I
That night Lizzie had a dream and, waking in the early hours of the grey dim morning, saw before her every detail of it. She had dreamt that she was lost in the house. No human being was there. Every room was closed and she knew that every room was empty.
It was full day, but only a dull yellow light lit the passages.—She could not find her way to the central staircase. A passage would be familiar to her and then suddenly would be dark and vague and menacing. She opened doors and found wide dusty empty rooms with windows thick in cobwebs and beyond them a garden green, tangled, deserted.
She knew that if she did not escape soon some disaster would overtake her, some disaster in which both Roddy and Rachel would be involved. She knew also that, in some way, Rachel's safety absolutely depended upon her—She felt, within herself, a struggle as to whether she should save Rachel. She did not wish to save Rachel.... But some impulse drove her....
She ran down the passage, stumbling in the strange indistinct yellow light—She knew that, could she only reach the garden, Rachel would be saved.
She reached a window, looked down, and saw below her, like a green pond, the lawn overgrown now with weeds and bristling with strange twisted plants.
She flung open the window and tried to jump, but a cold blast of some storm met her and drove her back. The storm screamed about her, the dust rose in the room, the plants in the garden waved their heads ... the wind rushed through the house and she heard doors banging and windows creaking.
She knew suddenly that she was too late—Rachel was dead.
She stood there thinking, "I thought that I hated her—I know now that I loved her all the time."
The storm died down—died away. A voice quite close to her said, "You made a mistake, Miss Rand. People have souls, you know—having a soul of your own is more important than criticizing other people's.... People have souls, you know."
She woke and heard a clock strike seven. As she lay there a sense of uneasiness was with her so strongly that she repeated to herself, half sleeping, half waking, "I wish to-day were over, quite over, quite over. I want to-day to be over."
She was completely wakened by a sound. She lay there for a little time wondering what it was. Then she realized that something was scratching on the door.
She got out of bed, opened the door and found the dog, Jacob, sitting in the long dark passage, looking through his tangled hair into space as though the very last thing that he had been doing had been trying to attract her attention. Jacob was nearer to a human being than any animal that she had ever known. He had attached himself to Miss Rand and she had decided, after watching him, that he knew more about the situation in the house than anyone else. To catch him, as he watched, with his grave brown eyes, Roddy or Rachel as they spoke or moved was to have no kind of doubt as to his wisdom, his deep philosophy, his penetration into motives.
He liked Miss Rand, but she knew well that his feeling for her had nothing of the passionate urgency with which he regarded Roddy or Rachel. All tragedy—the depths and the heights of it—she had seen in that dog's eyes, fixed with the deepest devotion upon Roddy.—"He knows," she had often thought during the last week, "exactly what's the matter with all of us."
He always slept, she knew, in a basket in Rachel's room, and she wondered why he had been ejected. He sat now in the middle of the floor and seemed deeply unhappy. He sat square with his legs spread out, his hair hanging in melancholy locks over his eyes, his small beard giving a last wistful touch to his expression. He did not look at Lizzie or show any interest in her, he only stared before him at the pattern on the wall.
Lizzie did not attempt to pat him—she went back to bed, and, lying there, saw the light gather about the room.
Once Jacob sighed. Otherwise he made no movement until the maid came in with Lizzie's tea—Then he crawled under the bed.