No! that idea was untenable, for my moonlight acquaintance was indisputably a very young woman, almost a girl.
At that moment we came to the upward path leading to the plateau. I recognised it at once. Below was the park, with the chapel.
But—yes, it was the plateau, but not as I had seen it. The trees were pruned, the grass-walks smooth as green velvet, the flower-beds brilliant with blossom.
“We often have tea here, papa and I,” said Lilia. “The story goes that this was the flower-garden of the old house two hundred years ago, and that they used to have afternoon gatherings here, like the garden-parties people have now.”
She must have thought me abnormally stupid that Sunday morning. When I saw a marble fountain, with water splashing into a basin where gold-fish were swimming, instead of the wrecked, broken-down object in my dream, I took refuge in silence; and as soon as I could, I left the uncanny spot. Whether I had dreamt of it, or of some place like it, of that I felt sure—the spot was uncanny.
While we walked through the wood towards the church, Lilia talked, but I heard little of what she said. She was telling me some story of a duel between the former proprietor of the Pinewood and a supposed friend, which had taken place on the terrace, and the chapel below was erected in memory of the event. If it was not exactly this, it was very much like it; and really I do not care. All that I want now is to find out whether my brain played me false that night, and whether I am likely to be the victim of brain disease if I go on working as hard as I have worked.
That darling girl! How good she was to me, how patient!
In spite of my inward anxiety, I shall always remember that Sunday with pleasure. The little whitewashed church, with the honest rustics singing hearty hymns to the quavering organ, while sunbeams came and went upon the walls, and the quivering foliage of an elm in the churchyard cast green lights upon my open prayer-book. The Mervyns are nice people. Mrs. Mervyn is a trifle too sharp, perhaps; I saw her eyes fixed upon me now and then with rather too scrutinising an expression. But it is very pretty, almost touching, to see her ways with that motherless girl. She loves her really, the good woman! When we were walking in the garden, Lilia and Mr. Mervyn strolling on in front of us, she was so good as to tell me she was glad I had come.
“Lilia knows so few young people, and no girls,” she said. “It is a law of her father’s, and always has been. Poor dear child! she is really not fit to face the world. She knows absolutely nothing of it.”
“Let us hope she may not be called upon to face the world,” I said.