Really never before had I been in such a vile and senseless humour. It seemed to take in the whole world. I passed in review all the men I had ever known. They were all about equally detestable; they seemed all so like one another, more or less hair on their faces, that was all, and yet women fall in love with these creatures; but then, what were women? I passed in review all the women I had ever known, and all the women I had ever heard of—they all had to stand for inspection beside the strange figure of Geraldine. Oh, what fools they looked, what dummies, what empty-headed apes, tricked out in borrowed feathers, full of spiteful tricks, and tricks to draw the attention of those other apes, the ones with beards.
I thought of the school-girls at the boarding-school,—those virgins so full of suppressed vice, their finnikin manners, their whispers, and their sniggers. I never thought that I too had been one of those vicious virgins.
I pricked myself with a pin, and that brought me back from my thoughts. Then I went down to breakfast. One place as usual. Old James the butler seemed grown ten years younger since that night so long ago when he let me in first, that night so long ago, the night before last. He darted about so quick that he upset a plate of muffins on the floor. Then bang! my bad humour changed suddenly to good.
What did this little wretch mean by breakfasting alone at unearthly hours? Did she have strange people out of the garden to breakfast with her? people with feet like roots, and faces like flowers. I had seen this Geraldine looking at the chrysanthemums with an expression of face as if she knew more about them than a mortal ought to know. Last night a great moth flew in from the garden, and rested quite familiarly on her hair, just above her ear. She treated the snails just as if they were kinsfolk. I felt sure that to her breakfast-table guests came who would have flown, or run, or crawled, from my presence.
Then, like a sombre note of music, came the recollection of my dream. I heard the mad galloping of the horses, and my good humour turned to sadness. You must think me a very changeable person, but that is just what I am. I am jotting down all my feelings as they came, so you can see that it takes very little to move me from sorrow to laughter.
I have written seventy-three pages! almost a little book. To think that I should ever have written a book, no matter how small!
Well, when breakfast was over I sat for awhile making up my mind that Geraldine might come to me before I came to her; then I got up and did exactly what I had determined not to do. I came down the toy-house corridor. I knocked at the right hand door; no answer. I pushed the door open and peeped in; no one. I knocked at the bedroom door; no answer, but I did not go in, I felt somehow afraid. Then I turned to the left hand door. I opened it. It was a strangely pretty room, but it did not contain Geraldine. It looked like an oratory; the roof was arched, and at the far end the daylight through a stained glass window shone glimmering down on the polished oak floor. A silver lamp swung from the ceiling, and an oak table, plain and rather severe looking, stood in the centre. This was where she probably dined, if she ever dined, and breakfasted all alone.
What a life this strange being must have led, just like a nun, and many a morning she must have sat here all alone whilst I was—where?
Do you know that all the sermons ever preached would have had less effect upon me than the sight of this room? I suddenly saw the beastliness of the world we all live in, just as plainly as if it had been some vile reptile crawling from under that oak table; but we never see sights like that for long, just half a second or so, and then we forget. I looked for a moment, then I turned away. Where had she gone to? was she hiding? could she be in the garden?
No, she was not in the garden; the chrysanthemums all looked as if they knew but would not tell. Oh, those chrysanthemums, how they haunt my dreams, actually haunt me; they are all dead and forgotten, but their faces seem to haunt me. Geraldine made them human when she walked amongst them, she touched their faces as if they were faces of brothers and sisters. I saw her smile at one once, and once I saw her actually frown at one of them, and now they come and haunt me as if to say, "What have you done to Geraldine?"