CHAPTER XVIII
A DREAM AND OTHER THINGS
It is perfectly amazing to what a degree the physical conditions of the atmosphere appear to be bound up with one’s own mental atmosphere. In the more ordinary nature of things, the physical conditions will act on the mental, sending your mind up to the point marked gaiety when the sun shines, dropping it down to despair—or, at any rate, down to dulness—when the skies are leaden. Also, in more extreme cases, the mental conditions will act on the physical, if not actually, at least with so good a show of reality as to appear genuine. If you are thoroughly unhappy—no mere, light, passing depression, mind you—it matters not at all how brilliant the sunshine may be, it is nothing but grey fog for all you see of it. If, on the other hand, you are in the seventh heaven of joy, the grey clouds are suffused with a golden light of radiance. But these are extreme cases.
It was an extreme case with Antony. Despite the sunshine which lay upon the earth, despite the singing of the birds in the early morning, and at evening, despite the flowers which displayed their colours and lavished their scents around him as he worked, the world might have been bathed in fog for all he saw of its brightness. Hope had taken unto herself wings and fled from him, and with her joy had departed.
He felt a queer bitterness towards his work, a bitterness towards the garden and the big grey house, and most particularly towards the man who had lived in it, and who was responsible for his present unhappiness. He had none towards the Duchessa. But then, after all, he appeared in her eyes as a fraud, the thing of all others he himself most detested. He could not possibly blame her for her attitude in the matter. Yet all the time, he had a queer feeling of something like remorse for his present bitterness; it was almost as if the garden and the very flowers themselves were reproaching him for it, reminding him that they were not to blame. And then a little incident suddenly served to dispel his gloom, at all events in a great measure.
It was a slight incident, a trivial incident, merely an odd dream. Nevertheless, having in view its oddness, and—unlike most dreams—its curious connectedness, also its effect on Antony’s spirit, it may be well to record it.
He dreamt he was walking in a garden. He knew it was the garden of Chorley Old Hall, though there was something curiously unlike about it, as there often is in dreams. The garden was full of flowers, and he could smell their strong, sweet scent. At one side of the garden—and this, in spite of that curious unlikeness, was the only distinctly unlike thing about it—was a gate of twisted iron. He was standing a long way from the gate, and he was conscious of two distinct moods within himself,—an impulse which urged him towards the gate, and something which held him back from approaching it.
Suddenly, from another direction, he saw a woman coming towards him. Recognition and amazement fell upon him. She was the same small girl he had played with in his boyhood, and whose name he could not remember, but grown to womanhood. She came towards him, her fair hair uncovered, and shining in the sunshine.