On Something (Dodo Press) (19 page)

"What path and what mood?" said I.

"I was telling you," he answered patiently, "only you were so brutal about
reality." And then he sighed. He put his stick across his knees as he sat
there on the grass, held it with a hand on either side of his knees, and
so sitting bunched up began his tale once more.

"It was ten years ago, and I was extremely tired, for you must know that
I am a Government servant, and I find my work most wearisome. It was just
this time of year that I took a week's holiday. I intended to take it in
Paris, but I thought on my way, as the weather was so fine, that I would
do something new and that I would walk a little way off the track. I had
often wondered what country lay behind the low and steep hills on the
right of the railway line.

"I had crossed the Channel by night," he continued, a little sorry for
himself, "to save the expense. It was dawn when reached Rouen, and there I
very well remember drinking some coffee which I did not like, and eating
some good bread which I did. I changed carriages at Rouen because the
express did not stop at any of the little stations beyond. I took a slower
train, which came immediately behind it, and stopped at most of the
stations. I took my ticket rather at random for a little station between
Pont de l'Arche and Mantes. I got out at that little station, and it was
still early—only midway through the morning.

"I was in an odd mixture of fatigue and exhilaration: I had not slept and
I would willingly have done so, but the freshness of the new day was upon
me, and I have always had a very keen curiosity to see new sights and to
know what lies behind the hills.

"The day was fine and already rather hot for June. I did not stop in the
village near the station for more than half an hour, just the time to take
some soup and a little wine; then I set out into the woods to cross over
into this parallel valley. I knew that I should come to it and to the
railway line that goes down it in a very few miles. I proposed when I came
to that other railway line on the far side of the hills to walk quietly
down it as nearly parallel to it as I could get, and at the first station
to take the next train for Chartres, and then the next day to go from
Chartres to Paris. That was my plan.

"The road up into the woods was one of those great French roads which
sometimes frighten me and always weary me by their length and insistence:
men seem to have taken so much trouble to make them, and they make me
feel as though I had to take trouble myself; I avoid them when I walk.
Therefore, so soon as this great road had struck the crest of the hills
and was well into the woods (cutting through them like the trench of a
fortification, with the tall trees on either side) I struck out into a
ride which had been cut through them many years ago and was already half
overgrown, and I went along this ride for several miles.

"It did not matter to me how I went, since my design was so simple and
since any direction more or less westward would enable me to fulfil it,
that is, to come down upon the valley of the Eure and to find the single
railway line which leads to Chartres. The woods were very pleasant on that
June noon, and once or twice I was inclined to linger in their shade and
sleep an hour. But—note this clearly—I did not sleep. I remember every
moment of the way, though I confess my fatigue oppressed me somewhat
as the miles continued.

"At last by the steepness of a new descent I
recognized that I had crossed the watershed and was coming down into the
valley of this river. The ride had dwindled to a path, and I was wondering
where the path would lead me when I noticed that it was getting more
orderly: there were patches of sand, and here and there a man had cut and
trimmed the edges of the way. Then it became more orderly still. It was
all sanded, and there were artificial bushes here and there—I mean bushes
not native to the forest, until at last I was aware that my ramble had
taken me into some one's own land, and that I was in a private ground.

"I saw no great harm in this, for a traveller, if he explains himself,
will usually be excused; moreover, I had to continue, for I knew no
other way, and this path led me westward also. Only, whether because my
trespassing worried me or because I felt my own dishevelment more acutely,
the lack of sleep and the strain upon me increased as I pursued those
last hundred yards, until I came out suddenly from behind a screen of
rosebushes upon a large lawn, and at the end of it there was a French
country house with a moat round it, such as they often have, and a stone
bridge over the moat.

"The château was simple and very grand. The mouldings upon it pleased me,
and it was full of peace. Upon the further side of the lawn, so that I
could hear it but not see it, a fountain was playing into a basin. By the
sound it was one of those high French fountains which the people who built
such houses as these two hundred years ago delighted in. The plash of it
was very soothing, but I was so tired and drooping that at one moment it
sounded much further than at the next.

"There was an iron bench at the edge of the screen of roses, and hardly
knowing what I did,—for it was not the right thing to do in another
person's place—I sat down on this bench, taking pleasure in the sight of
the moat and the house with its noble roof, and the noise of the fountain.
I think I should have gone to sleep there and at that moment—for I felt
upon me worse than ever the strain of that long hot morning and that long
night journey—had not a very curious thing happened."

Here the man looked up at me oddly, as though to see whether I disbelieved
him or not; but I did not disbelieve him.

I was not even very much interested, for I was trying to make the trees to
look different one from the other, which is an extremely difficult thing:
I had not succeeded and I was niggling away. He continued with more
assurance:

"The thing that happened was this: a young girl came out of the house
dressed in white, with a blue scarf over her head and crossed round her
neck. I knew her face as well as possible: it was a face I had known all
my youth and early manhood—but for the life of me I could not remember
her name!'

"When one is very tired," I said, "that does happen to one: a name one
knows as well as one's own escapes one. It is especially the effect of
lack of sleep."

"It is," said he, sighing profoundly; "but the oddness of my feeling it is
impossible to describe, for there I was meeting the oldest and perhaps the
dearest and certainly the most familiar of my friends, whom," he added,
hesitating a moment, "I had not seen for many years. It was a very great
pleasure … it was a sort of comfort and an ending. I forgot, the moment
I saw her, why I had come over the hills, and all about how I meant to get
to Chartres…. And now I must tell you," added the man a little awkwardly,
"that my name is Peter."

"No doubt," said I gravely, for I could not see why he should not bear
that name.

"My Christian name," he continued hurriedly.

"Of course," said I, as sympathetically as I could. He seemed relieved
that I had not even smiled at it.

"Yes," he went on rather quickly, "Peter—my name is Peter. Well, this
lady came up to me and said, 'Why, Peter, we never thought you would
come!' She did not seem very much astonished, but rather as though I had
come earlier than she had expected. 'I will get Philip,' she said. 'You
remember Philip?' Here I had another little trouble with my memory: I did
remember that there was a Philip, but I could not place him. That was odd,
you know. As for her, oh, I knew
her
as well as the colour of the
sky: it was her name that my brain missed, as it might have missed my own
name or my mother's.

"Philip came out as she called him, and there was a familiarity between
them that seemed natural to me at the time, but whether he was a brother
or a lover or a husband, or what, I could not for the life of me remember.

"'You look tired,' he said to me in a kind voice that I liked very much
and remembered clearly. 'I am,' said I, 'dog tired.' 'Come in with us,' he
said, 'and we will give you some wine and water. When would you like to
eat?' I said I would rather sleep than eat. He said that could easily be
arranged.

"I strolled with them towards the house across that great lawn, hearing
the noise of the fountain, now dimmer, now nearer; sometimes it seemed
miles away and sometimes right in my ears. Whether it was their
conversation or my familiarity with them or my fatigue, at any rate, as I
crossed the moat I could no longer recall anything save their presence. I
was not even troubled by the desire to recall anything; I was full of a
complete contentment, and this surging up of familiar things, this surging
up of it in a foreign place, without excuse or possible connexion or any
explanation whatsoever, seemed to me as natural as breathing.

"As I crossed the bridge I wholly forgot whence I came or whither I was
going, but I knew myself better than ever I had known myself, and every
detail of the place was familiar to me.

"Here I had passed (I thought) many hours of my childhood and my boyhood
and my early manhood also. I ceased considering the names and the relation
of Philip and the girl.

"They gave me cold meat and bread and excellent wine, and water to mix
with it, and as they continued to speak even the last adumbrations of care
fell off me altogether, and my spirit seemed entirely released and free.
My approaching sleep beckoned to me like an easy entrance into Paradise.
I should wake from it quite simply into the perpetual enjoyment of this
place and its companionship. Oh, it was an absolute repose!

"Philip took me to a little room on the ground floor fitted with the
exquisite care and the simplicity of the French: there was a curtained
bed, a thing I love. He lent me night clothes, though it was broad day,
because he said that if I undressed and got into the bed I should be much
more rested; they would keep everything quiet at that end of the house,
and the gentle fall of the water into the moat outside would not disturb
me. I said on the contrary it would soothe me, and I felt the benignity of
the place possess me like a spell. Remember that I was very tired and had
not slept for now thirty hours.

"I remember handling the white counterpane and noting the delicate French
pattern upon it, and seeing at one corner the little red silk coronet
embroidered, which made me smile. I remember putting my hand upon the cool
linen of the pillow-case and smoothing it; then I got into that bed and
fell asleep. It was broad noon, with the stillness that comes of a summer
noon upon the woods; the air was cool and delicious above the water of the
moat, and my windows were open to it.

"The last thing I heard as I dropped asleep was her voice calling to
Philip in the corridor. I could have told the very place. I knew that
corridor so well. We used to play there when we were children. We used to
play at travelling, and we used to invent the names of railway stations
for the various doors. Remembering this and smiling at the memory, I fell
at once into a blessed sleep.

"…I do not want to annoy you," said the man apologetically, "but I
really had to tell you this story, and I hardly know how to tell you the
end of it."

"Go on," said I hurriedly, for I had gone and made two trees one exactly
like the other (which in nature was never seen) and I was annoyed with
myself.

"Well," said he, still hesitating and sighing with real sadness, "when
I woke up I was in a third-class carriage; the light was that of late
afternoon, and a man had woken me by tapping my shoulder and telling me
that the next station was Chartres…. That's all."

He sighed again. He expected me to say something. So I did. I said without
much originality: "You must have dreamed it."

"No," said he, very considerably put out, "that is the point! I didn't! I
tell you I can remember exactly every stage from when I left the railway
train in the Seine Valley until I got into that bed."

"It's all very odd," said I.

"Yes," said he, "and so was my mood; but it was real enough. It was the
second or third most real thing that has ever happened to me. I am quite
certain that it happened to me."

I remained silent, and rubbed out the top of one of my trees so as to
invent a new top for it, since I could not draw it as it was. Then, as he
wanted me to say something more, I said: "Well, you must have got into the
train somehow."

"Of course," said he.

"Well, where did you get into the train?"

"I don't know."

"Your ticket would have told you that."

"I think I must have given it up to the man," he answered doubtfully, "the
guard who told me that the next station was Chartres."

"Well, it's all very mysterious," I said.

"Yes," he said, getting up rather weakly to go on again, "it is." And
he sighed again. "I come here every year. I hope," he added a little
wistfully, "I hope, you see, that it may happen to me again … but it
never does."

"It will at last," said I to comfort him.

And, will you believe it, that simple sentence made him in a moment
radiantly happy; his face beamed, and he positively thanked me, thanked me
warmly.

"You speak like one inspired," he said. (I confess I did not feel like it
at all.) "I shall go much lighter on my way after that sentence of yours."

He bade me good-bye with some ceremony and slouched off, with his eyes set
towards the west and the more distant hills.

A child of four years old, having read of Fairyland and of the people in
it, asked only two days ago, in a very popular attitude of doubt, whether
there were any such place, and, if so, where it was; for she believed in
her heart that the whole thing was a pack of lies.