CHAPTER I

_This story was told me by Leithen, as we were returning rather late in
the season from a shooting holiday in North Ontario. There were few
passengers, the weather was a succession of snow blizzards and gales,
and as we had the smoking-room for the most part to ourselves, we stoked
up the fire and fell into a mood of yarns and reminiscences. Leithen,
being a lawyer, has a liking for careful detail, and his tale took long
in the telling; indeed, snatches of it filled the whole of that rough
October passage. The version I have written out is amplified from his
narrative, but I think it is accurate, for he took the trouble to revise
it._

* * * * *

Romance (he said) is a word I am shy of using. It has been so staled and
pawed by fools that the bloom is gone from it, and to most people it
stands for a sugary world as flat as an eighteenth-century Arcadia. But,
dry stick as I am, I hanker after my own notion of romance. I suppose it
is the lawyer in me, but I define it as something in life which happens
with an exquisite aptness and a splendid finality, as if Fate had
suddenly turned artist–something which catches the breath because it is
so wholly right. Also for me it must happen to youth. I do not complain
of growing old, but I like to keep my faith that at one stage in our
mortal existence nothing is impossible. It is part of my belief that the
universe is on the whole friendly to man, and that the ordering of the
world is in the main benevolent…. So I go about expecting things,
waiting like an old pagan for the descent of the goddess. And once–only
once–I caught the authentic shimmer of her wings.

I

My story begins in January 1913, when I took my nephew Charles to dine
with the Amysforts for a ball they were giving. Balls are not much in my
line, for when I came first to London it was the foolish fashion of
young men not to dance, but to lounge superciliously in doorways, while
their elders took the floor. I had a good deal of work on hand, and I
meant to leave immediately after dinner, but the necessity of launching
Charles made me linger through the first few dances. My nephew was a
cheerful young gentleman in his second year at Oxford, and it presently
appeared that he did not want for friends of his own age. There was a
perpetual bandying of nicknames and occult chaff with other
fresh-coloured boys.

One in particular caught my attention. He was a tall young man of about
Charles’s age, who was not dancing but stood beside one of the windows
with his head silhouetted against a dark curtain. He was uncommonly
handsome after the ordinary English pattern, but our youth is mostly
good to behold, and that would not have fixed my attention. What struck
me was his pose. He was looking at the pretty spectacle with a curious
aloofness–with eyes that received much but gave out nothing. I have
never seen any one so completely detached, so clothed with his own
atmosphere, and since that is rare at the age of twenty, I asked Charles
if he knew him.

“Rather. It’s old Milburne. He’s up at Magdalen with me. First string
for the ‘Varsity mile. Believed”–his voice became reverential–“to be
going to knock five seconds off his last year’s time. Most awful good
chap. Like me to introduce you?”

The young man in response to my nephew’s beckoning approached us.
“Hullo, Vernon, how’s life?” said my nephew. “Want to introduce you to
my uncle–Sir Edward Leithen–big legal swell, you know–good fellow to
have behind you if you run up against the laws of England.”

Charles left us to claim a partner, and I exchanged a few commonplaces
with his friend, for I too–_consule Planco_–had run the mile. Our
short talk was the merest platitudes, but my feeling about his odd
distinction was intensified. There was something old-fashioned in his
manner–wholly self-possessed yet with no touch of priggishness–a
little formal, as if he had schooled himself to be urbanely and
delicately on his guard. My guess at the time was that he had foreign
blood in him, not from any difference of colouring or feature, but from
his silken reserve. We of the North are apt to be angular in our
silences; we have not learned the art of gracious reticence.

That boy’s face remained clearly fixed in my memory. It is a thing that
often happens to me, for without any reason on earth I will carry about
with me pictures of some casual witnesses or clients whom I am bound to
recognize if I ever see them again. It is as freakish a gift as that
which makes some men remember scraps of doggerel. I saw the face so
vividly in my mind that, if I had been an artist, I could have drawn it
accurately down to the finest lines of the mouth and the wary courtesy
of the eyes. I do not suppose I gave the meeting another conscious
thought, for I was desperately busy at the time, but I knew that I had
added another portrait to the lumber-room of my absurd memory.

I had meant to go to Scotland that Easter vacation to fish, but a sudden
pressure of Crown cases upset all my plans, and I had to limit my
holiday to four days. I wanted exercise, so I took it in the most
violent form, and went for a walk in the Westmorland hills. The snow lay
late that year, and I got the exercise I sought scrambling up icy
gullies and breasting north-easters on the long bleak ridges. All went
well till the last day, which I spent among the Cartmel fells intending
to catch a train at an obscure station which would enable me to join the
night mail for London at Lancaster. You know how those little hills
break down in stony shelves to the sea. Well, as luck would have it, I
stepped into a hole between two boulders masked with snow, and crawled
out with the unpleasing certainty that I had either broken or badly
wrenched my ankle. By the time I had hobbled down to the beginning of
the stone-walled pastures I knew that it was a twist and not a break,
but before I reached a road I knew also that I would never reach the
station in time for my train.

It had begun to snow again, the spring dusk was falling, and the place
was very lonely. My watch told me that even if I found a farm or inn and
hired a trap I should miss my train. The only chance was to get a
motor-car to take me to Lancaster. But there was no sign of farm or
inn–only interminable dusky snowy fields, and the road was too small
and obscure to make a friendly motor-car probable. I limped along in a
very bad temper. It was not a matter of desperate urgency that I should
be in London next morning, though delay would mean the postponement of a
piece of business I wanted to get finished. But the prospect was black
for my immediate comfort. The best I could look forward to was a bed in
a farm- or a wayside public-house, and a slow and painful journey next
day. I was angry with myself for my clumsiness. I had thought my ankles
beyond reproach, and it was ridiculous that after three days on rough
and dangerous mountains I should come to grief on a paltry hillock.

The dusk thickened, and not a soul did I meet. Presently woods began to
creep around the road, and I walked between two patches of blackness in
a thin glimmer of twilight which would soon be gone. I was cold and
hungry and rather tired, and my ankle gave me a good deal of pain. I
tried to think where I was, and could only remember that the station,
which had been my immediate objective, was still at least six miles
distant. I had out my map and wasted half a dozen matches on it, but it
was a map of the hill country and stopped short of my present
whereabouts. Very soon I had come to a determination to stop at the
first human habitation, were it a labourer’s cottage, and throw myself
upon the compassion of its inmates. But not a flicker of light could I
see to mark the presence of man.

Then something white glimmered faintly on my left, and I saw that it was
a wicket gate. This must mean a house near at hand, so I hopefully
pushed it open and entered. I found myself in a narrow path running
among fir trees. It was nearly pitch-dark in that place, and I was in
fear of losing the road, which was obscured by the fallen snow, and
getting lost in a wood. Soon, however, I was clear of the firs and in
more open country among what looked like beeches. The wind, too, had
swept the path bare, and there was just enough light to make it out as
it twined up and down a little glade. I suspected that I was in a
demesne of some considerable house, and the suspicion became a certainty
when my track emerged on a broad gravel drive. After that my way was
clear. The drive took me into a park–I knew it was a park because of
the frequent swing-gates for cattle–and suddenly it bore to the right
and I saw half a dozen irregularly placed lights high up in the air
before me. This was the house, and it must be a large one, for some of
the lights were far apart.

Five minutes later I found myself ringing the bell in a massive pillared
porch, and explaining my case to a very old butler, to whom I gave my
card.

“I’ve had an accident on the hills,” I said, “and twisted my ankle
rather badly. I wonder if I might ask for some assistance–to get to an
inn or a station. I’m afraid I don’t in the least know where I am.”

“This is Severns Hall, sir,” said the man. “My master is Mr. Vernon
Milburne. If you will come in, sir, I will acquaint him with the
position.”

“Mr. Vernon Milburne?” I cried. “I believe I have met him. I think he is
at Oxford with my nephew.”

“Mr. Milburne is a member of the University of Oxford,” said the ancient
man. He led me into a vast hall of the worst kind of Victorian Gothic,
in which a big bright wood fire crackled. When he saw me clearly the
butler proved a very angel of mercy. “I think, sir, you should first
have a little refreshment,” he said, and brought me a whisky-and-soda.
Then, while I thawed my frozen bones before the logs, he departed to
seek his master.

I was too preoccupied with my own grievances to feel much interest in
the fact that I had stumbled upon the dwelling of the boy who had so
intrigued me at Lady Amysfort’s ball. But as I warmed my hands at the
blaze it did occur to me that this was the last kind of house I would
have linked him with–this sham-mediæval upholstered magnificence. It
was Gothic with every merit of Gothic left out, and an air of dull
ecclesiasticism hung about it. There was even an organ at one end, ugly
and staring, as if it had come out of some _nouveau riche_ provincial
church. Every bit of woodwork was fretted and tortured into fancy
shapes.

I heard a voice at my elbow.

“I think we have met before, Sir Edward,” it said. “I am so sorry for
your misfortune. Let’s get the boot off and look at the ankle.”

“It’s only a sprain,” I said. “I really don’t want to bother you. If you
would be so very kind as to lend me a car to take me to Lancaster, I can
manage to travel all right. I ought to be in London to-morrow morning.”

“Nonsense!” He smiled in a pleasant boyish way. “You are going to stay
here to-night, and if you’re well enough I’ll send you into Lancaster
to-morrow. You look simply fagged out. Let’s get the boot off and see if
we need a doctor.”

He summoned the butler, and the two of them soon had my foot bare, while
the boy, who seemed to know something about sprains, ran a light hand
over the ankle bone.

“Nothing very bad here,” he said; “but it must have been jolly painful
to walk with. We’ll bandage it and you need only limp for a day or two.
Beaton, find out if Sir Edward’s room is ready. You’d better have a hot
bath and then we’ll do the bandaging. After that you’ll want some food.
I’ll lend you a dressing-gown and dry clothes.”

The next hour was spent in restoring me to some ease of body. Severns
might be an ugly house, but whoever built it had a pretty notion of
comfort in bedrooms. I had two rooms, each with a cheerful fire, and
when I had had my bath the two Samaritans bandaged my ankle as neatly as
a hospital nurse, and helped me into a suit of flannels. Then Vernon
disappeared, and when he returned he was dressed for dinner. A table had
been laid for me in the sitting-room, and Beaton was waiting to ask me
what I would drink.

“Champagne,” said Vernon. “I prescribe it.”

“But you’re making far too much fuss about me,” I protested. “I can
easily dine downstairs with you.”

“I think you ought to dine here. You’ve put yourself in my hands and I’m
your medical adviser.”

He saw me start my meal before he left me.

“Do you mind if I say good-night now?” he said. “You ought to get to bed
pretty soon, and I have some work I want to do after dinner. Sound sleep
and pleasant dreams.”

I dined excellently, and after a single pipe was resolutely put to bed
by Beaton the butler. They were benevolent despots in this house who
were not to be gainsaid. I was sufficiently weary to be glad to go to
sleep, but before I dropped off I wondered just a little at the nature
of my reception. There were no other guests, Beaton had told me, and it
seemed odd that a boy of nineteen alone in this Gothic mausoleum should
show so little desire for human companionship. I should have expected,
even if I were not allowed downstairs, to have had him come and talk to
me for an hour or so before turning in. What work had he to which he was
so faithful? I remembered that Charles had mentioned that he was a bit
of a swell at his books, but, as Charles himself had been ploughed for
Pass Mods, that might mean very little. Anyhow, there was something
morbid about a conscience which at nineteen forced its possessor to work
in vacation time after dinner. He had been immensely hospitable, but
obviously he had not wanted my company. That aloofness which I had
remarked at Lady Amysfort’s ball had become a heavy preoccupation. His
attitude had been courteously defensive; there had been a screen which
robbed his kindness of all geniality. I felt quite distinctly that there
was something in or about the house, something connected with himself,
from which I was being resolutely excluded.

I slept well, and was awakened by Beaton bringing my early tea. He had
undrawn the curtains and opened one of the windows, and a great flood of
sunlight and spring airs was pouring through. The storm had passed, and
April was in her most generous mood. My ankle felt lumpish and stiff,
but when Beaton examined it he pronounced that it was mending nicely.
“But you can’t press on it to-day, sir,” he added. “Mr. Vernon won’t let
you move to-day…. Breakfast will be laid in the sitting-room, and Mr.
Vernon’s compliments and he proposes to join you at nine o’clock. I will
return and bandage the ankle and assist you to rise as soon as Prayers
are over.”

Presently, as I lay watching a ridge of distant hill seen through the
window and trying to decide what it could be, the sound of singing rose
from some room below me. It must be Prayers. The old-fashioned hymn tune
reminded me of my childhood, and I wondered how many young men of to-day
kept up the fashion of family worship when alone in a country house. And
then I suddenly remembered all about the Milburnes, for they had been my
mother’s friends.

Humphrey Milburne had been a rich Lancashire cotton-spinner, whose
father or grandfather–I forget which–had been one of the pioneers of
the industry. I don’t think he had ever concerned himself greatly with
business, for his _métier_ had always been that of the devout layman
who is more occupied with church affairs than any bishop. He had been a
leader of the Evangelical party, a vigorous opponent of ritualist
practices, and a noted organizer of religious revivals. Vague memories
of him came back to me from my childhood, for my own family had been of
the same persuasion. I had a recollection of a tall, bearded man who, on
a visit to us, had insisted on seeing the children, and had set me on
his knee, and had asked me, a shivering, self-conscious mite,
embarrassing questions about my soul. I remembered his wife, Lady
Augusta, more clearly. She was a thin little woman who never seemed to
be separated from a large squashy Bible stuffed with leaflets and
secured by many elastic bands. She had had a knack of dropping
everything as she moved, and I had acted as page to retrieve her
belongings. She had been very kind to me, for to her grief she had then
no children…. I remembered that a son had at last been born–“a child
of many prayers,” my mother had called him. And then came a vague
recollection of a tragedy. Lady Augusta had died when the boy was an
infant, and her husband had followed within the year. After that the
Milburnes passed out of my life, except that their nurse had come to us
when I was at Oxford, and had had much to say of young Master Vernon.

My vague remembrance seemed to explain my host. The child of ageing
parents and an orphan from his early years–that would account for his
lack of youthful spontaneity. I liked the notion of him I was acquiring;
there was something quaint and loyal in his keeping up the family
ritual–an evangelical athlete with the looks of Apollo. I had fancied
something foreign in his air, but that of course was nonsense. He came
of the most prosaic British stock, cotton-spinning Milburnes, and for
his mother a Douglas-Ernott, whose family was the quintessence of Whig
solidity.

I found Vernon waiting for me in the sunny sitting-room, dressed in
rough grey homespun, and with an air of being ready for a long day in
the open. There was a change in him since the night before. His eyes
were a little heavy, as if he had slept badly, but the shutters were
lifted from them. His manner was no longer constrained, and the slight
awkwardness I had felt in his presence was gone. He was now a cheerful
communicative undergraduate.

“Beaton says you had a good night, sir, but you mustn’t use that foot of
yours. You can’t think of London to-day, you know. I’ve nothing to do
except look after you, so you’d better think of me as Charles with a
nephew’s privileges. It’s going to be a clinking fine day, so what do
you say to running up in the car to the moors above Shap and listening
to the curlews? In the spring they’re the jolliest things alive.”

He was a schoolboy now, looking forward to an outing, and we might have
been breakfasting in Oxford rooms before going out with the Bicester. I
fell into his holiday mood, and forgot to tell him that I had long ago
met his parents. He lent me an ulster and helped me downstairs, where he
packed me into the front of a big Daimler and got in beside me. In the
clear spring sunshine, with the park a chessboard of green grass and
melting snow, and the rooks cawing in the beech tops, Severns looked
almost venerable, for its lines were good and the stone was weathering
well. He nodded towards the long façades. “Ugly old thing, when you
think of Levens or Sizergh, but it was my grandfather’s taste, and I
mean to respect it. If we get a fine sunset you’ll see it light up like
an enchanted castle. It’s something to be able to see the hills from
every window, and to get a glimpse of the sea from the top floor.
Goodish sport, too, for we’ve several miles of salmon and sea trout, and
we get uncommon high birds in the upper coverts.”

We sped up by winding hill-roads to the moors, and there were the
curlews crying over the snow-patched bent with that note which is at
once eerie, and wistful, and joyful. There were grouse, too, busy about
their nesting, and an occasional stone-chat, and dippers flashing their
white waistcoats in every beck. It was like being on the roof of the
world, with the high Lake hills a little foreshortened, like ships
coming over the horizon at sea. Lunch we had with us, and ate on a dry
bank of heather, and we had tea in a whitewashed moorland farm. I have
never taken to any one so fast as I took to that boy. He was in the
highest spirits, as if he had finished some difficult task, and in the
rebound he became extraordinarily companionable. I think he took to me
also, for he showed a shy but intense interest in my doings, the
eagerness with which an undergraduate prospects the channels of the
world’s life which he is soon to navigate. I had been prepared to find a
touch of innocent priggishness, but there was nothing of the kind. He
seemed to have no dogmas of his own, only inquiries.

“I suppose a lawyer’s training fits a man to examine all kinds of
problems–not only legal ones,” he asked casually at luncheon. “I mean
he understands the value of any sort of evidence, for the principles of
logical truth are always the same?”

“I suppose so,” I replied, “though it’s only legal conundrums that come
my way. I was once asked my opinion on a scientific proof–in the higher
mathematics–but I didn’t make much of it–couldn’t quite catch on to
the data or understand the language.”

“Yes, that might be a difficulty,” he admitted. “But a thing like a
ghost story, for instance–you’d be all right at that, I suppose?”

The boy had clearly something in his head, and I wondered if the raw
magnificence of Severns harboured any spooks. Could that be the reason
of his diffidence on the previous evening?

When we got home we sat smoking by the library fire, and while I skimmed
the _Times_ Vernon dozed. He must have been short of his sleep and was
now making up for it in the way of a healthy young man. As I watched
his even breathing I decided that here there could be no abnormality of
body or mind. It was like watching a tired spaniel on the rug, too tired
even to hunt in his dreams.

As I lifted my eyes from the paper I saw that he was awake and was
looking at me intently, as if he were hesitating about asking me some
question.

“I’ve been asleep,” he apologized. “I can drop off anywhere after a day
on the hills.”

“You were rather sleepless as a child, weren’t you?” I asked.

His eyes opened. “I wonder how you know that?”

“From your old nurse. I ought to have told you that in my boyhood I knew
your parents a little. They stayed with us more than once. And Mrs.
Ganthony came to my mother from you. I was at Oxford at the time, and I
remember how she used to entertain us with stories about Severns. You
must have been an infant when she left.”

“I was four. What sort of things did she tell you?”

“About your bad nights, and your pluck. I fancy it was by way of censure
of our declamatory habits. Why, after all these years I remember some of
her phrases. How did the thing go? ‘What fidgeted me was the way his
lordship ‘eld his tongue. For usual he’d shout as lusty as a whelp, but
on these mornings I’d find him with his eyes like moons and his skin
white and shiny, and never a cheep the whole blessed night, with me
lying next door, and a light sleeper at all times, Mrs. Wace, ma’am.’
Was Mrs. Wace a sort of Mrs. Harris?”

He laughed merrily. “To think that you should have heard that! No, she
was our housekeeper, and Ganthony, who babbled like Sairey Gamp, made a
litany of her name. That’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard.”

“You’ve outgrown that childish ailment anyhow,” I said.

“Yes. I have outgrown it.” My practice with witnesses made me detect
just a shade of hesitation.

At dinner he returned to the subject which seemed to interest him, the
exact nature of the legal training. I told him that I was an advocate,
not a judge, and so had no need to cultivate a judicial mind.

“But you can’t do without it,” he protested. “You have to advise your
client and pronounce on his case before you argue it. The bulk of your
work must be the weighing of evidence. I should have thought that that
talent could be applied to any subject in the world if the facts were
sufficiently explained. In the long run the most abstruse business will
boil down to a fairly simple deduction from certain data. Your
profession enables you to select the relevant data.”

“That may be true in theory, but I wouldn’t myself rate legal talent so
high. A lawyer is apt to lack imagination, you know.” Then I stopped,
for I had suddenly the impression that Vernon wanted advice, help of
some kind–that behind all his ease he was profoundly anxious, and that
a plea, almost a cry, was trembling on his lips. I detest confidences
and labour to avoid them, but I could no more refuse this boy than stop
my ears against a sick child. So I added, “Of course lawyers make good
confidants. They’re mostly decent fellows, and they’re accustomed to
keeping their mouths shut.”

He nodded, as if I had settled some private scruple, and we fell to
talking about spring salmon in the Tay.

“Take the port into the library,” he told Beaton. “Sir Edward doesn’t
want coffee. Oh, and see that the fire is good. We shan’t need you again
to-night. I’ll put Sir Edward to bed.”

There was an odd air of purpose about him, as he gave me his arm to the
library and settled me with a cigar in a long chair. Then he disappeared
for a minute or two and returned with a shabby little clasped leather
book. He locked the door and put the key on the mantelpiece, and when he
caught me smiling he smiled too, a little nervously.

“Please don’t think me an ass,” he said. “I’m going to ask a tremendous
favour. I want you to listen to me while I tell you a story, something I
have never told to any one in my life before…. I don’t think you’ll
laugh at me, and I’ve a notion you may be able to help me. It’s a
confounded liberty, I know, but may I go on?”

“Most certainly,” I said. “I can’t imagine myself laughing at anything
you had to tell me; and if there’s anything in me that can help you it’s
yours for the asking.”

He drew a long breath. “You spoke of my bad nights as a child and I said
I had outgrown them. Well, it isn’t true.”

II

When Vernon was a very little boy he was the sleepiest and healthiest of
mortals, but every spring he had a spell of bad dreams. He slept at that
time in the big new night-nursery at the top of the west wing, which his
parents had built not long before their death. It had three windows
looking out to the moorish flats which run up to the fells, and from one
window, by craning your neck, you could catch a glimpse of the sea. It
was all hung, too, with a Chinese paper whereon pink and green parrots
squatted in wonderful blue trees, and there seemed generally to be a
wood fire burning. He described the place in detail, not as it is
to-day, but as he remembered it.

Vernon’s recollection of his childish nightmares was hazy. They varied,
I gathered, but narrowed down in the end to one type. He used to find
himself in a room different from the nursery and bigger, but with the
same smell of wood smoke. People came and went, such as his nurse, the
butler, Simon the head keeper, Uncle Appleby his guardian, Cousin
Jennifer, the old woman who sold oranges in Axby, and a host of others.
Nobody hindered them from going away, and they seemed to be pleading
with him to come too. There was danger in the place; something was going
to happen in the big room, and if by that time he was not gone there
would be mischief…. But it was quite clear to him that he could not
go. He must stop there, with the wood smoke in his nostrils, and await
the advent of the something. But he was never quite sure of the nature
of the compulsion. He had a notion that if he made a rush for the door
at Uncle Appleby’s heels he would be allowed to escape, but that somehow
he would be behaving badly. Anyhow, the place put him into a sweat of
fright, and Mrs. Ganthony looked darkly at him in the morning.

Those troubled springs continued–odd interludes in a life of nearly
unbroken health. Mrs. Ganthony left because she could not control her
tongue and increased the boy’s terrors, and Vernon was nine–he
thought–before the dream began to take a really definite shape. The
stage was emptying. There was nobody in the room now but himself, and he
saw its details a little more clearly. It was not any apartment in
Severns. Rather it seemed like one of the big old panelled chambers
which he remembered from visits to the Midland country houses of his
mother’s family, when he had arrived after dark and had been put to
sleep in a great bed in a place lit with dancing firelight. In the
morning it had looked only an ordinary big room, but at that hour of the
evening it had seemed an enchanted cave. The dream-room was not unlike
these, for there was the scent of a wood fire and there were dancing
shadows, but he could not see clearly the walls or the ceiling, and
there was no bed. In one corner was a door which led to the outer world,
and through this he knew that he might on no account pass. Another door
faced him, and he knew that he had only to turn the handle for it to
open.

But he did not want to, for he understood quite clearly what was beyond.
There was a second room just like the first one; he knew nothing about
it except that opposite the entrance another door led out of it. Beyond
was a third chamber, and so on interminably. There seemed to the boy to
be no end to this fantastic suite. He thought of it as a great snake of
masonry, winding up hill and down dale away to the fells or the sea….
Yes, but there _was_ an end. Somewhere far away in one of the rooms was
a terror waiting on him, or, as he feared, coming towards him. Even now
it might be flitting from room to room, every minute bringing its soft
tread nearer to the chamber of the wood fire.

About this time of his life the dream was an unmitigated horror. Once it
came while he was ill with a childish fever, and it sent his temperature
up to a point which brought Dr. Moreton galloping from Axby. In his
waking hours he did not, as a rule, remember it clearly; but during the
fever, asleep and awake, that sinuous building, one room thick, with
each room opening from the other, was never away from his thoughts. It
amazed him to think that outside were the cheerful moors where he hunted
for plovers’ eggs, and that only a thin wall of stone kept him from
pleasant homely things. The thought used to comfort him when he was
awake, but in the dream it never came near him. Asleep, the whole world
seemed one suite of rooms, and he, a forlorn little prisoner, doomed
grimly to wait on the slow coming through the many doors of a fear which
transcended word and thought.

He became a silent, self-absorbed boy, and, though the fact of his
nightmares was patent to the little household, the details remained
locked up in his head. Not even to Uncle Appleby would he tell them,
when that gentleman, hurriedly kind, came to visit his convalescent
ward. His illness made Vernon grow, and he shot up into a lanky, leggy
boy. But the hills soon tautened his sinews, and all the time at his
preparatory school he was a healthy and active child. He told me that he
tried to exorcise the dream through his religion–to “lay his burden on
the Lord,” as the old evangelical phrase has it; but he signally failed,
though he got some comfort from the attempt. It was borne in on him, he
said, that this was a burden which the Lord had laid quite definitely on
him and meant him to bear like a man.

He was fifteen and at Eton when he made the great discovery. The dream
had become almost a custom now. It came in April at Severns about
Eastertide–a night’s discomfort (it was now scarcely more) in the rush
and glory of the holidays. There was a moment of the old wild
heart-fluttering; but a boy’s fancy is more quickly dulled than a
child’s, and the endless corridors were now more of a prison than a
witch’s ante-chamber. By this time, with the help of his diary, he had
fixed the date of the dream; it came regularly on the night of the first
Monday of April. Now the year I speak of he had made a long expedition
into the hills, and had stridden home-ward at a steady four miles an
hour among the gleams and shadows of an April twilight. He was alone at
Severns, so he had had his supper in the big library, where afterwards
he sat watching the leaping flames on the open stone hearth. He was very
weary, and sleep fell upon him in his chair. He found himself in the
wood-smoke chamber, and before him the door leading to the unknown….
But it was no indefinite fear that now lay beyond. He knew
clearly–though how he knew he could not tell–that each year the
something came a room nearer, and was even now but twelve rooms off. In
twelve years his own door would open, and then—-

He woke in the small hours, chilled and mazed, but with a curious new
assurance in his heart. Hitherto the nightmare had left him in gross
terror, unable to endure the prospect of its recurrence, till the kindly
forgetfulness of youth relieved him. But now, though his nerves were
fluttering, he perceived that there was a limit to the mystery. Some day
it must declare itself and fight on equal terms.

The discovery opened a new stage in his life. As he thought over the
matter in the next few days he had the sense of being forewarned and
prepared for some great test of courage. The notion exhilarated as much
as it frightened him. Late at night, or on soft dripping days, or at any
moment of lessened vitality, he would bitterly wish that he had been
born an ordinary mortal. But on a keen morning of frost, when he rubbed
himself warm after a cold tub, or at high noon of summer, the adventure
of the dream almost pleased him. Unconsciously he must have braced
himself to a harder discipline. His fitness, moral and physical, became
his chief interest for reasons that would have been unintelligible to
his friends or his masters.

He passed through school–as I knew from Charles–an aloof and rather
splendid figure, a magnificent athlete with a brain as well as a body, a
good fellow in every one’s opinion, but a grave one. He could have had
no real intimates, for he never shared the secret of the spring dream.
At this period, for some reason which he could not tell, he would have
burned his hand off sooner than breathe a hint of it. Pure terror
absolves from all conventions and demands a confidant, so terror, I
think, must have largely departed from the nightmare as he grew older.
Fear, indeed, remained, and awe and disquiet, but these are human
emotions, whereas terror is of hell.

Had he told any one, he would no doubt have become self-conscious and
felt acutely his difference from other people, so it was a sound
instinct which kept him silent. As it was, he seems to have been an
ordinary schoolboy, much liked, and, except at odd moments, unaware of
any brooding destiny. As he grew older, and his ambition awoke, the
moments when he remembered the dream were apt to be disagreeable, for a
boy’s ambitions are strictly conventional and his soul revolts at the
abnormal. By the time he was ready for the university he wanted above
all things to run the mile a second faster than any one else, and he had
hopes of academic distinction, for he was an excellent classic. For most
of the year he lived with these hopes and was happy; then came April,
and for a short season he was groping in dark places. Just before and
after each dream he was in the mood of exasperation; but when it
actually came he was plunged in a different atmosphere, and felt the
quiver of fear and the quick thrill of expectation.

During his first year at Oxford he had made an attempt to avoid it. He
and three others were on a walking tour in Brittany in gusty spring
weather, and came late one evening to an inn by an estuary where
sea-gulls clattered about the windows. Youth-like they made a great and
foolish feast, and sat all night round a bowl of punch, while school
songs and “John Peel” contended with the dirling of the gale. At
daylight they took the road again, without having closed an eye, and
Vernon told himself that he was rid of his incubus. He wondered at the
time why he was not more cheerful, for to his surprise he had a sense of
loss, of regret, almost of disappointment.

“That was last year,” he said, and he opened the little locked diary and
showed me the entry. “Last night I went to bed not knowing what to
think, but far more nervous than I had been since I was a baby. I hope I
didn’t show it, but I wasn’t much in the mood for guests when you turned
up.”

“What happened?” I asked eagerly. “Did the dream come back?”

He nodded and passed me the diary so that I could read that morning’s
entry. The dream had not failed him. Once more he had been in the
chamber with the wood fire; once again he had peered at the door and
wondered with tremulous heart what lay beyond. For the something had
come nearer by two rooms, and was now only seven doors away. I read the
bare account in his neat, precise handwriting, and it gave me a strong
impression of being permitted to peep through a curtain at a stage
mysteriously set. I noticed that he had added some lines from Keats’s
_Indian Maid’s Song_:

“I would deceive her,
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.”

There was a mark of exclamation against the “she,” as if he found some
irony in it.

III

He seemed to be waiting for me to speak, waiting shyly and tensely like
a child expecting the judgment of an elder. But I found it hard to know
what to say.

“That is a very wonderful story!” I ventured at last. “I am honoured
that you should have chosen me to tell it to. Perhaps it will be a
relief to you to know that some one else understands what you are going
through…. I don’t suppose you want sympathy, but I would like to
congratulate you on your fortitude.”

“I don’t need sympathy–or congratulation. But I want help–the help of
your brain and your experience…. You see, in seven years some
tremendous experience is coming to me, and I want–I’d like–to know
what it is.”

“I wonder if a good doctor wouldn’t be the best person to consult.”

“No, no,” he cried almost angrily. “I tell you there’s nothing
pathological about it–not now that I’m a man. I don’t want it exorcised
as if it were an evil spell. I think–now–that I’d break my heart if it
all vanished into moonshine…. I believe in it as I believe in God, and
I’m ready to face whatever is coming. But I want to be forewarned and
forearmed, if possible, for it’s going to be a big thing. If I only
knew something about what was coming–even the smallest something!”

Those were the days before psycho-analysis had become fashionable, but
even then we had psychologists, and in my bewilderment I tried that
tack.

“Might not it all spring from some fright–some strange experience at
any rate–which you had as a baby? Such things often make an abiding
impression.”

He smiled. “You’re still thinking it is pathological. Fright would
account for recurring nightmares, but surely not for a thing so rational
as this–a fixed day every year, the same room, the time limit. It would
not explain the thing moving on a room last year when I had no dream.”

“I suppose not,” I admitted. “Have you looked up your family history? I
have heard stories of inherited obsessions and premonitions–what they
call a ‘weird’ in Scotland.”

“I thought of that, but there’s nothing–nothing. There are no Milburne
records much beyond my grandfather, and by all accounts they were the
most prosaic kind of business men. My mother’s family–well, there’s
plenty of records there, and I’ve waded through most of the muniment
room at Appleby. But there’s no hint of anything mysterious in the
Douglas-Ernotts. They were a time-serving lot, who knew how the cat was
going to jump, but they kept out of crime and shunned anything
imaginative like the plague. I shouldn’t think one of them had ever an
ambition which couldn’t be put in terms of office or money, or a regret
except that he had missed a chance of getting at the public purse.
True-blue Whigs, all of them.”

“Then I’m hanged if I know what to say. But, now you’ve told me, I want
you to remember that you can always count on me. I may not be able to
help, but I’m there whenever you want me. Perhaps–you never know–the
thing will reveal itself more clearly in the next seven years and come
within the scope of my help. I’ve taken a tremendous liking to you, my
dear chap, and we’re going to be friends.”

He held out his hand.

“That’s kind of you…. Shall I tell you what I think myself? I was
taught to believe that everything in our lives is foreordained by God.
No caprice of our own can alter the eternal plan. Now, why shouldn’t
some inkling of this plan be given us now and then–not knowledge, but
just an inkling that we may be ready? My dream may be a heavenly
warning, a divine foreshadowing–a privilege, not a cross. It is a
reminder that I must be waiting with girt loins and a lit lamp when the
call comes. That’s the way I look on it, and it makes me happy.”

I said nothing, for I did not share his Calvinism, but I felt that
suddenly that library had become rather a solemn place. I had listened
to the vow of the young Hannibal at the altar.