The Return of the Soul | Page 8

distance the sea was tossing and tumbling, whipped into foam by a fresh wind. The Isle of Man lay far away, dark, mysterious, under a stack of bellying white clouds, just beginning to be tinged with the faintest rose.
Margot found the scene beautiful, the wind life-giving, the flat sand-banks, the shining levels, even the dry, spiky grass that fluttered in the breeze, fascinating and refreshing.
"I feel near the heart of Nature in a place like this," she said, looking up at a seagull that hovered over the little platform, crying to the wind on which it hung.
The train stole off along the edge of the sands, till we could see only the white streamer of its smoke trailing towards the sun. We turned away from the sea, got into the carriage that was waiting for us, and set our faces inland. The ocean was blotted out by the low grass and heather-covered banks that divided the fields. Presently we plunged into woods. The road descended sharply. A village, an abruptly winding river sprang into sight.
We were on my land. We passed the inn, the Rainwood Arms, named after my grandfather's family. The people whom we met stared curiously and saluted in rustic fashion.
Margot was full of excitement and pleasure, and talked incessantly, holding my hand tightly in hers and asking a thousand questions. Passing through the village, we mounted a hill towards a thick grove of trees.
"The house stands among them," I said, pointing.
She sprang up eagerly in the carriage to find it, but it was hidden.
We dashed through the gate into the momentary darkness of the drive, emerged between great green lawns, and drew up before the big doorway of the hall. I looked into her eyes, and said "Welcome!"
She only smiled in answer.
I would not let her enter the house immediately, but made her come with me to the terrace above the river, to see the view over the Cumbrian mountains and the moors of Eskdale.
The sky was very clear and pale, but over Styhead the clouds were boiling up. The Screes that guard ebon Wastwater looked grim and sad.
Margot stood beside me on the terrace, but her chatter had been succeeded by silence. And I, too, was silent for the moment, absorbed in contemplation. But presently I turned to her, wishing to see how she was impressed by her new domain.
She was not looking towards the river and the hills, but at the terrace walk itself, the band of emerald turf that bordered it, the stone pots full of flowers, the winding way that led into the shrubbery.
She was looking at these intently, and with a strangely puzzled, almost startled expression.
"Hush! Don't speak to me for a moment," she said, as I opened my lips. "Don't; I want to---- How odd this is!"
And she gazed up at the windows of the house, at the creepers that climbed its walls, at the sloping roof and the irregular chimney-stacks.
Her lips were slightly parted, and her eyes were full of an inward expression that told me she was struggling with forgetfulness and desired recollection.
I was silent, wondering.
At last she said: "Ronald, I have never been in the North of England before, never set foot in Cumberland; yet I seem to know this terrace walk, those very flower-pots, the garden, the look of that roof, those chimneys, even the slanting way in which that great creeper climbs. Is it not--is it not very strange?"
She gazed up at me, and in her blue eyes there was an expression almost of fear.
I smiled down on her. "It must be your fancy," I said.
"It does not seem so," she replied. "I feel as if I had been here before, and often, or for a long time." She paused; then she said: "Do let me go into the house. There ought to be a room there--a room--I seem almost to see it. Come! Let us go in."
She took my hand and drew me towards the hall door. The servants were carrying in the luggage, and there was a certain amount of confusion and noise, but she did not seem to notice it. She was intent on something; I could not tell what.
"Do show me the house, Ronald--the drawing-room, and--and--there is another room I wish to see."
"You shall see them all, dear," I said. "You are excited. It is natural enough. This is the drawing-room."
She glanced round it hastily.
"And now the others!" she exclaimed.
I took her to the dining-room, the library, and the various apartments on the ground-floor.
She scarcely looked at them. When we had finished exploring, "Are these all?" she asked, with a wavering accent of disappointment.
"All," I answered.
"Then--show me the rooms upstairs."
We ascended the shallow oak steps, and passed first into the apartment in which my grandmother had died.
It had been done up since