The Return of the Soul | Page 9

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 then, refurnished, and almost completely
altered. Only the wide fireplace, with its brass dogs and its heavy oaken
mantelpiece, had been left untouched.
Margot glanced hastily round. Then she walked up to the fireplace, and
drew a long breath.
"There ought to be a fire here," she said.
"But it is summer," I answered, wondering.
"And a chair there," she went on, in a curious low voice, indicating--I
think now, or is it my imagination?--the very spot where my
grandmother was wont to sit. "Yes--I seem to remember, and yet not to
remember."
She looked at me, and her white brows were knit.
Suddenly she said: "Ronald, I don't think I like this room. There is
something--I don't know--I don't think I could sit here; and I seem to
remember--something about it, as I did about the terrace. What can it
mean?"
"It means that you are tired and overexcited, darling. Your nerves are
too highly strung, and nerves play us strange tricks. Come to your own
room and take off your things, and when you have had some tea, you
will be all right again."
Yes, I was fool enough to believe that tea was the panacea for an
undreamed-of, a then unimaginable, evil.

I thought Margot was simply an overtired and imaginative child that
evening. If I could believe so now!
We went up into her boudoir and had tea, and she grew more like
herself; but several times that night I observed her looking puzzled and
thoughtful, and a certain expression of anxiety shone in her blue eyes
that was new to them then.
But I thought nothing of it, and I was-happy. Two or three days passed,
and Mar-got did not again refer to her curious sensation of
pre-knowledge of the house and garden. I fancied there was a slight
alteration in her manner; that was all. She seemed a little restless. Her
vivacity flagged now and then. She was more willing to be alone than
she had been. But we were old married folk now, and could not be
always in each other's sight. I had a great many people connected with
the estate to see, and had to gather up the tangled threads of many
affairs.
The honeymoon was over. Of course we could not always be together.
Still, I should have wished Margot to desire it, and I could not hide
from myself that now and then she scarcely concealed a slight
impatience to be left in solitude. This troubled me, but only a little, for
she was generally as fond as ever. That evening, however, an incident
occurred which rendered me decidedly uneasy, and made me wonder if
my wife were not inclined to that curse of highly-strung
women--hysteria!
I had been riding over the moors to visit a tenant-farmer who lived at
some distance, and did not return until twilight. Dismounting, I let
myself into the house, traversed the hall, and ascended the stairs. As I
wore spurs, and the steps were of polished oak and uncarpeted, I
walked noisily enough to warn anyone of my approach. I was passing
the door of the room that had been my grandmother's sitting-room,
when I noticed that it stood open. The house was rather dark, and the
interior was dim enough, but I could see a figure in a white dress
moving about inside. I recognised Margot, and wondered what she was
doing, but her movements were so singular that, instead of speaking to

her, I stood in the doorway and watched her.
She was walking, with a very peculiar, stealthy step, around the room,
not as if she were looking for anything, but merely as if she were
restless or ill at ease. But what struck me forcibly was this, that there
was something curiously animal in her movements, seen thus in a dim
half-light that only partially revealed her to me. I had never seen a
woman walk in that strangely wild yet soft way before. There was
something uncanny about it, that rendered me extremely discomforted;
yet I was quite fascinated, and rooted to the ground.
I cannot tell how long I stood there. I