A Dream from the Night Read online

  Lucy came at luncheon time to move Olinda’s work from the table. As she brought out the white linen cloth, she said,

  “Mademoiselle has left this mornin’.”

  “Has she?” Olinda asked in surprise.

  “His Lordship took her to Derby station,” Lucy replied, “and she told Mrs. Kingston before she left that she was longin’ to get back to Paris.

  ‘All the same, mademoiselle, I hope you’ve had a nice rest,’ Mrs. Kingston said politely.

  ‘I’ll be restin’ a long time in the grave,’ Mademoiselle answered her. ‘This place is like a crypt and I don’t know how you stand it!’”

  Lucy laughed.

  “What do you think of that, miss! A crypt indeed! Mrs. Kingston was really shocked and, when she told Mr. Burrows, he said, ‘you never know what these foreigners will say next, there’re not like us and a good thing too, if you asks me!’”

  Olinda laughed, she could not help herself. She could almost hear the old butler saying it.

  At the same time her heart was singing with joy! The Earl had not gone back to France with Mademoiselle le Bronc!

  Perhaps that meant he intended to stay at home permanently and she only wished that she could see him and that he would tell her of his intentions.

  Then she told herself it was very unlikely that he would want to speak to her again.

  Last night, as he had been so desperate, he had turned to her because she was a stranger and because, as he had said to her on the island, she had not seemed real but part of a dream.

  It had all been part of the starlight, the stillness of the air, the exquisite view down the lake and the great house silhouetted against the sky.

  Nothing could have been commonplace in such a setting and so they had talked as Olinda had never talked to a man before and the Earl had confided in her because she was a stranger.

  Were they to meet again in the daytime, Olinda thought, the Earl might feel embarrassed because he had spoken so frankly and they had discussed his mother as she was quite certain that he had never discussed her with anyone else.

  ‘Now he will avoid me’ she thought with a sigh, ‘as I must avoid him.’

  It was a depressing idea and she knew, as the day passed while she sat stitching away at the cover from the Duchess’s bed, she longed with an intensity that was almost physical to be with the Earl again and to talk to him.

  Because she was sure of what his feelings were, she knew that the one place she must not go when she had finished supper was to the Greek Temple on the island.

  Resolutely she let herself out of the same door as she had done the night before, but now she walked deliberately through the gardens that lay at the back of the house.

  The sun was still bright, although the shadows were growing longer and the Earl, Olinda knew, would be at dinner.

  There would be no one to see her wend her way through the rose gardens with an ageing sundial in the centre of them and pass again through the yew hedges.

  She found the gardens as they sloped upwards were laid out in a manner that was a continual surprise and delight to anyone walking in them.

  She found a bowling alley and what she knew was a maze and childlike she longed to explore but was too frightened of getting lost.

  She found a small cascade falling down into a water garden that was bright with small shrubs and exotic plants, which she knew must have been brought from many different parts of the world.

  She climbed up the side of the cascade by a small flight of steps and finally left the gardens for a shrubbery brilliant with rhododendrons, crimson, white and purple.

  Their colours seemed to flare like flames against the darkness of the pine trees behind them.

  The path twisted and turned until finally Olinda found herself at the top of a hill with Kelvedon down below her.

  There was a statue of a Goddess, beautifully sculptured in white marble and there was a seat beneath it where she could sit and look down into the valley below.

  She could see the gardens, the great house and beyond it the lake.

  Through the branches of the trees she could catch a glimpse of the Greek Temple and she wondered if perhaps the Earl would go there and expect to find her waiting for him.

  Then she laughed at her presumption.

  He could have no interest in her personally! She had just been a face speaking in the darkness and, because he had been so desperate, her words had seemed helpful and he had given her an attention that he would never have accorded her at any other time.

  How could she expect anything else when she was nothing but an employee in his house?

  The view was very beautiful. The sun had begun to sink, filling the sky with colour and there were only the sounds from the nearby woods to disturb the peace of the passing day.

  There was the flutter of birds coming in to roost and the rustle of small animals moving in the undergrowth.

  Olinda wondered how many people had come to this spot to find peace and perhaps escape from the difficulties and problems that awaited them in the house below.

  Kelvedon was built for happiness as she had told the Earl last night.

  She reflected on how people tore themselves in pieces with the passion and violence of their emotions and yet it was such a waste of time.

  In reality they had so few years to live and, while they died, Kelvedon remained, strong and impregnable.

  She was thinking of all the Kelvedons who had lived there and particularly of the present Earl. She felt that she could see his face as vividly as if he was beside her and hear his voice with all its varying intonations as when he had spoken to her last night.

  Then suddenly again her dreams became reality!

  “I knew this was where I would find you,” a deep voice said.

  The Earl sat down beside her on the seat.

  She did not start, she only knew it seemed inevitable that he should appear because she had been thinking of him.

  “How did you know I would be – here?” she asked.

  “I was sure that you would feel too shy to go to the Temple,” he replied, “and this is the other place where I come to dream and to find peace.”

  “I did not – know that.”

  “Perhaps not consciously,” he said, “but undoubtedly unconsciously. You see, we cannot avoid each other, you and I. As I anticipated, you are here.”

  She glanced at him and thought that he looked younger and happier than she had expected.

  He was in evening clothes and she wondered vaguely how he could have escaped so quickly from the dining room and a dinner of many courses.

  Then she realised that she must have been sitting below the statue for quite a long time, because now the sun had gone behind the trees and the sky was deepening in the East.

  “Are you not interested enough to want a report?” the Earl asked.

  “A report?” Olinda echoed in surprise.

  “On how I have carried out your commands.”

  He was laughing at her, Olinda thought, but it was not unkind. In fact there was an intimacy about his tone that made her feel a little shy.

  “I hoped you would be interested,” he went on.

  “I am interested in anything you have to tell me,” Olinda answered, “but I thought that perhaps today – ”

  He smiled and it seemed to transform his face.

  “I knew exactly what you would be thinking,” he said, “but you are quite wrong. I did not regret confiding in you. I do not feel embarrassed because we were frank with each other. I just wanted to find out if you had been right and you were.”

  Olinda looked at him in astonishment.

  ‘How could he have known,’ she asked herself, ‘what has been in my mind all day?’

  Then knowing what he wanted her to say, she asked,

  “Will you tell me, my Lord, what you have done?”

  “After my guest left to return to France and, as you would have told me, if you had been brave enough, I made a
mistake in bringing her here, I have been visiting my farms.”

  “They were pleased to see you?” Olinda asked.

  “They certainly seemed to be,” he replied. “I don’t think I understood before this that those who live on a great estate feel that they own the proprietor just as he owns them.”

  “You are a part of their lives.”

  “A very large part,” the Earl agreed, “but I did not realise it.”

  “And now?”

  “They want me to be here,” he said. “They want to be able to explain to me what they are doing, show me their achievements and ask for my help when things go wrong.”

  “And that has made you happy?”

  “Everyone wishes to be wanted. I suppose my father would have told me, if I had listened, how interwoven one is with the lives of people who work on one’s land, who give you their very life by their labours.”

  Olinda clasped her hands together.

  “I am glad – so very glad – that you have found that out for – yourself.”

  “I should have known it before,” the Earl said. “Now I must try to make up lost time. I have wasted two years and I must somehow redeem them.”

  “I know that you will be able to do so,” Olinda said in a low voice.

  “How can you know that?”

  “I know it in the – same way as I knew last night what I must – tell you to – do.”

  The Earl was silent.

  Then he said,

  “Tell me about yourself.”

  “There is nothing to tell,” Olinda said quickly. “My mother is ill and I need money for her food and medicines. I have very few talents, but I can embroider.”

  “I should have said that you have many talents,” the Earl said, “and perhaps perception, clairvoyance, or call it what you will, is one of them.”

  “Perhaps instinct would be a better word, my Lord,” Olinda suggested quietly.

  “An instinct for what is right. Could any human being ask for more?”

  The Earl looked at Olinda as he spoke, seeing her hair very fair against the darkness of the trees that surrounded them.

  “Do you know what this Goddess represents?” he asked.

  “I am afraid I forgot to look,” Olinda replied. “I was so entranced by the view.”

  “She is Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom,” the Earl explained, “who knew more about life than all the Gods and men put together. Is not wisdom one of the things that you thought important to love?”

  “Very important,” Olinda said gravely, thinking of Hortense de Mazarin.

  “And wisdom is what few women have,” the Earl went on. “Yet it is what most men are afraid to find in a pretty woman.”

  “Afraid?” Olinda questioned.

  “No man wants a woman who is cleverer than he is himself.”

  “I think we are talking about two different things,” Olinda said slowly. “Cleverness in a way can be frightening, but wisdom is something quite different.”

  “You are right, of course you are right!” the Earl exclaimed. “What is it about you, Olinda, that you can always put everything into the right perspective? The instinct of wisdom! Yes, that indeed is what a man needs!”

  Unexpectedly he rose to his feet.

  “Come,” he said, “I will take you back. When it gets dark it is hard to find the path through the wood.”

  Olinda wondered if he was making an excuse to be rid of her, but when they entered the wood she found that, as he had said, it was quite difficult even in the twilight to find the way.

  There were also the steps down the side of the cascade to be negotiated and by the time they reached the gardens the light had almost gone and the dusk was closing in.

  They walked in silence across the velvet lawns and yet it seemed to Olinda that somehow they were still talking to each other.

  She was not certain what they said, she only knew that she was glad with a strange contentment she could not explain to herself to be beside the Earl and know that he was there.

  ‘It is because he is doing what I advised,’ she told herself.

  But she knew that that was not really the answer.

  They reached the side door for which Olinda had the key. He took it from her, turned the key in the lock and held it out to her.

  “Good night, Olinda,” he said, “and thank you.”

  She took the key from him and, as she did so, her fingers touched his. She felt something like a shock run through her body.

  She looked up at him inquiringly and he bent his head as if to kiss her cheek.

  “Thank you,” he began to say – but his lips found hers.

  Again there was that sense of shock and now it was like a streak of lightning running through her.

  His arms were round her and his mouth took possession of hers.

  For a moment it was a warmth and excitement, a feeling she had never known and somehow just as she had expected a kiss to be.

  Then suddenly it was a wonder, a rapture, something so exquisite, so perfect that it was beyond thought and expression.

  She felt as if a vivid and blinding light encompassed them and they were no longer two people but part of the wonder of Heaven itself.

  ‘This is Divine!’ Olinda thought, ‘and we are no longer human but Gods!’

  Then the ecstasy she felt made it impossible to think.

  It was so supreme, a rapture so unbelievable that time stood still.

  She did not realise that she had moved, but she found herself inside the house.

  The door closed behind her and she was alone.

  *

  Olinda lay for a long time face downwards on her bed. She had not undressed and she could not remember how she had found her way up the stairs and into her own room.

  Her whole body was pulsating, vibrating as if to the music of angels.

  She could not bear to come back to earth to face the commonplace to know that the light was gone and the glory she had felt had gone with it.

  ‘Why did I not realise,’ she asked herself, ‘that love is like this?’

  Why she had not known from the moment she met the Earl and saw him standing in the window that he was the man who could evoke in her the rapture she had read about and searched for, but had no idea how to find it?

  This was the Holy Grail she had spoken about. This was love as it was meant to be, the complete love of body, mind and soul.

  Then, as if she fell down from a great height into a valley of darkness, she told herself that, while she might feel like that, the Earl would feel very differently.

  He must have kissed hundreds of women and she had been just one more.

  He had been elated with his success during the day and grateful to her because she had suggested to him what he should do!

  That was all! There had been no talk of love between them tonight. He was not in love with her nor ever likely to be.

  She had nothing to offer the Earl of Kelvedon, who was a matrimonial catch in the Social world and who must have been pursued for his title and his great possessions ever since he had grown up.

  That he had been obsessed by his unhappiness over his mother and his hatred of her paramour did not alter the fact that socially he was very eligible and was also a most attractive man.

  ‘How could I think that for one moment he might be interested in me?’ Olinda asked herself. ‘Even if he knew who I was, it would make no difference. I have nothing to offer him, nothing!’

  With that thought the last remnant of the glory that had swept her up into a Heaven of happiness ebbed away to leave her in a very special Hell.

  ‘If I had never felt like that, even for a moment, I would not have missed it,’ she thought.

  She knew now that never again would life seem quite the same.

  Perhaps that was overdramatic, perhaps she was exaggerating what had happened. Yet she knew that, having touched the Divine for one fleeting second, she could never again accept a substitute.

  �
�I have always known it was like this,’ she told herself. But she also thought that in allowing the Earl to kiss her she had in fact destroyed any chance she might ever have of happiness.

  ‘How could I have known? How could I have guessed what he meant to do?’ she asked miserably.

  She told herself that he would think of her as Felix Hanson had, as a woman of no principles, willing to flirt with any man who paid her attention.

  Perhaps he would even believe that she was willing to let a flirtation go further and become a love affair. She was appalled at the thought.

  ‘Could he think that? How could he?’

  Yet she knew that it was very possible.

  Girls who were properly brought up, as she had been, did not allow a man they had met on no more than three occasions to kiss them passionately.

  She had neither struggled nor protested, but had surrendered herself to a rapture that had swept away thought itself.

  Perhaps being kissed is like that for everybody, Olinda wondered, and knew the answer.

  If Felix Hanson had kissed her it would have been very different. Then she would have felt disgusted, revolted, affronted.

  It was only the Earl who could awake in her sensations that until then she did not know existed.

  ‘How could I have let him? Why did I not anticipate that it might happen?’

  She asked herself the same question over and over again. Then because there was no answer she allowed herself almost reluctantly and because she could not help it to live again the rapture and the inexpressible wonder of his lips.

  ‘I have talked about love and I have thought about it,’ Olinda told herself, ‘but I did not know at all what it was like. Now I can understand why Kings have given up their thrones, why men have started wars and others have died a thousand deaths to prove their love!’

  She drew in her breath.

  ‘It is greater, more marvellous, more overwhelming than any human being can conceive. It is in truth Divine.’

  Then because she thought she would never find it again and the marvel of it was lost to her forever, she began to cry.

  Tears of self-pity ran down her cheeks and she knew that no amount of wise common sense could wipe them away.

  CHAPTER SIX