It was on this chariot that all the feeling in my dream was concentrated. The litheness of its shining curves, the changing light that seemed to give its sinuous shape a kind of breathing life, the harness hanging empty at its bar, all had some sharp, particular meaning for me. I knew it was an inanimate thing, and at the same time I knew that it knew I was there. I was terrified of it. It was waiting for me; and Nuaman and Sarkissian were plying their hammers with demon−like haste to get it ready. Sarkissian, Nuaman, the strange boys had not seen me, but it had. It winked and leered at me through the chink of the door.
I turned and ran on tiptoe out of the yard, back to the house, inside and up the stairs with the winged lightness of a nightmare. I threw off my dressing−gown and jumped, shivering, back into bed.
At my real awakening, which was in the brilliant light of a perfect morning, I remembered every detail of that scene and for a long time could not believe that I had not actually been up and out to the old stables in the night. I even felt my slippers to see if they were damp from the dew. Of course, they were quite dry. Indeed, I reflected, there wasn't much sense in feeling them, since if I had in fact taken the route I dreamed I had I should have been on flags all the way and should have touched no wet grass. Then as I sat on my bed pondering the thing, I was able to see from what different scattered incidents and ideas the whole picture was composed. The oddest thing now seemed to me something that in my dream had not surprised me at alclass="underline" I mean the presence of the strange boys. I could see now that it was our talk of little men, of little metal−workers, the night before that had suggested them. Also, the puzzle over Marvan and Ianthe being dressed when I saw them near the old mine differently from what Mrs. Sarkissian said they must have been dressed at that hour, may have had something to do with it. I could see that my sub−conscious mind, dealing with the puzzle on which I had fallen asleep, might have suggested the explanation, quite reasonable when reason slept, that the brown figures I had seen in the glen were not Marvan and Ianthe at all.
The last piece of the puzzle fell into place even while I was sitting pondering it. I became aware of a tiny irregular ringing sound, just like that which I thought had wakened me in the night, but diminished now and all but drowned by the stir and noise of the day. My bedroom door was open; opposite it was the bathroom door, also open. I went across, and there I found the washbasin nearly full of water and a tap dripping into it with a clear, bell−like little noise. I must have put back the plug without thinking after I had washed the previous night, and when sufficient water had accumulated from the dripping tap, my sleeping ear had caught the sound magnified by the silence of the night.
(11)
I did not tell my dream to anyone. Having so satisfactorily analysed it for myself I shelved it. I had awakened with a head full of the detail of the queer scene and the strongest conviction of its reality but, of course, once I became busy with the realities of the day, this conviction deserted me and much of the detail slipped out of memory.
What occupied my mind more than my dream was where I had gone wrong in my way across the moor. During the course of the morning I went into the library to have another look at the map. There, sure enough, was a clearly marked bridle road from Blagill to Staineshead, passing within half a mile of Ringstones Hall. The Stone Circle itself was marked and also the private road down to the Hall. It seemed as plain as a pike−staff. True, the date of the map which I discovered after some search, showed that it was thirty years old. I must, I thought, ask Dr Ravelin if there wasn't a more modern one in the house.
As I was standing gazing at the map Katia wandered into the room with a duster in her hand. She seemed in unusually low spirits. I spoke cheerily to her and she came over and gazed mournfully at the map with me. I wondered what queer ideas it conveyed to her.
“Look,” I said, jabbing my finger at the glass about halfway between the Stone Circle and Staineshead. “I lost myself there yesterday. Stupid, wasn't it?”
She looked at me as solemn as a ruminating cow for quite a long time, then nodded and heaved a deep sigh.
“I go one time,” she said. “The road hide itself.”
“It did more than that with me. It positively erased itself!”
Katia pondered deeply. I had not seen her look so lugubrious before, but I realised the hopelessness of trying to get at what was weighing on her spirits. It might have been a sharp word from Mrs. Sarkissian in the kitchen, or it might have been some profundity of Slavonic sorrow too deep for tears. I thought it might cheer her up if I proposed going swimming in the afternoon. She nodded, but still ruminated on something she seemed to want to tell me. At length, when she trusted herself to our slippery speech, it appeared that it was still my misadventure that she had on her mind.
“Sir No Man say no go,” she said. “You go. He take the road away. I stay; you stay. If you not come perhaps I gone. Now both stay here one hundred year.”
“Oh come, Katia,” I said, understanding her mournful tone if not her words. “Don't you like Ringstones?” She made her eyes very round.
“I like,” she said. “I like to now. But now I fear.''
She laid her hand (duster and all) on my arm and, with her face close to mine, spoke the word with such heavily breathed emphasis that she alarmed me and for a second I had a most unpleasant feeling in my inwards and knees.
“Fear?” I repeated, noticing how the mere speaking of that word in a certain way can communicate the thing itself. “What do you fear?”
She looked all round the room, even took a pace towards the door, wavered uncertainly, then put her back against the wall and, looking as if she expected goodness knows what horror to burst in on us, pronounced in a whisper a word, or two words, that completely baffled me.
“Less she", or perhaps “Lest she", I thought she said.
At that very second the door softly and suddenly opened. We were behind it. It seemed to me, such was the state Katia's mysterious behaviour had got me into, that the door opened of itself. My heart thumped.
It was Doctor Ravelin. He did not notice us until he was half−way across the room. Katia fled; and I, having returned his absent−minded 'Good−morning' a little jumpily, turned again to the map, though I don't know that just then I saw anything that was on it. Dr. Ravelin had come to get a book from the tall case by the window. When he had taken it down we stood and chatted. Or he chatted; I listened for a few moments and then blurted out that Katia seemed to be acting very oddly. What was wrong with her?