“You torture yourself, Max. You always have.”
“Not always. It’s quite simple, really. My difficulties come from the fact that I have only two responses to life: joy or horror. Every thought, every emotion, stems from one or the other. You’ll see why later.”
He said nothing, so I went on:
“It’s been said that to confess is not simply to admit an act, but to lay before someone the inner history of that act. The act is apparent: its roots are hidden. Confession reveals the roots.”
Then I told him that, although we had met intermittently during the last ten years, he knew nothing essential about my childhood and less than nothing, therefore, about circumstances which had shaped me as a mould shapes molten metal.
“I’ll try to keep this short, but it’s not easy. All I need tell you about my parents is that they were sensitive, unhappy, isolated people. I think I’ve told you we travelled all over Europe till I was seven.”
“Yes, I know that. And you once said what a shock it was when you discovered how different your parents were from those of your school fellows.”
“What I didn’t tell you was the kind of life I lived after we settled in Kent. I was about seven then—a nervous, imaginative child. So much so, that I used to walk in my sleep. You might remember that. It’s important.”
Then I went on:
“I did not mix with any contemporaries till I went to school when I was twelve. Kent was magic when I was a child. I still dream of it. My mother was practically an invalid; my father seemed like a man in a trance. I had a tutor, but, apart from him, my only companion was a maid, Hilda. She was eighteen and eventually became my mother’s companion. I spent whole days alone. I was radiantly happy. And I was innocent—as practically no modern child could be innocent. I knew nothing of evil—nothing of suffering. I confused the world of imagination with the actual world. I had no idea that I was lonely.”
After a pause, I said:
“Sorry to inflict this on you, but it’s necessary. I know that what’s coming will seem ridiculous—but confession involves pulling off psychic fig-leaves, and we all look a little absurd without them.”
He said nothing. He was leaning forward, gazing into the fire. Snow silenced every sound in the outside world. I could still hear the clock ticking in the bedroom.
“I explored our part of Kent pretty thoroughly. Then, one day, I went in a different direction. It was a marvellous May morning. After I’d walked a short way, the road dipped sharply into a wood. I rounded a sudden bend—and there was the Empty House.”
“An empty house?”
“No. The Empty House. I stopped dead and stared at it. Desolation! Heart-chilling desolation! No one could have lived there for years. To look at it, was to feel something deep in you wither. Nevertheless, as I remained rooted by the gates, affection for this tragic house glowed in me. Above all, it seemed familiar. I felt that I had returned to it. But soon curiosity raged in me about the people who had once lived here. What were they like? Where had they gone? Where were they now? I raced home, determined to find out everything about them.
“I discovered nothing about them, but the Empty House obsessed me more every day. I began to imagine the people who had lived there. At first they were shadowy, but gradually they became defined. A father and mother; a boy, Maurice; and a girl—Fredrika. Eventually, they seemed more real than any one I knew.
“Then something very odd happened. They ceased to be the family who had once lived in the Empty House. They were living there now. Yes, now. Imagination easily effected this miracle. I saw the old house, not as it was, but transformed by Fredrika’s presence. Every day she became more real and more precious. Fredrika, with her elfin features, lit brows, and imaginative eyes! I loved her as I had never loved any one. And I love her now. Yes—now!”
“I can understand that, Max.”
“You’re probably the only man who could—which is one reason why I’m here.”
I rose, then began to pace the room.
“I sometimes think that nothing quickens a child’s imagination so surely as loneliness. You remember that Robert Louis Stevenson made a play-fellow of his shadow. But I must make this short.
“Although I did not know it, it was during this Fredrika period that I began to walk in my sleep. This frightened my father so much that he slept in my room for some months. Eventually, however, he evidently decided that I was cured, because he went back to his own room. Well, one night I dreamed I was going to the Empty House and that Fredrika and Maurice were waiting for me. It was a perfect May morning. So, in my dream, I walked to the Empty House—to find Maurice waving from one window and Fredrika from another. Then something amazing happened. I woke up. It was night. I was fully dressed. I was standing by the rusty gates. Never had the Empty House seemed so sinister as it did on this autumn night under a moon bewitched.”
“Weren’t you frightened?”
“Not particularly. What appalled me was the contrast between the Empty House of my dream and the reality. Anyway, this so alarmed my father that, the next day, he took me to Dr. Gandy, whom I liked very much, I told him about Fredrika and Maurice and their parents—how much I loved them—and how much I wanted them to come back to the Empty House. I thought this surprised him. He asked if any one had talked to me about the people who used to live there, but I said that no one had told me anything. I had imagined Fredrika and her family. Then he said that our talk should be a secret between us, but I was to go to him at any time if I wanted to.”
“Never heard anything quite like this, Max.”
“Later, I learned the facts about the people who had lived at the Empty House. The year I was born, a family lived there consisting of a man and his wife, a boy and a girl——”
“But——”
“Wait! The mother was lovely; the children were admired for miles round. Then the father was ruined—totally ruined—overnight. He came home—shot his wife—shot the children—then shot himself. Next morning, the milkman found out what had happened—and went straight to Dr. Gandy.”
“You mean to tell me that the family who had actually lived in that house was identical with the one you had imagined?”
“Yes, practically identical.”
“That’s the most astounding part of the whole story. You’d have made a fortune as a medium, Max. You know what happens to people when you’re not with them, and you felt what had happened in that house.”
“It’s not surprising that I’m sensitive. I was the only child of eccentric parents—I was brought up in a hot-house atmosphere—and mixed with no one of my own age till I was twelve. Anyhow, we’re nearly at the end of the preface. About the same time as I learned the truth about the Empty House, I discovered the facts about sex. Discovered them in the crudest way imaginable. Remember that—in the crudest way imaginable.”
“How old were you then?”
“Eight. And wholly innocent. From that moment, my imagination was divided. It had its heaven and its hell—and although a marriage between them has frequently been arranged, it has not taken place yet. Not yet.”
I continued to pace the room for some minutes, then stopped by the window.
It is a curious fact that when you tell someone the most intimate things about yourself, you half-forget that you have a listener. Probably you cannot really believe that you are at last revealing what has been hidden for so long. If a miser, after years of secret liaison with his hoard, were suddenly to show it to a stranger, he would probably think he was only dreaming. The utterly unprecedented always seems unreal. Anyhow, I only half-believed that Antony was in an arm-chair by the fire, listening.