We talked about various things and then he told me that, several months ago, my father had discovered that I sometimes walked in my sleep and that was why he had had a bed moved into my room. Dr. Gandy instantly added that there was no need for alarm because sleep-walkers, like the blind, have a sense of obstacles but, all the same, it was just as well to stay in your bed once you were in it. He then said that, when we lived abroad, I had sometimes walked in my sleep from one room to another, but, recently, I left the house. For instance, on one occasion, after I had got up and dressed, my father had followed me to the stables, where I patted a puppy of which I was very fond.
I told the doctor that I remembered dreaming that I had got up in the night and gone to the stables to pat the puppy. Remembered it quite well.
Then he said we must not forget that I had been much better lately—so much better, in fact, that my father gave up sleeping in my room—but he would like to know whether, last night, I had dreamed that I had gone to the Empty House. I told him that I had but, in my dream, the sun was shining and Fredrika was waving from one window and Maurice from another.
Then he asked who Fredrika and Maurice were, so I plunged into a long account of them and their parents, and told him how much I loved them, and how happy they were, and how lovely the house was—particularly the library where we all had tea together when it was wet.
I was about to continue this breathless account of my adventures with Fredrika and Maurice when I discovered that he was looking at me with a very peculiar expression.
“You won’t tell any one!” I exclaimed. “No one knows about Fredrika and Maurice.”
“I won’t tell any one,” he said in his deep measured voice, “but I would like you to tell me this: has any one talked to you about that old house, and the people who used to live there?”
“Oh no, no one! Hilda told me it was no good asking about the people who used to live there because I’d only be told a lot of lies if I did.”
“You like Hilda?”
“Yes, awfully.”
He looked at me for a long time before he said:
“Hilda told you nothing whatever about the people who used to live in that empty house?”
“No, nothing, I don’t think she knows anything.”
“So you invented Fredrika and Maurice and their parents? You imagined them?”
“Yes, but now they are real. I’d do anything for them. I want them to come back.”
“To—come back?”
“Yes. I want the old house to be happy again. I want that more than anything in the world.”
After a long silence, he said:
“We won’t tell any one about this. It shall be a secret between us. But if you want to talk to me at any time, you’d come, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I’d come.”
He pressed a bell and a few moments later my father came into the consulting-room.
After a long talk about how essential it was that I should not be excited when I went to bed, my father said it was not surprising that I was “highly strung” because I was going to be an artist. Then he took some of my drawings from a portfolio and handed them to the doctor.
He held them in his broad hands, looked at each in turn, then said:
“You say he is going to be an artist. It seems to me that he is one. These are very remarkable.”
Almost immediately, he went on:
“This boy is remarkably sensitive and——”
He broke off, turned to me and said there was a small collection of rare butterflies in the next room and perhaps I’d like to look at them. I said I would, so he took me into a kind of study, then returned to my father.
Directly I got home, I raced round, looking for Hilda and eventually found her in the little workroom at the back of the house. I must have flung the door open tempestuously, because she shot to her feet, then exclaimed:
“What on earth’s happened now?”
“We’ve been to Dr. Gandy, and——”
“Well, I know that!”
“And—and you’ve to tell me something.”
“What is it, for heaven’s sake?”
“He says I’m sensitive. Now, what’s that mean—exactly?”
“Surely your father’s not paid good money to be told that!”
“But what’s it mean?”
“It means that you feel things that others don’t.”
I pondered that for a few moments, then asked:
“But do I feel things that others don’t?”
“I should think you do! You’re uncanny—that’s what you are. You know what’s happening to others when you’re not with them. Yes, you do! Often, when I call you in the morning, you’ll say that your mother’s had a bad night—which is true enough, but how do you know it?”
I said nothing, so she went on:
“It’s because you’re sensitive that you walk in your sleep. A nice shock you gave your father last night! D’you know what your tutor says about you?”
“No. What’s he say?”
“He says that imaginary things are more real to you than actual ones. Those were his very words. Still, it’s not your fault. You haven’t had much chance—what with being born in Paris, and then running about all those foreign countries! Besides——”
She broke off, looked at me long and earnestly, then said:
“Aren’t you afraid of yourself sometimes?”
“No. Why should I be?”
“Weren’t you, last night, when you woke up and found yourself out in the lane?”
“I’d rather have gone on dreaming.”
“Well, don’t you walk in your sleep into my room again.”
“Why not? You look jolly in bed.”
“Oh get along with you! You’re too much for me. And that’s a fact.”
When I left her, I went into the garden. October stillness hushed everything: even fiery asters and huge-headed dahlias seemed asleep. I walked on till I reached the little stream, dividing the terraced garden from the orchard—the little stream which kept whispering the same thing to itself, over and over and over again.
Then I remembered that although I had told Dr. Gandy a lot about Fredrika, I had not said anything about the drawings I had done of her. I was glad I’d said nothing about them. I kept them in a big black portfolio—and had never shown them to any one.
In every childhood there is someone or something which captures imagination, and the Empty House with its fictitious inhabitants certainly captured mine, but it was not the only influence of those early formative years. There was another, different in kind, and one that influenced the whole of my life. It happened when I was eight. And childhood ended with it. . . .
On public holidays, hordes of trippers invaded our part of Kent, roamed through its loveliness and left a trail of litter in their tracks. They appeared in our green solitudes as suddenly as if they had shot up through trap doors, and disappeared as dramatically.
But when I left the house one radiant spring morning, I was far too intent on the glory of the day, and far too enthralled by thoughts of Fredrika, to remember that it was Whit-Monday. I had decided to explore a footpath running out of Love Lane and had no time to think about anything else.
This particular May morning was the happiest of my life. There are moments when the commonest thing is transformed—when sight becomes vision—and this was one of them. During these moments, it is as if the world which is usually seen is the back of a tapestry, but, now, a glimpse is given of the hidden Divine design. A feeling of freedom and power possessed me. I exulted in the knowledge that I was an artist—that mine would be a dedicated life. I vowed to spare myself nothing—to surrender everything treasured by others—if only this vision remained and I were privileged to reveal it.