Those listless spells! He had suffered them too. They had been the beginning. And the doctor had found nothing wrong with him!
Sylvester had come to my room. He had wanted to see me so much that in his sleep his mind had been stronger than his body. He had wanted to tell me that he was going to die and that he was leaving everything to me. That was what had been uppermost in his mind. I had dreamed of Bella. That was what had been uppermost in mine. How had Bella died? That was what I had been asking myself. She had fallen from a window. Had she thrown herself down? Had she been led there?
No, no. I could not stop thinking of myself struggling in Joliffe’s arms.
Lottie had heard me. She had come up too. Was that why… I would not think it even. Of course it had been as Joliffe had said.
“Of course, of course,” I said aloud. “How could it have been otherwise?”
But how can one stop evil thoughts, fearful suspicions entering the mind?
Joliffe was solicitous. “My dearest Jane, you are not well. What is it? Tell me.”
“I just feel rather tired,” I said.
“But to walk in your sleep. You’ve never done that before have you… not as a child? Did your mother ever do it? Is it something that runs in families?”
“If I have done it I knew nothing about it.”
“I think you ought to see Dr. Phillips. You need a tonic of some sort. You’re run down. You’ve had a trying time.”
“I came through my trying times. I should be all right now.”
“But that’s how these things affect people. Their nerves stay steady while they are going through their crises and afterwards when they’ve settled into a peaceful existence the strain begins to show. You need a pick-me-up!”
I shook my head. “I’ll be all right, Joliffe.”
Jason knew I wasn’t well. He was worried too. I was deeply touched when he looked at me with anxious eyes. He feared he had neglected me. He had been so excited to have discovered a father that he had allowed his enthusiasm for one parent to submerge his care of the other. He had always looked after me, now I was ill.
He followed me around. He would come into my room in the morning and stand by my bed.
“How are you, Mama?” he would say and I wanted to hold him to me and hug him.
Joliffe understood. He always understood Jason.
“Don’t worry, old chap,” he said. “We’ll look after her.”
One afternoon he brought Dr. Phillips to the house without telling me.
I was resting on my bed as it was one of the listless days.
“Your husband tells me that you are not well, Mrs. Milner,” he said.
“I feel quite well at times; at others there’s a sort of lassitude.”
“You have no pain of any sort?”
I shook my head. “At times I feel quite… normal. And then this seems to descend on me.”
“Just tiredness?”
“And er… rather violent dreams.”
“Your husband told me that you had walked in your sleep. I think, Mrs. Milner, that you may not be adjusted to life out here.”
“I have been here for nearly two years.”
“I know. But this can manifest itself some time after the arrival. You are not apparently suffering from any malady except this lassitude and disturbed nights. The lassitude could be the result of the bad nights.”
“I sleep most of the nights.”
“Yes, but perhaps not peacefully, not deeply. And you have these nightmares. Perhaps you should contemplate a trip home.”
“In due course, yes. At the time there is so much to be done here.”
He understood.
“Still, I should think about it if I were you. In the meantime I will prescribe a tonic. I am sure that in a little while you will be yourself.”
Afterwards I said to Joliffe: “You should have told me you were getting the doctor. Really I felt something of a hypochondriac. There doesn’t seem to be anything much wrong with me.”
“Thank God for that.”
“I’m apparently not adjusted to life in the East. He suggested a trip home.”
“How would you like that, Jane?”
“I think I would like it very much but it isn’t possible just yet.”
“There’s no harm in thinking about it.”
“Would you like it, Joliffe?”
“I’d like anything that made you well… and happy.”
He was so tender that my heart was touched. He had that power. He could make me happy by a look or an inflection of his voice merely. So much did I love him.
I started to think about home: Mrs. Couch getting the house ready; I could see her purring over Jason. She would hate it with the house deserted by what she called the upstairs folk. I thought of green meadows and the buttercups with the dew on them and the fields which looked like patchwork and the leafy lanes—the first primroses and the crocuses, white, yellow, and mauve peeping out of the grass. It all seemed so normal and so far away. I was sure I should be completely well there. And a great nostalgia swept over me.
I took the doctor’s tonic and for a time it seemed to do me good. I became very excited when Joliffe found a Buddhist temple gate which he was certain was of the ninth or tenth century A.D. Toby and Adam doubted this and I couldn’t help feeling gratified when, after we had tracked down records, Joliffe was proved to be right. Sylvester had underestimated Joliffe, I told myself. He cared as passionately about the work as Sylvester had, and he would be as knowledgeable—perhaps even more so—when he reached his age.
I was feeling so well now that I laughed at my one-time fears.
Joliffe was delighted. “Old Phillips has put you right,” he said, “and it’s wonderful that you are quite well again.”
But the listlessness came back. It was depressing after I had begun to believe that the doctor’s diagnosis was correct and that I had not yet adjusted myself to life out here.
One afternoon I slept as I had before and awakened to that same horror. Dark shadows were in the room and I knew before I looked what I was going to see. A tenor possessed me. This was real. This was no dream.
I raised my eyes and the horrible numbing fear swept over me for there it was in the open doorway, the hideous evil face, the frightful luminous eyes… and it was watching me.
In a few seconds there was the flash of red and it was gone.
I stumbled off the bed and rushed to the door, open as before but there was no sign of the thing in the corridor.
My nightmare again. And I had thought I was getting better. I tried to think logically.
I had imagined it. Sylvester had mentioned it and what he had told me had become imbedded in my mind to come out in this form when I myself was not well.
I shut the door and turned the key. I was alone in my room.
I looked over my bed. The money sword hung there as Lottie had placed it.
A THOUSAND LANTERNS
I
The truth was brought home to me in a horribly disturbing manner.
The next day when I was drinking my afternoon tea in the sitting room, Jason entered the room.
He looked pleased to see me and came and sat beside me. He was being his protective self. He was very excited because the Feast of the Dragon was drawing near and Joliffe was planning to take us down to the waterfront where we would have a good view of the procession.
He chattered away excitedly and he asked if he could have a cup of my tea.
I poured it out for him and he gulped it down. He had had fish he told me, which was very salty. He drank two cups of the tea.