On the Night of the Seventh Moon

ONE

A month after I had looked on that little dead face Ilse took me back to England.

How normal everything seemed. If ever I could grow to believe that I had imagined, the whole incredible adventure, I could do it there. On the journey Ilse had talked to me of the future and the theme of her discourse was: Forget. The sooner I did this the sooner I should begin to lead a new life. She did not see it as I had seen it. To her it was a horrible misadventure with a climax she could only regard as fortunate. Death, she would say, had solved my problems. She did not know that the ecstatic memory of three days with Maximilian lived on; she did not understand that while a child lives within its mother, love is born.

But I could see that she was right about putting it all behind me. I had to go on living. I had to pick up the threads of my life.

Ilse stayed with us only a few days; then she said goodbye. I fancied there was a certain relief in her attitude. Perhaps she was regretting that she had asked me to accompany her and Ernst on that day some ten months ago, but when I saw her off at the station she made me promise to write to her and tell her how I was getting on and she seemed as concerned as ever.

Everyone agreed that I had changed. I knew that they were right. Gone was the gay, effervescent girl; in her place was a rather withdrawn woman. I looked older too-older than my nineteen years, whereas before I had looked younger than my age.

There were changes at home. Aunt Caroline was slightly different. She had always been critical of society; now she was angry with it. No one seemed right to her; Aunt Matilda came in for a good deal of castigation but I very soon became the butt for it. What I had thought I was doing gallivanting about in outlandish places for nearly a year, she did not know. Improving my German! English was good enough for her and should have been for anyone. I’d come back bone idle, as far as she could see. Had I any new recipes to tell her? Not that she would want a lot of foreign ways of cooking in her kitchen. I developed a talent for appearing to listen to her and not hearing a thing she said.

As for Aunt Matilda, she had changed. Bodily ailments still supplied her main excitement but she had become very friendly with the Clees in the bookshop.

“What I wonder,” said Aunt Caroline sarcastically, ‘is why you don’t go and live there. “

“You know, Helena,” Aunt Matilda confided in me, ‘when you think of all there is to do in the shop they don’t get much time for seeing to things about the rooms above it. Amelia’s chest isn’t what it should be and when you consider Mr. Clees’s one kidney trying to do the work of two, it makes you think. “

She was happier than she had been when I left and I grew quite fond of her. She was always smuggling in mending from the dees’ house so that Aunt Caroline wouldn’`t see it. She would sit in her room secretly doing it. It was what Aunt Caroline would call ‘making yourself cheap’.

The Grevilles were pleased to see me. I was asked to dinner within a few days of my return.

Mrs. Greville embraced me warmly.

“My dear Helena!” she said.

“Why, you`’ve grown thinner!” And she took my face in her hands and looked at it with such close scrutiny that I felt myself flushing.

“Is everything all right, Helena?”

“Why yes, of course.”

“You`’ve changed.”

“I’m a year older.”

“It’s more than that.” She looked rather worried so I kissed her and said: “I haven’t settled in properly yet.”

“Oh, your aunts,” she said with a little grimace. Then she added:

“Anthony’s so pleased you’re back. We all are.”

It was a happy evening. They were delighted by my return. They kept asking questions about my sojourn and I tried to evade them when they touched on my personal experiences and told them some of the legends of the forest.

Anthony could talk very learnedly about this.

“These have come from the pre-Christian era,” he said.

“I believe some of the beliefs still linger.”

“I’m sure they do,” I said; and I was back in the square watching the dancers and I saw a figure in the horned headdress and heard a tender voice whisper: “Lenchen, Liebchen.”

Anthony was looking at me strangely. I must have betrayed something. I warned myself to be careful. So I tried to be very gay and described how the girls dressed on feast days in their satin aprons with bright kerchiefs tied over their heads. Anthony knew something of this because he had visited the forest with his parents before he went to college. He had been fascinated even as I had.

Yes, it was a pleasant evening, but that night I was disturbed by dreams. Maximilian was in them and so was the child, and strangely enough it was not of a dead baby in a coffin I dreamed but of a living child.

The dreams were so vivid that when I awoke next morning I was plunged into deep melancholy.

This is how it will be throughout my life, I thought.

The days passed slowly at first but because one week was so much like another they merged and began to fly. There were the household duties to be performed under Aunt Caroline’s never-satisfied authority; there were the occasional visits of friends; sometimes I went into the bookshop and helped when they were busy. I began to acquire a certain knowledge of books. Aunt Matilda, who managed to be there quite often too, was always pleased to see me there. It was such a help for Amelia with her chest and Albert with his solitary kidney.

Aunt Caroline was not so pleased by the friendship.

“What you see in that place, I can’t imagine,” she grumbled.

“If they sold something sensible I might understand it more. Books! What are they but time-wasters?”

During the first year of my return, Ilse had written several times.

Then there came a letter to say that Ernst had died and she would be leaving Denkendorf. I sent my condolences and expected to be given a new address but I never had another letter from Ilse. I waited and waited but the years passed and there was nothing. It seemed very strange when I remembered how close we had been.

My dreams continued to disturb my nights and haunt my days. Time could no nothing to efface my memories. In those dreams my baby lived-a little girl who so resembled Maximilian that she was clearly his daughter. As the time passed she grew up in my dreams. I yearned for the child; and when I awoke after one of my vivid dreams I suffered the loss of my baby afresh.

We lived perpetually under the cloud of Aunt Caroline’s displeasure; and one day when I had been home for a little more than a year she was not up at her usual time and when I went to her room I found her in bed unable to move. She had had a stroke. She recovered a little and I nursed her for three years, with the help of Aunt Matilda. She was an exacting patient; nothing pleased her. Those were three dreary years when I would drop into my bed exhausted every night to dream. And how I dreamed! My memories were as vivid as ever.

I well remember the day when Aunt Matilda whispered to me that she was going to marry Albert Clees.

“I mean,” she said blushing coyly, ‘where is the sense of my keeping going in and out. I might just as well live there. “

“It’s only a step or two next door,” I reminded her.

“Oh, but it’s not the same.” She was bubbling over with excitement like a young bride. I was happy for her because she had changed so much. Happiness suited Aunt Matilda.

“When’s the great day to be?” I asked.

“Oh, I haven’t told Caroline yet.”

When Caroline was told she was very angry. She talked continually of the folly of old women who ran after men, mending their socks and turning the collars and cuffs of their shirts. What did they think they were going to get out of that!

“The satisfaction of helping someone, perhaps,” I suggested.

“Now, Helena, there’s no need for you to come into this. If Matilda likes to make a fool of herself, let her.”

“I don’t see that she’s making a fool of herself by helping Mr. Clees.”

“Perhaps you don’t, but I do. You’re too young to under stand these things.”

Too young! Beside Aunt Caroline I felt old in experience. If she but knew! I thought. If I said to her: But I have been a wife and mother, what would she make of my implausible tale? One thing I was sure of: she must never get a chance to make anything of it.

And that started the yearning again. Indeed, everything seemed to lead back to it.

When Aunt Matilda ceremoniously brought Mr. Clees into the house. Aunt Caroline merely sniffed and satisfied herself with contemptuous looks, but I had noticed the hot colour in her cheeks and the way the veins knotted at her temples.

I said that we ought to drink to the health and happiness of the affianced couple and without Aunt Caroline’s permission I took out a bottle of her best elderberry wine and served it.

It was rather pleasant to see Aunt Matilda looking ten years younger and I wondered, with a return of my old frivolity, whether she would have fallen in love with Albert Clees if he had not been deprived of a kidney. Amelia was pleased too. She whispered to me that she had seen it coming for a long time and that it was the best thing that could happen to her father.

The wedding was to be soon, for as Matilda said there was no sense in waiting, and Mr. Clees gallantly added that he had waited long enough, which made Aunt Matilda blush prettily.

When the Clees had left Aunt Caroline let forth a burst of scorn and abuse.

“Some people thought they were seventeen instead of forty-seven.”

“Forty-five,” said Aunt Matilda.

“And what’s the difference?”

“Two years,” said Aunt Matilda spiritedly.

“Making fools of themselves! I suppose there’ll be a white wedding with bridesmaids in wreaths of rosebuds.”

“No. Albert thinks a quiet wedding would be best.”

“He’s got sense enough to realize you don’t want to make a fool of yourself parading in white, then.”

“Albert has a lot of sense, more than some I could name.”

And so it went on.

Aunt Matilda, who had become “Matty’, named thus by her devoted Albert, was excited about her wedding-dress.

“Nigger brown velvet,” she said.

“Jenny Withers will make it. Albert will come with me to choose the material. And a nigger brown hat with pink roses.”

“Pink roses at your time of life!” snapped Aunt Caroline.

“If you marry that man you’ll sup sorrow with a long spoon.”

But in spite of her we grew quite gay over the wedding.

Amelia would come in and we would huddle together looking at patterns for the wedding-dress and for Amelia’s grey silk which was being made for the occasion. Amelia was to be maid of honour.

We would all be laughing together when we would hear Aunt Caroline’s stick outside the door (she had walked with a stick since her stroke, for one leg was useless). Then she would come in and say nothing but sit regarding us all with contempt.

But she could not spoil Matilda’s happiness, although on the wedding-day she refused to attend the ceremony.

“You can all go and make fools of yourselves if you want to,” she said.

“I shan’t.”

So Aunt Matilda was married and the wedding-breakfast was held in the rooms over the shop with just a few guests. Aunt Caroline stayed at home muttering and grumbling about mutton dressed up as lamb and people in their second childhood.

Two days after the wedding she had another stroke which rendered her almost incapable of moving at all. She did, however, retain her speech which was more venomous than ever.

There followed a very melancholy period which seemed to be devoted to the nursing of Aunt Caroline. Aunt Matilda helped; but her first duty was to Albert now and she was a happy wife determined to do her duty.

Often, when I was preparing a meal for Aunt Caroline, I would dream of a life I had once visualized during three blissful days. I thought of living in a schloss perched high on a hill, as so many of them I had seen had been; I thought of a gracious life with a husband whom I adored and who adored me; I thought too of children-my little daughter and a son. There would be a son. And often this seemed more real to me than the kitchen with its rows of bottles neatly labelled by Aunt Caroline and now often put back in the wrong place, until milk boiled over or something caught in the oven to bring me back to reality.

During this period there was great rejoicing in the Greville family becaue Anthony became vicar not of our church but of another on the outskirts of the town. Mrs. Greville was delighted with her clever son.

I knew that she had already seen him in his gaiters presiding over his bishopric.

I had taken to going to church every Sunday with the Grevilles to hear Anthony take the service; and I felt more contented than I had believed possible. The fact that I did not hear from Ilse added to the sense of unreality and I began to feel that I had strayed into a strange world where events which would seem inconceivable in a logical world had happened. But at night I dreamed my dreams.

On Sundays after evensong I would go to the GreviUes’ home for Sunday supper while Aunt Matilda or Amelia kept an eye on Aunt Caroline, who was more and more needing constant attention; and it was on one of the summer Sundays when supper had been cleared away that Anthony asked me to go for a walk with him. It was a lovely evening and we strolled out to the fields beyond the city and Anthony talked, as he loved to do, about the glories of Oxford. He loved to discover the history of the place and, like my father, he knew how all the colleges had been founded; on this particular Sunday he was telling me about the legend of St. Frideswyde, which he said was something more than a legend.

Frideswyde had actually lived and in the year 727 founded a nunnery.

When the King of Leicester fell madly in love with her and tried to abduct her, he was struck blind. She lived so piously that when she died a shrine was dedicated to her. About this shrine a hamlet grew up, then a village and so began the ancient town of Oxford. There the owners of cattle drove them across the ford where the Thames and Cherwell met and thus the spot derived its name of Oxford.

He was so enthusiastic when he talked that he grew quite animated, which he was not in the normal way, and I was taken by surprise when he said suddenly:

“Helena, will you marry me?”

I was shocked into silence. If I had ever doubted it, I knew in that moment that I considered myself to be a married woman. It was so long since I had seen Use’s kind face. It was so long since I had heard from her, that her image had faded and with it my fears that she, Ernst and Dr. Carlsberg must have been right. The farther I grew away from that time the more vivid seemed my adventure in the forest and the less plausible their account of my lost days.

But marry! I was already married.

“Helena, is the idea so repulsive to you?”

“Oh no,” I said.

“No, no. It was just that I hadn’`t thought.”

I stopped. How foolish this must seem. Of course it had been obvious for some time what Anthony’s intentions were. The attitude of Mr. and Mrs. Greville had made it clear. I realized with dismay that they were expecting us to come back from our walk engaged.

I said quickly: “Of course, Anthony. I’m fond of you.” Yes, I was fond of him. I liked Anthony Greville as much as any one in Oxford. I found his conversation interesting; I enjoyed his company. I should be very lonely if he went out of my life. But I wanted to go on as we were. It was his friendship I wanted. There was only one man whom I could consider as my husband and I believed he was that in spite of efforts to convince me that I loved a phantom.

“It’s just that I hadn’`t thought of marriage,” I finished lamely.

“I should have led up to this, I suppose,” he said ruefully.

“I know my parents expected. They are so fond of you and so am I.”

I said: “It would be very suitable of course, but...

“Oh, Helena,” he said, ‘get used to the idea. Think about it. “

“There is Aunt Caroline,” I said.

“I couldn’'t leave her. She needs someone to look after her all the time.”

“We could bring her to the vicarage. My mother would help to look after her.”

“I couldn’'t impose Aunt Caroline on you. She would disrupt the household.”

I was talking round the matter, anything but to tell the truth. I was really agitated because talking of marriage had brought back So vividly that room in the hunting lodge, the priest with the book and the ring, and Maximilian standing beside me impatiently waiting for the time when we would be alone.

I forced myself to think of Anthony. He would be kind to me; we could have a pleasant life together. I could be of use to him in his work; perhaps we should have children. I felt the pain surging within me as I thought of that little face framed in the white bonnet. How could I possibly marry without telling what had happened to me now six years ago.

I said quickly: “I should have to have time to think.

He took my hand and pressed it firmly.

“But of course,” he said.

We were thoughtful as we went back to the house. I could not tear my mind away from the past. I kept seeing Maximilian with the eager passion in his eyes. I had had no doubts then; I would have made no excuses; I would have swept them all away. And my child . I could not bear it. I must control my feelings.

When we arrived back at the house I noticed at once the expectancy in Mrs. Greville’s face. She was disappointed.

Anthony had now moved into the new vicarage, a charming Queen Anne residence with spacious, gracious lawns at both front and back. There was a south wall at the back-older than the house. It had been there since Tudor days. Peaches could be grown on it. There were apple and pear trees in the garden and a sundial inscribed with an old adage: “I count only the sunny hours. They,” said Anthony, were the only ones which should be counted. ” His parents had moved in with him.

To make sure of his comforts,” Mrs. Greville explained to me.

“Of course when Anthony marries we’ll be ready to take a back seat.”

She spoke significantly. I knew she thought that although I was hesitant I should eventually marry Anthony. After all, what life was there for me otherwise? It wasn’`t right, said Mrs. Greville, for young women to be cooped up looking after old ones. She implied that Aunt Caroline would be no less miserable installed in a room in the vicarage where she would help to look after her.

They were so good, so kind, and I loved them all dearly. Why did I hesitate? The answer was because I was clinging to a dream.

Either in reality or my dreams I had known the perfect union and I hungered for it. I knew that Anthony was a good man; it seemed very likely that Maximilian was not quite that; but one does not always love people for their virtues.

One day when we were in the walled garden, and I was alone with Anthony I blurted out: “Anthony, I want to be absolutely truthful with you. I’ve had a child.”

He was startled and incredulous.

“You remember I was away for almost a year. It’s the strangest story and the strangest part of it is that I don’t know whether or not it’s true.”

I told him what had happened, beginning with my adventure in the mist and the strong feelings that had been aroused in me that night. I wanted to keep nothing back. And then I went on to my adventure on the Night of the Seventh Moon.

“Everything was normal until then-and the rest.

Anthony, I am not sure.”

He listened intently.

“It seems incredible,” he said.

“I should like to meet your cousin. “

“She was so good to me. She felt responsible. She couldn’'t do enough.

She looked after me during those months . Then she ceased to write.

“

“Some people are bad correspondents.”

“But I should have thought she would have sent me an address. Anthony, what do you think happened?”

“I know,” he said, ‘that doctors are making rapid advances in this field and that experiments have been made. It must have been that this Dr. Carlsberg used such an experiment on you, with the results we have seen. “

“Is it possible to forget six whole days of your life?”

“I believe it is.”

And then . this horrible thing happened to me . and I cannot remember it. “

“It is better that you don’t. It seems that this was necessary to save you pain, humiliation and perhaps great mental stress which could have been dangerous.”

“I can see that you believe the marriage to have been a myth.”

“If it were not so, where is this man? Why did he not come forward?

Why did he give a false name . a name that you had seen was one of the Duke’s titles? Besides, why should your cousin lie to you? Why should the doctor do so? “

“Why indeed? Everything points one way. You as a practical man see that.”

“My poor Helena,” he said, ‘it was a shattering experience. But it is over now. The child died, so any complications which might have ensued have been removed. “

I closed my eyes. I could not bear it when anyone talked of my child’s death as this happy release.

“I wanted the child,” I said fiercely.

“I would not have cared for these complications.”

“You will have other children, Helena. That is the best way to heal that wound.”

How calm he was, how kind, how unshaken in his love for me.

I knew that I had told him this because the prospect of marriage with him was not an impossibility.

I was so pleased that I had told him. It was a great relief. I began to think how comforting it would be in the future to share my troubles with him.

TWO

The more I thought of marriage with Anthony the more rational it seemed. Anthony’s calm reception of my revelation had shown me what a steadying influence he would have on my life; he was a man in whom I knew I could put my trust. Marriage with him would be like coming into a safe harbour after battling against the storms. On the very next Sunday he preached an eloquent sermon about the need to overcome past misfortunes, never to brood on what could not be altered but to try to profit from experience rather than to regret it. His text came from the story of the houses, one of which was built on sand, the other on rock; and the shifting sands of romantic dreams were doomed to destruction while the house which was built on the firm rock of reality would endure.

I was so moved by that sermon that I almost made up my mind to marry him; and yet that very night my dreams were as vivid as ever and I awoke to find myself call for Maximilian.

I found I could talk of my experience with Anthony more freely than I had ever believed possible. It was a pleasure to bring it out into the open. We discussed it at great length and went over every detail. He missed nothing; but he remained firm to his conclusion that I had been the victim of Dr. Carlsberg’s experiment and he believed that the doctor had been right to make it.

Mrs. Greville was constantly busy helping with the work of the parish.

“My goodness,” she used to say, ‘a man in Anthony’s position can’t get along without a woman to help him in his parish duties. “

She was just a little impatient with me. She once reminded me that I was no longer a young girl. I was nearly twenty-six. No longer young.

People would soon be saying I was on the shelf.

How I should have enjoyed pleasing them t As it was, I did everything I could to help Mrs. Greville. I was indefatigable in the organization of the sales of work; and social evenings. I made cups of tea which were distributed at the mothers’ meetings.

“You have a flair for the work,” said Mrs. Greville significantly.

Between my constant visits to the vicarage and the work I did and my occasional spells in the bookshop besides looking after Aunt Caroline, the time flew.

Aunt Caroline grudged every minute I was away from the house.

“Chasing after the vicar,” she used to say.

“I don’t know. Some people are man-mad.”

She hated my going, out but Aunt Matty insisted. She was very excited about my relationship with Anthony. She was so happy in her marriage that she would have liked to see every one about her in the same blissful state-Amelia, myself and even Aunt Caroline.

She always came to the house while I was away.

“Now you go and enjoy yourself,” she would say significantly.

Then she thought it pleasant for me to be in the bookshop.

“Albert says you’re better than anyone in the foreign department and it’s amazing how many foreigners we get in.”

So the time flew past; there was never a moment to spare; and all the time at the back of my mind-and often to the fore of it-was the question: Could I be happy married to Anthony? Could I make him happy? Should I, if I married, cease to be haunted by nostalgic dreams?

I could see a very happy life ahead of me. Anthony’s quiet charm would have been enhanced by a wife who had the enthusiasm I knew I could muster and once my old high spirits returned I would be a useful foil.

Oh yes, I would tell myself again and again, it would be ideal.

Aunt Caroline continued to complain: “Gadding about! Running after Anthony Greville. Hoping he’ll marry you, I suppose. Making yourself cheap.” I wanted to shout at her:

He has asked me; but I didn’`t. And always something held me back from accepting.

I was to have a stall at the sale of work and had been collecting for weeks to fill it. Members of the church sent in their donations. One parcel came containing half a dozen egg-cosies from the Misses Edith and Rose Elkington.

I stared at the name for some seconds, and then I was back in the narrow street with the cobbled road, the overhanging signs; I was standing outside Dr. Kleine’s clinic and my body was heavy with my lively unborn child.

Two women had spoken to me on that occasion. Yes, their name had been Elkington. They sold teas and coffees, homemade cakes and homemade knicknacks like tea-cosy covers and egg-covers.

I shivered and felt vaguely apprehensive.

I was right to feel so. On the first afternoon of the sale of work they were there. Two pairs of bright eyes regarded me. They were like monkey’s eyes dark, living, curious.

“Why, it’s Miss Helena Trant.”

“Yes,” I said.

“We sent the egg-cosies.”

“Thank you. They are very useful.”

“I hope you like the red and green combination,” said the younger.

I said I thought it was most effective.

The elder of the two said: “didn’`t we see you in Germany?”

“Oh yes, I believe you did.”

“You’d gone out with your cousin, I believe, and stayed quite a long time.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Interesting,” said the elder; and I did not much like the gleam in her eye.

It made me more uneasy.

Aunt Caroline worked herself up into a fury that night. Matilda had come in and hurried off early because she was worried about Albert.

You had to be careful with one kidney, she kept saying.

I was late back. I had had quite a success with my stall and by the time I had added up the takings and packed away the unsold goods and gone back with Mrs. Greville with this, it was beginning to get late.

Aunt Caroline screamed at me when I came home.

She really looked very wild, her hair in disorder, her face flushed.

She had been knocking on the floor with her stick for the last half an hour. No one had answered. Our maid Ellen was a lazy good-for-nothing, she declared; Matilda was besotted about that man next door; Amelia had gone to some concert; and I of course was busy chasing Anthony Greville. No one had spared a thought for her, but that was how it was when you were ill. People were so selfish.

She went on and on and I was afraid for her because the doctor had said that she must not become excited. He had given me some pills which should have a calming effect but when I suggested she take one, she cried: “That’s right, blame it on to me. I’m the one who has to calm down. I have to keep quiet. I mustn’`t say a word. You all go gadding off to enjoy yourselves in the grand man-hunt. First Matilda Matty she calls herself now. Matty indeed! She’s gone back to her second childhood. And as for you! You’re brazen you are. I wonder the vicar can’t see through you. Well, you’re not a girl any more, are you? You’re getting a bit worried. You’re going to be left on the shelf if you don’t watch out. But nobody could say you’re not watching out. On the prowl, I’d say.”

I cried: “Be quiet. Aunt Caroline. You’re talking nonsense.”

“Nonsense. Nonsense that’s as plain as the nose on your face. Nonsense indeed! Anyone with half an eye can see what you’re after.”

I was goaded beyond endurance and I said: “As a matter of fact Anthony has asked me marry him.”

I saw her face change, and I knew then that this was what she feared, and suddenly I saw clearly what her life had been. She had not had Matilda’s more simple nature; Matilda had been interested in her invalids and sympathetic towards them: there was no sympathy in Aunt Caroline’s nature. She had been the less attractive of the two sisters. She was the eldest of the family. My father had come in between. She had had to stand aside for him and envy had eaten into her soul. I saw it there on her face-envy of my father for whom sacrifices had had to be made, for Matilda, who had made other people’s ailments her interest and who had now found a new life in her marriage; myself, as she thought, about to marry. Poor Aunt Caroline, robbed of everything; the education my father had had, the husband Matilda had; and in addition she was an invalid. I felt deeply sorry for her. Envy that deadliest of the seven sins-had etched those bitter lines about her mouth, had tightened it and set the sneering glitter in her eyes. Poor, poor Aunt Caroline.

I thought: I must look after her. I must try to be patient.

“Aunt Caroline,” I began, “I...

But she was groping for her pills. I took one and put it into her mouth.

I said, “You had better rest now. I am here if you want anything.”

She nodded; and that night she died.

No one could mourn her. Her passing could only be what was aptly and so commonly known as ‘a happy release’. “Her condition could only have worsened,” said the doctor. Aunt Matilda reverted to type and talked endlessly about hearts which were such funny things but were going to get you in the end. I should sleep next door until after the funeral, she said. Mrs. Greville immediately invited me to the vicarage, but I had already accepted Aunt Matilda’s offer. So I slept in the room which had been mine as a very small child before my father had acquired the house next door.

There was that bustling which funerals always meant. Aunt Matilda was in her element. Funerals as the ultimate climax to illness were a matter of great interest to her. Everything must be done in a manner which she considered ‘right’. Black had to be ordered and made at great speed; as chief mourner Aunt Matilda assumed a great importance.

I was next and we should go together; she would lean on my arm and I. would have to support her. Tears were necessary on such an occasion, and it was very strange, she told me, that some’ people did not always find it easy to shed them. One must not speak ill of the dead (an important point in funeral etiquette) but Aunt Caroline had been very ill and it was hard to regret her death. If tears should prove difficult, and she knew that I was by no means an easy shedder of them (“You’ never were,” she confided.

“It was something to do with being sent away from home when you were young’), she had heard a peeled onion concealed in the handkerchief was very effective.

I listened to the chattering and I thought how life had changed for her since Mr. Clees had come along; and that she was a much pleas anter person than she had been under the sway of Aunt Caroline and a participator in the perpetual bickering that seemed inevitable.

Marriage had been a blessing for her. And for me? I believed it would be the same. The black arrived. Aunt Matilda was not pleased with Amelia’s hat; her own, with its jet brooch and dead black satin ribbons, was a triumph. There were the wreaths which caused great consternation lest they should arrive too late. Aunt Matilda could not bear the thought of her sister’s being :y carried to her last resting-place without the “Gates of Heaven , Ajar’ which she and Albert were contributing. In our little drawing-room the coffin stood on trestles; there was a funereal smell throughout the house. The blinds were drawn in all rooms and our little maid had gone home to her mother because she couldn’'t face spending the nights alone in the |j house with the dead.

At last the day arrived. The solemn black-clad, top-hatted men walking beside the black-velvet caparisoned horses provided mournful solemnity, and the necessary pall of gloom had been arranged even to Aunt Matilda’s complete satisfaction.

Then back to the rooms over the shop to partake of funeral meats. Cold ham. Aunt Matilda said, was a necessity. At one funeral she had been given cold chicken, which in her opinion showed a certain levity out of keeping with the occasion.

The evening came.

T should stay here one more night,” said Aunt Matilda. So I did; and in my little room that night, I thought: I should marry Anthony.

Just as I had almost made up my mind something happened to make me hesitate.

Ellen, our little maid, came back after the funeral looking very thoughtful. She was absent-minded and during the second day I asked if there was anything wrong.

“Oh, Miss Helena,” she said, “I don’t know whether or not to tell you.”

“Well, if you think it would help you.

“Oh, it’s not me, miss. It’s you.”

“What do you mean, Ellen?”

“It’s you and the vicar, and I don’t believe it and I don’t think I should repeat it but perhaps you ought to know. I’m sure it’s just wicked gossip.”

“Do tell me.”

“Well my mum had it from someone who had been in their shop and she said there was a lot of people there and they were all saying it was shocking and that the vicar ought to be told.

“But what, Ellen?”

“I hardly like to say, miss. They’re saying that when you went away all that time it was because you was in trouble and that you had a baby.”

I stared at her.

Who said this, Ellen? “

“It started with them Miss Elkingtons. They said they saw you there . and it was clear and you was coming out of some hospital.”

I remembered it all so clearly: the little street; the exultation I had felt because my child would soon be born; four curious monkey-like eyes regarding me intently.

“It’s nonsense, I know, miss. But I thought you ought to know.”

“Oh yes,” I said.

“I ought to know. You did right to tell me.”

“Well, there’s nothing to it but gossip. I know that, miss. So does anybody who knows you. Them Miss Elkingtons is terrible gossips. My mum says that’s what they`’ve got a shop for. Miss, when you get married, you’ll be wanting someone up there and as I know your ways . I said: ” I’ll remember, Ellen. “

I wanted to get to my room and think.

Of course, I said to myself, I can’t marry Anthony. The Elkingtons would always be there to gossip. What a horrible sordid story! I had gone abroad to have a child . No, we could not live that down.

Like Caesar’s wife, the vicar’s must be beyond reproach.

I told Anthony what Ellen had told me.

He brushed it aside.

“My dear, we’d live that down.”

“But it’s true. I was pregnant when they saw me and it was obvious. I did have a child.”

“My dear Helena, that’s in the past.”

“I know and with you I should be building the house on the rock. But it’s not fair to you. A scandal like that could ruin your career. It could prevent your progress.”

“I’d rather have a wife than a bishopric.”

“I might fail you.” I frowned. I remembered the emotions Maximilian had stirred in me during that night in the mist. I remembered the slow turning of the door handle. If the door had opened, what then? I believed that I should have found him irresistible. What if by some miracle he came back? I feared that so strong would be my feelings for him that he would have the power to wreck that house-built on a rock though it might be.

Again I took refuge in prevarication.

“I must think,” I said.

“This has changed things in a way.” He wouldn’`t agree, but I insisted.

It was at this time that I decided to write down what had happened to me in order that I might come to some conclusion as to what actually occurred on the Night of the Seventh Moon. But I must confess that when I came to this point I was no nearer the truth than I had been before.

I put the account away so that I would always have a record of it and as the years passed I could re-live that time of my life in detail.

But it was not long after this that I again stepped into that fantastic world, and then I made up my mind that I would write down my adventures as they happened so that they would be clear and precise. I wanted the plain truth undistorted by time.

So when I once more arrived in the Lokenwald I started to record my adventures as soon as they began to happen.