The Lost History of Dreams

by Kris Waldherr

  “What about Ada’s Folly?” an agitated male voice asked. “Will we at least walk by there? I’ve come all the way from Manchester to see it.”

  The red-haired woman had recovered from her faint enough to say, “They never show Ada’s Folly—it’s most distressing!” Her bonnet shook from the vehemence of her words, making her frustration appear almost comical. Yet Robert felt sorry for her: she mourned. His three years as a daguerreotypist of the dead had honed his ability to recognize the signs. In her case, a crumpled black-bordered handkerchief peaking from the lace cuff of her sleeve revealed her loss.

  Owen ignored her interruption. “This way, if you please. Miss Grace Blackmoor will explain all to you.”

  As they entered Hugh’s study, the pilgrims murmured with anticipation, even the red-haired woman. One of them, the older stocky gentleman, offered Robert a hand after noting his injury. Once inside, several pilgrims set flowers on the fireplace mantel, their offerings joining a display of desiccated bouquets presumably left from previous tours. Hugh’s portrait engraving, the same one that served as frontispiece in The Collected Letters and Ephemera of Hugh de Bonne, stared out above the flowers like a relic.

  Grace welcomed the pilgrims, though Robert noticed she didn’t acknowledge the red-haired woman; perhaps she feared encouraging another faint. The red-haired woman was now fluttering a raven-feather fan before her face and seemed close to tears. As for Grace, instead of her usual housemaid’s dimity frock, she wore a grey merino gown that wouldn’t be out of place at a philanthropist’s tea. She looked older. Respectable. Not the fey creature Robert had followed to Ada’s Folly, lured by impulse and moonlight. Her lashes fluttered as she flashed a smile at Owen. He smoothed his curls and flecked his lips with the tip of his tongue, as though his mouth had grown dry.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Grace said, avoiding Robert’s gaze as she surveyed the pilgrims. “I am Miss Blackmoor. I’ve lived at Weald House for the past six years. Though I fear I never had the privilege to meet Hugh de Bonne, I have many stories to tell of his life.”

  Robert waited to see if she’d speak of Hugh’s death; she didn’t.

  “This way, if you please,” she continued. “There’s room for all.”

  Robert limped after the pilgrims, who’d settled into an awed silence, into Hugh’s study. As he observed them, he had the sense of attending church for a religion he’d never known existed. Instead of the mysteries of Christ, it was the mysteries of art: the call and response of the poems, the artifacts of the raven feathers and red roses. To think all this had existed within his family. He’d had no idea. It was like discovering a room you never knew was part of your house.

  Grace said, “We shall begin by speaking of Hugh de Bonne’s time at Weald House, which had been his wife’s childhood home until their marriage in 1834 . . .”

  As Grace spoke, Robert was surprised by how much more the study appeared than it had the previous evening. And more was the only word for it. Even if Hugh had only lived there for two weeks, under the light of day his study possessed an expansiveness that belied the sheer number of items it contained: the books, the statues, the glass display cases, the chairs—paraphernalia of the poet’s mortal existence.

  As Robert recalled, the far wall was constructed of tall French doors fragile with glass, an anomaly in an English farmhouse, which tended toward thick walls and small windows. Each door held a stained glass panel rich in detail and color. Though the individual panels were no larger than a small book, they featured a solitary bird caught in flight: a dove in one, a raven in another. Hugh must have commissioned them at the same time as the chapel. With this, the mad spectacle of Ada’s Folly called anew to Robert. He’d never daguerreotype it. Never return Hugh to his wife’s side. Instead, Hugh would spend eternity among strangers in Kent; his body would rest closer to Sida than Ada.

  Robert forced his attention back to Grace, who’d moved on to the book display. From the affectless way her words spilled from her lips, she was like a canary singing for her living who’d forgotten the song’s meaning.

  “Over here”—Grace pointed to a red leather-bound book—“is a first edition of The Lost History of Dreams. His last collection of poems.”

  The older lady cried, “His masterpiece.”

  Grace flushed prettily. “That’s what many claim. And I suspect that, given you’ve traveled to Weald House on a rainy day, you’ve read it. However, this copy of The Lost History of Dreams is different from others.” Her voice dropped conspiratorially. “Do you know why?”

  “Because Hugh de Bonne owned it,” Owen said in a flat voice that belied the moist yearning in his gaze.

  “You’re absolutely correct, sir,” Grace responded, winking. She drew the volume from the bookcase, opening to a marked page. “But wait! There’s more!”

  Robert craned his head over the pilgrims, who fluttered collectively like birds themselves.

  “See the notes on the side of the page?” Grace said. “They’re in Ada’s hand. As she lay heavy with child beneath the shadow of death, she conferred with her beloved husband on these very poems. They were one in art as they were in holy wedlock.”

  Grace replaced the book and stepped toward a small fur coat displayed on a rack. The coat was sewn of different animals—fox, rabbit, raccoon—and bordered in luxurious white ermine.

  “Ada was Hugh’s greatest inspiration,” she continued. “He gave her many gifts to honor their love. This was a coat Hugh gave her to commemorate their first Christmas as a married couple, which they spent in Paris—that’s in France, you know. The coat was accompanied by this note: ‘My locus amoenus’—”

  “Locus amoenus?” the artistic gentleman called out. “What in heaven’s name is that?”

  Grace shrugged.

  Robert explained, “It’s Latin for ‘pleasant place.’ Mr. de Bonne probably meant he considered his wife his home. As it should be in a marriage.”

  “And there you have it. Who knew?” Grace returned her attention to the note. “The rest says: ‘Here is something to protect you from everything that might trouble your soul. When you wear this coat, imagine my arms embracing you.’ ”

  A teardrop lingered on the edge of the older lady’s nose. Robert’s eyes darted to the red-haired lady, whose taffeta skirts were swaying. She was going to swoon again, he was certain. Instead she called out, “Miss Blackmoor! What of Ada’s Folly? What do you know of it?”

  “Questions at the end, please.” Grace pointed toward the spinet. “Behold Ada’s piano from Germany. The Black Forest no less!”

  She pressed her forefinger against a white key. It was raucously out of tune, but no one appeared to mind.

  “Ada sang and played beautifully. As sweetly as a siren, some say. She even had training in composing music thanks to Hugh. Before their marriage, he arranged for her to take lessons in secret.”

  “Why in secret?” the grey-haired lady interrupted.

  “The story is some feared she’d yearn for the stage, following the likes of Liszt or Chopin.” A cheeky grin. “Instead Ada did something far worse: she eloped with a poet.”

  Grace waited for the rustle of laughter that ran across the pilgrims. Even the red-haired lady was appeased; she’d folded away her fan. By now, Robert had the sense they would accept anything Grace told them, even if it involved Ada ascending to heaven accompanied by an angelic choir. Such was the power of story; he’d experienced firsthand at Oxford how a story could seduce a scholar despite the hard presence of facts. This power allowed Grace to transform the pilgrims’ obsession with Ada and Hugh de Bonne into something to be sold at sixpence a tour.

  “And now I fear I must speak of a very sad event, dear ladies and gentlemen,” Grace said. “As many of you know, Ada and Hugh’s daughter, Mathilde, was stillborn.” She pointed to a glass bell on Hugh’s desk. It displayed a black feather and a heart-shaped plait of ebony-hued hair. “Alas, Ada never recovered, but before her death she took comfort
in the items displayed here. Does anyone want to venture what they are?”

  The grey-haired lady shouted, “The hair belonged to the baby.”

  “Yes . . . and no, madam,” Grace replied, staring intently at the feather. “Yes, it was shorn from Mathilde’s head. No, in that the plait includes Ada’s hair. She and Mathilde bore the same color hair. But what of the feather?”

  Artistic Gentleman called out, “ ’ Tis a raven feather. Like in the poem ‘The Raven and the Rose.’ ”

  “Yes, it is indeed a raven feather. But it wasn’t found from a bird . . .” Grace’s words dipped in volume to heighten the solemnity. “When Mathilde was born, I fear the sorrowful circumstances were as you’d expect. However, when the midwife was washing the baby’s dear face for her eternal sleep in Christ, she noticed a raised bump on Mathilde’s cheek.

  “At first the midwife thought it a boil, though this made no sense—the poor babe barely drew a breath in this world before passing to the next. Then the midwife saw a black tuft rising from the bump. She pulled at it . . .” Grace clutched at her chest. “My lovely gentlemen and ladies, it was this very raven feather you see displayed before you.”

  The room gasped. So did Robert. Though his mind told him Grace’s story was nonsense, the gooseflesh on his neck informed otherwise.

  “Now I ask you,” Grace confided, “how could a raven feather find its way inside the cheek of an infant? And a stillborn at that? You might say, ‘Impossible, Miss Blackmoor!’ However, stranger things have occurred in this world. Chimeras of wonder, as Hugh de Bonne wrote.” Her finger jabbed toward the display. “This feather proves Mathilde was born an angel! That she was destined to be waiting for her mother in the eternal vale without sorrow!”

  Once the crowd settled, Grace clapped her hands to signify a change of subject. “But enough about poor dear Ada and Mathilde. What about Hugh de Bonne? We know he was born in France in 1792 toward the height of their troubles . . .”

  By now Robert’s ankle throbbed anew. He tightened his hands against the chair, which he still used to support himself. He closed his eyes; Grace’s chatter faded into a soft buzzing. He barely noticed when she pointed out Hugh’s walking stick (“As a young man, he was wounded in a duel in Chalk Farm—that’s in London, you know—and walked with a limp. This is the walking stick he used, which was carved from a mulberry tree and has real gold . . .”), or Hugh’s book collection (everything from Audubon’s Birds of America to a rare edition of Hours of Idleness, Lord Byron’s first book). Nor did Robert pay mind to Grace’s description of Hugh’s scandalous past before meeting Ada (“It is difficult to speak of the many ladies whose hearts he broke in London and Paris. The duchess who drowned herself in the Seine. The unfortunate who indulged in too much gin after finding herself with child . . .”).

  Robert forced his eyes open. The pilgrims were still there, wearing their cockades of roses and raven feathers; Grace’s lips were still moving, her words ricocheting against the material proof of Hugh’s existence that had made its way to this house where he’d never lived.

  “. . . This was the last letter from Hugh before his disappearance in October 1838,” Grace was saying. “It was found inside this very study after he locked and abandoned Ada’s Folly upon its completion. Some claim he found his way back to France. Others believe he traveled to America to find comfort in geography. Most fear he went mad with grief, though I hope not. His last letter to Ada is especially affecting when you consider he wrote it after her death. It’s like a prayer set to paper: ‘To know a love such as ours is enough in a life,’ he wrote. ‘I love and you love. And thus it ends. In love.’ ”

  Applause sounded, tentative then hearty. Grace offered a curtsey.

  “Thus ends our tour of Hugh de Bonne’s study. If anyone has questions, I’d be pleased to answer them.” A long pause. “No questions? None at all? Very well. Owen will—”

  Before Robert could stop himself, his voice rang out.

  “Excuse me, Miss Blackmoor . . .”

  Grace turned, offering that bright fake smile. “Sir?”

  “My question is about Ada’s Folly. I’ve been told someone has been leaving roses on the door there. Do you know who and why?”

  Grace’s face stilled like she’d been doused with water.

  III.

  As soon as Robert saw Grace’s response, he regretted his impulsiveness. But he wouldn’t recant—any moment now he would leave Weald House, never to return.

  “What an impertinent question,” someone huffed. The red-haired lady. She fluttered her raven-feather fan anew.

  “Roses?” Grace repeated slowly, tugging at a loose strand of hair. “I’m uncertain what you mean, sir. Like a bouquet?”

  Robert nodded. “I’ve been told the roses mysteriously appear in the middle of the night. Do you know why someone would be leaving them?”

  “Well, I fear I’ve heard of stranger deeds when it comes to Hugh de Bonne . . .” Grace’s giggle sounded forced. “It’s not uncommon for people to leave offerings to honor Hugh’s genius. As for whoever left the roses, does it matter?”

  The red-haired lady muttered, “Perhaps they wouldn’t appear if Miss Lowell opened the chapel to the world.”

  Before Robert could respond, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Mrs. Chilvers stood behind him.

  “Mr. Highstead, it’s time to leave. Come.”

  * * *

  Robert didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye to Grace or even the dog before Mrs. Chilvers led him out the front door, where the chaise carriage awaited with its grey canvas roof raised against the rain; someone had thoughtfully draped a tarp over the cart holding Hugh’s coffin. “You’ll need to dash for it, Mr. Highstead,” the housekeeper warned. “I haven’t an umbrella.”

  The rain was heavier than ever; Robert nearly slipped in the mud, causing his ankle to ache even more. Once he was ensconced in the chaise, he was surprised to find Isabelle seated beside him, his tripod and traveling case resting at her feet. Her eyes appeared bloodshot from lack of sleep, her cheeks sunken. Still, she’d managed to dress her hair. Her plaits coiled beneath her plain straw bonnet like a nest of albino serpents.

  “I’d thought Owen would drive.” Robert was too nonplussed to be polite.

  “I’d have thought the same thing,” she replied coolly, curling her gloved hands about the reins. “Given the events of last night, I decided it prudent to escort you myself.”

  Isabelle flicked the reins against the horse.

  As they traveled, Robert trained his gaze outside the cart at the passing scenery, away from Isabelle. Anything to avoid interaction. Viewed beneath the cover of rain, the winter landscape surrounding Weald House was even more desolate than he recalled. He viewed fallow bogs delineated by thorny hedgerows, long abandoned to any attempt of farming. Stone houses where no chimney smoke rose. Horses and cows lazily grazing in overgrown fields. A short canter later, the fields were replaced by woods, within which he knew Ada’s Folly stood. The forest appeared even more tangled, even darker, and more threatening than he’d recalled. He must have been mad to have followed Grace into it. Grace, at least, had the excuse of familiarity to explain her willingness to walk there in the dead of night.

  “Not much longer now,” Isabelle said, breaking the sharp silence. “The coach stand is just ahead. Hopefully there won’t be delays because of the rain. I must apologize for this unreasonable weather we’ve having, Mr. Highstead.”

  Her exchange was so peculiar, so unexpected, so downright polite, that Robert nearly laughed. He answered with matching formality. “No need, Miss Lowell. Man cannot control the weather any more than he can control fate.”

  “Nicely put, Mr. Highstead. Like something a wise vicar would say.”

  “Thank you, Miss Lowell.”

  Robert’s spine prickled with dread. How long could they continue being so cordial? He knew he should welcome this peaceful impasse as a graceful ending to an unpleasant interlude. Instead, he dis
trusted her civility.

  He recognized the oak tree marking the coach stand. Isabelle brought the horse to a halt.

  “No need for you to remain with me,” Robert said eagerly. “The coach will arrive shortly. If you would kindly unlatch the cart, I’ll manage from here.”

  Her eyebrows flew up. “In this storm? That would be inhospitable of me. Anyway, you’ll need help with the cart and your belongings.”

  The minutes passed. The air inside the carriage felt heavy with moisture. His ankle was tight inside his boot.

  “I think I see the coach,” Robert said, who hadn’t actually viewed any such thing. “It will be here any second—I’m certain of it.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Isabelle said. “Must be running late.”

  “Well, it is raining, Miss Lowell.”

  She offered a slow smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you wanted to get away from me.”

  Robert sweated beneath his overcoat. “I am grateful to you for your hospitality. I regret all that has occurred. I know I behaved dishonorably. Ungentlemanly. Though I understand it is much to expect, I pray in time you will understand the circumstances leading to my actions whilst beneath your roof. Though I fear it may be too late, I hope you will find it in yourself to forgive and . . .”

  Reconsider Hugh’s request to be buried with Ada, he wanted to say. It was the least he could do for his brother and Hugh. But he couldn’t, much as he yearned. Better to return home with some measure of dignity.

  “And what, Mr. Highstead? What did you intend to say?”

  “Nothing, madam.” Where was the coach?

  “I don’t think so.” Her gaze darted like a bird. “Were you going to speak of the untimely death of your wife?”

  Her tone was mild enough, but Robert felt as though she’d slapped him.