The Lost History of Dreams

by Kris Waldherr

  A statuesque lady, veiled in black like an angel of death, stood behind Hugh’s chair. Her gaze was adoring.

  “You posed for this?” Robert pointed at the veiled figure.

  The mourning woman’s posture stiffened with pride. “Yes—I arranged for the daguerreotype. I was with him in Geneva before he breathed his last. He would see no one, but he agreed to see me. I’d come all the way from Paris to beg for a poem marking the anniversary of my husband’s passing. I convinced Hugh to join me for dinner at my hotel. I recall he ordered the sole, though he scarcely touched it. He looked drawn. Sallow. I didn’t dare mention the rumors about Isabelle returning to Weald House. I’d assumed he’d heard, and if he hadn’t, I didn’t want to distress him, given his state. Instead, I advised him to consult a physician. I’ll never forgive myself for not insisting.” She dabbed her lashes with a black-bordered handkerchief. “Once I learned the worst, I used my authority to preserve Hugh’s likeness for my private collection. I’d hoped for his burial at Père Lachaise in a private tomb beside Abelard and Heloise. Hugh’s solicitor intervened before I could make arrangements.”

  “So you traveled here as quickly as you could.”

  “I knew someone would show eventually with Hugh.” She smiled through her tears. “I’ve only been here for just over a week. In this time, I’ve tried to approach Miss Lowell, but she refuses to see me. No doubt she considers me akin to a pilgrim.”

  Robert returned the daguerreotype, uncertain how to respond. If he told the mourning woman of Hugh’s request to be interred with Ada, he’d be granting credence to Tamsin Douglas. But Paris—that wasn’t what Hugh wanted either.

  “What do you want from me?” he said at last.

  “Besides to let me bring Hugh back to Paris? You must speak to Miss Lowell. She should know Tamsin Douglas plans to contest her claim to the estate, and will have her cast out from Weald House.” She took Robert’s hands, her grip firm. “If Hugh de Bonne is laid to rest in Ada’s Folly, Mrs. Douglas will find a way to force the chapel open to any Jane or John with a farthing to spare. There will be displays far worse than what you witnessed today at the church.”

  “Yet I sense there’s something else you desire,” Robert said, pulling his hands from hers.

  “How clever you are, Mr. Highstead! Just like Hugh.” Her tone grew steely. “Persuade Miss Lowell to let me purchase Ada’s Folly and Weald House. If we move quickly, a court won’t be able to intervene even if she’s discredited. I’ll protect Ada’s Folly from the pilgrims. Preserve it. For art. For the future.”

  To his surprise, Robert responded, “What of Ada’s grave? Perhaps the chapel is best kept locked.”

  “This won’t matter if Mrs. Douglas’s suit is successful. Miss Lowell will be turned out without a farthing to spare.” She set her palm on Robert’s shoulder. “You’ll help?”

  The memory of Isabelle, how slight she’d felt in his arms while he’d carried her from the church, returned to Robert. He suddenly felt very weary.

  “Whom might I say is making this offer?”

  The mourning woman clapped her hands. “How good you are! Tell her I’m an old friend of Hugh’s. The Vicomtesse de Fontaine.” A giggle. “Though if Miss Lowell is whom she claims, she would better know me by my name before I married.”

  “What might that name be?”

  The mourning woman giggled again and smoothed her curls. “Missus Dido.”

  V.

  Missus Dido’s carriage was as fettered with mourning as her cottage had been. It was a four-seater brougham decorated with black plumes, purple satin upholstery, and gleaming ebony wood, grand as any Robert had seen during his time as a daguerreotypist of the dead. He hardly noticed. He examined each of the sentences Missus Dido had uttered during their tea, turning them in his mind like they were specimens. Viewed as a whole, they only confused.

  “Miss Lowell may not be whom she claims.” If this was true, how had Isabelle learned so much about Ada’s and Hugh’s lives? “Once she was able to speak, she told Mrs. Chilvers . . . she’d traveled all the way from France to speak to Hugh about an important matter . . .” What would this matter be? And why would she insist on Ada’s story being published now?

  Because Hugh is no longer alive to stop her.

  Robert stared out the window as the brougham rolled from the village toward Weald House. Instead of passing through fields and woods, which would have afforded a last view of Ada’s Folly before his departure, the carriage wove over the moors. Despite the bright day, the moors unfurled with the sullen gold and grey of late winter, different from any landscape he’d viewed before. Unlike the curated fields of Belvedere from his childhood, the moors were wild and open and endless. He made out the soft grey of heather, the ochre of winter grass, and white spots signifying the movement of sheep in the distance. In another month, the moors would reawaken when spring returned: the grass would turn green, the hedgerows bloom. Life would continue in the face of death.

  This observation departed Robert’s mind as quickly as it rose, for his thoughts whirled like the carriage wheels, distracting him from the heaviness in his stomach. He shouldn’t have had the cake and cordial. He leaned his head against the carriage window, relishing the cool glass against his temples.

  And then he saw her. Isabelle, or whoever she was.

  She stood on the edge of the moor but twenty feet away. Her back was turned from the road, the dog at her side. Or at least Robert thought it was her—she seemed a different creature from the sharp-tongued adversary he’d encountered these past evenings, more akin to the woman he’d rescued from Tamsin Douglas and her flock of pilgrims. After hearing Missus Dido’s account, Isabelle appeared transformed. Or was it Robert who was transformed?

  Isabelle must not have heard the carriage’s approach, for she didn’t stir. Nor did Virgil.

  Robert called up to Marcus. “Is that Miss Lowell?”

  “I believe so. We’re not far from Weald House now.”

  “Can you stop a moment?”

  Time slowed like treacle as Robert watched Isabelle from the carriage, just as he’d watched her in the rose garden with the eye miniature.

  Isabelle looked to be staring out at the horizon. Her arms were raised toward the sky, her bonnet dangling from her shoulders in a strange display he couldn’t quite fathom. She swayed, eyes shut as she lifted her head toward the sky. Light streamed over her form. For the first time since Robert had made her acquaintance, her white hair wasn’t pinned tightly about her skull. She’d freed it, allowing the thick tresses to fall beyond her waist. Its ivory hue seemed not of this world as it glistened beneath the afternoon sun.

  In that moment, instead of reminding him of Ada or a Circe or even a goshawk, Isabelle reminded him of one of the most exquisite things he’d ever encountered: an icon of Saint Catherine by Crivelli he and Sida had viewed at the National Gallery in London while they were courting. The Crivelli was a small painting, intensely detailed in the Flemish Renaissance manner; Sida had explained the art was meant to inspire devotion, not appreciation.

  Who are you?

  The question rose unbidden before Robert could turn from it.

  He recalled Missus Dido’s account of Isabelle’s mysterious past, how she’d shown up at Weald House after Hugh’s disappearance and Ada’s death, and that no one had encountered Isabelle in years. Yet as he stared at Isabelle, it seemed it was Missus Dido who was caught in the past, with her daguerreotype of Hugh, her obsession with his legacy. All of a sudden Robert had the sensation of being caught in the past himself. There he was, with his devotion to his ghost wife, his impossible quest to daguerreotype Hugh inside Ada’s Folly. How was he any different than Missus Dido? This realization disturbed him. It felt as dangerous as Owen flicking those matches, or Grace accosting those bees. After Sida’s death, Robert had longed for her return with every breath of his being—when she’d appeared that day in his mirror, he’d felt a joy beyond compare. Yet now, standing on the moors st
aring at the woman claiming to be Isabelle Lowell, his quest to hold on to his wife after her death felt foolish, though he was uncertain why. This troubled him deeply.

  He thought of his disgrace at Oxford, his inability to write since then. His burrowing into the land of the dead with his ghost wife and daguerreotypes. He thought of Hugh’s pursuit of his locus amoenus in Ada, Isabelle’s hunger to protect her aunt’s resting place against Hugh and the pilgrims, and even John with his desire to be rid of his responsibility to Hugh’s estate. Weren’t they all constrained by the past, just as he was?

  Robert squinted again at Isabelle. At her unbound hair rippling in the wind.

  He gave himself a little shake. “Stop being so fanciful. After tomorrow, it won’t matter who she is.”

  But then he remembered her handkerchief, which he’d stuffed into his pocket during the church melee. He’d return the handkerchief, inform her he was leaving in the morning, and request the return of his camera. He’d tell her of Missus Dido’s offer, bringing closure to an unpleasant interlude. He’d move into his future, whatever that might be. Yes, his brother would be disappointed, Hugh would never be reunited with his wife, but he’d have done what he could. That would have to be enough.

  “Miss Lowell!” he shouted, a strange hope flooding his veins.

  Isabelle whirled toward the carriage, a flush spreading across her face.

  “Is that you, Mr. Highstead?”

  Her voice was high and odd as she plaited her hair; he’d startled her along with the dog, who gave a low growl. There was an unexpected openness in Isabelle’s gaze, a surprising warmth. Even her complexion looked calmer, her features gentler of mien. In that moment, Robert saw her as she might have been years ago, before she’d become crippled by sorrow and loss. Her lost history, as Hugh had described in his book.

  Who are you? he thought again.

  An answer to his question came as unexpectedly as his happening upon her on the moors.

  Startled by the dog’s barking, an army of sparrows fluttered up from the tall grass. They swirled around Isabelle in an array of brown and grey feathers and chittering bird song. As they settled along her shoulders, Robert pulled her black-bordered handkerchief from his pocket. It felt strangely stiff against his fingers.

  Blood spotted the ivory linen like anemones in the snow.

  PART II

  DREAMS FOUND

  *

  Later That Day

  Shropshire

  A Coat Sewn of Fur

  Excerpted from Cantos for Grown Children by Hugh de Bonne, published 1834 by Chapman & Hall, London.

  The Forest was cold, the girl was too. That long night

  Thru chattering lips she whispered a tale

  To help her survive ’til Morning’s light—

  A tale her Father told : Once there was a girl

  As white as snow, with lips red as blood . . .

  Though her words were hot, the cold was strong

  And salt’d tears froze o’er her wan cheeks.

  ‘I shall expire,’ she cried. ‘O my Father, pray for me!’

  But a prayer to one parent is a prayer to all

  And bestirred the deepest Forest into Life.

  Soon others circled the poor cold girl :

  Bear and fox, lion and possum,

  A mink draped in gold, a wolf jeweled in pearls.

  ‘Daughter, we’re here!’ they cried. ‘Have no qualm!

  We’ll warm you like a coat sewn of fur.’

  *

  I.

  Later when Robert was to think upon that moment on the moors when he first considered whether Ada de Bonne still lived, he’d remember it akin to the compulsion that had led to him gambling all he’d possessed to learn how to daguerreotype corpses after Sida’s death.

  She can’t be Ada, he told himself back in the stable house, unable to forget the sight of Isabelle’s hair glimmering with sun, her face open with joy, the sparrows along her arms. She’d seemed another woman, not the adversary who’d mistrusted him even before his arrival. He recalled the soft welcome of her arms in the church as they’d wrapped around his neck when he’d carried her from the pilgrims. The scent of her hair. The confusion Missus Dido’s words had unleashed. Yet it made sense: If Ada was still alive, she wasn’t buried in the chapel. This would explain her panicked refusal to allow Robert to inter Hugh there, or to let the pilgrims view the stained glass.

  With this, Isabelle’s—or was she Ada?—antagonism rearranged itself into a new history: she wanted Robert to leave before he uncovered the truth.

  It was mad. Impossible.

  His ankle aching, he sat down at the little table where he usually took his meals. His hand sped across the journal containing Ada’s story. He wrote:

  Blood on a handkerchief doesn’t always signify consumption.

  If she was Ada, wouldn’t someone recognize her?

  Why would Hugh build a chapel for Ada unless she was truly gone?

  Suddenly he remembered Isabelle had scarcely spoken of herself as she recounted her story. It can’t be a coincidence. Her words returned: “I’ve spoken only of my aunt’s experiences to save time . . . I was sent to school when I turned seven.” He’d assumed she was telling her story to preserve Ada’s memory. Now none of this made sense.

  He wrote: Who is Isabelle Lowell?

  He underlined the words with a sharp stroke of his pencil. His stomach quivering with excitement, Robert leafed through the journal, rereading the history she’d spun so far. Did Isabelle Lowell even live? Perhaps she’d died years earlier, lost to poverty or worse; Ada had donned Isabelle’s identity in the same way he’d worn Hugh’s clothes.

  Robert tapped his pencil against his chin, flummoxed.

  Why would Ada do this? Why would she hide her identity? And then, without warning, a new story unfurled before his imagination: Ada had abandoned Hugh after the death of their daughter, too bereft to remain with him in the Black Forest. When Hugh didn’t find her at Weald House, he built the chapel to regain her favor. But by the time Ada returned to Weald House, Hugh had disappeared, leaving her its only key. (Why did he leave? Remorse? Anger? This Robert couldn’t figure out.) Nor had Ada ever entered the chapel, if Robert was to believe the evidence. As for taking Isabelle’s name, if the pilgrims knew Ada still lived, they’d blame her for Hugh’s disappearance and death. They’d make her life a misery. Better to be presumed dead herself. And here she was over a decade later, with her husband dead, her last hope gone, bearing the weight of Ada’s story.

  Mad. Impossible.

  Robert shoved the journal away. This was what had happened with his Ovid biography: he’d made suppositions without supporting evidence. He wouldn’t do that again. And then he knew: he couldn’t return to Kent the next morning with Hugh’s corpse. Not until he knew the truth—or as much as could be surmised from Isabelle’s story. But what would Sida think of his decision? His obsession with Ada’s story felt a strange disloyalty to his marriage. He still felt awful about ignoring her to look for that miniature in Hugh’s study.

  All of a sudden Robert could no longer bear it. He had to learn more about Isabelle’s past. But who to ask?

  * * *

  The kitchen was uninhabited save for Mrs. Chilvers, who was snoring before the fire, her slackened mouth wet with spittle. (“Did Miss Isabelle say you could tarry here, Mr. Robert?” she said, startled awake when Robert opened the door. “I was informed you were to remain in the stable house.”) After a few minutes, she relaxed into her usual garrulous state, even willing to discuss Grace and the pilgrims. (“I have no idea what that girl was up to, Heaven save her. However, Miss Isabelle didn’t sack her like I’d expected. Instead, she pretended naught happened. It was very queer.”)

  Eventually he steered the conversation to Isabelle’s return to Weald House years earlier.

  “I’ve been told it was peculiar,” he said matter-of-factly. “No one had seen her for some time.”

  And no one reme
mbers her.

  The elderly woman’s lips puckered as though she’d tasted something tart. “Who told you that?”

  “Oh, someone at church. Not a pilgrim.” He added, “You found Miss Lowell in the rose garden, didn’t you?”

  “That’s years ago,” Mrs. Chilvers replied, grabbing a bowl of potatoes and carrots to wash. “Not long after I came to Weald House—I truly don’t remember much of those days.”

  Robert wouldn’t be deterred. “You were the last person to see Hugh before his disappearance.”

  “Again, ’twas long ago, Mr. Robert. He was here such a short time. He kept to himself. He was busy with the glass chapel, with laying Miss Ada’s remains to rest there.”

  “You witnessed this?”

  “No. By then the glass workers were long gone—they’d come from France—and he refused to let anyone help with Ada’s burial in the chapel but old Ned Shephard, who’s since passed on.” Mrs. Chilvers’s words slowed as she rinsed carrots in a basin. “You must understand Mr. Hugh wasn’t in his right mind. He seemed to never eat or sleep. Nor did he talk much. We scarcely spoke save when he gave me the key for Ada’s Folly. He said it was for Miss Isabelle should she come here. That she was the only person permitted to go inside the chapel.” She looked up from the basin. “And before you ask, no, I never used the key to unlock Ada’s Folly—I’m an honest woman.”

  “Forgive me. I wasn’t about to suggest this.”

  “Good.” A long pause. “No one save myself even knew the key existed until Miss Isabelle mentioned it to Mrs. Douglas. Which was unwise of her, but what’s done is done. Anyway, no need to speak of this. All that matters is Miss Lowell is a good mistress here. If it weren’t for her . . .”

  Virgil began to whimper, interrupting Mrs. Chilvers. No matter, for Robert could well imagine her unspoken words: Weald House would have been lost.