The Lost History of Dreams

by Kris Waldherr

  By the time the snow arrived it was already time for lunch, which was their usual first meal of the day—she and Hugh had spent all morning lying about in their usual way after too much cognac the night before. Snow or no, Ada dressed in the peach taffeta gown, Hugh’s favorite. She called the maid for her bonnet. He called for a carriage.

  “Aren’t we walking to the market?” Ada asked.

  “We’re going someplace else,” Hugh said, gathering his walking stick; he was wearing his favorite dark green frock coat. “How my head aches! I should take some of your laudanum.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.” He held a hand palm side up out the window. “The snow’s stopped. Anyway, there’s no point in waiting.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He refused to answer her questions. He refused to meet her eyes. Regardless, Ada’s heart rose. This was his way, to surprise her with an outing. Perhaps they’d go to a matinee, or to buy sheet music. His sullen manner suggested something beyond too much alcohol. Perhaps he’d received bad news from his publisher; he’d just sent them the manuscript for his third book, a collection of bird poems he hoped they’d publish immediately.

  Hugh instructed the carriage to drive toward the Île de la Cité, which he liked to call “the beating heart of Paris” in his fanciful way. Ada didn’t understand the remainder of his directions, for his voice was low. The winding streets of the Marais soon turned tight and labyrinthine, cased in by ancient buildings crumbling with neglect. How oppressive it was, like a maze leading to nowhere. The day turned dark, the sun a memory.

  Ada shivered beneath her cape, troubled by Hugh’s persistent silence. Where was he taking her? She didn’t dare ask.

  The Seine offered a brief reprieve before their carriage was thrust into shadows again. Once they were on the other side of the Pont au Double, they continued farther south before turning west to cross the Seine once more.

  After what felt like hours, Hugh rapped on the window, his knuckles taut on his walking stick.

  “If I remember correctly,” he said, “this is as close as we’re going to get.”

  Ada peered through the carriage window.

  They’d halted in front of a small square more crowded than any she’d ever seen in Paris, or anywhere else for that matter. Though the square lay in the center of a formal green park, Ada’s overall impression was of chaos. Her head whipped from side to side as she took in merchants hawking wares, acrobats tossing their limbs into cartwheels, slatternly singers preening for sous, kerchiefed women carrying wide wicker baskets. Uncountable tables heaped with flowers, fruits, meats, and curiosities. A toothless beggar relieved himself against a statue before giving Ada a wink. The cacophony of noise and smells and spectacle made her want to call after the carriage, which had already turned back toward the Seine. Toward Paris.

  “We’re in Sèvres, my love,” Hugh explained. “On the road to Versailles ville.”

  “We’re going to Versailles?” She hoped so.

  “No. Someplace else.” Hugh’s expression was inscrutable. “Must be market day.”

  He said nothing more as he took her arm. Nor did she ask anything more. How cold it was! She shivered beneath the fur coat that had been Hugh’s wedding present. Once they’d left their carriage, there was nothing to shield the wind sweeping in from the Seine.

  Ada glanced at Hugh from beneath her silk bonnet. His expression had shifted from inscrutable to forbidding. Something was troubling him. Something more than publisher woes.

  “This way,” he said. His grasp tightened on the soft flesh of her arm.

  She was grateful they didn’t linger in the square. The pavement was banked by bricked buildings raked up a hill; the landscape was vertiginous behind it, crossed by footpaths leading up to isolated manses bordered by spindly trees. It was one of these footpaths Hugh led her to, steeper than anything she could recall. The moors surrounding Weald House had hills, but they were of the gentle, rolling sort; the sort where you could rest beside a patch of cowslip and stare at clouds if you became breathless. This footpath wasn’t like that at all. It mercilessly traversed what felt like the sheer side of a cliff.

  Occasionally the path broke into a narrow stair sided by tall granite walls before branching into a dirt road. As she climbed, Ada’s crinolines swished and tangled against her limbs. She felt like a fish wrapped in paper. She pressed on, uneasy—Hugh had yet to say a word. For the first time in their marriage, she was intimidated by him.

  Breathless, she laid her palm flat against the stone wall. It was cold like a tomb. She felt as though she was being entombed herself. Her lungs tightened.

  She stopped to catch her breath, too dizzy to continue. “Where are we going?”

  Hugh glanced over his shoulder. “We’re almost there, Ada. Just a few more steps. How stubborn you can be!”

  Hugh’s tone was sharp. Like a stranger’s. For a moment Ada’s eyes prickled like a child’s. Who was this man she’d married and shared a bed with?

  But then he set his hands on hers.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you’re not suited for this much walking.”

  His touch was as warm as ever. Her tears receded.

  Up and up they went, one step following the other. And then they were there, wherever it was—Ada knew this because there were no more steps to climb. It was just as well. Her dizziness had grown into distress. She doubled over, her chest catching like a creaking door. In and out. Her gaze focused on her boots, on the drifts of red-hued dust and dead leaves lining the road.

  Once Ada could breathe, she looked up.

  They stood before a tall stone grand maison. The mansion bore an imposing entryway, tall banked windows, arched portico, and a red-tiled roof. It once must have been glorious, but no longer. The doorway was hidden beneath brambles. The windows were covered by long planks of rotted wood. The roof must have collapsed years before, for a thick-trunked elm, already leafless with winter, poked through the rubble toward the sky; it had taken root in the ruin below. Three carrion crows shuffled on a high branch, their ebony wings flapping with a predatory protectiveness. The stench of decay wafted in the air.

  Ada’s gaze dropped from the crows to the roof; from the roof to Hugh, who’d turned his back to her; from his back to his shoulders.

  Hugh’s shoulders were shuddering.

  Ada’s heart lurched. She wanted to ask, “Why are you weeping?” She wanted to say, “It’s only a house.” But in her heart, she knew why he was weeping, what the house signified, and why they’d come all this way across the Seine on a cold November day to an abandoned grande maison overtaken by trees and crows.

  This had been Hugh’s first true home.

  Ada understood that to say anything would cause Hugh further pain. And so she remained silent, but her silence wasn’t fallow. In her silence, she sensed his ghosts. His mother seated beneath roses in the garden. Hugh playing cache-cache with his young sisters on endless summer nights. The scent of jasmine. The clinking of silverware against china during long family meals. His father stoking the fire on icy nights. The laughter. The love. All the memories he’d described since their marriage.

  Hugh reached out, clutching air. “Gone. All gone.”

  “I know.” Ada’s tone was one she’d use to comfort a child.

  He rubbed his eyes. “I shouldn’t have come here. Shouldn’t have hoped.”

  “You wouldn’t have known unless you’d come.”

  He wiped his cheeks with a sleeve. “Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

  She took his hand. “Let’s go home.”

  Hugh’s tone grew unexpectedly intense. “Now you truly know I have no home.”

  Ada kissed his eyes to ease his tears. “But I’m your home now.”

  V.

  Isabelle’s words came to an abrupt halt. “I must rest for a moment.” She stifled another cough.

  “We’ve no time.” Robert looked up from his journal, fe
eling akin to Virgil stalking a hare; the closer he came to the truth, the more determined he grew. “What happened after Hugh discovered his home in ruins?”

  * * *

  Ada led Hugh back to the square where the coach had deposited them. She didn’t complain about the catch in her lungs, or the ache in her heart. Instead, for the first time in their marriage, she took care of her husband—and how happy it made her! Every so often, she’d pause to murmur comforting words. His replies were monosyllabic, his face ashen. No matter. They had each other—they’d be each other’s locus amoenus.

  In Sèvres ville, they found the streets curiously empty as though the world had ended. The market was over. No coaches were to be found. Before Hugh could despair, Ada suggested, “If we walk toward the river, perhaps we’ll find a coach by the bridge.”

  Hugh said nothing.

  They turned down the Rue Grande toward the Seine. The effort of walking countered the chilly air. The sun was already low, the water the color of pewter. In the distance, bells chimed three. The peace embedded in this scene further spurred Hugh’s tears instead of calming him. “How can there be so much beauty in this world,” he cried, “amid so much sorrow?”

  Somehow they found themselves standing before a dreamlike cream-colored palace facing the river—she couldn’t recall if she’d led Hugh, or if Hugh had led her. No matter: the palace appeared a remnant of an enchanted age before revolutions and guillotines. An age in which his family’s grande maison wasn’t inhabited by crows and ghosts. The courtyard surrounding held an array of marble figures posed in heroic stances.

  Ada read the text carved into the pediment above the main entrance. Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres.

  “A factory,” Hugh said, his cheeks still wet.

  “Look, here’s another sign. It’s also a museum of ceramics.”

  “Dishes. Vases.”

  “Let’s go in,” Ada said. “It’ll distract you.”

  Hugh covered his red eyes. “I can’t go in. Not like this.”

  “No one will care. I’ll say you’ve a cold. At the very least, we can ask where the coach stand is.”

  The museum foyer was empty as a church on Monday morning. No one greeted them as they ventured from the foyer into a large airy salon dominated by a grand stairway, which twisted toward a domed ceiling painted with stars and fronds in the Roman style. They ignored the stairs to venture into an even larger salon. It featured an octagonal glass cabinet holding a display of vases and bowls, each presented like an offering to the gods. Their gilded paintwork called forth an age when cherubs frolicked with centaurs, and birds plucked cherries from naiads’ lips. “Pretty,” was Hugh’s indifferent remark.

  Just as Ada and Hugh stepped beyond the cabinet to examine a display of small bisque figures, someone finally approached, a severe grey-haired madam. Her mouth gleamed with large white teeth and bonhomie. “Bienvenue, monsieur et madame!” she greeted before launching into an array of French so rapid that Ada couldn’t keep up; she resorted to bobbing her head to avoid seeming simpleminded. Fortunately, Hugh answered Madame slowly enough that Ada understood their conversation.

  “Quoi de plus à voir?” What more is there to see?

  “Venez avec moi, s’il vous plaît.” This way, if you please.

  Madame led them from the salon through wide corridors into other salons and, finally, into the shop, where they were expected to open their purses in gratitude for their visit.

  “What’s upstairs?” Hugh asked, pointing at the domed stairway they’d viewed upon their arrival.

  “That’s where we manufacture stained glass.” Madame’s tone was dismissive. “Nothing to see.”

  “Stained glass?” Even Ada could understand this in French. Her lips curved into an unconscious smile as she remembered Canterbury.

  “Oui. For church windows mainly.” Madame fell back into her role as guide, reciting by rote. “Many were destroyed during the Revolution. We are kept quite busy with their replacements.”

  “I must see it,” Hugh said, his sorrow forgotten.

  “This is not possible, monsieur—”

  But he was already pulling Ada up the stairs.

  “Monsieur, that’s not part of the musée. I must ask you to stop—”

  “We’ll be but a moment, Madame,” he said, winking at Ada. “It’s for my English wife.” In English he said: “She is difficult. Spoiled. Not to be refused—”

  “Very true,” Ada added in French. She stamped her foot. “I won’t leave unless you let me look!”

  “Madame! I must ask you—”

  “Only for a moment,” Ada amended, overcome by giggles. “Pardonne-moi.”

  They ascended the staircase before they could be stopped, Madame following after them furiously; Ada had never rushed so, but she didn’t mind. Surprisingly neither did her lungs. Her feet easily kept up with Hugh’s. She even forgot her breathlessness while they’d climbed the hill to his family home.

  One flight of stairs, a landing that twisted beyond the dome. Still, they rushed up, Madame’s scolding voice at their backs. Ada couldn’t stop giggling. Hugh’s arms were protective, prepared to catch her should she fall. The steps flew by, wide and cased in marble like those from a palace. They seemed an apt setting for what they were to find once they could climb no farther.

  “Oh,” Hugh said, blinking rapidly.

  “Oh,” she said, joining him in wonder.

  His arms fell from her as he circled the room. They were surrounded by light. Colored light. Light brighter than anything Ada could have imagined. Windows covered in color. On one side was a nativity; another, Christ raising Lazarus; and in between, so many others that Ada gave up trying to identify each subject. Marys mingled with Marthas, saints with sinners. The colors dazzled like heaven had burst forth on a clarion.

  Hugh’s face lifted into the widest grin Ada had ever witnessed. Her heart welled so wide she thought it would burst. Overwhelmed by beauty, by light, she reached for him and kissed him with all of her being, leaving Madame tutting with—

  * * *

  Robert raised a hand to silence Isabelle. “Shush.”

  Footsteps sounded outside the library door.

  Hesitant. Shuffling.

  Once they’d faded away, Isabelle said, “Mrs. Chilvers on her way to bed.” She even laughed, a bell-like sound. Nerves, Robert thought. Relief.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh before,” he said.

  “I know how to laugh. I know what it’s like to be happy. I was once happy.” She gently tapped his hand, her touch warm. “I must continue with Ada’s story.”

  * * *

  Hugh was silent all the way back to Paris, but it wasn’t a silence that troubled Ada. It was a content silence. A silence born of happiness. Of peace. She felt responsibility, pride even. She, Ada de Bonne, a consumptive society had only valued for her fortune, a woman many considered would die young and leave no mark on this world, had brought serenity to a bereft man. She watched Hugh open his journal to write. A poem, she thought, her heart swelling from her rib cage. He’s inspired. She recalled the stained glass, how the light had returned to his face once they’d ascended that staircase. Afterward, they’d made a generous donation to the musée to appease Madame.

  It was only later, back in the Marais, when they were at their usual restaurant at their usual table eating their usual meal of a roast chicken accompanied by their usual claret that Ada realized the influence their museum visit wrought.

  Hugh pushed the wine away and ordered coffee instead. Once the coffee arrived, he opened his journal. He slid it across the table toward her.

  All Ada saw was a small pencil drawing of what looked like a house. It was surrounded by bursts of words. Beauty Fragile Jewel Soul. He’d drawn the house beside a draft for a poem she’d never seen before.

  ‘Jewel or glass? Does it matter?’ quoth Charon.

  ‘For in the depths of Hades

  All colors become barren

/>   And only gold is bright . . .’

  But Eurydice is brave. Eurydice recites :

  ‘Yellow brilliant as sun. Red as dark as blood—

  Blue brighter than twilight . . .’

  Ada felt her forehead crinkle. “What’s this?”

  “Guess,” he said.

  “An idea for a poem?”

  “Look closer,” he said, pointing at the sketch. “It’s for a chapel, a small one made of glass. A locus amoenus. Though not my true locus amoenus—that’s you, my love.”

  Ada beamed.

  Hugh continued. “I’m not much of an artist, so you’ll have to imagine the colors, the patterns. But it’s all there, like the Muses had tapped me on the shoulder. Un fait accompli.”

  That’s what he’d been doing while they were on the train to Paris. Not writing. Sketching. But what a sketch! Crude as it was, Ada was enchanted. Her gaze darted over the page. She made out the arches soaring toward the sky, the willows surrounding it. A glass dome rising like a bubble arrayed by ribs of metal decorated by what looked like jewels. Hugh had even drawn an array of birds nesting in the chapel’s eaves—these were indicated by lines rising toward the sky.

  “So lovely,” he murmured toward the page; the tenderness in his tone reminded Ada of his voice in the morning.

  “It’s beautiful,” she breathed; again her chest caught. “We could build it—no, we must build it.”

  Hugh met her eyes, intense. “That’s what I thought.”

  “In the woods outside Weald House. When we return to England. It will be a wonder.”

  “A wonder,” Hugh agreed. “It would be a chapel like a poem. Besides, I have good reason to build it.”

  To memorialize his family. Ada immediately understood. In that moment she was never prouder of her decision to marry him despite Watkinson’s disapproval and Missus Dido’s envy. Not only did Ada love him, Hugh was a true artist—a pure artist. He was able to use his sorrow to create beauty to transform the world. He’d said, “How can there be so much beauty in this world amid so much sorrow?” The only solution was to create more beauty. She imagined the chapel rising from the woods toward the grey-clotted sky, an unnatural crop constructed of color and light. The shouts of the workers as they labored. The delicate glass pieces shimmering into form. They’d build it together, he with his artistry, she with her money. It would last beyond their lives, a testament to his poems, their love, especially since they’d never have children.