Most ardently I then
hoped that the sunbeams would follow me, and that the breeze charged
with cool heliotrope would greet me as it did Aunt Deborah.
In the daytime, all Hennersley was sunshine and flowers, and, stray
where I would, I never felt lonely or afraid; but as the light waned I
saw and felt a subtle change creep over everything. The long aisles of
trees that in the morning only struck me as enchantingly peaceful and
shady, gradually filled with strangely terrifying shadows; the hue of
the broad swards deepened into a darkness I did not dare interpret,
whilst in the house, in its every passage, nook, and corner, a gloom
arose that, seeming to come from the very bowels of the earth, brought
with it every possible suggestion of bogey.
I never spoke of these things to my relatives, partly because I was
ashamed of my cowardice, and partly because I dreaded a fresh rebuke.
How I suffered! and how I ridiculed my sufferings in the mornings,
when every trace of darkness was obliterated, and amid the radiant
bloom of the trees I thought only of heliotrope and sunbeams.
One afternoon my search for the abode of the genii led me to the
wingless side of the house, a side I rarely visited. At the foot of
the ivy-covered walls and straight in their centre was laid a wide
bed of flowers, every one of which was white. But why white? Again
and again I asked myself this question, but I dared not broach it to
my relatives. A garden all white was assuredly an enigma--and to every
enigma there is undoubtedly a key.
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