"Then he must have been a fool to go to sea," muttered Godfrey, and relapsed into a torpor, from which he awoke only to find himself stretched at length on the cushions of a first-class carriage.
Later on, the journey became very agreeable. Godfrey was interested in everything, being of a quick and receptive mind, and Miss Ogilvy proved a fund of information. When they had exhausted the scenery they conversed on other topics. Soon she knew everything there was to know about him and Isobel, whom it was evident she could not understand.
"Tell me," she said, looking at his dark and rather unusual eyes, "do you ever have dreams, Godfrey?" for now she called him by his Christian name.
"Not at night, when I sleep very soundly, except after that poor cabman was killed. I have seen lots of dead people, because my father always takes me to look at them in the parish, to remind me of my own latter end, as he says, but they never made me dream before."
"Then do you have them at all?"
He hesitated a little.
"Sometimes, at least visions of a sort, when I am walking alone, especially in the evening, or wondering about things. But always when I am alone."
"What are they?" she asked eagerly.
"I can't quite explain," he replied in a slow voice. "They come and they go, and I forget them, because they fade out, just like a dream does, you know."
"You must remember something; try to tell me about them."
"Well, I seem to be among a great many people whom I have never met.
Yet I know them and they know me, and talk to me about all sorts of things. For instance, if I am puzzling over anything they will explain it quite clearly, but afterwards I always forget the explanation and am no wiser than I was before. A hand holding a cloth seems to wipe it out of my mind, just as one cleans a slate."
"Is that all?"
"Not quite. Occasionally I meet the people afterwards. For instance, Thomas Sims, the cabman, was one of them, and," he added colouring, "forgive me for saying so, but you are another. I knew it at once, the moment I saw you, and that is what made me feel so friendly."
"How very odd!" she exclaimed, "and how delightful. Because, you see--@@well never mind----"
He looked at her expectantly, but as she said no more, went on.
"Then now and again I see places before I really do see them. For example, I think that presently we shall pass along a hillside with great mountain slopes above and below us covered with dark trees.
Opposite to us also, running up to three peaks with a patch of snow on the centre peak, but not quite at the top." He closed his eyes, and added, "Yes, and there is a village at the bottom of the valley by a swift-running stream, and in it a small white church with a spire and a gilt weathercock with a bird on it. Then," he continued rapidly, "I can see the house where I am going to live, with the Pasteur Boiset, an old white house with woods above and all about it, and the beautiful lake beneath, and beyond, a great mountain. There is a tree in the garden opposite the front door, like a big cherry tree, only the fruit looks larger than cherries," he added with confidence.
"I suppose that no one showed you a photograph of the place?" she asked doubtfully, "for as it happens I know it. It is only about two miles from Lucerne by the short way through the woods. What is more, there is a tree with a delicious fruit, either a big cherry or a small plum, for I have eaten some of it several years ago."
"No," he answered, "no one. My father only told me that the name of the little village is Kleindorf. He wrote it on the label for my bag."
Just then the line went round a bend. "Look," he said, "there is the place I told you we were coming to, with the dark trees, the three peaks, and the stream, and the white church with the cock on top of the spire."
She let down the carriage window, and stared at the scene.
"Yes," she exclaimed, "it is just as you described. Oh! at last I have found what I have been seeking for years. Godfrey, I believe that you have the true gift."
"What gift, Miss Ogilvy?"
"Clairvoyance, of course, and perhaps clairaudience as well."
The lad burst out laughing, and said that he wished it were something more useful.
From all of which it will be guessed that Ethel Ogilvy was a mystic of the first water.