Story of the Month: The House

She told me: I had been ill for two years, and I noticed during my illness that every night I dreamed one and the same dream, in which I saw myself taking a walk in the countryside. I would glimpse from afar a white house, long of façade and low, surrounded by a small grove of lindens; and on the left side of this house I would see a garden walled in by poplars, whose high branches I could glimpse from a distance, swaying above the lindens. In this dream I felt an attraction toward this house that drove me on to it. Its entrance was surrounded by a gate painted white; then whoever entered had to follow a gently curving path lined with trees, between which were scattered flowers of every kind, and anemones — but these flowers would wither if I picked them. At the end of this path there was a great space carpeted with grass, through which grew violets. This house, built of white stone, had a roof of tile, and its door was of oak, light in color, with carved panels.

I longed to visit this house, but no one answered my call. I would ring the bell and call out, and meet nothing but disappointment — and at that point I would wake.

That is my dream, and it repeated itself over long months with a precision and an exactness that made me think I must have seen this garden and this mansion in my childhood; yet in my waking state I could not recover the memory, and I went on searching for it stubbornly, until I learned to drive a car and decided to spend my summer holiday traveling the roads of France in search of the house of my dreams.

I do not wish to describe my journeys to you now, but I roamed through Normandy, Touraine, and Poitou without coming upon anything. I returned to Paris in October, and all through the winter I went back to dreaming of my white house. Then one day, as I was crossing a valley near L'Isle-Adam, I suddenly felt a delicious shiver — that strange emotion which takes hold of our senses when, after a long absence, we see persons or places we once loved.

Although I had never come to this region before, I recognized with perfect clarity the view that lay spread before my eyes: poplar branches hanging over masses of lindens, and through the scattered linden leaves a white house showed itself to the beholder. I knew then that I had found the mansion of my dreams, and I had no doubt that I would come upon a narrow road about a hundred meters from the main highway. It was just as I had imagined it. I followed it, and it brought me before the white gate. Beyond that gate was the path I had so often traversed in my dreams. I began to feast my eyes on the carpet of flowers spread beneath the trees; then I passed through the linden grove and saw the wide lawn and the little porch crowned by the light-colored oak door. I got out of the car, climbed the steps lightly, and rang the bell. I was very much afraid that no one would answer me, but a servant quickly appeared before my eyes — a sad-faced man, advanced in years, wearing a black coat. I noticed that astonishment took hold of him when he saw me, and he kept gazing at me for a long while without speaking. So I said to him:

— I am going to ask a favor of you that may seem strange to you. I do not know the owners of this house, but I should be happy if they would allow me to visit it.

He answered me in a tone of sorrow and regret:
— The house, madam, is for rent, and I am here to show it to those who wish to see it.

I answered him:
— For rent — is it true? What great luck!... And how could its owners give up so beautiful a house as this?

— Its owners used to live in it once, madam, but they left it from the time they felt that ghosts were haunting it.

— Spirits and ghosts? I said. That will never keep me from renting it. I did not know that people in the French provinces still believed in ghosts.

He said to me gravely:
— Nor did I, madam, believe in such things before I met in the garden, at night, the aged figure that drove my masters to flight.

Trying to smile, I said:
— What a story!

The old man answered me in a tone of reproach:
— It is a story that you, madam, above all must not laugh at — for that aged figure is you yourself!