Part 53

"'Perhaps this lady will know,' he says--an' it wasn't the way most of 'em talks here in Friendship, you understand--'I've been askin' the luggageman there,' he says, an' he was smilin' almost like a laugh at what he thought I was goin' to answer, 'I've been askin' the luggageman there, if he knows of a wood near the station that I shall be likely to find haunted at this hour. I've to wait for the 4.20, an' it's a bad time of day for a haunted wood, I'm afraid. The luggageman didn't seem to know.'

"An' then all at once I knew--I knew. Why, don't you see," Calliope cried, "I had to know! That was just the way we'd talked in my dream--kind of jokin' an' yet meanin' somethin', too--so's you felt all lifted up an' out o' the ordinary. An' then I knew who he was an' I see how everything was. Why, the girl that was me an' that was lonesome there in Friendship wasn't me, very much. Me bein' Calliope Marsh was the chance part, an' didn't count. But things was rilly the way I'd dreamed o' their bein.' Somehow, I had another self. An' I had dreamed o' bein' that self. An' there he stood, on the Friendship depot platform."

Calliope looked at me wistfully.

"You don't think I sound crazy, do you?" she asked.

And at my answer:--

"Well," she said, brightening, "that was how it was. An' it was like there hadn't been any first time an' like there wouldn't be any end. Like they was things bigger than time--an' lots nicer than life. An' I spoke up like I'd always known him.

"'Why, yes,' I says to him simple, 'you must mean the Depot Woods,' I said. 'They're always kind o' haunted to me. I guess the little folks that come in the en-gine smoke live in there,' I told him, smilin' because I was so glad.

"I remember how su'prised he looked an' how his face lit up, like he was hearin' English in a heathen land.

"'Upon my word,' he says, still only half believin' in me. 'An' do you go there often?' he ask' me. 'An' I daresay the little smoke folk talk to you, now?' he says.

"'I go 'most every day,' I told him, 'but we don't say very much. I guess they talk an' I listen,' I says.

"An' then the funny part about his askin' Bill for a haunted wood come over me.

"'Bill!' I says. 'Did you actually ask Bill that?'

"Oh, an' how we laughed--how we laughed. Just the way the dream had been. It seemed--it seemed such a sort o' special comical," Calliope said, "an' not like a Sodality laugh. 'Seems though I'd always laughed at one set o' things all my life--my everyday life. An' this was a new recipe for Laugh, flavoured different, an' baked in a quick oven, an' et hot.

"Well, we walked down the road together, like it had always been that way. An' we talked--like you do when you're with them you'd rather be with than anybody else. An' he ask' me, grave as grave, about the little smoke folks.

"'Will They be home, do you think?' he says.

"An' I says: 'Oh, yes. I know They will. They're always home.'

"An' we both felt pleased, like when you're sure.

"We went to walk in the Depot Woods. I remember how much he made me talk--more than I'd ever talked before, excep' in the dream. I know I told him the little stories I'd read about noted people, an' I said over some o' the verses I'd learned an' liked the sound of--I remembered 'em all for him, an' he listened an' heard 'em all just the way I'd said 'em. That was it--he heard it all just the way I said it. An' I mentioned the sun on the leaves an' the way the clouds looked, right out--an' I knew he didn't think I was affected. An' I made up things an' said, too--things that was always comin' in my head an' that I was always wantin' to say. An' he'd laugh almost before I was through--oh, it was like heaven to have him laugh an' not just say, 'What on earth are you talkin', Calliope Marsh?' like I'd heard. An' he kep' sayin', 'I know, I know,' like he knew what I meant better than anything else in the world. Then he read to me out o' the book he had an' he told me--beautiful things. Some of 'em I remember--I've remembered always. Some of 'em I forgot till I come on 'em, now an' then, in books--long afterwards; an' then it was like somebody dead spoke up. I'm always thankful to get hold o' other people's books an' see if mebbe I won't find somethin' else he said. But a good many o' the things I s'pose I clear forgot, an' I won't know 'em again till in the next life. Like I forgot what we said in the dream, till they're both all mixed up an' shinin'.

"We talked till 'most time for the 4.20 train. An' when it got towards four o'clock, I told him about my dream. It seemed like he ought to know, somehow. An' I told him how I dreamed I was him.

"'You don't look like the one I dreamed I was,' I told him, 'but, oh, you talk the same--an' you pretend, an' you laugh, an' you seem the same. An' your face looks different from folks here in Friendship, just like his, an' it seems somehow like you saw things besides with your eyes,' I told him, 'like the poet in my picture. So I know it's you--it must be you,' I says.

"He looked at me so queer an' sudden an' long.

"'I'm a poet, too,' he said, 'if it comes to that. A very bad one, you know--but a kind of poet.'

"An' then of course I was certain sure.

"When he understood all about it, I remember how he looked at me. An' he says:--

"'Well, an' who knows? Who knows?'

"He sat a long time without sayin' anything. But I wasn't unhappy, even when he seemed so sad. I couldn't be, because it was so much to know what I knew.

"'If I can,' he says to me on the depot platform, 'dead or alive, I'll come back some day to see you. But meanwhile you must forget me. Only the dream--keep the dream,' he says.

"I tried to dream it again," Calliope told me, "but I never could. An' dead or alive, he's never been back, all these years. I don't even know his name--an' I remembered afterwards he hadn't asked me mine. But I guess all that is the chance part, an' it don't really count. Out o' the dream I've been, you might say, caught, tied up an' couldn't get out,--just me, like you know me,--with a big unhappiness, an' like that. But in the dream I dreamed myself true. An' then God let me meet myself, just that once, there in the Depot Woods, to show me it's all right, an' that they's things that's bigger than time an' lots nicer than life."