Certain things, however, gradually then became apparent, forcing
themselves upon me, willy-nilly. They came slowly, but overwhelmingly.
Not that facts had changed, or natural details altered in the grounds--
this was impossible--but that I noticed for the first time various
aspects I had not noticed before--trivial enough, yet for me, just then,
significant. Some I remembered from previous days; others I saw now as I
wandered to and fro, uneasy, uncomfortable,--almost, it seemed, watched
by some one who took note of my impressions. The details were so
foolish, the total result so formidable. I was half aware that others
tried hard to make me see. It was deliberate.
My sister's phrase, "one layer got at me, another gets at you," flashed,
undesired, upon me.
For I saw, as with the eyes of a child, what I can only call a goblin
garden--house, grounds, trees, and flowers belonged to a goblin world
that children enter through the pages of their fairy tales. And what
made me first aware of it was the whisper of the wind behind me, so that
I turned with a sudden start, feeling that something had moved closer.
An old ash tree, ugly and ungainly, had been artificially trained to
form an arbor at one end of the terrace that was a tennis lawn, and the
leaves of it now went rustling together, swishing as they rose and fell.
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