Chapter One Last night I dreamed that I was back at Manderley.In a trance, I stood in front of the big iron gate leading to the driveway, and was blocked from entering for a while.There is a big lock and an iron chain on the iron door.I called out to the gatekeeper in my dream, but no one answered.So I leaned closer and looked in through the rusty iron bars on the door, and then I realized that Manderley was a deserted and empty house. There is no longer a curl of smoke from the chimney.The small latticed windows were open forlornly.At this time, like all dreamers, I suddenly obtained supernatural powers from nowhere, and I floated over the obstacles in front of me like a ghost.The driveway stretched out in front of my eyes, with twists and turns, vaguely as before.But when I walked forward, I noticed that the lane had changed: it seemed narrow and deserted, and it was no longer the familiar one.I was momentarily puzzled, but when I ducked my head to avoid a low-hanging swaying branch, I discovered the reason for the change.It turned out that nature had returned to its original form, and gradually stretched her slender fingers tenaciously and furtively into the driveway.Even in the past, the woods had always been a threat to the driveway, and now they finally won, and the black pressure was overwhelmingly approaching the sides of the driveway.The zelkova trees stretched out their naked white limbs and clung to each other, their branches intertwined in a strange embrace, forming a vault over my head like a cathedral archway.There are many other trees growing here, some I can't name, and some stunted oaks and warped elms, all intertwined with the beeches.Oaks, elms, and trollish bushes, and other vegetation, just lined the quiet ground, not at all as I remembered them.

The driveway has become a thin strip, compared with the past, it has become a line!The gravel layer on the road has disappeared, only a dense patch of weeds and moss.The branches hang down and block my way, and the gnarled roots look like the claws of skeletons.In the middle of this desolate and filthy forest, some bushes can be recognized from time to time, which are the symbols of our residence, and are the products of artificial cultivation and elegant taste.Like Ziyang, its flower spikes used to be quite famous, but now they have become wild plants because no one has pruned them to take care of them. The grass and trees are no different.

Suddenly east, now west, this poor thin line stretched crookedly forward. (And it was our driveway at one point!) Sometimes I think it's over, only to find it emerges from under a dead tree that's fallen on the ground, or in the middle of a muddy ditch made by the winter rains. The head struggled to come out.I have never felt that the road is so long, and the distance must be continuously doubling, just like trees doubling to grow higher.The driveway did not seem to lead to the house at all, but led into a maze, into a chaotic wilderness.Suddenly, I saw the house at a glance. The passage in front of the house was covered by a large cluster of strange shrubs that grew chaotically.I stood still, my heart was beating violently in my chest; tears rolled in my eyes, bringing a strange pain.

This is Manderley!Our former residence of Mandala!Still as secluded and quiet as before.The gray masonry looked pale in the dreamy moonlight, and the mullioned windows reflected the green lawn and the front deck.The passage of time has not damaged the perfect symmetry of the wall, nor the foundation of the house itself. The whole house is like a pearl in the palm of your hand. The platform is obliquely connected to the grassland, which stretches all the way to the sea.As soon as I turned around, I saw the pool of silvery sea water, just like the mirror-like surface of the lake when the wind is calm, quietly letting the moonlight caress.There are no waves to make the dream water sparkle, nor clouds to be brought by the westerly wind to cover the clear and pale night sky.

I turned back to the house.Although it stands tall and inviolable, as if we had just left yesterday and no one dared to touch it, I found that the garden, like the forest, obeys the law of the jungle.The heather was a hundred and fifty yards high, twisted and intertwined with ferns, and mating indiscriminately with a mass of nameless shrubs.These hybrid shrubs, clinging tightly to Shi Fu's roots, seem to be aware of their humble origins.A lilac and a copper beech have grown together, and the ivy, ever hostile to grace, stretches its crooked tendrils viciously, to coil the pair more tightly, and make them captives. .The ivy dominated the deserted garden, strands and strands of which crawled across the grass and threatened to invade the house.There is also a hybrid plant that grew in the woods, whose seeds were scattered under the trees long ago, and then forgotten, and now it goes hand in hand with the ivy, stretching its ugly body like a rhubarb. To the soft meadows where daffodils once bloomed.

Nettles can be seen everywhere, and they can be regarded as the vanguard of the invading army.They covered the terraces, crowded the aisles in disorder, and leaned their vulgar and slender bodies against the window lattices of the house.They were poor sentries, for in several places their ranks were broken by rhubarb, and they hung their heads and stretched out listlessly, and became the haunt of hares.I leave the driveway and walk to the platform.No nettles can stop me, nothing can stop me, because there is a magic in the way people walk in dreams. Moonlight can create strange hallucinations, even in dreams.Standing solemnly in front of the house, I decided that it was not an empty shell, but a living, breathing creature, as it had been before.

There was light in the windows, and the curtains fluttered slightly in the night wind.In the library, the door was ajar, because we forgot to take it with us when we went out.My handkerchief was still on the table, next to a vase of autumn roses. Everywhere in the library bears the imprint of us not gone: a small pile of library books marked "to be returned"; The cushions on the chair still bear the imprint of our leaning heads; the embers of the fire in the fireplace are still smoking in the morning light; and Jesper, the dog, is lying on the floor, The eyes are full of spirituality, the fat neck is drooping, and the tail is flapping and shaking because it heard the footsteps of its master.

I never noticed that a dark cloud had covered the moon.For a while the dark cloud lingered, like a black hand covering the face.Immediately, the illusion disappeared, and the lights in the windows were also extinguished.At last the house in front of me was a desolate shell again, soulless and uninhabited.Beside the big wall that is staring at you like a tiger, you can no longer hear the whispers of the past. Manderley is a tomb, and in its ruins lie our fears and our miseries.All this can no longer be resurrected from death.I never feel bad when I think of Manderley Park in my waking hours.If I had lived there in a carefree way, maybe I would recall all the beautiful things there in fact: the rose garden in summer, the birdsong at dawn, the afternoon tea under the chestnut tree, and the meadow beyond. There were bursts of waves.

I will also think of the lilacs in full bloom and miss "Happy Valley".All this is eternal, impossible to dissipate like a cloud of smoke.These memories are supposedly innocuous.The moon is still covered by dark clouds.Although I was in a dream, I thought of all of the above wakingly, because like all dreamers, I knew I was dreaming.The fact that I was lying in a foreign land hundreds of miles away, only to wake up in a matter of seconds, to find myself sleeping in a small empty hotel room without any special atmosphere, but because of this, It's a relief.I would sigh, stretch my waist, turn around, open my eyes, and look bewilderedly at the dazzling sunlight and the indifferent and clean sky, how different it is from the soft moonlight in my dream!The days ahead of us were undoubtedly long and monotonous, but at the same time filled with a precious sense of peace.This is something neither of us has experienced before.No, we won't talk about Manderley, and I don't want to tell about my dreams, because Manderley is no longer ours, Manderley no longer exists!