![]() And there were other trees as well, trees that I did not recognize, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered. The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realized what had happened. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it it was narrow and unkempt, not the drive that we had known. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
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