Part 37 (1/2)
ALICE'S DREAM
”Do you believe in dreams, Aunt Ella?”
”No, Alice, I do not.”
”Not if they come true?”
”Only a coincidence. If they don't come true are you willing to acknowledge that all are unreliable? Or, if some prove true do you consider them all reliable? You can have either horn of the dilemma.”
”What causes dreams, Aunt Ella?”
”Usually what's on your mind. Your brain doesn't wake up all at once and dreams flit through it until it gets full control.”
”What if a person dreams the same thing three nights in succession?”
”That proves nothing. When my first husband died I dreamed for a month or more that he was still alive and that I must wake him at a certain time because the morning he died he was to take a train at an early hour. You make your own dreams.”
”But supposing you see something in your dreams that you never saw before--that you never knew existed until you viewed it when asleep?”
”What have you been dreaming, Alice?”
”You won't laugh at me?”
”I promise not to laugh, but I won't promise to believe.”
”If my husband is dead,” said Alice, ”he is dead and I shall never see him again in this world; if he is still living, he is somewhere in this world, and it's my duty to find him.”
”I will agree to that,” a.s.sented her hearer, ”but you know that I have no faith that he is alive. Just think, twenty-three years have pa.s.sed away and you have had no word from him. Out of deference to your feelings, Alice, I had put off making my will since Sir Stuart died until yesterday. It is now signed and in my lawyer's hands. It is no secret, I have left all I possess to your son Quincy.”
”Why did you do that?”
”I promised his father that he should have it, but as I think he will never come to claim it, I gave it to his son, as he or you would do if it was yours. Now, your dreams have put some idea into your head. Where do you think your husband is?”
”I don't know what country it is, but, in my dreams, thrice repeated, I have seen him standing in a grove of trees filled with fruit--lemons and oranges they appeared to be.”
”Did he speak to you or you to him?”
”He looked at me but gave no sign of recognition. I called his name, but he did not answer me.”
”That proves what I said. You are always thinking about him, and your mind made up your dream.”
”Where do lemons and oranges grow?”
”In so many countries that you would have to go round the world to visit them all.” She thought to herself, ”they don't grow in the ocean.”
”You speak of twenty-three years having pa.s.sed. That's not so long. I have read of sailors being away longer than that and finally returning home. Men have stayed in prison longer than that and have come out into the world again. Why, Quincy is only fifty-three now.”
”And I'm seventy--an old woman some think me, and others call me so, but if I were sure that by living I could see Quincy again, I'd manage some way to keep alive until he came.”