Part 34 (1/2)
”Has she spoken of having had the dream again?” he inquired at last.
”Yes, sir,” was Dowie's brief reply.
”Did she say it was the same dream?”
”She told me her husband had come back. She said nothing more.”
”Has she told you that more than once?”
”No, sir. Only once so far.”
Doctor Benton looked at the sensible face very hard. He hesitated before he put his next question.
”But you think she has seen him since she spoke to you? You feel that she might speak of it again--at almost any time?”
”She might, sir, and she might not. It may seem like a sacred thing to her. And it's no business of mine to ask her about things she'd perhaps rather not talk about.”
”Do you think that she believes that she sees her husband every night?”
”I don't know _what_ I think, sir,” said Dowie in honourable distress.
”Well neither do I for that matter,” Benton answered brusquely. ”Neither do thousands of other people who want to be honest with themselves.
Physically the effect of this abnormal fancy is excellent. If this goes on she will end by being in a perfectly normal condition.”
”That's what I'm working for, sir,” said Dowie.
Whereupon Dr. Benton went away and thought still stranger and deeper things as he drove home over the moor road which twisted through the heather.
The next day's post delivered by Macaur himself brought as it did weekly a package of books and carefully chosen periodicals. Robin had, before this, not been equal even to looking them over and Dowie had arranged them neatly on shelves in the Tower room.
To-day when the package was opened Robin sat down near the table on which they were placed and began to look at them.
Out of the corner of her eye as she arranged books decorously on a shelf Dowie saw the still transparent hand open first one book and then another. At last it paused at a delicately coloured pamphlet. It was the last alluring note of modern advertis.e.m.e.nt, sent out by a firm which made a specialty of children's outfits and belongings. It came from an elect and expensive shop which prided itself on its dainty presentation of small beings attired in entrancing garments such as might have been designed for fairies and elves.
”If she begins to turn over the pages she'll go on. It'll be just Nature,” Dowie yearned.
The awakening she had thought Nature would bring about was not like the perilous miracle she had seen take place and had watched tremulously from hour to hour. Dreams, however much one had to thank G.o.d for them, were not exactly ”Nature.” They were not the blessed healing and strengthening she felt familiar with. You were never sure when they might melt away into s.p.a.ce and leave only emptiness behind them.
”But if she would wake up the other way it would be healthy--just healthy and to be depended upon,” was her thought. Robin turned over the leaves in no hurried way. She had never carelessly turned over the leaves of her picture books in her nursery. As she had looked at her picture books she looked at this one. There were pages given to the tiniest and most exquisite things of all, and it was the ill.u.s.trations of these, Dowie's careful sidelong eye saw she had first been attracted by.
”These are for very little--ones?” she said presently.
”Yes. For the new ones,” answered Dowie.
There was moment or so of silence.
”How little--how little!” Robin said softly. She rose softly and went to her couch and lay down on it. She was very quiet and Dowie wondered if she were thinking or if she were falling into a doze. She wished she had looked at the pamphlet longer. As the weeks had gone by Dowie had even secretly grieved a little at her seeming unconsciousness of certain tender things. If she had only looked at it a little longer.