"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.
"Was there a sound of movement in the next room?"
The thought awakened Dowie in the night. She did not know what the hour was, but she was sure of the sound as soon as she was fully awake. Robin had got up and was crossing the corridor to the Tower room.
"Does she want something? What could she want? I must go to her."
She must never quite lose sight of her or let her be entirely out of hearing. Perhaps she was walking in her sleep. Perhaps the dream-- Dowie was a little awed. Was he with her? In obedience to a weird impulse she always opened a window in the Tower room every night before going to bed. She had left it open to-night.
It was still open when she entered the room herself.
There was nothing unusual in the aspect of the place but that Robin was there and it was just midnight. She was not walking in her sleep. She was awake and standing by the table with the pamphlet in her hand.
"I couldn"t go to sleep," she said. "I kept thinking of the little things in this book. I kept seeing them."
"That"s quite natural," Dowie answered. "Sit down and look at them a bit. That"ll satisfy you and you"ll sleep easy enough. I must shut the window for you."
She shut the window and moved a book or so as if such things were usually done at midnight. She went about in a quiet matter-of-fact way which was even gentler than her customary gentleness because in these days, while trying to preserve a quite ordinary demeanour, she felt as though she must move as one would move in making sure that one would not startle a bird one loved.
Robin sat and looked at the pictures. When she turned a page and looked at it she turned it again and looked at it with dwelling eyes. Presently she ceased turning pages and sat still with the book open on her lap as if she were thinking not only of what she held but of something else.
When her eyes lifted to meet Dowie"s there was a troubled wondering look in them.
"It"s so strange--I never seemed to think of it before," the words came slowly. "I forgot because I was always--remembering."
"You"ll think now," Dowie answered. "It"s only Nature."
"Yes--it"s only Nature."
The touch of her hand on the pamphlet was a sort of caress--it was a touch which clung.
"Dowie," timidly. "I want to begin to make some little clothes like these. Do you think I can?"
"Well, my dear," answered Dowie composedly--no less so because it was past midnight and the stillness of moor and deserted castle rooms was like a presence in itself. "I taught you to sew very neatly before you were twelve. You liked to do it and you learned to make beautiful small st.i.tches. And Mademoiselle taught you to do fine embroidery. She"d learned it in a convent herself and I never saw finer work anywhere."
"I did like to do it," said Robin. "I never seemed to get tired of sitting in my little chair in the bay window where the flowers grew, and making tiny st.i.tches."
"You had a gift for it. Not all girls have," said Dowie. "Sometimes when you were embroidering a flower you didn"t want to leave it to take your walk."
"I am glad I had a gift," Robin took her up. "You see I want to make these little things with my own hands. I don"t want them sent up from London. I don"t want them bought. Look at this, Dowie."
Dowie went to her side. Her heart was quickening happily as it beat.
Robin touched a design with her finger.
"I should like to begin by making that," she suggested. "Do you think that if I bought one for a pattern I could copy it?"