"Would we be chasing these people if I didn"t?" I temporized with another question.
He seemed to be troubled, glancing toward the thoughtful professor as if expecting him to speak, and when this was not forthcoming he asked again:
"Well, friend gezabo, what do you think?"
The little scientist lowered his pipe, sighed and impressively answered:
"It is not given to all men to see this invisible agency at work."
The profoundly solemn way he said this made Tommy"s eyes grow round.
Ghost and mystery tales imparted during his childhood by black mammies and other negro servants had endowed him with a considerable amount of superst.i.tion that not infrequently prevailed against his better judgment. So now, when the erudite Monsieur treated my experience with reverence, even introducing an element of mysticism, Tommy wavered.
"Whiz-bang! You don"t really believe that spooky stuff, do you?"
"To my knowledge," Monsieur answered, "I have seen one case. You have heard me speak of Azuria. Well, many years ago a friend of mine, daughter of our King Christopher, fell to worrying about her cousin, a profligate who divided his time between the palace and Paris. As a punishment for various escapades the King had curtailed his allowance to a mere pittance, yet he seemed in spite of this to have as much money as before. It was this fact that worried my friend--the fear of a scandal.
"One night she dreamed that her child, a girl of nearly three, was being kidnaped. She arose in her sleep to follow, walking the length of the palace, and awoke to find herself in the cousin"s room--standing, indeed, behind his chair as he bent beneath a shaded lamp earnestly working on a plate for spurious money. Instantly she threatened to expose him to the King.
"Well, to shorten a long story, that night he did actually kidnap the child, leaving a note to my friend in which he suggested a compromise.
But there was no compromise with villainy in her make-up. The old King was much affected. Yet there were things in the air at that time, delicate situations of state, which demanded consideration. The kidnaping, if made public, would have produced a most disquieting effect in certain quarters. Our treaty with a powerful state had just been signed, based on the little princess" betrothal--you see? Therefore, her disappearance must be kept a secret for a while, so the police of the world were not notified. But that night ten men--a few of them loyal subjects and the others paid agents--left the capital. Thus a relentless search began, being carried to the ends of the world. A noted rogue, that fellow was--yet, strange to say, in earlier life a man of parts, an esthetic, an artist and musician of great ability; but _mon Dieu_, what a scoundrel!"
"Where did they find the little princess?" Tommy asked, after a pause.
"She was never found," he answered softly. "Word once came that she had died; again that she lived--but this I begin to doubt. So her mother reigns as regent, and in sorrow. Old Christopher had two daughters, the younger of whom----" but he stopped in confusion, his face turning very red. Later I remembered this.
We fell into a silence, a mutual sympathy for the bereaved lady who had been so wronged. At last Tommy asked:
"Do you cross your heart that Jack"s dream was anything like the one she had?"
"Dream?" Monsieur ran his fingers through his shock of hair. "Who can say? Was she dreaming, or did she see a vision? If a vision, why did it mislead by urging her into the very step that brought disaster? That scoundrel might never have considered kidnaping the child had the mother remained unsuspicious of his occupation! Yet visions are sent to warn against, not to court dangers. Again, some hold that he happened to be contemplating this step as a means of escape should discovery come, and so it was his thought transmitted to her."
"For goodness sake talk sense," I cried. "What difference does it make whether they were dreams or nightmares, or how much the cousin was thinking! What we want to know is where does my dream come in!"
He looked so hurt that I apologized by saying his fairy talk had sent me off my head. Small wonder, for when our guest attempted to explain a theory he proceeded on the a.s.sumption that we were as well versed in it as himself. Anyway, we smoothed him down and now, looking at us solemnly, he said:
"Latter-day English-speaking psychologists to the contrary notwithstanding, we know in the East that souls do travel abroad; that they will speak, one to another, while our bodies sleep--while we are steeped in that mysterious period of mimic death which leads us so uncannily near their twilight zone! Some men hold that our dreams are vagaries, as a puff of air or a pa.s.sing breeze; others that they are unfulfilled desires; still others that they are the impress made by another soul upon the subliminal part of us, that leaves to our active senses but imperfectly translatable hieroglyphics. Does that show you nothing?"
"Well," I temporized, "I can"t say it shows me much. How about you, Tommy?"
"Smell a little smoke, but don"t see any bright light yet. Elucidate, professor!"
He sighed, giving us a look of pity, I thought.
"If I call to a man, and the s.p.a.ce is great, my voice may fail before reaching him. Yet if it hangs its vibrations on a puff of air, a pa.s.sing breeze that blows in his direction, he hears me! So does the soul employ the pa.s.sing breeze--by which I mean the capricious thing called dreaming--to enter our consciousness that might not otherwise be reached. The impossibility is to say which is which--that is, which is the unfulfilled desire, which is but the capricious pa.s.sing breeze, and which is the message from another! If in the dark an uneducated fellow sits at a piano he might play several lovely chords, yet while they sounded well there would be no intelligence behind them. Such is the chance dream! But a master-player could produce a rhapsody, expressing to one who listened hope, love, desire, warning--everything. Such is the harmonious blending of soul and soul in sleep! And how can we tell which is which?"
He paused and gazed out at the water, and I saw in his face the peculiarly wistful expression that so often accompanies thoughts which are both elusive and far away. The index finger of his right hand was slightly raised, indicating a subconscious impulse to point upward.
Slowly turning back to us, he said in a tone of solemnity that lingers with me even now, a year later, as I write of it:
"In the Psalms we find these merciful words: "He giveth His beloved sleep." Yet they are but an imperfect translation of the original, which reads: "He giveth _to_ His beloved _in_ sleep." Do you not see here a greater meaning? Do your minds not at once grasp the corollary?"
"Then you mean," Tommy asked, "that every dream is intended to express something?"
"I will not go quite that far, although there are men highly practiced in the science of psycho-a.n.a.lytical research who stoutly affirm it. Ah, the great difficulty is in drawing the line--in determining which dreams are but pa.s.sing breezes and which are sent to us upon the wings of angels!"
"You"ve studied those things," I ventured. "Which was mine?"
"Study!" he cried, with a fine degree of scorn. "Yes, we study! We gather around the brink of a black well and steep ourselves in thought; we wrinkle our brows and tear our beards. Cries one: "I know what is down there!" Another turns to him: "You lie!" A third challenges: "Prove yourselves!" And thus do professors, students, psychologists, churchmen, laymen, infidels, and fools, gather about the pit! This much for study,"
he snapped his finger. "Unless a man have faith, he is in darkness to the end of his days!"
"All the same, I believe someone tried to warn the princess," Tommy insisted. "And it couldn"t have been anything less than a master-player that got off that rhapsody to Jack last night!" There was a note of teasing in this that the others did not detect.
"Well, Mr. Thomas, you"re wrong, sir." Gates, who had been listening attentively, now uncrossed his legs and spoke. "There isn"t a single curious thing in Mr. Jack"s dream. Anyone can see how it came about--with my apologies to you, sir," he bowed to Monsieur.
We laughed, because Gates had not impressed us as being much of a psychologist, and Tommy said:
"If you explain how he knew what Graham"s name was, I"ll listen."
"Why, sir, he saw it on the paper the night before--for it was there, as sure as you live, and he says he looked at the paper. The only thing is, he didn"t know he saw it--being a little gone in his cups, as you might say. But he did see it, and it soaked into his head, waiting till arfter he got to sleep before stirring around."
"That"s my first clear idea," Tommy"s face brightened; and Gates, thus encouraged, added:
"The reason he dreamed the old man went ash.o.r.e for the paper was because he saw the lady being watched when she came back to her table--and I"ll venture he thought right then that the old one was about to come back, too, and see what she was doing. Didn"t you, sir?"
"I believe I did," I murmured.
"So that stuck in his mind and came out the wrong way, just like dreams sometimes will. As for the photograph and bra.s.s frame--why, Mr. Thomas, you and the professor took on so about that picture when he"d developed it that Mr. Jack could have heard you in his sleep, and got that part of his dream from what you said!"
"It does fit, doesn"t it," Tommy cried. "And, Jack, the poetry Sylvia breathed at you--wasn"t it about the same thing our little Spanish girl sang?"
"It had the same general idea," I admitted.
"There you are, sir," Gates announced, with a satisfied air. "So there isn"t a thing unusual about your dream, arfter all. It"s as reasonable as the general run."
Monsieur did not relish having his big occult smoke blown away in this fashion; he looked at us with rather a sickish expression, as a boy might have if someone stuck a pin in his toy balloon. But it was such a relief to get back to practicalities that we let him sulk.
"Jack," Tommy asked, "do you think her real name is Sylvia?"
"Yes; I"m sure of that, anyhow!"
"How"re you sure of it?"
"It fits her so absolutely," I answered with decision.
"But Revenge would fit her, too, wouldn"t it? That"s sweet," he grinned.
"Or Constancy," the professor smiled, for once becoming inspired as he threw off his grouch.
"Try Ignorance!" This again from Tommy, who made an attempt to look blissful and only succeeded in making himself ridiculous, I thought.