At the same time, he comforted me by saying that she was in no immediate danger of death; and he left me certain remedies to be given, if certain symptoms appeared.
I took her to bed, and held her to me, with the idea of keeping her warm.
Without believing in mesmerism, it has since struck me that we might unconsciously have had some influence over each other, which may explain what followed. Do you think it likely?"
"Quite likely.
At the same time, the mesmeric theory (if you could believe in it) would carry the explanation further still.
Mesmerism would assert, not only that you and the child influenced each other, but that—in spite of the distance—you both influenced me.
And in that way, mesmerism would account for my vision as the necessary result of a highly developed sympathy between us.
Tell me, did you fall asleep with the child in your arms?"
"Yes.
I was completely worn out; and I fell asleep, in spite of my resolution to watch through the night.
In my forlorn situation, forsaken in a strange place, I dreamed of you again, and I appealed to you again as my one protector and friend.
The only new thing in the dream was, that I thought I had the child with me when I approached you, and that the child put the words into my mind when I wrote in your book.
You saw the words, I suppose? and they vanished, as before, no doubt, when I awoke?
I found the child still lying, like a dead creature, in my arms.
All through the night there was no change in her.
She only recovered her senses at noon the next day.
Why do you start?
What have I said that surprises you?"
There was good reason for my feeling startled, and showing it.
On the day and at the hour when the child had come to herself, I had stood on the deck of the vessel, and had seen the apparition of her disappear from my view.
"Did she say anything," I asked, "when she recovered her senses?"
"Yes.
She too had been dreaming—dreaming that she was in company with you.
She said:
'He is coming to see us, mamma; and I have been showing him the way.'
I asked her where she had seen you.
She spoke confusedly of more places than one.
She talked of trees, and a cottage, and a lake; then of fields and hedges, and lonely lanes; then of a carriage and horses, and a long white road; then of crowded streets and houses, and a river and a ship.
As to these last objects, there is nothing very wonderful in what she said.
The houses, the river, and the ship which she saw in her dream, she saw in the reality when we took her from London to Rotterdam, on our way here.
But as to the other places, especially the cottage and the lake (as she described them) I can only suppose that her dream was the reflection of mine.
I had been dreaming of the cottage and the lake, as I once knew them in years long gone by; and—Heaven only knows why—I had associated you with the scene.
Never mind going into that now!
I don't know what infatuation it is that makes me trifle in this way with old recollections, which affect me painfully in my present position.
We were talking of the child's health; let us go back to that."
It was not easy to return to the topic of her child's health.
She had revived my curiosity on the subject of her association with Greenwater Broad.
The child was still quietly at play in the bedchamber.
My second opportunity was before me.
I took it.
"I won't distress you," I began.
"I will only ask leave, before we change the subject, to put one question to you about the cottage and the lake."
As the fatality that pursued us willed it, it was her turn now to be innocently an obstacle in the way of our discovering each other.
"I can tell you nothing more to-night," she interposed, rising impatiently.
"It is time I put the child to bed—and, besides, I can't talk of things that distress me.
You must wait for the time—if it ever comes!—when I am calmer and happier than I am now."
She turned to enter the bed-chamber.
Acting headlong on the impulse of the moment, I took her by the hand and stopped her.
"You have only to choose," I said, "and the calmer and happier time is yours from this moment."
"Mine?" she repeated.