After a little, she regained her self-control.
"Come out into the sun," he said, "it's ghostly here. You don't seem
real to me, Ruth."
The mist filled her eyes again. "Don't, darling," he pleaded, "I'll try
to tell you."
They sat down on the hillside, where the sun shone brightly, and where
they could see Miss Ainslie's house plainly. She waited, frightened and
suffering, for what seemed an eternity, before he spoke.
"Last night, Ruth," he began, "my father came to me in a dream. You know
he died when I was about twelve years old, and last night I saw him as
he would have been if he had lived until now--something over sixty. His
hair and beard were matted and there was the most awful expression in
his eyes--it makes me shudder yet. He was in his grave clothes, dead and
yet not dead. He was suffering--there was something he was trying to say
to me; something he wanted to explain. We were out here on the hill in
the moonlight and I could see Miss Ainslie's house and hear the
surf behind the cliff. All he could say to me was:
'Abby--Mary--Mary--Abby--she--Mary,' over and over again. Once he said
'mother.' Abby was my mother's name.
"It is terrible," he went on. "I can't understand it. There is something
I must do, and I don't know what it is. A command is laid on me by the
dead--there is some wrong for which I must atone. When I first awoke, I
thought it was a dream, but it isn't, it's real. It seems as though that
was the real world, and this--all our love and happiness, and you, were
just dreams. I can't bear it, Ruth!"
He shuddered, and she tried to comfort him, though she was cold as a
marble statue and her lips moved with difficulty. "Don't, dear," she
said, "It was only a dream. I've had them sometimes, so vividly that
they haunted me for days and, as you say, it seemed as if that was the
real world and this the dream. I know how you feel--those things aren't
pleasant, but there's nothing we can do. It makes one feel so helpless.
The affairs of the day are largely under our control, but at night,
when the body is asleep, the mind harks back to things that have been
forgotten for years. It takes a fevered fancy as a fact, and builds
upon it a whole series of disasters. It gives trivial things great
significance and turns life upside down. Remembering it is the worst of
all."
"There's something I can't get at, Ruth," he answered. "It's just out of
my reach. I know it's reasonable to suppose it was a dream and that it
can be explained by natural causes, but I don't dream very often."