I told you I had one consolation still possibly left. Judge for yourself what the hope of it is to me, when I own to you that I should long since have put an end to my life, without it. Don't think I am talking nonsense; I mean what I say. It is one of my misfortunes that I have no religious scruples to restrain me. There was a time when I believed that religion might comfort me. I once opened my heart to a clergyman--a worthy person, who did his best to help me. All useless! My heart was too hard, I suppose. It doesn't matter--except to give you one more proof that I am thoroughly in earnest. Patience! patience! I am coming to the point. I asked you some odd questions, on the day when you first dined here? You have forgotten all about them, of course?"
"I remember them perfectly well," Amelius answered.
"You remember them? That looks as if you had thought about them afterwards. Come! tell me plainly what you did think?"
Amelius told her plainly. She became more and more interested, more and more excited, as he went on.
"Quite right!" she exclaimed, starting to her feet and walking swiftly backwards and forwards in the room. "There is a lost girl whom I want to find; and she is between sixteen and seventeen years old, as you thought. Mind! I have no reason--not the shadow of a reason--for believing that she is still a living creature. I have only my own stupid obstinate conviction; rooted here," she pressed both hands fiercely on her heart, "so that nothing can tear it out of me! I have lived in that belief--Oh, don't ask me how long! it is so far, so miserably far, to look back!" She stopped in the middle of the room. Her breath came and went in quick heavy gasps; the first tears that had softened the hard wretchedness in her eyes rose in them now, and transfigured them with the divine beauty of maternal love. "I won't distress you," she said, stamping on the floor, as she struggled with the hysterical passion that was raging in her. "Give me a minute, and I'll force it down again."
She dropped into a chair, threw her arms heavily on the table, and laid her head on them. Amelius thought of the child's frock and cap hidden in the cabinet. All that was manly and noble in his nature felt for the unhappy woman, whose secret was dimly revealed to him now. The little selfish sense of annoyance at the awkward situation in which she had placed him, vanished to return no more. He approached her, and put his hand gently on her shoulder. "I am truly sorry for you," he said. "Tell me how I can help you, and I will do it with all my heart."
"Do you really mean that?" She roughly dashed the tears from her eyes, and rose as she put the question. Holding him with one hand, she parted the hair back from his forehead with the other. "I must see your whole face," she said--"your face will tell me. Yes: you do mean it. The world hasn't spoilt you, yet. Do you believe in dreams?"
Amelius looked at her, startled by the sudden transition. She deliberately repeated her question.
"I ask you seriously," she said; "do you believe in dreams?"
Amelius answered seriously, on his side, "I can't honestly say that I do."
"Ah!" she exclaimed, "like me. I don't believe in dreams, either--I wish I did! But it's not in me to believe in superstitions; I'm too hard--and I'm sorry for it. I have seen people who were comforted by their superstitions; happy people, possessed of faith. Don't you even believe that dreams are sometimes fulfilled by chance?"
"Nobody can deny that," Amelius replied; "the instances of it are too many. But for one dream fulfilled by a coincidence, there are--"
"A hundred at least that are not fulfilled," Mrs. Farnaby interposed. "Very well. I calculate on that. See how little hope can live on! There is just the barest possibility that what I dreamed of you the other night may come to pass. It's a poor chance; but it has encouraged me to take you into my confidence, and ask you to help me."
This strange confession--this sad revelation of despair still unconsciously deceiving itself under the disguise of hope--only strengthened the compassionate sympathy which Amelius already felt for her. "What did you dream about me?" he asked gently.
"It's nothing to tell," she replied. "I was in a room that was quite strange to me; and the door opened, and you came in leading a young girl by the hand. You said, 'Be happy at last; here she is.' My heart knew her instantly, though my eyes had never seen her since the first days of her life. And I woke myself, crying for joy. Wait! it's not all told yet. I went to sleep again, and dreamed it again, and woke, and lay awake for awhile, and slept once more, and dreamed it for the third time. Ah, if I could only feel some people's confidence in three times! No; it produced an impression on me--and that was all. I got as far as thinking to myself, there is just a chance; I haven't a creature in the world to help me; I may as well speak to him. O, you needn't remind me that there is a rational explanation of my dream. I have read it all up, in the Encyclopaedia in the library. One of the ideas of wise men is that we think of something, consciously or unconsciously, in the daytime, and then reproduce it in a dream. That's my case, I daresay. When you were first introduced to me, and when I heard where you had been brought up, I thought directly that she might have been one among the many forlorn creatures who had drifted to your Community, and that I might find her through you. Say that thought went to my bed with me--and we have the explanation of my dream. Never mind! There is my one poor chance in a hundred still left. You will remember me, Amelius, if you should meet with her, won't you?"
The implied confession of her own intractable character, without religious faith to ennoble it, without even imagination to refine it--the unconscious disclosure of the one tender and loving instinct in her nature still piteously struggling for existence, with no sympathy to sustain it, with no light to guide it--would have touched the heart of any man not incurably depraved. Amelius spoke with the fervour of his young enthusiasm. "I would go to the uttermost ends of the earth, if I thought I could do you any good. But, oh, it sounds so hopeless!"
She shook her head, and smiled faintly.
"Don't say that! You are free, you have money, you will travel about in the world and amuse yourself. In a week you will see more than stay-at-home people see in a year. How do we know what the future has in store for us? I have my own idea. She may be lost in the labyrinth of London, or she may be hundreds of thousands of miles away. Amuse yourself, Amelius--amuse yourself. Tomorrow or ten years hence, you might meet with her!"
In sheer mercy to the poor creature, Amelius refused to encourage her delusion. "Even supposing such a thing could happen," he objected, "how am I to know the lost girl? You can't describe her to me; you have not seen her since she was a child. Do you know anything of what happened at the time--I mean at the time when she was lost?"
"I know nothing."
"Absolutely nothing?"
"Absolutely nothing."
"Have you never felt a suspicion of how it happened?"
Her face changed: she frowned as she looked at him.