"Can you recall the nature of that vision?" inquired Heathcote breathlessly.
It seemed to him that he was on the threshold of a new mystery—as terrible as the old one, and even darker: a tragedy hidden in the past, reflected only in a child's fever-dream.
"You should ask me if I can forget it, Monsieur," said Sister Gudule. "I wish with all my heart that I could. I have prayed many a prayer for oblivion. The poor child used to be feverish every night—a low fever, which only came on in the evening, but some nights were worse than others—and in her most feverish nights this dream seemed almost inevitable. I used to lie awake expecting it, dreading it."
"She used to talk in her sleep, then?"
"To talk, yes; and to scream—a terrible shriek sometimes, which would disturb every sleeper in the great dormitory adjoining my little room. She would start up on her pillow, and stare straight before her with wide-open eyes, being fast asleep all the time, you understand. 'Don't kill her, don't kill her!' she would cry; 'don't shoot her!' And then she would rock herself backwards and forwards, and moan in a low voice, 'The forest—the dark, dark forest; she is there, always there, with the blood running down her dress! Take her away, take away the dark forest—take away the blood!' Her words varied sometimes, but those words never: 'Take away the dark forest—take away the blood!'"
"And did she never tell you what the dream meant—you, her nurse and comforter, with whom she must have been on such confidential terms?"
"No, dear child. She loved me and trusted me with all the strength of her innocent heart, I believe; but she never told me the cause of that awful dream. And I never dared to question her. I was only anxious that she should forget the past—that if her nights were fevered and restless, her days should be peaceful and bright. I did everything I could to amuse and interest her, in studies, needlework, and play, and to help her to forget the past."
"And you succeeded, Sister," said the head of the convent approvingly. "I never saw a more wonderful cure. From a nervous hysterical child Léonie Lemarque grew into a bright merry girl."
"Yes, with God's help she was cured; but the cure was very slow. The shock which shattered her health, and for a time impaired her mind, must have been an awful one. Never before had I seen gray hairs upon the head of a child, but the thickly curling hair upon Léonie's temples when she came to us was patched with white; and it was years before the hair resumed its natural colour. For the first year her memory was almost a blank. It would have been useless for any one to attempt to teach her in class with the other children. She would have been despised as an idiot, laughed at perhaps, and her heart broken. I obtained the Reverend Mother's permission to keep her in my room, and to teach her in my own way, and little by little I awakened her memory and her mind. Both had been, as it were, benumbed, frozen, paralysed, by that awful shock of which we know so little."
"But you would guess that she had witnessed some dreadful scene, perhaps the death of some one she loved," speculated Heathcote. "Did she never talk to you of her childhood in Paris, her relatives?"