MARION’S DREAM.
“Between the dawning and the day,
The wind fell and the thunder ceased,
The rod light came up from the east,
As my dear love a-dying lay
Between the dawning and the day.”
BALLAD.
THE night after the baby’s birth Marion Baldwin had a somewhat remarkable dream. Remarkable in more ways than one. In the first place it was unusually coherent and clear; in the second, it was the first and only time in which Ralph Severn, the being who had exerted the greatest influence on herself and her life, ever appeared to her in “a vision of the night;” in the third place, after events satisfied her at least that to some extent the dream was prophetic as well as retrospective.
She dreamt that she was again a little child. A girl with flying curls and nimble feet, playing with her brother Harry in the garden of the little cottage at Brackley. All that had happened to her since then—her eventful girlhood, her sufferings and joys, her wifehood had hardly as yet realized motherhood—her whole life in short, was for the time being, swept out of her mind. She was again little May Vere, chasing butterflies and running races on the grass with still smaller Harry. Suddenly, in the midst of their play there was wafted towards her a strong, sweet scent. It was that of honeysuckle; the scent which, ever since the meeting in the old garden at the Peacock, she had not been able to endure. Any day she would gladly have walked some miles rather than encounter it.
In her dream it acted upon her in a peculiar, bewildering way. For a short time there came over her the painful sensation of partial suffocation; it seemed to her that she stopped in her running, and lay down on the soft, velvety grass. At this point Harry disappeared; nor did the remembrance of him return to her again throughout the dream. Gradually the oppression cleared away, and her breathing became easy. She was still conscious of the honeysuckle scent; but no longer to a painful of disagreeable extent. Then some one called her by name, clearly and distinctly. She knew the voice to be Ralph’s; but, looking up eagerly to see him, to her amazement she recognized the person approaching her as Geoffrey. As he drew nearer she saw that he looked pale and tired and walked very slowly. Something too he was carrying in his arms, the form of which she could not at first distinguish. Then she saw that it was a little child, lying across his breast as if asleep. It was not a baby, for a shower of thick, dark hair fell over and concealed the face: and as Geoffrey came close to her, and stood half fainting beside her, with one hand he gently put aside the hair, and she saw that the child was Sybil. Then he spoke.
“Help me to carry her, Marion,” he said. “I promised to take care of her and see her safe home, but she was too tired to walk any further; and I am nearly worn out myself.”
Marion stretched out her arm to take the child, but suddenly, as she did so, Sybil seemed to awake, slid from her grasp, and stood before her. Without speaking, the child for a moment gazed at the husband and wife with yearning love in her face; then, kissing her little hands she turned from them and hastened rapidly away, seeming rather to fly than run; but ever as she went, turning to kiss her hands with a sort of beckoning gesture. Marion did not feel the least surprise; but looking at Geoffrey was amazed to see him in violent distress.
“I must go,” he cried, “I must go.” As these words reached her ears she was seized with that fearful, indescribable sensation of dream horror, combining in itself every shade of human agony. Throwing up her arms in her extremity, she heard again Ralph’s voice calling her by name; and immediately she felt her hands grasped in his. Looking up, she met his tender, loving gaze fixed on her.
“Marion, Marion,” he cried, as if in reproach, “why did you not tell me before? Why did you leave it for Sybil to tell? See only how Geoffrey is suffering. Could you not have trusted my great love, not even for his sake?”