A World of Dreams

OF the many victims of that mysterious disease, encephalitis lethargica, commonly known as ‘sleeping sickness,’ about one half do not live. Of those who survive few are left entirely free of distressing after effects. I am one of these more fortunate ones. I have ventured to set down the facts in this article hoping that they may be of interest to the layman as well as to those who have met sleeping sickness professionally. It is perhaps advisable to describe my condition before, during, and after the actual attack.

About a year ago I entered the hospital for a slight surgical operation, which was followed by a mild staphylococcus infection; ten days later lobar pneumonia developed in one lung. From this I made a prompt recovery, and had a normal convalescence.

The one disturbing after condition was a pain at the lower end of my spine, which through several weeks increased in severity until I was practically never, during the day or night, free from intense suffering. I was put to bed, gradually grew drowsy, and after a week became unconscious — unconscious, that is, in so far as my ordinary power of realization or memory was concerned. I cannot recall a single moment of those eleven weeks when I lay unconscious, but I have been told that I talked a great deal and appeared to recognize certain people; that I could be aroused to swallow nourishment and would cry out with the pain of the spinal punctures which the physician made. I greeted cordially the eminent neurologist, who happened also to be an old friend, when he came twice from a distant city to see me, but I was incredulous when I was told during my convalescence that he had been there. I ran a temperature constantly and lost a great deal of weight.

One morning I awoke as if from an ordinary night’s sleep, looked at the nurse who had been on day duty for seven weeks, and said quietly, ‘Why, who are you?’ From that moment I made an uninterrupted recovery. Four months after I regained consciousness my recovery was complete. Naturally it took weeks for my normal strength to return, but I have now more than regained my weight and am told that I look, as indeed I feel, several years younger.

I

I can now view with almost objective interest and astonishment my mental processes during the eleven weeks of this illness. All these weeks I was in imagination going through vivid, exciting, and amazing experiences, entirely remote from my usual life, but still as clear as if I had actually lived them yesterday. I cannot recall the order in which they occurred or the length of their duration, but apparently they were not like ordinary dreams, which are said to come and go in a flash. My nurses have told me that I endeavored to perform acts in which I thought myself to be taking part, sometimes for hours at a time. All one afternoon I held in my hands an imaginary hat which I thought I was trimming with yards and yards of black ribbon. One evening I struggled long and hard to do a fancy dance in bed. Again, I pushed and pushed at the self-starter of my car which was stalled, working so hard in this difficulty that the night nurse told me afterward that she cherished a hope that I would ‘wreck the old thing in a ditch before morning!’ I seemed often, in fact, to be living for an entire day or night in some prolonged adventure.

In real life I have never, I think, had a pistol in my hand; but in my dreams I was a crack shot and very daring in the use of firearms. I whipped out my weapon on many occasions, always saving the situation by my unparalleled bravery. My husband and I seemed, in my dream, to have a longstanding feud with a man and his son who lived just around the corner from us. Our quarrel had arisen partly because we insisted on having their butcher shop torn down in order to straighten our street, and partly because of the disturbance caused by the vast number of chickens which they kept in their back yard. These two villains pursued us relentlessly and one night almost cornered us in our garage; but I slipped my pistol from the pocket of the car and covered them so daringly that they slunk away in terror.

We heard nothing of them for some time, and then learned that they had gone into the business of refurbishing old houses. Much as we disliked them personally, we decided to engage them to do ours. Their method was simple and ingenious, consisting in the mere building of a framework entirely around the old house and pouring in yellow cement. Every house looked the same: a broad, low effect like a great yellow hen spreading her wings, or a lady in yellow hooped skirts. The only disconcerting thing about it was that each house in turn, shortly after it was finished, blew up! Fortunately, before they began work on our house it was discovered that these miserable wretches had deliberately placed slow-burning bombs in the cement. They were forced to desist from this whimsical practice, and our house was safely done with a charming effect which I often regret as I look at its old clapboards. We now thought we had done with our two enemies, but on the first night after we went into the new house I noticed a trapdoor into the attic move ever so slightly, and, had I not whipped out my faithful pistol once more, we should have suffered. As it was, I finished them!

II

Now I go skimming along in my ‘ fourposter Buick.’ I had, it seemed, had a Buick engine fitted into my English great-grandmother’s four-poster bed, — the one in which I lay ill, — and I admire even now the skill with which I piloted it through the densest traffic. I backed up to curbs; I swung into the closest parking spaces; and once I got stalled at a busy downtown corner and worked violently trying to get started and away from the irate traffic officer.

I drove one day with Mary, an old nurse of my children, to an out-of-theway part of town, a flat, prairielike place where in a little wooden house a reception was being held in honor of the new minister of Mary’s church. I went rather reluctantly, to humor Mary, and I did not regret my decision, for when we went in I was confronted by a remarkably striking and interesting person. I cannot say to what sect this minister belonged: he was not a Roman Catholic, yet he had on a long dark robe; his face was like chiseled marble, his eyes deep-set, and his dark hair brushed severely back from his high forehead. His personality took a tremendous hold upon me and he wove in and out of my dreams for some time.

One night we went together to the house of a woman who was giving birth to twins. I went upstairs to help care for her and after several hours I lay down, overcome by fatigue. Before long my black-garbed friend came into the room and started toward me. I looked at him in astonishment, since, for the first time, he seemed to be surrounded by an aura of intense blue light. He came nearer and nearer with a pleading gesture, looking very beautiful and unearthly. Fascinated, I rose to meet him, and as he took me into his arms we seemed to sink, drowning, as it were, in the blue flame.

A neighbor of mine, Mrs. S., an older woman of great wealth, appeared in my dreams. She asked me to go to California with her as her guest and, feeling that I needed some assistance in getting ready, she insisted on engaging a seamstress to make over some of her dresses for me. I recall especially her delving into a trunk and bringing out a dark blue georgette heavily embroidered with iridescent blue beads. I assured her that I was not badly off for clothes as I had just purchased two lovely new gowns, one a soft rose-color evening gown, and the other a navy blue crêpe de Chine with a large medallion embroidered in Oriental colors on the front of the waist. (One day after I woke up I asked the nurse to show me my new dresses, and it was a bitter blow to learn that they were not hanging in my closet, and never had hung there.)

Mrs. S. took me aside the night before we left and said that she thought it wise to divide between us the responsibility of carrying her jewels. She gave me an almost priceless diamond and sapphire necklace and a precious family relic which had come into her possession that day in the following manner. In the midst of the preparations for our trip there had been a double tragedy in her family. A very old aunt who lived with her brother had died. I was present when word of her end was brought to the brother as he sat in a great easy-chair; he gave one look of astonishment and lay back, dead. So there had been a double funeral with many of the relations gathered together. Near Mrs. S. and me in the hall of her home stood a little fat old man who drew from his bosom a tiny box of polished onyx. He said that it was such a precious possession of this great family that one member was chosen each year as its curator; that he had sewn it into his shirt, and it had never left his person during the last year! Inside was a cube, also of onyx, with tiny inscriptions carved on it, pertaining to a ceremony which on rare and special occasions was held by the family. It was now Mrs. S.’s turn to care for the relic and, having evidently complete confidence in me, she asked me to carry it with the necklace. They were tied together by strips of white cloth, and a sort of harness was made to fasten them on to my person and also to the improvised bed of three chairs on which, because of the extra people in the household, I was to sleep that night. The idea seemed to be that I could not move without being conscious of my precious burden; but for some reason I did manage to slip out of the harness and run home. I was immediately seized with compunction over my neglect of duty and my distress was so vivid and prolonged that when I finally awoke from my illness I begged my husband to hurry to Mrs. S. to make sure that she had found her treasures.

III

We had now, in my dreams, moved to a strange city, and my husband had made the acquaintance of a very charming woman who lived on the other side of town in what seemed to be a university circle. Her husband was a professor and their house was the centre of delightful gatherings to which I too was admitted. I can see their large music room with a long window seat on one side, above which casement windows opened on to a most attractive little garden. We became so intimate with this family that one day Mrs. C. came to me with an astonishing proposal: she said that she thought the time had come for her son — though he was still in college — to have a love affair; that she considered it far wiser for the woman to be more mature, and would I step into the breach, so to speak. Her confidence in my charm, though somewhat astonishing, was evidently not misplaced, for the young man — a delightful and exceedingly handsome youth — soon centred his affections on me. There was much that was very beautiful in this idyl, but it ended, alas, in tragedy. We had gone to the woods, where my protégé was helping my husband (with whom during all this time my relations had remained perfectly happy and normal) to direct some boys in woodcraft and games. There is in my mind some confusion as to just what happened next. There was horse racing going on, as well as the chopping down of great trees; but out of the confusion comes quite clearly the picture of my beautiful lover lying dead at my feet. My own regret seemed to be lost in my admiration for the stoical bravery of the mother, who had idolized him, and my poetic appreciation of the beauty of the ceremony with which we buried him ‘under the wide and starry sky’ in a lonely grave in a wild and obscure ravine with occasional bits of moonlight flickering through.

Quite different was my affair with a dashing actor-bandit! I was walking down the street of my home town one day when there came up to me suddenly a stranger, — a tall, handsome man, — who explained that he was the head of a company of players then performing in an obscure and not entirely firstclass hall. For some inexplicable reason I allowed him to talk to me, and it developed that he had been attracted to me by my very blue eyes; he offered me a position in his company as understudy and possible successor to his leading lady. I debated the question with my family for some days. In spite of the fact that I kept insisting that I could never again resume my enviable social position in the town, — could never again, in fact, look my friends in the face, — my family, even my father and my husband, as well as the handsome stranger, urged me to accept the job. So, weeping bitterly and jeopardizing thereby the supposed charm of my blue eyes, I signed — at a cold, bleak street corner — my contract.

On the very first night trouble arose. The leading lady, blessed with snapping dark eyes, became violently jealous of me, and to show her wrath stabbed, not me, but herself, inflicting a flesh wound which prevented her appearance that night. Without any coaching I was hastily made ready, in the dingy little gas-lit dressing room, to take her place. My part consisted of dancing into the arena, kicking into the air a huge featherweight ball — kicking it finally to the dashing gentleman himself, who entered on an elephant. (My efforts to accomplish this feat in bed were so ridiculous that my husband and the nurses who were in the room tell me that in spite of their anxiety about me they could not help laughing surreptitiously. Apparently I detected this and was so hurt at their ridicule that I peremptorily ordered them to leave the room.)

I was conscious in my dream that I was doing my dance very badly, and that because of my awkwardness my hero’s ardor was somewhat dampened. He forgave me later, and, strangely enough, so did my rival, the three of us becoming the best of friends. For some reason we left our troupe in the lurch and transferred our activities to the out-of-doors. We rode or flew about in a strange vehicle which at times seemed to be a noisy, dashing little machine like a common taxi, at others simply a flat square, like a magic carpet; but always it was made of white canvas.

My mother had presented me with a new house, a huge pile of brick and stone, in the city where she lives, and my hero followed me there. He used often to come sailing through the air, alight on the roof of the porte-cochère, and climb in the window to see me; or I would climb out and go sailing through the air with him. About this time he took up the profession of bandit, and I shared with him the excitement of some daring robberies, escaping always on our white canvas carpet. I recall coming home one evening from one of our adventures and sitting down to an elegant dinner at a table which was entirely set with an exquisite service of etched green glass; apparently we did ourselves rather well!

When I moved into my mansion, the former owners had shown me two large safes sunk into the floor of the entrance hall and had asked permission to leave, temporarily, some of their valuables in these safes. By this time my bandit friend had gathered around him a group of followers who heard of this treasure and came one night to blow up the safes. For my sake their leader persuaded them not to take everything, but it stretched his authority over them almost to the breaking point and there was a great deal of rebellious feeling among them. Meanwhile, to add to our complications, the police had finally got upon the trail of our bold band, and one night they surrounded the house. My bandit climbed out of a high front window and started through the air, but alas! he had not flown far before there were a dozen airplanes in pursuit. As I leaned out of the window in great distress I saw flashes of brilliant light, followed by a series of piercing explosions, and my heart sank, for I realized that I should never see my bandit hero again.

IV

Word was brought to me that my beautiful little daughter had been drowned, — more like the usual nightmare, this, — and I wept steadily for days. We had been visiting in a distant city when this happened, but word had gone back immediately to the school which she attended. She had been so loved that they erected a little memorial to her — a tiny shaft of marble set in a plot of grass in a circle where several streets seemed to converge. I can see the group of her little friends, one, all in white, making a little speech at its dedication. My nurses finally got it through to me that the tragedy never had taken place; though the relief was great, I immediately became disturbed at the thought of the hoax which had been unwittingly perpetrated on the school. It seemed so real to me that the impression lasted for some time after I became conscious, and I kept urging my husband to go to the school authorities to tell them that we would reimburse them for the expense to which they had needlessly been put.

In one dream I seemed to be ill in a perfectly strange hospital out in the centre of some flatlands near a river. I went up, up in an elevator to a room made entirely of windows, where my brain was measured by what seemed to be a combination of sunlight and an electric ray. My doctor, in this dream, told me with enthusiasm that Dr. L., one of his colleagues, had just returned from Austria with some exceedingly rare animals, which when I saw them seemed scarcely worthy of that name. They were rather small, gossamerlike things but actually alive. These they introduced into my vitals in the hope that they would devour the germs of my disease!

And so it went on and on. I experienced the feeling of frustration common to nightmares in my many unsuccessful attempts to see a dear friend from across the continent who was in town but always out when I called. Incidentally, I carried always with me on these calls a baking-powder tin half full of cocoa mixed with bits of paper on which were jotted down questions which I wished to ask her. I crept through the woods at night and witnessed the horrible sight of my husband shot from his horse by a man crouching behind an old hut. I was gliding through the ocean on the back of a great fish while a rough man at the stern of a vessel which we followed threw cruel taunts at me. I visited an English countryside, with banks of blooming flowers, through which we drove to the lovely estate where we were to be house guests. I recall the details of the inside of this house: the graceful winding stairway, the quaint and beautiful furnishings, all of which I have never actually seen.

These amazing experiences, so alien to the life of a normal, prosaic individual like myself, are nevertheless still so vivid that I can scarcely believe that they are not the actual history of my past summer. When I regained consciousness I was so weak physically and so fatigued mentally that I accepted the situation docilely and had little curiosity in regard to myself, or as to what had been the nature of my illness. (Needless to say, all were careful at that time not to tell me.) I slept very badly for a while, and one morning, having lain from midnight until dawn wearily looking out of my window at the summer night, I said to the nurse, with an unconscious irony which she says made her gasp, ‘Well, whatever has been the trouble, there is one disease which no one could even suggest my having had, and that is sleeping sickness!5