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Page 53
She had intended to have one last talk with Mildred, but had no need
to call her. Utterly wretched, the poor little woman came in again
to see her as she had done scores of times before, to pour out her
heart. Forest had not come home to dinner, had not even taken the
trouble to telephone. Constance did not say that she herself was
responsible.
"Do you really want to know the truth about your dreams?" asked
Constance, after she had prevailed upon Mildred to eat a little.
"I do know," she returned.
"No, you don't," went on Constance, now determined to tell her the
truth whether she liked it or not. "That clairvoyant and Mr. Davies
are in league, playing you for a sucker, as they say."
Mrs. Caswell did not reply for a moment. Then she drew a long breath
and shut her eyes. "Oh, you don't know how true what she says is to
me. She--"
"Listen," interrupted Constance. "Mildred, I'm going to be frank,
brutally frank. Madame Cassandra has read your character, not the
character as you think it is, but your unconscious, subconscious
self. She knows that there is no better way to enter into the
intimate life of a client, according to the new psychology, than by
getting at and analyzing the dreams. And she knows that you can't go
far in dream analysis without finding sex. It is one of the
strongest natural impulses, yet subject to the strongest repression,
and hence one of the weakest points of our culture.
"She is actually helping along your alienation for that broker. You
yourself have given me the clue in your dreams. Only I am telling
you the truth about them. She holds it back and tells you plausible
falsehoods to help her own ends. She is trying to arouse in you
those passions which you have suppressed, and she has not scrupled
to use drugged cigarettes with you and others to do it. You remember
the breakfast dream, when I said that much could be traced back to
dreams? A thing happens. It causes a dream. That in turn sometimes
causes action. No, don't interrupt. Let me finish first.
"Take that first dream," continued Constance, rapidly thrusting home
her interpretation so that it would have its full effect. "You
dreamed that your husband was dying and you were afraid. She said it
meant love was dead. It did not. The fact is that neurotic fear in a
woman has its origin in repressed, unsatisfied love, love which for
one reason or another is turned away from its object and has not
succeeded in being applied. Then his death. That simply means that
you have a feeling that you might be happier if he were away and
didn't devil you. It is a survival of childhood, when death is
synonymous with absence. I know you don't believe it. But if you had
studied the subject as I have in the last few days you'd understand.
Madame Cassandra understands.
"And the wall. That was Wall Street, probably, which does divide you
two. You tried to get over it and you fell. That means your fear of
actually falling, morally, of being a fallen woman."
Mildred was staring wildly. She might deny but in her heart she must
admit.
"The thing that pursued you, half bull, half snake, was Davies and
his blandishments. I have seen him. I know what he is. The crowd in
a dream always denotes a secret. He is pursuing you, as in the
dream. But he hasn't caught you. He thinks there is in you the same
wild demimondaine instinct that with many an ardent woman, slumbers
unknown in the back of her mind.
"Whatever you may say, you do think of him. When a woman dreams of
breakfasting cozily with some one other than her husband it has an
obvious meaning. As for the messenger and the message about the
United Traction, there, too, was a plain wish, and, as you must see,
wishes in one form or another, disguised or distorted, lie at the
basis of dreams. Take the coal fire. That, too, is susceptible of
interpretation. I think you must have heard the couplet:
"'No coal, no fire so hotly glows As the secret love that no one
knows.'"
Mildred Caswell had risen, an indignant flush on her face.
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