Carrisford dropped his forehead in his hands.
"Good God! Yes," he said. "I was driven mad with dread (恐惧) and horror. I had not slept for weeks. The night I staggered out of my house all the air seemed full of hideous (可怕的) things mocking (嘲笑) and mouthing at me."
"That is explanation enough in itself," said Mr. Carmichael.
"How could a man on the verge of brain fever judge sanely (理智地)!" Carrisford shook his drooping head.
"And when I returned to consciousness poor Crewe was dead-and buried. And I seemed to remember nothing. I did not remember the child for months and months. Even when I began to recall her existence everything seemed in a sort of haze."
He stopped a moment and rubbed his forehead.
"It sometimes seems so now when I try to remember. Surely I must sometime have heard Crewe speak of the school she was sent to. Don't you think so?"
"He might not have spoken of it definitely. You never seem even to have heard her real name."
"He used to call her by an odd pet name he had invented. He called her his 'Little Missus.' But the wretched mines drove everything else out of our heads. We talked of nothing else. If he spoke of the school, I forgot-I forgot. And now I shall never remember."
"Come, come," said Carmichael. "We shall find her yet. We will continue to search for Madame Pascal's good-natured Russians.
She seemed to have a vague idea that they lived in Moscow. We will take this as a clue (线索). I will go to Moscow."
"If I were able to travel, I would go with you," said Carrisford; "but I can only sit here wrapped in furs and stare at the fire.
And when I look into it I seem to see Crewe's gay young face gazing back at me. He looks as if he were asking me a question.
Sometimes I dream of him at night, and he always stands before me and asks the same question in words. Can you guess what he says, Carmichael?"
Mr. Carmichael answered him in a rather low voice.
"Not exactly," he said.
"He always says, 'Tom, old man-Tom-where is the Little Missus?'" He caught at Carmichael's hand and clung to it.
"I must be able to answer him-I must!" he said.
"Help me to find her. Help me."
On the other side of the wall Sara was sitting in her garret (阁楼) talking to Melchisedec, who had come out for his evening meal.
"It has been hard to be a princess today, Melchisedec," she said.
"It has been harder than usual. It gets harder as the weather grows colder and the streets get more sloppy.
When Lavinia laughed at my muddy skirt as I passed her in the hall, I thought of something to say all in a flash-and I only just stopped myself in time.
You can't sneer (嘲笑) back at people like that-if you are a princess. But you have to bite your tongue to hold yourself in. I bit mine. It was a cold afternoon, Melchisedec. And it's a cold night."
Quite suddenly she put her black head down in her arms, as she often did when she was alone.
"Oh, papa," she whispered, "what a long time it seems since I was your 'Little Missus'!"
This was what happened that day on both sides of the wall.
The winter was a wretched one. There were days on which Sara tramped (踩) through snow when she went on her errands;
there were worse days when the snow melted and combined itself with mud to form slush (雪泥);
there were others when the fog was so thick that the lamps in the street were lighted all day and London looked as it had looked the afternoon, several years ago, when the cab had driven through the thoroughfares (大道) with Sara tucked up on its seat, leaning against her father's shoulder. {1}
On such days the windows of the house of the Large Family always looked delightfully cozy (舒适的) and alluring (吸引人的), and the study in which the Indian gentleman sat glowed with warmth and rich color.
But the attic was dismal (凄凉的) beyond words. There were no longer sunsets or sunrises to look at, and scarcely ever any stars, it seemed to Sara.
The clouds hung low over the skylight and were either gray or mud-color, or dropping heavy rain.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, even when there was no special fog, the daylight was at an end.
If it was necessary to go to her attic for anything, Sara was obliged to light a candle.
The women in the kitchen were depressed, and that made them more ill-tempered than ever. Becky was driven like a little slave (奴隶).
"'Twarn't for you, miss," she said hoarsely to Sara one night when she had crept into the attic-"'twarn't for you, an' the Bastille, an' bein' the prisoner in the next cell, I should die.
That there does seem real now, doesn't it? The missus is more like the head jailer every day she lives. I can jest see them big keys you say she carries.
The cook she's like one of the under-jailers. Tell me some more, please, miss-tell me about the subt'ranean passage we've dug under the walls." {2}
"I'll tell you something warmer," shivered (颤抖) Sara. "Get your coverlet and wrap it round you, and I'll get mine, and we will huddle (挤在一起) close together on the bed, and I'll tell you about the tropical forest where the Indian gentleman's monkey used to live.
When I see him sitting on the table near the window and looking out into the street with that mournful expression, I always feel sure he is thinking about the tropical (热带的) forest where he used to swing (摇荡) by his tail from coconut (椰子) trees. {3}
I wonder who caught him, and if he left a family behind who had depended on him for coconuts."
"That is warmer, miss," said Becky, gratefully; "but, someways, even the Bastille is sort of heatin' when you gets to tellin' about it."
"That is because it makes you think of something else," said Sara, wrapping the coverlet round her until only her small dark face was to be seen looking out of it.
"I've noticed this. What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else." {4}
"Can you do it, miss?" faltered Becky, regarding her with admiring eyes.
Sara knitted her brows a moment.
"Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't," she said stoutly.
"But when I can I'm all right. And what I believe is that we always could-if we practiced enough.
I've been practicing a good deal lately, and it's beginning to be easier than it used to be.
When things are horrible-just horrible-I think as hard as ever I can of being a princess.
I say to myself, 'I am a princess, and I am a fairy (虚构的) one, and because I am a fairy nothing can hurt me or make me uncomfortable.' You don't know how it makes you forget"-with a laugh.
She had many opportunities of making her mind think of something else, and many opportunities of proving to herself whether or not she was a princess.
But one of the strongest tests she was ever put to came on a certain dreadful day which, she often thought afterward, would never quite fade out of her memory even in the years to come.
