I expect nobody to approve of what I have next to tell of myself. In three
weeks from the day when my mother had identified her with the Woman of the
Dream, I took Alicia Warlock to church, and made her my wife. I was a man
bewitched. Again and again I say it--I was a man bewitched!
During the interval before my marriage, our little household at the
cottage was broken up. My mother and my aunt quarreled. My mother,
believing in the Dream, entreated me to break off my engagement. My aunt,
believing in the cards, urged me to marry.
This difference of opinion produced a dispute between them, in the course
of which my aunt Chance--quite unconscious of having any superstitious
feelings of her own--actually set out the cards which prophesied
happiness to me in my married life, and asked my mother how anybody but "a
blinded heathen could be fule enough, after seeing those cairds, to
believe in a dream!" This was, naturally, too much for my mother's
patience; hard words followed on either side; Mrs. Chance returned in
dudgeon to her friends in Scotland. She left me a written statement of my
future prospects, as revealed by the cards, and with it an address at
which a post-office order would reach her. "The day was not that far off,"
she remarked, "when Francie might remember what he owed to his aunt
Chance, maintaining her ain unbleemished widowhood on thratty punds a
year."
Having refused to give her sanction to my marriage, my mother also refused
to be present at the wedding, or to visit Alicia afterwards. There was no
anger at the bottom of this conduct on her part. Believing as she did in
this Dream, she was simply in mortal fear of my wife. I understood this,
and I made allowances for her. Not a cross word passed between us. My one
happy remembrance now--though I did disobey her in the matter of my
marriage--is this: I loved and respected my good mother to the last.
As for my wife, she expressed no regret at the estrangement between her
mother-in-law and herself. By common consent, we never spoke on that
subject. We settled in the manufacturing town which I have already
mentioned, and we kept a lodging-house. My kind master, at my request,
granted me a lump sum in place of my annuity. This put us into a good
house, decently furnished. For a while things went well enough. I may
describe myself at this time of my life as a happy man.
My misfortunes began with a return of the complaint with which my mother
had already suffered. The doctor confessed, when I asked him the question,
that there was danger to be dreaded this time. Naturally, after hearing
this, I was a good deal away at the cottage. Naturally also, I left the
business of looking after the house, in my absence, to my wife. Little by
little, I found her beginning to alter toward me. While my back was
turned, she formed acquaintances with people of the doubtful and
dissipated sort. One day, I observed something in her manner which forced
the suspicion on me that she had been drinking. Before the week was out,
my suspicion was a certainty. From keeping company with drunkards, she had
grown to be a drunkard herself.
I did all a man could do to reclaim her. Quite useless! She had never
really returned the love I felt for her: I had no influence; I could do
nothing. My mother, hearing of this last worse trouble, resolved to try
what her influence could do. Ill as she was, I found her one day dressed
to go out.
"I am not long for this world, Francis," she said. "I shall not feel easy
on my deathbed, unless I have done my best to the last to make you happy.
I mean to put my own fears and my own feelings out of the question, and go
with you to your wife, and try what I can do to reclaim her. Take me home
with you, Francis. Let me do all I can to help my son, before it is too
late."
How could I disobey her? We took the railway to the town: it was only half
an hour's ride. By one o'clock in the afternoon we reached my house. It
was our dinner hour, and Alicia was in the kitchen. I was able to take my
mother quietly into the parlor and then to prepare my wife for the visit.
She had drunk but little at that early hour; and, luckily, the devil in
her was tamed for the time.
She followed me into the parlor, and the meeting passed off better than I
had ventured to forecast; with this one drawback, that my mother--though
she tried hard to control herself--shrank from looking my wife in the face
when she spoke to her. It was a relief to me when Alicia began to prepare
the table for dinner.
She laid the cloth, brought in the bread tray, and cut some slices for us
from the loaf. Then she returned to the kitchen. At that moment, while I
was still anxiously watching my mother, I was startled by seeing the same
ghastly change pass over her face which had altered it in the morning
when Alicia and she first met. Before I could say a word, she started up
with a look of horror.
"Take me back!--home, home again, Francis! Come with me, and never go back
more!"
I was afraid to ask for an explanation; I could only sign her to be
silent, and help her quickly to the door. As we passed the bread tray on
the table, she stopped and pointed to it.
"Did you see what your wife cut your bread with?" she asked.
"No, mother; I was not noticing. What was it?"
"Look!"
I did look. A new clasp knife, with a buckhorn handle, lay with the loaf
in the bread tray. I stretched out my hand to possess myself of it. At the
same moment, there was a noise in the kitchen, and my mother caught me by
the arm.
"The knife of the Dream! Francis, I'm faint with fear--take me away before
she comes back!"
I couldn't speak to comfort or even to answer her. Superior as I was to
superstition, the discovery of the knife staggered me. In silence, I
helped my mother out of the house; and took her home.