A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
“Ah, well, as the days and the weeks passed I got mortal tired of
waiting for him to own my girl his wife, and take her to the great house
with blowing of trumpets, and waving of banners, and flaunting of flags,
and prancing of steeds, like I had heard of. What was the use of my girl
being the wife of a great lord, if she had to wear a linsey gown, and
sit in the hut and spin all day long while I was away to the henhouse?
Why, none at all.
“Oh, bairn, it is such a help to my poor heart telling you all this. And
you believe me, don’t you?”
“I believe every word you say—tell me more,” earnestly replied Wynnette.
“At long last my lady countess and her young lady daughters went up to
London town. And now I thought, while they are gone, my lord will take
his wife hame to the great house; but he didn’t, bairn; he didn’t. Oh,
he didn’t. He was abroad somewhere, to France, maybe, or to Paris, or
some other furrin country thereaway. And my lass gave herself up to
weeping, and never showed herself abroad, but stayed in the hut. One day
I laid a baby boy in her arms and told her to be comforted, for that her
son was the little Lord Glennon and the heir to the Earldom of Enderby.
“And then I had to tell my neighbors the secret, for I could not bear
they should think ill o’ my ain lass. But nane o’ them would believe me.
Not one. They laughed me to scorn—me and my lass. It is an old tale—oh,
such an old tale, such a common old tale! Only it comes hame when it’s
one’s ain bairn.
“One day my lord came hame and heard the report, and a fine passion he
was in with my lass and me. He denied her and her child. He pretended it
was Andy, the stableboy, she had married. And he scorned her, and
threatened to turn us both out of the hut if we ever so much as named
his name again.
“Oh, but he was the devil of the whole world!
“After that, in many long nights that my lass and I lay awake, we
talked, and I got to know why the great earl had married my beauty and
angel of the whole world. First he tried to win her love without her
hand; but my girl was good and firm; and then he grew so mad for her
love that he took her before a priest and married her.
“One day we did hear that the earl was to wed the duke’s daughter, and
all the cottagers said I was a mad crone to think my lord had stooped to
my lass. Ah, my lass! She was fading away before my very eyes. But not
fast enough for my lord.
“One day there was a fair at Enderby Town, and all the laborers on the
estate and all the servants at the castle had a holiday to go to the
fair. All went but me and my lass. We ne’er left hame in those days. We
could no bear that any should look on us and scorn us.
“So that day I left my lass spinning at the hut door, and the baby was
sleeping in the basket by her side, and I went to my duty in the
hen-houses. I had the old nests to clean out and fresh straw to put in
them. I got done about twelve of the clock and come hame.
“But my girl was not in the house, nor the babe. I had no misgiving. I
went in and waited for her. But she came no more. She never came again.
When it grew dark I began to be so uneasy that I went out to look for
her, but could no find her. There was no one as I could ask; all the
world was gone to the fair, and nane would be hame till late, maybe not
till morning.
“Well, bairn, when I had walked till my limbs were ready to sink under
me I went hame and laid down, just as I was, on the outside of my bed. I
was not asleep. Nay, bairnie, I was not asleep. I did no dream what
followed. I saw it. My eyes were shut and all the world was still; for
it was long after midnight, and even drawing near the morning; but still
it was pitch-dark, when—no, I wasn’t asleep, and I didn’t dream it—when
I felt a light through my shut eyelids. I opened them and saw the room
was full of light that did not come from sun, or moon, or star, or
candle, or lamp, or fire, but from a bright form that stood in the midst
of the place and beckoned me to come to it.
“In an awe that was not a fright, I got up and went to it and said
‘Phebe!’ for I knew it was my lass that stood there, with her child in
her arms, and clothed, not in the white raiment of the blest, but in
what I thought was lovelier, a clear, soft, rosy gown that fell from her
shoulders down to her feet. She had no crown on her head, but her silky,
yellow hair streamed down around her form like sunbeams. I knew she was
a spirit.
“‘Phebe!’ I said again—‘Phebe!’ She did not speak, but holding her child
on her right arm, she raised her left hand and beckoned me, and pointed
to the door, and went out. I followed her. She led me by ways I had
never gone before, but have gone every year since that night. The same
way I took you to-night, my bairn. The secret passage to the deep
caverns under the foundations of the castle, the only way to them except
through the trapdoor and shaft that runs two hundred feet down in a
straight line—a way that is now known to none but me. Even you could no
find it again. She led me through the secret passage and down the many,
many steps cut in the solid rock, down, down, down, her light making the
steep path light before me until we reached the Dungeon of the Dark
Death—and even that she lighted up.
“She led me to a spot where her dead body lay on the ground, just under
the bottom of the shaft, that reached only to the ceiling or roof above.
Her body lay with the body of her babe, just as if they both had dropped
down there and fallen asleep. I knew they were dead. I knew every bone
in both was broken, though that did not appear on the outside. It was
under where they struck the ground that the horror of death was. I knew
also, as if I had seen it all, how she had died—how she had been
entrapped to her sudden death—how she had not even suffered. There had
been a swift fall, a shock, nothing, and then a wonderful coming to life
in a new form.
“I tell you, lass, it was no dream, no dream! but a real seeing. And it
was wonderful to stand there by the two crushed, dead bodies and see the
two living souls. I thought of the chrysalis and the butterfly, the worm
and the moth, the eggshell and the bird, as I stood there between life
and death, and seeing both.
“And without any speech at all, my lass made me know how she had been
betrayed to death—how, every one being gone off the place, and she alone
in her hut, my lord had come to her and pretended to make it all up with
her, and had asked her to walk with him in the hall of the old castle.
And she had gone. And they walked up and down, up and down, until
suddenly, when she was passing with her babe over the trapdoor they had
passed so many times, he suddenly stepped back, the door fell in, and
she shot down, struck the ground two hundred feet below, and knew no
more until she woke up in her new form—not dead, but living, never more
to die.
“Presently she beckoned to me again, and walking before me, a form of
rosy light, led me back again by the way we had come, up, up, up, to the
upper air again. Nor did she leave me until we were back in the hut. She
waved her arm and signed for me to lie down on the bed; and I minded her
and did what she said. Then she stood by my bed waving her hand to and
fro, to and fro, until I went to sleep. And I slept so deep and so long
that it was broad daylight, with the sun shining in at the bare window,
when I waked.
“No, it was no dream, bairn. Soon as I waked I minded all that had
passed in the night, and I knowed it was no dream.
“I went no more out that day. At noon my lord came to the hut, the first
time he had come for many a day. And he asked me, in a careless way:
“‘Where is that wench of yours, goody?’ And I looked him straight in the
face, and answered him:
“‘Her body and her babe’s lie crushed to death on the stone floor of the
deep dungeon where you cast her down; but she and her child—they are in
Paradise.’
“He turned white as a sheet and he reeled in his saddle; but he quickly
put on a bold face and said:
“‘You are a mad old beast, and before twenty-four hours are over your
head you shall be committed to the County Lunatic Asylum.’
“And with that he struck spurs into his horse and dashed wildly away.
“Not too often, lass, does punishment follow fast on crime, but it did
in this case. He dashed wildly off in a state of mind, I reckon, that
made him unable to guide his young horse as he ought.
“Half an hour later he was carried hame to the castle on a shutter. The
horse had thrown him and broken his neck.
“The title and estates, they went to a distant cousin, great-grandfather
of the present Earl Francis. Earl Godfrey was good to me—he and his
children and his children’s children have been good to me—always good to
me, although they call me mad.
“When my girl was missed and the trapdoor was found open, they had it
that she had trodden on it and it had gin way under her weight, and her
death was a accident and nobody to blame. They wouldn’t listen to me—no
one word. They said I was a poor, harmless creetur, crazed by the loss
of my lass. They got a windlass and great chains and ropes, and then let
down men and they took up my birds’ broken shells and gave them
Christian burial.
“Everybody was kind to me, only they wouldn’t believe me. They said I
was mad. They would have it as it was the poor stableboy as wronged my
girl. And now I hear, after more than fifty years, some un have made
another story and got it into a book, how the stableboy killed my girl
and threw her body down the shaft, and was hanged for it at Carlisle.
All lies, bairn! All lies! My story is the only true one.”
“I believe you,” said Wynnette.