A DREAM
“Affectionate, indeed!” said William, “I do believe they have no other
idea but to mortify and wound everyone that seems to like them—cats and
monkeys.”
William had closed the door; he poked his fire, and sat before it,
eyeing it scornfully.
“I can’t think why anyone likes them—why we go on liking them—they are
so odious. I suppose they used not to be so. There’s Aunt Dinah—kind,
true old Aunt Dinah—she never could have been a heartless, insolent
creature, like that—never. We are all growing worse; the world will soon
be ripe for judgment.”
And William pulled off his coat as savagely as if he was going to fight
“Old Crump” again, behind the chapel at Rugby.
“I hate myself for liking her. No, I don’t like her—for _admiring_ her;
but she _is_ pretty. She _is_—there’s no good in denying it—she’s
_awfully_ pretty—_lovely!_ and till that great goose, Trevor, came and
turned her head with his boots, and his gloves, and his house, and his
trumpery, she was the nicest little creature in the world. Yes, there
was no one like her; not one on earth, I’ll maintain.”
And he knocked his hand so hard on the back of the chair beside him,
that he thought his knuckles were bleeding.
“I wish they _were_, by Jove!” he said. “I don’t care what happens, I
don’t care if I was knocked to smash, to think of that great gawky
goose. What on earth can she _see_ in him? Such rot!”
“Yes, she _is_—there’s no use in _disputing_ it—she’s the prettiest girl
I ever _saw_, in all my _life_,” he went on, putting himself down and
overbearing his affected indifference with honest vehemence. “Aunt Dinah
has promised me her _carte de visite_. I’ll have it copied in large the
first money I have, in Paris, at that great fellow’s there—and tinted;
and I’ll make old Winnie get me a lock of her hair; I have the one safe
when she was nine years old—so bright—who would have thought it would
ever have grown so dark? Winnie will get it for me. If I asked _her_,
she’d only refuse, or put me off some way. I’ll hang up her picture and
the little drawing of Gilroyd in my garret in Paris, and I’ll be a jolly
old bachelor. Marry in five years, indeed? My poor aunt might easily
find something more likely to fret about. Yes, I’ll be the most
tremendous, dry old quiz of a bachelor; and when she and her precious
husband come to Paris, as they will some day, I’ll get a peep at her,
perhaps, in the theatres and places, from some dark corner, and I’ll
wonder what she will be like then—always handsome, those eyes, and her
lips so scarlet, and her beautiful hair; and I’ll compare her with
little Vi of Gilroyd. She may be handsomer and more showy, but the
little Vi of Gilroyd will always be the brightest and best.”
In this mood William rambled over many old recollections of the place
and people he was leaving, and he laid his waistcoat on the chair much
more gently than his coat; and he thought how Aunt Dinah had taught him
to say his prayers long ago, under that friendly roof, and so down he
kneeled and said them with a sadder heart, and rose up with a great
sigh, and a sense of leave-taking that made his heart ache.
And now his candle was out, and he soon fast asleep; and again he had a
dream so strange that I must relate it.
The scenery of his dream, as before, presented simply the room in which
he lay, with the flickering fire-light in which he had gone to sleep. He
lay, in his vision, in his bed, just as he really did, with his back to
the fire and looking towards the curtains, which were closed on the side
between him and the door, when he heard a sound of naked feet running up
to his chamber door, which was flung open with a precipitation which
made the windows rattle, and his bed-curtain was drawn aside, and Miss
Perfect, with only a sheet, as it seemed, wrapt over her night dress,
and with a face white, and fixed with horror, said, “Oh, my God!
William, I’m dead—don’t let me go!” and under the clothes she clasped
his wrist with a hand that felt like cold metal. The figure crouched,
with its features advanced towards his, and William Maubray could
neither speak nor move, and lay so for some time, till with a “Ho!” he
suddenly recovered the power of motion, and sprang out of bed at the
side farthest from the visionary Aunt Dinah; and as he did so, he
distinctly felt the grasp of a cold hand upon his wrist, which, just as
before, vanished as he recovered the full possession of his waking
faculties, leaving, however, its impression there.
William lighted his candle at the fire, and listened for a long time
before he could find courage to look to the other side of the bed. When
he did, however, no sign of Aunt Dinah, sane or mad, was there. The door
was shut, and the old-fashioned furniture stood there prim and faded as
usual, and everything maintained its old serenity. On his wrist,
however, were the marks of a recent violent pressure, and William was
seized with an uncontrollable anxiety about Aunt Dinah which quite
overcame his panic; and getting on his clothes, and making a preliminary
survey of the gallery, which was still and empty, he hurried to Aunt
Dinah’s door and knocked.
“It’s I—William. How are you, aunt? are you quite well?” asked he, in
reply to her.
“Who’s there? what’s all that?”
“I, William.”
“Come in, child: you may. I’m in my bed: what takes you out of yours?”
“I had a dream, and fancied you were in my room, and—and ill.”
“Pooh, pooh, my dear William, get back to your room. It is all a fancy.
I’ve been here in bed for an hour or more, reading my dear father’s
sermon on the Woman of Endor.”
There she was, sitting up in a flannel dressing-gown, with the sometime
dean’s large and legible manuscript before her, and no doubt
investigating, with the lights thrown by Elihu Bung, the phenomena in
which the witch of those remote times dealt.
“I heard you talk a little time ago,” said Aunt Dinah, after a short and
curious stare at William’s pallid countenance.
“No,” said William, “I didn’t; I heard it too. It was that in fact that
partly alarmed me. It is very odd.”
“Were there knockings?” inquired she.
“No, no knocking,” said William; “it opened with a push.”
“_What_, my dear?” demanded Aunt Dinah, sitting very erect as she gazed
with a dark curiosity in William’s face, and abandoned the dean’s
manuscript on the coverlet.
“The door,” he answered. “It _is_ very odd. It’s the most horrid thing I
ever heard of. I’m sorry I slept in that room.”
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