Some years ago there lived in the suburbs of a large seaport town on
the west coast of England a man in humble circumstances, by name
Isaac Scatchard. His means of subsistence were derived from any
employment that he could get as an ostler, and occasionally when
times went well with him, from temporary engagements in service as
stable-helper in private houses. Though a faithful, steady, and
honest man, he got on badly in his calling. His ill-luck was
proverbial among his neighbors. He was always missing good
opportunities by no fault of his own, and always living longest in
service with amiable people who were not punctual payers of wages.
"Unlucky Isaac" was his nickname in his own neighborhood, and no one
could say that he did not richly deserve it.
With far more than one man's fair share of adversity to endure, Isaac
had but one consolation to support him, and that was of the dreariest
and most negative kind. He had no wife and children to increase his
anxieties and add to the bitterness of his various failures in life.
It might have been from mere insensibility, or it might have been
from generous unwillingness to involve another in his own unlucky
destiny; but the fact undoubtedly was, that he had arrived at the
middle term of life without marrying, and, what is much more
remarkable, without once exposing himself, from eighteen to
eight-and-thirty, to the genial imputation of ever having had a
sweetheart.
When he was out of service he lived alone with his widowed mother.
Mrs. Scatchard was a woman above the average in her lowly station as
to capacity and manners. She had seen better days, as the phrase is,
but she never referred to them in the presence of curious visitors;
and, though perfectly polite to every one who approached her, never
cultivated any intimacies among her neighbors. She contrived to
provide hardly enough for her simple wants by doing rough work for
the tailors, and always managed to keep a decent home for her son to
return to whenever his ill-luck drove him out helpless into the world.
One bleak autumn, when Isaac was getting on fast toward forty, and
when he was, as usual, out of place through no fault of his own, he
set forth from his mother's cottage on a long walk inland to a
gentleman's seat, where he had heard that a stable-helper was
required.
It wanted then but two days of his birthday; and Mrs. Scatchard, with
her usual fondness, made him promise, before he started, that he
would be back in time to keep that anniversary with her, in as
festive a way as their poor means would allow. It was easy for him
to comply with this request, even supposing he slept a night each way
on the road.
He was to start from home on Monday morning, and, whether he got the
new place or not, he was to be back for his birthday dinner on
Wednesday at two o'clock.
Arriving at his destination too late on the Monday night to make
application for the stable-helper's place, he slept at the village
inn, and in good time on the Tuesday morning presented himself at the
gentleman's house to fill the vacant situation. Here again his
ill-luck pursued him as inexorably as ever. The excellent written
testimonials to his character which he was able to procure availed
him nothing; his long walk had been taken in vain: only the day
before the stable-helper's place had been given to another man.
Isaac accepted this new disappointment resignedly and as a matter of
course. Naturally slow in capacity, he had the bluntness of
sensibility and phlegmatic patience of disposition which frequently
distinguish men with sluggishly working mental powers. He thanked
the gentleman's steward with his usual quiet civility for granting
him an interview, and took his departure with no appearance of
unusual depression in his face or manner.
Before starting on his homeward walk, he made some inquiries at the
inn, and ascertained that he might save a few miles on his return by
following a new road. Furnished with full instructions, several
times repeated, as to the various turnings he was to take, he set
forth on his homeward journey, and walked on all day with only one
stoppage for bread and cheese. Just as it was getting toward dark,
the rain came on and the wind began to rise, and he found himself, to
make matters worse, in a part of the country with which he was
entirely unacquainted, though he knew himself to be some fifteen
miles from home. The first house he found to inquire at was a lonely
roadside inn, standing on the outskirts of a thick wood. Solitary as
the place looked, it was welcome to a lost man who was also hungry,
thirsty, foot-sore, and wet. The landlord was civil, and
respectable-looking, and the price he asked for a bed was reasonable
enough. Isaac therefore decided on stopping comfortably at the inn
for that night.
He was constitutionally a temperate man. His supper consisted of two
rashers of bacon, a slice of home-made bread, and a pint of ale. He
did not go to bed immediately after this moderate meal, but sat up
with the landlord, talking about his bad prospects and his long run
of ill-luck, and diverging from these topics to the subject of
horse-flesh and racing. Nothing was said either by himself, his
host, or the few laborers who strayed into the tap-room, which could,
in the slightest degree, excite the very small and very dull
imaginative faculty which Isaac Scatchard possessed.
At a little after eleven the house was closed. Isaac went round with
the landlord and held the candle while the doors and lower windows
were being secured. He noticed with surprise the strength of the
bolts and bars, and iron-sheathed shutters.
"You see we are rather lonely here," said the landlord. "We never
have had any attempts made to break in yet, but it's always as well
to be on the safe side. When nobody is sleeping here, I am the only
man in the house. My wife and daughter are timid, and the
servant-girl takes after her missuses. Another glass of ale before
you turn in? No! Well, how such a sober man as you come to be out
of a place is more than I can make out, for one. Here's where you're
to sleep. You're our only lodger to-night, and I think you'll say my
missus has done her best to make you comfortable. You're quite sure
you won't have another glass of ale? Very well. Good-night."
It was half-past eleven by the clock in the passage as they went
upstairs to the bedroom, the window of which looked on to the wood at
the back of the house.
Isaac locked the door, set his candle on the chest of drawers, and
wearily got ready for bed. The bleak autumn wind was still blowing,
and the solemn, monotonous, surging moan of it in the wood was dreary
and awful to hear through the night-silence. Isaac felt strangely
wakeful. He resolved, as he lay down in bed, to keep the candle
alight until he began to grow sleepy, for there was something
unendurably depressing in the bare idea of laying awake in the
darkness, listening to the dismal, ceaseless moaning of the wind in
the wood.
Sleep stole on him before he was aware of it. His eyes closed, and
he fell off insensibly to rest without having so much as thought of
extinguishing the candle.
The first sensation of which he was conscious after sinking into
slumber was a strange shivering that ran through him suddenly from
head to foot, and a dreadful sinking pain at the heart, such as he
had never felt before. The shivering only disturbed his slumbers;
the pain woke him instantly. In one moment he passed from a state of
sleep to a state of wakefulness--his eyes wide open--his mental
perceptions cleared on a sudden as if by a miracle.
The candle had burned down nearly to the last morsel of tallow, but
the top of the unsnuffed wick had just fallen off, and the light in
the little room was, for the moment, fair and full.
Between the foot of the bed and the closed door there stood a woman
with a knife in her hand, looking at him.
He was stricken speechless with terror, but he did not lose the
preternatural clearness of his faculties, and he never took his eyes
off the woman. She said not a word as they stared each other in the
face, but she began to move slowly toward the left-hand side of the
bed.
His eyes followed her. She was a fair, fine woman, with yellowish
flaxen hair and light-gray eyes, with a droop in the left eyelid. He
noticed those things, and fixed them on his mind before she was round
at the side of the bed. Speechless, with no expression in her face,
with no noise following her footfall, she came closer and
closer--stopped and slowly raised the knife. He laid his right arm
over his throat to save it; but, as he saw the knife coming down,
threw his hand across the bed to the right side, and jerked his body
over that way just as the knife descended on the mattress within an
inch of his shoulder.
His eyes fixed on her arm and hand as she slowly drew her knife out
of the bed; a white, well-shaped arm, with a pretty down lying
lightly over the fair skin--a delicate lady's hand; with the crowning
beauty of a pink flush under and round the finger nails.
She drew the knife out, and passed again slowly to the foot of the
bed; stopped there for a moment looking at him; then came on--still
speechless, still with no expression on the blank, beautiful face,
still with no sound following the stealthy footfalls--came on to the
right side of the bed where he now lay.
As she approached, she raised the knife again, and he drew himself
away to the left side. She struck, as before, right into the
mattress, with a deliberate, perpendicularly downward action of the
arm. This time his eyes wandered from her to the knife. It was like
the large clasp-knives which he had often seen laboring men use to
cut their bread and bacon with. Her delicate little fingers did not
conceal more than two-thirds of the handle; he noticed that it was
made of buckhorn, clean and shining the blade was, and looking like
new.
For the second time she drew the knife out, concealed it in the wide
sleeve of her gown, then stopped by the bedside, watching him. For
an instant he saw her standing in that position, then the wick of the
spent candle fell over into the socket, the flame diminished to a
little blue point, and the room grew dark.
A moment, or less, if possible, passed so, and then the wick flamed
up, smokingly, for the last time. His eyes were still looking
eagerly over the right-hand side of the bed when the final flash of
light came, but they discerned nothing. The fair woman with the
knife was gone.
The conviction that he was alone again weakened the hold of the
terror that had struck him dumb up to this time. The preternatural
sharpness which the very intensity of his panic had mysteriously
imparted to his faculties left them suddenly. His brain grew
confused--his heart beat wildly--his ears opened for the first time
since the appearance of the woman to a sense of the woful, ceaseless
moaning of the wind among the trees. With the dreadful conviction of
the reality of what he had seen still strong within him, he leaped
out of bed, and screaming, "Murder! Wake up there! wake up!" dashed
headlong through the darkness to the door.
It was fast locked, exactly as he had left it on going to bed.
His cries on starting up had alarmed the house. He heard the
terrified, confused exclamations of women; he saw the master of the
house approaching along the passage with his burning rush-candle in
one hand and his gun in the other.
"What is it?" asked the landlord, breathlessly.
Isaac could only answer in a whisper. "A woman, with a knife in her
hand," he gasped out. "In my room--a fair, yellow-haired woman; she
jobbed at me with the knife twice over."
The landlord's pale cheeks grew paler. He looked at Isaac eagerly by
the flickering light of his candle, and his face began to get red
again; his voice altered, too, as well as his complexion.
"She seems to have missed you twice," he said.
"I dodged the knife as it came down," Isaac went on, in the same
scared whisper. "It struck the bed each time."
The landlord took his candle into the bedroom immediately. In less
than a minute he came out again into the passage in a violent passion.
"The devil fly away with you and your woman with the knife! There
isn't a mark in the bedclothes anywhere. What do you mean by coming
into a man's place, and frightening his family out of their wits
about a dream?"
"I'll leave your house," said Isaac, faintly. "Better out on the
road, in rain and dark, on my road home, than back again in that
room, after what I've seen in it. Lend me a light to get my clothes
by, and tell me what I'm to pay."
"Pay!" cried the landlord, leading the way with his light sulkily
into the bedroom. "You'll find your score on the slate when you go
downstairs. I wouldn't have taken you in for all the money you've
got about you if I'd known your dreaming, screeching ways beforehand.
Look at the bed. Where's the cut of a knife in it? Look at the
window--is the lock bursted? Look at the door (which I heard you
fasten yourself)--is it broke in? A murdering woman with a knife in
my house! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
Isaac answered not a word. He huddled on his clothes, and they went
downstairs together.
"Nigh on twenty minutes past two!" said the landlord, as they passed
a clock. "A nice time in the morning to frighten honest people out
of their wits!"
Isaac paid his bill, and the landlord let him out at the front door,
asking, with a grin of contempt, as he undid the strong fastenings,
whether "the murdering woman got in that way?"
They parted without a word on either side. The rain had ceased, but
the night was dark, and the wind bleaker than ever. Little did the
darkness or the cold or the uncertainty about the way home matter to
Isaac. If he had been turned out into the wilderness in a
thunderstorm, it would have been a relief after what he had suffered
in the bedroom of the inn.
What was the fair woman with the knife? The creature of a dream, or
that other creature from the unknown world called among men by the
name of ghost? He could make nothing of the mystery--had made
nothing of it, even when it was midday on Wednesday, and when he
stood, at last, after many times missing his road, once more on the
doorstep of home.
His mother came out eagerly to receive him. His face told her in a
moment that something was wrong.
"I've lost the place; but that's my luck. I dreamed an ill dream
last night, mother--or maybe I saw a ghost. Take it either way, it
scared me out of my senses, and I am not my own man again yet."
"Isaac, your face frightens me. Come into the fire--come in, and
tell mother all about it."
He was as anxious to tell as she was to hear: for it had been his
hope, all the way home, that his mother, with her quicker capacity
and superior knowledge, might be able to throw some light on the
mystery which he could not clear up for himself. His memory of the
dream was still mechanically vivid, though his thoughts were entirely
confused by it.
His mother's face grew paler and paler as he went on. She never
interrupted him by so much as a single word; but when he had done,
she moved her chair close to his, put her arms around his neck, and
said to him:
"Isaac, you dreamed your ill dream on this Wednesday morning. What
time was it when you saw the fair woman with a knife in her hand?"
Isaac reflected on what the landlord had said when they had passed by
the clock on his leaving the inn; allowed as nearly as he could for
the time that must have elapsed between the unlocking of his bedroom
door and the paying of his bill just before going away, and answered:
"Somewhere about two o'clock in the morning."
His mother suddenly quitted her hold of his neck, and struck her
hands together with a gesture of despair.
"This Wednesday is your birthday, Isaac, and two o'clock in the
morning was the time when you were born."
Isaac's capacities were not quick enough to catch the infection of
his mother's superstitious dread. He was amazed, and a little
startled also, when she suddenly rose from her chair, opened her old
writing-desk, took pen, ink, and paper, and then said to him:
"Your memory is but a poor one, Isaac, and now I'm an old woman
mine's not much better. I want all about this dream of yours to be
as well known to both of us, years hence, as it is now. Tell me over
again all you told me a minute ago, when you spoke of what the woman
with the knife looked like."
Isaac obeyed, and marveled much as he saw his mother carefully set
down on paper the very words that he was saying.
"Light-gray eyes," she wrote, as they came to the descriptive part,
"with a droop in the left eyelid; flaxen hair, with a gold-yellow
streak in it; white arms, with a down upon them; little lady's hand,
with a reddish look about the finger nails; clasp-knife with a
buckhorn handle, that seemed as good as new." To these particulars
Mrs. Scatchard added the year, month, day of the week, and time in
the morning when the woman of the dream appeared to her son. She
then locked up the paper carefully in the writing-desk.
Neither on that day nor on any day after could her son induce her to
return to the matter of the dream. She obstinately kept her thoughts
about it to herself, and even refused to refer again to the paper in
her writing-desk. Ere long Isaac grew weary of attempting to make
her break her resolute silence; and time, which sooner or later wears
out all things, gradually wore out the impression produced on him by
the dream. He began by thinking of it carelessly, and he ended by
not thinking of it at all.
The result was the more easily brought about by the advent of some
important changes for the better in his prospects, which commenced
not long after his terrible night's experience at the inn. He reaped
at last the reward of his long and patient suffering under adversity
by getting an excellent place, keeping it for seven years, and
leaving it, on the death of his master, not only with an excellent
character, but also with a comfortable annuity bequeathed to him as a
reward for saving his mistress's life in a carriage accident. Thus
it happened that Isaac Scatchard returned to his old mother, seven
years after the time of the dream at the inn, with an annual sum of
money at his disposal sufficient to keep them both in ease and
independence for the rest of their lives.
The mother, whose health had been bad of late years, profited so much
by the care bestowed on her and by freedom from money anxieties, that
when Isaac's birthday came round she was able to sit up comfortably
at table and dine with him.
On that day, as the evening drew on, Mrs. Scatchard discovered that a
bottle of tonic medicine which she was accustomed to take, and in
which she had fancied that a dose or more was still left, happened to
be empty. Isaac immediately volunteered to go to the chemist's and
get it filled again. It was as rainy and bleak an autumn night as on
the memorable past occasion when he lost his way and slept at the
roadside inn.
On going into the chemist's shop he was passed hurriedly by a poorly
dressed woman coming out of it. The glimpse he had of her face
struck him, and he looked back after her as she descended the door
steps.
"You're noticing that woman?" said the chemist's apprentice behind
the counter. "It's my opinion there's something wrong with her.
She's been asking for laudanum to put to a bad tooth. Master's out
for half an hour, and I told her I wasn't allowed to sell poison to
strangers in his absence. She laughed in a queer way, and said she
would come back in half an hour. If she expects master to serve her,
I think she'll be disappointed. It's a case of suicide, sir, if ever
there was one yet."
These words added immeasurably to the sudden interest in the woman
which Isaac had felt at the first sight of her face. After he had
got the medicine-bottle filled, he looked about anxiously for her as
soon as he was out in the street. She was walking slowly up and down
on the opposite side of the road. With his heart, very much to his
own surprise, beating fast, Isaac crossed over and spoke to her.
He asked if she was in any distress. She pointed to her torn shawl,
her scanty dress, her crushed, dirty bonnet; then moved under a lamp
so as to let the light fall on her stern, pale, but still most
beautiful face.
"I look like a comfortable, happy woman, don't I?" she said, with a
bitter laugh.
She spoke with a purity of intonation which Isaac had never heard
before from other lips than ladies' lips. Her slightest action
seemed to have the easy, negligent grace of a thoroughbred woman.
Her skin, for all its poverty-stricken paleness, was as delicate as
if her life had been passed in the enjoyment of every social comfort
that wealth can purchase. Even her small, finely shaped hands,
gloveless as they were, had not lost their whiteness.
Little by little, in answer to his question, the sad story of the
woman came out. There is no need to relate it here; it is told over
and over again in police reports and paragraphs about attempted
suicides.
"My name is Rebecca Murdoch," said the woman, as she ended. "I have
ninepence left, and I thought of spending it at the chemist's over
the way in securing a passage to the other world. Whatever it is, it
can't be worse to me than this, so why should I stop here?"
Besides the natural compassion and sadness moved in his heart by what
he heard, Isaac felt within him some mysterious influence at work all
the time the woman was speaking which utterly confused his ideas and
almost deprived him of his powers of speech. All that he could say
in answer to her last reckless words was that he would prevent her
from attempting her own life, if he followed her about all night to
do it. His rough, trembling earnestness seemed to impress her.
"I won't occasion you that trouble," she answered, when he repeated
his threat. "You have given me a fancy for living by speaking kindly
to me. No need for the mockery of protestations and promises. You
may believe me without them. Come to Fuller's Meadow to-morrow at
twelve, and you will find me alive, to answer for myself-- No!--no
money. My ninepence will do to get me as good a night's lodging as I
want."
She nodded and left him. He made no attempt to follow--he felt no
suspicion that she was deceiving him.
"It's strange, but I can't help believing her," he said to himself,
and walked away, bewildered, toward home.
On entering the house his mind was still so completely absorbed by
its new subject of interest that he took no notice of what his mother
was doing when he came in with the bottle of medicine. She had
opened her old writing-desk in his absence, and was now reading a
paper attentively that lay inside it. On every birthday of Isaac's
since she had written down the particulars of his dream from his own
lips, she had been accustomed to read that same paper, and ponder
over it in private.
The next day he went to Fuller's Meadow.
He had done only right in believing her so implicitly. She was
there, punctual to a minute, to answer for herself. The last-left
faint defenses in Isaac's heart against the fascination which a word
or look from her began inscrutably to exercise over him sank down and
vanished before her forever on that memorable morning.
When a man previously insensible to the influence of woman forms an
attachment in middle life, the instances are rare indeed, let the
warning circumstances be what they may, in which he is found capable
of freeing himself from the tyranny of the new ruling passion. The
charm of being spoken to familiarly, fondly, and gratefully by a
woman whose language and manners still retained enough of their early
refinement to hint at the high social station that she had lost,
would have been a dangerous luxury to a man of Isaac's rank at the
age of twenty. But it was far more than that--it was certain ruin to
him--now that his heart was opening unworthily to a new influence at
that middle time of life when strong feelings of all kinds, once
implanted, strike root most stubbornly in a man's moral nature. A
few more stolen interviews after that first morning in Fuller's
Meadow completed his infatuation. In less than a month from the time
when he first met her, Isaac Scatchard had consented to give Rebecca
Murdoch a new interest in existence and a chance of recovering the
character she had lost by promising to make her his wife.
She had taken possession, not of his passions only, but of his
faculties as well. All the mind he had he put into her keeping. She
directed him on every point--even instructing him how to break the
news of his approaching marriage in the safest manner to his mother.
"If you tell her how you met me and who I am at first," said the
cunning woman, "she will move heaven and earth to prevent our
marriage. Say I am the sister of one of your fellow-servants--ask
her to see me before you go into any more particulars--and leave it
to me to do the rest. I mean to make her love me next best to you,
Isaac, before she knows anything of who I really am."
The motive of the deceit was sufficient to sanctify it to Isaac. The
stratagem proposed relieved him of his one great anxiety, and quieted
his uneasy conscience on the subject of his mother. Still, there was
something wanting to perfect his happiness, something that he could
not realize, something mysteriously untraceable, and yet something
that perpetually made itself felt; not when he was absent from
Rebecca Murdoch, but, strange to say, when he was actually in her
presence! She was kindness itself with him. She never made him feel
his inferior capacities and inferior manners. She showed the
sweetest anxiety to please him in the smallest trifles; but, in spite
of all these attractions, he never could feel quite at his ease with
her. At their first meeting there had mingled with his admiration,
when he looked in her face, a faint, involuntary feeling of doubt
whether that face was entirely strange to him. No after-familiarity
had the slightest effect on this inexplicable, wearisome uncertainty.
Concealing the truth as he had been directed, he announced his
marriage engagement precipitately and confusedly to his mother on the
day when he contracted it. Poor Mrs. Scatchard showed her perfect
confidence in her son by flinging her arms round his neck, and giving
him joy of having found at last, in the sister of one of his
fellow-servants, a woman to comfort and care for him after his mother
was gone. She was all eagerness to see the woman of her son's
choice, and the next day was fixed for the introduction.
It was a bright sunny morning, and the little cottage parlor was full
of light as Mrs. Scatchard, happy and expectant, dressed for the
occasion in her Sunday gown, sat waiting for her son and her future
daughter-in-law.
Punctual to the appointed time, Isaac hurriedly and nervously led his
promised wife into the room. His mother rose to receive
her--advanced a few steps smiling--looked Rebecca full in the eyes,
and suddenly stopped. Her face, which had been flushed the moment
before, turned white in an instant; her eyes lost their expression of
softness and kindness, and assumed a blank look of terror; her
outstretched hands fell to her sides, and she staggered back a few
steps with a low cry to her son.
"Isaac," she whispered, clutching him fast by the arm when he asked
alarmedly if she was taken ill, "Isaac, does that woman's face remind
you of nothing?"
Before he could answer--before he could look round to where Rebecca
stood, astonished and angered by her reception, at the lower end of
the room--his mother pointed impatiently to her writing-desk, and
gave him the key.
"Open it," she said, in a quick, breathless whisper.
"What does this mean? Why am I treated as if I had no business here?
Does your mother want to insult me?" asked Rebecca, angrily.
"Open it, and give me the paper in the left-hand drawer. Quick!
quick, for Heaven's sake!" said Mrs. Scatchard, shrinking further
back in terror.
Isaac gave her the paper. She looked it over eagerly for a moment,
then followed Rebecca, who was now turning away haughtily to leave
the room, and caught her by the shoulder--abruptly raised the long,
loose sleeve of her gown, and glanced at her hand and arm. Something
like fear began to steal over the angry expression of Rebecca's face
as she shook herself free from the old woman's grasp. "Mad!" she
said to herself, "and Isaac never told me." With these few words she
left the room.
Isaac was hastening after her when his mother turned and stopped his
further progress. It wrung his heart to see the misery and terror in
her face as she looked at him.
"Light-gray eyes," she said, in low, mournful, awe-struck tones,
pointing toward the open door; "a droop in the left eyelid; flaxen
hair, with a gold-yellow streak in it; white arms, with a down upon
them; little lady's hand, with a reddish look under the finger
nails--The Dream-Woman, Isaac, the Dream-Woman!"
That faint cleaving doubt which he had never been able to shake off
in Rebecca Murdoch's presence was fatally set at rest forever. He
had seen her face, then, before--seven years before, on his birthday,
in the bedroom of the lonely inn.
"Be warned! oh, my son, be warned! Isaac, Isaac, let her go, and do
you stop with me!"
Something darkened the parlor window as those words were said. A
sudden chill ran through him, and he glanced sidelong at the shadow.
Rebecca Murdoch had come back. She was peering in curiously at them
over the low window-blind.
"I have promised to marry, mother," he said, "and marry I must."
The tears came into his eyes as he spoke and dimmed his sight, but he
could just discern the fatal face outside moving away again from the
window.
His mother's head sank lower.
"Are you faint?" he whispered.
"Broken-hearted, Isaac."
He stooped down and kissed her. The shadow, as he did so, returned
to the window, and the fatal face peered in curiously once more.
Three weeks after that day Isaac and Rebecca were man and wife. All
that was hopelessly dogged and stubborn in the man's moral nature
seemed to have closed round his fatal passion, and to have fixed it
unassailably in his heart.
After that first interview in the cottage parlor no consideration
would induce Mrs. Scatchard to see her son's wife again, or even to
talk of her when Isaac tried hard to plead her cause after their
marriage.
This course of conduct was not in any degree occasioned by a
discovery of the degradation in which Rebecca had lived. There was
no question of that between mother and son. There was no question of
anything but the fearfully exact resemblance between the living,
breathing woman and the spectre-woman of Isaac's dream.
Rebecca, on her side, neither felt nor expressed the slightest sorrow
at the estrangement between herself and her mother-in-law. Isaac,
for the sake of peace, had never contradicted her first idea that age
and long illness had affected Mrs. Scatchard's mind. He even allowed
his wife to upbraid him for not having confessed this to her at the
time of their marriage engagement rather than risk anything by
hinting at the truth. The sacrifice of his integrity before his one
all-mastering delusion seemed but a small thing, and cost his
conscience but little after the sacrifices he had already made.
The time of waking from this delusion--the cruel and the rueful
time--was not far off. After some quiet months of married life, as
the summer was ending, and the year was getting on toward the month
of his birthday, Isaac found his wife altering toward him. She grew
sullen and contemptuous; she formed acquaintances of the most
dangerous kind in defiance of his objections, his entreaties, and his
commands; and, worst of all, she learned, erelong, after every fresh
difference with her husband, to seek the deadly self-oblivion of
drink. Little by little, after the first miserable discovery that
his wife was keeping company with drunkards, the shocking certainty
forced itself on Isaac that she had grown to be a drunkard herself.
He had been in a sadly desponding state for some time before the
occurrence of these domestic calamities. His mother's health, as he
could but too plainly discern every time he went to see her at the
cottage, was failing fast, and he upbraided himself in secret as the
cause of the bodily and mental suffering she endured. When to his
remorse on his mother's account was added the shame and misery
occasioned by the discovery of his wife's degradation, he sank under
the double trial--his face began to alter fast, and he looked what he
was, a spirit-broken man.
His mother, still struggling bravely against the illness that was
hurrying her to the grave, was the first to notice the sad alteration
in him, and the first to hear of his last worst trouble with his
wife. She could only weep bitterly on the day when he made his
humiliating confession, but on the next occasion when he went to see
her she had taken a resolution in reference to his domestic
afflictions which astonished and even alarmed him. He found her
dressed to go out, and on asking the reason received this answer:
"I am not long for this world, Isaac," she said, "and I shall not
feel easy on my death-bed unless I have done my best to the last to
make my son happy. I mean to put my own fears and my own feelings
out of the question, and to go with you to your wife, and try what I
can do to reclaim her. Give me your arm, Isaac, and let me do the
last thing I can in this world to help my son before it is too late."
He could not disobey her, and they walked together slowly toward his
miserable home.
It was only one o'clock in the afternoon when they reached the
cottage where he lived. It was their dinner-hour, and Rebecca was in
the kitchen. He was thus able to take his mother quietly into the
parlor, and then prepare his wife for the interview. She had
fortunately drunk but little at that early hour, and she was less
sullen and capricious than usual.
He returned to his mother with his mind tolerably at ease. His wife
soon followed him into the parlor, and the meeting between her and
Mrs. Scatchard passed off better than he had ventured to anticipate,
though he observed with secret apprehension that his mother,
resolutely as she controlled herself in other respects, could not
look his wife in the face when she spoke to her. It was a relief to
him, therefore, when Rebecca began to lay the cloth.
She laid the cloth, brought in the bread-tray, and cut a slice from
the loaf for her husband, then returned to the kitchen. At that
moment, Isaac, still anxiously watching his mother, was startled by
seeing the same ghastly change pass over her face which had altered
it so awfully on the morning when Rebecca and she first met. Before
he could say a word, she whispered, with a look of horror:
"Take me back--home, home again, Isaac. Come with me, and never go
back again."
He was afraid to ask for an explanation; he could only sign to her to
be silent, and help her quickly to the door. As they 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, in a low
whisper.
"No, mother--I was not noticing--what was it?"
"Look!"
He did look. A new clasp-knife, with a buckhorn handle, lay with the
loaf in the bread-tray. He stretched out his hand shudderingly to
possess himself of it; but, at the same time, there was a noise in
the kitchen, and his mother caught at his arm.
"The knife of the dream! Isaac, I'm faint with fear. Take me away
before she comes back."
He was hardly able to support her. The visible, tangible reality of
the knife struck him with a panic, and utterly destroyed any faint
doubts that he might have entertained up to this time in relation to
the mysterious dream-warning of nearly eight years before. By a last
desperate effort, he summoned self-possession enough to help his
mother out of the house--so quietly that the "Dream-Woman" (he
thought of her by that name now) did not hear them departing from the
kitchen.
"Don't go back, Isaac--don't go back!" implored Mrs. Scatchard, as he
turned to go away, after seeing her safely seated again in her own
room.
"I must get the knife," he answered, under his breath. His mother
tried to stop him again, but he hurried out without another word.
On his return he found that his wife had discovered their secret
departure from the house. She had been drinking, and was in a fury
of passion. The dinner in the kitchen was flung under the grate; the
cloth was off the parlor table. Where was the knife?
Unwisely, he asked for it. She was only too glad of the opportunity
of irritating him which the request afforded her. He wanted the
knife, did he? Could he give her a reason why? No! Then he should
not have it--not if he went down on his knees to ask for it. Further
recrimination elicited the fact that she had bought it a bargain, and
that she considered it her own especial property. Isaac saw the
uselessness of attempting to get the knife by fair means, and
determined to search for it, later in the day, in secret. The search
was unsuccessful. Night came on, and he left the house to walk about
the streets. He was afraid now to sleep in the same room with her.
Three weeks passed. Still sullenly enraged with him, she would not
give up the knife; and still that fear of sleeping in the same room
with her possessed him. He walked about at night, or dozed in the
parlor, or sat watching by his mother's bedside. Before the
expiration of the first week in the new month his mother died. It
wanted then but ten days of her son's birthday. She had longed to
live till that anniversary. Isaac was present at her death, and her
last words in this world were addressed to him:
"Don't go back, my son, don't go back!"
He was obliged to go back, if it were only to watch his wife.
Exasperated to the last degree by his distrust of her, she had
revengefully sought to add a sting to his grief, during the last days
of his mother's illness, by declaring that she would assert her right
to attend the funeral. In spite of all that he could do or say, she
held with wicked pertinacity to her word, and on the day appointed
for the burial forced herself--inflamed and shameless with
drink--into her husband's presence, and declared that she would walk
in the funeral procession to his mother's grave.
This last worst outrage, accompanied by all that was most insulting
in word and look, maddened him for the moment. He struck her.
The instant the blow was dealt he repented it. She crouched down,
silent, in a corner of the room, and eyed him steadily; it was a look
that cooled his hot blood and made him tremble. But there was no
time now to think of a means of making atonement. Nothing remained
but to risk the worst till the funeral was over. There was but one
way of making sure of her. He locked her in her bedroom.
When he came back some hours after, he found her sitting, very much
altered in look and bearing, by the bedside, with a bundle on her
lap. She rose and faced him quietly, and spoke with a strange
stillness in her voice, a strange repose in her eyes, a strange
composure in her manner.
"No man has ever struck me twice," she said, "and my husband shall
have no second opportunity. Set the door open and let me go. From
this day forth we see each other no more."
Before he could answer she passed him and left the room. He saw her
walk away up the street.
Would she return?
All that night he watched and waited, but no footstep came near the
house. The next night, overpowered by fatigue, he lay down in bed in
his clothes, with the door locked, the key on the table, and the
candle burning. His slumber was not disturbed. The third night, the
fourth, the fifth, the sixth passed, and nothing happened. He lay
down on the seventh, still in his clothes, still with the door
locked, the key on the table, and the candle burning, but easier in
his mind.
Easier in his mind, and in perfect health of body when he fell off to
sleep. But his rest was disturbed. He woke twice without any
sensation of uneasiness. But the third time it was that
never-to-be-forgotten shivering of the night at the lonely inn, that
dreadful sinking pain at the heart, which once more aroused him in an
instant.
His eyes opened toward the left-hand side of the bed, and there
stood--
The Dream-Woman again? No! his wife; the living reality, with the
dream-spectre's face, in the dream-spectre's attitude; the fair arm
up, the knife clasped in the delicate white hand.
He sprang upon her almost at the instant of seeing her, and yet not
quickly enough to prevent her from hiding the knife. Without a word
from him--without a cry from her--he pinioned her in a chair. With
one hand he felt up her sleeve, and there, where the Dream-Woman had
hidden the knife, his wife had hidden it--the knife with the buckhorn
handle, that looked like new.
In the despair of that fearful moment his brain was steady, his heart
was calm. He looked at her fixedly with the knife in his hand, and
said these last words:
"You have told me we should see each other no more, and you have come
back. It is now my turn to go, and to go forever. I say that we
shall see each other no more, and my word shall not be broken."
He left her, and set forth into the night. There was a bleak wind
abroad, and the smell of recent rain was in the air. The distant
church-clocks chimed the quarter as he walked rapidly beyond the last
houses in the suburb. He asked the first policeman he met what hour
that was of which the quarter past had just struck.
The man referred sleepily to his watch, and answered, "Two o'clock."
Two in the morning. What day of the month was this day that had just
begun? He reckoned it up from the date of his mother's funeral. The
fatal parallel was complete: it was his birthday!
Had he escaped the mortal peril which his dream foretold? or had he
only received a second warning?
As that ominous doubt forced itself on his mind, he stopped,
reflected, and turned back again toward the city. He was still
resolute to hold to his word, and never to let her see him more; but
there was a thought now in his mind of having her watched and
followed. The knife was in his possession; the world was before him;
but a new distrust of her--a vague, unspeakable, superstitious
dread--had come over him.
"I must know where she goes, now she thinks I have left her," he said
to himself, as he stole back wearily to the precincts of his house.
It was still dark. He had left the candle burning in the
bed-chamber; but when he looked up to the window of the room now,
there was no light in it. He crept cautiously to the house door. On
going away, he remembered to have closed it; on trying it now, he
found it open.
He waited outside, never losing sight of the house, till daylight.
Then he ventured indoors--listened, and heard nothing--looked into
kitchen, scullery, parlor, and found nothing; went up, at last, into
the bedroom--it was empty. A picklock lay on the floor, betraying
how she had gained entrance in the night, and that was the only trace
of her.
Whither had she gone? That no mortal tongue could tell him. The
darkness had covered her flight; and when the day broke no man could
say where the light found her.
Before leaving the house and the town forever, he gave instructions
to a friend and neighbor to sell his furniture for anything that it
would fetch, and apply the proceeds to employing the police to trace
her. The directions were honestly followed, and the money was all
spent, but the inquiries led to nothing. The picklock on the bedroom
floor remained the one last useless trace of the Dream-Woman.