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CHAPTER III.
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'm not my own man again yet."
"Isaac, your face frightens me. Come in to 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 arm round 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 the 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 buck-horn 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
her 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 th e 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 road-side 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 than ladies' lips. Her slightest actions 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 questions, 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 nine-pence 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 women,
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 l 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.
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