The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
"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.
I held out my hand to say good-by. She tried to stop me.
"Don't go back, Francis! don't go back!".
"I must get the knife, mother. I must go back by the next train." I held
to that resolution. By the next train I went back.
XII
My wife had, of course, discovered our secret departure from the house.
She had been drinking. She 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?
I was foolish enough to ask for it. She refused to give it to me. In the
course of the dispute between us which followed, I discovered that there
was a horrible story attached to the knife. It had been used in a
murder--years since--and had been so skillfully hidden that the
authorities had been unable to produce it at the trial. By help of some of
her disreputable friends, my wife had been able to purchase this relic of
a bygone crime. Her perverted nature set some horrid unacknowledged value
on the knife. Seeing there was no hope of getting it by fair means, I
determined to search for it, later in the day, in secret. The search was
unsuccessful. Night came on, and I left the house to walk about the
streets. You will understand what a broken man I was by this time, when I
tell you I was afraid to sleep in the same room with her!
Three weeks passed. Still she refused to give up the knife; and still that
fear of sleeping in the same room with her possessed me. I walked about at
night, or dozed in the parlor, or sat watching by my mother's bedside.
Before the end of the first week in the new month, the worst misfortune of
all befell me--my mother died. It wanted then but a short time to my
birthday. She had longed to live till that day. I was present at her
death. Her last words in this world were addressed to me. "Don't go back,
my son--don't go back!"
I was obliged to go back, if it was only to watch my wife. In the last
days of my mother's illness she had spitefully added a sting to my grief
by declaring she would assert her right to attend the funeral. In spite of
all that I could do or say, she held to her word. On the day appointed for
the burial she forced herself, inflamed and shameless with drink, into my
presence, and swore she would walk in the funeral procession to my
mother's grave.
This last insult--after all I had gone through already--was more than I
could endure. It maddened me. Try to make allowances for a man beside
himself. I struck her.
The instant the blow was dealt, I repented it. She crouched down, silent,
in a corner of the room, and eyed me steadily. It was a look that cooled
my hot blood in an instant. There was no time now to think of making
atonement. I could only risk the worst, and make sure of her till the
funeral was over. I locked her into her bedroom.
When I came back, after laying my mother in the grave, I found her sitting
by the bedside, very much altered in look and bearing, with a bundle on
her lap. She faced me quietly; she spoke with a curious stillness in her
voice--strangely and unnaturally composed in look and manner.
"No man has ever struck me yet," she said. "My husband shall have no
second opportunity. Set the door open, and let me go."
She passed me, and left the room. I saw her walk away up the street. Was
she gone for good?
All that night I watched and waited. No footstep came near the house. The
next night, overcome with fatigue, I lay down on the bed in my clothes,
with the door locked, the key on the table, and the candle burning. My
slumber was not disturbed. The third night, the fourth, the fifth, the
sixth, passed, and nothing happened. I lay down on the seventh night,
still suspicious of something happening; still in my clothes; still with
the door locked, the key on the table, and the candle burning.
My rest was disturbed. I awoke twice, without any sensation of uneasiness.
The third time, that horrid shivering of the night at the lonely inn, that
awful sinking pain at the heart, came back again, and roused me in an
instant. My eyes turned to the left-hand side of the bed. And there stood,
looking at me--
The Dream Woman again? No! My wife. The living woman, with the face of the
Dream--in the attitude of the Dream--the fair arm up; the knife clasped in
the delicate white hand.
I sprang upon her on the instant; but not quickly enough to stop her from
hiding the knife. Without a word from me, without a cry from her, I
pinioned her in a chair. With one hand I felt up her sleeve; and there,
where the Dream Woman had hidden the knife, my wife had hidden it--the
knife with the buckhorn handle, that looked like new.
What I felt when I made that discovery I could not realize at the time,
and I can't describe now. I took one steady look at her with the knife in
my hand. "You meant to kill me?" I said.
"Yes," she answered; "I meant to kill you." She crossed her arms over her
bosom, and stared me coolly in the face. "I shall do it yet," she said.
"With that knife."
I don't know what possessed me--I swear to you I am no coward; and yet I
acted like a coward. The horrors got hold of me. I couldn't look at her--I
couldn't speak to her. I left her (with the knife in my hand), and went
out into the night.
There was a bleak wind abroad, and the smell of rain was in the air. The
church clocks chimed the quarter as I walked beyond the last house in the
town. I asked the first policeman I met what hour that was, of which the
quarter past had just struck.
The man looked at his watch, and answered, "Two o'clock." Two in the
morning. What day of the month was this day that had just begun? I
reckoned it up from the date of my mother's funeral. The horrid parallel
between the dream and the reality was complete--it was my birthday!
Had I escaped, the mortal peril which the dream foretold? or had I only
received a second warning? As that doubt crossed my mind I stopped on my
way out of the town. The air had revived me--I felt in some degree like my
own self again. After a little thinking, I began to see plainly the
mistake I had made in leaving my wife free to go where she liked and to do
as she pleased.
I turned instantly, and made my way back to the house. It was still dark.
I had left the candle burning in the bedchamber. When I looked up to the
window of the room now, there was no light in it. I advanced to the house
door. On going away, I remembered to have closed it; on trying it now, I
found it open.
I waited outside, never losing sight of the house till daylight. Then I
ventured indoors--listened, and heard nothing--looked into the kitchen,
scullery, parlor, and found nothing--went up at last into the bedroom. It
was empty.
A picklock lay on the floor, which told me how she had gained entrance in
the night. And that was the one trace I could find of the Dream Woman.
XIII
I waited in the house till the town was astir for the day, and then I went
to consult a lawyer. In the confused state of my mind at the time, I had
one clear notion of what I meant to do: I was determined to sell my house
and leave the neighborhood. There were obstacles in the way which I had
not counted on. I was told I had creditors to satisfy before I could
leave--I, who had given my wife the money to pay my bills regularly every
week! Inquiry showed that she had embezzled every farthing of the money I
had intrusted to her. I had no choice but to pay over again.
Placed in this awkward position, my first duty was to set things right,
with the help of my lawyer. During my forced sojourn in the town I did two
foolish things. And, as a consequence that followed, I heard once more,
and heard for the last time, of my wife.
In the first place, having got possession of the knife, I was rash enough
to keep it in my pocket. In the second place, having something of
importance to say to my lawyer, at a late hour of the evening, I went to
his house after dark--alone and on foot. I got there safely enough.
Returning, I was seized on from behind by two men, dragged down a passage
and robbed--not only of the little money I had about me, but also of the
knife. It was the lawyer's opinion (as it was mine) that the thieves were
among the disreputable acquaintances formed by my wife, and that they had
attacked me at her instigation. To confirm this view I received a letter
the next day, without date or address, written in Alicia's hand. The first
line informed me that the knife was back again in her possession. The
second line reminded me of the day when I struck her. The third line
warned me that she would wash out the stain of that blow in my blood, and
repeated the words, "I shall do it with the knife!"
These things happened a year ago. The law laid hands on the men who had
robbed me; but from that time to this, the law has failed completely to
find a trace of my wife.
My story is told. When I had paid the creditors and paid the legal
expenses, I had barely five pounds left out of the sale of my house; and I
had the world to begin over again. Some months since--drifting here and
there--I found my way to Underbridge. The landlord of the inn had known
something of my father's family in times past. He gave me (all he had to
give) my food, and shelter in the yard. Except on market days, there is
nothing to do. In the coming winter the inn is to be shut up, and I shall