Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1725 page)

I may say for myself that I am a temperate man. My supper simply consisted of come rashers of bacon, a slice of home-made bread, and a pint of ale. I did not go to bed immediately after this moderate meal, but sat up with the landlord, talking about my bad prospects and my long run of ill luck, and diverging from these topics to the subjects of horse-flesh and racing. Nothing was said, either by myself, my host, or the few labourers who strayed into the tap-room, which could, in the slightest degree, excite my mind, or set my fancy — which is only a small fancy at the best of times — playing tricks with my common sense.

At a little after eleven the house was closed. I went round with the landlord, and held the candle while the doors and lower windows were being secured. I noticed with surprise the strength of the bolts, bars, and iron-sheathed shutters.

“You see, we are rather lonely here,” says the landlord. “We never have had any attempts 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 comes to be out of place is more than I can understand for one. — Here’s where you’re to sleep. You’re the 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 we went up-stairs to the bed-room. The window looked out on the wood at the back of the house.

I locked my door, set my candle on the chest of drawers, and wearily got me ready for bed. The bleak wind was still blowing, and the solemn, surging moan of it in the wood was very dreary to hear through the night silence. Feeling strangely wakeful, I resolved to keep the candle alight until I began to grow sleepy. The truth is, I was not quite myself. I was depressed in mind by my disappointment of the morning; and I was wore out in body by my long walk. Between the two, I own I couldn’t face the prospect of lying awake in the darkness, listening to the dismal moan of the wind in the wood.

Sleep stole on me before I was aware of it; my eyes closed, and I fell off to rest, without having so much as thought of extinguishing the candle.

The next thing that I remember was a faint shivering that ran through me from head to foot, and a dreadful sinking pain at my heart, such as I had never felt before. The shivering only disturbed my slumbers — the pain woke me instantly. In one moment I passed from a state of sleep to a state of wakefulness — my eyes wide open — my mind clear on a sudden as if by a miracle.

The candle had burnt down nearly to the last morsel of tallow, but the unsnuffed wick had just fallen off, and the light was, for the moment, fair and full.

Between the foot of the bed and the closed door, I saw a person in my room. The person was a woman, standing looking at me, with a knife in her hand.

It does no credit to my courage to confess it — but the truth
is
the truth. I was struck speechless with terror. There I lay with my eyes on the woman; there the woman stood (with the knife in her hand) with
her
eyes on
me.

She said not a word as we stared each other in the face; but she moved after a little — moved slowly towards the left-hand side of the bed.

The light fell full on her face. A fair, fine woman, with yellowish flaxen hair, and light grey eyes, with a droop in the left eyelid. I noticed these things and fixed them in my mind, before she was quite round at the side of the bed. Without saying a word; without any change in the stony stillness of her face; without any noise following her footfall, she came closer and closer; stopped at the bed-head; and lifted the knife to stab me. I laid my arm over my throat to save it; but, as I saw the blow coming, I threw my hand across the bed to the right side, and jerked my body over that way, just as the knife came down, like lightning, within a hair’s-breadth of my shoulder.

My eyes fixed on her arm and her hand — she gave me time to look at them as she slowly drew the 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 a pink flush round the finger-nails.

She drew the knife out, and passed back again slowly to the foot of the bed; she stopped there for a moment looking at me; then she came on without saying a word; without any change in the stony stillness of her face; without any noise following her footfall — came on to the side of the bed where I now lay.

Getting near me, she lifted the knife again, and I drew myself away to the left side. She struck as before, right into the mattress, with a swift downward action, of her arm; and she missed me, as before, by a hair’s breadth. This time my eyes wandered from
her
to the knife. It was like the large clasp-knives which labouring men use to cut their bread and bacon with. Her delicate little fingers did not hide more than two-thirds of the handle; I noticed that it was made of buck-horn, clean and shining as the blade was, and looking like new.

For the second time she drew the knife out of the bed, and suddenly hid it away in the wide sleeve of her gown. That done, she stopped by the bedside, watching me. For an instant I saw her standing in that position — then the wick of the spent candle fell over into the socket. The flame dwindled to a little blue point, and the room grew dark.

A moment, or less if possible, passed so — and then the wick flamed up, smokily, for the last time. My eyes were still looking for her over the right-hand side of the bed when that last flash of light came. Look as I might, I could see nothing. The woman with the knife was gone.

I began to get back to myself again. I could feel my heart beating; I could hear the woful moaning of the wind in the wood; I could leap up in bed, and give the alarm before she escaped from the house. ‘Murder! Wake up there! Murder!’

Nobody answered to the alarm. I rose and groped my way through the darkness to the door of the room. By that way she must have got in. By that way she must have gone out

The door of the room was fast locked, exactly as I had left it on going to bed!

I looked at the window. Fast locked too!

Hearing a voice outside, I opened the door. There was the landlord, coming towards me along the passage, with his burning candle in one hand, and his gun in the other.

“What is it?” he says, looking at me in no very friendly way.

I could only answer him in a whisper. “A woman, with a knife in her hand. In my room. A fair, yellow-haired woman. She jabbed at me with the knife, twice over.”

He lifted his candle, and looked at me steadily from head to foot.

“She seems to have missed you — twice over.”

“I dodged the knife as it came down. It struck the bed each time. Go in, and see.”

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 by a dream?”

A dream? The woman who had tried to stab me, not a living human being like myself? I began to shake and shiver. The horrors got hold of me at the bare thought of it.

“I’ll leave the house,” I said. “Better out on the road in the rain and dark, than back again in that room, after what I’ve seen in it. Lend me the light to get my clothes by, and tell me what I’m to pay.”

The landlord led the way back with his light into the bedroom. “Pay?” says he. “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 had 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!”

My eyes followed his hand as it pointed first to the bed — then to the window — then to the door. There was no gainsaying it. The bed sheet was as sound as on the day it was made, The window was fast. The door hung on its hinges as steady as ever. I huddled my clothes on without speaking. We went downstairs together. I looked at the clock in the bar room. The time was twenty minutes past two in the morning. I paid my bill; and the landlord let me out. The rain had ceased; but the night was dark, and the wind was bleaker than ever. Little did the darkness, or the cold, or the doubt about the way home matter to
me.
My mind was away from all these things. My mind was fixed on the vision in the bedroom. What had I seen trying to murder me? The creature of a dream? Or that other creature from the world beyond the grave, whom men call ghost? I could make nothing of it as I walked along in the night; I had made nothing of it by midday — when I stood at last, after many times missing my road, on the doorstep of home.

VI.

My mother came out alone to welcome me back. There were no secrets between us two. I told her all that had happened, just as I have told it to you.

She kept silence till I had done. And then she put a question to me.

“What time was it, Francis, when you saw the Woman in your Dream?”

I had looked at the clock when I left the inn, and had noticed that the hands pointed to twenty minutes past two. Allowing for the time consumed in speaking to the landlord, and in getting on my clothes, I answered that I must have first seen the Woman at two o’clock in the morning. In other words, I had not only seen her on my birthday, but at the hour of my birth.

My mother still kept silence Lost in her own thoughts, she took me by the hand, and led me into the parlour. Her writing-desk was on the table by the fire-place. She opened it, and signed to me to take a chair by her side.

“My son! your memory is a bad one, and mine is fast failing me. Tell me again what the woman looked like. I want her to be as well known to both of us, years hence, as she is now.”

I obeyed; wondering what strange fancy might be working in her mind. I spoke; and she wrote the words as they fell from my lips: —

“Light grey eyes, 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 hands, with a rosy-red look about the fingernails.”

“Did you notice how she was dressed, Francis?”

“No, mother.”

“Did you notice the knife?”

“Yes. A large clasp-knife, with a buck-horn handle as good as new.”

My mother added the description of the knife. Also the year, month, day of the week, and hour of the day when the Dream-Woman appeared to me at the inn. That done, she locked up the paper in her desk.

“Not a word, Francis, to your aunt. Not a word to any living soul. Keep your Dream a secret between you and me.”

The weeks passed, and the months passed. My mother never returned to the subject again. As for me, time, which wears out all things, wore out my remembrance of the Dream. Little by little, the image of the Woman grew dimmer and dimmer. Little by little, she faded out of my mind.

VII.

The story of the warning is now told. Judge for yourself if it was a true warning or a false, when you hear what happened to me on my next birthday.

In the summer time of the year, the Wheel of Fortune turned the right way for me at last. I was smoking my pipe one day, near an old stone-quarry at the entrance to our village, when a carriage accident happened, which gave a new turn, as it were, to my lot in life. It was an accident of the commonest kind — not worth mentioning at any length. A lady driving herself; a runaway horse; a cowardly man-servant in attendance, frightened out of his wits; and the stone-quarry too near to be agreeable — that is what I saw, all in a few moments, between two whiffs of my pipe. I stopped the horse at the edge of the quarry, and got myself a little hurt by the shaft of the chaise. But that didn’t matter. The lady declared I had saved her life; and her husband, coming with her to our cottage the next day, took me into his service then and there. The lady happened to be of a dark complexion; and it may amuse you to hear that my aunt Chance instantly pitched on that circumstance as a means of saving the credit of the cards. Here was the promise of the Queen of Spades performed to the very letter, by means of “a dark woman,” just as my aunt had told me! “In the time to come, Francie, beware o” pettin yer ain blinded intairpretation on the cairds. Ye’re ower ready, I trow, to murmur under dispensations of Proavidence that ye canna fathom — like the Eesraelites of auld. I’ll say nae mair to ye. Mebbe when the mony’s powering into yer poakets, ye’ll no forget yer aunt Chance, left like a sparrow on the housetop, wi’ a sma’ annuitee o’ thratty punds a year.”