The Queen of Hearts

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The priest ceased, and we went out together in the mournful
twilight, and stood for a little while on the brow of the hill
where Uncle George used to sit, with his face turned toward
England. How my heart ached for him as I thought of what he must
have suffered in the silence and solitude of his long exile! Was
it well for me that I had discovered the Family Secret at last? I
have sometimes thought not. I have sometimes wished that the
darkness had never been cleared away which once hid from me the
fate of Uncle George.

THE THIRD DAY.

FINE again. Our guest rode out, with her ragged little groom, as
usual. There was no news yet in the paper--that is to say, no
news of George or his ship.

On this day Morgan completed his second story, and in two or
three days more I expected to finish the last of my own
contributions. Owen was still behindhand and still despondent.

The lot drawing to-night was Five. This proved to be the number
of the first of Morgan's stories, which he had completed before
we began the readings. His second story, finished this day, being
still uncorrected by me, could not yet be added to the common
stock.

On being informed that it had come to his turn to occupy the
attention of the company, Morga n startled us by immediately
objecting to the trouble of reading his own composition, and by
coolly handing it over to me, on the ground that my numerous
corrections had made it, to all intents and purposes, my story.

Owen and I both remonstrated; and Jessie, mischievously
persisting in her favorite jest at Morgan's expense, entreated
that he would read, if it was only for her sake. Finding that we
were all determined, and all against him, he declared that,
rather than hear our voices any longer, he would submit to the
minor inconvenience of listening to his own. Accordingly, he took
his manuscript back again, and, with an air of surly resignation,
spread it open before him.

"I don't think you will like this story, miss," he began,
addressing Jessie, "but I shall read it, nevertheless, with the
greatest pleasure. It begins in a stable--it gropes its way
through a dream--it keeps company with a hostler--and it stops
without an end. What do you think of that?"

After favoring his audience with this promising preface, Morgan
indulged himself in a chuckle of supreme satisfaction, and then
began to read, without wasting another preliminary word on any
one of us.

BROTHER MORGAN'S STORY

of

THE DREAM-WOMAN.

CHAPTER I.

I HAD not been settled much more than six weeks in my country
practice when I was sent for to a neighboring town, to consult
with the resident medical man there on a case of very dangerous
illness.

My horse had come down with me at the end of a long ride the
night before, and had hurt himself, luckily, much more than he
had hurt his master. Being deprived of the animal's services, I
started for my destination by the coach (there were no railways
at that time), and I hoped to get back again, toward the
afternoon, in the same way.

After the consultation was over, I went to the principal inn of
the town to wait for the coach. When it came up it was full
inside and out. There was no resource left me but to get home as
cheaply as I could by hiring a gig. The price asked for this
accommodation struck me as being so extortionate, that I
determined to look out for an inn of inferior pretensions, and to
try if I could not make a better bargain with a less prosperous
establishment.

I soon found a likely-looking house, dingy and quiet, with an
old-fashioned sign, that had evidently not been repainted for
many years past. The landlord, in this case, was not above making
a small profit, and as soon as we came to terms he rang the
yard-bell to order the gig.

"Has Robert not come back from that errand?" asked the landlord,
appealing to the waiter who answered the bell.

"No, sir, he hasn't."

"Well, then, you must wake up Isaac."

"Wake up Isaac!" I repeated; "that sounds rather odd. Do your
hostlers go to bed in the daytime?"

"This one does," said the landlord, smiling to himself in rather
a strange way.

"And dreams too," added the waiter; "I shan't forget the turn it
gave me the first time I heard him."

"Never you mind about that," retorted the proprietor; "you go and
rouse Isaac up. The gentleman's waiting for his gig."

The landlord's manner and the waiter's manner expressed a great
deal more than they either of them said. I began to suspect that
I might be on the trace of something professionally interesting
to me as a medical man, and I thought I should like to look at
the hostler before the waiter awakened him.

"Stop a minute," I interposed; "I have rather a fancy for seeing
this man before you wake him up. I'm a doctor; and if this queer
sleeping and dreaming of his comes from anything wrong in his
brain, I may be able to tell you what to do with him."

"I rather think you will find his complaint past all doctoring,
sir," said the landlord; "but, if you would like to see him,
you're welcome, I'm sure."

He led the way across a yard and down a passage to the stables,
opened one of the doors, and, waiting outside himself, told me to
look in.

I found myself in a two-stall stable. In one of the stalls a
horse was munching his corn; in the other an old man was lying
asleep on the litter.

I stooped and looked at him attentively. It was a withered,
woe-begone face. The eyebrows were painfully contracted; the
mouth was fast set, and drawn down at the corners.

The hollow wrinkled cheeks, and the scanty grizzled hair, told
their own tale of some past sorrow or suffering. He was drawing
his breath convulsively when I first looked at him, and in a
moment more he began to talk in his sleep.

"Wake up!" I heard him say, in a quick whisper, through his
clinched teeth. "Wake up there! Murder!"

He moved one lean arm slowly till it rested over his throat,
shuddered a little, and turned on his straw. Then the arm left
his throat, the hand stretched itself out, and clutched at the
side toward which he had turned, as if he fancied himself to be
grasping at the edge of something. I saw his lips move, and bent
lower over him. He was still talking in his sleep.

"Light gray eyes," he murmured, "and a droop in the left eyelid;
flaxen hair, with a gold-yellow streak in it--all right,
mother--fair white arms, with a down on them--little lady's hand,
with a reddish look under the finger nails. The knife--always the
cursed knife--first on one side, then on the other. Aha! you
she-devil, where's the knife?"

At the last word his voice rose, and he grew restless on a
sudden. I saw him shudder on the straw; his withered face became
distorted, and he threw up both his hands with a quick hysterical
gasp. They struck against the bottom of the manger under which he
lay, and the blow awakened him. I had just time to slip through
the door and close it before his eyes were fairly open, and his
senses his own again.

"Do you know anything about that man's past life?" I said to the
landlord.

"Yes, sir, I know pretty well all about it," was the answer, "and
an uncommon queer story it is. Most people don't believe it. It's
true, though, for all that. Why, just look at him," continued the
landlord, opening the stable door again. "Poor devil! he's so
worn out with his restless nights that he's dropped back into his
sleep already."

"Don't wake him," I said; "I'm in no hurry for the gig. Wait till
the other man comes back from his errand; and, in the meantime,
suppose I have some lunch and a bottle of sherry, and suppose you
come and help me to get through it?"

The heart of mine host, as I had anticipated, warmed to me over
his own wine. He soon became communicative on the subject of the
man asleep in the stable, and by little and little I drew the
whole story out of him. Extravagant and incredible as the events
must appear to everybody, they are related here just as I heard
them and just as they happened.

CHAPTER II.

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 hostler, 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 stablehelper'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
produce 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 the 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, footsore 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 subjects 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 comes
to be out of 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 lying 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 his 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 back 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 cla sp-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 buck-horn, clean and shining as 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 discovered 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 woeful 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 then
they went downstairs together.

"Nigh on twenty minutes past two!" said the landlord, as they
passed the 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 a wilderness
in a thunder-storm 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.

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.

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