The Queen of Hearts

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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.

CHAPTER IV.

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 specter-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, ere
long, 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 m eeting 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 breadtray 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 recriminations 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 any thing 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 into 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-specter's face, in the dream-specter'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 told me we should see each other no more, and you have come
back. It is my turn now 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 b efore
him; but a new distrust of her--a vague, unspeakable,
superstitious dread had overcome him.

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