第40章

"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.Asudden 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.