第42章

"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?