A Dream of Red Hands
The first opinion given to me regarding Jacob Settle was a simpledescriptive statement, 'He's a down-in-the-mouth chap': but I foundthat it embodied the thoughts and ideas of all his fellow-workmen.There was in the phrase a certain easy tolerance, an absence ofpositive feeling of any kind, rather than any complete opinion, whichmarked pretty accurately the man's place in public esteem. Still,there was some dissimilarity between this and his appearance whichunconsciously set me thinking, and by degrees, as I saw more of theplace and the workmen, I came to have a special interest in him. Hewas, I found, for ever doing kindnesses, not involving money expensesbeyond his humble means, but in the manifold ways of forethought andforbearance and self-repression which are of the truer charities oflife. Women and children trusted him implicitly, though, strangelyenough, he rather shunned them, except when anyone was sick, and thenhe made his appearance to help if he could, timidly and awkwardly. Heled a very solitary life, keeping house by himself in a tiny cottage,or rather hut, of one room, far on the edge of the moorland. Hisexistence seemed so sad and solitary that I wished to cheer it up, andfor the purpose took the occasion when we had both been sitting upwith a child, injured by me through accident, to offer to lend himbooks. He gladly accepted, and as we parted in the grey of the dawn Ifelt that something of mutual confidence had been established betweenus.
The books were always most carefully and punctually returned, and intime Jacob Settle and I became quite friends. Once or twice as Icrossed the moorland on Sundays I looked in on him; but on suchoccasions he was shy and ill at ease so that I felt diffident aboutcalling to see him. He would never under any circumstances come intomy own lodgings.
One Sunday afternoon, I was coming back from a long walk beyond themoor, and as I passed Settle's cottage stopped at the door to say 'Howdo you do?' to him. As the door was shut, I thought that he was out,and merely knocked for form's sake, or through habit, not expecting toget any answer. To my surprise, I heard a feeble voice from within,though what was said I could not hear. I entered at once, and foundJacob lying half-dressed upon his bed. He was as pale as death, andthe sweat was simply rolling off his face. His hands wereunconsciously gripping the bedclothes as a drowning man holds on towhatever he may grasp. As I came in he half arose, with a wild, huntedlook in his eyes, which were wide open and staring, as thoughsomething of horror had come before him; but when he recognised me hesank back on the couch with a smothered sob of relief and closed hiseyes. I stood by him for a while, quite a minute or two, while hegasped. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me, but with such adespairing, woeful expression that, as I am a living man, I would haverather seen that frozen look of horror. I sat down beside him andasked after his health. For a while he would not answer me except tosay that he was not ill; but then, after scrutinising me closely, hehalf arose on his elbow and said:
'I thank you kindly, sir, but I'm simply telling you the truth. I amnot ill, as men call it, though God knows whether there be not worsesicknesses than doctors know of. I'll tell you, as you are so kind,but I trust that you won't even mention such a thing to a living soul,for it might work me more and greater woe. I am suffering from a baddream.'
'A bad dream!' I said, hoping to cheer him; 'but dreams pass away withthe light--even with waking.' There I stopped, for before he spoke Isaw the answer in his desolate look round the little place.
'No! no! that's all well for people that live in comfort and withthose they love around them. It is a thousand times worse for thosewho live alone and have to do so. What cheer is there for me, wakinghere in the silence of the night, with the wide moor around me full ofvoices and full of faces that make my waking a worse dream than mysleep? Ah, young sir, you have no past that can send its legions topeople the darkness and the empty space, and I pray the good God thatyou may never have!' As he spoke, there was such an almostirresistible gravity of conviction in his manner that I abandoned myremonstrance about his solitary life. I felt that I was in thepresence of some secret influence which I could not fathom. To myrelief, for I knew not what to say, he went on:
'Two nights past have I dreamed it. It was hard enough the firstnight, but I came through it. Last night the expectation was in itselfalmost worse than the dream--until the dream came, and then it sweptaway every remembrance of lesser pain. I stayed awake till justbefore the dawn, and then it came again, and ever since I have been insuch an agony as I am sure the dying feel, and with it all the dreadof tonight.' Before he had got to the end of the sentence my mind wasmade up, and I felt that I could speak to him more cheerfully.
'Try and get to sleep early tonight--in fact, before the evening haspassed away. The sleep will refresh you, and I promise you there willnot be any bad dreams after tonight.' He shook his head hopelessly, soI sat a little longer and then left him.
When I got home I made my arrangements for the night, for I had madeup my mind to share Jacob Settle's lonely vigil in his cottage on themoor. I judged that if he got to sleep before sunset he would wakewell before midnight, and so, just as the bells of the city werestriking eleven, I stood opposite his door armed with a bag, in whichwere my supper, an extra large flask, a couple of candles, and a book.The moonlight was bright, and flooded the whole moor, till it wasalmost as light as day; but ever and anon black clouds drove acrossthe sky, and made a darkness which by comparison seemed almosttangible. I opened the door softly, and entered without waking Jacob,who lay asleep with his white face upward. He was still, and againbathed in sweat. I tried to imagine what visions were passing beforethose closed eyes which could bring with them the misery and woe whichwere stamped on the face, but fancy failed me, and I waited for theawakening. It came suddenly, and in a fashion which touched me to thequick, for the hollow groan that broke from the man's white lips as hehalf arose and sank back was manifestly the realisation or completionof some train of thought which had gone before.
'If this be dreaming,' said I to myself, 'then it must be based onsome very terrible reality. What can have been that unhappy fact thathe spoke of?'
While I thus spoke, he realised that I was with him. It struck me asstrange that he had no period of that doubt as to whether dream orreality surrounded him which commonly marks an expected environment ofwaking men. With a positive cry of joy, he seized my hand and held itin his two wet, trembling hands, as a frightened child clings on tosomeone whom it loves. I tried to soothe him:
'There, there! it is all right. I have come to stay with you tonight,and together we will try to fight this evil dream.' He let go my handsuddenly, and sank back on his bed and covered his eyes with hishands.
'Fight it?--the evil dream! Ah! no, sir, no! No mortal power can fightthat dream, for it comes from God--and is burned in here;' and he beatupon his forehead. Then he went on:
'It is the same dream, ever the same, and yet it grows in its power totorture me every time it comes.'
'What is the dream?' I asked, thinking that the speaking of it mightgive him some relief, but he shrank away from me, and after a longpause said:
'No, I had better not tell it. It may not come again.'
There was manifestly something to conceal from me--something that laybehind the dream, so I answered:
'All right. I hope you have seen the last of it. But if it should comeagain, you will tell me, will you not? I ask, not out of curiosity,but because I think it may relieve you to speak.' He answered withwhat I thought was almost an undue amount of solemnity:
'If it comes again, I shall tell you all.'
Then I tried to get his mind away from the subject to more mundanethings, so I produced supper, and made him share it with me, includingthe contents of the flask. After a little he braced up, and when I litmy cigar, having given him another, we smoked a full hour, and talkedof many things. Little by little the comfort of his body stole overhis mind, and I could see sleep laying her gentle hands on hiseyelids. He felt it, too, and told me that now he felt all right, andI might safely leave him; but I told him that, ri
ght or wrong, I wasgoing to see in the daylight. So I lit my other candle, and began toread as he fell asleep.
By degrees I got interested in my book, so interested that presently Iwas startled by its dropping out of my hands. I looked and saw thatJacob was still asleep, and I was rejoiced to see that there was onhis face a look of unwonted happiness, while his lips seemed to movewith unspoken words. Then I turned to my work again, and again woke,but this time to feel chilled to my very marrow by hearing the voicefrom the bed beside me:
'Not with those red hands! Never! never!' On looking at him, I foundthat he was still asleep. He woke, however, in an instant, and did notseem surprised to see me; there was again that strange apathy as tohis surroundings. Then I said:
'Settle, tell me your dream. You may speak freely, for I shall holdyour confidence sacred. While we both live I shall never mention whatyou may choose to tell me.'
He replied:
'I said I would; but I had better tell you first what goes before thedream, that you may understand. I was a schoolmaster when I was a veryyoung man; it was only a parish school in a little village in theWest Country. No need to mention any names. Better not. I was engagedto be married to a young girl whom I loved and almost reverenced. Itwas the old story. While we were waiting for the time when we couldafford to set up house together, another man came along. He was nearlyas young as I was, and handsome, and a gentleman, with all agentleman's attractive ways for a woman of our class. He would gofishing, and she would meet him while I was at my work in school. Ireasoned with her and implored her to give him up. I offered to getmarried at once and go away and begin the world in a strange country;but she would not listen to anything I could say, and I could see thatshe was infatuated with him. Then I took it on myself to meet the manand ask him to deal well with the girl, for I thought he might meanhonestly by her, so that there might be no talk or chance of talk onthe part of others. I went where I should meet him with none by, andwe met!' Here Jacob Settle had to pause, for something seemed to risein his throat, and he almost gasped for breath. Then he went on:
'Sir, as God is above us, there was no selfish thought in my heartthat day, I loved my pretty Mabel too well to be content with a partof her love, and I had thought of my own unhappiness too often not tohave come to realise that, whatever might come to her, my hope wasgone. He was insolent to me--you, sir, who are a gentleman, cannotknow, perhaps, how galling can be the insolence of one who is aboveyou in station--but I bore with that. I implored him to deal well withthe girl, for what might be only a pastime of an idle hour with himmight be the breaking of her heart. For I never had a thought of hertruth, or that the worst of harm could come to her--it was only theunhappiness to her heart I feared. But when I asked him when heintended to marry her his laughter galled me so that I lost my temperand told him that I would not stand by and see her life made unhappy.Then he grew angry too, and in his anger said such cruel things of herthat then and there I swore he should not live to do her harm. Godknows how it came about, for in such moments of passion it is hard toremember the steps from a word to a blow, but I found myself standingover his dead body, with my hands crimson with the blood that welledfrom his torn throat. We were alone and he was a stranger, with noneof his kin to seek for him and murder does not always out--not all atonce. His bones may be whitening still, for all I know, in the pool ofthe river where I left him. No one suspected his absence, or why itwas, except my poor Mabel, and she dared not speak. But it was all invain, for when I came back again after an absence of months--for Icould not live in the place--I learned that her shame had come andthat she had died in it. Hitherto I had been borne up by the thoughtthat my ill deed had saved her future, but now, when I learned that Ihad been too late, and that my poor love was smirched with that man'ssin, I fled away with the sense of my useless guilt upon me moreheavily than I could bear. Ah! sir, you that have not done such a sindon't know what it is to carry it with you. You may think that custommakes it easy to you, but it is not so. It grows and grows with everyhour, till it becomes intolerable, and with it growing, too, thefeeling that you must for ever stand outside Heaven. You don't knowwhat that means, and I pray God that you never may. Ordinary men, towhom all things are possible, don't often, if ever, think of Heaven.It is a name, and nothing more, and they are content to wait and letthings be, but to those who are doomed to be shut out for ever youcannot think what it means, you cannot guess or measure the terribleendless longing to see the gates opened, and to be able to join thewhite figures within.
'And this brings me to my dream. It seemed that the portal was beforeme, with great gates of massive steel with bars of the thickness of amast, rising to the very clouds, and so close that between them wasjust a glimpse of a crystal grotto, on whose shining walls werefigured many white-clad forms with faces radiant with joy. When Istood before the gate my heart and my soul were so full of rapture andlonging that I forgot. And there stood at the gate two mighty angelswith sweeping wings, and, oh! so stern of countenance. They held eachin one hand a flaming sword, and in the other the latchet, which movedto and fro at their lightest touch. Nearer were figures all draped inblack, with heads covered so that only the eyes were seen, and theyhanded to each who came white garments such as the angels wear. A lowmurmur came that told that all should put on their own robes, andwithout soil, or the angels would not pass them in, but would smitethem down with the flaming swords. I was eager to don my own garment,and hurriedly threw it over me and stepped swiftly to the gate; but itmoved not, and the angels, loosing the latchet, pointed to my dress, Ilooked down, and was aghast, for the whole robe was smeared withblood. My hands were red; they glittered with the blood that drippedfrom them as on that day by the river bank. And then the angels raisedtheir flaming swords to smite me down, and the horror was complete--Iawoke. Again, and again, and again, that awful dream comes to me. Inever learn from the experience, I never remember, but at thebeginning the hope is ever there to make the end more appalling; and Iknow that the dream does not come out of the common darkness where thedreams abide, but that it is sent from God as a punishment! Never,never shall I be able to pass the gate, for the soil on the angelgarments must ever come from these bloody hands!'
I listened as in a spell as Jacob Settle spoke. There was something sofar away in the tone of his voice--something so dreamy and mystic inthe eyes that looked as if through me at some spirit beyond--somethingso lofty in his very diction and in such marked contrast to hisworkworn clothes and his poor surroundings that I wondered if thewhole thing were not a dream.
We were both silent for a long time. I kept looking at the man beforeme in growing wonderment. Now that his confession had been made, hissoul, which had been crushed to the very earth, seemed to leap backagain to uprightness with some resilient force. I suppose I ought tohave been horrified with his story, but, strange to say, I was not. Itcertainly is not pleasant to be made the recipient of the confidenceof a murderer, but this poor fellow seemed to have had, not only somuch provocation, but so much self-denying purpose in his deed ofblood that I did not feel called upon to pass judgment upon him. Mypurpose was to comfort, so I spoke out with what calmness I could, formy heart was beating fast and heavily:
'You need not despair, Jacob Settle. God is very good, and His mercyis great. Live on and work on in the hope that some day you may feelthat you have atoned for the past.' Here I paused, for I could seethat deep, natural sleep this time, was creeping upon him. 'Go tosleep,' I said; 'I shall watch with you here and we shall have no moreevil dreams tonight.'
He made an effort to pull himself together, and answered:
'I don't know how to thank you for your goodness to me this night, butI think you had best leave me now. I'll try and sleep this out; I feela weight off my mind since I have told you all. If there's anything ofthe man left in me, I must try and fight out life alone.'
'I'll go tonight, as you wish it,' I said; 'but take my advice, and donot live in such a solitary way. Go among men and women; live amongthem. S
hare their joys and sorrows, and it will help you to forget.This solitude will make you melancholy mad.'
'I will!' he answered, half unconsciously, for sleep was overmasteringhim.
I turned to go, and he looked after me. When I had touched the latch Idropped it, and, coming back to the bed, held out my hand. He graspedit with both his as he rose to a sitting posture, and I said mygoodnight, trying to cheer him:
'Heart, man, heart! There is work in the world for you to do, JacobSettle. You can wear those white robes yet and pass through that gateof steel!'
Then I left him.
A week after I found his cottage deserted, and on asking at the workswas told that he had 'gone north', no one exactly knew whither.
Two years afterwards, I was staying for a few days with my friend Dr.Munro in Glasgow. He was a busy man, and could not spare much time forgoing about with me, so I spent my days in excursions to the Trossachsand Loch Katrine and down the Clyde. On the second last evening of mystay I came back somewhat later than I had arranged, but found thatmy host was late too. The maid told me that he had been sent for tothe hospital--a case of accident at the gas-works, and the dinner waspostponed an hour; so telling her I would stroll down to find hermaster and walk back with him, I went out. At the hospital I found himwashing his hands preparatory to starting for home. Casually, I askedhim what his case was.
'Oh, the usual thing! A rotten rope and men's lives of no account. Twomen were working in a gasometer, when the rope that held theirscaffolding broke. It must have occurred just before the dinner hour,for no one noticed their absence till the men had returned. There wasabout seven feet of water in the gasometer, so they had a hard fightfor it, poor fellows. However, one of them was alive, just alive, butwe have had a hard job to pull him through. It seems that he owes hislife to his mate, for I have never heard of greater heroism. They swamtogether while their strength lasted, but at the end they were so doneup that even the lights above, and the men slung with ropes, comingdown to help them, could not keep them up. But one of them stood onthe bottom and held up his comrade over his head, and those fewbreaths made all the difference between life and death. They were ashocking sight when they were taken out, for that water is like apurple dye with the gas and the tar. The man upstairs looked as if hehad been washed in blood. Ugh!'
'And the other?'
'Oh, he's worse still. But he must have been a very noble fellow. Thatstruggle under the water must have been fearful; one can see that bythe way the blood has been drawn from the extremities. It makes theidea of the _Stigmata_ possible to look at him. Resolution like thiscould, you would think, do anything in the world. Ay! it might almostunbar the gates of Heaven. Look here, old man, it is not a verypleasant sight, especially just before dinner, but you are a writer,and this is an odd case. Here is something you would not like to miss,for in all human probability you will never see anything like itagain.' While he was speaking he had brought me into the mortuary ofthe hospital.
On the bier lay a body covered with a white sheet, which was wrappedclose round it.
'Looks like a chrysalis, don't it? I say, Jack, if there be anythingin the old myth that a soul is typified by a butterfly, well, then theone that this chrysalis sent forth was a very noble specimen and tookall the sunlight on its wings. See here!' He uncovered the face.Horrible, indeed, it looked, as though stained with blood. But I knewhim at once, Jacob Settle! My friend pulled the winding sheet furtherdown.
The hands were crossed on the purple breast as they had beenreverently placed by some tender-hearted person. As I saw them myheart throbbed with a great exultation, for the memory of hisharrowing dream rushed across my mind. There was no stain now on thosepoor, brave hands, for they were blanched white as snow.
And somehow as I looked I felt that the evil dream was all over. Thatnoble soul had won a way through the gate at last. The white robe hadnow no stain from the hands that had put it on.