Chapter 10

DREAMS.

I went to bed early, and tried in vain to sleep. The events of the day passed continually through my brain, and brought on a nervous headache. All the blood in my body seemed concentrated in my head, leaving my feet and hands paralyzed with cold. After tossing about for many hours, I dropped off into a sort of mesmeric sleep, full of confused images, among which the singular face of Dinah North haunted me like the genius of the night-mare.

Dreams are one of the greatest mysteries in the unsolved problem of life. I have been a dreamer from my cradle, and if any person could explain the phenomena, the practical experience of a long life ought to have invested me with that power.

Most persons, in spite of themselves, or what they consider to be their better judgment, attach a superstitious importance to these visions of the night; nor is the vague belief in the spiritual agency employed in dreams, diminished by the remarkable dreams and their fulfilment, which are recorded in Holy Writ, the verity of which we are taught to believe as an article of faith.

My eyes are scarcely closed in sleep, before I become an actor in scenes of the most ludicrous or terrific nature. All my mental and physical faculties become intensified, and enjoy the highest state of perfection; as if the soul centered in itself the qualities of its mysterious triune existence.

Beautiful visions float before the sight, such as the waking eye never beheld; and the ear is ravished with music which no earthly skill could produce. The dreaming sense magnifies all sounds and sights which exist in nature. The thunder deepens its sonorous tone, ocean sends up a louder voice, and the whirlwind shakes the bending forest with tenfold fury.

I have beheld in sleep the mountains reel; the yawning earth disclose her hidden depths, and the fiery abyss swarm with hideous forms, which no waking eye could contemplate, and the mind retain its rationality. I have beheld the shrinking sea yield up the dead of ages, and have found myself a guilty and condemned wretch, trembling at the bar of Eternal Justice.

"Oh! what have I not beheld in sleep?"

I have been shut up, a living sentient creature in the cold, dank, noisome grave; have felt the loathsome worm slide along my warm, quivering limbs; the toad find a resting-place upon my breast; the adder wreath her slimy folds round my swelling throat; have struggled against the earthly weight that pressed out my soul and palsied my bursting heart, with superhuman strength; but every effort to free myself from my prison of clay was made in vain. My lips were motionless; my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth and refused to send forth a sound. Hope was extinct. I was beyond the reach of human aid; and that mental agony rendered me as powerless, as a moth in the grasp of a giant.

I have stood upon the edge of the volcano, and listened to the throbbings of Nature's fiery heart; and heard the boiling blood of earth, chafing and roaring far below; while my eyes vainly endeavoured to explore its glowing depths. Anon, by some fatal necessity, I was compelled to cross this terrible abyss--my bridge, a narrow plank insecurely placed upon the rounded stems of two yielding, sapling trees. Suddenly, frightful cries resounded on every side, and I was pursued by fiend-like forms in the shape of animal life. I put my foot upon the fearful bridge, I tried its strength, and felt a horrid consciousness that I never could pass over it in safety; my supernatural enemies drew nearer--I saw their blazing eyes--heard their low muttered growls; the next moment I leaped upon the plank--with a loud crash it severed--and with the velocity of thought, I was plunged headlong into the boiling gulf--down--down--down--for ever whirling down--the hot flood rushed over me. I felt the spasmodic grasp of death upon my throat, and awoke struggling with eternity upon the threshold of time.

Most persons of a reflective character, have kept a diary of the ordinary occurrences of life. I reversed this time-honoured mental exercise; and for some months, noted down what I could remember of the transactions of the mind, during its sleeping hours.

So wild and strange were these records, so eccentric the vagaries of the soul during its nocturnal wanderings, that I was induced to abandon the task, lest some friend hereafter, might examine, the mystic scroll, and conclude that it was written by a maniac.

It happened, that on the present night, I was haunted by a dream of more than ordinary wildness.

I dreamt that I stood in the centre of a boundless plain of sand, which undulated beneath my feet like the waves of the sea. Presently, I heard the rushing of a mighty wind, and as the whirl-blast swept over the desert, clouds of sand were driven before it, and I was lifted off my feet, and carried along the tide of dust as lightly as a leaf is whirled onward through the air. All objects fled as I advanced, and each moment increased the velocity of my flight.

A vast forest extended its gloomy arms athwart the horizon; but did not arrest my aerial journey. The thick boughs groaned and crashed beneath me, as I was dragged through their matted foliage; my limbs lacerated and torn, and my hair tangled amid the thorny branches. Vainly I endeavoured to cling to the twigs which impeded my passage, but they eluded my frenzied grasp, or snapped in my hands, while my cries for help were drowned in the thundering sweep of the mighty gale. Onward--onward. I was still flying onward without the aid of wings. There seemed no end to that interminable flight.

At length, when I least expected a change, I was suddenly cast to the bottom of a deep pit. The luxury of repose to my wounded and exhausted frame, was as grateful and refreshing as the dews of heaven to the long parched earth. I lay in a sort of pleasing helplessness, too glad to escape from past perils to imagine a recurrence of the same evil.

While dreamily watching the swallows, tending their young in the holes of the sandy bank that formed the walls of my prison, I observed the sand at the bottom of the pit caught up in little eddies and whirling round and round. A sickening feeling of dread stole over me, and I crouched down in an agony of fear, and clung with all my strength to the tufts of thorny shrubs which clothed the sides of the pit.

Again the wind-fiend caught me up on his broad pinions, and I was once more traversing with lightning speed the azure deserts of air. A burning heat was in my throat--my eyes seemed bursting from their sockets; confused sounds were murmuring in my ears, and the very blackness of darkness swallowed me up. No longer carried upward, I was now rapidly descending from some tremendous height. I stretched forth my hands to grasp some tangible substance in order to break the horrors of that fall, but all above, around, and beneath me, was empty air;--the effort burst the chains of that ghastly slumber, and I awoke with a short stifled cry of terror, exclaiming with devotional fervour, "Thank God! it is only a dream!"

The damp dews stood in large drops upon my brow, my hands were tightly clenched, and every hair upon my head seemed stiffened and erect with fear.

"Thank God!" I once more exclaimed in an agony of gratitude, "it is only a dream!"

Then arose the question: "What was the import of this dream, the effects of which I still felt through all my trembling frame, in the violent throbbing of my heart, and the ghastly cessation of every emotion save that of horror?"

Then I began to ponder, as I had done a thousand times before, over the mysterious nature of dreams, the manner in which they had been employed by the Almighty to communicate important truths to mankind, until I came to the conclusion that dreams were revelations from the spirit land, to warn us of dangers which threatened, or to punish us for crimes committed in the flesh.

"What are the visions which haunt the murderer's bed," I thought, "but phantoms of the past recalled by memory and conscience, and invested with an actual presence in sleep?"

Dr. Young, that melancholy dreamer of sublime dreams, has said--

"If dreams infest the grave, I wake emerging from a sea of dreams."

What a terrible idea of future punishment is contained in these words to one, whose sleep like mine is haunted by unutterable terrors! Think of an eternity of dreaming horrors. A hell condensed within the narrow resting-place of the grave.

My reveries were abruptly dispelled by the sound of steps along the passage which led to my chamber. My heart began to beat audibly. It was the dead hour of the night--who could be waking at such an unusual time? I sat up in the bed and listened.

I heard voices: two persons were talking in a loud tone in the passage, that was certain. For a long time, I could not distinguish one word from another, until my own name was suddenly pronounced in a louder key; and in a voice which seemed perfectly familiar to my ears.

The garret in which I slept, was a long, low, dingy apartment which formed a sort of repository for all the worn-out law books and waste papers belonging to the office, and as I have before stated the only furniture it possessed, was a mean truckle-bed on which I slept, and a large iron chest, which Mr. Moncton had informed me, contained title-deeds and other valuable papers, of which he himself kept the key.

They were kept in my apartment for better security; as the stair which led to the flat roof of the house opened into that chamber, and in case of fire, the chest and its contents could be easily removed.

For a wonder, I had never felt the least curiosity about the chest and its contents.

It stood in the old place, the day I first entered that dismal apartment when a child; and during the many long years which had slowly intervened, I never recollected having seen it unclosed. My attention for the first time was drawn to its existence by hearing my uncle say to some one in the passage in a hurried under tone.

"Set your mind at rest, the paper is in the iron chest in that room. If you will not rely upon my promise to destroy it, I will burn it before your eyes."

"That alone will satisfy my doubts," returned his companion. "Be cautious how you open the door, or the lad will awake."

"Nonsense, young folks like him sleep well."

"Ay, Robert Moncton, they are not troubled with an evil conscience."

This last observation was accompanied with a low sarcastic laugh; and with an involuntary shiver, I recognized in the mysterious speaker the old woman who had haunted my dreams.

"Conscience never troubles me, Dinah," returned Moncton, gloomily. "You first taught me to drown its warning voice."

"You were an apt pupil," said the woman. "All your natural tendencies were evil. I only fostered and called them out. But what is the use of recalling unpleasant truths. Why don't you silence memory, when you have ceased to feel remorse. But I tell you what it is, Moncton. The presence of the one proves the existence of the other. The serpent is sleeping in his coil, and one of these days you will feel the strength of his fangs. Is this the door that leads to his chamber? You have chosen a sorry dormitory for the heir of the proud house of Moncton."

"Hush! I wish he slept with his fathers. But even if he should awake, how could he guess, that our visit to his chamber could in any way concern him?"

"He has a shrewd face, an intelligent eye--an eye to detect treachery, and defy danger."

"On the contrary, a babe might deceive him."

"He has been educated in too hard a school to revel in such ignorance, Moncton."

"Hold your tongue, Dinah, and give me the light. Remember how you were deceived in his cousin Philip."

Mr. Moncton's hand was on the lock of the door: an almost irresistible impulse urged me to spring from the bed and draw the bolt. On second thoughts, however, I determined to feign sleep, and watch all that passed.

Resistance on my part would have been utterly useless, and I was anxious to find out if possible what connexion existed between my uncle, George Harrison, and this strange woman.

All this darted through my mind on the instant; the rays of the candle flashed upon the opposite wall; and my uncle, followed by his odious-looking companion, entered the room.

My intention of watching all their movements was completely frustrated by Mr. Moncton, who, advancing with cautious steps to my bed-side, held up the light in such a manner as not only to reveal my face, but the attitude in which I lay.

"Is he sleeping?" he whispered to his companion.

"He breathes like one in a profound slumber," was the reply. "'Tis a fine lad. How much he resembles Sir Alexander."

"His father, rather," sneered Moncton. "He's a second edition of Ned; but has got more brains. Thanks to his grandfather, Geoffrey, and his own mother, who was a beautiful, talented creature. Stand by the bed, Dinah, and keep watch over him while I light that lamp which he has left on the window-sill, and search for the papers."

The old woman took the light from Mr. Moncton's hand, and his station beside my bed. My too lively imagination pictured the witch-like face, with its dark, snaky eyes, bending over me, and I found it impossible to maintain, with any appearance of reality, the composure I had assumed. In order to conceal the excited state of my mind, and to convince her of the certainty of my pretended slumber, I threw out my arms, and began to toss and turn, and mutter in my sleep, putting on all the contortions which generally convulse the countenance of persons while writhing under the influence of some terrible dream. A state of perfect quiescence might have aroused suspicion; the noise I made completely lulled theirs to sleep.

Meanwhile my uncle had unlocked the chest, and I heard him toss the papers it contained, upon the floor; while, from time to time, he gave utterance to expressions indicative of vexation and disappointment.

After examining the contents of the box thoroughly, and returning the parchments to their original place, he said in a mortified tone:

"The papers are not here. How they have been abstracted I cannot imagine, as I always keep the key in a private drawer of my cabinet, which is known only to myself."

"Did you place them there yourself?" demanded the old woman, in a hurried whisper.

"No, but Walters, in whom I placed the most implicit confidence, assured me that he placed them here with his own hands. He may, however, have destroyed them, and anticipated my wishes."

"And you, with all your caution," sneered Dinah North, "could trust an affair of such importance to another."

"He was my creature, sworn to secrecy, and bought with my money, whose interest was to serve, not to betray me."

"A person who is capable of receiving a bribe to perform a base action, Moncton, is never to be trusted, especially a low-born fellow, like Walters; and where," she continued, anxiously, "is this man to be found?"

"He left twelve years ago for America, and took out with him, Michael Alzure, my brother's old servant, and Mary Earl, the boy's nurse, who were the only witnesses to the marriage. I wanted him to take the boy himself, and adopt him into his own family, which would have saved us all further trouble, but this to my surprise he positively refused to do."

"To what part of America did he emigrate?"

"First to Boston, where he remained for three years. He then removed to Philadelphia from the latter place. I twice received letters from him. He had been successful in business, and talked of buying land in the western States; for the last six years I have never heard of him or from him. It is more than probable that he is long since dead."

"People whom you wish out of the way, never die when you want them," said Dinah, with her peculiar sneering laugh. "But I think you told me that the--" I could not catch the word which she breathed into the ear of Mr. Moncton--"had been destroyed."

"Yes--yes. I burnt it with my own hand; this was the only document of any consequence, and it is a hundred chances to one, that he ever recovers it, or meets with the people who could prove his identity."

My uncle rose from his knees and locked the iron chest, then, extinguishing my lamp, he and the old woman left the room.

The sound of their retreating footsteps had scarcely died away, when, in spite of my wish to keep awake, I dropped off into a profound sleep, and did not again unclose my eyes until it was time to dress for breakfast.