The Haunted Hotel & Other Stories by Wilkie Collins

Author:Wilkie Collins [Collins, Wilkie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Published: 2012-03-25T23:00:00+00:00

3

His mother came out eagerly to receive him. His face told her in a moment that something was wrong.

‘I’ve lost the place; but that’s my luck. I dreamed an ill dream last night, mother – or maybe I saw a ghost. Take it either way, it scared me out of my senses, and I’m not my own man again yet.’

‘Isaac, your face frightens me. Come in to the fire – come in, and tell mother all about it.’

He was as anxious to tell as she was to hear; for it had been his hope, all the way home, that his mother, with her quicker capacity and superior knowledge, might be able to throw some light on the mystery which he could not clear up for himself. His memory of the dream was still mechanically vivid, though his thoughts were entirely confused by it.

His mother’s face grew paler and paler as he went on. She never interrupted him by so much as a single word; but when he had done, she moved her chair close to his, put her arm round his neck, and said to him.

‘Isaac, you dreamed your ill dream on this Wednesday morning. What time was it when you saw the fair woman with the knife in her hand?’

Isaac reflected on what the landlord had said when they had passed by the clock on his leaving the inn; allowed as nearly as he could for the time that must have elapsed between the unlocking of his bedroom door and the paying of his bill just before going away, and answered.

‘Somewhere about two o’clock in the morning.’

His mother suddenly quitted her hold of his neck, and struck her hands together with a gesture of despair.

‘This Wednesday is your birthday, Isaac, and two o’clock in the morning was the time when you were born.’

Isaac’s capacities were not quick enough to catch the infection of his mother’s superstitious dread. He was amazed, and a little startled also, when she suddenly rose from her chair, opened her old writing-desk, took pen, ink, and paper, and then said to him.

‘Your memory is but a poor one, Isaac, and, now I’m an old woman, mine’s not much better. I want all about this dream of yours to be as well known to both of us, years hence, as it is now. Tell me over again all you told me a minute ago, when you spoke of what the woman with the knife looked like.’

Isaac obeyed, and marvelled much as he saw his mother carefully set down on paper the very words that he was saying.

‘Light grey eyes,’ she wrote, as they came to the descriptive part, ‘with 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 about the linger nails; clasp-knife with a buckhorn handle, that seemed as good as new.’ To these particulars Mrs Scatchard added the year, month, day of the week, and time in the morning when the woman of the dream appeared to her son.

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