The Dream of Red Hands

by

Bram Stoker
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***

The first opinion given to me regarding Jacob Settle was a simple

descriptive statement. "He's a down-in-the-mouth chap": but I
found that it embodied the thoughts and ideas of all his fellow-
workmen. There was in the phrase a certain easy tolerance, an
absence of positive feeling of any kind, rather than any complete
opinion, which marked pretty accurately the man's place in public
esteem. Still, there was some dissimilarity between this and his
appearance which unconsciously set me thinking, and by degrees, as
I saw more of the place and the workmen, I came to have a special
interest in him. He was, I found, for ever doing kindnesses, not
involving money expenses beyond his humble means, but in the
manifold ways of forethought and forbearance and self-repression
which are of the truer charities of life. Women and children
trusted him implicitly, though, strangely enough, he rather shunned
them, except when anyone was sick, and then he made his appearance
to help if he could, timidly and awkwardly. He led 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. His existence seemed
so sad and solitary that I wished to cheer it up, and for the
purpose took the occasion when we had both been sitting up with a
child, injured by me through accident, to offer to lend him books.
He gladly accepted, and as we parted in the grey of the dawn I felt
that something of mutual confidence had been established between us.

The books were always most carefully and punctually returned,

and in time Jacob Settle and I became quite friends. Once or twice
as I crossed the moorland on Sundays I looked in on him; but on
such occasions he was shy and ill at ease so that I felt diffident
about calling to see him. He would never under any circumstances
come into my own lodgings.

One Sunday afternoon, I was coming back from a long walk

beyond the moor, and as I passed Settle's cottage stopped at the
door to say "how do 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 to get 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 found Jacob lying half-dressed
upon his bed. He was as pale as death, and the sweat was simply
rolling off his face. His hands were unconsciously gripping the
bed-clothes as a drowning man holds on to whatever he may grasp.
As I came in he half arose, with a wild, hunted look in his eyes,
which were wide open and staring, as though something of horror
had come before him; but when he recognised me he sank back on the
couch with a smothered sob of relief and closed his eyes. I stood
by him for a while, quiet a minute or two, while he gasped. Then
he opened his eyes and looked at me, but with such a despairing,
woeful expression that, as I am a living man, I would have rather
seen that frozen look of horror. I sat down beside him and asked
after his health. For a while he would not answer me except to
say that he was not ill; but then, after scrutinising me closely,
he half arose on his elbow and said-

"I thank you kindly, sir, but I'm simply telling you the
truth. I am not ill, as men call it, though God knows whether
there be not worse sicknesses than doctors know of. I'll tell
you, as you are so kind, but I trust that you won't even mention
such a think to a living soul, for it might work me more and
greater woe. I am suffering from a bad dream."

"A bad dream!" I said, hoping to cheer him; "but dreams pass
away with the light-even with waking." There I stopped, for before
he spoke I saw the answer in his desolate look round the little
place.

"No! no! that's all well for people that live in comfort and
with those they love around them. It is a thousand times worse for
those who live alone and have to do so. What cheer is there for
me, waking here in the silence of the night, with the wide moor
around me full of voices and full of faces that make my waking a
worse dream than my sleep? Ah, young sir, you have no past that
can send its legions to people the darkness and the empty space,
and I pray the good God that you may never have! As he spoke,
there was such an almost irresistible gravity of conviction in his
manner that I abandoned my remonstrance about his solitary life.
I felt that I was in the presence of some secret influence which I
could not fathom. To my relief, for I knew not what to say, he
went on-
 "Two nights past have I dreamed it. It was hard enough the
first night, but I came through it. Last night the expectation
was in itself almost worse than the dream-until the dream came,
and then it swept away every remembrance of lesser pain. I stayed
awake till just before the dawn, and then it came again, and ever
since I have been in such an agony as I am sure the dying feel,
and with it all the dread of to-night." Before he had got to the
end of the sentence my mind was made up, and I felt that I could
speak to him more cheerfully.

"Try and get to sleep early to-night-in fact, before the

evening has passed away. The sleep will refresh you, and I promise
you there will not be any bad dreams after to-night." He shook his
head hopelessly, so I sat a little longer and then left him.

When I got home I made my arrangements for the night, for I

had made up my mind to share Jacob Settle's lonely vigil in his
cottage on the moor. I judged that if he got to sleep before
sunset he would wake well before midnight, and so, just as the
bells of the city were striking eleven, I stood opposite his door
armed with a bag, in which were my supper, and extra large flask,
a couple of candles, and a book. The moonlight was bright, and
flooded the whole moor, till it was almost as light as day; but
ever and anon black clouds drove across the sky, and made a
darkness which by comparison seemed almost tangible. I opened the
door softly, and entered without waking Jacob, who lay asleep with
his white face upward. He was still, and again bathed it sweat.
I tried to imagine what visions were passing before those closed
eyes which could bring with them the misery and woe which were
stamped on the face, but fancy failed me, and I waited for the
awakening. It came suddenly, and in a fashion which touched me
to the quick, for the hollow groan that broke from the man's white
lips as he half arose and sank back was manifestly the realisation
or completion of some train of thought which had gone before.

"If this be dreaming," said I to myself, "then it must be

based on some very terrible reality. What can have been that
unhappy fact that he spoke of?"

While I thus spoke, he realised that I was with him. It

struck me as strange that he had no period of that doubt as to
whether dream or reality surrounded him which commonly marks an
expected environment of waking men. With a positive cry of joy,
he seized my hand and held it in his two wet, trembling hands, as
a frightened child clings on to someone whom it loves. I tried to
soothe him-

"There, there! it is all right. I have come to stay with you

to-night, and together we will try to fight this evil dream." He
let go my hand suddenly, and sank back on his bed and covered his
eyes with his hands.

"Fight it?-the evil dream! Ah! no sir no! No mortal power

can fight that dream, for it comes form God-and is burned in here;"
and he beat upon his forehead. Then he went on-

It is the same dream, ever the same, and yet it grows in its
power to torture me every time it comes."

"What is the dream?" I asked, thinking that the speaking of

it might give him some relief, but he shrank away from me, and
after a long pause said-

"No, I had better not tell it. It may not come again."

There was manifestly something to conceal from me-something

that lay behind the dream, so I answered-

"All right. I hope you have seen the last of it. But if it
should come again, 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 with what 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
mundane things, so I produced supper, and made him share it with
me, including the contents of the flask. After a little he braced
up, and when I lit my cigar, having given him another, we smoked a
full hour, and talked of many things. Little by little the comfort
of his body stole over his mind, and I could see sleep laying her
gentle hands on his eyelids. He felt it, too, and told me that
now he felt all right, and I might safely leave him; but I told
him that, right or wrong, I was going to see in the daylight. So
I lit my other candle, and began to read as he fell asleep.

By degrees I got interested in my book, so interested that

presently I was startled by its dropping out of my hands. I looked
and saw that Jacob was still asleep, and I was rejoiced to see that
there was on his face a look of unwonted happiness, while his lips
seemed to move with 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 voice from the bed beside me-

"Not with those red hands! Never! never!" On looking at him,

I found that he was still asleep. He woke, however, in an instant,
and did not seem surprised to see me; there was again that strange
apathy as to his surroundings. Then I said:

"Settle, tell me your dream. You may speak freely, for I

shall hold your confidence sacred. While we both live I shall
never mention what you may choose to tell me,"

"I said I would; but I had better tell you first what goes
before the dream, that you may understand. I was a schoolmaster
when I was a very young man; it was only a parish school in a
little village in the West Country. No need to mention any names.
Better not. I was engaged to be married to a young girl whom I
loved and almost reverenced. It was the old story. While we were
waiting for the time when we could afford to set up house together,
another man came along. He was nearly as young as I was, and
handsome, and a gentleman, with all a gentleman's attractive ways
for a woman of our class. He would go fishing, and she would meet
him while I was at my work in school. I reasoned with her and
implored her to give him up. I offered to get married 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 that she was
infatuated with him. Then I took it on myself to meet the man and
ask him to deal well with the girl, for I thought he might mean
honestly by her, so that there might be no talk or chance of talk
on the part of others. I went where I should meet him with none
by, and we met!" Here Jacob Settle had to pause, for something
seemed to rise in his throat, and he almost gasped for breath.
Then went on-

"Sir, as God is above us, there was no selfish thought in my

heart that day, I loved my pretty Mabel too well to be content with
a part of her love, and I had thought of my own unhappiness too
often not to have come to realise that, whatever might come to
her, my hope was gone. He was insolent to me-you, sir, who are a
gentleman, cannot know, perhaps, how galling can be the insolence
of one who is above you in station-but I bore with that. I
implored him to deal well with the girl, for what might be only
a pastime of an idle hour with him might be the breaking of her
heart. For I never had a thought of her truth, or that the worst
of harm could come to her-it was only the unhappiness to her heart
I feared. But when I asked him when he intended to marry her his
laughter galled me so that I lost my temper and 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 her that
then and there I swore he should not live to do her harm. God
knows how it came about, for in such moments of passion it is hard
to remember the steps from a word to a blow, but I found myself
standing over his dead body, with my hands crimson with the blood
that welled from his torn throat. We were alone and he was a
stranger, with none of his kin to seek for him and murder does not
always out-not all at once. His bones may be whitening still, for
all I know, in the pool of the river where I left him. No one
suspected his absence, or why it was, except my poor Mabel, and
she dared not speak. But it was all in vain, for when I came back
again after an absence of months-for I could not live in the
place-I learned that her shame had come and that she had died
in it. Hitherto I had been borne up by the thought that my ill
deed had saved her future, but now, when I learned that I had been
too late, and that my poor love was smirched with that man's sin,
I fled away with the sense of my useless guilt upon me more heavily
than I could bear. Ah! Sir, you that have not done such a sin
don't know what it is to carry it with you. You may think that
custom makes it easy to you, but it is not so. It grows and grows
with every hour, till it becomes intolerable, and with it growing,
too, the feeling that you must for ever stand outside Heaven. You
don't know what that means, and I pray God that you never may.
Ordinary men, to whom 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 let things be, but to those who are doomed
to be shut out for ever you cannot think what it means, you cannot
guess or measure the terrible endless longing to see the gates
opened, and to be able to join the white figures within.

"And this brings me to my dream. It seemed that the portal

was before me, with great gates of massive steel with bars of the
thickness of a mast, rising to the very clouds, and so close that
between them was just a glimpse of a crystal grotto, on whose
shinning walls were figured many white-clad forms with faces
radiant with joy. When I stood before the gate my heart and my
soul were so full of rapture and longing that I forgot. And there
stood at the gate two mighty angels with sweeping wings, and, oh!
so stern of countenance. They held each in one hand a flaming
sword, and in the other the latchet, which moved to and fro at
their lightest touch. Nearer were figures all draped in black,
with heads covered so that only the eyes were seen, and they handed
to each who came white garments such as the angels wear. A low
murmur came that told that all should put on their own robes, and
without soil, or the angels would not pass them in, but would smite
them 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 it moved not, and the angels, loosing the latchet,
pointed to my dress, I looked down, and was aghast, for the whole
robe was smeared with blood. My hands were red; they glittered
with the blood that dripped form them as on that day by the river
bank. And then the angels raised their flaming swords to smite me
down, and the horror was complete-I awoke. Again, and again, and
again, that awful dream comes to me. I never learn form the
experience, I never remember, but at the beginning the hope if
ever there to make the end more appalling; and I know that the
dream dose not come out of the common darkness where the dreams
abide, but that it is sent form God as a punishment! Never,
never shall I be able to pass the gate, for the soil on the angel
garments must ever come from these bloody hands!"

I listened as in a spell as Jacob Settle spoke. There was

something so far away in the tone of his voice-something so dreamy
and mystic in the eyes that looked as if through me at some spirit
beyond-something so lofty in his very diction and in such marked
contrast to his workworn clothes and his poor surroundings that I
wondered if the whole thing were not a dream.

We were both silent for a long time. I kept looking at the

man before me in growing wonderment. Now that his confession had
been made, his soul, which had been crushed to the very earth,
seemed to leap back again to uprightness with some resilient
force. I suppose I ought to have been horrified with his story,
but, strange to say, I was not. It certainly is not pleasant to
be made the recipient of the confidence of a murderer, but this
poor fellow seemed to have had, not only so much provocation, but
so much self-denying purpose in his deed of blood that I did not
feel called upon to pass judgment upon him. My purpose was to
comfort, so I spoke out with what calmness I could, for my heart
was beating fast and heavily-

"You need not despair, Jacob Settle. God is very good, and
his mercy is great. Live on and work on in the hope that some day
you may feel that you have atoned for the past." Here I paused,
for I could see that sleep, natural sleep this time, was creeping
upon him. "Go to sleep," I said; "I shall watch with you here,
and we shall have no more evil dreams to-night."

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, but I think you had best leave me now. I'll try and sleep
this out; I feel a weight off my mind since I have told you all.
If there's anything of the man left in me, I must try and fight
out life alone."

"I'll go to-night, as you wish it," I said; "but take my

advice, and do not live in such a solitary way. Go among men and
women; live among them. Share 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

overmastering him.

I turned to go, and he looked after me. When I had touched

the latch I dropped it, and, coming back to the bed, held out my
hand. He grasped it with both his as he rose to a sitting posture,
and I said my good-night, trying to cheer him-

"Heart, man, heart! There is work in the world for you to do,
Jacob Settle. You can wear those white robes yet and pass through
that gate of steel!"

Then I left him.

A week after I found his cottage deserted, and on asking at

the works was 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 for going about with me, so I spent my days in
excursions to the Trossachs and Loch Katrine and down the Clyde.
On the second last evening of my stay I came back somewhat later
than I had arranged, but found that my host was late too. The
maid told me that he had been sent for to the hospital-a case of
accident at the gas-works, and the dinner was postponed an hour;
so telling her I would stroll down to find her master and walk
back with him, I went out. At the hospital I found him washing
his hands preparatory to starting for home. Casually, I asked
him what his case was.

"Oh, the usual thing! A rotten rope and men's lives of no

account. Two men were working in a gasometer, when the rope that
held their scaffolding broke. It must have occurred just before
the dinner hour, for no one noticed their absence till the men had
returned. There was about seven feet of water in the gasometer,
so they had a hard fight for it, poor fellows. However, one of
them was alive, just alive, but we have had a hard job to pull him
through. It seems that he owes his life to his mate, for I have
never heard of greater heroism. They swam together while their
strength lasted, but at the end they were so done up that even the
lights above, and the men slung with ropes, coming down to help
them, could not keep them up. But one of them stood on the bottom
and held up his comrade over his head, and those few breaths made
all the difference between life and death. They were a shocking
sight when they were taken out, for that water is like a purple
dye with the gas and the tar. The man upstairs looked as if he
had been washed in blood. Ugh!"

"And the other?"

"Oh, he's worse still. But he must have been a very noble
fellow. That struggle under the water must have been fearful;
one can see that by the way the blood has been drawn from the
extremities. It makes the idea of the Stigmata possible to look
at him. Resolution like this could, you would think, do anything
in the world. Ay! it might almost unbar the gates of Heaven. Look
here, old man, it is not a very pleasant 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 it again." While he
was speaking he had brought me into the mortuary of the hospital.

On the bier lay a body covered with a white sheet, which was
wrapped close round it.

"Looks like a chrysalis, don't it? I say, Jack, if there be

anything in the old myth that a soul is typified by a butterfly,
well, then the one that this chrysalis sent forth was a very noble
specimen and took all the sunlight on its wings. See here!" He
uncovered the face. Horrible, indeed, it looked, as though stained
with blood. But I knew him at once, Jacob Settle! My friend
pulled the winding sheet further down.

The hands were crossed on the purple breast as they had been
reverently placed by some tenderhearted person. As I saw them my
heart throbbed with a great exultation, for the memory of his
harrowing dream rushed across my mind. There was no stain now on
those poor, brave hands, for they were blanched white as snow.
 And somehow as I looked I felt that the evil dream was all over.
That noble soul had won a way through the gate at last. The white
robe had now no stain from the hands that had put it on.