The Dream

"The Dream" by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu is a short story that explores themes of desire, identity, and the supernatural. The narrative follows a protagonist who experiences a vivid dream that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. As the story unfolds, the dream reveals deeper emotional truths and conflicts within the character, showcasing Le Fanu's skill in crafting psychological tension and eerie atmospheres. With its rich imagery and haunting prose, the tale invites readers to ponder the nature of dreams and their impact on the human psyche.

• Fiction
• Horror
• Short story

								
Dreams! What age, or what country of the world, has not felt and
acknowledged the mystery of their origin and end? I have thought not a
little upon the subject, seeing it is one which has been often forced
upon my attention, and sometimes strangely enough; and yet I have never
arrived at anything which at all appeared a satisfactory conclusion. It
does appear that a mental phenomenon so extraordinary cannot be wholly
without its use. We know, indeed, that in the olden times it has been
made the organ of communication between the Deity and His creatures;
and when a dream produces upon a mind, to all appearance hopelessly
reprobate and depraved, an effect so powerful and so lasting as to break
down the inveterate habits, and to reform the life of an abandoned
sinner, we see in the result, in the reformation of morals which
appeared incorrigible, in the reclamation of a human soul which seemed
to be irretrievably lost, something more than could be produced by a
mere chimera of the slumbering fancy, something more than could arise
from the capricious images of a terrified imagination. And while Reason
rejects as absurd the superstition which will read a prophecy in every
dream, she may, without violence to herself, recognize, even in the
wildest and most incongruous of the wanderings of a slumbering
intellect, the evidences and the fragments of a language which may be
spoken, which has been spoken, to terrify, to warn and to command. We
have reason to believe too, by the promptness of action which in the
age of the prophets followed all intimations of this kind, and by the
strength of conviction and strange permanence of the effects resulting
from certain dreams in latter times--which effects we ourselves may have
witnessed--that when this medium of communication has been employed
by the Deity, the evidences of His presence have been unequivocal. My
thoughts were directed to this subject in a manner to leave a lasting
impression upon my mind, by the events which I shall now relate, the
statement of which, however extraordinary, is nevertheless accurate.

About the year 17--, having been appointed to the living of C----h, I
rented a small house in the town which bears the same name: one morning
in the month of November, I was awakened before my usual time by my
servant, who bustled into my bedroom for the purpose of announcing a
sick call. As the Catholic Church holds her last rites to be totally
indispensable to the safety of the departing sinner, no conscientious
clergyman can afford a moment's unnecessary delay, and in little more
than five minutes I stood ready, cloaked and booted for the road, in the
small front parlour in which the messenger, who was to act as my guide,
awaited my coming. I found a poor little girl crying piteously near the
door, and after some slight difficulty I ascertained that her father was
either dead or just dying.

"And what may be your father's name, my poor child?" said I. She held
down her head as if ashamed. I repeated the question, and the wretched
little creature burst into floods of tears still more bitter than she
had shed before. At length, almost angered by conduct which appeared to
me so unreasonable, I began to lose patience, and I said rather
harshly,--

"If you will not tell me the name of the person to whom you would lead
me, your silence can arise from no good motive, and I might be justified
in refusing to go with you at all."

"Oh, don't say that--don't say that!" cried she. "Oh, sir, it was that
I was afeard of when I would not tell you--I was afeard, when you heard
his name, you would not come with me; but it is no use hidin' it
now--it's Pat Connell, the carpenter, your honour."

She looked in my face with the most earnest anxiety, as if her very
existence depended upon what she should read there. I relieved the child
at once. The name, indeed, was most unpleasantly familiar to me; but,
however fruitless my visits and advice might have been at another time,
the present was too fearful an occasion to suffer my doubts of their
utility, or my reluctance to re-attempting what appeared a hopeless
task, to weigh even against the lightest chance that a consciousness of
his imminent danger might produce in him a more docile and tractable
disposition. Accordingly I told the child to lead the way, and followed
her in silence. She hurried rapidly through the long narrow street which
forms the great thoroughfare of the town. The darkness of the hour,
rendered still deeper by the close approach of the old-fashioned houses,
which lowered in tall obscurity on either side of the way; the damp,
dreary chill which renders the advance of morning peculiarly cheerless,
combined with the object of my walk--to visit the death-bed of a
presumptuous sinner, to endeavour, almost against my own conviction,
to infuse a hope into the heart of a dying reprobate--a drunkard but
too probably perishing under the consequences of some mad fit of
intoxication; all these circumstances served to enhance the gloom and
solemnity of my feelings, as I silently followed my little guide, who
with quick steps traversed the uneven pavement of the Main Street. After
a walk of about five minutes, she turned off into a narrow lane, of that
obscure and comfortless class which is to be found in almost all small
old-fashioned towns, chill, without ventilation, reeking with all manner
of offensive effluviæ, and lined by dingy, smoky, sickly and pent-up
buildings, frequently not only in a wretched but in a dangerous
condition.

"Your father has changed his abode since I last visited him, and, I am
afraid, much for the worse," said I.

"Indeed he has, sir; but we must not complain," replied she. "We have to
thank God that we have lodging and food, though it's poor enough, it is,
your honour."

Poor child! thought I. How many an older head might learn wisdom from
thee--how many a luxurious philosopher, who is skilled to preach but not
to suffer, might not thy patient words put to the blush! The manner and
language of my companion were alike above her years and station; and,
indeed, in all cases in which the cares and sorrows of life have
anticipated their usual date, and have fallen, as they sometimes do,
with melancholy prematurity to the lot of childhood, I have observed the
result to have proved uniformly the same. A young mind, to which joy and
indulgence have been strangers, and to which suffering and self-denial
have been familiarized from the first, acquires a solidity and an
elevation which no other discipline could have bestowed, and which, in
the present case, communicated a striking but mournful peculiarity to
the manners, even to the voice, of the child. We paused before a narrow,
crazy door, which she opened by means of a latch, and we forthwith began
to ascend the steep and broken stairs which led to the sick man's room.

As we mounted flight after flight towards the garret-floor, I heard more

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