WAKEFIELD

In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth,

of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long time

from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very

uncommon, nor, without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be

condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far

from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record

of marital delinquency, and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be

found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in

London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in

the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or

friends and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment,

dwelt upward of twenty years. During that period he beheld his home

every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so

great a gap in his matrimonial felicity—when his death was reckoned

certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory and his

wife long, long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the

door one evening quietly as from a day’s absence, and became a loving

spouse till death.

This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the

purest originality, unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is

one, I think, which appeals to the general sympathies of mankind. We

know, each for himself, that none of us would perpetrate such a folly,

yet feel as if some other might. To my own contemplations, at least, it

has often recurred, always exciting wonder, but with a sense that the

story must be true and a conception of its hero’s character. Whenever

any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in

thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own meditation; or

if he prefer to ramble with me through the twenty years of Wakefield’s

vagary, I bid him welcome, trusting that there will be a pervading

spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them, done up neatly

and condensed into the final sentence. Thought has always its efficacy

and every striking incident its moral.

What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own idea

and call it by his name. He was now in the meridian of life; his

matrimonial affections, never violent, were sobered into a calm,

habitual sentiment; of all husbands, he was likely to be the most

constant, because a certain sluggishness would keep his heart at rest

wherever it might be placed. He was intellectual, but not actively so;

his mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings that tended to no

purpose or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so

energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper meaning

of the term, made no part of Wakefield’s gifts. With a cold but not

depraved nor wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with riotous

thoughts nor perplexed with originality, who could have anticipated

that our friend would entitle himself to a foremost place among the

doers of eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintances been asked who was the

man in London the surest to perform nothing to-day which should be

remembered on the morrow, they would have thought of Wakefield. Only

the wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She, without having

analyzed his character, was partly aware of a quiet selfishness that

had rusted into his inactive mind; of a peculiar sort of vanity, the

most uneasy attribute about him; of a disposition to craft which had

seldom produced more positive effects than the keeping of petty secrets

hardly worth revealing; and, lastly, of what she called a little

strangeness sometimes in the good man. This latter quality is

indefinable, and perhaps non-existent.

Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk

of an October evening. His equipment is a drab greatcoat, a hat covered

with an oil-cloth, top-boots, an umbrella in one hand and a small

portmanteau in the other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he is to

take the night-coach into the country. She would fain inquire the

length of his journey, its object and the probable time of his return,

but, indulgent to his harmless love of mystery, interrogates him only

by a look. He tells her not to expect him positively by the

return-coach nor to be alarmed should he tarry three or four days, but,

at all events, to look for him at supper on Friday evening. Wakefield,

himself, be it considered, has no suspicion of what is before him. He

holds out his hand; she gives her own and meets his parting kiss in the

matter-of-course way of a ten years’ matrimony, and forth goes the

middle-aged Mr. Wakefield, almost resolved to perplex his good lady by

a whole week’s absence. After the door has closed behind him, she

perceives it thrust partly open and a vision of her husband’s face

through the aperture, smiling on her and gone in a moment. For the time

this little incident is dismissed without a thought, but long

afterward, when she has been more years a widow than a wife, that smile

recurs and flickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield’s visage.

In her many musings she surrounds the original smile with a multitude

of fantasies which make it strange and awful; as, for instance, if she

imagines him in a coffin, that parting look is frozen on his pale

features; or if she dreams of him in heaven, still his blessed spirit

wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet for its sake, when all others have

given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts whether she is a widow.

But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him along the

street ere he lose his individuality and melt into the great mass of

London life. It would be vain searching for him there. Let us follow

close at his heels, therefore, until, after several superfluous turns

and doublings, we find him comfortably established by the fireside of a

small apartment previously bespoken. He is in the next street to his

own and at his journey’s end. He can scarcely trust his good-fortune in

having got thither unperceived, recollecting that at one time he was

delayed by the throng in the very focus of a lighted lantern, and again

there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind his own, distinct from

the multitudinous tramp around him, and anon he heard a voice shouting

afar and fancied that it called his name. Doubtless a dozen busybodies

had been watching him and told his wife the whole affair.

Poor Wakefield! little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this

great world. No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy

bed, foolish man, and on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee

home to good Mrs. Wakefield and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself

even for a little week from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she for

a single moment to deem thee dead or lost or lastingly divided from

her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious of a change in thy true wife

for ever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections—not

that they gape so long and wide, but so quickly close again.

Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed, Wakefield

lies down betimes, and, starting from his first nap, spreads forth his

arms into the wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed bed, “No,”

thinks he, gathering the bedclothes about him; “I will not sleep alone

another night.” In the morning he rises earlier than usual and sets

himself to consider what he really means to do. Such are his loose and

rambling modes of thought that he has taken this very singular step

with the consciousness of a purpose, indeed, but without being able to

define it sufficiently for his own contemplation. The vagueness of the

project and the convulsive effort with which he plunges into the

execution of it are equally characteristic of a feeble-minded man.

Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds

himself curious to know the progress of matters at home—how his

exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of a week, and, briefly, how

the little sphere of creatures and circumstances in which he was a

central object will be affected by his removal. A morbid vanity,

therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the affair. But how is he to

attain his ends? Not, certainly, by keeping close in this comfortable

lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the next street to his

home, he is as effectually abroad as if the stage-coach had been

whirling him away all night. Yet should he reappear, the whole project

is knocked in the head. His poor brains being hopelessly puzzled with

this dilemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving to cross the

head of the street and send one hasty glance toward his forsaken

domicile. Habit—for he is a man of habits—takes him by the hand and

guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just at the

critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon the

step.—Wakefield, whither are you going?

At that instant his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of

the doom to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries away,

breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn his

head at the distant corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of him?

Will not the whole household—the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart

maid-servant and the dirty little footboy—raise a hue-and-cry through

London streets in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master? Wonderful

escape! He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but is perplexed

with a sense of change about the familiar edifice such as affects us

all when, after a separation of months or years, we again see some hill

or lake or work of art with which we were friends of old. In ordinary

cases this indescribable impression is caused by the comparison and

contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality. In

Wakefield the magic of a single night has wrought a similar

transformation, because in that brief period a great moral change has

been effected. But this is a secret from himself. Before leaving the

spot he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife passing athwart

the front window with her face turned toward the head of the street.

The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with the idea that

among a thousand such atoms of mortality her eye must have detected

him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain be somewhat dizzy, when

he finds himself by the coal-fire of his lodgings.

So much for the commencement of this long whim-wham. After the initial

conception and the stirring up of the man’s sluggish temperament to put

it in practice, the whole matter evolves itself in a natural train. We

may suppose him, as the result of deep deliberation, buying a new wig

of reddish hair and selecting sundry garments, in a fashion unlike his

customary suit of brown, from a Jew’s old-clothes bag. It is

accomplished: Wakefield is another man. The new system being now

established, a retrograde movement to the old would be almost as

difficult as the step that placed him in his unparalleled position.

Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness occasionally

incident to his temper and brought on at present by the inadequate

sensation which he conceives to have been produced in the bosom of Mrs.

Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to death.

Well, twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each time with a

heavier step, a paler cheek and more anxious brow, and in the third

week of his non-appearance he detects a portent of evil entering the

house in the guise of an apothecary. Next day the knocker is muffled.

Toward nightfall comes the chariot of a physician and deposits its

big-wigged and solemn burden at Wakefield’s door, whence after a

quarter of an hour’s visit he emerges, perchance the herald of a

funeral. Dear woman! will she die?

By this time Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling,

but still lingers away from his wife’s bedside, pleading with his

conscience that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. If aught

else restrains him, he does not know it. In the course of a few weeks

she gradually recovers. The crisis is over; her heart is sad, perhaps,

but quiet, and, let him return soon or late, it will never be feverish

for him again. Such ideas glimmer through the mist of Wakefield’s mind

and render him indistinctly conscious that an almost impassable gulf

divides his hired apartment from his former home. “It is but in the

next street,” he sometimes says. Fool! it is in another world. Hitherto

he has put off’ his return from one particular day to another;

henceforward he leaves the precise time undetermined—not to-morrow;

probably next week; pretty soon. Poor man! The dead have nearly as much

chance of revisiting their earthly homes as the self-banished

Wakefield.

Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen

pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays

its strong hand on every deed which we do and weaves its consequences

into an iron tissue of necessity.

Wakefield is spellbound. We must leave him for ten years or so to haunt

around his house without once crossing the threshold, and to be

faithful to his wife with all the affection of which his heart is

capable, while he is slowly fading out of hers. Long since, it must be

remarked, he has lost the perception of singularity in his conduct.

Now for a scene. Amid the throng of a London street we distinguish a

man, now waxing elderly, with few characteristics to attract careless

observers, yet bearing in his whole aspect the handwriting of no common

fate for such as have the skill to read it. He is meagre; his low and

narrow forehead is deeply wrinkled; his eyes, small and lustreless,

sometimes wander apprehensively about him, but oftener seem to look

inward. He bends his head and moves with an indescribable obliquity of

gait, as if unwilling to display his full front to the world. Watch him

long enough to see what we have described, and you will allow that

circumstances—which often produce remarkable men from Nature’s ordinary

handiwork—have produced one such here. Next, leaving him to sidle along

the footwalk, cast your eyes in the opposite direction, where a portly

female considerably in the wane of life, with a prayer-book in her

hand, is proceeding to yonder church. She has the placid mien of

settled widowhood. Her regrets have either died away or have become so

essential to her heart that they would be poorly exchanged for joy.

Just as the lean man and well-conditioned woman are passing a slight

obstruction occurs and brings these two figures directly in contact.

Their hands touch; the pressure of the crowd forces her bosom against

his shoulder; they stand face to face, staring into each other’s eyes.

After a ten years’ separation thus Wakefield meets his wife. The throng

eddies away and carries them asunder. The sober widow, resuming her

former pace, proceeds to church, but pauses in the portal and throws a

perplexed glance along the street. She passes in, however, opening her

prayer-book as she goes.

And the man? With so wild a face that busy and selfish London stands to

gaze after him he hurries to his lodgings, bolts the door and throws

himself upon the bed. The latent feelings of years break out; his

feeble mind acquires a brief energy from their strength; all the

miserable strangeness of his life is revealed to him at a glance, and

he cries out passionately, “Wakefield, Wakefield! You are mad!” Perhaps

he was so. The singularity of his situation must have so moulded him to

itself that, considered in regard to his fellow-creatures and the

business of life, he could not be said to possess his right mind. He

had contrived—or, rather, he had happened—to dissever himself from the

world, to vanish, to give up his place and privileges with living men

without being admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise

parallel to his. He was in the bustle of the city as of old, but the

crowd swept by and saw him not; he was, we may figuratively say, always

beside his wife and at his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of

the one nor the affection of the other. It was Wakefield’s

unprecedented fate to retain his original share of human sympathies and

to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his

reciprocal influence on them. It would be a most curious speculation to

trace out the effect of such circumstances on his heart and intellect

separately and in unison. Yet, changed as he was, he would seldom be

conscious of it, but deem himself the same man as ever; glimpses of the

truth, indeed, would come, but only for the moment, and still he would

keep saying, “I shall soon go back,” nor reflect that he had been

saying so for twenty years.

I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear in the

retrospect scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had at

first limited his absence. He would look on the affair as no more than

an interlude in the main business of his life. When, after a little

while more, he should deem it time to re-enter his parlor, his wife

would clap her hands for joy on beholding the middle-aged Mr.

Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake! Would Time but await the close of our

favorite follies, we should be young men—all of us—and till Doomsday.

One evening, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is

taking his customary walk toward the dwelling which he still calls his

own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent showers that patter

down upon the pavement and are gone before a man can put up his

umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns through the

parlor-windows of the second floor the red glow and the glimmer and

fitful flash of a comfortable fire. On the ceiling appears a grotesque

shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield. The cap, the nose and chin and the broad

waist form an admirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with the

up-flickering and down-sinking blaze almost too merrily for the shade

of an elderly widow. At this instant a shower chances to fall, and is

driven by the unmannerly gust full into Wakefield’s face and bosom. He

is quite penetrated with its autumnal chill. Shall he stand wet and

shivering here, when his own hearth has a good fire to warm him and his

own wife will run to fetch the gray coat and small-clothes which

doubtless she has kept carefully in the closet of their bedchamber? No;

Wakefield is no such fool. He ascends the steps—heavily, for twenty

years have stiffened his legs since he came down, but he knows it

not.—Stay, Wakefield! Would you go to the sole home that is left you?

Then step into your grave.—The door opens. As he passes in we have a

parting glimpse of his visage, and recognize the crafty smile which was

the precursor of the little joke that he has ever since been playing

off at his wife’s expense. How unmercifully has he quizzed the poor

woman! Well, a good night’s rest to Wakefield!

This happy event—supposing it to be such—could only have occurred at an

unpremeditated moment. We will not follow our friend across the

threshold. He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which

shall lend its wisdom to a moral and be shaped into a figure. Amid the

seeming confusion of our mysterious world individuals are so nicely

adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that

by stepping aside for a moment a man exposes himself to a fearful risk

of losing his place for ever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it

were, the outcast of the universe.