There was that in the manner of the stranger, and in the
tremulous shake of his uplifted finger, as he held it between my
eyes and the light, which filled me with unqualified amazement;
but it was not this which had so violently moved me. It was the
pregnancy of solemn admonition in the singular, low, hissing
utterance; and, above all, it was the character, the tone, the
key, of those few, simple, and familiar, yet whispered syllables,
which came with a thousand thronging memories of bygone days, and
struck upon my soul with the shock of a galvanic battery. Ere I
could recover the use of my senses he was gone.
Although this event failed not of a vivid effect upon my
disordered imagination, yet was it evanescent as vivid. For some
weeks, indeed, I busied myself in earnest inquiry, or was wrapped
in a cloud of morbid speculation. I did not pretend to disguise
from my perception the identity of the singular individual who
thus perseveringly interfered with my affairs, and harassed me
with his insinuated counsel. But who and what was this
Wilson?—and whence came he?—and what were his purposes? Upon
neither of these points could I be satisfied; merely
ascertaining, in regard to him, that a sudden accident in his
family had caused his removal from Dr. Bransby’s academy on the
afternoon of the day in which I myself had eloped. But in a brief
period I ceased to think upon the subject; my attention being all
absorbed in a contemplated departure for Oxford. Thither I soon
went; the uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with
an outfit and annual establishment, which would enable me to
indulge at will in the luxury already so dear to my heart,—to vie
in profuseness of expenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the
wealthiest earldoms in Great Britain.
Excited by such appliances to vice, my constitutional temperament
broke forth with redoubled ardor, and I spurned even the common
restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels. But it
were absurd to pause in the detail of my extravagance. Let it
suffice, that among spendthrifts I out-Heroded Herod, and that,
giving name to a multitude of novel follies, I added no brief
appendix to the long catalogue of vices then usual in the most
dissolute university of Europe.
It could hardly be credited, however, that I had, even here, so
utterly fallen from the gentlemanly estate, as to seek
acquaintance with the vilest arts of the gambler by profession,
and, having become an adept in his despicable science, to
practise it habitually as a means of increasing my already
enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my
fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And the very
enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable
sentiment proved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason
of the impunity with which it was committed. Who, indeed, among
my most abandoned associates, would not rather have disputed the
clearest evidence of his senses, than have suspected of such
courses, the gay, the frank, the generous William Wilson—the
noblest and most liberal commoner at Oxford—him whose follies
(said his parasites) were but the follies of youth and unbridled
fancy—whose errors but inimitable whim—whose darkest vice but a
careless and dashing extravagance?
I had been now two years successfully busied in this way, when
there came to the university a young parvenu nobleman,
Glendinning—rich, said report, as Herodes Atticus—his riches,
too, as easily acquired. I soon found him of weak intellect, and,
of course, marked him as a fitting subject for my skill. I
frequently engaged him in play, and contrived, with the gambler’s
usual art, to let him win considerable sums, the more effectually
to entangle him in my snares. At length, my schemes being ripe, I
met him (with the full intention that this meeting should be
final and decisive) at the chambers of a fellow-commoner, (Mr.
Preston,) equally intimate with both, but who, to do him justice,
entertained not even a remote suspicion of my design. To give to
this a better coloring, I had contrived to have assembled a party
of some eight or ten, and was solicitously careful that the
introduction of cards should appear accidental, and originate in
the proposal of my contemplated dupe himself. To be brief upon a
vile topic, none of the low finesse was omitted, so customary
upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how
any are still found so besotted as to fall its victim.
We had protracted our sitting far into the night, and I had at
length effected the manoeuvre of getting Glendinning as my sole
antagonist. The game, too, was my favorite _écarté!_ The rest of
the company, interested in the extent of our play, had abandoned
their own cards, and were standing around us as spectators. The
_parvenu_, who had been induced by my artifices in the early part
of the evening, to drink deeply, now shuffled, dealt, or played,
with a wild nervousness of manner for which his intoxication, I
thought, might partially, but could not altogether account. In a
very short period he had become my debtor to a large amount,
when, having taken a long draught of port, he did precisely what
I had been coolly anticipating—he proposed to double our already
extravagant stakes. With a well-feigned show of reluctance, and
not until after my repeated refusal had seduced him into some
angry words which gave a color of pique to my compliance, did I
finally comply. The result, of course, did but prove how entirely
the prey was in my toils: in less than an hour he had quadrupled
his debt. For some time his countenance had been losing the
florid tinge lent it by the wine; but now, to my astonishment, I
perceived that it had grown to a pallor truly fearful. I say to
my astonishment. Glendinning had been represented to my eager
inquiries as immeasurably wealthy; and the sums which he had as
yet lost, although in themselves vast, could not, I supposed,
very seriously annoy, much less so violently affect him. That he
was overcome by the wine just swallowed, was the idea which most
readily presented itself; and, rather with a view to the
preservation of my own character in the eyes of my associates,
than from any less interested motive, I was about to insist,
peremptorily, upon a discontinuance of the play, when some
expressions at my elbow from among the company, and an
ejaculation evincing utter despair on the part of Glendinning,
gave me to understand that I had effected his total ruin under
circumstances which, rendering him an object for the pity of all,
should have protected him from the ill offices even of a fiend.
What now might have been my conduct it is difficult to say. The
pitiable condition of my dupe had thrown an air of embarrassed
gloom over all; and, for some moments, a profound silence was
maintained, during which I could not help feeling my cheeks
tingle with the many burning glances of scorn or reproach cast
upon me by the less abandoned of the party. I will even own that
an intolerable weight of anxiety was for a brief instant lifted
from my bosom by the sudden and extraordinary interruption which
ensued. The wide, heavy folding doors of the apartment were all
at once thrown open, to their full extent, with a vigorous and
rushing impetuosity that extinguished, as if by magic, every
candle in the room. Their light, in dying, enabled us just to
perceive that a stranger had entered, about my own height, and
closely muffled in a cloak. The darkness, however, was now total;
and we could only feel that he was standing in our midst. Before
any one of us could recover from the extreme astonishment into
which this rudeness had thrown all, we heard the voice of the
intruder.
“Gentlemen,” he said, in a low, distinct, and
never-to-be-forgotten whisper which thrilled to the very marrow
of my bones, “Gentlemen, I make no apology for this behaviour,
because in thus behaving, I am but fulfilling a duty. You are,
beyond doubt, uninformed of the true character of the person who
has to-night won at _écarté_ a large sum of money from Lord
Glendinning. I will therefore put you upon an expeditious and
decisive plan of obtaining this very necessary information.
Please to examine, at your leisure, the inner linings of the cuff
of his left sleeve, and the several little packages which may be
found in the somewhat capacious pockets of his embroidered
morning wrapper.”
While he spoke, so profound was the stillness that one might have
heard a pin drop upon the floor. In ceasing, he departed at once,
and as abruptly as he had entered. Can I—shall I describe my
sensations? Must I say that I felt all the horrors of the damned?
Most assuredly I had little time given for reflection. Many hands
roughly seized me upon the spot, and lights were immediately
reprocured. A search ensued. In the lining of my sleeve were
found all the court cards essential in _écarté_, and, in the
pockets of my wrapper, a number of packs, facsimiles of those
used at our sittings, with the single exception that mine were of
the species called, technically, arrondees; the honours being
slightly convex at the ends, the lower cards slightly convex at
the sides. In this disposition, the dupe who cuts, as customary,
at the length of the pack, will invariably find that he cuts his
antagonist an honor; while the gambler, cutting at the breadth,
will, as certainly, cut nothing for his victim which may count in
the records of the game.
Any burst of indignation upon this discovery would have affected
me less than the silent contempt, or the sarcastic composure,
with which it was received.
“Mr. Wilson,” said our host, stooping to remove from beneath his
feet an exceedingly luxurious cloak of rare furs, “Mr. Wilson,
this is your property.” (The weather was cold; and, upon quitting
my own room, I had thrown a cloak over my dressing wrapper,
putting it off upon reaching the scene of play.) “I presume it is
supererogatory to seek here (eyeing the folds of the garment with
a bitter smile) for any farther evidence of your skill. Indeed,
we have had enough. You will see the necessity, I hope, of
quitting Oxford—at all events, of quitting instantly my
chambers.”
Abased, humbled to the dust as I then was, it is probable that I
should have resented this galling language by immediate personal
violence, had not my whole attention been at the moment arrested
by a fact of the most startling character. The cloak which I had
worn was of a rare description of fur; how rare, how
extravagantly costly, I shall not venture to say. Its fashion,
too, was of my own fantastic invention; for I was fastidious to
an absurd degree of coxcombry, in matters of this frivolous
nature. When, therefore, Mr. Preston reached me that which he had
picked up upon the floor, and near the folding doors of the
apartment, it was with an astonishment nearly bordering upon
terror, that I perceived my own already hanging on my arm, (where
I had no doubt unwittingly placed it,) and that the one presented
me was but its exact counterpart in every, in even the minutest
possible particular. The singular being who had so disastrously
exposed me, had been muffled, I remembered, in a cloak; and none
had been worn at all by any of the members of our party with the
exception of myself. Retaining some presence of mind, I took the
one offered me by Preston; placed it, unnoticed, over my own;
left the apartment with a resolute scowl of defiance; and, next
morning ere dawn of day, commenced a hurried journey from Oxford
to the continent, in a perfect agony of horror and of shame.
I fled in vain. My evil destiny pursued me as if in exultation,
and proved, indeed, that the exercise of its mysterious dominion
had as yet only begun. Scarcely had I set foot in Paris ere I had
fresh evidence of the detestable interest taken by this Wilson in
my concerns. Years flew, while I experienced no relief.
Villain!—at Rome, with how untimely, yet with how spectral an
officiousness, stepped he in between me and my ambition! At
Vienna, too—at Berlin—and at Moscow! Where, in truth, had I not
bitter cause to curse him within my heart? From his inscrutable
tyranny did I at length flee, panic-stricken, as from a
pestilence; and to the very ends of the earth I fled in vain.
And again, and again, in secret communion with my own spirit,
would I demand the questions “Who is he?—whence came he?—and what
are his objects?” But no answer was there found. And then I
scrutinized, with a minute scrutiny, the forms, and the methods,
and the leading traits of his impertinent supervision. But even
here there was very little upon which to base a conjecture. It
was noticeable, indeed, that, in no one of the multiplied
instances in which he had of late crossed my path, had he so
crossed it except to frustrate those schemes, or to disturb those
actions, which, if fully carried out, might have resulted in
bitter mischief. Poor justification this, in truth, for an
authority so imperiously assumed! Poor indemnity for natural
rights of self-agency so pertinaciously, so insultingly denied!
I had also been forced to notice that my tormentor, for a very
long period of time, (while scrupulously and with miraculous
dexterity maintaining his whim of an identity of apparel with
myself,) had so contrived it, in the execution of his varied
interference with my will, that I saw not, at any moment, the
features of his face. Be Wilson what he might, this, at least,
was but the veriest of affectation, or of folly. Could he, for an
instant, have supposed that, in my admonisher at Eton—in the
destroyer of my honor at Oxford,—in him who thwarted my ambition
at Rome, my revenge at Paris, my passionate love at Naples, or
what he falsely termed my avarice in Egypt,—that in this, my
arch-enemy and evil genius, could fail to recognise the William
Wilson of my school boy days,—the namesake, the companion, the
rival,—the hated and dreaded rival at Dr. Bransby’s?
Impossible!—But let me hasten to the last eventful scene of the
drama.
Thus far I had succumbed supinely to this imperious domination.
The sentiment of deep awe with which I habitually regarded the
elevated character, the majestic wisdom, the apparent
omnipresence and omnipotence of Wilson, added to a feeling of
even terror, with which certain other traits in his nature and
assumptions inspired me, had operated, hitherto, to impress me
with an idea of my own utter weakness and helplessness, and to
suggest an implicit, although bitterly reluctant submission to
his arbitrary will. But, of late days, I had given myself up
entirely to wine; and its maddening influence upon my hereditary
temper rendered me more and more impatient of control. I began to
murmur,—to hesitate,—to resist. And was it only fancy which
induced me to believe that, with the increase of my own firmness,
that of my tormentor underwent a proportional diminution? Be this
as it may, I now began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope,
and at length nurtured in my secret thoughts a stern and
desperate resolution that I would submit no longer to be
enslaved.
It was at Rome, during the Carnival of 18—, that I attended a
masquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke Di Broglio. I
had indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the
wine-table; and now the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded
rooms irritated me beyond endurance. The difficulty, too, of
forcing my way through the mazes of the company contributed not a
little to the ruffling of my temper; for I was anxiously seeking,
(let me not say with what unworthy motive) the young, the gay,
the beautiful wife of the aged and doting Di Broglio. With a too
unscrupulous confidence she had previously communicated to me the
secret of the costume in which she would be habited, and now,
having caught a glimpse of her person, I was hurrying to make my
way into her presence. At this moment I felt a light hand placed
upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered, low, damnable
_whisper_ within my ear.
In an absolute phrenzy of wrath, I turned at once upon him who
had thus interrupted me, and seized him violently by the collar.
He was attired, as I had expected, in a costume altogether
similar to my own; wearing a Spanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt
about the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a rapier. A mask
of black silk entirely covered his face.
“Scoundrel!” I said, in a voice husky with rage, while every
syllable I uttered seemed as new fuel to my fury, “scoundrel!
impostor! accursed villain! you shall not—you shall not dog me
unto death! Follow me, or I stab you where you stand!”—and I
broke my way from the ball-room into a small ante-chamber
adjoining, dragging him unresistingly with me as I went.
Upon entering, I thrust him furiously from me. He staggered
against the wall, while I closed the door with an oath, and
commanded him to draw. He hesitated but for an instant; then,
with a slight sigh, drew in silence, and put himself upon his
defence.
The contest was brief indeed. I was frantic with every species of
wild excitement, and felt within my single arm the energy and
power of a multitude. In a few seconds I forced him by sheer
strength against the wainscoting, and thus, getting him at mercy,
plunged my sword, with brute ferocity, repeatedly through and
through his bosom.
At that instant some person tried the latch of the door. I
hastened to prevent an intrusion, and then immediately returned
to my dying antagonist. But what human language can adequately
portray that astonishment, that horror which possessed me at the
spectacle then presented to view? The brief moment in which I
averted my eyes had been sufficient to produce, apparently, a
material change in the arrangements at the upper or farther end
of the room. A large mirror,—so at first it seemed to me in my
confusion—now stood where none had been perceptible before; and,
as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but
with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me
with a feeble and tottering gait.
Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist—it was
Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his
dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them,
upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment—not a line in all
the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not,
even in the most absolute identity, mine own!
It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could
have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said:
_“You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou
also dead—dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst
thou exist—and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine
own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.”_