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 upwards 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 generous

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 ended 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 today 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 great-coat, a

hat covered with an oilcloth, 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 afterwards, 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 wofully conscious of a change

in thy true wife forever 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 towards 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 towards 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 whimwham. 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.

Towards 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 midst 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

tomorrow--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 spell-bound. 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 had lost the perception of

singularity in his conduct.

Now for a scene! Amind 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 himself, 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 reenter 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 towards 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 bed chamber? 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 forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it

were, the Outcast of the Universe.