WHEN Mr. Goodchild had looked out of the Lancaster Inn window for two
hours on end, with great perseverance, he begun to entertain a misgiving
that he was growing industrious. He therefore set himself next, to
explore the country from the tops of all the steep hills in the
neighbourhood.
He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell Thomas Idle what he
had seen. Thomas, on his back reading, listened with great composure,
and asked him whether he really had gone up those hills, and bothered
himself with those views, and walked all those miles?
‘Because I want to know,’ added Thomas, ‘what you would say of it, if you
were obliged to do it?’
‘It would be different, then,’ said Francis. ‘It would be work, then;
now, it’s play.’
‘Play!’ replied Thomas Idle, utterly repudiating the reply. ‘Play! Here
is a man goes systematically tearing himself to pieces, and putting
himself through an incessant course of training, as if he were always
under articles to fight a match for the champion’s belt, and he calls it
Play! Play!’ exclaimed Thomas Idle, scornfully contemplating his one
boot in the air. ‘You _can’t_ play. You don’t know what it is. You
make work of everything.’
The bright Goodchild amiably smiled.
‘So you do,’ said Thomas. ‘I mean it. To me you are an absolutely
terrible fellow. You do nothing like another man. Where another fellow
would fall into a footbath of action or emotion, you fall into a mine.
Where any other fellow would be a painted butterfly, you are a fiery
dragon. Where another man would stake a sixpence, you stake your
existence. If you were to go up in a balloon, you would make for Heaven;
and if you were to dive into the depths of the earth, nothing short of
the other place would content you. What a fellow you are, Francis!’ The
cheerful Goodchild laughed.
‘It’s all very well to laugh, but I wonder you don’t feel it to be
serious,’ said Idle. ‘A man who can do nothing by halves appears to me
to be a fearful man.’
‘Tom, Tom,’ returned Goodchild, ‘if I can do nothing by halves, and be
nothing by halves, it’s pretty clear that you must take me as a whole,
and make the best of me.’
With this philosophical rejoinder, the airy Goodchild clapped Mr. Idle on
the shoulder in a final manner, and they sat down to dinner.
‘By-the-by,’ said Goodchild, ‘I have been over a lunatic asylum too,
since I have been out.’
‘He has been,’ exclaimed Thomas Idle, casting up his eyes, ‘over a
lunatic asylum! Not content with being as great an Ass as Captain
Barclay in the pedestrian way, he makes a Lunacy Commissioner of
himself—for nothing!’
‘An immense place,’ said Goodchild, ‘admirable offices, very good
arrangements, very good attendants; altogether a remarkable place.’
‘And what did you see there?’ asked Mr. Idle, adapting Hamlet’s advice to
the occasion, and assuming the virtue of interest, though he had it not.
‘The usual thing,’ said Francis Goodchild, with a sigh. ‘Long groves of
blighted men-and-women-trees; interminable avenues of hopeless faces;
numbers, without the slightest power of really combining for any earthly
purpose; a society of human creatures who have nothing in common but that
they have all lost the power of being humanly social with one another.’
‘Take a glass of wine with me,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘and let _us_ be
social.’
‘In one gallery, Tom,’ pursued Francis Goodchild, ‘which looked to me
about the length of the Long Walk at Windsor, more or less—’
‘Probably less,’ observed Thomas Idle.
‘In one gallery, which was otherwise clear of patients (for they were all
out), there was a poor little dark-chinned, meagre man, with a perplexed
brow and a pensive face, stooping low over the matting on the floor, and
picking out with his thumb and forefinger the course of its fibres. The
afternoon sun was slanting in at the large end-window, and there were
cross patches of light and shade all down the vista, made by the unseen
windows and the open doors of the little sleeping-cells on either side.
In about the centre of the perspective, under an arch, regardless of the
pleasant weather, regardless of the solitude, regardless of approaching
footsteps, was the poor little dark-chinned, meagre man, poring over the
matting. “What are you doing there?” said my conductor, when we came to
him. He looked up, and pointed to the matting. “I wouldn’t do that, I
think,” said my conductor, kindly; “if I were you, I would go and read,
or I would lie down if I felt tired; but I wouldn’t do that.” The
patient considered a moment, and vacantly answered, “No, sir, I won’t;
I’ll—I’ll go and read,” and so he lamely shuffled away into one of the
little rooms. I turned my head before we had gone many paces. He had
already come out again, and was again poring over the matting, and
tracking out its fibres with his thumb and forefinger. I stopped to look
at him, and it came into my mind, that probably the course of those
fibres as they plaited in and out, over and under, was the only course of
things in the whole wide world that it was left to him to understand—that
his darkening intellect had narrowed down to the small cleft of light
which showed him, “This piece was twisted this way, went in here, passed
under, came out there, was carried on away here to the right where I now
put my finger on it, and in this progress of events, the thing was made
and came to be here.” Then, I wondered whether he looked into the
matting, next, to see if it could show him anything of the process
through which _he_ came to be there, so strangely poring over it. Then,
I thought how all of us, GOD help us! in our different ways are poring
over our bits of matting, blindly enough, and what confusions and
mysteries we make in the pattern. I had a sadder fellow-feeling with the
little dark-chinned, meagre man, by that time, and I came away.’
Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards, and bride-cake,
Mr. Goodchild followed in the same direction. The bride-cake was as
bilious and indigestible as if a real Bride had cut it, and the dinner it
completed was an admirable performance.
The house was a genuine old house of a very quaint description, teeming
with old carvings, and beams, and panels, and having an excellent old
staircase, with a gallery or upper staircase, cut off from it by a
curious fence-work of old oak, or of the old Honduras Mahogany wood. It
was, and is, and will be, for many a long year to come, a remarkably
picturesque house; and a certain grave mystery lurking in the depth of
the old mahogany panels, as if they were so many deep pools of dark
water—such, indeed, as they had been much among when they were trees—gave
it a very mysterious character after nightfall.
When Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle had first alighted at the door, and
stepped into the sombre, handsome old hall, they had been received by
half-a-dozen noiseless old men in black, all dressed exactly alike, who
glided up the stairs with the obliging landlord and waiter—but without
appearing to get into their way, or to mind whether they did or no—and
who had filed off to the right and left on the old staircase, as the
guests entered their sitting-room. It was then broad, bright day. But,
Mr. Goodchild had said, when their door was shut, ‘Who on earth are those
old men?’ And afterwards, both on going out and coming in, he had
noticed that there were no old men to be seen.
Neither, had the old men, or any one of the old men, reappeared since.
The two friends had passed a night in the house, but had seen nothing
more of the old men. Mr. Goodchild, in rambling about it, had looked
along passages, and glanced in at doorways, but had encountered no old
men; neither did it appear that any old men were, by any member of the
establishment, missed or expected.
Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their attention. It was,
that the door of their sitting-room was never left untouched for a
quarter of an hour. It was opened with hesitation, opened with
confidence, opened a little way, opened a good way,—always clapped-to
again without a word of explanation. They were reading, they were
writing, they were eating, they were drinking, they were talking, they
were dozing; the door was always opened at an unexpected moment, and they
looked towards it, and it was clapped-to again, and nobody was to be
seen. When this had happened fifty times or so, Mr. Goodchild had said
to his companion, jestingly: ‘I begin to think, Tom, there was something
wrong with those six old men.’
Night had come again, and they had been writing for two or three hours:
writing, in short, a portion of the lazy notes from which these lazy
sheets are taken. They had left off writing, and glasses were on the
table between them. The house was closed and quiet. Around the head of
Thomas Idle, as he lay upon his sofa, hovered light wreaths of fragrant
smoke. The temples of Francis Goodchild, as he leaned back in his chair,
with his two hands clasped behind his head, and his legs crossed, were
similarly decorated.
They had been discussing several idle subjects of speculation, not
omitting the strange old men, and were still so occupied, when Mr.
Goodchild abruptly changed his attitude to wind up his watch. They were
just becoming drowsy enough to be stopped in their talk by any such
slight check. Thomas Idle, who was speaking at the moment, paused and
said, ‘How goes it?’
‘One,’ said Goodchild.
As if he had ordered One old man, and the order were promptly executed
(truly, all orders were so, in that excellent hotel), the door opened,
and One old man stood there.
He did not come in, but stood with the door in his hand.
‘One of the six, Tom, at last!’ said Mr. Goodchild, in a surprised
whisper.—‘Sir, your pleasure?’
‘Sir, _your_ pleasure?’ said the One old man.
‘I didn’t ring.’
‘The bell did,’ said the One old man.
He said BELL, in a deep, strong way, that would have expressed the church
Bell.
‘I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing you, yesterday?’ said
Goodchild.
‘I cannot undertake to say for certain,’ was the grim reply of the One
old man.
‘I think you saw me? Did you not?’
‘Saw _you_?’ said the old man. ‘O yes, I saw you. But, I see many who
never see me.’
A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man. A cadaverous old man of measured
speech. An old man who seemed as unable to wink, as if his eyelids had
been nailed to his forehead. An old man whose eyes—two spots of fire—had
no more motion than if they had been connected with the back of his skull
by screws driven through it, and rivetted and bolted outside, among his
grey hair.
The night had turned so cold, to Mr. Goodchild’s sensations, that he
shivered. He remarked lightly, and half apologetically, ‘I think
somebody is walking over my grave.’
‘No,’ said the weird old man, ‘there is no one there.’
Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his head enwreathed in
smoke.
‘No one there?’ said Goodchild.
‘There is no one at your grave, I assure you,’ said the old man.
He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat down. He did not bend
himself to sit, as other people do, but seemed to sink bolt upright, as
if in water, until the chair stopped him.
‘My friend, Mr. Idle,’ said Goodchild, extremely anxious to introduce a
third person into the conversation.
‘I am,’ said the old man, without looking at him, ‘at Mr. Idle’s
service.’
‘If you are an old inhabitant of this place,’ Francis Goodchild resumed.
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were in doubt upon, this
morning. They hang condemned criminals at the Castle, I believe?’
‘_I_ believe so,’ said the old man.
‘Are their faces turned towards that noble prospect?’
‘Your face is turned,’ replied the old man, ‘to the Castle wall. When
you are tied up, you see its stones expanding and contracting violently,
and a similar expansion and contraction seem to take place in your own
head and breast. Then, there is a rush of fire and an earthquake, and
the Castle springs into the air, and you tumble down a precipice.’
His cravat appeared to trouble him. He put his hand to his throat, and
moved his neck from side to side. He was an old man of a swollen
character of face, and his nose was immoveably hitched up on one side, as
if by a little hook inserted in that nostril. Mr. Goodchild felt
exceedingly uncomfortable, and began to think the night was hot, and not
cold.
‘A strong description, sir,’ he observed.
‘A strong sensation,’ the old man rejoined.
Again, Mr. Goodchild looked to Mr. Thomas Idle; but Thomas lay on his
back with his face attentively turned towards the One old man, and made
no sign. At this time Mr. Goodchild believed that he saw threads of fire
stretch from the old man’s eyes to his own, and there attach themselves.
(Mr. Goodchild writes the present account of his experience, and, with
the utmost solemnity, protests that he had the strongest sensation upon
him of being forced to look at the old man along those two fiery films,
from that moment.)
‘I must tell it to you,’ said the old man, with a ghastly and a stony
stare.
‘What?’ asked Francis Goodchild.
‘You know where it took place. Yonder!’
Whether he pointed to the room above, or to the room below, or to any
room in that old house, or to a room in some other old house in that old
town, Mr. Goodchild was not, nor is, nor ever can be, sure. He was
confused by the circumstance that the right forefinger of the One old man
seemed to dip itself in one of the threads of fire, light itself, and
make a fiery start in the air, as it pointed somewhere. Having pointed
somewhere, it went out.
‘You know she was a Bride,’ said the old man.
‘I know they still send up Bride-cake,’ Mr. Goodchild faltered. ‘This is
a very oppressive air.’
‘She was a Bride,’ said the old man. ‘She was a fair, flaxen-haired,
large-eyed girl, who had no character, no purpose. A weak, credulous,
incapable, helpless nothing. Not like her mother. No, no. It was her
father whose character she reflected.
‘Her mother had taken care to secure everything to herself, for her own
life, when the father of this girl (a child at that time) died—of sheer
helplessness; no other disorder—and then He renewed the acquaintance that
had once subsisted between the mother and Him. He had been put aside for
the flaxen-haired, large-eyed man (or nonentity) with Money. He could
overlook that for Money. He wanted compensation in Money.
‘So, he returned to the side of that woman the mother, made love to her
again, danced attendance on her, and submitted himself to her whims. She
wreaked upon him every whim she had, or could invent. He bore it. And
the more he bore, the more he wanted compensation in Money, and the more
he was resolved to have it.
‘But, lo! Before he got it, she cheated him. In one of her imperious
states, she froze, and never thawed again. She put her hands to her head
one night, uttered a cry, stiffened, lay in that attitude certain hours,
and died. And he had got no compensation from her in Money, yet. Blight
and Murrain on her! Not a penny.
‘He had hated her throughout that second pursuit, and had longed for
retaliation on her. He now counterfeited her signature to an instrument,
leaving all she had to leave, to her daughter—ten years old then—to whom
the property passed absolutely, and appointing himself the daughter’s
Guardian. When He slid it under the pillow of the bed on which she lay,
He bent down in the deaf ear of Death, and whispered: “Mistress Pride, I
have determined a long time that, dead or alive, you must make me
compensation in Money.”’
‘So, now there were only two left. Which two were, He, and the fair
flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daughter, who afterwards became the
Bride.
‘He put her to school. In a secret, dark, oppressive, ancient house, he
put her to school with a watchful and unscrupulous woman. “My worthy
lady,” he said, “here is a mind to be formed; will you help me to form
it?” She accepted the trust. For which she, too, wanted compensation in
Money, and had it.
‘The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the conviction, that
there was no escape from him. She was taught, from the first, to regard
him as her future husband—the man who must marry her—the destiny that
overshadowed her—the appointed certainty that could never be evaded. The
poor fool was soft white wax in their hands, and took the impression that
they put upon her. It hardened with time. It became a part of herself.
Inseparable from herself, and only to be torn away from her, by tearing
life away from her.
‘Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy garden. He
was jealous of the very light and air getting to her, and they kept her
close. He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the
strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the house-front, the
moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit-trees in the red-walled garden,
the weeds to over-run its green and yellow walks. He surrounded her with
images of sorrow and desolation. He caused her to be filled with fears
of the place and of the stories that were told of it, and then on pretext
of correcting them, to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about
it in the dark. When her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors,
then, he would come out of one of the hiding-places from which he
overlooked her, and present himself as her sole resource.
‘Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment her life presented
to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind and power
to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was secured. She was
twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he brought her home to the
gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive Bride of three
weeks.
[Picture: A submissive bride]
‘He had dismissed the governess by that time—what he had left to do, he
could best do alone—and they came back, upon a rain night, to the scene
of her long preparation. She turned to him upon the threshold, as the
rain was dripping from the porch, and said:
‘“O sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for me!”
‘“Well!” he answered. “And if it were?”
‘“O sir!” she returned to him, “look kindly on me, and be merciful to me!
I beg your pardon. I will do anything you wish, if you will only forgive
me!”
‘That had become the poor fool’s constant song: “I beg your pardon,” and
“Forgive me!”
‘She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but contempt for her. But,
she had long been in the way, and he had long been weary, and the work
was near its end, and had to be worked out.
‘“You fool,” he said. “Go up the stairs!”
‘She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, “I will do anything you wish!” When
he came into the Bride’s Chamber, having been a little retarded by the
heavy fastenings of the great door (for they were alone in the house, and
he had arranged that the people who attended on them should come and go
in the day), he found her withdrawn to the furthest corner, and there
standing pressed against the paneling as if she would have shrunk through
it: her flaxen hair all wild about her face, and her large eyes staring
at him in vague terror.
‘“What are you afraid of? Come and sit down by me.”
‘“I will do anything you wish. I beg your pardon, sir. Forgive me!”
Her monotonous tune as usual.
‘“Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to-morrow, in your own
hand. You may as well be seen by others, busily engaged upon it. When
you have written it all fairly, and corrected all mistakes, call in any
two people there may be about the house, and sign your name to it before
them. Then, put it in your bosom to keep it safe, and when I sit here
again to-morrow night, give it to me.”
‘“I will do it all, with the greatest care. I will do anything you
wish.”
‘“Don’t shake and tremble, then.”
‘“I will try my utmost not to do it—if you will only forgive me!”
‘Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she had been told. He
often passed in and out of the room, to observe her, and always saw her
slowly and laboriously writing: repeating to herself the words she
copied, in appearance quite mechanically, and without caring or
endeavouring to comprehend them, so that she did her task. He saw her
follow the directions she had received, in all particulars; and at night,
when they were alone again in the same Bride’s Chamber, and he drew his
chair to the hearth, she timidly approached him from her distant seat,
took the paper from her bosom, and gave it into his hand.
‘It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of her death. He
put her before him, face to face, that he might look at her steadily; and
he asked her, in so many plain words, neither fewer nor more, did she
know that?
‘There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white dress, and they made
her face look whiter and her eyes look larger as she nodded her head.
There were spots of ink upon the hand with which she stood before him,
nervously plaiting and folding her white skirts.
‘He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more closely and steadily,
in the face. “Now, die! I have done with you.”
‘She shrunk, and uttered a low, suppressed cry.
‘“I am not going to kill you. I will not endanger my life for yours.
Die!”
‘He sat before her in the gloomy Bride’s Chamber, day after day, night
after night, looking the word at her when he did not utter it. As often
as her large unmeaning eyes were raised from the hands in which she
rocked her head, to the stern figure, sitting with crossed arms and
knitted forehead, in the chair, they read in it, “Die!” When she dropped
asleep in exhaustion, she was called back to shuddering consciousness, by
the whisper, “Die!” When she fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned,
she was answered “Die!” When she had out-watched and out-suffered the
long night, and the rising sun flamed into the sombre room, she heard it
hailed with, “Another day and not dead?—Die!”
‘Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all mankind, and engaged
alone in such a struggle without any respite, it came to this—that either
he must die, or she. He knew it very well, and concentrated his strength
against her feebleness. Hours upon hours he held her by the arm when her
arm was black where he held it, and bade her Die!
‘It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise. He computed the time
to be half-past four; but, his forgotten watch had run down, and he could
not be sure. She had broken away from him in the night, with loud and
sudden cries—the first of that kind to which she had given vent—and he
had had to put his hands over her mouth. Since then, she had been quiet
in the corner of the paneling where she had sunk down; and he had left
her, and had gone back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to
his chair.
‘Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in the leaden dawn,
he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards him—a white
wreck of hair, and dress, and wild eyes, pushing itself on by an
irresolute and bending hand.
‘“O, forgive me! I will do anything. O, sir, pray tell me I may live!”
‘“Die!”
‘“Are you so resolved? Is there no hope for me?”
‘“Die!”
‘Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and fear; wonder and fear
changed to reproach; reproach to blank nothing. It was done. He was not
at first so sure it was done, but that the morning sun was hanging jewels
in her hair—he saw the diamond, emerald, and ruby, glittering among it in
little points, as he stood looking down at her—when he lifted her and
laid her on her bed.
‘She was soon laid in the ground. And now they were all gone, and he had
compensated himself well.
‘He had a mind to travel. Not that he meant to waste his Money, for he
was a pinching man and liked his Money dearly (liked nothing else,
indeed), but, that he had grown tired of the desolate house and wished to
turn his back upon it and have done with it. But, the house was worth
Money, and Money must not be thrown away. He determined to sell it
before he went. That it might look the less wretched and bring a better
price, he hired some labourers to work in the overgrown garden; to cut
out the dead wood, trim the ivy that drooped in heavy masses over the
windows and gables, and clear the walks in which the weeds were growing
mid-leg high.
‘He worked, himself, along with them. He worked later than they did,
and, one evening at dusk, was left working alone, with his bill-hook in
his hand. One autumn evening, when the Bride was five weeks dead.
‘“It grows too dark to work longer,” he said to himself, “I must give
over for the night.”
‘He detested the house, and was loath to enter it. He looked at the dark
porch waiting for him like a tomb, and felt that it was an accursed
house. Near to the porch, and near to where he stood, was a tree whose
branches waved before the old bay-window of the Bride’s Chamber, where it
had been done. The tree swung suddenly, and made him start. It swung
again, although the night was still. Looking up into it, he saw a figure
among the branches.
‘It was the figure of a young man. The face looked down, as his looked
up; the branches cracked and swayed; the figure rapidly descended, and
slid upon its feet before him. A slender youth of about her age, with
long light brown hair.
‘“What thief are you?” he said, seizing the youth by the collar.
‘The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a blow with his arm
across the face and throat. They closed, but the young man got from him
and stepped back, crying, with great eagerness and horror, “Don’t touch
me! I would as lieve be touched by the Devil!”
‘He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking at the young
man. For, the young man’s look was the counterpart of her last look, and
he had not expected ever to see that again.
‘“I am no thief. Even if I were, I would not have a coin of your wealth,
if it would buy me the Indies. You murderer!”
‘“What!”
‘“I climbed it,” said the young man, pointing up into the tree, “for the
first time, nigh four years ago. I climbed it, to look at her. I saw
her. I spoke to her. I have climbed it, many a time, to watch and
listen for her. I was a boy, hidden among its leaves, when from that
bay-window she gave me this!”
‘He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning ribbon.
‘“Her life,” said the young man, “was a life of mourning. She gave me
this, as a token of it, and a sign that she was dead to every one but
you. If I had been older, if I had seen her sooner, I might have saved
her from you. But, she was fast in the web when I first climbed the
tree, and what could I do then to break it!”
‘In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing and crying: weakly
at first, then passionately.
‘“Murderer! I climbed the tree on the night when you brought her back.
I heard her, from the tree, speak of the Death-watch at the door. I was
three times in the tree while you were shut up with her, slowly killing
her. I saw her, from the tree, lie dead upon her bed. I have watched
you, from the tree, for proofs and traces of your guilt. The manner of
it, is a mystery to me yet, but I will pursue you until you have rendered
up your life to the hangman. You shall never, until then, be rid of me.
I loved her! I can know no relenting towards you. Murderer, I loved
her!”
‘The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered away in his descent
from the tree. He moved towards the gate. He had to pass—Him—to get to
it. There was breadth for two old-fashioned carriages abreast; and the
youth’s abhorrence, openly expressed in every feature of his face and
limb of his body, and very hard to bear, had verge enough to keep itself
at a distance in. He (by which I mean the other) had not stirred hand or
foot, since he had stood still to look at the boy. He faced round, now,
to follow him with his eyes. As the back of the bare light-brown head
was turned to him, he saw a red curve stretch from his hand to it. He
knew, before he threw the bill-hook, where it had alighted—I say, had
alighted, and not, would alight; for, to his clear perception the thing
was done before he did it. It cleft the head, and it remained there, and
the boy lay on his face.
‘He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the tree. As soon as it
was light in the morning, he worked at turning up all the ground near the
tree, and hacking and hewing at the neighbouring bushes and undergrowth.
When the labourers came, there was nothing suspicious, and nothing
suspected.
‘But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions, and destroyed
the triumph of the scheme he had so long concerted, and so successfully
worked out. He had got rid of the Bride, and had acquired her fortune
without endangering his life; but now, for a death by which he had gained
nothing, he had evermore to live with a rope around his neck.
‘Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom and horror, which he
could not endure. Being afraid to sell it or to quit it, lest discovery
should be made, he was forced to live in it. He hired two old people,
man and wife, for his servants; and dwelt in it, and dreaded it. His
great difficulty, for a long time, was the garden. Whether he should
keep it trim, whether he should suffer it to fall into its former state
of neglect, what would be the least likely way of attracting attention to
it?
‘He took the middle course of gardening, himself, in his evening leisure,
and of then calling the old serving-man to help him; but, of never
letting him work there alone. And he made himself an arbour over against
the tree, where he could sit and see that it was safe.
‘As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his mind perceived dangers
that were always changing. In the leafy time, he perceived that the
upper boughs were growing into the form of the young man—that they made
the shape of him exactly, sitting in a forked branch swinging in the
wind. In the time of the falling leaves, he perceived that they came
down from the tree, forming tell-tale letters on the path, or that they
had a tendency to heap themselves into a churchyard mound above the
grave. In the winter, when the tree was bare, he perceived that the
boughs swung at him the ghost of the blow the young man had given, and
that they threatened him openly. In the spring, when the sap was
mounting in the trunk, he asked himself, were the dried-up particles of
blood mounting with it: to make out more obviously this year than last,
the leaf-screened figure of the young man, swinging in the wind?
‘However, he turned his Money over and over, and still over. He was in
the dark trade, the gold-dust trade, and most secret trades that yielded
great returns. In ten years, he had turned his Money over, so many
times, that the traders and shippers who had dealings with him,
absolutely did not lie—for once—when they declared that he had increased
his fortune, Twelve Hundred Per Cent.
‘He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when people could be lost
easily. He had heard who the youth was, from hearing of the search that
was made after him; but, it died away, and the youth was forgotten.
‘The annual round of changes in the tree had been repeated ten times
since the night of the burial at its foot, when there was a great
thunder-storm over this place. It broke at midnight, and roared until
morning. The first intelligence he heard from his old serving-man that
morning, was, that the tree had been struck by Lightning.
‘It had been riven down the stem, in a very surprising manner, and the
stem lay in two blighted shafts: one resting against the house, and one
against a portion of the old red garden-wall in which its fall had made a
gap. The fissure went down the tree to a little above the earth, and
there stopped. There was great curiosity to see the tree, and, with most
of his former fears revived, he sat in his arbour—grown quite an old
man—watching the people who came to see it.
‘They quickly began to come, in such dangerous numbers, that he closed
his garden-gate and refused to admit any more. But, there were certain
men of science who travelled from a distance to examine the tree, and, in
an evil hour, he let them in!—Blight and Murrain on them, let them in!
‘They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and closely examine it, and
the earth about it. Never, while he lived! They offered money for it.
They! Men of science, whom he could have bought by the gross, with a
scratch of his pen! He showed them the garden-gate again, and locked and
barred it.
‘But they were bent on doing what they wanted to do, and they bribed the
old serving-man—a thankless wretch who regularly complained when he
received his wages, of being underpaid—and they stole into the garden by
night with their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and fell to at the tree.
He was lying in a turret-room on the other side of the house (the Bride’s
Chamber had been unoccupied ever since), but he soon dreamed of picks and
shovels, and got up.
‘He came to an upper window on that side, whence he could see their
lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in a heap which he had himself
disturbed and put back, when it was last turned to the air. It was
found! They had that minute lighted on it. They were all bending over
it. One of them said, “The skull is fractured;” and another, “See here
the bones;” and another, “See here the clothes;” and then the first
struck in again, and said, “A rusty bill-hook!”
‘He became sensible, next day, that he was already put under a strict
watch, and that he could go nowhere without being followed. Before a
week was out, he was taken and laid in hold. The circumstances were
gradually pieced together against him, with a desperate malignity, and an
appalling ingenuity. But, see the justice of men, and how it was
extended to him! He was further accused of having poisoned that girl in
the Bride’s Chamber. He, who had carefully and expressly avoided
imperilling a hair of his head for her, and who had seen her die of her
own incapacity!
‘There was doubt for which of the two murders he should be first tried;
but, the real one was chosen, and he was found Guilty, and cast for
death. Bloodthirsty wretches! They would have made him Guilty of
anything, so set they were upon having his life.
‘His money could do nothing to save him, and he was hanged. _I_ am He,
and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle with my face to the wall, a hundred
years ago!’
* * * * *
At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry out.
But, the two fiery lines extending from the old man’s eyes to his own,
kept him down, and he could not utter a sound. His sense of hearing,
however, was acute, and he could hear the clock strike Two. No sooner
had he heard the clock strike Two, than he saw before him Two old men!
Two.
The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films of fire: each,
exactly like the other: each, addressing him at precisely one and the
same instant: each, gnashing the same teeth in the same head, with the
same twitched nostril above them, and the same suffused expression around
it. Two old men. Differing in nothing, equally distinct to the sight,
the copy no fainter than the original, the second as real as the first.
‘At what time,’ said the Two old men, ‘did you arrive at the door below?’
‘At Six.’
‘And there were Six old men upon the stairs!’
Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his brow, or tried to do
it, the Two old men proceeded in one voice, and in the singular number:
‘I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skeleton put together and
re-hung on an iron hook, when it began to be whispered that the Bride’s
Chamber was haunted. It _was_ haunted, and I was there.
‘_We_ were there. She and I were there. I, in the chair upon the
hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself towards me on the
floor. But, I was the speaker no more, and the one word that she said to
me from midnight until dawn was, ‘Live!’
‘The youth was there, likewise. In the tree outside the window. Coming
and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and gave. He has, ever
since, been there, peeping in at me in my torment; revealing to me by
snatches, in the pale lights and slatey shadows where he comes and goes,
bare-headed—a bill-hook, standing edgewise in his hair.
‘In the Bride’s Chamber, every night from midnight until dawn—one month
in the year excepted, as I am going to tell you—he hides in the tree, and
she comes towards me on the floor; always approaching; never coming
nearer; always visible as if by moon-light, whether the moon shines or
no; always saying, from mid-night until dawn, her one word, “Live!”
‘But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this life—this present
month of thirty days—the Bride’s Chamber is empty and quiet. Not so my
old dungeon. Not so the rooms where I was restless and afraid, ten
years. Both are fitfully haunted then. At One in the morning. I am
what you saw me when the clock struck that hour—One old man. At Two in
the morning, I am Two old men. At Three, I am Three. By Twelve at noon,
I am Twelve old men, One for every hundred per cent. of old gain. Every
one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old power of suffering and agony.
From that hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and
fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner. At Twelve at
night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside Lancaster
Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall!
‘When the Bride’s Chamber was first haunted, it was known to me that this
punishment would never cease, until I could make its nature, and my
story, known to two living men together. I waited for the coming of two
living men together into the Bride’s Chamber, years upon years. It was
infused into my knowledge (of the means I am ignorant) that if two living
men, with their eyes open, could be in the Bride’s Chamber at One in the
morning, they would see me sitting in my chair.
‘At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled, brought
two men to try the adventure. I was scarcely struck upon the hearth at
midnight (I come there as if the Lightning blasted me into being), when I
heard them ascending the stairs. Next, I saw them enter. One of them
was a bold, gay, active man, in the prime of life, some five and forty
years of age; the other, a dozen years younger. They brought provisions
with them in a basket, and bottles. A young woman accompanied them, with
wood and coals for the lighting of the fire. When she had lighted it,
the bold, gay, active man accompanied her along the gallery outside the
room, to see her safely down the staircase, and came back laughing.
‘He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents of the
basket on the table before the fire—little recking of me, in my appointed
station on the hearth, close to him—and filled the glasses, and ate and
drank. His companion did the same, and was as cheerful and confident as
he: though he was the leader. When they had supped, they laid pistols on
the table, turned to the fire, and began to smoke their pipes of foreign
make.
‘They had travelled together, and had been much together, and had an
abundance of subjects in common. In the midst of their talking and
laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leader’s being always
ready for any adventure; that one, or any other. He replied in these
words:
‘“Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing else, I am afraid of
myself.”
‘His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, in what sense?
How?
‘“Why, thus,” he returned. “Here is a Ghost to be disproved. Well! I
cannot answer for what my fancy might do if I were alone here, or what
tricks my senses might play with me if they had me to themselves. But,
in company with another man, and especially with Dick, I would consent to
outface all the Ghosts that were ever of in the universe.”
‘“I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much importance
to-night,” said the other.
‘“Of so much,” rejoined the leader, more seriously than he had spoken
yet, “that I would, for the reason I have given, on no account have
undertaken to pass the night here alone.”
‘It was within a few minutes of One. The head of the younger man had
drooped when he made his last remark, and it drooped lower now.
‘“Keep awake, Dick!” said the leader, gaily. “The small hours are the
worst.”
‘He tried, but his head drooped again.
‘“Dick!” urged the leader. “Keep awake!”
‘“I can’t,” he indistinctly muttered. “I don’t know what strange
influence is stealing over me. I can’t.”
‘His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, and I, in my different
way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke of One, and I felt
that the second watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon
me that I must send him to sleep.
‘“Get up and walk, Dick!” cried the leader. “Try!”
‘It was in vain to go behind the slumber’s chair and shake him. One
o’clock sounded, and I was present to the elder man, and he stood
transfixed before me.
‘To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, without hope of benefit.
To him alone, I was an awful phantom making a quite useless confession.
I foresee it will ever be the same. The two living men together will
never come to release me. When I appear, the senses of one of the two
will be locked in sleep; he will neither see nor hear me; my
communication will ever be made to a solitary listener, and will ever be
unserviceable. Woe! Woe! Woe!’
As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their hands, it shot into Mr.
Goodchild’s mind that he was in the terrible situation of being virtually
alone with the spectre, and that Mr. Idle’s immoveability was explained
by his having been charmed asleep at One o’clock. In the terror of this
sudden discovery which produced an indescribable dread, he struggled so
hard to get free from the four fiery threads, that he snapped them, after
he had pulled them out to a great width. Being then out of bonds, he
caught up Mr. Idle from the sofa and rushed down-stairs with him.
* * * * *
‘What are you about, Francis?’ demanded Mr. Idle. ‘My bedroom is not
down here. What the deuce are you carrying me at all for? I can walk
with a stick now. I don’t want to be carried. Put me down.’
Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked about him wildly.
‘What are you doing? Idiotically plunging at your own sex, and rescuing
them or perishing in the attempt?’ asked Mr. Idle, in a highly petulant
state.
‘The One old man!’ cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly,—‘and the Two old
men!’
Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than ‘The One old woman, I think you
mean,’ as he began hobbling his way back up the staircase, with the
assistance of its broad balustrade.
‘I assure you, Tom,’ began Mr. Goodchild, attending at his side, ‘that
since you fell asleep—’
‘Come, I like that!’ said Thomas Idle, ‘I haven’t closed an eye!’
With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the disgraceful action
of going to sleep out of bed, which is the lot of all mankind, Mr. Idle
persisted in this declaration. The same peculiar sensitiveness impelled
Mr. Goodchild, on being taxed with the same crime, to repudiate it with
honourable resentment. The settlement of the question of The One old man
and The Two old men was thus presently complicated, and soon made quite
impracticable. Mr. Idle said it was all Bride-cake, and fragments, newly
arranged, of things seen and thought about in the day. Mr. Goodchild
said how could that be, when he hadn’t been asleep, and what right could
Mr. Idle have to say so, who had been asleep? Mr. Idle said he had never
been asleep, and never did go to sleep, and that Mr. Goodchild, as a
general rule, was always asleep. They consequently parted for the rest
of the night, at their bedroom doors, a little ruffled. Mr. Goodchild’s
last words were, that he had had, in that real and tangible old
sitting-room of that real and tangible old Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle
denied its existence?), every sensation and experience, the present
record of which is now within a line or two of completion; and that he
would write it out and print it every word. Mr. Idle returned that he
might if he liked—and he did like, and has now done it.