WILLIAM WILSON
What say of it? what say of CONSCIENCE grim, That spectre in my path?
_Chamberlayne's Pharronida._
LET me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page nowlying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation. This hasbeen already too much an object for the scorn--for the horror--for thedetestation of my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have notthe indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of alloutcasts most abandoned!--to the earth art thou not forever dead? to itshonors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations?--and a cloud, dense,dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes andheaven?
I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my lateryears of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime. This epoch--theselater years--took unto themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whoseorigin alone it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow baseby degrees. From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as amantle. From comparatively trivial wickedness I passed, with the strideof a giant, into more than the enormities of an Elah-Gabalus. Whatchance--what one event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with mewhile I relate. Death approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him hasthrown a softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing throughthe dim valley, for the sympathy--I had nearly said for the pity--ofmy fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in somemeasure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wishthem to seek out for me, in the details I am about to give, somelittle oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. I would have themallow--what they cannot refrain from allowing--that, although temptationmay have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus, at least,tempted before--certainly, never thus fell. And is it therefore that hehas never thus suffered? Have I not indeed been living in a dream? Andam I not now dying a victim to the horror and the mystery of the wildestof all sublunary visions?
I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitabletemperament has at all times rendered them remarkable; and, in myearliest infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the familycharacter. As I advanced in years it was more strongly developed;becoming, for many reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to myfriends, and of positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addictedto the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions.Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to my own,my parents could do but little to check the evil propensities whichdistinguished me. Some feeble and ill-directed efforts resulted incomplete failure on their part, and, of course, in total triumph onmine. Thenceforward my voice was a household law; and at an age whenfew children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to theguidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of myown actions.
My earliest recollections of a school-life, are connected with a large,rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England,where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where allthe houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-likeand spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, infancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues,inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anewwith undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell,breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness ofthe dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbeddedand asleep.
It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as I can now in any mannerexperience, to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and itsconcerns. Steeped in misery as I am--misery, alas! only too real--Ishall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary,in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterlytrivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy,adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality whenand where I recognise the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny whichafterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember.
The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds wereextensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortarand broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formedthe limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week--once everySaturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted totake brief walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields--andtwice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner tothe morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Ofthis church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep aspirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remotepew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended thepulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign,with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutelypowdered, so rigid and so vast,---could this be he who, of late, withsour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand,the Draconian laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterlymonstrous for solution!
At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It wasriveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged ironspikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was neveropened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions alreadymentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found aplenitude of mystery--a world of matter for solemn remark, or for moresolemn meditation.
The extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having many capaciousrecesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted theplay-ground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I wellremember it had no trees, nor benches, nor anything similar withinit. Of course it was in the rear of the house. In front lay a smallparterre, planted with box and other shrubs; but through this sacreddivision we passed only upon rare occasions indeed--such as a firstadvent to school or final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parentor friend having called for us, we joyfully took our way home for theChristmas or Midsummer holy-days.
But the house!--how quaint an old building was this!--to me howveritably a palace of enchantment! There was really no end to itswindings--to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, atany given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two storiesone happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to befound three or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateralbranches were innumerable--inconceivable--and so returning in uponthemselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansionwere not very far different from those with which we pondered uponinfinity. During the five years of my residence here, I was never ableto ascertain with precision, in what remote locality lay the littlesleeping apartment assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty otherscholars.
The school-room was the largest in the house--I could not help thinking,in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointedGothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiringangle was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising thesanctum, ”during hours,” of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. Itwas a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in theabsence of the ”Dominic,” we would all have willingly perished by thepeine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, farless reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One ofthese was the pulpit of the ”classical” usher, one of the ”English andmathematical.” Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossingin endless irregularity, were innumerable benches and desks, black,ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed books,and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesquefigures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirelylost what little of original form might have been their portion in dayslong departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of theroom, and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other.
Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yetnot in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life.The teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident tooccupy or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school wasreplete with more intense excitement than my riper youth has derivedfrom luxury, or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that myfirst mental development had in it much of the uncommon--even much ofthe outre. Upon mankind at large the events of very early existencerarely leave in mature age any definite impression. All is grayshadow--a weak and irregular remembrance--an indistinct regathering offeeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. Inchildhood I must have felt with the energy of a man what I now findstamped upon memory in lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable as theexergues of the Carthaginian medals.
Yet in fact--in the fact of the world's view--how little was thereto remember! The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed;the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays, andperambulations; the play-ground, with its broils, its pastimes, itsintrigues;--these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made toinvolve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, anuniverse of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate andspirit-stirring. ”Oh, le bon temps, que ce siecle de fer!”
In truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of mydisposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates,and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an ascendancy over allnot greatly older than myself;--over all with a single exception.This exception was found in the person of a scholar, who, althoughno relation, bore the same Christian and surname as myself;--acircumstance, in fact, little remarkable; for, notwithstanding a nobledescent, mine was one of those everyday appellations which seem, byprescriptive right, to have been, time out of mind, the common propertyof the mob. In this narrative I have therefore designated myself asWilliam Wilson,--a fictitious title not very dissimilar to the real.My namesake alone, of those who in school phraseology constituted ”ourset,” presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class--in thesports and broils of the play-ground--to refuse implicit belief in myassertions, and submission to my will--indeed, to interfere with myarbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there is on earth asupreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master mindin boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions.
Wilson's rebellion was to me a source of the greatestembarrassment;--the more so as, in spite of the bravado with which inpublic I made a point of treating him and his pretensions, I secretlyfelt that I feared him, and could not help thinking the equality whichhe maintained so easily with myself, a proof of his true superiority;since not to be overcome cost me a perpetual struggle. Yet thissuperiority--even this equality--was in truth acknowledged by no one butmyself; our associates, by some unaccountable blindness, seemed not evento suspect it. Indeed, his competition, his resistance, and especiallyhis impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not morepointed than private. He appeared to be destitute alike of the ambitionwhich urged, and of the passionate energy of mind which enabled me toexcel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by awhimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although therewere times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up ofwonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, hisinsults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, andassuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could onlyconceive this singular behavior to arise from a consummate self-conceitassuming the vulgar airs of patronage and protection.
Perhaps it was this latter trait in Wilson's conduct, conjoined with ouridentity of name, and the mere accident of our having entered the schoolupon the same day, which set afloat the notion that we were brothers,among the senior classes in the academy. These do not usually inquirewith much strictness into the affairs of their juniors. I have beforesaid, or should have said, that Wilson was not, in the most remotedegree, connected with my family. But assuredly if we had been brotherswe must have been twins; for, after leaving Dr. Bransby's, I casuallylearned that my namesake was born on the nineteenth of January,1813--and this is a somewhat remarkable coincidence; for the day isprecisely that of my own nativity.
It may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety occasioned meby the rivalry of Wilson, and his intolerable spirit of contradiction,I could not bring myself to hate him altogether. We had, to be sure,nearly every day a quarrel in which, yielding me publicly the palm ofvictory, he, in some manner, contrived to make me feel that it was hewho had deserved it; yet a sense of pride on my part, and a veritabledignity on his own, kept us always upon what are called ”speakingterms,” while there were many points of strong congeniality in ourtempers, operating to awake me in a sentiment which our position alone,perhaps, prevented from ripening into friendship. It is difficult,indeed, to define, or even to describe, my real feelings towardshim. They formed a motley and heterogeneous admixture;--some petulantanimosity, which was not yet hatred, some esteem, more respect, muchfear, with a world of uneasy curiosity. To the moralist it will beunnecessary to say, in addition, that Wilson and myself were the mostinseparable of companions.
It was no doubt the anomalous state of affairs existing between us,which turned all my attacks upon him, (and they were many, either openor covert) into the channel of banter or practical joke (giving painwhile assuming the aspect of mere fun) rather than into a more seriousand determined hostility. But my endeavours on this head were by nomeans uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittilyconcocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of thatunassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the poignancy ofits own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself, and absolutely refusesto be laughed at. I could find, indeed, but one vulnerable point,and that, lying in a personal peculiarity, arising, perhaps, fromconstitutional disease, would have been spared by any antagonist lessat his wit's end than myself;--my rival had a weakness in the faucal orguttural organs, which precluded him from raising his voice at any timeabove a very low whisper. Of this defect I did not fail to take whatpoor advantage lay in my power.
Wilson's retaliations in kind were many; and there was one form of hispractical wit that disturbed me beyond measure. How his sagacity firstdiscovered at all that so petty a thing would vex me, is a question Inever could solve; but, having discovered, he habitually practised theannoyance. I had always felt aversion to my uncourtly patronymic, andits very common, if not plebeian praenomen. The words were venom in myears; and when, upon the day of my arrival, a second William Wilson camealso to the academy, I felt angry with him for bearing the name, anddoubly disgusted with the name because a stranger bore it, who wouldbe the cause of its twofold repetition, who would be constantly in mypresence, and whose concerns, in the ordinary routine of the schoolbusiness, must inevitably, on account of the detestable coincidence, beoften confounded with my own.
The feeling of vexation thus engendered grew stronger with everycircumstance tending to show resemblance, moral or physical, between myrival and myself. I had not then discovered the remarkable fact that wewere of the same age; but I saw that we were of the same height, andI perceived that we were even singularly alike in general contour ofperson and outline of feature. I was galled, too, by the rumor touchinga relationship, which had grown current in the upper forms. In a word,nothing could more seriously disturb me, (although I scrupulouslyconcealed such disturbance,) than any allusion to a similarity of mind,person, or condition existing between us. But, in truth, I had no reasonto believe that (with the exception of the matter of relationship, andin the case of Wilson himself,) this similarity had ever been made asubject of comment, or even observed at all by our schoolfellows. Thathe observed it in all its bearings, and as fixedly as I, was apparent;but that he could discover in such circumstances so fruitful a field ofannoyance, can only be attributed, as I said before, to his more thanordinary penetration.
His cue, which was to perfect an imitation of myself, lay both in wordsand in actions; and most admirably did he play his part. My dress itwas an easy matter to copy; my gait and general manner were, withoutdifficulty, appropriated; in spite of his constitutional defect, even myvoice did not escape him. My louder tones were, of course, unattempted,but then the key, it was identical; and his singular whisper, it grewthe very echo of my own.
How greatly this most exquisite portraiture harassed me, (for it couldnot justly be termed a caricature,) I will not now venture to describe.I had but one consolation--in the fact that the imitation, apparently,was noticed by myself alone, and that I had to endure only the knowingand strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself. Satisfied withhaving produced in my bosom the intended effect, he seemed to chucklein secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was characteristicallydisregardful of the public applause which the success of his wittyendeavours might have so easily elicited. That the school, indeed, didnot feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate inhis sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could notresolve. Perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readilyperceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to the master air ofthe copyist, who, disdaining the letter, (which in a painting is allthe obtuse can see,) gave but the full spirit of his original for myindividual contemplation and chagrin.
I have already more than once spoken of the disgusting air of patronagewhich he assumed toward me, and of his frequent officious interferencewith my will. This interference often took the ungracious character ofadvice; advice not openly given, but hinted or insinuated. I received itwith a repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years. Yet, at thisdistant day, let me do him the simple justice to acknowledge that I canrecall no occasion when the suggestions of my rival were on the sideof those errors or follies so usual to his immature age and seeminginexperience; that his moral sense, at least, if not his general talentsand worldly wisdom, was far keener than my own; and that I might,to-day, have been a better, and thus a happier man, had I lessfrequently rejected the counsels embodied in those meaning whisperswhich I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly despised.
As it was, I at length grew restive in the extreme under his distastefulsupervision, and daily resented more and more openly what I consideredhis intolerable arrogance. I have said that, in the first years of ourconnexion as schoolmates, my feelings in regard to him might havebeen easily ripened into friendship: but, in the latter months of myresidence at the academy, although the intrusion of his ordinary mannerhad, beyond doubt, in some measure, abated, my sentiments, in nearlysimilar proportion, partook very much of positive hatred. Upon oneoccasion he saw this, I think, and afterwards avoided, or made a show ofavoiding me.
It was about the same period, if I remember aright, that, in analtercation of violence with him, in which he was more than usuallythrown off his guard, and spoke and acted with an openness of demeanorrather foreign to his nature, I discovered, or fancied I discovered,in his accent, his air, and general appearance, a something which firststartled, and then deeply interested me, by bringing to mind dim visionsof my earliest infancy--wild, confused and thronging memories of atime when memory herself was yet unborn. I cannot better describe thesensation which oppressed me than by saying that I could with difficultyshake off the belief of my having been acquainted with the being whostood before me, at some epoch very long ago--some point of the pasteven infinitely remote. The delusion, however, faded rapidly as it came;and I mention it at all but to define the day of the last conversation Ithere held with my singular namesake.
The huge old house, with its countless subdivisions, had several largechambers communicating with each other, where slept the greater numberof the students. There were, however, (as must necessarily happen in abuilding so awkwardly planned,) many little nooks or recesses, theodds and ends of the structure; and these the economic ingenuity of Dr.Bransby had also fitted up as dormitories; although, being the merestclosets, they were capable of accommodating but a single individual. Oneof these small apartments was occupied by Wilson.
One night, about the close of my fifth year at the school, andimmediately after the altercation just mentioned, finding every onewrapped in sleep, I arose from bed, and, lamp in hand, stole through awilderness of narrow passages from my own bedroom to that of my rival. Ihad long been plotting one of those ill-natured pieces of practical witat his expense in which I had hitherto been so uniformly unsuccessful.It was my intention, now, to put my scheme in operation, and I resolvedto make him feel the whole extent of the malice with which I was imbued.Having reached his closet, I noiselessly entered, leaving the lamp, witha shade over it, on the outside. I advanced a step, and listened tothe sound of his tranquil breathing. Assured of his being asleep, Ireturned, took the light, and with it again approached the bed. Closecurtains were around it, which, in the prosecution of my plan, Islowly and quietly withdrew, when the bright rays fell vividly uponthe sleeper, and my eyes, at the same moment, upon his countenance. Ilooked;--and a numbness, an iciness of feeling instantly pervaded myframe. My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit becamepossessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror. Gasping forbreath, I lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face. Werethese--these the lineaments of William Wilson? I saw, indeed, that theywere his, but I shook as if with a fit of the ague in fancying theywere not. What was there about them to confound me in this manner? Igazed;--while my brain reeled with a multitude of incoherent thoughts.Not thus he appeared--assuredly not thus--in the vivacity of his wakinghours. The same name! the same contour of person! the same day ofarrival at the academy! And then his dogged and meaningless imitationof my gait, my voice, my habits, and my manner! Was it, in truth, withinthe bounds of human possibility, that what I now saw was the result,merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation?Awe-stricken, and with a creeping shudder, I extinguished the lamp,passed silently from the chamber, and left, at once, the halls of thatold academy, never to enter them again.
After a lapse of some months, spent at home in mere idleness, I foundmyself a student at Eton. The brief interval had been sufficient toenfeeble my remembrance of the events at Dr. Bransby's, or at leastto effect a material change in the nature of the feelings with whichI remembered them. The truth--the tragedy--of the drama was no more.I could now find room to doubt the evidence of my senses; and seldomcalled up the subject at all but with wonder at extent of humancredulity, and a smile at the vivid force of the imagination which Ihereditarily possessed. Neither was this species of scepticism likely tobe diminished by the character of the life I led at Eton. The vortex ofthoughtless folly into which I there so immediately and so recklesslyplunged, washed away all but the froth of my past hours, engulfed atonce every solid or serious impression, and left to memory only theveriest levities of a former existence.
I do not wish, however, to trace the course of my miserable profligacyhere--a profligacy which set at defiance the laws, while it eludedthe vigilance of the institution. Three years of folly, passed withoutprofit, had but given me rooted habits of vice, and added, in a somewhatunusual degree, to my bodily stature, when, after a week of soullessdissipation, I invited a small party of the most dissolute students to asecret carousal in my chambers. We met at a late hour of the night; forour debaucheries were to be faithfully protracted until morning. Thewine flowed freely, and there were not wanting other and perhaps moredangerous seductions; so that the gray dawn had already faintly appearedin the east, while our delirious extravagance was at its height. Madlyflushed with cards and intoxication, I was in the act of insisting upona toast of more than wonted profanity, when my attention was suddenlydiverted by the violent, although partial unclosing of the door of theapartment, and by the eager voice of a servant from without. He saidthat some person, apparently in great haste, demanded to speak with mein the hall.
Wildly excited with wine, the unexpected interruption rather delightedthan surprised me. I staggered forward at once, and a few steps broughtme to the vestibule of the building. In this low and small room therehung no lamp; and now no light at all was admitted, save that of theexceedingly feeble dawn which made its way through the semi-circularwindow. As I put my foot over the threshold, I became aware of thefigure of a youth about my own height, and habited in a white kerseymeremorning frock, cut in the novel fashion of the one I myself wore at themoment. This the faint light enabled me to perceive; but the features ofhis face I could not distinguish. Upon my entering he strode hurriedlyup to me, and, seizing me by the arm with a gesture of petulantimpatience, whispered the words ”William Wilson!” in my ear.
I grew perfectly sober in an instant. There was that in the manner ofthe stranger, and in the tremulous shake of his uplifted finger, as heheld it between my eyes and the light, which filled me with unqualifiedamazement; but it was not this which had so violently moved me. Itwas the pregnancy of solemn admonition in the singular, low, hissingutterance; and, above all, it was the character, the tone, the key, ofthose few, simple, and familiar, yet whispered syllables, which camewith a thousand thronging memories of bygone days, and struck upon mysoul with the shock of a galvanic battery. Ere I could recover the useof my senses he was gone.
Although this event failed not of a vivid effect upon my disorderedimagination, yet was it evanescent as vivid. For some weeks, indeed, Ibusied myself in earnest inquiry, or was wrapped in a cloud of morbidspeculation. I did not pretend to disguise from my perception theidentity of the singular individual who thus perseveringly interferedwith my affairs, and harassed me with his insinuated counsel. Butwho and what was this Wilson?--and whence came he?--and what were hispurposes? Upon neither of these points could I be satisfied; merelyascertaining, in regard to him, that a sudden accident in his family hadcaused his removal from Dr. Bransby's academy on the afternoon of theday in which I myself had eloped. But in a brief period I ceasedto think upon the subject; my attention being all absorbed ina contemplated departure for Oxford. Thither I soon went; theuncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit andannual establishment, which would enable me to indulge at will inthe luxury already so dear to my heart,--to vie in profuseness ofexpenditure with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldoms inGreat Britain.
Excited by such appliances to vice, my constitutional temperament brokeforth with redoubled ardor, and I spurned even the common restraints ofdecency in the mad infatuation of my revels. But it were absurd topause in the detail of my extravagance. Let it suffice, that amongspendthrifts I out-Heroded Herod, and that, giving name to a multitudeof novel follies, I added no brief appendix to the long catalogue ofvices then usual in the most dissolute university of Europe.
It could hardly be credited, however, that I had, even here, so utterlyfallen from the gentlemanly estate, as to seek acquaintance with thevilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adeptin his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means ofincreasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-mindedamong my fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And thevery enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable sentimentproved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason of the impunitywith which it was committed. Who, indeed, among my most abandonedassociates, would not rather have disputed the clearest evidence of hissenses, than have suspected of such courses, the gay, the frank, thegenerous William Wilson--the noblest and most liberal commoner at Oxford--himwhose follies (said his parasites) were but the follies of youth andunbridled fancy--whose errors but inimitable whim--whose darkest vicebut a careless and dashing extravagance?
I had been now two years successfully busied in this way, when therecame to the university a young parvenu nobleman, Glendinning--rich, saidreport, as Herodes Atticus--his riches, too, as easily acquired. I soonfound him of weak intellect, and, of course, marked him as a fittingsubject for my skill. I frequently engaged him in play, and contrived,with the gambler's usual art, to let him win considerable sums, the moreeffectually to entangle him in my snares. At length, my schemes beingripe, I met him (with the full intention that this meeting should befinal and decisive) at the chambers of a fellow-commoner, (Mr. Preston,)equally intimate with both, but who, to do him Justice, entertainednot even a remote suspicion of my design. To give to this a bettercolouring, I had contrived to have assembled a party of some eight orten, and was solicitously careful that the introduction of cards shouldappear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplateddupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse wasomitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matterfor 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 lengtheffected the manoeuvre of getting Glendinning as my sole antagonist. Thegame, too, was my favorite ecarte! The rest of the company, interestedin the extent of our play, had abandoned their own cards, and werestanding around us as spectators. The parvenu, who had been inducedby my artifices in the early part of the evening, to drink deeply, nowshuffled, dealt, or played, with a wild nervousness of manner for whichhis intoxication, I thought, might partially, but could not altogetheraccount. In a very short period he had become my debtor to a largeamount, when, having taken a long draught of port, he did preciselywhat I had been coolly anticipating--he proposed to double our alreadyextravagant stakes. With a well-feigned show of reluctance, and notuntil after my repeated refusal had seduced him into some angry wordswhich gave a color of pique to my compliance, did I finally comply. Theresult, 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 hiscountenance had been losing the florid tinge lent it by the wine; butnow, to my astonishment, I perceived that it had grown to a pallor trulyfearful. I say to my astonishment. Glendinning had been represented tomy eager inquiries as immeasurably wealthy; and the sums which he hadas yet lost, although in themselves vast, could not, I supposed, veryseriously annoy, much less so violently affect him. That he was overcomeby the wine just swallowed, was the idea which most readily presenteditself; and, rather with a view to the preservation of my own characterin the eyes of my associates, than from any less interested motive, Iwas about to insist, peremptorily, upon a discontinuance of the play,when some expressions at my elbow from among the company, and anejaculation evincing utter despair on the part of Glendinning, gave meto understand that I had effected his total ruin under circumstanceswhich, rendering him an object for the pity of all, should haveprotected him from the ill offices even of a fiend.
What now might have been my conduct it is difficult to say. The pitiablecondition of my dupe had thrown an air of embarrassed gloom over all;and, for some moments, a profound silence was maintained, during which Icould not help feeling my cheeks tingle with the many burning glancesof 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 abrief instant lifted from my bosom by the sudden and extraordinaryinterruption which ensued. The wide, heavy folding doors of theapartment were all at once thrown open, to their full extent, with avigorous and rushing impetuosity that extinguished, as if by magic,every candle in the room. Their light, in dying, enabled us just toperceive that a stranger had entered, about my own height, and closelymuffled in a cloak. The darkness, however, was now total; and we couldonly feel that he was standing in our midst. Before any one of us couldrecover from the extreme astonishment into which this rudeness hadthrown all, we heard the voice of the intruder.
”Gentlemen,” he said, in a low, distinct, and never-to-be-forgottenwhisper which thrilled to the very marrow of my bones, ”Gentlemen, Imake no apology for this behaviour, because in thus behaving, I ambut fulfilling a duty. You are, beyond doubt, uninformed of the truecharacter of the person who has to-night won at ecarte a large sumof money from Lord Glendinning. I will therefore put you upon anexpeditious and decisive plan of obtaining this very necessaryinformation. Please to examine, at your leisure, the inner linings ofthe cuff of his left sleeve, and the several little packages which maybe found in the somewhat capacious pockets of his embroidered morningwrapper.”
While he spoke, so profound was the stillness that one might have hearda pin drop upon the floor. In ceasing, he departed at once, and asabruptly as he had entered. Can I--shall I describe my sensations?--mustI say that I felt all the horrors of the damned? Most assuredly I hadlittle time given for reflection. Many hands roughly seized me upon thespot, and lights were immediately reprocured. A search ensued. In thelining of my sleeve were found all the court cards essential in ecarte,and, in the pockets of my wrapper, a number of packs, facsimiles ofthose used at our sittings, with the single exception that mine were ofthe species called, technically, arrondees; the honours being slightlyconvex at the ends, the lower cards slightly convex at the sides. Inthis disposition, the dupe who cuts, as customary, at the length of thepack, will invariably find that he cuts his antagonist an honor; whilethe gambler, cutting at the breadth, will, as certainly, cut nothing forhis victim which may count in the records of the game.
Any burst of indignation upon this discovery would have affected me lessthan the silent contempt, or the sarcastic composure, with which it wasreceived.
”Mr. Wilson,” said our host, stooping to remove from beneath his feetan exceedingly luxurious cloak of rare furs, ”Mr. Wilson, this is yourproperty.” (The weather was cold; and, upon quitting my own room, I hadthrown a cloak over my dressing wrapper, putting it off upon reachingthe scene of play.) ”I presume it is supererogatory to seek here (eyeingthe folds of the garment with a bitter smile) for any farther evidenceof your skill. Indeed, we have had enough. You will see the necessity,I hope, of quitting Oxford--at all events, of quitting instantly mychambers.”
Abased, humbled to the dust as I then was, it is probable that I shouldhave resented this galling language by immediate personal violence, hadnot my whole attention been at the moment arrested by a fact of themost startling character. The cloak which I had worn was of a raredescription of fur; how rare, how extravagantly costly, I shall notventure to say. Its fashion, too, was of my own fantastic invention; forI was fastidious to an absurd degree of coxcombry, in matters of thisfrivolous nature. When, therefore, Mr. Preston reached me that whichhe had picked up upon the floor, and near the folding doors of theapartment, it was with an astonishment nearly bordering upon terror,that I perceived my own already hanging on my arm, (where I had no doubtunwittingly placed it,) and that the one presented me was but its exactcounterpart in every, in even the minutest possible particular. Thesingular being who had so disastrously exposed me, had been muffled,I remembered, in a cloak; and none had been worn at all by any ofthe members of our party with the exception of myself. Retaining somepresence of mind, I took the one offered me by Preston; placed it,unnoticed, over my own; left the apartment with a resolute scowl ofdefiance; and, next morning ere dawn of day, commenced a hurried journeyfrom 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, andproved, indeed, that the exercise of its mysterious dominion had as yetonly begun. Scarcely had I set foot in Paris ere I had fresh evidence ofthe 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 myambition! At Vienna, too--at Berlin--and at Moscow! Where, in truth, hadI not bitter cause to curse him within my heart? From his inscrutabletyranny did I at length flee, panic-stricken, as from a pestilence; andto the very ends of the earth I fled in vain.
And again, and again, in secret communion with my own spirit, wouldI demand the questions ”Who is he?--whence came he?--and what are hisobjects?” But no answer was there found. And then I scrutinized, with aminute scrutiny, the forms, and the methods, and the leading traits ofhis impertinent supervision. But even here there was very little uponwhich to base a conjecture. It was noticeable, indeed, that, in no oneof the multiplied instances in which he had of late crossed my path, hadhe so crossed it except to frustrate those schemes, or to disturb thoseactions, which, if fully carried out, might have resulted in bittermischief. Poor justification this, in truth, for an authority soimperiously assumed! Poor indemnity for natural rights of self-agency sopertinaciously, so insultingly denied!
I had also been forced to notice that my tormentor, for a very longperiod of time, (while scrupulously and with miraculous dexteritymaintaining his whim of an identity of apparel with myself,) had socontrived 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 whathe might, this, at least, was but the veriest of affectation, or offolly. Could he, for an instant, have supposed that, in my admonisherat Eton--in the destroyer of my honor at Oxford,--in him who thwarted myambition at Rome, my revenge at Paris, my passionate love at Naples, orwhat he falsely termed my avarice in Egypt,--that in this, my arch-enemyand evil genius, could fail to recognise the William Wilson of myschool boy days,--the namesake, the companion, the rival,--the hated anddreaded rival at Dr. Bransby's? Impossible!--But let me hasten to thelast eventful scene of the drama.
Thus far I had succumbed supinely to this imperious domination. Thesentiment of deep awe with which I habitually regarded the elevatedcharacter, the majestic wisdom, the apparent omnipresence andomnipotence of Wilson, added to a feeling of even terror, with whichcertain other traits in his nature and assumptions inspired me, hadoperated, hitherto, to impress me with an idea of my own utter weaknessand helplessness, and to suggest an implicit, although bitterlyreluctant submission to his arbitrary will. But, of late days, I hadgiven myself up entirely to wine; and its maddening influence upon myhereditary temper rendered me more and more impatient of control. Ibegan to murmur,--to hesitate,--to resist. And was it only fancy whichinduced me to believe that, with the increase of my own firmness, thatof my tormentor underwent a proportional diminution? Be this as it may,I now began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope, and at lengthnurtured in my secret thoughts a stern and desperate resolution that Iwould submit no longer to be enslaved.
It was at Rome, during the Carnival of 18--, that I attended amasquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke Di Broglio. I hadindulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine-table; andnow the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated me beyondendurance. The difficulty, too, of forcing my way through the mazes ofthe company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper; forI was anxiously seeking, (let me not say with what unworthy motive) theyoung, the gay, the beautiful wife of the aged and doting Di Broglio.With a too unscrupulous confidence she had previously communicated to methe secret of the costume in which she would be habited, and now, havingcaught a glimpse of her person, I was hurrying to make my way into herpresence.--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 thusinterrupted me, and seized him violently by the collar. He was attired,as I had expected, in a costume altogether similar to my own; wearing aSpanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson beltsustaining a rapier. A mask of black silk entirely covered his face.
”Scoundrel!” I said, in a voice husky with rage, while every syllableI uttered seemed as new fuel to my fury, ”scoundrel! impostor! accursedvillain! you shall not--you shall not dog me unto death! Follow me, or Istab you where you stand!”--and I broke my way from the ball-room intoa small ante-chamber adjoining--dragging him unresistingly with me as Iwent.
Upon entering, I thrust him furiously from me. He staggered against thewall, 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 insilence, and put himself upon his defence.
The contest was brief indeed. I was frantic with every species of wildexcitement, and felt within my single arm the energy and power of amultitude. In a few seconds I forced him by sheer strength against thewainscoting, and thus, getting him at mercy, plunged my sword, withbrute ferocity, repeatedly through and through his bosom.
At that instant some person tried the latch of the door. I hastenedto prevent an intrusion, and then immediately returned to my dyingantagonist. But what human language can adequately portray thatastonishment, that horror which possessed me at the spectacle thenpresented to view? The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had beensufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangementsat the upper or farther end of the room. A large mirror,--so at first itseemed to me in my confusion--now stood where none had been perceptiblebefore; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine ownimage, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meetme with a feeble and tottering gait.
Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist--it wasWilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution.His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Nota thread in all his raiment--not a line in all the marked and singularlineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absoluteidentity, mine own!
It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could havefancied that I myself was speaking while he said:
”You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou alsodead--dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thouexist--and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, howutterly thou hast murdered thyself.”