WAKEFIELD
In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told astruth, of a man--let us call him Wakefield--who absented himselffor a long time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedlystated, is not very uncommon, nor--without a proper distinctionof circumstances--to be condemned either as naughty ornonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated,is perhaps the strangest, instance on record, of maritaldelinquency; and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be foundin the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived inLondon. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgingsin the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by hiswife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for suchself-banishment, dwelt upwards of twenty years. During thatperiod, he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlornMrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in his matrimonialfelicity--when his death was reckoned certain, his estatesettled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife, long, longago, resigned to her autumnal widowhood--he entered the door oneevening, quietly, as from a day's absence, and became a lovingspouse till death.
This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though ofthe purest originality, unexampled, and probably never to berepeated, is one, I think, which appeals to the generoussympathies of mankind. We know, each for himself, that none of uswould perpetrate such a folly, yet feel as if some other might.To my own contemplations, at least, it has often recurred, alwaysexciting wonder, but with a sense that the story must be true,and a conception of its hero's character. Whenever any subject soforcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in thinking of it.If the reader choose, let him do his own meditation; or if heprefer to ramble with me through the twenty years of Wakefield'svagary, I bid him welcome; trusting that there will be apervading spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them,done up neatly, and condensed into the final sentence. Thoughthas always its efficacy, and every striking incident its moral.
What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out ourown idea, and call it by his name. He was now in the meridian oflife; his matrimonial affections, never violent, were soberedinto a calm, habitual sentiment; of all husbands, he was likelyto be the most constant, because a certain sluggishness wouldkeep his heart at rest, wherever it might be placed. He wasintellectual, but not actively so; his mind occupied itself inlong and lazy musings, that ended to no purpose, or had not vigorto attain it; his thoughts were seldom so energetic as to seizehold of words. Imagination, in the proper meaning of the term,made no part of Wakefield's gifts. With a cold but not depravednor wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with riotousthoughts, nor perplexed with originality, who could haveanticipated that our friend would entitle himself to a foremostplace among the doers of eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintancesbeen asked, who was the man in London the surest to performnothing today which should be remembered on the morrow, theywould have thought of Wakefield. Only the wife of his bosom mighthave hesitated. She, without having analyzed his character, waspartly aware of a quiet selfishness, that had rusted into hisinactive mind; of a peculiar sort of vanity, the most uneasyattribute about him; of a disposition to craft which had seldomproduced more positive effects than the keeping of petty secrets,hardly worth revealing; and, lastly, of what she called a littlestrangeness, sometimes, in the good man. This latter quality isindefinable, and perhaps non-existent.
Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is thedusk of an October evening. His equipment is a drab great-coat, ahat covered with an oilcloth, top-boots, an umbrella in one handand 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, andthe probable time of his return; but, indulgent to his harmlesslove of mystery, interrogates him only by a look. He tells hernot to expect him positively by the return coach, nor to bealarmed 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. Heholds out his hand, she gives her own, and meets his parting kissin the matter-of-course way of a ten years' matrimony; and forthgoes the middle-aged Mr. Wakefield, almost resolved to perplexhis good lady by a whole week's absence. After the door hasclosed behind him, she perceives it thrust partly open, and avision of her husband's face, through the aperture, smiling onher, and gone in a moment. For the time, this little incident isdismissed without a thought. But, long afterwards, when she hasbeen more years a widow than a wife, that smile recurs, andflickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield's visage. Inher many musings, she surrounds the original smile with amultitude of fantasies, which make it strange and awful: as, forinstance, if she imagines him in a coffin, that parting look isfrozen on his pale features; or, if she dreams of him in heaven,still his blessed spirit wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet, forits sake, when all others have given him up for dead, shesometimes doubts whether she is a widow.
But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after himalong the street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt intothe great mass of London life. It would be vain searching for himthere. Let us follow close at his heels, therefore, until, afterseveral superfluous turns and doublings, we find him comfortablyestablished by the fireside of a small apartment, previouslybespoken. He is in the next street to his own, and at hisjourney's end. He can scarcely trust his good fortune, in havinggot thither unperceived--recollecting that, at one time, he wasdelayed by the throng, in the very focus of a lighted lantern;and, again, there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind hisown, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him; and, anon,he heard a voice shouting afar, and fancied that it called hisname. Doubtless, a dozen busybodies had been watching him, andtold his wife the whole affair. Poor Wakefield! Little knowestthou thine own insignificance in this great world! No mortal eyebut mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy bed, foolish man:and, on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee home to goodMrs. Wakefield, and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself, evenfor a little week, from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she,for a single moment, to deem thee dead, or lost, or lastinglydivided from her, thou wouldst be wofully conscious of a changein thy true wife forever after. It is perilous to make a chasm inhuman affections; not that they gape so long and wide--but soquickly 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 theunaccustomed bed. "No,"-thinks he, gathering the bedclothes abouthim,--"I will not sleep alone another night."
In the morning he rises earlier than usual, and sets himself toconsider what he really means to do. Such are his loose andrambling modes of thought that he has taken this very singularstep with the consciousness of a purpose, indeed, but withoutbeing able to define it sufficiently for his own contemplation.The vagueness of the project, and the convulsive effort withwhich he plunges into the execution of it, are equallycharacteristic of a feeble-minded man. Wakefield sifts his ideas,however, as minutely as he may, and finds himself curious to knowthe progress of matters at home--how his exemplary wife willendure her widowhood of a week; and, briefly, how the littlesphere of creatures and circumstances, in which he was a centralobject, will be affected by his removal. A morbid vanity,therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the affair. But, how is heto attain his ends? Not, certainly, by keeping close in thiscomfortable lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the nextstreet to his home, he is as effectually abroad as if thestage-coach had been whirling him away all night. Yet, should hereappear, the whole project is knocked in the head. His poorbrains being hopelessly puzzled with this dilemma, he at lengthventures 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, andguides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just at thecritical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot
uponthe step. Wakefield! whither are you going?
At that instant his fate was turning on the pivot. Littledreaming of the doom to which his first backward step devoteshim, he hurries away, breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt,and hardly dares turn his head at the distant corner. Can it bethat nobody caught sight of him? Will not the wholehousehold--the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart maid servant, andthe dirty little footboy--raise a hue and cry, through Londonstreets, in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master? Wonderfulescape! He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but isperplexed with a sense of change about the familiar edifice, suchas affects us all, when, after a separation of months or years,we again see some hill or lake, or work of art, with which wewere friends of old. In ordinary cases, this indescribableimpression is caused by the comparison and contrast between ourimperfect reminiscences and the reality. In Wakefield, the magicof a single night has wrought a similar transformation, because,in that brief period, a great moral change has been effected. Butthis is a secret from himself. Before leaving the spot, hecatches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife, passing athwartthe front window, with her face turned towards the head of thestreet. The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with theidea that, among a thousand such atoms of mortality, her eye musthave detected him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain besomewhat dizzy, when he finds himself by the coal fire of hislodgings.
So much for the commencement of this long whimwham. After theinitial conception, and the stirring up of the man's sluggishtemperament to put it in practice, the whole matter evolvesitself in a natural train. We may suppose him, as the result ofdeep deliberation, buying a new wig, of reddish hair, andselecting sundry garments, in a fashion unlike his customary suitof brown, from a Jew's old-clothes bag. It is accomplished.Wakefield is another man. The new system being now established, aretrograde movement to the old would be almost as difficult asthe step that placed him in his unparalleled position.Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness occasionallyincident to his temper, and brought on at present by theinadequate sensation which he conceives to have been produced inthe bosom of Mrs. Wakefield. He will not go back until she befrightened half to death. Well; twice or thrice has she passedbefore his sight, each time with a heavier step, a paler cheek,and more anxious brow; and in the third week of hisnon-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 depositsits big-wigged and solemn burden at Wakefield's door, whence,after a quarter of an hour's visit, he emerges, perchance theherald of a funeral. Dear woman! Will she die? By this time,Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling, butstill lingers away from his wife's bedside, pleading with hisconscience that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. Ifaught else restrains him, he does not know it. In the course of afew weeks she gradually recovers; the crisis is over; her heartis sad, perhaps, but quiet; and, let him return soon or late, itwill never be feverish for him again. Such ideas glimmer throughthe midst of Wakefield's mind, and render him indistinctlyconscious that an almost impassable gulf divides his hiredapartment from his former home. "It is but in the next street!"he sometimes says. Fool! it is in another world. Hitherto, he hasput off his return from one particular day to another;henceforward, he leaves the precise time undetermined. Nottomorrow--probably next week--pretty soon. Poor man! The deadhave nearly as much chance of revisiting their earthly homes asthe self-banished Wakefield.
Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of adozen pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond ourcontrol lays its strong hand on every deed which we do, andweaves 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 whichhis heart is capable, while he is slowly fading out of hers. Longsince, it must be remarked, he had lost the perception ofsingularity in his conduct.
Now for a scene! Amind the throng of a London street wedistinguish a man, now waxing elderly, with few characteristicsto attract careless observers, yet bearing, in his whole aspect,the handwriting of no common fate, for such as have the skill toread it. He is meagre; his low and narrow forehead is deeplywrinkled; his eyes, small and lustreless, sometimes wanderapprehensively about him, but oftener seem to look inward. Hebends his head, and moves with an indescribable obliquity ofgait, as if unwilling to display his full front to the world.Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you willallow that circumstances--which often produce remarkable men fromnature's ordinary handiwork--have produced one such here. Next,leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in theopposite direction, where a portly female, considerably in thewane of life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding toyonder church. She has the placid mien of settled widowhood. Herregrets have either died away, or have become so essential to herheart, that they would be poorly exchanged for joy. Just as thelean man and well-conditioned woman are passing, a slightobstruction occurs, and brings these two figures directly incontact. Their hands touch; the pressure of the crowd forces herbosom against his shoulder; they stand, face to face, staringinto each other's eyes. After a ten years' separation, thusWakefield meets his wife!
The throng eddies away, and carries them asunder. The soberwidow, resuming her former pace, proceeds to church, but pausesin the portal, and throws a perplexed glance along the street.She passes in, however, opening her prayer-book as she goes. Andthe man! with so wild a face that busy and selfish London standsto gaze after him, he hurries to his lodgings, bolts the door,and throws himself upon the bed. The latent feelings of yearsbreak out; his feeble mind acquires a brief energy from theirstrength; all the miserable strangeness of his life is revealedto 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 somoulded him to himself, that, considered in regard to hisfellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be saidto possess his right mind. He had contrived, or rather he hadhappened, to dissever himself from the world--to vanish--to giveup his place and privileges with living men, without beingadmitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallelto his. He was in the bustle of the city, as of old; but thecrowd swept by and saw him not; he was, we may figuratively say,always beside his wife and at his hearth, yet must never feel thewarmth of the one nor the affection of the other. It wasWakefield's unprecedented fate to retain his original share ofhuman sympathies, and to be still involved in human interests,while he had lost his reciprocal influence on them. It would be amost curious speculation to trace out the effect of suchcircumstances on his heart and intellect, separately, and inunison. Yet, changed as he was, he would seldom be conscious ofit, but deem himself the same man as ever; glimpses of the truthindeed would come, but only for the moment; and still he wouldkeep saying, "I shall soon go back!"--nor reflect that he hadbeen saying so for twenty years.
I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear, in theretrospect, scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield hadat first limited his absence. He would look on the affair as nomore than an interlude in the main business of his life. When,after a little while more, he should deem it time to reenter hisparlor, his wife would clap her hands for joy, on beholding themiddle-aged Mr. Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake! Would Time butawait 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, Wakefieldis taking his customary walk towards the dwelling which he stillcalls his own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequentshowers that patter down upon the pavement, and are gone before aman can put up his umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefielddiscerns, through the parlor windows of the second floor, the redglow and the glimmer and fitful flash of a comfortable fire. Onthe ceiling appears a grotesque shadow
of good Mrs. Wakefield.The cap, the nose and chin, and the broad waist, form anadmirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with theup-flickering and down-sinking blaze, almost too merrily for theshade of an elderly widow. At this instant a shower chances tofall, and is driven, by the unmannerly gust, full intoWakefield's face and bosom. He is quite penetrated with itsautumnal chill. Shall he stand, wet and shivering here, when hisown hearth has a good fire to warm him, and his own wife will runto fetch the gray coat and small-clothes, which, doubtless, shehas kept carefully in the closet of their bed chamber? No!Wakefield is no such fool. He ascends the steps--heavily!--fortwenty years have stiffened his legs since he came down--but heknows it not. Stay, Wakefield! Would you go to the sole home thatis left you? Then step into your grave! The door opens. As hepasses in, we have a parting glimpse of his visage, and recognizethe crafty smile, which was the precursor of the little joke thathe has ever since been playing off at his wife's expense. Howunmercifully has he quizzed the poor woman! Well, a good night'srest to Wakefield!
This happy event--supposing it to be such--could only haveoccurred at an unpremeditated moment. We will not follow ourfriend across the threshold. He has left us much food forthought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral, andbe shaped into a figure. Amid the seeming confusion of ourmysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system,and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by steppingaside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk oflosing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as itwere, the Outcast of the Universe.