Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1797 page)

A fortnight after that conversation, she died.  In course of time, Arthur married again.  Of late years, he has lived principally in London, and I have seen little or nothing of him.

I have many years to pass over before I can approach to anything like a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative.  And even when that later period is reached, the little that I have to say will not occupy your attention for more than a few minutes.  Between six and seven years ago, the gentleman to whom I introduced you in this room, came to me, with good professional recommendations, to fill the position of my assistant.  We met, not like strangers, but like friends — the only difference between us being, that I was very much surprised to see him, and that he did not appear to be at all surprised to see me.  If he was my son or my brother, I believe he could not be fonder of me than he is; but he has never volunteered any confidences since he has been here, on the subject of his past life.  I saw something that was familiar to me in his face when we first met; and yet it was also something that suggested the idea of change.  I had a notion once that my patient at the Inn might be a natural son of Mr. Holliday’s; I had another idea that he might also have been the man who was engaged to Arthur’s first wife; and I have a third idea, still clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the only man in England who could really enlighten me, if he chose, on both those doubtful points.  His hair is not black, now, and his eyes are dimmer than the piercing eyes that I remember, but, for all that, he is very like the nameless medical student of my young days — very like him.  And, sometimes, when I come home late at night, and find him asleep, and wake him, he looks, in coming to, wonderfully like the stranger at Doncaster, as he raised himself in the bed on that memorable night!

The Doctor paused.  Mr. Goodchild, who had been following every word that fell from his lips up to this time, leaned forward eagerly to ask a question.  Before he could say a word, the latch of the door was raised, without any warning sound of footsteps in the passage outside.  A long, white, bony hand appeared through the opening, gently pushing the door, which was prevented from working freely on its hinges by a fold in the carpet under it.

‘That hand!  Look at that hand, Doctor!’ said Mr. Goodchild, touching him.

At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr. Goodchild, and whispered to him, significantly:

‘Hush! he has come back.’

CHAPTER III

The Cumberland Doctor’s mention of Doncaster Races, inspired Mr. Francis Goodchild with the idea of going down to Doncaster to see the races.  Doncaster being a good way off, and quite out of the way of the Idle Apprentices (if anything could be out of their way, who had no way), it necessarily followed that Francis perceived Doncaster in the race-week to be, of all possible idleness, the particular idleness that would completely satisfy him.

Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted on the natural and voluntary power of his disposition, was not of this mind; objecting that a man compelled to lie on his back on a floor, a sofa, a table, a line of chairs, or anything he could get to lie upon, was not in racing condition, and that he desired nothing better than to lie where he was, enjoying himself in looking at the flies on the ceiling.  But, Francis Goodchild, who had been walking round his companion in a circuit of twelve miles for two days, and had begun to doubt whether it was reserved for him ever to be idle in his life, not only overpowered this objection, but even converted Thomas Idle to a scheme he formed (another idle inspiration), of conveying the said Thomas to the sea-coast, and putting his injured leg under a stream of salt-water.

Plunging into this happy conception headforemost, Mr. Goodchild immediately referred to the county-map, and ardently discovered that the most delicious piece of sea-coast to be found within the limits of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands, all summed up together, was Allonby on the coast of Cumberland.  There was the coast of Scotland opposite to Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild with enthusiasm; there was a fine Scottish mountain on that Scottish coast; there were Scottish lights to be seen shining across the glorious Channel, and at Allonby itself there was every idle luxury (no doubt) that a watering-place could offer to the heart of idle man.  Moreover, said Mr. Goodchild, with his finger on the map, this exquisite retreat was approached by a coach-road, from a railway-station called Aspatria — a name, in a manner, suggestive of the departed glories of Greece, associated with one of the most engaging and most famous of Greek women.  On this point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to breathe a vein of classic fancy and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it appeared that the honest English pronunciation of that Cumberland country shortened Aspatria into ‘Spatter.’  After this supplementary discovery, Mr. Goodchild said no more about it.

By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried, hoisted, pushed, poked, and packed, into and out of carriages, into and out of beds, into and out of tavern resting-places, until he was brought at length within sniff of the sea.  And now, behold the apprentices gallantly riding into Allonby in a one-horse fly, bent upon staying in that peaceful marine valley until the turbulent Doncaster time shall come round upon the wheel, in its turn among what are in sporting registers called the ‘Fixtures’ for the month.

‘Do you see Allonby!’ asked Thomas Idle.

‘I don’t see it yet,’ said Francis, looking out of window.

‘It must be there,’ said Thomas Idle.

‘I don’t see it,’ returned Francis.

‘It must be there,’ repeated Thomas Idle, fretfully.

‘Lord bless me!’ exclaimed Francis, drawing in his head, ‘I suppose this is it!’

‘A watering-place,’ retorted Thomas Idle, with the pardonable sharpness of an invalid, ‘can’t be five gentlemen in straw hats, on a form on one side of a door, and four ladies in hats and falls, on a form on another side of a door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before them, and a boy’s legs hanging over a bridge (with a boy’s body I suppose on the other side of the parapet), and a donkey running away.  What are you talking about?’

‘Allonby, gentlemen,’ said the most comfortable of landladies as she opened one door of the carriage; ‘Allonby, gentlemen,’ said the most attentive of landlords, as he opened the other.

Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, and descended from the vehicle.  Thomas, now just able to grope his way along, in a doubled-up condition, with the aid of two thick sticks, was no bad embodiment of Commodore Trunnion, or of one of those many gallant Admirals of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout, thick sticks, tempers, wards, and nephews.  With this distinguished naval appearance upon him, Thomas made a crab-like progress up a clean little bulk-headed staircase, into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he slowly deposited himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of him, looking exceedingly grim.

‘Francis,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘what do you think of this place?’

‘I think,’ returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing way, ‘it is everything we expected.’

‘Hah!’ said Thomas Idle.

‘There is the sea,’ cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out of window; ‘and here,’ pointing to the lunch on the table, ‘are shrimps.  Let us — ’ here Mr. Goodchild looked out of window, as if in search of something, and looked in again, — ’let us eat ‘em.’

The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Goodchild went out to survey the watering-place.  As Chorus of the Drama, without whom Thomas could make nothing of the scenery, he by-and-by returned, to have the following report screwed out of him.

In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen.

‘But,’ Thomas Idle asked, ‘where is it?’

‘It’s what you may call generally up and down the beach, here and there,’ said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist of his hand.

‘Proceed,’ said Thomas Idle.

It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examination, what you might call a primitive place.  Large?  No, it was not large.  Who ever expected it would be large?  Shape?  What a question to ask!  No shape.  What sort of a street?  Why, no street.  Shops?  Yes, of course (quite indignant).  How many?  Who ever went into a place to count the shops?  Ever so many.  Six?  Perhaps.  A library?  Why, of course (indignant again).  Good collection of books?  Most likely — couldn’t say — had seen nothing in it but a pair of scales.  Any reading-room?  Of course, there was a reading-room.  Where?  Where! why, over there.  Where was over there?  Why,
there
!  Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste ground above high-water mark, where the rank grass and loose stones were most in a litter; and he would see a sort of long, ruinous brick loft, next door to a ruinous brick out-house, which loft had a ladder outside, to get up by.  That was the reading-room, and if Mr. Idle didn’t like the idea of a weaver’s shuttle throbbing under a reading-room, that was his look out. 
He
was not to dictate, Mr. Goodchild supposed (indignant again), to the company.

‘By-the-by,’ Thomas Idle observed; ‘the company?’

Well! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice company.  Where were they?  Why, there they were.  Mr. Idle could see the tops of their hats, he supposed.  What?  Those nine straw hats again, five gentlemen’s and four ladies’?  Yes, to be sure.  Mr. Goodchild hoped the company were not to be expected to wear helmets, to please Mr. Idle.

Beginning to recover his temper at about this point, Mr. Goodchild voluntarily reported that if you wanted to be primitive, you could be primitive here, and that if you wanted to be idle, you could be idle here.  In the course of some days, he added, that there were three fishing-boats, but no rigging, and that there were plenty of fishermen who never fished.  That they got their living entirely by looking at the ocean.  What nourishment they looked out of it to support their strength, he couldn’t say; but, he supposed it was some sort of Iodine.  The place was full of their children, who were always upside down on the public buildings (two small bridges over the brook), and always hurting themselves or one another, so that their wailings made more continual noise in the air than could have been got in a busy place.  The houses people lodged in, were nowhere in particular, and were in capital accordance with the beach; being all more or less cracked and damaged as its shells were, and all empty — as its shells were.  Among them, was an edifice of destitute appearance, with a number of wall-eyed windows in it, looking desperately out to Scotland as if for help, which said it was a Bazaar (and it ought to know), and where you might buy anything you wanted — supposing what you wanted, was a little camp-stool or a child’s wheelbarrow.  The brook crawled or stopped between the houses and the sea, and the donkey was always running away, and when he got into the brook he was pelted out with stones, which never hit him, and which always hit some of the children who were upside down on the public buildings, and made their lamentations louder.  This donkey was the public excitement of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public expense.

The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, on separate days of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild severally wound up, by looking out of window, looking in again, and saying, ‘But there is the sea, and here are the shrimps — let us eat ‘em.’

There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach, with its pools of water and its dry patches, changed into long bars of silver and gold in various states of burnishing, and there were fine views — on fine days — of the Scottish coast.  But, when it rained at Allonby, Allonby thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of place which the donkey seemed to have found out, and to have his highly sagacious reasons for wishing to bolt from.  Thomas Idle observed, too, that Mr. Goodchild, with a noble show of disinterestedness, became every day more ready to walk to Maryport and back, for letters; and suspicions began to harbour in the mind of Thomas, that his friend deceived him, and that Maryport was a preferable place.

Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they had looked at the sea and eaten the shrimps, ‘My mind misgives me, Goodchild, that you go to Maryport, like the boy in the story-book, to ask
it
to be idle with you.’

‘Judge, then,’ returned Francis, adopting the style of the story-book, ‘with what success.  I go to a region which is a bit of water-side Bristol, with a slice of Wapping, a seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a garnish of Portsmouth, and I say, “Will
you
come and be idle with me?”  And it answers, “No; for I am a great deal too vaporous, and a great deal too rusty, and a great deal too muddy, and a great deal too dirty altogether; and I have ships to load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron to hammer, and steam to get up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry, and fifty other disagreeable things to do, and I can’t be idle with you.”  Then I go into jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, where I am in the pastrycook’s shop at one moment, and next moment in savage fastnesses of moor and morass, beyond the confines of civilisation, and I say to those murky and black-dusty streets, “Will
you
come and be idle with me?”  To which they reply, “No, we can’t, indeed, for we haven’t the spirits, and we are startled by the echo of your feet on the sharp pavement, and we have so many goods in our shop-windows which nobody wants, and we have so much to do for a limited public which never comes to us to be done for, that we are altogether out of sorts and can’t enjoy ourselves with any one.”  So I go to the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to the Post-master, “Will
you
come and be idle with me?”  To which he rejoins, “No, I really can’t, for I live, as you may see, in such a very little Post-office, and pass my life behind such a very little shutter, that my hand, when I put it out, is as the hand of a giant crammed through the window of a dwarf’s house at a fair, and I am a mere Post-office anchorite in a cell much too small for him, and I can’t get out, and I can’t get in, and I have no space to be idle in, even if I would.”  So, the boy,’ said Mr. Goodchild, concluding the tale, ‘comes back with the letters after all, and lives happy never afterwards.’