Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1800 page)

‘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.’