Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1802 page)

‘He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the tree.  As soon as it was light in the morning, he worked at turning up all the ground near the tree, and hacking and hewing at the neighbouring bushes and undergrowth.  When the labourers came, there was nothing suspicious, and nothing suspected.

‘But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions, and destroyed the triumph of the scheme he had so long concerted, and so successfully worked out.  He had got rid of the Bride, and had acquired her fortune without endangering his life; but now, for a death by which he had gained nothing, he had evermore to live with a rope around his neck.

‘Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom and horror, which he could not endure.  Being afraid to sell it or to quit it, lest discovery should be made, he was forced to live in it.  He hired two old people, man and wife, for his servants; and dwelt in it, and dreaded it.  His great difficulty, for a long time, was the garden.  Whether he should keep it trim, whether he should suffer it to fall into its former state of neglect, what would be the least likely way of attracting attention to it?

‘He took the middle course of gardening, himself, in his evening leisure, and of then calling the old serving-man to help him; but, of never letting him work there alone.  And he made himself an arbour over against the tree, where he could sit and see that it was safe.

‘As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his mind perceived dangers that were always changing.  In the leafy time, he perceived that the upper boughs were growing into the form of the young man — that they made the shape of him exactly, sitting in a forked branch swinging in the wind.  In the time of the falling leaves, he perceived that they came down from the tree, forming tell-tale letters on the path, or that they had a tendency to heap themselves into a churchyard mound above the grave.  In the winter, when the tree was bare, he perceived that the boughs swung at him the ghost of the blow the young man had given, and that they threatened him openly.  In the spring, when the sap was mounting in the trunk, he asked himself, were the dried-up particles of blood mounting with it: to make out more obviously this year than last, the leaf-screened figure of the young man, swinging in the wind?

‘However, he turned his Money over and over, and still over.  He was in the dark trade, the gold-dust trade, and most secret trades that yielded great returns.  In ten years, he had turned his Money over, so many times, that the traders and shippers who had dealings with him, absolutely did not lie — for once — when they declared that he had increased his fortune, Twelve Hundred Per Cent.

‘He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when people could be lost easily.  He had heard who the youth was, from hearing of the search that was made after him; but, it died away, and the youth was forgotten.

‘The annual round of changes in the tree had been repeated ten times since the night of the burial at its foot, when there was a great thunder-storm over this place.  It broke at midnight, and roared until morning.  The first intelligence he heard from his old serving-man that morning, was, that the tree had been struck by Lightning.

‘It had been riven down the stem, in a very surprising manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts: one resting against the house, and one against a portion of the old red garden-wall in which its fall had made a gap.  The fissure went down the tree to a little above the earth, and there stopped.  There was great curiosity to see the tree, and, with most of his former fears revived, he sat in his arbour — grown quite an old man — watching the people who came to see it.

‘They quickly began to come, in such dangerous numbers, that he closed his garden-gate and refused to admit any more.  But, there were certain men of science who travelled from a distance to examine the tree, and, in an evil hour, he let them in! — Blight and Murrain on them, let them in!

‘They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and closely examine it, and the earth about it.  Never, while he lived!  They offered money for it.  They!  Men of science, whom he could have bought by the gross, with a scratch of his pen!  He showed them the garden-gate again, and locked and barred it.

‘But they were bent on doing what they wanted to do, and they bribed the old serving-man — a thankless wretch who regularly complained when he received his wages, of being underpaid — and they stole into the garden by night with their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and fell to at the tree.  He was lying in a turret-room on the other side of the house (the Bride’s Chamber had been unoccupied ever since), but he soon dreamed of picks and shovels, and got up.

‘He came to an upper window on that side, whence he could see their lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in a heap which he had himself disturbed and put back, when it was last turned to the air.  It was found!  They had that minute lighted on it.  They were all bending over it.  One of them said, “The skull is fractured;” and another, “See here the bones;” and another, “See here the clothes;” and then the first struck in again, and said, “A rusty bill-hook!”

‘He became sensible, next day, that he was already put under a strict watch, and that he could go nowhere without being followed.  Before a week was out, he was taken and laid in hold.  The circumstances were gradually pieced together against him, with a desperate malignity, and an appalling ingenuity.  But, see the justice of men, and how it was extended to him!  He was further accused of having poisoned that girl in the Bride’s Chamber.  He, who had carefully and expressly avoided imperilling a hair of his head for her, and who had seen her die of her own incapacity!

‘There was doubt for which of the two murders he should be first tried; but, the real one was chosen, and he was found Guilty, and cast for death.  Bloodthirsty wretches!  They would have made him Guilty of anything, so set they were upon having his life.

‘His money could do nothing to save him, and he was hanged. 
I
am He, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle with my face to the wall, a hundred years ago!’

At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry out.  But, the two fiery lines extending from the old man’s eyes to his own, kept him down, and he could not utter a sound.  His sense of hearing, however, was acute, and he could hear the clock strike Two.  No sooner had he heard the clock strike Two, than he saw before him Two old men!

TWO.

The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films of fire: each, exactly like the other: each, addressing him at precisely one and the same instant: each, gnashing the same teeth in the same head, with the same twitched nostril above them, and the same suffused expression around it.  Two old men.  Differing in nothing, equally distinct to the sight, the copy no fainter than the original, the second as real as the first.

‘At what time,’ said the Two old men, ‘did you arrive at the door below?’

‘At Six.’

‘And there were Six old men upon the stairs!’

Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his brow, or tried to do it, the Two old men proceeded in one voice, and in the singular number:

‘I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skeleton put together and re-hung on an iron hook, when it began to be whispered that the Bride’s Chamber was haunted.  It
was
haunted, and I was there.

‘
We
were there.  She and I were there.  I, in the chair upon the hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself towards me on the floor.  But, I was the speaker no more, and the one word that she said to me from midnight until dawn was, ‘Live!’

‘The youth was there, likewise.  In the tree outside the window.  Coming and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and gave.  He has, ever since, been there, peeping in at me in my torment; revealing to me by snatches, in the pale lights and slatey shadows where he comes and goes, bare-headed — a bill-hook, standing edgewise in his hair.

‘In the Bride’s Chamber, every night from midnight until dawn — one month in the year excepted, as I am going to tell you — he hides in the tree, and she comes towards me on the floor; always approaching; never coming nearer; always visible as if by moon-light, whether the moon shines or no; always saying, from mid-night until dawn, her one word, “Live!”

‘But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this life — this present month of thirty days — the Bride’s Chamber is empty and quiet.  Not so my old dungeon.  Not so the rooms where I was restless and afraid, ten years.  Both are fitfully haunted then.  At One in the morning.  I am what you saw me when the clock struck that hour — One old man.  At Two in the morning, I am Two old men.  At Three, I am Three.  By Twelve at noon, I am Twelve old men, One for every hundred per cent. of old gain.  Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old power of suffering and agony.  From that hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner.  At Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside Lancaster Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall!

‘When the Bride’s Chamber was first haunted, it was known to me that this punishment would never cease, until I could make its nature, and my story, known to two living men together.  I waited for the coming of two living men together into the Bride’s Chamber, years upon years.  It was infused into my knowledge (of the means I am ignorant) that if two living men, with their eyes open, could be in the Bride’s Chamber at One in the morning, they would see me sitting in my chair.

‘At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled, brought two men to try the adventure.  I was scarcely struck upon the hearth at midnight (I come there as if the Lightning blasted me into being), when I heard them ascending the stairs.  Next, I saw them enter.  One of them was a bold, gay, active man, in the prime of life, some five and forty years of age; the other, a dozen years younger.  They brought provisions with them in a basket, and bottles.  A young woman accompanied them, with wood and coals for the lighting of the fire.  When she had lighted it, the bold, gay, active man accompanied her along the gallery outside the room, to see her safely down the staircase, and came back laughing.

‘He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents of the basket on the table before the fire — little recking of me, in my appointed station on the hearth, close to him — and filled the glasses, and ate and drank.  His companion did the same, and was as cheerful and confident as he: though he was the leader.  When they had supped, they laid pistols on the table, turned to the fire, and began to smoke their pipes of foreign make.

‘They had travelled together, and had been much together, and had an abundance of subjects in common.  In the midst of their talking and laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leader’s being always ready for any adventure; that one, or any other.  He replied in these words:

‘“Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing else, I am afraid of myself.”

‘His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, in what sense?  How?

‘“Why, thus,” he returned.  “Here is a Ghost to be disproved.  Well!  I cannot answer for what my fancy might do if I were alone here, or what tricks my senses might play with me if they had me to themselves.  But, in company with another man, and especially with Dick, I would consent to outface all the Ghosts that were ever of in the universe.”

‘“I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much importance to-night,” said the other.

‘“Of so much,” rejoined the leader, more seriously than he had spoken yet, “that I would, for the reason I have given, on no account have undertaken to pass the night here alone.”

‘It was within a few minutes of One.  The head of the younger man had drooped when he made his last remark, and it drooped lower now.

‘“Keep awake, Dick!” said the leader, gaily.  “The small hours are the worst.”

‘He tried, but his head drooped again.

‘“Dick!” urged the leader.  “Keep awake!”

‘“I can’t,” he indistinctly muttered.  “I don’t know what strange influence is stealing over me.  I can’t.”

‘His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, and I, in my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke of One, and I felt that the second watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon me that I must send him to sleep.

‘“Get up and walk, Dick!” cried the leader.  “Try!”