Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1803 page)

‘It was in vain to go behind the slumber’s chair and shake him.  One o’clock sounded, and I was present to the elder man, and he stood transfixed before me.

‘To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, without hope of benefit.  To him alone, I was an awful phantom making a quite useless confession.  I foresee it will ever be the same.  The two living men together will never come to release me.  When I appear, the senses of one of the two will be locked in sleep; he will neither see nor hear me; my communication will ever be made to a solitary listener, and will ever be unserviceable.  Woe!  Woe!  Woe!’

As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their hands, it shot into Mr. Goodchild’s mind that he was in the terrible situation of being virtually alone with the spectre, and that Mr. Idle’s immoveability was explained by his having been charmed asleep at One o’clock.  In the terror of this sudden discovery which produced an indescribable dread, he struggled so hard to get free from the four fiery threads, that he snapped them, after he had pulled them out to a great width.  Being then out of bonds, he caught up Mr. Idle from the sofa and rushed down-stairs with him.

‘What are you about, Francis?’ demanded Mr. Idle.  ‘My bedroom is not down here.  What the deuce are you carrying me at all for?  I can walk with a stick now.  I don’t want to be carried.  Put me down.’

Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked about him wildly.

‘What are you doing?  Idiotically plunging at your own sex, and rescuing them or perishing in the attempt?’ asked Mr. Idle, in a highly petulant state.

‘The One old man!’ cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly, — ’and the Two old men!’

Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than ‘The One old woman, I think you mean,’ as he began hobbling his way back up the staircase, with the assistance of its broad balustrade.

‘I assure you, Tom,’ began Mr. Goodchild, attending at his side, ‘that since you fell asleep — ’

‘Come, I like that!’ said Thomas Idle, ‘I haven’t closed an eye!’

With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the disgraceful action of going to sleep out of bed, which is the lot of all mankind, Mr. Idle persisted in this declaration.  The same peculiar sensitiveness impelled Mr. Goodchild, on being taxed with the same crime, to repudiate it with honourable resentment.  The settlement of the question of The One old man and The Two old men was thus presently complicated, and soon made quite impracticable.  Mr. Idle said it was all Bride-cake, and fragments, newly arranged, of things seen and thought about in the day.  Mr. Goodchild said how could that be, when he hadn’t been asleep, and what right could Mr. Idle have to say so, who had been asleep?  Mr. Idle said he had never been asleep, and never did go to sleep, and that Mr. Goodchild, as a general rule, was always asleep.  They consequently parted for the rest of the night, at their bedroom doors, a little ruffled.  Mr. Goodchild’s last words were, that he had had, in that real and tangible old sitting-room of that real and tangible old Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle denied its existence?), every sensation and experience, the present record of which is now within a line or two of completion; and that he would write it out and print it every word.  Mr. Idle returned that he might if he liked — and he did like, and has now done it.

CHAPTER V

Two of the many passengers by a certain late Sunday evening train, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild, yielded up their tickets at a little rotten platform (converted into artificial touchwood by smoke and ashes), deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire.  A mysterious bosom it appeared, upon a damp, dark, Sunday night, dashed through in the train to the music of the whirling wheels, the panting of the engine, and the part-singing of hundreds of third-class excursionists, whose vocal efforts ‘bobbed arayound’ from sacred to profane, from hymns, to our transatlantic sisters the Yankee Gal and Mairy Anne, in a remarkable way.  There seemed to have been some large vocal gathering near to every lonely station on the line.  No town was visible, no village was visible, no light was visible; but, a multitude got out singing, and a multitude got in singing, and the second multitude took up the hymns, and adopted our transatlantic sisters, and sang of their own egregious wickedness, and of their bobbing arayound, and of how the ship it was ready and the wind it was fair, and they were bayound for the sea, Mairy Anne, until they in their turn became a getting-out multitude, and were replaced by another getting-in multitude, who did the same.  And at every station, the getting-in multitude, with an artistic reference to the completeness of their chorus, incessantly cried, as with one voice while scuffling into the carriages, ‘We mun aa’ gang toogither!’

The singing and the multitudes had trailed off as the lonely places were left and the great towns were neared, and the way had lain as silently as a train’s way ever can, over the vague black streets of the great gulfs of towns, and among their branchless woods of vague black chimneys.  These towns looked, in the cinderous wet, as though they had one and all been on fire and were just put out — a dreary and quenched panorama, many miles long.

Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds; of which enterprising and important commercial centre it may be observed with delicacy, that you must either like it very much or not at all.  Next day, the first of the Race-Week, they took train to Doncaster.

And instantly the character, both of travellers and of luggage, entirely changed, and no other business than race-business any longer existed on the face of the earth.  The talk was all of horses and ‘John Scott.’  Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses and John Scott.  Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats fastened with peculiar pins, and with the large bones of their legs developed under tight trousers, so that they should look as much as possible like horses’ legs, paced up and down by twos at junction-stations, speaking low and moodily of horses and John Scott.  The young clergyman in the black strait-waistcoat, who occupied the middle seat of the carriage, expounded in his peculiar pulpit-accent to the young and lovely Reverend Mrs. Crinoline, who occupied the opposite middle-seat, a few passages of rumour relative to ‘Oartheth, my love, and Mithter John Eth-COTT.’  A bandy vagabond, with a head like a Dutch cheese, in a fustian stable-suit, attending on a horse-box and going about the platforms with a halter hanging round his neck like a Calais burgher of the ancient period much degenerated, was courted by the best society, by reason of what he had to hint, when not engaged in eating straw, concerning ‘t’harses and Joon Scott.’  The engine-driver himself, as he applied one eye to his large stationary double-eye-glass on the engine, seemed to keep the other open, sideways, upon horses and John Scott.

Breaks and barriers at Doncaster Station to keep the crowd off; temporary wooden avenues of ingress and egress, to help the crowd on.  Forty extra porters sent down for this present blessed Race-Week, and all of them making up their betting-books in the lamp-room or somewhere else, and none of them to come and touch the luggage.  Travellers disgorged into an open space, a howling wilderness of idle men.  All work but race-work at a stand-still; all men at a stand-still.  ‘Ey my word!  Deant ask noon o’ us to help wi’ t’luggage.  Bock your opinion loike a mon.  Coom!  Dang it, coom, t’harses and Joon Scott!’  In the midst of the idle men, all the fly horses and omnibus horses of Doncaster and parts adjacent, rampant, rearing, backing, plunging, shying — apparently the result of their hearing of nothing but their own order and John Scott.

Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-Week.  Poses Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up the Stable-Yard at seven and nine each evening, for the Race-Week.  Grand Alliance Circus in the field beyond the bridge, for the Race-Week.  Grand Exhibition of Aztec Lilliputians, important to all who want to be horrified cheap, for the Race-Week.  Lodgings, grand and not grand, but all at grand prices, ranging from ten pounds to twenty, for the Grand Race-Week!

Rendered giddy enough by these things, Messieurs Idle and Goodchild repaired to the quarters they had secured beforehand, and Mr. Goodchild looked down from the window into the surging street.

‘By Heaven, Tom!’ cried he, after contemplating it, ‘I am in the Lunatic Asylum again, and these are all mad people under the charge of a body of designing keepers!’

All through the Race-Week, Mr. Goodchild never divested himself of this idea.  Every day he looked out of window, with something of the dread of Lemuel Gulliver looking down at men after he returned home from the horse-country; and every day he saw the Lunatics, horse-mad, betting-mad, drunken-mad, vice-mad, and the designing Keepers always after them.  The idea pervaded, like the second colour in shot-silk, the whole of Mr. Goodchild’s impressions.  They were much as follows:

Monday, mid-day.  Races not to begin until to-morrow, but all the mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pavements of the one main street of pretty and pleasant Doncaster, crowding the road, particularly crowding the outside of the Betting Rooms, whooping and shouting loudly after all passing vehicles.  Frightened lunatic horses occasionally running away, with infinite clatter.  All degrees of men, from peers to paupers, betting incessantly.  Keepers very watchful, and taking all good chances.  An awful family likeness among the Keepers, to Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell.  With some knowledge of expression and some acquaintance with heads (thus writes Mr. Goodchild), I never have seen anywhere, so many repetitions of one class of countenance and one character of head (both evil) as in this street at this time.  Cunning, covetousness, secrecy, cold calculation, hard callousness and dire insensibility, are the uniform Keeper characteristics.  Mr. Palmer passes me five times in five minutes, and, so I go down the street, the back of Mr. Thurtell’s skull is always going on before me.

Monday evening.  Town lighted up; more Lunatics out than ever; a complete choke and stoppage of the thoroughfare outside the Betting Rooms.  Keepers, having dined, pervade the Betting Rooms, and sharply snap at the moneyed Lunatics.  Some Keepers flushed with drink, and some not, but all close and calculating.  A vague echoing roar of ‘t’harses’ and ‘t’races’ always rising in the air, until midnight, at about which period it dies away in occasional drunken songs and straggling yells.  But, all night, some unmannerly drinking-house in the neighbourhood opens its mouth at intervals and spits out a man too drunk to be retained: who thereupon makes what uproarious protest may be left in him, and either falls asleep where he tumbles, or is carried off in custody.

Tuesday morning, at daybreak.  A sudden rising, as it were out of the earth, of all the obscene creatures, who sell ‘correct cards of the races.’  They may have been coiled in corners, or sleeping on door-steps, and, having all passed the night under the same set of circumstances, may all want to circulate their blood at the same time; but, however that may be, they spring into existence all at once and together, as though a new Cadmus had sown a race-horse’s teeth.  There is nobody up, to buy the cards; but, the cards are madly cried.  There is no patronage to quarrel for; but, they madly quarrel and fight.  Conspicuous among these hyaenas, as breakfast-time discloses, is a fearful creature in the general semblance of a man: shaken off his next-to-no legs by drink and devilry, bare-headed and bare-footed, with a great shock of hair like a horrible broom, and nothing on him but a ragged pair of trousers and a pink glazed-calico coat — made on him — so very tight that it is as evident that he could never take it off, as that he never does.  This hideous apparition, inconceivably drunk, has a terrible power of making a gong-like imitation of the braying of an ass: which feat requires that he should lay his right jaw in his begrimed right paw, double himself up, and shake his bray out of himself, with much staggering on his next-to-no legs, and much twirling of his horrible broom, as if it were a mop.  From the present minute, when he comes in sight holding up his cards to the windows, and hoarsely proposing purchase to My Lord, Your Excellency, Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your Honourable Worship — from the present minute until the Grand Race-Week is finished, at all hours of the morning, evening, day, and night, shall the town reverberate, at capricious intervals, to the brays of this frightful animal the Gong-donkey.

No very great racing to-day, so no very great amount of vehicles: though there is a good sprinkling, too: from farmers’ carts and gigs, to carriages with post-horses and to fours-in-hand, mostly coming by the road from York, and passing on straight through the main street to the Course.  A walk in the wrong direction may be a better thing for Mr. Goodchild to-day than the Course, so he walks in the wrong direction.  Everybody gone to the races.  Only children in the street.  Grand Alliance Circus deserted; not one Star-Rider left; omnibus which forms the Pay-Place, having on separate panels Pay here for the Boxes, Pay here for the Pit, Pay here for the Gallery, hove down in a corner and locked up; nobody near the tent but the man on his knees on the grass, who is making the paper balloons for the Star young gentlemen to jump through to-night.  A pleasant road, pleasantly wooded.  No labourers working in the fields; all gone ‘t’races.’  The few late wenders of their way ‘t’races,’ who are yet left driving on the road, stare in amazement at the recluse who is not going ‘t’races.’  Roadside innkeeper has gone ‘t’races.’  Turnpike-man has gone ‘t’races.’  His thrifty wife, washing clothes at the toll-house door, is going ‘t’races’ to-morrow.  Perhaps there may be no one left to take the toll to-morrow; who knows?  Though assuredly that would be neither turnpike-like nor Yorkshire-like.  The very wind and dust seem to be hurrying ‘t’races,’ as they briskly pass the only wayfarer on the road.  In the distance, the Railway Engine, waiting at the town-end, shrieks despairingly.  Nothing but the difficulty of getting off the Line, restrains that Engine from going ‘t’races,’ too, it is very clear.