by Edgar Allan Poe
(1839)
What say of it? what say (of) CONSCIENCE grim,
That spectre in my path?Chamberlayne's Pharronida.
LET me call myself, for the present, William
Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied
with my real appellation. This has been already too much an
object for the scorn --for the horror --for the detestation of
my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the
indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of
all outcasts most abandoned! --to the earth art thou not
forever dead? to its honors, to its flowers, to its golden
aspirations? --and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does
it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?
I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a
record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and
unpardonable crime. This epoch --these later years --took unto
themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whose origin alone
it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow base by
degrees. From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a
mantle. From comparatively trivial wickedness I passed, with
the stride of a giant, into more than the enormities of an
Elah-Gabalus. What chance --what one event brought this evil
thing to pass, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches;
and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening
influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through the dim
valley, for the sympathy --I had nearly said for the pity --of
my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been,
in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human
control. I would wish them to seek out for me, in the details I
am about to give, some little oasis of fatality amid a
wilderness of error. I would have them allow --what they cannot
refrain from allowing --that, although temptation may have
erewhile existed as great, man was never thus, at least,
tempted before --certainly, never thus fell. And is it
therefore that he has never thus suffered? Have I not indeed
been living in a dream? And am I not now dying a victim to the
horror and the mystery of the wildest of all sublunary
visions?
I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative
and easily excitable temperament has at all times rendered them
remarkable; and, in my earliest infancy, I gave evidence of
having fully inherited the family character. As I advanced in
years it was more strongly developed; becoming, for many
reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of
positive injury to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted to the
wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions.
Weak-minded, and beset with constitutional infirmities akin to
my own, my parents could do but little to check the evil
propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and
ill-directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their
part, and, of course, in total triumph on mine. Thenceforward
my voice was a household law; and at an age when few children
have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left to the
guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the
master of my own actions.
My earliest recollections of a school-life, are
connected with a large, rambling, Elizabethan house, in a
misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of
gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were
excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and
spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment,
in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its
deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand
shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the
deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with
sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky
atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded and
asleep.
It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as I can
now in any manner experience, to dwell upon minute
recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in misery
as I am --misery, alas! only too real --I shall be pardoned for
seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness
of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial,
and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy,
adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a
locality when and where I recognise the first ambiguous
monitions of the destiny which afterwards so fully overshadowed
me. Let me then remember.
The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The
grounds were extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped
with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole.
This prison-like rampart formed the limit of our domain; beyond
it we saw but thrice a week --once every Saturday afternoon,
when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief
walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields --and
twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal
manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of
the village. Of this church the principal of our school was
pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I
wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with
step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend
man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy
and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so
rigid and so vast, ---could this be he who, of late, with sour
visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in
hand, the Draconian laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox,
too utterly monstrous for solution!
At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more
ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and
surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep
awe did it inspire! It was never opened save for the three
periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned; then,
in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of
mystery --a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more
solemn meditation.
The extensive enclosure was irregular in form,
having many capacious recesses. Of these, three or four of the
largest constituted the play-ground. It was level, and covered
with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no trees, nor
benches, nor anything similar within it. Of course it was in
the rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted
with box and other shrubs; but through this sacred division we
passed only upon rare occasions indeed --such as a first advent
to school or final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent
or friend having called for us, we joyfully took our way home
for the Christmas or Midsummer holy-days.
But the house! --how quaint an old building was
this! --to me how veritably a palace of enchantment! There was
really no end to its windings --to its incomprehensible
subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time, to say with
certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be.
From each room to every other there were sure to be found three
or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral
branches were innumerable --inconceivable --and so returning in
upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the
whole mansion were not very far different from those with which
we pondered upon infinity. During the five years of my
residence here, I was never able to ascertain with precision,
in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment
assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty other
scholars.
The school-room was the largest in the house --I
could not help thinking, in the world. It was very long,
narrow, and dismally low, with pointed Gothic windows and a
celling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring angle was a
square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum,
"during hours," of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It
was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which
in the absence of the "Dominic," we would all have willingly
perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two
other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still
greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the
"classical" usher, one of the "English and mathematical."
Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless
irregularity, were innumerable benches and desks, black,
ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed
books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full
length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the
knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form
might have been their portion in days long departed. A huge
bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room, and a
clock of stupendous dimensions at the other.
Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable
academy, I passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of
the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood
requires no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it;
and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete with
more intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from
luxury, or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that
my first mental development had in it much of the uncommon
--even much of the outre. Upon mankind at large the events of
very early existence rarely leave in mature age any definite
impression. All is gray shadow --a weak and irregular
remembrance --an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and
phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I
must have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stamped
upon memory in lines as vivid, as deep, and as durable as the
exergues of the Carthaginian medals.
Yet in fact --in the fact of the world's view
--how little was there to remember! The morning's awakening,
the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the
periodical half-holidays, and perambulations; the play-ground,
with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; --these, by a
mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a
wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe
of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and
spirit-stirring. "Oh, le bon temps, que ce siecle de fer!"
In truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the
imperiousness of my disposition, soon rendered me a marked
character among my schoolmates, and by slow, but natural
gradations, gave me an ascendancy over all not greatly older
than myself; --over all with a single exception. This exception
was found in the person of a scholar, who, although no
relation, bore the same Christian and surname as myself; --a
circumstance, in fact, little remarkable; for, notwithstanding
a noble descent, mine was one of those everyday appellations
which seem, by prescriptive right, to have been, time out of
mind, the common property of the mob. In this narrative I have
therefore designated myself as William Wilson, --a fictitious
title not very dissimilar to the real. My namesake alone, of
those who in school phraseology constituted "our set," presumed
to compete with me in the studies of the class --in the sports
and broils of the play-ground --to refuse implicit belief in my
assertions, and submission to my will --indeed, to interfere
with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there
is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the
despotism of a master mind in boyhood over the less energetic
spirits of its companions.
Wilson's rebellion was to me a source of the
greatest embarrassment; --the more so as, in spite of the
bravado with which in public I made a point of treating him and
his pretensions, I secretly felt that I feared him, and could
not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily
with myself, a proof of his true superiority; since not to be
overcome cost me a perpetual struggle. Yet this superiority
--even this equality --was in truth acknowledged by no one but
myself; our associates, by some unaccountable blindness, seemed
not even to suspect it. Indeed, his competition, his
resistance, and especially his impertinent and dogged
interference with my purposes, were not more pointed than
private. He appeared to be destitute alike of the ambition
which urged, and of the passionate energy of mind which enabled
me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed
actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or
mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help
observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and
pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his
contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly
most unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could only
conceive this singular behavior to arise from a consummate
self-conceit assuming the vulgar airs of patronage and
protection.
Perhaps it was this latter trait in Wilson's
conduct, conjoined with our identity of name, and the mere
accident of our having entered the school upon the same day,
which set afloat the notion that we were brothers, among the
senior classes in the academy. These do not usually inquire
with much strictness into the affairs of their juniors. I have
before said, or should have said, that Wilson was not, in the
most remote degree, connected with my family. But assuredly if
we had been brothers we must have been twins; for, after
leaving Dr. Bransby's, I casually learned that my namesake was
born on the nineteenth of January, 1813 --and this is a
somewhat remarkable coincidence; for the day is precisely that
of my own nativity.
It may seem strange that in spite of the continual
anxiety occasioned me by the rivalry of Wilson, and his
intolerable spirit of contradiction, I could not bring myself
to hate him altogether. We had, to be sure, nearly every day a
quarrel in which, yielding me publicly the palm of victory, he,
in some manner, contrived to make me feel that it was he who
had deserved it; yet a sense of pride on my part, and a
veritable dignity on his own, kept us always upon what are
called "speaking terms," while there were many points of strong
congeniality in our tempers, operating to awake me in a
sentiment which our position alone, perhaps, prevented from
ripening into friendship. It is difficult, indeed, to define,or
even to describe, my real feelings towards him. They formed a
motley and heterogeneous admixture; --some petulant animosity,
which was not yet hatred, some esteem, more respect, much fear,
with a world of uneasy curiosity. To the moralist it will be
unnecessary to say, in addition, that Wilson and myself were
the most inseparable of companions.
It was no doubt the anomalous state of affairs
existing between us, which turned all my attacks upon him, (and
they were many, either open or covert) into the channel of
banter or practical joke (giving pain while assuming the aspect
of mere fun) rather than into a more serious and determined
hostility. But my endeavours on this head were by no means
uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily
concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in character, of
that unassuming and quiet austerity which, while enjoying the
poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in itself,
and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed,
but one vulnerable point, and that, lying in a personal
peculiarity, arising, perhaps, from constitutional disease,
would have been spared by any antagonist less at his wit's end
than myself; --my rival had a weakness in the faucal or
guttural organs, which precluded him from raising his voice at
any time above a very low whisper. Of this defect I did not
fall to take what poor advantage lay in my power.
Wilson's retaliations in kind were many; and there
was one form of his practical wit that disturbed me beyond
measure. How his sagacity first discovered at all that so petty
a thing would vex me, is a question I never could solve; but,
having discovered, he habitually practised the annoyance. I had
always felt aversion to my uncourtly patronymic, and its very
common, if not plebeian praenomen. The words were venom in my
ears; and when, upon the day of my arrival, a second William
Wilson came also to the academy, I felt angry with him for
bearing the name, and doubly disgusted with the name because a
stranger bore it, who would be the cause of its twofold
repetition, who would be constantly in my presence, and whose
concerns, in the ordinary routine of the school business, must
inevitably, on account of the detestable coincidence, be often
confounded with my own.
The feeling of vexation thus engendered grew
stronger with every circumstance tending to show resemblance,
moral or physical, between my rival and myself. I had not then
discovered the remarkable fact that we were of the same age;
but I saw that we were of the same height, and I perceived that
we were even singularly alike in general contour of person and
outline of feature. I was galled, too, by the rumor touching a
relationship, which had grown current in the upper forms. In a
word, nothing could more seriously disturb me, although I
scrupulously concealed such disturbance,) than any allusion to
a similarity of mind, person, or condition existing between us.
But, in truth, I had no reason to believe that (with the
exception of the matter of relationship, and in the case of
Wilson himself,) this similarity had ever been made a subject
of comment, or even observed at all by our schoolfellows. That
he observed it in all its bearings, and as fixedly as I, was
apparent; but that he could discover in such circumstances so
fruitful a field of annoyance, can only be attributed, as I
said before, to his more than ordinary penetration.
His cue, which was to perfect an imitation of
myself, lay both in words and in actions; and most admirably
did he play his part. My dress it was an easy matter to copy;
my gait and general manner were, without difficulty,
appropriated; in spite of his constitutional defect, even my
voice did not escape him. My louder tones were, of course,
unattempted, but then the key, it was identical; and his
singular whisper, it grew the very echo of my own.
How greatly this most exquisite portraiture
harassed me, (for it could not justly be termed a caricature,)
I will not now venture to describe. I had but one consolation
--in the fact that the imitation, apparently, was noticed by
myself alone, and that I had to endure only the knowing and
strangely sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself. Satisfied
with having produced in my bosom the intended effect, he seemed
to chuckle in secret over the sting he had inflicted, and was
characteristically disregardful of the public applause which
the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily
elicited. That the school, indeed, did not feel his design,
perceive its accomplishment, and participate in his sneer, was,
for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps
the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily
perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to the
master air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter, (which
in a painting is all the obtuse can see,) gave but the full
spirit of his original for my individual contemplation and
chagrin.
I have already more than once spoken of the
disgusting air of patronage which he assumed toward me, and of
his frequent officious interference withy my will. This
interference often took the ungracious character of advice;
advice not openly given, but hinted or insinuated. I received
it with a repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years.
Yet, at this distant day, let me do him the simple justice to
acknowledge that I can recall no occasion when the suggestions
of my rival were on the side of those errors or follies so
usual to his immature age and seeming inexperience; that his
moral sense, at least, if not his general talents and worldly
wisdom, was far keener than my own; and that I might, to-day,
have been a better, and thus a happier man, had I less
frequently rejected the counsels embodied in those meaning
whispers which I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly
despised.
As it was, I at length grew restive in the extreme
under his distasteful supervision, and daily resented more and
more openly what I considered his intolerable arrogance. I have
said that, in the first years of our connexion as schoolmates,
my feelings in regard to him might have been easily ripened
into friendship: but, in the latter months of my residence at
the academy, although the intrusion of his ordinary manner had,
beyond doubt, in some measure, abated, my sentiments, in nearly
similar proportion, partook very much of positive hatred. Upon
one occasion he saw this, I think, and afterwards avoided, or
made a show of avoiding me.
It was about the same period, if I remember
aright, that, in an altercation of violence with him, in which
he was more than usually thrown off his guard, and spoke and
acted with an openness of demeanor rather foreign to his
nature, I discovered, or fancied I discovered, in his accent,
his air, and general appearance, a something which first
startled, and then deeply interested me, by bringing to mind
dim visions of my earliest infancy --wild, confused and
thronging memories of a time when memory herself was yet
unborn. I cannot better describe the sensation which oppressed
me than by saying that I could with difficulty shake off the
belief of my having been acquainted with the being who stood
before me, at some epoch very long ago --some point of the past
even infinitely remote. The delusion, however, faded rapidly as
it came; and I mention it at all but to define the day of the
last conversation I there held with my singular namesake.
The huge old house, with its countless
subdivisions, had several large chambers communicating with
each other, where slept the greater number of the students.
There were, however, (as must necessarily happen in a building
so awkwardly planned,) many little nooks or recesses, the odds
and ends of the structure; and these the economic ingenuity of
Dr. Bransby had also fitted up as dormitories; although, being
the merest closets, they were capable of accommodating but a
single individual. One of these small apartments was occupied
by Wilson.
One night, about the close of my fifth year at the
school, and immediately after the altercation just mentioned,
finding every one wrapped in sleep, I arose from bed, and, lamp
in hand, stole through a wilderness of narrow passages from my
own bedroom to that of my rival. I had long been plotting one
of those ill-natured pieces of practical wit at his expense in
which I had hitherto been so uniformly unsuccessful. It was my
intention, now, to put my scheme in operation, and I resolved
to make him feel the whole extent of the malice with which I
was imbued. Having reached his closet, I noiselessly entered,
leaving the lamp, with a shade over it, on the outside. I
advanced a step, and listened to the sound of his tranquil
breathing. Assured of his being asleep, I returned, took the
light, and with it again approached the bed. Close curtains
were around it, which, in the prosecution of my plan, I slowly
and quietly withdrew, when the bright rays fell vividly upon
the sleeper, and my eyes, at the same moment, upon his
countenance. I looked; --and a numbness, an iciness of feeling
instantly pervaded my frame. My breast heaved, my knees
tottered, my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless
yet intolerable horror. Gasping for breath, I lowered the lamp
in still nearer proximity to the face. Were these --these the
lineaments of William Wilson? I saw, indeed, that they were
his, but I shook as if with a fit of the ague in fancying they
were not. What was there about them to confound me in this
manner? I gazed; --while my brain reeled with a multitude of
incoherent thoughts. Not thus he appeared --assuredly not thus
--in the vivacity of his waking hours. The same name! the same
contour of person! the same day of arrival at the academy! And
then his dogged and meaningless imitation of my gait, my voice,
my habits, and my manner! Was it, in truth, within the bounds
of human possibility, that what I now saw was the result,
merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation?
Awe-stricken, and with a creeping shudder, I extinguished the
lamp, passed silently from the chamber, and left, at once, the
halls of that old academy, never to enter them again.
After a lapse of some months, spent at home in
mere idleness, I found myself a student at Eton. The brief
interval had been sufficient to enfeeble my remembrance of the
events at Dr. Bransby's, or at least to effect a material
change in the nature of the feelings with which I remembered
them. The truth --the tragedy --of the drama was no more. I
could now find room to doubt the evidence of my senses; and
seldom called up the subject at all but with wonder at extent
of human credulity, and a smile at the vivid force of the
imagination which I hereditarily possessed. Neither was this
species of scepticism likely to be diminished by the character
of the life I led at Eton. The vortex of thoughtless folly into
which I there so immediately and so recklessly plunged, washed
away all but the froth of my past hours, engulfed at once every
solid or serious impression, and left to memory only the
veriest levities of a former existence.
I do not wish, however, to trace the course of my
miserable profligacy here --a profligacy which set at defiance
the laws, while it eluded the vigilance of the institution.
Three years of folly, passed without profit, had but given me
rooted habits of vice, and added, in a somewhat unusual degree,
to my bodily stature, when, after a week of soulless
dissipation, I invited a small party of the most dissolute
students to a secret carousal in my chambers. We met at a late
hour of the night; for our debaucheries were to be faithfully
protracted until morning. The wine flowed freely, and there
were not wanting other and perhaps more dangerous seductions;
so that the gray dawn had already faintly appeared in the east,
while our delirious extravagance was at its height. Madly
flushed with cards and intoxication, I was in the act of
insisting upon a toast of more than wonted profanity, when my
attention was suddenly diverted by the violent, although
partial unclosing of the door of the apartment, and by the
eager voice of a servant from without. He said that some
person, apparently in great haste, demanded to speak with me in
the hall.
Wildly excited with wine, the unexpected
interruption rather delighted than surprised me. I staggered
forward at once, and a few steps brought me to the vestibule of
the building. In this low and small room there hung no lamp;
and now no light at all was admitted, save that of the
exceedingly feeble dawn which made its way through the
semi-circular window. As I put my foot over the threshold, I
became aware of the figure of a youth about my own height, and
habited in a white kerseymere morning frock, cut in the novel
fashion of the one I myself wore at the moment. This the faint
light enabled me to perceive; but the features of his face I
could not distinguish. Upon my entering he strode hurriedly up
to me, and, seizing me by. the arm with a gesture of petulant
impatience, whispered the words "William Wilson!" in my
ear.
I grew perfectly sober in an instant.
There was that in the manner of the stranger, and
in the tremulous shake of his uplifted finger, as he held it
between my eyes and the light, which filled me with unqualified
amazement; but it was not this which had so violently moved me.
It was the pregnancy of solemn admonition in the singular, low,
hissing utterance; and, above all, it was the character, the
tone, the key, of those few, simple, and familiar, yet
whispered syllables, which came with a thousand thronging
memories of bygone days, and struck upon my soul with the shock
of a galvanic battery. Ere I could recover the use of my senses
he was gone.
Although this event failed not of a vivid effect
upon my disordered imagination, yet was it evanescent as vivid.
For some weeks, indeed, I busied myself in earnest inquiry, or
was wrapped in a cloud of morbid speculation. I did not pretend
to disguise from my perception the identity of the singular
individual who thus perseveringly interfered with my affairs,
and harassed me with his insinuated counsel. But who and what
was this Wilson? --and whence came he? --and what were his
purposes? Upon neither of these points could I be satisfied;
merely ascertaining, in regard to him, that a sudden accident
in his family had caused his removal from Dr. Bransby's academy
on the afternoon of the day in which I myself had eloped. But
in a brief period I ceased to think upon the subject; my
attention being all absorbed in a contemplated departure for
Oxford. Thither I soon went; the uncalculating vanity of my
parents furnishing me with an outfit and annual establishment,
which would enable me to indulge at will in the luxury already
so dear to my heart, --to vie in profuseness of expenditure
with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldoms in Great
Britain.
Excited by such appliances to vice, my
constitutional temperament broke forth with redoubled ardor,
and I spurned even the common restraints of decency in the mad
infatuation of my revels. But it were absurd to pause in the
detail of my extravagance. Let it suffice, that among
spendthrifts I out-Heroded Herod, and that, giving name to a
multitude of novel follies, I added no brief appendix to the
long catalogue of vices then usual in the most dissolute
university of Europe.
It could hardly be credited, however, that I had,
even here, so utterly fallen from the gentlemanly estate, as to
seek acquaintance with the vilest arts of the gambler by
profession, and, having become an adept in his despicable
science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my
already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among
my fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And the
very enormity of this offence against all manly and honourable
sentiment proved, beyond doubt, the main if not the sole reason
of the impunity with which it was committed. Who, indeed, among
my most abandoned associates, would not rather have disputed
the clearest evidence of his senses, than have suspected of
such courses, the gay, the frank, the generous William Wilson
--the noblest and most commoner at Oxford --him whose follies
(said his parasites) were but the follies of youth and
unbridled fancy --whose errors but inimitable whim --whose
darkest vice but a careless and dashing extravagance?
I had been now two years successfully busied in
this way, when there came to the university a young parvenu
nobleman, Glendinning --rich, said report, as Herodes Atticus
--his riches, too, as easily acquired. I soon found him of weak
intellect, and, of course, marked him as a fitting subject for
my skill. I frequently engaged him in play, and contrived, with
the gambler's usual art, to let him win considerable sums, the
more effectually to entangle him in my snares. At length, my
schemes being ripe, I met him (with the full intention that
this meeting should be final and decisive) at the chambers of a
fellow-commoner, (Mr. Preston,) equally intimate with both, but
who, to do him Justice, entertained not even a remote suspicion
of my design. To give to this a better colouring, I had
contrived to have assembled a party of some eight or ten, and
was solicitously careful that the introduction of cards should
appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my
contemplated dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none
of the low finesse was omitted, so customary upon similar
occasions that it is a just matter for wonder how any are still
found so besotted as to fall its victim.
We had protracted our sitting far into the night,
and I had at length effected the manoeuvre of getting
Glendinning as my sole antagonist. The game, too, was my
favorite ecarte!. The rest of the company, interested in the
extent of our play, had abandoned their own cards, and were
standing around us as spectators. The parvenu, who had been
induced by my artifices in the early part of the evening, to
drink deeply, now shuffled, dealt, or played, with a wild
nervousness of manner for which his intoxication, I thought,
might partially, but could not altogether account. In a very
short period he had become my debtor to a large amount, when,
having taken a long draught of port, he did precisely what I
had been coolly anticipating --he proposed to double our
already extravagant stakes. With a well-feigned show of
reluctance, and not until after my repeated refusal had seduced
him into some angry words which gave a color of pique to my
compliance, did I finally comply. The result, of course, did
but prove how entirely the prey was in my toils; in less than
an hour he had quadrupled his debt. For some time his
countenance had been losing the florid tinge lent it by the
wine; but now, to my astonishment, I perceived that it had
grown to a pallor truly fearful. I say to my astonishment.
Glendinning had been represented to my eager inquiries as
immeasurably wealthy; and the sums which he had as yet lost,
although in themselves vast, could not, I supposed, very
seriously annoy, much less so violently affect him. That he was
overcome by the wine just swallowed, was the idea which most
readily presented itself; and, rather with a view to the
preservation of my own character in the eyes of my associates,
than from any less interested motive, I was about to insist,
peremptorily, upon a discontinuance of the play, when some
expressions at my elbow from among the company, and an
ejaculation evincing utter despair on the part of Glendinning,
gave me to understand that I had effected his total ruin under
circumstances which, rendering him an object for the pity of
all, should have protected him from the ill offices even of a
fiend.
What now might have been my conduct it is
difficult to say. The pitiable condition of my dupe had thrown
an air of embarrassed gloom over all; and, for some moments, a
profound silence was maintained, during which I could not help
feeling my cheeks tingle with the many burning glances of scorn
or reproach cast upon me by the less abandoned of the party. I
will even own that an intolerable weight of anxiety was for a
brief instant lifted from my bosom by the sudden and
extraordinary interruption which ensued. The wide, heavy
folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown open, to
their full extent, with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that
extinguished, as if by magic, every candle in the room. Their
light, in dying, enabled us just to perceive that a stranger
had entered, about my own height, and closely muffled in a
cloak. The darkness, however, was now total; and we could only
feel that he was standing in our midst. Before any one of us
could recover from the extreme astonishment into which this
rudeness had thrown all, we heard the voice of the
intruder.
"Gentlemen," he said, in a low, distinct, and
never-to-be-forgotten whisper which thrilled to the very marrow
of my bones, "Gentlemen, I make no apology for this behaviour,
because in thus behaving, I am but fulfilling a duty. You are,
beyond doubt, uninformed of the true character of the person
who has to-night won at ecarte a large sum of money from Lord
Glendinning. I will therefore put you upon an expeditious and
decisive plan of obtaining this very necessary information.
Please to examine, at your leisure, the inner linings of the
cuff of his left sleeve, and the several little packages which
may be found in the somewhat capacious pockets of his
embroidered morning wrapper."
While he spoke, so profound was the stillness that
one might have heard a pin drop upon the floor. In ceasing, he
departed at once, and as abruptly as he had entered. Can I
--shall I describe my sensations? --must I say that I felt all
the horrors of the damned? Most assuredly I had little time
given for reflection. Many hands roughly seized me upon the
spot, and lights were immediately reprocured. A search ensued.
In the lining of my sleeve were found all the court cards
essential in ecarte, and, in the pockets of my wrapper, a
number of packs, facsimiles of those used at our sittings, with
the single exception that mine were of the species called,
technically, arrondees; the honours being slightly convex at
the ends, the lower cards slightly convex at the sides. In this
disposition, the dupe who cuts, as customary, at the length of
the pack, will invariably find that he cuts his antagonist an
honor; while the gambler, cutting at the breadth, will, as
certainly, cut nothing for his victim which may count in the
records of the game.
Any burst of indignation upon this discovery would
have affected me less than the silent contempt, or the
sarcastic composure, with which it was received.
"Mr. Wilson," said our host, stooping to remove
from beneath his feet an exceedingly luxurious cloak of rare
furs, "Mr. Wilson, this is your property." (The weather was
cold; and, upon quitting my own room, I had thrown a cloak over
my dressing wrapper, putting it off upon reaching the scene of
play.) "I presume it is supererogatory to seek here (eyeing the
folds of the garment with a bitter smile) for any farther
evidence of your skill. Indeed, we have had enough. You will
see the necessity, I hope, of quitting Oxford --at all events,
of quitting instantly my chambers."
Abased, humbled to the dust as I then was, it is
probable that I should have resented this galling language by
immediate personal violence, had not my whole attention been at
the moment arrested by a fact of the most startling character.
The cloak which I had worn was of a rare description of fur;
how rare, how extravagantly costly, I shall not venture to say.
Its fashion, too, was of my own fantastic invention; for I was
fastidious to an absurd degree of coxcombry, in matters of this
frivolous nature. When, therefore, Mr. Preston reached me that
which he had picked up upon the floor, and near the folding
doors of the apartment, it was with an astonishment nearly
bordering upon terror, that I perceived my own already hanging
on my arm, (where I had no doubt unwittingly placed it,) and
that the one presented me was but its exact counterpart in
every, in even the minutest possible particular. The singular
being who had so disastrously exposed me, had been muffled, I
remembered, in a cloak; and none had been worn at all by any of
the members of our party with the exception of myself.
Retaining some presence of mind, I took the one offered me by
Preston; placed it, unnoticed, over my own; left the apartment
with a resolute scowl of defiance; and, next morning ere dawn
of day, commenced a hurried journey from Oxford to the
continent, in a perfect agony of horror and of shame.
I fled in vain. My evil destiny pursued me as if
in exultation, and proved, indeed, that the exercise of its
mysterious dominion had as yet only begun. Scarcely had I set
foot in Paris ere I had fresh evidence of the detestable
interest taken by this Wilson in my concerns. Years flew, while
I experienced no relief. Villain! --at Rome, with how untimely,
yet with how spectral an officiousness, stepped he in between
me and my ambition! At Vienna, too --at Berlin --and at Moscow!
Where, in truth, had I not bitter cause to curse him within my
heart? From his inscrutable tyranny did I at length flee,
panic-stricken, as from a pestilence; and to the very ends of
the earth I fled in vain.
And again, and again, in secret communion with my
own spirit, would I demand the questions "Who is he? --whence
came he? --and what are his objects?" But no answer was there
found. And then I scrutinized, with a minute scrutiny, the
forms, and the methods, and the leading traits of his
impertinent supervision. But even here there was very little
upon which to base a conjecture. It was noticeable, indeed,
that, in no one of the multiplied instances in which he had of
late crossed my path, had he so crossed it except to frustrate
those schemes, or to disturb those actions, which, if fully
carried out, might have resulted in bitter mischief. Poor
justification this, in truth, for an authority so imperiously
assumed! Poor indemnity for natural rights of self-agency so
pertinaciously, so insultingly denied!
I had also been forced to notice that my
tormentor, for a very long period of time, (while scrupulously
and with miraculous dexterity maintaining his whim of an
identity of apparel with myself,) had so contrived it, in the
execution of his varied interference with my will, that I saw
not, at any moment, the features of his face. Be Wilson what he
might, this, at least, was but the veriest of affectation, or
of folly. Could he, for an instant, have supposed that, in my
admonisher at Eton --in the destroyer of my honor at Oxford,
--in him who thwarted my ambition at Rome, my revenge at Paris,
my passionate love at Naples, or what he falsely termed my
avarice in Egypt, --that in this, my arch-enemy and evil
genius, could fall to recognise the William Wilson of my school
boy days, --the namesake, the companion, the rival, --the hated
and dreaded rival at Dr. Bransby's? Impossible! --But let me
hasten to the last eventful scene of the drama.
Thus far I had succumbed supinely to this
imperious domination. The sentiment of deep awe with which I
habitually regarded the elevated character, the majestic
wisdom, the apparent omnipresence and omnipotence of Wilson,
added to a feeling of even terror, with which certain other
traits in his nature and assumptions inspired me, had operated,
hitherto, to impress me with an idea of my own utter weakness
and helplessness, and to suggest an implicit, although bitterly
reluctant submission to his arbitrary will. But, of late days,
I had given myself up entirely to wine; and its maddening
influence upon my hereditary temper rendered me more and more
impatient of control. I began to murmur, --to hesitate, --to
resist. And was it only fancy which induced me to believe that,
with the increase of my own firmness, that of my tormentor
underwent a proportional diminution? Be this as it may, I now
began to feel the inspiration of a burning hope, and at length
nurtured in my secret thoughts a stern and desperate resolution
that I would submit no longer to be enslaved.
It was at Rome, during the Carnival of 18--, that
I attended a masquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke
Di Broglio. I had indulged more freely than usual in the
excesses of the wine-table; and now the suffocating atmosphere
of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond endurance. The
difficulty, too, of forcing my way through the mazes of the
company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper;
for I was anxiously seeking, (let me not say with what unworthy
motive) the young, the gay, the beautiful wife of the aged and
doting Di Broglio. With a too unscrupulous confidence she had
previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in
which she would be habited, and now, having caught a glimpse of
her person, I was hurrying to make my way into her presence.
--At this moment I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder,
and that ever-remembered, low, damnable whisper within my
ear.
In an absolute phrenzy of wrath, I turned at once
upon him who had thus interrupted me, and seized him violently
by tile collar. He was attired, as I had expected, in a costume
altogether similar to my own; wearing a Spanish cloak of blue
velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a
rapier. A mask of black silk entirely covered his face.
"Scoundrel!" I said, in a voice husky with rage,
while every syllable I uttered seemed as new fuel to my fury,
"scoundrel! impostor! accursed villain! you shall not --you
shall not dog me unto death! Follow me, or I stab you where you
stand!" --and I broke my way from the ball-room into a small
ante-chamber adjoining --dragging him unresistingly with me as
I went.
Upon entering, I thrust him furiously from me. He
staggered against the wall, while I closed the door with an
oath, and commanded him to draw. He hesitated but for an
instant; then, with a slight sigh, drew in silence, and put
himself upon his defence.
The contest was brief indeed. I was frantic with
every species of wild excitement, and felt within my single arm
the energy and power of a multitude. In a few seconds I forced
him by sheer strength against the wainscoting, and thus,
getting him at mercy, plunged my sword, with brute ferocity,
repeatedly through and through his bosom.
At that instant some person tried the latch of the
door. I hastened to prevent an intrusion, and then immediately
returned to my dying antagonist. But what human language can
adequately portray that astonishment, that horror which
possessed me at the spectacle then presented to view? The brief
moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient to
produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangements at
the upper or farther end of the room. A large mirror, --so at
first it seemed to me in my confusion --now stood where none
had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to it in
extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale
and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and
tottering gait.
Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my
antagonist --it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the
agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he
had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his
raiment --not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments
of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity,
mine own!
It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a
whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking
while he said:
"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet,
henceforward art thou also dead --dead to the World, to Heaven
and to Hope! In me didst thou exist --and, in my death, see by
this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered
thyself."