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<pre>
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Title: The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices

Author: Charles Dickens

Release Date: April, 1997  [EBook #888]
[This file was first posted on April 28, 1997]
[Most recently updated: May 11, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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</pre>
<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
<p>Transcribed from the 1905 edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
<h1>THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES</h1>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven,
wherein these presents bear date, two idle apprentices, exhausted by
the long, hot summer, and the long, hot work it had brought with it,
ran away from their employer.&nbsp; They were bound to a highly meritorious
lady (named Literature), of fair credit and repute, though, it must
be acknowledged, not quite so highly esteemed in the City as she might
be.&nbsp; This is the more remarkable, as there is nothing against the
respectable lady in that quarter, but quite the contrary; her family
having rendered eminent service to many famous citizens of London.&nbsp;
It may be sufficient to name Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor under
King Richard II., at the time of Wat Tyler&rsquo;s insurrection, and
Sir Richard Whittington: which latter distinguished man and magistrate
was doubtless indebted to the lady&rsquo;s family for the gift of his
celebrated cat.&nbsp; There is also strong reason to suppose that they
rang the Highgate bells for him with their own hands.</p>
<p>The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty to the mistress
from whom they had received many favours, were actuated by the low idea
of making a perfectly idle trip, in any direction.&nbsp; They had no
intention of going anywhere in particular; they wanted to see nothing,
they wanted to know nothing, they wanted to learn nothing, they wanted
to do nothing.&nbsp; They wanted only to be idle.&nbsp; They took to
themselves (after HOGARTH), the names of Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis
Goodchild; but there was not a moral pin to choose between them, and
they were both idle in the last degree.</p>
<p>Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference of
character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon himself
any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he was idle; in
short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry.&nbsp;
Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish or
Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and-bred idler, a consistent
idler, who practised what he would have preached if he had not been
too idle to preach; a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness.</p>
<p>The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a few hours of
their escape, walking down into the North of England, that is to say,
Thomas was lying in a meadow, looking at the railway trains as they
passed over a distant viaduct&mdash;which was <i>his</i> idea of walking
down into the North; while Francis was walking a mile due South against
time&mdash;which was <i>his</i> idea of walking down into the North.&nbsp;
In the meantime the day waned, and the milestones remained unconquered.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Tom,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;the sun is getting low.&nbsp;
Up, and let us go forward!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Nay,&rsquo; quoth Thomas Idle, &lsquo;I have not done with
Annie Laurie yet.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he proceeded with that idle but popular
ballad, to the effect that for the bonnie young person of that name
he would &lsquo;lay him doon and dee&rsquo;&mdash;equivalent, in prose,
to lay him down and die.</p>
<p>&lsquo;What an ass that fellow was!&rsquo; cried Goodchild, with
the bitter emphasis of contempt.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Which fellow?&rsquo; asked Thomas Idle.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The fellow in your song.&nbsp; Lay him doon and dee!&nbsp;
Finely he&rsquo;d show off before the girl by doing <i>that</i>.&nbsp;
A sniveller!&nbsp; Why couldn&rsquo;t he get up, and punch somebody&rsquo;s
head!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Whose?&rsquo; asked Thomas Idle.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Anybody&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Everybody&rsquo;s would be better than
nobody&rsquo;s!&nbsp; If I fell into that state of mind about a girl,
do you think I&rsquo;d lay me doon and dee?&nbsp; No, sir,&rsquo; proceeded
Goodchild, with a disparaging assumption of the Scottish accent, &lsquo;I&rsquo;d
get me oop and peetch into somebody.&nbsp; Wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have anything to do with her,&rsquo; yawned
Thomas Idle.&nbsp; &lsquo;Why should I take the trouble?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s no trouble, Tom, to fall in love,&rsquo; said Goodchild,
shaking his head.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s trouble enough to fall out of it, once you&rsquo;re
in it,&rsquo; retorted Tom.&nbsp; &lsquo;So I keep out of it altogether.&nbsp;
It would be better for you, if you did the same.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, and not unfrequently
with several objects at once, made no reply.&nbsp; He heaved a sigh
of the kind which is termed by the lower orders &lsquo;a bellowser,&rsquo;
and then, heaving Mr. Idle on his feet (who was not half so heavy as
the sigh), urged him northward.</p>
<p>These two had sent their personal baggage on by train: only retaining
each a knapsack.&nbsp; Idle now applied himself to constantly regretting
the train, to tracking it through the intricacies of Bradshaw&rsquo;s
Guide, and finding out where it is now&mdash;and where now&mdash;and
where now&mdash;and to asking what was the use of walking, when you
could ride at such a pace as that.&nbsp; Was it to see the country?&nbsp;
If that was the object, look at it out of the carriage windows.&nbsp;
There was a great deal more of it to be seen there than here.&nbsp;
Besides, who wanted to see the country?&nbsp; Nobody.&nbsp; And again,
whoever did walk?&nbsp; Nobody.&nbsp; Fellows set off to walk, but they
never did it.&nbsp; They came back and said they did, but they didn&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
Then why should he walk?&nbsp; He wouldn&rsquo;t walk.&nbsp; He swore
it by this milestone!</p>
<p>It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated into the
North.&nbsp; Submitting to the powerful chain of argument, Goodchild
proposed a return to the Metropolis, and a falling back upon Euston
Square Terminus.&nbsp; Thomas assented with alacrity, and so they walked
down into the North by the next morning&rsquo;s express, and carried
their knapsacks in the luggage-van.</p>
<p>It was like all other expresses, as every express is and must be.&nbsp;
It bore through the harvest country a smell like a large washing-day,
and a sharp issue of steam as from a huge brazen tea-urn.&nbsp; The
greatest power in nature and art combined, it yet glided over dangerous
heights in the sight of people looking up from fields and roads, as
smoothly and unreally as a light miniature plaything.&nbsp; Now, the
engine shrieked in hysterics of such intensity, that it seemed desirable
that the men who had her in charge should hold her feet, slap her hands,
and bring her to; now, burrowed into tunnels with a stubborn and undemonstrative
energy so confusing that the train seemed to be flying back into leagues
of darkness.&nbsp; Here, were station after station, swallowed up by
the express without stopping; here, stations where it fired itself in
like a volley of cannon-balls, swooped away four country-people with
nosegays, and three men of business with portmanteaus, and fired itself
off again, bang, bang, bang!&nbsp; At long intervals were uncomfortable
refreshment-rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of Beauty towards
Beast, the public (but to whom she never relented, as Beauty did in
the story, towards the other Beast), and where sensitive stomachs were
fed, with a contemptuous sharpness occasioning indigestion.&nbsp; Here,
again, were stations with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden
razors set aloft on great posts, shaving the air.&nbsp; In these fields,
the horses, sheep, and cattle were well used to the thundering meteor,
and didn&rsquo;t mind; in those, they were all set scampering together,
and a herd of pigs scoured after them.&nbsp; The pastoral country darkened,
became coaly, became smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse,
improved again, grew rugged, turned romantic; was a wood, a stream,
a chain of hills, a gorge, a moor, a cathedral town, a fortified place,
a waste.&nbsp; Now, miserable black dwellings, a black canal, and sick
black towers of chimneys; now, a trim garden, where the flowers were
bright and fair; now, a wilderness of hideous altars all a-blaze; now,
the water meadows with their fairy rings; now, the mangy patch of unlet
building ground outside the stagnant town, with the larger ring where
the Circus was last week.&nbsp; The temperature changed, the dialect
changed, the people changed, faces got sharper, manner got shorter,
eyes got shrewder and harder; yet all so quickly, that the spruce guard
in the London uniform and silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar,
delivered half the dispatches in his shiny little pouch, or read his
newspaper.</p>
<p>Carlisle!&nbsp; Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle.&nbsp; It
looked congenially and delightfully idle.&nbsp; Something in the way
of public amusement had happened last month, and something else was
going to happen before Christmas; and, in the meantime there was a lecture
on India for those who liked it&mdash;which Idle and Goodchild did not.&nbsp;
Likewise, by those who liked them, there were impressions to be bought
of all the vapid prints, going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid
books.&nbsp; For those who wanted to put anything in missionary boxes,
here were the boxes.&nbsp; For those who wanted the Reverend Mr. Podgers
(artist&rsquo;s proofs, thirty shillings), here was Mr. Podgers to any
amount.&nbsp; Not less gracious and abundant, Mr. Codgers also of the
vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly tooth and nail.&nbsp;
Here, were guide-books to the neighbouring antiquities, and eke the
Lake country, in several dry and husky sorts; here, many physically
and morally impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies to copy,
in the exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large impression
of MR. SPURGEON, solid as to the flesh, not to say even something gross.&nbsp;
The working young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with their hands in
their pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast, and appeared
(much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else to do.&nbsp;
The working and growing young women of Carlisle, from the age of twelve
upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the evening, and rallied
the said young men.&nbsp; Sometimes the young men rallied the young
women, as in the case of a group gathered round an accordion-player,
from among whom a young man advanced behind a young woman for whom he
appeared to have a tenderness, and hinted to her that he was there and
playful, by giving her (he wore clogs) a kick.</p>
<p>On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and became (to the
two Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and reproachfully busy.&nbsp; There
were its cattle market, its sheep market, and its pig market down by
the river, with raw-boned and shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Lowland
dresses beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out among the animals,
and flavouring the air with fumes of whiskey.&nbsp; There was its corn
market down the main street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks.&nbsp;
There was its general market in the street too, with heather brooms
on which the purple flower still flourished, and heather baskets primitive
and fresh to behold.&nbsp; With women trying on clogs and caps at open
stalls, and &lsquo;Bible stalls&rsquo; adjoining.&nbsp; With &lsquo;Doctor
Mantle&rsquo;s Dispensary for the cure of all Human Maladies and no
charge for advice,&rsquo; and with Doctor Mantle&rsquo;s &lsquo;Laboratory
of Medical, Chemical, and Botanical Science&rsquo;&mdash;both healing
institutions established on one pair of trestles, one board, and one
sun-blind.&nbsp; With the renowned phrenologist from London, begging
to be favoured (at sixpence each) with the company of clients of both
sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he would make revelations
&lsquo;enabling him or her to know themselves.&rsquo;&nbsp; Through
all these bargains and blessings, the recruiting-sergeant watchfully
elbowed his way, a thread of War in the peaceful skein.&nbsp; Likewise
on the walls were printed hints that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed
to hear of a few fine active young men; and that whereas the standard
of that distinguished corps is full six feet, &lsquo;growing lads of
five feet eleven&rsquo; need not absolutely despair of being accepted.</p>
<p>Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the buried majesty
of Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode away from Carlisle at
eight o&rsquo;clock one forenoon, bound for the village of Hesket, Newmarket,
some fourteen miles distant.&nbsp; Goodchild (who had already begun
to doubt whether he was idle: as his way always is when he has nothing
to do) had read of a certain black old Cumberland hill or mountain,
called Carrock, or Carrock Fell; and had arrived at the conclusion that
it would be the culminating triumph of Idleness to ascend the same.&nbsp;
Thomas Idle, dwelling on the pains inseparable from that achievement,
had expressed the strongest doubts of the expediency, and even of the
sanity, of the enterprise; but Goodchild had carried his point, and
they rode away.</p>
<p>Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and twisting to
the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted himself a great deal
more than his merits deserve; but that is rather the way of the Lake
country), dodging the apprentices in a picturesque and pleasant manner.&nbsp;
Good, weather-proof, warm, pleasant houses, well white-limed, scantily
dotting the road.&nbsp; Clean children coming out to look, carrying
other clean children as big as themselves.&nbsp; Harvest still lying
out and much rained upon; here and there, harvest still unreaped.&nbsp;
Well-cultivated gardens attached to the cottages, with plenty of produce
forced out of their hard soil.&nbsp; Lonely nooks, and wild; but people
can be born, and married, and buried in such nooks, and can live and
love, and be loved, there as elsewhere, thank God! (Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s
remark.)&nbsp; By-and-by, the village.&nbsp; Black, coarse-stoned, rough-windowed
houses; some with outer staircases, like Swiss houses; a sinuous and
stony gutter winding up hill and round the corner, by way of street.&nbsp;
All the children running out directly.&nbsp; Women pausing in washing,
to peep from doorways and very little windows.&nbsp; Such were the observations
of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, as their conveyance stopped at the village
shoemaker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Old Carrock gloomed down upon it all in a very
ill-tempered state; and rain was beginning.</p>
<p>The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with Carrock.&nbsp;
No visitors went up Carrock.&nbsp; No visitors came there at all.&nbsp;
Aa&rsquo; the world ganged awa&rsquo; yon.&nbsp; The driver appealed
to the Innkeeper.&nbsp; The Innkeeper had two men working in the fields,
and one of them should be called in, to go up Carrock as guide.&nbsp;
Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, highly approving, entered the Innkeeper&rsquo;s
house, to drink whiskey and eat oatcake.</p>
<p>The Innkeeper was not idle enough&mdash;was not idle at all, which
was a great fault in him&mdash;but was a fine specimen of a north-country
man, or any kind of man.&nbsp; He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a
well-knit frame, an immense hand, a cheery, outspeaking voice, and a
straight, bright, broad look.&nbsp; He had a drawing-room, too, upstairs,
which was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells.&nbsp; (This was Mr.
Francis Goodchild&rsquo;s opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Idle did not
concur.)</p>
<p>The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and recrossed by
beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre, in a corner, that
it looked like a broken star-fish.&nbsp; The room was comfortably and
solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair.&nbsp; It had a snug
fireside, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the
wild country behind the house.&nbsp; What it most developed was, an
unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained
a most surprising number.&nbsp; They were not very various, consisting
in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated,
appealing on one leg to the parental affections from under little cupping
glasses; but, Uncle Tom was there, in crockery, receiving theological
instructions from Miss Eva, who grew out of his side like a wen, in
an exceedingly rough state of profile propagandism.&nbsp; Engravings
of Mr. Hunt&rsquo;s country boy, before and after his pie, were on the
wall, divided by a highly-coloured nautical piece, the subject of which
had all her colours (and more) flying, and was making great way through
a sea of a regular pattern, like a lady&rsquo;s collar.&nbsp; A benevolent,
elderly gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head, kept guard,
in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a table;
in appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife-box, but,
when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires, exactly like David&rsquo;s
harp packed for travelling.&nbsp; Everything became a nick-nack in this
curious room.&nbsp; The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to the highest
point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the greatest
possible distance from the fireplace, and said: &lsquo;By your leave,
not a kettle, but a bijou.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish
with the cover on, got upon a little round occasional table in a window,
with a worked top, and announced itself to the two chairs accidentally
placed there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in
china to be chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the
visiting moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village
on the Cumberland Fells.&nbsp; The very footstool could not keep the
floor, but got upon a sofa, and there-from proclaimed itself, in high
relief of white and liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled
up for repose.&nbsp; Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes,
the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the collection: being
perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting
down on the part of some corpulent member of the family.</p>
<p>There were books, too, in this room; books on the table, books on
the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner.&nbsp; Fielding
was there, and Smollett was there, and Steele and Addison were there,
in dispersed volumes; and there were tales of those who go down to the
sea in ships, for windy nights; and there was really a choice of good
books for rainy days or fine.&nbsp; It was so very pleasant to see these
things in such a lonesome by-place&mdash;so very agreeable to find these
evidences of a taste, however homely, that went beyond the beautiful
cleanliness and trimness of the house&mdash;so fanciful to imagine what
a wonder a room must be to the little children born in the gloomy village&mdash;what
grand impressions of it those of them who became wanderers over the
earth would carry away; and how, at distant ends of the world, some
old voyagers would die, cherishing the belief that the finest apartment
known to men was once in the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland&mdash;it
was such a charmingly lazy pursuit to entertain these rambling thoughts
over the choice oatcake and the genial whiskey, that Mr. Idle and Mr.
Goodchild never asked themselves how it came to pass that the men in
the fields were never heard of more, how the stalwart landlord replaced
them without explanation, how his dog-cart came to be waiting at the
door, and how everything was arranged without the least arrangement
for climbing to old Carrock&rsquo;s shoulders, and standing on his head.</p>
<p>Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Apprentices drifted
out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain; got
into the landlord&rsquo;s light dog-cart, and rattled off through the
village for the foot of Carrock.&nbsp; The journey at the outset was
not remarkable.&nbsp; The Cumberland road went up and down like all
other roads; the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages and
barked like other curs, and the Cumberland peasantry stared after the
dog-cart amazedly, as long as it was in sight, like the rest of their
race.&nbsp; The approach to the foot of the mountain resembled the approaches
to the feet of most other mountains all over the world.&nbsp; The cultivation
gradually ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road became gradually
rougher, and the sides of the mountain looked gradually more and more
lofty, and more and more difficult to get up.&nbsp; The dog-cart was
left at a lonely farm-house.&nbsp; The landlord borrowed a large umbrella,
and, assuming in an instant the character of the most cheerful and adventurous
of guides, led the way to the ascent.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild looked eagerly
at the top of the mountain, and, feeling apparently that he was now
going to be very lazy indeed, shone all over wonderfully to the eye,
under the influence of the contentment within and the moisture without.&nbsp;
Only in the bosom of Mr. Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold her gloomy
state.&nbsp; He kept it a secret; but he would have given a very handsome
sum, when the ascent began, to have been back again at the inn.&nbsp;
The sides of Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock
was hidden in mist.&nbsp; The rain was falling faster and faster.&nbsp;
The knees of Mr. Idle&mdash;always weak on walking excursions&mdash;shivered
and shook with fear and damp.&nbsp; The wet was already penetrating
through the young man&rsquo;s outer coat to a brand-new shooting-jacket,
for which he had reluctantly paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving
town; he had no stimulating refreshment about him but a small packet
of clammy gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an arm, nobody
to push him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in front,
nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent, the
dampness of the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable
folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the world, when there
is level ground within reach to walk on instead.&nbsp; Was it for this
that Thomas had left London?&nbsp; London, where there are nice short
walks in level public gardens, with benches of repose set up at convenient
distances for weary travellers&mdash;London, where rugged stone is humanely
pounded into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped into
smooth slabs for the pavement!&nbsp; No! it was not for the laborious
ascent of the crags of Carrock that Idle had left his native city, and
travelled to Cumberland.&nbsp; Never did he feel more disastrously convinced
that he had committed a very grave error in judgment than when he found
himself standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, and
knew that the responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually
getting to the top of it.</p>
<p>The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the
mournful Idle brought up the rear.&nbsp; From time to time, the two
foremost members of the expedition changed places in the order of march;
but the rearguard never altered his position.&nbsp; Up the mountain
or down the mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through
the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was always the last,
and was always the man who had to be looked after and waited for.&nbsp;
At first the ascent was delusively easy, the sides of the mountain sloped
gradually, and the material of which they were composed was a soft spongy
turf, very tender and pleasant to walk upon.&nbsp; After a hundred yards
or so, however, the verdant scene and the easy slope disappeared, and
the rocks began.&nbsp; Not noble, massive rocks, standing upright, keeping
a certain regularity in their positions, and possessing, now and then,
flat tops to sit upon, but little irritating, comfortless rocks, littered
about anyhow, by Nature; treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts
of small shapes and small sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers-up
of wavering feet.&nbsp; When these impediments were passed, heather
and slough followed.&nbsp; Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly
mitigated; and here the exploring party of three turned round to look
at the view below them.&nbsp; The scene of the moorland and the fields
was like a feeble water-colour drawing half sponged out.&nbsp; The mist
was darkening, the rain was thickening, the trees were dotted about
like spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which mapped out the
fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely farm-house
where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral in the grey light
like the last human dwelling at the end of the habitable world.&nbsp;
Was this a sight worth climbing to see?&nbsp; Surely&mdash;surely not!</p>
<p>Up again&mdash;for the top of Carrock is not reached yet.&nbsp; The
land-lord, just as good-tempered and obliging as he was at the bottom
of the mountain.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild brighter in the eyes and rosier
in the face than ever; full of cheerful remarks and apt quotations;
and walking with a springiness of step wonderful to behold.&nbsp; Mr.
Idle, farther and farther in the rear, with the water squeaking in the
toes of his boots, with his two-guinea shooting-jacket clinging damply
to his aching sides, with his overcoat so full of rain, and standing
out so pyramidically stiff, in consequence, from his shoulders downwards,
that he felt as if he was walking in a gigantic extinguisher&mdash;the
despairing spirit within him representing but too aptly the candle that
had just been put out.&nbsp; Up and up and up again, till a ridge is
reached and the outer edge of the mist on the summit of Carrock is darkly
and drizzingly near.&nbsp; Is this the top?&nbsp; No, nothing like the
top.&nbsp; It is an aggravating peculiarity of all mountains, that,
although they have only one top when they are seen (as they ought always
to be seen) from below, they turn out to have a perfect eruption of
false tops whenever the traveller is sufficiently ill-advised to go
out of his way for the purpose of ascending them.&nbsp; Carrock is but
a trumpery little mountain of fifteen hundred feet, and it presumes
to have false tops, and even precipices, as if it were Mont Blanc.&nbsp;
No matter; Goodchild enjoys it, and will go on; and Idle, who is afraid
of being left behind by himself, must follow.&nbsp; On entering the
edge of the mist, the landlord stops, and says he hopes that it will
not get any thicker.&nbsp; It is twenty years since he last ascended
Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the mist increases, that the
party may be lost on the mountain.&nbsp; Goodchild hears this dreadful
intimation, and is not in the least impressed by it.&nbsp; He marches
for the top that is never to be found, as if he was the Wandering Jew,
bound to go on for ever, in defiance of everything.&nbsp; The landlord
faithfully accompanies him.&nbsp; The two, to the dim eye of Idle, far
below, look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of friendly giants,
mounting the steps of some invisible castle together.&nbsp; Up and up,
and then down a little, and then up, and then along a strip of level
ground, and then up again.&nbsp; The wind, a wind unknown in the happy
valley, blows keen and strong; the rain-mist gets impenetrable; a dreary
little cairn of stones appears.&nbsp; The landlord adds one to the heap,
first walking all round the cairn as if he were about to perform an
incantation, then dropping the stone on to the top of the heap with
the gesture of a magician adding an ingredient to a cauldron in full
bubble.&nbsp; Goodchild sits down by the cairn as if it was his study-table
at home; Idle, drenched and panting, stands up with his back to the
wind, ascertains distinctly that this is the top at last, looks round
with all the little curiosity that is left in him, and gets, in return,
a magnificent view of&mdash;Nothing!</p>
<p>The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of the exploring
party is a little injured by the nature of the direct conclusion to
which the sight of it points&mdash;the said conclusion being that the
mountain mist has actually gathered round them, as the landlord feared
it would.&nbsp; It now becomes imperatively necessary to settle the
exact situation of the farm-house in the valley at which the dog-cart
has been left, before the travellers attempt to descend.&nbsp; While
the landlord is endeavouring to make this discovery in his own way,
Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under his wet coat, draws out a little
red morocco-case, opens it, and displays to the view of his companions
a neat pocket-compass.&nbsp; The north is found, the point at which
the farm-house is situated is settled, and the descent begins.&nbsp;
After a little downward walking, Idle (behind as usual) sees his fellow-travellers
turn aside sharply&mdash;tries to follow them&mdash;loses them in the
mist&mdash;is shouted after, waited for, recovered&mdash;and then finds
that a halt has been ordered, partly on his account, partly for the
purpose of again consulting the compass.</p>
<p>The point in debate is settled as before between Goodchild and the
landlord, and the expedition moves on, not down the mountain, but marching
straight forward round the slope of it.&nbsp; The difficulty of following
this new route is acutely felt by Thomas Idle.&nbsp; He finds the hardship
of walking at all greatly increased by the fatigue of moving his feet
straight forward along the side of a slope, when their natural tendency,
at every step, is to turn off at a right angle, and go straight down
the declivity.&nbsp; Let the reader imagine himself to be walking along
the roof of a barn, instead of up or down it, and he will have an exact
idea of the pedestrian difficulty in which the travellers had now involved
themselves.&nbsp; In ten minutes more Idle was lost in the distance
again, was shouted for, waited for, recovered as before; found Goodchild
repeating his observation of the compass, and remonstrated warmly against
the sideway route that his companions persisted in following.&nbsp;
It appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men want
to get to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk down it;
and he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even with
some irritability.&nbsp; He was answered from the scientific eminence
of the compass on which his companions were mounted, that there was
a frightful chasm somewhere near the foot of Carrock, called The Black
Arches, into which the travellers were sure to march in the mist, if
they risked continuing the descent from the place where they had now
halted.&nbsp; Idle received this answer with the silent respect which
was due to the commanders of the expedition, and followed along the
roof of the barn, or rather the side of the mountain, reflecting upon
the assurance which he received on starting again, that the object of
the party was only to gain &lsquo;a certain point,&rsquo; and, this
haven attained, to continue the descent afterwards until the foot of
Carrock was reached.&nbsp; Though quite unexceptionable as an abstract
form of expression, the phrase &lsquo;a certain point&rsquo; has the
disadvantage of sounding rather vaguely when it is pronounced on unknown
ground, under a canopy of mist much thicker than a London fog.&nbsp;
Nevertheless, after the compass, this phrase was all the clue the party
had to hold by, and Idle clung to the extreme end of it as hopefully
as he could.</p>
<p>More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all sorts of points
reached except the &lsquo;certain point;&rsquo; third loss of Idle,
third shouts for him, third recovery of him, third consultation of compass.&nbsp;
Mr. Goodchild draws it tenderly from his pocket, and prepares to adjust
it on a stone.&nbsp; Something falls on the turf&mdash;it is the glass.&nbsp;
Something else drops immediately after&mdash;it is the needle.&nbsp;
The compass is broken, and the exploring party is lost!</p>
<p>It is the practice of the English portion of the human race to receive
all great disasters in dead silence.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild restored the
useless compass to his pocket without saying a word, Mr. Idle looked
at the landlord, and the landlord looked at Mr. Idle.&nbsp; There was
nothing for it now but to go on blindfold, and trust to the chapter
of chances.&nbsp; Accordingly, the lost travellers moved forward, still
walking round the slope of the mountain, still desperately resolved
to avoid the Black Arches, and to succeed in reaching the &lsquo;certain
point.&rsquo;</p>
<p>A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a ravine, at the
bottom of which there flowed a muddy little stream.&nbsp; Here another
halt was called, and another consultation took place.&nbsp; The landlord,
still clinging pertinaciously to the idea of reaching the &lsquo;point,&rsquo;
voted for crossing the ravine, and going on round the slope of the mountain.&nbsp;
Mr. Goodchild, to the great relief of his fellow-traveller, took another
view of the case, and backed Mr. Idle&rsquo;s proposal to descend Carrock
at once, at any hazard&mdash;the rather as the running stream was a
sure guide to follow from the mountain to the valley.&nbsp; Accordingly,
the party descended to the rugged and stony banks of the stream; and
here again Thomas lost ground sadly, and fell far behind his travelling
companions.&nbsp; Not much more than six weeks had elapsed since he
had sprained one of his ankles, and he began to feel this same ankle
getting rather weak when he found himself among the stones that were
strewn about the running water.&nbsp; Goodchild and the landlord were
getting farther and farther ahead of him.&nbsp; He saw them cross the
stream and disappear round a projection on its banks.&nbsp; He heard
them shout the moment after as a signal that they had halted and were
waiting for him.&nbsp; Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed
the stream where they had crossed it, and was within one step of the
opposite bank, when his foot slipped on a wet stone, his weak ankle
gave a twist outwards, a hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at
the same moment, and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Apprentices,
crippled in an instant.</p>
<p>The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute danger.&nbsp;
There lay Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was the mist as thick as
ever, there was the landlord as completely lost as the strangers whom
he was conducting, and there was the compass broken in Goodchild&rsquo;s
pocket.&nbsp; To leave the wretched Thomas on unknown ground was plainly
impossible; and to get him to walk with a badly sprained ankle seemed
equally out of the question.&nbsp; However, Goodchild (brought back
by his cry for help) bandaged the ankle with a pocket-handkerchief,
and assisted by the landlord, raised the crippled Apprentice to his
legs, offered him a shoulder to lean on, and exhorted him for the sake
of the whole party to try if he could walk.&nbsp; Thomas, assisted by
the shoulder on one side, and a stick on the other, did try, with what
pain and difficulty those only can imagine who have sprained an ankle
and have had to tread on it afterwards.&nbsp; At a pace adapted to the
feeble hobbling of a newly-lamed man, the lost party moved on, perfectly
ignorant whether they were on the right side of the mountain or the
wrong, and equally uncertain how long Idle would be able to contend
with the pain in his ankle, before he gave in altogether and fell down
again, unable to stir another step.</p>
<p>Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas weighed heavily
and more heavily on the march of the expedition, the lost travellers
followed the windings of the stream, till they came to a faintly-marked
cart-track, branching off nearly at right angles, to the left.&nbsp;
After a little consultation it was resolved to follow this dim vestige
of a road in the hope that it might lead to some farm or cottage, at
which Idle could be left in safety.&nbsp; It was now getting on towards
the afternoon, and it was fast becoming more than doubtful whether the
party, delayed in their progress as they now were, might not be overtaken
by the darkness before the right route was found, and be condemned to
pass the night on the mountain, without bit or drop to comfort them,
in their wet clothes.</p>
<p>The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was washed out
altogether by another little stream, dark, turbulent, and rapid.&nbsp;
The landlord suggested, judging by the colour of the water, that it
must be flowing from one of the lead mines in the neighbourhood of Carrock;
and the travellers accordingly kept by the stream for a little while,
in the hope of possibly wandering towards help in that way.&nbsp; After
walking forward about two hundred yards, they came upon a mine indeed,
but a mine, exhausted and abandoned; a dismal, ruinous place, with nothing
but the wreck of its works and buildings left to speak for it.&nbsp;
Here, there were a few sheep feeding.&nbsp; The landlord looked at them
earnestly, thought he recognised the marks on them&mdash;then thought
he did not&mdash;finally gave up the sheep in despair&mdash;and walked
on just as ignorant of the whereabouts of the party as ever.</p>
<p>The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in the
dark, had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour from the
time when the crippled Apprentice had met with his accident.&nbsp; Mr.
Idle, with all the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble
on, found the power rapidly failing him, and felt that another ten minutes
at most would find him at the end of his last physical resources.&nbsp;
He had just made up his mind on this point, and was about to communicate
the dismal result of his reflections to his companions, when the mist
suddenly brightened, and begun to lift straight ahead.&nbsp; In another
minute, the landlord, who was in advance, proclaimed that he saw a tree.&nbsp;
Before long, other trees appeared&mdash;then a cottage&mdash;then a
house beyond the cottage, and a familiar line of road rising behind
it.&nbsp; Last of all, Carrock itself loomed darkly into view, far away
to the right hand.&nbsp; The party had not only got down the mountain
without knowing how, but had wandered away from it in the mist, without
knowing why&mdash;away, far down on the very moor by which they had
approached the base of Carrock that morning.</p>
<p>The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery that
the travellers had groped their way, though by a very roundabout direction,
to within a mile or so of the part of the valley in which the farm-house
was situated, restored Mr. Idle&rsquo;s sinking spirits and reanimated
his failing strength.&nbsp; While the landlord ran off to get the dog-cart,
Thomas was assisted by Goodchild to the cottage which had been the first
building seen when the darkness brightened, and was propped up against
the garden wall, like an artist&rsquo;s lay figure waiting to be forwarded,
until the dog-cart should arrive from the farm-house below.&nbsp; In
due time&mdash;and a very long time it seemed to Mr. Idle&mdash;the
rattle of wheels was heard, and the crippled Apprentice was lifted into
the seat.&nbsp; As the dog-cart was driven back to the inn, the landlord
related an anecdote which he had just heard at the farm-house, of an
unhappy man who had been lost, like his two guests and himself, on Carrock;
who had passed the night there alone; who had been found the next morning,
&lsquo;scared and starved;&rsquo; and who never went out afterwards,
except on his way to the grave.&nbsp; Mr. Idle heard this sad story,
and derived at least one useful impression from it.&nbsp; Bad as the
pain in his ankle was, he contrived to bear it patiently, for he felt
grateful that a worse accident had not befallen him in the wilds of
Carrock.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The dog-cart, with Mr. Thomas Idle and his ankle on the hanging seat
behind, Mr. Francis Goodchild and the Innkeeper in front, and the rain
in spouts and splashes everywhere, made the best of its way back to
the little inn; the broken moor country looking like miles upon miles
of Pre-Adamite sop, or the ruins of some enormous jorum of antediluvian
toast-and-water.&nbsp; The trees dripped; the eaves of the scattered
cottages dripped; the barren stone walls dividing the land, dripped;
the yelping dogs dripped; carts and waggons under ill-roofed penthouses,
dripped; melancholy cocks and hens perching on their shafts, or seeking
shelter underneath them, dripped; Mr. Goodchild dripped; Thomas Idle
dripped; the Inn-keeper dripped; the mare dripped; the vast curtains
of mist and cloud passed before the shadowy forms of the hills, streamed
water as they were drawn across the landscape.&nbsp; Down such steep
pitches that the mare seemed to be trotting on her head, and up such
steep pitches that she seemed to have a supplementary leg in her tail,
the dog-cart jolted and tilted back to the village.&nbsp; It was too
wet for the women to look out, it was too wet even for the children
to look out; all the doors and windows were closed, and the only sign
of life or motion was in the rain-punctured puddles.</p>
<p>Whiskey and oil to Thomas Idle&rsquo;s ankle, and whiskey without
oil to Francis Goodchild&rsquo;s stomach, produced an agreeable change
in the systems of both; soothing Mr. Idle&rsquo;s pain, which was sharp
before, and sweetening Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s temper, which was sweet
before.&nbsp; Portmanteaus being then opened and clothes changed, Mr.
Goodchild, through having no change of outer garments but broadcloth
and velvet, suddenly became a magnificent portent in the Innkeeper&rsquo;s
house, a shining frontispiece to the fashions for the month, and a frightful
anomaly in the Cumberland village.</p>
<p>Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the conscious Goodchild
quenched it as much as possible, in the shadow of Thomas Idle&rsquo;s
ankle, and in a corner of the little covered carriage that started with
them for Wigton&mdash;a most desirable carriage for any country, except
for its having a flat roof and no sides; which caused the plumps of
rain accumulating on the roof to play vigorous games of bagatelle into
the interior all the way, and to score immensely.&nbsp; It was comfortable
to see how the people coming back in open carts from Wigton market made
no more of the rain than if it were sunshine; how the Wigton policeman
taking a country walk of half-a-dozen miles (apparently for pleasure),
in resplendent uniform, accepted saturation as his normal state; how
clerks and schoolmasters in black, loitered along the road without umbrellas,
getting varnished at every step; how the Cumberland girls, coming out
to look after the Cumberland cows, shook the rain from their eyelashes
and laughed it away; and how the rain continued to fall upon all, as
it only does fall in hill countries.</p>
<p>Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with rain
all down the street.&nbsp; Mr. Thomas Idle, melodramatically carried
to the inn&rsquo;s first floor, and laid upon three chairs (he should
have had the sofa, if there had been one), Mr. Goodchild went to the
window to take an observation of Wigton, and report what he saw to his
disabled companion.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
&lsquo;What do you see from the turret?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;what I hope and
believe to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by eyes.&nbsp;
I see the houses with their roofs of dull black, their stained fronts,
and their dark-rimmed windows, looking as if they were all in mourning.&nbsp;
As every little puff of wind comes down the street, I see a perfect
train of rain let off along the wooden stalls in the market-place and
exploded against me.&nbsp; I see a very big gas lamp in the centre which
I know, by a secret instinct, will not be lighted to-night.&nbsp; I
see a pump, with a trivet underneath its spout whereon to stand the
vessels that are brought to be filled with water.&nbsp; I see a man
come to pump, and he pumps very hard, but no water follows, and he strolls
empty away.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
&lsquo;what more do you see from the turret, besides the man and the
pump, and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;one, two, three,
four, five, linen-drapers&rsquo; shops in front of me.&nbsp; I see a
linen-draper&rsquo;s shop next door to the right&mdash;and there are
five more linen-drapers&rsquo; shops down the corner to the left.&nbsp;
Eleven homicidal linen-drapers&rsquo; shops within a short stone&rsquo;s
throw, each with its hands at the throats of all the rest!&nbsp; Over
the small first-floor of one of these linen-drapers&rsquo; shops appears
the wonderful inscription, BANK.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
&lsquo;what more do you see from the turret, besides the eleven homicidal
linen-drapers&rsquo; shops, and the wonderful inscription, &ldquo;Bank,&rdquo;&mdash;on
the small first-floor, and the man and the pump and the trivet and the
houses all in mourning and the rain?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;the depository
for Christian Knowledge, and through the dark vapour I think I again
make out Mr. Spurgeon looming heavily.&nbsp; Her Majesty the Queen,
God bless her, printed in colours, I am sure I see.&nbsp; I see the
<i>Illustrated</i> <i>London News</i> of several years ago, and I see
a sweetmeat shop&mdash;which the proprietor calls a &ldquo;Salt Warehouse&rdquo;&mdash;with
one small female child in a cotton bonnet looking in on tip-toe, oblivious
of rain.&nbsp; And I see a watchmaker&rsquo;s with only three great
pale watches of a dull metal hanging in his window, each in a separate
pane.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
&lsquo;what more do you see of Wigton, besides these objects, and the
man and the pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the
rain?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I see nothing more,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;and
there is nothing more to see, except the curlpaper bill of the theatre,
which was opened and shut last week (the manager&rsquo;s family played
all the parts), and the short, square, chinky omnibus that goes to the
railway, and leads too rattling a life over the stones to hold together
long.&nbsp; O yes!&nbsp; Now, I see two men with their hands in their
pockets and their backs towards me.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
&lsquo;what do you make out from the turret, of the expression of the
two men with their hands in their pockets and their backs towards you?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;They are mysterious men,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;with
inscrutable backs.&nbsp; They keep their backs towards me with persistency.&nbsp;
If one turns an inch in any direction, the other turns an inch in the
same direction, and no more.&nbsp; They turn very stiffly, on a very
little pivot, in the middle of the market-place.&nbsp; Their appearance
is partly of a mining, partly of a ploughing, partly of a stable, character.&nbsp;
They are looking at nothing&mdash;very hard.&nbsp; Their backs are slouched,
and their legs are curved with much standing about.&nbsp; Their pockets
are loose and dog&rsquo;s-eared, on account of their hands being always
in them.&nbsp; They stand to be rained upon, without any movement of
impatience or dissatisfaction, and they keep so close together that
an elbow of each jostles an elbow of the other, but they never speak.&nbsp;
They spit at times, but speak not.&nbsp; I see it growing darker and
darker, and still I see them, sole visible population of the place,
standing to be rained upon with their backs towards me, and looking
at nothing very hard.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
&lsquo;before you draw down the blind of the turret and come in to have
your head scorched by the hot gas, see if you can, and impart to me,
something of the expression of those two amazing men.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The murky shadows,&rsquo; said Francis Goodchild, &lsquo;are
gathering fast; and the wings of evening, and the wings of coal, are
folding over Wigton.&nbsp; Still, they look at nothing very hard, with
their backs towards me.&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; Now, they turn, and I see&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
&lsquo;tell me quickly what you see of the two men of Wigton!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Francis Goodchild, &lsquo;that they have
no expression at all.&nbsp; And now the town goes to sleep, undazzled
by the large unlighted lamp in the market-place; and let no man wake
it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>At the close of the next day&rsquo;s journey, Mr. Thomas Idle&rsquo;s
ankle became much swollen and inflamed.&nbsp; There are reasons which
will presently explain themselves for not publicly indicating the exact
direction in which that journey lay, or the place in which it ended.&nbsp;
It was a long day&rsquo;s shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough roads,
and a long day&rsquo;s getting out and going on before the horses, and
fagging up hills, and scouring down hills, on the part of Mr. Goodchild,
who in the fatigues of such labours congratulated himself on attaining
a high point of idleness.&nbsp; It was at a little town, still in Cumberland,
that they halted for the night&mdash;a very little town, with the purple
and brown moor close upon its one street; a curious little ancient market-cross
set up in the midst of it; and the town itself looking much as if it
were a collection of great stones piled on end by the Druids long ago,
which a few recluse people had since hollowed out for habitations.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Is there a doctor here?&rsquo; asked Mr. Goodchild, on his
knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn: stopping in his examination
of Mr. Idle&rsquo;s ankle, with the aid of a candle.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Ey, my word!&rsquo; said the landlady, glancing doubtfully
at the ankle for herself; &lsquo;there&rsquo;s Doctor Speddie.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Is he a good Doctor?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Ey!&rsquo; said the landlady, &lsquo;I ca&rsquo; him so.&nbsp;
A&rsquo; cooms efther nae doctor that I ken.&nbsp; Mair nor which, a&rsquo;s
just THE doctor heer.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Do you think he is at home?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Her reply was, &lsquo;Gang awa&rsquo;, Jock, and bring him.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stirring up some
bay salt in a basin of water for the laving of this unfortunate ankle,
had greatly enjoyed himself for the last ten minutes in splashing the
carpet, set off promptly.&nbsp; A very few minutes had elapsed when
he showed the Doctor in, by tumbling against the door before him and
bursting it open with his head.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Gently, Jock, gently,&rsquo; said the Doctor as he advanced
with a quiet step.&nbsp; &lsquo;Gentlemen, a good evening.&nbsp; I am
sorry that my presence is required here.&nbsp; A slight accident, I
hope?&nbsp; A slip and a fall?&nbsp; Yes, yes, yes.&nbsp; Carrock, indeed?&nbsp;
Hah!&nbsp; Does that pain you, sir?&nbsp; No doubt, it does.&nbsp; It
is the great connecting ligament here, you see, that has been badly
strained.&nbsp; Time and rest, sir!&nbsp; They are often the recipe
in greater cases,&rsquo; with a slight sigh, &lsquo;and often the recipe
in small.&nbsp; I can send a lotion to relieve you, but we must leave
the cure to time and rest.&rsquo;</p>
<p>This he said, holding Idle&rsquo;s foot on his knee between his two
hands, as he sat over against him.&nbsp; He had touched it tenderly
and skilfully in explanation of what he said, and, when his careful
examination was completed, softly returned it to its former horizontal
position on a chair.</p>
<p>He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, but afterwards
fluently.&nbsp; He was a tall, thin, large-boned, old gentleman, with
an appearance at first sight of being hard-featured; but, at a second
glance, the mild expression of his face and some particular touches
of sweetness and patience about his mouth, corrected this impression
and assigned his long professional rides, by day and night, in the bleak
hill-weather, as the true cause of that appearance.&nbsp; He stooped
very little, though past seventy and very grey.&nbsp; His dress was
more like that of a clergyman than a country doctor, being a plain black
suit, and a plain white neck-kerchief tied behind like a band.&nbsp;
His black was the worse for wear, and there were darns in his coat,
and his linen was a little frayed at the hems and edges.&nbsp; He might
have been poor&mdash;it was likely enough in that out-of-the-way spot&mdash;or
he might have been a little self-forgetful and eccentric.&nbsp; Any
one could have seen directly, that he had neither wife nor child at
home.&nbsp; He had a scholarly air with him, and that kind of considerate
humanity towards others which claimed a gentle consideration for himself.&nbsp;
Mr. Goodchild made this study of him while he was examining the limb,
and as he laid it down.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild wishes to add that he considers
it a very good likeness.</p>
<p>It came out in the course of a little conversation, that Doctor Speddie
was acquainted with some friends of Thomas Idle&rsquo;s, and had, when
a young man, passed some years in Thomas Idle&rsquo;s birthplace on
the other side of England.&nbsp; Certain idle labours, the fruit of
Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s apprenticeship, also happened to be well known
to him.&nbsp; The lazy travellers were thus placed on a more intimate
footing with the Doctor than the casual circumstances of the meeting
would of themselves have established; and when Doctor Speddie rose to
go home, remarking that he would send his assistant with the lotion,
Francis Goodchild said that was unnecessary, for, by the Doctor&rsquo;s
leave, he would accompany him, and bring it back.&nbsp; (Having done
nothing to fatigue himself for a full quarter of an hour, Francis began
to fear that he was not in a state of idleness.)</p>
<p>Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of Francis Goodchild,
&lsquo;as it would give him the pleasure of enjoying a few more minutes
of Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s society than he could otherwise have hoped
for,&rsquo; and they went out together into the village street.&nbsp;
The rain had nearly ceased, the clouds had broken before a cool wind
from the north-east, and stars were shining from the peaceful heights
beyond them.</p>
<p>Doctor Speddie&rsquo;s house was the last house in the place.&nbsp;
Beyond it, lay the moor, all dark and lonesome.&nbsp; The wind moaned
in a low, dull, shivering manner round the little garden, like a houseless
creature that knew the winter was coming.&nbsp; It was exceedingly wild
and solitary.&nbsp; &lsquo;Roses,&rsquo; said the Doctor, when Goodchild
touched some wet leaves overhanging the stone porch; &lsquo;but they
get cut to pieces.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and led the way
into a low but pretty ample hall with rooms on either side.&nbsp; The
door of one of these stood open, and the Doctor entered it, with a word
of welcome to his guest.&nbsp; It, too, was a low room, half surgery
and half parlour, with shelves of books and bottles against the walls,
which were of a very dark hue.&nbsp; There was a fire in the grate,
the night being damp and chill.&nbsp; Leaning against the chimney-piece
looking down into it, stood the Doctor&rsquo;s Assistant.</p>
<p>A man of a most remarkable appearance.&nbsp; Much older than Mr.
Goodchild had expected, for he was at least two-and-fifty; but, that
was nothing.&nbsp; What was startling in him was his remarkable paleness.&nbsp;
His large black eyes, his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey
hair, his wasted hands, and even the attenuation of his figure, were
at first forgotten in his extraordinary pallor.&nbsp; There was no vestige
of colour in the man.&nbsp; When he turned his face, Francis Goodchild
started as if a stone figure had looked round at him.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Mr. Lorn,&rsquo; said the Doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr. Goodchild.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The Assistant, in a distraught way&mdash;as if he had forgotten something&mdash;as
if he had forgotten everything, even to his own name and himself&mdash;acknowledged
the visitor&rsquo;s presence, and stepped further back into the shadow
of the wall behind him.&nbsp; But, he was so pale that his face stood
out in relief again the dark wall, and really could not be hidden so.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s friend has met with accident, Lorn,&rsquo;
said Doctor Speddie.&nbsp; &lsquo;We want the lotion for a bad sprain.&rsquo;</p>
<p>A pause.</p>
<p>&lsquo;My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to-night.&nbsp;
The lotion for a bad sprain.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Ah! yes!&nbsp; Directly.&rsquo;</p>
<p>He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his white face
and his wild eyes to a table in a recess among the bottles.&nbsp; But,
though he stood there, compounding the lotion with his back towards
them, Goodchild could not, for many moments, withdraw his gaze from
the man.&nbsp; When he at length did so, he found the Doctor observing
him, with some trouble in his face.&nbsp; &lsquo;He is absent,&rsquo;
explained the Doctor, in a low voice.&nbsp; &lsquo;Always absent.&nbsp;
Very absent.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Is he ill?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;No, not ill.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Unhappy?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I have my suspicions that he was,&rsquo; assented the Doctor,
&lsquo;once.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor accompanied
these words with a benignant and protecting glance at their subject,
in which there was much of the expression with which an attached father
might have looked at a heavily afflicted son.&nbsp; Yet, that they were
not father and son must have been plain to most eyes.&nbsp; The Assistant,
on the other hand, turning presently to ask the Doctor some question,
looked at him with a wan smile as if he were his whole reliance and
sustainment in life.</p>
<p>It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try to lead the
mind of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-chair, away from what was
before him.&nbsp; Let Mr. Goodchild do what he would to follow the Doctor,
his eyes and thoughts reverted to the Assistant.&nbsp; The Doctor soon
perceived it, and, after falling silent, and musing in a little perplexity,
said:</p>
<p>&lsquo;Lorn!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;My dear Doctor.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion?&nbsp; You
will show the best way of applying it, far better than Mr. Goodchild
can.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;With pleasure.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the door.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Lorn!&rsquo; said the Doctor, calling after him.</p>
<p>He returned.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come home.&nbsp;
Don&rsquo;t hurry.&nbsp; Excuse my calling you back.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It is not,&rsquo; said the Assistant, with his former smile,
&lsquo;the first time you have called me back, dear Doctor.&rsquo;&nbsp;
With those words he went away.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Mr. Goodchild,&rsquo; said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice,
and with his former troubled expression of face, &lsquo;I have seen
that your attention has been concentrated on my friend.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He fascinates me.&nbsp; I must apologise to you, but he has
quite bewildered and mastered me.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,&rsquo; said
the Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s,
&lsquo;become in the course of time very heavy.&nbsp; I will tell you
something.&nbsp; You may make what use you will of it, under fictitious
names.&nbsp; I know I may trust you.&nbsp; I am the more inclined to
confidence to-night, through having been unexpectedly led back, by the
current of our conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my early life.&nbsp;
Will you please to draw a little nearer?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went on thus:
speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, that the wind,
though it was far from high, occasionally got the better of him.</p>
<p>When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many years
than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened
to arrive in the town of Doncaster, exactly in the middle of a race-week,
or, in other words, in the middle of the month of September.&nbsp; He
was one of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, and open-mouthed
young gentlemen, who possess the gift of familiarity in its highest
perfection, and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life making
friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go.&nbsp; His father was a
rich manufacturer, and had bought landed property enough in one of the
midland counties to make all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly
envious of him.&nbsp; Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect
of the great estate and the great business after his father&rsquo;s
death; well supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked after, during
his father&rsquo;s lifetime.&nbsp; Report, or scandal, whichever you
please, said that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful
days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be violently
indignant when he found that his son took after him.&nbsp; This may
be true or not.&nbsp; I myself only knew the elder Mr. Holliday when
he was getting on in years; and then he was as quiet and as respectable
a gentleman as ever I met with.</p>
<p>Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to Doncaster,
having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained way, that he would
go to the races.&nbsp; He did not reach the town till towards the close
of the evening, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed
at the principal hotel.&nbsp; Dinner they were ready enough to give
him; but as for a bed, they laughed when he mentioned it.&nbsp; In the
race-week at Doncaster, it is no uncommon thing for visitors who have
not bespoken apartments, to pass the night in their carriages at the
inn doors.&nbsp; As for the lower sort of strangers, I myself have often
seen them, at that full time, sleeping out on the doorsteps for want
of a covered place to creep under.&nbsp; Rich as he was, Arthur&rsquo;s
chance of getting a night&rsquo;s lodging (seeing that he had not written
beforehand to secure one) was more than doubtful.&nbsp; He tried the
second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the inferior inns after
that; and was met everywhere by the same form of answer.&nbsp; No accommodation
for the night of any sort was left.&nbsp; All the bright golden sovereigns
in his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the race-week.</p>
<p>To a young fellow of Arthur&rsquo;s temperament, the novelty of being
turned away into the street, like a penniless vagabond, at every house
where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new
and highly amusing piece of experience.&nbsp; He went on, with his carpet-bag
in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for
travellers that he could find in Doncaster, until he wandered into the
outskirts of the town.&nbsp; By this time, the last glimmer of twilight
had faded out, the moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting
cold, the clouds were gathering heavily, and there was every prospect
that it was soon going to rain.</p>
<p>The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young Holliday&rsquo;s
good spirits.&nbsp; He began to contemplate the houseless situation
in which he was placed, from the serious rather than the humorous point
of view; and he looked about him, for another public-house to inquire
at, with something very like downright anxiety in his mind on the subject
of a lodging for the night.&nbsp; The suburban part of the town towards
which he had now strayed was hardly lighted at all, and he could see
nothing of the houses as he passed them, except that they got progressively
smaller and dirtier, the farther he went.&nbsp; Down the winding road
before him shone the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint, lonely
light that struggled ineffectually with the foggy darkness all round
him.&nbsp; He resolved to go on as far as this lamp, and then, if it
showed him nothing in the shape of an Inn, to return to the central
part of the town and to try if he could not at least secure a chair
to sit down on, through the night, at one of the principal Hotels.</p>
<p>As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walking close under
it, found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court, on the wall
of which was painted a long hand in faded flesh-colour, pointing with
a lean forefinger, to this inscription:-</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>THE TWO ROBINS.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>Arthur turned into the court without hesitation, to see what The
Two Robins could do for him.&nbsp; Four or five men were standing together
round the door of the house which was at the bottom of the court, facing
the entrance from the street.&nbsp; The men were all listening to one
other man, better dressed than the rest, who was telling his audience
something, in a low voice, in which they were apparently very much interested.</p>
<p>On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a stranger with a knapsack
in his hand, who was evidently leaving the house.</p>
<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; said the traveller with the knapsack, turning round
and addressing himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-looking, bald-headed
man, with a dirty white apron on, who had followed him down the passage.&nbsp;
&lsquo;No, Mr. landlord, I am not easily scared by trifles; but, I don&rsquo;t
mind confessing that I can&rsquo;t quite stand <i>that</i>.&rsquo;</p>
<p>It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these words, that
the stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a bed at The Two
Robins; and that he was unable or unwilling to pay it.&nbsp; The moment
his back was turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own well-filled
pockets, addressed himself in a great hurry, for fear any other benighted
traveller should slip in and forestall him, to the sly-looking landlord
with the dirty apron and the bald head.</p>
<p>&lsquo;If you have got a bed to let,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and if
that gentleman who has just gone out won&rsquo;t pay your price for
it, I will.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Will you, sir?&rsquo; he asked, in a meditative, doubtful
way.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Name your price,&rsquo; said young Holliday, thinking that
the landlord&rsquo;s hesitation sprang from some boorish distrust of
him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Name your price, and I&rsquo;ll give you the money
at once if you like?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Are you game for five shillings?&rsquo; inquired the landlord,
rubbing his stubbly double chin, and looking up thoughtfully at the
ceiling above him.</p>
<p>Arthur nearly laughed in the man&rsquo;s face; but thinking it prudent
to control himself, offered the five shillings as seriously as he could.&nbsp;
The sly landlord held out his hand, then suddenly drew it back again.</p>
<p>&lsquo;You&rsquo;re acting all fair and above-board by me,&rsquo;
he said: &lsquo;and, before I take your money, I&rsquo;ll do the same
by you.&nbsp; Look here, this is how it stands.&nbsp; You can have a
bed all to yourself for five shillings; but you can&rsquo;t have more
than a half-share of the room it stands in.&nbsp; Do you see what I
mean, young gentleman?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Of course I do,&rsquo; returned Arthur, a little irritably.&nbsp;
&lsquo;You mean that it is a double-bedded room, and that one of the
beds is occupied?&rsquo;</p>
<p>The landlord nodded his head, and rubbed his double chin harder than
ever.&nbsp; Arthur hesitated, and mechanically moved back a step or
two towards the door.&nbsp; The idea of sleeping in the same room with
a total stranger, did not present an attractive prospect to him.&nbsp;
He felt more than half inclined to drop his five shillings into his
pocket, and to go out into the street once more.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Is it yes, or no?&rsquo; asked the landlord.&nbsp; &lsquo;Settle
it as quick as you can, because there&rsquo;s lots of people wanting
a bed at Doncaster to-night, besides you.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Arthur looked towards the court, and heard the rain falling heavily
in the street outside.&nbsp; He thought he would ask a question or two
before he rashly decided on leaving the shelter of The Two Robins.</p>
<p>&lsquo;What sort of a man is it who has got the other bed?&rsquo;
he inquired.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is he a gentleman?&nbsp; I mean, is he a quiet,
well-behaved person?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The quietest man I ever came across,&rsquo; said the landlord,
rubbing his fat hands stealthily one over the other.&nbsp; &lsquo;As
sober as a judge, and as regular as clock-work in his habits.&nbsp;
It hasn&rsquo;t struck nine, not ten minutes ago, and he&rsquo;s in
his bed already.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know whether that comes up to your
notion of a quiet man: it goes a long way ahead of mine, I can tell
you.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Is he asleep, do you think?&rsquo; asked Arthur.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I know he&rsquo;s asleep,&rsquo; returned the landlord.&nbsp;
&lsquo;And what&rsquo;s more, he&rsquo;s gone off so fast, that I&rsquo;ll
warrant you don&rsquo;t wake him.&nbsp; This way, sir,&rsquo; said the
landlord, speaking over young Holliday&rsquo;s shoulder, as if he was
addressing some new guest who was approaching the house.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Here you are,&rsquo; said Arthur, determined to be beforehand
with the stranger, whoever he might be.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll take
the bed.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he handed the five shillings to the landlord,
who nodded, dropped the money carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket,
and lighted the candle.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Come up and see the room,&rsquo; said the host of The Two
Robins, leading the way to the staircase quite briskly, considering
how fat he was.</p>
<p>They mounted to the second-floor of the house.&nbsp; The landlord
half opened a door, fronting the landing, then stopped, and turned round
to Arthur.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on
yours,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;You give me five shillings, I give
you in return a clean, comfortable bed; and I warrant, beforehand, that
you won&rsquo;t be interfered with, or annoyed in any way, by the man
who sleeps in the same room as you.&rsquo;&nbsp; Saying those words,
he looked hard, for a moment, in young Holliday&rsquo;s face, and then
led the way into the room.</p>
<p>It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it would be.&nbsp;
The two beds stood parallel with each other&mdash;a space of about six
feet intervening between them.&nbsp; They were both of the same medium
size, and both had the same plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary,
all round them.&nbsp; The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window.&nbsp;
The curtains were all drawn round this, except the half curtain at the
bottom, on the side of the bed farthest from the window.&nbsp; Arthur
saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp
little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back.&nbsp; He took
the candle, and advanced softly to draw the curtain&mdash;stopped half-way,
and listened for a moment&mdash;then turned to the landlord.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s a very quiet sleeper,&rsquo; said Arthur.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said the landlord, &lsquo;very quiet.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked in at the man
cautiously.</p>
<p>&lsquo;How pale he is!&rsquo; said Arthur.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; returned the landlord, &lsquo;pale enough, isn&rsquo;t
he?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Arthur looked closer at the man.&nbsp; The bedclothes were drawn
up to his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his
chest.&nbsp; Surprised and vaguely startled, as he noticed this, Arthur
stooped down closer over the stranger; looked at his ashy, parted lips;
listened breathlessly for an instant; looked again at the strangely
still face, and the motionless lips and chest; and turned round suddenly
on the landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the moment as the hollow
cheeks of the man on the bed.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Come here,&rsquo; he whispered, under his breath.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come
here, for God&rsquo;s sake!&nbsp; The man&rsquo;s not asleep&mdash;he
is dead!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;You have found that out sooner than I thought you would,&rsquo;
said the landlord, composedly.&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes, he&rsquo;s dead, sure
enough.&nbsp; He died at five o&rsquo;clock to-day.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;How did he die?&nbsp; Who is he?&rsquo; asked Arthur, staggered,
for a moment, by the audacious coolness of the answer.</p>
<p>&lsquo;As to who is he,&rsquo; rejoined the landlord, &lsquo;I know
no more about him than you do.&nbsp; There are his books and letters
and things, all sealed up in that brown-paper parcel, for the Coroner&rsquo;s
inquest to open to-morrow or next day.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s been here a
week, paying his way fairly enough, and stopping in-doors, for the most
part, as if he was ailing.&nbsp; My girl brought him up his tea at five
to-day; and as he was pouring of it out, he fell down in a faint, or
a fit, or a compound of both, for anything I know.&nbsp; We could not
bring him to&mdash;and I said he was dead.&nbsp; And the doctor couldn&rsquo;t
bring him to&mdash;and the doctor said he was dead.&nbsp; And there
he is.&nbsp; And the Coroner&rsquo;s inquest&rsquo;s coming as soon
as it can.&nbsp; And that&rsquo;s as much as I know about it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Arthur held the candle close to the man&rsquo;s lips.&nbsp; The flame
still burnt straight up, as steadily as before.&nbsp; There was a moment
of silence; and the rain pattered drearily through it against the panes
of the window.</p>
<p>&lsquo;If you haven&rsquo;t got nothing more to say to me,&rsquo;
continued the landlord, &lsquo;I suppose I may go.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t
expect your five shillings back, do you?&nbsp; There&rsquo;s the bed
I promised you, clean and comfortable.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s the man I
warranted not to disturb you, quiet in this world for ever.&nbsp; If
you&rsquo;re frightened to stop alone with him, that&rsquo;s not my
look out.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve kept my part of the bargain, and I mean to
keep the money.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m not Yorkshire, myself, young gentleman;
but I&rsquo;ve lived long enough in these parts to have my wits sharpened;
and I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if you found out the way to brighten up
yours, next time you come amongst us.&rsquo;&nbsp; With these words,
the landlord turned towards the door, and laughed to himself softly,
in high satisfaction at his own sharpness.</p>
<p>Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time sufficiently
recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick that had been played
on him, and at the insolent manner in which the landlord exulted in
it.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh,&rsquo; he said sharply, &lsquo;till you
are quite sure you have got the laugh against me.&nbsp; You shan&rsquo;t
have the five shillings for nothing, my man.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll keep the
bed.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Will you?&rsquo; said the landlord.&nbsp; &lsquo;Then I wish
you a goodnight&rsquo;s rest.&rsquo;&nbsp; With that brief farewell,
he went out, and shut the door after him.</p>
<p>A good night&rsquo;s rest!&nbsp; The words had hardly been spoken,
the door had hardly been closed, before Arthur half-repented the hasty
words that had just escaped him.&nbsp; Though not naturally over-sensitive,
and not wanting in courage of the moral as well as the physical sort,
the presence of the dead man had an instantaneously chilling effect
on his mind when he found himself alone in the room&mdash;alone, and
bound by his own rash words to stay there till the next morning.&nbsp;
An older man would have thought nothing of those words, and would have
acted, without reference to them, as his calmer sense suggested.&nbsp;
But Arthur was too young to treat the ridicule, even of his inferiors,
with contempt&mdash;too young not to fear the momentary humiliation
of falsifying his own foolish boast, more than he feared the trial of
watching out the long night in the same chamber with the dead.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It is but a few hours,&rsquo; he thought to himself, &lsquo;and
I can get away the first thing in the morning.&rsquo;</p>
<p>He was looking towards the occupied bed as that idea passed through
his mind, and the sharp, angular eminence made in the clothes by the
dead man&rsquo;s upturned feet again caught his eye.&nbsp; He advanced
and drew the curtains, purposely abstaining, as he did so, from looking
at the face of the corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the outset
by fastening some ghastly impression of it on his mind.&nbsp; He drew
the curtain very gently, and sighed involuntarily as he closed it.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Poor fellow,&rsquo; he said, almost as sadly as if he had known
the man.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, poor fellow!&rsquo;</p>
<p>He went next to the window.&nbsp; The night was black, and he could
see nothing from it.&nbsp; The rain still pattered heavily against the
glass.&nbsp; He inferred, from hearing it, that the window was at the
back of the house; remembering that the front was sheltered from the
weather by the court and the buildings over it.</p>
<p>While he was still standing at the window&mdash;for even the dreary
rain was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because
it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and
companionship in it&mdash;while he was standing at the window, and looking
vacantly into the black darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock
strike ten.&nbsp; Only ten!&nbsp; How was he to pass the time till the
house was astir the next morning?</p>
<p>Under any other circumstances, he would have gone down to the public-house
parlour, would have called for his grog, and would have laughed and
talked with the company assembled as familiarly as if he had known them
all his life.&nbsp; But the very thought of whiling away the time in
this manner was distasteful to him.&nbsp; The new situation in which
he was placed seemed to have altered him to himself already.&nbsp; Thus
far, his life had been the common, trifling, prosaic, surface-life of
a prosperous young man, with no troubles to conquer, and no trials to
face.&nbsp; He had lost no relation whom he loved, no friend whom he
treasured.&nbsp; Till this night, what share he had of the immortal
inheritance that is divided amongst us all, had laid dormant within
him.&nbsp; Till this night, Death and he had not once met, even in thought.</p>
<p>He took a few turns up and down the room&mdash;then stopped.&nbsp;
The noise made by his boots on the poorly carpeted floor, jarred on
his ear.&nbsp; He hesitated a little, and ended by taking the boots
off, and walking backwards and forwards noiselessly.&nbsp; All desire
to sleep or to rest had left him.&nbsp; The bare thought of lying down
on the unoccupied bed instantly drew the picture on his mind of a dreadful
mimicry of the position of the dead man.&nbsp; Who was he?&nbsp; What
was the story of his past life?&nbsp; Poor he must have been, or he
would not have stopped at such a place as The Two Robins Inn&mdash;and
weakened, probably, by long illness, or he could hardly have died in
the manner in which the landlord had described.&nbsp; Poor, ill, lonely,&mdash;dead
in a strange place; dead, with nobody but a stranger to pity him.&nbsp;
A sad story: truly, on the mere face of it, a very sad story.</p>
<p>While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he had stopped
insensibly at the window, close to which stood the foot of the bed with
the closed curtains.&nbsp; At first he looked at it absently; then he
became conscious that his eyes were fixed on it; and then, a perverse
desire took possession of him to do the very thing which he had resolved
not to do, up to this time&mdash;to look at the dead man.</p>
<p>He stretched out his hand towards the curtains; but checked himself
in the very act of undrawing them, turned his back sharply on the bed,
and walked towards the chimney-piece, to see what things were placed
on it, and to try if he could keep the dead man out of his mind in that
way.</p>
<p>There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, with some mildewed
remains of ink in the bottle.&nbsp; There were two coarse china ornaments
of the commonest kind; and there was a square of embossed card, dirty
and fly-blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it,
in all sorts of zig-zag directions, and in variously coloured inks.&nbsp;
He took the card, and went away, to read it, to the table on which the
candle was placed; sitting down, with his back resolutely turned to
the curtained bed.</p>
<p>He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one corner
of the card&mdash;then turned it round impatiently to look at another.&nbsp;
Before he could begin reading the riddles printed here, the sound of
the church-clock stopped him.&nbsp; Eleven.&nbsp; He had got through
an hour of the time, in the room with the dead man.</p>
<p>Once more he looked at the card.&nbsp; It was not easy to make out
the letters printed on it, in consequence of the dimness of the light
which the landlord had left him&mdash;a common tallow candle, furnished
with a pair of heavy old-fashioned steel snuffers.&nbsp; Up to this
time, his mind had been too much occupied to think of the light.&nbsp;
He had left the wick of the candle unsnuffed, till it had risen higher
than the flame, and had burnt into an odd pent-house shape at the top,
from which morsels of the charred cotton fell off, from time to time,
in little flakes.&nbsp; He took up the snuffers now, and trimmed the
wick.&nbsp; The light brightened directly, and the room became less
dismal.</p>
<p>Again he turned to the riddles; reading them doggedly and resolutely,
now in one corner of the card, now in another.&nbsp; All his efforts,
however, could not fix his attention on them.&nbsp; He pursued his occupation
mechanically, deriving no sort of impression from what he was reading.&nbsp;
It was as if a shadow from the curtained bed had got between his mind
and the gaily printed letters&mdash;a shadow that nothing could dispel.&nbsp;
At last, he gave up the struggle, and threw the card from him impatiently,
and took to walking softly up and down the room again.</p>
<p>The dead man, the dead man, the <i>hidden</i> dead man on the bed!&nbsp;
There was the one persistent idea still haunting him.&nbsp; Hidden?&nbsp;
Was it only the body being there, or was it the body being there, concealed,
that was preying on his mind?&nbsp; He stopped at the window, with that
doubt in him; once more listening to the pattering rain, once more looking
out into the black darkness.</p>
<p>Still the dead man!&nbsp; The darkness forced his mind back upon
itself, and set his memory at work, reviving, with a painfully-vivid
distinctness the momentary impression it had received from the first
sight of the corpse.&nbsp; Before long the face seemed to be hovering
out in the middle of the darkness, confronting him through the window,
with the paleness whiter, with the dreadful dull line of light between
the imperfectly-closed eyelids broader than he had seen it&mdash;with
the parted lips slowly dropping farther and farther away from each other&mdash;with
the features growing larger and moving closer, till they seemed to fill
the window and to silence the rain, and to shut out the night.</p>
<p>The sound of a voice, shouting below-stairs, woke him suddenly from
the dream of his own distempered fancy.&nbsp; He recognised it as the
voice of the landlord.&nbsp; &lsquo;Shut up at twelve, Ben,&rsquo; he
heard it say.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&rsquo;m off to bed.&rsquo;</p>
<p>He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his forehead, reasoned
with himself for a little while, and resolved to shake his mind free
of the ghastly counterfeit which still clung to it, by forcing himself
to confront, if it was only for a moment, the solemn reality.&nbsp;
Without allowing himself an instant to hesitate, he parted the curtains
at the foot of the bed, and looked through.</p>
<p>There was a sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful mystery of
stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow.&nbsp; No stir, no change
there!&nbsp; He only looked at it for a moment before he closed the
curtains again&mdash;but that moment steadied him, calmed him, restored
him&mdash;mind and body&mdash;to himself.</p>
<p>He returned to his old occupation of walking up and down the room;
persevering in it, this time, till the clock struck again.&nbsp; Twelve.</p>
<p>As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was succeeded by the
confused noise, down-stairs, of the drinkers in the tap-room leaving
the house.&nbsp; The next sound, after an interval of silence, was caused
by the barring of the door, and the closing of the shutters, at the
back of the Inn.&nbsp; Then the silence followed again, and was disturbed
no more.</p>
<p>He was alone now&mdash;absolutely, utterly, alone with the dead man,
till the next morning.</p>
<p>The wick of the candle wanted trimming again.&nbsp; He took up the
snuffers&mdash;but paused suddenly on the very point of using them,
and looked attentively at the candle&mdash;then back, over his shoulder,
at the curtained bed&mdash;then again at the candle.&nbsp; It had been
lighted, for the first time, to show him the way up-stairs, and three
parts of it, at least, were already consumed.&nbsp; In another hour
it would be burnt out.&nbsp; In another hour&mdash;unless he called
at once to the man who had shut up the Inn, for a fresh candle&mdash;he
would be left in the dark.</p>
<p>Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had entered his room,
his unreasonable dread of encountering ridicule, and of exposing his
courage to suspicion, had not altogether lost its influence over him,
even yet.&nbsp; He lingered irresolutely by the table, waiting till
he could prevail on himself to open the door, and call, from the landing,
to the man who had shut up the Inn.&nbsp; In his present hesitating
frame of mind, it was a kind of relief to gain a few moments only by
engaging in the trifling occupation of snuffing the candle.&nbsp; His
hand trembled a little, and the snuffers were heavy and awkward to use.&nbsp;
When he closed them on the wick, he closed them a hair&rsquo;s breadth
too low.&nbsp; In an instant the candle was out, and the room was plunged
in pitch darkness.</p>
<p>The one impression which the absence of light immediately produced
on his mind, was distrust of the curtained bed&mdash;distrust which
shaped itself into no distinct idea, but which was powerful enough in
its very vagueness, to bind him down to his chair, to make his heart
beat fast, and to set him listening intently.&nbsp; No sound stirred
in the room but the familiar sound of the rain against the window, louder
and sharper now than he had heard it yet.</p>
<p>Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed him,
and kept him to his chair.&nbsp; He had put his carpet-bag on the table,
when he first entered the room; and he now took the key from his pocket,
reached out his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped in it for his
travelling writing-case, in which he knew that there was a small store
of matches.&nbsp; When he had got one of the matches, he waited before
he struck it on the coarse wooden table, and listened intently again,
without knowing why.&nbsp; Still there was no sound in the room but
the steady, ceaseless, rattling sound of the rain.</p>
<p>He lighted the candle again, without another moment of delay and,
on the instant of its burning up, the first object in the room that
his eyes sought for was the curtained bed.</p>
<p>Just before the light had been put out, he had looked in that direction,
and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort, in the folds
of the closely-drawn curtains.</p>
<p>When he looked at the bed, now, he saw, hanging over the side of
it, a long white hand.</p>
<p>It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the bed, where
the curtain at the head and the curtain at the foot met.&nbsp; Nothing
more was visible.&nbsp; The clinging curtains hid everything but the
long white hand.</p>
<p>He stood looking at it unable to stir, unable to call out; feeling
nothing, knowing nothing, every faculty he possessed gathered up and
lost in the one seeing faculty.&nbsp; How long that first panic held
him he never could tell afterwards.&nbsp; It might have been only for
a moment; it might have been for many minutes together.&nbsp; How he
got to the bed&mdash;whether he ran to it headlong, or whether he approached
it slowly&mdash;how he wrought himself up to unclose the curtains and
look in, he never has remembered, and never will remember to his dying
day.&nbsp; It is enough that he did go to the bed, and that he did look
inside the curtains.</p>
<p>The man had moved.&nbsp; One of his arms was outside the clothes;
his face was turned a little on the pillow; his eyelids were wide open.&nbsp;
Changed as to position, and as to one of the features, the face was,
otherwise, fearfully and wonderfully unaltered.&nbsp; The dead paleness
and the dead quiet were on it still</p>
<p>One glance showed Arthur this&mdash;one glance, before he flew breathlessly
to the door, and alarmed the house.</p>
<p>The man whom the landlord called &lsquo;Ben,&rsquo; was the first
to appear on the stairs.&nbsp; In three words, Arthur told him what
had happened, and sent him for the nearest doctor.</p>
<p>I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a medical friend
of mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking care of his patients for him,
during his absence in London; and I, for the time being, was the nearest
doctor.&nbsp; They had sent for me from the Inn, when the stranger was
taken ill in the afternoon; but I was not at home, and medical assistance
was sought for elsewhere.&nbsp; When the man from The Two Robins rang
the night-bell, I was just thinking of going to bed.&nbsp; Naturally
enough, I did not believe a word of his story about &lsquo;a dead man
who had come to life again.&rsquo;&nbsp; However, I put on my hat, armed
myself with one or two bottles of restorative medicine, and ran to the
Inn, expecting to find nothing more remarkable, when I got there, than
a patient in a fit.</p>
<p>My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the literal truth
was almost, if not quite, equalled by my astonishment at finding myself
face to face with Arthur Holliday as soon as I entered the bedroom.&nbsp;
It was no time then for giving or seeking explanations.&nbsp; We just
shook hands amazedly; and then I ordered everybody but Arthur out of
the room, and hurried to the man on the bed.</p>
<p>The kitchen fire had not been long out.&nbsp; There was plenty of
hot water in the boiler, and plenty of flannel to be had.&nbsp; With
these, with my medicines, and with such help as Arthur could render
under my direction, I dragged the man, literally, out of the jaws of
death.&nbsp; In less than an hour from the time when I had been called
in, he was alive and talking in the bed on which he had been laid out
to wait for the Coroner&rsquo;s inquest.</p>
<p>You will naturally ask me, what had been the matter with him; and
I might treat you, in reply, to a long theory, plentifully sprinkled
with, what the children call, hard words.&nbsp; I prefer telling you
that, in this case, cause and effect could not be satisfactorily joined
together by any theory whatever.&nbsp; There are mysteries in life,
and the condition of it, which human science has not fathomed yet; and
I candidly confess to you, that, in bringing that man back to existence,
I was, morally speaking, groping haphazard in the dark.&nbsp; I know
(from the testimony of the doctor who attended him in the afternoon)
that the vital machinery, so far as its action is appreciable by our
senses, had, in this case, unquestionably stopped; and I am equally
certain (seeing that I recovered him) that the vital principle was not
extinct.&nbsp; When I add, that he had suffered from a long and complicated
illness, and that his whole nervous system was utterly deranged, I have
told you all I really know of the physical condition of my dead-alive
patient at The Two Robins Inn.</p>
<p>When he &lsquo;came to,&rsquo; as the phrase goes, he was a startling
object to look at, with his colourless face, his sunken cheeks, his
wild black eyes, and his long black hair.&nbsp; The first question he
asked me about himself, when he could speak, made me suspect that I
had been called in to a man in my own profession.&nbsp; I mentioned
to him my surmise; and he told me that I was right.</p>
<p>He said he had come last from Paris, where he had been attached to
a hospital.&nbsp; That he had lately returned to England, on his way
to Edinburgh, to continue his studies; that he had been taken ill on
the journey; and that he had stopped to rest and recover himself at
Doncaster.&nbsp; He did not add a word about his name, or who he was:
and, of course, I did not question him on the subject.&nbsp; All I inquired,
when he ceased speaking, was what branch of the profession he intended
to follow.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Any branch,&rsquo; he said, bitterly, &lsquo;which will put
bread into the mouth of a poor man.&rsquo;</p>
<p>At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him in silent curiosity,
burst out impetuously in his usual good-humoured way:-</p>
<p>&lsquo;My dear fellow!&rsquo; (everybody was &lsquo;my dear fellow&rsquo;
with Arthur) &lsquo;now you have come to life again, don&rsquo;t begin
by being down-hearted about your prospects.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll answer
for it, I can help you to some capital thing in the medical line&mdash;or,
if I can&rsquo;t, I know my father can.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The medical student looked at him steadily.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Thank you,&rsquo; he said, coldly.&nbsp; Then added, &lsquo;May
I ask who your father is?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s well enough known all about this part of the country,&rsquo;
replied Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;He is a great manufacturer, and his name
is Holliday.&rsquo;</p>
<p>My hand was on the man&rsquo;s wrist during this brief conversation.&nbsp;
The instant the name of Holliday was pronounced I felt the pulse under
my fingers flutter, stop, go on suddenly with a bound, and beat afterwards,
for a minute or two, at the fever rate.</p>
<p>&lsquo;How did you come here?&rsquo; asked the stranger, quickly,
excitably, passionately almost.</p>
<p>Arthur related briefly what had happened from the time of his first
taking the bed at the inn.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I am indebted to Mr. Holliday&rsquo;s son then for the help
that has saved my life,&rsquo; said the medical student, speaking to
himself, with a singular sarcasm in his voice.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come here!&rsquo;</p>
<p>He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony, right hand.</p>
<p>&lsquo;With all my heart,&rsquo; said Arthur, taking the hand-cordially.&nbsp;
&lsquo;I may confess it now,&rsquo; he continued, laughing.&nbsp; &lsquo;Upon
my honour, you almost frightened me out of my wits.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The stranger did not seem to listen.&nbsp; His wild black eyes were
fixed with a look of eager interest on Arthur&rsquo;s face, and his
long bony fingers kept tight hold of Arthur&rsquo;s hand.&nbsp; Young
Holliday, on his side, returned the gaze, amazed and puzzled by the
medical student&rsquo;s odd language and manners.&nbsp; The two faces
were close together; I looked at them; and, to my amazement, I was suddenly
impressed by the sense of a likeness between them&mdash;not in features,
or complexion, but solely in expression.&nbsp; It must have been a strong
likeness, or I should certainly not have found it out, for I am naturally
slow at detecting resemblances between faces.</p>
<p>&lsquo;You have saved my life,&rsquo; said the strange man, still
looking hard in Arthur&rsquo;s face, still holding tightly by his hand.&nbsp;
&lsquo;If you had been my own brother, you could not have done more
for me than that.&rsquo;</p>
<p>He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three words &lsquo;my
own brother,&rsquo; and a change passed over his face as he pronounced
them,&mdash;a change that no language of mine is competent to describe.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I hope I have not done being of service to you yet,&rsquo;
said Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll speak to my father, as soon as
I get home.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;You seem to be fond and proud of your father,&rsquo; said
the medical student.&nbsp; &lsquo;I suppose, in return, he is fond and
proud of you?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Of course, he is!&rsquo; answered Arthur, laughing.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Is there anything wonderful in that?&nbsp; Isn&rsquo;t <i>your</i>
father fond&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
<p>The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday&rsquo;s hand, and turned
his face away.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I beg your pardon,&rsquo; said Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;I hope
I have not unintentionally pained you.&nbsp; I hope you have not lost
your father.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I can&rsquo;t well lose what I have never had,&rsquo; retorted
the medical student, with a harsh, mocking laugh.</p>
<p>&lsquo;What you have never had!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The strange man suddenly caught Arthur&rsquo;s hand again, suddenly
looked once more hard in his face.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh.&nbsp;
&lsquo;You have brought a poor devil back into the world, who has no
business there.&nbsp; Do I astonish you?&nbsp; Well!&nbsp; I have a
fancy of my own for telling you what men in my situation generally keep
a secret.&nbsp; I have no name and no father.&nbsp; The merciful law
of Society tells me I am Nobody&rsquo;s Son!&nbsp; Ask your father if
he will be my father too, and help me on in life with the family name.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Arthur looked at me, more puzzled than ever.&nbsp; I signed to him
to say nothing, and then laid my fingers again on the man&rsquo;s wrist.&nbsp;
No!&nbsp; In spite of the extraordinary speech that he had just made,
he was not, as I had been disposed to suspect, beginning to get light-headed.&nbsp;
His pulse, by this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow beat, and
his skin was moist and cool.&nbsp; Not a symptom of fever or agitation
about him.</p>
<p>Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to me, and began
talking of the extraordinary nature of his case, and asking my advice
about the future course of medical treatment to which he ought to subject
himself.&nbsp; I said the matter required careful thinking over, and
suggested that I should submit certain prescriptions to him the next
morning.&nbsp; He told me to write them at once, as he would, most likely,
be leaving Doncaster, in the morning, before I was up.&nbsp; It was
quite useless to represent to him the folly and danger of such a proceeding
as this.&nbsp; He heard me politely and patiently, but held to his resolution,
without offering any reasons or any explanations, and repeated to me,
that if I wished to give him a chance of seeing my prescription, I must
write it at once.&nbsp; Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the loan of
a travelling writing-case, which, he said, he had with him; and, bringing
it to the bed, shook the note-paper out of the pocket of the case forthwith
in his usual careless way.&nbsp; With the paper, there fell out on the
counterpane of the bed a small packet of sticking-plaster, and a little
water-colour drawing of a landscape.</p>
<p>The medical student took up the drawing and looked at it.&nbsp; His
eye fell on some initials neatly written, in cypher, in one corner.&nbsp;
He started and trembled; his pale face grew whiter than ever; his wild
black eyes turned on Arthur, and looked through and through him.</p>
<p>&lsquo;A pretty drawing,&rsquo; he said in a remarkably quiet tone
of voice.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Ah! and done by such a pretty girl,&rsquo; said Arthur.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Oh, such a pretty girl!&nbsp; I wish it was not a landscape&mdash;I
wish it was a portrait of her!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;You admire her very much?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand for answer.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Love at first sight!&rsquo; he said, putting the drawing away
again.&nbsp; &lsquo;But the course of it doesn&rsquo;t run smooth.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s the old story.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s monopolised as usual.&nbsp;
Trammelled by a rash engagement to some poor man who is never likely
to get money enough to marry her.&nbsp; It was lucky I heard of it in
time, or I should certainly have risked a declaration when she gave
me that drawing.&nbsp; Here, doctor!&nbsp; Here is pen, ink, and paper
all ready for you.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;When she gave you that drawing?&nbsp; Gave it.&nbsp; Gave
it.&rsquo;&nbsp; He repeated the words slowly to himself, and suddenly
closed his eyes.&nbsp; A momentary distortion passed across his face,
and I saw one of his hands clutch up the bedclothes and squeeze them
hard.&nbsp; I thought he was going to be ill again, and begged that
there might be no more talking.&nbsp; He opened his eyes when I spoke,
fixed them once more searchingly on Arthur, and said, slowly and distinctly,
&lsquo;You like her, and she likes you.&nbsp; The poor man may die out
of your way.&nbsp; Who can tell that she may not give you herself as
well as her drawing, after all?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Before young Holliday could answer, he turned to me, and said in
a whisper, &lsquo;Now for the prescription.&rsquo;&nbsp; From that time,
though he spoke to Arthur again, he never looked at him more.</p>
<p>When I had written the prescription, he examined it, approved of
it, and then astonished us both by abruptly wishing us good night.&nbsp;
I offered to sit up with him, and he shook his head.&nbsp; Arthur offered
to sit up with him, and he said, shortly, with his face turned away,
&lsquo;No.&rsquo;&nbsp; I insisted on having somebody left to watch
him.&nbsp; He gave way when he found I was determined, and said he would
accept the services of the waiter at the Inn.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Thank you, both,&rsquo; he said, as we rose to go.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
have one last favour to ask&mdash;not of you, doctor, for I leave you
to exercise your professional discretion&mdash;but of Mr. Holliday.&rsquo;&nbsp;
His eyes, while he spoke, still rested steadily on me, and never once
turned towards Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;I beg that Mr. Holliday will not
mention to any one&mdash;least of all to his father&mdash;the events
that have occurred, and the words that have passed, in this room.&nbsp;
I entreat him to bury me in his memory, as, but for him, I might have
been buried in my grave.&nbsp; I cannot give my reasons for making this
strange request.&nbsp; I can only implore him to grant it.&rsquo;</p>
<p>His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face on the
pillow.&nbsp; Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the required pledge.&nbsp;
I took young Holliday away with me, immediately afterwards, to the house
of my friend; determining to go back to the Inn, and to see the medical
student again before he had left in the morning.</p>
<p>I returned to the Inn at eight o&rsquo;clock, purposely abstaining
from waking Arthur, who was sleeping off the past night&rsquo;s excitement
on one of my friend&rsquo;s sofas.&nbsp; A suspicion had occurred to
me as soon as I was alone in my bedroom, which made me resolve that
Holliday and the stranger whose life he had saved should not meet again,
if I could prevent it.&nbsp; I have already alluded to certain reports,
or scandals, which I knew of, relating to the early life of Arthur&rsquo;s
father.&nbsp; While I was thinking, in my bed, of what had passed at
the Inn&mdash;of the change in the student&rsquo;s pulse when he heard
the name of Holliday; of the resemblance of expression that I had discovered
between his face and Arthur&rsquo;s; of the emphasis he had laid on
those three words, &lsquo;my own brother;&rsquo; and of his incomprehensible
acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy&mdash;while I was thinking of
these things, the reports I have mentioned suddenly flew into my mind,
and linked themselves fast to the chain of my previous reflections.&nbsp;
Something within me whispered, &lsquo;It is best that those two young
men should not meet again.&rsquo;&nbsp; I felt it before I slept; I
felt it when I woke; and I went, as I told you, alone to the Inn the
next morning.</p>
<p>I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my nameless patient again.&nbsp;
He had been gone nearly an hour when I inquired for him.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>I have now told you everything that I know for certain, in relation
to the man whom I brought back to life in the double-bedded room of
the Inn at Doncaster.&nbsp; What I have next to add is matter for inference
and surmise, and is not, strictly speaking, matter of fact.</p>
<p>I have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned out to
be strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it as more than probable
that Arthur Holliday would marry the young lady who had given him the
water-colour drawing of the landscape.&nbsp; That marriage took place
a little more than a year after the events occurred which I have just
been relating.&nbsp; The young couple came to live in the neighbourhood
in which I was then established in practice.&nbsp; I was present at
the wedding, and was rather surprised to find that Arthur was singularly
reserved with me, both before and after his marriage, on the subject
of the young lady&rsquo;s prior engagement.&nbsp; He only referred to
it once, when we were alone, merely telling me, on that occasion, that
his wife had done all that honour and duty required of her in the matter,
and that the engagement had been broken off with the full approval of
her parents.&nbsp; I never heard more from him than this.&nbsp; For
three years he and his wife lived together happily.&nbsp; At the expiration
of that time, the symptoms of a serious illness first declared themselves
in Mrs. Arthur Holliday.&nbsp; It turned out to be a long, lingering,
hopeless malady.&nbsp; I attended her throughout.&nbsp; We had been
great friends when she was well, and we became more attached to each
other than ever when she was ill.&nbsp; I had many long and interesting
conversations with her in the intervals when she suffered least.&nbsp;
The result of one of these conversations I may briefly relate, leaving
you to draw any inferences from it that you please.</p>
<p>The interview to which I refer, occurred shortly before her death.&nbsp;
I called one evening, as usual, and found her alone, with a look in
her eyes which told me that she had been crying.&nbsp; She only informed
me at first, that she had been depressed in spirits; but, by little
and little, she became more communicative, and confessed to me that
she had been looking over some old letters, which had been addressed
to her, before she had seen Arthur, by a man to whom she had been engaged
to be married.&nbsp; I asked her how the engagement came to be broken
off.&nbsp; She replied that it had not been broken off, but that it
had died out in a very mysterious way.&nbsp; The person to whom she
was engaged&mdash;her first love, she called him&mdash;was very poor,
and there was no immediate prospect of their being married.&nbsp; He
followed my profession, and went abroad to study.&nbsp; They had corresponded
regularly, until the time when, as she believed, he had returned to
England.&nbsp; From that period she heard no more of him.&nbsp; He was
of a fretful, sensitive temperament; and she feared that she might have
inadvertently done or said something that offended him.&nbsp; However
that might be, he had never written to her again; and, after waiting
a year, she had married Arthur.&nbsp; I asked when the first estrangement
had begun, and found that the time at which she ceased to hear anything
of her first lover exactly corresponded with the time at which I had
been called in to my mysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn.</p>
<p>A fortnight after that conversation, she died.&nbsp; In course of
time, Arthur married again.&nbsp; Of late years, he has lived principally
in London, and I have seen little or nothing of him.</p>
<p>I have many years to pass over before I can approach to anything
like a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; We met, not like strangers, but like
friends&mdash;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I
had a notion once that my patient at the Inn might be a natural son
of Mr. Holliday&rsquo;s; I had another idea that he might also have
been the man who was engaged to Arthur&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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&mdash;very like him.&nbsp;
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!</p>
<p>The Doctor paused.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild, who had been following every
word that fell from his lips up to this time, leaned forward eagerly
to ask a question.&nbsp; Before he could say a word, the latch of the
door was raised, without any warning sound of footsteps in the passage
outside.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>&lsquo;That hand!&nbsp; Look at that hand, Doctor!&rsquo; said Mr.
Goodchild, touching him.</p>
<p>At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr. Goodchild, and whispered
to him, significantly:</p>
<p>&lsquo;Hush! he has come back.&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>The Cumberland Doctor&rsquo;s mention of Doncaster Races, inspired
Mr. Francis Goodchild with the idea of going down to Doncaster to see
the races.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&mdash;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.&nbsp; 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 &lsquo;Spatter.&rsquo;&nbsp; After this supplementary
discovery, Mr. Goodchild said no more about it.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; 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
&lsquo;Fixtures&rsquo; for the month.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Do you see Allonby!&rsquo; asked Thomas Idle.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see it yet,&rsquo; said Francis, looking out
of window.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It must be there,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see it,&rsquo; returned Francis.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It must be there,&rsquo; repeated Thomas Idle, fretfully.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Lord bless me!&rsquo; exclaimed Francis, drawing in his head,
&lsquo;I suppose this is it!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;A watering-place,&rsquo; retorted Thomas Idle, with the pardonable
sharpness of an invalid, &lsquo;can&rsquo;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&rsquo;s legs hanging over a bridge (with
a boy&rsquo;s body I suppose on the other side of the parapet), and
a donkey running away.&nbsp; What are you talking about?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Allonby, gentlemen,&rsquo; said the most comfortable of landladies
as she opened one door of the carriage; &lsquo;Allonby, gentlemen,&rsquo;
said the most attentive of landlords, as he opened the other.</p>
<p>Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, and descended
from the vehicle.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Francis,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle, &lsquo;what do you think
of this place?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I think,&rsquo; returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing way,
&lsquo;it is everything we expected.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.</p>
<p>&lsquo;There is the sea,&rsquo; cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out
of window; &lsquo;and here,&rsquo; pointing to the lunch on the table,
&lsquo;are shrimps.&nbsp; Let us&mdash;&rsquo; here Mr. Goodchild looked
out of window, as if in search of something, and looked in again,&mdash;&lsquo;let
us eat &rsquo;em.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Goodchild went out
to survey the watering-place.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen.</p>
<p>&lsquo;But,&rsquo; Thomas Idle asked, &lsquo;where is it?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s what you may call generally up and down the beach,
here and there,&rsquo; said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist of his hand.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Proceed,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.</p>
<p>It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examination, what
you might call a primitive place.&nbsp; Large?&nbsp; No, it was not
large.&nbsp; Who ever expected it would be large?&nbsp; Shape?&nbsp;
What a question to ask!&nbsp; No shape.&nbsp; What sort of a street?&nbsp;
Why, no street.&nbsp; Shops?&nbsp; Yes, of course (quite indignant).&nbsp;
How many?&nbsp; Who ever went into a place to count the shops?&nbsp;
Ever so many.&nbsp; Six?&nbsp; Perhaps.&nbsp; A library?&nbsp; Why,
of course (indignant again).&nbsp; Good collection of books?&nbsp; Most
likely&mdash;couldn&rsquo;t say&mdash;had seen nothing in it but a pair
of scales.&nbsp; Any reading-room?&nbsp; Of course, there was a reading-room.&nbsp;
Where?&nbsp; Where! why, over there.&nbsp; Where was over there?&nbsp;
Why, <i>there</i>!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; That was the reading-room, and if Mr. Idle
didn&rsquo;t like the idea of a weaver&rsquo;s shuttle throbbing under
a reading-room, that was his look out.&nbsp; <i>He</i> was not to dictate,
Mr. Goodchild supposed (indignant again), to the company.</p>
<p>&lsquo;By-the-by,&rsquo; Thomas Idle observed; &lsquo;the company?&rsquo;</p>
<p>Well! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice company.&nbsp;
Where were they?&nbsp; Why, there they were.&nbsp; Mr. Idle could see
the tops of their hats, he supposed.&nbsp; What?&nbsp; Those nine straw
hats again, five gentlemen&rsquo;s and four ladies&rsquo;?&nbsp; Yes,
to be sure.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild hoped the company were not to be expected
to wear helmets, to please Mr. Idle.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; That they got their living entirely by looking
at the ocean.&nbsp; What nourishment they looked out of it to support
their strength, he couldn&rsquo;t say; but, he supposed it was some
sort of Iodine.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&mdash;as
its shells were.&nbsp; 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&mdash;supposing what
you wanted, was a little camp-stool or a child&rsquo;s wheelbarrow.&nbsp;
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.&nbsp; This donkey was the public excitement
of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public expense.</p>
<p>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, &lsquo;But there
is the sea, and here are the shrimps&mdash;let us eat &rsquo;em.&rsquo;</p>
<p>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&mdash;on
fine days&mdash;of the Scottish coast.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they had looked at
the sea and eaten the shrimps, &lsquo;My mind misgives me, Goodchild,
that you go to Maryport, like the boy in the story-book, to ask <i>it</i>
to be idle with you.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Judge, then,&rsquo; returned Francis, adopting the style of
the story-book, &lsquo;with what success.&nbsp; 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, &ldquo;Will<i>
you</i> come and be idle with me?&rdquo;&nbsp; And it answers, &ldquo;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&rsquo;t be idle with you.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Then I go into jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, where I am in the
pastrycook&rsquo;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, &ldquo;Will<i> you</i> come and
be idle with me?&rdquo;&nbsp; To which they reply, &ldquo;No, we can&rsquo;t,
indeed, for we haven&rsquo;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&rsquo;t enjoy ourselves with any one.&rdquo;&nbsp;
So I go to the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to the
Post-master, &ldquo;Will<i> you</i> come and be idle with me?&rdquo;&nbsp;
To which he rejoins, &ldquo;No, I really can&rsquo;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&rsquo;s house
at a fair, and I am a mere Post-office anchorite in a cell much too
small for him, and I can&rsquo;t get out, and I can&rsquo;t get in,
and I have no space to be idle in, even if I would.&rdquo;&nbsp; So,
the boy,&rsquo; said Mr. Goodchild, concluding the tale, &lsquo;comes
back with the letters after all, and lives happy never afterwards.&rsquo;</p>
<p>But it may, not unreasonably, be asked&mdash;while Francis Goodchild
was wandering hither and thither, storing his mind with perpetual observation
of men and things, and sincerely believing himself to be the laziest
creature in existence all the time&mdash;how did Thomas Idle, crippled
and confined to the house, contrive to get through the hours of the
day?</p>
<p>Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get through the hours,
but passively allowed the hours to get through <i>him</i>.&nbsp; Where
other men in his situation would have read books and improved their
minds, Thomas slept and rested his body.&nbsp; Where other men would
have pondered anxiously over their future prospects, Thomas dreamed
lazily of his past life.&nbsp; The one solitary thing he did, which
most other people would have done in his place, was to resolve on making
certain alterations and improvements in his mode of existence, as soon
as the effects of the misfortune that had overtaken him had all passed
away.&nbsp; Remembering that the current of his life had hitherto oozed
along in one smooth stream of laziness, occasionally troubled on the
surface by a slight passing ripple of industry, his present ideas on
the subject of self-reform, inclined him&mdash;not as the reader may
be disposed to imagine, to project schemes for a new existence of enterprise
and exertion&mdash;but, on the contrary, to resolve that he would never,
if he could possibly help it, be active or industrious again, throughout
the whole of his future career.</p>
<p>It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered towards this
peculiar conclusion on distinct and logically-producible grounds.&nbsp;
After reviewing, quite at his ease, and with many needful intervals
of repose, the generally-placid spectacle of his past existence, he
arrived at the discovery that all the great disasters which had tried
his patience and equanimity in early life, had been caused by his having
allowed himself to be deluded into imitating some pernicious example
of activity and industry that had been set him by others.&nbsp; The
trials to which he here alludes were three in number, and may be thus
reckoned up: First, the disaster of being an unpopular and a thrashed
boy at school; secondly, the disaster of falling seriously ill; thirdly,
the disaster of becoming acquainted with a great bore.</p>
<p>The first disaster occurred after Thomas had been an idle and a popular
boy at school, for some happy years.&nbsp; One Christmas-time, he was
stimulated by the evil example of a companion, whom he had always trusted
and liked, to be untrue to himself, and to try for a prize at the ensuing
half-yearly examination.&nbsp; He did try, and he got a prize&mdash;how,
he did not distinctly know at the moment, and cannot remember now.&nbsp;
No sooner, however, had the book&mdash;Moral Hints to the Young on the
Value of Time&mdash;been placed in his hands, than the first troubles
of his life began.&nbsp; The idle boys deserted him, as a traitor to
their cause.&nbsp; The industrious boys avoided him, as a dangerous
interloper; one of their number, who had always won the prize on previous
occasions, expressing just resentment at the invasion of his privileges
by calling Thomas into the play-ground, and then and there administering
to him the first sound and genuine thrashing that he had ever received
in his life.&nbsp; Unpopular from that moment, as a beaten boy, who
belonged to no side and was rejected by all parties, young Idle soon
lost caste with his masters, as he had previously lost caste with his
schoolfellows.&nbsp; He had forfeited the comfortable reputation of
being the one lazy member of the youthful community whom it was quite
hopeless to punish.&nbsp; Never again did he hear the headmaster say
reproachfully to an industrious boy who had committed a fault, &lsquo;I
might have expected this in Thomas Idle, but it is inexcusable, sir,
in you, who know better.&rsquo;&nbsp; Never more, after winning that
fatal prize, did he escape the retributive imposition, or the avenging
birch.&nbsp; From that time, the masters made him work, and the boys
would not let him play.&nbsp; From that time his social position steadily
declined, and his life at school became a perpetual burden to him.</p>
<p>So, again, with the second disaster.&nbsp; While Thomas was lazy,
he was a model of health.&nbsp; His first attempt at active exertion
and his first suffering from severe illness are connected together by
the intimate relations of cause and effect.&nbsp; Shortly after leaving
school, he accompanied a party of friends to a cricket-field, in his
natural and appropriate character of spectator only.&nbsp; On the ground
it was discovered that the players fell short of the required number,
and facile Thomas was persuaded to assist in making up the complement.&nbsp;
At a certain appointed time, he was roused from peaceful slumber in
a dry ditch, and placed before three wickets with a bat in his hand.&nbsp;
Opposite to him, behind three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends,
filling the situation (as he was informed) of bowler.&nbsp; No words
can describe Mr. Idle&rsquo;s horror and amazement, when he saw this
young man&mdash;on ordinary occasions, the meekest and mildest of human
beings&mdash;suddenly contract his eye-brows, compress his lips, assume
the aspect of an infuriated savage, run back a few steps, then run forward,
and, without the slightest previous provocation, hurl a detestably hard
ball with all his might straight at Thomas&rsquo;s legs.&nbsp; Stimulated
to preternatural activity of body and sharpness of eye by the instinct
of self-preservation, Mr. Idle contrived, by jumping deftly aside at
the right moment, and by using his bat (ridiculously narrow as it was
for the purpose) as a shield, to preserve his life and limbs from the
dastardly attack that had been made on both, to leave the full force
of the deadly missile to strike his wicket instead of his leg; and to
end the innings, so far as his side was concerned, by being immediately
bowled out.&nbsp; Grateful for his escape, he was about to return to
the dry ditch, when he was peremptorily stopped, and told that the other
side was &lsquo;going in,&rsquo; and that he was expected to &lsquo;field.&rsquo;&nbsp;
His conception of the whole art and mystery of &lsquo;fielding,&rsquo;
may be summed up in the three words of serious advice which he privately
administered to himself on that trying occasion&mdash;avoid the ball.&nbsp;
Fortified by this sound and salutary principle, he took his own course,
impervious alike to ridicule and abuse.&nbsp; Whenever the ball came
near him, he thought of his shins, and got out of the way immediately.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Catch it!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Stop it!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Pitch
it up!&rsquo; were cries that passed by him like the idle wind that
he regarded not.&nbsp; He ducked under it, he jumped over it, he whisked
himself away from it on either side.&nbsp; Never once, through the whole
innings did he and the ball come together on anything approaching to
intimate terms.&nbsp; The unnatural activity of body which was necessarily
called forth for the accomplishment of this result threw Thomas Idle,
for the first time in his life, into a perspiration.&nbsp; The perspiration,
in consequence of his want of practice in the management of that particular
result of bodily activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill
succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever.&nbsp; For
the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself confined to his
bed for many weeks together, wasted and worn by a long illness, of which
his own disastrous muscular exertion had been the sole first cause.</p>
<p>The third occasion on which Thomas found reason to reproach himself
bitterly for the mistake of having attempted to be industrious, was
connected with his choice of a calling in life.&nbsp; Having no interest
in the Church, he appropriately selected the next best profession for
a lazy man in England&mdash;the Bar.&nbsp; Although the Benchers of
the Inns of Court have lately abandoned their good old principles, and
oblige their students to make some show of studying, in Mr. Idle&rsquo;s
time no such innovation as this existed.&nbsp; Young men who aspired
to the honourable title of barrister were, very properly, not asked
to learn anything of the law, but were merely required to eat a certain
number of dinners at the table of their Hall, and to pay a certain sum
of money; and were called to the Bar as soon as they could prove that
they had sufficiently complied with these extremely sensible regulations.&nbsp;
Never did Thomas move more harmoniously in concert with his elders and
betters than when he was qualifying himself for admission among the
barristers of his native country.&nbsp; Never did he feel more deeply
what real laziness was in all the serene majesty of its nature, than
on the memorable day when he was called to the Bar, after having carefully
abstained from opening his law-books during his period of probation,
except to fall asleep over them.&nbsp; How he could ever again have
become industrious, even for the shortest period, after that great reward
conferred upon his idleness, quite passes his comprehension.&nbsp; The
kind Benchers did everything they could to show him the folly of exerting
himself.&nbsp; They wrote out his probationary exercise for him, and
never expected him even to take the trouble of reading it through when
it was written.&nbsp; They invited him, with seven other choice spirits
as lazy as himself, to come and be called to the Bar, while they were
sitting over their wine and fruit after dinner.&nbsp; They put his oaths
of allegiance, and his dreadful official denunciations of the Pope and
the Pretender, so gently into his mouth, that he hardly knew how the
words got there.&nbsp; They wheeled all their chairs softly round from
the table, and sat surveying the young barristers with their backs to
their bottles, rather than stand up, or adjourn to hear the exercises
read.&nbsp; And when Mr. Idle and the seven unlabouring neophytes, ranged
in order, as a class, with their backs considerately placed against
a screen, had begun, in rotation, to read the exercises which they had
not written, even then, each Bencher, true to the great lazy principle
of the whole proceeding, stopped each neophyte before he had stammered
through his first line, and bowed to him, and told him politely that
he was a barrister from that moment.&nbsp; This was all the ceremony.&nbsp;
It was followed by a social supper, and by the presentation, in accordance
with ancient custom, of a pound of sweetmeats and a bottle of Madeira,
offered in the way of needful refreshment, by each grateful neophyte
to each beneficent Bencher.&nbsp; It may seem inconceivable that Thomas
should ever have forgotten the great do-nothing principle instilled
by such a ceremony as this; but it is, nevertheless, true, that certain
designing students of industrious habits found him out, took advantage
of his easy humour, persuaded him that it was discreditable to be a
barrister and to know nothing whatever about the law, and lured him,
by the force of their own evil example, into a conveyancer&rsquo;s chambers,
to make up for lost time, and to qualify himself for practice at the
Bar.&nbsp; After a fortnight of self-delusion, the curtain fell from
his eyes; he resumed his natural character, and shut up his books.&nbsp;
But the retribution which had hitherto always followed his little casual
errors of industry followed them still.&nbsp; He could get away from
the conveyancer&rsquo;s chambers, but he could not get away from one
of the pupils, who had taken a fancy to him,&mdash;a tall, serious,
raw-boned, hard-working, disputatious pupil, with ideas of his own about
reforming the Law of Real Property, who has been the scourge of Mr.
Idle&rsquo;s existence ever since the fatal day when he fell into the
mistake of attempting to study the law.&nbsp; Before that time his friends
were all sociable idlers like himself.&nbsp; Since that time the burden
of bearing with a hard-working young man has become part of his lot
in life.&nbsp; Go where he will now, he can never feel certain that
the raw-boned pupil is not affectionately waiting for him round a corner,
to tell him a little more about the Law of Real Property.&nbsp; Suffer
as he may under the infliction, he can never complain, for he must always
remember, with unavailing regret, that he has his own thoughtless industry
to thank for first exposing him to the great social calamity of knowing
a bore.</p>
<p>These events of his past life, with the significant results that
they brought about, pass drowsily through Thomas Idle&rsquo;s memory,
while he lies alone on the sofa at Allonby and elsewhere, dreaming away
the time which his fellow-apprentice gets through so actively out of
doors.&nbsp; Remembering the lesson of laziness which his past disasters
teach, and bearing in mind also the fact that he is crippled in one
leg because he exerted himself to go up a mountain, when he ought to
have known that his proper course of conduct was to stop at the bottom
of it, he holds now, and will for the future firmly continue to hold,
by his new resolution never to be industrious again, on any pretence
whatever, for the rest of his life.&nbsp; The physical results of his
accident have been related in a previous chapter.&nbsp; The moral results
now stand on record; and, with the enumeration of these, that part of
the present narrative which is occupied by the Episode of The Sprained
Ankle may now perhaps be considered, in all its aspects, as finished
and complete.</p>
<p>&lsquo;How do you propose that we get through this present afternoon
and evening?&rsquo; demanded Thomas Idle, after two or three hours of
the foregoing reflections at Allonby.</p>
<p>Mr. Goodchild faltered, looked out of window, looked in again, and
said, as he had so often said before, &lsquo;There is the sea, and here
are the shrimps;&mdash;let us eat &rsquo;em&rsquo;!&rsquo;</p>
<p>But, the wise donkey was at that moment in the act of bolting: not
with the irresolution of his previous efforts which had been wanting
in sustained force of character, but with real vigour of purpose: shaking
the dust off his mane and hind-feet at Allonby, and tearing away from
it, as if he had nobly made up his mind that he never would be taken
alive.&nbsp; At sight of this inspiring spectacle, which was visible
from his sofa, Thomas Idle stretched his neck and dwelt upon it rapturously.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Francis Goodchild,&rsquo; he then said, turning to his companion
with a solemn air, &lsquo;this is a delightful little Inn, excellently
kept by the most comfortable of landladies and the most attentive of
landlords, but&mdash;the donkey&rsquo;s right!&rsquo;</p>
<p>The words, &lsquo;There is the sea, and here are the&mdash;&rsquo;
again trembled on the lips of Goodchild, unaccompanied however by any
sound.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Let us instantly pack the portmanteaus,&rsquo; said Thomas
Idle, &lsquo;pay the bill, and order a fly out, with instructions to
the driver to follow the donkey!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Goodchild, who had only wanted encouragement to disclose the
real state of his feelings, and who had been pining beneath his weary
secret, now burst into tears, and confessed that he thought another
day in the place would be the death of him.</p>
<p>So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until the night
was far advanced.&nbsp; Whether he was recaptured by the town-council,
or is bolting at this hour through the United Kingdom, they know not.&nbsp;
They hope he may be still bolting; if so, their best wishes are with
him.</p>
<p>It entered Mr. Idle&rsquo;s head, on the borders of Cumberland, that
there could be no idler place to stay at, except by snatches of a few
minutes each, than a railway station.&nbsp; &lsquo;An intermediate station
on a line&mdash;a junction&mdash;anything of that sort,&rsquo; Thomas
suggested.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild approved of the idea as eccentric, and
they journeyed on and on, until they came to such a station where there
was an Inn.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; said Thomas, &lsquo;we may be luxuriously lazy;
other people will travel for us, as it were, and we shall laugh at their
folly.&rsquo;</p>
<p>It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors before mentioned
shaved the air very often, and where the sharp electric-telegraph bell
was in a very restless condition.&nbsp; All manner of cross-lines of
rails came zig-zagging into it, like a Congress of iron vipers; and,
a little way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box was constantly
going through the motions of drawing immense quantities of beer at a
public-house bar.&nbsp; In one direction, confused perspectives of embankments
and arches were to be seen from the platform; in the other, the rails
soon disentangled themselves into two tracks and shot away under a bridge,
and curved round a corner.&nbsp; Sidings were there, in which empty
luggage-vans and cattle-boxes often butted against each other as if
they couldn&rsquo;t agree; and warehouses were there, in which great
quantities of goods seemed to have taken the veil (of the consistency
of tarpaulin), and to have retired from the world without any hope of
getting back to it.&nbsp; Refreshment-rooms were there; one, for the
hungry and thirsty Iron Locomotives where their coke and water were
ready, and of good quality, for they were dangerous to play tricks with;
the other, for the hungry and thirsty human Locomotives, who might take
what they could get, and whose chief consolation was provided in the
form of three terrific urns or vases of white metal, containing nothing,
each forming a breastwork for a defiant and apparently much-injured
woman.</p>
<p>Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild
resolved to enjoy it.&nbsp; But, its contrasts were very violent, and
there was also an infection in it.</p>
<p>First, as to its contrasts.&nbsp; They were only two, but they were
Lethargy and Madness.&nbsp; The Station was either totally unconscious,
or wildly raving.&nbsp; By day, in its unconscious state, it looked
as if no life could come to it,&mdash;as if it were all rust, dust,
and ashes&mdash;as if the last train for ever, had gone without issuing
any Return-Tickets&mdash;as if the last Engine had uttered its last
shriek and burst.&nbsp; One awkward shave of the air from the wooden
razor, and everything changed.&nbsp; Tight office-doors flew open, panels
yielded, books, newspapers, travelling-caps and wrappers broke out of
brick walls, money chinked, conveyances oppressed by nightmares of luggage
came careering into the yard, porters started up from secret places,
ditto the much-injured women, the shining bell, who lived in a little
tray on stilts by himself, flew into a man&rsquo;s hand and clamoured
violently.&nbsp; The pointsman aloft in the signal-box made the motions
of drawing, with some difficulty, hogsheads of beer.&nbsp; Down Train!&nbsp;
More bear!&nbsp; Up Train!&nbsp; More beer.&nbsp; Cross junction Train!&nbsp;
More beer!&nbsp; Cattle Train!&nbsp; More beer.&nbsp; Goods Train!&nbsp;
Simmering, whistling, trembling, rumbling, thundering.&nbsp; Trains
on the whole confusion of intersecting rails, crossing one another,
bumping one another, hissing one another, backing to go forward, tearing
into distance to come close.&nbsp; People frantic.&nbsp; Exiles seeking
restoration to their native carriages, and banished to remoter climes.&nbsp;
More beer and more bell.&nbsp; Then, in a minute, the Station relapsed
into stupor as the stoker of the Cattle Train, the last to depart, went
gliding out of it, wiping the long nose of his oil-can with a dirty
pocket-handkerchief.</p>
<p>By night, in its unconscious state, the Station was not so much as
visible.&nbsp; Something in the air, like an enterprising chemist&rsquo;s
established in business on one of the boughs of Jack&rsquo;s beanstalk,
was all that could be discerned of it under the stars.&nbsp; In a moment
it would break out, a constellation of gas.&nbsp; In another moment,
twenty rival chemists, on twenty rival beanstalks, came into existence.&nbsp;
Then, the Furies would be seen, waving their lurid torches up and down
the confused perspectives of embankments and arches&mdash;would be heard,
too, wailing and shrieking.&nbsp; Then, the Station would be full of
palpitating trains, as in the day; with the heightening difference that
they were not so clearly seen as in the day, whereas the Station walls,
starting forward under the gas, like a hippopotamus&rsquo;s eyes, dazzled
the human locomotives with the sauce-bottle, the cheap music, the bedstead,
the distorted range of buildings where the patent safes are made, the
gentleman in the rain with the registered umbrella, the lady returning
from the ball with the registered respirator, and all their other embellishments.&nbsp;
And now, the human locomotives, creased as to their countenances and
purblind as to their eyes, would swarm forth in a heap, addressing themselves
to the mysterious urns and the much-injured women; while the iron locomotives,
dripping fire and water, shed their steam about plentifully, making
the dull oxen in their cages, with heads depressed, and foam hanging
from their mouths as their red looks glanced fearfully at the surrounding
terrors, seem as though they had been drinking at half-frozen waters
and were hung with icicles.&nbsp; Through the same steam would be caught
glimpses of their fellow-travellers, the sheep, getting their white
kid faces together, away from the bars, and stuffing the interstices
with trembling wool.&nbsp; Also, down among the wheels, of the man with
the sledge-hammer, ringing the axles of the fast night-train; against
whom the oxen have a misgiving that he is the man with the pole-axe
who is to come by-and-by, and so the nearest of them try to get back,
and get a purchase for a thrust at him through the bars.&nbsp; Suddenly,
the bell would ring, the steam would stop with one hiss and a yell,
the chemists on the beanstalks would be busy, the avenging Furies would
bestir themselves, the fast night-train would melt from eye and ear,
the other trains going their ways more slowly would be heard faintly
rattling in the distance like old-fashioned watches running down, the
sauce-bottle and cheap music retired from view, even the bedstead went
to bed, and there was no such visible thing as the Station to vex the
cool wind in its blowing, or perhaps the autumn lightning, as it found
out the iron rails.</p>
<p>The infection of the Station was this:- When it was in its raving
state, the Apprentices found it impossible to be there, without labouring
under the delusion that they were in a hurry.&nbsp; To Mr. Goodchild,
whose ideas of idleness were so imperfect, this was no unpleasant hallucination,
and accordingly that gentleman went through great exertions in yielding
to it, and running up and down the platform, jostling everybody, under
the impression that he had a highly important mission somewhere, and
had not a moment to lose.&nbsp; But, to Thomas Idle, this contagion
was so very unacceptable an incident of the situation, that he struck
on the fourth day, and requested to be moved.</p>
<p>&lsquo;This place fills me with a dreadful sensation,&rsquo; said
Thomas, &lsquo;of having something to do.&nbsp; Remove me, Francis.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Where would you like to go next?&rsquo; was the question of
the ever-engaging Goodchild.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster, established
in a fine old house: an Inn where they give you Bride-cake every day
after dinner,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.&nbsp; &lsquo;Let us eat Bride-cake
without the trouble of being married, or of knowing anybody in that
ridiculous dilemma.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Goodchild, with a lover&rsquo;s sigh, assented.&nbsp; They departed
from the Station in a violent hurry (for which, it is unnecessary to
observe, there was not the least occasion), and were delivered at the
fine old house at Lancaster, on the same night.</p>
<p>It is Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s opinion, that if a visitor on his arrival
at Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole which would push the
opposite side of the street some yards farther off, it would be better
for all parties.&nbsp; Protesting against being required to live in
a trench, and obliged to speculate all day upon what the people can
possibly be doing within a mysterious opposite window, which is a shop-window
to look at, but not a shop-window in respect of its offering nothing
for sale and declining to give any account whatever of itself, Mr. Goodchild
concedes Lancaster to be a pleasant place.&nbsp; A place dropped in
the midst of a charming landscape, a place with a fine ancient fragment
of castle, a place of lovely walks, a place possessing staid old houses
richly fitted with old Honduras mahogany, which has grown so dark with
time that it seems to have got something of a retrospective mirror-quality
into itself, and to show the visitor, in the depth of its grain, through
all its polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago
under old Lancaster merchants.&nbsp; And Mr. Goodchild adds that the
stones of Lancaster do sometimes whisper, even yet, of rich men passed
away&mdash;upon whose great prosperity some of these old doorways frowned
sullen in the brightest weather&mdash;that their slave-gain turned to
curses, as the Arabian Wizard&rsquo;s money turned to leaves, and that
no good ever came of it, even unto the third and fourth generations,
until it was wasted and gone.</p>
<p>It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday procession of the Lancaster
elders to Church&mdash;all in black, and looking fearfully like a funeral
without the Body&mdash;under the escort of Three Beadles.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Think,&rsquo; said Francis, as he stood at the Inn window,
admiring, &lsquo;of being taken to the sacred edifice by three Beadles!&nbsp;
I have, in my early time, been taken out of it by one Beadle; but, to
be taken into it by three, O Thomas, is a distinction I shall never
enjoy!&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>When Mr. Goodchild had looked out of the Lancaster Inn window for
two hours on end, with great perseverance, he begun to entertain a misgiving
that he was growing industrious.&nbsp; He therefore set himself next,
to explore the country from the tops of all the steep hills in the neighbourhood.</p>
<p>He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell Thomas Idle
what he had seen.&nbsp; Thomas, on his back reading, listened with great
composure, and asked him whether he really had gone up those hills,
and bothered himself with those views, and walked all those miles?</p>
<p>&lsquo;Because I want to know,&rsquo; added Thomas, &lsquo;what you
would say of it, if you were obliged to do it?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It would be different, then,&rsquo; said Francis.&nbsp; &lsquo;It
would be work, then; now, it&rsquo;s play.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Play!&rsquo; replied Thomas Idle, utterly repudiating the
reply.&nbsp; &lsquo;Play!&nbsp; Here is a man goes systematically tearing
himself to pieces, and putting himself through an incessant course of
training, as if he were always under articles to fight a match for the
champion&rsquo;s belt, and he calls it Play!&nbsp; Play!&rsquo; exclaimed
Thomas Idle, scornfully contemplating his one boot in the air.&nbsp;
&lsquo;You <i>can&rsquo;t</i> play.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t know what
it is.&nbsp; You make work of everything.&rsquo;</p>
<p>The bright Goodchild amiably smiled.</p>
<p>&lsquo;So you do,&rsquo; said Thomas.&nbsp; &lsquo;I mean it.&nbsp;
To me you are an absolutely terrible fellow.&nbsp; You do nothing like
another man.&nbsp; Where another fellow would fall into a footbath of
action or emotion, you fall into a mine.&nbsp; Where any other fellow
would be a painted butterfly, you are a fiery dragon.&nbsp; Where another
man would stake a sixpence, you stake your existence.&nbsp; If you were
to go up in a balloon, you would make for Heaven; and if you were to
dive into the depths of the earth, nothing short of the other place
would content you.&nbsp; What a fellow you are, Francis!&rsquo;&nbsp;
The cheerful Goodchild laughed.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s all very well to laugh, but I wonder you don&rsquo;t
feel it to be serious,&rsquo; said Idle.&nbsp; &lsquo;A man who can
do nothing by halves appears to me to be a fearful man.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Tom, Tom,&rsquo; returned Goodchild, &lsquo;if I can do nothing
by halves, and be nothing by halves, it&rsquo;s pretty clear that you
must take me as a whole, and make the best of me.&rsquo;</p>
<p>With this philosophical rejoinder, the airy Goodchild clapped Mr.
Idle on the shoulder in a final manner, and they sat down to dinner.</p>
<p>&lsquo;By-the-by,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;I have been over
a lunatic asylum too, since I have been out.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He has been,&rsquo; exclaimed Thomas Idle, casting up his
eyes, &lsquo;over a lunatic asylum!&nbsp; Not content with being as
great an Ass as Captain Barclay in the pedestrian way, he makes a Lunacy
Commissioner of himself&mdash;for nothing!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;An immense place,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;admirable
offices, very good arrangements, very good attendants; altogether a
remarkable place.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;And what did you see there?&rsquo; asked Mr. Idle, adapting
Hamlet&rsquo;s advice to the occasion, and assuming the virtue of interest,
though he had it not.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The usual thing,&rsquo; said Francis Goodchild, with a sigh.&nbsp;
&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Take a glass of wine with me,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle, &lsquo;and
let <i>us</i> be social.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;In one gallery, Tom,&rsquo; pursued Francis Goodchild, &lsquo;which
looked to me about the length of the Long Walk at Windsor, more or less&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Probably less,&rsquo; observed Thomas Idle.</p>
<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; &ldquo;What are you doing
there?&rdquo; said my conductor, when we came to him.&nbsp; He looked
up, and pointed to the matting.&nbsp; &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t do that,
I think,&rdquo; said my conductor, kindly; &ldquo;if I were you, I would
go and read, or I would lie down if I felt tired; but I wouldn&rsquo;t
do that.&rdquo;&nbsp; The patient considered a moment, and vacantly
answered, &ldquo;No, sir, I won&rsquo;t; I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll
go and read,&rdquo; and so he lamely shuffled away into one of the little
rooms.&nbsp; I turned my head before we had gone many paces.&nbsp; He
had already come out again, and was again poring over the matting, and
tracking out its fibres with his thumb and forefinger.&nbsp; 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&mdash;that his darkening intellect had narrowed down to the
small cleft of light which showed him, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Then, I wondered whether he looked into the matting, next, to see if
it could show him anything of the process through which <i>he</i> came
to be there, so strangely poring over it.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I had a sadder fellow-feeling with the little
dark-chinned, meagre man, by that time, and I came away.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards, and bride-cake,
Mr. Goodchild followed in the same direction.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; 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&mdash;such, indeed, as they had been much among when they were
trees&mdash;gave it a very mysterious character after nightfall.</p>
<p>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&mdash;but
without appearing to get into their way, or to mind whether they did
or no&mdash;and who had filed off to the right and left on the old staircase,
as the guests entered their sitting-room.&nbsp; It was then broad, bright
day.&nbsp; But, Mr. Goodchild had said, when their door was shut, &lsquo;Who
on earth are those old men?&rsquo;&nbsp; And afterwards, both on going
out and coming in, he had noticed that there were no old men to be seen.</p>
<p>Neither, had the old men, or any one of the old men, reappeared since.&nbsp;
The two friends had passed a night in the house, but had seen nothing
more of the old men.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their attention.&nbsp;
It was, that the door of their sitting-room was never left untouched
for a quarter of an hour.&nbsp; It was opened with hesitation, opened
with confidence, opened a little way, opened a good way,&mdash;always
clapped-to again without a word of explanation.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; When this had happened fifty times or so, Mr.
Goodchild had said to his companion, jestingly: &lsquo;I begin to think,
Tom, there was something wrong with those six old men.&rsquo;</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; They had left off writing, and glasses
were on the table between them.&nbsp; The house was closed and quiet.&nbsp;
Around the head of Thomas Idle, as he lay upon his sofa, hovered light
wreaths of fragrant smoke.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; They were
just becoming drowsy enough to be stopped in their talk by any such
slight check.&nbsp; Thomas Idle, who was speaking at the moment, paused
and said, &lsquo;How goes it?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;One,&rsquo; said Goodchild.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>He did not come in, but stood with the door in his hand.</p>
<p>&lsquo;One of the six, Tom, at last!&rsquo; said Mr. Goodchild, in
a surprised whisper.&mdash;&lsquo;Sir, your pleasure?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Sir, <i>your</i> pleasure?&rsquo; said the One old man.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t ring.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The bell did,&rsquo; said the One old man.</p>
<p>He said BELL, in a deep, strong way, that would have expressed the
church Bell.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing you, yesterday?&rsquo;
said Goodchild.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I cannot undertake to say for certain,&rsquo; was the grim
reply of the One old man.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I think you saw me?&nbsp; Did you not?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Saw <i>you</i>?&rsquo; said the old man.&nbsp; &lsquo;O yes,
I saw you.&nbsp; But, I see many who never see me.&rsquo;</p>
<p>A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man.&nbsp; A cadaverous old man
of measured speech.&nbsp; An old man who seemed as unable to wink, as
if his eyelids had been nailed to his forehead.&nbsp; An old man whose
eyes&mdash;two spots of fire&mdash;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.</p>
<p>The night had turned so cold, to Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s sensations,
that he shivered.&nbsp; He remarked lightly, and half apologetically,
&lsquo;I think somebody is walking over my grave.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; said the weird old man, &lsquo;there is no one
there.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his head enwreathed
in smoke.</p>
<p>&lsquo;No one there?&rsquo; said Goodchild.</p>
<p>&lsquo;There is no one at your grave, I assure you,&rsquo; said the
old man.</p>
<p>He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat down.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>&lsquo;My friend, Mr. Idle,&rsquo; said Goodchild, extremely anxious
to introduce a third person into the conversation.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I am,&rsquo; said the old man, without looking at him, &lsquo;at
Mr. Idle&rsquo;s service.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;If you are an old inhabitant of this place,&rsquo; Francis
Goodchild resumed.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were in doubt
upon, this morning.&nbsp; They hang condemned criminals at the Castle,
I believe?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;<i>I</i> believe so,&rsquo; said the old man.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Are their faces turned towards that noble prospect?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Your face is turned,&rsquo; replied the old man, &lsquo;to
the Castle wall.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Then, there is a rush
of fire and an earthquake, and the Castle springs into the air, and
you tumble down a precipice.&rsquo;</p>
<p>His cravat appeared to trouble him.&nbsp; He put his hand to his
throat, and moved his neck from side to side.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
Mr. Goodchild felt exceedingly uncomfortable, and began to think the
night was hot, and not cold.</p>
<p>&lsquo;A strong description, sir,&rsquo; he observed.</p>
<p>&lsquo;A strong sensation,&rsquo; the old man rejoined.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; At this time Mr. Goodchild believed that he saw
threads of fire stretch from the old man&rsquo;s eyes to his own, and
there attach themselves.&nbsp; (Mr.&nbsp; 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.)</p>
<p>&lsquo;I must tell it to you,&rsquo; said the old man, with a ghastly
and a stony stare.</p>
<p>&lsquo;What?&rsquo; asked Francis Goodchild.</p>
<p>&lsquo;You know where it took place.&nbsp; Yonder!&rsquo;</p>
<p>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.&nbsp;
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.&nbsp;
Having pointed somewhere, it went out.</p>
<p>&lsquo;You know she was a Bride,&rsquo; said the old man.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I know they still send up Bride-cake,&rsquo; Mr. Goodchild
faltered.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is a very oppressive air.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;She was a Bride,&rsquo; said the old man.&nbsp; &lsquo;She
was a fair, flaxen-haired, large-eyed girl, who had no character, no
purpose.&nbsp; A weak, credulous, incapable, helpless nothing.&nbsp;
Not like her mother.&nbsp; No, no.&nbsp; It was her father whose character
she reflected.</p>
<p>&lsquo;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&mdash;of sheer helplessness; no other disorder&mdash;and then He
renewed the acquaintance that had once subsisted between the mother
and Him.&nbsp; He had been put aside for the flaxen-haired, large-eyed
man (or nonentity) with Money.&nbsp; He could overlook that for Money.&nbsp;
He wanted compensation in Money.</p>
<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; She wreaked upon him every whim she had, or could invent.&nbsp;
He bore it.&nbsp; And the more he bore, the more he wanted compensation
in Money, and the more he was resolved to have it.</p>
<p>&lsquo;But, lo!&nbsp; Before he got it, she cheated him.&nbsp; In
one of her imperious states, she froze, and never thawed again.&nbsp;
She put her hands to her head one night, uttered a cry, stiffened, lay
in that attitude certain hours, and died.&nbsp; And he had got no compensation
from her in Money, yet.&nbsp; Blight and Murrain on her!&nbsp; Not a
penny.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He had hated her throughout that second pursuit, and had longed
for retaliation on her.&nbsp; He now counterfeited her signature to
an instrument, leaving all she had to leave, to her daughter&mdash;ten
years old then&mdash;to whom the property passed absolutely, and appointing
himself the daughter&rsquo;s Guardian.&nbsp; 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: &ldquo;Mistress Pride, I have determined a long
time that, dead or alive, you must make me compensation in Money.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;So, now there were only two left.&nbsp; Which two were, He,
and the fair flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daughter, who afterwards
became the Bride.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He put her to school.&nbsp; In a secret, dark, oppressive,
ancient house, he put her to school with a watchful and unscrupulous
woman.&nbsp; &ldquo;My worthy lady,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;here is a
mind to be formed; will you help me to form it?&rdquo;&nbsp; She accepted
the trust.&nbsp; For which she, too, wanted compensation in Money, and
had it.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the conviction,
that there was no escape from him.&nbsp; She was taught, from the first,
to regard him as her future husband&mdash;the man who must marry her&mdash;the
destiny that overshadowed her&mdash;the appointed certainty that could
never be evaded.&nbsp; The poor fool was soft white wax in their hands,
and took the impression that they put upon her.&nbsp; It hardened with
time.&nbsp; It became a part of herself.&nbsp; Inseparable from herself,
and only to be torn away from her, by tearing life away from her.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy
garden.&nbsp; He was jealous of the very light and air getting to her,
and they kept her close.&nbsp; He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded
the little windows, left the strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would
over the house-front, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit-trees
in the red-walled garden, the weeds to over-run its green and yellow
walks.&nbsp; He surrounded her with images of sorrow and desolation.&nbsp;
He caused her to be filled with fears of the place and of the stories
that were told of it, and then on pretext of correcting them, to be
left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about it in the dark.&nbsp;
When her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors, then, he would
come out of one of the hiding-places from which he overlooked her, and
present himself as her sole resource.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment her life
presented to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind
and power to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was secured.&nbsp;
She was twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he brought her
home to the gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive
Bride of three weeks.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He had dismissed the governess by that time&mdash;what he
had left to do, he could best do alone&mdash;and they came back, upon
a rain night, to the scene of her long preparation.&nbsp; She turned
to him upon the threshold, as the rain was dripping from the porch,
and said:</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;O sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for me!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; he answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;And if it were?&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;O sir!&rdquo; she returned to him, &ldquo;look kindly
on me, and be merciful to me!&nbsp; I beg your pardon.&nbsp; I will
do anything you wish, if you will only forgive me!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;That had become the poor fool&rsquo;s constant song: &ldquo;I
beg your pardon,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Forgive me!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but contempt for
her.&nbsp; But, she had long been in the way, and he had long been weary,
and the work was near its end, and had to be worked out.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;You fool,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Go up the stairs!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, &ldquo;I will do anything
you wish!&rdquo;&nbsp; When he came into the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber,
having been a little retarded by the heavy fastenings of the great door
(for they were alone in the house, and he had arranged that the people
who attended on them should come and go in the day), he found her withdrawn
to the furthest corner, and there standing pressed against the paneling
as if she would have shrunk through it: her flaxen hair all wild about
her face, and her large eyes staring at him in vague terror.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What are you afraid of?&nbsp; Come and sit down by
me.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I will do anything you wish.&nbsp; I beg your pardon,
sir.&nbsp; Forgive me!&rdquo;&nbsp; Her monotonous tune as usual.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to-morrow,
in your own hand.&nbsp; You may as well be seen by others, busily engaged
upon it.&nbsp; When you have written it all fairly, and corrected all
mistakes, call in any two people there may be about the house, and sign
your name to it before them.&nbsp; Then, put it in your bosom to keep
it safe, and when I sit here again to-morrow night, give it to me.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I will do it all, with the greatest care.&nbsp; I will
do anything you wish.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t shake and tremble, then.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I will try my utmost not to do it&mdash;if you will
only forgive me!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she had been
told.&nbsp; He often passed in and out of the room, to observe her,
and always saw her slowly and laboriously writing: repeating to herself
the words she copied, in appearance quite mechanically, and without
caring or endeavouring to comprehend them, so that she did her task.&nbsp;
He saw her follow the directions she had received, in all particulars;
and at night, when they were alone again in the same Bride&rsquo;s Chamber,
and he drew his chair to the hearth, she timidly approached him from
her distant seat, took the paper from her bosom, and gave it into his
hand.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of her
death.&nbsp; He put her before him, face to face, that he might look
at her steadily; and he asked her, in so many plain words, neither fewer
nor more, did she know that?</p>
<p>&lsquo;There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white dress,
and they made her face look whiter and her eyes look larger as she nodded
her head.&nbsp; There were spots of ink upon the hand with which she
stood before him, nervously plaiting and folding her white skirts.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more closely and
steadily, in the face.&nbsp; &ldquo;Now, die!&nbsp; I have done with
you.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;She shrunk, and uttered a low, suppressed cry.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I am not going to kill you.&nbsp; I will not endanger
my life for yours.&nbsp; Die!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He sat before her in the gloomy Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, day
after day, night after night, looking the word at her when he did not
utter it.&nbsp; As often as her large unmeaning eyes were raised from
the hands in which she rocked her head, to the stern figure, sitting
with crossed arms and knitted forehead, in the chair, they read in it,
&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;&nbsp; When she dropped asleep in exhaustion, she
was called back to shuddering consciousness, by the whisper, &ldquo;Die!&rdquo;&nbsp;
When she fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned, she was answered
&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;&nbsp; When she had out-watched and out-suffered the
long night, and the rising sun flamed into the sombre room, she heard
it hailed with, &ldquo;Another day and not dead?&mdash;Die!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all mankind, and
engaged alone in such a struggle without any respite, it came to this&mdash;that
either he must die, or she.&nbsp; He knew it very well, and concentrated
his strength against her feebleness.&nbsp; Hours upon hours he held
her by the arm when her arm was black where he held it, and bade her
Die!</p>
<p>&lsquo;It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise.&nbsp; He
computed the time to be half-past four; but, his forgotten watch had
run down, and he could not be sure.&nbsp; She had broken away from him
in the night, with loud and sudden cries&mdash;the first of that kind
to which she had given vent&mdash;and he had had to put his hands over
her mouth.&nbsp; Since then, she had been quiet in the corner of the
paneling where she had sunk down; and he had left her, and had gone
back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to his chair.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in the
leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards
him&mdash;a white wreck of hair, and dress, and wild eyes, pushing itself
on by an irresolute and bending hand.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;O, forgive me!&nbsp; I will do anything.&nbsp; O, sir,
pray tell me I may live!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Are you so resolved?&nbsp; Is there no hope for me?&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and fear; wonder
and fear changed to reproach; reproach to blank nothing.&nbsp; It was
done.&nbsp; He was not at first so sure it was done, but that the morning
sun was hanging jewels in her hair&mdash;he saw the diamond, emerald,
and ruby, glittering among it in little points, as he stood looking
down at her&mdash;when he lifted her and laid her on her bed.</p>
<p>&lsquo;She was soon laid in the ground.&nbsp; And now they were all
gone, and he had compensated himself well.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He had a mind to travel.&nbsp; Not that he meant to waste
his Money, for he was a pinching man and liked his Money dearly (liked
nothing else, indeed), but, that he had grown tired of the desolate
house and wished to turn his back upon it and have done with it.&nbsp;
But, the house was worth Money, and Money must not be thrown away.&nbsp;
He determined to sell it before he went.&nbsp; That it might look the
less wretched and bring a better price, he hired some labourers to work
in the overgrown garden; to cut out the dead wood, trim the ivy that
drooped in heavy masses over the windows and gables, and clear the walks
in which the weeds were growing mid-leg high.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He worked, himself, along with them.&nbsp; He worked later
than they did, and, one evening at dusk, was left working alone, with
his bill-hook in his hand.&nbsp; One autumn evening, when the Bride
was five weeks dead.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;It grows too dark to work longer,&rdquo; he said to
himself, &ldquo;I must give over for the night.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He detested the house, and was loath to enter it.&nbsp; He
looked at the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb, and felt that
it was an accursed house.&nbsp; Near to the porch, and near to where
he stood, was a tree whose branches waved before the old bay-window
of the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, where it had been done.&nbsp; The tree
swung suddenly, and made him start.&nbsp; It swung again, although the
night was still.&nbsp; Looking up into it, he saw a figure among the
branches.</p>
<p>&lsquo;It was the figure of a young man.&nbsp; The face looked down,
as his looked up; the branches cracked and swayed; the figure rapidly
descended, and slid upon its feet before him.&nbsp; A slender youth
of about her age, with long light brown hair.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What thief are you?&rdquo; he said, seizing the youth
by the collar.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a blow with
his arm across the face and throat.&nbsp; They closed, but the young
man got from him and stepped back, crying, with great eagerness and
horror, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t touch me!&nbsp; I would as lieve be touched
by the Devil!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking at
the young man.&nbsp; For, the young man&rsquo;s look was the counterpart
of her last look, and he had not expected ever to see that again.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I am no thief.&nbsp; Even if I were, I would not have
a coin of your wealth, if it would buy me the Indies.&nbsp; You murderer!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I climbed it,&rdquo; said the young man, pointing up
into the tree, &ldquo;for the first time, nigh four years ago.&nbsp;
I climbed it, to look at her.&nbsp; I saw her.&nbsp; I spoke to her.&nbsp;
I have climbed it, many a time, to watch and listen for her.&nbsp; I
was a boy, hidden among its leaves, when from that bay-window she gave
me this!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning ribbon.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Her life,&rdquo; said the young man, &ldquo;was a life
of mourning.&nbsp; She gave me this, as a token of it, and a sign that
she was dead to every one but you.&nbsp; If I had been older, if I had
seen her sooner, I might have saved her from you.&nbsp; But, she was
fast in the web when I first climbed the tree, and what could I do then
to break it!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing and
crying: weakly at first, then passionately.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Murderer!&nbsp; I climbed the tree on the night when
you brought her back.&nbsp; I heard her, from the tree, speak of the
Death-watch at the door.&nbsp; I was three times in the tree while you
were shut up with her, slowly killing her.&nbsp; I saw her, from the
tree, lie dead upon her bed.&nbsp; I have watched you, from the tree,
for proofs and traces of your guilt.&nbsp; The manner of it, is a mystery
to me yet, but I will pursue you until you have rendered up your life
to the hangman.&nbsp; You shall never, until then, be rid of me.&nbsp;
I loved her!&nbsp; I can know no relenting towards you.&nbsp; Murderer,
I loved her!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered away in
his descent from the tree.&nbsp; He moved towards the gate.&nbsp; He
had to pass&mdash;Him&mdash;to get to it.&nbsp; There was breadth for
two old-fashioned carriages abreast; and the youth&rsquo;s abhorrence,
openly expressed in every feature of his face and limb of his body,
and very hard to bear, had verge enough to keep itself at a distance
in.&nbsp; He (by which I mean the other) had not stirred hand or foot,
since he had stood still to look at the boy.&nbsp; He faced round, now,
to follow him with his eyes.&nbsp; As the back of the bare light-brown
head was turned to him, he saw a red curve stretch from his hand to
it.&nbsp; He knew, before he threw the bill-hook, where it had alighted&mdash;I
say, had alighted, and not, would alight; for, to his clear perception
the thing was done before he did it.&nbsp; It cleft the head, and it
remained there, and the boy lay on his face.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the tree.&nbsp;
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.&nbsp; When the labourers came, there was nothing
suspicious, and nothing suspected.</p>
<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>&lsquo;Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom and horror,
which he could not endure.&nbsp; Being afraid to sell it or to quit
it, lest discovery should be made, he was forced to live in it.&nbsp;
He hired two old people, man and wife, for his servants; and dwelt in
it, and dreaded it.&nbsp; His great difficulty, for a long time, was
the garden.&nbsp; 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?</p>
<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; And he made himself an arbour
over against the tree, where he could sit and see that it was safe.</p>
<p>&lsquo;As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his mind perceived
dangers that were always changing.&nbsp; In the leafy time, he perceived
that the upper boughs were growing into the form of the young man&mdash;that
they made the shape of him exactly, sitting in a forked branch swinging
in the wind.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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?</p>
<p>&lsquo;However, he turned his Money over and over, and still over.&nbsp;
He was in the dark trade, the gold-dust trade, and most secret trades
that yielded great returns.&nbsp; 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&mdash;for once&mdash;when they declared
that he had increased his fortune, Twelve Hundred Per Cent.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when people
could be lost easily.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; It broke at midnight, and
roared until morning.&nbsp; The first intelligence he heard from his
old serving-man that morning, was, that the tree had been struck by
Lightning.</p>
<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; The fissure went down the tree to a little above
the earth, and there stopped.&nbsp; There was great curiosity to see
the tree, and, with most of his former fears revived, he sat in his
arbour&mdash;grown quite an old man&mdash;watching the people who came
to see it.</p>
<p>&lsquo;They quickly began to come, in such dangerous numbers, that
he closed his garden-gate and refused to admit any more.&nbsp; 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!&mdash;Blight and Murrain
on them, let them in!</p>
<p>&lsquo;They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and closely examine
it, and the earth about it.&nbsp; Never, while he lived!&nbsp; They
offered money for it.&nbsp; They!&nbsp; Men of science, whom he could
have bought by the gross, with a scratch of his pen!&nbsp; He showed
them the garden-gate again, and locked and barred it.</p>
<p>&lsquo;But they were bent on doing what they wanted to do, and they
bribed the old serving-man&mdash;a thankless wretch who regularly complained
when he received his wages, of being underpaid&mdash;and they stole
into the garden by night with their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and
fell to at the tree.&nbsp; He was lying in a turret-room on the other
side of the house (the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber had been unoccupied ever
since), but he soon dreamed of picks and shovels, and got up.</p>
<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp;
It was found!&nbsp; They had that minute lighted on it.&nbsp; They were
all bending over it.&nbsp; One of them said, &ldquo;The skull is fractured;&rdquo;
and another, &ldquo;See here the bones;&rdquo; and another, &ldquo;See
here the clothes;&rdquo; and then the first struck in again, and said,
&ldquo;A rusty bill-hook!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He became sensible, next day, that he was already put under
a strict watch, and that he could go nowhere without being followed.&nbsp;
Before a week was out, he was taken and laid in hold.&nbsp; The circumstances
were gradually pieced together against him, with a desperate malignity,
and an appalling ingenuity.&nbsp; But, see the justice of men, and how
it was extended to him!&nbsp; He was further accused of having poisoned
that girl in the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber.&nbsp; 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!</p>
<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; Bloodthirsty wretches!&nbsp; They would have
made him Guilty of anything, so set they were upon having his life.</p>
<p>&lsquo;His money could do nothing to save him, and he was hanged.&nbsp;
<i>I</i> am He, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle with my face to
the wall, a hundred years ago!&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry
out.&nbsp; But, the two fiery lines extending from the old man&rsquo;s
eyes to his own, kept him down, and he could not utter a sound.&nbsp;
His sense of hearing, however, was acute, and he could hear the clock
strike Two.&nbsp; No sooner had he heard the clock strike Two, than
he saw before him Two old men!</p>
<p>TWO.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; Two old men.&nbsp; Differing in nothing, equally distinct
to the sight, the copy no fainter than the original, the second as real
as the first.</p>
<p>&lsquo;At what time,&rsquo; said the Two old men, &lsquo;did you
arrive at the door below?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;At Six.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;And there were Six old men upon the stairs!&rsquo;</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>&lsquo;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&rsquo;s Chamber was haunted.&nbsp; It <i>was</i> haunted,
and I was there.</p>
<p>&lsquo;<i>We</i> were there.&nbsp; She and I were there.&nbsp; I,
in the chair upon the hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself
towards me on the floor.&nbsp; But, I was the speaker no more, and the
one word that she said to me from midnight until dawn was, &lsquo;Live!&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;The youth was there, likewise.&nbsp; In the tree outside the
window.&nbsp; Coming and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and
gave.&nbsp; 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&mdash;a bill-hook, standing edgewise
in his hair.</p>
<p>&lsquo;In the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, every night from midnight until
dawn&mdash;one month in the year excepted, as I am going to tell you&mdash;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, &ldquo;Live!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this life&mdash;this
present month of thirty days&mdash;the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber is empty
and quiet.&nbsp; Not so my old dungeon.&nbsp; Not so the rooms where
I was restless and afraid, ten years.&nbsp; Both are fitfully haunted
then.&nbsp; At One in the morning.&nbsp; I am what you saw me when the
clock struck that hour&mdash;One old man.&nbsp; At Two in the morning,
I am Two old men.&nbsp; At Three, I am Three.&nbsp; By Twelve at noon,
I am Twelve old men, One for every hundred per cent. of old gain.&nbsp;
Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old power of suffering
and agony.&nbsp; From that hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old
men in anguish and fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner.&nbsp;
At Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside
Lancaster Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall!</p>
<p>&lsquo;When the Bride&rsquo;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.&nbsp; I waited
for the coming of two living men together into the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber,
years upon years.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s Chamber at One in the morning, they would see me
sitting in my chair.</p>
<p>&lsquo;At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled,
brought two men to try the adventure.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Next, I saw
them enter.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; They brought provisions with them in a basket, and bottles.&nbsp;
A young woman accompanied them, with wood and coals for the lighting
of the fire.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>&lsquo;He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents
of the basket on the table before the fire&mdash;little recking of me,
in my appointed station on the hearth, close to him&mdash;and filled
the glasses, and ate and drank.&nbsp; His companion did the same, and
was as cheerful and confident as he: though he was the leader.&nbsp;
When they had supped, they laid pistols on the table, turned to the
fire, and began to smoke their pipes of foreign make.</p>
<p>&lsquo;They had travelled together, and had been much together, and
had an abundance of subjects in common.&nbsp; In the midst of their
talking and laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leader&rsquo;s
being always ready for any adventure; that one, or any other.&nbsp;
He replied in these words:</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing else,
I am afraid of myself.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, in
what sense?&nbsp; How?</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Why, thus,&rdquo; he returned.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here is
a Ghost to be disproved.&nbsp; Well!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much
importance to-night,&rdquo; said the other.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Of so much,&rdquo; rejoined the leader, more seriously
than he had spoken yet, &ldquo;that I would, for the reason I have given,
on no account have undertaken to pass the night here alone.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It was within a few minutes of One.&nbsp; The head of the
younger man had drooped when he made his last remark, and it drooped
lower now.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Keep awake, Dick!&rdquo; said the leader, gaily.&nbsp;
&ldquo;The small hours are the worst.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;He tried, but his head drooped again.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Dick!&rdquo; urged the leader.&nbsp; &ldquo;Keep awake!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he indistinctly muttered.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what strange influence is stealing over me.&nbsp;
I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;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.</p>
<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Get up and walk, Dick!&rdquo; cried the leader.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Try!&rdquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;It was in vain to go behind the slumber&rsquo;s chair and
shake him.&nbsp; One o&rsquo;clock sounded, and I was present to the
elder man, and he stood transfixed before me.</p>
<p>&lsquo;To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, without hope
of benefit.&nbsp; To him alone, I was an awful phantom making a quite
useless confession.&nbsp; I foresee it will ever be the same.&nbsp;
The two living men together will never come to release me.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Woe!&nbsp; Woe!&nbsp;
Woe!&rsquo;</p>
<p>As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their hands, it shot
into Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s mind that he was in the terrible situation
of being virtually alone with the spectre, and that Mr. Idle&rsquo;s
immoveability was explained by his having been charmed asleep at One
o&rsquo;clock.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Being then out of bonds, he caught up Mr. Idle
from the sofa and rushed down-stairs with him.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>&lsquo;What are you about, Francis?&rsquo; demanded Mr. Idle.&nbsp;
&lsquo;My bedroom is not down here.&nbsp; What the deuce are you carrying
me at all for?&nbsp; I can walk with a stick now.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t
want to be carried.&nbsp; Put me down.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked about him
wildly.</p>
<p>&lsquo;What are you doing?&nbsp; Idiotically plunging at your own
sex, and rescuing them or perishing in the attempt?&rsquo; asked Mr.
Idle, in a highly petulant state.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The One old man!&rsquo; cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly,&mdash;&lsquo;and
the Two old men!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than &lsquo;The One old woman, I
think you mean,&rsquo; as he began hobbling his way back up the staircase,
with the assistance of its broad balustrade.</p>
<p>&lsquo;I assure you, Tom,&rsquo; began Mr. Goodchild, attending at
his side, &lsquo;that since you fell asleep&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Come, I like that!&rsquo; said Thomas Idle, &lsquo;I haven&rsquo;t
closed an eye!&rsquo;</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; The same peculiar sensitiveness
impelled Mr. Goodchild, on being taxed with the same crime, to repudiate
it with honourable resentment.&nbsp; The settlement of the question
of The One old man and The Two old men was thus presently complicated,
and soon made quite impracticable.&nbsp; Mr. Idle said it was all Bride-cake,
and fragments, newly arranged, of things seen and thought about in the
day.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild said how could that be, when he hadn&rsquo;t
been asleep, and what right could Mr. Idle have to say so, who had been
asleep?&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
They consequently parted for the rest of the night, at their bedroom
doors, a little ruffled.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;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.&nbsp; Mr. Idle returned that he might if he liked&mdash;and
he did like, and has now done it.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
<p>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.&nbsp;
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 &lsquo;bobbed arayound&rsquo; from sacred to profane,
from hymns, to our transatlantic sisters the Yankee Gal and Mairy Anne,
in a remarkable way.&nbsp; There seemed to have been some large vocal
gathering near to every lonely station on the line.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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, &lsquo;We
mun aa&rsquo; gang toogither!&rsquo;</p>
<p>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&rsquo;s way ever can, over the vague black streets of the
great gulfs of towns, and among their branchless woods of vague black
chimneys.&nbsp; These towns looked, in the cinderous wet, as though
they had one and all been on fire and were just put out&mdash;a dreary
and quenched panorama, many miles long.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; Next day, the first
of the Race-Week, they took train to Doncaster.</p>
<p>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.&nbsp; The talk was all of horses and &lsquo;John
Scott.&rsquo;&nbsp; Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters,
of horses and John Scott.&nbsp; 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&rsquo; legs, paced up and down by twos at junction-stations,
speaking low and moodily of horses and John Scott.&nbsp; 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 &lsquo;Oartheth, my love, and Mithter John Eth-COTT.&rsquo;&nbsp;
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 &lsquo;t&rsquo;harses
and Joon Scott.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>Breaks and barriers at Doncaster Station to keep the crowd off; temporary
wooden avenues of ingress and egress, to help the crowd on.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Travellers
disgorged into an open space, a howling wilderness of idle men.&nbsp;
All work but race-work at a stand-still; all men at a stand-still.&nbsp;
&lsquo;Ey my word!&nbsp; Deant ask noon o&rsquo; us to help wi&rsquo;
t&rsquo;luggage.&nbsp; Bock your opinion loike a mon.&nbsp; Coom!&nbsp;
Dang it, coom, t&rsquo;harses and Joon Scott!&rsquo;&nbsp; In the midst
of the idle men, all the fly horses and omnibus horses of Doncaster
and parts adjacent, rampant, rearing, backing, plunging, shying&mdash;apparently
the result of their hearing of nothing but their own order and John
Scott.</p>
<p>Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-Week.&nbsp; Poses
Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up the Stable-Yard at seven and
nine each evening, for the Race-Week.&nbsp; Grand Alliance Circus in
the field beyond the bridge, for the Race-Week.&nbsp; Grand Exhibition
of Aztec Lilliputians, important to all who want to be horrified cheap,
for the Race-Week.&nbsp; Lodgings, grand and not grand, but all at grand
prices, ranging from ten pounds to twenty, for the Grand Race-Week!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>&lsquo;By Heaven, Tom!&rsquo; cried he, after contemplating it, &lsquo;I
am in the Lunatic Asylum again, and these are all mad people under the
charge of a body of designing keepers!&rsquo;</p>
<p>All through the Race-Week, Mr. Goodchild never divested himself of
this idea.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The idea pervaded, like the second colour in shot-silk,
the whole of Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s impressions.&nbsp; They were much
as follows:</p>
<p>Monday, mid-day.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Frightened lunatic horses occasionally running
away, with infinite clatter.&nbsp; All degrees of men, from peers to
paupers, betting incessantly.&nbsp; Keepers very watchful, and taking
all good chances.&nbsp; An awful family likeness among the Keepers,
to Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
Cunning, covetousness, secrecy, cold calculation, hard callousness and
dire insensibility, are the uniform Keeper characteristics.&nbsp; Mr.
Palmer passes me five times in five minutes, and, so I go down the street,
the back of Mr. Thurtell&rsquo;s skull is always going on before me.</p>
<p>Monday evening.&nbsp; Town lighted up; more Lunatics out than ever;
a complete choke and stoppage of the thoroughfare outside the Betting
Rooms.&nbsp; Keepers, having dined, pervade the Betting Rooms, and sharply
snap at the moneyed Lunatics.&nbsp; Some Keepers flushed with drink,
and some not, but all close and calculating.&nbsp; A vague echoing roar
of &lsquo;t&rsquo;harses&rsquo; and &lsquo;t&rsquo;races&rsquo; always
rising in the air, until midnight, at about which period it dies away
in occasional drunken songs and straggling yells.&nbsp; 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.</p>
<p>Tuesday morning, at daybreak.&nbsp; A sudden rising, as it were out
of the earth, of all the obscene creatures, who sell &lsquo;correct
cards of the races.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s
teeth.&nbsp; There is nobody up, to buy the cards; but, the cards are
madly cried.&nbsp; There is no patronage to quarrel for; but, they madly
quarrel and fight.&nbsp; 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&mdash;made
on him&mdash;so very tight that it is as evident that he could never
take it off, as that he never does.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&mdash;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.</p>
<p>No very great racing to-day, so no very great amount of vehicles:
though there is a good sprinkling, too: from farmers&rsquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
Everybody gone to the races.&nbsp; Only children in the street.&nbsp;
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.&nbsp; A pleasant road, pleasantly wooded.&nbsp;
No labourers working in the fields; all gone &lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp;
The few late wenders of their way &lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; who are
yet left driving on the road, stare in amazement at the recluse who
is not going &lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp; Roadside innkeeper has
gone &lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp; Turnpike-man has gone &lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp;
His thrifty wife, washing clothes at the toll-house door, is going &lsquo;t&rsquo;races&rsquo;
to-morrow.&nbsp; Perhaps there may be no one left to take the toll to-morrow;
who knows?&nbsp; Though assuredly that would be neither turnpike-like
nor Yorkshire-like.&nbsp; The very wind and dust seem to be hurrying
&lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; as they briskly pass the only wayfarer
on the road.&nbsp; In the distance, the Railway Engine, waiting at the
town-end, shrieks despairingly.&nbsp; Nothing but the difficulty of
getting off the Line, restrains that Engine from going &lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo;
too, it is very clear.</p>
<p>At night, more Lunatics out than last night&mdash;and more Keepers.&nbsp;
The latter very active at the Betting Rooms, the street in front of
which is now impassable.&nbsp; Mr. Palmer as before.&nbsp; Mr. Thurtell
as before.&nbsp; Roar and uproar as before.&nbsp; Gradual subsidence
as before.&nbsp; Unmannerly drinking-house expectorates as before.&nbsp;
Drunken negro-melodists, Gong-donkey, and correct cards, in the night.</p>
<p>On Wednesday morning, the morning of the great St. Leger, it becomes
apparent that there has been a great influx since yesterday, both of
Lunatics and Keepers.&nbsp; The families of the tradesmen over the way
are no longer within human ken; their places know them no more; ten,
fifteen, and twenty guinea-lodgers fill them.&nbsp; At the pastry-cook&rsquo;s
second-floor window, a Keeper is brushing Mr. Thurtell&rsquo;s hair&mdash;thinking
it his own.&nbsp; In the wax-chandler&rsquo;s attic, another Keeper
is putting on Mr. Palmer&rsquo;s braces.&nbsp; In the gunsmith&rsquo;s
nursery, a Lunatic is shaving himself.&nbsp; In the serious stationer&rsquo;s
best sitting-room, three Lunatics are taking a combination-breakfast,
praising the (cook&rsquo;s) devil, and drinking neat brandy in an atmosphere
of last midnight&rsquo;s cigars.&nbsp; No family sanctuary is free from
our Angelic messengers&mdash;we put up at the Angel&mdash;who in the
guise of extra waiters for the grand Race-Week, rattle in and out of
the most secret chambers of everybody&rsquo;s house, with dishes and
tin covers, decanters, soda-water bottles, and glasses.&nbsp; An hour
later.&nbsp; Down the street and up the street, as far as eyes can see
and a good deal farther, there is a dense crowd; outside the Betting
Rooms it is like a great struggle at a theatre door&mdash;in the days
of theatres; or at the vestibule of the Spurgeon temple&mdash;in the
days of Spurgeon.&nbsp; An hour later.&nbsp; Fusing into this crowd,
and somehow getting through it, are all kinds of conveyances, and all
kinds of foot-passengers; carts, with brick-makers and brick-makeresses
jolting up and down on planks; drags, with the needful grooms behind,
sitting cross-armed in the needful manner, and slanting themselves backward
from the soles of their boots at the needful angle; postboys, in the
shining hats and smart jackets of the olden time, when stokers were
not; beautiful Yorkshire horses, gallantly driven by their own breeders
and masters.&nbsp; Under every pole, and every shaft, and every horse,
and every wheel as it would seem, the Gong-donkey&mdash;metallically
braying, when not struggling for life, or whipped out of the way.</p>
<p>By one o&rsquo;clock, all this stir has gone out of the streets,
and there is no one left in them but Francis Goodchild.&nbsp; Francis
Goodchild will not be left in them long; for, he too is on his way,
&lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;</p>
<p>A most beautiful sight, Francis Goodchild finds &lsquo;t&rsquo;races&rsquo;
to be, when he has left fair Doncaster behind him, and comes out on
the free course, with its agreeable prospect, its quaint Red House oddly
changing and turning as Francis turns, its green grass, and fresh heath.&nbsp;
A free course and an easy one, where Francis can roll smoothly where
he will, and can choose between the start, or the coming-in, or the
turn behind the brow of the hill, or any out-of-the-way point where
he lists to see the throbbing horses straining every nerve, and making
the sympathetic earth throb as they come by.&nbsp; Francis much delights
to be, not in the Grand Stand, but where he can see it, rising against
the sky with its vast tiers of little white dots of faces, and its last
high rows and corners of people, looking like pins stuck into an enormous
pincushion&mdash;not quite so symmetrically as his orderly eye could
wish, when people change or go away.&nbsp; When the race is nearly run
out, it is as good as the race to him to see the flutter among the pins,
and the change in them from dark to light, as hats are taken off and
waved.&nbsp; Not less full of interest, the loud anticipation of the
winner&rsquo;s name, the swelling, and the final, roar; then, the quick
dropping of all the pins out of their places, the revelation of the
shape of the bare pincushion, and the closing-in of the whole host of
Lunatics and Keepers, in the rear of the three horses with bright-coloured
riders, who have not yet quite subdued their gallop though the contest
is over.</p>
<p>Mr. Goodchild would appear to have been by no means free from lunacy
himself at &lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; though not of the prevalent
kind.&nbsp; He is suspected by Mr. Idle to have fallen into a dreadful
state concerning a pair of little lilac gloves and a little bonnet that
he saw there.&nbsp; Mr. Idle asserts, that he did afterwards repeat
at the Angel, with an appearance of being lunatically seized, some rhapsody
to the following effect: &lsquo;O little lilac gloves!&nbsp; And O winning
little bonnet, making in conjunction with her golden hair quite a Glory
in the sunlight round the pretty head, why anything in the world but
you and me!&nbsp; Why may not this day&rsquo;s running-of horses, to
all the rest: of precious sands of life to me&mdash;be prolonged through
an everlasting autumn-sunshine, without a sunset!&nbsp; Slave of the
Lamp, or Ring, strike me yonder gallant equestrian Clerk of the Course,
in the scarlet coat, motionless on the green grass for ages!&nbsp; Friendly
Devil on Two Sticks, for ten times ten thousands years, keep Blink-Bonny
jibbing at the post, and let us have no start!&nbsp; Arab drums, powerful
of old to summon Genii in the desert, sound of yourselves and raise
a troop for me in the desert of my heart, which shall so enchant this
dusty barouche (with a conspicuous excise-plate, resembling the Collector&rsquo;s
door-plate at a turnpike), that I, within it, loving the little lilac
gloves, the winning little bonnet, and the dear unknown-wearer with
the golden hair, may wait by her side for ever, to see a Great St. Leger
that shall never be run!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Thursday morning.&nbsp; After a tremendous night of crowding, shouting,
drinking-house expectoration, Gong-donkey, and correct cards.&nbsp;
Symptoms of yesterday&rsquo;s gains in the way of drink, and of yesterday&rsquo;s
losses in the way of money, abundant.&nbsp; Money-losses very great.&nbsp;
As usual, nobody seems to have won; but, large losses and many losers
are unquestionable facts.&nbsp; Both Lunatics and Keepers, in general
very low.&nbsp; Several of both kinds look in at the chemist&rsquo;s
while Mr. Goodchild is making a purchase there, to be &lsquo;picked
up.&rsquo;&nbsp; One red-eyed Lunatic, flushed, faded, and disordered,
enters hurriedly and cries savagely, &lsquo;Hond us a gloss of sal volatile
in wather, or soom dommed thing o&rsquo; thot sart!&rsquo;&nbsp; Faces
at the Betting Rooms very long, and a tendency to bite nails observable.&nbsp;
Keepers likewise given this morning to standing about solitary, with
their hands in their pockets, looking down at their boots as they fit
them into cracks of the pavement, and then looking up whistling and
walking away.&nbsp; Grand Alliance Circus out, in procession; buxom
lady-member of Grand Alliance, in crimson riding-habit, fresher to look
at, even in her paint under the day sky, than the cheeks of Lunatics
or Keepers.&nbsp; Spanish Cavalier appears to have lost yesterday, and
jingles his bossed bridle with disgust, as if he were paying.&nbsp;
Reaction also apparent at the Guildhall opposite, whence certain pickpockets
come out handcuffed together, with that peculiar walk which is never
seen under any other circumstances&mdash;a walk expressive of going
to jail, game, but still of jails being in bad taste and arbitrary,
and how would <i>you</i> like it if it was you instead of me, as it
ought to be!&nbsp; Mid-day.&nbsp; Town filled as yesterday, but not
so full; and emptied as yesterday, but not so empty.&nbsp; In the evening,
Angel ordinary where every Lunatic and Keeper has his modest daily meal
of turtle, venison, and wine, not so crowded as yesterday, and not so
noisy.&nbsp; At night, the theatre.&nbsp; More abstracted faces in it
than one ever sees at public assemblies; such faces wearing an expression
which strongly reminds Mr. Goodchild of the boys at school who were
&lsquo;going up next,&rsquo; with their arithmetic or mathematics.&nbsp;
These boys are, no doubt, going up to-morrow with <i>their</i> sums
and figures.&nbsp; Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell in the boxes O. P.&nbsp;
Mr. Thurtell and Mr. Palmer in the boxes P. S.&nbsp; The firm of Thurtell,
Palmer, and Thurtell, in the boxes Centre.&nbsp; A most odious tendency
observable in these distinguished gentlemen to put vile constructions
on sufficiently innocent phrases in the play, and then to applaud them
in a Satyr-like manner.&nbsp; Behind Mr. Goodchild, with a party of
other Lunatics and one Keeper, the express incarnation of the thing
called a &lsquo;gent.&rsquo;&nbsp; A gentleman born; a gent manufactured.&nbsp;
A something with a scarf round its neck, and a slipshod speech issuing
from behind the scarf; more depraved, more foolish, more ignorant, more
unable to believe in any noble or good thing of any kind, than the stupidest
Bosjesman.&nbsp; The thing is but a boy in years, and is addled with
drink.&nbsp; To do its company justice, even its company is ashamed
of it, as it drawls its slang criticisms on the representation, and
inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardour to fling it into the pit.&nbsp;
Its remarks are so horrible, that Mr. Goodchild, for the moment, even
doubts whether that <i>is</i> a wholesome Art, which sets women apart
on a high floor before such a thing as this, though as good as its own
sisters, or its own mother&mdash;whom Heaven forgive for bringing it
into the world!&nbsp; But, the consideration that a low nature must
make a low world of its own to live in, whatever the real materials,
or it could no more exist than any of us could without the sense of
touch, brings Mr. Goodchild to reason: the rather, because the thing
soon drops its downy chin upon its scarf, and slobbers itself asleep.</p>
<p>Friday Morning.&nbsp; Early fights.&nbsp; Gong-donkey, and correct
cards.&nbsp; Again, a great set towards the races, though not so great
a set as on Wednesday.&nbsp; Much packing going on too, upstairs at
the gun-smith&rsquo;s, the wax-chandler&rsquo;s, and the serious stationer&rsquo;s;
for there will be a heavy drift of Lunatics and Keepers to London by
the afternoon train.&nbsp; The course as pretty as ever; the great pincushion
as like a pincushion, but not nearly so full of pins; whole rows of
pins wanting.&nbsp; On the great event of the day, both Lunatics and
Keepers become inspired with rage; and there is a violent scuffling,
and a rushing at the losing jockey, and an emergence of the said jockey
from a swaying and menacing crowd, protected by friends, and looking
the worse for wear; which is a rough proceeding, though animating to
see from a pleasant distance.&nbsp; After the great event, rills begin
to flow from the pincushion towards the railroad; the rills swell into
rivers; the rivers soon unite into a lake.&nbsp; The lake floats Mr.
Goodchild into Doncaster, past the Itinerant personage in black, by
the way-side telling him from the vantage ground of a legibly printed
placard on a pole that for all these things the Lord will bring him
to judgment.&nbsp; No turtle and venison ordinary this evening; that
is all over.&nbsp; No Betting at the rooms; nothing there but the plants
in pots, which have, all the week, been stood about the entry to give
it an innocent appearance, and which have sorely sickened by this time.</p>
<p>Saturday.&nbsp; Mr. Idle wishes to know at breakfast, what were those
dreadful groanings in his bedroom doorway in the night?&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild
answers, Nightmare.&nbsp; Mr. Idle repels the calumny, and calls the
waiter.&nbsp; The Angel is very sorry&mdash;had intended to explain;
but you see, gentlemen, there was a gentleman dined down-stairs with
two more, and he had lost a deal of money, and he would drink a deal
of wine, and in the night he &lsquo;took the horrors,&rsquo; and got
up; and as his friends could do nothing with him he laid himself down
and groaned at Mr. Idle&rsquo;s door.&nbsp; &lsquo;And he DID groan
there,&rsquo; Mr. Idle says; &lsquo;and you will please to imagine me
inside, &ldquo;taking the horrors&rdquo; too!&rsquo;</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>So far, the picture of Doncaster on the occasion of its great sporting
anniversary, offers probably a general representation of the social
condition of the town, in the past as well as in the present time.&nbsp;
The sole local phenomenon of the current year, which may be considered
as entirely unprecedented in its way, and which certainly claims, on
that account, some slight share of notice, consists in the actual existence
of one remarkable individual, who is sojourning in Doncaster, and who,
neither directly nor indirectly, has anything at all to do, in any capacity
whatever, with the racing amusements of the week.&nbsp; Ranging throughout
the entire crowd that fills the town, and including the inhabitants
as well as the visitors, nobody is to be found altogether disconnected
with the business of the day, excepting this one unparalleled man.&nbsp;
He does not bet on the races, like the sporting men.&nbsp; He does not
assist the races, like the jockeys, starters, judges, and grooms.&nbsp;
He does not look on at the races, like Mr. Goodchild and his fellow-spectators.&nbsp;
He does not profit by the races, like the hotel-keepers and the tradespeople.&nbsp;
He does not minister to the necessities of the races, like the booth-keepers,
the postilions, the waiters, and the hawkers of Lists.&nbsp; He does
not assist the attractions of the races, like the actors at the theatre,
the riders at the circus, or the posturers at the Poses Plastiques.&nbsp;
Absolutely and literally, he is the only individual in Doncaster who
stands by the brink of the full-flowing race-stream, and is not swept
away by it in common with all the rest of his species.&nbsp; Who is
this modern hermit, this recluse of the St. Leger-week, this inscrutably
ungregarious being, who lives apart from the amusements and activities
of his fellow-creatures?&nbsp; Surely, there is little difficulty in
guessing that clearest and easiest of all riddles.&nbsp; Who could he
be, but Mr. Thomas Idle?</p>
<p>Thomas had suffered himself to be taken to Doncaster, just as he
would have suffered himself to be taken to any other place in the habitable
globe which would guarantee him the temporary possession of a comfortable
sofa to rest his ankle on.&nbsp; Once established at the hotel, with
his leg on one cushion and his back against another, he formally declined
taking the slightest interest in any circumstance whatever connected
with the races, or with the people who were assembled to see them.&nbsp;
Francis Goodchild, anxious that the hours should pass by his crippled
travelling-companion as lightly as possible, suggested that his sofa
should be moved to the window, and that he should amuse himself by looking
out at the moving panorama of humanity, which the view from it of the
principal street presented.&nbsp; Thomas, however, steadily declined
profiting by the suggestion.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The farther I am from the window,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;the
better, Brother Francis, I shall be pleased.&nbsp; I have nothing in
common with the one prevalent idea of all those people who are passing
in the street.&nbsp; Why should I care to look at them?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I hope I have nothing in common with the prevalent idea of
a great many of them, either,&rsquo; answered Goodchild, thinking of
the sporting gentlemen whom he had met in the course of his wanderings
about Doncaster.&nbsp; &lsquo;But, surely, among all the people who
are walking by the house, at this very moment, you may find&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Not one living creature,&rsquo; interposed Thomas, &lsquo;who
is not, in one way or another, interested in horses, and who is not,
in a greater or less degree, an admirer of them.&nbsp; Now, I hold opinions
in reference to these particular members of the quadruped creation,
which may lay claim (as I believe) to the disastrous distinction of
being unpartaken by any other human being, civilised or savage, over
the whole surface of the earth.&nbsp; Taking the horse as an animal
in the abstract, Francis, I cordially despise him from every point of
view.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Thomas,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;confinement to the house
has begun to affect your biliary secretions.&nbsp; I shall go to the
chemist&rsquo;s and get you some physic.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I object,&rsquo; continued Thomas, quietly possessing himself
of his friend&rsquo;s hat, which stood on a table near him,&mdash;&lsquo;I
object, first, to the personal appearance of the horse.&nbsp; I protest
against the conventional idea of beauty, as attached to that animal.&nbsp;
I think his nose too long, his forehead too low, and his legs (except
in the case of the cart-horse) ridiculously thin by comparison with
the size of his body.&nbsp; Again, considering how big an animal he
is, I object to the contemptible delicacy of his constitution.&nbsp;
Is he not the sickliest creature in creation?&nbsp; Does any child catch
cold as easily as a horse?&nbsp; Does he not sprain his fetlock, for
all his appearance of superior strength, as easily as I sprained my
ankle!&nbsp; Furthermore, to take him from another point of view, what
a helpless wretch he is!&nbsp; No fine lady requires more constant waiting-on
than a horse.&nbsp; Other animals can make their own toilette: he must
have a groom.&nbsp; You will tell me that this is because we want to
make his coat artificially glossy.&nbsp; Glossy!&nbsp; Come home with
me, and see my cat,&mdash;my clever cat, who can groom herself!&nbsp;
Look at your own dog! see how the intelligent creature curry-combs himself
with his own honest teeth!&nbsp; Then, again, what a fool the horse
is, what a poor, nervous fool!&nbsp; He will start at a piece of white
paper in the road as if it was a lion.&nbsp; His one idea, when he hears
a noise that he is not accustomed to, is to run away from it.&nbsp;
What do you say to those two common instances of the sense and courage
of this absurdly overpraised animal?&nbsp; I might multiply them to
two hundred, if I chose to exert my mind and waste my breath, which
I never do.&nbsp; I prefer coming at once to my last charge against
the horse, which is the most serious of all, because it affects his
moral character.&nbsp; I accuse him boldly, in his capacity of servant
to man, of slyness and treachery.&nbsp; I brand him publicly, no matter
how mild he may look about the eyes, or how sleek he may be about the
coat, as a systematic betrayer, whenever he can get the chance, of the
confidence reposed in him.&nbsp; What do you mean by laughing and shaking
your head at me?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Oh, Thomas, Thomas!&rsquo; said Goodchild.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
had better give me my hat; you had better let me get you that physic.&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;I will let you get anything you like, including a composing
draught for yourself,&rsquo; said Thomas, irritably alluding to his
fellow-apprentice&rsquo;s inexhaustible activity, &lsquo;if you will
only sit quiet for five minutes longer, and hear me out.&nbsp; I say
again the horse is a betrayer of the confidence reposed in him; and
that opinion, let me add, is drawn from my own personal experience,
and is not based on any fanciful theory whatever.&nbsp; You shall have
two instances, two overwhelming instances.&nbsp; Let me start the first
of these by asking, what is the distinguishing quality which the Shetland
Pony has arrogated to himself, and is still perpetually trumpeting through
the world by means of popular report and books on Natural History?&nbsp;
I see the answer in your face: it is the quality of being Sure-Footed.&nbsp;
He professes to have other virtues, such as hardiness and strength,
which you may discover on trial; but the one thing which he insists
on your believing, when you get on his back, is that he may be safely
depended on not to tumble down with you.&nbsp; Very good.&nbsp; Some
years ago, I was in Shetland with a party of friends.&nbsp; They insisted
on taking me with them to the top of a precipice that overhung the sea.&nbsp;
It was a great distance off, but they all determined to walk to it except
me.&nbsp; I was wiser then than I was with you at Carrock, and I determined
to be carried to the precipice.&nbsp; There was no carriage-road in
the island, and nobody offered (in consequence, as I suppose, of the
imperfectly-civilised state of the country) to bring me a sedan-chair,
which is naturally what I should have liked best.&nbsp; A Shetland pony
was produced instead.&nbsp; I remembered my Natural History, I recalled
popular report, and I got on the little beast&rsquo;s back, as any other
man would have done in my position, placing implicit confidence in the
sureness of his feet.&nbsp; And how did he repay that confidence?&nbsp;
Brother Francis, carry your mind on from morning to noon.&nbsp; Picture
to yourself a howling wilderness of grass and bog, bounded by low stony
hills.&nbsp; Pick out one particular spot in that imaginary scene, and
sketch me in it, with outstretched arms, curved back, and heels in the
air, plunging headforemost into a black patch of water and mud.&nbsp;
Place just behind me the legs, the body, and the head of a sure-footed
Shetland pony, all stretched flat on the ground, and you will have produced
an accurate representation of a very lamentable fact.&nbsp; And the
moral device, Francis, of this picture will be to testify that when
gentlemen put confidence in the legs of Shetland ponies, they will find
to their cost that they are leaning on nothing but broken reeds.&nbsp;
There is my first instance&mdash;and what have you got to say to that?&rsquo;</p>
<p>&lsquo;Nothing, but that I want my hat,&rsquo; answered Goodchild,
starting up and walking restlessly about the room.</p>
<p>&lsquo;You shall have it in a minute,&rsquo; rejoined Thomas.&nbsp;
&lsquo;My second instance&rsquo;&mdash;(Goodchild groaned, and sat down
again)&mdash;&lsquo;My second instance is more appropriate to the present
time and place, for it refers to a race-horse.&nbsp; Two years ago an
excellent friend of mine, who was desirous of prevailing on me to take
regular exercise, and who was well enough acquainted with the weakness
of my legs to expect no very active compliance with his wishes on their
part, offered to make me a present of one of his horses.&nbsp; Hearing
that the animal in question had started in life on the turf, I declined
accepting the gift with many thanks; adding, by way of explanation,
that I looked on a race-horse as a kind of embodied hurricane, upon
which no sane man of my character and habits could be expected to seat
himself.&nbsp; My friend replied that, however appropriate my metaphor
might be as applied to race-horses in general, it was singularly unsuitable
as applied to the particular horse which he proposed to give me.&nbsp;
From a foal upwards this remarkable animal had been the idlest and most
sluggish of his race.&nbsp; Whatever capacities for speed he might possess
he had kept so strictly to himself, that no amount of training had ever
brought them out.&nbsp; He had been found hopelessly slow as a racer,
and hopelessly lazy as a hunter, and was fit for nothing but a quiet,
easy life of it with an old gentleman or an invalid.&nbsp; When I heard
this account of the horse, I don&rsquo;t mind confessing that my heart
warmed to him.&nbsp; Visions of Thomas Idle ambling serenely on the
back of a steed as lazy as himself, presenting to a restless world the
soothing and composite spectacle of a kind of sluggardly Centaur, too
peaceable in his habits to alarm anybody, swam attractively before my
eyes.&nbsp; I went to look at the horse in the stable.&nbsp; Nice fellow!
he was fast asleep with a kitten on his back.&nbsp; I saw him taken
out for an airing by the groom.&nbsp; If he had had trousers on his
legs I should not have known them from my own, so deliberately were
they lifted up, so gently were they put down, so slowly did they get
over the ground.&nbsp; From that moment I gratefully accepted my friend&rsquo;s
offer.&nbsp; I went home; the horse followed me&mdash;by a slow train.&nbsp;
Oh, Francis, how devoutly I believed in that horse I how carefully I
looked after all his little comforts!&nbsp; I had never gone the length
of hiring a man-servant to wait on myself; but I went to the expense
of hiring one to wait upon him.&nbsp; If I thought a little of myself
when I bought the softest saddle that could be had for money, I thought
also of my horse.&nbsp; When the man at the shop afterwards offered
me spurs and a whip, I turned from him with horror.&nbsp; When I sallied
out for my first ride, I went purposely unarmed with the means of hurrying
my steed.&nbsp; He proceeded at his own pace every step of the way;
and when he stopped, at last, and blew out both his sides with a heavy
sigh, and turned his sleepy head and looked behind him, I took him home
again, as I might take home an artless child who said to me, &ldquo;If
you please, sir, I am tired.&rdquo;&nbsp; For a week this complete harmony
between me and my horse lasted undisturbed.&nbsp; At the end of that
time, when he had made quite sure of my friendly confidence in his laziness,
when he had thoroughly acquainted himself with all the little weaknesses
of my seat (and their name is Legion), the smouldering treachery and
ingratitude of the equine nature blazed out in an instant.&nbsp; Without
the slightest provocation from me, with nothing passing him at the time
but a pony-chaise driven by an old lady, he started in one instant from
a state of sluggish depression to a state of frantic high spirits.&nbsp;
He kicked, he plunged, he shied, he pranced, he capered fearfully.&nbsp;
I sat on him as long as I could, and when I could sit no longer, I fell
off.&nbsp; No, Francis! this is not a circumstance to be laughed at,
but to be wept over.&nbsp; What would be said of a Man who had requited
my kindness in that way?&nbsp; Range over all the rest of the animal
creation, and where will you find me an instance of treachery so black
as this?&nbsp; The cow that kicks down the milking-pail may have some
reason for it; she may think herself taxed too heavily to contribute
to the dilution of human tea and the greasing of human bread.&nbsp;
The tiger who springs out on me unawares has the excuse of being hungry
at the time, to say nothing of the further justification of being a
total stranger to me.&nbsp; The very flea who surprises me in my sleep
may defend his act of assassination on the ground that I, in my turn,
am always ready to murder him when I am awake.&nbsp; I defy the whole
body of Natural Historians to move me, logically, off the ground that
I have taken in regard to the horse.&nbsp; Receive back your hat, Brother
Francis, and go to the chemist&rsquo;s, if you please; for I have now
done.&nbsp; Ask me to take anything you like, except an interest in
the Doncaster races.&nbsp; Ask me to look at anything you like, except
an assemblage of people all animated by feelings of a friendly and admiring
nature towards the horse.&nbsp; You are a remarkably well-informed man,
and you have heard of hermits.&nbsp; Look upon me as a member of that
ancient fraternity, and you will sensibly add to the many obligations
which Thomas Idle is proud to owe to Francis Goodchild.&rsquo;</p>
<p>Here, fatigued by the effort of excessive talking, disputatious Thomas
waved one hand languidly, laid his head back on the sofa-pillow, and
calmly closed his eyes.</p>
<p>At a later period, Mr. Goodchild assailed his travelling companion
boldly from the impregnable fortress of common sense.&nbsp; But Thomas,
though tamed in body by drastic discipline, was still as mentally unapproachable
as ever on the subject of his favourite delusion.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
<p>The view from the window after Saturday&rsquo;s breakfast is altogether
changed.&nbsp; The tradesmen&rsquo;s families have all come back again.&nbsp;
The serious stationer&rsquo;s young woman of all work is shaking a duster
out of the window of the combination breakfast-room; a child is playing
with a doll, where Mr. Thurtell&rsquo;s hair was brushed; a sanitary
scrubbing is in progress on the spot where Mr. Palmer&rsquo;s braces
were put on.&nbsp; No signs of the Races are in the streets, but the
tramps and the tumble-down-carts and trucks laden with drinking-forms
and tables and remnants of booths, that are making their way out of
the town as fast as they can.&nbsp; The Angel, which has been cleared
for action all the week, already begins restoring every neat and comfortable
article of furniture to its own neat and comfortable place.&nbsp; The
Angel&rsquo;s daughters (pleasanter angels Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild
never saw, nor more quietly expert in their business, nor more superior
to the common vice of being above it), have a little time to rest, and
to air their cheerful faces among the flowers in the yard.&nbsp; It
is market-day.&nbsp; The market looks unusually natural, comfortable,
and wholesome; the market-people too.&nbsp; The town seems quite restored,
when, hark! a metallic bray&mdash;The Gong-donkey!</p>
<p>The wretched animal has not cleared off with the rest, but is here,
under the window.&nbsp; How much more inconceivably drunk now, how much
more begrimed of paw, how much more tight of calico hide, how much more
stained and daubed and dirty and dunghilly, from his horrible broom
to his tender toes, who shall say!&nbsp; He cannot even shake the bray
out of himself now, without laying his cheek so near to the mud of the
street, that he pitches over after delivering it.&nbsp; Now, prone in
the mud, and now backing himself up against shop-windows, the owners
of which come out in terror to remove him; now, in the drinking-shop,
and now in the tobacconist&rsquo;s, where he goes to buy tobacco, and
makes his way into the parlour, and where he gets a cigar, which in
half-a-minute he forgets to smoke; now dancing, now dozing, now cursing,
and now complimenting My Lord, the Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your
Honourable Worship, the Gong-donkey kicks up his heels, occasionally
braying, until suddenly, he beholds the dearest friend he has in the
world coming down the street.</p>
<p>The dearest friend the Gong-donkey has in the world, is a sort of
Jackall, in a dull, mangy, black hide, of such small pieces that it
looks as if it were made of blacking bottles turned inside out and cobbled
together.&nbsp; The dearest friend in the world (inconceivably drunk
too) advances at the Gong-donkey, with a hand on each thigh, in a series
of humorous springs and stops, wagging his head as he comes.&nbsp; The
Gong-donkey regarding him with attention and with the warmest affection,
suddenly perceives that he is the greatest enemy he has in the world,
and hits him hard in the countenance.&nbsp; The astonished Jackall closes
with the Donkey, and they roll over and over in the mud, pummelling
one another.&nbsp; A Police Inspector, supernaturally endowed with patience,
who has long been looking on from the Guildhall-steps, says, to a myrmidon,
&lsquo;Lock &rsquo;em up!&nbsp; Bring &rsquo;em in!&rsquo;</p>
<p>Appropriate finish to the Grand Race-Week.&nbsp; The Gong-donkey,
captive and last trace of it, conveyed into limbo, where they cannot
do better than keep him until next Race-Week.&nbsp; The Jackall is wanted
too, and is much looked for, over the way and up and down.&nbsp; But,
having had the good fortune to be undermost at the time of the capture,
he has vanished into air.</p>
<p>On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Goodchild walks out and looks at the Course.&nbsp;
It is quite deserted; heaps of broken crockery and bottles are raised
to its memory; and correct cards and other fragments of paper are blowing
about it, as the regulation little paper-books, carried by the French
soldiers in their breasts, were seen, soon after the battle was fought,
blowing idly about the plains of Waterloo.</p>
<p>Where will these present idle leaves be blown by the idle winds,
and where will the last of them be one day lost and forgotten?&nbsp;
An idle question, and an idle thought.; and with it Mr. Idle fitly makes
his bow, and Mr. Goodchild his, and thus ends the Lazy Tour of Two Idle
Apprentices.</p>
<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES ***</p>
<pre>

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