CD-ROM Today - The Disc! 1/CD-ROM_Today_-_The_Disc_1_April-May_1994.iso/books/poe/w_wilson

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                                      1839
                                 WILLIAM WILSON
                               by Edgar Allan Poe

        What say of it? what say (of) CONSCIENCE grim,
        That spectre in my path?
                          Chamberlayne's Pharronida.

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