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Wakefield
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In some old magazine or newspaper, I recollect a story, told as truth, of a
man - let us call him Wakefield - who absented himself for a long time, from his
wife. The fact, thus abstractedly is not very uncommon, nor - without a proper
distinction of circumstances - to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical.
Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest
instance, on record, of marital delinquency; and, moreover, as remarkable a
freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple
lived in London. The man, under presence of going a journey, took lodgings in
the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends,
and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upwards of
twenty years. During that period, he beheld his home every day, and frequently
the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in his matrimonial felicity
- when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed
from memory, and his wife, long, long ago, resigned to her autumnal widowhood -
he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day's absence, and became a
loving spouse till death.
This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the purest
originality, unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is one, I think,
which appeals to the general sympathies of mankind. We know, each for himself,
that none of us would perpetrate such a folly, yet feel as if some other might.
To my own contemplations, at least, it has often recurred, always wonder, but
with a sense that the story must be true, and a conception of its hero's
character. Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent
in thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own meditation; or if he
prefer to ramble with me through the twenty years of Wakefield's vagary, I bid
him welcome; trusting that there will be a pervading spirit and a moral, even
should we fail to find them, done up neatly, and condensed into the final
sentence. Thought has always its efficacy, and every striking incident its
moral.
What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own idea,
and call it by his name. He was now in the meridian of life; his matrimonial
affections, never violent, were sobered into a calm, habitual sentiment; of all
husbands, he was likely to be the most constant, because a certain sluggishness
would keep his heart at rest, wherever it might be placed. He was intellectual,
but not actively so; his mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings, that
tended to no purpose, or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so
energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper meaning of the
term, made no part of Wakefield's gifts. With a cold, but not depraved nor
wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with riotous thoughts, nor perplexed
with originality, who could have anticipated, that our friend would entitle
himself to a foremost place among the doers of eccentric deeds? Had his
acquaintances been asked, who was the man in London, the surest to perform
nothing to-day which should be remembered on the morrow, they would have thought
of Wakefield. Only the wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She, without
having analyzed his character, was partly aware of a quiet selfishness, that had
rusted into his inactive mind - of a peculiar sort of vanity, the most uneasy
attribute about him - of a disposition to craft, which had seldom produced more
positive effects than the keeping of petty secrets, hardly worth revealing -
and, lastly, of what she called a little strangeness, sometimes, in the good
man. This latter quality is indefinable, and perhaps non-existent.
Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk of
an October evening. His equipment is a drab great-coat, a hat covered with an
oil-cloth, top boots, an umbrella in one hand and a small portmanteau in the
other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he is to take the night-coach into
the country. She would fain inquire the length of his journey, its object, and
the probable time of his return; but, indulgent to his harmless love of mystery,
interrogates him only by a look. He tells her not to expect him positively by
the return coach, nor to be alarmed should he tarry three or four days; but, at
all events, to look for him at supper on Friday evening. Wakefield himself, be
it considered, has no suspicion of what is before him. He holds out his hand;
she gives her own, and meets his parting kiss, in the matter-of-course way of a
ten years' matrimony; and forth goes the middle-aged Mr. Wakefield, almost
resolved to perplex his good lady by a whole week's absence. After the door has
closed behind him, she perceives it thrust partly open, and a vision of her
husband's face, through the aperture, smiling on her, and gone in a moment. For
the time, this little incident is dismissed without a thought. But, long
afterwards, when she has been more years a widow than a wife, that smile recurs,
and flickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield's visage. In her many
musings, she surrounds the original smile with a multitude of fantasies, which
make it strange and awful; as, for instance, if she imagines him in a coffin,
that parting look is frozen on his pale features; or, if she dreams of him in
Heaven, still his blessed spirit wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet, for its
sake, when all others have given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts whether
she is a widow.
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But, our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him, along the
street, erehelose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of London
life. It would be vain searching for him there. Let us follow close at his
heels, therefore, until, after several superfluous turns and doublings, we find
him comfortably established by the fireside of a small apartment, previously
bespoken. He is in the next street to his own, and at his journey's end. He can
scarcely trust his good fortune, in having got thither unperceived -
recollecting that, at one time, he was delayed by the throng, in the very focus
of a lighted lantern; and, again, there were footsteps, that seemed to tread
behind his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him; and, anon, he
heard a voice shouting afar, and fancied that it called his name. Doubtless, a
dozen busy-bodies had been watching him, and told his wife the whole affair.
Poor Wakefield! Little knowest thou shine own insignificance in this great
world! No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy bed, foolish
man; and, on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee home to good Mrs.
Wakefield, and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself, even for a little week,
from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she, for a single moment, to deem thee
dead, or lost, or lastingly divided from her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious
of a change in thy true wife, forever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in
human affections; not that they gape so long and wide-but so quickly close
again!
Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed, Wakefield
lies down betimes, and starting from his first nap, spreads forth his arms into
the wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed bed. "No" - thinks he, gathering
the bed-clothes about him - "I will not sleep alone another night."
In the morning, he rises earlier than usual, and sets himself to consider
what he really means to do. Such are his loose and rambling modes of thought,
that he has taken this very singular step, with the consciousness of a purpose,
indeed, but without being able to define it sufficiently his own contemplation.
The vagueness of the project, and the convulsive effort with which he plunges
into the execution of it, are equally characteristic of a feeble-minded man.
Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds himself
curious to know the progress of matters at home - how his exemplary wife will
endure her widowhood, of a week; and, briefly, how the little sphere of
creatures and circumstances, in which he was a central object, will be affected
by his removal. A morbid vanity, therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the
affair. But, how is he to attain his ends? Not, certainly, by keeping close in
this comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the next street to
his home, he is as effectually abroad, as if the stage-coach had been whirling
him away all night. Yet, should he reappear, the whole project is knocked in the
head. His poor brains being hopelessly puzzled with this dilemma, he at length
ventures out, partly resolving to cross the head of the street, and send one
hasty glance towards his forsaken domicile. Habit - for he is a man of habits -
takes him by the hand, and guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where,
just at the critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon the
step. Wakefield! whither are you going?
At that instant, his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of the
doom to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries away, breathless
with agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn his head, at the distant
corner. Can it be, that nobody caught sight of him? Will not the whole household
- the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart maid-servant, and the dirty little
foot-boy - raise a hue-and-cry, through London streets, in pursuit of their
fugitive lord and master? Wonderful escape! l legathers courage to pause and
look homeward, but is perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar
edifice, such as affects us all, when, after a separation of months or years, we
again see some hill or lake, or work of art, with which we were friends, of old.
In ordinary cases, this indescribable impression is caused by the comparison and
contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality. In Wakefield, the
magic of a single night has wrought a similar transformation, because, in that
brief period, a great moral change has been effected. But this is a secret from
himself. Before leaving the spot, he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his
wife, passing athwart the front window, with her face turned towards the head of
the street. The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with the idea,
that, among a thousand such atoms of mortality, her eye must have detected him.
Right glad is his heart, though his brain be somewhat dizzy, when he finds
himself by the coal-fire of his lodgings.
So much for the commencement of this long whim-wham. After the initial
conception, and the stirring up of the man's sluggish temperament to put it in
practice, the whole matter evolves itself in a natural train. We may suppose
him, as the result of deep deliberation, buying a new wig, of reddish hair, and
selecting sundry garments, in a fashion unlike his customary suit of brown, from
a Jew's old-clothes bag. It is accomplished. Wakefield is another man. The new
system being now established, a retrograde movement to the old would be almost
as difficult as the step that placed him in his unparalleled position.
Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness, occasionally incident to
his temper, and brought on, at present, by the inadequate sensation which he
conceives to have been produced in the bosom of Mrs. Wakefield. He will not go
back until she be frightened half to death. Well, twice or thrice has she passed
before his sight, each time with a heavier step, a paler cheek, and more anxious
brow; and, in the third week of his non-appearance, he detects a portent of evil
entering the house, in the guise of an apothecary. Next day, the knocker is
muffled. Towards night-fall, comes the chariot of a physician, and deposits its
big-wigged and solemn burthen at Wakefield's door, whence, after a quarter of an
hour's visit, he emerges, perchance the herald of a funeral. Dear woman! Will
she die? By this time, Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling,
but still lingers away from his wife's bedside, pleading with his conscience,
that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. If aught else restrains him,
he does not know it. In the course of a few weeks, she gradually recovers; the
crisis is over; her heart is sad, perhaps, but quiet; and, let him return soon
or late, it will never be feverish for him again. Such ideas glimmer through the
mist of Wakefield's mind, and render him indistinctly conscious, that an almost
impassable gulf divides his hired apartment from his former home. "It is but in
the next street!" he sometimes says. Fool! it is in another world. Hitherto, he
has put off his return from one particular day to another; henceforward, he
leaves the precise time undetermined. Not to-morrow - probably next week -
pretty soon. Poor man! The dead have nearly as much chance of re-visiting their
earthly homes, as the self-banished Wakefield. |
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发表于 2016-7-10 11:22:58