Charles John Huffam Dickens 1812 - 1870
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic.
He created some of the world's most well-known fictional characters and
is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period.
During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented popularity, and by the
twentieth century he was widely seen as a literary genius by critics
and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely
popular.
Born in Portsmouth, England, Dickens was forced
to leave school to work in a factory when his father was thrown into
debtors prison.
Although he had little formal education, over his career he edited a
weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas and hundreds
of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed
extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned
vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Dickens sprang to fame with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity,
famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and
society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments,
pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication.
The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's
reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based
on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to reflect her disabilities, Dickens went on to improve the character with positive features.
His plots were carefully constructed, and Dickens often wove in elements from topical events into his narratives.
Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha,pennies to have each new
monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of
readers.
Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol,
remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic
genre. Set in London and Paris, his 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, is
the best selling novel of all time.
His creative genius has been praised by fellow
writers from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G.K. Chesterton for its
realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social
criticism.
On the other hand Oscar Wilde, Henry James and
Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose
writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism.
The term Dickensian
is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his
writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive
characters.
source:
HUNTED DOWN (1860)
I.
Most of us see some romances in
life. In my capacity as Chief Manager of a Life Assurance
Office, I think I have within the last thirty years seen more
romances than the generality of men, however unpromising the
opportunity may, at first sight, seem.
As I have retired, and live at my ease, I possess the means
that I used to want, of considering what I have seen, at
leisure. My experiences have a more remarkable aspect, so
reviewed, than they had when they were in progress. I have
come home from the Play now, and can recall the scenes of the
Drama upon which the curtain has fallen, free from the glare,
bewilderment, and bustle of the Theatre.
Let me recall one of these Romances of the real world.
There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection
with manner. The art of reading that book of which Eternal
Wisdom obliges every human creature to present his or her own
page with the individual character written on it, is a difficult
one, perhaps, and is little studied. It may require some
natural aptitude, and it must require (for everything does) some
patience and some pains. That these are not usually given
to it, that numbers of people accept a few stock
commonplace expressions of the face as the whole list of
characteristics, and neither seek nor know the refinements that
are truest, that You, for instance, give a great deal of
time and attention to the reading of music, Greek, Latin, French,
Italian, Hebrew, if you please, and do not qualify yourself to
read the face of the master or mistress looking over your
shoulder teaching it to you, I assume to be five hundred
times more probable than improbable. Perhaps a little
self-sufficiency may be at the bottom of this; facial expression
requires no study from you, you think; it comes by nature to you
to know enough about it, and you are not to be taken in.
I confess, for my part, that I have been taken in, over
and over again. I have been taken in by acquaintances, and
I have been taken in (of course) by friends; far oftener by
friends than by any other class of persons. How came I to
be so deceived? Had I quite misread their faces?
No. Believe me, my first impression of those people,
founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true. My
mistake was in suffering them to come nearer to me and explain
themselves away.
II.
The partition which separated my
own office from our general outer office in the City was of thick
plate-glass. I could see through it what passed in the
outer office, without hearing a word. I had it put up in
place of a wall that had been there for years, ever since
the house was built. It is no matter whether I did or did
not make the change in order that I might derive my first
impression of strangers, who came to us on business, from their
faces alone, without being influenced by anything they
said. Enough to mention that I turned my glass partition to
that account, and that a Life Assurance Office is at all times
exposed to be practised upon by the most crafty and cruel of the
human race.
It was through my glass partition that I first saw the
gentleman whose story I am going to tell.
He had come in without my observing it, and had put his hat
and umbrella on the broad counter, and was bending over it to
take some papers from one of the clerks. He was about forty
or so, dark, exceedingly well dressed in black, being in
mourning, and the hand he extended with a polite air, had a
particularly well-fitting black-kid glove upon it. His
hair, which was elaborately brushed and oiled, was parted
straight up the middle; and he presented this parting to the
clerk, exactly (to my thinking) as if he had said, in so many
words: ‘You must take me, if you please, my friend, just as
I show myself. Come straight up here, follow the gravel
path, keep off the grass, I allow no trespassing.’
I conceived a very great aversion to that man the moment I
thus saw him.
He had asked for some of our printed forms, and the clerk was
giving them to him and explaining them. An obliged and
agreeable smile was on his face, and his eyes met those of the
clerk with a sprightly look. (I have known a vast quantity
of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the
face. Don’t trust that conventional idea.
Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the
week, if there is anything to be got by it.)
I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became aware of
my looking at him. Immediately he turned the parting in his
hair toward the glass partition, as if he said to me with a sweet
smile, ‘Straight up here, if you please. Off the
grass!’
In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up his
umbrella, and was gone.
I beckoned the clerk into my room, and asked, ‘Who was
that?’
He had the gentleman’s card in his hand.
‘Mr. Julius Slinkton, Middle Temple.’
‘A barrister, Mr. Adams?’
‘I think not, sir.’
‘I should have thought him a clergyman, but for his
having no Reverend here,’ said I.
‘Probably, from his appearance,’ Mr. Adams
replied, ‘he is reading for orders.’
I should mention that he wore a dainty white cravat, and
dainty linen altogether.
‘What did he want, Mr. Adams?’
‘Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of
reference.’
‘Recommended here? Did he say?’
‘Yes, he said he was recommended here by a friend of
yours. He noticed you, but said that as he had not the
pleasure of your personal acquaintance he would not trouble
you.’
‘Did he know my name?’
‘O yes, sir! He said, “There is Mr.
Sampson, I see!”
‘A well-spoken gentleman, apparently?’
‘Remarkably so, sir.’
‘Insinuating manners, apparently?’
‘Very much so, indeed, sir.’
‘Hah!’ said I. ‘I want nothing at
present, Mr. Adams.’
Within a fortnight of that day I went to dine with a friend of
mine, a merchant, a man of taste, who buys pictures and books,
and the first man I saw among the company was Mr. Julius
Slinkton. There he was, standing before the fire, with good
large eyes and an open expression of face; but still (I thought)
requiring everybody to come at him by the prepared way he
offered, and by no other.
I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him to Mr. Sampson,
and my friend did so. Mr. Slinkton was very happy to see
me. Not too happy; there was no over-doing of the matter;
happy in a thoroughly well-bred, perfectly unmeaning way.
‘I thought you had met,’ our host observed.
‘No,’ said Mr. Slinkton. ‘I did look
in at Mr. Sampson’s office, on your recommendation; but I
really did not feel justified in troubling Mr. Sampson himself,
on a point in the everyday routine of an ordinary
clerk.’
I said I should have been glad to show him any attention on
our friend’s introduction.
‘I am sure of that,’ said he, ‘and am much
obliged. At another time, perhaps, I may be less
delicate. Only, however, if I have real business; for I
know, Mr. Sampson, how precious business time is, and what a vast
number of impertinent people there are in the world.’
I acknowledged his consideration with a slight bow.
‘You were thinking,’ said I, ‘of effecting a
policy on your life.’
‘O dear no! I am afraid I am not so prudent as you
pay me the compliment of supposing me to be, Mr. Sampson. I
merely inquired for a friend. But you know what friends are
in such matters. Nothing may ever come of it. I have
the greatest reluctance to trouble men of business with inquiries
for friends, knowing the probabilities to be a thousand to one
that the friends will never follow them up. People are so
fickle, so selfish, so inconsiderate. Don’t you, in
your business, find them so every day, Mr. Sampson?’
I was going to give a qualified answer; but he turned his
smooth, white parting on me with its ‘Straight up here, if
you please!’ and I answered ‘Yes.’
‘I hear, Mr. Sampson,’ he resumed presently, for
our friend had a new cook, and dinner was not so punctual as
usual, ‘that your profession has recently suffered a great
loss.’
‘In money?’ said I.
He laughed at my ready association of loss with money, and
replied, ‘No, in talent and vigour.’
Not at once following out his allusion, I considered for a
moment. ‘Has it sustained a loss of that
kind?’ said I. ‘I was not aware of
it.’
‘Understand me, Mr. Sampson. I don’t imagine
that you have retired. It is not so bad as that. But
Mr. Meltham’
‘O, to be sure!’ said I. ‘Yes!
Mr. Meltham, the young actuary of the
“Inestimable.”
‘Just so,’ he returned in a consoling way.
‘He is a great loss. He was at once the most
profound, the most original, and the most energetic man I have
ever known connected with Life Assurance.’
I spoke strongly; for I had a high esteem and admiration for
Meltham; and my gentleman had indefinitely conveyed to me some
suspicion that he wanted to sneer at him. He recalled me to
my guard by presenting that trim pathway up his head, with its
internal ‘Not on the grass, if you please, the
gravel.’
‘You knew him, Mr. Slinkton.’
‘Only by reputation. To have known him as an
acquaintance or as a friend, is an honour I should have sought if
he had remained in society, though I might never have had the
good fortune to attain it, being a man of far inferior
mark. He was scarcely above thirty, I suppose?’
‘About thirty.’
‘Ah!’ he sighed in his former consoling way.
‘What creatures we are! To break up, Mr. Sampson, and
become incapable of business at that time of life! Any
reason assigned for the melancholy fact?’
(‘Humph!’ thought I, as I looked at him.
‘But I WON’T go up the
track, and I WILL go on the
grass.’)
‘What reason have you heard assigned, Mr.
Slinkton?’ I asked, point-blank.
‘Most likely a false one. You know what Rumour is,
Mr. Sampson. I never repeat what I hear; it is the only way
of paring the nails and shaving the head of Rumour. But
when you ask me what reason I have heard assigned for Mr.
Meltham’s passing away from among men, it is another
thing. I am not gratifying idle gossip then. I was
told, Mr. Sampson, that Mr. Meltham had relinquished all his
avocations and all his prospects, because he was, in fact,
broken-hearted. A disappointed attachment I
heard, though it hardly seems probable, in the case of a
man so distinguished and so attractive.’
‘Attractions and distinctions are no armour against
death,’ said I.
‘O, she died? Pray pardon me. I did not hear
that. That, indeed, makes it very, very sad. Poor Mr.
Meltham! She died? Ah, dear me! Lamentable,
lamentable!’
I still thought his pity was not quite genuine, and I still
suspected an unaccountable sneer under all this, until he said,
as we were parted, like the other knots of talkers, by the
announcement of dinner:
‘Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me so moved on
behalf of a man whom I have never known. I am not so
disinterested as you may suppose. I have suffered, and
recently too, from death myself. I have lost one of two
charming nieces, who were my constant companions. She died
young, barely three-and-twenty; and even her remaining
sister is far from strong. The world is a grave!’
He said this with deep feeling, and I felt reproached for the
coldness of my manner. Coldness and distrust had been
engendered in me, I knew, by my bad experiences; they were not
natural to me; and I often thought how much I had lost in life,
losing trustfulness, and how little I had gained, gaining hard
caution. This state of mind being habitual to me, I
troubled myself more about this conversation than I might have
troubled myself about a greater matter. I listened to his
talk at dinner, and observed how readily other men responded to
it, and with what a graceful instinct he adapted his subjects to
the knowledge and habits of those he talked with. As, in
talking with me, he had easily started the subject I might be
supposed to understand best, and to be the most interested in,
so, in talking with others, he guided himself by the same
rule. The company was of a varied character; but he was not
at fault, that I could discover, with any member of it. He
knew just as much of each man’s pursuit as made him
agreeable to that man in reference to it, and just as little as
made it natural in him to seek modestly for information when the
theme was broached.
As he talked and talked, but really not too much, for the
rest of us seemed to force it upon him, I became quite angry
with myself. I took his face to pieces in my mind, like a
watch, and examined it in detail. I could not say much
against any of his features separately; I could say even less
against them when they were put together. ‘Then is it
not monstrous,’ I asked myself, ‘that because a man
happens to part his hair straight up the middle of his head, I
should permit myself to suspect, and even to detest
him?’
(I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my
sense. An observer of men who finds himself steadily
repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger is right
to give it great weight. It may be the clue to the whole
mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is
hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door.)
I took my part in the conversation with him after a time, and
we got on remarkably well. In the drawing-room I asked the
host how long he had known Mr. Slinkton. He answered, not
many months; he had met him at the house of a celebrated painter
then present, who had known him well when he was travelling with
his nieces in Italy for their health. His plans in life
being broken by the death of one of them, he was reading with the
intention of going back to college as a matter of form, taking
his degree, and going into orders. I could not but argue
with myself that here was the true explanation of his interest in
poor Meltham, and that I had been almost brutal in my distrust on
that simple head.
III.
On the very next day but one I was
sitting behind my glass partition, as before, when he came into
the outer office, as before. The moment I saw him again
without hearing him, I hated him worse than ever.
It was only for a moment that I had this opportunity; for he
waved his tight-fitting black glove the instant I looked at him,
and came straight in.
‘Mr. Sampson, good-day! I presume, you see, upon
your kind permission to intrude upon you. I don’t
keep my word in being justified by business, for my business
here, if I may so abuse the word is of the slightest
nature.’
I asked, was it anything I could assist him in?
‘I thank you, no. I merely called to inquire
outside whether my dilatory friend had been so false to himself
as to be practical and sensible. But, of course, he has
done nothing. I gave him your papers with my own hand, and
he was hot upon the intention, but of course he has done
nothing. Apart from the general human disinclination to do
anything that ought to be done, I dare say there is a specialty
about assuring one’s life. You find it like
will-making. People are so superstitious, and take it for
granted they will die soon afterwards.’
‘Up here, if you please; straight up here, Mr.
Sampson. Neither to the right nor to the left.’
I almost fancied I could hear him breathe the words as he sat
smiling at me, with that intolerable parting exactly opposite the
bridge of my nose.
‘There is such a feeling sometimes, no doubt,’ I
replied; ‘but I don’t think it obtains to any great
extent.’
‘Well,’ said he, with a shrug and a smile,
‘I wish some good angel would influence my friend in the
right direction. I rashly promised his mother and sister in
Norfolk to see it done, and he promised them that he would do
it. But I suppose he never will.’
He spoke for a minute or two on indifferent topics, and went
away.
I had scarcely unlocked the drawers of my writing-table next
morning, when he reappeared. I noticed that he came
straight to the door in the glass partition, and did not pause a
single moment outside.
‘Can you spare me two minutes, my dear Mr.
Sampson?’
‘By all means.’
‘Much obliged,’ laying his hat and umbrella on the
table; ‘I came early, not to interrupt you. The fact
is, I am taken by surprise in reference to this proposal my
friend has made.’
‘Has he made one?’ said I.
‘Ye-es,’ he answered, deliberately looking at me;
and then a bright idea seemed to strike him ‘or he
only tells me he has. Perhaps that may be a new way of
evading the matter. By Jupiter, I never thought of
that!’
Mr. Adams was opening the morning’s letters in the outer
office. ‘What is the name, Mr. Slinkton?’ I
asked.
‘Beckwith.’
I looked out at the door and requested Mr. Adams, if there
were a proposal in that name, to bring it in. He had
already laid it out of his hand on the counter. It was
easily selected from the rest, and he gave it me. Alfred
Beckwith. Proposal to effect a policy with us for two
thousand pounds. Dated yesterday.
‘From the Middle Temple, I see, Mr. Slinkton.’
‘Yes. He lives on the same staircase with me; his
door is opposite. I never thought he would make me his
reference though.’
‘It seems natural enough that he should.’
‘Quite so, Mr. Sampson; but I never thought of it.
Let me see.’ He took the printed paper from his
pocket. ‘How am I to answer all these
questions?’
‘According to the truth, of course,’ said I.
‘O, of course!’ he answered, looking up from the
paper with a smile; ‘I meant they were so many. But
you do right to be particular. It stands to reason that you
must be particular. Will you allow me to use your pen and
ink?’
‘Certainly.’
‘And your desk?’
‘Certainly.’
He had been hovering about between his hat and his umbrella
for a place to write on. He now sat down in my chair, at my
blotting-paper and inkstand, with the long walk up his head in
accurate perspective before me, as I stood with my back to the
fire.
Before answering each question he ran over it aloud, and
discussed it. How long had he known Mr. Alfred
Beckwith? That he had to calculate by years upon his
fingers. What were his habits? No difficulty about
them; temperate in the last degree, and took a little too much
exercise, if anything. All the answers were
satisfactory. When he had written them all, he looked them
over, and finally signed them in a very pretty hand. He
supposed he had now done with the business. I told him he
was not likely to be troubled any farther. Should he leave
the papers there? If he pleased. Much obliged.
Good-morning.
I had had one other visitor before him; not at the office, but
at my own house. That visitor had come to my bedside when
it was not yet daylight, and had been seen by no one else but by
my faithful confidential servant.
A second reference paper (for we required always two) was sent
down into Norfolk, and was duly received back by post.
This, likewise, was satisfactorily answered in every
respect. Our forms were all complied with; we accepted the
proposal, and the premium for one year was paid.
IV.
For six or seven months I saw no
more of Mr. Slinkton. He called once at my house, but I was
not at home; and he once asked me to dine with him in the Temple,
but I was engaged. His friend’s assurance was
effected in March. Late in September or early in October I
was down at Scarborough for a breath of sea-air, where I met him
on the beach. It was a hot evening; he came toward me with
his hat in his hand; and there was the walk I had felt so
strongly disinclined to take in perfect order again, exactly in
front of the bridge of my nose.
He was not alone, but had a young lady on his arm.
She was dressed in mourning, and I looked at her with great
interest. She had the appearance of being extremely
delicate, and her face was remarkably pale and melancholy; but
she was very pretty. He introduced her as his niece, Miss
Niner.
‘Are you strolling, Mr. Sampson? Is it possible
you can be idle?’
It was possible, and I was strolling.
‘Shall we stroll together?’
‘With pleasure.’
The young lady walked between us, and we walked on the cool
sea sand, in the direction of Filey.
‘There have been wheels here,’ said Mr.
Slinkton. ‘And now I look again, the wheels of a
hand-carriage! Margaret, my love, your shadow without
doubt!’
‘Miss Niner’s shadow?’ I repeated, looking
down at it on the sand.
‘Not that one,’ Mr. Slinkton returned,
laughing. ‘Margaret, my dear, tell Mr.
Sampson.’
‘Indeed,’ said the young lady, turning to me,
‘there is nothing to tell, except that I constantly
see the same invalid old gentleman at all times, wherever I
go. I have mentioned it to my uncle, and he calls the
gentleman my shadow.’
‘Does he live in Scarborough?’ I asked.
‘He is staying here.’
‘Do you live in Scarborough?’
‘No, I am staying here. My uncle has placed me
with a family here, for my health.’
‘And your shadow?’ said I, smiling.
‘My shadow,’ she answered, smiling too,
‘is, like myself, not very robust, I fear; for I
lose my shadow sometimes, as my shadow loses me at other
times. We both seem liable to confinement to the
house. I have not seen my shadow for days and days; but it
does oddly happen, occasionally, that wherever I go, for many
days together, this gentleman goes. We have come together
in the most unfrequented nooks on this shore.’
‘Is this he?’ said I, pointing before us.
The wheels had swept down to the water’s edge, and
described a great loop on the sand in turning. Bringing the
loop back towards us, and spinning it out as it came, was a
hand-carriage, drawn by a man.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Niner, ‘this really is my
shadow, uncle.’
As the carriage approached us and we approached the carriage,
I saw within it an old man, whose head was sunk on his breast,
and who was enveloped in a variety of wrappers. He was
drawn by a very quiet but very keen-looking man, with iron-gray
hair, who was slightly lame. They had passed us, when the
carriage stopped, and the old gentleman within, putting out his
arm, called to me by my name. I went back, and was absent
from Mr. Slinkton and his niece for about five minutes.
When I rejoined them, Mr. Slinkton was the first to
speak. Indeed, he said to me in a raised voice before I
came up with him:
‘It is well you have not been longer, or my niece might
have died of curiosity to know who her shadow is, Mr.
Sampson.’
‘An old East India Director,’ said I.
‘An intimate friend of our friend’s, at whose house I
first had the pleasure of meeting you. A certain Major
Banks. You have heard of him?’
‘Never.’
‘Very rich, Miss Niner; but very old, and very
crippled. An amiable man, sensible, much interested in
you. He has just been expatiating on the affection that he
has observed to exist between you and your uncle.’
Mr. Slinkton was holding his hat again, and he passed his hand
up the straight walk, as if he himself went up it serenely, after
me.
‘Mr. Sampson,’ he said, tenderly pressing his
niece’s arm in his, ‘our affection was always a
strong one, for we have had but few near ties. We have
still fewer now. We have associations to bring us together,
that are not of this world, Margaret.’
‘Dear uncle!’ murmured the young lady, and turned
her face aside to hide her tears.
‘My niece and I have such remembrances and regrets in
common, Mr. Sampson,’ he feelingly pursued, ‘that it
would be strange indeed if the relations between us were cold or
indifferent. If I remember a conversation we once had
together, you will understand the reference I make. Cheer
up, dear Margaret. Don’t droop, don’t
droop. My Margaret! I cannot bear to see you
droop!’
The poor young lady was very much affected, but controlled
herself. His feelings, too, were very acute. In a
word, he found himself under such great need of a restorative,
that he presently went away, to take a bath of sea-water, leaving
the young lady and me sitting by a point of rock, and probably
presuming, but that you will say was a pardonable indulgence
in a luxury, that she would praise him with all her
heart.
She did, poor thing! With all her confiding heart, she
praised him to me, for his care of her dead sister, and for his
untiring devotion in her last illness.
The sister had wasted away very slowly, and wild and terrible fantasies had come over her toward the end, but he had never been impatient with her, or at a loss; had always been gentle, watchful, and self-possessed. The sister had known him, as she had known him, to be the best of men, the kindest of men, and yet a man of such admirable strength of character, as to be a very tower for the support of their weak natures while their poor lives endured.
The sister had wasted away very slowly, and wild and terrible fantasies had come over her toward the end, but he had never been impatient with her, or at a loss; had always been gentle, watchful, and self-possessed. The sister had known him, as she had known him, to be the best of men, the kindest of men, and yet a man of such admirable strength of character, as to be a very tower for the support of their weak natures while their poor lives endured.
‘I shall leave him, Mr. Sampson, very soon,’ said
the young lady; ‘I know my life is drawing to an end; and
when I am gone, I hope he will marry and be happy. I am
sure he has lived single so long, only for my sake, and for my
poor, poor sister’s.’
The little hand-carriage had made another great loop on the
damp sand, and was coming back again, gradually spinning out a
slim figure of eight, half a mile long.
‘Young lady,’ said I, looking around, laying my
hand upon her arm, and speaking in a low voice, ‘time
presses. You hear the gentle murmur of that sea?’
She looked at me with the utmost wonder and alarm, saying,
‘Yes!’
‘And you know what a voice is in it when the storm
comes?’
‘Yes!’
‘You see how quiet and peaceful it lies before us, and
you know what an awful sight of power without pity it might be,
this very night!’
‘Yes!’
‘But if you had never heard or seen it, or heard of it
in its cruelty, could you believe that it beats every inanimate
thing in its way to pieces, without mercy, and destroys life
without remorse?’
‘You terrify me, sir, by these questions!’
‘To save you, young lady, to save you! For
God’s sake, collect your strength and collect your
firmness! If you were here alone, and hemmed in by the
rising tide on the flow to fifty feet above your head, you could
not be in greater danger than the danger you are now to be saved
from.’
The figure on the sand was spun out, and straggled off into a
crooked little jerk that ended at the cliff very near us.
‘As I am, before Heaven and the Judge of all mankind,
your friend, and your dead sister’s friend, I solemnly
entreat you, Miss Niner, without one moment’s loss of time,
to come to this gentleman with me!’
If the little carriage had been less near to us, I doubt if I
could have got her away; but it was so near that we were there
before she had recovered the hurry of being urged from the
rock. I did not remain there with her two minutes.
Certainly within five, I had the inexpressible satisfaction of
seeing her, from the point we had sat on, and to which I had
returned, half supported and half carried up some rude steps
notched in the cliff, by the figure of an active man. With
that figure beside her, I knew she was safe anywhere.
I sat alone on the rock, awaiting Mr. Slinkton’s
return. The twilight was deepening and the shadows were
heavy, when he came round the point, with his hat hanging at his
button-hole, smoothing his wet hair with one of his hands, and
picking out the old path with the other and a pocket-comb.
‘My niece not here, Mr. Sampson?’ he said, looking
about.
‘Miss Niner seemed to feel a chill in the air after the
sun was down, and has gone home.’
He looked surprised, as though she were not accustomed to do
anything without him; even to originate so slight a
proceeding.
‘I persuaded Miss Niner,’ I explained.
‘Ah!’ said he. ‘She is easily
persuaded, for her good. Thank you, Mr. Sampson; she
is better within doors. The bathing-place was farther than
I thought, to say the truth.’
‘Miss Niner is very delicate,’ I observed.
He shook his head and drew a deep sigh. ‘Very,
very, very. You may recollect my saying so. The time
that has since intervened has not strengthened her. The
gloomy shadow that fell upon her sister so early in life seems,
in my anxious eyes, to gather over her, ever darker, ever
darker. Dear Margaret, dear Margaret! But we must
hope.’
The hand-carriage was spinning away before us at a most
indecorous pace for an invalid vehicle, and was making most
irregular curves upon the sand. Mr. Slinkton, noticing it
after he had put his handkerchief to his eyes, said:
‘If I may judge from appearances, your friend will be
upset, Mr. Sampson.’
‘It looks probable, certainly,’ said I.
‘The servant must be drunk.’
‘The servants of old gentlemen will get drunk
sometimes,’ said I.
‘The major draws very light, Mr. Sampson.’
‘The major does draw light,’ said I.
By this time the carriage, much to my relief, was lost in the
darkness. We walked on for a little, side by side over the
sand, in silence. After a short while he said, in a voice
still affected by the emotion that his niece’s state of
health had awakened in him,
‘Do you stay here long, Mr. Sampson?’
‘Why, no. I am going away to-night.’
‘So soon? But business always holds you in
request. Men like Mr. Sampson are too important to others,
to be spared to their own need of relaxation and
enjoyment.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said I.
‘However, I am going back.’
‘To London?’
‘To London.’
‘I shall be there too, soon after you.’
I knew that as well as he did. But I did not tell him
so. Any more than I told him what defensive weapon my right
hand rested on in my pocket, as I walked by his side. Any
more than I told him why I did not walk on the sea side of him
with the night closing in.
We left the beach, and our ways diverged. We exchanged
good-night, and had parted indeed, when he said, returning,
‘Mr. Sampson, may I ask? Poor Meltham, whom
we spoke of, dead yet?’
‘Not when I last heard of him; but too broken a man to
live long, and hopelessly lost to his old calling.’
‘Dear, dear, dear!’ said he, with great
feeling. ‘Sad, sad, sad! The world is a
grave!’ And so went his way.
It was not his fault if the world were not a grave; but I did
not call that observation after him, any more than I had
mentioned those other things just now enumerated. He went
his way, and I went mine with all expedition. This
happened, as I have said, either at the end of September or
beginning of October. The next time I saw him, and the last
time, was late in November.
V.
I had a very particular
engagement to breakfast in the Temple. It was a bitter
north-easterly morning, and the sleet and slush lay inches deep
in the streets. I could get no conveyance, and was soon wet
to the knees; but I should have been true to that appointment,
though I had to wade to it up to my neck in the same
impediments.
The appointment took me to some chambers in the Temple.
They were at the top of a lonely corner house overlooking the
river. The name, Mr. Alfred
Beckwith, was painted on the outer door. On the door
opposite, on the same landing, the name Mr.
Julius Slinkton. The doors of both sets of chambers
stood open, so that anything said aloud in one set could be heard
in the other.
I had never been in those chambers before. They were
dismal, close, unwholesome, and oppressive; the furniture,
originally good, and not yet old, was faded and dirty, the
rooms were in great disorder; there was a strong prevailing smell
of opium, brandy, and tobacco; the grate and fire-irons were
splashed all over with unsightly blotches of rust; and on a sofa
by the fire, in the room where breakfast had been prepared, lay
the host, Mr. Beckwith, a man with all the appearances of the
worst kind of drunkard, very far advanced upon his shameful way
to death.
‘Slinkton is not come yet,’ said this creature,
staggering up when I went in; ‘I’ll call
him. Halloa! Julius Caesar! Come and
drink!’ As he hoarsely roared this out, he beat the
poker and tongs together in a mad way, as if that were his usual
manner of summoning his associate.
The voice of Mr. Slinkton was heard through the clatter from
the opposite side of the staircase, and he came in. He had
not expected the pleasure of meeting me. I have seen
several artful men brought to a stand, but I never saw a man so
aghast as he was when his eyes rested on mine.
‘Julius Cæsar,’ cried Beckwith, staggering
between us, ‘Mist’ Sampson! Mist’
Sampson, Julius Caesar! Julius, Mist’ Sampson,
is the friend of my soul. Julius keeps me plied with
liquor, morning, noon, and night. Julius is a real
benefactor. Julius threw the tea and coffee out of window when I
used to have any. Julius empties all the water jugs of
their contents, and fills ’em with spirits. Julius
winds me up and keeps me going. Boil the brandy,
Julius!’
There was a rusty and furred saucepan in the ashes, the
ashes looked like the accumulation of weeks, and Beckwith,
rolling and staggering between us as if he were going to plunge
headlong into the fire, got the saucepan out, and tried to force
it into Slinkton’s hand.
‘Boil the brandy, Julius Caesar! Come!
Do your usual office. Boil the brandy!’
He became so fierce in his gesticulations with the saucepan,
that I expected to see him lay open Slinkton’s head with
it. I therefore put out my hand to check him. He
reeled back to the sofa, and sat there panting, shaking, and
red-eyed, in his rags of dressing-gown, looking at us both.
I noticed then that there was nothing to drink on the table but
brandy, and nothing to eat but salted herrings, and a hot,
sickly, highly-peppered stew.
‘At all events, Mr. Sampson,’ said Slinkton,
offering me the smooth gravel path for the last time, ‘I
thank you for interfering between me and this unfortunate
man’s violence. However you came here, Mr. Sampson,
or with whatever motive you came here, at least I thank you for
that.’
‘Boil the brandy,’ muttered Beckwith.
Without gratifying his desire to know how I came there, I
said, quietly, ‘How is your niece, Mr. Slinkton?’
He looked hard at me, and I looked hard at him.
‘I am sorry to say, Mr. Sampson, that my niece has
proved treacherous and ungrateful to her best friend. She
left me without a word of notice or explanation. She was
misled, no doubt, by some designing rascal. Perhaps you may
have heard of it.’
‘I did hear that she was misled by a designing
rascal. In fact, I have proof of it.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ said he.
‘Quite.’
‘Boil the brandy,’ muttered Beckwith.
‘Company to breakfast, Julius Cæsar. Do your
usual office, provide the usual breakfast, dinner, tea, and
supper. Boil the brandy!’
The eyes of Slinkton looked from him to me, and he said, after
a moment’s consideration,
‘Mr. Sampson, you are a man of the world, and so am
I. I will be plain with you.’
‘O no, you won’t,’ said I, shaking my
head.
‘I tell you, sir, I will be plain with you.’
‘And I tell you you will not,’ said I.
‘I know all about you. You plain with any
one? Nonsense, nonsense!’
‘I plainly tell you, Mr. Sampson,’ he went on,
with a manner almost composed, ‘that I understand your
object. You want to save your funds, and escape from your
liabilities; these are old tricks of trade with you
Office-gentlemen. But you will not do it, sir; you will not
succeed. You have not an easy adversary to play against,
when you play against me. We shall have to inquire, in due
time, when and how Mr. Beckwith fell into his present
habits. With that remark, sir, I put this poor creature,
and his incoherent wanderings of speech, aside, and wish you a
good morning and a better case next time.’
While he was saying this, Beckwith had filled a half-pint
glass with brandy. At this moment, he threw the brandy at
his face, and threw the glass after it. Slinkton put his
hands up, half blinded with the spirit, and cut with the glass
across the forehead. At the sound of the breakage, a fourth
person came into the room, closed the door, and stood at it; he
was a very quiet but very keen-looking man, with iron-gray hair,
and slightly lame.
Slinkton pulled out his handkerchief, assuaged the pain in his
smarting eyes, and dabbled the blood on his forehead. He
was a long time about it, and I saw that in the doing of it, a
tremendous change came over him, occasioned by the change in
Beckwith, who ceased to pant and tremble, sat upright, and
never took his eyes off him. I never in my life saw a face
in which abhorrence and determination were so forcibly painted as
in Beckwith’s then.
‘Look at me, you villain,’ said Beckwith,
‘and see me as I really am. I took these rooms, to
make them a trap for you. I came into them as a drunkard,
to bait the trap for you. You fell into the trap, and you
will never leave it alive. On the morning when you last
went to Mr. Sampson’s office, I had seen him first.
Your plot has been known to both of us, all along, and you have
been counter-plotted all along. What? Having been
cajoled into putting that prize of two thousand pounds in your
power, I was to be done to death with brandy, and, brandy not
proving quick enough, with something quicker? Have I never
seen you, when you thought my senses gone, pouring from your
little bottle into my glass? Why, you Murderer and Forger,
alone here with you in the dead of night, as I have so often
been, I have had my hand upon the trigger of a pistol, twenty
times, to blow your brains out!’
This sudden starting up of the thing that he had supposed to
be his imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled
resolution to hunt him down and be the death of him, mercilessly
expressed from head to foot, was, in the first shock, too much
for him. Without any figure of speech, he staggered under
it. But there is no greater mistake than to suppose that a
man who is a calculating criminal, is, in any phase of his guilt,
otherwise than true to himself, and perfectly consistent with his
whole character. Such a man commits murder, and murder is
the natural culmination of his course; such a man has to outface
murder, and will do it with hardihood and effrontery. It is
a sort of fashion to express surprise that any notorious
criminal, having such crime upon his conscience, can so brave it
out. Do you think that if he had it on his conscience at
all, or had a conscience to have it upon, he would ever have
committed the crime?
Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe all such
monsters to be, this Slinkton recovered himself, and showed a
defiance that was sufficiently cold and quiet. He was
white, he was haggard, he was changed; but only as a sharper who
had played for a great stake and had been outwitted and had lost
the game.
‘Listen to me, you villain,’ said Beckwith,
‘and let every word you hear me say be a stab in your
wicked heart. When I took these rooms, to throw myself in
your way and lead you on to the scheme that I knew my appearance
and supposed character and habits would suggest to such a devil,
how did I know that? Because you were no stranger to
me. I knew you well. And I knew you to be the cruel
wretch who, for so much money, had killed one innocent girl while
she trusted him implicitly, and who was by inches killing
another.’
Slinkton took out a snuff-box, took a pinch of snuff, and
laughed.
‘But see here,’ said Beckwith, never looking away,
never raising his voice, never relaxing his face, never
unclenching his hand. ‘See what a dull wolf you have
been, after all! The infatuated drunkard who never drank a
fiftieth part of the liquor you plied him with, but poured it
away, here, there, everywhere, almost before your eyes; who
bought over the fellow you set to watch him and to ply him, by
outbidding you in his bribe, before he had been at his work three
days with whom you have observed no caution, yet who was so
bent on ridding the earth of you as a wild beast, that he would
have defeated you if you had been ever so prudent, that
drunkard whom you have, many a time, left on the floor of this
room, and who has even let you go out of it, alive and
undeceived, when you have turned him over with your
foot has, almost as often, on the same night, within an
hour, within a few minutes, watched you awake, had his hand at
your pillow when you were asleep, turned over your papers, taken
samples from your bottles and packets of powder, changed their
contents, rifled every secret of your life!’
He had had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but had
gradually let it drop from between his fingers to the floor;
where he now smoothed it out with his foot, looking down at it
the while.
‘That drunkard,’ said Beckwith, ‘who had
free access to your rooms at all times, that he might drink the
strong drinks that you left in his way and be the sooner ended,
holding no more terms with you than he would hold with a tiger,
has had his master-key for all your locks, his test for all your
poisons, his clue to your cipher-writing. He can tell you,
as well as you can tell him, how long it took to complete that
deed, what doses there were, what intervals, what signs of
gradual decay upon mind and body; what distempered fancies were
produced, what observable changes, what physical pain. He
can tell you, as well as you can tell him, that all this was
recorded day by day, as a lesson of experience for future
service. He can tell you, better than you can tell him,
where that journal is at this moment.’
Slinkton stopped the action of his foot, and looked at
Beckwith.
‘No,’ said the latter, as if answering a question
from him. ‘Not in the drawer of the writing-desk that
opens with a spring; it is not there, and it never will be there
again.’
‘Then you are a thief!’ said Slinkton.
Without any change whatever in the inflexible purpose, which
it was quite terrific even to me to contemplate, and from the
power of which I had always felt convinced it was impossible for
this wretch to escape, Beckwith returned,
‘And I am your niece’s shadow, too.’
With an imprecation Slinkton put his hand to his head, tore
out some hair, and flung it to the ground. It was the end
of the smooth walk; he destroyed it in the action, and it will
soon be seen that his use for it was past.
Beckwith went on: ‘Whenever you left here, I left
here. Although I understood that you found it necessary to
pause in the completion of that purpose, to avert suspicion,
still I watched you close, with the poor confiding girl.
When I had the diary, and could read it word by word, it
was only about the night before your last visit to
Scarborough, you remember the night? you slept with a small
flat vial tied to your wrist, I sent to Mr. Sampson, who
was kept out of view. This is Mr. Sampson’s trusty
servant standing by the door. We three saved your niece
among us.’
Slinkton looked at us all, took an uncertain step or two from
the place where he had stood, returned to it, and glanced about
him in a very curious way, as one of the meaner reptiles
might, looking for a hole to hide in. I noticed at the same
time, that a singular change took place in the figure of the
man, as if it collapsed within his clothes, and they
consequently became ill-shapen and ill-fitting.
‘You shall know,’ said Beckwith, ‘for I hope
the knowledge will be bitter and terrible to you, why you have
been pursued by one man, and why, when the whole interest that
Mr. Sampson represents would have expended any money in hunting
you down, you have been tracked to death at a single
individual’s charge. I hear you have had the name of
Meltham on your lips sometimes?’
I saw, in addition to those other changes, a sudden stoppage
come upon his breathing.
‘When you sent the sweet girl whom you murdered (you
know with what artfully made-out surroundings and probabilities
you sent her) to Meltham’s office, before taking her abroad
to originate the transaction that doomed her to the grave, it
fell to Meltham’s lot to see her and to speak with
her. It did not fall to his lot to save her, though I know
he would freely give his own life to have done it. He
admired her; I would say he loved her deeply, if I thought
it possible that you could understand the word. When she
was sacrificed, he was thoroughly assured of your guilt.
Having lost her, he had but one object left in life, and that was
to avenge her and destroy you.’
I saw the villain’s nostrils rise and fall convulsively;
but I saw no moving at his mouth.
‘That man Meltham,’ Beckwith steadily pursued,
‘was as absolutely certain that you could never elude him
in this world, if he devoted himself to your destruction with his
utmost fidelity and earnestness, and if he divided the sacred
duty with no other duty in life, as he was certain that in
achieving it he would be a poor instrument in the hands of
Providence, and would do well before Heaven in striking you out
from among living men. I am that man, and I thank God that
I have done my work !’
If Slinkton had been running for his life from swift-footed
savages, a dozen miles, he could not have shown more emphatic
signs of being oppressed at heart and labouring for breath, than
he showed now, when he looked at the pursuer who had so
relentlessly hunted him down.
‘You never saw me under my right name before; you see me
under my right name now. You shall see me once again in the
body, when you are tried for your life. You shall see me
once again in the spirit, when the cord is round your neck, and
the crowd are crying against you !’
When Meltham had spoken these last words, the miscreant
suddenly turned away his face, and seemed to strike his mouth
with his open hand. At the same instant, the room was
filled with a new and powerful odour, and, almost at the same
instant, he broke into a crooked run, leap, start, I have
no name for the spasm, and fell, with a dull weight that
shook the heavy old doors and windows in their frames.
That was the fitting end of him.
When we saw that he was dead, we drew away from the room, and
Meltham, giving me his hand, said, with a weary air,
‘I have no more work on earth, my friend. But I
shall see her again elsewhere.’
It was in vain that I tried to rally him. He might have
saved her, he said; he had not saved her, and he reproached
himself; he had lost her, and he was broken-hearted.
‘The purpose that sustained me is over, Sampson, and
there is nothing now to hold me to life. I am not fit for
life; I am weak and spiritless; I have no hope and no object; my
day is done.’
In truth, I could hardly have believed that the broken man who
then spoke to me was the man who had so strongly and so
differently impressed me when his purpose was before him. I
used such entreaties with him, as I could; but he still said, and
always said, in a patient, undemonstrative way,nothing
could avail him, he was brokenhearted.
He died early in the next spring. He was buried by the
side of the poor young lady for whom he had cherished those
tender and unhappy regrets; and he left all he had to her
sister. She lived to be a happy wife and mother; she
married my sister’s son, who succeeded poor Meltham; she is
living now, and her children ride about the garden on my
walking-stick when I go to see her.