WAKEFIELD
by 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
stated, 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 pretence 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 generous
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 exciting 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 ended 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 today 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 oilcloth, 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.
But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him
along the street, ere he lose 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 busybodies had been watching him, and
told his wife the whole affair. Poor Wakefield! Little knowest
thou thine 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 wofully 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 bedclothes
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 for 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 footboy--raise a hue and cry, through London
streets, in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master? Wonderful
escape! He gathers 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 nightfall comes the chariot of a physician, and deposits
its big-wigged and solemn burden 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 midst 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
tomorrow--probably next week--pretty soon. Poor man! The dead
have nearly as much chance of revisiting their earthly homes
as the self-banished Wakefield.
Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a
dozen pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond
our control lays its strong hand on every deed which we do,
and weaves its consequences into an iron tissue of necessity.
Wakefield is spell-bound. We must leave him for ten years or so,
to haunt around his house, without once crossing the threshold,
and to be faithful to his wife, with all the affection of which
his heart is capable, while he is slowly fading out of hers.
Long since, it must be remarked, he had lost the perception
of singularity in his conduct.
Now for a scene! Amind the throng of a London street we
distinguish a man, now waxing elderly, with few characteristics
to attract careless observers, yet bearing, in his whole aspect,
the handwriting of no common fate, for such as have the skill
to read it. He is meagre; his low and narrow forehead is deeply
wrinkled; his eyes, small and lustreless, sometimes wander
apprehensively about him, but oftener seem to look inward. He
bends his head, and moves with an indescribable obliquity of
gait, as if unwilling to display his full front to the world.
Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you will
allow that circumstances--which often produce remarkable men from
nature's ordinary handiwork--have produced one such here. Next,
leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the
opposite direction, where a portly female, considerably in the
wane of life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to
yonder church. She has the placid mien of settled widowhood. Her
regrets have either died away, or have become so essential to
her heart, that they would be poorly exchanged for joy. Just as
the lean man and well-conditioned woman are passing, a slight
obstruction occurs, and brings these two figures directly in
contact. Their hands touch; the pressure of the crowd forces her
bosom against his shoulder; they stand, face to face, staring
into each other's eyes. After a ten years' separation, thus
Wakefield meets his wife!
The throng eddies away, and carries them asunder. The sober
widow, resuming her former pace, proceeds to church, but pauses
in the portal, and throws a perplexed glance along the street.
She passes in, however, opening her prayer-book as she goes. And
the man! with so wild a face that busy and selfish London stands
to gaze after him, he hurries to his lodgings, bolts the door,
and throws himself upon the bed. The latent feelings of years
break out; his feeble mind acquires a brief energy from their
strength; all the miserable strangeness of his life is revealed
to him at a glance: and he cries out, passionately, "Wakefield !
Wakefield! You are mad!"
Perhaps he was so. The singularity of his situation must have
so moulded him to himself, that, considered in regard to his
fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be said
to possess his right mind. He had contrived, or rather he had
happened, to dissever himself from the world--to vanish--to
give up his place and privileges with living men, without being
admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel
to his. He was in the bustle of the city, as of old; but the
crowd swept by and saw him not; he was, we may figuratively say,
always beside his wife and at his hearth, yet must never feel
the warmth of the one nor the affection of the other. It was
Wakefield's unprecedented fate to retain his original share of
human sympathies, and to be still involved in human interests,
while he had lost his reciprocal influence on them. It would
be a most curious speculation to trace out the effect of such
circumstances on his heart and intellect, separately, and in
unison. Yet, changed as he was, he would seldom be conscious of
it, but deem himself the same man as ever; glimpses of the truth
indeed. would come, but only for the moment; and still he would
keep saying, "I shall soon go back!"--nor reflect that he had
been saying so for twenty years.
I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear, in the
retrospect, scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had
at first limited his absence. He would look on the affair as no
more than an interlude in the main business of his life. When,
after a little while more, he should deem it time to reenter his
parlor, his wife would clap her hands for joy, on beholding the
middle-aged Mr. Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake! Would Time but
await the close of our favorite follies, we should be young men,
all of us, and till Doomsday.
One evening, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield
is taking his customary walk towards the dwelling which he still
calls his own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent
showers that patter down upon the pavement, and are gone before
a man can put up his umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield
discerns, through the parlor windows of the second floor, the
red glow and the glimmer and fitful flash of a comfortable fire.
On the ceiling appears a grotesque shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield.
The cap, the nose and chin, and the broad waist, form an admirable
caricature, which dances, moreover, with the up-flickering and
down-sinking blaze, almost too merrily for the shade of an elderly
widow. At this instant a shower chances to fall, and is driven,
by the unmannerly gust, full into Wakefield's face and bosom. He
is quite penetrated with its autumnal chill. Shall he stand, wet
and shivering here, when his own hearth has a good fire to warm
him, and his own wife will run to fetch the gray coat and
small-clothes, which, doubtless, she has kept carefully in the
closet of their bed chamber? No! Wakefield is no such fool. He
ascends the steps--heavily!--for twenty years have stiffened
his legs since he came down--but he knows it not. Stay,
Wakefield! Would you go to the sole home that is left you? Then
step into your grave! The door opens. As he passes in, we have
a parting glimpse of his visage, and recognize the crafty smile,
which was the precursor of the little joke that he has ever
since been playing off at his wife's expense. How unmercifully
has he quizzed the poor woman! Well, a good night's rest to
Wakefield!
This happy event--supposing it to be such--could only have
occurred at an unpremeditated moment. We will not follow our
friend across the threshold. He has left us much food for
thought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral,
and be shaped into a figure. Amid the seeming confusion of
our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to
a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that,
by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a
fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield,
he may become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universe.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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