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Ambrose Bierce - "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge"

Sir Robert Naunton. - "Travels in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth by"

Rudyard Kipling - "Plain Tales from the Hills"

Charles W. Chesnutt - "The House Behind The Cedars"

AFTER DARK

W >> Wilkie Collins >> AFTER DARK




I have often heard him relate that strange adventure (William is
the best teller of a story I ever met with) to friends of all
ranks in many different parts of England, and I never yet knew it
fail of producing an effect. The farmhouse audience were, I may
almost say, petrified by it. I never before saw people look so
long in the same direction, and sit so long in the same attitude,
as they did. Even the servants stole away from their work in the
kitchen, and, unrebuked by master or mistress, stood quite
spell-bound in the doorway to listen. Observing all this in
silence, while my husband was going on with his narrative, the
thought suddenly flashed across me, "Why should William not get a
wider audience for that story, as well as for others which he has
heard from time to time from his sitters, and which he has
hitherto only repeated in private among a few friends? People
tell stories in books and get money for them. What if we told our
stories in a book? and what if the book sold? Why freedom,
surely, from the one great anxiety that is now preying on us!
Money enough to stop at the farmhouse till William's eyes are fit
for work again!" I almost jumped up from my chair as my thought
went on shaping itself in this manner. When great men make
wonderful discoveries, do they feel sensations like mine, I
wonder? Was Sir Isaac Newton within an ace of skipping into the
air when he first found out the law of gravitation? Did Friar
Bacon long to dance when he lit the match and heard the first
charge of gunpowder in the world go off with a bang?

I had to put a strong constraint on myself, or I should have
communicated all that was passing in my mind to William before
our friends at the farmhouse. But I knew it was best to wait
until we were alone, and I did wait. What a relief it was when we
all got up at last to say good-night!

The moment we were in our own room, I could not stop to take so
much as a pin out of my dress before I began. "My dear," said I,
"I never heard you tell that gambling-house adventure so well
before. What an effect it had upon our friends! what an effect,
indeed, it always has wherever you tell it!"

So far he did not seem to take much notice. He just nodded, and
began to pour out some of the lotion in which he always bathes
his poor eyes the last thing at night.

"And as for that, William," I went on, "all your stories seem to
interest people. What a number you have picked up, first and
last, from different sitters, in the fifteen years of your
practice as a portrait-painter! Have you any idea how many
stories you really do know?"

No: he could not undertake to say how many just then. He gave
this answer in a very indifferent tone, dabbing away all the time
at his eyes with the sponge and lotion. He did it so awkwardly
and roughly, as it seemed to me, that I took the sponge from him
and applied the lotion tenderly myself.

"Do you think," said I, "if you turned over one of your stories
carefully in your mind beforehand--say the one you told to-night,
for example--that you could repeat it all to me so perfectly and
deliberately that I should be able to take it down in writing
from your lips?"

Yes: of course he could. But why ask that question?

"Because I should like to have all the stories that you have been
in the habit of relating to our friends set down fairly in
writing, by way of preserving them from ever being forgotten."

Would I bathe his left eye now, because that felt the hottest
to-night? I began to forbode that his growing indifference to what
I was saying would soon end in his fairly going to sleep before I
had developed my new idea, unless I took some means forthwith of
stimulating his curiosity, or, in other words, of waking him into
a proper state of astonishment and attention. "William," said I,
without another syllable of preface, "I have got a new plan for
finding all the money we want for our expenses here."

He jerked his head up directly, and looked at me. What plan?

"This: The state of your eyes prevents you for the present from
following your profession as an artist, does it not? Very well.
What are you to do with your idle time, my dear? Turn author! And
how are you to get the money we want? By publishing a book!"

"Good gracious, Leah! are you out of your senses?" he exclaimed.

I put my arm round his neck and sat down on his knee (the course
I always take when I want to persuade him to anything with as few
words as possible).

"Now, William, listen patiently to me," I said. "An artist lies
under this great disadvantage in case of accidents--his talents
are of no service to him unless he can use his eyes and fingers.
An author, on the other hand, can turn his talents to account
just as well by means of other people's eyes and fingers as by
means of his own. In your present situation, therefore, you have
nothing for it, as I said before, but to turn author. Wait! and
hear me out. The book I want you to make is a book of all your
stories. You shall repeat them, and I will write them down from
your dictation. Our manuscript shall be printed; we will sell the
book to the public, and so support ourselves honorably in
adversity, by doing the best we can to interest and amuse
others."

While I was saying all this--I suppose in a very excitable
manner--my husband looked, as our young sailor-friend would
phrase it, quite _taken aback._ "You were always quick at
contriving, Leah," he said; "but how in the world came you to
think of this plan?"

"I thought of it while you were telling them the gambling-house
adventure downstairs," I answered.

"It is an ingenious idea, and a bold idea," he went on,
thoughtfully. "But it is one thing to tell a story to a circle of
friends, and another thing to put it into a printed form for an
audience of strangers. Consider, my dear, that we are neither of
us used to what is called writing for the press."

"Very true," said I, "but nobody is used to it when they first
begin, and yet plenty of people have tried the hazardous literary
experiment successfully. Besides, in our case, we have the
materials ready to our hands; surely we can succeed in shaping
them presentably if we aim at nothing but the simple truth."

"Who is to do the eloquent descriptions and the striking
reflections, and all that part of it?" said William, perplexedly
shaking his head.

"Nobody!" I replied. "The eloquent descriptions and the striking
reflections are just the parts of a story-book that people never
read. Whatever we do, let us not, if we can possibly help it,
write so much as a single sentence that can be conveniently
skipped. Come! come!" I continued, seeing him begin to shake his
head again; "no more objections, William, I am too certain of the
success of my plan to endure them. If you still doubt, let us
refer the new project to a competent arbitrator. The doctor is
coming to see you to-morrow. I will tell him all that I have told
you; and if you will promise on your side, I will engage on mine
to be guided entirely by his opinion."

William smiled, and readily gave the promise. This was all I
wanted to send me to bed in the best spirits. For, of course, I
should never have thought of mentioning the doctor as an
arbitrator, if I had not known beforehand that he was sure to be
on my side.

6th.--The arbitrator has shown that he deserved my confidence in
him. He ranked himself entirely on my side before I had half done
explaining to him what my new project really was. As to my
husband's doubts and difficulties, the dear good man would not so
much as hear them mentioned. "No objections," he cried, gayly;
"set to work, Mr. Kerby, and make your fortune. I always said
your wife was worth her weight in gold--and here she is now, all
ready to get into the bookseller's scales and prove it. Set to
work! set to work!"

"With all my heart," said William, beginning at last to catch the
infection of our enthusiasm. "But when my part of the work and my
wife's has been completed, what are we to do with the produce of
our labor?"

"Leave that to me," answered the doctor. "Finish your book and
send it to my house; I will show it at once to the editor of our
country newspaper. He has plenty of literary friends in London,
and he will be just the man to help you. By-the-by," added the
doctor, addressing me, "you think of everything, Mrs. Kerby; pray
have you thought of a name yet for the new book?"

At that question it was my turn to be "taken aback." The idea of
naming the book had never once entered my head.

"A good title is of vast importance," said the doctor, knitting
his brows thoughtfully. "We must all think about that. What shall
it be? eh, Mrs. Kerby, what shall it be?"

"Perhaps something may strike us after we have fairly set to
work," my husband suggested. "Talking of work," he continued,
turning to me, "how are you to find time, Leah, with your nursery
occupations, for writing down all the stories as I tell them?"

"I have been thinking of that this morning," said I, "and have
come to the conclusion that I shall have but little leisure to
write from your dictation in the day-time. What with dressing and
washing the children, teaching them, giving them their meals,
taking them out to walk, and keeping them amused at home--to say
nothing of sitting sociably at work with the dame and her two
girls in the afternoon--I am afraid I shall have few
opportunities of doing my part of the book between breakfast and
tea-time. But when the children are in bed, and the farmer and
his family are reading or dozing, I should have at least three
unoccupied hours to spare. So, if you don't mind putting off our
working-time till after dark--"

"There's the title!" shouted the doctor, jumping out of his chair
as if he had been shot.

"Where?" cried I, looking all round me in the surprise of the
moment, as if I had expected to see the title magically inscribed
for us on the walls of the room.

"In your last words, to be sure!" rejoined the doctor. "You said
just now that you would not have leisure to write from Mr.
Kerby's dictation till _after dark._ What can we do better than
name the book after the time when the book is written? Call it
boldly, _After dark._ Stop! before anybody says a word for or
against it, let us see how the name looks on paper."

I opened my writing-desk in a great flutter. The doctor selected
the largest sheet of paper and the broadest-nibbed pen he could
find, and wrote in majestic round-text letters, with alternate
thin and thick strokes beautiful to see, the two cabalistic words

AFTER DARK.

We all three laid our heads together over the paper, and in
breathless silence studied the effect of the round-text: William
raising his green shade in the excitement of the moment, and
actually disobeying the doctor's orders about not using his eyes,
in the doctor's own presence! After a good long stare, we looked
round solemnly in each other's faces and nodded. There was no
doubt whatever on the subject after seeing the round-text. In one
happy moment the doctor had hit on the right name.

"I have written the title-page," said our good friend, taking up
his hat to go. "And now I leave it to you two to write the book."

Since then I have mended four pens and bought a quire of
letter-paper at the village shop. William is to ponder well over
his stories in the daytime, so as to be quite ready for me "after
dark." We are to commence our new occupation this evening. My
heart beats fast and my eyes moisten when I think of it. How many
of our dearest interests depend upon the one little beginning
that we are to make to-night!

PROLOGUE TO THE FIRST STORY.

Before I begin, by the aid of my wife's patient attention and
ready pen, to relate any of the stories which I have heard at
various times from persons whose likenesses I have been employed
to take, it will not be amiss if I try to secure the reader's
interest in the following pages, by briefly explaining how I
became possessed of the narrative matter which they contain.

Of myself I have nothing to say, but that I have followed the
profession of a traveling portrait-painter for the last fifteen
years. The pursuit of my calling has not only led me all through
England, but has taken me twice to Scotland, and once to Ireland.
In moving from district to district, I am never guided beforehand
by any settled plan. Sometimes the letters of recommendation
which I get from persons who are satisfied with the work I have
done for them determine the direction in which I travel.
Sometimes I hear of a new neighborhood in which there is no
resident artist of ability, and remove thither on speculation.
Sometimes my friends among the picture-dealers say a good word on
my behalf to their rich customers, and so pave the way for me in
the large towns. Sometimes my prosperous and famous
brother-artists, hearing of small commissions which it is not
worth their while to accept, mention my name, and procure me
introductions to pleasant country houses. Thus I get on, now in
one way and now in another, not winning a reputation or making a
fortune, but happier, perhaps, on the whole, than many men who
have got both the one and the other. So, at least, I try to think
now, though I started in my youth with as high an ambition as the
best of them. Thank God, it is not my business here to speak of
past times and their disappointments. A twinge of the old
hopeless heartache comes over me sometimes still, when I think of
my student days.

One peculiarity of my present way of life is, that it brings me
into contact with all sorts of characters. I almost feel, by this
time, as if I had painted every civilized variety of the human
race. Upon the whole, my experience of the world, rough as it has
been, has not taught me to think unkindly of my fellow-creatures.
I have certainly received such treatment at the hands of some of
my sitters as I could not describe without saddening and shocking
any kind-hearted reader; but, taking one year and one place with
another, I have cause to remember with gratitude and
respect--sometimes even with friendship and affection--a very
large proportion of the numerous persons who have employed me.

Some of the results of my experience are curious in a moral point
of view. For example, I have found women almost uniformly less
delicate in asking me about my terms, and less generous in
remunerating me for my services, than men. On the other hand,
men, within my knowledge, are decidedly vainer of their personal
attractions, and more vexatiously anxious to have them done full
justice to on canvas, than women. Taking both sexes together, I
have found young people, for the most part, more gentle, more
reasonable, and more considerate than old. And, summing up, in a
general way, my experience of different ranks (which extends, let
me premise, all the way down from peers to publicans), I have met
with most of my formal and ungracious receptions among rich
people of uncertain social standing: the highest classes and the
lowest among my employers almost always contrive--in widely
different ways, of course, to make me feel at home as soon as I
enter their houses.

The one great obstacle that I have to contend against in the
practice of my profession is not, as some persons may imagine,
the difficulty of making my sitters keep their heads still while
I paint them, but the difficulty of getting them to preserve the
natural look and the every-day peculiarities of dress and manner.
People will assume an expression, will brush up their hair, will
correct any little characteristic carelessness in their
apparel--will, in short, when they want to have their likenesses
taken, look as if they were sitting for their pictures. If I
paint them, under these artificial circumstances, I fail of
course to present them in their habitual aspect; and my portrait,
as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter
always included. When we wish to judge of a man's character by
his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his
common workaday pen, not his best small-text, traced laboriously
with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with
portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right
reading of the externals of character recognizably presented to
the view of others.

Experience, after repeated trials, has proved to me that the only
way of getting sitters who persist in assuming a set look to
resume their habitual expression, is to lead them into talking
about some subject in which they are greatly interested. If I can
only beguile them into speaking earnestly, no matter on what
topic, I am sure of recovering their natural expression; sure of
seeing all the little precious everyday peculiarities of the man
or woman peep out, one after another, quite unawares. The long,
maundering stories about nothing, the wearisome recitals of petty
grievances, the local anecdotes unrelieved by the faintest
suspicion of anything like general interest, which I have been
condemned to hear, as a consequence of thawing the ice off the
features of formal sitters by the method just described, would
fill hundreds of volumes, and promote the repose of thousands of
readers. On the other hand, if I have suffered under the
tediousness of the many, I have not been without my compensating
gains from the wisdom and experience of the few. To some of my
sitters I have been indebted for information which has enlarged
my mind--to some for advice which has lightened my heart--to some
for narratives of strange adventure which riveted my attention at
the time, which have served to interest and amuse my fireside
circle for many years past, and which are now, I would fain hope,
destined to make kind friends for me among a wider audience than
any that I have yet addressed.

Singularly enough, almost all the best stories that I have heard
from my sitters have been told by accident. I only remember two
cases in which a story was volunteered to me, and, although I
have often tried the experiment, I cannot call to mind even a
single instance in which leading questions (as the lawyers call
them) on my part, addressed to a sitter, ever produced any result
worth recording. Over and over again, I have been disastrously
successful in encouraging dull people to weary me. But the clever
people who have something interesting to say, seem, so far as I
have observed them, to acknowledge no other stimulant than
chance. For every story which I propose including in the present
collection, excepting one, I have been indebted, in the first
instance, to the capricious influence of the same chance.
Something my sitter has seen about me, something I have remarked
in my sitter, or in the room in which I take the likeness, or in
the neighborhood through which I pass on my way to work, has
suggested the necessary association, or has started the right
train of recollections, and then the story appeared to begin of
its own accord. Occasionally the most casual notice, on my part,
of some very unpromising object has smoothed the way for the
relation of a long and interesting narrative. I first heard one
of the most dramatic of the stories that will be presented in
this book, merely through being carelessly inquisitive to know
the history of a stuffed poodle-dog.

It is thus not without reason that I lay some stress on the
desirableness of prefacing each one of the following narratives
by a brief account of the curious manner in which I became
possessed of it. As to my capacity for repeating these stories
correctly, I can answer for it that my memory may be trusted. I
may claim it as a merit, because it is after all a mechanical
one, that I forget nothing, and that I can call long-passed
conversations and events as readily to my recollection as if they
had happened but a few weeks ago. Of two things at least I feel
tolerably certain beforehand, in meditating over the contents of
this book: First, that I can repeat correctly all that I have
heard; and, secondly, that I have never missed anything worth
hearing when my sitters were addressing me on an interesting
subject. Although I cannot take the lead in talking while I am
engaged in painting, I can listen while others speak, and work
all the better for it.

So much in the way of general preface to the pages for which I am
about to ask the reader's attention. Let me now advance to
particulars, and describe how I came to hear the first story in
the present collection. I begin with it because it is the story
that I have oftenest "rehearsed," to borrow a phrase from the
stage. Wherever I go, I am sooner or later sure to tell it. Only
last night, I was persuaded into repeating it once more by the
inhabitants of the farmhouse in which I am now staying.



Not many years ago, on returning from a short holiday visit to a
friend settled in Paris, I found professional letters awaiting me
at my agent's in London, which required my immediate presence in
Liverpool. Without stopping to unpack, I proceeded by the first
conveyance to my new destination; and, calling at the
picture-dealer's shop, where portrait-painting engagements were
received for me, found to my great satisfaction that I had
remunerative employment in prospect, in and about Liverpool, for
at least two months to come. I was putting up my letters in high
spirits, and was just leaving the picture-dealer's shop to look
out for comfortable lodgings, when I was met at the door by the
landlord of one of the largest hotels in Liverpool--an old
acquaintance whom I had known as manager of a tavern in London in
my student days.

"Mr. Kerby!" he exclaimed, in great astonishment. "What an
unexpected meeting! the last man in the world whom I expected to
see, and yet the very man whose services I want to make use of!"

"What, more work for me?" said I; "are all the people in
Liverpool going to have their portraits painted?"

"I only know of one," replied the landlord, "a gentleman staying
at my hotel, who wants a chalk drawing done for him. I was on my
way here to inquire of any artist whom our picture-dealing friend
could recommend. How glad I am that I met you before I had
committed myself to employing a stranger!"

"Is this likeness wanted at once?" I asked, thinking of the
number of engagements that I had already got in my pocket.

"Immediately--to-day--this very hour, if possible," said the
landlord. "Mr. Faulkner, the gentleman I am speaking of, was to
have sailed yesterday for the Brazils from this place; but the
wind shifted last night to the wrong quarter, and he came ashore
again this morning. He may of course be detained here for some
time; but he may also be called on board ship at half an hour's
notice, if the wind shifts back again in the right direction.
This uncertainty makes it a matter of importance that the
likeness should be begun immediately. Undertake it if you
possibly can, for Mr. Faulkner's a liberal gentleman, who is sure
to give you your own terms."

I reflected for a minute or two. The portrait was only wanted in
chalk, and would not take long; besides, I might finish it in the
evening, if my other engagements pressed hard upon me in the
daytime. Why not leave my luggage at the picture-dealer's, put
off looking for lodgings till night, and secure the new
commission boldly by going back at once with the landlord to the
hotel? I decided on following this course almost as soon as the
idea occurred to me--put my chalks in my pocket, and a sheet of
drawing paper in the first of my portfolios that came to
hand--and so presented myself before Mr. Faulkner, ready to take
his likeness, literally at five minutes' notice.

I found him a very pleasant, intelligent man, young and
handsome. He had been a great traveler; had visited all the
wonders of the East; and was now about to explore the wilds of
the vast South American Continent. Thus much he told me
good-humoredly and unconstrainedly while I was preparing my
drawing materials.

As soon as I had put him in the right light and position, and had
seated myself opposite to him, he changed the subject of
conversation, and asked me, a little confusedly as I thought, if
it was not a customary practice among portrait-painters to gloss
over the faults in their sitters' faces, and to make as much as
possible of any good points which their features might possess.

"Certainly," I answered. "You have described the whole art and
mystery of successful portrait-painting in a few words."

"May I beg, then," said he, "that you will depart from the usual
practice in my case, and draw me with all my defects, exactly as
I am? The fact is," he went on, after a moment's pause, "the
likeness you are now preparing to take is intended for my mother.
My roving disposition makes me a great anxiety to her, and she
parted from me this last time very sadly and unwillingly. I don't
know how the idea came into my head, but it struck me this
morning that I could not better employ the time, while I was
delayed here on shore, than by getting my likeness done to send
to her as a keepsake. She has no portrait of me since I was a
child, and she is sure to value a drawing of me more than
anything else I could send to her. I only trouble you with this
explanation to prove that I am really sincere in my wish to be
drawn unflatteringly, exactly as I am."

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