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Edmund Burke - "Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches"

Ernest Bramah - "Kai Lung's Golden Hours"

Charles Dickens - ""

Charles Dickens - "American Notes for General Circulation"

AFTER DARK

W >> Wilkie Collins >> AFTER DARK




Secretly respecting and admiring him for what he had just said, I
promised that his directions should be implicitly followed, and
began to work immediately. Before I had pursued my occupation for
ten minutes, the conversation began to flag, and the usual
obstacle to my success with a sitter gradually set itself up
between us. Quite unconsciously, of course, Mr. Faulkner
stiffened his neck, shut his month, and contracted his
eyebrows--evidently under the impression that he was facilitating
the process of taking his portrait by making his face as like a
lifeless mask as possible. All traces of his natural animated
expression were fast disappearing, and he was beginning to change
into a heavy and rather melancholy-looking man.

This complete alteration was of no great consequence so long as I
was only engaged in drawing the outline of his face and the
general form of his features. I accordingly worked on doggedly
for more than an hour--then left off to point my chalks again,
and to give my sitter a few minutes' rest. Thus far the likeness
had not suffered through Mr. Faulkner's unfortunate notion of the
right way of sitting for his portrait; but the time of
difficulty, as I well knew, was to come. It was impossible for me
to think of putting any expression into the drawing unless I
could contrive some means, when he resumed his chair, of making
him look like himself again. "I will talk to him about foreign
parts," thought I, "and try if I can't make him forget that he is
sitting for his picture in that way."

While I was pointing my chalks Mr. Faulkner was walking up and
down the room. He chanced to see the portfolio I had brought with
me leaning against the wall, and asked if there were any sketches
in it. I told him there were a few which I had made during my
recent stay in Paris; "In Paris?" he repeated, with a look of
interest; "may I see them?"

I gave him the permission he asked as a matter of course. Sitting
down, he took the portfolio on his knee, and began to look
through it. He turned over the first five sketches rapidly
enough; but when he came to the sixth, I saw his face flush
directly, and observed that he took the drawing out of the
portfolio, carried it to the window, and remained silently
absorbed in the contemplation of it for full five minutes. After
that, he turned round to me, and asked very anxiously if I had
any objection to part with that sketch.

It was the least interesting drawing of the collection--merely a
view in one of the streets running by the backs of the houses in
the Palais Royal. Some four or five of these houses were
comprised in the view, which was of no particular use to me in
any way; and which was too valueless, as a work of art, for me to
think of selling it. I begged his acceptance of it at once. He
thanked me quite warmly; and then, seeing that I looked a little
surprised at the odd selection he had made from my sketches,
laughingly asked me if I could guess why he had been so anxious
to become possessed of the view which I had given him?

"Probably," I answered, "there is some remarkable historical
association connected with that street at the back of the Palais
Royal, of which I am ignorant."

"No," said Mr. Faulkner; "at least none that _I_ know of. The
only association connected with the place in _my_ mind is a
purely personal association. Look at this house in your
drawing--the house with the water-pipe running down it from top
to bottom. I once passed a night there--a night I shall never
forget to the day of my death. I have had some awkward traveling
adventures in my time; but _that_ adventure--! Well, never mind,
suppose we begin the sitting. I make but a bad return for your
kindness in giving me the sketch by thus wasting your time in
mere talk."

"Come! come!" thought I, as he went back to the sitter's chair,
"I shall see your natural expression on your face if I can only
get you to talk about that adventure." It was easy enough to lead
him in the right direction. At the first hint from me, he
returned to the subject of the house in the back street. Without,
I hope, showing any undue curiosity, I contrived to let him see
that I felt a deep interest in everything he now said. After two
or three preliminary hesitations, he at last, to my great joy,
fairly started on the narrative of his adventure. In the interest
of his subject he soon completely forgot that he was sitting for
his portrait--the very expression that I wanted came over his
face--and my drawing proceeded toward completion, in the right
direction, and to the best purpose. At every fresh touch I felt
more and more certain that I was now getting the better of my
grand difficulty; and I enjoyed the additional gratification of
having my work lightened by the recital of a true story, which
possessed, in my estimation, all the excitement of the most
exciting romance.

This, as I recollect it, is how Mr. Faulkner told me his
adventure:

THE TRAVELER'S STORY

OF

A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED.

Shortly after my education at college was finished, I happened to
be staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young
men then, and lived, I am afraid, rather a wild life, in the
delightful city of our sojourn. One night we were idling about
the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement
we should next betake ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to
Frascati's; but his suggestion was not to my taste. I knew
Frascati's, as the French saying is, by heart; had lost and won
plenty of five-franc pieces there, merely for amusement's sake,
until it was amusement no longer, and was thoroughly tired, in
fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social
anomaly as a respectable gambling-house. "For Heaven's sake,"
said I to my friend, "let us go somewhere where we can see a
little genuine, blackguard, poverty-stricken gaming with no false
gingerbread glitter thrown over it all. Let us get away from
fashionable Frascati's, to a house where they don't mind letting
in a man with a ragged coat, or a man with no coat, ragged or
otherwise." "Very well," said my friend, "we needn't go out of
the Palais Royal to find the sort of company you want. Here's the
place just before us; as blackguard a place, by all report, as
you could possibly wish to see." In another minute we arrived at
the door, and entered the house, the back of which you have drawn
in your sketch.

When we got upstairs, and had left our hats and sticks with the
doorkeeper, we were admitted into the chief gambling-room. We did
not find many people assembled there. But, few as the men were
who looked up at us on our entrance, they were all
types--lamentably true types--of their respective classes.

We had come to see blackguards; but these men were something
worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all
blackguardism--here there was nothing but tragedy--mute, weird
tragedy. The quiet in the room was horrible. The thin, haggard,
long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the
turning up of the cards, never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced,
pimply player, who pricked his piece of pasteboard perseveringly,
to register how often black won, and how often red--never spoke;
the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture eyes and the darned
great-coat, who had lost his last _sou,_ and still looked on
desperately, after he could play no longer--never spoke. Even the
voice of the croupier sounded as if it were strangely dulled and
thickened in the atmosphere of the room. I had entered the place
to laugh, but the spectacle before me was something to weep over.
I soon found it necessary to take refuge in excitement from the
depression of spirits which was fast stealing on me.
Unfortunately I sought the nearest excitement, by going to the
table and beginning to play. Still more unfortunately, as the
event will show, I won--won prodigiously; won incredibly; won at
such a rate that the regular players at the table crowded round
me; and staring at my stakes with hungry, superstitious eyes,
whispered to one another that the English stranger was going to
break the bank.

The game was _Rouge et Noir_. I had played at it in every city in
Europe, without, however, the care or the wish to study the
Theory of Chances--that philosopher's stone of all gamblers! And
a gambler, in the strict sense of the word, I had never been. I
was heart-whole from the corroding passion for play. My gaming
was a mere idle amusement. I never resorted to it by necessity,
because I never knew what it was to want money. I never practiced
it so incessantly as to lose more than I could afford, or to gain
more than I could coolly pocket without being thrown off my
balance by my good luck. In short, I had hitherto frequented
gambling-tables--just as I frequented ball-rooms and
opera-houses--because they amused me, and because I had nothing
better to do with my leisure hours.

But on this occasion it was very different--now, for the first
time in my life, I felt what the passion for play really was. My
success first bewildered, and then, in the most literal meaning
of the word, intoxicated me. Incredible as it may appear, it is
nevertheless true, that I only lost when I attempted to estimate
chances, and played according to previous calculation. If I left
everything to luck, and staked without any care or consideration,
I was sure to win--to win in the face of every recognized
probability in favor of the bank. At first some of the men
present ventured their money safely enough on my color; but I
speedily increased my stakes to sums which they dared not risk.
One after another they left off playing, and breathlessly looked
on at my game.

Still, time after time, I staked higher and higher, and still
won. The excitement in the room rose to fever pitch. The silence
was interrupted by a deep-muttered chorus of oaths and
exclamations in different languages, every time the gold was
shoveled across to my side of the table--even the imperturbable
croupier dashed his rake on the floor in a (French) fury of
astonishment at my success. But one man present preserved his
self-possession, and that man was my friend. He came to my side,
and whispering in English, begged me to leave the place,
satisfied with what I had already gained. I must do him the
justice to say that he repeated his warnings and entreaties
several times, and only left me and went away after I had
rejected his advice (I was to all intents and purposes gambling
drunk) in terms which rendered it impossible for him to address
me again that night.

Shortly after he had gone, a hoarse voice behind me cried:
"Permit me, my dear sir--permit me to restore to their proper
place two napoleons which you have dropped. Wonderful luck, sir!
I pledge you my word of honor, as an old soldier, in the course
of my long experience in this sort of thing, I never saw such
luck as yours--never! Go on, sir--_Sacre mille bombes!_ Go on
boldly, and break the bank!"

I turned round and saw, nodding and smiling at me with inveterate
civility, a tall man, dressed in a frogged and braided surtout.

If I had been in my senses, I should have considered him,
personally, as being rather a suspicious specimen of an old
soldier. He had goggling, bloodshot eyes, mangy mustaches, and a
broken nose. His voice betrayed a barrack-room intonation of the
worst order, and he had the dirtiest pair of hands I ever
saw--even in France. These little personal peculiarities
exercised, however, no repelling influence on me. In the mad
excitement, the reckless triumph of that moment, I was ready to
"fraternize" with anybody who encouraged me in my game. I
accepted the old soldier's offered pinch of snuff; clapped him on
the back, and swore he was the honestest fellow in the world--the
most glorious relic of the Grand Army that I had ever met with.
"Go on!" cried my military friend, snapping his fingers in
ecstasy--"Go on, and win! Break the bank--_Mille tonnerres!_ my
gallant English comrade, break the bank!"

And I _did_ go on--went on at such a rate, that in another
quarter of an hour the croupier called out, "Gentlemen, the bank
has discontinued for to-night." All the notes, and all the gold
in that "bank," now lay in a heap under my hands; the whole
floating capital of the gambling-house was waiting to pour into
my pockets!

"Tie up the money in your pocket-handkerchief, my worthy sir,"
said the old soldier, as I wildly plunged my hands into my heap
of gold. "Tie it up, as we used to tie up a bit of dinner in the
Grand Army; your winnings are too heavy for any breeches-pockets
that ever were sewed. There! that's it--shovel them in, notes and
all! _Credie!_ what luck! Stop! another napoleon on the floor!
_Ah! sacre petit polisson de Napoleon!_ have I found thee at
last? Now then, sir--two tight double knots each way with your
honorable permission, and the money's safe. Feel it! feel it,
fortunate sir! hard and round as a cannon-ball--_Ah, bah!_ if
they had only fired such cannon-balls at us at Austerlitz--_nom
d'une pipe!_ if they only had! And now, as an ancient grenadier,
as an ex-brave of the French army, what remains for me to do? I
ask what? Simply this: to entreat my valued English friend to
drink a bottle of Champagne with me, and toast the goddess
Fortune in foaming goblets before we part!"

Excellent ex-brave! Convivial ancient grenadier! Champagne by all
means! An English cheer for an old soldier! Hurrah! hurrah!
Another English cheer for the goddess Fortune! Hurrah! hurrah!
hurrah!

"Bravo! the Englishman; the amiable, gracious Englishman, in
whose veins circulates the vivacious blood of France! Another
glass? _Ah, bah!_--the bottle is empty! Never mind! _Vive le
vin!_ I, the old soldier, order another bottle, and half a pound
of bonbons with it!"

"No, no, ex-brave; never--ancient grenadier! _Your_ bottle last
time; _my_ bottle this. Behold it! Toast away! The French Army!
the great Napoleon! the present company! the croupier! the honest
croupier's wife and daughters--if he has any! the Ladies
generally! everybody in the world!"

By the time the second bottle of Champagne was emptied, I felt as
if I had been drinking liquid fire--my brain seemed all aflame.
No excess in wine had ever had this effect on me before in my
life. Was it the result of a stimulant acting upon my system when
I was in a highly excited state? Was my stomach in a particularly
disordered condition? Or was the Champagne amazingly strong?

"Ex-brave of the French Army!" cried I, in a mad state of
exhilaration, "_I_ am on fire! how are _you?_ You have set me on
fire! Do you hear, my hero of Austerlitz? Let us have a third
bottle of Champagne to put the flame out!"

The old soldier wagged his head, rolled his goggle-eyes, until I
expected to see
them slip out of their sockets; placed his dirty forefinger by
the side of his broken nose; solemnly ejaculated "Coffee!" and
immediately ran off into an inner room.

The word pronounced by the eccentric veteran seemed to have a
magical effect on the rest of the company present. With one
accord they all rose to depart. Probably they had expected to
profit by my intoxication; but finding that my new friend was
benevolently bent on preventing me from getting dead drunk, had
now abandoned all hope of thriving pleasantly on my winnings.
Whatever their motive might be, at any rate they went away in a
body. When the old soldier returned, and sat down again opposite
to me at the table, we had the room to ourselves. I could see the
croupier, in a sort of vestibule which opened out of it, eating
his supper in solitude. The silence was now deeper than ever.

A sudden change, too, had come over the "ex-brave." He assumed a
portentously solemn look; and when he spoke to me again, his
speech was ornamented by no oaths, enforced by no
finger-snapping, enlivened by no apostrophes or exclamations.

"Listen, my dear sir," said he, in mysteriously confidential
tones--"listen to an old soldier's advice. I have been to the
mistress of the house (a very charming woman, with a genius for
cookery!) to impress on her the necessity of making us some
particularly strong and good coffee. You must drink this coffee
in order to get rid of your little amiable exaltation of spirits
before you think of going home--you _must,_ my good and gracious
friend! With all that money to take home to-night, it is a sacred
duty to yourself to have your wits about you. You are known to be
a winner to an enormous extent by several gentlemen present
to-night, who, in a certain point of view, are very worthy and
excellent fellows; but they are mortal men, my dear sir, and they
have their amiable weaknesses. Need I say more? Ah, no, no! you
understand me! Now, this is what you must do--send for a
cabriolet when you feel quite well again--draw up all the windows
when you get into it--and tell the driver to take you home only
through the large and well-lighted thoroughfares. Do this; and
you and your money will be safe. Do this; and to-morrow you will
thank an old soldier for giving you a word of honest advice."

Just as the ex-brave ended his oration in very lachrymose tones,
the coffee came in, ready poured out in two cups. My attentive
friend handed me one of the cups with a bow. I was parched with
thirst, and drank it off at a draught. Almost instantly
afterwards, I was seized with a fit of giddiness, and felt more
completely intoxicated than ever. The room whirled round and
round furiously; the old soldier seemed to be regularly bobbing
up and down before me like the piston of a steam-engine. I was
half deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a feeling of utter
bewilderment, helplessness, idiocy, overcame me. I rose from my
chair, holding on by the table to keep my balance; and stammered
out that I felt dreadfully unwell--so unwell that I did not know
how I was to get home.

"My dear friend," answered the old soldier--and even his voice
seemed to be bobbing up and down as he spoke--"my dear friend, it
would be madness to go home in _your_ state; you would be sure to
lose your money; you might be robbed and murdered with the
greatest ease. _I_ am going to sleep here; do _you_ sleep here,
too--they make up capital beds in this house--take one; sleep off
the effects of the wine, and go home safely with your winnings
to-morrow--to-morrow, in broad daylight."

I had but two ideas left: one, that I must never let go hold of
my handkerchief full of money; the other, that I must lie down
somewhere immediately, and fall off into a comfortable sleep. So
I agreed to the proposal about the bed, and took the offered arm
of the old soldier, carrying my money with my disengaged hand.
Preceded by the croupier, we passed along some passages and up a
flight of stairs into the bedroom which I was to occupy. The
ex-brave shook me warmly by the hand, proposed that we should
breakfast together, and then, followed by the croupier, left me
for the night.

I ran to the wash-hand stand; drank some of the water in my jug;
poured the rest out, and plunged my face into it; then sat down
in a chair and tried to compose myself. I soon felt better. The
change for my lungs, from the fetid atmosphere of the
gambling-room to the cool air of the apartment I now occupied,
the almost equally refreshing change for my eyes, from the
glaring gaslights of the "salon" to the dim, quiet flicker of one
bedroom-candle, aided wonderfully the restorative effects of cold
water. The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like a
reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of
sleeping all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the still
greater risk of trying to get out after the house was closed, and
of going home alone at night through the streets of Paris with a
large sum of money about me. I had slept in worse places than
this on my travels; so I determined to lock, bolt, and barricade
my door, and take my chance till the next morning.

Accordingly, I secured myself against all intrusion; looked under
the bed, and into the cupboard; tried the fastening of the
window; and then, satisfied that I had taken every proper
precaution, pulled off my upper clothing, put my light, which was
a dim one, on the hearth among a feathery litter of wood-ashes,
and got into bed, with the handkerchief full of money under my
pillow.

I soon felt not only that I could not go to sleep, but that I
could not even close my eyes. I was wide awake, and in a high
fever. Every nerve in my body trembled--every one of my senses
seemed to be preternaturally sharpened. I tossed and rolled, and
tried every kind of position, and perseveringly sought out the
cold corners of the bed, and all to no purpose. Now I thrust my
arms over the clothes; now I poked them under the clothes; now I
violently shot my legs straight out down to the bottom of the
bed; now I convulsively coiled them up as near my chin as they
would go; now I shook out my crumpled pillow, changed it to the
cool side, patted it flat, and lay down quietly on my back; now I
fiercely doubled it in two, set it up on end, thrust it against
the board of the bed, and tried a sitting posture. Every effort
was in vain; I groaned with vexation as I felt that I was in for
a sleepless night.

What could I do? I had no book to read. And yet, unless I found
out some method of diverting my mind, I felt certain that I was
in the condition to imagine all sorts of horrors; to rack my
brain with forebodings of every possible and impossible danger;
in short, to pass the night in suffering all conceivable
varieties of nervous terror.

I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room--which was
brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the
window--to see if it contained any pictures or ornaments that I
could at all clearly distinguish. While my eyes wandered from
wall to wall, a remembrance of Le Maistre's delightful little
book, "Voyage autour de ma Chambre," occurred to me. I resolved
to imitate the French author, and find occupation and amusement
enough to relieve the tedium of my wakefulness, by making a
mental inventory of every article of furniture I could see, and
by following up to their sources the multitude of associations
which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand may be made to
call forth.

In the nervous unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found
it much easier to make my inventory than to make my reflections,
and thereupon soon gave up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre's
fanciful track--or, indeed, of thinking at all. I looked about
the room at the different articles of furniture, and did nothing
more.

There was, first, the bed I was lying in; a four-post bed, of all
things in the world to meet with in Paris--yes, a thorough clumsy
British four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz--the
regular fringed valance all round--the regular stifling,
unwholesome curtains, which I remembered having mechanically
drawn back against the posts without particularly noticing the
bed when I first got into the room. Then there was the
marble-topped wash-hand stand, from which the water I had
spilled, in my hurry to pour it out, was still dripping, slowly
and more slowly, on to the brick floor. Then two small chairs,
with my coat, waistcoat, and trousers flung on them. Then a large
elbow-chair covered with dirty-white dimity, with my cravat and
shirt collar thrown over the back. Then a chest of drawers with
two of the brass handles off, and a tawdry, broken china inkstand
placed on it by way of ornament for the top. Then the
dressing-table, adorned by a very small looking-glass, and a very
large pincushion. Then the window--an unusually large window.
Then a dark old picture, which the feeble candle dimly showed me.
It was a picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with
a plume of towering feathers. A swarthy, sinister ruffian,
looking upward, shading his eyes with his hand, and looking
intently upward--it might be at some tall gallows at which he was
going to be hanged. At any rate, he had the appearance of
thoroughly deserving it.

This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward
too--at the top of the bed. It was a gloomy and not an
interesting object, and I looked back at the picture. I counted
the feathers in the man's hat--they stood out in relief--three
white, two green. I observed the crown of his hat, which was of
conical shape, according to the fashion supposed to have been
favored by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up at. It
couldn't be at the stars; such a desperado was neither astrologer
nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was going
to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into
possession of his conical crowned hat and plume of feathers? I
counted the feathers again--three white, two green.

While I still lingered over this very improving and intellectual
employment, my thoughts insensibly began to wander. The moonlight
shining into the room reminded me of a certain moonlight night in
England--the night after a picnic party in a Welsh valley. Every
incident of the drive homeward, through lovely scenery, which the
moonlight made lovelier than ever, came back to my remembrance,
though I had never given the picnic a thought for years; though,
if I had _tried_ to recollect it, I could certainly have recalled
little or nothing of that scene long past. Of all the wonderful
faculties that help to tell us we are immortal, which speaks the
sublime truth more eloquently than memory? Here was I, in a
strange house of the most suspicious character, in a situation of
uncertainty, and even of peril, which might seem to make the cool
exercise of my recollection almost out of the question;
nevertheless, remembering, quite involuntarily, places, people,
conversations, minute circumstances of every kind, which I had
thought forgotten forever; which I could not possibly have
recalled at will, even under the most favorable auspices. And
what cause had produced in a moment the whole of this strange,
complicated, mysterious effect? Nothing but some rays of
moonlight shining in at my bedroom window.

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