Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1111 page)

He burst out with the second verse:

Backwards and forwards, with silent tread,
I walked on my watch by the doors of the dead.
And I said, It’s hard, on this New Year,
While the rest are dancing to leave me here,
Alone with death and cold and fear —
Poor me!

“Chorus, Jack! Chorus, Mrs. Housekeeper! Ho! ho! look at her! She can’t resist the music — she has come back to us already. What can we do for you, ma’am? The flask’s not quite drained yet. Come and have a drink.”

She had returned, recoiling from the outer darkness and silence, giddy with the sickening sense of faintness which was creeping over her again. When Schwartz spoke she advanced with tottering steps. “Water!” she exclaimed, gasping for breath. “I’m faint — water! water!”

“Not a drop in the place, ma’am! Brandy, if you like?”

“I forbid it!” cried Jack, with a peremptory sign of the hand. “Drinkable gold is for us — not for her!”

The glass of wine which Schwartz had prevented him from drinking caught his notice. To give Madame Fontaine her own “remedy,” stolen from her own room, was just the sort of trick to please Jack in his present humor. He pointed to the glass, and winked at the watchman. After a momentary hesitation, Schwartz’s muddled brain absorbed the new idea. “Here’s a drop of wine left, ma’am,” he said. “Suppose you try it?”

She leaned one hand on the table to support herself. Her heart sank lower and lower; a cold perspiration bedewed her face. “Quick! quick!” she murmured faintly. She seized the glass, and emptied it eagerly to the last drop.

Schwartz and Jack eyed her with malicious curiosity. The idea of getting away was still in her mind. “I think I can walk now,” she said. “For God’s sake, let me out!”

“Haven’t I told you already? I can’t get out myself.”

At that brutal answer, she shrank back. Slowly and feebly she made her way to the chair, and dropped on it.

“Cheer up, ma’am!” said Schwartz. “You shall have more music to help you — you shall hear how the mad watchman lost his wits. Another drop of the drinkable gold, Jack. A dram for you and a dram for me — and here goes!” He roared out the last verses of the song: —

Any company’s better than none, I said:
If I can’t have the living, I’d like the dead.
In one terrific moment more,
The corpse-bell rang at each cell door,
The moonlight shivered on the floor —
Poor me!

The curtains gaped; there stood a ghost,
On every threshold, as white as frost,
You called us, they shrieked, and we gathered soon;
Dance with your guests by the New Year’s moon!
I danced till I dropped in a deadly swoon —
Poor me!

And since that night I’ve lost my wits,
And I shake with ceaseless ague-fits:
For the ghosts they turned me cold as stone,
On that New Year’s night when the white moon shone,
And I walked on my watch, all, all alone —
Poor me!

And, oh, when I lie in my coffin-bed,
Heap thick the earth above my head!
Or I shall come back, and dance once more,
With frantic feet on the Deadhouse floor,
And a ghost for a partner at every door —
Poor me!

The night had cleared. While Schwartz was singing, the moon shone in at the skylight. At the last verse of the song, a ray of the cold yellow light streamed across Jack’s face. The fire of the brandy leapt into flame — the madness broke out in him, with a burst of its by-gone fury. He sprang, screaming, to his feet.

“The moon!” he shouted — ”the mad watchman’s moon! The mad watchman himself is coming back. There he is, sliding down on the slanting light! Do you see the brown earth of the grave dropping from him, and the rope round his neck? Ha! how he skips, and twists, and twirls! He’s dancing again with the dead ones. Make way there! I mean to dance with them too. Come on, mad watchman — come on! I’m as mad as you are!”

He whirled round and round with the fancied ghost for a partner in the dance. The coarse laughter of Schwartz burst out again at the terrible sight. He called, with drunken triumph, to Madame Fontaine. “Look at Jacky, ma’am. There’s a dancer for you! There’s good company for a dull winter night!” She neither looked nor moved — she sat crouched on the chair, spellbound with terror. Jack threw up his arms, turned giddily once or twice, and sank exhausted on the floor. “The cold of him creeps up my hands,” he said, still possessed by the vision of the watchman. “He cools my eyes, he calms my heart, he stuns my head. I’m dying, dying, dying — going back with him to the grave. Poor me! poor me!”

He lay hushed in a strange repose; his eyes wide open, staring up at the moon. Schwartz drained the last drop of brandy out of the flask. “Jack’s name ought to be Solomon,” he pronounced with drowsy solemnity; “Solomon was wise; and Jack’s wise. Jack goes to sleep, when the liquor’s done. Take away the bottle, before the overseer comes in. If any man says I am not sober, that man lies. The Rhine wine has a way of humming in one’s head. That’s all, Mr. Overseer — that’s all. Do I see the sun rising, up there in the skylight? I wish you good-night; I wish — you — good — night.”

He laid his heavy arms on the table; his head dropped on them — he slept.

The time passed. No sound broke the silence but the lumpish snoring of Schwartz. No change appeared in Jack; there he lay, staring up at the moon.

Somewhere in the building (unheard thus far in the uproar) a clock struck the first hour of the morning.

Madame Fontaine started. The sound shook her with a new fear — a fear that expressed itself in a furtive look at the cell in which the dead woman lay. If the corpse-bell rang, would the stroke of it be like the single stroke of the clock?

“Jack!” she whispered. “Do you hear the clock? Oh, Jack, the stillness is dreadful — speak to me.”

He slowly raised himself. Perhaps the striking of the clock — perhaps some inner prompting — had roused him. He neither answered Madame Fontaine, nor looked at her. With his arms clasped round his knees, he sat on the floor in the attitude of a savage. His eyes, which had stared at the moon, now stared with the same rigid, glassy look at the alarm-bell over the cell-door.

The time went on. Again the oppression of silence became more than Madame Fontaine could endure. Again she tried to make Jack speak to her.

“What are you looking at?” she asked. “What are you waiting for? Is it —
 
— ?” The rest of the sentence died away on her lips: the words that would finish it were words too terrible to be spoken.

The sound of her voice produced no visible impression on Jack. Had it influenced him, in some unseen way? Something did certainly disturb the strange torpor that held him. He spoke. The tones were slow and mechanical — the tones of a man searching his memory with pain and difficulty; repeating his recollections, one by one, as he recovered them, to himself.

“When she moves,” he muttered, “her hands pull the string. Her hands send a message up: up and up to the bell.” He paused, and pointed to the cell-door.

The action had a horrible suggestiveness to the guilty wretch who was watching him.

“Don’t do that!” she cried. “Don’t point
there!”

His hand never moved; he pursued his newly-found recollections of what the doctor had shown to him.

“Up and up to the bell,” he repeated. “And the bell feels it. The steel thing moves. The bell speaks. Good bell! Faithful bell!”

The clock struck the half-hour past one. Madame Fontaine shrieked at the sound — her senses knew no distinction between the clock and the bell.

She saw his pointing hand drop back, and clasp itself with the other hand, round his knees. He spoke — softly and tenderly now — he was speaking to the dead. “Rise Mistress, rise! Dear soul, the time is long; and poor Jack is waiting for you!”

She thought the closed curtains moved: the delusion was reality to her. She tried to rouse Schwartz.

“Watchman! watchman! Wake up!”

He slept on as heavily as ever.

She half rose from her chair. She was almost on her feet — when she sank back again. Jack had moved. He got up on his knees. “Mistress hears me!” he said. The light of vivid expression showed itself in his eyes. Their vacancy was gone: they looked longingly at the door of the cell. He got on his feet — he pressed both hands over his bosom. “Come!” he said. “Oh, Mistress, come!”

There was a sound — a faint premonitory rustling sound — over the door.

The steel hammer moved — rose — struck the metal globe. The bell rang.

He stood rooted to the floor, sobbing hysterically. The iron grasp of suspense held him.

Not a cry, not a movement escaped Madame Fontaine. The life seemed to have been struck out of her by the stroke of the bell. It woke Schwartz. Except that he looked up, he too never moved: he too was like a living creature turned to stone.

A minute passed.

The curtains swayed gently. Tremulous fingers crept out, parting them. Slowly, over the black surface of the curtain, a fair naked arm showed itself, widening the gap.

The figure appeared, in its velvet pall. On the pale face the stillness of repose was barely ruffled yet. The eyes alone were conscious of returning life. They looked out on the room, softly surprised and perplexed — no more. They looked downwards: the lips trembled sweetly into a smile. She saw Jack, kneeling in ecstasy at her feet.

And now again, there was stillness in the room. Unutterable happiness rejoiced, unutterable dread suffered, in the same silence.

The first sound heard came suddenly from the lonely outer hall. Hurrying footsteps swept over the courtyard. The flash of lights flew along the dark passage. Voices of men and women, mingled together, poured into the Watchman’s Chamber.

POSTSCRIPT

MR. DAVID GLENNEY RETURNS TO FRANKFORT,
AND CLOSES THE STORY

I

On the twelfth of December, I received a letter from Mrs. Wagner, informing me that the marriage of Fritz and Minna had been deferred until the thirteenth of January. Shortly afterwards I left London, on my way to Frankfort.

My departure was hurried, to afford me time to transact business with some of our correspondents in France and in Northern Germany. Our head-clerk, Mr. Hartrey (directing the London house in Mrs. Wagner’s absence), had his own old-fashioned notions of doing nothing in a hurry. He insisted on allowing me a far larger margin of time, for treating with our correspondents, than I was likely to require. The good man little suspected to what motive my ready submission to him was due. I was eager to see my aunt and the charming Minna once more. Without neglecting any of my duties (and with the occasional sacrifice of traveling by night), I contrived to reach Frankfort a week before I was expected — that is to say, in the forenoon of the fourth of January.

II

Joseph’s face, when he opened the door, at once informed me that something extraordinary was going on in the house.

“Anything wrong?” I asked.

Joseph looked at me in a state of bewilderment. “You had better speak to the doctor,” he said.

“The doctor! Who is ill? My aunt? Mr. Keller? Who is it?” In my impatience, I took him by the collar of his coat, and shook him. I shook out nothing but the former answer, a little abridged: —

“Speak to the doctor.”

The office-door was close by me. I asked one of the clerks if Mr. Keller was in his room. The clerk informed me that Mr. Keller was upstairs with the doctor. In the extremity of my suspense, I inquired again if my aunt was ill. The man opened his eyes. “Is it possible you haven’t heard?” he said.

“Is she dead or alive?” I burst out, losing all patience.

“Both,” answered the clerk.

I began — not unnaturally, I think — to wonder whether I was in Mr. Keller’s house, or in an asylum for idiots. Returning to the hall, I collared Joseph for the second time. “Take me up to the doctor instantly!” I said.