could not hear each other, though the officers could hear them.
Where is the nearest man – upon the right, or on the left? or is
there one in both directions? Where is he sitting now – with his
face to the light? or is he walking to and fro? How is he dressed?
Has he been here long? Is he much worn away? Is he very white and
spectre-like? Does HE think of his neighbour too?
Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening while he thinks, he
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
conjures up a figure with his back towards him, and imagines it
moving about in this next cell. He has no idea of the face, but he
is certain of the dark form of a stooping man. In the cell upon
the other side, he puts another figure, whose face is hidden from
him also. Day after day, and often when he wakes up in the middle
of the night, he thinks of these two men until he is almost
distracted. He never changes them. There they are always as he
first imagined them – an old man on the right; a younger man upon
the left – whose hidden features torture him to death, and have a
mystery that makes him tremble.
The weary days pass on with solemn pace, like mourners at a
funeral; and slowly he begins to feel that the white walls of the
cell have something dreadful in them: that their colour is
horrible: that their smooth surface chills his blood: that there
is one hateful corner which torments him. Every morning when he
wakes, he hides his head beneath the coverlet, and shudders to see
the ghastly ceiling looking down upon him. The blessed light of
day itself peeps in, an ugly phantom face, through the unchangeable
crevice which is his prison window.
By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful corner swell
until they beset him at all times; invade his rest, make his dreams
hideous, and his nights dreadful. At first, he took a strange
dislike to it; feeling as though it gave birth in his brain to
something of corresponding shape, which ought not to be there, and
racked his head with pains. Then he began to fear it, then to
dream of it, and of men whispering its name and pointing to it.
Then he could not bear to look at it, nor yet to turn his back upon
it. Now, it is every night the lurking-place of a ghost: a
shadow:- a silent something, horrible to see, but whether bird, or
beast, or muffled human shape, he cannot tell.
When he is in his cell by day, he fears the little yard without.
When he is in the yard, he dreads to re-enter the cell. When night
comes, there stands the phantom in the corner. If he have the
courage to stand in its place, and drive it out (he had once:
being desperate), it broods upon his bed. In the twilight, and
always at the same hour, a voice calls to him by name; as the
darkness thickens, his Loom begins to live; and even that, his
comfort, is a hideous figure, watching him till daybreak.
Again, by slow degrees, these horrible fancies depart from him one
by one: returning sometimes, unexpectedly, but at longer
intervals, and in less alarming shapes. He has talked upon
religious matters with the gentleman who visits him, and has read
his Bible, and has written a prayer upon his slate, and hung it up
as a kind of protection, and an assurance of Heavenly
companionship. He dreams now, sometimes, of his children or his
wife, but is sure that they are dead, or have deserted him. He is
easily moved to tears; is gentle, submissive, and broken-spirited.
Occasionally, the old agony comes back: a very little thing will
revive it; even a familiar sound, or the scent of summer flowers in
the air; but it does not last long, now: for the world without,
has come to be the vision, and this solitary life, the sad reality.
If his term of imprisonment be short – I mean comparatively, for