'William Wilson,' by Edgar Allan Poe, Part Two

01William Wilson.

02Part 2.

03In the first part of my story, I spoke about my life at my first school and about the other boys, over whom I gained firm control.

04But there was one boy who would not follow my commands, who would not do what I told him to as the other boys did.

05His name was the same as mine, William Wilson.

06Although he did not belong to my family in any way, he seemed to feel some love for me, and had entered the school the same day as I had.

07Many of the boys thought we were brothers.

08I soon discovered that we had been born on the same day, January 19, 1809.

09Wilson continued his attempts to command me, while I continued my attempts to rule him.

10The strange thing is that, although I did not like him, I could not hate him.

11We had a battle nearly every day, it is true.

12In public, it would seem that I had been proved the stronger.

13But he seemed somehow able to make me feel that this was not true, and that he himself was stronger.

14Nevertheless, we continued to talk to each other in a more or less friendly way.

15On a number of subjects we agreed very well.

16I sometimes thought that if we had met at another time and place, we might have become friends.

17It is not easy to explain my real feelings toward him.

18There was no love, and there was no fear.

19Yet, I saw something to honour in him, and I wanted to learn more about him.

20Anyone experienced in human nature will not need to be told that Wilson and I were always together.

21This strange appearance of friendship, although we were not friends, caused no doubt the strangeness of battle between us.

22I tried to make the others laugh at him.

23I tried to give him pain while seeming to play a light-hearted game.

24My attempts were not always successful, even though my plans were well made.

25There was much about his character that simply could not be laughed at.

26I could find, indeed, but one weakness.

27Perhaps he had been born with it, or perhaps it had come from some illness.

28No one but me would have made any use of it against him.

29He was able to speak only in a very, very soft, low voice.

30This weakness I never failed to use in any way that was in my power.

31Wilson could fight back, and he did.

32There was one way he had of troubling me beyond measure.

33I had never liked my name.

34Too many other people had the same name.

35I would rather have had a name that was not so often heard.

36The words sickened me.

37When on the day I arrived at the school a second William Wilson came also, I felt angry with him for having the name.

38I knew I would have to hear the name each day a double number of times.

39The other William Wilson would always be near.

40The other boys often thought that my actions and my belongings were his, and his were mine.

41My anger grew stronger with every happening that showed that William Wilson and I were alike, in body or in mind.

42I had not then discovered the surprising fact that we were of the same age, but I saw that we were of the same height, and I saw that in form and in face we were also much the same.

43Nothing could trouble me more deeply, although I carefully tried to keep everyone from seeing it, than to hear anyone say anything about the likeness between us of mind or of body, or of anything else.

44But in truth I had no reason to believe that this likeness was ever noticed by our schoolfellows.

45He saw it, and as clearly as I, that I knew well.

46He discovered that in this likeness he could always find a way of troubling me.

47This proved the more than usual sharpness of his mind.

48His method, which was to increase the likeness between us, lay both in words and in actions, and he followed his plan very well indeed.

49It was easy enough to have clothes like mine.

50He easily learned to walk and move as I did.

51His voice, of course, could not be as loud as mine, but he made his manner of speaking the same.

52Ah, how greatly this most careful picture of myself troubled me!

53I will not now attempt to tell.

54It seemed that I was the only one who noticed it.

55I was the only one who saw Wilson's strange and knowing smiles.

56Pleased with having produced in my heart the desired result, he seemed to laugh within himself, and cared nothing that no one laughed with him.

57I have already spoken of how he seemed to think he was better and wiser than I.

58He would try to guide me.

59He would often try to stop me from doing things I had planned.

60He would tell me what I should and should not do, and he would do this not openly, but in a word or two in which I had to look for the meaning.

61As I grew older, I wanted less and less to listen to him.

62As it was, I could not be happy under his eyes that always watched me.

63Every day I showed more and more openly that I did not want to listen to anything he told me.

64I have said that in the first years when we were in school together, my feelings might easily have been turned to friendship.

65But in the later months, although he talked to me less often then, I almost hated him.

66Yet let me be fair to him.

67I can remember no time when what he told me was not wiser than would be expected from one of his years.

68His sense of what was good or bad was sharper than my own.

69I might today be a better and happier man if I had more often done what he said.

70It was about the same period, if I remember rightly, that by chance he acted more openly than usual, and I discovered in his manner something that deeply interested me.

71Somehow he brought to mind pictures of my earliest years.

72I remembered, it seemed, things I could not have remembered.

73These pictures were wild, half-lighted and not clear, but I felt that very long ago I must have known this person standing before me.

74This idea, however, passed as quickly as it had come.

75It was on this same day that I had my last meeting at the school with this other strange William Wilson.

76That night, when everyone was sleeping, I got out of bed, and with a light in my hand, I went quietly through the house to Wilson's room.

77I had long been thinking of another of those plans to hurt him, with which I had until then had little success.

78It was my purpose now to begin to act according to this new plan.

79Having reached his room, I entered without a sound.

80Leaving the light outside, I advanced a step and listened.

81He was asleep.

82I turned and took the light and again went to the bed.

83I looked down upon his face.

84The coldness of ice filled my whole body.

85My knees trembled, my whole spirit was filled with horror.

86I moved the light nearer to his face.

87Was this, this the face of William Wilson?

88I saw, indeed, that it was.

89But I trembled as if with sickness as I imagined that it was not.

90What was there in his face to trouble me so?

91I looked and my mind seemed to turn in circles in the rush of my thoughts.

92It was not like this, surely not like this, that he appeared in the daytime.

93The same name, the same body, the same day that we came to school.

94And then there was his use of my way of walking, my manner of speaking.

95Was it in truth humanly possible that what I now saw was the result, and the result only, of his continued efforts to be like me?

96Filled with wonder and fear, cold and trembling, I put out the light.

97In the quiet darkness I went from his room, and without waiting one minute, I left that old school and never entered it again.

98Filled with wonder and fear, cold and fear, cold and fear.

99Filled with wonder and fear, cold and fear, cold and fear.

100Filled with wonder and fear, cold and fear, cold and fear.

101Filled with wonder and fear, cold and fear, cold and fear.

102Filled with wonder and fear, cold and fear, cold and fear.

103Filled with wonder and fear, cold and fear, cold and fear.

104Filled with wonder and fear, cold and fear.

105Filled with wonder and fear, cold and fear.

106Filled with wonder and fear, cold and fear.