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

01William Wilson, part four.

02As I ended the last part of my story, I was speaking of that terrible evening when I played cards with a young gentleman called Glenn Dinning.

03We were in the room of one of my friends at Oxford University.

04I had just realized that the young man, weak of mind and weakened by wine, had allowed me to win from him everything he owed.

05I was still trying to decide what I should do when, as I said, the wide, heavy doors of the room were suddenly opened, every light in the room went out.

06But I had seen that a stranger had entered.

07He was about my own height, and he was wearing a very fine, long coat.

08The darkness, however, was now complete, and we could only feel that he was standing among us.

09Then we heard him speak in a soft, low, never-to-be-forgotten voice, which I felt deep in my heart.

10He said, Gentlemen, I am here only to do my duty.

11You cannot know the true character of the man who has tonight taken a large amount of money from Mr.

12Glenn Dinning.

13Please have him take off his coat, and then look in it very carefully.

14While he was speaking, there was not another sound in the room.

15As he ended, he was gone.

16Can I, shall I, tell what I felt?

17Need I say that I was afraid, that I felt the sick fear of those who are judged forever wrong?

18Many hands held me, lights were brought.

19My friends looked in my coat.

20In it they found all the high cards, the valuable cards needed to win in the game we had been playing.

21Secretly using these cards, I could have taken the money of anyone who played the game with me.

22Mr.

23Preston, in whose room we were, then said, Mr.

24Wilson, this is yours.

25He lifted from the floor a fine, warm coat and said, We shall not look in this to prove again what we have proved already.

26We have seen enough.

27You will understand, I hope, the need for you to leave the university.

28At the very least, you must leave my room and leave it now.

29Down in the dust, though my spirit was, I might have tried to strike him for those words if, at that moment, I had not noticed something very surprising.

30My coat had cost more money than most men could spend, and it had been made especially for me.

31It was different, I thought, from every other coat in the world.

32When, therefore, Mr.

33Preston gave me the coat which he had picked up from the floor, I saw with terror that my own was already hanging on my arm, and that the two were alike in every way.

34I remembered that the strange being who had so mysteriously entered and left the room had had a coat.

35No one else in the room had been wearing one.

36I placed the coat offered by Mr.

37Preston over my own, and left his room.

38The next morning I began a hurried journey away from Oxford University.

39I ran, but I could not escape.

40I went from city to city, and in each one Wilson appeared.

41Paris, Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow.

42He followed me everywhere.

43Years passed.

44I went to the very ends of the earth.

45I ran in fear, as if running from a terrible sickness, and still he followed.

46Again and again I asked myself, Who is he?

47Where did he come from?

48And what was his purpose?

49But no answer was found.

50I was not.

51And then I looked with greatest care at the methods of his watch over me.

52I learned little.

53It was noticeable, indeed, that when he appeared now it was only to stop me in those actions from which evil might result.

54But what right did he have to try to control me?

55I also noticed that although he always wore clothes the same as mine, he no longer let me see his face.

56Did he think I would not know him?

57He destroyed my honour at Oxford.

58He stopped me in my plans for getting a high position in Rome, in my love in Naples, in what he called my desire for too much money in Egypt.

59Did he think I could fail to see that he was the William Wilson of my schoolboy days, the hated and feared William Wilson?

60But let me hurry to the last scene in my story.

61Until now I had not tried to strike back.

62He was honourable and wise.

63He could be everywhere and he knew everything.

64I felt such wonder and fear of him that I believed myself to be weak and helpless.

65Though it made me angry, I had done as he desired.

66But now I wanted more and more to escape his control.

67As I began to grow stronger, it seemed to me that he began to grow weaker.

68I felt a burning hope.

69In my deepest thoughts I decided that I was going to be free.

70It was at Rome during the Carnival of 1835 that I went to a dance in the great house of the Duke de Broglio.

71I had been drinking more wine than is usual, and the room seemed very crowded and hot.

72I became angry as I pushed through the people.

73I was looking for the young, the laughing, the beautiful wife of old de Broglio.

74Suddenly I saw her.

75But as I was trying to get through the crowd to join her, I felt a hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered quiet voice within my ear.

76In a wild anger I took him in a stronghold.

77Wilson was dressed as I had expected, like myself, in a rich coat of blue.

78Around his body was a band of red cloth from which hung a long, sharp sword.

79A mask of black cloth completely covered his face.

80You again, I cried, my anger growing hotter with each word.

81Always you again.

82You shall not hunt me like this until I die.

83Come with me now, or I will kill you where you stand.

84I pulled him after me into a small room nearby.

85I threw him against the wall and closed the door.

86I commanded him to take his sword in his hand.

87After a moment he took it, and stood waiting, ready to fight.

88The fight was short indeed.

89I was wild with hate and anger.

90In my arm I felt the strength of a thousand men.

91In a few moments I had forced him back against the wall, and he was in my power.

92Quickly, wildly, I put my sword's point again and again into his heart.

93At that moment I heard that someone was trying to open the door.

94I hurried to close it firmly and then turned back to my dying enemy.

95But what human words can tell the surprise, the horror, which filled me at the scene I then saw?

96The moment in which I had turned to close the door had been long enough, it seemed.

97What a great change to come at the far end of the room.

98A large mirror, a looking-glass, oh, so it seemed to me, now stood where it had not been before.

99As I walked toward it in terror, I saw my own form all spotted with blood, its face white, advancing to meet me with a weak and uncertain step.

100So it appeared, I say, but was not.

101It was my enemy, it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the pains of death.

102His mask and coat lay upon the floor.

103In his dress and in his face there was nothing which was not my own.

104It was Wilson, but now it was.

105My own voice I heard as he said, I have lost.

106Yet from now on, you are also dead.

107Dead to the world, dead to heaven, dead to hope.

108In me you lived, and in my death see by this face which is your own.

109How wholly, how completely you have killed.

110Yourself.

111Yourself.

112Yourself.

113Yourself.

114Yourself.

115Yourself.