Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall edition of “ChristmasStories” , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
I have kept one secret in the course of my life. I am a bashfulman. Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobodyever did suppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man. This isthe secret which I have never breathed until now.
I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerableplaces I have not been to, the innumerable people I have not calledupon or received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guiltyof, solely because I am by original constitution and character a bashfulman. But I will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with theobject before me.
That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveriesin the Holly-Tree Inn; in which place of good entertainment for manand beast I was once snowed up.
It happened in the memorable year when I parted for ever from AngelaLeath, whom I was shortly to have married, on making the discovery thatshe preferred my bosom friend. From our school-days I had freelyadmitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; and, thoughI was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the preference to be natural,and tried to forgive them both. It was under these circumstancesthat I resolved to go to America—on my way to the Devil.
Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but resolvingto write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing andforgiveness, which the steam-tender for shore should carry to the postwhen I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall,—Isay, locking up my grief in my own breast, and consoling myself as Icould with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I helddear, and started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.
The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambersfor ever, at five o’clock in the morning. I had shaved bycandle-light, of course, and was miserably cold, and experienced thatgeneral all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I haveusually found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances.
How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I cameout of the Temple! The street-lamps flickering in the gusty north-eastwind, as if the very gas were contorted with cold; the white-toppedhouses; the bleak, star-lighted sky; the market people and other earlystragglers, trotting to circulate their almost frozen blood; the hospitablelight and warmth of the few coffee-shops and public-houses that wereopen for such customers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the airwas charged (the wind had already beaten it into every crevice), andwhich lashed my face like a steel whip.
It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year. The Post-office packet for the United States was to depart from Liverpool,weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and I had theintervening time on my hands. I had taken this into consideration,and had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I need notname) on the farther borders of Yorkshire. It was endeared tome by my having first seen Angela at a farmhouse in that place, andmy melancholy was gratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave ofit before my expatriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoidbeing sought out before my resolution should have been rendered irrevocableby being carried into full effect, I had written to Angela overnight,in my usual manner, lamenting that urgent business, of which she shouldknow all particulars by-and-by—took me unexpectedly away fromher for a week or ten days.
There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place the