Hide and Seek [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION We are mysteries even to ourselves; and there are times when the Voices of the future that are in us, yet not ours, speak, and make the earthly part of us conscious of their presence. Oftenest our mortal sense feels that they are breaking their dread silence at those supreme moments of existence, when on the choice between two apparently trifling alternatives hangs suspended the whole future of a life. {Hide and Seek, Book I, Chapter XI, p. 177.) Book I of Hide and Seek ends with the young hero having to choose between the 'apparently trifling alternatives' of keeping the curfew imposed by his rigidly authoritarian father, or seeking the dubious nocturnal pleasures of the London streets. Of course he chooses the latter. The decision leads to his leaving home in disgrace, and the sequence of events that unravels the mystery of the novel is set in motion. The solemn, even portentous passage, which stands out from the generally humorous narration, also marks a break between two very diflferent styles of story-telling. The first half of Hide and Seek is leisurely and discursive. Wilkie Collins sets up a dialogue with his readers: he discusses religion; the upbringing of children; the stultifying misery of respectable middle-class suburban life. He allows himself the space to show his characters' lives and opinions in almost eighteenth-century detail, with a gentle charm that seems to have little in common with his preceding novel Basil. From the beginning of Book II there is a sharp acceleration of pace. The reader is at once introduced to a new character, an adventurer and outsider. With his arrival we are back in the familiar world of a Wilkie Collins story, in which the quotidian is invaded by the unexpected and extraordinary. It seems that Wilkie Collins was also at a crossroads in his own career, and uncertain which path to take. At an