When I was curate at Redleigh, before my cousin presented me to the very comfortable vicarage where I am now installed — only four hundred souls, and no dissenters! — I lodged for a while in the house of a most respectable country grocer of the name of Vernon. He was an excellent person, this Edward Vernon, a staunch pillar of the Church, ample of girth, like a Norman column, and a prosperous man of business. Providence had favoured him. He owned a considerable amount of house-property in the Redleigh neighbourhood, after the fashion of the well-to-do rural tradesman; for I have noticed on my way through the world in England that the smaller capitalist never cares to invest in anything on earth save the tangible and the visible. He’d rather get his two per cent sure out of cottages in his own parish than five or six out of unknown and uncertain colonial ventures. Australia is a name to him: the Argentine a phantom. But a cottage is a reality. He believes in house-property, and he pins his faith on it. ‘As safe as houses,’ is to him no mere phrase, but the simple statement of a fundamental principle.
Vernon was one of our churchwardens, and a most estimable man. His clean-shaven face invited moral confidence. Though he was close, very close, in his personal expenditure, and I’m afraid a hard landlord to his poorer tenants, he always subscribed liberally to all church undertakings, and took care to keep on excellent terms with our worthy vicar. (I call poor old Wilkins ‘worthy’ because I think that achromatic conventional epithet exactly suits my late ecclesiastical superior’s character: he was one of those negatively good and colourless men for whose special behoof that amiable non-committing adjective must have been expressly invented by the wisdom of our ancestors.) People even wondered at times that Vernon, who had a substantial private house of his own, apart from his business, should care to receive a lodger into the bosom of his family; and indeed, I must admit, he never let his rooms to any one save the passing curate of the moment. Ill-natured critics used to say he did it on purpose ‘to keep in with the parsons’; and, to say the truth, a becoming respect for the persons of the clergy was a marked peculiarity in Vernon’s well-balanced mind. I always considered him in every respect a model of discreet behaviour for the laity in his own rank and class of society.
He had his faults, of course; we are none of us perfect — not even bishops, as I always remark after every visitation. His relations with Mrs. Vernon, for example, were a trifle strained, though naturally I can’t say whether the blame lay rather with him or with her; and he behaved at times with undue severity to his children. I couldn’t help noticing, too, that very late at nights the good man seemed occasionally less clear and articulate in his pronunciation than in the middle of the day; but I ought in justice to add that if this vocal indecision were really due to incautious indulgence in an extra glass of wine with a friend over his pipe, Vernon had at least the grace and good taste to conceal his failing as far as possible. For I observed at all such times that he talked but sparingly, and in a very low voice; that he avoided my presence with considerable ingenuity; and that he seemed thoroughly ashamed of himself for his momentary lapse into an undignified condition. I am an Oxford man myself, and I can allow for such lapses, having rowed bow in my eight when I was an undergraduate at Oriel, and enjoyed in my time, as an Englishman may, the noisy fun of a good bump-supper.
Apart from this slight failing, however, which was never conspicuous, and which I could hardly have observed had I not been admitted into the privacy of Vernon’s family, I found my landlord in every way a true exponent of what I may venture to describe as lower-middle-class Christian virtues. He had raised himself by his industry and providence to a respectable position; he had saved and invested till he was quite a rich man, as riches went in Redleigh; and though I had occasion more than once to remonstrate with him (officially) about the unsavoury condition of the Dingle End cottages (popularly known as ‘Vernon’s Piggeries’), I must allow there was a good deal of truth in his apt reply that the cottages were quite good enough for the creatures who lived in them. ‘When you can never get in your rent,’ he said, ‘without going before the court for it, it ain’t in human nature, sir, to do much for your tenants.’ Having the misfortune to be an owner of West Indian property myself, I must say in my heart I largely sympathised with him.
I lodged at Vernon’s for about two years in very great comfort. The Banksia roses looked in at my window-sill. Mrs. Vernon was an excellent manager, and had brought her husband a considerable fortune. (She was the daughter of a notorious Wesleyan miller who worshipped at a galvanised iron chapel in an adjoining parish; but, of course, she had conformed as soon as she married the vicar’s churchwarden.) Though she and Vernon were on visibly bad terms with one another, which they didn’t attempt to conceal even before the children, they were both of one mind wherever business was concerned, being indeed most excellent and cautious stewards of the ample means which Providence had vouchsafed them. And the cookery was perfect. My modest chop was always grilled to a turn, thick, brown, and juicy: I had no fault to find in any way with the domestic arrangements. I fancy Mrs. Vernon, though Methodist bred, must have been quite as much alive as her husband to the commercial value of a clerical connection; certainly she was quite as anxious to increase to the utmost the fortune they had acquired by their joint exertions.
At the end of two years, however, a very unpleasant event occurred, which made me feel with deep force the slightness of the tie by which we all cling on to respectability and well-being. Vernon came up to me one morning with a newspaper in his hand, looking deadly pale, and half inarticulate with emotion. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he gasped out with a visible effort, as he pointed with one finger to a paragraph of news, ‘but have you read this in the Standard?’
‘Yes, I’ve read it, Vernon,’ I answered, glancing hastily at the lines to which his forefinger referred me; ‘it’s a very shocking thing; very shocking indeed: but I make it a rule never to take much interest in these sensational police cases.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said again (he was always most respectful in his mode of address); ‘but did you happen to notice, the man’s name in this horrid report is Vernon?’
‘Bless my soul, so it is,’ I cried, glancing down at it once more. I had never thought of connecting it with my respectable landlord. ‘You can’t mean to tell me such a disreputable person as the murderer seems to be is in any way related to you.’
The churchwarden winced. ‘Well, it’s no use concealing it from you, sir,’ he answered, looking down. ‘Before half an hour’s out, all the parish will know it. I’d rather you heard it first of all from me, who can explain the affair, than from some unfriendly outsider.’ And, indeed, it was true that Vernon, having got on in the world, hadn’t too many friends to speak up for him in Redleigh. ‘You see the name alone’s quite enough to fix it. There aren’t likely to be many Norcott Vernons in England. They’d know him by that ... Well, yes, sir; I’ll admit it; the man’s my own twin brother.’
‘Your own twin brother!’ I cried, taken aback, ‘And in a case like this! All the details so unpleasant! You don’t mean to say you think he really and truly murdered this woman?’
Vernon’s face was very grave. ‘Yes, I do, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’m afraid I must admit it. Norcott was always a very bad lot indeed; an idle, improvident, careless fellow as ever existed; right enough if only just he could have kept sober for a week; but when the drink was in him, there was no saying what folly on earth it would drive him to.’
‘And the antecedents too!’ I cried, scanning the paper once more. ‘Such a disgraceful life! His unfortunate relations with the murdered woman! If I hadn’t heard the facts from your own lips, Vernon, I could never have believed he was a member of your family!’
‘Well, that’s just where it is, sir,’ the grocer answered, his lips quivering a little. ‘He had a wife of his own once — a very decent woman, too, though he married improvidently. But he killed her with his drinking; and then he got remorse very bad for her death, which is always a foolish kind of feeling to give way to; and that drove him to drink again, a deal worse than ever; and after that, he picked up with some wretched creature; and quarrelling with her, I suppose, this affair was the end of it.’
‘A knife!’ I said, reading it over. ‘The worst kind of murder. Stabbing always seems to go with the most lawless habits.’
‘That’s it, sir,’ my friend answered. ‘I always told him he was lawless. But it’s a terrible thing, sir, and no mistake, when one’s own flesh and blood is had up like that on a charge of murder.’
‘It is indeed, Vernon,’ I answered, ‘and I sympathise with you most profoundly. But I’m going out now to see about that choir practice. I’ll talk with you again later on about this matter. Will you tell Mrs. Vernon I’ll want my beef-tea as usual, if you please, at eleven punctually?’
For the next day or two, very little was heard in the parish except gossip about Norcott Vernon and his early enormities. He monopolised Redleigh. I had never even heard of the man’s existence before; but now that he was the hero of a first-class local domestic tragedy, every old labourer in the village had some story to tell of ‘young Norcott Vernon’s’ juvenile delinquencies. I improved the occasion, indeed, with my boys in the Sunday school by pointing out to them how fatal might be the final results of the lawless habits engendered (as in this sad case) by the practice of tickling trout and playing truant on Saturdays. I found it absolutely necessary to do something of the sort, as the episode simply filled the minds of my entire Confirmation class. They read the local paper before my very eyes, and discussed the chances of the verdict in loud whispers, which led me to suppose they had been privately betting upon it.
When the day of the trial at Dorchester arrived, Vernon begged me with the utmost eagerness to accompany him to the assizes. He had always been so useful to me that, though the request was made at an inconvenient moment, I determined to go with him; besides, if it came to that, the trial itself promised to be in most ways a sufficiently curious one. I did my best, however, to keep the lads in the parish from attending the assizes: a morbid interest in such sights, I hold, is most injurious to young people. On the morning fixed for the trial, I went off myself with Vernon, taking my seat, as was then my wont, owing to straitened means, in a third-class carriage. It was one of those commodious little horse-boxes, still in use on the Great Western, open at the top between the different compartments; and as we got in, we happened to catch the end of a conversation carried on between two of my poorer parishioners. ‘Wull, what I says, Tom,’ one of them was remarking to his neighbour, ’is just like this; Ted were always a long zight the worst of they two Vernons, for all he’s so thick with the passons and such-like. Norcott, he were open, that’s where it is, don’t ‘ee zee? — but Ted, he’s a sneak, and always were one. He’d zell his own mother for money, he ‘ould. Whereas Norcott, wy, he’d give ‘ee the coat off his back, if on’y a decent zart o’ chap was to ask him vor it.’
‘That’s so, Clem,’ the other man answered him confidently. ‘You’ve just about hit upon it. And the reason Ted Vernon’s takin’ passon along of him to ‘sizes to-day, why, it’s just ‘cause he do think it do look more decent-like, when he’s goin’ to zee his own twin brother found guilty and zentenced off vor wilful murder.’
I considered it would be indecorous on our part to overhear any more of so personal a conversation (especially as there were two of us), so I coughed rather loudly to check their chatter, and, I’m pleased to say, put a stop at once to that lively colloquy. A moment later, I felt rather than saw a cautious head peep slowly over the partition; then a low voice whispered in very awestruck tones, ‘Law, Tom, if that ain’t passon hisself a-zittin’ along o’ Ted in next compartment!’
When we reached the court, the murder case was the first on the day’s list for trial. Accused was already in the dock when we entered. I looked hard at the prisoner. As often happens in the case of twins, he remarkably resembled his brother the churchwarden. To be sure, his swollen face bore evident marks of drink and dissipation, while Edward Vernon’s was smooth and smug and respectable-looking; but in spite of this mere difference of acquired detail, their features, and even their expressions, remained absurdly alike, though I fancied the prisoner must have possessed in youth a somewhat franker and more open countenance, with handsomer traits in it than the Redleigh grocer’s. He sat through the trial, which was short and hasty, with an air of fierce bravado on his bloated features, very different indeed from the respectful deference which his brother would have displayed to judge, jury, and counsel. The story of his crime was a vulgar and sordid one. The verdict, of course, was a foregone conclusion. The man’s very face would have sufficed to condemn him, even without the assiduous bungling of his lawyer, who didn’t try to do more than plead mitigating circumstances, which might possibly have reduced the verdict from the capital charge to one of manslaughter. The jury found the prisoner guilty without leaving their box; and the judge, with what seemed to me almost precipitate haste, assumed the black cap, and in a few short words passed sentence of death upon him for the wilful murder of the wretched creature with whom, as he rightly said, the man shared his infamy.
I went back to Redleigh in the same carriage with Vernon, who seemed very much upset by this distressing circumstance. But what surprised me most was the strange and so to speak sneaking way in which he appeared more than once to disclaim any connection with his brother’s crime. He was so respectable a man himself, and so excellent a churchman, that I’m sure if he hadn’t mooted the subject of his own accord nobody would ever for one moment have thought of confusing his moral character in any way with his brother’s. But he said to me more than once as we returned, in an argumentative voice, ‘Look here, Mr. Ogilvie; people talk a lot of nonsense, you know, about twins and their likeness. They’ll tell you down our way that what one twin’ll do, the other’ll do as well as him. But that’s all plain rubbish. Twins are born just as different as other people. Now my brother and me were always quite different. Not one thing alike in us. From the very beginning, Norcott was always a proper bad lot. Do what I would, I never could teach him prudence or saving. He was always breaking out, and had no self-restraint; and self-restraint, I say, is the principle at the bottom of all the virtues. It’s the principle at the bottom of all the virtues. And Norcott could never be kept from the drink either: when a man drinks like him, it just makes a fiend of him. Especially in our family. Unless he has self-restraint — self-restraint; self-restraint’ — he drew himself up proudly— ‘and then, of course, that’s quite another matter.’
Three days after he came up to me again. ‘Would you do me a great kindness, sir?’ he asked. ‘You know you’ve always been a very good friend to me.’
‘What is it, Vernon?’ I inquired, not being given to promise anything in the dark in that way.
‘Well, it’s this, sir,’ he answered, hesitating a little. ‘I want to go and see poor Norcott in Dorchester jail before he’s turned off, if I may venture to call it so; and I don’t exactly like to go near him by myself — it’s a delicate business: so I thought, as you were a clergyman, and a proper person (as I may say) to accompany me, perhaps you wouldn’t mind just running across with me.’
I had an errand or two in Dorchester, as it happened, that day; and I felt besides a certain natural curiosity to see how the fellow took the prospect of hanging, now the bravado of the trial had cooled off him a little; so I said, ‘It’s not exactly convenient for me to go to-day, Vernon’ (not to make myself too cheap); ‘but still, if you think it would be a comfort to you to have a clergyman by your side, why, to oblige a parishioner, and as a matter of duty, I don’t mind accompanying you.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ he replied, looking at me rather curiously; ‘I’m sure I’m very much obliged indeed to you.’ He said it, as he always said everything, respectfully and deferentially; yet I thought I somehow noticed a queer undercurrent of contempt in the tone of his voice which I had never before observed in it. And I certainly detected a strange gleam of devilry in the corner of his eye as he bowed and withdrew, which reminded me at once of his brother the murderer.
However, I thought no more about it at the time, and we went across to Dorchester next day very amicably, Vernon thanking me profusely more than once on the way for my goodness in accompanying him. We had a pass from the authorities to see the prisoner; and the moment we entered the fellow’s cell I could perceive at a glance he was as unrepentant as ever. His eyes were sullen. In fact, though of course he couldn’t possibly have had access to brandy in prison, he wore the exact air of a man who has been drinking heavily. I suppose he had acquired by dint of long practice a permanently drunken aspect and habit, which followed him even into the enforced teetotalism of the condemned cell. His manner was offensive, and extremely hectoring. As soon as his brother spoke to him, he burst out at once into a long, loud peal of discordant laughter. His hilarity shocked me. ‘Hullo, Ted,’ he cried, seizing his brother’s hand. ‘So you’ve come to preach to me! And you’ve brought along a parson! Well, well, that’s characteristic! You couldn’t drop in without a devil-dodger, couldn’t you? I know why you’ve done that. It’s half of it hypocrisy; but it’s more than half that you didn’t dare to face me — here, alone, in my cell — without a parson by your side to keep you in countenance!’
I felt grieved to see a man so near his last end in such an unbecoming frame of mind for one in his position; so I ventured to encroach so far upon the province of the prison chaplain as to offer him a little spiritual advice and exhortation. His brother, too, spoke to him most nicely and well, reminding him of their innocent childhood together, and of the many opportunities of leading a better life which had often been afforded him by the kindness of relations. But the condemned man seemed to wallow in a condition of hopeless rebellion; he had been delivered over, I judged, to a reprobate mind, which rendered him unwilling to listen to advice or consolation of any kind. His manner remained insolent and defiant to the very end; nothing that my companion could say to encourage him would bring him to a proper sense of his awful position.
At last, towards the close of our interview, when Vernon was endeavouring to utter a few appropriate words of affectionate farewell, the prisoner burst forth of a sudden with a fierce outbreak of language, the very words of which are engraved to this day on my memory. ‘Why, Ted, you shallow sneak,’ he cried, with every outer appearance of profound indignation, ‘what humbug this all is — your pretending to preach to me! You know from your childhood up you’ve always been a sight a worse fellow than I have! You know it, and I know it! Bone of my bone, and blood of my blood, I know every thought, every feeling, every fibre of you. I know the false bent of you. Why, you and I are the selfsame man — except only that I was never a sneak and a hypocrite as you are. When we were boys at school, we got into the same scrapes; but you sneaked out, and I got flogged for them. When we stole apples together, it was I who climbed the hedge, and you who kept the biggest half of the apples for yourself, and ate them secretly. Every instinct and impulse that has led me into this scrape, you have it as well as I have. Only, you have in addition that confounded self-restraint of yours, which I call covetousness and worldly wisdom.’
Edward Vernon seemed to wince as the criminal went on; but he bowed his head low and answered nothing. His brother still continued in a more excited voice: ‘Oh yes, I know you; every trick and every trait of you. You mean-spirited hypocrite! The family vices, you’ve got them as bad as I have, and one of them worse than me. There never was a Vernon yet, I know, but loved the drink and loved the money. I love them myself; you love them as well or better than I do. But I loved drink best; and you loved money. That was meaner and worse than me. I married for love a woman I doted on; and then, I led her a wretched life with the drink, and repented time and again, as we Vernons will repent — you know the way of us — and after that, fell back again. You married for money a woman you despised, and lived your wretched life at loggerheads with her for ever, being only at one for a time in your miserable money-grubbing. I loved the money, too; but I had grace enough left to hate myself for loving it; and it drove me into drink, worse, worse than ever; for whenever I tried to lead what you would call “a decent life,” I found in a week or two I was saving and scraping and carneying like you, and degenerating into a confounded respectable hypocrite. I despised and disliked myself so much for that — never being able to sink quite as low as you do — that I turned back to my drink, and respected myself the more for it. Then poor Lucy died — I hurried her to her grave, I know; no fear of that with you; your Martha won’t be hurried to the grave by any one; she’ll stroll down in her own good time, fat and sleek and respectable. I repented for that again — and drank worse than ever over it. You drink too, but late at night, in your own house — quietly, decently, soberly — like a respectable tradesman and a solvent churchwarden. You keep a parson in the house with you to prevent your breaking out some evening unawares into a Vernon fandango. Oh yes; I understand you! Then I picked up with poor Moll. I’m built like that. I must have a woman about, to care for and sympathise with — and to bully when I’m not sober. But I wasn’t going to inflict my poor drunken self upon a pure, good woman, whom I’d have driven to her grave the same as I did Lucy; so I picked up with poor Moll there. She could drink with me herself; and in her way I loved her. Don’t pull a shocked mug: you know how that was just as well as I do; for you’re the same build as me, and, you see, you’re a drunkard. I’ve always that consolation in talking to you, Ted, that at least I feel sure you can quite understand me. Two of a mind don’t need an interpreter. Well, we quarrelled one night, Moll and I, both as drunk as owls — quarrelled about another man; and in my heat, I struck her. She up and had at me. It was knives after that; her first, me after; and — here I am now, awaiting execution. But, Ted, you know it’s only because you’re a meaner sneak than I am that I’m sitting here, a condemned murderer to-day, while you’re a respectable and respected tradesman.’
To my great surprise, Edward Vernon seemed immensely impressed by this unseemly harangue, and, covering his face with his hands, cowered visibly before the man. For my own dignity’s sake, I felt it was high time this unfortunate interview should come to a conclusion. ‘Vernon,’ I said, touching the grocer’s arm, ‘let’s go now, I beg of you. Our presence is superfluous. It’s clear we can do your unhappy brother no good. He’s not in a fitting frame of mind just now to receive with advantage our advice or condolence. Suppose we leave him to the kindly ministrations of the prison chaplain?’
‘You’re right, sir,’ the grocer answered, taking his handkerchief from his face (and, contrary to all belief, I saw he had been crying). ‘I’m afraid my presence rather aggravates than consoles him.’
The murderer rose from his seat. His face was hateful. ‘Ted, Ted,’ he cried out, ‘you infernal hypocrite; will you keep up your hypocrisy even at a moment like this before your condemned brother? Oh, Ted, I’m ashamed of you. Go home, sir, go home; take your bottle from your box, and repent a good honest Vernon repentance! Get decently drunk before the eyes of the world, and confess your sneakishness. It’s money-grubbing, not virtue, that’s kept you straight so long. If you’ve any conscience left, boy, go home and repent of it. Go home and get drunk; and let all the world know which man of us two was really the worst devil!’
I seized the grocer’s arm and hurried him by main force out of the condemned cell. I felt this scene was growing unseemly. But all the way back to Redleigh he sat and crouched in the train, looking as if he had been whipped, and white as a ghost with terror.
Three days after, Norcott Vernon was to be executed at Dorchester. In the morning his brother Edward disappeared from Redleigh, and didn’t turn up again till late in the evening. About eleven o’clock, I was sitting in my own rooms, in my long lounge chair, engaged in reading the excellent literary supplement to the Guardian; and, having mislaid my paper-knife, no doubt through the culpable negligence of Mrs. Vernon’s housemaid, I had just taken from its sheath the little Norwegian dirk or dagger which I brought back the year before from my trip to the Hardanger Fiord. I had cut the pages open with it, and laid the knife down carelessly on the table by my side (which ought to be a lesson to one in habits of tidiness), when a loud and disgraceful noise upon the stairs aroused my attention — a noise as of quarrel and drunken scuffling. Next instant, with a rude burst, my door was pushed open, and my landlord entered, all red and blustering, without even so much as a knock to announce his arrival.
He had been drinking, that was evident; for his face was flushed: and I noticed, almost without consciously recognising the fact, that his features and expression now resembled more closely than ever the condemned man whom I had seen a few days before in his cell at Dorchester. He advanced towards me with an insolent hectoring air which exactly recalled his unfortunate brother’s. ‘Hullo, parson,’ he cried, laughing loud: ‘so there you are at your studies — looking over the list of next presentations! Ha, ha, ha! that’s a good joke! You’re counting the loaves and fishes. How much the advowson? Present incumbent, I suppose, over eighty, and failing!’
I had never before seen the man in such a state as this; so I rose severely and fronted him. ‘Vernon,’ I observed in my most chilling voice, ‘you’ve been drinking, sir, drinking!’
He drew back a pace, and throwing his head on one side, looked long at me and sniggered. ‘Yes, I have, you image,’ he answered. ‘You fool, I’ve been drinking. Honestly, openly, manfully drinking. And I’ve got it on me now — the Vernon repentance. I’ve been over to Dorchester — oh yes, I’ve been over: to see the black flag hoisted over the jail when my brother Norcott was turned off — for the murder I myself as good as committed.’
‘What do you mean, man?’ I cried, taken aback. ‘You’re drunk, sir: dead drunk! Go at once from my presence!’
‘Drunk?’ he answered. ‘Yes, drunk! But precious sober for all that. I’ve come to myself at last. I won’t endure it any longer.... Why, do you think, you great goggle-eyed owl, I like all this flummery? Do you think I like your parsonical cant? I’m a Vernon, and I hate it; though for the money’s sake, the vile money, the hateful money that was always our stumbling-block, I’ve endured it and put up with it. But I’m done with it now; I’ve slaved and saved enough: I’ve come to myself, as Norcott advised, and I tell you, I’m done with it. You thought I had no conscience, you blue-faced baboon; but I had, and I’ve awaked it. Good gin’s awaked it. It’s wide awake now, and it’s driving me to this, for poor Norcott’s murder. I did it as well as he; I did it, and I’ll pay for it. I could have done the same thing any day if I’d only had the courage, and if it hadn’t been for this cursed respectability’s sake that I endured for the money. I just kept it down, because I wasn’t half the man my brother Norcott was. They’ve hanged him for being more of a man than I was. He loved his wife, and I hate mine. But I’m a man too; and I can murder with the best of them.’
I began to be alarmed. ‘Go to bed, you wretched sot!’ I exclaimed severely.
But he burst into a loud laugh. ‘No, no; I won’t go to bed,’ he answered, ‘ — till I’ve had your blood. I’ll have your blood, or some one’s. Then I’ll go up sober for once, and sleep the sleep of a baby.’
As he spoke, his eye chanced to fall upon the Norwegian dagger which I had incautiously laid down beside the Guardian upon the table. He snatched it up and brandished it. I turned pale, I suppose; at any rate, I’m sure I retired with some haste to the far side of the sitting-room. He followed me like a demon. ‘Why, you white-livered cur,’ he cried, in a voice like a madman’s, ‘you’re afraid of dying! Ha, ha, ha! that’s good! A parson, and afraid! Afraid of going home! Where’s the point of your religion?’
I dodged him about the table; but he flew after me, round and round. He brandished the knife as he did so.
‘I’ve got a conscience,’ he shrieked aloud, ‘and it’s wide awake now. I’m done with hypocrisy. No more money-grubbing for me. I shall have somebody’s blood. It ain’t fair poor Norcott should be hanged by the neck till dead, and worse men than he alive and respected! I shall come out just for once in my life to-night. I shall show my real character. Let’s be honest and straightforward. — I’ll drive it up to the haft in you.’
He poked the knife out. Then he flung back his head and roared with laughter. ‘How the devil-dodger runs!’ he cried, lunging at me. ‘It does one good to see him. But I’ll have his blood, all the same. I shall swing for it, like Norcott.’
With a desperate effort, I rushed forward and seized the deadly weapon from the fellow’s hands. In doing so, I cut myself with the blade rather seriously. But I wrenched it away, all the same. He let me wrench it. But he stood there and laughed at me. Then he retreated towards the door, and pulled out — a new pistol. ‘I bought this at Dorchester,’ he said calmly, cocking it. ‘I bought it this morning, for conscience’ sake, to do a murder with.’
I faced him in silence. He pointed it at me and laughed again. ‘What a precious funk they’re in!’ he cried, seeming to burst with amusement. ‘What a lot they all think of their tuppeny-ha’penny lives! It’s enough to make one laugh. But I don’t think I’ll shoot him. He ain’t worth a good cartridge. He’s such a contemptible jackass!’
The words were rude; but I confess, at the moment, I heard them with pleasure.
Then, to my immense surprise, he opened the door once more, with a cunning look on his face, and walked quietly upstairs. I fell, unmanned, into my easy-chair, quivering all over with nervous agitation. There was a minute’s pause. At the end of that time, a loud report shook the room I sat in. It was followed at ten seconds’ interval by another. Next instant, the housemaid rushed down with a face of terror. ‘Oh, come up, sir,’ she cried. ‘There’s terrible things happening! Mr. Vernon’s shot himself, and he’s killed the missus!’
I went up to the bedroom. The wife was on the hearth-rug, shot lightly through the body. The wretched man himself lay moaning on the bed, blood streaming from his breast, and his eyes half open. As he saw me, he smiled through his pain and flung up one hand. ‘Norcott was right,’ he said slowly. ‘I was always a deal a worse fellow than he was. But I’ve come to myself now, and I hope I’ve killed her.’
He was wrong in that hope. His wife recovered. The jury very rightly returned it as temporary insanity. Indeed, Vernon’s strange and unbecoming language to myself just before his death clearly showed the fact that reason had been deposed from her seat for the time being. I have always felt that his brother’s terrible end must have preyed upon a once estimable parishioner’s mind so much that he was scarcely responsible at the time for his dreadful actions, which providentially had no such evil results for my own life and limbs as I feared at the moment of his worst delirium. His estate was proved at seventy odd thousand pounds, and his widow has since married a most respectable solicitor.