A Letter found among the Papers
of the late Mortimer Barr
YOU ask me if in my experience as
one of a pair of twins I ever observed anything unaccountable by the natural
laws with which we have acquaintance.
As to that you shall judge; perhaps
we have not all acquaintance with the same natural laws. You may know some
that I do not, and what is to me unaccountable
may be very clear to you.
You knew my brother John-that is, you knew him when you knew that I was
not present; but neither you nor, I believe, any human being could distinguish
between him and me if we chose
to seem alike. Our parents could not; ours is the only instance of which
I have any knowledge of so close resemblance as that. I
speak of my brother John, but I
am not at all sure that his name was not Henry and mine John. We were regularly
christened, but afterward, in the very act of
tattooing us with small distinguishing
marks, the operator lost his reckoning; and although I bear upon my forearm
a small “H” and he bore a “J,” it is by no
means certain that the letters
ought not to have been transposed. During our boyhood our parents tried
to distinguish us more obviously by our clothing and
other simple devices, but we would
so frequently exchange suits and otherwise circumvent the enemy that they
abandoned all such ineffectual attempts, and
during all the years that we lived
together at home everybody recognized the difficulty of the situation and
made the best of it by calling us both “Jehnry.” I have
often wondered at my father's forbearance
in not branding us conspicuously upon our unworthy brows, but as we were
tolerably good boys and used our power
of embarrassment and annoyance
with commendable moderation, we escaped the iron. My father was, in fact,
a singularly good-natured man, and I think quietly
enjoyed Nature's practical joke.
Soon after we had come to California, and settled at San Jose (where the
only good fortune that awaited us was our meeting with so kind a friend
as you),
the family, as you know, was broken
up by the death of both my parents in the same week. My father died insolvent,
and the homestead was sacrificed to pay his
debts. My sisters returned to relatives
in the East, but owing to your kindness John and I, then twenty-two years
of age, obtained employment in San Francisco,
in different quarters of the town.
Circumstances did not permit us to live together, and we saw each other
infrequently, sometimes not oftener than once a week.
As we had few acquaintances in
common, the fact of our extraordinary likeness was little known. I come
now to the matter of your inquiry.
One day soon after we had come to this city I was walking down Market Street
late in the afternoon, when I was accosted by a well-dressed man of
middle age, who after greeting
me cordially said: “Stevens, I know, of course, that you do not go out
much, but I have told my wife about you, and she would be
glad to see you at the house. I
have a notion, too, that my girls are worth knowing. Suppose you come out
to-morrow at six and dine with us, en famille; and
then if the ladies can't amuse
you afterward I'll stand in with a few games of billiards.”
This was said with so bright a smile and so engaging a manner that I had
not the heart to refuse, and although I had never seen the man in my life
I
promptly replied: “You are very
good, sir, and it will give me great pleasure to accept the invitation.
Please present my compliments to Mrs. Margovan and ask
her to expect me.”
With a shake of the hand and a pleasant parting word the man passed on.
That he had mistaken me for my brother was plain enough. That was an error
to
which I was accustomed and which
it was not my habit to rectify unless the matter seemed important. But
how had I known that this man's name was Margovan?
It certainly is not a name that
one would apply to a man at random, with a probability that it would be
right. In point of fact, the name was as strange to me as the
man.
The next morning I hastened to where my brother was employed and met him
coming out of the office with a number of bills that he was to collect.
I told
him how I had “committed” him and
added that if he didn't care to keep the engagement I should be delighted
to continue the impersonation.
“That's queer,” he said thoughtfully. “Margovan is the only man in the
office here whom I know well and like. When he came in this morning and
we had
passed the usual greetings some
singular impulse prompted me to say: ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Margovan,
but I neglected to ask your address.’ I got the
address, but what under the sun
I was to do with it, I did not know until now. It's good of you to offer
to take the consequence of your impudence, but I'll eat
that dinner myself, if you please.”
He ate a number of dinners at the same place- more than were good for him,
I may add without disparaging their quality; for he fell in love with Miss
Margovan, proposed marriage to
her and was heartlessly accepted.
Several weeks after I had been informed of the engagement, but before it
had been convenient for me to make the acquaintance of the young woman
and
her family, I met one day on Kearney
Street a handsome but somewhat dissipated-looking man whom something prompted
me to follow and watch, which I did
without any scruple whatever. He
turned up Geary Street and followed it until he came to Union Square. There
he looked at his watch, then entered the square.
He loitered about the paths for
some time, evidently waiting for some one. Presently he was joined by a
fashionably dressed and beautiful young woman and the
two walked away up Stockton Street,
I following. I now felt the necessity of extreme caution, for although
the girl was a stranger it seemed to me that she would
recognize me at a glance. They
made several turns from one street to another and finally, after both had
taken a hasty look all about-which I narrowly evaded by
stepping into a doorway-they entered
a house of which I do not care to state the location. Its location was
better than its character.
I protest that my action in playing the spy upon these two strangers was
without assignable motive. It was one of which I might or might not be
ashamed,
according to my estimate of the
character of the person finding it out. As an essential part of a narrative
educed by your question it is related here without
hesitancy or shame.
A week later John took me to the house of his prospective father-in-law,
and in Miss Margovan, as you have already surmised, but to my profound
astonishment, I recognized the
heroine of that discreditable adventure. A gloriously beautiful heroine
of a discreditable adventure I must in justice admit that she
was; but that fact has only this
importance: her beauty was such a surprise to me that it cast a doubt upon
her identity with the young woman I had seen before;
how could the marvellous fascination
of her face have failed to strike me at that time? But no-there was no
possibility of error; the difference was due to
costume, light and general surroundings.
John and I passed the evening at the house, enduring, with the fortitude
of long experience, such delicate enough banter as our likeness naturally
suggested. When the young lady
and I were left alone for a few minutes I looked her squarely in the face
and said with sudden gravity:
“You, too, Miss Margovan, have a double: I saw her last Tuesday afternoon
in Union Square.”
She trained her great grey eyes upon me for a moment, but her glance was
a trifle less steady than my own and she withdrew it, fixing it on the
tip of her
shoe.
“Was she very like me?” she asked, with an indifference which I thought
a little overdone.
“So like,” said I, “that I greatly admired her, and being unwilling to
lose sight of her I confess that I followed her until-Miss Margovan, are
you sure that
you understand?”
She was now pale, but entirely calm. She again raised her eyes to mine,
with a look that did not falter.
“What do you wish me to do?” she asked. “You need not fear to name your
terms. I accept them.”
It was plain, even in the brief time given me for reflection, that in dealing
with this girl ordinary methods would not do, and ordinary exactions were
needless.
“Miss Margovan,” I said, doubtless with something of the compassion in
my voice that I had in my heart, “it is impossible not to think you the
victim of
some horrible compulsion. Rather
than impose new embarrassments upon you I would prefer to aid you to regain
your freedom.”
She shook her head, sadly and hopelessly, and I continued, with agitation:
“Your beauty unnerves me. I am disarmed by your frankness and your distress.
If you are free to act upon conscience you will, I believe, do what you
conceive to be best; if you are
not-well, Heaven help us all! You have nothing to fear from me but such
opposition to this marriage as I can try to justify on-on
other grounds.”
These were not my exact words, but that was the sense of them, as nearly
as my sudden and conflicting emotions permitted me to express it. I rose
and left
her without another look at her,
met the others as they re-entered the room and said, as calmly as I could:
“I have been bidding Miss Margovan good evening; it
is later than I thought.”
John decided to go with me. In the street he asked if I had observed anything
singular in Julia's manner.
“I thought her ill,” I replied; “that is why I left.” Nothing more was
said.
The next evening I came late to my lodgings. The events of the previous
evening had made me nervous and ill; I had tried to cure myself and attain
to clear
thinking by walking in the open
air, but I was oppressed with a horrible presentiment of evil-a presentiment
which I could not formulate. It was a chill, foggy
night; my clothing and hair were
damp and I shook with cold. In my dressing-gown and slippers before a blazing
grate of coals I was even more uncomfortable. I
no longer shivered but shuddered-
there is a difference. The dread of some impending calamity was so strong
and dispiriting that I tried to drive it away by
inviting a real sorrow-tried to
dispel the conception of a terrible future by substituting the memory of
a painful past. I recalled the death of my parents and
endeavoured to fix my mind upon
the last sad scenes at their bedsides and their graves. It all seemed vague
and unreal, as having occurred ages ago and to
another person. Suddenly, striking
through my thought and parting it as a tense cord is parted by the stroke
of steel-I can think of no other comparison-I heard a
sharp cry as of one in mortal agony!
The voice was that of my brother and seemed to come from the street outside
my window. I sprang to the window and
threw it open. A street lamp directly
opposite threw a wan and ghastly light upon the wet pavement and the fronts
of the houses. A single policeman, with
upturned collar, was leaning against
a gatepost, quietly smoking a cigar. No one else was in sight. I closed
the window and pulled down the shade, seated myself
before the fire and tried to fix
my mind upon my surroundings. By way of assisting, by performance of some
familiar act, I looked at my watch; it marked
half-past eleven. Again I heard
that awful cry! It seemed in the room-at my side. I was frightened and
for some moments had not the power to move. A few
minutes later-I have no recollection
of the intermediate time-I found myself hurrying along an unfamiliar street
as fast as I could walk. I did not know where I
was, nor whither I was going, but
presently sprang up the steps of a house before which were two or three
carriages and in which were moving lights and a
subdued confusion of voices. It
was the house of Mr. Margovan.
You know, good friend, what had occurred there. In one chamber lay Julia
Margovan, hours dead by poison; in another John Stevens, bleeding from
a
pistol wound in the chest, inflicted
by his own hand. As I burst into the room; pushed aside the physicians
and laid my hand upon his forehead he unclosed his
eyes, stared blankly, closed them
slowly and died without a sign.
I knew no more until six weeks afterwards, when I had been nursed back
to life by your own saintly wife in your own beautiful home. All of that
you
know, but what you do not know
is this-which, however, has no bearing upon the subject of your psychological
researches-at least not upon that branch of them
in which, with a delicacy and consideration
all your own, you have asked for less assistance than I think I have given
you:
One moonlight night several years afterward I was passing through Union
Square. The hour was late and the square deserted. Certain memories of
the past
naturally came into my mind as
I came to the spot where I had once witnessed that fateful assignation,
and with that unaccountable perversity which prompts us
to dwell upon thoughts of the most
painful character I seated myself upon one of the benches to indulge them.
A man entered the square and came along the
walk toward me. His hands were
clasped behind him, his head was bowed; he seemed to observe nothing. As
he approached the shadow in which I sat I
recognized him as the man whom
I had seen meet Julia Margovan years before at that spot. But he was terribly
altered-grey, worn and haggard. Dissipation and
vice were in evidence in every
look; illness was no less apparent. His clothing was in disorder, his hair
fell across his forehead in a derangement which was at
once uncanny, and picturesque.
He looked fitter for restraint than liberty-the restraint of a hospital.
With no defined purpose I rose and confronted him. He raised his head and
looked me full in the face. I have no words to describe the ghastly change
that
came over his own; it was a look
of unspeakable terror-he thought himself eye to eye with a ghost. But he
was a courageous man. “Damn you, John Stevens!” he
cried, and lifting his trembling
arm he dashed his fist feebly at my face and fell headlong upon the gravel
as I walked away.
Somebody found him there, stone-dead. Nothing more is known of him, not
even his name. To know of a man that he is dead should be enough.
The End
