by Grant Allen
For a minute or two she crouched motionless in deathly silence. Even the negroes held their peace. Instinctively they divined the full depth of her misery.
After a while she rose again, and took Vanna on her lap. The child cried for food, and Clemmy opened her bosom. Then she sat there long beside the ruins of her hut. Negresses crowded round and tried in vain to comfort her. How could they understand her loss? They didn’t know what it meant: for in that moment of anguish Clemmy felt herself a white woman. They spoke to her of the hut. The hut! What to her were ten thousand palaces! If you had given her the King’s House at Spanish Town that night it would have been all the same. Not the roof over her head, but Ivan Greet’s manuscript.
She rocked herself up and down as she cowered on the ground, and moaned inarticulately. The rocking and moaning lulled Vanna to sleep. His child was now all she had left to live for. For hours she crouched on the bare ground, never uttering a word: the negresses sat round, and watched her intently. Now and again old Rachel begged her to come home to her stepfather’s hut; but Clemmy couldn’t stir a step from those sacred ashes. It grew dark and chilly, for Ivan Greet’s plot stood high on the mountain. One by one the negresses dropped off to their huts; Clemmy sat there still, with her naked feet buried deep in the hot ash, and Ivan Greet’s baby clasped close to her bosom.
At last with tropical unexpectedness, a great flash of lightning blazed forth, all at once, and showed the wide basin and the mountains round as distinct as daylight. Instantly and simultaneously a terrible clap of thunder bellowed aloud in their ears. Then the rain-cloud burst. It came down in a single sheet with equatorial violence.
Old Rachel and the few remaining negresses fled home. They seized Clemmy’s arm, and tried to drag her; but Clemmy sat dogged, and refused to accompany them. Then they started and left her. All night long the storm raged, and the thunder roared awesomely. Great flashes lighted up swaying stems of coconuts and bent clumps of bamboo; huge palms snapped short like reeds before the wind; loud peals rent the sky with their ceaseless artillery. And all night long, in spite of storm and wind, the rain pelted down in one unending flood, as though it poured by great leaks from some heavenly reservoir.
Torrents tore down the hills; many huts were swept away; streams roared and raved; devastation marked their track; ’twas a carnival of ruin, a memorable hurricane. Hail rattled at times; all was black as pitch, save when the lightning showed everything more vivid than daylight. But Clemmy sat on, hot at heart with her agony.
When morning dawned, the terrified negroes, creeping forth from their shanties, found her still on her plot, crouching close over his child, but stiff and stark and cold and lifeless. Her bare feet had dug deep in the ashes of Ivan’s hut, now washed by the rain to a sodden remnant. Little Vanna just breathed in her dead mother’s arms. Old Rachel took her.
And that’s why the world has never heard more of Ivan Greet’s Masterpiece.
THE CHURCHWARDEN’S BROTHER
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 do
mestic 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, as
sumed 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.’
