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One of Twins
by
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 gray 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 reentered 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 endeavored 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.