English fiction; Horror tales, English; Short stories, English
“Ever since that change in my affairs to which I have alluded, Bishop’s
Crossing had become hateful to me. My plans of life had been ruined, and
I had met with hasty judgments and unkind treatment where I had expected
sympathy. It is true that any danger of scandal from my brother had
passed away with his life; but still, I was sore about the past, and
felt that things could never be as they had been. It may be that I was
unduly sensitive, and that I had not made sufficient allowance for
others, but my feelings were as I describe. Any chance of getting away
from Bishop’s Crossing and of everyone in it would be most welcome to
me. And here was such a chance as I could never have dared to hope for,
a chance which would enable me to make a clean break with the past.
“There was this dead man lying upon the sofa, so like me that save for
some little thickness and coarseness of the features there was no
difference at all. No one had seen him come and no one would miss him.
We were both clean shaven, and his hair was about the same length as my
own. If I changed clothes with him, then Dr. Aloysius Lana would be
found lying dead in his study, and there would be an end of an
unfortunate fellow, and of a blighted career. There was plenty of ready
money in the room, and this I could carry away with me to help me to
start once more in some other land. In my brother’s clothes I could walk
by night unobserved as far as Liverpool, and in that great seaport I
would soon find some means of leaving the country. After my lost hopes,
the humblest existence where I was unknown was far preferable, in my
estimation, to a practice, however successful, in Bishop’s Crossing,
where at any moment I might come face to face with those whom I should
wish, if it were possible, to forget. I determined to effect the change.
“And I did so. I will not go into particulars, for the recollection is
as painful as the experience; but in an hour my brother lay, dressed
down to the smallest detail in my clothes, while I slunk out by the
surgery door, and taking the back path which led across some fields, I
started off to make the best of my way to Liverpool, where I arrived the
same night. My bag of money and a certain portrait were all I carried
out of the house, and I left behind me in my hurry the shade which my
brother had been wearing over his eye. Everything else of his I took
with me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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