stories of two brothers are common enough the world over—probably more so than stories of young men who have fallen in love with their grandmothers, and the main feature in most of them, as in the story i have just told, is in the close resemblance of the two brothers, for on that everything hinges. it is precisely the same in the one i am about to relate, one i came upon a few years ago—just how many i wish not to say, nor just where it happened except that it was in the west country; and for the real names of people and places i have substituted fictitious ones. for this too, like the last, is a true story. the reader on finishing it will perhaps blush to think it true, but apart from the moral aspect of the case it is, psychologically, a singularly interesting one.
one summer day i travelled by a public conveyance to pollhampton, a small rustic market town several miles distant from the nearest railroad. my destination was not the town itself, but a lonely heath-grown hill five miles further on, where i wished to find something that grew and blossomed on it, and my first object on arrival was to secure a riding horse or horse and trap to carry me there. i was told at once that it was useless to look for such a thing, as it was market day and everybody was fully occupied. that it was market day i already knew very well, as the two or three main streets and wide market-place in the middle of the town were full of sheep and cows and pigs and people running about and much noise of shoutings and barking dogs. however, the strange object of the strange-looking stranger in coming to the town, interested some of the wild native boys, and they rushed about to tell it, and in less than five minutes a nice neat-looking aged" target="_blank">middle-aged man stood at my elbow and said he had a good horse and trap and for seven-and-sixpence would drive me to the hill, help me there to find what i wanted, and bring me back in time to catch the conveyance. accordingly in a few minutes we were speeding out of the town drawn by a fast-trotting horse. fast trotters appeared to be common in these parts, and as we went along the road from time to time a small cloud of dust would become visible far ahead of us, and in two or three minutes a farmer's trap would appear and rush past on its way to market, to vanish behind us in two or three minutes more and be succeeded by another and then others. by-and-by one came past driven by two young women, one holding the reins, the other playing with the whip. they were tall, dark, with black hair, and colourless faces, aged about thirty, i imagined. as they flew by i remarked, "i would lay a sovereign to a shilling that they are twins." "you'd lose your money—there's two or three years between them," said my driver. "do you know them—you didn't nod to them nor they to you?" i said. "i know them," he returned, "as well as i know my own face when i look at myself in a glass." on which i remarked that it was very wonderful. "'tis only a part of the wonder, and not the biggest part," he said. "you've seen what they are like and how like they are, but if you passed a day with them in the house you'd be able to tell one from the other; but if you lived a year in the same house with their two brothers you'd never be able to tell one from the other and be sure you were right. the strangest thing is that the brothers who, like their sisters, have two or three years between them, are not a bit like their sisters; they are blue-eyed and seem a different race."
that, i said, made it more wonderful still. a curiously symmetrical family. rather awkward for their neighbours, and people who had business relations with them.
"yes—perhaps," he said, "but it served them very well on one occasion to be so much alike."
i began to smell a dramatic rat and begged him to tell me all about it.
he said he didn't mind telling me. their name was prage—antony and martin prage, of red pit farm, which they inherited from their father and worked together. they were very united. one day one of them, when riding six miles from home, met a girl coming along the road, and stopped his horse to talk to her. she was a poor girl that worked at a dairy farm near by, and lived with her mother, a poor old widow-woman, in a cottage in the village. she was pretty, and the young man took a liking to her and he persuaded her to come again to meet him on another day at that spot; and there were many more meetings, and they were fond of each other; but after she told him that something had happened to her he never came again. when she made enquiries she found he had given her a false name and address, and so she lost sight of him. then her child was born, and she lived with her mother. and you must know what her life was—she and her old mother and her baby and nothing to keep them. and though she was a shy ignorant girl she made up her mind to look for him until she found him to make him pay for the child. she said he had come on his horse so often to see her that he could not be too far away, and every morning she would go off in search of him, and she spent weeks and months tramping about the country, visiting all the villages for many miles round looking for him. and one day in a small village six miles from her home she caught sight of him galloping by on his horse, and seeing a woman standing outside a cottage she ran to her and asked who that young man was who had just ridden by. the woman told her she thought it was mr. antony prage of red pit farm, about two miles from the village. then the girl came home and was advised what to do. she had to do it all herself as there was no money to buy a lawyer, so she had him brought to court and told her own story, and the judge was very gentle with her and drew out all the particulars. but mr. prage had got a lawyer, and when the girl had finished her story he got up and put just one question to her. first he called on antony prage to stand up in court, then he said to her, "do you swear that the man standing before you is the father of your child?"
and just when he put that question antony's brother martin, who had been sitting at the back of the court, got up, and coming forward stood at his brother's side. the girl stared at the two, standing together, too astonished to speak for some time. she looked from one to the other and at last said, "i swear it is one of them." that, the lawyer said, wasn't good enough. if she could not swear that antony prage, the man she had brought into court, was the guilty person, then the case fell to the ground.
my informant finished his story and i asked "was that then the end—was nothing more done about it?" "no, nothing." "did not the judge say it was a mean dirty trick arranged between the brothers and the lawyer?" "no, he didn't—he non-suited her and that was all." "and did not antony prage, or both of them, go into the witness box and swear that they were innocent of the charge?" "no, they never opened their mouths in court. when the judge told the young woman that she had failed to establish her case, they walked out smiling, and their friends came round them and they went off together." "and these brothers, i suppose, still live among you at their farm and are regarded as good respectable young men, and go to chapel on sundays, and by-and-by will probably marry nice respectable methodist girls, and the girls' friends will congratulate them on making such good matches."
"oh, no doubt; one has been married some time and his wife has got a baby; the other one will be married before long."
"and what do you think about it all?"
"i've told you what happened because the facts came out in court and are known to everyone. what i think about it is what i think, and i've no call to tell that."
"oh, very well!" i said, vexed at his noncommittal attitude. then i looked at him, but his face revealed nothing; he was just the man with a quiet manner and low voice who had put himself at my service and engaged to drive me five miles out to a hill, help me to find what i wanted and bring me back in time to catch the conveyance to my town, all for the surprisingly moderate sum of seven-and-sixpence. but he had told me the story of the two brothers; and besides, in spite of our faces being masks, if one make them so, mind converses with mind in some way the psychologists have not yet found out, and i knew that in his heart of hearts he regarded those two respectable members of the pollhampton community much as i did.
