“Gibes again,” retorted Wright, as (according to his account to me) the vision of the dream came before him, and the anger which had accompanied it flared upon his heart.
But he wrestled with it, occasionally looking at his friend, whom he really loved, yet still fancying that the face of that friend, however illuminated with the good humour probably inspired by the whisky, might or would assume the demoniac expression it carried when he dreamed that he had stabbed him to the heart. It signified little that James was smiling,—the other expression would return when the smile left. It was embodied in the muscles. It appeared as a phantasm, and the strength of a morbid imagination gave it form and expression.
“Yes, the old gibes.”
“No,” replied James; “I canna jibe wi’ an auld freend. But to end a’ this just never speak mair o’ the new paradise.”
“Worse and worse!” cried Wright. “You despise a subject that ought to interest all people. What are you who laugh at the idea of being made a proprietor of the rights of man—a poor wretch, who makes a shilling a-day by carrying beef, and licks the hand that gives you a penny, which by the rights of nature belongs to you; for is it not robbed from you by your masters, who have made a forceful division of property, and then you scoff at the man who would right you. I say, man, you’re a born idiot.”
A word this that changed James’s face into as much of ill-nature as the poor fellow’s naturally good and simple heart would permit. Wright at that moment looked at him. He saw, as he thought, the very countenance of the stabber, and his heart burned again, his eye flashed, and he instinctively grasped the knife in his hand. The fit lasted for a moment and went off, and the conversation was renewed at a point where I break off my narrative, to resume it when Wright gave me the parting words.
All this time I was in my own house. It would be, I think, about nine o’clock when I left to go up the High Street. I saw a number of people collected at the mouth of the Fountain Close, and heard dreadful cries of murder from the high windows of a house a little way down the entry. I was not thinking of Wright, and pushing the people aside, I was beginning to make my way down, when up the close comes running a man in his shirt-sleeves. I caught him in an instant in my arms, while the people were crying wildly, the women screaming, “Take care of the knife!”
And to be sure the knife was in his hand, all bloody.
“Wright!” cried I, as I wrenched the weapon from him.
“Ay, Wright,” replied he; “I have murdered James,” and then drawing a deep sigh he added, in choking accents, “Oh, that dream!”