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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Two Destinies, by Wilkie Collins
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Two Destinies
+
+Author: Wilkie Collins
+
+Release Date: February, 1999  [Etext #1624]
+Posting Date: November 18, 2009
+[Last Updated: February 13, 2019]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWO DESTINIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by James Rusk
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO DESTINIES
+
+By Wilkie Collins
+
+
+
+
+The Prelude.
+
+THE GUEST WRITES AND TELLS THE STORY OF THE DINNER PARTY.
+
+MANY years have passed since my wife and I left the United States to pay
+our first visit to England.
+
+We were provided with letters of introduction, as a matter of course.
+Among them there was a letter which had been written for us by my wife's
+brother. It presented us to an English gentleman who held a high rank on
+the list of his old and valued friends.
+
+"You will become acquainted with Mr. George Germaine," my brother-in-law
+said, when we took leave of him, "at a very interesting period of his
+life. My last news of him tells me that he is just married. I know
+nothing of the lady, or of the circumstances under which my friend
+first met with her. But of this I am certain: married or single, George
+Germaine will give you and your wife a hearty welcome to England, for my
+sake."
+
+The day after our arrival in London, we left our letter of introduction
+at the house of Mr. Germaine.
+
+The next morning we went to see a favorite object of American interest,
+in the metropolis of England--the Tower of London. The citizens of the
+United States find this relic of the good old times of great use in
+raising their national estimate of the value of republican institutions.
+On getting back to the hotel, the cards of Mr. and Mrs. Germaine told us
+that they had already returned our visit. The same evening we received
+an invitation to dine with the newly married couple. It was inclosed in
+a little note from Mrs. Germaine to my wife, warning us that we were not
+to expect to meet a large party. "It is the first dinner we give, on our
+return from our wedding tour" (the lady wrote); "and you will only be
+introduced to a few of my husband's old friends."
+
+In America, and (as I hear) on the continent of Europe also, when your
+host invites you to dine at a given hour, you pay him the compliment of
+arriving punctually at his house. In England alone, the incomprehensible
+and discourteous custom prevails of keeping the host and the dinner
+waiting for half an hour or more--without any assignable reason and
+without any better excuse than the purely formal apology that is implied
+in the words, "Sorry to be late."
+
+Arriving at the appointed time at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Germaine, we
+had every reason to congratulate ourselves on the ignorant punctuality
+which had brought us into the drawing-room half an hour in advance of
+the other guests.
+
+In the first place, there was so much heartiness, and so little
+ceremony, in the welcome accorded to us, that we almost fancied
+ourselves back in our own country. In the second place, both husband and
+wife interested us the moment we set eyes on them. The lady, especially,
+although she was not, strictly speaking, a beautiful woman, quite
+fascinated us. There was an artless charm in her face and manner, a
+simple grace in all her movements, a low, delicious melody in her voice,
+which we Americans felt to be simply irresistible. And then, it was so
+plain (and so pleasant) to see that here at least was a happy marriage!
+Here were two people who had all their dearest hopes, wishes, and
+sympathies in common--who looked, if I may risk the expression, born to
+be man and wife. By the time when the fashionable delay of the half
+hour had expired, we were talking together as familiarly and as
+confidentially as if we had been all four of us old friends.
+
+Eight o'clock struck, and the first of the English guests appeared.
+
+Having forgotten this gentleman's name, I must beg leave to distinguish
+him by means of a letter of the alphabet. Let me call him Mr. A. When
+he entered the room alone, our host and hostess both started, and both
+looked surprised. Apparently they expected him to be accompanied by some
+other person. Mr. Germaine put a curious question to his friend.
+
+"Where is your wife?" he asked.
+
+Mr. A answered for the absent lady by a neat little apology, expressed
+in these words:
+
+"She has got a bad cold. She is very sorry. She begs me to make her
+excuses."
+
+He had just time to deliver his message, before another unaccompanied
+gentleman appeared. Reverting to the letters of the alphabet, let me
+call him Mr. B. Once more, I noticed that our host and hostess started
+when they saw him enter the room alone. And, rather to my surprise, I
+heard Mr. Germaine put his curious question again to the new guest:
+
+"Where is your wife?"
+
+The answer--with slight variations--was Mr. A's neat little apology,
+repeated by Mr. B.
+
+"I am very sorry. Mrs. B has got a bad headache. She is subject to bad
+headaches. She begs me to make her excuses."
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Germaine glanced at one another. The husband's face plainly
+expressed the suspicion which this second apology had roused in his
+mind. The wife was steady and calm. An interval passed--a silent
+interval. Mr. A and Mr. B retired together guiltily into a corner. My
+wife and I looked at the pictures.
+
+Mrs. Germaine was the first to relieve us from our own intolerable
+silence. Two more guests, it appeared, were still wanting to complete
+the party. "Shall we have dinner at once, George?" she said to her
+husband. "Or shall we wait for Mr. and Mrs. C?"
+
+"We will wait five minutes," he answered, shortly--with his eye on Mr. A
+and Mr. B, guiltily secluded in their corner.
+
+The drawing-room door opened. We all knew that a third married lady was
+expected; we all looked toward the door in unutterable anticipation. Our
+unexpressed hopes rested silently on the possible appearance of Mrs. C.
+Would that admirable, but unknown, woman, at once charm and relieve
+us by her presence? I shudder as I write it. Mr. C walked into the
+room--and walked in, _alone_.
+
+Mr. Germaine suddenly varied his formal inquiry in receiving the new
+guest.
+
+"Is your wife ill?" he asked.
+
+Mr. C was an elderly man; Mr. C had lived (judging by appearances) in
+the days when the old-fashioned laws of politeness were still in force.
+He discovered his two married brethren in their corner, unaccompanied by
+_their_ wives; and he delivered his apology for _his_ wife with the air
+of a man who felt unaffectedly ashamed of it:
+
+"Mrs. C is so sorry. She has got such a bad cold. She does so regret not
+being able to accompany me."
+
+At this third apology, Mr. Germaine's indignation forced its way outward
+into expression in words.
+
+"Two bad colds and one bad headache," he said, with ironical politeness.
+"I don't know how your wives agree, gentlemen, when they are well. But
+when they are ill, their unanimity is wonderful!"
+
+The dinner was announced as that sharp saying passed his lips.
+
+I had the honor of taking Mrs. Germaine to the dining-room. Her sense of
+the implied insult offered to her by the wives of her husband's friends
+only showed itself in a trembling, a very slight trembling, of the hand
+that rested on my arm. My interest in her increased tenfold. Only
+a woman who had been accustomed to suffer, who had been broken and
+disciplined to self-restraint, could have endured the moral martyrdom
+inflicted on her as _this_ woman endured it, from the beginning of the
+evening to the end.
+
+Am I using the language of exaggeration when I write of my hostess in
+these terms? Look at the circumstances as they struck two strangers like
+my wife and myself.
+
+Here was the first dinner party which Mr. and Mrs. Germaine had given
+since their marriage. Three of Mr. Germaine's friends, all married men,
+had been invited with their wives to meet Mr. Germaine's wife, and had
+(evidently) accepted the invitation without reserve. What discoveries
+had taken place between the giving of the invitation and the giving of
+the dinner it was impossible to say. The one thing plainly discernible
+was, that in the interval the three wives had agreed in the resolution
+to leave their husbands to represent them at Mrs. Germaine's table;
+and, more amazing still, the husbands had so far approved of the
+grossly discourteous conduct of the wives as to consent to make the most
+insultingly trivial excuses for their absence. Could any crueler slur
+than this have been cast on a woman at the outs et of her married life,
+before the face of her husband, and in the presence of two strangers
+from another country? Is "martyrdom" too big a word to use in describing
+what a sensitive person must have suffered, subjected to such treatment
+as this? Well, I think not.
+
+We took our places at the dinner-table. Don't ask me to describe that
+most miserable of mortal meetings, that weariest and dreariest of
+human festivals! It is quite bad enough to remember that evening--it is
+indeed.
+
+My wife and I did our best to keep the conversation moving as easily
+and as harmlessly as might be. I may say that we really worked hard.
+Nevertheless, our success was not very encouraging. Try as we might to
+overlook them, there were the three empty places of the three absent
+women, speaking in their own dismal language for themselves. Try as we
+might to resist it, we all felt the one sad conclusion which those empty
+places persisted in forcing on our minds. It was surely too plain that
+some terrible report, affecting the character of the unhappy woman at
+the head of the table, had unexpectedly come to light, and had at one
+blow destroyed her position in the estimation of her husband's friends.
+In the face of the excuses in the drawing-room, in the face of the empty
+places at the dinner-table, what could the friendliest guests do, to
+any good purpose, to help the husband and wife in their sore and sudden
+need? They could say good-night at the earliest possible opportunity,
+and mercifully leave the married pair to themselves.
+
+Let it at least be recorded to the credit of the three gentlemen,
+designated in these pages as A, B, and C, that they were sufficiently
+ashamed of themselves and their wives to be the first members of the
+dinner party who left the house. In a few minutes more we rose to follow
+their example. Mrs. Germaine earnestly requested that we would delay our
+departure.
+
+"Wait a few minutes," she whispered, with a glance at her husband. "I
+have something to say to you before you go."
+
+She left us, and, taking Mr. Germaine by the arm, led him away to the
+opposite side of the room. The two held a little colloquy together in
+low voices. The husband closed the consultation by lifting the wife's
+hand to his lips.
+
+"Do as you please, my love," he said to her. "I leave it entirely to
+you."
+
+He sat down sorrowfully, lost in his thoughts. Mrs. Germaine unlocked
+a cabinet at the further end of the room, and returned to us, alone,
+carrying a small portfolio in her hand.
+
+"No words of mine can tell you how gratefully I feel your kindness,"
+she said, with perfect simplicity, and with perfect dignity at the same
+time. "Under very trying circumstances, you have treated me with the
+tenderness and the sympathy which you might have shown to an old friend.
+The one return I can make for all that I owe to you is to admit you to
+my fullest confidence, and to leave you to judge for yourselves whether
+I deserve the treatment which I have received to-night."
+
+Her eyes filled with tears. She paused to control herself. We both
+begged her to say no more. Her husband, joining us, added his entreaties
+to ours. She thanked us, but she persisted. Like most sensitively
+organized persons, she could be resolute when she believed that the
+occasion called for it.
+
+"I have a few words more to say," she resumed, addressing my wife. "You
+are the only married woman who has come to our little dinner party. The
+marked absence of the other wives explains itself. It is not for me to
+say whether they are right or wrong in refusing to sit at our table.
+My dear husband--who knows my whole life as well as I know it
+myself--expressed the wish that we should invite these ladies. He
+wrongly supposed that _his_ estimate of me would be the estimate
+accepted by his friends; and neither he nor I anticipated that the
+misfortunes of my past life would be revealed by some person acquainted
+with them, whose treachery we have yet to discover. The least I can
+do, by way of acknowledging your kindness, is to place you in the same
+position toward me which the other ladies now occupy. The circumstances
+under which I have become the wife of Mr. Germaine are, in some
+respects, very remarkable. They are related, without suppression or
+reserve, in a little narrative which my husband wrote, at the time of
+our marriage, for the satisfaction of one of his absent relatives, whose
+good opinion he was unwilling to forfeit. The manuscript is in this
+portfolio. After what has happened, I ask you both to read it, as
+a personal favor to me. It is for you to decide, when you know all,
+whether I am a fit person for an honest woman to associate with or not."
+
+She held out her hand, with a sweet, sad smile, and bid us good night.
+My wife, in her impulsive way, forgot the formalities proper to the
+occasion, and kissed her at parting. At that one little act of sisterly
+sympathy, the fortitude which the poor creature had preserved all
+through the evening gave way in an instant. She burst into tears.
+
+I felt as fond of her and as sorry for her as my wife. But
+(unfortunately) I could not take my wife's privilege of kissing her. On
+our way downstairs, I found the opportunity of saying a cheering word to
+her husband as he accompanied us to the door.
+
+"Before I open this," I remarked, pointing to the portfolio under my
+arm, "my mind is made up, sir, about one thing. If I wasn't married
+already, I tell you this--I should envy you your wife."
+
+He pointed to the portfolio in his turn.
+
+"Read what I have written there," he said; "and you will understand what
+those false friends of mine have made me suffer to-night."
+
+The next morning my wife and I opened the portfolio, and read the
+strange story of George Germaine's marriage.
+
+
+
+
+The Narrative.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE GERMAINE WRITES, AND TELLS HIS OWN LOVE STORY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. GREENWATER BROAD
+
+LOOK back, my memory, through the dim labyrinth of the past, through
+the mingling joys and sorrows of twenty years. Rise again, my boyhood's
+days, by the winding green shores of the little lake. Come to me once
+more, my child-love, in the innocent beauty of your first ten years of
+life. Let us live again, my angel, as we lived in our first paradise,
+before sin and sorrow lifted their flaming swords and drove us out into
+the world.
+
+
+The month was March. The last wild fowl of the season were floating
+on the waters of the lake which, in our Suffolk tongue, we called
+Greenwater Broad.
+
+Wind where it might, the grassy banks and the overhanging trees tinged
+the lake with the soft green reflections from which it took its name.
+In a creek at the south end, the boats were kept--my own pretty sailing
+boat having a tiny natural harbor all to itself. In a creek at the north
+end stood the great trap (called a "decoy"), used for snaring the
+wild fowl which flocked every winter, by thousands and thousands, to
+Greenwater Broad.
+
+My little Mary and I went out together, hand in hand, to see the last
+birds of the season lured into the decoy.
+
+The outer part of the strange bird-trap rose from the waters of the lake
+in a series of circular arches, formed of elastic branches bent to the
+needed shape, and covered with folds of fine network, making the roof.
+Little by little diminishing in size, the arches and their net-work
+followed the secret windings of the creek inland to its end. Built back
+round the arches, on their landward side, ran a wooden paling, high
+enough to hide a man kneeling behind it from the view of the birds on
+the lake. At certain intervals a hole was broken in the paling just
+large enough to allow of the passage through it of a dog of the
+terrier or the spaniel breed. And there began and ended the simple yet
+sufficient mechanism of the decoy.
+
+In those days I was thirteen, and Mary was ten years old. Walking on our
+way to the lake we had Mary's father with us for guide and companion.
+The good man served as bailiff on my father's estate. He was, besides, a
+skilled master in the art of decoying ducks. The dog that helped him (we
+used no tame ducks as decoys in Suffolk) was a little black terrier;
+a skilled master also, in his way; a creature who possessed, in equal
+proportions, the enviable advantages of perfect good-humor and perfect
+common sense.
+
+The dog followed the bailiff, and we followed the dog.
+
+Arrived at the paling which surrounded the decoy, the dog sat down to
+wait until he was wanted. The bailiff and the children crouched behind
+the paling, and peeped through the outermost dog-hole, which commanded
+a full view of the lake. It was a day without wind; not a ripple stirred
+the surface of the water; the soft gray clouds filled all the sky, and
+hid the sun from view.
+
+We peeped through the hole in the paling. There were the wild
+ducks--collected within easy reach of the decoy--placidly dressing their
+feathers on the placid surface of the lake.
+
+The bailiff looked at the dog, and made a sign. The dog looked at the
+bailiff; and, stepping forward quietly, passed through the hole, so as
+to show himself on the narrow strip of ground shelving down from the
+outer side of the paling to the lake.
+
+First one duck, then another, then half a dozen together, discovered the
+dog.
+
+A new object showing itself on the solitary scene instantly became an
+object of all-devouring curiosity to the ducks. The outermost of them
+began to swim slowly toward the strange four-footed creature, planted
+motionless on the bank. By twos and threes, the main body of the
+waterfowl gradually followed the advanced guard. Swimming nearer and
+nearer to the dog, the wary ducks suddenly came to a halt, and, poised
+on the water, viewed from a safe distance the phenomenon on the land.
+
+The bailiff, kneeling behind the paling, whispered, "Trim!"
+
+Hearing his name, the terrier turned about, and retiring through the
+hole, became lost to the view of the ducks. Motionless on the water,
+the wild fowl wondered and waited. In a minute more, the dog had trotted
+round, and had shown himself through the next hole in the paling,
+pierced further inward where the lake ran up into the outermost of the
+windings of the creek.
+
+The second appearance of the terrier instantly produced a second fit of
+curiosity among the ducks. With one accord, they swam forward again,
+to get another and a nearer view of the dog; then, judging their
+safe distance once more, they stopped for the second time, under the
+outermost arch of the decoy. Again the dog vanished, and the puzzled
+ducks waited. An interval passed, and the third appearance of Trim took
+place, through a third hole in the paling, pierced further inland up
+the creek. For the third time irresistible curiosity urged the ducks to
+advance further and further inward, under the fatal arches of the decoy.
+A fourth and a fifth time the game went on, until the dog had lured the
+water-fowl from point to point into the inner recesses of the decoy.
+There a last appearance of Trim took place. A last advance, a last
+cautious pause, was made by the ducks. The bailiff touched the strings,
+the weighed net-work fell vertically into the water, and closed the
+decoy. There, by dozens and dozens, were the ducks, caught by means of
+their own curiosity--with nothing but a little dog for a bait! In a
+few hours afterward they were all dead ducks on their way to the London
+market.
+
+As the last act in the curious comedy of the decoy came to its end,
+little Mary laid her hand on my shoulder, and, raising herself on
+tiptoe, whispered in my ear:
+
+"George, come home with me. I have got something to show you that is
+better worth seeing than the ducks."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's a surprise. I won't tell you."
+
+"Will you give me a kiss?"
+
+The charming little creature put her slim sun-burned arms round my neck,
+and answered:
+
+"As many kisses as you like, George."
+
+It was innocently said, on her side. It was innocently done, on mine.
+The good easy bailiff, looking aside at the moment from his ducks,
+discovered us pursuing our boy-and-girl courtship in each other's arms.
+He shook his big forefinger at us, with something of a sad and doubting
+smile.
+
+"Ah, Master George, Master George!" he said. "When your father comes
+home, do you think he will approve of his son and heir kissing his
+bailiff's daughter?"
+
+"When my father comes home," I answered, with great dignity, "I shall
+tell him the truth. I shall say I am going to marry your daughter."
+
+The bailiff burst out laughing, and looked back again at his ducks.
+
+"Well, well!" we heard him say to himself. "They're only children.
+There's no call, poor things, to part them yet awhile."
+
+Mary and I had a great dislike to be called children. Properly
+understood, one of us was a lady aged ten, and the other was a gentleman
+aged thirteen. We left the good bailiff indignantly, and went away
+together, hand in hand, to the cottage.
+
+CHAPTER II. TWO YOUNG HEARTS.
+
+"HE is growing too fast," said the doctor to my mother; "and he is
+getting a great deal too clever for a boy at his age. Remove him from
+school, ma'am, for six months; let him run about in the open air
+at home; and if you find him with a book in his hand, take it away
+directly. There is my prescription."
+
+Those words decided my fate in life.
+
+In obedience to the doctor's advice, I was left an idle boy--without
+brothers, sisters, or companions of my own age--to roam about the
+grounds of our lonely country-house. The bailiff's daughter, like me,
+was an only child; and, like me, she had no playfellows. We met in
+our wanderings on the solitary shores of the lake. Beginning by being
+inseparable companions, we ripened and developed into true lovers. Our
+preliminary courtship concluded, we next proposed (before I returned to
+school) to burst into complete maturity by becoming man and wife.
+
+I am not writing in jest. Absurd as it may appear to "sensible people,"
+we two children were lovers, if ever there were lovers yet.
+
+We had no pleasures apart from the one all-sufficient pleasure which
+we found in each other's society. We objected to the night, because it
+parted us. We entreated our parents, on either side, to let us sleep in
+the same room. I was angry with my mother, and Mary was disappointed in
+her father, when they laughed at us, and wondered what we should want
+next. Looking onward, from those days to the days of my manhood, I can
+vividly recall such hours of happiness as have fallen to my share. But I
+remember no delights of that later time comparable to the exquisite and
+enduring pleasure that filled my young being when I walked with Mary in
+the woods; when I sailed with Mary in my boat on the lake; when I met
+Mary, after the cruel separation of the night, and flew into her open
+arms as if we had been parted for months and months together.
+
+What was the attraction that drew us so closely one to the other, at an
+age when the sexual sympathies lay dormant in her and in me?
+
+We neither knew nor sought to know. We obeyed the impulse to love one
+another, as a bird obeys the impulse to fly.
+
+Let it not be supposed that we possessed any natural gifts, or
+advantages which singled us out as differing in a marked way from other
+children at our time of life. We possessed nothing of the sort. I had
+been called a clever boy at school; but there were thousands of other
+boys, at thousands of other schools, who headed their classes and
+won their prizes, like me. Personally speaking, I was in no way
+remarkable--except for being, in the ordinary phrase, "tall for my age."
+On her side, Mary displayed no striking attractions. She was a
+fragile child, with mild gray eyes and a pale complexion; singularly
+undemonstrative, singularly shy and silent, except when she was alone
+with me. Such beauty as she had, in those early days, lay in a certain
+artless purity and tenderness of expression, and in the charming
+reddish-brown color of her hair, varying quaintly and prettily in
+different lights. To all outward appearance two perfectly commonplace
+children, we were mysteriously united by some kindred association of the
+spirit in her and the spirit in me, which not only defied discovery by
+our young selves, but which lay too deep for investigation by far older
+and far wiser heads than ours.
+
+You will naturally wonder whether anything was done by our elders to
+check our precocious attachment, while it was still an innocent love
+union between a boy and a girl.
+
+Nothing was done by my father, for the simple reason that he was away
+from home.
+
+He was a man of a restless and speculative turn of mind. Inheriting his
+estate burdened with debt, his grand ambition was to increase his small
+available income by his own exertions; to set up an establishment
+in London; and to climb to political distinction by the ladder of
+Parliament. An old friend, who had emigrated to America, had proposed
+to him a speculation in agriculture, in one of the Western States, which
+was to make both their fortunes. My father's eccentric fancy was struck
+by the idea. For more than a year past he had been away from us in the
+United States; and all we knew of him (instructed by his letters)
+was, that he might be shortly expected to return to us in the enviable
+character of one of the richest men in England.
+
+As for my poor mother--the sweetest and softest-hearted of women--to see
+me happy was all that she desired.
+
+The quaint little love romance of the two children amused and interested
+her. She jested with Mary's father about the coming union between the
+two families, without one serious thought of the future--without even a
+foreboding of what might happen when my father returned. "Sufficient for
+the day is the evil (or the good) thereof," had been my mother's motto
+all her life. She agreed with the easy philosophy of the bailiff,
+already recorded in these pages: "They're only children. There's no
+call, poor things, to part them yet a while."
+
+There was one member of the family, however, who took a sensible and
+serious view of the matter.
+
+My father's brother paid us a visit in our solitude; discovered what
+was going on between Mary and me; and was, at first, naturally enough,
+inclined to laugh at us. Closer investigation altered his way of
+thinking. He became convinced that my mother was acting like a fool;
+that the bailiff (a faithful servant, if ever there was one yet) was
+cunningly advancing his own interests by means of his daughter; and that
+I was a young idiot, who had developed his native reserves of imbecility
+at an unusually early period of life. Speaking to my mother under the
+influence of these strong impressions, my uncle offered to take me back
+with him to London, and keep me there until I had been brought to
+my senses by association with his own children, and by careful
+superintendence under his own roof.
+
+My mother hesitated about accepting this proposal; she had the advantage
+over my uncle of understanding my disposition. While she was still
+doubting, while my uncle was still impatiently waiting for her decision,
+I settled the question for my elders by running away.
+
+I left a letter to represent me in my absence; declaring that no mortal
+power should part me from Mary, and promising to return and ask my
+mother's pardon as soon as my uncle had left the house. The strictest
+search was made for me without discovering a trace of my place of
+refuge. My uncle departed for London, predicting that I should live to
+be a disgrace to the family, and announcing that he should transmit his
+opinion of me to my father in America by the next mail.
+
+The secret of the hiding-place in which I contrived to defy discovery is
+soon told. I was hidden (without the bailiff's knowledge) in the bedroom
+of the bailiff's mother. And did the bailiff's mother know it? you will
+ask. To which I answer: the bailiff's mother did it. And, what is
+more, gloried in doing it--not, observe, as an act of hostility to my
+relatives, but simply as a duty that lay on her conscience.
+
+What sort of old woman, in the name of all that is wonderful, was this?
+Let her appear, and speak for herself--the wild and weird grandmother of
+gentle little Mary; the Sibyl of modern times, known, far and wide, in
+our part of Suffolk, as Dame Dermody.
+
+I see her again, as I write, sitting in her son's pretty cottage parlor,
+hard by the window, so that the light fell over her shoulder while she
+knitted or read. A little, lean, wiry old woman was Dame Dermody--with
+fierce black eyes, surmounted by bushy white eyebrows, by a high
+wrinkled forehead, and by thick white hair gathered neatly under her
+old-fashioned "mob-cap." Report whispered (and whispered truly) that
+she had been a lady by birth and breeding, and that she had deliberately
+closed her prospects in life by marrying a man greatly her inferior
+in social rank. Whatever her family might think of her marriage, she
+herself never regretted it. In her estimation her husband's memory was
+a sacred memory; his spirit was a guardian spirit, watching over her,
+waking or sleeping, morning or night.
+
+Holding this faith, she was in no respect influenced by those grossly
+material ideas of modern growth which associate the presence of
+spiritual beings with clumsy conjuring tricks and monkey antics
+performed on tables and chairs. Dame Dermody's nobler superstition
+formed an integral part of her religious convictions--convictions which
+had long since found their chosen resting-place in the mystic doctrines
+of Emanuel Swedenborg. The only books which she read were the works
+of the Swedish Seer. She mixed up Swedenborg's teachings on angels and
+departed spirits, on love to one's neighbor and purity of life, with
+wild fancies, and kindred beliefs of her own; and preached the visionary
+religious doctrines thus derived, not only in the bailiff's household,
+but also on proselytizing expeditions to the households of her humble
+neighbors, far and near.
+
+Under her son's roof--after the death of his wife--she reigned a supreme
+power; priding herself alike on her close attention to her domestic
+duties, and on her privileged communications with angels and spirits.
+She would hold long colloquys with the spirit of her dead husband before
+anybody who happened to be present--colloquys which struck the simple
+spectators mute with terror. To her mystic view, the love union between
+Mary and me was something too sacred and too beautiful to be tried by
+the mean and matter-of-fact tests set up by society. She wrote for us
+little formulas of prayer and praise, which we were to use when we met
+and when we parted, day by day. She solemnly warned her son to look
+upon us as two young consecrated creatures, walking unconsciously on
+a heavenly path of their own, whose beginning was on earth, but whose
+bright end was among the angels in a better state of being. Imagine my
+appearing before such a woman as this, and telling her with tears of
+despair that I was determined to die, rather than let my uncle part
+me from little Mary, and you will no longer be astonished at the
+hospitality which threw open to me the sanctuary of Dame Dermody's own
+room.
+
+When the safe time came for leaving my hiding-place, I committed a
+serious mistake. In thanking the old woman at parting, I said to her
+(with a boy's sense of honor), "I won't tell upon you, Dame. My mother
+shan't know that you hid me in your bedroom."
+
+The Sibyl laid her dry, fleshless hand on my shoulder, and forced me
+roughly back into the chair from which I had just risen.
+
+"Boy!" she said, looking through and through me with her fierce black
+eyes. "Do you dare suppose that I ever did anything that I was ashamed
+of? Do you think I am ashamed of what I have done now? Wait there. Your
+mother may mistake me too. I shall write to your mother."
+
+She put on her great round spectacles with tortoise-shell rims and sat
+down to her letter. Whenever her thoughts flagged, whenever she was at a
+loss for an expression, she looked over her shoulder, as if some visible
+creature were stationed behind her, watching what she wrote; consulted
+the spirit of her husband, exactly as she might have consulted a living
+man; smiled softly to herself, and went on with her writing.
+
+"There!" she said, handing me the completed letter with an imperial
+gesture of indulgence. "_His_ mind and _my_ mind are written there. Go,
+boy. I pardon you. Give my letter to your mother."
+
+So she always spoke, with the same formal and measured dignity of manner
+and language.
+
+I gave the letter to my mother. We read it, and marveled over it
+together. Thus, counseled by the ever-present spirit of her husband,
+Dame Dermody wrote:
+
+
+"MADAM--I have taken what you may be inclined to think a great liberty.
+I have assisted your son George in setting his uncle's authority at
+defiance. I have encouraged your son George in his resolution to be
+true, in time and in eternity, to my grandchild, Mary Dermody.
+
+"It is due to you and to me that I should tell you with what motive I
+have acted in doing these things.
+
+"I hold the belief that all love that is true is foreordained and
+consecrated in heaven. Spirits destined to be united in the better world
+are divinely commissioned to discover each other and to begin their
+union in this world. The only happy marriages are those in which the two
+destined spirits have succeeded in meeting one another in this sphere of
+life.
+
+"When the kindred spirits have once met, no human power can really part
+them. Sooner or later, they must, by divine law, find each other again
+and become united spirits once more. Worldly wisdom may force them into
+widely different ways of life; worldly wisdom may delude them, or may
+make them delude themselves, into contracting an earthly and a fallible
+union. It matters nothing. The time will certainly come when that union
+will manifest itself as earthly and fallible; and the two disunited
+spirits, finding each other again, will become united here for the world
+beyond this--united, I tell you, in defiance of all human laws and of
+all human notions of right and wrong.
+
+"This is my belief. I have proved it by my own life. Maid, wife, and
+widow, I have held to it, and I have found it good.
+
+"I was born, madam, in the rank of society to which you belong. I
+received the mean, material teaching which fulfills the worldly notion
+of education. Thanks be to God, my kindred spirit met _my_ spirit while
+I was still young. I knew true love and true union before I was twenty
+years of age. I married, madam, in the rank from which Christ chose
+his apostles--I married a laboring-man. No human language can tell my
+happiness while we lived united here. His death has not parted us. He
+helps me to write this letter. In my last hours I shall see him standing
+among the angels, waiting for me on the banks of the shining river.
+
+"You will now understand the view I take of the tie which unites the
+young spirits of our children at the bright outset of their lives.
+
+"Believe me, the thing which your husband's brother has proposed to you
+to do is a sacrilege and a profanation. I own to you freely that I look
+on what I have done toward thwarting your relative in this matter as an
+act of virtue. You cannot expect _me_ to think it a serious obstacle to
+a union predestined in heaven, that your son is the squire's heir, and
+that my grandchild is only the bailiff's daughter. Dismiss from your
+mind, I implore you, the unworthy and unchristian prejudices of rank.
+Are we not all equal before God? Are we not all equal (even in this
+world) before disease and death? Not your son's happiness only, but your
+own peace of mind, is concerned in taking heed to my words. I warn you,
+madam, you cannot hinder the destined union of these two child-spirits,
+in after-years, as man and wife. Part them now--and YOU will be
+responsible for the sacrifices, degradations and distresses through
+which your George and my Mary may be condemned to pass on their way back
+to each other in later life.
+
+"Now my mind is unburdened. Now I have said all.
+
+"If I have spoken too freely, or have in any other way unwittingly
+offended, I ask your pardon, and remain, madam, your faithful servant
+and well-wisher, HELEN DERMODY."
+
+So the letter ended.
+
+To me it is something more than a mere curiosity of epistolary
+composition. I see in it the prophecy--strangely fulfilled in later
+years--of events in Mary's life, and in mine, which future pages are now
+to tell.
+
+My mother decided on leaving the letter unanswered. Like many of her
+poorer neighbors, she was a little afraid of Dame Dermody; and she
+was, besides, habitually averse to all discussions which turned on the
+mysteries of spiritual life. I was reproved, admonished, and forgiven;
+and there was the end of it.
+
+For some happy weeks Mary and I returned, without hinderance or
+interruption, to our old intimate companionship The end was coming,
+however, when we least expected it. My mother was startled, one
+morning, by a letter from my father, which informed her that he had been
+unexpectedly obliged to sail for England at a moment's notice; that he
+had arrived in London, and that he was detained there by business which
+would admit of no delay. We were to wait for him at home, in daily
+expectation of seeing him the moment he was free.
+
+This news filled my mother's mind with foreboding doubts of the
+stability of her husband's grand speculation in America. The sudden
+departure from the United States, and the mysterious delay in London,
+were ominous, to her eyes, of misfortune to come. I am now writing of
+those dark days in the past, when the railway and the electric telegraph
+were still visions in the minds of inventors. Rapid communication
+with my father (even if he would have consented to take us into his
+confidence) was impossible. We had no choice but to wait and hope.
+
+The weary days passed; and still my father's brief letters described him
+as detained by his business. The morning came when Mary and I went out
+with Dermody, the bailiff, to see the last wild fowl of the season lured
+into the decoy; and still the welcome home waited for the master, and
+waited in vain.
+
+CHAPTER III. SWEDENBORG AND THE SIBYL.
+
+MY narrative may move on again from the point at which it paused in the
+first chapter.
+
+Mary and I (as you may remember) had left the bailiff alone at the
+decoy, and had set forth on our way together to Dermody's cottage.
+
+As we approached the garden gate, I saw a servant from the house waiting
+there. He carried a message from my mother--a message for me.
+
+"My mistress wishes you to go home, Master George, as soon as you can. A
+letter has come by the coach. My master means to take a post-chaise from
+London, and sends word that we may expect him in the course of the day."
+
+Mary's attentive face saddened when she heard those words.
+
+"Must you really go away, George," she whispered, "before you see what I
+have got waiting for you at home?"
+
+I remembered Mary's promised "surprise," the secret of which was only
+to be revealed to me when we got to the cottage. How could I disappoint
+her? My poor little lady-love looked ready to cry at the bare prospect
+of it.
+
+I dismissed the servant with a message of the temporizing sort. My love
+to my mother--and I would be back at the house in half an hour.
+
+We entered the cottage.
+
+Dame Dermody was sitting in the light of the window, as usual, with one
+of the mystic books of Emanuel Swedenborg open on her lap. She solemnly
+lifted her hand on our appearance, signing to us to occupy our customary
+corner without speaking to her. It was an act of domestic high treason
+to interrupt the Sibyl at her books. We crept quietly into our places.
+Mary waited until she saw her grandmother's gray head bend down, and
+her grandmother's bushy eyebrows contract attentively, over her reading.
+Then, and then only, the discreet child rose on tiptoe, disappeared
+noiselessly in the direction of her bedchamber, and came back to
+me carrying something carefully wrapped up in her best cambric
+handkerchief.
+
+"Is that the surprise?" I whispered.
+
+Mary whispered back: "Guess what it is?"
+
+"Something for me?"
+
+"Yes. Go on guessing. What is it?"
+
+I guessed three times, and each guess was wrong. Mary decided on helping
+me by a hint.
+
+"Say your letters," she suggested; "and go on till I stop you."
+
+I began: "A, B, C, D, E, F--" There she stopped me.
+
+"It's the name of a Thing," she said; "and it begins with F."
+
+I guessed, "Fern," "Feather," "Fife." And here my resources failed me.
+
+Mary sighed, and shook her head. "You don't take pains," she said. "You
+are three whole years older than I am. After all the trouble I have
+taken to please you, you may be too big to care for my present when you
+see it. Guess again."
+
+"I can't guess."
+
+"You must!"
+
+"I give it up."
+
+Mary refused to let me give it up. She helped me by another hint.
+
+"What did you once say you wished you had in your boat?" she asked.
+
+"Was it long ago?" I inquired, at a loss for an answer.
+
+"Long, long ago! Before the winter. When the autumn leaves were falling,
+and you took me out one evening for a sail. Ah, George, _you_ have
+forgotten!"
+
+Too true, of me and of my brethren, old and young alike! It is always
+_his_ love that forgets, and _her_ love that remembers. We were only two
+children, and we were types of the man and the woman already.
+
+Mary lost patience with me. Forgetting the terrible presence of her
+grandmother, she jumped up, and snatched the concealed object out of her
+handkerchief.
+
+"There!" she cried, briskly, "_now_ do you know what it is?"
+
+I remembered at last. The thing I had wished for in my boat, all those
+months ago, was a new flag. And here was the flag, made for me in secret
+by Mary's own hand! The ground was green silk, with a dove embroidered
+on it in white, carrying in its beak the typical olive-branch, wrought
+in gold thread. The work was the tremulous, uncertain work of a child's
+fingers. But how faithfully my little darling had remembered my wish!
+how patiently she had plied the needle over the traced lines of the
+pattern! how industriously she had labored through the dreary winter
+days! and all for my sake! What words could tell my pride, my gratitude,
+my happiness?
+
+I too forgot the presence of the Sibyl bending over her book. I took
+the little workwoman in my arms, and kissed her till I was fairly out of
+breath and could kiss no longer.
+
+"Mary!" I burst out, in the first heat of my enthusiasm, "my father is
+coming home to-day. I will speak to him to-night. And I will marry you
+to-morrow!"
+
+"Boy!" said the awful voice at the other end of the room. "Come here."
+
+Dame Dermody's mystic book was closed; Dame Dermody's weird black eyes
+were watching us in our corner. I approached her; and Mary followed me
+timidly, by a footstep at a time.
+
+The Sibyl took me by the hand, with a caressing gentleness which was new
+in my experience of her.
+
+"Do you prize that toy?" she inquired, looking at the flag. "Hide it!"
+she cried, before I could answer. "Hide it--or it may be taken from
+you!"
+
+"Why should I hide it?" I asked. "I want to fly it at the mast of my
+boat."
+
+"You will never fly it at the mast of your boat!" With that answer she
+took the flag from me and thrust it impatiently into the breast-pocket
+of my jacket.
+
+"Don't crumple it, grandmother!" said Mary, piteously.
+
+I repeated my question:
+
+"Why shall I never fly it at the mast of my boat?"
+
+Dame Dermody laid her hand on the closed volume of Swedenborg lying in
+her lap.
+
+"Three times I have opened this book since the morning," she said.
+"Three times the words of the prophet warn me that there is trouble
+coming. Children, it is trouble that is coming to You. I look there,"
+she went on, pointing to the place where a ray of sunlight poured
+slanting into the room, "and I see my husband in the heavenly light. He
+bows his head in grief, and he points his unerring hand at You. George
+and Mary, you are consecrated to each other! Be always worthy of your
+consecration; be always worthy of yourselves." She paused. Her voice
+faltered. She looked at us with softening eyes, as those look who know
+sadly that there is a parting at hand. "Kneel!" she said, in low tones
+of awe and grief. "It may be the last time I bless you--it may be the
+last time I pray over you, in this house. Kneel!"
+
+We knelt close together at her feet. I could feel Mary's heart
+throbbing, as she pressed nearer and nearer to my side. I could feel my
+own heart quickening its beat, with a fear that was a mystery to me.
+
+"God bless and keep George and Mary, here and hereafter! God prosper,
+in future days, the union which God's wisdom has willed! Amen. So be it.
+Amen."
+
+As the last words fell from her lips the cottage door was thrust open.
+My father--followed by the bailiff--entered the room.
+
+Dame Dermody got slowly on her feet, and looked at him with a stern
+scrutiny.
+
+"It has come," she said to herself. "It looks with the eyes--it will
+speak with the voice--of that man."
+
+My father broke the silence that followed, addressing himself to the
+bailiff.
+
+"You see, Dermody," he said, "here is my son in your cottage--when he
+ought to be in my house." He turned, and looked at me as I stood with
+my arm round little Mary, patiently waiting for my opportunity to speak.
+"George," he said, with the hard smile which was peculiar to him,
+when he was angry and was trying to hide it, "you are making a fool of
+yourself there. Leave that child, and come to me."
+
+Now, or never, was my time to declare myself. Judging by appearances,
+I was still a boy. Judging by my own sensations, I had developed into a
+man at a moment's notice.
+
+"Papa," I said, "I am glad to see you home again. This is Mary Dermody.
+I am in love with her, and she is in love with me. I wish to marry her
+as soon as it is convenient to my mother and you."
+
+My father burst out laughing. Before I could speak again, his humor
+changed. He had observed that Dermody, too, presumed to be amused. He
+seemed to become mad with anger, all in a moment.
+
+"I have been told of this infernal tomfoolery," he said, "but I didn't
+believe it till now. Who has turned the boy's weak head? Who has
+encouraged him to stand there hugging that girl? If it's you, Dermody,
+it shall be the worst day's work you ever did in your life." He turned
+to me again, before the bailiff could defend himself. "Do you hear what
+I say? I tell you to leave Dermody's girl, and come home with me."
+
+"Yes, papa," I answered. "But I must go back to Mary, if you please,
+after I have been with you."
+
+Angry as he was, my father was positively staggered by my audacity.
+
+"You young idiot, your insolence exceeds belief!" he burst out. "I tell
+you this: you will never darken these doors again! You have been taught
+to disobey me here. You have had things put into your head, here, which
+no boy of your age ought to know--I'll say more, which no decent people
+would have let you know."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," Dermody interposed, very respectfully and very
+firmly at the same time. "There are many things which a master in a hot
+temper is privileged to say to the man who serves him. But you have gone
+beyond your privilege. You have shamed me, sir, in the presence of my
+mother, in the hearing of my child--"
+
+My father checked him there.
+
+"You may spare the rest of it," he said. "We are master and servant
+no longer. When my son came hanging about your cottage, and playing at
+sweethearts with your girl there, your duty was to close the door on
+him. You have failed in your duty. I trust you no longer. Take a month's
+notice, Dermody. You leave my service."
+
+The bailiff steadily met my father on his ground. He was no longer the
+easy, sweet-tempered, modest man who was the man of my remembrance.
+
+"I beg to decline taking your month's notice, sir," he answered. "You
+shall have no opportunity of repeating what you have just said to me.
+I will send in my accounts to-night. And I will leave your service
+to-morrow."
+
+"We agree for once," retorted my father. "The sooner you go, the
+better."
+
+He stepped across the room and put his hand on my shoulder.
+
+"Listen to me," he said, making a last effort to control himself. "I
+don't want to quarrel with you before a discarded servant. There must be
+an end to this nonsense. Leave these people to pack up and go, and come
+back to the house with me."
+
+His heavy hand, pressing on my shoulder, seemed to press the spirit
+of resistance out of me. I so far gave way as to try to melt him by
+entreaties.
+
+"Oh, papa! papa!" I cried. "Don't part me from Mary! See how pretty and
+good she is! She has made me a flag for my boat. Let me come here and
+see her sometimes. I can't live without her."
+
+I could say no more. My poor little Mary burst out crying. Her tears and
+my entreaties were alike wasted on my father.
+
+"Take your choice," he said, "between coming away of your own accord, or
+obliging me to take you away by force. I mean to part you and Dermody's
+girl."
+
+"Neither you nor any man can part them," interposed a voice, speaking
+behind us. "Rid your mind of that notion, master, before it is too
+late."
+
+My father looked round quickly, and discovered Dame Dermody facing him
+in the full light of the window. She had stepped back, at the outset
+of the dispute, into the corner behind the fireplace. There she had
+remained, biding her time to speak, until my father's last threat
+brought her out of her place of retirement.
+
+They looked at each other for a moment. My father seemed to think it
+beneath his dignity to answer her. He went on with what he had to say to
+me.
+
+"I shall count three slowly," he resumed. "Before I get to the last
+number, make up your mind to do what I tell you, or submit to the
+disgrace of being taken away by force."
+
+"Take him where you may," said Dame Dermody, "he will still be on his
+way to his marriage with my grandchild."
+
+"And where shall I be, if you please?" asked my father, stung into
+speaking to her this time.
+
+The answer followed instantly in these startling words:
+
+"_You_ will be on your way to your ruin and your death."
+
+My father turned his back on the prophetess with a smile of contempt.
+
+"One!" he said, beginning to count.
+
+I set my teeth, and clasped both arms round Mary as he spoke. I had
+inherited some of his temper, and he was now to know it.
+
+"Two!" proceeded my father, after waiting a little.
+
+Mary put her trembling lips to my ear, and whispered: "Let me go,
+George! I can't bear to see it. Oh, look how he frowns! I know he'll
+hurt you."
+
+My father lifted his forefinger as a preliminary warning before he
+counted Three.
+
+"Stop!" cried Dame Dermody.
+
+My father looked round at her again with sardonic astonishment.
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am--have you anything particular to say to me?"
+he asked.
+
+"Man!" returned the Sibyl, "you speak lightly. Have I spoken lightly to
+You? I warn you to bow your wicked will before a Will that is mightier
+than yours. The spirits of these children are kindred spirits. For time
+and for eternity they are united one to the other. Put land and sea
+between them--they will still be together; they will communicate in
+visions, they will be revealed to each other in dreams. Bind them by
+worldly ties; wed your son, in the time to come, to another woman, and
+my grand-daughter to another man. In vain! I tell you, in vain! You may
+doom them to misery, you may drive them to sin--the day of their union
+on earth is still a day predestined in heaven. It will come! it will
+come! Submit, while the time for submission is yours. You are a doomed
+man. I see the shadow of disaster, I see the seal of death, on your
+face. Go; and leave these consecrated ones to walk the dark ways of
+the world together, in the strength of their innocence, in the light of
+their love. Go--and God forgive you!" In spite of himself, my father was
+struck by the irresistible strength of conviction which inspired those
+words. The bailiff's mother had impressed him as a tragic actress might
+have impressed him on the stage. She had checked the mocking answer on
+his lips, but she had not shaken his iron will. His face was as hard as
+ever when he turned my way once more.
+
+"The last chance, George," he said, and counted the last number:
+"Three!"
+
+I neither moved nor answered him.
+
+"You _will_ have it?" he said, as he fastened his hold on my arm.
+
+I fastened _my_ hold on Mary; I whispered to her, "I won't leave you!"
+She seemed not to hear me. She trembled from head to foot in my arms. A
+faint cry of terror fluttered from her lips. Dermody instantly stepped
+forward. Before my father could wrench me away from her, he had said in
+my ear, "You can give her to _me_, Master George," and had released
+his child from my embrace. She stretched her little frail hands out
+yearningly to me, as she lay in Dermody's arms. "Good-by, dear," she
+said, faintly. I saw her head sink on her father's bosom as I was
+dragged to the door. In my helpless rage and misery, I struggled against
+the cruel hands that had got me with all the strength I had left. I
+cried out to her, "I love you, Mary! I will come back to you, Mary! I
+will never marry any one but you!" Step by step, I was forced further
+and further away. The last I saw of her, my darling's head was still
+resting on Dermody's breast. Her grandmother stood near, and shook her
+withered hands at my father, and shrieked her terrible prophecy, in
+the hysteric frenzy that possessed her when she saw the separation
+accomplished. "Go!--you go to your ruin! you go to your death!" While
+her voice still rang in my ears, the cottage door was opened and closed
+again. It was all over. The modest world of my boyish love and my boyish
+joy disappeared like the vision of a dream. The empty outer wilderness,
+which was my father's world, opened before me void of love and void of
+joy. God forgive me--how I hated him at that moment!
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE CURTAIN FALLS.
+
+FOR the rest of the day, and through the night, I was kept a close
+prisoner in my room, watched by a man on whose fidelity my father could
+depend.
+
+The next morning I made an effort to escape, and was discovered before
+I had got free of the house. Confined again to my room, I contrived
+to write to Mary, and to slip my note into the willing hand of the
+housemaid who attended on me. Useless! The vigilance of my guardian was
+not to be evaded. The woman was suspected and followed, and the letter
+was taken from her. My father tore it up with his own hands.
+
+Later in the day, my mother was permitted to see me.
+
+She was quite unfit, poor soul, to intercede for me, or to serve my
+interests in any way. My father had completely overwhelmed her by
+announcing that his wife and his son were to accompany him, when he
+returned to America.
+
+"Every farthing he has in the world," said my mother, "is to be thrown
+into that hateful speculation. He has raised money in London; he has let
+the house to some rich tradesman for seven years; he has sold the plate,
+and the jewels that came to me from his mother. The land in America
+swallows it all up. We have no home, George, and no choice but to go
+with him."
+
+An hour afterward the post-chaise was at the door.
+
+My father himself took me to the carriage. I broke away from him, with
+a desperation which not even his resolution could resist. I ran, I flew,
+along the path that led to Dermody's cottage. The door stood open; the
+parlor was empty. I went into the kitchen; I went into the upper rooms.
+Solitude everywhere. The bailiff had left the place; and his mother and
+his daughter had gone with him. No friend or neighbor lingered near with
+a message; no letter lay waiting for me; no hint was left to tell me in
+what direction they had taken their departure. After the insulting words
+which his master had spoken to him, Dermody's pride was concerned in
+leaving no trace of his whereabouts; my father might consider it as a
+trace purposely left with the object of reuniting Mary and me. I had no
+keepsake to speak to me of my lost darling but the flag which she had
+embroidered with her own hand. The furniture still remained in the
+cottage. I sat down in our customary corner, by Mary's empty chair, and
+looked again at the pretty green flag, and burst out crying.
+
+A light touch roused me. My father had so far yielded as to leave to my
+mother the responsibility of bringing me back to the traveling carriage.
+
+"We shall not find Mary here, George," she said, gently. "And we _may_
+hear of her in London. Come with me."
+
+I rose and silently gave her my hand. Something low down on the clean
+white door-post caught my eye as we passed it. I stooped, and discovered
+some writing in pencil. I looked closer--it was writing in Mary's hand!
+The unformed childish characters traced these last words of farewell:
+
+"Good-by, dear. Don't forget Mary."
+
+I knelt down and kissed the writing. It comforted me--it was like a
+farewell touch from Mary's hand. I followed my mother quietly to the
+carriage.
+
+Late that night we were in London.
+
+My good mother did all that the most compassionate kindness could do
+(in her position) to comfort me. She privately wrote to the solicitors
+employed by her family, inclosing a description of Dermody and his
+mother and daughter and directing inquiries to be made at the various
+coach-offices in London. She also referred the lawyers to two of
+Dermody's relatives, who lived in the city, and who might know
+something of his movements after he left my father's service. When she
+had done this, she had done all that lay in her power. We neither of us
+possessed money enough to advertise in the newspapers.
+
+A week afterward we sailed for the United States. Twice in that interval
+I communicated with the lawyers; and twice I was informed that the
+inquiries had led to nothing.
+
+
+With this the first epoch in my love story comes to an end.
+
+For ten long years afterward I never again met with my little Mary; I
+never even heard whether she had lived to grow to womanhood or not. I
+still kept the green flag, with the dove worked on it. For the rest,
+the waters of oblivion had closed over the old golden days at Greenwater
+Broad.
+
+CHAPTER V. MY STORY.
+
+WHEN YOU last saw me, I was a boy of thirteen. You now see me a man of
+twenty-three.
+
+The story of my life, in the interval between these two ages, is a story
+that can be soon told.
+
+Speaking of my father first, I have to record that the end of his career
+did indeed come as Dame Dermody had foretold it. Before we had been a
+year in America, the total collapse of his land speculation was followed
+by his death. The catastrophe was complete. But for my mother's little
+income (settled on her at her marriage) we should both have been left
+helpless at the mercy of the world.
+
+We made some kind friends among the hearty and hospitable people of the
+United States, whom we were unaffectedly sorry to leave. But there were
+reasons which inclined us to return to our own country after my father's
+death; and we did return accordingly.
+
+Besides her brother-in-law (already mentioned in the earlier pages of my
+narrative), my mother had another relative--a cousin named Germaine--on
+whose assistance she mainly relied for starting me, when the time came,
+in a professional career. I remember it as a family rumor, that Mr.
+Germaine had been an unsuccessful suitor for my mother's hand in the
+days when they were young people together. He was still a bachelor at
+the later period when his eldest brother's death without issue placed
+him in possession of a handsome fortune. The accession of wealth made
+no difference in his habits of life: he was a lonely old man, estranged
+from his other relatives, when my mother and I returned to England. If
+I could only succeed in pleasing Mr. Germaine, I might consider my
+prospects (in some degree, at least) as being prospects assured.
+
+This was one consideration that influenced us in leaving America. There
+was another--in which I was especially interested--that drew me back to
+the lonely shores of Greenwater Broad.
+
+My only hope of recovering a trace of Mary was to make inquiries among
+the cottagers in the neighborhood of my old home. The good bailiff had
+been heartily liked and respected in his little sphere. It seemed at
+least possible that some among his many friends in Suffolk might have
+discovered traces of him, in the year that had passed since I had left
+England. In my dreams of Mary--and I dreamed of her constantly--the
+lake and its woody banks formed a frequent background in the visionary
+picture of my lost companion. To the lake shores I looked, with a
+natural superstition, as to my way back to the one life that had its
+promise of happiness for _me_--my life with Mary.
+
+On our arrival in London, I started for Suffolk alone--at my mother's
+request. At her age she naturally shrank from revisiting the home scenes
+now occupied by the strangers to whom our house had been let.
+
+Ah, how my heart ached (young as I was) when I saw the familiar green
+waters of the lake once more! It was evening. The first object that
+caught my eye was the gayly painted boat, once mine, in which Mary and I
+had so often sailed together. The people in possession of our house were
+sailing now. The sound of their laughter floated toward me merrily over
+the still water. _Their_ flag flew at the little mast-head, from which
+Mary's flag had never fluttered in the pleasant breeze. I turned my eyes
+from the boat; it hurt me to look at it. A few steps onward brought me
+to a promontory on the shore, and revealed the brown archways of the
+decoy on the opposite bank. There was the paling behind which we had
+knelt to watch the snaring of the ducks; there was the hole through
+which "Trim," the terrier, had shown himself to rouse the stupid
+curiosity of the water-fowl; there, seen at intervals through the trees,
+was the winding woodland path along which Mary and I had traced our way
+to Dermody's cottage on the day when my father's cruel hand had torn us
+from each other. How wisely my good mother had shrunk from looking again
+at the dear old scenes! I turned my back on the lake, to think with
+calmer thoughts in the shadowy solitude of the woods.
+
+An hour's walk along the winding banks brought me round to the cottage
+which had once been Mary's home.
+
+The door was opened by a woman who was a stranger to me. She civilly
+asked me to enter the parlor. I had suffered enough already; I made my
+inquiries, standing on the doorstep. They were soon at an end. The woman
+was a stranger in our part of Suffolk; neither she nor her husband had
+ever heard of Dermody's name.
+
+I pursued my investigations among the peasantry, passing from cottage
+to cottage. The twilight came; the moon rose; the lights began to vanish
+from the lattice-windows; and still I continued my weary pilgrimage; and
+still, go where I might, the answer to my questions was the same. Nobody
+knew anything of Dermody. Everybody asked if I had not brought news of
+him myself. It pains me even now to recall the cruelly complete defeat
+of every effort which I made on that disastrous evening. I passed the
+night in one of the cottages; and I returned to London the next day,
+broken by disappointment, careless what I did, or where I went next.
+
+Still, we were not wholly parted. I saw Mary--as Dame Dermody said I
+should see her--in dreams.
+
+Sometimes she came to me with the green flag in her hand, and repeated
+her farewell words--"Don't forget Mary!" Sometimes she led me to our
+well-remembered corner in the cottage parlor, and opened the paper on
+which her grandmother had written our prayers for us. We prayed together
+again, and sung hymns together again, as if the old times had come back.
+Once she appeared to me, with tears in her eyes, and said, "We must
+wait, dear: our time has not come yet." Twice I saw her looking at me,
+like one disturbed by anxious thoughts; and twice I heard her say, "Live
+patiently, live innocently, George, for my sake."
+
+We settled in London, where my education was undertaken by a private
+tutor. Before we had been long in our new abode, an unexpected change
+in our prospects took place. To my mother's astonishment she received an
+offer of marriage (addressed to her in a letter) from Mr. Germaine.
+
+"I entreat you not to be startled by my proposal!" (the old gentleman
+wrote). "You can hardly have forgotten that I was once fond of you,
+in the days when we were both young and both poor. No return to the
+feelings associated with that time is possible now. At my age, all I ask
+of you is to be the companion of the closing years of my life, and to
+give me something of a father's interest in promoting the future welfare
+of your son. Consider this, my dear, and tell me whether you will take
+the empty chair at an old man's lonely fireside."
+
+My mother (looking almost as confused, poor soul! as if she had become
+a young girl again) left the whole responsibility of decision on the
+shoulders of her son! I was not long in making up my mind. If she said
+Yes, she would accept the hand of a man of worth and honor, who had
+been throughout his whole life devoted to her; and she would recover
+the comfort, the luxury, the social prosperity and position of which my
+father's reckless course of life had deprived her. Add to this, that
+I liked Mr. Germaine, and that Mr. Germaine liked me. Under these
+circumstances, why should my mother say No? She could produce no
+satisfactory answer to that question when I put it. As the necessary
+consequence, she became, in due course of time, Mrs. Germaine.
+
+I have only to add that, to the end of her life, my good mother
+congratulated herself (in this case at least) on having taken her son's
+advice.
+
+The years went on, and still Mary and I were parted, except in my
+dreams. The years went on, until the perilous time which comes in every
+man's life came in mine. I reached the age when the strongest of all
+the passions seizes on the senses, and asserts its mastery over mind and
+body alike.
+
+I had hitherto passively endured the wreck of my earliest and dearest
+hopes: I had lived patiently, and lived innocently, for Mary's sake. Now
+my patience left me; my innocence was numbered among the lost things of
+the past. My days, it is true, were still devoted to the tasks set me by
+my tutor; but my nights were given, in secret, to a reckless profligacy,
+which (in my present frame of mind) I look back on with disgust and
+dismay. I profaned my remembrances of Mary in the company of women
+who had reached the lowest depths of degradation. I impiously said to
+myself: "I have hoped for her long enough; I have waited for her long
+enough. The one thing now to do is to enjoy my youth and to forget her."
+
+From the moment when I dropped into this degradation, I might sometimes
+think regretfully of Mary--at the morning time, when penitent thoughts
+mostly come to us; but I ceased absolutely to see her in my dreams.
+We were now, in the completest sense of the word, parted. Mary's pure
+spirit could hold no communion with mine; Mary's pure spirit had left
+me.
+
+It is needless to say that I failed to keep the secret of my depravity
+from the knowledge of my mother. The sight of her grief was the first
+influence that sobered me. In some degree at least I restrained myself:
+I made the effort to return to purer ways of life. Mr. Germaine, though
+I had disappointed him, was too just a man to give me up as lost.
+He advised me, as a means of self-reform, to make my choice of a
+profession, and to absorb myself in closer studies than any that I had
+yet pursued.
+
+I made my peace with this good friend and second father, not only by
+following his advice, but by adopting the profession to which he had
+been himself attached before he inherited his fortune--the profession of
+medicine. Mr. Germaine had been a surgeon: I resolved on being a surgeon
+too.
+
+Having entered, at rather an earlier age than usual, on my new way of
+life, I may at least say for myself that I worked hard. I won, and kept,
+the interest of the professors under whom I studied. On the other hand,
+it cannot be denied that my reformation was, morally speaking, far from
+being complete. I worked; but what I did was done selfishly, bitterly,
+with a hard heart. In religion and morals I adopted the views of a
+materialist companion of my studies--a worn-out man of more than double
+my age. I believed in nothing but what I could see, or taste, or feel.
+I lost all faith in humanity. With the one exception of my mother, I had
+no respect for women. My remembrances of Mary deteriorated until they
+became little more than a lost link of association with the past. I
+still preserved the green flag as a matter of habit; but it was
+no longer kept about me; it was left undisturbed in a drawer of my
+writing-desk. Now and then a wholesome doubt, whether my life was not
+utterly unworthy of me, would rise in my mind. But it held no long
+possession of my thoughts. Despising others, it was in the logical order
+of things that I should follow my conclusions to their bitter end, and
+consistently despise myself.
+
+The term of my majority arrived. I was twenty-one years old; and of the
+illusions of my youth not a vestige remained.
+
+Neither my mother nor Mr. Germaine could make any positive complaint of
+my conduct. But they were both thoroughly uneasy about me. After anxious
+consideration, my step-father arrived at a conclusion. He decided that
+the one chance of restoring me to my better and brighter self was to try
+the stimulant of a life among new people and new scenes.
+
+At the period of which I am now writing, the home government had decided
+on sending a special diplomatic mission to one of the native princes
+ruling over a remote province of our Indian empire. In the disturbed
+state of the province at that time, the mission, on its arrival in
+India, was to be accompanied to the prince's court by an escort,
+including the military as well as the civil servants of the crown. The
+surgeon appointed to sail with the expedition from England was an old
+friend of Mr. Germaine's, and was in want of an assistant on whose
+capacity he could rely. Through my stepfather's interest, the post was
+offered to me. I accepted it without hesitation. My only pride left was
+the miserable pride of indifference. So long as I pursued my profession,
+the place in which I pursued it was a matter of no importance to my
+mind.
+
+It was long before we could persuade my mother even to contemplate the
+new prospect now set before me. When she did at length give way, she
+yielded most unwillingly. I confess I left her with the tears in my
+eyes--the first I had shed for many a long year past.
+
+The history of our expedition is part of the history of British India.
+It has no place in this narrative.
+
+Speaking personally, I have to record that I was rendered incapable of
+performing my professional duties in less than a week from the time when
+the mission reached its destination. We were encamped outside the city;
+and an attack was made on us, under cover of darkness, by the fanatical
+natives. The attempt was defeated with little difficulty, and with only
+a trifling loss on our side. I was among the wounded, having been struck
+by a javelin, or spear, while I was passing from one tent to another.
+
+Inflicted by a European weapon, my injury would have been of no serious
+consequence. But the tip of the Indian spear had been poisoned. I
+escaped the mortal danger of lockjaw; but, through some peculiarity in
+the action of the poison on my constitution (which I am quite unable to
+explain), the wound obstinately refused to heal.
+
+I was invalided and sent to Calcutta, where the best surgical help was
+at my disposal. To all appearance, the wound healed there--then broke
+out again. Twice this happened; and the medical men agreed that the
+best course to take would be to send me home. They calculated on
+the invigorating effect of the sea voyage, and, failing this, on
+the salutary influence of my native air. In the Indian climate I was
+pronounced incurable.
+
+Two days before the ship sailed a letter from my mother brought me
+startling news. My life to come--if I _had_ a life to come--had
+been turned into a new channel. Mr. Germaine had died suddenly, of
+heart-disease. His will, bearing date at the time when I left England,
+bequeathed an income for life to my mother, and left the bulk of his
+property to me, on the one condition that I adopted his name. I accepted
+the condition, of course, and became George Germaine.
+
+Three months later, my mother and I were restored to each other.
+
+Except that I still had some trouble with my wound, behold me now to all
+appearance one of the most enviable of existing mortals; promoted to the
+position of a wealthy gentleman; possessor of a house in London and of a
+country-seat in Perthshire; and, nevertheless, at twenty-three years of
+age, one of the most miserable men living!
+
+
+And Mary?
+
+In the ten years that had now passed over, what had become of Mary?
+
+You have heard my story. Read the few pages that follow, and you will
+hear hers.
+
+CHAPTER VI. HER STORY.
+
+WHAT I have now to tell you of Mary is derived from information obtained
+at a date in my life later by many years than any date of which I have
+written yet. Be pleased to remember this.
+
+
+Dermody, the bailiff, possessed relatives in London, of whom he
+occasionally spoke, and relatives in Scotland, whom he never mentioned.
+My father had a strong prejudice against the Scotch nation. Dermody knew
+his master well enough to be aware that the prejudice might extend to
+_him_, if he spoke of his Scotch kindred. He was a discreet man, and he
+never mentioned them.
+
+On leaving my father's service, he had made his way, partly by land and
+partly by sea, to Glasgow--in which city his friends resided. With his
+character and his experience, Dermody was a man in a thousand to any
+master who was lucky enough to discover him. His friends bestirred
+themselves. In six weeks' time he was placed in charge of a gentleman's
+estate on the eastern coast of Scotland, and was comfortably established
+with his mother and his daughter in a new home.
+
+The insulting language which my father had addressed to him had sunk
+deep in Dermody's mind. He wrote privately to his relatives in London,
+telling them that he had found a new situation which suited him, and
+that he had his reasons for not at present mentioning his address. In
+this way he baffled the inquiries which my mother's lawyers (failing
+to discover a trace of him in other directions) addressed to his
+London friends. Stung by his old master's reproaches, he sacrificed his
+daughter and he sacrificed me--partly to his own sense of self-respect,
+partly to his conviction that the difference between us in rank made it
+his duty to check all further intercourse before it was too late.
+
+Buried in their retirement in a remote part of Scotland, the little
+household lived, lost to me, and lost to the world.
+
+In dreams, I had seen and heard Mary. In dreams, Mary saw and heard me.
+The innocent longings and wishes which filled my heart while I was still
+a boy were revealed to her in the mystery of sleep. Her grandmother,
+holding firmly to her faith in the predestined union between us,
+sustained the girl's courage and cheered her heart. She could hear her
+father say (as my father had said) that we were parted to meet no more,
+and could privately think of her happy dreams as the sufficient promise
+of another future than the future which Dermody contemplated. So she
+still lived with me in the spirit--and lived in hope.
+
+The first affliction that befell the little household was the death
+of the grandmother, by the exhaustion of extreme old age. In her last
+conscious moments, she said to Mary, "Never forget that you and George
+are spirits consecrated to each other. Wait--in the certain knowledge
+that no human power can hinder your union in the time to come."
+
+While those words were still vividly present to Mary's mind, our
+visionary union by dreams was abruptly broken on her side, as it had
+been abruptly broken on mine. In the first days of my self-degradation,
+I had ceased to see Mary. Exactly at the same period Mary ceased to see
+me.
+
+The girl's sensitive nature sunk under the shock. She had now no elder
+woman to comfort and advise her; she lived alone with her father, who
+invariably changed the subject whenever she spoke of the old times. The
+secret sorrow that preys on body and mind alike preyed on _her_. A cold,
+caught at the inclement season, turned to fever. For weeks she was in
+danger of death. When she recovered, her head had been stripped of its
+beautiful hair by the doctor's order. The sacrifice had been
+necessary to save her life. It proved to be, in one respect, a cruel
+sacrifice--her hair never grew plentifully again. When it did reappear,
+it had completely lost its charming mingled hues of deep red and brown;
+it was now of one monotonous light-brown color throughout. At first
+sight, Mary's Scotch friends hardly knew her again.
+
+But Nature made amends for what the head had lost by what the face and
+the figure gained.
+
+In a year from the date of her illness, the frail little child of the
+old days at Greenwater Broad had ripened, in the bracing Scotch air and
+the healthy mode of life, into a comely young woman. Her features were
+still, as in her early years, not regularly beautiful; but the change
+in her was not the less marked on that account. The wan face had filled
+out, and the pale complexion had found its color. As to her figure, its
+remarkable development was perceived even by the rough people about her.
+Promising nothing when she was a child, it had now sprung into womanly
+fullness, symmetry, and grace. It was a strikingly beautiful figure, in
+the strictest sense of the word.
+
+Morally as well as physically, there were moments, at this period of
+their lives, when even her own father hardly recognized his daughter of
+former days. She had lost her childish vivacity--her sweet, equable
+flow of good humor. Silent and self-absorbed, she went through the daily
+routine of her duties enduringly. The hope of meeting me again had sunk
+to a dead hope in her by this time. She made no complaint. The bodily
+strength that she had gained in these later days had its sympathetic
+influence in steadying her mind. When her father once or twice ventured
+to ask if she was still thinking of me, she answered quietly that she
+had brought herself to share his opinions. She could not doubt that I
+had long since ceased to think of her. Even if I had remained faithful
+to her, she was old enough now to know that the difference between us in
+rank made our union by marriage an impossibility. It would be best (she
+thought) not to refer any more to the past, best to forget me, as I had
+forgotten her. So she spoke now. So, tried by the test of appearances,
+Dame Dermody's confident forecast of our destinies had failed to justify
+itself, and had taken its place among the predictions that are never
+fulfilled.
+
+The next notable event in the family annals which followed Mary's
+illness happened when she had attained the age of nineteen years. Even
+at this distance of time my heart sinks, my courage fails me, at the
+critical stage in my narrative which I have now reached.
+
+A storm of unusual severity burst over the eastern coast of Scotland.
+Among the ships that were lost in the tempest was a vessel bound from
+Holland, which was wrecked on the rocky shore near Dermody's place of
+abode. Leading the way in all good actions, the bailiff led the way in
+rescuing the passengers and crew of the lost ship. He had brought one
+man alive to land, and was on his way back to the vessel, when two heavy
+seas, following in close succession, dashed him against the rocks.
+He was rescued, at the risk of their own lives, by his neighbors. The
+medical examination disclosed a broken bone and severe bruises and
+lacerations. So far, Dermody's sufferings were easy of relief. But,
+after a lapse of time, symptoms appeared in the patient which revealed
+to his medical attendant the presence of serious internal injury. In the
+doctor's opinion, he could never hope to resume the active habits of
+his life. He would be an invalid and a crippled man for the rest of his
+days.
+
+Under these melancholy circumstances, the bailiff's employer did
+all that could be strictly expected of him, He hired an assistant to
+undertake the supervision of the farm work, and he permitted Dermody to
+occupy his cottage for the next three months. This concession gave the
+poor man time to recover such relics of strength as were still left to
+him, and to consult his friends in Glasgow on the doubtful question of
+his life to come.
+
+The prospect was a serious one. Dermody was quite unfit for any
+sedentary employment; and the little money that he had saved was not
+enough to support his daughter and himself. The Scotch friends were
+willing and kind; but they had domestic claims on them, and they had no
+money to spare.
+
+In this emergency, the passenger in the wrecked vessel (whose life
+Dermody had saved) came forward with a proposal which took father and
+daughter alike by surprise. He made Mary an offer of marriage; on the
+express understanding (if she accepted him) that her home was to be her
+father's home also to the end of his life.
+
+The person who thus associated himself with the Dermodys in the time
+of their trouble was a Dutch gentleman, named Ernest Van Brandt. He
+possessed a share in a fishing establishment on the shores of the
+Zuyder Zee; and he was on his way to establish a correspondence with the
+fisheries in the North of Scotland when the vessel was wrecked. Mary had
+produced a strong impression on him when they first met. He had lingered
+in the neighborhood, in the hope of gaining her favorable regard, with
+time to help him. Personally he was a handsome man, in the prime of
+life; and he was possessed of a sufficient income to marry on. In making
+his proposal, he produced references to persons of high social position
+in Holland, who could answer for him, so far as the questions of
+character and position were concerned.
+
+Mary was long in considering which course it would be best for her
+helpless father, and best for herself, to adopt.
+
+The hope of a marriage with me had been a hope abandoned by her years
+since. No woman looks forward willingly to a life of cheerless celibacy.
+In thinking of her future, Mary naturally thought of herself in the
+character of a wife. Could she fairly expect in the time to come to
+receive any more attractive proposal than the proposal now addressed
+to her? Mr. Van Brandt had every personal advantage that a woman could
+desire; he was devotedly in love with her; and he felt a grateful
+affection for her father as the man to whom he owed his life. With no
+other hope in her heart--with no other prospect in view--what could she
+do better than marry Mr. Van Brandt?
+
+Influenced by these considerations, she decided on speaking the fatal
+word. She said, "Yes."
+
+At the same time, she spoke plainly to Mr. Van Brandt, unreservedly
+acknowledging that she had contemplated another future than the future
+now set before her. She did not conceal that there had once been an old
+love in her heart, and that a new love was more than she could command.
+Esteem, gratitude, and regard she could honestly offer; and, with time,
+love might come. For the rest, she had long since disassociated herself
+from the past, and had definitely given up all the hopes and wishes once
+connected with it. Repose for her father, and tranquil happiness for
+herself, were the only favors that she asked of fortune now. These she
+might find under the roof of an honorable man who loved and respected
+her. She could promise, on her side, to make him a good and faithful
+wife, if she could promise no more. It rested with Mr. Van Brandt to say
+whether he really believed that he would be consulting his own happiness
+in marrying her on these terms.
+
+Mr. Van Brandt accepted the terms without a moment's hesitation.
+
+They would have been married immediately but for an alarming change
+for the worse in the condition of Dermody's health. Symptoms showed
+themselves, which the doctor confessed that he had not anticipated when
+he had given his opinion on the case. He warned Mary that the end might
+be near. A physician was summoned from Edinburgh, at Mr. Van Brandt's
+expense. He confirmed the opinion entertained by the country doctor. For
+some days longer the good bailiff lingered. On the last morning, he
+put his daughter's hand in Van Brandt's hand. "Make her happy, sir," he
+said, in his simple way, "and you will be even with me for saving your
+life." The same day he died quietly in his daughter's arms.
+
+Mary's future was now entirely in her lover's hands. The relatives in
+Glasgow had daughters of their own to provide for. The relatives in
+London resented Dermody's neglect of them. Van Brandt waited, delicately
+and considerately, until the first violence of the girl's grief had worn
+itself out, and then he pleaded irresistibly for a husband's claim to
+console her.
+
+The time at which they were married in Scotland was also the time at
+which I was on my way home from India. Mary had then reached the age of
+twenty years.
+
+
+The story of our ten years' separation is now told; the narrative leaves
+us at the outset of our new lives.
+
+I am with my mother, beginning my career as a country gentleman on the
+estate in Perthshire which I have inherited from Mr. Germaine. Mary is
+with her husband, enjoying her new privileges, learning her new duties,
+as a wife. She, too, is living in Scotland--living, by a strange
+fatality, not very far distant from my country-house. I have no
+suspicion that she is so near to me: the name of Mrs. Van Brandt (even
+if I had heard it) appeals to no familiar association in my mind. Still
+the kindred spirits are parted. Still there is no idea on her side, and
+no idea on mine, that we shall ever meet again.
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE.
+
+MY mother looked in at the library door, and disturbed me over my books.
+
+"I have been hanging a little picture in my room," she said. "Come
+upstairs, my dear, and give me your opinion of it."
+
+I rose and followed her. She pointed to a miniature portrait, hanging
+above the mantelpiece.
+
+"Do you know whose likeness that is?" she asked, half sadly, half
+playfully. "George! Do you really not recognize yourself at thirteen
+years old?"
+
+How should I recognize myself? Worn by sickness and sorrow; browned by
+the sun on my long homeward voyage; my hair already growing thin over
+my forehead; my eyes already habituated to their one sad and weary look;
+what had I in common with the fair, plump, curly-headed, bright-eyed
+boy who confronted me in the miniature? The mere sight of the portrait
+produced the most extraordinary effect on my mind. It struck me with
+an overwhelming melancholy; it filled me with a despair of myself too
+dreadful to be endured. Making the best excuse I could to my mother, I
+left the room. In another minute I was out of the house.
+
+I crossed the park, and left my own possessions behind me. Following
+a by-road, I came to our well-known river; so beautiful in itself, so
+famous among trout-fishers throughout Scotland. It was not then the
+fishing season. No human being was in sight as I took my seat on the
+bank. The old stone bridge which spanned the stream was within a hundred
+yards of me; the setting sun still tinged the swift-flowing water under
+the arches with its red and dying light.
+
+Still the boy's face in the miniature pursued me. Still the portrait
+seemed to reproach me in a merciless language of its own: "Look at what
+you were once; think of what you are now!"
+
+I hid my face in the soft, fragrant grass. I thought of the wasted years
+of my life between thirteen and twenty-three.
+
+How was it to end? If I lived to the ordinary life of man, what prospect
+had I before me?
+
+Love? Marriage? I burst out laughing as the idea crossed my mind. Since
+the innocently happy days of my boyhood I had known no more of love than
+the insect that now crept over my hand as it lay on the grass. My money,
+to be sure, would buy me a wife; but would my money make her dear to
+me? dear as Mary had once been, in the golden time when my portrait was
+first painted?
+
+Mary! Was she still living? Was she married? Should I know her again if
+I saw her? Absurd! I had not seen her since she was ten years old: she
+was now a woman, as I was a man. Would she know _me_ if we met? The
+portrait, still pursuing me, answered the question: "Look at what you
+were once; think of what you are now!"
+
+I rose and walked backward and forward, and tried to turn the current of
+my thoughts in some new direction.
+
+It was not to be done. After a banishment of years, Mary had got back
+again into my mind. I sat down once more on the river bank. The sun was
+sinking fast. Black shadows hovered under the arches of the old stone
+bridge. The red light had faded from the swift-flowing water, and had
+left it overspread with one monotonous hue of steely gray. The
+first stars looked down peacefully from the cloudless sky. The first
+shiverings of the night breeze were audible among the trees, and visible
+here and there in the shallow places of the stream. And still, the
+darker it grew, the more persistently my portrait led me back to the
+past, the more vividly the long-lost image of the child Mary showed
+itself to me in my thoughts.
+
+Was this the prelude of her coming back to me in dreams; in her
+perfected womanhood, in the young prime of her life?
+
+It might be so.
+
+I was no longer unworthy of her, as I had once been. The effect produced
+on me by the sight of my portrait was in itself due to moral and mental
+changes in me for the better, which had been steadily proceeding since
+the time when my wound had laid me helpless among strangers in a strange
+land. Sickness, which has made itself teacher and friend to many a man,
+had made itself teacher and friend to me. I looked back with horror at
+the vices of my youth; at the fruitless after-days when I had impiously
+doubted all that is most noble, all that is most consoling in human
+life. Consecrated by sorrow, purified by repentance, was it vain in me
+to hope that her spirit a nd my spirit might yet be united again? Who
+could tell?
+
+I rose once more. It could serve no good purpose to linger until night
+by the banks of the river. I had left the house, feeling the impulse
+which drives us, in certain excited conditions of the mind, to take
+refuge in movement and change. The remedy had failed; my mind was as
+strangely disturbed as ever. My wisest course would be to go home, and
+keep my good mother company over her favorite game of piquet.
+
+I turned to take the road back, and stopped, struck by the tranquil
+beauty of the last faint light in the western sky, shining behind the
+black line formed by the parapet of the bridge.
+
+In the grand gathering of the night shadows, in the deep stillness of
+the dying day, I stood alone and watched the sinking light.
+
+As I looked, there came a change over the scene. Suddenly and softly a
+living figure glided into view on the bridge. It passed behind the black
+line of the parapet, in the last long rays of the western light. It
+crossed the bridge. It paused, and crossed back again half-way. Then it
+stopped. The minutes passed, and there the figure stood, a motionless
+black object, behind the black parapet of the bridge.
+
+I advanced a little, moving near enough to obtain a closer view of the
+dress in which the figure was attired. The dress showed me that the
+solitary stranger was a woman.
+
+She did not notice me in the shadow which the trees cast on the bank.
+She stood with her arms folded in her cloak, looking down at the
+darkening river.
+
+Why was she waiting there at the close of evening alone?
+
+As the question occurred to me, I saw her head move. She looked along
+the bridge, first on one side of her, then on the other. Was she
+waiting for some person who was to meet her? Or was she suspicious of
+observation, and anxious to make sure that she was alone?
+
+A sudden doubt of her purpose in seeking that solitary place, a sudden
+distrust of the lonely bridge and the swift-flowing river, set my heart
+beating quickly and roused me to instant action. I hurried up the
+rising ground which led from the river-bank to the bridge, determined on
+speaking to her while the opportunity was still mine.
+
+She neither saw nor heard me until I was close to her. I approached with
+an irrepressible feeling of agitation; not knowing how she might receive
+me when I spoke to her. The moment she turned and faced me, my composure
+came back. It was as if, expecting to see a stranger, I had unexpectedly
+encountered a friend.
+
+And yet she _was_ a stranger. I had never before looked on that grave
+and noble face, on that grand figure whose exquisite grace and symmetry
+even her long cloak could not wholly hide. She was not, perhaps,
+a strictly beautiful woman. There were defects in her which were
+sufficiently marked to show themselves in the fading light. Her hair,
+for example, seen under the large garden hat that she wore, looked
+almost as short as the hair of a man; and the color of it was of that
+dull, lusterless brown hue which is so commonly seen in English women
+of the ordinary type. Still, in spite of these drawbacks, there was a
+latent charm in her expression, there was an inbred fascination in her
+manner, which instantly found its way to my sympathies and its hold on
+my admiration. She won me in the moment when I first looked at her.
+
+"May I inquire if you have lost your way?" I asked.
+
+Her eyes rested on my face with a strange look of inquiry in them. She
+did not appear to be surprised or confused at my venturing to address
+her.
+
+"I know this part of the country well," I went on. "Can I be of any use
+to you?"
+
+She still looked at me with steady, inquiring eyes. For a moment,
+stranger as I was, my face seemed to trouble her as if it had been a
+face that she had seen and forgotten again. If she really had this idea,
+she at once dismissed it with a little toss of her head, and looked away
+at the river as if she felt no further interest in me.
+
+"Thank you. I have not lost my way. I am accustomed to walking alone.
+Good-evening."
+
+She spoke coldly, but courteously. Her voice was delicious; her bow, as
+she left me, was the perfection of unaffected grace. She left the bridge
+on the side by which I had first seen her approach it, and walked slowly
+away along the darkening track of the highroad.
+
+Still I was not quite satisfied. There was something underlying the
+charming expression and the fascinating manner which my instinct felt
+to be something wrong. As I walked away toward the opposite end of the
+bridge, the doubt began to grow on me whether she had spoken the truth.
+In leaving the neighborhood of the river, was she simply trying to get
+rid of me?
+
+I at once resolved to put this suspicion of her to the test. Leaving the
+bridge, I had only to cross the road beyond, and to enter a plantation
+on the bank of the river. Here, concealed behind the first tree which
+was large enough to hide me, I could command a view of the bridge, and I
+could fairly count on detecting her, if she returned to the river, while
+there was a ray of light to see her by. It was not easy walking in the
+obscurity of the plantation: I had almost to grope my way to the nearest
+tree that suited my purpose.
+
+I had just steadied my foothold on the uneven ground behind the tree,
+when the stillness of the twilight hour was suddenly broken by the
+distant sound of a voice.
+
+The voice was a woman's. It was not raised to any high pitch; its accent
+was the accent of prayer, and the words it uttered were these:
+
+"Christ, have mercy on me!"
+
+There was silence again. A nameless fear crept over me, as I looked out
+on the bridge.
+
+She was standing on the parapet. Before I could move, before I could
+cry out, before I could even breathe again freely, she leaped into the
+river.
+
+The current ran my way. I could see her, as she rose to the surface,
+floating by in the light on the mid-stream. I ran headlong down the
+bank. She sank again, in the moment when I stopped to throw aside my
+hat and coat and to kick off my shoes. I was a practiced swimmer. The
+instant I was in the water my composure came back to me--I felt like
+myself again.
+
+The current swept me out into the mid-stream, and greatly increased
+the speed at which I swam. I was close behind her when she rose for
+the second time--a shadowy thing, just visible a few inches below the
+surface of the river. One more stroke, and my left arm was round her; I
+had her face out of the water. She was insensible. I could hold her in
+the right way to leave me master of all my movements; I could devote
+myself, without flurry or fatigue, to the exertion of taking her back to
+the shore.
+
+My first attempt satisfied me that there was no reasonable hope,
+burdened as I now was, of breasting the strong current running toward
+the mid-river from either bank. I tried it on one side, and I tried
+it on the other, and gave it up. The one choice left was to let myself
+drift with her down the stream. Some fifty yards lower, the river took
+a turn round a promontory of land, on which stood a little inn much
+frequented by anglers in the season. As we approached the place, I made
+another attempt (again an attempt in vain) to reach the shore. Our last
+chance now was to be heard by the people of the inn. I shouted at the
+full pitch of my voice as we drifted past. The cry was answered. A
+man put off in a boat. In five minutes more I had her safe on the bank
+again; and the man and I were carrying her to the inn by the river-side.
+
+The landlady and her servant-girl were equally willing to be of service,
+and equally ignorant of what they were to do. Fortunately, my medical
+education made me competent to direct them. A good fire, warm blankets,
+hot water in bottles, were all at my disposal. I showed the women myself
+how to ply the work of revival. They persevered, and I persevered; and
+still there she lay, in her perfect beauty of form, without a sign of
+life perceptible; there she lay, to all outward appearance, dead by
+drowning.
+
+A last hope was left--the hope of restoring her (if I could construct
+the apparatus in time) by the process called "artificial respiration."
+I was just endeavoring to tell the landlady what I wanted and was just
+conscious o f a strange difficulty in expressing myself, when the good
+woman started back, and looked at me with a scream of terror.
+
+"Good God, sir, you're bleeding!" she cried. "What's the matter? Where
+are you hurt?"
+
+In the moment when she spoke to me I knew what had happened. The old
+Indian wound (irritated, doubtless, by the violent exertion that I had
+imposed on myself) had opened again. I struggled against the sudden
+sense of faintness that seized on me; I tried to tell the people of the
+inn what to do. It was useless. I dropped to my knees; my head sunk on
+the bosom of the woman stretched senseless upon the low couch beneath
+me. The death-in-life that had got _her_ had got _me_. Lost to the world
+about us, we lay, with my blood flowing on her, united in our deathly
+trance.
+
+Where were our spirits at that moment? Were they together and conscious
+of each other? United by a spiritual bond, undiscovered and unsuspected
+by us in the flesh, did we two, who had met as strangers on the fatal
+bridge, know each other again in the trance? You who have loved and
+lost--you whose one consolation it has been to believe in other worlds
+than this--can you turn from my questions in contempt? Can you honestly
+say that they have never been _your_ questions too?
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE KINDRED SPIRITS
+
+THE morning sunlight shining in at a badly curtained window; a clumsy
+wooden bed, with big twisted posts that reached to the ceiling; on one
+side of the bed, my mother's welcome face; on the other side, an elderly
+gentleman unremembered by me at that moment--such were the objects that
+presented themselves to my view, when I first consciously returned to
+the world that we live in.
+
+"Look, doctor, look! He has come to his senses at last."
+
+"Open your mouth, sir, and take a sup of this." My mother was rejoicing
+over me on one side of the bed; and the unknown gentleman, addressed as
+"doctor," was offering me a spoonful of whisky-and-water on the other.
+He called it the "elixir of life"; and he bid me remark (speaking in
+a strong Scotch accent) that he tasted it himself to show he was in
+earnest.
+
+The stimulant did its good work. My head felt less giddy, my mind became
+clearer. I could speak collectedly to my mother; I could vaguely recall
+the more marked events of the previous evening. A minute or two more,
+and the image of the person in whom those events had all centered became
+a living image in my memory. I tried to raise myself in the bed; I
+asked, impatiently, "Where is she?"
+
+The doctor produced another spoonful of the elixir of life, and gravely
+repeated his first address to me.
+
+"Open your mouth, sir, and take a sup of this."
+
+I persisted in repeating my question:
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+The doctor persisted in repeating his formula:
+
+"Take a sup of this."
+
+I was too weak to contest the matter; I obeyed. My medical attendant
+nodded across the bed to my mother, and said, "Now, he'll do." My mother
+had some compassion on me. She relieved my anxiety in these plain words:
+
+"The lady has quite recovered, George, thanks to the doctor here."
+
+I looked at my professional colleague with a new interest. He was the
+legitimate fountainhead of the information that I was dying to have
+poured into my mind.
+
+"How did you revive her?" I asked. "Where is she now?"
+
+The doctor held up his hand, warning me to stop.
+
+"We shall do well, sir, if we proceed systematically," he began, in a
+very positive manner. "You will understand, that every time you open
+your mouth, it will be to take a sup of this, and not to speak. I shall
+tell you, in due course, and the good lady, your mother, will tell you,
+all that you have any need to know. As I happen to have been first on
+what you may call the scene of action, it stands in the fit order of
+things that I should speak first. You will just permit me to mix a
+little more of the elixir of life, and then, as the poet says, my plain
+unvarnished tale I shall deliver."
+
+So he spoke, pronouncing in his strong Scotch accent the most carefully
+selected English I had ever heard. A hard-headed, square-shouldered,
+pertinaciously self-willed man--it was plainly useless to contend with
+him. I turned to my mother's gentle face for encouragement; and I let my
+doctor have his own way.
+
+"My name," he proceeded, "is MacGlue. I had the honor of presenting
+my respects at your house yonder when you first came to live in this
+neighborhood. You don't remember me at present, which is natural
+enough in the unbalanced condition of your mind, consequent, you will
+understand (as a professional person yourself) on copious loss of
+blood."
+
+There my patience gave way.
+
+"Never mind me!" I interposed. "Tell me about the lady!"
+
+"You have opened your mouth, sir!" cried Mr. MacGlue, severely. "You
+know the penalty--take a sup of this. I told you we should proceed
+systematically," he went on, after he had forced me to submit to the
+penalty. "Everything in its place, Mr. Germaine--everything in its
+place. I was speaking of your bodily condition. Well, sir, and how did
+I discover your bodily condition? Providentially for _you_ I was driving
+home yesterday evening by the lower road (which is the road by the river
+bank), and, drawing near to the inn here (they call it a hotel; it's
+nothing but an inn), I heard the screeching of the landlady half a mile
+off. A good woman enough, you will understand, as times go; but a poor
+creature in any emergency. Keep still, I'm coming to it now. Well,
+I went in to see if the screeching related to anything wanted in the
+medical way; and there I found you and the stranger lady in a position
+which I may truthfully describe as standing in some need of improvement
+on the score of propriety. Tut! tut! I speak jocosely--you were both in
+a dead swoon. Having heard what the landlady had to tell me, and having,
+to the best of my ability, separated history from hysterics in the
+course of the woman's narrative, I found myself, as it were, placed
+between two laws. The law of gallantry, you see, pointed to the lady as
+the first object of my professional services, while the law of humanity
+(seeing that you were still bleeding) pointed no less imperatively to
+you. I am no longer a young man: I left the lady to wait. My word! it
+was no light matter, Mr. Germaine, to deal with your case, and get you
+carried up here out of the way. That old wound of yours, sir, is not to
+be trifled with. I bid you beware how you open it again. The next time
+you go out for an evening walk and you see a lady in the water, you will
+do well for your own health to leave her there. What's that I see? Are
+you opening your mouth again? Do you want another sup already?"
+
+"He wants to hear more about the lady," said my mother, interpreting my
+wishes for me.
+
+"Oh, the lady," resumed Mr. MacGlue, with the air of a man who found no
+great attraction in the subject proposed to him. "There's not much that
+I know of to be said about the lady. A fine woman, no doubt. If you
+could strip the flesh off her bones, you would find a splendid skeleton
+underneath. For, mind this! there's no such thing as a finely made woman
+without a good bony scaffolding to build her on at starting. I don't
+think much of this lady--morally speaking, you will understand. If I
+may be permitted to say so in your presence, ma'am, there's a man in the
+background of that dramatic scene of hers on the bridge. However, not
+being the man myself, I have nothing to do with that. My business with
+the lady was just to set her vital machinery going again. And, Heaven
+knows, she proved a heavy handful! It was even a more obstinate case to
+deal with, sir, than yours. I never, in all my experience, met with two
+people more unwilling to come back to this world and its troubles than
+you two were. And when I had done the business at last, when I was
+wellnigh swooning myself with the work and the worry of it, guess--I
+give you leave to speak for this once--guess what were the first words
+the lady said to me when she came to herself again."
+
+I was too much excited to be able to exercise my ingenuity. "I give it
+up!" I said, impatiently.
+
+"You may well give it up," remarked Mr. MacGlue. "The first words she
+addressed, sir, to the man who had dragged her out of the very jaws of
+death were these: 'How dare you meddle with me? why didn't you leave
+me to die?' Her exact language--I'll take my Bible oath of it. I was so
+provoked that I gave her the change back (as the saying is) in her own
+coin. 'There's the river handy, ma'am,' I said; 'do it again. I, for
+one, won't stir a hand to save you; I promise you that.' She looked up
+sharply. 'Are you the man who took me out of the river?' she said. 'God
+forbid!' says I. 'I'm only the doctor who was fool enough to meddle
+with you afterward.' She turned to the landlady. 'Who took me out of
+the river?' she asked. The landlady told her, and mentioned your name.
+'Germaine?' she said to herself; 'I know nobody named Germaine; I wonder
+whether it was the man who spoke to me on the bridge?' 'Yes,' says the
+landlady; 'Mr. Germaine said he met you on the bridge.' Hearing that,
+she took a little time to think; and then she asked if she could see Mr.
+Germaine. 'Whoever he is,' she says, 'he has risked his life to save me,
+and I ought to thank him for doing that.' 'You can't thank him tonight,'
+I said; 'I've got him upstairs between life and death, and I've sent
+for his mother: wait till to-morrow.' She turned on me, looking half
+frightened, half angry. 'I can't wait,' she says; 'you don't know what
+you have done among you in bringing me back to life. I must leave this
+neighborhood; I must be out of Perthshire to-morrow: when does the first
+coach southward pass this way?' Having nothing to do with the first
+coach southward, I referred her to the people of the inn. My business
+(now I had done with the lady) was upstairs in this room, to see how you
+were getting on. You were getting on as well as I could wish, and your
+mother was at your bedside. I went home to see what sick people might be
+waiting for me in the regular way. When I came back this morning, there
+was the foolish landlady with a new tale to tell 'Gone!' says she.
+'Who's gone?' says I. 'The lady,' says she, 'by the first coach this
+morning!'"
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that she has left the house?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, but I do!" said the doctor, as positively as ever. "Ask madam your
+mother here, and she'll certify it to your heart's content. I've got
+other sick ones to visit, and I'm away on my rounds. You'll see no more
+of the lady; and so much the better, I'm thinking. In two hours' time
+I'll be back again; and if I don't find you the worse in the interim,
+I'll see about having you transported from this strange place to the
+snug bed that knows you at home. Don't let him talk, ma'am, don't let
+him talk."
+
+With those parting words, Mr. MacGlue left us to ourselves.
+
+"Is it really true?" I said to my mother. "Has she left the inn, without
+waiting to see me?"
+
+"Nobody could stop her, George," my mother answered. "The lady left the
+inn this morning by the coach for Edinburgh."
+
+I was bitterly disappointed. Yes: "bitterly" is the word--though she
+_was_ a stranger to me.
+
+"Did you see her yourself?" I asked.
+
+"I saw her for a few minutes, my dear, on my way up to your room."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She begged me to make her excuses to you. She said, 'Tell Mr. Germaine
+that my situation is dreadful; no human creature can help me. I must
+go away. My old life is as much at an end as if your son had left me to
+drown in the river. I must find a new life for myself, in a new place.
+Ask Mr. Germaine to forgive me for going away without thanking him. I
+daren't wait! I may be followed and found out. There is a person whom I
+am determined never to see again--never! never! never! Good-by; and try
+to forgive me!' She hid her face in her hands, and said no more. I tried
+to win her confidence; it was not to be done; I was compelled to leave
+her. There is some dreadful calamity, George, in that wretched woman's
+life. And such an interesting creature, too! It was impossible not to
+pity her, whether she deserved it or not. Everything about her is a
+mystery, my dear. She speaks English without the slightest foreign
+accent, and yet she has a foreign name."
+
+"Did she give you her name?"
+
+"No, and I was afraid to ask her to give it. But the landlady here
+is not a very scrupulous person. She told me she looked at the poor
+creature's linen while it was drying by the fire. The name marked on it
+was, 'Van Brandt.'"
+
+"Van Brandt?" I repeated. "That sounds like a Dutch name. And yet you
+say she spoke like an Englishwoman. Perhaps she was born in England."
+
+"Or perhaps she may be married," suggested my mother; "and Van Brandt
+may be the name of her husband."
+
+The idea of her being a married woman had something in it repellent
+to me. I wished my mother had not thought of that last suggestion. I
+refused to receive it. I persisted in my own belief that the stranger
+was a single woman. In that character, I could indulge myself in the
+luxury of thinking of her; I could consider the chances of my being able
+to trace this charming fugitive, who had taken so strong a hold on my
+interest--whose desperate attempt at suicide had so nearly cost me my
+own life.
+
+If she had gone as far as Edinburgh (which she would surely do, being
+bent on avoiding discovery), the prospect of finding her again--in that
+great city, and in my present weak state of health--looked doubtful
+indeed. Still, there was an underlying hopefulness in me which kept
+my spirits from being seriously depressed. I felt a purely imaginary
+(perhaps I ought to say, a purely superstitious) conviction that we who
+had nearly died together, we who had been brought to life together, were
+surely destined to be involved in some future joys or sorrows common to
+us both. "I fancy I shall see her again," was my last thought before my
+weakness overpowered me, and I sunk into a peaceful sleep.
+
+That night I was removed from the inn to my own room at home; and that
+night I saw her again in a dream.
+
+The image of her was as vividly impressed on me as the far different
+image of the child Mary, when I used to see it in the days of old.
+The dream-figure of the woman was robed as I had seen it robed on the
+bridge. She wore the same broad-brimmed garden-hat of straw. She looked
+at me as she had looked when I approached her in the dim evening light.
+After a little her face brightened with a divinely beautiful smile; and
+she whispered in my ear, "Friend, do you know me?"
+
+I knew her, most assuredly; and yet it was with an incomprehensible
+after-feeling of doubt. Recognizing her in my dream as the stranger
+who had so warmly interested me, I was, nevertheless, dissatisfied with
+myself, as if it had not been the right recognition. I awoke with this
+idea; and I slept no more that night.
+
+In three days' time I was strong enough to go out driving with my
+mother, in the comfortable, old-fashioned, open carriage which had once
+belonged to Mr. Germaine.
+
+On the fourth day we arranged to make an excursion to a little waterfall
+in our neighborhood. My mother had a great admiration of the place, and
+had often expressed a wish to possess some memorial of it. I resolved
+to take my sketch-book: with me, on the chance that I might be able to
+please her by making a drawing of her favorite scene.
+
+Searching for the sketch-book (which I had not used for years), I found
+it in an old desk of mine that had remained unopened since my departure
+for India. In the course of my investigation, I opened a drawer in the
+desk, and discovered a relic of the old times--my poor little Mary's
+first work in embroidery, the green flag!
+
+The sight of the forgotten keepsake took my mind back to the bailiff's
+cottage, and reminded me of Dame Dermody, and her confident prediction
+about Mary and me.
+
+I smiled as I recalled the old woman's assertion that no human power
+could "hinder the union of the kindred spirits of the children in the
+time to come." What had become of the prophesied dreams in which we were
+to communicate with each other through the term of our separation? Years
+had passed; and, sleeping or waking, I had seen nothing of Mary. Years
+had passed; and the first vision of a woman that had come to me had
+been my dream a few nights since of the stranger whom I had saved from
+drowning. I thought of these chances and changes in my life, but not
+contemptuously or bitterly. The new love that was now stealing its way
+into my heart had softened and humanized me. I said to myself, "Ah, poor
+little Mary!" and I kissed the green flag, in grateful memory of the
+days that were gone forever.
+
+We drove to the waterfall.
+
+It was a beautiful day; the lonely sylvan scene was at its brightest
+and best. A wooden summer-house, commanding a prospect of the falling
+stream, had been built for the accommodation of pleasure parties by the
+proprietor of the place. My mother suggested that I should try to make
+a sketch of the view from this point. I did my best to please her, but I
+was not satisfied with the result; and I abandoned my drawing before it
+was half finished. Leaving my sketch-book and pencil on the table of the
+summer-house, I proposed to my mother to cross a little wooden bridge
+which spanned the stream, below the fall, and to see how the landscape
+looked from a new point of view.
+
+The prospect of the waterfall, as seen from the opposite bank, presented
+even greater difficulties, to an amateur artist like me, than the
+prospect which he had just left. We returned to the summer-house.
+
+I was the first to approach the open door. I stopped, checked in my
+advance by an unexpected discovery. The summer-house was no longer empty
+as we had left it. A lady was seated at the table with my pencil in her
+hand, writing in my sketch-book!
+
+After waiting a moment, I advanced a few steps nearer to the door, and
+stopped again in breathless amazement. The stranger in the summer-house
+was now plainly revealed to me as the woman who had attempted to destroy
+herself from the bridge!
+
+There was no doubt about it. There was the dress; there was the
+memorable face which I had seen in the evening light, which I had
+dreamed of only a few nights since! The woman herself--I saw her as
+plainly as I saw the sun shining on the waterfall--the woman herself,
+with my pencil in her hand, writing in my book!
+
+My mother was close behind me. She noticed my agitation. "George!" she
+exclaimed, "what is the matter with you?"
+
+I pointed through the open door of the summer-house.
+
+"Well?" said my mother. "What am I to look at?"
+
+"Don't you see somebody sitting at the table and writing in my
+sketch-book?"
+
+My mother eyed me quickly. "Is he going to be ill again?" I heard her
+say to herself.
+
+At the same moment the woman laid down the pencil and rose slowly to her
+feet.
+
+She looked at me with sorrowful and pleading eyes: she lifted her hand
+and beckoned me to approach her. I obeyed. Moving without conscious will
+of my own, drawn nearer and nearer to her by an irresistible power, I
+ascended the short flight of stairs which led into the summer-house.
+Within a few paces of her I stopped. She advanced a step toward me, and
+laid her hand gently on my bosom. Her touch filled me with strangely
+united sensations of rapture and awe. After a while, she spoke in low
+melodious tones, which mingled in my ear with the distant murmur of the
+falling water, until the two sounds became one. I heard in the murmur,
+I heard in the voice, these words: "Remember me. Come to me." Her hand
+dropped from my bosom; a momentary obscurity passed like a flying shadow
+over the bright daylight in the room. I looked for her when the light
+came back. She was gone.
+
+My consciousness of passing events returned.
+
+I saw the lengthening shadows outside, which told me that the evening
+was at hand. I saw the carriage approaching the summerhouse to take us
+away. I felt my mother's hand on my arm, and heard her voice speaking
+to me anxiously. I was able to reply by a sign entreating her not to be
+uneasy about me, but I could do no more. I was absorbed, body and soul,
+in the one desire to look at the sketch-book. As certainly as I had
+seen the woman, so certainly I had seen her, with my pencil in her hand,
+writing in my book.
+
+I advanced to the table on which the book was lying open. I looked at
+the blank space on the lower part of the page, under the foreground
+lines of my unfinished drawing. My mother, following me, looked at the
+page too.
+
+There was the writing! The woman had disappeared, but there were her
+written words left behind her: visible to my mother as well as to me,
+readable by my mother's eyes as well as by mine!
+
+These were the words we saw, arranged in two lines, as I copy them here:
+
+                   When the full moon shines
+                   On Saint Anthony's Well.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL.
+
+I POINTED to the writing in the sketch book, and looked at my mother. I
+was not mistaken. She _had_ seen it, as I had seen it. But she refused
+to acknowledge that anything had happened to alarm her--plainly as I
+could detect it in her face.
+
+"Somebody has been playing a trick on you, George," she said.
+
+I made no reply. It was needless to say anything. My poor mother was
+evidently as far from being satisfied with her own shallow explanation
+as I was. The carriage waited for us at the door. We set forth in
+silence on our drive home.
+
+The sketch-book lay open on my knee. My eyes were fastened on it; my
+mind was absorbed in recalling the moment when the apparition beckoned
+me into the summer-house and spoke. Putting the words and the writing
+together, the conclusion was too plain to be mistaken. The woman whom I
+had saved from drowning had need of me again.
+
+And this was the same woman who, in her own proper person, had not
+hesitated to seize the first opportunity of leaving the house in which
+we had been sheltered together--without stopping to say one grateful
+word to the man who had preserved her from death! Four days only had
+elapsed since she had left me, never (to all appearance) to see me
+again. And now the ghostly apparition of her had returned as to a tried
+and trusted friend; had commanded me to remember her and to go to her;
+and had provided against all possibility of my memory playing me false,
+by writing the words which invited me to meet her "when the full moon
+shone on Saint Anthony's Well."
+
+What had happened in the interval? What did the supernatural manner of
+her communication with me mean? What ought my next course of action to
+be?
+
+My mother roused me from my reflections. She stretched out her hand, and
+suddenly closed the open book on my knee, as if the sight of the writing
+in it were unendurable to her.
+
+"Why don't you speak to me, George?" she said. "Why do you keep your
+thoughts to yourself?"
+
+"My mind is lost in confusion," I answered. "I can suggest nothing and
+explain nothing. My thoughts are all bent on the one question of what
+I am to do next. On that point I believe I may say that my mind is made
+up." I touched the sketch-book as I spoke. "Come what may of it," I
+said, "I mean to keep the appointment."
+
+My mother looked at me as if she doubted the evidence of her own senses.
+
+"He talks as if it were a real thing!" she exclaimed. "George, you don't
+really believe that you saw somebody in the summer-house? The place was
+empty. I tell you positively, when you pointed into the summer-house,
+the place was empty. You have been thinking and thinking of this woman
+till you persuade yourself that you have actually seen her."
+
+I opened the sketch-book again. "I thought I saw her writing on this
+page," I answered. "Look at it, and tell me if I was wrong."
+
+My mother refused to look at it. Steadily as she persisted in taking the
+rational view, nevertheless the writing frightened her.
+
+"It is not a week yet," she went on, "since I saw you lying between
+life and death in your bed at the inn. How can you talk of keeping the
+appointment, in your state of health? An appointment with a shadowy
+Something in your own imagination, which appears and disappears, and
+leaves substantial writing behind it! It's ridiculous, George; I wonder
+you can help laughing at yourself."
+
+She tried to set the example of laughing at me--with the tears in her
+eyes, poor soul! as she made the useless effort. I began to regret
+having opened my mind so freely to her.
+
+"Don't take the matter too seriously, mother," I said. "Perhaps I may
+not be able to find the place. I never heard of Saint Anthony's Well; I
+have not the least idea where it is. Suppose I make the discovery, and
+suppose the journey turns out to be an easy one, would you like to go
+with me?"
+
+"God forbid" cried my mother, fervently. "I will have nothing to do
+with it, George. You are in a state of delusion; I shall speak to the
+doctor."
+
+"By all means, my dear mother. Mr. MacGlue is a sensible person. We
+pass his house on our way home, and we will ask him to dinner. In the
+meantime, let us say no more on the subject till we see the doctor."
+
+I spoke lightly, but I really meant what I said. My mind was sadly
+disturbed; my nerves were so shaken that the slightest noises on the
+road startled me. The opinion of a man like Mr. MacGlue, who looked
+at all mortal matters from the same immovably practical point of view,
+might really have its use, in my case, as a species of moral remedy.
+
+
+We waited until the dessert was on the table, and the servants had left
+the dining-room. Then I told my story to the Scotch doctor as I have
+told it here; and, that done, I opened the sketch-book to let him see
+the writing for himself.
+
+Had I turned to the wrong page?
+
+I started to my feet, and held the book close to the light of the lamp
+that hung over the dining table. No: I had found the right page. There
+was my half-finished drawing of the waterfall--but where were the two
+lines of writing beneath?
+
+Gone!
+
+I strained my eyes; I looked and looked. And the blank white paper
+looked back at me.
+
+I placed the open leaf before my mother. "You saw it as plainly as I
+did," I said. "Are my own eyes deceiving me? Look at the bottom of the
+page."
+
+My mother sunk back in her chair with a cry of terror.
+
+"Gone?" I asked.
+
+"Gone!"
+
+I turned to the doctor. He took me completely by surprise. No
+incredulous smile appeared on his face; no jesting words passed his
+lips. He was listening to us attentively. He was waiting gravely to hear
+more.
+
+"I declare to you, on my word of honor," I said to him, "that I saw the
+apparition writing with my pencil at the bottom of that page. I declare
+that I took the book in my hand, and saw these words written in it,
+'When the full moon shines on Saint Anthony's Well.' Not more than three
+hours have passed since that time; and, see for yourself, not a vestige
+of the writing remains."
+
+"Not a vestige of the writing remains," Mr. MacGlue repeated, quietly.
+
+"If you feel the slightest doubt of what I have told you," I went on,
+"ask my mother; she will bear witness that she saw the writing too."
+
+"I don't doubt that you both saw the writing," answered Mr. MacGlue,
+with a composure that surprised me.
+
+"Can you account for it?" I asked.
+
+"Well," said the impenetrable doctor, "if I set my wits at work, I
+believe I might account for it to the satisfaction of some people. For
+example, I might give you what they call the rational explanation, to
+begin with. I might say that you are, to my certain knowledge, in a
+highly excited nervous condition; and that, when you saw the apparition
+(as you call it), you simply saw nothing but your own strong impression
+of an absent woman, who (as I greatly fear) has got on the weak or
+amatory side of you. I mean no offense, Mr. Germaine--"
+
+"I take no offense, doctor. But excuse me for speaking plainly--the
+rational explanation is thrown away on me."
+
+"I'll readily excuse you," answered Mr. MacGlue; "the rather that I'm
+entirely of your opinion. I don't believe in the rational explanation
+myself."
+
+This was surprising, to say the least of it. "What _do_ you believe in?"
+I inquired.
+
+Mr. MacGlue declined to let me hurry him.
+
+"Wait a little," he said. "There's the _ir_rational explanation to try
+next. Maybe it will fit itself to the present state of your mind better
+than the other. We will say this time that you have really seen the
+ghost (or double) of a living person. Very good. If you can suppose a
+disembodied spirit to appear in earthly clothing--of silk or merino, as
+the case may be--it's no great stretch to suppose, next, that this same
+spirit is capable of holding a mortal pencil, and of writing mortal
+words in a mortal sketching-book. And if the ghost vanishes (which your
+ghost did), it seems supernaturally appropriate that the writing should
+follow the example and vanish too. And the reason of the vanishment may
+be (if you want a reason), either that the ghost does not like letting a
+stranger like me into its secrets, or that vanishing is a settled habit
+of ghosts and of everything associated with them, or that this ghost
+has changed its mind in the course of three hours (being the ghost of
+a woman, I am sure that's not wonderful), and doesn't care to see
+you 'when the full moon shines on Saint Anthony's Well.' There's the
+_ir_rational explanation for you. And, speaking for myself, I'm bound to
+add that I don't set a pin's value on _that_ explanation either."
+
+Mr. MacGlue's sublime indifference to both sides of the question began
+to irritate me.
+
+"In plain words, doctor," I said, "you don't think the circumstances
+that I have mentioned to you worthy of serious investigation?"
+
+"I don't think serious investigation capable of dealing with the
+circumstances," answered the doctor. "Put it in that way, and you put it
+right. Just look round you. Here we three persons are alive and hearty
+at this snug table. If (which God forbid!) good Mistress Germaine or
+yourself were to fall down dead in another moment, I, doctor as I am,
+could no more explain what first principle of life and movement had
+been suddenly extinguished in you than the dog there sleeping on the
+hearth-rug. If I am content to sit down ignorant in the face of such an
+impenetrable mystery as this--presented to me, day after day, every time
+I see a living creature come into the world or go out of it--why may I
+not sit down content in the face of your lady in the summer-house, and
+say she's altogether beyond my fathoming, and there is an end of her?"
+
+At those words my mother joined in the conversation for the first time.
+
+"Ah, sir," she said, "if you could only persuade my son to take
+your sensible view, how happy I should be! Would you believe it?--he
+positively means (if he can find the place) to go to Saint Anthony's
+Well!"
+
+Even this revelation entirely failed to surprise Mr. MacGlue.
+
+"Ay, ay. He means to keep his appointment with the ghost, does he? Well,
+I can be of some service to him if he sticks to his resolution. I can
+tell him of another man who kept a written appointment with a ghost, and
+what came of it."*
+
+This was a startling announcement. Did he really mean what he said?
+
+"Are you in jest or in earnest?" I asked.
+
+"I never joke, sir," said Mr. MacGlue. "No sick person really believes
+in a doctor who jokes. I defy you to show me a man at the head of our
+profession who has ever been discovered in high spirits (in medical
+hours) by his nearest and dearest friend. You may have wondered, I dare
+say, at seeing me take your strange narrative as coolly as I do. It
+comes naturally, sir. Yours is not the first story of a ghost and a
+pencil that I have heard."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," I said, "that you know of another man who has
+seen what I have seen?"
+
+"That's just what I mean to tell you," rejoined the doctor. "The man was
+a far-away Scots cousin of my late wife, who bore the honorable name
+of Bruce, and followed a seafaring life. I'll take another glass of the
+sherry wine, just to wet my whistle, as the vulgar saying is, before
+I begin. Well, you must know, Bruce was mate of a bark at the time I'm
+speaking of, and he was on a voyage from Liverpool to New Brunswick. At
+noon one day, he and the captain, having taken their observation of the
+sun, were hard at it below, working out the latitude and longitude on
+their slates. Bruce, in his cabin, looked across through the open door
+of the captain's cabin opposite. 'What do you make it, sir?' says Brace.
+The man in the captain's cabin looked up. And what did Bruce see? The
+face of the captain? Devil a bit of it--the face of a total stranger!
+Up jumps Bruce, with his heart going full gallop all in a moment, and
+searches for the captain on deck, and finds him much as usual, with his
+calculations done, and his latitude and longitude off his mind for the
+day. 'There's somebody at your desk, sir,' says Bruce. 'He's writing on
+your slate; and he's a total stranger to me.' 'A stranger in my cabin?'
+says the captain. 'Why, Mr. Bruce, the ship has been six weeks out of
+port. How did he get on board?' Bruce doesn't know how, but he sticks to
+his story. Away goes the captain, and bursts like a whirlwind into his
+cabin, and finds nobody there. Bruce himself is obliged to acknowledge
+that the place is certainly empty. 'If I didn't know you were a sober
+man,' says the captain, 'I should charge you with drinking. As it is,
+I'll hold you accountable for nothing worse than dreaming. Don't do it
+again, Mr. Bruce.' Bruce sticks to his story; Bruce swears he saw the
+man writing on the captain's slate. The captain takes up the slate and
+looks at it. 'Lord save us and bless us!' says he; 'here the writing is,
+sure enough!' Bruce looks at it too, and sees the writing as plainly
+as can be, in these words: 'Steer to the nor'-west.' That, and no
+more.--Ah, goodness me, narrating is dry work, Mr. Germaine. With your
+leave, I'll take another drop of the sherry wine.
+
+"Well (it's fine old wine, that; look at the oily drops running down the
+glass)--well, steering to the north-west, you will understand, was
+out of the captain's course. Nevertheless, finding no solution of the
+mystery on board the ship, and the weather at the time being fine, the
+captain determined, while the daylight lasted, to alter his course, and
+see what came of it. Toward three o'clock in the afternoon an iceberg
+came of it; with a wrecked ship stove in, and frozen fast to the ice;
+and the passengers and crew nigh to death with cold and exhaustion.
+Wonderful enough, you will say; but more remains behind. As the mate
+was helping one of the rescued passengers up the side of the bark, who
+should he turn out to be but the very man whose ghostly appearance Bruce
+had seen in the captain's cabin writing on the captain's slate! And more
+than that--if your capacity for being surprised isn't clean worn out by
+this time--the passenger recognized the bark as the very vessel which he
+had seen in a dream at noon that day. He had even spoken of it to one
+of the officers on board the wrecked ship when he woke. 'We shall be
+rescued to-day,' he had said; and he had exactly described the rig of
+the bark hours and hours before the vessel herself hove in view. Now you
+know, Mr. Germaine, how my wife's far-away cousin kept an appointment
+with a ghost, and what came of it."*
+
+Concluding his story in these words, the doctor helped himself to
+another glass of the "sherry wine." I was not satisfied yet; I wanted to
+know more.
+
+"The writing on the slate," I said. "Did it remain there, or did it
+vanish like the writing in my book?"
+
+Mr. MacGlue's answer disappointed me. He had never asked, and had never
+heard, whether the writing had remained or not. He had told me all
+that he knew, and he had but one thing more to say, and that was in the
+nature of a remark with a moral attached to it. "There's a marvelous
+resemblance, Mr. Germaine, between your story and Bruce's story. The
+main difference, as I see it, is this. The passenger's appointment
+proved to be the salvation of a whole ship's company. I very much doubt
+whether the lady's appointment will prove to be the salvation of You."
+
+I silently reconsidered the strange narrative which had just been
+related to me. Another man had seen what I had seen--had done what I
+proposed to do! My mother noticed with grave displeasure the strong
+impression which Mr. MacGlue had produced on my mind.
+
+"I wish you had kept your story to yourself, doctor," she said, sharply.
+
+"May I ask why, madam?"
+
+"You have confirmed my son, sir, in his resolution to go to Saint
+Anthony's Well."
+
+Mr. MacGlue quietly consulted his pocket almanac before he replied.
+
+"It's the full moon on the ninth of the month," he said. "That gives Mr.
+Germaine some days of rest, ma'am, before he takes the journey. If he
+travels in his own comfortable carriage--whatever I may think, morally
+speaking, of his enterprise--I can't say, medically speaking, that I
+believe it will do him much harm."
+
+"You know where Saint Anthony's Well is?" I interposed.
+
+"I must be mighty ignorant of Edinburgh not to know that," replied the
+doctor.
+
+"Is the Well in Edinburgh, then?"
+
+"It's just outside Edinburgh--looks down on it, as you may say. You
+follow the old street called the Canongate to the end. You turn to your
+right past the famous Palace of Holyrood; you cross the Park and the
+Drive, and take your way upward to the ruins of Anthony's Chapel, on the
+shoulder of the hill--and there you are! There's a high rock behind
+the chapel, and at the foot of it you will find the spring they call
+Anthony's Well. It's thought a pretty view by moonlight; and they tell
+me it's no longer beset at night by bad characters, as it used to be in
+the old time."
+
+My mother, in graver and graver displeasure, rose to retire to the
+drawing-room.
+
+"I confess you have disappointed me," she said to Mr. MacGlue. "I should
+have thought you would have been the last man to encourage my son in an
+act of imprudence."
+
+"Craving your pardon, madam, your son requires no encouragement. I can
+see for myself that his mind is made up. Where is the use of a person
+like me trying to stop him? Dear madam, if he won't profit by your
+advice, what hope can I have that he will take mine?"
+
+Mr. MacGlue pointed this artful compliment by a bow of the deepest
+respect, and threw open the door for my mother to pass out.
+
+When we were left together over our wine, I asked the doctor how soon I
+might safely start on my journey to Edinburgh.
+
+"Take two days to do the journey, and you may start, if you're bent
+on it, at the beginning of the week. But mind this," added the
+prudent doctor, "though I own I'm anxious to hear what comes of
+your expedition--understand at the same time, so far as the lady is
+concerned, that I wash my hands of the consequences."--
+
+     * The doctor's narrative is not imaginary. It will be found
+     related in full detail, and authenticated by names and
+     dates, in Robert Dale Owen's very interesting work called
+     "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World." The author
+     gladly takes this opportunity of acknowledging his
+     obligations to Mr. Owen's remarkable book.
+
+
+CHAPTER X. SAINT ANTHONY'S WELL.
+
+I STOOD on the rocky eminence in front of the ruins of Saint Anthony's
+Chapel, and looked on the magnificent view of Edinburgh and of the old
+Palace of Holyrood, bathed in the light of the full moon.
+
+The Well, as the doctor's instructions had informed me, was behind
+the chapel. I waited for some minutes in front of the ruin, partly to
+recover my breath after ascending the hill; partly, I own, to master
+the nervous agitation which the sense of my position at that moment had
+aroused in me. The woman, or the apparition of the woman--it might be
+either--was perhaps within a few yards of the place that I occupied. Not
+a living creature appeared in front of the chapel. Not a sound caught
+my ear from any part of the solitary hill. I tried to fix my whole
+attention on the beauties of the moonlit view. It was not to be done. My
+mind was far away from the objects on which my eyes rested. My mind was
+with the woman whom I had seen in the summer-house writing in my book.
+
+I turned to skirt the side of the chapel. A few steps more over the
+broken ground brought me within view of the Well, and of the high
+boulder or rock from the foot of which the waters gushed brightly in the
+light of the moon.
+
+She was there.
+
+I recognized her figure as she stood leaning against the rock, with her
+hands crossed in front of her, lost in thought. I recognized her face as
+she looked up quickly, startled by the sound of my footsteps in the deep
+stillness of the night.
+
+Was it the woman, or the apparition of the woman? I waited, looking at
+her in silence.
+
+She spoke. The sound of her voice was not the mysterious sound that
+I had heard in the summer-house. It was the sound I had heard on the
+bridge when we first met in the dim evening light.
+
+"Who are you? What do you want?"
+
+As those words passed her lips, she recognized me. "_You_ here!" she
+went on, advancing a step, in uncontrollable surprise. "What does this
+mean?"
+
+"I am here," I answered, "to meet you, by your own appointment."
+
+She stepped back again, leaning against the rock. The moonlight shone
+full upon her face. There was terror as well as astonishment in her eyes
+while they now looked at me.
+
+"I don't understand you," she said. "I have not seen you since you spoke
+to me on the bridge."
+
+"Pardon me," I replied. "I have seen you--or the appearance of
+you--since that time. I heard you speak. I saw you write."
+
+She looked at me with the strangest expression of mingled resentment and
+curiosity. "What did I say?" she asked. "What did I write?"
+
+"You said, 'Remember me. Come to me.' You wrote, 'When the full moon
+shines on Saint Anthony's Well.'"
+
+"Where?" she cried. "Where did I do that?"
+
+"In a summer-house which stands by a waterfall," I answered. "Do you
+know the place?"
+
+Her head sunk back against the rock. A low cry of terror burst from
+her. Her arm, resting on the rock, dropped at her side. I hurriedly
+approached her, in the fear that she might fall on the stony ground.
+
+She rallied her failing strength. "Don't touch me!" she exclaimed.
+"Stand back, sir. You frighten me."
+
+I tried to soothe her. "Why do I frighten you? You know who I am. Can
+you doubt my interest in you, after I have been the means of saving your
+life?"
+
+Her reserve vanished in an instant. She advanced without hesitation, and
+took me by the hand.
+
+"I ought to thank you," she said. "And I do. I am not so ungrateful as
+I seem. I am not a wicked woman, sir--I was mad with misery when I tried
+to drown myself. Don't distrust me! Don't despise me!" She stopped; I
+saw the tears on her cheeks. With a sudden contempt for herself, she
+dashed them away. Her whole tone and manner altered once more. Her
+reserve returned; she looked at me with a strange flash of suspicion and
+defiance in her eyes. "Mind this!" she said, loudly and abruptly, "you
+were dreaming when you thought you saw me writing. You didn't see me;
+you never heard me speak. How could I say those familiar words to a
+stranger like you? It's all your fancy--and you try to frighten me by
+talking of it as if it was a real thing!" She changed again; her eyes
+softened to the sad and tender look which made them so irresistibly
+beautiful. She drew her cloak round her with a shudder, as if she felt
+the chill of the night air. "What is the matter with me?" I heard her
+say to herself. "Why do I trust this man in my dreams? And why am I
+ashamed of it when I wake?"
+
+That strange outburst encouraged me. I risked letting her know that I
+had overheard her last words.
+
+"If you trust me in your dreams, you only do me justice," I said. "Do
+me justice now; give me your confidence. You are alone--you are in
+trouble--you want a friend's help. I am waiting to help you."
+
+She hesitated. I tried to take her hand. The strange creature drew it
+away with a cry of alarm: her one great fear seemed to be the fear of
+letting me touch her.
+
+"Give me time to think of it," she said. "You don't know what I have got
+to think of. Give me till to-morrow; and let me write. Are you staying
+in Edinburgh?"
+
+I thought it wise to be satisfied--in appearance at least--with this
+concession. Taking out my card, I wrote on it in pencil the address of
+the hotel at which I was staying. She read the card by the moonlight
+when I put it into her hand.
+
+"George!" she repeated to herself, stealing another look at me as the
+name passed her lips. "'George Germaine.' I never heard of 'Germaine.'
+But 'George' reminds me of old times." She smiled sadly at some passing
+fancy or remembrance in which I was not permitted to share. "There is
+nothing very wonderful in your being called 'George,'" she went on,
+after a while. "The name is common enough: one meets with it everywhere
+as a man's name And yet--" Her eyes finished the sentence; her eyes said
+to me, "I am not so much afraid of you, now I know that you are called
+'George.'"
+
+So she unconsciously led me to the brink of discovery!
+
+If I had only asked her what associations she connected with my
+Christian name--if I had only persuaded her to speak in the briefest and
+most guarded terms of her past life--the barrier between us, which the
+change in our names and the lapse of ten years had raised, must have
+been broken down; the recognition must have followed. But I never even
+thought of it; and for this simple reason--I was in love with her. The
+purely selfish idea of winning my way to her favorable regard by taking
+instant advantage of the new interest that I had awakened in her was the
+one idea which occurred to my mind.
+
+"Don't wait to write to me," I said. "Don't put it off till to-morrow.
+Who knows what may happen before to-morrow? Surely I deserve some little
+return for the sympathy that I feel with you? I don't ask for much. Make
+me happy by making me of some service to you before we part to-night."
+
+I took her hand, this time, before she was aware of me. The whole woman
+seemed to yield at my touch. Her hand lay unresistingly in mine; her
+charming figure came by soft gradations nearer and nearer to me; her
+head almost touched my shoulder. She murmured in faint accents, broken
+by sighs, "Don't take advantage of me. I am so friendless; I am so
+completely in your power." Before I could answer, before I could move,
+her hand closed on mine; her head sunk on my shoulder: she burst into
+tears.
+
+Any man, not an inbred and inborn villain, would have respected her at
+that moment. I put her hand on my arm and led her away gently past the
+ruined chapel, and down the slope of the hill.
+
+"This lonely place is frightening you," I said. "Let us walk a little,
+and you will soon be yourself again."
+
+She smiled through her tears like a child.
+
+"Yes," she said, eagerly. "But not that way." I had accidentally taken
+the direction which led away from the city; she begged me to turn toward
+the houses and the streets. We walked back toward Edinburgh. She eyed
+me, as we went on in the moonlight, with innocent, wondering looks.
+"What an unaccountable influence you have over me!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Did you ever see me, did you ever hear my name, before we met that
+evening at the river?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"And I never heard _your_ name, and never saw _you_ before. Strange!
+very strange! Ah! I remember somebody--only an old woman, sir--who might
+once have explained it. Where shall I find the like of her now?"
+
+She sighed bitterly. The lost friend or relative had evidently been dear
+to her. "A relation of yours?" I inquired--more to keep her talking than
+because I felt any interest in any member of her family but herself.
+
+We were again on the brink of discovery. And again it was decreed that
+we were to advance no further.
+
+"Don't ask me about my relations!" she broke out. "I daren't think of
+the dead and gone, in the trouble that is trying me now. If I speak of
+the old times at home, I shall only burst out crying again, and distress
+you. Talk of something else, sir--talk of something else."
+
+
+The mystery of the apparition in the summer-house was not cleared up
+yet. I took my opportunity of approaching the subject.
+
+"You spoke a little while since of dreaming of me," I began. "Tell me
+your dream."
+
+"I hardly know whether it was a dream or whether it was something else,"
+she answered. "I call it a dream for want of a better word."
+
+"Did it happen at night?"
+
+"No. In the daytime--in the afternoon."
+
+"Late in the afternoon?"
+
+"Yes--close on the evening."
+
+My memory reverted to the doctor's story of the shipwrecked passenger,
+whose ghostly "double" had appeared in the vessel that was to rescue
+him, and who had himself seen that vessel in a dream.
+
+"Do you remember the day of the month and the hour?" I asked.
+
+She mentioned the day, and she mentioned the hour. It was the day when
+my mother and I had visited the waterfall. It was the hour when I had
+seen the apparition in the summer-house writing in my book!
+
+I stopped in irrepressible astonishment. We had walked by this time
+nearly as far on the way back to the city as the old Palace of Holyrood.
+My companion, after a glance at me, turned and looked at the rugged old
+building, mellowed into quiet beauty by the lovely moonlight.
+
+"This is my favorite walk," she said, simply, "since I have been in
+Edinburgh. I don't mind the loneliness. I like the perfect tranquillity
+here at night." She glanced at me again. "What is the matter?" she
+asked. "You say nothing; you only look at me."
+
+"I want to hear more of your dream," I said. "How did you come to be
+sleeping in the daytime?"
+
+"It is not easy to say what I was doing," she replied, as we walked on
+again. "I was miserably anxious and ill. I felt my helpless condition
+keenly on that day. It was dinner-time, I remember, and I had no
+appetite. I went upstairs (at the inn where I am staying), and lay down,
+quite worn out, on my bed. I don't know whether I fainted or whether I
+slept; I lost all consciousness of what was going on about me, and I got
+some other consciousness in its place. If this was dreaming, I can only
+say it was the most vivid dream I ever had in my life."
+
+"Did it begin by your seeing me?" I inquired.
+
+"It began by my seeing your drawing-book--lying open on a table in a
+summer-house."
+
+"Can you describe the summer-house as you saw it?"
+
+She described not only the summer-house, but the view of the waterfall
+from the door. She knew the size, she knew the binding, of my
+sketch-book--locked up in my desk, at that moment, at home in
+Perthshire!
+
+"And you wrote in the book," I went on. "Do you remember what you
+wrote?"
+
+She looked away from me confusedly, as if she were ashamed to recall
+this part of her dream.
+
+"You have mentioned it already," she said. "There is no need for me to
+go over the words again. Tell me one thing--when _you_ were at the
+summer-house, did you wait a little on the path to the door before you
+went in?"
+
+I _had_ waited, surprised by my first view of the woman writing in my
+book. Having answered her to this effect, I asked what she had done or
+dreamed of doing at the later moment when I entered the summer-house.
+
+"I did the strangest things," she said, in low, wondering tones. "If you
+had been my brother, I could hardly have treated you more familiarly.
+I beckoned to you to come to me. I even laid my hand on your bosom. I
+spoke to you as I might have spoken to my oldest and dearest friend. I
+said, 'Remember me. Come to me.' Oh, I was so ashamed of myself when
+I came to my senses again, and recollected it. Was there ever such
+familiarity--even in a dream--between a woman and a man whom she had
+only once seen, and then as a perfect stranger?"
+
+"Did you notice how long it was," I asked, "from the time when you lay
+down on the bed to the time when you found yourself awake again?"
+
+"I think I can tell you," she replied. "It was the dinner-time of the
+house (as I said just now) when I went upstairs. Not long after I had
+come to myself I heard a church clock strike the hour. Reckoning from
+one time to the other, it must have been quite three hours from the time
+when I first lay down to the time when I got up again."
+
+Was the clew to the mysterious disappearance of the writing to be found
+here?
+
+Looking back by the light of later discoveries, I am inclined to think
+that it was. In three hours the lines traced by the apparition of her
+had vanished. In three hours she had come to herself, and had felt
+ashamed of the familiar manner in which she had communicated with me in
+her sleeping state. While she had trusted me in the trance--trusted me
+because her spirit was then free to recognize my spirit--the writing had
+remained on the page. When her waking will counteracted the influence of
+her sleeping will, the writing disappeared. Is this the explanation? If
+it is not, where is the explanation to be found?
+
+We walked on until we reached that part of the Canongate street in which
+she lodged. We stopped at the door.
+
+CHAPTER XI. THE LETTER OF INTRODUCTION.
+
+I LOOKED at the house. It was an inn, of no great size, but of
+respectable appearance. If I was to be of any use to her that night, the
+time had come to speak of other subjects than the subject of dreams.
+
+"After all that you have told me," I said, "I will not ask you to admit
+me any further into your confidence until we meet again. Only let me
+hear how I can relieve your most pressing anxieties. What are your
+plans? Can I do anything to help them before you go to rest to-night?"
+
+She thanked me warmly, and hesitated, looking up the street and down the
+street in evident embarrassment what to say next.
+
+"Do you propose staying in Edinburgh?" I asked.
+
+"Oh no! I don't wish to remain in Scotland. I want to go much further
+away. I think I should do better in London; at some respectable
+milliner's, if I could be properly recommended. I am quick at my needle,
+and I understand cutting out. Or I could keep accounts, if--if anybody
+would trust me."
+
+She stopped, and looked at me doubtingly, as if she felt far from sure,
+poor soul, of winning my confidence to begin with. I acted on that hint,
+with the headlong impetuosity of a man who was in love.
+
+"I can give you exactly the recommendation you want," I said, "whenever
+you like. Now, if you would prefer it."
+
+Her charming features brightened with pleasure. "Oh, you are indeed a
+friend to me!" she said, impulsively. Her face clouded again--she saw
+my proposal in a new light. "Have I any right," she asked, sadly, "to
+accept what you offer me?"
+
+"Let me give you the letter," I answered, "and you can decide for
+yourself whether you will use it or not."
+
+I put her arm again in mine, and entered the inn.
+
+She shrunk back in alarm. What would the landlady think if she saw her
+lodger enter the house at night in company with a stranger, and that
+stranger a gentleman? The landlady appeared as she made the objection.
+Reckless what I said or what I did, I introduced myself as her relative,
+and asked to be shown into a quiet room in which I could write a letter.
+After one sharp glance at me, the landlady appeared to be satisfied that
+she was dealing with a gentleman. She led the way into a sort of parlor
+behind the "bar," placed writing materials on the table, looked at
+my companion as only one woman can look at another under certain
+circumstances, and left us by ourselves.
+
+It was the first time I had ever been in a room with her alone.
+The embarrassing sense of her position had heightened her color and
+brightened her eyes. She stood, leaning one hand on the table, confused
+and irresolute, her firm and supple figure falling into an attitude
+of unsought grace which it was literally a luxury to look at. I said
+nothing; my eyes confessed my admiration; the writing materials lay
+untouched before me on the table. How long the silence might have
+lasted I cannot say. She abruptly broke it. Her instinct warned her that
+silence might have its dangers, in our position. She turned to me with
+an effort; she said, uneasily, "I don't think you ought to write your
+letter to-night, sir."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"You know nothing of me. Surely you ought not to recommend a person who
+is a stranger to you? And I am worse than a stranger. I am a miserable
+wretch who has tried to commit a great sin--I have tried to destroy
+myself. Perhaps the misery I was in might be some excuse for me, if you
+knew it. You ought to know it. But it's so late to-night, and I am so
+sadly tired--and there are some things, sir, which it is not easy for a
+woman to speak of in the presence of a man."
+
+Her head sunk on her bosom; her delicate lips trembled a little; she
+said no more. The way to reassure and console her lay plainly enough
+before me, if I chose to take it. Without stopping to think, I took it.
+
+Reminding her that she had herself proposed writing to me when we met
+that evening, I suggested that she should wait to tell the sad story of
+her troubles until it was convenient to her to send me the narrative
+in the form of a letter. "In the mean time," I added, "I have the most
+perfect confidence in you; and I beg as a favor that you will let me put
+it to the proof. I can introduce you to a dressmaker in London who is at
+the head of a large establishment, and I will do it before I leave you
+to-night."
+
+I dipped my pen in the ink as I said the words. Let me confess frankly
+the lengths to which my infatuation led me. The dressmaker to whom I
+had alluded had been my mother's maid in former years, and had been
+established in business with money lent by my late step-father, Mr.
+Germaine. I used both their names without scruple; and I wrote my
+recommendation in terms which the best of living women and the ablest of
+existing dressmakers could never have hoped to merit. Will anybody find
+excuses for me? Those rare persons who have been in love, and who have
+not completely forgotten it yet, may perhaps find excuses for me. It
+matters little; I don't deserve them.
+
+I handed her the open letter to read.
+
+She blushed delightfully; she cast one tenderly grateful look at me,
+which I remembered but too well for many and many an after-day. The next
+moment, to my astonishment, this changeable creature changed again. Some
+forgotten consideration seemed to have occurred to her. She turned pale;
+the soft lines of pleasure in her face hardened, little by little; she
+regarded me with the saddest look of confusion and distress. Putting the
+letter down before me on the table, she said, timidly:
+
+"Would you mind adding a postscript, sir?"
+
+I suppressed all appearance of surprise as well as I could, and took up
+the pen again.
+
+"Would you please say," she went on, "that I am only to be taken on
+trial, at first? I am not to be engaged for more"--her voice sunk lower
+and lower, so that I could barely hear the next words--"for more than
+three months, certain."
+
+It was not in human nature--perhaps I ought to say it was not in the
+nature of a man who was in my situation--to refrain from showing some
+curiosity, on being asked to supplement a letter of recommendation by
+such a postscript as this.
+
+"Have you some other employment in prospect?" I asked.
+
+"None," she answered, with her head down, and her eyes avoiding mine.
+
+An unworthy doubt of her--the mean offspring of jealousy--found its way
+into my mind.
+
+"Have you some absent friend," I went on, "who is likely to prove a
+better friend than I am, if you only give him time?"
+
+She lifted her noble head. Her grand, guileless gray eyes rested on me
+with a look of patient reproach.
+
+"I have not got a friend in the world," she said. "For God's sake, ask
+me no more questions to-night!"
+
+I rose and gave her the letter once more--with the postscript added, in
+her own words.
+
+We stood together by the table; we looked at each other in a momentary
+silence.
+
+"How can I thank you?" she murmured, softly. "Oh, sir, I will indeed be
+worthy of the confidence that you have shown in me!" Her eyes moistened;
+her variable color came and went; her dress heaved softly over the
+lovely outline of her bosom. I don't believe the man lives who could
+have resisted her at that moment. I lost all power of restraint;
+I caught her in my arms; I whispered, "I love you!" I kissed her
+passionately. For a moment she lay helpless and trembling on my breast;
+for a moment her fragrant lips softly returned the kiss. In an instant
+more it was over. She tore herself away with a shudder that shook
+her from head to foot, and threw the letter that I had given to her
+indignantly at my feet.
+
+"How dare you take advantage of me! How dare you touch me!" she said.
+"Take your letter back, sir; I refuse to receive it; I will never speak
+to you again. You don't know what you have done. You don't know how
+deeply you have wounded me. Oh!" she cried, throwing herself in despair
+on a sofa that stood near her, "shall I ever recover my self-respect?
+shall I ever forgive myself for what I have done to-night?"
+
+I implored her pardon; I assured her of my repentance and regret in
+words which did really come from my heart. The violence of her agitation
+more than distressed me--I was really alarmed by it.
+
+She composed herself after a while. She rose to her feet with modest
+dignity, and silently held out her hand in token that my repentance was
+accepted.
+
+"You will give me time for atonement?" I pleaded. "You will not lose all
+confidence in me? Let me see you again, if it is only to show that I am
+not quite unworthy of your pardon--at your own time; in the presence of
+another person, if you like."
+
+"I will write to you," she said.
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+I took up the letter of recommendation from the floor.
+
+"Make your goodness to me complete," I said. "Don't mortify me by
+refusing to take my letter."
+
+"I will take your letter," she answered, quietly. "Thank you for writing
+it. Leave me now, please. Good-night."
+
+I left her, pale and sad, with my letter in her hand. I left her, with
+my mind in a tumult of contending emotions, which gradually resolved
+themselves into two master-feelings as I walked on: Love, that adored
+her more fervently than ever; and Hope, that set the prospect before me
+of seeing her again on the next day.
+
+CHAPTER XII. THE DISASTERS OF MRS. VAN BRANDT.
+
+A MAN who passes his evening as I had passed mine, may go to bed
+afterward if he has nothing better to do. But he must not rank among
+the number of his reasonable anticipations the expectation of getting
+a night's rest. The morning was well advanced, and the hotel was astir,
+before I at last closed my eyes in slumber. When I awoke, my watch
+informed me that it was close on noon.
+
+I rang the bell. My servant appeared with a letter in his hand. It had
+been left for me, three hours since, by a lady who had driven to the
+hotel door in a carriage, and had then driven away again. The man had
+found me sleeping when he entered my bed-chamber, and, having received
+no orders to wake me overnight, had left the letter on the sitting-room
+table until he heard my bell.
+
+Easily guessing who my correspondent was, I opened the letter. An
+inclosure fell out of it--to which, for the moment, I paid no attention.
+I turned eagerly to the first lines. They announced that the writer
+had escaped me for the second time: early that morning she had left
+Edinburgh. The paper inclosed proved to be my letter of introduction to
+the dressmaker returned to me.
+
+I was more than angry with her--I felt her second flight from me as a
+downright outrage. In five minutes I had hurried on my clothes and was
+on my way to the inn in the Canongate as fast as a horse could draw me.
+
+The servants could give me no information. Her escape had been effected
+without their knowledge.
+
+The landlady, to whom I next addressed myself, deliberately declined to
+assist me in any way whatever.
+
+"I have given the lady my promise," said this obstinate person, "to
+answer not one word to any question that you may ask me about her. In
+my belief, she is acting as becomes an honest woman in removing herself
+from any further communication with you. I saw you through the keyhole
+last night, sir. I wish you good-morning."
+
+Returning to my hotel, I left no attempt to discover her untried. I
+traced the coachman who had driven her. He had set her down at a shop,
+and had then been dismissed. I questioned the shop-keeper. He remembered
+that he had sold some articles of linen to a lady with her veil down and
+a traveling-bag in her hand, and he remembered no more. I circulated a
+description of her in the different coach offices. Three "elegant young
+ladies, with their veils down, and with traveling-bags in their hands,"
+answered to the description; and which of the three was the fugitive
+of whom I was in search, it was impossible to discover. In the days of
+railways and electric telegraphs I might have succeeded in tracing
+her. In the days of which I am now writing, she set investigation at
+defiance.
+
+I read and reread her letter, on the chance that some slip of the pen
+might furnish the clew which I had failed to find in any other way. Here
+is the narrative that she addressed to me, copied from the original,
+word for word:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR--Forgive me for leaving you again as I left you in Perthshire.
+After what took place last night, I have no other choice (knowing my own
+weakness, and the influence that you seem to have over me) than to
+thank you gratefully for your kindness, and to bid you farewell. My sad
+position must be my excuse for separating myself from you in this rude
+manner, and for venturing to send you back your letter of introduction.
+If I use the letter, I only offer you a means of communicating with me.
+For your sake, as well as for mine, this mu st not be. I must never give
+you a second opportunity of saying that you love me; I must go away,
+leaving no trace behind by which you can possibly discover me.
+
+"But I cannot forget that I owe my poor life to your compassion and your
+courage. You, who saved me, have a right to know what the provocation
+was that drove me to drowning myself, and what my situation is, now that
+I am (thanks to you) still a living woman. You shall hear my sad story,
+sir; and I will try to tell it as briefly as possible.
+
+"I was married, not very long since, to a Dutch gentleman, whose name
+is Van Brandt. Please excuse my entering into family particulars. I have
+endeavored to write and tell you about my dear lost father and my old
+home. But the tears come into my eyes when I think of my happy past
+life. I really cannot see the lines as I try to write them.
+
+"Let me, then, only say that Mr. Van Brandt was well recommended to
+my good father before I married. I have only now discovered that he
+obtained these recommendations from his friends under a false pretense,
+which it is needless to trouble you by mentioning in detail. Ignorant of
+what he had done, I lived with him happily. I cannot truly declare that
+he was the object of my first love, but he was the one person in the
+world whom I had to look up to after my father's death. I esteemed him
+and respected him, and, if I may say so without vanity, I did indeed
+make him a good wife.
+
+"So the time went on, sir, prosperously enough, until the evening came
+when you and I met on the bridge.
+
+"I was out alone in our garden, trimming the shrubs, when the
+maid-servant came and told me there was a foreign lady in a carriage at
+the door who desired to say a word to Mrs. Van Brandt. I sent the maid
+on before to show her into the sitting-room, and I followed to receive
+my visitor as soon as I had made myself tidy. She was a dreadful woman,
+with a flushed, fiery face and impudent, bright eyes. 'Are you Mrs. Van
+Brandt?' she said. I answered, 'Yes.' 'Are you really married to him?'
+she asked me. That question (naturally enough, I think) upset my temper.
+I said, 'How dare you doubt it?' She laughed in my face. 'Send for Van
+Brandt,' she said. I went out into the passage and called him down from
+the room upstairs in which he was writing. 'Ernest,' I said, 'here is
+a person who has insulted me. Come down directly.' He left his room the
+moment he heard me. The woman followed me out into the passage to meet
+him. She made him a low courtesy. He turned deadly pale the moment he
+set eyes on her. That frightened me. I said to him, 'For God's sake,
+what does this mean?' He took me by the arm, and he answered: 'You shall
+know soon. Go back to your gardening, and don't return to the house till
+I send for you.' His looks were so shocking, he was so unlike himself,
+that I declare he daunted me. I let him take me as far as the garden
+door. He squeezed my hand. 'For my sake, darling,' he whispered, 'do
+what I ask of you.' I went into the garden and sat me down on the
+nearest bench, and waited impatiently for what was to come.
+
+"How long a time passed I don't know. My anxiety got to such a pitch at
+last that I could bear it no longer. I ventured back to the house.
+
+"I listened in the passage, and heard nothing. I went close to the
+parlor door, and still there was silence. I took courage, and opened the
+door.
+
+"The room was empty. There was a letter on the table. It was in my
+husband's handwriting, and it was addressed to me. I opened it and read
+it. The letter told me that I was deserted, disgraced, ruined. The woman
+with the fiery face and the impudent eyes was Van Brandt's lawful wife.
+She had given him his choice of going away with her at once or of being
+prosecuted for bigamy. He had gone away with her--gone, and left me.
+
+"Remember, sir, that I had lost both father and mother. I had no
+friends. I was alone in the world, without a creature near to comfort or
+advise me. And please to bear in mind that I have a temper which feels
+even the smallest slights and injuries very keenly. Do you wonder at
+what I had it in my thoughts to do that evening on the bridge?
+
+"Mind this: I believe I should never have attempted to destroy myself if
+I could only have burst out crying. No tears came to me. A dull, stunned
+feeling took hold like a vise on my head and on my heart. I walked
+straight to the river. I said to myself, quite calmly, as I went along,
+'_There_ is the end of it, and the sooner the better.'
+
+"What happened after that, you know as well as I do. I may get on to the
+next morning--the morning when I so ungratefully left you at the inn by
+the river-side.
+
+"I had but one reason, sir, for going away by the first conveyance that
+I could find to take me, and this was the fear that Van Brandt might
+discover me if I remained in Perthshire. The letter that he had left on
+the table was full of expressions of love and remorse, to say nothing
+of excuses for his infamous behavior to me. He declared that he had been
+entrapped into a private marriage with a profligate woman when he was
+little more than a lad. They had long since separated by common consent.
+When he first courted me, he had every reason to believe that she was
+dead. How he had been deceived in this particular, and how she had
+discovered that he had married me, he had yet to find out. Knowing
+her furious temper, he had gone away with her, as the one means
+of preventing an application to the justices and a scandal in the
+neighborhood. In a day or two he would purchase his release from her by
+an addition to the allowance which she had already received from him:
+he would return to me and take me abroad, out of the way of further
+annoyance. I was his wife in the sight of Heaven; I was the only woman
+he had ever loved; and so on, and so on.
+
+"Do you now see, sir, the risk that I ran of his discovering me if I
+remained in your neighborhood? The bare thought of it made my flesh
+creep. I was determined never again to see the man who had so cruelly
+deceived me. I am in the same mind still--with this difference, that I
+might consent to see him, if I could be positively assured first of the
+death of his wife. That is not likely to happen. Let me get on with my
+letter, and tell you what I did on my arrival in Edinburgh.
+
+"The coachman recommended me to the house in the Canongate where you
+found me lodging. I wrote the same day to relatives of my father, living
+in Glasgow, to tell them where I was, and in what a forlorn position I
+found myself.
+
+"I was answered by return of post. The head of the family and his wife
+requested me to refrain from visiting them in Glasgow. They had business
+then in hand which would take them to Edinburgh, and I might expect to
+see them both with the least possible delay.
+
+"They arrived, as they had promised, and they expressed themselves
+civilly enough. Moreover, they did certainly lend me a small sum of
+money when they found how poorly my purse was furnished. But I don't
+think either husband or wife felt much for me. They recommended me, at
+parting, to apply to my father's other relatives, living in England. I
+may be doing them an injustice, but I fancy they were eager to get me
+(as the common phrase is) off their hands.
+
+"The day when the departure of my relatives left me friendless was
+also the day, sir, when I had that dream or vision of you which I have
+already related. I lingered on at the house in the Canongate, partly
+because the landlady was kind to me, partly because I was so depressed
+by my position that I really did not know what to do next.
+
+"In this wretched condition you discovered me on that favorite walk
+of mine from Holyrood to Saint Anthony's Well. Believe me, your kind
+interest in my fortunes has not been thrown away on an ungrateful woman.
+I could ask Providence for no greater blessing than to find a brother
+and a friend in you. You have yourself destroyed that hope by what you
+said and did when we were together in the parlor. I don't blame you: I
+am afraid my manner (without my knowing it) might have seemed to give
+you some encouragement. I am only sorry--very, very sorry--to have no
+honorable choice left but never to see you again.
+
+"After much thin king, I have made up my mind to speak to those other
+relatives of my father to whom I have not yet applied. The chance that
+they may help me to earn an honest living is the one chance that I have
+left. God bless you, Mr. Germaine! I wish you prosperity and happiness
+from the bottom of my heart; and remain, your grateful servant,
+
+                                   "M. VAN BRANDT.
+
+"P.S.--I sign my own name (or the name which I once thought was mine) as
+a proof that I have honestly written the truth about myself, from first
+to last. For the future I must, for safety's sake, live under some other
+name. I should like to go back to my name when I was a happy girl at
+home. But Van Brandt knows it; and, besides, I have (no matter how
+innocently) disgraced it. Good-by again, sir; and thank you again."
+
+
+So the letter concluded.
+
+I read it in the temper of a thoroughly disappointed and thoroughly
+unreasonable man. Whatever poor Mrs. Van Brandt had done, she had done
+wrong. It was wrong of her, in the first place, to have married at all.
+It was wrong of her to contemplate receiving Mr. Van Brandt again, even
+if his lawful wife had died in the interval. It was wrong of her to
+return my letter of introduction, after I had given myself the trouble
+of altering it to suit her capricious fancy. It was wrong of her to take
+an absurdly prudish view of a stolen kiss and a tender declaration,
+and to fly from me as if I were as great a scoundrel as Mr. Van Brandt
+himself. And last, and more than all, it was wrong of her to sign her
+Christian name in initial only. Here I was, passionately in love with a
+woman, and not knowing by what fond name to identify her in my thoughts!
+"M. Van Brandt!" I might call her Maria, Margaret, Martha, Mabel,
+Magdalen, Mary--no, not Mary. The old boyish love was dead and gone, but
+I owed some respect to the memory of it. If the "Mary" of my early days
+were still living, and if I had met her, would she have treated me as
+this woman had treated me? Never! It was an injury to "Mary" to think
+even of that heartless creature by her name. Why think of her at all?
+Why degrade myself by trying to puzzle out a means of tracing her in her
+letter? It was sheer folly to attempt to trace a woman who had gone I
+knew not whither, and who herself informed me that she meant to pass
+under an assumed name. Had I lost all pride, all self-respect? In the
+flower of my age, with a handsome fortune, with the world before me,
+full of interesting female faces and charming female figures, what
+course did it become me to take? To go back to my country-house, and
+mope over the loss of a woman who had deliberately deserted me? or to
+send for a courier and a traveling carriage, and forget her gayly among
+foreign people and foreign scenes? In the state of my temper at that
+moment, the idea of a pleasure tour in Europe fired my imagination.
+I first astonished the people at the hotel by ordering all further
+inquiries after the missing Mrs. Van Brandt to be stopped; and then I
+opened my writing desk and wrote to tell my mother frankly and fully of
+my new plans.
+
+The answer arrived by return of post.
+
+To my surprise and delight, my good mother was not satisfied with only
+formally approving of my new resolution. With an energy which I had
+not ventured to expect from her, she had made all her arrangements for
+leaving home, and had started for Edinburgh to join me as my traveling
+companion. "You shall not go away alone, George," she wrote, "while I
+have strength and spirits to keep you company."
+
+In three days from the time when I read those words our preparations
+were completed, and we were on our way to the Continent.
+
+CHAPTER XIII. NOT CURED YET.
+
+WE visited France, Germany, and Italy; and we were absent from England
+nearly two years.
+
+Had time and change justified my confidence in them? Was the image of
+Mrs. Van Brandt an image long since dismissed from my mind?
+
+No! Do what I might, I was still (in the prophetic language of Dame
+Dermody) taking the way to reunion with my kindred spirit in the time to
+come. For the first two or three months of our travels I was haunted
+by dreams of the woman who had so resolutely left me. Seeing her in my
+sleep, always graceful, always charming, always modestly tender toward
+me, I waited in the ardent hope of again beholding the apparition of her
+in my waking hours--of again being summoned to meet her at a given place
+and time. My anticipations were not fulfilled; no apparition showed
+itself. The dreams themselves grew less frequent and less vivid and then
+ceased altogether. Was this a sign that the days of her adversity
+were at an end? Having no further need of help, had she no further
+remembrance of the man who had tried to help her? Were we never to meet
+again?
+
+I said to myself: "I am unworthy of the name of man if I don't forget
+her now!" She still kept her place in my memory, say what I might.
+
+I saw all the wonders of Nature and Art which foreign countries could
+show me. I lived in the dazzling light of the best society that Paris,
+Rome, Vienna could assemble. I passed hours on hours in the company
+of the most accomplished and most beautiful women whom Europe could
+produce--and still that solitary figure at Saint Anthony's Well, those
+grand gray eyes that had rested on me so sadly at parting, held their
+place in my memory, stamped their image on my heart.
+
+Whether I resisted my infatuation, or whether I submitted to it, I still
+longed for her. I did all I could to conceal the state of my mind from
+my mother. But her loving eyes discovered the secret: she saw that I
+suffered, and suffered with me. More than once she said: "George, the
+good end is not to be gained by traveling; let us go home." More than
+once I answered, with the bitter and obstinate resolution of despair:
+"No. Let us try more new people and more new scenes." It was only when
+I found her health and strength beginning to fail under the stress of
+continual traveling that I consented to abandon the hopeless search
+after oblivion, and to turn homeward at last.
+
+I prevailed on my mother to wait and rest at my house in London before
+she returned to her favorite abode at the country-seat in Perthshire.
+It is needless to say that I remained in town with her. My mother now
+represented the one interest that held me nobly and endearingly to life.
+Politics, literature, agriculture--the customary pursuits of a man in my
+position--had none of them the slightest attraction for me.
+
+We had arrived in London at what is called "the height of the season."
+Among the operatic attractions of that year--I am writing of the days
+when the ballet was still a popular form of public entertainment--there
+was a certain dancer whose grace and beauty were the objects of
+universal admiration. I was asked if I had seen her, wherever I went,
+until my social position, as the one man who was indifferent to the
+reigning goddess of the stage, became quite unendurable. On the next
+occasion when I was invited to take a seat in a friend's box, I accepted
+the proposal; and (far from willingly) I went the way of the world--in
+other words, I went to the opera.
+
+The first part of the performance had concluded when we got to the
+theater, and the ballet had not yet begun. My friends amused themselves
+with looking for familiar faces in the boxes and stalls. I took a chair
+in a corner and waited, with my mind far away from the theater, from the
+dancing that was to come. The lady who sat nearest to me (like ladies
+in general) disliked the neighborhood of a silent man. She determined to
+make me talk to her.
+
+"Do tell me, Mr. Germaine," she said. "Did you ever see a theater
+anywhere so full as this theater is to-night?"
+
+She handed me her opera-glass as she spoke. I moved to the front of the
+box to look at the audience.
+
+It was certainty a wonderful sight. Every available atom of space (as
+I gradually raised the glass from the floor to the ceiling of the
+building) appeared to be occupied. Looking upward and upward, my range
+of view gradually reached the gallery. Even at that distance, the
+excellent glass which had been put into my hands brought the faces of
+the audience close to me. I looked first at the persons who occupied
+the front row of seats in the gallery stalls.
+
+Moving the opera-glass slowly along the semicircle formed by the seats,
+I suddenly stopped when I reached the middle.
+
+My heart gave a great leap as if it would bound out of my body. There
+was no mistaking _that_ face among the commonplace faces near it. I had
+discovered Mrs. Van Brandt!
+
+She sat in front--but not alone. There was a man in the stall
+immediately behind her, who bent over her and spoke to her from time to
+time. She listened to him, so far as I could see, with something of a
+sad and weary look. Who was the man? I might, or might not, find that
+out. Under any circumstances, I determined to speak to Mrs. Van Brandt.
+
+The curtain rose for the ballet. I made the best excuse I could to my
+friends, and instantly left the box.
+
+It was useless to attempt to purchase my admission to the gallery. My
+money was refused. There was not even standing room left in that part of
+the theater.
+
+But one alternative remained. I returned to the street, to wait for Mrs.
+Van Brandt at the gallery door until the performance was over.
+
+Who was the man in attendance on her--the man whom I had seen sitting
+behind her, and talking familiarly over her shoulder? While I paced
+backward and forward before the door, that one question held possession
+of my mind, until the oppression of it grew beyond endurance. I went
+back to my friends in the box, simply and solely to look at the man
+again.
+
+What excuses I made to account for my strange conduct I cannot now
+remember. Armed once more with the lady's opera-glass (I borrowed it and
+kept it without scruple), I alone, of all that vast audience, turned my
+back on the stage, and riveted my attention on the gallery stalls.
+
+There he sat, in his place behind her, to all appearance spell-bound
+by the fascinations of the graceful dancer. Mrs. Van Brandt, on
+the contrary, seemed to find but little attraction in the spectacle
+presented by the stage. She looked at the dancing (so far as I could
+see) in an absent, weary manner. When the applause broke out in a
+perfect frenzy of cries and clapping of hands, she sat perfectly
+unmoved by the enthusiasm which pervaded the theater. The man behind her
+(annoyed, as I supposed, by the marked indifference which she showed
+to the performance) tapped her impatiently on the shoulder, as if he
+thought that she was quite capable of falling asleep in her stall. The
+familiarity of the action--confirming the suspicion in my mind which had
+already identified him with Van Brandt--so enraged me that I said or did
+something which obliged one of the gentlemen in the box to interfere.
+"If you can't control yourself," he whispered, "you had better leave
+us." He spoke with the authority of an old friend. I had sense enough
+left to take his advice, and return to my post at the gallery door.
+
+A little before midnight the performance ended. The audience began to
+pour out of the theater.
+
+I drew back into a corner behind the door, facing the gallery stairs,
+and watched for her. After an interval which seemed to be endless, she
+and her companion appeared, slowly descending the stairs. She wore a
+long dark cloak; her head was protected by a quaintly shaped hood, which
+looked (on _her_) the most becoming head-dress that a woman could wear.
+As the two passed me, I heard the man speak to her in a tone of sulky
+annoyance.
+
+"It's wasting money," he said, "to go to the expense of taking _you_ to
+the opera."
+
+"I am not well," she answered with her head down and her eyes on the
+ground. "I am out of spirits to-night."
+
+"Will you ride home or walk?"
+
+"I will walk, if you please."
+
+I followed them unperceived, waiting to present myself to her until
+the crowd about them had dispersed. In a few minutes they turned into a
+quiet by-street. I quickened my pace until I was close at her side, and
+then I took off my hat and spoke to her.
+
+She recognized me with a cry of astonishment. For an instant her face
+brightened radiantly with the loveliest expression of delight that I
+ever saw on any human countenance. The moment after, all was changed.
+The charming features saddened and hardened. She stood before me like a
+woman overwhelmed by shame--without uttering a word, without taking my
+offered hand.
+
+Her companion broke the silence.
+
+"Who is this gentleman?" he asked, speaking in a foreign accent, with an
+under-bred insolence of tone and manner.
+
+She controlled herself the moment he addressed her. "This is Mr.
+Germaine," she answered: "a gentleman who was very kind to me in
+Scotland." She raised her eyes for a moment to mine, and took refuge,
+poor soul, in a conventionally polite inquiry after my health. "I hope
+you are quite well, Mr. Germaine," said the soft, sweet voice, trembling
+piteously.
+
+I made the customary reply, and explained that I had seen her at the
+opera. "Are you staying in London?" I asked. "May I have the honor of
+calling on you?"
+
+Her companion answered for her before she could speak.
+
+"My wife thanks you, sir, for the compliment you pay her. She doesn't
+receive visitors. We both wish you good-night."
+
+Saying those words, he took off his hat with a sardonic assumption of
+respect; and, holding her arm in his, forced her to walk on abruptly
+with him. Feeling certainly assured by this time that the man was no
+other than Van Brandt, I was on the point of answering him sharply, when
+Mrs. Van Brandt checked the rash words as they rose to my lips.
+
+"For my sake!" she whispered, over her shoulder, with an imploring look
+that instantly silenced me. After all, she was free (if she liked) to go
+back to the man who had so vilely deceived and deserted her. I bowed and
+left them, feeling with no common bitterness the humiliation of entering
+into rivalry with Mr. Van Brandt.
+
+I crossed to the other side of the street. Before I had taken three
+steps away from her, the old infatuation fastened its hold on me again.
+I submitted, without a struggle against myself, to the degradation
+of turning spy and following them home. Keeping well behind, on the
+opposite side of the way, I tracked them to their own door, and entered
+in my pocket-book the name of the street and the number of the house.
+
+The hardest critic who reads these lines cannot feel more contemptuously
+toward me than I felt toward myself. Could I still love a woman after
+she had deliberately preferred to me a scoundrel who had married her
+while he was the husband of another wife? Yes! Knowing what I now knew,
+I felt that I loved her just as dearly as ever. It was incredible, it
+was shocking; but it was true. For the first time in my life, I tried to
+take refuge from my sense of my own degradation in drink. I went to my
+club, and joined a convivial party at a supper table, and poured glass
+after glass of champagne down my throat, without feeling the slightest
+sense of exhilaration, without losing for an instant the consciousness
+of my own contemptible conduct. I went to my bed in despair; and through
+the wakeful night I weakly cursed the fatal evening at the river-side
+when I had met her for the first time. But revile her as I might,
+despise myself as I might, I loved her--I loved her still!
+
+Among the letters laid on my table the next morning there were two which
+must find their place in this narrative.
+
+The first letter was in a handwriting which I had seen once before, at
+the hotel in Edinburgh. The writer was Mrs. Van Brandt.
+
+"For your own sake" (the letter ran) "make no attempt to see me, and
+take no notice of an invitation which I fear you will receive with this
+note. I am living a degraded life. I have sunk beneath your notice. You
+owe it to yourself, sir, to forget the miserable woman who now writes to
+you for the last time, and bids you gratefully a last farewell."
+
+Those sad lines were signed in initials only. It is needless to say
+that they merely strengthened my resolution to see her at all hazards. I
+kissed the paper on which her hand had rested, and then I turned to the
+second letter. It contained the "invitation" to which my correspondent
+had alluded, and it was expressed in these terms:
+
+"Mr. Van Brandt presents his compliments to Mr. Germaine, and begs
+to apologize for the somewhat abrupt manner in which he received Mr.
+Germaine's polite advances. Mr. Van Brandt suffers habitually from
+nervous irritability, and he felt particularly ill last night. He trusts
+Mr. Germaine will receive this candid explanation in the spirit in which
+it is offered; and he begs to add that Mrs. Van Brandt will be delighted
+to receive Mr. Germaine whenever he may find it convenient to favor her
+with a visit."
+
+That Mr. Van Brandt had some sordid interest of his own to serve in
+writing this grotesquely impudent composition, and that the unhappy
+woman who bore his name was heartily ashamed of the proceeding on which
+he had ventured, were conclusions easily drawn after reading the two
+letters. The suspicion of the man and of his motives which I naturally
+felt produced no hesitation in my mind as to the course which I had
+determined to pursue. On the contrary, I rejoiced that my way to
+an interview with Mrs. Van Brandt was smoothed, no matter with what
+motives, by Mr. Van Brandt himself.
+
+I waited at home until noon, and then I could wait no longer. Leaving a
+message of excuse for my mother (I had just sense of shame enough left
+to shrink from facing her), I hastened away to profit by my invitation
+on the very day when I received it.
+
+CHAPTER XIV. MRS. VAN BRANDT AT HOME.
+
+As I lifted my hand to ring the house bell, the door was opened from
+within, and no less a person than Mr. Van Brandt himself stood before
+me. He had his hat on. We had evidently met just as he was going out.
+
+"My dear sir, how good this is of you! You present the best of all
+replies to my letter in presenting yourself. Mrs. Van Brandt is at home.
+Mrs. Van Brandt will be delighted. Pray walk in."
+
+He threw open the door of a room on the ground-floor. His politeness was
+(if possible) even more offensive than his insolence. "Be seated, Mr.
+Germaine, I beg of you." He turned to the open door, and called up the
+stairs, in a loud and confident voice:
+
+"Mary! come down directly."
+
+"Mary"! I knew her Christian name at last, and knew it through Van
+Brandt. No words can tell how the name jarred on me, spoken by his lips.
+For the first time for years past my mind went back to Mary Dermody
+and Greenwater Broad. The next moment I heard the rustling of Mrs. Van
+Brandt's dress on the stairs. As the sound caught my ear, the old times
+and the old faces vanished again from my thoughts as completely as if
+they had never existed. What had _she_ in common with the frail,
+shy little child, her namesake, of other days? What similarity was
+perceivable in the sooty London lodging-house to remind me of the
+bailiff's flower-scented cottage by the shores of the lake?
+
+Van Brandt took off his hat, and bowed to me with sickening servility.
+
+"I have a business appointment," he said, "which it is impossible to put
+off. Pray excuse me. Mrs. Van Brandt will do the honors. Good morning."
+
+The house door opened and closed again. The rustling of the dress came
+slowly nearer and nearer. She stood before me.
+
+"Mr. Germaine!" she exclaimed, starting back, as if the bare sight of me
+repelled her. "Is this honorable? Is this worthy of you? You allow me to
+be entrapped into receiving you, and you accept as your accomplice Mr.
+Van Brandt! Oh, sir, I have accustomed myself to look up to you as a
+high-minded man. How bitterly you have disappointed me!"
+
+Her reproaches passed by me unheeded. They only heightened her color;
+they only added a new rapture to the luxury of looking at her.
+
+"If you loved me as faithfully as I love you," I said, "you would
+understand why I am here. No sacrifice is too great if it brings me into
+your presence again after two years of absence."
+
+She suddenly approached me, and fixed her eyes in eager scrutiny on my
+face.
+
+"There must be some mistake," she said. "You cannot possibly have
+received my letter, or you have not read it?"
+
+"I have received it, and I have read it."
+
+"And Van Brandt's letter--you have read that too?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She sat down by the table, and, leaning her arms on it, covered her face
+with her hands. My answers seemed not only to have distressed, but to
+have perplexed her. "Are men all alike?" I heard her say. "I thought I
+might trust in _his_ sense of what was due to himself and of what was
+compassionate toward me."
+
+I closed the door and seated myself by her side. She removed her hands
+from her face when she felt me near her. She looked at me with a cold
+and steady surprise.
+
+"What are you going to do?" she asked.
+
+"I am going to try if I can recover my place in your estimation," I
+said. "I am going to ask your pity for a man whose whole heart is yours,
+whose whole life is bound up in you."
+
+She started to her feet, and looked round her incredulously, as if
+doubting whether she had rightly heard and rightly interpreted my last
+words. Before I could speak again, she suddenly faced me, and struck her
+open hand on the table with a passionate resolution which I now saw in
+her for the first time.
+
+"Stop!" she cried. "There must be an end to this. And an end there shall
+be. Do you know who that man is who has just left the house? Answer me,
+Mr. Germaine! I am speaking in earnest."
+
+There was no choice but to answer her. She was indeed in
+earnest--vehemently in earnest.
+
+"His letter tells me," I said, "that he is Mr. Van Brandt."
+
+She sat down again, and turned her face away from me.
+
+"Do you know how he came to write to you?" she asked. "Do you know what
+made him invite you to this house?"
+
+I thought of the suspicion that had crossed my mind when I read Van
+Brandt's letter. I made no reply.
+
+"You force me to tell you the truth," she went on. "He asked me who you
+were, last night on our way home. I knew that you were rich, and that
+_he_ wanted money. I told him I knew nothing of your position in the
+world. He was too cunning to believe me; he went out to the public-house
+and looked at a directory. He came back and said, 'Mr. Germaine has a
+house in Berkeley Square and a country-seat in the Highlands. He is not
+a man for a poor devil like me to offend; I mean to make a friend of
+him, and I expect you to make a friend of him too.' He sat down and
+wrote to you. I am living under that man's protection, Mr. Germaine. His
+wife is not dead, as you may suppose; she is living, and I know her to
+be living. I wrote to you that I was beneath your notice, and you have
+obliged me to tell you why. Am I sufficiently degraded to bring you to
+your senses?"
+
+I drew closer to her. She tried to get up and leave me. I knew my
+power over her, and used it (as any man in my place would have used it)
+without scruple. I took her hand.
+
+"I don't believe you have voluntarily degraded yourself," I said. "You
+have been forced into your present position: there are circumstances
+which excuse you, and which you are purposely keeping back from me.
+Nothing will convince me that you are a base woman. Should I love you as
+I love you, if you were really unworthy of me?"
+
+She struggled to free her hand; I still held it. She tried to change the
+subject. "There is one thing you haven't told me yet," she said, with a
+faint, forced smile. "Have you seen the apparition of me again since I
+left you?"
+
+"No. Have _you_ ever seen _me_ again, as you saw me in your dream at the
+inn in Edinburgh?"
+
+"Never. Our visions of each other have left us. Can you tell why?"
+
+If we had continued to speak on this subject, we must surely have
+recognized each other. But the subject dropped. Instead of answering her
+question, I drew her nearer to me--I returned to the forbidden subject
+of my love.
+
+"Look at me," I pleaded, "and tell me the truth. Can you see me, can you
+hear me, and do you feel no answering sympathy in your own heart? Do you
+really care nothing for me? Have you never once thought of me in all the
+time that has passed since we last met?"
+
+I spoke as I felt--fervently, passionately. She made a last effort to
+repel me, and yielded even as she made it. Her hand closed on mine,
+a low sigh fluttered on her lips. She answered with a sudden
+self-abandonment; she recklessly cast herself loose from the restraints
+which had held her up to this time.
+
+"I think of you perpetually," she said. "I was thinking of you at the
+opera last night. My heart leaped in me when I heard your voice in the
+street."
+
+"You love me!" I whispered.
+
+"Love you!" she repeated. "My whole heart goes out to you in spite of
+myself. Degraded as I am, unworthy as I am--knowing as I do that nothing
+can ever come of it--I love you! I love you!"
+
+She threw her arms round my neck, and held me to her with all her
+strength. The moment after, she dropped on her knees. "Oh, don't tempt
+me!" she murmured. "Be merciful--and leave me."
+
+I was beside myself. I spoke as recklessly to her as she had spoken to
+me.
+
+"Prove that you love me," I said. "Let me rescue you from the
+degradation of living with that man. Leave him at once and forever.
+Leave him, and come with me to a future that is worthy of you--your
+future as my wife."
+
+"Never!" she answered, crouching low at my feet.
+
+"Why not? What obstacle is there?"
+
+"I can't tell you--I daren't tell you."
+
+"Will you write it?"
+
+"No, I can't even write it--to _you_. Go, I implore you, before Van
+Brandt comes back. Go, if you love me and pity me."
+
+She had roused my jealousy. I positively refused to leave her.
+
+"I insist on knowing what binds you to that man," I said. "Let him come
+back! If _you_ won't answer my question, I will put it to _him_."
+
+She looked at me wildly, with a cry of terror. She saw my resolution in
+my face.
+
+"Don't frighten me," she said. "Let me think."
+
+She reflected for a moment. Her eyes brightened, as if some new way out
+of the difficulty had occurred to her.
+
+"Have you a mother living?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you think she would come and see me?"
+
+"I am sure she would if I asked her."
+
+She considered with herself once more. "I will tell your mother what the
+obstacle is," she said, thoughtfully.
+
+"When?"
+
+"To-morrow, at this time."
+
+She raised herself on her knees; the tears suddenly filled her eyes. She
+drew me to her gently. "Kiss me," she whispered. "You will never come
+here again. Kiss me for the last time."
+
+My lips had barely touched hers, when she started to her feet and
+snatched up my hat from the chair on which I had placed it.
+
+"Take your hat," she said. "He has come back."
+
+My duller sense of hearing had discovered nothing. I rose and took
+my hat to quiet her. At the same moment the door of the room opened
+suddenly and softly. Mr. Van Brandt came in. I saw in his face that he
+had some vile motive of his own for trying to take us by surprise, and
+that the result of the experiment had disappointed him.
+
+"You are not going yet?" he said, speaking to me with his eye on Mrs.
+Van Brandt. "I have hurried over my business in the hope of prevailing
+on you to stay and take lunch with us. Put down your hat, Mr. Germaine.
+No ceremony!"
+
+"You are very good," I answered. "My time is limited to-day. I must beg
+you and Mrs. Van Brandt to excuse me."
+
+I took leave of her as I spoke. She turned deadly pale when she shook
+hands with me at parting. Had she any open brutality to dread from Van
+Brandt as soon as my back was turned? The bare suspicion of it made my
+blood boil. But I thought of _her_. In her interests, the wise thing and
+the merciful thing to do was to conciliate the fellow before I left the
+house.
+
+"I am sorry not to be able to accept your invitation," I said, as we
+walked together to the door. "Perhaps you will give me another chance?"
+
+His eyes twinkled cunningly. "What do you say to a quiet little dinner
+here?" he asked. "A slice of mutton, you know, and a bottle of good
+wine. Only our three selves, and one old friend of mine to make up
+four. We will have a rubber of whist in the evening. Mary and you
+partners--eh? When shall it be? Shall we say the day after to-morrow?"
+
+She had followed us to the door, keeping behind Van Brandt while he was
+speaking to me. When he mentioned the "old friend" and the "rubber of
+whist," her face expressed the strongest emotions of shame and disgust.
+The next moment (when she had heard him fix the date of the dinner for
+"the day after to-morrow") her features became composed again, as if
+a sudden sense of relief had come to her. What did the change mean?
+"To-morrow" was the day she had appointed for seeing my mother. Did she
+really believe, when I had heard what passed at the interview, that I
+should never enter the house again, and never attempt to see her more?
+And was this the secret of her composure when she heard the date of the
+dinner appointed for "the day after to-morrow"?
+
+Asking myself these questions, I accepted my invitation, and left the
+house with a heavy heart. That farewell kiss, that sudden composure when
+the day of the dinner was fixed, weighed on my spirits. I would have
+given twelve years of my life to have annihilated the next twelve hours.
+
+In this frame of mind I reached home, and presented myself in my
+mother's sitting-room.
+
+"You have gone out earlier than usual to-day," she said. "Did the fine
+weather tempt you, my dear?" She paused, and looked at me more closely.
+"George!" she exclaimed, "what has happened to you? Where have you
+been?"
+
+I told her the truth as honestly as I have told it here.
+
+The color deepened in my mother's face. She looked at me, and spoke to
+me with a severity which was rare indeed in my experience of her.
+
+"Must I remind you, for the first time in your life, of what is due to
+your mother?" she asked. "Is it possible that you expect me to visit a
+woman, who, by her own confession--"
+
+"I expect you to visit a woman who has only to say the word and to be
+your daughter-in-law," I interposed. "Surely I am not asking what is
+unworthy of you, if I ask that?"
+
+My mother looked at me in blank dismay.
+
+"Do you mean, George, that you have offered her marriage?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And she has said No?"
+
+"She has said No, because there is some obstacle in her way. I have
+tried vainly to make her explain herself. She has promised to confide
+everything to _you_."
+
+The serious nature of the emergency had its effect. My mother yielded.
+She handed me the little ivory tablets on which she was accustomed to
+record her engagements. "Write down the name and address," she said
+resignedly.
+
+"I will go with you," I answered, "and wait in the carriage at the
+door. I want to hear what has passed between you and Mrs. Van Brandt the
+instant you have left her."
+
+"Is it as serious as that, George?"
+
+"Yes, mother, it is as serious as that."
+
+CHAPTER XV. THE OBSTACLE BEATS ME.
+
+HOW long was I left alone in the carriage at the door of Mrs. Van
+Brandt's lodgings? Judging by my sensations, I waited half a life-time.
+Judging by my watch, I waited half an hour.
+
+When my mother returned to me, the hope which I had entertained of
+a happy result from her interview with Mrs. Van Brandt was a hope
+abandoned before she had opened her lips. I saw, in her face, that an
+obstacle which was beyond my power of removal did indeed stand between
+me and the dearest wish of my life.
+
+"Tell me the worst," I said, as we drove away from the house, "and tell
+it at once."
+
+"I must tell it to you, George," my mother answered, sadly, "as she told
+it to me. She begged me herself to do that. 'We must disappoint him,'
+she said, 'but pray let it be done as gently as possible.' Beginning
+in those words, she confided to me the painful story which you know
+already--the story of her marriage. From that she passed to her meeting
+with you at Edinburgh, and to the circumstances which have led her
+to live as she is living now. This latter part of her narrative she
+especially requested me to repeat to you. Do you feel composed enough to
+hear it now? Or would you rather wait?"
+
+"Let me hear it now, mother; and tell it, as nearly as you can, in her
+own words."
+
+"I will repeat what she said to me, my dear, as faithfully as I can.
+After speaking of her father's death, she told me that she had only two
+relatives living. 'I have a married aunt in Glasgow, and a married
+aunt in London,' she said. 'When I left Edinburgh, I went to my aunt
+in London. She and my father had not been on good terms together; she
+considered that my father had neglected her. But his death had softened
+her toward him and toward me. She received me kindly, and she got me a
+situation in a shop. I kept my situation for three months, and then I
+was obliged to leave it.'"
+
+My mother paused. I thought directly of the strange postscript which
+Mrs. Van Brandt had made me add to the letter that I wrote for her at
+the Edinburgh inn. In that case also she had only contemplated remaining
+in her employment for three months' time.
+
+"Why was she obliged to leave her situation?" I asked.
+
+"I put that question to her myself," replied my mother. "She made no
+direct reply--she changed color, and looked confused. 'I will tell you
+afterward, madam,' she said. 'Please let me go on now. My aunt was angry
+with me for leaving my employment--and she was more angry still, when
+I told her the reason. She said I had failed in duty toward her in not
+speaking frankly at first. We parted coolly. I had saved a little money
+from my wages; and I did well enough while my savings lasted. When they
+came to an end, I tried to get employment again, and I failed. My aunt
+said, and said truly, that her husband's income was barely enough to
+support his family: she could do nothing for me, and I could do nothing
+for myself. I wrote to my aunt at Glasgow, and received no answer.
+Starvation stared me in the face, when I saw in a newspaper an
+advertisement addressed to me by Mr. Van Brandt. He implored me to write
+to him; he declared that his life without me was too desolate to be
+endured; he solemnly promised that there should be no interruption to my
+tranquillity if I would return to him. If I had only had myself to think
+of, I would have begged my bread in the streets rather than return to
+him--'"
+
+I interrupted the narrative at that point.
+
+"What other person could she have had to think of?" I said.
+
+"Is it possible, George," my mother rejoined, "that you have no
+suspicion of what she was alluding to when she said those words?"
+
+The question passed by me unheeded: my thoughts were dwelling bitterly
+on Van Brandt and his advertisement. "She answered the advertisement, of
+course?" I said.
+
+"And she saw Mr. Van Brandt," my mother went on. "She gave me no
+detailed account of the interview between them. 'He reminded me,' she
+said, 'of what I knew to be true--that the woman who had entrapped him
+into marrying her was an incurable drunkard, and that his ever living
+with her again was out of the question. Still she was alive, and she had
+a right to the name at least of his wife. I won't attempt to excuse my
+returning to him, knowing the circumstances as I did. I will only say
+that I could see no other choice before me, in my position at the time.
+It is needless to trouble you with what I have suffered since, or to
+speak of what I may suffer still. I am a lost woman. Be under no alarm,
+madam, about your son. I shall remember proudly to the end of my life
+that he once offered me the honor and the happiness of becoming his
+wife; but I know what is due to him and to you. I have seen him for the
+last time. The one thing that remains to be done is to satisfy him that
+our marriage is impossible. You are a mother; you will understand why
+I reveal the obstacle which stands between us--not to him, but to you.'
+She rose saying those words, and opened the folding-doors which led from
+the parlor into a back room. After an absence of a few moments only, she
+returned."
+
+At that crowning point in the narrative, my mother stopped. Was she
+afraid to go on? or did she think it needless to say more?
+
+"Well?" I said.
+
+"Must I really tell it to you in words, George? Can't you guess how it
+ended, even yet?"
+
+There were two difficulties in the way of my understanding her. I had
+a man's bluntness of perception, and I was half maddened by suspense.
+Incredible as it may appear, I was too dull to guess the truth even now.
+
+"When she returned to me," my mother resumed, "she was not alone. She
+had with her a lovely little girl, just old enough to walk with the help
+of her mother's hand. She tenderly kissed the child, and then she put it
+on my lap. 'There is my only comfort,' she said, simply; 'and there is
+the obstacle to my ever becoming Mr. Germaine's wife.'"
+
+Van Brandt's child! Van Brandt's child!
+
+The postscript which she had made me add to my letter; the
+incomprehensible withdrawal from the employment in which she was
+prospering; the disheartening difficulties which had brought her to the
+brink of starvation; the degrading return to the man who had cruelly
+deceived her--all was explained, all was excused now! With an infant at
+the breast, how could she obtain a new employment? With famine staring
+her in the face, what else could the friendless woman do but return to
+the father of her child? What claim had I on her, by comparison with
+_him_? What did it matter, now that the poor creature secretly returned
+the love that I felt for her? There was the child, an obstacle between
+us--there was _his_ hold on her, now that he had got her back! What was
+_my_ hold worth? All social proprieties and all social laws answered the
+question: Nothing!
+
+My head sunk on my breast; I received the blow in silence.
+
+My good mother took my hand. "You understand it now, George?" she said,
+sorrowfully.
+
+"Yes, mother; I understand it."
+
+"There was one thing she wished me to say to you, my dear, which I have
+not mentioned yet. She entreats you not to suppose that she had the
+faintest idea of her situation when she attempted to destroy herself.
+Her first suspicion that it was possible she might become a mother was
+conveyed to her at Edinburgh, in a conversation with her aunt. It is
+impossible, George, not to feel compassionately toward this poor woman.
+Regrettable as her position is, I cannot see that she is to blame for
+it. She was the innocent victim of a vile fraud when that man married
+her; she has suffered undeservedly since; and she has behaved nobly to
+you and to me. I only do her justice in saying that she is a woman in a
+thousand--a woman worthy, under happier circumstances, to be my daughter
+and your wife. I feel _for_ you, and feel _with_ you, my dear--I do,
+with my whole heart."
+
+So this scene in my life was, to all appearance, a scene closed forever.
+As it had been with my love, in the days of my boyhood, so it was again
+now with the love of my riper age!
+
+Later in the day, when I had in some degree recovered my
+self-possession, I wrote to Mr. Van Brandt--as _she_ had foreseen I
+should write!--to apologize for breaking my engagement to dine with him.
+
+Could I trust to a letter also, to say the farewell words for me to the
+woman whom I had loved and lost? No! It was better for her, and better
+for me, that I should not write. And yet the idea of leaving her in
+silence was more than my fortitude could endure. Her last words at
+parting (as they were repeated to me by my mother) had expressed the
+hope that I should not think hardly of her in the future. How could I
+assure her that I should think of her tenderly to the end of my life?
+My mother's delicate tact and true sympathy showed me the way. "Send a
+little present, George," she said, "to the child. You bear no malice to
+the poor little child?" God knows I was not hard on the child! I went
+out myself and bought her a toy. I brought it home, and before I sent it
+away, I pinned a slip of paper to it, bearing this inscription: "To your
+little daughter, from George Germaine." There is nothing very pathetic,
+I suppose, in those words. And yet I burst out crying when I had written
+them.
+
+The next morning my mother and I set forth for my country-house in
+Perthshire. London was now unendurable to me. Traveling abroad I had
+tried already. Nothing was left but to go back to the Highlands, and to
+try what I could make of my life, with my mother still left to live for.
+
+CHAPTER XVI. MY MOTHER'S DIARY.
+
+THERE is something repellent to me, even at this distance of time, in
+looking back at the dreary days, of seclusion which followed each
+other monotonously in my Highland home. The actions of my life, however
+trifling they may have been, I can find some interest in recalling: they
+associate me with my fellow-creatures; they connect me, in some degree,
+with the vigorous movement of the world. But I have no sympathy with the
+purely selfish pleasure which some men appear to derive from dwelling on
+the minute anatomy of their own feelings, under the pressure of adverse
+fortune. Let the domestic record of our stagnant life in Perthshire (so
+far as I am concerned in it) be presented in my mother's words, not in
+mine. A few lines of extract from the daily journal which it was her
+habit to keep will tell all that need be told before this narrative
+advances to later dates and to newer scenes.
+
+
+"20th August.--We have been two months at our home in Scotland, and I
+see no change in George for the better. He is as far as ever, I fear,
+from being reconciled to his separation from that unhappy woman. Nothing
+will induce him to confess it himself. He declares that his quiet life
+here with me is all that he desires. But I know better! I have been into
+his bedroom late at night. I have heard him talking of her in his sleep,
+and I have seen the tears on his eyelids. My poor boy! What thousands
+of charming women there are who would ask nothing better than to be his
+wife! And the one woman whom he can never marry is the only woman whom
+he loves!
+
+"25th.--A long conversation about George with Mr. MacGlue. I have never
+liked this Scotch doctor since he encouraged my son to keep the fatal
+appointment at Saint Anthony's Well. But he seems to be a clever man in
+his profession--and I think, in his way, he means kindly toward George.
+His advice was given as coarsely as usual, and very positively at the
+same time. 'Nothing will cure your son, madam, of his amatory passion
+for that half-drowned lady of his but change--and another lady. Send
+him away by himself this time; and let him feel the want of some kind
+creature to look after him. And when he meets with that kind creature
+(they are as plenty as fish in the sea), never trouble your head about
+it if there's a flaw in her character. I have got a cracked tea-cup
+which has served me for twenty years. Marry him, ma'am, to the new one
+with the utmost speed and impetuosity which the law will permit.' I hate
+Mr. MacGlue's opinions--so coarse and so hard-hearted!--but I sadly fear
+that I must part with my son for a little while, for his own sake.
+
+"26th.--Where is George to go? I have been thinking of it all through
+the night, and I cannot arrive at a conclusion. It is so difficult to
+reconcile myself to letting him go away alone.
+
+"29th.--I have always believed in special providences; and I am now
+confirmed in my belief. This morning has brought with it a note from
+our good friend and neighbor at Belhelvie. Sir James is one of the
+commissioners for the Northern Lights. He is going in a Government
+vessel to inspect the lighthouses on the North of Scotland, and on the
+Orkney and Shetland Islands--and, having noticed how worn and ill my
+poor boy looks, he most kindly invites George to be his guest on the
+voyage. They will not be absent for more than two months; and the
+sea (as Sir James reminds me) did wonders for George's health when he
+returned from India. I could wish for no better opportunity than this of
+trying what change of air and scene will do for him. However painfully I
+may feel the separation myself, I shall put a cheerful face on it; and I
+shall urge George to accept the invitation.
+
+"30th.--I have said all I could; but he still refuses to leave me. I am
+a miserable, selfish creature. I felt so glad when he said No.
+
+"31st.--Another wakeful night. George must positively send his answer to
+Sir James to-day. I am determined to do my duty toward my son--he looks
+so dreadfully pale and ill this morning! Besides, if something is not
+done to rouse him, how do I know that he may not end in going back to
+Mrs. Van Brandt after all? From every point of view, I feel bound to
+insist on his accepting Sir James's invitation. I have only to be firm,
+and the thing is done. He has never yet disobeyed me, poor fellow. He
+will not disobey me now.
+
+"2d September.--He has gone! Entirely to please me--entirely against his
+own wishes. Oh, how is it that such a good son cannot get a good wife!
+He would make any woman happy. I wonder whether I have done right in
+sending him away? The wind is moaning in the fir plantation at the back
+of the house. Is there a storm at sea? I forgot to ask Sir James how big
+the vessel was. The 'Guide to Scotland' says the coast is rugged; and
+there is a wild sea between the north shore and the Orkney Islands. I
+almost regret having insisted so strongly--how foolish I am! We are all
+in the hands of God. May God bless and prosper my good son!
+
+"10th.--Very uneasy. No letter from George. Ah, how full of trouble this
+life is! and how strange that we should cling to it as we do!
+
+"15th.--A letter from George! They have done with the north coast and
+they have crossed the wild sea to the Orkneys. Wonderful weather has
+favored them so far; and George is in better health and spirits. Ah! how
+much happiness there is in life if we only have the patience to wait for
+it.
+
+"2d October.--Another letter. They are safe in the harbor of Lerwick,
+the chief port in the Shetland Islands. The weather has not latterly
+been at all favorable. But the amendment in George's health remains. He
+writes most gratefully of Sir James's unremitting kindness to him. I am
+so happy, I declare I could kiss Sir James--though he _is_ a great man,
+and a Commissioner for Northern Lights! In three weeks more (wind and
+weather permitting) they hope to get back. Never mind my lonely life
+here, if I can only see George happy and well again! He tells me they
+have passed a great deal of their time on shore; but not a word does
+he say about meeting any ladies. Perhaps they are scarce in those wild
+regions? I have heard of Shetland shawls and Shetland ponies. Are there
+any Shetland ladies, I wonder?"
+
+CHAPTER XVII. SHETLAND HOSPITALITY.
+
+"GUIDE! Where are we?"
+
+"I can't say for certain."
+
+"Have you lost your way?"
+
+The guide looks slowly all round him, and then looks at me. That is his
+answer to my question. And that is enough.
+
+The lost persons are three in number. My traveling companion, myself,
+and the guide. We are seated on three Shetland ponies--so small in
+stature, that we two strangers were at first literally ashamed to get on
+their backs. We are surrounded by dripping white mist so dense that we
+become invisible to one another at a distance of half a dozen yards. We
+know that we are somewhere on the mainland of the Shetland Isles. We see
+under the feet of our ponies a mixture of moorland and bog--here, the
+strip of firm ground that we are standing on, and there, a few feet off,
+the strip of watery peat-bog, which is deep enough to suffocate us if
+we step into it. Thus far, and no further, our knowledge extends. This
+question of the moment is, What are we to do next?
+
+The guide lights his pipe, and reminds me that he warned us against the
+weather before we started for our ride. My traveling companion looks
+at me resignedly, with an expression of mild reproach. I deserve it. My
+rashness is to blame for the disastrous position in which we now find
+ourselves.
+
+In writing to my mother, I have been careful to report favorably of my
+health and spirits. But I have not confessed that I still remember the
+day when I parted with the one hope and renounced the one love which
+made life precious to me. My torpid condition of mind, at home,
+has simply given place to a perpetual restlessness, produced by the
+excitement of my new life. I must now always be doing something--no
+matter what, so long as it diverts me from my own thoughts. Inaction is
+unendurable; solitude has become horrible to me. While the other members
+of the party which has accompanied Sir James on his voyage of inspection
+among the lighthouses are content to wait in the harbor of Lerwick for
+a favorable change in the weather, I am obstinately bent on leaving
+the comfortable shelter of the vessel to explore some inland ruin of
+prehistoric times, of which I never heard, and for which I care nothing.
+The movement is all I want; the ride will fill the hateful void of
+time. I go, in defiance of sound advice offered to me on all sides. The
+youngest member of our party catches the infection of my recklessness
+(in virtue of his youth) and goes with me. And what has come of it?
+We are blinded by mist; we are lost on a moor; and the treacherous
+peat-bogs are round us in every direction!
+
+What is to be done?
+
+"Just leave it to the pownies," the guide says.
+
+"Do you mean leave the ponies to find the way?"
+
+"That's it," says the guide. "Drop the bridle, and leave it to the
+pownies. See for yourselves. I'm away on _my_ powny."
+
+He drops his bridle on the pommel of his saddle, whistles to his pony,
+and disappears in the mist; riding with his hands in his pockets, and
+his pipe in his mouth, as composedly as if he were sitting by his own
+fireside at home.
+
+We have no choice but to follow his example, or to be left alone on
+the moor. The intelligent little animals, relieved from our stupid
+supervision, trot off with their noses to the ground, like hounds on the
+scent. Where the intersecting tract of bog is wide, they skirt round it.
+Where it is narrow enough to be leaped over, they cross it by a jump.
+Trot! trot!--away the hardy little creatures go; never stopping, never
+hesitating. Our "superior intelligence," perfectly useless in the
+emergency, wonders how it will end. Our guide, in front of us, answers
+that it will end in the ponies finding their way certainly to the
+nearest village or the nearest house. "Let the bridles be," is his one
+warning to us. "Come what may of it, let the bridles be!"
+
+It is easy for the guide to let his bridle be--he is accustomed to place
+himself in that helpless position under stress of circumstances, and he
+knows exactly what his pony can do.
+
+To us, however, the situation is a new one; and it looks dangerous in
+the extreme. More than once I check myself, not without an effort, in
+the act of resuming the command of my pony on passing the more dangerous
+points in the journey. The time goes on; and no sign of an inhabited
+dwelling looms through the mist. I begin to get fidgety and irritable; I
+find myself secretly doubting the trustworthiness of the guide. While
+I am in this unsettled frame of mind, my pony approaches a dim, black,
+winding line, where the bog must be crossed for the hundredth time at
+least. The breadth of it (deceptively enlarged in appearance by the
+mist) looks to my eyes beyond the reach of a leap by any pony that ever
+was foaled. I lose my presence of mind. At the critical moment before
+the jump is taken, I am foolish enough to seize the bridle, and suddenly
+check the pony. He starts, throws up his head, and falls instantly as if
+he had been shot. My right hand, as we drop on the ground together, gets
+twisted under me, and I feel that I have sprained my wrist.
+
+If I escape with no worse injury than this, I may consider myself well
+off. But no such good fortune is reserved for me. In his struggles to
+rise, before I have completely extricated myself from him, the pony
+kicks me; and, as my ill-luck will have it, his hoof strikes just where
+the poisoned spear struck me in the past days of my service in India.
+The old wound opens again--and there I lie bleeding on the barren
+Shetland moor!
+
+This time my strength has not been exhausted in attempting to breast
+the current of a swift-flowing river with a drowning woman to support.
+I preserve my senses; and I am able to give the necessary directions
+for bandaging the wound with the best materials which we have at our
+disposal. To mount my pony again is simply out of the question. I must
+remain where I am, with my traveling companion to look after me; and the
+guide must trust his pony to discover the nearest place of shelter to
+which I can be removed.
+
+Before he abandons us on the moor, the man (at my suggestion) takes our
+"bearings," as correctly as he can by the help of my pocket-compass.
+This done, he disappears in the mist, with the bridle hanging loose,
+and the pony's nose to the ground, as before. I am left, under my young
+friend's care, with a cloak to lie on, and a saddle for a pillow. Our
+ponies composedly help themselves to such grass as they can find on the
+moor; keeping always near us as companionably as if they were a couple
+of dogs. In this position we wait events, while the dripping mist hangs
+thicker than ever all round us.
+
+The slow minutes follow each other wearily in the majestic silence of
+the moor. We neither of us acknowledge it in words, but we both feel
+that hours may pass before the guide discovers us again. The penetrating
+damp slowly strengthens its clammy hold on me. My companion's
+pocket-flask of sherry has about a teaspoonful of wine left in the
+bottom of it. We look at one another--having nothing else to look at in
+the present state of the weather--and we try to make the best of it. So
+the slow minutes follow each other, until our watches tell us that forty
+minutes have elapsed since the guide and his pony vanished from our
+view.
+
+My friend suggests that we may as well try what our voices can do toward
+proclaiming our situation to any living creature who may, by the barest
+possibility, be within hearing of us. I leave him to try the experiment,
+having no strength to spare for vocal efforts of any sort. My companion
+shouts at the highest pitch of his voice. Silence follows his first
+attempt. He tries again; and, this time, an answering hail reaches us
+faintly through the white fog. A fellow-creature of some sort, guide or
+stranger, is near us--help is coming at last!
+
+An interval passes; and voices reach our ears--the voices of two men.
+Then the shadowy appearance of the two becomes visible in the mist. Then
+the guide advances near enough to be identified. He is followed by a
+sturdy fellow in a composite dress, which presents him under the double
+aspect of a groom and a gardener. The guide speaks a few words of rough
+sympathy. The composite man stands by impenetrably silent; the sight of
+a disabled stranger fails entirely either to surprise or to interest the
+gardener-groom.
+
+After a little private consultation, the two men decide to cross their
+hands, and thus make a seat for me between them. My arms rest on their
+shoulders; and so they carry me off. My friend trudges behind them, with
+the saddle and the cloak. The ponies caper and kick, in unrestrained
+enjoyment of their freedom; and sometimes follow, sometimes precede
+us, as the humor of the moment inclines them. I am, fortunately for my
+bearers, a light weight. After twice resting, they stop altogether, and
+set me down on the driest place they can find. I look eagerly through
+the mist for some signs of a dwelling-house--and I see nothing but a
+little shelving beach, and a sheet of dark water beyond. Where are we?
+
+The gardener-groom vanishes, and appears again on the water, looming
+large in a boat. I am laid down in the bottom of the boat, with my
+saddle-pillow; and we shove off, leaving the ponies to the desolate
+freedom of the moor. They will pick up plenty to eat (the guide says);
+and when night comes on they will find their own way to shelter in a
+village hard by. The last I see of the hardy little creatures they are
+taking a drink of water, side by side, and biting each other sportively
+in higher spirits than ever!
+
+Slowly we float over the dark water--not a river, as I had at first
+supposed, but a lake--until we reach the shores of a little island; a
+flat, lonely, barren patch of ground. I am carried along a rough pathway
+made of great flat stones, until we reach the firmer earth, and discover
+a human dwelling-place at last. It is a long, low house of one story
+high; forming (as well as I can see) three sides of a square. The door
+stands hospitably open. The hall within is bare and cold and dreary. The
+men open an inner door, and we enter a long corridor, comfortably warmed
+by a peat fire. On one wall I notice the closed oaken doors of rooms;
+on the other, rows on rows of well-filled book-shelves meet my eye.
+Advancing to the end of the first passage, we turn at right angles into
+a second. Here a door is opened at last: I find myself in a spacious
+room, completely and tastefully furnished, having two beds in it, and
+a large fire burning in the grate. The change to this warm and cheerful
+place of shelter from the chilly and misty solitude of the moor is
+so luxuriously delightful that I am quite content, for the first
+few minutes, to stretch myself on a bed, in lazy enjoyment of my new
+position; without caring to inquire into whose house we have intruded;
+without even wondering at the strange absence of master, mistress, or
+member of the family to welcome our arrival under their hospitable roof.
+
+After a while, the first sense of relief passes away. My dormant
+curiosity revives. I begin to look about me.
+
+The gardener-groom has disappeared. I discover my traveling companion
+at the further end of the room, evidently occupied in questioning the
+guide. A word from me brings him to my bedside. What discoveries has he
+made? whose is the house in which we are sheltered; and how is it that
+no member of the family appears to welcome us?
+
+My friend relates his discoveries. The guide listens as attentively to
+the second-hand narrative as if it were quite new to him.
+
+The house that shelters us belongs to a gentleman of ancient Northern
+lineage, whose name is Dunross. He has lived in unbroken retirement on
+the barren island for twenty years past, with no other companion than a
+daughter, who is his only child. He is generally believed to be one of
+the most learned men living. The inhabitants of Shetland know him far
+and wide, under a name in their dialect which means, being interpreted,
+"The Master of Books." The one occasion on which he and his daughter
+have been known to leave their island retreat was at a past time when
+a terrible epidemic disease broke out among the villages in the
+neighborhood. Father and daughter labored day and night among their poor
+and afflicted neighbors, with a courage which no danger could shake,
+with a tender care which no fatigue could exhaust. The father had
+escaped infection, and the violence of the epidemic was beginning to
+wear itself out, when the daughter caught the disease. Her life had been
+preserved, but she never completely recovered her health. She is now an
+incurable sufferer from some mysterious nervous disorder which
+nobody understands, and which has kept her a prisoner on the island,
+self-withdrawn from all human observation, for years past. Among the
+poor inhabitants of the district, the father and daughter are worshiped
+as semi-divine beings. Their names come after the Sacred Name in the
+prayers which the parents teach to their children.
+
+Such is the household (so far as the guide's story goes) on whose
+privacy we have intruded ourselves! The narrative has a certain interest
+of its own, no doubt, but it has one defect--it fails entirely to
+explain the continued absence of Mr. Dunross. Is it possible that he is
+not aware of our presence in the house? We apply the guide, and make a
+few further inquiries of him.
+
+"Are we here," I ask, "by permission of Mr. Dunross?"
+
+The guide stares. If I had spoken to him in Greek or Hebrew, I could
+hardly have puzzled him more effectually. My friend tries him with a
+simpler form of words.
+
+"Did you ask leave to bring us here when you found your way to the
+house?"
+
+The guide stares harder than ever, with every appearance of feeling
+perfectly scandalized by the question.
+
+"Do you think," he asks, sternly, "'that I am fool enough to disturb the
+Master over his books for such a little matter as bringing you and your
+friend into this house?"
+
+"Do you mean that you have brought us here without first asking leave?"
+I exclaim in amazement.
+
+The guide's face brightens; he has beaten the true state of the case
+into our stupid heads at last! "That's just what I mean!" he says, with
+an air of infinite relief.
+
+The door opens before we have recovered the shock inflicted on us by
+this extraordinary discovery. A little, lean, old gentleman, shrouded
+in a long black dressing-gown, quietly enters the room. The guide steps
+forward, and respectfully closes the door for him. We are evidently in
+the presence of The Master of Books!
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. THE DARKENED ROOM.
+
+THE little gentleman advances to my bedside. His silky white hair flows
+over his shoulders; he looks at us with faded blue eyes; he bows with a
+sad and subdued courtesy, and says, in the simplest manner, "I bid you
+welcome, gentlemen, to my house."
+
+We are not content with merely thanking him; we naturally attempt to
+apologize for our intrusion. Our host defeats the attempt at the outset
+by making an apology on his own behalf.
+
+"I happened to send for my servant a minute since," he proceeds, "and
+I only then heard that you were here. It is a custom of the house
+that nobody interrupts me over my books. Be pleased, sir, to accept
+my excuses," he adds, addressing himself to me, "for not having sooner
+placed myself and my household at your disposal. You have met, as I am
+sorry to hear, with an accident. Will you permit me to send for medical
+help? I ask the question a little abruptly, fearing that time may be of
+importance, and knowing that our nearest doctor lives at some distance
+from this house."
+
+He speaks with a certain quaintly precise choice of words--more like a
+man dictating a letter than holding a conversation. The subdued sadness
+of his manner is reflected in the subdued sadness of his face. He and
+sorrow have apparently been old acquaintances, and have become used to
+each other for years past. The shadow of some past grief rests quietly
+and impenetrably over the whole man; I see it in his faded blue eyes, on
+his broad forehead, on his delicate lips, on his pale shriveled cheeks.
+My uneasy sense of committing an intrusion on him steadily increases,
+in spite of his courteous welcome. I explain to him that I am capable of
+treating my own case, having been myself in practice as a medical man;
+and this said, I revert to my interrupted excuses. I assure him that it
+is only within the last few moments that my traveling companion and
+I have become aware of the liberty which our guide has taken in
+introducing us, on his own sole responsibility, to the house. Mr.
+Dunross looks at me, as if he, like the guide, failed entirely to
+understand what my scruples and excuses mean. After a while the truth
+dawns on him. A faint smile flickers over his face; he lays his hand in
+a gentle, fatherly way on my shoulder.
+
+"We are so used here to our Shetland hospitality," he says, "that we
+are slow to understand the hesitation which a stranger feels in taking
+advantage of it. Your guide is in no respect to blame, gentlemen. Every
+house in these islands which is large enough to contain a spare room has
+its Guests' Chamber, always kept ready for occupation. When you travel
+my way, you come here as a matter of course; you stay here as long as
+you like; and, when you go away, I only do my duty as a good Shetlander
+in accompanying you on the first stage of your journey to bid you
+godspeed. The customs of centuries past elsewhere are modern customs
+here. I beg of you to give my servant all the directions which are
+necessary to your comfort, just as freely as you could give them in your
+own house."
+
+He turns aside to ring a hand-bell on the table as he speaks; and
+notices in the guide's face plain signs that the man has taken offense
+at my disparaging allusion to him.
+
+"Strangers cannot be expected to understand our ways, Andrew," says
+The Master of Books. "But you and I understand one another--and that is
+enough."
+
+The guide's rough face reddens with pleasure. If a crowned king on a
+throne had spoken condescendingly to him, he could hardly have looked
+more proud of the honor conferred than he looks now. He makes a clumsy
+attempt to take the Master's hand and kiss it. Mr. Dunross gently repels
+the attempt, and gives him a little pat on the head. The guide looks at
+me and my friend as if he had been honored with the highest distinction
+that an earthly being can receive. The Master's hand had touched him
+kindly!
+
+In a moment more, the gardener-groom appears at the door to answer the
+bell.
+
+"You will move the medicine-chest into this room, Peter," says Mr.
+Dunross. "And you will wait on this gentleman, who is confined to his
+bed by an accident, exactly as you would wait on me if I were ill. If
+we both happen to ring for you together, you will answer his bell before
+you answer mine. The usual changes of linen are, of course, ready in the
+wardrobe there? Very good. Go now, and tell the cook to prepare a little
+dinner; and get a bottle of the old Madeira out of the cellar. You will
+least, in this room. These two gentlemen will be best pleased to dine
+together. Return here in five minutes' time, in case you are wanted; and
+show my guest, Peter, that I am right in believing you to be a good
+nurse as well as a good servant."
+
+The silent and surly Peter brightens under the expression of the
+Master's confidence in him, as the guide brightened under the influence
+of the Master's caressing touch. The two men leave the room together.
+
+We take advantage of the momentary silence that follows to introduce
+ourselves by name to our host, and to inform him of the circumstances
+under which we happen to be visiting Shetland. He listens in his
+subdued, courteous way; but he makes no inquiries about our relatives;
+he shows no interest in the arrival of the Government yacht and the
+Commissioner for Northern Lights. All sympathy with the doings of
+the outer world, all curiosity about persons of social position and
+notoriety, is evidently at an end in Mr. Dunross. For twenty years the
+little round of his duties and his occupations has been enough for him.
+Life has lost its priceless value to this man; and when Death comes to
+him he will receive the king of terrors as he might receive the last of
+his guests.
+
+"Is there anything else I can do," he says, speaking more to himself
+than to us, "before I go back to my books?"
+
+Something else occurs to him, even as he puts the question. He addresses
+my companion, with his faint, sad smile. "This will be a dull life, I am
+afraid, sir, for you. If you happen to be fond of angling, I can offer
+you some little amusement in that way. The lake is well stocked with
+fish; and I have a boy employed in the garden, who will be glad to
+attend on you in the boat."
+
+My friend happens to be fond of fishing, and gladly accepts the
+invitation. The Master says his parting words to me before he goes back
+to his books.
+
+"You may safely trust my man Peter to wait on you, Mr. Germaine, while
+you are so unfortunate as to be confined to this room. He has the
+advantage (in cases of illness) of being a very silent, undemonstrative
+person. At the same time he is careful and considerate, in his own
+reserved way. As to what I may term the lighter duties at your bedside
+such as reading to you, writing your letters for you while your right
+hand is still disabled, regulating the temperature in the room, and
+so on--though I cannot speak positively, I think it likely that these
+little services may be rendered to you by another person whom I have not
+mentioned yet. We shall see what happens in a few hours' time. In the
+meanwhile, sir, I ask permission to leave you to your rest."
+
+With those words, he walks out of the room as quietly as he walked
+into it, and leaves his two guests to meditate gratefully on Shetland
+hospitality. We both wonder what those last mysterious words of our host
+mean; and we exchange more or less ingenious guesses on the subject of
+that nameless "other person" who may possibly attend on me--until the
+arrival of dinner turns our thoughts into a new course.
+
+The dishes are few in number, but cooked to perfection and admirably
+served. I am too weary to eat much: a glass of the fine old Madeira
+revives me. We arrange our future plans while we are engaged over the
+meal. Our return to the yacht in Lerwick harbor is expected on the next
+day at the latest. As things are, I can only leave my companion to go
+back to the vessel, and relieve the minds of our friends of any needless
+alarm about me. On the day after, I engage to send on board a written
+report of the state of my health, by a messenger who can bring my
+portmanteau back with him.
+
+These arrangements decided on, my friend goes away (at my own request)
+to try his skill as an angler in the lake. Assisted by the silent Peter
+and the well-stocked medicine-chest, I apply the necessary dressings to
+my wound, wrap myself in the comfortable morning-gown which is always
+kept ready in the Guests' Chamber, and lie down again on the bed to try
+the restorative virtues of sleep.
+
+Before he leaves the room, silent Peter goes to the window, and asks
+in fewest possible words if he shall draw the curtains. In fewer words
+still--for I am feeling drowsy already--I answer No. I dislike shutting
+out the cheering light of day. To my morbid fancy, at that moment,
+it looks like resigning myself deliberately to the horrors of a long
+illness. The hand-bell is on my bedside table; and I can always ring for
+Peter if the light keeps me from sleeping. On this understanding, Peter
+mutely nods his head, and goes out.
+
+For some minutes I lie in lazy contemplation of the companionable fire.
+Meanwhile the dressings on my wound and the embrocation on my sprained
+wrist steadily subdue the pains which I have felt so far. Little by
+little, the bright fire seems to be fading. Little by little, sleep
+steals on me, and all my troubles are forgotten.
+
+I wake, after what seems to have been a long repose--I wake, feeling the
+bewilderment which we all experience on opening our eyes for the first
+time in a bed and a room that are new to us. Gradually collecting my
+thoughts, I find my perplexity considerably increased by a trifling but
+curious circumstance. The curtains which I had forbidden Peter to touch
+are drawn--closely drawn, so as to plunge the whole room in obscurity.
+And, more surprising still, a high screen with folding sides stands
+before the fire, and confines the light which it might otherwise give
+exclusively to the ceiling. I am literally enveloped in shadows. Has
+night come?
+
+In lazy wonder, I turn my head on the pillow, and look on the other side
+of my bed.
+
+Dark as it is, I discover instantly that I am not alone.
+
+A shadowy figure stands by my bedside. The dim outline of the dress
+tells me that it is the figure of a woman. Straining my eyes, I fancy
+I can discern a wavy black object covering her head and shoulders
+which looks like a large veil. Her face is turned toward me, but no
+distinguishing feature in it is visible. She stands like a statue, with
+her hands crossed in front of her, faintly relieved against the dark
+substance of her dress. This I can see--and this is all.
+
+There is a moment of silence. The shadowy being finds its voice, and
+speaks first.
+
+"I hope you feel better, sir, after your rest?"
+
+The voice is low, with a certain faint sweetness or tone which falls
+soothingly on my ear. The accent is unmistakably the accent of a refined
+and cultivated person. After making my acknowledgments to the unknown
+and half-seen lady, I venture to ask the inevitable question, "To whom
+have I the honor of speaking?"
+
+The lady answers, "I am Miss Dunross; and I hope, if you have no
+objection to it, to help Peter in nursing you."
+
+This, then, is the "other person" dimly alluded to by our host! I
+think directly of the heroic conduct of Miss Dunross among her poor and
+afflicted neighbors; and I do not forget the melancholy result of her
+devotion to others which has left her an incurable invalid. My anxiety
+to see this lady more plainly increases a hundred-fold. I beg her to add
+to my grateful sense of her kindness by telling me why the room is so
+dark "Surely," I say, "it cannot be night already?"
+
+"You have not been asleep," she answers, "for more than two hours. The
+mist has disappeared, and the sun is shining."
+
+I take up the bell, standing on the table at my side.
+
+"May I ring for Peter, Miss Dunross?"
+
+"To open the curtains, Mr. Germaine?"
+
+"Yes--with your permission. I own I should like to see the sunlight."
+
+"I will send Peter to you immediately."
+
+The shadowy figure of my new nurse glides away. In another moment,
+unless I say something to stop her, the woman whom I am so eager to see
+will have left the room.
+
+"Pray don't go!" I say. "I cannot think of troubling you to take a
+trifling message for me. The servant will come in, if I only ring the
+bell."
+
+She pauses--more shadowy than ever--halfway between the bed and the
+door, and answers a little sadly:
+
+"Peter will not let in the daylight while I am in the room. He closed
+the curtains by my order."
+
+The reply puzzles me. Why should Peter keep the room dark while Miss
+Dunross is in it? Are her eyes weak? No; if her eyes were weak, they
+would be protected by a shade. Dark as it is, I can see that she does
+not wear a shade. Why has the room been darkened--if not for me? I
+cannot venture on asking the question--I can only make my excuses in due
+form.
+
+"Invalids only think of themselves," I say. "I supposed that you had
+kindly darkened the room on my account."
+
+She glides back to my bedside before she speaks again. When she does
+answer, it is in these startling words:
+
+"You were mistaken, Mr. Germaine. Your room has been darkened--not on
+your account, but on _mine_."
+
+CHAPTER XIX. THE CATS.
+
+MISS DUNROSS had so completely perplexed me, that I was at a loss what
+to say next.
+
+To ask her plainly why it was necessary to keep the room in darkness
+while she remained in it, might prove (for all I knew to the contrary)
+to be an act of positive rudeness. To venture on any general expression
+of sympathy with her, knowing absolutely nothing of the circumstances,
+might place us both in an embarrassing position at the outset of our
+acquaintance. The one thing I could do was to beg that the present
+arrangement of the room might not be disturbed, and to leave her to
+decide as to whether she should admit me to her confidence or exclude me
+from it, at her own sole discretion.
+
+She perfectly understood what was going on in my mind. Taking a chair at
+the foot of the bed, she told me simply and unreservedly the sad secret
+of the darkened room.
+
+"If you wish to see much of me, Mr. Germaine," she began, "you must
+accustom yourself to the world of shadows in which it is my lot to live.
+Some time since, a dreadful illness raged among the people in our part
+of this island; and I was so unfortunate as to catch the infection. When
+I recovered--no! 'Recovery' is not the right word to use--let me say,
+when I escaped death, I found myself afflicted by a nervous malady which
+has defied medical help from that time to this. I am suffering (as the
+doctors explain it to me) from a morbidly sensitive condition of the
+nerves near the surface to the action of light. If I were to draw the
+curtains, and look out of that window, I should feel the acutest pain
+all over my face. If I covered my face, and drew the curtains with my
+bare hands, I should feel the same pain in my hands. You can just see,
+perhaps, that I have a very large and very thick veil on my head. I let
+it fall over my face and neck and hands, when I have occasion to
+pass along the corridors or to enter my father's study--and I find it
+protection enough. Don't be too ready to deplore my sad condition,
+sir! I have got so used to living in the dark that I can see quite well
+enough for all the purposes of _my_ poor existence. I can read and write
+in these shadows--I can see you, and be of use to you in many little
+ways, if you will let me. There is really nothing to be distressed
+about. My life will not be a long one--I know and feel that. But I hope
+to be spared long enough to be my father's companion through the closing
+years of his life. Beyond that, I have no prospect. In the meanwhile,
+I have my pleasures; and I mean to add to my scanty little stack the
+pleasure of attending on you. You are quite an event in my life. I
+look forward to reading to you and writing for you, as some girls look
+forward to a new dress, or a first ball. Do you think it very strange of
+me to tell you so openly just what I have in my mind? I can't help it! I
+say what I think to my father and to our poor neighbors hereabouts--and
+I can't alter my ways at a moment's notice. I own it when I like people;
+and I own it when I don't. I have been looking at you while you were
+asleep; and I have read your face as I might read a book. There are
+signs of sorrow on your forehead and your lips which it is strange to
+see in so young a face as yours. I am afraid I shall trouble you with
+many questions about yourself when we become better acquainted with each
+other. Let me begin with a question, in my capacity as nurse. Are your
+pillows comfortable? I can see they want shaking up. Shall I send for
+Peter to raise you? I am unhappily not strong enough to be able to help
+you in that way. No? You are able to raise yourself? Wait a little.
+There! Now lie back--and tell me if I know how to establish the right
+sort of sympathy between a tumbled pillow and a weary head."
+
+She had so indescribably touched and interested me, stranger as I was,
+that the sudden cessation of her faint, sweet tones affected me almost
+with a sense of pain. In trying (clumsily enough) to help her with the
+pillows, I accidentally touched her hand. It felt so cold and so thin,
+that even the momentary contact with it startled me. I tried vainly to
+see her face, now that it was more within reach of my range of view.
+The merciless darkness kept it as complete a mystery as ever. Had my
+curiosity escaped her notice? Nothing escaped her notice. Her next words
+told me plainly that I had been discovered.
+
+"You have been trying to see me," she said. "Has my hand warned you not
+to try again? I felt that it startled you when you touched it just now."
+
+Such quickness of perception as this was not to be deceived; such
+fearless candor demanded as a right a similar frankness on my side. I
+owned the truth, and left it to her indulgence to forgive me.
+
+She returned slowly to her chair at the foot of the bed.
+
+"If we are to be friends," she said, "we must begin by understanding
+one another. Don't associate any romantic ideas of invisible beauty
+with _me_, Mr. Germaine. I had but one beauty to boast of before I fell
+ill--my complexion--and that has gone forever. There is nothing to see
+in me now but the poor reflection of my former self; the ruin of
+what was once a woman. I don't say this to distress you--I say it to
+reconcile you to the darkness as a perpetual obstacle, so far as your
+eyes are concerned, between you and me. Make the best instead of the
+worst of your strange position here. It offers you a new sensation
+to amuse you while you are ill. You have a nurse who is an impersonal
+creature--a shadow among shadows; a voice to speak to you, and a hand to
+help you, and nothing more. Enough of myself!" she exclaimed, rising
+and changing her tone. "What can I do to amuse you?" She considered
+a little. "I have some odd tastes," she resumed; "and I think I may
+entertain you if I make you acquainted with one of them. Are you like
+most other men, Mr. Germaine? Do you hate cats?"
+
+The question startled me. However, I could honestly answer that, in this
+respect at least, I was not like other men.
+
+"To my thinking," I added, "the cat is a cruelly misunderstood
+creature--especially in England. Women, no doubt, generally do justice
+to the affectionate nature of cats. But the men treat them as if they
+were the natural enemies of the human race. The men drive a cat out of
+their presence if it ventures upstairs, and set their dogs at it if it
+shows itself in the street--and then they turn round and accuse the poor
+creature (whose genial nature must attach itself to something) of being
+only fond of the kitchen!"
+
+The expression of these unpopular sentiments appeared to raise me
+greatly in the estimation of Miss Dunross.
+
+"We have one sympathy in common, at any rate," she said. "Now I can
+amuse you! Prepare for a surprise."
+
+She drew her veil over her face as she spoke, and, partially opening the
+door, rang my handbell. Peter appeared, and received his instructions.
+
+"Move the screen," said Miss Dunross. Peter obeyed; the ruddy firelight
+streamed over the floor. Miss Dunross proceeded with her directions.
+"Open the door of the cats' room, Peter; and bring me my harp. Don't
+suppose that you are going to listen to a great player, Mr. Germaine,"
+she went on, when Peter had departed on his singular errand, "or that
+you are likely to see the sort of harp to which you are accustomed, as
+a man of the modern time. I can only play some old Scotch airs; and my
+harp is an ancient instrument (with new strings)--an heirloom in our
+family, some centuries old. When you see my harp, you will think of
+pictures of St. Cecilia--and you will be treating my performance kindly
+if you will remember, at the same time, that I am no saint!"
+
+She drew her chair into the firelight, and sounded a whistle which
+she took from the pocket of her dress. In another moment the lithe
+and shadowy figures of the cats appeared noiselessly in the red light,
+answering their mistress's call. I could just count six of them, as the
+creatures seated themselves demurely in a circle round the chair. Peter
+followed with the harp, and closed the door after him as he went out.
+The streak of daylight being now excluded from the room, Miss Dunross
+threw back her veil, and took the harp on her knee; seating herself, I
+observed, with her face turned away from the fire.
+
+"You will have light enough to see the cats by," she said, "without
+having too much light for _me_. Firelight does not give me the acute
+pain which I suffer when daylight falls on my face--I feel a certain
+inconvenience from it, and nothing more."
+
+She touched the strings of her instrument--the ancient harp, as she had
+said, of the pictured St. Cecilia; or, rather, as I thought, the ancient
+harp of the Welsh bards. The sound was at first unpleasantly high in
+pitch, to my untutored ear. At the opening notes of the melody--a slow,
+wailing, dirgelike air--the cats rose, and circled round their mistress,
+marching to the tune. Now they followed each other singly; now, at a
+change in the melody, they walked two and two; and, now again, they
+separated into divisions of three each, and circled round the chair in
+opposite directions. The music quickened, and the cats quickened their
+pace with it. Faster and faster the notes rang out, and faster and
+faster in the ruddy firelight, the cats, like living shadows, whirled
+round the still black figure in the chair, with the ancient harp on its
+knee. Anything so weird, wild, and ghostlike I never imagined before
+even in a dream! The music changed, and the whirling cats began to leap.
+One perched itself at a bound on the pedestal of the harp. Four sprung
+up together, and assumed their places, two on each of her shoulders.
+The last and smallest of the cats took the last leap, and lighted on
+her head! There the six creatures kept their positions, motionless as
+statues! Nothing moved but the wan, white hands over the harp-strings;
+no sound but the sound of the music stirred in the room. Once more the
+melody changed. In an instant the six cats were on the floor again,
+seated round the chair as I had seen them on their first entrance; the
+harp was laid aside; and the faint, sweet voice said quietly, "I am soon
+tired--I must leave my cats to conclude their performances tomorrow."
+
+She rose, and approached the bedside.
+
+"I leave you to see the sunset through your window," she said. "From
+the coming of the darkness to the coming of breakfast-time, you must
+not count on my services--I am taking my rest. I have no choice but to
+remain in bed (sleeping when I can) for twelve hours or more. The long
+repose seems to keep my life in me. Have I and my cats surprised you
+very much? Am I a witch; and are they my familiar spirits? Remember how
+few amusements I have, and you will not wonder why I devote myself to
+teaching these pretty creatures their tricks, and attaching them to me
+like dogs! They were slow at first, and they taught me excellent lessons
+of patience. Now they understand what I want of them, and they learn
+wonderfully well. How you will amuse your friend, when he comes back
+from fishing, with the story of the young lady who lives in the dark,
+and keeps a company of performing cats! I shall expect _you_ to amuse
+_me_ to-morrow--I want you to tell me all about yourself, and how you
+came to visit these wild islands of ours. Perhaps, as the days go on,
+and we get better acquainted, you will take me a little more into your
+confidence, and tell me the true meaning of that story of sorrow which I
+read on your face while you were asleep? I have just enough of the woman
+left in me to be the victim of curiosity, when I meet with a person who
+interests me. Good-by till to-morrow! I wish you a tranquil night, and a
+pleasant waking.--Come, my familiar spirits! Come, my cat children! it's
+time we went back to our own side of the house."
+
+She dropped the veil over her face--and, followed by her train of cats,
+glided out of the room.
+
+Immediately on her departure, Peter appeared and drew back the curtains.
+The light of the setting sun streamed in at the window. At the same
+moment my traveling companion returned in high spirits, eager to tell me
+about his fishing in the lake. The contrast between what I saw and heard
+now, and what I had seen and heard only a few minutes since, was so
+extraordinary and so startling that I almost doubted whether the veiled
+figure with the harp, and the dance of cats, were not the fantastic
+creations of a dream. I actually asked my friend whether he had found me
+awake or asleep when he came into the room!
+
+Evening merged into night. The Master of Books made his appearance, to
+receive the latest news of my health. He spoke and listened absently
+as if his mind were still pre-occupied by his studies--except when I
+referred gratefully to his daughter's kindness to me. At her name his
+faded blue eyes brightened; his drooping head became erect; his sad,
+subdued voice strengthened in tone.
+
+"Do not hesitate to let her attend on you," he said. "Whatever interests
+or amuses her, lengthens her life. In _her_ life is the breath of mine.
+She is more than my daughter; she is the guardian-angel of the house. Go
+where she may, she carries the air of heaven with her. When you say your
+prayers, sir, pray God to leave my daughter here a little longer."
+
+He sighed heavily; his head dropped again on his breast--he left me.
+
+The hour advanced; the evening meal was set by my bedside. Silent Peter,
+taking his leave for the night, developed into speech. "I sleep next
+door," he said. "Ring when you want me." My traveling companion, taking
+the second bed in the room, reposed in the happy sleep of youth. In
+the house there was dead silence. Out of the house, the low song of the
+night-wind, rising and falling over the lake and the moor, was the one
+sound to be heard. So the first day ended in the hospitable Shetland
+house.
+
+CHAPTER XX. THE GREEN FLAG.
+
+"I CONGRATULATE you, Mr. Germaine, on your power of painting in words.
+Your description gives me a vivid idea of Mrs. Van Brandt."
+
+"Does the portrait please you, Miss Dunross?"
+
+"May I speak as plainly as usual?"
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+"Well, then, plainly, I don't like your Mrs. Van Brandt."
+
+Ten days had passed; and thus far Miss Dunross had made her way into my
+confidence already!
+
+By what means had she induced me to trust her with those secret and
+sacred sorrows of my life which I had hitherto kept for my mother's
+ear alone? I can easily recall the rapid and subtle manner in which her
+sympathies twined themselves round mine; but I fail entirely to trace
+the infinite gradations of approach by which she surprised and conquered
+my habitual reserve. The strongest influence of all, the influence of
+the eye, was not hers. When the light was admitted into the room she was
+shrouded in her veil. At all other times the curtains were drawn, the
+screen was before the fire--I could see dimly the outline of her face,
+and I could see no more. The secret of her influence was perhaps partly
+attributable to the simple and sisterly manner in which she spoke to me,
+and partly to the indescribable interest which associated itself with
+her mere presence in the room. Her father had told me that she "carried
+the air of heaven with her." In my experience, I can only say that she
+carried something with her which softly and inscrutably possessed itself
+of my will, and made me as unconsciously obedient to her wishes as if I
+had been her dog. The love-story of my boyhood, in all its particulars,
+down even to the gift of the green flag; the mystic predictions of Dame
+Dermody; the loss of every trace of my little Mary of former days; the
+rescue of Mrs. Van Brandt from the river; the apparition of her in the
+summer-house; the after-meetings with her in Edinburgh and in London;
+the final parting which had left its mark of sorrow on my face--all
+these events, all these sufferings, I confided to her as unreservedly
+as I have confided them to these pages. And the result, as she sat by me
+in the darkened room, was summed up, with a woman's headlong impetuosity
+of judgment, in the words that I have just written--"I don't like your
+Mrs. Van Brandt!"
+
+"Why not?" I asked.
+
+She answered instantly, "Because you ought to love nobody but Mary."
+
+"But Mary has been lost to me since I was a boy of thirteen."
+
+"Be patient, and you will find her again. Mary is patient--Mary is
+waiting for you. When you meet her, you will be ashamed to remember that
+you ever loved Mrs. Van Brandt--you will look on your separation from
+that woman as the happiest event of your life. I may not live to hear of
+it--but _you_ will live to own that I was right."
+
+Her perfectly baseless conviction that time would yet bring about my
+meeting with Mary, partly irritated, partly amused me.
+
+"You seem to agree with Dame Dermody," I said. "You believe that our two
+destinies are one. No matter what time may elapse, or what may happen in
+the time, you believe my marriage with Mary is still a marriage delayed,
+and nothing more?"
+
+"I firmly believe it."
+
+"Without knowing why--except that you dislike the idea of my marrying
+Mrs. Van Brandt?"
+
+She knew that this view of her motive was not far from being the right
+one--and, womanlike, she shifted the discussion to new ground.
+
+"Why do you call her Mrs. Van Brandt?" she asked. "Mrs. Van Brandt is
+the namesake of your first love. If you are so fond of her, why don't
+you call her Mary?"
+
+I was ashamed to give the true reason--it seemed so utterly unworthy of
+a man of any sense or spirit. Noticing my hesitation, she insisted on my
+answering her; she forced me to make my humiliating confession.
+
+"The man who has parted us," I said, "called her Mary. I hate him with
+such a jealous hatred that he has even disgusted me with the name! It
+lost all its charm for me when it passed _his_ lips."
+
+I had anticipated that she would laugh at me. No! She suddenly raised
+her head as if she were looking at me intently in the dark.
+
+"How fond you must be of that woman!" she said. "Do you dream of her
+now?"
+
+"I never dream of her now."
+
+"Do you expect to see the apparition of her again?"
+
+"It may be so--if a time comes when she is in sore need of help, and
+when she has no friend to look to but me."
+
+"Did you ever see the apparition of your little Mary?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"But you used once to see her--as Dame Dermody predicted--in dreams?"
+
+"Yes--when I was a lad."
+
+"And, in the after-time, it was not Mary, but Mrs. Van Brandt who came
+to you in dreams--who appeared to you in the spirit, when she was far
+away from you in the body? Poor old Dame Dermody. She little thought,
+in her life-time, that her prediction would be fullfilled by the wrong
+woman!"
+
+To that result her inquiries had inscrutably conducted her! If she had
+only pressed them a little further--if she had not unconsciously led
+me astray again by the very next question that fell from her lips--she
+_must_ have communicated to _my_ mind the idea obscurely germinating in
+hers--the idea of a possible identity between the Mary of my first love
+and Mrs. Van Brandt!
+
+"Tell me," she went on. "If you met with your little Mary now, what
+would she be like? What sort of woman would you expect to see?"
+
+I could hardly help laughing. "How can I tell," I rejoined, "at this
+distance of time?"
+
+"Try!" she said.
+
+Reasoning my way from the known personality to the unknown, I
+searched my memory for the image of the frail and delicate child of my
+remembrance: and I drew the picture of a frail and delicate woman--the
+most absolute contrast imaginable to Mrs. Van Brandt!
+
+The half-realized idea of identity in the mind of Miss Dunross dropped
+out of it instantly, expelled by the substantial conclusion which the
+contrast implied. Alike ignorant of the aftergrowth of health, strength,
+and beauty which time and circumstances had developed in the Mary of
+my youthful days, we had alike completely and unconsciously misled one
+another. Once more, I had missed the discovery of the truth, and missed
+it by a hair-breadth!
+
+"I infinitely prefer your portrait of Mary," said Miss Dunross, "to
+your portrait of Mrs. Van Brandt. Mary realizes my idea of what a really
+attractive woman ought to be. How you can have felt any sorrow for
+the loss of that other person (I detest buxom women!) passes my
+understanding. I can't tell you how interested I am in Mary! I want to
+know more about her. Where is that pretty present of needle-work which
+the poor little thing embroidered for you so industriously? Do let me
+see the green flag!"
+
+She evidently supposed that I carried the green flag about me! I felt a
+little confused as I answered her.
+
+"I am sorry to disappoint you. The green flag is somewhere in my house
+in Perthshire."
+
+"You have not got it with you?" she exclaimed. "You leave her keepsake
+lying about anywhere? Oh, Mr. Germaine, you have indeed forgotten Mary!
+A woman, in your place, would have parted with her life rather than part
+with the one memorial left of the time when she first loved!"
+
+She spoke with such extraordinary earnestness--with such agitation, I
+might almost say--that she quite startled me.
+
+"Dear Miss Dunross," I remonstrated, "the flag is not lost."
+
+"I should hope not!" she interposed, quickly. "If you lose the green
+flag, you lose the last relic of Mary--and more than that, if _my_
+belief is right."
+
+"What do you believe?"
+
+"You will laugh at me if I tell you. I am afraid my first reading of
+your face was wrong--I am afraid you are a hard man."
+
+"Indeed you do me an injustice. I entreat you to answer me as frankly as
+usual. What do I lose in losing the last relic of Mary?"
+
+"You lose the one hope I have for you," she answered, gravely--"the hope
+of your meeting and your marriage with Mary in the time to come. I was
+sleepless last night, and I was thinking of your pretty love story by
+the banks of the bright English lake. The longer I thought, the more
+firmly I felt the conviction that the poor child's green flag is
+destined to have its innocent influence in forming your future life.
+Your happiness is waiting for you in that artless little keepsake!
+I can't explain or justify this belief of mine. It is one of my
+eccentricities, I suppose--like training my cats to perform to the music
+of my harp. But, if I were your old friend, instead of being only
+your friend of a few days, I would leave you no peace--I would beg and
+entreat and persist, as only a woman _can_ persist--until I had made
+Mary's gift as close a companion of yours, as your mother's portrait in
+the locket there at your watch-chain. While the flag is with you, Mary's
+influence is with you; Mary's love is still binding you by the dear old
+tie; and Mary and you, after years of separation, will meet again!"
+
+The fancy was in itself pretty and poetical; the earnestness which had
+given expression to it would have had its influence over a man of a far
+harder nature than mine. I confess she had made me ashamed, if she had
+done nothing more, of my neglect of the green flag.
+
+"I will look for it the moment I am at home again," I said; "and I will
+take care that it is carefully preserved for the future."
+
+"I want more than that," she rejoined. "If you can't wear the flag about
+you, I want it always to be _with_ you--to go wherever you go. When
+they brought your luggage here from the vessel at Lerwick, you
+were particularly anxious about the safety of your traveling
+writing-desk--the desk there on the table. Is there anything very
+valuable in it?"
+
+"It contains my money, and other things that I prize far more highly--my
+mother's letters, and some family relics which I should be very sorry
+to lose. Besides, the desk itself has its own familiar interest as my
+constant traveling companion of many years past."
+
+Miss Dunross rose, and came close to the chair in which I was sitting.
+
+"Let Mary's flag be your constant traveling companion," she said. "You
+have spoken far too gratefully of my services here as your nurse.
+Reward me beyond my deserts. Make allowances, Mr. Germaine, for the
+superstitious fancies of a lonely, dreamy woman. Promise me that the
+green flag shall take its place among the other little treasures in your
+desk!"
+
+It is needless to say that I made the allowances and gave the
+promise--gave it, resolving seriously to abide by it. For the first
+time since I had known her, she put her poor, wasted hand in mine,
+and pressed it for a moment. Acting heedlessly under my first grateful
+impulse, I lifted her hand to my lips before I released it. She
+started--trembled--and suddenly and silently passed out of the room.
+
+CHAPTER XXI. SHE COMES BETWEEN US.
+
+WHAT emotion had I thoughtlessly aroused in Miss Dunross? Had I offended
+or distressed her? Or had I, without meaning it, forced on her inner
+knowledge some deeply seated feeling which she had thus far resolutely
+ignored?
+
+I looked back through the days of my sojourn in the house; I questioned
+my own feelings and impressions, on the chance that they might serve me
+as a means of solving the mystery of her sudden flight from the room.
+
+What effect had she produced on me?
+
+In plain truth, she had simply taken her place in my mind, to the
+exclusion of every other person and every other subject. In ten days she
+had taken a hold on my sympathies of which other women would have failed
+to possess themselves in so many years. I remembered, to my shame, that
+my mother had but seldom occupied my thoughts. Even the image of Mrs.
+Van Brandt--except when the conversation had turned on her--had become
+a faint image in my mind! As to my friends at Lerwick, from Sir James
+downward, they had all kindly come to see me--and I had secretly and
+ungratefully rejoiced when their departure left the scene free for the
+return of my nurse. In two days more the Government vessel was to sail
+on the return voyage. My wrist was still painful when I tried to use it;
+but the far more serious injury presented by the re-opened wound was
+no longer a subject of anxiety to myself or to any one about me. I was
+sufficiently restored to be capable of making the journey to Lerwick,
+if I rested for one night at a farm half-way between the town and Mr.
+Dunross's house. Knowing this, I had nevertheless left the question of
+rejoining the vessel undecided to the very latest moment. The motive
+which I pleaded to my friends was--uncertainty as to the sufficient
+recovery of my strength. The motive which I now confessed to myself was
+reluctance to leave Miss Dunross.
+
+What was the secret of her power over me? What emotion, what passion,
+had she awakened in me? Was it love?
+
+No: not love. The place which Mary had once held in my heart, the place
+which Mrs. Van Brandt had taken in the after-time, was not the place
+occupied by Miss Dunross. How could I (in the ordinary sense of the
+word) be in love with a woman whose face I had never seen? whose beauty
+had faded, never to bloom again? whose wasted life hung by a thread
+which the accident of a moment might snap? The senses have their share
+in all love between the sexes which is worthy of the name. They had no
+share in the feeling with which I regarded Miss Dunross. What _was_ the
+feeling, then? I can only answer the question in one way. The feeling
+lay too deep in me for my sounding.
+
+What impression had I produced on her? What sensitive chord had I
+ignorantly touched, when my lips touched her hand?
+
+I confess I recoiled from pursuing the inquiry which I had deliberately
+set myself to make. I thought of her shattered health; of her melancholy
+existence in shadow and solitude; of the rich treasures of such a heart
+and such a mind as hers, wasted with her wasting life; and I said to
+myself, Let her secret be sacred! let me never again, by word or deed,
+bring the trouble which tells of it to the surface! let her heart be
+veiled from me in the darkness which veils her face!
+
+In this frame of mind toward her, I waited her return.
+
+I had no doubt of seeing her again, sooner or later, on that day. The
+post to the south went out on the next day; and the early hour of the
+morning at which the messenger called for our letters made it a matter
+of ordinary convenience to write overnight. In the disabled state of my
+hand, Miss Dunross had been accustomed to write home for me, under my
+dictation: she knew that I owed a letter to my mother, and that I relied
+as usual on her help. Her return to me, under these circumstances, was
+simply a question of time: any duty which she had once undertaken was an
+imperative duty in her estimation, no matter how trifling it might be.
+
+The hours wore on; the day drew to its end--and still she never
+appeared.
+
+I left my room to enjoy the last sunny gleam of the daylight in the
+garden attached to the house; first telling Peter where I might be
+found, if Miss Dunross wanted me. The garden was a wild place, to my
+southern notions; but it extended for some distance along the shore
+of the island, and it offered some pleasant views of the lake and the
+moorland country beyond. Slowly pursuing my walk, I proposed to myself
+to occupy my mind to some useful purpose by arranging beforehand the
+composition of the letter which Miss Dunross was to write.
+
+To my great surprise, I found it simply impossible to fix my mind on
+the subject. Try as I might, my thoughts persisted in wandering from
+the letter to my mother, and concentrated themselves instead--on Miss
+Dunross? No. On the question of my returning, or not returning, to
+Perthshire by the Government vessel? No. By some capricious revulsion of
+feeling which it seemed impossible to account for, my whole mind was now
+absorbed on the one subject which had been hitherto so strangely absent
+from it--the subject of Mrs. Van Brandt!
+
+My memory went back, in defiance of all exercise of my own will, to my
+last interview with her. I saw her again; I heard her again. I tasted
+once more the momentary rapture of our last kiss; I felt once more the
+pang of sorrow that wrung me when I had parted with her and found myself
+alone in the street. Tears--of which I was ashamed, though nobody was
+near to see them--filled my eyes when I thought of the months that had
+passed since we had last looked on one another, and of all that she
+might have suffered, must have suffered, in that time. Hundreds on
+hundreds of miles were between us--and yet she was now as near me as if
+she were walking in the garden by my side!
+
+This strange condition of my mind was matched by an equally strange
+condition of my body. A mysterious trembling shuddered over me faintly
+from head to foot. I walked without feeling the ground as I trod on it;
+I looked about me with no distinct consciousness of what the objects
+were on which my eyes rested. My hands were cold--and yet I hardly felt
+it. My head throbbed hotly--and yet I was not sensible of any pain. It
+seemed as if I were surrounded and enwrapped in some electric atmosphere
+which altered all the ordinary conditions of sensation. I looked up
+at the clear, calm sky, and wondered if a thunderstorm was coming. I
+stopped, and buttoned my coat round me, and questioned myself if I had
+caught a cold, or if I was going to have a fever. The sun sank below the
+moorland horizon; the gray twilight trembled over the dark waters of the
+lake. I went back to the house; and the vivid memory of Mrs. Van Brandt,
+still in close companionship, went back with me.
+
+The fire in my room had burned low in my absence. One of the closed
+curtains had been drawn back a few inches, so as to admit through the
+window a ray of the dying light. On the boundary limit where the light
+was crossed by the obscurity which filled the rest of the room, I saw
+Miss Dunross seated, with her veil drawn and her writing-case on her
+knee, waiting my return.
+
+I hastened to make my excuses. I assured her that I had been careful to
+tell the servant where to find me. She gently checked me before I could
+say more.
+
+"It's not Peter's fault," she said. "I told him not to hurry your return
+to the house. Have you enjoyed your walk?"
+
+She spoke very quietly. The faint, sad voice was fainter and sadder than
+ever. She kept her head bent over her writing-case, instead of turning
+it toward me as usual while we were talking. I still felt the mysterious
+trembling which had oppressed me in the garden. Drawing a chair near
+the fire, I stirred the embers together, and tried to warm myself. Our
+positions in the room left some little distance between us. I could only
+see her sidewise, as she sat by the window in the sheltering darkness of
+the curtain which still remained drawn.
+
+"I think I have been too long in the garden," I said. "I feel chilled by
+the cold evening air."
+
+"Will you have some more wood put on the fire?" she asked. "Can I get
+you anything?"
+
+"No, thank you. I shall do very well here. I see you are kindly ready to
+write for me."
+
+"Yes," she said, "at your own convenience. When you are ready, my pen is
+ready."
+
+The unacknowledged reserve that had come between us since we had last
+spoken together, was, I believe, as painfully felt by her as by me. We
+were no doubt longing to break through it on either side--if we had only
+known how. The writing of the letter would occupy us, at any rate. I
+made another effort to give my mind to the subject--and once more it was
+an effort made in vain. Knowing what I wanted to say to my mother, my
+faculties seemed to be paralyzed when I tried to say it. I sat cowering
+by the fire--and she sat waiting, with her writing-case on her lap.
+
+CHAPTER XXII. SHE CLAIMS ME AGAIN.
+
+THE moments passed; the silence between us continued. Miss Dunross made
+an attempt to rouse me.
+
+"Have you decided to go back to Scotland with your friends at Lerwick?"
+she asked.
+
+"It is no easy matter," I replied, "to decide on leaving my friends in
+this house."
+
+Her head drooped lower on her bosom; her voice sunk as she answered me.
+
+"Think of your mother," she said. "The first duty you owe is your
+duty to her. Your long absence is a heavy trial to her--your mother is
+suffering."
+
+"Suffering?" I repeated. "Her letters say nothing--"
+
+"You forget that you have allowed me to read her letters," Miss Dunross
+interposed. "I see the unwritten and unconscious confession of anxiety
+in every line that she writes to you. You know, as well as I do, that
+there is cause for her anxiety. Make her happy by telling her that you
+sail for home with your friends. Make her happier still by telling her
+that you grieve no more over the loss of Mrs. Van Brandt. May I write
+it, in your name and in those words?"
+
+I felt the strangest reluctance to permit her to write in those terms,
+or in any terms, of Mrs. Van Brandt. The unhappy love-story of my
+manhood had never been a forbidden subject between us on former
+occasions. Why did I feel as if it had become a forbidden subject now?
+Why did I evade giving her a direct reply?
+
+"We have plenty of time before us," I said. "I want to speak to you
+about yourself."
+
+She lifted her hand in the obscurity that surrounded her, as if
+to protest against the topic to which I had returned. I persisted,
+nevertheless, in returning to it.
+
+"If I must go back," I went on, "I may venture to say to you at parting
+what I have not said yet. I cannot, and will not, believe that you are
+an incurable invalid. My education, as I have told you, has been the
+education of a medical man. I am well acquainted with some of the
+greatest living physicians, in Edinburgh as well as in London. Will you
+allow me to describe your malady (as I understand it) to men who are
+accustomed to treat cases of intricate nervous disorder? And will you
+let me write and tell you the result?"
+
+I waited for her reply. Neither by word nor sign did she encourage the
+idea of any future communication with her. I ventured to suggest another
+motive which might induce her to receive a letter from me.
+
+"In any case, I may find it necessary to write to you," I went on. "You
+firmly believe that I and my little Mary are destined to meet again. If
+your anticipations are realized, you will expect me to tell you of it,
+surely?"
+
+Once more I waited. She spoke--but it was not to reply: it was only to
+change the subject.
+
+"The time is passing," was all she said. "We have not begun your letter
+to your mother yet."
+
+It would have been cruel to contend with her any longer. Her voice
+warned me that she was suffering. The faint gleam of light through
+the parted curtains was fading fast. It was time, indeed, to write the
+letter. I could find other opportunities of speaking to her before I
+left the house.
+
+"I am ready," I answered. "Let us begin."
+
+The first sentence was easily dictated to my patient secretary. I
+informed my mother that my sprained wrist was nearly restored to use,
+and that nothing prevented my leaving Shetland when the lighthouse
+commissioner was ready to return. This was all that it was necessary
+to say on the subject of my health; the disaster of my re-opened wound
+having been, for obvious reasons, concealed from my mother's knowledge.
+Miss Dunross silently wrote the opening lines of the letter, and waited
+for the words that were to follow.
+
+In my next sentence, I announced the date at which the vessel was to
+sail on the return voyage; and I mentioned the period at which my mother
+might expect to see me, weather permitting. Those words, also, Miss
+Dunross wrote--and waited again. I set myself to consider what I should
+say next. To my surprise and alarm, I found it impossible to fix my mind
+on the subject. My thoughts wandered away, in the strangest manner, from
+my letter to Mrs. Van Brandt. I was ashamed of myself; I was angry
+with myself--I resolved, no matter what I said, that I would positively
+finish the letter. No! try as I might, the utmost effort of my will
+availed me nothing. Mrs. Van Brandt's words at our last interview were
+murmuring in my ears--not a word of my own would come to me!
+
+Miss Dunross laid down her pen, and slowly turned her head to look at
+me.
+
+"Surely you have something more to add to your letter?" she said.
+
+"Certainly," I answered. "I don't know what is the matter with me. The
+effort of dictating seems to be beyond my power this evening."
+
+"Can I help you?" she asked.
+
+I gladly accepted the suggestion. "There are many things," I said,
+"which my mother would be glad to hear, if I were not too stupid to
+think of them. I am sure I may trust your sympathy to think of them for
+me."
+
+That rash answer offered Miss Dunross the opportunity of returning
+to the subject of Mrs. Van Brandt. She seized the opportunity with
+a woman's persistent resolution when she has her end in view, and is
+determined to reach it at all hazards.
+
+"You have not told your mother yet," she said, "that your infatuation
+for Mrs. Van Brandt is at an end. Will you put it in your own words? Or
+shall I write it for you, imitating your language as well as I can?"
+
+In the state of my mind at that moment, her perseverance conquered me. I
+thought to myself indolently, "If I say No, she will only return to the
+subject again, and she will end (after all I owe to her kindness)
+in making me say Yes." Before I could answer her she had realized my
+anticipations. She returned to the subject; and she made me say Yes.
+
+"What does your silence mean?" she said. "Do you ask me to help you, and
+do you refuse to accept the first suggestion I offer?"
+
+"Take up your pen," I rejoined. "It shall be as you wish."
+
+"Will you dictate the words?"
+
+"I will try."
+
+I tried; and this time I succeeded. With the image of Mrs. Van Brandt
+vividly present to my mind, I arranged the first words of the sentence
+which was to tell my mother that my "infatuation" was at an end!
+
+"You will be glad to hear," I began, "that time and change are doing
+their good work."
+
+Miss Dunross wrote the words, and paused in anticipation of the next
+sentence. The light faded and faded; the room grew darker and darker. I
+went on.
+
+"I hope I shall cause you no more anxiety, my dear mother, on the
+subject of Mrs. Van Brandt."
+
+In the deep silence I could hear the pen of my secretary traveling
+steadily over the paper while it wrote those words.
+
+"Have you written?" I asked, as the sound of the pen ceased.
+
+"I have written," she answered, in her customary quiet tones.
+
+I went on again with my letter.
+
+"The days pass now, and I seldom or never think of her; I hope I am
+resigned at last to the loss of Mrs. Van Brandt."
+
+As I reached the end of the sentence, I heard a faint cry from Miss
+Dunross. Looking instantly toward her, I could just see, in the
+deepening darkness, t hat her head had fallen on the back of the chair.
+My first impulse was, of course, to rise and go to her. I had barely got
+to my feet, when some indescribable dread paralyzed me on the instant.
+Supporting myself against the chimney-piece, I stood perfectly incapable
+of advancing a step. The effort to speak was the one effort that I could
+make.
+
+"Are you ill?" I asked.
+
+She was hardly able to answer me; speaking in a whisper, without raising
+her head.
+
+"I am frightened," she said.
+
+"What has frightened you?"
+
+I heard her shudder in the darkness. Instead of answering me, she
+whispered to herself: "What am I to say to him?"
+
+"Tell me what has frightened you?" I repeated. "You know you may trust
+me with the truth."
+
+She rallied her sinking strength. She answered in these strange words:
+
+"Something has come between me and the letter that I am writing for
+you."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I can't tell you."
+
+"Can you see it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can you feel it?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"What is it like?"
+
+"Like a breath of cold air between me and the letter."
+
+"Has the window come open?"
+
+"The window is close shut."
+
+"And the door?"
+
+"The door is shut also--as well as I can see. Make sure of it for
+yourself. Where are you? What are you doing?"
+
+I was looking toward the window. As she spoke her last words, I was
+conscious of a change in that part of the room.
+
+In the gap between the parted curtains there was a new light shining;
+not the dim gray twilight of Nature, but a pure and starry radiance, a
+pale, unearthly light. While I watched it, the starry radiance quivered
+as if some breath of air had stirred it. When it was still again, there
+dawned on me through the unearthly luster the figure of a woman. By fine
+and slow gradations, it became more and more distinct. I knew the noble
+figure; I knew the sad and tender smile. For the second time I stood in
+the presence of the apparition of Mrs. Van Brandt.
+
+She was robed, not as I had last seen her, but in the dress which she
+had worn on the memorable evening when we met on the bridge--in the
+dress in which she had first appeared to me, by the waterfall in
+Scotland. The starry light shone round her like a halo. She looked at
+me with sorrowful and pleading eyes, as she had looked when I saw
+the apparition of her in the summer-house. She lifted her hand--not
+beckoning me to approach her, as before, but gently signing to me to
+remain where I stood.
+
+I waited--feeling awe, but no fear. My heart was all hers as I looked at
+her.
+
+She moved; gliding from the window to the chair in which Miss Dunross
+sat; winding her way slowly round it, until she stood at the back. By
+the light of the pale halo that encircled the ghostly Presence, and
+moved with it, I could see the dark figure of the living woman seated
+immovable in the chair. The writing-case was on her lap, with the letter
+and the pen lying on it. Her arms hung helpless at her sides; her veiled
+head was now bent forward. She looked as if she had been struck to stone
+in the act of trying to rise from her seat.
+
+A moment passed--and I saw the ghostly Presence stoop over the
+living woman. It lifted the writing-case from her lap. It rested the
+writing-case on her shoulder. Its white fingers took the pen and wrote
+on the unfinished letter. It put the writing-case back on the lap of the
+living woman. Still standing behind the chair, it turned toward me. It
+looked at me once more. And now it beckoned--beckoned to me to approach.
+
+Moving without conscious will of my own, as I had moved when I first
+saw her in the summer-house--drawn nearer and nearer by an irresistible
+power--I approached and stopped within a few paces of her. She advanced
+and laid her hand on my bosom. Again I felt those strangely mingled
+sensations of rapture and awe, which had once before filled me when I
+was conscious, spiritually, of her touch. Again she spoke, in the low,
+melodious tones which I recalled so well. Again she said the words:
+"Remember me. Come to me." Her hand dropped from my bosom. The pale
+light in which she stood quivered, sunk, vanished. I saw the twilight
+glimmering between the curtains--and I saw no more. She had spoken. She
+had gone.
+
+I was near Miss Dunross--near enough, when I put out my hand, to touch
+her.
+
+She started and shuddered, like a woman suddenly awakened from a
+dreadful dream.
+
+"Speak to me!" she whispered. "Let me know that it is _you_ who touched
+me."
+
+I spoke a few composing words before I questioned her.
+
+"Have you seen anything in the room?"
+
+She answered. "I have been filled with a deadly fear. I have seen
+nothing but the writing-case lifted from my lap."
+
+"Did you see the hand that lifted it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you see a starry light, and a figure standing in it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you see the writing-case after it was lifted from your lap?"
+
+"I saw it resting on my shoulder."
+
+"Did you see writing on the letter, which was not _your_ writing?"
+
+"I saw a darker shadow on the paper than the shadow in which I am
+sitting."
+
+"Did it move?"
+
+"It moved across the paper."
+
+"As a pen moves in writing?"
+
+"Yes. As a pen moves in writing."
+
+"May I take the letter?"
+
+She handed it to me.
+
+"May I light a candle?"
+
+She drew her veil more closely over her face, and bowed in silence.
+
+I lighted the candle on the mantel-piece, and looked for the writing.
+
+There, on the blank space in the letter, as I had seen it before on the
+blank space in the sketch-book--there were the written words which the
+ghostly Presence had left behind it; arranged once more in two lines, as
+I copy them here:
+
+At the month's end, In the shadow of Saint Paul's.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. THE KISS.
+
+SHE had need of me again. She had claimed me again. I felt all the old
+love, all the old devotion owning her power once more. Whatever had
+mortified or angered me at our last interview was forgiven and forgotten
+now. My whole being still thrilled with the mingled awe and rapture of
+beholding the Vision of her that had come to me for the second time. The
+minutes passed--and I stood by the fire like a man entranced; thinking
+only of her spoken words, "Remember me. Come to me;" looking only at her
+mystic writing, "At the month's end, In the shadow of Saint Paul's."
+
+The month's end was still far off; the apparition of her had shown
+itself to me, under some subtle prevision of trouble that was still in
+the future. Ample time was before me for the pilgrimage to which I was
+self-dedicated already--my pilgrimage to the shadow of Saint Paul's.
+Other men, in my position, might have hesitated as to the right
+understanding of the place to which they were bidden. Other men might
+have wearied their memories by recalling the churches, the institutions,
+the streets, the towns in foreign countries, all consecrated to
+Christian reverence by the great apostle's name, and might have
+fruitlessly asked themselves in which direction they were first to turn
+their steps. No such difficulty troubled me. My first conclusion was the
+one conclusion that was acceptable to my mind. "Saint Paul's" meant the
+famous Cathedral of London. Where the shadow of the great church fell,
+there, at the month's end, I should find her, or the trace of her. In
+London once more, and nowhere else, I was destined to see the woman I
+loved, in the living body, as certainly as I had just seen her in the
+ghostly presence.
+
+Who could interpret the mysterious sympathies that still united us, in
+defiance of distance, in defiance of time? Who could predict to what end
+our lives were tending in the years that were to come?
+
+Those questions were still present to my thoughts; my eyes were still
+fixed on the mysterious writing--when I became instinctively aware of
+the strange silence in the room. Instantly the lost remembrance of
+Miss Dunross came back to me. Stung by my own sense of self-reproach, I
+turned with a start, and looked toward her chair by the window.
+
+The chair was empty. I was alone in the room.
+
+Why had she left me secretly, without a word of farewell? Because she
+was suffering, in mind or body? Or because she resented, naturally
+resented, my neglect of her?
+
+The bare suspicion that I had given her pain was intolerable to me. I
+rang my bell, to make inquiries.
+
+The bell was answered, not, as usual, by the silent servant Peter, but
+by a woman of middle age, very quietly and neatly dressed, whom I had
+once or twice met on the way to and from my room, and of whose exact
+position in the house I was still ignorant.
+
+"Do you wish to see Peter?" she asked.
+
+"No. I wish to know where Miss Dunross is."
+
+"Miss Dunross is in her room. She has sent me with this letter."
+
+I took the letter, feeling some surprise and uneasiness. It was the
+first time Miss Dunross had communicated with me in that formal way. I
+tried to gain further information by questioning her messenger.
+
+"Are you Miss Dunross's maid?" I asked.
+
+"I have served Miss Dunross for many years," was the answer, spoken very
+ungraciously.
+
+"Do you think she would receive me if I sent you with a message to her?"
+
+"I can't say, sir. The letter may tell you. You will do well to read the
+letter."
+
+We looked at each other. The woman's preconceived impression of me
+was evidently an unfavorable one. Had I indeed pained or offended Miss
+Dunross? And had the servant--perhaps the faithful servant who loved
+her--discovered and resented it? The woman frowned as she looked at me.
+It would be a mere waste of words to persist in questioning her. I let
+her go.
+
+Left by myself again, I read the letter. It began, without any form of
+address, in these lines:
+
+
+"I write, instead of speaking to you, because my self-control has
+already been severely tried, and I am not strong enough to bear more.
+For my father's sake--not for my own--I must take all the care I can of
+the little health that I have left.
+
+"Putting together what you have told me of the visionary creature whom
+you saw in the summer-house in Scotland, and what you said when you
+questioned me in your room a little while since, I cannot fail to infer
+that the same vision has shown itself to you, for the second time. The
+fear that I felt, the strange things that I saw (or thought I saw), may
+have been imperfect reflections in my mind of what was passing in yours.
+I do not stop to inquire whether we are both the victims of a delusion,
+or whether we are the chosen recipients of a supernatural communication.
+The result, in either case, is enough for me. You are once more under
+the influence of Mrs. Van Brandt. I will not trust myself to tell you
+of the anxieties and forebodings by which I am oppressed: I will only
+acknowledge that my one hope for you is in your speedy reunion with the
+worthier object of your constancy and devotion. I still believe, and I
+am consoled in believing, that you and your first love will meet again.
+
+"Having written so far, I leave the subject--not to return to it, except
+in my own thoughts.
+
+"The necessary preparations for your departure to-morrow are all made.
+Nothing remains but to wish you a safe and pleasant journey home. Do
+not, I entreat you, think me insensible of what I owe to you, if I say
+my farewell words here.
+
+"The little services which you have allowed me to render you have
+brightened the closing days of my life. You have left me a treasury
+of happy memories which I shall hoard, when you are gone, with miserly
+care. Are you willing to add new claims to my grateful remembrance? I
+ask it of you, as a last favor--do not attempt to see me again! Do not
+expect me to take a personal leave of you! The saddest of all words
+is 'Good-by': I have fortitude enough to write it, and no more. God
+preserve and prosper you--farewell!
+
+"One more request. I beg that you will not forget what you promised me,
+when I told you my foolish fancy about the green flag. Wherever you go,
+let Mary's keepsake go with you. No written answer is necessary--I would
+rather not receive it. Look up, when you leave the house to-morrow, at
+the center window over the doorway--that will be answer enough."
+
+
+To say that these melancholy lines brought the tears into my eyes is
+only to acknowledge that I had sympathies which could be touched. When I
+had in some degree recovered my composure, the impulse which urged me to
+write to Miss Dunross was too strong to be resisted. I did not trouble
+her with a long letter; I only entreated her to reconsider her decision
+with all the art of persuasion which I could summon to help me. The
+answer was brought back by the servant who waited on Miss Dunross, in
+four resolute words: "It can not be." This time the woman spoke out
+before she left me. "If you have any regard for my mistress," she said
+sternly, "don't make her write to you again." She looked at me with a
+last lowering frown, and left the room.
+
+It is needless to say that the faithful servant's words only increased
+my anxiety to see Miss Dunross once more before we parted--perhaps
+forever. My one last hope of success in attaining this object lay in
+approaching her indirectly through the intercession of her father.
+
+I sent Peter to inquire if I might be permitted to pay my respects to
+his master that evening. My messenger returned with an answer that was a
+new disappointment to me. Mr. Dunross begged that I would excuse him,
+if he deferred the proposed interview until the next morning. The next
+morning was the morning of my departure. Did the message mean that he
+had no wish to see me again until the time had come to take leave of
+him? I inquired of Peter whether his master was particularly occupied
+that evening. He was unable to tell me. "The Master of Books" was not in
+his study, as usual. When he sent his message to me, he was sitting by
+the sofa in his daughter's room.
+
+Having answered in those terms, the man left me by myself until the next
+morning. I do not wish my bitterest enemy a sadder time in his life
+than the time I passed during the last night of my residence under Mr.
+Dunross's roof.
+
+After walking to and fro in the room until I was weary, I thought of
+trying to divert my mind from the sad thoughts that oppressed it by
+reading. The one candle which I had lighted failed to sufficiently
+illuminate the room. Advancing to the mantel-piece to light the second
+candle which stood there, I noticed the unfinished letter to my mother
+lying where I had placed it, when Miss Dunross's servant first presented
+herself before me. Having lighted the second candle, I took up the
+letter to put it away among my other papers. Doing this (while my
+thoughts were still dwelling on Miss Dunross), I mechanically looked at
+the letter again--and instantly discovered a change in it.
+
+The written characters traced by the hand of the apparition had
+vanished! Below the last lines written by Miss Dunross nothing met my
+eyes now but the blank white paper!
+
+My first impulse was to look at my watch.
+
+When the ghostly presence had written in my sketch-book, the characters
+had disappeared after an interval of three hours. On this occasion, as
+nearly as I could calculate, the writing had vanished in one hour only.
+
+Reverting to the conversation which I had held with Mrs. Van Brandt when
+we met at Saint Anthony's Well, and to the discoveries which followed at
+a later period of my life, I can only repeat that she had again been the
+subject of a trance or dream, when the apparition of her showed itself
+to me for the second time. As before, she had freely trusted me and
+freely appealed to me to help her, in the dreaming state, when her
+spirit was free to recognize my spirit. When she had come to herself,
+after an interval of an hour, she had again felt ashamed of the familiar
+manner in which she had communicated with me in the trance--had again
+unconsciously counteracted by her waking-will the influence of her
+sleeping-will; and had thus caused the writing once more to disappear,
+in an hour from the moment when the pen had traced (or seemed to trace)
+it.
+
+This is still the one explanation that I can offer. At the time when the
+incident happened, I was far from being fully admitted to the confidence
+of Mrs. Van Brandt; and I was necessarily incapable of arriving at
+any solution of the mystery, right or wrong. I could only put away the
+letter, doubting vaguely whether my own senses had not deceived me.
+After the distressing thoughts which Miss Dunross's letter had roused in
+my mind, I was in no humor to employ my ingenuity in finding a clew to
+the mystery of the vanished writing. My nerves were irritated; I felt a
+sense of angry discontent with myself and with others. "Go where I may"
+(I thought impatiently), "the disturbing influence of women seems to be
+the only influence that I am fated to feel." As I still paced backward
+and forward in my room--it was useless to think now of fixing my
+attention on a book--I fancied I understood the motives which made men
+as young as I was retire to end their lives in a monastery. I drew aside
+the window curtains, and looked out. The only prospect that met my view
+was the black gulf of darkness in which the lake lay hidden. I could
+see nothing; I could do nothing; I could think of nothing. The one
+alternative before me was that of trying to sleep. My medical knowledge
+told me plainly that natural sleep was, in my nervous condition, one
+of the unattainable luxuries of life for that night. The medicine-chest
+which Mr. Dunross had placed at my disposal remained in the room. I
+mixed for myself a strong sleeping draught, and sullenly took refuge
+from my troubles in bed.
+
+It is a peculiarity of most of the soporific drugs that they not only
+act in a totally different manner on different constitutions, but that
+they are not even to be depended on to act always in the same manner on
+the same person. I had taken care to extinguish the candles before I got
+into my bed. Under ordinary circumstances, after I had lain quietly in
+the darkness for half an hour, the draught that I had taken would
+have sent me to sleep. In the present state of my nerves the draught
+stupefied me, and did no more.
+
+Hour after hour I lay perfectly still, with my eyes closed, in the
+semi-sleeping, semi-wakeful state which is so curiously characteristic
+of the ordinary repose of a dog. As the night wore on, such a sense of
+heaviness oppressed my eyelids that it was literally impossible for me
+to open them--such a masterful languor possessed all my muscles that I
+could no more move on my pillow than if I had been a corpse. And yet,
+in this somnolent condition, my mind was able to pursue lazy trains of
+pleasant thought. My sense of hearing was so acute that it caught the
+faintest sounds made by the passage of the night-breeze through the
+rushes of the lake. Inside my bed-chamber, I was even more keenly
+sensible of those weird night-noises in the heavy furniture of a room,
+of those sudden settlements of extinct coals in the grate, so familiar
+to bad sleepers, so startling to overwrought nerves! It is not a
+scientifically correct statement, but it exactly describes my condition,
+that night, to say that one half of me was asleep and the other half
+awake.
+
+How many hours of the night had passed, when my irritable sense of
+hearing became aware of a new sound in the room, I cannot tell. I can
+only relate that I found myself on a sudden listening intently, with
+fast-closed eyes. The sound that disturbed me was the faintest sound
+imaginable, as of something soft and light traveling slowly over the
+surface of the carpet, and brushing it just loud enough to be heard.
+
+Little by little, the sound came nearer and nearer to my bed--and then
+suddenly stopped just as I fancied it was close by me.
+
+I still lay immovable, with closed eyes; drowsily waiting for the next
+sound that might reach my ears; drowsily content with the silence, if
+the silence continued. My thoughts (if thoughts they could be called)
+were drifting back again into their former course, when I became
+suddenly conscious of soft breathing just above me. The next moment I
+felt a touch on my forehead--light, soft, tremulous, like the touch of
+lips that had kissed me. There was a momentary pause. Then a low sigh
+trembled through the silence. Then I heard again the still, small sound
+of something brushing its way over the carpet; traveling this time
+_from_ my bed, and moving so rapidly that in a moment more it was lost
+in the silence of the night.
+
+Still stupefied by the drug that I had taken, I could lazily wonder what
+had happened, and I could do no more. Had living lips really touched me?
+Was the sound that I had heard really the sound of a sigh? Or was it all
+delusion, beginning and ending in a dream? The time passed without my
+deciding, or caring to decide, those questions. Minute by minute, the
+composing influence of the draught began at last to strengthen its
+hold on my brain. A cloud seemed to pass softly over my last waking
+impressions. One after another, the ties broke gently that held me to
+conscious life. I drifted peacefully into perfect sleep.
+
+
+Shortly after sunrise, I awoke. When I regained the use of my memory,
+my first clear recollection was the recollection of the soft breathing
+which I had felt above me--then of the touch on my forehead, and of
+the sigh which I had heard after it. Was it possible that some one had
+entered my room in the night? It was quite possible. I had not locked
+the door--I had never been in the habit of locking the door during my
+residence under Mr. Dunross's roof.
+
+After thinking it over a little, I rose to examine my room.
+
+Nothing in the shape of a discovery rewarded me, until I reached the
+door. Though I had not locked it overnight, I had certainly satisfied
+myself that it was closed before I went to bed. It was now ajar. Had
+it opened again, through being imperfectly shut? or had a person, after
+entering and leaving my room, forgotten to close it?
+
+Accidentally looking downward while I was weighing these probabilities,
+I noticed a small black object on the carpet, lying just under the key,
+on the inner side of the door. I picked the thing up, and found that it
+was a torn morsel of black lace.
+
+The instant I saw the fragment, I was reminded of the long black veil,
+hanging below her waist, which it was the habit of Miss Dunross to wear.
+Was it _her_ dress, then, that I had heard softly traveling over the
+carpet; _her_ kiss that had touched my forehead; _her_ sigh that had
+trembled through the silence? Had the ill-fated and noble creature taken
+her last leave of me in the dead of night, trusting the preservation of
+her secret to the deceitful appearances which persuaded her that I was
+asleep? I looked again at the fragment of black lace. Her long veil
+might easily have been caught, and torn, by the projecting key, as she
+passed rapidly through the door on her way out of my room. Sadly and
+reverently I laid the morsel of lace among the treasured memorials which
+I had brought with me from home. To the end of her life, I vowed it, she
+should be left undisturbed in the belief that her secret was safe in her
+own breast! Ardently as I still longed to take her hand at parting, I
+now resolved to make no further effort to see her. I might not be master
+of my own emotions; something in my face or in my manner might betray me
+to her quick and delicate perception. Knowing what I now knew, the last
+sacrifice I could make to her would be to obey her wishes. I made the
+sacrifice.
+
+In an hour more Peter informed me that the ponies were at the door, and
+that the Master was waiting for me in the outer hall.
+
+I noticed that Mr. Dunross gave me his hand, without looking at me. His
+faded blue eyes, during the few minutes while we were together, were not
+once raised from the ground.
+
+"God speed you on your journey, sir, and guide you safely home," he
+said. "I beg you to forgive me if I fail to accompany you on the first
+few miles of your journey. There are reasons which oblige me to remain
+with my daughter in the house."
+
+He was scrupulously, almost painfully, courteous; but there was
+something in his manner which, for the first time in my experience,
+seemed designedly to keep me at a distance from him. Knowing the
+intimate sympathy, the perfect confidence, which existed between the
+father and daughter, a doubt crossed my mind whether the secret of the
+past night was entirely a secret to Mr. Dunross. His next words set that
+doubt at rest, and showed me the truth.
+
+In thanking him for his good wishes, I attempted also to express to him
+(and through him to Miss Dunross) my sincere sense of gratitude for the
+kindness which I had received under his roof. He stopped me, politely
+and resolutely, speaking with that quaintly precise choice of language
+which I h ad remarked as characteristic of him at our first interview.
+
+"It is in your power, sir," he said, "to return any obligation which you
+may think you have incurred on leaving my house. If you will be pleased
+to consider your residence here as an unimportant episode in your life,
+which ends--_absolutely_ ends--with your departure, you will more than
+repay any kindness that you may have received as my guest. In saying
+this, I speak under a sense of duty which does entire justice to you as
+a gentleman and a man of honor. In return, I can only trust to you
+not to misjudge my motives, if I abstain from explaining myself any
+further."
+
+A faint color flushed his pale cheeks. He waited, with a certain proud
+resignation, for my reply. I respected her secret, respected it more
+resolutely than ever, before her father.
+
+"After all that I owe to you, sir," I answered, "your wishes are my
+commands." Saying that, and saying no more, I bowed to him with marked
+respect, and left the house.
+
+Mounting my pony at the door, I looked up at the center window, as she
+had bidden me. It was open; but dark curtains, jealously closed, kept
+out the light from the room within. At the sound of the pony's hoofs on
+the rough island road, as the animal moved, the curtains were parted
+for a few inches only. Through the gap in the dark draperies a wan white
+hand appeared; waved tremulously a last farewell; and vanished from
+my view. The curtains closed again on her dark and solitary life. The
+dreary wind sounded its long, low dirge over the rippling waters of the
+lake. The ponies took their places in the ferryboat which was kept
+for the passage of animals to and from the island. With slow, regular
+strokes the men rowed us to the mainland and took their leave. I looked
+back at the distant house. I thought of her in the dark room, waiting
+patiently for death. Burning tears blinded me. The guide took my bridle
+in his hand: "You're not well, sir," he said; "I will lead the pony."
+
+When I looked again at the landscape round me, we had descended in the
+interval from the higher ground to the lower. The house and the lake had
+disappeared, to be seen no more.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. IN THE SHADOW OF ST. PAUL'S.
+
+In ten days I was at home again--and my mother's arms were round me.
+
+I had left her for my sea-voyage very unwillingly--seeing that she was
+in delicate health. On my return, I was grieved to observe a change for
+the worse, for which her letters had not prepared me. Consulting our
+medical friend, Mr. MacGlue, I found that he, too, had noticed my
+mother's failing health, but that he attributed it to an easily
+removable cause--to the climate of Scotland. My mother's childhood and
+early life had been passed on the southern shores of England. The change
+to the raw, keen air of the North had been a trying change to a person
+at her age. In Mr. MacGlue's opinion, the wise course to take would be
+to return to the South before the autumn was further advanced, and
+to make our arrangements for passing the coming winter at Penzance or
+Torquay.
+
+Resolved as I was to keep the mysterious appointment which summoned
+me to London at the month's end, Mr. MacGlue's suggestion met with no
+opposition on my part. It had, to my mind, the great merit of obviating
+the necessity of a second separation from my mother--assuming that she
+approved of the doctor's advice. I put the question to her the same day.
+To my infinite relief, she was not only ready, but eager to take the
+journey to the South. The season had been unusually wet, even for
+Scotland; and my mother reluctantly confessed that she "did feel a
+certain longing" for the mild air and genial sunshine of the Devonshire
+coast.
+
+We arranged to travel in our own comfortable carriage by post--resting,
+of course, at inns on the road at night. In the days before railways
+it was no easy matter for an invalid to travel from Perthshire to
+London--even with a light carriage and four horses. Calculating our rate
+of progress from the date of our departure, I found that we had just
+time, and no more, to reach London on the last day of the month.
+
+I shall say nothing of the secret anxieties which weighed on my mind,
+under these circumstances. Happily for me, on every account, my mother's
+strength held out. The easy and (as we then thought) the rapid rate of
+traveling had its invigorating effect on her nerves. She slept better
+when we rested for the night than she had slept at home. After twice
+being delayed on the road, we arrived in London at three o'clock on the
+afternoon of the last day of the month. Had I reached my destination in
+time?
+
+As I interpreted the writing of the apparition, I had still some hours
+at my disposal. The phrase, "at the month's end," meant, as I understood
+it, at the last hour of the last day in the month. If I took up my
+position "under the shadow of Saint Paul's," say, at ten that night, I
+should arrive at the place of meeting with two hours to spare, before
+the last stroke of the clock marked the beginning of the new month.
+
+At half-past nine, I left my mother to rest after her long journey, and
+privately quit the house. Before ten, I was at my post. The night was
+fine and clear; and the huge shadow of the cathedral marked distinctly
+the limits within which I had been bid to wait, on the watch for events.
+
+The great clock of Saint Paul's struck ten--and nothing happened.
+
+The next hour passed very slowly. I walked up and down; at one time
+absorbed in my own thoughts; at another, engaged in watching the gradual
+diminution in the number of foot passengers who passed me as the night
+advanced. The City (as it is called) is the most populous part of
+London in the daytime; but at night, when it ceases to be the center of
+commerce, its busy population melts away, and the empty streets assume
+the appearance of a remote and deserted quarter of the metropolis. As
+the half hour after ten struck--then the quarter to eleven--then the
+hour--the pavement steadily became more and more deserted. I could count
+the foot passengers now by twos and threes; and I could see the places
+of public refreshment within my view beginning already to close for the
+night.
+
+I looked at the clock; it pointed to ten minutes past eleven. At that
+hour, could I hope to meet Mrs. Van Brandt alone in the public street?
+
+The more I thought of it, the less likely such an event seemed to be.
+The more reasonable probability was that I might meet her once more,
+accompanied by some friend--perhaps under the escort of Van Brandt
+himself. I wondered whether I should preserve my self-control, in the
+presence of that man, for the second time.
+
+While my thoughts were still pursuing this direction, my attention was
+recalled to passing events by a sad little voice, putting a strange
+little question, close at my side.
+
+"If you please, sir, do you know where I can find a chemist's shop open
+at this time of night?"
+
+I looked round, and discovered a poorly clad little boy, with a basket
+over his arm, and a morsel of paper in his hand.
+
+"The chemists' shops are all shut," I said. "If you want any medicine,
+you must ring the night-bell."
+
+"I dursn't do it, sir," replied the small stranger. "I am such a little
+boy, I'm afraid of their beating me if I ring them up out of their beds,
+without somebody to speak for me."
+
+The little creature looked at me under the street lamp with such a
+forlorn experience of being beaten for trifling offenses in his face,
+that it was impossible to resist the impulse to help him.
+
+"Is it a serious case of illness?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know, sir."
+
+"Have you got a doctor's prescription?"
+
+He held out his morsel of paper.
+
+"I have got this," he said.
+
+I took the paper from him, and looked at it.
+
+It was an ordinary prescription for a tonic mixture. I looked first at
+the doctor's signature; it was the name of a perfectly obscure person
+in the profession. Below it was written the name of the patient for whom
+the medicine had been prescribed. I started as I read it. The name was
+"Mrs. Brand."
+
+The idea instantly struck me that this (so far as sound went, at any
+rate) was the English equivalent of Van Brandt.
+
+"Do you know the lady who sent you for the medicine?" I asked.
+
+"Oh yes, sir! She lodges with mother--and she owes for rent. I have
+done everything she told me, except getting the physic. I've pawned her
+ring, and I've bought the bread and butter and eggs, and I've taken
+care of the change. Mother looks to the change for her rent. It isn't my
+fault, sir, that I've lost myself. I am but ten years old--and all the
+chemists' shops are shut up!"
+
+Here my little friend's sense of his unmerited misfortunes overpowered
+him, and he began to cry.
+
+"Don't cry, my man!" I said; "I'll help you. Tell me something more
+about the lady first. Is she alone?"
+
+"She's got her little girl with her, sir."
+
+My heart quickened its beat. The boy's answer reminded me of that other
+little girl whom my mother had once seen.
+
+"Is the lady's husband with her?" I asked next.
+
+"No, sir--not now. He was with her; but he went away--and he hasn't come
+back yet."
+
+I put a last conclusive question.
+
+"Is her husband an Englishman?" I inquired.
+
+"Mother says he's a foreigner," the boy answered.
+
+I turned away to hide my agitation. Even the child might have noticed
+it!
+
+Passing under the name of "Mrs. Brand"--poor, so poor that she was
+obliged to pawn her ring--left, by a man who was a foreigner, alone with
+her little girl--was I on the trace of her at that moment? Was this lost
+child destined to be the innocent means of leading me back to the woman
+I loved, in her direst need of sympathy and help? The more I thought of
+it, the more strongly the idea of returning with the boy to the house
+in which his mother's lodger lived fastened itself on my mind. The clock
+struck the quarter past eleven. If my anticipations ended in misleading
+me, I had still three-quarters of an hour to spare before the month
+reached its end.
+
+"Where do you live?" I asked.
+
+The boy mentioned a street, the name of which I then heard for the first
+time. All he could say, when I asked for further particulars, was that
+he lived close by the river--in which direction, he was too confused and
+too frightened to be able to tell me.
+
+While we were still trying to understand each other, a cab passed slowly
+at some little distance. I hailed the man, and mentioned the name of
+the street to him. He knew it perfectly well. The street was rather
+more than a mile away from us, in an easterly direction. He undertook
+to drive me there and to bring me back again to Saint Paul's (if
+necessary), in less than twenty minutes. I opened the door of the cab,
+and told my little friend to get in. The boy hesitated.
+
+"Are we going to the chemist's, if you please, sir?" he asked.
+
+"No. You are going home first, with me."
+
+The boy began to cry again.
+
+"Mother will beat me, sir, if I go back without the medicine."
+
+"I will take care that your mother doesn't beat you. I am a doctor
+myself; and I want to see the lady before we get the medicine."
+
+The announcement of my profession appeared to inspire the boy with a
+certain confidence. But he still showed no disposition to accompany me
+to his mother's house.
+
+"Do you mean to charge the lady anything?" he asked. "The money I've
+got on the ring isn't much. Mother won't like having it taken out of her
+rent."
+
+"I won't charge the lady a farthing," I answered.
+
+The boy instantly got into the cab. "All right," he said, "as long as
+mother gets her money."
+
+Alas for the poor! The child's education in the sordid anxieties of life
+was completed already at ten years old!
+
+We drove away.
+
+CHAPTER XXV. I KEEP MY APPOINTMENT.
+
+THE poverty-stricken aspect of the street when we entered it, the dirty
+and dilapidated condition of the house when we drew up at the door,
+would have warned most men, in my position, to prepare themselves for
+a distressing discovery when they were admitted to the interior of the
+dwelling. The first impression which the place produced on _my_ mind
+suggested, on the contrary, that the boy's answers to my questions had
+led me astray. It was simply impossible to associate Mrs. Van Brandt (as
+_I_ remembered her) with the spectacle of such squalid poverty as I
+now beheld. I rang the door-bell, feeling persuaded beforehand that my
+inquiries would lead to no useful result.
+
+As I lifted my hand to the bell, my little companion's dread of a
+beating revived in full force. He hid himself behind me; and when I
+asked what he was about, he answered, confidentially: "Please stand
+between us, sir, when mother opens the door!"
+
+A tall and truculent woman answered the bell. No introduction was
+necessary. Holding a cane in her hand, she stood self-proclaimed as my
+small friend's mother.
+
+"I thought it was that vagabond of a boy of mine," she explained, as an
+apology for the exhibition of the cane. "He has been gone on an errand
+more than two hours. What did you please to want, sir?"
+
+I interceded for the unfortunate boy before I entered on my own
+business.
+
+"I must beg you to forgive your son this time," I said. "I found him
+lost in the streets; and I have brought him home."
+
+The woman's astonishment when she heard what I had done, and discovered
+her son behind me, literally struck her dumb. The language of the
+eye, superseding on this occasion the language of the tongue, plainly
+revealed the impression that I had produced on her: "You bring my lost
+brat home in a cab! Mr. Stranger, you are mad."
+
+"I hear that you have a lady named Brand lodging in the house," I went
+on. "I dare say I am mistaken in supposing her to be a lady of the same
+name whom I know. But I should like to make sure whether I am right or
+wrong. Is it too late to disturb your lodger to-night?"
+
+The woman recovered the use of her tongue.
+
+"My lodger is up and waiting for that little fool, who doesn't know his
+way about London yet!" She emphasized those words by shaking her brawny
+fist at her son--who instantly returned to his place of refuge behind
+the tail of my coat. "Have you got the money?" inquired the terrible
+person, shouting at her hidden offspring over my shoulder. "Or have you
+lost _that_ as well as your own stupid little self?"
+
+The boy showed himself again, and put the money into his mother's knotty
+hand. She counted it, with eyes which satisfied themselves fiercely that
+each coin was of genuine silver--and then became partially pacified.
+
+"Go along upstairs," she growled, addressing her son; "and don't keep
+the lady waiting any longer. They're half starved, she and her child,"
+the woman proceeded, turning to me. "The food my boy has got for them
+in his basket will be the first food the mother has tasted today. She's
+pawned everything by this time; and what she's to do unless you help
+her is more than I can say. The doctor does what he can; but he told me
+today, if she wasn't better nourished, it was no use sending for _him_.
+Follow the boy; and see for yourself if it's the lady you know."
+
+I listened to the woman, still feeling persuaded that I had acted under
+a delusion in going to her house. How was it possible to associate
+the charming object of my heart's worship with the miserable story
+of destitution which I had just heard? I stopped the boy on the first
+landing, and told him to announce me simply as a doctor, who had been
+informed of Mrs. Brand's illness, and who had called to see her.
+
+We ascended a second flight of stairs, and a third. Arrived now at the
+top of the house, the boy knocked at the door that was nearest to us
+on the landing. No audible voice replied. He opened the door without
+ceremony, and went in. I waited outside to hear what was said. The door
+was left ajar. If the voice of "Mrs. Brand" was (as I believed it would
+prove to be) the voice of a stranger, I resolved to offer her delicately
+such help as lay within my power, and to return forthwith to my post
+under "the shadow of Saint Paul's."
+
+The first voice that spoke to the boy was the voice of a child.
+
+"I'm so hungry, Jemmy--I'm so hungry!"
+
+"All right, missy--I've got you something to eat."
+
+"Be quick, Jemmy! Be quick!"
+
+There was a momentary pause; and then I heard the boy's voice once more.
+
+"There's a slice of bread-and-butter, missy. You must wait for your egg
+till I can boil it. Don't you eat too fast, or you'll choke yourself.
+What's the matter with your mamma? Are you asleep, ma'am?"
+
+I could barely hear the answering voice--it was so faint; and it
+uttered but one word: "No!"
+
+The boy spoke again.
+
+"Cheer up, missus. There's a doctor outside waiting to see you."
+
+This time there was no audible reply. The boy showed himself to me at
+the door. "Please to come in, sir. _I_ can't make anything of her."
+
+It would have been misplaced delicacy to have hesitated any longer to
+enter the room. I went in.
+
+There, at the opposite end of a miserably furnished bed-chamber,
+lying back feebly in a tattered old arm-chair, was one more among the
+thousands of forlorn creatures, starving that night in the great city.
+A white handkerchief was laid over her face as if to screen it from the
+flame of the fire hard by. She lifted the handkerchief, startled by the
+sound of my footsteps as I entered the room. I looked at her, and saw in
+the white, wan, death-like face the face of the woman I loved!
+
+For a moment the horror of the discovery turned me faint and giddy. In
+another instant I was kneeling by her chair. My arm was round her--her
+head lay on my shoulder. She was past speaking, past crying out: she
+trembled silently, and that was all. I said nothing. No words passed my
+lips, no tears came to my relief. I held her to me; and she let me hold
+her. The child, devouring its bread-and-butter at a little round table,
+stared at us. The boy, on his knees before the grate, mending the fire,
+stared at us. And the slow minutes lagged on; and the buzzing of a fly
+in a corner was the only sound in the room.
+
+The instincts of the profession to which I had been trained, rather than
+any active sense of the horror of the situation in which I was placed,
+roused me at last. She was starving! I saw it in the deadly color of her
+skin; I felt it in the faint, quick flutter of her pulse. I called
+the boy to me, and sent him to the nearest public-house for wine and
+biscuits. "Be quick about it," I said; "and you shall have more money
+for yourself than ever you had in your life!" The boy looked at me, spit
+on the coins in his hand, said, "That's for luck!" and ran out of the
+room as never boy ran yet.
+
+I turned to speak my first words of comfort to the mother. The cry of
+the child stopped me.
+
+"I'm so hungry! I'm so hungry!"
+
+I set more food before the famished child and kissed her. She looked up
+at me with wondering eyes.
+
+"Are you a new papa?" the little creature asked. "My other papa never
+kisses me."
+
+I looked at the mother. Her eyes were closed; the tears flowed slowly
+over her worn, white cheeks. I took her frail hand in mine. "Happier
+days are coming," I said; "you are _my_ care now." There was no answer.
+She still trembled silently, and that was all.
+
+In less than five minutes the boy returned, and earned his promised
+reward. He sat on the floor by the fire counting his treasure, the one
+happy creature in the room. I soaked some crumbled morsels of biscuit
+in the wine, and, little by little, I revived her failing strength by
+nourishment administered at intervals in that cautious form. After a
+while she raised her head, and looked at me with wondering eyes that
+were pitiably like the eyes of her child. A faint, delicate flush began
+to show itself in her face. She spoke to me, for the first time, in
+whispering tones that I could just hear as I sat close at her side.
+
+"How did you find me? Who showed you the way to this place?"
+
+She paused; painfully recalling the memory of something that was slow
+to come back. Her color deepened; she found the lost remembrance, and
+looked at me with a timid curiosity. "What brought you here?" she asked.
+"Was it my dream?"
+
+"Wait, dearest, till you are stronger, and I will tell you all."
+
+I lifted her gently, and laid her on the wretched bed. The child
+followed us, and climbing to the bedstead with my help, nestled at her
+mother's side. I sent the boy away to tell the mistress of the house
+that I should remain with my patient, watching her progress toward
+recovery, through the night. He went out, jingling his money joyfully in
+his pocket. We three were left together.
+
+As the long hours followed each other, she fell at intervals into a
+broken sleep; waking with a start, and looking at me wildly as if I had
+been a stranger at her bedside. Toward morning the nourishment which I
+still carefully administered wrought its healthful change in her pulse,
+and composed her to quieter slumbers. When the sun rose she was sleeping
+as peacefully as the child at her side. I was able to leave her, until
+my return later in the day, under the care of the woman of the house.
+The magic of money transformed this termagant and terrible person into
+a docile and attentive nurse--so eager to follow my instructions exactly
+that she begged me to commit them to writing before I went away. For a
+moment I still lingered alone at the bedside of the sleeping woman, and
+satisfied myself for the hundredth time that her life was safe, before
+I left her. It was the sweetest of all rewards to feel sure of this--to
+touch her cool forehead lightly with my lips--to look, and look again,
+at the poor worn face, always dear, always beautiful, to _my_ eyes.
+change as it might. I closed the door softly and went out in the bright
+morning, a happy man again. So close together rise the springs of joy
+and sorrow in human life! So near in our heart, as in our heaven, is the
+brightest sunshine to the blackest cloud!
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. CONVERSATION WITH MY MOTHER.
+
+I REACHED my own house in time to snatch two or three hours of repose,
+before I paid my customary morning visit to my mother in her own room. I
+observed, in her reception of me on this occasion, certain peculiarities
+of look and manner which were far from being familiar in my experience
+of her.
+
+When our eyes first met, she regarded me with a wistful, questioning
+look, as if she were troubled by some doubt which she shrunk from
+expressing in words. And when I inquired after her health, as usual, she
+surprised me by answering as impatiently as if she resented my having
+mentioned the subject. For a moment, I was inclined to think these
+changes signified that she had discovered my absence from home during
+the night, and that she had some suspicion of the true cause of it. But
+she never alluded, even in the most distant manner, to Mrs. Van
+Brandt; and not a word dropped from her lips which implied, directly or
+indirectly, that I had pained or disappointed her. I could only conclude
+that she had something important to say in relation to herself or to
+me--and that for reasons of her own she unwillingly abstained from
+giving expression to it at that time.
+
+Reverting to our ordinary topics of conversation, we touched on the
+subject (always interesting to my mother) of my visit to Shetland.
+Speaking of this, we naturally spoke also of Miss Dunross. Here, again,
+when I least expected it, there was another surprise in store for me.
+
+"You were talking the other day," said my mother, "of the green flag
+which poor Dermody's daughter worked for you, when you were both
+children. Have you really kept it all this time?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where have you left it? In Scotland?"
+
+"I have brought it with me to London."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I promised Miss Dunross to take the green flag with me, wherever I
+might go."
+
+My mother smiled.
+
+"Is it possible, George, that you think about this as the young lady in
+Shetland thinks? After all the years that have passed, you believe in
+the green flag being the means of bringing Mary Dermody and yourself
+together again?"
+
+"Certainly not! I am only humoring one of the fancies of poor Miss
+Dunross. Could I refuse to grant her trifling request, after all I owed
+to her kindness?"
+
+The smile left my mother's face. She looked at me attentively.
+
+"Miss Dunross seems to have produced a very favorable impression on
+you," she said.
+
+"I own it. I feel deeply interested in her."
+
+"If she had not been an incurable invalid, George, I too might have
+become interested in Miss Dunross--perhaps in the character of my
+daughter-in-law?"
+
+"It is useless, mother, to speculate on what _might_ have happened. The
+sad reality is enough."
+
+My mother paused a little before she put her next question to me.
+
+"Did Miss Dunross always keep her veil drawn in your presence, when
+there happened to be light in the room?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"She never even let you catch a momentary glance at her face?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"And the only reason she gave you was that the light caused her a
+painful sensation if it fell on her uncovered skin?"
+
+"You say that, mother, as if you doubt whether Miss Dunross told me the
+truth."
+
+"No, George. I only doubt whether she told you _all_ the truth."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Don't be offended, my dear. I believe Miss Dunross has some more
+serious reason for keeping her face hidden than the reason that she gave
+_you_."
+
+I was silent. The suspicion which those words implied had never occurred
+to my mind. I had read in medical books of cases of morbid nervous
+sensitiveness exactly similar to the case of Miss Dunross, as described
+by herself--and that had been enough for me. Now that my mother's idea
+had found its way from her mind to mine, the impression produced on
+me was painful in the last degree. Horrible imaginings of deformity
+possessed my brain, and profaned all that was purest and dearest in my
+recollections of Miss Dunross. It was useless to change the subject--the
+evil influence that was on me was too potent to be charmed away by talk.
+Making the best excuse that I could think of for leaving my mother's
+room, I hurried away to seek a refuge from myself, where alone I could
+hope to find it, in the presence of Mrs. Van Brandt.
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. CONVERSATION WITH MRS. VAN BRANDT.
+
+THE landlady was taking the air at her own door when I reached
+the house. Her reply to my inquiries justified my most hopeful
+anticipations. The poor lodger looked already "like another woman";
+and the child was at that moment posted on the stairs, watching for the
+return of her "new papa."
+
+"There's one thing I should wish to say to you, sir, before you go
+upstairs," the woman went on. "Don't trust the lady with more money at
+a time than the money that is wanted for the day's housekeeping. If
+she has any to spare, it's as likely as not to be wasted on her
+good-for-nothing husband."
+
+Absorbed in the higher and dearer interests that filled my mind, I had
+thus far forgotten the very existence of Mr. Van Brandt.
+
+"Where is he?" I asked.
+
+"Where he ought to be," was the answer. "In prison for debt."
+
+In those days a man imprisoned for debt was not infrequently a man
+imprisoned for life. There was little fear of my visit being shortened
+by the appearance on the scene of Mr. Van Brandt.
+
+Ascending the stairs, I found the child waiting for me on the upper
+landing, with a ragged doll in her arms. I had bought a cake for her on
+my way to the house. She forthwith turned over the doll to my care, and,
+trotting before me into the room with her cake in her arms, announced my
+arrival in these words:
+
+"Mamma, I like this papa better than the other. You like him better,
+too."
+
+The mother's wasted face reddened for a moment, then turned pale again,
+as she held out her hand to me. I looked at her anxiously, and discerned
+the welcome signs of recovery, clearly revealed. Her grand gray eyes
+rested on me again with a glimmer of their old light. The hand that had
+lain so cold in mine on the past night had life and warmth in it now.
+
+"Should I have died before the morning if you had not come here?" she
+asked, softly. "Have you saved my life for the second time? I can well
+believe it."
+
+Before I was aware of her, she bent her head over my hand, and
+touched it tenderly with her lips. "I am not an ungrateful woman," she
+murmured--"and yet I don't know how to thank you."
+
+The child looked up quickly from her cake. "Why don't you kiss him?" the
+quaint little creature asked, with a broad stare of astonishment.
+
+Her head sunk on her breast. She sighed bitterly.
+
+"No more of Me!" she said, suddenly recovering her composure, and
+suddenly forcing herself to look at me again. "Tell me what happy chance
+brought you here last night?"
+
+"The same chance," I answered, "which took me to Saint Anthony's Well."
+
+She raised herself eagerly in the chair.
+
+"You have seen me again--as you saw me in the summer-house by the
+waterfall!" she exclaimed. "Was it in Scotland once more?"
+
+"No. Further away than Scotland--as far away as Shetland."
+
+"Tell me about it! Pray, pray tell me about it!"
+
+I related what had happened as exactly as I could, consistently with
+maintaining the strictest reserve on one point. Concealing from her the
+very existence of Miss Dunross, I left her to suppose that the master
+of the house was the one person whom I had found to receive me during my
+sojourn under Mr. Dunross's roof.
+
+"That is strange!" she exclaimed, after she had heard me attentively to
+the end.
+
+"What is strange?" I asked.
+
+She hesitated, searching my face earnestly with her large grave eyes.
+
+"I hardly like speaking of it," she said. "And yet I ought to have no
+concealments in such a matter from you. I understand everything that you
+have told me--with one exception. It seems strange to me that you should
+only have had one old man for your companion while you were at the house
+in Shetland."
+
+"What other companion did you expect to hear of?" I inquired.
+
+"I expected," she answered, "to hear of a lady in the house."
+
+I cannot positively say that the reply took me by surprise: it forced me
+to reflect before I spoke again. I knew, by my past experience, that
+she must have seen me, in my absence from her, while I was spiritually
+present to her mind in a trance or dream. Had she also seen the daily
+companion of my life in Shetland--Miss Dunross?
+
+I put the question in a form which left me free to decide whether I
+should take her unreservedly into my confidence or not.
+
+"Am I right," I began, "in supposing that you dreamed of me in Shetland,
+as you once before dreamed of me while I was at my house in Perthshire?"
+
+"Yes," she answered. "It was at the close of evening, this time. I fell
+asleep, or became insensible--I cannot say which. And I saw you again,
+in a vision or a dream."
+
+"Where did you see me?"
+
+"I first saw you on the bridge over the Scotch river--just as I met you
+on the evening when you saved my life. After a while the stream and
+the landscape about it faded, and you faded with them, into darkness.
+I waited a little, and the darkness melted away slowly. I stood, as it
+seemed to me, in a circle of starry lights; fronting a window, with a
+lake behind me, and before me a darkened room. And I looked into the
+room, and the starry light showed you to me again."
+
+"When did this happen? Do you remember the date?"
+
+"I remember that it was at the beginning of the month. The misfortunes
+which have since brought me so low had not then fallen on me; and yet,
+as I stood looking at you, I had the strangest prevision of calamity
+that was to come. I felt the same absolute reliance on your power to
+help me that I felt when I first dreamed of you in Scotland. And I did
+the same familiar things. I laid my hand on your bosom. I said to you:
+'Remember me. Come to me.' I even wrote--"
+
+She stopped, shuddering as if a sudden fear had laid its hold on
+her. Seeing this, and dreading the effect of any violent agitation, I
+hastened to suggest that we should say no more, for that day, on the
+subject of her dream.
+
+"No," she answered, firmly. "There is nothing to be gained by giving me
+time. My dream has left one horrible remembrance on my mind. As long as
+I live, I believe I shall tremble when I think of what I saw near you in
+that darkened room."
+
+She stopped again. Was she approaching the subject of the shrouded
+figure, with the black veil over its head? Was she about to describe her
+first discovery, in the dream, of Miss Dunross?
+
+"Tell me one thing first," she resumed. "Have I been right in what I
+have said to you, so far? Is it true that you were in a darkened room
+when you saw me?"
+
+"Quite true."
+
+"Was the date the beginning of the month? and was the hour the close of
+evening?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Were you alone in the room? Answer me truly!"
+
+"I was not alone."
+
+"Was the master of the house with you? or had you some other companion?"
+
+It would have been worse than useless (after what I had now heard) to
+attempt to deceive her.
+
+"I had another companion," I answered. "The person in the room with me
+was a woman."
+
+Her face showed, as I spoke, that she was again shaken by the terrifying
+recollection to which she had just alluded. I had, by this time, some
+difficulty myself in preserving my composure. Still, I was determined
+not to let a word escape me which could operate as a suggestion on the
+mind of my companion.
+
+"Have you any other question to ask me?" was all I said.
+
+"One more," she answered. "Was there anything unusual in the dress of
+your companion?"
+
+"Yes. She wore a long black veil, which hung over her head and face, and
+dropped to below her waist."
+
+Mrs. Van Brandt leaned back in her chair, and covered her eyes with her
+hands.
+
+"I understand your motive for concealing from me the presence of that
+miserable woman in the house," she said. "It is good and kind, like
+all your motives; but it is useless. While I lay in the trance I saw
+everything exactly as it was in the reality; and I, too, saw that
+frightful face!"
+
+Those words literally electrified me.
+
+My conversation of that morning with my mother instantly recurred to my
+memory. I started to my feet.
+
+"Good God!" I exclaimed, "what do you mean?"
+
+"Don't you understand yet?" she asked in amazement on her side. "Must I
+speak more plainly still? When you saw the apparition of me, did you see
+me write?"
+
+"Yes. On a letter that the lady was writing for me. I saw the words
+afterward; the words that brought me to you last night: 'At the month's
+end, In the shadow of Saint Paul's.'"
+
+"How did I appear to write on the unfinished letter?"
+
+"You lifted the writing-case, on which the letter and the pen lay,
+off the lady's lap; and, while you wrote, you rested the case on her
+shoulder."
+
+"Did you notice if the lifting of the case produced any effect on her?"
+
+"I saw no effect produced," I answered. "She remained immovable in her
+chair."
+
+"I saw it differently in my dream. She raised her hand--not the
+hand that was nearest to you, but nearest to me. As _I_ lifted the
+writing-case, _she_ lifted her hand, and parted the folds of the veil
+from off her face--I suppose to see more clearly. It was only for a
+moment; and in that moment I saw what the veil hid. Don't let us speak
+of it! You must have shuddered at that frightful sight in the reality,
+as I shuddered at it in the dream. You must have asked yourself, as
+I did: 'Is there nobody to poison the terrible creature, and hide her
+mercifully in the grave?'"
+
+At those words, she abruptly checked herself. I could say nothing--my
+face spoke for me. She saw it, and guessed the truth.
+
+"Good heavens!" she cried, "you have not seen her! She must have kept
+her face hidden from you behind the veil! Oh, why, why did you cheat
+me into talking of it! I will never speak of it again. See, we are
+frightening the child! Come here, darling; there is nothing to be afraid
+of. Come, and bring your cake with you. You shall be a great lady,
+giving a grand dinner; and we will be two friends whom you have invited
+to dine with you; and the doll shall be the little girl who comes in
+after dinner, and has fruit at dessert!" So she ran on, trying vainly
+to forget the shock that she had inflicted on me in talking nursery
+nonsense to the child.
+
+Recovering my composure in some degree, I did my best to second the
+effort that she had made. My quieter thoughts suggested that she might
+well be self-deceived in believing the horrible spectacle presented to
+her in the vision to be an actual reflection of the truth. In common
+justice toward Miss Dunross I ought surely not to accept the conviction
+of her deformity on no better evidence than the evidence of a dream?
+Reasonable as it undoubtedly was, this view left certain doubts still
+lingering in my mind. The child's instinct soon discovered that her
+mother and I were playfellows who felt no genuine enjoyment of the game.
+She dismissed her make-believe guests without ceremony, and went back
+with her doll to the favorite play-ground on which I had met her--the
+landing outside the door. No persuasion on her mother's part or on mine
+succeeded in luring her back to us. We were left together, to face
+each other as best we might--with the forbidden subject of Miss Dunross
+between us.
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. LOVE AND MONEY.
+
+FEELING the embarrassment of the moment most painfully on her side, Mrs.
+Van Brandt spoke first.
+
+"You have said nothing to me about yourself," she began. "Is your life a
+happier one than it was when we last met?"
+
+"I cannot honestly say that it is," I answered.
+
+"Is there any prospect of your being married?"
+
+"My prospect of being married still rests with you."
+
+"Don't say that!" she exclaimed, with an entreating look at me. "Don't
+spoil my pleasure in seeing you again by speaking of what can never be!
+Have you still to be told how it is that you find me here alone with my
+child?"
+
+I forced myself to mention Van Brandt's name, rather than hear it pass
+_her_ lips.
+
+"I have been told that Mr. Van Brandt is in prison for debt," I said.
+"And I saw for myself last night that he had left you helpless."
+
+"He left me the little money he had with him when he was arrested," she
+rejoined, sadly. "His cruel creditors are more to blame than he is for
+the poverty that has fallen on us."
+
+Even this negative defense of Van Brandt stung me to the quick.
+
+"I ought to have spoken more guardedly of him," I said, bitterly. "I
+ought to have remembered that a woman can forgive almost any wrong that
+a man can inflict on her--when he is the man whom she loves."
+
+She put her hand on my mouth, and stopped me before I could say any
+more.
+
+"How can you speak so cruelly to me?" she asked. "You know--to my shame
+I confessed it to you the last time we met--you know that my heart, in
+secret, is all yours. What 'wrong' are you talking of? Is it the wrong I
+suffered when Van Brandt married me, with a wife living at the time (and
+living still)? Do you think I can ever forget the great misfortune of my
+life--the misfortune that has made me unworthy of you? It is no fault of
+mine, God knows; but it is not the less true that I am not married, and
+that the little darling who is playing out there with her doll is my
+child. And you talk of my being your wife--knowing that!"
+
+"The child accepts me as her second father," I said. "It would be better
+and happier for us both if you had as little pride as the child."
+
+"Pride?" she repeated. "In such a position as mine? A helpless woman,
+with a mock-husband in prison for debt! Say that I have not fallen
+quite so low yet as to forget what is due to you, and you will pay me
+a compliment that will be nearer to the truth. Am I to marry you for my
+food and shelter? Am I to marry you, because there is no lawful tie that
+binds me to the father of my child? Cruelly as he has behaved, he has
+still _that_ claim upon me. Bad as he is, he has not forsaken me; he
+has been forced away. My only friend, is it possible that you think
+me ungrateful enough to consent to be your wife? The woman (in my
+situation) must be heartless indeed who could destroy your place in the
+estimation of the world and the regard of your friends! The wretchedest
+creature that walks the streets would shrink from treating you in that
+way. Oh, what are men made of? How _can_ you--how _can_ you speak of
+it!"
+
+I yielded---and spoke of it no more. Every word she uttered only
+increased my admiration of the noble creature whom I had loved, and
+lost. What refuge was now left to me? But one refuge; I could still
+offer to her the sacrifice of myself. Bitterly as I hated the man who
+had parted us, I loved her dearly enough to be even capable of helping
+him for her sake. Hopeless infatuation! I don't deny it; I don't excuse
+it--hopeless infatuation!
+
+"You have forgiven me," I said. "Let me deserve to be forgiven. It is
+something to be your only friend. You must have plans for the future;
+tell me unreservedly how I can help you."
+
+"Complete the good work that you have begun," she answered, gratefully.
+"Help me back to health. Make me strong enough to submit to a doctor's
+estimate of my chances of living for some years yet."
+
+"A doctor's estimate of your chances of living?" I repeated. "What do
+you mean?"
+
+"I hardly know how to tell you," she said, "without speaking again of
+Mr. Van Brandt."
+
+"Does speaking of him again mean speaking of his debts?" I asked. "Why
+need you hesitate? You know that there is nothing I will not do to
+relieve _your_ anxieties."
+
+She looked at me for a moment, in silent distress.
+
+"Oh! do you think I would let you give your money to Van Brandt?"
+she asked, as soon as she could speak. "I, who owe everything to your
+devotion to me? Never! Let me tell you the plain truth. There is
+a serious necessity for his getting out of prison. He must pay his
+creditors; and he has found out a way of doing it--with my help."
+
+"Your help?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes. This is his position, in two words: A little while since, he
+obtained an excellent offer of employment abroad, from a rich relative
+of his, and he had made all his arrangements to accept it. Unhappily,
+he returned to tell me of his good fortune, and the same day he was
+arrested for debt. His relative has offered to keep the situation open
+for a certain time, and the time has not yet expired. If he can pay
+a dividend to his creditors, they will give him his freedom; and he
+believes he can raise the money if I consent to insure my life."
+
+To insure her life! The snare that had been set for her was plainly
+revealed in those four words.
+
+In the eye of the law she was, of course, a single woman: she was of
+age; she was, to all intents and purposes, her own mistress. What was
+there to prevent her from insuring her life, if she pleased, and from
+so disposing of the insurance as to give Van Brandt a direct interest
+in her death? Knowing what I knew of him--believing him, as I did, to be
+capable of any atrocity--I trembled at the bare idea of what might have
+happened if I had failed to find my way back to her until a later date.
+Thanks to the happy accident of my position, the one certain way of
+protecting her lay easily within my reach. I could offer to lend the
+scoundrel the money that he wanted at an hour's notice, and he was the
+man to accept my proposal quite as easily as I could make it.
+
+"You don't seem to approve of our idea," she said, noticing, in
+evident perplexity, the effect which she had produced on me. "I am very
+unfortunate; I seem to have innocently disturbed and annoyed you for the
+second time."
+
+"You are quite mistaken," I replied. "I am only doubting whether your
+plan for relieving Mr. Van Brandt of his embarrassments is quite so
+simple as you suppose. Are you aware of the delays that are likely to
+take place before it will be possible to borrow money on your policy of
+insurance?"
+
+"I know nothing about it," she said, sadly.
+
+"Will you let me ask the advice of my lawyers? They are trustworthy and
+experienced men, and I am sure they can be of use to you."
+
+Cautiously as I had expressed myself, her delicacy took the alarm.
+
+"Promise that you won't ask me to borrow money of you for Mr. Van
+Brandt," she rejoined, "and I will accept your help gratefully."
+
+I could honestly promise that. My one chance of saving her lay in
+keeping from her knowledge the course that I had now determined to
+pursue. I rose to go, while my resolution still sustained me. The sooner
+I made my inquiries (I reminded her) the more speedily our present
+doubts and difficulties would be resolved.
+
+She rose, as I rose--with the tears in her eyes, and the blush on her
+cheeks.
+
+"Kiss me," she whispered, "before you go! And don't mind my crying. I am
+quite happy now. It is only your goodness that overpowers me."
+
+I pressed her to my heart, with the unacknowledged tenderness of a
+parting embrace. It was impossible to disguise the position in which I
+had now placed myself. I had, so to speak, pronounced my own sentence of
+banishment. When my interference had restored my unworthy rival to his
+freedom, could I submit to the degrading necessity of seeing her in his
+presence, of speaking to her under his eyes? _That_ sacrifice of myself
+was beyond me--and I knew it. "For the last time!" I thought, as I held
+her to me for a moment longer--"for the last time!"
+
+The child ran to meet me with open arms when I stepped out on the
+landing. My manhood had sustained me through the parting with the
+mother. It was only when the child's round, innocent little face laid
+itself lovingly against mine that my fortitude gave way. I was past
+speaking; I put her down gently in silence, and waited on the lower
+flight of stairs until I was fit to face the world outside.
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. OUR DESTINIES PART US.
+
+DESCENDING to the ground-floor of the house, I sent to request a
+moment's interview with the landlady. I had yet to learn in which of the
+London prisons Van Brandt was confined; and she was the only person to
+whom I could venture to address the question.
+
+Having answered my inquiries, the woman put her own sordid construction
+on my motive for visiting the prisoner.
+
+"Has the money you left upstairs gone into his greedy pockets already?"
+she asked. "If I was as rich as you are, I should let it go. In your
+place, I wouldn't touch him with a pair of tongs!"
+
+The woman's coarse warning actually proved useful to me; it started
+a new idea in my mind! Before she spoke, I had been too dull or too
+preoccupied to see that it was quite needless to degrade myself by
+personally communicating with Van Brandt in his prison. It only now
+occurred to me that my legal advisers were, as a matter of course,
+the proper persons to represent me in the matter--with this additional
+advantage, that they could keep my share in the transaction a secret
+even from Van Brandt himself.
+
+I drove at once to the office of my lawyers. The senior partner--the
+tried friend and adviser of our family--received me.
+
+My instructions, naturally enough, astonished him. He was immediately
+to satisfy the prisoner's creditors, on my behalf, without mentioning
+my name to any one. And he was gravely to accept as security for
+repayment--Mr. Van Brandt's note of hand!
+
+"I thought I was well acquainted with the various methods by which a
+gentleman can throw away his money," the senior partner remarked. "I
+congratulate you, Mr. Germaine, on having discovered an entirely new
+way of effectually emptying your purse. Founding a newspaper, taking a
+theater, keeping race-horses, gambling at Monaco, are highly efficient
+as modes of losing money. But they all yield, sir, to paying the debts
+of Mr. Van Brandt!"
+
+I left him, and went home.
+
+The servant who opened the door had a message for me from my mother. She
+wished to see me as soon as I was at leisure to speak to her.
+
+I presented myself at once in my mother's sitting-room.
+
+"Well, George?" she said, without a word to prepare me for what was
+coming. "How have you left Mrs. Van Brandt?"
+
+I was completely thrown off my guard.
+
+"Who has told you that I have seen Mrs. Van Brandt?" I asked.
+
+"My dear, your face has told me. Don't I know by this time how you look
+and how you speak when Mrs. Van Brandt is in your mind. Sit down by me.
+I have something to say to you which I wanted to say this morning; but,
+I hardly know why, my heart failed me. I am bolder now, and I can say
+it. My son, you still love Mrs. Van Brandt. You have my permission to
+marry her."
+
+Those were the words! Hardly an hour had elapsed since Mrs. Van Brandt's
+own lips had told me that our union was impossible. Not even half an
+hour had passed since I had given the directions which would restore to
+liberty the man who was the one obstacle to my marriage. And this was
+the time that my mother had innocently chosen for consenting to receive
+as her daughter-in-law Mrs. Van Brandt!
+
+"I see that I surprise you," she resumed. "Let me explain my motive as
+plainly as I can. I should not be speaking the truth, George, if I told
+you that I have ceased to feel the serious objections that there are to
+your marrying this lady. The only difference in my way of thinking is,
+that I am now willing to set my objections aside, out of regard for your
+happiness. I am an old woman, my dear. In the course of nature, I cannot
+hope to be with you much longer. When I am gone, who will be left to
+care for you and love you, in the place of your mother? No one will
+be left, unless you marry Mrs. Van Brandt. Your happiness is my first
+consideration, and the woman you love (sadly as she has been led astray)
+is a woman worthy of a better fate. Marry her."
+
+I could not trust myself to speak. I could only kneel at my mother's
+feet, and hide my face on her knees, as if I had been a boy again.
+
+"Think of it, George," she said. "And come back to me when you are
+composed enough to speak as quietly of the future as I do."
+
+She lifted my head and kissed me. As I rose to leave her, I saw
+something in the dear old eyes that met mine so tenderly, which struck a
+sudden fear through me, keen and cutting, like a stroke from a knife.
+
+The moment I had closed the door, I went downstairs to the porter in the
+hall.
+
+"Has my mother left the house," I asked, "while I have been away?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Have any visitors called?"
+
+"One visitor has called, sir."
+
+"Do you know who it was?"
+
+The porter mentioned the name of a celebrated physician--a man at the
+head of his profession in those days. I instantly took my hat and went
+to his house.
+
+He had just returned from his round of visits. My card was taken to him,
+and was followed at once by my admission to his consulting-room.
+
+"You have seen my mother," I said. "Is she seriously ill? and have you
+not concealed it from her? For God's sake, tell me the truth; I can bear
+it."
+
+The great man took me kindly by the hand.
+
+"Your mother stands in no need of any warning; she is herself aware of
+the critical state of her health," he said. "She sent for me to confirm
+her own conviction. I could not conceal from her--I must not conceal
+from you--that the vital energies are sinking. She may live for some
+months longer in a milder air than the air of London. That is all I can
+say. At her age, her days are numbered."
+
+He gave me time to steady myself under the blow; and then he placed his
+vast experience, his matured and consummate knowledge, at my disposal.
+From his dictation, I committed to writing the necessary instructions
+for watching over the frail tenure of my mother's life.
+
+"Let me give you one word of warning," he said, as we parted. "Your
+mother is especially desirous that you should know nothing of the
+precarious condition of her health. Her one anxiety is to see you
+happy. If she discovers your visit to me, I will not answer for the
+consequences. Make the best excuse you can think of for at once taking
+her away from London, and, whatever you may feel in secret, keep up an
+appearance of good spirits in her presence."
+
+That evening I made my excuse. It was easily found. I had only to tell
+my poor mother of Mrs. Van Brandt's refusal to marry me, and there was
+an intelligible motive assigned for my proposing to leave London. The
+same night I wrote to inform Mrs. Van Brandt of the sad event which was
+the cause of my sudden departure, and to warn her that there no longer
+existed the slightest necessity for insuring her life. "My lawyers" (I
+wrote) "have undertaken to arrange Mr. Van Brandt's affairs immediately.
+In a few hours he will be at liberty to accept the situation that has
+been offered to him." The last lines of the letter assured her of my
+unalterable love, and entreated her to write to me before she left
+England.
+
+This done, all was done. I was conscious, strange to say, of no acutely
+painful suffering at this saddest time of my life. There is a limit,
+morally as well as physically, to our capacity for endurance. I can only
+describe my sensations under the calamities that had now fallen on me in
+one way: I felt like a man whose mind had been stunned.
+
+The next day my mother and I set forth on the first stage of our journey
+to the south coast of Devonshire.
+
+CHAPTER XXX. THE PROSPECT DARKENS.
+
+THREE days after my mother and I had established ourselves at Torquay,
+I received Mrs. Van Brandt's answer to my letter. After the opening
+sentences (informing me that Van Brandt had been set at liberty, under
+circumstances painfully suggestive to the writer of some unacknowledged
+sacrifice on my part), the letter proceeded in these terms:
+
+"The new employment which Mr. Van Brandt is to undertake secures to us
+the comforts, if not the luxuries, of life. For the first time since my
+troubles began, I have the prospect before me of a peaceful existence,
+among a foreign people from whom all that is false in my position may be
+concealed--not for my sake, but for the sake of my child. To more than
+this, to the happiness which some women enjoy, I must not, I dare not,
+aspire.
+
+"We leave England for the Continent early tomorrow morning. Shall I tell
+you in what part of Europe my new residence is to be?
+
+"No! You might write to me again; and I might write back. The one poor
+return I can make to the good angel of my life is to help him to forget
+me. What right have I to cling to my usurped place in your regard? The
+time will come when you will give your heart to a woman who is worthier
+of it than I am. Let me drop out of your life--except as an occasional
+remembrance, when you sometimes think of the days that have gone
+forever.
+
+"I shall not be without some consolation on my side, when I too look
+back at the past. I have been a better woman since I met with you. Live
+as long as I may, I shall always remember that.
+
+"Yes! The influence that you have had over me has been from first to
+last an influence for good. Allowing that I have done wrong (in my
+position) to love you, and, worse even than that, to own it, still the
+love has been innocent, and the effort to control it has been an honest
+effort at least. But, apart from this, my heart tells me that I am the
+better for the sympathy which has united us. I may confess to you what
+I have never yet acknowledged--now that we are so widely parted, and
+so little likely to meet again--whenever I have given myself up
+unrestrainedly to my own better impulses, they have always seemed to
+lead me to you. Whenever my mind has been most truly at peace, and I
+have been able to pray with a pure and a penitent heart, I have felt
+as if there was some unseen tie that was drawing us nearer and nearer
+together. And, strange to say, this has always happened (just as my
+dreams of you have always come to me) when I have been separated from
+Van Brandt. At such times, thinking or dreaming, it has always appeared
+to me that I knew you far more familiarly than I know you when we meet
+face to face. Is there really such a thing, I wonder, as a former state
+of existence? And were we once constant companions in some other sphere,
+thousands of years since? These are idle guesses. Let it be enough for
+me to remember that I have been the better for knowing you--without
+inquiring how or why.
+
+"Farewell, my beloved benefactor, my only friend! The child sends you a
+kiss; and the mother signs herself your grateful and affectionate
+
+"M. VAN BRANDT."
+
+
+When I first read those lines, they once more recalled to my
+memory--very strangely, as I then thought--the predictions of Dame
+Dermody in the days of my boyhood. Here were the foretold sympathies
+which were spiritually to unite me to Mary, realized by a stranger whom
+I had met by chance in the later years of my life!
+
+Thinking in this direction, did I advance no further? Not a step
+further! Not a suspicion of the truth presented itself to my mind even
+yet.
+
+Was my own dullness of apprehension to blame for this? Would another man
+in my position have discovered what I had failed to see?
+
+I look back along the chain of events which runs through my narrative,
+and I ask myself, Where are the possibilities to be found (in my case,
+or in the case of any other man) of identifying the child who was Mary
+Dermody with the woman who was Mrs. Van Brandt? Was there anything left
+in our faces, when we met again by the Scotch river, to remind us of our
+younger selves? We had developed, in the interval, from boy and girl to
+man and woman: no outward traces were discernible in us of the George
+and Mary of other days. Disguised from each other by our faces, we were
+also disguised by our names. Her mock-marriage had changed her surname.
+My step-father's will had changed mine. Her Christian name was the
+commonest of all names of women; and mine was almost as far from being
+remarkable among the names of men. Turning next to the various occasions
+on which we had met, had we seen enough of each other to drift into
+recognition on either side, in the ordinary course of talk? We had met
+but four times in all; once on the bridge, once again in Edinburgh,
+twice more in London. On each of these occasions, the absorbing
+anxieties and interests of the passing moment had filled her mind and
+mine, had inspired her words and mine. When had the events which had
+brought us together left us with leisure enough and tranquillity
+enough to look back idly through our lives, and calmly to compare the
+recollections of our youth? Never! From first to last, the course of
+events had borne us further and further away from any results that could
+have led even to a suspicion of the truth. She could only believe when
+she wrote to me on leaving England--and I could only believe when I read
+her letter--that we had first met at the river, and that our divergent
+destinies had ended in parting us forever.
+
+Reading her farewell letter in later days by the light of my matured
+experience, I note how remarkably Dame Dermody's faith in the purity of
+the tie that united us as kindred spirits was justified by the result.
+
+It was only when my unknown Mary was parted from Van Brandt--in
+other words, it was only when she was a pure spirit--that she felt my
+influence over her as a refining influence on her life, and that the
+apparition of her communicated with me in the visible and perfect
+likeness of herself. On my side, when was it that I dreamed of her
+(as in Scotland), or felt the mysterious warning of her presence in my
+waking moments (as in Shetland)? Always at the time when my heart opened
+most tenderly toward her and toward others--when my mind was most free
+from the bitter doubts, the self-seeking aspirations, which degrade the
+divinity within us. Then, and then only, my sympathy with her was the
+perfect sympathy which holds its fidelity unassailable by the chances
+and changes, the delusions and temptations, of mortal life.
+
+
+I am writing prematurely of the time when the light came to me. My
+narrative must return to the time when I was still walking in darkness.
+
+Absorbed in watching over the closing days of my mother's life, I found
+in the performance of this sacred duty my only consolation under the
+overthrow of my last hope of marriage with Mrs. Van Brandt. By slow
+degrees my mother felt the reviving influences of a quiet life and a
+soft, pure air. The improvement in her health could, as I but too well
+knew, be only an improvement for a time. Still, it was a relief to see
+her free from pain, and innocently happy in the presence of her son.
+Excepting those hours of the day and night which were dedicated to
+repose, I was never away from her. To this day I remember, with a
+tenderness which attaches to no other memories of mine, the books that I
+read to her, the sunny corner on the seashore where I sat with her, the
+games of cards that we played together, the little trivial gossip that
+amused her when she was strong enough for nothing else. These are my
+imperishable relics; these are the deeds of my life that I shall love
+best to look back on, when the all-infolding shadows of death are
+closing round me.
+
+In the hours when I was alone, my thoughts--occupying themselves mostly
+among the persons and events of the past--wandered back, many and many a
+time, to Shetland and Miss Dunross.
+
+My haunting doubt as to what the black veil had really hidden from me
+was no longer accompanied by a feeling of horror when it now recurred
+to my mind. The more vividly my later remembrances of Miss Dunross were
+associated with the idea of an unutterable bodily affliction, the higher
+the noble nature of the woman seemed to rise in my esteem. For the
+first time since I had left Shetland, the temptation now came to me to
+disregard the injunction which her father had laid on me at parting.
+When I thought again of the stolen kiss in the dead of night; when I
+recalled the appearance of the frail white hand, waving to me through
+the dark curtains its last farewell; and when there mingled with these
+memories the later remembrance of what my mother had suspected, and of
+what Mrs. Van Brandt had seen in her dream--the longing in me to find a
+means of assuring Miss Dunross that she still held her place apart in my
+memory and my heart was more than mortal fortitude could resist. I was
+pledged in honor not to return to Shetland, and not to write. How to
+communicate with her secretly, in some other way, was the constant
+question in my mind as the days went on. A hint to enlighten me was all
+that I wanted; and, as the irony of circumstances ordered it, my mother
+was the person who gave me the hint.
+
+We still spoke, at intervals, of Mrs. Van Brandt. Watching me on those
+occasions when we were in the company of friends and acquaintances at
+Torquay, my mother plainly discerned that no other woman, whatever her
+attractions might be, could take the place in my heart of the woman whom
+I had lost. Seeing but one prospect of happiness for me, she steadily
+refused to abandon the idea of my marriage. When a woman has owned that
+she loves a man (so my mother used to express her opinion), it is that
+man's fault, no matter what the obstacles may be, if he fails to make
+her his wife. Reverting to this view in various ways, she pressed it on
+my consideration one day in these words:
+
+"There is one drawback, George, to my happiness in being here with you.
+I am an obstacle in the way of your communicating with Mrs. Van Brandt."
+
+"You forget," I said, "that she has left England without telling me
+where to find her."
+
+"If you were free from the incumbrance of your mother, my dear, you
+would easily find her. Even as things are, you might surely write
+to her. Don't mistake my motives, George. If I had any hope of your
+forgetting her--if I saw you only moderately attracted by one or other
+of the charming women whom we know here--I should say, let us never
+speak again or think again of Mrs. Van Brandt. But, my dear, your heart
+is closed to every woman but one. Be happy in your own way, and let
+me see it before I die. The wretch to whom that poor creature is
+sacrificing her life will, sooner or later, ill-treat her or desert her
+and then she must turn to you. Don't let her think that you are
+resigned to the loss of her. The more resolutely you set her scruples at
+defiance, the more she will love you and admire you in secret. Women are
+like that. Send her a letter, and follow it with a little present. You
+talked of taking me to the studio of the young artist here who left
+his card the other day. I am told that he paints admirable portraits in
+miniatures. Why not send your portrait to Mrs. Van Brandt?"
+
+Here was the idea of which I had been vainly in search! Quite
+superfluous as a method of pleading my cause with Mrs. Van Brandt,
+the portrait offered the best of all means of communicating with Miss
+Dunross, without absolutely violating the engagement to which her
+father had pledged me. In this way, without writing a word, without even
+sending a message, I might tell her how gratefully she was remembered; I
+might remind her of me tenderly in the bitterest moments of her sad and
+solitary life.
+
+The same day I went to the artist privately. The sittings were afterward
+continued during the hours while my mother was resting in her room,
+until the portrait was completed. I caused it to be inclosed in a plain
+gold locket, with a chain attached; and I forwarded my gift, in the
+first instance, to the one person whom I could trust to assist me in
+arranging for the conveyance of it to its destination. This was the old
+friend (alluded to in these pages as "Sir James") who had taken me with
+him to Shetland in the Government yacht.
+
+I had no reason, in writing the necessary explanations, to express
+myself to Sir James with any reserve. On the voyage back we had more
+than once spoken together confidentially of Miss Dunross. Sir James had
+heard her sad story from the resident medical man at Lerwick, who had
+been an old companion of his in their college days. Requesting him to
+confide my gift to this gentleman, I did not hesitate to acknowledge the
+doubt that oppressed me in relation to the mystery of the black veil. It
+was, of course, impossible to decide whether the doctor would be able
+to relieve that doubt. I could only venture to suggest that the question
+might be guardedly put, in making the customary inquiries after the
+health of Miss Dunross.
+
+In those days of slow communication, I had to wait, not for days, but
+for weeks, before I could expect to receive Sir James's answer. His
+letter only reached me after an unusually long delay. For this, or
+for some other reason that I cannot divine, I felt so strongly the
+foreboding of bad news that I abstained from breaking the seal in my
+mother's presence. I waited until I could retire to my own room, and
+then I opened the letter. My presentiment had not deceived me.
+
+Sir James's reply contained these words only: "The letter inclosed tells
+its own sad story, without help from me. I cannot grieve for her; but I
+can feel sorry for you."
+
+The letter thus described was addressed to Sir James by the doctor at
+Lerwick. I copy it (without comment) in these words:
+
+"The late stormy weather has delayed the vessel by means of which we
+communicate with the mainland. I have only received your letter to-day.
+With it, there has arrived a little box, containing a gold locket and
+chain; being the present which you ask me to convey privately to Miss
+Dunross, from a friend of yours whose name you are not at liberty to
+mention.
+
+"In transmitting these instructions, you have innocently placed me in a
+position of extreme difficulty.
+
+"The poor lady for whom the gift is intended is near the end of her
+life--a life of such complicated and terrible suffering that death
+comes, in her case, literally as a mercy and a deliverance. Under these
+melancholy circumstances, I am, I think, not to blame if I hesitate to
+give her the locket in secret; not knowing with what associations this
+keepsake may be connected, or of what serious agitation it may not
+possibly be the cause.
+
+"In this state of doubt I have ventured on opening the locket, and
+my hesitation is naturally increased. I am quite ignorant of the
+remembrances which my unhappy patient may connect with the portrait. I
+don't know whether it will give her pleasure or pain to receive it, in
+her last moments on earth. I can only decide to take it with me, when
+I see her to-morrow, and to let circumstances determine whether I shall
+risk letting her see it or not. Our post to the South only leaves this
+place in three days' time. I can keep my letter open, and let you know
+the result.
+
+"I have seen her; and I have just returned to my own house. My distress
+of mind is great. But I will do my best to write intelligibly and fully
+of what has happened.
+
+"Her sinking energies, when I first saw her this morning, had rallied
+for the moment. The nurse informed me that she had slept during the
+early hours of the new day. Previously to this, there were symptoms of
+fever, accompanied by some slight delirium. The words that escaped her
+in this condition appear to have related mainly to an absent person whom
+she spoke of by the name of 'George.' Her one anxiety, I am told, was to
+see 'George' again before she died.
+
+"Hearing this, it struck me as barely possible that the portrait in the
+locket might be the portrait of the absent person. I sent her nurse
+out of the room, and took her hand in mine. Trusting partly to her own
+admirable courage and strength of mind, and partly to the confidence
+which I knew she placed in me as an old friend and adviser, I adverted
+to the words which had fallen from her in the feverish state. And then I
+said, 'You know that any secret of yours is safe in my keeping. Tell me,
+do you expect to receive any little keepsake or memorial from 'George'?
+
+"It was a risk to run. The black veil which she always wears was over
+her face. I had nothing to tell me of the effect which I was producing
+on her, except the changing temperature, or the partial movement, of her
+hand, as it lay in mine, just under the silk coverlet of the bed.
+
+"She said nothing at first. Her hand turned suddenly from cold to
+hot, and closed with a quick pressure on mine. Her breathing became
+oppressed. When she spoke, it was with difficulty. She told me nothing;
+she only put a question:
+
+"'Is he here?' she asked.
+
+"I said, 'Nobody is here but myself.'
+
+"'Is there a letter?'
+
+"I said 'No.'
+
+"She was silent for a while. Her hand turned cold; the grasp of her
+fingers loosened. She spoke again: 'Be quick, doctor! Whatever it is,
+give it to me, before I die.'
+
+"I risked the experiment; I opened the locket, and put it into her hand.
+
+"So far as I could discover, she refrained from looking at it at first.
+She said, 'Turn me in the bed, with my face to the wall.' I obeyed
+her. With her back turned toward me she lifted her veil; and then (as I
+suppose) she looked at the portrait. A long, low cry--not of sorrow or
+pain: a cry of rapture and delight--burst from her. I heard her kiss
+the portrait. Accustomed as I am in my profession to piteous sights and
+sounds, I never remember so completely losing my self-control as I lost
+it at that moment. I was obliged to turn away to the window.
+
+"Hardly a minute can have passed before I was back again at the bedside.
+In that brief interval she had changed. Her voice had sunk again; it
+was so weak that I could only hear what she said by leaning over her and
+placing my ear close to her lips.
+
+"'Put it round my neck,' she whispered.
+
+"I clasped the chain of the locket round her neck. She tried to lift her
+hand to it, but her strength failed her.
+
+"'Help me to hide it,' she said.
+
+"I guided her hand. She hid the locket in her bosom, under the white
+dressing-gown which she wore that day. The oppression in her breathing
+increased. I raised her on the pillow. The pillow was not high enough.
+I rested her head on my shoulder, and partially opened her veil. She was
+able to speak once more, feeling a momentary relief.
+
+"'Promise,' she said, 'that no stranger's hand shall touch me. Promise
+to bury me as I am now.'
+
+"I gave her my promise.
+
+"Her failing breath quickened. She was just able to articulate the next
+words:
+
+"'Cover my face again.'
+
+"I drew the veil over her face. She rested a while in silence. Suddenly
+the sound of her laboring respiration ceased. She started, and raised
+her head from my shoulder.
+
+"'Are you in pain?' I asked.
+
+"'I am in heaven!' she answered.
+
+"Her head dropped back on my breast as she spoke. In that last outburst
+of joy her last breath had passed. The moment of her supreme happiness
+and the moment of her death were one. The mercy of God had found her at
+last.
+
+"I return to my letter before the post goes out.
+
+"I have taken the necessary measures for the performance of my promise.
+She will be buried with the portrait hidden in her bosom, and with the
+black veil over her face. No nobler creature ever breathed the breath of
+life. Tell the stranger who sent her his portrait that her last moments
+were joyful moments, through his remembrance of her as expressed by his
+gift.
+
+"I observe a passage in your letter to which I have not yet replied. You
+ask me if there was any more serious reason for the persistent hiding of
+her face under the veil than the reason which she was accustomed to give
+to the persons about her. It is true that she suffered under a morbid
+sensitiveness to the action of light. It is also true that this was not
+the only result, or the worst result, of the malady that afflicted her.
+She had another reason for keeping her face hidden--a reason known
+to two persons only: to the doctor who lives in the village near her
+father's house, and to myself. We are both pledged never to divulge
+to any living creature what our eyes alone have seen. We have kept our
+terrible secret even from her father; and we shall carry it with us
+to our graves. I have no more to say on this melancholy subject to the
+person in whose interest you write. When he thinks of her now, let him
+think of the beauty which no bodily affliction can profane--the beauty
+of the freed spirit, eternally happy in its union with the angels of
+God.
+
+"I may add, before I close my letter, that the poor old father will
+not be left in cheerless solitude at the lake house. He will pass the
+remainder of his days under my roof, with my good wife to take care of
+him, and my children to remind him of the brighter side of life."
+
+
+So the letter ended. I put it away, and went out. The solitude of my
+room forewarned me unendurably of the coming solitude in my own life.
+My interests in this busy world were now narrowed to one object--to the
+care of my mother's failing health. Of the two women whose hearts had
+once beaten in loving sympathy with mine, one lay in her grave and the
+other was lost to me in a foreign land. On the drive by the sea I met my
+mother, in her little pony-chaise, moving slowly under the mild wintry
+sunshine. I dismissed the man who was in attendance on her, and walked
+by the side of the chaise, with the reins in my hand. We chatted quietly
+on trivial subjects. I closed my eyes to the dreary future that was
+before me, and tried, in the intervals of the heart-ache, to live
+resignedly in the passing hour.
+
+CHAPTER XXXI. THE PHYSICIAN'S OPINION.
+
+SIX months have elapsed. Summer-time has come again.
+
+The last parting is over. Prolonged by my care, the days of my mother's
+life have come to their end. She has died in my arms: her last words
+have been spoken to me, her last look on earth has been mine. I am now,
+in the saddest and plainest meaning of the words, alone in the world.
+
+The affliction which has befallen me has left certain duties to be
+performed that require my presence in London. My house is let; I am
+staying at a hotel. My friend, Sir James (also in London on business),
+has rooms near mine. We breakfast and dine together in my sitting-room.
+For the moment solitude is dreadful to me, and yet I cannot go into
+society; I shrink from persons who are mere acquaintances. At Sir
+James's suggestion, however, one visitor at the hotel has been asked to
+dine with us, who claims distinction as no ordinary guest. The physician
+who first warned me of the critical state of my mother's health is
+anxious to hear what I can tell him of her last moments. His time is too
+precious to be wasted in the earlier hours of the day, and he joins
+us at the dinner-table when his patients leave him free to visit his
+friends.
+
+The dinner is nearly at an end. I have made the effort to preserve my
+self-control; and in few words have told the simple story of my mother's
+last peaceful days on earth. The conversation turns next on topics of
+little interest to me: my mind rests after the effort that it has made;
+my observation is left free to exert itself as usual.
+
+Little by little, while the talk goes on, I observe something in the
+conduct of the celebrated physician which first puzzles me, and then
+arouses my suspicion of some motive for his presence which has not been
+acknowledged, and in which I am concerned.
+
+Over and over again I discover that his eyes are resting on me with a
+furtive interest and attention which he seems anxious to conceal. Over
+and over again I notice that he contrives to divert the conversation
+from general topics, and to lure me into talking of myself; and,
+stranger still (unless I am quite mistaken), Sir James understands and
+encourages him. Under various pretenses I am questioned about what I
+have suffered in the past, and what plans of life I have formed for the
+future. Among other subjects of personal interest to me, the subject
+of supernatural appearances is introduced. I am asked if I believe
+in occult spiritual sympathies, and in ghostly apparitions of dead or
+distant persons. I am dexterously led into hinting that my views on
+this difficult and debatable question are in some degree influenced by
+experiences of my own. Hints, however, are not enough to satisfy the
+doctor's innocent curiosity; he tries to induce me to relate in detail
+what I have myself seen and felt. But by this time I am on my guard;
+I make excuses; I steadily abstain from taking my friend into my
+confidence. It is more and more plain to me that I am being made the
+subject of an experiment, in which Sir James and the physician are
+equally interested. Outwardly assuming to be guiltless of any suspicion
+of what is going on, I inwardly determine to discover the true motive
+for the doctor's presence that evening, and for the part that Sir James
+has taken in inviting him to be my guest.
+
+Events favor my purpose soon after the dessert has been placed on the
+table.
+
+The waiter enters the room with a letter for me, and announces that the
+bearer waits to know if there is any answer. I open the envelope, and
+find inside a few lines from my lawyers, announcing the completion of
+some formal matter of business. I at once seize the opportunity that is
+offered to me. Instead of sending a verbal message downstairs, I make my
+apologies, and use the letter as a pretext for leaving the room.
+
+Dismissing the messenger who waits below, I return to the corridor in
+which my rooms are situated, and softly open the door of my bed-chamber.
+A second door communicates with the sitting-room, and has a ventilator
+in the upper part of it. I have only to stand under the ventilator,
+and every word of the conversation between Sir James and the physician
+reaches my ears.
+
+"Then you think I am right?" are the first words I hear, in Sir James's
+voice.
+
+"Quite right," the doctor answers.
+
+"I have done my best to make him change his dull way of life," Sir James
+proceeds. "I have asked him to pay a visit to my house in Scotland; I
+have proposed traveling with him on the Continent; I have offered
+to take him with me on my next voyage in the yacht. He has but one
+answer--he simply says No to everything that I can suggest. You have
+heard from his own lips that he has no definite plans for the future.
+What is to become of him? What had we better do?"
+
+"It is not easy to say," I hear the physician reply. "To speak plainly,
+the man's nervous system is seriously deranged. I noticed something
+strange in him when he first came to consult me about his mother's
+health. The mischief has not been caused entirely by the affliction of
+her death. In my belief, his mind has been--what shall I say?--unhinged,
+for some time past. He is a very reserved person. I suspect he has been
+oppressed by anxieties which he has kept secret from every one. At his
+age, the unacknowledged troubles of life are generally troubles caused
+by women. It is in his temperament to take the romantic view of love;
+and some matter-of-fact woman of the present day may have bitterly
+disappointed him. Whatever may be the cause, the effect is plain--his
+nerves have broken down, and his brain is necessarily affected by
+whatever affects his nerves. I have known men in his condition who have
+ended badly. He may drift into insane delusions, if his present course
+of life is not altered. Did you hear what he said when we talked about
+ghosts?"
+
+"Sheer nonsense!" Sir James remarks.
+
+"Sheer delusion would be the more correct form of expression," the
+doctor rejoins. "And other delusions may grow out of it at any moment."
+
+"What is to be done?" persists Sir James. "I may really say for myself,
+doctor, that I feel a fatherly interest in the poor fellow. His mother
+was one of my oldest and dearest friends, and he has inherited many of
+her engaging and endearing qualities. I hope you don't think the case is
+bad enough to be a case for restraint?"
+
+"Certainly not--as yet," answers the doctor. "So far there is no
+positive brain disease; and there is accordingly no sort of reason
+for placing him under restraint. It is essentially a difficult and a
+doubtful case. Have him privately looked after by a competent person,
+and thwart him in nothing, if you can possibly help it. The merest
+trifle may excite his suspicions; and if that happens, we lose all
+control over him."
+
+"You don't think he suspects us already, do you, doctor?"
+
+"I hope not. I saw him once or twice look at me very strangely; and he
+has certainly been a long time out of the room."
+
+Hearing this, I wait to hear no more. I return to the sitting-room (by
+way of the corridor) and resume my place at the table.
+
+The indignation that I feel--naturally enough, I think, under the
+circumstances--makes a good actor of me for once in my life. I invent
+the necessary excuse for my long absence, and take my part in the
+conversation, keeping the strictest guard on every word that escapes me,
+without betraying any appearance of restraint in my manner. Early in the
+evening the doctor leaves us to go to a scientific meeting. For half an
+hour or more Sir James remains with me. By way (as I suppose) of farther
+testing the state of my mind, he renews the invitation to his house in
+Scotland. I pretend to feel flattered by his anxiety to secure me as
+his guest. I undertake to reconsider my first refusal, and to give him a
+definite answer when we meet the next morning at breakfast. Sir James is
+delighted. We shake hands cordially, and wish each other good-night. At
+last I am left alone.
+
+My resolution as to my next course of proceeding is formed without a
+moment's hesitation. I determine to leave the hotel privately the next
+morning before Sir James is out of his bedroom.
+
+To what destination I am to betake myself is naturally the next question
+that arises, and this also I easily decide. During the last days of my
+mother's life we spoke together frequently of the happy past days when
+we were living together on the banks of the Greenwater lake. The longing
+thus inspired to look once more at the old scenes, to live for a while
+again among the old associations, has grown on me since my mother's
+death. I have, happily for myself, not spoken of this feeling to Sir
+James or to any other person. When I am missed at the hotel, there will
+be no suspicion of the direction in which I have turned my steps. To the
+old home in Suffolk I resolve to go the next morning. Wandering among
+the scenes of my boyhood, I can consider with myself how I may best bear
+the burden of the life that lies before me.
+
+After what I have heard that evening, I confide in nobody. For all I
+know to the contrary, my own servant may be employed to-morrow as the
+spy who watches my actions. When the man makes his appearance to take
+his orders for the night, I tell him to wake me at six the next morning,
+and release him from further attendance.
+
+I next employ myself in writing two letters. They will be left on the
+table, to speak for themselves after my departure.
+
+In the first letter I briefly inform Sir James that I have discovered
+his true reason for inviting the doctor to dinner. While I thank him for
+the interest he takes in my welfare, I decline to be made the object of
+any further medical inquiries as to the state of my mind. In due
+course of time, when my plans are settled, he will hear from me again.
+Meanwhile, he need feel no anxiety about my safety. It is one among my
+other delusions to believe that I am still perfectly capable of taking
+care of myself. My second letter is addressed to the landlord of the
+hotel, and simply provides for the disposal of my luggage and the
+payment of my bill.
+
+I enter my bedroom next, and pack a traveling-bag with the few things
+that I can carry with me. My money is in my dressing-case. Opening it, I
+discover my pretty keepsake--the green flag! Can I return to "Greenwater
+Broad," can I look again at the bailiff's cottage, without the one
+memorial of little Mary that I possess? Besides, have I not promised
+Miss Dunross that Mary's gift shall always go with me wherever I go? and
+is the promise not doubly sacred now that she is dead? For a while I sit
+idly looking at the device on the flag--the white dove embroidered on
+the green ground, with the golden olive-branch in its beak. The innocent
+love-story of my early life returns to my memory, and shows me in
+horrible contrast the life that I am leading now. I fold up the flag and
+place it carefully in my traveling-bag. This done, all is done. I may
+rest till the morning comes.
+
+No! I lie down on my bed, and I discover that there is no rest for me
+that night.
+
+Now that I have no occupation to keep my energies employed, now that
+my first sense of triumph in the discomfiture of the friends who have
+plotted against me has had time to subside, my mind reverts to the
+conversation that I have overheard, and considers it from a new point
+of view. For the first time, the terrible question confronts me: The
+doctor's opinion on my case has been given very positively. How do I
+know that the doctor is not right?
+
+This famous physician has risen to the head of his profession entirely
+by his own abilities. He is one of the medical men who succeed by
+means of an ingratiating manner and the dexterous handling of good
+opportunities. Even his enemies admit that he stands unrivaled in the
+art of separating the true conditions from the false in the discovery of
+disease, and in tracing effects accurately to their distant and hidden
+cause. Is such a man as this likely to be mistaken about me? Is it not
+far more probable that I am mistaken in my judgment of myself?
+
+When I look back over the past years, am I quite sure that the strange
+events which I recall may not, in certain cases, be the visionary
+product of my own disordered brain--realities to me, and to no one else?
+What are the dreams of Mrs. Van Brandt? What are the ghostly apparitions
+of her which I believe myself to have seen? Delusions which have been
+the stealthy growth of years? delusions which are leading me, by slow
+degrees, nearer and nearer to madness in the end? Is it insane suspicion
+which has made me so angry with the good friends who have been trying to
+save my reason? Is it insane terror which sets me on escaping from the
+hotel like a criminal escaping from prison?
+
+These are the questions which torment me when I am alone in the dead of
+night. My bed becomes a place of unendurable torture. I rise and dress
+myself, and wait for the daylight, looking through my open window into
+the street.
+
+The summer night is short. The gray light of dawn comes to me like a
+deliverance; the glow of the glorious sunrise cheers my soul once more.
+Why should I wait in the room that is still haunted by my horrible
+doubts of the night? I take up my traveling-bag; I leave my letters on
+the sitting-room table; and I descend the stairs to the house door. The
+night-porter at the hotel is slumbering in his chair. He wakes as I pass
+him; and (God help me!) he too looks as if he thought I was mad.
+
+"Going to leave us already, sir?" he says, looking at the bag in my
+hand.
+
+Mad or sane, I am ready with my reply. I tell him I am going out for a
+day in the country, and to make it a long day, I must start early.
+
+The man still stares at me. He asks if he shall find some one to carry
+my bag. I decline to let anybody be disturbed. He inquires if I have any
+messages to leave for my friend. I inform him that I have left written
+messages upstairs for Sir James and the landlord. Upon this he draws the
+bolts and opens the door. To the last he looks at me as if he thought I
+was mad.
+
+Was he right or wrong? Who can answer for himself? How can I tell?
+
+CHAPTER XXXII. A LAST LOOK AT GREENWATER BROAD.
+
+MY spirits rose as I walked through the bright empty streets, and
+breathed the fresh morning air.
+
+Taking my way eastward through the great city, I stopped at the first
+office that I passed, and secured my place by the early coach to
+Ipswich. Thence I traveled with post-horses to the market-town which was
+nearest to Greenwater Broad. A walk of a few miles in the cool evening
+brought me, through well-remembered by-roads, to our old house. By the
+last rays of the setting sun I looked at the familiar row of windows in
+front, and saw that the shutters were all closed. Not a living creature
+was visible anywhere. Not even a dog barked as I rang the great bell at
+the door. The place was deserted; the house was shut up.
+
+After a long delay, I heard heavy footsteps in the hall. An old man
+opened the door.
+
+Changed as he was, I remembered him as one of our tenants in the by-gone
+time. To his astonishment, I greeted him by his name. On his side, he
+tried hard to recognize me, and tried in vain. No doubt I was the more
+sadly changed of the two: I was obliged to introduce myself. The poor
+fellow's withered face brightened slowly and timidly, as if he were half
+incapable, half afraid, of indulging in the unaccustomed luxury of a
+smile. In his confusion he bid me welcome home again, as if the house
+had been mine.
+
+Taking me into the little back-room which he inhabited, the old man
+gave me all he had to offer--a supper of bacon and eggs and a glass
+of home-brewed beer. He was evidently puzzled to understand me when I
+informed him that the only object of my visit was to look once more
+at the familiar scenes round my old home. But he willingly placed his
+services at my disposal; and he engaged to do his best, if I wished it,
+to make me up a bed for the night.
+
+The house had been closed and the establishment of servants had been
+dismissed for more than a year past. A passion for horse-racing,
+developed late in life, had ruined the rich retired tradesman who had
+purchased the estate at the time of our family troubles. He had gone
+abroad with his wife to live on the little income that had been saved
+from the wreck of his fortune; and he had left the house and lands in
+such a state of neglect that no new purchaser had thus far been found to
+take them. My old friend, "now past his work," had been put in charge of
+the place. As for Dermody's cottage, it was empty, like the house. I was
+at perfect liberty to look over it if I liked. There was the key of the
+door on the bunch with the others; and here was the old man, with his
+old hat on his head, ready to accompany me wherever I pleased to go.
+I declined to trouble him to accompany me or to make up a bed in the
+lonely house. The night was fine, the moon was rising. I had supped; I
+had rested. When I had seen what I wanted to see, I could easily walk
+back to the market-town and sleep at the inn. Taking the key in my hand,
+I set forth alone on the way through the grounds which led to Dermody's
+cottage.
+
+Again I followed the woodland paths along which I had once idled so
+happily with my little Mary. At every step I saw something that reminded
+me of her. Here was the rustic bench on which we had sat together under
+the shadow of the old cedar-tree, and vowed to be constant to each other
+to the end of our lives. There was the bright little water spring, from
+which we drank when we were weary and thirsty in sultry summer days,
+still bubbling its way downward to the lake as cheerily as ever. As I
+listened to the companionable murmur of the stream, I almost expected to
+see her again, in her simple white frock and straw hat, singing to the
+music of the rivulet, and freshening her nosegay of wild flowers by
+dipping it in the cool water. A few steps further on and I reached a
+clearing in the wood and stood on a little promontory of rising ground
+which commanded the prettiest view of Greenwater lake. A platform
+of wood was built out from the bank, to be used for bathing by good
+swimmers who were not afraid of a plunge into deep water. I stood on the
+platform and looked round me. The trees that fringed the shore on either
+hand murmured their sweet sylvan music in the night air; the moonlight
+trembled softly on the rippling water. Away on my right hand I could
+just see the old wooden shed that once sheltered my boat in the days
+when Mary went sailing with me and worked the green flag. On my left
+was the wooden paling that followed the curves of the winding creek, and
+beyond it rose the brown arches of the decoy for wild fowl, now falling
+to ruin for want of use. Guided by the radiant moonlight, I could see
+the very spot on which Mary and I had stood to watch the snaring of the
+ducks. Through the hole in the paling before which the decoy-dog had
+shown himself, at Dermody's signal, a water-rat now passed, like a
+little black shadow on the bright ground, and was lost in the waters
+of the lake. Look where I might, the happy by-gone time looked back
+in mockery, and the voices of the past came to me with their burden of
+reproach: See what your life was once! Is your life worth living now?
+
+I picked up a stone and threw it into the lake. I watched the circling
+ripples round the place at which it had sunk. I wondered if a practiced
+swimmer like myself had ever tried to commit suicide by drowning, and
+had been so resolute to die that he had resisted the temptation to let
+his own skill keep him from sinking. Something in the lake itself, or
+something in connection with the thought that it had put into my mind,
+revolted me. I turned my back suddenly on the lonely view, and took the
+path through the wood which led to the bailiff's cottage.
+
+Opening the door with my key, I groped my way into the well-remembered
+parlor; and, unbarring the window-shutters, I let in the light of the
+moon.
+
+With a heavy heart I looked round me. The old furniture--renewed,
+perhaps, in one or two places--asserted its mute claim to my recognition
+in every part of the room. The tender moonlight streamed slanting
+into the corner in which Mary and I used to nestle together while Dame
+Dermody was at the window reading her mystic books. Overshadowed by the
+obscurity in the opposite corner, I discovered the high-backed arm-chair
+of carved wood in which the Sibyl of the cottage sat on the memorable
+day when she warned us of our coming separation, and gave us her
+blessing for the last time. Looking next round the walls of the room,
+I recognized old friends wherever my eyes happened to rest--the gaudily
+colored prints; the framed pictures in fine needle-work, which we
+thought wonderful efforts of art; the old circular mirror to which
+I used to lift Mary when she wanted "to see her face in the glass."
+Whenever the moonlight penetrated there, it showed me some familiar
+object that recalled my happiest days. Again the by-gone time looked
+back in mockery. Again the voices of the past came to me with their
+burden of reproach: See what your life was once! Is your life worth
+living now?
+
+I sat down at the window, where I could just discover, here and there
+between the trees, the glimmer of the waters of the lake. I thought
+to myself: "Thus far my mortal journey has brought me. Why not end it
+here?"
+
+Who would grieve for me if my death were reported to-morrow? Of all
+living men, I had perhaps the smallest number of friends, the fewest
+duties to perform toward others, the least reason to hesitate at leaving
+a world which had no place in it for my ambition, no creature in it for
+my love.
+
+Besides, what necessity was there for letting it be known that my death
+was a death of my own seeking? It could easily be left to represent
+itself as a death by accident.
+
+On that fine summer night, and after a long day of traveling, might I
+not naturally take a bath in the cool water before I went to bed?
+And, practiced as I was in the exercise of swimming, might it not
+nevertheless be my misfortune to be attacked by cramp? On the lonely
+shores of Greenwater Broad the cry of a drowning man would bring no help
+at night. The fatal accident would explain itself. There was literally
+but one difficulty in the way--the difficulty which had already
+occurred to my mind. Could I sufficiently master the animal instinct of
+self-preservation to deliberately let myself sink at the first plunge?
+
+The atmosphere in the room felt close and heavy. I went out, and walked
+to and fro--now in the shadow, and now in the moonlight--under the trees
+before the cottage door.
+
+Of the moral objections to suicide, not one had any influence over me
+now. I, who had once found it impossible to excuse, impossible even
+to understand, the despair which had driven Mrs. Van Brandt to attempt
+self-destruction--I now contemplated with composure the very act which
+had horrified me when I saw it committed by another person. Well may we
+hesitate to condemn the frailties of our fellow-creatures, for the
+one unanswerable reason that we can never feel sure how soon similar
+temptations may not lead us to be guilty of the same frailties
+ourselves. Looking back at the events of the night, I can recall but one
+consideration that stayed my feet on the fatal path which led back
+to the lake. I still doubted whether it would be possible for such a
+swimmer as I was to drown himself. This was all that troubled my mind.
+For the rest, my will was made, and I had few other affairs which
+remained unsettled. No lingering hope was left in me of a reunion in the
+future with Mrs. Van Brandt. She had never written to me again; I had
+(forgiven) her for having forgotten me. My thoughts of her and of others
+were the forbearing thoughts of a man whose mind was withdrawn already
+from the world, whose views were narrowing fast to the one idea of his
+own death.
+
+I grew weary of walking up and down. The loneliness of the place began
+to oppress me. The sense of my own indecision irritated my nerves.
+After a long look at the lake through the trees, I came to a positive
+conclusion at last. I determined to try if a good swimmer could drown
+himself.
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII. A VISION OF THE NIGHT.
+
+RETURNING to the cottage parlor, I took a chair by the window and opened
+my pocket-book at a blank page. I had certain directions to give to my
+representatives, which might spare them some trouble and uncertainty
+in the event of my death. Disguising my last instructions under the
+commonplace heading of "Memoranda on my return to London," I began to
+write.
+
+I had filled one page of the pocket-book, and had just turned to the
+next, when I became conscious of a difficulty in fixing my attention on
+the subject that was before it. I was at once reminded of the similar
+difficulty which I felt in Shetland, when I had tried vainly to arrange
+the composition of the letter to my mother which Miss Dunross was to
+write. By way of completing the parallel, my thoughts wandered now, as
+they had wandered then, to my latest remembrance of Mrs. Van Brandt.
+In a minute or two I began to feel once more the strange physical
+sensations which I had first experienced in the garden at Mr. Dunross's
+house. The same mysterious trembling shuddered through me from head to
+foot. I looked about me again, with no distinct consciousness of what
+the objects were on which my eyes rested. My nerves trembled, on that
+lovely summer night, as if there had been an electric disturbance in the
+atmosphere and a storm coming. I laid my pocket-book and pencil on
+the table, and rose to go out again under the trees. Even the trifling
+effort to cross the room was an effort made in vain. I stood rooted to
+the spot, with my face turned toward the moonlight streaming in at the
+open door.
+
+An interval passed, and as I still looked out through the door, I became
+aware of something moving far down among the trees that fringed the
+shore of the lake. The first impression produced on me was of two gray
+shadows winding their way slowly toward me between the trunks of the
+trees. By fine degrees the shadows assumed a more and more marked
+outline, until they presented themselves in the likeness of two robed
+figures, one taller than the other. While they glided nearer and nearer,
+their gray obscurity of hue melted away. They brightened softly with an
+inner light of their own as they slowly approached the open space before
+the door. For the third time I stood in the ghostly presence of Mrs.
+Van Brandt; and with her, holding her hand, I beheld a second apparition
+never before revealed to me, the apparition of her child.
+
+Hand-in-hand, shining in their unearthly brightness through the bright
+moonlight itself, the two stood before me. The mother's face looked at
+me once more with the sorrowful and pleading eyes which I remembered so
+well. But the face of the child was innocently radiant with an angelic
+smile. I waited in unutterable expectation for the word that was to be
+spoken, for the movement that was to come. The movement came first.
+The child released its hold on the mother's hand, and floating slowly
+upward, remained poised in midair--a softly glowing presence shining out
+of the dark background of the trees. The mother glided into the room,
+and stopped at the table on which I had laid my pocket-book and pencil
+when I could no longer write. As before, she took the pencil and wrote
+on the blank page. As before, she beckoned to me to step nearer to her.
+I approached her outstretched hand, and felt once more the mysterious
+rapture of her touch on my bosom, and heard once more her low, melodious
+tones repeating the words: "Remember me. Come to me." Her hand dropped
+from my bosom. The pale light which revealed her to me quivered, sunk,
+vanished. She had spoken. She had gone.
+
+I drew to me the open pocket-book. And this time I saw, in the writing
+of the ghostly hand, these words only:
+
+                    _"Follow the Child."_
+
+I looked out again at the lonely night landscape.
+
+There, in mid-air, shining softly out of the dark background of the
+trees, still hovered the starry apparition of the child.
+
+Advancing without conscious will of my own, I crossed the threshold of
+the door. The softly glowing vision of the child moved away before me
+among the trees. I followed, like a man spellbound. The apparition,
+floating slowly onward, led me out of the wood, and past my old home,
+back to the lonely by-road along which I had walked from the market-town
+to the house. From time to time, as we two went on our way, the bright
+figure of the child paused, hovering low in the cloudless sky. Its
+radiant face looked down smiling on me; it beckoned with its little
+hand, and floated on again, leading me as the Star led the Eastern sages
+in the olden time.
+
+I reached the town. The airy figure of the child paused, hovering over
+the house at which I had left my traveling-carriage in the evening.
+I ordered the horses to be harnessed again for another journey. The
+postilion waited for his further directions. I looked up. The child's
+hand was pointing southward, along the road that led to London. I gave
+the man his instructions to return to the place at which I had hired
+the carriage. At intervals, as we proceeded, I looked out through
+the window. The bright figure of the child still floated on before me
+gliding low in the cloudless sky. Changing the horses stage by stage, I
+went on till the night ended--went on till the sun rose in the eastern
+heaven. And still, whether it was dark or whether it was light, the
+figure of the child floated on before me in its changeless and mystic
+light. Mile after mile, it still led the way southward, till we left the
+country behind us, and passing through the din and turmoil of the great
+city, stopped under the shadow of the ancient Tower, within view of the
+river that runs by it.
+
+The postilion came to the carriage door to ask if I had further need of
+his services. I had called to him to stop, when I saw the figure of the
+child pause on its airy course. I looked upward again. The child's hand
+pointed toward the river. I paid the postilion and left the carriage.
+Floating on before me, the child led the way to a wharf crowded with
+travelers and their luggage. A vessel lay along-side of the wharf ready
+to sail. The child led me on board the vessel and paused again, hovering
+over me in the smoky air.
+
+I looked up. The child looked back at me with its radiant smile, and
+pointed eastward down the river toward the distant sea. While my eyes
+were still fixed on the softly glowing figure, I saw it fade away upward
+and upward into the higher light, as the lark vanishes upward and
+upward in the morning sky. I was alone again with my earthly
+fellow-beings--left with no clew to guide me but the remembrance of the
+child's hand pointing eastward to the distant sea.
+
+A sailor was near me coiling the loosened mooring-rope on the deck. I
+asked him to what port the vessel was bound. The man looked at me in
+surly amazement, and answered:
+
+"To Rotterdam."
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV. BY LAND AND SEA.
+
+IT mattered little to me to what port the vessel was bound. Go where I
+might, I knew that I was on my way to Mrs. Van Brandt. She had need
+of me again; she had claimed me again. Where the visionary hand of the
+child had pointed, thither I was destined to go. Abroad or at home,
+it mattered nothing: when I next set my foot on the land, I should be
+further directed on the journey which lay before me. I believed this as
+firmly as I believed that I had been guided, thus far, by the vision of
+the child.
+
+For two nights I had not slept--my weariness overpowered me. I descended
+to the cabin, and found an unoccupied corner in which I could lie down
+to rest. When I awoke, it was night already, and the vessel was at sea.
+
+I went on deck to breathe the fresh air. Before long the sensation of
+drowsiness returned; I slept again for hours together. My friend, the
+physician, would no doubt have attributed this prolonged need of repose
+to the exhausted condition of my brain, previously excited by delusions
+which had lasted uninterruptedly for many hours together. Let the cause
+be what it might, during the greater part of the voyage I was awake at
+intervals only. The rest of the time I lay like a weary animal, lost in
+sleep.
+
+When I stepped on shore at Rotterdam, my first proceeding was to ask my
+way to the English Consulate. I had but a small sum of money with me;
+and, for all I knew to the contrary, it might be well, before I did
+anything else, to take the necessary measures for replenishing my purse.
+
+I had my traveling-bag with me. On the journey to Greenwater Broad I had
+left it at the inn in the market-town, and the waiter had placed it in
+the carriage when I started on my return to London. The bag contained my
+checkbook, and certain letters which assisted me in proving my identity
+to the consul. He kindly gave me the necessary introduction to the
+correspondents at Rotterdam of my bankers in London.
+
+Having obtained my money, and having purchased certain necessaries of
+which I stood in need, I walked slowly along the street, knowing nothing
+of what my next proceeding was to be, and waiting confidently for the
+event which was to guide me. I had not walked a hundred yards before
+I noticed the name of "Van Brandt" inscribed on the window-blinds of a
+house which appeared to be devoted to mercantile purposes.
+
+The street door stood open. A second door, on one side of the passage,
+led into the office. I entered the room and inquired for Mr. Van Brandt.
+A clerk who spoke English was sent for to communicate with me. He told
+me there were three partners of that name in the business, and inquired
+which of them I wished to see. I remembered Van Brandt's Christian name,
+and mentioned it. No such person as "Mr. Ernest Van Brandt" was known at
+the office.
+
+"We are only the branch house of the firm of Van Brandt here," the clerk
+explained. "The head office is at Amsterdam. They may know where Mr.
+Ernest Van Brandt is to be found, if you inquire there."
+
+It mattered nothing to me where I went, so long as I was on my way to
+Mrs. Van Brandt. It was too late to travel that day; I slept at a hotel.
+The night passed quietly and uneventfully. The next morning I set forth
+by the public conveyance for Amsterdam.
+
+Repeating my inquiries at the head office on my arrival, I was referred
+to one of the partners in the firm. He spoke English perfectly; and
+he received me with an appearance of interest which I was at a loss to
+account for at first.
+
+"Mr. Ernest Van Brandt is well known to me," he said. "May I ask if you
+are a relative or friend of the English lady who has been introduced
+here as his wife?"
+
+I answered in the affirmative; adding, "I am here to give any assistance
+to the lady of which she may stand in need."
+
+The merchant's next words explained the appearance of interest with
+which he had received me.
+
+"You are most welcome," he said. "You relieve my partners and myself
+of a great anxiety. I can only explain what I mean by referring for
+a moment to the business affairs of my firm. We have a fishing
+establishment in the ancient city of Enkhuizen, on the shores of the
+Zuyder Zee. Mr. Ernest Van Brandt had a share in it at one time, which
+he afterward sold. Of late years our profits from this source have been
+diminishing; and we think of giving up the fishery, unless our prospects
+in that quarter improve after a further trial. In the meantime, having
+a vacant situation in the counting-house at Enkhuizen, we thought of
+Mr. Ernest Van Brandt, and offered him the opportunity of renewing his
+connection with us, in the capacity of a clerk. He is related to one of
+my partners; but I am bound in truth to tell you that he is a very bad
+man. He has awarded us for our kindness to him by embezzling our
+money; and he has taken to flight--in what direction we have not
+yet discovered. The English lady and her child are left deserted at
+Enkhuizen; and until you came here to-day we were quite at a loss to
+know what to do with them. I don't know whether you are already aware
+of it, sir; but the lady's position is made doubly distressing by doubts
+which we entertain of her being really Mr. Ernest Van Brandt's wife. To
+our certain knowledge, he was privately married to another woman some
+years since; and we have no evidence whatever that the first wife
+is dead. If we can help you in any way to assist your unfortunate
+country-woman, pray believe that our services are at your disposal."
+
+With what breathless interest I listened to these words it is needless
+to say. Van Brandt had deserted her! Surely (as my poor mother had once
+said) "she must turn to me now." The hopes that had abandoned me filled
+my heart once more; the future which I had so long feared to contemplate
+showed itself again bright with the promise of coming happiness to my
+view. I thanked the good merchant with a fervor that surprised him.
+"Only help me to find my way to Enkhuizen," I said, "and I will answer
+for the rest."
+
+"The journey will put you to some expense," the merchant replied.
+"Pardon me if I ask the question bluntly. Have you money?"
+
+"Plenty of money."
+
+"Very good. The rest will be easy enough. I will place you under the
+care of a countryman of yours, who has been employed in our office for
+many years. The easiest way for you, as a stranger, will be to go by
+sea; and the Englishman will show you where to hire a boat."
+
+In a few minutes more the clerk and I were on our way to the harbor.
+
+Difficulties which I had not anticipated occurred in finding the boat
+and in engaging a crew. This done, it was next necessary to purchase
+provisions for the voyage. Thanks to the experience of my companion, and
+to the hearty good-will with which he exerted it, my preparations were
+completed before night-fall. I was able to set sail for my destination
+on the next day.
+
+The boat had the double advantage, in navigating the Zuyder Zee, of
+being large, and of drawing very little water; the captain's cabin was
+at the stern; and the two or three men who formed his crew were berthed
+forward, in the bows. The whole middle of the boat, partitioned off
+on the one side and on the other from the captain and the crew, was
+assigned to me for my cabin. Under these circumstances, I had no reason
+to complain of want of space; the vessel measuring between fifty and
+sixty tons. I had a comfortable bed, a table, and chairs. The kitchen
+was well away from me, in the forward part of the boat. At my own
+request, I set forth on the voyage without servant or interpreter. I
+preferred being alone. The Dutch captain had been employed, at a former
+period of his life, in the mercantile navy of France; and we could
+communicate, whenever it was necessary or desirable, in the French
+language.
+
+We left the spires of Amsterdam behind us, and sailed over the smooth
+waters of the lake on our way to the Zuyder Zee.
+
+The history of this remarkable sea is a romance in itself. In the days
+when Rome was mistress of the world, it had no existence. Where the
+waves now roll, vast tracts of forest surrounded a great inland lake,
+with but one river to serve it as an outlet to the sea. Swelled by a
+succession of tempests, the lake overflowed its boundaries: its furious
+waters, destroying every obstacle in their course, rested only when they
+reached the furthest limits of the land.
+
+The Northern Ocean beyond burst its way in through the gaps of ruin;
+and from that time the Zuyder Zee existed as we know it now. The years
+advanced, the generations of man succeeded each other; and on the shores
+of the new ocean there rose great and populous cities, rich in commerce,
+renowned in history. For centuries their prosperity lasted, before
+the next in this mighty series of changes ripened and revealed itself.
+Isolated from the rest of the world, vain of themselves and their good
+fortune, careless of the march of progress in the nations round them,
+the inhabitants of the Zuyder Zee cities sunk into the fatal torpor of
+a secluded people. The few members of the population who still preserved
+the relics of their old energy emigrated, while the mass left behind
+resignedly witnessed the diminution of their commerce and the decay of
+their institutions. As the years advanced to the nineteenth century, the
+population was reckoned by hundreds where it had once been numbered by
+thousands. Trade disappeared; whole streets were left desolate. Harbors,
+once filled with shipping, were destroyed by the unresisted accumulation
+of sand. In our own times the decay of these once flourishing cities is
+so completely beyond remedy, that the next great change in contemplation
+is the draining of the now dangerous and useless tract of water, and
+the profitable cultivation of the reclaimed land by generations that are
+still to come. Such, briefly told, is the strange story of the Zuyder
+Zee.
+
+As we advanced on our voyage, and left the river, I noticed the tawny
+hue of the sea, caused by sand-banks which color the shallow water, and
+which make the navigation dangerous to inexperienced seamen. We found
+our moorings for the night at the fishing island of Marken--a low,
+lost, desolate-looking place, as I saw it under the last gleams of the
+twilight. Here and there, the gabled cottages, perched on hillocks, rose
+black against the dim gray sky. Here and there, a human figure appeared
+at the waterside, standing, fixed in contemplation of the strange boat.
+And that was all I saw of the island of Marken.
+
+Lying awake in the still night, alone on a strange sea, there were
+moments when I found myself beginning to doubt the reality of my own
+position.
+
+Was it all a dream? My thoughts of suicide; my vision of the mother and
+daughter; my journey back to the metropolis, led by the apparition
+of the child; my voyage to Holland; my night anchorage in the unknown
+sea--were these, so to speak, all pieces of the same morbid mental
+puzzle, all delusions from which I might wake at any moment, and find
+myself restored to my senses again in the hotel at London? Bewildered by
+doubts which led me further and further from any definite conclusion,
+I left my bed and went on deck to change the scene. It was a still and
+cloudy night. In the black void around me, the island was a blacker
+shadow yet, and nothing more. The one sound that reached my ears was the
+heavy breathing of the captain and his crew sleeping on either side of
+me. I waited, looking round and round the circle of darkness in which I
+stood. No new vision showed itself. When I returned again to the cabin,
+and slumbered at last, no dreams came to me. All that was mysterious,
+all that was marvelous, in the later events of my life seemed to have
+been left behind me in England. Once in Holland, my course had been
+influenced by circumstances which were perfectly natural, by commonplace
+discoveries which might have revealed themselves to any man in my
+position. What did this mean? Had my gifts as a seer of visions departed
+from me in the new land and among the strange people? Or had my destiny
+led me to the place at which the troubles of my mortal pilgrimage were
+to find their end? Who could say?
+
+Early the next morning we set sail once more.
+
+Our course was nearly northward. On one side of me was the tawny sea,
+changing under certain conditions of the weather to a dull pearl-gray.
+On the other side was the flat, winding coast, composed alternately of
+yellow sand and bright-green meadow-lands; diversified at intervals by
+towns and villages, whose red-tiled roofs and quaint church-steeples
+rose gayly against the clear blue sky. The captain suggested to me
+to visit the famous towns of Edam and Hoorn; but I declined to go on
+shore. My one desire was to reach the ancient city in which Mrs. Van
+Brandt had been left deserted. As we altered our course, to make for the
+promontory on which Enkhuizen is situated, the wind fell, then shifted
+to another quarter, and blew with a force which greatly increased the
+difficulties of navigation. I still insisted, as long as it was possible
+to do so, on holding on our course. After sunset, the strength of the
+wind abated. The night came without a cloud, and the starry firmament
+gave us its pale and glittering light. In an hour more the capricious
+wind shifted back again in our favor. Toward ten o'clock we sailed into
+the desolate harbor of Enkhuizen.
+
+The captain and crew, fatigued by their exertions, ate their frugal
+suppers and went to their beds. In a few minutes more, I was the only
+person left awake in the boat.
+
+I ascended to the deck, and looked about me.
+
+Our boat was moored to a deserted quay. Excepting a few fishing vessels
+visible near us, the harbor of this once prosperous place was a vast
+solitude of water, varied here and there by dreary banks of sand.
+Looking inland, I saw the lonely buildings of the Dead City--black,
+grim, and dreadful under the mysterious starlight. Not a human creature,
+not even a stray animal, was to be seen anywhere. The place might have
+been desolated by a pestilence, so empty and so lifeless did it
+now appear. Little more than a hundred years ago, the record of its
+population reached sixty thousand. The inhabitants had dwindled to a
+tenth of that number when I looked at Enkhuizen now!
+
+I considered with myself what my next course of proceeding was to be.
+
+The chances were certainly against my discovering Mrs. Van Brandt if I
+ventured alone and unguided into the city at night. On the other hand,
+now that I had reached the place in which she and her child were living,
+friendless and deserted, could I patiently wait through the weary
+interval that must elapse before the morning came and the town was
+astir? I knew my own self-tormenting disposition too well to accept this
+latter alternative. Whatever came of it, I determined to walk through
+Enkhuizen on the bare chance of meeting some one who might inform me of
+Mrs. Van Brandt's address.
+
+First taking the precaution of locking my cabin door, I stepped from the
+bulwark of the vessel to the lonely quay, and set forth upon my night
+wanderings through the Dead City.
+
+CHAPTER XXXV. UNDER THE WINDOW.
+
+I SET the position of the harbor by my pocket-compass, and then followed
+the course of the first street that lay before me.
+
+On either side, as I advanced, the desolate old houses frowned on me.
+There were no lights in the windows, no lamps in the streets. For a
+quarter of an hour at least I penetrated deeper and deeper into the
+city, without encountering a living creature on my way--with only the
+starlight to guide me. Turning by chance into a street broader than
+the rest, I at last saw a moving figure, just visible ahead, under the
+shadows of the houses. I quickened my pace, and found myself following
+a man in the dress of a peasant. Hearing my footsteps behind him, he
+turned and looked at me. Discovering that I was a stranger, he lifted
+a thick cudgel that he carried with him, shook it threateningly, and
+called to me in his own language (as I gathered by his actions) to
+stand back. A stranger in Eukhuizen at that time of night was evidently
+reckoned as a robber in the estimation of this citizen! I had learned on
+the voyage, from the captain of the boat, how to ask my way in Dutch,
+if I happened to be by myself in a strange town; and I now repeated
+my lesson, asking my way to the fishing office of Messrs. Van Brandt.
+Either my foreign accent made me unintelligible, or the man's suspicions
+disinclined him to trust me. Again he shook his cudgel, and again he
+signed to me to stand back. It was useless to persist. I crossed to the
+opposite side of the way, and soon afterward lost sight of him under the
+portico of a house.
+
+Still following the windings of the deserted streets, I reached what I
+at first supposed to be the end of the town.
+
+Before me, for half a mile or more (as well as I could guess), rose a
+tract of meadow-land, with sheep dotted over it at intervals reposing
+for the night. I advanced over the grass, and observed here and there,
+where the ground rose a little, some moldering fragments of brickwork.
+Looking onward as I reached the middle of the meadow, I perceived on
+its further side, towering gaunt and black in the night, a lofty arch or
+gateway, without walls at its sides, without a neighboring building
+of any sort, far or near. This (as I afterward learned) was one of
+the ancient gates of the city. The walls, crumbling to ruin, had been
+destroyed as useless obstacles that cumbered the ground. On the waste
+meadow-land round me had once stood the shops of the richest merchants,
+the palaces of the proudest nobles of North Holland. I was actually
+standing on what had been formerly the wealthy quarter of Enkhuizen! And
+what was left of it now? A few mounds of broken bricks, a pasture-land
+of sweet-smelling grass, and a little flock of sheep sleeping.
+
+The mere desolation of the view (apart altogether from its history)
+struck me with a feeling of horror. My mind seemed to lose its balance
+in the dreadful stillness that was round me. I felt unutterable
+forebodings of calamities to come. For the first time, I repented having
+left England. My thoughts turned regretfully to the woody shores of
+Greenwater Broad. If I had only held to my resolution, I might have been
+at rest now in the deep waters of the lake. For what had I lived and
+planned and traveled since I left Dermody's cottage? Perhaps only to
+find that I had lost the woman whom I loved--now that I was in the same
+town with her!
+
+Regaining the outer rows of houses still left standing, I looked about
+me, intending to return by the street which was known to me already.
+Just as I thought I had discovered it, I noticed another living creature
+in the solitary city. A man was standing at the door of one of the
+outermost houses on my right hand, looking at me.
+
+At the risk of meeting with another rough reception, I determined to
+make a last effort to discover Mrs. Van Brandt before I returned to the
+boat.
+
+Seeing that I was approaching him, the stranger met me midway. His dress
+and manner showed plainly that I had not encountered this time a person
+in the lower ranks of life. He answered my question civilly in his own
+language. Seeing that I was at a loss to understand what he said, he
+invited me by signs to follow him. After walking for a few minutes in
+a direction which was quite new to me, we stopped in a gloomy little
+square, with a plot of neglected garden-ground in the middle of it.
+Pointing to a lower window in one of the houses, in which a light dimly
+appeared, my guide said in Dutch: "Office of Van Brandt, sir," bowed,
+and left me.
+
+I advanced to the window. It was open, and it was just high enough to be
+above my head. The light in the room found its way outward through the
+interstices of closed wooden shutters. Still haunted by misgivings of
+trouble to come, I hesitated to announce my arrival precipitately by
+ringing the house-bell. How did I know what new calamity might not
+confront me when the door was opened? I waited under the window and
+listened.
+
+Hardly a minute passed before I heard a woman's voice in the room. There
+was no mistaking the charm of those tones. It was the voice of Mrs. Van
+Brandt.
+
+"Come, darling," she said. "It is very late--you ought to have been in
+bed two hours ago."
+
+The child's voice answered, "I am not sleepy, mamma."
+
+"But, my dear, remember you have been ill. You may be ill again if you
+keep out of bed so late as this. Only lie down, and you will soon fall
+asleep when I put the candle out."
+
+"You must _not_ put the candle out!" the child returned, with strong
+emphasis. "My new papa is coming. How is he to find his way to us, if
+you put out the light?"
+
+The mother answered sharply, as if the child's strange words had
+irritated her.
+
+"You are talking nonsense," she said; "and you must go to bed. Mr.
+Germaine knows nothing about us. Mr. Germaine is in England."
+
+I could restrain myself no longer. I called out under the window:
+
+"Mr. Germaine is here!"
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI. LOVE AND PRIDE.
+
+A CRY of terror from the room told me that I had been heard. For a
+moment more nothing happened. Then the child's voice reached me, wild
+and shrill: "Open the shutters, mamma! I said he was coming--I want to
+see him!"
+
+There was still an interval of hesitation before the mother opened the
+shutters. She did it at last. I saw her darkly at the window, with the
+light behind her, and the child's head just visible above the lower part
+of the window-frame. The quaint little face moved rapidly up and down,
+as if my self-appointed daughter were dancing for joy!
+
+"Can I trust my own senses?" said Mrs. Van Brandt. "Is it really Mr.
+Germaine?"
+
+"How do you do, new papa?" cried the child. "Push open the big door and
+come in. I want to kiss you."
+
+There was a world of difference between the coldly doubtful tone of the
+mother and the joyous greeting of the child. Had I forced myself too
+suddenly on Mrs. Van Brandt? Like all sensitively organized persons, she
+possessed that inbred sense of self-respect which is pride under another
+name. Was her pride wounded at the bare idea of my seeing her, deserted
+as well as deceived--abandoned contemptuously, a helpless burden on
+strangers--by the man for whom she had sacrificed and suffered so much?
+And that man a thief, flying from the employers whom he had cheated! I
+pushed open the heavy oaken street-door, fearing that this might be the
+true explanation of the change which I had already remarked in her. My
+apprehensions were confirmed when she unlocked the inner door, leading
+from the courtyard to the sitting-room, and let me in.
+
+As I took her by both hands and kissed her, she turned her head, so that
+my lips touched her cheek only. She flushed deeply; her eyes looked away
+from me as she spoke her few formal words of welcome. When the child
+flew into my arms, she cried out, irritably, "Don't trouble Mr.
+Germaine!" I took a chair, with the little one on my knee. Mrs. Van
+Brandt seated herself at a distance from me. "It is needless, I suppose,
+to ask you if you know what has happened," she said, turning pale
+again as suddenly as she had turned red, and keeping her eyes fixed
+obstinately on the floor.
+
+Before I could answer, the child burst out with the news of her father's
+disappearance in these words:
+
+"My other papa has run away! My other papa has stolen money! It's time I
+had a new one, isn't it?" She put her arms round my neck. "And now I've
+got him!" she cried, at the shrillest pitch of her voice.
+
+The mother looked at us. For a while, the proud, sensitive woman
+struggled successfully with herself; but the pang that wrung her was not
+to be endured in silence. With a low cry of pain, she hid her face in
+her hands. Overwhelmed by the sense of her own degradation, she was even
+ashamed to let the man who loved her see that she was in tears.
+
+I took the child off my knee. There was a second door in the
+sitting-room, which happened to be left open. It showed me a bed-chamber
+within, and a candle burning on the toilet-table.
+
+"Go in there and play," I said. "I want to talk to your mamma."
+
+The child pouted: my proposal did not appear to tempt her. "Give me
+something to play with," she said. "I'm tired of my toys. Let me see
+what you have got in your pockets."
+
+Her busy little hands began to search in my coat-pockets. I let her take
+what she pleased, and so bribed her to run away into the inner room. As
+soon as she was out of sight, I approached the poor mother and seated
+myself by her side.
+
+"Think of it as I do," I said. "Now that he has forsaken you, he has
+left you free to be mine."
+
+She lifted her head instantly; her eyes flashed through her tears.
+
+"Now that he has forsaken me," she answered, "I am more unworthy of you
+than ever!"
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Why!" she repeated, passionately. "Has a woman not reached the lowest
+depths of degradation when she has lived to be deserted by a thief?"
+
+It was hopeless to attempt to reason with her in her present frame of
+mind. I tried to attract her attention to a less painful subject by
+referring to the strange succession of events which had brought me to
+her for the third time. She stopped me impatiently at the outset.
+
+"It seems useless to say once more what we have said on other
+occasions," she answered. "I understand what has brought you here. I
+have appeared to you again in a vision, just as I appeared to you twice
+before."
+
+"No," I said. "Not as you appeared to me twice before. This time I saw
+you with the child by your side."
+
+That reply roused her. She started, and looked nervously toward the
+bed-chamber door.
+
+"Don't speak loud!" she said. "Don't let the child hear us! My dream
+of you this time has left a painful impression on my mind. The child is
+mixed up in it--and I don't like that. Then the place in which I saw
+you is associated--" She paused, leaving the sentence unfinished. "I am
+nervous and wretched to-night," she resumed; "and I don't want to speak
+of it. And yet, I should like to know whether my dream has misled me, or
+whether you really were in that cottage, of all places in the world?"
+
+I was at a loss to understand the embarrassment which she appeared to
+feel in putting her question. There was nothing very wonderful, to my
+mind, in the discovery that she had been in Suffolk, and that she was
+acquainted with Greenwater Broad. The lake was known all over the county
+as a favorite resort of picnic parties; and Dermody's pretty cottage
+used to be one of the popular attractions of the scene. What really
+surprised me was to see, as I now plainly saw, that she had some painful
+association with my old home. I decided on answering her question in
+such terms as might encourage her to take me into her confidence. In a
+moment more I should have told her that my boyhood had been passed
+at Greenwater Broad--in a moment more, we should have recognized each
+other--when a trivial interruption suspended the words on my lips. The
+child ran out of the bed-chamber, with a quaintly shaped key in her
+hand. It was one of the things she had taken out of my pockets and it
+belonged to the cabin door on board the boat. A sudden fit of curiosity
+(the insatiable curiosity of a child) had seized her on the subject of
+this key. She insisted on knowing what door it locked; and, when I had
+satisfied her on that point, she implored me to take her immediately to
+see the boat. This entreaty led naturally to a renewal of the disputed
+question of going, or not going, to bed. By the time the little creature
+had left us again, with permission to play for a few minutes longer,
+the conversation between Mrs. Van Brandt and myself had taken a new
+direction. Speaking now of the child's health, we were led naturally to
+the kindred subject of the child's connection with her mother's dream.
+
+"She had been ill with fever," Mrs. Van Brandt began; "and she was
+just getting better again on the day when I was left deserted in this
+miserable place. Toward evening, she had another attack that frightened
+me dreadfully. She became perfectly insensible--her little limbs were
+stiff and cold. There is one doctor here who has not yet abandoned the
+town. Of course I sent for him. He thought her insensibility was caused
+by a sort of cataleptic seizure. At the same time, he comforted me by
+saying that she was in no immediate danger of death; and he left me
+certain remedies to be given, if certain symptoms appeared. I took her
+to bed, and held her to me, with the idea of keeping her warm.
+Without believing in mesmerism, it has since struck me that we might
+unconsciously have had some influence over each other, which may explain
+what followed. Do you think it likely?"
+
+"Quite likely. At the same time, the mesmeric theory (if you could
+believe in it) would carry the explanation further still. Mesmerism
+would assert, not only that you and the child influenced each other, but
+that--in spite of the distance--you both influenced _me_. And in that
+way, mesmerism would account for my vision as the necessary result of a
+highly developed sympathy between us. Tell me, did you fall asleep with
+the child in your arms?"
+
+"Yes. I was completely worn out; and I fell asleep, in spite of my
+resolution to watch through the night. In my forlorn situation, forsaken
+in a strange place, I dreamed of you again, and I appealed to you again
+as my one protector and friend. The only new thing in the dream was,
+that I thought I had the child with me when I approached you, and that
+the child put the words into my mind when I wrote in your book. You saw
+the words, I suppose? and they vanished, as before, no doubt, when I
+awoke? I found the child still lying, like a dead creature, in my arms.
+All through the night there was no change in her. She only recovered
+her senses at noon the next day. Why do you start? What have I said that
+surprises you?"
+
+There was good reason for my feeling startled, and showing it. On the
+day and at the hour when the child had come to herself, I had stood on
+the deck of the vessel, and had seen the apparition of her disappear
+from my view.
+
+"Did she say anything," I asked, "when she recovered her senses?"
+
+"Yes. She too had been dreaming--dreaming that she was in company with
+you. She said: 'He is coming to see us, mamma; and I have been showing
+him the way.' I asked her where she had seen you. She spoke confusedly
+of more places than one. She talked of trees, and a cottage, and a lake;
+then of fields and hedges, and lonely lanes; then of a carriage and
+horses, and a long white road; then of crowded streets and houses, and
+a river and a ship. As to these last objects, there is nothing very
+wonderful in what she said. The houses, the river, and the ship which
+she saw in her dream, she saw in the reality when we took her from
+London to Rotterdam, on our way here. But as to the other places,
+especially the cottage and the lake (as she described them) I can only
+suppose that her dream was the reflection of mine. _I_ had been dreaming
+of the cottage and the lake, as I once knew them in years long gone by;
+and--Heaven only knows why--I had associated you with the scene. Never
+mind going into that now! I don't know what infatuation it is that makes
+me trifle in this way with old recollections, which affect me painfully
+in my present position. We were talking of the child's health; let us go
+back to that."
+
+It was not easy to return to the topic of her child's health. She had
+revived my curiosity on the subject of her association with Greenwater
+Broad. The child was still quietly at play in the bedchamber. My second
+opportunity was before me. I took it.
+
+"I won't distress you," I began. "I will only ask leave, before we
+change the subject, to put one question to you about the cottage and the
+lake."
+
+As the fatality that pursued us willed it, it was _her_ turn now to be
+innocently an obstacle in the way of our discovering each other.
+
+"I can tell you nothing more to-night," she interposed, rising
+impatiently. "It is time I put the child to bed--and, besides, I can't
+talk of things that distress me. You must wait for the time--if it ever
+comes!--when I am calmer and happier than I am now."
+
+She turned to enter the bed-chamber. Acting headlong on the impulse of
+the moment, I took her by the hand and stopped her.
+
+"You have only to choose," I said, "and the calmer and happier time is
+yours from this moment."
+
+"Mine?" she repeated. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Say the word," I replied, "and you and your child have a home and a
+future before you."
+
+She looked at me half bewildered, half angry.
+
+"Do you offer me your protection?" she asked.
+
+"I offer you a husband's protection," I answered. "I ask you to be my
+wife."
+
+She advanced a step nearer to me, with her eyes riveted on my face.
+
+"You are evidently ignorant of what has really happened," she said. "And
+yet, God knows, the child spoke plainly enough!"
+
+"The child only told me," I rejoined, "what I had heard already, on my
+way here."
+
+"All of it?"
+
+"All of it."
+
+"And you still ask me to be your wife?"
+
+"I can imagine no greater happiness than to make you my wife."
+
+"Knowing what you know now?"
+
+"Knowing what I know now, I ask you confidently to give me your hand.
+Whatever claim that man may once have had, as the father of your child,
+he has now forfeited it by his infamous desertion of you. In every sense
+of the word, my darling, you are a free woman. We have had sorrow enough
+in our lives. Happiness is at last within our reach. Come to me, and say
+Yes."
+
+I tried to take her in my arms. She drew back as if I had frightened
+her.
+
+"Never!" she said, firmly.
+
+I whispered my next words, so that the child in the inner room might not
+hear us.
+
+"You once said you loved me!"
+
+"I do love you!"
+
+"As dearly as ever?"
+
+"_More_ dearly than ever!"
+
+"Kiss me!"
+
+She yielded mechanically; she kissed me--with cold lips, with big tears
+in her eyes.
+
+"You don't love me!" I burst out, angrily. "You kiss me as if it were a
+duty. Your lips are cold--your heart is cold. You don't love me!"
+
+She looked at me sadly, with a patient smile.
+
+"One of us must remember the difference between your position and mine,"
+she said. "You are a man of stainless honor, who holds an undisputed
+rank in the world. And what am I? I am the deserted mistress of a thief.
+One of us must remember that. You have generously forgotten it. I must
+bear it in mind. I dare say I am cold. Suffering has that effect on me;
+and, I own it, I am suffering now."
+
+I was too passionately in love with her to feel the sympathy on which
+she evidently counted in saying those words. A man can respect a woman's
+scruples when they appeal to him mutely in her looks or in her tears;
+but the formal expression of them in words only irritates or annoys him.
+
+"Whose fault is it that you suffer?" I retorted, coldly. "I ask you to
+make my life a happy one, and your life a happy one. You are a cruelly
+wronged woman, but you are not a degraded woman. You are worthy to be
+my wife, and I am ready to declare it publicly. Come back with me to
+England. My boat is waiting for you; we can set sail in two hours."
+
+She dropped into a chair; her hands fell helplessly into her lap.
+
+"How cruel!" she murmured, "how cruel to tempt me!" She waited a little,
+and recovered her fatal firmness. "No!" she said. "If I die in doing it,
+I can still refuse to disgrace you. Leave me, Mr. Germaine. You can show
+me that one kindness more. For God's sake, leave me!"
+
+I made a last appeal to her tenderness.
+
+"Do you know what my life is if I live without you?" I asked. "My mother
+is dead. There is not a living creature left in the world whom I love
+but you. And you ask me to leave you! Where am I to go to? what am I
+to do? You talk of cruelty! Is there no cruelty in sacrificing
+the happiness of my life to a miserable scruple of delicacy, to an
+unreasoning fear of the opinion of the world? I love you and you love
+me. There is no other consideration worth a straw. Come back with me to
+England! come back and be my wife!"
+
+She dropped on her knees, and taking my hand put it silently to her
+lips. I tried to raise her. It was useless: she steadily resisted me.
+
+"Does this mean No?" I asked.
+
+"It means," she said in faint, broken tones, "that I prize your honor
+beyond my happiness. If I marry you, your career is destroyed by your
+wife; and the day will come when you will tell me so. I can suffer--I
+can die; but I can _not_ face such a prospect as that. Forgive me and
+forget me. I can say no more!"
+
+She let go of my hand, and sank on the floor. The utter despair of that
+action told me, far more eloquently than the words which she had
+just spoken, that her resolution was immovable. She had deliberately
+separated herself from me; her own act had parted us forever.
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII. THE TWO DESTINIES.
+
+I MADE no movement to leave the room; I let no sign of sorrow escape me.
+At last, my heart was hardened against the woman who had so obstinately
+rejected me. I stood looking down at her with a merciless anger, the
+bare remembrance of which fills me at this day with a horror of myself.
+There is but one excuse for me. The shock of that last overthrow of the
+one hope that held me to life was more than my reason could endure. On
+that dreadful night (whatever I may have been at other times), I myself
+believe it, I was a maddened man.
+
+I was the first to break the silence.
+
+"Get up," I said coldly.
+
+She lifted her face from the floor, and looked at me as if she doubted
+whether she had heard aright.
+
+"Put on your hat and cloak," I resumed. "I must ask you to go back with
+me as far as the boat."
+
+She rose slowly. Her eyes rested on my face with a dull, bewildered
+look.
+
+"Why am I to go with you to the boat?" she asked.
+
+The child heard her. The child ran up to us with her little hat in one
+hand, and the key of the cabin in the other.
+
+"I'm ready," she said. "I will open the cabin door."
+
+Her mother signed to her to go back to the bed-chamber. She went back
+as far as the door which led into the courtyard, and waited there,
+listening. I turned to Mrs. Van Brandt with immovable composure, and
+answered the question which she had addressed to me.
+
+"You are left," I said, "without the means of getting away from this
+place. In two hours more the tide will be in my favor, and I shall sail
+at once on the return voyage. We part, this time, never to meet again.
+Before I go I am resolved to leave you properly provided for. My money
+is in my traveling-bag in the cabin. For that reason, I am obliged to
+ask you to go with me as far as the boat."
+
+"I thank you gratefully for your kindness," she said. "I don't stand in
+such serious need of help as you suppose."
+
+"It is useless to attempt to deceive me," I proceeded. "I have spoken
+with the head partner of the house of Van Brandt at Amsterdam, and I
+know exactly what your position is. Your pride must bend low enough to
+take from my hands the means of subsistence for yourself and your child.
+If I had died in England--"
+
+I stopped. The unexpressed idea in my mind was to tell her that she
+would inherit a legacy under my will, and that she might quite as
+becomingly take money from me in my life-time as take it from my
+executors after my death. In forming this thought into words, the
+associations which it called naturally into being revived in me the
+memory of my contemplated suicide in the Greenwater lake. Mingling with
+the remembrance thus aroused, there rose in me unbidden, a temptation so
+overpoweringly vile, and yet so irresistible in the state of my mind at
+the moment, that it shook me to the soul. "You have nothing to live for,
+now that she has refused to be yours," the fiend in me whispered. "Take
+your leap into the next world, and make the woman whom you love take it
+with you!" While I was still looking at her, while my last words to her
+faltered on my lips, the horrible facilities for the perpetration of
+the double crime revealed themselves enticingly to my view. My boat was
+moored in the one part of the decaying harbor in which deep water still
+lay at the foot of the quay. I had only to induce her to follow me when
+I stepped on the deck, to seize her in my arms, and to jump overboard
+with her before she could utter a cry for help. My drowsy sailors, as I
+knew by experience, were hard to wake, and slow to move even when they
+were roused at last. We should both be drowned before the youngest and
+the quickest of them could get up from his bed and make his way to the
+deck. Yes! We should both be struck together out of the ranks of the
+living at one and the same moment. And why not? She who had again and
+again refused to be my wife--did she deserve that I should leave her
+free to go back, perhaps, for the second time to Van Brandt? On the
+evening when I had saved her from the waters of the Scotch river, I
+had made myself master of her fate. She had tried to destroy herself
+by drowning; she should drown now, in the arms of the man who had once
+thrown himself between her and death!
+
+Self-abandoned to such atrocious reasoning as this, I stood face to face
+with her, and returned deliberately to my unfinished sentence.
+
+"If I had died in England, you would have been provided for by my will.
+What you would have taken from me then, you may take from me now. Come
+to the boat."
+
+A change passed over her face as I spoke; a vague doubt of me began
+to show itself in her eyes. She drew back a little, without making any
+reply.
+
+"Come to the boat," I reiterated.
+
+"It is too late." With that answer, she looked across the room at the
+child, still waiting by the door. "Come, Elfie," she said, calling the
+little creature by one of her favorite nicknames. "Come to bed."
+
+I too looked at Elfie. Might she not, I asked myself, be made the
+innocent means of forcing her mother to leave the house? Trusting to the
+child's fearless character, and her eagerness to see the boat, I
+suddenly opened the door. As I had anticipated, she instantly ran out.
+The second door, leading into the square, I had not closed when I
+entered the courtyard. In another moment Elfie was out in the square,
+triumphing in her freedom. The shrill little voice broke the death-like
+stillness of the place and hour, calling to me again and again to take
+her to the boat.
+
+I turned to Mrs. Van Brandt. The stratagem had succeeded. Elfie's mother
+could hardly refuse to follow when Elfie led the way.
+
+"Will you go with us?" I asked. "Or must I send the money back by the
+child?"
+
+Her eyes rested on me for a moment with a deepening expression of
+distrust, then looked away again. She began to turn pale. "You are not
+like yourself to-night," she said. Without a word more, she took her
+hat and cloak and went out before me into the square. I followed her,
+closing the doors behind me. She made an attempt to induce the child to
+approach her. "Come, darling," she said, enticingly--"come and take my
+hand."
+
+But Elfie was not to be caught: she took to her heels, and answered from
+a safe distance. "No," said the child; "you will take me back and put me
+to bed." She retreated a little further, and held up the key: "I shall
+go first," she cried, "and open the door."
+
+She trotted off a few steps in the direction of the harbor, and waited
+for what was to happen next. Her mother suddenly turned, and looked
+close at me under the light of the stars.
+
+"Are the sailors on board the boat?" she asked.
+
+The question startled me. Had she any suspicion of my purpose? Had
+my face warned her of lurking danger if she went to the boat? It was
+impossible. The more likely motive for her inquiry was to find a new
+excuse for not accompanying me to the harbor. If I told her that the men
+were on board, she might answer, "Why not employ one of your sailors
+to bring the money to me at the house?" I took care to anticipate the
+suggestion in making my reply.
+
+"They may be honest men," I said, watching her carefully; "but I don't
+know them well enough to trust them with money."
+
+To my surprise, she watched me just as carefully on her side, and
+deliberately repeated her question:
+
+"Are the sailors on board the boat?"
+
+I informed her that the captain and crew slept in the boat, and paused
+to see what would follow. My reply seemed to rouse her resolution. After
+a moment's consideration, she turned toward the place at which the child
+was waiting for us. "Let us go, as you insist on it," she said, quietly.
+I made no further remark. Side by side, in silence we followed Elfie on
+our way to the boat.
+
+Not a human creature passed us in the streets; not a light glimmered
+on us from the grim black houses. Twice the child stopped, and (still
+keeping slyly out of her mother's reach) ran back to me, wondering at
+my silence. "Why don't you speak?" she asked. "Have you and mamma
+quarreled?"
+
+I was incapable of answering her--I could think of nothing but my
+contemplated crime. Neither fear nor remorse troubled me. Every better
+instinct, every nobler feeling that I had once possessed, seemed to
+be dead and gone. Not even a thought of the child's future troubled my
+mind. I had no power of looking on further than the fatal leap from the
+boat: beyond that there was an utter blank. For the time being--I can
+only repeat it, my moral sense was obscured, my mental faculties were
+thrown completely off their balance. The animal part of me lived and
+moved as usual; the viler animal instincts in me plotted and planned,
+and that was all. Nobody, looking at me, would have seen anything but a
+dull quietude in my face, an immovable composure in my manner. And yet
+no madman was fitter for restraint, or less responsible morally for his
+own actions, than I was at that moment.
+
+The night air blew more freshly on our faces. Still led by the child, we
+had passed through the last street--we were out on the empty open space
+which was the landward boundary of the harbor. In a minute more we
+stood on the quay, within a step of the gunwale of the boat. I noticed
+a change in the appearance of the harbor since I had seen it last.
+Some fishing-boats had come in during my absence. They moored, some
+immediately astern and some immediately ahead of my own vessel. I looked
+anxiously to see if any of the fishermen were on board and stirring. Not
+a living being appeared anywhere. The men were on shore with their wives
+and their families.
+
+Elfie held out her arms to be lifted on board my boat. Mrs. Van Brandt
+stepped between us as I stooped to take her up.
+
+"We will wait here," she said, "while you go into the cabin and get the
+money."
+
+Those words placed it beyond all doubt that she had her suspicions of
+me--suspicions, probably, which led her to fear not for her life, but
+for her freedom. She might dread being kept a prisoner in the boat, and
+being carried away by me against her will. More than this she could not
+thus far possibly apprehend. The child saved me the trouble of making
+any remonstrance. She was determined to go with me. "I must see the
+cabin," she cried, holding up the key. "I must open the door myself."
+
+She twisted herself out of her mother's hands, and ran round to the
+other side of me. I lifted her over the gunwale of the boat in an
+instant. Before I could turn round, her mother had followed her, and was
+standing on the deck.
+
+The cabin door, in the position which she now occupied, was on her left
+hand. The child was close behind her. I was on her right. Before us
+was the open deck, and the low gunwale of the boat overlooking the deep
+water. In a moment we might step across; in a moment we might take the
+fatal plunge. The bare thought of it brought the mad wickedness in me to
+its climax. I became suddenly incapable of restraining myself. I threw
+my arm round her waist with a loud laugh. "Come," I said, trying to drag
+her across the deck--"come and look at the water."
+
+She released herself by a sudden effort of strength that astonished me.
+With a faint cry of horror, she turned to take the child by the hand and
+get back to the quay. I placed myself between her and the sides of the
+boat, and cut off her retreat in that way. Still laughing, I asked her
+what she was frightened about. She drew back, and snatched the key of
+the cabin door out of the child's hand. The cabin was the one place of
+refuge now left, to which she could escape from the deck of the boat.
+In the terror of the moment, she never hesitated. She unlocked the door,
+and hurried down the two or three steps which led into the cabin, taking
+the child with her. I followed them, conscious that I had betrayed
+myself, yet still obstinately, stupidly, madly bent on carrying out my
+purpose. "I have only to behave quietly," I thought to myself, "and I
+shall persuade her to go on deck again."
+
+My lamp was burning as I had left it; my traveling-bag was on the table.
+Still holding the child, she stood, pale as death, waiting for me.
+Elfie's wondering eyes rested inquiringly on my face as I approached
+them. She looked half inclined to cry; the suddenness of the mother's
+action had frightened the child. I did my best to compose Elfie before
+I spoke to her mother. I pointed out the different objects which were
+likely to interest her in the cabin. "Go and look at them," I said, "go
+and amuse yourself."
+
+The child still hesitated. "Are you angry with me?" she asked.
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"Are you angry with mamma?"
+
+"Certainly not." I turned to Mrs. Van Brandt. "Tell Elfie if I am angry
+with you," I said.
+
+She was perfectly aware, in her critical position, of the necessity of
+humoring me. Between us, we succeeded in composing the child. She turned
+away to examine, in high delight, the new and strange objects which
+surrounded her. Meanwhile her mother and I stood together, looking at
+each other by the light of the lamp, with an assumed composure which hid
+our true faces like a mask. In that horrible situation, the grotesque
+and the terrible, always together in this strange life of ours, came
+together now. On either side of us, the one sound that broke the
+sinister and threatening silence was the lumpish snoring of the sleeping
+captain and crew.
+
+She was the first to speak.
+
+"If you wish to give me the money," she said, trying to propitiate me in
+that way, "I am ready to take it now."
+
+I unlocked my traveling-bag. As I looked into it for the leather case
+which held my money, my overpowering desire to get her on deck again,
+my mad impatience to commit the fatal act, became too strong to be
+controlled.
+
+"We shall be cooler on deck," I said. "Let us take the bag up there."
+
+She showed wonderful courage. I could almost see the cry for help rising
+to her lips. She repressed it; she had still presence of mind enough to
+foresee what might happen before she could rouse the sleeping men.
+
+"We have a light here to count the money by," she answered. "I don't
+feel at all too warm in the cabin. Let us stay here a little longer. See
+how Elfie is amusing herself!"
+
+Her eyes rested on me as she spoke. Something in the expression of them
+quieted me for the time. I was able to pause and think. I might take
+her on deck by force before the men could interfere. But her cries would
+rouse them; they would hear the splash in the water, and they might be
+quick enough to rescue us. It would be wiser, perhaps, to wait a little
+and trust to my cunning to delude her into leaving the cabin of her own
+accord. I put the bag back on the table, and began to search for the
+leather money-case. My hands were strangely clumsy and helpless. I could
+only find the case after scattering half the contents of the bag on the
+table. The child was near me at the time, and noticed what I was doing.
+
+"Oh, how awkward you are!" she burst out, in her frankly fearless way.
+"Let me put your bag tidy. Do, please!"
+
+I granted the request impatiently. Elfie's restless desire to be always
+doing something, instead of amusing me, as usual, irritated me now. The
+interest that I had once felt in the charming little creature was all
+gone. An innocent love was a feeling that was stifled in the poisoned
+atmosphere of my mind that night.
+
+The money I had with me was mostly composed of notes of the Bank of
+England. Carefully keeping up appearances, I set aside the sum that
+would probably be required to take a traveler back to London; and I put
+all that remained into the hands of Mrs. Van Brandt. Could she suspect
+me of a design on her life now?
+
+"That will do for the present," I said. "I can communicate with you in
+the future through Messrs. Van Brandt, of Amsterdam."
+
+She took the money mechanically. Her hand trembled; her eyes met mine
+with a look of piteous entreaty. She tried to revive my old tenderness
+for her; she made a last appeal to my forbearance and consideration.
+
+"We may part friends," she said, in low, trembling tones. "And as
+friends we may meet again, when time has taught you to think forgivingly
+of what has passed between us, to-night."
+
+She offered me her hand. I looked at her without taking it. I penetrated
+her motive in appealing to my old regard for her. Still suspecting me,
+she had tried her last chance of getting safely on shore.
+
+"The less we say of the past, the better," I answered, with ironical
+politeness. "It is getting late. And you will agree with me that Elfie
+ought to be in her bed." I looked round at the child. "Be quick, Elfie,"
+I said; "your mamma is going away." I opened the cabin door, and offered
+my arm to Mrs. Van Brandt. "This boat is my house for the time being,"
+I resumed. "When ladies take leave of me after a visit, I escort them to
+the dock. Pray take my arm."
+
+She started back. For the second time she was on the point of crying for
+help, and for the second time she kept that last desperate alternative
+in reserve.
+
+"I haven't seen your cabin yet," she said, her eyes wild with fear, a
+forced smile on her lips, as she spoke. "There are several little things
+here that interest me. Give me another minute or two to look at them."
+
+She turned away to get nearer to the child, under pretense of looking
+round the cabin. I stood on guard before the open door, watching her.
+She made a second pretense: she noisily overthrew a chair as if by
+accident, and then waited to discover whether her trick had succeeded in
+waking the men.
+
+The heavy snoring went on; not a sound of a person moving was audible on
+either side of us.
+
+"My men are heavy sleepers," I said, smiling significantly. "Don't be
+alarmed; you have not disturbed them. Nothing wakes these Dutch sailors
+when they are once safe in port."
+
+She made no reply. My patience was exhausted. I left the door and
+advanced toward her. She retreated in speechless terror, passing behind
+the table to the other end of the cabin. I followed her until she had
+reached the extremity of the room and could get no further. She met the
+look I fixed on her; she shrunk into a corner, and called for help. In
+the deadly terror that possessed her, she lost the use of her voice. A
+low moaning, hardly louder than a whisper, was all that passed her lips.
+Already, in imagination, I stood with her on the gunwale, already I felt
+the cold contact of the water--when I was startled by a cry behind me.
+I turned round. The cry had come from Elfie. She had apparently just
+discovered some new object in the bag, and she was holding it up in
+admiration, high above her head. "Mamma! mamma!" the child cried,
+excitedly, "look at this pretty thing! Oh, do, do ask him if I may have
+it!"
+
+Her mother ran to her, eager to seize the poorest excuse for getting
+away from me. I followed; I stretched out my hands to seize her. She
+suddenly turned round on me, a woman transformed. A bright flush was
+on her face, an eager wonder sparkled in her eyes. Snatching Elfie's
+coveted object out of the child's hand, she held it up before me. I saw
+it under the lamp-light. It was my little forgotten keepsake--the Green
+Flag!
+
+"How came you by this?" she asked, in breathless anticipation of my
+reply. Not the slightest trace was left in her face of the terror that
+had convulsed it barely a minute since! "How came you by this?" she
+repeated, seizing me by the arm and shaking me, in the ungovernable
+impatience that possessed her.
+
+My head turned giddy, my heart beat furiously under the conflict of
+emotions that she had roused in me. My eyes were riveted on the green
+flag. The words that I wanted to speak were words that refused to come
+to me. I answered, mechanically: "I have had it since I was a boy."
+
+She dropped her hold on me, and lifted her hands with a gesture of
+ecstatic gratitude. A lovely, angelic brightness flowed like light from
+heaven over her face. For one moment she stood enraptured. The next she
+clasped me passionately to her bosom, and whispered in my ear: "I am
+Mary Dermody! I made it for You!"
+
+The shock of discovery, following so closely on all that I had suffered
+before it, was too much for me. I sank, fainting, in her arms.
+
+When I came to myself I was lying on my bed in the cabin. Elfie was
+playing with the green flag, and Mary was sitting by me with my hand in
+hers. One long look of love passed silently from her eyes to mine--from
+mine to hers. In that look the kindred spirits were united; The Two
+Destinies were fulfilled.
+
+THE END OF THE STORY.
+
+
+
+The Finale.
+
+
+
+
+THE WIFE WRITES, AND CLOSES THE STORY.
+
+THERE was a little introductory narrative prefixed to "The Two
+Destinies," which you may possibly have forgotten by this time.
+
+The narrative was written by myself--a citizen of the United States,
+visiting England with his wife. It described a dinner-party at which we
+were present, given by Mr. and Mrs. Germaine, in celebration of their
+marriage; and it mentioned the circumstances under which we were
+intrusted with the story which has just come to an end in these pages.
+Having read the manuscript, Mr. and Mrs. Germaine left it to us to
+decide whether we should continue our friendly intercourse with them or
+not.
+
+At 3 o'clock P.M. we closed the last leaf of the story. Five minutes
+later I sealed it up in its cover; my wife put her bonnet on, and there
+we were, bound straight for Mr. Germaine's house, when the servant
+brought a letter into the room, addressed to my wife.
+
+She opened it, looked at the signature, and discovered that it was "Mary
+Germaine." Seeing this, we sat down side by side to read the letter
+before we did anything else.
+
+On reflection, it strikes me that you may do well to read it, too. Mrs.
+Germaine is surely by this time a person in whom you feel some interest.
+And she is on that account, as I think, the fittest person to close the
+story. Here is her letter:
+
+
+"DEAR MADAM (or may I say--'dear friend'?)--Be prepared, if you please,
+for a little surprise. When you read these lines we shall have left
+London for the Continent.
+
+"After you went away last night, my husband decided on taking this
+journey. Seeing how keenly he felt the insult offered to me by the
+ladies whom we had asked to our table, I willingly prepared for our
+sudden departure. When Mr. Germaine is far away from his false friends,
+my experience of him tells me that he will recover his tranquillity.
+That is enough for me.
+
+"My little daughter goes with us, of course. Early this morning I drove
+to the school in the suburbs at which she is being educated, and took
+her away with me. It is needless to say that she was delighted at the
+prospect of traveling. She shocked the schoolmistress by waving her hat
+over her head and crying 'Hooray,' like a boy. The good lady was very
+careful to inform me that my daughter could not possibly have learned to
+cry 'Hooray' in _her_ house.
+
+"You have probably by this time read the narrative which I have
+committed to your care. I hardly dare ask how I stand in your estimation
+now. Is it possible that I might have seen you and your good husband if
+we had not left London so suddenly? As things are, I must now tell you
+in writing what I should infinitely have preferred saying to you with
+your friendly hand in mine.
+
+"Your knowledge of the world has no doubt already attributed the absence
+of the ladies at our dinner-table to some report affecting my character.
+You are quite right. While I was taking Elfie away from her school, my
+husband called on one of his friends who dined with us (Mr. Waring), and
+insisted on an explanation. Mr. Waring referred him to the woman who
+is known to you by this time as Mr. Van Brandt's lawful wife. In her
+intervals of sobriety she possesses some musical talent; Mrs. Waring had
+met with her at a concert for a charity, and had been interested in
+the story of her wrongs, as she called them. My name was, of course,
+mentioned. I was described as a 'cast-off mistress' of Van Brandt, who
+had persuaded Mr. Germaine into disgracing himself by marrying her,
+and becoming the step-father of her child. Mrs. Waring thereupon
+communicated what she had heard to other ladies who were her friends.
+The result you saw for yourselves when you dined at our house.
+
+"I inform you of what has happened without making any comment. Mr.
+Germaine's narrative has already told you that I foresaw the deplorable
+consequences which might follow our marriage, and that I over and over
+again (God knows at what cost of misery to myself) refused to be his
+wife. It was only when my poor little green flag had revealed us to each
+other that I lost all control over myself. The old time on the banks of
+the lake came back to me; my heart hungered for its darling of happier
+days; and I said Yes, when (as you may think) I ought to have still said
+No. Will you take poor old Dame Dermody's view of it, and believe that
+the kindred spirits, once reunited, could be parted no more? Or will you
+take my view, which is simpler still? I do love him so dearly, and he is
+so fond of me!
+
+"In the meantime, our departure from England seems to be the wisest
+course that we can adopt. As long as this woman lives she will say again
+of me what she has said already, whenever she can find the opportunity.
+My child might hear the reports about her mother, and might be injured
+by them when she gets older. We propose to take up our abode, for a time
+at least, in the neighborhood of Naples. Here, or further away yet, we
+may hope to live without annoyance among a people whose social law
+is the law of mercy. Whatever may happen, we have always one last
+consolation to sustain us--we have love.
+
+"You talked of traveling on the Continent when you dined with us. If you
+should wander our way, the English consul at Naples is a friend of my
+husband's, and he will have our address. I wonder whether we shall ever
+meet again? It does seem hard to charge the misfortunes of my life on
+me, as if they were my faults.
+
+"Speaking of my misfortunes, I may say, before I close this letter, that
+the man to whom I owe them is never likely to cross my path again. The
+Van Brandts of Amsterdam have received certain information that he is
+now on his way to New Zealand. They are determined to prosecute him if
+he returns. He is little likely to give them the opportunity.
+
+"The traveling-carriage is at the door: I must say good-by. My husband
+sends to you both his kindest regards and best wishes. His manuscript
+will be quite safe (when you leave London) if you send it to his
+bankers, at the address inclosed. Think of me sometimes--and think of me
+kindly. I appeal confidently to _your_ kindness, for I don't forget that
+you kissed me at parting. Your grateful friend (if you will let her be
+your friend),
+
+                                    "MARY GERMAINE."
+
+We are rather impulsive people in the United States, and we decide on
+long journeys by sea or land without making the slightest fuss about
+it. My wife and I looked at each other when we had read Mrs. Germaine's
+letter.
+
+"London is dull," I remarked, and waited to see what came of it.
+
+My wife read my remark the right way directly.
+
+"Suppose we try Naples?" she said.
+
+That is all. Permit us to wish you good-by. We are off to Naples.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Two Destinies, by Wilkie Collins
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