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James Rusk, jrusk@cyberramp.net.]





[Etext prepared by James Rusk, jrusk@cyberramp.net. Italics are
indicated by the underscore character.]





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 a nd 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.

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