Book: THE TWO DESTINIES

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"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.

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