Book: THE TWO DESTINIES

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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 th e 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."

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