Book: THE TWO DESTINIES

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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 se tting 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 i t 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 discovere d 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.

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