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Mary put her trembling lips to my ear, and whispered: "Let me go,
George! I can't bear to see it. Oh, look how he frowns! I know
he'll hurt you."

My father lifted his forefinger as a preliminary warning before
he counted Three.

"Stop!" cried Dame Dermody.

My father looked round at her again with sardonic astonishment.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am--have you anything particular to say to
me?" he asked.

"Man!" returned the Sibyl, "you speak lightly. Have I spoken
lightly to You? I warn you to bow your wicked will before a Will
that is mightier than yours. The spirits of these children are
kindred spirits. For time and for eternity they are united one to
the other. Put land and sea between them--they will still be
together; they will communicate in visions, they will be revealed
to each other in dreams. Bind them by worldly ties; wed your son,
in the time to come, to another woman, and my grand-daughter to
another man. In vain! I tell you, in vain! You may doom them to
misery, you may drive them to sin--the day of their union on
earth is still a day predestined in heaven. It will come! it will
come! Submit, while the time for submission is yours. You are a
doomed man. I see the shadow of disaster, I see the seal of
death, on your face. Go; and leave these consecrated ones to walk
the dark ways of the world together, in the strength of their
innocence, in the light of their love. Go--and God forgive you!"
In spite of himself, my father was struck by the irresistible
strength of conviction which inspired those words. The bailiff's
mother had impressed him as a tragic actress might have impressed
him on the stage. She had checked the mocking answer on his lips,
but she had not shaken his iron will. His face was as hard as
ever when he turned my way once more.

"The last chance, George, " he said, and counted the last number:
"Three!"

I neither moved nor answered him.

"You _will_ have it?" he said, as he fastened his hold on my arm.

I fastened _my_ hold on Mary; I whispered to her, "I won't leave
you!" She seemed not to hear me. She trembled from head to foot
in my arms. A faint cry of terror fluttered from her lips.
Dermody instantly stepped forward. Before my father could wrench
me away from her, he had said in my ear, "You can give her to
_me_, Master George," and had released his child from my embrace.
She stretched her little frail hands out yearningly to me, as she
lay in Dermody's arms. "Good-by, dear," she said, faintly. I saw
her head sink on her father's bosom as I was dragged to the door.
In my helpless rage and misery, I struggled against the cruel
hands that had got me with all the strength I had left. I cried
out to her, "I love you, Mary! I will come back to you, Mary! I
will never marry any one but you!" Step by step, I was forced
further and further away. The last I saw of her, my darling's
head was still resting on Dermody's breast. Her grandmother stood
near, and shook her withered hands at my father, and shrieked her
terrible prophecy, in the hysteric frenzy that possessed her when
she saw the separation accomplished. "Go!--you go to your ruin!
you go to your death!" While her voice still rang in my ears, the
cottage door was opened and closed again. It was all over. The
modest world of my boyish love and my boyish joy disappeared like
the vision of a dream. The empty outer wilderness, which was my
father's world, opened before me void of love and void of joy.
God forgive me--how I hated him at that moment!

CHAPTER IV.

THE CURTAIN FALLS.

FOR the rest of the day, and through the night, I was kept a
close prisoner in my room, watched by a man on whose fidelity my
father could depend.

The next morning I made an effort to escape, and was discovered
before I had got free of the house. Confined again to my room, I
contrived to write to Mary, and to slip my note into the willing
hand of the housemaid who attended on me. Useless! The vigilance
of my guardian was not to be evaded. The woman was suspected and
followed, and the letter was taken from her. My father tore it up
with his own hands.

Later in the day, my mother was permitted to see me.

She was quite unfit, poor soul, to intercede for me, or to serve
my interests in any way. My father had completely overwhelmed her
by announcing that his wife and his son were to accompany him,
when he returned to America.

"Every farthing he has in the world," said my mother, "is to be
thrown into that hateful speculation. He has raised money in
London; he has let the house to some rich tradesman for seven
years; he has sold the plate, and the jewels that came to me from
his mother. The land in America swallows it all up. We have no
home, George, and no choice but to go with him."

An hour afterward the post-chaise was at the door.

My father himself took me to the carriage. I broke away from him,
with a desperation which not even his resolution could resist. I
ran, I flew, along the path that led to Dermody's cottage. The
door stood open; the parlor was empty. I went into the kitchen; I
went into the upper rooms. Solitude everywhere. The bailiff had
left the place; and his mother and his daughter had gone with
him. No friend or neighbor lingered near with a message; no
letter lay waiting for me; no hint was left to tell me in what
direction they had taken their departure. After the insulting
words which his master had spoken to him, Dermody's pride was
concerned in leaving no trace of his whereabouts; my father might
consider it as a trace purposely left with the object of
reuniting Mary and me. I had no keepsake to speak to me of my
lost darling but the flag which she had embroidered with her own
hand. The furniture still remained in the cottage. I sat down in
our customary corner, by Mary's empty chair, and looked again at
the pretty green flag, and burst out crying.

A light touch roused me. My father had so far yielded as to leave
to my mother the responsibility of bringing me back to the
traveling carriage.

"We shall not find Mary here, George," she said, gently. "And we
_ may_ hear of her in London. Come with me."

I rose and silently gave her my hand. Something low down on the
clean white door-post caught my eye as we passed it. I stooped,
and discovered some writing in pencil. I looked closer--it was
writing in Mary's hand! The unformed childish characters traced
these last words of farewell:

"Good-by, dear. Don't forget Mary."

I knelt down and kissed the writing. It comforted me--it was like
a farewell touch from Mary's hand. I followed my mother quietly
to the carriage.

Late that night we were in London.

My good mother did all that the most compassionate kindness could
do (in her position) to comfort me. She privately wrote to the
solicitors employed by her family, inclosing a description of
Dermody and his mother and daughter and directing inquiries to be
made at the various coach-offices in London. She also referred
the lawyers to two of Dermody's relatives, who lived in the city,
a nd who might know something of his movements after he left my
father's service. When she had done this, she had done all that
lay in her power. We neither of us possessed money enough to
advertise in the newspapers.

A week afterward we sailed for the United States. Twice in that
interval I communicated with the lawyers; and twice I was
informed that the inquiries had led to nothing.


With this the first epoch in my love story comes to an end.

For ten long years afterward I never again met with my little
Mary; I never even heard whether she had lived to grow to
womanhood or not. I still kept the green flag, with the dove
worked on it. For the rest, the waters of oblivion had closed
over the old golden days at Greenwater Broad.

CHAPTER V.

MY STORY.

WHEN YOU last saw me, I was a boy of thirteen. You now see me a
man of twenty-three.

The story of my life, in the interval between these two ages, is
a story that can be soon told.

Speaking of my father first, I have to record that the end of his
career did indeed come as Dame Dermody had foretold it. Before we
had been a year in America, the total collapse of his land
speculation was followed by his death. The catastrophe was
complete. But for my mother's little income (settled on her at
her marriage) we should both have been left helpless at the mercy
of the world.

We made some kind friends among the hearty and hospitable people
of the United States, whom we were unaffectedly sorry to leave.
But there were reasons which inclined us to return to our own
country after my father's death; and we did return accordingly.

Besides her brother-in-law (already mentioned in the earlier
pages of my narrative), my mother had another relative--a cousin
named Germaine--on whose assistance she mainly relied for
starting me, when the time came, in a professional career. I
remember it as a family rumor, that Mr. Germaine had been an
unsuccessful suitor for my mother's hand in the days when they
were young people together. He was still a bachelor at the later
period when his eldest brother's death without issue placed him
in possession of a handsome fortune. The accession of wealth made
no difference in his habits of life: he was a lonely old man,
estranged from his other relatives, when my mother and I returned
to England. If I could only succeed in pleasing Mr. Germaine, I
might consider my prospects (in some degree, at least) as being
prospects assured.

This was one consideration that influenced us in leaving America.
There was another--in which I was especially interested--that
drew me back to the lonely shores of Greenwater Broad.

My only hope of recovering a trace of Mary was to make inquiries
among the cottagers in the neighborhood of my old home. The good
bailiff had been heartily liked and respected in his little
sphere. It seemed at least possible that some among his many
friends in Suffolk might have discovered traces of him, in the
year that had passed since I had left England. In my dreams of
Mary--and I dreamed of her constantly--the lake and its woody
banks formed a frequent background in the visionary picture of my
lost companion. To the lake shores I looked, with a natural
superstition, as to my way back to the one life that had its
promise of happiness for _me_--my life with Mary.

On our arrival in London, I started for Suffolk alone--at my
mother's request. At her age she naturally shrank from revisiting
the home scenes now occupied by the strangers to whom our house
had been let.

Ah, how my heart ached (young as I was) when I saw the familiar
green waters of the lake once more! It was evening. The first
object that caught my eye was the gayly painted boat, once mine,
in which Mary and I had so often sailed together. The people in
possession of our house were sailing now. The sound of their
laughter floated toward me merrily over the still water. _Their_
flag flew at the little mast-head, from which Mary's flag had
never fluttered in the pleasant breeze. I turned my eyes from the
boat; it hurt me to look at it. A few steps onward brought me to
a promontory on the shore, and revealed the brown archways of the
decoy on the opposite bank. There was the paling behind which we
had knelt to watch the snaring of the ducks; there was the hole
through which "Trim," the terrier, had shown himself to rouse the
stupid curiosity of the water-fowl; there, seen at intervals
through the trees, was the winding woodland path along which Mary
and I had traced our way to Dermody's cottage on the day when my
father's cruel hand had torn us from each other. How wisely my
good mother had shrunk from looking again at the dear old scenes!
I turned my back on the lake, to think with calmer thoughts in
the shadowy solitude of the woods.

An hour's walk along the winding banks brought me round to the
cottage which had once been Mary's home.

The door was opened by a woman who was a stranger to me. She
civilly asked me to enter the parlor. I had suffered enough
already; I made my inquiries, standing on the doorstep. They were
soon at an end. The woman was a stranger in our part of Suffolk;
neither she nor her husband had ever heard of Dermody's name.

I pursued my investigations among the peasantry, passing from
cottage to cottage. The twilight came; the moon rose; the lights
began to vanish from the lattice-windows; and still I continued
my weary pilgrimage; and still, go where I might, the answer to
my questions was the same. Nobody knew anything of Dermody.
Everybody asked if I had not brought news of him myself. It pains
me even now to recall the cruelly complete defeat of every effort
which I made on that disastrous evening. I passed the night in
one of the cottages; and I returned to London the next day,
broken by disappointment, careless what I did, or where I went
next.

Still, we were not wholly parted. I saw Mary--as Dame Dermody
said I should see her--in dreams.

Sometimes she came to me with the green flag in her hand, and
repeated her farewell words--"Don't forget Mary!" Sometimes she
led me to our well-remembered corner in the cottage parlor, and
opened the paper on which her grandmother had written our prayers
for us. We prayed together again, and sung hymns together again,
as if the old times had come back. Once she appeared to me, with
tears in her eyes, and said, "We must wait, dear: our time has
not come yet." Twice I saw her looking at me, like one disturbed
by anxious thoughts; and twice I heard her say, "Live patiently,
live innocently, George, for my sake."

We settled in London, where my education was undertaken by a
private tutor. Before we had been long in our new abode, an
unexpected change in our prospects took place. To my mother's
astonishment she received an offer of marriage (addressed to her
in a letter) from Mr. Germaine.

"I entreat you not to be startled by my proposal!" (the old
gentleman wrote). "You can hardly have forgotten that I was once
fond of you, in the days when we were both young and both poor.
No return to the feelings associated with that time is possible
now. At my age, all I ask of you is to be the companion of the
closing years of my life, and to give me something of a father's
interest in promoting the future welfare of your son. Consider
this, my dear, and tell me whether you will take the empty chair
at an old man's lonely fireside."

My mother (looking almost as confused, poor soul! as if she had
become a young girl again) left the whole responsibility of
decision on the shoulders of her son! I was not long in making up
my mind. If she said Yes, she would accept the hand of a man of
worth and honor, who had been throughout his whole life devoted
to her; and she would recover the comfort, the luxury, the social
prosperity and position of which my father's reckless course of
life had deprived her. Add to this, that I liked Mr. Germaine,
and that Mr. Germaine liked me. Under these circumstances, why
should my mother say No? She could produce no satisfactory answer
to that question when I put it. As the necessary consequence, she
became, in due course of time, Mrs. Germaine.

I have only to add that, to the end of her life, my good mother
congratulated he rself (in this case at least) on having taken
her son's advice.

The years went on, and still Mary and I were parted, except in my
dreams. The years went on, until the perilous time which comes in
every man's life came in mine. I reached the age when the
strongest of all the passions seizes on the senses, and asserts
its mastery over mind and body alike.

I had hitherto passively endured the wreck of my earliest and
dearest hopes: I had lived patiently, and lived innocently, for
Mary's sake. Now my patience left me; my innocence was numbered
among the lost things of the past. My days, it is true, were
still devoted to the tasks set me by my tutor; but my nights were
given, in secret, to a reckless profligacy, which (in my present
frame of mind) I look back on with disgust and dismay. I profaned
my remembrances of Mary in the company of women who had reached
the lowest depths of degradation. I impiously said to myself: "I
have hoped for her long enough; I have waited for her long
enough. The one thing now to do is to enjoy my youth and to
forget her."

From the moment when I dropped into this degradation, I might
sometimes think regretfully of Mary--at the morning time, when
penitent thoughts mostly come to us; but I ceased absolutely to
see her in my dreams. We were now, in the completest sense of the
word, parted. Mary's pure spirit could hold no communion with
mine; Mary's pure spirit had left me.

It is needless to say that I failed to keep the secret of my
depravity from the knowledge of my mother. The sight of her grief
was the first influence that sobered me. In some degree at least
I restrained myself: I made the effort to return to purer ways of
life. Mr. Germaine, though I had disappointed him, was too just a
man to give me up as lost. He advised me, as a means of
self-reform, to make my choice of a profession, and to absorb
myself in closer studies than any that I had yet pursued.

I made my peace with this good friend and second father, not only
by following his advice, but by adopting the profession to which
he had been himself attached before he inherited his fortune--the
profession of medicine. Mr. Germaine had been a surgeon: I
resolved on being a surgeon too.

Having entered, at rather an earlier age than usual, on my new
way of life, I may at least say for myself that I worked hard. I
won, and kept, the interest of the professors under whom I
studied. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that my
reformation was, morally speaking, far from being complete. I
worked; but what I did was done selfishly, bitterly, with a hard
heart. In religion and morals I adopted the views of a
materialist companion of my studies--a worn-out man of more than
double my age. I believed in nothing but what I could see, or
taste, or feel. I lost all faith in humanity. With the one
exception of my mother, I had no respect for women. My
remembrances of Mary deteriorated until they became little more
than a lost link of association with the past. I still preserved
the green flag as a matter of habit; but it was no longer kept
about me; it was left undisturbed in a drawer of my writing-desk.
Now and then a wholesome doubt, whether my life was not utterly
unworthy of me, would rise in my mind. But it held no long
possession of my thoughts. Despising others, it was in the
logical order of things that I should follow my conclusions to
their bitter end, and consistently despise myself.

The term of my majority arrived. I was twenty-one years old; and
of the illusions of my youth not a vestige remained.

Neither my mother nor Mr. Germaine could make any positive
complaint of my conduct. But they were both thoroughly uneasy
about me. After anxious consideration, my step-father arrived at
a conclusion. He decided that the one chance of restoring me to
my better and brighter self was to try the stimulant of a life
among new people and new scenes.

At the period of which I am now writing, the home government had
decided on sending a special diplomatic mission to one of the
native princes ruling over a remote province of our Indian
empire. In the disturbed state of the province at that time, the
mission, on its arrival in India, was to be accompanied to the
prince's court by an escort, including the military as well as
the civil servants of the crown. The surgeon appointed to sail
with the expedition from England was an old friend of Mr.
Germaine's, and was in want of an assistant on whose capacity he
could rely. Through my stepfather's interest, the post was
offered to me. I accepted it without hesitation. My only pride
left was the miserable pride of indifference. So long as I
pursued my profession, the place in which I pursued it was a
matter of no importance to my mind.

It was long before we could persuade my mother even to
contemplate the new prospect now set before me. When she did at
length give way, she yielded most unwillingly. I confess I left
her with the tears in my eyes--the first I had shed for many a
long year past.

The history of our expedition is part of the history of British
India. It has no place in this narrative.

Speaking personally, I have to record that I was rendered
incapable of performing my professional duties in less than a
week from the time when the mission reached its destination. We
were encamped outside the city; and an attack was made on us,
under cover of darkness, by the fanatical natives. The attempt
was defeated with little difficulty, and with only a trifling
loss on our side. I was among the wounded, having been struck by
a javelin, or spear, while I was passing from one tent to
another.

Inflicted by a European weapon, my injury would have been of no
serious consequence. But the tip of the Indian spear had been
poisoned. I escaped the mortal danger of lockjaw; but, through
some peculiarity in the action of the poison on my constitution
(which I am quite unable to explain), the wound obstinately
refused to heal.

I was invalided and sent to Calcutta, where the best surgical
help was at my disposal. To all appearance, the wound healed
there--then broke out again. Twice this happened; and the medical
men agreed that the best course to take would be to send me home.
They calculated on the invigorating effect of the sea voyage,
and, failing this, on the salutary influence of my native air. In
the Indian climate I was pronounced incurable.

Two days before the ship sailed a letter from my mother brought
me startling news. My life to come--if I _had_ a life to
come--had been turned into a new channel. Mr. Germaine had died
suddenly, of heart-disease. His will, bearing date at the time
when I left England, bequeathed an income for life to my mother,
and left the bulk of his property to me, on the one condition
that I adopted his name. I accepted the condition, of course, and
became George Germaine.

Three months later, my mother and I were restored to each other.

Except that I still had some trouble with my wound, behold me now
to all appearance one of the most enviable of existing mortals;
promoted to the position of a wealthy gentleman; possessor of a
house in London and of a country-seat in Perthshire; and,
nevertheless, at twenty-three years of age, one of the most
miserable men living!


And Mary?

In the ten years that had now passed over, what had become of
Mary?

You have heard my story. Read the few pages that follow, and you
will hear hers.

CHAPTER VI.

HER STORY.

WHAT I have now to tell you of Mary is derived from information
obtained at a date in my life later by many years than any date
of which I have written yet. Be pleased to remember this.


Dermody, the bailiff, possessed relatives in London, of whom he
occasionally spoke, and relatives in Scotland, whom he never
mentioned. My father had a strong prejudice against the Scotch
nation. Dermody knew his master well enough to be aware that the
prejudice might extend to _him_, if he spoke of his Scotch
kindred. He was a discreet man, and he never mentioned them.

On leaving my father's service, he had made his way, partly by
land and partly by sea, to Glasgow--in which city his friends
resided. With his character and his experience, Dermody was a man
in a
thousand to any master who was lucky enough to discover him. His
friends bestirred themselves. In six weeks' time he was placed in
charge of a gentleman's estate on the eastern coast of Scotland,
and was comfortably established with his mother and his daughter
in a new home.

The insulting language which my father had addressed to him had
sunk deep in Dermody's mind. He wrote privately to his relatives
in London, telling them that he had found a new situation which
suited him, and that he had his reasons for not at present
mentioning his address. In this way he baffled the inquiries
which my mother's lawyers (failing to discover a trace of him in
other directions) addressed to his London friends. Stung by his
old master's reproaches, he sacrificed his daughter and he
sacrificed me--partly to his own sense of self-respect, partly to
his conviction that the difference between us in rank made it his
duty to check all further intercourse before it was too late.

Buried in their retirement in a remote part of Scotland, the
little household lived, lost to me, and lost to the world.

In dreams, I had seen and heard Mary. In dreams, Mary saw and
heard me. The innocent longings and wishes which filled my heart
while I was still a boy were revealed to her in the mystery of
sleep. Her grandmother, holding firmly to her faith in the
predestined union between us, sustained the girl's courage and
cheered her heart. She could hear her father say (as my father
had said) that we were parted to meet no more, and could
privately think of her happy dreams as the sufficient promise of
another future than the future which Dermody contemplated. So she
still lived with me in the spirit--and lived in hope.

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