Book: THE TWO DESTINIES

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The doctor produced another spoonful of the elixir of life, and
gravely repeated his first address to me.

"Open your mouth, sir, and take a sup of this."

I persisted in repeating my question:

"Where is she?"

The doctor persisted in repeating his formula:

"Take a sup of this."

I was too weak to contest the matter; I obeyed. My medical
attendant nodded across the bed to my mother, and said, "Now,
he'll do." My mother had some compassion on me. She relieved my
anxiety in these plain words:

"The lady has quite recovered, George, thanks to the doctor
here."

I looked at my professional colleague with a new interest. He was
the legitimate fountainhead of the information that I was dying
to have poured into my mind.

"How did you revive her?" I asked. "Where is she now?"

The doctor held up his hand, warning me to stop.

"We shall do well, sir, if we proceed systematically," he began,
in a very positive manner. "You will understand, that every time
you open your mouth, it will be to take a sup of this, and not to
speak. I shall tell you, in due course, and the good lady, your
mother, will tell you, all that you have any need to know. As I
happen to have been first on what you may call the scene of
action, it stands in the fit order of things that I should speak
first. You will just permit me to mix a little more of the elixir
of life, and then, as the poet says, my plain unvarnished tale I
shall deliver."

So he spoke, pronouncing in his strong Scotch accent the most
carefully selected English I had ever heard. A hard-headed,
square-shouldered, pertinaciously self-willed man--it was plainly
useless to contend with him. I turned to my mother's gentle face
for encouragement; and I let my doctor have his own way.

"My name," he proceeded, "is MacGlue. I had the honor of
presenting my respects at your house yonder when you first came
to live in this neighborhood. You don't remember me at present,
which is natural enough in the unbalanced condition of your mind,
consequent, you will understand (as a professional person
yourself) on copious loss of blood."

There my patience gave way.

"Never mind me!" I interposed. "Tell me about the lady!"

"You have opened your mouth, sir!" cried Mr. MacGlue, severely.
"You know the penalty--take a sup of this. I told you we should
proceed systematically," he went on, after he had forced me to
submit to the penalty. "Everything in its place, Mr.
Germaine--everything in its place. I was speaking of your bodily
condition. Well, sir, and how did I discover your bodily
condition? Providentially for _you_ I was driving home yesterday
evening by the lower road (which is the road by the river bank),
and, drawing near to the inn here (they call it a hotel; it's
nothing but an inn), I heard the screeching of the landlady half
a mile off. A good woman enough, you will understand, as times
go; but a poor creature in any emergency. Keep still, I'm coming
to it now. Well, I went in to see if the screeching related to
anything wanted in the medical way; and there I found you and the
stranger lady in a position which I may truthfully describe as
standing in some need of improvement on the score of propriety.
Tut! tut! I speak jocosely--you were both in a dead swoon. Having
heard what the landlady had to tell me, and having, to the best
of my ability, separated history from hysterics in the course of
the woman's narrative, I found myself, as it were, placed between
two laws. The law of gallantry, you see, pointed to the lady as
the first object of my professional services, while the law of
humanity (seeing that you were still bleeding) pointed no less
imperatively to you. I am no longer a young man: I left the lady
to wait. My word! it was no light matter, Mr. Germaine, to deal
with your case, and get you carried up here out of the way. That
old wound of yours, sir, is not to be trifled with. I bid you
beware how you open it again. The next time you go out for an
evening walk and you see a lady in the water, you will do well
for your own health to leave her there. What's that I see? Are
you opening your mouth again? Do you want another sup already?"

"He wants to hear more about the lady," said my mother,
interpreting my wishes for me.

"Oh, the lady," resumed Mr. MacGlue, with the air of a man who
found no great attraction in the subject proposed to him.
"There's not much that I know of to be said about the lady. A
fine woman, no doubt. If you could strip the flesh off her bones,
you would find a splendid skeleton underneath. For, mind this!
there's no such thing as a finely made woman without a good bony
scaffolding to build her on at starting. I don't think much of
this lady--morally speaking, you will understand. If I may be
permitted to say so in your presence, ma'am, there's a man in the
background of that dramatic scene of hers on the bridge. However,
not being the man myself, I have nothing to do with that. My
business with the lady was just to set her vital machinery going
again. And, Heaven knows, she proved a heavy handful! It was even
a more obstinate case to deal with, sir, than yours. I never, in
all my experience, met with two people more unwilling to come
back to this world and its troubles than you two were. And when I
had done the business at last, when I was wellnigh swooning
myself with the work and the worry of it, guess--I give you leave
to speak for this once--guess what were the first words the, lady
said to me when she came to herself again."

I was too much excited to be able to exercise my ingenuity. "I
give it up!" I said, impatiently.

"You may well give it up," remarked Mr. MacGlue. "The first words
she addressed, sir, to the man who had dragged her
out of the very jaws of death were these: 'How dare you meddle
with me? why didn't you leave me to die?' Her exact
language--I'll take my Bible oath of it. I was so provoked that I
gave her the change back (as the saying is) in her own coin.
'There's the river handy, ma'am,' I said; 'do it again. I, for
one, won't stir a hand to save you; I promise you that.' She
looked up sharply. 'Are you the man who took me out of the
river?' she said. 'God forbid!' says I. 'I'm only the doctor who
was fool enough to meddle with you afterward.' She turned to the
landlady. 'Who took me out of the river?' she asked. The landlady
told her, and mentioned your name. 'Germaine?' she said to
herself; 'I know nobody named Germaine; I wonder whether it was
the man who spoke to me on the bridge?' 'Yes,' says the landlady;
'Mr. Germaine said he met you on the bridge.' Hearing that, she
took a little time to think; and then she asked if she could see
Mr. Germaine. 'Whoever he is,' she says, 'he has risked his life
to save me, and I ought to thank him for doing that.' 'You can't
thank him tonight,' I said; 'I've got him upstairs between life
and death, and I've sent for his mother: wait till to-morrow.'
She turned on me, looking half frightened, half angry. 'I can't
wait,' she says; 'you don't know what you have done among you in
bringing me back to life. I must leave this neighborhood; I must
be out of Perthshire to-morrow: when does the first coach
southward pass this way?' Having nothing to do with the first
coach southward, I referred her to the people of the inn. My
business (now I had done with the lady) was upstairs in this
room, to see how you were getting on. You were getting on as well
as I could wish, and your mother was at your bedside. I went home
to see what sick people might be waiting for me in the regular
way. When I came back this morning, there was the foolish
landlady with a new tale to tell 'Gone!' says she. 'Who's gone?'
says I. 'The lady,' says she, 'by the first coach this morning!'
"

"You don't mean to tell me that she has left the house?" I
exclaimed.

"Oh, but I do!" said the doctor, as positively as ever. "Ask
madam your mother here, and she'll certify it to your heart's
content. I've got other sick ones to visit, and I'm away on my
rounds. You'll see no more of the lady; and so much the better,
I'm thinking. In two hours' time I'll be back again; and if I
don't find you the worse in the interim, I'll see about having
you transported from this strange place to the snug bed that
knows you at home. Don't let him talk, ma'am, don't let him
talk."

With those parting words, Mr. MacGlue left us to ourselves.

"Is it really true?" I said to my mother. "Has she left the inn,
without waiting to see me?"

"Nobody could stop her, George," my mother answered. "The lady
left the inn this morning by the coach for Edinburgh."

I was bitterly disappointed. Yes: "bitterly" is the word--though
she _was_ a stranger to me.

"Did you see her yourself?" I asked.

"I saw her for a few minutes, my dear, on my way up to your
room."

"What did she say?"

"She begged me to make her excuses to you. She said, 'Tell Mr.
Germaine that my situation is dreadful; no human creature can
help me. I must go away. My old life is as much at an end as if
your son had left me to drown in the river. I must find a new
life for myself, in a new place. Ask Mr. Germaine to forgive me
for going away without thanking him. I daren't wait! I may be
followed and found out. There is a person whom I am determined
never to see again--never! never! never! Good-by; and try to
forgive me!' She hid her face in her hands, and said no more. I
tried to win her confidence; it was not to be done; I was
compelled to leave her. There is some dreadful calamity, George,
in that wretched woman's life. And such an interesting creature,
too! It was impossible not to pity her, whether she deserved it
or not. Everything about her is a mystery, my dear. She speaks
English without the slightest foreign accent, and yet she has a
foreign name."

"Did she give you her name?"

"No, and I was afraid to ask her to give it. But the landlady
here is not a very scrupulous person. She told me she looked at
the poor creature's linen while it was drying by the fire. The
name marked on it was, 'Van Brandt.' "

"Van Brandt?" I repeated. "That sounds like a Dutch name. And yet
you say she spoke like an Englishwoman. Perhaps she was born in
England."

"Or perhaps she may be married," suggested my mother; "and Van
Brandt may be the name of her husband."

The idea of her being a married woman had something in it
repellent to me. I wished my mother had not thought of that last
suggestion. I refused to receive it. I persisted in my own belief
that the stranger was a single woman. In that character, I could
indulge myself in the luxury of thinking of her; I could consider
the chances of my being able to trace this charming fugitive, who
had taken so strong a hold on my interest--whose desperate
attempt at suicide had so nearly cost me my own life.

If she had gone as far as Edinburgh (which she would surely do,
being bent on avoiding discovery), the prospect of finding her
again--in that great city. and in my present weak state of
health--looked doubtful indeed. Still, there was an underlying
hopefulness in me which kept my spirits from being seriously
depressed. I felt a purely imaginary (perhaps I ought to say, a
purely superstitious) conviction that we who had nearly died
together, we who had been brought to life together, were surely
destined to be involved in some future joys or sorrows common to
us both. "I fancy I shall see her again," was my last thought
before my weakness overpowered me, and I sunk into a peaceful
sleep.

That night I was removed from the inn to my own room at home; and
that night I saw her again in a dream.

The image of her was as vividly impressed on me as the far
different image of the child Mary, when I used to see it in the
days of old. The dream-figure of the woman was robed as I had
seen it robed on the bridge. She wore the same broad-brimmed
garden-hat of straw. She looked at me as she had looked when I
approached her in the dim evening light. After a little her face
brightened with a divinely beautiful smile; and she whispered in
my ear, "Friend, do you know me?"

I knew her, most assuredly; and yet it was with an
incomprehensible after-feeling of doubt. Recognizing her in my
dream as the stranger who had so warmly interested me, I was,
nevertheless, dissatisfied with myself, as if it had not been the
right recognition. I awoke with this idea; and I slept no more
that night.

In three days' time I was strong enough to go out driving with my
mother, in the comfortable, old-fashioned, open carriage which
had once belonged to Mr. Germaine.

On the fourth day we arranged to make an excursion to a little
waterfall in our neighborhood. My mother had a great admiration
of the place, and had often expressed a wish to possess some
memorial of it. I resolved to take my sketch-book: with me, on
the chance that I might be able to please her by making a drawing
of her favorite scene.

Searching for the sketch-book (which I had not used for years), I
found it in an old desk of mine that had remained unopened since
my departure for India. In the course of my investigation, I
opened a drawer in the desk, and discovered a relic of the old
times--my poor little Mary's first work in embroidery, the green
flag!

The sight of the forgotten keepsake took my mind back to the
bailiff's cottage, and reminded me of Dame Dermody, and her
confident prediction about Mary and me.

I smiled as I recalled the old woman's assertion that no human
power could "hinder the union of the kindred spirits of the
children in the time to come." What had become of the prophesied
dreams in which we were to communicate with each other through
the term of our separation? Years had passed; and, sleeping or
waking, I had seen nothing of Mary. Years had passed; and the
first vision of a woman that had come to me had been my dream a
few nights since of the stranger whom I had saved from drowning.
I thought of these chances and changes in my life, but not
contemptuously or bitterly. The new love that was now stealing
its way into my heart had softened and humanized me. I said to
myself, "Ah, poor little Mary!" and I kissed the green flag, in
grateful memory of the days that were gone forever.

We drove to the waterfall.

It was a beautiful day; the lonely sylvan scene was at its
brightest and best. A wooden summer-house, commanding a prospect
of the falling stream, had been built for the accommodation of
pleasure parties by the proprietor of the place. My mother
suggested that I should try to make a sketch of the view from
this point. I did my best to please her, but I was not satisfied
with the result; and I abandoned my drawing before it was half
finished. Leaving my sketch-book and pencil on the table of the
summer-house, I proposed to my mother to cross a little wooden
bridge which spanned the stream, below the fall, and to see how
the landscape looked from a new point of view.

The prospect of the waterfall, as seen from the opposite bank,
presented even greater difficulties, to an amateur artist like
me, than the prospect which he had just left. We returned to the
summer-house.

I was the first to approach the open door. I stopped, checked in
my advance by an unexpected discovery. The summer-house was no
longer empty as we had left it. A lady was seated at the table
with my pencil in her hand, writing in my sketch-book!

After waiting a moment, I advanced a few steps nearer to the
door, and stopped again in breathless amazement. The stranger in
the summer-house was now plainly revealed to me as the woman who
had attempted to destroy herself from the bridge!

There was no doubt about it. There was the dress; there was the
memorable face which I had seen in the evening light, which I had
dreamed of only a few nights since! The woman herself--I saw her
as plainly as I saw the sun shining on the waterfall--the woman
herself, with my pencil in her hand, writing in my book!

My mother was close behind me. She noticed my agitation.
"George!" she exclaimed, "what is the matter with you?"

I pointed through the open door of the summer-house.

"Well?" said my mother. "What am I to look at?"

"Don't you see somebody sitting at the table and writing in my
sketch-book?"

My mother eyed me quickly. "Is he going to be ill again?" I heard
her say to herself.

At the same moment the woman laid down the pencil and rose slowly
to her feet.

She looked at me with sorrowful and pleading eyes: she lifted her
hand and beckoned me to approach her. I obeyed. Moving without
conscious will of my own, drawn nearer and nearer to her by an
irresistible power, I ascended the short flight of stairs which
led into the summer-house. Within a few paces of her I stopped.
She advanced a step toward me, and laid her hand gently on my
bosom. Her touch filled me with strangely united sensations of
rapture and awe. After a while, she spoke in low melodious tones,
which mingled in my ear with the distant murmur of the falling
water, until the two sounds became one. I heard in the murmur, I
heard in the voice, these words: "Remember me. Come to me." Her
hand dropped from my bosom; a momentary obscurity passed like a
flying shadow over the bright daylight in the room. I looked for
her when the light came back. She was gone.

My consciousness of passing events returned.

I saw the lengthening shadows outside, which told me that the
evening was at hand. I saw the carriage approaching the
summerhouse to take us away. I felt my mother's hand on my arm,
and heard her voice speaking to me anxiously. I was able to reply
by a sign entreating her not to be uneasy about me, but I could
do no more. I was absorbed, body and soul, in the one desire to
look at the sketch-book. As certainly as I had seen the woman, so
certainly I had seen her, with my pencil in her hand, writing in
my book.

I advanced to the table on which the book was lying open. I
looked at the blank space on the lower part of the page, under
the foreground lines of my unfinished drawing. My mother,
following me, looked at the page too.

There was the writing! The woman had disappeared, but there were
her written words left behind her: visible to my mother as well
as to me, readable by my mother's eyes as well as by mine!

These were the words we saw, arranged in two lines, as I copy
them here:

When the full moon shines
On Saint Anthony's Well.


CHAPTER IX.

NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL.

I POINTED to the writing in the sketch book, and looked at my
mother. I was not mistaken. She _had_ seen it, as I had seen it.
But she refused to acknowledge that anything had happened to
alarm her--plainly as I could detect it in her face.

"Somebody has been playing a trick on you, George," she said.

I made no reply. It was needless to say anything. My poor mother
was evidently as far from being satisfied with her own shallow
explanation as I was. The carriage waited for us at the door. We
set forth in silence on our drive home.

The sketch-book lay open on my knee. My eyes were fastened on it;
my mind was absorbed in recalling the moment when the apparition
beckoned me into the summer-house and spoke. Putting the words
and the writing together, the conclusion was too plain to be
mistaken. The woman whom I had saved from drowning had need of me
again.

And this was the same woman who, in her own proper person, had
not hesitated to seize the first opportunity of leaving the house
in which we had been sheltered together--without stopping to say
one grateful word to the man who had preserved her from death!
Four days only had elapsed since she had left me, never (to all
appearance) to see me again. And now the ghostly apparition of
her had returned as to a tried and trusted friend; had commanded
me to remember her and to go to her; and had provided against all
possibility of my memory playing me false, by writing the words
which invited me to meet her "when the full moon shone on Saint
Anthony's Well."

What had happened in the interval? What did the supernatural
manner of her communication with me mean? What ought my next
course of action to be?

My mother roused me from my reflections. She stretched out her
hand, and suddenly closed the open book on my knee, as if the
sight of the writing in it were unendurable to her.

"Why don't you speak to me, George?" she said. "Why do you keep
your thoughts to yourself?"

"My mind is lost in confusion," I answered. "I can suggest
nothing and explain nothing. My thoughts are all bent on the one
question of what I am to do next. On that point I believe I may
say that my mind is made up." I touched the sketch-book as I
spoke. "Come what may of it," I said, "I mean to keep the
appointment."

My mother looked at me as if she doubted the evidence of her own
senses.

"He talks as if it were a real thing!" she exclaimed. "George,
you don't really believe that you saw somebody in the
summer-house? The place was empty. I tell you positively, when
you pointed into the summer-house, the place was empty. You have
been thinking and thinking of this woman till you persuade
yourself that you have actually seen her."

I opened the sketch-book again. "I thought I saw her writing on
this page," I answered. "Look at it, and tell me if I was wrong."

My mother refused to look at it. Steadily as she persisted in
taking the rational view, nevertheless the writing frightened
her.

"It is not a week yet," she went on, "since I saw you lying
between life and death in your bed at the inn. How can you talk
of keeping the appointment, in your state of health? An
appointment with a shadowy Something in your own imagination,
which appears and disappears, and leaves substantial writing
behind it! It's ridiculous, George; I wonder you can help
laughing at yourself."

She tried to set the example of laughing at me--with the tears in
her eyes, poor soul! as she made the useless effort. I began to
regret having opened my mind so freely to her.

"Don't take the matter too seriously, mother," I said. "Perhaps I
may not be able to find the place. I never heard of Saint
Anthony's Well; I have not the least idea where it is. Suppose I
make the discovery, and suppose the journey turns out to be an
easy one, would you like to go with me?"

"God forbid" cried my mother, fervently. "I will have nothing to
do with it, George. You are in a state of delusion; I shall speak
to the doctor."

"By all means, my dear mother. Mr. MacGlue is a sensible person.
We pass his house on our way home, and we will ask him to dinner.
In the meantime, let us say no more on the subject till we see
the doctor."

I spoke lightly, but I really meant what I said. My mind was
sadly disturbed; my nerves were so shaken that the slightest
noises on the road startled me. The opinion of a man like Mr.
MacGlue, who looked at all mortal matters from the same immovably
practical point of view, might really have its use, in my case,
as a species of moral remedy.


We waited until the dessert was on the table, and the servants
had left the dining-room. Then I told my story to the Scotch
doctor as I have told it here; and, that done, I opened the
sketch-book to let him see the writing for himself.

Had I turned to the wrong page?

I started to my feet, and held the book close to the light of the
lamp that hung over the dining table. No: I had found the right
page. There was my half-finished drawing of the waterfall--but
where were the two lines of writing beneath?

Gone!

I strained my eyes; I looked and looked. And the blank white
paper looked back at me.

I placed the open leaf before my mother. "You saw it as plainly
as I did," I said. "Are my own eyes deceiving me? Look at the
bottom of the page."

My mother sunk back in her chair with a cry of terror.

"Gone?" I asked.

"Gone!"

I turned to the doctor. He took me completely by surprise. No
incredulous smile appeared on his face; no jesting words passed
his lips. He was listening to us attentively. He was waiting
gravely to hear more.

"I declare to you, on my word of honor," I said to him, "that I
saw the apparition writing with my pencil at the bottom of that
page. I declare that I took the book in my hand, and saw these
words written in it, 'When the full moon shines on Saint
Anthony's Well.' Not more than three hours have passed since that
time; and, see for yourself, not a vestige of the writing
remains."

"Not a vestige of the writing remains, " Mr. MacGlue repeated,
quietly.

"If you feel the slightest doubt of what I have told you," I went
on, "ask my mother; she will bear witness that she saw the
writing too."

"I don't doubt that you both saw the writing," answered Mr.
MacGlue, with a composure that surprised me.

"Can you account for it?" I asked.

"Well," said the impenetrable doctor, "if I set my wits at work,
I believe I might account for it to the satisfaction of some
people. For example, I might give you what they call the rational
explanation, to begin with. I might say that you are, to my
certain knowledge, in a highly excited nervous condition; and
that, when you saw the apparition (as you call it), you simply
saw nothing but your own strong impression of an absent woman,
who (as I greatly fear) has got on the weak or amatory side of
you. I mean no offense, Mr. Germaine--"

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