Book: THE TWO DESTINIES

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"I take no offense, doctor. But excuse me for speaking
plainly--the rational explanation is thrown away on me."

"I'll readily excuse you," answered Mr. MacGlue; "the rather that
I'm entirely of your opinion. I don't believe in the rational
explanation myself."

This was surprising, to say the least of it. "What _do_ you
believe in?" I inquired.

Mr. MacGlue declined to let me hurry him.

"Wait a little," he said. "There's the _ir_rational explanation
to try next. Maybe it will fit itself to the present state of
your mind better than the other. We will say this time that you
have really seen the ghost (or double) of a living person. Very
good. If you can suppose a disembodied spirit to appear in
earthly clothing--of silk or merino, as the case may be--it's no
great stretch to suppose, next, that this same spirit is capable
of holding a mortal pencil, and of writing mortal words in a
mortal sketching-book. And if the ghost vanishes (which your
ghost did), it seems supernaturally appropriate that the writing
should follow the example and vanish too. And the reason of the
vanishment may be (if you want a reason), either that the ghost
does not like letting a stranger like me into its secrets, or
that vanishing is a settled habit of ghosts and of everything
associated with them, or that this ghost has changed its mind in
the course of three hours (being the ghost of a woman, I am sure
that's not wonderful), and doesn't care to see you 'when the full
moon shines on Saint Anthony's Well.' There's the _ir_rational
explanation for you. And, speaking for myself, I'm bound to add
that I don't set a pin's value on _that_ explanation either."

Mr. MacGlue's sublime indifference to both sides of the question
began to irritate me.

"In plain words, doctor," I said, "you don't think the
circumstances that I have mentioned to you worthy of serious
investigation?"

"I don't think serious investigation capable of dealing with the
circumstances," answered the doctor. "Put it in that way, and you
put it right. Just look round you. Here we three persons are
alive and hearty at this snug table. If (which God forbid!) good
Mistress Germaine or yourself were to fall down dead in another
moment, I, doctor as I am, could no more explain what first
principle of life and movement had been suddenly extinguished in
you than the dog there sleeping on the hearth-rug. If I am
content to sit down ignorant in the face of such an impenetrable
mystery as this--presented to me, day after day, every time I see
a living creature come into the world or go out of it--why may I
not sit down content in the face of your lady in the
summer-house, and say she's altogether beyond my fathoming, and
there is an end of her?"

At those words my mother joined in the conversation for the first
time.

"Ah, sir," she said, "if you could only persuade my son to take
your sensible view, how happy I should be! Would you believe
it?--he positively means (if he can find the place) to go to
Saint Anthony's Well!"

Even this revelation entirely failed to surprise Mr. MacGlue.

"Ay, ay. He means to keep his appointment with the ghost, does
he? Well, I can be of some service to him if he sticks to his
resolution. I can tell him of another man who kept a written
appointment with a ghost, and what came of it."

This was a startling announcement. Did he really mean what he
said?

"Are you in jest or in earnest?" I asked.

"I never joke, sir," said Mr. MacGlue. "No sick person really
believes in a doctor who jokes. I defy you to show me a man at
the head of our profession who has ever been discovered in high
spirits (in medical hours) by his nearest and dearest friend. You
may have wondered, I dare say, at seeing me take your strange
narrative as coolly as I do. It comes naturally, sir. Yours is
not the first story of a ghost and a pencil that I have heard."

"Do you mean to tell me," I said, "that you know of another man
who has seen what I have seen?"

"That's just what I mean to tell you," rejoined the doctor. "The
man was a far-away Scots cousin of my late wife, who bore the
honorable name of Bruce, and followed a seafaring life. I'll take
another glass of the sherry wine, just to wet my whistle, as the
vulgar saying is, before I begin. Well, you must know, Bruce was
mate of a bark at the time I'm speaking of, and he was on a
voyage from Liverpool to New Brunswick. At noon one day, he and
the captain, having taken their observation of the sun, were hard
at it below, working out the latitude and longitude on their
slates. Bruce, in his cabin, looked across through the open door
of the captain's cabin opposite. 'What do you make it, sir?' says
Brace. The man in the captain's cabin looked up. And what did
Bruce see? The face of the captain? Devil a bit of it--the face
of a total stranger! Up jumps Bruce, with his heart going full
gallop all in a moment, and searches for the captain on deck, and
finds him much as usual, with his calculations done, and his
latitude and longitude off his mind for the day. 'There's
somebody at your des k, sir,' says Bruce. 'He's writing on your
slate; and he's a total stranger to me.' 'A stranger in my
cabin?' says the captain. 'Why, Mr. Bruce, the ship has been six
weeks out of port. How did he get on board?' Bruce doesn't know
how, but he sticks to his story. Away goes the captain, and
bursts like a whirlwind into his cabin, and finds nobody there.
Bruce himself is obliged to acknowledge that the place is
certainly empty. 'If I didn't know you were a sober man,' says
the captain, 'I should charge you with drinking. As it is, I'll
hold you accountable for nothing worse than dreaming. Don't do it
again, Mr. Bruce.' Bruce sticks to his story; Bruce swears he saw
the man writing on the captain's slate. The captain takes up the
slate and looks at it. 'Lord save us and bless us!' says he;
'here the writing is, sure enough !' Bruce looks at it too, and
sees the writing as plainly as can be, in these words: 'Steer to
the nor'-west.' That, and no more.--Ah, goodness me, narrating is
dry work, Mr. Germaine. With your leave, I'll take another drop
of the sherry wine.

"Well (it's fine old wine, that; look at the oily drops running
down the glass)--well, steering to the north-west, you will
understand, was out of the captain's course. Nevertheless,
finding no solution of the mystery on board the ship, and the
weather at the time being fine, the captain determined, while the
daylight lasted, to alter his course, and see what came of it.
Toward three o'clock in the afternoon an iceberg came of it; with
a wrecked ship stove in, and frozen fast to the ice; and the
passengers and crew nigh to death with cold and exhaustion.
Wonderful enough, you will say; but more remains behind. As the
mate was helping one of the rescued passengers up the side of the
bark, who should he turn out to be but the very man whose ghostly
appearance Bruce had seen in the captain's cabin writing on the
captain's slate! And more than that--if your capacity for being
surprised isn't clean worn out by this time--the passenger
recognized the bark as the very vessel which he had seen in a
dream at noon that day. He had even spoken of it to one of the
officers on board the wrecked ship when he woke. 'We shall be
rescued to-day,' he had said; and he had exactly described the
rig of the bark hours and hours before the vessel herself hove in
view. Now you know, Mr. Germaine, how my wife's far-away cousin
kept an appointment with a ghost, and what came of it."*

Concluding his story in these words, the doctor helped himself to
another glass of the "sherry wine." I was not satisfied yet; I
wanted to know more.

"The writing on the slate," I said. "Did it remain there, or did
it vanish like the writing in my book?"

Mr. MacGlue's answer disappointed me. He had never asked, and had
never heard, whether the writing had remained or not. He had told
me all that he knew, and he had but one thing more to say, and
that was in the nature of a remark with a moral attached to it.
"There's a marvelous resemblance, Mr. Germaine, between your
story and Bruce's story. The main difference, as I see it, is
this. The passenger's appointment proved to be the salvation of a
whole ship's company. I very much doubt whether the lady's
appointment will prove to be the salvation of You."

I silently reconsidered the strange narrative which had just been
related to me. Another man had seen what I had seen--had done
what I proposed to do! My mother noticed with grave displeasure
the strong impression which Mr. MacGlue had produced on my mind.

"I wish you had kept your story to yourself, doctor," she said,
sharply.

"May I ask why, madam?"

"You have confirmed my son, sir, in his resolution to go to Saint
Anthony's Well."

Mr. MacGlue quietly consulted his pocket almanac before he
replied.

"It's the full moon on the ninth of the month," he said. "That
gives Mr. Germaine some days of rest, ma'am,. before he takes the
journey. If he travels in his own comfortable carriage--whatever
I may think, morally speaking, of his enterprise--I can't say,
medically speaking, that I believe it will do him much harm."

"You know where Saint Anthony's Well is?" I interposed.

"I must be mighty ignorant of Edinburgh not to know that,"
replied the doctor.

"Is the Well in Edinburgh, then?"

"It's just outside Edinburgh--looks down on it, as you may say.
You follow the old street called the Canongate to the end. You
turn to your right past the famous Palace of Holyrood; you cross
the Park and the Drive, and take your way upward to the ruins of
Anthony's Chapel, on the shoulder of the hill--and there you are!
There's a high rock behind the chapel, and at the foot of it you
will find the spring they call Anthony's Well. It's thought a
pretty view by moonlight; and they tell me it's no longer beset
at night by bad characters, as it used to be in the old time."

My mother, in graver and graver displeasure, rose to retire to
the drawing-room.

"I confess you have disappointed me," she said to Mr. MacGlue. "I
should have thought you would have been the last man to encourage
my son in an act of imprudence."

"Craving your pardon, madam, your son requires no encouragement.
I can see for myself that his mind is made up. Where is the use
of a person like me trying to stop him? Dear madam, if he won't
profit by your advice, what hope can I have that he will take
mine?"

Mr. MacGlue pointed this artful compliment by a bow of the
deepest respect, and threw open the door for my mother to pass
out.

When we were left together over our wine, I asked the doctor how
soon I might safely start on my journey to Edinburgh.

"Take two days to do the journey, and you may start, if you're
bent on it, at the beginning of the week. But mind this," added
the prudent doctor, "though I own I'm anxious to hear what comes
of your expedition--understand at the same time, so far as the
lady is concerned, that I wash my hands of the consequences." --
* The doctor's narrative is not imaginary. It will be found
related in full detail, and authenticated by names and dates, in
Robert Dale Owen's very interesting work called "Footfalls on the
Boundary of Another World." The author gladly takes this
opportunity of acknowledging his obligations to Mr. Owen's
remarkable book.


CHAPTER X.

SAINT ANTHONY'S WELL.

I STOOD on the rocky eminence in front of the ruins of Saint
Anthony's Chapel, and looked on the magnificent view of Edinburgh
and of the old Palace of Holyrood, bathed in the light of the
full moon.

The Well, as the doctor's instructions had informed me, was
behind the chapel. I waited for some minutes in front of the
ruin, partly to recover my breath after ascending the hill;
partly, I own, to master the nervous agitation which the sense of
my position at that moment had aroused in me. The woman, or the
apparition of the woman--it might be either--was perhaps within a
few yards of the place that I occupied. Not a living creature
appeared in front of the chapel. Not a sound caught my ear from
any part of the solitary hill. I tried to fix my whole attention
on the beauties of the moonlit view. It was not to be done. My
mind was far away from the objects on which my eyes rested. My
mind was with the woman whom I had seen in the summer-house
writing in my book.

I turned to skirt the side of the chapel. A few steps more over
the broken ground brought me within view of the Well, and of the
high boulder or rock from the foot of which the waters gushed
brightly in the light of the moon.

She was there.

I recognized her figure as she stood leaning against the rock,
with her hands crossed in front of her, lost in thought. I
recognized her face as she looked up quickly, startled by the
sound of my footsteps in the deep stillness of the night.

Was it the woman, or the apparition of the woman? I waited,
looking at her in silence.

She spoke. The sound of her voice was not the mysterious sound
that I had heard in the summer-house. It was the sound I had
heard on the bridge when we first met in the dim evening light.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

As those words passed her lips, she recognized me. "_You_ here!"
she went on, advancing a step, in uncontrollable surprise . "What
does this mean?"

"I am here," I answered, "to meet you, by your own appointment."

She stepped back again, leaning against the rock. The moonlight
shone full upon her face. There was terror as well as
astonishment in her eyes while they now looked at me.

"I don't understand you," she said. "I have not seen you since
you spoke to me on the bridge."

"Pardon me," I replied. "I have seen you--or the appearance of
you--since that time. I heard you speak. I saw you write."

She looked at me with the strangest expression of mingled
resentment and curiosity. "What did I say?" she asked. "What did
I write?"

"You said, 'Remember me. Come to me.' You wrote, 'When the full
moon shines on Saint Anthony's Well.' "

"Where?" she cried. "Where did I do that?"

"In a summer-house which stands by a waterfall," I answered. "Do
you know the place?"

Her head sunk back against the rock. A low cry of terror burst
from her. Her arm, resting on the rock, dropped at her side. I
hurriedly approached her, in the fear that she might fall on the
stony ground.

She rallied her failing strength. "Don't touch me!" she
exclaimed. "Stand back, sir. You frighten me."

I tried to soothe her. "Why do I frighten you? You know who I am.
Can you doubt my interest in you, after I have been the means of
saving your life?"

Her reserve vanished in an instant. She advanced without
hesitation, and took me by the hand.

"I ought to thank you," she said. "And I do. I am not so
ungrateful as I seem. I am not a wicked woman, sir--I was mad
with misery when I tried to drown myself. Don't distrust me!
Don't despise me!" She stopped; I saw the tears on her cheeks.
With a sudden contempt for herself, she dashed them away. Her
whole tone and manner altered once more. Her reserve returned;
she looked at me with a strange flash of suspicion and defiance
in her eyes. "Mind this!" she said, loudly and abruptly, "you
were dreaming when you thought you saw me writing. You didn't see
me; you never heard me speak. How could I say those familiar
words to a stranger like you? It's all your fancy--and you try to
frighten me by talking of it as if it was a real thing!" She
changed again; her eyes softened to the sad and tender look which
made them so irresistibly beautiful. She drew her cloak round her
with a shudder, as if she felt the chill of the night air. "What
is the matter with me?" I heard her say to herself. "Why do I
trust this man in my dreams? And why am I ashamed of it when I
wake?"

That strange outburst encouraged me. I risked letting her know
that I had overheard her last words.

"If you trust me in your dreams, you only do me justice," I said.
"Do me justice now; give me your confidence. You are alone--you
are in trouble--you want a friend's help. I am waiting to help
you."

She hesitated. I tried to take her hand. The strange creature
drew it away with a cry of alarm: her one great fear seemed to be
the fear of letting me touch her.

"Give me time to think of it," she said. "You don't know what I
have got to think of. Give me till to-morrow; and let me write.
Are you staying in Edinburgh?"

I thought it wise to be satisfied--in appearance at least--with
this concession. Taking out my card, I wrote on it in pencil the
address of the hotel at which I was staying. She read the card by
the moonlight when I put it into her hand.

"George!" she repeated to herself, stealing another look at me as
the name passed her lips. " 'George Germaine.' I never heard of
'Germaine.' But 'George' reminds me of old times." She smiled
sadly at some passing fancy or remembrance in which I was not
permitted to share. "There is nothing very wonderful in your
being called 'George,' " she went on, after a while. "The name is
common enough: one meets with it everywhere as a man's name And
yet--" Her eyes finished the sentence; her eyes said to me, "I am
not so much afraid of you, now I know that you are called
'George.' "

So she unconsciously led me to the brink of discovery!

If I had only asked her what associations she connected with my
Christian name--if I had only persuaded her to speak in the
briefest and most guarded terms of her past life--the barrier
between us, which the change in our names and the lapse of ten
years had raised, must have been broken down; the recognition
must have followed. But I never even thought of it; and for this
simple reason--I was in love with her. The purely selfish idea of
winning my way to her favorable regard by taking instant
advantage of the new interest that I had awakened in her was the
one idea which occurred to my mind.

"Don't wait to write to me," I said. "Don't put it off till
to-morrow. Who knows what may happen before to-morrow? Surely I
deserve some little return for the sympathy that I feel with you?
I don't ask for much. Make me happy by making me of some service
to you before we part to-night."

I took her hand, this time, before she was aware of me. The whole
woman seemed to yield at my touch. Her hand lay unresistingly in
mine; her charming figure came by soft gradations nearer and
nearer to me; her head almost touched my shoulder. She murmured
in faint accents, broken by sighs, "Don't take advantage of me. I
am so friendless; I am so completely in your power." Before I
could answer, before I could move, her hand closed on mine; her
head sunk on my shoulder: she burst into tears.

Any man, not an inbred and inborn villain, would have respected
her at that moment. I put her hand on my arm and led her away
gently past the ruined chapel, and down the slope of the hill.

"This lonely place is frightening you," I said. "Let us walk a
little, and you will soon be yourself again."

She smiled through her tears like a child.

"Yes," she said, eagerly. "But not that way." I had accidentally
taken the direction which led away from the city; she begged me
to turn toward the houses and the streets. We walked back toward
Edinburgh. She eyed me, as we went on in the moonlight, with
innocent, wondering looks. "What an unaccountable influence you
have over me!" she exclaimed.

"Did you ever see me, did you ever hear my name, before we met
that evening at the river?"

"Never."

"And I never heard _your_ name, and never saw _you_ before.
Strange! very strange! Ah! I remember somebody--only an old
woman, sir--who might once have explained it. Where shall I find
the like of her now?"

She sighed bitterly. The lost friend or relative had evidently
been dear to her. "A relation of yours?" I inquired--more to keep
her talking than because I felt any interest in any member of her
family but herself.

We were again on the brink of discovery. And again it was decreed
that we were to advance no further.

"Don't ask me about my relations!" she broke out. "I daren't
think of the dead and gone, in the trouble that is trying me now.
If I speak of the old times at home, I shall only burst out
crying again, and distress you. Talk of something else, sir--talk
of something else."


The mystery of the apparition in the summer-house was not cleared
up yet. I took my opportunity of approaching the subject.

"You spoke a little while since of dreaming of me," I began.
"Tell me your dream."

"I hardly know whether it was a dream or whether it was something
else," she answered. "I call it a dream for want of a better
word."

"Did it happen at night?"

"No. In the daytime--in the afternoon."

"Late in the afternoon?"

"Yes--close on the evening."

My memory reverted to the doctor's story of the shipwrecked
passenger, whose ghostly "double" had appeared in the vessel that
was to rescue him, and who had himself seen that vessel in a
dream.

"Do you remember the day of the month and the hour?" I asked.

She mentioned the day, and she mentioned the hour. It was the day
when my mother and I had visited the waterfall. It was the hour
when I had seen the apparition in the summer-house writing in my
book!

I stopped in irrepressible astonishment. We had walked by this
time nearly as far on the way back to the city as the old Palace
of Holyrood. My companion, after a glance at me, turned and
looked at the rugged old building, mellowed into quiet beauty by
the lovely moonlight.

"This is my fa vorite walk," she said, simply, "since I have been
in Edinburgh. I don't mind the loneliness. I like the perfect
tranquillity here at night." She glanced at me again. "What is
the matter?" she asked. "You say nothing; you only look at me."

"I want to hear more of your dream," I said. "How did you come to
be sleeping in the daytime?"

"It is not easy to say what I was doing," she replied, as we
walked on again. "I was miserably anxious and ill. I felt my
helpless condition keenly on that day. It was dinner-time, I
remember, and I had no appetite. I went upstairs (at the inn
where I am staying), and lay down, quite worn out, on my bed. I
don't know whether I fainted or whether I slept; I lost all
consciousness of what was going on about me, and I got some other
consciousness in its place. If this was dreaming, I can only say
it was the most vivid dream I ever had in my life."

"Did it begin by your seeing me?" I inquired.

"It began by my seeing your drawing-book--lying open on a table
in a summer-house."

"Can you describe the summer-house as you saw it?"

She described not only the summer-house, but the view of the
waterfall from the door. She knew the size, she knew the binding,
of my sketch-book--locked up in my desk, at that moment, at home
in Perthshire!

"And you wrote in the book," I went on. "Do you remember what you
wrote?"

She looked away from me confusedly, as if she were ashamed to
recall this part of her dream.

"You have mentioned it already," she said. There is no need for
me to go over the words again. Tell me one thing--when _you_ were
at the summer-house, did you wait a little on the path to the
door before you went in?"

I _had_ waited, surprised by my first view of the woman writing
in my book. Having answered her to this effect, I asked what she
had done or dreamed of doing at the later moment when I entered
the summer-house.

"I did the strangest things," she said, in low, wondering tones.
"If you had been my brother, I could hardly have treated you more
familiarly. I beckoned to you to come to me. I even laid my hand
on your bosom. I spoke to you as I might have spoken to my oldest
and dearest friend. I said, 'Remember me. Come to me.' Oh, I was
so ashamed of myself when I came to my senses again, and
recollected it. Was there ever such familiarity--even in a
dream--between a woman and a man whom she had only once seen, and
then as a perfect stranger?"

"Did you notice how long it was," I asked, "from the time when
you lay down on the bed to the time when you found yourself awake
again?"

"I think I can tell you," she replied. "It was the dinner-time of
the house (as I said just now) when I went upstairs. Not long
after I had come to myself I heard a church clock strike the
hour. Reckoning from one time to the other, it must have been
quite three hours from the time when I first lay down to the time
when I got up again."

Was the clew to the mysterious disappearance of the writing to be
found here?

Looking back by the light of later discoveries, I am inclined to
think that it was. In three hours the lines traced by the
apparition of her had vanished. In three hours she had come to
herself, and had felt ashamed of the familiar manner in which she
had communicated with me in her sleeping state. While she had
trusted me in the trance--trusted me because her spirit was then
free to recognize my spirit--the writing had remained on the
page. When her waking will counteracted the influence of her
sleeping will, the writing disappeared. Is this the explanation?
If it is not, where is the explanation to be found?

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