Book: THE TWO DESTINIES

W >> Wilkie Collins >> THE TWO DESTINIES




I said to myself: "I am unworthy of the name of man if I don't
forget her now!" She still kept her place in my memory, say what
I might.

I saw all the wonders of Nature and Art which foreign countries
could show me. I lived in the dazzling light of the best society
that Paris, Rome, Vienna could assemble. I passed hours on hours
in the company of the most accomplished and most beautiful women
whom Europe could produce--and still that solitary figure at
Saint Anthony's Well, those grand gray eyes that had rested on me
so sadly at parting, held their place in my memory, stamped their
image on my heart.

Whether I resisted my infatuation, or whether I submitted to it,
I still longed for her. I did all I could to conceal the state of
my mind from my mother. But her loving eyes discovered the
secret: she saw that I suffered, and suffered with me. More than
once she said: "George, the good end is not to be gained by
traveling; let us go home." More than once I answered, with the
bitter and obstinate resolution of despair: "No. Let us try more
new people and more new scenes." It was only when I found her
health and strength beginning to fail under the stress of
continual traveling that I consented to abandon the hopeless
search after oblivion, and to turn homeward at last.

I prevailed on my mother to wait and rest at my house in London
before she returned to her favorite abode at the country-seat in
Perthshire. It is needless to say that I remained in town with
her. My mother now represented the one interest that held me
nobly and endearingly to life. Politics, literature,
agriculture--the customary pursuits of a man in my position--had
none of them the slightest attraction for me.

We had arrived in London at what is called "the height of the
season." Among the operatic attractions of that year--I am
writing of the days when the ballet was still a popular form of
public entertainment--there was a certain dancer whose grace and
beauty were the objects of universal admiration. I was asked if I
had seen her, wherever I went, until my social position, as the
one man who was indifferent to the reigning goddess of the stage,
became quite unendurable. On the next occasion when I was invited
to take a seat in a friend's box, I accepted the proposal; and
(far from willingly) I went the way of the world--in other words,
I went to the opera.

The first part of the performance had concluded when we got to
the theater, and the ballet had not yet begun. My friends amused
themselves with looking for familiar faces in the boxes and
stalls. I took a chair in a corner and waited, with my mind far
away from the theater, from the dancing that was to come. The
lady who sat nearest to me (like ladies in general) disliked the
neighborhood of a silent man. She determined to make me talk to
her.

"Do tell me, Mr. Germaine," she said. "Did you ever see a theater
anywhere so full as this theater is to-night?"

She handed me her opera-glass as she spoke. I moved to the front
of the box to look at the audience.

It was certainty a wonderful sight. Every available atom of space
(as I gradually raised the glass from the floor to the ceiling of
the building) appeared to be occupied. Looking upward and upward,
my range of view gradually reached the gallery. Even at that
distance, the excellent glass which had been put into my hands
brought the faces of the audience close to me. I looked first at
the pe rsons who occupied the front row of seats in the gallery
stalls.

Moving the opera-glass slowly along the semicircle formed by the
seats, I suddenly stopped when I reached the middle.

My heart gave a great leap as if it would bound out of my body.
There was no mistaking _that_ face among the commonplace faces
near it. I had discovered Mrs. Van Brandt!

She sat in front--but not alone. There was a man in the stall
immediately behind her, who bent over her and spoke to her from
time to time. She listened to him, so far as I could see, with
something of a sad and weary look. Who was the man? I might, or
might not, find that out. Under any circumstances, I determined
to speak to Mrs. Van Brandt.

The curtain rose for the ballet. I made the best excuse I could
to my friends, and instantly left the box.

It was useless to attempt to purchase my admission to the
gallery. My money was refused. There was not even standing room
left in that part of the theater.

But one alternative remained. I returned to the street, to wait
for Mrs. Van Brandt at the gallery door until the performance was
over.

Who was the man in attendance on her--the man whom I had seen
sitting behind her, and talking familiarly over her shoulder?
While I paced backward and forward before the door, that one
question held possession of my mind, until the oppression of it
grew beyond endurance. I went back to my friends in the box,
simply and solely to look at the man again.

What excuses I made to account for my strange conduct I cannot
now remember. Armed once more with the lady's opera-glass (I
borrowed it and kept it without scruple), I alone, of all that
vast audience, turned my back on the stage, and riveted my
attention on the gallery stalls.

There he sat, in his place behind her, to all appearance
spell-bound by the fascinations of the graceful dancer. Mrs. Van
Brandt, on the contrary, seemed to find but little attraction in
the spectacle presented by the stage. She looked at the dancing
(so far as I could see) in an absent, weary manner. When the
applause broke out in a perfect frenzy of cries and clapping of
hands, she sat perfectly unmoved by the enthusiasm which pervaded
the theater. The man behind her (annoyed, as I supposed, by the
marked indifference which she showed to the performance) tapped
her impatiently on the shoulder, as if he thought that she was
quite capable of falling asleep in her stall. The familiarity of
the action--confirming the suspicion in my mind which had already
identified him with Van Brandt--so enraged me that I said or did
something which obliged one of the gentlemen in the box to
interfere. "If you can't control yourself," he whispered, "you
had better leave us." He spoke with the authority of an old
friend. I had sense enough left to take his advice, and return to
my post at the gallery door.

A little before midnight the performance ended. The audience
began to pour out of the theater.

I drew back into a corner behind the door, facing the gallery
stairs, and watched for her. After an interval which seemed to be
endless, she and her companion appeared, slowly descending the
stairs. She wore a long dark cloak; her head was protected by a
quaintly shaped hood, which looked (on _her_) the most becoming
head-dress that a woman could wear. As the two passed me, I heard
the man speak to her in a tone of sulky annoyance.

"It's wasting money," he said, "to go to the expense of taking
_you_ to the opera."

"I am not well," she answered with her head down and her eyes on
the ground. "I am out of spirits to-night."

"Will you ride home or walk?"

"I will walk, if you please."

I followed them unperceived, waiting to present myself to her
until the crowd about them had dispersed. In a few minutes they
turned into a quiet by-street. I quickened my pace until I was
close at her side, and then I took off my hat and spoke to her.

She recognized me with a cry of astonishment. For an instant her
face brightened radiantly with the loveliest expression of
delight that I ever saw on any human countenance. The moment
after, all was changed. The charming features saddened and
hardened. She stood before me like a woman overwhelmed by
shame--without uttering a word, without taking my offered hand.

Her companion broke the silence.

"Who is this gentleman?" he asked, speaking in a foreign accent,
with an under-bred insolence of tone and manner.

She controlled herself the moment he addressed her. "This is Mr.
Germaine," she answered: "a gentleman who was very kind to me in
Scotland." She raised her eyes for a moment to mine, and took
refuge, poor soul, in a conventionally polite inquiry after my
health. "I hope you are quite well, Mr. Germaine," said the soft,
sweet voice, trembling piteously.

I made the customary reply, and explained that I had seen her at
the opera. "Are you staying in London?" I asked. "May I have the
honor of calling on you?"

Her companion answered for her before she could speak.

"My wife thanks you, sir, for the compliment you pay her. She
doesn't receive visitors. We both wish you good-night."

Saying those words, he took off his hat with a sardonic
assumption of respect; and, holding her arm in his, forced her to
walk on abruptly with him. Feeling certainly assured by this time
that the man was no other than Van Brandt, I was on the point of
answering him sharply, when Mrs. Van Brandt checked the rash
words as they rose to my lips.

"For my sake!" she whispered, over her shoulder, with an
imploring look that instantly silenced me. After all, she was
free (if she liked) to go back to the man who had so vilely
deceived and deserted her. I bowed and left them, feeling with no
common bitterness the humiliation of entering into rivalry with
Mr. Van Brandt.

I crossed to the other side of the street. Before I had taken
three steps away from her, the old infatuation fastened its hold
on me again. I submitted, without a struggle against myself, to
the degradation of turning spy and following them home. Keeping
well behind, on the opposite side of the way, I tracked them to
their own door, and entered in my pocket-book the name of the
street and the number of the house.

The hardest critic who reads these lines cannot feel more
contemptuously toward me than I felt toward myself. Could I still
love a woman after she had deliberately preferred to me a
scoundrel who had married her while he was the husband of another
wife? Yes! Knowing what I now knew, I felt that I loved her just
as dearly as ever. It was incredible, it was shocking; but it was
true. For the first time in my life, I tried to take refuge from
my sense of my own degradation in drink. I went to my club, and
joined a convivial party at a supper table, and poured glass
after glass of champagne down my throat, without feeling the
slightest sense of exhilaration, without losing for an instant
the consciousness of my own contemptible conduct. I went to my
bed in despair; and through the wakeful night I weakly cursed the
fatal evening at the river-side when I had met her for the first
time. But revile her as I might, despise myself as I might, I
loved her--I loved her still!

Among the letters laid on my table the next morning there were
two which must find their place in this narrative.

The first letter was in a handwriting which I had seen once
before, at the hotel in Edinburgh. The writer was Mrs. Van
Brandt.

"For your own sake" (the letter ran) "make no attempt to see me,
and take no notice of an invitation which I fear you will receive
with this note. I am living a degraded life. I have sunk beneath
your notice. You owe it to yourself, sir, to forget the miserable
woman who now writes to you for the last time, and bids you
gratefully a last farewell."

Those sad lines were signed in initials only. It is needless to
say that they merely strengthened my resolution to see her at all
hazards. I kissed the paper on which her hand had rested, and
then I turned to the second letter. It contained the "invitation"
to which my correspondent had alluded, and it was expressed in
these terms:

"Mr. Van Brandt presents his compliments to Mr. Germaine, and
begs to apologize for the somewhat abrupt manner in which he
received Mr. Germaine's polite advances. Mr. Van Brandt suffers
habitually from nervous irritability, and he felt particularly
ill last night. He trusts Mr. Germaine will receive this candid
explanation in the spirit in which it is offered; and he begs to
add that Mrs. Van Brandt will be delighted to receive Mr.
Germaine whenever he may find it convenient to favor her with a
visit."

That Mr. Van Brandt had some sordid interest of his own to serve
in writing this grotesquely impudent composition, and that the
unhappy woman who bore his name was heartily ashamed of the
proceeding on which he had ventured, were conclusions easily
drawn after reading the two letters. The suspicion of the man and
of his motives which I naturally felt produced no hesitation in
my mind as to the course which I had determined to pursue. On the
contrary, I rejoiced that my way to an interview with Mrs. Van
Brandt was smoothed, no matter with what motives, by Mr. Van
Brandt himself.

I waited at home until noon, and then I could wait no longer.
Leaving a message of excuse for my mother (I had just sense of
shame enough left to shrink from facing her), I hastened away to
profit by my invitation on the very day when I received it.

CHAPTER XIV.

MRS. VAN BRANDT AT HOME.

As I lifted my hand to ring the house bell, the door was opened
from within, and no less a person than Mr. Van Brandt himself
stood before me. He had his hat on. We had evidently met just as
he was going out.

"My dear sir, how good this is of you! You present the best of
all replies to my letter in presenting yourself. Mrs. Van Brandt
is at home. Mrs. Van Brandt will be delighted. Pray walk in."

He threw open the door of a room on the ground-floor. His
politeness was (if possible) even more offensive than his
insolence. "Be seated, Mr. Germaine, I beg of you." He turned to
the open door, and called up the stairs, in a loud and confident
voice:

"Mary! come down directly."

"Mary"! I knew her Christian name at last, and knew it through
Van Brandt. No words can tell how the name jarred on me, spoken
by his lips. For the first time for years past my mind went back
to Mary Dermody and Greenwater Broad. The next moment I heard the
rustling of Mrs. Van Brandt's dress on the stairs. As the sound
caught my ear, the old times and the old faces vanished again
from my thoughts as completely as if they had never existed. What
had _she_ in common with the frail, shy little child, her
namesake, of other days? What similarity was perceivable in the
sooty London lodging-house to remind me of the bailiff's
flower-scented cottage by the shores of the lake?

Van Brandt took off his hat, and bowed to me with sickening
servility.

"I have a business appointment," he said, "which it is impossible
to put off. Pray excuse me. Mrs. Van Brandt will do the honors.
Good morning."

The house door opened and closed again. The rustling of the dress
came slowly nearer and nearer. She stood before me.

"Mr. Germaine!" she exclaimed, starting back, as if the bare
sight of me repelled her. "Is this honorable? Is this worthy of
you? You allow me to be entrapped into receiving you, and you
accept as your accomplice Mr. Van Brandt! Oh, sir, I have
accustomed myself to look up to you as a high-minded man. How
bitterly you have disappointed me!"

Her reproaches passed by me unheeded. They only heightened her
color; they only added a new rapture to the luxury of looking at
her.

"If you loved me as faithfully as I love you," I said, "you would
understand why I am here. No sacrifice is too great if it brings
me into your presence again after two years of absence."

She suddenly approached me, and fixed her eyes in eager scrutiny
on my face.

"There must be some mistake," she said. "You cannot possibly have
received my letter, or you have not read it?"

"I have received it, and I have read it."

"And Van Brandt's letter--you have read that too?"

"Yes."

She sat down by the table, and, leaning her arms on it, covered
her face with her hands. My answers seemed not only to have
distressed, but to have perplexed her. "Are men all alike?" I
heard her say. "I thought I might trust in _his_ sense of what
was due to himself and of what was compassionate toward me."

I closed the door and seated myself by her side. She removed her
hands from her face when she felt me near her. She looked at me
with a cold and steady surprise.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I am going to try if I can recover my place in your estimation,"
I said. "I am going to ask your pity for a man whose whole heart
is yours, whose whole life is bound up in you."

She started to her feet, and looked round her incredulously, as
if doubting whether she had rightly heard and rightly interpreted
my last words. Before I could speak again, she suddenly faced me,
and struck her open hand on the table with a passionate
resolution which I now saw in her for the first time.

"Stop!" she cried. "There must be an end to this. And an end
there shall be. Do you know who that man is who has just left the
house? Answer me, Mr. Germaine! I am speaking in earnest."

There was no choice but to answer her. She was indeed in
earnest--vehemently in earnest.

"His letter tells me," I said, "that he is Mr. Van Brandt."

She sat down again, and turned her face away from me.

"Do you know how he came to write to you?" she asked. "Do you
know what made him invite you to this house?"

I thought of the suspicion that had crossed my mind when I read
Van Brandt's letter. I made no reply.

"You force me to tell you the truth," she went on. "He asked me
who you were, last night on our way home. I knew that you were
rich, and that _he_ wanted money. I told him I knew nothing of
your position in the world. He was too cunning to believe me; he
went out to the public-house and looked at a directory. He came
back and said, 'Mr. Germaine has a house in Berkeley Square and a
country-seat in the Highlands. He is not a man for a poor devil
like me to offend; I mean to make a friend of him, and I expect
you to make a friend of him too.' He sat down and wrote to you. I
am living under that man's protection, Mr. Germaine. His wife is
not dead, as you may suppose; she is living, and I know her to be
living. I wrote to you that I was beneath your notice, and you
have obliged me to tell you why. Am I sufficiently degraded to
bring you to your senses?"

I drew closer to her. She tried to get up and leave me. I knew my
power over her, and used it (as any man in my place would have
used it) without scruple. I took her hand.

"I don't believe you have voluntarily degraded yourself," I said.
"You have been forced into your present position: there are
circumstances which excuse you, and which you are purposely
keeping back from me. Nothing will convince me that you are a
base woman. Should I love you as I love you, if you were really
unworthy of me?"

She struggled to free her hand; I still held it. She tried to
change the subject. "There is one thing you haven't told me yet,"
she said, with a faint, forced smile. "Have you seen the
apparition of me again since I left you?"

"No. Have _you_ ever seen _me_ again, as you saw me in your dream
at the inn in Edinburgh?"

"Never. Our visions of each other have left us. Can you tell
why?"

If we had continued to speak on this subject, we must surely have
recognized each other. But the subject dropped. Instead of
answering her question, I drew her nearer to me--I returned to
the forbidden subject of my love.

"Look at me," I pleaded, "and tell me the truth. Can you see me,
can you hear me, and do you feel no answering sympathy in your
own heart? Do you really care nothing for me? Have you never once
thought of me in all the time that has passed since we last met?"

I spoke as I felt--fervently, passionately. She made a last
effort to repel me, and yielded even as she made it. Her hand
closed on mine, a low sigh fluttered on her lips. She answered
with a sudden self-abandonment; she recklessly cast herself loose
from the restraints which had held her up to this time.

"I think of you perpetually," she said. "I was thinking of you at
the opera last night . My heart leaped in me when I heard your
voice in the street."

"You love me!" I whispered.

"Love you!" she repeated. "My whole heart goes out to you in
spite of myself. Degraded as I am, unworthy as I am--knowing as I
do that nothing can ever come of it--I love you! I love you!"

She threw her arms round my neck, and held me to her with all her
strength. The moment after, she dropped on her knees. "Oh, don't
tempt me!" she murmured. "Be merciful--and leave me."

I was beside myself. I spoke as recklessly to her as she had
spoken to me.

"Prove that you love me," I said. "Let me rescue you from the
degradation of living with that man. Leave him at once and
forever. Leave him, and come with me to a future that is worthy
of you--your future as my wife."

"Never!" she answered, crouching low at my feet.

"Why not? What obstacle is there?"

"I can't tell you--I daren't tell you."

"Will you write it?"

"No, I can't even write it--to _you_. Go, I implore you, before
Van Brandt comes back. Go, if you love me and pity me."

She had roused my jealousy. I positively refused to leave her.

"I insist on knowing what binds you to that man," I said. "Let
him come back! If _you_ won't answer my question, I will put it
to _him_."

She looked at me wildly, with a cry of terror. She saw my
resolution in my face.

"Don't frighten me," she said. "Let me think."

She reflected for a moment. Her eyes brightened, as if some new
way out of the difficulty had occurred to her.

"Have you a mother living?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Do you think she would come and see me?"

"I am sure she would if I asked her."

She considered with herself once more. "I will tell your mother
what the obstacle is," she said, thoughtfully.

"When?"

"To-morrow, at this time."

She raised herself on her knees; the tears suddenly filled her
eyes. She drew me to her gently. "Kiss me," she whispered. "You
will never come here again. Kiss me for the last time."

My lips had barely touched hers, when she started to her feet and
snatched up my hat from the chair on which I had placed it.

"Take your hat," she said. "He has come back."

My duller sense of hearing had discovered nothing. I rose and
took my hat to quiet her. At the same moment the door of the room
opened suddenly and softly. Mr. Van Brandt came in. I saw in his
face that he had some vile motive of his own for trying to take
us by surprise, and that the result of the experiment had
disappointed him.

"You are not going yet?" he said, speaking to me with his eye on
Mrs. Van Brandt. "I have hurried over my business in the hope of
prevailing on you to stay and take lunch with us. Put down your
hat, Mr. Germaine. No ceremony!"

"You are very good," I answered. "My time is limited to-day. I
must beg you and Mrs. Van Brandt to excuse me."

I took leave of her as I spoke. She turned deadly pale when she
shook hands with me at parting. Had she any open brutality to
dread from Van Brandt as soon as my back was turned? The bare
suspicion of it made my blood boil. But I thought of _her_. In
her interests, the wise thing and the merciful thing to do was to
conciliate the fellow before I left the house.

"I am sorry not to be able to accept your invitation," I said, as
we walked together to the door. "Perhaps you will give me another
chance?"

His eyes twinkled cunningly. "What do you say to a quiet little
dinner here?" he asked. "A slice of mutton, you know, and a
bottle of good wine. Only our three selves, and one old friend of
mine to make up four. We will have a rubber of whist in the
evening. Mary and you partners--eh? When shall it be? Shall we
say the day after to-morrow?"

She had followed us to the door, keeping behind Van Brandt while
he was speaking to me. When he mentioned the "old friend" and the
"rubber of whist," her face expressed the strongest emotions of
shame and disgust. The next moment (when she had heard him fix
the date of the dinner for "the day after to-morrow") her
features became composed again, as if a sudden sense of relief
had come to her. What did the change mean? "To-morrow" was the
day she had appointed for seeing my mother. Did she really
believe, when I had heard what passed at the interview, that I
should never enter the house again, and never attempt to see her
more? And was this the secret of her composure when she heard the
date of the dinner appointed for "the day after to-morrow"?

Asking myself these questions, I accepted my invitation, and left
the house with a heavy heart. That farewell kiss, that sudden
composure when the day of the dinner was fixed, weighed on my
spirits. I would have given twelve years of my life to have
annihilated the next twelve hours.

In this frame of mind I reached home, and presented myself in my
mother's sitting-room.

"You have gone out earlier than usual to-day," she said. "Did the
fine weather tempt you, my dear?" She paused, and looked at me
more closely. "George!" she exclaimed, "what has happened to you?
Where have you been?"

I told her the truth as honestly as I have told it here.

The color deepened in my mother's face. She looked at me, and
spoke to me with a severity which was rare indeed in my
experience of her.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.