Book: THE TWO DESTINIES

W >> Wilkie Collins >> THE TWO DESTINIES




"Must I remind you, for the first time in your life, of what is
due to your mother?" she asked. "Is it possible that you expect
me to visit a woman, who, by her own confession--"

"I expect you to visit a woman who has only to say the word and
to be your daughter-in-law," I interposed. "Surely I am not
asking what is unworthy of you, if I ask that?"

My mother looked at me in blank dismay.

"Do you mean, George, that you have offered her marriage?"

"Yes."

"And she has said No?"

"She has said No, because there is some obstacle in her way. I
have tried vainly to make her explain herself. She has promised
to confide everything to _you_."

The serious nature of the emergency had its effect. My mother
yielded. She handed me the little ivory tablets on which she was
accustomed to record her engagements. "Write down the name and
address," she said resignedly.

"I will go with you," I answered, "and wait in the carriage at
the door. I want to hear what has passed between you and Mrs. Van
Brandt the instant you have left her."

"Is it as serious as that, George?"

"Yes, mother, it is as serious as that."

CHAPTER XV.

THE OBSTACLE BEATS ME.

HOW long was I left alone in the carriage at the door of Mrs. Van
Brandt's lodgings? Judging by my sensations, I waited half a
life-time. Judging by my watch, I waited half an hour.

When my mother returned to me, the hope which I had entertained
of a happy result from her interview with Mrs. Van Brandt was a
hope abandoned before she had opened her lips. I saw, in her
face, that an obstacle which was beyond my power of removal did
indeed stand between me and the dearest wish of my life.

"Tell me the worst," I said, as we drove away from the house,
"and tell it at once."

"I must tell it to you, George," my mother answered, sadly, "as
she told it to me. She begged me herself to do that. 'We must
disappoint him,' she said, 'but pray let it be done as gently as
possible.' Beginning in those words, she confided to me the
painful story which you know already--the story of her marriage.
From that she passed to her meeting with you at Edinburgh, and to
the circumstances which have led her to live as she is living
now. This latter part of her narrative she especially requested
me to repeat to you. Do you feel composed enough to hear it now?
Or would you rather wait?"

"Let me hear it now, mother; and tell it, as nearly as you can,
in her own words."

"I will repeat what she said to me, my dear, as faithfully as I
can. After speaking of her father's death, she told me that she
had only two relatives living. 'I have a married aunt in Glasgow,
and a married aunt in London,' she said. 'When I left Edinburgh,
I went to my aunt in London. She and my father had not been on
good terms together; she considered that my father had neglected
her. But his death had softened her toward him and toward me. She
received me kindly, and she got me a situation in a shop. I kept
my situation for three months, and then I was obliged to leave
it.'
"

My mother paused. I thought directly of the strange postscript
which Mrs. Van Brandt had made me add to the letter that I wrote
for her at the Edinburgh inn. In that case also she had only
contemplated remaining in her employment for three months' time.

"Why was she obliged to leave her situation?" I asked.

"I put that question to her myself," replied my mother. "She made
no direct reply--she changed color, and looked confused. 'I will
tell you afterward, madam,' she said. 'Please let me go on now.
My aunt was angry with me for leaving my employment--and she was
more angry still, when I told her the reason. She said I had
failed in duty toward her in not speaking frankly at first. We
parted coolly. I had saved a little money from my wages; and I
did well enough while my savings lasted. When they came to an
end, I tried to get employment again, and I failed. My aunt said,
and said truly, that her husband's income was barely enough to
support his family: she could do nothing for me, and I could do
nothing for myself. I wrote to my aunt at Glasgow, and received
no answer. Starvation stared me in the face, when I saw in a
newspaper an advertisement addressed to me by Mr. Van Brandt. He
implored me to write to him; he declared that his life without me
was too desolate to be endured; he solemnly promised that there
should be no interruption to my tranquillity if I would return to
him. If I had only had myself to think of, I would have begged my
bread in the streets rather than return to him--' "

I interrupted the narrative at that point.

"What other person could she have had to think of?" I said.

"Is it possible, George," my mother rejoined, "that you have no
suspicion of what she was alluding to when she said those words?"

The question passed by me unheeded: my thoughts were dwelling
bitterly on Van Brandt and his advertisement. "She answered the
advertisement, of course?" I said.

"And she saw Mr. Van Brandt," my mother went on. "She gave me no
detailed account of the interview between them. 'He reminded me,'
she said, 'of what I knew to be true--that the woman who had
entrapped him into marrying her was an incurable drunkard, and
that his ever living with her again was out of the question.
Still she was alive, and she had a right to the name at least of
his wife. I won't attempt to excuse my returning to him, knowing
the circumstances as I did. I will only say that I could see no
other choice before me, in my position at the time. It is
needless to trouble you with what I have suffered since, or to
speak of what I may suffer still. I am a lost woman. Be under no
alarm, madam, about your son. I shall remember proudly to the end
of my life that he once offered me the honor and the happiness of
becoming his wife; but I know what is due to him and to you. I
have seen him for the last time. The one thing that remains to be
done is to satisfy him that our marriage is impossible. You are a
mother; you will understand why I reveal the obstacle which
stands between us--not to him, but to you.' She rose saying those
words, and opened the folding-doors which led from the parlor
into a back room. After an absence of a few moments only, she
returned."

At that crowning point in the narrative, my mother stopped. Was
she afraid to go on? or did she think it needless to say more?

"Well?" I said.

"Must I really tell it to you in words, George? Can't you guess
how it ended, even yet?"

There were two difficulties in the way of my understanding her. I
had a man's bluntness of perception, and I was half maddened by
suspense. Incredible as it may appear, I was too dull to guess
the truth even now.

"When she returned to me," my mother resumed, "she was not alone.
She had with her a lovely little girl, just old enough to walk
with the help of her mother's hand. She tenderly kissed the
child, and then she put it on my lap. 'There is my only comfort,'
she said, simply; 'and there is the obstacle to my ever becoming
Mr. Germaine's wife.' "

Van Brandt's child! Van Brandt's child!

The postscript which she had made me add to my letter; the
incomprehensible withdrawal from the employment in which she was
prospering; the disheartening difficulties which had brought her
to the brink of starvation; the degrading return to the man who
had cruelly deceived her--all was explained, all was excused now!
With an infant at the breast, how could she obtain a new
employment? With famine staring her in the face, what else could
the friendless woman do but return to the father of her child?
What claim had I on her, by comparison with _him_? What did it
matter, now that the poor creature secretly returned the love
that I felt for her? There was the child, an obstacle between
us--there was _his_ hold on her, now that he had got her back!
What was _my_ hold worth? All social proprieties and all social
laws answered the question: Nothing!

My head sunk on my breast; I received the blow in silence.

My good mother took my hand. "You understand it now, George?" she
said, sorrowfully.

"Yes, mother; I understand it."

"There was one thing she wished me to say to you, my dear, which
I have not mentioned yet. She entreats you not to suppose that
she had the faintest idea of her situation when she attempted to
destroy herself. Her first suspicion that it was possible she
might become a mother was conveyed to her at Edinburgh, in a
conversation with her aunt. It is impossible, George, not to feel
compassionately toward this poor woman. Regrettable as her
position is, I cannot see that she is to blame for it. She was
the innocent victim of a vile fraud when that man married her;
she has suffered undeservedly since; and she has behaved nobly to
you and to me. I only do her justice in saying that she is a
woman in a thousand--a woman worthy, under happier circumstances,
to be my daughter and your wife. I feel _for_ you, and feel
_with_ you, my dear--I do, with my whole heart."

So this scene in my life was, to all appearance, a scene closed
forever. As it had been with my love, in the days of my boyhood,
so it was again now with the love of my riper age!

Later in the day, when I had in some degree recovered my
self-possession, I wrote to Mr. Van Brandt--as _she_ had foreseen
I should write!--to apologize for breaking my engagement to dine
with him.

Could I trust to a letter also, to say the farewell words for me
to the woman whom I had loved and lost? No! It was better for
her, and better for me, that I should not write. And yet the idea
of leaving her in silence was more than my fortitude could
endure. Her last words at parting (as they were repeated to me by
my mother) had expressed the hope that I should not think hardly
of her in the future. How could I assure her that I should think
of her tenderly to the end of my life? My mother's delicate tact
and true sympathy showed me the way. "Send a little present,
George," she said, "to the child. You bear no malice to the poor
little child?" God knows I was not hard on the child! I went out
myself and bought her a toy. I brought it home, and before I sent
it away, I pinned a slip of paper to it, bearing this
inscription: "To your little daughter, from George Germaine."
There is nothing very pathetic, I suppose, in those words. And
yet I burst out crying when I had written them.

The next morning my mother and I set forth for my country-house
in Perthshire. London was now unendurable to me. Traveling abroad
I had tried already. Nothing was left but to go back to the
Highlands, and to try what I could make of my life, with my
mother still left to live for.

CHAPTER XVI.

MY MOTHER'S DIARY.

THERE is something repellent to me, even at this distance of
time, in looking back at the dreary days, of seclusion which
followed each other monotonously in my Highland home. The actions
of my life, however trifling they may have been, I can find some
interest in recalling: they associate me with my
fellow-creatures; they connect me, in some degree, with the
vigorous movement of the world. But I have no sympathy with the
purely selfish pleasure which some men appear to derive from
dwelling on the minute anatomy of their own feelings, under the
pr essure of adverse fortune. Let the domestic record of our
stagnant life in Perthshire (so far as I am concerned in it) be
presented in my mother's words, not in mine. A few lines of
extract from the daily journal which it was her habit to keep
will tell all that need be told before this narrative advances to
later dates and to newer scenes.


"20th August.--We have been two months at our home in Scotland,
and I see no change in George for the better. He is as far as
ever, I fear, from being reconciled to his separation from that
unhappy woman. Nothing will induce him to confess it himself. He
declares that his quiet life here with me is all that he desires.
But I know better! I have been into his bedroom late at night. I
have heard him talking of her in his sleep, and I have seen the
tears on his eyelids. My poor boy! What thousands of charming
women there are who would ask nothing better than to be his wife!
And the one woman whom he can never marry is the only woman whom
he loves!

"25th.--A long conversation about George with Mr. MacGlue. I have
never liked this Scotch doctor since he encouraged my son to keep
the fatal appointment at Saint Anthony's Well. But he seems to be
a clever man in his profession--and I think, in his way, he means
kindly toward George. His advice was given as coarsely as usual,
and very positively at the same time. 'Nothing will cure your
son, madam, of his amatory passion for that half-drowned lady of
his but change--and another lady. Send him away by himself this
time; and let him feel the want of some kind creature to look
after him. And when he meets with that kind creature (they are as
plenty as fish in the sea), never trouble your head about it if
there's a flaw in her character. I have got a cracked tea-cup
which has served me for twenty years. Marry him, ma'am, to the
new one with the utmost speed and impetuosity which the law will
permit.' I hate Mr. MacGlue's opinions--so coarse and so
hard-hearted!--but I sadly fear that I must part with my son for
a little while, for his own sake.

"26th.--Where is George to go? I have been thinking of it all
through the night, and I cannot arrive at a conclusion. It is so
difficult to reconcile myself to letting him go away alone.

"29th.--I have always believed in special providences; and I am
now confirmed in my belief. This morning has brought with it a
note from our good friend and neighbor at Belhelvie. Sir James is
one of the commissioners for the Northern Lights. He is going in
a Government vessel to inspect the lighthouses on the North of
Scotland, and on the Orkney and Shetland Islands--and, having
noticed how worn and ill my poor boy looks, he most kindly
invites George to be his guest on the voyage. They will not be
absent for more than two months; and the sea (as Sir James
reminds me) did wonders for George's health when he returned from
India. I could wish for no better opportunity than this of trying
what change of air and scene will do for him. However painfully I
may feel the separation myself, I shall put a cheerful face on
it; and I shall urge George to accept the invitation.

"30th.--I have said all I could; but he still refuses to leave
me. I am a miserable, selfish creature. I felt so glad when he
said No.

"31st.--Another wakeful night. George must positively send his
answer to Sir James to-day. I am determined to do my duty toward
my son--he looks so dreadfully pale and ill this morning!
Besides, if something is not done to rouse him, how do I know
that he may not end in going back to Mrs. Van Brandt after all?
From every point of view, I feel bound to insist on his accepting
Sir James's invitation. I have only to be firm, and the thing is
done. He has never yet disobeyed me, poor fellow. He will not
disobey me now.

"2d September.--He has gone! Entirely to please me--entirely
against his own wishes. Oh, how is it that such a good son cannot
get a good wife! He would make any woman happy. I wonder whether
I have done right in sending him away? The wind is moaning in the
fir plantation at the back of the house. Is there a storm at sea?
I forgot to ask Sir James how big the vessel was. The 'Guide to
Scotland' says the coast is rugged; and there is a wild sea
between the north shore and the Orkney Islands. I almost regret
having insisted so strongly--how foolish I am! We are all in the
hands of God. May God bless and prosper my good son!

"10th.--Very uneasy. No letter from George. Ah, how full of
trouble this life is! and how strange that we should cling to it
as we do!

"15th.--A letter from George! They have done with the north coast
and they have crossed the wild sea to the Orkneys. Wonderful
weather has favored them so far; and George is in better health
and spirits. Ah! how much happiness there is in life if we only
have the patience to wait for it.

"2d October.--Another letter. They are safe in the harbor of
Lerwick, the chief port in the Shetland Islands. The weather has
not latterly been at all favorable. But the amendment in George's
health remains. He writes most gratefully of Sir James's
unremitting kindness to him. I am so happy, I declare I could
kiss Sir James--though he _is_ a great man, and a Commissioner
for Northern Lights! In three weeks more (wind and weather
permitting) they hope to get back. Never mind my lonely life
here, if I can only see George happy and well again! He tells me
they have passed a great deal of their time on shore; but not a
word does he say about meeting any ladies. Perhaps they are
scarce in those wild regions? I have heard of Shetland shawls and
Shetland ponies. Are there any Shetland ladies, I wonder?"

CHAPTER XVII.

SHETLAND HOSPITALITY.

"GUIDE! Where are we?"

"I can't say for certain."

"Have you lost your way?"

The guide looks slowly all round him, and then looks at me. That
is his answer to my question. And that is enough.

The lost persons are three in number. My traveling companion,
myself, and the guide. We are seated on three Shetland ponies--so
small in stature, that we two strangers were at first literally
ashamed to get on their backs. We are surrounded by dripping
white mist so dense that we become invisible to one another at a
distance of half a dozen yards. We know that we are somewhere on
the mainland of the Shetland Isles. We see under the feet of our
ponies a mixture of moorland and bog--here, the strip of firm
ground that we are standing on, and there, a few feet off, the
strip of watery peat-bog, which is deep enough to suffocate us if
we step into it. Thus far, and no further, our knowledge extends.
This question of the moment is, What are we to do next?

The guide lights his pipe, and reminds me that he warned us
against the weather before we started for our ride. My traveling
companion looks at me resignedly, with an expression of mild
reproach. I deserve it. My rashness is to blame for the
disastrous position in which we now find ourselves.

In writing to my mother, I have been careful to report favorably
of my health and spirits. But I have not confessed that I still
remember the day when I parted with the one hope and renounced
the one love which made life precious to me. My torpid condition
of mind, at home, has simply given place to a perpetual
restlessness, produced by the excitement of my new life. I must
now always be doing something--no matter what, so long as it
diverts me from my own thoughts. Inaction is unendurable;
solitude has become horrible to me. While the other members of
the party which has accompanied Sir James on his voyage of
inspection among the lighthouses are content to wait in the
harbor of Lerwick for a favorable change in the weather, I am
obstinately bent on leaving the comfortable shelter of the vessel
to explore some inland ruin of prehistoric times, of which I
never heard, and for which I care nothing. The movement is all I
want; the ride will fill the hateful void of time. I go, in
defiance of sound advice offered to me on all sides. The youngest
member of our party catches the infection of my recklessness (in
virtue of his youth) and goes with me. And what has come of it?
We are blinded by mist; we are lost on a moor; and the treacherou
s peat-bogs are round us in every direction!

What is to be done?

"Just leave it to the pownies," the guide says.

"Do you mean leave the ponies to find the way?"

"That's it," says the guide. "Drop the bridle, and leave it to
the pownies. See for yourselves. I'm away on _my_ powny."

He drops his bridle on the pommel of his saddle, whistles to his
pony, and disappears in the mist; riding with his hands in his
pockets, and his pipe in his mouth, as composedly as if he were
sitting by his own fireside at home.

We have no choice but to follow his example, or to be left alone
on the moor. The intelligent little animals, relieved from our
stupid supervision, trot off with their noses to the ground, like
hounds on the scent. Where the intersecting tract of bog is wide,
they skirt round it. Where it is narrow enough to be leaped over,
they cross it by a jump. Trot! trot!--away the hardy little
creatures go; never stopping, never hesitating. Our "superior
intelligence," perfectly useless in the emergency, wonders how it
will end. Our guide, in front of us, answers that it will end in
the ponies finding their way certainly to the nearest village or
the nearest house. "Let the bridles be," is his one warning to
us. "Come what may of it, let the bridles be!"

It is easy for the guide to let his bridle be--he is accustomed
to place himself in that helpless position under stress of
circumstances, and he knows exactly what his pony can do.

To us, however, the situation is a new one; and it looks
dangerous in the extreme. More than once I check myself, not
without an effort, in the act of resuming the command of my pony
on passing the more dangerous points in the journey. The time
goes on; and no sign of an inhabited dwelling looms through the
mist. I begin to get fidgety and irritable; I find myself
secretly doubting the trustworthiness of the guide. While I am in
this unsettled frame of mind, my pony approaches a dim, black,
winding line, where the bog must be crossed for the hundredth
time at least. The breadth of it (deceptively enlarged in
appearance by the mist) looks to my eyes beyond the reach of a
leap by any pony that ever was foaled. I lose my presence of
mind. At the critical moment before the jump is taken, I am
foolish enough to seize the bridle, and suddenly check the pony.
He starts, throws up his head, and falls instantly as if he had
been shot. My right hand, as we drop on the ground together, gets
twisted under me, and I feel that I have sprained my wrist.

If I escape with no worse injury than this, I may consider myself
well off. But no such good fortune is reserved for me. In his
struggles to rise, before I have completely extricated myself
from him, the pony kicks me; and, as my ill-luck will have it,
his hoof strikes just where the poisoned spear struck me in the
past days of my service in India. The old wound opens again--and
there I lie bleeding on the barren Shetland moor!

This time my strength has not been exhausted in attempting to
breast the current of a swift-flowing river with a drowning woman
to support. I preserve my senses; and I am able to give the
necessary directions for bandaging the wound with the best
materials which we have at our disposal. To mount my pony again
is simply out of the question. I must remain where I am, with my
traveling companion to look after me; and the guide must trust
his pony to discover the nearest place of shelter to which I can
be removed.

Before he abandons us on the moor, the man (at my suggestion)
takes our " bearings," as correctly as he can by the help of my
pocket-compass. This done, he disappears in the mist, with the
bridle hanging loose, and the pony's nose to the ground, as
before. I am left, under my young friend's care, with a cloak to
lie on, and a saddle for a pillow. Our ponies composedly help
themselves to such grass as they can find on the moor; keeping
always near us as companionably as if they were a couple of dogs.
In this position we wait events, while the dripping mist hangs
thicker than ever all round us.

The slow minutes follow each other wearily in the majestic
silence of the moor. We neither of us acknowledge it in words,
but we both feel that hours may pass before the guide discovers
us again. The penetrating damp slowly strengthens its clammy hold
on me. My companion's pocket-flask of sherry has about a
teaspoonful of wine left in the bottom of it. We look at one
another--having nothing else to look at in the present state of
the weather--and we try to make the best of it. So the slow
minutes follow each other, until our watches tell us that forty
minutes have elapsed since the guide and his pony vanished from
our view.

My friend suggests that we may as well try what our voices can do
toward proclaiming our situation to any living creature who may,
by the barest possibility, be within hearing of us. I leave him
to try the experiment, having no strength to spare for vocal
efforts of any sort. My companion shouts at the highest pitch of
his voice. Silence follows his first attempt. He tries again;
and, this time, an answering hail reaches us faintly through the
white fog. A fellow-creature of some sort, guide or stranger, is
near us--help is coming at last!

An interval passes; and voices reach our ears--the voices of two
men. Then the shadowy appearance of the two becomes visible in
the mist. Then the guide advances near enough to be identified.
He is followed by a sturdy fellow in a composite dress, which
presents him under the double aspect of a groom and a gardener.
The guide speaks a few words of rough sympathy. The composite man
stands by impenetrably silent; the sight of a disabled stranger
fails entirely either to surprise or to interest the
gardener-groom.

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