The Two Destinies

iling; on one side of the bed, my mother's welcome face; on the other side, an elderly gentleman unremembered by me at that mom

k! He has come to

gentleman, addressed as "doctor," was offering me a spoonful of whisky-and-water on the other. He called it the "elixir

vaguely recall the more marked events of the previous evening. A minute or two more, and the image of the person in whom those eve

l of the elixir of life, and gravel

h, sir, and tak

in repeating

e is

isted in repeat

sup of

dded across the bed to my mother, and said, "Now, he'll do." My mother

covered, George, thank

erest. He was the legitimate fountainhead of the inf

e her?" I asked. "

up his hand, war

eak. 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 s

rd. A hard-headed, square-shouldered, pertinaciously self-willed man - it was plainly useless to conten

came to live in this neighborhood. You don't remember me at present, which is natural enough in the unbalanced con

patience

interposed. "Tell

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,

the lady," said my mother,

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 ob

e to exercise my ingenuity. "I g

r?' 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 ha

me that she has left t

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 wor

words, Mr. MacGlue

my mother. "Has she left the

her answered. "The lady left the inn th

es: "bitterly" is the word - t

her yoursel

inutes, my dear, on my

did sh

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 l

give you

very scrupulous person. She told me she looked at the poor creature's line

Dutch name. And yet you say she spoke like an

uggested my mother; "and Van Brand

isted 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

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 b

inn to my own room at home; and th

he 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 appro

er in my dream as the stranger who had so warmly interested me, I was, nevertheless, dissatisfied with my

ing with my mother, in the comfortable, old-fashioned,

at admiration of the place, and had often expressed a wish to possess some memorial of it. I resolved to take my

emained unopened since my departure for India. In the course of my investigation, I opened a drawer in the d

to the bailiff's cottage, and reminded me of Dame De

eparation? 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

to the

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. Le

nted even greater difficulties, to an amateur artist like me, than t

unexpected discovery. The summer-house was no longer empty as we had left it. A

gain in breathless amazement. The stranger in the summer-house was now plainly r

ening light, which I had dreamed of only a few nights since! The woman herself - I saw her as plainly as

ticed my agitation. "George!" she exc

the open door of

mother. "What

itting at the table and w

Is he going to be ill again?

an laid down the pencil an

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, u

ss of passing

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, bo

e blank space on the lower part of the page, under the foreground lines

re her written words left behind her: visible to my mother as

saw, arranged in two lin

full mo

ony's Well.