The Two Destinies

by Wilkie Collins

agentleman can throw away his money," the senior partner remarked. "Icongratulate you, Mr. Germaine, on having discovered an entirely newway of effectually emptying your purse. Founding a newspaper, taking atheater, keeping race-horses, gambling at Monaco, are highly efficientas modes of losing money. But they all yield, sir, to paying the debtsof Mr. Van Brandt!"

  I left him, and went home.

  The servant who opened the door had a message for me from my mother. Shewished to see me as soon as I was at leisure to speak to her.

  I presented myself at once in my mother's sitting-room.

  "Well, George?" she said, without a word to prepare me for what wascoming. "How have you left Mrs. Van Brandt?"

  I was completely thrown off my guard.

  "Who has told you that I have seen Mrs. Van Brandt?" I asked.

  "My dear, your face has told me. Don't I know by this time how you lookand how you speak when Mrs. Van Brandt is in your mind. Sit down by me.I have something to say to you which I wanted to say this morning; but,I hardly know why, my heart failed me. I am bolder now, and I can sayit. My son, you still love Mrs. Van Brandt. You have my permission tomarry her."

  Those were the words! Hardly an hour had elapsed since Mrs. Van Brandt'sown lips had told me that our union was impossible. Not even half anhour had passed since I had given the directions which would restore toliberty the man who was the one obstacle to my marriage. And this wasthe time that my mother had innocently chosen for consenting to receiveas her daughter-in-law Mrs. Van Brandt!

  "I see that I surprise you," she resumed. "Let me explain my motive asplainly as I can. I should not be speaking the truth, George, if I toldyou that I have ceased to feel the serious objections that there are toyour marrying this lady. The only difference in my way of thinking is,that I am now willing to set my objections aside, out of regard for yourhappiness. I am an old woman, my dear. In the course of nature, I cannothope to be with you much longer. When I am gone, who will be left tocare for you and love you, in the place of your mother? No one willbe left, unless you marry Mrs. Van Brandt. Your happiness is my firstconsideration, and the woman you love (sadly as she has been led astray)is a woman worthy of a better fate. Marry her."

  I could not trust myself to speak. I could only kneel at my mother'sfeet, and hide my face on her knees, as if I had been a boy again.

  "Think of it, George," she said. "And come back to me when you arecomposed enough to speak as quietly of the future as I do."

  She lifted my head and kissed me. As I rose to leave her, I sawsomething in the dear old eyes that met mine so tenderly, which struck asudden fear through me, keen and cutting, like a stroke from a knife.

  The moment I had closed the door, I went downstairs to the porter in thehall.

  "Has my mother left the house," I asked, "while I have been away?"

  "No, sir."

  "Have any visitors called?"

  "One visitor has called, sir."

  "Do you know who it was?"

  The porter mentioned the name of a celebrated physician--a man at thehead of his profession in those days. I instantly took my hat and wentto his house.

  He had just returned from his round of visits. My card was taken to him,and was followed at once by my admission to his consulting-room.

  "You have seen my mother," I said. "Is she seriously ill? and have younot concealed it from her? For God's sake, tell me the truth; I can bearit."

  The great man took me kindly by the hand.

  "Your mother stands in no need of any warning; she is herself aware ofthe critical state of her health," he said. "She sent for me to confirmher own conviction. I could not conceal from her--I must not concealfrom you--that the vital energies are sinking. She may live for somemonths longer in a milder air than the air of London. That is all I cansay. At her age, her days are numbered."

  He gave me time to steady myself under the blow; and then he placed hisvast experience, his matured and consummate knowledge, at my disposal.From his dictation, I committed to writing the necessary instructionsfor watching over the frail tenure of my mother's life.

  "Let me give you one word of warning," he said, as we parted. "Yourmother is especially desirous that you should know nothing of theprecarious condition of her health. Her one anxiety is to see youhappy. If she discovers your visit to me, I will not answer for theconsequences. Make the best excuse you can think of for at once takingher away from London, and, whatever you may feel in secret, keep up anappearance of good spirits in her presence."

  That evening I made my excuse. It was easily found. I had only to tellmy poor mother of Mrs. Van Brandt's refusal to marry me, and there wasan intelligible motive assigned for my proposing to leave London. Thesame night I wrote to inform Mrs. Van Brandt of the sad event which wasthe cause of my sudden departure, and to warn her that there no longerexisted the slightest necessity for insuring her life. "My lawyers" (Iwrote) "have undertaken to arrange Mr. Van Brandt's affairs immediately.In a few hours he will be at liberty to accept the situation that hasbeen offered to him." The last lines of the letter assured her of myunalterable love, and entreated her to write to me before she leftEngland.

  This done, all was done. I was conscious, strange to say, of no acutelypainful suffering at this saddest time of my life. There is a limit,morally as well as physically, to our capacity for endurance. I can onlydescribe my sensations under the calamities that had now fallen on me inone way: I felt like a man whose mind had been stunned.

  The next day my mother and I set forth on the first stage of our journeyto the south coast of Devonshire.

  CHAPTER XXX. THE PROSPECT DARKENS.

  THREE days after my mother and I had established ourselves at Torquay,I received Mrs. Van Brandt's answer to my letter. After the openingsentences (informing me that Van Brandt had been set at liberty, undercircumstances painfully suggestive to the writer of some unacknowledgedsacrifice on my part), the letter proceeded in these terms:

  "The new employment which Mr. Van Brandt is to undertake secures to usthe comforts, if not the luxuries, of life. For the first time since mytroubles began, I have the prospect before me of a peaceful existence,among a foreign people from whom all that is false in my position may beconcealed--not for my sake, but for the sake of my child. To more thanthis, to the happiness which some women enjoy, I must not, I dare not,aspire.

  "We leave England for the Continent early tomorrow morning. Shall I tellyou in what part of Europe my new residence is to be?

  "No! You might write to me again; and I might write back. The one poorreturn I can make to the good angel of my life is to help him to forgetme. What right have I to cling to my usurped place in your regard? Thetime will come when you will give your heart to a woman who is worthierof it than I am. Let me drop out of your life--except as an occasionalremembrance, when you sometimes think of the days that have goneforever.

  "I shall not be without some consolation on my side, when I too lookback at the past. I have been a better woman since I met with you. Liveas long as I may, I shall always remember that.

  "Yes! The influence that you have had over me has been from first tolast an influence for good. Allowing that I have done wrong (in myposition) to love you, and, worse even than that, to own it, still thelove has been innocent, and the effort to control it has been an honesteffort at least. But, apart from this, my heart tells me that I am thebetter for the sympathy which has united us. I may confess to you whatI have never yet acknowledged--now that we are so widely parted, andso little likely to meet again--whenever I have given myself upunrestrainedly to my own better impulses, they have always seemed tolead me to you. Whenever my mind has been most truly at peace, and Ihave been able to pray with a pure and a penitent heart, I have feltas if there was some unseen tie that was drawing us nearer and nearertogether. And, strange to say, this has always happened (just as mydreams of you have always come to me) when I have been separated fromVan Brandt. At such times, thinking or dreaming, it has always appearedto me that I knew you far mo
re familiarly than I know you when we meetface to face. Is there really such a thing, I wonder, as a former stateof existence? And were we once constant companions in some other sphere,thousands of years since? These are idle guesses. Let it be enough forme to remember that I have been the better for knowing you--withoutinquiring how or why.

  "Farewell, my beloved benefactor, my only friend! The child sends you akiss; and the mother signs herself your grateful and affectionate

  "M. VAN BRANDT."

  When I first read those lines, they once more recalled to mymemory--very strangely, as I then thought--the predictions of DameDermody in the days of my boyhood. Here were the foretold sympathieswhich were spiritually to unite me to Mary, realized by a stranger whomI had met by chance in the later years of my life!

  Thinking in this