The Two Destinies Part 11

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed her lips. "'George Germaine.' I never heard of 'Germaine.'

But 'George' reminds me of old times." She smiled sadly at some pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sociations 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 pa.s.senger, whose ghostly "double" had appeared in the vessel that was to rescue him, and who had himself seen that vessel in a dream.