The Two Destinies Read online

been. The effect producedon me by the sight of my portrait was in itself due to moral and mentalchanges in me for the better, which had been steadily proceeding sincethe time when my wound had laid me helpless among strangers in a strangeland. Sickness, which has made itself teacher and friend to many a man,had made itself teacher and friend to me. I looked back with horror atthe vices of my youth; at the fruitless after-days when I had impiouslydoubted all that is most noble, all that is most consoling in humanlife. Consecrated by sorrow, purified by repentance, was it vain in meto hope that her spirit a nd my spirit might yet be united again? Whocould tell?

  I rose once more. It could serve no good purpose to linger until nightby the banks of the river. I had left the house, feeling the impulsewhich drives us, in certain excited conditions of the mind, to takerefuge in movement and change. The remedy had failed; my mind was asstrangely disturbed as ever. My wisest course would be to go home, andkeep my good mother company over her favorite game of piquet.

  I turned to take the road back, and stopped, struck by the tranquilbeauty of the last faint light in the western sky, shining behind theblack line formed by the parapet of the bridge.

  In the grand gathering of the night shadows, in the deep stillness ofthe dying day, I stood alone and watched the sinking light.

  As I looked, there came a change over the scene. Suddenly and softly aliving figure glided into view on the bridge. It passed behind the blackline of the parapet, in the last long rays of the western light. Itcrossed the bridge. It paused, and crossed back again half-way. Then itstopped. The minutes passed, and there the figure stood, a motionlessblack object, behind the black parapet of the bridge.

  I advanced a little, moving near enough to obtain a closer view of thedress in which the figure was attired. The dress showed me that thesolitary stranger was a woman.

  She did not notice me in the shadow which the trees cast on the bank.She stood with her arms folded in her cloak, looking down at thedarkening river.

  Why was she waiting there at the close of evening alone?

  As the question occurred to me, I saw her head move. She looked alongthe bridge, first on one side of her, then on the other. Was shewaiting for some person who was to meet her? Or was she suspicious ofobservation, and anxious to make sure that she was alone?

  A sudden doubt of her purpose in seeking that solitary place, a suddendistrust of the lonely bridge and the swift-flowing river, set my heartbeating quickly and roused me to instant action. I hurried up therising ground which led from the river-bank to the bridge, determined onspeaking to her while the opportunity was still mine.

  She neither saw nor heard me until I was close to her. I approached withan irrepressible feeling of agitation; not knowing how she might receiveme when I spoke to her. The moment she turned and faced me, my composurecame back. It was as if, expecting to see a stranger, I had unexpectedlyencountered a friend.

  And yet she _was_ a stranger. I had never before looked on that graveand noble face, on that grand figure whose exquisite grace and symmetryeven her long cloak could not wholly hide. She was not, perhaps,a strictly beautiful woman. There were defects in her which weresufficiently marked to show themselves in the fading light. Her hair,for example, seen under the large garden hat that she wore, lookedalmost as short as the hair of a man; and the color of it was of thatdull, lusterless brown hue which is so commonly seen in English womenof the ordinary type. Still, in spite of these drawbacks, there was alatent charm in her expression, there was an inbred fascination in hermanner, which instantly found its way to my sympathies and its hold onmy admiration. She won me in the moment when I first looked at her.

  "May I inquire if you have lost your way?" I asked.

  Her eyes rested on my face with a strange look of inquiry in them. Shedid not appear to be surprised or confused at my venturing to addressher.

  "I know this part of the country well," I went on. "Can I be of any useto you?"

  She still looked at me with steady, inquiring eyes. For a moment,stranger as I was, my face seemed to trouble her as if it had been aface that she had seen and forgotten again. If she really had this idea,she at once dismissed it with a little toss of her head, and looked awayat the river as if she felt no further interest in me.

  "Thank you. I have not lost my way. I am accustomed to walking alone.Good-evening."

  She spoke coldly, but courteously. Her voice was delicious; her bow, asshe left me, was the perfection of unaffected grace. She left the bridgeon the side by which I had first seen her approach it, and walked slowlyaway along the darkening track of the highroad.

  Still I was not quite satisfied. There was something underlying thecharming expression and the fascinating manner which my instinct feltto be something wrong. As I walked away toward the opposite end of thebridge, the doubt began to grow on me whether she had spoken the truth.In leaving the neighborhood of the river, was she simply trying to getrid of me?

  I at once resolved to put this suspicion of her to the test. Leaving thebridge, I had only to cross the road beyond, and to enter a plantationon the bank of the river. Here, concealed behind the first tree whichwas large enough to hide me, I could command a view of the bridge, and Icould fairly count on detecting her, if she returned to the river, whilethere was a ray of light to see her by. It was not easy walking in theobscurity of the plantation: I had almost to grope my way to the nearesttree that suited my purpose.

  I had just steadied my foothold on the uneven ground behind the tree,when the stillness of the twilight hour was suddenly broken by thedistant sound of a voice.

  The voice was a woman's. It was not raised to any high pitch; its accentwas the accent of prayer, and the words it uttered were these:

  "Christ, have mercy on me!"

  There was silence again. A nameless fear crept over me, as I looked outon the bridge.

  She was standing on the parapet. Before I could move, before I couldcry out, before I could even breathe again freely, she leaped into theriver.

  The current ran my way. I could see her, as she rose to the surface,floating by in the light on the mid-stream. I ran headlong down thebank. She sank again, in the moment when I stopped to throw aside myhat and coat and to kick off my shoes. I was a practiced swimmer. Theinstant I was in the water my composure came back to me--I felt likemyself again.

  The current swept me out into the mid-stream, and greatly increasedthe speed at which I swam. I was close behind her when she rose forthe second time--a shadowy thing, just visible a few inches below thesurface of the river. One more stroke, and my left arm was round her; Ihad her face out of the water. She was insensible. I could hold her inthe right way to leave me master of all my movements; I could devotemyself, without flurry or fatigue, to the exertion of taking her back tothe shore.

  My first attempt satisfied me that there was no reasonable hope,burdened as I now was, of breasting the strong current running towardthe mid-river from either bank. I tried it on one side, and I triedit on the other, and gave it up. The one choice left was to let myselfdrift with her down the stream. Some fifty yards lower, the river tooka turn round a promontory of land, on which stood a little inn muchfrequented by anglers in the season. As we approached the place, I madeanother attempt (again an attempt in vain) to reach the shore. Our lastchance now was to be heard by the people of the inn. I shouted at thefull pitch of my voice as we drifted past. The cry was answered. Aman put off in a boat. In five minutes more I had her safe on the bankagain; and the man and I were carrying her to the inn by the river-side.

  The landlady and her servant-girl were equally willing to be of service,and equally ignorant of what they were to do. Fortunately, my medicaleducation made me competent to direct them. A good fire, warm blankets,hot water in bottles, were all at my disposal. I showed the women myselfhow to ply the work of revival. They persevered, and I persevered; andstill there she lay, in her perfect beauty of form, without a sign oflife perceptible; there she lay, to all outward appearance, dead bydrowning.

&n
bsp; A last hope was left--the hope of restoring her (if I could constructthe apparatus in time) by the process called "artificial respiration."I was just endeavoring to tell the landlady what I wanted and was justconscious o f a strange difficulty in expressing myself, when the goodwoman started back, and looked at me with a scream of terror.

  "Good God, sir, you're bleeding!" she cried. "What's the matter? Whereare you hurt?"

  In the moment when she spoke to me I knew what had happened. The oldIndian wound (irritated, doubtless, by the violent exertion that I hadimposed on myself) had opened again. I struggled against the suddensense of faintness that seized on me; I tried to tell the people of theinn what to do. It was useless. I dropped to my knees; my head sunk onthe bosom of the woman stretched senseless upon the low couch beneathme. The death-in-life that had got _her_ had got _me_. Lost to the worldabout us, we lay, with my blood flowing on her, united in our deathlytrance.

  Where were our spirits at that moment? Were