The Two Destinies Page 12

they together and consciousof each other? United by a spiritual bond, undiscovered and unsuspectedby us in the flesh, did we two, who had met as strangers on the fatalbridge, know each other again in the trance? You who have loved andlost--you whose one consolation it has been to believe in other worldsthan this--can you turn from my questions in contempt? Can you honestlysay that they have never been _your_ questions too?

  CHAPTER VIII. THE KINDRED SPIRITS

  THE morning sunlight shining in at a badly curtained window; a clumsywooden bed, with big twisted posts that reached to the ceiling; on oneside of the bed, my mother's welcome face; on the other side, an elderlygentleman unremembered by me at that moment--such were the objects thatpresented themselves to my view, when I first consciously returned tothe world that we live in.

  "Look, doctor, look! He has come to his senses at last."

  "Open your mouth, sir, and take a sup of this." My mother was rejoicingover me on one side of the bed; and the unknown gentleman, addressed as"doctor," was offering me a spoonful of whisky-and-water on the other.He called it the "elixir of life"; and he bid me remark (speaking ina strong Scotch accent) that he tasted it himself to show he was inearnest.

  The stimulant did its good work. My head felt less giddy, my mind becameclearer. I could speak collectedly to my mother; I could vaguely recallthe more marked events of the previous evening. A minute or two more,and the image of the person in whom those events had all centered becamea living image in my memory. I tried to raise myself in the bed; Iasked, impatiently, "Where is she?"

  The doctor produced another spoonful of the elixir of life, and gravelyrepeated his first address to me.

  "Open your mouth, sir, and take a sup of this."

  I persisted in repeating my question:

  "Where is she?"

  The doctor persisted in repeating his formula:

  "Take a sup of this."

  I was too weak to contest the matter; I obeyed. My medical attendantnodded across the bed to my mother, and said, "Now, he'll do." My motherhad some compassion on me. She relieved my anxiety in these plain words:

  "The lady has quite recovered, George, thanks to the doctor here."

  I looked at my professional colleague with a new interest. He was thelegitimate fountainhead of the information that I was dying to havepoured into my mind.

  "How did you revive her?" I asked. "Where is she now?"

  The doctor held up his hand, warning me to stop.

  "We shall do well, sir, if we proceed systematically," he began, in avery positive manner. "You will understand, that every time you openyour mouth, it will be to take a sup of this, and not to speak. I shalltell 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 onwhat you may call the scene of action, it stands in the fit order ofthings that I should speak first. You will just permit me to mix alittle more of the elixir of life, and then, as the poet says, my plainunvarnished tale I shall deliver."

  So he spoke, pronouncing in his strong Scotch accent the most carefullyselected English I had ever heard. A hard-headed, square-shouldered,pertinaciously self-willed man--it was plainly useless to contend withhim. I turned to my mother's gentle face for encouragement; and I let mydoctor have his own way.

  "My name," he proceeded, "is MacGlue. I had the honor of presentingmy respects at your house yonder when you first came to live in thisneighborhood. You don't remember me at present, which is naturalenough in the unbalanced condition of your mind, consequent, you willunderstand (as a professional person yourself) on copious loss ofblood."

  There my patience gave way.

  "Never mind me!" I interposed. "Tell me about the lady!"

  "You have opened your mouth, sir!" cried Mr. MacGlue, severely. "Youknow the penalty--take a sup of this. I told you we should proceedsystematically," he went on, after he had forced me to submit to thepenalty. "Everything in its place, Mr. Germaine--everything in itsplace. I was speaking of your bodily condition. Well, sir, and how didI discover your bodily condition? Providentially for _you_ I was drivinghome yesterday evening by the lower road (which is the road by the riverbank), and, drawing near to the inn here (they call it a hotel; it'snothing but an inn), I heard the screeching of the landlady half a mileoff. A good woman enough, you will understand, as times go; but a poorcreature 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 themedical way; and there I found you and the stranger lady in a positionwhich I may truthfully describe as standing in some need of improvementon the score of propriety. Tut! tut! I speak jocosely--you were both ina dead swoon. Having heard what the landlady had to tell me, and having,to the best of my ability, separated history from hysterics in thecourse of the woman's narrative, I found myself, as it were, placedbetween two laws. The law of gallantry, you see, pointed to the lady asthe first object of my professional services, while the law of humanity(seeing that you were still bleeding) pointed no less imperatively toyou. I am no longer a young man: I left the lady to wait. My word! itwas no light matter, Mr. Germaine, to deal with your case, and get youcarried up here out of the way. That old wound of yours, sir, is not tobe trifled with. I bid you beware how you open it again. The next timeyou go out for an evening walk and you see a lady in the water, you willdo well for your own health to leave her there. What's that I see? Areyou opening your mouth again? Do you want another sup already?"

  "He wants to hear more about the lady," said my mother, interpreting mywishes for me.

  "Oh, the lady," resumed Mr. MacGlue, with the air of a man who found nogreat attraction in the subject proposed to him. "There's not much thatI know of to be said about the lady. A fine woman, no doubt. If youcould strip the flesh off her bones, you would find a splendid skeletonunderneath. For, mind this! there's no such thing as a finely made womanwithout a good bony scaffolding to build her on at starting. I don'tthink much of this lady--morally speaking, you will understand. If Imay be permitted to say so in your presence, ma'am, there's a man in thebackground of that dramatic scene of hers on the bridge. However, notbeing the man myself, I have nothing to do with that. My business withthe lady was just to set her vital machinery going again. And, Heavenknows, she proved a heavy handful! It was even a more obstinate case todeal with, sir, than yours. I never, in all my experience, met with twopeople more unwilling to come back to this world and its troubles thanyou two were. And when I had done the business at last, when I waswellnigh swooning myself with the work and the worry of it, guess--Igive you leave to speak for this once--guess what were the first wordsthe lady said to me when she came to herself again."

  I was too much excited to be able to exercise my ingenuity. "I give itup!" I said, impatiently.

  "You may well give it up," remarked Mr. MacGlue. "The first words sheaddressed, sir, to the man who had dragged her out of the very jaws ofdeath were these: 'How dare you meddle with me? why didn't you leaveme to die?' Her exact language--I'll take my Bible oath of it. I was soprovoked that I gave her the change back (as the saying is) in her owncoin. 'There's the river handy, ma'am,' I said; 'do it again. I, forone, won't stir a hand to save you; I promise you that.' She looked upsharply. 'Are you the man who took me out of the river?' she said. 'Godforbid!' says I. 'I'm only the doctor who was fool enough to meddlewith you afterward.' She turned to the landlady. 'Who took me out ofthe river?' she asked. The landlady told her, and mentioned your name.'Germaine?' she said to herself; 'I know nobody named Germaine; I wonderwhether it was the man who spoke to me on the bridge?' 'Yes,' says thelandlady; '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 sentfor his mother: wait till to-morrow.' She turned on me, looking halffrightened, half angry. 'I can't wait,' she says
; 'you don't know whatyou have done among you in bringing me back to life. I must leave thisneighborhood; I must be out of Perthshire to-morrow: when does the firstcoach southward pass this way?' Having nothing to do with the firstcoach southward, I referred her to the people of the inn. My business(now I had done with the lady) was upstairs in this room, to see how youwere getting on. You were getting on as well as I could wish, and yourmother was at your bedside. I went home to see what sick people might bewaiting for me in the regular way. When I came back this morning, therewas the foolish