The Two Destinies

Those sad lines were signed in initials only. It is needless to say that they merely strengthened my resolution to see her at all hazards. I kissed the paper on which her hand had rested, and then I turned to the second letter. It contained the 'invitation' to which my correspondent had alluded, and it was expressed in these terms:

'Mr. Van Brandt presents his compliments to Mr. Germaine, and begs to apologize for the somewhat abrupt manner in which he received Mr. Germaine's polite advances. Mr. Van Brandt suffers habitually from nervous irritability, and he felt particularly ill last night. He trusts Mr. Germaine will receive this candid explanation in the spirit in which it is offered; and he begs to add that Mrs. Van Brandt will be delighted to receive Mr. Germaine whenever he may find it convenient to favor her with a visit.'

That Mr. Van Brandt had some sordid interest of his own to serve in writing this grotesquely impudent composition, and that the unhappy woman who bore his name was heartily ashamed of the proceeding on which he had ventured, were conclusions easily drawn after reading the two letters. The suspicion of the man and of his motives which I naturally felt produced no hesitation in my mind as to the course which I had determined to pursue. On the contrary, I rejoiced that my way to an interview with Mrs. Van Brandt was smoothed, no matter with what motives, by Mr. Van Brandt himself.

I waited at home until noon, and then I could wait no longer. Leaving a message of excuse for my mother (I had just sense of shame enough left to shrink from facing her), I hastened away to profit by my invitation on the very day when I received it.

CHAPTER XIV. MRS. VAN BRANDT AT HOME.

As I lifted my hand to ring the house bell, the door was opened from within, and no less a person than Mr. Van Brandt himself stood before me. He had his hat on. We had evidently met just as he was going out.

'My dear sir, how good this is of you! You present the best of all replies to my letter in presenting yourself. Mrs. Van Brandt is at home. Mrs. Van Brandt will be delighted. Pray walk in.'

He threw open the door of a room on the ground-floor. His politeness was (if possible) even more offensive than his insolence. 'Be seated, Mr. Germaine, I beg of you.' He turned to the open door, and called up the stairs, in a loud and confident voice:

'Mary! come down directly.'

'Mary'! I knew her Christian name at last, and knew it through Van Brandt. No words can tell how the name jarred on me, spoken by his lips. For the first time for years past my mind went back to Mary Dermody and Greenwater Broad. The next moment I heard the rustling of Mrs. Van Brandt's dress on the stairs. As the sound caught my ear, the old times and the old faces vanished again from my thoughts as completely as if they had never existed. What had she in common with the frail, shy little child, her namesake, of other days? What similarity was perceivable in the sooty London lodging-house to remind me of the bailiff's flower- scented cottage by the shores of the lake?

Van Brandt took off his hat, and bowed to me with sickening servility.

'I have a business appointment,' he said, 'which it is impossible to put off. Pray excuse me. Mrs. Van Brandt will do the honors. Good morning.'

The house door opened and closed again. The rustling of the dress came slowly nearer and nearer. She stood before me.

'Mr. Germaine!' she exclaimed, starting back, as if the bare sight of me repelled her. 'Is this honorable? Is this worthy of you? You allow me to be entrapped into receiving you, and you accept as your accomplice Mr. Van Brandt! Oh, sir, I have accustomed myself to look up to you as a high-minded man. How bitterly you have disappointed me!'

Her reproaches passed by me unheeded. They only heightened her color; they only added a new rapture to the luxury of looking at her.

'If you loved me as faithfully as I love you,' I said, 'you would understand why I am here. No sacrifice is too great if it brings me into your presence again after two years of absence.'

She suddenly approached me, and fixed her eyes in eager scrutiny on my face.

'There must be some mistake,' she said. 'You cannot possibly have received my letter, or you have not read it?'

'I have received it, and I have read it.'

'And Van Brandt's letter—you have read that too?'

'Yes.'

She sat down by the table, and, leaning her arms on it, covered her face with her hands. My answers seemed not only to have distressed, but to have perplexed her. 'Are men all alike?' I heard her say. 'I thought I might trust in his sense of what was due to himself and of what was compassionate toward me.'

I closed the door and seated myself by her side. She removed her hands from her face when she felt me near her. She looked at me with a cold and steady surprise.

'What are you going to do?' she asked.

'I am going to try if I can recover my place in your estimation,' I said. 'I am going to ask your pity for a man whose whole heart is yours, whose whole life is bound up in you.'

She started to her feet, and looked round her incredulously, as if doubting whether she had rightly heard and rightly interpreted my last words. Before I could speak again, she suddenly faced me, and struck her open hand on the table with a passionate resolution which I now saw in her for the first time.

'Stop!' she cried. 'There must be an end to this. And an end there shall be. Do you know who that man is who has just left the house? Answer me, Mr. Germaine! I am speaking in earnest.'

There was no choice but to answer her. She was indeed in earnest—vehemently in earnest.

'His letter tells me,' I said, 'that he is Mr. Van Brandt.'