WHEN YOU last saw me, I was a boy of thirteen. You now see me a man of
twenty-three.
The story of my life, in the interval between these two ages, is a story
that can be soon told.
Speaking of my father first, I have to record that the end of his career
did indeed come as Dame Dermody had foretold it. Before we had been a
year in America, the total collapse of his land speculation was followed
by his death. The catastrophe was complete. But for my mother's little
income (settled on her at her marriage) we should both have been left
helpless at the mercy of the world.
We made some kind friends among the hearty and hospitable people of the
United States, whom we were unaffectedly sorry to leave. But there were
reasons which inclined us to return to our own country after my father's
death; and we did return accordingly.
Besides her brother-in-law (already mentioned in the earlier pages of my
narrative), my mother had another relative--a cousin named Germaine--on
whose assistance she mainly relied for starting me, when the time came,
in a professional career. I remember it as a family rumor, that Mr.
Germaine had been an unsuccessful suitor for my mother's hand in the
days when they were young people together. He was still a bachelor at
the later period when his eldest brother's death without issue placed
him in possession of a handsome fortune. The accession of wealth made
no difference in his habits of life: he was a lonely old man, estranged
from his other relatives, when my mother and I returned to England. If
I could only succeed in pleasing Mr. Germaine, I might consider my
prospects (in some degree, at least) as being prospects assured.
This was one consideration that influenced us in leaving America. There
was another--in which I was especially interested--that drew me back to
the lonely shores of Greenwater Broad.
My only hope of recovering a trace of Mary was to make inquiries among
the cottagers in the neighborhood of my old home. The good bailiff had
been heartily liked and respected in his little sphere. It seemed at
least possible that some among his many friends in Suffolk might have
discovered traces of him, in the year that had passed since I had left
England. In my dreams of Mary--and I dreamed of her constantly--the
lake and its woody banks formed a frequent background in the visionary
picture of my lost companion. To the lake shores I looked, with a
natural superstition, as to my way back to the one life that had its
promise of happiness for _me_--my life with Mary.
On our arrival in London, I started for Suffolk alone--at my mother's
request. At her age she naturally shrank from revisiting the home scenes
now occupied by the strangers to whom our house had been let.
Ah, how my heart ached (young as I was) when I saw the familiar green
waters of the lake once more! It was evening. The first object that
caught my eye was the gayly painted boat, once mine, in which Mary and I
had so often sailed together. The people in possession of our house were
sailing now. The sound of their laughter floated toward me merrily over
the still water. _Their_ flag flew at the little mast-head, from which
Mary's flag had never fluttered in the pleasant breeze. I turned my eyes
from the boat; it hurt me to look at it. A few steps onward brought me
to a promontory on the shore, and revealed the brown archways of the
decoy on the opposite bank. There was the paling behind which we had
knelt to watch the snaring of the ducks; there was the hole through
which "Trim," the terrier, had shown himself to rouse the stupid
curiosity of the water-fowl; there, seen at intervals through the trees,
was the winding woodland path along which Mary and I had traced our way
to Dermody's cottage on the day when my father's cruel hand had torn us
from each other. How wisely my good mother had shrunk from looking again
at the dear old scenes! I turned my back on the lake, to think with
calmer thoughts in the shadowy solitude of the woods.
An hour's walk along the winding banks brought me round to the cottage
which had once been Mary's home.
The door was opened by a woman who was a stranger to me. She civilly
asked me to enter the parlor. I had suffered enough already; I made my
inquiries, standing on the doorstep. They were soon at an end. The woman
was a stranger in our part of Suffolk; neither she nor her husband had
ever heard of Dermody's name.
I pursued my investigations among the peasantry, passing from cottage
to cottage. The twilight came; the moon rose; the lights began to vanish
from the lattice-windows; and still I continued my weary pilgrimage; and
still, go where I might, the answer to my questions was the same. Nobody
knew anything of Dermody. Everybody asked if I had not brought news of
him myself. It pains me even now to recall the cruelly complete defeat
of every effort which I made on that disastrous evening. I passed the
night in one of the cottages; and I returned to London the next day,
broken by disappointment, careless what I did, or where I went next.
Still, we were not wholly parted. I saw Mary--as Dame Dermody said I
should see her--in dreams.
Sometimes she came to me with the green flag in her hand, and repeated
her farewell words--"Don't forget Mary!" Sometimes she led me to our
well-remembered corner in the cottage parlor, and opened the paper on
which her grandmother had written our prayers for us. We prayed together
again, and sung hymns together again, as if the old times had come back.
Once she appeared to me, with tears in her eyes, and said, "We must
wait, dear: our time has not come yet." Twice I saw her looking at me,
like one disturbed by anxious thoughts; and twice I heard her say, "Live
patiently, live innocently, George, for my sake."
We settled in London, where my education was undertaken by a private
tutor. Before we had been long in our new abode, an unexpected change
in our prospects took place. To my mother's astonishment she received an
offer of marriage (addressed to her in a letter) from Mr. Germaine.
"I entreat you not to be startled by my proposal!" (the old gentleman
wrote). "You can hardly have forgotten that I was once fond of you,
in the days when we were both young and both poor. No return to the
feelings associated with that time is possible now. At my age, all I ask
of you is to be the companion of the closing years of my life, and to
give me something of a father's interest in promoting the future welfare
of your son. Consider this, my dear, and tell me whether you will take
the empty chair at an old man's lonely fireside."
My mother (looking almost as confused, poor soul! as if she had become
a young girl again) left the whole responsibility of decision on the
shoulders of her son! I was not long in making up my mind. If she said
Yes, she would accept the hand of a man of worth and honor, who had
been throughout his whole life devoted to her; and she would recover
the comfort, the luxury, the social prosperity and position of which my
father's reckless course of life had deprived her. Add to this, that
I liked Mr. Germaine, and that Mr. Germaine liked me. Under these
circumstances, why should my mother say No? She could produce no
satisfactory answer to that question when I put it. As the necessary
consequence, she became, in due course of time, Mrs. Germaine.
I have only to add that, to the end of her life, my good mother
congratulated herself (in this case at least) on having taken her son's
advice.
The years went on, and still Mary and I were parted, except in my
dreams. The years went on, until the perilous time which comes in every
man's life came in mine. I reached the age when the strongest of all
the passions seizes on the senses, and asserts its mastery over mind and
body alike.
I had hitherto passively endured the wreck of my earliest and dearest
hopes: I had lived patiently, and lived innocently, for Mary's sake. Now
my patience left me; my innocence was numbered among the lost things of
the past. My days, it is true, were still devoted to the tasks set me by
my tutor; but my nights were given, in secret, to a reckless profligacy,
which (in my present frame of mind) I look back on with disgust and
dismay. I profaned my remembrances of Mary in the company of women
who had reached the lowest depths of degradation. I impiously said to
myself: "I have hoped for her long enough; I have waited for her long
enough. The one thing now to do is to enjoy my youth and to forget her."
From the moment when I dropped into this degradation, I might sometimes
think regretfully of Mary--at the morning time, when penitent thoughts
mostly come to us; but I ceased absolutely to see her in my dreams.
We were now, in the completest sense of the word, parted. Mary's pure
spirit could hold no communion with mine; Mary's pure spirit had left
me.
It is needless to say that I failed to keep the secret of my depravity
from the knowledge of my mother. The sight of her grief was the first
influence that sobered me. In some degree at least I restrained myself:
I made the effort to return to purer ways of life. Mr. Germaine, though
I had disappointed him, was too just a man to give me up as lost.
He advised me, as a means of self-reform, to make my choice of a
profession, and to absorb myself in closer studies than any that I had
yet pursued.
I made my peace with this good friend and second father, not only by
following his advice, but by adopting the profession to which he had
been himself attached before he inherited his fortune--the profession of
medicine. Mr. Germaine had been a surgeon: I resolved on being a surgeon
too.
Having entered, at rather an earlier age than usual, on my new way of
life, I may at least say for myself that I worked hard. I won, and kept,
the interest of the professors under whom I studied. On the other hand,
it cannot be denied that my reformation was, morally speaking, far from
being complete. I worked; but what I did was done selfishly, bitterly,
with a hard heart. In religion and morals I adopted the views of a
materialist companion of my studies--a worn-out man of more than double
my age. I believed in nothing but what I could see, or taste, or feel.
I lost all faith in humanity. With the one exception of my mother, I had
no respect for women. My remembrances of Mary deteriorated until they
became little more than a lost link of association with the past. I
still preserved the green flag as a matter of habit; but it was
no longer kept about me; it was left undisturbed in a drawer of my
writing-desk. Now and then a wholesome doubt, whether my life was not
utterly unworthy of me, would rise in my mind. But it held no long
possession of my thoughts. Despising others, it was in the logical order
of things that I should follow my conclusions to their bitter end, and
consistently despise myself.
The term of my majority arrived. I was twenty-one years old; and of the
illusions of my youth not a vestige remained.
Neither my mother nor Mr. Germaine could make any positive complaint of
my conduct. But they were both thoroughly uneasy about me. After anxious
consideration, my step-father arrived at a conclusion. He decided that
the one chance of restoring me to my better and brighter self was to try
the stimulant of a life among new people and new scenes.
At the period of which I am now writing, the home government had decided
on sending a special diplomatic mission to one of the native princes
ruling over a remote province of our Indian empire. In the disturbed
state of the province at that time, the mission, on its arrival in
India, was to be accompanied to the prince's court by an escort,
including the military as well as the civil servants of the crown. The
surgeon appointed to sail with the expedition from England was an old
friend of Mr. Germaine's, and was in want of an assistant on whose
capacity he could rely. Through my stepfather's interest, the post was
offered to me. I accepted it without hesitation. My only pride left was
the miserable pride of indifference. So long as I pursued my profession,
the place in which I pursued it was a matter of no importance to my
mind.
It was long before we could persuade my mother even to contemplate the
new prospect now set before me. When she did at length give way, she
yielded most unwillingly. I confess I left her with the tears in my
eyes--the first I had shed for many a long year past.
The history of our expedition is part of the history of British India.
It has no place in this narrative.
Speaking personally, I have to record that I was rendered incapable of
performing my professional duties in less than a week from the time when
the mission reached its destination. We were encamped outside the city;
and an attack was made on us, under cover of darkness, by the fanatical
natives. The attempt was defeated with little difficulty, and with only
a trifling loss on our side. I was among the wounded, having been struck
by a javelin, or spear, while I was passing from one tent to another.
Inflicted by a European weapon, my injury would have been of no serious
consequence. But the tip of the Indian spear had been poisoned. I
escaped the mortal danger of lockjaw; but, through some peculiarity in
the action of the poison on my constitution (which I am quite unable to
explain), the wound obstinately refused to heal.
I was invalided and sent to Calcutta, where the best surgical help was
at my disposal. To all appearance, the wound healed there--then broke
out again. Twice this happened; and the medical men agreed that the
best course to take would be to send me home. They calculated on
the invigorating effect of the sea voyage, and, failing this, on
the salutary influence of my native air. In the Indian climate I was
pronounced incurable.
Two days before the ship sailed a letter from my mother brought me
startling news. My life to come--if I _had_ a life to come--had
been turned into a new channel. Mr. Germaine had died suddenly, of
heart-disease. His will, bearing date at the time when I left England,
bequeathed an income for life to my mother, and left the bulk of his
property to me, on the one condition that I adopted his name. I accepted
the condition, of course, and became George Germaine.
Three months later, my mother and I were restored to each other.
Except that I still had some trouble with my wound, behold me now to all
appearance one of the most enviable of existing mortals; promoted to the
position of a wealthy gentleman; possessor of a house in London and of a
country-seat in Perthshire; and, nevertheless, at twenty-three years of
age, one of the most miserable men living!
And Mary?
In the ten years that had now passed over, what had become of Mary?
You have heard my story. Read the few pages that follow, and you will
hear hers.