TWO WOMEN OR ONE?
From The Mss. Of Dr. Leonard Benary
By Henry Harland
New York
1890
_DEDICATION_
TO -------- --------, ESQUIRE.
“I'll link my waggon to a star;”
I'll dedicate this tale to you:
Wit, poet, scholar, that you are,
And skilful story-teller too,
And theologue, and critic true,
And main-stay of the-------Review.
I'll link my waggon to a star,
Does not the Yankee sage advise it?
And yet I dare not name your name,
Lest the wide lustre of its fame
Eclipse my humble candle-flame:
But you'll surmise it.
January 1890.
TWO WOMEN OR ONE?
CHAPTER I.--THE FIRST NIGHT.
|My name is Leonard Benary--rather a foreign-sounding name, though I am
a pure-blooded Englishman. I reside at No. 63, Riverview Road, in the
American city of Adironda, though I was born in Devonshire. And I am a
physician and surgeon, though retired from active practice. My age can
be computed when I say that I came into the world on the 21st day of
July, in the year 1818.
I must at the outset crave the reader's indulgence for two things.
First, my style. I am not a literary man; and my style will therefore
be ungraceful. Secondly, my provincialisms. I have lived in Adironda
for very nearly half a century, and I have therefore fallen into divers
local peculiarities of speech. But I have a singular, and I believe an
interesting and significant, story to tell, and I think it had better be
ill told than not told at all.
It begins with the night of Friday, June 13th, 1884.
Towards twelve o'clock on that night I was walking in an easterly
direction along the south side of Washington Street, between Myrtle
Avenue and Riverview Road, on my way home from a concert which I had
attended at the Academy of Music. Moving in the same direction, on the
same side of the street, and leading me by something like a hundred
feet, I could make out the figure of a woman. Except for us two, the
neighbourhood appeared to be deserted.
Anything about my fellow pedestrian, beyond her sex, which was
proclaimed by the outline of her gown as she passed under a
street-lamp--whether she was young or old, white or black, a lady or
a beggar--I was unable, owing to the darkness of the night, and to the
distance that separated us, to distinguish. Indeed, I should most likely
have paid no attention whatever to her, for I was busy with my own
thoughts, had I not happened to notice that when she readied the corner
of Riverview Road, instead of turning into that thoroughfare, she
proceeded to the terrace at the foot of Washington Street, and
immediately disappeared down the stone staircase which leads thence to
the water's edge.
This action at once struck me as odd, and put an end to my
pre-occupation.
What could a solitary woman want at the brink of the Yellow Snake River
at twelve o'clock midnight?
Her errand could scarcely be a benign one; and the conjecture that
suicide might possibly be its object, instantly, of course, arose in my
mind.
My duty under the circumstances, anyhow, seemed plain--to keep an eye
upon her, and hold myself in readiness to interfere, if needful.
After a moment's deliberation, I, too, descended the stone stairs.