The Two Destinies

by Wilkie Collins

words which she hadjust spoken, that her resolution was immovable. She had deliberatelyseparated herself from me; her own act had parted us forever.

  CHAPTER XXXVII. THE TWO DESTINIES.

  I MADE no movement to leave the room; I let no sign of sorrow escape me.At last, my heart was hardened against the woman who had so obstinatelyrejected me. I stood looking down at her with a merciless anger, thebare remembrance of which fills me at this day with a horror of myself.There is but one excuse for me. The shock of that last overthrow of theone hope that held me to life was more than my reason could endure. Onthat dreadful night (whatever I may have been at other times), I myselfbelieve it, I was a maddened man.

  I was the first to break the silence.

  "Get up," I said coldly.

  She lifted her face from the floor, and looked at me as if she doubtedwhether she had heard aright.

  "Put on your hat and cloak," I resumed. "I must ask you to go back withme as far as the boat."

  She rose slowly. Her eyes rested on my face with a dull, bewilderedlook.

  "Why am I to go with you to the boat?" she asked.

  The child heard her. The child ran up to us with her little hat in onehand, and the key of the cabin in the other.

  "I'm ready," she said. "I will open the cabin door."

  Her mother signed to her to go back to the bed-chamber. She went backas far as the door which led into the courtyard, and waited there,listening. I turned to Mrs. Van Brandt with immovable composure, andanswered the question which she had addressed to me.

  "You are left," I said, "without the means of getting away from thisplace. In two hours more the tide will be in my favor, and I shall sailat once on the return voyage. We part, this time, never to meet again.Before I go I am resolved to leave you properly provided for. My moneyis in my traveling-bag in the cabin. For that reason, I am obliged toask you to go with me as far as the boat."

  "I thank you gratefully for your kindness," she said. "I don't stand insuch serious need of help as you suppose."

  "It is useless to attempt to deceive me," I proceeded. "I have spokenwith the head partner of the house of Van Brandt at Amsterdam, and Iknow exactly what your position is. Your pride must bend low enough totake from my hands the means of subsistence for yourself and your child.If I had died in England--"

  I stopped. The unexpressed idea in my mind was to tell her that shewould inherit a legacy under my will, and that she might quite asbecomingly take money from me in my life-time as take it from myexecutors after my death. In forming this thought into words, theassociations which it called naturally into being revived in me thememory of my contemplated suicide in the Greenwater lake. Mingling withthe remembrance thus aroused, there rose in me unbidden, a temptation sooverpoweringly vile, and yet so irresistible in the state of my mind atthe moment, that it shook me to the soul. "You have nothing to live for,now that she has refused to be yours," the fiend in me whispered. "Takeyour leap into the next world, and make the woman whom you love take itwith you!" While I was still looking at her, while my last words to herfaltered on my lips, the horrible facilities for the perpetration ofthe double crime revealed themselves enticingly to my view. My boat wasmoored in the one part of the decaying harbor in which deep water stilllay at the foot of the quay. I had only to induce her to follow me whenI stepped on the deck, to seize her in my arms, and to jump overboardwith her before she could utter a cry for help. My drowsy sailors, as Iknew by experience, were hard to wake, and slow to move even when theywere roused at last. We should both be drowned before the youngest andthe quickest of them could get up from his bed and make his way to thedeck. Yes! We should both be struck together out of the ranks of theliving at one and the same moment. And why not? She who had again andagain refused to be my wife--did she deserve that I should leave herfree to go back, perhaps, for the second time to Van Brandt? On theevening when I had saved her from the waters of the Scotch river, Ihad made myself master of her fate. She had tried to destroy herselfby drowning; she should drown now, in the arms of the man who had oncethrown himself between her and death!

  Self-abandoned to such atrocious reasoning as this, I stood face to facewith her, and returned deliberately to my unfinished sentence.

  "If I had died in England, you would have been provided for by my will.What you would have taken from me then, you may take from me now. Cometo the boat."

  A change passed over her face as I spoke; a vague doubt of me beganto show itself in her eyes. She drew back a little, without making anyreply.

  "Come to the boat," I reiterated.

  "It is too late." With that answer, she looked across the room at thechild, still waiting by the door. "Come, Elfie," she said, calling thelittle creature by one of her favorite nicknames. "Come to bed."

  I too looked at Elfie. Might she not, I asked myself, be made theinnocent means of forcing her mother to leave the house? Trusting to thechild's fearless character, and her eagerness to see the boat, Isuddenly opened the door. As I had anticipated, she instantly ran out.The second door, leading into the square, I had not closed when Ientered the courtyard. In another moment Elfie was out in the square,triumphing in her freedom. The shrill little voice broke the death-likestillness of the place and hour, calling to me again and again to takeher to the boat.

  I turned to Mrs. Van Brandt. The stratagem had succeeded. Elfie's mothercould hardly refuse to follow when Elfie led the way.

  "Will you go with us?" I asked. "Or must I send the money back by thechild?"

  Her eyes rested on me for a moment with a deepening expression ofdistrust, then looked away again. She began to turn pale. "You are notlike yourself to-night," she said. Without a word more, she took herhat and cloak and went out before me into the square. I followed her,closing the doors behind me. She made an attempt to induce the child toapproach her. "Come, darling," she said, enticingly--"come and take myhand."

  But Elfie was not to be caught: she took to her heels, and answered froma safe distance. "No," said the child; "you will take me back and put meto bed." She retreated a little further, and held up the key: "I shallgo first," she cried, "and open the door."

  She trotted off a few steps in the direction of the harbor, and waitedfor what was to happen next. Her mother suddenly turned, and lookedclose at me under the light of the stars.

  "Are the sailors on board the boat?" she asked.

  The question startled me. Had she any suspicion of my purpose? Hadmy face warned her of lurking danger if she went to the boat? It wasimpossible. The more likely motive for her inquiry was to find a newexcuse for not accompanying me to the harbor. If I told her that the menwere on board, she might answer, "Why not employ one of your sailorsto bring the money to me at the house?" I took care to anticipate thesuggestion in making my reply.

  "They may be honest men," I said, watching her carefully; "but I don'tknow them well enough to trust them with money."

  To my surprise, she watched me just as carefully on her side, anddeliberately repeated her question:

  "Are the sailors on board the boat?"

  I informed her that the captain and crew slept in the boat, and pausedto see what would follow. My reply seemed to rouse her resolution. Aftera moment's consideration, she turned toward the place at which the childwas waiting for us. "Let us go, as you insist on it," she said, quietly.I made no further remark. Side by side, in silence we followed Elfie onour way to the boat.

  Not a human creature passed us in the streets; not a light glimmeredon us from the grim black houses. Twice the child stopped, and (stillkeeping slyly out of her mother's reach) ran back to me, wondering atmy silence. "Why don't you speak?" she asked. "Have you and mammaquarreled?"

  I was incapable of answering her--I could think of nothing but mycontemplated crime. Neither fear nor remorse troubled me. Every betterinstinct, every nobler feeling that I had once possessed, seemed tobe dead and gone. Not even a thought of the child's future troubled mymind. I had no power of looking on further than the fatal leap from theboat: b
eyond that there was an utter blank. For the time being--I canonly repeat it, my moral sense was obscured, my mental faculties werethrown completely off their balance. The animal part of me lived andmoved as usual; the viler animal instincts in me plotted and planned,and that was all. Nobody, looking at me, would have seen anything but adull quietude in my face, an immovable composure in my manner. And yetno madman was fitter for restraint, or less responsible morally for hisown actions, than I was at that moment.

  The night air blew more freshly on our faces. Still led by the child, wehad passed through the last street--we were out on the empty open spacewhich was the landward boundary of the harbor. In a minute more westood on the quay, within a step of the gunwale of the