第56章 CHAPTER XX(1)

THE GREEN FLAG

"I CONGRATULATE you, Mr. Germaine, on your power of painting in words. Your description gives me a vivid idea of Mrs. Van Brandt."

"Does the portrait please you, Miss Dunross?"

"May I speak as plainly as usual?"

"Certainly!"

"Well, then, plainly, I don't like your Mrs. Van Brandt." Ten days had passed; and thus far Miss Dunross had made her way into my confidence already! By what means had she induced me to trust her with those secret and sacred sorrows of my life which I had hitherto kept for my mother's ear alone? I can easily recall the rapid and subtle manner in which her sympathies twined themselves round mine; but I fail entirely to trace the infinite gradations of approach by which she surprised and conquered my habitual reserve. The strongest influence of all, the influence of the eye, was not hers. When the light was admitted into the room she was shrouded in her veil. At all other times the curtains were drawn, the screen was before the fire--I could see dimly the outline of her face, and I could see no more. The secret of her influence was perhaps partly attributable to the simple and sisterly manner in which she spoke to me, and partly to the indescribable interest which associated itself with her mere presence in the room. Her father had told me that she "carried the air of heaven with her." In my experience, I can only say that she carried something with her which softly and inscrutably possessed itself of my will, and made me as unconsciously obedient to her wishes as if I had been her dog. The love-story of my boyhood, in all its particulars, down even to the gift of the green flag; the mystic predictions of Dame Dermody; the loss of every trace of my little Mary of former days; the rescue of Mrs. Van Brandt from the river; the apparition of her in the summer-house; the after-meetings with her in Edinburgh and in London; the final parting which had left its mark of sorrow on my face--all these events, all these sufferi ngs, I confided to her as unreservedly as I have confided them to these pages. And the result, as she sat by me in the darkened room, was summed up, with a woman's headlong impetuosity of judgment, in the words that I have just written--"I don't like your Mrs. Van Brandt!"

"Why not?" I asked. She answered instantly, "Because you ought to love nobody but Mary."

"But Mary has been lost to me since I was a boy of thirteen."

"Be patient, and you will find her again. Mary is patient--Mary is waiting for you. When you meet her, you will be ashamed to remember that you ever loved Mrs. Van Brandt--you will look on your separation from that woman as the happiest event of your life. I may not live to hear of it--but _you_ will live to own that I was right." Her perfectly baseless conviction that time would yet bring about my meeting with Mary, partly irritated, partly amused me.

"You seem to agree with Dame Dermody," I said. "You believe that our two destinies are one. No matter what time may elapse, or what may happen in the time, you believe my marriage with Mary is still a marriage delayed, and nothing more?"

"I firmly believe it."

"Without knowing why--except that you dislike the idea of my marrying Mrs. Van Brandt?" She knew that this view of her motive was not far from being the right one--and, womanlike, she shifted the discussion to new ground.

"Why do you call her Mrs. Van Brandt?" she asked. "Mrs. Van Brandt is the namesake of your first love. If you are so fond of her, why don't you call her Mary?" I was ashamed to give the true reason--it seemed so utterly unworthy of a man of any sense or spirit. Noticing my hesitation, she insisted on my answering her; she forced me to make my humiliating confession.

"The man who has parted us," I said, "called her Mary. I hate him with such a jealous hatred that he has even disgusted me with the name! It lost all its charm for me when it passed _his_ lips." I had anticipated that she would laugh at me. No! She suddenly raised her head as if she were looking at me intently in the dark.

"How fond you must be of that woman!" she said. "Do you dream of her now?"

"I never dream of her now."

"Do you expect to see the apparition of her again?"

"It may be so--if a time comes when she is in sore need of help, and when she has no friend to look to but me."

"Did you ever see the apparition of your little Mary?"

"Never!"

"But you used once to see her--as Dame Dermody predicted--in dreams?"

"Yes--when I was a lad."

"And, in the after-time, it was not Mary, but Mrs. Van Brandt who came to you in dreams--who appeared to you in the spirit, when she was far away from you in the body? Poor old Dame Dermody. She little thought, in her life-time, that her prediction would be fullfilled by the wrong woman!" To that result her inquiries had inscrutably conducted her! If she had only pressed them a little further--if she had not unconsciously led me astray again by the very next question that fell from her lips--she _must_ have communicated to _my_ mind the idea obscurely germinating in hers--the idea of a possible identity between the Mary of my first love and Mrs. Van Brandt!