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.