Footsteps of Fate Part 2

"But where in the world have you really been?" whispered Frank for the third time, infinitely amused and inquisitive.

"Here and there, I tell you--first in one place, and then in another,"

answered Bertie, with the most innocent face in the world; and, dapper as ever, he delicately lifted an oyster, his little finger in the air, and swallowed down his half-dozen without another word on the subject.

IV.

The season pa.s.sed away, but Bertie remained. Sometimes, indeed, he talked of going to Holland; he had an uncle, a stockbroker, in Amsterdam. Possibly that uncle.... But Westhove would not hear of it; and, when his friend's conscience p.r.i.c.ked him for sponging on him, he talked him down. What did it matter? If Bertie had been the rich man, and he the pauper, Bertie would have done the same by him. They were friends.

A true appreciation of the case began to dawn on him in the now firmly established habits of their life. Frank's moral sense whispered drowsily in the ease of their luxurious existence. Now and then indeed, he had something like a vague suspicion that he was not rich enough for two; that he had spent more in the last few months than in any former season. But he was too heedless to dwell long on such unpleasant doubts.

He was lulled to sleep by Bertie as if by opium or morphia. Bertie had become indispensable to him: he consulted his friend on every point, and allowed himself to be led by him on every occasion, completely subjugated by the ascendancy held over him by the fragile little man, with his velvet paws, as though he had him under a yoke. Every now and then--ere long at frequent intervals of about a fortnight--Bertie disappeared, stayed away four or five days, and came back one fine morning, with his insinuating smile, exhausted, pale, and tired out.

These were, perhaps, some secret excesses of dissipation--mysterious adventure-hunting in the sordid purlieus of the lowest neighbourhoods--of which Frank never heard nor understood the truth; a depth of depravity into which Frank seemed too precise and dainty to be initiated; sins in which he was to have no part, and which Bertie, in his refinement of selfishness, kept for himself as an occasional treat.

Then Frank's hours were pa.s.sed in disgust of life; he missed the unwholesome stimulant of his existence; in his solitude he sank into grey melancholy and sadness, verging on despair. He stayed at home all day, incapable of any exertion, sulking in his lonely house, where everything--the draping of the handsome curtains, the bronze nudity of the statues, the careless disarray of the cushions on the divan--had still, as it were, an odour of Bertie, which haunted him with regret. On such days as these he was conscious of the futility of his existence, the odious insignificance of his sinewless, empty life; useless, aimless, null!

Sadly sweet memories would come over him; reminiscences of his parental home, shining through the magic gla.s.s of retrospect, like bright, still pools of tender domestic harmony, in which the figures of his father and mother stood forth grand and n.o.ble, glorified by child-like affection.

He longed for some unspeakable ideal, something pure and chaste, some high aim in life. He would shake off this torpor of the soul; he would send away Bertie--

But Bertie came back, and Bertie held him tightly once more in his silken bonds, and he saw more clearly every day that he could not live without Bertie. And then, catching sight of himself in a mirror--tall and brawny and strong, the healthy blood tinging his clear complexion--he could not forbear smiling at the foolish visions of his solitude, which struck him now as diseased imaginings, quite out of keeping with his robust vigour. Life was but a farce, and the better part was to play it out as a farce, in mere sensual enjoyment. Nothing else was worth the pains.... And yet sometimes at night, when his big body lay tired out after some riotous evening, a gnawing dissatisfaction would come over him, not to be conquered by this light-hearted philosophy, and even Bertie himself would lecture him. Why did not Frank seek some employment--some sphere of action? Why did not he travel for a while?

"Why not go to Norway?" asked Bertie one day, for the sake of saying something.

London was beginning to be intolerable to Bertie; and as the notion of travelling smiled on Frank, both for a change and for economy--since they could live more cheaply abroad than in the whirl of fashionable London--he thought it over, and came to a decision to leave White-Rose Cottage for an indefinite period to the care of Annie and her husband, and spend a few weeks in Norway. Bertie should go with him.

PART II.

I.

After luncheon at the table d'hote of the Britannia Hotel at Dronthjem, the friends made their way along the broad, quiet streets with their low, wooden houses, and they had left the town, going in the direction of the Gjeitfjeld, when they overtook, in the village of Ihlen, an elderly gentleman with a young girl, evidently bent on the same excursion. The pair had sat a few places off at the table d'hote, and as this much acquaintance justified a recognition in so lonely a spot, Westhove and his friend lifted their hats. The old gentleman immediately asked, in English, whether they knew the road to the Gjeitfjeld: he and his daughter--who, during the colloquy, never looked up from her "Baedeker"--could not agree on the subject. This difference of opinion led to a conversation: the two young men begged to be allowed to join them, Frank being of opinion that "Baedeker" was right.

"Papa will never believe in 'Baedeker!'" said the young lady with a quiet smile, as she closed the red volume she had been consulting. "Nor will he ever trust me when I tell him I will guide him safely."

"Are you always so sure of knowing your way?" said Frank, laughing.

"Always!" she saucily declared, with a gay laugh.

Bertie inquired how long a walk it was, and what was to be seen at the end of it; Frank's everlasting walks were a weariness and a bore. During his residence with his friend he had so spoiled himself, in order to forget his former wretchedness, that he now knew no greater pleasure than that of lying on a bench with a cigar, or a gla.s.s of port, and, above all, would avoid every exertion. But now, abroad--when a man is travelling--he cannot for ever sit dozing in his hotel. Besides, he was quite stiff with riding in a carriole; all this useless rushing about was really monstrous folly, and White-Rose Cottage was not such a bad place. Frank, on the contrary, thoroughly enjoyed the clear, invigorating air of this brilliant summer day, and he drank in the sunshine as though it were fine wine cooled by a fresh mountain breeze; his step was elastic and his voice had a contented ring.

"Are you an Englishman?" asked the gentleman.

Westhove explained that they were Dutch, that they lived in London; and his tone had the frank briskness which a man instinctively adopts to fellow-travellers, as sharing his lot for the moment, when the weather is fine and the landscape pleasing. Their sympathy being thus aroused by their admiration of Norwegian scenery, they walked on side by side, the elder man stepping out bravely, the young lady very erect, with her fine figure moulded in a simple, close-fitting blue cloth dress, to which a cape with several folds--something like an elegant type of coach-man's cape--lent a dash of smartness. She wore a sort of jockey-cap, with a mannish air, on her thick twists of ruddy-gold hair.

Bertie alone could not understand how all this could be called pleasure; but he made no complaint. He spoke little, not thinking it necessary to make himself agreeable to people whom he might probably never set eyes on again after the morrow. So he just kept up with them, wondering at Frank, who had at once plunged into eager conversation with the young lady, but perceiving on a sudden that his own politeness and tact were a mere superficial varnish as compared with Frank's instinctive good breeding. At that moment, for the first time, notwithstanding his better features and natty travelling costume, he felt himself so far Frank's inferior that a surge of fury resembling hate thrilled through him. He could not bear this sense of inferiority, so he approached the old gentleman, and walking by his side forced himself to a show of respectful amiability. As they followed the windings of the upward and diminishing path they by degrees lagged behind Frank and his companion, and thus climbed the hill two and two.

"So you live in London. What is your name?" asked the young lady, with calm curiosity.

"Frank Westhove."

"My name is Eva Rhodes; my father is Sir Archibald Rhodes, of Rhodes Grove. And your friend?"

"His name is Robert van Maeren."

"I like the sound of your name best. I believe I can say it like English. Tell it me again."

He repeated his name, and she said it after him with her English accent.

It was very funny, and they laughed over it--"Fraank, Fraank Westhoove."

And then they looked back.

"Papa, are you tired?" cried Eva. The old man was toiling up the height with his broad shoulders bent; his face was red under his travelling cap, which he had pushed to the back of his head, and he was blowing like a Triton. Bertie tried to smile pleasantly, though he was inwardly raging in high dudgeon over this senseless clamber. They had half an hour more of it, however, before the narrow track, which zigzagged up the hill-side like a grey arabesque, came to an end, and they sat down to rest on a block of stone.

Eva was enchanted. Far below lay Dronthjem with its modern houses, encircled by the steely waters of the Nid and its fjord, a magic mirror on which floated the white ma.s.s of the fortress of Munkenholm. The mountains rising on all sides were blue; nearest to them the bloomy, purple blue of the grape; then the deep sheeny blue of velvet; further off the transparent, crystalline blue of the sapphire, and in the distance the tender sky-blue of the turquoise. The water was blue, like blue silver; the very air was blue as pearls are or mother-of-pearls.

The equable sunlight fell on everything, without glare and without shadow, from exactly overhead.

"It is almost like Italy!" exclaimed Eva. "And this is Norway! I had always pictured Norway to myself as being all like Romsdal, wild and barren, with rocky peaks like the Romsdalhorn and the Trolltinder, and with raging cascades like the Sletta fos; but this is quite lovely, and so softly blue! I should like to build a house here and live in it, and I would called it Eva's Bower, and keep a whole flock of white doves; they would look so pretty flying in the blue air."

"Dear child!" laughed Sir Archibald. "It looks very different in winter, I suspect."

"No doubt different, but still lovely. In winter I should love the fury of raging winds, and the roar of the waves of the fjord below my house, and grey mists would hang over the hills! I can see it all!"

"Why, you would be frozen," argued the father, gravely.

"Oh no; and I should sit at my turret window dreaming over Dante or Spenser. Do you love Dante and Spenser?"

The question was addressed to Frank, who had listened somewhat puzzled to Eva's raptures, and was now a little startled; for, you see, though he knew Dante by name, he had never even heard of the poet Spenser; only of Herbert Spencer.

"What, do you not know the Faery Queen, Una, and the Red-cross Knight, and Britomart? How very strange."

"Dear child, what a little fanatic you are over those silly allegories!"

said papa.

"But they are glorious, papa!" Eva insisted. "Besides, I love allegory above all things, and admire no other kind of poetry."

"The style is so affected! You are drowned in symbolism!"

"It is the keynote of the Renaissance," Eva protested. "In the time of Elizabeth all the Court talked in that high-flown style. And Edmund Spenser's images are splendid; they sparkle like jewels!"

Bertie thought this discourse much too learned, but he kept his opinion to himself, and made some remark about Dante's "Inferno." They were by this time rested and went on again up the hill.

"My daughter is half an 'Esthetic,'" said the old gentleman, laughing.