Footsteps of Fate Part 23

"Ay, Fatality. Bertie used to say--"

"Do not mention Bertie."

As she spoke the rain dashed against the window panes in a perfect torrent.

"It is always raining," she murmured.

"Yes--always," he mechanically repeated. She shuddered and looked in his face.

"Why do you say that?" she asked quickly.

"I do not know," said he, startled and bewildered. "I really do not know. Why, what did I say?"

They both were silent. Then she began again.

"Frank!"

"My darling."

"I will not let you leave me again. Not even for a day. I shall always be in terror for you."

"Let there be an end to everything, my child."

"No, no. Listen. Let us be together for ever. For ever and ever. Let us lie down to sleep--while it is still raining."

"Eva!"

"Together. You say yourself that everything in you fails of happiness, and that nevertheless happiness must come from within. Well, it is the same with me. And yet we love each other; do we not?"

"Yes, yes."

"Then why should we remain awake in this weariful life? It is always, always raining. Give me a kiss, Frank. A good night kiss, and let us sleep while it rains. Let me go to sleep in your arms--"

"Eva, what do you mean?" he asked, hoa.r.s.ely, for he did not understand her.

"I broke the phial--broke it for you," she went on wildly. "But you can always get another?" An icy chill shot through his very marrow like a sudden frost.

"G.o.d in heaven, Eva! What do you want?"

She smiled at him calmly, with a soft light in her beaming eyes, and she threw her arms round him.

"To die with you, my dearest," she whispered as in an ecstasy of joy.

"What good can life do us? You were right. You can never be happy again, and I can ever be happy with you. And yet I will not leave you, for you are all in all to me. Then how can we live, or why? But, oh, Frank, to die together, in each other's arms! That is the greatest bliss! A kindly poison, Frank, nothing painful. Something easy to take, that we can take together, and clasp each other, and die--die--die--" Frank shuddered with horror.

"No, Eva, no!" he cried. "You must not wish that, you cannot wish that!

I forbid it."

"Oh, do not forbid it," she said persuasively, falling on the floor and embracing his knees. "Let us share the same fate: that will be bliss.

All about us will be rose colour and gold and silver, like a glorious sunset. Oh, can you imagine anything more beautiful? Frank, that is happiness, the happiness we have looked for--which every one in this world is looking for. It is Paradise! It is Heaven!"

He was not carried away by her rapture, but her words tempted him as with the promise of a brief joy in this life and an unutterably peaceful rest in death. He could say no more to dissuade her, to check her in the heavenward flight of her fancy; but still he reflected that there were no means at hand, since the phial was broken.

Eva had risen, irresistibly attracted to the spot where the phial had fallen. She stooped and picked it up. It had fallen into the drapery of a curtain; it was not broken, only cracked and chipped. Not a drop had been spilt.

"Frank!" she screamed, in her frenzied gladness. "It is not broken!

Look! It is whole. It is Fate that would not allow it to be broken."

He too was standing up, quaking with an icy chill. She had already forced out the stopper and half emptied the phial with a mad, ecstatic smile.

"Eva!" he shrieked.

And quite calmly, smiling still, she handed it to him. He looked at her for a moment, feeling as if they two were already no longer of this world, as if they were floating in a sphere of unknown natural laws, in which strange things must come to pa.s.s. The world, as it seemed, was about to perish in that deluge of pouring rain. But he saw that she stood waiting with her strange smile--and he drank.

It was quite dark; they lay on the sofa side by side, in each other's arms. He was dead. She raised her head in an agony of alarm at the storm which was raging outside, and that other storm which was raging in her dying body. The lightning glared white and the thunder was close overhead. But louder than the echoes in the air the thunder came rolling on towards Eva, nearer and nearer, louder and louder, a supernatural thunder, on the wheels of the spheres.

"It is coming!" she murmured, in the anguish of death. "Great heavens!

the thunder again!"

And she sank convulsed on the body of her lover, hiding her head under his coat, to die there.

Then came a shuffling step in the pa.s.sage outside the dark room. An old man's thin voice twice called the name of Eva; and a hand opened the door.

The End.