Footsteps of Fate Part 5

And he stood once more lost in thought; the grey, wet atmosphere without cast a gloom on the scene within; and in his soul, too, reigned the deepest gloom. What was the use of fostering warm feelings when a few days of sympathetic companionship could only end in parting? This was always the case with friendly travelling-acquaintance, and was it not so throughout life, with every one--everything--we love? Was it worth while to care for anything? Was not all love a great delusion, by which men blinded themselves to their disgust at life?

PART III.

I.

December in London. Cold and foggy. White-Rose Cottage wrapped in mist; in the back room a blazing fire.

But Robert van Maeren was no longer in the blissful mood to enjoy this luxury, as we have hitherto known him; moreover, he now regarded it as quite a matter of course, which came to him by right, since he was a creature of such refined feeling, so slight and fragile, and did not feel himself born to endure poverty and want. Still, he had known misery, the slavery of hired labour, to which he had bent his back with crafty subservience; still, he had felt the gnawings of hunger, the bitterness of squalid beggary. But all this seemed long ago, and as vague as a dream, or as the vanishing lines of the London streets out there, dimmed and blurred by the pall of fog; as indistinct as our dubious impressions of a former state of existence. For, after his metamorphosis, he had determined to forget--he had forced himself to forget; never for an instant to recall his sufferings, or to think of the future. He hated the past as an injustice, a disgrace, an ineradicable stain on the superficial spotlessness of his present life; he had persuaded himself that all those things which he had now hidden, buried, for ever ignored, had indeed never happened. And he had succeeded in this effacement of his life in America; it seemed wiped out of the annals of his memory.

Why, now, must those years rise slowly before him, like ghosts out of the grave of oblivion? What had they to say to him now? Nearer and nearer, till, year by year, month by month, day by day, they pa.s.sed before him, dancing in the flames at which he sat staring, like a Dance of Death of the years. They grinned at him from skulls, with hollow eyes and pallid faces, distorted by a crafty smile; the dead years which beckoned to him, wearing filthy rags, and poisoning his cigar with their foul odour! He saw them, he smelt them; he shuddered with their chill--there, in front of the fire; he felt their hunger, in spite of the dinner that awaited him. Why was it that the future, which he no less persistently ignored, was beginning to hang over him as an omen of evil, which each day, each hour, brought nearer and nearer irresistibly, inevitably?--That future must perhaps be such as the past had been.

Yes, something was impending. There he sat, sick with alarms, cowardly, spiritless, effete. Something was in the air; he felt it coming nearer, to overwhelm him, to wrestle with him for life or death in a frenzy of despair; he felt himself tottering, sinking; he was torn from the ease and comfort of his present life, cast out into the streets, without shelter, without anything! For what had he of his own? The clothes he wore, the shoes on his feet, the ring on his finger were Frank's. The dinner to come, the bed upstairs, were Frank's. Thus had it been for a year past; and if he were to go with all he possessed, he would go--naked, in the winter. And he could not again be as he had been in America, tramping for work day after day. His body and mind alike were enervated, as by a warm bath of luxury; he had become like a hot-house plant which is accustomed to the moist heat, and perishes when it is placed in the open air. But it hung over him, cruel and unrelenting; not for an instant did the threat relax, and in his abject weakness he feebly wrung his white hands, and two tears, hot with despair, rolled down his cheeks.

Struggle for existence! He was incapable of such a battle; his energy was too lax for that--a laxity which he had felt growing on him as a joy after his fight for life, but which now had made him powerless to screw himself up to the merest semblance of determination.

And before him he saw the fateful chain of events pa.s.sing onwards--some so infinitely small--each detail a terrible link, and all leading on to catastrophe. Strange that each one was the outcome of its predecessor!

the future the outcome of the past! If, after his failure from sheer idleness at Leyden, his father had not placed him as clerk in the office of a Manchester house, he would probably never have known certain youths, his fellow clerks, fashionable young rakes, and fierce "strugglers for existence;" still scarcely more than boys, and already the worse for dissipation. If he had never known them--and yet, how pleasantly had they borne him along, merely by humouring his natural bent!--he might, perhaps, not have played such underhand tricks with the money belonging to the firm, that his patron, out of sympathy and regard for his father, had helped him to go to America. That was where he had sunk deepest, swamped in the maelstrom of more energetic fortune-hunters. If only he had been less unlucky in America, he would not have found himself stranded in London in such utter dest.i.tution, or have appealed to Westhove for help.

And Frank--but for his suggestion, Frank would never have gone to Norway, never have met Eva. Oh, that journey to Norway! how he cursed it now; for Frank might, perhaps, not have fallen in love, and never have thought of marriage. And now--only yesterday Westhove had called at Sir Archibald's house, where the two friends had been made very welcome after their acquaintance in Norway, and had come home engaged to Eva.

Frank would marry, and he, Bertie? Where was he to go? What was to become of him?

He was painfully conscious of the fatality of life, of the injustice of the dispensations of fortune; and he discerned that his own immediate difficulties owed their origin to a single word. One single word: Norway!--Norway, Eva, Frank's falling in love, Frank's engagement and marriage, and his own shipwreck--how horribly clearly he saw every link of the chain of his own life in each word! One word, uttered under a foolish impulse: Norway! And it had irretrievably wrought the happiness of two other persons at the cost of his own. Injustice! Injustice!

And he cursed the impulse, the mysterious, innate force which more or less prompts every word we speak; and he cursed the fact that every word uttered by the tongue of man remains beyond recall. What is that impulse? Something obscurely good, an unconscious "better self," as men declare, which, though deeply and mysteriously hidden, dashes ahead like an unbroken colt, treading down the most elaborate results of careful thought? Oh, if he had but held his tongue! Why Norway? What concern had he with that one fatal, fateful land, above all others? Why not Spain, Russia, j.a.pan, good G.o.d! Kamschatka, for aught he cared; why especially Norway? Idiotic impulse, which had unlocked his miserable lips to p.r.o.nounce that luckless name; and oh, the injustice of fate, of life, of everything!

Energy? Will? What could will and energy do against fate? They were words, empty words. Be a cringing fatalist, like a Turk or Arab, and let day follow day; never think; for behind thought lurks impulse!--Fight?

Against Fate, who forges her chains blindly, link upon link?

He threw himself back in his chair, still feebly wringing his hands, and the tears trickled again and again down his cheeks. He saw his own cowardice take shape before him; he stared into its frightened eyes, and he did not condemn it. For he was as fate had made him. He was a craven, and he could not help it. Men called such a one as he a coward: it was but a word. Why coward, or simple and loyal and brave, or good and n.o.ble? It was all a matter of convention, of accepted meaning; the whole world was mere convention, a concept, an illusion of the brain.

There was nothing real at all--nothing!

And yet there was something real: misery and poverty were real. He had felt them, wrestled with them hand to hand; and now he was too weak to fight them again, too delicate, too refined! He _would_ not face them again. Then, leaning back with his pallid head resting against the cushioned back of his chair, his deep-set black eyes clouded With the venom of these reflections, he was aware of a gentle; pleasant electric current thrilling through him--a current of Will. Fatality had willed to bring Frank and Eva together; well, he--a mere plaything of Fate--would will, that--

Yes. He would will to part them.

And before his very eyes, as it seemed, that purpose rose up, cold and rigid, an evil and mysterious form, like an incarnation of Satanic malignity.

It looked at him with the eye of a Sybil, of a Sphinx; and, as compared with the t.i.tanic cruelty of that image, his former visions sank into nothingness--the Dance of Death of the years, the continuity of Fatality, and his cursing of it all. These now vanished, and he only saw that figure, like a ghost, almost tangible and almost visibly solid in the dusk, against the dying glow of the fire. The gloomy, questioning gaze of those eyes hypnotised his soul; his instinct fell asleep under its crushing power.... Friendship! grat.i.tude! They, too, were mere words.

There was nothing real in life but conventionality and--poverty. And then there was that image--there, in front of the fire--with its staring, fixed gaze, petrified to an embodiment of silent, irresistible, infernal magnetism!

II

That night--he saw Frank no more, for he had stayed to dine with Sir Archibald Rhodes--that night Van Maeren could not sleep; the wildest fancies kept him wide awake. Illusions and schemes whirled through his fevered brain; strange voices buzzed in his ears, hissing like an angry sea. He saw himself sitting with Eva in a cab, pa.s.sing through the gloomiest and foulest parts of London. Squalid figures stood in their way, and came close to Eva. He laughed as he saw her dragged away by men with brutal faces, and then come back to him, with her clothes torn, sobbing because she had been insulted. A fearful headache hammered in his brain, and he groaned with a painful effort to control the wild extravagance of his fancy. He got up, rubbing his eyes, as if to drive away the melodramatic vision, and wrapped his burning head in a wet, cold towel. He involuntarily looked in the gla.s.s; and, in the subdued glimmer of the nightlight, his face stared back at him as pale as death, drawn and haggard, with hollow, sunken eyes, and a gaping mouth. His heart beat violently, as if it were rising into his throat, and he pressed it down with both hands. After drinking a gla.s.s of water he lay down again, forcing himself to be calm. Subtler fancies now crowded his mind, like fine threads caught athwart and across--webs mingled in a maze like an inextricable tangle of lace; and his imagination worked out the intricacies of weariful intrigues, as though he were a poet who, during a night of lucid sleeplessness, constructs a drama, and, not content with its plot, goes through it again and again, to master the great conception in his mind before writing it out.

Now he saw the orgies of a past day repeating themselves below in the sitting-room. He saw the skating-rink, and Frank and himself drinking champagne, and laughing and singing. But suddenly the door opened, and Sir Archibald came in with Eva on his arm. Sir Archibald cursed Frank with tremendous words and vehement gestures, and Frank hung his head; but Eva threw herself between them, with words of anguish and imploring hands. And it was all the last scene of the fourth act of an opera. The singing in his ears, and the dreadful throbbing in his aching head, were like the thunder of a full orchestra, excited to the utmost by the beat of an energetic conductor, and the loud, strident crash of bra.s.s instruments.

Bertie moaned, and tossed from side to side, compelling himself to picture less violent scenes. Now it was like a modern comedy. Eva, at his suggestion, was suspiciously watching Annie, the maid and housekeeper at White-Rose Cottage. Eva was jealous, and then a grand catastrophe--Eva finding Annie in Frank's arms.

Sick with thinking, bewildered by his own imaginings, he drove away the chaotic vision. Exhaustion overcame him; his frenzy was worn out, though his head was still burning, throbbing, bursting; although acute pain shot through his brain, from his brows to his neck, as if he were being scalped; although the blood in his temples leaped furiously in his veins, with rhythmical torture. And in the immediate torment of physical suffering, his pride, which was to defy Fatality, collapsed like a tower crumbling into ruins. His imagination became vacancy; he forgot his terrors of the future. He lay motionless, bathed in clammy sweat; his eyes and mouth wide open; and the indecision of exhaustion cast a softened light on all his fancies--mere delirious dreams, which could never bear the faintest resemblance to reality. Things must go on as they might, he lazily thought; the future was still remote; he would think no more about it; he would let himself go with the chain of events, link by link; it was madness to double his fists against Fate, which was so strong--so omnipotent.

III.

The following days pa.s.sed quietly enough, though a vague fear still hung over Bertie's head. He bowed that head without further thought, but still with a dull ferment in the depths of his heart, below the superficial calm.

Then one day he went with Frank to the Rhodes', and Eva, taking his hand, said:

"We shall be good friends, shall we not?"

And after she had spoken he heard her voice still ringing in his ears like little bells. He mechanically let his velvety eyes rest on hers, and smiled, and allowed her to lead him to a sofa, and show him designs for furniture and patterns of curtains for their new home--her home and Frank's. Frank himself sat a little way off talking to Sir Archibald. He looked at them, sitting side by side, like brother and sister, on the softly cushioned settee--their heads bent together over the rustling pages of the pattern-book, their hands meeting from time to time. And his brows were knit in a frown of displeasure.

And yet he laughed, and said to Eva:

"Bertie will be of the greatest use; he has far better taste than I."

And he felt as though he had spoken the words in spite of himself, or had meant to say something quite other than this compliment, but could not help it. All the time he was talking politics to Sir Archibald his eyes rested on them, magnetically attracted by their familiar manner.

There was a sisterly gentleness in Eva, an emanation of sympathy for her lover's friend, a somewhat romantic interest in the mystery of Van Maeren's fine dark eyes and insinuating voice, and a compa.s.sion for the deep Byronic sorrows which she attributed to him--something like the esthetic pathos of a sentimental reader over the inexplicable woes of a hero of romance.

It was to her a poetic friendship, which very harmoniously supplemented her love for Frank Westhove; a kind of love of which in her girlish enthusiasm she had never imagined the existence, and of which, if she could have suspected it, she would certainly never have thought herself capable: a calm, peaceful, and true affection, practical, almost homely, without the faintest tinge of romance; a love, not blind to her lover's faults, but faithful to him in spite of them, like a mother's for her undeserving child. She perceived his indolence over every voluntary effort, his indecision over every serious question, his vacillation between this and that; and did not blind herself to all this weakness.

But it was this very weakness which had gained her heart, as a pleasing contrast with the cool, uneffusive, sober affection of her father, who spoiled her indeed, but never so much as she herself desired.

Then there was another contrast which charmed her even more, which had filled her heart with an admiration that had become a pa.s.sion; the contrast in Frank himself, of his mild, yielding character with the robust vigour of his stalwart person. She, woman as she was, found something adorable in the fact of this splendidly strong youth, with his broad chest and shoulders, his great mane of fair hair and powerful neck--this man, whose suppleness and ease in lifting and moving things betrayed constant practice in the use of his limbs--being so feeble in determination, and so gentle in demeanour. When she was alone and thought of him so, she could not help smiling, though the tears came into her eyes--tears of happiness--for this contrast made her happy. It was very strange, she thought, and she could not understand it; it was a riddle; but she did not try to solve it, for it was a riddle that she loved, and as she thought of it, with smiling lips and tear-dimmed eyes, she longed only to have her arms round his neck--her own Frank's.

She did not idealise him; she never now thought of platonic twin-souls in superhuman ecstasy; she took him as he was, a mere man; and it was for what he was that she worshipped him, calm and at rest in her worship. Although she knew that the romantic side of her nature could never find fulfilment--such as it now did through her sisterly regard for Bertie--she had no regret for it in her abounding love for Frank.

And since her nature found completion in the enjoyment of the moment, she was pleased and quite satisfied, and felt such a sunny glow in her and about her as deserves to be called true happiness.

This was her frame of mind now, as she looked through the patterns with Bertie, while Frank sat chatting with her father. There was the man she loved, here her brother-friend. This was all good; she never could wish for anything more than to be thus happy in her love and her friendship.

She looked at Bertie with a protecting and pitying smile, and yet with a touch of contempt at his slight, boyish figure, his white hands and diamond ring, his little feet in patent leather shoes, hardly larger than her own; what a dapper little mannikin he was! Always spotlessly precise in dress and manner, with an appealing cloud of melancholy over his whole person.

As he glanced up at her, consulting her about some detail in one of the prints, Bertie detected this smile on Eva's face, ironically patronising and at the same time kind and sisterly; and knowing that she liked him, he could to some extent read its meaning; but he asked her:

"What are you smiling at?"

"At nothing," said she; and she went on, still smiling affectionately: "Why did you never become an artist, Bertie?"