Footsteps of Fate Part 6

"An artist?" said Van Maeren, "what next?"

"A painter, or an author. You have great artistic taste--"

"I!" he repeated, much surprised, for he really did not know that he possessed very remarkable esthetic feeling, an exquisiteness of taste worthy of a woman, of a connoisseur; and her words set his own character before him in a new light. Does a man never know himself and what really lies in him?

"I could do nothing," he replied, somewhat flattered by Eva's speech; and in his astonishment, candid for once in spite of himself, he went on: "I should be too lazy."

He was startled by his own words, as though he had stripped himself bare; and he instinctively looked across at Frank to see if he had heard him. Vexed at his own thoughtlessness he coloured and laughed to hide his annoyance, while she, still smiling, shook her head reproachfully.

IV.

When, a little later, Eva was alone with her lover, and she showed him the patterns which his friend had preferred, Frank began: "Eva--"

She looked at him inquiringly, beaming with quiet happiness.

There was a turmoil in his brain; he wanted to speak to her about Bertie. But he suddenly remembered his promise to his friend never to reveal anything of his past life. Frank was a man who simply regarded a spoken word as inviolable, and he suddenly perceived that he could not say what he had on his tongue. And yet, he remembered his uncomfortable sensations when, on the top of Moldeho, Eva had so innocently expressed her change of opinion in his friend's favour. Had he not then felt, as though the black clouds were an omen of evil hanging over her head? And had he not experienced the same shudder as he saw them sitting side by side on the sofa, as if a noose were ready to cast round her neck? It was an instinctive dread, springing up unexpectedly, without anything to lead up to it. Ought he not to speak, to tell her what Bertie was? But he had promised--and it was foolishly superst.i.tious to allow such an unreasoning terror to have any influence on his mind. Bertie was not like ordinary men; he was very lazy, and lived too contentedly at the expense of others--a thing that Westhove could not understand, and over which in his good nature he simply shook his head with a smile--but Bertie was not wicked. So he was concealing nothing from Eva but that Bertie had no money. Still, he had meant to say something, something was seething in his brain. Eva was looking at him wide-eyed; he must speak.

So he went on, embarra.s.sed in spite of himself, coerced by a mysterious force which seemed to dictate the words:

"I was going to say--perhaps you will think me silly--but I do not like, I do not think it right--"

She still looked at him with her surprised eyes, smiling at his hesitancy. It was this very indecision which, in her eyes, was so engaging a contrast to his stalwart frame; she sat down on his knee, leaning against him, and her voice sounded like a poem of love:

"Well, what, Frank? My dearest Frank, what is it?"

Her eyes smiled in his; she laid her arms round his neck, clasping her hands, and again she asked:

"Tell me, foolish boy, what is the matter?"

"I do not like to see you always--that you should always--sit so--with Bertie."

The words forced their way against his will; and now that they were spoken it seemed to him that he had meant to say something quite different. Eva was amazed.

"Sit so with Bertie!" she repeated. "How do I sit with Bertie? Have I done anything I ought not? Or--tell me, Frank, are you so horribly jealous?"

He clasped her closer, and, kissing her hair, he muttered: "Yes, yes! I am jealous."

"But of Bertie--your best friend, who lives with you? You cannot surely be jealous of him!"

She burst out laughing, and, carried away by her own mirth, fairly shook as she sat there, on his knee, with her head against his shoulder.

"Of Bertie!" she said, still gasping. "How is it possible? Oh, oh, of Bertie! But I only think of him as a pretty boy, almost a girl. He is so tiny, and has such neat little hands. Oh, oh! What! jealous of Bertie?"

"Do not laugh so!" he said, with a frown. "I really mean it--you are so familiar with him--"

"But he is your dearest friend!"

"Yes, so he may be--but yet--"

She began again to laugh; she thought him most amusing; and at the same time she loved him all the better for being so sullen and jealous.

"Silly fellow!" she said, and her fingers played with his fair, golden-tinted moustache. "How foolish--oh! how foolish you are!"

"But promise me--" he began again.

"Of course, if it will make your mind easy, I shall keep more at a distance. But I shall find it very difficult, for I am so accustomed to Bertie. And Bertie must not be allowed to guess it; thus your friendship will remain unbroken. I must still be good friends with him. No, no! I tell you I must be kind to him. Foolish boy that you are! I never knew that you could be so silly!" And she laughed again very heartily, shaking his head in her engaging merriment, and towzling his thick hair with her two little hands.

V.

Frank had of late begun to think of Bertie as an intolerable burthen.

Though he himself did not understand why, he could not bear to see Eva and his friend together, and their intimacy brought this about almost every day. Eva had rightly perceived that she could hardly behave to Bertie otherwise than she had done hitherto. Meanwhile he had to put up with great coolness from Frank. After one of his escapades, which had lasted three days, this coolness was very conspicuous. Westhove, who usually made very pressing inquiries on his return from these mysterious absences, on this occasion said not a word. And Bertie vowed to himself that this should be the last of these disappearances.

But then came the discussion, which Van Maeren had so greatly dreaded; in a confidential moment his friend spoke of his impending marriage, and asked Bertie what plans he had for the future.

"For you know dear old fellow," was Frank's kind way of putting it, "that I will with pleasure do my best to help you. Here, or in Holland, I have a few connections. And so long as you have nothing, of course I shall not leave you out in the cold; on that you may safely reckon. But I shall be leaving White-Rose Cottage: Eva thinks it too much out of the way, and, as you know, prefers Kensington. But we have had good times together, haven't we?"

And he clapped Bertie on the shoulder, grateful for the life of good fellowship they had enjoyed within those walls, and feeling a little compa.s.sion for the poor youth who took so kindly to the good gifts of wealth, and who had, alas! no wealth to procure them with. However, he penetrated no further into Bertie's state of mind; he had always had a turn for a Bohemian existence: he had known luxury after living in misery; now life must be a little less easy for him again. That was all.

Bertie, on his part, horrified by the heartless villany of his first reflections, allowed himself to slide on day by day, with no further thought of his various plots. He sometimes even had a nave belief that at the last moment fortune would look on him with favour: his Fatalism was like a form of worship, giving him strength and hope.

VI.

However, a moment came when he thought all hope lost; the danger was pressing and imminent.

"Bertie," said Westhove, who had just come home in some excitement, "to-morrow you can find some employment to suit you, I think. Tayle--you know, our friend at the club--tells me that he wants to find a secretary for his father, Lord Tayle. The old man lives on his place, up in Northumberland; he is always ailing, and sometimes tiresome, still, it seems to me that you will not easily get such another chance. You will have a salary of eighty pounds, and live in the house of course. I should have spoken of you to Tayle at once, but that you begged me long ago--"

"Then you did not mention my name?" said Bertie, hastily and almost offended.

"No," replied Frank, surprised at his tone. "I could make no overtures till I had spoken to you. But make up your mind at once, for Tayle has two other men in his eye already. If you can decide at once I will go back to Tayle this minute: my cab is waiting." And he took up his hat.

Eighty pounds, and a position as secretary, with free quarters at the Castle! How the splendour of such an offer would have dazzled Bertie not so very long since, in America. But now--

"My dear Frank," he said, very coldly, "I am very much obliged for your kind intentions, but, pray, take no trouble on my account. I cannot accept the place. Dismiss your cab--"

"What!" cried his friend, in utter amazement. "Will you not at least think it over?"

"Thank you very much. If you have nothing better to offer me than to become the servant of the father of a man with whom I have been intimate as an equal, I can only say, Thank you for nothing. I am not going to shut myself up in a country-house, and scribble for an ailing, fractious old man, for a pittance of eighty pounds a year. And what would Tayle think of me? He has always known me as your friend, and we have been familiar on that footing; and now he is to see me his father's hired menial! I cannot say that you have much delicate feeling, Frank."