Footsteps of Fate Part 9

Would Bertie have pitied her so if there really had been nothing in it but his own pessimistic fears for her happiness? Or was he not indeed hiding something? And had it anything to do with Frank?

And then Frank came, and she often saw him sit quite still for a time, with a frown on his brow.

"What is the matter?" she asked. And he replied just as usual:

"Nothing, sweetheart."

And they chatted together, at first a little constrained, but soon quite happy again in their plans and dreams, forgetting what weighed on their minds. Eva would laugh brightly, and perch herself on Frank's knee, and play with his moustache. But if Bertie came in, something seemed at once to come between them; a shadow which parted them.

It was when the friends were alone together that they were most ill-at-ease. Then Westhove could only long to turn Van Maeren out of doors at once, without the smallest perceptible cause, like a mangy hound. He pictured Bertie as he had seen him standing shivering in his wretched raiment that snowy night. Now he was such a dandy, and nothing was too good for him; and he was irreproachable; he did not even go off for a few days at a time, wandering obscurely like a cat. He was always "interesting," with his halo of melancholy; and since the scene over the secretaryship, he often a.s.sumed a reproachful tone in his voice and expression when speaking to Frank.

Eva, when left to herself, was deeply wretched. Chaotic doubts tortured her soul, doubts which, for the moment, she could set aside, but which would force themselves on her as soon as she thought of Bertie's sympathetic smile and strange compa.s.sion for her. Oh! what was it? What was it? She had often meant to talk it over with Frank, but when she was on the point of beginning the subject, she did not know what to say.

That Bertie pitied her? It could be nothing but his own pessimism which, in its universal humanity, regarded the world as worthy of pity, since it seemed created to be wretched.

Should she ask Frank whether he had any silent grief--if he had anything to trouble him? This she did once or twice, and the answer was always the same:

"Nothing, dearest!"

What then, oh, what was this horror? Alas! she could get no further; she stood as it were blindfold in an enchanted circle, which she could not overstep, and her hand felt all round but could grasp nothing. If she resolutely banished such thoughts they came back again persistently.

They overwhelmed her afresh, they re-possessed themselves of her brain, suggesting endless doubts; and ending always, always, in the same question which was the invariable outcome of these miserable cogitations:

"What can it be?--Is there anything at all?"

And never an answer.

She had once again questioned Bertie; but he had only smiled, with that terrifying smile of woe, and had implored her not to rack her brain over anything which he might have inconsiderately let drop as the natural outcome of his melancholy temper. Otherwise, he should henceforth always be afraid of speaking to her with any frankness; he must weigh his words, and their confidential intimacy as brother and sister would be at an end. And her own feeling in the matter was full of dubious half-lights, in which no outline was distinct, no colour decided--a confusion of shadowy grey tints which dimmed the clear brightness of her love with increasing gloom, fatiguing her spirit by their indefiniteness, their non-existence in actual life, and their intangible semblance of reality, like a dream.

IX.

Once, however, the dream took substance; once she touched--she saw--she heard--Something. But was that It?

They were coming out of the Lyceum. The crowd streamed forth, slowly shuffling, pushing impatiently now and then, shoulder to shoulder. And in the crush, close to her, Eva saw the flaming red plush opera-cloak of a tall, stout woman, and under a babyish "Cherry-ripe" hat a face, rose, white and black, with a doll-like smile, which suddenly leaned across her to address Frank. The brim of the hat rested on a ma.s.s of yellow curls, a scent of musk and rice-powder greeted her nostrils, and, like a blow in her own face, she heard the words:

"Hallo! good evening, Frank; how are you, old boy?"

She started and shrank back, looking hastily first at the rouged face and then at Frank; she saw his flashing look of rage, nor did the tall woman's confusion escape her notice--a damsel of the skating-rink--though the stranger drew back at seeing a lady on Frank's arm; she had evidently at first seen him over Eva's head in the crowd, and she now vanished, disconcerted by her own blunder in addressing a man who had a lady with him.

But she shot a glance of amazed inquiry at Van Maeren who was close behind. Bertie might have warned her; for it was Bertie who had whispered three words under the "Cherry-ripe" hat, with a nod towards the front, saying: "There goes Frank."

She was vexed with herself; but she really had not seen the young lady.

When they reached home, Sir Archibald, who had observed nothing, was bidding them good-night at the door, but Frank exclaimed: "I beg your pardon--but I must speak to Eva--I beg of you--"

It was already late, but Sir Archibald was no stickler for etiquette.

They were alone, looking at each other with anxious eyes, but neither spoke. Frank began hurriedly, stumbling over his words as if he were eager to forestall any evil suspicion she might entertain.

"Eva, believe me, Eva; you must believe me; it was nothing. You must not think anything of--of what happened just now."

In a few brief words he told of a former acquaintance--a young man's acquaintance--of the skating rink. This was all at an end, it was a thing of the past; she must know that every man had a past. She knew that--surely?

"A past," she echoed coldly. "Oh! every man has a past? But we--we have no past."

"Eva, Eva!" he cried, for through the irony of her tone there pierced such acute pain that he stood dismayed and helpless, not knowing how to comfort her.

"Tell me only this much," she went on, going close up to him and looking into his face with that strange stare. She laid her hands on his shoulders and tried to read his inmost soul through his eyes. And she slowly said, expecting to hear her own doom in the first word he should utter:

"It is at an end?"

He fell on his knees before her where she had dropped on a chair, rigidly upright, as if she were frozen; he warmed her resisting hands in his grasp--and he swore that it was. His oath rang true; truth was stamped on his face; and she believed him.... He besought forgiveness, told her that she must never think of it again, that all men--

"Oh yes," she nodded her comprehension. "I know, I understand. Papa has brought me up on rather liberal lines."

He recollected that phrase; she had used it once before. And they both at once remembered Moldeho and the black clouds. Eva shuddered.

"Are you cold, dearest?"

But she shook her head, still with a strange light in her eyes. He would have clasped her in his arms but she drew back, and he felt himself rebuffed, almost rejected. He could not understand her. Why no kiss, why no generous reconciliation, if she understood so well, if she had been so liberally trained? But she was perhaps a little upset; he would not be too urgent. It would no doubt blow over.

When he was gone, Eva, in her own room, shivered and her teeth chattered as if she had an ague. And she began to cry bitterly, miserably, with deep despairing sobs, for grief that she lived, that she was a rational being--a woman--above all, that she had ever loved; that the world existed, that everything was so mean, so base--a mud heap! She loathed it all. She felt as if she had never really understood any of the books she had read; neither the "Faery Queen" nor "Ghosts"--especially "Ghosts"; never understood anything she had learnt under her father's "rather liberal" training. The white-feathery down of her illusions was blown into s.p.a.ce; a rough hand had rubbed away the bloom from her most secret and inmost soul; the sacred innocence of her maidenhood had been dragged in the gutter. For the first time the peace of her great but reasonable love for Frank came into violent collision with the romance of her girlish dreams, and the balance of the two feelings was destroyed--of the practical and the romantic side of her character.

X.

After that conversation with Eva, Bertie felt as though he were living in a more subtle atmosphere, wandering in a labyrinth full of mysterious ways of craft and cunning, in which he must walk very circ.u.mspectly if he did not wish to lose himself. He knew very well what he had been driving at; he wanted to instil into Eva suspicions of Frank's constancy. Did she not herself know her lover to be fickle, almost capricious? Had not his hints been well chosen? Had he not sown the seed of doubt? He did not know. He saw nothing to rea.s.sure him in the regular, monotonous routine of everyday life, in which subtle shades of manner so often escape even the keenest observer. Eva had, indeed, once asked him about that Something; but after that, in appearance at least, their intercourse had been on the old footing again. He saw no difference in Eva--none in Frank; so Eva could have said nothing to her lover and asked him no questions.

Before that afternoon Bertie had known hesitancy, had felt some disgust at his own heartlessness, some horror of his own monstrous selfishness.

But that talk with Eva had been the first step on a downward path, where it was now impossible to turn back. A singular lucidity of thought dawned in his brain, as though his brain was a crystal mirror, in which his ideas were reflected in a vivid light. Never yet had he felt himself so keenly alert, so clearly logical; never had he aimed so true at an object in view, with the precision of a needle. The clearness of his mind was so perfect that in a nave perception of his own baseness--a lucid moment of self-knowledge which once flashed on him, to his surprise, for no more than a second--he wondered that he should not apply so much talent and ingenuity to a n.o.bler purpose.

"Why did you never become an artist?" he could hear Eva asking him.

But he only smiled; the practical weariness of life rose up before him; his own indolence, his cat-like love of physical ease. No, no, he could not help himself; so it must be. The first step was taken. It was Fate!

Then, that evening as they came out of the theatre, that woman who belonged to their past life, his own significant nod, and his words, "There goes Frank." Was not all this, too, a fatality? Did not Fate strew such trivial incidents as these in the path of those who burnt incense at her shrine and paid her due worship, to be utilised by them as benefits--infinitely small links, which they must themselves weld into the chain? Did not Fate give men the illusion of free will, and a semblance of truth to the lie which says that they by their own energy can coerce the course of circ.u.mstance? No more than a word, a nod--"There goes Frank!"--and then, for the rest, trust to the chance--Chance! What is chance?--that the smart damsel of the skating rink should overlook Eva--tiny, dainty Eva--lost in the crowd.

Had the result been such as he had counted on? Had he guessed the purpose of Fate?

Yes, he thought, in some small degree; why else should Frank have craved an interview with Eva at so late an hour? And so, in that atmosphere of finely spun cunning, in that labyrinth of wiles, he no longer regarded himself as base, heartless, selfish. Words--mere words! It was folly to consider things too closely; he dismissed all scruples, and if they would sometimes force themselves on him he would argue with himself: Who could tell whether it was not a good thing if Frank should not marry? He was not a man to marry--no, really; he was changeable, capricious, and inconstant; he would not make a wife happy.

Still, Van Maeren could see at once that this was self-deception; and he would laugh to himself, shaking his head, at finding himself so droll, so singular. Life was as nothing; nothing was worth troubling oneself about; but this introspection, this self-study, looking into one's own mind, juggling with one's own thoughts--that was really interesting, that was an amusing occupation, while lying at full length on a comfortable sofa.

And yet he seldom enjoyed any repose of mind. The web of his scheming was perpetually being wearily woven in his mind. His interviews with Eva were a fatiguing effort--sometimes a long discourse, sometimes only half utterances--for he had constantly and precisely to weigh every word.