"All right," said Frank, "pray think so. I myself can see that it is very weak of me. But, good G.o.d! I can hold out no longer. I love her so; I was so happy; life was so sweet; and now; now, by my own fault! I do not care what you think it. Absurd or not, I mean to go all the same."

In his distress of mind he had thrown himself into a chair, and every muscle of his features was quivering with agitation. But he went on:

"I do not know what it is that I feel; I am so unhappy, so deeply, deeply wretched. Never in my life had I known what it was to feel so content, in such harmonious equilibrium of soul as when I was with Eva; at least so it seems to me now. And now it is all at an end, and everything seems aimless. I no longer know why I live and move and eat and have my being! Why should I take all that trouble, and then have this misery into the bargain? I might just as well be dead. You see, that is why I mean to call there. And if things do not come right then, well, I shall make an end of myself! Yes, yes, I shall make an end of myself."

Crushed by the burthen of life, he lay back in his chair, with his features set, his great limbs stretched out in their useless strength, all his power undermined by the mysterious inertia which gnawed it away like a worm. Before him stood Van Maeren, drawn to his full height in the energy of despair, and his flashing eyes darting sparks of fire. He laid his tremulous hands on Westhove's shoulders, feeling their ma.s.sive breadth, heavy and strong. A reaction electrified him with something like defiance; he scorned this man of might in his love-sickness. But above all, oh, above all, he felt himself being dragged down to the lowest deep; and it was with the tenacity of a parasitic growth that he clung to Frank, setting his fingers into his shoulders.

"Frank," he began, almost hoa.r.s.ely, "just listen to me. You are making yourself ill. You talk like a fool, and then you cry out; just like a baby. You must get over it. Show a little more pluck. Do not mar your whole life by these foolish lamentations. And what about, when all is said and done, what about? All because a girl has ceased to love you. Do you place your highest hopes of happiness in a girl? They are creatures without brains or heart; superficial and vain, whipped up to a froth--mere windy nothingness. And you would kill yourself for that?

Heaven above, man! It is impossible.--I do not know what it is to love a woman, eh? But you do not know what trouble and misery are. You fancy that all the woes on earth have come upon you. And it is nothing, after all, but a little discomfort, a little wounded conceit perhaps--it will be no worse. If I had made away with myself at every turn of ill-luck, I should have been dead a thousand times. But I pulled through, you see.

How can you be such a coward? Eva has shown you very plainly that she does not want to have anything more to say to you; and you would seek her once more! Suppose she were to show you the door? What then? If you do such a thing, if you go to her, you will be so mean in my eyes, so weak, so cowardly, so childish, such a fool, such a d.a.m.ned fool, that you may go to the devil for aught I care!"

He cleared his throat as if he were actually sick, and turned away with a queer, light-headed feeling in his brain.

Westhove said nothing, torn in his mind between two impulses. He was no longer clear as to his purpose, quite bewildered by the false voice in his ear--in his soul. There was something fact.i.tious in Bertie's speech, a false ring which Frank could not detect, though he was conscious of it; and the voice of his own desires rang false too, with jarring, unresolved chords, which jangled inharmoniously against each other. He had completely lost his head, but he sat silent for some time, till at length he repeated, with sullen obstinacy:

"All right. I do not care a pin. I shall go all the same."

But Bertie began again, with honeyed smoothness this time, seating himself on the floor, as was his wont when he was out of luck, on the fur rug before the fire, resting his throbbing head against a chair.

"Come, Frank, get this out of your mind. You never meant that you would really go. You are at heart too proud and too brave to think of it seriously. Pull yourself together. Have you forgotten everything? Did not Eva tell you that she did not believe your word, that you were false to her, that you still were friends with that other girl, and that she knew it? To tell you the truth, I observed from the first how suspicious she was, and I did not think it becoming in a young lady; I did not think it quite--quite nice.... To be sure, that evening at the Lyceum, it did look as if there was something in it. Still, when you a.s.sured her that it was at an end, it seems to me quite monstrous that she did not believe you then. You cannot possibly mean what you say when you speak of seeking her again. Of course it makes no difference to me; go by all means, for what I care; but I should regard it as such folly, such utter folly--"

And still Frank sat speechless, lost, with the bewildering jangle still in his brain.

"And you will take the same view of it if you only think it over. Think it over, Frank."

"I will," said Frank, gloomily.

Bertie went on, flattering his manly courage, and it sounded like bells in Frank's ears: pride, pluck; pride, pluck: only the bells were cracked. And yet the jingle soothed him. Did he at this moment love Eva?

Or was it all over, had she killed his love by her doubt? Pride, pluck; pride, pluck. He could not tell--alas! he could not tell.

With a movement like a caress, Bertie crept nearer, laid his head on the arm of Westhove's chair, and clasped his hands about his knees, looking, in the dusk and firelight, like a supple panther; and his eyes gleamed like a panther's, black and flame-coloured.

"Speak, Frank; I cannot bear to see you like this. I care for you so much, though perhaps it does not seem so to you just now, and though I have my own way of showing it. Oh, I know very well that you sometimes think me ungrateful. But you do not know me; I am really devoted to you.

I never loved my father, nor any woman, nor even myself, as I do you. I could do anything in the world for you, and that is a great deal for me to say. I say, Frank, I will not have you look so. Let us leave London; let us travel, or go to live somewhere else--in Paris or Vienna. Yes, let us go to Vienna--that is a long way off; or to America, to San Francisco; or to Australia--Wherever you choose. The world is wide, and you may see so many things that you will get fresh ideas. Or let us make an expedition to the interior of Africa. I should enjoy seeing such a savage country, and I am stronger than I look; I am tough. Let us wander about a great deal, and go through a great deal--great bodily fatigue.

Don't you think it must be splendid to cut your way through the impenetrable bush? Oh, yes, let us bathe our souls in nature, in fresh air, and s.p.a.ce, and health."

"Well, well," Frank grumbled, "we will go away. We will travel. But I cannot do it comfortably: I have very little money. I spent so much last year."

"Oh, but we will be economical; what need have we of luxury. I, at any rate, can do without it."

"Very well," Frank muttered again. "We will do it cheaply."

Then they were silent for a time. In the twilight, Frank by some slight movement touched one of Bertie's hands. He suddenly grasped it, squeezed it almost to crushing, and said in a low voice:

"Good old fellow! Dear, good fellow!"

XVII.

Can he have gone there? thought Van Maeren as he sat at home alone the next evening, and did not know with what purpose Westhove had gone out.

Well, he would sit up for him; there was nothing else to be done. Just a few days to arrange matters and then they would be off, away from London. Oh, what a luckless wretch he thought himself. All this villany for the sake of mere material comfort, of idleness, and wealth, which, as he was slowly beginning to discover, had all become a matter of indifference to him. Oh! for the Bohemian liberty of his vagabond life in the States, free, unshackled; his pockets now full of dollars and again empty, absolutely empty! He felt quite homesick for it; it struck him as an enviable existence of careless independence as compared with his present state of vacuous ease and servility. How greatly he was changed. Formerly he had been unfettered indeed by conventional rules but free from any great duplicity; and now, his mind had been cultivated but was sunk in a depth of baseness. And what for? To enable him to hold fast that which no longer had any value in his eyes. No value? Why, then, did he not cut his way out of his own net, to go away, in poverty; and write a single word to Frank and Eva to bring them together again?

It was still in his power to do this.

He thought of it, but smiled at the thought; it was impossible, and yet he could not see wherein the impossibility lay. But it _was_ impossible, it was a thing which could not be done. It was illogical, full of dark difficulties, a thing that could never come about for mysterious reasons of Fatality, which, indeed, he did not clearly discern but accepted as unanswerable.

He was musing in this vein, alone that evening, when Annie, the housekeeper, came to tell him that some one wanted to speak with him.

"Who is it?"

She did not know, so he went into the sitting-room, where he found Sir Archibald's footman, with his big nose and ugly, shifty, grey eyes, like a bird's, twinkling in his terra-cotta face, which was varied by blue tracts of shorn whisker and beard. He was out of his livery, and dressed like a gentleman, in a light overcoat and a felt hat, with a cane and gloves.

"What brings you here?" said Van Maeren, shortly, with a scowl. "I have always told you that I would not have you come to the house. You have no complaint to make of me, I suppose?"

Oh, no, he had no complaint to make, he had only come to call on an old friend--such a swell! Bertie would remember the times they had had in New York. They had been waiters together, pals at the same hotel. Rum chance, eh, that they should run up against each other in London? It was a small world; you were always running up against some one wherever you might go. You couldn't keep out of any one's way; in fact, if it was G.o.d's will you should meet a feller you couldn't keep out of that feller's way, and then you might sometimes be able to do him a good turn.... There had been some letters written--and he sc.r.a.ped his throat--inconvenient letters. Sixty quid down for two letters to the young woman, that was the bargain. Life was hard; to get a little fun now and then in London cost a deal of money. And now there was a third letter, in the same hand--dear, dear, whose could it be now?--addressed to the old man. He did not want to be too hard on an old pal, but he had come just to ask him whether that letter too was of any value. He had it with him.

"Then give it here," stammered Van Maeren, as pale as death, holding out his hand.

Ay, but thirty sovs. was too little, a mere song. This letter was to the old man, and was worth more, and, to tell the truth, his old friend was hard up, desperately hard up. Bertie was a gentleman who could throw the money about, and he had a n.o.ble heart. He would never leave an old pal in the lurch. The devil's in it, we must help each other in this world.

Say a hundred?

"You are a rascal!" cried Bertie. "We had agreed on thirty pounds. I have not a hundred pounds; I am not rich."

Well, of course he knew that; but Mr. Westhove no doubt, gave his friend sixpence now and then, and Mr. Westhove was made of money. Come, come, Mr. Van Maeren must think it over; he really should do something for an old pal and a hundred pounds was not the whole world after all.

"I have not a hundred pounds at this moment, I a.s.sure you," said Bertie, huskily, from a parched throat, and shaking as if in an ague fit.

Well, he would come again then, by-and-by. He would take great care of the letter.

"Hand over the letter. I will give you the money another time."

But his "old pal" laughed cheerfully. No, no--given is given. They might trust each other, but it should be give and take--the letter for the hundred pounds down.

"But I will not have you coming here again. I will not have it, I tell you."

All right. There was no difficulty on that score. His swell friend might bring it himself. To-morrow?

"Yes, to-morrow without fail. And now go; for G.o.d's sake, go!"

He pushed his demon out of the house, promising him, to-morrow--to-morrow evening. Then he called up Annie, and vehemently asked her whether she knew the man.

"Who was the fellow?" he roughly inquired, like a gambler who plays a high trump at a critical point of the game.

She, however, did not know, and was surprised that Mr. Van Maeren should not have known him. "Had he been troublesome?"

"Yes, a beggar, a regular beggar."