Introduction to Footsteps of Fate by Luis Couperus. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
please visit LibriVox dot org. Introduction the Dutch Sensitivists by Edmund Goss.
In the intellectual history of all countries, we find the same phenomenon incessantly recurring.
New writers, new artists, new composers arise in revolt against what has
delighted their grandfathers and satisfied their fathers. These young men, pressed together at
first by external opposition into a serried phalanx, gradually win their way, become
themselves the delight and then the satisfaction of their contemporaries, and falling apart as
successes secure to them, come to seem lax, defeats and obsolete to a
new race of youths who effect a fresh esthetic revolution. In small communities.
These movements are often to be observed more precisely than in larger ones, but
they are very tardily perceived by foreigners. The established authorities in art and literature,
retaining their exclusive place in dictionaries and handbooks long after the claim of their
juniors to be observed with attention has been practically conceded at home. For this
reason, partly and partly also because the mental life of Holland receives little attention
in this country. No account has yet been taken of the revolution in Dutch
taste which has occupied the last six or seven years. I believe that the
present occasion is the first on which it has been brought to the notice of
any English speaking public. There exists, however, in Holland at this moment,
a group of young writers, most of them between thirty five and twenty
five years of age, who exhibit a violent seal for literature, passing often
into extravagance, who repudiate sometimes with ferocity. There rare the sleepy Dutch authorship
of the last forty years, and who are held together or crushed together by
the weight of antiquated taste and indifference to executive merit which they experience around them.
Certain facts seem to be undeniable, First that every young man of letters
in Holland whose work is really promising has joined the camp. And secondly,
that with all the ferment and crudity inseparable from prose and verse composed in direct
opposition to existing canons of taste. The poems and the stories of these young
Dutchmen are often full of beauty and delicacy. They have read much in their
boyhood. They have imitated Rosetti and Keats. They have been fascinated by certain
Frenchmen, by flood Ware, by Goncour, particularly by Weismanns, who is
a far away kinsman of their own. They have studied the disquieting stories of
Edgar Poe. But these exotic influences are passing away, and those who know
something of current Dutch belllectra can realize best how imperatively a plowing up of the
phlegmatic tradition of Dutch thoughts was required before a new crop of imagination could spring
up, rejecting the conventional aspects of contemporary Dutch literature. I will now attempt
to give some sketch of the present situation as it appears to a foreign critic
observing the field without prejudice. The latest novelist of great importance was Madame Gertrude
Boss born Toussaint, who was born in eighteen twenty one. After having written
a long series of historical romances for nearly forty years, this intelligent woman and
careful writer broke with her own assured post public had took up the discussion of
psychological questions. She treated the problem of socialism in Raymond de schein Wecker and
the status of women in Major France. Madame Bospon Toussain died in eighteen eighty
six, just too early to welcome the new school of writers, with whom
she would probably have had more sympathy than any of her contemporaries. Her place
in popular esteem was taken for a short time by miss Obsomer he S.
C. Wallace, whose long novels have been translated into English in Dargen van
Stride, in Troubled Times and forced ungunst Royal Favour. She had genuine talent,
but her style was heavy and tedious. After the new wind began to
blow, although she was still young, she married, went to Hungary and
gave up writing novels. Three authors of importance, each by a curious coincidence,
born in the year eighteen twenty six, fill up the interval between the
old and new generation. These are Decca, buskan Witt, and vos Mar
Edward Douvers. Decca, whose novel Max Havilah dates from eighteen fifty eight,
was a man of exceptional genius. Bred in the interior of Java, he
observed the social conditions of life in the Dutch Indies as no one else had
done, but his one great book remained a solitary one. He died in
eighteen eighty seven without having justified the very high hopes awakened by that extraordinary and
revolutionary work. The career of Conrad Buskin Houitt was very different. The principal
literary critic of Holland in his generation, he aimed at being the sad Buth
of the Dutch, and in his early days as the dreaded thrasibulus of journalism,
he did much to awaken thought. His volumes of criticism are extremely numerous
and exercised a wholesome influence during his own time. He died in Paris in
April eighteen eighty six. These two writers have had a strong effect on the
prose style of the younger school of essayists and novelists. They lived long enough
to observe the dawn of the new literature, and their relations with the latest
writers were cordial, if somewhat reserved. What Duva Stecca and Buskin Huet did
in prose was effected in poetry by Carol Vussmer. This estimable man, who
died in eighteen eighty eight, was well known throughout Europe as an art critic
and an authority on Rembrandts. In Holland, he was pre eminent as the
soul of a literary newspaper, the Nederlanska Spectator, which took an independence line
in literary criticism and affected to lead public taste in dad directions less provincial and
old fashioned than the rest of the Dutch press. Vosmar wrote also several volumes
of more or less fantastic poetry, a translation of Homer into Alexandrian's and an
antiquarian novel, Amazona eighteen eighty one. But voss Mayer's position was above all
that of a precursor. He and he alone saw that a new thing must
be made in Dutch poetical literature. He and he alone was not satisfied with
the stereotyped Batavian tradition. At the same time, Vossmar was not, it
may be admitted, strong enough himself to found a new school, perhaps even
in his later days. The Olympian calm which he affected, and a certain
elegant indolence which overcame him, may have made him unsympathetic to the ardent and
the juvenile. At all events, the singular phenomenon has occurred. He who
have all living Dutchman was ten or fifteen years ago, fretting under the poverty
of thought and imagination in his fatherland and longing for the new era to arrive.
He is at this moment the one man of the last generation who is
most exposed to that unseemly ferosita de June, which is the ugliest feature of
these esthetic revolutions. I have just been reading with real pain the violent attack
on vos Mayer and his influence, which has been published by that very clever
young poet mister Villum Close, the New Vegheds, December eighteen ninety. All
that cheers me is to know that the whirligig of time will not forget its
revenges, and that if mister Close only lives long enough, he will find
somebody now unborn to call him a bloodless puppet of one other representative of the
transitional period, Marcellus Emmenced say Little. He wrote a poem Lilith and several
short stories. Much was expected of him, but I know not what has
been the result. The inaugurator of the New School was Jacques Perk, a
young poet of indubitable genius. He was influenced to some degree by Shelley and
by the Florence of the Dutch browning Potchita. He wrote in eighteen eighty A
Matilda, for which he could find no publisher. Presently died. Had began
to be famous on the posthumous issue of his poems, edited by Vossmer and
Close in eighteen eighty three. The sonnets of Perk, like those of Bulls
with Us one hundred years ago, were the heralds of a whole new poetic
literature. The resistance made to the young writers who now began to express themselves,
and their experience that all the doors of periodical publication in Holland were closed
to them, led to the foundation in eighteen eighty five of de Nuverheed's arrival
to the old Dutch quarterly Deheds. In this new Review, which has steadily
maintained and improved its position, most of the principal productions of the New School
have appeared. The first three numbers contained Decliner Johannes Little Johnny of Doctor Friedrich
van Aiden, the first considerable prose work of the younger generation. This is
a charming romance, fantastic and refined, half symbolical, half realistic, which
deserves to be known to English readers. It has been highly appreciated in Holland.
To this followed two powerful books by L. Van Deesel, Ein Leifte
a Love and Decliner Republique The Little Republic. Van Deesel has written with great
force, but he has hitherto been the enfon terrible of the school, the
one who is claim aimed with most insolence to say precisely what has occurred to
him. To say, he has been influenced more than the rest by the
latest French literature. While speaking of the New School, it is difficult to
restrain from mentioning others of those whose work in the Nieu Vahids and elsewhere has
raised hopes of high performance in the future. Jacques van Ley, a painter
by profession, has published, among other things, an exquisitely finished volume of
prota prose essays. Franz Netzka, who deliberately marches in step with the French
Realists is the George Moore of Holland. He has published a variety of small
sketches and one or two novels. Hari Prince, under the pseudonym of Copeland,
has written some very good studies of life. Among the poets Avilem Close,
Albert Vervey, and Hermanhorta, each of whom deserves a far more careful
critical consideration than can here be given to him. Philem Close, indeed,
may be considered as the leader of the school since the death of Perk.
It was to Close that in the period from eighteen eighty to eighteen eighty five
each of the new writers went in secret for encouragement, criticism and sympathy.
He appears to be a man of very remarkable character, violent and passionate in
his public utterances. He is adored by his own colleagues and disciples, and
one of the most gifted of them has told me that Close has never made
a serious mistake in his estimate of the force of a man or a book.
His writings, however, are very few, and his tone in controversy
is acrid and uncompromising. As I have already indicated, he remains the least
known and the least liked, though the most powerful of the band. The
member of a new generation whose verse and prose alike have one most acceptance is
certainly Fredrik van Eden. His cycle of lyrical verse Ellen eighteen ninety one is
doubtless the most exquisite product of recent Dutch literature, for the peculiar quality which
unites in one movement the varied elements of the school which I have attempted thus
briefly to describe. The name sensitivism has been invented by one of themselves,
by Van Diesel. It is a development of Impressionism grafted upon naturalism. As
a frail and exotic bud may be set in the rough basis of a thorn.
It preserves the delicacy of sensation of the one, and strengthens it by
the exactitude and conscientiousness of the other. Yet without giving way to the vagaries
of impressionism or to the brutality of mere realism, it selects and refines.
It re embracesancy that's maiden so rudely turned out of house and home by the
naturalists. It aims, in fact, at retaining the best, and nothing
but the best of the experiments of the French during the last quarter of a
century. Vandesel greets Lajent with elaborate courtesy, with the respect due to a
fallen divinity. He calls his friends in Holland to attend the gorgeous funeral of
naturalism, which is dead, but urges them not to sacrifice their own living
sensitivism to the imitation of what is absolutely a matter of past history. It
will be seen that Dutch sensitivism is not, by any means unlike French symbolism,
and we might expect prose like Malamaise and verse like Mariases. As a
matter of fact, however, the Dutch seem, in their general attitude of
reserve, to leave their mother tongue unassailed and to be as intelligible as their
inspiration allows them to be. Be. To one of these writers, however,
and to one of the youngest, it is time that I should turn.
The first member of the new Dutch school to be presented in the following
pages to English readers is Louis Marie Anne Kuperus. Of him, as the
author of this book, I must give a fuller biography, although he is
still too young to occupy much space by the record of his achievements. Luis
Kuperus was born on the tenth of June eighteen sixty three at the Hague,
where he spent the first ten years of his life. He was then taken
in company with his family to Java and resided five years in Batavia, returning
to the Hague, where he completed his education. He began to make teaching
his profession, but gradually drifted into devoting himself entirely to literature. He published
a little volume of verses in eighteen eighty four, and another of more importance
called Orchidean Orchids in eighteen eighty seven. Oriental and luscious. But he has
succeeded, as everyone allows, much better in prose. His long novel of
modern life in the Hague, called Elena Vera, which ran through the reeds
and was published in book form in eighteen eighty nine, is an admirable performance
of nod Lot literally to be translated Fate or Destiny eighteen ninety. Our readers
will now judge for themselves. Mister Kuperis is at present engaged, as he
tells me on a novel called Extaza Ecstasy, such as the brief chronicle of
a writer from whom much is expected by the best critics of his own country.
End of introduction, Section one of Footsteps of Fate by Luis Kuperus,
translated by Clara Bell. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are
in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox
dot org. Part one one. His hands in his pockets and the collar
of his fur coat turned up, Frank was making his way one evening through
squalls of snow along the deserted length of Adelaide Road. As he approached the
villa where he lived. White Rose Cottage was called sunk buried, wrapped in
white snow like a nest in cotton wool. He was aware of someone coming
to meet him from Primrose Hill. He looked steadily in the man's face,
since he evidently intended to address him, doubting as to what his purpose might
be this lonely snowy night, and he was greatly surprised when he heard said
in Dutch, pardon the intrusion, Are you not, mister Vesthova, Yes,
replied Frank Vesthova, Who are you? What do you want? I
am Robert van Mehren. You may perhaps remember what you Bertie, cried Frank.
How came you here in London? And in his amazement, there rose
up before him through the driving snow, a vision of his youth, A
pleasing picture of boyish friendship, of something young and warm. Not altogether by
chance, said the other, whose voice had taken on a somewhat more confident
tone at the sound of the familiar Bertie. I knew that you lived here,
and I have been to your door three times, but you had not
come in. Your maid said you were expected at home this evening, and
I made so bold as to wait here for you. And again his voice
lost its firmness and assumed the imploring accent of a beggar. Is your business
so urgent? Then asked Frank in surprise, Yes, I want, Perhaps
you could help me. I know no one here. Where are you living
nowhere? I only arrived here early this morning, and I have I have
no money. He was shivering from standing in the cold during this short dialogue
and seemed to shrink into himself, almost fawning like a cowed dog. Come
in with me, said Frank, greatly astonished but full of sympathy, and
of the affectionate reminiscences of his boyhood. Come and spend the night with me.
Oh, gladly, was the reply, eager and tremulous, as if
he feared that the heaven inspired words might be retracted. They went together a
few steps further. Then Frank took a key out of his pocket, the
key of White Rose Cottage. He opened the door. A hexangonal Moorish lantern
was burning low and shed a soft light in the hall. Go in,
said Frank, and he locked the door and bolted it behind them. It
was half past twelve. The maid had not yet gone to bed. That
gentleman called here a little while ago. Two or three times she murmured with
a look of suspicion at Bertie. And I've seen him hanging about all the
evening as if he was on the watch. I was frightened, you know,
it's so lonely in these parts. Frank shook his head reassuringly. Make
the fire up as quickly as possible, Annie, is your husband still up
the fire? Sir? Yes, Bertie. Will you have something to eat?
Gladly if it gives you no trouble? Replied Bertie in English, for
the benefit of the maid, and he looked with an insinuating expression to meet
the surprised, cold blue eyes of the neat, brisk young woman. His
voice was persuasive and low. He tried to take as little room as possible
in the small hall, and to avoid her gaze, seemed to shrink to
efface himself in a corner where the shadow fell. Frank led the way into
a large back room, cold and dark when they entered, but soon lighted
up, and before long genially warmed by the huge fire which blazed up in
the grate. Annie laid the table sapper for one, sir, nay for
two. I will eat something, said Frank, thinking that Bertie would feel
more at his ease at his friend's invitation. The visitor had seated himself in
a large armchair by the fire, and there he sat bolt upright, without
speaking, feeling shy before the woman who came and went. And now in
the light, Frank could see the poverty of his appearance, his thin shabby
coat shining with grease and bereft of buttons, his worn fringed trousers, his
dirty comforter hiding a lack of under linen, his ripped and slipshod shoes oose.
In his confusion and awkwardness, he still held his battered hat. This
garb accorded ill with the aristocratic elegance of his figure, the thin, pale,
chiseled features, full of distinction, in spite of the unkempt light hair
and unshaven stubble of a beard. It was like a masquerade of rank and
culture in the rags of misery, beseeming it as ill as an unsuitable part
in a play. And the actor sat motionless, staring into the fire hill,
at ease in the atmosphere of luxury which surrounded him. In this room,
evidently the home of a young man of fortune who had no yearnings for
domestic society. The curtains and carpets were of handsome quality, so were the
furniture and ornaments, but arranged without any reference to comfort. The chairs and
tables against the wall, stiff and orderly and shining with polish. But it
did not make this impression on Bertie, for sense of the blessedness of warmth
and shelter possessed him wholly of peace and reprieve, as calm as a lake,
and as delightful as an oasis, a smiling prospect after the snow and
cold of the last few hours. And when he saw that Frank was gazing
at him invisible wonder at his motionless attitude by the glorious fire, where the
dancing flames flew up like yellow dragon's tongs, at last he smiled and said,
with humble gratitude, in the tone of a beggar, thank you very
much. This is good. Annie had not much to set before them,
the remains from the larder of a young fellow who lives chiefly away from home.
A bit of cold beef, steak and salad, some biscuits and jam.
But it bore some resemblance to a supper, and Bertie did it full
honor, eating and drinking with systematic deliberateness, hardly conscious of what, and
imbibing hot grog without confessing the hunger with which had nipped his very vitals.
At length, Frank tried to make him speak, drew him into talk and
into telling him what had reduced him to such misery. Bertie told his tale
in a fragmentary fashion, very abjectly, every word sounding like a petition,
disputes with his father about his mother's fortune, a trifle of a few thousand
golden quickly spent vicissitudes in America, where he had been by turns a farm
servant, a waiter in a hotel, and a super on the stage.
His return to Europe on board a liner, working out his passage in every
variety of service. His first day in London without assent, he remembered Vestova's
address from letters bearing date of some years back, and had at once made
his way to White Rose Cottage, only fearing that meanwhile Frank might have moved
half a dozen times and left no traces. Oh his anxiety that night,
waiting in the cold wind, while it grew darker and darker, the gloom,
with no relief but the ghostly whiteness of the deathly silent snow, and
now the warmth, the shelter and food. And again he thanked his friend,
cowering, shriveled in his threadbare clothes, Thank you, thank you,
Annie Sulky, over so much trouble at this hour of the night, and
for such a vagabond brought in from the street, had nevertheless prepared a bedroom,
and Frank led him upstairs, Shocked by his exhausted appearance and ashy paleness.
He patted him on the shoulder, promising to help him, but now
he must go to bed. Tomorrow they would see what could be done.
When Bertie found himself alone, he looked about him. The room was very
comfortable, the bed ample, soft and warm. He felt himself squalid and
dirty amidst such surroundings of luxury, and, by an actatural instinct of decency
and cleanliness, though his teeth were chattering with cold, he first carefully and
elaborately washed himself, lathering, rubbing, brushing, till his whole body was
rosy and glowing and smelling of soap SuDS. He looked in the glass and
only regretted that he had no raisors. He would have shaved. At last,
Having slipped on a night shirt which lay ready for use, he crept
in between the blankets. He did not immediately fall asleep, reveling in the
comfort, in his own purification, in the whiteness of the sheets, the
warmth of the quilt, in the gleam of the night light, even which
showed discreetly through a green shade. A smile came into his eyes and parted
his lips and he was asleep without a thought of the morrow, happy in
the respite of today and the warmth of the bed, his mind almost vacant,
indeed, but for the single recurring thought that Frank was really a good
fellow. Two next morning, there was a hard frost, the snow glittered
like crystals. They had breakfasted, and Bertie was relating his disasters in America.
He had been trimmed and shaved by Frank's barber, and he was wearing
Frank's clothes, which were a world too wide for him, and a pair
of slippers in which his feet were lost. He already felt more at home
and began to bask, like a cat which has found a warm spot of
sunshine. He lounged at his ease in the armchair, smoking comfortably, and
was on the old familiar terms with Frank. His voice was soft and mellow,
with a ring of full content, like an alloy of gold. Vesthova
was interested and let him tell his story in his own way, and he
did so very simply, without making any secret of his poverty. But everything
had happened inevitably and could not have turned out otherwise. He was no favorite
of fortune. That was all, but he was tough. Many another would
not have pulled through as he had. Frank looked at him in astonishment.
He was so frail, so pale, so delicate, almost devoid of all
manly developments. He was lost in the grotesque amplitude of Frank's coat and trousers,
a mere stripling as compared with his own stalwart's angular frame. And he
had gone through days of hunger, nights without a shelter, a depth of
poverty which to Frank, well fed and ruddy with vigorous health, seemed unendurable,
had he spoke of it so coolly, almost jestingly, without complaining,
only looking with regretful pity at his hands, which were thin and blue with
the biting cold, and chapped and raw about the knuckles. At the moment,
the state of his hands seemed to be the only thing that troubled him.
A very happy nature, thought Frank, while he laughed at him for
his concern about his hands. But Bertie himself was shocked at his own heedlessness,
for he suddenly exclaimed, but what am I to do? What am
I to do? He gazed into vacancy, helpless and desperate, wringing his
hands, Frank laughed him out of his despair, poured him out a glass
of sherry, and told him that for the present he must stay where he
was to recover. He himself would be heartily glad of Bertie's company for a
few weeks. He was a little sick of his wealthy bachelor life. He
belonged to a circle of idlers who went out a great deal and spent a
great deal, and he was tired of it. All dinners and balls in
the world as suppers and orgies in the half world. It was always the
same thing, a life like a montaignourus down and then up again, down
and then up again, without a moment for thought, an existence made for
you in the position you made for yourself. At the moment, he had
but one anxiety, Bertie himself. Frank would help him after a few weeks
rest to find an appointment or some employment, but above all he was not
to worry himself. For the present. Vestova was only glad to have his
old friend. Under his roof, memories rose up before him like dissolving views,
pale hued and swift, but appealing to his sympathy. Memories of his
school days, of boyish mischief, zigzag excursions, picnics among the sand hills
near the Hague. Did Bertie remember? Frank could see him still, the
slight, fragile lad, bullied by louts, protected by himself, Frank,
whose fists were always ready to hit out right and left in defense of his
friend, and later, on their student days in Delft, Bertie's sudden disappearance
without leaving a trace even for Frank. Then a few letters at rare intervals,
and then years of silence. Oh, he was glad, indeed to
see his friend at his side once more. He had always had a great
love for Bertie, just because Bertie was so wholly unlike himself, with something
of the cat about him, loving to be petted and made much of but
now and then irresistibly prompts it to flee over roofs and gutters, to get
myery and dirty, and return at last to warm and clean himself on the
hearth. Frank loved his friend as a twin brother, quite different from himself,
imposed upon by Bertie's supercilious and delicately egoistic fascination, a catslike creature altogether,
Bertie found it a great luxury to stay in door the whole of that
day sitting by the fire, which he kept blazing by feeding it with logs.
Frank had some capital port, and they sat after lunch sipping it,
dreaming or talking, Bertie telling a hundred tales of his adventures in America,
of his farmer, master, of his hotel, and the theater where he
had acted, and one anecdote led to another, all garnished with a touch
of singular romance. Frank presently wanted a little fresh air and said he would
go to his club, but Bertie remained where he was. He could not
go about in rags, but he could not appear anywhere with Frank in the
clothes he had on. Frank was to return to dinner at eight o'clock,
and then, suddenly, as if it had come to him like a lightning
flash, Bertie said, say nothing about me. Pray to any of your
friends. They need not be told that you know such a bad lot as
I am. Promise me, Frank promised, laughing and holding out his hand.
The bad lot added, how can I ever repay you? What a
happy thing for me that I should have met you. You're the most generous
fellow I ever knew. Frank escaped from this volley of gratitude, and Bertie
remained alone in front of the hearth, toasting all over in the blaze,
or stretching his legs with his feet on the shining bars. He poured himself
out another glass of port and made himself think of nothing, reveling in the
enjoyment of idleness, while he seriously examined his damaged hands, wondering how best
to ensure their rapid recovery. Three Bertie had been a month at white Rose
Cottage and was now hardly recognizable in the young man who sat by Frank's side
in a Victoria in an irreproachable fur lined coat a fashionable tall hat, both
the men wrapped about the knees in a hands plaid. He now mixed quite
at his ease with Frank's other acquaintances, carefully dressed, agreeable and entertaining,
and lisping English with an affected accent which he thought elegant. He dined with
Frank every day at the club to which he was introduced, criticized game and
wines with the most blase air in the world, and smoked havannahs at two
shillings apiece as if they were mere straw. Frank had in his inmost soul
the greatest belief in him, and watched him with a smile of secret satisfaction
as he calmly went his own way, chatting with men of the world,
without ever for a moment's feeling shy. And Frank thought the comedy altogether so
amusing that he introduced his friend wherever he went. Winter yielded to a foggy
spring. The London season was upon them, and a Bertie seemed to find
great pleasure in assisting at after noon teas and evenings at home, in sitting
at a grand dinner between two pairs of fine shoulders, and flirting with each
in turn, never dazzled by the glitter of jewels, nor bewildered by the
sparkle of champagne, in leaning with languid grace in the stalls or dress circles,
his chiseled features full of distinction and lordly repose, a fragrant white flower
gleaming in his buttonhole, and his opera glass dangling between his now white fingers,
as though not one of the ladies was worthy of his inspection. Frank
for lack of occupation as a man who takes his pleasure where he finds it.
Had pushed Bertie forward in the world, not merely to help him,
but also for the fun of it, a silly amusement, to make a
fool of society. Bertie himself had many scruples, had kept a note in
a pocket book of everything Frank spent upon him. When times were better,
he would repay him all, and in a fortnight it had mounted up to
a total of some hundred pounds. Even at home, Frank found him amusing
Bertie, who had contrived, by a few kind words, to win the
good graces of Annie and her husband. Vestova's valet and butler, turned all
the furniture about in whimsical disorder, bought statuettes, palms, and oriental stuffs,
and changed the unsociable aspects of the room into one of artistic comfort,
which invited to indolence as subdued lights, wide divans, the atmosphere of an
alcove redolent of Egyptian pastels and fine cigarettes, in which thought floated into dreams,
and the half closed eyes rested on the nude figures of bronze nymphs seen
through the greenery of plants. Here in the evening high festivals were held orgies
with a few chosen friends and select fair ones, two ladies from skating rink,
and a figurance from a theater, who smoked cigarettes with their vermilion lips
and drank to Bertie's health. Frank left, to his heart's content to see
Bertie, a contemner of the fair sex, quite insensible to the three charmers,
making game of them, teasing them, setting them by the ears till
they were almost ready to claw each other, and to conclude the matter,
pouring floods of champagne down their des collite throats. No, Frank had never
been so well amused during all his long residence in London, where he had
settled as an engineer in order to give, as he said, a cosmopolitan
character to his knowledge of the world. He was thoroughly good hearted and too
highly prosperous to be a deep thinker. He had tasted of every pleasure and
had no high opinion of life, which was after all but a farce,
lasting according to statistics on average six and thirty years. He made small pretense
of any philosophical views of existence, beyond a determined avoidance of everything that was
not amusing. Now Bertie was very amusing, not only in his fun with
women, the cruel sport of a panther, but especially in the farcical parts
he played in Frank's world, where he figured as a man of fashion,
he a vagabond who only a month since had stood shivering in rags on the
pavements. It was a constant secret delight to his friend, who gave Bertie
carte blanche to enable him to keep it up, a carte blanche which was
amply honored, bringing in heavy tailor's bills for Bertie, dressed with refined vanity,
bought ties by the dozen, adopted every fancy that came into fashion,
has scented himself with all the waters of Rimmel. It was as though he
was fain to plunge into every extravagant refinement of an exquisite after having been a
squalid scarecrow. And although at first he kept faithful record of his outlay,
he soon forgot first one item, and then another, till at last he
forgot all. Thus weeks slipped by, and Frank never thought of troubling himself
to inquire among his influential acquaintances for employment for his companion. Their life as
wealthy idlers filled their minds entirely. Frank's at any rate, for Bertie had
brought a new charm into it. But suddenly a strange thing happened. One
day Bertie went out in the morning alone and did not come in to lunch.
After luncheon at the club, no Bertie, nor yet at dinner,
he did not come home in the evening. He had left no clue.
Frank, extremely uneasy, sat up half the night no one. Two days
went by still no one. Frank inquired right and left, and at last
gave information to the police. At last. One morning, before Frank was
up, Bertie appeared at his bedside with an apologetic smile. Frank must not
be angry with him. He surely had not been alarmed. You see,
such a monotonously genteel life had suddenly been too much for him. Always these
elegant ladies with trains and diamonds, always clubs full of lords and baronets,
and skating rinks, the pink of finery, always a chimney pot's hat,
and every evening full dress with the regulation buttonholer. It was intolerable. He
could endure it no longer it had been too much for him. But where
did you hide yourself, asked Frank in utter amazements. Oh here and there
among old acquaintance. I've not been out of London, and you did not
know a soul here. Oh well, no fashionable folk like your friends.
But escape grace or two, you're not vexed with me. Frank had sat
up in bed to talk to him. He saw that he looked pale,
weary, and unkempt. His trousers were deeply bordered with mud, his hat
crushed. There was a three cornered rent in his greatcoat. And he stood
there in evident confusion, like a boy with his doubting, coaxing smile.
Come, do not be cross with me, Take me into favor once more.
This was too much for Frank, Provoked beyond the measure, he exclaimed,
But Bertie, what a cat you look? And where on earth have
you been? He asked again? Oh? Here and there? And he
could get no more out of him. Bertie would only say that he had
wanted to disappear, and now he was tired he would go to bed.
He slept till three in the afternoon. Frank laughed over it all day and
Bertie went into fits when he heard of the police. At dinner at the
club, he related with a melancholy face that he had been out of town
for a few days attending a funeral. Frank had failed to receive a note
through the carelessness of a servant. But where in the world have you really
been? Whispered Frank for the third time, infinitely amused and inquisitive, here
and there, I tell you, first in one place and then in another,
answered Bertie, with the most innocent face in the world, and dapper
as ever. He delicately lifted an oyster his little finger in the air and
swallowed down his half dozen without another word on the subject. Four the season
passed away, but Bertie remained sometimes. Indeed, he talked of going to
Holland. He had an uncle, a stockbroker in Amsterdam, possibly that uncle,
but Vestova would not hear of it, and when his friend's conscience pricked
him for sponging on him, he talked him down. What did it matter.
If Bertie had been the rich man and he the pauper, Bertie would
have done the same by him. They were friends. A true appreciation of
the case began to dawn on him. In the now firmly established habits of
their life. Frank's moral sense whispered drowsily in the ease of their luxurious existence.
Now and then. Indeed, he had something like a vague suspicion that
he was not rich enough for two, that he had spent more in the
last few months than in any former season. But he was too heedless to
dwell long on such unpleasant doubts. He was lulled to sleep by Bertie,
as if by opium or morphia. Bertie had become indispensable to him. He
consulted his friend on every part, and allowed himself to be led by him
on every occasion, completely subjugated by the ascendancy held over him by the fragile
little man with his velvet paws, as though he had him under a yoke.
Every now and then, a longest frequent intervals of about a fortnight,
Bertie disappeared, stayed away four or five days, and came back one fine
morning with his insinuating smile, exhausted, pale, and tired out. These
were perhaps some secret excesses of dissipation mysterious adventure hunting in the sordid Purlieus of
the lowest neighbourhoods of which Frank never heard nor understood the truth, a depth
of depravity into which Frank seemed too precise and dainty to be initiated, sins
in which he was to have no part, at which Bertie, in his
refinement of selfishness, kept for himself as an occasional treat. Then Frank's hours
were passed in disgusting of life. He missed the unwholesome stimulants of his existence.
In his solitude, he sank into gray, melancholy and sadness, verging
on despair. He stayed at home all day, incapable of any exertion,
sulking in his lonely house, where everything, the draping of the handsome curtains,
the bronze nudity of the statues, the careless disarray of the cushions on
the divan had still, as it were, an odor of Bertie, which
haunted him with regret. On such days as these, he was conscious of
the futility of his existence, the odious insignificance of his sinulous, empty life,
useless, aimless, null Sadly, sweet memories would come over him,
reminiscences of his parental home, shining through the magic glass of retrospect, like
bright still pools of tender domestic harmony, in which the figures of his father
and mother stood forth, grand and noble, glorified by childlike affection. He
longed for some unspeakable ideal, something pure and chaste, some high aim in
life. He would shake off this torpor of the soul. He would send
away Bertie. But Bertie came back, and Bertie held him tightly once more
in his silken bonds, and he saw more clearly every day that he could
not live without Bertie. And then, catching sight of himself in a mirror,
tall and brawny and strong, the healthy blood tinging his clear complexion,
he could not forbear smiling at the foolish visions of his solitude, which struck
him now as diseased imaginings, quite out of keeping with his robust vigor.
Life was but a farce, and the better part was to play it out
as a farce, in a mere sensual enjoyment. Nothing else was worth the
pains. And yet sometimes at night, when his big body lay tired out
after some riotous evening, a gnawing dissatisfaction would come over him, not to
be conquered by this light hearted philosophy, and even Bertie himself would lecture him.
Why did not Frank seek some employment, some sphere of action. Why
did he not travel for a while? Why not go to Norway? Asked
Bertie one day for the sake of saying something. London was beginning to be
intolerable to Bertie, and as the notion of traveling smiled on Frank, both
for a change and for economy, since they could live more cheaply abroad than
in the whorld of fashionable London. He thought it over had came to a
decision to leave white Rose Cottage for an indefinite period to the care of Annie
and her husband, and spend a few weeks in Norway. Bertie should go
with him. End of Section one, Section two of Footsteps of Fate by
Luis Kuperos. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part two one.
After luncheon at the table dote of the Britannia Hotel at Torontier, the
friends made their way along the broad quiet streets with their low wooden houses,
and they had left the town, going in the direction of the Yettrielt when
they overtook in the village of Eileen, an elderly gentleman with a young girl,
evidently bent on the same excursion. The pair had sat a few places
off at the table dote, and as this much acquaintance justified a recognition in
so lonely a spot, Vestova and his friend lifted their hats. The old
gentleman immediately asked in English whether they knew the road to the yitfrielt He and
his daughter, who during the colloquy never looked up from her Badeka, could
not agree on the subject. This difference of opinion led to a conversation.
The two young men begged to be allowed to join them, Frank being of
the opinion that Baedeker was right. Papa will never believe in Badeker, said
the young lady with a quiet smile, as she closed the red volume she
had been consulting. Nor will he ever trust me when I tell him I
will guide him safely? Are you always so sure of knowing your way?
Said Frank, laughing always she saw, soily, declared with a gay laugh.
Bertie inquired how long a walk it was and what was to be seen
at the end of it. Frank's everlasting walks were a weariness and a bore.
During his residence with his friend, he had so spoilt himself in order
to forget his former wretchedness, that he now knew no greater pleasure than that
of lying on a bed bench with a cigar or a glass of port,
and above all would avoid every exertion. But now abroad, when a man
is traveling, he cannot forever sit dozing in his hotel. Besides, he
was quite stiff with riding in a carryall. All this useless rushing about was
really monstrous folly, and White Rose Cottage was not such a bad place.
Frank, on the contrary, thoroughly enjoyed the clear, invigorating air of this
brilliant summer day, and he drank in the sunshine as though it were a
fine wine cooled by a fresh mountain breeze. His step was elastic, and
his voice had a contented ring. Are you an Englishman? Asked the gentleman.
Vestova explained that they were Dutch, that they lived in London, and
his tone had the frank briskness which a man instinctively adopts to fellow travelers as
sharing his lot for the moment when the weather is fine and the landscape pleasing,
their sympathy being thus aroused by their admiration of Norwegian scenery, they walked
on side by side, the elder man stepping out bravely, the young lady
very erect, with her fine figure molded in a simple, close fitting blue
cloth dress, to which a cape with several folds, something like an elegant
type of coachman's cape, lent a dash of smartness. She wore a sort
of jockey cap with a Mannish air on her thick twists of ruddy gold hair.
Bertie alone could not understand how all this could be called pleasure, but
he made no complaint. He spoke little, not thinking it necessary to make
himself agreeable to people whom he might probably never set eyes on again after the
morrow, so he just kept up with them, wondering at Frank, who
had at once plunged into eager conversation with the young lady, but perceiving on
a sudden that his own politeness and tact were a mere superficial varnish as compared
with Frank's instinctive good breeding at that moment for the first time, notwithstanding his
better features, and natty traveling costume. He felt himself so far Frank's inferior
as a surge of fury resembling hate thrilled through him. He could not bear
this sense of inferiority, so he approached the old gentleman, and, walking
by his side, forced himself to a show of respectful amiability. As they
followed the windings of the upward and diminishing path, they by degrees lagged behind
Frank and his companion, and thus climbed the hill two and two. So
you live in London? What is your name? Asked the young lady,
with calm curiosity. Frank Vestova. My name is Eva Rhodes. My father
is Sir Archibal Roads of Roads grow. And your friend his name is Robert
van Meren. I like the sound of your name best. I believe I
can say it like English. Tell it me again. He repeated his name,
and she said it after him with her English accent. It was very
funny, and they laughed over it. Frank Frank Westhoover, and they looked
back. Papa, are you tired? Cried Eva. The old man was
toiling up the height with his broad shoulders bent. His face was red under
his traveling cap, which he had pushed to the back of his head,
and he was blowing like a triton. Bertie tried to smile pleasantly, though
he was inwardly raging in high dudgeon over this senseless clamber. They had half
an hour more of it, however, before the narrow track, which zigzagged
up the hillside like a gray Arabesque, came to an end, and they
sat down to rest on a block of stone. Eva was enchanted. Far
below lay Drontime, with its modern houses, encircled by the steely waters of
the Knee, and its fiord, a magic mirror on which floated the white
mass of the fortress of Munkenholm. The mountains rising on all sides were blue.
Nearest to them, the bloomy purple blue of the grape, then the
deep sheeny blue of velvet, further off, the transparent crystalline blue of the
sapphire, and in the distance the tender sky blue of the turquoise. The
water was blue like blue silver. The very air was blue as pearls are,
or mother of pearls. The equable sunlight fell on everything without glare and
without shadow, from exactly overhead It's almost like Italy, exclaimed Eva. And
this is Norway. I had always pictured Norway to myself as being all like
rum Style, wild and barren, with rocky peaks like rob Style Horn and
the troll Tinder, and with raging cascades like the slatter Hoss. But this
is quite lovely and so softly blue. I should like to build a house
here and live in it. That I would call its Eva's Bower, and
keep a whole flock of white doves. They would look so pretty flying in
the blue air, dear child, laughed Sir Archibald. It looks very different
in winter, I suspect, no doubt, different, but still lovely.
In winter. I should love the fury of raging winds and the roar of
the waves of the fjord below my house, and gray mists would hang over
the hills. I can see it all. Why you would be frozen,
argued the father gravely. Oh no, and I should sit at my turret
window dreaming over Dante or Spencer. Do you love Dante and Spencer? The
question was addressed to Frank, who had listened and somewhat puzzled to Eva's raptures
and was now a little startled. For you see, though he knew Dante
by name, he had never even heard of the poet Spencer, only of
Herbert Spencer. What you do not know the fairy Queen Yuna, and the
Red Cross Knight and britom Art. How very strange, dear child. What
a little fanatic you are over those silly allegories, said Papa. But they
are glorious, Papa, Eva insisted, Besides, I love allegory above all
things, and admire no other kind of poetry. The style is so affected,
you are drowned in symbolism. It is the keynote of the Renaissance.
Eva protested. In the time of Elizabeth all the court talked in that high
flown style, and Edmund Spencer's images are splendid. They sparkle like jewels.
Bertie thought this disco much to learnard, but he kept his opinion to himself,
and made some remark about Dante's inferno. They were by this time rested,
and went on again up the hill. My daughter is half an aesthetic,
said the old gentleman, laughing, and Evil laughed too. Nay,
that is not the truth, Papa, Do not believe him, mister,
mister Westhoover. Do you know what makes Papa say so? A few years
ago, when I had but just left school, I and a few girls
I knew were perfectly idiotic. For a while, we tousled our hair into
mops, dressed in floppy garments of damask and brocade with enormous sieves, and
held meetings among ourselves to talk nonsense about art. We sat in attitudes,
holding a sunflower or a peacock's feather, and were perfectly ridiculous. That is
why Papa still says such things. I'm not so silly now, but I'm
still very fond of reading. And is that so very esthetic? Frank looked
smilingly into her honest, clear gray eyes, and her ringing, decided voice
had an apologetic tone, as if she were asking pardon for her little display
of learning. He understood that there was nothing of the Blue Stocking in this
girl, as might have seemed from her sententious jest before, and he was
quite vexed with himself for having been compelled to confess that he knew nothing of
the poet Spencer. How stupid she must think him. But it was a
moment when the beauties of the scenery had so bewitched them that they moved,
as it were, in a magic circle of sympathy, in which some unknown
law overruled their natural impulses, something electrically swift and etherially subtle. As they
climbed the meandering mountain track or made shortcuts through the low brushwood, where the
leaves glistened in the sun like polished green needles, And as he breathed that
pure, intoxicating air, Frank felt as though he had known her quite a
long time, as if it were years since he had first seen her at
the table dote at dorontiim Ad. Sir Archibald and Bertie Lingering behind were far
off miles away. Mere remembered images Eva's voice joined with his own inharmonious union,
as though their fragmentary talk of art and poetry were a duet which they
both knew how to sing. Although Frank candidly confessed that he had read but
little that what he had read he scarcely remembered, she playfully scolded him,
and her sweet clear tones now and then startled a bird, which flew piping
out of the shrubs. He felt within him a revival of strength, a
new birth, and would fain have spread his arms to embrace the air.
Two that evening, on their return from their war, after dinner, over
a cup of coffee, they discussed their further projects. We are going to
milder, said Sir Archibald, and so are we, Frank, exclaimed The
old gentleman at once expressed a wish that the friends would continue to give him
and his daughter the pleasure of their society. Frank had taken a great fancy
to him, and Bertie thought him courteous and good company. Bertie had talked
a good deal about America, but he had not told the whole history of
his farming experiences in the far West. He had indeed idealized it a little
by speaking of my farm, and Frank did not contradict him. By the
end of two days spent at Fronteign, they were the best of friends,
with that confidential intimacy which on a tour when etiquette is out of court sometimes
arises from mere contact without any knowledge of character on either side, and sympathy
in trifles and mutual attraction a superficial sentiment of transient admiration which occupies the traveler's
leisure the day on the sea by steamboat to Malder was like a party of
pleasure in spite of the rain which drove them below. And in the cabin
over a bottle of champagne, Miss Eva and the three men played a rubber
of whist but afterwards, in a gleam of pale sunshine, there was an
endless walk to and fro on the wet deck. The low, rocky shore
glided slowly past on the larboard side, the hills varying in outline, now
close together and again showing a gap covered with brown moss down by the water,
and gray above with patches of pale rose or dull purple lights at Christian
sand. They were far from land, and the waters, now rougher,
were crimson in the glory of the sinking sun fast approaching the horizon. Everywhere
had a crest of flame colored foam, as though the ocean were on fire.
Frankened Eva, meanwhile, pacing up and down, laughed at each other's
faces, reddened like a couple of pianists, or like two maskers rouged by
the glow of the sun, to the semblance of clowns. They reached Malda
late at night, too late to see its lovely feord. But next morning
there it lay before them, a long, narrow inlet encircled by mountains,
capped with snow, a poem a song of mountains, pure, lofty,
beautiful, severe, solemn, without one jarring note. The sky above them
was calmly gray, like brooding melancholy, and the peace that rains sounded like
a passionless and ante. Three next day, when Sir Archibald proposed a walk
at Maldehoy, Bertie declared that he was tired and did not feel well,
and begged to be left at home. In point of fact, he thought
that the weather did not look promising. Heavy clouds were gathering about the chain
of hilltops, which shut in the fiord like a sweeping drapery of rain,
threatening ere long to fall and wrap everything in their gloomy folds. Eva,
however, would not be checked by bad weather. When people were traveling.
They must not be afraid of a wetting So the three set out, and
Bertie, in his patent slippers, remained in the drawing room of the Grand
Hotel with a book and a half pint bottle. The road was muddy,
but they stepped out valiantly in their waterproofs and stout boots. The rain,
which hung threateningly above their heads, did not daunt them, but gave a
touch of romantic adventure to the expedition, as though it threatened to submerge them
in an impending deluge. Once off the beaten road and still toiling upwards,
they occasionally missed the track, which was lost in a plashy bog, or
under ferns dripping with rain, or struck across a wild growth of blue bilberries.
They crossed the morass, using the rocks as stepping stones, the old
gentleman without help, and Eva with her hand on Frank's, fearing lest her
little feat should slide on the smooth green moss. She laughed, gaily,
skipping from stone to stone with his help, sometimes suddenly slipping and supporting herself
against his shoulder, and then again going on bravely trying the stones with her
stout stick. She felt as though she need take no particular heed, now
that he was at her side, that he would support her if she stumbled,
and they chatted eagerly as they went, almost leaping from rock to rock.
What sort of man is your friend, mister westhova Eva suddenly inquired.
Frank was a little startled. It was always an unpleasant task to give any
information concerning Bertie, less on account of his past life than of his present
position, his quiet sponging on himself. Frank, who though enslaved by Bertie
knew full well that the situation was strange, to say the least of it
in the eyes of the world. Oh, he's a man who's been very
unfortunate, he said evasively. Had he presently added? Has he not made
a pleasant impression on you? Eva laughed so heartily that she was near falling
into a pool of mud if Frank had not firmly thrown his arm round her
waist. Eva Eva cried her father, shaking his head. Pray be more
careful. Eva threw herself up with a slight blush. What can I say,
she went on, pursuing the subject, if I were to speak the
whole truth, of course, But perhaps you will be vexed, For I
can see very plainly that you are quite infatuated with your friend. Then you
do not like him? Well, then if you insist on knowing the first
day, when I made his acquaintance, I thought him insufferable. With you,
we got on famously at once as an amusing traveling companion, but with
him. But perhaps he has not traveled much. Oh, yes he has,
said Frank, who could not help smiling. Well, then perhaps he
was shy or awkward. However, I began to think differently of him after
that. I don't think him insufferable now. It was strange, but Frank
felt no particular satisfaction on hearing the young lady's changed opinion. He made no
reply. You say he has had much to trouble him, And indeed I
can see it in his face. There is something so gentle in him,
so tender, I might almost say, such soft dark eyes and such a
sweet voice. At first, as I tell you, I found it intolerable,
but now it strikes me as rather poetical. He must certainly be a
poet and have been crossed in love. He can be no commonplace man.
No, that he certainly is not, said Frank, vaguely. A little
ill at ease over Eva's raptures, and a mingling of jealousy and regret,
something like an aversion for the worldly polish, and a dull envy of the
poetic graces which Yva attributed to his friend, ran through his veins like a
chill. He glanced up, almost pathetically at the pretty creature, who was
sometimes so shrewd and sometimes so naive, so learned in all that bore on
her favorite studies, so ignorant of real life. A dim compassion came over
him, and on a sudden the gray rain clouds weighed upon him with a
pall of melancholy, as though they were ominous of some inevitable fatality which threatened
to crush her. His fingers involuntarily clasped her hand more tightly. Here's the
path, once more, cried Sir Archibald, who was twenty steps ahead of
them. Oh yes, there is the path. Thank you, mister Westhova,
said Eva, as she sprang from the last stepping stone, pushing her
way through the snapping bracken to the beaten track. And up there is the
huts with the weather cock. Her father went on, I believe we've made
a long round out of our way. Instead of chattering so much, you
would do well to keep a sharp look out for the path. My old
eyes, you know, but it was great fun jumping over the stones,
laughed Eva. Far above them, they could now see the huts with the
tall pole of the weather cock, and they went on at an easier pace,
their feet sinking into the violet and a pink blossomed heath. Crushing the
bilberries, dimly purple like tiny grapes. Eva stooped and picked some. Oh
so nice and sweet, she exclaimed, with childish surprise, as she pulled
some more, dyeing her lips and fingers blue with the juice of the berries.
Taste them, mister Westove. He took them from her soft, small
hand, stained as it were with purple blood. It was true, they
were deliciously sweet, and such fine ones. And then they went on again,
following Sir Archibald, often stopping and triumphing like children. When they came
on a large patch where the watleberries had spread unhindered, like a miniature orchard.
Papa, Papa, do try them, Eva cried, heedless of the
fact that Papa was far ahead, but Sir Archibald was not out of sight,
and they had to run to overtake him. Eva's laughter ringing like a
bell, while she lamented that she must leave so many berries untouched, and
such beauties. I dare say there will be plenty round the hut, said
Frank consolingly. Do you think so, she said, with a merry laugh.
Oh, what a couple of babies we are. The path grew wider,
and they found it easy walking up to the top, sometimes quitting the
track and scrambling over the stones to shorten the way. Presently they heard a
shout, and looking up, they saw Sir Archibald standing on the cairn,
in which the staff of the weathercock was fixed, and waving his traveling cap.
They hurried on and soon were at his side. Eva knocked at the
door of the hut. The hut is shut up, said her father.
How stupid, she exclaimed. Why does it stand there at all? If
it's shut up, there's no one live in it. Why, of course
not, said Sir Archibald, as if it was the most natural thing in
the world. Frank helped Eva to climb the cairn round the pole, and
they looked down on the panorama at their feet. It's beautiful, but melancholy,
said Eva. The long fiord lay below them, a narrow ribbond of
pale, motionless water, hemmed in by the mountains, now wreathed with gray
vapor, through which they gleamed fitfully like ghosts of mountains Laupardon and Venulinda,
Troultinda, and the Romsdal Hall towering up through the envious rolling mist, which
swelled by the coming storm, hung in black clouds from every peak and cast
a gloomy reflection on the still waters. The hills were weeping, unsubstantial,
motionless phantoms, sorrowing and tragical under some august and superhuman woe, a grief
as of giants and demigods. The Fiord, with its township, a plot
of gardens and roofs and walls, and the white chalet of the Grand Hotel,
all weeping, all motionless under the gloomy sky. A ghostly chill rose
up from the gulf to where the trio stood, mingling with the tangible clamminess
of the mist, which seemed to weigh on their eyelids. It was not
raining, but the moisture seemed to distill on them. From the black,
unbroken rack of clouds, and to the westwards, between two cliffs which parted
to show a gleaming strip of ocean, a streak was visible of pale gold
and faint rose color, hardly more than a touch of pink. A sparkle
of gold, a stinted arms of the setting sun. They scarcely said another
word, oppressed by the superhuman sadness which enwrapped them like a shroud. When
Eva at last spoke, her clear voice sounded far away through a curtain.
Look, there's a glint of sunshine over the sea. Here. We are
pining for the sun. Oh I wish the sun would break through the cloud.
It's so dismal here, so dreary. How well I understand Oswald's cry
in Ibsen's ghosts when he is going mad the sun the sun men might pray
for sunshine here and get to no more than that distant gleam Oh I am
perished. She shivered violently under the stiff, shining folds of her waterproof cloak.
Her face was drawn and white, and her eyes looked large and anxious.
She suddenly felt herself so forlorn and lonely that she instinctively took her father's
arm and clung to him closely. Are you cold, my child? Shall
we go home? He asked? She nodded, and they both helped her
down the heap of stones. Why she knew not, but suddenly she had
thought of her mother, who was dead, and wondered whether she had ever
felt thus forlorn in spite of her father's fondness. But when they came in
sight of the hut again, she said, as if it had just occurred
to her Papa, there are some names cut in the door. Let us
cut ours too, But child, you are so cold and pale. Never
mind, let us cut our names. I want to, she urged,
like a spoilt child. No, Eva, what nonsense. Oh but I
do want to, she repeated, coaxingly, But the old man would not
give in. Grumbling still, Frank, however, pulled out his pocket knife.
Oh, mister Westhova, do cut my name? Nothing but Eva,
only three letters, will you, she asked softly. Frank had it on
his lips to say that he would like to cut his own name with hers,
although it was so long, but he was silent. It would have
sounded flat and commonplace in the midst of this mournful scenery. So he carved
the letters on the door, which was like a traveler's album. Eva stood
gazing out to the west, and she saw the three streaks of gold turn
pale, and the rose tint fade away. The sun, the sun she
murmured with a shudder and a faint smile on her white lips and in her
tearful eyes. A few heavy drops of rain had begun to fall, so
Archibald asked if they were ever coming, and led the way. Eva nodded
with a smile and went up to Frank. Have you done, it's,
mister Westover, Yes, said Frank, hastily finishing the last letter. She
looked up and saw that he had cut Eva rhoades and in very neat,
even letters smoothly finished below he had roughly cut Frank in a great hurry.
Why did you add roads, she asked, and her voice was faint,
as if far away, because it took longer. Frank replied simply four.
They got back to the Grand Hotel in a torrent of rain. A deluge
poured out of all the urns of heaven, muddy to their waists, wet
to the skin, and chilled to the bone. Eva, after a hot
supper, was sent off to bed by her father and the three men,
Sir Archibald, Frank, and Bertie sat in the drawing room, where a
few other visitors, all very cross at the bad weather, tried to solace
themselves with illustrated papers or albums. The old gentleman took a doze in an
easy chair. Frank gazed pensively at the straight streaks of rain, which fell
like an endless curtain of close steel needles thrashing the surface of the fiord.
Bertie sipped to hot grog and luked as his shiny slippers. And did you
not miss my company on your excursion, he asked, addressing Frank with a
smile, just to break the silence that reigned in the room. Vesthova turned
to him in some surprise, as if roused from a dream. Then,
with a frank laugh, he briefly answered no. Bertie stared at him,
but his friend had already turned away, lost in thought over the patter of
the rain. So Bertie at last took up his book again and tried to
read, but the letters danced before his eyes. His ears and nerves still
thrilled uncomfortably under the remembrance of that one short, astounding word which Frank had
fired into the silence like a leaden bullet. It annoyed him that Frank should
take no further notice of him. Frank stood and moved, looking out at
the mountains, scarcely visible through the watery shroud. What he saw was their
walk back from Maldoy, the meandering downward path through the tall, dripping bracken,
the pelting rains streaming in the faces as from a watering pot. Eva
closely wrapped in her wet macintosh and clinging to his arm as if seeking his
protection. Behind them, her father carefully feeling the slippery moss grown stones with
his walking stick. Frank had wanted to wrap her in his own thick waterproof
coat, but this she had positively rejected. She would not have him made
ill for her sake, she said in that far away voice. And then
when they were home again, after they had changed their clothes and dined and
laughed over their adventure, Sir Archibald was afraid lest Eva should have taken cold.
Frank remembered at this moment the fragments of their conversation, his asking her,
a little surprised, in spite of himself, have you read Ibsen's Ghosts?
You spoke of Oswald when we were up on Milderhoy. As it happened,
he had himself read Ghosts, and he did not think it's a book
for a young girl. She noticed his surprise and had blushed deeply as she
replied, Yes, I have read it. I read a great deal,
and Papa has brought me up on rather liberal lines. Do you think that
I ought not to have read Ghosts? She herself had seen no harm in
it and had not perhaps fully understood it, As she candidly confessed, he
had not ventured to tell her that the study of such a drama of physiological
heredity was, to say the least, unnecessary for a young girl. She
had answered vaguely, and she had colored yet more deeply and said no more.
She must have regarded me as a prig of a schoolmaster, thought he
Ill at ease. Why should she not read what she likes? She does
not need my permission for her reading. She has grown up enough. She
must have thought me a pedantic owl. Frank, said Bertie again. What
said Frank startled? Will this place tomorrow morning? I suppose yes, that
was our plan, at least if the weather improves. What is the name
of the next outlandish spot? We are going to fabe lungs Nas and from
there to Romsdahl and gudbrand Stahl and the roads. They are going to bergen
tomorrow I don't know, And he stood once more lost in thought, the
gray, wet atmosphere without cast a gloom on the scene. Within, and
in his soul too, rained the deepest gloom. What was the use of
fostering warm feelings when a few days of sympathetic companionship could only end imparting?
This was always the case with friendly traveling acquaintance. And was it not so
throughout life? With everyone everything we love? Was it worthwhile to care for
anything? Was not all love a great delusion by which men blinded themselves to
their disgust at life? End of section two, Section three of Footsteps of
Fate by Luis Kuperus. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part
three one to six, one December in London, cold and foggy, white
rose cottage, wrapped in mist, in the back room a blazing fire.
But Robert van meyer And 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,
slavery of hired labor, 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 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,
ought 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 persuaded himself that all those things which he had now hidden, buried,
forever ignored, had indeed never happened. Had 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 passed 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 odor. 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 he jour 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, sea feet. Something was in the air. He felt its
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 franks. The dinner to come, the bed upstairs were franks.
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 hothouse 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 passing 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 Leiden, 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 had already the worse for dissipation.
If he had never known them, And yet how pleasantly had they borne
him along merely by humoring 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 mailstre 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 destitution, or have applied
to Vestovah 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 thought of marriage. And only yesterday Vestova had called at
Sir Archibald's house whether 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 difficul cultis 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 clear 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 to the happiness of two other persons at the cost of his
own injustice. In justice, had he cursed the impulse, the mysterious innates
force which more or less prompts every word we speak? And he cursed the
facts that every word uttered by the tongue of man remains beyond recall. What
is that impulse? Something obscurely good and 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, Japan?
Good God can chat her for aught? He cared, why, especially
Norway idiotic impulse, which had unlocked his miserable lips to pronounce 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 thoughts, 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 noble. 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,
would not face them again. Then, leaning back with his pallid head
resting against the cushion the back of his chair, his deep set, black
eyes clouded with the venom of these reflections, he was aware of a gentle,
pleasing 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
sphynx. And as compared with the titanic cruelty of that image, his former
vision sank into nothingness. The dance of death, of the years, the
continuity of fatality, had 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 hypnotized his soul. His instincts fell asleep under
its crushing power. Friendship, gratitude, 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 silence, irresistible, infernal magnetism. Two that night,
he saw Frank no more, for he had stayed to dine with Sir
Archibald Roads van Mehren. Could not sleep. The wildest fancies kept him wide
awake. Illusions and schemes whirled through his feet brain. Strange voices buzzed in
his ears, hissing like an angry sea. He saw himself sitting with Eva
in a cab passing 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. Had wrapped his burning head in a wet,
cold towel. He involuntarily looked in the glass, and in the subdued
glimmer of the night light, 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 glass of water,
he lay down again, forcing himself to be calm. Subtler fancies now crowded
his mind like fine threads caught a thwart and across webbs 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 orges 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 as Archibald
came in with Eva on his arm. So 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 brass 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 maiden
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 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 leapt
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 omnipotence. Three the following
days passed 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 roads, 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 missile
of Van Mehren's fine, dark eyes and insinuating voice, had a compassion 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 Vestova,
a kind of love 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 passion. The contrast in Frank himself, of his mild, yielding character,
with the robust vigor of his stalwart's 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 and the use of his limbs, being so feeble in determination, so
gentle in demeanor. 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 Franks.
She did not idealize 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 worshiped him, calm and at rest
in her worship. Although she knew that the romantic side of her nature could
never find fulfillment 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
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 patronizing 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,
as she went on, still smiling affectionately. Why did you never become an
artist? Bertie? An artist, said Van Meren, What next? A
painter or an author? You have great artistic taste, aye, 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 colored and
laughed to hide his annoyance, while she, still smiling, shook her head
reproachfully. Four. 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 Mulderhoy Eva had
so innocently expressed her change of opinion in his friend's favor. 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 superstitious to
allow such an unreasoning terror to have any influence on his mind. Bertie was
not like ordinary men. He was very late and lived too contentedly at the
expense of others. I think that Veshova 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 meant to say something, Something was
seething in his brain. Eva was looking at him wide eyed. He must
speak, So he went on, embarrassed 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's 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's 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. Ah,
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, gold tinted mustache. 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
touzling his thick hair with her two little hands. Five. 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. Vestova,
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
Mehren 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 Whitrose 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 compassion 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, and 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 villainy 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
naive belief the last moment, fortune would look on him with favor. His
fatalism was like a form of worship, giving him strength and hope. Six.
However, a moment came when he thought all hope lost. The danger
was pressing an imminent Bertie, said Vestova, who had just come home in
some excitement. Tomorrow you can find some employment to suit you. I think
tail You know, our friend at the club tells me that he wants to
find a secretary for his father, Lord Tail. The old man lives on
his place up in Northumberland. He's 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 Tailor at once, but that you
begged me long ago. Then you did not mention my name, said Bertie
hastily, and almost a no, replied Frank, surprised at his tone,
I could make no overtures till I had spoken to you, But to make
up your mind at once. The Tail has two other men in his eye
already. If you can decide at once, I will go back to Tail
this minute. My cab is waiting. And he took up his hat.
Eighty pounds and a position as secretary with three quarters at the castle. How
the splendor 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 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'm
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 Tale think of me? He has always known me as your friend,
and we have been familiar on that footaying, and now he is to see
me his father's hired menial. I cannot say that you have much delicate feeling,
Frank. His brain was in a whirl while he spoke. Never before
had he assumed such a haughty tone in addressing Frank, But it was like
a cry of despair rising up from the ruins of his false pride. But
good god man, what do you expect, exclaimed Vesthova. You know all
my friends, and it is only through my friends that I can hope to
help you. I will take no help from anyone like the men of our
own club, nor from any one to whom you have introduced me as their
equal. That's certainly, it makes the case a difficult one, said Veshova
with a sharp laugh, for great wrath was rising up in him. Then
you have nothing to say to this, nothing, But what on earth do
you want, said Frank indignantly for the moment? Nothing for the moment,
well and good, But by and by that I will see all in good
time. And if you cannot be more considerate, he stopped short, startled
by his own voice. He was speaking loudly, as it would seem with
domineering vehemence, but in fact only with the energy of despairing indolence and pride.
At bay. The two men looked at each other for a few seconds,
and each suddenly feeling as though he had a store of buried grievances against
the other, grievances which had accumulated in spite of the friendly intimacy of their
lives, and which they were on the point now were flinging in each other's
teeth as foul insults. But Van mer And checked his out first. He
recollected himself, or he had not forgotten himself. He smiled and held out
his hand. Forgive me, Frank, he said, humbly, with that
voice like beat and gold, and that mitigating smile. I know you,
bent well. I can never, no, never repay you for all you
have done for me, But this place I cannot really accept. I would
rather be a waiter or the conductor of a tram car. Forgive me if
I seem ungrateful. So they made it up. But vesover thought this pride
on his companion's part ridiculous, and was vexed that the whole affair must remain
a secret from Eva. He would have liked to consult her on the subject.
And it was with a deeper frown and more scowling glance that he watched
those two Bertie and Eva, as they sat side by side in the evening,
in the subdued light of the blue shaded lamp, chatting like brother and
sister, like some covered dishonesty. It was all he could do to keep
from proclaiming aloud that Bertie was a parasite, a low fellow, from tearing
them apart from snatching them away from their blissful, smiling and guileless intimacy as
they discussed furniture and hangings. End of section three, Section four of Footsteps
of Fate by Luis Kuperus. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain,
Part three seven to ten seven. After this ineffectual attempt to help Vanameron,
his friend took no further trouble, expecting that when the case became urgent,
Bertie himself would ask his assistance. But Bertie's refusal led Frank to perceive for
the first time the false pers position in which he had placed his companion,
both with regard to himself and to his associates. His kindness to a friend
out of luck in allowing him to live for a year as a man of
fortune. Struck him, now seen in the light of an attachment which had
purified, renovated, and transformed his whole nature, as indescribably preposterous, as
trampling on every law of honor and veracity, and unjustifiable mockery of the good
faith of the world he lived in. Formerly, he had thought all this
very amusing, But now he felt that it was mean to have enjoyed such
amusement as this had he understood that he had himself encouraged the growth as of
some poisonous weed of Van Mahden's false pride, which now forbade him to accept
a favor from any one of their boon companions. The days glided by,
and Vestova could not shake off the sense of self reproach, which indeed grew
up on him. As time went on. Van Maheron cast a shadow over
the happiness of his love. Eva saw that some dull grief made him silent.
He would sit brooding for many minutes at a time, his brows knit,
and a deep furrow across his forehead. What ails you, frank nothing,
my darling, Are you still jealous. No, I will cure myself
of it. Well, you see, it is your own fault. If
you had not always sang the praises of Bertie as your best friend, I
should never have become so intimate with him. Yes, it was his own
fault that he saw very clearly. And are you satisfied with me now?
She asked, laughing. He too laughed, for indeed it was true.
For Frank's sake, she had now suddenly changed her behavior to Bertie. She
would rise and quit the sofa where they sat while he was yet speaking.
She sometimes contradicted him, reproached him for his foppishness, and laughed at him
for his dainty little hands. He looked at her in amazement, fancied she
meant it for flirtation, but could not understand what she would be at one
evening. For hour after hour, she pestered him with petty annoyances pinpricks,
which she intended should reassure Frank and not wound Bertie too deeply. The conversation
presently turned on heraldry, and Sir Archibald wanted to show the two men the
blazoned roll of his family tree. Frank rose, ready to follow him to
his study, and Bertie did the same. Eva felt a little compunction,
thinking she had carried her teasing rather far this time, and she knew that
her father's pedigree would not interest him in the least. Leave Bertie here,
Papa, said she he knows nothing about heraldry, And at the same time,
to comfort Frank, who dared not betray his jealousy, she added lightly,
with a mollifying twinkle of her long eyelashes, Frank will trust us alone
together, I dare say. Her voice was so simple, her glance so
loving, that Frank smiled and nodded trustfully, though annoyed at seeing Bertie sit
down again. As soon as they were alone, Bertie began for shame ether,
how could you torment me as you have been doing. She laughed and
blushed, a little, ashamed of herself for treating him so to please Frank.
But Bertie's face was grave, and with an appealing gesture, he folded
his hands and said, beseechingly, promise me that you will not do so
again. She gazed at him in surprise at his earnest tone. It's only
by fun, said she, but a form of fun which is suffering to
me, he replied in a low voice, and still she looked at him,
not understanding. He sat huddled up, his head on his breast,
his eyes fixed before him, and his brown hair, which waved a little
over his forehead, clinging to his temples, which were damp with perspiration.
He was evidently much agitated. He had no idea what might come of this
dialogue, but he was aware that his tone had been solemn, that these
first words might be the prelude to a very important interview. He felt that
these few minutes were destined to become a precious link in the chain of his
life, and he waited with the patience of a fatalist, for the thoughts
which should take shape in his brain and the words which should rise to his
lips. He kept an eye on himself, as it were, and at
the same time spun a web about Eva. As a spider entangles a fly
in the thread, it draws out of its bowels. You see, he
went on slowly. I cannot bear that you should torment me, so you
think less well of me than you used. But if I have little hands,
I cannot help it. She could not forbear a smile at the intentionally
coquettish tone. He had assumed an affectation of spoilt childishness, which she saw
through at once, But she replied nevertheless, well, I beg your pardon
for teasing you. I will not do so again. He, however,
had risen from his chair, and, pretending not to see the hand she
held out, he silently went to the window and stood there, looking out
on the parklike greenery of Kensington Gardens, dimmed with mist. She sat still,
waiting for him to speak, but he said nothing, Are you angry,
Bertie? Then he slowly turned round. The gray daylight fell through the
muslin curtains and gave a pallid look, a hue of Parian china to his
delicate features. Very gently, with a deep, melancholy smile, he shook
his head in negation, and to her romantic fancy, the madness of that
smile gave him a poetic interest, as of a youthful god or a fallen
angel, the celestial softness of a sexless mythological being, such as she had
seen in illustrated books of verse, a man in form a woman in face.
She longed to invite him to pour out his woes, and at this
moment. It would scarcely have surprised her if his speech had sounded like a
rhythmical monologue, a long lament in blank verse. Bertie, my dear fellow,
what is the matter? There he stood speechless in the pale, slanting
light, knowing that the effects must be almost theatrical, and she, sitting
where it was darker, could see that his eyes glistened through tears. Much
moved, she went up to him. She took his hand and made him
sit down by her side. Speak, Bertie, have I vexed you?
Can you not tell me? But again he shook his head with that face
smile, and at last he said, huskily, no, Eva, I'm
not vexed. I can be vexed no more. But I am very very
sad because we must so soon part, and I care for you so much
part. Why where are you going? Indeed? I do not myself know
that, sweet girl. I shall remain till you are married, and then
I must go to wander hither and thither quite alone. Will you sometimes think
of me? I wonder? But why do you not stay in London?
He looked at her. He had begun this conversation without knowing whither it might
lead him abandoning himself to chance. But now with this luke which her eyes
met in response, there suddenly blazed up in him a little diabolical flame.
He knew now what he was driving at. He weighed every word he uttered
as if they were grains of gold. He felt himself very lucid, very
logical, calm, free from the painful incoherence agitation of the last few minutes.
And he spoke very slowly, in a mournful, hollow voice, like
a sick man in London. No, Eva, I cannot remain here,
Why not? I cannot, dear girl, I cannot, not with any
decency. It is impossible. The hypocrisy of his eye, the languor of
his tone, his assumption of inconsolable grief, distilled into her mind a vague
suspicion, like an insidious poison, the suspicion that it was on her accounts
that he could not remain in London because he would have to meet her as
his friend's wife. It was no more than a suggestion. The wordless despair
which seemed to exhale from him inspired the inference, but her mind rebelled against
it. It was a mere suspicion and groundless. He went on, still
very slowly, becausensidering every word as if with mathematical accuracy. And when I
am gone and you are left with Frank, always with him, will you
be happy? Eva? Why Bertie? She paused, It would be almost
cruel to say yes in the security of her happiness in the face of his
pain. Why do you ask, she said, almost timidly. He gazed
into her face with the deep, soft, misty blackness of his fine eyes.
Then he bent his head and they filled with tears, and he clutched
his hands as if they were cold. Why why, Eva insisted nothing nothing,
Promise me that you will be happy, For if you were not happy,
I should be heartbroken. What should hinder my being happy? I love
Frank so dearly, she exclaimed, though still fearing lest she should hurt his
feelings. Yes, and so long as you are happy, all is well,
he murmured, low, still rubbing his hands. Then, on a
sudden while her inquiring gaze still rested on his face, he said, poor
child. What why poor child? She asked in dismay. He seized her
hands, his tears dropped on her fingers. Oh, Eva, Eva,
God, who can read my heart? If you, Oh, I feel
such pity, such great passionate pity for you. I would do I know
not what I would give my life if I if you, poor poor child.
She was standing up now, trembling and as pale as death. Her
fingers clutched the table cover, which slipped as she pulled it, and a
glass vase in which a few flowers were fading was upset. The water trickled
over the velvets cloth in great silvery beads. She let it flow into pool,
staring at it with wide, terrified eyes, while he covered his face
with his hands. Bertie, she cried, oh, Bertie, why do
you speak thus? What is it all? Tell me, tell me everything
I must know. I desire you to speak out. His reply was a
gesture, a perfectly natural gesture of deprecation, with no touch of theatrical insincerity,
a gesture as though he would retract his words and had said something he
should have kept to himself. Then he too rose, and his face had
changed. His expression was no longer one of suffering or pity, but of
cool decision. No, no, there is nothing to tell eva, nothing,
And you could exclaim, poor child, And you pity me, Good
God, but why what is this? What evil threatens me? She had
Frank's name on her lips, but dared not utter it. And he was
conscious of this. Nothing, really and truly nothing. Dear Eva, I
assure you nothing. I sometimes have the most foolish thoughts, mere fancies.
Look, the vase has fallen over. But what were you thinking? Then?
What fancies? He wiped the water off the tablecloth with his pocket's handkerchief
and replaced the flowers in the glass. Nothing, nothing at all, he
murmured huskily. He was tremulous with nervousness, and his tone was deeply compassionate,
as if his words were meant to shroud some awful secret. Then,
as he said no more, she sank on the sofa and broke into uncontrolled
and passionate sobs, scared by the undefinable terror which rose up in her soul.
Eva, dear Eva, be calm, he entreated her, fearing lest
someone should come into the room, And then then he knelt down close by
her, taking her hands and pressing them tenderly. Look at me, Eva,
I assure you, I swear to you there is nothing wrong, nothing
at all. But what exists in my own imagination. But you see,
I care for you so fondly. You will let me say so, won't
you? For what I feel for you is only guileless devoted friendship for my
friend's bride and my own little sister. I love you so truly that I
cannot help asking myself, will my dear Eva be happy? It is a
foolish thought, no doubt, But in me it is not strange, because
I am always thinking of those I love. You. See, I have
known so much sorrow and suffering that when I see anyone I care for so
truly as I do for you, see her so full of confidence in life
and of fair illusions, the thought comes over me, terrible but irresistible,
will she be happy? Is there indeed any such thing as happiness? Us?
Oh? I ought not to say such things. I only darken your
outlook and give you pessimistic notions. But sometimes when I see you with Frank,
my heart is so full. For I love Frank too. I owe
so much to him, and I should so gladly see him happy with some
woman with someone. Still, I can only say, trust wholly in Frank.
He loves you, Though he is a little fickle, a little capricious
in his feelings, but he adores you. The delicate shades of a woman's
nature are above his comprehension, perhaps, and he is apt to carry his
light heartedness a little too far. Still, he means no harm. He
is so candid, so honest, You know, always so exactly what he
is at. And so, Eva, dear Eva, never let any misunderstanding
come between you. Always be open with each other, will you not,
my child? Oh, my poor Eva. And he two sobbed low in
his mysterious anguish, which was not altogether a pretense, for he was really
in despair at the prospects before him. She looked down on him in dismay,
greatly distressed by his words, from which she inferred something which he would
not reveal, each word a drop of subtle venom, and the germ of
strange doubts which shot up like poisonous weeds. Then there is nothing to tell,
she said once more, in a weary tone of entreaty, clasping her
hands. No, dear Eva, nothing at all. Only I am worn
out, you see, quite an old man, And so I worry myself
sometimes about you two, when how far away, far from London. Will
you be happy? Tell me, Eva, will you be happy? Promise
me, swear to me that you will. She gently nodded in the affirmative,
with a sigh of regrets that he must leave London, regrets for what
he had suggested, worst of all, for what he had left, and
said, the mystery, the terror. He meanwhile had risen, holding out
his hands to her and shaking his head as though over the follies of man.
He said, with his most pathetic smile, How silly you must think
me to torment myself so about nothing. I ought not to have said so
much. Perhaps I have saddened you with it all, have I? No?
She replied with a gentle smile, shaking her head. No, not
really. He let himself drop into a chair, sighing deeply. Alas such
is life, he murmured, with a fixed gaze full of sinister significance.
She made no answer, her heart was too full. By this time it
was dark. Van Maheron took his leave. Frank alone had been asked to
stay to dinner. Have you forgiven me? He asked, very humbly,
with his most insinuating and romantic air. As the last rays of daylight shed
an ethereal glow on his face for what she said. But she was silently
weeping for having distressed you even for a minute. She nodded and rose,
trembling, exhausted and tottering, Oh, yes, you gave me a great
fright, but you will not do so again. I beg Never, he
murmured. He kissed her hand, a courteous caress he was accustomed to bestow,
with a touch of foppery, like an eighteenth century marquis, and he
went away. She was left alone, standing there in the middle of the
room. She closed her eyes, and she felt as though a mist had
fallen and then wrapped her. And in that mist she saw Mulder her and
the spectral fjord gleaming between the two ranges of protecting mountains, and far away
in the wear those three thin bars of gold. And suddenly she felt as
she had never felt before, so forlorn, so lonely, in the midst
of the cloud, without even a thought of Sir Archibald and Frank, remembering
nothing but her long dead mother. Her weight pressed on her brain like the
icy palm of a giant's hand. Dusky gloom closed in upon her, and
Suddenly the living warmth within her was chilled, as with a deadly frost.
She felt as if she were standing in vast space and through it, invisible,
intangible, and yet sensibly and undeniably real. She was aware of a
coming horror, rolling dully on like distant thunder. She stretched out her hands,
feeling for some support, but she did not fall senseless. She recovered
herself and found that she was still in the middle of the room, now
almost dark, a little tremulin and with a feeble sensation about the knees.
And she could not but think there was something, yet, something which Bertie
had concealed from her. Eight next day she thought it all over once more.
What was it? What was it? 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 stash.
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 still at ease. Then Vestova could only long to turn
Van Mayern 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 Secretary Ship, he often assumed 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 compassion 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's then? Oh? What was this?
Horror? Alas she could get no further, She stood as it were
a blindfolding, an enchant 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 repossessed 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 a 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 color decided, a confusion
of shadowy gray tints which dimmed the clear brightness of her love with increasing gloom,
fatiguing her spirit by their indefiniteness, then no existence in actual life,
and their intangible semblance of reality like a dream. Nine Once, however,
the dream took substance. Once she touched, she saw, she heard something,
but what was that it? They were coming out of the lyceum.
The crowd streamed forth, slowly, shuffling, pushing impatiently now and then shoulders
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. Her 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 mass 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 Meyren, who
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
stickle of her 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's happened just now. In a few
brief words, he told 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 match. 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, is it? 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 upon
rather liberal lines. He recollected that phrase. She had used it once before,
and they both at once remembered Mulderhoy 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 fairy Queen nor ghosts, especially ghosts,
never understood anything she had learnt under her father's rather liberal training. The White
Fea, the redown of her illusions, was blown into space. 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. Ten
after that conversation with Eva, Bertie felt as though he were living in a
more subtle atmosphere, wondering in a labyrinth full of mysterious ways of craft and
cunning, in which he must walk very circumspectully if he did not wish to
lose himself. He knew very well what he had been driving at. He
wanted to instill into Eva suspicions of Frank's constancy. 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 reassure 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 naive 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 nobler purpose. Why did
you never become an artist? He could hear, even asking him, but
he only smiled. The practical weariness of life rose up before him, his
own indolence, his catlike 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 theater,
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 s drew such trivial incidents as these in the path of those
who burnt incense at her shrine and paid her due worship, to be utilized
by them as benefits, infinitely small links which they must themselves welded 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 circumstance 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 ring should Overlookeiva, tiny dainty,
Eva lost in the crowd. Had the results 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 shourued not to 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 Meyern could
see at once that this was a 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 one's self 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.
Still, this weariness was never to be detected in his air and manner,
or in the phrases which fell from his lips, so apparently unpremeditated that
they seemed alive with natural impulse, They were in fact the outcome of a
theatrical and carefully elaborated pessimism. They were lamentations over the ills of life,
pity for Eva, wrapped in mysterious regrets. And amid all this melancholy accusations
against Vestova mere trifles, passing hints, amounting to nothing but for the tone
and accent, accusations of levity, inconstancy, caprice, fickleness. But at
the slightest outcry on Eva's part, he was ready to contradict himself, fencing
cleverly enough now with himself and now with Eva, with all the feints of
a master of the foils, just touching her lightly, a prick here and
a prick there, drawing a tiny drop of blood at each hit. And
to Eva it seemed that her soul, after having been dragged through a gutter,
was bleeding to death under these pinpricks. It was a very sensible pain
when she hopelessly compared the reality with her dreams as they grew more vague and
faded away. When she argued with herself in the cold light of reason and
asked herself, why am I so wretched? Because Frank is a young man
like other young men, because Bertie is a pessimist, The despairs of my
ever being happy. And then she would shrug her shoulders. Her trouble was
intangible, had paled to a thin cloud and vanished. She had always been
very happy. Bertie's dejection was sickly nonsense. She should be happy again.
But notwithstanding that, her common sense thus dissipated the pain, it's constantly returned,
in spite of reason and argument, returned persistently, like an object tossed
on a wave which comes and goes, comes and goes. She could enery
you're it no longer. And one day, when she ventured to look honestly
into her own heart, she saw that she did indeed doubt Frank and the
truth of his statements about that woman. Longing for some certainty, she asked
Bertie, his friend, tell me, Bertie, that's something of which you
once spoke to me. That's mystery. What is it? Oh? Nothing,
my dear girl, Absolutely nothing. She gazed at him with penetrating eyes
and went on in a strange, cold tone. Well, but I know
I have guessed. Bertie was startled. What was she thinking? What had
she got into her head? Yes, I have guessed it, she repeated.
Frank does not love me. He loves he loves that's woman, that
creature of the lyceum. He has always loved her. Is it so?
Bertie said nothing, but stared before him. That was the easiest and best
reply, Bertie, tell me, is it so? No? It is
not so, he answered, Dully, what a foolish notion to have got
into your head? What made you think of such a thing? But there
was no ring of conviction in his voice. He spoke mechanically, as though
in absence of mind, as if he were thinking of something else. Does
he ever see her now? She went on, feeling as if she were
defiling herself with her own words, as if her lips were dropping slime.
Why, of course not, what are you thinking of? She leaned back
with a sigh, and tears glistened in her large eyes. He was silent
for a minute, studying her out of the corner of his eye. Then,
as if to mitigate his too feeble repudiation of the suspicion, he went
on, reproachfully. Really, Eva, you must not think such things as
Frank. It is not nice. He must have some confidence in the manure
to marry. Then it is not the truth, certainly not. He never
sees her now? But does not he think of her? Still? He
gave her a long, deep, enigmatical look. His eyes were like black
velvet darkness. She could not read their meaning. Fie said, he reprovingly,
and he shook his head. That is no answer, she said urgently,
and again he fixed that dark gaze on her. Good God, answer
me, she cried, her heart wrung to the very core. How can
you expect me to know Frank's feelings? He dared to murmur, I don't
know. There, then it is so, she moaned, clutching his hands.
I don't know, he repeated, and freeing himself from her grass,
he turned away and rose. He loves her, he cannot live without her.
Hears that creature's slave, as you men sometimes are to such women.
And though he sees her no more, out of respect for me, he
thinks of her and talks of her to you. And that is why he
is so silent and grave when he is here. Is it so good?
Heavens? I do not know, he groaned with mild impatience. How should
I know? But why then does he pretend to love me? Why did
he ask me to marry him? Because once, for a moment, in
no way he fancied he could do without her, because he meant to live
a new life, and out finds that he cannot. She clasped her hands
with a gesture of anguish. Good God, Eva, say no more,
Say no more. I do not know. I tell you, I know
nothing about it. Nothing. He sank back in his chair with a sigh
of exhaustion. She said no more. The tears streamed from her eyes like
rain, impossible to be restrained. End of Section four, Section five of
Footsteps of fate by Luis Kuperos. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain,
Part three eleven to fourteen eleven. And in her misery, she thought
she had been very clever and cunning, and that she had guessed rightly,
while in truth as guileless as a child. She had been, as it
were, hypnotized by his magnetic gaze, and had spoken the very words he
had intended she should utter. She felt nothing of this. She saw him
still as her brother friend, fragile, affectionate and unhappy, dreading to wound
her, anxious to screen her from the truth for fear of hurting her,
and yet not crafty enough to conceal it when she pressed him too closely.
This was how he appeared to her. Not for an instant did she suspect
that she was as a fly wrapping itself closer and closer in the spider's toils.
But he himself, after this scene, failed to see clearly that he
had pulled the wires, that he had been the first to taint her confidence
with the poison of suspicion, that he had brought about the catastrophe as they
came out of the lyceum, that he had compelled Eva to follow the clue
he had chosen to suggest. Dimness shrouded the clearness of his mental vision as
a breath clouds a mirror. The lucid crisis of his faculties was pasted.
This was all the outcome of circumstances, he thought. No human being of
his own free will would work such things out. How easily everything had come
about, how simply without a hitch. It was because fate had so willed
it and had favored him. He had no part in it. Nor was
this self deception, he really thought so. In the evening after their last
interview, Eva went very late to seek her father in his study, where
he sat reading his books on heraldry. He supposed she had come to bid
him good night, as usual, but she sat down facing him, very
upright and with a set face, like a sleepwalker. Father, I want
to speak to you, he looked at her in surprise. In the Olympian
piece of his genealogical studies, in the calm, emotionless existence of a hale
old man who finds a solace for advancing years, among his books, he
had never discerned that a drama was going on close beside him. Played by
three beings whom he saw every day. And he was startled at his daughter's
rigid face and tone of suppressed suffering. Are you ill, my child?
Oh no, I'm quite well. But I want to ask you something.
I want to know if you will speak to Frank. To Frank, Yes,
to Frank. The other evening, as we were coming out of the
lyceum, and she told him the whole story, sitting straight up in her
chair, with that strange look in her face and a husky, subdued voice,
all about the yellow haired woman and her own suspicions and distrust. It
was wrong of her to doubt Frank, but really she could not help it.
She would fain have quoted Bertie as evidence, but Bertie had, after
all, said nothing definite, so she did not see how she could bring
him into court, and did not therefore mention his name. Sir Archibald listened
in dismay. He had never suspected what was going on in his daughter's mind.
He had always suppose that everything was as clear as the sun at noon.
And what then, he asked, in some embarrassments, And then I
want you to speak to Frank, ask him point blank whether he still loves
this woman who has played some part in his past life. Whether he cannot
bear to give her up, whether that is the reason he is always so
silent and gloomy when we see him here. Get him to speak out.
I would rather hear my doom than live in this dreadful suspense. And to
you, perhaps he will clear it all up so that things may go on
as they were before. Say nothing of my distrust. If it is not
justified by the facts. It might make him angry. It is too bad
of me to suspect his truth. And I have tried to bring myself to
a better mind, but I cannot succeed. There is something in it I
know not what. There is something in the air about me. Oh what
I know not which whispers to me. Do not trust him, Do not
trust him. I cannot understand what it is, but I feel it in
me, all about me. It is a voice in my ear, sometimes
an eye which gazes at me at night when I cannot sleep. It looks
down on me, it speaks to me. I feel as if I were
going crazy. Perhaps it is a spirit. But do you speak to him,
Papa, do that much for your child. I'm so very very unhappy.
She knelt at his feet and laid her head on his knees, sobbing
bitterly. He mechanically stroked her hair. But he did not in the least
understand. He loved his child, but his affection was more a matter of
tender habits than of sympathetic intelligence. He did not understand her. He thought
her foolish and fanciful. Was it for this that he had given her a
first rate education, let her read all kinds of books, and made her
know the world as it was stern practice and selfish, a struggle in which
each one must endeavor to conquer and secure a place and a share of happiness
by sheer calm determination. He had his own corner in it, with his
books and his heraldry. Why did she let herself be a victim to nervous
fancies? For it was all nerves, nothing but nerves. Cursed things were
nerves. How like her mother she was, in spite of her liberal education,
dreamy, romantic, full of absurd imagination. He speak to Frank,
Why what about? What was he to say the lady at the lyceum,
this woman or that to whom he had bowed, that might happen to anyone.
Eva was very absurd not to see that it might. And as to
his talking it over with Frank, why the young man would think that his
future father in law was a perfect fool. There were thousands of such women
in London. Where was the young man who had no acquaintance among them?
And the picture of disturbed peace, of an unpleasant discussion which would destroy an
hour of perhaps a day, of his Olympian repose, and tear him from
his studies rose up in his brain, a terror to his simple minded selfishness.
Come, Eva, this is sheer folly, he good, humanly grumbled.
What good you think I can do? These are mere sickly fancies.
No, no, they are not sickly fancies, not fancies at all.
It is something something quite different. There is something in me, around me,
beyond my control. But child, you are talking nonsense. When I
try to think it out, it goes away for a little while, but
then it comes back again. Really, Eva, you must not talk so
foolishly. After all, what is this story you have told me? What
does it all mean? It comes and it goes, and it stays away,
and then again it comes and goes. She shook her head sadly,
sitting on the floor at his feet in front of the fire. No,
no, she said, very positively. You do not understand. You are
a man. You do not understand all there is in a woman. We
women are quite different. But you will speak to him, will you not?
And ask him about it? No, Eva, that I certainly will
not. Frank might very well ask me what business it was of mine.
You know as well as I do that every man has or has had acquaintance
among such women. There is nothing in that, And Frank strikes me as
too honorable to have anything to do with one of them. Now that he
is engaged to you. I know him too well to imagine that. It
is really too silly of you. Do you hear too silly? She began
to sob passionately and a moan. In an overpowering fit of grief. She
wrung her hands, rocking herself from side to side as if suffering intolerable torments.
Oh Papa, she entreated, dear Papa, do do do this for
your child's sake, you little Eva. Go to him, Talk to him.
I am so unhappy. I cannot bear it. I am so wretched.
Speak to him. I cannot speak of such a matter. I am
only a girl. It is all so horrible, so sickening. Oh,
Papa, Papa, do speak to Frank. She tried to lean coaxingly against
his knees, but he stood up. Her tears angered him and made him
more obstinate. His wife had never got anything from him by tears, quite
the reverse. Eva was silly and childish. He could not recognize his spirited
daughter, always indefatigable and bright, with whom he had traveled half over the
world. World in this crushed creature dissolved in woe. Stand up, Eva,
he said, sternly, Do not crouch on the floor. You will
end by vexing me seriously by your folly. What are you crying for?
For nothing? Pure foolish imagining. I will have no more of it.
You must behave reasonably Get up. Stand up. She dragged herself to her
feet, groaning as she did so, with a white face and clenched hands.
I cannot help it, she said, it is my nature. I
suppose. Have you no pity for your child, even if you don't understand
her. Oh, go and speak to him, only a few words,
I implore you. I beseech you. No, no, no, he
cried, stamping his foot, his face quite red, as if from a
congestion of rage at all, this useless, undefined vexation, and his daughter's
folly and weeping entry, which his obstinacy urged him on no account to indulge.
She, however, rose, looking taller in her despair. Her eyes
had a strange look as they gazed into her father's. Then you will not
speak to Frank, You will not do that much for me. No,
it is all nonsense. I tell you, worry me about it no more.
Very well, then I must do it, she said, gravely,
as if pronouncing some irrevocable decision, and very slowly, without looking round,
without bidding him good night, she left the room. It was as though
Sir Archibald was a total stranger, as though there were no bond of tenderness
between her and her father, nothing but the hostility of two antagonistic natures.
No, under their superficial affection, they had had no feeling in common.
They had never really known, never try to understand each other. She had
no sympathy with his old age, he had none with her youth. They
were miles asunder a desert, a pathless waste lay between them. They dwelt
apart, as completely as though they were locked up in two shrines, where
each worshiped a different god. He is my father, thought she as she
went along the passage. I am his child. She could not understand it.
It was a mystery of nature that scarcely seemed possible. He her father,
she his child, and yet he could not feel her anguish, could
not see that it was anguish called its folly and fancy, and a vehement
longing for her mother rose up in her heart. She would have understood.
Mamma, mamma, she sobbed out, Oh, mamma, come back,
tell me what I can do. Come as a ghost. I will not
be afraid of you. I'm so lawn, so miserable, so miserable,
Come and haunt me. Come only come in her room. In the darkness,
she watched for the ghost, but it came not. The night hung
unbroken, like a black curtain behind which there was nothing but emptiness. Twelve.
When Frank came to call next morning, he at once saw in her
face that she was greatly agitated. What is the matter, dearest, he
asked. At first, she felt weak. There was something so terrible and
then again so shocking. But she commanded herself. She drew herself up in
her pretty self will, which gave firmness to the childlike enthusiasm and womanly coyness
of her nature, like a sterner background against which so much that was soft
and tender stood out and feeling above all she stood alone, abandoned by her
father, she was determined to be firm. Frank, I have no alternative,
she began, with the energy of despair. I must talk matters over
with you, even before you answer me. I am almost convinced that I
am wrong and think myself odious. But still I must speak, for I
am too unhappy under this, all this, to keep it all to myself
in silence is more than I can bear. I can endure it no longer.
Frank. I ask Papa to speak to you, but he will not.
Perhaps he is right, Still it is not kind of him. For
now I must do it to myself. Even in the excited state of mind
she was in, she loathed this cruel necessity, but she controlled herself and
went on That woman, Frank, Frank, that woman. I could think
of nothing else but dear Eva, Oh, let me speak I must speak.
I see that creature always at my elbow. I smell her perfume,
I hear her voice. I cannot get it out of my ears. She
shuddered violently, and the dreadful thing came over her again, again, possessed
her, the ghostly hypnotism of that eye, that whisper, that strange magnetic
power which her father could not understand. The words she spoke seemed prompted inspired
by that voice. Her expression and attitude obeyed the coercion of that gaze in
her. Inmost soul, she felt those eyes as black as nights. Oh
Frank, she cried, and the tears came from nervous excitement and the fear
lest she should not have courage to obey these promptings. I must, I
must ask you. Why when you come to see me are you always so
grave and silent? So you were not happy in my society? Why do
you evade all direct replies? Why do you always tell me that there is
nothing the matter? That woman? It is because of her, because you
still love her, better perhaps than you love me, because you cannot forget
her, because she still is a part of your life, a large part,
perhaps the largest, Oh, it is such torture, such misery,
ever present misery. And I am not meanly jealous, I have never been.
I quite understand your feeling about her the first comer, though it is
dreadful. But you yourself are too silent, too sad, And when I
think it's over, I doubt, in spite of myself, Frank, in
spite of myself, I swear to you, but the suspicion forces itself upon
me and overwhelms me. Greats God, why must it be? But Frank,
tell me I am a simpleton to think so, and that she is
nothing to you any longer, nothing at all. You never see her,
do you tell me? Tell me the anguish of her soul? As she
spoke, was eloquent in her face, though disfigured with grief and pale with
the dead whiteness of a faded azalea blossom, A convulsive pang pinched the corners
of her mouth, and a quivering eyelids. She was indeed a martyr to
her own too vivid fancy, But he, at this moment was incapable of
seeing her as a martyr. Her words had roused in him a surge of
fury, such as he could remember having felt, occasionally as a child,
lashed up, as it were, by the blast of a hurricane, drowning
every other feeling, sweeping away every other thought like dust before the storm.
It came blustering up at the notion of his honesty being questioned, his perfect
candor, honor, and truth, like a whirlwind of righteous indignation at such
injustice. For his own mind. He could not conceive of such a doubt,
knowing himself to be honest, honorable, and true. His dark gray
eyes flashed between his deeply knit brows. His words came viciously from between his
set teeth, which shone large and white under his mustache like polished ivory.
It is inconceivable, Good God, this is monstrous. I have answered you
once and for all. I have told you in plain words, no,
no, no, And you ask me again and again. Do you think
I am a liar? Why have you ever seen anything in me to make
you think I can lie? I say no, and I mean no,
And you still have doubts. Still you think and worry over it like an
old woman. Why do you not take things as they are? You know
the facts. Why do you not believe me? I am not sad,
I am not gloomy. I'm quite happy with you. I love you.
I do not doubt you, but you you believe me. If you go
on in this way, you will make yourself miserable, and me too,
me too. She looked at him steadfastly, and her pride rose up to
meet his wrath, for his words offended her. You need not speak to
me in that tone, she answered, haughtily. When I tell you that
it is against my will, you hear in spite of myself, that I
have doubts, and that this makes me miserable. You need not take that
tone, have some pity on me, and do not speak like that.
But Eva, when I assure you. He began again, trembling with rage,
which he tried to control, forcing himself to speak gently. When I
assure you, you had done so already, and you doubt my word,
only in so far as you disbelieve me, he roared, quite beside himself.
Only in so far as I think you are keeping something back, She
cried, something back? What in Heaven's name? His friend's name was on
her tongue. But as soon as she thought of Bertie, hesitancy and indecision
took possession of her, for she knew not what exactly Bertie had in fact
told her. It was always as though Van Mehren had enclosed her in a
magic circle, a spell of silence which made it impossible for her to mention
him. And even at this juncture, he was an intangible presence, his
name an unutterable word, his hints a mere, inarticulate jangle. What what,
she gasped in bewilderment, Oh, I do not know, if only
I knew, But you are concealing something from me. Perhaps it is something
about her, that woman. But when I tell you that she no,
no, she insisted, confirmed in her imaginings by her offended pride. I
know, I know you men count such matters as nothing, a thing of
the past. It is so all the world over, you say, And
what I called something you call nothing. And so I say, there is
something that you are hiding. Frank Eva, I swear, do not swear
to it, for that would be a sin. She shrieked out, wrought
up in spite of herself to a paroxysm of insane belief in a thing of
which she knew nothing certain. For I feel it, I feel it here
in me, about me, everywhere. He seized her by the wrists,
carried away by his rage at her rejecting his asseverations, wounded in his proud
consciousness of honor and truthfulness, and amazed at the depth of her infatuated distrust.
Then you do not believe me, he said, with an oath,
you do not believe me, and for the second time, his tone offended
and enraged her. The exposure of their two antagonistic natures, with all their
passions and infirmities, brought them into collision. No, since you will have
it, No, she cried, and she wrenched herself free from his vise
like grasp with such violence that her slender wrists cracked. Now you know it.
I do not believe you. You are hiding something from me, and
it has something to do with that woman. I feel it, and what
I feel is to me undeniable. That creature who dared to speak to you
has taken root in my imagination. I feel her close to me, smell
her scent, and am so intensely conscious that there is still something between you
and her that I am bold to say to you. You lie, You
lie for her sake, and are cheating me. With a sort of low
bellow, which broke from him involuntarily. He rushed at her, clenching his
fists, and she mechanically shrank back, But he seized her hands again and
closing them in his great, strong fingers, so that she felt his power
through her flesh, in her very bones. Oh, and it was like
muttering thunder. You have no heart, none that you can say such things
to me. You are base, mean even to think them. You feel,
and you feel, Yes, it is your own petty narrowness that you
feel. You have nothing in you but base and contemptible incredulity. Your whole
nature is mean. Everything is at an end between us. I have nothing
more to do with you. I was mistaken in you. He flung her
off onto a sofa. There she remained staring up at the ceiling with wide
open eyes. Yes, at the moment, she was startled rather than angry,
and did not fully understand the state of things. Her overwrought brain was
bewildered. She knew not what had happened. For a minute, he stood
looking at her, His lips wore a sneer of contempt, and his eyes
half closed in scorn, glanced over her prostrate form. He saw how pretty
she was. Her graceful figure, stretched on the Turkish pillows, revealed the
soft lines of its supple, girlish mold through the clinging folds of a thin,
pale green material. Her hair, which had come loose, hung to
the floor like the red gold fleece of some rare wild creature. Her bosom
heaved with spasmodic rapidity. She lay there like a ravished maid, flung aside.
In a fit of passion, he saw all the charms that he had
forfeited. Deep wrath sprang up in him, wild longing for the happiness he
had lost, But his injured honor ousted regrets and longing, he turned away
and left her there. She remained on the same spot, in the same
attitude. She was full of obscure wonderment. Darkness had fallen on her soul,
as though after being entrapped by falsehood, blindfolded by doubt, she had
been led into a labyrinth, and then suddenly released her eyes and bound in
a dark chamber. Her soul indeed seemed to have bled to death. She
could not yet know how deeply it was wounded, And in spite of her
intolerable grief. She still thought only of the darkness about her. How strange,
she whispered, But why in Heaven's name, why? Thirteen after this
there was a month peace. A sudden calm had fallen on them, both
full for both alike of silent, bitter grief, and with it all the
insignificant commonplace of ordinary life and the recurring, monotonous tasks of every day.
Even Bertie found himself breathing this strange, stagnant air. He wondered greatly what
could have occurred, how simply, how easily things had worked themselves out?
He no, he had done nothing, He could have done nothing. Events
had merely followed each other. What had come about was the inevitable, and
the possibility of a life free from care again lay before him an eternity of
comfort and wealth with Vestova, for whom he felt his old affection revived with
the glow almost of a passion, now that Frank severed from Eva. Though
blaming himself, indeed needed consolation and sympathy, and Bertie's low, unctuous tones
were full of sympathy. Oh the dark man. Melancholy of the first few
days, the terrible grief of wondering when now his indignation cold, Frank asked
himself, as Eva had asked herself, why why had this happened? What
had he done? What had brought it about? And he could not see,
could not understand. It was like a book out of which leaves have
been torn so as to spoil the sense. He could comprehend, neither himself
and his fury, nor Eva and her doubts. All life seemed to him
a riddle. For hours together he would sit gazing out of the window,
staring at the opaque, dullness of the London fog, his eye fixed on
that riddle. He rarely went out, but sat dreaming in White Rose Cottage,
which was lonely and quiet enough in its remote suburb and enovating indifference possessed
his stalwart's frame. For the first time in his life, he saw himself
in a true light, and detected the vacillation and weakness deep down in his
being, like a lymphatic stream traversing his sanguine physical vigor. He saw himself
as a mere child in resistance to the storm of rage. The blast of
fury, which had swept away his happiness and his suffering, was so terrible
that he could not entirely comprehend it. It seemed too all embracing for the
human mind. These were days of dreary gloom which they spent together, Frank
too dejected to go out of doors, Bertie creeping about very softly under the
pressure of a vague dread and indefinable dissatisfaction. He felt Frank's friendship reviving,
and flattered by this revival, was conscious of a sentiment of pity, almost
of sympathy. He tried to rouse Frank from his moodiness and talked of a
supper party with ladies on the old pattern. He made plans for going away
here or there for a few days. Es He tried to persuade Vestovah to
take to work, mentioning the names of various great engineers who were to be
found in London. But everything fell dead against Frank's obdurate melancholy. Everything was
swallowed up in the dark cloud of his dejection, which seemed incapable of more
than one idea, one self reproach, one grief. Had. The only
solace of his life was always to have Bertie at his side, a closer
intimacy to which Van Mahern himself was no less prompted now that he had gained
his selfish ends, having no further fear of impending poverty, and seeing always
by him a consuming sorrow. Had he not rejected the notion that he had
been the cause of it all, and had he not, during his late
existence as an idle bachelor, become so super fine a being that he felt
a craving for the vague delights of sympathy, nothing more than sympathy, Since
no greater and noble love, no strong and generous friendship, could breathe in
the complicated recesses of his soul, for lack of room and fresh air in
those narrow cells built up on strange fallacies, And since love and friendship must
pine and die there like a lion in a boudoir. Thus it was that
he could still feel, for Frank, could lay his hand on his shoulders
and try to comfort him, could find words of affection new on his lips,
and unwanted phrases of consolation or cheering. Women, he would say,
were so narrow minded, they were nothing, They loved nothing, They were
a mere illusion. No man should ever make himself miserable for a woman there
was nothing like friendship, which women could not even understand and never felt for
each other, a passion of sympathy, the noble joy of affinity and agreement.
And he believed what he said, sunning himself in platonism with cats like
complacency, just as he basked in materi real ease and comfort, rejoicing in
his raptures of friendship and admiring himself for his lofty ideals. But Frank's love
for Eva had been and was still so absorbing that he erelong saw through this
feats and decrepit devotion, and thenceforward it afforded him no solace. His depression
wrapped him in darker folds. He forced himself to recall exactly everything that had
happened, what Eva had said, what he had replied, and he laid
all the blame on himself, exonerating Eva for her doubts. He cursed his
own temper, his barbarous violence to a woman and to her what was to
be done? Parted, parted forever. It was a fearful thought that he
might never see her again, that she could be nothing henceforth in his life?
Could it be not? Otherwise? Was all lost? Irrevocably. No,
no, no, The desperate denial rose up within him. He would
triumph over circumstances. He would win back his happiness. And she, how
was she? Was she too suffering? Did she still doubt him? Or
had his vehemence, notwithstanding its brutality, made his innocence clear. But if
it were so, if she no longer doubted him, and how could she?
Good? Heavens, how wretched she must be, grieving over her want
of trust, with self accusation even more terrible than his own, For his
wrath had at any rate been justifiable and her suspicions were not. Was it
so? Or was she, on the contrary, stricken almost to death,
perhaps by his cruelty, or filled with contempt for his lack of power to
control his anger, which was like some raging wild beast? How was she?
What was her mood? A passionate desire to know pierced his heart now
and again, like a sword thrust to go to her, to pray for
pardon, for restoration to the happiness he had thrown away as he had flung
her from him on that sofa. She would never admit him to her presence
after so great an insult that he might write, of course, a letter.
His heart leapt with joy but bliss to grovel on paper in the dust
at her feet, to humble himself in penitential prayers for mercy and adoring words,
while asserting his dignity and the pride of his truth and his anguish under
her doubts. She would hearken as a madonna to a sinner. He would
recover his lost happiness. Had he tried to compose his letter, thrilling with
the effort to find words which still did not seem fervent or humble enough,
he spent a whole day over his task, polishing his phrases as a poet
does a sonnet, And when at last it was finished, he felt refreshed
in spirit, with renewed hopes a complete resurrection. He was convinced that his
letter would remove every misunderstanding between him and Eva. In the highest spirits,
he betook himself to Van Mehreen, told his friend of the step he had
taken and all he hoped for. He spoke eagerly. His very voice was
changed. Bertie leaned back in his chair, rather grave and pale, but
he controlled himself so far as to smile in answer to Vestov's smile, and
he agreed in his anticipations, in words to which he vainly strove to give
a ring of conviction. To be sure, of course, everything must come
right again, he muttered, and the perspiration stood on his forehead under his
chestnut curls fourteen. But an hour later, alone in his room that evening,
he walked to and fro with such seething agitation has set every nerve quivering
in his slight frame as a storm tosses a rowing boat. His soft features
were distorted to a hideous expression of malignancy. With rage at his own impotence,
had he strode up and down, up and down like a beast in
a cage, clenching his fists. Then it was for this that he had
elaborated his tastes, had sharpened and polished all his natural gifts, and had
directed all the powers of his mind like a battery charged with some mysterious fluid,
on the secrets of a girl's love and life. A single letter,
a few pages of tender words, and the whole work would be destroyed.
But now, in his wrath, he suddenly saw and prided himself on the
fact, he saw that he very certainly he had guided events to sever frankened
Eva, how could he, even for a moment have doubted it? And
it was all to come to naught, never, never, no, a
thousand times no, awful and infinitely far as the horizon, the perspective of
life yawned before him, the dead level of poverty, the barren desert in
which he must pine and perish of hunger. And in his horror of treading
that wilderness, every sinew of his lax resolve seemed strained to the verge of
snapping. He must take steps forthwith an idea flashed through his brain like the
zigzag of forked lightning. Yes, that was his only course, the simplest
and most obvious means, a mere stroke of villainy, as conventionality would term
it. No need here for any elaborate psychological pros and cons They were never
of any use. They got entangled in their uncomplications, simply a theatrical coup.
He took his hat and crept quietly out of the house, with a
near of contempt, of scorn for himself that he should have fallen so low.
It was half past ten. He hailed a cab and laughed to hear
the melodramatic sound of his own voice as he gave the driver Sir Archibald's address,
the voice of a stage traitor. Then he shrank into a corner of
the vehicle, his shoulders up to his ears, his eyes half closed,
and gazing out through the dim mystery of the night, deadly melancholy lurked at
the bottom of his soul. He got out near Sir Archibald's house, walked
a few yards to the door, and rang. And the minutes he waited
in the darkness before the closed house seemed an eternity of intolerable misery, of
horror, aversion loathing of himself. His lips were pinched into a grimace of
disgust. A manservant opened the door with a look of surprise at the belated
visitor, a surprise which gave way to an impertinent stare when he saw that
Van Mehren was alone, without vestover. He bowed with insolent irony and held
the door wide open with exaggerated civility for Bertie to enter. I must speak
with you at once, said Bertie coolly, At once, and alone.
The man looked at him, but said nothing. You can do me a
service. I need your assistance pressingly. Can I say two words to you
without being seen by anyone? Now, said the servant, Yes, now,
without delay? Will you come in into the servants hall? No?
No, come out and walk up and down with me and speak low.
I cannot leave the house yet. The old man will be going to bed
in an hour or so, and then I can join you in the street.
Then I will wait for you opposite by the park railings. You will
be sure to come. I will make it worth your while. The footman
laughed, a loud, brazen laugh which rang through the hall, filling Bertie
with alarm. Then you are a gentleman now and pretty flush, eh,
yes, said Van Mehren hoarsely. Then you will come, yes, yes,
in an hour, or more fully an hour wait for me. But
if I am to do anything for you, you will have to fork out,
you know, and fork out handsomely too. All right, all right,
said Bertie, But I hope you will not fail me. I count
on your coming. Mind. The door was ruthlessly shut. He walked up
and down for a very long time in the cold and damp. The chill
pierced to his very marrow, while the twinkling gas lamp stared at him through
the gray mist like watery eyes. He waited, pacing the pavement for an
hour an hour and a half, perishing a fatigue and cold, like a
beggar without a shelter. Still he waited, shivering as he walked, his
hands in his pot, his eyes dull with self contempt, staring out of
his white face at the dark square of the door, which still remains shut.
End of section five, Section six of Footsteps of Fate by Louis Kuperus.
This library vox recording is in the public domain. Part three fifteen to
eighteen fifteen. When after a few days of anxious expectancy, Frank still had
no answer from Eva, he wrote a second time, and although the first
bloom of his revived hopes was already dying, he started whenever the bell rang
and would go to the letterbox in the front door. His thoughts were constantly
busy with picturing the messenger who was walking up the road with his happiness wrapped
up in an envelope, and he would imagine what, ever's answer might be,
just a few lines somewhat cool, perhaps in her large, bold English
hand on the scented ivory laid paper she always used, with her initials crossed
in pink and silver in one corner. How long she took to write that
answer? Was she angry? How could she not make up her mind how
to word her forgiveness? Was she elaborating her letter as he had elaborated his
had The days went by while he waited for that note. When he was
at home, he pictured the postman coming nearer and nearer, now only four
three, two doors away. Now he would ring, and he listened,
but the bell did not sound, or if it did, it was not
by reason of the letter. When he was out, he would be electrified
by the thought, for the letter must be lying at home. And he
hurried back to White Rose Cottage, looked in the letter box, and then
in the sitting room, but he never found it, and the intolerable emptiness
of the place where he looked for it made him swear and stamp with rage.
Twice he had written two letters, and yet she gave no sign,
and he could think of no cause in his ardent expectancy, which made him
regard it as the most natural thing that she should reply at once. Still
he lived on this waiting. The reply must come. It could not be
otherwise. His brain held no other thought than it is coming. It would
come to day. All life was void and flat, but it could be
filled by just one letter. Day followed day, and there was no change.
I've had no answer yet from Eva, he said, in a subdued
tone to Bertie, as feeling himself humiliated, disgraced by her determined silence,
mocked at in his illusory hopes. Not yet, said Bertie, and a
mist of melancholy glistened in his black, velvety eyes. Await indeed lay on
his mind. He sighed deeply and frequently. He really was unhappy. What
he had done was so utterly base, But it was all Frank's fault.
Why now that he was parted from Eva, could he not forget his passion?
Why could he not find sufficient comfort in the sweets of friendship. How
delightful it might have been to live on together, a happy pair of friends,
under the calm, blue sky of brotherhood, in the golden bliss of
perfect sympathy, with no woman to disturb it. Thus he romanced, consciously,
working up his friendly, compassionate feeling towards Frank to a sort of frenzy,
in the hope of comforting himself a little and forgetting his foul deed,
of convincing himself that he was magnanimous. Nay, that in spite of that
little deception, he now, more than ever since he was sunk in the
mind, really longed for a high ideal. It was all Frank's fault.
And yet was Frank to blame because he could not forget eva. No,
No, that was all fatality. No one was to blame for that.
That was the act of fate. Yes, that is certain, thought he.
But why have we brains to think with? And why do we feel
pain if we can do nothing to help ourselves? Why are we not plants
or stones? Why should this vast, useless universe exist at all? And
why why did nothingness cease to be? How peaceful? How delightfully peaceful that
would be? He stud as it were before the sealed portals of the Great
Enigma, suddenly amazed and horrified at himself. Good God, how had he
come to this? How was it that nowadays he was always thinking of such
things? Had he ever had such notions in America? When he was toiling
and tramping in his daily slavery. Had he not then regarded himself as a
gross materialist, caring for nothing but plenty of good food and unbroken peace?
And now, when he had long experience of such material comforts, now he
felt as though his nerves had been spun finer and finer to mere silken threads,
thrilling and quivering under one emotion after another, vibrating like the invisible aerial
pulsations which are irresistibly transmitted with a musical murmur along the telephone wires overhead.
How had he come by all this philosophy the blossom of his idle hours,
And in his bewilderment, he tried to recall his youth and remember whether he
had then had this predisposition to thought, whether he had then had any books
which had impressed him deeply, tried to picture his parents, and whether this
might be hereditary he he had handed round coffee cups in New York. Was
he not, after all happier in those days and freer from care? Or
was it only that distance lent enchantment to the view, the distance of so
few years sixteen, when Frank, after a few days of death in life
patience had still received no answer, he wrote to Sir Archibald. Still the
same silence, he poured out his grief to Bertie in bitter complaint, no
longer humble, but full of wrath, like an enraged animal, and yet
half woeful at the ill feeling shown by Eva and her father. Was it
not enough that he had three times craved forgiveness? Had Eva cared for him,
in fact, so little that when he groveled at her feet, she
could find no word even to tell him that all was at an end.
I cannot now remember all I said, he told Bertie, as he paced
the room with long, equal and determined steps. But I must have been
hard upon her. God help me. I can never govern my speech.
And I seized her. I recollect so by the arms, and then I
came away. I was too furious. I ought not to have done it.
But I cannot keep cool. I cannot frank. I wish you could
get over it, said Bertie soothingly from the depths of his arm chair.
There is nothing now to be done. It is very sad that it should
have happened. So, but you must throw it off. Throw it off.
Were you ever in love with a woman, certainly then you must know
something of it, But you could never love any one much. It's not
in your nature. You love yourself too well. That may be, But
at any rate I love you, and I cannot bear to see you.
Thus, Frank, get over it. They seem to have taken the whole
business so ill there is nothing more to be done. I wish you would
only see that and submit to the inevitable. Try to live for something else.
Can there be no other woman in the world for you? Perhaps there
is another. A man does not perish so for love. You are not
a girl. Girls do so. He gazed at Frank with such a magnetic
light in his eyes that Vestova fancied. There was a great truth in his
words, and Bertie's last reproof reminded him of his vacillation, his miserable weakness,
which lay beneath his manly and powerful exterior like an insecure foundation. Still,
he clung to his passionate longings, his vehement craving for the happiness he
had lost. You cannot possibly judge of the matter, he retorted, impatiently,
trying to escape from Van Mehren's eye. You never did love a woman,
though you may say so. Why should not everything come right again.
What has happened? After all? What have I done? I fell into
a violent, vulgar rage? What then, is that so unpardonable in the
person you love? But perhaps, I say, can I have addressed the
letters wrongly? During a few seconds there was a weight of silence in the
room, an atmosphere of lead. Then Van Meyrn said, and his voice
had a tender, coaxing tone. If you had written but once, I
might think it's possible. But three letters to the same house it is scarcely
possible. I will go myself and call, said Vesthova. Yes, yes,
I will go myself. What are you saying? Asked Bertie dreamily.
He was still under the influence of that heavy moral atmosphere. He had not
quite understood nor grasp the idea. What was it you said? He repeated,
I shall go myself and call at the house. Frank reiterated, at
what house? Where? Why? At the roads on eva? Are you
daft? But Bercy rose to his feet, and his eyes glittered in his
pale face like black diamonds with a hundred facets. What to do there?
He said, with a convulsive effort in his throat to keep his voice calm
to talk to her and set matters straight. I cannot bear it. It
has gone on too long. You are a fool, said Van Merin shortly.
Why am I a fool? Whilere you a fool? You have not
a grain of self respect? Do you really think of going there? Yes?
Of course I consider it absurd, said Bertie. All right, said
Frank Pray think so, I myself can see that this is very weak of
me. But good God, 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 about 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 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, and a mind by the mysterious inertia which gnawed it away
like a worm. Before him stood Van Mehren, drawn to his full height
and the energy of despair, and his flashing eyes darting sparks of fire.
He laid his tremulous hands on Vestova's shoulders, feeling their massive 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 hoarsely. Just listen
to me. You're 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're 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. Hey, 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 see 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 would be so mean, in my eyes, so weak,
so cowardly, so childish, such a fool, such a damned fool,
that you may go to the devil for aught. Eye care. He
cleared his throat as if he were actually sick, and turned away, with
a queer, light headed feeling in his brain. Vestova 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 factitious 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 solemn 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 pulled yourself together? Have you forgotten everything? Did not even tell
you that she did not believe your word, that you were false to her,
that you were still friends with that other girl, and that she knew
it. To tell you the truth, I observed from the fur how suspicious
she was, and I did not think it to be coming in a young
lady. I did not think it's quite quite nice to be sure that evening
at the lyceum it did look as if there was something in it still when
you assured 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 seeing 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's love Eva? Or was it all
over? Had she killed his love by her doubts? 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 Vestova'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 colored 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'm stronger than I look, I'm
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 space and health very 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? Ay,
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. Seventeen can
you have gone there? Thought of Anna Mahren, as he sat at home
alone the next evening and did not know with what purpose Vestova 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 villainy 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, had 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 whats 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 someone 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 gray
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 Mehren 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 as swell Bertie would remember the times
they had had in New York. They had been waiters together, pals at
the same hotel. Rumchan say that they should run up against each other.
In London. It was a small world. You were always running up against
someone wherever you might go. You couldn't keep out of anyone's way. In
fact, if it was God's will, you should meet a fella you couldn't
keep out of that fella's way, and then you might sometimes be able to
do him a good turn. There had been some letters written, and he
scraped 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 o money. And now there was
a third letter in the same hand, dear, dear, who's could it
be? Now? Addressed to the old man. He didn't 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 Meron, as pale as death,
holding out his hand. Aye, but thirty sovs was too little,
a mere song. This letter was to the old man who 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 noble heart. He would never leave an old pal in the
lurch, the devils 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 mister Vestovna, no doubt
gave his friend sixpence now and then. And mister Vesthova was made of money.
Come, come, mister van Meyer, and 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 assure you, said Bertie, huskily, from a parched
throat and shaking as if in an eager 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 given. 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 God'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 tramp at a critical point of the game. She however,
did not know, and was surprised that mister van Marin should not have known
him. Had he been troublesome. Yes, a beggar, a regular beggar.
He was dressed like a gentleman too. Be more careful for the future,
said Bertie, and let no one into the house. Eighteen. He
sat up that evening till Frank came home. As he sat alone, he
wept for hours. He sobbed passionately, miserably, till in the slightly built
little villa Annie and her husband might have heard him, till his head felt
like a drum and bursting with throbbing pain. He fairly cried in irrepressible wretchedness,
and his sobs shook his little body like a rhythm of agony. Oh,
how could he get out of this slough? Kill himself? How could
he live on in such wretchedness? And again and again he looked about him
for a weapon, his hands clutched his throat like a vice. But he
had not the courage, at least not at that moment. For as he
clenched his fingers, and an endurable pain mounted to his already aching head that
he wept all the more bitterly at finding himself too weak to do it.
It was one in the morning. Frank must surely come in soon. He
looked in the glass and saw a pale, purple gray face, with swollen,
wet eyes, and thick blue veins on the temples, pulsating visibly under
the transparent skin. Frank must not see him thus, and yet he must
know that he must ask. He went up to his room undressed and got
shivering into bed, but he did not go to sleep. He lay listening
for the front door to open. At half past two, Vesthova came in.
Good God, if he had gone to the roads. No, no,
he must have been at the club. He went straight upstairs to bed.
Annie and her husband locked up the house. There was a noise of
bolts and locks, the clank of metal bars. Half an hour later,
Bertie rose. Now it would be dark in Frank's room, Otherwise he would
have seen that purple pallor out into the passage. Tap Frank Hallo come in
in he went. Vesthova was in bed. No light but the night light
Bertie with his back to the glimmer. Now would Frank mention the roads?
No? He asked what was up and found Mahring began. There was an
urgent matter he must lay before his friend, some old debts he had remembered,
which he must pay before they went away. He was so vexed about
it, it was really taking advantage of Frank's kindness. Could Frank give him
the money? My dear fellow, I have run completely dry. I have
only just enough to pay for our passage to buen as Aires. How much
do you want? A hundred pounds? A hundred pounds, I assure you.
I do not know where to lay my hand on the money. Do
you want it now on the spot? Can you not put it off?
Or can you not do with a bill? No? I must have money
down, hard cash. Well, wait a bit, Perhaps I can find
a way. Yes, I will manage it somehow. I will see about
it tomorrow tomorrow morning. Are you in such a juice of a hurry?
Well, all right, I will find it somehow. But now go to
bed, for I'm sleepy. We made a night of it. Tomorrow I
am sure I can help you, and at any rate I will not leave
you in a fix that you may rely on. But you are a troublesome
boy. Do you hear? Only the other day you had thirty pounds,
and then again thirty more. For a minute Van Mayern stood rigid, a
dark mass against the dim gleam of the night light. Then he went up
to the bed, and, falling on his knees, lay his head on
the coverlet, and fairly sobbed. I say, are you ill? Are
you going? Cre asked Vestova? What on earth ails you? No?
He was not crazy, but only so grieved to take advantage of Frank's good
nature, especially if his friend was himself in difficulties. They were such shameful
debts he would rather not tell him what for debts outstanding from a time when
for a few days he had disappeared. Frank knew, didn't he old sins
to pay for a well behave better for the future. We will set it
all right tomorrow. Make no more noise and go to bed. I'm dead
sleepy. We all had as much as we could carry come get up,
I say. Van Maheron rose, and taking Vestov's hand, tried to thank
him. There that will do. Go to bed, I say, And
he went in his own room. He presently through the wall heard Frank snoring.
He remained sitting on the edge of his bed. Once more his fingers
gripped his throat tighter, tighter, But it's hurt him, made his headache.
Great, God, he thought, is it possible that I should be
the thing I am? End of section six Section seven of Footsteps of Fate
by Luis Kuperus. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part four
one to four one A life of wandering for two years and more of voyages
from America to Australia, from Australia back to Europe, painfully restless, finding
no new aims in life, no new reason for their own existence, no
new thing in the countries they traversed, or in the various atmospheres they breathed.
A life at first with that the struggle for existence, dragged out by
each under the weight of his own woe, with many regrets, but no
anxiety as to the material burden of existence. But presently there was that growing
dread of that material burden, the unpleasant consciousness that there was no more money
coming out from home month after month, disagreeable transactions with bankers in distant places,
constant letter writing to and fro. In short, the almost total evaporation
of a fortune of which too much had long since been dissipated in golden vapor.
Then they saw the necessity of looking about them for means of subsistence,
and they had taken work in factories, assurance offices, brokers' warehouses and what
not, simply to keep their heads above water. In this life which they
found so aimless and wretched. They had known hours of bitter anguish and many
long days of poverty with no escape, and the remembrance of White Rose Cottage.
Still they had felt no longing for White Rose Cottage, again, gradually
yielding to indifference and solemn patience, their fears for the future and struggles to
live with the outcome of natural inherited instinct rather than of spontaneous impulse and personal
desire. And even in this gloomy indifference, Van Mehern had one comforting reflection,
one delicate pleasure, exquisite and peculiar, as a solace to his self
contempt, the consolation of knowing that, now that Vestova had known some buffeting
of fortune, now that they had to work for their bread, he had
never felt impelled to leave his friend to his fate or desert him as soon
as the game was up. The impulse to abandon Frank had never risen in
his soul, and he was glad of it, glad that when it occurred
to him afterwards as a possibility, it was merely as a notion with which
he had no concern and which was no part of himself. No, he
had stuck by Frank, partly, perhaps as a result of his cat like
nature, and because he clung to his place at Frank's side, but not
for that alone. There was something ideal in it, some little sentiments.
He liked, the notion of remaining faithful to a man who had not assent
left in the world. They had worked together, sharing the toil and the
pay with brotherly equality, two long years, and now they were back in
Europe, avoiding England and returning to their native land, Holland, Amsterdam and
the Hague. A strange longing had grown up in them both to see once
more the places they had quitted so long before, bored by their familiarity,
to see the wider world, to drag home their broken lives, as though
they hoped there to find a cure, a miraculous bomb to console them for
existence. They had scraped together some little savings and might take a few months
of summer holiday by thriftily spending their handful of cash. So they had taken
lodgings in a villa at Scathing, a little house to the left of the
Orange Hotel, looking out over the sea, and the sea had become a
changeful background for their lazy summer fancies, for they did not care to wander
away. Amid the bustle of the court house and the sands. Frank would
sit for hours on the balcony in a cane chair, his legs on the
railing, the blue smoke of his cigars curling up in front of his nose,
and then he felt soothed, free from all acute pain, resigned to
his own uselessness, though with a memory now and again of the past,
and of a sorrow which was no longer too keen and then stiff. With
sitting still, he would play a game of quoits or hockey offence a little
with Bertie, whom he had taught to use the foils. He looked,
full of health, was stouter than of yore, with a fine, high
color under his clear tanned skin, a mild gravity in his bright gray eyes,
and sometimes a rather bitter curl under his sheeny yellow mustache. But Bertie
suffered more. And as he looked out over the semicircle of ocean and saw
the waters break with their endless rollers of blue and green, and gray and
violet and pearly iridescence, the vaulted sky above, full of endless cloud scenery,
sweeping or creeping masses of opaque gray or white, silvery pinions, dappled
feathers, drifts of down like sky foam. He fancied that his fate was
coming up over the sea. It was coming closer, irresistibly closer, and
he watched its approach. He felt it so intensely that sometimes his whole being
seemed to be on the alert while he sat motionless in his cane chair with
his eyes fixed on the barren waste of waters. Two. Thus it happened
that, sitting here one day, he saw on the shore below, between
the tufts of yellow broom growing on the sand hills. Two figures coming towards
him, a man and a woman, like finely drawn silhouettes in Indian ink
against the silver sea. A pang suddenly shot through his frame, from his
heart to his throat, to his temples. But the saltreak came up to
him and roused his senses with a freshness that mounted to his brain, so
that in spite of the shock, it remained quite clear, as if filled
with a rare atmosphere. He saw everything distinctly, down to the subtlest detail
of hue and line, The silver gray curve of the horizon like an enormous,
glittering liquid eye with mother of pearl tints, broken by the tumbling crests
of the way leaves, and hardly darker than the spread of sky, strewn
with a variously gray fleece of rent and raveled clouds. To the right,
one stucco facade of the courthouse, looking with stupid dignity at the sea out
of its staring window. Eyes further away by the water's edge, the fishing
boats like large walnut shells with filmy veils of black netting hanging from the masts.
Each boat with its little flag playfully waving and curling in the breeze.
And on the terrace, on the strand, among a confused crowd of yellow
painted chairs, a throng of summer visitors, like a great stain of pale
water color in gay but delicate tints, he could see quite clearly. Hear
a rent in the red sail of a boat. There a ribbon fluttering from
a basket chair. And again a seagull on the shore, swooping to snatch
something out of the surf. He noted all these little details, minute and
motley trifles, bright specks in the expanse of sky and ocean, and very
visible in the subdued light of a sunless day. And those two silhouettes,
a man and a woman, grew larger, came nearer along the sands,
till they were just opposite to him. He knew them at once by their
general appearance, the man by a peculiar gesture of raising his hat and wiping
his forehead, the lady by the way she carried her parasol, the stick
resting on her shoulder while she held the point of one of the ribs.
And recognizing them, he had a singular light headed sensation, as though he
would presently be floating dizzily out of his chair as swept away over the sea.
He fell back, feeling strangely weary, and dazzling sparks danced before his
fixed gaze like glittering notes of interrogation. What was to be done? Could
he devise some ingenious excuse and try to tempt Frank to leave the place to
fly? Oh? How small the world was? Was it? For this?
They had wandered over the globe, never knowing any rest, to meet
at their very first halting place, the two beings he most dreaded? Was
this accident or fatality? Yes? Fatality? But then was he really afraid?
And in his dejection he felt quite sure that he was afraid of nothing,
That he was profoundly indifferent, full of an intolerable weariness of self torture.
He was too tired to feel alarm. He would wait and see what
would happen. It must come. There was no escape. It was fatality.
It was rest to sit there, motionless, inert, willless, with
the wide silver gray waters before him, waiting for what might happen, To
struggle no more for his own ends, to fear, no more, but
to wait patiently and forever. It must come, like the tide from the
ocean. It must cover him as the surf covers the sands, and then
go down again, and perhaps drag him with it, drowned and dead.
A wave of that flood would wash over him and stop his breath, and
more waves would follow, endlessly, a senseless tide, a fruitless eternity.
I wish I did not feel it so acutely, he painfully thought. It
is too silly to feel it. So perhaps nothing will come of it,
and I shall live to be a hundred in peace and contentment. Still,
this is undeniable. This is a fact. They are there. They are
here. But if it were really coming, I should not feel it.
Nothing happens but the unexpected. It is mere nervous weakness over tension. Nothing
can really matter to me, Nothing matters. The air is lovely and pleasant,
soft. There floats a cloud, and I will just sit still without
fear, quite at my ease. There they are again, the sea,
muse fly low. I will wait. Wait. Those boys are playing in
that boat. What's folly? They will have it over? He looked with
involuntary interest at their antics, and then again at the gentleman and lady.
They were now full in sight, just below him, and they went past,
knowing nothing, without a gesture, like two puppets. Ah, but
I know, thought he. They are here, and it has come in
their train perps. But it may go away with them too and be no
more than a threat. So I shall wait. I do not care.
If it must come, it must. They had gone out of sight.
The boys and their boats were gone too. The shore in front of him
was lonely, a long stretch of desert. Suddenly he was seized with a
violent, shivering an agu He stood up, his face quite colorless, his
knees quaking. Terror had suddenly been too much for him, and large beads
of sweat bedewed his forehead. God above, thought he life is terrible.
I have made it terrible. I'm afraid. What can I do? Run
away? No? No, I must wait. Can any harm come to
me? No? None, none, none. There they were, both
of them, she and her father. I am really afraid. Oh,
if it must come, great, God, only let it come quickly.
Then he fancied his eyes had deceived him, that it had not been those
two impossible. And yet he knew that they were there. Terror throbbed in
his breast with vehement hearts beating, and he now only marveled that he could
have looked at the boats with the boys at all whilst Archiebald and Eva were
walking down on the shore. But it's not to be upset. That was
what he had been thinking of the boat. Three A whole fortnight of broiling
summer days slipped by. Had he waited, always too weary to make the
smallest effort to induce Frank to quit the place, it might perhaps have cost
him no more than a single word. But he never spoke the word,
waiting and gradually falling under a spell of waiting, as though he were looking
for the mysterious outcome of an interesting denouement. Had they already met, anywhere?
Would they meet? And if they should, would anything come of it?
One thing inevitably follows another thought. He nothing could ever be done to
check their course. Vestova was in the habit of remaining a great deal indoors,
leading a quiet life between his gloomy thoughts and his favorite gymnastics, not
troubling himself about the summer crowd outside on the terrace and the shore. Thus
the fortnight passed without his becoming aware of the vicinity of the woman whom Van
Meherin dreaded. Not a suspicion of premonition thrilled through Frank's mild melancholy. He
had gone on breathing the fresh sea air without perceiving any fragrance in the atmosphere
that could suggest her presence. He did not discern the prince of her little
chores on the level strand below the villa, nor the tilt of her parasol
passing under his eyes as he sat calmly smoking with his feet on the railings.
And they must often have gazed at the self same packets steaming into the
narrow harbor, like a colored silhouette cut out of a prince, with its
little sails and flag of smoke. But their eyes were unconscious. How nearly
they must be crossing each other out there over the sea. After these two
scorching weeks, there came a dull, gray, sunless day, with heavy
rains stored in the driving black clouds like swollen water skins. Frank had gone
for a walk on the shore by the edge of the wailing, fretting sea.
The basket chairs had been carried higher up and were closely packed and almost
unoccupied. There was scarcely anyone out. A dismal, sighing wind swept the
waters. It was an autumn day full of the desolation of departed summer joys.
And as he walked on his ears filled with the morning breeze, he
saw her coming towards him, with waving skirts and fluttering ribbons, and great
heaven, it was she. It was as though a massive rock had been
suddenly cast at his breast with a giant's throat, and he lay crushed and
breathless beneath a surge of mingled joy and anguish, struggled through his pulses,
thrilled his nerves mounted to his brain. He involuntarily stood still and almost unconsciously
exclaimed in a tone inaudible, indeed at any distance and drowned in the wind.
Eva, my god, Eva. But the distance was lessening. Now
She was close to him, and apparently quite calm, because she had already
seen him that very morning, though he had not seen her because she had
gone through the first emotion, because she had walked that way in the wind,
close by the villa into which she had seen him. Vanish in the
hope of meeting him again. The question flashed through his mind whether he should
greet her with a bow as a stranger, doing it with affected indifference,
as though unmoved by this accidental meeting and forgets full of the past. And
in spite of his tremulous excitement, he could still be amazed at seeing her
cam straight towards him without a hesitation, as if to her goal. In
an instant she stood before him with her pale, earnest face and dark eyes
beaming with vitality. He saw her whole form and figure, absorbed them into
himself, as though his soul would devour the vision. Frank, she said
softly. He made no reply, shivering with emotion and scarcely able to see
through the mist of tears which dimmed his eyes. She smiled sadly. Will
you not hear me, she said, in her low, silvery voice.
He bowed awkwardly, muttering something awkwardly, putting out his hand. She gently
grasped it and went on still in that subdued tone like an echo. Don't
be vexed with me for addressing you. There is something I should like to
say to you. I'm glad to have met you here in scathing, and
by mere chance, or perhaps not by mere chance, there was some misunderstanding,
Frank, between you and me, and unpleasant words were spoken on both
sides. We are parted, and yet I should like to ask your forgiveness
for what I then said. Tears choked her. She could scarcely control herself,
but she concealed her emotion and stood calmly before him, brave as women
can be brave, and with that sad smile, full of hopeless submission,
without affectation, candid and simple. Do not take it amiss. Only let
me ask you whether you can forgive me for having once offended you, and
will henceforth think of me more tenderly? Eva Eva, he stammered, You
ask me to forgive? It was I? It was I who Nay,
She gently interrupted, you have forgotten it was I? Do you forgive me?
And she held out her hand. Frank wrung it with a sob that
choked in his throat. Thank you, I am glad, she went on.
I was in the wrong. Why should I not confess it? I
own it? Frankly, Will you not come and see Papa. We are
living in a hotel, GARNI have you anything to do if not come now
with me, Papa will be very pleased to see you. Certainly, of
course, he muttered, walking on by her side. But I am not
taking you from any one else. Perhaps some one is waiting for you.
Perhaps now by this time you are married. She forced herself to look at
him with her faint smile, a languid, pale courtesy which parted her lips,
but sadly, and her voice was mildly blank, devoid of any special
interest. He started at her words. They conveyed a suggestion which had never
occurred to him, A strange idea transferred from her to him, but it
took no root and perished instantly married. Oh Eva, no, never,
he exclaimed, Well, such a thing might have been, said she coolly.
They were silent for a while, but in a few moments, Eva,
touched by the tone of his last words, could no longer contain herself
and began to cry gently like a frightened child, sobbing spasmodically as they walked
on, the tears soaking her white gauze veil in front of their hotel,
she stopped, and, controlling herself for a moment, said Frank, be
honest with me. Do you not think it odious of me to have spoken
to you? I could not make up my mind what I ought to do,
but I so much wanted to confess myself wrong and ask you to forgive
me. Do you despise me for doing such a thing which perhaps some other
girl would never have done? Despise you? I despise you, cried he
with a gulp. But he could say no more, for some visitors were
coming towards them, though, but few were out on this windy and threatening
day. They went a little further, hanging their heads like criminals under the
eyes of the strangers. Then they turned into the hotel four. Sir Archibald
received Frank somewhat coolly, though civilly. Then he left them together, and
Eva at once began sit down. Frank, I have something to tell you,
he obeyed, in some surprise. Her tone was business like, her
emotion was suppressed, and she seemed to be prepared to make some clear and
logical statements. Frank said, she you once wrote a letter to Papa,
did you not, Yes? He nodded, sadly, You did, she
exclaimed eagerly. Yes, he repeated, two to you, and one to
sir Archibald, what two to me? Well, she cried in dismay.
Yes, he nodded once more, and you had no answers, She went
on more calmly. Did you ever wonder why why, he echoed in surprise,
because you were offended because I had been so rough, no, said
she very positively. Simply and solely because we never received your letters, what
cried Vestova, They never reached us. Our servant William seems to have had
some interest in keeping them back, some interest, repeated Frank Dully, bewildered
Why that? I do not know, replied Eva. All I know is
this our maid Kate, who remember her, came crying one day to tell
me that she could not stay any longer, for she was afraid of William,
who had declared that he would murder her. I inquired what had happened,
and then she told me that she had once been just about to bring
up a letter to Papa in your handwriting. She knew your writing. William
had come behind her when she was close to the door and had snatched it
from her, saying that he would carry it in, But instead of doing
so, he had put the letter into his pocket. She had asked him
what he meant by it. Then they had a violent quarrel, and ever
since she had been afraid of the man. She had wanted to tell me
a long time ago, but dared not for fear of William. We questioned
William, who was rough and sulky, and considered himself offended by our doubts
of his honesty. Papa had his room searched to see if he had stolen
any more letters or other things. Nothing, however, was to be found,
neither stolen articles, nor letters, nor even the letter to Papa,
which seems to be the last of the three. You wrote, it,
was said Frank. Of course Papa dismissed the man, And oh what was
it? I wanted to tell you? I cannot remember. So you wrote
actually three times? Indeed I did three times. And what did you say,
she asked, with a sob in her throat. I ask you to
forgive me, and whether whether all could not be the same again. I
confessed that I had been wrong, but you were not, perhaps not,
I cannot tell now I felt it. So then I waited and waited for
a word from you or your father, and none came. No, none,
She sighed, and then what could I have done? Why did you
not come yourself? Oh? Why did you never come near us? She
wailed reproachfully. He was silent for a minute, collecting his thoughts. He
could not remember it all. Tell me, Frank, she said softly,
Why did you not come yourself? I cannot remember exactly, he said,
dully. Then you did think of it, yes, certainly, said he.
Then how was it that you never came? Frank suddenly broke down.
He gulped down his tears with difficulty, a gulp of anguish. Because I
was heart broken, because I was so wretched, so unspeakably wretched. I
had always taken rather cynical views of women and love and so forth, and
then when I met you, it was all so new, so fresh to
me. I felt myself a boy again. I was in love with you,
not only for your beauty, but for everything you said and did,
for being what you are, always so calm and sweet, good God,
I adored you, Eva. Then there was that change that doubts, that
dreadful time. I cannot remember it all now, and I felt so forlorn
and broken hearted I could have died then, Eva, Eva, you were
so miserable and you did not come to me. No, but good Heavens,
why not I wanted to go to you? And why did you not
do it? Then again he sat lost in thought, his brain seemed clouded.
Ah, yes, I think I remember all about it now, he
said, slowly. I wanted to go, And then Bertie said, what
did Bertie say that? He thought to me a fool for my pains,
A coward and a cur and a fool. But why because you had disbelieved
my word? And then I thought perhaps he was right? And I did
not go. She flung herself on a sofa in utter woe, weeping passionately.
Then it was what Bertie said, She cried, reproachfully. Yes,
nothing else, he said, mournfully, God in heaven. That alone.
They were both silent. Then Eva sat upright again, shivering. Her face
was white and bloodless, her eyes fixed with a dull, vacant glare,
like weathered glass. Oh, Frank, she cried, Frank, I am
so frightened. It is coming what what he asked? In alarm? I
felt its coming upon me, she moaned, panting. It is like the
sound of distant thunder droning in my ears and in my brain. Great heavens,
it is close to me. Frank, oh, frank, it is
above me, over me. The thunder is over my head. She shrieked
and fought the air with her arms as if to beat something off, and
her slender frame was convulsed as from a series of mysterious electric shocks. Her
breath came rattling in her throat. Then she tottered, and he thought she
would have fallen. He clasped her in his arms. Eva, Eva,
he cried. She allowed him to drag her to the sofa without making any
resistance, happy in his embrace in spite of her hallucination. And there she
remains sitting by him, with his arm round her, cowering against his breast.
Eva, come, Eva, what is it that ails you? It
has passed over, she murmured, almost inaudibly. Yes, it is gone,
now it is gone. It has come over me so often lately.
It comes roaring on slowly and stealthily, and then it breaks over my head,
shaking me to the core, and then it goes away, dies away
away. I am in such terror of it. It is like a monster
which comes bellowing at me, and it frightens me. So what can it
be I cannot tell overwrought nerves, perhaps, he said consolingly. Oh,
hold me close, she said, caressingly, Hold me tightly to you.
When I am alone, after it is past. I am left in such
deadly fear. But now now I have you you once more, you will
not cast me from you again. You will protect me, your poor little
evil, will you not? Ah? Yes, I have you back now.
I knew, I felt I should have you back some day, and
I have made Papa come to Scaveningen every summer. I had an idea that
you must be somewhere in Holland, at the Hague or at Scaveningen, that
if we were ever to meet again, it would be here. And now
it has happened. And I have you once more. Hold me tightly now
in both arms, both arms. Then I shall not be frightened. She
clung more closely to his breast, her head on his shoulder, and then,
in a voice like a child's luke, she said, holding out her
wrist, What asked he that little scar you did that I did? Yes,
you clutched me by the ri lists. He felt utterly miserable in spite
of having found her again. Had he covered the line of the scar with
little kisses, She laughed quietly. It's a bracelet, she said lightly.
End of section seven, Section eight of Footsteps of Fate by Luis Kuperus.
This libery vox recording is in the public domain Part four, five and six
five. Presently, however, he started up eva he began suddenly recollecting himself.
How why what is it? She said, laughing, but a little
exhausted after her strange fear of the fancied thunder? Those letters? Why did
William? What could they matter to William? Not make curiosity to see what
was in them? He would not have snatched that last one so roughly from
Kate if it had been all no, no, Then you think he had
some interest I do? But what Why should he care whether I wrote to
you or no? Perhaps he was acting for well, for someone else,
but for whom. What concern could my letters be of anybody's? What advantage
could it be to anyone to hinder or getting them? She sat up and
looked at him for some time, without speaking, dreading the questions she must
ask. Can you barely think of no one? She said? No?
Did no one know that you had written? No one but Bertie Ah only
Bertie, said she with emphasis. But Bertie, no, surely, he
asked her, indignant at so preposterous a suspicion, Perhaps, she whispered,
almost inaudibly. Perhaps Bertie eva impossible. Why how she sank back into her
former attitude, her head on his breast, trembling still from the impression of
the thunder she had heard, and she went on, I know nothing.
I only think I have thought it over day after day for two years,
and I have begun to find a great deal that seems mysterious in what had
never before been puzzling, but indeed sympathetic to me in Bertie. You know,
we often used to talk together and sometimes alone. You were a little
jealous sometimes, but you had not the smallest reason for it, for there
was never anything to make you. So we were like a brother and sister.
We often talked of you. Well. Afterwards, I remembered those talks,
and it struck me that Bertie, yes, that Bertie, that he
did not speak of you as a true friend should I'm not sure when he
was talking. It never occurred to me, for Bertie had a tone and
a way of saying things. I always fancied then that he meant well by
us both, and that he really cared for us, but that he was
afraid of something happening, some evil, some catastrophe, if we were married.
He seemed to think that we ought not to marry. When afterwards I
thought over what he had said, that was always the impression. He really
seemed to think that we that we ought never to be married. She closed
her eyes, worn out by this effort to solve the enigmas of the past,
and she took his hand and stroked it as she held it in her
own. He too, tried to look into that labyrinth of the past,
but he could discern nothing. His memory carried him back to their last days
in London, and he did recall something. He recollected Van Mayhorn's stern tone
when he Vestova had said that he should call at the roads. He remembered
Bertie's urgent haste to get out of London and wonder about the world. Could
Bertie had Bertie any interest? But he could not discern it in the simplicity
of his unpractical, heedlessly liberal friendship, which had never taken any account of
expenses, always sharing what he had with his companion because he had plenty,
and the other had nothing. He could not see it, since he had
never thought of such a possibility in his strange indifference to everything that approached money
matters, an indifference so complete as to constitute a mental deficiency, as another
man is indifferent to all that concerns politics or art or what not, matters
which he held so cheap and understood so little, and could only shake his
head over it, as over an abracadabra he looked, but saw not you
see? I fancy it afterwards that Bertie had been opposed to our marrying,
Eva repeated dreamily, and then, bewildered by the mystery which life had woven
about her, she went on, tell me, Frank, what was there
in him? What was he? Who was he? Why would you never
tell me anything about him? For I discovered that too later during those two
years when I thought out so many things. He looked at her in dismay,
bitter self reproach came upon him, but never having told her that Bertie
was poor, penniless, and dependent on his friend's bounty. Why was it
he had never told her? Was it out of a sense of shame at
being himself so careless, so foolishly weak about a concern in which others were
so cautious and prudent, so foolishly weak, careless to imbecility. And still
he looked at her in dismay. Then a suspicion of the truth flashed across
his mind like the zigzag glimmer of distant lightning, and he shrank from its
lurid gleam. Eva, he said, I will go to Bertie. To
Bertie. She shrieked, is he here? Yes? He here? Oh?
I had never thought of that. I fancied he was away, far
away, dead. Perhaps I did not care what had become of him.
Great God. Here, Frank. I implore you, Frank, leave him,
do not go near him. But Eva, I must ask him.
No, Frank, oh, Frank, for God's sake, do not go.
I am afraid, afraid. Do not go. He soothed her gently
with a soft, sad smile, which just lifted his yellow mustache. With
grave fondness in his honest eyes. He soothed and petted her very gently to
reassure her. Do not be afraid, my darling. I will be quite
calm. But still I must ask, don't you see? Wait for me
here? I will return in the evening, Can you really be Oh,
you had better not go. I promise you I will be quite calm,
quite cool, And he embraced her fondly, closely, with passionate fervor.
Then you are mine once more, he asked. She threw her arms round
his neck and kissed his lips, his eyes, his face. Yes,
she said, I am yours. Do what you will with me till we
meet again, then said he, and he quitted the house. Eva,
left alone, looked about her with a shudder, as if seeking the evil
she dreaded. She was afraid, afraid for herself and for Frank, but
chiefly for Frank. In an instant, her fears had risen to intolerable horror.
She heard her father's step in the passage. She recognized his shuffling tread.
It was impossible to her to meet him. Just then, she snatched
up a cloak and wrapped it about her, pulling the hood up over her
head as she rushed out of doors. It was raining heavily. Six Frank
found Van Maren at home, and Bertie saw at once that it had come.
He read it in Frank's drawn face, heard it in the thick utterance
of his voice. And at the same time he felt that the lax springs
of his determination were trying to brace themselves in despair, in self defense,
and that they failed. Bertie said, Vestova, I want to speak to
you, to ask you something. Bertie made no reply. His legs quaked.
He was sitting in a large cane chair, and he did not move.
I have just met Eva. Frank went on, and I went with
her to see her father. So Archibald tells me that they have been here
some weeks. Still Bertie spoke not. He gazed up at Frank with his
deep black eyes, and their brilliancy was overcast by distress and fear. Frank
stood in front of him, and he now passed his hand over his brow
in some confusion. He had at first purpose to tell his story, and
then quite calmly, to ask a question. But something he knew, not
what in Bertie's cat like indolence roused his anger made him furious with him for
the first time in all the years he had known him. He was angry
that Bertie could stay there, half lying down languidly at ease, his graceful
hand hanging over the arm of the lounge, and he did not detect that
his attitude at this moment was assumed merely to conceal an all too overwhelming agitation.
Had Frank's intention of telling a logical tale and asking a plain question suddenly
collapsed in rage, giving way to a mad desire to know at once,
at once. Listen to me, Bertie, you remember the three letters that
I wrote before we left London. Eva tells me they were kept back by
their servants. William. Do you know anything about it? Bertie was silent,
but his eyes were fixed on Frank with dull, anxious entreaty. No
one knew of the existence of those letters. But you have you any suspicion
why it should be to William's interest to suppress them? Then? No,
how should I said Bertie, scarcely above his breath. Come speak out,
cried Vestova, quivering in every muscle. You must know something about it,
that is quite clear. You must speak out. All thought of self defense
melted away under the vehemence of Frank's tone. Bertie hardly had any curiosity even
to know what had occurred to betray William's complicity, and he felt that it
would be easiest now to give himself up completely without reserve, since that which
he had been dreading for weeks had come upon him inevitably and fatally, since
whatever was to happen would happen inevitably and fatally. And in his weakness he
was conscious of the horrible pathos, the hopeless pity of his being what he
was, of things being as they were. Well, then he muttered,
dejectedly, I do know what do you know? It was I who who
did what? Who bribed William not to deliver the letters? Vestova looked at
him in dumb astonishment. Darkness clouded his sight. Everything was in a whirl.
He did not hear, did not understand, forgetting that the truth had
already flashed across his brain. You you, he gasped, My god,
but why vanam Heron got up. He burst into tears, because because I
don't know, I cannot tell you. It is too vile. Vestovah had
seized him by the shoulders. He shook him and said, in horse raar,
you damned villain. You will not tell me. Why you will not
tell me? Almost I shake it out of your body. Why tell me
this instant? Because because sobbed Van Mehren, wringing his white hands, tell
me out with it because I wanted to stay with you, and because if
you married, I should have had to go. I was so fond of
you, and speak out. You were so fond of me and then and
you were so kind to me. You gave me everything. I foresaw that
I should have to work for my living again. And I was so well
off where I was, Frank, Frank, listen to me. Hear what
I have to tell you. Before you say anything, before you are angry,
let me explain. Do not condemn me till you know. Oh,
yes, it was base of me to do what I did. But let
me say a word, and do not be angry, Frank, till you
know everything. Frank. Try to see me as I am. I am
as God made me, and I cannot help it. I would have been
different if I could, And I only did what I could not help doing.
Indeed, I could not help it. I was driven to it by
a power outside me. I was so weak, so tired. I could
rest with you. And though you may not believe me, I loved you,
I worshiped you, and you wanted to turn me out and make me
work. Then it was then I did it. Hear me, Frank,
let me tell you all. I must tell you all. I made either
believe that you did not really love her. I made her doubt you so
that everything was broken off between you and the letters. I stopped them.
It was all my doing, Frank, all all. And I hated myself
while I did it because I was not different from what I am. But
I could not help it. I was made so. And you do not
understand me. I am such a strange mixture that you cannot understand. But
try to understand me, and you will, Frank, And then you will
forgive me. Perhaps you will even forgive me. Oh, believe me,
I beseech you. I am not wholly selfish. I love you with all
my soul, so truly as one man hardly ever loves another. Because you
were so good to me. I can prove it to you. Did I
not stick by you when you had lost all your money in America? If
I had been selfish, should I not have left you then? But I
stayed with you. I worked with you, and we shared everything and were
happy. Oh why did not things remain as they were? Now? You
have met her? And now have you done with words? Roared Frank?
So you did this? You wrecked all that life held for me. God
in Heaven, is it possible? No, you are right, I do
not understand you. He ended with a venomous laugh, his face crimson,
and he eyes starting with rage. Bertie had dropped crouching in a heap on
the ground and sobbed aloud. Oh but try to understand, he entreated.
Try to see a fellow creature as he is, in all his comfortless nakedness,
with no conventional rappings. My God, I swear to you that I
wish I was different, But how can I help being what I am?
I was born without any option of my own. I was endowed with a
brain, and I must think, and I think otherwise than I gladly would
think. And I have been tossed through life like a ball. Like a
ball, What could I do thus tossed? But try to keep my head
up? Strength of will, strength of mind. I do not know whether
you have any, but I have never never felt such a thing. When
I do a thing, it is because I must, because I can do
no otherwise. For though I may have the wish to act differently, the
strength and energy are not there. Believe me, I despise myself. Believe
that Frank And tried to understand and to forgive words words you are raving,
growled Frank, I do not know what all your talk means. I can
understand nothing at this moment, and even if I could, at this moment,
I would not. All I understand is that you have ruined me,
that you have destroyed my whole life's joy, and that you are a low
scoundrel who bribed a servant to stop my letters out of gross, vile,
unfathomable selfishness. Bribed him. Tell me, rascal, wretch, coward,
bribed him with what in Heaven's name? Tell me with what you bribed him
with with? But Van mehr And hesitated in abject fear, for Westover had
collared him by the waistcoats as he groveled on the floor, and shook him
again and again by thunder, you villain. You bribed him with my money,
with my own money. Tell me speak, or I'll kick it out
of you. Yes, with my money, Yes, yes, yes.
Frank flung him down with a yell of contempt, of loathing of such a
thing as he. But Vana Meheron was experiencing a reaction from his self abasement.
The world was so stupid. Men were stupid. Frank was stupid.
He did not understand that a man should be such as he Bertie was.
He could not understand. He bellowed out in his brutal rage, like some
wild beast without brains or sense. He himself had brains. Happier was he
who had none. He envied Frank his lack of them. He sprang up
with one leap. Yes, yes, yes, he hissed it hard if
you don't understand, if you are too idiotic to take it in, yes,
I say, yes, yes, yes, I bribed him with your
money that you were so kind as to give me. The very last day,
when we were leaving London, you gave me one hundred pounds to pay
William. Do you remember to pay William? You do not understand, well,
you don't understand. You're a stupid brute without brains, Aye, and
I envy you for having none. There was a time when I had none.
And do you know how I came by them? Why? Through you?
There was a time when I toiled and worked and never thought and never
cared. I ate all I earned, and when I earned nothing, I
went hungry and I was happy. It was you, You who fed me
on dainties and gave me wine to drink. And it was you who clothed
me so that I had not to work, but had nothing to do but
to think, think in my contempt idleness all day long. And now I
only wish I could crack my skull open and throw my brains in your face.
Having made me what I am, so finikin and full of ideas you
don't understand, then perhaps you will not understand that at this moment I feel
no gratitude for all you have done for me, that I hate you for
it, all that I despise you, and that you have made my life
infinitely more wretched than I have made yours. Do you understand that much at
any rate? Ah, that I despise you and hate you, hate you.
He had entrenched himself behind a table, sputtering out this volume of words
in a paroxysm of nervous excitements. He felt as though every fiber of his
frame was ready to crack like an overstrained cord. He got behind the table
because Vestova was standing before him at the other side, now, his eyes
staringly white and bloodshot in his head, purple face his nostrils dilated, his
shoulders up, his fists clenched ready as it seemed to spring upon him.
Vestova was waiting, as it appeared, till Van Mehern had spit out in
his face all the foul words he could find. Yes, I hate you,
Bertie repeated, I hate you. He could find nothing else to say.
Then Frank let himself go with a bellow like a wild beast, a
sound that had nothing human in it. He sprang over the table, which
tilted on its side, and came down with all the weight of his impetus
on Bertie, who fell under him like a reed. He seized his foe
by the throat, dragged him over the legs of the table into the middle
of the room, dropped him with a crack on the floor, and fell
upon him. With his bony, square knee on Bertie's chest and his left
hand holding his no like a vice, and a hard, dry feeling like
a thirst for sheer brutality rose to Vestova's throat. With a dreadful smile on
his lips, he swallowed two or three times, fiendishly, glad that he
had him in his power. In the clutch of his left hand under his
knee, and he doubled his right fist and raised it like a hammer with
a tigerish roar. There there there he growled, And each time a sledgehammer
blow fell on Bertie there there there, on his nose, his eyes,
his mouth, his forehead, and the blows resounded dully on his skull,
as if on metal. A red mist clouded a vestover's sight. Everything was
red, purple, scarlet's vermilion, a blood stained metally circled round him like
whirring wheels, and through that strange crimson halo, a distorted face grinned up
at him under the pounding of his fist. The corners of the room swam
in red, as if they were full of tangible red terror, whirling whirling
round him, a purple dizziness, a scarlet madness, a nightmare bathed in
blood. And his blows fell fast and steadily there there there, and his
left hand closed tighter on the throat below that face. The door flew open,
and she Eva rushed up to him through the red mist, parting it,
dispelling it by the swift actuality of her appearance. Frank, Frank,
She screamed, stop, I entreat you, stop, you are murdering him.
He let his arm drop and looked at her as in a dream.
She tried to drag him back, to get him away from the battered body
to which he clung in his fury like a vampire. Leave him, Frank,
I beseech you. Let him stand up, Do not kill him.
I was outside and I was frightened. I did not understand because you were
speaking Dutch. Great heavens, what have you done to him? Look?
Look what a state he is in. Frank had risen to his feet,
dazed by that red frenzy. He had to lean on the table. I've
given him what he deserved. I've thrashed him, and I will do it
again. He was on the point of falling on the foe once more,
with that devilish grin on his face. And that's brutal thirst still choking him.
Frank. No, Frank, cried Eva, clinging to him with both
hands. For God's sake, be satisfied. Look at him, oh,
look at him? Well, Then let him get up, Frank snarled.
He may get up, Get up, wretched once, get up. He
gave him a kick, and a second and a third to make him rise,
but Van Meheron did not move. Great God only look at him,
said Eva, kneeling down by the body. Luke, don't you see She
turned to Frank, and he, as if awaking from his dream of blood,
did see now, and soar with horror. There it lay the legs
and arms, convulsed and writhing, the body breathlessly still in the loose,
light hued summer suit, and the face a mask of blue and green and
violet stained with purplish black, which oozed from ears and nose and mouth,
trickling down clammy and dark, drop by drop onto the carpet. One eye
was a shapeless mass, half pulp and jelly. The other stared out of
the oval socket like a large, dull, melancholy opal. The throat looked
as though it had a very broad purple band round it, and as they
stood gazing down at the features, it seemed that they were swelling, swelling
to a sickening, unrecognizable deformity. Out of doors, the storm of rain
had not ceased. There they stood, staring at the horror that lay bleeding
and motionless on the ground before them, a leaden silence within and without the
falling torrent, an endless endless plash. Eva, kneeling by Bertie's side and
shuddering with terror, had felt his heart. Had listened with her ear against
the breathless trunk, close to the dreadful thing to make sure. As she
had got up again quaking, had very softly stepped back from it, her
eyes still directed on it, and now stood clinging against Frank as if she
would become one with him. In her agony of fear Frank, she gasped,
God, have mercy, Frank, he's dead. Let us go,
let us go, let us fly. Is he dead? Asked Vestova dully.
His mind was beginning to wake, a faint dawn like murky daybreak.
He released himself from her grasp, knelts down, listened, felt, thought
vaguely of fetching a doctor of remedies, and then he added, huskily,
certain indeed of what he said, but quite uncertain of what he should do.
Yes, he's dead, he's dead. What can i Eva still hung
on to him, imploring him to fly, to escape, but his mind
was gradually getting clearer, daylight shining in on his bewilderments. He freed himself
from her embrace and tried to go his hand was already on the door handle.
Frank, She shrieked, for she saw that he meant to abandon her.
Hush, he whispered, with a finger on his lips. Stay here,
stay here and watch him. I will come back, and he went.
She would have followed him, have clung to him in an agony of
terror, but he had already shut the door behind him, and her trembling
knees could scarcely carry her. She sat down by the body, shivering miserably.
There it was, the swollen, bruised and purple face, sad and
sickening in the diffused afternoon light which came in obliquely through the curtain of rain,
every breath stuck in her throat. She was dying for air, and
long to open the window, being closer to that than to the door,
but she dared not. But outside, through the dim square panes, she
saw the tragical sky covered with driving slate colored piles of cloud, and the
rain falling in a perfect deluge, and the sea dark and ominous as an
imminent threat, the raging foam gleaming through a shroud of pouring water. Mulder
moulder, she exclaimed, icy cold, with terrible remembrance. It is the
sky of Moulder, the fjord of Mulder, that was where I first felt
it. Oh God, help help, And she fell senseless on the floor.
End of section eight Section nine of Footsteps of Fate by Louis Uberus.
This libertyvox recording is in the public domain. Part five one. Since that
day of terror, two years had elapsed, years of silence, endurance for
them, both each suffering alone, for they were parted with only the solace
of a brief meeting now and then, when she could go and see him
where he was spending those two years, the days slowly dragging past in the
prison among the sand hills. He had given himself up at once to the
police of Scheveningen, as if he were walking in his sleep, had been
taken to the house of detention. He had stood his trial. It had
lasted six weeks, a short time, his lawyer had said to comfort him,
because there was no mystery to clear up. The murder was proved to
a demonstration beyond the shadow of a doubt, to be the result of a
quarrel. This was evident also from the evidence of miss Rhodes, who had
stated that the criminal himself had not at first understood that his friend was dead,
for that he had immediately after kicked him two or three times to rouse
him, thinking he was only in a state of collapse, and that this
had taken and place in her presence. The trial was watched with interest by
the public, and their sympathy was aroused when the purchase of the letters came
out through the evidence of Sir Archibald and his daughter, confirmed by William,
whose presence was secured by diplomatic interference, there were no difficulties. Six weeks
settled everything. Frank was sentenced to two years imprisonment and the case was not
taken to a higher court. He had spent the time, day after day
in a waking dream of gloomy lucidity, with always always the sinister vision of
that writhing body and the horror of that dreadful, battered face before his eyes.
He had felt its glide over the pages of his book when he tried
to read among the letters he traced when he tried to write what he scarcely
knew fragments of an account of his travels through America and Australia. A melancholy
employment and full of pain, since every word reminded him of the murdered man
who had been his constant companion. And when he did nothing but gazed in
dreary reverie out of the window of his cell, there just below and not
very far away, he could see the villa where they had dwelt together and
where he had done the deed, with a glimmer of the sea, a
shining gray streak, and in fancy he could smell the briny scent, as
in the days when he had spent hour after hour with his feet on the
balustrade, the hours which, as they crept on, though he knew it's
not, were bringing inevitable doom on them both every moments nearer. So it's
never left him, It's haunted him incessantly. Heava had entreated her father to
remain at the Hague during all this terrible time, and Sir Archibald had consented,
fearing for his daughter's health. Her natural sweet equanimity had given way to
a fitful nervousness, which tormented her with hallucinations, visions of thunder and of
blood. So they had settled in the van Storck Park, and all through
Frank's imprisonment she had been able to see him from time to time, coming
home more exhausted from each visit, in despair over his melancholy. However,
she might try to encourage him with hopes for the future. Later on,
when he should be free, she herself could hope, nay, lived only
on hope, controlling her excitability under the yoke of patience and of her confidence
in something brighter which might come into her life by and by when Frank was
free, a new life, oh for a new life, and her spirit
stanced at the thought and new happiness, Great God, some happiness. She
did not herself understand how she could still hope, since she had known so
much of life and of men, and since she had lived through that fearful
experience. But she would not think of it, and in the distant future
she saw everything fair and good. Even her hallucinations did not destroy her hopefulness,
though dreading them she regarded them as a recurring malady of the brain,
which would presently depart of itself. She could even smile as she sat streaming
in the pale light of a starlit summer evening, the calendar in her hand,
on which she scratched through each day as it died with a gold pencil
case which she had bought on purpose and used for nothing else. Wearing it
in a bracelet, struck it out with a glad, firm stroke as bringing
her nearer to the blissful future. And she would even let the days pass
without erasing them severally, that she might have the joy at the end of
a week of making six or seven strokes, one after another in a luxury
of anticipation. Two and now long as they had been, the days had
all stolen by all, one after another. Beyond recall, the past was
more and more the past, and would forever remain so it would never come
back to them, she thought, never haunt them more with hideous memories.
She grew calmer, her nervousness diminished, and something like peace came upon her
in a passionate longing for the happy future, for she was going to be
happy with Frank. She was now in London again with her father, living
very quietly, still feeling the past in spite of her present gladness, still
conscious of what had been in all its misery and its horror. Frank too
was in London, in a poorly paid place as an assistant overseer, in
some engineering works, the only opening he could find by the help of his
old connections, jumping at it. Indeed, in consideration of his antecedents,
of which he had no cause to be proud by and by, he should
get something better, something more suited to his attainments. And he took up
his studies again to refresh his technical knowledge, which had grown somewhat rusty.
So Archibald had grown much older and was crippled by attacks of rheumatism, but
he still sat poring over his heraldic studies, living in Holland for his daughter's
sake. He had too long been out of his own circle of acquaintance and
groove of habits. And though he had, from time to time, in
a fit of childish temper, expressed his vexation at Eva's becoming the wife of
a murderer, he now agreed to everything, shrinking from the world and troubling
himself about nothing, only craving to be left undisturbed in the apathy of his
old age. He knew nothing about it, old men, nothing thing of
such things. The young people might please themselves. They always knew best,
and must have their own way. So he grumbled on apparently indifferent, but
glad at heart that Eva should marry Frank, since Frank, if he could
be violent, was good at heart, and Eva would be well cared for,
and he himself would have someone to bear him company in his own house.
Yes, yes, a little company. Frank and Eva met but rarely
during the week, for he was busy in the evenings. But they saw
each other regularly on Sundays, and Eva had the whole week in which to
think over the Sunday which he had last seen him, and she tried to
recall every word that he had said, every look that he had given her.
On these treasures she lived all the week. She had never loved him
so dearly as now, when crushing depression weighed on him, which he longed
to lighten by the solace of her love. There was something motherly in her
feeling for him, as though his sufferings had made a child of him,
needing a tenderer regard than of yore. She had loved him then for the
mysterious charm, as it seemed to her of the contrast between his feeble gentleness
and his powerful physique, And now it was no more than a higher development
of the same charm, since she saw the stalwart strong man suffering so pitiably
under the memory of what he had gone through, and lacking the energy to
rise superior to it and to begin life anew. But this want of vigor
did not discourage her in her hopes for the future. On the contrary,
she loved him for his weakness, while regarding this as singular and incomprehensible in
herself, dreaming it over in her solitude, or smiling with gladness, for
she, as a woman, in spite of her nervous visionary temperament, could
resolutely forget the power as bravely go forward and meet the future, compelling happiness
to come to her by her sweet patience and elastic constancy. Had not all
the woes of the past lain outside them both, had not Frank done penance
enough for his fit of rage to hold up his head again. Now,
Oh, they would soon have got over it completely. They would insist on
being happy, and she would cure him of everything like heart sickness. Thus
she hoped on a long long time, refusing at first to acknowledge that he
grew more melancholy and gloomy, sinking into deeper and deeper dejection under his burden.
But at last she was compelled to see it, could no longer blind
herself. She could not help seeing that he sat speechless when she talked,
so hopefully listened in silence to her cheerful words and bright illusions, saying nothing
and sometimes closing his eyes with a sigh which he tried to suppress. She
could not deceive herself. Her sanguine moods aroused in him only an echo of
despair. And when one day this was suddenly clear to her, she felt
suddenly too that her nervous fears had worn her out, that she was sad
and ill, that her courage, her hopes, her illusions were sinking down
down, deeper and deeper. Her bitterness, as of wormwood, rose up
in her, tainting everything. She flung herself on her bed in her loneliness,
hearts broken, in utter anguish, and cursed her life, cursed God
in helpless woe. Three then circumstances occurred, which, in spite of all
this, led to its being settled that they were to be married in quite
a short time. In about six weeks, Frank had been helped by some
of his old friends to obtain an appointment as an engineer in a great Glasgow
firm. Eva was to have her mother's fortune. There were no difficulties in
the way. Frank now always spent the whole of Sunday at Sir Archibald's house.
He came to lunch sitting as silent as ever, and after lunch they
were usually left to themselves. At first, the hours flew by, sped
by Eva's daydreams. Though she was still and in spite of herself somewhat nervous.
They would discuss various matters and even readtogether. But then for some little
time, minutes would link itself to minute while they did nothing but sit side
by side on a deep sofa, holding each other's hands and gazing into vacancy.
And a moment came when they could no longer endure that grasp, no
longer dared, the image of Bertie with his purpose old, blood stained face
would rise up between them. Their hands parted. They were both thinking of
the dead. Eva felt as if she had been an accomplice in the deed.
As it grew darker, intolerable misery would so overpower her that it seemed
as though she must suffocate. Then they would throw the windows open, and
stand for a long long time to refresh themselves in the cool air, looking
out over the park in the gathering gloom. She listened in dread to Frank's
breath as it came and went hi. And she was afraid of him in
spite of her love. After all, he had committed murder. He could
do such things in his rage. Oh if in a fit of passion she
too, But she would defend herself with the strength of despair, she would
cling to life. Had she not herself felt strong enough to kill. No,
No, no, she surely she was too timid. And besides,
she loved him so dearly, she adored him, and soon she would be
his wife. Still she was afraid. The Sundays were no longer days so
sweet as to leave a treasure of memory in which she could live through the
week. On the contrary, even now dreaded Sunday, she awaited it with
terror. Friday, Saturday. Here it was again. There was Frank.
She heard his step as still she was afraid, and she still loved him.
They were sitting thus one evening, hand in hand and silence. It
was still early in the afternoon, but a storm threatened and the gray gloom
peered in through the thick lace curtains. Eva, depressed by the heavy weather,
thirsting for some comfort, suddenly, in spite of her fears, threw
herself on Frank's breast. I could not longer endure this weather, she wailed,
almost moaning, the dark, cloudy sky always oppresses me. Of late,
I want to go to Italy. Frank, to the sun, the
sun. He pressed her to him, but did not speak. She began
to weep softly, Say something, Frank, She sobbed. Yes, I
do not like this heavy sky, he said dully. Again, there was
silence. She tried to control herself, clinging closely to him. Then she
went on, I cannot be up against it. I believe since that rainy
day which overtook us in Mulder so long ago, now five years and more.
You remember when we had met three or four times a few days before
at Doroncim. She smiled and kissed his hand, remembering her youth. She
was old. Now you recollect. We got home to the hotel drenched.
I believe I have been well ever since that day that I took a bad
cold which settled in me, though at first I did not feel it and
said nothing about it, but which has been undermining me ever since, all
this long time. He made no reply. He too had a vague recollection
of something tragically painful at Smulda, but he could no longer remember what.
But she suddenly burst into a violent fit of weeping. Oh, Frank,
speak say something, She besought him, in despair at his silence, feeling
her terror grow greater in the stillness and her heart throbbing wildly in spite of
herself. He passed his hands over his forehead, trying to collect his thoughts.
Then he slowly replied, Yes, Eva, for I have something to
say to you, just this very day. What is that? She asked,
looking up through her tears in surprise at strange tone. I want to
speak to you very seriously, Eva, Will you listen? Yes, I
want to ask you something to ask if you would not rather be free to
ask, if you would not be glad that I should release you. She
did not immediately understand him, and sat gazing at him, open mouthed.
Why, she said at length, shuddering, terrified, lest he should understand
something of what was torturing her soul, because it would be so much better
for you my child, he said gently. I have no right to fetter
your life to mine. I am wrecked an old man, and you are
young. She clung closely to him. No, I am old too,
said she with a smile, and I will not have it. I will
be true to you. I will always comfort you when you are out of
heart, and so together we will both grow young again and both be happy.
Her voice was as sweet as balm. To give him strength. She
felt something of her old illusions reviving in her. She would cling to him
whatever the cost. She loved him. He clasped her tightly to his breast
and kissed her fondly. For the moment, she felt no fear. He
was so unhappy. You are a dear good girl, he whispered in a
husky, trembling voice. I do not deserve that you should be so good
to me. But seriously, Eva, think it over once more. Consider
again whether you would not be unhappy, nay wretched, if you had to
be with me always. There is yet time. We have our future lives
in our hands, and I cannot spend mine with you, Eva, only
to make yours more miserable than I have done already. So for your sake
for your happiness. I would gladly give you back your word, but I
will not have it, she moaned desperately. I will not. I do
not understand you. Why should you give me back my word? He took
her hands caressingly in his own and looked in her face a long time,
with a sad smile under the gold colored mustache. Why because because you are
afraid of me, my darling. A spasm shot through her whole frame like
an electric shock. Wildly, she looked at him and wildly protested, It's
not true, Frank, I swear it's not true. Great God, why
do you think that? What have I done to make you think it?
Believe me, Frank, take my word. I swear to you by all
that is holy there, I swear to you it is not true. I
am not afraid of you. Yes, yes, Eva, you are afraid
of me, he said, calmly. And I understand it. It must
be so. And yet I assure you you should have no cause to be,
for I should be a lamb in your hands. I would lay my
head in your hands, your pretty cold white hands, and sleep like a
child. You should do with me whatever you would, and I would never
be angry with you, for I could never be so again. Never again,
I would lie at your feet, I would feel your feet on me
on my breast, and lies so still, so calm and blessed. He
had fallen on his knees before her, with his head in her lap,
on her hands. Well, then, she said, gently, if that
is the case, why should I ever be afraid of you? Since you
promised me this? And why do you talk of releasing me from my word?
Because I cannot bear to live on seeing you so unhappy? Because you
are unhappy with me, as I can see, and because you will be
even more so when we are together later Always, she quivered in every fiber,
A strange li ucidity came over her. She saw all that had happened
as if mirrored in crystal. Hear me, frank, she said, in
a clear, bright voice, Remain where you are and listen to me.
Listen well. I mean to be true to you, and we shall be
happy. I feel that we shall. What has occurred that we should always
be so miserable? Nothing, I repeat it, nothing. Do not let
us spoil our own lives. I doubted you once you have forgiven me.
That is all. At an end you discovered that Bertie was a scoundrel,
and you killed him. That too is ended. Nothing of all this can
matter to me now. I will never think of it again. It has
ceased to exist so far as I am concerned. And that is all,
Frank. Consider reflect, that is all. Nothing else has happened, and
that is not much. We are young and strong, we are not really
old. And I tell you we can live a new life somewhere together,
somewhere a long way from London, A new life, Frank, a new
life. I love you, Frank. You are everything to me. You
are my idol, my husband, my darling, my child, my great
child. She clasped his head passionately to her bosom in a rapture, her
eyes sparkling and a flush tinging the azalea whiteness of her cheeks. But his
eyes met hers with a look of anguish. You are an angel, Eva,
you are an angel. But I cannot claim you for Listen to me
the real truth. Well, what is the truth? Bertie was not a
scoundrel. He was nothing but a man, a very weak man. That
is the truth. Listen to me, Eva, let me speak. I
thought a great deal at Scheveningen, among the sand hills. You know,
I thought over everything I could remember of what he had said to me in
those liveslast moments in self defense, and by degrees all his words came back
to me, and I felt that he had been in the right, in
the right. Oh, Frank, I do not know what he said in
self defense. But now still shall Bertie's influence come between us to part us?
She cried in bitter despair. No it is not, that, he
replied, Make no mistake. It is not Bertie's influence which divides us.
It is my guilt, your guilt, My guilt which rises up before me
from time to time, reminding me of what I have done, so that
I cannot forget it, shall never forget it. Let me tell you he
was right in what he said at last. He was a weak creature,
he said, flung into life without any strength of will. Was that his
fault? He despised himself for having done so mean a thing about those letters,
but he had not known what else to do. Well, And I
forgive him for being weak, for he could not help it. And we
are all weak. I am weak too. But you would never have done
such a thing, cried Eva, because I perhaps some difference, But I
am weak all the same. I am weak when I am angry, and
then then in my fury, I was utterly, utterly weak. This is
the truth. This is what is crushing me and broken as I am.
I cannot be your husband. Oh what would I not give to have him
still alive. I was fond of him once, and now I could say
to him that I do understand that I forgive him. Frank, do not
be so foolish, so foolishly good, she exclaimed. Oh it is not
foolish goodness, he said, with a melancholy smile. It is philosophy.
Well, then, she cried, in a hard, rough tone, I
am no philosopher. I am not foolishly good. I do not forgive him
for being a villain and for making us miserable. I hate him, hate
him dead as he is. I hate him for coming between us and haunting
us now that you have killed him, and for the diabolical influence he still
brings to bear on you and on me. But I say I will not
have it, She shrieked, despairingly, starting to her feet, but still
clinging to him. I tell you that I will not lose you for the
second time. I swear that if you try to leave me here, I
will stand, holding you fast in my arms, clasping you to me till
we both are dead, for I will not let impart us. I hate
him. I am glad you murdered him, and if he were living now,
I would do it myself. I would kill him, strangle him,
strangle him. She clenched her hands as if she gripped his throat, and
held Frank in her embrace as though he were her prey. Out of doors,
it was growing darker every minute. He gently released himself, supporting her
indeed, for he felt that she was tottering in her overtension of energy and
courage. She was staring out at the weather with her sunken gray eyes,
and she shivered from head to foot. He led her back to the sofa,
made her sit down, and again knelt before her in more passionate devotion
than ever eva. He whispered, Oh, look at the clouds, She
cried, It is pouring a deluge, Yes, said he, What does
that matter? I love you. I cannot bear up against such weather.
She moaned. It oppresses me and frightens me. Oh, it terrifies me.
So protect me, Frank, shelter me. Come close. She drew
him to her on the sofa, and, opening his coat, nestled against
him. I have so frightened. Hold me tightly, wrap your coat round
me. Oh, do not let it come upon me. Lord, have
mercy, and do not let it come over me again. I beseech thee.
It was the visionary thunder. She prayed to be spared, and she
threw both arms round her lover, clinging to him as if to hide herself.
So she remained while he held her close. When presently twisting her fingers
into his waistcoat pocket, she murmured, what is this? What have you
here? What have you found? He said, in alarm, This in
your waistcoat pocket? Nothing? A little file, he muttered, Some drops
for my eyes. I've been troubled by my eyes lately. She took out
the file. It was a tiny, dark blue bottle with a cut glass
stopper and no label. For your eyes, she said, I did not
know. Yes, really, he answered, give it me. But she
held it hidden in her two hands and laughed, No, No, I
will not give it to you. Why are you so uneasy? I shall
not break it? Does it smelt I want to open it, but the
stopper's stuck. Eva, I entreat you, give it me, he implored
her, and the perspiration stood on his brow. It is nothing but drops
for the eyes, and it has no scent. You will spill it and
it stains. But she puts her hands behind her back. It is not
for the eyes, and you have nothing the matter with yours, she said
positively. Yes, really, no, you are deceiving me. It is
it is something else, is it not? Eva? Give it to me?
Does it take effect? Quickly? She asked. Eva, I insist
give it me, he repeated, angry now, and at his wits end,
he threw his arm round her and tried to seize her wrists, but
he only grasped one empty hand, while the other flung the file over his
head on the floor. There was a little clatter of falling glass, and
before he could rise, she had thrown her arms round him again, dragging
him down among the cushions. Let it lie there, she murmured, with
a smile. It is broken. I have broken it for you. Tell
me why did you carry that about with you? It is not what you
fancy, he replied, still on the defensive. So much the better.
Why did you have it? He sat silent for a moment, then yielding
to her insistence, he said, to take it when all was at an
end between us in the evening, of course, And now you cannot do
so. Perhaps I can manage to buy some more, he said, with
a gloomy laugh. But why is everything to be at an end between us?
He was suddenly quite serious, mocking no more at life and death.
For your sake, my angel, for your happiness, I beseech you,
let it all be ended. Let me feel that I no longer need to
make you wretched. You may yet be happy, but I I feel that
everything in me hinders my ever being happy, and all happiness must begin in
ourselves alone. And do you think I shall let you go now that you
have just told me what you would do in the evening. But you are
not to think that I should do it only for your sake. I always
go about with that in my pocket. I have often thought of doing it,
But then I have thought of you, and I lacked courage, for
I know that you loved me only too well, not too well. I
have lived in you, but for you I should never have truly lived but
for me you might have lived with another and have been happy. No,
never with any other. That could never have been. I had to live
with you. It was fatality, ay, fatality, Bertie, you 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 were both 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 forever, forever and ever. Let us lie down
to sleep while it is still raining. Eva together. You say yourself that
everything in you fails of happines, 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's kiss, and let us sleep while
it rains. Let me go to sleep in your arms. Eva, What
do you mean, he asked hoarsely, for he did not understand her.
I broke the file, 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. God in heaven, Eva, what do you want?
She smiled at him, calmly, with the soft light in her beaming
eyes, and she threw her arms round him. So 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 never 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, Weaver, 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 color and gold and silver like a glorious sunset. Oh,
can you image anything more beautiful? Frank? That is happiness, the happiness
we have looked for, which everyone 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 file
was broken. Eva had risen irresistibly attracted to the spot where the file 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's 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 file
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 too 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 pass. 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 tis 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 passage outside the dark room. An old man's
thin voice twice called the name of Eva, and a hand opened the door.
End of section nine, end of Footsteps of Fate by Luis Kuperus,
translated by Clara Bell, read by Phil Benson in Sydney, Australia,