THE Berties drove away laughing, but when they had got quite out of the Curate’s sight, Bertie Eldridge turned to his cousin with indignation.
‘How could you be such an ass?’ he said. ‘You were just going to let out that the yacht was bound for the Mediterranean, and then, of course, their plans would have been instantly changed.’
‘You need not snap me up so sharply,’ said the other; ‘I never said a word about the Mediterranean, and if I had he would have taken no notice. What was it to him, one way or another? I see no good in an unnecessary fib.’
‘What was it to him? How blind you are! Why it is as much to him as it is—— Did you never find that out?’
‘You don’t mean to say,’ said the other Bertie, with confusion. ‘But, by Jove, I might have known, and that’s how he found out! He is not such a slow beggar as he looks. Did you hear that about my studies? I dare say he said it with a bad motive, but he has reason, heaven knows! My poor studies!’
‘Nonsense! You can’t apply adjectives, my dear fellow, to what does not exist.’
‘That is all very well for you,’ said Bertie Hardwick. ‘You have no occasion to trouble yourself. You can’t come to much harm. But I am losing my time and forming habits I ought not to form, and disappointing my parents, and all that. You know it, Bertie, and I know it, and even such a dull, good-humoured slug as Sugden sees it. I ought not to go with you on this trip—that is as plain as daylight.’
‘Stuff!’ said the other Bertie.
‘It is not stuff. He was quite right. I ought not to go, and I won’t!’
‘Look here,’ said the other; ‘if you don’t, you’ll be breaking faith with me. You know we have always gone halves in everything all our lives. We are not just like any two other fellows; we are not even like brothers. Sometimes I think we have but one soul between us. You are pledged to me, and I to you, for whatever may happen. If it is harm, we will share it; and if it is good, why there is no telling what advantages to you may be involved as well. You cannot forsake me, Bertie; it would be a treachery not only to me, but to the very nature of things.’
Bertie Hardwick shook his head; a shade of perplexity crossed his face.
‘I never was your equal in argument, and never will be,’ he said, ‘and, besides, you have certain stock principles which floor a fellow. But it is no use struggling; I suppose it is my fate. And a very jolly fate, to tell the truth; though what the people at home will say, and all my godfathers and godmothers, who vowed I was to be honest and industrious, and work for my living——’
‘I don’t much believe in that noble occupation,’ said the other; ‘but meantime let us think over what we want at Ryde, which is a great deal more important. Going abroad! I wonder if the old fellow was thinking of you and me when he signed that sentence. It is the best thing, the very best, that could have happened. Everything will be new, and yet there will be the pleasure of bringing back old associations and establishing intercourse afresh. How lucky it is! Cheer up, Bertie. I feel my heart as light as a bird.’
‘Mine is like a bird that is fluttering just before its fall,’ said Bertie, with gravity which was half mock and half real, shaking his head.
‘You envy me my good spirits,’ said his companion, ‘and I suppose there is not very much ground for them. Thank heaven I don’t offend often in that way. It is more your line than mine. But I do feel happier about the chief thing of all than I have done since Easter. Courage, old boy; we’ll win the battle yet.’
Bertie Hardwick shook his head again.
‘I don’t think I shall ever win any battle,’ he said, dolorously; ‘but, in the meantime, here’s the list for fitting out the “Shadow.” I suppose you think more of that now than of anything else.’
The other Bertie laughed long and low at his cousin’s mournful tone; but they were soon absorbed in the lists, as they bowled along towards Ryde, with a good horse, and a soft breeze blowing in their faces. All the seriousness dispersed from Bertie Hardwick’s face as they went on—or rather a far more solemn seriousness came over it as he discussed the necessity of this and that, and all the requirements of the voyage. Very soon he forgot all about the momentary curb that had stopped his imagination in full course. ‘My studies!’ he said, when the business of the day was over, with a joyous burst of laughter more unhesitating even than his cousin’s. He had surmounted that little shock, and his amusement was great at the idea of being reproached with neglect of anything so entirely nominal. He had taken his degree, just saving it, with no honour, nor much blame either; and now for a whole year he had been afloat in the world, running hither and thither, as if that world were but one enormous field of amusement. He ought not to have done so. When he decided to give up the Church, he ought, as everybody said, to have turned his mind to some other profession; and great and many were the lamentations over his thoughtlessness in the Rectory of Langton-Courtenay. But somehow the two Berties had always been as one in the minds of all their kith and kin; and even the Hardwicks regarded with a vague indulgence the pleasant idleness which was thus shared. Sir Herbert Eldridge was rich, and had influence and patronage, and the other Bertie was his only son. It would be no trouble to him to provide ‘somehow’ for his nephew when the right moment came. And thus, though the father and mother shook their heads, and Mrs. Hardwick would sometimes sigh over the waste of Bertie’s abilities and his time, yet they had made no very earnest remonstrances up to this moment; and all had gone on merrily, and all had seemed well.
That evening, however, as it happened, he received an energetic letter on the subject from his father—a letter pointing out to him the folly of thus wasting his best years. Mr. Hardwick reminded his son that he was three-and-twenty, that he had his way to make in the world, and that it was his duty to make up his mind how he was going to do it.
‘I don’t insist upon the Church,’ he said, ‘if your mind is not inclined that way—for that is a thing I would never force; but I cannot see you sink into a state of dependence. Your cousin is very kind; but you ought, and you must know it, to be already in the way of supporting yourself.’
Bertie wrote an answer to this letter at once that evening, without waiting to take counsel of the night; perhaps he felt that it was safe to do it at once, while the idea of work still looked and felt like a good joke. This was his reply:—
‘I am very sorry to see that you feel so strongly about my idleness. I know I am an idle wretch, and always was; but it can’t last, of course; and after this bout I will do my best to mend. The fact is that for this cruise I am pledged to Bertie. I should be behaving very shabbily to him, after all his kindness, if I threw him over at the last moment. And, besides, we don’t go without an object, neither he nor I, of which you will hear anon. I cannot say more now. Give my love to Mamma and the girls; and don’t be vexed if I find there is no time to run home before we start. I shall write from the first port we touch at. Home without fail before Christmas. Good-bye.
‘Yours affectionately, H. H.’
Bertie was much pleased with this effusion; and even when he read it over in the morning, though it did not appear to strike so perfectly the golden line between seriousness and levity as it had appeared to do at night, it was still a satisfactory production. And it pleased him, in the vanity of his youth, to have made the obscure yet important suggestion that his voyage was ‘not without an object.’ What would they all think if they ever found out what that object was? He laughed at the thought, though with a tinge of heightened colour. The people at home would suppose that some great idea had come to the two—that they were going on an antiquarian or a scientific expedition; for Bertie Eldridge was a young man full of notions, and had made attempts in both these branches of learning. Bertie laughed at this very comical idea; but though he was thus satisfied with his own cleverness in baffling his natural guardians, there was a single drop of shame, a germ of bitterness, somewhere at the bottom of his heart. He could fence gaily with his father, and forget the good advice which came to him from those who had a right to give it; but that chance dart thrown by the Curate had penetrated a weak point in his armour. Mr. Sugden’s suggestion, who was a young man on his own level, a fellow whom he had laughed at, and had no lofty opinion of, clung to him like an obstinate bit of thistledown. It was of no consequence, said with an intention to wound—a mere spiteful expression of envy; but it clung to him, and pricked him vaguely, and made him uncomfortable, in spite of himself.
For Bertie was only thoughtless, not selfish. He was running all the risks involved by positive evil in his levity; but he did not mean it. Had he known what real trouble was beginning to rise in the minds of his ‘people’ in respect to him, and how even his uncle Sir Herbert growled at the foolish sacrifice he was making, Bertie had manhood enough to have pulled himself up, and abandoned those delights of youth. And indeed a certain uneasiness had begun to appear faintly in his own mind—a sense that his life was not exactly what it might be, which, of itself, might have roused him to better things. But temptation was strong, and life was pleasant; and at twenty-three there still seems so much of it to come, and such plenty of time to make amends for all one’s early follies. Then there were a hundred specious excuses for him, which even harder judges than he acknowledged. From their cradles, his cousin Bertie and himself had been as one—they had been born on the same day; they had taken every step of their lives together; they resembled each other as twin brothers sometimes do; and something still more subtle, still more fascinating, than the bond between twin-brothers existed between them. This had been the admiration of their respective families when they were children; and it was with some pride that Lady Eldridge and Mrs. Hardwick had told their friends of the curious sympathy between the boys; how when one was ill, the other was depressed and wretched, though his cousin was at a distance from him, and he had no knowledge, except by instinct, of the malady.
‘We know directly when anything is wrong with the other Bertie,’ the respective mothers would say, with that pride which mothers feel in any peculiarity of their children.
This strange tie was strengthened by their education; they went to school together on the same day; they kept side by side all through, and though one Bertie might be at the head of the form and another at the bottom, still in the same form they managed to keep, all tutors, masters, and aids to learning promoting, so far as in them lay, the twinship, which everybody found ‘interesting.’ And they went to the same college, and day for day, and side by side, took every successive step. Bertie Eldridge was the cleverest; it was he who was always at the top; and then he was—a fact which he much plumed himself upon—the eldest by six hours, and accordingly had a right to be the guide and teacher. Thus the very threads of their lives were twisted so close together that it was a difficult thing to pull them asunder; and though all the older people had come by this time to regret the natural weakness which had prompted them to allow this bond to knit itself closer with every year of life, none of them had yet hit upon a plan for breaking it. The reader will easily perceive what a fatal connection this was for the poorer of the two—he who had to make his own way, and had no hereditary wealth to fall back upon. For Bertie Eldridge it was natural and suitable, and as innocent and pleasant as a life without an object can be; but for Bertie Hardwick it was destruction. However, it was difficult, very difficult, for him to realise this. He laughed at his father’s remonstrances, even while he assented to them, and allowed that they were perfectly true; yes, everything that was said was quite true—and yet the life itself was so natural, so inevitable. How could he tear himself from it—‘break faith with Bertie?’ He resolved indefinitely that some time or other it would have to be done, and then plunged, with a light heart, into the victualling and the preparation of the ‘Shadow.’ But, nevertheless, that arrow of Mr. Sugden’s stuck between the joints of his armour. He felt it prick him when he moved; he could not quite forget it, do what he would.