"Good old fellow! Dear, good fellow!"
CHAPTER XXII
Can he have gone there? thought Van Maeren as he sat at home alone the next evening, and did not know with what purpose Westhove had gone out. Well, he would sit up for him; there was nothing else to be done. Just a few days to arrange matters and then they would be ofl, 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 and again empty, absolutely empty! He felt quite homesick for it; it struck him as an enviable existence of careless independence as compared with his present state of vacuous ease and servility. How greatly he was changed. Formerly he had been unfettered indeed by conventional rules, but free from any great duplicity; and now, his mind had been cultivated, but was sunk in a depth of baseness. And what for? To enable him to hold fast that which no longer had any value in his eyes. No value? Why, then, did he not cut his way out of his own net, to go away, in poverty; and write a single word to Frank and Eva to bring them together again? It was still in his power to do this.
He thought of it, but smiled at the thought; it was impossible, and yet he could not see wherein the impossibility lay. But it was impossible, it was a thing which could not be done. It was illogical, full of dark difficulties, a thing that could never come about for mysterious reasons of Fatality, which, indeed, he did not clearly discern, but accepted as unanswerable.
He was musing in this vein, alone that evening, when Annie, the housekeeper, came to tell him that some one wanted to speak with him.
"Who is it?"
She did not know, so he went into the sittingroom, 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 Maeren, shortly, with a scowl. "I have always told you that I would not have you come to the house. You have no complaint to make of me, I suppose?"
Oh, no, he had no complaint to make, he had only come to call on an old friend—such a swell I Bertie would remember the times they had had in New York. They had been waiters together, pals at the same hotel. Rum chance, eh, that they should run up against each other in London? It was a small world; you were always running up against some one wherever you might go. You couldn't keep out of any one's way; in fact, if it was God's will you should meet a feller you couldn't keep out of that feller's way, and then you might sometimes be able to do him a good turn. . . . There had been some letters written —and he 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 of money. And now there was a third letter, in the same hand—dear, dear, whose could it be now?—addressed to the old man. He did not want to be too hard on an old pal, but he had come just to ask whether that letter too was of any value. He had it with him.
"Then give it here," stammered Van Maeren, as pale as death, holding out his hand.
Ay, but thirty sovs. was too little, a mere song. This letter was to the old man, and was worth more, and, to tell the truth, his old friend was hard up, desperately hard up. Bertie was a gentleman who could throw the money about, and he had a noble heart. He would never leave an old pal in the lurch. The devil's in it, we must help each other in this world. Say a hundred?
"You are a rascal!" cried Bertie. "We had agreed on thirty pounds. I have not a hundred pounds; I am not rich."
Well, of course he knew that; but Mr. Westhove, no doubt, gave his friend sixpence now and then, and Mr. Westhove was made of money. Come, come, Mr. Van Maeren must think it over; he really should do something for an old pal, and a hundred pounds was not the whole world after all.
"I have not a hundred pounds at this moment, I assure you," said Bertie, huskily, from a parched throat, and shaking as if in an ague fit.
Well, he would come again then, by and by. He would take great care of the letter.
"Hand over the letter. I will give you the money another time."
But his "old pal" laughed cheerfully. No, no— given is given. They might trust each other, but it should be give and take—the letter for the hundred pounds down.
"But I will not have you coming here again. I will not have it, I tell you."
All right. There was no difficulty on that score. His swell friend might bring it himself. Tomorrow?
"Yes, to-morrow without fail. And now go; for God's sake, go!"
He pushed his demon out of the house, promising him,
