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:--
‘MY DEAR FATHER,
‘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.