Footsteps of Fate Part 11

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 am 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 habit 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, practical, and selfish, a struggle in which each one must endeavour 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 any one. 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 or 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-humouredly grumbled. "What good do 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 all 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 honourable 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 pa.s.sionately, and 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, your 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, and 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 recognise his spirited daughter--always indefatigable and bright--with whom he had travelled half over the 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 do not 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 and entreaties, 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 p.r.o.nouncing 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 tried 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 wors.h.i.+pped a different G.o.d.

"He is my father," thought she, as she went along the pa.s.sage. "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 it 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 am so forlorn, 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.

XII.

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 child-like 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 that 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 asked 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 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 can 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 att.i.tude obeyed the coercion of that gaze. In her inmost soul she felt those eyes as black as night.

"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, as though 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 never have 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 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! Great G.o.d, 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 her 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 bl.u.s.tering up at the notion of his honesty being questioned, his perfect candour, honour, and truth--like a whirlwind of righteous indignation at such injustice; for in his own mind he could not conceive of such a doubt, knowing himself to be honest, honourable, and true. His dark grey eyes flashed beneath his deeply knit brows; his words came viciously from between his set teeth, which shone large and white under his moustache, like polished ivory.

"It is inconceivable! Good G.o.d, this is monstrous! I have answered you, once 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 still you 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 am 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 a.s.sure you," he began again, trembling with rage, which he tried to control, forcing himself to speak gently: "when I a.s.sure 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 that I think you are keeping something back," she cried.