‘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.
CHAPTER XXX.
The next day the whole population of the place surged in and out of the Cottage, full of regrets and wonders. ‘Are you really going?’ the ladies said, ‘so soon? I suppose it was quite a sudden idea? And how delightful for you!—but you can’t expect us to be pleased. On the contrary, we are all inconsolable. I don’t know what we shall do without you. How long do you intend to stay away?’
‘Nothing is settled,’ said Mrs. Anderson, blandly. ‘We are leaving ourselves quite free. I think it is much better not to be hampered by any fixed time for return.’