Part 30 (2/2)
Love. The cross-tides of sense and sentiment made a pretty disturbance. And still further, there was another counter-tide. Love does not necessarily make a young man keen-sighted, but it generally highly develops his talent for suspicion. By subtle gradations, Breitmann had s.h.i.+fted in Fitzgerald's mind from a possible friend to a probable rival. Breitmann did not now court his society when the smoking bouts came round, or when the steward brought the whisky and soda after the ladies had retired. Breitmann was moody, and whatever variance his moods had, they retained the gray tone. This Fitzgerald saw and dilated upon; and it rankled when he thought that this hypothetical adventurer had rights, level and equal to his, always supposing he had any.
In this state of mind he drooped idly over the rail as the yacht drew out of the bay, the evening of the second day. The glories of the southern sunset lingered and vanished, a-begging, without his senses being roused by them; and long after the sea, chameleon-like, changed from rose to lavender, from lavender to gray, the mountains yet jealously clung to their vivid aureolas of phantom gold. Fitzgerald saw nothing but writing on the water.
”Well, my boy,” said Cathewe, lounging affectionately against Fitzgerald, ”here we are, rolled over again.”
”What?”
Cathewe described a circle with his finger lazily.
”Oh!” said Fitzgerald, listless. ”Another day more or less, crowded into the past, doesn't matter.”
”Maybe. If we could only have the full days and deposit the others and draw as we need them; but we can't do it. And yet each day means something; there ought always to be a little of it worth remembering.”
”Old parson!” cried Fitzgerald, with a jab of his elbow.
”All bally rot, eh? I wish I could look at it that way. Yet, when a man mopes as you are doing, when this sunset. . .”
”New one every day.”
”What's the difficulty, Jack?”
”Am I walking around with a sign on my back?” testily.
”Of a kind, yes.”
Cathewe spoke so solemnly that Fitzgerald looked round, and saw that which set his ears burning. Immediately he lowered his gaze and sought the water again.
”Have I been making an a.s.s of myself, Arthur?”
”No, Jack; but you are laying yourself open to some wonder. For three or four days now, except for the forty-eight hours on land there, you've been a sort of killjoy. Even the admiral has remarked it.”
”Tell him it's my liver,” with a laugh not wholly free of embarra.s.sment. ”Suppose,” he continued, in a low voice; ”suppose--”
But he couldn't go on.
”Yes, suppose,” said Cathewe, taking up the broken thread; ”suppose there was a person who had a heap of money, or will have some day; and suppose there's another person who has but little and may have less in days to come. Is that the supposition, Jack? The presumption of an old friend, a right that ought never to be abrogated.” Cathewe laid a hand on his young friend's shoulder; there was a silent speech of knowledge and brotherhood in it such as Fitzgerald could not mistake.
”That's the supposition,” he admitted generously.
”Well, money counts only when you buy horses and yachts and houses, it never really matters in anything else.”
”It is easy to say that.”
”It is also easy to learn that it is true.”
”Isn't there a good deal of buying these days where there should be giving?”
”Not among real people. You have had enough experience with both types to be competent to distinguish the one from the other. You have birth and brains and industry; you're a decent sort of chap besides,”
genially. ”Can money buy these things when grounded on self-respect as they are in you? Come along now; for the admiral sent me after you.
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