He conquers who awaits the end.
Fortune fixed her wayward fancy on the first sketch that Eve contributed to theCommentator. Wayward, indeed, for Eve herself knew that it was not good, and in the lettered quiet of the editorial sanctum John Craik smiled querulously to himself. John Craik had a supreme contempt for the public taste, but he knew exactly what it wanted. He was like achefsmiling over his made dishes. He did not care for the flavour himself, but his palate was subtle enough to detect the sweet or bitter that tickled his master’s tongue. He served the public faithfully, with a twisted, cynic smile behind his spectacles--for John Craik had a family to feed. He knew that Eve’s work was only partially good--true woman’s work that might cease to flow at any moment. But he detected the undeniable originality of it, and the public palate likes a novel flavour.
So deeply versed was he in worldly knowledge, so thoroughly had he gauged the critic, the journalist, and the public, that before he unfolded a newspaper he could usually foresee the length, the nature, and the literary merit of the criticism. He knew that the tendency of the age is to acquire as much knowledge as possible in a short time. He looked upon the world as a huge kindergarten, and theCommentatoras its school-book. It was good that the world’s knowledge of its own geography should be extended, but the world must not be allowed to detect the authority of the usher’s voice. There are a lot of people who, like women at a remnant sale, go about the paths of literature picking up scraps which do not match, and never can be of the slightest use. It was John Craik’s business to set out his remnant counter to catch these wandering gleaners, and Eve sent him her wares by a lucky chance at the moment when he wanted them.
The editor of theCommentatorwas sitting in his deep chair before the fire one morning about eleven o’clock, when the clerk, whose business it was to tell glib lies about his chief, brought him a card.
“Lloseta,” said Craik aloud to himself. “Ask him to come up.”
“The man who ought to have written the Spanish sketches,” he commented, when the clerk had left.
The Count came into the room with a certain ease of manner subtly indicative of the fact that it was not the first time that he had visited it. He shook hands and waited until the clerk had closed the door.
There was a copy of the month’sCommentatoron the table. De Lloseta took it up and opened it at the first page.
“Who wrote that?” he asked, holding out the magazine.
Craik laughed--a sudden boyish laugh--but he held his sides the while.
“You not only beard the lion in his den, but you ask him to tell you the tricks of his trade,” he said. “Sit down, all the same. You don’t mind my pipe, do you?”
The Spaniard sat down and sought a cigarette-case in his waistcoat pocket with a deliberation that made his companion fidget in his chair.
“You asked me to write those sketches,” said the Count pleasantly. “I delayed and you gave the order to some one else. Assuredly I have a certain right to ask who my supplanter is.”
“None whatever, my dear Lloseta. I did not give the order for those sketches--they came.”
“From whom?”
“Ah!”
“You will not tell me?”
“My dear man, I cannot. The smell of printing ink is not good for a man’s morals. Leave me my unsullied honour.”
The Count had lighted his cigarette. He looked keenly at his companion’s deeply-lined face, and the blue smoke floated between them.
“There are not many people who could have written that article,” he said. “For the few English who know Spain like that are known to the natives. And no Spaniard would have dared to write it.”
John Craik laughed, and while he was laughing his eyes were grave and full of keen observation.
“Then you admit that it is true,” he said.
“Yes,” answered the Count; “it is true--all of it. The writer knows my country as few Englishmen--orwomenknow it.”
John Craik was leaning back in his deep chair an emaciated, pain-stricken form. His calm grey eyes met the quick glance, and did not fall nor waver.
“Then you will not tell me?”
“No. But why are you so anxious to know?”
The Count smoked for a few seconds in silence.
“I will tell you,” he said suddenly, “in confidence.”
Craik nodded, and settled himself again in his chair. He was a very fidgety man.
“It is not the first article that I care about,” explained De Lloseta. “It is that which is behind it. This” - he laid his hand on the page--“is my own country, the north and east of Spain, the wildest part of the Peninsula, the home of the Catalonians, who have always been the leaders in strife and warfare. It is the country from whence my family has its source. All that is written about Catalonia or the Baleares must necessarily refer in part to me and mine. This writer may know too much.”
“I think,” said John Craik, “that I can guarantee that if the writer does know too much, theCommentatorshall not be the channel through which the knowledge will reach the public.”
“Thanks; but--can you guarantee it? Can you guarantee that the public interest, being aroused by these articles, may not ask for further details, which details might easily be given elsewhere, in something less--respectable--than theCommentator?”
“My dear sir, one would think you had a crime on your conscience.”
Cipriani de Lloseta smiled--such a smile as John Craik had never seen before.
“I have many,” he answered. “Who has not?”
“Yes; they accumulate as life goes on, do they not?”
“What I fear,” went on De Lloseta, “is the idle gossip which obtains in England under the pleasant title of ‘Society Notes,’ ‘Boudoir Chat,’ and other new-fangled vulgarities. In Spain we have not that.”
“Then Spain is the Promised Land.”
“Your Society journalists may talk of the English nobility, though the aristocracy that fills the ‘Society Notes’ is almost invariably the aristocracy of yesterday. But I want to keep the Spanish families out of it if possible--the names that were there before printing was invented.”
“Printing and education are too cheap nowadays,” said John Craik. “They are both dangerous instruments in the hands of fools, and it is the fool who goes to the cheap market. But you need not be afraid of the Society papers. It is only those who wish to be advertised who find themselves there.”
De Lloseta’s thoughts had gone back to theCommentator. He picked up the magazine and was looking over the pages of the Spanish article.
“It is clever,” he said. “It is very clever.”
Craik nodded, after the manner of one who had formed his own opinion and intended to abide by it. He was a gentle-mannered man in the ordinary intercourse of life, but on the battlefield of letters he was a veritable Cœur-de-Lion. He quailed before no man.
“You know,” said the Count, “there are only two persons who could have written this--and they are women. If it is the one, I fear nothing; if the other, I fear everything.”
“Then,” said John Craik, shuffling in his chair, “fear nothing.”
De Lloseta looked at him sharply.
“I could force you to tell a lie by mentioning the name of the woman who wrote this,” he said.
“Then don’t!” said John Craik. “I lie beautifully!”
“No, I will not. But I will ask you to do something for me instead: let me read the proofs of these as they are printed.”
For exactly two seconds John Craik pondered.
“I shall be happy to do that,” he said. “I will let you know when the proof is ready. You must come here and read it in this room.”
Cipriani de Lloseta rose from his seat.
“Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand. “I will not keep you from your work. You are doing a better action than you are aware of.”
He took the frail fingers in his grasp for a second and turned to go. Before the door closed behind him John Craik was at work again.
So Eve Challoner’s work passed through Cipriani de Lloseta’s hand, and that nobleman came into her life from another point. It would seem that in whichsoever direction she turned, the Mallorcan was waiting for her with his grave persistence, his kindly determination to watch over her, to exercise that manly control over her life which is really the chief factor of feminine happiness on earth--if women only knew it. For all through Nature there are qualities given to the male for the sole advantage of the female, and the beasts of the forest rise up in silent protest against the nonsense that is talked to-day of woman’s place in the world. We may consider the beasts of the field to advantage, for through all the chances and changes of education, of female emancipation, and the subjection of the weaker sort of man, there will continue to run to the end of time the one grand principle that the male is there to protect the female and the female to care for her young.
Cipriani de Lloseta thus late in life seemed to have found an object. Eve Challoner, while bringing back the past with a flood of recollections - for she seemed to carry the air of Mallorca with her--had so far brought him to the present that for the first time since thirty years and more he began to be interested in the life that was around him.
He suspected--nay, he almost knew--that Eve had written the article in theCommentatorwhich had attracted so much attention. John Craik had to a certain extent baffled him. He had called on the editor of the great periodical in the hope of gleaning some detail - some little scrap of information which would confirm his suspicion - but he had come away with nothing of value excepting the promise that the printed matter should pass through his hands before it reached the public.
Even if he was mistaken, and this proved after all to be the work of Mrs. Harrington, the fact of the proof being offered to his scrutiny was in itself an important safeguard. This, however, was only a secondary possibility. He knew that Eve had written this thing, and he wished to have the opportunity of correcting one or two small mistakes which he anticipated, and which he felt that he himself alone could rectify.
In the meantime John Craik was scribbling a letter to Eve in his minute caligraphy.
“DEAR MADAM” (he wrote), “Your first article is, I am glad to say, attracting considerable attention. It is absolutely necessary that I should see you, with a view of laying down plans for further contributions. Please let me know how this can be arranged. Yours truly,“JOHN CRAIK.”
And at the same time another man, to whom all these things were of paramount importance--to whom all that touched Eve’s life was as if it touched his own--was reading theCommentator. Fitz, on his way home from the Mediterranean, to fill the post of navigating-lieutenant to a new ironclad at that time fitting out at Chatham, bought theCommentatorfrom an enterprising newsagent given to maritime venture in Plymouth harbour. The big steamer only stayed long enough to discharge her mails, and Fitz being a sailor did not go ashore. Instead, he sat on a long chair on deck and read theCommentator. He naturally concluded that at last Cipriani de Lloseta had acceded to John Craik’s wish.
The Ingham-Bakers had come home from Malta and were at this time staying with Mrs. Harrington in London. Agatha had of late taken to reading the newspapers somewhat exhaustively. She read such columns as are usually passed over by the majority of womankind--such as naval intelligence and those uninteresting details of maritime affairs printed in small type, and stated to emanate from Lloyd’s, wherever that vague source may be.
From these neglected corners of theMorning PostAgatha Ingham-Baker had duly learnt that Henry FitzHenry had been appointed navigating-lieutenant to theTerrific, lying at Chatham, which would necessitate his leaving theKittiwakeat Gibraltar and returning to England at once. She also read that the Indian linerCroonahhad sailed from Malta for Gibraltar and London, with two hundred and five passengers and twenty-six thousand pounds in specie.
And John Craik had written to Eve to come to London, where she had a permanent invitation to stay with Mrs. Harrington.
From over the wide world these people seemed to be drifting together like leaves upon a pond--borne hither and thither by some unseen current, swirled suddenly by a passing breath--at the mercy of wind and weather and chance, each occupied in his or her small daily life, looking no further ahead than the next day or the next week. And yet they were drifting surely and steadily towards each other, driven by the undercurrent of Fate, against which the strongest will may beat itself in vain.
Let thine eyes look right on.
“How handsome Fitz looks in his uniform!” Mrs. Ingham-Baker said, with that touch of nervous apprehension which usually affected all original remarks addressed by her to Mrs. Harrington.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker had been to Malta and back, but the wonders of the deep had failed to make a wiser woman of her. If one wishes to gain anything by seeing the world, it is best to go and look at it early in life.
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Harrington, with a glance in the direction of Agatha, the only other occupant of the drawing-room--“yes; he is a good-looking young fellow.”
Agatha was reading theGlobe, sitting upright and stiff, for she was wearing a new ball-dress.
“I think,” went on Mrs. Ingham-Baker volubly, “that I have never seen a naval uniform before--in a room close at hand, you know. Of course, on board theCroonahthe officers wore a sort of uniform, but they had not a sword.”
Agatha turned over her newspaper impatiently. Mrs. Harrington was listening with an air of the keenest interest, which might have been sarcastic.
“Poor Luke had not quite so much gold braid--”
Agatha looked up, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker collapsed.
“I should think,” she added, after some nervous shufflings in her seat, “that a sword is a great nuisance. Should you not think so, Marion dear?”
“I do not know,” replied Mrs. Harrington; “I never wore one.”
Mrs. Ingham-Baker laughed eagerly at herself, after the manner of persons who cannot afford to keep up a decent self-respect.
“But I always rather think,” she went on, with an apprehensive glance towards her daughter, “that a sword is out of place in a drawing-room, or--or anywhere where there are carpets, you know.”
“I thought you had never seen one before,” put in Agatha, without looking up from her newspaper. “In a room--close at hand, you know.”
“No--no, of course not; but I knew, dear, that they were worn. Of course, in warfare it is different.”
“In warfare,” said Mrs. Harrington patiently, “they are usually supposed to come in rather handy.”
“Yes--he-he!” acquiesced Mrs. Ingham-Baker, adjusting a bracelet on her arm with something approaching complacency. She thought she began to see daylight through the conversational maze in which--with the best intentions--she had involved herself. “But I was only thinking that for a lady’s drawing-room I think I like Luke’s quiet black clothes just as much.”
“I am glad of that,” said Mrs. Harrington; “because I expect you will see several other men in the same dress this evening.”
Mrs. Harrington had got up a party to go to the great naval ball of the season--a charity ball. Her party consisted of the Ingham-Bakers and the FitzHenrys, and for the first time for eight years the twin brothers met in the house in Grosvenor Gardens. They were at this moment in the dining-room together, where they had been left by their hostess with a kindly injunction to finish the port wine, duly tempered - as was all Mrs. Harrington’s kindness--by instructions not to smoke.
Agatha’s feelings were rather mixed, so, like a wise young woman of the world, she read the evening paper with great assiduity and refused to think.
The evening had been one of comparisons. Fitz and Luke had come together, for they were sharing rooms in Jermyn Street. Fitz, smart, upright, essentially a naval officer and an unquestionable gentleman. Luke, a trifle browner, more weather-beaten, with a faint, subtle suggestion of a rougher life. Fitz, easy, good-natured, calmly sure of himself - utterly without self-consciousness. Luke, conscious of inferior grade, not quite at ease, jealously on the alert for the comparison.
And Agatha had known from the first moment that in the eyes of the world--and Mrs. Harrington looked through those eyes--there was no comparison. Fitz carried all before him. All except Agatha. The girl was puzzled. Luke could not be compared with Fitz, and the whole world did not compare with Luke. She was fully awake to the contradiction, and she could not reconcile her facts. She had been very properly brought up at the Brighton Boarding School, receiving a good, practical, modern, nineteenth-century education--a curriculum of solid facts culled from the latest school books, from which Love had very properly been omitted.
And now, as she pretended to read theGlobeAgatha was puzzling vaguely and numbly over the contradictions that come into human existence with the small adjunct called love. She was wondering how it was that she saw Luke’s faults and the thousand ways in which he was inferior to his brother, and yet that with all these to stay him up Fitz did not compare with Luke. After all, there must have been some small defect in the education which she had received, for instead of thinking these futile things she ought to have been attempting to discover--as was her mother at that moment--which of the two brothers seemed more likely to inherit Mrs. Harrington’s money.
Agatha’s thoughts went back to the moment on the deck of theCroonah, when the sea breeze swept over her and Luke, and the strength of it, the simple, open force, seemed to be part and parcel of him--of the strong arms around her in which she was content to lie quiescent. She wondered for a moment whether it had all been true.
For Agatha Ingham-Baker was essentially human and womanly, in that she was, and ever would be, a creature of possibilities. She took up her long gloves and began slowly to draw them on. They were quite new, and she smoothed them with a distinct satisfaction, under which there brooded the sense of a new possibility. In all her calculations of life--and these had been many--she had never thought of the possibility of misery. She buttoned the gloves, she drew them cunningly up over her rounded arms, and she wondered whether she was going to be a miserable woman all her life. She saw herself suddenly with those inward eyes which are sometimes vouchsafed to us momentarily, and she saw Misery--in its best dress.
She looked up as Fitz and Luke came into the room. Luke’s eyes were only for her. Fitz, with the unconcealed absorption which was often his, absolutely ignored her presence. And the little incident roused something contradictory in Agatha--something evil and, alas! feminine. She awoke to the very matter-of-factness of the present moment, and she determined to make a conquest of Fitz.
Agatha was not quite on her guard, and Mrs. Harrington’s cold grey eyes were alert. It had once been this lady’s intention to use Agatha as a means of subjecting Luke to her own capricious will - Agatha being the alternative means where money had failed. She had almost forgotten this when Luke came into the room with eyes only for Agatha--and the girl was looking at Fitz.
“I suppose, Agatha,” said Mrs. Harrington, “you will not be at a loss for partners to-night? You will know plenty of dancing men?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” replied Agatha indifferently. She turned over her newspaper and retreated, as it were, behind her first line of defence--the sure line of audacious silence.
“The usual throng?”
“The usual throng,” answered Agatha imperturbably.
Luke was biting his nails impatiently. His jealousy was patent to any woman. Fitz was talking to Mrs. Ingham-Baker.
“I should advise you young men to secure your dances now,” continued Mrs. Harrington, with her usual fatal persistence. “Once Agatha gets into the room she will be snapped up.”
Fitz turned round with his good-natured smile--the smile that indicates a polite attention to an indifferent conversation--and Mrs. Ingham-Baker was free to thrust in her awkward oar. She splashed in.
“Oh, I am sure she will not let herself be snapped up to-night; will you, dear?”
“That, no doubt, depends upon the snapper,” put in Mrs. Harrington, looking--perhaps by accident--at Fitz. “Fitz,” she went on, “come here and tell me all about your new ship. I hope you are proud--I am. I am often laughed at for a garrulous old woman when I begin talking of you!”
She glanced aside at Mrs. Ingham-Baker, who was beaming on Fitz, as the simple-hearted beam on the rising sun.
“Yes,” said the stout lady, “we are all so delighted. Agatha was only saying yesterday that your success was wonderful. She was quite excited about it.”
The fond mother looked invitingly towards her daughter with a smile that said as plainly as words--
“There you are! I have cleared the stage for you--step in and score a point.”
But Agatha did not respond.
“I suppose it is a steamer,” continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker eagerly. “A steam man-of-war.”
“Yes,” replied Fitz, with perfect gravity, “a steam man-of-war.”
“TheHorrible--or theTerrible, is it not?”
“TheTerrific.”
There was an account of the new war-ship in the evening paper which Agatha had laid aside, and Fitz was impolitely glancing at this while he spoke. The journal gave the names of the officers. Fitz was wondering whether Eve Challoner ever saw theGlobe.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker became lost in a maternal fit of admiration. She was looking at Agatha with her head on one side. At intervals she glanced towards Fitz--an inviting glance, as if to draw his attention to the fact that one of Nature’s most perfect productions was waiting to gladden his vision.
“Look!” that little glance seemed to say. “Look at Agatha.Isshe not lovely?”
But Fitz was still wondering whether Eve was in the habit of reading theGlobe. He often wondered thus about her daily habits, trying to picture, in his ignorant masculine way, the hours and minutes of a girl’s daily existence.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker could not stand this waste of his time and Agatha’s dress.
“What do you think of the frock?” she asked Mrs. Harrington, in a whisper which was audible to every one in the room.
“It is very pretty,” replied the hostess, who happened to be in a good humour. Dress possessed a small corner of her cold heart. It was one of very few weaknesses. It was almost a redeeming point in a too man-like character. Her own dresses were always perfect, usually of the richest silk--and grey. Hence she was known as the Grey Lady, and only a few--for Society has neither time nor capacity for thought--wondered whether the colour had penetrated to her soul.
The two now became engaged in a technical conversation, which was only interrupted by the arrival of tea. Luke and Agatha were talking about Malta. She was telling him that their friends in Valetta had invited them to go again next year, and theCroonahwas mentioned.
While the hostess was attending to the teapot, Mrs. Ingham-Baker took the opportunity of disturbing Fitz--of stirring him up, so to speak, and making him look at Agatha.
“Do you think you would have recognised your old playmate if you had met her accidentally--to-night, for instance, at the ball?” she asked.
Again the inviting glance toward her daughter, to which Fitz naturally responded. It was too obvious to ignore.
“No; I do not think so,” he replied, going back in his mind to the recollection of a thin-legged little girl with lank hair.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker’s proud eyes rested complacently on her offspring.
“Do you like her dress?” she asked in a whisper--only audible to him. But Agatha knew the gist of it. The arm and shoulder nearest to them gave a little jerk of self-consciousness.
“Very pretty,” replied Fitz; and Mrs. Ingham-Baker stored the remark away for future use. For all she knew--or all she wanted to know--it might refer to Agatha’s self.
“I am afraid I shall lose her, you know--horribly afraid,” whispered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, knowing the value of competition in all things.
Fitz looked genuinely sympathetic, and glanced at Agatha again, wondering what disease had marked her for its own. Mrs. Ingham-Baker thought fit to explain indirectly, as was her wont.
“She is very much admired,” she said under her breath, with a sigh and a lugubrious shake of the head.
“Oh,” murmured Fitz, with a smile.
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker. She heaved a sigh, observed a decent pause, and then added, “Does it surprise you?”
“Not in the least. It is most natural.”
“You think so--really?”
“Of course I do,” answered Fitz.
There was another little pause, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker then said, in a tone of friendly confidence--
“I advise you to secure your dances early. She will be engaged three deep in a very short time--a lot of mere boys she does not want to dance with.”
Fitz thanked her fervently, and went to help Mrs. Harrington.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker sat back in her chair, well pleased with herself. Like many of her kind, she began the social campaign with the initial error of underrating her natural foes--young men.
But over all things brooding sleptThe quiet sense of something lost.
Agatha was singularly uncertain of herself. If it had not been for her education--at the Brighton school they had taught her that tears are not only idle, but also harmful to the complexion--she would have felt inclined to weep.
There was something wrong about the world this evening, and she did not know what it was. Little things irritated her--such as the creak of Mrs. Harrington’s rich silk dress as that lady breathed. Agatha almost hated Fitz, without knowing why. She wanted Luke to come and speak to her, and yet the necessity of limiting their conversation to mere social platitudes made her hope that he would not do so.
At length she rose to go and make her last preparations for the ball. The old habit was so strong upon her that unconsciously she gave a little swing of the hips to throw her skirt out--to show herself to the greatest advantage in the perfect dress. There was a tiny suggestion of the thoroughbred horse in the paddock--as there always is in the attitude of some young persons, though they would not be grateful were one to tell them of it--a certain bridling, a sleek step, and a lamentably obvious search for the eye of admiration. Fitz opened the door for her, and she gave him a glance as she passed him--a preliminary shot to find the range, as it were--to note which way the wind blew.
In the dimly-lighted hall Agatha suddenly became aware of a hot sensation in the eyelids. The temperature of the tear of vexation is a high one. As she passed towards the staircase, her glance was attracted by a sword, bright of hilt, dark of sheath. Fitz’s sword, lying with his white gloves on the table, where he had laid them on coming into the house. The footman had drawn the blade an inch or so from the sheath--to look at the chasing--to handle the steel that deals in warfare with all the curiosity of one whose business lies among the knives of peace.
Agatha paused and looked at the tokens of Fitz’s calling. She thought of Luke, who had no sword. And the hot unwonted tear fell on the blade.
All the evening Mrs. Harrington had been marked in her attention to Fitz. It was quite obvious that he was--for the moment, at all events--the favoured nephew. And Mrs. Ingham-Baker noted these things.
“My dear,” she whispered to Agatha, when they were waiting in the hall for their hostess, “it is Fitz, of course. I can see that with half an eye.”
Agatha shrugged her shoulders in a rude manner, suggesting almost that her mother was deprived of more reliable means of observation than the moiety mentioned.
“What is Fitz?” she asked, with weary patience.
“Well, I can only tell you that she has called him ‘dear’ twice this evening, and I have never heard her do the same to Luke.”
“A lot Luke cares!” muttered Agatha scornfully, and her mother, whose sense of logic did not run to the perception that Luke’s feelings were beside the question, discreetly collapsed into her voluminous wraps.
She was, however, quite accustomed to be treated thus with contumely, and then later to see her suggestions acted upon--a feminine consolation which men would do well to take unto themselves. As soon as they entered the ball-room, Mrs. Ingham-Baker, with that supernatural perspicacity which is sometimes found in stupid mothers, saw that Agatha was refusing her usual partners. She noted her daughter’s tactics with mingled awe and admiration, both of which tributes were certainly deserved. She saw Agatha look straight through one man at the decorations on the wall behind; she saw her greet an amorous youth of tender years with a semi-maternal air of protection which at once blighted his hopes, cured his passion, and made him abandon the craving for a dance. Agatha was evidently reserving herself and her programme for some special purposes, and she did it with a skill bred of long experience.
Luke was the first to come and ask for a dance--nay, he demanded it.
“Do you remember the last time we danced together?” he asked, as he wrote on her card.
“Yes,” she replied, in a voice which committed her to nothing. She did not look at him, but past him; to where Fitz was talking to Mrs. Harrington.
But he was not content with that. He retained the card and stood in front of her, waiting with suppressed passion in every muscle, waiting for her to meet his eyes.
At last, almost against her will, she did, and for one brief moment she was supremely happy. It was only, however, for a moment. Sent, apparently, by a very practical Providence to save her from herself, a young man blustered good-naturedly through the crowd and planted himself before her with a cheeryaplombwhich seemed to indicate his supposition that in bringing her his presence he brought the desire of her heart and the brightest moment of the evening.
“Well, Agatha,” he said, in that loud voice which, with all due deference, usually marks the Harrovian, “how many have you got for me? No rot now! I want my share, you know, eh?”
Heedless of Luke’s scowling presence, he held out his hand, encased in a very tight glove, asking with a good-natured jerk of the head for her programme.
“Is your wife here?” asked Agatha, smilingly relinquishing her card.
“Wife be blowed!” he answered heartily. “Why so formal? Of course she’s here, carrying on with all the young ’uns as usual. She’s as fit as paint. But she won’t like to be called stiff names. Why don’t you call her Maggie?”
Agatha smiled and did not explain. She doubtless had a good reason for the unusually formal inquiry, and she glanced at Luke to see that his brow had cleared.
Then suddenly some instinct, coming she knew not whence, and leading to consequences affecting their three lives, made her introduce the two men.
“Mr. Carr,” she said, “Mr. FitzHenry. You may be able to get each other partners. Besides, you have an interest in common.”
The two men bowed.
“Are you a sailor?” inquired Luke, almost pleasantly. With Willie Carr it was difficult to be stiff and formal.
“Not I; but I’m interested in shipping--not the navy, you know--merchant service. I’m something in the City, like the young man on the omnibus, eh?”
“I’m in the merchant service,” answered Luke.
“Ah! What ship?”
“TheCroonah.”
“Croonah,” repeated Carr, hastily scribbling his name on Agatha’s programme. “Fine ship; I know her well by name. Know ’em all on paper, you know. I’m an insurance man--what they call a doctor--Lloyd’s and all that; missing ships, overdue steamers, hedging and dodging, and the inner walks of marine insurance--that’s yours truly.Croonah’sa big value,Iknow.”
He looked up keenly over Agatha’s engagement card. The look was not quite in keeping with his bluff and open manners. Moreover, a man who is, so to speak, not in keeping with himself is one who requires watching.
“Yes, she is a fine ship,” answered Luke, with a momentary thought of theTerrific.
“Tell me,” went on Carr, confidentially plucking Luke’s sleeve, “when she is going to the bottom, and I’ll do a line for you--make your fortune for you. You’d not be the first man who has come to me, with his hair hardly dry, for a cheque.”
Luke laughed and went away in answer to Mrs. Harrington’s beckoning finger.
Fitz was coming towards Agatha and her companion.
“Holloa!” exclaimed Carr, “I’m blowed if here is not a second edition of the same man.”
“His brother,” explained Agatha, who saw Fitz coming, although she was apparently looking the other way.
“Royal Navy,” muttered Carr.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m off. Can’t get on with Royal Navy men, somehow.”
With a jovial nod and something remarkably near a wink, Willie Carr left her, shouldering his way through the crowd with that good-natured boisterousness of manner which is accepted by the world for honesty.
Agatha was looking the other way when Fitz came to her, and he was forced to touch her and repeat his desire to be accorded a dance before she became aware of his proximity.
“Certainly,” she answered rather carelessly, “if you want one. I--”--she paused with infinite skill and looked down at her own dress--“I thought I had displeased you.”
Fitz looked slightly surprised.
“What an absurd thing to think!” he said rather lamely.
She glanced up with pert coquetry.
“Then it was only oblivion or indifference.”
“What was only oblivion or indifference?” he asked, still smiling as he compared cards.
“Your very obvious delay in coming,” she answered. “Considering that we have known each other since we were children, it is only natural that I should want to dance with you.”
“Considering that we have known each other since we were children,” he said, repeating her words and tone, “may I have a third?”
“Yes,” with a frank nod. “And”--she paused, and looking round saw Luke going away in the opposite direction with Mrs. Harrington--“and will you take me to have some coffee now? I am engaged for this dance, but no matter.”
Fitz gave her his arm and turned to hitch his sword higher. He made sure that the blade was well home, shutting in the little red spot of gathering rust--a tear.
When they had at length passed through the eager crowd and found a resting-place in a smaller room, Agatha looked up at Fitz as he handed her her coffee, and did not pretend to hide the admiration with which she regarded him.
“You know,” she said, “you are a great favourite with Mrs. Harrington.”
“She is always very kind to me.”
Fitz was a difficult person to gossip with by reason of his quiet directness of manner. He had a way of abruptly finishing his speech without the usual lowering of the voice. And it is just that small drop of half a tone that invites further confidence. In such small matters as these lies the secret of conversational success, and by such trivial tricks of the tongue we are daily and hourly deceived. The man or the woman who lowers the tone at the end of speech defers to the listener’s opinion, and usually receives it. The manner with which Fitz broke off led his listener to believe that he was not attending to the conversation. Agatha therefore baited her hook more heavily.
“Like many women, she thinks that sailors are superior to the rest of mankind,” she said, with just enough lightness of tone to be converted into a screen if necessary. But she heaved a little sigh before she drank her coffee.
Fitz had not decided whether all this referred to himself or to Luke. He hoped that Agatha had, so to speak, brought her guns to bear upon him, because of himself he was sure, of Luke he was doubtful. As a matter of curiosity he pursued the conversation.
“And you,” he said, “look upon such mistaken persons with the mingled pity and contempt that they deserve?”
“No,” she answered, with audacious calmness, as she rose and passed before him; “for I think the same.”
She cleverly deprived him of the opportunity of answering, and pushed her way through the crowd alone, allowing him to follow.
Before she danced with him again, she danced with Luke, and her humour seemed to have undergone a change.
There are some men who, like salmon, never go back. They push on, and that which they have gained they hold to though it cost them their lives. Luke FitzHenry was one of these, and Agatha found that in the London ball-room she could take back nothing that she had given on board theCroonah. Luke, it is to be presumed, had old-fashioned theories which have fallen into disuse in these practical modern days wherein we flirt for one night only, for a day, for a week, according to convenience. He could not lay aside the voyage to Malta and that which occurred then as a matter of the past; and Agatha, surprised and at a loss, did not seem to know how to make him do so.
She learnt with a new wonder that the rest of this ball--namely, that part of his programme which did not refer to her, the dances he was to dance with partners other than herself--counted as nothing. For him this ball was merely herself. There was not another woman in the room--for him. He told her this and other things. Moreover, the sound of it was quite new to her. For the modern young man does not make serious love to such women as Agatha Ingham-Baker.
La discretion d’un homme est d’autant plus grande qu’on lui demande davantage.
“I want you to ask me to dinner!”
The Count de Lloseta bowed as he made this remark, and looked at his companion with a smile.
At times Mrs. Harrington gave way to a momentary panic in respect to Cipriani de Lloseta--when she was not feeling very well, perhaps. Her situation seemed to be somewhat that of a commander holding an impregnable position against a cunning foe. For every position of such a nature is impenetrable only so long as it can meet and defy each new engine of warfare that is brought against it. And one day the fatal engine is invented.
Mrs. Harrington looked into his face with a flicker in her drawn grey eyes. Then she gave a little laugh which was not quite free from uneasiness.
“Why?” she asked sardonically. “Have you fallen in love with some one at last?”
She knew that this taunt would hurt him. Besides, she liked to throw it at the memory of a woman whom she had hated--Cipriani de Lloseta’s dead wife.
“I should like to be of your party to-night,” he said quietly.
She gave another scornful laugh, with that ring of malice in it which thrills in the voice of some elderly women when they speak of young girls.
“Eve is to be of our party to-night,” she said. “Ah--that would be too absurd--a new Adam! You! But, mind you, Agatha will be here too. You will have to be careful how you play your cards, Don Juan! However, we dine at eight, and I shall be glad to see you.”
De Lloseta took up his hat and stick. With Mrs. Harrington, and with no one else perhaps in London, he still observed the stiff Spanish manner. He bowed without offering to shake hands, and left her.
Mrs. Harrington--cold, calculating, essentially worldly--looked at the closed door with deep speculation in her eyes. They were hard eyes, such as are only to be seen in a woman’s face; for an old man has usually picked up a little charity somewhere on the road through life.
Then she looked at a hundred-pound note which he had tossed across the table to her with a silent Catalonian contempt earlier in the proceedings.
“I thought he was rather easy to manage,” she said, examining the note. “I thought he wanted something. He has paid this--for his dinner.”
The Count moreover appeared to consider the entertainment cheap at the price, if his manner was to be relied upon. For he entered the drawing-room at eight o’clock the same evening with an unusually pleasant air of anticipatory enjoyment. He shook hands quite gaily with Mrs. Ingham-Baker, who bridled stoutly, and thought that he was a very distinguished-looking man despite his dark airs. He received Agatha’s careless nod and shake of the hand with a murmured politeness; with Eve he shook hands in silence. Then he turned rather suddenly upon Fitz and held out his hand gravely.
“I congratulate you,” he said. “When I last had the pleasure of seeing you, I did not suspect that I was entertaining a great man unawares--you were too humble.”
Fitz involuntarily glanced towards Eve, knowing that the speaker had a second meaning. Eve was watching the Count rather curiously, as if wondering how he would greet Fitz. Every one in the room was looking at the Count de Lloseta; for this quiet-spoken Spaniard was a distinct factor in the life of each one of them.
They fell to talking of commonplace matters, and presently Mrs. Harrington rustled in. The servants were only awaiting her arrival to announce that dinner was ready.
She looked round.
“We are short of men,” she said. “We miss Luke, do we not?”
She looked straight at Agatha, who returned her stare with audacious imperturbability. It was only Luke’s presence that unsteadied her. When he was away, she could hold her own against the world.
“I have never seen Luke,” said Eve to the Count, who had been commanded to offer her his arm. “I am so sorry to have missed him.”
Agatha, who was in front, beneath them on the stairs, turned and looked up at her with a strange smile. She either did not heed the Count, or she undervalued his powers of observation.
“You would undoubtedly have liked him,” said the Spaniard.
At the table there was considerable arranging of the seats, and finally De Lloseta was placed at one side with Mrs. Ingham-Baker, while the two girls sat side by side opposite to them.
Fitz was at the foot of the table.
In the course of conversation the Spaniard leant across and said to Agatha--
“Have you seen this month’sCommentator, Miss Ingham-Baker?”
An unaccountable silence fell upon the assembled guests. Eve Challoner’s face turned quite white. Her eyes were lowered to her plate. No one looked at her except the Count, and his glance was momentary.
“Yes--and of course I have read the Spanish sketch. I suppose every one in London has! It makes me want to go to Spain.”
Mrs. Ingham-Baker bridled and glanced at the Spaniard. Agatha might be a countess yet--a foreign one, but still a countess. Fitz was looking at De Lloseta. He naturally concluded that it was he who had written the article. He was still watching his face when the Spaniard turned to him and said--
“And you, Fitz? You know something about the matter too!”
And Eve Challoner betrayed herself completely. No one happened to be looking at her except Cipriani de Lloseta, and he saw that not only had she written the celebrated articles, but that she loved Fitz. Fitz’s opinion was the only one worth hearing. In her anxiety to hear it, she quite forgot to guard her secret.
“Yes,” answered Fitz, wondering what De Lloseta was leading up to. “I have read them both, of course. I hope there are more. The man knows what he is writing about.”
“He does,” said the Count, smiling across the table at Eve.
The girl was moistening her lips, which seemed suddenly to have become dry and feverish. Her hands were trembling. She had evidently been terribly afraid of the opinion so innocently asked by the Spaniard.
De Lloseta changed the subject at once. He had found out all that he wanted to know, and more. He had no intention of forcing a confidence upon Eve.
The burthen of the conversation fell upon his shoulders. Fitz, no great talker at any time, was markedly quiet. He had nothing to offer for the general delectation. His remarks upon all subjects mooted were laconic and valueless. The duties as temporary host occupied him for the moment, and his thoughts were obviously elsewhere. His attitude towards Eve had been friendly, but rather reserved. There was no suggestion of sulkiness, but on the other hand he had failed to take advantage of one or two opportunities which she had given him of referring to the past and to any mutual obligations or common interests they had had therein. It happened that Agatha had heard her give him these openings, and had noticed his lack of enterprise.
Agatha Ingham-Baker had long before conceived a strange suspicion - namely, that Eve and Fitz loved each other. She had absolutely nothing to base her suspicions upon, not so much even as the gossips of Majorca. And nevertheless her suspicions throve, as such do, and grew into conviction.
Agatha had come down early to the drawing-room on purpose to establish her right over Fitz. She found De Lloseta in the hall, and he followed her into the room. Whenever she attempted to demonstrate her right to the attention of the only young man present by one of those little glances or words with which women hurt each other, De Lloseta seemed to step in, intercepting with his dark smile. At dinner, when Fitz was absent-minded, Agatha managed to show the others that she alone could follow him into the land of his reflections and call him back from thence. But on several occasions, when she was about to turn to him with a smile which was especially reserved for certain young men under certain circumstances, Cipriani de Lloseta spoke to her and spoilt the small manœuvre.
Eve saw it all. She saw more than the acute Spaniard. Firstly, because she was a woman. Secondly, because she loved Fitz. Thirdly, because the inken curse was hers in a small degree, and people who dabble in ink often wade deep into human nature.