And hence one master passion in the breast,Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows all the rest.
Life is, after all, a matter of habit. In those families where rapid consumption is hereditary, the succeeding generations seem to get into the habit of dying early. They take it, without complaint, as a matter of course. Sailors and other persons who lead a rough and hazardous life seem also to acquire this philosophy of existence. Luke FitzHenry went to sea again on the day appointed for theCroonahto leave London, without so much as a snarl at Fate.
It was a great wrench to him to leave Agatha again so soon, in the first full force of his passion. But he left her almost happily. His love for her was rising up and filling his whole existence. And it is not those lives that are frittered away in a thousand pastimes that are happy. It is the strong life wholly absorbed by one great interest, be it love or be it merely money-making.
Luke had hitherto been rather an aimless man. He was a brilliant sailor, not because he set himself to the task, but merely because seamanship was born in him, together with a dogged steadiness of nerve and a complete fearlessness. It was so easy to be a good sailor that he had not even the satisfaction of having to make an effort. His heart was empty. He had indeed the sea, but his love of it was unconscious. Away from it, he was ill at ease; on its breast, he was not actively happy--he was merely at home. But he had no career. He had no great prize to aim for, and his combative nature required one. He had no career to make, for he was already near the summit of the humble ladder on which Fate had set his feet.
Then came Agatha, and the empty heart was filled with a dangerous suddenness.
The pain which this parting caused him had something of pleasure in it. There are some men and many women who doubt love unless it bring actual pain with it. Luke had always mistrusted fate, and had love brought happiness with it he would probably have doubted its genuineness. He hugged all his doubts, his jealousies, his passionate thoughts to himself. He had nothing to cling to. Agatha had never told him that she loved him. But she was for him so entirely apart from all other women that it seemed necessary that he also should not be as other men for her. Not much for a lover to live upon during four or five months!
Agatha had given him a photograph of herself--a fashionable picture in an affected pose in evening dress--but she had absolutely refused to write. This photograph Luke put into a frame, and as soon as theCroonahwas out of dock he hung it up in his little cabin. His servant saw it and recognised the fair passenger of a former voyage, but he knew his place and his master too well to offer any comment.
Unlike the ordinary young man, whose thoughts are lightly turned to love, Luke was no worse a sailor for his self-absorption. All his care, all his keen, fearless judgment were required; for theCroonahran through a misty channel into a boisterous Atlantic.
He stood motionless at his post, as was his wont, keen and alert for the moment, but living in the past. He saw again Mrs. Harrington’s drawing-room as he had last seen it, with Agatha sitting in a low chair near the fire, while Mrs. Harrington wrote at her desk, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker read theTimes.
“I have come,” he remembered saying, “to bid you good-bye.”
He heard again the rustle of Mrs. Ingham-Baker’s newspaper, and again he saw the look in Agatha’s eyes as they met his. He would remember that look to the end of his life; he was living on it now. Agatha, in her rather high-pitched society tones, was the first to speak.
“If I were a sailor,” she said, “I would never say good-bye. It is better to drop in and pay a call; at the end one might casually mention the words.”
“Oh! we grow accustomed to it,” Luke answered.
“Do you?” the girl inquired, with an enigmatical smile, and her answer was in his eyes. She did not want him to grow accustomed to saying farewell to her.
Luke FitzHenry was not inclined to sociability--the stronger sort of man rarely is. On board theCroonahhe was usually considered morose and self absorbed. He did his duty, and in this was second to no man on board; but he was content to get the passengers to their destination, looking upon theCroonahas a mere conveyance for a certain number of chattering, gossiping, mischief-making live-stock. He utterly failed in his social duties; he did not cultivate the art of making his ship a sort of floating “hydro”.
The boisterous weather kept the decks fairly select until Gibraltar had been left behind in the luminous haze that hangs over the mouth of the Mediterranean in a westerly breeze. But in the smoother waters of the Southern seas the passengers plucked up courage, and one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently waved with friendly jocularity.
“Morning--morning!” he cried.
“Good morning,” replied Luke, passing to his seat at the after-end of the saloon. He had recognised the man at once, although he had only exchanged a few words with him in a crowded ball-room. Everything connected with Agatha, however remotely, seemed to engrave itself indelibly on his mind. This was Willie Carr, the man to whom Agatha had introduced him at the naval orphanage ball. Willie Carr was on board theCroonah, evidently quite at home, and bound for India, for he was seated at the Indian table.
It was not necessary for Luke to make inquiries about this passenger, because his brother officers soon began to speak of him. By some means Carr made himself popular among the officers, and gradually began to enjoy privileges denied to his fellow passengers. He frequently visited the engine-room, and was always to be seen after meals in, or in the neighbourhood of, the smoking-room, in conversation with one or other of theCroonah’sofficers, who were generally found to be smoking Carr’s cigars.
Despite many obvious and rather noisy overtures of friendship, Luke FitzHenry held aloof until the Aden light was left behind. He succeeded in limiting his intercourse to an exchange of passing remarks on the weather until theCroonahhad rounded Pointe de Galle and was heading northwards. Then arose circumstances which brought them together, and possibly served Willie Carr’s deliberate purpose.
Carr was travelling without his wife--he was the sort of man who does travel without his wife. She, poor woman, had made one initial mistake, namely, in marrying him, and such mistakes are sometimes paid for by a life of atonement to the gods. She remained at home to care for an ever-increasing family on a small housekeeping allowance, which was not always paid.
This wife was the only point in his favour which had presented itself to Luke’s mind, for the latter resented a certain tone of easy familiarity, which Agatha seemed to take as a matter of course.
Luke was afraid of being questioned about Agatha, and he therefore kept Carr at a respectful distance. He harboured no personal dislike towards the man, whose bluff and honest manner made him popular among his fellows.
It was the evening of the first day in the Bay of Bengal that a steamer passed theCroonah, running south, and flying a string of signals. TheCroonahreplied, and the homeward-bound vessel disappeared in the gathering twilight with her code flags still flying.
“What did she say?” asked the passengers.
“Nothing,” replied the officers; “only the weather. It is the change of the monsoon.”
At dinner the captain was remarkably grave; he left the table early, having eaten little. The officers were reticent, as was their wont. Luke FitzHenry, it was remarked and remembered afterwards, alone appeared to be in good spirits.
After dinner a busybody in the shape of a too intelligent young coffee-planter, who possessed an aneroid barometer, brought that instrument to the smoking-room with a scared face. The needle was deflected to a part of the dial which the intelligent young planter had hitherto considered to be merely ornamental and not intended for practical use. His elders and betters told him to put it away and not to tell the ladies. Then they continued smoking; but they knew that they had just seen such a barometer as few men care to look upon.
The word “cyclone” was whispered in one corner of the cabin, and a white-moustached general was understood to mutter--
“Damned young fool!” as he pulled at his cheroot.
The whisperer did not hear the remark, and went on to give further information on atmospheric disturbances. Suddenly the field-officer jumped to his feet.
“Look here, sir!” he cried. “If we are in for a cyclone, I trust that we know how to behave as men--and die as men, if need be! But don’t let us have any whispering in corners, like a lot of schoolgirls. We are in the care of good men, and all we have to do is to obey orders, and--damn it, sir!--to remember we’re Englishmen!”
The general walked out of the smoking-saloon, and the first sight that greeted his eyes was Luke FitzHenry, quick, keen, and supernaturally calm, standing over a group of Malay sailors who were hard at work getting in awnings. The white-haired soldier stood and watched with the grim silence which he had showed to death before now. He was of the Indian army. He had led the black man to victory and death, and he knew to a nerve the sensitive Asiatic organisation. He saw that it was good and not for the first time he noted the sheep-like dependence with which the black men grouped themselves round their white leader, watching his face, taking their cue in expression, in attitude, even in their feelings from him.
“Good man,” muttered the general to himself.
He stood there alone while the ship was stripped of every awning, while the decks were cleared of all that hamper which makes the passenger an encumbrance at sea. There was no shouting, no confusion, no sign of fear. In a marvellously short time the broad decks were lying bare and clear, all loose things were stowed away or made fast, and theCroonahstood ready for her great fight.
All the while an arc of black cloud had been growing on the horizon. There was not a breath of wind. From the engine-rooms the thud of the piston-rods came throbbing up with a singular distinctness. The arc of cloud had risen halfway to the meridian. There were streaks in it--streaks of yellow on black. Far away to the north, at the point of contact with the horizon, a single waterspout rose like a black pillar from sea to cloud. Dwellers in the cool and temperate zones would have thought that the end of the world was about to come. Men, standing quite still, felt the drops of perspiration trickling beneath their ears. The air taken into the lungs seemed powerless to expand them. The desire to take a deeper breath was constant and oppressive.
A quartermaster brought a message to the general that he must go below or else come up to the lower bridge. He could not stay where he was. The captain said that the cyclone might break at any moment. The old soldier nodded, and made his way to the lower bridge. Before he had been there long he was joined by Carr, who carried a mackintosh over his arm. The two men nodded. The general rather liked Carr. He was a Harrovian, and the general’s son was at Harrow.
“Going to see it out on deck?” he inquired.
“Rather. I’m not going to be drowned like a rat in a trap!” replied Carr, jovial still, and brave.
Luke came to the bridge and took up his position by the side of the captain. No one spoke.
From the distant horizon--from the north where the waterspout still was--a long groan floated over the water. There was a green line on the black surface of the ocean, dark green flecked with white; it was spreading over the sea, and coming towards them. Luke turned and said one word to the quartermaster. The man went to the wheelhouse and brought out three long black oilskin coats--two for the captain and Luke, the other for himself.
The groan, like that of an animal in pain, was repeated. It seemed farther off. Then a sound like the escape of steam from an engine came apparently from the sky.
Luke said something to the captain, and pointed with his right hand. They consulted together in a whisper, and the captain made a signal to the two steersmen motionless in the wheelhouse. The well-greased chains ran smoothly, and the great black prow of theCroonahcrept slowly round the horizon pointing out to sea, away from the land. Ceylon lay astern of them in the darkness which was almost like night.
The captain and Luke stood side by side on the little bridge, far above the deck. They had exchanged their gold-braided caps for sou’westers. The outline of their black forms was just distinguishable against the sky. They were looking straight ahead into the yellow streaks, out over the flecked sea. And not a breath of wind stirred the leaden atmosphere.
Looking down on the broad decks, it would seem at first that they were deserted, but as the eye became accustomed to the gloom, men standing like shadows could be perceived here and there--at their posts--waiting.
All the skylights had been doubly tarpaulined. Some of them had been strengthened with battens lashed transversely over the canvas. All that mortal brain could devise mortal hand had done. The rest was with God.
The decks were quite dark, for the skylights were covered, even those of the engine-room, and the men at work down there in the stifling heat knew not what the next moment might bring. They had nothing to guide them as to the moment when the hurricane would strike the ship. For the last five minutes they had been holding on to their life-rails with both hands, expecting to be thrown among the machinery at every second.
Still there was no breath of wind. The darkness was less intense. A yellow glow seemed to be behind the cloud.
Then a strange feeling of being drawn upward came to all, and strong men gasped for breath. It was only for a moment. But the sensation was that the air was being sucked up to the sky, leaving a vacuum on the face of the waters.
Suddenly the captain’s voice startled the night, rising trumpet-like above the hiss of the steam.
“Standby!” he cried.
Luke looked down to the lower bridge.
“You had better hold on to something,” he called, and as he spoke the hurricane struck theCroonah. It can only be described as a pushing smack. She rolled slowly over before it, and it seemed that she would never stop.
Who knows? The man is proven by the hour.
The sea seemed to rise up and fall on the disabled ship with a wild fury. There was a strange suggestion of passion in every wave as it crashed over the bulwarks. In the roar of the hurricane there was a faint sound of crackling wood. The deck was at an angle of thirty. The port boats on their davits were invisible; they were under water. If theCroonahrighted quickly those boats would break up like old baskets.
The two men on the lower bridge stood on the uprights of the rail, leaning against the deck as against a wall. The crackling sound like breaking matchwood seemed to come from above. Carr looked up and saw the captain and Luke at the wheel. The wheelhouse had collapsed like a card house; it had simply been blown away, and one of the helmsmen with it. The other was lying huddled up at the lower end of the narrow bridge.
For a moment the darkness lifted and the survivors saw a weird sight. One of the starboard boats, attached to the davit by only one fall, was held by the wind like a flag straight out over the deck. Already two men were clambering to the upper bridge to take the place of the helmsmen who were dead. Relieved from the wheel, Luke dragged himself up to the ladder leading from the upper to the lower deck. A few moments later they saw him cutting with a hatchet at the ropes holding the boat to the davit. There were four, for it was a heavy boat, held by a double block. He cut two at a stroke: the others ran out instantly. The boat disappeared to leeward like a runaway hat, and fell with a splash into the foaming sea.
TheCroonahseemed to feel the relief. She rose a little to windward, but her lee-rail was still under water. Down in the scuppers, in the tangle of ropes and splintered wood, sundry dark forms, looking more like bundles of dirty rags than anything else, rolled and tossed helplessly. These were dead and drowning men. Already the European sailors were at work, some cutting away useless top-hamper, others attempting to drag the terror-stricken Malays to a place of comparative safety. Luke FitzHenry took command of these men, as was his duty, working like one of them, with infinite daring. He could only communicate with his captain by signs, speech being impossible. It was a seaman’s fight. Each man did that which seemed to him expedient for the safety of the ship. TheCroonahwas fully equipped for fine weather--for cleaning brasses and swabbing decks and bending awnings; but for bad weather--notably for a cyclone - she was perilously undermanned. Half of the native crew were paralysed by fear, many were killed, others drowned from a mere incapacity to hold on.
The other officers of the ship had their hands more than full. The doctor was below in the saloon surrounded by a babel of shrieking women and white-faced men; the engineers were on watch at their deadly posts in the heart of the ship.
Carr turned and clambered down the iron ladder to the upper deck. He was half a sailor and quite an Englishman. Moreover he came from Harrow, where they teach a certain bull-dog courage.
Luke, working half blinded by spray and salt water, presently found a strong man working at his side. Together they cut away the submerged boats, standing to their waists in water, at infinite peril of their lives; together they made their way forward to help the chief officer and his devoted gang, who were cutting away the foremast and the wreckage of forward boats.
Through the long hours of the night these dauntless men worked unceasingly, and--incongruous practical details--the stewards brought them food at stated intervals, while two men served out spirits all the while. Slowly, inch by inch, they righted the ship, bringing her stubborn prow gradually into the wind; and all the while the engines throbbed, all the while the grimy stokers shovelled coal into the furnaces, all the while the engineers stood and watched their engines.
Dawn broke on a terrific sea and a falling wind. The night was over and the dread Bay had had her thousand lives and more, for a cyclone simply wipes out the native craft like writing on a slate. TheCroonahhad been right through the corner of the worst cyclone of a generation. Luke crawled back to the bridge where the captain stood, as he had stood all night, motionless. Sheer skill and a great experience had pulled theCroonahthrough.
When the danger was past those who were on deck saw a man in shirt and trousers only, his grey hair ruffled, his clothes glued to his limbs by perspiration, emerge from the bowels of the ship. He came on deck, passed by those who scarce knew him without his gold braid, and slowly climbed the ladder to the bridge. There, in the early morning light, the two men who had saved three hundred lives--the captain and the chief engineer--silently shook hands.
“I had to keep you down there for the safety of the ship,” said the captain gruffly.
“All right, old man, I knew that.”
The old engineer turned and looked fore and aft over the wrecked decks with a curious smile as if he had come back from another world.
While they stood there the saloon doors were opened and a haggard row of faces peered out. A quarter-master held the passengers back, for the decks were unsafe. Railings and bulwarks were gone, boats smashed, awning stanchions twisted and bent. No landsmen could be trusted to move safely amid such confusion.
And all the while the engines throbbed, and theCroonahheld proudly on her course to the north--battered, torn, and sore stricken, yet a victor.
After changing their clothes, Luke and Carr breakfasted together at the after-end of the second officer’s table in the saloon. With a certain humour the captain allowed of no relaxation in the discipline of the ship. The breakfast bell was rung at the usual time, the meal was served with the usual profusion, even the menus were written as carefully as ever; and some good ladies opined that the captain must be a godless man, because forsooth he did not cringe beneath the wing of the passing Angel of Death.
“I am glad I saw that,” said Carr, neat and clean, hearty and smiling as usual.
Luke looked up from a generous plate. He thought that Carr was indulging in bravado, but he relinquished this opinion when he saw the man’s face and his helping of bacon and eggs. Carr seemed to have enjoyed the cyclone, as he had no doubt enjoyed many a game of football in his youth, and many a spin across country later. For this man kept his hunters. He was moved thereto by that form of self-respect which urges some men to live like gentlemen, to, as they express it, “do themselves well,” whether their mere monetary circumstances allow of it or no; and some one usually pays for these philosophers--that is the annoying part of it.
“By gad! I didn’t think it could blow like that, though!” Carr went on, with his mouth full.
“I don’t think it can often,” replied Luke. He could not help liking this man, despite his first prejudice against him. Besides, they had stood shoulder to shoulder, with death around them, and such moments draw differing men together. It is the required touch of Nature, this same death, which frightens us before it comes and seems so gentle when it is here.
“I always wanted to see a cyclone,” went on Carr conversationally, “and now I’m satisfied. I have had enough. I shouldn’t have cared for more. Pass, cyclones!”
“It is not many men who have your laudable thirst for experience,” said Luke. “It is rather a strenuous form of pleasure.”
“Pleasure!” answered Carr, with one of his sharp glances. “Pleasure, be d--d! It’s business, sir, business. I mean to make money out of cyclones.”
“How? Bottle them up and make them turn a windmill?”
“No, sir.”
Carr turned round to make sure that he could not be overheard.
“No, sir. Your idea is not bad in the main, though hardly practicable. No. I know a dodge worth two of that! I told you before that I am in the marine insurance line. Now, the funny part of the marine insurance line is that the majority of the men engaged in it do not know their business. Now I propose to teach these gentlemen their business.”
“Will they thank you for it?” asked Luke.
“They’ll pay me for it, which is better, by a long chalk! Ha, ha! Butter, please.”
“And what have cyclones got to do with it?”
Again one of the sharp glances which sat so strangely on Carr’s open countenance.
“I understand there is a science of cyclones,” he said quietly.
“Yes.”
“Which means that you chaps knew what was coming forty-eight hours ago?”
“Yes,” replied Luke.
“That that steamer flying signals yesterday was talking to you about it?”
“Yes.”
“And that when you got into it you knew exactly whereabout you were in it; where the centre was, and which was the shortest way out of it, to get clear away from the vortex and beyond the axis line, so as not to get into it again?”
“Yes. You’re quite a Fitzroy.”
Carr winked cheerily.
“And all this is a certainty?”
“A dead certainty,” replied Luke. “It is a science.”
Carr laid down his knife and fork.
“Suppose,” he said, “that the next cyclone sends forty ships to kingdom come, and I’ve got a line of five hundred or a thousand insured on every one of them. I’ll study these jolly old cyclones. It will be easy enough to know about when they’ll be coming. When one is about I’ll have a line on every ship at sea between Colombo and Penang--do you see? I’ll get a man on the coast here to watch the weather. When there’s a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal he will wire me home one word, ‘Milksop,’ or ‘Spongecake,’ or something soft and innocent. I’ll do the rest, my boy.”
Luke was only pretending to eat. The desire to make money was strong upon him--as indeed were all his desires--it was almost a passion; for money meant Agatha, and Agatha had grown to be the one absorbing passion of his heart. Agatha had been at the back of the superhuman fight which he had waged all night against death. Agatha was behind Carr’s words. The thought of her was tempting him through the man’s arguments.
“But what will you insure?” he asked.
“Profit,” replied Carr, in a whisper. “It is done every day--policy proof of interest--the fools!”
“What is policy proof of interest?”
“It means that they admit your insurance to be valid, whether you have anything on board the ship or not. It is not legal, but they know it when they sign the policy; and they know that it would ruin them if they refused to pay an ‘honour policy.’ I tell you they don’t know their business and they have no combination. They all distrust each other, and tell lies to each other about their profits and their losses. If I insure profit I have only to say that I shall lose money if the ship does not reach her destination and deliver her cargo safely. The cargo may be mine; I may be buying it or selling it; no one can tell, and the underwriters don’t ask. They pocket their premium, and if they have to pay, and think they have been rooked, they keep it to themselves, because each man is against his neighbour.”
“But do they know nothing about cyclones?” inquired Luke.
“My good sir, they hardly know the difference between Calcutta and Bombay. Half of them think that a cyclone and a monsoon are the same thing, and not one in ten could tell you the difference between a brig and a barquentine.”
Luke gave a little half-convinced laugh. The man was so open and honest that his arguments had nothing underhand or crafty in them.
“It sounds very simple,” he said.
“It is; d--d simple! So are the underwriters; but that is not our business. You see, FitzHenry, in all commerce there are a certain number of fools for the wise men to outwit. In marine insurance there are a large number. All insurance is nothing but a bet, and betting is a matter of intelligence. We bring more intelligence to bear upon it than the other chap, therefore we win.”
He helped himself to marmalade with a jaunty hand. Luke hardly noticed the easy transition from “I” to “we.” He had had no intention of suggesting a partnership in this easy manner of making money, but the partnership seemed to have formed itself.
“But--” Carr paused, holding in the air an emphatic spoon. “But, my boy, we want capital, we want to lay our hands on fifty thousand pounds.”
“I am afraid I could not lay my hand on fifty thousand pence,” said Luke.
Carr glanced at him sharply. There was a little pause while Carr ate marmalade and toast.
“Oh yes, you could,” he said in a low tone. “Between us we could raise fifty thousand as easy as winking.”
As if to demonstrate the facility of the latter, he looked up and closed his left eye confidentially.
“You’re a sailor,” he went on to say, “and a ripping good one at that. You know the perils of the deep, as the parsons say. It wouldn’t be hard for you to tell when theCroonahwas running into a tight place like yesterday. All you have to do is to wire home one word to me. My telegraphic address is ‘Simple, London.’ Say you wire home ‘Milksop.’ We could fix on ‘Milksop’; it sounds so innocent! In twenty-four hours I’d have fifty thousand done on theCroonahin London, Glasgow, Liverpool, New York, Paris, and Germany--spread about, you know. In four or five days theCroonahgoes to the bottom, and we scoop in, your name never appearing--see?”
There was a little pause.
“See?” repeated Carr, in little more than a whisper. Luke looked up. He met Carr’s eyes and knew that he was dealing with a villain. The strange part of it was that he felt no anger. He could not free his mind from the thought of Agatha. There was one corner of the steamer which was almost sacred to him--the little space behind the deckhouse where he had held Agatha in his arms for one moment of intense happiness--where she told him that she could not be poor.
Carr rose and threw down his table napkin with a certain grand air which was his.
“It would be the making of you,” he said. “It is worth thinking about.”
He threw back his shoulders--a trick common enough with strongly built men who incline to stoutness--nodded, and left him. He passed down the length of the saloon, seeking his cigar-case in the pocket of his coat, exchanging loud and hearty greetings with those among the passengers whom he knew. He was popular on account of the open British frankness which he cultivated, and which is supposed to be the outward sign of an honest heart. He seemed to be thinking of his great scheme no longer, but he left Luke to brood over it--to try and chase the word “Milksop” from his brain, where it seemed to be indelibly engraved.
He left Luke to fight against a great temptation alone and heavily handicapped, for Luke FitzHenry was held as in a vice by his passionate love for Agatha. It is not all men who can love. It is only a few who are capable of a deep passion. This is as rare as genius. A man of genius is usually a failure in all except his own special line. The man who can and does love passionately must be a good man indeed if his love do not make a villain of him.
The greater man, the greater courtesy.
The Count de Lloseta and John Craik were sitting together in the editorial room of theCommentator.
It was a quiet room, with double windows and a permanent odour of tobacco smoke. An empty teacup stood on the table by John Craik’s elbow.
“Name of God!” Cipriani de Lloseta had ejaculated when he saw it. “At eleven o’clock in the morning!”
“Must stir the brain up,” was the reply.
“I would not do it with a teaspoon,” De Lloseta had answered, and then he sat down to correct the proof of Eve’s fourth article on “Spain and Spanish Life.”
They had been sitting thus together for half an hour in friendly silence, only broken by an occasional high-class Spanish anathema hurled at the head of the printer.
“A dog’s trade!” ejaculated De Lloseta at last, leaning back and throwing down his pen, “a dog’s trade, my friend!”
“It is mine,” replied Craik, without looking up. In fiction he was celebrated for a certain smartness of dialogue. His printed conversations were pretty displays of social sword-play. It had become a sort of habit with him to thrust and parry quickly; but the sudden smile on his lined face, the kindly glance from behind the spectacles, always took away the sting and demonstrated that it was mere “copy,” to fill up the dull columns of life and throw in a sparkle here and there.
“Have you finished?” he inquired.
“Yes, thank Heaven! I was not intended for a literary calling. That is number four, and I am not paid--I am not paid; there lies the sting.”
“Number four, yes; two published and two in hand,” replied John Craik. His mind was busy elsewhere; it was with the creatures of his own imagination, living their lives, rejoicing with them, sorrowing with them.
The Count rose and walked gravely to the hearthrug, holding the proof-sheets in his hand.
“Number four,” he reiterated. “Will they go on, my friend?”
John Craik looked up sharply.
“No.”
“How many more will you accept?”
“Two more at the outside, making six in all. The public is like a greedy child, it must be stopped before it makes itself sick. Nausea leaves a lasting distaste for that which preceded it.”
The Count nodded.
“And this worldly wisdom--is it the editor or the man who speaks?”
“The editor. The editor is a man who lives by saying ‘No.’”
“And you will say ‘No’ to any more from this--writer’s pen?”
“To any more about Spain I most certainly shall.”
The Count reflected. What little light the London day afforded fell full upon his long narrow face, upon the pointed Velasquez chin, the receding iron-grey hair brushed straight back.
“And the fact that the writer is supporting herself and a worn-out old uncle by her pen will make no difference?”
John Craik hesitated for a moment.
“Not the least,” he then said. “You seem to know the writer.”
“I do, and I am interested in her.”
“A lady?” John Craik was dotting hisi’swith the contemplativeness of artistic finish.
“Essentially so.”
“And poor?”
“Yes, and proud as--”
“A Spaniard,” suggested John Craik.
“If you will. It is a vice which has almost become a virtue in these democratic days.”
John Craik looked up.
“I will do what I can, Lloseta,” he said. “But she is not a great writer, and will never become one.”
“I know that. Some day she will become a great lady, or I know nothing of them.”
Craik was still busy touching up his manuscript.
“I have never seen her,” he said. “But the impression I received from her manuscripts is that she is a girl who has lived a simple life among a simple people. She has seen a great deal of nature, out-of-door nature, which is pure, and cannot be too deeply studied. She has seen very little of human nature, which is not so pure as it might be. That is her chief charm of style, a high-minded purity. She does not describe the gutter and think she is writing of the street. By the way, I am expecting her here” (he paused, and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece) “in exactly two minutes.”
The Count rose quickly and took his hat. As he extended his hand to say “Good-bye” there was a rap at the door. The discreet youth who told John Craik’s falsehoods for him came in and handed his master a slip of paper with a name written thereon.
Craik read the inscription, crumpled up the paper, and threw it into the waste-paper basket.
“In one minute,” he said, and the liar withdrew.
Cipriani de Lloseta, with a quiet deliberation which was sometimes almost dramatic, stooped over the paper basket and recovered the crumpled slip of paper. He did not unfold it, but held it out, crushed up in his closed fist.
“Miss Eve Challoner,” he said.
John Craik nodded.
De Lloseta laughed and threw the paper into the fire.
“I must not be seen. Where do you propose to put me?”
“Go upstairs instead of down,” replied John Craik, as if he had been asked the same question before. “Wait on the next landing until you hear this door close; you may then escape in safety.”
“Thanks--good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
When Eve entered the room, John Craik was writing. He rose with a bow savouring of a politer age than ours, and held out his hand.
“At last,” he said, “I have prevailed upon you to come and see me. Will you sit down? The chair is shabby, but great men and women have sat in it.”
He spoke pleasantly, with his twisted laugh, and when Eve was seated he sat slowly, carefully down again. He was thinking not so much of what he was saying as of his hearer. He saw that Eve was undeniably beautiful--the man saw that. The novelist saw that she was probably interesting. As he had just stated, great women had sat in the same chair, and it was John Craik’s impulse to save Eve from that same greatness. He had, since a brilliant youth at Oxford, been steeped, as it were, in literature. He had known all the great men and women, and he held strong views of his own. These were probably erroneous--many women will think so--but he held to them. They were based on experience, which is not always the case with views expressed in print and elsewhere. John Craik held that greatness is not good for women. That it is not for their own happiness, he knew. That it is not for the happiness of those around them, he keenly suspected. Some of Eve’s celebrated predecessors in that chair had not quite understood John Craik. All thought that he was not sufficiently impressed--not, that is, so impressed by them as they were themselves when they reflected upon their own renown.
He looked at Eve quickly, rubbing his hands together.
“May I, as an old man, ask some impertinent questions?” he inquired, with a cheerfulness which sat strangely on the wan face.
“Yes.”
“Why do you write?” he said. “Take time; answer me after reflection.”
Eve reflected while the great editor stared into the fire.
“To make money,” she answered at last.
He looked up, and saw that she was answering in simple good faith.
“That is right.”
He did not tell her that he was sick and tired of the jargon of art for art’s sake, literature for literature’s sake. He did not tell that--practical man of the world that he was--he had no faith in literary art; that he believed the power of writing to be a gift and nothing else; that the chief art in literature is that which is unconscious of itself.
“Do you feel within yourself the makings of a great author?”
Eve laughed, a sudden girlish laugh, which made John Craik reduce his estimate of her age by five years.
“No,” she answered.
He sat up and looked at her with a kind admiration.
“You are refreshing,” he said, “very, especially to a man who has seen stout and elderly females sit in that same chair and state their conviction that they were destined to be George Eliots or Charlotte Brontës, women who had written one improper or irreligious novel, which had obtained a certain success in the foolish circles.”
“Do you think I have,” asked Eve, “the--the makings of an income?”
John Craik reflected.
“A small one,” he said bluntly.
“That is all I want.”
Craik raised his eyebrows.
“And renown,” he said, “do you want that?”
“Not in the least, except for its intrinsic value.”
Craik banged his hand down on the arm of his chair and laughed aloud.
“This is splendid!” he cried. “I have never met such a practical person. Then you would be content to work for a sufficient income without ever being known to the world?”
“Yes, provided that the work was genuine and not given to me out of mere charity.”
The editor of theCommentatorlooked at her gravely. He had suddenly remembered Cipriani de Lloseta.
“Oh, you are proud!” he said.
Eve laughed with a negative shake of the head.
“Not more than other people,” she answered.
“Not more than other people. Well, we will have it so. And not ambitious.”
“No, I think not.”
“You may thank God for that,” said John Craik, half to himself. “An ambitious woman is not a pleasant person.”
There was a little pause, during which John Craik rubbed his chin reflectively with his bony fingers.
“And now,” he said, “that I know something about you, I will tell you why I asked you to be good enough to come and see me. To begin with, I am an old man; you can see that for yourself. I am a martyr to rheumatism, and I frequently suffer from asthma, otherwise I should have done myself the pleasure of calling on you. I wanted to see you, because lady authors are uncertain creatures. A large majority of them have nothing better to do, and therefore write. Others do not care for the money, but they do most decidedly for the renown. The nudge and whisper of society is nectar to them. Others again are brilliant in flashes and dull in long periods. Few, very few are content to work with their pen as their poorer sisters are forced to work with their needles. In that lies the secret of the more permanent success of men journalists and men authors. The journalism and the authorship are not the men, but merely the business of their lives. Now will you be content to work hard and steadily without any great hope of renown--to work, in fact, anonymously for a small but certain income?”
“Yes,” answered Eve, without hesitation.
Craik nodded his head gravely and thoughtfully. He was too deeply experienced to fall into the error of thinking that Eve was different from other women. He did not for a moment imagine that he had secured in her a permanent subscriber to theCommentator--possibly he did not want her as such. He was merely doing a good deed--no new thing to him, although his right hand hardly knew what his left was doing. He liked Eve, he admired her, and was interested in her. Cipriani de Lloseta he was deeply interested in, and he knew, with the keen instinct of the novelist, that he was being drawn into one of those romances of real life which exists in the matter-of-fact nineteenth century atmosphere that we breathe.
So Eve Challoner left John Craik’s office an independent woman for the time being, and the charity was so deeply hidden that her ever-combative pride had failed to detect it.