CHAPTER XVI. BROKEN.

The Powers

Behind the world that make our griefs our gains.

The small town of Somarsh, in Suffolk, consists of one street running

up from the so-called harbour. At one end is the railway-station; at

the other the harbour and the sea, and that is Somarsh. There are

records that in days gone by--in the days of east coast

prosperity--there was a Mayor of Somarsh, or Southmarsh, as it was then

written. But Ichabod!

All Somarsh was in the street one morning after Fitz had gone to sea

again, and those of the women who were not talking loudly were weeping

softly. The boats were not in yet, but the weather was fine, and the

still, saffron sea was dotted with brown sails. There was nothing

wrong with the boats.

No; the trouble was on shore, as it mostly is. It came not from the

sea, but from men. It was pinned upon the door of Merton's Bank in the

High Street. Its form was unintelligible, for the wording of the

notice was mostly outside the Suffolk vocabulary. There was something

written in a clerkly hand about the withdrawal of "financial facilities

necessitating a stoppage of payment pending reconstruction."

But the people in the street were saying that Merton's was "broke." The

constable said so, and he was a recognised authority on matters

pertaining to dry land and the law. The door was locked on the inside,

the shutters were up, the blinds down, as if mourning the death of a

good East county credit.

"And them a drivin' behind their two horses," said one old

weather-beaten fisherman, who was suspected of voting on the wrong side

at electioneering time.

Some shook their heads, but the word went no farther, for the man who

does his business on the great waters has a vast respect for ancient

institutions. And Merton's had been a good bank for many generations.

"P'raps," said an old woman who had nothing to lose--for the sea had

even kept her corpses from her--"p'raps what they say 'bout

reconstruction may be all right. But here comes the capt'n."

The crowd turned like one man and watched the advent of Captain Bontnor.

The old man was dressed in his best pilot cloth suit. He had worn it

quite recklessly for the last month, ever since Eve had come to live

with him. He had been interrupted in his morning walk--his

quarter-deck tramp--forty times the length of his own railing in front

of Malabar Cottage. The postman bringing letters for Eve, had told him

that there was trouble down in the town, and that he would likely be

wanted.

When he saw where the crowd was stationed he caught his breath.

"No," he said aloud to himself, "no, it can't be Merton's."

And when he joined the townspeople they saw that his sunburnt, rugged

face was grey as ashes.

"Mates," he said, "what is it?"

"Merton's is broke--Merton's is broke!" they answered, clearing a way

for him to read the notice for himself. In Somarsh Captain Bontnor was

considered quite a scholar. As such he might, perhaps, have deciphered

the clerkly handwriting in a shorter time than he now required, but on

the east coast a reputation is not easily shaken.

They waited for the verdict in silence. After five minutes he turned

round and his face gave some of them a shock. His kindly blue eyes had

a painfully puzzled, incompetent look, which had often come across them

in Barcelona and in London. But in Somarsh only Eve was familiar with

it.

"Yes, mates," he said, falling back into his old seafaring vernacular,

forgetful of his best suit, "yes, shipmates, as far as I rightly

understand it, the bank's broken. And--and there's some of us that's

ruined men."

He stood for a moment looking straight in front of him--looking very

old and not quite fit for life's battle. Then he moved away.

"I'll just go and tell my niece," he said.

They watched him stump away--sturdy, unbroken, upright--still a man.

"It's a hard end to a hard life," said the old woman who had suggested

hope; and being only human, they fell to discussing the event from the

point at which it affected their own lives.

Malabar Cottage stood at the top end of the High Street--almost by

itself--looking out over the little green plot of common land, where

the coastguard flagpost stands towards the sea. It was a low-roofed,

solidly built cottage--once a coastguard station, but superseded in the

heyday of east coast smuggling by a larger station further up the hill.

There was a little garden in front, which the captain kept himself,

growing such old-fashioned flowers as were content with his ignorant

handling. The white jasmine ran riot over the portico.

Eve had apparently received a letter of some importance, for she was

standing at the gate waiting for him. She ran out hatless to see him

on his quarter-deck, and to her surprise found him not. She soon saw

him coming, however, and to beguile the time fell to reading her letter

a second time, with a little frown, as if the caligraphy gave her

trouble.

She did not look up until he was quite close.

"Uncle," she cried, "what is the matter?"

He gave a smile, which was painfully out of place on his bluff

features--it was wan and twisted.

"Nothing, my dearie; nothing."

He fumbled at the gate, and she had to find the latch for him.

"Just come below--I mean indoors, my dear. I've had some news. I dare

say it will be all right--but just at first, you understand, it is a

little--keen."

He bustled through the porch, and Eve followed him. She watched him

hang up his old straw hat, standing on tiptoe with a grunt, as was his

wont.

"I must unship that peg and put it a bit lower," he said, as he had

said a hundred times before.

Then he went into the little dining-room and sat somewhat heavily down,

with his two hands resting on his knees. He looked puzzled.

"Truth is, my dear," he said breathlessly, "I don't seem to take to

this long-shore life. I--I rather think of going back to sea. There's

plenty will give me a ship. And I want you to keep this cottage nice

for me, dearie, against my coming home."

He paused, looking round the room with a poor simulation of interest at

the quaint ornaments and curiosities which he had brought home from

different parts of the world. He looked at the ceiling and the

carpet--anywhere, in fact, except at Eve. Then he pushed his fingers

through his thick grey hair, making it stand on end in a ludicrous

manner.

"I've got all my bits of things collected here--just bits of

things--oh, dear!--oh, dear--Eve, my child, I wonder why the Almighty's

gone and done this?"

Eve was already sitting on the arm of his chair, stroking back his hair

with her tender fingers.

"What is it, uncle?" she asked. "Tell me."

"Merton's," he answered. "Merton's, and them so safe!"

"Is it only money?" cried Eve. "Is that all?"

"Yes," he answered rather wearily, "that's all. But it's money that's

took me fifty-five years to make."

"And had you it all in Merton's Bank?"

"Yes, dearie, all."

"But are you sure they have failed--that there is no mistake?"

"Quite sure. I've read it myself pinned on the door, and the shutters

up, like a thing you read of in the newspapers. No, it's right.

There's not often a mistake about bad news."

Eve bent over him very tenderly and kissed him. He was holding her

hand between his, patting it gently with his rough, weather-beaten

fingers. He was looking straight in front of him with that painful

look of helplessness which had earned him the friendship of Lord

Seahampton in Barcelona.

"But," said the girl at length, "you cannot go to sea again."

She knew that he would never get a ship, for his seamanship, like all

other things that were his, was hopelessly superannuated. He was not

fit to be trusted with a ship--no owner would dream of it, no crew

would sail under him.

"There's men," said the captain humbly, "who learnt their seamanship

from me--who sailed under me--p'raps one of them would give me a berth

as first mate or even second mate under him--for a shipmate they would

do it."

Captain Bontnor had fallen behind the times even in his sentiments. He

did not know that in these days of short voyages, of Seamen's Unions,

and Firemen's Friendlies and Stokers' Guilds, a shipmate is no longer a

special friend--the tie is broken, as are many other ties, by the

advance of education.

Then the old man pulled himself together, and smiled bravely at his

niece.

"It is not for myself that I'm worrying," he said, "but for you. I

don't quite see my way clear yet. It's sort of sharp and sudden. I

cannot get the poor Mertons out of my head--people that have been

accustomed to their carriages and all. It's hard for them! You see,

what they say is that their financial facilities have been withdrawn,

and I dare say nobody is to blame. It is just what they call the hand

of God, in a bill of lading--just the hand of God."

"Yes, dear," answered Eve. "And now I am going to serve out a glass of

sherry; you want it after your quick walk. That is what you did at

sea, you served it out, did you not?"

"He, he! yes, dearie; that is it."

His rugged hand shook as he drank the wine.

"Only," he went on, after wiping his moustache vigorously with a red

pocket-handkerchief--"only it was rum, dearie--rum, you know, for heavy

weather. It puts heart into the men."

His face suddenly clouded over again.

"And we've run into heavy weather, haven't we? Just the hand of God."

"Finish the glass," said Eve, and she stood over him while he drank the

wine.

"And now," she went on, "listen to me. I have had a very important

letter, which could hardly have come at a more opportune moment. In

fact, I think we may call it also . . . what they say in a bill of

lading."

She opened the letter, as if about to read it aloud, and on glancing

through she seemed to change her mind.

"It is from Mrs. Harrington," she said. "It is a very kind letter."

She looked at her uncle, whose face had suddenly hardened. He seemed

to be schooling himself to hear something unpleasant.

"Ay!" he muttered, "ay! I suppose she'll get her way now. I suppose I

can't hope to keep you now. She'll get you--she'll get you."

"Then I think you are a very mean old man!" exclaimed Eve. "I don't

believe you are a sailor at all. You are what you call a land-lubber,

if you think that I am the sort of person to accept your kindness when

you are prosperous, and then--and then when heavy weather comes to go

away and leave you."

The old man smiled rather wanly, and fumbled with the red

pocket-handkerchief.

"As it happens, Mrs. Harrington does not ask me to go and stay with

her--she asks me--" She paused and laid her hand on his shoulder

gently. "She asks me--to accept money."

Captain Bontnor sat upright.

"Ay-y-y," he said, "charity."

"Yes," said Eve quietly, "charity; and I'm going to accept it."

Captain Bontnor scratched his head. His manners were not, as has

already been stated, remarkable for artificiality or superficial

refinement. He screwed up his features as if he were swallowing

something nasty.

"Read me the letter," he said.

Eve opened the missive again, and looked at it.

"She puts it very nicely," she said. "She asks if you will permit me

to accept a dress allowance from a rich woman who does not always spend

her money discreetly."

It must be admitted that Mrs. Harrington's nice way of putting it lost

nothing by its transmission through Eve's lips.

Thus poor Charity creeps in wherever she can shelter. She is not

proud. She does not ask to be accepted for her own sake; though Heaven

knows she frequently is. She masquerades in any costume--she accepts

the humiliation of any disguise. She is ready to be cast down before

swine, or raised high before the eyes of fools. She is used as a tool

or a stepping-stone--the humble handmaid of the tuft-hunter and the

toady. She is dragged through the mire of the slums to the dwellings

of the wealthy and idle. She is hounded up and down the world--the

plaything of Fashion, the trap of the unwary, the washerwoman of the

unclean who wish to try the paths of virtue--for a change. And she is

still Charity, and she lives strong and pure in herself. It has been

decreed that we shall ever have the poor beside us, and so long shall

we also possess those who live on them.

Charity begetteth charity, and it was for Charity's sake that Eve

Challoner took the bitter bread to herself, and accepted Mrs.

Harrington's offer.

Her own pride lay between her and this woman whom she knew to be

capricious, uncertain, lacking the quality of justice. Her duty

towards Captain Bontnor lay between her and high Heaven.

So Eve Challoner learnt her first lesson in that school where we all

are called to study sooner or later--the school of Adversity; where

some of us pass creditably, whilst others are ploughed, and a few--a

very few--take honours.

BOOK THE SECOND.

CHAPTER I. BITS OF LIFE.

Some far-off touch

Of greatness, to know well I am not great.

The local house-agent anticipated no difficulty in letting Malabar

Cottage, furnished, at a good weekly rental; and in due course a dreamy

clergyman, with a wife who was anything but dreamy, came and saw and

hired. The wide-awake wife was so interested in Eve that she forgot to

settle several details which came to her mind afterwards. Her

curiosity was so aroused that the special cupidity belonging to the

wife of the dreamy clergyman was for the moment allayed, and she forgot

to drive a hard bargain.

Moreover, Eve's manner was not exactly encouraging to the would-be

bargainer. A stupendous ignorance of the tricks of furnished

house-letting, combined with a certain lofty contempt for details,

acquired in Spain, where such contempt is thoroughly understood,

completely baffled the clergyman's wife. She concluded that Eve was a

very stupid and ignorant girl, a poor housekeeper, and an incompetent

woman of the world; and yet she was afraid of her, simply because she

did not understand her. Jews, poor men's wives, and other persons who

live by haggling, have a subtle fear of those who will not haggle.

So Malabar Cottage was let; and in due time the sad day arrived when

Captain Bontnor had to bid farewell to his "bits of things." These

"bits of things" were in reality bits of his life--and a human life is

not so long nor so interesting an affair that we can afford lightly to

break off any portion, to throw it away, or even to let it out on hire.

Captain Bontnor wandered rather disconsolately round the rooms after

breakfast, and as Eve was with him he gave her a short inventory of

these pieces of his life.

"That there harpoon," he said, pointing to a rusty relic on the wall

above the mantelpiece, "was given to me by the finest whaling captain

that ever found his way into the North water. When I first went to sea

I thought I'd like to be a whaler; but two voyages settled that fancy.

I'm told they shoot their harpoons out of a gun nowadays--poor sport

that! And there's no sport like whalin'. Two thousand pounds at one

end of a line and your own life at the other--that's finer sport than

these Cockney partridge-shooters know of.

"And that's my seal-pick--many a seal have I killed with that. That

there's the portrait of the True Love, three-masted schooner, built at

Littlehampton by Harvey. Sailed second mate, first mate, and master in

her, I did. Then she was sold; and a lubber went and--and threw her on

the Kentish Knock in a south-easterly gale. She was a pretty ship! I

felt the loss as if she'd been my sweetheart--the pretty little True

Love!

"That string of shells was given to me by a shipmate--old Charlie

Sams--to bring home for his wife. He picked 'em up on the beach above

James Town. Took yellow Jack, he did, and died in my arms--and he only

had the shells to send to his young wife and a bit of a baby he was

always botherin' and talkin' about. I did two cross voyages, and one

of them round the Horn, before I got home, and I couldn't find the

woman, she having moved. So when I left the sea, I just hung them up

in case she happened to come along by chance and see them with his

portrait underneath. That's Charlie Sams--a bit brown and faded. She

won't come along now, I suppose. It is a matter of fifty-five years

since Charlie died."

As he wandered round the house, so he wandered on in his reminiscences,

until Eve led him out of the front door. He took his hat from the peg

which he had been intending to unship and refix at a lower level for

the last fifteen years, and followed her meekly into the garden. He

paused to pick up some yellow jasmine leaves which had withered in the

warmth of the May sun and fallen on the doorstep. Then he looked back

longingly.

"You see," said Eve cheerfully, "it is only for a few months. We can

always let it in the summer like this, and live luxuriously on our rent

in the winter."

He threw back his shoulders and smiled bravely, trying to banish the

thought of his "bits of things."

"Yes, dearie, it's only for a few months--only for a few months."

And they both knew that they could not hope to live in Malabar Cottage

again--not, at all events, on the rent paid by the clergyman's wife.

They had taken lodgings in a small house near the harbour, which, as

Eve pointed out, was much more convenient for the shops; and, besides,

they could now buy their fish out of the boats. This last theory she

propounded with a grave assumption of housekeeping knowledge which did

not fail to impress Captain Bontnor.

The whole town knew of the captain's misfortune, and half the citizens

of Somarsh shared in it. Only those who had saved nothing lost

nothing, for Merton's was the only bank on the coast; and more than one

old fisherman--bent with rheumatism, crippled by the hardships of a

life spent half in the water, half on it--saw his savings--the fruit of

long toilsome years--go to pay the London tradesmen a part of what

young Merton owed them. It was the old, oft-repeated tale of

over-education. A country banker's son sent to public school and

university to be educated out of country banking and into nothing else.

Captain Bontnor was quite penniless. During his long life he had saved

nearly four thousand pounds, and this sum he had placed on deposit with

the Somarsh bankers, living very comfortably on the interest. The

whole of this was absorbed--a mere drop in the financial ocean.

Mrs. Harrington had asked Eve to accept a dress allowance of forty

pounds a year, and Eve accepted--for her uncle. Besides this she had a

little ready money--the result of the sale of the contents of the Casa

d'Erraha. A person who looked like a butler or a major-domo had gone

over from Barcelona to Palma to attend this sale; and the local buyers

laughed immoderately at him in their sleeves. He was, they opined, a

mule--he did not know the value of things, and paid double for all he

bought.

But the proceeds of the sale did not amount to much. Eve knew that

something must be done. The money would soon be exhausted, and they

could not live on the dress allowance. Since the failure of the bank,

Captain Bontnor's mental grasp had seemed less reliable than ever, and

Eve had kept these things to herself.

The captain's one servant--an aged female--who ruined his digestion and

neglected her dusting, was prevailed upon to return to her people, and

Eve and her uncle settled down to their restricted life in the lodgings

which were so conveniently near the fishing harbour.

The captain was too old to break off his habits of life, so he walked

his quarter-deck tramp, backwards and forwards beneath the window on

the clean pavement of the High Street, which broadened out to the

harbour. He went down to meet the boats, where he was ever a welcome

onlooker, and he never came back without fish for which no payment had

been taken.

He usually met the postman when he was keeping his watch on

deck--beneath the little bay-window--and if there was a letter for Eve,

he would pause in front of the house, and hand it through the open sash.

He did this one morning after they had been in the lodgings a month,

and he had not added two turns to the regulation forty before Eve

called to him. He bustled in at the door, hung his old straw hat on a

peg, which was likewise too high, and went into the little parlour. As

he was smoking, he stood in the doorway, for he had not yet got over

his immense respect for the niece who was above him.

"Yes, dearie?" he said. "What to do now?"

Eve was standing near the window, holding a letter in her hand.

"Listen!" she said, and spreading out her elbows she read grandly--

"'MADAM,--I like your Spanish Notes and Sketches; but I cannot put in

number one until I see number two. Send me more, or, better still, if

convenient, when you are next in town, do me the honour of calling

here.--Yours very truly--'

"Now listen, uncle."

"Yes, dear!"

"'Yours very truly,

"'JOHN CRAIK.'"

"Lor!" ejaculated Captain Bontnor, "the gentleman that writes."

Eve handed him the letter, which he held, awestruck, with the tip of

his thumb and finger.

"He doesn't write very well--he, he!" he added, with a chuckle. "I'm

afraid it's no good my trying to read it without my glasses."

He blinked at the crabbed spidery caligraphy, and handed the letter

back.

"It is signed John Craik, but Providence held the pen," said Eve. "If

this letter had not come I should have had to leave you, uncle. I

should have had to go and be a governess. And I do not want to leave

you."

The old man's eyes filled suddenly, as old eyes sometimes will. He

stuffed his pipe into his pocket and took her two hands in his, patting

them tenderly.

He did not speak for some time, but stood blinking back the tears.

"Then God bless John Craik!" he said. "God bless him."

They sat down to talk this thing over, forgetful of the captain's pipe,

which burnt a hole in the lining of his coat. There was so much to be

discussed. Eve had written a certain number of short essays--painfully

conscious all the while of their simplicity and faultiness. She did

not know that so long as a person has his subject at his finger-ends,

simplicity is rather to be commended than otherwise. It is the

half-informed who are verbose. She had written simply of the simple

life which she knew so well. She had depicted Spanish daily life from

the keenly instinctive standpoint of a woman's observation; and only a

week before she had sent a single essay--marked number one--to the

editor of the Commentator, John Craik.

She had written for money, and made no disguise of her motive. Here

was no literary lady with all the recognised adjuncts except the

literature. She did not write in order that she might talk of having

written. She did not talk in such flowing periods and with such

overbearing wisdom that insincere friends in sheer weariness were

called upon to suggest that she should and could write.

In sending her first small attempt to John Craik she had not forwarded

therewith a long explanatory letter, which reticence had made him read

the manuscript.

Eve read the great man's letter a second time, while the captain

scratched his head and watched her.

"And," he said meekly, "what do you think of doing?"

Eve looked up with a happy smile.

"What he tells me," she answered. "Oh, I am so glad, uncle; I cannot

tell you how glad I am."

The captain shuffled awkwardly on his feet.

"I'm more than glad," he said. "I'm sorter proud."

He pulled down his coat and walked to the window.

"Yes," he said, looking out into the street. "That's it. I'm proud.

It's a great gift--writin'. A great gift."

Eve laughed.

"Oh!" she answered. "I'm afraid that I have no gift. It is a very,

very minute talent. That is all. I always liked books, but I have not

the gift for writing them."

Captain Bontnor never thought Eve was a great authoress. In his simple

way this man had a vast deal of discrimination, as simple people often

have. It is the oversubtle man who makes the most egregious mistakes,

because most of us have not time to be subtle. He never suspected Eve

of being a great authoress, and he never attributed to her any desire

to attain that doubtful pinnacle of fame. But he saw very plainly the

immense advantage to be gathered in this time from her talent. In his

simplicity he hoped that something would turn up for him to do, in a

world which has no pity nor charity for that which is old, effete, and

out of fashion.

"Yes," he said, after deep thought, "we must do what he tells us.

There's no harm in that."

Eve laughed.

"I thought," she said, "that we understood pride in Spain and Mallorca;

but I have never met such a proud caballero as you."

She was standing behind him where he stood, looking grimly out of the

window, her two hands resting on his broad shoulders.

"I suppose," she went on, "that you have once or twice humbled your

pride so much as to accept a ship when it was offered you. You said

that there are plenty who would give you a command now. John Craik is

giving me a ship, that is all."

The captain nodded.

"Yes," he said, "that's it, that's it. You've got your first ship."

CHAPTER II. A COMPACT.

Prends moy tel que je suy.

The tendency of the age is to peep behind the scenes. The world is

growing old, and human nature is nearly worn through; we are beginning

to see the bare bones of it. But a strange survival of youthfulness is

that remarkable fascination of the unseen--the desire to get behind the

scenes and see the powder for ourselves. If a man makes his livelihood

by lifting horses and other heavy objects from the earth, we

immediately wish to know details of his private life, and an obliging

journalist interviews him. If another write a book, we immediately

wish to know how he does it, where, when, and why. We also like to see

his portrait on the fly-leaf--or HE likes to see it there.

Eve Challoner was lamentably behind the spirit of the age in that she

did not know how she wrote a series of articles destined to attain

renown. But as she never went out to meet the interviewer, he never

came to her. She fell into a habit of going out for long walks by

herself, and in the course of these peregrinations she naturally

acquired the custom of thinking about her writing.

During these long walks Captain Bontnor remained at home alone, or

joined a knot of fellow-mariners on the green in front of the

reading-room. When Eve came home with her mind full of matter to be

set down on paper he discreetly went to keep his watch on

deck--backwards and forwards on the pavement in front of the window.

At each turn the old sailor paused to cast his eyes over the whole

horizon, after the manner of mariners, as if he were steering Somarsh

across the North Sea.

Thus uncle and niece glided imperceptibly into that mode of life which

is called humdrum, and which some wise people consider the best mode of

getting through existence. Sketch number two was written, rewritten,

liked, hated, and finally sent to John Craik, with a letter explaining

that the writer lived in Suffolk, and could not for the moment make it

convenient to go to London. John Craik was a busy man. He made no

answer, and in a few days the proof of sketch number one arrived, with

a little printed notice of instructions as to correcting and returning.

Of all fleeting glamours that of the proof-sheet is assuredly lightest

on the wing, and Eve duly hated her own works in print, as we all do

hate our first triumphs. Afterwards we get resigned--much as we grow

resigned to the face we see in the looking-glass.

At this time Captain Bontnor conceived the idea that it was incumbent

upon him to take up seriously, though late in life, the higher walks of

literature.

"Now," he said to Eve one evening, when the first proof had been almost

wept over, "now, dearie, what author would you recommend to a man who

has a natural likin' for reading, but owing to the circumstances of his

life has had no opportunity of cultivatin' his taste?"

"Well, uncle, a good deal would depend upon his inclination--whether he

liked poetry or fiction, or serious reading."

"Of course, of course," acceded Captain Bontnor, pressing the tobacco

into his pipe with his thumb; "I am taking that into consideration.

There's all sorts to be had now, ain't there--poetry and fiction and

novels? I am not sure that the style would matter much, so long--so

long as the print was nice and clear."

Eve duly gave her opinion without pressing the question too closely,

and while she was out on her long walks Captain Bontnor laboriously

cultivated his neglected taste. He sat in the window-seat with much

gravity, and more than made up in application for the youthful

quickness which he lacked. He resolutely refused to look up from his

book when he heard the alternate thud and stump which announced the

passage down to the harbour of his particular crony, Mark Standon,

whose other leg had been buried at sea. He kept the dictionary beside

him, and when the writer used a word of sonorous ring and obscure

meaning he gravely looked it out.

The first time that Mr. Standon saw his friend thus engaged he stood on

the pavement and expressed his surprise with more force than elegance;

whereupon Captain Bontnor went out and explained to him exactly how it

stood. So marked was the old sailor's influence on the social affairs

at Somarsh that there was a notable revival of literary taste and

discussion at the corner of the Lifeboat House, where the local

intellect assembled.

Captain Bontnor was engaged one day in the study of an author called

Dickens, to whose works he had not yet found time to devote his full

attention, when a strange footstep on the pavement made him look up. It

certainly was not Standon's halting gait, and a lack of iron nail

certified to the fact that it was no Somarsh man. The captain looked

over his spectacles and saw Cipriani de Lloseta studying the numbers on

the doors as he came down the quiet little street.

The sight gave the old sailor rather a shock. He abandoned the study

of Mr. Dickens and took off his spectacles. Then he scratched his

head--always an ominous sign. His first instinct was to go and open

the door; then he remembered that the new-comer was a nobleman who

lived in a palace, and that he himself was indirectly a gentleman,

inasmuch as he lived in the same house as a lady--his niece. So he sat

still and allowed the landlady to open the door.

When Cipriani de Lloseta was ushered into the tiny room he found the

captain half-bowing on the hearthrug.

"Captain Bontnor," he said, with all the charm of manner which was his,

"this is a pleasure."

The captain shook hands, and with the rough hospitality of the cabin

drew forward his own armchair, which the Count took at once.

"When last we met," he said, "I had the privilege of receiving you at

my house in Barcelona--a poor dark place in a narrow street. Now here

you have a sea-view."

"But this is not my house," said Captain Bontnor, feeling unaccountably

at ease with this nobleman. "Malabar Cottage is farther up the hill.

I've got all my bits of things up there."

"Indeed. It would have given me pleasure to see them. I learnt from a

mutual--friend, Mrs. Harrington, of your change of address."

Captain Bontnor looked at him keenly; and who shall say that the rough

old man did not appreciate the refined tact of his visitor?

"I've had losses," he said.

The Count nodded shortly. He was drawing off his gloves.

"I do not know," he said conversationally, "if it has been your

experience, but for myself I have found that reverses of fortune are

not without some small consolation. They prove the friendship of one's

friends."

The captain reflected.

"Yes," he said, "you're right, Mr.--I mean Count--and--and brings the

good out of women."

"Women!" the Count repeated gravely. "You refer to Miss Challoner--I

see signs of her presence in this room. Is she out?"

"Yes--I am afraid she is." He glanced nervously at the clock. "She is

not likely to be in for an hour and more yet."

"I am sorry," said the Count; "but also I am rather glad. I shall thus

have an opportunity of asking your opinion upon one or two

matters--between men of the world, you know."

"I am afraid my opinion is not of much value, sir, except it's about

schooners--I always sailed in schooners."

The Count nodded gravely.

"In my country," he said, "we usually go in for brigs; they find them

easier to handle. But you know Mallorca--you have seen for yourself."

The captain was not listening; he was looking at the modest

lodging-house sideboard.

"I was wondering," he explained, with a transparent simplicity which

was perhaps as good as that which is called good breeding, "whether you

would take a glass of sherry wine."

"I should like nothing better," said the Count. "It will give me

pleasure to take a glass of wine with you."

Quietly, imperceptibly, De Lloseta set Captain Bontnor at his ease, and

at the same time he mastered him. They spoke of indifferent

topics--topics which, however, were well within the captain's knowledge

of the world. Then suddenly the Count laid aside the social mask which

he wore with such consummate ease.

"I came down to Somarsh," he said, "because I am deeply distressed at

your reverse of fortune. I came to see you, captain, because when I

had the pleasure of meeting you at Barcelona I saw you to be a just

man, and one to whom one could speak openly. I am a rich man--you

understand. Need I say more?"

Captain Bontnor blinked uncertainly.

"No," he answered, "I'm thinkin' it isn't necessary."

"Not between men of the world," urged Cipriani de Lloseta. "It is not

for your sake. I would not insult you in such a way. It is for Eve.

For a woman's sake a man may easily sacrifice his pride."

The captain nodded and glanced at the clock. He had not fully realised

until that moment how dependent he was upon his niece.

"You know," continued the Count, following up his advantage, "all the

somewhat peculiar circumstances of the case. Do you think there is any

chance of Eve's reconsidering her decision?"

The captain shook his head.

"No," he answered bluntly, "I don't. Since she came back from

London--" he paused.

"Yes, since she came back from London?" suggested the Count.

"She seems more determined than ever."

The Count was looking at him keenly.

"Then," he said, "you also have noticed a change."

Captain Bontnor shuffled in his seat and likewise in his speech.

"I suppose," he said, "that she has grown into a woman. Adversity's

done it."

"Yes," said the Count, "your observations seem to me to be correct. I

had the pleasure of seeing her once or twice when she was staying at

Mrs. Harrington's; but I did not refer to the question raised at my

house in Barcelona, because I noticed the change to which you allude.

Instead, I attempted to gain the co-operation and assistance of a

mutual friend, Henry FitzHenry."

Cipriani de Lloseta paused and looked at his companion, who in turn

gazed stolidly at the fire.

"And I received a rebuff," added the Count. He waited for some little

time, but Captain Bontnor had no comment to offer, so De Lloseta went

on: "Challoner was one of my best friends. I do not feel disposed to

let the matter drop, more especially now that you have been compelled

to leave Malabar Cottage. I propose entreating Miss Challoner to

reconsider her decision. Will you help me?"

"Yes," answered Captain Bontnor, "I will."

"Then tell me if Eve has accepted assistance from Mrs. Harrington?"

"Yes, she has."

The Count swore softly in Spanish.

"I am sorry for that," he said aloud. "I am superstitious. I have a

theory that Mrs. Harrington's money is apt to be a curse to those upon

whom it is bestowed."

"Mrs. Harrington's no friend of mine," said Captain Bontnor; and De

Lloseta, who was looking out of the window, smiled somewhat grimly.

"Perhaps," he said after a little pause, "perhaps you will allow me to

claim the privilege which you deny to her?"

"Yes," answered Captain Bontnor awkwardly; "yes, if you care to."

"Thanks. I see Miss Challoner--Eve--coming. I count on your

assistance."

Eve paused on the threshold in astonishment at the sight of the Count

de Lloseta and her uncle in grave discourse over a glass of sherry.

"You!" she said. "You here!"

And he wondered why she suddenly lost colour.

"I," he answered, "I--here to pay my respects."

Eve gave a little gasp of relief. For a moment she was off her

guard--with a dangerous man watching her.

"I thought you had bad news," she said.

And Cipriani de Lloseta knew that this was a woman whose heart was at

sea.

"No," he answered; "I merely came to quarrel."

He drew forward a chair, and Eve sat down.

"We shall always quarrel," he went on, "unless you are kind. Let us

begin at once and get it over, because I want to stay to lunch. Will

you reconsider your decision with respect to the Val d'Erraha?"

Eve shook her head and looked at her uncle.

"No," she answered; "I cannot do that. Not now."

"Some day?" he suggested.

"Not now," repeated the girl; and, looking up, her face suddenly became

grave, as if reflecting the expression in the dark Spanish eyes bent

upon her.

"You are cruel!" he said.

"I am young--"

"Is it not the same thing?"

"And I can work," added Eve.

"Yes," he said. "But in my old-fashioned way I am prejudiced against a

lady working. In the days of women's rights ladies are apt to forget

the charm of white hands."

Eve made no answer.

"Then it is not peace?"

"No," she answered, with a smile; "not yet."

She was standing beside Captain Bontnor, with her hand on his shoulder.

"Uncle and I," she added, "are not beaten yet."

Cipriani de Lloseta smiled darkly.

"Will you promise me one thing," he said; "that when you are beaten you

will come to me before you go to any one else?"

"Yes," answered Eve, "I think we can promise that."

CHAPTER III. BAFFLED.

He conquers who awaits the end.

Fortune fixed her wayward fancy on the first sketch that Eve

contributed to the Commentator. 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 a chef smiling 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 the Commentator as

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 the Commentator was 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's Commentator on 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--or WOMEN know 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, the Commentator shall 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 the Commentator?"

"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 the Commentator. 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 Coeur-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

the Commentator which 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 the Commentator. 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 the

Commentator from 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 the Commentator. 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 the Morning Post Agatha Ingham-Baker

had duly learnt that Henry FitzHenry had been appointed

navigating-lieutenant to the Terrific, lying at Chatham, which would

necessitate his leaving the Kittiwake at Gibraltar and returning to

England at once. She also read that the Indian liner Croonah had

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.

CHAPTER IV. FOR THE HIGHEST BIDDER.

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 the Globe, 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 the Croonah the 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 the Globe Agatha 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 the Croonah,

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."

"The Horrible--or the Terrible, is it not?"

"The Terrific."

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 the Globe.

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. IS she not

lovely?"

But Fitz was still wondering whether Eve was in the habit of reading

the Globe. 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 the Croonah was 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.

CHAPTER V. THE TEAR ON THE SWORD.

But over all things brooding slept

The 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 cheery aplomb which 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?"

"The Croonah."

"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's a big value, _I_ know."

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

the Terrific.

"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 the Croonah. 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.

CHAPTER VI. THE COUNT STANDS BY.

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's Commentator, 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 manoeuvre.

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.

CHAPTER VII. A VOYAGE.

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 the Croonah to 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 the

Croonah was 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 the Croonah

ran 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 the Times.

"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 the Croonah he 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 the Croonah as 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 the Croonah, 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 the Croonah's officers, 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 the Croonah had 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 the Croonah, running south, and flying a string of signals. The

Croonah replied, 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.