the decks were cleared of all that hamper which makes the passenger an
encumbrance at sea. There was no shouting, no confusion, no sign of
fear. In a marvellously short time the broad decks were lying bare and
clear, all loose things were stowed away or made fast, and the Croonah
stood ready for her great fight.
All the while an arc of black cloud had been growing on the horizon.
There was not a breath of wind. From the engine-rooms the thud of the
piston-rods came throbbing up with a singular distinctness. The arc of
cloud had risen halfway to the meridian. There were streaks in
it--streaks of yellow on black. Far away to the north, at the point of
contact with the horizon, a single waterspout rose like a black pillar
from sea to cloud. Dwellers in the cool and temperate zones would have
thought that the end of the world was about to come. Men, standing
quite still, felt the drops of perspiration trickling beneath their
ears. The air taken into the lungs seemed powerless to expand them.
The desire to take a deeper breath was constant and oppressive.
A quartermaster brought a message to the general that he must go below
or else come up to the lower bridge. He could not stay where he was.
The captain said that the cyclone might break at any moment. The old
soldier nodded, and made his way to the lower bridge. Before he had
been there long he was joined by Carr, who carried a mackintosh over
his arm. The two men nodded. The general rather liked Carr. He was a
Harrovian, and the general's son was at Harrow.
"Going to see it out on deck?" he inquired.
"Rather. I'm not going to be drowned like a rat in a trap!" replied
Carr, jovial still, and brave.
Luke came to the bridge and took up his position by the side of the
captain. No one spoke.
From the distant horizon--from the north where the waterspout still
was--a long groan floated over the water. There was a green line on
the black surface of the ocean, dark green flecked with white; it was
spreading over the sea, and coming towards them. Luke turned and said
one word to the quartermaster. The man went to the wheelhouse and
brought out three long black oilskin coats--two for the captain and
Luke, the other for himself.
The groan, like that of an animal in pain, was repeated. It seemed
farther off. Then a sound like the escape of steam from an engine came
apparently from the sky.
Luke said something to the captain, and pointed with his right hand.
They consulted together in a whisper, and the captain made a signal to
the two steersmen motionless in the wheelhouse. The well-greased
chains ran smoothly, and the great black prow of the Croonah crept
slowly round the horizon pointing out to sea, away from the land.
Ceylon lay astern of them in the darkness which was almost like night.
The captain and Luke stood side by side on the little bridge, far above
the deck. They had exchanged their gold-braided caps for sou'westers.
The outline of their black forms was just distinguishable against the
sky. They were looking straight ahead into the yellow streaks, out
over the flecked sea. And not a breath of wind stirred the leaden
atmosphere.
Looking down on the broad decks, it would seem at first that they were
deserted, but as the eye became accustomed to the gloom, men standing
like shadows could be perceived here and there--at their posts--waiting.
All the skylights had been doubly tarpaulined. Some of them had been
strengthened with battens lashed transversely over the canvas. All that
mortal brain could devise mortal hand had done. The rest was with God.
The decks were quite dark, for the skylights were covered, even those
of the engine-room, and the men at work down there in the stifling heat
knew not what the next moment might bring. They had nothing to guide
them as to the moment when the hurricane would strike the ship. For
the last five minutes they had been holding on to their life-rails with
both hands, expecting to be thrown among the machinery at every second.
Still there was no breath of wind. The darkness was less intense. A
yellow glow seemed to be behind the cloud.
Then a strange feeling of being drawn upward came to all, and strong
men gasped for breath. It was only for a moment. But the sensation
was that the air was being sucked up to the sky, leaving a vacuum on
the face of the waters.
Suddenly the captain's voice startled the night, rising trumpet-like
above the hiss of the steam.
"Stand BY!" he cried.
Luke looked down to the lower bridge.
"You had better hold on to something," he called, and as he spoke the
hurricane struck the Croonah. It can only be described as a pushing
smack. She rolled slowly over before it, and it seemed that she would
never stop.
CHAPTER VIII. A GREAT FIGHT.
Who knows? The man is proven by the hour.
The sea seemed to rise up and fall on the disabled ship with a wild
fury. There was a strange suggestion of passion in every wave as it
crashed over the bulwarks. In the roar of the hurricane there was a
faint sound of crackling wood. The deck was at an angle of thirty. The
port boats on their davits were invisible; they were under water. If
the Croonah righted quickly those boats would break up like old baskets.
The two men on the lower bridge stood on the uprights of the rail,
leaning against the deck as against a wall. The crackling sound like
breaking matchwood seemed to come from above. Carr looked up and saw
the captain and Luke at the wheel. The wheelhouse had collapsed like a
card house; it had simply been blown away, and one of the helmsmen with
it. The other was lying huddled up at the lower end of the narrow
bridge.
For a moment the darkness lifted and the survivors saw a weird sight.
One of the starboard boats, attached to the davit by only one fall, was
held by the wind like a flag straight out over the deck. Already two
men were clambering to the upper bridge to take the place of the
helmsmen who were dead. Relieved from the wheel, Luke dragged himself
up to the ladder leading from the upper to the lower deck. A few
moments later they saw him cutting with a hatchet at the ropes holding
the boat to the davit. There were four, for it was a heavy boat, held
by a double block. He cut two at a stroke: the others ran out
instantly. The boat disappeared to leeward like a runaway hat, and
fell with a splash into the foaming sea.
The Croonah seemed to feel the relief. She rose a little to windward,
but her lee-rail was still under water. Down in the scuppers, in the
tangle of ropes and splintered wood, sundry dark forms, looking more
like bundles of dirty rags than anything else, rolled and tossed
helplessly. These were dead and drowning men. Already the European
sailors were at work, some cutting away useless top-hamper, others
attempting to drag the terror-stricken Malays to a place of comparative
safety. Luke FitzHenry took command of these men, as was his duty,
working like one of them, with infinite daring. He could only
communicate with his captain by signs, speech being impossible. It was
a seaman's fight. Each man did that which seemed to him expedient for
the safety of the ship. The Croonah was fully equipped for fine
weather--for cleaning brasses and swabbing decks and bending awnings;
but for bad weather--notably for a cyclone--she was perilously
undermanned. Half of the native crew were paralysed by fear, many were
killed, others drowned from a mere incapacity to hold on.
The other officers of the ship had their hands more than full. The
doctor was below in the saloon surrounded by a babel of shrieking women
and white-faced men; the engineers were on watch at their deadly posts
in the heart of the ship.
Carr turned and clambered down the iron ladder to the upper deck. He
was half a sailor and quite an Englishman. Moreover he came from
Harrow, where they teach a certain bull-dog courage.
Luke, working half blinded by spray and salt water, presently found a
strong man working at his side. Together they cut away the submerged
boats, standing to their waists in water, at infinite peril of their
lives; together they made their way forward to help the chief officer
and his devoted gang, who were cutting away the foremast and the
wreckage of forward boats.
Through the long hours of the night these dauntless men worked
unceasingly, and--incongruous practical details--the stewards brought
them food at stated intervals, while two men served out spirits all the
while. Slowly, inch by inch, they righted the ship, bringing her
stubborn prow gradually into the wind; and all the while the engines
throbbed, all the while the grimy stokers shovelled coal into the
furnaces, all the while the engineers stood and watched their engines.
Dawn broke on a terrific sea and a falling wind. The night was over
and the dread Bay had had her thousand lives and more, for a cyclone
simply wipes out the native craft like writing on a slate. The Croonah
had been right through the corner of the worst cyclone of a generation.
Luke crawled back to the bridge where the captain stood, as he had
stood all night, motionless. Sheer skill and a great experience had
pulled the Croonah through.
When the danger was past those who were on deck saw a man in shirt and
trousers only, his grey hair ruffled, his clothes glued to his limbs by
perspiration, emerge from the bowels of the ship. He came on deck,
passed by those who scarce knew him without his gold braid, and slowly
climbed the ladder to the bridge. There, in the early morning light,
the two men who had saved three hundred lives--the captain and the
chief engineer--silently shook hands.
"I had to keep you down there for the safety of the ship," said the
captain gruffly.
"All right, old man, I knew that."
The old engineer turned and looked fore and aft over the wrecked decks
with a curious smile as if he had come back from another world.
While they stood there the saloon doors were opened and a haggard row
of faces peered out. A quarter-master held the passengers back, for
the decks were unsafe. Railings and bulwarks were gone, boats smashed,
awning stanchions twisted and bent. No landsmen could be trusted to
move safely amid such confusion.
And all the while the engines throbbed, and the Croonah held proudly on
her course to the north--battered, torn, and sore stricken, yet a
victor.
After changing their clothes, Luke and Carr breakfasted together at the
after-end of the second officer's table in the saloon. With a certain
humour the captain allowed of no relaxation in the discipline of the
ship. The breakfast bell was rung at the usual time, the meal was
served with the usual profusion, even the menus were written as
carefully as ever; and some good ladies opined that the captain must be
a godless man, because forsooth he did not cringe beneath the wing of
the passing Angel of Death.
"I am glad I saw that," said Carr, neat and clean, hearty and smiling
as usual.
Luke looked up from a generous plate. He thought that Carr was
indulging in bravado, but he relinquished this opinion when he saw the
man's face and his helping of bacon and eggs. Carr seemed to have
enjoyed the cyclone, as he had no doubt enjoyed many a game of football
in his youth, and many a spin across country later. For this man kept
his hunters. He was moved thereto by that form of self-respect which
urges some men to live like gentlemen, to, as they express it, "do
themselves well," whether their mere monetary circumstances allow of it
or no; and some one usually pays for these philosophers--that is the
annoying part of it.
"By gad! I didn't think it could blow like that, though!" Carr went
on, with his mouth full.
"I don't think it can often," replied Luke. He could not help liking
this man, despite his first prejudice against him. Besides, they had
stood shoulder to shoulder, with death around them, and such moments
draw differing men together. It is the required touch of Nature, this
same death, which frightens us before it comes and seems so gentle when
it is here.
"I always wanted to see a cyclone," went on Carr conversationally, "and
now I'm satisfied. I have had enough. I shouldn't have cared for
more. Pass, cyclones!"
"It is not many men who have your laudable thirst for experience," said
Luke. "It is rather a strenuous form of pleasure."
"Pleasure!" answered Carr, with one of his sharp glances. "Pleasure, be
d--d! It's business, sir, business. I mean to make money out of
cyclones."
"How? Bottle them up and make them turn a windmill?"
"No, sir."
Carr turned round to make sure that he could not be overheard.
"No, sir. Your idea is not bad in the main, though hardly practicable.
No. I know a dodge worth two of that! I told you before that I am in
the marine insurance line. Now, the funny part of the marine insurance
line is that the majority of the men engaged in it do not know their
business. Now I propose to teach these gentlemen their business."
"Will they thank you for it?" asked Luke.
"They'll pay me for it, which is better, by a long chalk! Ha, ha!
Butter, please."
"And what have cyclones got to do with it?"
Again one of the sharp glances which sat so strangely on Carr's open
countenance.
"I understand there is a science of cyclones," he said quietly.
"Yes."
"Which means that you chaps knew what was coming forty-eight hours ago?"
"Yes," replied Luke.
"That that steamer flying signals yesterday was talking to you about
it?"
"Yes."
"And that when you got into it you knew exactly whereabout you were in
it; where the centre was, and which was the shortest way out of it, to
get clear away from the vortex and beyond the axis line, so as not to
get into it again?"
"Yes. You're quite a Fitzroy."
Carr winked cheerily.
"And all this is a certainty?"
"A dead certainty," replied Luke. "It is a science."
Carr laid down his knife and fork.
"Suppose," he said, "that the next cyclone sends forty ships to kingdom
come, and I've got a line of five hundred or a thousand insured on
every one of them. I'll study these jolly old cyclones. It will be
easy enough to know about when they'll be coming. When one is about
I'll have a line on every ship at sea between Colombo and Penang--do
you see? I'll get a man on the coast here to watch the weather. When
there's a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal he will wire me home one word,
'Milksop,' or 'Spongecake,' or something soft and innocent. I'll do
the rest, my boy."
Luke was only pretending to eat. The desire to make money was strong
upon him--as indeed were all his desires--it was almost a passion; for
money meant Agatha, and Agatha had grown to be the one absorbing
passion of his heart. Agatha had been at the back of the superhuman
fight which he had waged all night against death. Agatha was behind
Carr's words. The thought of her was tempting him through the man's
arguments.
"But what will you insure?" he asked.
"Profit," replied Carr, in a whisper. "It is done every day--policy
proof of interest--the fools!"
"What is policy proof of interest?"
"It means that they admit your insurance to be valid, whether you have
anything on board the ship or not. It is not legal, but they know it
when they sign the policy; and they know that it would ruin them if
they refused to pay an 'honour policy.' I tell you they don't know
their business and they have no combination. They all distrust each
other, and tell lies to each other about their profits and their
losses. If I insure profit I have only to say that I shall lose money
if the ship does not reach her destination and deliver her cargo
safely. The cargo may be mine; I may be buying it or selling it; no
one can tell, and the underwriters don't ask. They pocket their
premium, and if they have to pay, and think they have been rooked, they
keep it to themselves, because each man is against his neighbour."
"But do they know nothing about cyclones?" inquired Luke.
"My good sir, they hardly know the difference between Calcutta and
Bombay. Half of them think that a cyclone and a monsoon are the same
thing, and not one in ten could tell you the difference between a brig
and a barquentine."
Luke gave a little half-convinced laugh. The man was so open and
honest that his arguments had nothing underhand or crafty in them.
"It sounds very simple," he said.
"It is; d--d simple! So are the underwriters; but that is not our
business. You see, FitzHenry, in all commerce there are a certain
number of fools for the wise men to outwit. In marine insurance there
are a large number. All insurance is nothing but a bet, and betting is
a matter of intelligence. We bring more intelligence to bear upon it
than the other chap, therefore we win."
He helped himself to marmalade with a jaunty hand. Luke hardly noticed
the easy transition from "I" to "we." He had had no intention of
suggesting a partnership in this easy manner of making money, but the
partnership seemed to have formed itself.
"But--" Carr paused, holding in the air an emphatic spoon. "But, my
boy, we want capital, we want to lay our hands on fifty thousand
pounds."
"I am afraid I could not lay my hand on fifty thousand pence," said
Luke.
Carr glanced at him sharply. There was a little pause while Carr ate
marmalade and toast.
"Oh yes, you could," he said in a low tone. "Between us we could raise
fifty thousand as easy as winking."
As if to demonstrate the facility of the latter, he looked up and
closed his left eye confidentially.
"You're a sailor," he went on to say, "and a ripping good one at that.
You know the perils of the deep, as the parsons say. It wouldn't be
hard for you to tell when the Croonah was running into a tight place
like yesterday. All you have to do is to wire home one word to me. My
telegraphic address is 'Simple, London.' Say you wire home 'Milksop.'
We could fix on 'Milksop'; it sounds so innocent! In twenty-four hours
I'd have fifty thousand done on the Croonah in London, Glasgow,
Liverpool, New York, Paris, and Germany--spread about, you know. In
four or five days the Croonah goes to the bottom, and we scoop in, your
name never appearing--see?"
There was a little pause.
"See?" repeated Carr, in little more than a whisper. Luke looked up.
He met Carr's eyes and knew that he was dealing with a villain. The
strange part of it was that he felt no anger. He could not free his
mind from the thought of Agatha. There was one corner of the steamer
which was almost sacred to him--the little space behind the deckhouse
where he had held Agatha in his arms for one moment of intense
happiness--where she told him that she could not be poor.
Carr rose and threw down his table napkin with a certain grand air
which was his.
"It would be the making of you," he said. "It is worth thinking about."
He threw back his shoulders--a trick common enough with strongly built
men who incline to stoutness--nodded, and left him. He passed down the
length of the saloon, seeking his cigar-case in the pocket of his coat,
exchanging loud and hearty greetings with those among the passengers
whom he knew. He was popular on account of the open British frankness
which he cultivated, and which is supposed to be the outward sign of an
honest heart. He seemed to be thinking of his great scheme no longer,
but he left Luke to brood over it--to try and chase the word "Milksop"
from his brain, where it seemed to be indelibly engraved.
He left Luke to fight against a great temptation alone and heavily
handicapped, for Luke FitzHenry was held as in a vice by his passionate
love for Agatha. It is not all men who can love. It is only a few who
are capable of a deep passion. This is as rare as genius. A man of
genius is usually a failure in all except his own special line. The
man who can and does love passionately must be a good man indeed if his
love do not make a villain of him.
CHAPTER IX. THE EDITOR'S ROOM.
The greater man, the greater courtesy.
The Count de Lloseta and John Craik were sitting together in the
editorial room of the Commentator.
It was a quiet room, with double windows and a permanent odour of
tobacco smoke. An empty teacup stood on the table by John Craik's
elbow.
"Name of God!" Cipriani de Lloseta had ejaculated when he saw it. "At
eleven o'clock in the morning!"
"Must stir the brain up," was the reply.
"I would not do it with a teaspoon," De Lloseta had answered, and then
he sat down to correct the proof of Eve's fourth article on "Spain and
Spanish Life."
They had been sitting thus together for half an hour in friendly
silence, only broken by an occasional high-class Spanish anathema
hurled at the head of the printer.
"A dog's trade!" ejaculated De Lloseta at last, leaning back and
throwing down his pen, "a dog's trade, my friend!"
"It is mine," replied Craik, without looking up. In fiction he was
celebrated for a certain smartness of dialogue. His printed
conversations were pretty displays of social sword-play. It had become
a sort of habit with him to thrust and parry quickly; but the sudden
smile on his lined face, the kindly glance from behind the spectacles,
always took away the sting and demonstrated that it was mere "copy," to
fill up the dull columns of life and throw in a sparkle here and there.
"Have you finished?" he inquired.
"Yes, thank Heaven! I was not intended for a literary calling. That is
number four, and I am not paid--I am not paid; there lies the sting."
"Number four, yes; two published and two in hand," replied John Craik.
His mind was busy elsewhere; it was with the creatures of his own
imagination, living their lives, rejoicing with them, sorrowing with
them.
The Count rose and walked gravely to the hearthrug, holding the
proof-sheets in his hand.
"Number four," he reiterated. "Will they go on, my friend?"
John Craik looked up sharply.
"No."
"How many more will you accept?"
"Two more at the outside, making six in all. The public is like a
greedy child, it must be stopped before it makes itself sick. Nausea
leaves a lasting distaste for that which preceded it."
The Count nodded.
"And this worldly wisdom--is it the editor or the man who speaks?"
"The editor. The editor is a man who lives by saying 'No.'"
"And you will say 'No' to any more from this--writer's pen?"
"To any more about Spain I most certainly shall."
The Count reflected. What little light the London day afforded fell
full upon his long narrow face, upon the pointed Velasquez chin, the
receding iron-grey hair brushed straight back.
"And the fact that the writer is supporting herself and a worn-out old
uncle by her pen will make no difference?"
John Craik hesitated for a moment.
"Not the least," he then said. "You seem to know the writer."
"I do, and I am interested in her."
"A lady?" John Craik was dotting his i's with the contemplativeness of
artistic finish.
"Essentially so."
"And poor?"
"Yes, and proud as--"
"A Spaniard," suggested John Craik.
"If you will. It is a vice which has almost become a virtue in these
democratic days."
John Craik looked up.
"I will do what I can, Lloseta," he said. "But she is not a great
writer, and will never become one."
"I know that. Some day she will become a great lady, or I know nothing
of them."
Craik was still busy touching up his manuscript.
"I have never seen her," he said. "But the impression I received from
her manuscripts is that she is a girl who has lived a simple life among
a simple people. She has seen a great deal of nature, out-of-door
nature, which is pure, and cannot be too deeply studied. She has seen
very little of human nature, which is not so pure as it might be. That
is her chief charm of style, a high-minded purity. She does not
describe the gutter and think she is writing of the street. By the
way, I am expecting her here" (he paused, and looked at the clock on
the mantelpiece) "in exactly two minutes."
The Count rose quickly and took his hat. As he extended his hand to
say "Good-bye" there was a rap at the door. The discreet youth who
told John Craik's falsehoods for him came in and handed his master a
slip of paper with a name written thereon.
Craik read the inscription, crumpled up the paper, and threw it into
the waste-paper basket.
"In one minute," he said, and the liar withdrew.
Cipriani de Lloseta, with a quiet deliberation which was sometimes
almost dramatic, stooped over the paper basket and recovered the
crumpled slip of paper. He did not unfold it, but held it out, crushed
up in his closed fist.
"Miss Eve Challoner," he said.
John Craik nodded.
De Lloseta laughed and threw the paper into the fire.
"I must not be seen. Where do you propose to put me?"
"Go upstairs instead of down," replied John Craik, as if he had been
asked the same question before. "Wait on the next landing until you
hear this door close; you may then escape in safety."
"Thanks--good-bye."
"Good-bye."
When Eve entered the room, John Craik was writing. He rose with a bow
savouring of a politer age than ours, and held out his hand.
"At last," he said, "I have prevailed upon you to come and see me. Will
you sit down? The chair is shabby, but great men and women have sat in
it."
He spoke pleasantly, with his twisted laugh, and when Eve was seated he
sat slowly, carefully down again. He was thinking not so much of what
he was saying as of his hearer. He saw that Eve was undeniably
beautiful--the man saw that. The novelist saw that she was probably
interesting. As he had just stated, great women had sat in the same
chair, and it was John Craik's impulse to save Eve from that same
greatness. He had, since a brilliant youth at Oxford, been steeped, as
it were, in literature. He had known all the great men and women, and
he held strong views of his own. These were probably erroneous--many
women will think so--but he held to them. They were based on
experience, which is not always the case with views expressed in print
and elsewhere. John Craik held that greatness is not good for women.
That it is not for their own happiness, he knew. That it is not for
the happiness of those around them, he keenly suspected. Some of Eve's
celebrated predecessors in that chair had not quite understood John
Craik. All thought that he was not sufficiently impressed--not, that
is, so impressed by them as they were themselves when they reflected
upon their own renown.
He looked at Eve quickly, rubbing his hands together.
"May I, as an old man, ask some impertinent questions?" he inquired,
with a cheerfulness which sat strangely on the wan face.
"Yes."
"Why do you write?" he said. "Take time; answer me after reflection."
Eve reflected while the great editor stared into the fire.
"To make money," she answered at last.
He looked up, and saw that she was answering in simple good faith.
"That is right."
He did not tell her that he was sick and tired of the jargon of art for
art's sake, literature for literature's sake. He did not tell
that--practical man of the world that he was--he had no faith in
literary art; that he believed the power of writing to be a gift and
nothing else; that the chief art in literature is that which is
unconscious of itself.
"Do you feel within yourself the makings of a great author?"
Eve laughed, a sudden girlish laugh, which made John Craik reduce his
estimate of her age by five years.
"No," she answered.
He sat up and looked at her with a kind admiration.
"You are refreshing," he said, "very, especially to a man who has seen
stout and elderly females sit in that same chair and state their
conviction that they were destined to be George Eliots or Charlotte
Brontes, women who had written one improper or irreligious novel, which
had obtained a certain success in the foolish circles."
"Do you think I have," asked Eve, "the--the makings of an income?"
John Craik reflected.
"A small one," he said bluntly.
"That is all I want."
Craik raised his eyebrows.
"And renown," he said, "do you want that?"
"Not in the least, except for its intrinsic value."
Craik banged his hand down on the arm of his chair and laughed aloud.
"This is splendid!" he cried. "I have never met such a practical
person. Then you would be content to work for a sufficient income
without ever being known to the world?"
"Yes, provided that the work was genuine and not given to me out of
mere charity."
The editor of the Commentator looked at her gravely. He had suddenly
remembered Cipriani de Lloseta.
"Oh, you are proud!" he said.
Eve laughed with a negative shake of the head.
"Not more than other people," she answered.
"Not more than other people. Well, we will have it so. And not
ambitious."
"No, I think not."
"You may thank God for that," said John Craik, half to himself. "An
ambitious woman is not a pleasant person."
There was a little pause, during which John Craik rubbed his chin
reflectively with his bony fingers.
"And now," he said, "that I know something about you, I will tell you
why I asked you to be good enough to come and see me. To begin with, I
am an old man; you can see that for yourself. I am a martyr to
rheumatism, and I frequently suffer from asthma, otherwise I should
have done myself the pleasure of calling on you. I wanted to see you,
because lady authors are uncertain creatures. A large majority of them
have nothing better to do, and therefore write. Others do not care for
the money, but they do most decidedly for the renown. The nudge and
whisper of society is nectar to them. Others again are brilliant in
flashes and dull in long periods. Few, very few are content to work
with their pen as their poorer sisters are forced to work with their
needles. In that lies the secret of the more permanent success of men
journalists and men authors. The journalism and the authorship are not
the men, but merely the business of their lives. Now will you be
content to work hard and steadily without any great hope of renown--to
work, in fact, anonymously for a small but certain income?"
"Yes," answered Eve, without hesitation.
Craik nodded his head gravely and thoughtfully. He was too deeply
experienced to fall into the error of thinking that Eve was different
from other women. He did not for a moment imagine that he had secured
in her a permanent subscriber to the Commentator--possibly he did not
want her as such. He was merely doing a good deed--no new thing to
him, although his right hand hardly knew what his left was doing. He
liked Eve, he admired her, and was interested in her. Cipriani de
Lloseta he was deeply interested in, and he knew, with the keen
instinct of the novelist, that he was being drawn into one of those
romances of real life which exists in the matter-of-fact nineteenth
century atmosphere that we breathe.
So Eve Challoner left John Craik's office an independent woman for the
time being, and the charity was so deeply hidden that her
ever-combative pride had failed to detect it.
CHAPTER X. THE CURTAIN LOWERS.
The shadow, cloaked from head to foot,
Who keeps the keys of all the creeds.
As she walked back to Grosvenor Gardens, Eve reflected with some
satisfaction that the Ingham-Bakers had left Mrs. Harrington's
hospitable roof. From this shelter they had gone forth into a world
which is reputed cold, and has nevertheless some shelter still for such
as are prepared to cringe to the overbearing, to flatter the vain, to
worship riches.
Eve wanted time to think over her new position, to reflect with
satisfaction over her new independence, for the Caballero Challoner, if
he had bequeathed little else, had left to her a very active pride.
She knew so little of the world that she never paused to wonder why
John Craik should have made her a proposal which could hardly be
beneficial to himself. She was innocent enough to think that the good
things of this world are given just where and when they are wanted.
Captain Bontnor was the chief object of her thoughts, and she was
already dreaming of restoring him to Malabar Cottage and his bits of
things. So engrossed was she in these reflections, that she noticed
nothing unusual in the face of the butler who opened the door which had
shut upon Luke FitzHenry some years before.
"I'm glad you're back, miss," he said gravely.
Something in his tone--cold and correct--caught Eve's attention.
"Why?" she asked, and a consoling knowledge that the Terrific was safe
in Chatham Dockyard leapt into her mind.
"Mrs. Harrington's been took rather bad, miss."
The man's manner said more than his words. Eve hurried upstairs to
Mrs. Harrington's bedroom. She tapped at the door and went in without
waiting. There was a strong smell of ammonia in the air. The blinds
were half lowered, and in the dim light Eve did not see very clearly.
Presently, from the depths of a huge four-poster bed, she descried a
pair of keen eyes--the face of Mrs. Harrington. The face, the eyes,
the mind were alive, the body was stricken; it was almost dead already.
Mrs. Harrington looked down at the shapeless limbs beneath the coverlet
with something like fear in her eyes, something of the expression of a
dog that has been run over. This woman meant to die hard.
Eve knew little of life, but she was no stranger to death. She
recognised our last enemy in the grey face beneath the canopy of the
four-poster.
"Where have you been so long, child?" said Mrs. Harrington querulously,
"leaving me to these fools of servants. I have been unwell, but I'm
better now. They've sent for the doctor. I shall be better presently.
I have no pain, only--only a sort of numbness."
She looked down at her left hand, which lay outside the coverlet, and
fear was in her eyes. She had defied men too long to be afraid of God,
but she did not want to die; she had too keen an enjoyment for the good
things of this world.
Eve came to the bedside.
Mrs. Harrington's face was drawn together in anger. She was annoyed
that Death should have come for her, and, true to herself, she insulted
him by deliberately ignoring his presence. There was something defiant
in her cold eyes still, something unbeaten, although she knew that
there was no one on her side. The general feeling was against her. So
far as the world was concerned, Death could have her.
Eve turned away from the bed and faced the doctor, who was coming into
the room with Mrs. Harrington's maid. No one displayed the slightest
emotion. A selfish life and a happy death are rarely vouchsafed to the
same person. The doctor did not ask Eve to stay, so she went
downstairs and wrote to Fitz, sending the note round to his rooms in
Jermyn Street by a servant. It was the second time in her life that
she had sent for Fitz.
When the doctor came downstairs, Eve went out into the hall. He
pointed with his finger to the room from which she came, and followed
her back there. He was a middle-aged man, educated to the
finger-tips--all science and no heart.
"Are you a relation of Mrs. Harrington's?" he inquired.
"We are distantly connected," answered Eve.
The doctor was not giving much attention to her answer. He had a habit
of tapping his teeth with his thumbnail, which made Eve dislike him at
sight.
"Has she any one else?" he asked. "Any one who--cares?"
He was quite without the intention of being rude but he was absorbed in
his profession, and had a large practice. He wanted to go.
"She has a nephew. I have sent for him."
The doctor nodded. He glanced at Eve, then he said quietly--
"She will live about an hour. She wants me to come again and bring
another man. I will do it, although it is useless. There are some
things money cannot buy."
With a quick mechanical smile he was gone.
Eve went upstairs again to the room where Mrs. Harrington was fighting
her last fight. As she passed up the stairs, she noticed two letters
on the hall table awaiting postage; one was addressed to Mrs.
Ingham-Baker, the other to Luke, at Malta.
Mrs. Harrington had ordered the blinds to be pulled up, and the
daylight showed her face to be little changed. It had always been
grey; the shadows on it now were grey; the eyes were active and bright.
It was only the body that was dying; Mrs. Harrington's mind was bright
and keen as ever.
"That doctor is a fool," she said. "I have told him to come back and
bring Sir James Harlow with him. And will you please send and tell
Fitz that I should like to see him? You must arrange to stay on a few
days until I am better. Captain Bontnor will have to do without you.
My servants are not to be trusted alone. I shall want you to keep them
in order; they require a tight reign."
"I have sent for Fitz," said Eve.
"Why?" snapped Mrs. Harrington. "To come and make love to you? Leave
that to Agatha. She has been teaching them both to do that for the
last three years. Her idea is to marry the one who gets my money.
I've known that all along."
Eve's dark eyes hardened suddenly. She could not believe what the
doctor had told her five minutes earlier. Five minutes--one-twelfth
part of Mrs. Harrington's life ebbed away.
"Pray do not talk like that," said the girl quietly.
Mrs. Harrington's cold grey eyes fell before Eve's glance of mingled
wonder and contempt; her right hand was feebly plucking at the
counterpane.
Far below, in the basement, a bell rang, and soon after there was a
step on the stairs.
"Who is that?" inquired Mrs. Harrington.
"Fitz."
The dying woman was looking at the door with an unwonted longing in her
eyes.
"You seem to know his step," she said, with a jealous laugh.
Eve said nothing. The door opened, and Fitz came in.
Mrs. Harrington was the first to speak.
"I am not well this morning, dear," she said. "I sent for you because
I have a few things I want you to do for me."
"Pleasure," murmured Fitz, glancing at Eve. He either did not know how
ill Mrs Harrington was, or he did not care. It is probable that these
two persons now at the dying woman's bed were the only two people who
would be in any degree sorry at her death.
Eve, with a woman's instinct, busied herself with the pillow--with the
little adjuncts of a sick-room which had already found their way to the
bedside. She looked at Mrs. Harrington's face, saw the hard eyes fixed
on Fitz, and something in the glance made her leave the room.
"Just leave me alone," the dying woman said peevishly as Eve went away;
"I don't want a lot of people bothering about."
But Fitz stayed, and when Eve had closed the door the sudden look of
cunning that came over the faded face did not appear to surprise him.
"Quick!" whispered Mrs. Harrington, "quick! I do not believe I am
dying, as that doctor said I was, but it is better to make sure. Open
the left-hand drawer in the dressing-table; you will find my keys."
Fitz obeyed her, bringing the bunch of keys, rusty and black from being
concealed in a thousand different hiding-places.
"Now," she said, "open that desk; it was--your father's. Bring it
here. Be quick! Some one may come."
Her shrivelled fingers fumbled hastily among some old papers. Finally
she found an envelope, brown with age, on which was written, in her own
spidery handwriting, "Recipe for apple jelly."
She thrust the envelope into Fitz's hands, and he smilingly read the
superscription.
"That's nothing," she explained sharply; "that's only for the servants.
One cannot be too careful. Inside there is some money. I saved it up.
It will help to furnish your new cabin."
"Thank you," said Fitz, looking critically at the envelope. "But--"
"You must take it," she interrupted; "it is the only money I ever
saved." She broke off with a malicious laugh. "All these fools
thought I was rich," she went on. "They have been scheming and
plotting to get my money. There is no money. That is all there is.
You and Luke were the only two who never thought about it. You are
both like your father. Here, shut the desk up again. Put it back on
the table. Now hide the keys--left-hand corner, under the box of
hairpins."
Fitz obeyed her and came back towards the bed. His large mind felt a
sudden contempt for this petty and mean woman. He did not understand
her, and the contempt he felt for her in some way hurt him. He was
afraid of what she was going to say next.
"But," she said, "if I get better you must give me the money back."
Fitz gave a little laugh. Something prompted him to open the envelope
and look at the contents. There were five notes of ten pounds each.
The rich Mrs. Harrington of Grosvenor Gardens had saved fifty pounds,
and she lay on her death-bed watching Fitz count this vast hoard with a
quiet deliberation. In its way it was a tragedy--the grimmest of
all--for its dominant note was the contemptibility of human nature.
"I do not want the money. I should not keep it under any
circumstances."
"What would you do with it?" she asked sharply.
"Give it to a charity."
"No, no, you must not do that; they are all swindles!"
In her eagerness she tried to sit up, and fell back with a puzzled look
on her face, as if some one had struck her.
"Here," she gasped, "give it to me! give it to me!"
She clutched the envelope in her unsteady hands, and suddenly her jaw
dropped.
Fitz ran to the door. On the stairs were the two doctors, followed
closely by Eve. In a moment the doctors were at the bedside.
"Yes," said one of them--the younger of the two--and he glanced at his
watch. "I gave her an hour."
The elder man took the dead woman's hand in his. He released the
envelope from her grasp and read the superscription, "Recipe for apple
jelly." With a grave smile he handed the envelope to Eve as Fitz took
her out of the room.
They went downstairs together, and both were thinking of D'Erraha. They
went into the library, which was silent and gloomy. Fitz had not
spoken yet, but she seemed to understand his silence, just as she had
understood it once before. She had told him then. She did not do so
now.
Eve was not thinking of the dead woman upstairs. This death came to
her only as a faint reflection of the one great grief which had cut her
life in two--as great griefs do. She was perhaps wondering how it was
that Fitz seemed always to come to her at those moments when she could
not do without him. She was more probably not thinking at all, but
resting as it were in the sense of complete safety and protection which
this man's presence gave her.
There was a little silence, broken only by the sound of street traffic
faintly heard through the plate-glass windows. Fitz was looking at
her, his blue eyes grave and searching. This was not a man to miss his
opportunity, this youngest commander on the list.
"Eve," he said, "I used to think at D'Erraha that you cared for me."
"I have always cared for you," she answered, with a queer little smile,
half bold, half shy.
So Love came in at the windows as Death crept up the stairs.
Before long they heard the doctors go away, but they heeded not. They
only forgot each other when Cipriani de Lloseta came into the room.
The Spaniard's quick eyes read something in Eve's face. He looked
sharply at Fitz, but he said nothing of what he saw.
"So our dear lady has been taken from us," he said quietly, with an
upward jerk of the head.
Fitz nodded. Cipriani de Lloseta walked to the window and quietly drew
down the blind.
"So falls the curtain," he said, "on the little drama of my humble
life."
He turned and looked from one to the other with that sudden warmth of
love which either of them seemed able to draw from him.
"Some day," he said, "I will tell you--you two--the story, but not now."
He stepped forward and raised Eve's fingers to his lips. A quaint,
half-Spanish grace marked the picture of Southern chivalry.
"My child," said Lloseta, "may Heaven always bless you!" And he left
them.
CHAPTER XI. "MILKSOP".
What have we made each other?
The cathedral bells were calling good Papists to their morning devotion
as the Croonah moved into Valetta harbour. No sooner did her black
prow appear between the pier heads than a score of boats left the
steps, their rowers gesticulating, quarrelling, laughing among
themselves with Maltese vivacity.
One boat, flying the Croonah's houseflag, made its way more leisurely
through the still, clear water. This boat was bringing mails to the
Croonah, and in the letter-bag Mrs. Harrington's last missive to Luke
had found its place. This letter had been posted by the well-trained
footman while Eve and Fitz stood at Mrs. Harrington's bedside. Before
it was stamped at the district office the hand that wrote it was still.
And it contained mischief. Even after her death Mrs. Harrington
brought trouble to the man whose life she had spoilt by her caprice.
The letter ran--
"DEAR LUKE,--Just a line to tell you that you may bring your
portmanteau straight up to Grosvenor Gardens when your ship arrives in
London. I read of your fortunate escape from the cyclone, and
congratulate you. I dare say I shall be having a few friends to stay
when you are with me, so you need not fear dulness. Yours
affectionately,
"MARIAN HARRINGTON.
"P.S.--I always suspect you of having, consciously or unconsciously,
possessed yourself of the affections of a young lady who shall be
nameless. A word to the wise: make good use of your opportunities,
for there are other aspirants in the field--a certain brilliant young
naval officer not unknown to you. Moreover his chance appears to be a
good one. You must waste no more time."
It happened that Luke FitzHenry was in a dangerous mood when he read
this letter. He had been up half the night. The captain had been
cross-grained and unreasonable. Even the mildest of us has his moments
of clear-sightedness when he sees the world and the hollowness thereof.
Luke saw this and more when he had read Mrs. Harrington's evil
communication. He seemed to have reached the end of things, when his
present life became no longer tolerable. It must be remembered that
this man was passionate and very resolute. Moreover he had been
handicapped from the beginning of his life by a tendency to go wrong.
He was not a good subject for ill-fortune.
It was his duty to go ashore with papers to be delivered at the agent's
office. He delivered his papers and then he went to the cable office.
He telegraphed the single word "Milksop" to Willie Carr in London.
When he got back to the Croonah, worn out, dirty, and morose, the
passengers were not yet astir. He had an unsatisfactory breakfast, and
went to his cabin for a few hours' necessary sleep. He had given way
to a great temptation, not as the weak give way, on the spur of the
moment, with hesitation, but as a strong man--strong, even in his
weaknesses.
He did it after mature deliberation--did it thoroughly and carefully,
without the least intention of regretting it afterwards. He was
desperate and driven. He could not think of life without Agatha, and
he did not see why he should be called upon to do so. Ill fortune had
dogged him from his childhood. He had borne it all, morosely but
without a murmur. He was going to turn at last. The Croonah must go.
She was well insured, he knew that. That the cargo was fully covered
against loss he could safely suppose. As to the passengers and the
crew, none of them should suffer; he thought he was a clever enough
sailor for that.
So he laid him down in his little cabin to sleep, while the sun rose
over the blue Mediterranean, while some passengers went ashore and
others came on board, while the single word "Milksop" was spelt over a
continent; and he was still sleeping when the anchor was jerked up from
its muddy bed, and the watchers on pier and harbour looked their last
on the grand old Croonah.
A breeze was blowing out in the open, one of those bright westerly
breezes that bring a breath of the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, and
often make the short passage from Malta to Gibraltar the worst part of
the voyage from India to the Channel.
None of the passengers took any interest in the morose second officer,
and few of them remarked his absence from table during the two days'
passage. The Croonah arrived at Gibraltar after dark, took her mails
and passengers on board, and proceeded down the Straits about eight
o'clock in the evening. It was late autumn, and the breeze from the
cool Atlantic still hurried in over the parched lands of Africa and
Southern Europe.
Tarifa light was sighted and left twinkling behind. Trafalgar stared
out of the darkness ahead, and in its turn was left behind. A few of
the passengers had recovered their Mediterranean ill-usage sufficiently
to dine in the Straits, but the Atlantic swell soon sent them below.
The decks were deserted, for many of these people were returning to
England after long years in India, and the first chill northern breeze
they met made them shiver while it delighted them.
Luke FitzHenry was on the bridge from eight o'clock till midnight,
motionless at his post--a mere navigating machine, respected and feared
by all who worked with him, understood of none.
When midnight came he exchanged a few words with the first officer, and
together they superintended the shaking out of the foresails before the
watch went below. The wind was on the quarter, strong and steady.
Almost immediately the good steamer felt the canvas, leaning gently
over to leeward, adding another mile to her great speed. The sea was
black, and the air seemed to be full of the sounds of waves breaking
and hissing. Ahead the mast-head and the side-lights shone down on the
face of the waters and lighted up an occasional white-capped wave. In
the air, brisk and masterful, there was a sense of purpose and tension
which sailors understand, while mere printed words cannot convey it to
landsmen. It was a very dark night.
"St. Vincent," said Luke tersely, as he turned to leave the bridge. The
first officer, a man grown old at his post, followed the direction of
his junior's gaze, but some seconds elapsed before he distinguished the
light twinkling feebly low down on the horizon.
Luke went to his cabin and lay down on his berth all dressed. He was
due on the bridge again at four o'clock. The Croonah sailed by
time-table, subjecting the winds and seas, as the great steamships do
nowadays. Luke FitzHenry had calculated this to a minute before he
telegraphed the single word "Milksop" to Willie Carr in London.
He was on the bridge a few minutes before eight bells rang, and found
the captain. He knew his chief's customs. He knew that this wise old
sailor was in the habit of accumulating as much sleep in his brain as
possible before passing Ushant light, because he lived on the bridge
when the Croonah had once turned eastward up the Channel. Whenever the
captain took a night's rest, he broke it at four o'clock, at the change
of the watch. He stood muffled in a big coat over his pyjamas, and
exchanged a few words with his subordinates. After the first officer
had gone below, Luke went to his post at the starboard end of the
bridge, while the captain walked slowly backwards and forwards. They
remained thus for half an hour. The ship was all quiet. The breeze
had fallen a little. There was as yet no sign of daybreak towards the
east. A steamer passed, showing a red light and a white mast-head
light.
Presently the captain paused in his walk near to Luke.
"Call me," he said, "when you raise the Burling light."
Luke answered with a monosyllable, and the elder sailor went towards
the ladder.
No one had heard the order given. Luke followed him to the ladder, and
watched him go down into the darkness. They had sailed together six
years in fair weather and foul; they had fought and conquered a cyclone
in the Bay together from that bridge; but Agatha Ingham-Baker was
stronger than these things. Woman is the strongest thing in a man's
life.
There was still no sign of daylight, no faintest gleam in the eastern
sky, when the Burling light was sighted right ahead. The look-out on
the forecastle did not "sing out" the lights on board the Croonah, but
sent a companion aft to the bridge with the report. This was done for
the comfort of the passengers.
Luke altered the course half a point. From the wheel-house the men
could not see the light, which was hidden by the fore-mast. Luke went
aft and looked at the patent log. His calculations were all correct.
He glanced at his watch--he had to go to the wheel-house to do this,
and the binnacle-lights showed his face to be still and pale. He moved
and had the air of a man upon whose shoulders an immense responsibility
was weighing. He was going to wreck the Croonah, but he had two
hundred and ninety lives to save. He carefully studied the eastern
sky. He did not want daylight yet.
The Burling light is not a very big one--not so big, some mariners
think, as it should be. It is visible twenty-five miles away; but
Luke's knowledge told him that in thick and misty weather, such as
hovers over this coast in a westerly wind, the glare of the revolving
lamp could not be distinguished at a greater distance than ten or
twelve miles.
The Croonah raced on, a ship full of sleeping human beings. There came
a faint blue tinge into the eastern sky, a gleam over the eastern sea.
The Burling light--an eye looking round into the darkness, seeming to
open and shut sleepily--grew brighter and brighter. It was right
ahead! it rose as they approached it until it stood right above the
bowsprit.
Then Luke FitzHenry changed the course. The Croonah turned her blunt
prow half a point out into the Atlantic, and she raced on; she passed
by Burling Island, leaving the slowly winking eye on her starboard
quarter. Ahead lay the complete darkness of the north-west horizon.
Luke stood at his post, his eyes hidden by his binoculars. He was
studying the horizon in front of him--in front of the Croonah. There
was a little lump on the horizon, like the top of a mountain sticking
out of the sea; this he knew to be the rock called the Great Farilhao.
Again he altered the course, still seeking the Atlantic, another
quarter point to the west. He was going to pass the Great Farilhao as
he had passed the Burling, within a stone's throw. This he actually
did, the rugged outline of the barren rock standing out sharply against
the eastern sky. There was now nothing ahead; the horizon lay before
him, clear, unbroken.
Luke moved a few paces. He went and stood by the engine-room
telegraph. The engines throbbed merrily, but the steamer was still
asleep. There was no sound but the thud of the piston-rods and the
whispering swirl of the water lashed by the huge screw.
The Croonah raced on, her sails set, her engines working at full speed.
Suddenly Luke FitzHenry grasped the handle of the engine-room signal.
He wrenched it to one side--"Stand by." Instantly the gong answered,
"Stand by." "Half speed ahead."
And half speed ahead it was. Luke FitzHenry was clever even in his
crime; he had three hundred lives to save. He stood motionless as a
statue, gazing at the smooth unbroken water in front of him; he grasped
the rail and set his teeth; he stood well back with his feet firmly
planted. And there was a grinding crash. The Croonah seemed to climb
up into the air, then she stopped dead, and below--inside her--there
was a long, rumbling crash, as if all that was inside her had been cast
forward in confusion. She had run on to the sunken rocks that lie
north-west of the Farilhoes.
A great silence followed and immediately the pattering of bare feet. A
confused murmuring of voices rose from the saloon gangway--a buzzing
sound, like that of a hive disturbed. A single voice rose in a shriek
of mortal terror, and immediately there followed a chorus of confused
shouts.
Luke already had his lips at the speaking-tube. He was telling the
engineer on watch to steam ahead; he knew the danger of the Croonah
slipping back into deep water and sinking.
In a marvellously short time the decks were thronged with people, some
standing white-faced and calm in the dim light of early morning;
others, mad with terror, rushing from side to side.
The strange part of it was that Luke remained alone on the bridge. The
captain and the other officers were busy with the passengers. The
second officer remained motionless at his post; he commanded the
steersman by a wave of the arm to stay at the wheel, although he knew
that the Croonah would never answer her helm again; her travelling days
were done.
In the dim light now increasing momentarily, Luke FitzHenry looked down
upon the wildly confused decks and saw discipline slowly assert itself.
He saw the captain commanding by sheer force of individual power; he
saw the quartermasters form in line across the deck and drive the
passengers farther aft, leaving room to get out the boats.
In a few moments--in a marvellously short space of time--the work of
saving life began. A boat was lowered, the crew slipped into their
places, and a certain number of lady passengers were hastily handed
down the gangway. The first boat eased away. The oars were thrown
out. It was off, and some of the passengers cheered. One can never
tell what men, especially Englishmen, may do when they actually see
death face to face. The boat was headed to the south-east, towards the
Carreiro do Mosteiro, on Burling Island, the only possible
landing-place.
Luke felt a touch on his arm and turned sharply. It was a
quartermaster, breathless but cool.
"Captain wants you, sir. I'll take the bridge."
Luke turned to obey orders.
"Keep her steaming full speed ahead," he said, jerking his head towards
the engine-room telegraph.
"Ay, sir," the man replied.
"Until the water gets to the furnaces," he added to himself, "and then
we're dead men."
Luke ran lightly down the iron ladder to the lower bridge, which was
deserted. From thence he made his way aft to the quarter-deck. As he
passed the saloon staircase he ran against two women; one was dragging
the other, or attempting to do so, towards the group of passengers
huddled together amidships.
"You go," the younger woman was saying, "if you want to. I will wait."
Luke stopped. The elder woman was apparently wild with terror. She
had not even stopped to put on a dressing-gown. Her thin grey hair
fluttered in the breeze. She was stout and an object of ridicule even
with death clutching at her.
"Go on, mother," said the younger woman, with contempt in her voice.
"Agatha!" cried Luke. "You here?"
"Yes; we came on board at Malta."
CHAPTER XII. THE END OF THE "CROONAH".
Our life is given us as a blank;
Ourselves must make it blest or curst.
A man came running along and clutched at Luke's arm.
"Captain wants you, sir, immediate!" he cried.
"All right," answered Luke. "Here, take this lady and put her into a
boat."
Mrs. Ingham-Baker was clinging to him.
"Luke," she said firmly, "you must provide us with a lifeboat--a safe
one. I will not stand this neglect."
"Here!" cried Luke to the man. "Take her away."
"You come along o' me, marm," said the man, with a twinkle in his eye.
"I'll pervide ye with a lifeboat, bless yer heart!"
And in the dim light of the saloon stairhead lamp, Luke and Agatha were
left facing each other.
"Why did you not let me know you were coming?" he asked sharply. He
looked round with haggard eyes; they were quite alone.
"I had no time. We just caught the boat by an hour."
She was singularly quiet. Both of them seemed to forget that every
moment lost increased the danger of their position.
"Why did you come?" he asked.
She looked at him, and there was that in her eyes that makes men mad.
"Because I could not stay away from you."
His breath came sharply with a catch.
For a few moments they forgot such things as life and death. They did
more, they defied death; for surely such love as this is stronger than
the mere end of life. Again it was the possibility of something good
and something strong that lurked hidden behind the worldliness of
Agatha Ingham-Baker, and Luke FitzHenry, of all men, alone had the
power of bringing that possibility to the surface.
All around them the wind moaned and shrieked through the rigging; the
waves, beating against the sheer side of the doomed Croonah, filled the
air with a sound of great foreboding--the deep voice of an elemental
power that knows no mercy. Within twenty feet of them men and women
were struggling like dumb and driven animals for bare life--struggling,
shouting, quarrelling over a paltry precedence of a minute or so in
going to the boats; within a hundred yards of them, out over the dark
waters, Agatha's mother, thrown from an overturned boat, was struggling
her last struggle, with her silly old face turned indignantly up to
heaven. But they saw none of these things.
All the good men were wanted for the boats, and the captain, with two
officers only and a few stewards, defended the gangway against the rush
of the panic-stricken native crew.
"FitzHenry! FitzHenry!" the old captain shouted. "For God's sake,
come here!" For Luke alone was dreaded by the lascars.
But Luke and Agatha heeded nothing. These people, these lives, were
nothing to them, for a passionate love is the acme of selfishness.
They heard the sounds, however; they heard the captain calling for the
man who had never failed him.
"I wrecked her for you," said Luke, in Agatha's hungry ears. "I did it
all for you."
And at last the woman's vanity was satisfied; it was thrown a sop that
would suffice for its eternal greed. Luke had done this thing for her.
She was quick enough to guess how and why, for she knew Willie Carr.
She knew that good ships are thrown away for money's sake. The Croonah
had been thrown away for her sake--the Croonah, the patient, obedient
servant to Luke's slightest word, almost an animal in its mechanical
intelligence, filling that place in the sailor's heart that some men
reserve for their horses and others for their wives. Women have been
jealous of a ship before now. Eve was jealous of the Terrific; Agatha
had always been jealous of the Croonah. And now the ship had been
thrown away for her, and with his ship Luke had cast away his
unrivalled reputation as a seaman, his honour as a gentleman, his
conscience. He was a criminal, a thief, a murderer for Agatha's sake.
She, true to her school, to her generation, to her training, was proud
of it; for she was one of those unhappy women who will not have their
lovers love honour more.
There was a sudden roar far down in the bowels of the vessel, and
immediately volumes of steam issued from every skylight. The inrushing
sea had broken down the bulk-heads, the water had reached the
engine-rooms. In an instant Luke was alive to the danger--the good
sailor that was within the man all awake. His trained ears and the
tread of his feet on the deck told him that the screw was still.
"Come," he cried to Agatha, "you must get away in the next boat."
But Agatha resisted his arm. That which had hitherto been mere
pertness in her manner and carriage had suddenly grown into a strong
determination. The woman was cool and fearless.
"Not without you," she answered. "I will not leave the ship until you
do."
"I must stay till the last," he said.
She looked at him with a little smile, for women love courage, though
it sometimes frightens them. She never dreamt of danger to either of
them. Her trust in Luke was all-sufficient, without reserve, without
hesitation.
"Then I will stay too."
For a moment his iron nerve--a nerve which had deliberately planned all
this destruction--wavered.
"Why did you not let me know you were coming?" he asked desperately.
"I had no time," she answered, with a singular shortness, for she could
not tell him that a letter from Mrs. Harrington to her mother--the
companion to that received by Luke at Valetta--had brought about this
sudden decision. She could not tell him that, egged on by a
transparent hint from Mrs. Harrington that Luke was to be her heir, she
and her mother had taken the first boat to Malta; that she had
deliberately planned to marry him for the money that was to be his.
Such a confession was impossible at that time; with his arms still
round her, the mere thought of it nauseated her. For a moment, she saw
herself as others had seen her--a punishment which for some women is
quite sufficient.
At this moment a man came running along the deck--the same
quartermaster who had taken charge of Mrs. Ingham-Baker. He was a man
of no nerves whatever, and of considerable humour.
"Any more ladies?" he was shouting as he ran. "Any more for the shore?"
He laughed at his own conceit as he ran--the same fearless laugh with
which he sent Mrs. Ingham-Baker down the gangway to her death. He
paused, saw Luke and Agatha standing together beneath the lamp.
"Captain's callin' you like hell!" he cried. "Engine-room's full. The
old ship's got it this time, sir."
"All right, I know," answered Luke curtly; and the man ran on, shouting
as he went.
At this moment the Croonah gave a shiver, and Luke looked round
hastily. He ran to the rail and looked over with a quick sailor's
glance fore and aft. He turned towards Agatha again, but before he
could reach her the steamer gave a lurch over to starboard. The deck
seemed to rise between them. For a moment Agatha stood above him, then
she half ran, half fell, down the short steep incline into his arms.
Luke was ready for her, with one foot against the rail--for the deck
was at an angle of thirty and more; no one could stand on it. He
caught her deftly, and the breeze whirling round the deck-house blew
her long hair across his face.
She never changed colour. There was the nucleus of a good and strong
woman somewhere in Agatha Ingham-Baker. She clung to her lover's arms
and watched his face with a faith that nothing could shake. Thus they
stood during three eternal seconds while the Croonah seemed to
hesitate, poised on the brink. Then the great steamer slowly slid
backwards, turning a little as she did so.
There was a sickening sound of gurgling water. The Croonah was afloat,
but only for a few seconds. There was no time to lower another boat,
and all on board knew it. There were not many remaining, for the
passengers had all left the ship--the stokers, the engineers.
Amidships the captain stood, surrounded by his officers and a few
European sailors--faithful to the end. They had only one boat left,
and that was forward, half under water--out of the question. So they
stood and waited for the ship to sink beneath them.
In the distance, on the rough sea, now grey in the light of a sullen
dawn, two boats were approaching, having landed their human freight on
Burling Island.
"Now, my lads," cried the captain, "if any of you are feeling like
going overboard, over you go."
One man slowly took off his coat. He stooped down and unlaced his
boots, while the others watched him. It seemed to take him hours. The
bows of the great steamer were almost buried in the broken seas; her
stern was raised high in the air, showing the screw and the rudder.
The man who preferred to swim for it looked round with a strange smile
into the quiet, rough faces of his undismayed companions. It seemed to
be merely a choice of deaths.
"Well, mates," he said, "so long!"
He dived overboard and swam slowly away.
Luke watched him speculatively. He knew that had he been alone he
could have saved himself quite easily. With Agatha his chances were
less certain. Agatha it was who had spoilt his careful calculation.
Without conceit--for he was a stubbornly self-depreciating man--he knew
that his absence from his captain's side had just made the
difference--the little difference between life and death--to twenty or
thirty people. Had he been beside the captain and the other officers
the native crew would have worked quietly and intrepidly; there would
have been time for all hands to leave the Croonah before she slipped
back into deep water.
The great steamer rolled slowly from side to side, like a helpless dumb
animal in death agony, but she never righted herself, her decks were
never level. At length she gave a roll to leeward and failed to
recover herself. From some air-shaft there came a ceaseless whistle,
deep and sonorous, like the emission of air from the bunghole of a
beer-barrel. The engines were quite still, even the steam had ceased
to rise.
Luke stood holding Agatha with one arm. He was watching the two boats
making their way through the choppy sea towards them, and Agatha was
watching his face.
The Croonah was now lying right over on her beam ends. Luke was
standing on the wire network of the rail. Suddenly he threw himself
backwards, and as they fell through space Agatha heard the captain's
voice quite distinctly, as from the silence of another world.
"She's going!" he cried.
They struck the water together, Luke undermost, as he had intended.
Agatha shut her eyes and clung to him. They seemed to go down and
down. Then suddenly she heard Luke's voice.
"Take a breath," he gasped short and sharp. His voice was singularly
stern.
With his disengaged hand he put her hair from her face. She opened her
eyes and saw him smiling at her; she saw a huge piece of wreckage
poised on the edge of a wave over his head; she saw it fall; she felt
the shock of it.
Luke's arm lost its hold; he rolled over feebly in the water, the blood
running down his face, a sudden sense of sleep in his brain. He awoke
again to find himself swimming mechanically, and opened his eyes.
Close to him something white was floating half under water. Spread out
over the surface of the wave Agatha's long hair rose and fell like
seaweed, almost within his grasp. It was like a horrible nightmare.
He tried to reach it, but his arms were powerless; he could not make an
inch of progress; he could only keep himself afloat. Agatha's face was
under water. On the rise of a wave he saw her little bare foot; it was
quite still. He knew that she was dead, and the blessed sleepiness
took him again, dragging him down.
. . . . .
So the last of the Croonah was her good name written large on a yellow
telegram form, nailed to the panel of the room technically known as the
Chamber of Horrors at Lloyd's.
Around this telegram a group of grave-faced men stood in silence, or
with muttered words of surprise.
"The Croonah!" they said, "the Croonah!" as if a pillar of their faith
had fallen. For once no one had a theory: no carpet mariner could
explain this thing.
Against the jamb of the window, behind them all, Willie Carr stood
leaning.
"Done anything on her?" some one asked him.
"Yes, bad luck," he answered. "Had friends on her, too."
It was a long and expansive telegram, giving the list of the lost,
twenty-nine in all, and among the names were mentioned Mrs.
Ingham-Baker and her daughter.
"Ship in charge of second officer," said the telegram. And lower down,
at the foot of the fatal list: "Second officer picked up unconscious.
Doing well."
Suddenly Willie Carr moved, and, turning his back somewhat hastily,
looked out of the window.
Fitz had just come into the dreary, fateful little room, conducted
thither by the Admiralty agent. He read the telegram carefully from
beginning to end.
"Luke on the Burlings!" he muttered, as he turned to go. "Luke! I
can't understand it. He must have been mad!"
And after all Fitz only spoke the truth; but it was a madness to which
we are all subject.
CHAPTER XIII. AT D'ERRAHA AGAIN.
There is no statute so sublime
As Love's in all the world; and e'en to kiss
The pedestal is still a better bliss
Than all ambitions.
Three years later Eve was sitting on the terrace of the Casa d'Erraha.
It was late autumn, and we who live in Northern latitudes do not quite
realise what the autumn of Southern Europe is. Artists and others
interested in the beauties of nature love a dry summer for the autumn
that is sure to follow it. In Spain and in the islands of the
Mediterranean every summer is dry, and every autumn is beautiful.
The Casa d'Erraha has not changed in any way--nothing changes in the
Balearics. The same soft Southern odours creep up from the valley to
battle with the strong resinous scent of the pines that crown the
mountains.
Eve had been a year in D'Erraha--the whole of her married life. The
Count de Lloseta placed the house at their disposal for the honeymoon.
Fitz and she came to stay a month; they had remained twelve. It is
often so in Majorca. A number of Spaniards came six hundred years
ago--nine families; the nine names are there to-day.
Fitz had taken D'Erraha on the Minorcan rotas lease, so the old valley,
the old house, was his.
Eve was not alone on the terrace, for a certain small gentleman, called
Henry Cyprian FitzHenry, a prospective sailor, lay in a pink and
perfect slumber on her lap. Henry Cyprian fully appreciated the valley
of repose.
Eve was reading a letter--a lamentable scrawl, by the way--obviously
the work of a hand little used to the pen.
"My dearie," the letter ran; and it bore the address--Malabar Cottage,
Somarsh, Suffolk.
"MY DEARIE,--Please thank your good husband for his letter to me
announcing the birth of your son. I hope the little man is doing well.
Make a sailor of him. Being one myself I have had opportunity of
noticing seafaring men under different circumstances, and I have never
had an occasion to be ashamed of a shipmate, only excepting when he was
drunk, which is human, so to speak. Thanking the captain kindly for
his inquiries, I have to advise that all is going well at Malabar
Cottage. The cottage keeps taut and staunch; and now that my old
shipmate Creary has joined me, we keep to the weather side of the
butcher's bill without any difficulty. We pull along on a even keel
wonderfully well, Creary being a good-natured man, and as pleasant a
shipmate as one could wish. He has brought his bits of things with
him, and alongside of mine they make a homely look. I miss your voice
about the house, and sometimes I feel a bit lonely, but being a rough
seafaring man I know that Malabar Cottage was hardly fit for a lady
like yourself. The Count de Lloseta has twice been down to see me,
sitting affable down to our bit of lunch with us and making Creary
laugh till he choked. I don't rightly understand how it was that the
Count and your good husband the captain (R.N.) fixed up my money
affairs, getting so much of it back from Merton's while others haven't
had a halfpenny. I asked the Count to explain, which he did at some
length. But I didn't rightly understand it, never having had a good
head for figures, though I could always work out my sums near enough to
fix her position on the chart at mid-day. I take it that Mr. Lloseta
has got a gift for financials, leastwise he pays me my money most
regular, and last time there was two pounds more. I am sure I ought to
feel thankful that I have such good friends, and people, too, so much
above me. I understand that the Count de Lloseta is going out to
Majorca this autumn. He is a good man.--Your affectionate uncle,
"WILLIAM JOHN BONTNOR (Master)."
Eve read this effusion with a queer little smile which had no mirth in
it. She folded the letter carefully and laid it aside for her husband
to see when he returned. Then she fell into a reverie, looking down
over the great silent valley that lay between her and the sea. She had
been out into the world and had come back to D'Erraha again. In the
world she had had a somewhat singular experience. She had never loved
a woman, she had never known a woman's love. One man after another had
come into her life, passing across the field of her mental vision when
it was most susceptible to impression, each influencing her life in his
own way, each loving her in his own way, each claiming her love. Here
was a woman, the mother of a boy, whose every thought had been formed
by men, whose knowledge had been acquired from men, whose world was a
world of men. She would not have known what to do with a daughter, so
Fate had sent her a son. From the Caballero Challoner to Fitz, from
Fitz to Captain Bontnor, from Captain Bontnor to John Craik, and from
Craik back to Fitz, this, with Cipriani de Lloseta ever coming and
going, in and out, had been Eve FitzHenry's life.
These men had only taught her to be a woman, as men ever do; but from
them she had acquired the broader way of taking life, the larger way of
thinking, which promised well for Henry Cyprian lying asleep on her lap.
She was thinking of these men, for all they had taught her, of all she
had learnt from them without their knowing it, when one of them came to
her. Fitz had dismounted in the patio and came walking somewhat
stiffly through to the terrace. He had been out all day on a distant
part of the D'Erraha property, for he combined the farmer and the
sailor. He had applied for a year's leave after having served his
country for fifteen. The year had run into fifteen months, and there
was talk of the time when he should go to sea no longer.
Fitz had changed little. The cloud, however, that had formerly hung as
it were in his eyes had vanished. Eve had driven it away, slowly and
surely. Perhaps Henry Cyprian had something to do in the matter also
by pushing his uncle Luke out of the place he had hitherto occupied in
Fitz's heart. Luke had voluntarily relinquished the place to a certain
degree. He had left England three years before to seek his fortune in
other seas, and Fortune had come to him as she often does when she is
sought half-heartedly. Luke commanded one of the finest war-ships
afloat, but she sailed under the Chilean flag.
"Letters," said Fitz.
Eve smiled and handed him Captain Bontnor's epistle. She watched his
face as he read--she had a trick of watching her husband's face. This
was a hopelessly taciturn man, but Eve seemed to understand him.
There was another letter unopened and addressed to Fitz. He took it up
and opened it leisurely, after the manner of one who has all he wants
and looks for nothing by post.
Eve saw his face brighten with surprise. He read the letter through,
and then he handed it to her.
"Lloseta," he said, "is coming. He is in Barcelona."
Eve read the letter. She leant back in her deep chair with a
pensiveness, a faint suggestion of weariness bespeaking the end of a
convalescence, which was perhaps climatic.
"I have never understood the Count," she said. "There are so many
people one does not understand."
She broke off with a little laugh, half impatient.
"Yes," said her husband quietly. "Whom are you thinking of?"
"Agatha."
Fitz was gazing at the fine quartz gravel beneath his feet.
"Agatha cared for Luke," he said.
A faint flicker of anxiety passed across Eve's eyes--the mention of
Luke's name always brought it. She had never seen this twin
brother--this shadow as it were of Fitz's life--and it had been slowly
borne in upon her--perhaps Henry Cyprian had taught her--that there is
a tie between twins which no man can gauge nor tell whither it may lead.
"Yes," she said quietly, "I know."
"How do you know? Did she tell you?"
Eve smiled.
"No; but I knew long ago. I do not think she was good, Fitz, but that
was good in her--quite good. People say that it sometimes saves men.
It often saves women. I think it is better for a girl to have no
mother at all than to have a foolish mother, much better, I am sure of
it."
"Women like Mrs. Ingham-Baker," said Fitz gruffly, "do more harm in the
world than women who are merely bad. She made Agatha what she was, and
Agatha made Luke throw away the Croonah."
"But the Court decided that it was an unusual current," said Eve, who
had followed every word of the official inquiry.
Fitz shrugged his shoulders.
"He threw the ship away," he said. "Sailors like Luke do not get
wrecked on the Burlings."
Eve did not pursue the subject, for this was the shadow on her
happiness. It has been ruled that we are not to be quite happy here,
and those are happiest who have a shadow that comes from outside--from
elsewhere than from themselves or their own love.
Eve, womanlike, had thought of these things, analysing them as women
do, and she recognised the shadow frankly. She was too intelligent,
too far-sighted to expect perfect bliss, but she knew that she had as
near an approach to it as is offered for human delectation, neutralised
as it was by that vague regret which is only the reflection of the
active sorrows of others.
Fitz had handed the Count's letter to his wife. She read it slowly and
allowed it to drop. As it fluttered to her lap she caught sight of
some writing on the back.
"Did you see the postscript?" she asked.
"No."
She turned the letter and read aloud.
"I saw Craik just before I left. He was, I think, in better health.
His mind is much too brilliant, his brain too active, his humour too
keen to be that of a sick man. When I told him your good news he quite
forgot to be rheumatic. 'Glad to hear it, glad to hear it,' he said.
'She was much too good to be a mere writing woman.' By the way, I
imagine Eve never learnt that all the Spanish articles, except the
first, passed through my hands as well as Craik's before publication.
I knew who wrote them, and am still one of their profoundest admirers,
but, like John Craik, I am well content that the gifted author should
turn her attention to other things, notably to my godson, to whom
salutations. Did either of you ever meet young Lord Seahampton, an
excellent fellow, with the appearance of a cleanly groom and the heart
of a true knight? He was killed while riding a steeplechase last week.
I regret him deeply. He was one of my few friends."
Eve laid the letter down with a little sigh, a species of sigh which
she reserved for Cipriani de Lloseta.
"He is a nineteenth-century Quixote," she said. "No one ever knows
what good he may be doing."
Then they fell to talking of this man, of what he had done and what he
had left undone. They guessed at what he had suffered, and of the
suffering which he had spared others they knew a little; but of his own
feelings they were ignorant, his motives they only knew in part. His
life had been lived out to a certain extent before them, but they knew
nothing of it; it was a mere superficies without perspective, and Eve,
woman-like, wanted to put a background to it.
"But why," she persisted, from the height of her own happiness, which
had apparently been so easy to reach, "why does he lead such a lonely,
gloomy life? Why has he so few friends? Why does he not come and live
at Lloseta instead of in the gloomy palace in the Calle de la Paz?"
"His life is all whys," answered Fitz; "it is one big note of
interrogation. He said that some day he would tell us; no doubt he
will."
"Yes; perhaps so."
Eve reflected, and again she indulged in a short sigh.
"And after he has told us there will be nothing to be done, that is the
worst of it; there will be nothing to be done, Fitz."
"There never has been anything to be done," replied Fitz slowly, as was
his wont. "That has been the keynote of his life as long as I have
known him. If there had been anything to do, you may be sure that De
Lloseta would have done it."
Eve was bending over the small beginnings of a man lying supine on her
knees. She drew Henry Cyprian's wraps closer around him preparatory to
taking him indoors.
"Then his is surely the saddest life imaginable," she said.
CHAPTER XIV. THE COUNT'S STORY.
And yet I know
That tears lie deep in all I do.
The pine forests on the mountain-tops were beginning to gather the
darkness as the Count de Lloseta rode up the last slope to the Casa
d'Erraha. The sun had just set behind the rocky land that hides
Miramar from D'Erraha. A stillness seemed to be creeping down from the
mountain to the valley. The wind had gone down with the sun.
The Count rode alone beneath the gloom of the maritime pines which grow
to their finest European stature on the northern slope of D'Erraha. He
had been in the saddle all day; but Cipriani de Lloseta was a Spaniard,
and a Spaniard is a different man when he has thrown his leg across a
horse. The suave indolence of manner seems to vanish, the courtly
indifference, the sloth and contemplativeness which stand as a bar
between our northern nature and the peninsular habit. De Lloseta was a
fine horseman--even in Spain, the nation of finest horsemen in the
world; also he was on Majorcan soil again. He had landed at Palma that
morning from the Barcelona steamer, and he had found Fitz awaiting him
with a servant and a led horse on the quay.
There was a strangely excited gleam in De Lloseta's dark eyes which
Fitz did not fail to notice. The Count looked around over the dark
wild faces of his countrymen and met no glance of recognition, for he
had been absent forty years. Then he raised his eyes to the old city
towering on the hillside above them, the city that has not changed
these six hundred years, and he smiled a wan smile.
"I have brought a horse for you," said Fitz, "either to ride back to
D'Erraha with me now or to take you to Lloseta, should you care to go
direct there. Eve has packed up some lunch for you in the saddle-bag
if you think of going to Lloseta first."
The Count nodded.
"Yes," he said, "that is like Eve; she would think of such things."
He went up to the horse, patted it, measured the length of the
stirrup-leather, and then turned to Fitz.
"I will go to Lloseta," he said. "It is only natural after forty
years. I will be with you by seven o'clock to-night at D'Erraha."
Fitz did not offer to accompany him, and Cipriani de Lloseta rode that
strange ride alone; unknown, an outcast in his own land, he rode
through the most fertile valley in the world, of which every tree was
dear to him; and no man knew his thoughts. The labourers in the
fields, men and women, brown, sunburnt, half Moorish, wholly simple and
natural, paused in their toil and looked wonderingly at the lonely
horseman; the patient mules walking their ceaseless round at the
Moorish wells blinked lazily at him; the eagles of Lloseta swept slowly
round in a great circle far above the old castle, as they had swept in
his childhood, and he looked up at them with his strange patient smile.
He pushed the great olive-wood gate open and passed into the terraced
garden, all overgrown, neglected, mournful. It was a strange
home-coming, with no one near to see.
He spent the whole day at Lloseta engaged in the very practical work of
employing men to labour at the garden and in the house. It was, he
said, his intention to come back to his "possession," as these Majorcan
country houses are called, to inhabit it the larger part of the year,
and to pass the remaining winter months at his palace in Palma.
In the afternoon he mounted his horse, and in the evening, as has been
said, he reached D'Erraha.
A servant must have been watching his approach, for the large door was
thrown open and he rode into the patio. Fitz was here to welcome him;
and behind him Eve, with Henry Cyprian in her arms. No one spoke. It
was rather singular. The Count dismounted. He took off his hat and
held it in the Spanish mode in his hand while he shook hands with Fitz
and Eve. He looked round the patio. He noted the old marble well,
yellow with stupendous age, the orange trees clustering over it, the
palms and the banana trees, then he smiled at Eve.
"After many years," he said.
There was a little pause.
"I should have wished to see your father," he said, "amidst these
surroundings."
Eve gave a little nod. From long association with men she had learnt a
manlike reticence. She moved a little towards the open archway leading
through to the terrace.
"We have some tea," she said, "waiting for you. Will you come to the
terrace?"
He followed her, while the servant led the tired horse away.
They sat at the northern end of the terrace, where the garden-chairs
always stood, and before, beneath, all around them rose and fell the
finest of all the fine Majorcan scenery--scenery which only Sardinia
can rival in Europe.
Eve poured out his tea, which he drank, and set the cup aside.
They all knew that the time had come for the Count de Lloseta to tell
his story--to redeem the promise made to Eve and Fitz long ago, before
they were married.
Cipriani de Lloseta leant back in his deep garden-chair nursing one
booted leg over the other. He was dusty and travel-stained, but the
natural hardiness of his frame seemed to be more apparent than ever in
his native land, on his native mountains.
"My poor little tale," he said; "you will have it?"
"Yes," said Eve; and Fitz nodded.
Cipriani de Lloseta did not look at them, but down into the gathering
blue of the valley beneath them. His quiet, patient eyes never turned
elsewhere during his narrative, as if he were telling the story to the
valley and the hills.
"When I was quite a young man everything was too prosperous with me. I
was rich, I had health and liberty and many friends; life was
altogether too simple and easy for me. Before I was twenty-one I met
my dear Rosa and fell in love with her. Here again it was too easy,
too convenient. Fate is cruellest when she is too kind. The parents
wished it. The two families were equally old, equally rich; and lastly
Rosa--Rosa was kind enough to be--kind to me."
He paused, pensively rubbing his clean-shaven chin with his forefinger,
his long profile was turned towards Eve, standing out like brown marble
against the gloom of the valley. Eve wondered about this woman, this
Rosa, who had been forty years in her grave. She wondered what manner
of woman this must have been to have kept the love of a man through all
these years by a mere memory, but she did not wonder that Rosa had been
kind.
"She saw things in me that do not exist," Cipriani de Lloseta went on
quietly. "It is so with women when--and men may thank God that it is
so."
He gave a little laugh, unpleasant to the ear--the laugh of a man who
has been right down to the bottom of life and comes up again with a
sneer.
Eve and Fitz made no sign. This story was like wine that has lain
forgotten in the dark for many years, it needed careful handling. Henry
Cyprian turned on his silken cushion, and opening his great dark eyes
watched the speaker with that infantine steadfastness of gaze which may
perchance see more than we suspect.
"We were married"--he paused and gave a jerk of the head towards Palma,
behind him to the left--"in the cathedral, and were quite happy. At
that time the Harringtons were living, or rather staying, in this house
with your good father. Neither of you ever saw the Honourable George
Harrington; your loss is infinitesimal. For some reason they began to
come to Lloseta a good deal--some reason of Mrs. Harrington's. She was
always a singular woman, with a reason for all that she did, which I,
in my old-fashioned way, do not think good in a woman. She disliked my
wife. I could see that through her affectionate ways. I do not know
why. Men cannot understand these things. Rosa was very beautiful."
Eve, who was watching his face, gave a little nod--a mental nod, as it
were, for her own edification. It is possible that she, being a woman,
understood.
"Finally they came to stay a few days--you know the Spanish
hospitality. She forced it on us against our will. I was particularly
averse to it because of--Rosa. I wanted to be quietly at Lloseta. We
intended to live almost entirely in Majorca. We wanted our children to
be Majorcans, and especially a son. The Harringtons stayed longer than
we invited them for. They were well-bred adventurers. I have met many
such in English country houses--people who shoot, and fish, and hunt at
the expense of others. It suited them to stay at Lloseta, and they did
so. They were people who got the best of everything by asking for
it--by looking upon it in a well-bred way as their right. I did not
mind that, but I wanted them to go, on account of Rosa. Also I
disliked the woman's manner towards myself; it altered when Rosa was
not there, you understand. We have a word for it in Spain, but I will
not say it because the woman is dead."
There was a rasping sound as he drew his first and second fingers
across his closely shaven chin. It is a singular thing that cynics
usually reserve their keenest shafts for women.
"At last I informed Rosa that they must be told to go, and Rosa was
very angry. It was her pride--the pride of a new-fledged hostess, of a
young matron. She was Spanish, and hot tempered. My inhospitality was
terrible to her, and she spoke sharply. I was quicker to feel and to
act then than I am now. I answered her. I would not give way,
thinking, as I was, of the son we hoped for. It was nothing, but we
raised our voices. In the heat of the argument I lifted my hand. Rosa
thought that I was going to strike her--a strange mistake. She stepped
back and fell. You know our marble floors. She struck her temple
against the floor, and she lay quite still. I heard a sound, and
turning, saw Mrs. Harrington in the doorway. She had been listening;
she had seen everything. Rosa never recovered consciousness; she died.
It was terribly easy for her to die. It was equally hard for me to
continue living. Mrs. Harrington helped me in my great sorrow to a
certain extent, but she would not help me by going away. Then, as soon
as Rosa was buried, she told me that unless I gave her money she would
tell all Spain that I had murdered my wife. At first I did not
understand. I did not know that God had created women such as this.
But she made her meaning quite clear. Indeed to do this thoroughly,
she hinted to the neighbours that she knew more than she had disclosed.
All Majorca would turn its back upon me--all except Challoner. I paid
the woman. I have paid her ever since, and I do not regret it. What
else could I do? After many generations of honour and uprightness I
could not let the name of Lloseta fall into the hands of a low woman
such as Mrs. Harrington. I had to pay heavily, but it was still cheap.
I saved the name. No breath of dishonour has reached the name of De
Lloseta de Mallorca. I got her out of Majorca, and my old friend
Challoner set himself the task of silencing the gossips. But I found
that I had to leave Lloseta--for the name's sake I quitted my home."
He spread out his hands with a patient gesture of resignation.
"Such has been my life," he went on. "It has been spent in preserving
the name unspotted, in paying Mrs. Harrington, and in praying the good
God to make her life unhappy and short. In His greater wisdom He
prolonged her life, but it was never a happy one, for God is just. I
am the last of the Llosetas. The name will die, but it has lived for
six hundred years, and it dies as it lived--unspotted--one of the great
names of the world."
He broke off with a little laugh.
"Spanish pride," he said. "I must beg your indulgence. My life you
know. It has not been a happy one. I have never forgotten Rosa; I
have never even tried. I have had several objects however in life; it
has not been uninteresting. One of the chief of these objects has been
to repay to a minute extent the true friendship of my dear Challoner.
He was a friend in need. He taught me to look upon the English as the
finest race of men on this planet. I may be wrong, but I shall adhere
to my opinion. In my small way I attempted to repay in part to
Challoner's daughter all that I owed to him; but I only ran against a
pride as strong, as sensitive as my own. My child, you did quite
right!"
He turned to Eve, smiling his patient smile.
"And now," he went on, "I shall have my way after all."
He laid his hand on Henry Cyprian, who was conscientiously putting the
Valley of Repose to its best use.
"After all, this little caballero was born at D'Erraha. D'Erraha is
his; is it not so?"
And Eve, giving up her pride to him--casting it down before his loftier
pride--came round to his chair, and bending over, kissed him silently.