The Grey Lady Part 17

"Can I stay on board to lunch with you?" he asked easily. "Goodness only knows when we shall run against each other again. It was the merest chance. We only got in last night. I was just going ash.o.r.e to report when we saw the old Croonah come pounding in. That"--he paused and drew his cloak closer--"is why I am in my war-paint! We are going straight home."

"Stay by all means," said Luke.

Fitz nodded.

"I suppose," he added as an afterthought, "that I ought to pay my respects to Mrs. Ingham-Baker?"

Luke's face cleared suddenly. Fitz had evidently forgotten about Agatha.

"I will ask them to lunch with us in my cabin," he said.

And presently they left the bridge.

In due course Fitz was presented to the Ingham-Bakers, and Agatha was very gracious. Fitz looked at her a good deal. Simply because she made him. She directed all her conversation and eke her bright eyes in his direction. He listened, and when necessary he laughed a jolly resounding laugh. How could she tell that he was drawing comparisons all the while? It is the simple-minded men who puzzle women most. Whenever Luke's face clouded she swept away the gathering gloom with some small familiar attention--some reference to him in her conversation with Fitz which somehow brought him nearer and set Fitz further off.

Suddenly, on hearing that Fitz hoped to be in England within a week, Mrs. Ingham-Baker fell heavily into conversation.

"I am afraid," she said, "that you will find our dear Mrs.

Harrington more difficult to get on with than ever. In fact--he, he!--I almost feel inclined to advise you not to try. But I suppose you will not be much in London?"

Fitz looked at her with clear, keen blue eyes.

"I expect to be there some time," he answered. "I hope to stay with Mrs. Harrington."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker glanced at Agatha, and returned somewhat hastily to her galantine of veal.

Agatha was drumming on the table with her fingers.

CHAPTER XII. A SHUFFLE.

To love is good, no doubt, but you love best A calm safe life, with wealth and ease and rest.

The Croonah ran round Europa Point into fine weather, and the wise old captain--who felt the pulse of the saloon with unerring touch-- deemed it expedient to pin upon the board the notice of a ball to be given on the following night. There was considerable worldly knowledge in this proceeding. The pa.s.sengers still had the air of Europe in their lungs, the energy of Europe in their limbs. Nothing pulls a ship full of people together so effectually as a ball.

Nothing gives such absorbing employment to the female mind which would otherwise get into hopeless mischief. Besides they had been at sea five days, and the captain knew that more than one ingenuous maiden, sitting in thoughtful idleness about the decks, was lost in vague forebodings as to the creases in her dresses ruthlessly packed away in the hold.

The pa.s.sengers were, in fact, finding their sea-legs, which, from the captain's point of view, meant that the inner men and the outer women would now require and receive a daily increasing attention.

So he said a word to the head cook, and to the fourth officer he muttered -

"Let the women have their trunks!"

When, on the evening of the ball, Agatha appeared at the door of her mother's cabin, that good lady's face fell.

"What, dear? Your old black!"

"Yes, dear, my old black," replied the dutiful daughter. She was arranging a small bouquet of violets in the front of her dress--a bouquet she had found in her cabin when she went to dress. Luke had, no doubt, sent ash.o.r.e for them at Gibraltar--and there was something of the unknown, the vaguely possible, in his manner of placing them on her tiny dressing-table, without a word of explanation, which appealed to her jaded imagination.

There was some suggestion of recklessness about Agatha, which her mother almost detected--something which had never been suggested in the subtler element of London drawing-room. The girl spoke in a short, sharp way which was new to the much-snubbed rear-commander.

Agatha still had this when Luke asked her for a dance.

"Yes," she answered curtly, handing him the card and avoiding his eyes.

He stepped back to take advantage of the light of a swinging hurricane lamp, and leant against the awning which had been closed in all round.

"How many may I have?" he asked.

She continued to look anywhere except in his direction. Then quite suddenly she gave a little laugh.

"All."

"What?" he added, with a catch in his breath.

"You may have them all."

There was a pause; then Agatha turned with a half-mocking smile, and looked at him. For the first time in her life she was really frightened. She had never seen pa.s.sion in a man's face before. It was the one thing she had never encountered in the daily round of social effort in London. Not an evil pa.s.sion, but the strong pa.s.sion of love, which is as rare in human beings as is genius. He was standing in a conventional att.i.tude, holding her programme--and that which took the girl's breath away lay in his eyes alone.

She could not meet his look, for she felt suddenly quite puny and small and powerless. She realised in that flash of thought that there was a whole side of life of which she had never suspected the existence. After all, she was learning the lesson that millions of women have to learn before they quite realise what life is.

She smiled nervously, and looked hard at the little card in his strong, still hands--wondering what she had done. She saw him write his name opposite five or six dances. Then he handed her the card, and left her with a grave bow--left her without a word of explanation, to take his silence and explain it if she could. That sense of the unknown in him, which appealed so strongly to her, seemed to rise and envelop her in a maze of thought and imagination which was bewildering in its intensity--thrilling with a new life.

When he came back later to claim his first dance, he was quietly polite, and nothing else. They danced until the music stopped, and Agatha knew that she had met her match in this as in other matters.

The dancers trooped out to the dimly-lighted deck, while the quartermaster raised the awning to allow the fresh air to circulate.

Luke and Agatha went with the rest, her hand resting unsteadily on his sleeve. She had never felt unsteady like this before. She was conscious, probably for the first time in her life, of a strange, creeping fear. She was distinctly afraid of the first words that her partner would say when they were alone. Spread out over the broad deck the many pa.s.sengers seemed but a few. It was almost solitude--and Agatha was afraid of solitude with Luke. Yet she had selected a dress which she knew would appeal to him. She had dressed for him--which means something from a woman's point of view.

She had welcomed this ball with a certain reckless throb of excitement, not for its own sake, but for Luke's. The unerring instinct of her vanity had not played her false. She had succeeded, and now she was afraid of her success. There is a subtle fear in all success, and an indefinite responsibility.

Luke knew the ship. He led the way to a deserted corner of the deck, with a deliberation which set Agatha's heart beating.

"What did you mean when you said I could have all the dances?" asked Luke slowly. His eyes gleamed deeply as he looked down at her. And Agatha had no answer ready.

She stood before him with downcast eyes--like a chidden child who has been meddling with danger.

And suddenly his arms were round her. She gave a little gasp, but made no attempt to escape from him. This was all so different, so new to her. There was something in the strong salt air blowing over them which seemed to purify the world and raise them above the sordid cares thereof. There was something simple and strong and primitive in this man--at home on his own element, all filled with the strength of the ocean--mastering her, claiming her as if by force.

"What did you mean?" he asked again.

She pushed him away, and turning stood beside him with her two hands resting on the rail, her back turned towards him.

"Oh, Luke," she whispered at length, "I can't be poor--I CAN'T--I can't. You do not know what it is. It has always been such a struggle--there is no rest in it."

It is said that women can raise men above the world. How often do they bring them down to it when they are raising themselves!

And Luke's love was large enough to accept her as she was.

"And if I were not poor?" he asked, without any of the sullen pride that was his.

She answered nothing, and he read her silence aright.