The Grey Lady Part 2

She stiffened herself with a rustling sound of silk, proudly conscious of injured virtue, full of the charity that exacteth a high interest.

"We did our best," replied Fitz, with a simple intrepidity which rather spoilt the awesomeness of the situation.

"I am not speaking to you," returned the lady. "You have worked and have pa.s.sed your examination satisfactorily. You are not clever--I know that; but you have managed to get into the Navy, where your father was before you, and your grandfather before him. I have no doubt you will give satisfaction to your superior officers. I was talking to Luke."

"We all knew that," said Luke, in a dangerous voice, which trite observation she chose to ignore.

"You have had equal advantages," pursued the dispenser of charity.

"I have shown no favour; I have treated you alike. It had been my intention to do so all your lives and after my death."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker was so interested at this juncture that she leant forward with parted lips, listening eagerly. The Honourable Mrs.

Harrington allowed herself the plebeian pleasure of returning the stare with a questioning glance which broke off into a little laugh.

"Have you," she continued, addressing Luke directly, "any reason to offer for your failure--beyond the usual one of bad luck?"

Luke looked at her in a lowering way and made no reply. Had Mrs.

Harrington been a poor woman, she would have recognised that the boy was at the end of his tether. But she had always been surrounded-- as such women are--by men, and more especially by women, who would swallow any insult, any insolence, so long as it was gilded. The world had, in fact, accepted the Honourable Mrs. Harrington because she could afford to gild herself.

"It was bad luck, and nothing else," burst out Fitz, heedless of her sarcastic tones. "Luke is a better sailor than I am. But he always was weak in his astronomy, and it all turned on astronomy."

"I should imagine it all turned on stupidity," said Mrs. Harrington.

"I'm stupid, if you like," said Fitz; "Luke isn't. Luke is clever; ask any chap on board!"

"I do not need to ask any chap on board," said Mrs. Harrington. "My own common sense tells me that he is clever. He has proved it."

"It's like a woman--to hit a fellow when he's down," said Luke, with his hands deep in his pockets.

He turned to Mrs. Ingham-Baker for sympathy in this sentiment, and that soft-hearted lady deemed it expedient to turn hastily away, avoiding his glance, denying all partisanship.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker was not a person given to the disguise of her own feelings. She was plausible enough to the outer world. To herself she was quite frank, and hardly seemed to recognise this as the event she had most desired. It is to be presumed that her heart was like her physical self, a large, unwieldy thing, over which she had not a proper control. The organ mentioned had a way of tripping her up. It tripped her now, and she quite forgot that this quarrel was precisely what she had wanted for years. She had looked forward to it as the turning-point in her daughter Agatha's fortunes.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker had, in fact, wondered more than a thousand times why the Honourable Mrs. Harrington should do all for the FitzHenrys and nothing for Agatha. She did not attempt to attribute reasons.

She knew her s.e.x too well for that. She merely wondered, which means that she cherished a question until it grew into a grievance.

The end of it she knew would be a quarrel. This might not come until the FitzHenrys should have grown to man's estate and man's privilege of quarrelling with his female relatives about the youthful female relative of some other person. But it would come, surely. Mrs. Ingham-Baker, the parasite, knew her victim, Mrs.

Harrington, well enough to be sure of that.

And now that this quarrel had arisen--much sooner than she could have hoped--providentially brought about by an astronomical examination-paper, Mrs. Ingham-Baker was forced to face the humiliating fact that she felt sorry for Luke.

It would have been different had Agatha been present, but that ingenious maiden was at school at Brighton. Had her daughter been in the room, Mrs. Ingham-Baker's motherly instinct would have narrowed itself down to her. But in the absence of her own child, Luke's sorry plight appealed to that larger maternal instinct which makes good women in unlikely places.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker was, however, one of the many who learn to curb the impulse of a charitable intention. She looked out of the window, and pretended not to notice that the culprit had addressed his remark to her. To complete this convenient deafness she gave a simulated little cough of abstraction, which entirely gave her away.

Mrs. Harrington chose to ignore Luke's taunt.

"And," she inquired sweetly, "what do you intend to do now?"

Quite suddenly the boy turned on her.

"I intend," he cried, "to make my own life--whatever it may be. If I am starving I will not come to you. If half-a-crown would save me, I would rather die than borrow it from you. You think that you can buy everything with your cursed money. You can't buy me. You can't buy a FitzHenry. You--you can't--"

He gave a little sob, remembered his new manhood--that sudden, complete manhood which comes of sorrow--pulled himself up, and walked to the door. He opened it, turned once and glanced at his brother, and pa.s.sed out of the room.

So Luke FitzHenry pa.s.sed out into his life--a life which he was to make for himself. Pa.s.sionate--quick to love, to hate, to suffer; deep in his feeling, susceptible to ridicule or sarcasm--an orphan.

The stairs were dark as he went down them.

Mrs. Harrington gave a little laugh as the door closed behind him.

She had always been able to repurchase the friendship of her friends.

Fitz made a few steps towards the door before her voice arrested him. "Stop!" she cried.

He paused, and the old sense of discipline that was in his blood made him obey. He thought that he would find Luke upstairs on the bed with his face buried in his folded arms, as he had found him a score of times during their short life.

"I think you are too hard on him," he answered hotly. "It is bad enough being ploughed, without having to stand abuse afterwards."

"My dear," said Mrs. Harrington, "just you come here and sit beside me. We will leave Luke to himself for a little. It is much better.

Let him think it out alone."

What was there in this fair-haired boy's demeanour, voice, or being that appealed to Mrs. Harrington, despite her sterner self?

So Fitz was pacified by the lady's gentler manner, and consented to remain. He made good use of his time, pleading Luke's cause, explaining his bad fortune, and modestly disclaiming any credit to himself for having succeeded where his brother failed. But all the while the boy was restless, eager to get away and run upstairs to Luke, who he felt sure was living years in every moment, as children do in those griefs which we take upon ourselves to call childish.

At last he rose.

"May I go now?" he asked.

"Yes, if you like. But do not bring Luke to me until he is prepared to apologise for his ingrat.i.tude and rudeness."

"What a dear boy he is!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Ingham-Baker almost before the door was closed. "So upright and honest and straightforward."

"Yes," answered Mrs. Harrington, with a sigh of anger.

"He will be a fine man," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker. "I shall die quite happy if my Agatha marries such a man as Henry will be."

Mrs. Harrington glanced at her voluminous friend rather critically.

"You do not look like dying yet," she said.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker put her head on one side and looked resigned.

"One never knows," she answered. "It is a great responsibility, Marian, to have a daughter."

"I should imagine, from what I have seen of Agatha, that the child is quite capable of taking care of herself."

"Yes," answered the fond mother, "she is intelligent. But a girl is so helpless in the world, and when I am gone I should feel happier if I knew that my child had a good husband, such as Fitz, to take care of her."

Neither of these ladies being of the modern school of feminine learning, the vague theology underlying this remark was allowed to pa.s.s unnoticed.