The Grey Lady Part 25

His rugged hand shook as he drank the wine.

"Only," he went on, after wiping his moustache vigorously with a red pocket-handkerchief--"only it was rum, dearie--rum, you know, for heavy weather. It puts heart into the men."

His face suddenly clouded over again.

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

"Finish the gla.s.s," said Eve, and she stood over him while he drank the wine.

"And now," she went on, "listen to me. I have had a very important letter, which could hardly have come at a more opportune moment. In fact, I think we may call it also . . . what they say in a bill of lading."

She opened the letter, as if about to read it aloud, and on glancing through she seemed to change her mind.

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

She looked at her uncle, whose face had suddenly hardened. He seemed to be schooling himself to hear something unpleasant.

"Ay!" he muttered, "ay! I suppose she'll get her way now. I suppose I can't hope to keep you now. She'll get you--she'll get you."

"Then I think you are a very mean old man!" exclaimed Eve. "I don't believe you are a sailor at all. You are what you call a land- lubber, if you think that I am the sort of person to accept your kindness when you are prosperous, and then--and then when heavy weather comes to go away and leave you."

The old man smiled rather wanly, and fumbled with the red pocket- handkerchief.

"As it happens, Mrs. Harrington does not ask me to go and stay with her--she asks me--" She paused and laid her hand on his shoulder gently. "She asks me--to accept money."

Captain Bontnor sat upright.

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

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

Captain Bontnor scratched his head. His manners were not, as has already been stated, remarkable for artificiality or superficial refinement. He screwed up his features as if he were swallowing something nasty.

"Read me the letter," he said.

Eve opened the missive again, and looked at it.

"She puts it very nicely," she said. "She asks if you will permit me to accept a dress allowance from a rich woman who does not always spend her money discreetly."

It must be admitted that Mrs. Harrington's nice way of putting it lost nothing by its transmission through Eve's lips.

Thus poor Charity creeps in wherever she can shelter. She is not proud. She does not ask to be accepted for her own sake; though Heaven knows she frequently is. She masquerades in any costume--she accepts the humiliation of any disguise. She is ready to be cast down before swine, or raised high before the eyes of fools. She is used as a tool or a stepping-stone--the humble handmaid of the tuft- hunter and the toady. She is dragged through the mire of the slums to the dwellings of the wealthy and idle. She is hounded up and down the world--the plaything of Fashion, the trap of the unwary, the washerwoman of the unclean who wish to try the paths of virtue-- for a change. And she is still Charity, and she lives strong and pure in herself. It has been decreed that we shall ever have the poor beside us, and so long shall we also possess those who live on them.

Charity begetteth charity, and it was for Charity's sake that Eve Challoner took the bitter bread to herself, and accepted Mrs.

Harrington's offer.

Her own pride lay between her and this woman whom she knew to be capricious, uncertain, lacking the quality of justice. Her duty towards Captain Bontnor lay between her and high Heaven.

So Eve Challoner learnt her first lesson in that school where we all are called to study sooner or later--the school of Adversity; where some of us pa.s.s creditably, whilst others are ploughed, and a few--a very few--take honours.

BOOK THE SECOND.

CHAPTER I. BITS OF LIFE.

Some far-off touch Of greatness, to know well I am not great.

The local house-agent antic.i.p.ated no difficulty in letting Malabar Cottage, furnished, at a good weekly rental; and in due course a dreamy clergyman, with a wife who was anything but dreamy, came and saw and hired. The wide-awake wife was so interested in Eve that she forgot to settle several details which came to her mind afterwards. Her curiosity was so aroused that the special cupidity belonging to the wife of the dreamy clergyman was for the moment allayed, and she forgot to drive a hard bargain.

Moreover, Eve's manner was not exactly encouraging to the would-be bargainer. A stupendous ignorance of the tricks of furnished house- letting, combined with a certain lofty contempt for details, acquired in Spain, where such contempt is thoroughly understood, completely baffled the clergyman's wife. She concluded that Eve was a very stupid and ignorant girl, a poor housekeeper, and an incompetent woman of the world; and yet she was afraid of her, simply because she did not understand her. Jews, poor men's wives, and other persons who live by haggling, have a subtle fear of those who will not haggle.

So Malabar Cottage was let; and in due time the sad day arrived when Captain Bontnor had to bid farewell to his "bits of things." These "bits of things" were in reality bits of his life--and a human life is not so long nor so interesting an affair that we can afford lightly to break off any portion, to throw it away, or even to let it out on hire.

Captain Bontnor wandered rather disconsolately round the rooms after breakfast, and as Eve was with him he gave her a short inventory of these pieces of his life.

"That there harpoon," he said, pointing to a rusty relic on the wall above the mantelpiece, "was given to me by the finest whaling captain that ever found his way into the North water. When I first went to sea I thought I'd like to be a whaler; but two voyages settled that fancy. I'm told they shoot their harpoons out of a gun nowadays--poor sport that! And there's no sport like whalin'. Two thousand pounds at one end of a line and your own life at the other- -that's finer sport than these c.o.c.kney partridge-shooters know of.

"And that's my seal-pick--many a seal have I killed with that. That there's the portrait of the True Love, three-masted schooner, built at Littlehampton by Harvey. Sailed second mate, first mate, and master in her, I did. Then she was sold; and a lubber went and--and threw her on the Kentish Knock in a south-easterly gale. She was a pretty ship! I felt the loss as if she'd been my sweetheart--the pretty little True Love!

"That string of sh.e.l.ls was given to me by a shipmate--old Charlie Sams--to bring home for his wife. He picked 'em up on the beach above James Town. Took yellow Jack, he did, and died in my arms-- and he only had the sh.e.l.ls to send to his young wife and a bit of a baby he was always botherin' and talkin' about. I did two cross voyages, and one of them round the Horn, before I got home, and I couldn't find the woman, she having moved. So when I left the sea, I just hung them up in case she happened to come along by chance and see them with his portrait underneath. That's Charlie Sams--a bit brown and faded. She won't come along now, I suppose. It is a matter of fifty-five years since Charlie died."

As he wandered round the house, so he wandered on in his reminiscences, until Eve led him out of the front door. He took his hat from the peg which he had been intending to unship and refix at a lower level for the last fifteen years, and followed her meekly into the garden. He paused to pick up some yellow jasmine leaves which had withered in the warmth of the May sun and fallen on the doorstep. Then he looked back longingly.

"You see," said Eve cheerfully, "it is only for a few months. We can always let it in the summer like this, and live luxuriously on our rent in the winter."

He threw back his shoulders and smiled bravely, trying to banish the thought of his "bits of things."

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

And they both knew that they could not hope to live in Malabar Cottage again--not, at all events, on the rent paid by the clergyman's wife.

They had taken lodgings in a small house near the harbour, which, as Eve pointed out, was much more convenient for the shops; and, besides, they could now buy their fish out of the boats. This last theory she propounded with a grave a.s.sumption of housekeeping knowledge which did not fail to impress Captain Bontnor.

The whole town knew of the captain's misfortune, and half the citizens of Somarsh shared in it. Only those who had saved nothing lost nothing, for Merton's was the only bank on the coast; and more than one old fisherman--bent with rheumatism, crippled by the hardships of a life spent half in the water, half on it--saw his savings--the fruit of long toilsome years--go to pay the London tradesmen a part of what young Merton owed them. It was the old, oft-repeated tale of over-education. A country banker's son sent to public school and university to be educated out of country banking and into nothing else.

Captain Bontnor was quite penniless. During his long life he had saved nearly four thousand pounds, and this sum he had placed on deposit with the Somarsh bankers, living very comfortably on the interest. The whole of this was absorbed--a mere drop in the financial ocean.

Mrs. Harrington had asked Eve to accept a dress allowance of forty pounds a year, and Eve accepted--for her uncle. Besides this she had a little ready money--the result of the sale of the contents of the Casa d'Erraha. A person who looked like a butler or a major- domo had gone over from Barcelona to Palma to attend this sale; and the local buyers laughed immoderately at him in their sleeves. He was, they opined, a mule--he did not know the value of things, and paid double for all he bought.

But the proceeds of the sale did not amount to much. Eve knew that something must be done. The money would soon be exhausted, and they could not live on the dress allowance. Since the failure of the bank, Captain Bontnor's mental grasp had seemed less reliable than ever, and Eve had kept these things to herself.

The captain's one servant--an aged female--who ruined his digestion and neglected her dusting, was prevailed upon to return to her people, and Eve and her uncle settled down to their restricted life in the lodgings which were so conveniently near the fishing harbour.