The Grey Lady Part 29

"From whom?"

"Ah!"

"You will not tell me?"

"My dear man, I cannot. The smell of printing ink is not good for a man's morals. Leave me my unsullied honour."

The Count had lighted his cigarette. He looked keenly at his companion's deeply-lined face, and the blue smoke floated between them.

"There are not many people who could have written that article," he said. "For the few English who know Spain like that are known to the natives. And no Spaniard would have dared to write it."

John Craik laughed, and while he was laughing his eyes were grave and full of keen observation.

"Then you admit that it is true," he said.

"Yes," answered the Count; "it is true--all of it. The writer knows my country as few Englishmen--or WOMEN know it."

John Craik was leaning back in his deep chair an emaciated, pain- stricken form. His calm grey eyes met the quick glance, and did not fall nor waver.

"Then you will not tell me?"

"No. But why are you so anxious to know?"

The Count smoked for a few seconds in silence.

"I will tell you," he said suddenly, "in confidence."

Craik nodded, and settled himself again in his chair. He was a very fidgety man.

"It is not the first article that I care about," explained De Lloseta. "It is that which is behind it. This"--he laid his hand on the page--"is my own country, the north and east of Spain, the wildest part of the Peninsula, the home of the Catalonians, who have always been the leaders in strife and warfare. It is the country from whence my family has its source. All that is written about Catalonia or the Baleares must necessarily refer in part to me and mine. This writer may know too much."

"I think," said John Craik, "that I can guarantee that if the writer does know too much, the Commentator shall not be the channel through which the knowledge will reach the public."

"Thanks; but--can you guarantee it? Can you guarantee that the public interest, being aroused by these articles, may not ask for further details, which details might easily be given elsewhere, in something less--respectable--than the Commentator?"

"My dear sir, one would think you had a crime on your conscience."

Cipriani de Lloseta smiled--such a smile as John Craik had never seen before.

"I have many," he answered. "Who has not?"

"Yes; they acc.u.mulate as life goes on, do they not?"

"What I fear," went on De Lloseta, "is the idle gossip which obtains in England under the pleasant t.i.tle of 'Society Notes,' 'Boudoir Chat,' and other new-fangled vulgarities. In Spain we have not that."

"Then Spain is the Promised Land."

"Your Society journalists may talk of the English n.o.bility, though the aristocracy that fills the 'Society Notes' is almost invariably the aristocracy of yesterday. But I want to keep the Spanish families out of it if possible--the names that were there before printing was invented."

"Printing and education are too cheap nowadays," said John Craik.

"They are both dangerous instruments in the hands of fools, and it is the fool who goes to the cheap market. But you need not be afraid of the Society papers. It is only those who wish to be advertised who find themselves there."

De Lloseta's thoughts had gone back to the Commentator. He picked up the magazine and was looking over the pages of the Spanish article.

"It is clever," he said. "It is very clever."

Craik nodded, after the manner of one who had formed his own opinion and intended to abide by it. He was a gentle-mannered man in the ordinary intercourse of life, but on the battlefield of letters he was a veritable Coeur-de-Lion. He quailed before no man.

"You know," said the Count, "there are only two persons who could have written this--and they are women. If it is the one, I fear nothing; if the other, I fear everything."

"Then," said John Craik, shuffling in his chair, "fear nothing."

De Lloseta looked at him sharply.

"I could force you to tell a lie by mentioning the name of the woman who wrote this," he said.

"Then don't!" said John Craik. "I lie beautifully!"

"No, I will not. But I will ask you to do something for me instead: let me read the proofs of these as they are printed."

For exactly two seconds John Craik pondered.

"I shall be happy to do that," he said. "I will let you know when the proof is ready. You must come here and read it in this room."

Cipriani de Lloseta rose from his seat.

"Thank you," he said, holding out his hand. "I will not keep you from your work. You are doing a better action than you are aware of."

He took the frail fingers in his grasp for a second and turned to go. Before the door closed behind him John Craik was at work again.

So Eve Challoner's work pa.s.sed through Cipriani de Lloseta's hand, and that n.o.bleman came into her life from another point. It would seem that in whichsoever direction she turned, the Mallorcan was waiting for her with his grave persistence, his kindly determination to watch over her, to exercise that manly control over her life which is really the chief factor of feminine happiness on earth--if women only knew it. For all through Nature there are qualities given to the male for the sole advantage of the female, and the beasts of the forest rise up in silent protest against the nonsense that is talked to-day of woman's place in the world. We may consider the beasts of the field to advantage, for through all the chances and changes of education, of female emanc.i.p.ation, and the subjection of the weaker sort of man, there will continue to run to the end of time the one grand principle that the male is there to protect the female and the female to care for her young.

Cipriani de Lloseta thus late in life seemed to have found an object. Eve Challoner, while bringing back the past with a flood of recollections--for she seemed to carry the air of Mallorca with her- -had so far brought him to the present that for the first time since thirty years and more he began to be interested in the life that was around him.

He suspected--nay, he almost knew--that Eve had written the article in the Commentator which had attracted so much attention. John Craik had to a certain extent baffled him. He had called on the editor of the great periodical in the hope of gleaning some detail-- some little sc.r.a.p of information which would confirm his suspicion-- but he had come away with nothing of value excepting the promise that the printed matter should pa.s.s through his hands before it reached the public.

Even if he was mistaken, and this proved after all to be the work of Mrs. Harrington, the fact of the proof being offered to his scrutiny was in itself an important safeguard. This, however, was only a secondary possibility. He knew that Eve had written this thing, and he wished to have the opportunity of correcting one or two small mistakes which he antic.i.p.ated, and which he felt that he himself alone could rectify.

In the meantime John Craik was scribbling a letter to Eve in his minute caligraphy.

"DEAR MADAM" (he wrote), "Your first article is, I am glad to say, attracting considerable attention. It is absolutely necessary that I should see you, with a view of laying down plans for further contributions. Please let me know how this can be arranged. Yours truly, "JOHN CRAIK."

And at the same time another man, to whom all these things were of paramount importance--to whom all that touched Eve's life was as if it touched his own--was reading the Commentator. Fitz, on his way home from the Mediterranean, to fill the post of navigating- lieutenant to a new ironclad at that time fitting out at Chatham, bought the Commentator from an enterprising newsagent given to maritime venture in Plymouth harbour. The big steamer only stayed long enough to discharge her mails, and Fitz being a sailor did not go ash.o.r.e. Instead, he sat on a long chair on deck and read the Commentator. He naturally concluded that at last Cipriani de Lloseta had acceded to John Craik's wish.

The Ingham-Bakers had come home from Malta and were at this time staying with Mrs. Harrington in London. Agatha had of late taken to reading the newspapers somewhat exhaustively. She read such columns as are usually pa.s.sed over by the majority of womankind--such as naval intelligence and those uninteresting details of maritime affairs printed in small type, and stated to emanate from Lloyd's, wherever that vague source may be.

From these neglected corners of the Morning Post Agatha Ingham-Baker had duly learnt that Henry FitzHenry had been appointed navigating- lieutenant to the Terrific, lying at Chatham, which would necessitate his leaving the Kittiwake at Gibraltar and returning to England at once. She also read that the Indian liner Croonah had sailed from Malta for Gibraltar and London, with two hundred and five pa.s.sengers and twenty-six thousand pounds in specie.