The Grey Lady Part 43

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 circ.u.mstances, 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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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, a.n.a.lysing 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, pa.s.sed 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 G.o.dson, 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."