The Grey Lady

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This eBook was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.

THE GREY LADY
BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN.

"The dog that snapt the shadow, dropt the bone."

CONTENTS

BOOK THE FIRST

I. TWO IN THE FIELD.
II. A MAN DOWN.
III. A SEA DOG.
IV. PURGATORIO.
V. THE VALLEY OF REPOSE.
VI. AN ACTOR PASSES OFF THE STAGE.
VII. IN THE STREET OF THE PEACE.
VIII. THE DEAL.
IX. CUT FOR PARTNERS.
X. THE GAME OPENS.
XI. SHIPS UPON THE SEA.
XII. A SHUFFLE.
XIII. A CHOICE.
XIV. A QUATRE.
XV. DON QUIXOTE.
XVI. BROKEN.

BOOK THE SECOND

I. BITS OF LIFE.
II. A COMPACT.
III. BAFFLED.
IV. FOR THE HIGHEST BIDDER.
V. THE TEAR ON THE SWORD.
VI. THE COUNT STANDS BY.
VII. A VOYAGE.
VIII. A GREAT FIGHT.
IX. THE EDITOR'S ROOM.
X. THE CURTAIN LOWERS.
XI. "MILKSOP".
XII. THE END OF THE "CROONAH."
XIII. AT D'ERRAHA AGAIN.
XIV. THE COUNT'S STORY.

BOOK THE FIRST.

CHAPTER I. TWO IN THE FIELD.

Qui n'accepte pas le regret n'accepte pas la vie.

The train technically known as the "Flying Dutchman," tearing
through the plains of Taunton, and in a first-class carriage by
themselves, facing each other, two boys.

One of these boys remembers the moment to this day. A journey
accomplished with Care for a travelling companion usually adheres to
the wheels of memory until those wheels are still. Grim Care was
with these boys in the railway carriage. A great catastrophe had
come to them. A FitzHenry had failed to pass into her Majesty's
Navy. Back and back through the generations--back to the days when
England had no navy--she had always been served at sea by a
FitzHenry. Moreover, there had always been a Henry of that name on
the books. Henry, the son of Henry, had, as a matter of course,
gone down to the sea in a ship, had done his country's business in
the great waters.

There was, if they could have looked at it from a racial point of
view, one small grain of consolation. The record was not even now
snapped--for Henry had succeeded, Luke it was who had failed.

Henry sat with his back to the engine, looking out over the flat
meadow-land, with some moisture remarkably like a tear in either
eye. The eyes were blue, deep, and dark like the eastern horizon
when the sun is setting over the sea. The face was brown, and oval,
and still. It looked like a face that belonged to a race, something
that had been handed down with the inherent love of blue water. It
is probable that many centuries ago, a man with features such as
these, with eyes such as these, and crisp, closely curling hair, had
leaped ashore from his open Viking boat, shouting defiance to the
Briton.

This son of countless Henrys sat and thought the world was hollow,
with no joy in it, and no hope, because Luke had failed.

We are told that there shall be two in the field, that the one shall
be taken and the other left. But we have yet to learn why, in our
limited vision, the choice seems invariably to be mistaken. We have
yet to learn why he who is doing good work is called from the field,
leaving there the man whose tastes are urban.

Except for the sake of the record--and we cannot really be expected
in these busy times to live for generations past or yet unborn--
except for the record it would have been more expedient that Henry
should fail and Luke succeed. Everybody knew this. It was the
common talk on board the Britannia. Even the examiners knew it.
Luke himself was aware of it. But there had always been a fatality
about Luke.

And now, when it was quite apparent that Luke was a sailor and
nothing else, the Navy would have none of him. Those who knew him--
his kindly old captain and others--averred that, with a strict and
unquestionable discipline, Luke FitzHenry could be made a first-
class officer and a brilliant sailor. No one quite understood him,
not even his brother Henry, usually known as Fitz. Fitz did not
understand him now; he had not understood him since the fatal notice
had been posted on the broad mainmast, of which some may wot. He
did not know what to say, so, like the wise old Duke, he said
nothing.

In the meantime the train raced on. Every moment brought them
nearer to London and to the Honourable Mrs. Harrington.

Fitz seemed to be realising this, for he glanced uneasily at his
brother, whose morose, sullen face was turned resolutely towards the
window.

"She'll be a fool," he said, "if she does not give you another
chance."

"I would not take it," answered Luke mechanically.

He was darker than his brother, with a longer chin and a peculiar
twist of the lips. His eyes were lighter in colour, and rather too
close together. A keen observer would have put him down as a boy
who in manhood might go wrong. The strange thing was that no one
could have hesitated for a moment in selecting Luke as the cleverer
of the two.

Fitz paused. He was not so quick with his tongue as with his limbs.
He knew his brother well enough to foresee the effect of failure.
Luke FitzHenry was destined to be one of those unfortunate men who
fail ungracefully.

"Do not decide in too great a hurry," said Fitz at length, rather
lamely. "Don't be a fool!"

"No, it has been decided for me by my beastly bad luck."

"It WAS bad luck--deuced bad luck."

They had bought a packet of cigarettes at Exeter, but that outward
sign of manhood lay untouched on the seat beside Fitz. It almost
seemed as if manhood had come to them both in a more serious form
than a swaggering indulgence in tobacco.

The boys were obviously brothers, but not aggressively twins. For
Luke was darker than Fitz, and somewhat shorter in stature.

It is probable that neither of them had ever seriously contemplated
the possibility of failure for one and not for the other. Neither
had ever looked onward, as it were, into life to see himself there
without the other. The life that they both anticipated was that
life on the ocean wave, of which home-keeping poets sing so
eloquently; and it had always been vaguely taken for granted that no
great difference in rank or success could sever them. Fitz was too
simple-minded, too honest to himself, to look for great honours in
his country's service. He mistrusted himself. Luke mistrusted
Providence.

Such was the difference between these two boys--the thin end of a
wedge of years which, spreading out in after days, turned each life
into a path of its own, sending each man inexorably on his separate
way.

These two boys were almost alone in the world. Their mother had
died in giving them birth. Their father, an old man when he
married, reached his allotted span when his sons first donned Her
Majesty's brass buttons, and quietly went to keep his watch below.
Discipline had been his guiding star through life, and when Death
called him he obeyed without a murmur, trusting confidently to the
Naval Department in the first place, and the good God in the second,
to look after his boys.

That the late Admiral FitzHenry had sorely misplaced his confidence
in the first instance was a fact which the two boys were now called
upon to face alone in their youthful ignorance of the world. Fitz
was uneasily conscious of a feeling of helplessness, as if some all-
powerful protector had suddenly been withdrawn. Their two lives had
been pre-committed to the parental care of their country, and now it
almost took their breath away to realise that Luke had no such
protector.

His was the pride that depreciates self. During the last twenty-
four hours Fitz had heard him boast of his failure, holding it up
with a singularly triumphant sneer, as if he had always distrusted
his destiny and took a certain pleasure in verifying his own
prognostications. There are some men who find a satisfaction in bad
luck which good fortune could never afford them.

In a large house in Grosvenor Gardens two ladies were at that same
moment speaking of the FitzHenrys. It was quite easy to see that
the smaller lady of the two was the mistress of the house, as also
of that vague abstract called the situation. She sat in the most
comfortable chair, which was, by the way, considerably too spacious
for her, and there was a certain aggressive sense of possession
about her attitude and manner.

Had she been a man, one would have said at once that here was a
nouveau riche, ever heedful of the fact that the big room and all
the appurtenances thereof were the fruits of toil and perseverance.
There was a distinct suggestion of self-manufacture about Mrs.
Harrington--distinct, that is to say, to the more subtle-minded.
For she was not vulgar, neither did she boast. But the expression
of her keen and somewhat worldly countenance betokened the intention
of holding her own.

The Honourable Mrs. Harrington was not only beautifully dressed, but
knew how to wear her clothes en grande dame.

"Yes," she was saying, "Luke has failed to pass off the Britannia.
It is a rare occurrence. I suppose the boy is a fool."

Mrs. Harrington was rather addicted to the practice of calling other
people names. If the butler made a mistake she dubbed him an idiot
at once. She did not actually call her present companion, Mrs.
Ingham-Baker, a fool, possibly because she considered the fact too
apparent to require note.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker, stout and cringing, smoothed out the piece of
silken needlework with which she moved through life, and glanced at
her companion. She wanted to say the right thing. And Mrs.
Harrington was what the French call "difficult." One could never
tell what the right thing might be. The art of saying it is,
moreover, like an ear for music, it is not to be acquired. And Mrs.
Ingham-Baker had not been gifted thus.

"And yet," she said, "their father was a clever man--as I have been
told."

"By whom?" inquired Mrs. Harrington blandly.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker paused in distress.

"I wonder who it was," she pretended to reflect.

"So do I," snapped Mrs. Harrington.

Mrs. Ingham-Baker's imagination was a somewhat ponderous affair,
and, when she trusted to it, it usually ran her violently down a
steep place. She concluded to say nothing more about the late
Admiral FitzHenry.

"The boy," said Mrs. Harrington, returning to the hapless Luke, "has
had every advantage. I suppose he will try to explain matters when
he comes. I could explain it in one word--stupidity."

"Perhaps," put in Mrs. Ingham-Baker nervously, "the brains have all
gone to the other brother, Henry. It is sometimes so with twins."

Mrs. Harrington laughed rather derisively.

"Stupid woman to have twins," she muttered.

This was apparently one of several grievances against the late Mrs.
FitzHenry.

"They have a little money of their own, have they not?" inquired
Mrs. Ingham-Baker, with the soft blandness of one for whom money has
absolutely no attraction.

"About enough to pay their washerwoman."

There was a pause, and then Mrs. Ingham-Baker heaved a little sigh.

"I am sure, dear," she said, "that in some way you will be rewarded
for your great kindness to these poor orphan boys."

She shook her head wisely, as if reflecting over the numerous cases
of rewarded virtue which had come under her notice, and the action
made two jet ornaments in her cap wobble, in a ludicrous manner,
from side to side.

"That may be," admitted the lady of the house, "though I wish I felt
as sure about it as you do."

"But then," continued Mrs. Ingham-Baker, in a low and feeling tone,
"you always were the soul of generosity."

The "soul of generosity" gave an exceedingly wise little smile--
almost as if she knew better--and looked up sharply towards the
door. At the same moment the butler appeared.

"Mr. Pawson, ma'am," he said.

The little nod with which this information was received seemed to
indicate that Mr. Pawson had been expected.

Beneath her black curls Mrs. Ingham-Baker's beady eyes were very
much on the alert.

"In the library, James," said Mrs. Harrington--and the two jet
ornaments bending over the silken needlework gave a little throb of
disappointment.

"Mr. Pawson," announced the lady of the house, "is the legal light
who casts a shadow of obscurity over my affairs."

And with that she left the room.

As soon as the door was closed Mrs. Ingham-Baker was on her feet.
She crossed the room to where her hostess's key-basket and other
belongings stood upon a table near the window. She stood looking
eagerly at these without touching them. She even stooped down to
examine the address of an envelope.

"Mr. Pawson!" she said, in a breathless whisper. "Mr. Pawson--what
does that mean? Can she be going to alter her--no! But--yes, it
may be! Perhaps Susan knows."

Mrs. Ingham-Baker then rang the bell twice, and resumed her seat.

Presently an aged servant came into the room. It was easy to see at
a glance that she was a very old woman, but the years seemed to
weigh less on her mind than on her body.

"Yes," she said composedly.

"Oh--eh, Susan," began Mrs. Ingham-Baker almost cringingly. "I rang
because I wanted to know if a parcel has come for me--a parcel of
floss-silk--from that shop in Buckingham Palace Road, you know."

"If it had come," replied Susan, with withering composure, "it would
have been sent up to you."

"Yes, yes, of course I know that, Susan. But I thought that perhaps
it might have been insufficiently addressed or something--that you
or Mary might have thought that it was for Mrs. Harrington."

"She don't use floss silks," replied the imperturbable Susan.

"I was just going to ask her about it, when she was called away by
some one. I think she said that it was her lawyer."

"Yes, Mr. Pawson."

Susan's manner implied--very subtly and gently--that her place in
this pleasant house was more assured than that of Mrs. Ingham-Baker,
and perhaps that stout diplomatist awoke to this implication, for
she pulled herself up with considerable dignity.

"I hope that nothing is wrong," she said, in a tone that was
intended to disclaim all intention of discussing such matters with a
menial. "I should be sorry if Mrs. Harrington was drawn into any
legal difficulty; the law is so complicated."

Susan was engaged in looking for a speck of dust on the mantelpiece,
not for its own intrinsic value, but for the sake of Mary's future.
She had apparently no observation of value to offer upon the vexed
subject of the law.

"I was rather afraid," pursued Mrs. Ingham-Baker gravely, "that Mrs.
Harrington might be unduly incensed against that poor boy, Luke
FitzHenry; that in a moment of disappointment, you know, she might
be making some--well, some alteration in her will to the detriment
of the boy."

Susan stood for a moment in front of the lady, with a strange little
smile of amusement among the wrinkles of her face.

"Yes, that may be," she said, and quietly left the room.

CHAPTER II. A MAN DOWN.

Caress the favourites, avoid the unfortunate, and trust nobody.

The atmosphere of Mrs. Harrington's drawing-room seemed to absorb
the new-found manhood of the two boys, for they came forward shyly,
overawed by the consciousness of their own boots, by the conviction
that they carried with them the odour of cigarette smoke and
failure.

"Well, my dears," said the Honourable Mrs. Harrington, suddenly
softened despite herself by the sight of their brown young faces.
"Well, come here and kiss me."

All the while she was vaguely conscious that she was surprising
herself and others. She had not intended to treat them thus. Mrs.
Harrington was a woman who had a theory of life--not a theory to
talk about, but to act upon. Her theory was that "heart" is all
nonsense. She looked upon existence here below as a series of
contracts entered into with one's neighbour for purposes of mutual
enjoyment or advantage. She thought that life could be put down in
black and white. Which was a mistake. She had gone through fifty
years of it without discovering that for the sake of some memory--
possibly a girlish one--hidden away behind her cold grey eyes, she
could never be sure of herself in dealing with man or boy whose
being bore the impress of the sea.

The strange thing was that she had never found it out. We speak
pityingly of animals that do not know their own strength. Which of
us knows his own weakness? There was a man connected with Mrs.
Harrington's life, one of the contractors in black and white, who
had found out this effect of a brown face and a blue coat upon a
woman otherwise immovable. This man, Cipriani de Lloseta, who
contemplated life, as it were, from a quiet corner of the dress
circle, kept his knowledge for his own use.

Fitz and Luke obeyed her invitation without much enthusiasm. They
were boyish enough to object to kissing on principle. They then
shook hands awkwardly with Mrs. Ingham-Baker, and drifted together
again with that vague physical attraction which seems to qualify
twins for double harness on the road of life. There was trouble
ahead of them; and without defining the situation, like soldiers
surprised, they instinctively touched shoulders.

It was the psychological moment. There was a little pause, during
which Mrs. Harrington seemed to stiffen herself, morally and
physically. Had she not stiffened herself, had she only allowed
herself, as it were, to go--to call Luke to her and comfort him and
sympathise with him--it would have altered every life in that room,
and others outside of it. Even blundering, cringing, foolish Mrs.
Ingham-Baker would have acted more wisely, for she would have
followed the dictates of an exceedingly soft, if shallow, heart.

"I had hoped for a more satisfactory home-coming than this," said
Mrs. Harrington in her hardest voice. When she spoke in this tone
there was the faintest suggestion of a London accent.

Fitz made a little movement, a step forward, as if she had been
unconsciously approaching the brink of some danger, and he wished to
warn her. The peculiar twist in Luke's lips became momentarily more
visible, and he kept his deep, despondent eyes fixed on the
speaker's face.

There are two kinds of rich women. The one spends her money in
doing good, the other pays it away to gratify her love of power. Of
the Honourable Mrs. Harrington it was never reported that she was
lavish in her charities.

"I think," she said, "that I ought to tell you that I have been
paying the expenses of your education almost entirely. I was in no
way bound to do so. I took charge of you at your father's death
because I--because he was a true friend to me. I do not grudge the
money, but in return I expected you to work hard and get on in your
profession."

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 passed 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 sex 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 passed out of the room.

So Luke FitzHenry passed out into his life--a life which he was to
make for himself. Passionate--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."

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