The Grey Lady Part 23

"Very much to her credit," put in Fitz, looking fixedly at his own boots.

"Entirely so. And I respect her for it. Unfortunately, a.s.sistance could hardly come from you--a young man. Whereas, I might be her grandfather."

He looked up with a smile--keen, black-haired, lithe of frame--a young man in appearance.

"We might help each other," he added, "you and I, quite alone.

Captain Bontnor is a very worthy old fellow, but--" and he shrugged his shoulders. "We cannot leave her to the wayward charity of a capricious woman!" he added, with sudden bluntness.

He looked rather wonderingly at Fitz, who did not respond to this suggestion, as he had expected him to do. The coalition seemed so natural and so eminently practical, and yet the sailor sat coldly listening to each proposition as it fell from his companion's lips, weighing it, sifting it with a judicial, indifferent apathy.

The Count de Lloseta threw himself back in his chair, and awaited, with all the gravity of his race, the pleasure of his companion. At length Fitz spoke, rather deliberately.

"I think," he said, "you mistake the footing upon which I stand with respect to Miss Challoner. I shall be most happy to do all in my power; but I tell you frankly that it does not amount to much. I am indebted to her indirectly for some very pleasant visits to D'Erraha; her father was very kind to me. Hardly sufficient to warrant anything that would look like interference on my part."

The Count was too discreet a man to press the point any further.

"All this unfortunate difficulty would have been easily averted had I been less stupid. I shall never cease to regret it."

He spoke conversationally, flicking the end of his cigar neatly into the fire, and without looking at Fitz.

"I never foresaw the natural tendency of lawyers to complicate the affairs of life. My man in Palma was unfortunately zealous."

Fitz nodded.

"Yes," he said, "I was there."

Cipriani de Lloseta glanced at him sharply.

"I am glad of that," he said. "It was very stupid of me. I ought to have telegraphed to him to hold his tongue."

"But Miss Challoner could not have accepted the Val d'Erraha as a present?"

"Oh yes, she could, if she had not known. These little things are only a matter of sentiment."

Fitz leant forward, looking into the Count's face without attempting to conceal his surprise.

"Do you mean to say you would have given it to her?" he asked.

"No; I should have paid it to her in settlement of a debt which I owed to her father."

The Count moved rather uneasily in his chair. His eyes fell before his companion's steady gaze.

"Another matter of sentiment," suggested Fitz.

De Lloseta shrugged his shoulders.

"If you will."

They lapsed into silence again. The Count was puzzled by Fitz, as Fitz in his turn had been puzzled earlier in the evening by Eve. It was merely the old story of woman the incomprehensible, and man the superior--the lord of the universe--puzzled, completely mystified, made supremely miserable or quite happy by her caprice of a moment.

It was a small thing that stood between these two men, preventing them from frankly co-operating in the scheme which both had at heart. It was nothing but the tone of a girl's voice, the studied silence of a girl's eyes, which had once been eloquent.

It was getting late. A discreet clock on the mantelpiece declared the hour of midnight in deliberate cathedral chime. Fitz looked up, but he did not move. He liked Cipriani de Lloseta. He had been prepared to do so, and now he had gone further than he had intended.

He wanted him to go on talking about Eve, for he thirsted in his dumbly enduring way for more details of her life. But he would not revert to the subject. Rather than that he would go on enduring.

While they were sitting thus in silence, the only other occupant of the room--the man with the pain-drawn face--rose from his seat, helping his legs with unsteady hands upon either arm of the chair.

He threw the paper down carelessly on the table, and came across the room towards the Count de Lloseta. He was a surprisingly tall man when he stood up; for in his chair he seemed to sink into himself.

His hair was grey--rather long and straggly--his eyes hazel, looking through spectacles wildly. His cheeks were very hollow, his chin square and bony. Here was a man of keen nerves and quick to suffer.

"Well," he said to Lloseta, "I haven't seen you for some time."

"I've been away."

The tall man looked down at him with the singular scrutiny already mentioned.

"Spain?"

"Spain."

He turned away with a little nod, but stopped before he had gone many paces.

"And when are you going to write those sketches of Spanish life?" he asked, with a cheery society laugh, which sounded rather incongruous. "Never, I suppose. Well, the loss is mine. Good- night, Lloseta."

He went away without looking back.

"Do you know who that is?" the Count asked Fitz when the door was closed.

Fitz had risen, with his eye on the clock.

"No. But I seem to know his face."

The Count looked up with a smile.

"You ought to. That was John Craik."

CHAPTER XVI. BROKEN.

The Powers Behind the world that make our griefs our gains.

The small town of Somarsh, in Suffolk, consists of one street running up from the so-called harbour. At one end is the railway- station; at the other the harbour and the sea, and that is Somarsh.

There are records that in days gone by--in the days of east coast prosperity--there was a Mayor of Somarsh, or Southmarsh, as it was then written. But Ichabod!

All Somarsh was in the street one morning after Fitz had gone to sea again, and those of the women who were not talking loudly were weeping softly. The boats were not in yet, but the weather was fine, and the still, saffron sea was dotted with brown sails. There was nothing wrong with the boats.

No; the trouble was on sh.o.r.e, as it mostly is. It came not from the sea, but from men. It was pinned upon the door of Merton's Bank in the High Street. Its form was unintelligible, for the wording of the notice was mostly outside the Suffolk vocabulary. There was something written in a clerkly hand about the withdrawal of "financial facilities necessitating a stoppage of payment pending reconstruction."