The Grey Lady Part 26

The captain was too old to break off his habits of life, so he walked his quarter-deck tramp, backwards and forwards beneath the window on the clean pavement of the High Street, which broadened out to the harbour. He went down to meet the boats, where he was ever a welcome onlooker, and he never came back without fish for which no payment had been taken.

He usually met the postman when he was keeping his watch on deck-- beneath the little bay-window--and if there was a letter for Eve, he would pause in front of the house, and hand it through the open sash.

He did this one morning after they had been in the lodgings a month, and he had not added two turns to the regulation forty before Eve called to him. He bustled in at the door, hung his old straw hat on a peg, which was likewise too high, and went into the little parlour. As he was smoking, he stood in the doorway, for he had not yet got over his immense respect for the niece who was above him.

"Yes, dearie?" he said. "What to do now?"

Eve was standing near the window, holding a letter in her hand.

"Listen!" she said, and spreading out her elbows she read grandly -

"'MADAM,--I like your Spanish Notes and Sketches; but I cannot put in number one until I see number two. Send me more, or, better still, if convenient, when you are next in town, do me the honour of calling here.--Yours very truly--'

"Now listen, uncle."

"Yes, dear!"

"'Yours very truly, "'JOHN CRAIK.'"

"Lor!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Captain Bontnor, "the gentleman that writes."

Eve handed him the letter, which he held, awestruck, with the tip of his thumb and finger.

"He doesn't write very well--he, he!" he added, with a chuckle.

"I'm afraid it's no good my trying to read it without my gla.s.ses."

He blinked at the crabbed spidery caligraphy, and handed the letter back.

"It is signed John Craik, but Providence held the pen," said Eve.

"If this letter had not come I should have had to leave you, uncle.

I should have had to go and be a governess. And I do not want to leave you."

The old man's eyes filled suddenly, as old eyes sometimes will. He stuffed his pipe into his pocket and took her two hands in his, patting them tenderly.

He did not speak for some time, but stood blinking back the tears.

"Then G.o.d bless John Craik!" he said. "G.o.d bless him."

They sat down to talk this thing over, forgetful of the captain's pipe, which burnt a hole in the lining of his coat. There was so much to be discussed. Eve had written a certain number of short essays--painfully conscious all the while of their simplicity and faultiness. She did not know that so long as a person has his subject at his finger-ends, simplicity is rather to be commended than otherwise. It is the half-informed who are verbose. She had written simply of the simple life which she knew so well. She had depicted Spanish daily life from the keenly instinctive standpoint of a woman's observation; and only a week before she had sent a single essay--marked number one--to the editor of the Commentator, John Craik.

She had written for money, and made no disguise of her motive. Here was no literary lady with all the recognised adjuncts except the literature. She did not write in order that she might talk of having written. She did not talk in such flowing periods and with such overbearing wisdom that insincere friends in sheer weariness were called upon to suggest that she should and could write.

In sending her first small attempt to John Craik she had not forwarded therewith a long explanatory letter, which reticence had made him read the ma.n.u.script.

Eve read the great man's letter a second time, while the captain scratched his head and watched her.

"And," he said meekly, "what do you think of doing?"

Eve looked up with a happy smile.

"What he tells me," she answered. "Oh, I am so glad, uncle; I cannot tell you how glad I am."

The captain shuffled awkwardly on his feet.

"I'm more than glad," he said. "I'm sorter proud."

He pulled down his coat and walked to the window.

"Yes," he said, looking out into the street. "That's it. I'm proud. It's a great gift--writin'. A great gift."

Eve laughed.

"Oh!" she answered. "I'm afraid that I have no gift. It is a very, very minute talent. That is all. I always liked books, but I have not the gift for writing them."

Captain Bontnor never thought Eve was a great auth.o.r.ess. In his simple way this man had a vast deal of discrimination, as simple people often have. It is the oversubtle man who makes the most egregious mistakes, because most of us have not time to be subtle.

He never suspected Eve of being a great auth.o.r.ess, and he never attributed to her any desire to attain that doubtful pinnacle of fame. But he saw very plainly the immense advantage to be gathered in this time from her talent. In his simplicity he hoped that something would turn up for him to do, in a world which has no pity nor charity for that which is old, effete, and out of fas.h.i.+on.

"Yes," he said, after deep thought, "we must do what he tells us.

There's no harm in that."

Eve laughed.

"I thought," she said, "that we understood pride in Spain and Mallorca; but I have never met such a proud caballero as you."

She was standing behind him where he stood, looking grimly out of the window, her two hands resting on his broad shoulders.

"I suppose," she went on, "that you have once or twice humbled your pride so much as to accept a s.h.i.+p when it was offered you. You said that there are plenty who would give you a command now. John Craik is giving me a s.h.i.+p, that is all."

The captain nodded.

"Yes," he said, "that's it, that's it. You've got your first s.h.i.+p."

CHAPTER II. A COMPACT.

Prends moy tel que je suy.

The tendency of the age is to peep behind the scenes. The world is growing old, and human nature is nearly worn through; we are beginning to see the bare bones of it. But a strange survival of youthfulness is that remarkable fascination of the unseen--the desire to get behind the scenes and see the powder for ourselves.

If a man makes his livelihood by lifting horses and other heavy objects from the earth, we immediately wish to know details of his private life, and an obliging journalist interviews him. If another write a book, we immediately wish to know how he does it, where, when, and why. We also like to see his portrait on the fly-leaf--or HE likes to see it there.

Eve Challoner was lamentably behind the spirit of the age in that she did not know how she wrote a series of articles destined to attain renown. But as she never went out to meet the interviewer, he never came to her. She fell into a habit of going out for long walks by herself, and in the course of these peregrinations she naturally acquired the custom of thinking about her writing.

During these long walks Captain Bontnor remained at home alone, or joined a knot of fellow-mariners on the green in front of the reading-room. When Eve came home with her mind full of matter to be set down on paper he discreetly went to keep his watch on deck-- backwards and forwards on the pavement in front of the window. At each turn the old sailor paused to cast his eyes over the whole horizon, after the manner of mariners, as if he were steering Somarsh across the North Sea.

Thus uncle and niece glided imperceptibly into that mode of life which is called humdrum, and which some wise people consider the best mode of getting through existence. Sketch number two was written, rewritten, liked, hated, and finally sent to John Craik, with a letter explaining that the writer lived in Suffolk, and could not for the moment make it convenient to go to London. John Craik was a busy man. He made no answer, and in a few days the proof of sketch number one arrived, with a little printed notice of instructions as to correcting and returning. Of all fleeting glamours that of the proof-sheet is a.s.suredly lightest on the wing, and Eve duly hated her own works in print, as we all do hate our first triumphs. Afterwards we get resigned--much as we grow resigned to the face we see in the looking-gla.s.s.

At this time Captain Bontnor conceived the idea that it was inc.u.mbent upon him to take up seriously, though late in life, the higher walks of literature.