The Grey Lady | Page 4

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