The Grey Lady | Page 5

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