CHAPTER I. BITS OF LIFE.
Some far-off touch
Of greatness, to know well I am not great.
The local house-agent anticipated no difficulty in letting Malabar Cottage, furnished, at a good weekly rental; and in due course a dreamy clergyman, with a wife who was anything but dreamy, came and saw and hired. The wide-awake wife was so interested in Eve that she forgot to settle several details which came to her mind afterwards. Her curiosity was so aroused that the special cupidity belonging to the wife of the dreamy clergyman was for the moment allayed, and she forgot to drive a hard bargain.
Moreover, Eve’s manner was not exactly encouraging to the would-be bargainer. A stupendous ignorance of the tricks of furnished house-letting, combined with a certain lofty contempt for details, acquired in Spain, where such contempt is thoroughly understood, completely baffled the clergyman’s wife. She concluded that Eve was a very stupid and ignorant girl, a poor housekeeper, and an incompetent woman of the world; and yet she was afraid of her, simply because she did not understand her. Jews, poor men’s wives, and other persons who live by haggling, have a subtle fear of those who will not haggle.
So Malabar Cottage was let; and in due time the sad day arrived when Captain Bontnor had to bid farewell to his “bits of things.” These “bits of things” were in reality bits of his life - and a human life is not so long nor so interesting an affair that we can afford lightly to break off any portion, to throw it away, or even to let it out on hire.
Captain Bontnor wandered rather disconsolately round the rooms after breakfast, and as Eve was with him he gave her a short inventory of these pieces of his life.
“That there harpoon,” he said, pointing to a rusty relic on the wall above the mantelpiece, “was given to me by the finest whaling captain that ever found his way into the North water. When I first went to sea I thought I’d like to be a whaler; but two voyages settled that fancy. I’m told they shoot their harpoons out of a gun nowadays--poor sport that! And there’s no sport like whalin’. Two thousand pounds at one end of a line and your own life at the other--that’s finer sport than these Cockney partridge-shooters know of.
“And that’s my seal-pick--many a seal have I killed with that. That there’s the portrait of the True Love, three-masted schooner, built at Littlehampton by Harvey. Sailed second mate, first mate, and master in her, I did. Then she was sold; and a lubber went and--and threw her on the Kentish Knock in a south-easterly gale. She was a pretty ship! I felt the loss as if she’d been my sweetheart--the pretty little True Love!
“That string of shells was given to me by a shipmate--old Charlie Sams--to bring home for his wife. He picked ’em up on the beach above James Town. Took yellow Jack, he did, and died in my arms--and he only had the shells to send to his young wife and a bit of a baby he was always botherin’ and talkin’ about. I did two cross voyages, and one of them round the Horn, before I got home, and I couldn’t find the woman, she having moved. So when I left the sea, I just hung them up in case she happened to come along by chance and see them with his portrait underneath. That’s Charlie Sams--a bit brown and faded. She won’t come along now, I suppose. It is a matter of fifty-five years since Charlie died.”
As he wandered round the house, so he wandered on in his reminiscences, until Eve led him out of the front door. He took his hat from the peg which he had been intending to unship and refix at a lower level for the last fifteen years, and followed her meekly into the garden. He paused to pick up some yellow jasmine leaves which had withered in the warmth of the May sun and fallen on the doorstep. Then he looked back longingly.
“You see,” said Eve cheerfully, “it is only for a few months. We can always let it in the summer like this, and live luxuriously on our rent in the winter.”
He threw back his shoulders and smiled bravely, trying to banish the thought of his “bits of things.”
“Yes, dearie, it’s only for a few months--only for a few months.”
And they both knew that they could not hope to live in Malabar Cottage again--not, at all events, on the rent paid by the clergyman’s wife.
They had taken lodgings in a small house near the harbour, which, as Eve pointed out, was much more convenient for the shops; and, besides, they could now buy their fish out of the boats. This last theory she propounded with a grave assumption of housekeeping knowledge which did not fail to impress Captain Bontnor.
The whole town knew of the captain’s misfortune, and half the citizens of Somarsh shared in it. Only those who had saved nothing lost nothing, for Merton’s was the only bank on the coast; and more than one old fisherman--bent with rheumatism, crippled by the hardships of a life spent half in the water, half on it--saw his savings - the fruit of long toilsome years--go to pay the London tradesmen a part of what young Merton owed them. It was the old, oft-repeated tale of over-education. A country banker’s son sent to public school and university to be educated out of country banking and into nothing else.
Captain Bontnor was quite penniless. During his long life he had saved nearly four thousand pounds, and this sum he had placed on deposit with the Somarsh bankers, living very comfortably on the interest. The whole of this was absorbed--a mere drop in the financial ocean.
Mrs. Harrington had asked Eve to accept a dress allowance of forty pounds a year, and Eve accepted--for her uncle. Besides this she had a little ready money--the result of the sale of the contents of the Casa d’Erraha. A person who looked like a butler or a major-domo had gone over from Barcelona to Palma to attend this sale; and the local buyers laughed immoderately at him in their sleeves. He was, they opined, a mule--he did not know the value of things, and paid double for all he bought.
But the proceeds of the sale did not amount to much. Eve knew that something must be done. The money would soon be exhausted, and they could not live on the dress allowance. Since the failure of the bank, Captain Bontnor’s mental grasp had seemed less reliable than ever, and Eve had kept these things to herself.
The captain’s one servant--an aged female--who ruined his digestion and neglected her dusting, was prevailed upon to return to her people, and Eve and her uncle settled down to their restricted life in the lodgings which were so conveniently near the fishing harbour.
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!” ejaculated 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 glasses.”
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 God bless John Craik!” he said. “God 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 manuscript.
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 authoress. 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 authoress, 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 fashion.
“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 ship when it was offered you. You said that there are plenty who would give you a command now. John Craik is giving me a ship, that is all.”
The captain nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s it, that’s it. You’ve got your first ship.”