CHAPTER V. THE TEAR ON THE SWORD.
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
Agatha was singularly uncertain of herself. If it had not been for her education--at the Brighton school they had taught her that tears are not only idle, but also harmful to the complexion--she would have felt inclined to weep.
There was something wrong about the world this evening, and she did not know what it was. Little things irritated her--such as the creak of Mrs. Harrington’s rich silk dress as that lady breathed. Agatha almost hated Fitz, without knowing why. She wanted Luke to come and speak to her, and yet the necessity of limiting their conversation to mere social platitudes made her hope that he would not do so.
At length she rose to go and make her last preparations for the ball. The old habit was so strong upon her that unconsciously she gave a little swing of the hips to throw her skirt out--to show herself to the greatest advantage in the perfect dress. There was a tiny suggestion of the thoroughbred horse in the paddock--as there always is in the attitude of some young persons, though they would not be grateful were one to tell them of it--a certain bridling, a sleek step, and a lamentably obvious search for the eye of admiration. Fitz opened the door for her, and she gave him a glance as she passed him--a preliminary shot to find the range, as it were--to note which way the wind blew.
In the dimly-lighted hall Agatha suddenly became aware of a hot sensation in the eyelids. The temperature of the tear of vexation is a high one. As she passed towards the staircase, her glance was attracted by a sword, bright of hilt, dark of sheath. Fitz’s sword, lying with his white gloves on the table, where he had laid them on coming into the house. The footman had drawn the blade an inch or so from the sheath--to look at the chasing--to handle the steel that deals in warfare with all the curiosity of one whose business lies among the knives of peace.
Agatha paused and looked at the tokens of Fitz’s calling. She thought of Luke, who had no sword. And the hot unwonted tear fell on the blade.
All the evening Mrs. Harrington had been marked in her attention to Fitz. It was quite obvious that he was--for the moment, at all events--the favoured nephew. And Mrs. Ingham-Baker noted these things.
“My dear,” she whispered to Agatha, when they were waiting in the hall for their hostess, “it is Fitz, of course. I can see that with half an eye.”
Agatha shrugged her shoulders in a rude manner, suggesting almost that her mother was deprived of more reliable means of observation than the moiety mentioned.
“What is Fitz?” she asked, with weary patience.
“Well, I can only tell you that she has called him ‘dear’ twice this evening, and I have never heard her do the same to Luke.”
“A lot Luke cares!” muttered Agatha scornfully, and her mother, whose sense of logic did not run to the perception that Luke’s feelings were beside the question, discreetly collapsed into her voluminous wraps.
She was, however, quite accustomed to be treated thus with contumely, and then later to see her suggestions acted upon--a feminine consolation which men would do well to take unto themselves. As soon as they entered the ball-room, Mrs. Ingham-Baker, with that supernatural perspicacity which is sometimes found in stupid mothers, saw that Agatha was refusing her usual partners. She noted her daughter’s tactics with mingled awe and admiration, both of which tributes were certainly deserved. She saw Agatha look straight through one man at the decorations on the wall behind; she saw her greet an amorous youth of tender years with a semi-maternal air of protection which at once blighted his hopes, cured his passion, and made him abandon the craving for a dance. Agatha was evidently reserving herself and her programme for some special purposes, and she did it with a skill bred of long experience.
Luke was the first to come and ask for a dance--nay, he demanded it.
“Do you remember the last time we danced together?” he asked, as he wrote on her card.
“Yes,” she replied, in a voice which committed her to nothing. She did not look at him, but past him; to where Fitz was talking to Mrs. Harrington.
But he was not content with that. He retained the card and stood in front of her, waiting with suppressed passion in every muscle, waiting for her to meet his eyes.
At last, almost against her will, she did, and for one brief moment she was supremely happy. It was only, however, for a moment. Sent, apparently, by a very practical Providence to save her from herself, a young man blustered good-naturedly through the crowd and planted himself before her with a cheery aplomb which seemed to indicate his supposition that in bringing her his presence he brought the desire of her heart and the brightest moment of the evening.
“Well, Agatha,” he said, in that loud voice which, with all due deference, usually marks the Harrovian, “how many have you got for me? No rot now! I want my share, you know, eh?”
Heedless of Luke’s scowling presence, he held out his hand, encased in a very tight glove, asking with a good-natured jerk of the head for her programme.
“Is your wife here?” asked Agatha, smilingly relinquishing her card.
“Wife be blowed!” he answered heartily. “Why so formal? Of course she’s here, carrying on with all the young ’uns as usual. She’s as fit as paint. But she won’t like to be called stiff names. Why don’t you call her Maggie?”
Agatha smiled and did not explain. She doubtless had a good reason for the unusually formal inquiry, and she glanced at Luke to see that his brow had cleared.
Then suddenly some instinct, coming she knew not whence, and leading to consequences affecting their three lives, made her introduce the two men.
“Mr. Carr,” she said, “Mr. FitzHenry. You may be able to get each other partners. Besides, you have an interest in common.”
The two men bowed.
“Are you a sailor?” inquired Luke, almost pleasantly. With Willie Carr it was difficult to be stiff and formal.
“Not I; but I’m interested in shipping--not the navy, you know--merchant service. I’m something in the City, like the young man on the omnibus, eh?”
“I’m in the merchant service,” answered Luke.
“Ah! What ship?”
“The Croonah.”
“Croonah,” repeated Carr, hastily scribbling his name on Agatha’s programme. “Fine ship; I know her well by name. Know ’em all on paper, you know. I’m an insurance man--what they call a doctor--Lloyd’s and all that; missing ships, overdue steamers, hedging and dodging, and the inner walks of marine insurance--that’s yours truly. Croonah’s a big value, I know.”
He looked up keenly over Agatha’s engagement card. The look was not quite in keeping with his bluff and open manners. Moreover, a man who is, so to speak, not in keeping with himself is one who requires watching.
“Yes, she is a fine ship,” answered Luke, with a momentary thought of the Terrific.
“Tell me,” went on Carr, confidentially plucking Luke’s sleeve, “when she is going to the bottom, and I’ll do a line for you--make your fortune for you. You’d not be the first man who has come to me, with his hair hardly dry, for a cheque.”
Luke laughed and went away in answer to Mrs. Harrington’s beckoning finger.
Fitz was coming towards Agatha and her companion.
“Holloa!” exclaimed Carr, “I’m blowed if here is not a second edition of the same man.”
“His brother,” explained Agatha, who saw Fitz coming, although she was apparently looking the other way.
“Royal Navy,” muttered Carr.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m off. Can’t get on with Royal Navy men, somehow.”
With a jovial nod and something remarkably near a wink, Willie Carr left her, shouldering his way through the crowd with that good-natured boisterousness of manner which is accepted by the world for honesty.
Agatha was looking the other way when Fitz came to her, and he was forced to touch her and repeat his desire to be accorded a dance before she became aware of his proximity.
“Certainly,” she answered rather carelessly, “if you want one. I--”--she paused with infinite skill and looked down at her own dress--“I thought I had displeased you.”
Fitz looked slightly surprised.
“What an absurd thing to think!” he said rather lamely.
She glanced up with pert coquetry.
“Then it was only oblivion or indifference.”
“What was only oblivion or indifference?” he asked, still smiling as he compared cards.
“Your very obvious delay in coming,” she answered. “Considering that we have known each other since we were children, it is only natural that I should want to dance with you.”
“Considering that we have known each other since we were children,” he said, repeating her words and tone, “may I have a third?”
“Yes,” with a frank nod. “And”--she paused, and looking round saw Luke going away in the opposite direction with Mrs. Harrington--“and will you take me to have some coffee now? I am engaged for this dance, but no matter.”
Fitz gave her his arm and turned to hitch his sword higher. He made sure that the blade was well home, shutting in the little red spot of gathering rust--a tear.
When they had at length passed through the eager crowd and found a resting-place in a smaller room, Agatha looked up at Fitz as he handed her her coffee, and did not pretend to hide the admiration with which she regarded him.
“You know,” she said, “you are a great favourite with Mrs. Harrington.”
“She is always very kind to me.”
Fitz was a difficult person to gossip with by reason of his quiet directness of manner. He had a way of abruptly finishing his speech without the usual lowering of the voice. And it is just that small drop of half a tone that invites further confidence. In such small matters as these lies the secret of conversational success, and by such trivial tricks of the tongue we are daily and hourly deceived. The man or the woman who lowers the tone at the end of speech defers to the listener’s opinion, and usually receives it. The manner with which Fitz broke off led his listener to believe that he was not attending to the conversation. Agatha therefore baited her hook more heavily.
“Like many women, she thinks that sailors are superior to the rest of mankind,” she said, with just enough lightness of tone to be converted into a screen if necessary. But she heaved a little sigh before she drank her coffee.
Fitz had not decided whether all this referred to himself or to Luke. He hoped that Agatha had, so to speak, brought her guns to bear upon him, because of himself he was sure, of Luke he was doubtful. As a matter of curiosity he pursued the conversation.
“And you,” he said, “look upon such mistaken persons with the mingled pity and contempt that they deserve?”
“No,” she answered, with audacious calmness, as she rose and passed before him; “for I think the same.”
She cleverly deprived him of the opportunity of answering, and pushed her way through the crowd alone, allowing him to follow.
Before she danced with him again, she danced with Luke, and her humour seemed to have undergone a change.
There are some men who, like salmon, never go back. They push on, and that which they have gained they hold to though it cost them their lives. Luke FitzHenry was one of these, and Agatha found that in the London ball-room she could take back nothing that she had given on board the Croonah. Luke, it is to be presumed, had old-fashioned theories which have fallen into disuse in these practical modern days wherein we flirt for one night only, for a day, for a week, according to convenience. He could not lay aside the voyage to Malta and that which occurred then as a matter of the past; and Agatha, surprised and at a loss, did not seem to know how to make him do so.
She learnt with a new wonder that the rest of this ball--namely, that part of his programme which did not refer to her, the dances he was to dance with partners other than herself--counted as nothing. For him this ball was merely herself. There was not another woman in the room--for him. He told her this and other things. Moreover, the sound of it was quite new to her. For the modern young man does not make serious love to such women as Agatha Ingham-Baker.