XXIII
About this time, Henry Harper became a member of a society which met once a week at Crosbie's in the Strand. This step was the outcome of a course of lectures he had attended at the London Ethical Institution, in Bloomsbury Square. They had been delivered by the very able Professor Wynne Davies, on that most fascinating of all subjects to the truly imaginative mind, the Idea of God.
During these lectures, and quite by chance, Henry Harper had made the acquaintance of a certain Arthur Reeves, a young journalist, who suggested that he should join the Social Debating Society, which met at Crosbie's every Tuesday. This he accordingly did; and being under no obligation to take an active part in the proceedings until he felt he could do so with reasonable credit, he was able to enjoy them thoroughly. Moreover, he was in full sympathy with these alert minds which for the most part were owned by young and struggling men.
Some of the discussions Henry Harper heard at Crosbie's made a deep impression upon him. All the members seemed to have a turn for speculative inquiry. The majority of those who took an active part in the debates spoke very well. Now and again, it is true, the pride of intellect raised its head. Some of its members were young enough to know everything, but there was also a leaven of older minds which saw life more steadily, and in as rounded a shape as it is possible for the eye of man to perceive it.
There was one man in particular who attracted Henry Harper. His name was James Thorneycroft, and he was in his way a rare bird, a bank manager with a strong ethical and sociological bias. He was one of the graybeards of the society, a man of sixty, who had the worn look of one who had been fighting devils, more or less unsuccessfully, all his life. For Henry Harper there was fascination and inspiration in James Thorneycroft. His was a mind capable of delving deep into spiritual experience, and of rendering it in terms which all could understand.
At the third meeting which Henry Harper attended at Crosbie's, his friend and introducer, Arthur Reeves, under the spell cast by the brilliant Professor Wynne Davies, ventured to combat a certain skepticism in regard to the scope and function of the Deity, which some of the advanced members had put into words at the previous meeting.
The performance of Arthur Reeves was crude and rather unphilosophical, and yet it was stimulating enough to bring James Thorneycroft on to his legs.
"My own view about God is this," he began in that curiously unpremeditated and abrupt way which made an effect of absolute sincerity. "There is a form of inherited belief that will overthrow the most fearless and independent mind if it ventures to disregard it. I suppose most men who think at all are up against this particular problem some time in their lives. But it all comes back to this: it is absolutely impossible for any man to banish the idea of God and continue as a reasoning entity. Of the First Cause we know nothing, of the Ultimate Issue we know even less, but my own faith is that as long as the idea of God persists, Man himself will not perish. I know there are many who will say that science is against me. They will say that there is nothing inherent in the mere idea of God which will or can prevent an earthquake banishing all forms of organic life from this planet in sixty seconds. Well, it is my faith that if that came to pass Man would still persist in some other form. Science would at once rejoin that he would cease to be Man, but to my own psychic experience that is not at all a clear proposition. Science is based upon reason which states as an absolute fact that two and two make four. The idea of God is based upon the fact that two and two plus One make five, and all the science and all the clear and exact thinking in the world can't alter it. Man is only a reasoning animal up to a point. He has only to keep exclusively to reason to bring about his own defeat. Every thinking mind, I assume, must oscillate at some period of its development between Reason on the one hand (two and two make four) and Experience (two and two make five) on the other. Well, if it won't bore you" ... "Go on, go on!" cried the meeting, not out of politeness merely, since all felt the fascination of the unconventional and childlike personality of James Thorneycroft.... "I will give you in as few words as I can the experience that happened to me nearly thirty years ago, which laid at rest all doubts I might ever have had on this point.
"At that time I was a clerk in a bank at Blackhampton. Employed at the bank was a young porter." ...
For a reason he could never explain, a strange thrill suddenly ran through Henry Harper.
"... And this young chap was one of the best and most promising fellows I ever met. He belonged to the working class, but he was tremendously keen to improve himself. When I met him first he couldn't even read—it makes one smile to hear people talk about the good old days!—but he very soon learned, and then he began to worry things out for himself. I lent him one or two books myself ... John Stuart Mill, I remember, and that old fool Carlyle, who ruled the roast at that time."—Here a bearded gentleman at the back had to be called to order.—"Then we both began to get into deeper waters, and with assistance from Germany, soon found ourselves in a flood of isms, although I am bound to say without being able to make very much of them.
"The time came, however, when this young man, who was really a very fine fellow, took the wrong turning. He somehow got entangled with a woman, a thoroughly bad lot I afterwards found out, a person of a type much below his own. He was an extraordinarily simple chap, he had the heart of a child. From a mistaken, an utterly mistaken sense of chivalry, he finally married her.
"If ever a man was imposed upon and entrapped it was this poor fellow. Of course he didn't know that at first. But from the hour of his marriage deterioration set in. Ambition and all desire for self-improvement began to go. Then he lost his mental poise, and he became cynical, and no wonder, because that woman made his life a hell. Even when the truth came to him he stuck to her, really I think out of some quixotic notion he had of reforming her. Certainly he stuck to her long after he ought to have, because slowly but surely she began to drag him down. At last, when the full truth came home to him, he killed her in a sudden fit of madness.
"Now, there was no real evil in that man. There were one or two soft places in him, no doubt, as there are in most of us, but it is my firm belief that had he married the right woman he would one day have been a credit to his country. He was in every way a very fine fellow—in fact, he was too fine a fellow. It was the vein of quixotic chivalry in his nature that undid him. That was the cruelest part of the whole thing. And I am bound to say that the doubts the higher criticism had put into my mind were very much assisted by the fact that it was this poor chap's real nobility of soul which destroyed him.
"From the point of view of reason, any man was wrong to marry such a woman, even allowing for the fact that he was ignorant of her real character and vocation when he married her. From the point of view of ethics he was wrong; that is to say, he had not even infringed the code of conventional morality, and was therefore under no obligation to do so. And where he was doubly wrong in the sight of reason and ethics, and where, in the sight of the Saviour of mankind, he was so magnificently right, was in sticking to her in the way he did.
"And yet that man came to the gallows. For years afterwards I could never think of him without a feeling of inward rage that almost amounted to blasphemy. But to return to Reasonv.Experience, I am merely telling this story for the sake of what I am going to say now. I went to see that poor man in prison after his trial, when he had only one day to live, and I shall never forget the look of him. He was like a saint. He looked into my eyes and took my hand and he said, and I can hear his words now, 'Mr. Thorneycroft, you can take it from me, there is a God.'
"I have never forgotten those words. And many times since they were spoken I firmly believe it has only been the words of my poor friend, Henry Harper, spoken on the brink of a shameful grave, which have saved me." The name fell unconsciously from the lips of James Thorneycroft.
XXIV
The Sailor never went again to the meetings of the Social Debating Society at Crosbie's in the Strand, Somehow he had not the courage. The simple unadorned story of James Thorneycroft had taken complete possession of his mind.
Without making any researches into the subject, some instinct which transcended reason, which transcended experience itself, told him that the Henry Harper of the story was his own father. Moreover, he was prepared to affirm that it was his own presence in that room—unknown as he was to James Thorneycroft to whom he had never spoken a word in his life—which had been responsible for the story's telling.
This clear conviction brought no shame to Henry Harper. No man could have been more amply vindicated in the sight of others than his father had been by him who had given his story with a poignancy which had silenced all criticism of the deductions he had ventured to draw from it.
The feeling uppermost in the mind of Henry Harper was that one world more had been revealed. At various times in his life he had had intimations of the Unseen. There was something beyond himself with which he had been in familiar contact. But up till now he had never thought about it much.
The story he had heard seemed to alter everything. In a subtle way his whole outlook was changed. The fact that his father had died such a death brought with it no sense of ignominy. It was too remote, too far beyond him; besides, the man who had told the story had been careful to show his father's true character.
It was almost inconceivable that he did not apply the logic of this terrible event to his own case. By now it should have been clear that he was literally treading the same path. Perhaps the voice of reason could not argue with the overwhelming forces which now had Henry Harper in their grip. Once they had driven him into an identical position they forced him to act in a similar way. Just as the father had made the disastrous error of setting himself to reform his wife when he had found out what she was, the son was now preparing to repeat it.
He determined upon a great effort to win Cora from drink.
Since the quarrel over the man in the taxi, which had occurred nearly two months ago, they had drifted further apart. Cora had behaved with great unwisdom and she was aware of the fact. But she was not going to risk the loss of the golden eggs if she could possibly help it. She had been shaken more than a little by her own folly, and if Harry had not been a dead-beat fool it must have meant a pretty decisive nail in her coffin. Even as it was, and in spite of the softness for which she despised him, his tone had hardened perceptibly since the incident. Not that she cared very much for that. She did not believe he had it in him to go to extremities. And yet now he had taken this new tone she was not quite sure. Perhaps he was not quite so "soppy" as her friends always declared him to be.
Be that as it may, Cora accepted it in good part when Harry took upon himself to beg her earnestly to check her habit of drinking more than she ought. She was even a little touched; she had not expected a solicitude which she knew she didn't deserve. Instead of "telling him off," as she felt she ought to have done, she promised to do her best to meet his wishes.
He was so grateful that he tried to find a way of helping her. He must let her see that he was ready to assist any effort she might make by every means in his power. Therefore, several evenings a week he accompanied her to the Roc and sometimes they went on, as formerly, to a play or a music hall.
When, after an absence of many months, Henry Harper reappeared in these haunts of fashion, he had to run the gantlet of the girls and the boys. But Cora was secretly gratified to find that he was much better able to take care of himself now. Those months of sequestration, unknown to her, had been a period of very remarkable development. He had been mixing on terms of equality with a class much above hers, he had been enlarging the scope of his observation, he had been deepening his experience. Moreover, he had discovered the letter aitch, and with the help of the indefatigable Madame Sadleir, who was a skillful and conscientious teacher, was now making use of the new knowledge.
Yes, there was a great improvement in Harry. In the opinion of his critics he was much more a man of the world; callow youths and insipid ladies of the town could no longer "come it over him" in the way that had formerly delighted them. Even Miss Bonser and Miss Press had to use discretion. The new knowledge did not make him a prig, but it seemed to give his character an independence and a depth which called for respectful treatment.
He disliked these evenings as much as ever. The Roc and Cora's friends could never have any sort of attraction for Henry Harper. But there was now the sense of duty to sustain him. He was making a heroic effort to save Cora from herself, yet he sometimes felt in his heart that such a woman was hardly worth the saving.
The fact was, it was no use disguising it now, she jarred every nerve in his soul. The more he developed the more hopeless she grew. He knew now that she was very common, sordid clay. It was not in her to rise or to respond. She was crass, heavy-witted, coarse-fibered; his effort had to be made against fearful, and as it seemed with the new perceptions that were coming upon him, ever increasing odds.
By this he had learned from the new and finer world into which his talent had brought him that Cora had but a thin veneer of spurious refinement after all. He knew enough now to see how hopelessly wrong she was in everything, from the heart outwards. It began to hurt him more and more to be in her company in public places. Sometimes he could hardly bear to sit at the same table with her, so alien she was from the people he was meeting now on terms approximating to equality.
Edward Ambrose, realizing how the young man was striving to rise with his fortunes, was doing all that lay in his power to help him. At this time, the name of Mrs. Henry Harper had not been mentioned to him. Several times the Sailor had been at the point of revealing that sinister figure in the background of his life. More than once he had felt that it was the due of this judicious friend that he should know at least of the existence of Cora. But each time he had tried to screw his courage to the task a kind of nausea had overwhelmed him. The truth was Edward Ambrose and Cora stood at opposite poles, and whenever he tried to speak of her it became impossible to do so.
Henry Harper had been present at several of the very agreeable bachelor dinner parties in Bury Street, and on each occasion his host had noted an honorable and increasing effort on the part of the neophyte to rise to the measure of his opportunity. There could be no doubt he was coming on amazingly. The rough edges were being smoothed down and he was always so simple and unaffected that it was hardly possible for liberal-minded men whom fortune had given a place in the stalls at the human comedy to refrain from liking him.
"Henry," said his friend when the young man looked in one afternoon in Pall Mall, "what are you doing tomorrow week, Friday, the twenty-third?"
Henry was doing nothing in particular.
"Then you must come and dine with me," said Edward Ambrose.
"I'll be delighted."
"Wait a minute. That's not the important part. You'll have to take somebody in to dinner. And she's about the nicest girl I know, and she wants very much to meet the author of 'Dick Smith,' and I promised that she should. There will be two or three others ... Ellis and his fiancée ... I told you Ellis had just got engaged ... but we shall not be more than ten all told. Will you face it, Henry, just to oblige a friend?"
A dinner party of ten with ladies was rather a facer for Mr. Henry Harper, in spite of the fact that his social laurels were clustering thicker upon him.
"I suppose I'll have to if you've promised her," he said with not ungracious reluctance.
"I'm sure you'll like her as much as she'll like you," said Edward Ambrose.
That remains to be seen was the mental reservation in the mind of the Sailor.
XXV
Friday week soon came, but very unfortunately it found Cora "in one of her moods."
The first intimation she had of the dinner party was the arrival of a parcel of evening clothes, which Harry had purchased that morning in the Strand. As ladies were to be present, his sense of the fitness of things had led him at last to incur this long-promised expense. Indeed, Cora herself had said that sooner or later this would have to be. But now that the clothes had actually arrived and she insisted upon being told for what purpose they were required, she flew into a tantrum.
In Cora's opinion, there had been too much dining already with this Mr. Ambrose, and now that Harry was being invited to meet ladies, had Mr. Ambrose been a true gentleman she would have been invited as well. It did not occur to her that he was not aware of her existence. But in any case Harry ought not to be going to meet other women without his wife.
Cora became very sulky. And she mingled unamiability with abuse. The sad truth was, and her husband realized it with intense bitterness in the course of that afternoon, she had begun drinking heavily again in spite of all that he could do to check her. It was a failure of the will. There was no doubt life bored her. The restraints she had recently put upon herself, not in regard to drink alone, had become more than she could bear. For a week past she had known that another "break-out" was imminent.
She was now inclined to make this dinner party to which she was not invited a pretext for it.
"I see what it is," she said with ugly eyes. "Your lawful wife is not good enough for my lord Ambrose and his lady friends."
This stung, it was so exactly the truth.
"But don't think for a moment I am going to take it lying down. If you go to this party I'm coming too."
"You can't," said her husband quietly—so quietly that it made her furious.
"Oh, can't I!"
"No, you can't," he said with a finality that offered no salve. He was angry with his own weakness. He knew that it had caused him to drift into a false position. And yet what could he do—with such a wife as that?
"You're ashamed of me," she said, with baffled rage in her voice.
"You've no right to say that." It was a feeble rejoinder, but silence would have been worse.
"I am going to give you fair warning, Harry. If you go to this party and meet other women while I am left at home, I shall...."
"You'll what?" he said, recoiling from her heavy breathing ugliness.
"I shall go a good old blind tonight, I warn you."
She spoke with full knowledge of the effort he had made to help her and all that it had cost him.
"It won't be half a blind, I'm telling you," she said, reading his eyes. "I've done my best for weeks and weeks to please you. I've hardly touched a drop—and this is all the thanks I get. I'm flesh and blood like other people."
She saw with malicious triumph that she had him cornered.
"Look here, Cora," he said, "it's too late to get out of this now. It wouldn't be fair or right for me to break my word to Mr. Ambrose. But I'll promise this. If you will only keep sober tonight, I'll never go to another party without ... without your permission."
"Without my permission!"
"Without you, then, if that's what you want me to say."
"Oh, yes! I don't think!"
"I don't ever break my word," he said simply. "You know that. If I say a thing I try my best to act up to it."
"Well, it's not good enough for me, anyhow," she said, with a sudden and jealous knowledge of her own inferiority. "If you leave me tonight, so help me God, I'll get absolutely blind."
She saw the horror in his eyes and was glad. It gave her a sense of power. But it brought its own Nemesis. She forgot just then that he alone stood between her and the gutter.
"Be reasonable, Cora," he said weakly. There did not seem to be anything else he could say.
"I've warned you," she said savagely. "Leave me tonight and you'll see. I'll not be made a mark of by no one, not if I know it."
In great distress he retired to his bedroom in order to think things out. He felt that he was much in the wrong. Somehow he did not seem to be keeping to the terms of the bargain. Up to a point Cora had reason and justice on her side. Yet beyond that point was the duty to his friends.
In a miserable state of mind he sat on the bed. He was desperately unwilling to undo all the good work of the past six weeks, but it was certain that if he left Cora in her present mood something would happen. Twice he almost made up his mind not to go, but each time he was over-powered by the thought of his friend. It was really impossible to leave him in the lurch without a shadow of excuse.
At last, with a sense of acute misery, he came to a decision, or rather the swift passage of time forced it upon him. Suddenly he got off the bed, opened the parcel and spread out the new clothes.
BOOK IV
DISINTEGRATION
I
The process of dressing for Henry Harper's first dinner party was not a very agreeable operation. No man could have undertaken it in a worse state of despair. The new links he had bought could only be persuaded with difficulty into the cuffs of the boiled shirt; further trouble presented itself with the collar, and finally, when all the major operations were complete, he had to solve the problem of a white tie or a black one. In the end he chose a black one on the ground that it would be more modest, although he was not sure that it was right.
When at last he was complete in every detail, he returned to the sitting-room where his wife still was. She was smoking a cigarette.
"Cora," he said quietly and politely, "I am only going because I must. I couldn't look Mr. Ambrose in the face if I let him down without a fair excuse. But I'll promise this. I'll never go to another party without you, and I give you my solemn word I wouldn't go now if there was a way out."
She made no answer. Without looking at him, but with sour rage in her eyes, she threw the end of the cigarette she was smoking into the fire and lit another.
The young man was rather short of time, and remembering a former excursion to Bury Street which was yet quite easy to find from the top of the Avenue, he took a taxi. Driving in solitary state he was very nervous and strangely uncomfortable. The evening clothes felt horribly new and conspicuous, and they didn't seem to fit anywhere. Then again he knew this was an adventure of the first magnitude. The bachelor parties of two or three intimate friends were on a different plane from an affair of this kind. However, he determined to thrust unworthy fears aside. There could be no doubt he was far better equipped than he had been before Madame Sadleir took him in hand. Besides, when all was said, the feeling uppermost in his mind just now, outweighing even the black thought of Cora, was a sense of exhilaration. Somehow he felt, as his swift machine crossed Piccadilly Circus, in spite of Cora, in spite of new clothes, in spite of bitter inexperience, that for the first time in his life he was entering the golden realm whose every door had been double-locked, thrice-bolted against him by the dark and evil machinations of destiny.
Even when the taxi stopped before the now familiar portals in Bury Street and he had paid the driver his fare, he still had a sense of adventure. And this was heightened by what was going on around him. The magic door was open wide to the night, the august form of Portman, the butler, was framed in it, and at that very moment the Fairy Princess was descending from her chariot.
How did he know it was she? Some occult faculty mysteriously told him. She was tall and dark and smiling; a bright blue cloak was round her; he saw a white satin slipper. It was She. Beyond a doubt it was the real Hyde Park lady he was going to take in to dinner.
He hung back by the curb, a whole discreet minute, while Mr. Portman received her. She made some smiling remark that Henry Harper couldn't catch. He could only hear the beautiful notes of her voice. They were those of a siren, a low deep music.
The Sailor came to the door just as another chariot glided up. He greeted Portman, his old friend, of whom he was still rather in awe, and doffed his coat and hat in the entrance hall without flurry, and then went slowly up the stairs where he found that the butler had already preceded him. Moreover, he was just in time to hear him announce: "Miss Pridmore."
The name literally sang through the brain of the Sailor. Where had he heard it? But he had not time then to hunt it down in his memory.
"Mr. Harper." With a feeling of excitement he heard the rolling, unctuous announcement.
For a brief instant the vigorous grip and the laughing face of his host put all further speculation to flight. Edward Ambrose was in great heart and looking as only the Edward Ambroses of the world can look at such moments. But he merely gave Henry Harper time to note, with a little stab of dismay, that the tie he had chosen was the wrong color, when he was almost hurled upon Miss Pridmore.
"This is Mr. Harper, Mary, whom you wanted to meet." And then with that gay note which the Sailor could never sufficiently approve: "I promised him one admirer. He wouldn't have come without."
Where had he heard that name? The question was surging upon the Sailor as he stood looking at her and waiting for her to speak. A moment ago it had been uttered for the first time, yet it was strangely familiar to him. And that face of clear-cut good sense, with eyes of a fathomless gray, where had he seen it?
"I should love to have been a sailor." Those were her first words. That voice, where had he heard it? It seemed to be coming back to him out of the years, out of the measureless Pacific. A Hyde Park lady was speaking in Bury Street, St. James', but at that moment he was not in London, not in England, not in Europe at all. He was on the high seas aboard theMargaret Carey, he was in his bunk in the half-deck. In one hand he held a sputtering candle; in the other a torn fragment of theBrooklyn Eagle. It was Klondyke who was speaking. The Fairy Princess was speaking with the voice of his immortal friend.
"I have a brother who has sailed before the mast."
In a flash he remembered the inscription in Klondyke's Bible: "Jack Pridmore is my name, England is my nation." The mystery was solved. This was Klondyke's sister. There was no mistaking the resemblance of voice, of feature; this was the unforgettable girl he had seen with Klondyke in Hyde Park.
He suddenly remembered that he must say something. It would hardly be proper to stand there all night with his mouth open, yet with not a word coming out of it.
"I think I know your brother," were his first words. They were not the result of deliberate choice. Some new and strange power seemed to have taken complete possession of him.
"You've met my brother Jack?"
"Yes. We were aboard the same craft pretty near two years. We used to call him Klondyke."
A delightful laugh rang in his ears.
"What a perfect name for him! I must tell that to my mother. It was because he had been in the Klondyke, I suppose."
"Yes, that was it. He had been in the Klondyke. He used to yarn about it on theMargaret Carey. We were both berthed for'ard in the half-deck. His bunk was under mine."
"Isn't it odd that we should meet like this!"
"Yes, it's queer. But there are many queer things in the world, ain't there? At least I've seen a goodish few and so has Klondyke. But he was a grand chap."
Mary Pridmore, who felt rather the same about her brother Jack, although he was not a brother to be proud of, but quite the reverse, as the members of his family always made a point of explaining to him whenever they had the chance, was somehow touched by the tone of reverence with which his shipmate spoke of him.
"He's the black sheep of the family, of course you know that," she said, feeling it necessary to take precautions against this delightful young sailorman who had already intrigued her.
"He used to say so," said the Sailor, with the simplicity of his kind. "He used to say his mother was fearfully cut up about him. She thought he was a rolling stone and he would never be any good at anything. But you don't think so, Miss Pridmore, do you?" The eyes of the young man delighted her as they looked directly into hers. "No, I can see you don't. You think Klondyke's all right."
"Why should you think, Mr. Harper, that I think anything of the kind?" The voice was rebuking, but the eyes were laughing, and it was the eyes that mattered.
"You can't deny it!" he said with a charming air of defiance. "And if I was Klondyke's sister I wouldn't want to."
"As long as mother never hears anyone speak of him like that it really doesn't matter what we think of him, you know."
This wonderful creature, who in the sight of the Sailor was perfection from head to heel, whose very voice he could only compare to John Milton whom he had lately discovered, let her hand rest on his arm very lightly, yet with a touch that was almost affectionate. And then they went downstairs to dinner.
II
Politeness forbade that they should talk all the time to each other during that enchanted meal. Mr. Ellis was at the other side of Miss Pridmore, and an unknown lady of great charm and volubility was at the other side of Mr. Harper. These very agreeable people had to have a little share of their conversation, but during the major part of a delightful affair, Henry Harper was talking as he had never talked in his life before, not even to Klondyke himself, to Klondyke's sister.
It was not only about Klondyke that they talked. They had other things in common. Miss Pridmore was a perfectly sincere, a frankly outspoken admirer of "The Adventures of Dick Smith." She had never read anything like it; moreover she was quite fearless and nobly unqualified in her admiration of that fascinating tale of adventure, for the most part murderous adventure, on the high seas.
"We all have great arguments at home," she said, "as to which volume is the best. I say the first. To me those island chapters are incomparable. The Island of San Pedro. I say that's better than 'Robinson Crusoe' itself, which makes Uncle George furious. He considers it sacrilege to say anything of the kind."
"It is so," said the author with a little quiver of happiness.
"But you are bound to say that, aren't you?"
"I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it, Miss Pridmore."
The quaint solemnity delighted her.
"Uncle George says the Island of San Pedro is an imitation of 'Robinson Crusoe,' but nothing will ever make me admit that, so you had better not admit it either. Please say it isn't, to save my reputation for omniscience."
"I had not read 'Robinson Crusoe' when I wrote the Island, and I suppose if I had I should have written it differently."
"It's a very good thing you hadn't. There's nothing like the Island anywhere to my mind. You can see and feel and hear and smell and taste that Island. It is so real that when poor Dick was put ashore by the drunken captain of the brigantineExcelsiorI literally daren't go to bed. And my brother Jack says—and I always quote this to Uncle George—that no more lifelike picture of a windjammer—it is a windjammer, isn't it?——"
"That's right."
"And of an island in the Pacific could possibly be given."
"Well, I wouldn't quite say that myself," said the sailorman, with the blood singing in his ears.
"Of course not. It wouldn't be right for you to say it."
"Where is Klondyke now, Miss Pridmore?" he asked suddenly.
"No one knows. He probably doesn't know himself. The last letter my mother had from him arrived about two months ago. He was then in the middle of Abyssinia. But he has moved since. He never stays long anywhere when the wanderlust is on him. But we don't worry. He'll turn up one of these days quite unexpectedly, looking rather like a tramp, and will settle down to civilization for a short time; and then one morning he'll go off again to the most outlandish place he can think of, and we may not see or hear anything of him for months or even years."
A dull period followed the dessert. Miss Pridmore and the other ladies went and the Sailor had to remain with four comparatively flat and tame gentlemen who smoked very good cigars and talked of matters which the young man did not feel competent to enter upon.
It was an irksome twenty minutes, but it had to be endured. And it was not really so very difficult because he was in heaven.
At last when the four other gentlemen had solemnly smoked their cigars, and he had smoked the mild cigarette which contented him, they went upstairs. And as they did so he felt the hand of Edward Ambrose on his shoulder and he heard a laughing voice in his ear. "Henry, you are going great guns."
That was quite true. He felt wonderful. There is no doubt people do feel wonderful when they are in heaven. And there was his divinity sitting in the middle of the smaller sofa, and as soon as he entered he was summoned with a gesture of charming imperiousness which the boldest of men would not have dared to disobey. And as he came to her she laughingly made room for him. He sat by her side and fell at once to talking again of Klondyke. From Klondyke, whom she would not admit was quite the hero the author of "Dick Smith" considered him to be, they passed to the High Seas, and then to Literature, and then to the Drama, and then to Life itself, and then to the High Seas again, and then to Edward Ambrose, whom she spoke of with great affection as a very old friend of hers and of her family, and then once more to Life itself. After the flight of a winged hour she rose suddenly and held out her hand. But as she did so she also said one memorable thing.
"Mr. Harper"—her fingers were touching his—"promise, please, you will come to tea one afternoon soon. No. 50, Queen Street, Mayfair. I am going to write it on a piece of paper if you will get it for me, so that there will be no mistake."
The Sailor got the piece of paper for Miss Pridmore. As he did so the eternal feminine rejoiced at his tall, straight, cleanly handsomeness, in spite of the reach-me-down which clothed it.
"Now that means no excuse," she said, with a little touch of royal imperiousness returning upon her. "No. 50, Queen Street. One of those little houses on the left. About half past four. Shall we say Wednesday? I want to hear you talk to my mother about Klondyke."
She gave him her hand again, and then after a number of very cordial and direct good-bys which Klondyke himself could not have bettered, she went downstairs gayly with her host.
"Tell me, Mary," said Edward Ambrose on the way down, "who in the world is Klondyke?"
"It's Jack," she said. "They were together on board the brigantineExcelsior—although that's not the real name of it."
"How odd!" said Edward Ambrose. "But what a fellow he is not to have said so. When one remembers how he gloated over the yarn one would have thought——"
"But how should he know? It must have been years ago. Yet the strange thing is he remembers Jack and he knew I was his sister because we are so exactly alike, which I thought very tactless."
"Naturally. Did you like him?" The question came with very swift directness.
"He's amazing." The answer was equally swift, equally direct. "He is the only author I have ever met who comes near to being——"
"To being what?" Mary Pridmore had suddenly remembered that she was being escorted downstairs by a distinguished man of letters.
"Do you press the question?"
"Certainly I press the question."
"Very well, then," said Mary Pridmore. "Wild horses will not make me answer it. But I can only say that your young man is as wonderful as his books. He's coming to tea on Wednesday, and it will be very disappointing if you don't come as well. Good-by, Edward. It's been a splendid evening." And she waved her hand to him as she sped away with an air of large and heroic enjoyment of the universe, while Edward Ambrose stood rather wistfully at the door watching her recede into the night.
III
"My friend," said Edward Ambrose, as he helped the last departing guest into his overcoat, "I suppose you know you have made a conquest?"
The Sailor was not aware of the fact.
"Mary Pridmore is ... well, she is rather ... she is rather..."
"We talked a lot," said the young man, with a glow in his voice. "I hope she wasn't bored. But as she was Klondyke's sister, I couldn't help letting myself go a bit. She's—she's just my idea of what a lady ought to be."
The young man, who was still in heaven, had the grace to blush at such an indiscretion. His host laughed.
Said he: "Had I realized that you were such a very dangerous fellow, I don't think you would have been invited here tonight. I mean it, Henry." And to show that he didn't mean it in the least, Edward Ambrose gave the Sailor a little affectionate push into Bury Street.
As the night was fine and time was his own, Henry Harper returned on foot to King John's Mansions. He did not go by a direct route, but chose Regent Street, Marylebone Road, Euston Road, and other circuitous thoroughfares, so that the journey took about four times as long as it need have done. Midnight had struck already when he came to the top of the Avenue.
By that time he was no longer in heaven. As a matter of fact, he had fallen out of paradise in Portland Place. It was there he suddenly remembered Cora. For several enchanted hours he had completely forgotten her. He had been in Elysium, but almost opposite the Queen's Hall he fell out of it. It was there the unwelcome truth came upon him that he had been surrendering himself to madness.
He clenched his teeth as if he had received a blow in the face. He was like an ill-found ship wrenched from its moorings and cast adrift in mid-ocean. God in heaven, how was he to go home to that unspeakable woman after such a draught of sheer delight!
For a moment, standing dazed and breathless in the middle of the road, he almost wanted to shriek. He had been drinking champagne, not with undignified freedom, yet for unseasoned temperaments it may be a dangerous beverage even in modest quantities. He had really drunk very little, but he felt that in the situation he had now to face it would have been better to have left it alone.
How was he going to face Cora now he had seen the péri, now he had looked within the Enchanted Gates?
There was only one possible answer to the question. And that had come to him as he had crossed, quite unnecessarily, the Marylebone Road, and had fetched up against the railings of Regent's Park. He must accept the issue like a man. Setting his teeth anew, he moved in an easterly direction towards the Euston Road.
He allowed himself to hope, as he turned the latchkey in the door of No. 106, King John's Mansions, that Cora had not carried out her threat. But he was not able to build much upon it. As he climbed up slowly towards the roof of the flats there seemed something indescribably squalid about the endless flights of bleak, iron-railed stone stairs.
When the door of No. 106 opened to his latchkey, the first thing he perceived was a stealthy reek of alcohol. A light was in the passage; and then as he closed the outer door, he caught an oddly unexpected sound of voices coming through the half open door of the sitting-room. He stood and listened tensely. One of the voices was that of a man.
It was not necessary to enter the sitting-room itself to confirm this fact. A man's hat, one of the sort called a gibus, which he knew was only worn with evening clothes, was hanging on one of the pegs in the passage. An overcoat lined with astrachan was under it.
He could hear a strange voice coming from the sitting-room. It was that of a man of education, but it had a sort of huskiness which betrayed the familiar presence of alcohol. Involuntarily, he stood to listen at the half open door.
"Cora, old girl, you are as tight as a tick." After all, the tones were more, sober than drunk. "I'll be getting a move on, I think. I'll soon be as bad as you, and then I won't be able to, I expect."
"Don't go yet, ducky. I am just beginning to like you." It was the voice of Cora—the voice of Cora drunk.
"I will, if you don't mind. That second bottle has been a mistake. And you are not so very amusing, are you?"
"Speak for yourself." And the voice of Cora subsided into some far and deep oblivion.
There was a silence. In the midst of it, the young man suddenly entered the room.
The visitor, who was tall and powerful and well dressed, had the look of a gentleman. Perhaps a gentleman run a little to seed. He was standing on the threadbare hearthrug, his hands in his pockets, in a rather contemptuous attitude, while Cora, unmistakably drunk, had subsided on the sofa. Several bottles with glasses beside them were on the table.
As Henry Harper entered the room, the man looked at him in utter astonishment. His surprise seemed too great to allow him to speak.
"'Ullo, Harry," muttered Cora from her sofa. She did not attempt a more formal or coherent greeting.
He did not know what to say or how to act. He was wholly taken aback by the man's air of cool surprise; indeed his attitude expressed grim resentment for the intrusion of a third person.
"Who is this gentleman, Cora?" at last the young man was able to ask.
"Go to hell," Cora muttered.
"Yes, go to hell," said the man, apparently grateful for the lead.
Harper stood nonplused, defeated. But he managed to say, feebly enough as it seemed to himself, "I don't know who you are, sir, but I'll thank you for an explanation."
The man laughed insolently. "It's the limit," he said.
At this point, Cora, by an effort verging upon the superhuman, sat up on the sofa.
"Charlie." Her voice was a wheeze. "I want you to set about this beauty—to oblige me."
"My God, I've a good mind to," said Charlie, who as he became more sober seemed to grow more dangerous. "I don't know who you are, my friend, but if you'll take advice you'll clear out."
As the man spoke, his eyes looked particularly ugly. But among the things the Sailor had learned aboard theMargaret Careywas the art of keeping cool in a crisis.
"You've no right here at all, sir," said the man. "You ought to know that."
"No right!" said Henry Harper, in astonishment.
"If you are a wise man, you will go away. I was here first."
"What do you mean?"
"I came at the invitation of this lady, Miss Cora Dobbs, who is a very old friend of mine."
The man turned towards the sofa. Cora nodded. But she was now bordering on a state of coma.
"Who are you, sir?" Harper tried hard to keep his temper in spite of the man's calculated insolence. "Are you a relation of hers?"
"A relation!" The man was taken aback. "We are both here for the same object, I presume."
"I don't know what you mean, but this is my flat and I'll be very thankful if you'll quit."
"Your flat!" A light seemed to dawn. The man turned to Cora: "Why didn't you tell me? I thought you were on your own, as you were before I went to Canada."
To the man's clear annoyance, Cora had now reached a phase which forbade her to answer this question. He then addressed Henry Harper with a sudden change of voice.
"She's not played the game," he said, half apologetically.
"I don't know what you mean by that. I don't understand you."
The man looked at him in astonishment. He then looked at Cora, who was half lying upon the sofa, mute, fuddled, and indifferent.
"Come outside," said the man, in a lower tone, "and I'll explain."
Feeling completely bewildered, Harper accompanied him into the passage.
"I apologize," said the man, as soon as they got there. "But Cora is entirely to blame. There's no need to say she never told me she was living with you."
"I don't understand," said Henry Harper.
The man stared at him. He was at a loss.
"Of course, I've known Cora Dobbs for years." He lowered his voice. "But I've been away in Canada. Before I went, I used to come here pretty regularly."
As the man spoke, light came to Henry Harper. All at once, a chill ran in his veins.
"But ... but she's ... she's my wife," he gasped, leaning heavily against the wall of the passage.
"She's yourwhat!" the man almost shouted.
"She's my wife."
Again the man stared at him, but now with a look of consternation and pity.
"You mean to say you didn't know?"
The young man, still leaning against the wall, was unable to speak. A glance at the ashen face convinced the older man that there was no need to repeat the question.
"Well, I'm sorry, and I can only apologize," he said, after a moment's pause, and in a tone of good feeling. He then took his hat and coat from the peg, and suddenly darted out of the flat. The door closed after him with a bang.