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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sailor, by J. C. Snaith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sailor
+
+Author: J. C. Snaith
+
+Illustrator: W. A. Hottinger
+
+Release Date: December 2, 2011 [EBook #38186]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SAILOR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "Mr. Harper was completely out of his depth." (Page
+267.)]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SAILOR
+
+
+BY
+
+J. C. SNAITH
+
+
+AUTHOR OF "ANNE FEVERSHAM," "BROKE OF COVENDEN,"
+  "ARAMINTA," ETC.
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+
+W. A. HOTTINGER
+
+
+
+THOMAS LANGTON
+
+TORONTO
+
+1916
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
+
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Mr. Harper was completely out of his depth." . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+"A nigger with rings in his ears came forward with a light."
+
+"'I was a bit on last night,' she said with well assumed humility."
+
+"'Mary,' he said, 'do you remember your words eleven months ago?'"
+
+
+
+
+THE SAILOR
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+GESTATION
+
+I
+
+A large woman in a torn dress stood at the gate of a rag and bone
+dealer's yard.  The season was November, the hour midnight, the place a
+slum in a Midland textile town.
+
+Hanging from the wall of the house beyond was a dirty oil lamp round
+which the fog circled in a hundred spectral shapes.  Seen by its light,
+she was not pleasant to look upon.  Bare-armed, bare-headed, savage
+chest half bare and sagging in festoons, she stood stayless and
+unashamed, breathing gin and wickedness.  A grin of quiet joy was upon
+her alcoholic countenance.  Nay, more than joy.  It was a light of
+inward ecstasy, and sprang from the fact that a heavy carter's whip was
+in her hand.
+
+Not many feet from the spot on which she stood was the wall of a
+neighbor's house.  Crouching against it so that he was scarcely visible
+in the darkness was a boy of thirteen.  Without stockings or shoes, he
+wore only a filthy shirt, a thing that had once been a jacket, and a
+tattered lower garment which left his thighs half naked.
+
+His face was transfigured with terror.
+
+"Enery Arper," said the woman with a shrill snigger not unlike the
+whinny of a horse, "Auntie said she'd wait up for you, didn't she?  And
+she always keeps a promise, don't she, my boy?"
+
+The figure six yards away the fog was doing its best to hide cowered
+yet closer to the wall.
+
+"And what was it, Enery, that Auntie promised you if you come 'ome
+again with ninepence?"  The wheeze of the voice had a note of humor.
+
+The boy was wedged so close to the wall that he had barked the skin off
+his bare knees.  The woman, watching him intently, began to trail the
+heavy lash on the cobbled yard.
+
+"Said she'd make it up to a shillin' for you, didn't she? ... if you
+come 'ome again with ninepence.  Said she'd cut the heart out o' you
+... same as if it was the eye of a pertater."
+
+A powerful arm was already loose.  The eye of an expert had the
+distance measured to a nicety.
+
+"Clean out."
+
+A scream followed that was not human.  The heavy whip had caught the
+boy round the unprotected thighs.
+
+"I'll do ye in this time."
+
+Mad with pain and terror the boy dashed straight at her, charging like
+a desperate animal, as with leisurely ferocity she prepared for a
+second cut at him.  The impact of his body was so unexpected that it
+nearly knocked her down.
+
+It was his only chance.  Before she could recover her balance he was
+out of the gate and away in the fog.  A lane ran past the yard.  He was
+in it before the whip could reach him again; in it and running for his
+life.
+
+The lane was short, straight and very narrow, with high walls on both
+sides.  A turn to the right led through a small entry into a by-street
+which gave access to one of the main thoroughfares of the city.  A turn
+to the left ended in a blank wall which formed a blind alley.
+
+By the time the boy was halfway down the lane, he realized that in his
+mad terror he had turned to the left instead of to the right.  There
+was no escape.  He was in a trap.
+
+A moment he hesitated, sick with fear.  He could hear the heavy
+footfalls of his pursuer; as she plowed through the fog he could hear
+her wheezy grunts and alcoholic curses.
+
+"Took the wrong turnin', eh?"  She was within ten yards.  "Hold on a
+minute, that's all, young man!"
+
+In sheer desperation the boy ran on again, well knowing he could not
+get beyond the wall at the bottom of the lane.  He could see it
+already.  A lamp was there, faintly revealing its grim outline with fog
+around it.
+
+"I'll do ye in, by God, I will!"
+
+The voice was so near that his knees began to fail.  Overcome with
+terror he threw himself on the ground near the wall.  He had neither
+the strength nor the courage to try again the trick that had saved him
+a minute ago.
+
+He knew she was standing under the lamp, he knew she was looking for
+him.
+
+"Ah, Enery, I see yer," she said, with a savage laugh.
+
+Content to know there was no escape for him she paused to get her
+breath.
+
+The boy began to wriggle along under the lea of the wall, while she
+stood watching him.  The wall was old, and all at once he made a
+discovery.  Close to his head was a small hole, where three or four
+bricks had fallen out.  It was a mere black space, leading he knew not
+where.  But he didn't hesitate.  Hardly knowing what he did, he
+squeezed his head through the hole.  And then with the frenzied
+desperation of a rat in a trap he dragged his body after it.
+
+An oath came from the woman under the lamp, a short ten yards off.  She
+sprang at the wall.  She lashed at it again and again, cursing
+horribly.  But it was no use.  Her prey had escaped with one savage cut
+across the heels.  She continued to lash at the hole, but the boy was
+out of her reach.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Where was he?  He didn't know.  Half dead with fear he could hear her
+lashing at the wall, but she wouldn't be able to get at him.
+
+With a great effort he rose from his hands and knees.  He had hardly
+strength to stand up.  He seemed to be in a sort of garden.  There was
+mold under his feet.  It was too dark to see it, but he knew by the
+smell; also it was damp and sticky.  He moved a few yards and his feet
+became entangled among roots and bushes.  And then suddenly a dog began
+to bark and his heart stood still.
+
+For quite a minute he dared not move another step.  The dog sounded
+very near, yet he could not return by the way he had come.  No, in
+spite of the dog he must find another outlet from this garden.  Very
+cautiously he moved a yard or two, and then stopped to listen.  Shaking
+with terror he then moved on again.
+
+Groping about in the fog and darkness, his teeth chattering with cold,
+his brain quite numb, it seemed that he would never be able to find a
+way out.  Where was he?  He had no idea of anything except the ground
+under his feet.  Now it was a stretch of gravel, now a rubbish heap,
+now moist earth, now roots and bushes, and then finally, after the
+lapse of hours as it seemed, he came up against a wall.
+
+It might be the wall through which he had crept.  Of that he could not
+be sure, but yet he did not think it was.  He began to follow the line
+of it, taking care to do so in the opposite direction to the dog whose
+barking was incessant.  As he walked he rubbed his hands along the
+surface of the wall in the hope of finding a gate.
+
+For a long time he groped through the darkness, but came upon nothing
+in the least resembling a gate.  Again he grew desperate.  He would
+have to wait there until daylight.  But he simply dared not do that
+with the dog straining at his chain, seemingly, only a very few yards
+off.
+
+Sick with cold and shaking in every limb he began to cry feebly.  His
+knees were knocking, he was at the end of his wits.  There was no way
+out of the garden, yet if he stayed in it the dog would kill him.
+Suddenly he decided upon the only possible course; he must climb the
+wall.  Not knowing its height, or what there was beyond, or whether it
+was merely the wall of a house, he began to "shin" up it for all he was
+worth, grasping its rough surface as well as he could with his hands
+and his knees and his bare toes.  There must be some kind of a top to
+it, and when the dog broke his chain, as every moment he threatened to
+do, he might not be able to reach him.
+
+Wild and precarious struggling, in the course of which he was several
+times within an ace of toppling backwards into the garden, brought his
+numb fingers at last to a kind of coping.  He had just strength enough
+to draw up his body on to the narrow ledge, only to find that he could
+not possibly remain on it.  The top of the wall was sown thickly with
+broken glass.
+
+He knew his hands and knees were cut, yet he could hardly feel
+anything.  There was only one thing to do now; he must jump for it--one
+side or the other.  He came to no deliberate decision; at that moment
+he was completely unbalanced in body and mind, but a voice inside him
+said suddenly:
+
+"Chance it!"
+
+Hands and knees instinctively gripping as hard as they could, he
+slipped over the other side.  But it was impossible to keep a hold.  He
+slipped and swayed and slipped again, and then he knew that he was
+falling ... falling ... falling through space into the unknown.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Something hit him, something so hard that it seemed to crack him as if
+he had been an egg.  It was the earth.  He lay a moment almost without
+sensation, and then he realized that the dog was no longer barking.
+Feeling reassured he made an effort to rise.  He couldn't move.  The
+sensation was horrible.  Perhaps he had broken his back.
+
+He tried several times, and because he could feel no pain the thought
+seemed to grow upon him.  Presently, however, he found he could stand.
+Still dazed and shaken in every bone, he knew now that he had had the
+luck to fall upon soft earth.  But as soon as he stood up there came a
+savage grinding pain in his left leg, and he lay down whimpering
+feebly.  He then got up again, and then lay down again, and then
+suddenly he wished he was dead.
+
+If only he had had the luck to kill himself!  But every moment now made
+the wish seem more vain.  He was conscious of one ache after another,
+in every part of his body; his hands and feet were bleeding, he was
+sick and sorry, but he seemed to know that death was a long way off.
+Suddenly he stood up again.  The cold, wet earth under him was
+unendurable.  Where was he?  He set his teeth, and began to drag his
+left leg after him in order to find out.  Where was he?  This place
+seemed a sort of garden too.  But there was no dog in it.  The damp
+soil was merged very soon in substances less gentle to the feet; old
+crocks and scraps of metal and other debris, the prelude to a rubbish
+heap.  And then without in the least expecting it, he came upon water.
+The question was answered.  He was on the bank of the canal.
+
+The knowledge chilled right through him.  Here and now was his chance.
+It wouldn't take more than a minute if he jumped straight in.  But the
+water looked still and cold and horrible.  As he came to the edge he
+found he couldn't face it.  He simply hadn't the pluck.
+
+He limped on a few yards.  It might seem easier a bit lower down.  But
+when he came a bit lower down he couldn't face it either, and he stood
+at the edge of the water crying miserably.
+
+After a while he dragged himself away from the canal.  He stumbled over
+rubbish heaps and stones and brickbats, varied now and then with
+nettles and twitch grass.  He came to a low bridge and crossed it.
+Nothing would have been easier than to slip over the side; it might
+have been there for the purpose; but this was one of the places where
+the fog had lifted a little, again he caught a glimpse of the water and
+again he moved on.
+
+At last he came to some wooden railings and got through a gap where one
+or two had been broken.  Here the fog was so thick that he lost his
+bearings altogether.  He didn't know in the least where he was, he
+couldn't see his hand before him; and then he stumbled over something
+which jarred his hurt foot horribly.  The something was a wire.
+
+Of course, it was the railway.  He remembered, almost with a feeling of
+excitement, that the railway was in the next field to the canal.  A
+moment he stood trying to make out things and noises in the fog.  Yes,
+he could hear, at least he thought he could hear, wagons being shunted
+in the sidings.  After he had moved a few yards towards the sound, he
+was able to make out a red light in the distance.
+
+For some odd reason which he couldn't explain, the feeling of
+excitement began to grow with the certainty that he was on the line.
+He could feel the metals, icy cold, smooth and slippery under his feet.
+He limped along until a dim shape loomed ahead.  It was a signal box.
+By this time his excitement was almost terrible.
+
+He stood a moment listening to the snortings of an engine which he
+couldn't see, and the clang-clang-clang of the wagons as they were
+being shunted in the sidings.  And then all at once the signal under
+which he was shivering dropped with a great clatter, and something very
+deep down in him, a something he had not known existed until that
+moment, gave a sort of little exultant cry and told him that now was
+his chance.
+
+Excited almost to the verge of joy he limped past the signal box in
+order to get away from its lights.  If the thing was done at all it
+would have to be done in darkness.  Presently he looked round, and with
+a sensation of downright terror, found that the lights of the signal
+box were no longer to be seen.  Here the fog was quite thick again;
+whichever way he looked there was not a single object he could make out
+in the darkness.  But under his bare feet he could feel the broad
+metals icy, smooth, inexorable.
+
+"Now's your chance," said a gentle voice deep down in himself.
+
+Instantly he lay full length in the six-foot way.
+
+"Set your head on the line," said the voice.
+
+He did as he was told.  The sensation of the icy metal under his right
+ear was so horrible that his heart almost stopped inside him.
+
+"Close your eyes," said the voice, and then it said a little more
+gently as if it knew that already he was half dead with fear, "Stay
+just as you are and you'll not know nothink about it."
+
+He closed his eyes.
+
+"Don't move," said the voice.  "Stay there and it'll not hurt you."
+
+If he had had a God to pray to, he would have prayed.
+
+The engine seemed a long time on the way.  He daren't move hand or
+foot, he daren't stir a muscle of his body.  But as the seconds passed
+an intense desire came upon him to change the position of his head.  It
+felt so undefended sideways on.  Surely it would be better if he turned
+it round so that....
+
+"Don't move," the voice commanded him.  "Keep just like that.  Quite
+still."
+
+He was bound to obey.  The voice was stronger than he.
+
+"Eyes shut, and you'll not know nothink."
+
+It was as a mother would have spoken had he ever heard a mother speak.
+
+... The engine was coming.  He could hear it snorting and rattling in
+the distance.  He simply daren't listen.  He tried to imagine he was
+already dead.  But a frightful crash suddenly broke in upon his brain,
+and then another, and then another ... he had never realized how much
+it took to...
+
+"Fog signals," said the voice.  "Keep just as you are ...  eyes shut
+... quite still ... quite still."
+
+There it was, grunting and rattling....  Know nothink!  ... there ...
+now...
+
+Grunting, rattling, snorting, what a time it took!  In spite of himself
+he opened his eyes, and found that he was still alive.
+
+"You were on the wrong line after all."
+
+The sound of the voice turned him faint.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+There was only one thing to be done now, and this he did without delay.
+He took his head from the metals and stood up as well as he could.  His
+body was all numb and lifeless, but there was a queer excitement in him
+somewhere that for the moment made him feel almost happy.  After all,
+he wasn't dead.  And in that strange moment that was like a dream he
+was almost glad he wasn't.  Yes, almost glad.  It was hard to believe
+that he should wish to find himself alive, and yet as he stretched his
+limbs and began to move he couldn't honestly say that after all he
+wasn't just a little bit pleased.
+
+He was not able to move very fast; he was so dreadfully cold for one
+thing, and then his left foot was hurt.  But now, as he walked along
+the six-foot way, he felt somehow stronger than he had ever felt in his
+life before.  Of a sudden he crossed the metals and plunged recklessly
+sideways into the fog.  He stumbled over some signal wires and fell on
+his knees, got up and stumbled over some more.  What did it matter?
+What did anything matter?  After all, it was quite easy to die.  He
+must find the right line and make a job of it.
+
+He stopped a moment, and turned this thought over in his mind.  And
+then he heard the voice again.
+
+"_Henry Harper, you'll never be able to do that again as long as you
+live._"
+
+The words were gentle and composed, but they struck him like a curse.
+He knew that they were true.  Not as long as he lived would he be able
+to do again as he had just done.  It was as if the judge in his wig
+whom he had seen that afternoon riding to the Assizes in his gilt
+carriage had passed a life sentence upon him.  His knees began to
+crumble under him again; he could have shrieked with terror.  Crying
+miserably he limped along into the sidings.  He came to a lamp.  All
+around were silent, grim shapes upon which its feeble light was cast.
+They were loaded wagons, sheeted with tarpaulins.  With the amazing
+recklessness that had just been born in him he determined to find a way
+into one of them in the hope of being able to lie down and sleep.  It
+was not very difficult to climb up and get under one of the sheets,
+which happened to have been loosely tied.  Also he had the luck to find
+a bed that would have been more or less comfortable had the night not
+been so bitterly cold.  The wagon was loaded with sacks full of a
+substance soft and yielding; as a matter of fact, it was flour.
+
+Henry Harper lay down with a feeling of relief and burrowed among the
+sacks as far as he could get.  A mass of aches in body and soul,
+anything was better than the darkness and damp fog and icy substances
+cutting into his bare feet.  Presently, with the sacks piled all round
+him, he felt less miserable, and he fell asleep.
+
+How long he slept he didn't know.  But it must have been some little
+time, and the sleep must have been fairly sound, for he was only
+awakened by a great jolt of the wagon.  And before he was fully awake
+it had begun to move.
+
+Hadn't he better jump out?  No, let it move.  Let it do anything it
+liked.  Let it go anywhere it pleased.  What did it matter?  Again he
+fell asleep.
+
+The next time he awoke he was shivering with cold and feeling very
+hungry.  But the wagon was moving now and no mistake.  It was still
+pitch dark, although the fog seemed to have lifted a bit, but the
+detonators which had been placed on the line were going off now and
+again with tremendous reports, signals flew past, and while he lay
+wondering what he ought to do now, he passed through an array of lights
+which looked like a station.
+
+He soon came to the conclusion that it was useless to do anything.  He
+couldn't get out of the wagon now even if he wanted to, that was unless
+he wanted to kill himself.  Yes ... that was exactly what...
+
+"Lie quiet.  Go to sleep," a stern voice commanded him.
+
+He tried to sleep again but soon found he couldn't.  He was cold and
+ill, but after an attack of vomiting he felt better.  Meanwhile the
+wagon rattled on and on through the night, and it seemed to go faster
+the farther it went.
+
+Where was it going?  What did it matter where it went so long as he
+went with it?  But--the sudden thought was like a blow--that was just
+what did matter!  They would find him lying there, and they would give
+him to the police, and the police would do something to him.  He knew
+all about that, because they had done something to him once already for
+taking an apple off a stall in the market place.  He had only taken
+one, but they had given him six strokes, and in spite of the cold and
+the pain in his left leg he still remembered just what they were like.
+
+Perhaps he ought to jump for it.  No, that was impossible with his leg
+like that; the wagon was going too fast.  He had better lie quiet and
+slip out as soon as the wagon stopped at a station.  He burrowed far
+down into the sacks once more, for the sake of the warmth, and after a
+while he went to sleep again.
+
+And then he had a dream that filled him with terror.  The police had
+found him.  The police had found him in the wagon.
+
+He awoke with a start.  Rough hands were shaking him.  Yes, it was
+perfectly true!
+
+"Kim up ... you!"
+
+It was the voice of the police.
+
+He turned over with a whimper and lifted up his head, only to drop it
+instantly.  He had been blinded by the glare of a lantern held six
+inches from his eyes.
+
+"Well, damn me," a great, roaring voice surged into his ears.  "Here,
+Ike!"
+
+"What's up now?" said a second voice, roaring like the first.
+
+"Come and look at this."
+
+The boy dug his head into the sacks.
+
+"What's up?" said voice the second.
+
+"What about it?  Must ha' got in at Blackhampton."
+
+"Well, damn me."
+
+The boy burrowed deeper and deeper into the sacks.
+
+"Here, come out of it."  The owner of the first voice took him by the
+ear and dragged him out of the wagon.
+
+"What's yer name?"
+
+No answer.
+
+His captor shook him roughly.
+
+"Enry Arper," whimpered the boy.
+
+"Enry what?"
+
+"Enry Arper."
+
+"Enry Arper, is it?  Well, you are going to have something to 'arp for,
+you are, my lad."
+
+"Ever had the birch rod, Mister Enry Arper?" inquired the first voice
+with a kind of grim pleasantness.
+
+The boy didn't answer.
+
+"No?  Not had that pleasure?  The police are going to cut the skin off
+o' you and sarve you right.  They'll larn you to trespass on to the
+railway.  Fetch the foreman, Ike."
+
+While the boy, securely held by the ear, stood shivering, Ike went
+leisurely in search of the foreman shunter.  It was six o'clock, and
+that individual, who had been on duty since that hour the previous
+evening, was on the point of going home.  Ike found him in the
+messroom, where he had gone to exchange his lantern for the small
+wicker basket in which he brought his meals.  His name was Job Lorimer,
+and being large and fat and florid he sauntered up to the scene of
+action with an air of frank acceptance of life as it is, that seems to
+go as a rule with his type of physique and countenance.
+
+"Why, blow me, Iggins, what's all this year?"
+
+"Allow me to introjuice Mr. Enry Arper o' Blackhampton.--Mr. Job
+Lorimer, foreman shunter, Kentish Town."
+
+"'Owdy do, young man.  Pleased to meet you."  Mr. Lorimer winked
+solemnly at both his subordinates.  "What can we do for you?"
+
+"Twelve strokes with the birch rod," said subordinate the first.
+
+"Eight for the first offence," said subordinate the second.
+
+Suddenly the boy fell down senseless at the foreman shunter's feet.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Well, blow me," said the Foreman Shunter.  "Show the light, Pearson."
+
+The second subordinate maneuvered the lantern.  "On'y a kid.  And I
+never see sich a state as he's in.  No boots.  No stockings.  Just look
+at them feet.  And his hands all of a mush.  Gawd!" said the Foreman
+Shunter.
+
+"What'll you do about it, Job?" said subordinate number one.
+
+"Do about it?" said the Foreman Shunter sharply.  "Do about what?"
+
+"Might let him go this time?" said subordinate number two.
+
+The boy opened his eyes.
+
+"I'll take him 'ome to the missus and give him some breakfast," said
+the Foreman Shunter with an air of asperity.
+
+The odd thing was that both subordinates seemed silently to approve
+this grave dereliction of a foreman shunter's duty.
+
+"Can you walk, me lad?"
+
+"O' course he can't, Iggins, not with them," said the Foreman Shunter.
+"Can't stand on 'em, let alone walk on 'em.  Here, catch holt o' the
+bawsket."
+
+The Foreman Shunter took the boy in his arms and carried him away from
+the goods yard as he would have carried a baby.
+
+"Leave the bawsket at No. 12 when you come off duty," he called back to
+the first subordinate.
+
+"Right, Job, I will," said the first subordinate rather respectfully,
+and then as the Foreman Shunter passed out of hearing, the first
+subordinate said to his mate, "Fancy taking a thing like that 'ome to
+your missus."
+
+In the meantime the boy was shivering and whimpering in what he felt to
+be the strong arms of the police.
+
+"Let me go, mister, this once," he whined as awful recollections surged
+upon him.  He had been getting terribly hurt all through the night, but
+he knew that he was going to be hurt still more now that the police had
+got hold of him.
+
+But his faint whimpers and half-hearted wriggles were without effect
+upon the majesty of the law.
+
+"Lie still.  Keep quiet," growled the Foreman Shunter, adding as quite
+an impersonal afterthought, "Blast you!"
+
+It seemed a very long time to the boy before he came to prison.  Up one
+strange street and down another he was carried.  As he lay in the arms
+of the police he could make out lamp after lamp and row after row of
+houses in the darkness.
+
+It was a long way to the station.
+
+"Let me go this once, mister," he began to whine again.  "I'll not do
+it no more."
+
+"Quiet, blast you," growled the large, rich voice of the police.
+
+At last they came to a door, which in the uncertain light seemed
+exactly similar to one he had passed through on an occasion he would
+never forget to his dying day.  He began to cry again miserably.
+Perhaps they would give him something to eat--they did so before--but
+he would not be able to eat anything this time if they offered it, not
+until they had done what they had to do.
+
+He could hear sounds a little way off ... inside the prison.  He
+gripped convulsively the rough overcoat of his captor.  How vividly he
+remembered it all!  They gave it two other boys first.  Again he could
+hear their screams, again he could see the blood running down their
+bare legs.
+
+He must try to be a man ... he remembered that one of the other boys
+had laughed about it afterwards ... he must try to be a man ... at
+least that had been the advice of a fatherly policeman in spectacles
+who had presided over the ceremony....
+
+"Mother ... that you..."  The terrific voice of his captor went right
+through him.  "Where are you, Mother?  Show a light."
+
+Suddenly a door at the end of the passage was flung open.  There came a
+blinding gush of gaslight.
+
+"Why, Job ... whatever...!"
+
+"I'll set him on the sophy."
+
+"Yes, on the sophy.  Goodness gracious me!"
+
+The boy realized that he was on a horsehair sofa, and that a fine,
+clean, handsome-looking lady was standing with her mouth open in front
+of him.
+
+"Goodness gracious, Job!"
+
+"Come all the way from Blackhampton in a truck this morning.  By the
+5:40 Express."
+
+"Well, I'm blessed if I ever see such a hobject.  I'll give him some
+tea and a bit o' bacon, and some bread and butter, and then I'll get
+some o' that mud off him."
+
+"Some of it's blood," said the Foreman Shunter.
+
+"Yes, I see it is.  Never ... did ... I ... see ... anythink ... like
+him.  I'll make the tea; the kettle's boiling."  The voice of Mother
+was the nearest thing to music the boy had ever heard.  It was better
+even than that of the ladies who sang in the bar of the Wheat Sheaf,
+the Red Lion, and the Crown and Anchor, outside which places he had
+always stayed to listen when he could conveniently do so.  This room
+was not in the least like the police station.  And he was quite sure
+that the lady called Mother had nothing whatever to do with....
+
+"Set him a bit nearer to the fire, Job,"--yes, the voice was
+music--"and put this round him."
+
+"This" was an old coat.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"I'll give it him in a saucer," said Mother.  "It'll be cooler that
+way."
+
+A saucer of tea was offered to the boy.
+
+"Can you hold it, me lad?"
+
+"Yes, lady," he said, faintly.
+
+"Lap it up, then.  Better let me try it first."  She sipped a little
+out of the saucer.  "Yes, that's right enough."
+
+The tea was so perfectly delicious that he swallowed it at a gulp.
+Mother and the Foreman Shunter watched him with surprise.
+
+"Now for a bite o' bread and butter," said Mother, sawing away at a
+quartern loaf.
+
+The boy seized the bread and butter like a hungry dog.  Mother and the
+Foreman Shunter stood looking at him with queer, rather startled faces.
+
+"I never see the likes o' that, Job."
+
+"No, never," said the Foreman Shunter, solemnly.  "Damn me."
+
+"What's your name, boy?"
+
+"Enry Arper, lady."
+
+"Enry what?"
+
+"Enry Arper, lady."
+
+"Could you eat a bit o' bacon, do you think?"
+
+The boy nodded with an eagerness that made the Foreman Shunter laugh.
+
+"I see nothing to laugh at, Job Lorimer," said his wife sharply.  Tears
+had come into her eyes.  She whisked them away with a corner of her
+apron, and then gave a sniff of remarkable violence.  "And they call
+this a Christian land."
+
+"You never heard me call it that, Mother," said the Foreman Shunter.
+
+"More shame to you, then, Job Lorimer."
+
+"I know this," said the Foreman Shunter, speaking in a slow and
+decisive manner, "whatever this country is or whatever it ain't,
+there's as much Christianity in it as there is in that hearthrug.  And
+there ain't a bit more."
+
+"Shut your head," said his wife.  "And hand me that knife and I'll cut
+up this bit o' bacon for him."
+
+She took a delicately browned rasher out of a hissing, delicious
+smelling frying-pan on the fire, cut it into very small pieces, gave it
+to the boy, and told him to eat it slowly.
+
+After the boy's wants had been attended to, Mother spread a newspaper
+on the sofa and told him to put up his legs and rest a bit.  The
+Foreman Shunter then passed through a door and performed wonders in the
+way of blowing and splashing at the scullery sink.  When he reappeared
+his face was very red and shining and the boy was fast asleep.
+
+"I'm thinking I'll have a bite meself," said Job, with a glance at the
+sofa.  "And then I suppose I had better take him along to the police
+station."
+
+Mother made no reply, but gave her husband a breakfast worthy of a
+foreman shunter.  She then examined carefully the boy's hands and feet.
+
+"I never did see such a hobject," said she.  And then with an imperious
+air, "I'll give him a wash, that's what I'll do."
+
+In order to carry out this resolve, she went into the scullery, filled
+the copper, and lit the fire.
+
+Presently the members of the family, three small boys and a smaller
+girl, came down to breakfast _en route_ to school.  They looked
+wonderingly at the creature on the sofa, with great curiosity in their
+half frightened eyes.  Their father told them sternly to keep away from
+it, to get on with their breakfasts, not to make a noise, and to clear
+off to school.
+
+"Is it a boy or a girl?" Alfie asked Johnnie, in a thrilling whisper as
+soon as father had retired to help Mother in the scullery.
+
+"A girl, o' course."
+
+There was some excuse for Johnnie: there was something that looked
+exactly like a girl in the sleeping face.  The rest was hidden by the
+coat.
+
+The family was soon packed off to school, Johnnie "with a flea in his
+ear" for having cleaned his boots imperfectly the night before.  Mother
+then cleared away the remains of breakfast, and the Foreman Shunter
+fetched a fair-sized zinc bath out of the washhouse, pushed back the
+table, and set it down before the fire.  He filled it with warm water
+from the copper, and then gave the sleeper a shake and said,
+
+"Now, then, boy."
+
+The boy roused himself with a little whimper of protest.  He had not
+been very fast asleep; the police in varying forms of their activity
+were still hovering round the outskirts of his mind.  He began to cry
+miserably at the sight of the zinc bath, which supplied a forgotten
+link in an awful chain of memories.  Yes, this was the police station
+after all.  He remembered now quite well how they gave him a bath
+before they ...
+
+"What are you crying for?" asked Mother.  "I'm not going to hurt you,
+my boy.  Nice warm bath.  Bind up your feet.  Then you can go to sleep
+again."
+
+Perhaps it wasn't the police station, after all.  Certainly that
+institution as he knew it had no Mother and no warm tea and no fried
+bacon, and no sofa and no old coat.
+
+Mother removed the filthy shirt and the tattered knickerbockers with
+uncompromising but not indelicate hands.
+
+"Them had better be burnt, Job," she said sharply, as she gave them to
+the Foreman Shunter to throw into the back yard.
+
+"Better ha' done this job in the scullery, Mother," said he.
+
+"Too cold...."  She took the temperature of the bath with an expert's
+finger....  "I never did see anything like this poor child.  There's
+nothing to him.  Look at his ribs.  You can count 'em.  Ugh!"  The eye
+of Mother had been arrested by a broad red mark across both thighs.
+
+"That's been done with a whip," said the Foreman Shunter, grimly.
+
+"Just look at those feet ... they are beginning to bleed again.  And
+these pore hands.  I'll get some rags and some Friar's Balsam.  And his
+hair!  Goodness gracious me!  I'll have to go to the chemist's for
+that, I'm thinking."
+
+It was perfectly true that Mother had to pay a visit to the chemist for
+the boy's hair.  Nothing less than the chemist could meet the case.
+
+In the meantime, the Foreman Shunter soaped and washed the boy
+thoroughly, dried him with a coarse towel, rubbed the Friar's Balsam on
+the mutilated hands and feet, which made them smart horribly, and bound
+them in clean rags.  Mother then returned to perform wonders with the
+chemist's lotion.  Afterwards she fetched a nightgown of Alfie's, put
+it on the boy, wrapped him up in a couple of blankets, and made him
+comfortable on the sofa, and the Foreman Shunter drew it a bit nearer
+the fire.  Then the boy was told he could sleep as long as he liked.
+Presently he began to doze, his mind still running on the police; but
+certainly this was not a bit like the station.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"What'll you do with him, Mother?"
+
+It was tea time, the kitchen blind was down, the gas was lit; and
+mother was toasting a muffin for the Foreman Shunter, who was about to
+go on duty.
+
+"He can't stay here, you know.  We've as many as we can manage already."
+
+"I know that," snapped Mother.
+
+Like most mothers who are worth their salt, she had rather a habit of
+snapping at the Foreman Shunter.
+
+The boy was feeling wonderfully comfortable.  In fact, he had never
+felt so comfortable in his life.  And he was just sufficiently awake to
+know that his fate was being decided upon.
+
+"What'll you do with him, anyhow?"
+
+"I don't know," snapped Mother.
+
+"I don't neither.  Seems to me there's nothing for it but to hand him
+over to the police."
+
+The boy was fully awake now.  His heart stood still.  It seemed an age
+before mother spoke in answer to this terrible suggestion.
+
+"Yes, of course, there's always that," she said, at last.
+
+The boy's heart died within him.
+
+"He can't stay here, that's a moral," said the Foreman Shunter.
+
+"I never said he could," snapped Mother.  "But I don't hold with the
+police myself.  It means the Work'us, and you'd better not be born at
+all, Job Lorimer, than go to the Work'us."
+
+"You are right there," said the Foreman Shunter.
+
+"He wants a honest occipation," said Mother, buttering the muffin.
+
+"He wants eddicatin' first," said the Foreman Shunter, beginning to eat
+the muffin.  "What can you do with a kid like that?  Don't know A from
+a bull's foot.  Not fit for any decent society."
+
+"You are right there," said Mother.  "But I'm all against the Work'us,
+and it's no use purtending I ain't."
+
+"Same here," said the Foreman Shunter.  "But he can't stay at No. 12,
+Gladstone Villas, and you can lay to that."
+
+"Did I say he could?" snapped Mother yet again.
+
+"Very well, then."
+
+And the Foreman Shunter went on duty.
+
+It took five days for the _famille_ Lorimer to decide the fate of Henry
+Harper.  Five wonderful days in which he lay most of the time wrapped
+in warm blankets on a most comfortable sofa in a warm room.  Everybody
+was remarkably good to him.  He had the nicest things to eat and drink
+that had ever come his way; he was spoken to in the only kind tones
+that had ever been used to him in all his thirteen years of life.  He
+was given a clean shirt of Alfie's without a single hole in it; he was
+given a pair of Johnnie's socks; a pair of the Foreman Shunter's
+trousers were cut down for him; he was given boots (Alfie's), a
+waistcoat (Alfie's), a jacket (Alfie's), a necktie (Johnnie's), a clean
+linen collar (Alfie's), a red-spotted handkerchief (Percy's--by Percy's
+own request).  In fact, in those five days he was by way of being taken
+to the bosom of the family.
+
+He was really a very decent sort of boy--at least, Father said so to
+Mother in Johnnie's hearing.  That is, he had the makings of a decent
+boy.  And Johnnie knew that if Father said so it must be so, because
+Johnnie also knew that Father was an extremely acute and searching
+critic of boys in general.  They were all very sorry for him, and Alfie
+and Percy were also inclined to be sorry for Johnnie, who had made a
+regular mug of himself by declaring that this poor street arab was a
+girl.  It would take Johnnie at least a year to live it down, but in
+the meantime they were full of pity for this miserable waif out of the
+gutter who could neither write nor read, who tore at his food, who
+called Mother "lady" and Father "mister," and said "dunno" and used
+strange terms of the streets in a way they could hardly understand.
+This poor gutter-snipe, who had been so badly knocked about, who had
+never had a father or a mother, or a brother or a sister, was whole
+worlds away from the fine assurance, the complete freedom and security
+of Selborne Street Higher Grade Schools.  He was more like a dumb
+animal than a boy; and sometimes as they watched his white, hunted face
+and heard his strange mumblings--the nearest he got, as a rule, to
+human speech--it would have taken very little to convince them that
+such was the case, could they only have forgotten that his like was to
+be found at every street corner selling matches and evening papers and
+begging for coppers when the police were not about.
+
+During those five days the boy's future was a sore problem for the
+Foreman Shunter and his wife.  And it was only solved at last by a god
+out of a machine.  Mr. Elijah Hendren was the deity in question.
+
+That gentleman happened to look in upon the evening of the fatal fifth
+day.  A benign, cultivated man of the world, he came regularly once a
+week to engage the Foreman Shunter in a game of draughts.  It was also
+Mr. Hendren's custom on these occasions to smoke a pipe of bacca and to
+give expression to his views upon things in general, of which from
+early youth he had been an accomplished critic.
+
+Mr. Hendren, it seemed, had a relation by marriage who followed the
+sea.  He was a rough sort of man, in Mr. Hendren's opinion not exactly
+what you might call polished.  Still, he followed a rough sort of
+trade, and this was a rough sort of boy, and Mr. Hendren didn't mind
+having a word with Alec--the name of the relation--and see what could
+be done in the matter.
+
+"I don't know about that," said Mother.  "They might ill-use him, and
+he's been ill-used more than enough already."
+
+"Quite so," said Mr. Hendren politely, "huffing" the Foreman Shunter.
+"Quite so, M'ria"--Mr. Hendren was a very old friend of the family--"I
+quite agree with you there.  The sea's a rough trade--rough an' no
+mistake--Alec can tell you tales that would make your hair rise--but as
+I say, he's a rough boy--and even the 'igh seas is better than the
+Work'us."
+
+"Anything is better than that," said Mother.  "All the same, I wouldn't
+like the poor child to be knocked about.  You see, he's not very
+strong; he wants building up, and he's been used that crool by somebody
+that he's frit of his own shadow."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Hendren impressively.  Impressiveness was Mr. Hendren's
+long suit.  At that time, he was perhaps the most impressive man under
+sixty in Kentish Town.  "Ah," said Mr. Hendren, "I quite understand,
+M'ria.  I'll speak to Alec the first thing tomorrer and see what he can
+do.  Not to be knocked about--but the sea's the sea, you quite
+understand?"
+
+"My great-uncle Dexter sailed twelve times round the Horn," said Mother
+with modesty.
+
+"Did he so?" said Mr. Hendren.  "Twelve times.  Before the mast?"
+
+"Before the mast?" was a little too much for Mother, as Mr. Hendren
+intended it to be, having no doubt a reputation to keep up.
+
+"I don't know about afore the mast," said Mother stoutly.  "I only know
+that great-uncle Dexter was terrible rough ... terrible rough."
+
+"All sailors is terrible rough," said Mr. Hendren, politely "huffing"
+the Foreman Shunter again.  "Still, M'ria, I'll see what I can do with
+Alec ... although, mind you, as I say, Alec's not as much polish as
+some people."
+
+"Great-uncle Dexter hadn't neither," said Mother.  "Foulest-mouthed man
+I ever heard in my life ... and that's saying a good deal."  And Mother
+looked volumes at the Foreman Shunter.
+
+"That so?" said Mr. Hendren, tactfully, crowning his second king.
+"However ... I'll see Alec ... first thing tomorrer...."
+
+"Thank you, 'Lijah," said the Foreman Shunter.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+"Alec's" real name was Mr. Thompson.  He was a very hirsute man, with
+whiskers all over him, and at first sight he seemed to bear a very
+striking resemblance to his arboreal ancestors of the largest and most
+terrifying species.  His distinguished relation, upon introducing him
+in the course of the next evening to the family circle of No. 12,
+Gladstone Villas, seemed not in the least proud of him, and to tell the
+truth about Mr. Thompson, he did appear to be lacking in the graces of
+the town.  His rough pea-jacket and huge, ungainly limbs, his gruff
+voice and gibbon-like aspect might all have been forgiven on the ground
+of his calling, but unfortunately he began by expectorating with really
+extraordinary freedom and vehemence into the kitchen fire, and from
+that moment it was quite impossible for Mother or any other responsible
+person to render Mr. Thompson in terms of the higher humanity.  This
+was a pity, because Mr. Thompson had evidently a range of private
+qualities.
+
+Truth to tell, Mother did not take to Mr. Thompson as kindly as she
+might have done, and it needed all Mr. Hendren's tact, which was very
+remarkable even for one who was "wholesale," to enable her to have any
+truck with "Alec" at all.
+
+"You must be reasonable, M'ria," said Mr. Hendren, urbanely.  "It's
+either the Work'us for this boy or it's the 'igh seas.  If it's the
+latter, you couldn't have a better man than Alec to look after him; if
+it's the former, of course I wash my hands of the matter."
+
+This flawless logic was strongly approved by the Foreman Shunter.
+
+"'Lijah speaks to the p'int," he affirmed, with a rather doubtful
+glance in the direction of Mr. Thompson, who was again expectorating
+into the fire with a display of virtuosity that was almost uncanny.
+
+In the meantime, the boy stood white and trembling in the midst of
+Johnnie and Alfie and Percy while his fate hung in the balance.  Not
+one of these had taken kindly to Mr. Thompson, in spite of the fact
+that at frequent intervals the admired Mr. Hendren assured their father
+and mother that "he was a first-rate seaman."
+
+"Now, this is the crux of the matter," said Mr. Elijah Hendren,
+bringing in the word "crux" as though he well knew it was only
+"wholesale" people who were allowed to use such a word at all.  "Either
+the boy goes to sea with Alec, and he couldn't have no better to take
+charge of him--Alec's a first-rate seaman--else he goes to the Work'us.
+Now, my boy, which is it to be?"  And Mr. Hendren fairly hypnotized the
+poor waif in father's trousers cut down with the large and rolling eye
+of an accepted candidate for the honorary treasurership of the Ancient
+Order of Hedgehogs.
+
+"Now, me lad, which is it to be?"  Mr. Hendren's forefinger wagged so
+sternly that the boy began to weep softly.  "Alec'll not eat you, you
+know.  If he says he'll see you through, he'll see you through.  Am I
+right, Alec?"
+
+"Yep," growled Alec, beginning to threaten a further assault upon the
+kitchen fire.
+
+"Very well, then," said Mr. Hendren.  "There you are.  What can you ask
+fairer?  You can either go with Alec--Mr. Thompson to you, my boy--else
+you can be handed over to the police, and they'll send you to the
+Work'us.  Now, boy, which is it to be?"  Mr. Hendren put the question
+with awful impressiveness.  "It's a free country, you know.  You can
+take your choice: Alec--Mr. Thompson--or the Work'us?"
+
+If Henry Harper had had a doubt in his mind as to which was the less
+grim of these alternatives, the casual mention of the police
+undoubtedly laid it at rest.  Mr. Thompson looked capable of eating a
+boy of his age, but after all that was very little compared with what
+the police, as Henry Harper knew them, took a pride in doing in the
+ordinary discharge of their functions.
+
+"I'll go wiv 'im, mister," said Henry Harper, in sudden desperation.
+
+He then hid himself behind his friend Johnnie.
+
+"With Mr. Thompson?"
+
+"Yes, mister."
+
+Henry Harper began to sob, and Alfie and Percy at least didn't blame
+him.  Mr. Thompson was the nearest thing to the wicked ogre in "Jack
+and the Beanstalk" they had ever seen in their lives.
+
+However, their mother who had the heart of a lion, who was afraid of
+nothing so long as it was human--and even Mr. Thompson was apparently
+that--took upon herself to have a little serious discourse with the man
+of the sea.
+
+"I suppose, Mr. Thompson, this is a decent ship to which you will be
+taking the poor child?" said she.
+
+It was necessary for Mr. Thompson to roll his eyes fearfully before he
+could do justice to such a leading question.  He was then understood to
+say in his queer, guttural voice, which seemed to come out of his
+boots, that the ship was right enough, although a bit hungry at times
+as all ships were.
+
+"Is the captain of the vessel a gentleman?" demanded Mother at
+point-blank range.
+
+Mr. Thompson was understood to say that when the Old Man was all right
+he was all right, but when in drink he was a devil.
+
+"All men are," said Mother, succinctly.  "That's the worst of it.  But
+I understand you to say that at ordinary times the captain's a
+gentleman."
+
+"Yep," said Mr. Thompson, comprehensively.
+
+In spite, however, of this valuable testimonial to the captain's
+character and status, Mother seemed very loath to put her trust in him
+or in Mr. Thompson either.  For one thing that admirable seaman
+expectorated again into the kitchen fire, but that apart, the note of
+primeval extravagance in his outward aspect hardly commended itself to
+Mother.
+
+"The child is very young," she said, "to be going to sea.  And you
+sailors has rough ways--my great-uncle Dexter always said so.  And he
+was a rough man if you like--not as rough as you are, Mr. Thompson, but
+still he was rough.  And as I say, the boy is not grown yet, there's
+nothing to him, as you might say; still, as it's you, Mr. Thompson, or
+the Work'us, I suppose it'll have to be you."
+
+"Quite so, M'ria," interposed Mr. Hendren with marked urbanity.
+
+"Now you quite understand," said Mother.  "Mr. Thompson, I hold you
+responsible for this boy.  You'll be good to him, and stand his friend,
+and teach him seafaring ways, and you'll see that nobody ill-uses him.
+You'll promise that now, Mr. Thompson.  This boy's delicate, and as I
+say, he's already been knocked about so crool, he's frit of his own
+shadow."
+
+Mr. Thompson promised with becoming solemnity that he would see no harm
+came to the boy.  Thereupon he seemed to go up a little in Mother's
+estimation.  Moreover, he suddenly took an odd fancy to Johnnie.  He
+produced a foreign penny from his pea-jacket, offered it to Johnnie and
+asked him what he thought of it, and he seemed so gratified that
+Johnnie--who had about as much imagination as the leg of a chair--was
+not in the least afraid of him, that he told Johnnie to keep the penny,
+and then he fairly took away the breath of everybody, Mother included,
+by promising magnificently to bring Johnnie a parrot from the West
+Indies.
+
+Even Mr. Elijah Hendren was impressed by this princely offer on the
+part of his kinsman by marriage.
+
+"He's rough, o' course," whispered Mr. Elijah Hendren to the Foreman
+Shunter, "but he means it about the parrot.  That's the kind o' man he
+is, although, mind you, I don't say he's polished."
+
+Whatever doubts might have been entertained for the future of Henry
+Harper, the parrot somehow seemed to soften them.  Even Mother felt
+that to express misgiving after that would be in bad taste.  Mr.
+Thompson promised that he would see the old man in the course of the
+morrow, as the _Margaret Carey_ had to sail on Friday, but he had no
+doubt it would be all right as they never minded a boy or two.  And
+then the Foreman Shunter sent Johnnie to the end of the street for a
+quartern of rum, as there was only beer in the house, and that mild
+beverage was not the slightest use to a sailor.
+
+Johnnie walked on air.  At every shop window he came to he stopped to
+examine his foreign penny.  But what was that in comparison with a real
+live parrot all the way from the West Indies?  That night, Johnnie was
+the happiest boy in Kentish Town.  He slept with the foreign penny
+under his pillow, and his dreams were of unparalleled magnificence.
+
+And on the sofa in the kitchen below, tossed and dozed the unhappiest
+boy in Kentish Town.  He had escaped the police by a miracle, he was
+quit of Auntie, he was free of the selling of matches, but tomorrow or
+the day after he was leaving the only friends he had ever known.  As
+for the sea and Mr. Thompson and the _Margaret Carey_, there was some
+subtle but deadly instinct in him that had warned him already.  There
+would be no Mother to wash him and bind his wounds, or to give him
+fried bacon and see that he came to no harm.
+
+Twice he woke in the middle of the night, sweating with fear, and
+wildly calling her name.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The next day it rained incessantly from morning till night, and there
+was just a faint hope in the boy's mind that it might prevent Mr.
+Thompson coming to fetch him.  He clung desperately to this feeble
+straw, because it was the only one he had, but he was not such a fool
+as to think that Mr. Thompson was the kind of man who stays at home for
+the weather.  Therefore it did not surprise him at all when he was
+solemnly told that evening about six o'clock, just after he had had his
+tea, that Mr. Thompson had come for him.
+
+Sure enough Mr. Thompson had.  Moreover, he had come in a cab.  All the
+same, he managed to enter the kitchen with the water running off his
+pea-jacket on mother's spotless floor, and as he stood blinking
+fiercely in the gas light, he looked bigger and hairier and less like a
+human being than ever.
+
+Henry Harper's one instinct was to take a tight hold of Mother's apron.
+And this he did in spite of the fact that Johnnie and Alfie and Percy
+were sitting round the table, drinking tea and eating bread and jam.
+Mother told Henry Harper very gently he must be a man, whereupon he did
+his best to meet Mr. Thompson boldly.  But he made a very poor job of
+it indeed.
+
+Mr. Thompson, whose speech could only be followed with certainty by
+specialists, was understood to ask whether the boy's sea chest was
+ready.
+
+"He has only the clothes he stands in," said Mother, tartly.
+
+Mr. Thompson said that was a pity.
+
+The boy hadn't even an overcoat, and Mother decided to give him quite a
+good one of Johnnie's--Johnnie bravely saying he didn't mind, although
+he minded a goodish bit, as he was rather proud of that particular
+garment.
+
+"Your father will buy you another," said Mother.  "I couldn't think of
+sending any boy to sea without an overcoat."
+
+She also made up a bundle of odds and ends for the boy: a flannel
+shirt, two much-darned pairs of drawers, a rather broken pair of boots,
+a knitted comforter, and a pot of marmalade.  She then gave him a kiss
+and put an apple into his hand and told him to be a good boy, and then
+he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Henry Harper followed Mr. Thompson into the cab that was waiting at the
+street door.  He sat all alone opposite that ogre in the darkness,
+holding on desperately to the bundle and the apple that Mother had
+given him.  He didn't venture to speak; he hardly ventured to breathe
+while the cab rumbled and tumbled through the rain.  He didn't know
+where he was going.  He only knew that he was going to sea, and he
+didn't even know what the sea was like, except that it was water and
+people got drowned in it.  There was no sea at Blackhampton.
+
+Mr. Thompson had not much conversation.  This may have been due to his
+superior rank, or because he was one of those strong, silent men who
+prefer actions to words after the manner of the heroes in the best
+modern romances.  Not that the boy was acquainted with any of these; he
+could neither read nor write; indeed, it was quite true what the
+Foreman Shunter had said, "that he didn't know A from a bull's foot,"
+although, of course, that was speaking figuratively.
+
+Mr. Thompson sat grim and silent as the tomb.  But suddenly, by the
+light of a passing lamp, the boy saw his right hand enter his pocket
+and come out with a large clasp knife in it.  This he opened at his
+leisure.  And then all at once a wave of terror swept over Henry
+Harper.  This man was Jack the Ripper.
+
+That famous person was then at his zenith.  He had lately committed his
+fourth horrible murder in Whitechapel.  The boy knew that as an
+undoubted fact, because he had cried the crime in the streets of
+Blackhampton, and had sold out twice in an hour.  Moreover, he knew as
+a fact--extremely well informed contemporaries had told him--that Jack
+the Ripper was a sailor.
+
+It was no use attempting to struggle or cry out.  Besides, he was now
+paralyzed with terror.  The only thing there was to hope for was that
+the Ripper would kill him before he started to mutilate.
+
+They passed another street lamp, and the boy saw that Mr. Thompson had
+something else in his hand.  It was a fantastically shaped metal case.
+The murderer opened it coolly and took out a queer, dark looking
+substance.  He cut a piece off with his knife, put it in his mouth,
+then closed the blade and returned it to his pocket.  The boy began to
+breathe again.  It was a plug of tobacco.
+
+All the same, Henry Harper knew he was not yet out of the wood.  He was
+as sure as he was sitting in a four-wheeler--a thing he had never done
+before in his life--that this large and hairy sailor with the clasp
+knife was the murderer.  Moreover, as he cast terrified glances through
+the wet windows into the sodden streets, he was certain this was
+Whitechapel itself.  Everything looked so dark and mean and sullen,
+with noisome alleys on every hand and hardly any lamps to see them by,
+that full-grown women, let alone boys of thirteen, could be done to
+death in them without attracting the police.
+
+It was not a bit of use trying to escape.  Jack the Ripper would cut
+his throat if he moved hand or foot.  The best thing he could do was to
+keep still.  That was all very well, but he was sick with fear.  He was
+being taken into the heart of Whitechapel to be done to death as Mary
+Ann Nichols and Catherine Morton--he was always very good at
+remembering names--and the other victims had been.  He was familiar
+with all the details; they had been enormously discussed; there wasn't
+a newsboy in Blackhampton who hadn't his own private theory of these
+thrilling crimes.  For instance, Henry Harper himself had always
+maintained that the sailor was a big sailor, and that he had a black
+beard.  He had little thought a week ago when he had presented this
+startling theory to young Arris with a certain amount of intellectual
+pride that he would so soon be in a position to prove it.
+
+They came to some iron gates.  The cab stopped under a lamp.  Mr.
+Thompson put his head out of the window.  If the boy had not been
+petrified with terror now would have been his chance.  But he couldn't
+move.
+
+The Ripper began to roar like a bull at some unseen presence, and soon
+the gates moved back and the cab moved on.  And then about a minute
+later, for the first time in his life, the boy saw the mast of a ship.
+He knew it was a ship.  He had seen pictures in shop windows.  There
+was one shop window in particular he frequented every Friday evening,
+which always displayed the new number of the _'Lustrated London News_
+and the _'Lustrated London News_ was great on ships.  This was a kind
+of glorified canal boat with masts, but according to the _'Lustrated
+London News_, and there could be no higher authority, it was
+undoubtedly a ship.
+
+In his excitement at seeing it, he nearly forgot who was sitting
+opposite.  Perhaps he wasn't going to be mutilated in Whitechapel after
+all.  There might be yet a chance; the murderer had not again taken his
+knife out of his pocket.  But suddenly another special edition flashed
+through his memory: "'Orrible crime on the 'Igh Seas.  Revolting
+Details."  And then he knew that he was being decoyed to the high seas,
+in order that this man could work his will upon him at his leisure in
+circumstances of unspeakable ferocity.
+
+The cab stopped again.  Mr. Thompson opened the door and got out.  It
+was still raining very hard.  There was a lamp close by, and the boy
+could see the water falling in long, stealthy, narrow rods.  The
+murderer told him roughly to come out.  He came out at once.  Had he
+had the pluck of a mouse, he would have run for it.  But he was quaking
+and trembling, his knees were letting him down.
+
+The driver of the cab, a grotesque in an oilskin cape with a hat to
+match it, dragged a large wooden box tied round with cord off the roof
+of his machine and with the help of its owner lowered it to the ground.
+By the time this was done there came out of the darkness three or four
+strange men, who moved with the stealth of those used to the night.
+They gathered round the box and its owner with humble offers of their
+assistance.
+
+The boy's first thought was that these scarecrows were confederates of
+the eminent murderer.  But this theory was soon shattered.  At any
+rate, if confederates they were, Mr. Thompson seemed to have little use
+for them at the moment.  Without a word of warning he suddenly ran boot
+first at one of these wretches and sent him spinning into the mud.  The
+man fell with a howl and rose with a curse, and then made off into the
+darkness muttering imprecations, in the wake of his companions who had
+disappeared already.
+
+The boy could only feel that murderers of Mr. Thompson's class act
+according to their tastes in these little matters; but the cabman was
+rather impressed.  He had made up his mind to stand out for "eight and
+a kick," but he now took what was given him without a word.  As a
+matter of fact, he was given five shillings, which was considerably
+under his legal fare, but he did not venture to question Mr. Thompson's
+arithmetic.  He moved off at once, but proceeded to take it out of his
+wretched horse as soon as he got through the dock gates.
+
+In the meantime, Mr. Thompson was left standing beside his sea chest in
+the rain, and Henry Harper stood beside it also, convulsively clutching
+in one hand the bundle Mother had made up for him and in the other the
+apple she had given him.
+
+Should he run for it?  What was the use?  All at once Mr. Thompson
+shouldered his sea chest with an air of quiet ferocity, and growled
+something that sounded like, "Git forrard, bye."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Expecting to be kicked into the sea if he didn't do as he was told, the
+boy got forrard at once.  Mr. Thompson and his sea chest followed close
+upon his heels.  Henry Harper crossed a couple of crazy planks with
+water lying far down underneath them, Mr. Thompson and his sea chest
+always just behind him, and then to his wonder and dismay he suddenly
+realized that he was on the deck of a ship.
+
+He hadn't time to take his bearings, or to make out at all clearly what
+the deck of a ship was like, before he was descending a ladder into
+total darkness which smelled like a sewer.  A nigger with rings in his
+ears came forward with a light, and Mr. Thompson asked if the Old Man
+was in the cabin, and the nigger said, "Yessah."
+
+[Illustration: "A nigger with rings in his ears came forward with a
+light."]
+
+Mr. Thompson led Henry Harper to the cabin, which was a kind of room,
+about twelve feet by ten, miserably lit by a single dirty oil lamp.
+Here the smell of sewage that pervaded the vessel was rather genteelly
+mingled with an odor of rum.  The Old Man was in the cabin right
+enough.  He was not a very prepossessing old man to look at; to begin
+with, he hardly looked old at all.  He was just a rough, middle-aged
+seaman, with a sodden, half-savage face, with a peculiar light in it
+that somehow reminded the boy of Auntie when she had been to the
+public.  It might almost have been taken for humor, had not humor some
+little reputation as a Christian quality.
+
+"Bye, sir," said Mr. Thompson, briefly.
+
+"Bye," said the Old Man, with equal brevity.  He then passed half a
+bloodshot eye over the shrinking figure in Johnnie's overcoat and
+father's trousers cut down, and said, "Git forrard, bye," in a tone
+that no boy of judgment would ever hesitate for a single moment to obey.
+
+Henry Harper got forrard at once, although he didn't know where.  He
+found his way out of the cabin somehow, and made ahead for a light that
+was suspended in an iron bracket.  Under this he stood a moment trying
+to collect himself, or as much of himself as he had managed to bring
+aboard the ship, when Mr. Thompson came along and led him through
+various queer sorts of passages and up a flight of stairs to a place
+which he called the cook's galley.
+
+The cook, a fearful looking Chinaman, received Henry Harper with a
+scowl, which, however, was merged at once in an extreme servility
+towards Mr. Thompson who was clearly a person of high consequence
+aboard the _Margaret Carey_.  In deference to Mr. Thompson's wishes,
+the cook, whose name was Sing, showed the boy a sort of small manhole
+between the copper and the galley stairs where he could put his gear,
+and also where he could creep in and rest whenever his duties permitted.
+
+"All snuggee," said Sing, with an ingratiating grin for the exclusive
+benefit of Mr. Thompson.  Moreover, still further to impress Mr.
+Thompson with his humanity, Sing kindly presented the boy with a piece
+of moldy biscuit and a couple of scraps of broken meat.  Mr. Thompson,
+having formally started Henry Harper on his career, withdrew.  Sing
+resumed his scowl and pointed to an inverted bacon box on which his new
+assistant could sit and eat his supper.
+
+But Henry Harper found very little in the way of appetite.  The biscuit
+was so hard that it seemed to require a chisel, and the meat so salt
+and tough that any expenditure of jaw power was unlikely to prove a
+profitable investment.  There still remained the apple that Mother had
+given him.  But not for a moment did he think of eating that.  It would
+have been sacrilege.  Mother had her shrine already in his oddly
+impressionable mind.  No matter how long he might live, no matter where
+his wanderings might take him, he never expected to come across such a
+being again.  He wrapped the apple reverently in Percy's red-spotted
+handkerchief.  He would always keep that apple in order that he might
+never forget her.
+
+Sing, like Mr. Thompson, was not a great hand at conversation.
+Nevertheless, he had his share of natural curiosity.  His wicked little
+yellow eyes never left the boy's face.  He seemed unable to make up his
+mind about him, but what sort of a mind it was that he had to make up
+greatly puzzled and perplexed Henry Harper, who had only once seen a
+real live Chinaman before, and that was through the open door of the
+worst public in Blackhampton.  Sing looked capable of anything as he
+sat scowling and smoking his pipe, but it was a subtler and deeper sort
+of capability than the sheer Jack-the-Ripperishness of Mr. Thompson.
+It was reasonably certain that Mr. Thompson would be content with a
+knife, although he might do very fearful things with it in moments of
+ecstasy; with Sing there might be every sort of horror known to the
+annals of crime.
+
+After Sing had gazed in silence at Henry Harper for about an hour, he
+pointed to the manhole, which meant that the boy had better get to bed.
+Henry Harper took the hint as quickly as possible, not in the least
+because he wanted to get to a bed of that kind, but because the
+Chinaman seemed of a piece with Mr. Thompson and the Old Man.  Implicit
+obedience was still the only course for a boy of judgment.  Those
+wicked little yellow eyes, about the size of a pig's, held a promise he
+dared not put into words.  Henry Harper had still a morbid dread of
+being hurt, in spite of the fact that he had been hurt so often.
+
+With a heart wildly beating, he crawled into the manhole and he knew at
+once, oversensitive as he was, that it was full of things that crept.
+He shuddered and nearly screamed, but fear of the Chinaman restrained
+him.  It was so dark in that chasm between the copper and the galley
+stairs that he couldn't see his hand when he held it in front of him;
+also it was so hot, in spite of the cold November rain he had left in
+the good and great world outside this death trap, that he could hardly
+breathe at first; yet as soon as he had got used to the temperature he
+took off Johnnie's overcoat and wrapped his face in it in order to
+prevent unknown things crawling over it.
+
+He didn't cry himself to sleep.  Tonight he was too far gone for tears.
+If only he had had a bit of pluck he would have chosen the police.  The
+thing they did was awful, but after all it could not compare with a
+'orrible crime on the 'igh seas.  The police did one thing sure and you
+knew the worst--but there were a thousand ways of murder, and very
+likely more for Jack the Ripper and a Chinaman.
+
+He hardly dared to breathe, indeed was scarcely able to do so, with
+Johnnie's overcoat covering his eyes and mouth.  But even as he lay
+gasping in a sweat of fear, there was just one thing, and the only one
+he had to which to cling.  And he clung to it desperately.  It was the
+sacred apple he had had the luck to wrap in the red-spotted
+handkerchief which Percy had given him.
+
+Sleep was not to be thought of.  Something was racing and hammering
+upon his brain.  After a lapse of time which seemed like hours, but was
+only twenty minutes in point of fact, he began to understand that this
+turmoil had a definite meaning.  An idea was being born.
+
+When at last it burst upon his mind it was nothing very remarkable.
+"Henry Harper, you must find your way out of this before it's too late.
+Never mind the police.  You must find your way out of this, Henry
+Harper."
+
+He took Johnnie's overcoat from his face and sat up and listened.  It
+was absolutely pitch dark.  At first there was not a sound.  Then he
+thought he could detect a gentle scratching, a noise made by a rat near
+his head.  But he could hear nothing of the Chinaman.  No doubt he had
+gone to bed.  The boy rose with stealthy care, and well it was that he
+did, otherwise he would have hit his head against the under side of the
+galley stairs.
+
+It was so dark that he couldn't see the opening from the manhole into
+the galley itself.  But he found it at last and climbed out cautiously.
+The lamp in the galley had gone out; there was not a glimmer of light
+anywhere.  He had no knowledge of the Chinaman's whereabouts, he could
+not find the opening which led into the other parts of the ship.  He
+groped about as noiselessly as he could, hoping to avoid the one and to
+find the other, and then suddenly there came a truly terrible sound.
+He had put his foot on the Chinaman's face.
+
+He heard the Chinaman get up in his rage; he even knew where he was
+although it was too dark to see him.  His heart stood still; the
+Chinaman was feeling for him in the darkness; and then he was obliged
+to feel himself for the Chinaman in order to avoid him.
+
+Suddenly he caught a glimpse of a light.  He ran towards it not knowing
+what else to do.  But in almost the same moment the Chinaman had seen
+it too, and also had seen him go.  Near the light was a ladder which
+ascended to some unknown region.  The boy raced up the ladder with the
+Chinaman upon his heels.  As soon as he got to the top the sharp, wet
+air caught his face.  He was on the deck.  He dashed straight ahead;
+there was no time for any plan.  The Chinaman was at the top of the
+ladder already and trying to catch him by the leg.
+
+Running like mad, the boy gained a yard or two along the deck.  But he
+had no real chance of escape, for he had not the least notion of his
+bearings or of the hang of the ship.  And luck did not favor him at
+all.  Suddenly he tripped over an unseen obstacle and fell heavily, and
+then the Chinaman came down on him with both knees, fastening fingers
+upon his throat.
+
+He was not able to cry out, the Chinaman saw to that.  But if Sing was
+going to kill him, he could only hope it would be soon.  This, however,
+was not the cook's intention.  He merely led Henry Harper back to the
+galley by the ear, gave his arm a ferocious twist which made the boy
+gasp, and then sent him flying head-first into the stifling darkness of
+the manhole with the help of a well-timed boot.  The boy pitched in
+such a way that he was half stunned, and when at last he came fully to
+himself light was creeping through a tiny chink in the manhole, and he
+knew that it was morning.  Also he knew by the curious lapping sound
+made by the waves under the galley stairs that the ship was already at
+sea.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Yes, it was true, the ship was already at sea.  He was lost.  And
+hardly was there time for his mind to seize this terrible thought when
+the Chinaman looked into the manhole.  As soon as he saw the boy was
+sitting up, a broad grin came on his face and he beckoned him out with
+a finger.
+
+The boy obeyed at once, and tumbled unsteadily into the galley.  But as
+soon as he tried to stand on his legs he fell down.  The Chinaman with
+a deep smile pointed to the bacon box, and the boy sat on it, and then
+tried as well as he could to prevent his head from going round.
+
+Luckily, for the time being, the Chinaman took no further notice of
+Henry Harper, but set about the duties of the day.  It was nearly six
+bells of the morning watch, and he had to serve breakfast for the crew.
+This consisted partly of a curious mixture that was boiling in the
+copper, which was called wet hash, and was esteemed as a luxury, and
+partly of an indescribable liquid called coffee, which was brewed out
+of firewood or anything that came handy, and was not esteemed as
+anything in particular by the most catholic taste.
+
+Long before the boy's head had done spinning six bells was struck, and
+the members of the crew came into the galley with their pannikins.
+There were sixteen all told, excluding the Old Man and the superior
+officers, of whom Mr. Thompson was the chief.  Henry Harper's breath
+was taken away by the sight of this wolfish looking lot.  He had seen
+distinguished members of the criminal classes massed around the Judge's
+carriage at the Assizes at Blackhampton, just for old sake's sake as it
+were, and to show that they still took a friendly interest in the Old
+Cock; but these were tame and rather amateurish sort of people compared
+with the crew of the _Margaret Carey_.
+
+As a body of seamen the crew of the _Margaret Carey_ was undoubtedly
+"tough."  Dagoes, Yanks, Dutchmen and a couple of not very "white"
+Britishers; they came into the galley, one after another, took up their
+pannikins of wet hash, and as soon as they saw and smelled it, told Mr.
+Sing what they thought of him in terms of the sea.  Henry Harper was
+chilled to the marrow.  He was still seated on the bacon box, his head
+was still humming; but he seemed to remember that Auntie, even on
+Saturday nights, when she came home from the public, was not as these.
+
+At the end of a fortnight the boy was still alive.  At first he was so
+dreadfully ill that his mind was distracted from other things.  And as
+he did not lack food as soon as he could eat it, body and soul kept
+together in a surprising way.
+
+He was still in great dread of the Chinaman and of the nights of
+torment in the crawling darkness of the manhole under the galley
+stairs.  But he kept on doing his job as well as he could; he took care
+to be alert and obliging to whomever crossed his path; he tried his
+honest best to please the Chinaman by saving him as much trouble as
+possible, thus at the end of a fortnight not only his life was intact,
+but also his skin.
+
+The truth was he was not a bad sort of boy at all.  For one thing he
+was as sharp as a needle: the gutter, Dame Nature's own academy, had
+taught him to be that.  He never had to be told a thing twice.  Also he
+was uncommonly shrewd and observant, and he very soon came to the
+conclusion that the business of his life must be to please the Chinaman.
+
+In this task he began to succeed better than he could have hoped.
+Sing, for all his look of unplumbed wickedness, did not treat him so
+badly as soon as he began to make himself of use.  For one thing he got
+a share of the best food that was going, the scraps from the cabin
+table, and this was a very important matter for one of the hungriest
+boys aboard one of the hungriest ships athwart the seas.
+
+In the course of the third week, Henry Harper began to buck up a bit.
+His first experience of the motions of a ship at sea had made him
+horribly unwell.  As night after night he lay tossing and moaning as
+loudly as he dared in the stifling darkness between the boiler and the
+galley stairs, without a friend in the world and only an unspeakable
+fate to look forward to, he felt many times that he was going to die
+and could only hope the end would be easy.
+
+However, he had learned already that the act of death is not a simple
+matter if you have to compass it for yourself.  Every morning found him
+limp as a rag, but always and ever alive.  And then gradually he got
+the turn.  Each day he grew a little stronger, a little bolder, so that
+by the end of the third week he had even begun to feel less afraid of
+the Chinaman.
+
+In the middle of the fourth week, he had a bit of real luck.  And it
+came to him in the guise of an inspiration.  It was merely that one
+night when the time came for turning into that stifling inferno which
+he still dreaded with all his soul, he literally took his courage in
+his hands.  He spread Johnnie's overcoat in the farthest corner of the
+galley itself, made a pillow of the bundle that Mother had given him,
+and then without venturing a look in the direction of the Chinaman very
+quietly lay down and waited, with beating heart, for the worst.
+
+Strange to say, the worst never happened.  For a long time he expected
+a boot in his ribs.  Every nerve was braced to receive it.  But the
+slow minutes passed and no boot came.  All this time Sing sat on the
+bacon box, smoking solemnly, and taking an occasional sip of grog from
+his pannikin.  And then suddenly Henry Harper went quite deliciously to
+sleep, and dreamed that he was in the West Indies, and had caught a
+real live parrot for Johnnie.
+
+It was a really wonderful sleep that he had.  He did not wake once till
+four bells struck in the morning watch, the proper time for starting
+the duties of the day.  These began with lighting the fire and filling
+the copper.  He rose from his corner a new boy, and there was Sing
+lying peacefully in the middle of the floor, not taking notice of
+anyone.  And the odd thing was that during the day Sing showed him no
+disfavor; and when night came and it was time once more to turn in,
+Henry Harper lay down again in the corner of the galley.  There was now
+no need to await the arrival of the Chinaman's boot.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+The floor of the galley gave Henry Harper his first start on the road
+to manhood.  He got so far along it as to be only a little afraid of
+the Chinaman.  But that was his limit for some little time to come.
+Meanwhile he continued in the punctual discharge of his duties, and for
+some months things seemed to go fairly well with him.  But at last
+there came a fatal day when the sinister figure of Mr. Thompson
+appeared once more upon the scene.  The boy was told briefly and
+roughly that the ship was short-handed, that he was wanted aft at once,
+and that he had better take his truck along with him.
+
+From that hour the current of his life was changed.  For many a day
+after that he was to know neither peace nor security.  He had been
+called to bear a part in the terrific fight that went on all day and
+all night, between this crazy windjammer and the forces of nature.
+
+For days and weeks the brain of Henry Harper was a confused horror of
+raging seas, tearing winds, impossible tasks, brutal and savage
+commands.  He did his best, he kept on doing it even when he didn't
+know what he was doing, but what a best it was!  He was buffeted about
+the slippery decks by the hand of man or the hand of nature; he
+understood less than half of what was said to him, and even that he
+didn't know how to set about doing.  The _Margaret Carey_ was so ill
+found that she seemed at the mercy of the great gales and the mighty
+seas of the Atlantic.  She was flung and tossed to all points of the
+compass; her decks were always awash; her furious and at times half
+demented Old Man was always having to heave her to, but Henry Harper
+was never a hand's turn of use on the deck of that hell ship.
+
+He was so unhandy that in the port watch they christened him "Sailor."
+There wasn't a blame thing he could do.  He was so sick and sorry, he
+was so scared out of his life that the Old Man used to get furious at
+the mere sight of him.
+
+For weeks the boy hardly knew what it was to have a whole skin or a dry
+shirt.  The terrible seas got higher and higher as they came nearer the
+Horn, the wind got icier, the Old Man's temper got worse, the ship got
+crazier, the crew got smaller and smaller by accidents and disease;
+long before Cape Stiff was reached in mid-Atlantic the _Margaret Carey_
+was no habitation for a human soul.
+
+Sailor's new berth in the half-deck was always awash.  Every time he
+turned into it he stood a good chance of being drowned like a rat in a
+hole.  The cold was severe.  He had no oilskins or any proper seaman's
+gear, except a pair of makeshift leggings from the slop chest.  Day
+after day he was soaked to the skin, and in spite of Johnnie's overcoat
+and all the clothes in the bundle Mother had given him, he could seldom
+keep dry.
+
+Every man aboard the _Margaret Carey_, except the Old Man and Mr.
+Thompson, and perhaps the second mate, Mr. MacFarlane, in his rare
+moments of optimism, was convinced she would never see Frisco.  The
+crew was a bad one.  Dagoes are not reckoned much as seamen, the
+Dutchmen were sullen and stupid, none of the Yankees and English was
+really quite white.  The seas were like mountains; often during the day
+and night all available hands had to be literally fighting them for
+their lives.
+
+All through this time Henry Harper found only one thing to do, and that
+was to keep on keeping on.  But the wonder was he was able even to do
+that.  Often he felt so weak and miserable that he could hardly drag
+himself along the deck.  He had had more than one miraculous escape
+from being washed overboard.  His time must come soon enough, but he
+could take no step to bring it nearer, because he felt that never again
+would he be able to arrange the matter for himself.  Something must
+have snapped that night he had waited on the wrong rail for the engine.
+Bowery Joe, the toughest member of the crew, a regular down-east
+Yankee, who liked to threaten him with a knife because of the look on
+his face, had told him that he ought to have been born a muddy dago,
+and that he was "short of sand."
+
+There seemed to be something missing that others of his kind possessed.
+But he had many things to worry about just then.  He just kept on
+keeping on--out of the way of the Old Man as well as he could--out of
+the way of the fist of the second mate--out of the way of the boots and
+the knives of all and sundry--out of the way of the raging, murderous
+sea that, after all, was his only friend.  The time came when sheer
+physical misery forced him to be always hiding from the other members
+of the crew.
+
+One morning the Old Man caught him skulking below after all hands had
+been piped on deck to get the canvas off her.  The Old Man said not a
+word, but carried him up the companion by the nape of the neck as if he
+had been a kitten, brought him on the main deck, and fetched him up in
+the midst of his mates at the foot of the mast.  He then ordered him
+aloft with the rest of them.
+
+In absolute desperation Sailor began to climb.  He knew that if he
+disobeyed he would be flung into the sea.  Clinging, feet and claws,
+like a cat, for the sake of the life he hadn't the courage to lose, he
+fought his way up somehow through the icy wind and the icier spray that
+was ever leaping up and hitting him, no matter how high he went.  He
+fought his way as far as the lower yardarm.  Here he clung helpless,
+dazed with terror, faint with exhaustion.  Commands were screamed from
+below, which he could not understand, which he could not have obeyed
+had he understood them, since he now lacked the power to stir from his
+perch.  His hands were frozen stiff; there was neither use nor breath
+in his body; the motions of the ship were such that if he tried to
+shift a finger he would be flung to the deck he could no longer see,
+and be pulped like an apple.  So he clung frantically to the shrouds,
+trying to keep his balance, although he had merely to let go an instant
+in order to end his troubles.  But this he could not do; and in the
+meantime commands and threats were howled at him in vain.
+
+"Come down, then," bawled the Old Man at last, beside himself with fury.
+
+But the boy couldn't move one way or the other.  At that moment it was
+no more possible to come down than it was to go up higher.
+
+They had to roll up the sails without his aid.  After that the fury of
+the wind and the sea seemed to abate a bit.  Perhaps this was more
+Henry Harper's fancy than anything else; but at least it enabled him to
+gather the strength to move from his perch and slide down the futtock
+shrouds to the deck.
+
+The Old Man was waiting for him at the foot of the mast.  He took him
+by the throat.
+
+"One o' you fetch me a bight o' cord," he roared quietly.  He had to
+roar to make himself heard at all, but it was a quiet sort of roar that
+meant more than it could express.
+
+He was promptly obeyed by two or three.  There was going to be a bit of
+fun with Sailor.
+
+Frank, an Arab and reckoned nothing as a seaman, was the first with the
+cord, but Louis, a Peruvian, was hard on his heels.  The boy wondered
+dimly what was going to happen.
+
+The Old Man took hold of his wrists and tied them so tightly behind him
+that the double twist of cord cut into his thin flesh.  But he didn't
+feel it very much just then.  The next thing the boy knew was that he
+was being dragged along the deck.  Then he realized that he was being
+lashed to the mizzen fife-rail while several of the crew stood around
+grinning approvingly.  And when this was done they left him there.
+They left him unable to sit or to lie down, or even to stand, because
+the seas continually washed his feet from under him.  There was nothing
+to protect him from the pitiless wind of the Atlantic that cut through
+his wretched body like a knife, or the yet more pitiless waves that
+broke over it, soaking him to the skin and half dashing out his life.
+Mercifully the third sea that came, towering like a mountain and then
+seeming to burst right over him, although such was not the case, left
+him insensible.
+
+He didn't know exactly how or when it was that he came to.  He had a
+dim idea that he was very slowly dying a worse death than he had ever
+imagined it was possible for anything to die.  It was a process that
+went on and on; and then there came a blank; and then it started again,
+and he remembered he was still alive and that he was still dying; and
+then another blank; and then there was something alive quite near him;
+and then he remembered Mother and tried to gasp her name.
+
+When at last Henry Harper came to himself he found he was in the arms
+of Mr. Thompson.  The Old Man with the devil in his eyes was standing
+by; all around the Horn he had been drinking heavily.  Mr. MacFarlane,
+Mr. Petersen the third mate, and some of the others were also standing
+by.
+
+The boy heard the Old Man threaten to put Mr. Thompson in irons, and
+heard him call him a mutinous dog.  Mr. Thompson made no reply, but no
+dog could have looked more mutinous than he did as he held the boy in
+his arms.  There was a terrible look on his face, and Mr. MacFarlane
+and the others held back a bit.
+
+It chanced, however, that there was just one thought at the back of the
+Old Man's mind, and it was this that saved Mr. Thompson, also the boy
+and perhaps the ship.  He feared no man, he had no God when he was in
+drink, and he didn't set much store by the devil as a working
+institution; but drunk or sober he was always a first-rate seaman and
+he cared a great deal about his ship.  And he knew very well that
+except himself Mr. Thompson was the only first-rate seaman aboard the
+_Margaret Carey_, and that without his aid there was little chance of
+the vessel reaching Frisco.  It was this thought at the back of the Old
+Man's mind that prevented his putting Mr. Thompson in irons.
+
+The boy lay longer than he knew, hovering much nearer to death than he
+guessed, in Mr. Thompson's bunk, with Mr. Thompson's spare oilskins
+over him, his dry blankets under him, and Mr. Thompson moistening his
+lips with grog every few minutes for several hours.  It was a pretty
+near go; had Henry Harper known how near it was he might have taken his
+chance.  But he didn't know, and in the course of two or three days
+nature and Mr. Thompson and perhaps a change in the weather pulled him
+through.
+
+All the way out from London until the third day past the Horn the
+weather had been as dirty as it knew how to be; and it knows how to be
+very dirty indeed aboard a windjammer on the fifty-sixth degree of
+latitude in the month of December, which is not the worst time of the
+year.  But it suddenly took quite a miraculous turn for the better.
+The wind allowed Mr. Thompson to shift the course of the _Margaret
+Carey_ a couple of points in two hours, so that before that day was out
+the old tub, which could not have been so crazy as she seemed to Henry
+Harper, was running before it in gala order with all her canvas spread.
+
+During the following morning the sun was seen for the first time for
+some weeks, and the port watch gave it a cheer of encouragement.  By
+nightfall the wind and the sea were behaving very well, all things
+considered, and they shared the credit with Mr. Thompson of having
+saved the life of Henry Harper.
+
+The Old Man's temper began to mend with the weather.  He was not all
+bad--very few men are--it was merely as Mr. Thompson had said, that
+when drink was in him he was a devil.  The dirtier the weather the more
+drink there was in him, as a rule.  When the sun shone again and things
+began to look more hopeful, the Old Man's temper improved out of all
+knowledge.
+
+The Old Man set such store by seamanship that it was the one quality he
+respected in others.  His world was divided into those who were good
+seamen and those who were not good seamen.  If you were a good seaman
+he would never forget it in his dealings with you; if you were not a
+good seaman, whatever else you might be, you could go to hell for all
+that he cared.  And of all the seamen he had shipped in the course of a
+pretty long experience as a master mariner, he had never, in his own
+judgment, come across the equal of Mr. Thompson.  This was his fifth
+time round the Horn with that gentleman as mate, and each voyage
+increased the Old Man's respect for his remarkable ability.  He had
+never seen anything better than the style in which the mate got the old
+ship before the wind; nothing could be more perfect than the way she
+was moving now under all her canvas; and that evening in the cabin,
+after supper, the Old Man broached a bottle of his "pertickler" and
+decided upon some little _amende_ to the mate for having threatened to
+put him in irons.
+
+"That bye is no use on deck," he said.  "He had better come here and
+make himself useful until he gets stronger."
+
+The Old Man meant this for a great concession, and Mr. Thompson
+accepted it in the spirit in which it was offered.  The Old Man now
+regarded the boy as part and parcel of Mr. Thompson's property, and it
+was by no means certain, such is the subtle psychology of active
+benevolence, that Mr. Thompson did not regard the boy in that light
+also.  At any rate the boy looked on the mate as his natural protector.
+Henry Harper craved for someone to whom he could render homage and
+obedience.  He would have reverenced the Old Man had he been worthy of
+such an emotion; as it was he had to fall back on the mate, a rough man
+to look at, and a very bad one to cross, but one to whom he owed his
+life, and the only friend he had.
+
+It took Henry Harper a fortnight to get fairly on his legs again.  Then
+he was able to come on deck as far as the break of the poop.  Much
+seemed to have happened to the world since he had been below.  He found
+the sun shining gloriously; there was hardly a puff of wind; the crew
+in high good humor were cheerfully mending sails.  It was not the same
+ship, it was not the same sea, it was not the same world he had left a
+long fortnight ago.  He was amazed and thrilled.  The slum-bred waif
+had no idea that any world could be like this.  Moreover, the
+convalescent stage of a dangerous illness was cleansing and renewing
+him.  For the first time since he had been born he forgot the burden of
+his inheritance.  He was suddenly intoxicated by the extraordinary
+majesty and beauty of the universe.
+
+The sea, what an indescribably glorious thing!  The sky without a cloud
+in it!  He had never seen any sky at Blackhampton to compare with this.
+The air, how clean and bright it was!  The mollymawks with their
+beautiful white breasts were skimming the green water.  It was a
+glorious world.  He heard a dago singing at his work.  He almost wanted
+to sing as well.
+
+He got a needle and some packthread and sat down on the afterhatch and
+suddenly made up his mind to do his best.  He could make nothing of his
+life, or of his circumstances.  His wretched body was all sore and
+bruised and broken; his head was still going round and round; he didn't
+know what he was, or why he was, or where he was; but a very glorious
+earth had been made by Somebody, just as a very miserable thing had
+been made by Somebody.  However, let him keep on keeping on.
+
+He had gone too far, thus early in life, for self-pity.  Besides there
+was too much happening around him, too much to look at, too much to do
+to think very deeply about himself.  Yes, it was a very wonderful
+world.  The sun began to warm his veins as he sat plying his needle,
+such a sun as he had never known.  The colors all around were simply
+marvelous; blues and yellows, greens and purples!  There was nothing at
+Blackhampton to compare with them.  The dago seated near had set down
+his needle, had dabbled his hand in the water, had begun to sing louder
+than ever.  Yes, Blackhampton was not to be compared with such a world
+as this.
+
+For the next three weeks things began to go a bit kinder for Henry
+Harper.  Each day grew warmer, more gorgeous; there was no wind to
+speak of; the sea became so smooth that it might have been the West
+Norton and Bagsworth canal.  And as it was clearly realized by the rest
+of the crew that for some mysterious reason Sailor was now under the
+extremely powerful protection of Mr. Thompson, they were careful to
+keep their hands off him, and also their boots.  This made life a
+little duller for them, but a bit easier for Henry Harper.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Three weeks or so this good life went on.  Horror unspeakable was at
+the back of the boy's mind.  There were things he could never forget as
+long as life lasted.  At any moment they might return upon him; but
+during those days of sun and calm Henry Harper was in an enchanted
+world.  It was so warm and fair that he retrieved Johnny's overcoat and
+Mother's bundle from his bunk where they had been a long time soaking,
+spread them on the deck to dry, and had them for a pillow when he slept
+that night underneath the stars.
+
+But the good days were soon at an end.  Each one after the
+twenty-second got hotter and hotter; the twenty-fourth was quite
+unpleasant; the heat on the twenty-seventh became almost unbearable.
+They were now in the doldrums in a dead calm.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if we find trouble before we get to the China seas."
+Thus Mr. MacFarlane, the second mate, a prophetic Scotsman, in Henry
+Harper's hearing.
+
+Mr. MacFarlane was right, as he generally was in these matters--more so
+perhaps than he had reckoned, for they managed to find a good deal of
+trouble before they got to the China seas.
+
+For several days there was no stir in the air.  The heat grew worse;
+and then one afternoon it suddenly became very dark, without any
+apparent reason.  Mr. Thompson went about with a face uglier than
+usual, and Mr. MacFarlane said they were cutting straight into the tail
+of a typhoon; and then there was an anxious consultation with the Old
+Man on deck.
+
+Mr. Thompson's face got uglier as the sky got darker, and the sea
+became like a mixture of oil and lead.  It was almost impossible to
+breathe even on deck; there wasn't a capful of air in the sails or out
+of them; all the crew had their tongues out; and instead of eating his
+supper that evening the Old Man opened a bottle of his "pertickler."
+
+The boy turned in that night, in the new berth that had been found for
+him by Mr. Thompson's orders, with a feeling that something was going
+to happen.  For one thing the Old Man looked like having the devil in
+him again before the morning.  Moreover, the heat was so intense that
+sleep seemed out of the question.
+
+However, the boy fell asleep unexpectedly, and was presently awakened
+in a stifling darkness by a sudden awful and incredible sound of
+rushing and tearing.  He sat up gasping for air and wondering what it
+was that had happened.
+
+Afraid to stay where he was, for it was certain that something terrible
+had occurred, he got out of his bunk and groped his way as well as he
+could through the darkness, and at last made his way on deck.  Here it
+was as black as it was below; all the lights were out; the sky was like
+pitch; the sea could not be seen; but he knew at once the cause of the
+tearing and rushing.  It was the wind.
+
+The wind was blowing in a manner he would not have thought to be
+possible.  Its fury was stupendous.  It was impossible to stand up in
+it, therefore he did the only thing that he could: he lay down.
+
+Some time he lay on the deck, unable to move forward a yard, or even to
+return whence he came, such was the pressure that held him down.  Then
+it was he felt a new kind of terror.  This was more than physical, it
+seemed beyond the mind of man.  They had had high winds and fierce
+storms at Blackhampton, but never had he known or guessed that there
+could be a thing of this kind.  Such a wind was outside nature
+altogether.  It seemed to be tearing the ship into little bits.
+
+Several times he tried to rise to his feet in the darkness and find his
+way below, but it was no use.  Flesh and blood could not stand an
+instant against such a rage as that.  And then as he lay down again
+full length, clutching the hot deck itself for safety, he began to
+wonder why no one else was about.  Slowly the truth came to him, but
+not at first in a form in which he could recognize or understand it.
+It seemed to creep upon him like a nightmare.  All the crew and Mr.
+Thompson and the Old Man had been blown overboard, and he was drifting
+about the world, a strange unbelievable world, alone on the ship.
+
+He began to shriek with terror.  Yet he didn't know that.  It was not
+possible to hear the sound of his own voice.  He lay writhing on the
+deck in a state of dementia.  A caveman caught and soused by his first
+thunderstorm could not have been more pitiable.  He was alone, in this
+unknown sea, in this endless night, with all eternity around him.
+
+Again he tried to rise from the deck, but he was still held down,
+gasping and choking, by a crushing weight of wind.  It would be a
+merciful thing if the ship went to the bottom.  But even if it did his
+case might be no better.  Then came the thought that this was what had
+happened.  The ship had foundered, and this tempest and this appalling
+darkness were what he had heard the Reverend Rogers speak of, at a very
+nice tea party at the Brookfield Street Mission Hall to which he had
+once been invited, as "the life to come."
+
+Henry Harper remembered that "the life to come" was to be a very
+terrifying business for "those who had done evil," and according to the
+Reverend Rogers all men had done evil; moreover, he had dwelt at great
+length on the Wrath of the Supreme Being who was called God.
+
+Henry Harper was in the presence of God.  This terrific wind in which
+it was impossible for any created thing to exist was the Wrath of the
+Supreme Being.  Such a thought went beyond reason.  It was a key which
+unlocked secret chambers in the inherited memory of Henry Harper.  Many
+were the half remembered things of which he had had experience through
+former eons of time.  The idea of God was the chief of these.
+
+Half mad with subconscious recollection, he began to crawl like a snake
+on his belly along the deck.  The key was unlocking one chamber after
+another in his soul.  Now he was a fire worshiper in a primeval forest;
+now he was cleansing his spirit in the blood of sacrifice; now he was
+kneeling and praying; now he was dancing round a pile of stones.  He
+was flooded with a subconscious memory of world-old worship of the
+Unseen, a propitiation of the thing called God.
+
+He was a caveman in the presence of deity.  Shuddering in every pulse
+of his being he pressed his face to the hot boards of the deck.  The
+secret chambers of his mind were assailing him with things unspeakable.
+Even the Reverend Rogers could not have imagined them.
+
+All at once he rolled up against something soft in the darkness.  With
+a thrill of hope he knew it was a living thing.  It was a dago bereft
+like himself.  Lying with his sweating face pressed to the deck, he
+also was in the presence of deity.
+
+The noise was too great for their voices to be heard, but each knew
+that the other was alive, and they lay side by side for two hours,
+contriving to save their reason by the sense of each other's nearness.
+
+After that time had passed they were able to crawl into shelter.  Here
+they found others of the crew in varying states of terror and
+stupefaction.  But it was now getting lighter, and the wind was blowing
+less.  The worst was over.  It seemed very remarkable that the
+_Margaret Carey_ was still afloat.
+
+In two hours more the wind had died.  An hour after that they saw the
+sun again and the ship kept her course as if nothing had occurred.
+Indeed, nothing had occurred to speak of, in Mr. Thompson's opinion,
+except that two members of the crew had fetched away and gone
+overboard, and they could ill afford to lose them, being undermanned
+already.
+
+It was now the boy's duty to wait on the Old Man in the cabin.  This
+was more to his taste than having to lend a hand in the port watch.  He
+was not the least use on deck, and was assured by everybody that he
+never would be, but in the cabin he was very alert and diligent, and
+less inefficient than might have been expected.  He was really very
+quick in some ways, and he laid himself out to please the Old Man with
+his cheerful willingness, not that he felt particularly willing or
+cheerful either, but he knew that was the only way to save his skin.
+At any rate, Sailor was not going back into the port watch if he could
+possibly help it.
+
+For such a boy as he, with an eager, imaginative brain always asking
+questions of its profoundly ignorant owner, the cabin was a far more
+interesting place than the half-deck or the forecastle.  There was a
+measure of society in the cabin; Mr. Thompson and Mr. MacFarlane
+sometimes fraternized with the Old Man, after supper, and their
+discourse when they turned to and smoked their pipes and discussed a
+noggin of the Old Man's "pertickler," of which they were great
+connoisseurs, was very well worth hearing.
+
+Henry Harper found that when the Old Man was not upset by the
+weather--which generally brought on a drinking attack--he was human
+more or less.  Although prone to outbursts of fury, in which anything
+might occur, he was by no means all bad.  In fact, he was rather by way
+of being religious when the elements were in his favor.  When at a
+loose end he would read a chapter of the Bible, which was of the large
+family order, adorned the cabin sideboard, and had apparently been
+handed down from father to son.  If the weather was good there was
+often an instructive theological discussion with Mr. MacFarlane after
+supper.  The second mate was very full of Biblical lore.  His
+interpretation of Holy Writ was not always identical with that of his
+superior officer, and being a Scotsman and a man of great parts and
+character, he never temporized or waived a point.  Sometimes he flatly
+contradicted the Old Man who, to Henry Harper's intense surprise, would
+take it lying down, being an earnest seeker after light in these high
+matters.  For all that, some of the Old Man's Biblical theories were
+quite unshakable, as, for instance, that Jonah could not have been a
+first-rate seaman.
+
+In spite of being short-handed, things began to go a bit better.  There
+was very little wind, the sea was like glass, the sun was beautifully
+warm all day, and at night a warm and glowing sky was sown thickly with
+stars.  Rather late one afternoon, while the Old Man was drinking his
+tea, Mr. MacFarlane appeared in the cabin with a look of importance,
+and reported land to starboard.
+
+"Nonsense, Mr. MacFarlane," said the Old Man.  "We are a good nine days
+from anywhere."
+
+Mr. MacFarlane, however, maintained with polite firmness--land to
+starboard not being a theological matter--that land there was on the
+starboard bow, N. by NE. as well as he could reckon.
+
+"Nonsense, Mr. MacFarlane," said the Old Man.
+
+But he rose from his tea at once, took his binoculars and clambered on
+deck.  A little while afterwards he returned in a state of odd
+excitement, accompanied by Mr. Thompson, and they spread out a chart on
+the cabin table.
+
+"By God," said the Old Man, "it's the Island of San Pedro."  And he
+suddenly brought his fist down on the chart.  Moreover, he pronounced
+the name with a curious intensity.  "By God," he said, "I haven't seen
+that island for four and twenty years.  We tried to dodge a typhoon,
+but was caught in her, and went aground on the Island of San Pedro.
+There was only me and the ship's bye as lived to tell the tale."
+
+The voice of the Old Man had grown hoarse, and in his eyes was a glow
+of dark excitement.  Suddenly they met full and square the startled
+eyes of the boy who was listening eagerly.
+
+"Only me and the ship's bye," said the Old Man, his voice falling
+lower.  "We lived six weeks on shellfish and the boots and clothes of
+the dead."
+
+The voice of the Old Man sank to a thrilling whisper.  He then said
+sharply: "Bye, a bottle o' brandy."
+
+When Henry Harper brought the brandy his face was like a piece of white
+chalk.
+
+"Only me and the ship's bye," repeated the Old Man in a hoarse whisper.
+"The others went ravin' mad.  We knifed 'em one by one; it was the
+kindest thing to do.  The bye didn't go ravin' mad till afterwards.
+And there weren't no Board of Trade Inquiry."
+
+"No, sir," said Mr. Thompson, nodding his ugly head and speaking in a
+slow, inhuman voice.
+
+"No Board o' Trade inquiry," said the Old Man.  "Nine men and the
+ship's bye on the Island o' San Pedro, latitude eighteen degrees,
+longitude one hundred and twenty-four degrees."  He placed his finger
+on the chart on the cabin table.  "There y'are, Mr. Thompson.  And on'y
+me to tell the tale.  The bye was gibbering like a baboon by the time
+he was fetched aboard the _Para Wanka_, Chinese barque out o' Honolulu.
+I was a bit touched meself.  Thirteen weeks in 'orspital.  Remarkable
+recovery.  That's the knife on the sideboard in the leather case."
+
+Mr. Thompson took the knife in his hand reverently.
+
+"No Board o' Trade inquiry, sir," he said.
+
+"No Board o' Trade inquiry," said the Old Man, taking a good drink of
+neat brandy.  "Come on deck and let us have another look at the Island
+of San Pedro."
+
+Overcome by a sense of uncanny fascination the boy followed the Old Man
+and the mate up the companion and to the deck.  Long the Old Man gazed
+at the island through his glass, but made no further remark.  Then,
+having seen enough of it, he handed the glass to Mr. Thompson, who made
+no remark either, but gazed with a mask of steel at the Island of San
+Pedro.
+
+Mr. MacFarlane, who stood by, pointed with his finger suddenly.
+
+"Sharks," he said.
+
+"Aye," said the Old Man with queer eyes, "these roads is full of 'em.
+Aye, there they are, the pretties!"
+
+The boy followed Mr. MacFarlane's finger over the deck rail, and sure
+enough, quite near to the ship was a number of creatures whose upturned
+bellies shone a strange dead white.
+
+"Come every morning to look at us, the pretties, on the Island of San
+Pedro."  The Old Man laughed in a queer way.  "The tide brought 'em
+more than one nice breakfast, but they never had no luck with me and
+that bye.  He! he! he!"
+
+The Old Man went down to the cabin rather unsteadily, but laughing all
+the way.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if it's a wet night," said Mr. MacFarlane to the mate
+in the hearing of the boy.
+
+This was a technicality that Henry Harper didn't understand, but it
+held no mystery for Mr. Thompson, who smiled as he alone could and
+growled, "Yep."
+
+After supper, the Old Man sat late and drank deep.  He pressed both his
+officers to share with him.  He was always passing the bottle, but
+though Mr. Thompson and Mr. MacFarlane were able to keep a stout
+course, they were simply not in it with the Old Man.  For one thing
+both were men of principle who preferred rum to brandy, and very
+luckily for the _Margaret Carey_, Mr. Thompson in certain aspects of
+his nature preferred his ship to either.
+
+The Old Man talked much that night of the Island of San Pedro, overmuch
+perhaps for the refined mind of the second mate.  The boy stood
+listening behind the Old Man's chair, ready to go about as soon as the
+Old Man should be at the end of the bottle.
+
+"No, we didn't touch human flesh," said the Old Man.  "I give you my
+word of honor as a Christian man.  But we caught one o' the Chinamen at
+it--two of us was Chinamen--an' we drew lots as to who should do him
+in.  There was three white men left at that time, including myself and
+excluding the bye.  Andrews it was, our bosun, who drawed the ticket,
+and as soon as he drawed it I thought he looked young for the work.  He
+wanted to pass it to me, but I said no--he'd drawed the ticket an' he
+must do the will o' God."
+
+"'Scuse my interrupting, sir," said Mr. MacFarlane, "but how did ye
+know it was the will o' God?"
+
+"Because he'd drawed the ticket, you fool," snapped the Old Man.
+"Didn't I say he'd drawed the ticket?"
+
+"Yep," nodded Mr. Thompson.
+
+"Very well, then," said the Old Man with acerbity.  "It was up to
+Andrews to do the will o' God.  He said he'd not do it then, but he'd
+wait until the morning.  I said, 'There's no time like the present,'
+but he was Scotch, and he was obstinate, an' the mornin' never come for
+Andrews.  He began to rave in the night, as we all lay together on the
+sand, with the Chinaman in the middle, and at the screech o' dawn when
+I give him the knife, I see at once he was off his rocker."
+
+"Up the pole, sir?" asked Mr. MacFarlane, politely.
+
+"Yes, blast you," said the Old Man.  "Don't you understand plain
+English?  Bye, another bottle."
+
+As the boy's livid face was caught by the lamp on the table while he
+bent over it with the new bottle, the Old Man suddenly laughed.  There
+was something in the boy's eyes that went straight to his heart.
+
+"By God!" he said, refilling his glass.  "That's a good idea.  We'll
+put Sailor here ashore on the Island o' San Pedro first thing in the
+morning.  We will, so help me!"  And the Old Man winked solemnly at Mr.
+Thompson and the second mate.
+
+Mr. Thompson smiled and the second mate laughed.  The idea itself was
+humorous, and the Old Man's method of expressing it seemed to lend it
+point.
+
+"That's a good idea," said the Old Man, bringing his fist down so
+sharply that the brandy out of his glass slopped over on the
+tablecloth.  "Sailor here shall be put ashore at sunrise on the Island
+of San Pedro.  We'll never be able to make a man of him aboard the
+_Margaret Carey_.  We'll see what the tigers and the lions and the
+wolves and hyenas 'll do with him on the Island o' San Pedro."
+
+"Sirpints, Cap'n?" inquired Mr. Thompson innocently, as he returned the
+look of his superior officer.
+
+"God bless me, yes, Mr. Thompson!" said the Old Man in a thrilling
+voice.  "That's why you've got to keep out o' the trees.  My advice to
+Sailor is--are ye attendin', young feller?--always sleep on sand.
+Sirpints won't face sand, and it's something to know that, Mr.
+Thompson, when you are all on your lonesome on the Island of San Pedro."
+
+"I've heard that afore, sir," said Mr. Thompson, impressively.  "Never
+knowed the truth o' it, though."
+
+"True enough, Mr. Thompson," said the Old Man.  "Sirpints has no use
+for sand.  Worries 'em, as you might say."
+
+"I've always understood, sir," said Mr. MacFarlane, whose humor was apt
+to take a pragmatical turn, "that it's only one sort o' sirpint what's
+shy o' sand."
+
+The Old Man eyed the second mate sullenly.
+
+"O' course it is," he said, "and that's the on'y sort they've got on
+the Island o' San Pedro.  The long, round-bellied sort, as don't bite
+but squeeges."
+
+"And swallers yer?" said Mr. Thompson.
+
+"And swallers yer.  Pythons, I think they're called, or am I thinkin'
+o' boar constrictors?"
+
+"Pythons, sir," said Mr. MacFarlane.  "What swallows a bullock as easy
+as it swallows a baby."
+
+"Yes, that's right."  The Old Man turned to grin at the boy, but there
+was pathos in his voice.  "Sailor, my bye, you must keep out o' the
+trees.  Promise me, Sailor, you'll keep out o' the trees."
+
+The boy had to hold on by the table.  The laughter that rang in his
+ears could only have one meaning.  He knew that the Old Man with the
+drink in him would be as good as his word.  Suddenly, by a queer trick
+of the mind, Henry Harper was again a newsboy crying, "'Orrible Crime
+on the 'Igh Seas," along the streets of Blackhampton.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Sailor didn't sleep that night in his bunk in the half-deck but lay in
+the lee of the chart-house looking up at the stars.  Now and again, he
+could hear little plop-plops in the water, and these he knew were
+sharks.  It was a night like heaven itself--not that Sailor had had
+much experience of heaven so far--wonderfully calm, with the stars so
+bright that even as he lay he could see the outline of the Island of
+San Pedro.  It was so clear in the starlight that he could see little
+dark patches here and there rising to the skyline.  These were trees he
+was sure.
+
+He didn't try to sleep, but lay waiting for the dawn, not thinking of
+what he should do, or what he ought to do.  What was the use?  He was
+alone and quite helpless, and he was now in a state altogether beyond
+mere terror; he was face to face with that which his mind could not
+meet.  But he was as sure as those stars were in the sky, that as soon
+as it was light the Old Man would put him ashore on the Island of San
+Pedro, and that even Mr. Thompson would raise no protest.
+
+Once or twice he tried to think, but it was no use.  His brain was
+going.  He must lie there and wait.  How long he lay he didn't know,
+but it seemed hours before he heard the morning watch come on deck, and
+even then it was some while from daylight.  For a long, long time he
+lay stupefied, unable to do anything but listen for the stealthy
+plop-plop of the sharks in the water.  And when the daylight came, at
+first it was so imperceptible that he did not notice it.
+
+At last the sun got up, and then he saw that right away to starboard
+the sky was truly wonderful, a mass of delicate color which the eye
+could not grasp.  For a moment, the soul of Henry Harper was entranced.
+Heaven itself was opening before him.  His mind went back to the
+Reverend Rogers and the Brookfield Street Mission.  With a stab of
+shame for having so long forgotten them, he suddenly recalled the words
+of the Reverend Rogers upon the subject of the Golden Gates.  Flooded
+by an intolerable rush of memories, he imagined he could see and hear
+the Choir Invisible.  The fowls of the air were heralding a marvelous
+sunrise in the Pacific.
+
+For a moment he forgot the Island of San Pedro.  Another door of memory
+had been unlocked.  He was in a flood of golden light.  There straight
+before him were the gates of paradise.  He was looking at the home of
+God.  Suddenly Henry Harper thought he could hear the voices of the
+angels.  He strained his eyes to starboard.  Real angels with wings
+would be a wonderful sight.  The fowls of the air were in chorus, the
+sharks were plopping in the water, the gates of heaven were truly
+marvelous--orange, crimson, gold, purple, every color he had ever seen
+or imagined, and he had seen and imagined many, was now filling his
+eyes with ecstasy.  At every pore of being he was sensing light and
+sound.  He was like a harp strung up.  And then in the midst of it all,
+there came the voice of the Old Man as he climbed on deck, with Mr.
+Thompson at his heels.  And then ... and then ... the heavens opened
+... and Henry Harper saw ... and Henry Harper saw....
+
+
+There was a great plop in the water, much nearer than that of the
+sharks.  There followed heartrending screams and cries, enough to
+appall the soul of man.  All hands rushed to the side of the ship.
+
+"It's on'y Sailor," said the Old Man, with a drunken growl.  "Let him
+drown."
+
+In the next instant there came another great plop in the water.
+
+"What the hell!" roared the Old Man.
+
+"Please, sir, Mr. Thompson's gone for him."
+
+"Mr. who? ... blast you!"
+
+"Mr. Thompson, sir."
+
+"Then lower the gig."  The Old Man began to stamp up and down the deck,
+roaring like a maniac.  "Lower the gig, I tell ye."  His fingers were
+the first on the davits.  "And all hands pipe up a chantey ... louder
+... louder ... blast you! ... to keep off those sharks."
+
+The Old Man's voice was hoarse and terrible, as he worked like a demon
+to launch the boat.
+
+"Louder, louder, blast you!" he kept roaring.  The smooth, dead-white
+bellies lay all around, shining in the sunrise.  The Old Man was in a
+frenzy; it seemed as if the boat would never be got into the water.
+
+At last it was launched and the Old Man was the first to jump into it,
+still roaring like one possessed.  He beat the water furiously with a
+piece of spar.  But Mr. Thompson with the boy in tow seemed to be
+holding his own very well.  Either the sharks had not seen them, or
+they dare not approach in the midst of that terrific outcry.
+
+They were soon in the boat, Mr. Thompson being a powerful swimmer; and
+when at last they were back on the deck of the _Margaret Carey_, the
+boy lay gasping and the mate stood by like some large and savage dog,
+shaking the water out of his eyes.
+
+"Whatever made you do that, Mr. Thompson?" expostulated the Old Man.
+He was a good deal sobered by the incident, and his manner showed it.
+
+Mr. Thompson did not answer.  He stood glowering at a number of the
+hands who had gathered round.
+
+"Don't none o' you gennelmen touch that bye," he said with a slow
+snarl, and he pointed to the heap on the deck.
+
+They took Mr. Thompson's advice.  Most people did aboard the _Margaret
+Carey_.  Even the Old Man respected it in the last resort, that was if
+he was sober enough to respect anything.  But with him it was the
+seamanship rather than the personal force of his chief officer that
+turned the scale.  It was the man himself to whom less exalted people
+bowed the knee.
+
+It took the boy the best part of two days to recover the use of his
+wits.  And even then he was not quite as he had been.  Something seemed
+to have happened to him; a very subtle, almost imperceptible change had
+taken place.  He had touched bottom.  In a dim way he seemed to realize
+that he had been made free of some high and awful mystery.
+
+The knowledge was reflected in the thin brown face, haunted now with
+all manner of unimaginable things.  But the feeling of defeat and
+hopelessness had passed; a new Henry Harper had come out of the sea;
+never again was he quite so feckless after that experience.
+
+For one thing, he was no longer afraid to go aloft.  During the warm
+calm delightful days in the Indian Ocean when things went well with the
+ship, and there happened to be nothing doing in the cabin, Sailor began
+to make himself familiar with the yards.  All through the good weather
+he practiced climbing assiduously, so that one day the Old Man remarked
+upon it to the mate, demanding of that gentleman, "What has happened to
+Sailor?  He goes aloft like a monkey and sleeps in the cross-trees."
+
+Mr. Thompson made no reply, but a look came into his grim face which
+might be said to express approval.
+
+The Old Man and the mate were the first to recognize that a change had
+taken place in Sailor, but the knowledge was not confined exclusively
+to them.  It was soon shared by others.  One evening, as Sailor sat
+sunning himself with the ship's cat on his knee, gazing with intensity
+now at the sky, now at the sea, one of the hands, a rough nigger named
+Brutus, threw a boot at him in order to amuse the company.  There was a
+roar of laughter when it was seen that the aim was so true that the boy
+had been hit in the face.
+
+Sailor laid the cat on the deck, got up quietly, and with the blood
+running down his cheek came over to Brutus.
+
+"Was that you, you ----?"  To the astonishment of all he addressed in
+terms of the sea the biggest bully aboard the ship.
+
+"Yep," said the nigger, showing his fine teeth in a grin at the others.
+
+"There, then, you ugly swine," said Sailor.
+
+In an instant he had whipped out one of the cabin table knives, which
+he had hidden against the next attack, and struck at the nigger with
+all his strength.  If the point of the knife had not been blunt the
+nigger would never have thrown another boot at anybody.
+
+There was a fine to-do.  The nigger, a thorough coward, began to howl
+and declared he was done.  The second mate was fetched, and he reported
+the matter at once to the Old Man.
+
+In a great fury the Old Man came in person to investigate.  But he very
+soon had the rights of the matter; the boy's cheek was bleeding freely,
+and the nigger was more frightened than hurt.
+
+"Get below you," said the Old Man savagely to the nigger.  "I'll have
+you in irons.  I'll larn you to throw boots."
+
+That was all the satisfaction the nigger got out of the affair, but
+from then boots were not thrown lightheartedly at Sailor.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+After many days of ocean tramping with an occasional discharge of cargo
+at an out of the way port, the ship put in at Frisco.  Here, after a
+clean up, a new cargo was taken aboard, also a new crew.  This was a
+pretty scratch lot; the usual complement of Yankees, Dutchmen, dagoes,
+and an occasional Britisher.
+
+For a long and trying fifteen months, Sailor continued on the seas,
+about all the oceans of the world.  At the end of that time he was
+quite a different boy from the one who had left his native city of
+Blackhampton.  Dagoes and niggers no longer did as they liked with him.
+He still had a strong dislike, it was true, to going aloft in a gale,
+but he invariably did as he was told to the best of his ability; he no
+longer skulked or showed the white feather in the presence of his
+mates.  Nevertheless, he was always miserably unhappy.  There was
+something in his nature that could not accept the hateful discomforts
+of a life before the mast, although from the day of his birth he had
+never known what it was to lie soft.  He was in hell all the time.
+Moreover, he knew it and felt it to the inmost fiber of his being; the
+soul of Henry Harper was no longer derelict.
+
+The sense of the miracle which had happened off the Island of San Pedro
+abided with him through gale and typhoon, through sunshine and
+darkness, through winter and summer.  It didn't matter what the sea was
+doing, or the wind was saying, or the Old Man was threatening, a
+miracle had happened to Henry Harper.  He had touched bed rock.  He had
+seen things and he had learned things; man and nature, all the terrible
+and mysterious forces around him could do their worst, but he no longer
+feared them in the old craven way.  Sailor had suffered a sea change.
+The things in earth and heaven he had looked upon none could share with
+him, not even Mr. Thompson, that strange and sinister man of the sea,
+to whom he owed what was called "his life"; nay, not even the Old Man
+himself who had lived six weeks on shellfish on the Island of San Pedro.
+
+When the _Margaret Carey_ had been to Australia and round the larger
+half of the world, she put in at Frisco again.  Here she took another
+cargo and signed on fresh hands for a voyage round the Pacific Coast.
+Among the latter was a man called Klondyke.  At least, that was the
+name he went by aboard the _Margaret Carey_, and was never called by
+any other.  At first this individual puzzled Henry Harper considerably.
+He shared a berth with him in the half-deck, and the boy--now a grown
+man rising sixteen--armed with a curiosity that was perfectly
+insatiable, and a faculty of taking lively and particular notice, found
+a great deal to interest him in this new chum.
+
+He was about twenty-four and a Britisher, although Sailor in common
+with most of his shipmates thought at first that he was a Yankee.  For
+one thing, he was a new type aboard the _Margaret Carey_.  Very
+obviously he knew little of the sea, but that didn't seem to trouble
+him.  From the moment he set foot aboard, he showed that he could take
+good care of himself.  It was not obtrusive but quietly efficient care
+that he took of himself, yet it seemed to bear upon the attitude of all
+with whom he had to do.
+
+Klondyke knew nothing about a windjammer, but soon started in to learn.
+And it didn't seem to matter what ticklish or unpleasant jobs he was
+put to--jobs for which Sailor could never overcome a great dislike--he
+had always a remarkable air of being in this hard and perilous business
+merely for the good of his health.
+
+Klondyke said he had never been aloft before in his life, and the first
+time he went up it was blowing hard from the northeast, yet his chief
+concern before he started was to lay a bet of five dollars with anybody
+in the starboard watch that he didn't fall out of the rigging.  But
+there were no takers, for there was not a man aboard who would believe
+that this was the first time he had gone up on a yard.
+
+It was not many weeks before Klondyke was the most efficient ordinary
+seaman aboard the _Margaret Carey_.  And by that time he had become a
+power among the after gang.  As one of the Yankees, who was about as
+tough as they made them but with just a streak of the right color in
+him, expressed it, "Klondyke was a white man from way back."
+
+The fact was, Klondyke was a white man all through, the only one aboard
+the ship.  It was not a rarefied or aggressively shining sort of
+whiteness.  His language on occasion could be quite as salt as that of
+anybody else, even more so, perhaps, as he had a greater range of
+tongues, both living and dead, from which to choose.  He was very
+partial to his meals, and growled terribly if the grub went short as it
+often did; he also set no store by dagoes and "sich," for he was very
+far from believing that all men were equal.  They were, no doubt, in
+the sight of God, but Klondyke maintained that the English were first,
+Yankees and Dutchmen divided second place, and the rest of sea-going
+humanity were not on the chart at all.  He was always extremely clear
+about this.
+
+From the first day of Klondyke's coming aboard, Sailor, who was very
+sharp in some things, became mightily interested in the new hand in the
+wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears, who went about the
+ship as if he owned it; while after a time the new hand returned the
+compliment by taking a friendly interest in Sailor.  But that was not
+at first.  Klondyke, for all his go-as-you-please air, was not the kind
+of man who entered easily upon personal relations.  Moreover, there was
+something about him which puzzled Henry Harper.  He spoke a kind of
+lingo the boy had never heard before.  It was that as much as anything
+which had made Sailor think he was a Yank.  He had not been used to
+that sort of talk at Blackhampton, nor was it the kind in vogue on the
+_Margaret Carey_.  If not exactly la-di-da, had it been in the mouth of
+some people it would have been considered a trifle thick.
+
+Sailor's intimacy with Klondyke, which was to have an important bearing
+upon his life, began in quite a casual way.  One afternoon, with the
+sea like glass, and not a puff of wind in the sails, they sat together
+on the deck picking oakum to keep them from idleness, when Klondyke
+suddenly remarked: "Sailor, don't think me inquisitive, but I'm
+wondering what brought you to sea."
+
+"Inquisitive" was a word Sailor had not heard before, and he could only
+guess at its meaning.  But he thought Klondyke so little inquisitive
+that he said at once quite simply and frankly, "Dunno."  He then added
+by way of an afterthought, although Klondyke was a new chum and rated
+the same as himself, "Mister."
+
+"No, I expect not," said Klondyke, "but I've been wondering a bit
+lately"--there was something very pleasant in Klondyke's tone--"how you
+come to be aboard this hell ship.  One would have thought you'd have
+done better ashore."
+
+Sailor was not able to offer an opinion upon that.
+
+"In some kind of a store or an office?"
+
+"Can't read, can't write."
+
+"No?"  Klondyke's eyebrows went up for a fraction of an instant, then
+they came down as if a bit ashamed of themselves for having gone up at
+all.  "But it's quite easy to learn, you know."
+
+Sailor gasped in astonishment.  He had always been led to believe that
+to learn to read and write was a task of superhuman difficulty.  Some
+of his friends at Blackhampton had attended a night school now and
+again, but none of them had been able to make much of the racket of
+reading and writing, except one, Nick Price, who had a gift that way
+and was good for nothing else.  Besides, as soon as he really took to
+the game a change came over him.  Finally, he left the town.
+
+"I'd never be able to read an' write," said Sailor.
+
+"Why not?" said Klondyke.  "Why not, like anybody else ... if you stuck
+it?  Of course, you'd have to stick it, you know.  It mightn't come
+very kind at first."
+
+This idea was so entirely new that Sailor rose with quite a feeling of
+excitement from the upturned bucket on which he sat.
+
+"Honest, mister," he said, gazing wistfully into the face of Klondyke,
+"do you _fink_ I could?"
+
+"Sure," said Klondyke.  "Sure as God made little apples."
+
+Sailor decided that he would think it over.  It was a very important
+step to take.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Klondyke's library consisted of two volumes: the Bible and "Don
+Quixote."  Sailor knew a bit about the former work.  The Reverend
+Rogers had read it aloud on a famous occasion when Henry Harper had had
+the luck to be invited to a real blowout of tea and buns at the
+Brookfield Street Mission.  That was a priceless memory, and Henry
+Harper always thought that to hear the Reverend Rogers read the Bible
+was a treat.  Klondyke, who was not at all like the Reverend Rogers in
+word or deed, said it was "a damned good book," and would sometimes
+read in it when he was at a bit of a loose end.
+
+It was by means of this volume that Sailor learned his alphabet.
+Presently he got to spelling words of two and three letters, then he
+got as far as remembering them, and then came the proud day when he
+could write his name with a stump of pencil on a stray piece of the
+_Brooklyn Eagle_, in which Klondyke had packed his tooth brush, the
+only one aboard the _Margaret Carey_.
+
+"What is your name, old friend?" Klondyke asked.
+
+"Enry Arper."
+
+"H-e-n with a Hen, ry--Henry.  H-a-r with a Har, p-e-r--Harper."
+
+"There ain't no aitch in Arper," said Sailor.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Enry Arper was Sailor's own private name, which he had been given at
+his birth, which he had used all his life.  He had always felt that as
+it was the only thing he owned, it was his to do with as he liked.
+Therefore he was determined to spell it according to his fancy.  He
+wouldn't admit that there could possibly be an aitch in Arper; and for
+some little time his faith in Klondyke's competence was a bit shaken,
+for his mentor was at pains to make out that there could be and was.
+
+Henry Harper stuck to his ground, however.
+
+"It's me own name," he said, "an' I oughter know."
+
+Klondyke was amused.  He seemed rather to admire Sailor's attitude.  No
+doubt he felt that no Englishman is worth his salt who doesn't spell
+his name just as the fancy takes him.
+
+Klondyke's own name was Jack Pridmore, and it was set out with other
+particulars on the flyleaf of his Bible.  In a large and rather crude
+copperplate was inscribed:
+
+  Jack Pridmore is my name,
+    England is my nation,
+  Good old Eton College
+    Gave me a lib'ral education.
+  Stet domus et
+  Floreat Etona.
+
+The arms of Eton College with the motto "Floreat Etona" were inscribed
+on the opposite page, also in tattoo on the left arm of the owner.  In
+Sailor's opinion, Eton College did flourish undoubtedly in the person
+of Jack Pridmore.  He was a white man all through, and long before
+Sailor could make out that inscription on the flyleaf of Klondyke's
+Bible, he was convinced that such was the case.
+
+In Sailor's opinion, he was a good one to follow anywhere.  Everything
+in Klondyke seemed in just the right proportion and there was nothing
+in excess.  He was new to the sea, but he was not in the least green or
+raw in anything.  You would have to stay up all night if you meant to
+get ahead of him.  So much had he knocked about the world that he knew
+men and cities like the back of his hand, and he had the art of shaking
+down at once in any company.
+
+All the same, in Sailor's opinion, he had odd ideas.  For one thing, he
+set his face against the habit of carrying a knife in your shirt in
+case the dagoes got above themselves.
+
+"It's not quite white, you know, old friend," said Klondyke.
+
+"Dagoes ain't white," said Sailor.
+
+"No; and that's why we've got to show 'em how white we are if we are
+going to keep top dog."
+
+This reasoning was too deep for Sailor.
+
+"Don't see it meself.  Them dagoes is bigger'n me.  If I could lick
+'em, I'd lick 'em till they hollered when they started in to fool
+around.  But they are real yaller; none on 'em will face a bit o'
+sheffle."
+
+"No," said Klondyke, "and they'll not face a straight left with a punch
+in it either."
+
+Klondyke then made a modest suggestion that Sailor should acquire this
+part of a white man's equipment.  He was firmly convinced that with the
+rudiments of reading and writing and a straight left with a punch in
+it, you could go all over the world.
+
+At first Sailor took by no means as kindly to the punching as he did to
+the other branches of knowledge.  He wanted a bit of persuading to face
+Klondyke in "a little friendly scrapping practice" in the lee of the
+chart house when no one was by.  Klondyke was as hard as a nail; his
+left was like a horse's kick; and when he stood in his birthday suit,
+which he did once a day to receive the bucket of water he got Sailor to
+dash over him--another of his odd ideas--he looked as fine a picture of
+make and muscle as you could wish to see.  Sailor thought "the little
+friendly scrapping practice" was a very one-sided arrangement.  His
+nose seemed to bleed very easily, his eyes began to swell so that he
+could hardly see out of them, and his lips and ears thickened with
+barely any provocation at all, whereas he never seemed to get within a
+yard of Klondyke's physiognomy unless that warrior put down his hands
+and allowed him to hit it.
+
+By this time, however, Klondyke had laid such a hold on Henry Harper
+that he didn't like to turn it up.  He'd never make a Slavin or a
+Corbett--it simply wasn't in him--but all that was "white" in Sailor
+mustered at this chap's call.  The fact was, he had begun to worship
+Klondyke, and when with the "sand" of a true hero he was able to get
+over an intense dislike of being knocked about, he began to feel a sort
+of pride in the process.  If he had to take gruel from anybody, it had
+better be from him.  Besides, Sailor was such a queer fish that there
+seemed something in his nature which almost craved for a licking from
+the finest chap he had ever known.  His affection for this "whitest" of
+men seemed to grow with the punishment he took from him.
+
+One night, after an easy watch, as they lay talking and smoking in
+their bunks in the dark, Klondyke remarked:
+
+"Sailor, there's a lot o' guts in you."
+
+Henry Harper, who was very far off that particular discovery, didn't
+know what Klondyke was getting at.
+
+"You've taken quite a lot of gruel this week.  And you've stood up to
+it well.  Mind, I don't think you'll ever make a bruiser, not if you
+practice until the cows come home.  It simply isn't there, old friend.
+It's almost like hitting a woman, hitting you.  It is not your line of
+country, and it gets me what you are doing aboard this blue-nose
+outfit.  How do you stick it?  It must be hell all the time."
+
+Henry Harper made no reply.  He was rather out of his depth just now,
+but he guessed that most of this was true.
+
+"I don't mind taking chances, but it's all the other way with you.
+Every time you go aloft, you turn white as chalk, and that shows what
+grit you've got.  But your mother ought never to have let you come to
+sea, my boy."
+
+"Never had no mother," said Sailor.
+
+"No"--Klondyke felt he ought to have known that.  "Well, it would have
+saved mine a deal of disappointment," he said cheerfully, "if she had
+never had such a son.  I'm her great sorrow.  But if you had had a
+mother it would have been another story.  You'd have been a regular
+mother's boy."
+
+Sailor wasn't sure.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+Klondyke was ten months an ordinary seaman aboard the _Margaret Carey_.
+In that time the old tub, which could not have been so crazy as she
+seemed to the experts of the forecastle, went around the Pacific as far
+as Brisbane, thence to Durban, thence again to California.  Meanwhile,
+friendship ripened.  It was a great thing for Sailor to have the
+countenance of such a man as Klondyke.  He knew so much more about the
+world than Sailor did, also he was a real friend and protector; and,
+when they went ashore together in strange places, as they often did, he
+had a wonderful knack of making himself respected.
+
+It was not that Klondyke wore frills.  In most of the places in which
+they found themselves a knife in the ribs would have done his business
+out of hand had that been the case.  It was simply that he knew his way
+and could talk to every man in his own language, and every woman, too,
+if it came to that.  Whether it was a Frisco hash-slinger or a refined
+bar-lady along the seaboard made no difference to Klondyke.  It was
+true that he always looked as if he had bought the earth at five per
+cent. discount for cash and carried the title deeds in his pocket, but
+he had such a way with him that from Vancouver to Sydney and back again
+nobody seemed to think the worse of him for it.
+
+However, the day came all too soon when a tragic blow fell on Sailor.
+The ship put in at Honolulu one fine morning, and as soon as Klondyke
+went ashore he picked up a substitute for himself on the waterfront,
+whom the Old Man was willing to accept for the rest of his term.
+Klondyke then broke the news to Sailor that he had just taken a fancy
+to walk across Asia.
+
+It was a heavy blow.  Sailor was very near tears, although he was
+growing in manhood every week.
+
+"It's no use asking you to come with me," said Klondyke.  "We shouldn't
+have enough brass to go round.  Besides, now the _wanderlust_ is on me
+there is no saying where I'll get to.  I'm very likely to be sawed up
+for firewood in the middle of Tibet."
+
+Sailor knew that Klondyke wanted to make the journey alone.  Partly to
+soften the blow and partly as an impulse of friendship, he gave the boy
+his Bible and also his wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and
+ears.
+
+"Stick to the reading and writing, old friend," were the final words of
+this immortal.  "That's your line of country.  It'll pay you in the
+end.  You'll get no good out of the sea.  If you are wise, whenever you
+touch the port of London, you'll give a miss to this old tub.  A life
+on the ocean wave is never going to be the least use to you."
+
+Sailor knew that Klondyke was right.  But among the many things he
+lacked was all power of initiative.  As soon as he had lost his prop
+and stay, he was once more a derelict.  For him life before the mast
+must always be a hell, but he had no power of acting for himself.
+After Klondyke left the ship there didn't seem anything else to do
+beyond a mere keeping of body and soul together aboard the _Margaret
+Carey_.  There was nothing else he could do if it came to that.  He had
+only learned to sell papers on land, and he had given the best years of
+his life to the sea.  Besides, every voyage he became a better sailor
+and was paid a bit more; he even had visions of one day being rated
+able seaman.  Moreover, being saving and careful, his slender store of
+dollars grew.  But his heart was never really in his work, never in the
+making of money nor in the sailing of the ship.
+
+He was a square peg in a round hole.  He didn't know enough about
+himself or the world or the life he was trying to live to realize fully
+that this was the case.  And for all his weakness of will and complete
+lack of training, which made his life a burden to him, he had a curious
+sort of tenacity that enabled him to keep on keeping on long after
+natures with more balance would have turned the thing up.  All the
+years he was at sea, he never quite overcame the sense of fear the sea
+aroused in him; he seldom went aloft, even in a dead calm, without
+changing color, and he never dared look down; he must have lost his
+hold in many a thrashing northeaster and been broken on the deck like
+an egg but for an increasing desire to live that was simple torment.
+There was a kind of demon in his soul which made him fight for a thing
+that mocked it.
+
+He had no other friend after Klondyke went.  No other was possible;
+besides, he had a fierce distrust of half his shipmates; he even lost
+his early reverence for Mr. Thompson, in spite of the fact that he owed
+him his life, long before the mate left the ship at Liverpool nine
+months after the departure of Klondyke.  Above all, the Old Man in
+liquor always inspired his terror, a treat to be counted on once a
+month at least.  The years of his seafaring were bitter, yet never once
+did he change ship.  He often thought about it, but unluckily for Henry
+Harper thought was not action; he "never quite matched up," as Klondyke
+used to express it.  He had a considerable power of reflection; he was
+a creature of intuitions, with a faculty of observation almost
+marvelous in an untrained mind, but he never seemed able to act for
+himself.
+
+Another grave error was that he didn't take Klondyke's advice and stick
+to reading and writing.  No doubt he ought to have done it; but it was
+such a tough job that he could hardly take it on by himself.  The
+drudgery made him miserable; it brought too vividly to his mind the
+true friend who had gone out of his life.  For the rest of his time
+aboard the _Margaret Carey_ he never got over the loss of Klondyke.
+The presence and support of that immortal had meant another world for
+him.  For many months he could hardly bear the sight of the Bible his
+friend had given him, but cherished it as he had once cherished an
+apple that had also been given him by one who had crossed his orbit in
+the night of time and had spoken to him in passing.
+
+It is not unlikely that Henry Harper would have sailed the seas aboard
+the _Margaret Carey_ until that miraculous ship went to pieces in
+mid-ocean or turned turtle round the Horn; it is not unlikely that he
+would have gone down to his grave without a suspicion that any other
+kingdom awaited him, had it not been that in the last resort the
+decision was taken out of his hands.
+
+One day, when he had been rather more than six years at sea, the
+_Margaret Carey_ was within three days of London, whither she was bound
+with a cargo of wheat, when the Old Man informed him briefly and curtly
+that she was making her last voyage and that she was going to be broken
+up.  The news was such a blow that at first Sailor could not realize
+what it meant.  He had come to feel that no sort of existence would be
+possible apart from the _Margaret Carey_.  He had lived six crowded and
+terrible years of worse than discomfort, but he could envisage no
+future apart from that leaking, crazy, foul old tub.
+
+All too soon the day came, a misty morning of October, when he stepped
+ashore.  A slender bundle was under one arm, Klondyke's fur cap on his
+head, a weird outfit on his lathlike body, an assortment of clothes as
+never was on sea or land before; and he had a store of coins of various
+realms, no less than eighty-five pieces of all sizes and values, from
+an English farthing to a Mexican five dollars, very carefully disposed
+about his person.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+TRAVAIL
+
+I
+
+The Sailor, shipless and alone, was about to enter the most amazing
+city in the world.
+
+He was a handsome boy, lean, eager eyed, and very straight in the body
+in spite of his gear, which consisted mainly of leggings, a tattered
+jersey, and a wonderful fur cap with flaps for the nose and ears.  He
+was fairly tall, but being as thin as a rail looked much taller than he
+was.  His face and hands were the color of mahogany, his vivid eyes
+were set with long intercourse with the sea, and in them was a look
+that was very hard to forget.
+
+He came ashore about ten o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, October the
+fifth.  For a while he stood on the edge of the quay with his bundle
+under his arm, wondering what he should do.  It had not occurred to him
+to ask advice when he left the ship.  Even the bosun had not said, "So
+long" to him; in spite of six years' service he was a poor seaman with
+no real heart for his job.  He had been a cheap and inefficient hand;
+aboard a better ship, in the Old Man's opinion, he would have been dear
+at any price.
+
+His relations with the rest of the crew had never been intimate.  Most
+considered him "soft" or "a bit touched"; from the Old Man to the last
+joined ship's boy, he was "only Sailor."  He never thought of asking
+what he ought to do; and had he done so his curious intuition told him
+the answer he would have been likely to receive.  They would have told
+him to go and drown himself.
+
+He had not been ashore a quarter of an hour when he began to feel that
+it was the best thing he could do.  But the queer faculty he had told
+him at once that it was a thing he would never be able to do now.  If
+he had had any luck it would have been done years ago.
+
+Therefore, instead of jumping over the side of the quay, he suddenly
+walked through the dock gates into the streets of Wapping.  All the
+morning he drifted aimlessly up one street and down another, his bundle
+under his arm, but neither plan nor purpose in his mind.  At last, he
+began to feel very hungry, and then he found himself up against the
+problem of getting something to eat.
+
+Opposite where he stood in the narrow, busy, interminable street was an
+imposing public house, painted a magnificent yellow.  He knew that
+bread and cheese and a tankard of beer, which he so greatly desired,
+were there for the asking.  But the asking!--that was the rub.  He
+always felt tongue-tied in a public house, and his experience of them
+in his brief shore-goings in Frisco, Sydney, Liverpool, or Shanghai had
+never been happy, and had sometimes ended in disaster.  But now under
+the spur of need, he crossed the street and, fixing his will, found his
+way through the swing doors into the gilded interior of the Admiral
+Nelson.
+
+Happily, the American bar was at that moment without a customer.  This
+was a great relief to the Sailor.  But a truly thrilling bar-lady,
+replete with earrings, a high bust, and an elaborate false front, gave
+him an eye of cool disdain as he entered with his bundle, which he laid
+upon a marble-topped table as far from her as possible; and then, after
+a long moment's pause, in order to screw his courage to the
+sticking-point, he came over to the counter.
+
+The sight of the bar-lady brought a surge of previous shore-goings into
+the Sailor's mind.  Quite automatically, he doffed his fur cap as
+Klondyke would have done in these heroic circumstances, and then all at
+once she forgot to be magnificent.  For one thing, in spite of his
+grotesque clothes and his thin cheeks and his shock of chestnut hair,
+he was a decidedly handsome boy.  Also he was a genuinely polite and
+modest one, and the bar-lady, Miss Burton by name, who had the worldly
+wisdom that owns to thirty-nine and the charm which goes with that
+period of life, was favorably impressed.  "What can I do for you?" Miss
+Burton inquired.  It was clear that her one desire was to help a shy
+youth over his embarrassment.
+
+The voice of the fair, so charmingly civilized, at once unlocked a door
+in the Sailor's memory.  With a further slow summoning of will-power
+which made it the more impressive, he answered precisely as Klondyke
+had at the Bodega in Frisco: "May I have some bread and cheese, please,
+and half a pint of beer?"
+
+"Certainly you may," she smiled.
+
+The tone of deference had touched a chord in her.  Moreover, he really
+was handsome, although attired as a very ordinary, not to say a very
+common, seaman, and evidently far more at home on the deck of a
+windjammer than in the American bar of an up-to-date public-house.
+
+"Fourpence, please."  The bar-lady set before him a pewter flagon of
+foaming fresh-drawn ale, also a liberal piece of bread and cheese,
+beautifully white to one accustomed to hard tack aboard the _Margaret
+Carey_.
+
+In some confusion the Sailor produced a handful of silver coins from
+his amazing trousers, out of which he solemnly chose a Spanish
+fourpenny.
+
+"Haven't you got anything English?" she asked, bursting suddenly into a
+laugh.
+
+Not a little disconcerted, the Sailor began to struggle with a second
+handful of coins which he took from another pocket.  Blushing to the
+tips of his ears, he finally tendered half a crown.
+
+"Two-and-two change."  With an intent smile she marked what he did with
+it.
+
+Having stowed away the two-and-twopence, he was about to carry his
+plate of bread and cheese and tankard of beer to the marble-topped
+table where he had left his bundle, when the lady said, in a royal tone
+of gracious command, "Why not sit and eat it here?"
+
+The Sailor would have been the last young man in the world to think of
+disobeying.  He felt a little thrill creep down his spine as he climbed
+up on the high stool exactly opposite her.  It was the sort of thrill
+he had had when under the aegis of Klondyke he had carried out this
+delicate social maneuver for the benefit of the bar-ladies of Frisco,
+Liverpool, and Shanghai.
+
+At first, he was too shy to eat.
+
+"Go on.  Don't mind me," she encouraged him.
+
+An intensive politeness caused him to cut his bread carefully with his
+knife.  And then before he put it into his mouth he said, in an abrupt,
+but well modulated Klondyke manner, "'Scuse me, lady, won't yer 'ave a
+bite yerself?"
+
+The deferential tone belonged to the mentor of his youth, yet the
+speech itself seemed to owe little to Eton College.
+
+"No, thank you," said Miss Burton.  "I'm not hungry."  And then, seeing
+his look of embarrassment, "Now get on with it.  Don't mind me."
+
+This was a woman of the world.  She was a ripe student of human nature,
+at least of the trousers-wearing section of human nature.  Not for many
+a day had she been so taken by a specimen of an always remarkable genus
+as by this boy with the deep eyes, whose clothes and speech and
+behavior were like nothing on earth.
+
+A true amateur of the male sex, she watched this quaint specimen eating
+bread and cheese.  Presently he raised his tankard aloft, said, "Good
+'ealth, lady," in a shy manner, and drank half of it at a gulp.
+
+"When are you going to sea again?" asked Miss Burton, conversationally.
+
+"Never going to sea no more," said the young man, with a strange look
+in his eyes.
+
+"What--never?" She seemed surprised.
+
+"Never no more.  I'll never sail agen afore the mast.  I'd sooner
+starve.  It's--it's----"
+
+"It's what?"
+
+"It's hell, lady."
+
+Miss Burton was taken aback by the tone of conviction.  After all, this
+grotesque young sea monster was no true amphibian.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do ashore?" she asked after a pause, while
+she gazed at him in astonishment.
+
+"Dunno."
+
+"No plans?"
+
+The boy shook his head.
+
+"Like another tankard of mild?"
+
+"Yes, please, lady."
+
+The impact of the bar-lady's easy and familiar style had caused a
+rather sharp relapse from the Klondyke standard of refinement, but not
+for a moment did the Sailor forget the dignity of her estate.  In spite
+of the hybrid words he used, the note of subtle deference was never out
+of his voice; and Miss Burton, unconsciously intrigued by it, became
+even more interested in this strange product of the high seas.
+
+"How long have you been afloat?"  She handed him a second tankard of
+mild.
+
+"Near six year."
+
+"Six years.  Gracious goodness!  And you didn't like it?"
+
+"No."
+
+For some reason, the look in his eyes caused her to shiver a little.
+
+"Why did you stick it, then?"
+
+"Dunno."
+
+A pause followed.  Then he lifted his tankard again, said, "'Ere's
+lookin', lady," and drank it right off.
+
+"Well, you are a rum one, you are, and no mistake," murmured Miss
+Burton, not to the Sailor, but to the beer engine at her side.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+After the young man from the sea had drunk his second tankard of mild,
+he sat on the high stool silent and embarrassed.  He was hoping that
+the gorgeous creature opposite would continue the conversation, but he
+didn't seem to know how to encourage her.  However, as soon as a
+powerful feminine intelligence had told her the state of the case, she
+said abruptly, "Well, and what are you going to do for a living now
+you've retired from the sea?"
+
+He gave his head a wistful shake.
+
+The gesture, rather pathetic in its hopelessness, touched Miss Burton.
+
+"Well, you can't live on air, you know."
+
+"No, lady."
+
+"Well, what are you going to do?"
+
+Another shake of the head was the only answer, but as he met her
+sympathetic eyes, an inspiration came to him.
+
+"Lady," he said humbly, "you don't happen to know of a shack?"
+
+"Know of a what!"  The touch of acerbity froze him at once.  "Shack!"
+Coming to his assistance, "What on earth's that?"
+
+"Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man."  The phrase was
+Klondyke's, and it came to him quite oddly at that moment in all its
+native purity.  His mentor had a private collection of such phrases
+which he used to roll out for his own amusement when he went ashore.
+This was one.  Henry Harper could see him now, pointing to a dingy card
+in a dingy window in a dingy street, in some miserable seaboard suburb,
+and he could hear him saying, "There you are, Sailor, lodgings, clean
+and decent, for a single man."
+
+Miss Burton pondered.  And then the slow smile came again.
+
+"Well, if you really want lodgings clean and decent for a single man I
+suppose I must try and help you," she said graciously.  "But I'm afraid
+I shan't be much use.  They are not quite in my line."
+
+"No, lady."
+
+"Still, Fore Street is full of them.  That's the second turn to the
+left and then the first on the right, and then the first on the right
+again."
+
+"Yes, lady."
+
+"You might try No. 5--or No. 7--or No. 9--but Fore Street's full of
+them."
+
+Miss Burton was really trying to be helpful, and the young seaman was
+very grateful to her, but Klondyke would have known at once that "she
+was talking out of the back of her neck."
+
+Armed with this valuable information, the young man got off his high
+stool at last, raised his fur cap once more, with a little of the
+unconscious grace of its original owner, said, "So long, lady,"
+collected his bundle and went out by the side door.  And in the
+meantime, the bar-lady, who had marked every detail of his going,
+hardly knew whether to laugh or to shed tears.  This was the queerest
+being she had ever seen in her life.
+
+The Sailor managed to find Fore Street after taking several wrong
+turnings and asking his way three times.  And then his difficulties
+really began.
+
+Fore Street was very narrow, very long, very gloomy, very dirty.  In
+each of these qualities it seemed well able to compare with any street
+he had seen in Frisco, in Sydney, in Liverpool, or even in Port Said.
+But it didn't discourage him.  After all he had never been used to
+anything else.
+
+The first house in Fore Street had a grimy card in a grimier window,
+exactly in the manner to rejoice the heart of Klondyke.  Sailor, who
+had forgotten almost every syllable of "book-learning" he ever
+possessed--and at no time had he been the possessor of many--leaped at
+once to the conclusion that the legend on the card was, "Lodgings,
+clean and decent, for a single man."  Unfortunately it was,
+"Dressmaking done here."
+
+A very modest knock was answered by a large female of truculent aspect,
+to whom he took off his cap, while she stood looking at him with
+surprise, wonder and inveterate distrust of mankind in general and of
+him in particular spreading over her like a pall.
+
+"Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man!"
+
+The door of No. 1, Fore Street, was slammed violently in the face of
+the applicant.
+
+The Sailor nearly shed tears.  He was absurdly sensitive in dealing
+with the other sex and prone to be affected by its hazards and
+vicissitudes.  However, Auntie of the long ago surged into his mind,
+and the recollection seemed to soften the rebuff.  All, even of that
+sex, were not bar-ladies, sympathetic, smiling, and magnificent.
+Therefore he took courage to knock at the door of the next house which
+also had a card in the window.  But, unfortunately, that again was not
+to proclaim lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man, but merely,
+"A horse and cart for hire."
+
+Here the blow, again from the quarter which knows how to deal them, was
+equally decisive.  A creature, blowsy and unkempt, told him, after a
+single glance at his fur cap and his bundle and his deep-sea-going
+gear, "that if he didn't take hisself off and look sharp about it she'd
+set the pleece on him."
+
+At this second rebuff the Sailor stood at the edge of the curb for some
+little time, trying to pluck up spirit to grapple with the problem of
+the next card-bearing domicile, which happened to be the third house in
+the street.  He felt he had begun to lose his bearings a bit.  It had
+come upon him all at once with great force that he was a stranger in a
+strange land whose language he didn't know.
+
+He had just made up his mind to tackle the next card in the window, let
+the consequences be what they might, when he felt his sleeve plucked by
+a small urchin of nine with a preternaturally sharp and racial
+countenance.
+
+This promising product of the world's greatest race, one Moses
+Gerothwohl by name, had had an eye fixed on the fur cap ever since he
+had heard its owner ask at the first house in the street for lodgings,
+clean and decent, for a single man.  This was undoubtedly one of those
+foreign sailors, perhaps a Rooshian--a Rooshian was the very highest
+flight of which the imagination of Moses Gerothwohl was at present
+capable--who, even if they were apt to get drunk on queer fluids and
+sometimes went a bit free with their knives, were yet very
+good-natured, and as a rule were pretty well off for money.
+
+"Did yer sye, mate, yer wanted a shakedown?" said Moses Gerothwohl,
+plucking at the sleeve of the Sailor.
+
+The Sailor looked down at the urchin and nodded.
+
+"Come with me, then," said Moses, stoutly.  "And I'll take yer to my
+grandma's."
+
+He led the Sailor through a perfect maze of by-streets, and through a
+nest of foul courts and alleys, until at last he came to the house of
+his grandmother, to whom he presented the foreign seaman.
+
+She was not very prepossessing to look at, nor was her abode enticing,
+but she had a small room to offer which, if not over clean and
+decidedly airless, contained a bed of which he could have the sole use
+for the reasonable sum of sixpence a night.
+
+The young man accepted the terms at once and laid his bundle on the
+bed.  But the old woman did not accept him with equal alacrity.  There
+was a little formality to be gone through before the transaction could
+be looked upon as "firm."  It was usual for the sixpence to be paid in
+advance.
+
+Grandma was one-fifth tact, three-fifths determination, one-fifth
+truculence, and the whole of her was will power of a very concentrated
+kind.  She was as tough as wire, and in the course of several tense and
+vital minutes, during which her wolf's eyes never left Henry Harper's
+face, that fact came home to him.
+
+It took nearly five minutes for the Sailor to realize that Grandma was
+waiting for something, but as soon as he did, the way in which he bowed
+to fate impressed her right down to the depths of her soul.  He took an
+immense handful of silver out of his pocket, the hoarded savings of six
+years of bitter toil, chose one modest English "tanner" after a search
+among many values and nationalities, and handed it over with a polite
+smile.
+
+The old woman was a very hard nut of the true waterside variety, but
+the sight of such affluence was almost too much for her.  Money was her
+ruling passion.  She went downstairs breathing hard, and with a deep
+conviction that Rothschild himself was in occupation of her first floor
+front.
+
+In the meantime, the Sailor had seated himself on the bed at the side
+of his bundle, and had started to think things out a bit.  This was a
+long and tough job.  Hours passed.  The small, stuffy, evil-smelling
+bedroom grew as black as pitch; a heavy October darkness had descended
+upon the strange land of Wapping, but the Sailor was still thinking
+very hard; also he was wondering what he should do next.
+
+He hadn't a friend on the wide earth.  There was nothing to which he
+could turn his hand.  He could neither read nor write.  And in his
+heart he had a subtle fear of these queer longshore people, although he
+had sense enough to know that it was a Sailor's duty to trample that
+feeling under foot.  One who six long years had sailed before the mast
+aboard the _Margaret Carey_ had nothing to fear in human shape.
+
+As Henry Harper sat on that patched counterpane in the growing October
+darkness, unloosing that strange and terrible thing, the mind of man,
+he was not merely lonely, he was afraid.  Afraid of what?  He didn't
+know.  But as the darkness grew there came an uncanny feeling under his
+jersey.  It seemed to stick him in the pit of the stomach like the icy
+blade of a knife.  He had tasted fear in many forms, but this kind of
+stealing coldness was something new and something different.
+
+It grew darker and darker in the room.  The sense of loneliness was
+upon him now like a living presence.  There was not a soul in the world
+to whom he could turn, to whom he might speak, unless it was the old
+woman downstairs.  Yet lonely and rather terrified as he was, his odd
+intuition told him it would be better to converse with no one than to
+converse with her.
+
+At last, shivering and supperless, although his pockets were heavy with
+silver untold, he made up his mind to turn in.  It was a counsel of
+desperation.  He was sick to nausea with the business of thinking about
+nothing, a process which began in nothing and ended in nothing; and at
+last with a groan of misery, he pulled off his boots and leggings, but
+without removing his clothes stretched himself on the bed.
+
+If he could have had his wish he would have gone to sleep, never to
+awake again.  But he could only lie shivering in the darkness without
+any hope of rest.  Presently a clock struck two.  And then he thought
+he heard a creak on the stairs and shortly afterwards a stealthy
+footfall outside his door.
+
+He had never been anything but broad awake.  But these creeping noises
+of the night seemed to string up every sense he had to a point that was
+uncanny.  He held his breath in order to listen--to listen like a
+frightened animal in a primeval forest that has begun to sense the
+approach of a secret and deadly foe.
+
+The door of the room came very softly open.  It was at the side of the
+bed, and he could not see it; but he felt an almost imperceptible
+vibration in the airless stuffiness in which he lay.  Moreover, a
+breathing, catlike thing had entered the room; a thing he could neither
+hear nor see.  It was a presence of which he was made aware by the
+incandescent forces of a living imagination.
+
+It was too dark to see, there was not a sound to hear, but he knew
+there was a breathing shape within reach of his left hand.
+
+Suddenly his hand shot out and closed upon it.
+
+He caught something electric, quivering, alive.  But whatever it was, a
+deadly silence contained it.  There was not a sound, except a gasp, as
+of one who has made a sudden plunge into icy water.  The Sailor lay
+inert, but now that live thing was in his hand he was not afraid.
+
+He expected a knife.  Realizing that he must defend his face or his
+ribs or whatever part might be open to attack, he knew he must be ready
+for the blow.
+
+But a queer thing happened.  The attack was not made by a knife.  It
+was made by a human will.  As he lay grappling in the darkness with his
+visitor, slowly but surely he felt himself enfolded by an unknown
+power.  Such a force was beyond his experience.  His own will was in a
+vice; there was a deadly struggle, yet neither moved.  Not a sound was
+uttered, but in the end the Sailor nearly screamed with the
+overmastering tension which seemed to be pressing out his life.  And
+then he realized that his hand was no longer holding the thing upon
+which it had closed.
+
+The room was empty again.  The darkness was too great for his eyes to
+tell him, but every sense he had, and at this moment he had more than
+five, seemed to say that whatever his peril, it had now passed.
+
+He sat up and listened tensely through the still open door.  He thought
+he could hear the creak of a foot on the stairs.  Then he began to
+search his pockets for a box of matches, and suddenly remembered that
+he hadn't one.  But the sense of physical danger had given him a new
+power over his mind.  He was now terribly alert.
+
+His instinct was to get out of that house at once.  But a very little
+reflection showed that such a course was not necessary.  It was only an
+old woman after all.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Reinforced with the idea that an old woman with wolf's eyes should have
+no terrors for a sailor, Henry Harper decided to stay where he was,
+until daylight at least.  In the absence of matches and local knowledge
+it would not be easy to find a way out of the house in the middle of
+the night.  Moreover if he drew the chest of drawers from under the
+skylight, which was too thickly plastered with generations of grime to
+dispense light from the sky or anywhere else, and barricaded the door,
+he could not be taken by surprise and need have fear of none.
+
+He decided to do this.  With arms as tough as steel, he lifted up the
+chest of drawers bodily and dumped it with a crash against the door.
+Let Grandma get through that if she could.  If she did, God help her.
+
+Yes, God help her.  The Sailor suddenly took from his pocket a large,
+bone-hafted clasp knife.  There came the friendly click of the opening
+blade, he felt the well ground edge lightly with the ball of his thumb.
+He would lie quietly for Grandma in comfort and in simple faith.
+
+What a fool to let her go! ... the trusty friend in his hand was
+speaking to him....  Had you forgotten me?  I'd have done Grandma's
+business in a brace of shakes, you know.
+
+The Sailor, aware of that, felt rather sorry.
+
+But in a little while there was another voice in the room.  In climbing
+back on the bed, one hand touched the fur cap which lay at the foot of
+it.  Instantly, a second voice spoke through the darkness.
+
+"No, Sailor, my boy."  What a voice it was!  "It ain't quite white.
+Put your knife in your pocket, old friend.  And if Grandma calls again
+and you feel you _must_ set your mark on her, what's wrong with your
+ten commandments, anyway?"
+
+The tones of Klondyke filled the darkness with their music.
+
+Sailor obeyed instinctively, in the way he had always done.  He put the
+knife back in his pocket with a gentle sigh.
+
+The dirty dawn of a wet October day stole on the young man's eyes as he
+was attempting a doze on the patched counterpane with his sea-going
+gear around him.  The arrival of an honest Wednesday morning, chill and
+dismal as it was, dispelled with a magic that seemed ironical any
+lingering trace he might have of his night fear of Grandma.  Was he not
+a sailor who six long years had sailed the seas?  Had he not seen, done
+and suffered things which held him forever from any human thrall?
+
+But Henry Harper knew better than to ask Grandma what she had got for
+breakfast.
+
+He chose instead to sling his hook.  Gathering his truck back into its
+bundle, and cramming the magic cap over his eyes, he pulled the chest
+of drawers away from the bedroom door.  Then as soon as there was light
+enough to see the way he crept down the creaking stairs, unlocked,
+unbolted and unchained the door below, and slipped out into Wednesday
+morning.
+
+Wednesday morning received him with a chill spatter of rain.  He stood
+a minute on the cobbles of the squalid yard in front of Grandma's
+abode--wondering where he was, what he should do, which turn he should
+take.  As a fact, there was only one turn he could take, and that lay
+straight ahead across the yard, through a short arched passageway
+leading to a maze of courts and alleys which led heaven knew where.
+
+He proceeded to find out.  Bundle under arm, fur cap over eyes, a roll
+in his gait, the Sailor emerged at last upon a main street, at present
+only half awake.  But it contained a thing of vast importance: a
+policeman.
+
+The Law in its majesty looked at the Sailor.  The Sailor in his
+simplicity looked at the majesty of the Law.  There was a time, six
+long, long years ago, when he would not have ventured such a liberty
+with the most august of human institutions.  But he was through that
+phase of his career.  By comparison with all the stripes that had since
+been laid upon him even the police were gentle and humane.
+
+There was not a soul in sight except this solemn London bobby, who
+stood four square in the Sailor's path.
+
+"Mornin', mister."  The Sailor lifted his cap, partly from a sense of
+fraternity, partly from a proud feeling of being no longer afraid to do
+so.
+
+The bobby surveyed the strange nondescript that had been washed up by
+the tide of Wapping.  He looked gravely at the bundle and at the fur
+cap, and then decided in quite an impersonal way not to return their
+owner's salutation.
+
+The Sailor was not hurt by the aloofness of the Law.  He had not
+expected anything else.  After all, the police were the police.  He
+knew that a gulf of several hemispheres was fixed between a real
+three-stripe rozzer of the Metropolitan Force and a thing it had
+pleased fate to call by the name of Henry Harper.
+
+"A wrong un, I expect," was the reflection of Constable H23, who always
+expected a wrong un at that hour of the morning.  Upon the spur of this
+thought, the bobby suddenly turned on his heel, and saw the wrong un,
+bundle, fur cap and all, crossing the road like an early morning fox at
+the lure of a favorite hencoop.  Moreover, he was crossing it for the
+reason that he was frantically hungry.
+
+Across the road, at a junction it formed with three others as mean and
+dismal as itself, was a sight supremely blessed in the eyes of the
+Sailor.  It was nothing less than a coffee stall in the panoply of
+matutinal splendor.  Steaming fluids, with flames glowing under them,
+flanked one half of its counter; rock cakes, ham sandwiches, beef
+sandwiches, rolls and butter, and pork pies, splendidly honest and
+genuine pork pies, flanked the other half of it.
+
+The proprietor of the stall, an optimist in white apron and shirt
+sleeves, being unmistakably of the male sex had no terrors for the
+Sailor.  Besides, he was flushed with the knowledge that he had just
+said good morning to the police.
+
+"Cup o' coffee, mister, and one o' them."
+
+Nothing less than a pork pie could meet the need of the Sailor.
+Moreover, he dived in his pocket, took the first coin that came, which
+happened to be half a crown, and laid it with true Klondyke
+magnificence on the counter.
+
+The proprietor of the stall, who added a power of clear thinking to his
+many qualities, appeared to see in the action as well as in the coin
+itself, a declaration of financial status on the part of the young
+seaman in the remarkable gear.  Also this view was shared by the only
+one of his early morning customers who happened to be at the stall: to
+wit, an almost aggressively capable looking and slightly bow-legged
+young man with flaming red hair and ears set at right angles to his
+head, who was devouring a pork pie with quiet ferocity.
+
+A single glance passed between Ike, who owned the stall, and the most
+influential of his patrons, who answered to the name of Ginger; a
+single glance and that was all.
+
+"Nothing smaller, sonny?" said Ike, smiling and pleasant.  "Not used to
+big money at seven g.m.  Penny the corfee and two pence the pie.  Three
+d."  The proprietor raised three fingers and beamed like a seraph.
+
+Ginger suspended operations on the pork pie to see what Dr. Nansen
+would do next.
+
+The Sailor, with memories of Grandma still in his mind, put back the
+half-crown carefully before he brought out anything else.  He was not
+going to give himself away this time.  Thus he went warily in search of
+the smallest coin he could disentangle from the welter of all shapes
+and sizes, of all values and countries, which had been disposed in
+every pocket of his person.  At last he produced one and laid it on the
+oilcloth modestly, as though he merely valued it at threepence.  But in
+that part of the world it was valued at half a sovereign.
+
+"Rich aunt," said the proprietor of the stall, with respectful humor.
+
+The young man with the flaming hair turned half about, pork pie in
+hand, to get a better view of Dr. Nansen.  This close observer
+proceeded to chew steadily without venturing any remark.
+
+There was nothing left for the Sailor but to give away his wealth in
+handfuls now.  He had to keep diving into his secret hoard, which out
+of deference to the thought of Grandma he was still determined not to
+disclose in bulk and sum.  Now came up a Spanish fourpenny, now a
+Yankee nickel, now a Frenchman, now a Dutchman, now a Mexican
+half-dollar, now a noble British quid.  For several crowded and
+glorious minutes, Ike and the most influential of his patrons had the
+time of their lives.
+
+"Thank you, Count," said the proprietor of the stall urbanely, when at
+last the owner of the fur cap had managed to discharge his liability in
+coin current in the realm of Great Britain.  Then, in common with the
+entranced Ginger, he watched the young man recruit exhausted nature.
+
+The Sailor having made short and clean work of his first pie went on to
+his second, then to his second cup of coffee, then to a rock cake, then
+to a ham sandwich, then to a third cup of coffee, then to a third pie,
+when Ike and Ginger, his patron, watched with ever growing respect.
+And then came the business of finding ninepence, and with it a second
+solemn procession of Yankees and Dutchmen and Spaniards and Mexicans,
+which roused the respect of Ginger and Ike to such a pitch that it
+became almost unbearable.
+
+"See here, Vanderbilt!" said Ike at last, yielding reluctantly the hope
+that the young plutocrat would ever hit the exact coin that would meet
+the case.  "Dig up that half dollar.  Me and Ginger"--a polite grimace
+at Ginger--"can make up one-and-nine."
+
+Ginger, divided between the reserve of undoubted social position--he
+was earning good money down at the docks--and an honest desire to make
+himself agreeable in such romantic circumstances, warily produced a
+grimy and war-worn sixpence and handed it across the counter, looking
+Ike straight in the eyes as he did so.
+
+"Any use?" said Ginger, calm, aloof, and casual.
+
+In the meantime the Sailor had begun the search for his half-crown.
+Ginger and Ike waited hopefully, and in the end they were rewarded.
+The Sailor found it at last, but not before he had made an end of all
+secrecy.  In sheer desperation he disclosed handfuls of his hoard.
+
+"Thank yer, Count.  One-and-nine change," said Ike.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The Sailor, fortified by one of the best breakfasts of his life,
+politely said "Mornin'" to the proprietor of the coffee stall with a
+lift of the cap not ungraceful, adding a slightly modified ritual for
+the benefit of Ginger, and stepped out again into the world.
+
+Ike and Ginger, his patron, turned to watch the Sailor go.  Neither
+spoke, but with eyes that glowed in the gray light of the morning like
+those of a couple of healthy basilisks, they marked all that the young
+man did.  The Sailor walked into the middle of the road to the point
+where four arteries of traffic met, and then hesitation overcame him as
+to what he should do next.  For a little while, he stood looking up one
+street and down another with an expression of bewilderment upon his
+face.
+
+"So long," said Ginger to Ike.
+
+The proprietor of the stall had now none to share his thoughts.  He saw
+Ginger, assured but wary, saunter up to the Sailor as he stood at gaze;
+saw him touch the young man on the shoulder as if by chance rather than
+design; saw him speak words which, bend across the counter as he might,
+he was too far away to catch.
+
+"Lookin' for anything?" were the words that Ginger spoke.  Moreover, he
+spoke them blandly, yet with such a subdued air that he might have been
+talking in his sleep.  The Sailor, whose eyes were far away in the gray
+mists of the morning, was looking for nothing, it seemed.
+
+"Which way you goin'?" asked Ginger, in the same tone of mild
+somnambulism.
+
+"Dunno," said the Sailor, his eyes farther away than ever.
+
+"Don't know," repeated Ginger.
+
+At this point, he ventured to look very hard and straight into the face
+of the Sailor.  His knowledge of the human race was pretty considerable
+for one of his years, and there was something about the wearer of the
+fur cap that interested him.  The face under it was fine-drawn, much
+tanned by the weather, open as the sky.  Ginger then flung an expert's
+eye over the lean length of blue jersey which surmounted a grotesque
+pair of leggings.
+
+"You don't know," said Ginger.  "Well, suppose you walk as far as the
+docks?"
+
+The Sailor didn't seem to mind.
+
+"Been long at sea?" inquired Ginger, as with intimate local knowledge
+he piloted the young man through a series of short cuts.
+
+"Six year."
+
+"Have ye so!"  Ginger was surprised and impressed.  "Like it?"
+
+The eyes of the Sailor looked straight down into those of Ginger.  But
+he didn't say anything.
+
+"You didn't like it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why did you stick it, then?"
+
+"Dunno."
+
+The conversation languished a moment, but Ginger's curiosity was
+increasing.
+
+"Still foller the sea?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What's yer job?"
+
+"Ain't got one."
+
+Ginger stroked a resolute jaw.
+
+"Lookin' for a billet?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"Ashore?"
+
+The Sailor nodded.
+
+"Better come with me, then," said Ginger, with an air of decision.
+"Dare say we can fix you at our shop.  Fifteen bob a week ... fifteen
+bob and a tizzey ... if you leave it ter me."
+
+The heart of the Sailor leaped under his jersey.  This was big money as
+money was understood aboard the _Margaret Carey_.
+
+At the end of a narrow street they came suddenly upon the dock gates.
+Through these on the left, then to the left again, and then to the
+right was the private wharf of Antcliff and Jackson, Limited, and also
+at Hull and Grimsby.  Ginger, having told the Sailor tersely to wait
+outside, entered the decrepit wooden office at the entrance to the
+wharf, with the air of a partner in the firm.  After he had had two
+minutes' conversation with a melancholy individual with a red nose and
+a celluloid collar, he beckoned to the Sailor to come inside.
+
+The Sailor entered the office like a man in a dream.
+
+"Name?" said, or rather snapped, the Individual.
+
+"Enry Arper."
+
+The Individual took down the time book from the rack above his head
+with a vehemence that seemed quite uncalled for, opened it savagely,
+dipped a pen in a cracked inkpot and dashed down the name ferociously.
+
+"Sign."
+
+The Sailor took up the pen coolly and with a sense of power.  The
+Individual was a mere babe at the breast compared to Mr. Thompson and
+the Old Man.  Moreover, the ability to sign his name was his one
+literary accomplishment and he was honorably proud of it.  Klondyke had
+taught him that, and he had hung on for all he was worth to such a
+priceless asset.  H-e-n with a Hen, r-y Henry, H-a-r with a Har, p-e-r
+Harper--the letters were formed very carefully with his tongue sticking
+out of his mouth.
+
+Ginger, rather impressed by the insouciance of the whole proceeding,
+then led the Sailor across the yard to his duties.  He wasn't quite
+such a guy as he looked.  There was something there it seemed;
+something that went pretty deep.  Ginger noted it not unfavorably.  He
+was all for depth.  He was a great believer in depth.
+
+The Sailor was informed by this new and providential friend that he had
+stood out for the princely emolument of seventeen and a tizzey, and had
+been able to get it.  This was big money for his rank of life, but his
+occupation was menial.  He had to haul sacks, to load and unload
+cargoes.  Still he didn't complain.  It was the life of a gentleman in
+comparison with being afloat on the high seas.
+
+To be sure his money was not as big as it looked.  He had to live out
+of it and to find a berth to sleep in at night.  But making every
+allowance for longshore extravagance there could be no doubt that this
+new existence was sheer luxury after six years of Sing and wet hash and
+hard-tack and a bed in the half-deck of the _Margaret Carey_.
+
+Dinner time came at twelve o'clock, and under the aegis of Ginger, the
+Sailor walked up the main street once more to Ike's coffee stall, and
+at Ginger's expense had as much as he could eat for sixpence.  He
+wanted to pay his own shot and Ginger's also, but Ginger simply would
+not hear of such a thing.  This was His, he said firmly; and when
+Ginger spoke firmly it generally had to be His whatever it was or might
+be.  It was nice of Ginger; all the same that paladin was far-sighted,
+he was clear-headed, he was sure and cool.  What Ginger didn't know was
+not knowledge, and it was no less a person than Ike who said so.
+
+For example, after dinner, which took exactly twelve minutes by the
+clock of the Booteries across the road and opposite the stall, Ginger
+remarked almost in the manner of one who communes with his subliminal
+self, "There's one thing yer wantin'."
+
+The Sailor looked incredulous.  At that moment he felt it was not in
+the power of wide earth or high heaven to offer him anything further.
+
+"You want a belt for your brass."  Ginger spoke behind his hand in a
+whisper.  "Mon't carry it loose.  Wear it round your waist, next your
+skin.  Money's money."
+
+Ike, absorbed in the polite occupation of brushing stray crumbs of rock
+cake from the strip of grimy oilcloth which graced the counter, was so
+much impressed by Ginger's grasp of mind that he had the misfortune to
+bring down a jubilee mug with his elbow, without breaking it,
+fortunately.
+
+Ginger laid such emphasis upon the point that the Sailor accompanied
+him across the street to Grewcock's emporium, where body belts were
+kept in stock.  A careful survey of all to be found on the premises,
+together with an examination, equally careful, of their prices
+convinced Ginger that better value for the money could be had
+elsewhere.  Thus they withdrew lower down the street to Tollemache and
+Pearson's, where unfortunately the scale of charges was even higher.
+
+This was discouraging, but there was a silver lining to the cloud.  It
+appeared that Ginger had a belt, which in his own opinion was far
+superior to anything they had yet seen; it was Russia leather of the
+finest quality and he was willing to sell it for less than it cost if
+the Sailor was open to the deal.  The Sailor was not averse from doing
+business, as Ginger felt sure would be the case, when the material
+advantages had been pointed out to him.  But as Ginger had not the belt
+upon him he suggested that they should call at his lodgings on their
+way back to the docks in order that the Sailor might inspect it.
+
+Ginger's lodgings were within a stone's throw of the wharf of Antcliff
+and Jackson, Limited.  Not only were they very clean and comfortable,
+but also remarkably convenient; in fact, they were most desirable
+lodgings in every way.  Their only drawback was they were not cheap.
+Otherwise they were first class.
+
+By a coincidence the Sailor, it seemed, was in need of good lodgings as
+well as a belt for his money.  Before he returned to the wharf of
+Antcliff and Jackson, Limited, at one o'clock, he had been provided
+with things so necessary to his comfort, well-being, and social status.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The Sailor paid six-and-six for the belt of Russia leather, and in
+Ginger's opinion that was as good as getting it for nothing.  Also he
+agreed to share bed and board with Ginger for the sum of twelve
+shillings a week.  It was top price, Ginger allowed, but then the
+accommodation was _extra_.  Out of the window of the bedroom you could
+pitch a stone into the wharf of Antcliff and Jackson, Limited.
+
+This arrangement, in Ginger's opinion, was providential for both
+parties.  Such lodgings would have been beyond Ginger's means had he
+been unable to find a decent chap to share them with him.  Then the
+Sailor was young, in Ginger's opinion, in spite of the fact that he had
+been six years at sea.  It would be a great thing in Ginger's opinion
+for so young a sailor to be taken in hand by a landsman of experience
+until he got a bit more used to _terrier firmer_.
+
+So much was the Sailor impressed by Ginger's disinterestedness that at
+six o'clock that evening, when his first day's work was done, he
+brought his gear from the wharf to No. 1, Paradise Alley.  Ginger
+superintended its removal in the manner of an uncle deeply concerned
+for the welfare of a favorite nephew.  Indeed this was Ginger's
+permanent attitude to the Sailor from this time on; all the same, he
+received twelve shillings in advance for a week's board and lodging.
+Uncle and nephew then sat down to a high tea of hot sausages, with
+unlimited toast and dripping, before a good fire, in a front parlor so
+clean and comfortable that the mind of the Sailor was carried back a
+long six years to Mother and the Foreman Shunter.
+
+When Henry Harper sat down to this meal with Ginger opposite, and that
+philanthropist removed the cover from three comely sausages, measured
+them carefully and helped the Sailor to the larger one-and-a-half, his
+first thought was that he was now as near heaven as he was ever likely
+to get.  What a change from the food, the company, and the squalor of
+the _Margaret Carey_!  Klondyke himself could not have handed him the
+larger sausage-and-a-half with an air more genuinely polite.  There was
+a self-possession about Ginger that was almost as wine and music to the
+torn soul of Henry Harper.
+
+As the Sailor sat eating his sausage-and-a-half and after the manner of
+a sybarite dipping in abundant gravy the perfectly delicious toast and
+dripping, he felt he would never be able to repay the debt he already
+owed to Ginger.  That floating hell which had been his home for six
+long years, that other hell the native haunt of Auntie where all his
+early childhood had been passed, even that more contiguous hell in the
+next street but two, the abode of Grandma, were this evening a thousand
+miles away.  Just as the mere presence of Klondyke had once given him
+courage and self-respect which in his darkest hours since he had never
+altogether lost, so now, after such a meal, the mere sight of Ginger
+sitting at the other side of the fire, smoking Log Cabin, put him in
+new heart, touched him, if not with a sense of joy, with a sense of
+hope.
+
+As became a man of parts Ginger was not content to sit for the rest of
+the evening smoking Log Cabin and gazing into the fire.  At a quarter
+past seven, by the cuckoo clock on the chimneypiece, there came a knock
+at the outer door of the room which opened on the street.  This was to
+herald the arrival of Ginger's own private newspaper, the _Evening
+Mercury_, which had been brought by a tattered urchin of nine, of whom
+the Sailor caught a passing glimpse, and as in a glass darkly beheld
+his former self.
+
+In the eyes of the Sailor hardly anything could have ministered so much
+to Ginger's social position as that every evening of his life, Sundays
+excepted, his own newspaper should be delivered at No. 1, Paradise
+Alley.  It was impossible for the Sailor to forget his early days in
+spite of the fact that fortune had come to him now in a miraculous way.
+His world was still divided into those who sold papers and those who
+bought them.  Ginger clearly belonged to the latter exclusive and
+princely caste.  He was of the class of Klondyke--of Klondyke who in
+his shore-goings in the uttermost parts of the earth behaved in an
+indescribably regal and plutocratic manner.  Sometimes it had appeared
+to the Sailor, such were the amazing uses to which Klondyke had put his
+money, that the earth was his and all the lands and the waters thereof.
+
+Ginger's ideas were not as princely as those of Klondyke; that was, in
+regard to money itself.  He did not throw money about in the way that
+Klondyke did, nor had he Klondyke's air of genial magnificence which
+vanquished all sorts and conditions of men and women.  But in their own
+way Ginger's ideas were quite as imperial.
+
+As soon as Ginger opened his evening paper he remarked, with a short
+whistle, "I see Wednesday has beat the Villa."
+
+"No," said the incredulous Sailor.
+
+It was an act of politeness on the part of the Sailor to be
+incredulous.  He might have accepted the fact without any display of
+emotion.  But he felt it was due to his feelings that he should make
+some kind of comment, for they had been stirred considerably by the
+victory of Wednesday over the Villa.
+
+"Win by much?" asked the Sailor, his heart suddenly beginning to beat
+under his seaman's jersey.
+
+"Three two," said Ginger.
+
+"At Brum?"
+
+"No, at Sheffle, in foggy weather, on a holdin' turf."
+
+The Sailor's eyes glowed.  And then with his chin in his hands he gazed
+deep into the fire.
+
+"I once seen the Villa," he said in a dreaming voice.  It was the
+proudest memory of his life.
+
+Ginger withdrew his mind from a consideration of the Police Report and
+the latest performances of the Government.
+
+"At the Palace?"  Ginger's tone was deep as becomes one entering upon
+an epic subject.
+
+"No," said the Sailor, the doors of memory unlocked.  "At Blackhampton.
+The Villa come to play the Rovers.  My! they could play a bit.  Won the
+Cup that year.  Me and young Arris climbed a tree overlookin' the
+ground.  Young Arris got pinched by a rozzer."
+
+Ginger was not impressed by the reminiscence.  It seemed a pity that a
+chap who had been six years before the mast, and not a bad sort of
+fellow, should give himself away like that.  From the style and manner
+of the anecdote it was clear to this exact thinker that the Sailor had
+begun pretty low down in the scale.  In the pause which followed the
+Sailor shivered like a warhorse who hears the battle from afar.  The
+memories of his youth were surging upon him.  In the meantime, Ginger,
+who appeared to be frowning over the Government and the Police news,
+was watching the Sailor's eyes very intently.  He was watching those
+strange eyes with a cool detachment.
+
+"Enery," said Ginger, choosing his words carefully, "if I was you, do
+you know what I'd do?"
+
+Enery didn't.
+
+"I'd very seriously be considerin' how I could earn my four quid a
+week."
+
+The Sailor smiled sadly.  He knew from cold experience that such a
+remark was sheer after-supper romance.  Still it must be very nice to
+own a mind like Ginger's, which could weave such fantasy about the
+facts of life.
+
+"If I was you," proceeded Ginger, "I wouldn't sleep in my bed until I
+was earnin' my four quid a week, winter _and_ summer."
+
+The Sailor who knew the price exacted in blood and tears to earn a
+pound a month could only smile.
+
+"I'm goin' out for it meself," said Ginger.  "And I'm not so tall as
+you.  And I haven't your make and shape, I haven't your turn o' the
+leg, I haven't your arms an' wrisses."
+
+Ginger might have been speaking Dutch for all that the Sailor could
+follow the emanations of his remarkable intellect.
+
+"See here,"--an unnecessary adjuration since the Sailor was looking in
+solemn wonder with both eyes---"my pal Dinkie Dawson has just been
+engaged for three years by the Blackhampton Rovers at four thick uns a
+week.  Fact."
+
+The Sailor didn't doubt it.  The very genius of scepticism would have
+respected such an announcement.
+
+"Dinkie Dawson, if you please," said Ginger.  "Why, I used to punch his
+head fearful.  He did my ciphering at school--an' now--an' now----!"
+Ginger was overcome by emotion.  "But if a mug like Dink--yes, mark
+you, a _mug_ can earn big money, I'm sort of thinkin' _that_ puts it
+right up to William Herbert Jukes, Esquire."
+
+The eyes of the Sailor glowed like stars in the light of the fire.  It
+was almost as if he had heard the flutter of the wings of destiny.  As
+a boy of nine flying shoeless and stockingless through the icy mud of
+Blackhampton, bawling, "Result of the Cup tie," he had felt deep in his
+heart the first stab of ambition.  One day he would help the Rovers
+bring the Cup to his native city.  That was no more than a dream.  The
+Rovers were heroes and supermen--not that Henry Harper was able to
+formulate them in terms of psychological accuracy.  And here was
+Ginger, a new and very remarkable friend, whom fate had thrown across
+his path, seated within three yards of him, setting his soul on fire.
+
+"Why not?"  There was no fire in the soul of Ginger.  His voice was
+arctic cold, but the purpose in it was deadly.  "If a guy like Dink,
+why not me?"  A slight pause.  "And if Ginger Jukes, who is five foot
+six an' draws the beam at eleven stun in his birthday suit, why not Mr.
+Enery Arper?"  And Ginger looked across at the Sailor almost with pity.
+
+The heart of the Sailor began to thump violently.  And there came
+something soft and large in his throat.
+
+"How tall are you, Sailor?  Six foot?"  The eye of an expert traversed
+the finely turned form.
+
+"Thereabouts."
+
+"What's your fighting weight in the buff?"
+
+"Dunno."
+
+"Ought to know to a bounce.  But it don't matter.  You'll thicken.  How
+old next birthday?"
+
+"Nineteen."
+
+"That's a good age.  Wish I was.  I'm one and twenty."
+
+The Sailor thought he looked more.
+
+"I'm a lot more in some things," said Ginger.  "But at football I shall
+not be one and twenty until the middle o' Janawerry."
+
+The Sailor was a little out of his depth.  There was a subtlety about
+Ginger that went far beyond anything he had ever met.  Even Klondyke,
+great man as he was, seemed a mere child by comparison with this
+forcible thinker.
+
+"Nineteen is just the age," said Ginger, "to learn to chuck yerself
+about.  But I dare say you know how to do that, having follered the
+sea."
+
+"I can climb a bit," the Sailor admitted with great modesty.
+
+"Can yer jump?"
+
+The Sailor could jump a bit too.
+
+"Could you throw yerself at the ball like a rattlesnake if you see it
+fizzing for the fur corner o' the net?"
+
+The Sailor's modesty could not hazard an opinion on a matter of such
+technical complexity.
+
+"I expect so," said Ginger, with a condescension that was most
+agreeable.  "You are just the build for a goalkeeper.  If it's fine
+tomorrow dinner-hour, we'll put you through your paces on Cox's Piece.
+I'm thinkin', Enery, you and me will soon be out after that four quid.
+Anyhow, I'll answer for Mr. W. H."
+
+With the air of a Bismarck, Mr. W. H. Jukes, _alias_ Ginger, resumed an
+extremely concentrated perusal of the evening's news.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+That night the repose of the Sailor was rather disturbed.  For one
+thing he was unused to sleeping on dry land; for another Ginger took up
+a lot of the bed, and as he slept next the wall, the Sailor's position
+on the outer verge was decidedly perilous.  Also when Ginger lay on his
+back, which he did about two, he was a snorer.  Therefore the Sailor
+had to adjust himself to circumstances before he could begin to repose
+at all.
+
+Even when slumber had really set in, which was not until after three,
+he had to wriggle his lean form into the famous but very tight jersey
+of the Blackhampton Rovers, the historic blue and chocolate.  But what
+a moment it was when he came proudly on to the field in the midst of
+the heroes of his early dreams, coolly buttoning his goalkeeping
+gloves, and pretending not to be aware that thousands were massed tier
+upon tier around the amphitheater craning their necks to get a glimpse
+of him, and shouting themselves hoarse with their cries of battle!
+
+It was odd that his first game with his beloved Rovers should be
+against the doughtiest of their foes, the world-famous Villa.  And it
+seemed at first that the occasion would be too much for him.  But
+Ginger was there, ruddy and insouciant, also in a magnificent new
+jersey.  Ginger was playing full back, and just as the match was about
+to begin he turned round to the goalkeeper and said, "Now, Sailor, pull
+up your socks, old friend."  But the queer thing was, the voice did not
+belong to Ginger, it was the voice of Klondyke.  Then confusion came.
+It was not Ginger, it was Klondyke himself who was playing full back,
+Klondyke the noblest hero of them all.  So much was the Sailor
+astonished by the discovery that he fell out of bed, without disturbing
+Ginger who was in occupation of three parts of it and snoring like a
+traction engine.
+
+Next day, the dinner-hour being fine, the Sailor made his debut as a
+football player on Cox's Piece in the presence of a critical assembly.
+A number of the choicest spirits of the neighborhood, some in work,
+some out of it, but one and all fired with real enthusiasm for a noble
+game, gathered with a football about a quarter past twelve.  This was a
+stalwart company, but as soon as Ginger appeared on the scene he took
+sole command of it.  There were those who could kick a football as well
+as he, there were those who were older, bigger, stronger, but by sheer
+pressure of character in that assembly Ginger's word was law.
+
+"Parkins," said Ginger, "you can't keep goal.  Come out of it, Parkins.
+Here's a chap as can."
+
+While the crestfallen and unwilling Parkins deferred to the master
+mind, a wave of solemn curiosity passed through the cognoscenti of
+Cox's Piece.  The Sailor was seen to doff his wonderful fur cap, which
+alone was a guaranty of untold possibilities in its wearer, to roll up
+solemnly the sleeves of his tattered blue seaman's jersey, and to take
+his place in the goal which had been formed by two heaps of coats.
+
+"He's a sailor," said Ginger, for the general information.  But the
+statement was entirely superfluous.  It was clear to the humblest
+intelligence that he was a sailor and nothing else, but Ginger knew the
+value of such an announcement.  To a landsman--and these were landsmen
+all--a sailor is a sailor.  Strange glories are woven round his
+visionary brow.  He is a being apart.  Things are permitted to him in
+speech and deed that would excite criticism in an ordinary mortal.  For
+instance, the first shot at goal, which Ginger took himself by divine
+right, and quite an easy one, by design, for a real goalkeeper to
+parry, the Sailor missed altogether.  Had he been aught but a sailor
+his reputation as far as Cox's Piece was concerned would have been gone
+forever.
+
+"Ain't got his sea legs yet."  Ginger's coolness and impressiveness
+were extraordinary.  "Been eight year at sea.  Round the world nine
+times.  Wrecked twice.  Seed the serpent off the coast o' Madagascar.
+Give me the ball, Igson.  Wait till he gets his eye in an' you'll see."
+
+Ginger's second shot at goal was easier than his first, and the Sailor,
+to the gratification of his mentor, was able to mobilize in time to
+stop it.
+
+"What did I tell yer?" said Ginger.  "You'll see what he can do when he
+gets his sea legs."
+
+Within a week the Sailor was the unofficial hero of Cox's Piece.
+Ginger, of course, was the only authentic one.  But he was too great a
+man ever to be visited by a suspicion of jealousy.  Jealousy is a
+second rate passion, and whatever Ginger was he was not second rate.
+Besides the Sailor's remarkable success on Cox's Piece increased the
+prestige of his discoverer.
+
+The Sailor took to goalkeeping as a duck takes to water.  The truth was
+he was a goalkeeper born, as a poet is born or a soldier or a musician.
+His slender body was hung on wires, his muscles were toughened into
+steel and whipcord by long years of hard and perilous training.  Then
+his eye, keen and clear as a hawk's, was quick and true.  Also he was
+active as a cat, and with very little practice was able to compass that
+_tour de force_ of the goalkeeper's art, the trick of flinging himself
+full length upon the ground in order to parry a swift shot at short
+range.
+
+Ginger was a wonderfully shrewd judge of men.  And this faculty had
+never shown itself more clearly than in seeing a born goalkeeper in the
+Sailor even before that young man had made his debut on Cox's Piece.
+The brilliant form of his protege was a personal triumph for Ginger.
+His reputation for omniscience was more firmly established than ever.
+In little more than a fortnight the Sailor was able to keep goal not
+merely to the admiration of Cox's Piece, his fame had begun to spread.
+
+It was not that Henry Harper, even in these critical days, was wholly
+absorbed in the business of learning to play football.  Of vast
+importance to his progress in the world, as in Ginger's opinion that
+art was, there was still time and opportunity for the Sailor to think
+of other things.
+
+He was much impressed by Ginger's perusal of the evening's news, which
+always took place after supper.  At the same time he was troubled.
+Ginger took it for granted that Enery could read a newspaper.  He
+treated that as a matter of course, perhaps for the reason that he had
+seen the Sailor sign his name, laboriously it was true, in the
+time-book of Antcliff and Jackson, Limited.  But Ginger, with all his
+shrewdness, made a bad mistake.  He little guessed that the Sailor's
+signature stood for the sum of his learning.  He little guessed when he
+flung the _Evening Mercury_ across to the Sailor after he had done with
+it himself, and the Sailor thanked him with that odd politeness which
+rather puzzled him, and became absorbed in the paper's perusal, that
+the young man could hardly read a word.
+
+On the evening this first happened the Sailor had intended no deceit.
+He was so straight by nature that he could not have set himself
+deliberately to take in anybody.  The deception came about without any
+will of his to deceive at all; and he was soon having to maintain a
+false impression which he had not intended to create.  All the same, he
+would have been mortally ashamed to let the cat out of his bag.  He
+well knew that it would have been a crushing blow to that terrible
+thing, the pride of Ginger.
+
+The young man wrestling behind the _Evening Mercury_ with the simplest
+words it contained, and able to make very little of them in the way of
+sense because they so seldom came together, reflected ruefully that he
+ought at all costs to have borne in mind Klondyke's advice.  "Stick to
+the reading and writing, old friend.  That's your line of country.
+You'll get more out of those than ever you'll get out of the sea."
+Bitterly he regretted now that he had not set store by those inspired
+words.  He began to see clearly that you could not hope to cut much ice
+ashore unless you were a man of education.
+
+He was able to write his name, and that was all.  Also he knew his
+alphabet and could count up to a hundred if you gave him plenty of
+time.  There were also a few words he knew at sight, and thirty,
+perhaps, short ones, and the easiest in the terribly difficult English
+language, that he could spell with an effort.  This was the sum of his
+knowledge, and the whole of it was due to Klondyke, who had given many
+a half-hour of his leisure to imparting it in the cold and damp misery
+of the half-deck with no more than a sputter of candle by which to do
+it.
+
+Sailor had clung desperately to all the scraps of learning which
+Klondyke had given him, but when his friend left the ship he had not
+had the grit to plow the hard furrow of knowledge for himself.  Somehow
+he had not been able to stick it.  He needed the inspiration of
+Klondyke's voice and presence, of Klondyke's humor and friendliness.
+He could hardly bring himself to open the Bible his friend had given
+him, and when he tried to read the _Brooklyn Eagle_ he couldn't see it
+for tears.
+
+Now he had left the sea for good, he knew a bitter price would be
+exacted for his weakness.  To begin with it would be impossible to tell
+Ginger the truth.  Ginger was the kind of man who would look down on
+him if once he knew his secret.  Besides it was a grievous handicap
+ashore never to have been to school.  Moreover the Sailor was so honest
+that any kind of deception hurt him.
+
+"Read that yarn about Kitchener and the Gippy?"
+
+"No," said the miserable Sailor.
+
+"Better.  Page three.  Bottom.  Damn good.  What?"
+
+"Yep," said the Sailor, wishing to commit the act of hari-kari.  He
+must find a way out.  The longer the pretense was kept up the worse it
+would be.  But it was impossible to tell Ginger that he couldn't even
+find the yarn of Kitchener and the Gippy, let alone attempt to read it.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Ginger was a wonderful chap, but his nature was hard.  He had little of
+Klondyke's far-sighted sympathy, which in circumstances of ever growing
+difficulty would have been an enormous help to the Sailor.
+
+Henry Harper had felt no shame when he told the dismal truth to
+Klondyke that he could neither read nor write.  But he would rather
+have his tongue cut out than tell that particular truth to Ginger.
+Still the game of make-believe must not go on.  It made the young man
+horribly uncomfortable to be driven to play it after supper every
+night.  Something must be done if the esteem, perhaps the friendship,
+of Ginger was not to be forfeited.
+
+The Sailor was no fool.  Therefore he set his wits very seriously to
+work to grasp the nettle without exposing his ignorance more than was
+absolutely necessary.  He spent anxious hours, not only during the day,
+but in the watches of the night, trying to find a way out.
+
+One Saturday evening he sat in a frame of mind bordering upon ecstasy.
+At the instance of Ginger, who was the captain and treasurer of the
+club, the chairman of the committee, and also one of its
+vice-presidents, the Sailor had been invited that afternoon to keep
+goal for the Isle of Dogs Albion.  The Sailor had done so.  Ginger had
+shaken hands with him impressively after the match, and had solemnly
+told him that he had won it for his side, which was truly the case.
+And the fact was frankly admitted by the rest of the team.
+
+"Mark my words," said Ginger to his peers, "that feller's young at
+present, but he plays for England when he gets a bit more powder in his
+hold."
+
+This was talking, but no member of the Isle of Dogs Albion was so
+misguided as to argue the matter.  Ginger's word was the law of
+nations.  Besides, the Sailor was a goalkeeping genius; his form that
+afternoon could not have been surpassed by Robinson of Chelsea.
+
+That evening as the Sailor sat gazing, chin on hands, into the fire,
+while Ginger read out the results of the afternoon's matches, he began
+to think to a purpose.
+
+"Sunderland hasn't half put it acrost the Arsenal.  Villa and Wolves a
+draw."
+
+"Ginger," said the Sailor wistfully, "if you had been to sea for near
+seven year an' you had forgot a bit o' what you knowed at school, what
+would you do about it?"
+
+"Do about what?  'Otspur hasn't half punctured Liverpool, I don't
+think."
+
+"Do about learnin' what you've forgot?"
+
+"Come again, pardner.  I'm not Old Moore.  Manchester City and
+Birmingham no goals half time."
+
+"Do about learnin' a bit o' figurin' what you ought to ha' knowed afore
+you went to sea?"
+
+"Do you think I'm Datas?"  The flash of scorn seared the soul of Henry
+Harper like the live end of an electric wire.  "It's a silly juggins
+question.  How the hell should I know?"
+
+No, Ginger was not helpful.
+
+But tonight the Sailor was in the seventh heaven, he was walking on
+air, therefore with a courage not his as a rule he would not own defeat.
+
+"Suppose you'd almost forgot how to read the news.  What'd you do about
+it?"
+
+"Do about it?  Why, I'd pleadin' well go and drown meself."
+
+The Sailor drew in his breath in a little gasp.  But the matter was so
+tragic that he must go on.  And it was no more than Klondyke had
+foreseen.
+
+"Perhaps there's someone as would learn me," said the Sailor half to
+himself.  And then his pluck gave out.
+
+Silence fell for twenty minutes.  Ginger smoked Log Cabin and read the
+evening's news, while the Sailor continued to stare in the fire.  Then
+Ginger flung across the _Evening Mercury_ with, as the Sailor fancied,
+a slight touch of contempt.  But Henry Harper had not the heart to take
+up the paper tonight.  He must never take it up again until he had
+learned to read it!
+
+In the meantime Ginger reflected.
+
+"Sailor," he said, looking at the fire-lit figure, with vibrations of
+depth and power in his voice, "you'll go far.  That's my opinion, an' I
+don't talk out o' the back o' my neck as a general rule.  You'll go
+far."
+
+This conveyed nothing to the Sailor.
+
+"I'm tellin' yer," said Ginger.  Rising with his freckled face shining
+and his deep mind fired by ambition, he took from a drawer in the
+supper table a sheet of writing-paper, an envelope, and a blotter which
+a philanthropic insurance company had presented to the landlady, an
+ancient ink bottle and a prehistoric pen from the chimneypiece, cleared
+a space by piling saucers upon plates and cups on the top of them, and
+then sat down to compose the following letter:
+
+
+DEAR DINK,
+
+I write these few lines hoping you are well as they leave me at
+present.  A chap has just joined our club as I think you ought to know
+about.  He's a sailor, and his goal-keeping is marvelous.  None of our
+chaps has seen anything like it.  Thought you might like to know this
+as the Hotspurs is after him.  Two of their directors came to see him
+play this afternoon, and from what I hear they are going to make him an
+offer.  But from what he tells me he would rather play for the Rovers
+than anybody as he is Blackhampton born, and though he's been nine
+times round the world and wrecked twice, he thinks there's no town like
+it.  At present he is young and green, being took to sea as quite a
+kid, but I honestly think your directors ought to know about him, as he
+will be snapped up at once.  I can arrange to bring him over to
+Blackhampton any Saturday for your club to look at if they care to give
+us both a trial with the Rovers' second team.  We would both come for
+our expenses, railway fares, and one day's wages, but he won't come
+without me as we lodge together and play for the same club.  You can
+take it from me he's a Nonesuch.
+
+Yours truly,
+  W. H. JUKES.
+
+P. S.--This season I am in pretty fair form myself at right full back.
+W. H. J.
+
+
+Ginger wrote this letter with great pains in a very clear and masterful
+hand.  He addressed it to Mr. D. Dawson (Blackhampton Rovers F.C.), 12
+Curzon Street, Blackhampton.  Then, without saying a word to the
+Nonesuch, he went out to post it at the end of the street.  Having done
+this, thinking hard, he made his way to the little alien hairdresser in
+the High Road, who had the honor of his patronage, and sternly ordered
+"a hair cut, and see that you go close with the lawn mower."
+
+Meanwhile the Sailor sat by the fire.  Presently the room was invaded
+by Mrs. Sparks, the landlady.  She was a fatigued and faded creature,
+but honest, discreet, and thoroughly respectable in Ginger's opinion,
+and in that of his fellow lodger there could be no higher.  Besides it
+was no secret that Mrs. Sparks had seen better days.  She was the widow
+of a mariner, who had borne a gallant part in the bombardment of
+Alexandria, although his country and hers appeared rather to have
+overlooked the fact.
+
+The Sailor was a little afraid of Mrs. Sparks.  She was to his mind a
+lady, and overawed by her sex in general, the young man was rather
+embarrassed by her air of austerity.  She never spoke without choosing
+her words, also the order in which to place them; and Ginger, who was
+frankly and cynically contemptuous in private discourse of Mrs. Sparks'
+sex, was always careful to address her as "Ma'am," a fact which as far
+as the Sailor was concerned amply vouched for her status.
+
+At ordinary times the Sailor would not have dared to speak to his
+landlady unless she had first spoken to him.  But tonight he was in a
+state of excitement.  By some curious means the events of the afternoon
+had translated him.  A tiny bud of ambition was breaking its filaments
+in his brain.
+
+While Mrs. Sparks, weary and sallow of countenance, was clearing the
+table, a compelling force made the Sailor remove his chin from his
+hands and cease gazing into the fire.
+
+"Beggin' pardon, m'm," he said, with the odd, almost cringing
+humbleness which always inspired him in his passages with even the
+least considerable of Mrs. Sparks' sex, "would you mind if I ask you a
+question?"
+
+The landlady was a little surprised.  Her lodgers were not in the habit
+of taking her into their confidence.  But in spite of a bleak exterior
+she was less formidable than she looked, and this the Sailor had felt
+to be the case.  In his tone, moreover, was a note to touch the heart
+of any woman.
+
+"Not at all," said Mrs. Sparks genteelly.
+
+"If you had been seven year at sea," said the young man, enfolding her
+with his deep eyes, "an' you had forgot your figurin', what would you
+do about it?"
+
+Mrs. Sparks was so completely at a loss that the Sailor felt it to be
+his duty to make himself a little clearer.
+
+"Suppose, m'm, you had forgot all yer knowed of your writin' and
+readin' while you was at sea, what 'u'd you do about _that_?"
+
+Mrs. Sparks shook her head.  It was a ladylike expression of hopeless
+defeat.
+
+The Sailor grew desperate.
+
+"See here, m'm."  He took up the _Evening Mercury_ with a fierceness
+which immensely surprised Mrs. Sparks; he looked so gentle that he
+didn't seem to have it in him.  "It's like this year.  I can't read a
+word o' this pleadin' paper.  Beg parding, lady."  Her face had
+hardened at such a term of the sea.  The voice of the young man died
+suddenly as if thoroughly ashamed of its own vehemence.
+
+However the vehemence had done the trick.
+
+"I would learn," said the landlady curtly.
+
+"Yep," said the Sailor, with the blush of a girl, "it's what I want to."
+
+"Then why not?"
+
+"Dunno how, m'm," he said helplessly.
+
+"Why not go to a school?"
+
+"Can't while I'm at work, m'm."
+
+"There are schools you can go to at night."
+
+Mrs. Sparks swept up the crumbs, whisked away the table cloth, replaced
+it with a cheerful looking red one, and retired with a look which the
+Sailor took for disdain.
+
+No, he ought never to have let the cat out of the bag.  It would have
+been better to have bitten off his tongue.  But after all it was only
+Mrs. Sparks ... although Mrs. Sparks was Mrs. Sparks.  He must be very
+careful how he let on to people about his shameful ignorance.
+
+He was a fool to worry about it.  "It's nothing to be ashamed of, old
+friend," Klondyke had said, but the world was not made up of Klondykes.
+It was something to be ashamed of if you looked at it as Mrs. Sparks
+and Ginger did.  He felt, as far as they were concerned, he would never
+live it down.  Once more he looked into the fire in order to resume the
+captaincy of his soul.  But it was no use.  Fix his will as he might,
+the famous blue and chocolate jerseys of the Blackhampton Rovers had
+yielded permanently to Mrs. Sparks with a look of scorn in her face.
+
+He got up and in sudden despair took his cap off the peg behind the
+door.  No longer could he stay in the room with his shame.  More space,
+more air was needed.  As he flung open the outer door, a gust of damp
+fog came in; and with it came the squat, powerful, slightly bow-legged
+figure of Ginger, looking more than ever like a man of destiny now he
+had had his hair cut.
+
+"Where goin'?"
+
+"Walk," said the Sailor miserably.
+
+"Nice night for a walk.  Rum one you are."  Had the Sailor's promise as
+a goalkeeper been less remarkable Ginger would have been tempted to
+rebuke such irresponsible behavior.  As it was he was content merely to
+place it on record.
+
+"Well if you must, you must," said Ginger magisterially, closing the
+door.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+At five minutes past six on Tuesday evening, when Ginger came home from
+work, a letter was waiting for him on the sitting-room chimneypiece.
+The first thing he noticed was that it bore the Blackhampton postmark,
+but being a very cool and sure hand, he did not open it at once.  He
+preferred to fulfil the first and obvious duty of a self-respecting
+citizen of "cleaning himself up" at the scullery sink with water from
+the pump, and of sitting down to a dish of tripe and fried onions,
+always a favorite with him, and particularly on Tuesday when the tripe
+was fresh, while the Sailor, looking rather forlorn, poured out the
+tea.  Ginger chose to do all this with astounding sang-froid before
+opening Dinkie Dawson's letter.
+
+He read slowly, with unruffled countenance.  Then with a noncommittal
+air, he threw the letter carelessly across the table to the Sailor, who
+had to retrieve it from the slop basin which fortunately was empty.
+
+"Read it," said Ginger, his face a mask, his tone ice cold, without a
+trace of emotion.
+
+The Sailor blushed vividly.
+
+"Read it, yer fool," said Ginger.  The pitiless autocrat was now
+striking through the tone of detachment.
+
+Hopelessly confused, the Sailor turned the letter the right side up.
+But he didn't attempt to read.  He knew it was no use.  There was not a
+line he could understand, yet he was forced to hold it before his eyes.
+
+"What do you think o' that, young feller, my lad?"
+
+Stern triumph was striking now through Ginger's almost terrible
+detachment.  "What do you think on it, eh?"
+
+The Sailor was not able to think anything of it at the moment.
+
+"None so dusty--what?"  Ginger fairly glowed with a sense of victory.
+
+"Yep," said the Sailor feebly.
+
+"About fixes it--what?"
+
+"Yep," said the Sailor.
+
+He gave back the letter to Ginger with nervous guilt, neither knowing
+why it was none so dusty nor what it was that it fixed.
+
+"Yer silly perisher.  Don't yer see what it means?"
+
+The Sailor nodded feebly.
+
+"Very well, then, why don't yer say so?"
+
+There was the light of contempt in the truculent eyes of Ginger.  The
+Sailor simply could not meet them.
+
+"Blymy"--the scorn of Ginger was withering--"if you hadn't been nine
+times round the world afore the mast, I should say you was just a
+guy--I should straight.  Don't you understand what Dinkie Dawson says?"
+
+The Sailor's stammer might be taken for, "Yep."
+
+"Very well, then," said Ginger, so savagely that he had to read the
+_Evening Mercury_ in order to calm himself.
+
+The Sailor began to wish he was dead.  And then suddenly Ginger laid
+down the paper.
+
+"This touch is goin' to cost you money, young Mister Man," he said,
+magniloquently.
+
+The Sailor's face was haggard.
+
+"You'll have to lay out thirty bob on a new suit of clothes to start
+with."
+
+The Sailor nodded.
+
+"Of course, you can get a suit for less, but myself I'm all for
+quality."
+
+The Sailor nodded.
+
+"If you'll take my advice, young feller, you'll go to Dago and Rogers
+and get one o' them blue suitings as they shows in the winder, neat but
+not gaudy, cut in the West End style.  I'm thinkin' o' gettin' one
+meself; you simply can't help lookin' a gentleman in one o' them, with
+a spotted tie and a double turnover collar."
+
+"Yep," said the Sailor, to whom all this was as intelligible as a play
+of Sophocles.
+
+"You'll also want a nice neat Gladstone."
+
+"Yep," said the Sailor abjectly.
+
+"Brown paper parcel and your boots tied on by string at the end o' it
+won't do in this scene, young feller."
+
+"No," said the Sailor.
+
+"Got to dress the shop winder a bit in this act."  A strange inner
+light was beginning to gleam in the eyes of Ginger.  "Nice new
+Gladstone, pair o' nice wide knickers cut saucy round the knee, and a
+set o' new laces in your boots.  And I'm thinking one o' those all-wool
+white sweaters you can get at Tallow's might turn out a good
+investment."
+
+The Sailor nodded feebly.
+
+"Never spile the ship for a ha'porth o' tar.  Allus dress the part.
+Never stint a coat o' paint for Mrs. Jarley's Waxworks."
+
+The Sailor nodded.
+
+"You've got to learn to knock the public silly," concluded Ginger, with
+a ferocity almost frightening, "if you are ever goin' to cut any ice on
+this bleedin' planet."
+
+Utterly nonplussed, the Sailor went early to bed with his shame.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+In the opinion of Cox's Piece, "lift" was not the word for the bearing
+of Ginger on the morrow at the mid-day gathering.  It was pardonable,
+no doubt; Ginger was Ginger, a being apart.  Twopenny Sturgess wouldn't
+half have had it dusted out of him.  It wouldn't have been stood from
+Gogo, or Hogan, or Foxey Green, but with Ginger it was different.  It
+was realized in a way that was almost sinister by the cognoscenti of
+Cox's Piece that if there was such a thing existing in the world,
+Ginger was really and truly It.
+
+Nevertheless, Pouncer Rogers was so unwise as to put into words the
+unspoken thought that was in every mind when he told Ginger bluntly to
+his face "that he'd believe it when he seed it."
+
+"Yer call me a liar," said Ginger, drawing himself up to his full
+height of five feet six inches with remarkable dignity.
+
+"I said I'd believe it when I seed it," said the heroic Pouncer.
+
+"Sailor here read the letter," said Ginger, underplaying from the sheer
+strength of his hand.  "Didn't you, Sailor boy?  _You_ read Dinkie
+Dawson's letter?"
+
+"Yep," said the miserable Sailor.
+
+"An' didn't he say a day's wages and railway fares both ways?"
+
+The answer of the Sailor was understood to be in the affirmative.
+
+"First class, o' course," said Pouncer, with a deliberate wink at Gogo
+and Twopenny.
+
+Ginger's hand was so full that he could afford to treat the observation
+on its merits.
+
+"_Third_ class, Pouncer.  It was _third_, Sailor boy?"  The appeal to
+Sailor boy had a superb touch of condescension.  Pouncer would
+cheerfully have given a week's wages for the privilege of slaying
+Ginger.
+
+"Yep--third," muttered the miserable one.
+
+"Ginger Jukes," said the defiant Pouncer, "if you want my 'pinion, you
+don't know Dinkie Dawson at all.  That's my 'pinion."
+
+"Your opinion was not _ast_, young Pouncer."  Ginger's air was that of
+a Napoleon.  "An' when anyone pleadin' well _asts_ it, Pouncer, you can
+give it.  Perhaps you'll say that Sailor didn't read Dinkie's letter?"
+
+"So he says," sneered Pouncer.
+
+The Sailor winced, but the cognoscenti were much too busy to notice him.
+
+"You are never goin' to call _him_ a liar," said Ginger.
+
+"I call him nothing."
+
+"You had better not," said Ginger, who noticed that Pouncer was drawing
+in his horns a bit.  "_I_ can afford to take your lip, young Pouncer
+Rogers.  I'm used to it an' you are no class, anyway, but if you call
+the Sailor here a liar, he'll have to put it acrost you.  Won't you,
+Sailor boy?"
+
+No reply from the Sailor.
+
+"I call him nothing," said Pouncer, coming back a bit at this rather
+unexpected silence on the part of the Sailor.  "But I simply says he
+pleadin' well didn't read no pleadin' letter from Dinkie Dawson, that's
+all I simply says."
+
+"Young Pouncer," said Ginger, "you have called the Sailor a liar."  He
+turned to his protege with the anxious air of an extraordinarily polite
+Samaritan.  "I'll hold your coat, Sailor boy.  You've took too much
+already from the likes o' him.  Give me your coat.  You are bound to
+put it acrost him now."
+
+Ginger looked around magisterially; the cognoscenti concurred as one.
+Already the Sailor's coat was in Ginger's hand.  In the next moment he
+had rolled up the sleeves of the Sailor's blue jersey, remarking as he
+did so, "If ever I see a chap on his bended knees a-lookin' for
+trouble, it's this here young Pouncer.  Sailor boy, if you'll be ruled
+by me, you won't half give him his gruel."
+
+"It's more than you can, Ginger Jukes," said Pouncer, with ill-timed
+and unworthy defiance.
+
+Ginger was aware of that fact.  In the first place, fighting was not
+his long suit.  He had too much intellect to love so vulgar a pastime
+merely for its own sake.  Not only was it violent and dangerous, but it
+seldom meant anything in particular when you were through with it.  All
+the same, it had its uses.  Pouncer had been getting above himself for
+some little time now.  If he didn't soon receive a proper licking from
+somebody, the hegemony of Cox's Piece might cease to be a sinecure.
+
+"His left's fairly useful," whispered Ginger, as he brought his man up
+to the scratch.  "But that's all he's got.  Now mind you punch a hole
+right through him."
+
+It was a rather disappointing scrap.  But for this it would be unfair
+to blame either Pouncer or the Sailor.  The fiasco was due to the
+unexpected, unwarranted, thoroughly ill-timed, and almost unprecedented
+behavior of the Metropolitan Police, who in the person of a certain
+Constable Y28 promptly moved on the combatants while they were sparring
+for position.  He was obviously a young constable who had not quite
+shaken down into his duties.
+
+"It'll have to be a draw," announced Ginger a little lower down the
+road, while Constable Y28 stood watching the ebb and flow of the
+cognoscenti.  But it may have been that Ginger's verdict was governed
+less by a consideration of the attitude of Constable Y28, than by the
+fact that Pouncer's ring-craft appeared to have improved considerably
+since Ginger had last seen it in action.  For obvious reasons, it would
+not do for the Sailor to meet his Waterloo just then.
+
+"Young Pouncer," said Ginger, as a final and dramatic parting shot,
+"you've called the Sailor a liar, but all the same, we can neither on
+us play next Saturday for the Isle of Dogs Albion.  An' if on Saturday
+mornin' you take the trouble to roll up at the station about five
+minutes to seven, you will flaming well see the reason."
+
+"Seein' ain't always believin," said Pouncer.
+
+In spite, however, of that unchallengeable statement, Cox's Piece was
+well represented at the up platform to London Bridge at five minutes to
+seven, or thereabouts, on the morning of Saturday, November 3.  These
+enthusiasts, touched with scepticism as they were, deserved well of
+fate.  It was not that they sympathized with Pouncer Rogers in his
+ignoble point of view; they believed that for the first time in its
+brief and rather checkered history, the Isle of Dogs Albion F.C. was
+coming into its own.
+
+An impressive sight met the faithful who were present on the up
+platform to London Bridge at a few minutes to seven on the morning of
+Saturday.  Then it was that Ginger and the Sailor were seen in the
+booking-hall taking their tickets for Blackhampton.  Each carried a
+brand-new and decidedly elegant Gladstone bag, brilliant of hue and
+affirming its ownership in bold and clear letters; W.H.J.--H.H.
+Moreover, both Ginger and the Sailor wore a brand-new cap of black and
+white tweed, a brand-new overcoat with velvet collar, a brand-new blue
+suit, undoubted masterpieces of Jago and Brown, 25 The Arcade, and at
+Finsbury Circus, the whole surmounted by lustrous boots, spotted
+necktie and spotless double collar.  The effect was heightened by a
+previous evening's haircut and a close matutinal shave.
+
+Those of the faithful who had assembled on the up platform to wish _bon
+voyage_ to their club mates on their journey to High Olympus were
+rather staggered by the sight of them.  Had the goalkeeper and the
+right full back of the Isle of Dogs Albion been going forth to play for
+the first team of the Villa itself, they could not have dressed the
+part more superbly.  Such stage management, its inception due to the
+genius of Ginger, its execution, the fruit of the Sailor's fabulous
+wealth, filled their friends with awe.  The unworthy doubt cast by
+Pouncer upon Ginger's _bona fides_ brought its own Nemesis.  Pouncer
+was so completely overthrown by the spectacular appearance on the up
+platform that he sneaked out of the station _via_ alternate doors of
+the refreshment buffet, an illegal crossing of the main line, and a
+final exit by the booking-hall of the down platform.
+
+Seated in a third smoker, on the way to his natal city of Blackhampton,
+upon which he had not set eyes for seven long and incredible years, the
+emotions of Henry Harper were very complex.  He was in a dream.  He had
+been made to realize by the Force seated opposite smoking Log Cabin and
+reading _Pearson's Weekly_, that romance had come at last into a mean
+and hopeless life--into a life which had never looked for such things
+to happen.
+
+The Sailor knew now the ordeal before him.  He was to be tried as a
+goalkeeper by the great and famous Blackhampton Rovers, the gods of his
+youth.  The fact was very hard to believe, but according to the
+relentless Force to the wheel of whose chariot he was tied such was the
+case.  And there was his new gear to prove it.
+
+When they got past Luton, they had the compartment to themselves.  It
+was then that the Force, _alias_ Ginger, laid _Pearson's Weekly_ aside
+and admonished the Sailor out of the store of his wisdom.
+
+"First thing you bear in mind, young feller, is your name's Cucumber.
+That's the hallmark o' class.  It's the coolest player what takes the
+kitty.  Did you ever see Jock Norton o' the Villa?"
+
+The Sailor did not remember having done so.
+
+"It don't matter," said Ginger.  "This afternoon you'll see me.  I've
+formed myself on Jock Norton o' the Villa.  There's no better model for
+a young and risin' player.  But as I say, Cucumber's your docket.
+That's my first an' my last word to you, young feller.  It's Cucumber
+what'll put the half Nelson on the kermittee.  And, o' course,
+everythink else yer leave to me.  Understand?"
+
+The Sailor did his best to do so.
+
+"Everythink I tells yer, you'll do.  Everythink I says, you'll stand
+by.  What I says you've said, you've pleadin' well said, young feller,
+an' don't forget it."
+
+The Sailor was not likely to forget.  The look in the eyes of Ginger,
+slightly flecked with green in a good light--why they should have
+assumed that color is part of the eternal paradox--sent little chills
+down the Sailor's spine.
+
+They steamed into the Central Station of the famous but murky city of
+Blackhampton at half-past twelve.  The Sailor was still in a dream, but
+of so vivid a hue that he was fairly trembling with excitement.  And
+the first person he saw, who actually opened the door of their
+compartment, was a certain grim railway policeman, who, on Henry
+Harper's last appearance at Blackhampton Central Station, had led him
+outside by the ear and cuffed him soundly for having ventured to appear
+in it.  The final words of this stern official had been, "If ever you
+come in here again, you'll see what I'll do."
+
+Well, Henry Harper had come in again, and he was now seeing what the
+policeman did.  He felt subconsciously that fate was laughing at this
+obsequious figure in uniform opening the door of a third smoker for a
+new goalkeeper, who had come specially from London to be tried by the
+Rovers.
+
+Ginger considered it an economy of time, also the part of policy, to
+have a light repast at the refreshment buffet.  While they were in the
+act of consuming egg sandwiches, bananas, and a pint of bitter--they
+were good to play on--the throng around the buffet was swollen by three
+or four smart individuals not quite so well dressed as themselves
+perhaps, but each carrying a handbag which if not so new as theirs was
+very similar in shape, design, and general importance.
+
+There was a little commotion near the beer engine.  "Play up, Rovers,"
+cried an enthusiast in a chocolate and blue necktie.  The quick ear of
+Ginger caught the sound; his eye envisaged the cause of it.  He gave
+the Sailor a nudge so shrewd and sudden as to involve disaster to his
+pint of bitter.
+
+"There's Dink," he said, in a thrilling whisper.
+
+One less than Ginger would have waited for the situation to evolve.  He
+would have been modestly content for the famous and redoubtable Dinkie
+Dawson, already an idol of the public and the press, to confer notice
+upon those whose reputations were in the womb of time.  But that was
+not Ginger's way.
+
+"Come on, Sailor boy, I'll introjuice yer.  But mind--Cucumber.  And
+leave the lip ter me."
+
+The Sailor didn't feel like being introduced to anybody just then,
+certainly not to Dinkie Dawson, or the Prince of Wales, or Lord
+Salisbury, or anyone of equal eminence.  In spite of new clothes and a
+Gladstone bag, he knew his limit.  But the relentless Force to the
+wheel of whose chariot he was tied, the amazing Ginger, sauntered up to
+the beer engine and struck Dinkie Dawson a blow on the shoulder.
+
+"Hullo, Ginge," said the great man.  Moreover he spoke with the large
+geniality of one who has really arrived.
+
+"Hullo, Dink."  Cucumber was not the word for Ginger.  "Where are ye
+playin'?"
+
+"At Durbee agen the Countee."
+
+"Mind yer put it acrost 'em," said Ginger, in the ready and agreeable
+tone of the man of the world.  "Let me introjuice Mr. Enery Arper.  Mr.
+Dinkie Dawson."
+
+"'Ow do," said Dinkie.  But it was not the tone he had used to Ginger.
+There was inquiry, condescension, keep-your-distance and quite a lot of
+other things in it.  Ginger, whom Dinkie knew and liked, had described
+Mr. Enery Arper as a Nonesuch, but Dinkie, who was himself a Nonesuch
+of a very authentic breed, was not all inclined to make concessions to
+a Nonesuch in embryo.
+
+Mr. Harper's shyness was so intense that it might easily have been
+mistaken for Lift.  But Ginger, wary and alert, stepped into the breach
+with his accustomed gallantry.
+
+"I told yer in my letter he had been a sailor," whispered Ginger in the
+great man's ear.  "He's sailed eight years afore the mast.  Three times
+wrecked.  Seed the serpent.  Gee, what that chap's done an' seen--it
+fair makes you dizzy.  Not that you would think it to look at him,
+would yer?"
+
+"No, I wouldn't," said Dinkie, who measured men by one standard only.
+"But what about his goalkeeping?  Can he keep goal or can't he?
+There's a big chance for a chap as can really _keep_ goal.  But he must
+be class."
+
+"He's class," said Ginger--coolly.
+
+"Can he clear well?"
+
+"He's a daisy, I tell yer."
+
+"That's got to be seen," said Dinkie.  "But he looks green to me.  An'
+I tell you this, Ginger Jukes, it's not a bit o' use anybody trying to
+lumber a green un on to a club like the Rovers."
+
+"I know that," said Ginger urbanely.  "But you'll see--if he keeps his
+thatch.  By the way, Dink, you didn't say in your letter whether the
+Rovers had a vacancy for a right full back."
+
+"We've got Mullins and Pretyman, the best pair o' backs in England."
+
+Ginger knew that perfectly well, but he did not allow it to defeat him.
+
+"There's as good fish in the sea as ever come out of it," said he.
+
+"I don't know about that," said Dinkie Dawson coldly.
+
+It was clear that Ginger Jukes did not realize where he was or what he
+was up against.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Ginger and the Sailor drove to the ground of the Blackhampton Rovers on
+the roof of a two-horse bus.  It was a long way from the Central
+Station, but they had time in hand; the match did not begin until
+half-past two, and it was only a little after one at present.  As
+together they made what both felt to be as fateful a journey as they
+would ever take in the whole course of their lives, their emotions were
+many and conflicting.
+
+"There y'are, young feller."  Ginger pointed to a hoarding on which a
+chocolate and blue poster was displayed.  In spite of his religion of
+Cucumber, the thrill in his voice was perceptible.  "There's a bill of
+the match."
+
+"Who are we p-playin'?" stammered the Sailor, half choked by a sudden
+rush of emotion that threatened to unman him.
+
+"Can't yer read?"
+
+"No," gasped the Sailor.
+
+"No?" gasped Ginger.
+
+"I--I mean, I can't see very well."
+
+"_Can't see!_"
+
+Ginger nearly fell off the bus.
+
+"Not at this distance, I--I mean."
+
+"Blymy."  For a moment Ginger was done.  Then he said with a ferocity
+ruthless and terrible, "Young feller, you've pleadin' well _got_ to see
+this afternoon.  You've got to keep yer eyes skinned or ... or I'll
+scrag yer.  Understand?  If you let me down or you let Dinkie make a
+mark on us, you'll see what I'll do."  There was something deadly now
+in the freckled skin and the green eyes.  Ginger might have been a
+large reptile from the Island of San Pedro.
+
+The Sailor felt horribly nervous, and the demeanor of Ginger did not
+console him.  The fact was, Ginger was horribly nervous too.  It was
+the moment of his life, the hour to which vaulting ambition had long
+looked forward.  Before this damp, dismal November afternoon was three
+hours older would be decided the one really pregnant problem of
+Ginger's universe, namely and to wit, could he contrive to get his foot
+on the ladder that leads to fame and fortune?  If courage and
+resolution and an insight into the ways of men could bring this thing
+to pass there was reason for Ginger to be of good faith.  But--and the
+But was a big one--none knew better than Ginger that many are called
+and few are chosen, that the world is full of gifted and ambitious
+people who have never quite managed to "deliver the goods," that life
+is hell for the under dog, and that it is given to no man to measure
+the exact distance between the cup and the lip.
+
+The ground of the Blackhampton Rovers Football Club came into view as
+the bus dived into a muddy and narrow lane.  It then crossed the bridge
+of the West Norton and Bagsworth canal, and there before the thrilled
+eyes of the Sailor was the faded flag of chocolate and blue flying over
+the enormous corrugated iron roof of the grand stand.  But there were
+not many people about at present.  It was not yet two o'clock, moreover
+the spectators were likely to be few, so dismal was the afternoon, and
+of such little importance the match, which was a mere affair of the
+second team.
+
+Ginger, with all his formidable courage, was devoutly thankful that
+such was the case.  It was well that the prestige of the Blackhampton
+Rovers was not at stake.  For he knew that he was taking a terrible
+risk.  The Sailor was young and untried, his experience of the game was
+slight, and had been gained in poor company.  Even the second team of
+the august Blackhampton Rovers was quite a different matter from the
+first team of the Isle of Dogs Albion.  They were up against class and
+had better look out!
+
+This was the thought in Ginger's mind as he entered the ground of the
+famous club, with the Sailor at his heels, and haughtily said,
+"Player," in response to a demand for entrance money on the part of the
+man at the gate.  Ginger was a little overawed by his surroundings
+already in spite of a fixed determination not to be overawed by
+anything.
+
+As for the Sailor, following upon the heels of Ginger and speaking not
+a word, he was as one in a dream.  Yes, this was the ground of the
+Rovers right enough.  There was the flag over the pavilion.  God in
+heaven, what things he had seen, what things he had known since he
+looked on it last!  Somehow the sight of that torn and faded banner of
+chocolate and blue brought a sudden gush of tears to his eyes.  And in
+a queer way, he felt a better man for shedding them.  There at the end
+of the ground by the farther goal, in the shadow of the legend,
+Blackhampton Empire Twice Nightly, painted in immense letters on a
+giant hoarding, was the tree out of which young Arris fell and was
+pinched by a rozzer on the never-to-be-forgotten day when the Villa
+came to play the Rovers in that immortal cup tie it had been the glory
+of his youth to witness.  And now ... and now!  It was too much!  Henry
+Harper could not believe that he was about to wear the chocolate and
+blue himself, that he was about to tread the turf of this historic
+field which had not so much as one blade of grass upon it.
+
+"Young feller."  The face of Ginger was pale, his voice was hoarse.
+"Don't forget what I've told yer.  Remember Cucumber.  Stick tight to
+your thatch.  There's a lot at stake for both on us.  This has got to
+mean two quid a week for you and me."
+
+The Sailor did not reply.  But an odd look came into his deep eyes.
+Could Ginger have read them, and it was well he could not, those eyes
+would have accused him of sacrilege.  It was not with thoughts like
+these that Henry Harper defiled the classic battleground, the sacred
+earth of High Olympus.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+In the Rovers' dressing-room the reception of Ginger and the Sailor was
+cool.  Their look of newness, of their bags and overcoats in
+particular, at once aroused feelings of hostility.  They implied
+greenness and swank; and in athletic circles these carry heavy
+penalties.  Greenness is a grave misdemeanor, swank a deadly sin.
+Fortunately Ginger was far too wise to talk.  He contented himself with
+a civil passing of the time of day.  One less a warrior might have been
+a little cowed by the glances at his bag and his overcoat.  But Ginger
+was not.  He did not care two straws for the opinion of his fellow
+hirelings.  It was his business to impress the club committee.
+
+As for the Sailor, he was not in a condition to understand what was
+taking place around him.  Cucumber might be his name, but his brain was
+like a ball of fire.
+
+One of the immortal chocolate and blue shirts was handed to him, but
+when the time came to put it on he stood holding it in his hand.
+
+"Into it, yer fool," said his mentor, in a fierce whisper.  It would
+not be wise to attract by a display of eccentricity the notice of nine
+pairs of eyes.
+
+With a start, the Sailor came back to the present and thrust his head
+into the shirt.  His thoughts were with young Arris.  He, too, had had
+a dream of playing for the Rovers.  If only young Arris could see him
+now!
+
+The "gate" was small, the afternoon unpleasant, the match by no means a
+good one.  The result did not matter to the Rovers, whose reputation
+was known wherever football was played.  In the view of the ruling
+powers of that old and famous club, who sat in the center of the
+grandstand, the object of this rather scratch game was not glory but
+the discovery of new talent.  But small as the audience was, it
+contained a personage of vast consequence, who sat like Olympian Zeus
+enthroned on high with his satellites around him.
+
+He was a majestic figure whose importance could be seen at a glance.
+His expansive fur coat, his superb contour, his spats, his red face,
+the flower in his buttonhole, and the large cigar with a band round it
+stuck in the side of his mouth, were a guaranty of status, apart from
+any consideration of supreme capacity.  Mr. Augustus Higginbottom was
+the chairman of the club.
+
+"Who have we got keepin' goal?" said Olympian Zeus, as he fixed a pair
+of gold-rimmed eyeglasses on his nose and looked at his card.  "Arper,
+I see.  Who the 'ell's Arper?"
+
+"On trial, Gus."  Three or four anxiously officious satellites hastened
+to enlighten the chairman.
+
+"I rather like the look o' Arper."  It was as Plato might have spoken
+had he ever worn a fur coat and had a large cigar with a band round it
+tucked in the side of his mouth, and had he placed his services at the
+disposal of the committee of the Blackhampton Rovers Football Club in
+order to enable it to distinguish the false from the true.
+
+"Make and shape there," said Mr. Higginbottom.  "Light on his pins.
+Gets down to the ball."
+
+"Oh, well stopped, young un!" shouted an adventurous satellite, in
+order that an official decree might be promulgated to the general
+public.
+
+It was known at once round the ground that the critics had got their
+eyes on the new goalkeeper.
+
+"I've heard say, Gus," said the adventurous one, "that this
+youth--_well_ saved, _my_ lad!--is a sailor."
+
+"Sailor is he?"  Mr. Higginbottom was so much impressed by the
+information that he began to chew the end of his cigar.  "Ops about,
+don't he.  I tell you what, Albert"--six satellites craned to catch the
+chairman's ukase--"I like the cut o' the Sailor."
+
+"Played, young un," cried the grandstand.
+
+"Albert," said the chairman, "who's that cab oss?"
+
+"The right full back, Gus?"
+
+"Him I mean.  He's no use."  The chairman glanced augustly at his card.
+"Jukes, I see.  Who the 'ell's Jukes?"
+
+"On trial," said Mr. Satellite Albert.  "But I don't altogether agree
+with you there, Gus."  Albert differed deferentially from the chairman.
+"There's nothing like a touch o' Ginger."
+
+"I grant you," said the chairman.  "But the goods has to be there as
+well.  Ginger's no class.  Moves like a height-year-old with the
+staggers."
+
+"Wake up, Jukes."  The official decree was promulgated from the
+grandstand.
+
+It was known at once round the ground that it was all up with Jukes.
+
+"Chrysanthemum Top can't play for rock cakes and Everton toffee," was
+the opinion of the proletariat in the sixpenny stand.
+
+"Ginger's no class," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom.  "There's no class
+about Ginger."
+
+"Pull up your socks, Jukes," the grandstand exhorted him.
+
+Ginger knew already, without any official intimation, that he was being
+outplayed.  Do as he would he did not seem able to mobilize quickly
+enough to stop these swift and skillful forwards.  He had never met
+anything like them on Cox's Piece.  Ginger knew already, without any
+help from the grandstand, that he was out of it.  He was doing his
+level best, he was doing it doggedly with set teeth, but the truth was
+he felt like a carthorse compared with these forwards of the enemy who
+were racehorses one and all.
+
+But the Sailor ... the Sailor was magnificent so far.  He had stopped
+every shot, and two at least only a goalkeeper touched with the divine
+fire could have parried.  Half time was signaled, and in spite of the
+inefficiency of the right full back, the enemy had yet to score a goal.
+
+As the players walked off the field to refit for the second half, a
+special cheer was raised for young Harper.
+
+"Played, me lad."  It was the voice of the chairman of the club from
+the center of the grandstand.
+
+"Played, me lad."  Three hundred throats echoed the cry.  Zeus himself
+had spoken.
+
+A ragged urchin, who had paid his threepence with the best of them and
+had therefore a right to express his opinion in a public manner, looked
+up into the sweating face and the haggard eyes of Ginger as he walked
+off the ground.  "Go 'ome, Ginger.  Yer can't play for nuts.  Yer no
+class."
+
+Like a sick gladiator, Ginger staggered into the dressing-room, but in
+his eyes was defiance of fate and not despair of it.
+
+"Mate," he said, in a hollow voice to the attendant, "fetch me six
+pennorth o' brandy."
+
+He dipped his head into a basin of cold water and then sat in a
+truculent silence.  He did not so much as glance at the Sailor, who had
+the rest of the team around him.  Where did Harper come from?  What
+club did he play for?  Was it true that he had been a sailor?
+
+Henry Harper was only able to answer these questions very shyly and
+imperfectly.  He was in a dream.  He could hardly realize where he was
+or what he was doing.  When they returned to the field of play, the
+goalkeeper, already a favorite, was given a little private cheer.  But
+the Sailor heard it not; he was dreaming, dreaming, walking on air.
+
+"Buck up, Ginger," piped the shrill urchin, as the tense and heroic
+figure of that warrior came on the field last of all.  But the grim
+eyes and the set face were not in need of admonition.  Ginger was
+prepared to do or die.
+
+"Cab Oss can use his weight," said the All Highest.
+
+"First good thing he's done," said Mr. Satellite Albert.  The right
+full back, it seemed, had charged like a tiger at the center forward of
+the enemy and had laid him low.
+
+"Good on yer, Ginger," cried the proletariat.
+
+After this episode, the game grew rough.  And this was in Ginger's
+favor.  Outclassed he might be in pace and skill, but no human soul
+could outclass Ginger in sheer fighting quality when his back was to
+the wall.  Before long the stricken lay around him.
+
+"It isn't footba'," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom.  "You can't call it
+footba', but it's the right game to play under the circumstances."
+
+It began to seem that the enemy would never score the goal it so much
+desired.  The goalkeeper kept up his form in quite a marvelous way,
+parrying shot after shot of every range and pace from all points of the
+compass.  He was a man inspired.  And the right full back was truly
+terrible now.  He had ceased to trouble about the ball, but wherever he
+saw a red-shirted adversary he brought him down and fell on him.
+Ginger did not achieve any particular feat of arms, but his moral
+effect was considerable.
+
+The shades of night were falling, but not a single goal had been scored
+by either party.  The goalkeeper grew more and more wonderful, the
+right full back was more like a lion than ever.
+
+"Blame my cats," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, "that Ginger's
+mustard.  But they'll never stan' him in a League match.  What do you
+say, Davis?"
+
+Mr. Davis, a small buttoned-up man in a knitted comforter and a brown
+bowler hat, had given far fewer opinions than his peers.  He was a man
+of deeds.  He had played for England _v._ Scotland in his distinguished
+youth, but no one would have guessed it to look at him.
+
+"Quite agree, Gus," said Mr. Davis, in a measured tone.  "Football is
+not a game for Ginger.  Not the man we are looking for.  But that
+goalkeeper..."
+
+"That's all right, Davis," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, "we are
+going to make no mistake about him."
+
+Night fell, the referee blew his whistle, the match was at an end, and
+still not a goal had been scored.  Utterly weary, covered with mud from
+head to heel, the twenty-two players trooped back to the dressing-room.
+They flung off the reeking garments of battle and fought for the icy
+shower bath, the heroic Ginger still the foremost in the fray.
+
+"Look slippy into yer duds, young feller," he breathed hoarsely in the
+ear of the Sailor.  "We've pleadin' well got to catch that kermittee
+afore it goes."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Ginger might have spared himself all anxiety in regard to the
+"kermittee."  The Great General Staff had made up its mind in the
+matter already.  The directors would like to see Harper in the
+committee room before he went.
+
+"What abaht me?" said Ginger.
+
+"It's Harper they want to see," said their emissary.  "They don't want
+to see no one else."
+
+"Oh, don't they!" was Ginger's eloquent comment to himself.
+
+"Ready, Harper?" said the emissary, with the air of a law-giver.  "I'll
+show you the way."
+
+"Come on, Sailor boy," said Ginger, with his affectionate avuncular
+air, as he gave a final touch, aided by a hairbrush and a
+looking-glass, to his auburn locks which he wore in the form of a
+fringe on his forehead.
+
+"Jukes, there's your expenses," said the emissary rather haughtily, as
+he handed Ginger a sovereign.  "The directors don't require to see you."
+
+"I'd like to see them," said the imperturbable Ginger.
+
+"Their time is valuable."
+
+"So's mine," said Ginger.  "Come on, Sailor boy."
+
+The chairman, now enthroned in the committee room, had short shrift for
+Ginger.
+
+"Jukes," he said with brutal directness, as he chewed the end of his
+cigar, "we didn't send for you.  You are not the Rovers' sort and never
+will be.  You are a trier an' all that, you are a good plucked un, but
+the Rovers is only out for one thing, an' that's class."
+
+This oration was extremely well delivered, cigar in mouth, yet the
+committee seemed to be more impressed by it than Ginger himself.
+
+"That's right, Gus," said Mr. Satellite Albert.  "Those are our views."
+
+Mr. Augustus Higginbottom might have expressed the views of the
+committee, but it did not appear that they were the views of Mr. W. H.
+Jukes.  That warrior stood, tweed cap in hand, the Sailor by his side,
+as though they did not in any way concern him.
+
+"You understand, Jukes?" said the chairman.
+
+No reply.
+
+"Arper here is the man we sent for.  Arper"--the impressiveness of Mr.
+Higginbottom was very carefully calculated--"you've no polish, me lad,
+you lack experience, you are young, you've got to grow and you've got
+to learn, but you might make a goalkeeper if you was took in hand by
+the Rovers.  Understand me, Arper,"--the chairman raised an eloquent
+forefinger--"I say ye _might_ if you was took in hand an' trained by a
+club o' the class o' the Rovers.  But you've a long way to go.  Do you
+understand, me lad?"
+
+"Yes, mister," said the Sailor humbly.
+
+The "mister" jarred horribly upon the sensitive ear of Mr. W. H. Jukes,
+who whispered, "Call him 'sir,' yer fool."
+
+"Very well, then," proceeded Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, "now we'll come
+to business.  My feller directors"--the chairman waved a magniloquent
+hand--"agrees with me that the Rovers can offer you a pound a week
+because you are promisin', although not justified as you are at
+present.  Now what do you say?"
+
+"Nothin' doin'," said Mr. W. H. Jukes, before the goalkeeper could say
+anything.  "Come on, Sailor boy.  We are wastin' our time.  We'll be
+gettin' to the station."
+
+"My remarks, Jukes, was not addressed to you," said the chairman with
+awful dignity.  "The directors has no use for _your_ services, as I
+thought I 'ad made clear."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir," said Ginger, with a considered politeness that seemed
+rather to surprise the committee.  "Come on, Sailor.  A quid a week!  I
+think we can do better nor that."
+
+"One moment," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom.  There was a hurried
+consultation while Ginger and the goalkeeper began to move to the door.
+"One moment, Arper."
+
+Ginger, drawing the Sailor after him, returned with every sign of
+reluctance to the middle of the room.
+
+"Jukes," said the chairman, "you have nothing to do with this matter,
+anyway."
+
+"No, sir," said Ginger, with a deference he was very far from feeling.
+
+"You quite understand that, Jukes?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Ginger, with formidable politeness.
+
+"Very good.  Now, Arper, the directors is prepared to rise to
+twenty-five shillings a week, an' that's their limit."
+
+"I'm sorry, gentlemen," said Ginger, "but twenty-five bob a week is not
+a bit o' use to either on us.  We like the town what we've seen on it,
+but two pound a week's our minimum.  It's only wastin' time to talk of
+less.  If we ain't worth two pound a week to the Blackhampton Rovers, I
+dessey we'll be worth it to the Otspur or the Villa.  Come on, Sailor.
+We're only wastin' our time, boy."
+
+This carefully delivered ultimatum made quite a sensation.  There was
+not one of the committee who would not cheerfully have slain Mr. W. H.
+Jukes.  But they wanted that goalkeeper very badly.  Moreover, the
+mention of the Hotspur and the Villa did not lessen this desire.
+
+"One moment, Jukes."
+
+A further consultation followed.  This matter called for very masterful
+and, at the same time, very delicate handling.
+
+Mr. Augustus Higginbottom went to the length of removing his cigar from
+the corner of his mouth.
+
+"See here, Jukes," said he, "it's not you we want, it's the goalkeeper.
+Now, Arper, I am empowered by my feller directors to offer you two
+pound a week with a rise next year if you turn out satisfactory."
+
+"That's more like it," said Ginger coolly.  "Two pound a week and a
+rise next year.  What do you say, Sailor boy?  Or do you think it would
+be better to see the Villa?"
+
+It was as much as the chairman could do to keep from pitching Jukes out
+of the room.  His cheek was amazing, but if this course was taken, it
+was clear that Harper would not adorn his person with a chocolate and
+blue shirt.
+
+The unlucky fact was that the goalkeeper and the right full back had
+only one mind between them.  And that mind was not in the possession of
+the goalkeeper.
+
+"We've allus played together," said Ginger, "and we allus shall.  I've
+taught him all he knows--haven't I, Sailor boy?"
+
+"Yep," said the Sailor, coming humbly into the conversation for the
+first time.
+
+"We've allus played for the same club, we lodge together, we work
+together, we are pals in everythink--ain't we, Sailor boy?"
+
+"Yep," said the Sailor.
+
+"And if you don't want us it's all the same to us--ain't it, Sailor
+boy?"
+
+"Yep," said the Sailor.
+
+There followed a final consultation between the chairman of the club
+and his fellow committee-men.  But only one conclusion to the matter
+was possible.  The Blackhampton Rovers must either accept Mr. W. H.
+Jukes with all his limitations, or lose the type of goalkeeper they had
+been seeking up and down the land for many a year.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+To the Sailor, the visit to Blackhampton was a fairy tale.  At first,
+he could not realize that he had worn the chocolate and blue, and had
+performed wonderful deeds at the instance of a power beyond himself.
+As for the sequel, involving a farewell to the wharf of Antcliff and
+Jackson, Limited, and a triumphal return to his natal city as a
+salaried player of the Rovers, even when this had really happened, it
+was very hard to believe.
+
+Ginger took the credit.  And if he had not had a talent for affairs
+these things could not have come about.  It was entirely due to him
+that Henry Harper learned to play football, and had he not mastered the
+art, it is unlikely that he would ever have found the key to his life.
+
+The Sailor was a simple, modest soul.  He felt the sudden turn of
+fortune's wheel was due to no grace of his own.  From that amazing hour
+when certain documents were signed and Henry Harper, who had suffered
+terrible things to gain a few dollars a month, began to draw a salary
+of two pounds a week with surprisingly little to do in order to earn
+it, his devotion to Ginger became almost that of a dog for its master.
+
+They both had their feet on the ladder now, if ever two young men had.
+It might be luck, it might be pluck, it might be a combination of
+anything you chose to call it, but there it was; two untried men had
+imposed their personalities upon some of the shrewdest judges of
+football in the United Kingdom.  The Sailor had shown genius on the
+field; Ginger had shown genius of a kind more valuable.
+
+On the Monday week following their triumph, they invaded Blackhampton
+again.  This time they were accompanied not merely by their Gladstone
+bags and their velvet-collared overcoats, but they came with the whole
+of their worldly goods.
+
+They obtained---"they" meaning Ginger--some quite first-rate lodgings
+in Newcastle Street, near the canal.  These had been recommended by
+Dinkie Dawson, who lodged in the next street but two.  The charges of
+the new landlady, Miss Gwladys Foldal, were much higher than those of
+Mrs. Sparks, but the accommodation was Class compared to Paradise
+Alley.  As Ginger informed the Sailor, socially they had taken a big
+step up.
+
+For example, Miss Foldal herself was, in Ginger's opinion, far more a
+woman of the world than Mrs. Sparks.  Her hair was golden, it was
+always amazingly curled about tea time, when she had newly powdered her
+nose; she maintained a "slavey" and did little of the housework
+herself, apparently never soiling her well-kept hands with anything
+menial; also she had an undoubted gift of conversation, could play the
+piano, and if much entreated would lift occasionally an agreeable voice
+in song; in a word, Miss Foldal was a lady versed in the enchantments
+of good society.
+
+The Sailor was quite overawed at first by Miss Foldal.  Always very
+responsive to the impact of her sex, a word or a look from the least of
+its members was enough to embarrass him.  Miss Foldal, with her
+tempered brilliancy and her matured charm, impressed him greatly.
+
+Even Ginger, who was so cynical in regard to ladies in general and
+landladies in particular, was inclined to approve her.  This was a
+great concession on Ginger's part, because up till then there were only
+two persons in the universe whom Ginger did approve, one being himself,
+whom he approved wholeheartedly, the other being Dinkie Dawson, whom he
+accepted with reservations.
+
+Ginger and the Sailor soon settled down in their new quarters.  They
+were well received by their fellow players.  They must not look beyond
+the second team at present, so august was the circle in which they now
+moved, but Harper was "the goods" undoubtedly; one of these days the
+world would hear of him; while as for Jukes, although without genius as
+a player he was such a trier that he was bound to improve.  Indeed, he
+began to improve in every match in which he appeared in this exalted
+company.  His time was not yet, but the directors of the club,
+resentful as they were of the coup that Ginger had played, shrewdly
+foresaw that a man of such will and determination might one day prove a
+sound investment.
+
+These were golden days for the Sailor.  The perils and the hardships
+aboard the _Margaret Carey_, the titanic fights with nature, the
+ceaseless struggles on the yards of that crazy vessel in order to save
+himself from being dashed to pieces on the deck below, had been such a
+training for his present life as nothing else could have been.
+
+It was now for the first time that Henry Harper began to envisage that
+queer thing, Himself.  He was never at any period an egotist in a
+narrow way.  Fate had mercilessly flogged a sense of proportion into
+him at the threshold of his life; whatever the future had in store he
+would never be able to forget that man himself is a creature of
+strange, terrible, and tragic destiny.  As soon as a little prosperity
+came to him, he began to develop.  The respect of others for the
+accidental prowess he wore so unassumingly, good food, regular habits,
+a sense of security, did much for Henry Harper in this critical phase
+of his fortunes.
+
+First he learned to take a pride in his body.  That was a very simple
+ethic of the great religion to be revealed to him.  He was quick to see
+that he was one of a company of highly trained athletes whom nature had
+endowed nobly.  Together with his fellow players, he was exercised with
+as much care as if he had been a racehorse.  He was bathed and
+massaged, groomed and tended; such a sense of physical well-being came
+to him that he could not help growing in grace and beauty, in strength
+and freedom of mind and soul.
+
+After several weeks of this new and wonderful life there was still a
+dark secret that continued to haunt the Sailor.  He could neither read
+nor write, and he was living in a world in which these accomplishments
+were taken for granted.  He had to conceal the fact as best he could.
+None must know, but a means would have to be found of overcoming this
+stigma.
+
+He dared not speak of it to Ginger, or to Miss Foldal either, much as
+he liked and respected her.  He remembered the face of Mrs. Sparks.
+But after giving much thought to the matter, he made cautious
+inquiries, and then one morning it suddenly occurred to him that he was
+a fool.  Here was Henry Harper in his native city of Blackhampton,
+certain parts of which he knew like the back of his hand, and yet he
+had forgotten the night school in Driver's Lane that Cocky Footit and
+Leary Jeacock went to and never did any good afterwards.
+
+The thought hit the Sailor hard as he was seated at his princely
+breakfast of eggs and bacon, very choicely fried, and such a cup of
+coffee as any man might have envied him.  He remembered how seven years
+ago, in the Cocky Footit and Leary Jeacock days, he simply daren't go
+home at night unless he had sold a certain number of _Evening Stars_.
+And what a home it was for any boy to go to!
+
+In spite of the eggs and bacon and the warm fire and Ginger seated
+opposite with the _Athletic News_ propped against the coffee pot, a
+shudder crept through Henry Harper.  He regretted bitterly that he
+should have allowed his thoughts to stray.  But how could they go back
+to Cocky Footit and Leary Jeacock and the night school they attended in
+Driver's Lane, without taking a leap unbidden to that other lane which
+ran level with Driver's, with the rag and bone yard and the iron gates
+where dwelt Auntie and her cart whip, the only home at that time he had
+known?
+
+He couldn't help shuddering at the picture in his mind.  Where was
+Auntie now?  How would she look to one who had sailed before the mast
+over all the oceans of the world?
+
+The subject of Auntie had a morbid fascination.  It held him as
+completely as the night school in Driver's Lane.  The truth was, it was
+impossible to recall the one without envisaging the other.
+
+As soon as he had finished breakfast, he put on the overcoat with the
+velvet collar and the smart tweed cap, stepped into Newcastle Street
+and began to wander across the canal bridge.  Then he turned to the
+right through Clover Street, crossed the tram lines, passed the Crown
+and Cushion, his favorite public-house of yore, where he had listened
+many an evening to the music and singing that floated through the swing
+doors, with always a half formed thought at the back of his mind which
+he dared not face.  As of old, he stood to listen, but there was no
+music now, for it was only ten o'clock in the morning, and it didn't
+begin until seven at night.
+
+He was not afraid of the life of seven years ago.  As he stood outside
+the Crown and Cushion that was the idea which exalted him.  Henry
+Harper was not obliged to meet Auntie, but was going to do so out of
+curiosity, and because he owed it to himself to prove that he no longer
+went in fear of her.
+
+That might be so, but as he passed through the old familiar streets and
+alleys, with bareheaded Aunties standing arms akimbo in conversation
+with the neighbors, while many a Henry Harper sprawled half naked in
+the gutter, his courage almost failed.  The slums of Blackhampton had
+changed less than he in seven years.
+
+Yes, this was Crow's Yard.  And there at the door of No. 1, as of yore,
+was Mother Crow, toothless and yellow, unspeakably foul of word and
+aspect, whose man often threatened to swing for her and finally swung
+for another.  Henry Harper stole swiftly through Crow's Yard, fearing
+at every step that he would be recognized.
+
+With a thudding heart, he came into Wright's Lane.  It was like a
+horrible dream; he nearly turned and ran.  What if Auntie was still
+there?  He had just seen Mother Crow and Meg Baker and Cock-eyed Polly
+and others of her circle.  Well, if she was...?
+
+The beating of his heart would not let him meet the question.  He ought
+not to have come.  All the same, there was nothing to be afraid of now.
+
+No, there was nothing to be....  Again he nearly turned and ran.  The
+iron gates were before him.  There were the piles of stinking bones,
+old newspapers, foul rags, scrap iron, and all sorts of odds and ends.
+And there was the broken-down handcart he had trundled so often through
+the mud.  The wheels were still on it, but they looked like new ones.
+And there on the wall of the shed was the nail.
+
+A sick thrill passed through Henry Harper.  He couldn't make out in the
+thick November halflight whether on that nail there was really what he
+thought there was.  A wave of curiosity forced him to enter the yard.
+The whip was hanging there as usual.  The heavy handle bound with
+strips of brass shone through the gloom.  The sight of it seemed again
+to hold him in a thrall of terror.  As if it were a nightmare he fought
+to throw it off.  He had been a sailor; he was the goalkeeper for the
+Blackhampton Rovers; he was earning two pounds a week; he had a velvet
+collar to his overcoat; there was no need to be afraid of...
+
+"Now, young man?"
+
+A thick, wheezy grunt came out of the inner murk of the yard and sent a
+chill down the spine of Henry Harper.
+
+"What can I do for yer?"
+
+Auntie, cheerfully alcoholic as ever, stood before him in all her
+shapeless obscenity.  She stood as of old, exuding gin and humor and
+latent savagery.  She had changed so little that he felt he had not
+changed either.  At first he could not believe that she did not
+recognize him.
+
+Auntie stood eyeing him with disfavor.  The good clothes, the clean
+collar, the polished boots told against him heavily.  Most probably a
+detective.
+
+"What do you want for _that_, missus?"  He pointed to the nail.
+
+"Not for sale."  The light he had seen so often sprang to her eyes.
+"You can have anythink else.  Scrap iron, rags and bones, waste paper,
+bedsteads, but yer can't have that."  And Auntie looked at him,
+wheezing humorously at the idea of anyone wanting to buy such an
+article.  Suddenly Henry Harper met again the eyes of Medusa in their
+depth and power.
+
+At once he knew why he had stayed those long years under her roof.  It
+was not merely that he had nowhere else to go.  There was a living
+devil in the soul of Auntie and it was far stronger than anything at
+present in the soul of Henry Harper.  Already he could feel the old
+helpless terror striking into him again.  He was forgetting that he had
+been a sailor, he was forgetting the Blackhampton Rovers, he was
+forgetting his two pounds a week....
+
+"Well, missus, if yer won't, yer won't," he said, with a mighty effort
+of the will.
+
+Auntie laughed her old rich note of genial defiance, as if an affection
+for a thing of little value and less use must be defended.  As she did
+so, a miserable cur sneaked out through the open door of the house
+beyond the archway.  She turned to it humorously.
+
+"I thought I told _you_ to keep in."
+
+The dog cast a look at her and sneaked in again.
+
+"Mornin', missus."
+
+"Mornin', young man.  Sorry I can't oblige yer."  It was the old note
+of affability that always endeared her to the neighbors.
+
+But it was not of Auntie that Henry Harper was thinking when he got
+into Wright's Lane.  It was of the dog.  In the eyes of that animal he
+had seen his former self.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+It had been Henry Harper's intention to go on across the Lammas and
+make inquiries about the night school.  But his courage suddenly
+failed.  As soon as he got into Wright's Lane, he felt that for one day
+at least he had seen enough of the haunts of his youth.
+
+As he stood at the corner, trying to make up his mind what to do, an
+intense longing for Newcastle Street came upon him.  It seemed wiser to
+postpone the night school until the afternoon.
+
+He had not expected to find the other side of the canal quite so bad as
+it had proved to be.  It seemed ages away in point of experience.
+There was no place for good clothes, a clean collar, and polished boots
+in the region the other side of the canal.  It was very unfortunate
+that the night school lay in the middle of that area.
+
+Henry Harper was in an unhappy frame of mind when he sat down to dinner
+with Ginger at one o'clock.  A very bad aura enveloped him.  The sight
+of Auntie in her lair would take him some little time to overcome.
+Then the sense of failure was unpleasant.  It was unworthy of a sailor
+to have shirked his job.  Every day made it more necessary for
+something to be done.  His pretence of understanding the newspapers
+when he could hardly read a word was telling against him with Ginger.
+His contribution to the after-supper conversation was so feeble, as a
+rule, that Ginger was almost afraid "he was not all there."
+
+However, he would inquire about the night school that afternoon.  The
+matter was so urgent that he could have no peace until he had moved in
+it.  But fate, having taken his measure, began to marshal silent
+invisible forces.
+
+To begin with the forces were silent enough, yet they were not exactly
+invisible.  A little after three, while the Sailor, still in the Valley
+of Decision, was looking into the fire, wondering whether it was
+possible after all to postpone the task until the following morning
+when he might be in a better frame of mind, Ginger looked out of the
+window, announced that "there wasn't half a fog coming over," and that
+he had a good mind to make himself comfortable indoors for the rest of
+the day.
+
+This was enough for the Sailor.  The fog put the night school out of
+the question for that afternoon; it must be postponed till the morrow.
+All the same, he fell into a black and bitter mood in which
+self-disgust came uppermost.
+
+Ginger's good mind to stay indoors did not materialize.  As soon as the
+clock chimed four he remembered that he had to play a hundred up with
+Dinkie at the Crown and Cushion.
+
+At quarter-past four, Miss Foldal came in, drew down the blinds, lit
+the gas, and laid the cloth for tea.  She then sought permission, as
+the fire was such a good one, to toast a muffin at it, which she
+proceeded to do with the elegance that marked her in everything.
+
+The Sailor had never seen anybody quite so elegant as Miss Foldal in
+the afternoon.  The golden hair was curled and crimped, the blonde
+complexion freshly powdered, there was a superb display of jewelry upon
+a fine bosom, she was tightly laced, and the young man watching her
+with grave curiosity heard her stays creak as she bent down at the fire.
+
+Two ladies further apart than Miss Foldal and Auntie would be hard to
+conceive.  Dimly the young man had begun to realize that it was a very
+queer cosmos in which he had been called to exercise his being.  There
+were whole stellar spaces between Auntie and Miss Foldal.
+
+The latter lady was not merely elegant, she was kind.  Miss Foldal was
+very kind indeed to Mr. Harper.  From the day he had entered her house,
+she had shown in many subtle ways that she wanted to make him feel at
+home.  And Mr. Harper, who up till now only realized Woman
+extrinsically, already considered Miss Foldal a very nice lady.
+
+It was true that Ginger referred to her rather contemptuously as Old
+Tidde-fol-lol, and saw, or affected to see, something deep in her most
+innocent actions.  But the Sailor, with a natural reverence for her sex
+in spite of all he had suffered at its hands, was constrained to
+believe these slighting references to Old Tidde-fol-lol were lapses of
+taste on the part of his hero.  Homer nods on occasion.  Henry Harper
+was not acquainted with that impressive fact at this period of his
+life, but he was sure that Ginger was a little unfortunate in his
+references to Miss Foldal.
+
+The Sailor was beginning to like Miss Foldal immensely.  He did not go
+beyond that.  The great apparition of Woman in her cardinal aspect had
+not yet appeared to him, and was not to do so for long days to come.
+As Ginger said, he was a kid at present, and hardly knew he was born.
+Still, he was beginning to take notice.
+
+"Would you like me to pour out your tea, Mr. Harper?"
+
+"Thank you, miss."  He was no longer so ignorant as to say, "Thank you,
+lady."
+
+"Sugar?"
+
+"Please, miss."
+
+He admired immensely the manipulation of the sugar tongs by those
+elegant hands.  They were inclined to be fat and were perhaps rather
+broad to the purview of a connoisseur, but they were covered in rings
+set with stones more or less precious, and the soul of Henry Harper
+responded instinctively to all that they meant and stood for.  The
+hands of Auntie were not as these.
+
+"You _do_ take two lumps and milk, of course?"
+
+There was an ease and a charm about Miss Foldal that made the Sailor
+think of velvet.
+
+"Now take a piece of muffin while it's warm."
+
+She offered the muffin, already steeped in delicious butter, with the
+slightly imperious charm of a Madame Recamier, not that Henry Harper
+knew any more about Madame Recamier than he did about Homer at this
+period of his career.  Yet he may have known all about them even then.
+He may have known all about them and forgotten all about them, and when
+the time came to unseal the inner chambers of his consciousness,
+perhaps he would remember them again.
+
+Auntie had never handed him a muffin in such a way as that.  Mrs.
+Sparks hadn't either.  Ginger might sneer and call her Old
+Tidde-fol-lol, although not to her face--he was always very polite to
+her face--but there was no doubt she was absolutely a lady, and her
+muffins ... her muffins were _extra_.
+
+This afternoon, Miss Foldal lingered over the tea table in most
+agreeable discourse.  The fog was too thick for her to venture into the
+market place, where she wanted to go.
+
+"If it's shopping you want, miss," said Mr. Harper, with an
+embarrassment that made her smile, "let me go and do it for you."
+
+"I couldn't think of it, Mr. Harper."
+
+"I will, miss, I'll be very glad to."  She liked the deep eyes of this
+strikingly handsome young man.
+
+"I couldn't think of it, Mr. Harper.  I couldn't really.  Besides, my
+shopping will keep till tomorrow."
+
+"You know best, miss."  There was resignation tempered by a certain
+chivalrous disappointment.  Quite unconsciously, Mr. Harper was doing
+his utmost to rise to the standard of speech and manner of Miss Foldal,
+which was far beyond any he had yet experienced.
+
+"I saw in the _Evening Star_ that you won your match on Saturday."'
+
+"Yes, miss, four-two."  But the mention of the _Evening Star_ was a
+stab.  Every night the _Evening Star_ presented its tragic problem.
+
+"Mr. Jukes tells me you will be having a trial with the first team
+soon."
+
+Mr. Jukes had told Miss Foldal nothing of the kind.  She was the last
+person to whom he would have made any such confidence.
+
+"Oh no, miss."  The native modesty was pleasant in her ear.  "I'm
+nothing near good enough yet."
+
+"It will come, though.  It is bound to come."
+
+The young man was not stirred by this prophecy.  His mind had gone back
+to the night school; it was tormenting itself with the problem ever
+before it now.  He would have liked to bring the conversation round to
+the matter, if only it could be done without disclosing the deadly
+secret.  But the memory of Mrs. Sparks was still fresh.  There was no
+denying that for a chap of nineteen not to have the elements of the
+three r's was a disgrace; it was bound to prejudice him in the eyes of
+a lady of education.
+
+Still, Miss Foldal was not Mrs. Sparks.  Being a higher sort of lady
+perhaps she would be able to make allowances.  Yet Henry Harper didn't
+want her or anyone else to make allowances.  However, he could not
+afford to be proud.
+
+Chance it, suddenly decreed the voice within.  She won't eat you anyway.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+Miss Foldal, it seemed, had been trained in her youth for a board
+school teacher.  In a brief flash of autobiography, she told Mr. Harper
+she had never really graduated in that trying profession, but had
+forsaken a career eminently honorable for the more doubtful one of the
+stage, and had spent the rest of her life in regretting it.  But always
+at the back of her mind was the sense of her original calling to leaven
+the years of her later fall from grace.
+
+Not only Miss Foldal, but the Sailor also was quick to see the hand of
+Providence, when that young man, coloring pink in the gaslight and
+eating his last muffin, made the admission, "that his readin' an'
+writin' was rusty because of havin' followed the sea."  And she
+answered, "Reelly," in her own inimitable way, to which the Sailor
+rejoined, "Yes, miss, reelly, and do you _fink_ you could recommend a
+night school?"
+
+"Night school, Mr. Harper?"  And this was where the higher kind of lady
+was able to claim superiority over Mrs. Sparks.  "Please don't think me
+impertinent, but I would be delighted to help you all I could.  You
+see, I was trained for a pupil teacher before I went on the stage
+against my father's wishes."
+
+The heart of the Sailor leaped.  In that tone of sincere kindness was
+the wish to be of use.  If Miss Foldal had been trained as a pupil
+teacher, the night school in Driver's Lane might not be necessary,
+after all.
+
+"What do you want to learn?" said Miss Foldal, with a display of grave
+interest.  "I am afraid my French is rather rusty and I never had much
+Latin and Italian to speak of."
+
+The Sailor was thrilled.
+
+"Don't want no French, miss," he said, "or anythink swankin'.  I just
+want to read the _Evenin' Star_ an' be able to write a letter."
+
+"Do you mean to say----"  Like the lady she was, she checked herself
+very adroitly.  "I am quite sure, Mr. Harper, that is easily arranged.
+How much can you read at present?"
+
+"Nothink, miss."  The plain and awful truth slipped out before he knew
+it had.
+
+Miss Foldal did not flicker an eyelash.  She merely said, "I'll go and
+see if I can find Butter's spelling-book.  I ought to have it
+somewhere."
+
+She went at once in search of it, and five minutes later returned in
+triumph.
+
+"Do you mind not sayin' anythink about it to Ginger Jukes, miss?" the
+young man besought her.
+
+"If it is your wish," said Miss Foldal, "I certainly will not."
+
+Here was the beginning of wisdom for Henry Harper.  The prophetic words
+of Klondyke came back to him.  From the very first lesson, which he
+took that evening after tea before the return of Ginger from the Crown
+and Cushion, it seemed that reading and writing was the Sailor's true
+line of country.  A whole new world was spread suddenly before him.
+
+Mr. Harper was an amazingly diligent pupil.  He took enormous pains.
+Whenever Ginger was not about, he was consolidating the knowledge he
+had gained, and slowly and painfully acquiring more.  At Miss Foldal's
+suggestion, he provided himself with a slate and pencil.  This enabled
+him to tackle a very intricate business in quite a professional manner.
+
+It was uphill work making pothooks and hangers, having to write rows of
+a-b, ab, and having to make sure of his alphabet by writing it out from
+memory.  But he did not weaken in his task.  Sometimes he rose early to
+write, sometimes he sat up late to read; every day he received
+instruction of priceless value.  And never once did his preceptress
+give herself airs, or sneer at his ignorance; above all, she did not
+give him away to Ginger.
+
+These were great days.  The beginning of real, definite knowledge gave
+Henry Harper a new power of soul.  C-a-t spelled cat, d-o-g spelled
+dog; nine went five times into forty-five.  There was no limit to these
+jewels of information.  If he continued to work in this way, he might
+hope to read the _Evening Star_ by the end of March.
+
+In the meantime, while all these immense yet secret labors were going
+forward, he felt his position with Ginger was in jeopardy.  Somehow as
+the weeks passed with the Sailor still in the second team, they did not
+seem to be on quite the terms that they had been.  The change was so
+slight as to be hardly perceptible, yet it hurt the Sailor, who had a
+great capacity for friendship and also for hero worship.  Ginger, to
+whom his present fabulous prosperity was due, must always be one of the
+gods of his idolatry.
+
+The truth was, Ginger was one of those who rise to the top wherever
+they are, while Henry Harper lacked this quality.  Ginger, although
+only in the second team at present, always talked and behaved as if he
+was a member of the first.  There could be no doubt his honorable
+friendship with Dinkie Dawson--one of England's best, as the _Evening
+Star_ often referred to him--was the foundation upon which he
+sedulously raised his social eminence.
+
+In fact, Ginger seldom moved out of the company of the first team.  He
+played billiards with its members at the Crown and Cushion; he played
+whist and cribbage with them at the same resort of fashion; they almost
+regarded him as one of themselves, although he had yet to win his
+spurs; moreover, and this was the oddest part of the whole matter, even
+the committee had come to look upon him favorably.
+
+The Sailor was a little wounded now and then by Ginger's persiflage.
+Sometimes he held him up to ridicule in a way that hurt.  He made no
+secret, besides, of his growing belief that there was not very much to
+the Sailor after all, that he was letting the grass grow under his
+feet, and that he was good for very little beyond getting down to a hot
+one.  No doubt, the root of the trouble lay in the fact that during the
+first months of his service with the Rovers, the Sailor was less
+interested in football and the things that went with football than he
+ought to have been.  He was secretly giving his nights and days to a
+matter which seemed of even greater importance than his bread and
+butter.  This might easily have led to disaster had it not been for a
+saving clause ever present in the mind of Henry Harper.
+
+His dream, as a shoeless and stockingless newsboy, miserably hawking
+his Result Edition through the mud of Blackhampton, had been that one
+day he would help the Rovers bring the Cup to his native city.  This
+thought had sustained him in many a desperate hour.  Well, Henry Harper
+was something of a fatalist now.  He had come very much nearer the
+realization of that dream than had ever seemed possible.  Therefore, he
+was not going to let go of it.  His mind was now full of other matters,
+but he must not lose sight of the fact that it was his bounden duty to
+make his dream come true.
+
+To begin with he had to find his way into the first eleven.  But the
+weeks went by.  January came, and with it the first of the cup ties,
+but Henry Harper was still in the second team and likely to remain
+there.  It was not that he did not continue to show promise.  But
+something more than promise was needed for these gladiatorial contests
+when twenty, thirty, forty, fifty thousand persons assembled to cheer
+their favorites, whose names were in their mouths as household words.
+His time might one day come, if he kept on improving.  But it would not
+be that year.  As Ginger said, before he could play in a cup tie he
+would have to get a bit more pudding under his shirt.
+
+During these critical months Henry Harper was getting other things to
+sustain him.  Every week marked a definite advance in knowledge.  Miss
+Foldal found him other books, and one evening at the beginning of
+March, he astonished her not merely by spelling crocodile, but by
+writing it down on his slate.
+
+April came, and with it the end of the football season.  Then arose a
+problem the Sailor had not foreseen.  Would the Rovers take him on for
+another year?  He was still untried in the great matches, he was still
+merely a youth of promise.  Would he be re-engaged?  It was a question
+for Ginger also.  But as far as he was concerned, the matter did not
+long remain in doubt.  One evening in the middle of that fateful month,
+he came in to supper after his usual "hundred up" at the Crown and
+Cushion.
+
+"Well, Sailor," he said, a note of patronage in his tone.  "I've fixed
+it with the kermittee.  They are going to take me on for next year."
+
+Sailor was not surprised.  His faith in Ginger never wavered.
+
+"Wish I could say the same for you, Sailor," said Ginger,
+condescendingly; "but the kermittee think you are not quite class."
+
+"They are not goin' to take me on again!" said the Sailor in a hollow
+voice.
+
+"No.  They think you are not quite Rovers' form.  They are goin' to
+give you back your papers."
+
+Such a decree was like cold steel striking at the Sailor's heart.  The
+dream of his boyhood lay shattered.  And there were other consequences
+which just then he could not muster the power of mind to face.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+Those were dark hours for Henry Harper.  Not only must he yield great
+hopes, he must also give up a princely mode of life.  Here was a
+disaster which must surely make an end of desires that had begun to
+dominate him like a passion.
+
+In this time of crisis Ginger showed his faith.  He was not a young man
+of emotional ardor, but the Sailor was a chap you couldn't help liking,
+and in his heart Ginger believed in him; therefore all the influence he
+could muster he brought to bear on those in high places.
+
+This could not be done directly.  Ginger was still in the second team
+himself, but his social qualities had given him a footing with the
+first.  Among these, with the redoubtable Dinkie Dawson for his prop
+and stay, he let it be widely circulated that it would be an act of
+folly for the Rovers to turn down the Sailor without giving him a fair
+trial, because sooner or later he was bound to make good.
+
+This view became so fashionable in the billiards' saloon at the Crown
+and Cushion that it came to the ears of its proprietor, who was no less
+a person than Mr. Augustus Higginbottom.  Therefore one evening Ginger
+was able to hearten the Sailor in the depths of his despair.
+
+"They are goin' to give you a trial with the first on Saturday, young
+feller.  And just remember all depends on it.  If you do well, you'll
+stay; if you don't, you'll have to pack your bag."
+
+It was not very comforting for one so highly strung as the Sailor.  But
+Ginger meant well; also he had done well; it was entirely due to him
+that the Sailor was to have his chance.  And that chance would never
+have been his if Ginger's astuteness had not been very considerable.
+
+Saturday came, and Henry Harper found himself in action with the first
+team at last.  It was the end of the season and little importance was
+attached to the match, but the Sailor, as he took his place nervously
+in the goal, well knew that this game was to make or mar him.  All was
+at stake.  He had felt as he lay sleepless throughout the previous
+night that the issue would try him too highly.  It was the penalty of
+imagination to be slain in battle before the battle came.  But when the
+hour arrived and he stood in the goal, he was able after all to do his
+bit like a workman.
+
+In his own way he was a fighter.  And genius for goalkeeping stood to
+him, as Ginger had been confident it would.  In the first minute of the
+game he gathered a hot one cleverly, got rid of it before the enemy
+could down him, and from that moment he had no further dread of losing
+his nerve.
+
+"What did I tell yer, Dink?" said Ginger with an air of restrained
+triumph.  "That young feller plays for England one o' these fine
+afternoons."
+
+This was a bold statement, yet not unsanctioned in high places.  That
+evening the Sailor was summoned to the Presence, and was offered a
+contract for another season with a promised rise if he continued to do
+well.
+
+The months which followed meant much to Henry Harper.  In many respects
+they were the best of his life.  It was a time of dawning hope, of
+coming enlargement, of slow-burgeoning wisdom.  During those golden
+summer mornings in which he wandered in the more or less vernal meadows
+engirdling the city, latent, unsuspected forces began to awake.
+Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, he craved continually.  Every fresh
+victory won in an enchanted field was a lighted torch in the Sailor's
+soul.
+
+He knew that the playing of football was but a means to an end.  It
+gave him leisure, opportunity, wherewithal for things infinitely more
+important.  During those months of his awakening, his desire became a
+passion.  There were whole vast continents in the mind of man, that he
+could never hope to traverse.  There was no limit to the vista opened
+up by those supreme arts of man's invention, the twin and cognate arts
+of reading and writing.
+
+Knowledge is power.  That statement had been made quite recently by his
+already well-beloved Blackhampton _Evening Star_.  With his own eyes he
+had been able to read that declaration.  Its truth had thrilled him.
+
+He was making such progress now that he could read the newspaper almost
+as well as Ginger himself.  He no longer dreaded the unmasking of his
+guilty secret because he no longer had one to unmask.  Of course he had
+not Ginger's ease and facility; to tackle a leading article was a task
+of Hercules, but give him time and Marlow's Dictionary--Miss Foldal had
+marked his diligence by the gift of her own private copy--and he need
+not fear any foe in black and white.
+
+September came, and with it football again.  And from the first match
+it was seen that Sailor Harper, which was the name the whole town
+called him now, had taken a long stride to the front.  By the end of
+that month his place in the first team was secure, and his fame was in
+the mouth of everybody.
+
+For many years, in Mr. Augustus Higginbottom's judgment--and there
+could be none higher--the one need of the Blackhampton Rovers had been
+a goalkeeper of Class.  They had one now.  The Sailor was performing
+miracles in every match, and Ginger, his mentor, was going about with a
+permanent expression of, "What did I tell yer?" upon a preternaturally
+sharp and freckled countenance.
+
+Ginger did not allow the grass to grow under his own feet either.  He
+was now installed as billiards marker and general factotum at the Crown
+and Cushion; in fact he had already come to occupy quite a place at
+court.  But even this was not the limit of that vaulting ambition,
+which was twofold: (1) to be the official right full back of the
+Blackhampton Rovers; (2) the acquisition of a tobacconist's shop in the
+vicinity of the Crown and Cushion.  But the latter scheme belonged, of
+course, to the distant future.
+
+Ginger was far-sighted, such had always been Dinkie Dawson's opinion,
+and Dinkie did not speak unless he knew.  Therefore little surprise was
+caused by a startling rumor at the beginning of November of Ginger's
+engagement to Miss Maria Higginbottom.  And it was coincident with
+Ginger's "making good" with the Rovers' first team.
+
+It was said that the engagement had not the sanction of the chairman of
+the club.  Nevertheless Ginger kept his place as general factotum at
+the Crown and Cushion; moreover, as understudy to Joe Pretyman who had
+been smitten with water on the knee, he stepped into the breach with
+such gallantry that the first part of his ambition was soon assured.
+By sheer fighting power, by his sovereign faculty of never knowing when
+he was beaten, Ginger in the first week of December was in a position
+that nature could hardly have meant him to grace.
+
+"Blame my cats," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, whose thoughts were a
+little rueful.  "That Ginger's mustard.  He plays better an' better in
+every match."
+
+"Yes, Gus, he does," said Mr. Satellite Albert.
+
+On the evening of that proud day, Ginger obtained a rise in his salary.
+According to rumor, no sooner had it been granted than he urged Miss
+Maria Higginbottom to fix a date.  It was said that, in spite of
+Ginger's recent triumphs, the lady declined the offer.  Even money was
+freely laid, however, that within a twelvemonth Ginger would lead her
+to the altar.
+
+During that glorious December, the Rovers won every match.  While the
+Sailor continued to be a wonder among goalkeepers, Ginger quietly took
+his place as the authentic successor to the famous Joe Pretyman.
+Indeed, things were carried to such a perilous height of enthusiasm in
+the town of Blackhampton that two coming events were treated as
+accomplished facts: the Rovers would win the Cup and the Sailor would
+be chosen for England in the match against Scotland.
+
+These were dream days for Henry Harper.  He was performing miracles,
+yet compared with going aloft in a gale in latitude fifty degrees
+everything seemed absurdly simple.  He had merely to stand on dry land,
+or on land dry more or less, since the ground of the Rovers was not so
+well drained as it might have been, in thick boots and a warm sweater,
+catching a football which was so much easier to seize than a ratline,
+and evading the oncoming forwards of the enemy who were not allowed to
+use their hands, let alone their knives.  It was as easy as tumbling
+off a yard.  But there was just one drawback to it, which he did not
+think of mentioning to anyone, not even to Miss Foldal.  Every match in
+which he played seemed to increase a feeling of excitement he was never
+without.
+
+This was queer.  There was really so little to excite one who had been
+six years before the mast.  At first he was inclined to believe it must
+be the presence of the crowd.  But he ought to have got over that.
+Besides, it was not the crowd which caused the almost terrible feeling
+of tension that always came upon him now the night before a match.
+
+After a great game on Christmas Eve, he was raised shoulder high by a
+body of admirers and carried off the field.  The committee of the club
+marked his achievements by a substantial rise of wages and by obtaining
+his signature to a contract for the following year.  Ginger also, who
+had performed wonderful deeds, was honored in a manner equally
+practical.  That Christmas both were on the crest of the wave.  But the
+highest pinnacle was reserved for the Sailor.  It was not merely that
+he was tall and straight and strong as steel, that he could spring like
+a cat from one side of the goal to the other, or hang like a monkey
+from the crossbar, or fling his lithe body at the ball with calculated
+daring; it was perhaps his modesty which took the public captive.
+
+It may have been this or it may not; there is so little of the
+corporate mind of man that can be reduced to set terms.  Ginger's most
+partial worshiper would have had to look a long while to find modesty
+in the bearing of that hero, yet he was very popular also.  Nothing
+succeeds like success, was an apothegm of the Blackhampton _Evening
+Star_.  The Sailor knew that now from experience, but he was presently
+to know, as he had known before, that nothing fails like failure, at
+least in the minds of many for whom the Blackhampton _Evening Star_ was
+the last word of wisdom.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+"Sailor boy," said Ginger, on Christmas night, "what are you readin'
+now?"
+
+"'Pickwick Papers,'" said the Sailor, trying to speak as if this was
+nothing out of the common.
+
+"Potery?"
+
+"It's by Charles Dickens," said the Sailor, with a thrill of triumph
+which he was quite unable to keep out of his voice.
+
+When Ginger was out of his depth, which was not very often, he always
+took care not to give himself away.  The only Charles Dickens with whom
+he was acquainted was doing great things just now at center half back
+for Duckingfield Britannia.  But with all respect to Chas., Ginger did
+not believe that he was the author of the "Pickwick Papers."  Therefore
+he made no comment.  But silence did not debar him from the process of
+thought.
+
+"Sailor boy," he said at last, "if you take the advice o' your father,
+you'll not go over-reading yerself.  Them deep books what you get out
+o' the Free Libry is dangerous, that's my experience.  Too much truck
+with 'em turns a chap's brain.  Besides, they mean nothing when you've
+done."
+
+The Sailor was less impressed than usual.  But Ginger was very clear
+upon the point.
+
+"I once knowed a chap as over-read hisself into quod.  He was as sound
+a young feller as you could find in a month o' Sundays, but he took to
+goin' to the Free Libry to read Socialism, and that done him in.  He
+come to think all men was equal and Mine is Thine, and that sort o'
+tommy, an' it took a pleadin' old Beak to set him right in the matter;
+at least he give him six months without the option, and even that
+didn't convince the youth.  Some chaps take a deal o' convincin'.  But
+the Free Libry was that chap's ruin, there's no doubt about it."
+
+Ginger urged this view with a conviction that rather alarmed the
+Sailor.  "Pickwick Papers," although very difficult and advanced
+reading, seemed harmless enough, but Ginger had such a developed mind,
+he appeared to know so much about everything, that the Sailor felt it
+would be the part of wisdom to consult Miss Foldal.
+
+It had been her idea that he should join the Free Library.  He had
+promptly done so, and from the perfectly amazing wealth of the world's
+literature garnered there had led off with the "Pickwick Papers," which
+he had heard was, next to the Bible and "Barriers Burned Away," the
+greatest book in the English language.  His instinct pointed to
+"Barriers Burned Away"--he had read little bits of the Bible already,
+of which Miss Foldal had a private copy--but he felt that "Pickwick
+Papers" was the less difficult work of the two.  For the present,
+therefore, he must be content with that famous book.
+
+Miss Foldal reassured him wonderfully.  She was convinced that Mr.
+Jukes took an extreme view.  She had never read any of the works of
+Dickens herself, she simply couldn't abide him, he was too
+_descriptive_ for her, but she was sure there was no harm in him,
+although she had heard that with Thackeray it was different.  Not that
+she had read Thackeray either, as she understood that no unmarried lady
+under forty could read Thackeray and remain respectable.
+
+The Sailor was strengthened by Miss Foldal's view of Dickens, but her
+reference to the rival and antithesis of that blameless author was in a
+sense unfortunate.  Mr. Harper wanted to take back "Pickwick Papers" at
+once; he had had it three weeks and had only just reached Chapter Nine;
+he would exchange it for the more lurid and worldly works of the
+licentious Thackeray.  But Miss Foldal dissuaded him.  For one thing,
+she had the reputation of her household to consider.  She had once had
+an aunt, an old lady very widely read and of great literary taste, who
+always maintained that the "Vanity Fair" of Thackeray ought to have
+been burned by the common hangman, and that nothing but good would have
+been done to the community if the author had been burned along with it.
+Miss Foldal allowed that her aunt had been an old lady of strong views;
+all the same, she was of opinion that _Thorough_ must be Mr. Harper's
+motto.  He had begun "Pickwick Papers," and although she allowed it was
+dry, he must read every word for the purpose of forming his character,
+before he even so much as thought about Thackeray.
+
+"Rome was not built in a day," said Miss Foldal.  "Those who pursued
+knowledge must not attempt to run before they could walk.  Thackeray
+was so much more advanced than Dickens that to read the one before the
+other was like going to a Robertson comedy or Shakespeare before you
+had seen a pantomime or the Moore and Burgess Minstrels."
+
+The ethics of Miss Foldal were a little too much for the Sailor.  But
+one fact was clear.  For once Ginger was wrong: no possible harm could
+come of reading Charles Dickens.
+
+Thus Henry Harper was able to continue his studies in ease of mind.
+And at the beck of ambition one thing led to another in the most
+surprising way.  His appetite for knowledge grew on what it fed.
+Reading was only one branch; there was the writing, also the ciphering.
+The latter art was not really essential.  It was rather a side-dish,
+and _hors-d'oeuvre_--Miss Foldal's private word--but it was also very
+useful, and in a manner of speaking you could not lay claim to the
+education of a gentleman without it.
+
+The Sailor did not at present aspire to a liberal education, but he
+remembered that Klondyke had always set great store by ciphering and
+had taught him to count up to a hundred.  It was due perhaps to that
+immortal memory rather than to Miss Foldal's somewhat fanciful and
+romantic attitude towards the supremely difficult science of numbers
+that Henry Harper persevered with the multiplication table.  At first,
+however, the difficulties were great.  But his grit was wonderful.
+Early in the winter mornings, while Ginger was still abed, and Miss
+Foldal also, he would come downstairs, light the gas in the
+sitting-room, put on his overcoat and sit down to three hours' solid
+study of writing and arithmetic.  Moreover, he burned the midnight oil.
+Sometimes with the aid of Marlow's Dictionary, he read the "Pickwick
+Papers" far into the night, with a little of the Bible for a change, or
+the Blackhampton _Evening Star_.  And if he had not to be on duty with
+the club, he would spend all his time in these exacting occupations.
+
+In the meantime, the Blackhampton Rovers were making history.  They
+were an old established club; for many years they had had one of the
+best teams in the country, and although on two occasions they had been
+in the semi-final round for the Cup, they had never got beyond that
+critical stage; therefore the long coveted trophy had not yet been seen
+in the city of Blackhampton.
+
+However, the Cup was coming to Blackhampton this year, said the experts
+in football with whom the town was filled.  The Rovers had not lost a
+match since September 12.  They had won three cup ties already, beating
+on each occasion a redoubtable foe, of whom one was that ancient and
+honorable enemy, the Villa.  One more victory and the Rovers would be
+in the semi-final again.
+
+As far as local knowledge could discern there was none to thwart the
+Rovers now.  In the words of Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, every man was a
+trier, the whole team was the goods.  They had the best goalkeeper in
+England, and Ginger, in whom he had never really believed, had turned
+out mustard.  The proprietor of the Crown and Cushion, with that
+largeness of mind which is not afraid to change its opinions, expressed
+himself thus a few minutes before closing time in the private bar when
+he took "a drop of summat" to stimulate the parts of speech and the
+powers of reason.
+
+The Rovers could not fail to win the Cup.  According to rumor, after
+the triumph over the Villa, they were freely backed.  This may have
+been the case or it may not.  But no body of sportsmen could have been
+more confident than the thirty thousand odd who paid their shillings
+and their sixpences with heroic regularity, who followed the fortunes
+of the Rovers in victory or defeat.
+
+For this noble body of partisans there was one authentic hero now.
+Dinkie Dawson was class, Erb Mullins was a good un, Mac was as good a
+one as ever came over the Border, Ginger was a terror for his size and
+never knew when he was beat, but it was the Sailor in goal who caught
+and held every eye.  There was magic in all the Sailor did and the way
+he did it, which belonged to no one else, which was his own inimitable
+gift.
+
+Sailor Harper was the idol of the town.  He might have married almost
+any girl in it.  People turned round to look at him as he walked over
+the canal bridge towards the market place.  Even old ladies of the most
+fearless and terrific virtue seemed involuntarily to give the glad eye
+to the fine-looking lad "with all the oceans of the world in his face,"
+as a local poet said in the _Evening Star_, when he got into a tram or
+a bus.  If the Sailor had not been the soul of modesty, he would have
+been completely spoiled by the public homage during these crowded and
+glorious weeks.
+
+It was a rare time for Blackhampton, a rare time for the Rovers, a rare
+time for Henry Harper.  The very air of the smoke-laden and unlovely
+town seemed vibrant with emotion.  A surge of romance had entered his
+heart.  The wild dream of his newsboy days was coming true.  He was
+going to help the Rovers bring the Cup to his native city.  Such a
+thought made even the "Pickwick Papers," now Chapter Twenty-three, seem
+uninspired.  He had not ventured on Shakespeare; he was not ripe for it
+yet, said Miss Foldal.  Shakespeare was poetry, and the crown of all
+wisdom, the greatest man that ever lived with one exception, but the
+time would come even for the Bard of Avon.  On the night the Rovers
+brought home the Cup, Miss Foldal volunteered a promise to read aloud
+"Romeo and Juliet," the finest play ever written by Shakespeare, in
+which she herself had once appeared at the Blackhampton Lyceum,
+although that was a long time ago.
+
+However, there the promise was.  But when it came to the ears of Ginger
+he expressed himself as thoroughly disgusted.
+
+"Keep your eyeballs skinned, young feller," said that misogynist.
+"That's the advice of your father.  She's after your four pound a week.
+Take care you are not nabbed.  You ain't safe with old Tidde-fol-lol
+these days, you ain't reelly."
+
+The Sailor was hurt by such reflections on one to whom he owed much.
+It is true that a recent episode after supper in the passage had rather
+disconcerted him, but it would be easy to make too much of it, as he
+was never quite sure whether Miss Foldal did or did not intend to kiss
+him, even if she put her arms round his neck.  Also he had once seen
+her take a bottle of gin to her bedroom, but he was much too loyal to
+mention to Ginger either of these matters; and, after all, what were
+these things in comparison with her elegance and her refinement, her
+knowledge of Shakespeare and the human heart?
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Great was the excitement in the town when the _Evening Star_ brought
+out a special edition with the news that the Rovers had to play
+Duckingfield Britannia in the fourth round of the Cup.
+
+Duckingfield was the center of a mining district about fifteen miles
+away, and the rivalry between the Britannia and the Rovers was
+terrific.  In the mind of any true Blackhamptonian there was never any
+question as to their respective merits.  The Rovers had forgotten more
+about football than the Britannia would ever know.  One was quite an
+upstart club; the other, as all the world knew, went back into the
+primal dawn of football history.  The Rovers practiced the science and
+culture of the game; the Britannia relied on brute force and adjectival
+ignorance.
+
+Still, Duckingfield Britannia were doughty foes, and although the
+Rovers had no need to fear anyone, the feeling at the Crown and Cushion
+was that they rather wished they had not to play them.  The truth was,
+in their battles with these upstarts, the Rovers never seemed able to
+live up to their reputation.  Whether they met at Duckingfield or at
+Blackhampton, and in no matter what circumstances, the Rovers
+invariably got the worst of the deal.  This was odd, because the Rovers
+were much the superior team in every way, always had been, always would
+be.  They didn't know how to play football at Duckingfield, whereas
+Blackhampton was the home of the game.
+
+Moreover, there was one historic meeting between these neighbors which
+was always a _causa foederis_ at any gathering of their partisans.  It
+was a certain match on neutral ground in which they met in the
+semi-final for the Cup, when to the utter confusion and bewilderment of
+all the best judges, the Rovers, who in their own opinion had really
+won the Cup already, were beaten four goals to nothing.  It is true
+that a snowstorm raged throughout the match, and to this fact the
+defeat of the Rovers was always ascribed by the lovers of pure
+football.  It could never be accounted for on any other hypothesis.  No
+comparison of the real merits of the teams was possible, any more than
+it was possible to compare the towns whence they sprang.  You could not
+mention a town like Duckingfield in the same breath as a town like
+Blackhampton; to speak of the Britannia being the equal of the Rovers
+merely betrayed a fundamental ignorance of what you were talking about.
+
+All the same the feeling in the private bar of the Crown and Cushion on
+the night of the announcement that the Rovers and the Britannia must
+meet once more in a cup tie was one of anxiety.  It had long been felt
+in Blackhampton that the fates never played quite fairly in the matter
+of Duckingfield Britannia.  No reasonable person outside the latter
+miserable place ever questioned the Rovers' immense superiority, but
+there was no glossing over the fact that a clash of arms with these
+rude and unpolished foemen ended invariably in darkness and eclipse.
+"It's what I always say," Mr. August Higginbottom would affirm on these
+tragic occasions, "they don't know _how_ to play footba' at
+Duckingfill.  Bull-fighting's their game.  Brute force
+and--_hignorance_, that's all there is to it."
+
+For ten days nothing was talked of in Blackhampton but the coming
+battle.  But there could be only one result.  Britannia was bound to be
+wiped off the face of the earth.  Still, the whole town would breathe
+more freely on Saturday evening, when this operation had been performed
+and the Rovers were safely in the semi-final round.
+
+On the eve of the match, it was whispered all over Blackhampton that
+big money was on.  The confidence of the enemy was overweening,
+ridiculous, pathetic; partisans of the Britannia were said to be
+backing their favorites for unheard-of sums.  "Rovers would be all
+right if they had a front parlor to play in," was a favorite axiom of
+these unpolished foemen.  "Britannia plays footba'.  They don't play
+hunt-the-slipper nor kiss-in-the-ring."
+
+The great day dawned.  A chill February dawn it was.  Queerly excited
+by the coming match, Henry Harper had hardly closed his eyes throughout
+the previous night.  He knew that wonders were expected of him; there
+seemed no reason, under Providence, why he should not perform them; in
+match after match, he had gone from strength to strength; yet on the
+eve he hardly slept.
+
+He had not been sleeping for some little time now.  He had paid no heed
+to the warnings of Ginger, who was quite sure "he was over-reading
+hisself," but he didn't believe this was the case.  No doubt he had
+studied hard; his thirst for knowledge grew in spite of the copious
+draughts with which he tried to quench it.  Only too often before a
+match, he felt nervous, overstrung, but it did not occur to him that he
+was on the verge of disaster.
+
+On the morning of a never-to-be-forgotten day, the Sailor rose before
+it was light to practice writing and to study arithmetic--he was as far
+as vulgar fractions now.  He sat in an overcoat in a fireless
+sitting-room for three hours before breakfast, and continued his labors
+for several hours afterwards.  Then, after a light luncheon, he walked
+with Ginger to the ground.
+
+The famous field of the Rovers was called Gamble's Pleasance.  History
+has not determined the source of its name.  Extrinsically it was hard
+to justify.  Only one tree was visible, and not a single blade of
+grass.  It was surrounded on four sides by huge roofed structures of
+wood and iron, towering tier upon tier; it had capacity for fifty
+thousand people.  When Ginger and the Sailor came on the scene, these
+had taken up their places already, the gates had been closed, and
+disappointed enthusiasts were turning away by the hundred.  There was
+not room in Gamble's Pleasance for another human being.
+
+It was a scene truly remarkable that met the eyes of Ginger and the
+Sailor.  Tier upon tier, wall upon wall of solid humanity rose to the
+sky.  The Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band fought nobly but in
+vain against fifty thousand larynxes, and mounted police did their best
+to prevent their owners bursting through the barriers to the field of
+play.
+
+The majority were strong partisans of the Rovers and wore favors of
+chocolate and blue.  But there had been an invasion of the Huns.
+Barbarians from the neighboring town of Duckingfield could be picked
+out at a glance.  One and all wore aggressively checked cloth caps, on
+which a red-and-white card was pinned bearing the legend, "Play up,
+Britannia."
+
+The supporters of that upstart club were massed in solid phalanxes
+about the scene of action.  They waved red-and-white banners, they
+shook rattles, they discoursed the strains of "Rule, Britannia" on
+trumpets and mouth-organs, they let off fireworks, and far worse than
+all this, they indulged in ribald criticism of their distinguished
+opponents' style of play.  "They were goin' to mop the floor with 'em
+as usual."  The consequence was hand-to-hand conflicts became general
+all over the ground between the dignified supporters of True Football,
+and these Visigoths who were ignorant of that godlike science.  These
+encounters pleasantly assisted the efforts of the mounted police and
+the Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band to beguile the fleeting
+minutes until the combatants appeared on the field of honor.
+
+"Yer talk about yer Sailor," said a red-and-white-rosetted warrior with
+a rattle in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other.  "We'll give
+him Sailor.  Rovers can swank, but they can't play footba'."
+
+"Villa didn't think so, anyway," said another sportsman, who flaunted a
+chocolate-and-blue rose in his buttonhole without intending any affront
+to horticulture.
+
+"Villa," said the Duckingfield barbarian.  "Who's Villa!  Play oop,
+Britann-yah!"  He then proceeded to render the slogan of Britannia on
+the mouth-organ, until some seething superpatriot hit him on the head
+from behind with a rattle.
+
+In the midst of the "scrap" that followed this graceful rebuke, which
+two unmounted members of the Blackhampton Constabulary regarded from a
+strategic distance with the utmost detachment, a cry of "'Ere they
+come!" was loosed from at least thirty-five thousand throats, and such
+a roar rent the heavens as must have disturbed Zeus considerably just
+as he was settling down for the afternoon.
+
+"Play up, Rovers!"
+
+Blackhampton might well be proud of the eleven wearers of the chocolate
+and blue.  A finer-looking set of warriors would have been hard to
+find.  And it did not lessen the pride of their friends that among the
+eleven only the goalkeeper could claim to be representing the place of
+his birth.
+
+"Play up, Sailor!"
+
+The slender, handsome boy, looking rather fine-drawn, but with
+something of the turn of limb of a thoroughbred racehorse, came into
+the goal and was duly greeted by his admirers.
+
+"'E plays for England," proclaimed one of these.
+
+"I don't think," said a Visigoth with a mouth-organ.
+
+"Play up, Dink!"
+
+The great Dinkie, side-stepping with the loose-limbed elegance of a
+ragtime dancer, looked as smart as paint.
+
+"There's not a better inside left playing footba'," said another
+enthusiast, looking round for contradiction.
+
+"I don't think," said a Visigoth with a rattle.
+
+"Play up, Ginger!"
+
+Ginger, with head of flame, looking more bow-legged, prick-eared and
+pugnacious than ever, was a veritable pocket edition of the "Fighting
+Temeraire."
+
+"'E's a daisy, ain't 'e?" said the enthusiast.
+
+"I don't think," quoth the Visigoth.
+
+Another roar was loosed, this time by fifteen thousand Duckingfield
+larynxes.
+
+"'Ere they are.  Play oop, Britann-yah.  Play oop, me little lads."
+
+All this was merely the prelude to such a game as never was seen on
+Gamble's Pleasance.  The Rovers were on the crest of the wave.  They
+had not lost a match since September 12, and this day was Saturday,
+February 20.  They were proud and confident, they were playing on their
+own ground in the presence of their friends, and they had a very long
+score to settle with Duckingfield Britannia.
+
+And yet deep in the hearts of the wearers of the chocolate and blue was
+the sense of fate.  And it is a stronger thing than any that has yet
+existed in the soul of man.  Fought they never so fiercely, under no
+matter what conditions, whenever the haughty Rovers met these
+unpolished foemen they had invariably to bite the dust or the mud, as
+the case might be.
+
+The pace was a corker to start with.  It was as if twenty-two
+parti-colored tigers had been suddenly let loose.  But it was not
+football that was played.  Britannia was not capable of expounding the
+noble science as it was understood by the polished and urbane Rovers of
+Blackhampton.
+
+"Goin' to be a dog-fight as usual," proclaimed Mr. Augustus
+Higginbottom, who was seated in the exact center of the members' stand.
+
+This grim remark was a concession to the fact that the Britannia was
+already fiercely attacking the Rovers' goal, and that Ginger, under
+great pressure, had been compelled to give a corner kick.
+
+From the word "go" it was a terrific set-to.  Up and down, down and up,
+ding dong, hammer and tongs, east, west, north and south of that
+turfless, sand-strewn area surged the tide of battle.  Every yard of
+ground was yielded at the point of death; at least so it seemed to
+fifty thousand spectators and six mounted constables who could hardly
+breathe for excitement.
+
+"Durn me, if that Ginger ain't top weight," hoarsely remarked the
+chairman of the club to Mr. Satellite Albert.
+
+Ginger had just laid out the center forward of the enemy when a goal
+seemed sure.  The advantage of the proceeding was twofold.  In the
+first place, the Rovers' citadel was still uncaptured, in spite of the
+fact that thirty-five thousand persons had as good as yielded it to the
+enemy, fifteen thousand of whom were already hooting with delight at
+receiving it; while in the second place, Ginger's fellow warriors, who
+were gasping and holding their sides, were provided with a "breather."
+
+"If Britannia would only play footba', it wouldn't matter," roared the
+Rovers' chairman in a bull's voice above the din.
+
+Five minutes' grace, the fruit of Ginger's timely action, was much
+appreciated by his comrades, who were able to recover their wind while
+the enemy's center forward, supine and attended by the club trainer
+with a sponge and a cordial, recovered his.  Nevertheless, the referee,
+a cock-sparrow in knickerbockers, who tried to spoil a fine game by
+stopping it without visible reason for doing so, felt he could do no
+less than caution Ginger for dangerous play.
+
+"Turn him off."  Fifteen thousand Duckingfielders besought the referee.
+"Turn him off.  Dirty dog!"
+
+"Good old Ginger!  Played, Ginger!  Good on yer, Ginger!" proclaimed
+thirty-five thousand stalwart Blackhamptonians.
+
+Had Ginger received marching orders thirty-five thousand
+Blackhamptonians would know the reason why.
+
+"Don't know what footba' is at Duckingfill," said Mr. Augustus
+Higginbottom, glaring around with a truculence awful to behold.
+
+But they were at it again.  Quarter was neither asked nor given.
+Duckingfield Britannia couldn't play for rock cakes, they couldn't play
+for toffee and bananas, but had not the Sailor in goal performed one of
+his miracles just before the referee blew his whistle for half time,
+the Rovers would have been a goal down at that sorely needed interval.
+
+As it was, when, at the end of forty-five minutes' pounding, the
+twenty-two warriors limped off the ground to the strain of "Hearts of
+Oak," rendered with extraordinary vehemence by the Blackhampton
+Excelsior Prize Brass Band, no goal had been scored, and fifty thousand
+persons and six mounted policemen appeared for the time being
+reasonably content.
+
+"Can't call it footba', but you mark my words, Albert, it is goin' to
+be a hell of a second half."
+
+Mr. Satellite Albert could only faintly concur with the chairman of the
+club.  He had a rather weak heart.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+In the Rovers' dressing-room the trainer, an obese individual in a
+dirty cloth cap and dirtier sweater, handed round a plate of sliced
+lemons to the team.  But, white as a ghost, sat the Sailor in a corner
+apart from the rest.  He realized that the match was only half over,
+and with all his soul he wished it at an end.  He was in no mood for
+sucking lemons just now.  The hand of fate was upon him.
+
+Everything seemed to be going round.  He was so oddly and queerly
+excited that he could hardly see.  How in the world he had stopped that
+shot and got rid of the ball with two Britannias literally hurling
+themselves upon him, he would never know.  But he understood dimly, as
+he sat chin in hand on the farthest bench by the washing basins, that
+anything might happen before the match was over.  The truth was, and he
+simply dared not face it, this terrific battle of giants was a bit too
+much for him.  No, he dared not face that thought, he, whose dream,
+whose imperial destiny it was to bring the Cup for the first time to
+his native city.
+
+"Buck up, Sailor boy."
+
+Ginger, the greatest hero of them all, had laid an affectionate hand on
+his shoulder.
+
+"Buck up, Sailor boy.  You'll never stop a better nor that one.  We've
+got 'em boiled."
+
+Mr. Augustus Higginbottom appeared in the dressing-room, fur coat,
+chocolate waistcoat, blue tie, spats, watch-chain and all.  His face
+had a grim and dour expression.
+
+"Me lads," said he, "if ye can make a draw on it there's two pound
+apiece for ye.  And if ye can win there's four.  Understand?"
+
+They all understood but Sailor.  At that moment he could neither hear
+nor see the chairman of the committee.  The only person he could see
+was a certain young Arris in a certain tree, and all he knew was that a
+decree of inexorable fate compelled him to stand in the shadow of that
+tree for forty-five minutes by the clock, with the gaze of fifty
+thousand people and six mounted policemen centered upon him.
+
+The second half of the match began with a sensation.  In the very first
+minute, the dauntless Ginger checked a rush by the enemy's left, gave
+the ball a mighty thump with his good right boot, and more by luck than
+anything it fell at the feet of Dinkie Dawson.  And he, as all the
+world knew, was, on his day and in his hour, a genius.  He trapped the
+ball, he diddled and dodged, he pretended to pass but he didn't.  He
+merely kept straight on, yet feinting now to the right and now to the
+left of him.  Britannia's center half back, a bullet-headed son of
+Hibernia, challenged him ruthlessly, but at the psychological instant
+Dinkie side-stepped in a way he had, and he of the bullet head barged
+fathoms deep into the mud of Gamble's Pleasance.  Britannia's left full
+back now came up to see what was the matter, a singularly ill-advised
+proceeding; he ought to have waited for trouble instead of going to
+look for it was the unanimous opinion of fifteen thousand
+Duckingfielders, who shrieked with dismay as Dinkie and the ball went
+past the ill-advised one before you could say "knife."  And then it was
+that fifty thousand persons and six mounted policemen suddenly grew
+alive to an intensely critical situation.
+
+It was this.  Only one thing under Providence could now save
+Britannia's citadel.  A very fine and notable thing it was, no less
+than the agile yet majestic goalkeeper, Alexander MacFadyen by name,
+late of Glasgow Caledonians, and many times an international player.
+There was no better in the world to cope with such a titanic situation,
+but in times like these Dinkie Dawson was not as other men.
+
+The heroic Scot knew that, but he didn't flinch or turn a hair.  All
+the same, he must not go to Dinkie, as his puir fulish Saxon comrade
+had; Dinkie must come to him.  "Yes, ma laddie," said the dour visage
+of Alexander MacFadyen, "I'll be waitin' for ye, I'm thinkin'."
+
+It was such a moment as no pen--leaving out Shakespeare and the
+football reporter for the _Evening Star_--could do justice to.  "I'm
+waitin' for ye, Dinkie, ma laddie," said Alexander MacFadyen, with
+Dinkie coming on and on, his dainty feet twinkling to the tunes of
+faerie.  Hardly so much as the horse of a mounted policeman ventured to
+breathe.  For a fraction of an instant, the two warriors eyed each
+other like tiger-cats about to spring.  Crash!  It was sheer
+inspiration.  Dinkie had drawn a bow at a venture.  The ball lay in the
+corner of the goal net, the citadel was captured, Britannia's flag was
+down.
+
+It was, undoubtedly, in the opinion of thirty-five thousand souls the
+finest goal seen on Gamble's Pleasance within the memory of man.  In
+the considered judgment of the other fifteen thousand it was such a
+wicked fluke that a well contested game was covered with ridicule.
+
+Over the scene that followed it is kind to draw the veil.  People of
+all ages and both sexes made themselves so indescribably ridiculous
+that Zeus of the Bright Sky, in dudgeon no doubt for the ruin of his
+afternoon, drew down the blinds and sought to cool their courage with
+one of his honest showers of rain.
+
+It seemed all over, bar the shouting.  There was only twenty minutes to
+play.  The Rovers were still leading one goal to nothing, the attacks
+of the Britannia were being shattered against the rock of an
+impregnable defense, when a string of tragic incidents befell which
+turned a sure triumph into dire disaster.
+
+Some maintain it was the rain alone which caused the debacle.  None can
+deny that the ball was greased by Jupiter's shower.  But even that fact
+cannot cover all that happened.  As for the other sinister explanation,
+which is firmly believed at Blackhampton to this day, it was never
+accepted by the fellow players of him who gave away the match.
+
+Fate was at the root of the tragedy.  There were twenty minutes to
+play, the Rovers were leading one to nothing, and the Sailor had to
+take a free kick from goal.  He could do this at his leisure; according
+to the laws of the game no opponent was allowed to approach.  But as he
+placed the ball for the kick, he somehow failed to notice in the
+gathering gloom that Ginger was right in the line of fire.  Of course
+he ought to have done so.  Yet so great was his excitement now that he
+did not know what he was doing.  He took the kick; the ball struck
+Ginger full in the middle of the back and rebounded through the goal.
+
+It was growing so dark that at first not a soul realized what had
+happened.  By the time the goalkeeper, like a man in a dream, had
+retrieved the ball from the net, the awful truth was known.  The Sailor
+had given away the match.
+
+Henry Harper never forgot to his dying day the look in the eyes of
+Ginger.  In the presence of their grim reproach his one desire was for
+the earth to open and swallow him.
+
+Pandemonium had been unchained, but the Sailor heard it not, as he
+leaned against the goalpost feeling like a man in a nightmare.  At that
+moment his whole being was dominated by a single thought.  He had given
+away the match.
+
+Strictly speaking, all was not yet lost.  But the Sailor was completely
+unnerved by his crime, and Ginger's eyes were haunting him.  As he
+leaned against the post, the farthest from the tree sacred to the
+memory of young Arris, he knew that if anything came to him now, he
+would not be able to stop it.
+
+Another shot came.  It was inevitable.  The gift of the gods was as
+wine in the veins of Duckingfield Britannia.  They were tigers again:
+eleven parti-colored tigers.  But the second shot was just a slow
+trickling affair that any goalkeeper in his senses ought to have been
+able to deal with.  But the Sailor bungled it miserably.  He didn't
+know how, he didn't know why, but the ball wriggled slowly out of his
+hands through the goal, and the match was lost beyond hope of recovery.
+
+There could be no thought now of the Cup coming to Blackhampton.  He
+daren't look at Ginger.  He tried not to hear, he tried not to see.  It
+must all be a hideous dream.  But there to the left was the historic
+tree simply alive with young Arrises cursing and scorning him.
+Suddenly there was a mighty surge by the crowd in the farthest corner
+of the ground, which called for all the address of the mounted police
+to restrain.
+
+"Sailor, you've sold the match."
+
+The ugly words were being bellowed at him out of the night.  He could
+hear the loud and deep curses of the Rovers' partisans; he imagined he
+could see their fists being shaken at him.  He wished he was dead, but
+he had to stand there another twelve minutes exposed to the public
+ignominy.
+
+In that twelve minutes, Duckingfield Britannia scored four goals more.
+All was darkness and eclipse.  The Rovers, noble warriors as they were,
+had done all that mortal men could do; in the case of the heroic
+Ginger, they might even be said to have done a little more.  But fate
+was too much for them.  The last line of defense, on which all
+depended, had played them false.  The Sailor muddled hopelessly
+everything that came to him now.  The end of the game was not merely a
+defeat for the Rovers, it was a disaster, a rout.
+
+The referee blew his whistle for the last time, and Act One of the
+tragedy was at an end.  But its termination was merely the signal for
+Act Two to begin.  The crowd, in a frenzy of rage, surged over the
+ground.  "Sailor's sold the match," was the cry of the angry thousands.
+
+The oncoming hordes had no terrors for Henry Harper.  Let them do with
+him as they liked.  Death would have been more than welcome as he
+leaned against the goalpost, not seeking to escape the tender mercies
+of the mob.
+
+It was Ginger who realized the danger.
+
+"Dink," he called hoarsely, "Mac, Peter, Joe, they are coming for
+Sailor.  They'll kill him if they catch holt on him."
+
+It was true.  And it seemed that the sternest fight of that terrific
+day was yet to be.  An angry mob is not responsible for its actions.
+There was a fierce set-to between a handful of good men, with help from
+six mounted constables, and many hundreds bereft by an excitement which
+at that moment made them little better than savages.
+
+"Scrag 'im!  Scrag 'im!"
+
+Henry Harper could hear their voices all about him, but little he
+cared.  Indeed they were almost pleasant to his ears.  Again it was a
+case of hard pounding, with the police bearing a gallant part, and the
+goalkeeper's escort taking blows and freely returning them.
+
+There was a vision in the mind of Henry Harper which he never forgot,
+of the blood streaming down the face of Ginger as he dealt out blows to
+the right and to the left of him.  He never forgot the look on the face
+of Dinkie as they kept driving on and driving home.
+
+Times and again it seemed as if the Rovers' partisans must tear their
+late hero in pieces.  But his escort got him somehow to the
+dressing-room, and a strong force of the Blackhampton Constabulary
+watched over it for a solid hour by the pavilion clock.  By that time,
+the crowd had dispersed, the ground was clear, and Henry Harper was
+able to go home.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+"You are late for your tea, Mr. Harper," said Miss Foldal.  "It's
+twenty past seven.  It will be supper time soon."
+
+The Sailor apologized in his gentle, rather childlike way.
+
+"Do you know where Ginger Jukes is, miss?" he asked, in a queer voice.
+
+"He came in for his tea and then went out again," said Miss Foldal,
+regulating her tone with care.
+
+She had been told already by the _Evening Star_ that the Rovers, after
+leading by a goal within twenty minutes of the end of the game, had
+suffered a crushing and incomprehensible defeat, that the crowd had
+made an infuriated attack on Harper, the goalkeeper, and in the blank
+space reserved for the latest news, it said that in deference to public
+feeling, the committee of the club had decided to hold an inquiry into
+his conduct.
+
+Miss Foldal was far too discreet to refer to the match.  But if ever
+she had seen tragedy in a human countenance, it was now visible in the
+face of this young man.  She poured out a cup of tea for him, which he
+declined.  Then he said, in that queer voice which did not seem to
+belong to him, that he would not be in need of supper.
+
+"If you want my opinion, Mr. Harper," said Miss Foldal, "you have been
+working too hard.  I really think the best thing for you is bed."
+
+The young man stood white as a sheet with a face not pleasant to look
+upon.
+
+"I do reelly.  Go to bed now, and I'll bring you a basin of gruel with
+a little something in it."
+
+A basin of gruel with a little something in it was Miss Foldal's
+specific for all the ills to which flesh is heir.  Mention of it was
+clear proof that Mr. Harper's present condition gave cause for anxiety.
+
+"I don't want nothing, miss," said the young man, in a voice quite
+unlike his own.  "It's very kind of you, but the only thing I want just
+now is to be let be."
+
+Had Mr. Jukes or any of her other lodgers made that speech it would
+have seemed uncivil, but Miss Foldal knew that Mr. Harper was incapable
+of any kind of intentional rudeness.  He was as gentle as a child.
+Perhaps that was why the look now in his eyes hurt her so much.
+
+Without saying anything else, the young man went up to his bedroom.
+
+Time passed.  The supper hour came and went.  Mr. Jukes did not return
+and Mr. Harper did not come down again.  But it was this latter fact
+that disconcerted the landlady.  She could not get the look of those
+eyes out of her brain.  Only once had she seen such a look in the eyes
+of any human being, and that was in those of her Uncle Frederick just
+before he destroyed himself.
+
+Nine struck.  There was no sound from the room above.  Miss Foldal grew
+horribly afraid.  Memories of her Uncle Frederick had descended very
+grimly upon her.
+
+Perhaps Mr. Harper had gone to bed.  She hoped and believed that he
+had.  And yet she could not be sure.  It was her duty to go up to his
+room and inquire.  But it was too much for her nerves to be quite alone
+in the house.  Ethel, the maid-servant, had gone out shopping as it was
+Saturday night, and Mr. Jukes had not yet come in for his supper.
+
+Miss Foldal was not a brave woman.  Her deepest instinct was against
+going up those stairs.  It was much to her credit that she did go up at
+a quarter past nine.  The door of Mr. Harper's room was shut, but a
+light was coming from under it.
+
+She knocked so timidly that a mouse would not have heard her.
+
+No answer.
+
+She knocked again, a little louder, as she imagined, but no louder in
+reality.
+
+Still no answer.
+
+"It is exactly as I feared."  Miss Foldal began to shake, and the
+spirit of her Uncle Frederick crept out from under the door.
+
+She wanted to scream; indeed, she was about to act in this futile
+manner, when it suddenly occurred to her that screaming would be no use
+whatever.  Far wiser to open the door, if only out of deference to the
+manes of her uncle, whose end had taught her that suicide was not such
+a terrible thing after all.
+
+At last Miss Foldal opened the door of the bedroom.  A great surprise
+was in store, but it was not of the kind that had been provided by her
+Uncle Frederick.
+
+Mr. Harper, wearing his overcoat and cap, was in the act of strapping
+together a bag full of clothes.  The relief of Miss Foldal was great;
+at the same time a quaver in her voice showed that she was full of
+anxiety.
+
+"Why, Mr. Harper, you are never going away?"
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"Without your supper?"
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"Mr. Harper, wherever are you going to?"
+
+"Dunno, miss."  The gentle voice had a stab in it for the woman's heart
+of his landlady.  "'Ere's my board and lodging, miss."  He took a
+sovereign from his pocket, and put it in her hand.  "I'll be very sorry
+to go.  I'm thinking I'll never 'ave another 'ome like this."
+
+Miss Foldal thought so too.  Somehow she was not the least ashamed of
+the sudden tears which sprang into her eyes.  There was some high
+instinct in her, in spite of her rather battered and war-worn
+appearance, which seemed to urge her to protect him.
+
+"I cannot hear of you going away like this, Mr. Harper, not at this
+time of night and without your supper, I cannot reelly."
+
+It was vain, however, of Miss Foldal to protest.  Moreover, she knew it
+was vain.  There was a look in Mr. Harper's face that all the Miss
+Foldals in the world could not have coped with.
+
+"Well, I'm sorry, I'm very sorry," was all she could gasp, and then he
+was gone.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+Bag in hand he entered the February night.  As he turned up the collar
+of his overcoat his excitement crystallized into a definite thought.
+Whatever happened he must not meet Ginger.
+
+He didn't know where he was going; he had neither purpose nor plan; his
+only guide was a vague desire to get a long way from Blackhampton in a
+short space of time.
+
+In obedience to this instinct, he passed over the canal bridge, the
+main highway to the center of the city, turned down several byways in
+order to avoid the Crown and Cushion, threaded a path through a maze of
+slums and alleys, and emerged at last, almost without knowing it,
+within twenty yards of Blackhampton Central Station.
+
+This seemed a special act of Providence; and subsequent events
+confirmed Henry Harper in that view.  He walked through the station
+booking-hall, yet without taking a ticket, since in a dim way he felt
+it was not wise to do so before you have given the least thought to
+where you are going.
+
+A train was standing in the station.  The porters were closing the
+doors, the guard had taken out his whistle.
+
+"Jump in, sir, we're off."
+
+Henry Harper pitched head foremost into a first non-smoker, his bag was
+pitched in after him, the door was slammed, and the train was already
+passing through the long tunnel at the end of the station before he was
+able to realize what had happened.
+
+An old lady was the only other occupant of the compartment.  She was a
+stern looking dame, with a magnificent fur cloak, a dominant nose,
+fearless eyes, and a large black hat with plenty of trimming but
+without feathers.
+
+It was clear from the demeanor of the old lady that she was inclined to
+regard the intruder with disfavor.  However, as she was a person not
+without consequence in her own small world, this was her fixed attitude
+of mind in regard to the vast majority of her fellow creatures.  But
+she never allowed herself to be afraid of them, partly out of pride,
+also because it was good for the character.  All the same, a nature
+less powerful might easily have pulled the cord and communicated with
+the guard, such was the look of wildness in the eyes of her fellow
+traveler.  Moreover, he had fallen into her lap, and had trodden on her
+foot rather severely, and she was not sure that he had apologized.
+
+Between Duckingfield Junction and High Moreton she became involved in
+quite a train of speculations.  In the first place, he was obviously
+not a gentleman.  That was her habitual jumping-off point in her survey
+of the human male.  In fact, she would have ignored his existence had
+it been possible to do so.  But her foot had suffered so much from his
+clumsiness that she was not able to put him out of her mind.  Besides,
+she was a sharp and quizzical old thing, and from the height of her own
+self-consequence she stole glances at him that were a nice mingling of
+caution and truculence.  It was an honest, open, unusual face, there
+was that to be said for it.  The behavior, the manner, and the
+portmanteau marked H.H. were unconventional, to say the least; there
+was an absence of gloves, but the eyes were remarkable.  Probably a
+young poet on his way to Oxford for the week-end.  Although they
+confessed to two of these unfortunate persons in her own family, it was
+an article of her faith that a poet was never a gentleman.
+
+Somehow the young man in the corner interested the old lady so much
+that when the last of the tunnels was safely passed, a temperament by
+nature adventurous as became three grandsons in the Household Cavalry
+led her to study him at closer quarters.
+
+"Do you mind having the window down a little?"
+
+"No, lady."
+
+He sprang to his feet and lowered the window, and the old lady, pitying
+herself profoundly that she could ever have thought about him at all,
+settled herself in her corner and was very soon asleep.
+
+This cynical proceeding had no effect upon the young man opposite.  As
+far as he was concerned she did not exist, any more than he now existed
+for her; moreover, she never had existed for him, therefore the balance
+of indifference was in his favor.
+
+The Sailor's one preoccupation, as the long and slow succession of
+stations passed, was the face of Ginger.  It was gazing through the
+window at him out of the intense darkness of the night.  And what a
+face it was, with the blood streaming down it and a look in the eyes he
+would never forget.
+
+Where was he going?  He didn't know and he didn't care, if only it was
+far enough from Blackhampton.  Presently he began to feel cold and
+hungry and horribly lonely.  Now he was beginning to realize that
+Ginger and Miss Foldal and Dinkie and the Rovers were things of the
+past, his misery grew more than he could bear.  His dream was
+shattered!  He would never bring the Cup to Blackhampton.  And there
+was the face of Ginger looking in at the window, and he nearly woke the
+old lady by jumping up with a cry of agony.
+
+There was nothing left for him now but to go on into unending night.
+He was moving out of an unspeakable past into a future of panic and
+emptiness.  And then he tried to sleep, but strange and awful thoughts
+prevented him.  The old lady awoke with a start, only to find that her
+feet were cold in spite of their hot water bottle, which was also cold,
+and was great negligence on the part of the railway company.  Still,
+she hoped to be at the end of her journey soon.  In that reflection the
+old lady was more fortunate than her fellow traveler, who had no such
+hope to console him.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+The train went on and on.  Its stoppings and startings were endless;
+the night grew very cold; the old lady, gathering her fur cloak around
+her, resettled herself in her corner and slept again.  The chill in the
+heart of the Sailor was now a deadly thing.  Repose for him was out of
+the question.  Red and white striped phantoms converged upon him
+through the gloom; tier upon tier of massed humanity rose shrieking to
+the sky; but there was only one face that he could recognize, and it
+was a face he would never forget.
+
+At last the Sailor dozed a little.  And then the train stopped once
+more, and an official of the railway company entered the carriage with
+a demand for tickets.  The old lady found hers without difficulty, but
+the young man opposite had no ticket, it appeared.  Also his behavior
+was so odd that at first the official seemed to think he was drunk.  He
+had no idea of where he was going.  But the next station, it seemed,
+was Marylebone, and that was as far as he could go.
+
+While the old lady watched from her corner grimly, the official was
+able to gather that this unsatisfactory traveler had come from
+Blackhampton, which, as he had been so unwise as to travel first class,
+meant a sovereign in coin of the realm.
+
+The traveler was able to produce a sovereign from a belt which he wore
+round his waist--a proceeding which seemed to stimulate the curiosity
+of his fellow traveler in the highest degree--and paid it over without
+a murmur.  The official wrote out a receipt with an absurd stump of
+pencil.
+
+"Thank you, mister," said the young man.
+
+The train moved on.
+
+A few minutes later it had come to the end of a long and wearisome
+journey.  The old lady was the first to leave the carriage.  She was
+assisted in doing so by the ministrations of a very tall and dignified
+footman.
+
+As the Sailor stepped to the platform, bag in hand, there was a great
+clock straight before him pointing to the hour of midnight.  Where was
+he?  He had never heard of Marylebone.  It might be England, it might
+be Scotland; in his present state of mind it might be anywhere.
+
+"Keb, sir?"  The inquiry surged all round him, but the Sailor did not
+want a cab.
+
+His first feeling as he stood on the platform of that immense station
+was one of sheer bewilderment.  He didn't know where he was, he had
+nowhere to go, he had no plans.  An intense loneliness came over him
+again.  Soon, however, it was merged in the exhilaration of the
+atmosphere around him.  This was a different place from Blackhampton;
+it was larger, more vital, more mysterious.
+
+As he walked slowly down the platform the importance of everything
+seemed to increase.  He would have to think things out a bit, although
+just now any kind of thinking was torment.
+
+He had learned much during his sixteen months at Blackhampton, not only
+in regard to the world in which he lived, but also--and as he moved
+down the platform with his bag the thought gave him a thrill of joy--to
+read and write.  He felt these things, bought and paid for at a heavy
+cost, were so infinitely precious that he need not fear the future.
+
+Straight before his eyes was the legend, "Cloak Room."  Sixteen months
+ago it would have been High Dutch.  But the new knowledge told him it
+was the place to leave your bag.  Accordingly, he went and left it,
+paid his twopence, and put the ticket in exchange carefully in his
+belt, where nineteen sovereigns and twelve half-sovereigns were secure.
+
+He had learned the meaning of money during his six years at sea.
+Perhaps it was the sight of so much and the knowledge of its value that
+gave him a thrill of power as he passed out of the station into the
+wide, peopled immensity of this unknown land.  There was a policeman
+standing on an island in the middle of the road, and the time had long
+passed since those grim days when he would have been as likely to fly
+to the moon as to address a question to the police.
+
+"What place is this, mister?"
+
+"Marylebone Road."
+
+The information did not seem very valuable.  Still, the policeman's
+tone implied that it might be.  As the Sailor stood in the middle of
+the road he was suddenly comforted by the sight of manna in the
+wilderness.  Across the way was a coffee stall.  Such a bright vision
+told him how sore was his need.
+
+All the same he was not hungry.  He drank two cups of coffee, but he
+was too excited to eat.  That was odd, because there was nothing to
+excite him.  But when he turned away from the stall and started to walk
+he didn't know where, something curious, and terrible had begun again
+to lay hold of his brain.  Nevertheless, he went on and on through
+streets interminable, fully determined to free himself of that eerie,
+horrible feeling.
+
+Had it not been for the face of Ginger perhaps all would have been
+well.  But it was lurking everywhere amid the gloom and byways of the
+night.  The place he was in was endless; it was a waste of bricks and
+mortar.  Even Liverpool and the waterfront at Frisco could not compare
+with it.  Then it suddenly came upon him that he was a guy.  This place
+was London.  It was the only place it could be.
+
+There was something in the mere thought which fired the imagination of
+the Sailor.  The Isle of Dogs had been London in a manner of speaking,
+but this was surely the heart of the city.  He could not remember to
+have seen such houses as he was passing now.  Liverpool and Frisco had
+had them no doubt.  But in his present mood the mass and gloom of these
+great bulks addressed him strangely.  This vastness immeasurable,
+debouching upon the lamps at the corners of the streets, was instinct
+with the magic of the future.  It was as if this world of bricks and
+mortar towering to the night was girt with fabulous secret riches.
+
+Symbols of opulence spoke to the Sailor as he walked.  Somehow he felt
+he could claim kinship with them.  He had his store of riches also.
+No, it was not contained in the belt around his body.  That was only a
+very little between him and the weather; a man like Klondyke would soon
+have done it in.  But Henry Harper could now read and write, that was
+the thought which nerved him to meet the future, that was his store of
+secret and fabulous wealth.
+
+God knew he had paid a price for Aladdin's lamp.  A week ago that night
+he had seen performed at the Blackhampton Lyceum the first play of his
+life, "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp."  He had sat in the pit, Dinkie Dawson
+one side of him, Ginger the other.  He had now his own wonderful lamp.
+It was glowing and burning, a mass of dull fire, in the right-hand
+corner of his brain.  It was a talisman which had come to him at the
+cost of blood and tears; a magic gift of heaven that he must guard with
+life itself.
+
+On and on he went.  Now and again the face of Ginger tried to overthrow
+him, but the presence of the talisman meant much to him now....
+
+
+After weary hours his pace began to fail.  There were no more houses as
+far as he could tell.  Grass was under his feet; bushes of furze and a
+clean smell of earth enveloped him.  The darkness was less, but
+everything was very still.  Suddenly he felt strangely tired.  And then
+an awful feeling crept upon him.
+
+A low wooden seat was near, and he sat on it.  It was still dark, and
+the weather was particularly chill February.  As he drew his overcoat
+across his knees, he was overmastered by a sense of terror.  Somehow it
+seemed more subtle and more deadly than all the fear he had ever known;
+of Auntie, of Jack the Ripper, of the Chinaman, of the Old Man, of the
+Island of San Pedro, of Duckingfield Britannia, of even that
+blood-stained visage of which he could still catch glimpses in the
+darkness.  It was a stealthy distrust of Aladdin's lamp, the wonderful
+talisman glowing like a star in the right-hand corner of his brain.
+
+Long he sat in the February small hours.  He would wait for the light,
+having neither inclination nor strength to continue his journey into
+regions unknown.  It grew very cold.  And then a new fear crept over
+him.  He felt he was going to become very ill.
+
+However, he determined to use all the force of his will.  This feeling
+was pure imagination, he was sure.  He would put it out of his mind.
+It was a matter of life and death not to be ill now.  And not for a
+moment must he think of dying, now a wonderful talisman had been given
+him which was about to unlock the doors of worlds beyond his own.
+
+With fierce determination he rose from the seat unsteadily.  And as he
+did so he saw the cold, cold light of the morning paling the tops of
+the distant trees.  He began to move forward again.  He would have to
+keep going somehow if he was not to be overtaken by darkness and
+eclipse.  Whatever he did, he must hold on to his identity.  Whatever
+he did, he must keep secure the treasure rare and strange that was now
+within himself.
+
+Suddenly in the light of the dawn, he made out a man's figure coming
+towards him.  It was a policeman.
+
+"What place do they call this, mister?"
+
+"Barnes Common."
+
+They moved on slowly in their opposite ways.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+BEING
+
+I
+
+Barnes Common seemed a very large place.  The Sailor was afraid he
+would not be able to keep on much longer, but he had learned endurance
+in his six years before the mast.  Weeks and months together he had
+just kept on keeping on while he had sailed the terrible seas.  At that
+time there was no magic talisman to hold him to his course, there was
+neither hope nor faith of the world to be.  But now it was otherwise.
+Surely he had no reason to give in, just as a new heaven and a new
+earth were opening before his eyes.
+
+He came presently to a row of houses.  A road was beyond and traffic
+was passing along it.  The hope of a coffee stall sprang to his mind.
+He walked doggedly along the road, until at a point where it was merged
+in an important thoroughfare he came upon a cabman's shelter.  And
+there within, in answer to his faith, were the things he sought.
+Through the open door was a fire, a smell of steaming fluids, of frying
+meats, and an honest bench on which to enjoy them.
+
+He asked no leave, but stumbled in and at the beck of his powerfully
+stimulated senses ordered a kingly repast, and spread both hands before
+the fire.  Sausages and mashed potatoes were brought to him and he sat
+down to eat, just as a very cheerful looking cabman entered with a face
+of professional red, and wearing apparel not unworthy of an arctic
+explorer.
+
+The cabman ordered a cup of cocoa and a "doorstep," and that justice
+might be done to them sat on the bench by the young man's side.  A
+little while they ate in silence, for both were very hungry.  Then
+under the influence of food and a good fire the cabman talked.  His
+sociability enabled the Sailor to ask an important question.
+
+"Can you tell me, mister, of lodgings, clean and decent, for a single
+man?"
+
+"What sort o' lodgings are you wantin', mister?"  The cabman was
+favorably impressed by the young man's air of politeness.
+
+"Lodgings clean and decent," said the Sailor.
+
+"I know that," said the cabman urbanely, "but what do you want to pay
+fur 'em?"
+
+The Sailor reflected.  There were nineteen sovereigns and twelve
+half-sovereigns in his belt; all the same, he was enough of a landsman
+to know the value of money.
+
+"I want to live cheap," he said, with extreme simplicity.  "Just as
+cheap as I can, and be clean and decent, too."
+
+The cabman let his large wise eyes flow over the Sailor, and quietly
+took his measure as became a veteran of the town.
+
+"Ever tried Bowdon House?"
+
+The Sailor shook his head.
+
+The cabman ruminated.
+
+"Tizzey a day fur your cubicle an' the use o' the kitchen fire."
+
+The young man was not insulted, although the cabman feared he might
+have been, so good were his clothes, so gravely courteous his aspect.
+
+"O' course," said the cabman, "it ain't Buckingham Palace, it's no use
+purtendin' it is."
+
+"So long as it's clean and decent," said the Sailor.
+
+"I give you my word for that.  Never stayed there myself, but I know
+them as has."
+
+The Sailor nodded.
+
+"O' course, it ain't the Sizzle.  I don't say that all on 'em moves in
+high circles, that would be tellin' a lie, but if you don't mind all
+sorts there's wuss homes, they tell me, in this metropolus, than Bowdon
+House."
+
+The young man said he would try it, anyway, if it wasn't far.
+
+"It's at the back o' Victoria," said the cabman.  "Can't miss it if you
+go sharp to the left at the second turnin' past the station."
+
+Henry Harper had to confess that he didn't know the way to Victoria
+Station.
+
+"It's quite easy," said the cabman.  "Buss 14 that goes by here will
+set you down at Victoria.  Then do as I say, or ask a bobby to put you
+right."
+
+Armed with these instructions, Henry Harper presently set out for
+Bowdon House.  Feeling much better for a good meal and human
+intercourse, he found it without difficulty.  Bowdon House was a large
+and somber building.  Its exterior rather abashed the Sailor.  But a
+sure instinct warned him that now he could not afford to be abashed by
+anything.  Therefore he entered and boldly paid the sum of sixpence for
+a vacant cubicle.
+
+The beds might not be equal to the Sizzle, but they were clean and
+decent undoubtedly, and not too hard for a sailor.  You could have a
+bath for a penny, you could keep your own private frying pan, you were
+allowed the use of the kitchen range to cook any food you liked to buy,
+and a comfortable place was provided where you could sit and eat it.
+The company was mixed, it was true, as the cabman had said, but these
+were solid advantages, and the chief of them at the moment, in the
+opinion of Henry Harper, was that you could go to bed when you liked
+and stay there forever if only you continued to pay your six-pence a
+night.
+
+The first thing the young man did was to have a hot bath.  He then
+hired for a penny a nightgown, as clean and decent as his cubicle, and
+within a very short time was in a sleep so long and deep that it
+banished entirely the new fear that had crept into his brain.
+
+About five o'clock in the evening he awoke a new man.  After a toilet
+as careful as the absence of a razor and a hairbrush would permit, he
+found his way to the common room.  He felt extremely hungry, but the
+outlay of another six-pence, brought him a pot of tea, some brown bread
+and butter, and a slice of meat pie.
+
+There was only one other patron in the common room, and he at once
+attracted Henry Harper's curiosity.  This individual was engaged in
+toasting a muffin at the large and clear fire, and even with the
+Sailor's experience of Miss Foldal in this kind, he had never seen one
+of these delightful articles dealt with in a manner of such sacerdotal
+delicacy.
+
+A blue china plate was warming before the fire, and the muffin was
+presently placed on it, soaked in butter in true Miss Foldal style, and
+brought to table piping hot.  The young man had chosen a place as near
+the fire as he could get, and the muffin expert took a place opposite,
+poured out a brew of tea from his own blue china teapot, and to the
+Sailor's amazement squeezed a little lemon juice into it.
+
+This Sybarite was eating his first piece of muffin with an air of
+feminine elegance when he suddenly caught the young man's eye.  The
+limpid glance seemed to stimulate his own blue orb to a mild and calm
+curiosity.  The Sybarite looked the young man up and down, but
+continued to eat his muffin with a kind of apostolic pleasantness,
+which somehow recalled to Henry Harper the Reverend Rogers and a
+certain famous tea-party at the Brookfield Street Mission Hall in his
+distant youth.
+
+Presently, to Henry Harper's grave surprise, the muffin eater was
+pleased to discourse a little of men and things.
+
+The Sailor in his genuine modesty was flattered, moreover he was
+charmed.  Never in all his wanderings had he heard a man discourse in
+this way.  It might have been Klondyke himself--at times there was an
+odd resemblance to that immortal in the occasional grace notes of the
+Sybarite.  Yet it was a suggestion rather than a resemblance.  This was
+a kind of composite of Klondyke and the Reverend Rogers, a Klondyke
+raised to a higher intellectual power.
+
+Of course, this was only one aspect of the Sybarite, and that the least
+important, because with every allowance for the sacred memory of the
+Reverend Rogers, the person opposite was quite the most wonderful
+talker Henry Harper had ever heard in his life.
+
+Had the Sailor heard the music of Palestrina, which at that period was
+a pleasure to come, he might have imagined he was listening to it.  The
+voice of the Sybarite was measured yet floating, his phrases were
+endless yet perfectly rounded and definite, there was a note of
+weariness, older than the world, yet there was a charm, a lucidity, a
+mellow completeness that was perfectly amazing.  The Sailor, with a
+wonderful talisman now burning bright in his soul, was enchanted.
+
+This remarkable person owned, with a sort of frankness which was not
+frankness at all, that there were just two things he could do of
+practical utility.  One, it seemed, was to toast a muffin with anybody,
+the other was to make the perfect cup of tea.  Here he ended and here
+he began.  He had also the rather unacademic habit of quoting dead
+languages in a manner so remarkably impressive as to bewilder the
+Sailor.
+
+Henry Harper listened with round eyes.  He devoured the Sybarite.  His
+talisman seemed to tell him that he was on the verge of worlds denied
+to the common run of men.  This remarkable person had even a private
+language of his own.  He used words and phrases so charged with
+esoteric meanings that they somehow seemed to make the Aladdin's lamp
+burn brighter in the Sailor's soul.  He had a knowledge of books
+comprehensive and wonderful, of all ages and countries apparently, yet
+when the young man ventured to ask timidly, but with a sort of pride in
+his question, whether he had read the "Pickwick Papers," the answer
+overthrew him completely.
+
+"God forbid," said the Sybarite.
+
+Henry Harper was utterly defeated.  And yet he was charmed.  Here was a
+depth far beyond Miss Foldal, who had suggested that he should get a
+ticket for the Free Library in order to be able to read Charles Dickens.
+
+"I suppose, sir"--the "sir" would have had the sanction of Ginger, the
+perfect man of the world--"I suppose, sir, you don't think much of
+Charles Dickens?"
+
+After all, that was what the Sybarite really meant.
+
+"Not necessarily that.  He is simply not in one's ethos, don't you
+know."
+
+The Sailor was baffled completely, but in some way he was a shrewd
+young man.  He had soon decided that it would be wiser to listen than
+attempt to talk himself.
+
+The Sybarite was fastidious but he was not shy.  He liked to speak out
+of the depths of his wisdom to a fit audience if the spirit was on him.
+He knew that he talked well, even beautifully; the immortal flair of
+the artist was there; and in this strange young man with the deep eyes
+was the perfect listener, and that was what the soul of the Sybarite
+always demanded.
+
+The Sailor listened with a kind of fascinated intensity; also he
+watched all that the Sybarite did with a sense of esthetic delight.
+His lightest movements, like his voice, were ordered, feline,
+sacramental.  It made no difference whether he was toasting muffins,
+buttering them, or merely eating them; whether he was pouring out tea
+or conveying it in a blue china cup to his lips, it was all done in a
+manner to suggest the very poetry of motion.  And when it came to a
+matter of rolling a cigarette, which it presently did, the almost
+catlike grace of the long and slender hands that were so clean and kept
+so perfectly, touched a chord very deep in the Sailor.
+
+The name of this wonderful person, as the Sailor learned in the course
+of the next two days, was Mr. Esme Horrobin.  He had been formerly a
+fellow and tutor of Gamaliel College, Oxford; he let out much
+pertaining to himself in the most casual way in an exegesis which was
+yet so neutral that it seemed to be more than wisdom itself.  Also he
+did not shrink from impartial consideration of an act which
+circumstances had imposed upon him.
+
+"It was one's duty to resign, I assure you."  As the enchanted hours
+passed, the discourse of the Sybarite grew more intimate, so rapt and
+so responsive was the young man with the deep eyes in his elemental
+simplicity.  "It was most trying to have to leave one's warm bed in the
+middle of winter at eight o'clock, to breakfast hastily, merely for
+what?  Merely to sustain an oaf from the public schools in a death
+grapple with an idyll of Theocritus.  There's a labor of Sisyphus for
+you.  We Horrobins are an old race; who knows what mysteries we have
+profaned in the immortal past!  I hope I make myself clear."
+
+Mr. Horrobin was not making himself at all clear, but the Sailor was
+striving hard to keep track of him.  The Sybarite, a creature of
+intuitions when in the full enjoyment of "his personal ethos," was
+ready to help him to do so.
+
+"We Horrobins are what is called in the physical world born-tired.  We
+are as incapable of continuous effort as a dram drinker is of total
+abstinence.  This absurd cosmos of airships and automobiles bores us to
+tears.  A mere labor of Sisyphus, I assure you, my dear fellow.  The
+whole human race striving to get to nowhere as fast as it can in order
+to return as quickly as possible.  And why?  I will tell you.  Man
+himself has profaned the mysteries.  The crime of Prometheus is not yet
+expiated on our miserable planet.  Take my own case.  I am fit for one
+thing only, and that is to lie in bed smoking good tobacco with my
+books around me, translating the 'Satyricon' of Petronius Arbiter.  It
+seems an absurd thing to say, but given the bed, the tobacco, the
+books, and the right conjunction of the planetary bodies, which in
+these matters is most essential, and I honestly believe I am able to
+delve deeper into the matchless style of Petronius than any other
+person living or dead."
+
+The Sailor was awed.  The "Satyricon" of Petronius Arbiter was whole
+worlds away from Miss Fordal.
+
+"Whether I shall ever finish my translation is not of the slightest
+importance.  Personally, I am inclined to think not.  That is one's own
+private labor of Sisyphus.  It won me a fellowship and ultimately lost
+it me.  Let us assume that I finish it.  There is not a publisher or an
+academic body in Europe or America that would venture to publish it.
+Rome under Nero, my dear fellow, the feast of Trimalchio.  And assuming
+it is finished and assuming it is published, it will be a thing
+entirely without value, either human or commercial.  And why?  Because
+there is no absolute canon of literary style existing in the world.  It
+is one labor of Sisyphus the more for a man to say this is Petronius to
+a world for whom Petronius can never exist.  Do I make myself clear?"
+
+The Sailor was silent, but round eyes of wonder were trained upon the
+blue-eyed, yellow-bearded face of Mr. Esme Horrobin.  The Sybarite,
+agreeably alive to the compliment, sighed deeply.
+
+"It may have been right to resign one's fellowship, yet one doesn't say
+it was.  It may not have been right, yet one doesn't say it was not.
+At least, a fellowship of Gamaliel in certain of its aspects is better
+than bear-leading the aristocracy, and a person of inadequate resources
+is sometimes driven even to that."
+
+The next morning, the Sailor retrieved his bag from the cloak room at
+Marylebone Station, to which he went by bus from Victoria without much
+difficulty.  He felt wonderfully better for his day's rest, and much
+fortified by the society of Mr. Esme Horrobin.  Friendship had always
+been precious to Henry Harper.  There was something in his nature that
+craved for it, yet he had never been able to satisfy the instinct
+easily.  But this inspired muffin eater opened up a whole world of new
+and gorgeous promise now that he had Aladdin's lamp to read him by.
+Mr. Esme Horrobin was what Klondyke would have called a high-brow.  But
+he was something more.  He was a man who had the key to many hidden
+things.
+
+When the Sailor had brought his bag to Bowdon House, the first thing he
+did was to find Marlow's Dictionary.  Miss Foldal had presented him
+with her own private copy of this invaluable work, and the name Gwladys
+Foldal was to be seen on the flyleaf.  "Ethos" was the first word he
+looked up, but it was not there.  He then sought "oaf," whose
+definition was fairly clear.  Then he went on to "bear-leading" and to
+"aristocracy."  These proved less simple.  Their private meanings were
+plain, more or less, but to correlate them was beyond the Sailor's
+powers, nor did it fall within the scope of Marlow's Dictionary to
+explain what the Sybarite meant when he spoke of bear-leading the
+aristocracy.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Henry Harper's acquaintance with Mr. Esme Horrobin had important
+consequences.  That gentleman's interest deepened almost to a mild
+liking for the young man.  He was a type new to the Sybarite; and he
+might have taken pleasure in his primitive attitude to life had it been
+possible for such a developed mind to take pleasure in anything.
+
+The company at Bowdon House was certainly mixed, but Mr. Esme Horrobin
+was a miracle of courtesy to all with whom he came in contact.  He had
+a smile and a nod for a bricklayer's laborer, a bus conductor out of a
+billet, a decayed clerk or a reformed pickpocket.  No matter who they
+were, his charming manners intrigued them, but also kept them at their
+distance.  When he fell into the language of democracy, which he
+sometimes did for his own amusement, it was always set off by an access
+of the patrician to his general air.  By this simple means he
+maintained the balance of power in the body politic.  He had grasped
+the fact that every man is at heart a snob.  Even the young man who had
+followed the sea accepted Mr. Esme Horrobin's estimate of Mr. Esme
+Horrobin.
+
+Indeed, the Sailor was absorbing Mr. Esme Horrobin at every pore.  He
+felt it to be a liberal education to sit at the same table, and when he
+went to his cubicle there were at least half a dozen carefully
+remembered words to look up in Marlow's Dictionary.  But it would not
+do to linger in the land of the lotus.  He must find a means of earning
+a living.
+
+It occurred to the Sailor on the morning of his third day at Bowdon
+House, that he might ask Mr. Horrobin for a little advice on the
+matter.  But he did not find it easy to do so.  The young man was very
+shy.  It was one thing to listen to Mr. Horrobin, but quite another to
+talk to him.  However, after tea on the third evening, when no one was
+by, he screwed up courage and boldly asked whether Mr. Horrobin knew of
+a billet for a chap who didn't mind hard work, or how such a thing
+could be obtained.
+
+Frankly Mr. Horrobin did not.  It was the first time in his life that
+he had been met by any such problem.  The problem for Mr. Horrobin had
+always been of a very different kind.  His tone seemed to express the
+unusual when he asked the young man if he had any particular form of
+occupation in view.
+
+"I'd like something to do with literature, sir," said Henry Harper,
+venturing timidly upon a new word.
+
+"Ah."  Mr. Horrobin scratched a yellow-whiskered chin.  It was very
+ironical that a young man who had asked whether he read Dickens should
+now seek advice upon such a matter.
+
+"Do you mean reading literature, my dear fellow, writing literature, or
+selling literature?"
+
+The young man explained very simply that it was the selling of
+literature he had in mind.
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Esme Horrobin gravely.  But he had a kind heart.  And if
+he really took to a person, which he very seldom did, he had the sort
+of disposition that is mildly helpful.  And he had taken to this young
+man, therefore he felt inclined to do what he could for him.
+
+Mr. Horrobin rolled and lit a cigarette.  After five minutes' hard
+thought inspiration came.  Its impact was almost dramatic, except that
+in no circumstances was Mr. Esme Horrobin ever dramatic.
+
+"I really think," he said, "I must give you a line to Rudge, my
+bookseller, in the Charing Cross Road.  He is a man who might help you;
+at least he may know a man who might help you.  Yes, a little line to
+Rudge.  Pray remind me tomorrow."
+
+The young man was filled with gratitude.  But he allowed his hopes to
+run too high.  Even a little line to Rudge the bookseller was not a
+thing to compass in this offhand way.  Tomorrow in the mouth of Mr.
+Esme Horrobin was a very comprehensive term.  It was Tomorrow that he
+was going to complete his translation of the "Satyricon" of Petronius;
+it was Tomorrow that he would return to the world in which he was born;
+it was Tomorrow that he would rise earlier and forswear the practice of
+smoking and reading in bed.  Therefore, with the promised letter to
+Rudge the bookseller burning a hole in his mind the young man spent a
+very anxious tomorrow waiting for Mr. Esme Horrobin to emerge from his
+cubicle.
+
+"No use asking for Mr. Orrobin," he was told finally by the groom of
+the chambers, a man old and sour and by nature the complete pessimist.
+"It's one of his days in bed.  He'll not put his nose outside his
+cubicle until tea time."
+
+That discreet hour was on the wane before Mr. Horrobin was to be seen
+at work with a kettle, a caddy, and a toasting fork.  Even then he was
+in such conversational feather that it was nearly three hours later
+before the young man was able to edge in a timid reminder.
+
+"I have not forgotten," said Mr. Horrobin, all charm and amenity.  "But
+remind me tomorrow.  I will write most gladly to Rudge.  He is quite a
+good fellow."
+
+The Sailor grew desperate.  It seemed impossible to live through a
+second tomorrow of this kind.
+
+"If I get a bit of paper and an envelope and a pen and ink, will you
+have any objection to writing the letter now, sir?"
+
+"My dear fellow"--the grace notes were languid and delicate--"I shall
+be delighted.  But why tonight?  It hardly seems worth while to trouble
+about it tonight."
+
+But the young man rose from the common room table with almost a
+sensation of fear upon him, and ran to his cubicle, where all the
+materials for a little line to Rudge the bookseller had been in
+readiness since eight o'clock that morning.
+
+Mr. Horrobin smiled when they were brought to him, a smile half
+weariness, half indulgent patronage.  Even then it was necessary to
+consume two more cigarettes before he could take the extreme course of
+addressing Rudge the bookseller.  Finally, he was addressed as follows:
+
+
+Mr. Esme Horrobin presents his compliments to Mr. Rudge, and will be
+glad if he can find employment on his staff, or on that of any
+bookselling friends, for the bearer, whom he will find clean,
+respectful, obliging, and anxious to improve himself.
+
+
+The letter was composed with much care and precision, and written in a
+hand of such spiderlike elegance as hardly to be legible,
+notwithstanding that every "t" was crossed and every comma in its
+place.  Then came the business of sealing it.  Mr. Horrobin produced a
+tiny piece of red sealing wax from some unsuspected purlieu of himself;
+a prelude to a delicately solemn performance with a wax vesta, which he
+took from a silver box at the end of his watch chain, and a signet ring
+which he gracefully removed from a finger of his right hand.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The next morning, before nine o'clock, armed with a red-sealed document
+addressed in a kind of ultra-neat Chinese, "To Mr. Rudge, Bookseller,
+Charing Cross Road," the Sailor set out upon one phase the more of an
+adventurous life.
+
+It was not easy to find the Charing Cross Road, and when even he had
+done so, Mr. Rudge was not there.  Booksellers were in abundance on
+both sides of the street.  Mr. Hogan was there, Messrs. Cook and Hunt,
+Messrs. Lewis and Grieve; in fact, there were booksellers by the score,
+but Mr. Rudge was not of these.  In the end, however, patience was
+rewarded.  There was a tiny shop on the right near the top of the long
+street, which bore the magic name on its front in letters so faded as
+to be almost undecipherable.
+
+Only one person was in the shop, a small and birdlike man to whom Henry
+Harper presented Mr. Horrobin's letter.  The recipient was apparently
+impressed by it.
+
+"Mr. Horrobin, I see," said Mr. Rudge the bookseller--the small and
+birdlike man was not less than he--in a tone of reverence as he broke
+the seal.
+
+A man of parts, Mr. Rudge was proud of an acquaintance which might
+almost be considered non-professional.  When out of funds, Mr. Horrobin
+would sell Mr. Rudge a classic at a very little below its original
+cost, and when in funds would buy it back at a price somewhat less than
+that at which he had sold it.  Mr. Rudge did not gain pecuniarily by
+the transaction, but in the course of the deal Mr. Horrobin would
+discourse so charmingly upon the classics in general that Mr. Rudge
+felt it was as good as a lecture at the Royal Institution.  Although
+not a scholar himself in the academic sense, he had a ripe regard for
+those who were.  In the mind of his bookseller, Mr. Horrobin stood for
+Culture with a very large letter.
+
+Mr. Rudge was not in urgent need of an assistant.  But he had felt
+lately that he would like one.  He was getting old.  It seemed a
+special act of grace that Mr. Horrobin should have sent him this young
+man.
+
+Perhaps it was Mr. Rudge's reverence for Mr. Horrobin which committed
+him to a bold course.  It was stretching a point, but Mr. Horrobin was
+Mr. Horrobin, and in the special circumstances it seemed the part of
+homage for pure intellect to do what he could for the bearer.  Thus,
+after a few minutes' consideration of the matter, Henry Harper was
+engaged at a salary of twenty-five shillings a week to be in attendance
+at the shop from eight till seven, and eight till two Saturdays.
+
+This was a stroke of real luck.  A special providence had seemed to
+watch over the Sailor ever since he had left the _Margaret Carey_.  The
+situation that had been offered was exactly the one he would have
+chosen.  The mere sight of a shop crammed with treasures ancient and
+mysterious was like a glimpse of an enchanted land.  The previous day
+he had bought a copy of the "Arabian Nights" for a shilling.  Such
+facility had he now gained in reading that he had dipped into its pages
+with a sharp sense of delight.  No. 249, Charing Cross Road, was a
+veritable Cave of the Forty Robbers.
+
+These endless rows of shelves were magic casements opening on
+fairyland.  The Sailor felt that the turning point of his life had
+come.  A cosmos of new worlds was spread before him now.  Moreover, it
+was his to enter and enjoy.
+
+He had come, as it seemed, miraculously, upon a period of expansion and
+true growth.  His duties in the shop were light.  This was one of those
+quiet businesses that offer many intervals of leisure.  Also Mr. Rudge,
+as became one with a regard for the things of the mind, gave his
+assistant a chance "to improve himself" in accordance with Mr.
+Horrobin's suggestion.  Perhaps that happy and fortunate phrase had a
+great deal to do with the new prosperity.  Mr. Rudge had been flattered
+by such a request coming from a man of such distinction; he felt he
+must live up to it by allowing Henry Harper to improve himself as much
+as possible.
+
+The Sailor had entered Elysium.  But he had the good sense to walk
+warily.  He knew now that it was over-reading, the danger against which
+Ginger had solemnly warned him, that had brought about the Blackhampton
+catastrophe.  He must always be on his guard, yet now the freedom was
+his of all these magic shelves, it was by no means easy to stick to
+that resolve.
+
+Mr. Rudge dwelt at the back of the shop.  Most of his time was passed
+in a small, dark, and stuffy sitting-room, where he ate his meals and
+applied himself to Culture at every reasonable opportunity.  Now that
+he had an assistant, he was able to bestow more time than ever upon the
+things of the mind.  He spent half his days and half his nights taking
+endless notes, in a meticulous hand, for a great work he had conceived
+forty-two years ago when he had migrated from Birmingham to the
+metropolis.  This _magnum opus_ was to be called "A History of the
+World," and was to consist of forty volumes, with a supplementary
+volume as an index, making forty-one in all.  Each was to have four
+hundred and eighty pages, which were to be divided into twenty-four
+chapters.  There were to be no illustrations.
+
+Four decades had passed since the golden hour in which this scheme was
+born.  In a spare room above the shop were a number of large tin trunks
+full of notes for the great work, all very carefully coded and
+docketed.  These were the fruits of forty-two years' amazing industry.
+Every year these labors grew more comprehensive, more unceasing.  But
+the odd thing was that only the first sentence of the first volume of
+the opus was yet in being.  It ran, "'In the beginning,' says Holy
+Writ, 'was the Word.'"  And even that pregnant sentence had yet to be
+put on paper.  At present, it lay like the text of the History itself,
+in the head of the author.
+
+With Henry Harper to mind the shop, the historian was able to devote
+more time to the work of his life.  This was a fortunate matter,
+because Mr. Rudge was already within a few months of seventy, and forty
+volumes and an index had yet to be written.  As a fact, considerable
+portions of the index were already in existence; and during Henry
+Harper's first week in the front shop it received a valuable accession
+in the form of "Bulrushes, Vol. IX., pp. 243-245.  Moses in, Vol. III.,
+p. 120."  Careful and voluminous notes upon Bulrushes, based upon an
+unknown work that had lately arrived in a consignment of second-hand
+books from Sheffield, went to line the bottom of yet another large
+trunk which had been added recently to the attic above the shop.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The day soon came when Henry Harper said good-by to Mr. Horrobin and
+Bowdon House.  Mr. Rudge took a fancy to him from the first.  It may
+have been his high credentials partly; no one could have been equipped
+with a better start in life than the imprimatur of such a scholar and
+such a gentleman as Mr. Esme Horrobin.  But at the same time there was
+much to like in the young man himself.  He was diligent and respectful
+and his heart was in his work; also, and perhaps this counted more with
+Mr. Rudge than anything else, he was very anxious to improve himself.
+And Mr. Rudge, who was an altruist as well as a lover of Culture, was
+very anxious to improve him.
+
+Sometimes Mr. Rudge had a feeling of loneliness, notwithstanding the
+immense labor to which he had dedicated his life.  This was due in a
+measure to the fact that a nephew he had adopted had taken a sudden
+distaste for the Charing Cross Road, and had now been twelve months at
+sea.  A bedroom he had occupied above the shop was vacant; and the use
+of it was presently offered to Henry Harper.
+
+The young man accepted it gratefully.  It was one more rare stroke of
+luck; he was now free to dwell in the land of faerie all day and all
+night.  It seemed as if this was to be a golden time.
+
+In a sense it was.  Aladdin's lamp was fed continually and kept freshly
+trimmed.  The Sailor began to make surprising progress in his studies,
+and his kind master, when not too completely absorbed in his own
+titanic labors after supper, would sometimes help him.  In fact, it was
+Mr. Rudge who first introduced him to grammar.  Klondyke had never
+mentioned it.  Miss Foldal had never mentioned it.  Mr. Horrobin had
+never mentioned it.  Mr. Rudge it was who first brought grammar home to
+Henry Harper.
+
+Reading was important, said Mr. Rudge, also writing, also arithmetic,
+but these things, excellent in themselves, paled in the presence of
+grammar.  You simply could not do without it.  He could never have
+planned his "History of the World" in forty volumes excluding the
+index, let alone have prepared a concrete foundation for such a work,
+without a thorough knowledge of this science.  It was the key to all
+Culture, and Culture was the crown of all wisdom.
+
+On the shelves of the shop were several works on the subject.  And Mr.
+Rudge soon began to spare an hour after supper every night from his own
+labors, in order that Henry Harper might acquire the key to the higher
+walks of mental experience.
+
+The young man took far less kindly to grammar than he did to reading,
+writing, arithmetic, or even geography, which Miss Foldal considered
+one of the mere frills of erudition.  He could see neither rhyme nor
+reason in this new study; but Mr. Rudge assured him it was so important
+that he felt bound to persevere.
+
+Moreover, these efforts brought their reward.  They kept him certain
+hours each day from the things for which he had a passion, so that when
+he felt he could turn to them again his delight was the more intense.
+
+The books he read were very miscellaneous, but Mr. Rudge had too broad
+a mind to exercise a censorship.  In his view, as became a bookseller
+_pur sang_, all books were good, but some were better than others.
+
+For instance, works of the imagination were less good than other
+branches of literature.  In Volume XXXIX of the "History of the World"
+a chapter was to be devoted to Shakespeare, pp. 260-284, wherein homage
+would be paid to a remarkable man, but it would be shown that the
+adulation lavished upon one who relied so much on imagination was out
+of all proportion to that received by Hayden, the author of the
+"Dictionary of Dates."  Without that epoch-making work the "History of
+the World" could not have been undertaken.
+
+Ill-assorted the Sailor's reading might be, but this was a time of true
+development.  Day by day Aladdin's lamp burned brighter.  There was
+little cause to regret Blackhampton, dire tragedy as his flight must
+ever be.  When he had been a fortnight with Mr. Rudge he tried to write
+Ginger a letter.
+
+To begin it, however, was one thing; to complete it another.  It seemed
+so light and callous in comparison with his depth of feeling that he
+tore it up.  He was disgraced forever in the sight of Ginger and his
+peers.
+
+Therefore he decided to write to Miss Foldal instead.  But when he took
+pen in hand, somehow he lost courage.  He could have no interest for
+her now.  It would be best to forget Blackhampton, to put it, if
+possible, out of his life.
+
+Still he felt rather lonely sometimes.  Mr. Rudge was wonderfully kind,
+but he lived in a world of his own.  And the only compensations Henry
+Harper now had for the crowded epoch of Blackhampton were the books in
+the shop which he devoured ravenously, and the daily visits of the
+charlady, Mrs. Greaves.
+
+For many years she had been the factotum of Mr. Elihu Rudge.  Every
+morning she made his fire, cooked his meals, swept and garnished his
+home, and "did for him" generally.  She was old, thin, somber and
+battered, and she had the depth of a bottomless abyss.
+
+Mrs. Greaves was a treasure.  Mr. Rudge depended upon her in
+everything.  She was an autocrat, but women of her dynamic power are
+bound to be.  She despised all men, frankly and coldly.  In the purview
+of Mrs. Caroline Agnes Greaves, man was a poor thing.  Woman who could
+get round him, who could walk over him, who could set him up and put
+him down, merely allowed him to take precedence in order that she might
+handle him to better advantage.  She had a great contempt for an
+institution that was no "use any way," and to this law of nature it was
+not to be expected that "a nine pence to the shilling" creature like
+Mr. Henry Harper would provide an exception.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+One evening the Sailor made a discovery.  At first, however, he was far
+from grasping what it meant.  Like many things intimately concerned
+with fate, it seemed a trivial and commonplace matter.  It was
+presently to change the current of his life, but it was not until long
+after the change was wrought that he saw the hand of destiny.
+
+After a week of delight he turned the last page of "Vanity Fair" by the
+famous author, William Makepeace Thackeray, the rival and contemporary
+of Charles Dickens, the author of the "Pickwick Papers."  It was within
+a few minutes of midnight, and as Mr. Rudge, engaged upon copious notes
+of the life of Charles XII of Sweden, made no sign of going to bed,
+Henry Harper determined to allow himself one more hour.
+
+Therefore he took a candle and entered the front shop with a sense of
+adventure.  First he put back "Vanity Fair," Volume II, on its shelf,
+and then raising his candle on high, with the eagle glance of stout
+Cortez, he surveyed all the new worlds about him.  With a thrill of joy
+he stood pondering which kingdom he should enter.  Should it be "The
+Origin of Species," by Charles Darwin, which his master said was an
+important work and had been laid under contribution for the History?
+Should it be the "Queens of England," by Agnes Strickland, also several
+times to be quoted in the History?  Or should it be Volume CXLI of
+_Brown's Magazine_, 2_s._ 9_d._, re-bound with part of the July number
+missing?
+
+By pure chance the choice fell upon _Brown's Magazine_, incomplete as
+it was, and in its outward seeming entirely commonplace.  He took the
+volume from its shelf, beat the dust out of it, and carried it into the
+sitting-room.
+
+He began to read at the first page.  This happened to be the opening of
+a serial story, "The Adventures of George Gregory; A Tale of the High
+Seas," by Anon.  And the tale proved so entrancing that that night the
+young man did not go to bed until it was nearly time to get up again.
+
+Without being aware of it he had found his kingdom.  Here were
+atmosphere and color, space and light.  Here was the life he had known
+and realized, set forth in the vicarious glory of the printed page.
+For many days to come he could think of little save "The Adventures of
+George Gregory."  This strange tale of the high seas, over which his
+master shook his head sadly when it was shown to him, declaring it to
+be a work of the imagination and therefore of very small account, had a
+glamour quite extraordinary for Henry Harper.  It brought back the
+_Margaret Carey_ and his years of bitter servitude.  It conjured up Mr.
+Thompson and the Chinaman, the Old Man and the Island of San Pedro.
+With these august shades raised again in the mind of the Sailor, "The
+Adventures of George Gregory" gained an authority they could not
+otherwise have had.  In many of its details the story was obviously
+inaccurate.  Sometimes Anon made statements about the _Belle Fortune_,
+the name of the ship, and the Pacific Isles, upon one of which it was
+wrecked, that almost made Henry Harper doubt whether George Gregory had
+ever been to sea at all.  However, he soon learned that it was his duty
+to crush these unworthy suspicions and to yield entirely to the
+wonderful feast of incident spread before him.
+
+Charles Dickens, and even W. M. Thackeray, for all his knowledge of the
+world, were poor things compared with Anon.  It was a real misfortune
+that the part of the July number of _Brown's Magazine_ which was
+missing contained an installment of "The Adventures," but there was no
+help for it.  Moreover, having realized the fact, the gift of the gods,
+Aladdin's lamp, came to the assistance of the Sailor.
+
+With the help of the magic talisman it was quite easy to fill in the
+missing part which contained the adventures of poor George when
+marooned, not on the Island of San Pedro, but on an island in the
+southern seas.  There would certainly be serpents, and for that reason
+he would have to keep out of the trees; and although the July number
+was not able to supply the facts, once you had Aladdin's lamp it was a
+very simple matter to make good the omission.
+
+One thing leads to another.  "The Adventures of George Gregory,"
+imperfect as they were, fastened such a grip on the mind of Henry
+Harper, that one dull Monday afternoon in March, when he sat in the
+shop near the oil-stove waiting for an infrequent customer, a great
+thought came to him.  Might it not be possible to improve upon George
+Gregory with the aid of the talisman and his own experience?
+
+It was a very daring thought, but he was sustained in it by the
+conclusion to which he had come: the work of Anon, exciting and
+ingenious as it certainly was, was not the high seas as the Sailor had
+once envisaged them.  The color, the mystery, the discomfort, the
+horror were not really there.  Even the marooning of poor George upon
+the Island of Juan Fernandez did not thrill your blood as it ought to
+have done.  True, it could be urged that the part containing the
+episode was missing; but in no case would it have been possible to
+equal in horror and intensity the marooning of Sailor upon the Island
+of San Pedro with serpents in every tree around him, although with
+equal truth it might be urged by the skeptical that the incident never
+took place at all.
+
+"Never took place at all!" lisped Aladdin's lamp in magic syllables.
+"Pray, what do you mean?  It certainly took place in your experience,
+and in the opinion of your learned master who is writing a history of
+the world in forty volumes, that is the only thing that matters."
+
+A flash of the talisman was soon to raise a bottle of ink and a quire
+of foolscap.  Therefore one evening after supper, Mr. Rudge, still at
+Charles XII of Sweden, was startled painfully when "The Adventures of
+Dick Smith on the High Seas," by Henry Harper, Chapter One, was shown
+to him.  It was a fall, but his master was too kind to say so.  These
+misspent hours could have been used for a further enrichment of the
+mind.  He might have added to his knowledge of grammar.  He might have
+ventured upon the study of shorthand itself, a science of which Mr.
+Rudge never ceased to deplore his own ignorance.  However, he said
+nothing, and went on with the great work.
+
+Thus, not realizing the true feelings of his master, the young man
+continued to supplement the entrancing but incomplete "Adventures of
+George Gregory" with his own experience.  The strange tale grew at the
+back of the genie who tended the lamp, and with it grew the soul of
+Henry Harper.  In this new and wonderful realm he had entered it seemed
+that the Sailor had surely found his kingdom.  Deep down in himself
+were latent faculties which he had not known were there.  They were now
+springing forth gloriously into the light.
+
+All his life he had been a dreamer of dreams; now the power was his of
+making them come true, he had a world of his own in which to live.  He
+was only half awake as yet to the world around him; and this arrest of
+growth was for a time his weakness and his strength.  It is impossible,
+it is said, to touch pitch and not be defiled.  The worth of that
+aphorism was about to be tried by the clairvoyant soul of Henry Harper.
+
+At this time, while he was drawing very painfully and yet rapturously
+upon his inner life, he was like an expanding flower.  All his leisure
+was not spent in the back parlor at No. 249, Charing Cross Road.  There
+were hours when he walked abroad into the streets of the great city.
+
+Much was hidden from his eyes as yet.  The truth was it was not his own
+great city in which he walked.  He gazed and saw, listened and heard in
+a mirage of fanciful ignorance.  A life of unimaginable squalor and
+hardship had not been able to slay the genie sleeping in that elemental
+soul.  But it had yet to get its range of values in the many worlds
+around it.
+
+One Sunday morning in the spring, in one of his enchanted walks about
+the city in the pursuit of knowledge, he chanced to enter Hyde Park.
+It was the hour when the churches of the neighborhood disgorged their
+fashionable congregations.  Here, as he sat near the statue of Achilles
+and watched the brilliant throng pass by, a feeling of awe and
+bewilderment overcame him.  He had never realized before that his
+fellow occupants of the planet could be so wonderful.  Here was a
+significance, a beauty, a harmony of aspect beyond anything he had
+imagined to be possible.  The fine-ladyhood of Miss Foldal was nothing
+in comparison with that queening it all around him.  Even the quality
+of Mr. Esme Horrobin paled in luster.  This was a very remarkable world
+into which he had strayed.  He had almost a sense of guilt at finding
+himself there.  With such clothes as he wore and such a humility of
+heart as he had, he had clearly no right of entry to this paradise.
+But there he was with every nerve alive, and the scene burned itself
+vividly into his heart and brain.
+
+These gorgeous beings with their kingliness of mien, these children of
+the sun who spoke with the accent of the gods meant much more to the
+primitive soul of Henry Harper than as yet it could understand.  In the
+intoxication of the hour, with the sun and the birds, the trees, the
+green earth, the bright flowers paying their homage to the grace and
+beauty of his countrywomen, he felt like an angel who has fallen out of
+heaven, who after aeons of time in a bottomless hell is permitted to
+see again a fair heritage that once was his.
+
+The genie had unlocked another door.  Henry Harper was now in a world
+of romance.  In order to know what these wonderful beings truly were he
+listened eagerly for fragments of their talk as they passed by.  All of
+a sudden there came miraculously a voice that had a tang of ocean in
+it.  There and then was he flung out of Hyde Park to the deck of the
+_Margaret Carey_.
+
+Leaping at the sound of a laugh, a full-chested music the Sailor could
+never forget, he saw, a few yards off, the oncoming figures of a man
+and a girl.  Both were tall and young and splendid; both seemed to be
+dressed in the last cry of fashion.  Moreover they bore themselves with
+the assured grace of a sweet ship under canvas.
+
+The pair were clearly brother and sister, and the figure of the man, at
+least, was extraordinarily familiar to Henry Harper.  Yet almost before
+he had realized them, they were level with him.  It was not until they
+were actually past the seat on which he sat that there came a flash of
+recognition.  The man was Klondyke.
+
+For an instant the heart of the Sailor stood still.  The immortal had
+almost touched his knee, yet he was yards away already.  But Klondyke
+it was, laughing his great note and rolling out his rich and peculiar
+dialect.  It was Klondyke in a top hat and a tail coat, looking as if
+he had come out of a bandbox.  Who could believe that such faultless
+magnificence had been washed habitually out of its berth in the
+half-deck of the _Margaret Carey_?
+
+He did not look a bit older than when the Sailor had seen him last,
+that unhappy six years ago when his friend shook him by the hand, told
+him to stick to his reading and writing, and then started to walk
+across Asia.  And in that time Klondyke did not appear to have changed
+at all.  He had the same brown, large-featured face, the same keen and
+cheerful eye, the same roll in his gait, and that cool, indefinable,
+you-be-damned air that was both admired and resented aboard the
+_Margaret Carey_.
+
+By the time the Sailor had recovered from his surprise, Klondyke was
+out of sight.  A strong impulse then came upon Henry Harper to go after
+his friend and declare himself.  But a feeling of timidity defeated
+him.  Besides, he understood more fully at this moment than ever before
+that there were whole continents between such a man as Klondyke and
+such a man as Henry Harper.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The emotions of the Sailor were many and conflicting as he made his way
+back to Charing Cross Road to the homely meal which Mrs. Greaves
+provided for his master and himself.  A long afternoon and evening
+followed in which _Dick Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_ roamed
+the high seas.
+
+Infinite pains had now brought the narrative to Chapter Six.  But for
+some days progress was very slow.  The figure of Klondyke held the
+thoughts of the Sailor.  Surely it was cowardice not to have made
+himself known.  It was treason to assume that his friend, in spite of
+the wonderful girl by his side, would not have been glad to see him
+again.  Yet was it?  That was the half formed fear which tormented him.
+Klondyke had forgotten his existence: so much was clear because he had
+almost touched his knee as he went by.  And why should he remember him?
+Who was he that he should be remembered by such a man as Klondyke?  The
+tale of the high seas had a bad week.  The Sailor was held in thrall by
+an emanation from the past.  How Klondyke would have roared had he
+known what he was at!  Somehow it set the blood tingling in Henry
+Harper's ears to reflect that it was he who a few brief years ago had
+first introduced him to reading and writing.
+
+Do as he would, it was not a propitious hour for the story of _Dick
+Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_.  And when the next Sunday came
+he had to decide whether or not to go to Hyde Park in the hope of
+seeing the immortal.  Finally, in a state of utter misgiving, he went.
+This time, although he sat a long hour on a seat near the statue of
+Achilles, there was never a sign of him.  Yet he was content to be
+disappointed, for the longer he sat the more clearly he knew that
+cowardice would defeat him again should Klondyke and his attendant
+nymph appear.
+
+Henry Harper was coming now to a phase in which ladies were to play
+their part.  Mrs. Greaves had a niece, it seemed.  From brilliant
+accounts furnished from time to time he learned that she was a
+strikingly gifted creature, not only endowed with beauty, but also with
+brains in a very high degree.
+
+"Miss Cora Dobbs," in the words of her aunt, "was an actress by
+profession, and she had done so well in it that she had a flat of her
+own round the corner in the Avenue.  Toffs as understood Cora's merit
+thought 'ighly of her talent.  She could dance and she could sing, and
+she earned such good money that she had a nest-egg put by."
+
+Henry Harper was at first too absorbed in his work to pay much
+attention to the charlady's discourses upon her niece.  Besides, had he
+not known Miss Gwladys Foldal who had played in Shakespeare and been
+admitted to an intimacy of a most intellectual kind?  The indifference
+of Mr. Harper seemed to pique Mrs. Greaves.  She often recurred to the
+subject of Miss Dobbs; moreover, she seemed anxious for the young man
+to realize that "although she was the niece of one as didn't pretend to
+be anythink, Cora herself was a lady."
+
+Such statements were not really necessary.  In the eyes of Mr. Harper
+every woman was a lady more or less, even if to that rule there must
+always be one signal exception.  He had a deep-rooted chivalry for Mrs.
+Greaves' sex.  He even treated her, flat-chested, bearded and
+ferret-like as she was, with an instinctive courtesy which she at once
+set down as weakness of character.
+
+For a reason Mr. Harper did not try to fathom--just now he was far too
+deep in his task to give much thought to the matter--Mrs. Greaves
+seemed most anxious that he should make the acquaintance of Miss Cora
+Dobbs.  One reason, it is true, she gave.  "Mr. Arper was a snail as
+was too much in his shell.  He wanted a bright and knowing girl like
+Cora to tote him around a bit and teach him not to be afraid of life."
+
+Mrs. Greaves had such a contempt for Mr. Harper's sex that her
+solicitude was rather strange.  As for its two specimens for whom she
+"did" daily, the emotion they inspired was one of deadly cynicism.  In
+her razor-like judgment they were as soft as pap.  It was therefore the
+more remarkable that she should now take such an interest in the
+welfare of the younger man.
+
+What was he writing?  Lips of cautious curiosity were always asking the
+question.  A book!  She was greatly interested in books and had always
+been since she had "done" for a gentleman who got fifty pounds for
+every one that he wrote.  What did Mr. Harper expect to get by it?
+
+It had not occurred to Mr. Harper that he would get anything by it.
+
+"Why write it then?" she asked with acrid surprise.  Why get up so
+early and sit up so late?  Why use all that good ink and expensive
+paper if he didn't expect to get something out of it?
+
+The young man was writing it because he felt he must.
+
+"I sometimes think you must be a reg'lar soft-biled un," said Mrs.
+Greaves, with an air of personal affront.  "I do, honest.  Wasting your
+time like that ... and mine as well!"
+
+At that moment, however, the Sailor was far too deep in Chapter
+Eighteen to attend to the charlady.  His total lack of interest sent
+her in a huff to the back kitchen.  Yet she was not cast down
+altogether.  He was more of a half-bake than she had guessed, that was
+all.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Next morning a lady walked into the shop.  She was tall and stout,
+beaming and fashionable.  The first detail of a striking, even
+resplendent personality which caught the young man's eye was her boots.
+These were long, narrow, perilously high in the heel, they had black
+and white checked uppers, and a pair of fat feet had been buttoned into
+them.
+
+"I want 'Etiquette for Ladies,' please.  It's in the window.  A
+shilling.  Yellow cover."
+
+It was not the voice the young man had heard in Hyde Park, nor was it
+the voice of Miss Foldal; on the contrary, it was direct, searching,
+rather aggressive in quality.  There was ease and confidence in it,
+there was humor and archness.  It was a voice of hyper-refinement, of
+Miss Foldal receiving company, raised to a higher, more dominant power.
+
+"Yes, that's the one.  By a Member of the Aristocracy.  At least it
+says it is.  And if it isn't, I get my money back, don't I?"
+
+The flash of teeth and the smile that followed startled the young man
+considerably.  He blushed to the roots of his hair.  This was a new
+kind of lady altogether and he didn't know in the least how he was
+going to cope with her.
+
+"Thanks very much."  Elegantly the sum of one shilling was disbursed
+from a very smart reticule.
+
+That, however, was not the conclusion of the incident.
+
+"Excuse me," said the lady, "but you are Mr. Harper, aren't you?"
+
+Blushing again he admitted very humbly that he was.
+
+"Yes, you look clever.  I'm Cora Dobbs.  You know Auntie, I think."
+
+With a blush deepening to a hue that was quite nice the young man said
+he knew Miss Dobbs' aunt.
+
+"She's a rum one, isn't she?"  The sudden friendliness was overpowering.
+
+The young man, not knowing what to say, said nothing.  Thus far he had
+been on the high seas with _Dick Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_,
+but he was quickly coming to dry land, to London, to the Charing Cross
+Road.  So this was the niece of whom Mrs. Greaves thought so much.
+Henry Harper could understand the charlady's pride in her, but it was
+very surprising that she should be the niece of Mrs. Greaves.  She was
+something totally different.  In manner she was even more refined than
+Miss Foldal herself, although in some ways she had a slight resemblance
+to his good fairy.  But Miss Dobbs had a candor, a humor and a charm
+quite new in Henry Harper's very limited social experience.  She was
+really most agreeable; also her clothes, if not exactly Hyde Park, were
+so fine that they must have cost a great deal of money.
+
+So much for Miss Dobbs in the sight of Mr. Harper.  As for Mr. Harper
+in the sight of Miss Dobbs, that was a very different matter.  He was
+not bad looking; he was tall, well-made, clean, his eyes were good.
+But their queer expression could only mean that he was as weak as water
+and as green as grass.  Evidently he hardly knew he had come on to the
+earth.  Also he was as shy as a baby and his trousers wanted ironing
+badly.
+
+"I have heard quite a lot about you, Mr. Harper, from my aunt."
+
+It was a little surprising that a creature so fashionable should own an
+aunt so much the reverse.  Even Mr. Harper, who had hardly begun to get
+a sense of perspective, felt the two ladies were as wide asunder as the
+poles.  Not of course that Mrs. Greaves was an "ordinary" char, he had
+her own assurance of that.  She was a kind of super-charlady who "did"
+for barristers and professional gentlemen, cooked their meals,
+supervised their bachelor establishments, and allowed them to share her
+pride in a distinguished niece.
+
+Had Mr. Harper been a more sophisticated young man he must have felt
+the attitude of the niece to be admirable.  There was not a shade of
+false shame when she spoke of her aunt.  Miss Cora Dobbs was too
+frankly of the world to suffer any vicarious embarrassment.  She was
+amused with a relationship thrust upon her by an ironical providence,
+and that was all.
+
+"I hear you are writing a book."
+
+That was a false move.  Mr. Harper was only able to blush vividly and
+to make a kind of noise at the back of his throat.
+
+"I have a great friend who is writing one."  Miss Dobbs hastened to
+repair a tactical mistake.  "Hers is reminiscences.  I am helping with
+a few of mine.  I dare say Auntie has told you I have been on the
+stage?"
+
+Mr. Harper had been told that.
+
+"Don't you think it's a good idea?  My friend gives her name because
+she married a lord, but I'm to do the donkey work.  It would be telling
+if I told you her name, but don't you think it's business?"
+
+Mr. Harper thought, not very audibly, that it was.
+
+"One of our girls at the Friv., Cassie Smallpiece, who married Lord
+Bargrave, you know..."
+
+... Mr. Harper did not know, but Miss Dobbs had already struck such a
+note of intimacy that he somehow felt he ought to have known....
+
+"... Made quite a pot of money out of hers.  Of course there was
+scandal in Cassie's.  Cassie was rather warm pastry.  But there'll be
+none in ours, although I expect that'll be money out of our pockets."
+
+Mr. Harper hoped such would not be the case.
+
+"Bound to be," said Miss Dobbs.  "That's the worst of being a clean
+potato, you are always missing your share of the cake."
+
+Mr. Harper was completely out of his depth.  He had no reply to make to
+this very advanced remark.
+
+Miss Dobbs watched his perplexed face with a narrow-lidded wariness,
+behind which glittered the eyes of a goshawk.  But she was too wise to
+force the pace unduly.  With a suddenness that was almost startling,
+she said, "Well, ching-a-ling.  I'll look in again when you are not so
+busy, Mr. Harper.  One of these days perhaps you will give me advice
+about my reminiscences."  And with a smile and a wave of her muff of
+excruciating friendliness, Miss Cora Dobbs gave a trip and a waddle,
+and the high heels and the black and white check uppers were on the
+pavement of the Charing Cross Road.
+
+For at least three minutes, however, after they had gone, _Dick Smith_
+and the brigantine _Excelsior_ were left in a state of suspended
+animation.  The author had to make a great effort before he could
+proceed with Chapter Eighteen.  A glamour had passed from the earth; at
+least from that part of the earth contained by the four walls of No.
+249, Charing Cross Road.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Miss Cora Dobbs was as good as her word.  She looked in again; indeed
+she formed quite a habit of looking into the shop of Elihu Rudge,
+bookseller, whenever she was passing.  This seemed to work out on an
+average at one morning a week.  Her reminiscences could hardly have
+induced this friendliness because, strange to say, she never mentioned
+them again.
+
+On a first consideration, it seemed more likely due to her deep
+interest in the book Mr. Harper was writing, of which her aunt had told
+her.  Whenever Miss Dobbs looked in she never failed to ask, "How is it
+going today?" and she declared she would not be satisfied until a
+chapter had been read to her.
+
+Mr. Harper was rather embarrassed by the attentions of Miss Dobbs.  He
+was a very shy young man, and in regard to his new and strange and
+sometimes extremely painful labors he was unreasonably silent.  But so
+determined was the interest of Miss Dobbs that in the end Mr. Harper
+yielded to its pressure.  At last he let her see the manuscript.  But
+even that did not content her.  She was set, it seemed, on having some
+of the choicest passages read aloud by the author when there was no one
+in the shop.
+
+In a way the determination of Miss Dobbs was rather a thorn.  Yet it
+would have been idle and ungracious for Mr. Harper to pretend that he
+was not flattered by this remarkable solicitude for the story of _Dick
+Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_.  He was very flattered indeed.
+For one thing, Miss Dobbs was Miss Dobbs in a way that Miss Foldal had
+never been Miss Foldal.  She was a force in the way that Ginger was;
+her elegance was positive, it meant something.  She had a subtle air of
+"being out for blood," just as Ginger had when they had paid their
+first never-to-be-forgotten visit to Blackhampton.  Deep in his heart
+the Sailor was a little afraid of Miss Cora Dobbs.  Yet he did not know
+why he should be.  She was extraordinarily agreeable.  No one could
+have been pleasanter to talk to; she was by far the wittiest and most
+amusing lady he had ever met; it was impossible not to like her
+immensely; but already a subtle instinct told him to beware.
+
+As for Miss Dobbs, her state of mind would be difficult to render.
+Just as Mr. Harper was very simple, Miss Dobbs was extremely complex.
+In the first place, there seemed no particular reason why she should
+have come into the shop at all.  It may have been curiosity.  Perhaps
+her aunt had aroused it by the statement that Mr. Rudge had "set up a
+nice-looking boy as wrote books," and it may have been that the bearing
+of the nice-looking boy gave warrant for a continuance of Miss Dobbs'
+friendly regard.
+
+On the other hand, it may have been the nature of Mr. Harper's calling
+which inspired these punctual attentions.  It certainly had
+possibilities.  Among the friends of Miss Dobbs was a certain Mr.
+Albert Hobson who was reputed to earn several thousands a year by his
+pen.  Again, it may have been the statement of her aunt that the young
+man "had follered the sea and had a nest-egg put by."  Or again it may
+have been the young man himself who appealed to her.  His clean
+simplicity of mind and of mansion may have had a morbid attraction for
+a complexity that was pathological.  Of these hypotheses the last may
+seem least probable, but the motives of a Miss Cora Dobbs defy
+analysis; and in a world in which nothing is absolute she is perhaps
+entitled to the benefit of any doubt that may arise concerning them.
+
+In spite of Miss Dobbs, whose attentions for the present were confined
+to a few minutes one morning a week, the story of _Dick Smith_ began to
+make excellent progress.  All the same it was uphill work.  The Sailor
+was a very clumsy craftsman using the queerest of tools, but oddly
+enough he had a remarkable faculty of concentration.
+
+At last came the day when the final chapter was written.  And a proud
+day it was.  In spite of many defeats and misgivings, he was able at
+three o'clock of a summer morning to write the magic words, "The End."
+Yet it was far from being the end of his labors.  He little knew that
+he had merely come to Mount Pisgah, and that for many days he must be
+content with no more than a glimpse of the Promised Land.
+
+In telling the story of his early years the Sailor had no particular
+object in view.  Certain mysterious forces were craving expression.
+Such a task had not been undertaken at the call of ambition.  But now
+it was done ambition found a part to play.
+
+On the very morning the story was finished, by an odd chance Miss Dobbs
+came into the shop.  In answer to her invariable, "Well, what of it?"
+she was gravely informed that the end had been reached.
+
+"My! you've been going some, Mr. R. L. Stevenson.  Run along and fetch
+the last chapter and read it to me and then I'll tell you honestly
+whether I think it's as good as Bert Hobson."
+
+Miss Dobbs had the habit of command.  Therefore Chapter the Last,
+telling of the hero's miraculous deliverance from the Island of San
+Pedro, was at once produced.  Moreover, it was read to her with naif
+sincerity in a gentle voice.
+
+"Hot stuff!"  Miss Dobbs dexterously concealed a yawn with a dingy
+white glove.  "It's It."
+
+The author blushed with pleasure, although he could hardly believe the
+story was as good as all that.
+
+"And what are you going to do with it now you've written it?"
+
+To her intense surprise it had not occurred to him to do anything with
+it.
+
+"Oh, but that's potty.  That's merely potty.  Of course you are going
+to bring it out as a book."
+
+The author had not thought of doing so.
+
+"Anyhow, it is just the thing for a magazine."
+
+Even a magazine had not entered his mind.
+
+"What are you going to do with it, then?" demanded Miss Dobbs, with
+growing incredulity.
+
+This was a question Mr. Harper was unable to answer.
+
+"You are going to do nothing with it?" gasped Miss Dobbs.
+
+"No."
+
+"But it's 'some' story, I assure you it is.  If you send it to the
+_Rotunda_ or the _Covent Garden_ it may mean big money."
+
+Quite absurdly the financial aspect had not presented itself.
+
+"Well, you're potty," said Miss Dobbs, with despondency.  "Don't you
+know that Bert Hobson, who writes those stories for the _Rotunda_,
+makes his thousands a year?"
+
+Mr. Harper, who had never heard of Bert Hobson or of the _Rotunda_,
+seemed greatly surprised.
+
+"Why, you are as green as green," said Miss Dobbs reproachfully.  "It's
+such a nugget of thrills, you ought to see that it gets published.  You
+ought really."
+
+But in spite of her conviction it was some time before he felt able to
+take her advice.  Such unpractical reluctance on the part of genius
+gave her pain.  It seemed to lower its value.  He must be a genius to
+have written a book, but it was a great pity that he should confirm the
+world's estimate of genius by behaving like one.
+
+Why had he taken so much trouble if he was not going to get a nice fat
+check out of it?
+
+He had written it because he felt he must.
+
+It's a very sloppy reason, was the unexpressed opinion of Miss Dobbs.
+
+After such a hopeless admission on the part of the young man with the
+queer eyes, Miss Dobbs felt so hurt that she did not appear in the shop
+for three weeks.  And when at last she came again, she learned that the
+story of _Dick Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_ was still in its
+drawer and had yet to be seen by anyone.
+
+"You beat Banagher," said Miss Dobbs.  And then she suddenly exclaimed,
+"Look here, Mr. Harper, give me that story and I'll send it myself to
+the _Rotunda_."
+
+Very gently and politely, but quite firmly, Mr. Harper declined to do
+so.  But in order to appease Miss Dobbs, who was inclined to make this
+refusal a personal matter, he solemnly promised that he would send it
+to the _Rotunda_ himself, or some other magazine.
+
+Henry Harper took a sudden resolve that night to send the story to the
+home of its only true begetter, _Brown's Magazine_.  Why he chose that
+periodical in preference to the _Rotunda_ was more than he could say.
+It may have been a feeling of reverence for the dilapidated Volume CXLI
+with part of the July number missing.  Some high instinct may have been
+at work since the gods must have some kind of machinery to help them in
+these matters.  At least the material fact was beyond dispute.  He
+packed the story that evening in neat brown paper, and before taking
+down the shutters of the shop the next morning, went out and posted it,
+although sure in his own mind that he was guilty of a foolish
+proceeding.
+
+Still, there was a lady in the case.  But when in the course of the
+following day Miss Dobbs looked in again, by some odd perversity she
+was inclined to share this view to the full.  She had never heard of
+_Brown's Magazine_.  The _Rotunda_ and the _Covent Garden_ were her
+stand-bys.  She never read anything else.  But she dared say that
+Brown's money would be as good as other people's, although _Brown's
+Magazine_ certainly would not have the circulation of the _Rotunda_.
+
+Several weeks passed.  Miss Dobbs looked in now and again to ask if Mr.
+Harper had "had any luck."  To this inquiry one invariable answer was
+given, and after a time Miss Dobbs seemed to lose something of her
+faith.  Her interest in the story of Dick Smith and in Mr. Harper
+himself began to wane.  She had said from the first that _Brown's_ was
+a mistake.  It should have been the _Rotunda_ or nothing.  Miss Dobbs
+was a firm believer in beginning at the top; in her opinion it was
+easier to come down than it was to go up.
+
+When the fourth week of silence on the part of _Brown's Magazine_ had
+been entered upon, she suggested that Mr. Harper should stir them up a
+bit.  With surprising inconsequence he asked for one more week of
+grace.  For his own part, he could not help thinking it was a good
+sign.  Miss Dobbs did not share his view.  _Brown's_ had either mislaid
+the manuscript, they had not received it, or they had destroyed it; and
+in a state verging upon sarcasm she withdrew from the shop with the
+final and crushing remark, "that Mr. Harper was a rum one, and she
+doubted very much whether he would ever make good."
+
+However, Miss Dobbs, in spite of her knowledge of the world, had to
+admit, a week later, that Mr. Harper knew more about _Brown's Magazine_
+than she did.  For when she looked in on the morning of Saturday to
+inquire for news of the ill-fated _Dick Smith_ she was met triumphantly
+with a letter which had come by the last post the previous evening.
+
+With quite a thrill she took the letter out of its neatly embossed
+envelope and made an attempt to read the following:
+
+
+12B, Pall Mall,
+  September 2.
+
+DEAR SIR,
+
+Your story has now been read twice, and the conclusion very reluctantly
+come to by the writer is that it would be impossible to use it in
+_Brown's Magazine_ in its present form.  It bears many marks of
+inexperience, but at the same time it has such a strikingly original
+quality that the writer would be very glad to have a talk with you
+about it.  In the meantime the MS is being returned to you.
+
+Yours very truly,
+  EDWARD AMBROSE.
+
+
+"I don't call that writing," said Miss Dobbs, who had been utterly
+defeated by the hand of the editor of _Brown's Magazine_.  "It is just
+a fly walking across the paper without having wiped its feet.  Read it
+to me, Mr. Harper."
+
+Mr. Harper, who had spent nearly an hour the previous evening in making
+out the letter, and now knew it by heart, enforced her respect by
+reading it aloud as if it had been nothing out of the common.
+
+"Marks of inexperience!" was her comment.  "Like his impudence.  I
+wonder who he thinks he is.  You take my advice, Mr. Harper, and send
+it to the _Covent Garden_.  See what they've got to say about it."
+
+However, before taking that course, Henry Harper felt it would be the
+part of wisdom to get in touch with the real live editor who had
+expressed a wish to see him.  Besides, there had been something in the
+letter signed "Edward Ambrose" which had set a chord vibrating in his
+heart.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+In order to pay a visit to 12B, Pall Mall, Henry Harper had to ask for
+leave.  This was readily granted by his master, who was even more
+impressed by the letter from the editor of _Brown's Magazine_ than was
+its recipient.
+
+As became one who had a practical acquaintance with editors and
+publishers, Mr. Rudge knew that for more than a century _Brown's
+Magazine_ had been a Mecca of the man of letters.  Great names were
+enshrined in its history.  These began with Byron and Scott, and flowed
+through the Victorian epoch to the most gifted and representative minds
+of the present.  Mr. Ambrose himself was a critic of some celebrity;
+moreover, _Brown's Magazine_ was still half a crown a month as it
+always had been, so that even its subscribers had a sense of
+exclusiveness.
+
+Henry Harper was so shy that when the hour came for him to set forth to
+12B, Pall Mall, his one desire was to take the advice of Miss Dobbs and
+not pay his visit at all.  But Mr. Rudge was adamant.  Henry must go to
+Pall Mall if only for the sake of the firm.  Just as the young man was
+about to set out, his master emphasized the immense importance of the
+matter by appearing on the scene, clothes brush in hand, in order to
+give a final touch to his toilet.  No discredit must be done to 249,
+Charing Cross Road.  An unprecedented honor had been conferred upon it.
+
+The reception of Mr. Harper in Pall Mall was of a kind to impress a
+sensitive young man of high aspiration and very limited opportunity.
+To begin with, Pall Mall is Pall Mall, and No. 12B in every chaste
+external was entirely worthy of its local habitation.  After a much
+bemedaled commissionaire of incredibly distinguished aspect had ushered
+the young man into the front office, he was received by a grave and
+reverend signior in a frock coat whom Mr. Harper instinctively felt was
+the editor himself.  Such, however, was not the case.  The grave and
+reverend one was a trusted member of the staff, whose duty it was to
+usher contributors into the Presence, and in the meantime, if delay
+arose, to arrange for their well-being.
+
+Before Mr. Harper could be received, he spent some terrible minutes in
+a tiny waiting-room, in which he felt he was being asphyxiated.  During
+that time it was borne in upon him that he would not be equal to the
+ordeal ahead.  Every minute he grew more nervous.  He could never face
+it, he was sure.  Far better to have taken the advice of the wise Miss
+Dobbs, and have been content with the _Covent Garden_.
+
+Before the fateful moment came he was in a state of despair.  Why he
+should have been was impossible to say.  What was Pall Mall in
+comparison with the forecastle or the futtock shrouds of the _Margaret
+Carey_?  What were the commissionaire and the frock-coated gentleman in
+comparison with Mr. Thompson and the Old Man?  Yet he came within an
+ace of flying out of that waiting-room into the street.
+
+The cicerone reappeared, led the young man up a flight of stairs,
+opened a door, and announced, "Mr. Harper."
+
+Seated at a writing table in a bay of the large, airy, well-appointed
+room, was a gravely genial man, whose face had that subtle look of
+power which springs from the play of mind.
+
+He rose at once and offered a welcome of such unstudied cordiality that
+Henry Harper forgot that he had ever been afraid of him.  The editor of
+_Brown's Magazine_ placed a chair for the young man and asked him to
+sit down.  He then returned to his writing table, leaned back in his
+own chair, and half turned to face his visitor.
+
+"Your story interested me enormously."  The editor studied very closely
+the young man opposite without appearing to do so; and then he said, in
+a slightly changed tone, as if a theory previously formed had been
+confirmed, "I am sure you have had experience of the sea."
+
+The Sailor knew already that he was going to like Mr. Ambrose
+immensely.  In a subtle way he was reminded of Klondyke, and more
+remotely of Mr. Horrobin, but yet he felt that Mr. Ambrose was not
+really like them at all.
+
+As for Edward Ambrose, he had at once fixed in his mind a picture of
+great simplicity, of eager intensity, of an earnestness pathetic and
+naif.  Strange to say, it was almost exactly the one he had been able
+to envisage beforehand.  If ever a human document had ascended to the
+first floor of 12B, Pall Mall, it was here before his eyes.
+
+The Sailor began presently to forget his shyness in a surprising way.
+Mr. Ambrose differed from Mr. Horrobin inasmuch that he was ready, even
+anxious, to listen.  He seemed quite eager that the Sailor should speak
+about himself.  The story had interested him very much.  He felt its
+power, and saw great possibilities for a talent, immature as it was,
+which could declare itself in a shape so definite.
+
+After a while the Sailor talked with less reserve than perhaps he ought
+to have done.  But such a man was very hard to resist--impossible for
+certain natures.  He had a faculty of perception that was very rare, he
+was amazingly quick to see and to appreciate; and with this curious
+power of realizing all that was worthy there was a knack of
+overlooking, of perhaps even blinding himself, to things less pleasing.
+
+The Sailor's speech, queer and semi-literate as it was, exactly
+resembled his writing.  Here was something rare and strange.  The shy
+earnestness of the voice, the neat serge suit, well tended but of poor
+quality, the general air of clean simplicity without and within; above
+all, the haunted eyes of this deep-sea mariner, which had seen so much
+more than they would ever be able to tell, fixed towards a goal they
+could never hope to attain, were much as Edward Ambrose had pictured
+them.
+
+"I want to use your story," said the editor; "but please don't be
+offended by what I am going to say."
+
+The look in the face of the Sailor showed it would be quite impossible
+for Mr. Ambrose to offend him.
+
+"There are little things, certain rules that have to be learned before
+even Genius itself can be given a hearing.  And it is vital to master
+them.  But you are so far on the road, that in a short time, if you
+care to go on, I am convinced you will have all the tricks of a craft
+which too often begins and ends in trickery and once in a lustrum rises
+to power.  At least that's my experience."  And Mr. Ambrose laughed
+with charming friendliness.
+
+"Now," he went on, "I will let you into a secret that all the world
+knows.  We declined _Treasure Island_.  Not in my time, I am glad to
+say, but _Brown's Magazine_ declined it.  The story is told against us;
+and if we can we want to wipe the blot off our escutcheon.  And I feel,
+Mr. Harper, that if you will learn the rules of the game and not lose
+yourself, one day you will help us to do so."
+
+It took the editor some time to explain what he meant.  But he did so
+at considerable length and with wonderful lucidity.  The personality of
+this young man appealed to him.  And he felt that the author of _Dick
+Smith_ had had an almost superhuman task laid upon him.  Here was a
+competitor in the Olympian games starting from a mark so far behind his
+peers that by all the laws he was out of the race before he started to
+run it.  But was he?  Somehow Edward Ambrose felt that if this
+dauntless spirit, already many times defeated, but never completely
+overthrown, could find the courage to go on, the world would have cause
+one day to congratulate _Brown's Magazine_.
+
+The editor took a cordial leave of his strange visitor.  "Keep on
+keeping on, and see what comes of it.  Don't be afraid to use the
+knife, but be careful not to cut yourself.  That's the particular form
+of the eternal paradox assumed by the absolute for the overthrow of the
+writing man!  It's a riddle each must read in his own way.  But
+instinct is the master key.  Trust it as you have done already, and it
+will unlock every door.  However, we will talk of that another time.
+But you might bear in mind what a great writer said to me here in this
+room only last week.  'When you feel anything you may have written is
+really fine it is a golden rule to leave it out.'  Clear away a few of
+the trees, and then we may begin to see the wood.  But this doesn't
+apply to the Island of San Pedro.  Not a word of _that_ can be spared."
+
+The Sailor walked on air as far as the National Gallery.  But as he
+turned the corner into Charing Cross Road he was brought to earth by a
+violent collision with an elderly gentleman.  He was not brought
+literally to earth because he suffered less than his victim.
+
+Before the elderly gentleman had ceased to blaspheme the young man came
+within an ace of an even more emphatic reminder of earth's realities:
+at the end of Cranbourn Street an omnibus nearly ran over him.  Still,
+it is the part of charity to cover his sins, because up till then,
+Tuesday, September the fifth had been the day of his life.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+This mood did not last very long.  He was now up against the stern
+facts of authorship.  The story of _Dick Smith_ would have to be
+written again and written differently.  In the reincarnation would be
+little of the creative rapture of the primal birth.  And so little
+faith had the Sailor in his powers that he could not help feeling that
+too much had been asked of them.
+
+To add to his doubts, he was beset by conflicting advice.  Miss Dobbs
+was quite angry when she learned the result of the interview with Mr.
+Ambrose, which she did the day after it had taken place.
+
+"Wants you to write it again, does he?" she said with a glow of
+indignation.  "I call that the limit!  Now, if you'll be guided by me,
+Mr. Harper, which, of course, you ought to have been from the first,
+you'll do nothing of the kind.  Send it to the _Rotunda_ or the _Covent
+Garden_."
+
+Miss Dobbs was so firm and Henry Harper was so oppressed by the
+magnitude of his task, that he came very near taking her advice.
+
+It was the intervention of the author of "A History of the World" in
+forty volumes with an index that saved the situation.  Mr. Rudge was
+horrified when he learned that Henry Harper thought of trying his luck
+with the _Rotunda_.  It was nothing less than an act of _lese-majeste_.
+There could be so little ground of comparison between that upstart and
+_Brown's_ that in the opinion of Mr. Rudge it was better to be damned
+by the fountain of honor, which had published Byron and Scott, than be
+accepted and even tricked out with illustrations--there would be no
+illustrations in the "History of the World"--by a cheap and flashy
+parvenu which bore a similar relation to literature to that a toadstool
+bore to horticulture.
+
+Miss Dobbs had force of character, but she was no match for Mr. Rudge
+when it came to a question of _Brown's Magazine_ v. the _Rotunda_.  He
+even went to the length of telling her that she didn't know what she
+was talking about.  The grave spectacled eyes of the historian flashed
+to such purpose that Miss Dobbs was fain to admit "that she never would
+have thought the old fool had it in him."  But great issues were at
+stake.  All that he stood for was in the scale.  Such an affront should
+only be offered to Culture over the dead body of the author of the
+"History of the World."
+
+Finally, Henry Harper sat down to rewrite the story of _Dick Smith_ and
+the brigantine _Excelsior_.  As a fruit of victory, Mr. Rudge ordained
+that the young man should return to the study of grammar.  It was more
+than ever necessary now.  He was sure that had he been as well up in
+grammar as he ought to have been, the question of rewriting the story
+of _Dick Smith_ could never have arisen.
+
+These were trying days.  But the Sailor stuck gallantly to his guns.
+In spite of the pessimism of Miss Dobbs, who still looked in now and
+again, he grappled with an extremely difficult task.  Moreover, he did
+so very thoroughly.  Mr. Ambrose had given him only general rules to go
+by; yet these, few and succinct as they were, seemed to cut into the
+woof and fabric of his mind.
+
+As the days passed, and the end of Henry Harper's labor seemed farther
+off than ever, Miss Dobbs grew more gloomy, but her regard for his
+welfare was still considerable.  He might have been grateful had it
+become less, but he was far too chivalrous to admit such a thought.
+Besides, it was not a little surprising that a lady of the standing of
+Miss Dobbs should take an interest in such a person as himself.
+
+One day, she invited him to tea at her flat.  He _must_ come tomorrow
+afternoon, to meet her great friend, Zoe Bonser, who was a Maison Perry
+girl, and very nice and clever.  Had there been a way of evading this
+point-blank invitation, he would certainly have sought it.
+Unfortunately there was not.  Before issuing her invitation Miss Dobbs
+had already taken the precaution of asking casually whether "he was
+doing anything Sunday afternoon?"
+
+Mr. Harper grew quite alarmed as soon as he realized what he had done.
+The mere thought of the society of promiscuous ladies, however nice and
+clever, was enough to frighten him.  Miss Dobbs herself, who was
+niceness and cleverness personified, had never really broken through
+the ice.  They were old friends now, but even she, with all the arts of
+which she was mistress, had never been able to penetrate the reserve of
+this odd young man.  If he had not been incapable of deliberately
+wounding the feelings of a lady who had shown him such kindness, he
+would have boldly refused to meet the nice and clever Miss Bonser,
+which with all his soul he longed to do.
+
+Therefore, on Sunday afternoon, he sadly abandoned a chapter of _Dick
+Smith_, which was now in a tangle so hopeless that it seemed it would
+never come right.  After infinite pains had made him as presentable as
+a very limited wardrobe allowed, he went to No. 106, King John's
+Mansions, the whereabouts of which had already been explained to him
+very carefully.
+
+Miss Dobbs' flat was right at the top of a very large, very gloomy, and
+very draughty building.  Its endless flights of stone stairs--there was
+no lift, although it was clearly a case for one--seemed not to have
+been swept for a month at least.  But this was in keeping with a
+general air of cheapness and discomfort.  By the time Mr. Harper had
+climbed as far as No. 106, and had knocked timidly with a decrepit
+knocker upon an uninviting door, he was in a state of panic and
+dejection.
+
+Miss Dobbs opened the door herself.  As she stood on an ungarnished
+threshold, cigarette in hand, flashing rows of fine teeth in welcome,
+the young man's first thought was how different she looked without her
+hat.  His second thought was that its absence hardly improved her.  She
+looked older, flatter, less mysterious.  Even the fluffy and
+peroxidized abundance, which came low on the forehead in a quite
+remarkable bandeau, somehow gave a maturity to her appearance that he
+had not in the least expected.
+
+Miss Dobbs had all the arts of gracious hospitality.  She took his
+overcoat and hat away from him, and then hustled him genially into what
+she called her "boo-door," into the alert but extremely agreeable
+presence of the nice and clever Miss Bonser.
+
+Miss Bonser was not exactly what you would call beautiful, but she had
+Chick--to adopt the picturesque language of her oldest and dearest
+friend in rendering her afterwards to Mr. Henry Harper.  She had the
+appearance of a thoroughly good sort, except that her eyes were so
+terribly wary, although hardly so wary perhaps as those of her hostess,
+because that would have been impossible.  Still, there was Chick and
+refinement, and above all, great cordiality in Miss Bonser.
+Cordiality, indeed, was the prevailing note of No. 106, King John's
+Mansions.  Miss Dobbs addressed Miss Bonser as "dear," Miss Bonser
+addressed Miss Dobbs as "dear," and then Miss Dobbs covered Mr. Harper
+with confusion by suddenly and unexpectedly calling him "Harry."
+
+"Take a pew, Harry," said Miss Dobbs.
+
+Mr. Harper knew that he alone was intended, because no other gentleman
+was there.  Nervously he sat down in a creaking and rickety cane chair.
+The "Harry" had flattered him a goodish bit, since Miss Dobbs was quite
+as much a lady in her home as she was out of it; also she had for a
+friend another lady, a very nice and clever one, with a refined voice,
+smart clothes, and a great amount of jewelry.  She had also the air and
+the manners of Society, of which he had learned in the works of the
+famous novelist, W. M. Thackeray.  The way in which Miss Bonser
+produced a private case and offered it to him after choosing a
+cigarette for herself, somehow reminded him of "Vanity Fair."
+
+"Harry don't smoke, do you, Harry?" said the hostess, covering Mr.
+Harper's extreme confusion with rare tact and spontaneity.
+
+Miss Dobbs then made tea, and by the time Mr. Harper had had two large
+and cracked cups of a weak brew and had eaten one piece of buttered
+cake, being too shy to eat anything else in spite of great pressure, he
+was able to collect himself a little.
+
+"Cora tells me you are writing a book, Harry," said Miss Bonser
+conversationally.
+
+Mr. Harper admitted this, although again startled by the Harry.
+
+"You don't mind, do you," said Miss Bonser, in answer to his face.
+"'Mister' is so formal.  I'm all for being friendly and pleasant
+myself.  What was I saying?  Oh, about the book you are writing.  My
+best boy, Bert Hobson, the novelist, makes simply pots of money.  He's
+got a serial running now in the _Covent Garden_.  You've read it, I
+daresay."
+
+It appeared that Mr. Harper had not read the story.
+
+"Well, you ought reelly."  Mr. Harper noticed that Miss Bonser
+pronounced the polite word "reelly" exactly as Miss Foldal did,
+although a much more fashionable lady in other respects than the good
+fairy of Blackhampton.  "Start at once.  Do it now.  It's Albert's top
+notch."  To Miss Dobbs: "Don't you think so, dear?"
+
+Miss Dobbs was quite of Miss Bonser's opinion.
+
+"What's the name of your book?" asked Miss Bonser.
+
+"'The Adventures of Dick Smith,'" said Mr. Harper nervously.
+
+"It's a very good title, don't you think so, dear?" Miss Dobbs thought
+so too.
+
+"I suppose you'll dedicate it to Cora," said Miss Bonser, "as she has
+taken such an interest in it."
+
+Mr. Harper had to admit rather shamefacedly that it had not occurred to
+him to do that.  Miss Bonser was surprised; but Miss Dobbs said she
+couldn't think of it.  She didn't look for a reward.  Miss Bonser said
+she was sure of that, yet Mr. Harper felt very uncomfortable because it
+was borne in upon him that he had been guilty of a sin of omission.  An
+awkward silence followed, at least so it appeared to Mr. Harper, but it
+was very tactfully terminated by Miss Bonser, who suddenly asked Miss
+Dobbs about Harold.
+
+Harold, it seemed, was very keen on Miss Dobbs; in fact, he was her
+best boy.  He was an architect who lived at Wimbledon, but had just
+taken rooms in town.  He was a Cambridge man, had a commission in the
+Territorials, and was a regular sport.  However, this seemed to convey
+so little to Mr. Harper that the conversation soon appeared to languish
+in regard to Harold.
+
+After this, the young man sat very anxiously in the cane chair, wanting
+sorely to get out of it, yet with not enough knowledge of society to be
+able to do so.  "The Adventures of Dick Smith" were calling him loudly,
+yet he had too little courage and too much politeness to venture upon
+the headlong flight which above all things he now desired.  Presently,
+however, his air of mute misery appealed to his hostess, who suddenly
+said with great good nature.  "Now, don't you be staying, Harry, a
+moment longer than you think you ought.  I know you want to get back to
+your writing."  And Miss Dobbs rose and shook hands with him gravely.
+Miss Bonser then sat up in her wicker chair and offered her hand at a
+very fashionable angle, but said good-by with real friendliness, and
+then Mr. Harper made a very awkward exit without either self-possession
+or dignity.
+
+
+"Chase me," said Miss Bonser, as soon as the smiling Miss Dobbs had
+returned from letting the young man out of the front door.
+
+"Priceless, isn't he?"  Miss Dobbs flung herself with a suppressed
+giggle into a wicker chair.
+
+"Well, well," reflected Miss Bonser.  "One of these days he may be
+useful to bring you in out of the rain."
+
+"If he begins to make good," said Miss Dobbs sagely.  "You never know
+your luck."
+
+"Cruelty to children, isn't it?"
+
+Miss Dobbs smiled thoughtfully.  "Don't you think his eyes are rather
+nice?" she said.
+
+"He's got a lot in his face," said Miss Bonser.  "That's a face that's
+seen things.  And I'm not so sure, dear, that he is such a juggins as
+we fancy."
+
+"We'll hope not at any rate," said Miss Dobbs coolly.
+
+"Still, I like a man with a punch in him myself."
+
+"Perhaps I'll be able to improve him a bit.  He hardly knows he's born
+at present."
+
+"That's true, dear," said Miss Bonser, with a rather indiscreet gurgle.
+
+"It's nothing to laugh at, Zoe."  To the surprise of her friend, Miss
+Dobbs seemed a little hurt.
+
+"Well, well."  Miss Bonser flung away the end of her cigarette.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+"The Adventures of Dick Smith" continued to make progress.  Still, it
+was uphill work.  But Henry Harper had a tenacity truly
+remarkable--"the angelic patience of genius," in the phrase of Balzac.
+Not that it ever occurred to the Sailor himself that he was a genius,
+or for that matter to Mr. Rudge, who did not believe in genius; yet, a
+little ironically, Miss Dobbs informed her friend Miss Bonser more than
+once that she would not be surprised if he turned out a bit of one.
+
+Mr. Harper's first visit to King John's Mansions was not his last.
+Miss Dobbs saw to that.  He was so odd that she was tempted to ask
+herself whether this particular game was worth the candle; also her
+friends were continually asking each other a similar question on her
+behalf.  Nevertheless, "Harry" unconsciously formed quite a habit of
+going to tea round the corner in the Avenue on Sunday afternoons.
+
+He was chaffed rather unmercifully at times by several of the ladies he
+found there, in particular by a certain Miss Gertie Press, by nature so
+witty and sarcastic that the young man was genuinely afraid of her.
+Still, it was a very valuable experience to have the _entree_ to this
+dashing circle, and often when he did not wish to go he forced himself
+to do so by sheer power of will, he had such a strong, ever-growing
+desire to improve himself and to increase his knowledge of the world.
+
+Miss Gertie Press was a knut.  It was about the time that portent was
+coming into vogue.  She was one of the rather primitive kind to be
+found in the second row of the Frivolity chorus of which she was an
+ornament.  She was extremely good-natured, as all these ladies seemed
+to be, at least in Mr. Harper's presence; but could he have heard their
+comments when he had returned to his "masterpiece," about which they
+were always chaffing him, he might have held other views.  "Greased
+Lightning" was Miss Press's name for him, he was so extraordinarily
+quick in the uptake!  "He's got the brains of my boot," said she.
+"Your money is on the wrong horse, Cora."
+
+These ladies were really sorry for poor Cora.  She must be potty to
+trouble herself with a thing like that.  But the time came when Cora's
+friends began to think differently.
+
+At the end of April, after nearly eight months' hard toil, in the
+course of which the "Adventures" had been cut down one half, and the
+half that remained had been remodeled and rewritten, and then written
+all over again, the Sailor packed up the manuscript, without any
+particular emotion except a vague one of simple despair, and sent it to
+the editor of _Brown's Magazine_, from whom he had not heard a word
+since September 5.
+
+Mr. Rudge, after reading the revised version in a very conscientious
+manner, thought the grammar decidedly weak, and felt the thing must
+always suffer from being a work of the imagination.  In his eyes
+nothing could soften that cardinal defect; but he was a liberal-minded
+man, and if _Brown's Magazine_ was really interested in that sort of
+thing--well, it was no business of his to decry it.  There was no
+accounting for taste after all, and _Brown's_ was certainly the best
+magazine of its kind in existence.
+
+A week passed, and then one evening the replica of a certain envelope
+which would ever remain upon the tablets of his memory was dropped
+through the slit in the shop door.  It was addressed to "Henry Harper,
+Esquire," and ran as follows:
+
+
+DEAR MR. HARPER,
+
+Come and see me as soon as you can and let us have another little talk
+about "The adventures of Dick Smith."
+
+Very sincerely yours,
+  EDWARD AMBROSE.
+
+
+Henry Harper did not understand the significance of those few and
+simple words.  Mr. Rudge had a fair juster appreciation of the three
+barely legible lines signed "Edward Ambrose."  But the next morning,
+after further ministrations of his master's clothes brush, the young
+man went courageously forth to 12B, Pall Mall.
+
+The bemedaled commissionaire and the bald-headed gentleman had no
+terrors for him now.  Had he not walked and talked with Zeus himself?
+These Olympian sconce bearers could not eat him, and there is always
+comfort in that reflection for an imaginative mind.  Even a ten
+minutes' wait in the room below did not matter.
+
+Mr. Ambrose greeted him with a grip of the hand which seemed to utter a
+volume.
+
+"It's a very fine thing," said the editor, without a word of preface,
+as if there could be only one thought for either just then.  "At least
+that's my opinion."  He laughed a little at his own vehemence.  "Some
+people will not agree with me.  They'll say it's too crude, they'll say
+the colors are laid on too thick.  But that to me is its wonderful
+merit; it convinces in spite of itself, which is almost the surest test
+of genius, although that's a big word.  But you've a great faculty.
+I'm so glad you've been able to make such a fine thing."  His eyes
+shone; the charming voice vibrated with simple enthusiasm.  "How one
+envies a man who can make a thing like that!"
+
+"You needn't, sir," said the Sailor, hardly knowing that he had spoken.
+
+Edward Ambrose fell to earth like an exploded firework.  In spite of an
+eagerness of temperament which amused his friends, he was not a
+vaporer.  He, too, had been in deep places, although the strange
+kingdoms he had seen were not exactly those of this young man, this
+curious, awkward, silent, unforgettable figure.
+
+"No, I expect not," said Mr. Ambrose in a changed tone, after a short
+pause.  And then he added abruptly, "Now, suppose we sit down and talk
+business."
+
+They sat down, but the Sailor had no better idea of talking business
+than the table in front of him.
+
+"I want very much to run it as a serial in the magazine," said the
+editor.
+
+"I'll be very proud, sir."
+
+"Well, now, what do you think we ought to pay for it?  Just for the
+serial rights, you know.  Of course I ought to explain that you are a
+new and untried author, and so on.  But to my mind that's cheating.
+Either a thing is or it isn't.  I dare say I'm wrong ... in a world in
+which nothing is certain ... however ... what do you think we ought to
+pay for the serial rights?
+
+"I'll leave it to you, sir."
+
+"Well, the magazine can afford to pay three hundred pounds.  And we
+will talk about the book rights later."
+
+Such a sum was beyond the Sailor's wildest dreams.  Truth to tell he
+had dreamed very little upon that aspect of the matter.  He knew the
+value of money, therefore it had never occurred to him that it would be
+within the power of a pen and a bottle of ink to bring it to him in
+such fabulous quantities.  He seemed just now to be living in a dream.
+
+"Three hundred pounds, then," said Mr. Ambrose.  "And I wish the
+magazine could have paid more without injustice to itself.  But its
+audience is small, though select--as we hope--at any rate."
+
+The Sailor's manner showed very clearly that no apology was called for.
+Such a sum was princely.  Gratitude was the emotion uppermost, and he
+did his best to express it in his queer, disjointed way.
+
+"I'll always remember your kindness, sir," he said huskily.  "I'd never
+have been able to make anything of it at all if it hadn't been for you."
+
+"Oh, yes, you would.  Not so soon, perhaps, but it's all there.
+Anyhow, I'm very glad if I've been a bit of use at the first fence."
+
+The cordial directness of Edward Ambrose made a strong appeal to the
+Sailor.  He had knocked about the world enough to begin to know
+something of men.  And of one thing he was already convinced.  The
+editor was of the true Klondyke breed.  He said what he meant, and he
+meant what he said.  And when this fortunate interview was at an end
+and the young man returned to the Charing Cross Road, it was not so
+much the fabulous sum which had come to him that made him happy, as the
+sure knowledge that he had found a friend.  He had found a friend of
+the kind for which his soul had long craved.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+"Now that Greased Lightning is beginning to make good," said Miss
+Gertie Press, "I suppose you'll marry him, my Cora?"
+
+"Shouldn't wonder.  Have a banana."
+
+This was persiflage on the part of Miss Dobbs.  She meant have a
+cigarette.
+
+Miss Press lit the cheap but scented Egyptian that was offered her, and
+lay back in the wicker chair with an air of languor which somehow did
+not match up with the gaminlike acuteness of her comically ill-natured
+countenance.
+
+"That's where long views come in," philosophized Miss Press.  "Wish I
+could take 'em.  But I can't.  I haven't the _nous_.  We all thought
+you was potty to take up with him.  But you won't half give us the bird
+now he looks like turning out a good investment."
+
+Miss Dobbs smiled at the frankness of her friend.  Miss Press was noted
+throughout the length and the breadth of the Avenue for her habit of
+thinking aloud.
+
+Miss Zoe Bonser, who was eating a tea cake, also smiled.  It was Sunday
+afternoon, and these three ladies were awaiting the arrival of Mr.
+Henry Harper in a rather speculative frame of mind.  The previous
+Sunday Mr. Harper had not appeared.
+
+It was no longer possible to laugh at the mere name of Greased
+Lightning and to pull Cora's leg and chaff her unmercifully.  It seemed
+that Miss Bonser, having mentioned casually to Mr. Albert Hobson that
+she had a friend who had a friend who knew a young fellow whose first
+serial was just beginning in _Brown's_, the admired Albert had inquired
+immediately:
+
+"What's the name of your young fellow?"
+
+"He's not my young fellow," said Zoe the cautious.  "But his
+name's--Lord, I've forgotten it!"  This was untrue.  "But we all think
+he's potty."
+
+"His name is not Henry Harper, by any chance?"
+
+Miss Bonser nodded discreetly.  She was a little surprised at the set
+of the wind.
+
+"But, of course, he's barmy."
+
+"Whatever he is, he's no slouch," said the judicial Mr. Hobson.  He
+himself was no slouch either, in spite of the company which in hours of
+ease he affected.  "He'll go far.  He's another Stevenson and with luck
+one of these days he might be something bigger."
+
+"Don't care if he's a John Roberts or a Dawson," said Zoe; "he's not
+fit to be out without his nurse."  If the latter part of Mr. Hobson's
+statement had meant little to that astute mind, the first part meant a
+good deal.
+
+Miss Bonser bore the news to King John's Mansions on the following
+Sunday afternoon.  It made quite a sensation.  Bert Hobson was the
+nearest thing to "the goods" which had yet impinged on that refined
+circle.  He was something more than the average harmless fool about
+town; in the opinion of Miss Dobbs and Miss Press, he knew his way
+about; and if Albert had really said that Harry was the coming man, he
+could not have such a great distance to travel.
+
+"I hope he is not going to give us a miss in baulk now he's got there.
+That'll be swank if he does, won't it, Bonser?"  Miss Press winked at
+Miss Bonser in a serio-comic manner.
+
+"It will, Press," said that lady.
+
+"He'll come.  You'll see," said Miss Dobbs, with reasoned optimism.
+"He's here now."
+
+In fact, at that moment a mild assault was being delivered by the
+decrepit knocker on a faintly responsive front door.
+
+"What was the check that _Brown's_ gave him?" Miss Press asked Miss
+Bonser, as Miss Dobbs went forth to receive her guest.
+
+"Three hundred--so she says."
+
+"Do you believe it?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"But he's barmy."
+
+"All these writing men are."
+
+"Except Bert."
+
+"Oh, he's barmy in a way, else he wouldn't have taken up with me."
+
+"Yes, that's true, dear.  But did he say that about It?"
+
+"Ye-es."
+
+"Well, it's time she had a bit of luck ... if she's really going to
+have it.  She wants it badly."
+
+"Yes, by God."
+
+At this moment Mr. Henry Harper came into the room.  He entered very
+nervously with his usual blush of embarrassment.  The truth was,
+although he had yet to realize it clearly, the undercurrent of sarcasm,
+never absent from this refined atmosphere, always hurt him.  Mr. Henry
+Harper was a very sensitive plant, and these fashionable and witty
+ladies did not appear to know that.
+
+"He's a swanker," was the greeting of Miss Press, as she offered her
+hand and then withdrew it playfully before Mr. Harper could take it.
+"And I never shake hands with a swanker, do I, Bonser?"
+
+"But he's so clever," said Miss Bonser, politely offering hers.  "He's
+Bert Hobson at his best."
+
+Mr. Harper was so overcome by this reception that he had the misfortune
+to knock over the teapot, which had been placed on a small and
+ill-balanced Japanese table.
+
+"Damn you!"  The voice of the hostess came upon the culprit like the
+stroke of a whip.  For a moment Miss Dobbs was off her guard.  She was
+furious at the ruin of her carpet and her hospitality, although the
+latter was really the more important as the carpet was ruined already.
+"However, it doesn't matter."  She hastened to cover the "Damn you"
+with a heroic smile.  "Take a pew, Harry, and make yourself comfy.  I
+can easily get some more; it's the slavey's Sunday out."  The hostess,
+teapot in hand, withdrew from the room with a winning air of
+reconstituted amenity.
+
+"If you had been a little gentleman," said Miss Press, as the hostess
+left the room, "you would have shot out of your chair, opened the door
+for her, carried the teapot to the kitchen, and held the caddy while
+she put in more tea.  And then you'd have fiddled about with the kettle
+while she held the teapot, and poured boiling water over her hand.
+After that you'd have gone down on your knees, and then you'd have
+kissed it better.  At least, that's how you'd have behaved if you had
+been a mother's boy in the Guards.  Wouldn't he, Bonser?"
+
+"Shut up, Press," said Miss Bonser.  "It's a shame to rag as you do."
+
+"But he's a swanker," said Miss Press.  "And I don't like swankers."
+
+Mr. Harper was in a state of extreme misery and feeling very pink about
+the ears, when the smiling Miss Dobbs reappeared with a fresh pot of
+tea.  The way in which she contrived to efface the tragic incident was
+admirable.  She poured out gracefully a cup of tea for Mr. Harper, a
+terribly weak cup of tea it was, and pressed half a buttered scone upon
+him and smiled at him all the time, perhaps a little anxiously, with
+her wonderful teeth.  But in spite of these winning attentions, it was
+not certain that the young man was going to enjoy himself.  That honest
+and forthright "Damn you" had brought with it somehow the taste of
+Auntie's whip, and he could feel it still.  Then, too, these clever and
+witty ladies had a way of making him feel ridiculous.  Also, they spoke
+a language he didn't understand.  Moreover, he knew that Miss Press
+meant it when she said he wasn't a gentleman.  To tell the truth, that
+was a fact of which he was growing daily more conscious, and the
+jesting remark of Miss Press hurt almost as much as the "Damn you."
+
+"If I was clever, and had a three-hundred-pound serial running in
+_Brown's Magazine_," said Miss Press, "I'd be so set up with myself
+that I wouldn't give a word to a dog when I came out to a bun-worry.
+Would you, Bonser?"
+
+"Shut up, Press," said the benign Miss Bonser.  "Little girls should be
+seen but not heard--at least, that's what my dear old governess taught
+me in the long ago."
+
+"Yes, I knew you was brought up a clergyman's daughter," said Miss
+Press, returning stoutly to the charge.  "And so was Pressy and so was
+Dobby, and so was all of us."
+
+"Play cricket, Pressy," said the hostess, rather plaintively.
+
+For all that he knew, Mr. Harper might have been listening to a dead
+language.  This may have relieved his mind a little.  All the same, it
+made it very difficult to take a hand in the conversation, which these
+ladies clearly felt to be the duty of a gentleman, whether he was in
+the Guards or not.
+
+Suddenly Miss Press caused a portion of Mr. Harper's buttered scone "to
+go the wrong way" by placing one of his hands in that of his hostess,
+who had taken a seat rather near him.
+
+"Allow me," said Miss Press, rising gallantly from her chair, and
+dealing Mr. Harper a succession of hearty buffets in the middle of the
+back.  "You really are the limit, Enery.  You might never have been in
+love before."
+
+"Chuck it, Pressy," said Miss Dobbs.  "Let my Harry alone.  My Harry's
+very clever, and his Cora's very proud of him.  Aren't I, Harry?"  Miss
+Dobbs flashed upon the unhappy young man a glance of very high candle
+power.  She also sighed seraphically.
+
+When Mr. Harper had swallowed his tea, of which one cup sufficed, and
+after abandoning any further attempt to deal with his buttered scone,
+the hostess gathered the tea things with the aid of her friends.  She
+then took them to the back premises, declining further help.  In spite
+of the protests of her guests, Miss Dobbs insisted on this self-denying
+course.  She left Mr. Henry Harper in their care, and hoped they would
+do their best to amuse him during her absence.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+"Harry," said Miss Press, with a dramatic change of tone as soon as the
+hostess had retired with the tea things, "Zoe and I have to talk to you
+very serious.  Haven't we, Zoe?"
+
+Miss Bonser nodded impressively.
+
+"You are not playing fair with Cora, Harry."
+
+During the slight pause which followed this statement, a look of
+fawnlike bewilderment flitted across the eyes of the Sailor.
+
+"You are breaking her heart," said Miss Press, with tragic simplicity.
+
+"Yes, dear," came the thrilling whisper of Miss Bonser.
+
+"That's true."
+
+"We are telling you this, Harry," said Miss Press, "because we think it
+is something you ought to know.  You think so, don't you, dear?"
+
+"I do, dear," said Miss Bonser.
+
+"Cora is one of the best that ever stepped," said Miss Press.  "She has
+a heart of gold, she is a girl in a thousand.  It would be a black
+shame to spoil her life.  You think that, don't you, dear?"
+
+"Yes, dear," said Miss Bonser emotionally.
+
+Mr. Harper was completely out of his depth.  He didn't know in the
+least what they were talking about.
+
+"Forgive us, Harry, for taking it upon ourselves in this way," said
+Miss Bonser, in a kind, quiet voice.  "We are all for a bit of fun, but
+we can't stand by and see a good girl suffering in silence, can we,
+Gertie?"
+
+"No, dear," said Gertie, with pathos.
+
+Both ladies eyed him cautiously.  He was so innocent, he was such a
+simple child that they could almost have found it in their hearts to
+pity him.
+
+"We feel bound to mention it, Harry," said Miss Press.  "Poor Cora
+can't take her oats or anything.  She has to have a sleeping draught
+now."
+
+"And she's getting that thin, poor thing," chimed the plaintive Miss
+Bonser.
+
+The Sailor's perplexity grew.
+
+"If you ask me," said Miss Press, suddenly taking a higher note, "it's
+up to you, Harry, to play the gentleman."  Watching the color change in
+his face, she knew she was on the target now.  "A gentleman don't play
+fast and loose, if you ask me."
+
+"At least, not the sort we are used to," whispered Miss Bonser, in a
+superb pianissimo.
+
+"It's Lord Caradoc and Pussy Pearson over again," said Miss Press.
+"But Caradoc being the goods married Pussy without making any bones
+about it.  Harry, it's up to you to follow the example of a real
+gentleman.  Forgive us for speaking plain."
+
+Henry Harper glanced nervously from one lady to the other.  A light was
+just beginning to dawn upon him.
+
+"Cora's a straight girl," said Miss Bonser, taking up the parable.
+"She's one of the plucky ones, is Cora.  It's a hard world for lonely
+girls like her, isn't it, Gert?"
+
+"It is, dear," said Gert.  "And one like Cora, whose position, as you
+might say, is uncertain, can't be too careful.  You see, Harry, you
+have been coming to her flat for the best part of a year.  You've been
+with her to the theater and the Coliseum; two Sundays ago she was seen
+with you on the river, and--well, she's been getting herself talked
+about, and that's all there is to it."
+
+"Cora's a girl in a thousand," chimed Zoe the tactful.  "She worships
+the ground you walk on, Harry."
+
+A painfully startled look came suddenly into the eyes of the young man.
+Both ladies felt the look rather than saw it, and gave another sharp
+turn to the screw.
+
+"Of course, you haven't known it, Harry," said Miss Press.  "She
+wouldn't let you know it.  But that's Cora."
+
+"She would rather have died," said Zoe.  "You will not breathe a word,
+of course, Harry.  She would never forgive us if she knew we had let
+on."
+
+"That's her pride," said Miss Press.
+
+"And the way that poor thing cried her eyes out when you didn't turn up
+at tea time last Sunday as usual, the first time for nearly a year,
+well----"  Language suddenly failed Miss Bonser.  "A pretty job we had
+with her, hadn't we, Gert?"
+
+So cunningly had the screw been applied, that Mr. Harper felt dazed.
+Suddenly Miss Bonser raised a finger of warning.
+
+"Shush!" It was half a whisper, half a hiss.  "Not a word.  Here's
+Cora."
+
+Miss Dobbs came in so abruptly that she nearly caught the injunction.
+And hardly had she entered, when Miss Press and Miss Bonser rose
+together and declared that they must really be going.
+
+The hostess made a polite and conventional objection, but both ladies
+kissed her effusively and hustled her out into the passage.
+
+"Dobby," Miss Press whispered excitedly, as soon as they had reached
+that dark and smelly draught distributor, "we've fairly put the half
+Nelson on him.  Now go in and fix him up."
+
+Miss Bonser and Miss Press tripped down the many unswept stone stairs
+of King John's Mansions, and Miss Dobbs closed the front door of No.
+106.  She then returned to Mr. Harper in the "boo-door."
+
+"Well, Harry," she said, "why didn't you come last Sunday?"
+
+Had the Sailor been true to his strongest instinct he would have fled.
+But he stayed where he was for several reasons, and of these the most
+cogent was quite a simple one.  There was a will stronger than his own
+in the room just then.
+
+Miss Bonser and Miss Press, as became a long experience of the chase,
+had done their work with efficiency.  The Sailor had not guessed that
+this friendly and amusing and very agreeable lady--in spite of the
+"Damn you"--was so very much in love with him.  It was a wholly
+unexpected issue, for which the young man was inclined to blame himself
+bitterly.
+
+"Well, Harry," said Miss Dobbs, breaking suddenly upon a whirl of
+rather terrifying thoughts, "why didn't you come last Sunday?"
+
+He was in a state of mental chaos, therefore to attempt to answer the
+question was useless.
+
+"Why didn't oo, Harry?"  Miss Dobbs suddenly felt that it was a case
+for _force majeure_.  Very unexpectedly she flung her arms round his
+neck.  Risking the rickety cane chair she sat heavily upon his knee,
+yet not so heavily as she might have done, and with a she-leopard's
+tenderness drew his head to her ample bosom.
+
+A thrill of repugnance passed through Henry Harper, yet he was so fully
+engaged with a very pressing problem as hardly to know that it had.
+
+"Kiss your Cora, Harry."
+
+But his Cora kissed Harry instead.  And as she did so, the unfailing
+instinct given to woman told her that that kiss was a mistake.
+
+In the next instant, the fat arms had disengaged themselves from the
+young man's neck, and Miss Dobbs had slipped from his knee and was
+standing looking at him.
+
+Her gesture was striking and picturesque; also she had the air of a
+tragedy queen.
+
+"Harry," she said, with a catch in her voice, "you are breaking my
+heart."
+
+The Sailor had already been informed of that.  He had tried not to
+believe it, but facts were growing too strong for him.  A superb tear
+was in the eyes of Miss Dobbs.  The sight of it thrilled and startled
+him.
+
+Twice before in his life had he seen tears in the eyes of a woman, and
+with his abnormal power of memory he vividly recalled each occasion
+now.  The first time was in the eyes of Mother, the true woman he would
+always reverence, when she took off his clothes after his first flight
+from Blackhampton, and put him into a bath; the second time was in the
+eyes of Miss Foldal, and she also was a true woman whose memory he
+would always honor, when she said good-bye on the night of the second
+departure from the city of his birth.  But the tears in the eyes of
+Mother and Miss Foldal were not as the superb and terrible tear in the
+eye of Miss Cora Dobbs.
+
+"Don't think I blame you, Harry," said that lady with a Jocasta-like
+note, trying to keep the bitterness out of her tone.  "I'm only a
+lonely and unprotected girl who will soon be on the shelf, but that's
+no fault of yours.  Yet, somehow, I thought you were different.
+Somehow, I thought you was a gentleman."
+
+Miss Dobbs had no illusions on that point, but she well knew where the
+shoe was going to pinch.
+
+"I'll be a mark and a laughing stock," said the tragic Cora, "as poor
+Pussy was before Caradoc made up his mind to marry her.  While he was
+plain Bill Jackson nothing was good enough for Pussy.  Used to take her
+to the Coliseum and on the river in the summer, and used to come to her
+flat a bit lower down the Avenue to take tea with her and her friends
+every Sunday of his life.  And then suddenly Bill came into the title,
+and poor Pussy got a miss from my lord.  We all thought at first she
+would go out of her mind.  She worshiped the ground that Bill walked
+upon.  Besides, she couldn't bear to be made a mark of by her friends;
+and being nothing but a straight girl there was always her reputation
+to consider.  Poor Pussy had to take a sleeping draught every night for
+months.  But Caradoc played cricket in the end as he was bound to do,
+being a gentleman by birth, and Pussy is now a countess with two
+children, a boy and a girl, and only last summer she invited me to go
+and spend a fortnight with her at her place in Ireland, but, of course,
+I couldn't, because I hadn't the clothes.  Still, I'm glad for Pussy's
+sake.  She was always one of the best, was Pussy.  All's well that ends
+well, isn't it?"  And Miss Jocasta Dobbs very abruptly broke down.
+
+It was a breakdown of the most nerve-shattering kind.  The tears
+streamed down her face.  She struggled almost hysterically not to give
+way, yet the more she struggled, the more she did give way.
+
+"Miss Dobbs," he gasped, huskily--he had known her a long and crowded
+year, but he had never ventured on Cora--"Miss Cora"--he had done it
+now!  "I didn't mean nothing."
+
+Better had he held his peace.
+
+"You didn't mean anything!"  There was a change in the voice of
+Jocasta.  "You didn't mean anything, Mr. Harper?  No, I suppose not."
+
+The young man drew in his breath sharply.  The tone of Miss Dobbs was
+edged like a knife.
+
+"It was only a poor and unprotected girl with whom you might play the
+fool until you had made good.  It was only a girl who valued her fair
+name, a girl who would have died rather than be made a mark of by her
+friends.  I suppose now you are a big man and earning big money, you
+will take up with somebody else.  Well, I'm not the one to grudge any
+girl her luck."
+
+The sudden fall in the voice of Miss Dobbs and the half veiled look in
+her eyes somehow took Henry Harper back to the Auntie of his childhood.
+And it almost seemed that she also had in her hand a weapon which she
+knew well how to use.
+
+"I thought I had a gentleman to deal with," said Miss Dobbs, brushing
+aside a tear, "but it was my mistake.  However, it's never too late to
+learn."  Her laugh seemed to strike him.
+
+"I didn't mean to mislead you," mumbled the young man, who felt like a
+trapped and desperate animal.  Yet when all was said, the emotion
+uppermost was not for himself.  This woman was hurting him horribly,
+but it was the fact, as he thought, that he was hurting her still more
+without any intention of evil towards her, which now took possession of
+his mind.  He would do anything to soften the pain he was unwittingly
+causing.  It was not in his nature to hurt a living thing.
+
+"I beg pardon, Miss Cora," he said, faintly, "I didn't mean nothing
+like that."
+
+She turned upon him, a tigress, and rent him.  Nor did he shrink from
+the wounds she dealt.  It was no more than he deserved.  He should have
+learned a little more about ladies and their fine feelings and their
+social outlook, before daring to go to tea at their private flats and
+to meet their friends; before daring to be seen with them at a public
+place like the Coliseum or in a boat on the river.  He was receiving a
+much needed lesson.  It was one he would never forget.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Henry Harper did not go to tea at King John's Mansions on the next
+Sunday afternoon.  And on the following Sunday he stayed away too.
+Moreover, during the whole of that fortnight Miss Cora Dobbs did not
+call once at No. 249, Charing Cross Road.
+
+This was a relief to the young man.  He would not have known how to
+meet her had she come to the shop as usual.  He was so shattered by the
+bolt from the blue that he didn't know in the least what to do.
+
+Happily there was his work to distract him.  Mr. Ambrose had suggested
+that he should write another tale for _Brown's Magazine_.  He was to
+take his own time over the new story, bearing ever in mind the advice
+given him formerly, which he had turned to very good account; and in
+the meantime, his fancy could expand in the happy knowledge that the
+"Adventures of Dick Smith" were attracting attention in the magazine.
+Mr. Ambrose had already arranged for the story to appear as a book when
+its course had run in _Brown's_, and he was convinced--if prophecy was
+ever safe in literary matters--that real success awaited it.
+
+Could Henry Harper have put Miss Cora Dobbs out of his thoughts, he
+might have been almost completely happy in planning and writing the
+"Further Adventures of Dick Smith."  Aladdin's wonderful lamp was
+making his life a fairy tale.  An incredible vista of fame and fortune
+was spreading before his eyes.  Even Mr. Rudge had been stricken with
+awe by the check for three hundred pounds.
+
+Yet, at the back of everything just now was a terrible feeling of
+indecision.  There could be no doubt that the great world of which he
+knew so little, clearly looked to him "to act the gentleman."  The
+phrase was that of the elegant and refined Miss Bonser and the dashing
+Miss Press, who mixed habitually with gentlemen, and therefore were in
+a position to speak with authority on such a delicate matter.  And so
+plain was his duty that it had even percolated to Mrs. Greaves, who, in
+ways subtle and mysterious, seemed to be continually unbosoming herself
+to a similar tenor.
+
+In the course of the third week of crisis, Mr. Harper's perplexities
+were greatly increased by a brief but emotional note, written on
+elegantly art-shaded notepaper, which had the name "Cora" with a ring
+round it engraved in the left-hand corner.  It said:
+
+
+DEAR HARRY,
+
+Why haven't you been or written?  I am feeling so low and miserable
+that unless you come to see me Sunday, the doctor says I shall have a
+bad breakdown.
+
+Yours, CORA.
+
+
+Somehow, this letter, couched in such grimly pathetic terms, seemed to
+leave the young man with no alternative.  Therefore, on the following
+Sunday afternoon, at the usual hour, he was just able to screw up
+courage to knock at the door of No. 106, King John's Mansions.
+
+He was rather surprised to find Cora in good health; certainly the tone
+of her letter had implied that such was not the case.  She had no
+appearance of suffering.  In tone and manner she was a little
+chastened, but that was all.
+
+Miss Bonser and Miss Press were also there when Mr. Harper arrived.
+But their reception of him was so much more formal than was usual that
+a feeling of tension was at once created.  It was as if these
+experienced ladies understood that some high issue was pending.
+
+Each of them treated him in quite a different way from that which she
+had used before.  In her own style, each was lofty and _grande dame_.
+It was no longer Harry, but Mr. Harper; and they shook hands with him
+without cordiality, but with quiet dignity, and said, "How do you do?"
+
+Strange to say, Mr. Harper found this reception more to his liking than
+the less studied manner in which he was received as a rule.  Now that
+he had not to meet persiflage and chaff, he was fairly cool and
+collected.  The stately bow of Miss Press and the archly fashionable
+handshake of Miss Bonser were much less embarrassing than their
+habitual mode of attack.
+
+This afternoon, Mr. Harper was treated as a chance acquaintance might
+have been by three fashionable ladies who knew the world better than
+they knew him.  There was a subtle note of distance.  This afternoon,
+Miss Press talked books and theaters, and talked them very well,
+although, to be sure, rather better about the latter than the former.
+Yet in Mr. Harper's judgment, her conversation was more improving than
+her usual mode of discourse.  Had he not been in such a state of
+turmoil it would have been quite a pleasure to sit and listen, she
+talked so well about the things that were beginning to interest him
+intensely; also her manner of speaking was extremely refined.
+
+Miss Bonser talked mainly about the Royal Academy of Arts.  She knew a
+good deal about art, having studied it, although in what capacity she
+didn't state, before she went to the Maison Perry.  Nevertheless, she
+had both fluency and point; she didn't like Leader so much as she liked
+Sargent; she spoke of values, composition, brushwork, draughtmanship,
+and it was really a pity that Mr. Harper was not easier in his mind,
+otherwise he could not have failed to be edified.  As it was, Miss
+Press and Miss Bonser rose considerably in his estimation.  He could
+have wished that they always hoisted themselves on these high subjects.
+
+Both ladies, wearing white gloves and looking very _comme il faut_,
+went soon after five, as they had promised to go on to Lady Caradoc's.
+Mr. Harper felt quite sorry.  They had talked so well about the things
+that interested him that somehow their distinguished departure left a
+void.  As they got up to go, Mr. Harper, remembering a hint he had
+received from Miss Press, touching the behavior of a gentleman in such
+circumstances, sprang to the door, and with less awkwardness than
+usual, contrived to open it for them to pass out.
+
+The ordeal he dreaded was now upon him.  He was with Cora alone.
+However, much to his relief, there was no sign at present of "a bad
+breakdown."
+
+For three weeks he had been living in a little private hell of
+indecision.  But now there was a chance of winning through.  His duty
+was not yet absolutely clear, but he was not without hope that it would
+become so.  In that time he had been thinking very hard and very deep.
+And by some means, he had added a cubit to his stature since he stood
+last on that tea-stained hearthrug in the quasi-comfort of that
+overfurnished "boo-door."  It was a new and enlarged Mr. Harper who now
+confronted a more composed and dignified Miss Dobbs.
+
+"Well, Harry," said Miss Dobbs, "it is nice to see you here again."
+
+He was touched by such a tone of magnanimity.  Somehow, he felt that it
+was more than he deserved.
+
+"How's the new story getting on?"  There was not a sign of the
+breakdown at present.  "Will it be as good as the old one?"  This was a
+welcome return to her first phase of generous interest; to the Miss
+Dobbs of whom he had memories not wholly unpleasant.
+
+"I think it is going to be better," he said gravely.  "Much better.
+Anyway, I intend it to be."
+
+"That's right.  I like to hear that.  Nothing like ambition.  I suppose
+you'll get another three hundred for this one?"
+
+"Five," said the young man.  "That's if the editor likes it."
+
+"My!" said Miss Dobbs, with an involuntary flash of the wary eyes.
+"And that's only for the serial."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And, of course, you'll be able to bring it out as a book as well?"
+
+"The editor has arranged for that already.  For the present one, I
+mean."
+
+"But you'll get paid for it extra, of course!"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+"How much?" Miss Dobbs spoke carelessly, but her eyes were by no means
+careless.
+
+"I'll get a shilling for every copy that's sold."
+
+"And how many will they sell?"
+
+"Nobody knows that," he said, and from his tone it seemed that aspect
+of the matter was unimportant.
+
+"No, I expect not."  Her tone coincided readily with his.  "But I
+suppose a man like Stevenson or Bert Hobson would sell by the hundred
+thousand?"
+
+"No idea," said the young man.
+
+"But you ought to have an idea, Harry.  It's very important.  What you
+want is somebody with a head for business to look after your affairs."
+
+He was inclined to accept this view of the matter, but there would be
+time to think of that when he really was selling in thousands, which,
+of course, could not be until the book was published.
+
+"When will it be published?"
+
+"Next week."
+
+"Next week!  And you are going to get a sure five hundred, apart from
+the book, for the story you are writing now?"
+
+"If Mr. Ambrose likes it."
+
+"Of course he'll like it.  You must make it so good that he can't help
+liking it."
+
+"I'll try, anyway."
+
+Miss Dobbs grew thoughtful.  She was inclined to believe, having regard
+to all the circumstances, that she had a difficult hand to play.
+Therefore, she began to arrange two or three of the leading cards in
+her mind.  To be perfectly candid with herself, she could not help
+thinking, and her two friends had confirmed her in that view, that she
+had shown lack of judgment in the cards she had played already.  For
+one thing, it was agreed that they might have a little underrated the
+size and the weight of the fish that had to be landed.
+
+Miss Dobbs was a trifle uncertain as to what her next move should be.
+There was much at stake, and one blunder in tactics might be fatal.
+However, she was about to receive assistance of a kind she had felt it
+would no longer be wise to expect.
+
+"Miss Dobbs ... Cora," said the young man, with an abruptness that
+startled her.  "There's something ... something particular I want to
+say to you."
+
+Cora was on guard at once.  But she was able to make clear that
+whatever he might have to say to her, she was prepared to listen.
+
+"I've been thinking a goodish bit," said Henry Harper, with a quaint
+stiffening of manner as the gruff words found a way out of him, "about
+that talk we had the last time I come here."
+
+Miss Dobbs listened with eyes half shut.  Her face was a mask.
+
+"I don't pretend to know much about what's due to ladies," he said,
+after a pause so long and so trying that it seemed to hypnotize him.
+"I've not mixed much in Society"--W. M. Thackeray, in whose works he
+was now taking so much interest, had a great belief in Society--"but I
+should like to do what's straight."
+
+Silence still seemed the part of wisdom for Miss Dobbs.
+
+"If I've done wrong, I'm sorry."  There was another very awkward pause
+to navigate.  "But I didn't see no harm in what I've done, and that's
+the truth."
+
+A very slight sniff from Miss Dobbs ... a very slight sniff and nothing
+more.
+
+"If I never speak again, Miss Cora, it's a solemn fact."
+
+The sniff grew slightly more pronounced.
+
+"If I had known a bit more about Society, I might not have come here
+quite so often."
+
+"What's Society got to do with it, anyway?" suddenly asked Miss Dobbs,
+who was getting a trifle bored by the word.
+
+"I don't know," said the young man, "but I thought it had."
+
+"Why should you think so?"
+
+"Hasn't it, Miss Cora?"
+
+At this point, it seemed necessary for Miss Dobbs to regard the
+situation as a whole.  A wrong move here might be fatal.
+
+"Yes, I suppose it has," said she, trying very hard to keep from
+laughing in his face.  "If you put it that way."
+
+Again there was a pause.  Henry Harper seemed to be overawed by this
+admission on the part of a lady of great experience.
+
+"I make no claim"--Miss Dobbs felt that a little well-timed assistance
+was called for--"if that's what you mean.  My reputation's gone, but as
+I am only a girl, without a shilling, who has to fight her own battle,
+of course it's not of the slightest consequence."
+
+"That's just what I want to talk to you about," he said, with a
+simplicity that made her lip curl in spite of the strong will which
+ruled it.  Zoe was right, it was cruelty to children.
+
+"Talk away, then," said Miss Dobbs, with dreary and tragic coldness.
+
+"I just want to do right.  I admit I've done wrong.  But what I've
+done, I've done in ignorance.  I didn't know it would be against your
+reputation for me to come here constant, and to take you on the river,
+and go with you to the theater and the Coliseum."
+
+"No, I don't suppose you did," said Cora, holding her hand very
+carefully now that he had been such a fool as to put a weapon in it.
+"No, I suppose not, Mr. Harper."
+
+The "Mr." was stressed very slightly, but she felt him flinch a little.
+
+"Well, Miss Cora," he said huskily, "it's like this.  I just want to do
+right by you as any other gentleman would."
+
+"Oh, do you, Mr. Harper."  She fixed him with the eye of a basilisk.
+
+"Yes," he said, and the sweat broke out on his forehead.  "Whatever
+it's got to be."
+
+She sensed the forehead rather than saw it.  Every nerve in her was now
+alert.  Yet the desire uppermost was to spit in his face, or to dash
+her fist in it with all the strength she had, but at such a moment she
+could not afford to give rein to the woman within.  She must bide her
+time.  The fish was hooked, but it still remained to land it.
+
+"Well, Mr. Harper, I am sure you are most kind.  But you know better
+than I can tell you that there is only one thing you can do under the
+circumstances."  And Miss Dobbs suddenly laughed in Mr. Harper's face,
+in order to show that she was not such a fool as to treat his heroics
+seriously.
+
+"What's that, Miss Cora?" he asked, huskily.
+
+"What's that, Mr. Harper?  What innocence!  I wonder where you was
+brought up?"
+
+"Don't ask that, Miss Cora."  He could have bitten out his tongue
+almost before the words had slipped from it.
+
+But Miss Cora was not going to be sidetracked at this critical moment
+by a matter so trivial as Mr. Harper's upbringing.
+
+"You take away a straight girl's reputation, you as good as ruin her,
+and then you come and ask her what you should do about it.  What ho,
+she bumps!"  And Miss Dobbs, with an irrelevance fully equal to her
+final remark, suddenly flung herself down to the further detriment of
+the broken-springed sofa.
+
+Mr. Harper, however, was able to recognize this as a cry of the soul of
+a lady in agony.
+
+"If you think I ought to marry you," he said, with dry lips, "I'll do
+it."
+
+Miss Dobbs, flopping on the sofa, sat up suddenly with a complete
+change of manner.
+
+"It's not what I think, Mr. Harper," she said.  "That don't matter.
+It's what you think that matters.  If a man is a gentleman, he don't
+ask those sort of things."
+
+"No, I suppose he doesn't," said Mr. Harper, who suddenly felt and saw
+the great force of this.  "Miss Dobbs ... Cora.... I ... I ... will you
+marry me, Miss Cora?"
+
+The answer of Miss Cora was to rise from the sofa in the stress of
+feminine embarrassment.  But she did not fall into his arms, as some
+ladies might have done; she did not even change color.  She merely said
+in an extremely practical voice--
+
+"Harry, you've done right, and I'm glad you've acted the toff.  There
+was those who said you wouldn't, but we'll not mention names.  However,
+all's well that ends well.  And the sooner we get married the better."
+
+He made no reply.  But a slow, deadly feeling had begun to creep along
+his spine.
+
+"Do you mind where we are married, Harry?"
+
+"No," he said, gently, with faraway eyes.
+
+"I'm all for privacy," said Miss Dobbs, in her practical voice.  "I
+hope you are."
+
+"Whatever's agreeable to you is agreeable to me."  He seemed to feel
+that that was good W. M. Thackeray.
+
+"Very well, then, Harry, tomorrow morning at eleven I'll call for you,
+and we'll toddle round to the Circus and see what the Registrar has to
+say to us."
+
+"If that's agreeable to you, it's agreeable to me," he said, sticking
+doggedly to his conception of the man of the world and the English
+gentleman.
+
+"And now, Harry---"  But Cora suddenly stopped in the very act of
+advancing upon him.  He had read her purpose, and she had read his
+eyes; moreover, she had read the look which those eyes had been unable
+to veil.  With the sagacity upon which Miss Cora Dobbs prided
+herself--if she happened to be perfectly sober--she decided to postpone
+any oscular demonstration of regard for Harry until the next day.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+It was not until Tuesday evening that Henry Harper informed the old man
+who had treated him with such kindness that he had decided to give up
+his situation.  Mr. Rudge was not surprised.  Now that the young man's
+time had become so valuable his master disinterestedly approved this
+step, although he would regret the loss of such a trustworthy
+assistant.  Henry Harper then felt called upon to explain that he had
+married Cora that afternoon, and that he was about to transfer his
+belongings to No. 106, King John's Mansions.
+
+"You don't mean to say you have gone and got married?" said Mr. Rudge.
+
+"Yes, sir.  But Cora wanted it to be kept very quiet, else I should
+have told you before."
+
+"Cora who?" asked his master, pushing up his spectacles on to his
+forehead.
+
+"Cora Dobbs."
+
+"Do you mean that niece of Mrs. Greaves?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Goodness gracious me!"  Mr. Rudge was never moved to this objurgation
+except under duress of very high emotion.  "Goodness gracious me ...
+why, she's not respectable!"
+
+"Beg your pardon, sir, but there you are wrong."  The young man
+addressed his master with an independence and a dignity that
+twenty-four hours ago would not have been possible.  "Cora is quite
+respectable and ... and Cora's a lady.  If there's those who think
+otherwise, it's my fault for ... for compromising her."  To Mrs. Henry
+Harper belonged the credit for the word "compromising," although it was
+worthy of W. M. Thackeray himself.
+
+"Goodness gracious me!"  Mr. Rudge mopped his face with a profuse red
+handkerchief.  "Didn't I most strongly warn you against her when I
+found her that morning in the shop?"
+
+"You have never once mentioned Cora to me, sir," said Henry Harper
+respectfully.  "And I'm very glad you haven't, because a great wrong's
+been done her."
+
+"Didn't I tell you she was up to no good, and that you had better be
+careful?"
+
+"No, sir, you never said a single word to me."
+
+"I certainly meant to do so ... but that's my unfortunate memory.  I
+remember I had Charles XII. of Sweden in my head at the time;
+practically three hundred pages of Volume XXXIII.  But it's no excuse.
+I'll never be able to forgive myself for not having warned you.  It's a
+pity she's Mrs. Greaves' niece, but I'm as sure as Tilly sacked
+Magdeburg that that girl Cora is not respectable."
+
+"You are quite mistaken in that, sir," said Henry Harper, with a
+dignity of an entirely new kind, "because she is now my wife."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Henry."  Mr. Rudge had begun to realize that he was
+letting his tongue run away with him.  "I'd forgotten that.  I dare say
+I have been misinformed."
+
+"Yes, sir, I am quite sure of that.  You have no idea how careful she
+is in that way.  It is because she is so careful that I've married her."
+
+"Goodness gracious me!" said Mr. Rudge.
+
+"She is most particular.  And so are all her lady friends.  And it's
+because I've been going to her flat and getting her talked about and
+going to the Coliseum with her, that I thought I ought to act the
+gentleman."
+
+"Goodness gracious me!  I wouldn't have had this happen for a thousand
+pounds."
+
+"I wouldn't, either, sir," said Henry Harper.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+When, at the instance of the lady who was now his wife, the young man
+removed his few belongings to No. 106, King John's Mansions, his first
+feeling was that he had entered quite a different world.  He was very
+sorry to leave Mr. Rudge, who had been a true friend and to whom he had
+become deeply attached.  Also he was sorry to leave that comfortable
+sitting-room with all its associations of profitable labor which
+embodied by far the best hours his life had known.  As for the books in
+the shop, he would miss them dreadfully.
+
+It was a wrench to leave these things.  But at the call of duty it had
+to be.  Cora regarded the change as inevitable, and she saw that it was
+made at once.  From the very hour of their marriage, she took absolute
+charge of him.  It was due to her infinitely greater knowledge of life
+and of the world that one who was so much a child in these matters
+should defer to her in everything.  He was expected to do as he was
+told, and for the most part he was perfectly willing to fulfil that
+obligation.
+
+Almost the first question she asked him, as soon as they were man and
+wife, was what he had done with the check for three hundred pounds?
+Her highly developed business instinct regarded it as more or less
+satisfactory, that at the suggestion of Mr. Rudge he had opened an
+account at a bank.  It was a very sensible thing to have done, but it
+would be even more sensible if the money was paid over to her.  She
+also felt that all sums he earned in the future should be banked in her
+name.  There were many advantages in such a course.  In the first
+place, only one banking account would be necessary, and she always
+favored simplicity in matters of business.  Again, their money would be
+much safer with her: she understood its value far better than he.
+Again, it would be wise if she made all financial arrangements; a man
+who had his head full of writing would naturally not want to be
+bothered with such tiresome things, and he would have the more time to
+use his pen.
+
+These arguments were so logical that Harry felt their force.  There was
+no doubt that Cora's head was much better than his.  Besides, as she
+said, with a penetration which was flattering, he lived in a world of
+his own, and she was quite sure he ought not to be worried by things of
+that kind.
+
+Up to a point, this was true.  The world Henry Harper lived in at
+present was largely of his own creation; and he was content that the
+wife he had married should take these trite burdens from his shoulders.
+Moreover, at first he did not regret Mr. Rudge and the old privacy as
+much as he thought he would.  Cora was by no means deficient in common
+sense, and having had what she knew was a great stroke of luck, she
+determined to show herself worthy of it by doing her best "to settle
+down."
+
+There was prudence and wisdom in this.  Mrs. Henry Harper had been a
+scholar in a very hard school, and she now hoped to profit by its
+teaching.  Therefore, she tried all she knew to make the young man
+comfortable, not merely because she liked him as much as it was
+possible for her to like any man, but also for the more practical
+reason that he might begin to like her.
+
+At first his work, which meant so much more to him than ever Cora
+could, suffered far less than he had feared.  To be sure, he missed the
+books terribly.  He had not realized the value of those serried rows in
+the shop until the time had come to do without them.  But Mr. Rudge, in
+saying good-by to him with distress in his honest eyes, had promised
+that the run of the shelves should always be his.
+
+Now there was no longer the bookshop to look after, he had more time
+for reading and writing, and for gaining general knowledge.  Also Cora
+had the wisdom to trouble him little.  She stayed in bed most of the
+morning, and as Royal Daylight had strict instructions to walk
+delicately in going about her household duties, Henry Harper with his
+habit of rising early was always able to count on a long and
+uninterrupted morning's work.
+
+In the afternoon, Cora generally went forth to visit her friends.  And
+as she showed no desire for Harry to accompany her, there were so many
+more precious hours in which he could do as he liked, in which his
+fancy could expand.  In the evening, however, his trials began.  After
+the first few days of matrimony, Cora developed a passion for
+restaurants, whither she expected him to accompany her.  As a rule they
+dined at the Roc at the bottom of the Avenue, where there was music and
+company, and here they sometimes fell in with one or another of Cora's
+circle.  Then about twice a week they would go on to a theater or a
+music hall, and have supper at another restaurant.  The young man soon
+grew aware that if Cora's attention was not fully occupied, she became
+restless and irritable.
+
+These evenings abroad gave Henry Harper a feeling of profound
+discomfort.  But he did not complain.  It would not have been fair to
+Cora, who, as she proudly said, gave him a free hand for the rest of
+the day.  And even the publicity of restaurant life, against his
+deepest instinct as it was, had compensations quite apart from the
+performance of duty.  There was much to be learned from these places.
+The Sailor had a remarkable faculty of minute observation.  The genie
+within never slept.  Other worlds were swimming into his ken.  Golden
+hours were being stolen from his labors, but he was gaining first-hand
+knowledge of men and things.
+
+These early days of married life were in some respects the most
+valuable the Sailor had yet known.  He was no longer living entirely in
+his dreams.  So much was coming into his purview which he could not
+grasp, to which he had hardly a clue, that he had an overmastering
+desire for more exact information.
+
+For example, the talk of Cora's numerous friends was almost a foreign
+language, which left him as a rule with a sense of hopeless ignorance
+and inferiority.  But this merely increased the wish to catch up.  Just
+as a surprisingly brief four years ago he had been tormented with an
+almost insane desire to read and write and to learn geography and
+arithmetic, so now he had a terrible craving to enter a world in which
+Cora moved with such ease and assurance.
+
+The chief difficulty now was the multiplicity of worlds around him.
+There was his own private world which none could enter but himself.
+That was a thing apart.  It was made up of the awful memories of his
+youth: of Auntie, of the slushy streets of Blackhampton, of special
+editions, of the police, of a December night on the railway, of Mother,
+of Mr. Thompson, of the Old Man, of the half-deck of the _Margaret
+Carey_, of the Island of San Pedro, of the Chinaman, of Klondyke, of
+Ginger, of Auntie again, of Miss Foldal, of the final catastrophe; all
+these memories lay at he back of the world he inhabited--these memories
+and the wonderful books he was always studying.  Yet enthroned above
+them all was the Aladdin's lamp that glowed like a star in the
+right-hand corner of his brain.  But even that seemed to be related to
+other strange, ineluctable forces which lay deep down at the root of
+his being, in the center of which was the thing he called himself.
+
+This private cosmos, however, wide as it was, was only an imperceptible
+speck of the whole.  Yet it was all important, because he felt it was
+the only one he would ever really know.  As for this world of Cora's,
+it was quite outside his experience.  Even the simplest objects in it
+did not present themselves at the same angle of vision.  They were man
+and wife and went about together, but the worlds they inhabited were so
+diverse that he soon felt it would never be possible to merge them in
+one another.
+
+Then, too, there was the cosmogony of Mr. Rudge.  That was a vastly
+different matter from his own and Cora's, and the great world of the
+Roc and the Domino where there was continual music and people drank
+things called liqueurs and wore evening clothes.  Again, there was the
+world of his friend Mr. Ambrose, and beyond this again was the world of
+those wonderful people whom he used to watch with such solemn delight
+and curiosity when he paid his Sunday morning pilgrimages to Hyde Park.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Early in November "The Adventures of Dick Smith on the High Seas" was
+published by a firm with which Mr. Ambrose was connected.  It was clear
+from the first that it was going to succeed.  The progress of the story
+through the chaste pages of _Brown's_ had brought many new readers to
+that old and respected periodical.  The editor made no secret of the
+fact that it was the best serial story the magazine had had for years,
+and as soon as "Dick Smith" appeared as a book it had many friends.
+
+The notices in the papers, which Mr. Ambrose took the trouble to send
+to Henry Harper from time to time, were kind to the verge of
+indiscretion.  Almost without exception they summed up the modest and
+unpretending story in the same way: it was a thing entirely new.  The
+writer saw and felt life with extraordinary intensity, and he had the
+power of painting it with a vivid force that was astonishing.  The
+effect was heightened by a quaintness of style which seemed to give the
+impression of a foreigner of great perception using a tongue with which
+he was unfamiliar.  Yet, allowing for every defect, there was a
+wonderful power of narrative, not unworthy of a Bunyan or a Defoe.  A
+spell was cast upon the reader's mind, which made it very difficult for
+those who began the book to lay it down until the last page had been
+read.
+
+Henry Harper was quite unconscious of the stir he had begun to make in
+literary circles.  One aspect only of a literary success had anything
+to say to him at first, and that was purely monetary.  Moreover, Edward
+Ambrose, unaffectedly proud of being the sponsor of "the new
+Stevenson"--a generalization so crude as to be very wide of the
+mark--was wise enough to stand between the personality of this half
+formed but rapidly developing man of genius and the curiosity of his
+admirers.
+
+The young man was more than content that Edward Ambrose should take
+charge of his literary affairs and "dry nurse him" through these early
+and in some ways very critical months of his fame.  And child of nature
+as the Sailor was, it was a task that could only have been carried
+through by a man of tact and liberality of mind.
+
+One day, at the beginning of December, when Henry Harper had been
+married nearly six weeks--the visit to the Registrar round the corner
+in the Circus had coincided almost exactly with the book publication of
+the "Adventures of Dick Smith on the High Seas"--he received a letter
+from his friend.  It said:
+
+
+Bury Street,
+  Tuesday.
+
+MY DEAR HARPER,
+
+If you are free, come and dine here on Friday next at eight.  There
+will be two or three men (no ladies!), old friends, and your humble
+admirers, who would like very much to meet you.  Do come if you can.
+
+Yours ever,
+  EDWARD AMBROSE.
+
+
+The Sailor's first instinct, in spite of his confidence in Mr. Ambrose
+and a liking for him that now amounted to affection, was to decline
+this invitation.  He was well aware that he was not fitted by education
+and by social opportunity to take his place as the equal of Mr. Ambrose
+and his friends.  Therefore, a summons even in these siren terms,
+worried him a good deal.  It seemed disloyal to deny such a friend for
+such a reason; but he had learned that the genie who now accompanied
+him day and night wherever he went, had one very sinister quality.  It
+had a power of making him morbidly sensitive in regard to his own
+deficiencies.
+
+In order to end the state of uncertainty into which the letter had
+thrown him, he showed it to Cora.  She advised him to accept the
+invitation.  This Mr. Ambrose, as she knew, had helped him very much,
+and it would be wise, she thought, for Harry to meet these friends of
+his, who no doubt would be literary men like Mr. Ambrose himself.
+
+Cora having made his mind up for him, the young man determined to do
+his best to lay his timidity aside.  After all, there was nothing of
+which to be ashamed.  He was what he was; and it would be the part of
+loyalty to a true friend to believe that no harm could come of dining
+with him.
+
+All the same, the evening of Friday, December 13, was in the nature of
+a great ordeal for Henry Harper.  Why he should have had this feeling
+about it was more than he could say.  But having duly written and
+posted his acceptance, he knew no peace of mind until that ominous day
+was through.
+
+The evening itself, when it came, began badly.  Cora, whom he left at
+the door of the Roc at a little after half past seven, told him exactly
+how to get to Bury Street.  He would have plenty of time to walk as he
+had not to be there until eight.  But either he did not follow her
+instructions as carefully as he ought to have done, or he was in a
+chaotic state of mind, for things went hopelessly awry.  He took
+several wrong turnings, had twice to be put right by a policeman, began
+to wish miserably, when it was too late, that he had taken a taxi, and
+in the end arrived nearly twenty minutes after eight at Edward
+Ambrose's door.
+
+It was a flustered, guilty, generally discomposed Henry Harper who was
+admitted by Mr. Ambrose's servant, whom he addressed as "Sir."  The
+host and his two other guests were waiting patiently to begin dinner.
+
+"Here you are," said Edward Ambrose, coming forward to greet the young
+man almost before he was announced.  "I know what has happened, so
+don't apologize.  No good Londoner apologizes for being late, my dear
+fellow."  He then introduced Henry Harper to his two friends, and they
+went in to dinner.
+
+The young man was so much upset at first by the absence of a dinner
+jacket, that he felt he must take an early opportunity of apologizing
+for that also.  This he accordingly did with the greatest simplicity,
+and excused himself on the plea that he had no evening clothes at
+present, but was intending to get some.
+
+Before Edward Ambrose could make any remark, his servant, of whom Henry
+Harper was really more in awe than of anyone else--he looked so much
+more imposing than either his master or his master's guests--was asking
+whether he would have sherry.
+
+"No, thank you, I'm teetotal," he said to the servant in answer to the
+invitation.  "At least, I'm almost teetotal."  For he suddenly
+remembered that since his marriage he had rather fallen away from
+grace, yet not to any great extent.
+
+"Have just half a glass," said Ambrose.  "I'm rather proud of this
+sherry, although that's not a wise thing to say."  The host laughed his
+rich note, which in the ear of Henry Harper was even finer than
+Klondyke's, if such an admission was not sacrilege; and his two
+friends, to whom the latter part of his remark was addressed, echoed
+his laugh with notes of their own that were almost equally musical.
+
+"A simple beverage, warranted harmless," said the host as he raised his
+glass, making a rather feeble attempt to secure his line of retreat.
+
+"Plutocrat," said his friend Ellis, who was in the Foreign Office, and
+who dignified his leisure with writing plays.
+
+"It's very nice indeed, sir," said Henry Harper, speaking as he felt.
+He was convinced that this was the nicest wine he had ever tasted--to
+be sure, he had tasted little--and that it called for sincere
+commendation.
+
+This evening was a landmark in the Sailor's life.  Nervously anxious as
+he had been at the outset, the ease and the simplicity of his three
+companions, their considered yet not too obviously considered kindness
+towards him, the discreet pains they took to establish him on a basis
+of equality, could hardly fail of their effect.  Very soon Henry Harper
+began to respond to this new and subtly delightful atmosphere as a
+flower responds to the sun.
+
+He had never imagined that any dinner could be so agreeable as this
+one.  He had never dreamed of food so choice or cooked so deliciously,
+or wines of such an exquisite flavor.  He had never seen a room like
+that, or such beautiful silver, or such flowers as those in the bowl in
+the center of the table.  All these things addressed a clear call to
+the soul of Henry Harper, a call it had never heard before.
+
+Mr. Ambrose was a delightful host, and not less delightful were his
+friend Mr. Ellis and his other friend Mr. Barrington, yet perhaps Mr.
+Portman, the servant, who bore himself with apostolic calm and dignity,
+was really the most wonderful of all.
+
+Somehow, these three gentlemen, Mr. Ambrose, Mr. Ellis, and Mr.
+Barrington, continually recalled, by little things they said and the
+way in which they said them, no less a person than Mr. Esme Horrobin.
+And to recall that gentleman was to evoke the even more august shade of
+the immortal Klondyke.
+
+By an odd chance, Mr. Esme Horrobin was to be brought to the mind of
+Henry Harper in a manner even more direct before dinner was over.  By
+the time they had come to the apples and pears and Mr. Ambrose had
+persuaded him to have half a glass of port wine, they were all talking
+freely and frankly together--Henry Harper a little less freely and
+frankly than the others, no doubt, but yet having settled down to enjoy
+himself more thoroughly than he could ever have thought to be
+possible--when the name of Mr. Esme Horrobin was suddenly mentioned.
+It was either Mr. Ellis or Mr. Barrington who mentioned it.  The young
+man was not sure which; indeed, throughout the evening he was not quite
+sure which was Mr. Ellis and which was Mr. Barrington.  Anyhow, after
+the host had told an anecdote which made them laugh consumedly,
+although the Sailor was not quite able to see the point of it, Mr.
+Ellis-Barrington made the remark, "That story somehow reminds one of
+Esme Horrobin."
+
+"Alas, poor Esme!" sighed Mr. Ellis-Barrington with mock pathos.  "It's
+odd, but this story of Ned's, which really seems to handle facts rather
+recklessly, recalls that distinguished shade.  Alas, poor Horrobin!"
+
+All three--Mr. Ellis, Mr. Barrington, and their host--laughed at the
+mention of that name, but to the acute ear of Henry Harper it seemed
+that their mirth had suddenly taken a new note.
+
+"You never met Horrobin," said Mr. Ellis-Barrington to the Sailor.  "We
+were all at Gamaliel with him."
+
+Mr. Ellis-Barrington was wrong to assume that Mr. Harper had never met
+Mr. Esme Horrobin.  Mr. Harper had not been with Mr. Horrobin at
+Gamaliel, but he had been with him at Bowdon House.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Mr. Harper, feeling honorably glad that he could play
+this part in the conversation.  "I have met a Mr. Horrobin of Gamaliel
+College, Oxford."  Somehow, the young man could not repress a thrill of
+pride in his excellent memory for names and places.
+
+"Not the great Esme?" cried Mr. Ellis-Barrington with serio-comic
+incredulity.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Esme Horrobin," said Henry Harper stoutly.
+
+"Do tell us where you met the great man?" The voice of Edward Ambrose
+was asking the question almost as if it felt that it ought not to do so.
+
+"I met him, sir, when I was staying at Bowdon House.  He was staying
+there, too, and he used to talk to me about the 'Satyricon' of
+Petronius Arbiter and the Feast of Trimalchio."
+
+For one brief but deadly instant, there was a pause.  The odd precision
+with which the carefully treasured words were spoken was uncanny.  But
+the three friends who had been with the great Esme Horrobin at Gamaliel
+somehow felt that an abyss had opened under their feet.
+
+Edward Ambrose was the first to speak.  But the laugh of gay charm was
+no longer on his lips.  There was a look almost of horror in those
+honest eyes.
+
+"That's very interesting, my dear fellow," he said, with a change of
+tone so slight that it was hardly possible to detect it.  "Interesting
+and curious that you should have met Horrobin."  And then with a return
+to carelessness, as though no answer was required to a merely
+conventional inquiry: "What's he doing now, do you know?"
+
+The Sailor's almost uncanny power of memory was equal even to that
+question.
+
+"He's bear-leading the aristocracy," said the young man, with a proud
+exactitude of phrase.
+
+"Oh, really!"
+
+But in spite of the adroitness of the host, the tact of Mr. Ellis, and
+Mr. Barrington's feeling for the nuances, another pause followed.  For
+one dark instant it was by no means clear to all three of them that
+their legs were not being pulled rather badly.  This rare and strange
+young sea monster with a primeval simplicity of speech and manner, who
+had just absentmindedly quenched his thirst from his finger bowl, might
+not be all that he appeared.  It seemed hardly possible to doubt the
+_bona fides_ of such a curiously charming child of nature, but....
+
+For another brief and deadly moment, silence reigned.  But in that
+moment, Mr. Henry Harper, with his new and rather terrible
+sensitiveness, was beginning to fear that he had committed a solecism.
+He remembered with a pang that Marlow's Dictionary had been unable to
+correlate "bear-leading" and "aristocracy."  Clearly he had done wrong
+to make use of a phrase whose significance he did not fully understand,
+even though it was the phrase most certainly used by Mr. Esme Horrobin.
+It was pretending to a knowledge you didn't possess, and these
+gentlemen who had all been to college and to whom, therefore, pretence
+of any kind was entirely hateful....
+
+"It's so like him!"  The rare laugh of Edward Ambrose had come suddenly
+to the young man's aid.  But the question for gods and men was: did Mr.
+Ambrose mean it was so like Mr. Esme Horrobin to be bear-leading the
+aristocracy, or so like Mr. Henry Harper to be using a phrase whose
+meaning was beyond him?
+
+"Alas, poor Esme!" sighed Mr. Ellis-Barrington.
+
+The Sailor echoed that sigh.  His relief was profound that after all a
+pause so deadly had not been caused by himself.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Henry Harper at this period of his life was in the grip of a single
+passion; the passion to know.  Already he had learned that books,
+wonderful, enchanting as they were, formed only one avenue to the
+realms of truth.  He had now come to realize that there are many
+secrets in earth and heaven which books, even the wisest of them, are
+not able to disclose.
+
+Of late, he had begun to reinforce the thousand and one volumes placed
+at his disposal by Mr. Rudge with the daily and weekly newspapers, and
+those contemporaries of _Brown's_ which came out once a month.  He had
+been quite confounded by the reception given to "Dick Smith" by the
+public press.  A thing so trivial seemed unrelated to the life of
+incomprehensible complexity in which he lived.  Besides, he was
+convinced that the merit of the story had been exaggerated, as it no
+doubt had, in accordance with a generous custom of giving a newcomer a
+fair chance.  Still, the author felt in his own mind that whatever the
+reviewers found in "Dick Smith" to admire was to be laid to the door of
+the friend who had made it possible for the story to reach the world.
+
+One of the first fruits of this new craving for exact knowledge was to
+prove bitterly embarrassing.  The Sailor had been haunted for several
+weeks by a report, which he had found among Mr. Rudge's miscellaneous
+collection, of the royal commission which sat to inquire into the
+terrible case of Adolf Beck.  He became obsessed by the thought that
+the apparatus of the criminal law in a free country could fasten bonds
+on an entirely innocent person, could successfully resist all attempts
+to cast them off, and when finally pinned down and exposed to public
+censure could easily evoke a second line of defense, which, under
+juridical forms, freed it of blame in the matter.
+
+To such an extent did the affair react upon the Sailor's mind that when
+he called one afternoon upon Edward Ambrose in Pall Mall, he had to
+make a sad confession.  He had been so much troubled by it that he had
+not been able to work.
+
+"Ah, but there we come to the core of official England," said Edward
+Ambrose.  "Such miscarriages of justice happen in every country in the
+world, but the commission which solemnly justifies them on the ground
+of indisputable common sense could only have happened in this land of
+ours."
+
+The young man was grateful for the tone of indignation.  It was
+something to know there was one man in the world who agreed in sum with
+a certain trite formula which was all he had to work by.  It had come
+to him by accident on the _Margaret Carey_....  Right is right, and
+wrong is no man's right.
+
+"You should go to the Old Bailey one day and hear a trial," said Edward
+Ambrose.  "All things that are concerned with reality might help you
+just now.  I dare say it will hurt you horribly; but if you are not
+unlucky in the judge, it may help to restore your faith in your
+country."
+
+"Yes, sir, I'll go there one day, as you advise me to," said Henry
+Harper, as a boy in the fourth form who was young for his age might
+have said it; and then with curious simplicity: "But I won't much fancy
+going by myself."
+
+"I'll come with you," said Edward Ambrose, "if that is how you feel
+about it."
+
+Thus it was that one evening, about a fortnight later, Henry Harper
+received a postcard, which said:
+
+
+Meet me outside O. B. 10.30 tomorrow.  Murder trial: a strange and
+terrible drama of passion for two students of the human comedy!  E. A.
+
+
+On the following morning, the Sailor had already mingled with the crowd
+outside the Old Bailey when, punctual to the minute, he was joined by
+his friend.
+
+"It's brave of you to face it," was his greeting.
+
+Mr. Ambrose little knew the things he had faced in the course of his
+five and twenty years of life, was the thought that ran in the mind of
+the Sailor.
+
+They made their way in, and became witnesses of the drama that the law
+was preparing to unfold.
+
+The judge began the proceedings, or rather the proceedings began
+themselves, with a kind of grotesque dignity.  After the jury had been
+sworn, the prisoner was brought into the dock.  Henry Harper gazed at
+him with an emotion of dull horror.  In an instant, he had recognized
+Mr. Thompson, the mate of the _Margaret Carey_.
+
+There could be no doubt it was he.  Alexander Thompson was the name
+given in the indictment; besides, the Sailor would have known anywhere
+that shaggy and hirsute man who had cast such a shadow across his
+youth.  There he was, that grim figure!  He had changed, and yet he had
+not changed.  The long, lean, angular body was the same in every
+awkward line, but the deadly pallor of the face was horrible to see.
+It was Mr. Thompson right enough, and yet it was not Mr. Thompson at
+all.
+
+A surge of memories came upon Henry Harper as he sat in that court.
+They were so terrible that he could hardly endure them.  He did not
+hear a word that was being spoken by the barrister who, in even and
+impartial tones, was reciting the details of a savage but not ignoble
+crime.  The Sailor was thousands of miles away in the Pacific; the
+groves of the Island of San Pedro were rising through the morning
+mists; he could hear the plop-plop of the sharks in the water; he could
+hear the Old Man coming up on deck.
+
+"That man looks capable of anything," whispered Edward Ambrose.
+
+The Sailor had always been clear upon that point.  There was the drive
+to the docks in a cab through the rain of the November night in his
+mind.  Again he was a helpless waif of the streets seated opposite Jack
+the Ripper.  He almost wanted to scream.
+
+"Would you rather not stay?" whispered his friend.
+
+"I'm not feeling very well," said Henry Harper; thereupon they left the
+court and went out into the street.
+
+They walked along Holborn in complete silence.  To the Sailor the
+fellowship, the security, the friendliness of that crowded street were
+a great relief.  His soul was in the grip of awful memories.  Even the
+man at his side could not dispel them.  Mr. Ambrose was much farther
+away just now than the Old Man, the Island of San Pedro, and the savage
+and brutal murderer to whom he owed his life.
+
+For days afterwards, the mind of the Sailor was dominated by Mr.
+Thompson.  He learned from the newspapers that the mate of the
+_Margaret Carey_ was condemned to death, and that he awaited the last
+office of the law in Dalston Prison.  One day, an odd impulse came upon
+him.  He bought some grapes and took them to the prison, and with a
+boldness far from his character at ordinary times, sought permission to
+see the condemned man.
+
+As Mr. Thompson had only one day more to live, and not one of his
+friends had visited him for the simple reason that he had not a friend
+in the world, the governor of the prison, a humane man, gave the Sailor
+permission to see the mate of the _Margaret Carey_.
+
+Behind iron bars and in the presence of a warder, Henry Harper was
+allowed to look upon Mr. Thompson, to speak to him, and to offer the
+grapes he had brought him.  But a dreadful shock awaited the young man.
+He saw at once that there was nothing human now in the man who was
+ranging his cell like a caged beast.
+
+"Don't you know me, Mr. Thompson?" cried Henry Harper feebly, through
+the bars.
+
+The mate of the _Margaret Carey_ paid no heed to his voice, but still
+paced up and down.
+
+"Don't you know me, Mr. Thompson?  I'm Sailor."
+
+For a fraction of time, the condemned man turned savage, unutterable
+eyes upon him.  They were those of a wild beast at bay.
+
+"There's no God," he said.
+
+He dashed his head against the wall of his cell.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+Henry Harper was now in a universe of infinite complexity.  The genie
+who lived in the wonderful lamp in his brain had taught him already
+that he knew nothing about whole stellar spaces in this strange cosmos
+that he, the thing he called himself, inhabited.  Moreover, it
+presented many problems.  Of these the most instant and pressing was
+Cora.
+
+It was no use mincing the matter: Cora and he were not getting on.
+There was no bond of sympathy between them.  His work and all that went
+with it were far more to him than the woman he had married.  And when
+this fact came home to her, she began to resent it in a contemptuous
+way.  It made it more difficult for both that his work only appealed to
+her in one aspect, and that the one which least appealed to him.  The
+hard and continuous labor it involved meant nothing to her; the hopes
+and the fears of an awakening artistic sense were things beyond her
+power to grasp; if his work had not a definite commercial value, if it
+could not be rendered in pounds and shillings, it was a waste of time
+and worse than meaningless.  Everything apart from that was a closed
+book as far as she was concerned.  She began to despise his timidity
+and his ignorance, and the time soon came when she did not hesitate to
+sneer at him before her friends.
+
+For one thing, she was bitterly resentful.  It was useless to disguise
+that he was not merely indifferent to her physical charms, he
+positively disliked and even dreaded that aspect of their life
+together.  Within a very short time after their marriage, he made the
+discovery that she drank.
+
+Even before that knowledge came he had discerned something unwholesome
+about her.  The blackened eyebrows, the rouged cheeks, the dyed hair,
+the overfine presence, the stealthy, cloying color of scent she exuded,
+the coarse mouth, the apathetic eyes, had always been things that he
+dared not let his mind rest upon in detail even before he had taken
+them unto himself.  And now that he had done so at the call of duty,
+and with even that to sustain him, he foresaw that he must come to
+dislike them more and more.  It hardly needed a pervading reek of
+brandy in her bedroom to read the future.
+
+Unluckily for Cora, the monotony of a "straight" life with such a
+humdrum young man was more than she could stand for any length of time.
+The old fatal habit was soon upon her again.  Years of yielding had
+weakened her will; and now she was beginning to grow contemptuous of
+her husband--perhaps as a requital of his apathy towards her--she began
+to assume a defiant carelessness, first of manner and then of conduct.
+
+Disaster was foreshadowed by several quarrels.  None of these were
+serious, but they showed the inevitable end towards which matters had
+begun to drift.  Henry Harper was not the sort of man with whom it was
+easy to quarrel; he had no aptitude for a form of reflex action quite
+alien to his nature.  All the same, there were times when he was almost
+tempted to defend himself from Cora's perpetual sneers at his dullness,
+not only in her company, which was bad enough, but in that of her
+friends, which was worse.
+
+Her chief complaint was his bearing in restaurants and public places.
+He had not a word to say for himself; he let "the girls" and "the
+boys"--Cora included her whole exceedingly numerous acquaintance in
+these terms--"come it over him"; he took everything lying down; and she
+couldn't understand why a man who was as clever as he was supposed to
+be "didn't let himself out a bit now and again."
+
+Harry's social maladroitness became a very sore subject.  It annoyed
+Cora intensely that the boys and the girls should so consistently "make
+a mark of him."  His inability to hit back seemed to be a grave
+reflection upon her judgment and good taste in marrying him.  The time
+soon came when she told him that if he couldn't show himself a little
+brighter in company, he could either stay at home of an evening or go
+his way, and she would go hers.
+
+As a fact, neither alternative was irksome to Henry Harper.  But the
+ultimatum hurt him very much.  The odd thing was that in spite of the
+nipping atmosphere to which his sensitiveness was exposed, it seemed to
+grow more acute.  He had a very real sense of inferiority in the
+presence of others.  Not only did he suffer from a lack of any kind of
+social training, but even the few counters he was painfully acquiring
+in a difficult game he had not the art of playing to advantage.  Thus
+he was only too glad to accept Cora's ukase.  It was a merciful relief
+to sit at home in the evening and eat the meager cold supper that Royal
+Daylight provided, and then go on with his work to what hour he chose,
+instead of being haled abroad at the heels of a superfashionable and
+therefore hyperdisdainful Cora to public places, where he was always at
+a miserable disadvantage.
+
+She thus formed a habit of sallying forth alone in the evening.
+Although she sometimes returned after midnight in a slightly elevated
+condition, or in her own words, "inclined to be market merry," her
+husband had too little knowledge of life to be really suspicious or
+even deeply resentful.
+
+Under the new arrangement, which suited the young man so well, he was
+able to attend public lectures at various places, the Polytechnic in
+Regent Street, the British Museum, the London Institution, the South
+Kensington Museum, and other centers of light.  These helped him in
+certain ways.  He was no dry-as-dust.  Already his eyes were set
+towards the mountain peaks, yet with a humility that was perhaps his
+chief asset, he felt it to be in the power of all men to help him upon
+his journey.
+
+Twice a week, now, after an early supper, he would go to a lecture.
+When it was over, he would often take a stroll about the streets in
+order to observe the phantasmagoria around him of which he knew so
+little.  Yet his eager mind was looking forward to a time when all
+should be made clear by the play of the light that shines in darkness.
+
+As a rule, he would finish his evening's excursion with a cup of coffee
+and a sandwich at Appenrodt's in Oxford Circus.  And then thinking his
+wonderful thoughts, he would take a final enchanted stroll homewards to
+the Avenue, to No. 106, King John's Mansions, where his work and his
+books awaited him.  Sometimes, however, he was greatly troubled with
+the thought of Cora.  It was idle to disguise the ever growing sense of
+antagonism that was arising between them.  But she went her way and he
+went his.  The financial arrangement they had now come to was that he
+should pay the rent of the flat and all household expenses, and as Cora
+had apparently no money of her own, he also allowed her half of what
+remained of his income.
+
+One evening in the summer, as he was walking slowly down Regent Street,
+a man and a woman passed him in an open taxi.  The woman was Cora, and
+the man, who was in evening dress, appeared to have his arm around her
+waist.  The sight was like a blow in the face.  And yet it was a thing
+so far outside his ken that it was impossible to know exactly what it
+meant.  For a moment he was dazed.  He did not know how to regard it,
+or in what way to deal with it.  To begin with, and perhaps oddly, it
+did not make him particularly angry.  Why he was not more angry, he
+didn't know.  No doubt it was because he was growing to dislike Cora so
+intensely.  But as he walked slowly to King John's Mansions he still
+had the curious feeling of being half stunned by a blow.
+
+He went to bed without awaiting her return.  She had recently taken to
+coming home very late.  Partly because of this, and partly in
+consequence of the condition in which she often returned, he had
+insisted for some little time past upon a bedroom of his own.  This she
+had been very unwilling to concede, but he had fought for it and had in
+the end won; and tonight as he turned in and locked the door, he
+determined that no power on earth should cause him to yield the spoils
+of victory.  He got into bed with hideous phantoms in his mind.  But
+the thought uppermost was that he had turned yet another page of
+experience.  And there suddenly in the midst of the flow and eddy of
+his fancies, the awful face of Mr. Thompson emerged at the foot of the
+bed.  He could almost hear the mate of the _Margaret Carey_ dash his
+head against the wall of his cell.
+
+He put forth all his power of will in the hope of inducing sleep, but
+before it showed signs of coming, he heard Cora's latchkey fumbling at
+the front door of the flat.  She opened it with a rattle, and closed it
+with a bang; and then he heard her come stumbling along the passage,
+her fuddled voice uplifted in the mirthless strain of a music hall
+ditty.
+
+With a sensation of physical nausea, he heard her try the handle of the
+bedroom door.  And then there came a knock.
+
+"Let me in, ducky."
+
+He didn't answer, but pulled the bedclothes over his head.
+
+"Let me in, ducky.  I want to kiss you good night."
+
+In spite of the bedclothes, he could still hear her.
+
+Receiving no answer, she beat upon the door again.
+
+"Don't then"--he could still hear her--"You are no good, anyway."
+
+She then stumbled to her own room singing "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" with
+cheerful defiance, and slammed the door.
+
+XX
+
+The next day Cora was not visible until about two o'clock, which was
+now her invariable rule.  They lunched together.  He could hardly bring
+himself to eat the comfortless meal with her.  But, after all, he had
+taken her for better or for worse.  He must keep his part of the
+contract, therefore it was no use being squeamish.
+
+He waited until the meal was over and Royal Daylight had cleared the
+table, and had also cleared away herself, before he mentioned the taxi.
+And then very bluntly, and in a tone entirely new to her as well as to
+himself, he demanded an explanation.
+
+Cora, it seemed, was in a rather chastened mood.  For one thing, she
+was now sober, and when she was sober she was not exactly a fool.  She
+was not really repentant.  He was too poor a thing to make a
+self-respecting woman repent.  But now she was again herself, she was
+both shrewd and wary; after all, this double-adjectival idiot was the
+goose that laid the golden eggs.
+
+"I was a bit on last night," she said, with well-assumed humility.
+
+[Illustration: "'I was a bit on last night,' she said, with
+well-assumed humility."]
+
+"Yes, I heard you was when you come home," he said, with the new note
+in his voice that she didn't like.
+
+"Oh, so you _did_ hear."  She suddenly determined to carry the war into
+the enemy's country.  "Why didn't you open it, then?"
+
+The cold impudence stung.
+
+"I'd rather have died than have opened it to a cow like you."  He
+hardly knew the words he used.  They had seemed to spring unbidden from
+the back of beyond.
+
+She half respected him for speaking to her in that way, and in such a
+tone; there was perhaps a little more to the double-adjectival one than
+she had guessed.  And as the cards were dead against her now, she
+decided on a strategic grovel of pathos and brandy.
+
+"Call yourself a gentleman?"  Tears sprang reluctantly to the raddled
+cheek.
+
+The sight of a lady in tears, even a lady who drank, was a little too
+much for Henry Harper.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said.  "I oughtn't to have said that."  He had
+remembered that the word "cow" as applied to the female sex was a
+Blackhampton expression and a favorite with Auntie.
+
+The lady could only weep a little more profusely.  This mug was as soft
+as butter.
+
+He stood looking at her with tight lips and with eyes of sorrowful
+disgust.
+
+"But you've no right to drink as much as you do," he said,
+determinedly.  "And you've no right to ride in taxis with gentlemen and
+to let them put their arms round you."
+
+"And you've no right to call your own lawful wife a cow," she said,
+tearfully.
+
+"I've apologized for that," he said.  "But you've given me no
+explanation of that gentleman."
+
+"Didn't I say I was a bit on," she said aggrievedly.
+
+"It's no excuse.  It makes it worse."
+
+"Yes, it does," said Mrs. Henry Harper, with a further grovel, "if it
+happened.  But it didn't happen.  You was mistaken, Harry.  I'm too
+much the lady to let any gentleman, whether he was in evening dress or
+whether he wasn't, put his arm around me in a taxi.  I wouldn't think
+of it now I'm married.  Now, you kiss your Cora, Harry, for calling her
+a name."
+
+She approached him with pursed lips.  In spite of the shame he felt for
+such a lapse from his official duties, he retreated slowly before her.
+
+"It's no use denying it," he said, as soon as the table had been placed
+successfully between them.  "I saw his arm round you."
+
+"You are mistaken, Harry."  She did not like the look or the sound of
+him.  She was beginning to be alarmed at her own folly.  "I may have
+been a bit on, but I was not as bad as that.  Honest."
+
+"I saw what I saw," he persisted; and then feeling no longer able to
+cope with her or the situation, he slipped out of the room and out of
+the flat.
+
+He had now to look forward in a dim way to the time when he would have
+to leave her.  The time was not yet, but he was beginning to feel in
+the very marrow of his bones that it was near.  Now that her secret was
+out and a hopeless deterioration had begun, there was something so
+revolting in the whole thing that he foresaw already their life
+together could have only one end.  But in the meantime, he must be man
+enough to keep with a stiff upper lip a contract he ought never to have
+made.
+
+Apart from his domestic relations, things were going very well indeed
+with him.  He had completed the "Further Adventures of Dick Smith" to
+the satisfaction of Mr. Ambrose, and it was on the point of starting in
+the magazine.  Moreover, the first series had won fame on both sides of
+the Atlantic.  It was felt, so rare was its merits, that if Henry
+Harper never wrote anything else his reputation was secure for twenty
+years.
+
+This, of course, was an amazing piece of fortune.  Edward Ambrose, who
+had had no small share in bringing it about, and whose discriminating
+friendship had made it possible, compared it, in his own mind, with the
+success of Dickens, who, after a life of poverty and hardship, gained
+immortality at five and twenty.  It was far too soon as yet to predict
+such a crown for Henry Harper, but he had certainly burst upon the
+world as a full-fledged literary curiosity.  His name was coming to be
+in the mouth of all who could appreciate real imagination.
+
+One of the first fruits of this success was his election to the
+Stylists' Club.  This distinguished and esoteric body met on the
+afternoon of the first Tuesday of the autumn and winter months at
+Paradine's Hotel in Upper Brook Street, Berkeley Square, to discuss
+Style.  Literary style only was within the scope of its reference; at
+the same time, the members of the club carried Style into all the
+appurtenances of their daily lives.  Not only were they stylists on
+paper, they were stylists in manner, in dress, in speech, in mental
+outlook.  The club was so select that it was limited to two hundred
+members, as it was felt there was never likely to be more than that
+number of persons in the metropolis at any one time who could be
+expected to possess an authentic voice upon the subject.  Happily,
+these were not all confined to one sex.  The club included ladies.
+
+That the Stylists' Club, of all human institutions, should have sought
+out Henry Harper for the signal honor of membership, seemed a rare bit
+of byplay on the part of Providence.  For a reason which he could not
+explain, Edward Ambrose gave a hoot of delight when the young man
+brought to him the club's invitation, countersigned by its president,
+the supremely distinguished Mr. Herbert Gracious, whose charmingly
+urbane "Appreciations," issued biennially, were known wherever the
+English language was in use.  Mr. Herbert Gracious was not merely a
+stylist himself, he was a cause of style in others.
+
+Henry Harper had been a little troubled at first by the hoot of Mr.
+Ambrose, and the feeling of doubt it inspired was not made less by a
+rather lame defense.  All the same, Mr. Ambrose so frankly respected
+the young man's intense desire to improve himself that he urged him to
+join the club, and to attend the first meeting, at any rate, of the new
+session, if he felt he would get the least good out of it.
+
+In response to a basely utilitarian suggestion, Henry Harper said he
+would do so.  He was not in a frame of mind to face such an ordeal.
+But he must not let go of himself.  Miserable as he was, he felt he
+must take such advice if only to prove his courage.  He would attend
+the first meeting of the Stylists' Club on the ground of its being good
+for the character, if on no higher.
+
+"I suppose you'll be there, sir?"
+
+"No," laughed Mr. Ambrose.  "I'm not a member.  It's a very
+distinguished body."
+
+Henry Harper looked incredulous.  It did not occur to him that anybody
+could be so distinguished as to exclude such a man as Edward Ambrose.
+
+"I don't think I'll go, then," said Henry Harper.  "It will be a bit
+lonesome-like."
+
+"Please do.  And then come and tell me about it.  Your personal
+impression will be valuable."
+
+It was for this reason that the Sailor finally decided not to show the
+white feather.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+Henry Harper found the Stylists' Club of far greater interest than he
+thought it would be.  To one as simple as he it was a very stimulating
+body.  Moving precariously towards fresh standards of life, he knew at
+once that he was in a strange new world.  He knew even before a
+powdered footman had led him across the parqueted floors of Paradine's
+Hotel, and a personage hardly less gorgeous had announced him to the
+congeries of stylists who had assembled to the number of about sixty.
+
+"It is such a pleasure, Mr. Harper," said a large, florid, benign and
+beaming gentleman, seizing him by the hand.  "You will find us all at
+your feet."
+
+Mr. Harper was overawed not a little by the size and the distinction of
+the company, but the benign and beaming gentleman, who was no less a
+person than Mr. Herbert Gracious himself, took him in charge and
+introduced him to several other gentlemen, most of whom were benign but
+not beaming, being rather obviously preoccupied with a sense of Style.
+Indeed, Mr. Herbert Gracious was the only one of its members who did
+beam really.  The others were far too deeply engaged with the momentous
+matters they had met to consider.
+
+When Mr. Henry Harper had been allowed to subside into a vacant chair
+in the midst of six stylists, four of whom were female and two of whom
+were male, he was able to pull himself together a little.  He knew
+already that he was in very deep waters indeed: Mr. Esme Horrobins and
+Mr. Edward Ambroses were all around him.  And these ladies ... these
+ladies who waved eyeglasses stuck on sticks were not of the Cora and
+the Miss Press and the Miss Bonser breed; they were of the sort that
+Klondyke put on a high hat and a swallowtail to walk with in Hyde Park.
+Yes, even for a sailor, he was in very deep waters just now, and he was
+obliged to tell himself once again, as he always did in such
+circumstances, that having sailed six years before the mast there was
+nothing in the world to fear.
+
+All the same, at first he was very far from being happy.  A dozen
+separate yet correlated discussions upon Style had been interrupted by
+his entrance.  The announcement, "Mr. Henry Harper," had suspended
+every conversation.  For a moment all the Mr. Esme Horrobins were mute
+and inglorious.  But then, having glutted their gaze upon one whom Mr.
+Herbert Gracious himself had already crowned in the Literary Supplement
+of the _Daily Age and Lyre_, the Mr. Esme Horrobins and the Mrs. Esme
+Horrobins--the mere male was not allowed to have it all his own way in
+this discussion upon Style--took up the theme.
+
+It was the part of Mr. Henry Harper to listen.  The public press of
+England and America had compared his own style to that of Stevenson,
+Bunyan, Defoe, the Bible, Shakespeare, Laetitia Longborn Gentle, Memphis
+Mortmain Mimpriss, finally Dostoievsky, and then Stevenson again.  In a
+true analysis Stevenson would have defeated all the other competitors
+together, leaving out Dostoievsky, who was a bad second, and excluding
+the Bible, Shakespeare, and Memphis Mortmain Mimpriss, who, to their
+great discredit, were an equally bad third.  Stevenson was first and
+the rest nowhere.  And there that glorious reincarnation sat, in a
+modest blue suit, but looking very neat and clean, listening to every
+word that fell in his vicinity from the lips of the elect.  At least,
+that was, as far as it was possible for one human pair of ears to do so.
+
+"Tell me, Mr. Harper," said Miss Carinthia Small, with all Kensington
+upon her eyebrows, imperiously attacking with a stick eyeglass, which
+she wobbled ferociously, this very obvious young genius who didn't know
+how to dress properly, as soon as Mr. Marmaduke Buzzard--M.B. of the
+_Stylists' Review_--had allowed her, much against his will and for
+purely physical reasons, to get in a word.  "Tell me, Mr. Harper,
+exactly how you feel about Dostoievsky?  Where do you place him?
+Before Meredith and after Cuthbert Rampant, or before Cuthbert Rampant
+and after Thomas Hardy?"
+
+It was a dismal moment for Mr. Henry Harper.  Fortunately he hesitated
+for a fraction of an instant, and he was saved.  That infinitesimal
+period of time had given Mr. Marmaduke Buzzard his chance to get in
+again.  And stung by the public acclamation of Mr. Cuthbert Rampant, a
+well-nourished young man in a checked cravat, who was curving
+gracefully over Miss Carinthia Small, he proceeded to show with some
+little violence, yet without loss of temper, that in any discussion of
+style _qua_ style, Turgenieff alone of the Russians could possibly
+count.
+
+"But everybody knows," breathed the defiant Miss Carinthia in the
+charmed ear of Mr. Cuthbert Rampant, "that had it not been for
+Dostoievsky, the 'Adventures of Dick Smith' could never have been
+written at all."
+
+The considered reply of Mr. Cuthbert Rampant was lost in the boom and
+the rattle of Mr. Marmaduke Buzzard's heavy artillery.
+
+Henry Harper might have sailed six years upon the high seas, but a
+flood of deep and perplexing waters was all around him now.  Stylists
+to right of him, stylists to left of him, all discoursing _ex cathedra_
+upon that supreme quality.  Never, since the grim days of the _Margaret
+Carey_ had he felt a sterner need to keep cool and hold his wits about
+him.  But with the native shrewdness that always stood to him in a
+crisis, he had grasped already a very important fact.  It must be the
+task just now of the new Stevenson to sit tight and say nothing.
+
+To this resolve he kept honorably.  And it was less difficult than it
+might have been had not Style alone been the theme of their discourse,
+had not this been an authentic body of its practitioners, and had not
+"The Adventures of Dick Smith" been acclaimed as the finest example of
+pure narrative seen for many a year.  All through the period of tea and
+cake, which Mr. Henry Harper contrived to hand about with the best of
+them, being honestly determined not to mind his inferior clothes and
+absence of manner, because, after all, these things were less important
+than they seemed at the moment, he kept perfectly mute.
+
+Nevertheless he had one brief lapse.  It was after he had drunk a cup
+of tea and the undefeated Miss Carinthia Small had drunk several, and
+Mr. Marmaduke Buzzard had retired in gallant pursuit of some watercress
+sandwiches, that the dauntless lady felt it to be her duty to draw him
+out.
+
+"Tell me, Mr. Harper," said she, "what really led you to Stevenson?"
+
+So much was the novice troubled by the form of the question that she
+decided to restate it in a simpler one, although heaven knew it was
+simple enough already!
+
+"What is your favorite Stevenson?" she asked, looking Mr. Cuthbert
+Rampant full in the eye with an air of the complete Amazon.
+
+The author of "The Adventures of Dick Smith" was bound to speak then.
+Unfortunately he spoke to his own undoing.
+
+"I've only read one book by Stevisson," he said, in a voice of curious
+penetration which nervousness had rendered loud and strident.
+
+"Pray, which is that?" asked Miss Carinthia Small in icy tones.
+
+"It's the one called 'Virginibus Puerisk,'" said Mr. Henry Harper.
+
+Miss Carinthia Small felt that a pin might have been heard to fall in
+Upper Brook Street, Berkeley Square.  Mr. Cuthbert Rampant shared her
+emotion.  Yet the area of the fatal silence did not extend beyond Mr.
+Marmaduke Buzzard, who had already reopened fire a short distance away,
+and was again doing immense execution.
+
+Miss Carinthia Small and Mr. Cuthbert Rampant risked no further
+discussion of Stevisson with this strange young Visigoth from the back
+of beyond.  Neither of them could have believed it to be possible.
+When he had been first ushered into the room by the benign Herbert, and
+had modestly sat down, he had looked so clean and neat, and anxious to
+efface himself that he might have been a product of some
+self-respecting modern university who was on a reconnaissance from a
+garden suburb.  But how could that have been their thought!  This was a
+cruel trick that somebody had played upon Herbert.  There was malice in
+it, too.  Dear Herbert, England's only critic, the British Sainte
+Beuve, had had his leg pulled in a really wicked manner!  He had always
+prided himself upon being democratic and inclusive, but there was a
+limit to everything.
+
+Happily the Sailor did not stay much longer.  Many stylists were going
+already.  It had been an interesting experience for the young man.  If
+he had gained nothing beyond a cup of lukewarm tea and a cucumber
+sandwich, he certainly felt very glad that he had had the courage to
+face it.
+
+"Good-by, ma'am," he said, squeezing a delicate white glove in a broad
+and powerful grip.  "I'm very proud to have met you.  What else ought I
+to read of Stevisson?"
+
+Miss Carintha Small felt an inclination to laugh.  But yet there was
+something that saved him.  What it was she didn't know.  She only knew
+it was something that Winchester and New College in the person of Mr.
+Cuthbert Rampant did not possess.
+
+"Good-by."  There was really very little of the stylist in her voice,
+although she was not aware of it, and would have been quite mortified
+had such been the case.  "And you _must_ read 'Treasure Island.'  It is
+exactly your style, although 'Dick Smith' is very much deeper and truer
+and to my mind altogether more sincere."
+
+Miss Carinthia Small had not meant to say a word of this.  She had not
+meant to say anything.  She had intended to efface this young man
+altogether.
+
+The Sailor threaded his way through a perfect maze of stylists with
+almost a sense of rapture.  It had been a delightful adventure to
+converse on equal terms with a real Hyde Park Lady: a brilliant
+creature who had neither chaffed him nor hit him in the back, nor
+addressed him as "Greased Lightning," nor had rebuked him with "Damn
+you."  He walked out on air.
+
+As the author of "The Adventures of Dick Smith" was retrieving his hat
+from the hotel cloak room, he was suddenly brought to earth.  Two
+really imperial stylists were being assisted into elaborate fur coats
+by two stylists among footman.
+
+"My dear Herbert."  An abnormally quick ear caught the half humorous,
+half indignant remark, in spite of the fact that it was uttered in a
+very low tone.  "This man Harper ... I assure you the fellow hasn't an
+aitch to his name."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+It was not until Henry Harper had escaped from Paradine's Hotel and had
+managed to find a way into Regent Street that the words he had
+overheard seemed to hit him between the eyes.  His mind had been thrown
+back years, to Klondyke and the waterlogged bunk in the half-deck of
+the _Margaret Carey_.  He recalled as in a dream the great argument he
+had dared to maintain as to the true manner of spelling his name, and
+how, finally, he had been compelled to give in.  Ever since that time,
+he had always put in the aitch in deference to his friend's superior
+artillery, which included Greek and Latin and other surprising things.
+
+It was clear, however, that it was not a bit of use putting the letter
+aitch in your name unless you included it in your speech as well.  It
+was amazing that he had not grasped such a simple truth until that
+moment.  He had known, of course, for some little time now, in fact,
+ever since he had met Mr. Esme Horrobin at Bowdon House that his manner
+of speaking only very faintly resembled that in vogue in college and
+society circles.
+
+On the edge of the curb at Piccadilly Circus, waiting to make the
+perilous crossing to the Avenue, the crushing force of the remark he
+had overheard seemed to come right home to him.  Moreover, as he stood
+there he saw in an almost fantastically objective way that the letter
+aitch should be attended to at once.  He must not be content merely to
+improve his mind, he must improve himself in every possible manner.
+
+It was here, as he stood in deep thought, that his old friend
+Providence came rather officiously to his aid.  A derelict walked past
+him in the gutter, and on the back of the human wreck was fixed a
+sandwich board bearing the legend:
+
+
+Madame Sadleir gives lessons daily by appointment in voice production,
+elocution, correct speaking, and deportment.  Apply for terms at 12,
+Portugal Place, W.
+
+
+This was very friendly of Providence.  The young man knew that two
+minutes ago he had passed Portugal Place.  He was strung up to the
+point of adventure.  This too long neglected matter was so vital to one
+who desired to mix with stylists on equal terms, that it would be the
+part of wisdom to see about it now.
+
+At this moment thought was action with Henry Harper.  Therefore he
+turned almost at once and retraced his steps into Regent Street.
+Within a very short time he was assailing the bell pull of 12, Portugal
+Place, W., third floor.
+
+Providence had arranged that Madame Sadleir should be at home.  She was
+alone, moreover, in her professional chamber, and fully prepared to
+enter into the matter of the letter aitch.
+
+Madame Sadleir was stout and elderly, she wore an auburn wig, she was
+calm and efficient, yet she also had an indefinable quality of style.
+In spite of a certain genial grotesqueness she had an air of
+superiority.  Henry Harper, his vibrant sensibilities still astretch
+from an afternoon of stylists, perceived at once that this was a lady
+with more or less of a capital letter.
+
+Experience of Cora and her friends had by this time taught the Sailor
+that there were "common or garden" ladies, to use a favorite expression
+of Miss Press, and there were also those he defined as real or Hyde
+Park ladies.  He had little first-hand knowledge, at present, of the
+latter; he merely watched them from afar and marked their deportment in
+public places.  But there was a subtle quality in the greeting of
+Madame Sadleir, almost a caricature to look at as she was, which
+suggested the presence of a lady with a capital letter, at least with
+more or less of a capital letter, a sort of Hyde Park lady relapsed.
+Henry Harper was aware, almost before Madame Sadleir spoke a word, that
+she had been born to better things than 12, Portugal Place, W., third
+floor.
+
+Completely disarmed by the calm but forthcoming manner of Madame
+Sadleir, Mr. Henry Harper stated his modest need with extreme
+simplicity.  He just wanted to be taught in as few lessons as possible
+to speak like a real college gentleman that went regular--regularly
+(remembering his grammar in time)--into Society.
+
+Madame Sadleir's smile was maternal.
+
+"Why, certainly," she said in the voice of a dove.  "Nothing easier."
+
+The young man felt reassured.  He had not thought, even in his moments
+of optimism, that there would be anything easy in the process of making
+a Mr. Edward Ambrose or a Mr. Esme Horrobin.
+
+"It will be necessary," said Madame Sadleir, "to pay very particular
+attention to the course of instruction, and also to practice
+assiduously.  But first you must learn to take breath and to assemble
+and control the voice.  Do you desire the Oxford manner?"
+
+Mr. Henry Harper, with recollections of Mr. Edward Ambrose and Mr. Esme
+Horrobin, said modestly that he did desire the Oxford manner if it
+could be acquired in a few lessons, which was yet more than he dared to
+hope.
+
+"The number of lessons depends entirely upon your diligence and, may I
+add"--and Madame Sadleir did add--"your intelligence and natural
+aptitude.  But, of course, to remove all misunderstanding, the Oxford
+manner is an extra."
+
+Somehow he felt that such would be the case.
+
+"Personally, one doesn't recommend it," said Mtdame Sadleir, "for
+general use."
+
+Mr. Harper was a little disappointed.
+
+"It is not quite so popular as it was," said Madame Sadleir, "unless
+one is going into the Church.  In the Church it is always in vogue, in
+fact one might say a _sine qua non_ in its higher branches.  Do you
+propose to take Orders?"
+
+Mr. Harper had no thoughts of a commercial life.
+
+"Personally," said Madame Sadleir, speaking with the most engaging
+freedom and ease, "one is inclined to favor a good Service manner for
+all round general use.  There is the A manner for the army subaltern,
+the B manner for the company officer, either of which you will find
+admirable for general purposes.  There is also the Naval manner, but
+excellent as it is, I am afraid it is hardly to be recommended for
+social life.  The Civil Service manner, which combines utility with a
+reasonable amount of ornament, might suit you perhaps.  I am
+recommending it quite a good deal just now.  And, of course, there is
+the Diplomatic or Foreign Office manner for advanced pupils, but it may
+be early days to talk of that at present.  One does not like to raise
+false hopes or to promise more than one can perform.  Now, Mr. Harper,
+kindly let me hear you read this leading article in the Times on 'What
+is Wrong with the Nation?' paying particular attention to the vowel
+sounds."
+
+With grave deliberation, Mr. Henry Harper did as he was asked.  Having
+painfully completed his task, Madame Sadleir, in a remarkably benign
+way, which somehow brought Mr. Herbert Gracious vividly to his mind,
+proceeded to deal with him with the utmost fidelity.
+
+Said she: "It is my duty to tell you that for the present a good sound
+No. 3 Commercial manner is earnestly recommended.  If you are diligent,
+it may be possible to graft a modified Oxford upon it, but I am afraid
+it would be premature to promise even that."
+
+This was disappointing.  But, after all, it was to be foreseen.  Mr.
+Edward Ambroses and Mr. Esme Horrobins were not made in a day.  And
+when he came to think the matter over at his leisure he was sincerely
+glad that they were not.  It would have taken a mystery and a glamour
+from the world.
+
+
+
+
+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 Reason _v._ 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
+fiancee ... 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 the _Margaret 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
+the _Brooklyn 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 the _Margaret 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 brigantine _Excelsior_ I 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 brigantine
+_Excelsior_--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 peri, 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 the _Margaret Carey_ was 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 your _what_!" 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.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The Sailor continued to lean against the wall.  An abyss had opened.
+The look on the face of Mr. Rudge, his late master, and the strange
+words he had used were returning upon him with awful force.
+
+With this discovery came surprise, bewilderment, self-disgust.  It
+hardly seemed possible that a man in his senses could be so blind, so
+ignorant, so gullible.  Where had been his wits, that he should have
+allowed the creature at the other side of the passage wall, and her
+associates, to dupe him so completely?
+
+As the feeling of amazement at his own folly deepened, a gust of fury
+swept through him like a storm.  An overmastering desire came upon him
+to enter that room, to deal once and for all with this bird of prey.
+Let the world be rid of a foul thing.  Let his be the hand to efface it
+in its infamy.
+
+He would go in at once and make an end of her.  A surge of inherited
+forces, a flood of old, unhappy, far-off things were whirling him like
+a piece of driftwood into the maelstrom.  He was in the grip of a
+terrible power ... a power beyond his control.  It was not merely that
+she had entrapped him, or that he had been incredibly blind to the drab
+and sordid world in which she lived; in the light of a widening
+knowledge, the fact which now drove him to frenzy was that a creature
+so common and unclean should have found it so easy to make him her
+victim.
+
+He did not return to the room at once.  There were other forces, it
+seemed, vibrating in the air around him.  There came a sudden reminder
+from the talisman that he bore continually in the right-hand corner of
+his brain.  He heard a voice.
+
+"Henry Harper, is she worth it?  Remember, if you destroy her, you
+destroy yourself utterly, body and soul."
+
+The words sank into him.  The issue was joined, and there came the
+shock of battle.  A will half wrenched asunder seemed about to be
+overthrown.  The desire to enter the room was overmastering; a sense of
+duty was reinforced by the passion of revenge.  There was madness in
+the thought that he was the dupe of a common woman of the streets.
+
+Shaken with a fury that was awful, he still leaned against the wall of
+the passage.  The voice of the genie was no longer heard.  The talisman
+shone no more.  The old, unhappy, far-off things had overwhelmed them.
+
+"Kill her, kill her," they whispered savagely.  "It is the only thing
+to do."
+
+He was half down already.  The forces of destiny were crushing out his
+life.
+
+"Kill her.  Kill her."  The very walls were breathing commands in his
+ears.  "It is a duty to others to avenge yourself."
+
+There was subtlety in the demand.  But this was a strong, not a subtle
+nature.  It did not practice self-deception lightly.  Aladdin's lamp
+was quick to reveal the sophist; moreover, it had its own answer ready.
+Suddenly it flashed before the mind of Henry Harper the elemental
+figure of the man James Thorneycroft simply relating his story.  By a
+curious trick of the brain, the words of the condemned man were again
+in his ears.
+
+"You can take it from me that there is a God."
+
+He hardly knew what those words meant even as he heard them now.  But
+he knew they had a significance beyond any which had previously touched
+his life.  Then a miracle happened.  The powers which had him in their
+grip began to relax.  It was as if his whole being was translated.  He
+was again his own man.  Broken and shattered he was able to stagger to
+his own room and light the gas.
+
+The battle was not decided yet.  But a new power had come to him.
+Therefore Henry Harper's first act was to do that which he had never
+done before in his life.  He kneeled by the side of his bed and prayed.
+
+Presently he rose, and went out again into the little lobby, past the
+half open door through which could be heard a succession of drunken
+snores.  He snatched his coat and hat from the peg and went hurriedly
+down into the street.
+
+It was one o'clock.  The Avenue and its environs were almost deserted,
+save for an occasional policeman and a few returning revelers.  He had
+no idea as to the way he should go.  His one desire was to get as far
+as he could from King John's Mansions in the shortest possible time.
+
+Walking about the streets of the city hour after hour, he could not
+measure the abyss which had engulfed him.  He was completely cast away,
+he had lost track of himself, he didn't know where he was, he had no
+chart by which to go.
+
+Ceaseless wandering through remote and unknown places brought the dawn
+at last, and then he found that the spot he had reached was Camberwell
+Green.  Overcome with fatigue, he sat on a public seat near a tram
+terminus for a little while.  Then he tried to shape his thoughts, but
+the mind refused to act.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The longer he sat the more confused he became.  At last it occurred to
+him that the best thing he could do was to seek the advice of Edward
+Ambrose.  Indeed, in his present state that seemed the only course to
+take.  Almost mechanically, he began to make his way in the direction
+of Bury Street, St. James'.
+
+He had a long way to go, and the road was obscure, but as there was not
+the least need for hurry, he followed the tram lines as far as the
+Embankment.  By the time he had reached Whitehall, it was about eight
+o'clock.  Less than half an hour afterwards he had entered Bury Street,
+and was back in that house which a few short hours ago had given him
+his first glimpse of paradise.
+
+"Why, Henry!"  His friend gave a cry of surprise.  And then to cover it
+he said: "You are just in time for breakfast.  Another knife and fork,
+Portman.  Take off your overcoat."
+
+The young man had no wish to do so.  He remembered that his evening
+clothes were under it.  Nor had he any desire for breakfast.
+
+As soon as the servant had retired, Edward Ambrose compelled him firmly
+but kindly to eat.
+
+Ambrose had noted already that the Sailor was in a decidedly
+overwrought state.  The ashen face, the wild eyes, the disheveled
+appearance was not pleasant to see.
+
+"Tell me what has happened."
+
+"Before I do that," said the young man, in a voice unlike his own, "I
+want you to consider this a secret between us."
+
+"Yes ... of course."
+
+"To begin at the beginning of a rotten story."  There was a queer break
+in the voice.  "You didn't know that I was married, did you?"
+
+"No," said Ambrose, impassively.
+
+"I dare say I ought to have told you.  Several times I made up my mind
+that I would.  I am very sorry now I didn't."
+
+"You were under no obligation to do so."
+
+"There wouldn't be so much to tell you now if I had," said the Sailor,
+with horror in his eyes.  He then told his story at length, with detail
+and with difficulty, but concealing nothing.
+
+Edward Ambrose was much affected.  He somehow felt, as a generous mind
+was likely to feel in such a case, that it should have been his part to
+shield this lamb from the wolves.  Yet he knew that blame did not lie
+at his door.
+
+Still, he was deeply grieved.  He accepted the story without question
+as it was told him.  There could be no doubt that all the essential
+facts were exactly as they had been related.  Harper, in his curious
+ignorance of the world, had fallen into a trap.
+
+The young man ended the story with a pathetic appeal for advice.  He
+made it clear that he could never go back to this woman; he dared not
+even venture to see her again lest he do her violence.  He must get
+free of her at all costs.  Could his friend tell him how such a thing
+must be managed?
+
+"One feels it ought not to be very difficult in the circumstances,"
+said Edward Ambrose, "if we go the right way to work.  But the first
+thing is to consult a lawyer."
+
+Accordingly, before he had finished a greatly interrupted meal, Ambrose
+went to the telephone and arranged to see his own solicitor as soon as
+that gentleman should arrive at his office in Spring Gardens.  When he
+returned to the dining-room, he found Henry Harper striding up and down
+it.  A sort of determined rage had taken possession of him.  The
+hereditary forces that had so nearly overthrown him a few hours before
+had returned upon him.
+
+"I'll never be so near murder as I was between twelve and one last
+night," he said, huskily, with a clenched and deadly look.
+
+"She wouldn't have been worth it," said Edward Ambrose.  He then turned
+abruptly from the subject.  "You will want rooms, won't you--somewhere
+to go?"  He had a fund of very practical kindness.  "And you'll want
+clothes.  And your papers and books.  But I think we had better send
+one of Mortimer's clerks to collect those.  As for rooms, perhaps
+Portman may know of some."
+
+Upon due interrogation, Portman, it seemed, knew of some rooms that
+might be vacant.  Thereupon he was sent on a diplomatic mission; the
+scale of charges must be strictly moderate.  He must not show his nose,
+which prided itself on a resemblance to that of a certain very eminent
+statesman, in Bury Street again until his errand had been carried out
+successfully.
+
+Presently, the solicitors, Messrs. Mortimer, Groves, Pearce, Son and
+Mortimer, rang up to say that Mr. Daniel Mortimer had arrived at the
+office, and would be glad to see Mr. Ambrose.  Accordingly, Henry
+Harper went at once with his friend in a taxi to Spring Gardens.
+
+Mr. Daniel Mortimer was the kind of man who would have greatly
+impressed the Sailor on an ordinary occasion.  Mr. Mortimer was by
+nature very impressive.  He could not help being so.  Even when he was
+quite alone and merely warming his hands at the fire, he was
+impressive.  In fact, it was a quality which was worth several
+thousands a year to him.
+
+Mr. Mortimer had the reputation of being a very sound lawyer.  He
+certainly looked a very sound lawyer.  His geniality was most engaging,
+and there was a shrewd and knowledgeable personality beneath.
+
+He greeted Mr. Ambrose less as a client than as a rather irresponsible
+nephew received by a preternaturally wise yet jovial uncle.  Ambrose
+had been his fag at school.
+
+"Well, Edward, what can we do for you?" was the pontifical greeting.
+
+"Allow me to introduce Mr. Harper--Mr. Mortimer--and you can prepare to
+speak out of the depths of your wisdom after the ancient manner."
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Mortimer, with the air of one very well able to
+do so.  "Won't you sit down?"  He placed two chairs with innate and
+almost oriental magnificence.  "We are now at your service."  It was
+less a trick of speech than sheer pressure of human character which
+caused Mr. Mortimer always to refer to himself in the plural.
+
+"I think you had better tell the story, Henry," said Edward Ambrose.
+"Tell it to Mortimer exactly as you have told it to me."
+
+That gentleman assumed his armchair of state, and for the second time
+that morning Henry Harper told his strange story.
+
+"And you never guessed!" was the solicitor's brief comment when it had
+been told.
+
+"I can't think why I didn't," said the young man.
+
+Mr. Mortimer frowned tremendously.  He then took up a pencil and began
+with great freedom of style to draw on his blotting pad a portrait of
+no one in particular.
+
+"Edward," he said, after he had continued to do this for several
+minutes, "I am afraid this is a difficult business."
+
+"I am afraid so," said Edward Ambrose gravely.  "And we have come to a
+very wise man to set it right for us.  It oughtn't to be beyond your
+powers, ought it, having regard to the acknowledged character of the
+lady?"
+
+"I fear," said Mr. Mortimer, "the character of the lady is too much
+acknowledged if the question of a divorce is running in your mind."
+
+"Well, of course it is," said Edward Ambrose, with an air of deep
+disappointment as he looked at Henry Harper.
+
+"I'll have a divorce if I can possibly get one," said the young man.
+"And I don't care what trouble I take or what it costs."
+
+Mr. Mortimer continued to draw very spirited pictures on his blotting
+pad.
+
+"Don't you advise it?" asked Edward Ambrose.
+
+"Yes, I do, if we can get one.  But in the special circumstances, it is
+going to prove uncommonly difficult, in fact, one might say impossible."
+
+"You don't mean that, sir," said Henry Harper.
+
+"It is only my opinion."  Mr. Mortimer spoke as if there could be no
+other.  "But let me be quite candid, as I am sure you want me to be.  I
+am perfectly certain you will never get a British jury to believe the
+first part of your story."
+
+"But you believe it?" said Henry Harper, with wild eyes.
+
+"I most certainly believe it, I believe every word you tell me.  But we
+have to deal with a British jury, and in any question affecting what it
+calls 'morality,' a British jury is a very difficult proposition.  At
+least, that's my experience."
+
+Both Henry Harper and his friend were so dismayed by the force of Mr.
+Mortimer's conviction, that at first they did not say anything.  Soon,
+however, Edward Ambrose, who was looking particularly unhappy,
+remarked: "Then you don't advise him to fight it?"
+
+"I don't.  I am sorry to say I don't.  There is not a dog's chance
+without very strong direction from the Bench, and there is little hope
+of that in a case of this kind.  His Majesty's judges are quite as bad
+as a British jury when they are out on the 'morality' racket."
+
+"The good bourgeois, in fact, without a spark of imagination?"
+
+"Quite so.  Of course, we might try, but really one doesn't advise it.
+There would be unwarrantable expense, and even if we were lucky enough
+to get a verdict, it would still be a very serious matter for a young
+and rising man.  At least, that's my view."
+
+"I don't doubt you are right," said Edward Ambrose, with a groan of
+sheer vexation.
+
+"You mean, sir, I can't get free of her?" said the Sailor.
+
+"Only with great difficulty, I am afraid.  And in any event, the issue
+is uncertain.  As I understand, you are in a position to prove very
+little.  Conjecture will not satisfy a jury, and even that must be
+based on a set of circumstances that will not help your case."
+
+"Well, what do you advise?" asked Edward Ambrose.
+
+"I should be inclined to let matters take their course for the present.
+As she appears to be drinking heavily, it is not unreasonable to hope
+that in time things may adjust themselves automatically."
+
+"But in the meantime how can she be kept from making herself
+objectionable?"
+
+"If you care to leave that to us, I think a way may be found."
+
+"By paying her a sum weekly?" suggested Edward Ambrose.  "And by
+threatening to withdraw it if she doesn't behave herself?"
+
+"I don't think it will be necessary to do that."
+
+However, the young man felt it to be his duty to keep her from the
+gutter, which seemed to be her present destination.
+
+"That is for you to consider," said Mr. Mortimer.  "In my judgment, you
+are under no obligation to provide for her, but if on grounds of
+humanity you wish to do so, let no one dissuade you."
+
+Edward Ambrose agreed.
+
+The upshot of a painful matter was that it was left in Mr. Mortimer's
+hands.  He undertook to deal in such a way with Mrs. Henry Harper that
+there should be no fear of molestation from her.  Also, he would have
+inquiries made into her past history and her present mode of life; and
+if a subsequent reconsideration of the case should make a final appeal
+to the law seem in any wise expedient, then would be the time to invoke
+it.  In the meantime a sum would be paid to her weekly.  Mr. Mortimer
+undertook to send a clerk to the flat in order to collect Henry
+Harper's papers and other belongings.
+
+It was an unhappy state of affairs, but the young man realized that for
+the present it would be the part of wisdom to leave the matter in the
+prudent hands of Mr. Mortimer.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The Sailor found sanctuary at Bury Street until late in the afternoon.
+By that time a member of Mr. Mortimer's staff had retrieved his
+chattels from King John's Mansions; also the admirable Portman had
+returned from his quest "for lodgings, clean and decent, for a single
+man."  Moreover, success had crowned it, as Edward Ambrose had been
+confident that it would.
+
+Portman, it appeared, had found very nice rooms for a single gentleman
+in Brinkworth Street, Chelsea.  They were kept by a friend of his who
+had been butler in the service of the Honorable Lady Price, relict of
+the late Sir O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., a former governor of the
+Bowerman Islands, who had given him an excellent character.  It was
+also fortified by the fact that he had married the cook lately in the
+service of that lady.  Portman was sure that Mr. Harper would find
+everything very comfortable.
+
+Half an hour later, Henry Harper was on his way to Brinkworth Street
+with his few belongings.  Before taking leave of Portman, he presented
+him with half a sovereign.  This was a princely emolument in the eyes
+of the Sailor, but he felt that nothing less could meet the case.
+
+On his arrival at Brinkworth Street, the young man knew at once that he
+would be in good hands.  The air of respectability which hovered round
+his rooms was a little portentous, perhaps, but at least it was in
+welcome and vivid contrast to the cheap and dismal tawdriness of King
+John's Mansions.  Mr. Emerson Paley, the proprietor of No. 14, and Mrs.
+Paley also, had something of Portman's impressiveness.  It was clear
+that they had their own standard of taste and conduct.  Moreover, Henry
+Harper welcomed it.  To him it meant a fixing of social values.  The
+atmosphere of No. 14, Brinkworth Street, was wholly different from that
+which had enveloped any home he had ever known before.
+
+The Sailor found a stimulus in these new surroundings.  Brinkworth
+Street, its outlook and its ideals, was a cosmos he had yet to traverse
+and explore.  Mr. Paley was in his own way surprisingly a gentleman, as
+Mrs. Paley in hers was surprisingly a lady; not, of course, in the way
+that Edward Ambrose and his new friend, Mary Pridmore, were, but still
+they undoubtedly stood for something--a curious, indefinable something
+wholly beyond the _menage_ he had lately left, with its air of
+make-believe refinement which was not refinement at all.
+
+Mr. Paley and also Mrs. Paley treated him with great consideration.
+And it was no second-hand or spurious emotion.  It seemed to be their
+nature to pay respect, they seemed to have a craving to pay it, just as
+a person there was no need to name and that person's friends had a
+craving to be always what they called "pulling your leg."  Not only was
+Mr. Harper treated with deference, but solid comfort, well cooked food
+and punctual attention were lavished upon him, so that for his own part
+he was bound to honor the source whence these blessings sprang.  The
+august shade of the relict of Sir O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., might have
+been a little too much in evidence now and again for the plain and
+unvarnished taste of a sailor, but an ever deepening perception showed
+him that the very things he was inclined to despise and to laugh at--as
+most of the people with whom his life had been passed would undoubtedly
+have done--were of real importance if you were able to look at them
+from the right point of view.
+
+From the moment he invaded its rather oppressively respectable
+precincts, No. 14, Brinkworth Street, by some alchemy of the spirit of
+place, began to work sensibly upon the Sailor.  A rapidly expanding
+life had been in peril of being torn asunder, but Providence, which
+owed him so much, had found him a harbor of refuge.
+
+From the very first evening in his new quarters reconstruction began.
+An air of ordered calm seemed to pervade the carefully laundered pillow
+as he laid his head on it that night.  He was miserably weary, for one
+thing, but his physical state was not alone the cause of his sleeping
+in a way that had not been possible at No. 106, King John's Mansions,
+in all the months he had known it.  Somehow, that sleep in those clean
+sheets, in that well-aired room, seemed to be the prelude to a new
+phase of being.
+
+It was Sunday morning when the Sailor awoke.  The first thing he knew
+was that the noiseless Mr. Paley was in the room, that he had placed a
+tiny tray on a small table at the side of his bed, that he had said, in
+his discreet voice, "Eight o'clock, sir," and that he was now in the
+act of drawing up the blinds and letting in the light of February.
+
+"Do you desire a warm bath or a cold, sir?"
+
+It might have been Portman himself who was asking that considered
+question.
+
+"Cold, please," said the Sailor, rubbing his eyes with a feeling of
+pleasure.
+
+Mr. Paley spread a mat and then produced from a chastely curtained
+recess a large, yellow-painted bath.  Shortly afterwards, he evolved
+two cans of water from outside the bedroom door.
+
+"Your bath is quite ready, sir."
+
+"Thank you.  Much obliged."
+
+The Sailor sprang out of bed.  Yes, it was another new world he had
+entered.
+
+Half an hour later, he had descended to the dining-room, feeling
+perhaps a stronger and more composed man than he had ever been in his
+life.  A well cooked rasher and two poached eggs and crisp toast and
+butter and the best Oxford marmalade awaited him.  He sat near the
+pleasant fire, with his back to the enlarged photograph of the late Sir
+O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., the last portrait taken by Messrs. Barrett
+and Filmer, of Regent Street, and at Brighton, before the country and
+the empire endured its irreparable loss.  He ate steadily for twenty
+minutes by the marble and ormulu clock in the center of the chimney
+piece, presented by the Honorable Lady Price (a daughter of Lord Vesle
+and Voile) in recognition of the faithful and valued service of Miss
+Martha Handcock, on the occasion of her marriage with Mr. Emerson
+Paley.  He also contrived to hold a brief conversation with Mr. Emerson
+Paley in regard to the weather.  In a word, the Sailor's first
+breakfast in Brinkworth Street was a memorable affair.
+
+After his meal, beginning to feel more and more his own man, and with
+this new world of order, of respect for established things, unfolding
+itself around him, he proceeded to unpack the books which the
+surprisingly efficient member of Messrs. Mortimer's staff had collected
+in three large parcels.  He felt a little thrill of delight as he laid
+out carefully each beloved volume on the well polished writing table
+with its green baize top, and then arranged them with precision and
+delicacy on a row of empty shelves that had been freshly papered to
+receive them.
+
+When this had been done and the litter had been carefully removed, the
+Sailor chose the volume which had had the most to say to him of late.
+In fact, it was the book which up till now had meant more to him than
+any other.  Then he sat luxuriously before the fire, bravely determined
+to forget the world he had left and to envisage the new one opening
+around him.
+
+Two hours passed, whose golden flight it was not for him to heed, when
+all at once he was brought to earth.
+
+"Mr. Ambrose," announced Mr. Paley.
+
+"I thought I'd like to see if you had moved in in good shape," said his
+friend, as he entered briskly and cheerfully.  "Sorry I couldn't come
+with you last night, but I should have been hopelessly late for a very
+dull dinner party, which might have made it longer for others.  What
+are you reading?  Milton?"
+
+"It simply takes my head off," said the Sailor.  "I almost want to
+shout and sing.  It's another new world to me."
+
+"We can all envy any man who enters it," said Edward Ambrose, with his
+deep laugh.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Three days later, at the punctual hour of half past four in the
+afternoon, Mr. Henry Harper was at the threshold of No. 50, Queen
+Street, Mayfair.  He had been at pains to array himself as well as a
+limited wardrobe allowed, which meant that neatness had been set above
+fashion.  In spite of all he had been through since his glimpse of
+paradise, the coming of this present hour had been a beacon in his
+mind.  And now as he stood on the doorstep of No. 50, waiting for his
+echoing summons to be heeded, he felt so nervous that he could hardly
+breathe.
+
+The magic portals of the Fairy Princess were drawn back by another Mr.
+Portman, a bland and spreading gentleman who bore himself with the same
+authentic air of chaste magnificence.  He took charge of Mr. Harper's
+coat and hat and then took charge of Mr. Harper himself as though he
+had clearly expected him.  As the young man followed him upstairs to
+the drawing-room his heart beat with a violence wholly absurd.
+
+Mary came forward to greet him as soon as he appeared in the room, her
+eyes alight, her hand outstretched.  It was a reception of pure
+unstudied friendship.
+
+There was only one other person in the large room just then, a lady of
+quiet, slightly formidable dignity, who was enthroned before a massive
+silver tea service on a massive silver tray.
+
+"Mr. Harper--my mother," said Mary.
+
+The young man took the offered hand timidly.  The lady of the silver
+tea service, kindly and smiling though she was, had none of the
+impulsive accessibility of her daughter.  The Sailor knew in a moment
+that she belonged to another order of things altogether.
+
+She was large and handsome, sixty, perhaps, and her finely modeled face
+was framed in an aureole of extremely correct white hair.  Indeed, in
+spite of her smile and an air of genuine kindness, correctness seemed
+to be her predominant feature.  Everything about her was so ordered, so
+exactly right, that she had the rather formal unimaginative look to
+which the whole race of royalties is doomed by the walls of the Royal
+Academy of Arts.
+
+It is not certain that Lady Pridmore felt this to be a hardship.  Mary
+roundly declared that nothing would have induced her mother to part
+with it.  She had often been mistaken for this or that personage, and
+although much teased on the subject by her daughters, it was an open
+secret that such resemblances were precious in her sight.
+
+To this lady's "How do you do?" Mr. Harper responded with incoherency.
+But the watchful Mary, who knew "the effect that mother had on some
+people," promptly came to the young man's aid and helped him out with
+great gallantry and success.
+
+With the laugh peculiarly hers, Mary fixed the sailorman in a chair at
+a strategic distance from her mother, gave him a cup of tea and a
+liberal piece of cake, also thoughtfully provided him with a plate and
+a small table to put it on, because this creature of swift intuitions
+somehow felt that he had not quite got his drawing-room legs at present.
+
+"You have a whole volume of questions to answer presently, Mr. Harper,"
+said Mary, "so take plenty of nourishment, please.  One of the pink is
+recommended.  They've got maraschino."  She took one herself and bit it
+in half with a gusto that rather amazed the young man; somehow he had
+not looked for it in a real Hyde Park lady.
+
+"Mmm--I told you--mmm--Klondyke."  The real Hyde Park lady was speaking
+with her mouth full.  "Klondyke is the black sheep of the family.  My
+mother is simply dying to talk to you about him."
+
+This was not strictly true.  Lady Pridmore was not of the kind that
+simply dies to talk of anything to anybody.  Before she married Sir
+John, she had been a Miss Colthurst, of Suffolk.  At the time of her
+union with that gentleman, then plain Mr. Pridmore, _charge d'affaires_
+at Porocatepetl, and afterwards Her Britannic Majesty's representative
+in several European capitals, her standard of conduct had been rigidly
+fixed.  She had seen much of life since, but nothing had ever caused
+her to modify it.  She was greatly interested in the perennial subject
+of her eldest son, but to her mind, as it would have been to the
+collective mind of the Colthursts of Suffolk from immemorial time, it
+was merely an abuse of language for Mary to state that she was simply
+dying to hear about Klondyke.  She was always _much_ interested,
+nevertheless, in the doings of poor dear Jack.
+
+However, a disappointment was in store for Lady Pridmore.  This rather
+strange looking young man with the shy and embarrassed manner was not
+so communicative on the subject in conversation with her as he had been
+when Mary had met him at dinner.  He had really very little to tell
+her.  For one thing, it was by no means so easy to converse with her as
+it had been with the altogether delightful daughter who knew exactly
+when and how to lend a hand.
+
+The mother of Klondyke had therefore to do most of the talking about
+that unsatisfactory young man.  She certainly did it very well.  That
+is to say, she talked about him in a very even, precise, persistent,
+Hyde-Park-lady tone.  And the Sailor, as he sat listening with awe to a
+conversation in which he did not feel in the least able to bear a part,
+could only marvel that Klondyke had had such a mother as Lady Pridmore
+and that Lady Pridmore had had such a son as Klondyke.
+
+It had always been Lady Pridmore's wish that her eldest son should
+enter his father's profession.  In the first place, he would have had
+Influence to help him, and if there was anything more precious in the
+sight of Lady Pridmore than Influence, it would have been very hard to
+discover it.  Again, he was the offspring of two diplomatic families;
+at least, it was recorded in Burke, where each family's record was set
+out at considerable length and no doubt with reasonable veracity, that
+diplomacy was one of the callings which adorned two supremely honorable
+escutcheons.
+
+In the opinion of Mary, also in that of Silvia, who ought to have been
+back from Mudie's by now, and also, but in a less degree, in the
+opinion of Otto--named after his godfather, a certain Prince Otto von
+Bismarck--who generally got home from the Foreign Office about five,
+their mother exaggerated the importance of the Pridmores of Yorkshire
+and the Colthursts of Suffolk.  No doubt they were two fairly old and
+respectable families; Burke could certainly show cause for setting
+store by them; each family ran to two full pages, fairly bristling with
+peers and baronets and Lady Charlottes and Lady Sophias; and yet, to
+their mother's grief, these three heretics, Mary, Silvia, and Otto,
+generally known as the Prince, took pleasure in developing the theory
+that it was mere Victorianism for Burke or anyone else to flaunt such a
+pride in the Colthursts and the Pridmores.
+
+"Because," said Mary, "it is not as though either family has ever
+produced anybody at all first-rate in anything."
+
+The intrusion of Burke reveals a certain attitude of mind in Lady
+Pridmore.  It was really surprising--three of her progeny always
+maintained it, and a fourth would undoubtedly have done so had he ever
+felt called upon to express an opinion in the matter--that one who had
+seen as much of the world as their mother, who had dined and supped and
+danced and paid calls in the most famous European capitals, who had
+been intimate with Crowned Heads, who had been whirled by them across
+ballrooms, who had the entree to the great world and had cut a very
+decent figure in it, according to the memoirs of the time, should have
+such obsolete ideas in regard to the value of the Colthurst family of
+Suffolk and in slightly modified degree of the Pridmore family of
+Yorkshire.  As Mary said, it was funny.
+
+At present, however, Mr. Henry Harper did not share any such view of
+Lady Pridmore.  She and all that went with her seemed too important to
+be contemplated in the light of levity.  She had a dignity beyond
+anything the Sailor had known or up till then had conceived to be
+possible.  Therefore, it made her relationship to Klondyke a crowning
+wonder.
+
+"I shall always think, Mr. Harper," said Lady Pridmore, "that if they
+had only given Jack his Eleven during his last term at Eton, it would
+have made a great difference in his life.  I don't say he ought to have
+played against Harrow, but I certainly think they might have played him
+against Winchester for his bowling.  Had they done that, I am convinced
+it would have steadied him, and then, no doubt, he would have settled
+down and have followed in the footsteps of his father."
+
+This was the tragedy of Lady Pridmore's life, yet it said much for the
+callousness of youth that Mary, Silvia, and the Prince were unable to
+approach the subject with reverence.
+
+The Sailor kept up his end as well as he could, but his awe of Lady
+Pridmore did not grow less.  Therefore he could do himself no sort of
+justice.  Mary, who had taken him completely under her wing, was always
+on the watch to render well-timed assistance.  She helped him out of
+one or two tight places, and then Silvia came in, with three books in a
+strap.
+
+She was of a type different from Mary's, but Mr. Harper thought she was
+very good to look at.  She had the same air of directness that he liked
+so much in the elder sister.  An amused vivacity made her popular with
+most people, yet behind it was a cool, rather cynical perception of men
+and things.
+
+Mary introduced Mr. Harper, and Silvia shook hands with him in her
+mother's manner, but with an eye of merriment which made quite a comic
+effect.
+
+"I've just come from Mudie's," she said, "where they say everybody is
+reading your book.  It is wonderfully clever of you to have written it.
+Sailors don't write as a rule, do they?  Something better to do, I
+suppose."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Henry Harper.  Somehow he felt already
+that Silvia was disarmingly easy to get on with.  "Myself, I'd rather
+be John Milton than the master of any ship that ever sailed the seas."
+
+"Yes, but that's because you were a sailor before you were a writer,
+isn't it?"
+
+"It's what every writer that's worth his salt has got to be," said the
+young man, quaintly.  "John Milton was a sailor, too.  A master
+mariner."
+
+"Yes, of course," said Silvia.  "I see what you mean."
+
+She had decided already that she very much liked this strange, wistful,
+rather fine-drawn young man.  He was quite different from any other
+young man she had ever met.  Somehow, he was exactly like his book.
+
+"It is odd you should have been on the same ship as my brother."
+
+"Yes," said the Sailor.  "And yet it isn't.  Nothing is really queer if
+you come to think about it.  It seems very much more strange to me that
+I should be in this beautiful room talking to you ladies, than that I
+should have been in the port watch with Klondyke aboard the _Margaret
+Carey_."
+
+"The sea is more familiar to you than London," said Silvia, completely
+disarmed by his naivete, as Mary had been.
+
+Otto now came in.  His general aspect was not unlike Klondyke's, his
+air was frank and manly, yet his bearing was more considered than that
+hero's.  All the same he had a full share of the family charm.
+
+"Otto," said Mary, "this is Mr. Harper, who knows Jack."
+
+"What, you know old Fly-up-the-Creek!  Heaven help you!"
+
+Mr. Harper had already made the discovery that these people had a
+language of their own, which he could only follow with difficulty.  It
+was a language which Madame Sadleir didn't teach, a language that Mr.
+Ambrose didn't use, although he understood it well enough; in fact, it
+was a language he had never heard before, and he somehow felt that Lady
+Pridmore was rather pained by it.
+
+"Mr. Harper," said Mary, "this is our respectable brother.  He is true
+to type."
+
+"For the love of heaven, be quiet!" said Otto, gulping his tea.
+
+"Here's your book on Nietzsche," said Silvia.  "Mr. Harper, what do you
+think of Nietzsche?"
+
+Mr. Harper had never heard of Nietzsche, and he didn't hesitate to say
+so.  Lady Pridmore alone, of the four people present, failed to respect
+his frankness.  To her mind, it was inconceivable that an author by
+profession and one reputed to be successful should not have heard of
+Nietzsche.  It was almost as if he had not heard of Lord Tennyson.
+
+Yet Mary and Silvia and even the Prince honored this candor.  This chap
+was a queer freak in the eyes of the budding diplomatist, but he had
+been told by people who knew about such matters that all writing chaps
+were, if they were at all first rate.  All the same, he liked him.  One
+felt he was straight and decent, in spite of his outlandishness.
+Somehow this quaint bird did not seem to be following the usual line of
+country of the soaring eagles of the moment whom his sisters brought to
+the house from time to time.
+
+The Prince took not unkindly to the sailorman, who had written two very
+curious books about the sea.  They were much overrated, in the Prince's
+opinion.  The style was uncertain, and the colors were laid on too
+thick for anything, but people who knew Ted Ambrose, for instance,
+thought a good deal of them.  Personally, the Prince believed in style.
+Stevenson, for example, wrote like an educated man.  This man's writing
+in its crude force had somehow the air of the lower deck.  Ambrose said
+there was greatness in it, all the same.  Personally, the Prince
+preferred polished mediocrity, and was not ashamed of the fact, not
+that one could call a chap like Stevenson mediocre.  But this man
+Harper lacked something, although it was to his credit to admit that he
+had never heard of Nietzsche.  But obviously he hadn't.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Mary's enthusiasm for the sailorman was shared by Silvia, although not
+perhaps in an equal degree.  Lady Pridmore was inclined to be a little
+distressed by it, in the way that she was inclined to be a little
+distressed by so many things.  The Prince merely thought there was no
+harm in the chap, but that he was a freak.
+
+Edward Ambrose, who had discovered what Lady Pridmore considered this
+rather odd young man, had many questions to answer when next he
+appeared in Queen Street.  As a particular friend of the house, he
+turned the tables by adroitly chaffing Lady Pridmore and the Prince,
+and by ministering gaily to Mary's and Silvia's tempered ecstasies.
+
+In the meantime, the Sailor was indulging little private ecstasies of
+his own.  The visit to a Mayfair drawing-room had marked one more epoch
+in a strange career.  He had entered another new and wonderful world.
+It was a world whose language was a closed book to him at present.
+Perhaps it always would be; at any rate, it seemed to lie out of the
+range even of Madame Sadleir, whose instruction he still courted
+diligently.
+
+It was a world of peculiar grace, of external harmony and beauty.  The
+trained minds marching with the trained movements of these people lent
+the quality of poetry to all they said and did.  And they took what he
+could only call their refinement so much for granted, that they seemed
+almost to apologize for the sheer niceness in which they had so
+completely enveloped themselves.  He had not known that such people
+existed in mass and bulk, at least that they had a corporate life of
+their own.  The glamour they had for him was extraordinary.  It would
+have been impossible to think without a thrill of his friend Miss
+Pridmore, even if she had not been the sister of the immortal Klondyke.
+
+Mary herself found so much in common with the Sailor that she began to
+show him the sights of the town.  She was quite a modern girl in her
+breadth and independence, happily inoculated against every sort of ism,
+but at the same time capable of following any line she marked out for
+herself.  The Sailor had soon begun to interest her very much, and
+instinctively divining something of his handicap, she wished to help
+him all she could.
+
+About a week after the first visit to Queen Street, she led the young
+man to the National Gallery to see the Turners.  They spent a very
+profitable morning holding high communion before them.  His unstudied
+comments seemed to give her a juster view not of art merely, but of
+life as well.  The depth of his intoxication as he stood before these
+seascapes, sensing them, drinking them in, filled her with wonder.
+
+"God!" he muttered once.  She saw his eyes were full of tears, and she
+felt a stab of pity.
+
+Life had not been kind to this man.  A thousand subtle, half
+apprehended things had already told her that.  He had said in his odd
+way, which was yet so poignant, that he "had started a long way behind
+scratch."  Indeed, it was the sight of these very Turners which had
+wrung the admission from him.
+
+After this, they went one day to Manchester Square to see the Wallace
+collection, and to concerts on several Sunday afternoons, but the
+climax of esthetic delight was reached for Henry Harper when one
+evening he was taken to the Opera to hear "Tristan."  Edward Ambrose,
+who it seemed numbered the super-rich among his friends, had been lent
+a box on the grand tier.  And nothing would content him save that
+others should share the blessings which attend acquaintance with
+plutocracy.
+
+The box was able to accommodate six persons, and those whom Edward
+Ambrose lured into honoring it and being honored by it were the three
+ladies, the Prince, Henry Harper, and himself.  Lady Pridmore and the
+Prince were a little bored undoubtedly.  She had the lowest opinion of
+Wagner and thought the Germans overrated generally.  The Prince was
+more discreet in his condemnation, but he certainly thought the Prelude
+was too long.  Edward Ambrose, Mary, and Silvia had heard it so often
+that it was almost ceasing to be an excitement for them: a frame of
+mind, it is said, which connotes the amateur.  As for Mr. Harper, that
+was an ever-memorable night.
+
+From this time on he was in a state of growing ecstasy which threatened
+to become perilous.  Existence was now an enchanted thing.  A veritable
+Fairy Princess had come into his life.  In speech, in manner, in look,
+in deed, she was of royal kin.  In all the Sailor's wanderings, in all
+his imaginings, no mortal woman had assumed the significance of this
+sister of the immortal Klondyke.
+
+O goddess rare and strange!  He was already in her thrall.  She was
+gray-eyed Athena of whom his reading had lately been telling him, she
+was Wisdom herself come to earth in the disciplined splendor of her
+spirit.  Already he was prostrate at the shrine.  It was for Her that
+he had sailed the multitudinous seas, it was for Her that he had
+traversed noisome caverns measureless to man.
+
+Aladdin, with a flash of the wonderful lamp, had shown him a reason for
+many things.  Strange and dreadful burdens had been laid upon him,
+every inch of his endurance had been tested in Fate's crucible, that in
+the end he might win through to a high destiny.  Was it for nothing
+that, shoeless and stockingless, he had cried, "Orrible Crime on the
+Igh Seas," in the slush of a Blackhampton gutter?  Was it for nothing
+that he had looked on the Island of San Pedro?  No; there was purpose
+behind it all.  At the chosen hour the goddess Athena was to appear in
+order that he might be healed with the divine wisdom.
+
+Life was touched to very fine issues for the Sailor now.  And yet so
+swift was the change that he did not realize its peril.  The sister of
+Klondyke meant much to him already.  Sometimes he read his work to her.
+When they discussed it afterwards her comments would reveal a depth of
+knowledge that astonished him, and raised the whole matter of the
+argument to a higher plane.  Many an enchanted talk they had together.
+So miraculously were their minds in tune that it almost seemed they
+must have conversed through unnumbered ages.  Then, too, in the most
+tactful and delicate way, she was his guide amid the elusive paths of
+this new and divine world he was entering.  Yet she asked so little and
+gave so much, such a change was wrought in his life by subtle degrees,
+that he was blind to the terrible danger.
+
+It was in late spring, when they had known each other nearly three
+months, that the Sailor had a first intimation of coming disaster.  By
+that time he had yielded completely to a state of bliss.  Moreover, he
+was now in the thrall of Athena's counterfeit and epitome as imaged by
+other sailormen who had held communings with her.  She had sent to
+Brinkworth Street on three successive Mondays, recking nought of her
+deed, certain magic volumes in which she herself was mirrored by the
+mind of a poet: "Richard Feverel," "Beauchamp," and "The Egoist."  And
+then as he felt the sorcery of Renee, Clara, Lucy, and other
+adumbrations of Athena herself, something happened.
+
+It was merely that she went out of town for a fortnight.  But that
+fortnight was enough to tell the Sailor one tragic thing.  A glamour
+had gone from the earth.  The grass of May was no longer green;
+Chelsea's river was no longer a vindication of Turner; the birds no
+longer sang in Middlesex.
+
+A strange thing had come to pass.  The Sailor had suffered one sea
+change the more.  But at first, had his life depended on it, he could
+not have said what it was.  He only knew that he was losing appetite
+for the magic food on which he had been waxing lately: it was no longer
+possible to devour poetry and wisdom in the way he had done.  Moreover
+his pen no longer flew across the paper.  It took him a whole week to
+do that which he now expected to accomplish in a morning, and then the
+result pleased him so little that he tore it up.  He was bitterly
+disconcerted by this mystery.  But one day, the eighth of her absence,
+the truth came to him, like a ghost in the night.  Life was no longer
+possible without Mary Pridmore.
+
+It was about four o'clock of a morning in June when this fact overtook
+him.  As he lay in bed, facing it as well as he could, it seemed to
+submerge him.  He sprang forth to meet the cold dawn creeping from the
+Thames, flung up the blind and opened the window.  In the grip of the
+old relentless force he turned his eyes to the east.  The faint flecks
+of orange across the river were the gates of paradise, yet the Sailor
+hardly knew whether the sinister gloom beyond was a bank of cloud or
+the trees upon the Island of San Pedro.  In an exaltation of the spirit
+which he had only known once before in his life, he seemed to hear a
+particular name being twittered by the birds in the eaves.  Mary
+Pridmore!  Mary Pridmore!
+
+It was fantastic, it was ridiculous, it was perhaps a form of mania,
+but there was the fact.  And a policeman, passing along Brinkworth
+Street at that moment, seemed to tread out that magic name upon its
+echoing pavement!
+
+She had given him her address: Miss Pridmore, at Greylands, near
+Woking.  He must write, she had said, but not before he had finished
+"The Egoist," and had made up his mind about it; thereby revealing, as
+became a properly conventional Miss Pridmore, that it was not so much
+the sailorman who was of consequence as his opinion on a highly
+technical matter!
+
+In the innocence of his heart he had already written and posted a
+letter.  His views were expressed with a naivete at the opposite pole
+from Box Hill on these high epistolary occasions.  It was not in this
+wise that the mage addressed his own particular goddesses.
+
+No answer had yet come to this letter.  Therefore in the half light of
+dawn he sat down to write a second and more considered one.  Vain
+endeavor!  It was not for the pen of mortal to unlock the heart of the
+true prince, unless the genie willed it.  And this morning, alas, the
+genie was not amenable.  For it suddenly addressed the Sailor, not with
+the voice of a magician, but with rude horse sense.
+
+"Get into bed, you fool," said the genie.  "Cease making an idiot of
+yourself.  Athena is as far beyond you as the stars in their courses
+which have just gone back into heaven."
+
+The Sailor returned to his bed, to dream.  He did his best to be
+rational, but the task was hopeless.  "Mary Pridmore!  Mary Pridmore!"
+twittered the sparrows in the eaves of Chelsea.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+A little after five had struck by the church of St. Clement at the
+bottom of Brinkworth Street, he rose again from his bed.  He flung on
+his clothes, draped a scarf round his neck in lieu of a collar, crept
+downstairs and out of the front door of No. 14 into the streets of the
+metropolis.
+
+This morning there was a coolness in the air.  And as soon as he felt
+it he was able to think more clearly.  A sharp thrill ran through his
+brain.  It was hardly three months since he had roamed the streets of
+London in the morning hours with tumult in his heart.
+
+Since that night he had explored whole continents; hardly anything
+remained of many former worlds he had inhabited; but there was a spear
+in the side of Ulysses, and he must always remember that none could
+pluck it out.
+
+As he reached the bottom of the street and Thames in his majesty smiled
+grimly upon him, he knew that he was in terrible case.  He was no more
+than a frail mortal, caught in the toils of irresistible forces.  What
+hope had such a one of outfacing the decrees of fate?
+
+It was not until he had walked for an hour by the waters of Thames that
+he returned to Brinkwater Street, to breakfast.  A letter with the
+Woking postmark was at the side of his plate.  It said:
+
+
+Greylands.
+  Thursday.
+
+MY DEAR MR. HARPER,
+
+Your view of 'The Egoist' is a new light to me on a most wonderful
+book.  It is not exactly how I see it myself, but I somehow feel you
+are very near the truth.  But when you say that a man such as
+Willoughby is not quite sane there is a point for argument.  You are
+also too severe, I think, in your judgment of the author of his being.
+You say he could never really have known what life is.  There I frankly
+don't agree with you, but of course we look at things so differently,
+and that is the great charm of your long letter.  This is a very stupid
+one, but I won't apologize for it, because it is the best I can write,
+and I shall not have the presumption to try to meet you on your own
+ground.  You have sailed the High Seas, whereas I have only read about
+them.  Looking back on the conversations we have had I see you as a
+master mariner.  This is not an idle compliment.  You have not yet
+gained your full stature, you have yet to declare yourself in your
+power, but believe me you have the strength of a giant, and if such a
+wish is not an impertinence I hope you will have the courage to achieve
+your destiny.
+
+Yours always most sincerely,
+  MARY PRIDMORE.
+
+
+This letter was like a draft of wine to the Sailor.  He read it many
+times before that day was out, but he turned to it again and again long
+after he knew every word by heart.  It gave him a new zest for his
+work.  He had quite a good day with the pen.  Under these high auspices
+he took new courage to go on.  Much was asked of him by this sacred
+intimacy.  By deeds alone could he show himself worthy.
+
+In reply to this letter he wrote a very long one to Miss Pridmore, at
+Greylands, near Woking.  It was not so discreet and carefully
+considered as the one he had intended to write; he let himself go far
+more than he felt he ought to have done.  And the reply he received the
+day before the fortnight was up was similarly expansive and just as
+entrancing as the former one.  But the whole effect was marred by a
+grievous disappointment.  Instead of returning from Greylands on the
+morrow, which was Saturday, she was going to stay another week.
+
+How could he bear the burden of existence for such an intolerable
+length of time without a sight of her?  It was asking more of flesh and
+blood than flesh and blood thought reasonable.
+
+The next day, Saturday, was a time of gloom.  He could not work at all,
+and it was no use making a pretence of it.  But in the evening, sadly
+smoking a pipe after so meager a dinner that Mr. Paley was quite
+disconcerted, there came an inspiration.
+
+Why not pay a visit to Woking on the morrow?  Why not make his way to
+Greylands--wherever Greylands might be--and without revealing an
+unsanctioned presence, gaze upon Athena in all her glory as she came
+out of church, which he knew she attended every Sunday?
+
+The idea at once took possession of him.  And presently it flamed so
+hot in his mind that he borrowed a Bradshaw from Mr. Paley and found,
+as he had surmised, that there was no lack of trains to Woking on the
+morrow.  He decided that the one which arrived at 9.20 would be the
+best for his purpose.  That would give him plenty of time to locate
+Greylands, and ample opportunity, no doubt, to reach it.
+
+Sunday came, a fair June day, and the Sailor, having made an early, but
+in the circumstances surprisingly efficient, breakfast, set forth to
+Waterloo Station.  Such an adventure could receive no sanction from men
+or gods, but after all, reflected Henry Harper as he went his way, no
+possible harm can come of it if I don't let her see me!
+
+The train arrived at Woking only five minutes late, which was really
+not bad for the Sabbath.  Only one porter was to be seen on the
+deserted platform, and he, with the gruffness of a martyr ill resigned,
+had "never heard on it," that is to say, had never heard of Greylands.
+
+This was a rebuff.  The clerk in the booking office, suffering also
+from a sense of injustice, was equally unhelpful.  However, outside the
+station was a solitary flyman in charge of a promiscuous vehicle, and
+he, it seemed, had heard of Greylands, moreover, scenting a fare, knew
+how to get there.
+
+"It's afore you come to Bramshott, just off the Guildford Road.  How
+far?  All out three mile.  But I shan't ask more than four shilling."
+
+The Sailor declined this offer with politeness.  He would have plenty
+of time to walk, which was what he wanted to do.  The flyman, in spite
+of a keen disappointment, received such a sincere and cordial "Good
+morning," that he returned it without discourtesy.
+
+The first thing to enkindle the senses of the Sailor was the smell of
+the fresh country earth.  A very little rain had fallen in the night,
+but enough to renew with a divine cleanliness these wide spaces, these
+open heaths.
+
+The bracken, young and green and a mass of shining crystals, was
+uncurling itself on each side of the road.  The birds were in full
+choir, the trees were near the pomp of midsummer, the sun of June made
+a glory of the distant hills.  It was a noble world.  Long before the
+Sailor came to Greylands he was like a harp strung and touched to
+ecstasy by the implicit hand of nature.
+
+He knew he was speculating on the bare chance of a sight of Athena.
+There was nothing to tell him that she would go that morning to
+Bramshott parish church.  The only guide he had was that she went to
+church at least once every Sunday, and sometimes twice, but whether
+this would involve attendance at the local service must be the part of
+faith to answer.
+
+At any rate, whether he set eyes on her or not, he was trudging to
+Greylands through the bracken in ease of mind and high expansion of
+spirit.  He might not see her, yet he was giving himself the glorious
+opportunity.  It was on the knees of the gods, but already he felt
+stronger, braver, saner, for having put it to the touch.
+
+A little after ten he came to Bramshott village.  It was a small place
+of quaint timber-framed houses, and in the middle was a church.  But it
+all seemed commonplace enough.  There was nothing here to minister to
+an intense emotion; nothing but the sun, the birds, the sky, the
+bracken, the perfumed loveliness of mother earth.
+
+He was not such a fool as to fear his ecstasy.  Come what might he
+would live his hour.  The towers of Greylands, he was told in the
+village, could be seen from the church porch.  There they were, sure
+enough, banked and massive, cutting across the sun with their
+importunate red brick.  This, at any rate, was her local habitation.
+It was his to gaze upon even if no other guerdon rewarded him.
+
+As became a true sailorman, who had sailed six years before the mast,
+he had brought home a pocket of horse sense from his wanderings.
+Therefore, as soon as he had drunk his fill of those flanked towers, he
+went inside the church and found a decrepit pew-opener who was full of
+information.
+
+The service began at eleven.  Reverend Manson was the vicar and also
+the squire of the parish, although Greylands was the rich folk, and
+they always came of a Sunday morning, whatever the weather, if the
+Fambly was at home.  Their name was Ellis, and they were very rich.
+
+Armed with this knowledge, the Sailor decided upon a bold course.  He
+took up a position in a corner of the church some way behind the
+Greylands pew, which had been duly pointed out to him.  Here he sat
+unseen with one solid pillar to conceal him.  But he had taken care
+that in spite of the pillar a clear sight of the Greylands pew should
+be his.
+
+It seemed a long time to eleven.  But it came at last, and with it, or
+rather shortly before it, by the courtesy of the gods, came Mary
+Pridmore.  She entered before the Sailor, counting the seconds in his
+fastness, realized that she was there.
+
+She wore a simple dress of soft gray and a black hat.  But in no
+particular had she abated a whit of her regality.  In that fine outline
+was a quality that made his pulses leap.  As she went down the aisle
+with two white-spatted, ultra-princelike cavaliers, and two ladies,
+older than she, yet in garb more fanciful, the Sailor caught just a
+glimpse of her face.  Yes, this was Athena herself, a creature
+altogether splendid yet restrained, who drew the Sailor's very soul and
+held it, while she knelt on her hassock, with an air of gravest
+submission and dignity.
+
+Suddenly he realized that she was praying.  With a rather irrational
+impulse of shame he fell on his knees.  The knowledge abased him that
+he had neglected this obvious duty, but yet he had the excuse, such as
+it was, that this was the very first time in his life he had entered a
+church.
+
+Hitherto--if the Sailor must face the truth--the whole of his
+intercourse with religious things had been confined to two tea and bun
+fights with addresses to follow, under the aegis of that light of his
+youth, the Reverend Rogers, at the Brookfield Street Mission Hall.
+Therefore he didn't know in the least what to do.  However, let him
+keep his eyes in front of him.  When Athena got up he must get up, when
+she sat down he must sit down.  And kneeling as she kneeled, he
+devoutly hoped that he was rendering homage to the same God as she,
+although with far less whole-hearted allegiance than hers at the moment.
+
+It was hard to know what use to make of the Book of Common Prayer that
+the verger had given him.  He had never opened such a volume before.
+To the best of his recollection one had been lent him at the Brookfield
+Street Mission Hall, but certainly it had not been opened.  It would
+have been no use to do so, seeing that he could not read a word of it
+then.  But he could read it now, and he desired to render thanks for
+that miraculous, that crowning mercy.
+
+The service was long, but to the Sailor it was entrancing.  The
+imperial outline of Athena was ever before him; and yet in despite of
+her he had at least a part of a devout mind to spare for an ancient
+mystery.  Reverend Manson in his dual role of vicar and squire of
+Bramshott was something of a patriarch.  It was a fine face, and to the
+Sailor it was a symbolical presence.  He was simple and sincere, and
+whatever his learning may have been he wore it like a flower.  Somehow,
+Reverend Manson spoke to the heart of the Sailor.  During that
+enchanted hour he followed him into an unknown kingdom.  Yet as he did
+this the young man was thrilled by the thought that he did not journey
+alone.  Athena was with him at every step he took.
+
+The prayers passed and the singing, which affected him strangely; then
+came the sermon, and after that more singing, and then came the verger
+with the collection plate.  The Sailor put in half a sovereign;
+anything but gold seemed a profanation of a most solemn rite.  And then
+he did an immensely wise thing.  He glided swiftly, in the midst of the
+hymn, out of the church, and out of Bramshott village into the lanes of
+Surrey.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+More than one long and golden hour the Sailor wandered through bracken
+and heather.  He didn't know in the least where he was going, and there
+seemed no reason why he should care.  He had a wonderful sense of
+adventure.  Here was something real.  This was the noble and gorgeous
+life to which the streets of Blackhampton, the deck of the _Margaret
+Carey_, the sojourn at King John's Mansions were the dreadful but
+necessary prelude.
+
+After a long beat across country, and away, away he knew not where, he
+struck a path which carried him into a charming village tucked away
+under a hill.  It then occurred to him that he was very hungry.  The
+sign of "The Chequers" in the village street brought the fact home.  At
+this neat hostelry with a roof of thatch he was able to declare himself
+a _bona fide_ traveler, and was rewarded with a noble chunk of bread
+and cheese and a glass of beer, a thin and tepid brew whose only merit
+was the quality of wetness.  But such fare and an hour's rest on a
+wooden bench in a cool parlor with a sanded floor was Elysium.
+
+After that again the road--but only the road in a manner of speaking.
+The Sailor, roaming now the high seas of his desire, was in no mood at
+present for the ordered routes of commerce.  Let it be the open
+country.  Let him be borne across multitudinous seas on the wings of
+fancy.  Therefore, as a bird flies, he struck across the pathless
+heather.  The bracken rose waist high, but wherever it ran he followed
+it, now through the close-grown woods, now across furzy common and open
+spaces.
+
+On and on he wandered all the golden afternoon.  And then quite
+suddenly came evening and an intense weariness which was not made less
+because he didn't know where he was.  He only knew that he was in
+Surrey and very tired.  But, all at once, Providence declared itself in
+an unexpected way.  Straight ahead among the trees was a tiny opening,
+and threading it a hum of telegraph wires.
+
+This could only mean that a main road was at hand.  Quickened to new
+life by such a rare piece of luck he pushed on, thanking his stars.
+Evidently he could not be far from a town or a railway.  As a fact, he
+had struck the Guilford Road, and a hundred yards or so along it the
+friendliest milestone he had ever met assured him that he was three
+miles from the country town of Surrey.
+
+Those three miles, honest turnpike as they were, proved a test of
+endurance.  But they ended at last.  Footsore and limping now, he
+crossed a bridge and entered a railway station where the lamps were lit
+already.  And then Providence really surpassed itself!  The last train
+to London was due in twenty minutes.
+
+The Sailor flung himself down on a seat in the station in a state of
+heavenly fatigue.  It had been such a day as he had never known, and
+his final gracious act of fortune was a fitting climax.  It was true
+the last train to London was twenty minutes late, but it sufficed to
+know that it was surely coming.
+
+Finally it came, and the Sailor entered it.  Moreover, he had the
+carriage to himself, and was able to lie full length on the cushions in
+an orgy of weariness.  He dozed deliciously all the way to Waterloo,
+which he reached at something after eleven.  It was striking midnight
+by St. Clement's Church as he turned the latchkey in the door of No. 14
+Brinkworth Street.  At a quarter past that hour the Sailor was in his
+bed too deeply asleep even to dream of Athena.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+One of Mary Pridmore's first acts upon her return from Greylands was to
+summon the sailorman to dine in Queen Street.  She was a little
+peremptory.  That is to say, she could take no refusal; it seemed that
+a certain Mr. Nixon, a Cabinet Minister, had expressed a wish to meet
+the author of "Dick Smith."
+
+Miss Pridmore was a little excited by this desire on the part of Mr.
+Nixon.  In her opinion, if you were a member of the Cabinet, it was
+important you should be met; yet Henry Harper did not attach as much
+significance to the matter as perhaps he ought to have done.  In fact,
+he was a little vague upon the subject.  He knew that the newspapers
+talked mysteriously about the Cabinet, and abused it fearfully every
+morning with the most devoted and courageous persistency; also he
+remembered that one of Auntie's temporary husbands was said to have
+been a cabinetmaker when he was in work, but neither this fact, nor the
+attitude of the public press, seemed to afford any reason why he must
+in no circumstances disappoint the President of the Board of
+Supererogation.
+
+"Please don't be so cool to the Cabinet, Mr. Harper," Athena pleaded,
+while the young man sought a way out of the impasse.  "When such a man
+as Mr. Nixon asks to meet you, it means that you have _really_ arrived.
+Not that it matters.  You have arrived without any help from Mr. Nixon.
+But he is an old friend of mother's, and he is greatly interested in
+your book."
+
+The Sailor wanted very particularly, but as delicately as he could, to
+escape the ordeal of dining in Queen Street, Mayfair.  Instinct warned
+him that this would prove a different matter from a party in Bury
+Street.  The truth was, he had not been able to overcome an
+unreasonable awe of Lady Pridmore.  Then, too, he had an uneasy feeling
+that he was a little out of his depth with the Prince.  Yet again, Miss
+Silvia, friendly and amusing as she was, gave him a slight sense of
+hidden, invisible barriers which he could never hope to surmount.
+
+Mary, however, would take no denial.  Her mother would be much
+disappointed, and so would Mr. Nixon, and so would Uncle George, who
+had also expressed a desire to be present.  In Lady Pridmore's opinion
+this really "ranged" Mr. Harper, and with such a person as Lady
+Pridmore, that was an operation of the first magnitude, not, of course,
+that her daughter confided that to the Sailor in so many words.
+
+"I am talking nonsense," said Mary, with that sharp turn of frankness
+which the Sailor adored in her.  "If you don't want to meet people,
+there is no reason why you should.  I sometimes feel exactly the same
+myself.  Mr. Nixon is a bore, and Uncle George--well, he's Uncle
+George.  It will be a tiresome evening for you, but Edward is coming
+and Jack Ellis, whom we both like, and his fiancee who is quite
+amusing, and if you really decide to come, I am sure it will please
+mother."
+
+The Sailor saw, however, that it would please Mary.  And that was
+reason enough for him to accept the invitation after all.
+
+When the day came, it was in fear and trembling that he put on his new
+evening clothes, with which he had been provided by Edward Ambrose's
+own tailor.  Upon a delicate hint from his friend, he discarded his
+first suit, which he now realized was a little too crude for a growing
+reputation.  Yet, rather oddly, he could hardly be brought to
+understand that he had such a thing as a reputation.  Indeed, it was
+only in Queen Street, Mayfair, that a reputation seemed to matter.
+
+A dinner party at No. 50 was a serious affair.  He had to begin by
+shaking hands with Lady Pridmore, who looked like a lady from the walls
+of Burlington House.  A week ago he had been with Mary to the Royal
+Academy of Arts.  Then, also, formidable looking strangers abounded.
+Foremost of these was Uncle George.
+
+Uncle George was an elderly admiral retired.  Among the younger members
+of the family he was known as "Old Blunderbore."  His voice, once of
+great use on the quarterdeck, was really a little too much for a
+drawing-room of modest dimensions.  Also, his opinions were many and
+they were unqualified, his stories were long and quite pointless as a
+rule, he was apt to indulge in a kind of ventriloquial entertainment
+when he ate his soup, he drank a goodish deal, and was not always very
+polite to the servants; yet being Uncle George, his sister-in-law
+seemed to feel that he was a person of immense consequence, and he did
+not disguise the fact that he considered her a sensible woman for
+thinking so.
+
+Uncle George seized the hand of the Sailor in marine style, and said,
+in his loud voice, "Good book you wrote, young man.  'Adventures of
+Paul Jones.'  Good book.  Some of it's true, I'm told, and, of course,
+that makes it much better."
+
+At this point, Mary the watchful led the Sailor gently but firmly out
+of the range of Uncle George.
+
+That warrior, baffled of his prey, fell like a sea leopard upon Edward
+Ambrose, who, however, countered him quietly and with frank amusement.
+
+"Never made a bigger mistake in your life, Ambrose, than to compare
+'Paul Jones' with 'Robinson Crusoe.'"
+
+Ambrose did not consider it necessary to point out that he had never
+once mentioned "Paul Jones," and that he was too wise a man ever to
+compare anything with "Robinson Crusoe."  Instead, he laughed the note
+that was quite peculiar to himself, and mildly asked Uncle George what
+he thought of the latest performance of the First Lord of the Admiralty.
+
+In the meantime, the Sailor was having to sustain the shock of a first
+meeting with the President of the Board of Supererogation.  His mentor
+had already described this pillar of the Government as a bore.  But the
+Sailor was not yet sufficiently acquainted with things and men to
+regard the Right Honorable Gregory Nixon with this measure of
+detachment.
+
+The impact, however, of the Front Bench manner was less severe than was
+to have been expected.  The voice of Mr. Nixon was nothing like so
+formidable as his appearance.
+
+"A great pleasure, a great pleasure."  Mr. Nixon had a trick of
+repeating his phrases.  "Pray, how did you come to write it all?
+Angrove thinks"--to the profound and morbid horror of the public press,
+Mr. Angrove at that moment was the Prime Minister of the
+realm--"Angrove thinks..."
+
+Happily, the butler informed his mistress that dinner was served, and
+for a time Mr. Nixon had to postpone what Mr. Angrove thought.
+
+It was only for a time, however, that it was possible to do so.  The
+President of the Board of Supererogation did all his thinking
+vicariously in terms of Mr. Angrove.  But there was just one subject on
+which Mr. Nixon had opinions of his own.  That was the subject of
+divorce, and it may have been for the reason that it was not a cabinet
+matter.  Before the evening was over, it was tolerably certain that the
+President of the Board of Supererogation would identify himself
+publicly and at length with the minority report.
+
+This cheerless fact had to be taken for granted.  Divorce in its
+various aspects was a constant preoccupation of the right honorable
+gentleman.  He had never been married himself, and was never likely to
+be.  Had this not been the case Mr. Gregory Nixon must have felt bound
+to defer to any opinion that Mr. Angrove might or might not have
+expressed upon the matter.
+
+"We are in for it now," whispered Mary to the Sailor, who was eating
+the entree, sweetbreads with white sauce, and wishing he could use a
+knife as well as a fork.  "But it's Uncle George's fault.  He's given
+him a chance with his silly and pointless story, which is a mere
+perversion of a very much better one.  There, what did I say?"
+
+It was tragically true, that Mr. Nixon was already in the saddle.
+
+"If he would only say something sensible!  He is like that character in
+Dickens--but his King Charles's head is the minority report."
+
+Still, this may have been a woman's thrust, because Mary did not happen
+to be an admirer of Mr. Nixon's personality.  Yet he was a very
+agreeable man, and on the subject of divorce he talked extraordinarily
+well, perhaps quite as well as it is possible for any human being to
+talk on such a vexed and complicated subject.
+
+Mr. Nixon knew that, no doubt.  The fact was, that just as one man may
+have a genius for playing chess, another for shooting clay pigeons, a
+third for hitting a golf ball or casting a fly, so this eminent
+politician had a genius for discussing divorce.  He may have felt that
+on that topic no human being could stand against him at a small dinner
+party where the conversation was general.  Lady Pridmore seemed grieved
+when her hero began to expose this flaw in the armor of a Christian
+gentleman, Uncle George became furious and was suddenly rude to the
+butler, Mary and Silvia and the Prince looked the picture of misery,
+and Edward Ambrose came within an ace of choking himself.
+
+All the same, the discussion which followed was of breathless interest
+to one person at that table.  Henry Harper hung on every word of it.
+
+Mary herself was the first to take up the gage of battle.  And she took
+it up gallantly.  She didn't think for a moment that divorce ought to
+be made more easy.  In her opinion, it ought to be made more difficult.
+
+"Why?" asked Mr. Nixon.  He asked no more than that, but there was the
+weight of several royal commissions in the inquiry.
+
+But Mary had the flame of war in her eyes.  She knew what Mr. Nixon's
+opinions were, and she was heartily ashamed of them.  On this subject
+she could make a very good show for herself, because she happened to
+feel strongly upon it.
+
+Mr. Nixon was a latitudinarian.  He would have divorce brought within
+the reach of all classes of the community.  It should be equally
+accessible to the poor and the well-to-do.  He would greatly amplify
+the grounds for obtaining it, and even went the length of affirming
+that the mutual consent of the contracting parties should alone
+suffice.  Moreover, he saw no reason why marriage should not be a
+contract like any other for a period of years.
+
+Mary bluntly considered these were abominable heresies, and several
+other women, not to mention Mr. Ellis and Uncle George, shared her
+opinion.  Even Lady Pridmore, who in her heart was horrified by her
+hero's fall, was moved to remark that it would be impossible to carry
+on society on any such basis.
+
+"Of course it would," said Mary, with a vehemence that was startling.
+"For better for worse, for richer for poorer, that's my view.  I dare
+say it's old-fashioned, but I'm sure it's right."
+
+"There I dissent," said Mr. Nixon.  "It isn't right at all.  Our
+marriage laws are out of date.  They can no longer meet the needs of
+the community.  They are as far behind the twentieth century as a stage
+coach or a two-horse omnibus.  Untold misery and hardship have been
+inflicted upon the population, and it is high time there was practical
+legislation upon the subject."
+
+"Marriage," said Mary, with charming pugnacity, "is the most sacred
+contract into which it is possible for any human being to enter.  And
+if it is not to be binding, I really don't know what contract is or can
+hope to be.  What is your view of the question, Mr. Harper?" she asked,
+suddenly, of the young man at her side.
+
+The Sailor had been listening with an attention almost painful.  But he
+felt quite unequal to taking a part in the argument.  Therefore he
+contented himself with the general statement that it ought to be easier
+to get a divorce than it was at present.
+
+"I am grieved to hear you say that," said Athena, with a note in her
+voice which startled him.  "I know I am rather a fanatic, but I really
+don't see how there can be two opinions upon the matter."
+
+Feeling very unhappy, Henry Harper did not try to contest the point.
+But this was a subject upon which she felt so strongly that she could
+not leave it in such a very unsatisfactory state.
+
+"Those whom God hath joined let no man put asunder," said Athena.  "How
+is it possible to go beyond that!  I would even abolish divorce
+altogether."
+
+The young man felt a sudden chill.
+
+"Suppose a man had been divorced through no fault of his own?" he said
+in a far-away voice.
+
+"I don't think a divorced person ought ever to remarry."
+
+"That might hit some people very hard," said Henry Harper, perhaps
+without a full understanding of the words he used.
+
+"There are bound to be cases in which it would work very cruelly.  One
+realizes that.  But ought it to make a difference?  There must always
+be those who have to be sacrificed for the sake of the community."
+
+Henry Harper appreciated the strength of that argument.  At the moment,
+in the strangeness of his surroundings, he was not able to grapple with
+it.  But he was dimly aware that almost unknown to himself he had come
+to the border of another perilous country.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+As the June night was ablaze with stars Edward Ambrose and the Sailor
+walked some of the way home together.
+
+"I hope you enjoyed yourself," said Ambrose.
+
+Was it possible for a man to do otherwise with gray-eyed Athena sitting
+beside him nearly the whole evening!
+
+"I enjoyed myself very much," said the Sailor simply.
+
+"The Pridmores are very old friends of mine.  An interesting family, I
+always think."
+
+They walked on in silence for a little time, and then the Sailor said
+suddenly:
+
+"Mary seems to have strong ideas about divorce."  As he spoke he felt a
+curious tension.
+
+"Surprisingly so," said Edward Ambrose, in his detached way, "for such
+a modern girl.  Somehow one doesn't quite expect it."
+
+"No," said the Sailor.
+
+"It is the measure of her genuineness."  Edward Ambrose seemed at that
+moment to be addressing his words less to the young man at his side
+than to the stars of heaven.  "But she is very complex to me.  I've
+known her all her life....  I've watched her grow up."  A whimsical
+sigh was certainly addressed to the stars of heaven.  "It is rather
+wonderful to see all that Pridmore and Colthurst crassness and
+narrowness, that has somehow made England great in spite of itself--if
+you know what I mean..."
+
+The Sailor didn't know in the least, but that was of no consequence to
+Edward Ambrose in the expression of his mood.
+
+"... touched to finer issues."
+
+The Sailor knew now, but his companion gave him no chance to say so.
+
+"She's so strong and fine, so independent, so modern!"  Edward Ambrose
+laughed his rare note, yet for some reason it was without gaiety.
+
+The truth was he had long been deeply in love with Mary Pridmore, but
+it was only in certain moments that he realized it.
+
+"I suppose you knew Klondyke?" said the Sailor, wistfully.
+
+"Her brother Jack?  Oh, yes.  He's thrown back to some Viking strain.
+One can hardly imagine his being the brother of Otto and the son of his
+mother or the son of his father."
+
+"I can imagine Mary being the sister of Klondyke," said the Sailor.
+
+"Really!  I never see her at quite that angle myself.  He's a funny
+chap."  Edward Ambrose was really not thinking at all of any mere male
+member of the Pridmore family.  "Might have done well in diplomacy.
+Son of his father.  Ought to have gone far."  Again Edward Ambrose
+loosed his wonderful note, but it had nothing to do with Jack Pridmore.
+"And what does he do?  And yet, the odd thing is he may be right."
+
+"Klondyke's a white man from way back," said the Sailor abruptly.
+
+The phrase was new to Edward Ambrose, who, as became a man with a keen
+literary sense, turned it over in his mind.  And then he suddenly
+remembered that he owed it to his friends, the Pridmores, to be a
+little more guarded in his utterances concerning them.
+
+"Good night, Henry," he said, offering his hand at the corner of
+Albemarle Street.
+
+In the same moment, a human derelict fastened upon the Sailor, who had
+to send him away with the price of a bed before he could return his
+friend's good night.
+
+Thinking their thoughts they went their ways.  Edward Ambrose crossed
+in a black mood to St. James Street.  For a reason he could not explain
+a sudden depression had come upon him.  A sharp sense of life's tragic
+complexity had entered his mind.  In order to correct its dire
+influence he lit a pipe and started to read a manuscript which had come
+to him that morning.  It was called, "A Master Mariner," Book the First.
+
+"Damn it all," he thought a few minutes later.  "There can be no
+possible doubt about that boy.  If he can only put the whole thing
+through in this style, what a book it will be!"
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+In the meantime, the Sailor was walking home to Brinkworth Street,
+distributing largesse.
+
+"Poor, broken mariners," he said, when his pockets were finally empty.
+"Poor marooned sailormen.  I expect all these have seen the Island of
+San Pedro.  I expect some of them are living on it now."
+
+He went to bed, but not to sleep.  He had begun to realize that he was
+getting into very deep waters.  The truth was, he was growing a little
+afraid.  He had been a little afraid ever since that magical Sunday in
+the wilds of Surrey.  And now tonight, as he lay tossing on his pillow,
+a very definite sense of peril was slowly entering into him.  If he was
+not very careful, the tide of affairs would prove too much, and he
+would find himself carried out to sea.
+
+As he lay awake through the small hours, the sinister truth grew clear
+that grim forces were closing upon him again.  His will was in danger
+of being overpowered, if it was not overpowered already.  Mary Pridmore
+had come to mean so much to him that it seemed quite impossible to hold
+life on any terms without her.  Yet it was morbidly weak to admit for a
+single moment anything of the kind.
+
+During the week that followed, Mary and "the sailorman" undertook
+several harmless little excursions.  One afternoon she called for him
+with Silvia in her mother's car and drove by way of Richmond Park to
+Hampton Court.  For the Sailor that was a very memorable day.  He had a
+walk alone in the palace garden with Athena, while Silvia, with a keen
+sense of the fitness of things, paid a call upon some friends of hers
+in what she impudently called the Royal Workhouse.
+
+This enchanted afternoon, Mary and the Sailor didn't talk divorce.
+Many things in earth and heaven they talked about, but that subject was
+not among them.  They scaled the heights together, they roamed the
+mountain places.  She told him that the first book of "A Master
+Mariner," which she had been allowed to read in manuscript, had carried
+her completely away, and she most sincerely hoped that he would be able
+to sustain a soaring eagle flight through the hundreds of pages of the
+two books to follow.
+
+"But you will," she said.  "I am convinced of it.  I have made up my
+mind that you must."
+
+As she spoke the words the look of her amidst a glory of color set his
+soul on fire.  It was as much as he could do to refrain from taking the
+hand of Athena.  He wanted to cry aloud his happiness.  She looked
+every inch of royal kin as thus she stood amid flowers, a high and
+grave wisdom enfolding her.  She was indeed a daughter of the gods,
+tall, slender, virile, an aureole of purest poetry upon her brows that
+only John Milton could have hymned in their serenity.
+
+"Edward Ambrose thinks as I do about it," she said.  "He dined with us
+last night, and afterwards we had a long talk.  I hardly dare tell what
+hopes he has of you.  And, of course, one oughtn't.  But, somehow, I
+can't help it ... I can't help it...."
+
+She spoke to herself rather than to him.  The words fell from her lips
+involuntarily, as if she were in a dream.
+
+"You are so far upon the road that last night Edward and I willed it
+together that you should go to the end of your journey.  We both feel,
+somehow, that you must ... you must ... you must!"
+
+Again the Sailor wanted to cry out as he looked at her.  He thought he
+could see the tears leap to her eyes.  But that may have been because
+they had leaped to his own.
+
+He could not trust himself to speak.  He dare not continue to look at
+her.
+
+"What a life you must have had!"
+
+It was the first time that note had been on the lips of Athena.  The
+sound of it was more than music, it was sorcery.
+
+"You must have had a wonderful life.  And I suppose in some ways..."
+The beautiful voice sank until it could not be heard, and then rose a
+little.  "In some ways, it must have been ... rather terrible."
+
+He did not speak nor did he look at her.  But had he been a strong man
+armed, he would have fled that magician-haunted garden.  He would have
+left her then, he would never have looked on her again.
+
+"... Rather terrible."  In an odd crescendo those words fell again from
+the lips of Athena.  "Edward thinks so.  But it's an impertinence,
+isn't it?  Except that some lives are the property of others ... of the
+race.  You are not offended?"
+
+"No," he said.  And then feeling that it might have the sound of yes,
+he gathered defiantly all that remained of his will.  "My life has not
+been at all like what you and Mr. Ambrose think.  It has been just
+hell."
+
+"That is exactly what we imagined it had been," said Athena, with
+divine simplicity.  "And perhaps that is why"--her eyes were strangely
+magnetic--"Edward and I have willed it that your life to come..."
+
+A surge of wild blood suddenly darkened the wonderful lamp of Aladdin
+in the right-hand corner of his brain.
+
+"... shall be crowned with more than thorns."
+
+She seemed almost to shiver.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said, suddenly applying the curb of a powerful
+will.  "It is impertinence.  But there is always something about this
+old garden which seems to carry one beyond oneself.  It was wrong to
+come."
+
+"Don't say that...."  The Sailor hardly knew that he was speaking.  "We
+are running a risk ... but ... but it's worth it.  Let us sit on that
+seat a minute.  Shall we?"
+
+"Yes, and wait for Silvia."  She was using the curb with a force that
+was almost brutal, as many a Pridmore and many a Colthurst had used it
+before her.
+
+The Sailor was shattered.  But new strength had come to Athena.  All
+the jealous, inherited forces of her being had rallied to the call of
+her distress.
+
+"By the way."  It was not Athena who was speaking now, but Miss
+Pridmore, whose local habitation was Queen Street, Mayfair.  "I nearly
+forgot to tell you"--it was a clear note of gaiety--"a great event has
+happened.  You shall have one guess."
+
+There was not so much as half a guess in the sailorman.
+
+"There's news of Klondyke.  My mother had a letter from him this
+morning.  It's his first word for nearly a year.  He sent a postcard
+from Queenstown to say he will be home tomorrow, and that I must clean
+out of his own particular bedroom.  Whenever he turns up and wherever
+he comes from, I have always to do that at a moment's notice."
+
+"Where's he been this time?" asked the Sailor.
+
+"Round the whole wide world, I believe."
+
+"Working his passage?"
+
+"Very likely.  As soon as he arrives, you will have to come and see
+him.  We are going to keep you as a surprise.  Your meeting will be
+great fun, and you are to promise that Silvia and I will be allowed to
+see it.  And you are to behave as if you were aboard the brigantine
+_Excelsior_--it will always be the brigantine _Excelsior_ to me--and
+greet him in good round terms of the sea.  Now promise, please ... and,
+of course, no one will mind if you swear.  It will hardly be as bad as
+Uncle George in a temper."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+"Here you are."  It was the gay voice of the returning Silvia.  "So
+sorry I've been so long.  But I've had to hunt for you.  One might have
+known you would choose the coolest and quietest spot in the whole
+garden."
+
+As the sailorman was handing them into the car, Silvia said:
+
+"By the way, have you remembered to tell Mr. Harper about Klondyke?"
+
+"Yes, I have," said Mary.
+
+"It will be priceless to see you and Klondyke meet," said Silvia.  "We
+shall not say a word about you.  You are to be kept a secret.  You have
+just got to come and be sprung on him, and then you've got to tell him
+to stand by and go about like the sailormen in Stevenson."
+
+Henry Harper tried very hard to laugh.  It was so clearly expected of
+him.  But he failed rather lamentably.
+
+"I don't suppose he'll remember me," was all he could say.  "It's years
+and years since we met.  I was only half-grown and half-baked in those
+days."
+
+"Of course, he'll remember you," said Silvia, "if you really sailed
+round the world together before the mast.  But you _will_ let us hear
+you talk?  And it must be pure brigantine _Excelsior_, mustn't it,
+Mary?"
+
+"He's already promised."
+
+In the Sailor's opinion, this was not strictly true; at least he had no
+recollection of having gone so far as to make a promise.  He could
+hardly have been such a fool.  Mary, in her enthusiasm, was taking a
+little too much for granted.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, desperately, "but I don't remember having
+said so."
+
+"Oh, but you did, surely, as we sat under the tree."
+
+"No hedging now," said Silvia, with merry severity.  "It will be
+splendid.  And the Prince wants to be in at it."
+
+"I don't think we can have Otto," said Mary.
+
+"But I've promised him, my dear.  It's all arranged.  Mr. Harper is to
+come to dinner.  And not a word is to be said to Klondyke."
+
+"I dare say Mr. Harper won't want to come to dinner?" Mary looked
+quizzically across at the sailorman through the dim light of a car
+interior passing under a Hammersmith archway.  "One dinner per annum
+with the _famille_ Pridmore will be quite enough for him, I expect."
+
+"That cuts off his retreat, anyway," said Silvia.  "And I think, as the
+Prince is going to be there, it will only be fair to have Edward
+Ambrose.  Of course, Mr. Harper, you fully realize what you have to do.
+To begin with, you enter with a nautical roll, give the slack of your
+trousers a hitch, and as soon as you see Klondyke, who, I dare say,
+will be smoking a foul pipe and reading the _Pink Un_, you will strike
+your hand on your knee and shout at the top of your voice, 'What ho, my
+hearty!'"
+
+"How absurd you are!" said Mary, with a rather wry smile.  She had just
+caught the look on the Sailor's face.
+
+"Well, my dear, that's the program, as the Prince and I have arranged
+it."
+
+Henry Harper was literally forced into a promise to dine in Queen
+Street on an appointed day in order to meet Klondyke.  There was really
+no escape.  It would have been an act of sheer ungraciousness to have
+held out.  Besides, when all was said, the Sailor wanted very much to
+see his hero.
+
+Nevertheless, grave searchings of heart awaited him now.  His sane
+moments told him--alas! those in which he could look dispassionately
+upon his predicament seemed to be few--that a wide gulf was fixed
+between these people and himself.  In all essentials they were as wide
+asunder as the poles.  Their place in the scheme of things was fixed,
+they moved in a definite orbit, while at the best of it he was a mere
+adventurer, a waif of the streets whom Klondyke had first taught to
+read and write.
+
+The fact itself was nothing to be ashamed of, he knew that.  It was no
+fault of his that life had never given him a chance.  But a new and
+growing sensitiveness had come upon him, which somehow made that
+knowledge hard to bear.  He did not wish to convey an impression of
+being other than he was, but he knew it would be difficult to meet
+Klondyke now.
+
+This, however, was weakness, and he determined to lay it aside.  Such
+feelings were unworthy of Klondyke and of himself.  The price to be
+paid might be heavy--he somehow knew that far more was at stake than he
+dared think--but let the cost be what it might, he must not be afraid
+to meet his friend.
+
+All too soon, the evening came when he was due at Queen Street.  He
+arrayed himself with a care almost cynical in his new and well cut
+clothes, brushed his hair very thoroughly, and took great pains over
+the set of his tie.  Then giving himself doggedly to a task from which
+there was no escape, he managed to arrive in Queen Street on the stroke
+of the hour of eight.
+
+An atmosphere of veiled amusement seemed to envelop him as soon as he
+entered the drawing-room, but the hero was not there.  The Sailor was
+informed by Silvia in a gay aside that Klondyke always made a practice
+of being absolutely last in any boiled-shirted assembly.  The Prince,
+however, was on the hearthrug, wearing his usual air of calm
+proprietorship, and with an expression of countenance even more
+quizzical than usual.  Edward Ambrose was also there, looking a trifle
+perplexed and a little anxious.  Lady Pridmore in white satin and
+really beautiful black lace had that air of regal composure she was
+never without, but Mary and Silvia were consumed with frank amusement.
+
+"Klondyke is still struggling," said Silvia, "but he won't be long."
+
+It was easy to see that the hero and his boiled shirt were a standing
+jest in the family circle.  He was really a figure of legend.
+Incredible stories were told of him, all of which had the merit of
+being based upon truth.  He would have been a source of pure joy for
+the things he had done could he ever have been forgiven for the things
+he hadn't done.
+
+Dinner had been announced a full five minutes, and a frown was slowly
+submerging the Prince, when Klondyke sauntered in, his hands deep in
+his pockets, looking extremely brown and _soigne_ and altogether
+handsome.  By some miracle he was even better turned out than his
+younger brother.
+
+"Here he is!" cried Silvia.
+
+But the Sailor had no need to be told it was he.  This was a Klondyke
+he had never known and hardly guessed at, but after a long and
+miraculous nine years he was again to grasp his hand.  Somehow, at the
+sight of that gay and handsome face, the room and the people in it
+passed away.  He could only think of Klondyke on the quay at Honolulu
+starting to walk across Asia, and here was his hero brown as a chestnut
+and splendidly fit and cheerful.
+
+Silvia, with a display of facetiousness, introduced Mr. Harper, the
+famous author, while the others, amused yet strangely serious, watched
+their greeting.  The Sailor came forward shyly, once again the ship's
+boy of the _Margaret Carey_.  But in his eyes was a look which the eyes
+of that boy had never known.
+
+The first thing Klondyke did was to take his hands out of his pockets.
+He then stood gazing in sheer astonishment.
+
+"Why ... why, Sailor!"
+
+For the moment, that was all.
+
+The Sailor said nothing, but blind to all things else, stood looking at
+his friend.  It was the old note of the good comrade his ears had
+cherished a long nine years.  Yes, this was Klondyke right enough.
+
+The hero was still gazing at him in sheer astonishment.  He was taking
+him in in detail: the well cut clothes, the air of neatness, order, and
+well-being.  And then a powerful fist had come out square to meet that
+of Henry Harper.  But not a word passed.
+
+It was rather tame, perhaps, for the lookers-on.  It was part of the
+Klondyke tradition never to take him seriously.  An utterly comic
+greeting had been expected between these two who had sailed before the
+mast, a greeting absurdly nautical, immensely grotesque.  It seemed odd
+that there should have been nothing of this kind in it.
+
+Those two commonplace words of Klondyke's were all that passed between
+them--before they went down to dinner, at any rate.  And throughout the
+meal, the eyes of the two sailormen were continually straying to each
+other to the exclusion of everything else.  Somehow, to Henry Harper it
+was like a fantastic dream that he should be seated in Elysium with the
+goddess Athena by his side and the immortal Klondyke looking at him
+continually from the head of the table.
+
+All through dinner, Klondyke was unable to overcome a feeling of
+astonishment that Henry Harper should be sitting there.  He couldn't
+help listening to all that he said, he couldn't help watching all that
+he did.  It was amazing to hear him talk to Mary and his mother about
+books and plays and to watch his bearing, which was that of a man well
+used to dining out.  To be sure, Klondyke was not a close observer, but
+as far as he could see there was not a single mistake in anything
+Sailor said or did, yet nine years ago, when he left him in tears on
+the quay at Honolulu, he was just a waif from the gutter who could
+neither write nor read.
+
+When the women had returned to the drawing-room and Klondyke and Edward
+Ambrose and the Prince sat smoking their cigars, while Henry Harper was
+content with his usual cigarette, it suddenly grew clear to one of the
+four that these two sailormen very much desired to be left together.
+
+"Prince," said Edward Ambrose, "let us go and talk Shakespeare and the
+musical glasses."
+
+As soon as the door had closed Klondyke said: "Now, Sailor, you must
+have a little of this brandy.  No refusal."  He filled two liqueur
+glasses with the fastidious care of one who knew the value of this
+magic potion.  "Sailor"--Klondyke had raised his own glass and was
+looking at him as of old, with eyes that had traversed all the oceans
+of the world as well as all its continents---"I'm very glad to see you
+here."
+
+As soon as the glass touched the lips of Henry Harper, something within
+him seemed to beat thickly, and then an odd sort of phrase began to
+roll through his brain.  Somehow it brought with it all the sights and
+the sounds and the odors of the _Margaret Carey_.  It was a phrase he
+had once heard a Yank make use of in the forecastle of that hell-ship,
+and it was to the effect that Klondyke was a white man from way back.
+
+That was quite true.  Klondyke was a white man from way back.  Not that
+Sailor had ever doubted it for a moment.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+To the disappointment of the drawing-room, Klondyke and the sailorman
+sat a long time together.  They had much to say to one another.
+
+It was Klondyke, however, who did most of the talking.  He had not
+changed in the least, and he was still the hero of old, yet the Sailor
+felt very shy and embarrassed at first.  But after a while, the magic
+of the old intercourse returned, and Henry Harper was able to unlock a
+little of his heart.
+
+"Life is queer," said Klondyke.  "And the more you see of it, the
+queerer it seems.  Take me.  If I had been born you, I'd have been as
+happy as a dead bird swabbing the main deck and shinning up the futtock
+shrouds and hauling in the tops'ls.  And if you had been born me, you'd
+have been as happy as a dead bird going great guns and doing all sorts
+of honor to the family.  I wanted to go into the Navy, but my mother
+and the old governor wouldn't stand for it.  It must be diplomacy,
+because the governor had influence, and I was the eldest son and I
+ought to make use of it.  What a job you would have made of that
+billet!  And how you hated the _Margaret Carey_.  It was hell all the
+time, wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said the Sailor, "just hell."
+
+"Still, it helped you to find yourself."
+
+"Yes--if I was worth finding."
+
+"Of course you were."
+
+"Anyhow, I took the advice you gave me," said the Sailor, with his odd
+simplicity.
+
+"You'd have given it yourself in the end without any help of mine.  But
+it's strange that when I read your book I never guessed that you were
+the author, and that you were writing about our old coffin ship and the
+Old Man and the mate ... what was his name?"
+
+"Mr. Thompson."
+
+"Since deceased, I hear."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"One always felt he was a proper cutthroat."
+
+"I'd not be sitting here now, but for Mr. Thompson.  I'll tell you."
+
+Klondyke's eyes began to shine.
+
+In a few words and very simply, the Sailor told the story of the Island
+of San Pedro.
+
+"I've sometimes thought since," was his conclusion, "that they were
+just guying me, knowing they could frighten me out of my wits."
+
+"Of course they were," said Klondyke.  "That's human nature.  But you
+had rotten luck ever to come to sea.  However, you are in smooth waters
+now.  You'll never have to face the high seas again, my boy."
+
+"I don't know that," said the Sailor, with a sudden sickness of the
+heart.
+
+"No fear.  The wicket's going to roll out plumb.  You are the most
+wonderful chap I have ever met.  Now I suppose we had better join the
+others."
+
+They went upstairs and had a gay reception.
+
+"I wish you would dance a hornpipe or something," said Silvia, "or
+cross talk as they did on the brigantine _Excelsior_, else we shall
+none of us believe that either of you have ever been before the mast at
+all."
+
+"I tell you, Sailor, what we might do," said Klondyke.  "If we can
+remember the words, we might give 'em that old chantey that was always
+so useful round the Horn.  How does it go?"
+
+Klondyke sat down at the piano and began to pick out the notes with one
+finger of each hand.
+
+"'Away for Rio!'  I'll sing the solo, if I can remember it, and you
+sing the chorus, Sailor!"
+
+Such stern protests were raised by those who knew the capacity of
+Klondyke's lung power that very reluctantly he gave up this project,
+yet the very indifferent backing of his shipmate may have carried more
+weight with him than the pressure of public opinion.
+
+When Edward Ambrose and the Sailor had gone their ways and the others
+apparently had gone to bed, Klondyke doffed the coat of civilization in
+favor of a very faded and generally disreputable Ramblers' blazer, lit
+his pipe, and then, in the most comfortable chair he could find, began
+to read again "The Adventures of Dick Smith on the High Seas."
+
+"Yes, he's a wonderful chap," he kept muttering at intervals.  After he
+had been moved to this observation several times, he was interrupted by
+the reappearance of the Prince, who looked uncommonly serious, in an
+elaborate quilted silk smoking jacket that he affected in his
+postprandial hours.
+
+"This chap Harper," suddenly opened the Prince.  "I want to have a word
+with you about him."
+
+The look on the face of the elder and less reputable brother seemed
+pretty clearly to show that this desire was not shared.  But duty had
+to be done, and the Prince seated himself doggedly on the high fender,
+his back to the fire.
+
+"Tell me," he said, "what you know about this chap Harper."
+
+Somehow, Klondyke hardly felt inclined.  For one thing, the slow but
+sure growth of the Foreign Office manner, which he was able to detect
+in his younger brother every time he returned from his wanderings,
+always seemed to rattle him a bit.  Of course Otto was a first-rate
+chap according to his lights; still, Klondyke was the elder, and if
+questions must be asked he did not feel bound to answer them.
+
+A mild but concentrated gaze conveyed as much.
+
+"Ted Ambrose brought him here," said the Prince, with a nice feeling
+for these nuances.  "A good chap, I dare say ... quite a good chap ...
+but..."
+
+The mild gaze was still concentrated, but if possible more limpid.
+
+"... but somehow a little ... Mother thinks so, anyway."
+
+"Oh, yes, I dare say," said Klondyke, with a casualness that rather
+annoyed the Prince.
+
+"Fact is ... I might as well tell you..."  The tone of the Prince
+implied nothing less than a taking of the bull by the horns.  "We all
+think Mary is inclined to ... to..."
+
+With nice deliberation, Klondyke laid "The Adventures of Dick Smith" on
+the hearthrug.
+
+"Mother thinks," said the Prince plaintively, after a pause, "it would
+be better if he didn't come to the house so much."
+
+Klondyke frowned heavily and tapped his pipe on a fire-dog.
+
+"How long's he been coming here?" he asked.
+
+"Some little time now."
+
+Klondyke still frowned.
+
+"Mother thinks," said the plaintive Prince, "that Mary sees far too
+much of him.  And I rather agree with her."
+
+"Why?" asked Klondyke stolidly.
+
+"Why?" repeated his younger brother, looking at him with wary
+amazement.  "Well, to start with, he ain't a gentleman."
+
+Klondyke tapped his pipe again.
+
+"I don't mind telling you," said the Prince, "we all think she is
+making a perfect idiot of herself."
+
+"What's Ted Ambrose think?"
+
+"I've not asked him, but I believe mother has mentioned the matter."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"She thought he seemed a good deal worried."
+
+Klondyke's frown had assumed terrific dimensions.
+
+"She's old enough to take care of herself, anyway," he said, beginning
+abruptly to refill a foul briar from a small tin box that he
+unexpectedly evolved from the pocket of his trousers.
+
+"That's hardly the point, is it?" said the Prince, with a deference he
+didn't feel.
+
+"What is the point?" asked Klondyke, striking a wooden match on the
+sole of his shoe.
+
+"Mother has mentioned the matter to Uncle George, and he thinks the
+chap ought not to come here."
+
+"Oh, that's rot," said Klondyke coolly.  "That's like the old fool."
+
+"I'm afraid I agree ... with Uncle George, I mean ... and so does
+Silvia."
+
+"What's Ted Ambrose think about it?  He generally knows the lie of a
+country."
+
+"He'd give no opinion to mother.  But he was certainly worried."
+
+Klondyke resumed his frown.  He felt rather at sea.  He was, in spite
+of birth and training, a man of primal instincts; he looked at things
+in an elemental way.  Either a man was a good chap or he was not.  If
+he was a good chap, no matter where he may have started from in the
+race of life, he was fitted by nature to marry his sister.  If he was
+not a good chap, no matter what else he was or might be, he didn't
+count anyway.
+
+"You see"--the plaintive voice of the Prince broke in upon Klondyke's
+unsubtle analysis of the situation--"no one knows anything about him.
+Ambrose sprang him on us from nowhere, as you might say.  Of course,
+he's a man with a sort of reputation ... in his own line ... but he's
+not one of us ... and it wouldn't have so much mattered if he had been
+a gentleman."
+
+"There I don't altogether agree," said Klondyke with conviction, but
+without vehemence.  "I always think with Ted Ambrose on that point.
+Gentlemen are not made.  They are born, like poets and cricketers."
+
+"That's rot," said the Prince, with a sudden deepening of his tone of
+courtesy which made it seem excessive.  "You are mixing, I
+think--aren't you--two entirely different things?"
+
+"No, I don't think so," said Klondyke.  "Harper is not a chap who would
+ever go back on a pal, and that's all that matters."
+
+The Prince suddenly became so deeply angry that he decided to go to bed
+at once, and accordingly did so.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+For a number of people there followed anxious days.  Mary's friends
+made no secret of their belief that she was losing her head.  They were
+much troubled.  She was a universal favorite, one of those charming
+people who seem to have an almost poetic faculty of common sense.  But
+she was thought to be far too wise ever to be carried away by anything.
+
+The Pridmores, at heart, were conventional.  They were abreast of the
+times, were lively and intelligent, and could be at ease in Bohemia,
+but up till now Bohemia had known the deference due to Queen Street,
+Mayfair.
+
+Lady Pridmore had always thought--and Silvia, Uncle George, and the
+Prince had agreed with her--that Mary was predestined for Edward
+Ambrose.  For one thing, Edward, when his father died, would be very
+well off--not that the Pridmores were in the least mercenary.  They
+simply knew what money means to such a being as man in such a world as
+the present.  Then Edward was liked by them all.  It had long been a
+mystery why Mary had not married him.  He was always her faithful
+cavalier, and a rather exceptional man.  And now she had suddenly gone
+off at half cock, as Uncle George expressed it.
+
+During this period, tribulation was rife at other places also.  Edward
+Ambrose was in no enviable frame of mind.  The woman he loved and the
+friend he served were cutting deeply into his life.  But of one thing
+he was convinced--neither of them realized their danger.
+
+He was a sufficient judge of his kind to know that Henry Harper was not
+a man willfully to practice deceit.  Ambrose was aware of the skeleton
+in the cupboard.  It was ever present to his mind.  And his position
+was rendered painfully difficult by the fact that he was under a pledge
+not to reveal it.  The root of the matter, as far as Harper was
+concerned, was that his inexperience of the world might cause him to
+drift into a relationship which he did not intend and could not foresee.
+
+Ambrose was tormented by a desire to tell Mary Pridmore all he knew.
+Surely it was his duty.  Her ignorance of certain facts, which Harper
+most unwisely withheld, was a very real and grave danger.  Ambrose
+realized how quickly such a woman, almost unknown to herself, could
+sweep a man off his feet.  He also felt that Henry Harper, with his
+atmosphere of mystery, and his remarkable powers which needed the help
+of a strong and stable intelligence, might make an irresistible appeal
+to a girl like Mary Pridmore.
+
+Ambrose felt that he alone knew the peril which beset his friends.  Yet
+he could not warn one without treason to the other.  His regard for
+both seemed to preclude all interference.  He had a sincere affection
+for a brave-spirited man; for Mary he had long cherished something more
+than affection; yet in circumstances such as these an untimely word
+might do mischief untold.
+
+For the present, therefore, he had better remain silent.  In the
+meantime, the Sailor had descended once more into the pit.  He had been
+cast again, by that grim destiny which had never failed to dog him from
+the outset of his life, into the vortex of overmastering forces.  He
+felt the time was near when without the help of Mary Pridmore he could
+not keep on.
+
+One day, worn out with anxiety, he called at Spring Gardens and had an
+interview with Mr. Daniel Mortimer.  That gentleman could give little
+solace.  The woman drew her allowance every week.  There was reason to
+believe that she had bad bouts of drinking, but Mr. Mortimer was still
+unable to advise a petition for divorce.  The whole matter was full of
+difficulty, there was the question of expense, also it would be wise
+not to ignore the consequences to a rising reputation.
+
+Henry Harper felt the force of this reasoning.  It was no use
+attempting to gainsay the view of an expert in the law.  Moreover, he
+had a clear knowledge of Mary's opinion on the subject of divorce.  In
+any event she would never consent to marry him.
+
+The young man took leave of the kindly and wise Mr. Mortimer, and with
+despair in his heart walked slowly back to Brinkworth Street.  Every
+yard of the way he wondered what he should do now.  He felt like an
+animal caught in a trap.  For more than a week he had not been able to
+think of his work.
+
+He had not seen Mary for some days.  He was trying to keep her out of
+his thoughts.  But the more he denied himself the sight of her, the
+less power he had to fight the demon in whose grip he was now held.  He
+was unable to work, he slept little, he had no appetite for food; for
+the most part, he could only walk up and down this wonderful and
+terrible city of London which had now begun to appall him.
+
+He had outgrown his present strength.  And, as only a woman can, she
+realized where and how she might help him.  This deep-sea mariner
+should not call to her in vain.  Athena, in her high maternal sanity,
+was ready to yield all.
+
+Three days ago, when he had seen her last, and had sat with her in the
+shade of the park, her eyes, her voice had told him that.  They had
+told him that, even when it had not been his to ask.  It was this
+implicit declaration which had so gravely frightened him.  The truth
+struck home that he was not treading the path of honor.
+
+By the time he had returned to Brinkworth Street, he knew the necessity
+of a definite course of action.  It was madness to go on in their
+present way.  They had come to mean too much to each other; besides, a
+perception keenly sensitive had told him that her friends were
+beginning to regard him with a tacit hostility.  It had not found
+expression in word or deed; he was always received with kindness; but
+except on the part of Klondyke, there was no real warmth of sympathy.
+
+Circumstances had placed him in a terribly false position, and he must
+be man enough to break his fetters.  He knew that there was still one
+way of doing that.  The course was extreme, but honor demanded it.
+
+He had been invited to tea the next day at the house of a friend they
+had in common.  It was to be a large party, and he knew that if he
+carried out his original intention of going, he would see Mary and no
+doubt have a chance of talking to her.  Much painful reflection that
+evening finally decided him.  He would go prepared to tell everything.
+It must be their last meeting, for she would surely see how hopeless
+was the intimacy into which they had drifted.
+
+Having quite definitely made up his mind, he was able to snatch a
+little more sleep that night than for some weeks past.  Moreover, he
+got up the next day with his resolution strong upon him.  Let the cost
+be what it might, he must accept a bitter and humiliating situation.
+
+At half past four that afternoon he was one of many more or less
+distinguished persons filling the spacious rooms of a house in a
+fashionable square.  The hostess, a quick-witted adroit woman, was very
+much a friend of both.  She had a real regard for Mary, also a genuine
+weakness for a man of genius.
+
+Athena was there already when the Sailor arrived.  And as she sat on a
+distant sofa, nursing her teacup, with several members of her court
+around her, the young man was struck yet again, as he always was, by
+her look of vital power.  She had in a very high degree that curious
+air of distinction which comes of an old race and seems to strike from
+a distance.  The features were neither decisive nor regular, but the
+modeling of the whole face and the poise of the head no artist could
+see without desiring to render on canvas.
+
+The Sailor had to steel his will.  The thought was almost intolerable
+that at one blow he was about to sever his friendship with her.  She
+was so strong and fine, she was a sacred part of his life, she was the
+key of those central forces that now seemed bent on his destruction.
+
+Presently, amid the slow eddy of an ever changing crowd they came
+together.  Her greeting was of a peculiarly simple friendliness.  She
+seemed grave, with something almost beyond gravity.  There was a shadow
+upon a face that hardly seemed to have known one in all its years of
+shelter and security.
+
+"Is there anywhere we can talk?" he managed to say after a little while.
+
+She rose from her sofa with the decision he had always lacked.
+
+"Let us try the library," she said.
+
+And with the assured skill of an experienced navigator of social
+waters, she led him there and found it empty.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Henry Harper's decision had been taken finally.  But as soon as he
+entered this large and dull room, he felt the chill of its emptiness in
+an almost symbolical way.  It was what his whole life was going to be,
+and the thought nearly wrung a groan out of him.
+
+She was puzzled by a certain oddness in his manner, a feeling which of
+late had been growing upon her.  It was hard to understand.  She knew
+his need of help, his craving for it, yet now the time had come when he
+had only to ask in order to receive it he seemed at the mercy of a
+painful indecision which had the power to wound.
+
+Here and now a subtle withdrawal of the highest part of himself seemed
+more than ever apparent.  It was even in his face this afternoon, in
+the wonderful face of Ulysses that had all the oceans of the world in
+it.  What did it portend?  Was it that he was afraid?
+
+What had he to fear?  How could such a person as herself repel him?
+She had all to give if only he would demand it of her.
+
+Of that he must be aware.  The haunted eyes of the sailorman too
+clearly proclaimed his knowledge.
+
+"How is 'A Master Mariner'?" she asked, in order to end the silence
+which had intervened as soon as they entered the room.
+
+"It doesn't get on," he said, in a voice that did not seem to be his
+own.
+
+"I'm very sorry."  The deep note was sincerity itself.
+
+"I don't know why," said the Sailor, "but it's too much for me now."
+
+"Of course, it is all immensely difficult.  The latter part
+particularly.  Somehow, one always felt it would be."
+
+"It's not that," said the Sailor.  "Not the difficulty, I mean.  That
+was always there, and I was never afraid of it.  But I think I am
+losing grip."
+
+She looked at him, a little disquieted.  There was a note in his voice
+she heard then for the first time.
+
+"That must not be," she said.  "There's no reason for it."
+
+"Ah, you don't know.  I begin to feel now that I'll never be able to
+put it through."
+
+"Why should you feel that?  What reason can you have, a man of your
+wonderful powers, a man with all his life before him?"
+
+"I just haven't the strength," he said in his quaint speech, "and
+that's all there is to it."
+
+To her surprise, to her horror almost, he suddenly covered his face
+with his hands.  Somehow, the sight of a weakness so palpable in a
+thing so strong and fine was unnerving.
+
+"I'll never be able to put it through by myself."
+
+As she stood facing him, she felt the truth of that.
+
+"Is it necessary?"  The words seemed to shape themselves in despite of
+her.
+
+"Yes."  Involuntarily, he drew away from her.  A sure feminine instinct
+waited for the words that should follow.  She read in those strange
+eyes that he must now speak.  She could almost feel, as she stood so
+near him, a slow and grim gathering of the will.  She could almost hear
+the surge of speech to his lips.  But no words came, and the moment
+passed.
+
+Now that he had to strike the knife into his heart, it could not be
+done.  It was not cowardice, it was not a failure of the will, it was
+not even a momentary weakness of the soul.  He was in the grip of
+ineluctable forces, of a power beyond himself.  As he stood not three
+yards from her with the table supporting him, his whole nature seemed
+wrenched and shaken to the roots of being.
+
+She couldn't help pitying him profoundly.  There was something that had
+crept into his eyes which harrowed her.  Poor mariner!  For the first
+time in her life, she felt a curious sudden tightening of the throat.
+She could have shrieked, almost, at the sight of this tragic pain it
+was not to be hers to ease.
+
+A moment later, she had regained control.
+
+"You must keep on," said Athena.  "You must keep on."
+
+But he knew that he was down, and that the ineluctable forces were
+killing him.
+
+She may have known it, too.  No longer able to bear the look upon his
+face, she drew back, an intense pity striking her.
+
+Was she upon the verge of some great tragedy?  She did not dare to
+frame the question.
+
+"Mary." ... She awoke to the sound of the Sailor's voice and of her own
+name on his lips....  "I've made up my mind to--to go away for a bit."
+
+In the midst of these throes, an inspiration had come to him.  It was
+no more than a miserable subterfuge, but it was all he could do.
+
+"I somehow feel I'm on the rocks.  I think I'll go a voyage.  I'm
+losing myself.  I'll perhaps be able to..."
+
+A stifling sense of pity kept her silent.
+
+"... to persuade Klondyke to come along with me."
+
+"I wish I could have helped you."  The words were wrung from her.
+
+"You can't," he said, and he spoke with a gust of passion as one half
+maddened.  "No one can help me."
+
+She saw his wildness, and somehow her strength went out to him.
+
+"You can't think what I've been through," he said, with something worse
+than rage entering his voice.
+
+She knew she couldn't even guess, and was too wise to try.  But again
+she was hurt by the sight of a suffering it could never be hers to heal.
+
+"Henry," she said, "I would like you always to feel and always to
+remember that whatever happens to you, and wherever you are, I am your
+friend, if only I may be."
+
+To this high and rare simplicity of Athena the goddess, he could make
+no response.
+
+"And now I must go," she said, gathering the whole force of her
+resolution.
+
+"Suppose I walk with you a little of the way?" he said.
+
+She almost guessed that he meant it for their last stroll together.
+
+It was a long step from the scene of the tea party to Mary's door, but
+no finer evening for a walk could have been desired.  Neither knew why
+they chose to take it.  For both it was a mere prolongation of misery.
+Perhaps it was that he still hoped, against hope itself, for the moment
+to return in which it would be possible to tell the secret that locked
+his lips.
+
+Humiliated as he was, there may still have been that thought in his
+mind.  But it was vain in any case.  There could be no real intention
+now of telling her.  By the time they had crossed the park, he had cast
+it entirely away.  And now they fell to talking of other matters.
+
+Unwilling to let her go, cleaving to her in his weakness to the very
+last second of the very last hour, he persuaded her to sit a few
+minutes on an empty bench under the trees ... under the trees within
+whose shade he had sat when he had seen her first.  And there he had
+from her lips a definite expression of her faith.
+
+It was with that they parted--finally, as he believed.  He dared not
+put it to himself in a way so explicit, it was not a thing he could
+face in such bare, set terms, but in his brain the Aladdin's lamp was
+burning fitfully, and it was this that flashed the cruel light of truth.
+
+"... If ever you want help!"
+
+Those were the words of their parting, as the pressure of his fingers
+met the last touch of hers.  And then she was gone, and he was gone ...
+and then a bleak, dull blindness came over him and he knew that more
+than life had gone with her.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+A rudderless ship in mid-ocean, he wandered long and aimlessly about
+the byways of the city.  It was past midnight when he found himself
+back in Brinkworth Street.  Without taking off his clothes, he flung
+himself face down on his bed.
+
+After a while, he tried very hard to pull himself together.  He must be
+a man, that was the whole substance of his thoughts.  As ever, he knew
+that to be his simple duty.  Throughout his overdriven life, he had
+always had to tell himself, and other people had always made a point of
+telling him, to be a man.  Auntie had been the first to ask it of him
+when she had dragged him upstairs and tied him to the bed.  "Enry
+Arper"--he had heard that shrill snigger above the roar of
+Knightsbridge--"what I shall do to you is going to hurt, but you must
+be a man and bear it."  A jolly looking policeman had told him to be a
+man at the police station.  Mr. Thompson had told him to be a man the
+night he carried him to sea.  The Old Man had given him equally sound
+advice when he had gravely told him of the Island of San Pedro.
+
+All his life, it seemed, he had not lacked good advice, and hell only
+knew he had always done his best to follow it.  But as now he lay on
+his bed in Brinkworth Street in a cold summer dawn, he felt that he was
+done.
+
+The plain fact was he was coming to believe that he had not had a
+square deal.  Life was tolerable for some, no doubt; for people like
+the Pridmores, for instance, and his friend Edward Ambrose--he was not
+envying them meanly, nor was he merely pitying himself--for those who
+had been born right, who had had a fair start, who had been given a
+reasonably plumb wicket to play on, as Klondyke expressed it.  But for
+gutter breeds such as himself, there was not one chance in a million of
+ever winning through.  He had done all it was possible for a man to do,
+and now with a feeling of more than impotence, he realized that he was
+out.
+
+He had learned a trick of praying this last year or two, but in this
+cold summer dawn he had no longer a use for it.  What was the good?
+Somebody--it was not for him to say Who--had not played fair.  Henry
+Harper, you must be a man and bear it!  A sudden gust of rage swept
+through him as he lay.  The voice of Auntie was coming back to him out
+of the years.  And she was exhorting him to an inhuman stoicism in
+order that she might serve her private ends.
+
+Some time between six and seven, in a state of awful dejection, he
+undressed and got into bed.  He did not want Mr. Paley to find him like
+that when he brought the water for his bath at eight o'clock.  It would
+not be right to wound the feelings of a good man.  But if Henry Harper
+had had the courage to take a razor, well....  Mr. Paley would not have
+found him in bed.  Since that night on the railway, now many years ago,
+he had lost the nerve for anything of that kind.  He had always thought
+that on that night something had snapped in the center of himself.
+
+At eight o'clock, when the punctual Mr. Paley came with the water can,
+Henry Harper told him that he was not going to get up at present, and
+that he would not be in need of breakfast.
+
+"Aren't you well, sir?" asked Mr. Paley, in his discreet voice.
+
+"No, I'm not very well."
+
+"I'm sorry, sir."  Mr. Paley had the gift of expressing true sympathy
+in his tone and bearing.  "You have been a little run down some days
+now, have you not, sir?"
+
+"Longer than that," said the Sailor.  "Ever since I've been born, I've
+been a poor sort of brute."
+
+"Robust health is an untold blessing.  I'm glad to say I've always
+enjoyed it myself, and so has Mrs. Paley.  Would you like to see a
+doctor, sir?  I'll go along at once to Dr. Gibb at the end of the
+street."
+
+"A doctor is no use for my complaint."
+
+Mr. Paley was grieved, but he wisely withdrew without further comment.
+
+The Sailor turned his face to the wall with a vague sort of prayer that
+he might be allowed to die.  But it was not to heaven; the deadly
+pressure of events had forced him in spite of a lifetime's hard and
+bitter fighting to accept Mr. Thompson's theory.  The troll of Auntie,
+who was exuding gin and wickedness around his pillow, had been now
+reinforced by the mate of the _Margaret Carey_.
+
+A pleasant pair they made, these trolls from his youth.  And there were
+others.  If only that delicate spring had not snapped, he must have
+jumped out of bed and settled the business out of hand.  "Be a man,"
+said the voice of Auntie.  "There's the case on the dressing table
+straight before your eyes.  Be a man, Enry Arper, and set about it."
+
+Auntie was right.  He got out of bed.  He took up the case and stood an
+instant holding it in his hand.
+
+"Lay holt on it, bye."  That was Mr. Thompson's gruff tone, and it was
+followed immediately by Auntie's shrill and peculiar snigger.
+
+There was one other thing, however, on the dressing table: a
+comfortable, green-backed edition of the "Poems of John Milton."  The
+Sailor didn't know why, but he took up the now familiar volume with his
+unoccupied hand.  It may have been mere blind chance, it may have been
+one last cunning effort on the part of the genie, for by some means the
+book came open at a certain place in the middle.  Suddenly the brown
+case fell to the carpet with a thud.
+
+In spite of the trolls besieging him, the Sailor crept back to his bed
+with the book in his hands.  What wonderful, wonderful worlds were
+these!  And he was little more than twenty-eight.  And the sun of
+Brinkworth Street had entered his chamber to tell him that this was a
+gorgeous morning of midsummer.
+
+The battle was not over yet, however.  Auntie and Mr. Thompson in the
+hour of their necessity had summoned to their aid the Old Man and Cora
+Dobbs.  It was now all hell let loose.
+
+"Chuck it, ducky."  It was Cora's voice now.  "You are not a man, you
+know, and never will be.  You are no use, anyway.  Get out of your
+little bed, now, and cut off the gas at the meter."
+
+Time went on, but he made no attempt to reckon how much of it.  He was
+too fiercely occupied in fighting the damned.  Once or twice it seemed
+that they must surely down him.  Their insane laughter hovered round
+his pillow continually, even in the broad light of a very glorious day.
+Sooner or later, he feared, there could only be one end to it all.
+John Milton or no John Milton, they almost had him out of bed again,
+when Mr. Paley came quite unexpectedly into the room.
+
+"Mr. Pridmore, sir, has called.  Shall I ask him up?"
+
+Klondyke, however, had come up without waiting to be invited.
+
+"Mary told me you were a bit below the weather," he said, "so I thought
+I'd come and see you.  What's the matter?"
+
+The Sailor could not answer the question.  He could only gaze with wild
+eyes at his friend.
+
+"You've been working too hard, I expect," said Klondyke, looking at him
+shrewdly.  "Overdriving the buzz-box, my boy, with this new book that
+Ted Ambrose thinks is going to be great.  You'll have to have rest and
+a change."
+
+Klondyke perched on the edge of the bed, as if it had been Sailor's
+bunk in the half-deck of the _Margaret Carey_.
+
+"Mary said you talked of going away for a bit, and she thought you
+might like me to come with you.  Now what do you say to a little trip
+as far as Frisco, for the sake of old times?  You can put me down
+there.  I'm just beginning to feel, after a month here, that I shall be
+none the worse for another trek to Nowhere and back.  And then you can
+come home by the next boat and finish your job, or go on a bit further
+round the coast, if you fancy it.  What do you say, old friend?"
+
+The Sailor, supine in his bed, was unable to say anything.  But the
+trolls had no use for Klondyke.  Hissing and snarling they had flown
+already to distant corners of the room.
+
+"Shall we fix that?  I'll go now to Cockspur Street and see if I can
+book a couple of saloon berths for tomorrow--there's a boat for Frisco
+most Wednesdays, and you are not up to roughing it at present.
+Besides, there's no reason why you should.  Now, Sailor, what do you
+say?"
+
+In spite of all the trolls there were in the universe, Klondyke was
+still Klondyke, it seemed.  Perhaps he alone could have conquered them.
+
+"That fixes it," he said.  "Just get your gear together.  You won't
+want much.  And mine's ready any time.  I'll go along at once, and come
+back and report."
+
+Two minutes later, Klondyke was away on his errand, only too happy at
+the prospect of being in harness again.
+
+For the time being, the trolls were overthrown.  The battle was not yet
+won, but a staunch friend had given the Sailor new fighting power.  He
+was by no means his own man; he felt he never could be again; all the
+same, when Klondyke returned about an hour later with the news that he
+had been able to secure two berths for the following day, Henry Harper
+was dressed, he was bathed and shaved, he was clothed in his right mind
+more or less.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+On the following night, the Sailor put once more to sea.  But it was
+very different faring from any he had known before.  A craft of this
+kind was another new world to him.  Indeed, so little did it resemble
+the _Margaret Carey_, that it was hard to realize at first that he was
+once more ocean bound.  Even the tang of salt in the air and the wash
+of the waves against the sides of the great ship were scarcely enough
+to assure him that he was again afloat.
+
+It was the presence of Klondyke which really convinced him.
+
+"I never thought we should come to this," said his friend as they
+lingered in boiled shirts over an excellent dinner and a band the
+second day out.  "It's better than having to turn out on deck at eight
+bells with your oilskins soaked and the nose of the Horn in front of
+you.  You think so, Sailor, I know."
+
+Henry Harper confessed that he did.
+
+"How you stuck it all those years, I can't think," said Klondyke.  "How
+any chap sticks it who doesn't really take to the sea passes me.  But
+you were always a nailer for keeping on keeping on."
+
+The case might be even as Klondyke said, but the Sailor had about
+reached his limit.
+
+Klondyke himself, who was not a close observer, was struck by the
+change.  He couldn't quite make him out.  In his peculiar way, he had a
+great regard for the Sailor.  He considered him to be a white man all
+through; and knowing so much of the facts of his life, he felt his grit
+was quite extraordinary.  But now it had begun to seem that this
+gallant fighter was losing tenacity.  There was something about him
+which suggested a boxer who has been knocked to the boards, who is
+trying to rise before he is counted out and sickly realizes that he
+can't.
+
+What had happened?  It was clear that he had had an awful facer.  How
+had he come by it?  Klondyke belonged to a type which strictly
+preferred its own business to that of anyone else, but it was
+impossible not to ask these questions, knowing as much of Henry Harper
+as he did.
+
+Was Mary the cause?  Had the blow been dealt by her?  Somehow, he did
+not think that could be the case.  And yet there was a doubt in his
+mind.  He knew, at least, that Mary was fearfully upset.  It was she
+who had come to him with a particular look in her eyes and had proposed
+a voyage for the Sailor on the plea that he had been working too hard.
+That certainly did not suggest any unkindness on her part.  All the
+same, he knew that his family strongly disapproved of her intimacy with
+Henry Harper.
+
+Putting two and two together, he was half inclined to believe that the
+Sailor had proposed to Mary, and that against her own wish she had
+refused him.  But even that hypothesis did not account for the morbid
+and rudderless state he was in now.
+
+Nevertheless, the Sailor had still a little fight left in him.  About
+the third or fourth day out, he had begun to make an effort to pull
+himself together, and then it became clear that the voyage was doing
+him good.  In a week he was a new man.  He was still deeply mysterious,
+he was not keen and alert as he used to be, but to the unsubtle mind of
+Klondyke that implied a case of overwork.
+
+Indeed, as far as he was concerned, that must always be the primary
+fact in regard to the Sailor.  How the chap must have sapped in the
+nine years since last they had put to sea.  It was almost incredible
+that a man who had made a reputation with his pen, who in speech and
+bearing could pass muster anywhere, should have been picked out of the
+gutter unable to write his own name, and set aboard the _Margaret
+Carey_.
+
+Yes, this chap had enormous fighting power.  There was not one man in a
+million who could have overcome such a start as that.  It would be a
+tragic pity if he went under just as he was coming into his own.
+
+When they reached Frisco the Sailor was so much more himself that
+Klondyke, who at one time had been disinclined to leave him, felt that
+now he might do so without any fear for his safety.  In every way he
+seemed very much better.  He was brighter, less silent.  There was
+still a mysterious something about him which he could not account for,
+but he felt the worst was past and that there was no reason why Henry
+Harper should not go home alone.
+
+Therefore, when they came to Frisco, Klondyke carried out his plan of
+trekking to nowhere and back, where boiled shirts would cease to
+trouble him, and where, with a rifle and a few cartridges, and one or
+two odds and ends in a makeshift carry-all which had accompanied him to
+the uttermost places of the earth, he would really feel that he was
+alive.  He invited the Sailor to come with him, yet he knew that such a
+mode of life was not for Henry Harper.  And the Sailor knew that, too.
+For one thing, he would be wasting precious time he could not afford to
+lose; again, now that fighting power was coming back to him, he must
+run his rede, must prepare to outface destiny.
+
+Still, in taking leave of his friend, he was trying himself beyond his
+present strength.
+
+The fact struck him with cruel force at the moment of parting on the
+waterfront at Frisco.  Klondyke, wearing a fur cap the replica of one
+that would ever be the magic possession of Henry Harper, was on the
+point of going his way, and the Sailor had booked a return passage to
+Liverpool.  It came upon him as they said good-by that it was more than
+he could bear.
+
+"You'll win out," were the last words spoken in the familiar way.
+"You've not got so far along the course to be downed in the straight.
+Keep on keeping on, and you'll get through."
+
+That was their farewell.  But as soon as the Sailor was alone, the
+awaiting trolls were on him.  He was in better shape now than in those
+hours in Brinkworth Street, but the conflict was grim.  Every ounce of
+will was needed.
+
+He went aboard feeling dazed.  Even yet he had not grasped the worst.
+He did not know until the next day that England and Brinkworth Street
+were not yet possible, and that perhaps they never would be.
+Therefore, when they touched at the port of Boston he changed ship and
+put about, having suddenly determined to make the grand tour as a
+saloon passenger.
+
+He was well off for money.  Popularity had come to him as well as
+technical success.  He could afford to sail round the world first
+class.  And having reached this wise decision, he began in earnest to
+fight destiny.
+
+He had made a pledge that he would not write to Mary, also, if his will
+endured, he would never see her again.  It seemed the only course after
+that last failure.
+
+John Milton was with him, also the Bible and Shakespeare and Shelton's
+"Don Quixote" and Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and a translation of
+Montaigne.  Moreover, he had the Iliad and the Odyssey in English, also
+a Greek Lexicon.  With the aid of this, he spent many an hour in
+quarrying painfully, but with a certain amount of success, in the
+original.  This royal company did much to hold the trolls at bay.  But
+in the evening they would hover round the lamp in the saloon; and
+during the night, when he awoke to the wash of the sea, expecting to
+hear eight bells struck and half wishing he was dead in consequence,
+because he would have to tumble out of his bunk and ascend shivering to
+the deck of the _Margaret Carey_, then was a time for the foe.  But
+with John Milton and a greater than John by his elbow, and with
+Aladdin's wonderful lamp still burning fitfully through the night,
+although of late the genie had apparently forgotten to trim it, the
+demons for all their hissing and snarling were never really able to
+fasten their fangs upon him as they had done that morning in Brinkworth
+Street.
+
+Weeks went by.  He saw strange sights and many familiar ones, he
+touched at some unknown and some half remembered ports, he watched the
+sun gild many majestic cities.  Once again he saw on the starboard bow
+the trees of the Island of San Pedro.  Once again he saw the sharks
+with their dead-white bellies and heard their continual plop-plop in
+the water.  Once again he heard the Old Man come up the cabin stairs.
+This time the heavens did not open, perhaps for the reason that there
+was no heaven to open for Henry Harper now.
+
+About the third day out from Auckland on the homeward tack, he put
+forth a great effort to come to grips with "A Master Mariner," Book
+Three.  But after a week of futile struggling he discovered that
+Aladdin's lamp was extinguished altogether.
+
+The knowledge was bitter, but it must be accepted.  Hope was the magic
+fuel with which the lamp was fed.  If that priceless stuff should fail,
+the lamp could burn no more.  Whatever he did now it seemed as clear as
+the glorious sun of the Antipodes that the mariner would never come
+into port.
+
+Several times he changed ship.  Mind and will steadily developed, but
+he was never captain of his soul.  The demons of the past no longer
+besieged him, but Book Three was still becalmed.  The hour was not yet
+in which he could return.
+
+Months went by, but the future remained an abyss.
+
+In the end, Ulysses came back to the shores of his native Ithaca for a
+prosaic but sufficient reason.  It was merely that he was in need of
+money.  After eleven months of wandering on the face of the waters, the
+liberal store he carried had almost disappeared.  Quite suddenly one
+night, in the Mediterranean, he took the decision to return to London.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+The Sailor knew as soon as he stepped on the platform at Charing Cross
+that he had no wish to see again that city which had treated him with
+such unkindness.  He left his gear in the station cloak room, and then
+by the time he had gone a few yards he regretted bitterly that he had
+ever come back at all.  The mere sight of the omnibuses, of the names
+on the hoardings, of the grotesquely miscellaneous throngs in the
+Strand, told him that eleven months of ceaseless wandering had done
+nothing, or at the best very little, to heal the wound he bore.
+
+These streets brought an ache that, steel his will as he might, he
+could hardly bear.  There to the right was the National Gallery.  It
+was on just such a morning as this that she had led him to the Turners.
+Farther along were Pall Mall and Edward Ambrose.
+
+Five minutes he stood on the curb at the top of Northumberland Avenue,
+trying to decide whether he should cross Trafalgar Square.  Once more
+the old sense of disintegration was upon him.  Once more he was asking
+himself what he ought to do.
+
+Eleven months had passed, but things were as they were.  In that time
+not a line had been added to the work he was trying to do.  Yet he felt
+that his first duty was to go to see Edward Ambrose.  Let him go now.
+It was no use shirking it.  But a curious instinct was holding him
+back.  It was illogical, he knew, but every moment that he stood there
+seemed to make the task more difficult.
+
+In a state of irresolution he crossed the road as far as an island in
+the middle.  The sense of familiarity was growing at every step.
+Within a very few yards was Spring Gardens.  He could see two doors up
+the street the brass plate of Messrs. Mortimer mocking him through a
+weird substitute for the light of day.
+
+In spite of all the months that had passed, the sight of that brass
+plate was like a knife in his body.  He turned from the island to dash
+across a very dangerous road, and came within an ace of the death that
+would have been so welcome.  A taxi avoided him by an almost miraculous
+swerve, for which, when he realized it, he did not thank the driver.
+
+All at sea he crossed the Square and entered Pall Mall.  In the process
+of time he came to the home of _Brown's Magazine_.  Edward Ambrose gave
+him a welcome that nearly brought tears to his eyes.
+
+"My dear boy!" he said.  "Not one word in all these months!  Anyhow you
+have come back to us."
+
+It was impossible to doubt the friendship and the affection of this
+greeting.  The Sailor felt a pang of shame.  As a fact, he had been too
+modest to expect such loyalty.
+
+"I'm ... I'm sorry."
+
+"You had no right to forget your friends," said Edward Ambrose, a
+little resentfully.  He knew the workings of this childishly open mind,
+and it hurt him that a sincere emotion should have been underrated.
+
+"Yes," said the Sailor queerly.  "It was rotten."
+
+"You are looking splendidly brown and well," said Edward Ambrose as
+soon as it seemed the part of wisdom to speak.  "You don't mean to say
+that Dick Smith has been sailing the high seas all these long months?"
+
+"Not Dick Smith.  Ulysses."
+
+Ambrose gave a little start of pure pleasure.
+
+"Then," he said, "a master mariner has really come into port?"
+
+"No."  He stifled a groan.  "And never will, I'm thinking.  That poor
+sailor man is still becalmed east by west of Nowhere, and never a sign
+of land on either bow."
+
+"But you _must_ put it through somehow.  Tell me ... is there anything
+I can do to help you?"
+
+The Sailor shook his head miserably.
+
+"I can't accept that as final," said Edward Ambrose.  "It's--it's--I
+hesitate to say what it may be if only you carry it out as you have
+conceived it.  If you don't do that I some how feel the high gods will
+never forgive you ... or me."
+
+If anything could have rekindled Aladdin's lamp in the Sailor's soul it
+would have been the enthusiasm of this friend.  But it was not to be;
+the trolls had him captive.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said gently, knowing the stab he dealt.  "It is no
+fault of yours.  It's you that's made me all I am ... and if any man
+could have helped me here you would have been that man.  But I'm just a
+broken mariner.  It's no use mincing it--I'm done."
+
+The stark simplicity of the confession made Edward Ambrose gasp.  He
+could say nothing.  In the honest eyes was a look of consternation.
+
+"A mariner has got to have a star to work by.  Even old Ulysses had to
+have that.  But there's not one for Henry Harper in all the firmament."
+He fell into a sudden, odd, and queer kind of rage.  "It's a black
+shame.  If only I'd had a fair chance I'd have put this thing through.
+You might say"--the harsh laugh jarred worse than the baffled
+anger--"I'm a chap who has been handicapped out of the race.
+However..."  The Sailor became silent.
+
+Ambrose felt himself to be shaken.  The impotent fury of this elemental
+soul was something beyond his experience.  He hardened his heart.  It
+must be his task to anchor this derelict adrift in uncharted seas until
+such time as help could come to him.
+
+"Henry," he said suddenly, "does Mary Pridmore know you have returned?"
+
+"No."
+
+Edward Ambrose mustered his courage.
+
+"If you don't bring the mariner into port it will be a heavy blow for
+her."
+
+"What has it to do with her?" was the almost savage reply.
+
+"She believes in you."
+
+"Why should she?"  There was almost a note of menace.
+
+"She is your friend.  We are both your friends."
+
+The quiet tone somehow prevailed.
+
+"Of course," he said queerly, "you are both my friends.  And I'm not
+worthy of either."
+
+"Suppose we leave her to be the judge of that."
+
+The Sailor shook his head.
+
+"She can't judge anything until ... until I've told her ... about Cora."
+
+"She has not been told?"  Ambrose spoke casually, impassively.  Somehow
+he had allowed himself to guess that the Sailor had told her, and that
+she had sent him away.  Why he should have come to that rather
+fantastic conclusion he didn't know, except that she had not had a line
+from Henry Harper in eleven months.  But he saw at once that he was
+wrong.
+
+He felt that he must use great care.  The ice was even thinner than he
+had suspected.  Moreover an acute perception told him that nothing
+would be easier than for ill informed well-meaningness to commit a
+tragic blunder.
+
+"You don't mean to say you thought I had?"  The Sailor put his question
+oddly, disconnectedly.
+
+"The fact is," said Edward Ambrose jesuitically, "I have never been
+impertinent enough to think the matter out.  I know nothing beyond the
+fact that Mary Pridmore is very much your friend."
+
+"There's no use in saying that when I can never be hers."
+
+"Ah, there I don't agree," said Edward Ambrose calmly.
+
+"Why not look the facts in the face?"
+
+"Yes, why not?"
+
+"Friendship between us is impossible.  That's why I went away.  We ...
+we played it up too high.  Friendship between a man and a woman is no
+use ... at least not to her and me ... although..."
+
+"I'm not talking merely of friendship," said Edward Ambrose, very
+deliberately.  "I'm talking of something else."
+
+So charged with meaning were the words that the Sailor recoiled as if
+he had received a blow.
+
+"What ... what are you saying!" he cried with a sudden blind rage in
+his face.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V
+
+FULFILLMENT
+
+I
+
+"Why do you taunt me?" cried the Sailor after a pause hard to endure.
+
+"I offer neither reason nor excuse for the words I have used," said
+Edward Ambrose calmly.  "I can only say that she is more than your
+friend.  You must remember that you have been away eleven months.  In
+the meantime water still continues to flow under London Bridge."
+
+"I don't follow you."
+
+"Yes, of course--one assumes too much.  One forgets that you have been
+away so long and that apparently you have not yet seen Mortimer."
+
+"Mortimer!"
+
+"Perhaps I ought to have told you ... yes ... I can see I ought to
+have.  Mortimer has news."
+
+"News!"
+
+"Now I am going to put you out.  Go at once and see him."
+
+Henry Harper presently realized that he was again on the pavement of
+Pall Mall, but he was too bewildered to know how he had come there.  He
+was in a kind of dream.  But all he did had a specific purpose.  For
+instance, he was going to see Mr. Mortimer.  Yet he could not
+understand what lay behind his friend's desire that he should see the
+solicitor at once.  The true explanation never occurred to him.
+
+Mr. Mortimer had to tell him that his wife had died two months ago in
+the course of one of her bouts of drinking.  At first the Sailor could
+not grasp the significance of the statement.  It hardly seemed to make
+any impact upon him.  He thanked Mr. Mortimer for all his services in a
+trying matter, and went out into the street, apparently giving very
+little thought to what had happened.
+
+Here, however, he grew suddenly aware that the aspect of things had
+completely changed.  Something had occurred which lay beyond his ken,
+but he knew already that the whole universe was different.
+
+A new man in brain and heart, he collected his things from Charing
+Cross and drove to Brinkworth Street.  His room was ready to receive
+him in spite of the fact that he had been away eleven months.  He had
+written to Mr. Paley from time to time inclosing money and telling him
+that he hoped to be home presently.  And home he was at last.
+
+It was not at once that he could set his thoughts in order.  But one
+fact was clear.  He was free.  He was free to enjoy the light of
+heaven, to breathe the breath of life.
+
+In the height of the tumult now upon him he took a resolve.  The
+barrier was down.  He would put all to the touch.  Somehow he had an
+implicit faith.  A gulf was fixed, he knew, between Mary and himself.
+She belonged to a world far removed from the one in which he had been
+born, in which he had passed so much of his life.  But he had that
+final pledge, "If ever you want help!"  Well, there was only one way in
+which she could help him, and that she knew as well as he.
+
+Soon after five he set out.  If he went leisurely he would reach Queen
+Street about six, a propitious hour.  She was generally at home at that
+time.  It was hard to believe that he was the same man who had stood
+that morning on the curb at Charing Cross.  He had absolutely nothing
+now in common with that broken mariner.
+
+In those few brief hours he had suffered one sea change the more.  The
+genie had relit the lamp.  Again he was a forward-looking man.  Nay, he
+was more.  He was a prince of the blood approaching the portals of an
+imperial kingdom.  Otto, a prince of that other kingdom, issued from
+the threshold of No. 50, while Venables, the butler, with polite
+surprise, was in the very act of receiving the Sailor.
+
+"Hulloa, Harper," said the Prince.  "Turned up again.  We had all given
+you up for lost."
+
+It might have been possible for a delicate ear to detect something
+other than welcome in the voice of his highness.  But whether such was
+the case or not was a matter of no concern to the returned mariner.
+
+Mary was at home and alone.  At first he was a little unnerved by the
+sight of her, and she perhaps by the sight of him.  The look of sadness
+in her face distressed him.
+
+"Not one line," she said.  But there was nothing of Edward Ambrose's
+half reproach in her voice.
+
+"No."
+
+"I was beginning to think I should never see or hear of you again."
+Her simplicity was the exact counterpart of his own.
+
+"I don't think I ever meant you to."
+
+She waited patiently for him to add to his strange words and was slow
+to realize that he couldn't.
+
+"That would have been cruel," she said at last.
+
+"It would have been cruel either way.  However, it is all done with
+now."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand," she said, finding that speech had
+failed him again.
+
+"I don't know whether I can tell you."
+
+Ought he to tell her?  A harrowing doubt arose.  She knew that there
+had been some grave reason for his going away.  But what the hidden
+cause had been, hers was not a nature that would ask.  She only knew
+that if speech and bearing meant anything, he was deeply in love with
+her, and yet for some unfathomable reason he had shirked the issue.
+
+And now he had returned after these long months, which to her as well
+as to himself had been a time of more than bitterness, there was still
+this shadow between them.  Yet it surely belonged to the past.  There
+was no barrier between them now, except the memory of a secret which
+somehow he could not believe was vital.
+
+In her immense desire to serve him she was ready to give all that he
+might ask.  But there was still a reservation in his mind.  In the
+sudden revelation, as it seemed to him, of the divine clemency, he was
+overwhelmed by a desire to confess all.
+
+There may have been no need to do so, yet that was not a question to
+ask.  She was his, he knew it; she would not be less, she would be
+doubly his, if she learned the circumstances of his life.  Besides, so
+high was the revulsion of feeling now upon him that it seemed the
+course of honor.  And was it not her right to know all concerning him
+before he demanded so great a sacrifice?
+
+In this mood he never for a moment doubted that it would be a further
+bond.  Let him tell his secret now that his lips had been unsealed.
+
+"Mary," he said, "do you remember your words eleven months ago?"
+
+[Illustration: "'Mary,' he said, 'do you remember your words eleven
+months ago?'"]
+
+"I remember them perfectly."
+
+"Well, there was only one way in which you could help me then, and that
+was why I went away.  And I never intended to return unless I could
+claim that which you offered me."
+
+"Was it necessary?"
+
+"Mere friendship is no use to you and me.  But I couldn't ask you to
+marry me then, although I knew ... at least I thought I knew ... you'll
+tell me if I am wrong..."
+
+She couldn't help smiling a little at this rather childlike confusion.
+
+"... that you would marry me if I asked you.  But I didn't, because I
+couldn't.  Do you understand that?  Do you still look at things in the
+way you did?"
+
+The soul of a poor mariner might be tempest tossed on all the oceans of
+the world, but the soul of Mary Pridmore was the fixed star of his
+faith.  The mere thought seemed to brace his courage for the task that
+honor laid upon him.
+
+He took her hand.  It was the only manifestation he would allow himself
+until he had told her.
+
+"I could not ask you to marry me then," he said, "because I had a wife."
+
+"You had a wife."  She repeated the words numbly, incredulously.
+
+"I had a wife," he said, doggedly.  "She died two months ago."
+
+"And ... and you never told me!"
+
+"No."
+
+There was an edge to her tone that had struck like a knife.
+
+"Henry!"
+
+"I tried," he said feebly.  "God knows I tried."
+
+"You don't mean you deceived me?"  Her voice was hardening.
+
+"No."  A queer kind of faintness was coming over him.  "I don't mean
+that.  You never asked me and ... and I never told you."
+
+"But you knew I took it for granted that you were not married."
+
+The order and precision of her speech began to frighten him.  He could
+give no answer.
+
+"You knew that."  Her voice was hurting him terribly.
+
+"I don't say I didn't," he said.  He had a sick feeling that he was
+already in the jaws of a trap.  God in heaven, what madness had lured
+him to tell her when he had no need to do so!
+
+"Then you deceived me."  The voice was pitiless.
+
+He looked at her with scared eyes.
+
+"Don't say that," he said.
+
+He saw there was a cold light blazing in her and he began to grow
+miserably afraid.
+
+"I tried very hard not to deceive you," he said.  "God knows I tried.
+And it was because I couldn't go on with it that I went away and ...
+and never meant to see you again."
+
+"I don't quite think that is an excuse."
+
+Somehow the words seemed to goad him on to unknown perils.  But he was
+in a quicksand, the ground was moving under his feet.
+
+"You don't know what my life has been," he said desperately.  "You
+don't know what a wife I married, you don't know anything about me,
+else you wouldn't be so hard."
+
+She realized while he was speaking, realized with a kind of nausea,
+which came suddenly upon her, that all he said was true.  There was a
+peculiar note creeping into his voice that assailed her fastidious ears
+like a sudden descent to a subterranean region which she knew to exist,
+but of which she had never had first-hand knowledge.  The subtle change
+of tone was telling her as nothing else could have done that it was
+perfectly true that she knew neither what his life had been nor
+anything about him.
+
+"Mary."  In spite of an intense feeling for him it was beginning to
+make her wince to hear her name on his lips.  "If you don't mind I
+think I'll tell you one or two things about my life and ... and how I
+came ... to get married."
+
+"I think perhaps I would rather not know."  It was not she who said
+that.  Long generations of Pridmores and Colthursts had suddenly taken
+charge and had answered for her.
+
+It was a tone he had never heard her use, not even at the dinner party
+at which she had discussed the question of divorce.  It was almost as
+if she had hit him a blow and yet without intending to deal one.  By
+this time he had grown so dazed and frightened that he had begun to
+lose his head.
+
+"The woman I married was not respectable, and that was why I didn't
+tell you."
+
+She drew away from him a little.  It was quite an involuntary action,
+but he felt it like a knife in the flesh.  In sick desperation he
+floundered on, suddenly losing touch with all the small amenities of
+speech and manner he had so painfully imposed upon himself.  Moreover,
+he realized the fact with pangs that were almost murderous.  There were
+notes from the Blackhampton gutter beginning to strike through his
+voice.
+
+"You don't know what my life has been," he said.  "You don't know where
+I started from."
+
+Again she made that involuntary movement, almost as if she felt that
+the mere tone was defiling her.
+
+"You must let me tell you ... let me tell you all, if you don't mind.
+It'll help you understand."
+
+"I would rather you didn't."  Again the Pridmores and the Colthursts
+were speaking.
+
+He looked at her with a wildness that made her shiver.  An intense pity
+for this man had suddenly begun to do battle with the Colthursts and
+the Pridmores.  There was something in those eyes, as there always had
+been, that was almost beyond her power to meet.
+
+"I never had a chance," he said, holding her in thrall with the voice
+she no longer recognized as his.  "I've been handicapped out of the
+race.  I'm going to tell you, Mary.  It's not that I want your pity ...
+I ask more than that.  It's more than pity will bring a sailorman like
+me into port."
+
+A kind of defiance of himself and of her had entered his tone.  His
+words seemed to open a vein in her heart.  She had a great compassion
+for this man, but with all her strength of soul, with all her
+independence, she knew and felt that voice had already told her that
+the facts of his life were going to prove more than she could bear.
+
+In a dogged way, with many of the tricks of speech and manner of former
+phases of his life, which he had sloughed as a snake its skin, and had
+now reassumed in the stress of overmastering agony, he told her all.
+He spared her nothing, not even his comparatively recent knowledge that
+his father had been driven to commit a murder, which in Henry Harper's
+view accounted for the price the son had had to pay.  Nothing was
+spared her of Auntie, of the police, of the night on the railway, of
+Mr. Thompson and the Old Man, of the _Margaret Carey_ and the Island of
+San Pedro, of Ginger and Blackhampton, of the first meeting with
+Klondyke, of the first meeting with Edward Ambrose, and, finally, an
+account of his fall into the clutches of Cora Dobbs and how he made the
+horrible discovery concerning her on the night of their own first
+memorable meeting at the dinner party in Bury Street.
+
+Some insane demon seemed to urge him on.  In spite of the look of
+horror in her eyes, he told her everything.  Somehow he felt it was the
+only reparation he could make to her for being as he was.
+
+"Klondyke gave me my first start," he said finally.  "He knows nearly
+as much as you--except about that woman--but he's stood to me all
+through.  I don't ask your pity.  I admit I deceived you, Mary, an' I
+done wrong, but it warn't because I didn't want to do right.  I got to
+pay for it, I can see that.  I dare say it's right, but I'll only say
+... and this is final ... _Enry Arper, whatever 'is father done, don't
+deserve not a half, not a quarter of what's been done to him_."
+
+She had to hold on by the table.  Something was stifling her.  There
+were things in this elemental soul which the Pridmores and the
+Colthursts might once have known, but for long generations had
+forgotten.
+
+She dare not look at him.  An abyss had opened.  She simply couldn't
+face it.
+
+Somehow he knew that.  It needed no words to tell him.  Everything was
+lost.  The mariner could never hope to come into port.  Again that
+horrible sense of rage came on him, which a few hours ago had
+overthrown him in his interview with Edward Ambrose.  It maddened him
+to think that he had been allowed to get so far along the road and that
+a subtle trick had defeated him when the goal was actually in sight.
+
+Yet even at the last there was just one thing, and only one, that stood
+to him: if it was still possible he must be a man, a gentleman.  He
+knew this woman was suffering cruelly, and he owed it to her and to his
+friends not to profane the God she worshiped.  There was no God in
+heaven after all, it seemed, for Henry Harper, but for her, who had not
+the stain of a father's crime upon her, it was a different matter.
+
+As he stood not three paces from her, clenched and incoherent, fighting
+not to strike her with the sudden awful blasphemies that were surging
+to his lips, he knew nothing of what was passing in her mind.  Had he
+known she would have had his pity.  All that her progenitors had stood
+for in the past had suddenly recoiled upon her.  All those entries in
+Burke it had been her pleasure to deride, all the politicians and the
+landed proprietors, all the Lady Sophias and the Lady Carolines, all
+that flunkyfied reverence for concrete things of those generations of
+the Pridmores and the Colthursts, which had so long affronted her high
+good sense, were now having their word to say in the matter.
+
+She had pledged her help to this man if ever he asked it, but now she
+found that help was not hers to give.  Said the tart voice of her
+famous Aunt Caroline, it is not to be expected, my dear, of a sane
+Christian gentlewoman.  Think of your father, my dear!  By some strange
+irony, Mary Pridmore suddenly thought of him, that admired and
+bewhiskered servant of a generation which allowed his friend Bismarck
+to steal Schleswig and to murder France, but paid itself the tribute of
+building the Albert Memorial; the distinguished servant of a generation
+that had denied reading, writing, and arithmetic to its Henry Harpers
+and had turned them barefoot into its Blackhampton gutters.
+
+Many things were coming home to the heart of Mary Pridmore in the awful
+silence of that room.  She was no more to blame for the long line of
+her fathers whose governing abilities were commemorated in the England
+of the sixties than was their victim, Henry Harper, in whose bruised
+body and tormented soul had been commemorated his mother's murder.  She
+was numb and dazed now she had heard his story, but she had nothing to
+give him.
+
+The truth had come to him already.  "Now, Enery, you must be a man and
+bear it," said the voice of Auntie, wheezing in the upper air.  Well
+... if his flesh and blood would only let him he must be a gentleman as
+long as he had the honor to converse with a real Hyde Park lady who
+believed in God ... that was all he knew at the moment.  If there was a
+spark of manhood in him he must hold on to that.
+
+"Miss Pridmore." ... He was able to pull himself together in a way that
+astonished even himself....  "I see it's all over with me and you.
+I'll never be able to get through without your help.  I'm fair done in.
+But I don't blame you.  An' I just want you to say you don't blame me,
+an' then I'll quit."
+
+She couldn't speak.  Aunt Caroline in a hoop and elastic-sided boots
+was simply imploring her to behave with dignity.
+
+"Say you don't blame me, Miss Pridmore, an' then I'll quit.  It's not
+reelly my fault about my father."  He laughed a little, but she didn't
+hear him.  "I'm sorry, though, about the Mariner.  If we could have
+brought _him_ into port, you and me, Miss Pridmore, there'd been
+nothing like him outside the Russians.  However ... say I'm not to
+blame ... and then I'll quit."
+
+She was unable to hear what he was saying.
+
+"Won't you, Miss Pridmore?  I can't bear you should think I've played
+it low down.  If I could ha' told you afore I'd ha' done it ... you can
+lay to that."
+
+It was not a voice that she knew, and she could not answer it.
+
+"Well, I'm sorry."
+
+Suddenly he took her hand, and its coldness startled him.
+
+"I'll say good-by," he said with a sort of laugh.
+
+Aunt Charlotte primly informed her niece that Mr. Harper was taking
+leave.
+
+"Oh," she said.  "Good-by."
+
+Without venturing again to touch the hand she offered, he stumbled
+headlong out of the room and down the stairs.  He took his hat from a
+table in the hall and let himself out of the front door before the
+butler could get there.  He closed the door after him with a sharp
+bang--it was a door with a patent catch and could only be closed in
+that way--and as he did this and the sound re-echoed along Queen
+Street, the lamp in the right-hand corner of his brain suddenly went
+out.
+
+By the time he came to the end of the street it had grown very dark.
+And as he turned a corner and found himself in a street whose name he
+didn't know he was unable to see anything.  And then all at once he
+realized that Aladdin's lamp was broken in a thousand pieces, and he
+gave a little wild shriek of dismay.  The savage hunted eyes of Mr.
+Thompson were gazing at him from under the helmet of a passing
+constable.
+
+The trolls had got him.
+
+Nothing could help him now.  It had grown so dark that he couldn't see
+anything, although it was hardly seven at present of an evening in
+June.  He almost shrieked again as he heard the sniggering voice of
+Auntie ascend above the gathering noises of the town: "Now, Enery, you
+must be a man and bear it."
+
+He didn't know where he was now amid the maze of the little-frequented
+streets of Mayfair.  He had lost his way and he couldn't see.  He was
+blind already with an ever growing darkness.  He was losing all sense
+of time and place.  But the voice of Auntie was ever in his ears,
+exhorting him, with that shrill and peculiar snigger of which she never
+seemed to grow weary, to be a man and bear it, as he stumbled on and on
+into the night.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+One afternoon about a week later, Edward Ambrose rang up No. 50, Queen
+Street, on the telephone to ask if Mary was at home.  In reply he was
+told by Silvia that Mary had gone for a few days to Greylands to the
+Ellises, but her mother would be very glad if Edward would come and see
+her as she wished particularly to have a little talk with him.  Edward
+certainly did not wish particularly to have a little talk with Lady
+Pridmore at that moment, but there was no way out of it.  Thus in no
+very amiable frame of mind he drove to Queen Street.
+
+Lady Pridmore was alone in the drawing-room.  She received Edward with
+the grave cordiality that she reserved for favorites.
+
+"It is very nice of you to come, Edward.  Ring for some tea."
+
+That was like her, when she knew quite well he never took tea.
+
+"We are dreadfully worried about Mary."
+
+That was like her again.  She was always dreadfully worried about
+something, although nothing in wide earth or high heaven had the power
+really to upset her.  But Edward for some reason was not feeling very
+sympathetic towards the Lady Pridmores of the world just now.
+
+"And we blame you."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, we blame you.  It was you who first brought that young man, Mr.
+Harper, to the house."
+
+This was not quite in accordance with the facts.  Still, there would be
+no point in saying so.  Ambrose, therefore, contented himself with
+asking, "Well, what of him?" with as much politeness as he could muster
+in order to cover a growing impatience.
+
+"It is not well, Edward, it is very far from well," said Lady Pridmore
+aggrievedly.  "As I say, we are all dreadfully worried.  Mr. Harper
+turned up here again one day last week, the first time for a year.  And
+he saw Mary alone.  Silvia and I were out--at--dear me!--but it doesn't
+matter----"
+
+"Quite so," murmured the courteous Edward.
+
+"Otto met him coming in as he went out."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, as I say, Mary and Mr. Harper were together a long time and
+somehow--I'm sorry to tell you this--she has seemed quite ill ever
+since."
+
+Edward expressed regret.
+
+"And Dr. Claughton strongly advised a change."
+
+"I am very sorry," he said gravely.
+
+"She is so overstrung that she has had to have sleeping drafts.  It is
+by Dr. Claughton's advice she has gone down to Woking."
+
+"But what reason have you to connect all this with Mr. Harper?"
+
+"The evening he saw her she didn't come down to dinner.  Now I would
+like you to tell me a little more about--about Mr. Harper.  You brought
+him here, you know.  Otto says he is not altogether ... Do you think
+that?"
+
+"Had I thought for a moment that he was not a desirable acquaintance I
+should not have brought him here."  This was a shameless begging of the
+question; it was not he who had brought the young man there.
+
+"I'm glad to hear you say that," said Lady Pridmore with feeling.
+"That is exactly what I said to Otto.  I wish you would tell me all you
+know about this Mr. Harper."
+
+"I am afraid I can only tell you one thing about him."
+
+"Yes," said Lady Pridmore encouragingly!
+
+"At the present moment he is very dangerously ill.  The doctors take a
+very grave view of his case."
+
+Lady Pridmore was grieved to hear that, but it fully confirmed what she
+had surmised.
+
+What had she surmised?
+
+"I am quite sure that something rather dreadful took place here a week
+ago."
+
+Ambrose felt that was most probable.
+
+"I wish you would tell me, Edward," said Lady Pridmore, "what in your
+opinion it was that happened."
+
+The retort on the tip of Edward's tongue was, "How the devil should I
+know!" but fortunately he didn't allow it to pass.  He contented
+himself with silence.
+
+"I want to see Mary most particularly," he said, after a pause.  "I
+think I'll send her a telegram to say that I am coming by the first
+train tomorrow."
+
+"Do," said Lady Pridmore.  "That will cheer her up."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+He sent a telegram as he returned sadly to his rooms.  He was in a
+miserable frame of mind.  Somehow he was hating life, but he was now
+fully bent upon one thing, and no peace could be his until he had done
+it.
+
+After dinner came an answer to say Mary would be very glad to see him.
+He sat smoking endless pipes, until he realized that it would soon be
+too late to go to bed if he was to catch an early train.
+
+On arrival at Woking, Mary was at the station with her friend's car.
+She looked ill, he thought, but she seemed very glad to see him.  At
+first they found little to say.  Indeed, it was not until they had
+decided to use a fine morning in walking to Greylands, had sent on the
+car and taken to the road, that they were able to talk in the way they
+wished.
+
+"I suppose you don't quite know why I've come?" said Ambrose.
+
+"No, I frankly don't," said Mary, "but at least, Edward, it is always
+very, very good to see you."
+
+Ever since she could remember, he had ranked as the chief of her
+friends, and that accounted, perhaps, for a certain attitude of mind
+towards him.  But in all the years they had known each other, in all
+the hours they had spent in each other's company, never had they seemed
+so intimate as in this walk together.  And there was a very clear
+reason why this should be so.  Never had each felt such a need of the
+other's perceptiveness.
+
+It was not for him to ask what had happened a week ago at that last
+interview in Queen Street.  But she told him voluntarily.
+
+"I had promised to help him," she said, growing pale at the
+recollection.  "And he came to me and told me all ... all the facts and
+the circumstances ... things that not I and not you, Edward ... could
+ever have guessed."
+
+"You were not able to do what he asked?"
+
+"No, I simply was not.  I simply couldn't.  I meant to help him.  I
+wanted to.  Perhaps ... perhaps I ought to have ... but ... but it was
+an abyss he showed me ... you don't know..."
+
+They walked on in silence a little way.
+
+"... A year ago, I made a pledge.  And he counted on it.  I think that
+is why he told me the whole dreadful story.  Had I not been a coward, I
+should never have..."
+
+"You judge yourself too hardly.  He asked too much."
+
+"It should not have been too much.  I ought to have been able to help
+him.  At least ... I ought not to have sent him away as I did."
+
+"Assuming it were not too late, do you think you could help him now?"
+
+"But it _is_ too late."  She was evading the question.
+
+"It is not the view I take myself.  I saw both doctors yesterday, and
+they have very little hope of a recovery.  But you and I are not bound
+to agree with them."
+
+"What can we do ... in the face of such an opinion?"
+
+"We can have faith."
+
+"But the doctors?"
+
+"It is a purely mental case.  The mind is the key of the whole matter."
+
+"Yes, I know ... I know."
+
+"No doctor, however expert, can ever say anything positively in regard
+to the mind, provided the brain is not damaged."
+
+"Isn't it bound to be?"
+
+"They do not say that ... and there is our hope.  It is a special case.
+We must always remember this man is different from other people.  It is
+my firm belief that it is in your power to save him.  The view may be
+entirely mistaken, but it is my own personal conviction."
+
+A new Edward Ambrose was speaking.  Here were a strength and a force
+which until that moment he had not known how to show her.  It may have
+been that the occasion had never arisen, or perhaps the conventional
+timidity of his kind had never permitted it.
+
+"I--I don't altogether understand," she said, faintly.
+
+"You took away his belief.  And I ask you to give it him back again."
+
+She walked dully by his side, striving as well as she could to
+represent to herself the strange words he had used in a form she could
+accept.
+
+"You do understand, Mary?"
+
+"Isn't it too late?"
+
+Tormenting fears were again upon her.
+
+"It may be.  Certainly the doctors think the balance of probability
+against it.  But I firmly hold that such a view is not for those who
+know this poor sailorman.  I cannot help thinking that no one is
+allowed to get so far along the road in the face of such paralyzing
+odds without there being still some hope of putting the thing through."
+
+They stood in the middle of the road, looking at each other.
+
+"I ... I think you are right.  You understand him so much better than
+I."
+
+"That we can neither of us believe."  He spoke with a queer laugh.
+"But if I am asking you to give too much, you mustn't blame me.  You
+have always taught me to ask too much."  His voice tailed off in the
+oddest way.  "But this time I don't ask for myself."
+
+She was crying.  "I was never the woman that you thought me.  Or that I
+thought myself."
+
+She stood a moment, the tears running down her cheeks.
+
+"You must go to that poor mariner," he said, with odd suddenness,
+trying now for the first time in all the long years to impose his will
+upon hers.  "He has a very wonderful cargo on board.  You and I--we owe
+it to each other and perhaps to future generations--to see that it
+comes into port."
+
+Such a tone was startling.  She had never heard it before.  A new and
+very potent voice was speaking.
+
+"There is no time to lose."  This was Edward Ambrose raised to a higher
+power.  "Every hour is going to count.  If it is still possible, go and
+offer him a refuge from the storm."
+
+She stood irresolute.  But already she had begun to waver.  A masculine
+nature in its new and full expression was turning the scale.
+
+"If we go back at once," he said, "there will be time to catch the
+twelve o'clock train from Woking.  You can telegraph to your maid.  And
+Catherine Ellis will understand.  Or you can write and explain."
+
+Either the call was stronger than her weakness, or she had underrated
+the forces within herself.  For suddenly she turned round and they
+began to retrace their steps along the road they had come.
+
+Good walking gave them time for the midday train to Waterloo.  Upon
+arrival at that terminus, shortly before one, they drove to a nursing
+home in Fitzroy Square.
+
+Permission had already been obtained by Ambrose for Mary Pridmore to
+see Henry Harper.  It was felt that her presence at his bedside could
+do no harm, although there was very little hope that it could do good.
+At any rate, the nurse who received them made no difficulties about
+admitting her.  Ambrose took leave of Mary on the doorstep in the
+casual rather whimsical way he affected in all his dealings with her,
+and then drove heroically to his club.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The Sailor lay breathing heavily.  He was still just able to keep on
+keeping on.  But in spite of the darkened room and the blindness of his
+eyes, he knew at once that she had come to him ... the incarnation of
+the good, the beautiful, and the true ... gray-eyed Athena, with the
+plumes in her helmet.
+
+His prayer had been heard, his faith had been answered.  He knew she
+had come to him, this emanation of the divine justice and the divine
+mercy, even before her lips had breathed his name ... that name which
+through eons of time, as it seemed, he had been striving to fix in the
+chaos that once had been his brain.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+It was rather less than a year later that Edward Ambrose, seated in his
+favorite chair in his rooms in Bury Street, knocked out the ashes of a
+last pipe before turning in.  He had already given a startled glance at
+the clock on the chimney piece, and had found it was a quarter past
+three in the morning.
+
+The truth was he had been oblivious of the flight of time for a good
+many hours.  And the cause of this lapse was a bulky bundle of
+manuscript which was still on his knees.  It had come to him from
+abroad with a letter the previous day.  And having read the last page
+and having cleared the debris from his pipe, he yet returned the pipe,
+empty as it was, to his mouth and then read the letter again.
+
+It said:
+
+
+MY DEAR EDWARD,
+
+In praying you to accept the dedication of what to you and none other I
+venture to call an epic of that strange and terrible thing, the
+unsubduable soul of Man, I make one more demand on your patience.  I
+feel that only a very brave man could father such a thing as this poor
+mariner.  It is not that he has not proved to be a stouter fellow than
+could ever have been hoped.  To say otherwise would be black
+ingratitude to those who sought him out on the open sea and brought him
+safely into port.  If his book is more than was to have been expected,
+it is yet less than the future promises now that other new, or shall we
+say _recovered_ worlds, are continually opening to the gaze of the
+astonished sailorman as with Athena by his side he roams the shores of
+his native Ithaca.
+
+  Drink deep, O muse, of the Pierian spring,
+  Unlock the doors of memory.
+
+
+If this prayer is heard, on a day Ulysses may proclaim in native
+wood-notes wild the goodness of the living God, and hymn the glories of
+a universe that man, ill-starred as he may be, is powerless to defile.
+Even if such power is not granted to the mariner, he will yet have a
+happiness he had not thought possible for mortal men to know.  And she
+who had Wisdom for her godmother, I hope and pray she is also happy in
+self-fulfillment.  If this is a fatal egotism, I am not afraid to
+expose it to you.  The mariner is not so blind that he does not see
+that it is a more developed, a far higher form of our species who sits
+with his old pipe in his favorite chair in Bury Street, St. James',
+frowning over this ridiculous letter.  You and she begin where he
+leaves off.  What virtue both must have inherited!  And who shall dare
+to say how terribly a man may be punished for lack of virtue in his
+ancestors.
+
+We send you our blessing and our affection.
+
+H.H.
+
+
+Having reread this letter, Edward Ambrose turned again to the
+concluding pages of the manuscript still lying upon his knees.  The
+clock on the chimney piece struck four, but no heed was paid to it.
+The empty pipe was still between his teeth when finally he exclaimed:
+"Yes, it's wonderful ... very wonderful.  It is even more wonderful
+than I had hoped."
+
+He then took the pipe from his mouth and found the stem was bitten
+right through.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sailor, by J. C. Snaith
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