Front matter (continued 5)

"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 faërie 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, 2s. 9d., 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 naïf 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 naïf. 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 lèse-majesté. 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.