Front matter (continued 6)

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 entrée 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."

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.