Chapter XV: Book IV: Disintegration (2)

It is not certain that Lady Pridmore felt this to be a hardship. Mary roundly declared that nothing would have induced her mother to part with it. She had often been mistaken for this or that personage, and although much teased on the subject by her daughters, it was an open secret that such resemblances were precious in her sight.

To this lady's "How do you do?" Mr. Harper responded with incoherency. But the watchful Mary, who knew "the effect that mother had on some people," promptly came to the young man's aid and helped him out with great gallantry and success.

With the laugh peculiarly hers, Mary fixed the sailorman in a chair at a strategic distance from her mother, gave him a cup of tea and a liberal piece of cake, also thoughtfully provided him with a plate and a small table to put it on, because this creature of swift intuitions somehow felt that he had not quite got his drawing-room legs at present.

"You have a whole volume of questions to answer presently, Mr. Harper," said Mary, "so take plenty of nourishment, please. One of the pink is recommended. They've got maraschino." She took one herself and bit it in half with a gusto that rather amazed the young man; somehow he had not looked for it in a real Hyde Park lady.

"Mmm--I told you--mmm--Klondyke." The real Hyde Park lady was speaking with her mouth full. "Klondyke is the black sheep of the family. My mother is simply dying to talk to you about him."

This was not strictly true. Lady Pridmore was not of the kind that simply dies to talk of anything to anybody. Before she married Sir John, she had been a Miss Colthurst, of Suffolk. At the time of her union with that gentleman, then plain Mr. Pridmore, _charge d'affaires_ at Porocatepetl, and afterwards Her Britannic Majesty's representative in several European capitals, her standard of conduct had been rigidly fixed. She had seen much of life since, but nothing had ever caused her to modify it. She was greatly interested in the perennial subject of her eldest son, but to her mind, as it would have been to the collective mind of the Colthursts of Suffolk from immemorial time, it was merely an abuse of language for Mary to state that she was simply dying to hear about Klondyke. She was always _much_ interested, nevertheless, in the doings of poor dear Jack.

However, a disappointment was in store for Lady Pridmore. This rather strange looking young man with the shy and embarrassed manner was not so communicative on the subject in conversation with her as he had been when Mary had met him at dinner. He had really very little to tell her. For one thing, it was by no means so easy to converse with her as it had been with the altogether delightful daughter who knew exactly when and how to lend a hand.

The mother of Klondyke had therefore to do most of the talking about that unsatisfactory young man. She certainly did it very well. That is to say, she talked about him in a very even, precise, persistent, Hyde-Park-lady tone. And the Sailor, as he sat listening with awe to a conversation in which he did not feel in the least able to bear a part, could only marvel that Klondyke had had such a mother as Lady Pridmore and that Lady Pridmore had had such a son as Klondyke.

It had always been Lady Pridmore's wish that her eldest son should enter his father's profession. In the first place, he would have had Influence to help him, and if there was anything more precious in the sight of Lady Pridmore than Influence, it would have been very hard to discover it. Again, he was the offspring of two diplomatic families; at least, it was recorded in Burke, where each family's record was set out at considerable length and no doubt with reasonable veracity, that diplomacy was one of the callings which adorned two supremely honorable escutcheons.

In the opinion of Mary, also in that of Silvia, who ought to have been back from Mudie's by now, and also, but in a less degree, in the opinion of Otto--named after his godfather, a certain Prince Otto von Bismarck--who generally got home from the Foreign Office about five, their mother exaggerated the importance of the Pridmores of Yorkshire and the Colthursts of Suffolk. No doubt they were two fairly old and respectable families; Burke could certainly show cause for setting store by them; each family ran to two full pages, fairly bristling with peers and baronets and Lady Charlottes and Lady Sophias; and yet, to their mother's grief, these three heretics, Mary, Silvia, and Otto, generally known as the Prince, took pleasure in developing the theory that it was mere Victorianism for Burke or anyone else to flaunt such a pride in the Colthursts and the Pridmores.

"Because," said Mary, "it is not as though either family has ever produced anybody at all first-rate in anything."

The intrusion of Burke reveals a certain attitude of mind in Lady Pridmore. It was really surprising--three of her progeny always maintained it, and a fourth would undoubtedly have done so had he ever felt called upon to express an opinion in the matter--that one who had seen as much of the world as their mother, who had dined and supped and danced and paid calls in the most famous European capitals, who had been intimate with Crowned Heads, who had been whirled by them across ballrooms, who had the entree to the great world and had cut a very decent figure in it, according to the memoirs of the time, should have such obsolete ideas in regard to the value of the Colthurst family of Suffolk and in slightly modified degree of the Pridmore family of Yorkshire. As Mary said, it was funny.

At present, however, Mr. Henry Harper did not share any such view of Lady Pridmore. She and all that went with her seemed too important to be contemplated in the light of levity. She had a dignity beyond anything the Sailor had known or up till then had conceived to be possible. Therefore, it made her relationship to Klondyke a crowning wonder.

"I shall always think, Mr. Harper," said Lady Pridmore, "that if they had only given Jack his Eleven during his last term at Eton, it would have made a great difference in his life. I don't say he ought to have played against Harrow, but I certainly think they might have played him against Winchester for his bowling. Had they done that, I am convinced it would have steadied him, and then, no doubt, he would have settled down and have followed in the footsteps of his father."

This was the tragedy of Lady Pridmore's life, yet it said much for the callousness of youth that Mary, Silvia, and the Prince were unable to approach the subject with reverence.

The Sailor kept up his end as well as he could, but his awe of Lady Pridmore did not grow less. Therefore he could do himself no sort of justice. Mary, who had taken him completely under her wing, was always on the watch to render well-timed assistance. She helped him out of one or two tight places, and then Silvia came in, with three books in a strap.

She was of a type different from Mary's, but Mr. Harper thought she was very good to look at. She had the same air of directness that he liked so much in the elder sister. An amused vivacity made her popular with most people, yet behind it was a cool, rather cynical perception of men and things.

Mary introduced Mr. Harper, and Silvia shook hands with him in her mother's manner, but with an eye of merriment which made quite a comic effect.

"I've just come from Mudie's," she said, "where they say everybody is reading your book. It is wonderfully clever of you to have written it. Sailors don't write as a rule, do they? Something better to do, I suppose."

"I don't know about that," said Henry Harper. Somehow he felt already that Silvia was disarmingly easy to get on with. "Myself, I'd rather be John Milton than the master of any ship that ever sailed the seas."

"Yes, but that's because you were a sailor before you were a writer, isn't it?"

"It's what every writer that's worth his salt has got to be," said the young man, quaintly. "John Milton was a sailor, too. A master mariner."

"Yes, of course," said Silvia. "I see what you mean."

She had decided already that she very much liked this strange, wistful, rather fine-drawn young man. He was quite different from any other young man she had ever met. Somehow, he was exactly like his book.

"It is odd you should have been on the same ship as my brother."

"Yes," said the Sailor. "And yet it isn't. Nothing is really queer if you come to think about it. It seems very much more strange to me that I should be in this beautiful room talking to you ladies, than that I should have been in the port watch with Klondyke aboard the _Margaret Carey_."

"The sea is more familiar to you than London," said Silvia, completely disarmed by his naivete, as Mary had been.

Otto now came in. His general aspect was not unlike Klondyke's, his air was frank and manly, yet his bearing was more considered than that hero's. All the same he had a full share of the family charm.

"Otto," said Mary, "this is Mr. Harper, who knows Jack."

"What, you know old Fly-up-the-Creek! Heaven help you!"

Mr. Harper had already made the discovery that these people had a language of their own, which he could only follow with difficulty. It was a language which Madame Sadleir didn't teach, a language that Mr. Ambrose didn't use, although he understood it well enough; in fact, it was a language he had never heard before, and he somehow felt that Lady Pridmore was rather pained by it.

"Mr. Harper," said Mary, "this is our respectable brother. He is true to type."

"For the love of heaven, be quiet!" said Otto, gulping his tea.

"Here's your book on Nietzsche," said Silvia. "Mr. Harper, what do you think of Nietzsche?"

Mr. Harper had never heard of Nietzsche, and he didn't hesitate to say so. Lady Pridmore alone, of the four people present, failed to respect his frankness. To her mind, it was inconceivable that an author by profession and one reputed to be successful should not have heard of Nietzsche. It was almost as if he had not heard of Lord Tennyson.

Yet Mary and Silvia and even the Prince honored this candor. This chap was a queer freak in the eyes of the budding diplomatist, but he had been told by people who knew about such matters that all writing chaps were, if they were at all first rate. All the same, he liked him. One felt he was straight and decent, in spite of his outlandishness. Somehow this quaint bird did not seem to be following the usual line of country of the soaring eagles of the moment whom his sisters brought to the house from time to time.

The Prince took not unkindly to the sailorman, who had written two very curious books about the sea. They were much overrated, in the Prince's opinion. The style was uncertain, and the colors were laid on too thick for anything, but people who knew Ted Ambrose, for instance, thought a good deal of them. Personally, the Prince believed in style. Stevenson, for example, wrote like an educated man. This man's writing in its crude force had somehow the air of the lower deck. Ambrose said there was greatness in it, all the same. Personally, the Prince preferred polished mediocrity, and was not ashamed of the fact, not that one could call a chap like Stevenson mediocre. But this man Harper lacked something, although it was to his credit to admit that he had never heard of Nietzsche. But obviously he hadn't.

VIII

Mary's enthusiasm for the sailorman was shared by Silvia, although not perhaps in an equal degree. Lady Pridmore was inclined to be a little distressed by it, in the way that she was inclined to be a little distressed by so many things. The Prince merely thought there was no harm in the chap, but that he was a freak.

Edward Ambrose, who had discovered what Lady Pridmore considered this rather odd young man, had many questions to answer when next he appeared in Queen Street. As a particular friend of the house, he turned the tables by adroitly chaffing Lady Pridmore and the Prince, and by ministering gaily to Mary's and Silvia's tempered ecstasies.

In the meantime, the Sailor was indulging little private ecstasies of his own. The visit to a Mayfair drawing-room had marked one more epoch in a strange career. He had entered another new and wonderful world. It was a world whose language was a closed book to him at present. Perhaps it always would be; at any rate, it seemed to lie out of the range even of Madame Sadleir, whose instruction he still courted diligently.

It was a world of peculiar grace, of external harmony and beauty. The trained minds marching with the trained movements of these people lent the quality of poetry to all they said and did. And they took what he could only call their refinement so much for granted, that they seemed almost to apologize for the sheer niceness in which they had so completely enveloped themselves. He had not known that such people existed in mass and bulk, at least that they had a corporate life of their own. The glamour they had for him was extraordinary. It would have been impossible to think without a thrill of his friend Miss Pridmore, even if she had not been the sister of the immortal Klondyke.

Mary herself found so much in common with the Sailor that she began to show him the sights of the town. She was quite a modern girl in her breadth and independence, happily inoculated against every sort of ism, but at the same time capable of following any line she marked out for herself. The Sailor had soon begun to interest her very much, and instinctively divining something of his handicap, she wished to help him all she could.

About a week after the first visit to Queen Street, she led the young man to the National Gallery to see the Turners. They spent a very profitable morning holding high communion before them. His unstudied comments seemed to give her a juster view not of art merely, but of life as well. The depth of his intoxication as he stood before these seascapes, sensing them, drinking them in, filled her with wonder.

"God!" he muttered once. She saw his eyes were full of tears, and she felt a stab of pity.

Life had not been kind to this man. A thousand subtle, half apprehended things had already told her that. He had said in his odd way, which was yet so poignant, that he "had started a long way behind scratch." Indeed, it was the sight of these very Turners which had wrung the admission from him.

After this, they went one day to Manchester Square to see the Wallace collection, and to concerts on several Sunday afternoons, but the climax of esthetic delight was reached for Henry Harper when one evening he was taken to the Opera to hear "Tristan." Edward Ambrose, who it seemed numbered the super-rich among his friends, had been lent a box on the grand tier. And nothing would content him save that others should share the blessings which attend acquaintance with plutocracy.

The box was able to accommodate six persons, and those whom Edward Ambrose lured into honoring it and being honored by it were the three ladies, the Prince, Henry Harper, and himself. Lady Pridmore and the Prince were a little bored undoubtedly. She had the lowest opinion of Wagner and thought the Germans overrated generally. The Prince was more discreet in his condemnation, but he certainly thought the Prelude was too long. Edward Ambrose, Mary, and Silvia had heard it so often that it was almost ceasing to be an excitement for them: a frame of mind, it is said, which connotes the amateur. As for Mr. Harper, that was an ever-memorable night.

From this time on he was in a state of growing ecstasy which threatened to become perilous. Existence was now an enchanted thing. A veritable Fairy Princess had come into his life. In speech, in manner, in look, in deed, she was of royal kin. In all the Sailor's wanderings, in all his imaginings, no mortal woman had assumed the significance of this sister of the immortal Klondyke.

O goddess rare and strange! He was already in her thrall. She was gray-eyed Athena of whom his reading had lately been telling him, she was Wisdom herself come to earth in the disciplined splendor of her spirit. Already he was prostrate at the shrine. It was for Her that he had sailed the multitudinous seas, it was for Her that he had traversed noisome caverns measureless to man.

Aladdin, with a flash of the wonderful lamp, had shown him a reason for many things. Strange and dreadful burdens had been laid upon him, every inch of his endurance had been tested in Fate's crucible, that in the end he might win through to a high destiny. Was it for nothing that, shoeless and stockingless, he had cried, "Orrible Crime on the Igh Seas," in the slush of a Blackhampton gutter? Was it for nothing that he had looked on the Island of San Pedro? No; there was purpose behind it all. At the chosen hour the goddess Athena was to appear in order that he might be healed with the divine wisdom.

Life was touched to very fine issues for the Sailor now. And yet so swift was the change that he did not realize its peril. The sister of Klondyke meant much to him already. Sometimes he read his work to her. When they discussed it afterwards her comments would reveal a depth of knowledge that astonished him, and raised the whole matter of the argument to a higher plane. Many an enchanted talk they had together. So miraculously were their minds in tune that it almost seemed they must have conversed through unnumbered ages. Then, too, in the most tactful and delicate way, she was his guide amid the elusive paths of this new and divine world he was entering. Yet she asked so little and gave so much, such a change was wrought in his life by subtle degrees, that he was blind to the terrible danger.

It was in late spring, when they had known each other nearly three months, that the Sailor had a first intimation of coming disaster. By that time he had yielded completely to a state of bliss. Moreover, he was now in the thrall of Athena's counterfeit and epitome as imaged by other sailormen who had held communings with her. She had sent to Brinkworth Street on three successive Mondays, recking nought of her deed, certain magic volumes in which she herself was mirrored by the mind of a poet: "Richard Feverel," "Beauchamp," and "The Egoist." And then as he felt the sorcery of Renee, Clara, Lucy, and other adumbrations of Athena herself, something happened.

It was merely that she went out of town for a fortnight. But that fortnight was enough to tell the Sailor one tragic thing. A glamour had gone from the earth. The grass of May was no longer green; Chelsea's river was no longer a vindication of Turner; the birds no longer sang in Middlesex.

A strange thing had come to pass. The Sailor had suffered one sea change the more. But at first, had his life depended on it, he could not have said what it was. He only knew that he was losing appetite for the magic food on which he had been waxing lately: it was no longer possible to devour poetry and wisdom in the way he had done. Moreover his pen no longer flew across the paper. It took him a whole week to do that which he now expected to accomplish in a morning, and then the result pleased him so little that he tore it up. He was bitterly disconcerted by this mystery. But one day, the eighth of her absence, the truth came to him, like a ghost in the night. Life was no longer possible without Mary Pridmore.

It was about four o'clock of a morning in June when this fact overtook him. As he lay in bed, facing it as well as he could, it seemed to submerge him. He sprang forth to meet the cold dawn creeping from the Thames, flung up the blind and opened the window. In the grip of the old relentless force he turned his eyes to the east. The faint flecks of orange across the river were the gates of paradise, yet the Sailor hardly knew whether the sinister gloom beyond was a bank of cloud or the trees upon the Island of San Pedro. In an exaltation of the spirit which he had only known once before in his life, he seemed to hear a particular name being twittered by the birds in the eaves. Mary Pridmore! Mary Pridmore!

It was fantastic, it was ridiculous, it was perhaps a form of mania, but there was the fact. And a policeman, passing along Brinkworth Street at that moment, seemed to tread out that magic name upon its echoing pavement!

She had given him her address: Miss Pridmore, at Greylands, near Woking. He must write, she had said, but not before he had finished "The Egoist," and had made up his mind about it; thereby revealing, as became a properly conventional Miss Pridmore, that it was not so much the sailorman who was of consequence as his opinion on a highly technical matter!

In the innocence of his heart he had already written and posted a letter. His views were expressed with a naivete at the opposite pole from Box Hill on these high epistolary occasions. It was not in this wise that the mage addressed his own particular goddesses.

No answer had yet come to this letter. Therefore in the half light of dawn he sat down to write a second and more considered one. Vain endeavor! It was not for the pen of mortal to unlock the heart of the true prince, unless the genie willed it. And this morning, alas, the genie was not amenable. For it suddenly addressed the Sailor, not with the voice of a magician, but with rude horse sense.

"Get into bed, you fool," said the genie. "Cease making an idiot of yourself. Athena is as far beyond you as the stars in their courses which have just gone back into heaven."

The Sailor returned to his bed, to dream. He did his best to be rational, but the task was hopeless. "Mary Pridmore! Mary Pridmore!" twittered the sparrows in the eaves of Chelsea.

IX

A little after five had struck by the church of St. Clement at the bottom of Brinkworth Street, he rose again from his bed. He flung on his clothes, draped a scarf round his neck in lieu of a collar, crept downstairs and out of the front door of No. 14 into the streets of the metropolis.

This morning there was a coolness in the air. And as soon as he felt it he was able to think more clearly. A sharp thrill ran through his brain. It was hardly three months since he had roamed the streets of London in the morning hours with tumult in his heart.

Since that night he had explored whole continents; hardly anything remained of many former worlds he had inhabited; but there was a spear in the side of Ulysses, and he must always remember that none could pluck it out.

As he reached the bottom of the street and Thames in his majesty smiled grimly upon him, he knew that he was in terrible case. He was no more than a frail mortal, caught in the toils of irresistible forces. What hope had such a one of outfacing the decrees of fate?

It was not until he had walked for an hour by the waters of Thames that he returned to Brinkwater Street, to breakfast. A letter with the Woking postmark was at the side of his plate. It said:

Greylands.
Thursday.

MY DEAR MR. HARPER,

Your view of 'The Egoist' is a new light to me on a most wonderful book. It is not exactly how I see it myself, but I somehow feel you are very near the truth. But when you say that a man such as Willoughby is not quite sane there is a point for argument. You are also too severe, I think, in your judgment of the author of his being. You say he could never really have known what life is. There I frankly don't agree with you, but of course we look at things so differently, and that is the great charm of your long letter. This is a very stupid one, but I won't apologize for it, because it is the best I can write, and I shall not have the presumption to try to meet you on your own ground. You have sailed the High Seas, whereas I have only read about them. Looking back on the conversations we have had I see you as a master mariner. This is not an idle compliment. You have not yet gained your full stature, you have yet to declare yourself in your power, but believe me you have the strength of a giant, and if such a wish is not an impertinence I hope you will have the courage to achieve your destiny.

Yours always most sincerely,
MARY PRIDMORE.

This letter was like a draft of wine to the Sailor. He read it many times before that day was out, but he turned to it again and again long after he knew every word by heart. It gave him a new zest for his work. He had quite a good day with the pen. Under these high auspices he took new courage to go on. Much was asked of him by this sacred intimacy. By deeds alone could he show himself worthy.

In reply to this letter he wrote a very long one to Miss Pridmore, at Greylands, near Woking. It was not so discreet and carefully considered as the one he had intended to write; he let himself go far more than he felt he ought to have done. And the reply he received the day before the fortnight was up was similarly expansive and just as entrancing as the former one. But the whole effect was marred by a grievous disappointment. Instead of returning from Greylands on the morrow, which was Saturday, she was going to stay another week.

How could he bear the burden of existence for such an intolerable length of time without a sight of her? It was asking more of flesh and blood than flesh and blood thought reasonable.

The next day, Saturday, was a time of gloom. He could not work at all, and it was no use making a pretence of it. But in the evening, sadly smoking a pipe after so meager a dinner that Mr. Paley was quite disconcerted, there came an inspiration.

Why not pay a visit to Woking on the morrow? Why not make his way to Greylands--wherever Greylands might be--and without revealing an unsanctioned presence, gaze upon Athena in all her glory as she came out of church, which he knew she attended every Sunday?

The idea at once took possession of him. And presently it flamed so hot in his mind that he borrowed a Bradshaw from Mr. Paley and found, as he had surmised, that there was no lack of trains to Woking on the morrow. He decided that the one which arrived at 9.20 would be the best for his purpose. That would give him plenty of time to locate Greylands, and ample opportunity, no doubt, to reach it.

Sunday came, a fair June day, and the Sailor, having made an early, but in the circumstances surprisingly efficient, breakfast, set forth to Waterloo Station. Such an adventure could receive no sanction from men or gods, but after all, reflected Henry Harper as he went his way, no possible harm can come of it if I don't let her see me!

The train arrived at Woking only five minutes late, which was really not bad for the Sabbath. Only one porter was to be seen on the deserted platform, and he, with the gruffness of a martyr ill resigned, had "never heard on it," that is to say, had never heard of Greylands.

This was a rebuff. The clerk in the booking office, suffering also from a sense of injustice, was equally unhelpful. However, outside the station was a solitary flyman in charge of a promiscuous vehicle, and he, it seemed, had heard of Greylands, moreover, scenting a fare, knew how to get there.

"It's afore you come to Bramshott, just off the Guildford Road. How far? All out three mile. But I shan't ask more than four shilling."

The Sailor declined this offer with politeness. He would have plenty of time to walk, which was what he wanted to do. The flyman, in spite of a keen disappointment, received such a sincere and cordial "Good morning," that he returned it without discourtesy.

The first thing to enkindle the senses of the Sailor was the smell of the fresh country earth. A very little rain had fallen in the night, but enough to renew with a divine cleanliness these wide spaces, these open heaths.

The bracken, young and green and a mass of shining crystals, was uncurling itself on each side of the road. The birds were in full choir, the trees were near the pomp of midsummer, the sun of June made a glory of the distant hills. It was a noble world. Long before the Sailor came to Greylands he was like a harp strung and touched to ecstasy by the implicit hand of nature.

He knew he was speculating on the bare chance of a sight of Athena. There was nothing to tell him that she would go that morning to Bramshott parish church. The only guide he had was that she went to church at least once every Sunday, and sometimes twice, but whether this would involve attendance at the local service must be the part of faith to answer.

At any rate, whether he set eyes on her or not, he was trudging to Greylands through the bracken in ease of mind and high expansion of spirit. He might not see her, yet he was giving himself the glorious opportunity. It was on the knees of the gods, but already he felt stronger, braver, saner, for having put it to the touch.

A little after ten he came to Bramshott village. It was a small place of quaint timber-framed houses, and in the middle was a church. But it all seemed commonplace enough. There was nothing here to minister to an intense emotion; nothing but the sun, the birds, the sky, the bracken, the perfumed loveliness of mother earth.

He was not such a fool as to fear his ecstasy. Come what might he would live his hour. The towers of Greylands, he was told in the village, could be seen from the church porch. There they were, sure enough, banked and massive, cutting across the sun with their importunate red brick. This, at any rate, was her local habitation. It was his to gaze upon even if no other guerdon rewarded him.

As became a true sailorman, who had sailed six years before the mast, he had brought home a pocket of horse sense from his wanderings. Therefore, as soon as he had drunk his fill of those flanked towers, he went inside the church and found a decrepit pew-opener who was full of information.

The service began at eleven. Reverend Manson was the vicar and also the squire of the parish, although Greylands was the rich folk, and they always came of a Sunday morning, whatever the weather, if the Fambly was at home. Their name was Ellis, and they were very rich.

Armed with this knowledge, the Sailor decided upon a bold course. He took up a position in a corner of the church some way behind the Greylands pew, which had been duly pointed out to him. Here he sat unseen with one solid pillar to conceal him. But he had taken care that in spite of the pillar a clear sight of the Greylands pew should be his.

It seemed a long time to eleven. But it came at last, and with it, or rather shortly before it, by the courtesy of the gods, came Mary Pridmore. She entered before the Sailor, counting the seconds in his fastness, realized that she was there.

She wore a simple dress of soft gray and a black hat. But in no particular had she abated a whit of her regality. In that fine outline was a quality that made his pulses leap. As she went down the aisle with two white-spatted, ultra-princelike cavaliers, and two ladies, older than she, yet in garb more fanciful, the Sailor caught just a glimpse of her face. Yes, this was Athena herself, a creature altogether splendid yet restrained, who drew the Sailor's very soul and held it, while she knelt on her hassock, with an air of gravest submission and dignity.

Suddenly he realized that she was praying. With a rather irrational impulse of shame he fell on his knees. The knowledge abased him that he had neglected this obvious duty, but yet he had the excuse, such as it was, that this was the very first time in his life he had entered a church.

Hitherto--if the Sailor must face the truth--the whole of his intercourse with religious things had been confined to two tea and bun fights with addresses to follow, under the aegis of that light of his youth, the Reverend Rogers, at the Brookfield Street Mission Hall. Therefore he didn't know in the least what to do. However, let him keep his eyes in front of him. When Athena got up he must get up, when she sat down he must sit down. And kneeling as she kneeled, he devoutly hoped that he was rendering homage to the same God as she, although with far less whole-hearted allegiance than hers at the moment.

It was hard to know what use to make of the Book of Common Prayer that the verger had given him. He had never opened such a volume before. To the best of his recollection one had been lent him at the Brookfield Street Mission Hall, but certainly it had not been opened. It would have been no use to do so, seeing that he could not read a word of it then. But he could read it now, and he desired to render thanks for that miraculous, that crowning mercy.

The service was long, but to the Sailor it was entrancing. The imperial outline of Athena was ever before him; and yet in despite of her he had at least a part of a devout mind to spare for an ancient mystery. Reverend Manson in his dual role of vicar and squire of Bramshott was something of a patriarch. It was a fine face, and to the Sailor it was a symbolical presence. He was simple and sincere, and whatever his learning may have been he wore it like a flower. Somehow, Reverend Manson spoke to the heart of the Sailor. During that enchanted hour he followed him into an unknown kingdom. Yet as he did this the young man was thrilled by the thought that he did not journey alone. Athena was with him at every step he took.

The prayers passed and the singing, which affected him strangely; then came the sermon, and after that more singing, and then came the verger with the collection plate. The Sailor put in half a sovereign; anything but gold seemed a profanation of a most solemn rite. And then he did an immensely wise thing. He glided swiftly, in the midst of the hymn, out of the church, and out of Bramshott village into the lanes of Surrey.

X

More than one long and golden hour the Sailor wandered through bracken and heather. He didn't know in the least where he was going, and there seemed no reason why he should care. He had a wonderful sense of adventure. Here was something real. This was the noble and gorgeous life to which the streets of Blackhampton, the deck of the _Margaret Carey_, the sojourn at King John's Mansions were the dreadful but necessary prelude.

After a long beat across country, and away, away he knew not where, he struck a path which carried him into a charming village tucked away under a hill. It then occurred to him that he was very hungry. The sign of "The Chequers" in the village street brought the fact home. At this neat hostelry with a roof of thatch he was able to declare himself a _bona fide_ traveler, and was rewarded with a noble chunk of bread and cheese and a glass of beer, a thin and tepid brew whose only merit was the quality of wetness. But such fare and an hour's rest on a wooden bench in a cool parlor with a sanded floor was Elysium.

After that again the road--but only the road in a manner of speaking. The Sailor, roaming now the high seas of his desire, was in no mood at present for the ordered routes of commerce. Let it be the open country. Let him be borne across multitudinous seas on the wings of fancy. Therefore, as a bird flies, he struck across the pathless heather. The bracken rose waist high, but wherever it ran he followed it, now through the close-grown woods, now across furzy common and open spaces.

On and on he wandered all the golden afternoon. And then quite suddenly came evening and an intense weariness which was not made less because he didn't know where he was. He only knew that he was in Surrey and very tired. But, all at once, Providence declared itself in an unexpected way. Straight ahead among the trees was a tiny opening, and threading it a hum of telegraph wires.

This could only mean that a main road was at hand. Quickened to new life by such a rare piece of luck he pushed on, thanking his stars. Evidently he could not be far from a town or a railway. As a fact, he had struck the Guilford Road, and a hundred yards or so along it the friendliest milestone he had ever met assured him that he was three miles from the country town of Surrey.

Those three miles, honest turnpike as they were, proved a test of endurance. But they ended at last. Footsore and limping now, he crossed a bridge and entered a railway station where the lamps were lit already. And then Providence really surpassed itself! The last train to London was due in twenty minutes.

The Sailor flung himself down on a seat in the station in a state of heavenly fatigue. It had been such a day as he had never known, and his final gracious act of fortune was a fitting climax. It was true the last train to London was twenty minutes late, but it sufficed to know that it was surely coming.

Finally it came, and the Sailor entered it. Moreover, he had the carriage to himself, and was able to lie full length on the cushions in an orgy of weariness. He dozed deliciously all the way to Waterloo, which he reached at something after eleven. It was striking midnight by St. Clement's Church as he turned the latchkey in the door of No. 14 Brinkworth Street. At a quarter past that hour the Sailor was in his bed too deeply asleep even to dream of Athena.

XI

One of Mary Pridmore's first acts upon her return from Greylands was to summon the sailorman to dine in Queen Street. She was a little peremptory. That is to say, she could take no refusal; it seemed that a certain Mr. Nixon, a Cabinet Minister, had expressed a wish to meet the author of "Dick Smith."

Miss Pridmore was a little excited by this desire on the part of Mr. Nixon. In her opinion, if you were a member of the Cabinet, it was important you should be met; yet Henry Harper did not attach as much significance to the matter as perhaps he ought to have done. In fact, he was a little vague upon the subject. He knew that the newspapers talked mysteriously about the Cabinet, and abused it fearfully every morning with the most devoted and courageous persistency; also he remembered that one of Auntie's temporary husbands was said to have been a cabinetmaker when he was in work, but neither this fact, nor the attitude of the public press, seemed to afford any reason why he must in no circumstances disappoint the President of the Board of Supererogation.

"Please don't be so cool to the Cabinet, Mr. Harper," Athena pleaded, while the young man sought a way out of the impasse. "When such a man as Mr. Nixon asks to meet you, it means that you have _really_ arrived. Not that it matters. You have arrived without any help from Mr. Nixon. But he is an old friend of mother's, and he is greatly interested in your book."

The Sailor wanted very particularly, but as delicately as he could, to escape the ordeal of dining in Queen Street, Mayfair. Instinct warned him that this would prove a different matter from a party in Bury Street. The truth was, he had not been able to overcome an unreasonable awe of Lady Pridmore. Then, too, he had an uneasy feeling that he was a little out of his depth with the Prince. Yet again, Miss Silvia, friendly and amusing as she was, gave him a slight sense of hidden, invisible barriers which he could never hope to surmount.

Mary, however, would take no denial. Her mother would be much disappointed, and so would Mr. Nixon, and so would Uncle George, who had also expressed a desire to be present. In Lady Pridmore's opinion this really "ranged" Mr. Harper, and with such a person as Lady Pridmore, that was an operation of the first magnitude, not, of course, that her daughter confided that to the Sailor in so many words.

"I am talking nonsense," said Mary, with that sharp turn of frankness which the Sailor adored in her. "If you don't want to meet people, there is no reason why you should. I sometimes feel exactly the same myself. Mr. Nixon is a bore, and Uncle George--well, he's Uncle George. It will be a tiresome evening for you, but Edward is coming and Jack Ellis, whom we both like, and his fiancee who is quite amusing, and if you really decide to come, I am sure it will please mother."

The Sailor saw, however, that it would please Mary. And that was reason enough for him to accept the invitation after all.

When the day came, it was in fear and trembling that he put on his new evening clothes, with which he had been provided by Edward Ambrose's own tailor. Upon a delicate hint from his friend, he discarded his first suit, which he now realized was a little too crude for a growing reputation. Yet, rather oddly, he could hardly be brought to understand that he had such a thing as a reputation. Indeed, it was only in Queen Street, Mayfair, that a reputation seemed to matter.

A dinner party at No. 50 was a serious affair. He had to begin by shaking hands with Lady Pridmore, who looked like a lady from the walls of Burlington House. A week ago he had been with Mary to the Royal Academy of Arts. Then, also, formidable looking strangers abounded. Foremost of these was Uncle George.

Uncle George was an elderly admiral retired. Among the younger members of the family he was known as "Old Blunderbore." His voice, once of great use on the quarterdeck, was really a little too much for a drawing-room of modest dimensions. Also, his opinions were many and they were unqualified, his stories were long and quite pointless as a rule, he was apt to indulge in a kind of ventriloquial entertainment when he ate his soup, he drank a goodish deal, and was not always very polite to the servants; yet being Uncle George, his sister-in-law seemed to feel that he was a person of immense consequence, and he did not disguise the fact that he considered her a sensible woman for thinking so.

Uncle George seized the hand of the Sailor in marine style, and said, in his loud voice, "Good book you wrote, young man. 'Adventures of Paul Jones.' Good book. Some of it's true, I'm told, and, of course, that makes it much better."

At this point, Mary the watchful led the Sailor gently but firmly out of the range of Uncle George.

That warrior, baffled of his prey, fell like a sea leopard upon Edward Ambrose, who, however, countered him quietly and with frank amusement.

"Never made a bigger mistake in your life, Ambrose, than to compare 'Paul Jones' with 'Robinson Crusoe.'"

Ambrose did not consider it necessary to point out that he had never once mentioned "Paul Jones," and that he was too wise a man ever to compare anything with "Robinson Crusoe." Instead, he laughed the note that was quite peculiar to himself, and mildly asked Uncle George what he thought of the latest performance of the First Lord of the Admiralty.

In the meantime, the Sailor was having to sustain the shock of a first meeting with the President of the Board of Supererogation. His mentor had already described this pillar of the Government as a bore. But the Sailor was not yet sufficiently acquainted with things and men to regard the Right Honorable Gregory Nixon with this measure of detachment.

The impact, however, of the Front Bench manner was less severe than was to have been expected. The voice of Mr. Nixon was nothing like so formidable as his appearance.

"A great pleasure, a great pleasure." Mr. Nixon had a trick of repeating his phrases. "Pray, how did you come to write it all? Angrove thinks"--to the profound and morbid horror of the public press, Mr. Angrove at that moment was the Prime Minister of the realm--"Angrove thinks..."

Happily, the butler informed his mistress that dinner was served, and for a time Mr. Nixon had to postpone what Mr. Angrove thought.

It was only for a time, however, that it was possible to do so. The President of the Board of Supererogation did all his thinking vicariously in terms of Mr. Angrove. But there was just one subject on which Mr. Nixon had opinions of his own. That was the subject of divorce, and it may have been for the reason that it was not a cabinet matter. Before the evening was over, it was tolerably certain that the President of the Board of Supererogation would identify himself publicly and at length with the minority report.

This cheerless fact had to be taken for granted. Divorce in its various aspects was a constant preoccupation of the right honorable gentleman. He had never been married himself, and was never likely to be. Had this not been the case Mr. Gregory Nixon must have felt bound to defer to any opinion that Mr. Angrove might or might not have expressed upon the matter.

"We are in for it now," whispered Mary to the Sailor, who was eating the entree, sweetbreads with white sauce, and wishing he could use a knife as well as a fork. "But it's Uncle George's fault. He's given him a chance with his silly and pointless story, which is a mere perversion of a very much better one. There, what did I say?"

It was tragically true, that Mr. Nixon was already in the saddle.

"If he would only say something sensible! He is like that character in Dickens--but his King Charles's head is the minority report."

Still, this may have been a woman's thrust, because Mary did not happen to be an admirer of Mr. Nixon's personality. Yet he was a very agreeable man, and on the subject of divorce he talked extraordinarily well, perhaps quite as well as it is possible for any human being to talk on such a vexed and complicated subject.

Mr. Nixon knew that, no doubt. The fact was, that just as one man may have a genius for playing chess, another for shooting clay pigeons, a third for hitting a golf ball or casting a fly, so this eminent politician had a genius for discussing divorce. He may have felt that on that topic no human being could stand against him at a small dinner party where the conversation was general. Lady Pridmore seemed grieved when her hero began to expose this flaw in the armor of a Christian gentleman, Uncle George became furious and was suddenly rude to the butler, Mary and Silvia and the Prince looked the picture of misery, and Edward Ambrose came within an ace of choking himself.

All the same, the discussion which followed was of breathless interest to one person at that table. Henry Harper hung on every word of it.

Mary herself was the first to take up the gage of battle. And she took it up gallantly. She didn't think for a moment that divorce ought to be made more easy. In her opinion, it ought to be made more difficult.

"Why?" asked Mr. Nixon. He asked no more than that, but there was the weight of several royal commissions in the inquiry.

But Mary had the flame of war in her eyes. She knew what Mr. Nixon's opinions were, and she was heartily ashamed of them. On this subject she could make a very good show for herself, because she happened to feel strongly upon it.

Mr. Nixon was a latitudinarian. He would have divorce brought within the reach of all classes of the community. It should be equally accessible to the poor and the well-to-do. He would greatly amplify the grounds for obtaining it, and even went the length of affirming that the mutual consent of the contracting parties should alone suffice. Moreover, he saw no reason why marriage should not be a contract like any other for a period of years.

Mary bluntly considered these were abominable heresies, and several other women, not to mention Mr. Ellis and Uncle George, shared her opinion. Even Lady Pridmore, who in her heart was horrified by her hero's fall, was moved to remark that it would be impossible to carry on society on any such basis.

"Of course it would," said Mary, with a vehemence that was startling. "For better for worse, for richer for poorer, that's my view. I dare say it's old-fashioned, but I'm sure it's right."

"There I dissent," said Mr. Nixon. "It isn't right at all. Our marriage laws are out of date. They can no longer meet the needs of the community. They are as far behind the twentieth century as a stage coach or a two-horse omnibus. Untold misery and hardship have been inflicted upon the population, and it is high time there was practical legislation upon the subject."

"Marriage," said Mary, with charming pugnacity, "is the most sacred contract into which it is possible for any human being to enter. And if it is not to be binding, I really don't know what contract is or can hope to be. What is your view of the question, Mr. Harper?" she asked, suddenly, of the young man at her side.

The Sailor had been listening with an attention almost painful. But he felt quite unequal to taking a part in the argument. Therefore he contented himself with the general statement that it ought to be easier to get a divorce than it was at present.

"I am grieved to hear you say that," said Athena, with a note in her voice which startled him. "I know I am rather a fanatic, but I really don't see how there can be two opinions upon the matter."

Feeling very unhappy, Henry Harper did not try to contest the point. But this was a subject upon which she felt so strongly that she could not leave it in such a very unsatisfactory state.

"Those whom God hath joined let no man put asunder," said Athena. "How is it possible to go beyond that! I would even abolish divorce altogether."

The young man felt a sudden chill.

"Suppose a man had been divorced through no fault of his own?" he said in a far-away voice.

"I don't think a divorced person ought ever to remarry."