Chapter IX: Book III: Being (1)

I

Barnes Common seemed a very large place. The Sailor was afraid he would not be able to keep on much longer, but he had learned endurance in his six years before the mast. Weeks and months together he had just kept on keeping on while he had sailed the terrible seas. At that time there was no magic talisman to hold him to his course, there was neither hope nor faith of the world to be. But now it was otherwise. Surely he had no reason to give in, just as a new heaven and a new earth were opening before his eyes.

He came presently to a row of houses. A road was beyond and traffic was passing along it. The hope of a coffee stall sprang to his mind. He walked doggedly along the road, until at a point where it was merged in an important thoroughfare he came upon a cabman's shelter. And there within, in answer to his faith, were the things he sought. Through the open door was a fire, a smell of steaming fluids, of frying meats, and an honest bench on which to enjoy them.

He asked no leave, but stumbled in and at the beck of his powerfully stimulated senses ordered a kingly repast, and spread both hands before the fire. Sausages and mashed potatoes were brought to him and he sat down to eat, just as a very cheerful looking cabman entered with a face of professional red, and wearing apparel not unworthy of an arctic explorer.

The cabman ordered a cup of cocoa and a "doorstep," and that justice might be done to them sat on the bench by the young man's side. A little while they ate in silence, for both were very hungry. Then under the influence of food and a good fire the cabman talked. His sociability enabled the Sailor to ask an important question.

"Can you tell me, mister, of lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man?"

"What sort o' lodgings are you wantin', mister?" The cabman was favorably impressed by the young man's air of politeness.

"Lodgings clean and decent," said the Sailor.

"I know that," said the cabman urbanely, "but what do you want to pay fur 'em?"

The Sailor reflected. There were nineteen sovereigns and twelve half-sovereigns in his belt; all the same, he was enough of a landsman to know the value of money.

"I want to live cheap," he said, with extreme simplicity. "Just as cheap as I can, and be clean and decent, too."

The cabman let his large wise eyes flow over the Sailor, and quietly took his measure as became a veteran of the town.

"Ever tried Bowdon House?"

The Sailor shook his head.

The cabman ruminated.

"Tizzey a day fur your cubicle an' the use o' the kitchen fire."

The young man was not insulted, although the cabman feared he might have been, so good were his clothes, so gravely courteous his aspect.

"O' course," said the cabman, "it ain't Buckingham Palace, it's no use purtendin' it is."

"So long as it's clean and decent," said the Sailor.

"I give you my word for that. Never stayed there myself, but I know them as has."

The Sailor nodded.

"O' course, it ain't the Sizzle. I don't say that all on 'em moves in high circles, that would be tellin' a lie, but if you don't mind all sorts there's wuss homes, they tell me, in this metropolus, than Bowdon House."

The young man said he would try it, anyway, if it wasn't far.

"It's at the back o' Victoria," said the cabman. "Can't miss it if you go sharp to the left at the second turnin' past the station."

Henry Harper had to confess that he didn't know the way to Victoria Station.

"It's quite easy," said the cabman. "Buss 14 that goes by here will set you down at Victoria. Then do as I say, or ask a bobby to put you right."

Armed with these instructions, Henry Harper presently set out for Bowdon House. Feeling much better for a good meal and human intercourse, he found it without difficulty. Bowdon House was a large and somber building. Its exterior rather abashed the Sailor. But a sure instinct warned him that now he could not afford to be abashed by anything. Therefore he entered and boldly paid the sum of sixpence for a vacant cubicle.

The beds might not be equal to the Sizzle, but they were clean and decent undoubtedly, and not too hard for a sailor. You could have a bath for a penny, you could keep your own private frying pan, you were allowed the use of the kitchen range to cook any food you liked to buy, and a comfortable place was provided where you could sit and eat it. The company was mixed, it was true, as the cabman had said, but these were solid advantages, and the chief of them at the moment, in the opinion of Henry Harper, was that you could go to bed when you liked and stay there forever if only you continued to pay your six-pence a night.

The first thing the young man did was to have a hot bath. He then hired for a penny a nightgown, as clean and decent as his cubicle, and within a very short time was in a sleep so long and deep that it banished entirely the new fear that had crept into his brain.

About five o'clock in the evening he awoke a new man. After a toilet as careful as the absence of a razor and a hairbrush would permit, he found his way to the common room. He felt extremely hungry, but the outlay of another six-pence, brought him a pot of tea, some brown bread and butter, and a slice of meat pie.

There was only one other patron in the common room, and he at once attracted Henry Harper's curiosity. This individual was engaged in toasting a muffin at the large and clear fire, and even with the Sailor's experience of Miss Foldal in this kind, he had never seen one of these delightful articles dealt with in a manner of such sacerdotal delicacy.

A blue china plate was warming before the fire, and the muffin was presently placed on it, soaked in butter in true Miss Foldal style, and brought to table piping hot. The young man had chosen a place as near the fire as he could get, and the muffin expert took a place opposite, poured out a brew of tea from his own blue china teapot, and to the Sailor's amazement squeezed a little lemon juice into it.

This Sybarite was eating his first piece of muffin with an air of feminine elegance when he suddenly caught the young man's eye. The limpid glance seemed to stimulate his own blue orb to a mild and calm curiosity. The Sybarite looked the young man up and down, but continued to eat his muffin with a kind of apostolic pleasantness, which somehow recalled to Henry Harper the Reverend Rogers and a certain famous tea-party at the Brookfield Street Mission Hall in his distant youth.

Presently, to Henry Harper's grave surprise, the muffin eater was pleased to discourse a little of men and things.

The Sailor in his genuine modesty was flattered, moreover he was charmed. Never in all his wanderings had he heard a man discourse in this way. It might have been Klondyke himself--at times there was an odd resemblance to that immortal in the occasional grace notes of the Sybarite. Yet it was a suggestion rather than a resemblance. This was a kind of composite of Klondyke and the Reverend Rogers, a Klondyke raised to a higher intellectual power.

Of course, this was only one aspect of the Sybarite, and that the least important, because with every allowance for the sacred memory of the Reverend Rogers, the person opposite was quite the most wonderful talker Henry Harper had ever heard in his life.

Had the Sailor heard the music of Palestrina, which at that period was a pleasure to come, he might have imagined he was listening to it. The voice of the Sybarite was measured yet floating, his phrases were endless yet perfectly rounded and definite, there was a note of weariness, older than the world, yet there was a charm, a lucidity, a mellow completeness that was perfectly amazing. The Sailor, with a wonderful talisman now burning bright in his soul, was enchanted.

This remarkable person owned, with a sort of frankness which was not frankness at all, that there were just two things he could do of practical utility. One, it seemed, was to toast a muffin with anybody, the other was to make the perfect cup of tea. Here he ended and here he began. He had also the rather unacademic habit of quoting dead languages in a manner so remarkably impressive as to bewilder the Sailor.

Henry Harper listened with round eyes. He devoured the Sybarite. His talisman seemed to tell him that he was on the verge of worlds denied to the common run of men. This remarkable person had even a private language of his own. He used words and phrases so charged with esoteric meanings that they somehow seemed to make the Aladdin's lamp burn brighter in the Sailor's soul. He had a knowledge of books comprehensive and wonderful, of all ages and countries apparently, yet when the young man ventured to ask timidly, but with a sort of pride in his question, whether he had read the "Pickwick Papers," the answer overthrew him completely.

"God forbid," said the Sybarite.

Henry Harper was utterly defeated. And yet he was charmed. Here was a depth far beyond Miss Foldal, who had suggested that he should get a ticket for the Free Library in order to be able to read Charles Dickens.

"I suppose, sir"--the "sir" would have had the sanction of Ginger, the perfect man of the world--"I suppose, sir, you don't think much of Charles Dickens?"

After all, that was what the Sybarite really meant.

"Not necessarily that. He is simply not in one's ethos, don't you know."

The Sailor was baffled completely, but in some way he was a shrewd young man. He had soon decided that it would be wiser to listen than attempt to talk himself.

The Sybarite was fastidious but he was not shy. He liked to speak out of the depths of his wisdom to a fit audience if the spirit was on him. He knew that he talked well, even beautifully; the immortal flair of the artist was there; and in this strange young man with the deep eyes was the perfect listener, and that was what the soul of the Sybarite always demanded.

The Sailor listened with a kind of fascinated intensity; also he watched all that the Sybarite did with a sense of esthetic delight. His lightest movements, like his voice, were ordered, feline, sacramental. It made no difference whether he was toasting muffins, buttering them, or merely eating them; whether he was pouring out tea or conveying it in a blue china cup to his lips, it was all done in a manner to suggest the very poetry of motion. And when it came to a matter of rolling a cigarette, which it presently did, the almost catlike grace of the long and slender hands that were so clean and kept so perfectly, touched a chord very deep in the Sailor.

The name of this wonderful person, as the Sailor learned in the course of the next two days, was Mr. Esme Horrobin. He had been formerly a fellow and tutor of Gamaliel College, Oxford; he let out much pertaining to himself in the most casual way in an exegesis which was yet so neutral that it seemed to be more than wisdom itself. Also he did not shrink from impartial consideration of an act which circumstances had imposed upon him.

"It was one's duty to resign, I assure you." As the enchanted hours passed, the discourse of the Sybarite grew more intimate, so rapt and so responsive was the young man with the deep eyes in his elemental simplicity. "It was most trying to have to leave one's warm bed in the middle of winter at eight o'clock, to breakfast hastily, merely for what? Merely to sustain an oaf from the public schools in a death grapple with an idyll of Theocritus. There's a labor of Sisyphus for you. We Horrobins are an old race; who knows what mysteries we have profaned in the immortal past! I hope I make myself clear."

Mr. Horrobin was not making himself at all clear, but the Sailor was striving hard to keep track of him. The Sybarite, a creature of intuitions when in the full enjoyment of "his personal ethos," was ready to help him to do so.

"We Horrobins are what is called in the physical world born-tired. We are as incapable of continuous effort as a dram drinker is of total abstinence. This absurd cosmos of airships and automobiles bores us to tears. A mere labor of Sisyphus, I assure you, my dear fellow. The whole human race striving to get to nowhere as fast as it can in order to return as quickly as possible. And why? I will tell you. Man himself has profaned the mysteries. The crime of Prometheus is not yet expiated on our miserable planet. Take my own case. I am fit for one thing only, and that is to lie in bed smoking good tobacco with my books around me, translating the 'Satyricon' of Petronius Arbiter. It seems an absurd thing to say, but given the bed, the tobacco, the books, and the right conjunction of the planetary bodies, which in these matters is most essential, and I honestly believe I am able to delve deeper into the matchless style of Petronius than any other person living or dead."

The Sailor was awed. The "Satyricon" of Petronius Arbiter was whole worlds away from Miss Fordal.

"Whether I shall ever finish my translation is not of the slightest importance. Personally, I am inclined to think not. That is one's own private labor of Sisyphus. It won me a fellowship and ultimately lost it me. Let us assume that I finish it. There is not a publisher or an academic body in Europe or America that would venture to publish it. Rome under Nero, my dear fellow, the feast of Trimalchio. And assuming it is finished and assuming it is published, it will be a thing entirely without value, either human or commercial. And why? Because there is no absolute canon of literary style existing in the world. It is one labor of Sisyphus the more for a man to say this is Petronius to a world for whom Petronius can never exist. Do I make myself clear?"

The Sailor was silent, but round eyes of wonder were trained upon the blue-eyed, yellow-bearded face of Mr. Esme Horrobin. The Sybarite, agreeably alive to the compliment, sighed deeply.

"It may have been right to resign one's fellowship, yet one doesn't say it was. It may not have been right, yet one doesn't say it was not. At least, a fellowship of Gamaliel in certain of its aspects is better than bear-leading the aristocracy, and a person of inadequate resources is sometimes driven even to that."

The next morning, the Sailor retrieved his bag from the cloak room at Marylebone Station, to which he went by bus from Victoria without much difficulty. He felt wonderfully better for his day's rest, and much fortified by the society of Mr. Esme Horrobin. Friendship had always been precious to Henry Harper. There was something in his nature that craved for it, yet he had never been able to satisfy the instinct easily. But this inspired muffin eater opened up a whole world of new and gorgeous promise now that he had Aladdin's lamp to read him by. Mr. Esme Horrobin was what Klondyke would have called a high-brow. But he was something more. He was a man who had the key to many hidden things.

When the Sailor had brought his bag to Bowdon House, the first thing he did was to find Marlow's Dictionary. Miss Foldal had presented him with her own private copy of this invaluable work, and the name Gwladys Foldal was to be seen on the flyleaf. "Ethos" was the first word he looked up, but it was not there. He then sought "oaf," whose definition was fairly clear. Then he went on to "bear-leading" and to "aristocracy." These proved less simple. Their private meanings were plain, more or less, but to correlate them was beyond the Sailor's powers, nor did it fall within the scope of Marlow's Dictionary to explain what the Sybarite meant when he spoke of bear-leading the aristocracy.

II

Henry Harper's acquaintance with Mr. Esme Horrobin had important consequences. That gentleman's interest deepened almost to a mild liking for the young man. He was a type new to the Sybarite; and he might have taken pleasure in his primitive attitude to life had it been possible for such a developed mind to take pleasure in anything.

The company at Bowdon House was certainly mixed, but Mr. Esme Horrobin was a miracle of courtesy to all with whom he came in contact. He had a smile and a nod for a bricklayer's laborer, a bus conductor out of a billet, a decayed clerk or a reformed pickpocket. No matter who they were, his charming manners intrigued them, but also kept them at their distance. When he fell into the language of democracy, which he sometimes did for his own amusement, it was always set off by an access of the patrician to his general air. By this simple means he maintained the balance of power in the body politic. He had grasped the fact that every man is at heart a snob. Even the young man who had followed the sea accepted Mr. Esme Horrobin's estimate of Mr. Esme Horrobin.

Indeed, the Sailor was absorbing Mr. Esme Horrobin at every pore. He felt it to be a liberal education to sit at the same table, and when he went to his cubicle there were at least half a dozen carefully remembered words to look up in Marlow's Dictionary. But it would not do to linger in the land of the lotus. He must find a means of earning a living.

It occurred to the Sailor on the morning of his third day at Bowdon House, that he might ask Mr. Horrobin for a little advice on the matter. But he did not find it easy to do so. The young man was very shy. It was one thing to listen to Mr. Horrobin, but quite another to talk to him. However, after tea on the third evening, when no one was by, he screwed up courage and boldly asked whether Mr. Horrobin knew of a billet for a chap who didn't mind hard work, or how such a thing could be obtained.

Frankly Mr. Horrobin did not. It was the first time in his life that he had been met by any such problem. The problem for Mr. Horrobin had always been of a very different kind. His tone seemed to express the unusual when he asked the young man if he had any particular form of occupation in view.

"I'd like something to do with literature, sir," said Henry Harper, venturing timidly upon a new word.

"Ah." Mr. Horrobin scratched a yellow-whiskered chin. It was very ironical that a young man who had asked whether he read Dickens should now seek advice upon such a matter.

"Do you mean reading literature, my dear fellow, writing literature, or selling literature?"

The young man explained very simply that it was the selling of literature he had in mind.

"Ah," said Mr. Esme Horrobin gravely. But he had a kind heart. And if he really took to a person, which he very seldom did, he had the sort of disposition that is mildly helpful. And he had taken to this young man, therefore he felt inclined to do what he could for him.

Mr. Horrobin rolled and lit a cigarette. After five minutes' hard thought inspiration came. Its impact was almost dramatic, except that in no circumstances was Mr. Esme Horrobin ever dramatic.

"I really think," he said, "I must give you a line to Rudge, my bookseller, in the Charing Cross Road. He is a man who might help you; at least he may know a man who might help you. Yes, a little line to Rudge. Pray remind me tomorrow."

The young man was filled with gratitude. But he allowed his hopes to run too high. Even a little line to Rudge the bookseller was not a thing to compass in this offhand way. Tomorrow in the mouth of Mr. Esme Horrobin was a very comprehensive term. It was Tomorrow that he was going to complete his translation of the "Satyricon" of Petronius; it was Tomorrow that he would return to the world in which he was born; it was Tomorrow that he would rise earlier and forswear the practice of smoking and reading in bed. Therefore, with the promised letter to Rudge the bookseller burning a hole in his mind the young man spent a very anxious tomorrow waiting for Mr. Esme Horrobin to emerge from his cubicle.

"No use asking for Mr. Orrobin," he was told finally by the groom of the chambers, a man old and sour and by nature the complete pessimist. "It's one of his days in bed. He'll not put his nose outside his cubicle until tea time."

That discreet hour was on the wane before Mr. Horrobin was to be seen at work with a kettle, a caddy, and a toasting fork. Even then he was in such conversational feather that it was nearly three hours later before the young man was able to edge in a timid reminder.

"I have not forgotten," said Mr. Horrobin, all charm and amenity. "But remind me tomorrow. I will write most gladly to Rudge. He is quite a good fellow."

The Sailor grew desperate. It seemed impossible to live through a second tomorrow of this kind.

"If I get a bit of paper and an envelope and a pen and ink, will you have any objection to writing the letter now, sir?"

"My dear fellow"--the grace notes were languid and delicate--"I shall be delighted. But why tonight? It hardly seems worth while to trouble about it tonight."

But the young man rose from the common room table with almost a sensation of fear upon him, and ran to his cubicle, where all the materials for a little line to Rudge the bookseller had been in readiness since eight o'clock that morning.

Mr. Horrobin smiled when they were brought to him, a smile half weariness, half indulgent patronage. Even then it was necessary to consume two more cigarettes before he could take the extreme course of addressing Rudge the bookseller. Finally, he was addressed as follows:

Mr. Esme Horrobin presents his compliments to Mr. Rudge, and will be glad if he can find employment on his staff, or on that of any bookselling friends, for the bearer, whom he will find clean, respectful, obliging, and anxious to improve himself.

The letter was composed with much care and precision, and written in a hand of such spiderlike elegance as hardly to be legible, notwithstanding that every "t" was crossed and every comma in its place. Then came the business of sealing it. Mr. Horrobin produced a tiny piece of red sealing wax from some unsuspected purlieu of himself; a prelude to a delicately solemn performance with a wax vesta, which he took from a silver box at the end of his watch chain, and a signet ring which he gracefully removed from a finger of his right hand.

III

The next morning, before nine o'clock, armed with a red-sealed document addressed in a kind of ultra-neat Chinese, "To Mr. Rudge, Bookseller, Charing Cross Road," the Sailor set out upon one phase the more of an adventurous life.

It was not easy to find the Charing Cross Road, and when even he had done so, Mr. Rudge was not there. Booksellers were in abundance on both sides of the street. Mr. Hogan was there, Messrs. Cook and Hunt, Messrs. Lewis and Grieve; in fact, there were booksellers by the score, but Mr. Rudge was not of these. In the end, however, patience was rewarded. There was a tiny shop on the right near the top of the long street, which bore the magic name on its front in letters so faded as to be almost undecipherable.

Only one person was in the shop, a small and birdlike man to whom Henry Harper presented Mr. Horrobin's letter. The recipient was apparently impressed by it.

"Mr. Horrobin, I see," said Mr. Rudge the bookseller--the small and birdlike man was not less than he--in a tone of reverence as he broke the seal.

A man of parts, Mr. Rudge was proud of an acquaintance which might almost be considered non-professional. When out of funds, Mr. Horrobin would sell Mr. Rudge a classic at a very little below its original cost, and when in funds would buy it back at a price somewhat less than that at which he had sold it. Mr. Rudge did not gain pecuniarily by the transaction, but in the course of the deal Mr. Horrobin would discourse so charmingly upon the classics in general that Mr. Rudge felt it was as good as a lecture at the Royal Institution. Although not a scholar himself in the academic sense, he had a ripe regard for those who were. In the mind of his bookseller, Mr. Horrobin stood for Culture with a very large letter.

Mr. Rudge was not in urgent need of an assistant. But he had felt lately that he would like one. He was getting old. It seemed a special act of grace that Mr. Horrobin should have sent him this young man.

Perhaps it was Mr. Rudge's reverence for Mr. Horrobin which committed him to a bold course. It was stretching a point, but Mr. Horrobin was Mr. Horrobin, and in the special circumstances it seemed the part of homage for pure intellect to do what he could for the bearer. Thus, after a few minutes' consideration of the matter, Henry Harper was engaged at a salary of twenty-five shillings a week to be in attendance at the shop from eight till seven, and eight till two Saturdays.

This was a stroke of real luck. A special providence had seemed to watch over the Sailor ever since he had left the _Margaret Carey_. The situation that had been offered was exactly the one he would have chosen. The mere sight of a shop crammed with treasures ancient and mysterious was like a glimpse of an enchanted land. The previous day he had bought a copy of the "Arabian Nights" for a shilling. Such facility had he now gained in reading that he had dipped into its pages with a sharp sense of delight. No. 249, Charing Cross Road, was a veritable Cave of the Forty Robbers.

These endless rows of shelves were magic casements opening on fairyland. The Sailor felt that the turning point of his life had come. A cosmos of new worlds was spread before him now. Moreover, it was his to enter and enjoy.

He had come, as it seemed, miraculously, upon a period of expansion and true growth. His duties in the shop were light. This was one of those quiet businesses that offer many intervals of leisure. Also Mr. Rudge, as became one with a regard for the things of the mind, gave his assistant a chance "to improve himself" in accordance with Mr. Horrobin's suggestion. Perhaps that happy and fortunate phrase had a great deal to do with the new prosperity. Mr. Rudge had been flattered by such a request coming from a man of such distinction; he felt he must live up to it by allowing Henry Harper to improve himself as much as possible.

The Sailor had entered Elysium. But he had the good sense to walk warily. He knew now that it was over-reading, the danger against which Ginger had solemnly warned him, that had brought about the Blackhampton catastrophe. He must always be on his guard, yet now the freedom was his of all these magic shelves, it was by no means easy to stick to that resolve.

Mr. Rudge dwelt at the back of the shop. Most of his time was passed in a small, dark, and stuffy sitting-room, where he ate his meals and applied himself to Culture at every reasonable opportunity. Now that he had an assistant, he was able to bestow more time than ever upon the things of the mind. He spent half his days and half his nights taking endless notes, in a meticulous hand, for a great work he had conceived forty-two years ago when he had migrated from Birmingham to the metropolis. This _magnum opus_ was to be called "A History of the World," and was to consist of forty volumes, with a supplementary volume as an index, making forty-one in all. Each was to have four hundred and eighty pages, which were to be divided into twenty-four chapters. There were to be no illustrations.

Four decades had passed since the golden hour in which this scheme was born. In a spare room above the shop were a number of large tin trunks full of notes for the great work, all very carefully coded and docketed. These were the fruits of forty-two years' amazing industry. Every year these labors grew more comprehensive, more unceasing. But the odd thing was that only the first sentence of the first volume of the opus was yet in being. It ran, "'In the beginning,' says Holy Writ, 'was the Word.'" And even that pregnant sentence had yet to be put on paper. At present, it lay like the text of the History itself, in the head of the author.

With Henry Harper to mind the shop, the historian was able to devote more time to the work of his life. This was a fortunate matter, because Mr. Rudge was already within a few months of seventy, and forty volumes and an index had yet to be written. As a fact, considerable portions of the index were already in existence; and during Henry Harper's first week in the front shop it received a valuable accession in the form of "Bulrushes, Vol. IX., pp. 243-245. Moses in, Vol. III., p. 120." Careful and voluminous notes upon Bulrushes, based upon an unknown work that had lately arrived in a consignment of second-hand books from Sheffield, went to line the bottom of yet another large trunk which had been added recently to the attic above the shop.

IV

The day soon came when Henry Harper said good-by to Mr. Horrobin and Bowdon House. Mr. Rudge took a fancy to him from the first. It may have been his high credentials partly; no one could have been equipped with a better start in life than the imprimatur of such a scholar and such a gentleman as Mr. Esme Horrobin. But at the same time there was much to like in the young man himself. He was diligent and respectful and his heart was in his work; also, and perhaps this counted more with Mr. Rudge than anything else, he was very anxious to improve himself. And Mr. Rudge, who was an altruist as well as a lover of Culture, was very anxious to improve him.

Sometimes Mr. Rudge had a feeling of loneliness, notwithstanding the immense labor to which he had dedicated his life. This was due in a measure to the fact that a nephew he had adopted had taken a sudden distaste for the Charing Cross Road, and had now been twelve months at sea. A bedroom he had occupied above the shop was vacant; and the use of it was presently offered to Henry Harper.

The young man accepted it gratefully. It was one more rare stroke of luck; he was now free to dwell in the land of faerie all day and all night. It seemed as if this was to be a golden time.

In a sense it was. Aladdin's lamp was fed continually and kept freshly trimmed. The Sailor began to make surprising progress in his studies, and his kind master, when not too completely absorbed in his own titanic labors after supper, would sometimes help him. In fact, it was Mr. Rudge who first introduced him to grammar. Klondyke had never mentioned it. Miss Foldal had never mentioned it. Mr. Horrobin had never mentioned it. Mr. Rudge it was who first brought grammar home to Henry Harper.

Reading was important, said Mr. Rudge, also writing, also arithmetic, but these things, excellent in themselves, paled in the presence of grammar. You simply could not do without it. He could never have planned his "History of the World" in forty volumes excluding the index, let alone have prepared a concrete foundation for such a work, without a thorough knowledge of this science. It was the key to all Culture, and Culture was the crown of all wisdom.

On the shelves of the shop were several works on the subject. And Mr. Rudge soon began to spare an hour after supper every night from his own labors, in order that Henry Harper might acquire the key to the higher walks of mental experience.

The young man took far less kindly to grammar than he did to reading, writing, arithmetic, or even geography, which Miss Foldal considered one of the mere frills of erudition. He could see neither rhyme nor reason in this new study; but Mr. Rudge assured him it was so important that he felt bound to persevere.

Moreover, these efforts brought their reward. They kept him certain hours each day from the things for which he had a passion, so that when he felt he could turn to them again his delight was the more intense.

The books he read were very miscellaneous, but Mr. Rudge had too broad a mind to exercise a censorship. In his view, as became a bookseller _pur sang_, all books were good, but some were better than others.

For instance, works of the imagination were less good than other branches of literature. In Volume XXXIX of the "History of the World" a chapter was to be devoted to Shakespeare, pp. 260-284, wherein homage would be paid to a remarkable man, but it would be shown that the adulation lavished upon one who relied so much on imagination was out of all proportion to that received by Hayden, the author of the "Dictionary of Dates." Without that epoch-making work the "History of the World" could not have been undertaken.

Ill-assorted the Sailor's reading might be, but this was a time of true development. Day by day Aladdin's lamp burned brighter. There was little cause to regret Blackhampton, dire tragedy as his flight must ever be. When he had been a fortnight with Mr. Rudge he tried to write Ginger a letter.

To begin it, however, was one thing; to complete it another. It seemed so light and callous in comparison with his depth of feeling that he tore it up. He was disgraced forever in the sight of Ginger and his peers.

Therefore he decided to write to Miss Foldal instead. But when he took pen in hand, somehow he lost courage. He could have no interest for her now. It would be best to forget Blackhampton, to put it, if possible, out of his life.

Still he felt rather lonely sometimes. Mr. Rudge was wonderfully kind, but he lived in a world of his own. And the only compensations Henry Harper now had for the crowded epoch of Blackhampton were the books in the shop which he devoured ravenously, and the daily visits of the charlady, Mrs. Greaves.

For many years she had been the factotum of Mr. Elihu Rudge. Every morning she made his fire, cooked his meals, swept and garnished his home, and "did for him" generally. She was old, thin, somber and battered, and she had the depth of a bottomless abyss.

Mrs. Greaves was a treasure. Mr. Rudge depended upon her in everything. She was an autocrat, but women of her dynamic power are bound to be. She despised all men, frankly and coldly. In the purview of Mrs. Caroline Agnes Greaves, man was a poor thing. Woman who could get round him, who could walk over him, who could set him up and put him down, merely allowed him to take precedence in order that she might handle him to better advantage. She had a great contempt for an institution that was no "use any way," and to this law of nature it was not to be expected that "a nine pence to the shilling" creature like Mr. Henry Harper would provide an exception.

V

One evening the Sailor made a discovery. At first, however, he was far from grasping what it meant. Like many things intimately concerned with fate, it seemed a trivial and commonplace matter. It was presently to change the current of his life, but it was not until long after the change was wrought that he saw the hand of destiny.

After a week of delight he turned the last page of "Vanity Fair" by the famous author, William Makepeace Thackeray, the rival and contemporary of Charles Dickens, the author of the "Pickwick Papers." It was within a few minutes of midnight, and as Mr. Rudge, engaged upon copious notes of the life of Charles XII of Sweden, made no sign of going to bed, Henry Harper determined to allow himself one more hour.

Therefore he took a candle and entered the front shop with a sense of adventure. First he put back "Vanity Fair," Volume II, on its shelf, and then raising his candle on high, with the eagle glance of stout Cortez, he surveyed all the new worlds about him. With a thrill of joy he stood pondering which kingdom he should enter. Should it be "The Origin of Species," by Charles Darwin, which his master said was an important work and had been laid under contribution for the History? Should it be the "Queens of England," by Agnes Strickland, also several times to be quoted in the History? Or should it be Volume CXLI of _Brown's Magazine_, 2_s._ 9_d._, re-bound with part of the July number missing?

By pure chance the choice fell upon _Brown's Magazine_, incomplete as it was, and in its outward seeming entirely commonplace. He took the volume from its shelf, beat the dust out of it, and carried it into the sitting-room.

He began to read at the first page. This happened to be the opening of a serial story, "The Adventures of George Gregory; A Tale of the High Seas," by Anon. And the tale proved so entrancing that that night the young man did not go to bed until it was nearly time to get up again.

Without being aware of it he had found his kingdom. Here were atmosphere and color, space and light. Here was the life he had known and realized, set forth in the vicarious glory of the printed page. For many days to come he could think of little save "The Adventures of George Gregory." This strange tale of the high seas, over which his master shook his head sadly when it was shown to him, declaring it to be a work of the imagination and therefore of very small account, had a glamour quite extraordinary for Henry Harper. It brought back the _Margaret Carey_ and his years of bitter servitude. It conjured up Mr. Thompson and the Chinaman, the Old Man and the Island of San Pedro. With these august shades raised again in the mind of the Sailor, "The Adventures of George Gregory" gained an authority they could not otherwise have had. In many of its details the story was obviously inaccurate. Sometimes Anon made statements about the _Belle Fortune_, the name of the ship, and the Pacific Isles, upon one of which it was wrecked, that almost made Henry Harper doubt whether George Gregory had ever been to sea at all. However, he soon learned that it was his duty to crush these unworthy suspicions and to yield entirely to the wonderful feast of incident spread before him.

Charles Dickens, and even W. M. Thackeray, for all his knowledge of the world, were poor things compared with Anon. It was a real misfortune that the part of the July number of _Brown's Magazine_ which was missing contained an installment of "The Adventures," but there was no help for it. Moreover, having realized the fact, the gift of the gods, Aladdin's lamp, came to the assistance of the Sailor.

With the help of the magic talisman it was quite easy to fill in the missing part which contained the adventures of poor George when marooned, not on the Island of San Pedro, but on an island in the southern seas. There would certainly be serpents, and for that reason he would have to keep out of the trees; and although the July number was not able to supply the facts, once you had Aladdin's lamp it was a very simple matter to make good the omission.

One thing leads to another. "The Adventures of George Gregory," imperfect as they were, fastened such a grip on the mind of Henry Harper, that one dull Monday afternoon in March, when he sat in the shop near the oil-stove waiting for an infrequent customer, a great thought came to him. Might it not be possible to improve upon George Gregory with the aid of the talisman and his own experience?

It was a very daring thought, but he was sustained in it by the conclusion to which he had come: the work of Anon, exciting and ingenious as it certainly was, was not the high seas as the Sailor had once envisaged them. The color, the mystery, the discomfort, the horror were not really there. Even the marooning of poor George upon the Island of Juan Fernandez did not thrill your blood as it ought to have done. True, it could be urged that the part containing the episode was missing; but in no case would it have been possible to equal in horror and intensity the marooning of Sailor upon the Island of San Pedro with serpents in every tree around him, although with equal truth it might be urged by the skeptical that the incident never took place at all.

"Never took place at all!" lisped Aladdin's lamp in magic syllables. "Pray, what do you mean? It certainly took place in your experience, and in the opinion of your learned master who is writing a history of the world in forty volumes, that is the only thing that matters."

A flash of the talisman was soon to raise a bottle of ink and a quire of foolscap. Therefore one evening after supper, Mr. Rudge, still at Charles XII of Sweden, was startled painfully when "The Adventures of Dick Smith on the High Seas," by Henry Harper, Chapter One, was shown to him. It was a fall, but his master was too kind to say so. These misspent hours could have been used for a further enrichment of the mind. He might have added to his knowledge of grammar. He might have ventured upon the study of shorthand itself, a science of which Mr. Rudge never ceased to deplore his own ignorance. However, he said nothing, and went on with the great work.

Thus, not realizing the true feelings of his master, the young man continued to supplement the entrancing but incomplete "Adventures of George Gregory" with his own experience. The strange tale grew at the back of the genie who tended the lamp, and with it grew the soul of Henry Harper. In this new and wonderful realm he had entered it seemed that the Sailor had surely found his kingdom. Deep down in himself were latent faculties which he had not known were there. They were now springing forth gloriously into the light.

All his life he had been a dreamer of dreams; now the power was his of making them come true, he had a world of his own in which to live. He was only half awake as yet to the world around him; and this arrest of growth was for a time his weakness and his strength. It is impossible, it is said, to touch pitch and not be defiled. The worth of that aphorism was about to be tried by the clairvoyant soul of Henry Harper.

At this time, while he was drawing very painfully and yet rapturously upon his inner life, he was like an expanding flower. All his leisure was not spent in the back parlor at No. 249, Charing Cross Road. There were hours when he walked abroad into the streets of the great city.

Much was hidden from his eyes as yet. The truth was it was not his own great city in which he walked. He gazed and saw, listened and heard in a mirage of fanciful ignorance. A life of unimaginable squalor and hardship had not been able to slay the genie sleeping in that elemental soul. But it had yet to get its range of values in the many worlds around it.

One Sunday morning in the spring, in one of his enchanted walks about the city in the pursuit of knowledge, he chanced to enter Hyde Park. It was the hour when the churches of the neighborhood disgorged their fashionable congregations. Here, as he sat near the statue of Achilles and watched the brilliant throng pass by, a feeling of awe and bewilderment overcame him. He had never realized before that his fellow occupants of the planet could be so wonderful. Here was a significance, a beauty, a harmony of aspect beyond anything he had imagined to be possible. The fine-ladyhood of Miss Foldal was nothing in comparison with that queening it all around him. Even the quality of Mr. Esme Horrobin paled in luster. This was a very remarkable world into which he had strayed. He had almost a sense of guilt at finding himself there. With such clothes as he wore and such a humility of heart as he had, he had clearly no right of entry to this paradise. But there he was with every nerve alive, and the scene burned itself vividly into his heart and brain.

These gorgeous beings with their kingliness of mien, these children of the sun who spoke with the accent of the gods meant much more to the primitive soul of Henry Harper than as yet it could understand. In the intoxication of the hour, with the sun and the birds, the trees, the green earth, the bright flowers paying their homage to the grace and beauty of his countrywomen, he felt like an angel who has fallen out of heaven, who after aeons of time in a bottomless hell is permitted to see again a fair heritage that once was his.

The genie had unlocked another door. Henry Harper was now in a world of romance. In order to know what these wonderful beings truly were he listened eagerly for fragments of their talk as they passed by. All of a sudden there came miraculously a voice that had a tang of ocean in it. There and then was he flung out of Hyde Park to the deck of the _Margaret Carey_.

Leaping at the sound of a laugh, a full-chested music the Sailor could never forget, he saw, a few yards off, the oncoming figures of a man and a girl. Both were tall and young and splendid; both seemed to be dressed in the last cry of fashion. Moreover they bore themselves with the assured grace of a sweet ship under canvas.

The pair were clearly brother and sister, and the figure of the man, at least, was extraordinarily familiar to Henry Harper. Yet almost before he had realized them, they were level with him. It was not until they were actually past the seat on which he sat that there came a flash of recognition. The man was Klondyke.

For an instant the heart of the Sailor stood still. The immortal had almost touched his knee, yet he was yards away already. But Klondyke it was, laughing his great note and rolling out his rich and peculiar dialect. It was Klondyke in a top hat and a tail coat, looking as if he had come out of a bandbox. Who could believe that such faultless magnificence had been washed habitually out of its berth in the half-deck of the _Margaret Carey_?

He did not look a bit older than when the Sailor had seen him last, that unhappy six years ago when his friend shook him by the hand, told him to stick to his reading and writing, and then started to walk across Asia. And in that time Klondyke did not appear to have changed at all. He had the same brown, large-featured face, the same keen and cheerful eye, the same roll in his gait, and that cool, indefinable, you-be-damned air that was both admired and resented aboard the _Margaret Carey_.

By the time the Sailor had recovered from his surprise, Klondyke was out of sight. A strong impulse then came upon Henry Harper to go after his friend and declare himself. But a feeling of timidity defeated him. Besides, he understood more fully at this moment than ever before that there were whole continents between such a man as Klondyke and such a man as Henry Harper.

VI

The emotions of the Sailor were many and conflicting as he made his way back to Charing Cross Road to the homely meal which Mrs. Greaves provided for his master and himself. A long afternoon and evening followed in which _Dick Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_ roamed the high seas.

Infinite pains had now brought the narrative to Chapter Six. But for some days progress was very slow. The figure of Klondyke held the thoughts of the Sailor. Surely it was cowardice not to have made himself known. It was treason to assume that his friend, in spite of the wonderful girl by his side, would not have been glad to see him again. Yet was it? That was the half formed fear which tormented him. Klondyke had forgotten his existence: so much was clear because he had almost touched his knee as he went by. And why should he remember him? Who was he that he should be remembered by such a man as Klondyke? The tale of the high seas had a bad week. The Sailor was held in thrall by an emanation from the past. How Klondyke would have roared had he known what he was at! Somehow it set the blood tingling in Henry Harper's ears to reflect that it was he who a few brief years ago had first introduced him to reading and writing.

Do as he would, it was not a propitious hour for the story of _Dick Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_. And when the next Sunday came he had to decide whether or not to go to Hyde Park in the hope of seeing the immortal. Finally, in a state of utter misgiving, he went. This time, although he sat a long hour on a seat near the statue of Achilles, there was never a sign of him. Yet he was content to be disappointed, for the longer he sat the more clearly he knew that cowardice would defeat him again should Klondyke and his attendant nymph appear.

Henry Harper was coming now to a phase in which ladies were to play their part. Mrs. Greaves had a niece, it seemed. From brilliant accounts furnished from time to time he learned that she was a strikingly gifted creature, not only endowed with beauty, but also with brains in a very high degree.

"Miss Cora Dobbs," in the words of her aunt, "was an actress by profession, and she had done so well in it that she had a flat of her own round the corner in the Avenue. Toffs as understood Cora's merit thought 'ighly of her talent. She could dance and she could sing, and she earned such good money that she had a nest-egg put by."

Henry Harper was at first too absorbed in his work to pay much attention to the charlady's discourses upon her niece. Besides, had he not known Miss Gwladys Foldal who had played in Shakespeare and been admitted to an intimacy of a most intellectual kind? The indifference of Mr. Harper seemed to pique Mrs. Greaves. She often recurred to the subject of Miss Dobbs; moreover, she seemed anxious for the young man to realize that "although she was the niece of one as didn't pretend to be anythink, Cora herself was a lady."