The Sailor

"My God, I've a good mind to," said Charlie, who as he became more sober seemed to grow more dangerous. "I don't know who you are, my friend, but if you'll take advice you'll clear out."

As the man spoke, his eyes looked particularly ugly. But among the things the Sailor had learned aboard the Margaret Carey was the art of keeping cool in a crisis.

"You've no right here at all, sir," said the man. "You ought to know that."

"No right!" said Henry Harper, in astonishment.

"If you are a wise man, you will go away. I was here first."

"What do you mean?"

"I came at the invitation of this lady, Miss Cora Dobbs, who is a very old friend of mine."

The man turned towards the sofa. Cora nodded. But she was now bordering on a state of coma.

"Who are you, sir?" Harper tried hard to keep his temper in spite of the man's calculated insolence. "Are you a relation of hers?"

"A relation!" The man was taken aback. "We are both here for the same object, I presume."

"I don't know what you mean, but this is my flat and I'll be very thankful if you'll quit."

"Your flat!" A light seemed to dawn. The man turned to Cora: "Why didn't you tell me? I thought you were on your own, as you were before I went to Canada."

To the man's clear annoyance, Cora had now reached a phase which forbade her to answer this question. He then addressed Henry Harper with a sudden change of voice.

"She's not played the game," he said, half apologetically.

"I don't know what you mean by that. I don't understand you."

The man looked at him in astonishment. He then looked at Cora, who was half lying upon the sofa, mute, fuddled, and indifferent.

"Come outside," said the man, in a lower tone, "and I'll explain."

Feeling completely bewildered, Harper accompanied him into the passage.

"I apologize," said the man, as soon as they got there. "But Cora is entirely to blame. There's no need to say she never told me she was living with you."

"I don't understand," said Henry Harper.

The man stared at him. He was at a loss.

"Of course, I've known Cora Dobbs for years." He lowered his voice. "But I've been away in Canada. Before I went, I used to come here pretty regularly."

As the man spoke, light came to Henry Harper. All at once, a chill ran in his veins.

"But … but she's … she's my wife," he gasped, leaning heavily against the wall of the passage.

"She's your what!" the man almost shouted.

"She's my wife."

Again the man stared at him, but now with a look of consternation and pity.

"You mean to say you didn't know?"

The young man, still leaning against the wall, was unable to speak. A glance at the ashen face convinced the older man that there was no need to repeat the question.

"Well, I'm sorry, and I can only apologize," he said, after a moment's pause, and in a tone of good feeling. He then took his hat and coat from the peg, and suddenly darted out of the flat. The door closed after him with a bang.

IV

The Sailor continued to lean against the wall. An abyss had opened. The look on the face of Mr. Rudge, his late master, and the strange words he had used were returning upon him with awful force.

With this discovery came surprise, bewilderment, self-disgust. It hardly seemed possible that a man in his senses could be so blind, so ignorant, so gullible. Where had been his wits, that he should have allowed the creature at the other side of the passage wall, and her associates, to dupe him so completely?

As the feeling of amazement at his own folly deepened, a gust of fury swept through him like a storm. An overmastering desire came upon him to enter that room, to deal once and for all with this bird of prey. Let the world be rid of a foul thing. Let his be the hand to efface it in its infamy.

He would go in at once and make an end of her. A surge of inherited forces, a flood of old, unhappy, far-off things were whirling him like a piece of driftwood into the maëlstrom. He was in the grip of a terrible power … a power beyond his control. It was not merely that she had entrapped him, or that he had been incredibly blind to the drab and sordid world in which she lived; in the light of a widening knowledge, the fact which now drove him to frenzy was that a creature so common and unclean should have found it so easy to make him her victim.

He did not return to the room at once. There were other forces, it seemed, vibrating in the air around him. There came a sudden reminder from the talisman that he bore continually in the right-hand corner of his brain. He heard a voice.

"Henry Harper, is she worth it? Remember, if you destroy her, you destroy yourself utterly, body and soul."

The words sank into him. The issue was joined, and there came the shock of battle. A will half wrenched asunder seemed about to be overthrown. The desire to enter the room was overmastering; a sense of duty was reinforced by the passion of revenge. There was madness in the thought that he was the dupe of a common woman of the streets.

Shaken with a fury that was awful, he still leaned against the wall of the passage. The voice of the genie was no longer heard. The talisman shone no more. The old, unhappy, far-off things had overwhelmed them.

"Kill her, kill her," they whispered savagely. "It is the only thing to do."

He was half down already. The forces of destiny were crushing out his life.

"Kill her. Kill her." The very walls were breathing commands in his ears. "It is a duty to others to avenge yourself."

There was subtlety in the demand. But this was a strong, not a subtle nature. It did not practice self-deception lightly. Aladdin's lamp was quick to reveal the sophist; moreover, it had its own answer ready. Suddenly it flashed before the mind of Henry Harper the elemental figure of the man James Thorneycroft simply relating his story. By a curious trick of the brain, the words of the condemned man were again in his ears.

"You can take it from me that there is a God."

He hardly knew what those words meant even as he heard them now. But he knew they had a significance beyond any which had previously touched his life. Then a miracle happened. The powers which had him in their grip began to relax. It was as if his whole being was translated. He was again his own man. Broken and shattered he was able to stagger to his own room and light the gas.

The battle was not decided yet. But a new power had come to him. Therefore Henry Harper's first act was to do that which he had never done before in his life. He kneeled by the side of his bed and prayed.

Presently he rose, and went out again into the little lobby, past the half open door through which could be heard a succession of drunken snores. He snatched his coat and hat from the peg and went hurriedly down into the street.

It was one o'clock. The Avenue and its environs were almost deserted, save for an occasional policeman and a few returning revelers. He had no idea as to the way he should go. His one desire was to get as far as he could from King John's Mansions in the shortest possible time.

Walking about the streets of the city hour after hour, he could not measure the abyss which had engulfed him. He was completely cast away, he had lost track of himself, he didn't know where he was, he had no chart by which to go.

Ceaseless wandering through remote and unknown places brought the dawn at last, and then he found that the spot he had reached was Camberwell Green. Overcome with fatigue, he sat on a public seat near a tram terminus for a little while. Then he tried to shape his thoughts, but the mind refused to act.

V

The longer he sat the more confused he became. At last it occurred to him that the best thing he could do was to seek the advice of Edward Ambrose. Indeed, in his present state that seemed the only course to take. Almost mechanically, he began to make his way in the direction of Bury Street, St. James'.

He had a long way to go, and the road was obscure, but as there was not the least need for hurry, he followed the tram lines as far as the Embankment. By the time he had reached Whitehall, it was about eight o'clock. Less than half an hour afterwards he had entered Bury Street, and was back in that house which a few short hours ago had given him his first glimpse of paradise.

"Why, Henry!" His friend gave a cry of surprise. And then to cover it he said: "You are just in time for breakfast. Another knife and fork, Portman. Take off your overcoat."

The young man had no wish to do so. He remembered that his evening clothes were under it. Nor had he any desire for breakfast.

As soon as the servant had retired, Edward Ambrose compelled him firmly but kindly to eat.

Ambrose had noted already that the Sailor was in a decidedly overwrought state. The ashen face, the wild eyes, the disheveled appearance was not pleasant to see.

"Tell me what has happened."

"Before I do that," said the young man, in a voice unlike his own, "I want you to consider this a secret between us."

"Yes … of course."

"To begin at the beginning of a rotten story." There was a queer break in the voice. "You didn't know that I was married, did you?"

"No," said Ambrose, impassively.

"I dare say I ought to have told you. Several times I made up my mind that I would. I am very sorry now I didn't."

"You were under no obligation to do so."

"There wouldn't be so much to tell you now if I had," said the Sailor, with horror in his eyes. He then told his story at length, with detail and with difficulty, but concealing nothing.

Edward Ambrose was much affected. He somehow felt, as a generous mind was likely to feel in such a case, that it should have been his part to shield this lamb from the wolves. Yet he knew that blame did not lie at his door.

Still, he was deeply grieved. He accepted the story without question as it was told him. There could be no doubt that all the essential facts were exactly as they had been related. Harper, in his curious ignorance of the world, had fallen into a trap.

The young man ended the story with a pathetic appeal for advice. He made it clear that he could never go back to this woman; he dared not even venture to see her again lest he do her violence. He must get free of her at all costs. Could his friend tell him how such a thing must be managed?

"One feels it ought not to be very difficult in the circumstances," said Edward Ambrose, "if we go the right way to work. But the first thing is to consult a lawyer."

Accordingly, before he had finished a greatly interrupted meal, Ambrose went to the telephone and arranged to see his own solicitor as soon as that gentleman should arrive at his office in Spring Gardens. When he returned to the dining-room, he found Henry Harper striding up and down it. A sort of determined rage had taken possession of him. The hereditary forces that had so nearly overthrown him a few hours before had returned upon him.

"I'll never be so near murder as I was between twelve and one last night," he said, huskily, with a clenched and deadly look.

"She wouldn't have been worth it," said Edward Ambrose. He then turned abruptly from the subject. "You will want rooms, won't you – somewhere to go?" He had a fund of very practical kindness. "And you'll want clothes. And your papers and books. But I think we had better send one of Mortimer's clerks to collect those. As for rooms, perhaps Portman may know of some."

Upon due interrogation, Portman, it seemed, knew of some rooms that might be vacant. Thereupon he was sent on a diplomatic mission; the scale of charges must be strictly moderate. He must not show his nose, which prided itself on a resemblance to that of a certain very eminent statesman, in Bury Street again until his errand had been carried out successfully.

Presently, the solicitors, Messrs. Mortimer, Groves, Pearce, Son and Mortimer, rang up to say that Mr. Daniel Mortimer had arrived at the office, and would be glad to see Mr. Ambrose. Accordingly, Henry Harper went at once with his friend in a taxi to Spring Gardens.

Mr. Daniel Mortimer was the kind of man who would have greatly impressed the Sailor on an ordinary occasion. Mr. Mortimer was by nature very impressive. He could not help being so. Even when he was quite alone and merely warming his hands at the fire, he was impressive. In fact, it was a quality which was worth several thousands a year to him.

Mr. Mortimer had the reputation of being a very sound lawyer. He certainly looked a very sound lawyer. His geniality was most engaging, and there was a shrewd and knowledgeable personality beneath.

He greeted Mr. Ambrose less as a client than as a rather irresponsible nephew received by a preternaturally wise yet jovial uncle. Ambrose had been his fag at school.

"Well, Edward, what can we do for you?" was the pontifical greeting.

"Allow me to introduce Mr. Harper – Mr. Mortimer – and you can prepare to speak out of the depths of your wisdom after the ancient manner."

"Certainly," said Mr. Mortimer, with the air of one very well able to do so. "Won't you sit down?" He placed two chairs with innate and almost oriental magnificence. "We are now at your service." It was less a trick of speech than sheer pressure of human character which caused Mr. Mortimer always to refer to himself in the plural.

"I think you had better tell the story, Henry," said Edward Ambrose. "Tell it to Mortimer exactly as you have told it to me."

That gentleman assumed his armchair of state, and for the second time that morning Henry Harper told his strange story.

"And you never guessed!" was the solicitor's brief comment when it had been told.

"I can't think why I didn't," said the young man.

Mr. Mortimer frowned tremendously. He then took up a pencil and began with great freedom of style to draw on his blotting pad a portrait of no one in particular.

"Edward," he said, after he had continued to do this for several minutes, "I am afraid this is a difficult business."

"I am afraid so," said Edward Ambrose gravely. "And we have come to a very wise man to set it right for us. It oughtn't to be beyond your powers, ought it, having regard to the acknowledged character of the lady?"

"I fear," said Mr. Mortimer, "the character of the lady is too much acknowledged if the question of a divorce is running in your mind."

"Well, of course it is," said Edward Ambrose, with an air of deep disappointment as he looked at Henry Harper.

"I'll have a divorce if I can possibly get one," said the young man. "And I don't care what trouble I take or what it costs."

Mr. Mortimer continued to draw very spirited pictures on his blotting pad.

"Don't you advise it?" asked Edward Ambrose.

"Yes, I do, if we can get one. But in the special circumstances, it is going to prove uncommonly difficult, in fact, one might say impossible."

"You don't mean that, sir," said Henry Harper.

"It is only my opinion." Mr. Mortimer spoke as if there could be no other. "But let me be quite candid, as I am sure you want me to be. I am perfectly certain you will never get a British jury to believe the first part of your story."

"But you believe it?" said Henry Harper, with wild eyes.

"I most certainly believe it, I believe every word you tell me. But we have to deal with a British jury, and in any question affecting what it calls 'morality,' a British jury is a very difficult proposition. At least, that's my experience."

Both Henry Harper and his friend were so dismayed by the force of Mr. Mortimer's conviction, that at first they did not say anything. Soon, however, Edward Ambrose, who was looking particularly unhappy, remarked: "Then you don't advise him to fight it?"

"I don't. I am sorry to say I don't. There is not a dog's chance without very strong direction from the Bench, and there is little hope of that in a case of this kind. His Majesty's judges are quite as bad as a British jury when they are out on the 'morality' racket."

"The good bourgeois, in fact, without a spark of imagination?"

"Quite so. Of course, we might try, but really one doesn't advise it. There would be unwarrantable expense, and even if we were lucky enough to get a verdict, it would still be a very serious matter for a young and rising man. At least, that's my view."

"I don't doubt you are right," said Edward Ambrose, with a groan of sheer vexation.

"You mean, sir, I can't get free of her?" said the Sailor.

"Only with great difficulty, I am afraid. And in any event, the issue is uncertain. As I understand, you are in a position to prove very little. Conjecture will not satisfy a jury, and even that must be based on a set of circumstances that will not help your case."

"Well, what do you advise?" asked Edward Ambrose.

"I should be inclined to let matters take their course for the present. As she appears to be drinking heavily, it is not unreasonable to hope that in time things may adjust themselves automatically."

"But in the meantime how can she be kept from making herself objectionable?"

"If you care to leave that to us, I think a way may be found."

"By paying her a sum weekly?" suggested Edward Ambrose. "And by threatening to withdraw it if she doesn't behave herself?"

"I don't think it will be necessary to do that."

However, the young man felt it to be his duty to keep her from the gutter, which seemed to be her present destination.

"That is for you to consider," said Mr. Mortimer. "In my judgment, you are under no obligation to provide for her, but if on grounds of humanity you wish to do so, let no one dissuade you."

Edward Ambrose agreed.

The upshot of a painful matter was that it was left in Mr. Mortimer's hands. He undertook to deal in such a way with Mrs. Henry Harper that there should be no fear of molestation from her. Also, he would have inquiries made into her past history and her present mode of life; and if a subsequent reconsideration of the case should make a final appeal to the law seem in any wise expedient, then would be the time to invoke it. In the meantime a sum would be paid to her weekly. Mr. Mortimer undertook to send a clerk to the flat in order to collect Henry Harper's papers and other belongings.

It was an unhappy state of affairs, but the young man realized that for the present it would be the part of wisdom to leave the matter in the prudent hands of Mr. Mortimer.

VI

The Sailor found sanctuary at Bury Street until late in the afternoon. By that time a member of Mr. Mortimer's staff had retrieved his chattels from King John's Mansions; also the admirable Portman had returned from his quest "for lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." Moreover, success had crowned it, as Edward Ambrose had been confident that it would.

Portman, it appeared, had found very nice rooms for a single gentleman in Brinkworth Street, Chelsea. They were kept by a friend of his who had been butler in the service of the Honorable Lady Price, relict of the late Sir O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., a former governor of the Bowerman Islands, who had given him an excellent character. It was also fortified by the fact that he had married the cook lately in the service of that lady. Portman was sure that Mr. Harper would find everything very comfortable.

Half an hour later, Henry Harper was on his way to Brinkworth Street with his few belongings. Before taking leave of Portman, he presented him with half a sovereign. This was a princely emolument in the eyes of the Sailor, but he felt that nothing less could meet the case.

On his arrival at Brinkworth Street, the young man knew at once that he would be in good hands. The air of respectability which hovered round his rooms was a little portentous, perhaps, but at least it was in welcome and vivid contrast to the cheap and dismal tawdriness of King John's Mansions. Mr. Emerson Paley, the proprietor of No. 14, and Mrs. Paley also, had something of Portman's impressiveness. It was clear that they had their own standard of taste and conduct. Moreover, Henry Harper welcomed it. To him it meant a fixing of social values. The atmosphere of No. 14, Brinkworth Street, was wholly different from that which had enveloped any home he had ever known before.

The Sailor found a stimulus in these new surroundings. Brinkworth Street, its outlook and its ideals, was a cosmos he had yet to traverse and explore. Mr. Paley was in his own way surprisingly a gentleman, as Mrs. Paley in hers was surprisingly a lady; not, of course, in the way that Edward Ambrose and his new friend, Mary Pridmore, were, but still they undoubtedly stood for something – a curious, indefinable something wholly beyond the ménage he had lately left, with its air of make-believe refinement which was not refinement at all.

Mr. Paley and also Mrs. Paley treated him with great consideration. And it was no second-hand or spurious emotion. It seemed to be their nature to pay respect, they seemed to have a craving to pay it, just as a person there was no need to name and that person's friends had a craving to be always what they called "pulling your leg." Not only was Mr. Harper treated with deference, but solid comfort, well cooked food and punctual attention were lavished upon him, so that for his own part he was bound to honor the source whence these blessings sprang. The august shade of the relict of Sir O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., might have been a little too much in evidence now and again for the plain and unvarnished taste of a sailor, but an ever deepening perception showed him that the very things he was inclined to despise and to laugh at – as most of the people with whom his life had been passed would undoubtedly have done – were of real importance if you were able to look at them from the right point of view.

From the moment he invaded its rather oppressively respectable precincts, No. 14, Brinkworth Street, by some alchemy of the spirit of place, began to work sensibly upon the Sailor. A rapidly expanding life had been in peril of being torn asunder, but Providence, which owed him so much, had found him a harbor of refuge.

From the very first evening in his new quarters reconstruction began. An air of ordered calm seemed to pervade the carefully laundered pillow as he laid his head on it that night. He was miserably weary, for one thing, but his physical state was not alone the cause of his sleeping in a way that had not been possible at No. 106, King John's Mansions, in all the months he had known it. Somehow, that sleep in those clean sheets, in that well-aired room, seemed to be the prelude to a new phase of being.

It was Sunday morning when the Sailor awoke. The first thing he knew was that the noiseless Mr. Paley was in the room, that he had placed a tiny tray on a small table at the side of his bed, that he had said, in his discreet voice, "Eight o'clock, sir," and that he was now in the act of drawing up the blinds and letting in the light of February.

"Do you desire a warm bath or a cold, sir?"

It might have been Portman himself who was asking that considered question.

"Cold, please," said the Sailor, rubbing his eyes with a feeling of pleasure.

Mr. Paley spread a mat and then produced from a chastely curtained recess a large, yellow-painted bath. Shortly afterwards, he evolved two cans of water from outside the bedroom door.

"Your bath is quite ready, sir."

"Thank you. Much obliged."

The Sailor sprang out of bed. Yes, it was another new world he had entered.

Half an hour later, he had descended to the dining-room, feeling perhaps a stronger and more composed man than he had ever been in his life. A well cooked rasher and two poached eggs and crisp toast and butter and the best Oxford marmalade awaited him. He sat near the pleasant fire, with his back to the enlarged photograph of the late Sir O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., the last portrait taken by Messrs. Barrett and Filmer, of Regent Street, and at Brighton, before the country and the empire endured its irreparable loss. He ate steadily for twenty minutes by the marble and ormulu clock in the center of the chimney piece, presented by the Honorable Lady Price (a daughter of Lord Vesle and Voile) in recognition of the faithful and valued service of Miss Martha Handcock, on the occasion of her marriage with Mr. Emerson Paley. He also contrived to hold a brief conversation with Mr. Emerson Paley in regard to the weather. In a word, the Sailor's first breakfast in Brinkworth Street was a memorable affair.