The Sailor Part 27

"If it's shopping you want, miss," said Mr. Harper, with an embarra.s.sment that made her smile, "let me go and do it for you."

"I couldn't think of it, Mr. Harper."

"I will, miss, I'll be very glad to." She liked the deep eyes of this strikingly handsome young man.

"I couldn't think of it, Mr. Harper. I couldn't really. Besides, my shopping will keep till tomorrow."

"You know best, miss." There was resignation tempered by a certain chivalrous disappointment. Quite unconsciously, Mr. Harper was doing his utmost to rise to the standard of speech and manner of Miss Foldal, which was far beyond any he had yet experienced.

"I saw in the _Evening Star_ that you won your match on Sat.u.r.day."'

"Yes, miss, four-two." But the mention of the _Evening Star_ was a stab. Every night the _Evening Star_ presented its tragic problem.

"Mr. Jukes tells me you will be having a trial with the first team soon."

Mr. Jukes had told Miss Foldal nothing of the kind. She was the last person to whom he would have made any such confidence.

"Oh no, miss." The native modesty was pleasant in her ear. "I'm nothing near good enough yet."

"It will come, though. It is bound to come."

The young man was not stirred by this prophecy. His mind had gone back to the night school; it was tormenting itself with the problem ever before it now. He would have liked to bring the conversation round to the matter, if only it could be done without disclosing the deadly secret. But the memory of Mrs. Sparks was still fresh. There was no denying that for a chap of nineteen not to have the elements of the three r's was a disgrace; it was bound to prejudice him in the eyes of a lady of education.

Still, Miss Foldal was not Mrs. Sparks. Being a higher sort of lady perhaps she would be able to make allowances. Yet Henry Harper didn't want her or anyone else to make allowances. However, he could not afford to be proud.

Chance it, suddenly decreed the voice within. She won't eat you anyway.

XV

Miss Foldal, it seemed, had been trained in her youth for a board school teacher. In a brief flash of autobiography, she told Mr. Harper she had never really graduated in that trying profession, but had forsaken a career eminently honorable for the more doubtful one of the stage, and had spent the rest of her life in regretting it. But always at the back of her mind was the sense of her original calling to leaven the years of her later fall from grace.

Not only Miss Foldal, but the Sailor also was quick to see the hand of Providence, when that young man, coloring pink in the gaslight and eating his last m.u.f.fin, made the admission, "that his readin' an'

writin' was rusty because of havin' followed the sea." And she answered, "Reelly," in her own inimitable way, to which the Sailor rejoined, "Yes, miss, reelly, and do you _fink_ you could recommend a night school?"

"Night school, Mr. Harper?" And this was where the higher kind of lady was able to claim superiority over Mrs. Sparks. "Please don't think me impertinent, but I would be delighted to help you all I could. You see, I was trained for a pupil teacher before I went on the stage against my father's wishes."

The heart of the Sailor leaped. In that tone of sincere kindness was the wish to be of use. If Miss Foldal had been trained as a pupil teacher, the night school in Driver's Lane might not be necessary, after all.

"What do you want to learn?" said Miss Foldal, with a display of grave interest. "I am afraid my French is rather rusty and I never had much Latin and Italian to speak of."

The Sailor was thrilled.

"Don't want no French, miss," he said, "or anythink sw.a.n.kin'. I just want to read the _Evenin' Star_ an' be able to write a letter."

"Do you mean to say----" Like the lady she was, she checked herself very adroitly. "I am quite sure, Mr. Harper, that is easily arranged.

How much can you read at present?"

"Nothink, miss." The plain and awful truth slipped out before he knew it had.

Miss Foldal did not flicker an eyelash. She merely said, "I'll go and see if I can find b.u.t.ter's spelling-book. I ought to have it somewhere."

She went at once in search of it, and five minutes later returned in triumph.

"Do you mind not sayin' anythink about it to Ginger Jukes, miss?" the young man besought her.

"If it is your wish," said Miss Foldal, "I certainly will not."

Here was the beginning of wisdom for Henry Harper. The prophetic words of Klond.y.k.e came back to him. From the very first lesson, which he took that evening after tea before the return of Ginger from the Crown and Cushion, it seemed that reading and writing was the Sailor's true line of country. A whole new world was spread suddenly before him.

Mr. Harper was an amazingly diligent pupil. He took enormous pains.

Whenever Ginger was not about, he was consolidating the knowledge he had gained, and slowly and painfully acquiring more. At Miss Foldal's suggestion, he provided himself with a slate and pencil. This enabled him to tackle a very intricate business in quite a professional manner.

It was uphill work making pothooks and hangers, having to write rows of a-b, ab, and having to make sure of his alphabet by writing it out from memory. But he did not weaken in his task. Sometimes he rose early to write, sometimes he sat up late to read; every day he received instruction of priceless value. And never once did his preceptress give herself airs, or sneer at his ignorance; above all, she did not give him away to Ginger.

These were great days. The beginning of real, definite knowledge gave Henry Harper a new power of soul. C-a-t spelled cat, d-o-g spelled dog; nine went five times into forty-five. There was no limit to these jewels of information. If he continued to work in this way, he might hope to read the _Evening Star_ by the end of March.

In the meantime, while all these immense yet secret labors were going forward, he felt his position with Ginger was in jeopardy. Somehow as the weeks pa.s.sed with the Sailor still in the second team, they did not seem to be on quite the terms that they had been. The change was so slight as to be hardly perceptible, yet it hurt the Sailor, who had a great capacity for friendship and also for hero worship. Ginger, to whom his present fabulous prosperity was due, must always be one of the G.o.ds of his idolatry.

The truth was, Ginger was one of those who rise to the top wherever they are, while Henry Harper lacked this quality. Ginger, although only in the second team at present, always talked and behaved as if he was a member of the first. There could be no doubt his honorable friendship with d.i.n.kie Dawson--one of England's best, as the _Evening Star_ often referred to him--was the foundation upon which he sedulously raised his social eminence.

In fact, Ginger seldom moved out of the company of the first team. He played billiards with its members at the Crown and Cushion; he played whist and cribbage with them at the same resort of fashion; they almost regarded him as one of themselves, although he had yet to win his spurs; moreover, and this was the oddest part of the whole matter, even the committee had come to look upon him favorably.

The Sailor was a little wounded now and then by Ginger's persiflage.

Sometimes he held him up to ridicule in a way that hurt. He made no secret, besides, of his growing belief that there was not very much to the Sailor after all, that he was letting the gra.s.s grow under his feet, and that he was good for very little beyond getting down to a hot one. No doubt, the root of the trouble lay in the fact that during the first months of his service with the Rovers, the Sailor was less interested in football and the things that went with football than he ought to have been. He was secretly giving his nights and days to a matter which seemed of even greater importance than his bread and b.u.t.ter. This might easily have led to disaster had it not been for a saving clause ever present in the mind of Henry Harper.

His dream, as a shoeless and stockingless newsboy, miserably hawking his Result Edition through the mud of Blackhampton, had been that one day he would help the Rovers bring the Cup to his native city. This thought had sustained him in many a desperate hour. Well, Henry Harper was something of a fatalist now. He had come very much nearer the realization of that dream than had ever seemed possible. Therefore, he was not going to let go of it. His mind was now full of other matters, but he must not lose sight of the fact that it was his bounden duty to make his dream come true.

To begin with he had to find his way into the first eleven. But the weeks went by. January came, and with it the first of the cup ties, but Henry Harper was still in the second team and likely to remain there. It was not that he did not continue to show promise. But something more than promise was needed for these gladiatorial contests when twenty, thirty, forty, fifty thousand persons a.s.sembled to cheer their favorites, whose names were in their mouths as household words.

His time might one day come, if he kept on improving. But it would not be that year. As Ginger said, before he could play in a cup tie he would have to get a bit more pudding under his shirt.

During these critical months Henry Harper was getting other things to sustain him. Every week marked a definite advance in knowledge. Miss Foldal found him other books, and one evening at the beginning of March, he astonished her not merely by spelling crocodile, but by writing it down on his slate.

April came, and with it the end of the football season. Then arose a problem the Sailor had not foreseen. Would the Rovers take him on for another year? He was still untried in the great matches, he was still merely a youth of promise. Would he be re-engaged? It was a question for Ginger also. But as far as he was concerned, the matter did not long remain in doubt. One evening in the middle of that fateful month, he came in to supper after his usual "hundred up" at the Crown and Cushion.

"Well, Sailor," he said, a note of patronage in his tone. "I've fixed it with the kermittee. They are going to take me on for next year."

Sailor was not surprised. His faith in Ginger never wavered.

"Wish I could say the same for you, Sailor," said Ginger, condescendingly; "but the kermittee think you are not quite cla.s.s."

"They are not goin' to take me on again!" said the Sailor in a hollow voice.

"No. They think you are not quite Rovers' form. They are goin' to give you back your papers."

Such a decree was like cold steel striking at the Sailor's heart. The dream of his boyhood lay shattered. And there were other consequences which just then he could not muster the power of mind to face.