The Sailor Part 51

Completely disarmed by the calm but forthcoming manner of Madame Sadleir, Mr. Henry Harper stated his modest need with extreme simplicity. He just wanted to be taught in as few lessons as possible to speak like a real college gentleman that went regular--regularly (remembering his grammar in time)--into Society.

Madame Sadleir's smile was maternal.

"Why, certainly," she said in the voice of a dove. "Nothing easier."

The young man felt rea.s.sured. He had not thought, even in his moments of optimism, that there would be anything easy in the process of making a Mr. Edward Ambrose or a Mr. Esme Horrobin.

"It will be necessary," said Madame Sadleir, "to pay very particular attention to the course of instruction, and also to practice a.s.siduously. But first you must learn to take breath and to a.s.semble and control the voice. Do you desire the Oxford manner?"

Mr. Henry Harper, with recollections of Mr. Edward Ambrose and Mr. Esme Horrobin, said modestly that he did desire the Oxford manner if it could be acquired in a few lessons, which was yet more than he dared to hope.

"The number of lessons depends entirely upon your diligence and, may I add"--and Madame Sadleir did add--"your intelligence and natural apt.i.tude. But, of course, to remove all misunderstanding, the Oxford manner is an extra."

Somehow he felt that such would be the case.

"Personally, one doesn't recommend it," said Mtdame Sadleir, "for general use."

Mr. Harper was a little disappointed.

"It is not quite so popular as it was," said Madame Sadleir, "unless one is going into the Church. In the Church it is always in vogue, in fact one might say a _sine qua non_ in its higher branches. Do you propose to take Orders?"

Mr. Harper had no thoughts of a commercial life.

"Personally," said Madame Sadleir, speaking with the most engaging freedom and ease, "one is inclined to favor a good Service manner for all round general use. There is the A manner for the army subaltern, the B manner for the company officer, either of which you will find admirable for general purposes. There is also the Naval manner, but excellent as it is, I am afraid it is hardly to be recommended for social life. The Civil Service manner, which combines utility with a reasonable amount of ornament, might suit you perhaps. I am recommending it quite a good deal just now. And, of course, there is the Diplomatic or Foreign Office manner for advanced pupils, but it may be early days to talk of that at present. One does not like to raise false hopes or to promise more than one can perform. Now, Mr. Harper, kindly let me hear you read this leading article in the Times on 'What is Wrong with the Nation?' paying particular attention to the vowel sounds."

With grave deliberation, Mr. Henry Harper did as he was asked. Having painfully completed his task, Madame Sadleir, in a remarkably benign way, which somehow brought Mr. Herbert Gracious vividly to his mind, proceeded to deal with him with the utmost fidelity.

Said she: "It is my duty to tell you that for the present a good sound No. 3 Commercial manner is earnestly recommended. If you are diligent, it may be possible to graft a modified Oxford upon it, but I am afraid it would be premature to promise even that."

This was disappointing. But, after all, it was to be foreseen. Mr.

Edward Ambroses and Mr. Esme Horrobins were not made in a day. And when he came to think the matter over at his leisure he was sincerely glad that they were not. It would have taken a mystery and a glamour from the world.

XXIII

About this time, Henry Harper became a member of a society which met once a week at Crosbie's in the Strand. This step was the outcome of a course of lectures he had attended at the London Ethical Inst.i.tution, in Bloomsbury Square. They had been delivered by the very able Professor Wynne Davies, on that most fascinating of all subjects to the truly imaginative mind, the Idea of G.o.d.

During these lectures, and quite by chance, Henry Harper had made the acquaintance of a certain Arthur Reeves, a young journalist, who suggested that he should join the Social Debating Society, which met at Crosbie's every Tuesday. This he accordingly did; and being under no obligation to take an active part in the proceedings until he felt he could do so with reasonable credit, he was able to enjoy them thoroughly. Moreover, he was in full sympathy with these alert minds which for the most part were owned by young and struggling men.

Some of the discussions Henry Harper heard at Crosbie's made a deep impression upon him. All the members seemed to have a turn for speculative inquiry. The majority of those who took an active part in the debates spoke very well. Now and again, it is true, the pride of intellect raised its head. Some of its members were young enough to know everything, but there was also a leaven of older minds which saw life more steadily, and in as rounded a shape as it is possible for the eye of man to perceive it.

There was one man in particular who attracted Henry Harper. His name was James Thorneycroft, and he was in his way a rare bird, a bank manager with a strong ethical and sociological bias. He was one of the graybeards of the society, a man of sixty, who had the worn look of one who had been fighting devils, more or less unsuccessfully, all his life. For Henry Harper there was fascination and inspiration in James Thorneycroft. His was a mind capable of delving deep into spiritual experience, and of rendering it in terms which all could understand.

At the third meeting which Henry Harper attended at Crosbie's, his friend and introducer, Arthur Reeves, under the spell cast by the brilliant Professor Wynne Davies, ventured to combat a certain skepticism in regard to the scope and function of the Deity, which some of the advanced members had put into words at the previous meeting.

The performance of Arthur Reeves was crude and rather unphilosophical, and yet it was stimulating enough to bring James Thorneycroft on to his legs.

"My own view about G.o.d is this," he began in that curiously unpremeditated and abrupt way which made an effect of absolute sincerity. "There is a form of inherited belief that will overthrow the most fearless and independent mind if it ventures to disregard it.

I suppose most men who think at all are up against this particular problem some time in their lives. But it all comes back to this: it is absolutely impossible for any man to banish the idea of G.o.d and continue as a reasoning ent.i.ty. Of the First Cause we know nothing, of the Ultimate Issue we know even less, but my own faith is that as long as the idea of G.o.d persists, Man himself will not perish. I know there are many who will say that science is against me. They will say that there is nothing inherent in the mere idea of G.o.d which will or can prevent an earthquake banishing all forms of organic life from this planet in sixty seconds. Well, it is my faith that if that came to pa.s.s Man would still persist in some other form. Science would at once rejoin that he would cease to be Man, but to my own psychic experience that is not at all a clear proposition. Science is based upon reason which states as an absolute fact that two and two make four. The idea of G.o.d is based upon the fact that two and two plus One make five, and all the science and all the clear and exact thinking in the world can't alter it. Man is only a reasoning animal up to a point. He has only to keep exclusively to reason to bring about his own defeat. Every thinking mind, I a.s.sume, must oscillate at some period of its development between Reason on the one hand (two and two make four) and Experience (two and two make five) on the other. Well, if it won't bore you" ... "Go on, go on!" cried the meeting, not out of politeness merely, since all felt the fascination of the unconventional and childlike personality of James Thorneycroft.... "I will give you in as few words as I can the experience that happened to me nearly thirty years ago, which laid at rest all doubts I might ever have had on this point.

"At that time I was a clerk in a bank at Blackhampton. Employed at the bank was a young porter." ...

For a reason he could never explain, a strange thrill suddenly ran through Henry Harper.

"... And this young chap was one of the best and most promising fellows I ever met. He belonged to the working cla.s.s, but he was tremendously keen to improve himself. When I met him first he couldn't even read--it makes one smile to hear people talk about the good old days!--but he very soon learned, and then he began to worry things out for himself. I lent him one or two books myself ... John Stuart Mill, I remember, and that old fool Carlyle, who ruled the roast at that time."--Here a bearded gentleman at the back had to be called to order.--"Then we both began to get into deeper waters, and with a.s.sistance from Germany, soon found ourselves in a flood of isms, although I am bound to say without being able to make very much of them.

"The time came, however, when this young man, who was really a very fine fellow, took the wrong turning. He somehow got entangled with a woman, a thoroughly bad lot I afterwards found out, a person of a type much below his own. He was an extraordinarily simple chap, he had the heart of a child. From a mistaken, an utterly mistaken sense of chivalry, he finally married her.

"If ever a man was imposed upon and entrapped it was this poor fellow.

Of course he didn't know that at first. But from the hour of his marriage deterioration set in. Ambition and all desire for self-improvement began to go. Then he lost his mental poise, and he became cynical, and no wonder, because that woman made his life a h.e.l.l.

Even when the truth came to him he stuck to her, really I think out of some quixotic notion he had of reforming her. Certainly he stuck to her long after he ought to have, because slowly but surely she began to drag him down. At last, when the full truth came home to him, he killed her in a sudden fit of madness.

"Now, there was no real evil in that man. There were one or two soft places in him, no doubt, as there are in most of us, but it is my firm belief that had he married the right woman he would one day have been a credit to his country. He was in every way a very fine fellow--in fact, he was too fine a fellow. It was the vein of quixotic chivalry in his nature that undid him. That was the cruelest part of the whole thing. And I am bound to say that the doubts the higher criticism had put into my mind were very much a.s.sisted by the fact that it was this poor chap's real n.o.bility of soul which destroyed him.

"From the point of view of reason, any man was wrong to marry such a woman, even allowing for the fact that he was ignorant of her real character and vocation when he married her. From the point of view of ethics he was wrong; that is to say, he had not even infringed the code of conventional morality, and was therefore under no obligation to do so. And where he was doubly wrong in the sight of reason and ethics, and where, in the sight of the Saviour of mankind, he was so magnificently right, was in sticking to her in the way he did.

"And yet that man came to the gallows. For years afterwards I could never think of him without a feeling of inward rage that almost amounted to blasphemy. But to return to Reason _v._ Experience, I am merely telling this story for the sake of what I am going to say now.

I went to see that poor man in prison after his trial, when he had only one day to live, and I shall never forget the look of him. He was like a saint. He looked into my eyes and took my hand and he said, and I can hear his words now, 'Mr. Thorneycroft, you can take it from me, there is a G.o.d.'

"I have never forgotten those words. And many times since they were spoken I firmly believe it has only been the words of my poor friend, Henry Harper, spoken on the brink of a shameful grave, which have saved me." The name fell unconsciously from the lips of James Thorneycroft.

XXIV

The Sailor never went again to the meetings of the Social Debating Society at Crosbie's in the Strand, Somehow he had not the courage.

The simple unadorned story of James Thorneycroft had taken complete possession of his mind.

Without making any researches into the subject, some instinct which transcended reason, which transcended experience itself, told him that the Henry Harper of the story was his own father. Moreover, he was prepared to affirm that it was his own presence in that room--unknown as he was to James Thorneycroft to whom he had never spoken a word in his life--which had been responsible for the story's telling.

This clear conviction brought no shame to Henry Harper. No man could have been more amply vindicated in the sight of others than his father had been by him who had given his story with a poignancy which had silenced all criticism of the deductions he had ventured to draw from it.

The feeling uppermost in the mind of Henry Harper was that one world more had been revealed. At various times in his life he had had intimations of the Unseen. There was something beyond himself with which he had been in familiar contact. But up till now he had never thought about it much.

The story he had heard seemed to alter everything. In a subtle way his whole outlook was changed. The fact that his father had died such a death brought with it no sense of ignominy. It was too remote, too far beyond him; besides, the man who had told the story had been careful to show his father's true character.

It was almost inconceivable that he did not apply the logic of this terrible event to his own case. By now it should have been clear that he was literally treading the same path. Perhaps the voice of reason could not argue with the overwhelming forces which now had Henry Harper in their grip. Once they had driven him into an identical position they forced him to act in a similar way. Just as the father had made the disastrous error of setting himself to reform his wife when he had found out what she was, the son was now preparing to repeat it.

He determined upon a great effort to win Cora from drink.

Since the quarrel over the man in the taxi, which had occurred nearly two months ago, they had drifted further apart. Cora had behaved with great unwisdom and she was aware of the fact. But she was not going to risk the loss of the golden eggs if she could possibly help it. She had been shaken more than a little by her own folly, and if Harry had not been a dead-beat fool it must have meant a pretty decisive nail in her coffin. Even as it was, and in spite of the softness for which she despised him, his tone had hardened perceptibly since the incident.

Not that she cared very much for that. She did not believe he had it in him to go to extremities. And yet now he had taken this new tone she was not quite sure. Perhaps he was not quite so "soppy" as her friends always declared him to be.

Be that as it may, Cora accepted it in good part when Harry took upon himself to beg her earnestly to check her habit of drinking more than she ought. She was even a little touched; she had not expected a solicitude which she knew she didn't deserve. Instead of "telling him off," as she felt she ought to have done, she promised to do her best to meet his wishes.

He was so grateful that he tried to find a way of helping her. He must let her see that he was ready to a.s.sist any effort she might make by every means in his power. Therefore, several evenings a week he accompanied her to the Roc and sometimes they went on, as formerly, to a play or a music hall.