The Sailor Part 54

"But you are bound to say that, aren't you?"

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't think it, Miss Pridmore."

The quaint solemnity delighted her.

"Uncle George says the Island of San Pedro is an imitation of 'Robinson Crusoe,' but nothing will ever make me admit that, so you had better not admit it either. Please say it isn't, to save my reputation for omniscience."

"I had not read 'Robinson Crusoe' when I wrote the Island, and I suppose if I had I should have written it differently."

"It's a very good thing you hadn't. There's nothing like the Island anywhere to my mind. You can see and feel and hear and smell and taste that Island. It is so real that when poor d.i.c.k was put ash.o.r.e by the drunken captain of the brigantine _Excelsior_ I literally daren't go to bed. And my brother Jack says--and I always quote this to Uncle George--that no more lifelike picture of a windjammer--it is a windjammer, isn't it?----"

"That's right."

"And of an island in the Pacific could possibly be given."

"Well, I wouldn't quite say that myself," said the sailorman, with the blood singing in his ears.

"Of course not. It wouldn't be right for you to say it."

"Where is Klond.y.k.e now, Miss Pridmore?" he asked suddenly.

"No one knows. He probably doesn't know himself. The last letter my mother had from him arrived about two months ago. He was then in the middle of Abyssinia. But he has moved since. He never stays long anywhere when the wanderl.u.s.t is on him. But we don't worry. He'll turn up one of these days quite unexpectedly, looking rather like a tramp, and will settle down to civilization for a short time; and then one morning he'll go off again to the most outlandish place he can think of, and we may not see or hear anything of him for months or even years."

A dull period followed the dessert. Miss Pridmore and the other ladies went and the Sailor had to remain with four comparatively flat and tame gentlemen who smoked very good cigars and talked of matters which the young man did not feel competent to enter upon.

It was an irksome twenty minutes, but it had to be endured. And it was not really so very difficult because he was in heaven.

At last when the four other gentlemen had solemnly smoked their cigars, and he had smoked the mild cigarette which contented him, they went upstairs. And as they did so he felt the hand of Edward Ambrose on his shoulder and he heard a laughing voice in his ear. "Henry, you are going great guns."

That was quite true. He felt wonderful. There is no doubt people do feel wonderful when they are in heaven. And there was his divinity sitting in the middle of the smaller sofa, and as soon as he entered he was summoned with a gesture of charming imperiousness which the boldest of men would not have dared to disobey. And as he came to her she laughingly made room for him. He sat by her side and fell at once to talking again of Klond.y.k.e. From Klond.y.k.e, whom she would not admit was quite the hero the author of "d.i.c.k Smith" considered him to be, they pa.s.sed to the High Seas, and then to Literature, and then to the Drama, and then to Life itself, and then to the High Seas again, and then to Edward Ambrose, whom she spoke of with great affection as a very old friend of hers and of her family, and then once more to Life itself.

After the flight of a winged hour she rose suddenly and held out her hand. But as she did so she also said one memorable thing.

"Mr. Harper"--her fingers were touching his--"promise, please, you will come to tea one afternoon soon. No. 50, Queen Street, Mayfair. I am going to write it on a piece of paper if you will get it for me, so that there will be no mistake."

The Sailor got the piece of paper for Miss Pridmore. As he did so the eternal feminine rejoiced at his tall, straight, cleanly handsomeness, in spite of the reach-me-down which clothed it.

"Now that means no excuse," she said, with a little touch of royal imperiousness returning upon her. "No. 50, Queen Street. One of those little houses on the left. About half past four. Shall we say Wednesday? I want to hear you talk to my mother about Klond.y.k.e."

She gave him her hand again, and then after a number of very cordial and direct good-bys which Klond.y.k.e himself could not have bettered, she went downstairs gayly with her host.

"Tell me, Mary," said Edward Ambrose on the way down, "who in the world is Klond.y.k.e?"

"It's Jack," she said. "They were together on board the brigantine _Excelsior_--although that's not the real name of it."

"How odd!" said Edward Ambrose. "But what a fellow he is not to have said so. When one remembers how he gloated over the yarn one would have thought----"

"But how should he know? It must have been years ago. Yet the strange thing is he remembers Jack and he knew I was his sister because we are so exactly alike, which I thought very tactless."

"Naturally. Did you like him?" The question came with very swift directness.

"He's amazing." The answer was equally swift, equally direct. "He is the only author I have ever met who comes near to being----"

"To being what?" Mary Pridmore had suddenly remembered that she was being escorted downstairs by a distinguished man of letters.

"Do you press the question?"

"Certainly I press the question."

"Very well, then," said Mary Pridmore. "Wild horses will not make me answer it. But I can only say that your young man is as wonderful as his books. He's coming to tea on Wednesday, and it will be very disappointing if you don't come as well. Good-by, Edward. It's been a splendid evening." And she waved her hand to him as she sped away with an air of large and heroic enjoyment of the universe, while Edward Ambrose stood rather wistfully at the door watching her recede into the night.

III

"My friend," said Edward Ambrose, as he helped the last departing guest into his overcoat, "I suppose you know you have made a conquest?"

The Sailor was not aware of the fact.

"Mary Pridmore is ... well, she is rather ... she is rather..."

"We talked a lot," said the young man, with a glow in his voice. "I hope she wasn't bored. But as she was Klond.y.k.e's sister, I couldn't help letting myself go a bit. She's--she's just my idea of what a lady ought to be."

The young man, who was still in heaven, had the grace to blush at such an indiscretion. His host laughed.

Said he: "Had I realized that you were such a very dangerous fellow, I don't think you would have been invited here tonight. I mean it, Henry." And to show that he didn't mean it in the least, Edward Ambrose gave the Sailor a little affectionate push into Bury Street.

As the night was fine and time was his own, Henry Harper returned on foot to King John's Mansions. He did not go by a direct route, but chose Regent Street, Marylebone Road, Euston Road, and other circuitous thoroughfares, so that the journey took about four times as long as it need have done. Midnight had struck already when he came to the top of the Avenue.

By that time he was no longer in heaven. As a matter of fact, he had fallen out of paradise in Portland Place. It was there he suddenly remembered Cora. For several enchanted hours he had completely forgotten her. He had been in Elysium, but almost opposite the Queen's Hall he fell out of it. It was there the unwelcome truth came upon him that he had been surrendering himself to madness.

He clenched his teeth as if he had received a blow in the face. He was like an ill-found ship wrenched from its moorings and cast adrift in mid-ocean. G.o.d in heaven, how was he to go home to that unspeakable woman after such a draught of sheer delight!

For a moment, standing dazed and breathless in the middle of the road, he almost wanted to shriek. He had been drinking champagne, not with undignified freedom, yet for unseasoned temperaments it may be a dangerous beverage even in modest quant.i.ties. He had really drunk very little, but he felt that in the situation he had now to face it would have been better to have left it alone.

How was he going to face Cora now he had seen the peri, now he had looked within the Enchanted Gates?

There was only one possible answer to the question. And that had come to him as he had crossed, quite unnecessarily, the Marylebone Road, and had fetched up against the railings of Regent's Park. He must accept the issue like a man. Setting his teeth anew, he moved in an easterly direction towards the Euston Road.

He allowed himself to hope, as he turned the latchkey in the door of No. 106, King John's Mansions, that Cora had not carried out her threat. But he was not able to build much upon it. As he climbed up slowly towards the roof of the flats there seemed something indescribably squalid about the endless flights of bleak, iron-railed stone stairs.

When the door of No. 106 opened to his latchkey, the first thing he perceived was a stealthy reek of alcohol. A light was in the pa.s.sage; and then as he closed the outer door, he caught an oddly unexpected sound of voices coming through the half open door of the sitting-room.

He stood and listened tensely. One of the voices was that of a man.

It was not necessary to enter the sitting-room itself to confirm this fact. A man's hat, one of the sort called a gibus, which he knew was only worn with evening clothes, was hanging on one of the pegs in the pa.s.sage. An overcoat lined with astrachan was under it.

He could hear a strange voice coming from the sitting-room. It was that of a man of education, but it had a sort of huskiness which betrayed the familiar presence of alcohol. Involuntarily, he stood to listen at the half open door.

"Cora, old girl, you are as tight as a tick." After all, the tones were more, sober than drunk. "I'll be getting a move on, I think.