The Sailor Part 70

"Yes, why not?"

"Friendship between us is impossible. That's why I went away. We ...

we played it up too high. Friendship between a man and a woman is no use ... at least not to her and me ... although..."

"I'm not talking merely of friendship," said Edward Ambrose, very deliberately. "I'm talking of something else."

So charged with meaning were the words that the Sailor recoiled as if he had received a blow.

"What ... what are you saying!" he cried with a sudden blind rage in his face.

BOOK V

FULFILLMENT

I

"Why do you taunt me?" cried the Sailor after a pause hard to endure.

"I offer neither reason nor excuse for the words I have used," said Edward Ambrose calmly. "I can only say that she is more than your friend. You must remember that you have been away eleven months. In the meantime water still continues to flow under London Bridge."

"I don't follow you."

"Yes, of course--one a.s.sumes too much. One forgets that you have been away so long and that apparently you have not yet seen Mortimer."

"Mortimer!"

"Perhaps I ought to have told you ... yes ... I can see I ought to have. Mortimer has news."

"News!"

"Now I am going to put you out. Go at once and see him."

Henry Harper presently realized that he was again on the pavement of Pall Mall, but he was too bewildered to know how he had come there. He was in a kind of dream. But all he did had a specific purpose. For instance, he was going to see Mr. Mortimer. Yet he could not understand what lay behind his friend's desire that he should see the solicitor at once. The true explanation never occurred to him.

Mr. Mortimer had to tell him that his wife had died two months ago in the course of one of her bouts of drinking. At first the Sailor could not grasp the significance of the statement. It hardly seemed to make any impact upon him. He thanked Mr. Mortimer for all his services in a trying matter, and went out into the street, apparently giving very little thought to what had happened.

Here, however, he grew suddenly aware that the aspect of things had completely changed. Something had occurred which lay beyond his ken, but he knew already that the whole universe was different.

A new man in brain and heart, he collected his things from Charing Cross and drove to Brinkworth Street. His room was ready to receive him in spite of the fact that he had been away eleven months. He had written to Mr. Paley from time to time inclosing money and telling him that he hoped to be home presently. And home he was at last.

It was not at once that he could set his thoughts in order. But one fact was clear. He was free. He was free to enjoy the light of heaven, to breathe the breath of life.

In the height of the tumult now upon him he took a resolve. The barrier was down. He would put all to the touch. Somehow he had an implicit faith. A gulf was fixed, he knew, between Mary and himself.

She belonged to a world far removed from the one in which he had been born, in which he had pa.s.sed so much of his life. But he had that final pledge, "If ever you want help!" Well, there was only one way in which she could help him, and that she knew as well as he.

Soon after five he set out. If he went leisurely he would reach Queen Street about six, a propitious hour. She was generally at home at that time. It was hard to believe that he was the same man who had stood that morning on the curb at Charing Cross. He had absolutely nothing now in common with that broken mariner.

In those few brief hours he had suffered one sea change the more. The genie had relit the lamp. Again he was a forward-looking man. Nay, he was more. He was a prince of the blood approaching the portals of an imperial kingdom. Otto, a prince of that other kingdom, issued from the threshold of No. 50, while Venables, the butler, with polite surprise, was in the very act of receiving the Sailor.

"Hulloa, Harper," said the Prince. "Turned up again. We had all given you up for lost."

It might have been possible for a delicate ear to detect something other than welcome in the voice of his highness. But whether such was the case or not was a matter of no concern to the returned mariner.

Mary was at home and alone. At first he was a little unnerved by the sight of her, and she perhaps by the sight of him. The look of sadness in her face distressed him.

"Not one line," she said. But there was nothing of Edward Ambrose's half reproach in her voice.

"No."

"I was beginning to think I should never see or hear of you again."

Her simplicity was the exact counterpart of his own.

"I don't think I ever meant you to."

She waited patiently for him to add to his strange words and was slow to realize that he couldn't.

"That would have been cruel," she said at last.

"It would have been cruel either way. However, it is all done with now."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," she said, finding that speech had failed him again.

"I don't know whether I can tell you."

Ought he to tell her? A harrowing doubt arose. She knew that there had been some grave reason for his going away. But what the hidden cause had been, hers was not a nature that would ask. She only knew that if speech and bearing meant anything, he was deeply in love with her, and yet for some unfathomable reason he had shirked the issue.

And now he had returned after these long months, which to her as well as to himself had been a time of more than bitterness, there was still this shadow between them. Yet it surely belonged to the past. There was no barrier between them now, except the memory of a secret which somehow he could not believe was vital.

In her immense desire to serve him she was ready to give all that he might ask. But there was still a reservation in his mind. In the sudden revelation, as it seemed to him, of the divine clemency, he was overwhelmed by a desire to confess all.

There may have been no need to do so, yet that was not a question to ask. She was his, he knew it; she would not be less, she would be doubly his, if she learned the circ.u.mstances of his life. Besides, so high was the revulsion of feeling now upon him that it seemed the course of honor. And was it not her right to know all concerning him before he demanded so great a sacrifice?

In this mood he never for a moment doubted that it would be a further bond. Let him tell his secret now that his lips had been unsealed.

"Mary," he said, "do you remember your words eleven months ago?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Mary,' he said, 'do you remember your words eleven months ago?'"]

"I remember them perfectly."

"Well, there was only one way in which you could help me then, and that was why I went away. And I never intended to return unless I could claim that which you offered me."

"Was it necessary?"

"Mere friendship is no use to you and me. But I couldn't ask you to marry me then, although I knew ... at least I thought I knew ... you'll tell me if I am wrong..."