The Sailor Part 52

When, after an absence of many months, Henry Harper reappeared in these haunts of fas.h.i.+on, he had to run the gantlet of the girls and the boys.

But Cora was secretly gratified to find that he was much better able to take care of himself now. Those months of sequestration, unknown to her, had been a period of very remarkable development. He had been mixing on terms of equality with a cla.s.s much above hers, he had been enlarging the scope of his observation, he had been deepening his experience. Moreover, he had discovered the letter aitch, and with the help of the indefatigable Madame Sadleir, who was a skillful and conscientious teacher, was now making use of the new knowledge.

Yes, there was a great improvement in Harry. In the opinion of his critics he was much more a man of the world; callow youths and insipid ladies of the town could no longer "come it over him" in the way that had formerly delighted them. Even Miss Bonser and Miss Press had to use discretion. The new knowledge did not make him a prig, but it seemed to give his character an independence and a depth which called for respectful treatment.

He disliked these evenings as much as ever. The Roc and Cora's friends could never have any sort of attraction for Henry Harper. But there was now the sense of duty to sustain him. He was making a heroic effort to save Cora from herself, yet he sometimes felt in his heart that such a woman was hardly worth the saving.

The fact was, it was no use disguising it now, she jarred every nerve in his soul. The more he developed the more hopeless she grew. He knew now that she was very common, sordid clay. It was not in her to rise or to respond. She was cra.s.s, heavy-witted, coa.r.s.e-fibered; his effort had to be made against fearful, and as it seemed with the new perceptions that were coming upon him, ever increasing odds.

By this he had learned from the new and finer world into which his talent had brought him that Cora had but a thin veneer of spurious refinement after all. He knew enough now to see how hopelessly wrong she was in everything, from the heart outwards. It began to hurt him more and more to be in her company in public places. Sometimes he could hardly bear to sit at the same table with her, so alien she was from the people he was meeting now on terms approximating to equality.

Edward Ambrose, realizing how the young man was striving to rise with his fortunes, was doing all that lay in his power to help him. At this time, the name of Mrs. Henry Harper had not been mentioned to him.

Several times the Sailor had been at the point of revealing that sinister figure in the background of his life. More than once he had felt that it was the due of this judicious friend that he should know at least of the existence of Cora. But each time he had tried to screw his courage to the task a kind of nausea had overwhelmed him. The truth was Edward Ambrose and Cora stood at opposite poles, and whenever he tried to speak of her it became impossible to do so.

Henry Harper had been present at several of the very agreeable bachelor dinner parties in Bury Street, and on each occasion his host had noted an honorable and increasing effort on the part of the neophyte to rise to the measure of his opportunity. There could be no doubt he was coming on amazingly. The rough edges were being smoothed down and he was always so simple and unaffected that it was hardly possible for liberal-minded men whom fortune had given a place in the stalls at the human comedy to refrain from liking him.

"Henry," said his friend when the young man looked in one afternoon in Pall Mall, "what are you doing tomorrow week, Friday, the twenty-third?"

Henry was doing nothing in particular.

"Then you must come and dine with me," said Edward Ambrose.

"I'll be delighted."

"Wait a minute. That's not the important part. You'll have to take somebody in to dinner. And she's about the nicest girl I know, and she wants very much to meet the author of 'd.i.c.k Smith,' and I promised that she should. There will be two or three others ... Ellis and his fiancee ... I told you Ellis had just got engaged ... but we shall not be more than ten all told. Will you face it, Henry, just to oblige a friend?"

A dinner party of ten with ladies was rather a facer for Mr. Henry Harper, in spite of the fact that his social laurels were cl.u.s.tering thicker upon him.

"I suppose I'll have to if you've promised her," he said with not ungracious reluctance.

"I'm sure you'll like her as much as she'll like you," said Edward Ambrose.

That remains to be seen was the mental reservation in the mind of the Sailor.

XXV

Friday week soon came, but very unfortunately it found Cora "in one of her moods."

The first intimation she had of the dinner party was the arrival of a parcel of evening clothes, which Harry had purchased that morning in the Strand. As ladies were to be present, his sense of the fitness of things had led him at last to incur this long-promised expense.

Indeed, Cora herself had said that sooner or later this would have to be. But now that the clothes had actually arrived and she insisted upon being told for what purpose they were required, she flew into a tantrum.

In Cora's opinion, there had been too much dining already with this Mr.

Ambrose, and now that Harry was being invited to meet ladies, had Mr.

Ambrose been a true gentleman she would have been invited as well. It did not occur to her that he was not aware of her existence. But in any case Harry ought not to be going to meet other women without his wife.

Cora became very sulky. And she mingled unamiability with abuse. The sad truth was, and her husband realized it with intense bitterness in the course of that afternoon, she had begun drinking heavily again in spite of all that he could do to check her. It was a failure of the will. There was no doubt life bored her. The restraints she had recently put upon herself, not in regard to drink alone, had become more than she could bear. For a week past she had known that another "break-out" was imminent.

She was now inclined to make this dinner party to which she was not invited a pretext for it.

"I see what it is," she said with ugly eyes. "Your lawful wife is not good enough for my lord Ambrose and his lady friends."

This stung, it was so exactly the truth.

"But don't think for a moment I am going to take it lying down. If you go to this party I'm coming too."

"You can't," said her husband quietly--so quietly that it made her furious.

"Oh, can't I!"

"No, you can't," he said with a finality that offered no salve. He was angry with his own weakness. He knew that it had caused him to drift into a false position. And yet what could he do--with such a wife as that?

"You're ashamed of me," she said, with baffled rage in her voice.

"You've no right to say that." It was a feeble rejoinder, but silence would have been worse.

"I am going to give you fair warning, Harry. If you go to this party and meet other women while I am left at home, I shall...."

"You'll what?" he said, recoiling from her heavy breathing ugliness.

"I shall go a good old blind tonight, I warn you."

She spoke with full knowledge of the effort he had made to help her and all that it had cost him.

"It won't be half a blind, I'm telling you," she said, reading his eyes. "I've done my best for weeks and weeks to please you. I've hardly touched a drop--and this is all the thanks I get. I'm flesh and blood like other people."

She saw with malicious triumph that she had him cornered.

"Look here, Cora," he said, "it's too late to get out of this now. It wouldn't be fair or right for me to break my word to Mr. Ambrose. But I'll promise this. If you will only keep sober tonight, I'll never go to another party without ... without your permission."

"Without my permission!"

"Without you, then, if that's what you want me to say."

"Oh, yes! I don't think!"

"I don't ever break my word," he said simply. "You know that. If I say a thing I try my best to act up to it."

"Well, it's not good enough for me, anyhow," she said, with a sudden and jealous knowledge of her own inferiority. "If you leave me tonight, so help me G.o.d, I'll get absolutely blind."

She saw the horror in his eyes and was glad. It gave her a sense of power. But it brought its own Nemesis. She forgot just then that he alone stood between her and the gutter.

"Be reasonable, Cora," he said weakly. There did not seem to be anything else he could say.

"I've warned you," she said savagely. "Leave me tonight and you'll see. I'll not be made a mark of by no one, not if I know it."

In great distress he retired to his bedroom in order to think things out. He felt that he was much in the wrong. Somehow he did not seem to be keeping to the terms of the bargain. Up to a point Cora had reason and justice on her side. Yet beyond that point was the duty to his friends.