The Sailor Part 58

From the moment he invaded its rather oppressively respectable precincts, No. 14, Brinkworth Street, by some alchemy of the spirit of place, began to work sensibly upon the Sailor. A rapidly expanding life had been in peril of being torn asunder, but Providence, which owed him so much, had found him a harbor of refuge.

From the very first evening in his new quarters reconstruction began.

An air of ordered calm seemed to pervade the carefully laundered pillow as he laid his head on it that night. He was miserably weary, for one thing, but his physical state was not alone the cause of his sleeping in a way that had not been possible at No. 106, King John's Mansions, in all the months he had known it. Somehow, that sleep in those clean sheets, in that well-aired room, seemed to be the prelude to a new phase of being.

It was Sunday morning when the Sailor awoke. The first thing he knew was that the noiseless Mr. Paley was in the room, that he had placed a tiny tray on a small table at the side of his bed, that he had said, in his discreet voice, "Eight o'clock, sir," and that he was now in the act of drawing up the blinds and letting in the light of February.

"Do you desire a warm bath or a cold, sir?"

It might have been Portman himself who was asking that considered question.

"Cold, please," said the Sailor, rubbing his eyes with a feeling of pleasure.

Mr. Paley spread a mat and then produced from a chastely curtained recess a large, yellow-painted bath. Shortly afterwards, he evolved two cans of water from outside the bedroom door.

"Your bath is quite ready, sir."

"Thank you. Much obliged."

The Sailor sprang out of bed. Yes, it was another new world he had entered.

Half an hour later, he had descended to the dining-room, feeling perhaps a stronger and more composed man than he had ever been in his life. A well cooked rasher and two poached eggs and crisp toast and b.u.t.ter and the best Oxford marmalade awaited him. He sat near the pleasant fire, with his back to the enlarged photograph of the late Sir O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., the last portrait taken by Messrs. Barrett and Filmer, of Regent Street, and at Brighton, before the country and the empire endured its irreparable loss. He ate steadily for twenty minutes by the marble and ormulu clock in the center of the chimney piece, presented by the Honorable Lady Price (a daughter of Lord Vesle and Voile) in recognition of the faithful and valued service of Miss Martha Handc.o.c.k, on the occasion of her marriage with Mr. Emerson Paley. He also contrived to hold a brief conversation with Mr. Emerson Paley in regard to the weather. In a word, the Sailor's first breakfast in Brinkworth Street was a memorable affair.

After his meal, beginning to feel more and more his own man, and with this new world of order, of respect for established things, unfolding itself around him, he proceeded to unpack the books which the surprisingly efficient member of Messrs. Mortimer's staff had collected in three large parcels. He felt a little thrill of delight as he laid out carefully each beloved volume on the well polished writing table with its green baize top, and then arranged them with precision and delicacy on a row of empty shelves that had been freshly papered to receive them.

When this had been done and the litter had been carefully removed, the Sailor chose the volume which had had the most to say to him of late.

In fact, it was the book which up till now had meant more to him than any other. Then he sat luxuriously before the fire, bravely determined to forget the world he had left and to envisage the new one opening around him.

Two hours pa.s.sed, whose golden flight it was not for him to heed, when all at once he was brought to earth.

"Mr. Ambrose," announced Mr. Paley.

"I thought I'd like to see if you had moved in in good shape," said his friend, as he entered briskly and cheerfully. "Sorry I couldn't come with you last night, but I should have been hopelessly late for a very dull dinner party, which might have made it longer for others. What are you reading? Milton?"

"It simply takes my head off," said the Sailor. "I almost want to shout and sing. It's another new world to me."

"We can all envy any man who enters it," said Edward Ambrose, with his deep laugh.

VII

Three days later, at the punctual hour of half past four in the afternoon, Mr. Henry Harper was at the threshold of No. 50, Queen Street, Mayfair. He had been at pains to array himself as well as a limited wardrobe allowed, which meant that neatness had been set above fas.h.i.+on. In spite of all he had been through since his glimpse of paradise, the coming of this present hour had been a beacon in his mind. And now as he stood on the doorstep of No. 50, waiting for his echoing summons to be heeded, he felt so nervous that he could hardly breathe.

The magic portals of the Fairy Princess were drawn back by another Mr.

Portman, a bland and spreading gentleman who bore himself with the same authentic air of chaste magnificence. He took charge of Mr. Harper's coat and hat and then took charge of Mr. Harper himself as though he had clearly expected him. As the young man followed him upstairs to the drawing-room his heart beat with a violence wholly absurd.

Mary came forward to greet him as soon as he appeared in the room, her eyes alight, her hand outstretched. It was a reception of pure unstudied friends.h.i.+p.

There was only one other person in the large room just then, a lady of quiet, slightly formidable dignity, who was enthroned before a ma.s.sive silver tea service on a ma.s.sive silver tray.

"Mr. Harper--my mother," said Mary.

The young man took the offered hand timidly. The lady of the silver tea service, kindly and smiling though she was, had none of the impulsive accessibility of her daughter. The Sailor knew in a moment that she belonged to another order of things altogether.

She was large and handsome, sixty, perhaps, and her finely modeled face was framed in an aureole of extremely correct white hair. Indeed, in spite of her smile and an air of genuine kindness, correctness seemed to be her predominant feature. Everything about her was so ordered, so exactly right, that she had the rather formal unimaginative look to which the whole race of royalties is doomed by the walls of the Royal Academy of Arts.

It is not certain that Lady Pridmore felt this to be a hards.h.i.+p. Mary roundly declared that nothing would have induced her mother to part with it. She had often been mistaken for this or that personage, and although much teased on the subject by her daughters, it was an open secret that such resemblances were precious in her sight.

To this lady's "How do you do?" Mr. Harper responded with incoherency.

But the watchful Mary, who knew "the effect that mother had on some people," promptly came to the young man's aid and helped him out with great gallantry and success.

With the laugh peculiarly hers, Mary fixed the sailorman in a chair at a strategic distance from her mother, gave him a cup of tea and a liberal piece of cake, also thoughtfully provided him with a plate and a small table to put it on, because this creature of swift intuitions somehow felt that he had not quite got his drawing-room legs at present.

"You have a whole volume of questions to answer presently, Mr. Harper,"

said Mary, "so take plenty of nourishment, please. One of the pink is recommended. They've got maraschino." She took one herself and bit it in half with a gusto that rather amazed the young man; somehow he had not looked for it in a real Hyde Park lady.

"Mmm--I told you--mmm--Klond.y.k.e." The real Hyde Park lady was speaking with her mouth full. "Klond.y.k.e is the black sheep of the family. My mother is simply dying to talk to you about him."

This was not strictly true. Lady Pridmore was not of the kind that simply dies to talk of anything to anybody. Before she married Sir John, she had been a Miss Colthurst, of Suffolk. At the time of her union with that gentleman, then plain Mr. Pridmore, _charge d'affaires_ at Porocatepetl, and afterwards Her Britannic Majesty's representative in several European capitals, her standard of conduct had been rigidly fixed. She had seen much of life since, but nothing had ever caused her to modify it. She was greatly interested in the perennial subject of her eldest son, but to her mind, as it would have been to the collective mind of the Colthursts of Suffolk from immemorial time, it was merely an abuse of language for Mary to state that she was simply dying to hear about Klond.y.k.e. She was always _much_ interested, nevertheless, in the doings of poor dear Jack.

However, a disappointment was in store for Lady Pridmore. This rather strange looking young man with the shy and embarra.s.sed manner was not so communicative on the subject in conversation with her as he had been when Mary had met him at dinner. He had really very little to tell her. For one thing, it was by no means so easy to converse with her as it had been with the altogether delightful daughter who knew exactly when and how to lend a hand.

The mother of Klond.y.k.e had therefore to do most of the talking about that unsatisfactory young man. She certainly did it very well. That is to say, she talked about him in a very even, precise, persistent, Hyde-Park-lady tone. And the Sailor, as he sat listening with awe to a conversation in which he did not feel in the least able to bear a part, could only marvel that Klond.y.k.e had had such a mother as Lady Pridmore and that Lady Pridmore had had such a son as Klond.y.k.e.

It had always been Lady Pridmore's wish that her eldest son should enter his father's profession. In the first place, he would have had Influence to help him, and if there was anything more precious in the sight of Lady Pridmore than Influence, it would have been very hard to discover it. Again, he was the offspring of two diplomatic families; at least, it was recorded in Burke, where each family's record was set out at considerable length and no doubt with reasonable veracity, that diplomacy was one of the callings which adorned two supremely honorable escutcheons.

In the opinion of Mary, also in that of Silvia, who ought to have been back from Mudie's by now, and also, but in a less degree, in the opinion of Otto--named after his G.o.dfather, a certain Prince Otto von Bismarck--who generally got home from the Foreign Office about five, their mother exaggerated the importance of the Pridmores of Yorks.h.i.+re and the Colthursts of Suffolk. No doubt they were two fairly old and respectable families; Burke could certainly show cause for setting store by them; each family ran to two full pages, fairly bristling with peers and baronets and Lady Charlottes and Lady Sophias; and yet, to their mother's grief, these three heretics, Mary, Silvia, and Otto, generally known as the Prince, took pleasure in developing the theory that it was mere Victorianism for Burke or anyone else to flaunt such a pride in the Colthursts and the Pridmores.

"Because," said Mary, "it is not as though either family has ever produced anybody at all first-rate in anything."

The intrusion of Burke reveals a certain att.i.tude of mind in Lady Pridmore. It was really surprising--three of her progeny always maintained it, and a fourth would undoubtedly have done so had he ever felt called upon to express an opinion in the matter--that one who had seen as much of the world as their mother, who had dined and supped and danced and paid calls in the most famous European capitals, who had been intimate with Crowned Heads, who had been whirled by them across ballrooms, who had the entree to the great world and had cut a very decent figure in it, according to the memoirs of the time, should have such obsolete ideas in regard to the value of the Colthurst family of Suffolk and in slightly modified degree of the Pridmore family of Yorks.h.i.+re. As Mary said, it was funny.

At present, however, Mr. Henry Harper did not share any such view of Lady Pridmore. She and all that went with her seemed too important to be contemplated in the light of levity. She had a dignity beyond anything the Sailor had known or up till then had conceived to be possible. Therefore, it made her relations.h.i.+p to Klond.y.k.e a crowning wonder.

"I shall always think, Mr. Harper," said Lady Pridmore, "that if they had only given Jack his Eleven during his last term at Eton, it would have made a great difference in his life. I don't say he ought to have played against Harrow, but I certainly think they might have played him against Winchester for his bowling. Had they done that, I am convinced it would have steadied him, and then, no doubt, he would have settled down and have followed in the footsteps of his father."

This was the tragedy of Lady Pridmore's life, yet it said much for the callousness of youth that Mary, Silvia, and the Prince were unable to approach the subject with reverence.

The Sailor kept up his end as well as he could, but his awe of Lady Pridmore did not grow less. Therefore he could do himself no sort of justice. Mary, who had taken him completely under her wing, was always on the watch to render well-timed a.s.sistance. She helped him out of one or two tight places, and then Silvia came in, with three books in a strap.

She was of a type different from Mary's, but Mr. Harper thought she was very good to look at. She had the same air of directness that he liked so much in the elder sister. An amused vivacity made her popular with most people, yet behind it was a cool, rather cynical perception of men and things.

Mary introduced Mr. Harper, and Silvia shook hands with him in her mother's manner, but with an eye of merriment which made quite a comic effect.

"I've just come from Mudie's," she said, "where they say everybody is reading your book. It is wonderfully clever of you to have written it.

Sailors don't write as a rule, do they? Something better to do, I suppose."

"I don't know about that," said Henry Harper. Somehow he felt already that Silvia was disarmingly easy to get on with. "Myself, I'd rather be John Milton than the master of any s.h.i.+p that ever sailed the seas."