The Sailor Part 62

"That might hit some people very hard," said Henry Harper, perhaps without a full understanding of the words he used.

"There are bound to be cases in which it would work very cruelly. One realizes that. But ought it to make a difference? There must always be those who have to be sacrificed for the sake of the community."

Henry Harper appreciated the strength of that argument. At the moment, in the strangeness of his surroundings, he was not able to grapple with it. But he was dimly aware that almost unknown to himself he had come to the border of another perilous country.

XII

As the June night was ablaze with stars Edward Ambrose and the Sailor walked some of the way home together.

"I hope you enjoyed yourself," said Ambrose.

Was it possible for a man to do otherwise with gray-eyed Athena sitting beside him nearly the whole evening!

"I enjoyed myself very much," said the Sailor simply.

"The Pridmores are very old friends of mine. An interesting family, I always think."

They walked on in silence for a little time, and then the Sailor said suddenly:

"Mary seems to have strong ideas about divorce." As he spoke he felt a curious tension.

"Surprisingly so," said Edward Ambrose, in his detached way, "for such a modern girl. Somehow one doesn't quite expect it."

"No," said the Sailor.

"It is the measure of her genuineness." Edward Ambrose seemed at that moment to be addressing his words less to the young man at his side than to the stars of heaven. "But she is very complex to me. I've known her all her life.... I've watched her grow up." A whimsical sigh was certainly addressed to the stars of heaven. "It is rather wonderful to see all that Pridmore and Colthurst cra.s.sness and narrowness, that has somehow made England great in spite of itself--if you know what I mean..."

The Sailor didn't know in the least, but that was of no consequence to Edward Ambrose in the expression of his mood.

"... touched to finer issues."

The Sailor knew now, but his companion gave him no chance to say so.

"She's so strong and fine, so independent, so modern!" Edward Ambrose laughed his rare note, yet for some reason it was without gaiety.

The truth was he had long been deeply in love with Mary Pridmore, but it was only in certain moments that he realized it.

"I suppose you knew Klond.y.k.e?" said the Sailor, wistfully.

"Her brother Jack? Oh, yes. He's thrown back to some Viking strain.

One can hardly imagine his being the brother of Otto and the son of his mother or the son of his father."

"I can imagine Mary being the sister of Klond.y.k.e," said the Sailor.

"Really! I never see her at quite that angle myself. He's a funny chap." Edward Ambrose was really not thinking at all of any mere male member of the Pridmore family. "Might have done well in diplomacy.

Son of his father. Ought to have gone far." Again Edward Ambrose loosed his wonderful note, but it had nothing to do with Jack Pridmore.

"And what does he do? And yet, the odd thing is he may be right."

"Klond.y.k.e's a white man from way back," said the Sailor abruptly.

The phrase was new to Edward Ambrose, who, as became a man with a keen literary sense, turned it over in his mind. And then he suddenly remembered that he owed it to his friends, the Pridmores, to be a little more guarded in his utterances concerning them.

"Good night, Henry," he said, offering his hand at the corner of Albemarle Street.

In the same moment, a human derelict fastened upon the Sailor, who had to send him away with the price of a bed before he could return his friend's good night.

Thinking their thoughts they went their ways. Edward Ambrose crossed in a black mood to St. James Street. For a reason he could not explain a sudden depression had come upon him. A sharp sense of life's tragic complexity had entered his mind. In order to correct its dire influence he lit a pipe and started to read a ma.n.u.script which had come to him that morning. It was called, "A Master Mariner," Book the First.

"d.a.m.n it all," he thought a few minutes later. "There can be no possible doubt about that boy. If he can only put the whole thing through in this style, what a book it will be!"

XIII

In the meantime, the Sailor was walking home to Brinkworth Street, distributing largesse.

"Poor, broken mariners," he said, when his pockets were finally empty.

"Poor marooned sailormen. I expect all these have seen the Island of San Pedro. I expect some of them are living on it now."

He went to bed, but not to sleep. He had begun to realize that he was getting into very deep waters. The truth was, he was growing a little afraid. He had been a little afraid ever since that magical Sunday in the wilds of Surrey. And now tonight, as he lay tossing on his pillow, a very definite sense of peril was slowly entering into him. If he was not very careful, the tide of affairs would prove too much, and he would find himself carried out to sea.

As he lay awake through the small hours, the sinister truth grew clear that grim forces were closing upon him again. His will was in danger of being overpowered, if it was not overpowered already. Mary Pridmore had come to mean so much to him that it seemed quite impossible to hold life on any terms without her. Yet it was morbidly weak to admit for a single moment anything of the kind.

During the week that followed, Mary and "the sailorman" undertook several harmless little excursions. One afternoon she called for him with Silvia in her mother's car and drove by way of Richmond Park to Hampton Court. For the Sailor that was a very memorable day. He had a walk alone in the palace garden with Athena, while Silvia, with a keen sense of the fitness of things, paid a call upon some friends of hers in what she impudently called the Royal Workhouse.

This enchanted afternoon, Mary and the Sailor didn't talk divorce.

Many things in earth and heaven they talked about, but that subject was not among them. They scaled the heights together, they roamed the mountain places. She told him that the first book of "A Master Mariner," which she had been allowed to read in ma.n.u.script, had carried her completely away, and she most sincerely hoped that he would be able to sustain a soaring eagle flight through the hundreds of pages of the two books to follow.

"But you will," she said. "I am convinced of it. I have made up my mind that you must."

As she spoke the words the look of her amidst a glory of color set his soul on fire. It was as much as he could do to refrain from taking the hand of Athena. He wanted to cry aloud his happiness. She looked every inch of royal kin as thus she stood amid flowers, a high and grave wisdom enfolding her. She was indeed a daughter of the G.o.ds, tall, slender, virile, an aureole of purest poetry upon her brows that only John Milton could have hymned in their serenity.

"Edward Ambrose thinks as I do about it," she said. "He dined with us last night, and afterwards we had a long talk. I hardly dare tell what hopes he has of you. And, of course, one oughtn't. But, somehow, I can't help it ... I can't help it...."

She spoke to herself rather than to him. The words fell from her lips involuntarily, as if she were in a dream.

"You are so far upon the road that last night Edward and I willed it together that you should go to the end of your journey. We both feel, somehow, that you must ... you must ... you must!"

Again the Sailor wanted to cry out as he looked at her. He thought he could see the tears leap to her eyes. But that may have been because they had leaped to his own.

He could not trust himself to speak. He dare not continue to look at her.

"What a life you must have had!"