Miss Foldal, it seemed, had been trained in her youth for a board school teacher. In a brief flash of autobiography, she told Mr. Harper she had never really graduated in that trying profession, but had forsaken a career eminently honorable for the more doubtful one of the stage, and had spent the rest of her life in regretting it. But always at the back of her mind was the sense of her original calling to leaven the years of her later fall from grace.

Not only Miss Foldal, but the Sailor also was quick to see the hand of Providence, when that young man, coloring pink in the gaslight and eating his last muffin, made the admission, "that his readin' an' writin' was rusty because of havin' followed the sea." And she answered, "Reelly," in her own inimitable way, to which the Sailor rejoined, "Yes, miss, reelly, and do you fink you could recommend a night school?"

"Night school, Mr. Harper?" And this was where the higher kind of lady was able to claim superiority over Mrs. Sparks. "Please don't think me impertinent, but I would be delighted to help you all I could. You see, I was trained for a pupil teacher before I went on the stage against my father's wishes."

The heart of the Sailor leaped. In that tone of sincere kindness was the wish to be of use. If Miss Foldal had been trained as a pupil teacher, the night school in Driver's Lane might not be necessary, after all.

"What do you want to learn?" said Miss Foldal, with a display of grave interest. "I am afraid my French is rather rusty and I never had much Latin and Italian to speak of."

The Sailor was thrilled.

"Don't want no French, miss," he said, "or anythink swankin'. I just want to read the Evenin' Star an' be able to write a letter."

"Do you mean to say – " Like the lady she was, she checked herself very adroitly. "I am quite sure, Mr. Harper, that is easily arranged. How much can you read at present?"

"Nothink, miss." The plain and awful truth slipped out before he knew it had.

Miss Foldal did not flicker an eyelash. She merely said, "I'll go and see if I can find Butter's spelling-book. I ought to have it somewhere."

She went at once in search of it, and five minutes later returned in triumph.

"Do you mind not sayin' anythink about it to Ginger Jukes, miss?" the young man besought her.

"If it is your wish," said Miss Foldal, "I certainly will not."

Here was the beginning of wisdom for Henry Harper. The prophetic words of Klondyke came back to him. From the very first lesson, which he took that evening after tea before the return of Ginger from the Crown and Cushion, it seemed that reading and writing was the Sailor's true line of country. A whole new world was spread suddenly before him.

Mr. Harper was an amazingly diligent pupil. He took enormous pains. Whenever Ginger was not about, he was consolidating the knowledge he had gained, and slowly and painfully acquiring more. At Miss Foldal's suggestion, he provided himself with a slate and pencil. This enabled him to tackle a very intricate business in quite a professional manner.

It was uphill work making pothooks and hangers, having to write rows of a-b, ab, and having to make sure of his alphabet by writing it out from memory. But he did not weaken in his task. Sometimes he rose early to write, sometimes he sat up late to read; every day he received instruction of priceless value. And never once did his preceptress give herself airs, or sneer at his ignorance; above all, she did not give him away to Ginger.

These were great days. The beginning of real, definite knowledge gave Henry Harper a new power of soul. C-a-t spelled cat, d-o-g spelled dog; nine went five times into forty-five. There was no limit to these jewels of information. If he continued to work in this way, he might hope to read the Evening Star by the end of March.

In the meantime, while all these immense yet secret labors were going forward, he felt his position with Ginger was in jeopardy. Somehow as the weeks passed with the Sailor still in the second team, they did not seem to be on quite the terms that they had been. The change was so slight as to be hardly perceptible, yet it hurt the Sailor, who had a great capacity for friendship and also for hero worship. Ginger, to whom his present fabulous prosperity was due, must always be one of the gods of his idolatry.

The truth was, Ginger was one of those who rise to the top wherever they are, while Henry Harper lacked this quality. Ginger, although only in the second team at present, always talked and behaved as if he was a member of the first. There could be no doubt his honorable friendship with Dinkie Dawson – one of England's best, as the Evening Star often referred to him – was the foundation upon which he sedulously raised his social eminence.

In fact, Ginger seldom moved out of the company of the first team. He played billiards with its members at the Crown and Cushion; he played whist and cribbage with them at the same resort of fashion; they almost regarded him as one of themselves, although he had yet to win his spurs; moreover, and this was the oddest part of the whole matter, even the committee had come to look upon him favorably.

The Sailor was a little wounded now and then by Ginger's persiflage. Sometimes he held him up to ridicule in a way that hurt. He made no secret, besides, of his growing belief that there was not very much to the Sailor after all, that he was letting the grass grow under his feet, and that he was good for very little beyond getting down to a hot one. No doubt, the root of the trouble lay in the fact that during the first months of his service with the Rovers, the Sailor was less interested in football and the things that went with football than he ought to have been. He was secretly giving his nights and days to a matter which seemed of even greater importance than his bread and butter. This might easily have led to disaster had it not been for a saving clause ever present in the mind of Henry Harper.

His dream, as a shoeless and stockingless newsboy, miserably hawking his Result Edition through the mud of Blackhampton, had been that one day he would help the Rovers bring the Cup to his native city. This thought had sustained him in many a desperate hour. Well, Henry Harper was something of a fatalist now. He had come very much nearer the realization of that dream than had ever seemed possible. Therefore, he was not going to let go of it. His mind was now full of other matters, but he must not lose sight of the fact that it was his bounden duty to make his dream come true.

To begin with he had to find his way into the first eleven. But the weeks went by. January came, and with it the first of the cup ties, but Henry Harper was still in the second team and likely to remain there. It was not that he did not continue to show promise. But something more than promise was needed for these gladiatorial contests when twenty, thirty, forty, fifty thousand persons assembled to cheer their favorites, whose names were in their mouths as household words. His time might one day come, if he kept on improving. But it would not be that year. As Ginger said, before he could play in a cup tie he would have to get a bit more pudding under his shirt.

During these critical months Henry Harper was getting other things to sustain him. Every week marked a definite advance in knowledge. Miss Foldal found him other books, and one evening at the beginning of March, he astonished her not merely by spelling crocodile, but by writing it down on his slate.

April came, and with it the end of the football season. Then arose a problem the Sailor had not foreseen. Would the Rovers take him on for another year? He was still untried in the great matches, he was still merely a youth of promise. Would he be re-engaged? It was a question for Ginger also. But as far as he was concerned, the matter did not long remain in doubt. One evening in the middle of that fateful month, he came in to supper after his usual "hundred up" at the Crown and Cushion.

"Well, Sailor," he said, a note of patronage in his tone. "I've fixed it with the kermittee. They are going to take me on for next year."

Sailor was not surprised. His faith in Ginger never wavered.

"Wish I could say the same for you, Sailor," said Ginger, condescendingly; "but the kermittee think you are not quite class."

"They are not goin' to take me on again!" said the Sailor in a hollow voice.

"No. They think you are not quite Rovers' form. They are goin' to give you back your papers."

Such a decree was like cold steel striking at the Sailor's heart. The dream of his boyhood lay shattered. And there were other consequences which just then he could not muster the power of mind to face.

XVI

Those were dark hours for Henry Harper. Not only must he yield great hopes, he must also give up a princely mode of life. Here was a disaster which must surely make an end of desires that had begun to dominate him like a passion.

In this time of crisis Ginger showed his faith. He was not a young man of emotional ardor, but the Sailor was a chap you couldn't help liking, and in his heart Ginger believed in him; therefore all the influence he could muster he brought to bear on those in high places.

This could not be done directly. Ginger was still in the second team himself, but his social qualities had given him a footing with the first. Among these, with the redoubtable Dinkie Dawson for his prop and stay, he let it be widely circulated that it would be an act of folly for the Rovers to turn down the Sailor without giving him a fair trial, because sooner or later he was bound to make good.

This view became so fashionable in the billiards' saloon at the Crown and Cushion that it came to the ears of its proprietor, who was no less a person than Mr. Augustus Higginbottom. Therefore one evening Ginger was able to hearten the Sailor in the depths of his despair.

"They are goin' to give you a trial with the first on Saturday, young feller. And just remember all depends on it. If you do well, you'll stay; if you don't, you'll have to pack your bag."

It was not very comforting for one so highly strung as the Sailor. But Ginger meant well; also he had done well; it was entirely due to him that the Sailor was to have his chance. And that chance would never have been his if Ginger's astuteness had not been very considerable.

Saturday came, and Henry Harper found himself in action with the first team at last. It was the end of the season and little importance was attached to the match, but the Sailor, as he took his place nervously in the goal, well knew that this game was to make or mar him. All was at stake. He had felt as he lay sleepless throughout the previous night that the issue would try him too highly. It was the penalty of imagination to be slain in battle before the battle came. But when the hour arrived and he stood in the goal, he was able after all to do his bit like a workman.

In his own way he was a fighter. And genius for goalkeeping stood to him, as Ginger had been confident it would. In the first minute of the game he gathered a hot one cleverly, got rid of it before the enemy could down him, and from that moment he had no further dread of losing his nerve.

"What did I tell yer, Dink?" said Ginger with an air of restrained triumph. "That young feller plays for England one o' these fine afternoons."

This was a bold statement, yet not unsanctioned in high places. That evening the Sailor was summoned to the Presence, and was offered a contract for another season with a promised rise if he continued to do well.

The months which followed meant much to Henry Harper. In many respects they were the best of his life. It was a time of dawning hope, of coming enlargement, of slow-burgeoning wisdom. During those golden summer mornings in which he wandered in the more or less vernal meadows engirdling the city, latent, unsuspected forces began to awake. Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge, he craved continually. Every fresh victory won in an enchanted field was a lighted torch in the Sailor's soul.

He knew that the playing of football was but a means to an end. It gave him leisure, opportunity, wherewithal for things infinitely more important. During those months of his awakening, his desire became a passion. There were whole vast continents in the mind of man, that he could never hope to traverse. There was no limit to the vista opened up by those supreme arts of man's invention, the twin and cognate arts of reading and writing.

Knowledge is power. That statement had been made quite recently by his already well-beloved Blackhampton Evening Star. With his own eyes he had been able to read that declaration. Its truth had thrilled him.

He was making such progress now that he could read the newspaper almost as well as Ginger himself. He no longer dreaded the unmasking of his guilty secret because he no longer had one to unmask. Of course he had not Ginger's ease and facility; to tackle a leading article was a task of Hercules, but give him time and Marlow's Dictionary – Miss Foldal had marked his diligence by the gift of her own private copy – and he need not fear any foe in black and white.

September came, and with it football again. And from the first match it was seen that Sailor Harper, which was the name the whole town called him now, had taken a long stride to the front. By the end of that month his place in the first team was secure, and his fame was in the mouth of everybody.

For many years, in Mr. Augustus Higginbottom's judgment – and there could be none higher – the one need of the Blackhampton Rovers had been a goalkeeper of Class. They had one now. The Sailor was performing miracles in every match, and Ginger, his mentor, was going about with a permanent expression of, "What did I tell yer?" upon a preternaturally sharp and freckled countenance.

Ginger did not allow the grass to grow under his own feet either. He was now installed as billiards marker and general factotum at the Crown and Cushion; in fact he had already come to occupy quite a place at court. But even this was not the limit of that vaulting ambition, which was twofold: (1) to be the official right full back of the Blackhampton Rovers; (2) the acquisition of a tobacconist's shop in the vicinity of the Crown and Cushion. But the latter scheme belonged, of course, to the distant future.

Ginger was far-sighted, such had always been Dinkie Dawson's opinion, and Dinkie did not speak unless he knew. Therefore little surprise was caused by a startling rumor at the beginning of November of Ginger's engagement to Miss Maria Higginbottom. And it was coincident with Ginger's "making good" with the Rovers' first team.

It was said that the engagement had not the sanction of the chairman of the club. Nevertheless Ginger kept his place as general factotum at the Crown and Cushion; moreover, as understudy to Joe Pretyman who had been smitten with water on the knee, he stepped into the breach with such gallantry that the first part of his ambition was soon assured. By sheer fighting power, by his sovereign faculty of never knowing when he was beaten, Ginger in the first week of December was in a position that nature could hardly have meant him to grace.

"Blame my cats," said Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, whose thoughts were a little rueful. "That Ginger's mustard. He plays better an' better in every match."

"Yes, Gus, he does," said Mr. Satellite Albert.

On the evening of that proud day, Ginger obtained a rise in his salary. According to rumor, no sooner had it been granted than he urged Miss Maria Higginbottom to fix a date. It was said that, in spite of Ginger's recent triumphs, the lady declined the offer. Even money was freely laid, however, that within a twelvemonth Ginger would lead her to the altar.

During that glorious December, the Rovers won every match. While the Sailor continued to be a wonder among goalkeepers, Ginger quietly took his place as the authentic successor to the famous Joe Pretyman. Indeed, things were carried to such a perilous height of enthusiasm in the town of Blackhampton that two coming events were treated as accomplished facts: the Rovers would win the Cup and the Sailor would be chosen for England in the match against Scotland.

These were dream days for Henry Harper. He was performing miracles, yet compared with going aloft in a gale in latitude fifty degrees everything seemed absurdly simple. He had merely to stand on dry land, or on land dry more or less, since the ground of the Rovers was not so well drained as it might have been, in thick boots and a warm sweater, catching a football which was so much easier to seize than a ratline, and evading the oncoming forwards of the enemy who were not allowed to use their hands, let alone their knives. It was as easy as tumbling off a yard. But there was just one drawback to it, which he did not think of mentioning to anyone, not even to Miss Foldal. Every match in which he played seemed to increase a feeling of excitement he was never without.

This was queer. There was really so little to excite one who had been six years before the mast. At first he was inclined to believe it must be the presence of the crowd. But he ought to have got over that. Besides, it was not the crowd which caused the almost terrible feeling of tension that always came upon him now the night before a match.

After a great game on Christmas Eve, he was raised shoulder high by a body of admirers and carried off the field. The committee of the club marked his achievements by a substantial rise of wages and by obtaining his signature to a contract for the following year. Ginger also, who had performed wonderful deeds, was honored in a manner equally practical. That Christmas both were on the crest of the wave. But the highest pinnacle was reserved for the Sailor. It was not merely that he was tall and straight and strong as steel, that he could spring like a cat from one side of the goal to the other, or hang like a monkey from the crossbar, or fling his lithe body at the ball with calculated daring; it was perhaps his modesty which took the public captive.

It may have been this or it may not; there is so little of the corporate mind of man that can be reduced to set terms. Ginger's most partial worshiper would have had to look a long while to find modesty in the bearing of that hero, yet he was very popular also. Nothing succeeds like success, was an apothegm of the Blackhampton Evening Star. The Sailor knew that now from experience, but he was presently to know, as he had known before, that nothing fails like failure, at least in the minds of many for whom the Blackhampton Evening Star was the last word of wisdom.

XVII

"Sailor boy," said Ginger, on Christmas night, "what are you readin' now?"

"'Pickwick Papers,'" said the Sailor, trying to speak as if this was nothing out of the common.

"Potery?"

"It's by Charles Dickens," said the Sailor, with a thrill of triumph which he was quite unable to keep out of his voice.

When Ginger was out of his depth, which was not very often, he always took care not to give himself away. The only Charles Dickens with whom he was acquainted was doing great things just now at center half back for Duckingfield Britannia. But with all respect to Chas., Ginger did not believe that he was the author of the "Pickwick Papers." Therefore he made no comment. But silence did not debar him from the process of thought.

"Sailor boy," he said at last, "if you take the advice o' your father, you'll not go over-reading yerself. Them deep books what you get out o' the Free Libry is dangerous, that's my experience. Too much truck with 'em turns a chap's brain. Besides, they mean nothing when you've done."

The Sailor was less impressed than usual. But Ginger was very clear upon the point.

"I once knowed a chap as over-read hisself into quod. He was as sound a young feller as you could find in a month o' Sundays, but he took to goin' to the Free Libry to read Socialism, and that done him in. He come to think all men was equal and Mine is Thine, and that sort o' tommy, an' it took a pleadin' old Beak to set him right in the matter; at least he give him six months without the option, and even that didn't convince the youth. Some chaps take a deal o' convincin'. But the Free Libry was that chap's ruin, there's no doubt about it."

Ginger urged this view with a conviction that rather alarmed the Sailor. "Pickwick Papers," although very difficult and advanced reading, seemed harmless enough, but Ginger had such a developed mind, he appeared to know so much about everything, that the Sailor felt it would be the part of wisdom to consult Miss Foldal.

It had been her idea that he should join the Free Library. He had promptly done so, and from the perfectly amazing wealth of the world's literature garnered there had led off with the "Pickwick Papers," which he had heard was, next to the Bible and "Barriers Burned Away," the greatest book in the English language. His instinct pointed to "Barriers Burned Away" – he had read little bits of the Bible already, of which Miss Foldal had a private copy – but he felt that "Pickwick Papers" was the less difficult work of the two. For the present, therefore, he must be content with that famous book.

Miss Foldal reassured him wonderfully. She was convinced that Mr. Jukes took an extreme view. She had never read any of the works of Dickens herself, she simply couldn't abide him, he was too descriptive for her, but she was sure there was no harm in him, although she had heard that with Thackeray it was different. Not that she had read Thackeray either, as she understood that no unmarried lady under forty could read Thackeray and remain respectable.

The Sailor was strengthened by Miss Foldal's view of Dickens, but her reference to the rival and antithesis of that blameless author was in a sense unfortunate. Mr. Harper wanted to take back "Pickwick Papers" at once; he had had it three weeks and had only just reached Chapter Nine; he would exchange it for the more lurid and worldly works of the licentious Thackeray. But Miss Foldal dissuaded him. For one thing, she had the reputation of her household to consider. She had once had an aunt, an old lady very widely read and of great literary taste, who always maintained that the "Vanity Fair" of Thackeray ought to have been burned by the common hangman, and that nothing but good would have been done to the community if the author had been burned along with it. Miss Foldal allowed that her aunt had been an old lady of strong views; all the same, she was of opinion that Thorough must be Mr. Harper's motto. He had begun "Pickwick Papers," and although she allowed it was dry, he must read every word for the purpose of forming his character, before he even so much as thought about Thackeray.

"Rome was not built in a day," said Miss Foldal. "Those who pursued knowledge must not attempt to run before they could walk. Thackeray was so much more advanced than Dickens that to read the one before the other was like going to a Robertson comedy or Shakespeare before you had seen a pantomime or the Moore and Burgess Minstrels."

The ethics of Miss Foldal were a little too much for the Sailor. But one fact was clear. For once Ginger was wrong: no possible harm could come of reading Charles Dickens.

Thus Henry Harper was able to continue his studies in ease of mind. And at the beck of ambition one thing led to another in the most surprising way. His appetite for knowledge grew on what it fed. Reading was only one branch; there was the writing, also the ciphering. The latter art was not really essential. It was rather a side-dish, and hors-d'oeuvre– Miss Foldal's private word – but it was also very useful, and in a manner of speaking you could not lay claim to the education of a gentleman without it.

The Sailor did not at present aspire to a liberal education, but he remembered that Klondyke had always set great store by ciphering and had taught him to count up to a hundred. It was due perhaps to that immortal memory rather than to Miss Foldal's somewhat fanciful and romantic attitude towards the supremely difficult science of numbers that Henry Harper persevered with the multiplication table. At first, however, the difficulties were great. But his grit was wonderful. Early in the winter mornings, while Ginger was still abed, and Miss Foldal also, he would come downstairs, light the gas in the sitting-room, put on his overcoat and sit down to three hours' solid study of writing and arithmetic. Moreover, he burned the midnight oil. Sometimes with the aid of Marlow's Dictionary, he read the "Pickwick Papers" far into the night, with a little of the Bible for a change, or the Blackhampton Evening Star. And if he had not to be on duty with the club, he would spend all his time in these exacting occupations.

In the meantime, the Blackhampton Rovers were making history. They were an old established club; for many years they had had one of the best teams in the country, and although on two occasions they had been in the semi-final round for the Cup, they had never got beyond that critical stage; therefore the long coveted trophy had not yet been seen in the city of Blackhampton.

However, the Cup was coming to Blackhampton this year, said the experts in football with whom the town was filled. The Rovers had not lost a match since September 12. They had won three cup ties already, beating on each occasion a redoubtable foe, of whom one was that ancient and honorable enemy, the Villa. One more victory and the Rovers would be in the semi-final again.

As far as local knowledge could discern there was none to thwart the Rovers now. In the words of Mr. Augustus Higginbottom, every man was a trier, the whole team was the goods. They had the best goalkeeper in England, and Ginger, in whom he had never really believed, had turned out mustard. The proprietor of the Crown and Cushion, with that largeness of mind which is not afraid to change its opinions, expressed himself thus a few minutes before closing time in the private bar when he took "a drop of summat" to stimulate the parts of speech and the powers of reason.

The Rovers could not fail to win the Cup. According to rumor, after the triumph over the Villa, they were freely backed. This may have been the case or it may not. But no body of sportsmen could have been more confident than the thirty thousand odd who paid their shillings and their sixpences with heroic regularity, who followed the fortunes of the Rovers in victory or defeat.

For this noble body of partisans there was one authentic hero now. Dinkie Dawson was class, Erb Mullins was a good un, Mac was as good a one as ever came over the Border, Ginger was a terror for his size and never knew when he was beat, but it was the Sailor in goal who caught and held every eye. There was magic in all the Sailor did and the way he did it, which belonged to no one else, which was his own inimitable gift.

Sailor Harper was the idol of the town. He might have married almost any girl in it. People turned round to look at him as he walked over the canal bridge towards the market place. Even old ladies of the most fearless and terrific virtue seemed involuntarily to give the glad eye to the fine-looking lad "with all the oceans of the world in his face," as a local poet said in the Evening Star, when he got into a tram or a bus. If the Sailor had not been the soul of modesty, he would have been completely spoiled by the public homage during these crowded and glorious weeks.

It was a rare time for Blackhampton, a rare time for the Rovers, a rare time for Henry Harper. The very air of the smoke-laden and unlovely town seemed vibrant with emotion. A surge of romance had entered his heart. The wild dream of his newsboy days was coming true. He was going to help the Rovers bring the Cup to his native city. Such a thought made even the "Pickwick Papers," now Chapter Twenty-three, seem uninspired. He had not ventured on Shakespeare; he was not ripe for it yet, said Miss Foldal. Shakespeare was poetry, and the crown of all wisdom, the greatest man that ever lived with one exception, but the time would come even for the Bard of Avon. On the night the Rovers brought home the Cup, Miss Foldal volunteered a promise to read aloud "Romeo and Juliet," the finest play ever written by Shakespeare, in which she herself had once appeared at the Blackhampton Lyceum, although that was a long time ago.

However, there the promise was. But when it came to the ears of Ginger he expressed himself as thoroughly disgusted.

"Keep your eyeballs skinned, young feller," said that misogynist. "That's the advice of your father. She's after your four pound a week. Take care you are not nabbed. You ain't safe with old Tidde-fol-lol these days, you ain't reelly."

The Sailor was hurt by such reflections on one to whom he owed much. It is true that a recent episode after supper in the passage had rather disconcerted him, but it would be easy to make too much of it, as he was never quite sure whether Miss Foldal did or did not intend to kiss him, even if she put her arms round his neck. Also he had once seen her take a bottle of gin to her bedroom, but he was much too loyal to mention to Ginger either of these matters; and, after all, what were these things in comparison with her elegance and her refinement, her knowledge of Shakespeare and the human heart?