The longer he sat the more confused he became. At last it occurred to him that the best thing he could do was to seek the advice of Edward Ambrose. Indeed, in his present state that seemed the only course to take. Almost mechanically, he began to make his way in the direction of Bury Street, St. James'.

He had a long way to go, and the road was obscure, but as there was not the least need for hurry, he followed the tram lines as far as the Embankment. By the time he had reached Whitehall, it was about eight o'clock. Less than half an hour afterwards he had entered Bury Street, and was back in that house which a few short hours ago had given him his first glimpse of paradise.

"Why, Henry!" His friend gave a cry of surprise. And then to cover it he said: "You are just in time for breakfast. Another knife and fork, Portman. Take off your overcoat."

The young man had no wish to do so. He remembered that his evening clothes were under it. Nor had he any desire for breakfast.

As soon as the servant had retired, Edward Ambrose compelled him firmly but kindly to eat.

Ambrose had noted already that the Sailor was in a decidedly overwrought state. The ashen face, the wild eyes, the disheveled appearance was not pleasant to see.

"Tell me what has happened."

"Before I do that," said the young man, in a voice unlike his own, "I want you to consider this a secret between us."

"Yes … of course."

"To begin at the beginning of a rotten story." There was a queer break in the voice. "You didn't know that I was married, did you?"

"No," said Ambrose, impassively.

"I dare say I ought to have told you. Several times I made up my mind that I would. I am very sorry now I didn't."

"You were under no obligation to do so."

"There wouldn't be so much to tell you now if I had," said the Sailor, with horror in his eyes. He then told his story at length, with detail and with difficulty, but concealing nothing.

Edward Ambrose was much affected. He somehow felt, as a generous mind was likely to feel in such a case, that it should have been his part to shield this lamb from the wolves. Yet he knew that blame did not lie at his door.

Still, he was deeply grieved. He accepted the story without question as it was told him. There could be no doubt that all the essential facts were exactly as they had been related. Harper, in his curious ignorance of the world, had fallen into a trap.

The young man ended the story with a pathetic appeal for advice. He made it clear that he could never go back to this woman; he dared not even venture to see her again lest he do her violence. He must get free of her at all costs. Could his friend tell him how such a thing must be managed?

"One feels it ought not to be very difficult in the circumstances," said Edward Ambrose, "if we go the right way to work. But the first thing is to consult a lawyer."

Accordingly, before he had finished a greatly interrupted meal, Ambrose went to the telephone and arranged to see his own solicitor as soon as that gentleman should arrive at his office in Spring Gardens. When he returned to the dining-room, he found Henry Harper striding up and down it. A sort of determined rage had taken possession of him. The hereditary forces that had so nearly overthrown him a few hours before had returned upon him.

"I'll never be so near murder as I was between twelve and one last night," he said, huskily, with a clenched and deadly look.

"She wouldn't have been worth it," said Edward Ambrose. He then turned abruptly from the subject. "You will want rooms, won't you – somewhere to go?" He had a fund of very practical kindness. "And you'll want clothes. And your papers and books. But I think we had better send one of Mortimer's clerks to collect those. As for rooms, perhaps Portman may know of some."

Upon due interrogation, Portman, it seemed, knew of some rooms that might be vacant. Thereupon he was sent on a diplomatic mission; the scale of charges must be strictly moderate. He must not show his nose, which prided itself on a resemblance to that of a certain very eminent statesman, in Bury Street again until his errand had been carried out successfully.

Presently, the solicitors, Messrs. Mortimer, Groves, Pearce, Son and Mortimer, rang up to say that Mr. Daniel Mortimer had arrived at the office, and would be glad to see Mr. Ambrose. Accordingly, Henry Harper went at once with his friend in a taxi to Spring Gardens.

Mr. Daniel Mortimer was the kind of man who would have greatly impressed the Sailor on an ordinary occasion. Mr. Mortimer was by nature very impressive. He could not help being so. Even when he was quite alone and merely warming his hands at the fire, he was impressive. In fact, it was a quality which was worth several thousands a year to him.

Mr. Mortimer had the reputation of being a very sound lawyer. He certainly looked a very sound lawyer. His geniality was most engaging, and there was a shrewd and knowledgeable personality beneath.

He greeted Mr. Ambrose less as a client than as a rather irresponsible nephew received by a preternaturally wise yet jovial uncle. Ambrose had been his fag at school.

"Well, Edward, what can we do for you?" was the pontifical greeting.

"Allow me to introduce Mr. Harper – Mr. Mortimer – and you can prepare to speak out of the depths of your wisdom after the ancient manner."

"Certainly," said Mr. Mortimer, with the air of one very well able to do so. "Won't you sit down?" He placed two chairs with innate and almost oriental magnificence. "We are now at your service." It was less a trick of speech than sheer pressure of human character which caused Mr. Mortimer always to refer to himself in the plural.

"I think you had better tell the story, Henry," said Edward Ambrose. "Tell it to Mortimer exactly as you have told it to me."

That gentleman assumed his armchair of state, and for the second time that morning Henry Harper told his strange story.

"And you never guessed!" was the solicitor's brief comment when it had been told.

"I can't think why I didn't," said the young man.

Mr. Mortimer frowned tremendously. He then took up a pencil and began with great freedom of style to draw on his blotting pad a portrait of no one in particular.

"Edward," he said, after he had continued to do this for several minutes, "I am afraid this is a difficult business."

"I am afraid so," said Edward Ambrose gravely. "And we have come to a very wise man to set it right for us. It oughtn't to be beyond your powers, ought it, having regard to the acknowledged character of the lady?"

"I fear," said Mr. Mortimer, "the character of the lady is too much acknowledged if the question of a divorce is running in your mind."

"Well, of course it is," said Edward Ambrose, with an air of deep disappointment as he looked at Henry Harper.

"I'll have a divorce if I can possibly get one," said the young man. "And I don't care what trouble I take or what it costs."

Mr. Mortimer continued to draw very spirited pictures on his blotting pad.

"Don't you advise it?" asked Edward Ambrose.

"Yes, I do, if we can get one. But in the special circumstances, it is going to prove uncommonly difficult, in fact, one might say impossible."

"You don't mean that, sir," said Henry Harper.

"It is only my opinion." Mr. Mortimer spoke as if there could be no other. "But let me be quite candid, as I am sure you want me to be. I am perfectly certain you will never get a British jury to believe the first part of your story."

"But you believe it?" said Henry Harper, with wild eyes.

"I most certainly believe it, I believe every word you tell me. But we have to deal with a British jury, and in any question affecting what it calls 'morality,' a British jury is a very difficult proposition. At least, that's my experience."

Both Henry Harper and his friend were so dismayed by the force of Mr. Mortimer's conviction, that at first they did not say anything. Soon, however, Edward Ambrose, who was looking particularly unhappy, remarked: "Then you don't advise him to fight it?"

"I don't. I am sorry to say I don't. There is not a dog's chance without very strong direction from the Bench, and there is little hope of that in a case of this kind. His Majesty's judges are quite as bad as a British jury when they are out on the 'morality' racket."

"The good bourgeois, in fact, without a spark of imagination?"

"Quite so. Of course, we might try, but really one doesn't advise it. There would be unwarrantable expense, and even if we were lucky enough to get a verdict, it would still be a very serious matter for a young and rising man. At least, that's my view."

"I don't doubt you are right," said Edward Ambrose, with a groan of sheer vexation.

"You mean, sir, I can't get free of her?" said the Sailor.

"Only with great difficulty, I am afraid. And in any event, the issue is uncertain. As I understand, you are in a position to prove very little. Conjecture will not satisfy a jury, and even that must be based on a set of circumstances that will not help your case."

"Well, what do you advise?" asked Edward Ambrose.

"I should be inclined to let matters take their course for the present. As she appears to be drinking heavily, it is not unreasonable to hope that in time things may adjust themselves automatically."

"But in the meantime how can she be kept from making herself objectionable?"

"If you care to leave that to us, I think a way may be found."

"By paying her a sum weekly?" suggested Edward Ambrose. "And by threatening to withdraw it if she doesn't behave herself?"

"I don't think it will be necessary to do that."

However, the young man felt it to be his duty to keep her from the gutter, which seemed to be her present destination.

"That is for you to consider," said Mr. Mortimer. "In my judgment, you are under no obligation to provide for her, but if on grounds of humanity you wish to do so, let no one dissuade you."

Edward Ambrose agreed.

The upshot of a painful matter was that it was left in Mr. Mortimer's hands. He undertook to deal in such a way with Mrs. Henry Harper that there should be no fear of molestation from her. Also, he would have inquiries made into her past history and her present mode of life; and if a subsequent reconsideration of the case should make a final appeal to the law seem in any wise expedient, then would be the time to invoke it. In the meantime a sum would be paid to her weekly. Mr. Mortimer undertook to send a clerk to the flat in order to collect Henry Harper's papers and other belongings.

It was an unhappy state of affairs, but the young man realized that for the present it would be the part of wisdom to leave the matter in the prudent hands of Mr. Mortimer.

VI

The Sailor found sanctuary at Bury Street until late in the afternoon. By that time a member of Mr. Mortimer's staff had retrieved his chattels from King John's Mansions; also the admirable Portman had returned from his quest "for lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." Moreover, success had crowned it, as Edward Ambrose had been confident that it would.

Portman, it appeared, had found very nice rooms for a single gentleman in Brinkworth Street, Chelsea. They were kept by a friend of his who had been butler in the service of the Honorable Lady Price, relict of the late Sir O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., a former governor of the Bowerman Islands, who had given him an excellent character. It was also fortified by the fact that he had married the cook lately in the service of that lady. Portman was sure that Mr. Harper would find everything very comfortable.

Half an hour later, Henry Harper was on his way to Brinkworth Street with his few belongings. Before taking leave of Portman, he presented him with half a sovereign. This was a princely emolument in the eyes of the Sailor, but he felt that nothing less could meet the case.

On his arrival at Brinkworth Street, the young man knew at once that he would be in good hands. The air of respectability which hovered round his rooms was a little portentous, perhaps, but at least it was in welcome and vivid contrast to the cheap and dismal tawdriness of King John's Mansions. Mr. Emerson Paley, the proprietor of No. 14, and Mrs. Paley also, had something of Portman's impressiveness. It was clear that they had their own standard of taste and conduct. Moreover, Henry Harper welcomed it. To him it meant a fixing of social values. The atmosphere of No. 14, Brinkworth Street, was wholly different from that which had enveloped any home he had ever known before.

The Sailor found a stimulus in these new surroundings. Brinkworth Street, its outlook and its ideals, was a cosmos he had yet to traverse and explore. Mr. Paley was in his own way surprisingly a gentleman, as Mrs. Paley in hers was surprisingly a lady; not, of course, in the way that Edward Ambrose and his new friend, Mary Pridmore, were, but still they undoubtedly stood for something – a curious, indefinable something wholly beyond the ménage he had lately left, with its air of make-believe refinement which was not refinement at all.

Mr. Paley and also Mrs. Paley treated him with great consideration. And it was no second-hand or spurious emotion. It seemed to be their nature to pay respect, they seemed to have a craving to pay it, just as a person there was no need to name and that person's friends had a craving to be always what they called "pulling your leg." Not only was Mr. Harper treated with deference, but solid comfort, well cooked food and punctual attention were lavished upon him, so that for his own part he was bound to honor the source whence these blessings sprang. The august shade of the relict of Sir O'Gorman Price, K.C.M.G., might have been a little too much in evidence now and again for the plain and unvarnished taste of a sailor, but an ever deepening perception showed him that the very things he was inclined to despise and to laugh at – as most of the people with whom his life had been passed would undoubtedly have done – were of real importance if you were able to look at them from the right point of view.

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 butter 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 Handcock, 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 passed, 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 fashion. 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 friendship.

There was only one other person in the large room just then, a lady of quiet, slightly formidable dignity, who was enthroned before a massive silver tea service on a massive 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 hardship. 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 – Klondyke." The real Hyde Park lady was speaking with her mouth full. "Klondyke 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, chargé 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 Klondyke. 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 embarrassed 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 Klondyke 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 Klondyke had had such a mother as Lady Pridmore and that Lady Pridmore had had such a son as Klondyke.

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 godfather, 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 Yorkshire 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 attitude 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 entrée 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 Yorkshire. 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 relationship to Klondyke 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 assistance. 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 ship that ever sailed the seas."

"Yes, but that's because you were a sailor before you were a writer, isn't it?"

"It's what every writer that's worth his salt has got to be," said the young man, quaintly. "John Milton was a sailor, too. A master mariner."

"Yes, of course," said Silvia. "I see what you mean."

She had decided already that she very much liked this strange, wistful, rather fine-drawn young man. He was quite different from any other young man she had ever met. Somehow, he was exactly like his book.

"It is odd you should have been on the same ship as my brother."

"Yes," said the Sailor. "And yet it isn't. Nothing is really queer if you come to think about it. It seems very much more strange to me that I should be in this beautiful room talking to you ladies, than that I should have been in the port watch with Klondyke aboard the Margaret Carey."

"The sea is more familiar to you than London," said Silvia, completely disarmed by his naïveté, as Mary had been.

Otto now came in. His general aspect was not unlike Klondyke's, his air was frank and manly, yet his bearing was more considered than that hero's. All the same he had a full share of the family charm.

"Otto," said Mary, "this is Mr. Harper, who knows Jack."

"What, you know old Fly-up-the-Creek! Heaven help you!"

Mr. Harper had already made the discovery that these people had a language of their own, which he could only follow with difficulty. It was a language which Madame Sadleir didn't teach, a language that Mr. Ambrose didn't use, although he understood it well enough; in fact, it was a language he had never heard before, and he somehow felt that Lady Pridmore was rather pained by it.

"Mr. Harper," said Mary, "this is our respectable brother. He is true to type."

"For the love of heaven, be quiet!" said Otto, gulping his tea.

"Here's your book on Nietzsche," said Silvia. "Mr. Harper, what do you think of Nietzsche?"