Henry Harper at this period of his life was in the grip of a single passion; the passion to know. Already he had learned that books, wonderful, enchanting as they were, formed only one avenue to the realms of truth. He had now come to realize that there are many secrets in earth and heaven which books, even the wisest of them, are not able to disclose.

Of late, he had begun to reinforce the thousand and one volumes placed at his disposal by Mr. Rudge with the daily and weekly newspapers, and those contemporaries of Brown's which came out once a month. He had been quite confounded by the reception given to "Dick Smith" by the public press. A thing so trivial seemed unrelated to the life of incomprehensible complexity in which he lived. Besides, he was convinced that the merit of the story had been exaggerated, as it no doubt had, in accordance with a generous custom of giving a newcomer a fair chance. Still, the author felt in his own mind that whatever the reviewers found in "Dick Smith" to admire was to be laid to the door of the friend who had made it possible for the story to reach the world.

One of the first fruits of this new craving for exact knowledge was to prove bitterly embarrassing. The Sailor had been haunted for several weeks by a report, which he had found among Mr. Rudge's miscellaneous collection, of the royal commission which sat to inquire into the terrible case of Adolf Beck. He became obsessed by the thought that the apparatus of the criminal law in a free country could fasten bonds on an entirely innocent person, could successfully resist all attempts to cast them off, and when finally pinned down and exposed to public censure could easily evoke a second line of defense, which, under juridical forms, freed it of blame in the matter.

To such an extent did the affair react upon the Sailor's mind that when he called one afternoon upon Edward Ambrose in Pall Mall, he had to make a sad confession. He had been so much troubled by it that he had not been able to work.

"Ah, but there we come to the core of official England," said Edward Ambrose. "Such miscarriages of justice happen in every country in the world, but the commission which solemnly justifies them on the ground of indisputable common sense could only have happened in this land of ours."

The young man was grateful for the tone of indignation. It was something to know there was one man in the world who agreed in sum with a certain trite formula which was all he had to work by. It had come to him by accident on the Margaret Carey… Right is right, and wrong is no man's right.

"You should go to the Old Bailey one day and hear a trial," said Edward Ambrose. "All things that are concerned with reality might help you just now. I dare say it will hurt you horribly; but if you are not unlucky in the judge, it may help to restore your faith in your country."

"Yes, sir, I'll go there one day, as you advise me to," said Henry Harper, as a boy in the fourth form who was young for his age might have said it; and then with curious simplicity: "But I won't much fancy going by myself."

"I'll come with you," said Edward Ambrose, "if that is how you feel about it."

Thus it was that one evening, about a fortnight later, Henry Harper received a postcard, which said:

Meet me outside O. B. 10.30 tomorrow. Murder trial: a strange and terrible drama of passion for two students of the human comedy! E. A.

On the following morning, the Sailor had already mingled with the crowd outside the Old Bailey when, punctual to the minute, he was joined by his friend.

"It's brave of you to face it," was his greeting.

Mr. Ambrose little knew the things he had faced in the course of his five and twenty years of life, was the thought that ran in the mind of the Sailor.

They made their way in, and became witnesses of the drama that the law was preparing to unfold.

The judge began the proceedings, or rather the proceedings began themselves, with a kind of grotesque dignity. After the jury had been sworn, the prisoner was brought into the dock. Henry Harper gazed at him with an emotion of dull horror. In an instant, he had recognized Mr. Thompson, the mate of the Margaret Carey.

There could be no doubt it was he. Alexander Thompson was the name given in the indictment; besides, the Sailor would have known anywhere that shaggy and hirsute man who had cast such a shadow across his youth. There he was, that grim figure! He had changed, and yet he had not changed. The long, lean, angular body was the same in every awkward line, but the deadly pallor of the face was horrible to see. It was Mr. Thompson right enough, and yet it was not Mr. Thompson at all.

A surge of memories came upon Henry Harper as he sat in that court. They were so terrible that he could hardly endure them. He did not hear a word that was being spoken by the barrister who, in even and impartial tones, was reciting the details of a savage but not ignoble crime. The Sailor was thousands of miles away in the Pacific; the groves of the Island of San Pedro were rising through the morning mists; he could hear the plop-plop of the sharks in the water; he could hear the Old Man coming up on deck.

"That man looks capable of anything," whispered Edward Ambrose.

The Sailor had always been clear upon that point. There was the drive to the docks in a cab through the rain of the November night in his mind. Again he was a helpless waif of the streets seated opposite Jack the Ripper. He almost wanted to scream.

"Would you rather not stay?" whispered his friend.

"I'm not feeling very well," said Henry Harper; thereupon they left the court and went out into the street.

They walked along Holborn in complete silence. To the Sailor the fellowship, the security, the friendliness of that crowded street were a great relief. His soul was in the grip of awful memories. Even the man at his side could not dispel them. Mr. Ambrose was much farther away just now than the Old Man, the Island of San Pedro, and the savage and brutal murderer to whom he owed his life.

For days afterwards, the mind of the Sailor was dominated by Mr. Thompson. He learned from the newspapers that the mate of the Margaret Carey was condemned to death, and that he awaited the last office of the law in Dalston Prison. One day, an odd impulse came upon him. He bought some grapes and took them to the prison, and with a boldness far from his character at ordinary times, sought permission to see the condemned man.

As Mr. Thompson had only one day more to live, and not one of his friends had visited him for the simple reason that he had not a friend in the world, the governor of the prison, a humane man, gave the Sailor permission to see the mate of the Margaret Carey.

Behind iron bars and in the presence of a warder, Henry Harper was allowed to look upon Mr. Thompson, to speak to him, and to offer the grapes he had brought him. But a dreadful shock awaited the young man. He saw at once that there was nothing human now in the man who was ranging his cell like a caged beast.

"Don't you know me, Mr. Thompson?" cried Henry Harper feebly, through the bars.

The mate of the Margaret Carey paid no heed to his voice, but still paced up and down.

"Don't you know me, Mr. Thompson? I'm Sailor."

For a fraction of time, the condemned man turned savage, unutterable eyes upon him. They were those of a wild beast at bay.

"There's no God," he said.

He dashed his head against the wall of his cell.

XIX

Henry Harper was now in a universe of infinite complexity. The genie who lived in the wonderful lamp in his brain had taught him already that he knew nothing about whole stellar spaces in this strange cosmos that he, the thing he called himself, inhabited. Moreover, it presented many problems. Of these the most instant and pressing was Cora.

It was no use mincing the matter: Cora and he were not getting on. There was no bond of sympathy between them. His work and all that went with it were far more to him than the woman he had married. And when this fact came home to her, she began to resent it in a contemptuous way. It made it more difficult for both that his work only appealed to her in one aspect, and that the one which least appealed to him. The hard and continuous labor it involved meant nothing to her; the hopes and the fears of an awakening artistic sense were things beyond her power to grasp; if his work had not a definite commercial value, if it could not be rendered in pounds and shillings, it was a waste of time and worse than meaningless. Everything apart from that was a closed book as far as she was concerned. She began to despise his timidity and his ignorance, and the time soon came when she did not hesitate to sneer at him before her friends.

For one thing, she was bitterly resentful. It was useless to disguise that he was not merely indifferent to her physical charms, he positively disliked and even dreaded that aspect of their life together. Within a very short time after their marriage, he made the discovery that she drank.

Even before that knowledge came he had discerned something unwholesome about her. The blackened eyebrows, the rouged cheeks, the dyed hair, the overfine presence, the stealthy, cloying color of scent she exuded, the coarse mouth, the apathetic eyes, had always been things that he dared not let his mind rest upon in detail even before he had taken them unto himself. And now that he had done so at the call of duty, and with even that to sustain him, he foresaw that he must come to dislike them more and more. It hardly needed a pervading reek of brandy in her bedroom to read the future.

Unluckily for Cora, the monotony of a "straight" life with such a humdrum young man was more than she could stand for any length of time. The old fatal habit was soon upon her again. Years of yielding had weakened her will; and now she was beginning to grow contemptuous of her husband – perhaps as a requital of his apathy towards her – she began to assume a defiant carelessness, first of manner and then of conduct.

Disaster was foreshadowed by several quarrels. None of these were serious, but they showed the inevitable end towards which matters had begun to drift. Henry Harper was not the sort of man with whom it was easy to quarrel; he had no aptitude for a form of reflex action quite alien to his nature. All the same, there were times when he was almost tempted to defend himself from Cora's perpetual sneers at his dullness, not only in her company, which was bad enough, but in that of her friends, which was worse.

Her chief complaint was his bearing in restaurants and public places. He had not a word to say for himself; he let "the girls" and "the boys" – Cora included her whole exceedingly numerous acquaintance in these terms – "come it over him"; he took everything lying down; and she couldn't understand why a man who was as clever as he was supposed to be "didn't let himself out a bit now and again."

Harry's social maladroitness became a very sore subject. It annoyed Cora intensely that the boys and the girls should so consistently "make a mark of him." His inability to hit back seemed to be a grave reflection upon her judgment and good taste in marrying him. The time soon came when she told him that if he couldn't show himself a little brighter in company, he could either stay at home of an evening or go his way, and she would go hers.

As a fact, neither alternative was irksome to Henry Harper. But the ultimatum hurt him very much. The odd thing was that in spite of the nipping atmosphere to which his sensitiveness was exposed, it seemed to grow more acute. He had a very real sense of inferiority in the presence of others. Not only did he suffer from a lack of any kind of social training, but even the few counters he was painfully acquiring in a difficult game he had not the art of playing to advantage. Thus he was only too glad to accept Cora's ukase. It was a merciful relief to sit at home in the evening and eat the meager cold supper that Royal Daylight provided, and then go on with his work to what hour he chose, instead of being haled abroad at the heels of a superfashionable and therefore hyperdisdainful Cora to public places, where he was always at a miserable disadvantage.

She thus formed a habit of sallying forth alone in the evening. Although she sometimes returned after midnight in a slightly elevated condition, or in her own words, "inclined to be market merry," her husband had too little knowledge of life to be really suspicious or even deeply resentful.

Under the new arrangement, which suited the young man so well, he was able to attend public lectures at various places, the Polytechnic in Regent Street, the British Museum, the London Institution, the South Kensington Museum, and other centers of light. These helped him in certain ways. He was no dry-as-dust. Already his eyes were set towards the mountain peaks, yet with a humility that was perhaps his chief asset, he felt it to be in the power of all men to help him upon his journey.

Twice a week, now, after an early supper, he would go to a lecture. When it was over, he would often take a stroll about the streets in order to observe the phantasmagoria around him of which he knew so little. Yet his eager mind was looking forward to a time when all should be made clear by the play of the light that shines in darkness.

As a rule, he would finish his evening's excursion with a cup of coffee and a sandwich at Appenrodt's in Oxford Circus. And then thinking his wonderful thoughts, he would take a final enchanted stroll homewards to the Avenue, to No. 106, King John's Mansions, where his work and his books awaited him. Sometimes, however, he was greatly troubled with the thought of Cora. It was idle to disguise the ever growing sense of antagonism that was arising between them. But she went her way and he went his. The financial arrangement they had now come to was that he should pay the rent of the flat and all household expenses, and as Cora had apparently no money of her own, he also allowed her half of what remained of his income.

One evening in the summer, as he was walking slowly down Regent Street, a man and a woman passed him in an open taxi. The woman was Cora, and the man, who was in evening dress, appeared to have his arm around her waist. The sight was like a blow in the face. And yet it was a thing so far outside his ken that it was impossible to know exactly what it meant. For a moment he was dazed. He did not know how to regard it, or in what way to deal with it. To begin with, and perhaps oddly, it did not make him particularly angry. Why he was not more angry, he didn't know. No doubt it was because he was growing to dislike Cora so intensely. But as he walked slowly to King John's Mansions he still had the curious feeling of being half stunned by a blow.

He went to bed without awaiting her return. She had recently taken to coming home very late. Partly because of this, and partly in consequence of the condition in which she often returned, he had insisted for some little time past upon a bedroom of his own. This she had been very unwilling to concede, but he had fought for it and had in the end won; and tonight as he turned in and locked the door, he determined that no power on earth should cause him to yield the spoils of victory. He got into bed with hideous phantoms in his mind. But the thought uppermost was that he had turned yet another page of experience. And there suddenly in the midst of the flow and eddy of his fancies, the awful face of Mr. Thompson emerged at the foot of the bed. He could almost hear the mate of the Margaret Carey dash his head against the wall of his cell.

He put forth all his power of will in the hope of inducing sleep, but before it showed signs of coming, he heard Cora's latchkey fumbling at the front door of the flat. She opened it with a rattle, and closed it with a bang; and then he heard her come stumbling along the passage, her fuddled voice uplifted in the mirthless strain of a music hall ditty.

With a sensation of physical nausea, he heard her try the handle of the bedroom door. And then there came a knock.

"Let me in, ducky."

He didn't answer, but pulled the bedclothes over his head.

"Let me in, ducky. I want to kiss you good night."

In spite of the bedclothes, he could still hear her.

Receiving no answer, she beat upon the door again.

"Don't then" – he could still hear her – "You are no good, anyway."

XX

The next day Cora was not visible until about two o'clock, which was now her invariable rule. They lunched together. He could hardly bring himself to eat the comfortless meal with her. But, after all, he had taken her for better or for worse. He must keep his part of the contract, therefore it was no use being squeamish.

He waited until the meal was over and Royal Daylight had cleared the table, and had also cleared away herself, before he mentioned the taxi. And then very bluntly, and in a tone entirely new to her as well as to himself, he demanded an explanation.

Cora, it seemed, was in a rather chastened mood. For one thing, she was now sober, and when she was sober she was not exactly a fool. She was not really repentant. He was too poor a thing to make a self-respecting woman repent. But now she was again herself, she was both shrewd and wary; after all, this double-adjectival idiot was the goose that laid the golden eggs.

"I was a bit on last night," she said, with well-assumed humility.

"Yes, I heard you was when you come home," he said, with the new note in his voice that she didn't like.

"Oh, so you did hear." She suddenly determined to carry the war into the enemy's country. "Why didn't you open it, then?"

The cold impudence stung.

"I'd rather have died than have opened it to a cow like you." He hardly knew the words he used. They had seemed to spring unbidden from the back of beyond.

She half respected him for speaking to her in that way, and in such a tone; there was perhaps a little more to the double-adjectival one than she had guessed. And as the cards were dead against her now, she decided on a strategic grovel of pathos and brandy.

"Call yourself a gentleman?" Tears sprang reluctantly to the raddled cheek.

The sight of a lady in tears, even a lady who drank, was a little too much for Henry Harper.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I oughtn't to have said that." He had remembered that the word "cow" as applied to the female sex was a Blackhampton expression and a favorite with Auntie.

The lady could only weep a little more profusely. This mug was as soft as butter.

He stood looking at her with tight lips and with eyes of sorrowful disgust.

"But you've no right to drink as much as you do," he said, determinedly. "And you've no right to ride in taxis with gentlemen and to let them put their arms round you."

"And you've no right to call your own lawful wife a cow," she said, tearfully.

"I've apologized for that," he said. "But you've given me no explanation of that gentleman."

"Didn't I say I was a bit on," she said aggrievedly.

"It's no excuse. It makes it worse."

"Yes, it does," said Mrs. Henry Harper, with a further grovel, "if it happened. But it didn't happen. You was mistaken, Harry. I'm too much the lady to let any gentleman, whether he was in evening dress or whether he wasn't, put his arm around me in a taxi. I wouldn't think of it now I'm married. Now, you kiss your Cora, Harry, for calling her a name."

She approached him with pursed lips. In spite of the shame he felt for such a lapse from his official duties, he retreated slowly before her.

"It's no use denying it," he said, as soon as the table had been placed successfully between them. "I saw his arm round you."

"You are mistaken, Harry." She did not like the look or the sound of him. She was beginning to be alarmed at her own folly. "I may have been a bit on, but I was not as bad as that. Honest."

"I saw what I saw," he persisted; and then feeling no longer able to cope with her or the situation, he slipped out of the room and out of the flat.

He had now to look forward in a dim way to the time when he would have to leave her. The time was not yet, but he was beginning to feel in the very marrow of his bones that it was near. Now that her secret was out and a hopeless deterioration had begun, there was something so revolting in the whole thing that he foresaw already their life together could have only one end. But in the meantime, he must be man enough to keep with a stiff upper lip a contract he ought never to have made.

Apart from his domestic relations, things were going very well indeed with him. He had completed the "Further Adventures of Dick Smith" to the satisfaction of Mr. Ambrose, and it was on the point of starting in the magazine. Moreover, the first series had won fame on both sides of the Atlantic. It was felt, so rare was its merits, that if Henry Harper never wrote anything else his reputation was secure for twenty years.

This, of course, was an amazing piece of fortune. Edward Ambrose, who had had no small share in bringing it about, and whose discriminating friendship had made it possible, compared it, in his own mind, with the success of Dickens, who, after a life of poverty and hardship, gained immortality at five and twenty. It was far too soon as yet to predict such a crown for Henry Harper, but he had certainly burst upon the world as a full-fledged literary curiosity. His name was coming to be in the mouth of all who could appreciate real imagination.

One of the first fruits of this success was his election to the Stylists' Club. This distinguished and esoteric body met on the afternoon of the first Tuesday of the autumn and winter months at Paradine's Hotel in Upper Brook Street, Berkeley Square, to discuss Style. Literary style only was within the scope of its reference; at the same time, the members of the club carried Style into all the appurtenances of their daily lives. Not only were they stylists on paper, they were stylists in manner, in dress, in speech, in mental outlook. The club was so select that it was limited to two hundred members, as it was felt there was never likely to be more than that number of persons in the metropolis at any one time who could be expected to possess an authentic voice upon the subject. Happily, these were not all confined to one sex. The club included ladies.

That the Stylists' Club, of all human institutions, should have sought out Henry Harper for the signal honor of membership, seemed a rare bit of byplay on the part of Providence. For a reason which he could not explain, Edward Ambrose gave a hoot of delight when the young man brought to him the club's invitation, countersigned by its president, the supremely distinguished Mr. Herbert Gracious, whose charmingly urbane "Appreciations," issued biennially, were known wherever the English language was in use. Mr. Herbert Gracious was not merely a stylist himself, he was a cause of style in others.

Henry Harper had been a little troubled at first by the hoot of Mr. Ambrose, and the feeling of doubt it inspired was not made less by a rather lame defense. All the same, Mr. Ambrose so frankly respected the young man's intense desire to improve himself that he urged him to join the club, and to attend the first meeting, at any rate, of the new session, if he felt he would get the least good out of it.

In response to a basely utilitarian suggestion, Henry Harper said he would do so. He was not in a frame of mind to face such an ordeal. But he must not let go of himself. Miserable as he was, he felt he must take such advice if only to prove his courage. He would attend the first meeting of the Stylists' Club on the ground of its being good for the character, if on no higher.

"I suppose you'll be there, sir?"

"No," laughed Mr. Ambrose. "I'm not a member. It's a very distinguished body."

Henry Harper looked incredulous. It did not occur to him that anybody could be so distinguished as to exclude such a man as Edward Ambrose.

"I don't think I'll go, then," said Henry Harper. "It will be a bit lonesome-like."

"Please do. And then come and tell me about it. Your personal impression will be valuable."

It was for this reason that the Sailor finally decided not to show the white feather.