The Sailor Part 26

No, there was nothing to be.... Again he nearly turned and ran. The iron gates were before him. There were the piles of stinking bones, old newspapers, foul rags, sc.r.a.p iron, and all sorts of odds and ends.

And there was the broken-down handcart he had trundled so often through the mud. The wheels were still on it, but they looked like new ones.

And there on the wall of the shed was the nail.

A sick thrill pa.s.sed through Henry Harper. He couldn't make out in the thick November halflight whether on that nail there was really what he thought there was. A wave of curiosity forced him to enter the yard.

The whip was hanging there as usual. The heavy handle bound with strips of bra.s.s shone through the gloom. The sight of it seemed again to hold him in a thrall of terror. As if it were a nightmare he fought to throw it off. He had been a sailor; he was the goalkeeper for the Blackhampton Rovers; he was earning two pounds a week; he had a velvet collar to his overcoat; there was no need to be afraid of...

"Now, young man?"

A thick, wheezy grunt came out of the inner murk of the yard and sent a chill down the spine of Henry Harper.

"What can I do for yer?"

Auntie, cheerfully alcoholic as ever, stood before him in all her shapeless obscenity. She stood as of old, exuding gin and humor and latent savagery. She had changed so little that he felt he had not changed either. At first he could not believe that she did not recognize him.

Auntie stood eyeing him with disfavor. The good clothes, the clean collar, the polished boots told against him heavily. Most probably a detective.

"What do you want for _that_, missus?" He pointed to the nail.

"Not for sale." The light he had seen so often sprang to her eyes.

"You can have anythink else. Sc.r.a.p iron, rags and bones, waste paper, bedsteads, but yer can't have that." And Auntie looked at him, wheezing humorously at the idea of anyone wanting to buy such an article. Suddenly Henry Harper met again the eyes of Medusa in their depth and power.

At once he knew why he had stayed those long years under her roof. It was not merely that he had nowhere else to go. There was a living devil in the soul of Auntie and it was far stronger than anything at present in the soul of Henry Harper. Already he could feel the old helpless terror striking into him again. He was forgetting that he had been a sailor, he was forgetting the Blackhampton Rovers, he was forgetting his two pounds a week....

"Well, missus, if yer won't, yer won't," he said, with a mighty effort of the will.

Auntie laughed her old rich note of genial defiance, as if an affection for a thing of little value and less use must be defended. As she did so, a miserable cur sneaked out through the open door of the house beyond the archway. She turned to it humorously.

"I thought I told _you_ to keep in."

The dog cast a look at her and sneaked in again.

"Mornin', missus."

"Mornin', young man. Sorry I can't oblige yer." It was the old note of affability that always endeared her to the neighbors.

But it was not of Auntie that Henry Harper was thinking when he got into Wright's Lane. It was of the dog. In the eyes of that animal he had seen his former self.

XIV

It had been Henry Harper's intention to go on across the Lammas and make inquiries about the night school. But his courage suddenly failed. As soon as he got into Wright's Lane, he felt that for one day at least he had seen enough of the haunts of his youth.

As he stood at the corner, trying to make up his mind what to do, an intense longing for Newcastle Street came upon him. It seemed wiser to postpone the night school until the afternoon.

He had not expected to find the other side of the ca.n.a.l quite so bad as it had proved to be. It seemed ages away in point of experience.

There was no place for good clothes, a clean collar, and polished boots in the region the other side of the ca.n.a.l. It was very unfortunate that the night school lay in the middle of that area.

Henry Harper was in an unhappy frame of mind when he sat down to dinner with Ginger at one o'clock. A very bad aura enveloped him. The sight of Auntie in her lair would take him some little time to overcome.

Then the sense of failure was unpleasant. It was unworthy of a sailor to have s.h.i.+rked his job. Every day made it more necessary for something to be done. His pretence of understanding the newspapers when he could hardly read a word was telling against him with Ginger.

His contribution to the after-supper conversation was so feeble, as a rule, that Ginger was almost afraid "he was not all there."

However, he would inquire about the night school that afternoon. The matter was so urgent that he could have no peace until he had moved in it. But fate, having taken his measure, began to marshal silent invisible forces.

To begin with the forces were silent enough, yet they were not exactly invisible. A little after three, while the Sailor, still in the Valley of Decision, was looking into the fire, wondering whether it was possible after all to postpone the task until the following morning when he might be in a better frame of mind, Ginger looked out of the window, announced that "there wasn't half a fog coming over," and that he had a good mind to make himself comfortable indoors for the rest of the day.

This was enough for the Sailor. The fog put the night school out of the question for that afternoon; it must be postponed till the morrow.

All the same, he fell into a black and bitter mood in which self-disgust came uppermost.

Ginger's good mind to stay indoors did not materialize. As soon as the clock chimed four he remembered that he had to play a hundred up with d.i.n.kie at the Crown and Cus.h.i.+on.

At quarter-past four, Miss Foldal came in, drew down the blinds, lit the gas, and laid the cloth for tea. She then sought permission, as the fire was such a good one, to toast a m.u.f.fin at it, which she proceeded to do with the elegance that marked her in everything.

The Sailor had never seen anybody quite so elegant as Miss Foldal in the afternoon. The golden hair was curled and crimped, the blonde complexion freshly powdered, there was a superb display of jewelry upon a fine bosom, she was tightly laced, and the young man watching her with grave curiosity heard her stays creak as she bent down at the fire.

Two ladies further apart than Miss Foldal and Auntie would be hard to conceive. Dimly the young man had begun to realize that it was a very queer cosmos in which he had been called to exercise his being. There were whole stellar s.p.a.ces between Auntie and Miss Foldal.

The latter lady was not merely elegant, she was kind. Miss Foldal was very kind indeed to Mr. Harper. From the day he had entered her house, she had shown in many subtle ways that she wanted to make him feel at home. And Mr. Harper, who up till now only realized Woman extrinsically, already considered Miss Foldal a very nice lady.

It was true that Ginger referred to her rather contemptuously as Old Tidde-fol-lol, and saw, or affected to see, something deep in her most innocent actions. But the Sailor, with a natural reverence for her s.e.x in spite of all he had suffered at its hands, was constrained to believe these slighting references to Old Tidde-fol-lol were lapses of taste on the part of his hero. Homer nods on occasion. Henry Harper was not acquainted with that impressive fact at this period of his life, but he was sure that Ginger was a little unfortunate in his references to Miss Foldal.

The Sailor was beginning to like Miss Foldal immensely. He did not go beyond that. The great apparition of Woman in her cardinal aspect had not yet appeared to him, and was not to do so for long days to come.

As Ginger said, he was a kid at present, and hardly knew he was born.

Still, he was beginning to take notice.

"Would you like me to pour out your tea, Mr. Harper?"

"Thank you, miss." He was no longer so ignorant as to say, "Thank you, lady."

"Sugar?"

"Please, miss."

He admired immensely the manipulation of the sugar tongs by those elegant hands. They were inclined to be fat and were perhaps rather broad to the purview of a connoisseur, but they were covered in rings set with stones more or less precious, and the soul of Henry Harper responded instinctively to all that they meant and stood for. The hands of Auntie were not as these.

"You _do_ take two lumps and milk, of course?"

There was an ease and a charm about Miss Foldal that made the Sailor think of velvet.

"Now take a piece of m.u.f.fin while it's warm."

She offered the m.u.f.fin, already steeped in delicious b.u.t.ter, with the slightly imperious charm of a Madame Recamier, not that Henry Harper knew any more about Madame Recamier than he did about Homer at this period of his career. Yet he may have known all about them even then.

He may have known all about them and forgotten all about them, and when the time came to unseal the inner chambers of his consciousness, perhaps he would remember them again.

Auntie had never handed him a m.u.f.fin in such a way as that. Mrs.

Sparks hadn't either. Ginger might sneer and call her Old Tidde-fol-lol, although not to her face--he was always very polite to her face--but there was no doubt she was absolutely a lady, and her m.u.f.fins ... her m.u.f.fins were _extra_.

This afternoon, Miss Foldal lingered over the tea table in most agreeable discourse. The fog was too thick for her to venture into the market place, where she wanted to go.