The Sailor Part 37

That, however, was not the conclusion of the incident.

"Excuse me," said the lady, "but you are Mr. Harper, aren't you?"

Blus.h.i.+ng again he admitted very humbly that he was.

"Yes, you look clever. I'm Cora Dobbs. You know Auntie, I think."

With a blush deepening to a hue that was quite nice the young man said he knew Miss Dobbs' aunt.

"She's a rum one, isn't she?" The sudden friendliness was overpowering.

The young man, not knowing what to say, said nothing. Thus far he had been on the high seas with _d.i.c.k Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_, but he was quickly coming to dry land, to London, to the Charing Cross Road. So this was the niece of whom Mrs. Greaves thought so much.

Henry Harper could understand the charlady's pride in her, but it was very surprising that she should be the niece of Mrs. Greaves. She was something totally different. In manner she was even more refined than Miss Foldal herself, although in some ways she had a slight resemblance to his good fairy. But Miss Dobbs had a candor, a humor and a charm quite new in Henry Harper's very limited social experience. She was really most agreeable; also her clothes, if not exactly Hyde Park, were so fine that they must have cost a great deal of money.

So much for Miss Dobbs in the sight of Mr. Harper. As for Mr. Harper in the sight of Miss Dobbs, that was a very different matter. He was not bad looking; he was tall, well-made, clean, his eyes were good.

But their queer expression could only mean that he was as weak as water and as green as gra.s.s. Evidently he hardly knew he had come on to the earth. Also he was as shy as a baby and his trousers wanted ironing badly.

"I have heard quite a lot about you, Mr. Harper, from my aunt."

It was a little surprising that a creature so fas.h.i.+onable should own an aunt so much the reverse. Even Mr. Harper, who had hardly begun to get a sense of perspective, felt the two ladies were as wide asunder as the poles. Not of course that Mrs. Greaves was an "ordinary" char, he had her own a.s.surance of that. She was a kind of super-charlady who "did"

for barristers and professional gentlemen, cooked their meals, supervised their bachelor establishments, and allowed them to share her pride in a distinguished niece.

Had Mr. Harper been a more sophisticated young man he must have felt the att.i.tude of the niece to be admirable. There was not a shade of false shame when she spoke of her aunt. Miss Cora Dobbs was too frankly of the world to suffer any vicarious embarra.s.sment. She was amused with a relations.h.i.+p thrust upon her by an ironical providence, and that was all.

"I hear you are writing a book."

That was a false move. Mr. Harper was only able to blush vividly and to make a kind of noise at the back of his throat.

"I have a great friend who is writing one." Miss Dobbs hastened to repair a tactical mistake. "Hers is reminiscences. I am helping with a few of mine. I dare say Auntie has told you I have been on the stage?"

Mr. Harper had been told that.

"Don't you think it's a good idea? My friend gives her name because she married a lord, but I'm to do the donkey work. It would be telling if I told you her name, but don't you think it's business?"

Mr. Harper thought, not very audibly, that it was.

"One of our girls at the Friv., Ca.s.sie Smallpiece, who married Lord Bargrave, you know..."

... Mr. Harper did not know, but Miss Dobbs had already struck such a note of intimacy that he somehow felt he ought to have known....

"... Made quite a pot of money out of hers. Of course there was scandal in Ca.s.sie's. Ca.s.sie was rather warm pastry. But there'll be none in ours, although I expect that'll be money out of our pockets."

Mr. Harper hoped such would not be the case.

"Bound to be," said Miss Dobbs. "That's the worst of being a clean potato, you are always missing your share of the cake."

Mr. Harper was completely out of his depth. He had no reply to make to this very advanced remark.

Miss Dobbs watched his perplexed face with a narrow-lidded wariness, behind which glittered the eyes of a goshawk. But she was too wise to force the pace unduly. With a suddenness that was almost startling, she said, "Well, ching-a-ling. I'll look in again when you are not so busy, Mr. Harper. One of these days perhaps you will give me advice about my reminiscences." And with a smile and a wave of her m.u.f.f of excruciating friendliness, Miss Cora Dobbs gave a trip and a waddle, and the high heels and the black and white check uppers were on the pavement of the Charing Cross Road.

For at least three minutes, however, after they had gone, _d.i.c.k Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_ were left in a state of suspended animation. The author had to make a great effort before he could proceed with Chapter Eighteen. A glamour had pa.s.sed from the earth; at least from that part of the earth contained by the four walls of No.

249, Charing Cross Road.

VIII

Miss Cora Dobbs was as good as her word. She looked in again; indeed she formed quite a habit of looking into the shop of Elihu Rudge, bookseller, whenever she was pa.s.sing. This seemed to work out on an average at one morning a week. Her reminiscences could hardly have induced this friendliness because, strange to say, she never mentioned them again.

On a first consideration, it seemed more likely due to her deep interest in the book Mr. Harper was writing, of which her aunt had told her. Whenever Miss Dobbs looked in she never failed to ask, "How is it going today?" and she declared she would not be satisfied until a chapter had been read to her.

Mr. Harper was rather embarra.s.sed by the attentions of Miss Dobbs. He was a very shy young man, and in regard to his new and strange and sometimes extremely painful labors he was unreasonably silent. But so determined was the interest of Miss Dobbs that in the end Mr. Harper yielded to its pressure. At last he let her see the ma.n.u.script. But even that did not content her. She was set, it seemed, on having some of the choicest pa.s.sages read aloud by the author when there was no one in the shop.

In a way the determination of Miss Dobbs was rather a thorn. Yet it would have been idle and ungracious for Mr. Harper to pretend that he was not flattered by this remarkable solicitude for the story of _d.i.c.k Smith_ and the brigantine _Excelsior_. He was very flattered indeed.

For one thing, Miss Dobbs was Miss Dobbs in a way that Miss Foldal had never been Miss Foldal. She was a force in the way that Ginger was; her elegance was positive, it meant something. She had a subtle air of "being out for blood," just as Ginger had when they had paid their first never-to-be-forgotten visit to Blackhampton. Deep in his heart the Sailor was a little afraid of Miss Cora Dobbs. Yet he did not know why he should be. She was extraordinarily agreeable. No one could have been pleasanter to talk to; she was by far the wittiest and most amusing lady he had ever met; it was impossible not to like her immensely; but already a subtle instinct told him to beware.

As for Miss Dobbs, her state of mind would be difficult to render.

Just as Mr. Harper was very simple, Miss Dobbs was extremely complex.

In the first place, there seemed no particular reason why she should have come into the shop at all. It may have been curiosity. Perhaps her aunt had aroused it by the statement that Mr. Rudge had "set up a nice-looking boy as wrote books," and it may have been that the bearing of the nice-looking boy gave warrant for a continuance of Miss Dobbs'

friendly regard.

On the other hand, it may have been the nature of Mr. Harper's calling which inspired these punctual attentions. It certainly had possibilities. Among the friends of Miss Dobbs was a certain Mr.

Albert Hobson who was reputed to earn several thousands a year by his pen. Again, it may have been the statement of her aunt that the young man "had follered the sea and had a nest-egg put by." Or again it may have been the young man himself who appealed to her. His clean simplicity of mind and of mansion may have had a morbid attraction for a complexity that was pathological. Of these hypotheses the last may seem least probable, but the motives of a Miss Cora Dobbs defy a.n.a.lysis; and in a world in which nothing is absolute she is perhaps ent.i.tled to the benefit of any doubt that may arise concerning them.

In spite of Miss Dobbs, whose attentions for the present were confined to a few minutes one morning a week, the story of _d.i.c.k Smith_ began to make excellent progress. All the same it was uphill work. The Sailor was a very clumsy craftsman using the queerest of tools, but oddly enough he had a remarkable faculty of concentration.

At last came the day when the final chapter was written. And a proud day it was. In spite of many defeats and misgivings, he was able at three o'clock of a summer morning to write the magic words, "The End."

Yet it was far from being the end of his labors. He little knew that he had merely come to Mount Pisgah, and that for many days he must be content with no more than a glimpse of the Promised Land.

In telling the story of his early years the Sailor had no particular object in view. Certain mysterious forces were craving expression.

Such a task had not been undertaken at the call of ambition. But now it was done ambition found a part to play.

On the very morning the story was finished, by an odd chance Miss Dobbs came into the shop. In answer to her invariable, "Well, what of it?"

she was gravely informed that the end had been reached.

"My! you've been going some, Mr. R. L. Stevenson. Run along and fetch the last chapter and read it to me and then I'll tell you honestly whether I think it's as good as Bert Hobson."

Miss Dobbs had the habit of command. Therefore Chapter the Last, telling of the hero's miraculous deliverance from the Island of San Pedro, was at once produced. Moreover, it was read to her with naf sincerity in a gentle voice.

"Hot stuff!" Miss Dobbs dexterously concealed a yawn with a dingy white glove. "It's It."

The author blushed with pleasure, although he could hardly believe the story was as good as all that.

"And what are you going to do with it now you've written it?"

To her intense surprise it had not occurred to him to do anything with it.