The Sailor Part 73

Lady Pridmore was grieved to hear that, but it fully confirmed what she had surmised.

What had she surmised?

"I am quite sure that something rather dreadful took place here a week ago."

Ambrose felt that was most probable.

"I wish you would tell me, Edward," said Lady Pridmore, "what in your opinion it was that happened."

The retort on the tip of Edward's tongue was, "How the devil should I know!" but fortunately he didn't allow it to pa.s.s. He contented himself with silence.

"I want to see Mary most particularly," he said, after a pause. "I think I'll send her a telegram to say that I am coming by the first train tomorrow."

"Do," said Lady Pridmore. "That will cheer her up."

III

He sent a telegram as he returned sadly to his rooms. He was in a miserable frame of mind. Somehow he was hating life, but he was now fully bent upon one thing, and no peace could be his until he had done it.

After dinner came an answer to say Mary would be very glad to see him.

He sat smoking endless pipes, until he realized that it would soon be too late to go to bed if he was to catch an early train.

On arrival at Woking, Mary was at the station with her friend's car.

She looked ill, he thought, but she seemed very glad to see him. At first they found little to say. Indeed, it was not until they had decided to use a fine morning in walking to Greylands, had sent on the car and taken to the road, that they were able to talk in the way they wished.

"I suppose you don't quite know why I've come?" said Ambrose.

"No, I frankly don't," said Mary, "but at least, Edward, it is always very, very good to see you."

Ever since she could remember, he had ranked as the chief of her friends, and that accounted, perhaps, for a certain att.i.tude of mind towards him. But in all the years they had known each other, in all the hours they had spent in each other's company, never had they seemed so intimate as in this walk together. And there was a very clear reason why this should be so. Never had each felt such a need of the other's perceptiveness.

It was not for him to ask what had happened a week ago at that last interview in Queen Street. But she told him voluntarily.

"I had promised to help him," she said, growing pale at the recollection. "And he came to me and told me all ... all the facts and the circ.u.mstances ... things that not I and not you, Edward ... could ever have guessed."

"You were not able to do what he asked?"

"No, I simply was not. I simply couldn't. I meant to help him. I wanted to. Perhaps ... perhaps I ought to have ... but ... but it was an abyss he showed me ... you don't know..."

They walked on in silence a little way.

"... A year ago, I made a pledge. And he counted on it. I think that is why he told me the whole dreadful story. Had I not been a coward, I should never have..."

"You judge yourself too hardly. He asked too much."

"It should not have been too much. I ought to have been able to help him. At least ... I ought not to have sent him away as I did."

"a.s.suming it were not too late, do you think you could help him now?"

"But it _is_ too late." She was evading the question.

"It is not the view I take myself. I saw both doctors yesterday, and they have very little hope of a recovery. But you and I are not bound to agree with them."

"What can we do ... in the face of such an opinion?"

"We can have faith."

"But the doctors?"

"It is a purely mental case. The mind is the key of the whole matter."

"Yes, I know ... I know."

"No doctor, however expert, can ever say anything positively in regard to the mind, provided the brain is not damaged."

"Isn't it bound to be?"

"They do not say that ... and there is our hope. It is a special case.

We must always remember this man is different from other people. It is my firm belief that it is in your power to save him. The view may be entirely mistaken, but it is my own personal conviction."

A new Edward Ambrose was speaking. Here were a strength and a force which until that moment he had not known how to show her. It may have been that the occasion had never arisen, or perhaps the conventional timidity of his kind had never permitted it.

"I--I don't altogether understand," she said, faintly.

"You took away his belief. And I ask you to give it him back again."

She walked dully by his side, striving as well as she could to represent to herself the strange words he had used in a form she could accept.

"You do understand, Mary?"

"Isn't it too late?"

Tormenting fears were again upon her.

"It may be. Certainly the doctors think the balance of probability against it. But I firmly hold that such a view is not for those who know this poor sailorman. I cannot help thinking that no one is allowed to get so far along the road in the face of such paralyzing odds without there being still some hope of putting the thing through."

They stood in the middle of the road, looking at each other.

"I ... I think you are right. You understand him so much better than I."

"That we can neither of us believe." He spoke with a queer laugh.

"But if I am asking you to give too much, you mustn't blame me. You have always taught me to ask too much." His voice tailed off in the oddest way. "But this time I don't ask for myself."

She was crying. "I was never the woman that you thought me. Or that I thought myself."