More than one long and golden hour the Sailor wandered through bracken and heather. He didn't know in the least where he was going, and there seemed no reason why he should care. He had a wonderful sense of adventure. Here was something real. This was the noble and gorgeous life to which the streets of Blackhampton, the deck of the Margaret Carey, the sojourn at King John's Mansions were the dreadful but necessary prelude.

After a long beat across country, and away, away he knew not where, he struck a path which carried him into a charming village tucked away under a hill. It then occurred to him that he was very hungry. The sign of "The Chequers" in the village street brought the fact home. At this neat hostelry with a roof of thatch he was able to declare himself a bona fide traveler, and was rewarded with a noble chunk of bread and cheese and a glass of beer, a thin and tepid brew whose only merit was the quality of wetness. But such fare and an hour's rest on a wooden bench in a cool parlor with a sanded floor was Elysium.

After that again the road – but only the road in a manner of speaking. The Sailor, roaming now the high seas of his desire, was in no mood at present for the ordered routes of commerce. Let it be the open country. Let him be borne across multitudinous seas on the wings of fancy. Therefore, as a bird flies, he struck across the pathless heather. The bracken rose waist high, but wherever it ran he followed it, now through the close-grown woods, now across furzy common and open spaces.

On and on he wandered all the golden afternoon. And then quite suddenly came evening and an intense weariness which was not made less because he didn't know where he was. He only knew that he was in Surrey and very tired. But, all at once, Providence declared itself in an unexpected way. Straight ahead among the trees was a tiny opening, and threading it a hum of telegraph wires.

This could only mean that a main road was at hand. Quickened to new life by such a rare piece of luck he pushed on, thanking his stars. Evidently he could not be far from a town or a railway. As a fact, he had struck the Guilford Road, and a hundred yards or so along it the friendliest milestone he had ever met assured him that he was three miles from the country town of Surrey.

Those three miles, honest turnpike as they were, proved a test of endurance. But they ended at last. Footsore and limping now, he crossed a bridge and entered a railway station where the lamps were lit already. And then Providence really surpassed itself! The last train to London was due in twenty minutes.

The Sailor flung himself down on a seat in the station in a state of heavenly fatigue. It had been such a day as he had never known, and his final gracious act of fortune was a fitting climax. It was true the last train to London was twenty minutes late, but it sufficed to know that it was surely coming.

Finally it came, and the Sailor entered it. Moreover, he had the carriage to himself, and was able to lie full length on the cushions in an orgy of weariness. He dozed deliciously all the way to Waterloo, which he reached at something after eleven. It was striking midnight by St. Clement's Church as he turned the latchkey in the door of No. 14 Brinkworth Street. At a quarter past that hour the Sailor was in his bed too deeply asleep even to dream of Athena.

XI

One of Mary Pridmore's first acts upon her return from Greylands was to summon the sailorman to dine in Queen Street. She was a little peremptory. That is to say, she could take no refusal; it seemed that a certain Mr. Nixon, a Cabinet Minister, had expressed a wish to meet the author of "Dick Smith."

Miss Pridmore was a little excited by this desire on the part of Mr. Nixon. In her opinion, if you were a member of the Cabinet, it was important you should be met; yet Henry Harper did not attach as much significance to the matter as perhaps he ought to have done. In fact, he was a little vague upon the subject. He knew that the newspapers talked mysteriously about the Cabinet, and abused it fearfully every morning with the most devoted and courageous persistency; also he remembered that one of Auntie's temporary husbands was said to have been a cabinetmaker when he was in work, but neither this fact, nor the attitude of the public press, seemed to afford any reason why he must in no circumstances disappoint the President of the Board of Supererogation.

"Please don't be so cool to the Cabinet, Mr. Harper," Athena pleaded, while the young man sought a way out of the impasse. "When such a man as Mr. Nixon asks to meet you, it means that you have really arrived. Not that it matters. You have arrived without any help from Mr. Nixon. But he is an old friend of mother's, and he is greatly interested in your book."

The Sailor wanted very particularly, but as delicately as he could, to escape the ordeal of dining in Queen Street, Mayfair. Instinct warned him that this would prove a different matter from a party in Bury Street. The truth was, he had not been able to overcome an unreasonable awe of Lady Pridmore. Then, too, he had an uneasy feeling that he was a little out of his depth with the Prince. Yet again, Miss Silvia, friendly and amusing as she was, gave him a slight sense of hidden, invisible barriers which he could never hope to surmount.

Mary, however, would take no denial. Her mother would be much disappointed, and so would Mr. Nixon, and so would Uncle George, who had also expressed a desire to be present. In Lady Pridmore's opinion this really "ranged" Mr. Harper, and with such a person as Lady Pridmore, that was an operation of the first magnitude, not, of course, that her daughter confided that to the Sailor in so many words.

"I am talking nonsense," said Mary, with that sharp turn of frankness which the Sailor adored in her. "If you don't want to meet people, there is no reason why you should. I sometimes feel exactly the same myself. Mr. Nixon is a bore, and Uncle George – well, he's Uncle George. It will be a tiresome evening for you, but Edward is coming and Jack Ellis, whom we both like, and his fiancée who is quite amusing, and if you really decide to come, I am sure it will please mother."

The Sailor saw, however, that it would please Mary. And that was reason enough for him to accept the invitation after all.

When the day came, it was in fear and trembling that he put on his new evening clothes, with which he had been provided by Edward Ambrose's own tailor. Upon a delicate hint from his friend, he discarded his first suit, which he now realized was a little too crude for a growing reputation. Yet, rather oddly, he could hardly be brought to understand that he had such a thing as a reputation. Indeed, it was only in Queen Street, Mayfair, that a reputation seemed to matter.

A dinner party at No. 50 was a serious affair. He had to begin by shaking hands with Lady Pridmore, who looked like a lady from the walls of Burlington House. A week ago he had been with Mary to the Royal Academy of Arts. Then, also, formidable looking strangers abounded. Foremost of these was Uncle George.

Uncle George was an elderly admiral retired. Among the younger members of the family he was known as "Old Blunderbore." His voice, once of great use on the quarterdeck, was really a little too much for a drawing-room of modest dimensions. Also, his opinions were many and they were unqualified, his stories were long and quite pointless as a rule, he was apt to indulge in a kind of ventriloquial entertainment when he ate his soup, he drank a goodish deal, and was not always very polite to the servants; yet being Uncle George, his sister-in-law seemed to feel that he was a person of immense consequence, and he did not disguise the fact that he considered her a sensible woman for thinking so.

Uncle George seized the hand of the Sailor in marine style, and said, in his loud voice, "Good book you wrote, young man. 'Adventures of Paul Jones.' Good book. Some of it's true, I'm told, and, of course, that makes it much better."

At this point, Mary the watchful led the Sailor gently but firmly out of the range of Uncle George.

That warrior, baffled of his prey, fell like a sea leopard upon Edward Ambrose, who, however, countered him quietly and with frank amusement.

"Never made a bigger mistake in your life, Ambrose, than to compare 'Paul Jones' with 'Robinson Crusoe.'"

Ambrose did not consider it necessary to point out that he had never once mentioned "Paul Jones," and that he was too wise a man ever to compare anything with "Robinson Crusoe." Instead, he laughed the note that was quite peculiar to himself, and mildly asked Uncle George what he thought of the latest performance of the First Lord of the Admiralty.

In the meantime, the Sailor was having to sustain the shock of a first meeting with the President of the Board of Supererogation. His mentor had already described this pillar of the Government as a bore. But the Sailor was not yet sufficiently acquainted with things and men to regard the Right Honorable Gregory Nixon with this measure of detachment.

The impact, however, of the Front Bench manner was less severe than was to have been expected. The voice of Mr. Nixon was nothing like so formidable as his appearance.

"A great pleasure, a great pleasure." Mr. Nixon had a trick of repeating his phrases. "Pray, how did you come to write it all? Angrove thinks" – to the profound and morbid horror of the public press, Mr. Angrove at that moment was the Prime Minister of the realm – "Angrove thinks…"

Happily, the butler informed his mistress that dinner was served, and for a time Mr. Nixon had to postpone what Mr. Angrove thought.

It was only for a time, however, that it was possible to do so. The President of the Board of Supererogation did all his thinking vicariously in terms of Mr. Angrove. But there was just one subject on which Mr. Nixon had opinions of his own. That was the subject of divorce, and it may have been for the reason that it was not a cabinet matter. Before the evening was over, it was tolerably certain that the President of the Board of Supererogation would identify himself publicly and at length with the minority report.

This cheerless fact had to be taken for granted. Divorce in its various aspects was a constant preoccupation of the right honorable gentleman. He had never been married himself, and was never likely to be. Had this not been the case Mr. Gregory Nixon must have felt bound to defer to any opinion that Mr. Angrove might or might not have expressed upon the matter.

"We are in for it now," whispered Mary to the Sailor, who was eating the entrée, sweetbreads with white sauce, and wishing he could use a knife as well as a fork. "But it's Uncle George's fault. He's given him a chance with his silly and pointless story, which is a mere perversion of a very much better one. There, what did I say?"

It was tragically true, that Mr. Nixon was already in the saddle.

"If he would only say something sensible! He is like that character in Dickens – but his King Charles's head is the minority report."

Still, this may have been a woman's thrust, because Mary did not happen to be an admirer of Mr. Nixon's personality. Yet he was a very agreeable man, and on the subject of divorce he talked extraordinarily well, perhaps quite as well as it is possible for any human being to talk on such a vexed and complicated subject.

Mr. Nixon knew that, no doubt. The fact was, that just as one man may have a genius for playing chess, another for shooting clay pigeons, a third for hitting a golf ball or casting a fly, so this eminent politician had a genius for discussing divorce. He may have felt that on that topic no human being could stand against him at a small dinner party where the conversation was general. Lady Pridmore seemed grieved when her hero began to expose this flaw in the armor of a Christian gentleman, Uncle George became furious and was suddenly rude to the butler, Mary and Silvia and the Prince looked the picture of misery, and Edward Ambrose came within an ace of choking himself.

All the same, the discussion which followed was of breathless interest to one person at that table. Henry Harper hung on every word of it.

Mary herself was the first to take up the gage of battle. And she took it up gallantly. She didn't think for a moment that divorce ought to be made more easy. In her opinion, it ought to be made more difficult.

"Why?" asked Mr. Nixon. He asked no more than that, but there was the weight of several royal commissions in the inquiry.

But Mary had the flame of war in her eyes. She knew what Mr. Nixon's opinions were, and she was heartily ashamed of them. On this subject she could make a very good show for herself, because she happened to feel strongly upon it.

Mr. Nixon was a latitudinarian. He would have divorce brought within the reach of all classes of the community. It should be equally accessible to the poor and the well-to-do. He would greatly amplify the grounds for obtaining it, and even went the length of affirming that the mutual consent of the contracting parties should alone suffice. Moreover, he saw no reason why marriage should not be a contract like any other for a period of years.

Mary bluntly considered these were abominable heresies, and several other women, not to mention Mr. Ellis and Uncle George, shared her opinion. Even Lady Pridmore, who in her heart was horrified by her hero's fall, was moved to remark that it would be impossible to carry on society on any such basis.

"Of course it would," said Mary, with a vehemence that was startling. "For better for worse, for richer for poorer, that's my view. I dare say it's old-fashioned, but I'm sure it's right."

"There I dissent," said Mr. Nixon. "It isn't right at all. Our marriage laws are out of date. They can no longer meet the needs of the community. They are as far behind the twentieth century as a stage coach or a two-horse omnibus. Untold misery and hardship have been inflicted upon the population, and it is high time there was practical legislation upon the subject."

"Marriage," said Mary, with charming pugnacity, "is the most sacred contract into which it is possible for any human being to enter. And if it is not to be binding, I really don't know what contract is or can hope to be. What is your view of the question, Mr. Harper?" she asked, suddenly, of the young man at her side.

The Sailor had been listening with an attention almost painful. But he felt quite unequal to taking a part in the argument. Therefore he contented himself with the general statement that it ought to be easier to get a divorce than it was at present.

"I am grieved to hear you say that," said Athena, with a note in her voice which startled him. "I know I am rather a fanatic, but I really don't see how there can be two opinions upon the matter."

Feeling very unhappy, Henry Harper did not try to contest the point. But this was a subject upon which she felt so strongly that she could not leave it in such a very unsatisfactory state.

"Those whom God hath joined let no man put asunder," said Athena. "How is it possible to go beyond that! I would even abolish divorce altogether."

The young man felt a sudden chill.

"Suppose a man had been divorced through no fault of his own?" he said in a far-away voice.

"I don't think a divorced person ought ever to remarry."

"That might hit some people very hard," said Henry Harper, perhaps without a full understanding of the words he used.

"There are bound to be cases in which it would work very cruelly. One realizes that. But ought it to make a difference? There must always be those who have to be sacrificed for the sake of the community."

Henry Harper appreciated the strength of that argument. At the moment, in the strangeness of his surroundings, he was not able to grapple with it. But he was dimly aware that almost unknown to himself he had come to the border of another perilous country.

XII

As the June night was ablaze with stars Edward Ambrose and the Sailor walked some of the way home together.

"I hope you enjoyed yourself," said Ambrose.

Was it possible for a man to do otherwise with gray-eyed Athena sitting beside him nearly the whole evening!

"I enjoyed myself very much," said the Sailor simply.

"The Pridmores are very old friends of mine. An interesting family, I always think."

They walked on in silence for a little time, and then the Sailor said suddenly:

"Mary seems to have strong ideas about divorce." As he spoke he felt a curious tension.

"Surprisingly so," said Edward Ambrose, in his detached way, "for such a modern girl. Somehow one doesn't quite expect it."

"No," said the Sailor.

"It is the measure of her genuineness." Edward Ambrose seemed at that moment to be addressing his words less to the young man at his side than to the stars of heaven. "But she is very complex to me. I've known her all her life… I've watched her grow up." A whimsical sigh was certainly addressed to the stars of heaven. "It is rather wonderful to see all that Pridmore and Colthurst crassness and narrowness, that has somehow made England great in spite of itself – if you know what I mean…"

The Sailor didn't know in the least, but that was of no consequence to Edward Ambrose in the expression of his mood.

"… touched to finer issues."

The Sailor knew now, but his companion gave him no chance to say so.

"She's so strong and fine, so independent, so modern!" Edward Ambrose laughed his rare note, yet for some reason it was without gaiety.

The truth was he had long been deeply in love with Mary Pridmore, but it was only in certain moments that he realized it.

"I suppose you knew Klondyke?" said the Sailor, wistfully.

"Her brother Jack? Oh, yes. He's thrown back to some Viking strain. One can hardly imagine his being the brother of Otto and the son of his mother or the son of his father."

"I can imagine Mary being the sister of Klondyke," said the Sailor.

"Really! I never see her at quite that angle myself. He's a funny chap." Edward Ambrose was really not thinking at all of any mere male member of the Pridmore family. "Might have done well in diplomacy. Son of his father. Ought to have gone far." Again Edward Ambrose loosed his wonderful note, but it had nothing to do with Jack Pridmore. "And what does he do? And yet, the odd thing is he may be right."

"Klondyke's a white man from way back," said the Sailor abruptly.

The phrase was new to Edward Ambrose, who, as became a man with a keen literary sense, turned it over in his mind. And then he suddenly remembered that he owed it to his friends, the Pridmores, to be a little more guarded in his utterances concerning them.

"Good night, Henry," he said, offering his hand at the corner of Albemarle Street.

In the same moment, a human derelict fastened upon the Sailor, who had to send him away with the price of a bed before he could return his friend's good night.

Thinking their thoughts they went their ways. Edward Ambrose crossed in a black mood to St. James Street. For a reason he could not explain a sudden depression had come upon him. A sharp sense of life's tragic complexity had entered his mind. In order to correct its dire influence he lit a pipe and started to read a manuscript which had come to him that morning. It was called, "A Master Mariner," Book the First.

"Damn it all," he thought a few minutes later. "There can be no possible doubt about that boy. If he can only put the whole thing through in this style, what a book it will be!"

XIII

In the meantime, the Sailor was walking home to Brinkworth Street, distributing largesse.

"Poor, broken mariners," he said, when his pockets were finally empty. "Poor marooned sailormen. I expect all these have seen the Island of San Pedro. I expect some of them are living on it now."

He went to bed, but not to sleep. He had begun to realize that he was getting into very deep waters. The truth was, he was growing a little afraid. He had been a little afraid ever since that magical Sunday in the wilds of Surrey. And now tonight, as he lay tossing on his pillow, a very definite sense of peril was slowly entering into him. If he was not very careful, the tide of affairs would prove too much, and he would find himself carried out to sea.

As he lay awake through the small hours, the sinister truth grew clear that grim forces were closing upon him again. His will was in danger of being overpowered, if it was not overpowered already. Mary Pridmore had come to mean so much to him that it seemed quite impossible to hold life on any terms without her. Yet it was morbidly weak to admit for a single moment anything of the kind.

During the week that followed, Mary and "the sailorman" undertook several harmless little excursions. One afternoon she called for him with Silvia in her mother's car and drove by way of Richmond Park to Hampton Court. For the Sailor that was a very memorable day. He had a walk alone in the palace garden with Athena, while Silvia, with a keen sense of the fitness of things, paid a call upon some friends of hers in what she impudently called the Royal Workhouse.

This enchanted afternoon, Mary and the Sailor didn't talk divorce. Many things in earth and heaven they talked about, but that subject was not among them. They scaled the heights together, they roamed the mountain places. She told him that the first book of "A Master Mariner," which she had been allowed to read in manuscript, had carried her completely away, and she most sincerely hoped that he would be able to sustain a soaring eagle flight through the hundreds of pages of the two books to follow.

"But you will," she said. "I am convinced of it. I have made up my mind that you must."

As she spoke the words the look of her amidst a glory of color set his soul on fire. It was as much as he could do to refrain from taking the hand of Athena. He wanted to cry aloud his happiness. She looked every inch of royal kin as thus she stood amid flowers, a high and grave wisdom enfolding her. She was indeed a daughter of the gods, tall, slender, virile, an aureole of purest poetry upon her brows that only John Milton could have hymned in their serenity.

"Edward Ambrose thinks as I do about it," she said. "He dined with us last night, and afterwards we had a long talk. I hardly dare tell what hopes he has of you. And, of course, one oughtn't. But, somehow, I can't help it … I can't help it…"

She spoke to herself rather than to him. The words fell from her lips involuntarily, as if she were in a dream.

"You are so far upon the road that last night Edward and I willed it together that you should go to the end of your journey. We both feel, somehow, that you must … you must … you must!"

Again the Sailor wanted to cry out as he looked at her. He thought he could see the tears leap to her eyes. But that may have been because they had leaped to his own.

He could not trust himself to speak. He dare not continue to look at her.

"What a life you must have had!"

It was the first time that note had been on the lips of Athena. The sound of it was more than music, it was sorcery.

"You must have had a wonderful life. And I suppose in some ways…" The beautiful voice sank until it could not be heard, and then rose a little. "In some ways, it must have been … rather terrible."

He did not speak nor did he look at her. But had he been a strong man armed, he would have fled that magician-haunted garden. He would have left her then, he would never have looked on her again.

"… Rather terrible." In an odd crescendo those words fell again from the lips of Athena. "Edward thinks so. But it's an impertinence, isn't it? Except that some lives are the property of others … of the race. You are not offended?"

"No," he said. And then feeling that it might have the sound of yes, he gathered defiantly all that remained of his will. "My life has not been at all like what you and Mr. Ambrose think. It has been just hell."

"That is exactly what we imagined it had been," said Athena, with divine simplicity. "And perhaps that is why" – her eyes were strangely magnetic – "Edward and I have willed it that your life to come…"

A surge of wild blood suddenly darkened the wonderful lamp of Aladdin in the right-hand corner of his brain.

"… shall be crowned with more than thorns."

She seemed almost to shiver.

"I beg your pardon," she said, suddenly applying the curb of a powerful will. "It is impertinence. But there is always something about this old garden which seems to carry one beyond oneself. It was wrong to come."

"Don't say that…" The Sailor hardly knew that he was speaking. "We are running a risk … but … but it's worth it. Let us sit on that seat a minute. Shall we?"

"Yes, and wait for Silvia." She was using the curb with a force that was almost brutal, as many a Pridmore and many a Colthurst had used it before her.

The Sailor was shattered. But new strength had come to Athena. All the jealous, inherited forces of her being had rallied to the call of her distress.

"By the way." It was not Athena who was speaking now, but Miss Pridmore, whose local habitation was Queen Street, Mayfair. "I nearly forgot to tell you" – it was a clear note of gaiety – "a great event has happened. You shall have one guess."

There was not so much as half a guess in the sailorman.

"There's news of Klondyke. My mother had a letter from him this morning. It's his first word for nearly a year. He sent a postcard from Queenstown to say he will be home tomorrow, and that I must clean out of his own particular bedroom. Whenever he turns up and wherever he comes from, I have always to do that at a moment's notice."

"Where's he been this time?" asked the Sailor.

"Round the whole wide world, I believe."

"Working his passage?"

"Very likely. As soon as he arrives, you will have to come and see him. We are going to keep you as a surprise. Your meeting will be great fun, and you are to promise that Silvia and I will be allowed to see it. And you are to behave as if you were aboard the brigantine Excelsior– it will always be the brigantine Excelsior to me – and greet him in good round terms of the sea. Now promise, please … and, of course, no one will mind if you swear. It will hardly be as bad as Uncle George in a temper."