XI
"The Adventures of Dick Smith" continued to make progress. Still, it was uphill work. But Henry Harper had a tenacity truly remarkable—"the angelic patience of genius," in the phrase of Balzac. Not that it ever occurred to the Sailor himself that he was a genius, or for that matter to Mr. Rudge, who did not believe in genius; yet, a little ironically, Miss Dobbs informed her friend Miss Bonser more than once that she would not be surprised if he turned out a bit of one.
Mr. Harper's first visit to King John's Mansions was not his last. Miss Dobbs saw to that. He was so odd that she was tempted to ask herself whether this particular game was worth the candle; also her friends were continually asking each other a similar question on her behalf. Nevertheless, "Harry" unconsciously formed quite a habit of going to tea round the corner in the Avenue on Sunday afternoons.
He was chaffed rather unmercifully at times by several of the ladies he found there, in particular by a certain Miss Gertie Press, by nature so witty and sarcastic that the young man was genuinely afraid of her. Still, it was a very valuable experience to have the entrée to this dashing circle, and often when he did not wish to go he forced himself to do so by sheer power of will, he had such a strong, ever-growing desire to improve himself and to increase his knowledge of the world.
Miss Gertie Press was a knut. It was about the time that portent was coming into vogue. She was one of the rather primitive kind to be found in the second row of the Frivolity chorus of which she was an ornament. She was extremely good-natured, as all these ladies seemed to be, at least in Mr. Harper's presence; but could he have heard their comments when he had returned to his "masterpiece," about which they were always chaffing him, he might have held other views. "Greased Lightning" was Miss Press's name for him, he was so extraordinarily quick in the uptake! "He's got the brains of my boot," said she. "Your money is on the wrong horse, Cora."
These ladies were really sorry for poor Cora. She must be potty to trouble herself with a thing like that. But the time came when Cora's friends began to think differently.
At the end of April, after nearly eight months' hard toil, in the course of which the "Adventures" had been cut down one half, and the half that remained had been remodeled and rewritten, and then written all over again, the Sailor packed up the manuscript, without any particular emotion except a vague one of simple despair, and sent it to the editor of Brown's Magazine, from whom he had not heard a word since September 5.
Mr. Rudge, after reading the revised version in a very conscientious manner, thought the grammar decidedly weak, and felt the thing must always suffer from being a work of the imagination. In his eyes nothing could soften that cardinal defect; but he was a liberal-minded man, and if Brown's Magazine was really interested in that sort of thing—well, it was no business of his to decry it. There was no accounting for taste after all, and Brown's was certainly the best magazine of its kind in existence.
A week passed, and then one evening the replica of a certain envelope which would ever remain upon the tablets of his memory was dropped through the slit in the shop door. It was addressed to "Henry Harper, Esquire," and ran as follows:
DEAR MR. HARPER,