Harry could have told him, but he held his tongue. He was trying to reconcile the present tone of Lowndes, which had in it a strong dash of remorse, with the countless extravagances he had already seen him commit. Lowndes seemed to divine his thoughts.
"You may wonder," said he, "how I managed to raise wind enough for the provender I had undertaken to bring home. I wonder if I dare tell you? I called at your tailors' on my way to the noble Earl's, and – and I struck them for a fiver! There, there, Ringrose, they'll get it back next week. I've lived on odd fivers all this year, and I simply didn't know where else to turn for one to-day. Yet they want me to pay an income tax! I sent in my return the other day, and they sent it back with 'unsatisfactory' written across my writing. So I sent it back with 'I entirely agree with you' written across theirs, and that seems to have shut them up. One of the most pestilent forms of creditor is the tax gatherer, and the income tax is the most iniquitous of all. Never you fill one in correctly, Ringrose, if you wish me to remain your friend."
"But," said Harry, as they reached the station and were waiting for the train, "you not only keep servants – "
"Servants?" cried Lowndes. "We have only one, and she's away at the seaside. I send her there for a change whenever she gets grumpy for want of wages. I tell her she looks seedy, and I give her a sovereign to go. It has the air of something thrown in, and it comes a good deal cheaper than paying them their wages, Ringrose. I make you a present of the tip for what it's worth."
"But you have a man-servant, too?"
"A man-servant! My good fellow, that's no servant of mine. I only make it worth his while to lend a hand."
"Who is he, then?"
"This is your train; jump in and I'll tell you."
The spectacled eyes were twinkling, and the sharp nose twitching, when Harry leant out of the third-class carriage window.
"Well, who is it?"
"The old dodge, Ringrose, the old dodge."
"What's that?"
"The Man in Possession!"
And Gordon Lowndes was left roaring with laughter on the platform.
CHAPTER IX
THE CITY OF LONDON
It was a considerably abridged version of his visit to Richmond which Mrs. Ringrose received from her son. Gordon Lowndes had indeed given Harry free leave to tell his mother what he liked, but not even to her could the boy bring himself to repeat all that he had seen and heard. He preferred to quote the frank admissions of Lowndes himself, and that with reticence and a definite object. It was Harry's ambition to remove his mother's bitterness against the young woman who had never been to see her; and, by explaining the matter as it had been explained to him, he easily succeeded, since Mrs. Ringrose would have sympathised and sorrowed with her worst enemy when that enemy was in distress. In uprooting one prejudice, however, her son went near to planting another in its stead.
"I only hope, my boy, that you are not going to fall in love with her."
"Mother!"
"She seems to have made a deep impression on you."
"But not that sort of impression! She is a fine creature, I can see, and we got on capitally together. We shall probably become the best of friends. But you need have no fears on any other score. Why, she must be ever so much older than I am."
"She is twenty-seven. He told me so."
"There you are! Twenty-seven!" cried Harry, triumphantly.
But it was not a triumph he enjoyed. Twenty-seven seemed a great age to him, and six years an impassable gulf. Doubtless it was just as well, especially when a person did not in the least resemble another person's ideal; still, he had not supposed she was so old as that. He wished he had not been told her age. Certainly it gave him a sense of safety, just as he was beginning to wonder what the view would be like from Richmond Hill to-day. But it was a little dull to feel so safe as all that.
This was the day on which Harry Ringrose had intended to pack up his African curios and send them off to Lowndes's office. But, after the conversation of which the above was a snatch, his mother charged him to do nothing of the kind. If Mr. Lowndes was in such difficulties, it was certainly not their place to add to them by claiming further favours at his hands. Harry agreed, but said the idea had originated with Lowndes himself. His mother was firm on the point, and counselled him either to sell his own wares or to listen to her and give up the idea.
So Harry haunted the Kensington Public Library, and patiently waited his turn for such journals as the Exchange and Mart. But it was in an evening paper that he came across the advertisement which brought the first grist to his mill. A lady in a suburb guaranteed good prices for secondhand books, left-off jewellery, and all kinds of bric-á; – brac and "articles of vertu," and inserted her advertisement in places as original as itself. It caught Harry's eye more than once before the idea occurred to him; but at length he made his way to that suburb with a pair of ostrich eggs, an assegai, and a battle-axe studded with brass-headed nails. He came back with a basket of strawberries, a pot of cream, and several shillings in his pocket. Next evening a post-office order to the amount of that first-class fare to London was remitted to Gordon Lowndes, while a new silk hat hung on the pegs, to give the boy a chance in the City. All that now remained of the curios were one pair of ostrich eggs and a particularly murderous tomahawk, with which Harry himself chopped up the empty packing-cases to save in firewood.
So a few days passed, and the new clothes came home, and Harry Ringrose was externally smart enough for the Stock Exchange itself, before the first letter came from Uncle Spencer. He had spoken to several of the business men among his congregation, but, he regretted to say, with but little result so far. Not that this had surprised him, as conscience had of course forbidden him to represent his nephew as other than he was in respect of that training and those qualifications in which Harry was so lamentably deficient. He understood that for every vacant post there were some hundreds of applicants, all of whom could write shorthand and keep books, while the majority had taken the trouble to master at least one foreign language. Harry had probably learned French at school, but doubtless he had wasted his opportunities in that as in other branches. Shorthand, however, appeared to be the most essential requirement, and, as it was unfortunately omitted from the public-school curriculum, Mr. Walthew was sending Harry a "Pitman's Guide," in the earnest hope that he would immediately apply himself to the mastery of this first step to employment and independence. Meanwhile, one gentleman, whose name and address were given, had said that he would be glad to see Henry if he cared to call, and of course it was just possible that something might come of it. Henry would naturally leave no stone unturned, and would call on this gentleman without delay. Uncle Spencer, however, did not fail to add that he was not himself sanguine of the result.
"He never is," said Harry. "What's the good of going?"
"You must do what your uncle says," replied Mrs. Ringrose, to whom the letter had been written.
"But what's the good if he's given me away beforehand? He will have told the fellow I can't even write an office fist, and am generally no use, so why should he take me on? And if the fellow isn't going to take me on, why on earth should I go and see him?"
Mrs. Ringrose pointed out that this was begging the question, and reminded Harry that his Uncle Spencer took a pessimistic view of everything. She herself then went to the opposite extreme.
"I think it an excellent sign that he should want to see you at all, and I feel sure that when he does see you he will want to snap you up. What a good thing you have your new clothes to go in! Your uncle doesn't say what the business is, but I am quite convinced it has something to do with Africa, and that your experience out there is the very thing they want. So be sure that you agree to nothing until we have talked it over."
Harry spent a few minutes in somewhat pusillanimous contemplation of the Pitman hieroglyphs, wondering if he should ever master them, and whether it would help him so very much if he did. It was not that he was afraid of work, for he only asked to be put into harness at once and driven as hard as they pleased. But it was a different matter to be told first to break oneself in; and to begin instantly and in earnest and alone required a higher order of moral courage than Harry could command just then.
But he went into the City that same forenoon, and he saw the gentleman referred to in his uncle's letter. The interview was not more humiliating than many another to which Harry submitted at the same bidding; but it was the first, and it hurt most at the time. No sooner had it begun than Harry realised that he had no clue as to the relations subsisting between Mr. Walthew and the man of business, nor yet as to what had passed between them on the subject of himself, and he saw too late that he had allowed himself to be placed in a thoroughly false position. It looked, however, as though the clergyman had been less frank than he professed, for Harry was put through a second examination, and his admissions received with the most painful tokens of surprise. He was even asked for a specimen of his handwriting, which self-consciousness made less legible than ever; in the end his name was taken, "in case we should hear of anything," and he was bowed out with broken words of gratitude on his lips and bitter curses in his heart.
He went home vowing that he never would submit to that indignity again: yet again and again he did.
Mr. Walthew was informed of the result of the interview which he had instigated, and wrote back to say how little it surprised him. But he mentioned another name and another address, and, in short, sent his nephew hat-in-hand to some half-dozen of his friends and acquaintances, none of whom showed even a momentary inclination to give the lad a trial. Harry did not blame them, but he did blame his uncle for making him a suppliant in one unlikely quarter after another. Yet he never refused to go when it came to the point; for, though a week slipped by without his learning to write a line of shorthand, Harry Ringrose had character enough not to neglect a chance – no matter how slight – for fear of a rebuff – no matter how brutal.
Yet he never forgot the exquisite misery of those unwarrantable begging interviews: the excitement of seeking for the office in the swarming, heated labyrinth of the City – the depression of the long walk home with another blank drawn from the bag. How he used to envy the smart youths in the short black jackets and the shiny hats – all doing something – all earning something! And how stolidly he looked the other way when in one or two of those youths he recognised a schoolfellow. How could he face anybody he had ever known before? – an idler, a pauper, and disgraced. They would only cut him as he had been cut that first morning on his way to the old home; therefore he cut them.
But one day he was forced to break this sullen rule: his arm was grabbed by the man he had all but passed, and a sallow London face compelled his recognition.
"You're a nice one, Ringrose!" said a voice with the London twang. "Is it so many years since you shared a cabin on a ship called the Sobraon, with a chap of the name of Barker?"
"I'm awfully sorry," cried Harry with a blush. "You – I wasn't looking for any one I knew. How are you, Barker?"
"Oh, as well as a Johnny can be in this hole of a City. Thinking of knocking up again and getting the gov'nor to send me another long voyage. I'm not a man of leisure like you, Ringrose. What brings you here?"
"Oh, I've only been to see a man," said Harry, without technical untruth.
"I pictured you loafin' about that rippin' old place in the photos you used to have up in our cabin. Not gone to Oxford yet, then?"
"No – the term doesn't begin till October. But – " Harry tried to tell the truth here, but the words choked him, and the moment passed.
"Not till October! Four clear months! What a chap you are, Ringrose; it makes me want to do you an injury, upon my Sam it does. Look at me! At it from the blessed week after I landed – at it from half-past nine to six, and all for a measly thirty-five bob a week. How would you like that, eh? How would you like that?"
Harry's mouth watered, but he said he didn't know, and contrived to force another smile as he held out a trembling hand.
"Got to be going, have you?" said the City youth. "I thought you bloated Johnnies were never in a hurry? Well, well, give a poor devil a thought sometimes, cooped up at a desk all day long. Good-bye – you lucky dog!"
The tears were in Harry's eyes as he went his way, yet the smile was still upon his lips, and it was grimly genuine now. If only the envious Barker knew where the envy really lay! How was it he did not? To the conscious wretch it was a revelation that all the world was not conversant with his disappointment and his disgrace.
To think that he had talked of going up to Oxford next term! It had never been quite decided, and he blushed to think how he must have spoken of it at sea. Still more was he ashamed of his want of common pluck in pretending for a moment that he was going up still.
"'Pluck lost, all lost,'" he thought, remorsefully; "and I've lost it already! Oh, what would Innes think of me, for carrying his motto in my heart when I don't need it, and never acting on it when I do!"
That night he wrote it out on the back of a visiting card, and tacked the tiny text to the wall above his bed: —
"MONEY LOST – LITTLE LOST
HONOUR LOST – MUCH LOST
PLUCK LOST – ALL LOST."
And his old master's motto sent Harry Ringrose with a stout heart on many another errand to the City, and steeled and strengthened him when he came home hopeless in the evening. Yet it was very, very hard to live up to; and many also were the unworthy reactions which afflicted him in those dark summer days, that he had expected to be so free from care, and so full of happiness.
One afternoon he crept down from a stockbroker's office, feeling smaller than ever (for that stockbroker had made the shortest work yet of him), to see a man selling halfpenny papers over a placard that proclaimed "extraordinary scoring at Lord's." A spirit of recklessness came over Harry, and buying a paper was but the thin end of his extravagance. A minute later he had counted his money and found enough to take him to St. John's Wood and into the ground; and it was still the money that he had obtained for his curios; and town was intolerable with that sinister London heat which none feel more than your seasoned salamander from the tropics. Harry's new clothes were sticking to him, and he thought how delicious it would be at Lord's. To think was to argue. What was sixpence after all? He had had no lunch, and that would have cost him sixpence more or less; he would do without any lunch, and go to Lord's instead.
It was delicious there, and Harry was so lucky as to squeeze into a seat. Quite a breeze, undreamt of in the City, blew across the ground, blowing the flannels of the players against their bodies and fetching little puffs of dust from the pitch. The wicket was crumbling, the long scores of the morning were at an end. It was only the tail of the Middlesex team that Harry was in time to see batting, but they were good enough for him. All his life he had nourished a hopeless passion for the game, and every care was forgotten until the last man was out.
"Why – Harry?"
He had been looking at the pitch, and he spun round like an arrested criminal. Yet the strong hand on his shoulder was also delicate and full of kindness, and he was gazing into the best face he had ever seen. His ideal woman he was still to find, but his ideal man he had loved and worshipped from his twelfth year; and here he stood, supple and athletic as ever, only slimmer and graver; and their hands were locked.
"Mr. Innes!"
"I had no idea you were in England, Harry."
"I have been back three weeks."
"Why didn't you write?"
He knew everything. Harry saw it in the kind, strong face, and heard it in a voice rich with sympathy and reproach.
"I was too ashamed," he murmured – and he hung his head.
"You might have trusted me, old fellow," said Mr. Innes. "Come and sit on top of the pavilion and tell me all about yourself."
At any other time it would have been a sufficient joy to Harry Ringrose to set foot in that classic temple of the sacred game; now he had eyes for nothing and nobody but the man who led him up the steps, through the cricketing throng, up the stairs. And when they sat together on top, and the ground was cleared, and play resumed, not another ball did Harry watch with intelligent eyes. He was sitting with the man to whom he had been too proud to write, but whose disciple he had been at heart for many a year. He was talking to the object of his early hero-worship, and he found him his hero still.
Mr. Innes listened attentively, gravely, but said very little himself. He appreciated the difficulty of starting in life without money or influence, and was too true a friend to make light of it. He thought that business would be best if only an opening could be found. Schoolmastering led to nothing unless one had money or a degree. Still they must think and talk it over, and Harry must come down to Guildford and see the new chapel and the swimming-bath. Could he come for a day or two before the end of the term? Was he sure he could leave his mother? Harry was quite sure, but would write when he got home.
Then it was time for Mr. Innes to go, but first he gave Harry tea in the members' dining-room, and after that a lift in his hansom as far as Piccadilly. So that Harry reached home both earlier and in better case than he might have done; whereupon Mrs. Ringrose, hearing his key in the latch, came out to meet him with a face of mystery which contrasted oddly with his radiance.
"Oh, mother," he cried, "whom do you think I've seen! Innes! Innes! and he's the same as ever, and wants me to go and stay with him, so you were right, and I was wrong! What is it then? Who's here?" His voice sank in obedience to her gestures.
"Your Uncle Spencer," she whispered, tragically.
"Delighted to see him," cried Harry, who had been made much too happy by one man to be readily depressed by any other.
"He has been waiting to see you since five o'clock, my boy."
"Has he? Very sorry to hear that, uncle," said Harry, bursting into the sitting-room and greeting the clergyman with the heartiness he was feeling for all the world. Mr. Walthew looked at his watch.
"Since a quarter before five, Mary," said he, "and now it wants seven minutes to six. Not that I shall grudge the delay if it be attributable to the only cause I can imagine to account for it. The circumstances, Henry, are hardly those which warrant levity; if you have indeed been successful at last, as I hope to hear – "
"Successful, uncle?"
"I understand that you have been to see the gentleman on the Stock Exchange, who was kind enough to say that he would see you, and of whom I wrote to you yesterday?"
"So I have! I had quite forgotten that."
"Forgotten it?" cried Mr. Walthew.
"I beg your pardon, Uncle Spencer," said Harry, respectfully enough; "but since I saw your friend I have been with Mr. Innes my old schoolmaster, the best man in the whole world, and I am afraid it has put the other interview right out of my head."
"He did give you an interview, however?"
"Yes, for about a minute."
"And nothing came of it, as usual?" sneered the clergyman.
"And nothing came of it – as usual – I am very sorry to say, Uncle Spencer."
"And what time was this?"
"Between two and three."
"You must excuse me, Henry, but I am doing my best to obtain employment for you – I cannot say I have much hope now – still, I am doing my best, and I am naturally interested in the use you make of your time. May I ask – as I think I have a right to ask – where you have spent the afternoon?"
"Certainly, Uncle Spencer; at Lord's Cricket-ground."
Harry was well aware that he had delivered a bombshell, and he quite expected to receive a broadside in return. But he had forgotten Uncle Spencer's mode of expressing superlative displeasure. It has been said that Mr. Walthew never smiled, but there were occasions when a weird grin shed a sort of storm-light on his habitual gloom. That was when indignation baffled invective, and righteous anger fell back on holy scorn. The present was an occasion in point.
Mr. Walthew stared at Harry without a word, but gradually this unlovely look broke out upon him, and at last he positively chuckled in his beard.
"You are out of work, and too incompetent to obtain any," said he, "and yet you can waste your own time and your mother's money in watching a cricket-match!"
"I went without my lunch in order to do so," was Harry's defence. "And besides, it was my money – I got it for my spears and things."
"And you call that your money?" cried Uncle Spencer. "I would not talk about my money until I was paying for my board and residence under this roof!"
"Now, that will do!" cried Mrs. Ringrose. "That is my business, Spencer, and I will not allow you to speak so to my boy."
"Come, come, mother," Harry interrupted, "my uncle is quite right from his point of view. I admit I had qualms about going to Lord's myself. But I think I must have been meant to go – I know there was some meaning in my meeting Innes."
"If anything could surprise me in you, Henry," resumed Mr. Walthew, "it would be the Pagan sentiments which you have just pained me by uttering. May you live to pray forgiveness for your heresy, as also for your extravagance! But of the latter I will say no more, though I certainly think, Mary, that where my assistance has been invoked I have a right to speak my mind. The waste of money is, however, even less flagrant, in my opinion, than the waste of time. It is now several days, Henry, since I sent you a guide to shorthand. An energetic and conscientious fellow, as anxious as you say you are to work for his daily bread, could have mastered at least the rudiments in the time. Have you?"
"I told you he had not!" cried Mrs. Ringrose. "How can you expect it, when every day he has been seeking work in the City? And he comes in so tired!"
"Not too tired to go to Lord's Cricket-ground, however," was the not unjust rejoinder. "But perhaps his energy has found another outlet? Last time I was here he was going to write articles and poems for the magazines – so I understood. How many have you written, Henry?"
Harry scorned to point out that it was his mother's words which were being quoted against him, not his own; yet ever since his evening at Richmond he had been meaning to try his hand at something, and he felt guilty as he now confessed that he had not written a line.
"I was sure of it!" cried the clergyman. "You talk of getting employment, but you will not take the trouble to qualify yourself for the humblest post; you talk of writing, but you will not take the trouble even to write! Not that I suppose for a moment anything would come of it if you did! The magazines, Henry, do not open their columns to young fellows without literary training, any more than houses of business engage clerks without commercial education or knowledge. Yet it would be something even if you tried to write! It would be something if you wrote – as probably you would write – for the waste-paper basket and the dust-bin. But no, you seem to have no application, no energy, no sense of duty; and what more I can do for you I fail to see. I have written several letters on your account; I have risked offending several friends. Nothing has come of it, and nothing is likely to come of it until you put your own shoulder to the wheel. I have put mine. I have done my best. My conscience is an easy one, at any rate."
Mr. Walthew caught up his hat and brought these painful proceedings to a close by rising abruptly, as though his feelings were too much for him. Mrs. Ringrose took his hand without a word, and without a word Harry showed him out.
"So his conscience is easy!" cried the boy, bitterly. "He talks as if that had been his object – to ease his conscience – not to get me work. He has sent me round the City like a beggar, and he calls that doing his best! I had a good mind to tell him what I call it."
"I almost wish you had," said Mrs. Ringrose, shedding tears.
"No, mother, there was too much truth in what he says. I have been indolent. Nevertheless, I believe Innes will get me something to do. And meanwhile I intend to have my revenge on Uncle Spencer."
"How, my boy?"
Harry had never looked so dogged.
"By getting something into a magazine within a week."