Young Blood

There was heat enough and fire enough in the young fellow's tone to bring blood to the cheek of an older man so spoken to. Lowndes looked delighted; he even clapped his hands.

"Well said, Ringrose; said like a sportsman!" he cried. "I like to hear a young chap talk out straight from the chest like that. I think all the more of you, my son, and you shall have your old bag by five o'clock if I bust for it. Only look here: don't you be angry with your grandfather!"

Harry burst out laughing in his own despite.

"It's impossible to be angry with you," he said. "Still, I must – "

"I see you must. So I'll jump into a hansom and I'll raise the fiver to redeem your bag if I have to drive all over the City of London for it!"

Harry laughed again, and sat down to wait as Lowndes went clattering down the stone stair-case. And as he sat there alone he suddenly grew pale. In his rage with Lowndes he had forgotten Lowndes's daughter, and now the thought of her turned his heart sick. He found it possible to forgive the father for an indictable offence. It should have been comparatively easy to forgive the daughter for receiving in her sore need the virtual proceeds of that crime. Yet the thought that she had done so was intolerable to him, and his heart began a sudden tattoo as a stiff step was heard ascending the stairs.

"Mr. Backhouse," said Harry, as that worthy reappeared, "I want a plain answer to a plain question."

"I shall be delighted to give you one," said Mr. Backhouse, "if it is in my power, sir."

"Do you know where my bag is?"

Mr. Backhouse said nothing.

"Then I see you do," cried Harry; "and so do I; and that was not my question at all. Did Miss Lowndes know about it?"

"No, sir."

"You are sure?"

"Certain! She never saw him take it out; he took jolly good care she shouldn't; and he came back with a yarn as long as your leg to account for the money."

Harry's feelings were a revelation to himself; they were the beginning of the greatest revelation of his life. But he cloaked them carefully and passed the better part of an hour reading the newspaper and exchanging an occasional remark with the lessee of the office. And no later than a quarter to four, which was long before Harry expected him, Lowndes was back. But he looked baffled, and there was no bag in his hand.

"Will either of you fellows lend me five bob for the cab?" he panted. "I've been all over the City of London."

Mr. Backhouse shook his head.

"And I can't," said Harry, "for I have barely enough to take me down to Guildford and back."

"Then we must keep him waiting too. Here, Jimmy" – to the office-child – "you stand by to take a telegram. Now, Ringrose, you're going to see me play trumps. Old Bacchus has seen 'em before." Indeed, that specimen's unwholesome face was already wreathed in dissipated grins.

Lowndes seized a telegram form, sat down with his hat on the back of his head, and began writing and talking at the same time.

"Like you, Ringrose, I have a near relative in the Church. An own brother, my boy, who cut me off with a text more years ago than I care to count, and hasn't spoken to me since. He's about as High as that uncle of yours is Low, but luckily there's one point on which even the parsons think alike. They funk a family scandal even more than other folks, and they funk it most when they have episcopal aspirations like my precious brother. What d'ye think of this for him, boys? 'Wire solicitors pay me fiver by five o'clock or I shall never see six. – Gordon Lowndes.' What price that for an ace of trumps? Not many parsons would care to go into the witness-box and read that out at their own brother's inquest – eh, Ringrose?"

Harry only stared.

"Too many fives," objected Mr. Backhouse, with an air of literary censorship. "Make it a tenner."

"Most noble Bacchus! For every reason, a tenner it is."

"And it's too obscure, that about never seeing six. Six what? I know what you mean, but trust a parson to miss the point. Your last was much better – that about the police in the outer office."

"We can't play the police twice. It's suicide or nothing this time – but hold on!" He seized another form and scribbled furiously. "How about this, then? 'Wire solicitors pay me ten pounds immediately or I am a dead man by 5.15. – Gordon.' That'll give you time to do it, Ringrose, with a good hansom."

"Oh, I daresay there's another train," said Harry. "And candidly, Mr. Lowndes, rather than drive you to this sort of thing, I should prefer to say I've lost my luggage and be done with it."

"Not a bit of it, my good fellow. I've got you into this mess, and I'll get you out again or know the reason why. I assure you, Ringrose, I'm quite enjoying it. Besides, there'll be a fiver over, thanks to old Bacchus here. Jimmy, run like sin with this telegram. Don't say you haven't a bob, Bacchus? Good man, you shall reap your reward when we've got this boy his blessed bag."

Lowndes waited until half-past four, talking boisterously the whole time. Harry had never heard him tell more engaging stories, nor come out with better phrases. At the half-hour, however, he drove off in his long-suffering hansom to his brother's solicitors. And by a quarter-past five he was back, in the same hansom, with the bag on top.

Harry met him down below.

"Here you are, my son!" cried Gordon Lowndes, jumping out with his face all flushed with triumph and twitching with glee. "That reverend brother of mine has never been known to fail when approached in a diplomatic manner – no more will your reverend uncle, if you try my tip on him! No, boy, it shall never happen again: jump in, and you've heaps of time. Cabby, take this gentleman on to Waterloo main line, and I'll pay for the lot. Will fifteen bob do you?"

"Thank'ee, sir, it'll do very well."

And Harry drove off with his hand aching from a pressure which he had, indeed, returned; almost forgetting the enormity of the other's offence in the zest, humour, and promptitude of the amend; and actually feeling, for the moment, under a fresh obligation to Gordon Lowndes.

CHAPTER XIV

A CHANGE OF LUCK

Quite apart from all that came of it, this visit to Guildford was something of a psychological experience at the time. The devotion of Harry Ringrose to his first school had been for years second only to his love for his old home, and now that the old home was his no longer, the old school was the place he loved best on earth. He knew it when he saw the well-remembered building once more in the golden light of that summer's evening. He knew it when he knelt in the school chapel and heard the most winning of human voices reading the school prayers. The chapel was new since Harry's day, but the prayers were not, and they reminded him of his own worst acts since he had heard them last. Mr. Innes sang tenor in the hymn, as he had always done, and Harry kept his ear on the voice he so loved; but the hymn itself was one of his old favourites, associated for ever with his first school, and it reminded him too. He looked about him, among the broad white collars, the innocent pink faces, and the open, singing mouths. He wondered which of the boys were leaving this term, and if one of them would leave with better resolutions than he had taken away with him seven years before … and yet… He had not been worse than others, but better perhaps than many; and yet there seemed no measure to his vileness, there certainly was none to his remorse, as he knelt again and prayed as he seemed never to have prayed since he was himself a little boy there at school. Then the organ pealed, and Mr. Innes went down the aisle with his grave fine face and his swinging stride. Mrs. Innes and Harry went next; the masters followed in their black gowns; and they all formed line in the passage outside, and the boys filed past and shook hands and said good-night on their way up to the dormitories.

Harry's visit extended over some days, and afterwards he used sometimes to wish that he had cut it short after the first delightful night. He was a creature of moods, and only a few minutes of each day were spent in chapel. It was a novel satisfaction to him to smoke his pipe with his old schoolmaster, to talk to him as man to man, and he knew too late that he had talked too much. He did not mean to be bombastic about his African adventures, but he was anxious that Mr. Innes should realise how much he had seen. Harry was in fact a little self-conscious with the man he had worn in his heart so many years, a little disappointed at being treated as an old boy rather than as a young man, and more eager to be entertaining than entertained. So when he came to the end of his own repertoire he related with enthusiasm some of the exploits of Gordon Lowndes. But the enthusiasm evaporated in the process, for Mr. Innes did not disguise his disapproval of the type of man described. And Harry himself saw Lowndes in a different light henceforth; for this is what it is to be so young and impressionable, and so keenly alive to the influence of others.

The best as well as the strongest influence Harry had ever known was that of Mr. Innes himself. He felt it as much now as ever he had done – and in old days it had been of Innes that he would think in his remorse for wrongdoing, and how it would hurt Innes that a boy of his should fall so far short of his teaching. It never occurred to him then that his hero was probably a man of the world after all, capable of human sympathy with human weakness, and even liable to human error on his own account. Nor did this strike him now – for Harry Ringrose was as yet too far from being a man of the world himself. The old idolatry was as strong in him as ever. And the old taint of personal emulation still took a little from its worth.

"If only I could be more like you!" he broke out when Mr. Innes had spoken a kind, strong word or two as Harry was going. "I used to try so hard – I will again!"

"What, to get like me?" said Innes with a laugh. "I hope you'll be a much better man than I am, Harry. But it's time you gave up trying to be like anybody."

"How do you mean?" asked Harry, his enthusiasm rather damped.

"Be yourself, old fellow."

"But myself is such a poor sort of thing!"

"Never mind. Try to make yourself strong; but don't think about yourself. Don't you see the distinction? Only think about doing your duty and helping others; the less you dwell upon yourself, the easier that will be. Good-bye, old fellow. Let me know how you get on."

"Good-bye, sir," said Harry. "You don't know how you help me! You are sending me away with a new thought altogether. I will do my best. I will indeed."

"I know you will," said Mr. Innes.

So ended the visit.

The new thought made its mark on Harry's character, but it was not all that he brought away with him from Guildford. The visit fired a train of sufficiently important material results, though the fuse burnt slowly, and for weeks did not seem to be burning at all. Harry came away with the match in his pocket, in the shape of a letter of introduction to a firm of scholastic agents.

Mr. Innes had by no means encouraged his old boy to try to become a schoolmaster; he feared that the two years in Africa would tell against Harry rather than in his favour, and then without a degree there was absolutely no future. He thought better of Harry's chances in literature. It was he who had encouraged the boy's very earliest literary leanings and attempts, and he took the kindest view of the accepted verses, of which he was shown a copy; but when he heard of the many failures which had followed that one exceeding small success, and of all the repulses which Harry had met with in the City, his old master was silent for some minutes, after which he sat down at his desk and wrote the introduction there and then.

"These fellows will get you something if anybody can," he had said; and, indeed, the gentlemen in question, on whom Harry called on his way back to Kensington, seemed confident of getting him something without delay. He had come to them in the very nick of time for next term's vacancies. They would send him immediately, and from day to day, particulars of posts for which he could apply; they had the filling of so many, there was little doubt but that he would obtain what he wanted before long. Their charge would be simply five per cent. on the first year's salary, which would probably be fifty pounds, or sixty if they were lucky.

Harry went home jubilant. The agents had taken down his name and his father's name without question or comment. They declined to regard the years in Africa as a serious disqualification, much less since he had been a tutor there; and Harry began to think that Mr. Innes had taken an unnecessarily black view of his chances. He knew better in a few weeks' time.

It is true that at first he had a thick letter every day, containing the promised particulars of several posts. How used he grew to the clerk's mauve round hand, to the thin sheets of paper damp from the gelatine that laid each opening before Heaven knew how many applicants – to the unvarying formula employed! The Reverend So-and-So, of Dashton, Blankshire, would require in September the services of a junior master, possessing qualifications thereupon stated with the salary offered. The vacant posts were in all parts of the country, and the sanguine Harry pictured himself in almost every county in England while awaiting his fate in one quarter after another. In few cases were the qualifications more than he actually possessed, for he was at least capable of taking the lowest form in a preparatory school, while he could truthfully describe himself as being "fond of games." But the agents' clients would have none of him, and as time went on the agents' envelopes grew thin with single enclosures, and came to hand only once in a way.

And yet several head-masters wrote kindly answers to Harry's application, and two or three seemed on the verge of engaging him. Some interviewed him at the agents' offices, and one had him down to luncheon at his school, paying Harry's fare all the way into Hertfordshire and back. Another only rejected him because Harry was not a fast round-hand bowler, and a fast round-hand bowler was essential – not for the school matches, in which the masters took no part, but for the town, for which they played regularly every Saturday: the music-master bowled slow left, and fast right was indispensable at the other end. But the failures that were all but successes were only the harder to bear, and the bitter fact remained that the lad was no more wanted in the schoolroom than in the office. It struck him sometimes as a grim commentary on the education he had himself received. A thousand or two had been spent upon it, and he had not left school a dunce. He knew as much, perhaps, as the average boy on going up to the university from a public school, and of what use was it to him? It did not enable him to earn his bread. He felt some bitterness against the system which had taught him to swim only with the life-belt of influence and money. It had been his fate to be pitched overboard without one.

Not that he was idle all this time. In the dreadful dog-days, when none but the poor were left in London, and the heat in the little flat became well-nigh insupportable, so that poor Mrs. Ringrose was quite prostrate from its effects, her son sat in his shirt and trousers and plied his pen again in sheer desperation. He wrote out the true incident which he had been advised would make a capital magazine article if written down just as he told it. So he tried to do so; and sent the result to Uncle Tom. It came back almost by return of post, with a civil note from the Editor, saying that he could not use the story as the end was so unsatisfactory. It was unsatisfactory because the story happened to be true, and the author never thought of meddling with the facts, though he weighted his work with several immaterial points which he had forgotten when telling the tale verbally. He now flew to the opposite extreme, and dashed off a brief romance unadulterated by a solitary fact or a single instance of original observation. This was begun with ambitious ideas of a match with some shilling monthly, but it was only offered to the penny weeklies, and was burnt unprinted some few months later.

One day, however, the day on which Harry went down to Hertfordshire at a pedagogue's expense, and was coming back heavy with the knowledge that he would not do, the spirit moved him to invest a penny in a comic paper with a considerable vogue. He needed something to cheer him up, and for all he knew this sheet might be good or bad enough to make him smile; it was neither, but it proved to be the best investment he had ever made. It contained a conspicuous notice to contributors, and a number of sets of intentionally droll verses on topics of the week. Before Harry got out at King's Cross he had the rough draft of such a production on his shirtcuff; he wrote it out and sent it off that night; and it appeared in the very next issue of that comic pennyworth.

And this time Harry felt that he had done something that he could do again; but days passed without a word from the Editor, and it looked very much as though the one thing he could do would prove to be unpaid work. At length he determined to find out. The paper's strange name was Tommy Tiddler ("St. Thomas must be your patron saint," said Mrs. Ringrose), and its funereal offices were in a court off the Strand. Harry blundered into the counting-house and asked to see the Editor, at which an elderly gentleman turned round on a high stool and viewed him with suspicion. What did he want with the Editor?

"I had a contribution in the last issue," said Harry, nervously, "and – and I wanted to know if there would be any payment."

"But that has nothing to do with the Editor," said the old gentleman. "That is my business."

He got down from his stool and produced a file of the paper, in which the price of every contribution was marked across it, with the writer's name in red ink. Harry was asked to point out his verses, and with a thrill he saw that they were priced at half-a-sovereign. In another minute the coin was in his purse and he was signing the receipt with a hand that shook.

"Monday is our day for paying contributors," the old gentleman said. "In future you must make it convenient to call or apply in writing on that day."

In future!

On his way out he had to pass through the publishing department, where stacks of the new issue were being carried in warm from the machines. It was not on sale until the following day, but Harry could not resist asking to look at a copy, for he had sent in a second set of verses on the appearance of the first. And there they were! He found them instantly and could have cried for joy.

The Inner Circle was never a slower or more stifling route than on that August afternoon; neither was Harry Ringrose ever happier in his life than when he alighted before the train stopped at High Street, Kensington. He had done it two weeks running. He knew that he could go on doing it. He was earning twenty-six pounds a year, and earning it in an hour a week! He almost ran along the hot street, and he took the stairs three at a time. As he fumbled with his latch-key in his excitement, he heard talking within and had momentary misgivings; but his lucky day had dawned at last: the visitor was Fanny Lowndes.

CHAPTER XV

IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS

Not since the incident of the dressing-bag had Harry heard a word of Lowndes. He had no idea what had become of that erratic financier or of his daughter, and as to the former he no longer greatly cared. You may have the knack of carrying others with you, but it is dangerous so to carry them against their own convictions; a reaction is inevitable, and Harry had undergone one against Gordon Lowndes. In the warmth of the moment he had freely forgiven the pawning of his bag, but he found it harder to confirm that forgiveness on subsequent and cool reflection. And the visit to Guildford had something to do with this. It had replaced old standards, it had brightened old ideals; and the influence of Mr. Innes was directly antagonistic to that of Lowndes. Add the scholastic disappointments and the literary attempts, and it will be obvious that in the lad's life there had been little room of late for the promoter of the H.C.S. & T.S.A.

But of the promoter's daughter Harry Ringrose had thought often enough. His mind had flown to her in many a difficulty, and it was only his revised view of Lowndes which had kept him from going down to Richmond for her sympathy upon the fate of the manuscript for which she was responsible. Even this afternoon he had thought of her in the Underground, side by side with his mother, as the one other person whom he longed to tell of his success. So that it seemed little short of a miracle to find these two together.

Fanny had already been shown the first Tiddler verses, and she now shared Mrs. Ringrose's joy over the half-sovereign and the news of a second accepted contribution. It was delightful to Harry to see her kind face again, to see it happy, and to remember (as he suddenly did) in what trouble he had seen it last. And now he noticed that the girl was brightly dressed, with new gloves and a brilliant sunshade, and he could not but ask after her father and his affairs.

It appeared that the Highland Crofters' Salmon and Trout Supply Association, Limited, was still on the tapis, but under another name and other patronage. The Earl of Banff was no longer connected with the enterprise, but in his stead Lowndes had secured the co-operation of one the Hon. Pelham Tankervell, a personage who appeared to be on a friendly footing with the light and leading of both Houses of Parliament. This Harry gathered from a sheaf of most interesting letters which Fanny Lowndes had brought with her at her father's request. These letters were addressed to Mr. Tankervell by the most illustrious persons, nearly all of whom gave that gentleman permission to use their distinguished names as patrons of the Crofter Fisheries, Limited, which was the old Company's new name. It was difficult to glance over the letters without imbibing some degree of confidence, and it was plain to Harry that Miss Lowndes herself had more than of old. She told him that the Earl's solicitors had compounded with her father for a substantial sum, and she pointed to her gorgeous parasol as one of the cab-load of purchases with which her father had driven home after cashing the lawyers' cheque. It was plain that the little house on Richmond Hill was in much better case than heretofore; indeed, Fanny Lowndes told Harry as much, though she did add that she no more wished to see him Secretary of the Crofter Fisheries than of the H.C.S. & T.S.A.

"But you believe in it now?" he could not help saying.

"More than I did – decidedly."

"Then why should you dislike to see me in it?"

"You are fit for something better; and – and I think that after this Mr. Tankervell will expect to be made Secretary."

Harry was neither surprised nor vexed to hear it; but he was thinking less of this last sentence than of the last but one.

"You call writing for the Tiddler something better?"

"For you – I do. It is a beginning, at any rate."

Until her train went he was telling her of his prose flights and failures, and she was bemoaning her share in one of them. The High Street seemed a lonely place as he walked home to the flat. Yet the day was still the happiest that he had spent in London.

The third week he sent a couple of offerings to Tommy Tiddler, but only one of them got in. He tried them with two again. Meanwhile there was an unexpected development in an almost forgotten quarter.

After nearly a month's interval, there came one more thin envelope from the scholastic agents; and this time it was a Mrs. Bickersteth, of the Hollies, Teddington, who required a resident master immediately, to teach very little boys. Very little also was the salary offered. It was thirty pounds; and Harry was for tossing the letter into the first fire they had sat over in the flat, when his mother looked up from the socks which she was knitting for him, and took an unexpected line.

"I wish you to apply for it," said she.

"What, leave you for thirty pounds, when I can make twenty-six at home?"

"That will make fifty-six; for you would be sure to have some time to yourself, and you say the verses only take you an hour on the average. At any rate I wish you to apply, my boy. I will tell you why if they take you."