Young Blood

"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."

CHAPTER X

A FIRST OFFENCE

When Harry Ringrose vowed that he would get something into a magazine within a week, he simply meant that he would write something and get it taken by some editor. But even so he had no conception of the odds against him. Few beginners can turn out acceptable matter at a day's notice, and fewer editors accept within the week. Fortune, however, often favours the fool who rushes in.

Harry began wisely by deciding to make his first offering poetical, for verses of kinds he had written for years, and besides, they would come quicker if they came at all. Undoubted indolence is also discernible in this choice, but on the whole it was the sound one, and that very evening saw Harry set to work in a spirit worthy of a much older literary hand.

He found among the books the selected poems of Shelley which he had brought home some mid-summers before as a prize for his English examination. His own language was indeed the only one for which poor Harry had shown much aptitude, though for a youth who had scribbled for his school magazine, and formed the habit of shedding verses in his thirteenth year, he was wofully ill-read even in that. Let it be confessed that he took down his Shelley with the cynical and shameless intention of seeking what he might imitate in those immortal pages. The redeeming fact remains that he read in them for hours without once recalling his impious and immoral scheme.

It was years since he had dipped into the book, and its contents caused him naive astonishment. He had read a little poetry in his desultory way. Tennyson he loved, and Byron he had imitated at school But in all his adventurings on the Ægean seas of song, he had never chanced upon such a cluster of golden islets as the lyrics in this selection. The epic mainland had always less attraction for him. He found it demand a concentrative effort, and Harry was very sorry and even ashamed, but he loved least to read that way. So he left "Alastor" and "The Witch of Atlas" untouched and untried, and spent half the night in ecstasies over such discoveries as the "Indian Serenade" and "Love's Philosophy." These were the things for him; the things that could be written out on half a sheet of notepaper or learnt in five minutes; the things he loved to read, and would have died to write.

He forgot his proposed revenge; he forgot his uttered vow. He forgot the sinister design with which he had taken up his Shelley, and it was pure love of the lines that left him, when he had blown out his candle, saying his last-learnt over to himself:

"Rarely, rarely, comest thou,Spirit of Delight!Wherefore hast thou left me nowMany a day and night?Many a weary night and day'Tis since thou art fled away.How shall ever one like meWin thee back again?With the joyous and the freeThou wilt scoff at pain.Spirit false! thou hast forgotAll but those who need thee not.As a lizard with the shadeOf a trembling leaf,Thou with sorrow art dismayed – "

Here he stuck fast and presently fell asleep, to think no more of it till he was getting up next morning. He was invaded with a dim recollection of this poem while the water was running into his bath. As he took his plunge, the lines sprang out clear as sunshine after rain, and the man in the bath made a discovery.

They were not Shelley's lines at all. They were his own.

At breakfast he was distraught. Mrs. Ringrose complained. Harry pulled out an envelope, made a note first, and then his apology. Mrs. Ringrose returned as usual to her room, but Harry did not follow her with his pipe. He went to his own room instead, and sat down on the unmade bed, with a pencil, a bit of paper, and a frightful furrow between his downcast eyes. In less than half-an-hour, however, the thing was done: a highly imitative effort in the manner of those verses which he had been saying to himself last thing the night before.

The matter was slightly different: the subject was dreams, not delight, and instead of "Spirit of Delight," the dreams were apostrophised as "Spirits of the Night." Then the form of the stanza was freshened up a little: the new poet added a seventh line, rhyming with the second and fourth, while the last word of the fifth was common to all the stanzas, and necessitated a new and original double-rhyme in the sixth line of each verse. Harry found a rhyming dictionary (purchased in his school-days for the benefit of the school magazine) very handy in this connection. It was thus he made such short work of his rough draft. But the fair copy was turned out (in the sitting-room) in even quicker time, and a somewhat indiscreet note written to the Editor of Uncle Tom's Magazine, though not on the lines which Mrs. Ringrose had once suggested. A "stamped directed envelope" was also prepared, and enclosed in compliance with Uncle Tom's very explicit "Notice to Contributors." Then Harry stole down and out, and posted his missive with a kind of guilty pride: after all, the deed itself had been a good deal less cold-blooded than the original intention.

Mrs. Ringrose knew nothing. She had seen Harry scribble on an envelope, and that was all. She knew how the boy blew hot and cold, and she did him the injustice of concluding he had renounced his vow, but the kindness of never voicing her conclusion. Yet his restless idleness, and a something secretive in his manner, troubled her greatly during the next few days, and never more than on the Saturday morning, when Harry came in late for breakfast and there was a letter lying on his plate.

"You seem to have been writing to yourself," said Mrs. Ringrose, as she looked suspiciously from Harry to the letter.

"To myself?" he echoed, and without kissing her he squeezed round the table to his place.

"Yes; that's your writing, isn't it? And it looks like one of my envelopes!"

It was both. Harry stood gazing at his own superscription, and weighing the envelope with his eye. He was afraid to feel it. It looked too thin to contain his verses. It was too thin! Between finger and thumb it felt absolutely empty. He tore it open, and read on a printed slip the sweetest words his eyes had ever seen.

"The Editor of Uncle Tom's Magazine has great pleasure in accepting for publication – "

The title of the verses (a very bad one) was filled in below, the date below that, and that was all.

"Oh, mother, they've accepted my verses!"

"Who?"

"Uncle Tom's Magazine."

"Did you actually send some verses to Uncle Tom?"

"Yes, on Tuesday, the day after Uncle Spencer was here. I've done what I said I'd do. He'll see I'm not such an utter waster after all."

"And you – never – told – me!"

His mother's eyes were swimming. He kissed them dry, and began to make light of his achievement.

"Mother, I couldn't. I didn't know what you would think of them. I didn't think much of them myself, nor do I now. The verses in Uncle Tom are not much. And then – I thought it would be a surprise."

"Well, it wouldn't have been one if I had known you had sent them," said Mrs. Ringrose; and now she was herself again. "I only hope, my boy," she added, "that they will pay you something."

"Of course they will. Uncle Tom must have an excellent circulation."

"Then I hope they'll pay you something handsome. Did you tell the Editor how long we have taken him in?"

"Mother!"

"Then I've a great mind to write and tell him myself. I am sure it would make a difference."

"Yes; it would make the difference of my getting the verses back by return of post," said Harry, grimly.

Mrs. Ringrose looked hurt, but gave way on the point, and bade him go on with his breakfast. Harry did so with the Uncle Tom acceptance spread out and stuck up against the marmalade dish, and one eye was on it all the time. Afterwards he went to his room and read over the rough draft of his verses, which he had not looked at since he sent them away. He could not help thinking a little more of them than he had thought then. He wondered how they would look in print, and referred to one of the bound Uncle Toms to see.

"Well, have you brought them?" said Mrs. Ringrose when he could keep away from her no longer.

"The verses? No, dear, I have only a very rough draft of them, which you couldn't possibly read; and I could never read them to you – I really couldn't."

"Not to your own mother?"

He shook his head. He was also blushing; and his diffidence in the matter was not the less genuine because he was swelling all the time with private pride. Mrs. Ringrose did not press the point. The pecuniary side of the affair continued to interest her very much.

"Do you think fifty?" she said at length, with considerable obscurity; but her son knew what she was talking about.

"Fifty what?"

"Pounds!"

"For my poor little verses? You little know their length! They are only forty-two lines in all."

"Well, what of that? I am sure I have heard of such sums being given for a short poem."

"Well, they wouldn't give it for mine. Fifty shillings, more like."

"No, no. Say twenty pounds. They could never give you less."

Harry shook his head and smiled.

"A five-pound note, at the very outside," said he, oracularly. "But whatever it is, it'll be one in the eye for the other uncle! Upon my word, I think we must go to his church to-morrow evening."

"It will mean going in to supper afterwards, and you know you didn't like it last time."

"I can lump it for the sake of scoring off Uncle Spencer!"

But that was more easily said than done, especially, so to speak, on the "home ground," where a small but exclusively feminine and entirely spiritless family sang a chorus of meek approval to the reverend gentleman's every utterance. When, therefore, Mr. Walthew added to his melancholy congratulations a solemn disparagement of all the lighter magazines (which he boasted were never to be seen in his house), the echo from those timid throats was more galling than the speech itself. But when poor Mrs. Ringrose ventured only to hint at her innocent expectations as to the honorarium, and her brother actually laughed outright, and his family made equally merry, then indeed was Harry punished for the ignoble motives with which he had attended his uncle's church.

"My good boy," cried Uncle Spencer, with extraordinary geniality, "you will be lucky if you get a sixpence! I say again that I congratulate you on the prospect of getting into print at all. I say again that even that is not less a pleasure than a surprise to me. But I would not delude myself with pecuniary visions until I could write serious articles for the high-class magazines!"

Between his mother's presentiments and his uncle's prognostications, the contributor himself endeavoured to strike a happy medium; but even he was disappointed when an afternoon post brought a proof of the verses, together with a postal order for ten-and-sixpence. Harry showed it to his mother without a word, and for the moment they both looked glum. Then the boy burst out laughing, and the lady followed suit.

"And I had visions of a fiver," said Harry.

"Nay, but I was the worst," said his mother, who was laughing and crying at the same time. "I said twenty!"

"It only shows how much the public know about such things. Ten-and-six!"

"Well, my boy, that's better than what your uncle said. How long did it take you to write?"

"Oh, not more than half an hour. If it comes to that, the money was quickly earned."

For a minute and more Mrs. Ringrose gazed steadily at an upper sash, which was one's only chance of seeing the sky through the windows of the flat. Her lips were tightly pursed; they always were when she was in the toils of a calculation.

"A thousand a year!" she exclaimed at length.

"What do you mean, mother?"

"Well, if this poem only took you half an hour, you might easily turn out half a dozen a day. That would be three guineas. Three guineas a day would come to over a thousand a year."

Harry laughed and kissed her.

"I'll see what I can do," he said; "but I'm very much afraid half a dozen a week will be more than I can manage. Three guineas a week would be splendid. I shouldn't have to go round begging for work any more; they would never give me half as much in an office. Heigho! Here are the verses for you to read."

He put on his hat, and went into the High Street to cash his order. It was the first money his pen had ever earned him in the open market, and, since the sum seemed to Harry too small to make much difference, he determined to lay out the whole of it in festive and appropriate, if unjustifiable fashion. The High Street shops met all his wants. At one he bought a ninepenny tin of mulligatawny, and a five-and-ninepenny bottle of Perrier Jouet; at another, some oyster patties and meringues and half a pound of pressed beef (cut in slices), which came to half-a-crown between them. The remaining shilling he spent on strawberries and the odd sixpence on cream. He would have nothing sent, so we may picture a triumphant, but rather laborious return to the flat.

He found his mother in tears over the proofs of his first verses; she shed more when he showed her how he had spent his first honorarium. Yet she was delighted; there had been very little in the house, but now they would be able to do without the porter's wife to cook, and would be all by themselves for their little treat. No one enjoyed what she loved to call a "treat" more than Mrs. Ringrose; and perhaps even in the best of days she had never had a greater one than that now given her by her extravagant son. It was unexpected, and, indeed, unpremeditated; it had all the elements of success; and for one short evening it made Harry's mother almost forget that she was also the wife of a fraudulent and missing bankrupt.

Harry, too, was happier than he had been for many a day. In the course of the evening he stole innumerable glances at his proof, wondering what this friend or that would think of the verses when they came out in Uncle Tom. Once it was through Lowndes's spectacles that he tried to look at them, more than once from Mr. Innes's point of view, but most often with the sterling grey eyes of the girl on Richmond Hill, who had so earnestly begged him to write. He had heard nothing of her from that evening to this; her father had not mentioned her in the one letter Harry had received from him, and neither of them had been near the flat. But he believed that Fanny Lowndes would like the verses; he knew that she would encourage him to go on.

And go on he did, with feverish energy, for the next few days. But the good luck did not repeat itself too soon; for though the first taste of printer's ink gave the lad energy, so that within a week he had showered verses upon half the magazines in London, all those verses returned like the dove to the ark, because it did not also bring him good ideas, and his first success had spoilt him a little by costing no effort. Even Uncle Tom would have no more of him; and the unhappy Harry began to look upon his imitation of Shelley as the mere fluke it seemed to have been.

CHAPTER XI

BEGGAR AND CHOOSER

The one communication which Harry Ringrose had received from Gordon Lowndes was little more than a humorous acknowledgment of the sum refunded to him after the sale of the trophies. The writer warmly protested against the payment of a debt which he himself had never regarded in that light. The worst of it was that he was not in a position to refuse such payment. The prospects of the Highland Crofters' Salmon and Trout Supply Association, Limited, were if anything rosier than ever. But it was an axiom that the more gigantic the concern, the longer and more irritating the initial delay, and no news of the Company would be good news for some time to come.

"Meanwhile I am here every day of my life," concluded Lowndes, "and pretty nearly all day. Why the devil don't you look me up?"

Indeed, Harry might have done so on any or all of those dreadful days which took him a beggar to the City of London. His reason for not doing so was, however, a very simple one. He did not want Lowndes to think that he disbelieved in the H.C.S. & T.S.A., as he must if he knew that Harry was assiduously seeking work elsewhere. Harry was not altogether sure that he did utterly disbelieve in that colossal project. But it was difficult to put much confidence in it after the revelations at Richmond, and when it was obvious that the promoter's own daughter lacked confidence in his schemes. Certainly it was impossible to feel faith enough in the Highland Crofters' to leave lesser stones unturned. And yet to let Lowndes know what he was doing might be to throw away three hundred a year.

So Harry had avoided Leadenhall Street on days when the company-promoter's boisterous spirits and exuberant good-humour would have been particularly grateful to him. But this was before he became a successful literary man. He wanted Lowndes to hear of his success; he particularly wanted him to tell his daughter. He was not sure that he should avoid Leadenhall Street another time, nor did he when it came.

This was after the successful effort had realised only half-a-guinea, and when some subsequent attempt was coming back in disgrace by every post. Mrs. Ringrose had taken a leaf out of Harry's book, and committed a letter to the post without even letting him know that she had written one. An answer came by return, and this she showed to Harry in considerable trepidation. It was from the solicitor whom she had mentioned on the day after Harry's arrival. In it Mr. Wintour Phipps presented his compliments to Mrs. Ringrose, and stated that he would be pleased to see her son any afternoon between three and four o'clock.

"I thought old friends were barred?" Harry said, reproachfully. "I thought we were agreed about that, mother?"

"But this is not an old friend of yours or mine, my dear. I never knew him; I only know what your father did for him. He paid eighty pounds for his stamps, so I think he might do something for you! And so does he, you may depend, or he would not write that you are to go and see him."

"He doesn't insist upon it," said Harry, glancing again at the solicitor's reply. "He puts it pretty formally, too!"

"Have I not told you that I never met him? It was your father and his father who were such old friends."

"So he writes to you through a clerk!"

"How do you know?"

"It's the very hand they all tell me I ought to cultivate."

"I have no doubt he is a very busy man. I have often heard your father say so. Yet he can spare time to see you! You will go to him, my boy – to please your mother?"

"I will think about it, dear."

The mid-day post brought back another set of rejected verses. Harry swallowed his pride.

"It's all right, mother; I'll go and see that fellow this afternoon."

And there followed the last of the begging interviews, which in character and result had little to differentiate it from all the rest. Harry did indeed feel less compunction in bearding his father's god-son than in asking favours of complete strangers. He also fancied that he was better fitted for the law than for business, and, when he came to Bedford Row, he could picture himself going there quite happily every day. The knowledge, too, that this Wintour Phipps was under obligations to his father, sent the young fellow up a pair of dingy stairs with a confidence which had not attended him on any former errand of the kind. And yet in less than ten minutes he was coming down again, with his beating heart turned to lead, but with a livelier contempt for his own innocence than for the hardness of the world as most lately exemplified by Wintour Phipps. Nor would the last of these interviews be worth mentioning but for what followed; for it was on this occasion that Harry went on to Leadenhall Street to get what comfort he could from the one kind heart he knew of in the City of London.

But there an unexpected difficulty awaited him. He remembered the number, but he looked in vain for the name of Gordon Lowndes among the others that were painted on the passage wall as you went in. So he doubted his memory and tried other numbers; but results brought him back to the first, and he climbed upstairs in quest of the name that was not in the hall. He never found it; but as he reached the fourth landing a peal of unmistakable laughter came through a half-open door. And Harry took breath, for he had found his friend.

"Very well," he heard a thin voice saying quietly, "since you refuse me the slightest satisfaction, Mr. Lowndes, I shall at once take steps."