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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42902 ***
+
+    _BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+    A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH.
+    UNDER TWO SKIES.
+    TINY LUTTRELL.
+    THE BOSS OF TAROOMBA.
+    THE UNBIDDEN GUEST.
+    THE ROGUE'S MARCH.
+    IRRALIE'S BUSHRANGER.
+    MY LORD DUKE.
+
+
+
+
+YOUNG BLOOD
+
+
+BY
+
+E. W. HORNUNG
+
+
+    "_When all the world is young, lad,
+      And all the trees are green;
+    And every goose a swan, lad,
+      And every lass a queen;
+    Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
+      And round the world away;
+    Young blood must have its course, lad,
+      And every dog his day._"
+
+    THE WATER BABIES.
+
+
+CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
+_LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE_
+1898
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                                 PAGE
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE OLD HOME                                                        1
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE BREAKING OF THE NEWS                                           11
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE SIN OF THE FATHER                                              20
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE NEW HOME                                                       32
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A WET BLANKET                                                      40
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE GAME OF BLUFF                                                  57
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ON RICHMOND HILL                                                   71
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A MILLIONAIRE IN THE MAKING                                        85
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE CITY OF LONDON                                                 95
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A FIRST OFFENCE                                                   111
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+BEGGAR AND CHOOSER                                                122
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE CHAMPION OF THE GODS                                          135
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE DAY OF BATTLE                                                 150
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A CHANGE OF LUCK                                                  165
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS                                       175
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A DAME'S SCHOOL                                                   183
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+AT FAULT                                                          195
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+MR. SCRAFTON                                                      203
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ASSAULT AND BATTERY                                               214
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+BIDING HIS TIME                                                   226
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+HAND TO HAND                                                      234
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+MAN TO MAN                                                        247
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE END OF THE BEGINNING                                          259
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+YOUNG INK                                                         276
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+SCRAFTON'S STORY                                                  287
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+A MASTERSTROKE                                                    304
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+RESTITUTION                                                       315
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+A TALE APART                                                      326
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected
+without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been
+retained as printed. The cover of this ebook was created by the
+transcriber and is hereby placed in the public domain.
+
+
+
+
+Young Blood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE OLD HOME.
+
+
+Harry Ringrose came of age on the happiest morning of his life. He was
+on dry land at last, and flying north at fifty miles an hour instead of
+at some insignificant and yet precarious number of knots. He would be
+at home to eat his birthday breakfast after all; and half the night he
+sat awake in a long ecstasy of grateful retrospect and delicious
+anticipation, as one by one the familiar stations were hailed and left
+behind, each an older friend than the last, and each a deadlier enemy
+to sleep. Worn out by excitement, however, he lay down for a minute
+between Crewe and Warrington, and knew no more until the guard came to
+him at the little junction across the Westmoreland border. Harry
+started up, the early sun in his sleepy eyes, and for an instant the
+first-class smoking-compartment was his state-room aboard the ship
+_Sobraon_, and the guard one of his good friends the officers. Then
+with a rush of exquisite joy the glorious truth came home to him, and
+he was up and out that instant--the happiest and the luckiest young
+rascal in the land.
+
+It was the 19th of May, and a morning worthy the month and the
+occasion. The sun had risen in a flawless sky, and the dear old English
+birds were singing on all sides of the narrow platform, as Harry
+Ringrose stretched his spindle-legs upon it and saw his baggage out of
+the long lithe express and into the little clumsy local which was to
+carry him home. The youth was thin and tall, yet not ungainly, with a
+thatch of very black hair, but none upon his sun-burnt face. He was
+shabbily dressed, his boots were down at heel and toe, there were
+buttons missing from his old tweed coat, and he wore a celluloid collar
+with his flannel shirt. On the other hand, he was travelling
+first-class, and the literary supplies tucked under his arm had cost
+the extravagant fellow several shillings at Euston book-stall. Yet he
+had very little money in his pocket. He took it all out to count. It
+amounted to five shillings and sixpence exactly, of which he gave
+half-a-crown to the guard for waking him, and a shilling to a porter
+here at the junction, before continuing his journey in the little
+train. This left him a florin, and that florin was all the money he
+possessed in the world.
+
+He was, however, the only child of a father who would give him as much
+as he wanted, and, what was rarer, of one with sufficient sense of
+humour to appreciate the prodigal's return without a penny in his
+pocket or a decent garment on his back. Whether his people would be
+equally pleased at being taken completely by surprise was not quite so
+certain. They might say he ought to have let them know what ship he was
+coming by, or at least have sent a telegram on landing. Yet all along
+he had undertaken to be home for his twenty-first birthday, and it
+would only have made them anxious to know that he had trusted himself
+to a sailing-vessel. Fifty days instead of twenty from the Cape! It had
+nearly cost him his word; but, now that it was over, the narrow margin
+made the joke all the greater; and Harry Ringrose loved a joke better
+than most things in the world.
+
+The last two years of his life had been a joke from beginning to end:
+for in the name of health he had been really seeking adventure and
+undergoing the most unnecessary hardships for the fun of talking about
+them for the rest of his days. He pictured the first dinner-party after
+his return, and the faces of some dozen old friends when they heard of
+the leopards under the house, the lion in the moonlight, and (when the
+ladies had withdrawn) of the notorious murderer with whom Harry had
+often dined. They should perceive that the schoolboy they remembered
+was no longer anything of the sort, but a man of the world who had seen
+more of it than themselves. It is true that for a man of the world
+Harry Ringrose was still somewhat youthfully taken up with himself and
+his experiences; but his heart was rich with love of those to whom he
+was returning, and his mind much too simple to be aware of its own
+egotism. He only knew that he was getting nearer and nearer home, and
+that the joy of it was almost unendurable.
+
+His face was to the carriage window, his native air streamed down his
+throat and blew a white lane through his long black hair. Miles of
+green dales rushed past under a network of stone walls, to change soon
+to mines and quarries, which in their turn developed into furnaces and
+works, until all at once the sky was no longer blue and the land no
+longer green. And when Harry Ringrose looked out of the opposite
+window, it was across grimy dunes that stretched to a breakwater built
+of slag, with a discoloured sea beyond.
+
+The boy rolled up his rug and changed his cap for a villainous sombrero
+preserved for the occasion. He then made a selection from his lavish
+supply of periodical literature, and when he next looked out the train
+was running in the very shadow of some furnaces in full blast. The
+morning sun looked cool and pale behind their monstrous fires, and
+Harry took off the sombrero to his father's ironworks, though with a
+rather grim eye, which saw the illuminated squalor of the scene without
+appreciating its prosperity. Sulphurous flames issued from all four
+furnaces; at one of the four they were casting as the train passed, and
+the molten incandescent stream ran white as the wire of an electric
+light.
+
+After the works came rank upon rank of workmen's streets running right
+and left of the line; then the ancient and historic quarter of the
+town, with its granite houses and its hilly streets, all much as it had
+been a hundred years before the discovery of iron-stone enriched and
+polluted a fair countryside. Then the level-crossing, without a
+creature at the gates at such an hour; finally a blank drab platform
+with the long loose figure of the head-porter standing out upon it as
+the homeliest sight of all. Harry clapped him on the cap as the train
+drew up; but either the man had forgotten him, or he was offended, for
+he came forward without a smile.
+
+"Well, David, how are you? Your hand, man, your hand! I'm back from the
+wilds. Don't you know me?"
+
+"I do now, sir."
+
+"That's right! It does me good to see an old face like yours. Gently
+with this green box, David, it's full of ostrich-eggs, that's why I had
+it in the carriage. There's four more in the van; inspan the lot till
+we send in for them, will you? I mean to walk up myself. Come, gently,
+I say!"
+
+The porter had dropped the green box clumsily, and now sought to cover
+his confusion by saying that the sight of Master Harry, that altered,
+had taken him all aback. Young Ringrose was justly annoyed; he had
+taken such care of that green box for so many weeks. But he did not
+withhold the florin, which was being pocketed for a penny when the man
+saw what it was and handed it back.
+
+"What, not enough for you?" cried Harry.
+
+"No, sir, too much."
+
+The boy stared and laughed.
+
+"Don't be an ass, David; I don't come home from Africa every day! If
+you'd been with me you'd think yourself lucky to get home at all! You
+just inspan those boxes, and we'll send for them after breakfast."
+
+The man mumbled that it was not worth two shillings. Harry said that
+was his business. The porter hung his head.
+
+"I--I may have broken them eggs."
+
+"Oh, well, if you have, two bob won't mend 'em; cling on to it, man,
+and don't drop them again."
+
+The loose-limbed porter turned away with the coin, but without a word,
+while Harry went off in high good-humour, though a little puzzled by
+the man's manner. It was not a time to think twice of trifles, however,
+and, at all events, he had achieved the sportsmanlike feat of emptying
+his pockets of their last coin. He strode out of the station with a
+merry, ringing tread. Half the town heard him as he went whistling
+through the streets and on to the outlying roads.
+
+The one he took was uphill and countrified. High hedgerows bloomed on
+either hand, and yet you could hear the sea, and sometimes see it, and
+on this side of the town it was blue and beautiful. Our wayfarer met
+but one other, a youth of his own age, with whom he had played and
+fought since infancy, though the families had never been intimate.
+Harry halted and held out his hand, which was ignored, the other
+passing with his nose in the air, and a tin can swinging at his side,
+on his way to some of the works. Harry coloured up and said a hard word
+softly. Then he remembered how slow his old friend the porter had been
+to recognise him; and he began to think he must have grown up out of
+knowledge. Besides accounting for what would otherwise have been an
+inexplicable affront, the thought pleased and flattered him. He strode
+on serenely as before, sniffing the Irish Sea at every step.
+
+He passed little lodges and great gates with never a glance at the fine
+houses within: for to Harry Ringrose this May morning there were but
+one house and one garden in all England. To get to them he broke at
+last into a run, and only stopped when the crest of the hill brought
+him, breathless, within sight of both. There was the long front wall,
+with the gates at one end, the stables at the other, and the fresh
+leaves bulging over every intervening brick. And down the hill, behind
+the trees, against the sea, were the windows, the gables, the chimneys,
+that he had been dreaming of for two long years.
+
+His eyes filled with a sudden rush of tears. "Thank God!" he muttered
+brokenly, and stood panting in the road, with bowed bare head and
+twitching lips. He could not have believed that the mere sight of home
+would so move him. He advanced in an altered spirit, a sense of his own
+unworthiness humbling him, a hymn of thanksgiving in his heart.
+
+And now the very stones were eloquent, and every yard marked by some
+landmark forgotten for two years, and yet familiar as ever at the first
+glance. Here was the mark a drunken cabman had left on the gatepost in
+Harry's school-days; there the disused summerhouse with the window
+still broken by which Harry had escaped when locked in by the very
+youth who had just cut him on the road. The drive struck him as a
+little more overgrown. The trees were greener than he had ever known
+them, the bank of rhododendrons a mass of pink without precedent in his
+recollection; but then it was many years since Harry had seen the place
+so late in May, for he had gone out to Africa straight from school.
+
+As for the dear house, the creepers had spread upon the ruddy stone and
+the tiles had mellowed, but otherwise there seemed to be no change. It
+would look its old self when the blinds were up: meantime Harry fixed
+his eyes upon those behind which his parents would still be fast
+asleep, and he wondered, idly at first, why they had given up sleeping
+with a window open. It had been their practice all the year round; and
+the house had been an early-rising house; yet not a fire was
+lighted--not a chimney smoking--not a window open--not a blind
+drawn--though close upon seven o'clock by the silver watch that had
+been with Harry through all his adventures.
+
+His hand shook as he put the watch back in his pocket. The possibility
+of his parents being away--of his surprise recoiling upon himself--had
+never occurred to him until now. How could they be away? They never
+dreamt of going away before the autumn. Besides, he had told them he
+was coming home in time to keep his birthday. They were not away--they
+were not--they were not!
+
+Yet there he stood--in the sweep of the drive--but a few yards from the
+steps--and yet afraid to ring and learn the truth! As though the truth
+must be terrible; as though it would be a tragedy if they did happen to
+be from home!
+
+It would serve him right if they were.
+
+So at last, with such a smile as a man may force on the walk to the
+gallows, Harry Ringrose dragged himself slowly to the steps, and still
+more slowly up them; for they were dirty; and something else about the
+entrance was different, though he could not at first tell what. It was
+not the bell, which he now pulled, and heard clanging in the kitchen
+loud enough to rouse the house; he was still wondering what it was when
+the last slow tinkling cut his speculations short.
+
+Strange how so small a sound should carry all the way from the kitchen!
+
+He rang again before peering through one of the narrow ruby panes that
+lighted the porch on each side of the door. He could see no farther
+than the wall opposite, for the inner door was to the right, and in the
+rich crimson light the porch looked itself at first sight. Then
+simultaneously Harry missed the mat, the hat stand, a stag's antlers;
+and in another instant he knew what it was that had struck him as
+different about the entrance. He ought not to have been able to peer
+through that coloured light at all. The sill should have supported the
+statuette of Night which matched a similar representation of Morning on
+the other side of the door. Both were gone; and the distant bell, still
+pealing lustily from his second tug, was breaking the silence of an
+empty house.
+
+Harry was like a man waking from a trance: the birds sang loud in his
+ears, the sun beat hot on his back, while he himself stood staring at
+his own black shadow on the locked door, and wondering what it was, for
+it never moved. Then, in a sudden frenzy, he struck his hand through
+the ruby glass, and plucked out the pieces the putty still held in
+place, until he was able to squeeze through bodily. Blood dripped from
+his fingers and smeared the handle of the unlocked inner door as he
+seized and turned it and sprang within. The hall was empty. The stairs
+were bare.
+
+He ran into room after room; all were stripped from floor to ceiling.
+The sun came in rods through the drawn blinds: on the walls were the
+marks of the pictures: on the floors, a stray straw here and there.
+
+He cried aloud and railed in his agony. He shouted through the house,
+and his voice came back to him from the attics. Suddenly, in a grate,
+he espied a printed booklet. It was an auctioneer's list. The sale had
+taken place that very month.
+
+The calmness of supreme misery now stole over Harry Ringrose, and he
+saw that his fingers were bleeding over the auctioneer's list. He took
+out his handkerchief and wiped them carefully--he had no tears to
+staunch--and bound up the worst finger with studious deliberation.
+Apathy succeeded frenzy, and, utterly dazed, he sat down on the stairs,
+for there was nowhere else to sit, and for some minutes the only sound
+in the empty house was the turning of the leaves of the auctioneer's
+list.
+
+Suddenly he leapt to his feet: another sound had broken the silence,
+and it was one that he seemed to have heard only yesterday: a sound so
+familiar in his home, so home-like in itself, that it seemed even now
+to give the lie to his wild and staring eyes.
+
+It was the sound of wheels in the gravel drive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE BREAKING OF THE NEWS.
+
+
+Harry was in three minds in as many seconds: he would hide, he would
+rush out and learn the truth, he would first see who it was that had
+followed him at such an hour. The last impulse prevailed, and the study
+was the room from which to peep. Harry crept in on tiptoe, past the
+bookshelves eloquently bare, to the bow-window with the drawn Venetian
+blinds. Slightly raising one of the laths, he could see everything as
+the cab drew up at the steps.
+
+The cab-door was flung open and out sprang an utter stranger to Harry
+Ringrose. This was a middle-aged man of the medium height, wearing a
+somewhat shabby tall hat and a frock-coat which shone unduly in the
+strong sunlight. He had a fresh complexion, a reddish moustache
+streaked with grey, a sharp-pointed nose, and a very deep chin which
+needed shaving; but what struck Harry first and last were the keen,
+decisive eyes, twinkling behind glasses with gold rims, which went
+straight to the broken window and surveyed it critically before their
+owner had set foot on the steps. It seemed that the cabman saw it too
+and made some remark; for the fare turned upon him, paid him and
+slammed his door, and ordered him off in a very peremptory voice which
+Harry heard distinctly. The cab turned in the sweep and disappeared
+among the trees. Then the stranger came slowly up the steps, with his
+eyes once more fixed upon the broken window. In another moment they had
+run like lightning over the face of the house, and, before Harry had
+time to move, had met his own.
+
+The stranger raised his eyebrows, shook his head, and pointed to the
+front door. Harry went to it, shot the bolts back, turned the key, and
+flung the door wide open. He was trembling now with simple terror. His
+tongue would not ask what had happened. It was like standing to be
+shot, and having to give the signal to the firing party.
+
+The other seemed to feel it almost equally: his fresh face was pale,
+and his quick eyes still with sorrow and compunction. It was evident he
+knew the worst. If only he would tell it unasked!
+
+"My name is Lowndes," he began at last. "Gordon Lowndes--you must have
+heard of me?"
+
+"I--I don't remember it," stammered Harry at the second attempt.
+
+"I stayed here several times while you were in Africa. I was here in
+February."
+
+"Yes, now I remember your name: it was in the last letter I had."
+
+He could say this calmly; and yet his lips could not frame the question
+whose answer would indeed be life or death.
+
+"Two years ago I did not know your people," resumed the other. "But for
+two years I have been their most intimate friend."
+
+"Tell me," at length whispered Harry: "is--either of them--dead?" And
+he awaited the worst with a sudden fortitude.
+
+Mr. Lowndes shook his head.
+
+"Not that I know of," said he.
+
+"Thank God!" the boy burst out, with the first break in his voice.
+"Nothing else matters--nothing--nothing! I made sure it was that! Can
+you swear that my father is all right?"
+
+The other winced. "To the best of my knowledge," said he almost
+sharply.
+
+"And my mother?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I was with her three days ago."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In London."
+
+"London! And I passed through London last night! You saw her, you say,
+three days ago, and she was all right then?"
+
+"I never knew her look better."
+
+"Then tell me the worst and let us have it over! I can see that we have
+lost our money--but that doesn't matter. Nothing matters if they are
+all right; won't you come in, sir, and tell me all?"
+
+Harry did not know it, for in his deep emotion he had lost sight of
+self; but there was something infinitely touching in the way the young
+man stood aside and ushered his senior into the hall as though it were
+still his home. Mr. Lowndes shook his head at the unconscious air, and
+he entered slowly, with it bent. Harry shut the doors behind them, and
+they turned into the first room. It was the room with the empty
+bookshelves; and it still smelt of Harry's father's cheroots.
+
+"You may wonder at my turning up like this," said Lowndes; "but for
+those fools at the shipping-office I should have met you at the docks.
+I undertook to do so, and to break the news to you there."
+
+"But how could you know my ship?"
+
+The other smiled.
+
+"Cable," said he; "that was a very simple matter. But if your shipping
+fellows hadn't sworn you'd be reported from the Lizard, in lots of time
+for me to get up from Scotland to meet you, I should never have run
+down there as I was induced to do on business the night before last. I
+should have let the business slide. As it was the telegram reached me
+last night in Glasgow, when I knew it was too late to keep you out of
+this. Still, I timed myself to get here five minutes before you, and
+should have done it if my train hadn't been forty minutes late. It--it
+must have been the devil's own quarter-of-an-hour for you, Ringrose!
+Have a drop of this before we go on; it'll do you good."
+
+He took a flask from his pocket and half filled the cup with raw
+whisky, which Harry seized gratefully and drained at a gulp. In truth,
+the shock of the morning, after the night's excitement, had left him
+miserably faint. The spirit revived him a little.
+
+"You are very kind to me," he said, returning the cup. "You must be a
+great friend of my parents for them to give you this job, and a good
+friend to take it on! Now, if you please, tell me every mortal thing;
+you will tell me nothing I cannot bear; but I am sure you are too kind
+to keep anything back."
+
+Lowndes was gazing with a shrewd approval upon the plucky young fellow,
+in whom, indeed, disappointment and disaster had so far awakened only
+what was best. At the last words, however, the quick eyes fell behind
+the gold-rimmed glasses in a way that made Harry wonder whether he had
+indeed been told the worst. And yet there was already more than enough
+to account for the other's embarrassment; and he determined not to add
+to it by unnecessary or by impatient questions.
+
+"You are doubtless aware," began Lowndes, "that the iron trade in this
+country has long been going from bad to worse? You have heard of the
+bad times, I imagine, before to-day?"
+
+Harry nodded: he had heard of the bad times as long as he could
+remember. But because the happy conditions of his own boyhood had not
+been affected by the cry, he had believed that it was nothing else. He
+was punished now.
+
+"The times," proceeded Lowndes, "have probably been bad since your
+childhood. How old are you now?"
+
+"Twenty-one to-day."
+
+"To-day!"
+
+"Go on," said Harry, hoarsely. "Don't be sorry for me. I deserve very
+little sympathy." His hands were in the pockets he had wilfully emptied
+of every coin.
+
+"When you were five years old," continued Lowndes, "the pig-iron your
+father made fetched over five pounds a ton; before you were seven it
+was down to two-pounds-ten; it never picked up again; and for the last
+ten years it hasn't averaged two pounds. Shall I tell you what that
+means? For these ten years your father has been losing a few shillings
+on every ton of pig-iron produced--a few hundred pounds every week of
+his life!"
+
+"And I was enjoying myself at school, and now in Africa! Oh," groaned
+Harry Ringrose, "go on, go on; but don't waste any pity on me."
+
+"You may be a very rich man, but that sort of thing can't last for
+ever. The end is bound to come, and in your father's case it came,
+practically speaking, several years ago."
+
+"Several years? I don't follow you. He never failed?"
+
+"It would have been better for you all if he had. You have looked upon
+this place as your own, I suppose, from as far back as you can remember
+down to this morning?"
+
+"As my father's own--decidedly."
+
+"It has belonged to his bankers for at least five years."
+
+"How do you know?" cried Harry hotly.
+
+"He told me himself, when I first came down here, now eighteen months
+ago. We met in London, and he asked me down. I was in hopes we might do
+business together; but it was no go."
+
+"What sort of business?"
+
+"I wanted him to turn the whole thing into a Limited Liability
+Company," said Gordon Lowndes, reeling off the last three words as
+though he knew them better than his own name; "I mean those useless
+blast-furnaces! What good were they doing? None at all. Three bob a ton
+on the wrong side! That's all the good they'd done for years, and
+that's all they were likely to do till times changed. Times never will
+change--to what they were when you were breeched--but that's a detail.
+Your father's name down here was as sweet as honey. All he'd got to do
+was to start an extra carriage or two, put up for Parliament on the
+winning side, and turn his works into a Limited Liability Company. I'd
+have promoted it. I'd have seen it through in town. The best men would
+have gone on the board, and we'd have done the bank so well in shares
+that they wouldn't have got out of it if they could. We'd have made a
+spanking good thing of it if only the governor would have listened to
+reason. He wouldn't; said he'd rather go down with the ship than let in
+a lot of shareholders. 'Damn the shareholders!' says I. 'Why count the
+odds in the day of battle?' It's the biggest mistake you can make,
+Ringrose, and your governor kept on making it! It was in this very
+room, and he was quite angry with me. He wouldn't let me say another
+word. And what happens? A year or so later--this last February--he
+wires me to come down at once. Of course I came, but it was as I
+thought: the bank's sick of it, and threatens to foreclose. I went to
+see them; not a bit of good. Roughly speaking, it was a case of either
+paying off half the mortgage and reconstructing the whole bag of
+tricks, or going through the courts to beggary. Twenty thousand was the
+round figure; and I said I'd raise it if it was to be raised."
+
+This speech had barely occupied a minute, so rapidly was it spoken; and
+there was much of it which Harry, in his utter ignorance of all such
+matters, would have found difficult to follow at a much slower rate of
+utterance. As it was, however, it filled him with distrust of his
+father's friend, who, on his own showing, had made some proposal
+dishonourable in the eyes of a high-principled man. Moreover, it came
+instinctively to Harry that he had caught a first glimpse of the real
+Gordon Lowndes, with his cunning eyes flashing behind his _pince-nez_,
+the gestures of a stump orator, and this stream of unintelligible
+jargon gushing from his lips. The last sentences, however, were plain
+enough even to Harry's understanding.
+
+"You said you'd raise it," he repeated dryly; "yet you can't have done
+so."
+
+"I raised ten thousand."
+
+"Only half; well?"
+
+"It was no use."
+
+"My father would refuse to touch it?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"Then what did he do?"
+
+Lowndes drew back a pace, saying nothing, but watching the boy with
+twitching eyelids.
+
+"Come, sir, speak out!" cried Harry, "He will tell me himself, you
+know, when I get back to London."
+
+"He is not there."
+
+"You said he was!"
+
+"I said your mother was."
+
+"Where is my father, then?"
+
+"On the Continent--we think."
+
+"You think? And the--ten thousand pounds?"
+
+"He has it with him," said Lowndes, in a low voice. "I'm sorry to say
+he--bolted with the lot!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE SIN OF THE FATHER.
+
+
+"It's a lie!"
+
+The word flew through Harry's teeth as in another century his sword
+might have flown from its sheath; and so blind was he with rage and
+horror that he scarcely appreciated its effect on Gordon Lowndes. Never
+was gross insult more mildly taken. The elder man did certainly change
+colour for an instant; in another he had turned away with a shrug, and
+in yet another he was round again with a sad half-smile. Harry glared
+at him in a growing terror. He saw that he was forgiven; a blow had
+disconcerted him less.
+
+"I expected you to jump down my throat," observed Lowndes, with a
+certain twitching of the sharp nose which came and went with the
+intermittent twinkle in his eyes.
+
+"It is lucky you are not a younger man, or you would have got even more
+than you expected!"
+
+"For telling you the truth? Well, well, I admire your spirit,
+Ringrose."
+
+"It is not the truth," said Harry doggedly, his chest heaving, and a
+cold sweat starting from his skin.
+
+"I wish to God it were not!"
+
+"You mean to tell me my father absconded?"
+
+"That is the word I should have used."
+
+"With ten thousand pounds that did not belong to him?"
+
+"Not exactly that; the money was lent to him, but for another purpose.
+He has misapplied rather than misappropriated it."
+
+Harry felt his head swimming. Disaster he might bear--but disaster
+rooted in disgrace! He gazed in mute misery upon the stripped but still
+familiar room; he breathed hard, and the stale odour of his father's
+cheroots became a sudden agony in his dilated nostrils. Something told
+him that what he had heard was true. That did not make it easier to
+believe--on the bare word of a perfect stranger.
+
+"Proofs!" he gasped. "What proofs have you? Have you any?"
+
+Lowndes produced a pocket-book and extracted a number of newspaper
+cuttings.
+
+"Yes," sighed he, "I have almost everything that has appeared about it
+in the papers. It will be cruel reading for you, Ringrose; but you may
+take it better so than from anybody's lips. The accounts in the local
+press--the creditors' meetings and so forth--are, however, rather long.
+Hadn't you better wait until we're on our way back to town?"
+
+"Wait? No, show me something now! I apologise for what I said; I made
+use of an unpardonable word; but--I don't believe it yet!"
+
+"Here, then," said Lowndes, "if you insist. Here's a single short
+paragraph from the _P.M.G._ It would appear about the last day in
+March."
+
+"The day I sailed!" groaned Harry. He took the cutting and read as
+follows:--
+
+    THE MISSING IRONMASTER.
+
+    The Press Association states that nothing further has been
+    ascertained with regard to the whereabouts of Mr. Henry J.
+    Ringrose, the Westmoreland ironmaster, who was last seen on Easter
+    Eve. He has been traced, however, as already reported in these
+    columns, to the Café Suisse in Dieppe, though no further. The
+    people at the café persist in stating that their visitor only
+    remained a few hours, so that he would appear to have walked thence
+    into thin air. The police, as usual, are extremely reticent; but
+    inquiry at Scotland Yard has elicited the fact that considerable
+    doubt exists as to whether the missing man's chief creditors will,
+    or can, owing to the character of their claim, take further action
+    in the matter.
+
+"Who are the chief creditors?" asked Harry, returning the cutting with
+an ashy face.
+
+"Four business friends of your father's, from whom I raised the money
+in his name."
+
+"Here in the neighbourhood?"
+
+"No, in London; they advanced two thousand five hundred each."
+
+"It was no good, you say?"
+
+"No; the bank was not satisfied."
+
+"So my father ran away with their money and left the works to go to
+blazes--and my mother to starve?"
+
+Lowndes shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I apologise again for insulting you, Mr. Lowndes," said the boy,
+holding out his hand. "You have been a good friend to my poor father, I
+can see, and I know that you firmly believe what you say. But I never
+will! No; not if all his friends, and every newspaper in the kingdom,
+told me it was true!"
+
+"Then what are you to believe?"
+
+"That there has been foul play!"
+
+The elder man turned away with another shrug, and it was some moments
+before Harry saw his face; when he did it was grave and sympathetic as
+before, and exhibited no trace of the irritation which it had cost an
+apparent effort to suppress.
+
+"I am not surprised at that entering your head, Ringrose."
+
+"Has it never entered yours?"
+
+"Everything has; but one weeds out the impossibilities."
+
+"Why is it impossible?" Harry burst out. "It is a good deal likelier
+than that my father would have done what it's said he did! There's an
+impossibility, if you like; and you would say so, too, if you had known
+him better."
+
+Mr. Lowndes shook his head, and smiled sadly as he watched the boy's
+flaming face through his spectacles.
+
+"You may have known your father, Ringrose, but you don't know human
+nature, or you wouldn't talk like that. Nothing is impossible--no
+crime--not even to the best of us--when the strain becomes more than we
+can bear. It is a pure question of strain and strength: which is the
+greater of the two. Every man has his breaking-point; your father was
+at his for years; it's a mystery to me how he held out so long. You
+must look at it sensibly, Ringrose. No thinking man will blame him, for
+the simple reason that every man who thinks knows very well that he
+might have done the same thing himself under the same pressure.
+Besides--give him a chance! With ten thousand pounds in his pocket----"
+
+"You're sure he had it in his pocket?" interrupted Harry. These
+arguments only galled his wounds.
+
+"Or else in a bag; it comes to the same thing."
+
+"In what shape would he have the money?"
+
+"Big notes and some gold."
+
+"Yet foul play's an impossibility!"
+
+"The numbers of the notes are known. Not one of them has turned up."
+
+"I care nothing about that," cried the boy wildly, "though it shows he
+hasn't spent them himself. Listen to me, Mr. Lowndes. I believe my
+father is dead, I believe he has been murdered: and I would rather that
+than what you say! But you claim to have been his friend? You raised
+this money for him? Very well; take my hand--here in his room--where I
+can see him now, all the time I'm talking to you--and swear that you
+will help me to clear this mystery up! We'll inspan the best detective
+in town, and take him with us to Dieppe, and never leave him till we
+get at the truth. I mean to live for nothing else. Swear that you will
+help me ... swear it here ... in his own room."
+
+The wild voice had come down to a broken whisper. Next moment it had
+risen again: the man hesitated.
+
+"Swear it! Swear it! Or you may have been my father's friend, but you
+are none from this hour to my mother and me."
+
+Lowndes spread his hands in an indulgent gesture.
+
+"Very well! I swear to help you to clear up this--mystery--as long as
+you think it is one."
+
+"That is all I want. Now tell me when the next train starts for town.
+It used to be nine-twenty?"
+
+"It is still."
+
+"You are returning to London yourself?"
+
+"Yes, by that train."
+
+"Then let us meet at the station. It is now eight. I--I want to be
+alone here for an hour or two. No, it will do me good, it will calm me.
+I feel I have been very rude to you, sir, but I have hardly known what
+I said. I am beside myself--beside myself!" And Harry Ringrose rushed
+from the room, and up the bare and sounding stairs of his empty home:
+it was from his own old bedroom that he heard Lowndes leave the house,
+and saw a dejected figure climbing the sloping drive with heavy steps.
+
+That hour of leave-taking is not to be described. How the boy harrowed
+himself wilfully by going into every room and thinking of something
+that had happened there, and seeing it all again through scalding
+tears, is a thing to be understood by some, but pitied rather than
+commended. There was, however, another and a sounder side to Harry
+Ringrose, and the prayers he prayed, and the vows he vowed, these were
+brave, and he meant them all that bitter birthday morning, that was to
+have been the happiest of all his life. Then his heart was broken but
+still heroic: there came many a brighter day he would gladly have
+exchanged for that black one, for the sake of its high resolves, its
+pure impulses, its noble and undaunted aspirations.
+
+He had one more rencontre before he got away: in the garden he espied
+their old gardener. It was impossible not to go up and speak to him;
+and Harry left the old man crying like a child; but he himself had no
+tears.
+
+"I am glad they left you your job: you will care for things," he had
+said, as he was going.
+
+"Ay, ay, for the master's sake: he was the best master a man ever had,
+say what they will."
+
+"But you don't believe what they say?"
+
+The gardener looked blank.
+
+"Do you dare to tell me," cried Harry, "that you believe what they
+believe?"
+
+It was at this the man broke down; but Harry strode away with bitter
+resentment in his heart, and so back to the town, with a defiant face
+for every passer; but this time there were none he knew. At the spot
+where his old companion had cut him, that affront was recalled for the
+first time; its meaning was plain enough now; and plain the strange
+conduct of the railway-porter, who kept out of his way when Harry
+reappeared at the station.
+
+Lowndes was there waiting for him, and had not only taken the tickets,
+but also telegraphed to Mrs. Ringrose; and this moved poor Harry to a
+shame-faced confession of his improvidence on the way down, and its
+awful results, in the midst of which the other burst out laughing in
+his face. Harry was a boy after his own heart; it was a treat to meet
+anybody who declined to count the odds in the day of battle; but, in
+any case, Mr. Lowndes claimed the rest of the day as "his funeral." As
+Harry listened, and thanked his new friend, he had a keen and hostile
+eye for any old ones; but the train left without his seeing another.
+
+"The works look the same as ever," groaned Harry, as he gazed out on
+them once more. "I thought they seemed to be doing so splendidly, with
+all four furnaces in blast."
+
+"They are doing better than for some years past: iron's looking up: the
+creditors may get their money back yet."
+
+"Thank God for that!"
+
+Lowndes opened his eyes, and the sharp nose twitched amusement.
+
+"If I were in your place that would be the worst part of all. I have no
+sympathy with creditors as a class."
+
+"I want to be even with them," said Harry through his teeth. "I will
+be, too, before I die: with every man of them. Hallo! why, this is a
+first-class carriage! How does that happen? I never looked where we got
+in; I followed you."
+
+"And I chose that we should travel first."
+
+"But I can't, I won't!" cried Harry, excitedly. "It was monstrous of me
+last night, but it would be criminal this morning. You sit where you
+are. I can change into a third at the next station."
+
+"I have a first-class ticket for you," rejoined Lowndes. "You may as
+well make use of it."
+
+"But when shall I pay you back?"
+
+"Never, my boy! I tell you this is my funeral till I deliver you over
+to your mother, so don't _you_ begin counting the odds; you've nothing
+to do with them. Besides, you came up like a rocket, and I won't have
+you go down altogether like the stick!"
+
+Nor did he; and Harry soon saw that his companion was not to be judged
+by his shabby top-hat and his shiny frock-coat; he was evidently a very
+rich man. Where the boy had flung half-crowns overnight--where
+half-a-crown was more than ample--his elder now scattered
+half-sovereigns, and they had an engaged carriage the whole way. At
+Preston an extravagant luncheon-basket was taken in, with a bottle of
+champagne and some of the best obtainable cigars, for the quality of
+both of which Gordon Lowndes made profuse apologies. But Harry felt a
+new being after his meal, for grief and excitement had been his bread
+all day, and the wine warmed his heart to the strange man with whom he
+had been thrown in such dramatic contact. Better company, in happier
+circumstances, it would have been difficult to imagine; and it was
+clear that, with quip and anecdote, he was doing his utmost to amuse
+Harry and to take him out of his trouble. But to no purpose: the boy
+was perforce a bad listener, and at last confessed it in as many words.
+
+"My mind is so full of my father," added Harry, "that I have hardly
+given my dear mother a thought; but my life is hers from to-day. You
+said she was in Kensington; in lodgings, I suppose?"
+
+"No, in a flat. It's very small, but there's a room for you, and it's
+been ready for weeks."
+
+"What is she living on?"
+
+"Less than half her private income by marriage settlement; that was all
+there was left, and five-eighths of it she would insist on making over
+to the men who advanced the ten thousand. She is paying them
+two-and-a-half per cent. on their money and attempting to live on a
+hundred and fifty a year!"
+
+"I'll double it before long!"
+
+"Then she'll pay them five."
+
+"They shall have every farthing one day; and the other creditors, they
+shall have their twenty shillings in the pound if I live long enough.
+Now let me have the rest of those cuttings. I want to know just how we
+stand--and what they say."
+
+Out came the pocket-book once more. They were an hour's run nearer town
+when Harry spoke again.
+
+"May I keep them?" he said.
+
+"Surely."
+
+"Thank you. I take it the bank's all right--and thank God the other
+liabilities up there are not large. As to the flight with that ten
+thousand--I don't believe it yet. There has been foul play. You mark my
+words."
+
+Lowndes looked out at the flying fields.
+
+"Which of you saw him last?" continued Harry.
+
+"Your mother, when he left for town."
+
+"When was that?"
+
+"The morning after Good Friday."
+
+"When did he cross?"
+
+"That night."
+
+"Did he write to anybody?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"Not to my mother?"
+
+Lowndes leant forward across the compartment: there was a shrewd look
+in the spectacled eyes.
+
+"Not that I know of," he said again, but with a different intonation.
+"I have often wondered!"
+
+"Did you ask her?"
+
+"Yes; she said not."
+
+"Then what do you mean?" cried Harry indignantly. "Do you think my
+mother would tell you a lie?"
+
+"Your mother is the most loyal little woman in England," was the reply.
+"I certainly think that she would keep her end up in the day of
+battle."
+
+Harry ground his teeth. He could have struck the florid able face whose
+every look showed a calm assumption of his father's infamy.
+
+"You take it all for granted!" he fumed; "you, who say you were his
+friend. How am I to believe in such friendship? True friends are not so
+ready to believe the worst. Oh! it makes my blood boil to hear you
+talk; it makes me hate myself for accepting kindness at your hands. You
+have been very kind, I know," added Harry in a breaking voice;
+"but--but for God's sake don't let us speak about it any more!" And he
+flung up a newspaper to hide his quivering lips; for now he was hoping
+against hope and believing against belief.
+
+Was it not in black and white in all the papers? How could it be
+otherwise than true? Rightly or wrongly, the world had found his father
+guilty; and was he to insult all and sundry who failed to repudiate the
+verdict of the world?
+
+Harry was one who could not endure to be in the wrong with anybody: his
+weakness in every quarrel was an incongruous hankering for the good
+opinion of the enemy, and this was intensified in the case of one who
+was obviously anxious to be his friend. To appear ungracious or
+ungrateful was equally repugnant to Harry Ringrose, and no sooner was
+he master of his emotion than he lowered the paper in order to add a
+few words which should remove any such impression.
+
+Gordon Lowndes sat dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief that he
+made haste to put away, as though it was his eyes he had been wiping,
+which indeed was Harry's first belief. But the gold-rimmed glasses were
+not displaced, and, so far from a tear, there was an expression behind
+them for which Harry could not then find the name; nevertheless, it
+made him hold his tongue after all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE NEW HOME.
+
+
+Harry had hoped that his companion would go his own way when they got
+to London; but it was "his funeral," as Mr. Lowndes kept saying, and he
+seemed determined to conduct it to the end. Euston was crowded, where
+Lowndes behaved like a man in his element, dealing abuse and largesse
+with equal energy and freedom, and getting Harry and all his boxes off
+in the first cab which left the station. But he himself was at Harry's
+side; and there he sat until the cab stopped, half-an-hour later,
+beneath a many-windowed red-brick pile thrown up in the angle of two
+back streets.
+
+A porter in uniform ran up to help with the luggage, and, as Harry
+jumped out, a voice with a glad sob in it hailed him from a first-floor
+window. He waved his hat, and, with a pang, saw a white head vanishing:
+it had not been white when he went away. Next moment he was flying up
+the stone stairs three at a time; and on the first landing, at an open
+door, there was the sweet face, all aged and lined and lighted with
+sorrow and shame and love; there were the softest arms in all the
+world, spread wide to catch and clasp him to the warmest heart.
+
+It was a long time afterwards, in a room which made the old furniture
+look very big, the old pictures very sad, that Mr. Lowndes was
+remembered for the first time. They looked into the narrow passage: the
+boxes blocked it, but he was not there; they called, but there was no
+answer.
+
+"Have we no servant, mother?"
+
+"We have no room for one. The porter's wife comes up and helps me."
+
+"I can help you! Many a meal have I cooked in Africa."
+
+"My boy, what a home-coming!"
+
+It was the first word about that, and with it came the first catch in
+Harry's mother's voice.
+
+"No, mother, thank God I am back to take care of you; and oh! I am so
+thankful we are to be alone to-night."
+
+"But I am sorry he did not come in."
+
+"He was quite right not to."
+
+"But he must have paid for the cab--I will look out of the window--yes,
+it has gone--and I had the money ready in case you forgot!"
+
+Harry could have beaten himself, but he could not tell his mother just
+then that he had arrived without a penny, and that Lowndes had not only
+paid the cabman, but must be pounds out of pocket by him on the day.
+
+"Don't you like him, dear?" said his mother, divining that he did not.
+
+"I do and I don't," said Harry bluntly.
+
+"He has been so kind to me!"
+
+"Yes; he is kind enough."
+
+"Did you not think it good of him to rush from Scotland to meet you and
+then bring you all the way to your--new--home?"
+
+"It was almost too good. I would have been happier alone," said Harry,
+forgetting all else in his bitter remembrance of some speeches Lowndes
+had made.
+
+"That is not very grateful, my boy. You little know what he has been to
+me!"
+
+"Has he done so much?"
+
+"Everything--all through! You see what I have saved from the wreck? It
+was he who went to bid for me at the sale!"
+
+"You bought them in, mother?"
+
+"Yes; I could accept nothing from the creditors. That is the one point
+on which I quarrel with Mr. Lowndes; but we have agreed to differ. Why
+do you dislike him, Harry?"
+
+"Mother, don't you know?"
+
+"I cannot imagine."
+
+"He thinks the worst--about my father."
+
+It was the first mention of the father's name. Mrs. Ringrose was silent
+for many moments.
+
+"I know he does," she said at length.
+
+"Then how can you bear the sight of him?" her boy burst out.
+
+"It is no worse than all the world thinks."
+
+And Mrs. Ringrose sighed; but now her voice was abnormally calm, as
+with a grief too great for tears.
+
+The long May evening had not yet closed in, and in the ensuing silence
+the cries of children in the street below, and the Last Waltz of Weber
+from the piano of the flat above, came with equal impertinence through
+the open windows. Mrs. Ringrose was in the rocking-chair in which she
+had nursed her only child. Her back was to the light, but she was
+rocking slowly. Her son stood over her with horror deepening in his
+face, but hers he could not see, only the white head which two years
+ago had been hardly grey. He dropped upon his knees and seized her
+hands; they were cold; and he missed her rings.
+
+"Mother--mother! You don't think it too?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"You do! Oh, mother, how are we to go on living after this? What makes
+you think it? Quick! has he written to you?"
+
+Mrs. Ringrose started violently. "Who put that into your head?" she
+cried out sharply.
+
+"Nobody. I only wondered if there had been a letter, and I asked
+Lowndes, but he said you said there had not."
+
+"Was that not enough for you?"
+
+"Oh, mother, tell me the truth!"
+
+The poor lady groaned aloud.
+
+"God knows I meant to keep it to myself!" she whispered. "And yet--oh,
+how could I destroy his letter? And I thought you ought to see it--some
+day--not yet."
+
+"Mother, I must see it now."
+
+"You will never breathe it to a soul?"
+
+"Never without your permission."
+
+"No one must ever dream I heard one word after he left me!"
+
+"No one ever shall."
+
+"I will get the letter."
+
+His hand was trembling when he took it from her.
+
+"It was written on the steamer, you see."
+
+"It may be a forgery," said Harry, in a loud voice that trembled too.
+Yet there was a ring of real hope in it. He was thinking of Lowndes in
+the train. He had caught him mopping a wet brow. He had surprised a
+guilty look--yes, guilty was the word--he had found it at last--in
+those shifty eyes behind the _pince-nez_. If villainy should be at the
+bottom of it all, and Lowndes at the bottom of the villainy!
+
+If the letter should prove a forgery after all!
+
+He had it in his hand. He carried it to the failing light. He hardly
+dared to look at it, but when he did a cry escaped him.
+
+It was a cry of disappointment and abandoned hope.
+
+Minutes passed without another sound; then the letter was slowly folded
+up and restored to its envelope, and dropped into Harry's pocket,
+before his arms went round his mother's neck.
+
+"Mother, let me burn it, so that no eyes but ours shall ever see!"
+
+"Burn it? Burn the last letter I may ever have from him? Give it to
+me!" And she pressed it to her bosom.
+
+Harry hung his head in a long and wretched silence.
+
+"We must forget him, mother," he said at last.
+
+"Harry, he was a good father to you, he loved you dearly. He was mad
+when he did what he has done. You must never say that again."
+
+"I meant we must forget what he has done----"
+
+"Ah God! if I could!"
+
+"And only think of him as he used to be."
+
+"Yes; yes; we will try."
+
+"It would be easier--don't you think--if we never spoke of this?"
+
+"We never will, unless we must."
+
+"Let us think that we just failed like other people. But, mother, I
+will work all my life to pay off everybody! I will work for you till I
+drop. Goodness knows what at; but I learnt to work for fun in Africa, I
+am ready to work in earnest, and, thank God, I have all my life before
+me."
+
+"You are twenty-one to-day!"
+
+"Yes, I start fair in every way."
+
+"That this should be your twenty-first birthday! My boy--my boy!"
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The long May twilight deepens into night; the many windows of the
+red-brick block are lit up one by one; and the many lives go on. Below,
+at the curb, a doctor's brougham and a hansom are waiting end to end;
+and from that top flat a young couple come scuttling down the stone
+stairs, he in a crush-hat, she with a flower in her hair, and theirs is
+the hansom. The flat below has similar tenants, but here the doctor is,
+and the young man paces his desolate parlour with a ghastly face.
+
+And in the flat below that it is Weber's Last Waltz once more, and
+nothing else, by the hour together. And in the flat below that--the
+flat that would have gone into one room of their old home--Harry
+Ringrose and his mother are still steeling themselves and one another
+to face the future and to live down the past.
+
+The light has been lowered in their front room and transferred for a
+space to the tiny dining-room at the back, which looks down into the
+building's well, but now it is the front windows which stand out once
+more. Twelve o'clock comes, and there is a tinkle of homing hansoms
+(the brougham has gone away masterless), and the public-house at the
+corner empties noisily, but the light in those front windows remains
+the brightest in the mansions. And Weber is done with at last; but the
+two voices below go on and on and on into the night; nor do they cease
+when their light shifts yet again into the front bedroom.
+
+It is two in the morning, and the young couple have come home crumpled
+from their dance, and their feet drag dreadfully on the stairs, and the
+doctor has taken their hansom, and the young man below them is drunk
+with joy, when Harry Ringrose kisses his mother for the twentieth last
+time and really goes. But he is too excited to sleep. In half-an-hour
+he creeps back into the passage. Her light is still burning. He goes
+in.
+
+"You spoke of Innes, mother?"
+
+"Yes; I feel sure he would be the first to help you."
+
+"I cannot go to him. I can go to nobody. We must start afresh with
+fresh friends, and I'll begin answering advertisements to-morrow.
+Yet--Innes has helped me already!"
+
+Mrs. Ringrose has been reading herself asleep, like a practical woman,
+out of one of the new magazines he has brought home. The sweet face on
+the pillow is wonderfully calm (for it is not from his mother that
+Harry inherits his excitability), but at this it looks puzzled.
+
+"When has he helped you?"
+
+"To-night, mother! There was a motto he had when I was at his school.
+He used to say it in his sermons, and he taught me to say it in my
+heart."
+
+"Well, my boy?"
+
+"It came back to me just now. It puts all that we have been saying in a
+nutshell. May I tell you, mother?"
+
+"I am waiting to hear."
+
+"'Money lost--little lost.'"
+
+"It's easy to say that."
+
+"'Honour lost--much lost.'"
+
+"I call it everything."
+
+"No, mother, wait! 'PLUCK lost--ALL lost!' It's only pluck that's
+everything. We must never lose that, mother, we must never lose that!"
+
+"God grant we never may."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A WET BLANKET.
+
+
+The morning sun filled the front rooms of the flat, and the heavy
+hearts within were the lighter for its cheery rays. Sorrow may outlive
+the night, and small joy come in the morning; but yet, if you are young
+and sanguine, and the month be May, and the heavens unspotted, and the
+air nectar, then you may suddenly find yourself thrilling with an
+unwarrantable delight in mere life, and that in the very midst of
+life's miseries. It was so with young Harry Ringrose, on the morning
+following his tragic home-coming; it was even so with Harry's mother,
+who was as young at heart as her boy, and fully as sanguine in
+temperament. They had come down from the high ground of the night. The
+everyday mood had supervened. Harry was unpacking his ostrich eggs in
+the narrow passage, and thoroughly enjoying a pipe; in her own room his
+mother sat cleaning her silver, incredible contentment in her face,
+because her boy was in and out all the morning, and the little flat was
+going to bring them so close together.
+
+"That's the lot," said Harry when the bed was covered with the eggs.
+"Now, mother, which do you think the best pair?"
+
+"They all look the same to me."
+
+"They are not. Look at this pair in my hands. Can't you see that
+they're much bigger and finer than the rest?"
+
+"I daresay they are."
+
+"They're for you, mother, these two."
+
+And he set them on the table among the spoons and forks and
+plate-powder. She kissed him, but looked puzzled.
+
+"What shall you do with the rest?"
+
+"Sell them! Five shillings a pair; five tens are fifty; that's
+two-pound-ten straight away."
+
+"I won't have you sell them!"
+
+"They are mine, mother, and I must."
+
+"You'll be sorry for it when you have a good situation."
+
+"Ah, when!" said Harry, and he was out again with a laugh.
+
+A noise of breaking wood came from the passage. He was opening another
+case. His mother frowned at her miniature in the spoon she had in hand,
+and when he returned, brandishing a brace of Kaffir battle-axes, she
+would hardly look at them.
+
+"I feel sure Wintour Phipps would take you into his office," said Mrs.
+Ringrose.
+
+"I never heard of him. Who is he?"
+
+"A solicitor; your father paid for his stamps when he was articled."
+
+"An old friend, then?"
+
+"Not of mine, for I never saw him; but he was your father's godson."
+
+"It comes to the same thing, and I can't go to him, mother. Face old
+friends I cannot! You and I are starting afresh, dear; I'm prepared to
+answer every advertisement in the papers, and to take any work I can
+get, but not to go begging favours of people who would probably cut us
+in the street. I don't expect to get a billet instantly; that's why I
+mean to sell all this truck--for the benefit of the firm."
+
+"You had much better write an article about your experiences, and get
+it into some magazine, as you said you would last night."
+
+Indeed, they had discussed every possible career in the night, among
+others that of literature, which the mother deemed her son competent to
+follow on the strength of certain contributions to his school magazine,
+and of the winning parody in some prize competition of ancient history.
+He now said he would try his hand on the article some day, but it would
+take time, and would anybody accept it when written? That was the
+question, said Harry, and his mother had a characteristic answer.
+
+"If you wrote to the Editor of _Uncle Tom's Magazine_," said she, "and
+told him you had taken it in as long as you could remember--I bought in
+the bound volumes for you, my boy--I feel sure that he would accept it
+and pay for it too."
+
+"Well, we'll see," said Harry, with a laugh. "Meanwhile we must find
+somebody to accept all these curios, and to pay for them. I see no room
+for them here."
+
+"There is certainly very little."
+
+"I wonder who would be the best people to go to?"
+
+Mrs. Ringrose considered.
+
+"I should try Whitbreds," said she at last, "since you are so set upon
+it. They sell everything; and I have had all my groceries from them for
+so many years that they can hardly refuse to take something from us."
+
+To the simple-hearted lady, whom fifty years had failed to
+sophisticate, there seemed nothing unreasonable in the expectations
+which she formed of others, for they were one and all founded upon the
+almost fanatical loyalty which was a guiding impulse of her own warm
+heart. In her years of plenty it was ever the humblest friend who won
+her warmest welcome, and the lean years to come proved powerless to
+check this generous spirit. Mrs. Ringrose would be illogically staunch
+to tradesmen whom she had dealt with formerly, and would delight their
+messengers with unnecessary gratuities because she had been accustomed
+to give all her life; but so unconscious was she of undue liberality on
+her part that she was apt to credit others with her own extravagance in
+charity, and to feel it bitterly when not done by as perhaps she alone
+would have done. It simply astounded her when three of her husband's
+old friends, who had in no way suffered by him, successively refused
+her secret supplication for a desk for her boy in their offices: she
+would herself have slept on the floor to have given the child of any
+one of them a bed in her little flat.
+
+But the treadmill round in search of work was not yet begun, though
+Harry was soon enough to find himself upon the wheel. Even as he
+unpacked his native weapons a weighty step was ascending the common
+stair, and the electric bell rang long and aggressively just as Mrs.
+Ringrose decided that it would be worth her son's while to let his
+trophies go for fifty pounds.
+
+"A tall man in a topper!" whispered Harry, bursting quietly in. "I saw
+him through the ground glass; who can it be?"
+
+"Your Uncle Spencer," said Mrs. Ringrose, looking straight at Harry
+over the wash-leather and the mustard-pot.
+
+"Uncle Spencer!" Harry looked aghast. "What's bringing him, mother?"
+
+"I wrote to him directly I got the telegram."
+
+"You never said so!"
+
+"No; I knew you wouldn't be pleased."
+
+"Need I see him?"
+
+"It is you he has come to see. Go, my boy; take him into the
+sitting-room, and I will join you when you have had your talk.
+Meanwhile, remember that he is your mother's brother, and will exert
+his influence to get you a situation; he has come so promptly, I
+shouldn't be surprised if he has got you one already! And you are
+letting him ring twice!"
+
+Indeed, the avuncular thumb had already pressed the button longer than
+was either necessary or polite, and Harry went to the door with
+feelings which he had difficulty in concealing as he threw it open.
+Uncle Spencer stood without in a stiff attitude and in sombre clerical
+attire; he beheld his nephew without the glimmer of a smile on his
+funereal, bearded countenance, while his large hand was slow in joining
+Harry's, and its pressure perfunctory.
+
+"So sorry to keep you waiting, but--but I forgot we hadn't a servant,"
+fibbed Harry to be polite. "Do come in, Uncle Spencer."
+
+"I thought nobody could be at home," was the one remark with which the
+clergyman entered; and Harry sighed as he heard that depressing voice
+again.
+
+The Reverend Spencer Walthew was indeed the survival of a type of
+divine now rare in the land, but not by any means yet extinct. His
+waistcoat fastened behind his back in some mysterious manner, and he
+never smiled. He was the vicar of a semi-fashionable parish in North
+London, where, however, he preached in a black gown to empty pews,
+while a mixed choir behaved abominably behind his back. As a man he was
+neither fool nor hypocrite, but the natural enemy of pleasure and
+enthusiasm, and one who took a grim though unconscious satisfaction in
+disheartening his neighbour. No two proverbial opposites afford a more
+complete contrast than was presented by Mr. Walthew and Mrs. Ringrose;
+and yet at the bottom of the brother's austerity there lay one or two
+of the sister's qualities, for those who cared to dig deep enough in
+such stony and forbidding ground.
+
+Harry had never taken to his uncle, who had frowned on Lord's and
+tabooed the theatre on the one occasion of his spending a part of his
+holidays in North London; and Mr. Walthew was certainly the last person
+he wanted to see that day. It made Harry Ringrose throb and tingle to
+look on the clergyman and to think of his father; they had never been
+friendly together; and if one syllable was said against the man who was
+down--no matter what he had done--the son of that man was prepared to
+make such a scene as should secure an immunity from further insult. But
+here Harry was indulging in fears as unworthy as his determination, and
+he was afterwards ashamed of both.
+
+The clergyman began in an inevitable strain, dwelling solemnly on the
+blessing of adversity in general, before proceeding to point out that
+the particular misfortunes which had overwhelmed Harry and his mother
+could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as
+adventitious or accidental, since they were obviously the deliberate
+punishment of a justly irate God, and as such to be borne with
+patience, meekness, and humility. Harry chafed visibly, thinking of his
+innocent mother in the next room; but, to do the preacher justice, his
+sermon was a short one, and the practical issue was soon receiving the
+attention it deserved.
+
+"I understand, Henry," said Mr. Walthew, "that you did obtain some
+useful and remunerative employment in Africa, which you threw up in
+order to come home and enjoy yourself. It is, of course, a great pity
+that you were so ill-advised and improvident; but may I ask in what
+capacity you were employed, and at what salary?"
+
+"I don't admit that I was either ill-advised or improvident," cried
+Harry, with disrespectful warmth. "I didn't go out to work, but for my
+health, and I only worked for the fun of it, and am jolly glad I did
+come back to take care of my mother and to work for her. I was tutor in
+a Portuguese planter's family, and he gave me seventy pounds a year."
+
+"And your board?"
+
+"And my board."
+
+"It was very good. It is a great deal better than anything you are
+likely to get here. How long were you with the planter?"
+
+"Ten months."
+
+"Only ten months! You must allow an older head than yours to continue
+thinking it is a pity you are not there still. Now, as to money
+matters, your father would doubtless cease sending you remittances once
+you were earning money for yourself?"
+
+"No, he sent me fifty pounds last Christmas."
+
+"Then, at any rate, you have brought enough home to prevent your being
+a burden to your mother? Between fifty and a hundred pounds, I take
+it?"
+
+Harry shook his head; it was hot with a shame he would have owned to
+anybody in the world but Mr. Walthew.
+
+"Not fifty pounds?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How much, then?"
+
+"Not a penny!"
+
+The clergyman opened his eyes and lifted his hands in unaffected
+horror. Harry could not help smiling in his face--could not have helped
+it if he had stood convicted of a worse crime than extravagance.
+
+"You have spent every penny--and you smile!" the uncle cried. "You come
+home to find your mother at starvation's door--and you smile! You have
+spent her substance in--in----"
+
+"Riot!" suggested Harry wickedly. "Sheer riot and evil living! Oh,
+Uncle Spencer, don't look like that; it's not exactly true; but, can't
+you see, I had no idea what was going to happen here at home? I thought
+I was coming back to live on the fat of the land, and when I'd made my
+miserable pile I spent it--like a man, I thought--like a criminal, if
+you will. Whichever it was, you must know which I feel now. And
+whatever I have done I am pretty badly punished. But at least I mean to
+take my punishment like a man, and to work like one, too, at any mortal
+thing I can find to do."
+
+Mr. Walthew looked down his nose at the carpet on which he stood. He
+had sense enough to see that the lad was in earnest now, and that it
+was of no use to reproach him further with what was past.
+
+"It seems to me, Henry," he said at length, "that it's a case of
+ability rather than of will. You say you are ready to do anything; the
+question is--what can you do?"
+
+"Not many things," confessed Henry, in a humbler voice; "but I can
+learn, Uncle Spencer--I will do my best to learn."
+
+"How old are you, Henry?"
+
+"Twenty-one."
+
+Harry was about to add "yesterday," but refrained from making his
+statement of fact an appeal for sympathy; for the man in him was coming
+steadily to the front.
+
+"Then you would leave school in the Sixth Form?"
+
+Harry had to shake his head.
+
+"Perhaps you were on the Modern Side? All the better if you were!"
+
+"No, I was not; I left in the form below the Sixth."
+
+"Then you know nothing about book-keeping, for example?"
+
+"I wish I did."
+
+"But you are a fair mathematician?"
+
+"It was my weakest point."
+
+The clergyman's expression was more melancholy than ever. "It is a
+great pity--a very great pity, indeed," said he. "However, I see
+writing materials on the table, and shall be glad if you will write me
+down your full name, age, and address."
+
+Harry sat down and wrote what was required of him in the pretty, rather
+scholarly hand which looked like and was the imitation of a prettier
+and more scholarly one. Then he unsuspectingly blotted the sheet and
+handed it to Mr. Walthew, who instantly began shaking his head in the
+most depressing fashion.
+
+"It is as I feared," said he; "you do not even write a fair commercial
+hand. It is well enough at a distance," and he held the sheet at arm's
+length, "but it is not too easy to read, and I fear it would never do
+in an office. There are several City men among my parishioners; I had
+hoped to go to one or two of them with a different tale, but now I
+fear--I greatly fear. However, one can but try. You do not fancy any of
+the professions, I suppose? Not that you could afford one if you did."
+
+"Are the fees so high?" asked poor Harry, in a broken-spirited voice.
+
+"High enough to be prohibitive in your case, though it might not be so
+if you had saved your money," the clergyman took care to add. "Of which
+particular profession were you thinking?"
+
+"We--we have been talking it all over, and we did speak of--the Law."
+
+"Out of the question; it would cost hundreds, and you wouldn't make a
+penny for years."
+
+"Then there is--schoolmastering."
+
+"It leads to nothing; besides--excuse me, Henry--but do you think you
+are scholar enough yourself to--to presume to--teach others?"
+
+Harry fetched a groan.
+
+"I don't know. I managed well enough in Mozambique, but it was chiefly
+teaching English. I only know that I would work day and night to
+improve myself, if once I could get a chance."
+
+"Well," said Uncle Spencer, "it is just possible that I may hear in my
+parish of some delicate or backward boy whom you would be competent to
+ground, and if so I shall recommend you as far as I conscientiously
+can. But I cannot say I am sanguine, Henry; it would be a different
+thing if you had worked harder at school and got into the Sixth Form. I
+suppose no other career has occurred to you as feasible? I confess I
+find the range sadly restricted by the rather discreditable limitations
+to which you own."
+
+Another career had occurred to Harry, and it was the one to which he
+felt most drawn, but by inclination rather than by conscious aptitude,
+so that he would have said nothing about it had not Mrs. Ringrose
+joined them at this moment. Her brother greeted her with a tepid
+salute, then dryly indicated the drift of the conversation, enlarging
+upon the vista of hopeless disability which it had revealed in Henry,
+and concluding with a repetition of his last question.
+
+"No," said Harry rather sullenly, "I can think of nothing else I'm fit
+for unless I sweep a crossing; and then you would say I hadn't money
+for the broom!"
+
+"But, surely, my boy," cried his mother, "you have forgotten what you
+said to me last night?"
+
+Harry frowned and glared, for it is one thing to breathe your
+ridiculous aspirations to the dearest of mothers in the dead of night,
+and quite another thing to confide them to a singularly unsympathetic
+uncle in broad daylight. But Mrs. Ringrose had turned to her brother,
+and she would go on: "There is one thing he tells me he would rather do
+than anything else in the world--and I am sure he could do it best."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Write!"
+
+Harry groaned. Mr. Walthew raised his eyebrows. Mrs. Ringrose sat
+triumphant.
+
+"Write what, my dear Mary?"
+
+"Articles--poems--books."
+
+A grim resignation was given to Harry, and he laughed aloud as the
+clergyman shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
+
+"On his own showing," said Uncle Spencer, "I should doubt whether he
+has--er--the education--for that."
+
+Mrs. Ringrose looked displeased, and even dangerous, for the moment;
+but she controlled her feelings on perceiving that the boy himself was
+now genuinely amused.
+
+"You are quite mistaken," she contented herself with saying. "Have I
+never shown you the parody on Gray's Elegy he won a guinea for when he
+was fourteen? Then I will now."
+
+And the fond lady was on her feet, only to find her boy with his back
+to the door, and laughter, shame and anger fighting for his face.
+
+"You shall do no such thing, mother," Harry said firmly. "That
+miserable parody!"
+
+"It was nothing of the kind. It began, 'The schoolbell tolls the
+knell----'"
+
+"Hush, mother!"
+
+"'Of parting play'" she added wilfully.
+
+Mr. Walthew's eyebrows had reached their apogee.
+
+"That is quite enough, Mary," said he. "I disapprove of parodies, root
+and branch; they are invariably vulgar; and when the poem parodied has
+a distinctly religious tendency, as in this case, they are also
+irreverent and profane. I am only glad to see that Henry is himself
+ashamed of his lucubration. If he should write aught of a religious
+character, and get it into print--a difficult matter, Henry, for one so
+indifferently equipped--my satisfaction will not be lessened by my
+surprise. Meanwhile let him return to those classics he should never
+have neglected, for by the dead languages only can we hope to obtain a
+mastery of our own; and I, for my part, will do my best in what, after
+all, I regard as a much less hopeless direction. Good-bye, Mary. I
+trust that I shall see you both on Sunday."
+
+But Mrs. Ringrose would not let him go without another word for her
+boy's parody.
+
+"When I read it to Mr. Lowndes," said she, to Harry's horror, "he said
+that he thought that a lad who could write so well at fourteen should
+have a future before him. So you see everybody is not of your opinion,
+Spencer; and Mr. Lowndes saw nothing vulgar."
+
+"Do I understand you to refer," said Mr. Walthew, bristling, "to the
+person who has done me the honour of calling upon me in connection with
+your affairs?"
+
+"He is the only Mr. Lowndes I know."
+
+"Then let me tell you, Mary, that his is not a name to conjure with in
+my hearing. I should say, however, that he is the last person to be a
+competent judge of vulgarity or--or other matters."
+
+"Then you dislike him too?" cried poor Mrs. Ringrose.
+
+"Do you?" said Mr. Walthew, turning to Harry; and uncle and nephew
+regarded one another for the first time with mutually interested eyes.
+
+"Not I," said Harry stoutly. "He has been my mother's best friend."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it," the clergyman said; "what's more, I don't
+believe it."
+
+"But he has been and he is," insisted the lady; "you little know what
+he has done for me."
+
+"I wouldn't trust his motives," said her brother. "I am sorry to say
+it, Mary; he is very glib and plausible, I know; but--he doesn't strike
+me as an honest man!"
+
+Mrs. Ringrose was troubled and vexed, and took leave of the visitor
+with a face as sombre as his own; but as for Harry, he recalled his own
+feelings on the journey up, and he felt less out of sympathy with his
+uncle than he had ever done in his life before. But Mr. Walthew was not
+one to go without an irritating last word, and in the passage he had
+his chance. He had remarked on the packing cases, and Harry had dived
+into his mother's room and returned with an ostrich egg in each hand,
+of which he begged his uncle's acceptance, saying that he would send
+them by the parcels post. Mr. Walthew opened his eyes but shook his
+head.
+
+"I could not dream of taking them from you," said he, "in--in your
+present circumstances, Henry."
+
+"But I got them for nothing," said Harry, at once hurt and nettled. "I
+got a dozen of them, and any amount of assegais and things, all for
+love, when I was on the Zambesi. I should like you and my aunt to have
+something."
+
+"Really I could not think of it; but, if I did, I certainly should not
+permit you to incur the expense of parcel postage."
+
+"Pooh! uncle, it would only be sixpence or a shilling."
+
+"_Only_ sixpence _or_ a shilling! As if they were one and the same
+thing! You talk like a millionaire, Henry, and it pains me to hear you,
+after the conversation we have had."
+
+Harry wilfully observed that he never had been able to study the
+shillings, and his uncle stood shocked on the threshold, as indeed he
+was meant to be.
+
+"Then it's about time," said he, "that you did learn to study them--and
+the sixpences--and the pence. You were smoking a pipe when I came. I
+confess I was surprised, not merely because the habit is a vile one,
+for it is unhappily the rule rather than the exception, but because it
+is also an extravagant habit. You may say--I have heard young men
+say--that it only costs you a few pence a week. Then, pray, study those
+few pence--and save them. It is your duty. And as for what you say you
+got for nothing, the ostrich eggs and so forth, take them and sell them
+at the nearest shop! That also is your bounden duty, unless you wish to
+be a burden to your mother in her poverty; and I am very sorry that you
+should compel me to tell you so by talking of not 'studying' the
+shillings."
+
+He towered in the doorway, a funereal monument of righteous horror; and
+once more Harry held out his hand, and let his elder go with the last
+word. The lad realised, in the first place, that he had just heard one
+or two things which were perfectly true; and yet, in the second, he was
+certain that he could not have replied without insolence--after his own
+prior and virtuous resolve to sell the curios himself. Now he never
+would sell them--so he felt for the moment; and he found himself
+closing the door as though there were illness in the flat, in his
+anxiety to keep from banging it as he desired.
+
+"I fear your Uncle Spencer has been vexing you too," his mother said;
+"and yet I know that he will do his best to secure you a post."
+
+"Oh, that's all right, mother; he was kind enough; it's only his way,"
+said Harry, for he could see that his mother was sufficiently put out
+as it was.
+
+"It's a way that makes me miserable," said poor Mrs. Ringrose, with a
+tear in her voice. "Did you hear what he said to me? He said what I
+never shall forgive."
+
+"Not about those rotten verses?"
+
+"No--about Mr. Lowndes. Your uncle said he didn't think him an honest
+man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE GAME OF BLUFF.
+
+
+An inscrutable note reached Harry by the last post that night. It was
+from Gordon Lowndes, and it ran:--
+
+    "Leadenhall Street, E.C.
+
+    "May 20.
+
+    "DEAR RINGROSE,--If you are still of the same mind about a matter
+    which we need not name, let me hear from you by return, and I'll
+    'inspan' the best detective in the world. He is at present cooling
+    his heels at Scotland Yard, but may be on the job again any day, so
+    why not on ours?
+
+    "Perhaps you will kindly drop me a line in any case, as I await
+    your instructions.
+
+    "Yours faithfully,
+
+    "GORDON LOWNDES."
+
+"What is it, my boy?"
+
+"A line from Lowndes."
+
+"Am I not to see it?"
+
+"I would rather you didn't, mother dear."
+
+"You haven't offended him, I hope?"
+
+"Oh, no, it's about something we spoke of in the train; it has come to
+nothing, that's all."
+
+And Mrs. Ringrose gathered, as she was intended to gather, that some
+iron or other had already been in the fire--and come out again. She
+said no more. As for Harry, the final proof of his father's dishonour
+had put out of his mind the oath which he had made Lowndes swear in
+that almost happy hour when he could still refuse to believe; and the
+sting of the reminder, and of the contrast between his feelings then
+and now, was such that he was determined his mother should not bear it
+with him. But yet, with all the pain it gave, the note from Lowndes
+both puzzled and annoyed him; it was as though there were some subtle
+thing between the lines, a something in a cipher to which he had not
+the key; and he resented being forced to reply. After long
+deliberation, however, this was written and rewritten, and taken
+stealthily to the pillar in the small hours:--
+
+    "Kensington, May 21st.
+
+    "DEAR MR. LOWNDES,--I am not of the same mind about the matter
+    which you very kindly do not name. I hope that neither you nor I
+    will ever have occasion to name it again, and that you will forgive
+    me for what I said yesterday before I could believe the truth. I
+    hardly know now what I did say, but I do honestly apologise, and
+    only beg of you never to speak, and, if possible, not to think, of
+    it again.
+
+    "Believe me that I am grateful for your kind offer, and more than
+    grateful for all your goodness to my mother.
+
+    "Yours sincerely,
+
+    "HARRY RINGROSE."
+
+This had the effect of bringing Lowndes to the flat the following
+afternoon, in the high spirits which were characteristic of the normal
+man; it was only natural they should have deserted him the day before;
+and yet when Harry came in and found him taking tea with his mother,
+radiant, voluble, hilarious, the change was such that he seemed to the
+boy another being. Humour shone through the gold-rimmed glasses and
+trembled at the tip of the pointed nose. Harry had never seen a jollier
+face, or listened to so boisterous a laugh; and they were what he
+needed, for he had come in doubly embittered and depressed.
+
+He had been to the great house which had supplied his mother with her
+groceries for so many years. He had seen a member of the firm, a
+gentleman of presence and aplomb, in whose courtly company Harry and
+his old clothes were painfully outclassed. The resultant and inevitable
+repulse was none the less galling from being couched in terms of
+perfectly polite condescension. Harry carried his specimen battle-axe
+home in the brown paper he had taken it in, and pitched it upon the
+sofa with a wry face before recounting his experience.
+
+Lowndes instantly said that he would get a price for the curios if
+Harry would send them along to his office. Whereupon Harry thanked him,
+but still looked glum, for a worse experience remained untold.
+
+The boy was in glaring need of new clothes; he could not possibly seek
+work in town as he was; and Mrs. Ringrose had characteristically
+insisted that he should go to his father's and his own old London
+tailors. There was, moreover, some point in such a course, since it was
+now known that Mr. Ringrose had settled his tailors' account, with
+several others of the kind, on the very eve of his flight; so that in
+the circumstances these people might fairly be expected to wait for
+their money until Harry could earn it. Elsewhere he would have to pay
+ready cash, a very serious matter, if not an impossibility for some
+time to come. So Harry was really driven to go where he was known, but
+yet so ashamed, that it was only the miserable interview with the
+well-groomed gentleman aforesaid which had brought him to the point. He
+had called at the tailors' on his way home, chosen his cloth and been
+measured, only to be confronted by the senior partner at the door.
+
+"What do you think he wanted?" cried Harry in a blaze. "A guarantee
+that they would be paid! I told them they needn't trouble to make the
+things at all, and out I came."
+
+Lowndes dashed down his cup and was on his legs in an instant.
+
+"I'll give them their guarantee," said he. "You swallow your tea and
+get your hat; we'll take a hansom back to your tailors, and I'll give
+them their guarantee!"
+
+Harry was against any such intervention, but Mrs. Ringrose was against
+Harry, and in less than five minutes Lowndes had carried him off. In
+the hansom the spirits of that mirthful man rose higher than ever; he
+sat rubbing his hands and chuckling with delight; but so truculent were
+his sentiments that Harry, who hated a row as much as his companion
+appeared to like one, was not a little nervous as to what would happen,
+and got out finally with his heart in his mouth.
+
+What did happen need not be described. Suffice it that Mr. Lowndes
+talked to that master-tailor with extraordinary energy for the space of
+about three minutes, and that in several different strains, preparing
+his soil with simple reproaches, scarifying with sarcasm, and finally
+trampling it down with a weight of well-worded abuse the like of which
+Harry had never listened to off the stage. And the effect was more
+extraordinary than the cause: the tradesman took it like a lamb,
+apologised to Harry on the spot, and even solicited his friend's custom
+as they turned to leave the shop. The result opened Harry's mouth in
+sheer amazement. After a first curt refusal, Mr. Lowndes hesitated,
+fingered a cloth, became gradually gracious, and in the end was
+measured for no fewer than three suits and an Inverness cape.
+
+"Couldn't resist it!" said he, roaring with laughter in the cab.
+"Trustfulness is a virtue we should all encourage, and I hope,
+Ringrose, that you'll continue to encourage it in these excellent
+fellows. I've sown the seed, it's for you to reap the flower; and
+recollect that they'll think much more of you when you order six suits
+than when you pay for one."
+
+"It was extraordinary," said Harry, "after the dressing-down you gave
+them!"
+
+"Dressing-down?" said Lowndes. "I meant to dress 'em down, and I'll
+dress anybody down who needs it--of that you may be sure. What's this?
+Grosvenor Square? Do you see that house with the yellow balcony in the
+far corner? That's my Lady Banff's--I gave _her_ a bit of my mind the
+other evening. Went to see my Lord on business. Left standing in the
+hall twenty minutes. Down came my Lady to dinner, so I just asked her,
+as a matter of curiosity, if they took me for a stick or an umbrella,
+to leave me there, and then I told her what I thought of the manners
+and customs of her house. My Lady had me shown into the library at
+once, and made me a handsome apology into the bargain. I guarantee
+friend Yellowplush to know better next time!"
+
+Lowndes stayed to supper at the flat, and he became better and better
+company as Harry Ringrose gradually yielded to the contagion of his
+gaiety and his good-humour. He was certainly the most entertaining of
+men; yet for a long time Harry resented being entertained by him, and
+would frown one moment because he had been forced to laugh the moment
+before. Nor was this because of anything that had already happened; it
+was due entirely to the current behaviour of Gordon Lowndes. The man
+took unwarrantable liberties. His status at the flat was rightly that
+of a privileged friend, but Harry thought he presumed upon it
+insufferably.
+
+Like many great talkers, Lowndes was a vile listener, who thought
+nothing of interrupting Mrs. Ringrose herself; while as for Harry, he
+tried more than once to set some African experience of his own against
+the visitor's endless anecdotes; but he never succeeded, and for a time
+the failures rankled. It was the visitor, again, who must complain of
+the supper: the lamb was underdone, the mint sauce too sweet for him,
+and the salad dressing which was on the table not to be compared with
+the oil and vinegar which were not. These were the things that made
+Harry hate himself when he laughed; yet laugh he must; the other's
+intentions were so obviously good; and he did not offend Mrs. Ringrose.
+She encouraged him to monopolise the conversation, but that without
+appearing to attach too much importance to everything he said. And once
+when Harry caught her eye, himself raging inwardly, there was an
+indulgent twinkle in it which mollified him wonderfully, for it seemed
+to say: "These are his little peculiarities; you should not take them
+seriously; they do not make him any the less my friend--and yours." It
+was this glance which undermined Harry's hostility and prepared his
+heart for eventual surrender to the spell of which Gordon Lowndes was
+undoubted master.
+
+"I tell you what, Ringrose," said he, as they rose from the table, "if
+you don't get a billet within the next month, I'll give you one
+myself."
+
+"You won't!" cried Harry, incredulously enough, for the promise had
+been made without preliminary, and it seemed too good to be possible.
+
+"Won't I?" laughed Lowndes; "you'll see if I won't! What's more, it'll
+be a billet worth half-a-dozen such as that uncle of yours is likely to
+get you. What would you say to three hundred for a start?"
+
+"I knew you were joking," was what Harry said, with a sigh; and his
+mother turned away as though she had known it too.
+
+"I was never more serious in my life," retorted Lowndes. "I'm up to my
+chin in the biggest scheme of the century--bar none--though I'm not
+entitled to tell you what it is at this stage. It's a critical stage,
+Ringrose, but this week will settle things one way or the other. It's
+simply a question whether the Earl of Banff will or whether the Earl of
+Banff won't, and he's going to answer definitely this week. If he
+will--and I haven't the slightest doubt of it in my own mind--the
+Company will be out before you know where you are--and you shall be
+Secretary----"
+
+"Secretary!"
+
+"Be good enough not to interrupt me, Ringrose. You shall be Secretary
+with three hundred a year. Not competent? Nonsense; I'll undertake to
+make you competent in a couple of hours; but if I say more, you'll know
+too much before the time, and I'm pledged to secrecy till we land the
+noble Earl. He's a pretty big fish, but I've as good as got him.
+However, he's to let us know this week, and perhaps it would be as well
+not to raise the wind on that three hundred meanwhile; but it's as good
+as in your pocket, Ringrose, for all that!"
+
+Mrs. Ringrose sat in her chair, without a sound save that of her
+knitting needles; and Harry formed the impression that she was already
+in the secret of the unmentionable scheme, but that she disapproved of
+it. He remarked, however, that he only wished he had known of such a
+prospect in time to have mentioned it to his uncle at their interview.
+
+"Your uncle!" cried Lowndes. "I should like to have seen his face if
+you had! I asked him to take shares the other day--told him I could put
+him on the best thing of the reign--and it was as good as a pantomime
+to see his face. Apart from his religious scruples, which make him
+regard the City of London as the capital of a warmer place than
+England, he's not what you would call one of Nature's sportsmen, that
+holy uncle of yours. He's a gentleman who counts the odds. I wouldn't
+trust him in the day of battle. Never till my dying day shall I forget
+our first meeting!"
+
+And Lowndes let out a roar of laughter that might have been heard
+throughout the mansions; but Harry looked at his mother, who was
+smiling over her knitting, before he allowed himself to smile and to
+ask what had happened.
+
+"Your mother had written to tell him I was going to call," said
+Lowndes, wiping the tears from his eyes, "and when I did go he wanted
+proof of my identity because I didn't happen to have a card on me. I
+suppose he thought I looked a shady cuss, so he took it into his head I
+wasn't the real Simon Pure. You see, there's nothing rash about your
+uncle; as for me, I burst out laughing in his face, and that made
+matters worse. He said he'd want a witness then--a witness to my
+identity before he'd discuss his sister's affairs with me. 'All right,'
+says I, 'you shall have half a dozen witnesses, for I'll call my
+underclothes! There's "Gordon Lowndes" on my shirt and collar--there's
+"Gordon Lowndes" on my pants and vest--and if there isn't "Gordon
+Lowndes" on both my socks there'll be trouble when I get home,' I told
+him; and I was out of my coat and waistcoat before he could stop me.
+I'd have gone on, too, but that was enough for your uncle! I can see
+him now--it was on his doorstep--but he let me in after that!"
+
+Harry had a hearty, boyish laugh which it was a pleasure to hear, and
+Mrs. Ringrose heard it now as she had not heard it for two years; for
+she had shown that the story did not offend her by laughing herself;
+and besides, the boy also could see his uncle, with sable arms
+uplifted, and this impudent Bohemian coolly stripping on the doorstep.
+His innate impudence was brought home to Harry in different fashion a
+moment later, when the visitor suddenly complained of the light, and
+asked why on earth there was only one gas-bracket in a room of that
+size.
+
+"Because I could not afford more," replied Mrs. Ringrose.
+
+"Afford them, my dear madam? There should have been no question of
+affording them!" cried Gordon Lowndes. "You should have brought what
+you wanted from your own house."
+
+"But it wasn't our own," sighed Mrs. Ringrose; "it belonged to--our
+creditors."
+
+"Your creditors!" echoed Lowndes, with scathing scorn. "It makes me
+positively ill to hear an otherwise sensible lady speak of creditors in
+that submissive tone! I regard it as a sacred obligation on all of us
+to get to windward of our creditors, by fair means or foul. We owe it
+to our fellow-creatures who may find themselves similarly situated
+to-morrow or next day. If we don't get to windward of our creditors, be
+very sure they'll get to windward of us. But to pamper and pet the
+enemy--as though they'd dare to say a word about a petty
+gas-bracket!--was a perfect crime, my dear Mrs. Ringrose, and one that
+showed a most deplorable lack of public spirit. I only wish I'd thought
+of your gas-brackets when I was down there the day before yesterday!"
+
+"Why? What would you have done?" demanded Harry with some heat.
+
+"Come away with one in my hat!" roared Lowndes. "Come away with the
+chandelier next my skin!"
+
+And he broke into a great guffaw in which Harry Ringrose joined in his
+own despite. It was absurd to apply conventional standards to this
+sworn enemy of convention. It was impossible to be angry with Gordon
+Lowndes. Harry determined to take no further offence at anything he
+might say or do, but to follow his mother's tacit example and to accept
+her singular friend on her own tolerant terms. Nor was it hard to see
+when the lad made amiable resolutions; they flew like flags upon his
+face; and Mrs. Ringrose was able to go to bed and to leave the pair
+together with an easy mind.
+
+Whereupon they sat up till long after midnight, and Harry, having
+relinquished all thought of entertaining Gordon Lowndes, was himself
+undeniably entertained. He had seen something of the world (less than
+he thought, but still something), yet he had never met with anybody
+half so interesting as Lowndes, who had been everywhere, seen
+everything, and done most things, in his time. He had made and lost a
+fortune in different companies, the names of which Harry hardly caught,
+for they set him speculating upon the new Company which was to make his
+own small fortune too. Lowndes, however, refused to be drawn back to
+that momentous subject. Nor were all the exploits he recounted of a
+financial cast; there were some which Harry would have flatly
+disbelieved the day before; but one and all were consistent with the
+character of the man as he had seen it since.
+
+Great names seemed as familiar to him as his own, and, after the scene
+at the tailors', Harry could well believe that Mr. Lowndes had heckled
+a very eminent politician to his inconvenience, if not to the alleged
+extent of altering the entire course of a General Election. He was also
+the very man to have defended in person an action for libel, and to
+have lost it by the little error of requesting the judge to "be good
+enough to hold his tongue." The consequences had been serious indeed,
+but Lowndes described them with considerable relish. His frankness was
+not the least of his charms as a raconteur. Before he went he had
+confessed to one crime at least--that of blackmailing a surgeon-baronet
+for a thousand pounds in his own consulting-room.
+
+"He got a hold of the bell-rope," said Lowndes, "but it was no use his
+playing the game of bluff with _me_. I simply laughed in his face. He'd
+murdered a poor man's wife--vivisected her, Ringrose--taken her to
+pieces like a watch--and he'd got to pay up or be exposed."
+
+For it was disinterested blackmail, so that even this story was
+characteristic if incredible. It illustrated what may be termed an
+officious altruism--which Harry had seen operating in his own
+behalf--side by side with a perfectly piratical want of principle which
+Lowndes took no pains to conceal. It was impossible for an
+impressionable young fellow, needing a friend, not to be struck by one
+so bluff, so masterful, so kind-hearted, and probably much less
+unscrupulous than it pleased him to appear; and it was impossible for
+Harry Ringrose not to put the kind heart first, as he came upstairs
+after seeing Lowndes into a hansom, and thought how joyfully he would
+come up them if he were sure of earning even one hundred a year.
+
+And Lowndes said three!
+
+"I am thankful you like him," said Mrs. Ringrose, who was still awake.
+"But--we all can see the faults of those we really like--and there's
+one fault I do see in Mr. Lowndes. He is so sanguine!" Mrs. Ringrose
+might have added that we see those faults the plainest when they are
+also our own.
+
+"Sanguine!" said Harry. "How?"
+
+"He expects Lord Banff to make up his mind this week."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It has been 'this week' all this year!"
+
+Harry looked very sad.
+
+"Then you don't think much of my chances of that--three hundred? I
+might have seen you didn't at the time."
+
+"No, my boy, I do not. Of his will to help you there can be no
+question; his ability is another matter; and we must not rely on him."
+
+"But you say he has helped you so much?"
+
+"In a different way."
+
+"Well," said Harry after a pause, "in spite of what you say, he seems
+quite sure himself that everything will be settled to-morrow. He has an
+appointment with Lord Banff in the afternoon. He wants to see me
+afterwards, and has asked me to go down and spend the evening with them
+at Richmond."
+
+Mrs. Ringrose lay conspicuously silent.
+
+"Who are 'they,' mother?" continued her son. "Somehow or other he is a
+man you never associate with a family, he's so complete in himself. Is
+he married?"
+
+"His wife is dead."
+
+"Then there are children?"
+
+"One daughter, I believe."
+
+"Don't you know her?"
+
+"No; and I don't want to!" cried Mrs. Ringrose. So broke the small
+storm which had been brewing in her grave face and altered voice.
+
+"Why not, mother?"
+
+"She has never been near me! Here I have been nearly two months, and
+she has never called. I shall refuse to see her when she does. The
+father can come, but we are beneath the daughter. We are in trouble,
+you see! I only hope you'll have very little to say to her."
+
+"I won't go at all if you'd rather I didn't."
+
+"No, you must go; but be prepared for a snub--and to snub her!"
+
+The bitterness of a sweet woman is always startling, and Harry had
+never heard his mother speak so bitterly. Her spirit infected him, and
+he left her with grim promises. Yet he went to bed more interested than
+ever in Gordon Lowndes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ON RICHMOND HILL.
+
+
+It was the hour before sunset when Harry Ringrose took the train from
+Earl's Court to Richmond, and, referring to an envelope which Lowndes
+had given him overnight, inquired his way to Sandringham, Greville
+Road, Richmond Hill. Having no experience of suburban London, he was
+prepared to find a mansion not absolutely unworthy of its name, and was
+rather astonished at having to give that of the road to the policeman
+who directed him. He had half expected that officer to look impressed
+and say, "Oh, yes, Mr. Lowndes's; the large house on the hill; you
+can't mistake it." For though he gathered that Lowndes was only about
+to become a millionaire, and that his contempt for creditors was
+founded upon some former personal experience of that obnoxious class,
+it nevertheless appeared to Harry that his friend must be pretty well
+off as it was. At all events, he thought nothing of losing the last
+train and driving all this way home.
+
+Harry had never been in Richmond before, and the picturesque features
+with which its narrow streets still abound were by no means lost upon
+him. Here a quaint gable, and there a tile roof, sunken and discoloured
+with sheer age, reminded him that he was indeed in the old country once
+more; and he rejoiced in the fact with a blessed surcease of the pain
+and shame with which his home-coming had been fraught. May was in his
+blood; and as he climbed the hill the words of the old song, that
+another Richmond claims, rang so loud in his head that he had a work to
+keep them back from his lips:--
+
+"On Richmond Hill there lives a lass, More bright than May-day morn;
+Whose charms all other maids' surpass--A rose without a thorn. This
+lass so neat, with smiles so sweet, Has won my right good will. I'd
+crowns resign to call her mine, Sweet lass of Richmond Hill!"
+
+The young fellow could not help thinking that it was a lass of Richmond
+Hill he was about to meet, and wondering whether her smiles would prove
+sweet, and her charms superior to those of all other maids. Harry
+Ringrose had never been in love. He had been duly foolish in his callow
+day, but that was nothing. From the firm pedestal of one-and-twenty he
+could look back, and lay his hand upon his heart, and aver with truth
+that it had never been irretrievably lost. Nevertheless, Harry was
+quite prepared to lose his heart as soon as ever he realised the ideal
+which was graven upon it; or he had been so prepared until the
+revelation of these last days had hurled such idle aspirations to the
+winds. But, for some reason, the memory of that revelation did not
+haunt him this evening; and, accordingly, he was so prepared once more.
+
+One of the many inconveniences of preconceiving your fate lies in the
+nervous feeling that it may be lurking round every corner in the shape
+of every woman you are about to meet. Even when he met them Harry was
+not always sure. His ideal was apt to be elastic in the face of obvious
+charms. It was only the impossibles that he knew at sight, such as the
+girl who was climbing the hill ahead of him at this moment. Harry would
+not have looked twice at her but for one circumstance.
+
+She was tall and well-built, on a far larger scale than Harry cared
+about, and yet she was continually changing a bag which she carried
+from one hand to the other. It was a leather travelling-bag, of no
+excessive size, but as she carried it in one hand her body bent itself
+the other way; and she never had it in the same hand long.
+
+The hill was steep and seemed interminable; it was the warm evening of
+a hot day; and Harry, slowly overhauling the young woman, might have
+seen that she had pretty hair and ears, but he could think of nothing
+but her burden and her fatigue. He could not even think of himself and
+his ideals, and had so ceased committing his besetting sin. What he did
+see, however, was that the girl was a lady, and he heartily wished that
+she were not. He longed to carry that bag for her, but he could not
+bring himself to offer to do so. He had too much delicacy or too little
+courage.
+
+Irresolutely he slackened his pace; he was ashamed, despite his
+scruples, to pass her callously without a word. He was close behind her
+now. He heard her breathing heavily. Was there nothing he could say?
+Was there no way of putting it without offence? Harry was still
+thinking when the knot untied itself. The girl had stopped dead, and
+put the bag down with a deep sigh, and Harry had caught it up without
+thinking any more.
+
+"What are you doing?" cried the girl. "Give that back to me at once."
+
+Her voice was very indignant, but also a little faint; and the note of
+alarm with which it began changed to one of authority as she saw that,
+at any rate, she was not dealing with a thief.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Harry, very red, as he raised his hat with
+his unoccupied hand; "but--but you really must let me carry it a little
+way for you."
+
+"I could not dream of it. Will you kindly give it me back this
+instant?"
+
+The girl was now good-humoured but very firm. She also had coloured,
+but her lips remained pale with fatigue. And she had very fine,
+fearless, grey eyes; but Harry found he could defy them in such a
+cause, so that they flashed with anger, and a foot--no very small
+one--stamped heartily on the pavement.
+
+"Did you hear what I said?"
+
+"I did; but----"
+
+"Give it to me!"
+
+"It's so heavy."
+
+"Give it to me!"
+
+He was wondering whether the bag was full of jewels, that she was in
+such a state about it, when all at once she grabbed at the handle he
+still hesitated to relinquish. The bag came open between them--and to
+his amazement he saw what it contained.
+
+Coals!
+
+A few fell out upon the pavement. Harry stooped, put them in again, and
+shut the bag. The young lady had moved away. She was walking on slowly
+ahead, and from her shoulders Harry feared that she was crying. He
+followed miserably but doggedly with the bag.
+
+She never looked round, and he never took his eyes from those broad,
+quivering shoulders. He felt an officious brute, but he had a certain
+fierce consolation too: he had got his way--he had not been beaten by a
+woman. And the heaviness of the bag, no longer to be wondered at, was
+in itself a justification; he also had changed it from hand to hand,
+and that more than once, before they came to the top of the hill.
+
+Here he followed his leader down a broad turning to the left, and
+thence along a smaller road until she stopped before the low wooden
+gate of a shabby little semi-detached house. Evidently this was her
+destination, and she was waiting for her bag. And now Harry lost
+confidence with every step he took, for the girl stood squarely with
+her back to the gate, and her eyes were dry but very bright, as though
+she meant to give him a bit of her mind before she let him go.
+
+"You may put it down here."
+
+Harry did so without a word.
+
+"Thank you. You are a stranger to Richmond, I think?"
+
+The thanks had sounded ironical, and the question took Harry aback. The
+grey eyes looked amused, and it was the last expression he had expected
+in them.
+
+"How did you know that?" he simply asked.
+
+"You are too sunburnt for Richmond, and--perhaps--too gallant!"
+
+"Or officious?"
+
+Her pleasant tone put him at his ease.
+
+"No; it was very kind of you, and one good turn deserves another. Were
+you looking for any particular road or house?"
+
+"Yes, for Sandringham, in the Greville Road."
+
+She stood aside and pointed to the name on the little wooden gate.
+
+"Why, this is it!" gasped Harry Ringrose.
+
+"Yes; this is Sandringham," said the girl, with a sort of shamefaced
+humour. "No wonder you are disappointed!"
+
+His eyes came guiltily from the little house with the big name. "Then
+are you Miss Lowndes?" he inquired aghast.
+
+"That is my name--Mr. Ringrose."
+
+Spoken with the broadest smile, this was the last straw so far as
+Harry's manners were concerned.
+
+"How on earth do you know mine?" cried he.
+
+"I guessed it in the road."
+
+"How could you?"
+
+"How did I know you were a stranger to Richmond?" rejoined Miss
+Lowndes. "Anybody could see that you have come from foreign parts; and
+I had heard all about you from my father. Besides, I expected you. I
+only hoped to get home first with my coals. And to be caught like
+this--it's really too bad!"
+
+"I am awfully sorry," murmured Harry, and with such obvious sincerity
+that Miss Lowndes smiled again.
+
+"I think you may be!" said she. "One may find that stupidity in the
+kitchen has run one short of coals at the very moment when they are
+wanted most, and the quickest thing may be for one to go oneself and
+borrow a few from a friend. But it's hard lines to be caught doing so,
+Mr. Ringrose, for all that!"
+
+So this was the explanation. To Harry Ringrose it was both simple and
+satisfying; but before he could say a word Miss Lowndes had changed the
+subject abruptly by again pointing to the grand name on the gate.
+
+"This is another thing I may as well explain for your benefit, Mr.
+Ringrose; it is one of my father's little jokes. When he came here he
+was so tickled by the small houses with the large names that he
+determined to beat his neighbours at their own game. It was all I could
+do to prevent him from having 'Buckingham Palace' painted on the gate.
+So you are quite forgiven for finding it difficult to believe that this
+was the house, and also for upsetting my coals. And now I think we may
+shake hands and go in."
+
+He took with alacrity the fine firm hand which was held out to him, and
+felt already at his ease as he followed Miss Lowndes to the steps,
+again carrying the bag. By this time, moreover, he had noted and
+admired her pretty hair, which was fair with a warm tinge in it, her
+rather deep but very pleasant voice, and the clear and healthy skin
+which had her father's freshness in finer shades. She was obviously
+older than Harry, and stronger-minded as well as less beautiful than
+his ideal type. But he had a feeling, even after these few minutes,
+which had not come to him in all the hours that he had spent with
+Gordon Lowndes. It was the feeling that he had found a real friend.
+
+But the surprises of the evening were only beginning, for while Harry
+contemplated a warped and blistered front door, in thorough keeping
+with the poverty-stricken appearance of the house, it was opened by a
+man-servant not unworthy of the millionaire of the immediate future.
+And yet next moment he found himself in a sitting-room as sordid as the
+exterior. The visitor was still trying to reconcile these
+contradictions when Miss Lowndes followed him slowly into the room,
+reading a telegram as she came.
+
+"Are you very hungry, Mr. Ringrose?" said she, looking up in evident
+anxiety.
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Because I am afraid my father will not be home for another hour. This
+is a telegram from him. He has been detained. But it doesn't seem fair
+to ask you to wait so long!"
+
+"I should prefer it. I shall do myself much better justice in an hour's
+time," said Harry, laughing; but Miss Lowndes still appeared to take
+the situation seriously, though she also seemed relieved. And her
+embarrassment was notable after the way in which she had carried off
+the much more trying contretemps in the road. It was as though there
+were something dispiriting in the atmosphere of the poky and
+ill-favoured house, something which especially distressed its young
+mistress; for they sat for some time without a word, while dusk
+deepened in the shabby little room; and it was much to Harry's relief
+when he was suddenly asked if he had ever seen the view from Richmond
+Hill.
+
+"Never," he replied; "will you show it to me, Miss Lowndes? I have
+often heard of it, and I wish you would."
+
+"It would be better than sitting here," said his companion, "though I'm
+afraid you won't see much in this light. However, it's quite close, and
+we can try."
+
+It was good to be in the open air again, but, as Miss Lowndes observed,
+it was a pity she had not thought of it before. In the park the shadows
+were already deep, and the deer straggling across the broad paths as
+they never do till nightfall. A warm glow still suffused the west, and
+was reflected in the river beneath, where pleasure-boats looked black
+as colliers on the belt of pink. It was the hour when it is dark
+indoors but light without, and yellow windows studded the woody levels
+while the contour of the trees was yet distinct. Even where the river
+coiled from pink to grey the eye could still follow it almost to
+Twickenham, a leaden track between the leaves.
+
+"I only wish it were an hour earlier," added Miss Lowndes when she had
+pointed out her favourite landmarks. "Still, it's a good deal
+pleasanter here than indoors." She seemed a different being when she
+was out of that house; she had been talkative enough since they
+started, but now she turned to Harry.
+
+"Tell me about Africa, Mr. Ringrose. Tell me all the interesting things
+you saw and did and heard about while you were out there!"
+
+Harry caught his breath with pleasure. It was the unconscious fault of
+his adolescence that he was more eager to convey than receive; it was
+the complementary defect of the quality of enthusiasm which was Harry's
+strongest point. He had landed from his travels loaded like a gun with
+reminiscence and adventure, but the terrible return to the old home had
+damped his priming, and at the new home the future was the one affair
+of his own of which he had had time or heart to think. But now the
+things came back to him which he had come home longing to relate. He
+needed no second bidding from the sympathetic companion at his side,
+but began telling her, diffidently at first, then with all his boyish
+gusto as he caught and held her interest, the dozen and one experiences
+that had been on his tongue three days (that seemed three weeks) ago.
+
+To talk and be understood--to talk and be appreciated--it was half the
+battle of life with Harry Ringrose at this stage of his career. It is
+true that he had seen but little, and true that he had done still less,
+even in these two last errant years of his. But whatsoever he had seen
+or done, that had interested him in the least, he could bring home
+vividly enough to anybody who would give him a sympathetic hearing. And
+to do so was a deep and a strange delight to him; not, perhaps,
+altogether unconnected with mere vanity; but ministering also to a
+subtler sense of which the possessor was as yet unconscious.
+
+And Miss Lowndes listened to her young Othello, an older and more
+critical Desdemona, who liked him less for the dangers he had passed
+than for his ingenuous delight in recounting them. The talk indeed
+interested, but the talker charmed her, so that she was content to
+listen for the most part without a word. Meanwhile they were sauntering
+farther and farther afield, and at length the new Desdemona was
+compelled to tell Othello they must turn. He complied without pausing
+in the story. Her next interruption was more serious.
+
+"Don't you write?" she suddenly exclaimed.
+
+"Write what?"
+
+"Things for magazines."
+
+"I wish I did! The magazine at school was the only one I ever tried my
+hand for. Who told you I wrote?"
+
+"Mrs. Ringrose has shown things to my father, and he thought them very
+good. It only just struck me that what you are telling me would make
+such a capital magazine sketch. But it was very rude of me to
+interrupt. Please go on."
+
+"No, Miss Lowndes, I've gone on too long as it is! Here have I been
+talking away about Africa as though nothing had happened while I was
+there; and it's only three days since I landed and found
+out--everything!"
+
+His voice was strangely altered: the shame of forgetting, the pain of
+remembering, saddened and embittered every accent. Miss Lowndes,
+however, who had so plainly shared his enthusiasm, as plainly shrank
+from him in his depression. Harry was too taken up with his own
+feelings to notice this. Nor did he feel his companion's silence; for
+what was there to be said?
+
+"You should take to writing," was what she did say, presently. "You
+have a splendid capital to draw upon."
+
+"Do you write?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It is odd you should speak of it. There's nothing I would sooner do
+for a living--and something I've got to do--only I doubt if I have it
+in me to do any good with my pen. I may have the capital, but I
+couldn't lay it out to save my life."
+
+He spoke wistfully, however, as though he were not sure. And now Miss
+Lowndes seemed the more sympathethic for her momentary lapse. She was
+very sure indeed.
+
+"You have only to write those things down as you tell them, and I'm
+certain they would take!"
+
+"Very well," laughed Harry, "I'll have a try--when I have time. I
+suppose you know what your father promises me?"
+
+"No, indeed I don't," cried Miss Lowndes.
+
+"The Secretaryship of this new Company when it comes out!"
+
+For some moments the girl was silent, and then: "I'd rather see you
+writing," she said.
+
+"But this would mean three hundred a year."
+
+"I would rather make one hundred by my pen!"
+
+Harry said that he would, too, as far as liking was concerned, but that
+there were other considerations. He added that of course he did not
+count upon the Secretaryship, which seemed far too good a thing to be
+really within his reach, for it would be many a day before he was worth
+three hundred a year in any capacity. Nevertheless, it was very kind of
+Mr. Lowndes to have thought of such a thing at all.
+
+"He is kind," murmured the girl, breaking a silence which had
+influenced Harry's tone. And it was a something in her tone that made
+him exclaim:
+
+"He is the kindest man I have ever met!"
+
+"You really think so?" she cried, wistfully.
+
+"I know it," said Harry, at once touched and interested by her manner.
+"It isn't as if he'd only been kind to me. He was more than kind three
+days ago, and--and I didn't take it very well from him at first; but I
+shall never forget it now! It isn't only that, however; it's his
+kindness to my dear mother that I feel much more; and then--he was my
+father's friend!"
+
+They walked on without a word--they were nearly home now--and this time
+Harry thought less of his companion's silence, for what could she say?
+But already he felt that he could say anything to her, and "You knew my
+father?" broke from him in a low voice.
+
+"Oh, yes; I knew him very well."
+
+"He has been here?" said Harry, looking at the semi-detached house with
+a new and painful interest as they stopped at the gate.
+
+"Yes; two or three times."
+
+"When was the last?"
+
+But the latch clicked with his words, and Miss Lowndes was hastening up
+the path.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A MILLIONAIRE IN THE MAKING.
+
+
+There was a bright light in the little drawing-room, and Harry made
+sure that the master of the house had returned from town. Miss Lowndes
+put the question as soon as the door was opened, however, and he heard
+the reply as he followed her within.
+
+"No, miss, not yet."
+
+"Then who is here?"
+
+"Mr. Huxtable."
+
+"Mr. Huxtable--in the drawing-room?"
+
+"He insisted on waiting, and I thought he might as well wait there as
+anywhere."
+
+Harry thought the man's manner presumptuous, and, looking at him
+severely, was actually answered with a wink. Before he had time to
+think twice about that, however, Miss Lowndes marched erect into the
+drawing-room, and the visitor at her heels became the unwilling witness
+of a scene which he never forgot.
+
+A little bald man had planted himself on the hearthrug, where he stood
+trembling like a terrier on the leash, in an attitude of indescribable
+truculence and determination.
+
+"Good evening, young lady!" cried he, in a tone so insolent that Harry
+longed to assault him on the spot.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Huxtable. Do you wish to speak to me?"
+
+"No, thank you, miss. Not this time. I've spoken to you often enough
+and nothing's come of it. To-night I mean to see your pa. 'E's not come
+'ome yet, 'asn't 'e? Then 'ere I stick till 'e does."
+
+"May I ask what you want with him?"
+
+"May you arst?" roared Mr. Huxtable. "I like that, I'm blessed if I
+don't! Oh, yes, you may arst, young lady, and you may pretend you don't
+know; and much good it'll do you! I want my money; that's what _I_
+want. Thirty-eight pound seventeen shillings and fourpence for
+butcher-meat delivered at this 'ere 'ouse--that's all _I_ want! If
+you've got it 'andy, well and good; and if 'e's got it 'andy when 'e
+comes in, well and good again, for 'ere I wait; but if not, I'll
+county-court 'im to-morrow, and there's plenty more'll follow my
+example. It's a perfect scandal the way this 'ouse is conducted. Not a
+coal or a spud, let alone a bit o' meat, are you known to 'ave paid for
+this blessed year. It's all over Richmond, and for my part I'm sick of
+it. I've been put off and put off but I won't be put off no more. 'Ere
+I stick till 'is nibs comes in."
+
+During the first half of this harangue--considerably lengthened by
+pauses during which the tradesman gasped for breath and seemed once or
+twice on the verge of apoplexy--Harry Ringrose was on the horns of a
+dilemma in the hall. One moment he was within an ace of rushing in and
+ejecting the fellow on his own responsibility, and the next he felt it
+better to spare his new friend's feelings by making his own escape. But
+the butcher had only partly said his say when a latch-key grated in the
+door, and Gordon Lowndes entered in time to overhear the most
+impertinent part. Shutting the door softly behind him, he stood
+listening on the mat, with his head on one side and a very comical
+expression on his face. Harry had been tremulous with indignation.
+Lowndes merely shook with suppressed amusement; and, handing a heavy
+parcel to Harry, entered the room, as the tradesman ceased, in a
+perfect glow of good-humour and geniality.
+
+"Ah! my dear Huxtable, how are you?" cried he. "Delighted to see you;
+only hope I haven't kept you very long. You must blame the Earl of
+Banff, not me; he kept me with him until after eight o'clock. Not a
+word, my dear sir--not one syllable! I know exactly what you are going
+to say, and don't wonder at your wishing to see me personally. My dear
+Huxtable, I sympathise with you from my soul! How much is it? Thirty or
+forty pounds, eh? Upon my word it's too bad! But there again the Earl
+of Banff's to blame, and I've a very good mind to let you send in your
+account to him. His Lordship has been standing between me and a million
+of money all this year, but he won't do so much longer. I think I've
+brought him to reason at last. My good Mr. Huxtable, we're on the eve
+of the greatest success in modern finance. The papers will be full of
+it in about a week's time, and I shall be a rich man. But meanwhile I'm
+a poor one--I've put my all on it--I've put my shirt on it--and I'm a
+much poorer man than ever you were, Huxtable. Poor men should hang
+together, shouldn't they? Then stand by me another week, and I give you
+my word I'll stand by you. I'll pay you thirty shillings in the pound!
+Fanny, my dear, write Mr. Huxtable an IOU for half as much again as we
+owe him; and let him county-court me for _that_ if he doesn't get it
+before he's many days older!"
+
+Mr. Huxtable had made several ineffectual attempts to speak; now he was
+left without a word. Less satisfied than bewildered, he put the IOU in
+his pocket and was easily induced to accept a couple of the Earl of
+Banff's cigars before he went. Lowndes shook hands with him on the
+steps, and returned rubbing his own.
+
+"My dear Ringrose," said he, "I'm truly sorry you should have come in
+for this little revelation of our _res angusta_, but I hope you will
+lay to heart the object-lesson I have given you in the treatment of
+that harmful and unnecessary class known as creditors. There are but
+two ways of treating them. One is to kick them out neck-and-crop, and
+the other you have just seen for yourself. But don't misunderstand me,
+Ringrose! I meant every word I said, and he shall have his thirty
+shillings in the pound. The noble Earl has been a difficult fish to
+play, but I think I've landed him this time. Yes, my boy, you'll be
+drawing your three hundred a year, and I my thirty thousand, before
+midsummer; but I'll tell you all about it after supper. Why, bless my
+soul, that's the supper you've got in your hands, Ringrose! Take it
+from him, Fanny, and dish it up, for I'm as hungry as a coach-load of
+hunters, and I've no doubt Ringrose is the same."
+
+And now Harry understood the trepidation with which Miss Lowndes had
+consulted him as to whether they should wait supper for her father, and
+her relief on hearing his opinion on the point: there had been no
+supper in the house. Lowndes, however, had brought home material for an
+excellent meal, of which caviare, a raised pie, French rolls,
+camembert, peaches and a pine-apple, and a bottle of Heidsieck, were
+conspicuous elements. Black coffee followed, rather clumsily served by
+the man-servant, who waited in a dress suit some sizes too small for
+him. And after supper Harry Ringrose at last heard something definite
+concerning the Company from which he was still assured that he might
+count on a certain income of three hundred pounds a year.
+
+"Last night my tongue was tied," said Lowndes; "but to-night the matter
+is as good as settled; and I may now speak without indiscretion. I must
+tell you first of all that the Company is entirely my own idea--and a
+better one I never had in my life. It is founded on the elementary
+principle that the average man gives more freely to a good cause than
+to a bad one, but most freely to the good cause out of which he's
+likely to get some change. He enjoys doing good, but he enjoys it most
+when it pays him best, and there you have the root of the whole matter.
+Only hit upon the scheme which is both lucrative and meritorious, which
+gives the philanthropist the consolation of reward, and the
+money-grubber the kudos of philanthropy, and your fortune's made. You
+may spread the Gospel or the Empire, and do yourself well out of
+either; but, for my part, I wanted something nearer home--where charity
+begins, Ringrose--and it took me years to hit upon the right thing.
+Ireland has been my snare: to ameliorate the Irish peasant and the
+English shareholder at the same swoop: it can't be done. I wasted whole
+months over the Irish Peasants' Potato Produce Company, but it wouldn't
+pan out. Nobody will put money into Ireland, and potatoes are cheap
+already as the dirt they grow in. But I was working in the right
+direction, and the crofter grievances came as a godsend to me about a
+year ago. The very thing! I won't trouble you with the intermediate
+stages; the Highland Crofters' Salmon and Trout Supply Association,
+Limited, will be registered this week; and the greatest of Scottish
+landlords, my good old Earl of Banff, is to be Chairman of Directors
+and rope in all the rest."
+
+Harry asked how it was to be made to pay. Lowndes had every detail at
+his finger-ends, and sketched out an amazing programme with bewildering
+volubility. The price of salmon would be reduced a hundred per cent.
+The London shops would take none but the Company's fish. Fresh trout
+would sell like herrings in the street, and the Company would buy up
+the fishmongers' shops all over the country, just as brewers bought up
+public-houses. As soon as possible they would have their own line to
+the North, and expresses full of nothing but fish would do the distance
+without stopping in time hitherto unprecedented in railway annals.
+
+"But," said Harry, "there are plenty of fish in the sea, and in other
+places besides the Highlands."
+
+"So there are, but in ten years' time we shall own every river in the
+kingdom, and every cod-bank round the coast."
+
+"And where will the crofters come in then?"
+
+Lowndes roared with laughter.
+
+"They won't come in at all. It will be forgotten that they ever were
+in: the original Company will probably be incorporated with the British
+Fresh Water and Deep Sea Fishing Company, Limited. Capital ten
+millions. General Manager, Sir Gordon Lowndes, Bart., Park Lane, W.
+Secretary, H. Ringrose, Esq., at the Company's Offices, Trafalgar
+Square. We shall buy up the Grand Hotel and have them there. As for the
+crofters, they'll be our Empire and our Gospel; we'll play them for all
+they're worth in the first year or two, and then we'll let them slide."
+
+Miss Lowndes had been present all this time, and Harry had stolen more
+than one anxious glance in her direction. She never put in a word, nor
+could she be said to wear her thoughts upon her face, as she bent it
+over some needlework in the corner where she sat. Yet it was the
+daughter's silent presence which kept Harry himself proof for once
+against the always contagious enthusiasm of the father. He could not
+help coupling it with other silences of the early evening, and the
+Highland Crofters' Salmon and Trout Supply Association, Limited, left
+him as cold as he felt certain it left Miss Lowndes. It was now after
+eleven, however, and he rose to bid her good-night, while Lowndes went
+to get his hat in order to escort him to the station.
+
+"And I shall never forget our walk," added Harry, and unconsciously
+wrung her hand as though it were that of some new-found friend of his
+own sex.
+
+"Then don't forget my advice," said Miss Lowndes, "but
+write--write--write--and come and tell me how you get on!"
+
+It was her last word to him, and for days to come it stimulated Harry
+Ringrose, like many another remembered saying of this new friend,
+whenever he thought of it. But at the time he was most struck by her
+tacit dismissal of the more brilliant prospects which had been
+discussed in her hearing.
+
+"A fine creature, my daughter," said Lowndes, on the way to the
+station. "She's one to stand by a fellow in the day of battle--she's as
+staunch as steel."
+
+"I can see it," Harry answered, with enthusiasm.
+
+"Yes, yes; you have seen how it is with us, Ringrose. There's no use
+making a secret of it with you, but I should be sorry for your mother
+to know the hole we've been in, especially as we're practically out of
+it. Yet you may tell her what you like; she may wonder Fanny has never
+been to see her, but she wouldn't if she knew what a time the poor girl
+has had of it! You've no conception what it has been, Ringrose. I
+couldn't bear to speak of it if it wasn't all over but the shouting.
+To-night there was oil in the lamps, but I shouldn't like to tell you
+how many times we've gone to bed in the dark since they stopped our
+gas. You may keep your end up in the City, because if you don't you're
+done for, but it's the very devil at home. We drank cold water with our
+breakfast this morning, and I can't conceive how Fanny got in coals to
+make the coffee to-night."
+
+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-à-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."
+
+
+
+
+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 now
+      Many a day and night?
+    Many a weary night and day
+    'Tis since thou art fled away.
+
+    How shall ever one like me
+      Win thee back again?
+    With the joyous and the free
+      Thou wilt scoff at pain.
+    Spirit false! thou hast forgot
+    All but those who need thee not.
+
+    As a lizard with the shade
+      Of 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."
+
+"Steps--steps, do you say?" roared Lowndes himself. "All right, take
+steps to the devil!"
+
+And a small dark man came flying through the door, which was instantly
+banged behind him. Harry caught him in his arms, and then handed him
+his hat, which was rolling along the stone landing. The poor man
+thanked him in an agitated voice, and was tottering down the stairs,
+when he turned, and with sudden fury shook his umbrella at the shut
+door.
+
+"The dirty scamp!" he cried. "The bankrupt blackguard!"
+
+Harry never forgot the words, nor the working, whiskered face of the
+man who uttered them. He stood where he was until the trembling
+footfalls came up to him no more. Then he knocked at the door. Lowndes
+himself flung it open, and the frown of a bully changed like lightning
+to the most benevolent and genial smile.
+
+"You!" he cried. "Come in, Ringrose--come in; I'm delighted to see
+you."
+
+"Yes, it's me," said Harry, letting drop the hearty hand which he felt
+to be a savage fist unclenched to greet him. "Who did you think it
+was?"
+
+"Why, the man you must have met upon the stairs! A little rat of a
+creditor I've chucked out this time, but will throw over the banisters
+if he dares to show his nose up here again."
+
+Harry was forcibly reminded of the butcher at Richmond.
+
+"So this is the other way of treating them?" said he.
+
+"This is the other way. Ha! ha! I recollect what you mean. Well, I have
+some sympathy with a small tradesman whom the fortune of war has kept
+out of his money for weeks and months; not a particle for a little Jew
+who has the insolence to come up here and browbeat and threaten me in
+my own office for a few paltry pounds! If he had written me a civil
+note, reminding me of the debt, which was really so small that I'd
+forgotten all about it, he should have had his money in time. Now he
+may whistle for it till he's black in the face!"
+
+Lowndes's indignation was so much more impressive than that of the
+little dark man on the stairs, that Harry's sympathies changed sides
+without his knowledge. He merely felt his heart warm to Lowndes as the
+latter took him by the arm and led him through the outer office (in
+which an undersized urchin was mastheaded on an abnormally high stool)
+into an inner one, where a red-nosed man sat at the far side of a large
+double desk.
+
+"My friend Mr. Backhouse," said Lowndes, introducing the red-nosed man.
+"We're not partners; not even in the same line of business; but we
+share the office between us, and the clerks, too--don't we, Bacchus?"
+
+The red-nosed man grinned at his blotting-pad, and Harry perceived that
+the "clerks" consisted of the small child in the outer office.
+
+"I noticed your name down below in the passage," said Harry to Mr.
+Backhouse, "but I couldn't see yours, Mr. Lowndes. I nearly went away
+again."
+
+"Ah! it's in Backhouse's name we have the office; it suits my hand to
+keep mine out of it. I'm playing a deep game, Ringrose--one of the
+deepest that ever was played in the City of London. I stand to win a
+million of money!"
+
+Lowndes had assumed an air of suitable subtlety and mystery; his eyes
+were half-closed behind their gold-rimmed lenses, and he nodded his
+head slowly and impressively as he stood with his back to the
+fireplace. Harry noticed that he still wore the shabby frock-coat, and
+that his trousers were as baggy as ever at the knees. He could not help
+asking how the deep game was progressing.
+
+"Slowly, Ringrose, slowly, but as surely as the stride of time itself.
+My noble Earl is up in the Highlands with his yacht. Insisted on
+looking into the thing with his own eyes. That's what's keeping us all,
+but I expect him back in another week, and then, Ringrose, you may
+throw up your hat; for I have not the slightest shadow of a doubt as to
+the result of the old chap's investigations."
+
+Here the clock struck four, and the red-nosed man, who had also a stiff
+leg, put on his hat, and stumped out of the office.
+
+"Now we can talk," said Lowndes, shutting the door, giving Harry a
+chair, and sitting down himself. "He'll be gone ten minutes. It's his
+whisky-time; he has a Scotch whisky every hour as regularly as the
+clock strikes. Wonderful man, Bacchus, for I never saw him a penn'orth
+the worse. Some day he'll go pop. But never mind him, Ringrose, and
+never mind the Company; tell us how the world's been using you, my boy;
+that's more to the point."
+
+So Harry told him about the accepted verses, and Gordon Lowndes not
+only promised to tell his daughter, but was himself most emphatic in
+encouraging Harry to go on as he had begun. It might be his true
+vocation after all. If he wrote a book and made a hit it would be a
+better thing even than the Secretaryship of the H.C.S. & T.S.A. The
+delay there was particularly hard lines on Harry. Lowndes only hoped he
+was letting no chances slip meanwhile.
+
+"It is always conceivable," said he, "that my aristocratic directors
+may each have a loafing younger son whom they may want to shove into
+the billet. You may depend upon me, Ringrose, to resist such jobbery
+tooth-and-nail; but, if I were you, I wouldn't refuse the substance for
+the shadow; you could always chuck it up, you know, and join us just
+the same."
+
+"Then you won't be offended," said Harry, greatly relieved, "if I tell
+you that I have had one or two other irons in the fire?"
+
+"Offended, my boy? I should think you a duffer if you had not."
+
+In another minute Harry had made a clean breast of his other journeys
+to the City, and was recounting the latest of those miserable
+experiences when Lowndes cut him short.
+
+"What!" cried he, "your father paid for the fellow's stamps, and he
+refused to pay for yours?"
+
+"We never got so far as that," said Harry bitterly. "He wanted a
+premium with me, and that settled it. He said three hundred guineas was
+the usual thing, but in consideration of certain obligations he had
+once been under to my father (he wasn't such a fool as to go into
+particulars), he would take me for a hundred and fifty. And he made a
+tremendous favour of that. He expected me to go down on my knees with
+gratitude, I daresay, but I just told him that a hundred and fifty was
+as far beyond me as three hundred, and said good afternoon and came
+away. Mind you, I don't blame him. Why should I expect so much for so
+little? He's no worse than any of the rest; they're all the same, and I
+don't blame any of them. Who am I that I should go asking favours of
+any one of them? My God, I've asked my last!"
+
+"You're your father's son, that's who you are," said Gordon Lowndes.
+"What your father did for this skunk of a solicitor, he should be the
+first man to do for you. What's his name, by the way?"
+
+"Phipps."
+
+"Not Wintour Phipps?"
+
+Harry nodded; and his nod turned up every light in the other's
+expressive face. Gordon Lowndes seized his hat and was on his legs in
+an instant, as radiant and as eager as when he set out to chasten and
+correct Harry's tailors. Such little punitive crusades were in fact the
+salt and pepper of his existence.
+
+"My boy," he cried, "I've known Wintour Phipps for years. I know enough
+to strike Wintour Phipps off the rolls to-morrow. I guess he'll do
+anything for me, will Wintour Phipps! So you sit just as tight as wax
+till I come back. I shan't be long." And he was gone before Harry
+grasped his meaning sufficiently to interfere. For the young fellow was
+apt to be slow-witted when taken by surprise: and though he ran
+headlong down the stairs a minute later, he was only in time to see
+Lowndes dive into a hansom on the other side of the crowded street, and
+be driven away.
+
+He could do nothing now. He was annoyed with Lowndes, and yet the man
+meant well--by Harry, at all events Others might take him as they found
+him, and call him a scamp if they chose. Very possibly he was one;
+indeed, on his own showing, in his own stories, he was nothing else.
+But he had a kind heart, and Harry's needs and rebuffs inclined him to
+rate a sympathetic rogue far higher in the moral scale than a callous
+paragon. Whatever else might be said of Lowndes, there was no end to
+the trouble he would take for another. Even when he insisted on doing
+what the person most concerned would have had him leave undone (as in
+this instance), it was impossible not to feel grateful to him for doing
+anything at all. His unselfish enthusiasm in other people's causes was
+beyond all praise. He might not be a good man, but that was a virtue
+which many a good man had not.
+
+Still Harry was annoyed. What Gordon Lowndes had gone to say to Wintour
+Phipps he could only conjecture; but the object was plainly
+intercessory, and Harry hated the thought of such intercession on his
+behalf. There was nothing for it, however, but to climb upstairs again
+(he had done so), and patiently to await the return of Lowndes. So the
+afternoon passed. Mr. Backhouse stumped in, took his hat off, wrote
+letters, reached his hat, and stumped out again. But still no Lowndes.
+
+"Good-night," said Harry to the retreating Bacchus.
+
+"Oh, I'm not going--I shall be back directly," replied that methodical
+man. "I have a little business down below." And he was back in ten
+minutes, sucking his moustache, and followed almost immediately by
+Gordon Lowndes, who stalked into the room with an air which Harry had
+not before seen him affect. His triumph was self-evident, but it was
+beautifully suppressed. He put down his hat with exasperating
+deliberation, and then stood beaming at Harry through his glasses.
+
+"Well?" said Harry.
+
+"It's all right," said Lowndes, very quietly, as of a foregone
+conclusion: "you may start work to-morrow, Ringrose. Our friend Phipps
+will be only too glad to have you. He will pay for the stamps for your
+articles, and, so far from charging you a premium, he will give you a
+small salary from the beginning. It won't be much, but then articled
+clerks as a rule get nothing. Our friend Phipps is going to make an
+exception in your case--and just you let me know when he treats you
+again as he did this afternoon. He never will! You'll find him tame
+enough now. You're to go to him again to-morrow morning; and you see if
+he don't receive you with open arms!"
+
+"But why?" cried Harry. "What have you said?"
+
+"What have I said? Well, I reminded him of a trifling incident which
+there was no need to remind him of at all, for the mere thought of it
+turned him pale the moment he saw me. So I took the liberty of showing
+him what might still happen if he didn't do exactly what I wanted about
+you. My boy, the thing was settled in two minutes. A rising young
+fellow like Wintour Phipps is not the man to be struck off the rolls if
+he knows it! But I wasn't coming away without having the whole thing
+down in black and white, and here it is."
+
+From his inner pocket he took out a long blue envelope and slapped it
+down on the desk.
+
+"May I see?" said Harry in a throbbing voice.
+
+"Certainly; it's your business now, not mine."
+
+Harry ran his eye over the brief document. Then he looked up.
+
+"It's my business now--not yours?"
+
+"To be sure."
+
+"Then I'm very much obliged to you, Mr. Lowndes, but here's an end of
+it."
+
+He tore the paper twice across, and carefully dropped it into the
+waste-paper basket. Then he looked up again. And he had never seen
+Lowndes really pale until that moment, nor really red until the next.
+Yet the storm passed over after all.
+
+"Well--upon--my--soul!" said Gordon Lowndes, very slowly, but with more
+humour and less wrath in each successive word. "And you're the man who
+wanted a billet!"
+
+"I want one still, but not on such terms. I'd rather starve."
+
+"There's no accounting for taste."
+
+"But I'm very sorry, I am indeed, that you should have troubled
+yourself to no purpose," continued Harry, holding out his hand with
+genuine emotion. "It was awfully good of you, and I shall never forget
+it."
+
+"Nonsense--nonsense!" said Lowndes sharply. "Don't name it, my good
+fellow. We all look at these things differently--don't we, Bacchus? You
+wouldn't have had any scruples, would you? No more would I, my boy, I
+tell you frankly. But don't name it again. It was no trouble at all,
+and, even if it had been, there's nothing I wouldn't do for any of you,
+Ringrose, and now you know it. Hurt my feelings? Not a bit of it, my
+dear boy, I'm only frightened I hurt yours. Good night, good night, and
+my love to the old lady. Cut away home and tell her I've no more
+principles than Bacchus has brains!"
+
+But Harry thought the matter over in the Underground; and it was many a
+day before he mentioned it at the flat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE CHAMPION OF THE GODS.
+
+
+Harry had gathered that another week would decide the fate of the
+H.C.S. & T.S.A., Ltd., and he could not help feeling anxious as that
+week drew to its close. Not that he himself had gained much confidence
+in the mighty scheme in question, for he found it more and more
+impossible to believe very deeply in Gordon Lowndes or any of his
+works. Yet he knew now that Lowndes would help him if he could, by fair
+means or by foul, and he could say the same of no other man. Lowndes
+was not merely his friend, but his only friend in London, and you
+cannot afford to be hypercritical of an only friend. He might be
+unscrupulous, he might be unreliable, but he stood by himself for
+staunchness and the will to help. He might be a straw for sinking
+hopes, but there was no spar in sight.
+
+So Harry searched the papers at the Public Library, not only for likely
+advertisements (which he would answer to the tune of several stamps a
+day), but also for the announcement of the return from Scotland of the
+Earl of Banff, K.G. When that announcement appeared, and two or three
+days slipped by without a line from Lowndes, though the week was more
+than up, then, and not until then, did Harry Ringrose abandon his last
+hope of getting anything to do in London. His one friend there had
+failed him, and was very likely himself in prison for debt. He had, it
+is true, an infinitely better friend at Guildford, whom he was on the
+eve of visiting, and who might help him to some junior mastership, but
+this was the most that he could hope for now. Such a post would in all
+probability separate him from his mother, but even that would be better
+than living upon her as he was now doing. And in London he seemed to
+stand no chance at all.
+
+To this melancholy conclusion had Harry come on the day before he was
+to go to Guildford, when the electric bell began ringing as though it
+was never going to stop, and there stood Lowndes himself at ten o'clock
+in the morning. Harry instantly demanded to be told the worst or the
+best. The other held up his finger and shook his head. His face seemed
+wilfully inscrutable, but it was also full of humour and encouragement.
+
+"The fact is, Ringrose," said Lowndes, "I have heard so much of that
+blessed Company every day for so many months, that I mean to give
+myself one day without thinking or speaking about it at all. Come to me
+to-morrow and you shall know everything. Meanwhile you and your mother
+must dine with me this evening to celebrate the occasion. Let us say
+the Grand Hotel and seven o'clock. Then we can all go to some theatre
+afterwards."
+
+Harry ran to tell his mother he felt certain the Company was coming out
+at last, and to repeat this invitation word for word; but he had great
+difficulty in getting her to accept it. How could she go out again? She
+might be seen; it would look so bad; and she did not want to enjoy
+herself. Then, said Harry, neither did he; and so gained his point by
+rather doubtful means. Lowndes, who was on his way to the City, and
+would not come in, whispered to Harry that a little outing would do his
+mother all the good in the world; then his eyes fell, and he stood
+quizzically contemplating the shiny suit which he still seemed to
+prefer to all the new ones he had ordered from Harry's tailors.
+
+"I think, Ringrose," said he, "that you and I had better dress. I keep
+some war-paint in the City, so it will be no trouble to either of us.
+Tell your mother not to bother, however, as my daughter will not be in
+evening dress. I forgot to mention, by the way, that she is coming in
+to pay her belated respects to Mrs. Ringrose this afternoon, and I want
+you to be so good as to bring her along with you to the Grand Hotel.
+Seven o'clock, recollect, and you and I will dress."
+
+With that he ran down the stone stairs, and the swing doors closed
+behind him with a thud while Harry Ringrose still loitered on the
+landing outside the flat. Delighted as he was at the unwonted prospect
+of a little gaiety, and more than thankful for all that it implied,
+those emotions were nothing to the sudden satisfaction with which he
+found himself looking forward to seeing Miss Lowndes again and at the
+flat. It is true that the keener pleasure was also the less perfect. It
+was mingled with a personal anxiety which it was annoying to feel, but
+which Harry could not shake off. He was unreasonably anxious that his
+mother should like Miss Lowndes, and that Miss Lowndes should like his
+mother. And yet he told himself it was a natural feeling enough; he
+recalled its counterpart in old days when he had taken some
+schoolfellow home for the holidays.
+
+As for Mrs. Ringrose, she was not only pleased to hear the girl was
+coming, but regarded that unprecedented fact as a happier augury than
+any other circumstance.
+
+"I really think you must be right," said she, "and that the ship he has
+always talked about is coming in at last. I am sure I hope it is true,
+for I know of nobody who would make a better millionaire than Mr.
+Lowndes. He is generous with his money when it seems that he has less
+than I should have believed possible, so what will he be when he is
+really rich! But he never would tell me what his great scheme was; and
+I am not sure that I altogether care for it from your description, my
+boy. I like Mr. Lowndes immensely, but I am not sure that I want to see
+you concerned in a pure speculation. However, let us hope for the best,
+and let neither of them suppose that we do not believe the best. Yes,
+of course, I shall be glad to see the daughter. Go down, my boy, and
+tell the porter's wife to come up and speak to me."
+
+When in the fulness of time Miss Lowndes arrived, the door was opened
+by neither Harry nor Mrs. Ringrose, and the flat was brightened by a
+few fresh flowers which the former had brought in without exciting his
+mother's suspicions. Mrs. Ringrose, indeed, had an inveterate love of
+entertaining, which all her troubles had not killed in her, and she
+received the visitor in a way that made Harry draw a very long breath.
+Palpably and indeed inexplicably nervous as she came in, so genial was
+the welcome that the girl recovered herself in a moment, and in another
+Harry's anxieties were at an end. Once she had mastered her momentary
+embarrassment, it was obvious that Miss Lowndes was in infinitely
+better spirits than when he had seen her last at Richmond. She looked
+younger; there was a warmer tinge upon her cheek, her eyes were
+brighter, her dress less demure. Harry had only to look at her to feel
+assured that fortune was smiling after all upon the H.C.S. & T.S.A.;
+and he had only to hear the two women talking to know that they would
+be friends.
+
+Miss Lowndes explained why she had never been to call before. She said
+frankly that they had been terribly poor, and she herself greatly tied
+in consequence. She spoke of the poverty in the perfect tense, with the
+freedom and nonchalance with which one can afford to treat what is
+passed and over. Nothing could have been more reassuring than her tone,
+nothing pleasanter than the way in which she and Mrs. Ringrose took to
+one another. Harry was so pleased that he was quite contented to sit by
+and listen, and to wait upon Miss Lowndes when the tea came in, and
+only put in his word here and there. It was his mother who would speak
+about the accepted verses, and when Harry fled to dress he left her
+ransacking the escritoire for his notorious outrage on Gray's Elegy.
+Nor was this the final mark of favour. When they started for Charing
+Cross, it was Mrs. Ringrose who insisted that they should take an
+omnibus, and Mrs. Ringrose who presently suggested that the young
+people would be cooler outside. It was as though Fanny Lowndes had made
+a deeper impression on Harry's mother than on Harry himself.
+
+Now, there is no more delightful drive than that from Kensington to the
+Strand, at the golden end of a summer's afternoon and on the top of a
+Hammersmith omnibus. If you are so fortunate as to get a front seat
+where nobody can smoke in your face and the view is unimpeded, it is
+just possible that your coppers may buy you as much of colour and
+beauty and life and interest as Harry Ringrose obtained for his; but
+certainly Harry was very young and much addicted to enthusiasm over
+small things; and perhaps nobody else is likely to breast the first
+green corner of the Gardens with the thrill it gave him, or to covet a
+certain small house in Kensington Gore as he coveted it, or to see with
+his eyes through the railings and the thick leaves of the Park, or to
+read as much romance upon the crowded flagstones of Piccadilly. Already
+he knew and loved every furlong of the route; but Fanny Lowndes was the
+first companion who had been with him over the ground; and afterwards,
+when he came to know every yard, every yard was associated with her.
+The beginning of the Gardens henceforth reminded Harry of his first
+direct question about the Company, and her assurances ever afterwards
+accompanied him to the Memorial. That maligned monument he never passed
+again without thinking of the argument it had led to, without deploring
+his companion's views as to gilt and gay colours, without remembering
+sadly that it was the one subject on which they disagreed that happy
+summer evening. He found her more sympathetic even than he had been
+imagining her since their first meeting. They touched a score of topics
+on which their spirits jumped as one: in after days he would recall
+them in their order when he came that way alone, and see summer
+sunshine through the dripping fogs, and green leaves on the black
+branches in the Park.
+
+Their last words he remembered oftenest, because even the Underground
+leads to Trafalgar Square, and it was there that they were spoken. The
+shadows of the column lay sharp and black across the Square; that of
+the Admiral was being run over by innumerable wheels in the road
+beyond, and the low sun flashed in every window of the Grand Hotel.
+
+"Our future offices!" laughed Harry, pointing to the pile.
+
+"I don't think I want them to be yours," said Fanny Lowndes.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I want you to go on with your writing."
+
+"But you see how little good I am. One thing accepted out of seven
+written! I should never make bread and butter at it."
+
+"You have not done what I told you to do at Richmond. You should try
+prose, and draw on your own experiences."
+
+"Would you be my critic?"
+
+"If I had the qualifications."
+
+"Well, will you read me and say what you think?"
+
+"With all my heart."
+
+"Then I'll set to work as soon as ever I get back from Guildford. You
+would put pluck into a mouse, Miss Lowndes, and I'll try to deserve the
+interest you take in me."
+
+The omnibus stopped, and their eyes met with a mutual regret as they
+rose. Harry could not have believed that a change of fortune would so
+change a face; that of Miss Lowndes was always lighted by intelligence
+and kindness, but with the light of happiness added it was almost
+beautiful. And yet, the fine eyes fell before Harry's, and fell again
+as he handed her to the curb with a cordial clasp, so that the boy was
+thoughtful as they crossed to the hotel, thinking of her nervousness at
+the flat.
+
+A few hours later he could understand the daughter of Gordon Lowndes
+feeling nervous in accompanying comparative strangers to public places
+under the wing of that extraordinary man.
+
+It was evident from the first that Lowndes was in a highly excitable
+state. Harry overheard him telling his daughter she was five minutes
+late in a tone which made his young blood boil. But it was the hotel
+officials who had the chief benefit of the company-promoter's mood.
+Something was wrong with the soup--Harry was talking to Miss Lowndes
+and never knew what. All he heard was Lowndes sending for the head
+waiter, and the harangue that followed. The head waiter ventured to
+answer; he was instantly told to fetch the general manager. A painful
+scene seemed inevitable, but the worst was over. In making two
+officials miserable, and in greatly embarrassing his daughter and his
+guests, it suddenly appeared that Lowndes had quite recovered his own
+spirits, and the manager found a boisterous humourist instead of the
+swashbuckler for whom he had come prepared. The complaint was waived
+with dexterous good-nature; but care seemed to be taken that no
+loophole should be given for a second. The remainder of the repast was
+unexceptionable (as, indeed, the soup had seemed to Harry), and
+Lowndes, who drank a good deal of champagne, continued uproariously
+mirthful almost to the end. He told them the name of the piece for
+which he had taken stalls. It had only been produced the previous
+evening, so none of them could say that they had seen it before.
+
+"I don't know what it's like," added Lowndes. "I never read criticisms.
+Have you seen anything about it, Ringrose?"
+
+"Why, yes," said Harry; "I looked in at the library this morning, and I
+saw two or three notices. They say it is a good enough play; but there
+was a bit of a row last night. The papers are full of it. In fact
+that's how I came to read the criticisms."
+
+"A row in the theatre?" said Lowndes. "What about?"
+
+"Fees," said Harry. "You know there are no fees at the Lyceum and the
+Savoy, and three or four more of the best theatres, so they want to
+abolish them there also."
+
+"Who do?"
+
+"The public."
+
+"But it's a question for the management entirely. The public have
+nothing to do with it."
+
+"I don't know about that," argued Harry. "The public pay, and they
+think they shouldn't."
+
+"Why?" snapped Lowndes; and it became disagreeably apparent that his
+lust for combat had revived.
+
+"Well, they think they pay quite enough for their places without any
+extras afterwards, such as a fee for programmes. They say you might as
+well be charged for the bill-of-fare when you dine at a restaurant. But
+their great point seems to be that if half-a-dozen good theatres can do
+without fees all good theatres can. They call them an imposition."
+
+"Rubbish," snorted Lowndes, in so offensive a manner that Harry could
+say no more; he was therefore surprised when, after a little general
+conversation in which Lowndes had not joined, the latter leant across
+to him with all the twinkling symptoms of his liveliest moments.
+
+"I presume," said he, "that all the row last night was kicked up by the
+pit and gallery?"
+
+"So I gathered."
+
+"Ah! What they want is a remonstrance from the stalls. There would be
+some sense in that."
+
+There were no more disagreeables at the hotel, and none with either of
+the cabmen outside the theatre. All at once Lowndes seemed to have
+grown unnaturally calm and sedate, Harry could not imagine why. But
+only too soon he knew.
+
+They had four stalls in the centre of the third row. Harry sat on the
+extreme left of the party, with Fanny Lowndes on his right, to whom he
+was talking as he tucked his twelve-shilling "topper" as carefully as
+possible under the seat, when his companion suddenly looked round and
+up with a startled expression. Harry followed her example, and there
+was Gordon Lowndes standing up in his place and laughing in the
+reddening face of the pretty white-capped attendant. In his hand were
+four programmes.
+
+"Certainly not," he was saying. "The system of fees, in a theatre like
+this, is an outrage on the audience, and I don't intend to submit to
+it."
+
+"I can't help the system, sir."
+
+"I know you can't, my good girl. I don't blame you. Go about your
+business."
+
+"But I must fetch the manager."
+
+"Oh, fetch the police if you like. Not a penny-piece do I pay."
+
+And Gordon Lowndes stood erect in his place, fanning himself with the
+unpaid-for programmes, and beaming upon all the house. Already all eyes
+were upon him; it was amusing to note with what different glances. The
+stalls took care to look suitably contumelious, and the dress-circle
+were in proper sympathy with the stalls. But the front row of the pit
+were leaning across the barrier, and the gallery was a fringe of
+horizontal faces and hats.
+
+"We're behind you," said a deep voice in the pit.
+
+"Good old four-eyes!" piped another from aloft.
+
+The gods had recognised their champion: he gave them a magnificent wave
+of the programmes, and stood there with swelling shirt-front, every
+inch the demagogue.
+
+"Now, sir, now!"
+
+The manager was a smart-looking man with a pointed beard, and a
+crush-hat on the back of his head. He spoke even more sharply than was
+necessary.
+
+"Now, sir, to you," replied Lowndes suavely, and with an admirable
+inclination of his head.
+
+"Well, what's the matter? Why won't you pay?"
+
+"I never encourage fees," replied Lowndes, shaking his twinkling face
+in the most fatherly fashion. He articulated his words with the utmost
+deliberation, however, and there was a yell of approval from the gods
+above. A ripple of amusement was also going round the house; for Mrs.
+Ringrose was holding up half-a-crown and making treacherous signs to
+the manager, which, however, he would not see. It seemed he was a
+fighting man himself, and his eyes were locked in a tussle with
+Lowndes's spectacles.
+
+"You must leave the theatre, that's all."
+
+"Nonsense," retorted Lowndes, with his indulgent smile.
+
+"We shall see about that. May I trouble you, ladies and gentlemen, to
+leave your places for one moment?"
+
+Lowndes's incomparable guffaw resounded through the auditorium. It was
+receiving a hearty echo in pit and gallery, when he held up his
+programmes, and the gods were still. The ladies and gentlemen had kept
+their seats.
+
+"My dear sir, why give yourself away?" said Gordon Lowndes, still
+chuckling, to the manager. "You daren't touch me, and you know you
+daren't. A pretty figure you'd cut at Bow Street to-morrow morning! Now
+kindly listen to me--" and he tapped the programmes authoritatively
+with his forefinger. "You know as well as I do that there was trouble
+last night in this theatre about this very thing; my dear sir, I can
+promise you there'll be trouble every night until you discontinue your
+present obsolete and short-sighted policy. How I wish you were a
+sensible man! Then you would think twice before attempting to force a
+barefaced imposition of this sort down the throats of your audience; an
+imposition that every theatre of repute has recognised as such and
+thrown overboard long and long ago. You don't force it down _my_
+throat, I can tell you that. You don't bluff or bully _me_. As if we
+didn't pay enough for our seats without any such exorbitant extras!
+Why, they might as well charge us for the bill-of-fare at a first-class
+restaurant. Besides, what a charge! Sixpence for these--sixpence for
+this!" And he spun one of his programmes into the pit, and waved
+another towards the gallery.
+
+But that cool quick tongue was no sooner silent than the house was in a
+hubbub. Here and there arose a thin, peevish cry of "Turn him out," but
+on the whole the sympathy of the house was with Lowndes. The stalls
+were no longer visibly ashamed of him; the dress-circle jumped with the
+stalls; but the pit clapped its ungloved hands and stamped with its
+out-of-door boots, while every species of whistle, cheer and cat-call
+came hurtling from the gallery. This went on for some three minutes,
+which is a long time thus filled. There was no stopping it. The manager
+retreated unheard and impotent. A minute later the curtain went up,
+only to give the tumult a new impetus. The hapless actors looked at one
+another and at the front of the house. The curtain came down, and the
+popular and talented lessee himself stepped in front of it, dressed in
+his stage costume. But even him they would not hear. Then arose the
+unknown, middle-aged gentleman in the stalls, with the splendid temper
+and the gold eye-glasses--and him they would.
+
+"Come, come, ladies and gentlemen," cried he, "haven't we done enough
+for one night? We have all paid our money, are we not to see the piece?
+As for that other matter, I think it may safely be left in the hands of
+yonder wise man who stands before us."
+
+And it was--with a result you may remember. Meantime the curtain was up
+for good and the play proceeding after a very short interval indeed,
+during which Gordon Lowndes bore himself with startling modesty,
+sitting quietly in his place and doing nothing but apologise to Mrs.
+Ringrose for having caused such a scene on an occasion when she was his
+guest. He should have thought only of his guests; but his sense of
+public duty, combined with his bitter and inveterate intolerance of
+anything in the shape of an imposition, had run away with him, and on
+Mrs. Ringrose's account he was humbly sorry for it. That lady forgave
+him, however. Through a perfect agony of shame and indignation she had
+come to a new and not unnatural pride in her eccentric friend.
+
+As for Harry, there was no measure to his enthusiasm: the tears had
+been in his eyes from sheer excitement.
+
+"A wonderful man, your father!" he whispered again and again to the
+pale girl on his right.
+
+"He is," she answered, with a smile and a sigh. And the smile was the
+sadder of the two.
+
+Between the acts Harry visited the foyer with Lowndes, who was
+complimented by several strangers on his spirited and public-spirited
+behaviour.
+
+"But do you know," said Harry, when they were alone, "from the way you
+spoke at dinner I fancied you took quite an opposite view of the whole
+question of fees?"
+
+"So I did," whispered Lowndes, with his tremulous grin, "but I saw my
+way to some sport, and that was enough for me. I was spoiling for some
+sport to-night, and a bit of bluff from the stalls was obviously what
+was wanted. You must excuse my using your arguments, but the fact is I
+very seldom set foot inside a theatre, and they were the only ones I'd
+ever heard."
+
+"At dinner you said they were nonsense!"
+
+The other winked as he lowered his voice.
+
+"So they were, my dear Ringrose. That was exactly where the sport came
+in."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE DAY OF BATTLE.
+
+
+It was the following morning that Harry Ringrose received a first
+return for the many letters he had written in answer to advertisements
+seen in the Public Library. The advertisement had been for an articled
+clerk. The clerk was to be articled on really "exceptional terms" (duly
+specified), and a "public-school boy" was "preferred." It was, in fact,
+the likeliest advertisement Harry had seen, and its possibilities were
+not altogether dissipated by the communication now received:--
+
+    "DEAR SIR,--We beg to acknowledge your letter of the 19th instant,
+    and to say that this is an increasing business, and that we require
+    further assistance in it. You would have an opportunity of
+    thoroughly learning the whole business under the supervision of Mr.
+    Shuttleworth himself; would accompany him to the various courts,
+    and eventually other arrangements might be made. You will notice
+    that the premium is only fifty guineas, which will be returned in
+    salary--a very unusual thing.
+
+    "Perhaps you will give me a call at your early convenience, of
+    which we shall be glad to have notice, as we must take someone at
+    once.
+
+    "Yours faithfully,
+
+    "WALTER SHUTTLEWORTH & CO."
+
+Like most of his correspondence, this letter was read by Harry to his
+mother, who looked up at him as though his fortune were already made.
+She had been in favour of the Law all along, and she was prepared to
+break into her capital for the fifty guineas' premium and for the
+eighty pounds for stamps. It would decrease their income by a few
+pounds, but if Harry were getting a good salary they would be the
+gainers by the difference. In any case he must telegraph to these
+people without a moment's loss of time--he must see Mr. Shuttleworth
+before starting for Guildford that afternoon. His bag should be ready
+immediately, and, as he also wanted to see Mr. Lowndes, he could leave
+it in Leadenhall Street and pop in for it afterwards on his way to
+Waterloo.
+
+Such was his mother's advice, and Harry took it to the letter. The bag
+was his father's dressing-bag, which Mrs. Ringrose said would make a
+good appearance at Mr. Innes's. It was heavy with silver-mounted
+fittings, but there was just room for Harry's dress suit, which made it
+heavier still. Consequently the way from Aldgate to Leadenhall Street
+had never seemed so long before, and Harry was thankful when he and the
+bag were at last aloft in Lowndes's office. Here he instantly forgot
+his wet forehead and his aching arm. He had dropped in upon the
+queerest scene.
+
+Gordon Lowndes was in the inner office. Harry saw him through the open
+door, and his first impression was that Lowndes had been up all night.
+He was still in evening dress. The very hat and Inverness, in which
+Harry had seen the last of him at eleven the night before, completed
+his attire at eleven this morning. There was one quaint difference:
+instead of a white bow he wore a blue scarf tied in an ordinary knot,
+which stultified the whole costume. Harry looked hard. Lowndes was
+looking even harder at him, with a kind of what-do-_you_-want glare.
+But he was palpably sober; he wore every sign of the man who had slept
+heartily and risen in his vigour, and in an instant his features had
+relaxed and his hands lay affectionately on Harry's shoulders.
+
+"Well, Ringrose, my boy, what brought you along so early? And what have
+you got there?"
+
+"It's my bag," said Harry. "I'm going down to Guildford for a day or
+two, but I've got to see a man this morning, and I thought I might
+leave it here in the meantime. May I?"
+
+"Surely, Ringrose, surely. Come inside; I've got my daughter here. My
+dear, here's Harry Ringrose, and this is his bag. Gad! but it's heavy!"
+
+Miss Lowndes blushed painfully as she shook hands with Harry. Her other
+arm was held behind her back with incriminating care.
+
+"Now, my dear," said Lowndes, briskly, "since we are bowled out let's
+be bowled out. Ringrose is bound to know the truth sooner or later, so
+he may as well know it now." And with a rough laugh he snatched from
+behind his daughter's back the shiny old clothes in which he had called
+at the flat the previous morning.
+
+Harry thought that the best thing he could do was to join in the laugh.
+Next moment his heart smote him, for Miss Lowndes had turned her back
+and stood looking at the window: not through it: it was opaque with
+grime.
+
+"Fact is, Ringrose." continued Lowndes, "the noble Earl is trying to
+play me false. He won't keep it up, mind you; he's in too deep with me
+to dare; but he's trying it on. Yesterday was the day we were to fix
+things up for good and all. I wasn't sure of him, Ringrose; he's shown
+himself a slippery old cuss too often. However, I had raised a breath
+of wind since I saw you last, and I had a fiver left, so I thought we'd
+make sure of our little spree. Blue your last fiver--that's my rule.
+Never count the odds in the day of battle, and blue your last fiver for
+luck! If you don't blue that fiver you may never have another to blue,
+and I'm hanged if you deserve one! Well, that was my last fiver we
+blued last night. Don't look like that, man--I tell you I blued it for
+luck. The luck hasn't come yet, but you may bet your shirt it's on the
+way. You'll see the noble Earl trot back to heel when I threaten to
+expose him if he doesn't! Why, I've got letters from him that would
+make him the laughing-stock of the Lords; yet he leaves me one crying
+off in so many words, and has cleared for the Mediterranean in his
+yacht. Either he'll come back within a week, Ringrose, and go through
+with the Company, or by God he shall pay through the nose for breaking
+his word and wasting my time! But I see you looking at my toilet. It is
+a bit of an anachronism, I confess."
+
+"I suppose you have been sitting up all night," said Harry. "I'm not
+surprised after what you tell me."
+
+Lowndes guffawed.
+
+"You'll never find me doing that!" he cried. "I leave the sitting up to
+my creditors! They'll sit up pretty slick before I've done with 'em--so
+will the noble Earl. Now let me enlighten you. You remember all those
+clothes I ordered from your trustful tailors, and how I told you never
+to neglect a good credit? Well, to give you a practical illustration of
+the merits of my advice, I've been living on those clothes ever since.
+I have so! Yesterday this time the whole boiling were up the spout. I
+just got out the dress-suit and this Inverness for one night only, and
+changed into them up here. Now I've got to put them in pop again, and
+that's why you find me with them on. Do you follow me, Ringrose? Those
+good old duds are the only garments I've got in the world--thanks to
+the so-called Right Honourable the Earl of Banff."
+
+Harry could not smile. He was thinking of his tailors, and he shuddered
+to remember that Lowndes had also borrowed five pounds in hard cash
+from the accommodating firm. Harry had dazzling visions of eventual
+trouble and responsibility; then his eyes stole over to the forlorn
+figure by the window; and it was quivering in a way that cut him to the
+heart.
+
+"You may like to blue your last fiver," he turned to Lowndes and cried;
+"but I wish to heaven you hadn't blued it on us! As for my mother, when
+she hears----"
+
+"Don't tell her, Mr. Ringrose!" cried a breaking voice. "I shall die of
+shame if she ever knows."
+
+Fanny Lowndes had turned about with her fine eyes drowned in tears, her
+strong hands clutched together in an agony of entreaty; and just then
+Harry felt that he could forgive her father much, but never for the
+grief and shame which he first heaped upon the girl, and then forced
+her to display.
+
+"It's a queer thing, Ringrose," observed Lowndes, "that women never can
+be got to take a sensible view of these matters. Your mother--my
+daughter--they're every one of them alike."
+
+He swung on his heel with a shrug, and went into the outer office to
+meet his friend Backhouse, who here returned from the usual errand. A
+trembling hand fell on Harry's arm.
+
+"Do not think the worst of him!" whispered Fanny.
+
+"It is only on your account," was his reply.
+
+"But he is so good to me!"
+
+"Yet yesterday he let you think that all was well."
+
+"He wanted to give me a pleasure while he could."
+
+Harry looked in the brave wet eyes, and his heart gave a sudden bound.
+
+"How staunch you are!" he murmured. "He is a lucky man who has you at
+his back!"
+
+Then he followed her father into the outer office, saying he must go,
+but that he would be back in an hour for his bag.
+
+He was back in less.
+
+His interview with Messrs. Walter Shuttleworth (one gentleman) had
+proved but little more satisfactory than any of his other interviews.
+Still, here was a man who had need of Harry, and that was something. He
+was the first. Harry rather took to him. He was a dashing young fellow,
+a public-school man; and it was a public-school man such as Harry that
+he wanted in his office. At present he appeared to keep but one
+juvenile clerk, a size larger than Lowndes's--and he had no partner.
+This was the opening which was dimly and dexterously held out to Harry
+as an ultimate probability. And for one dazzling moment Harry felt that
+here was his chance in life at last. But when he came to ask questions,
+the fabric fell to pieces like all the rest, and he knew that he was
+sitting in Mr. Shuttleworth's office for the last time as well as for
+the first. For, though the premium was to be returned "in salary," it
+would only be returned during the last twelvemonth of Harry's articles,
+and for four weary years he must work for nothing. He shook his head;
+he was bitterly disappointed. He was then told that the proposed
+arrangement was an offer in a thousand; but that he knew. He took his
+hat, simply saying he could never afford it. But he was asked to think
+it over and to write again, for he was just the sort of fellow for the
+place; and this he promised to do, because it seemed just the sort of
+place for him.
+
+Mr. Backhouse had stumped into the office as Harry was leaving, and now
+Harry met him stumping out. It was this that showed him that he had
+been less than an hour away. But Lowndes had found time to array
+himself once more in his "good old duds," to put his dress-suit back
+into pawn, and to run through Leadenhall Market with Fanny before
+packing her back to Richmond. And now he was ready to listen to Harry,
+and very anxious to know how he had got on, and with whom, and where,
+and what it had all been about.
+
+Harry told him everything. He was only too glad to do so, since however
+Lowndes might misuse his wits and talents in his own affairs, they were
+ever at the service of his friends, and it seemed but right that
+someone should have the benefit of those capital parts. The boy had
+felt differently an hour before, but now he needed advice, and here was
+Lowndes as eager as ever to advise. As usual, he saw to the heart of
+the matter long ere the whole had been laid before him. Ten to one, he
+said, the thing was past praying for now; it depended, however, on how
+strong a fancy this lawyer had taken to Ringrose, for he was by no
+means the only public-school boy to be had in London. His best policy
+now was to write a letter which should heighten that fancy, while it
+set forth his own circumstances and needs more explicitly than Harry
+appeared to have done in the interview. That would get at the man's
+heart, if he had one, and if not there was no further chance. Such a
+letter was eventually written at Lowndes's dictation; but Harry never
+felt comfortable about it; and it was only the sore necessity of
+employment that prevailed upon him to let Lowndes post it as they were
+both on their way out to luncheon.
+
+They lunched at Crosby Hall. Harry took little because he meant to pay.
+Lowndes, however, would not hear of that, and Harry had to give way on
+the point, little as he liked doing so in the circumstances. They then
+left the place arm-in-arm, but in the street Lowndes withdrew his hand
+and held it out.
+
+"I won't drag you out of your way again," said he, "especially as I
+have a lot of letters to write this afternoon. Good-day to you,
+Ringrose."
+
+"You forget my bag," said Harry, smiling.
+
+"What about it?"
+
+"I left it in your office."
+
+"In my office? To be sure, so you did. And now I think of it, I've got
+something to say to you about your bag."
+
+Harry wondered what. Evidently it was something he preferred not to say
+in the street, for Lowndes strode along with a square jaw and a face
+frowning with thought. Backhouse was at the desk. Lowndes put down
+sixpence and told him to buy himself an irregular. Backhouse limped
+out, shutting the door, and they were alone. Harry could not see his
+bag.
+
+"Ringrose," said Lowndes, "I've stood by you and yours in the day of
+battle, and now it's your turn to stand by me and mine. You can't
+conceive what a hole we've been in. Not a penny piece in the house down
+yonder--not a crust--not a bone. I came in this morning to raise a few
+shillings by hook or crook, and I brought in my daughter so as to send
+her back with enough to buy the bare necessary. I tried Bacchus, but he
+swears he's getting his drinks on tick. I tried the caretaker, but I've
+stuck her so often that she wouldn't be stuck again. I knew it was no
+use trying you, Ringrose, yet I knew you would want to help me, so I'll
+tell you what I've done. I've run in that bag of yours along with my
+dress-suit."
+
+"You didn't pawn it?"
+
+"Certainly I did."
+
+"You mean to tell me----"
+
+"Kindly lower your voice. If you want the office-boy to hear what
+you're saying, I don't. I mean to tell you that the situation was
+desperate, and your bag has saved it for the time being. I mean to tell
+you that I'd pawn the shirt off my back to get you out of half as bad a
+hole as I've been in this morning. Come, Ringrose, I thought you were
+sportsman enough to stand by the man who has stood by you?"
+
+Harry's indignation knew no bounds, and yet the plausibility of the
+older man told upon him even in his heat.
+
+"I am ready enough to stand by you," he cried, "but this is a different
+thing. I freely acknowledge your kindness to my mother and myself, but
+it doesn't give you the right to put my things in pawn, and you must
+get them out again at once."
+
+"My good fellow," said Lowndes, "I fully intend to do so. I have sent
+an urgent letter to the noble Earl's solicitors this very morning,
+telling them of the straits to which the old villain has reduced me,
+and of the steps I intend to take failing a proper and immediate
+indemnification. I haven't the least doubt that they will send me a
+cheque on account before the day's out, and then I shall instantly send
+round for your bag."
+
+Harry shook off the hand that had been laid upon his arm, and pulled
+out his watch.
+
+"It's twenty to three," said he quietly. "I leave Waterloo by the
+five-forty, and my bag leaves with me. Let there be no misunderstanding
+about that, Mr. Lowndes. I must have it by five o'clock--not a minute
+later."
+
+"Why must you? Surely they could fix you up for one night? I guarantee
+it won't be longer."
+
+"They dress for dinner down at Guildford," said Harry; "it isn't the
+fixing up for the night."
+
+"Well, why not lose your bag on the way? Nothing more natural in a
+young fellow of your age."
+
+Harry lost his temper instead.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Lowndes, you have been a good friend to us, as you say.
+You were a good friend to us last night. You've been a good friend to
+me this very day. But I simply can't conceive how you could go and do a
+thing like this; and I must have my bag by five o'clock, or we shall be
+friends no longer."
+
+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."
+
+"Well, they won't; so here goes--to please you."
+
+He sat down and dashed off an answer there and then, but with none of
+the care which he had formerly expended on such compositions. And
+instead of the old unrest until he knew his fate, he forthwith thought
+no more about the matter. So the telegram took him all aback next
+morning. He was to meet Mrs. Bickersteth at three o'clock at the
+agents'. By four he had the offer of the vacant mastership in her
+school.
+
+It was the irony of Harry's fate that a month ago he would have jumped
+at the chance and flown home on the wings of ecstasy; now he asked for
+grace to consult his mother, but promised to wire his decision that
+evening, and went home very sorry that he had applied.
+
+Mrs. Ringrose sighed to see his troubled face.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me it has come to nothing?"
+
+"No; the billet's mine if I want it."
+
+"And you actually hesitated?"
+
+"Yes, mother, because I do not want it. That's the fact of the matter."
+
+Mrs. Ringrose sat silent and looked displeased.
+
+"Is the woman not nice?" she asked presently.
+
+"She seemed all right; rather distinguished in her way; but the hours
+are atrocious, and I made that my excuse for thinking twice about
+accepting such a salary. I have promised to send a telegram this
+evening. But, oh, mother, I don't want to leave you; not to go to a
+dame's school and thirty pounds a year!"
+
+"You would get your board as well."
+
+"But you would be all alone."
+
+"I could go away for a little. Your Uncle Spencer has asked me to go to
+the seaside next month with your aunt and the girls. I--I think it
+would do me good."
+
+"You could leave me in charge, and I would write verses all the time."
+
+"It would be much cheaper to shut up the flat. Then we should be really
+saving. And--Harry--it is necessary!"
+
+Then the truth came out, and with it the real reason why Mrs. Ringrose
+wished him to accept the cheap mastership at Teddington. She was trying
+to keep house upon a hundred and fifty a year; so far she was failing
+terribly. The rent of the flat was sixty-five; that left eighty-five
+pounds a year, or but little over thirty shillings a week for all
+expenses. It was true they kept no servant, but the porter's wife
+charged five shillings a week, and when the washing was paid there was
+seldom more than a pound over, even when the stockings and the
+handkerchiefs were done at home. A pound a week to feed and clothe the
+two of them! It sounded ample--the tailors had not even sent in their
+bill yet--and yet somehow it was lamentably insufficient. Mrs. Ringrose
+had been a rich woman all her life until now; that was the whole secret
+of the matter. Even Harry, ready as he still was for an extravagance,
+was in everyday minutiæ more practical than his dear mother. She never
+called in the porter without giving him a shilling. She seldom paid for
+anything at the door without slipping an additional trifle into the
+recipient's hand. And once when some Highlanders played their bagpipes
+and danced their sword-dances in the back street below, she flung a
+florin through the window because she had no smaller silver, and to
+give coppers she was ashamed.
+
+Harry was the last to take exception to traits which he had himself
+inherited, but he had long foreseen that disaster must come unless he
+could earn something to add to their income, and so balance the bread
+he ate and the tea he swallowed. And now disaster had come, insomuch
+that the next quarter's money was condemned, and Harry's duty was
+clear. Yet still he temporised.
+
+"A month ago it would have been bad enough," said he; "but surely we
+might hang together now that I have got a start. Ten bob a week! You
+shall see me creep up to a pound and then to two!"
+
+"You must first make sure of the ten bob," said Mrs. Ringrose, who had
+a quaint way of echoing her son's slang, and whose sanguine temperament
+had been somewhat damped by late experience.
+
+"I am sure of it. Are not three weeks running good enough?"
+
+"But you say they only take you an hour, and that you could spare at
+the school, even though you had to do it in your own bedroom. Besides,
+it need only be for one term if you didn't like it; to economise till
+Christmas, that is all I ask."
+
+Harry knew what he ought to say. He was troubled and vexed at his own
+perverseness. Yet all his instincts told him that he was finding a
+footing at last--humble enough, Heaven knew!--on the ladder to which he
+felt most drawn. And a man does not go against his instincts in a
+moment.
+
+"Come, my boy," urged Mrs. Ringrose. "Send the telegram and be done
+with it."
+
+"Wait!" cried Harry, as the bell rang. "There's the post. It may be
+that my story is accepted."
+
+He meant the story which never was accepted, but whose fitness for the
+flames he had yet to realise. The letter, however, did not refer to
+either of his prose attempts. It was from the Editor of _Tommy
+Tiddler_, enclosing both sets of verses which Harry had sent him that
+week, and very civilly stating that they were not quite up to his
+contributor's "usual mark."
+
+Harry went straight out of the flat and was gone some minutes.
+
+"I've sent that telegram," said he when he came back. "I should have
+told you that the term begins this next Saturday, and I've got to be
+there on Friday evening."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A DAME'S SCHOOL.
+
+
+The Hollies, Teddington, was situated in a quiet road off the main
+street. A wooden gate, varnished and grained, displayed a brass plate
+with Mrs. Bickersteth's name engraved upon it, while that of the house
+was lettered in black on one of the stucco gate-posts, and perhaps
+justified by the few evergreens which grew within. A low wall was
+topped by a sort of balustrade, likewise stuccoed, and behind this wall
+stood half-a-dozen cropped and yellowing limes.
+
+The house itself was hardly what Harry had expected so far from town.
+He seemed to have passed it daily for the last four months, for it was
+the plain, tall, semi-detached, "desirable" and even "commodious
+residence," which abounds both in Kensington and Camden Town, in the
+groves of St. John's Wood and on the heights of Notting Hill. A flight
+of exceedingly clean steps led up to a ponderous front door with a
+mighty knocker; on the right were two long windows which evidently
+stretched to the floor, for a wire screen protected the lower part of
+each; and above these screens, late on the Friday afternoon, some eight
+or nine rather dismal little faces were pressed to watch the arrival of
+the new master.
+
+The cabman carried the luggage up the steps and was duly overpaid. The
+servant shut the great door with a bang--it was a door that would not
+shut without one--and Harry Ringrose had gone to school again at
+one-and-twenty.
+
+He was shown into a very nice drawing-room--the kind of drawing-room to
+reassure an anxious parent--and here for a minute he was alone. Through
+a thin wall came a youthful buzz, and Harry distinctly heard, "I wonder
+if he's strict?" He also heard an irritable, weak, feminine voice
+exclaiming: "Be silent--be silent--or you shall all have fifty lines!"
+Then the door opened, and he was shaking hands with Mrs. Bickersteth.
+
+The lady was short, stout, and rather more than elderly, yet with a
+fresh-coloured face as free from wrinkles as it was full of character,
+and yellow hair which age seemed powerless to bleach. Her manner was
+not without kindness or distinction, but neither quality was quite so
+noticeable as when Harry had seen her at the agents' in her mantle and
+bonnet. Indeed the fresh cheeks had a heightened tinge, and the light
+eyes a brightness, which Harry Ringrose was destined to know better as
+the visible signs of Mrs. Bickersteth's displeasure.
+
+"We are a little late," began the schoolmistress (who had this way of
+speaking to the boys, and who early discovered a propensity to treat
+Harry as one of them): "we are a little later than I expected, Mr.
+Ringrose. Now that we have come, however, we will say no more about
+it."
+
+And the lady gave a perfunctory little laugh, meant to sound indulgent,
+but Harry had a true ear for such things, and he made his apologies a
+little stiffly. If Mrs. Bickersteth had named an hour he would have
+made it his business to be there by that hour; as she had but said the
+afternoon, he had presumed that five o'clock would be time enough. Mrs.
+Bickersteth replied that she called five o'clock the evening, with a
+playfully magnanimous smile which convinced Harry even less than her
+laugh: he had a presentiment of the temper which it masked.
+
+"But pray let us say no more about it," cried the lady once more. "I
+only thought that it would be a good opportunity for you to get to know
+the little men. I am glad to say that all the boarders have arrived;
+they are now, as I daresay you hear, in the next room with the other
+governess. Dear me, what am I saying! You see, Mr. Ringrose, I have
+always had two governesses in the house hitherto. Mr. Scrafton, who
+comes every morning (except Saturday) to teach the elder boys, has been
+our only regular master for many years, though a drill-sergeant also
+comes twice a week from the barracks at Hampton Court. But in taking a
+master into my house, in place of one of the governesses, I am trying
+an experiment which I feel sure we will do our best to justify."
+
+Harry replied as suitably as possible, but made more than one mental
+note. His engagement had not been termed an experiment at their
+previous interview. Neither had he heard the name of Mr. Scrafton until
+this moment.
+
+"I hear the servant taking your portmanteau upstairs," continued Mrs.
+Bickersteth, "and presently I shall show you your room, as I am going
+to ask you to oblige me by always wearing slippers in the house. The
+day-boys change their boots the moment they arrive. Before we go
+upstairs, however, there is one matter about which I should like to
+speak. We have a delicate little fellow here whose name is Woodman, and
+whose parents--very superior, rich people--live down in Devonshire, and
+trust the little man entirely to my care. He is really much better here
+than he is at home; still he has to have a fire in his room throughout
+the winter, and consequently he cannot sleep with the other boys.
+Hitherto one of the governesses has slept in his room, but now I am
+going to take the opportunity of putting you there, as I am sorry to
+say he is a boy who requires firmness as well as care. If you will
+accompany me upstairs I will now show you the room."
+
+It was at the end of a passage at the top of the house, and a very nice
+room Harry thought it. The beds were in opposite corners, a screen
+round the smaller one, and the space between at present taken up with
+Harry's portmanteau and the boy's boxes, which were already partially
+unpacked. A fire burnt in the grate; a number of texts were tacked to
+the walls. Harry was still looking about him when Mrs. Bickersteth made
+a dive into one of the little boy's open boxes and came up with a
+gaily-bound volume in each hand.
+
+"More story-books!" cried she. "I have a good mind to confiscate them.
+I do not approve of the number of books his parents encourage him to
+read. If you ever catch him reading up here, Mr. Ringrose, I must ask
+you to report the matter instantly to me, as I regret to say that he
+has given trouble of that kind before."
+
+Harry bowed obedience.
+
+"Little Woodman," continued the schoolmistress, "though sharp enough
+when he likes, is, I am sorry to say, one of our most indolent boys. He
+would read all day if we would let him. However, he is going to Mr.
+Scrafton this term, so he will have to exert himself at last! And now,
+if you like your room, Mr. Ringrose, I will leave you to put on your
+slippers, and will take you into the schoolroom when you come
+downstairs."
+
+The schoolroom was long and bare, but unconventional in that a long
+dining-table did away with desks, and the boys appeared to be shaking
+off their depression when Harry and his employer entered five minutes
+later. They were making a noise through which the same angry but
+ineffectual voice could be heard threatening a hundred lines all round
+as the door was thrown open. The noise ceased that moment. The
+governess rose in an apologetic manner; while all the boys wore guilty
+faces, but one who was buried in a book, sitting hunched up on the
+floor. Like most irascible persons, however, the schoolmistress had her
+moments of conspicuous good-temper, and this was one.
+
+"These are the little men," said she. "Children, this is your new
+master. Miss Maudsley--Mr. Ringrose."
+
+And Harry found himself bowing to the lady with the voice, a lady of
+any age, but no outward individuality; even as he did so, however, Mrs.
+Bickersteth beckoned to the governess; and in another moment Harry was
+alone with the boys.
+
+The new master had never felt quite so shy or so self-conscious as he
+did during the next few minutes; it was ten times worse than going to
+school as a new boy. The fellows stood about him, staring frankly, and
+one in the background whispered something to another, who told him to
+shut up in a loud voice. Harry seated himself on the edge of the table,
+swung a leg, stuck his hands in his pockets (where they twitched) and
+asked the other boys their names.
+
+"James Wren," said the biggest, who looked twelve or thirteen, and was
+thickly freckled.
+
+"Ernest Wren," said a smaller boy with more freckles.
+
+"Robertson."
+
+"Murray."
+
+"Gifford."
+
+"Simes."
+
+"Perkins."
+
+"Stanley."
+
+"And that fellow on the floor?"
+
+"Woodman," said James Wren. "I say, Woodman, don't you hear? Can't you
+get up when you're spoken to?"
+
+Woodman shut his book, keeping, however, a finger in the place, and got
+up awkwardly. He was one of the smallest of the boys, but he wore long
+trousers, and beneath them irons which jingled as he came forward with
+a shambling waddle. He had a queer little face, dark eyes and the
+lightest of hair; and he blushed a little as, alone among the boys, but
+clearly unconscious of the fact, he proceeded to shake hands with the
+new master.
+
+"So you are Woodman?" said Harry.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the boy. "Have you come instead of Mr. Scrafton, sir?"
+
+"No, I have come as well."
+
+At this there were groans, of which Harry thought it best to take no
+notice. He observed, however, that Woodman was not among the groaners,
+and to get upon safe ground he asked him what the book was.
+
+"One of Ballantyne's, sir. It's magnificent!" And the dark eyes glowed
+like coals in what was again a very pale face.
+
+"_The Red Eric_," said Harry, glancing at the book. "I remember it
+well. You're in an exciting place, eh?"
+
+"Yes, sir: the mutiny, sir."
+
+"Then don't let me stop you--run along!" said Harry, smiling; and
+Woodman was back on the floor and aboard his whaler before the new
+master realised that this was hardly the way in which he had been
+instructed to treat the boy who was always reading.
+
+But he went on chatting with the others, and in quite a few minutes he
+felt that, as between the boys and himself, all would be plain sailing.
+They were nice enough boys--one or two a little awkward--one or two
+vocally unacquainted with the first vowel--but all of them disposed to
+welcome a man (Harry thought) after the exclusive authority of resident
+ladies. Traces of a demoralising rule were not long in asserting
+themselves, as when Robertson gave Simes a sly kick, and Simes started
+off roaring to tell Mrs. Bickersteth, only to be hauled back by Harry
+and given to understand (evidently for the first time) that only little
+girls told tales. The bigger boys seemed to breathe again when he said
+so. Then they all stood at one of the windows in the failing light, and
+Harry talked cricket to them, and even mentioned his travels, whereat
+they clamoured for adventures; but the new master was not such a fool
+as to play all his best cards first. They were still at the window when
+the gate opened and in walked a squat silk-hatted gentleman with a
+yellow beard and an evening paper.
+
+"Here comes old Lennie!" exclaimed Gifford, who was the one with the
+most to say for himself.
+
+"Who?" said Harry.
+
+"Lennie Bickersteth, sir--short for Leonard," replied Gifford, while
+the other boys laughed.
+
+"But you mustn't speak of him like that," said Harry severely.
+
+"Oh, yes, I must!" cried Gifford, excited by the laughter. "We all call
+him Lennie, and Reggie Reggie, and Baby Baby; don't we, you fellows?
+Bicky likes us to--it makes it more like home."
+
+"Well," said Harry, "I know what Mrs. Bickersteth would _not_ like, and
+if you say _that_ again I shall smack your head."
+
+Which so discomfited and subdued the excitable Gifford that Harry liked
+him immensely from that moment, and not the less when he discovered
+that the boy's incredible information was perfectly correct.
+
+Mrs. Bickersteth was a widow lady with three grown-up children, whom
+she insisted on the boys addressing, not merely by their Christian
+names, but by familiar abbreviations of the same. Leonard and Reginald
+were City men who went out every morning with a bang of the big front
+door, and came home in the evening with a rattle of their latch-keys.
+Both were short and stout like their mother, with beards as yellow as
+her hair, while Leonard, the elder, was really middle-aged; but it was
+against the rules for the boys to address or refer to them as anything
+but Lennie and Reggie, and only the governess and Harry were permitted
+to say "Mr. Bickersteth." As for the baby of the family, who was Baby
+still to all her world, she was certainly some years younger; and the
+name was more appropriate in her case, since she wore the family hair
+down to eyes of infantile blue, and had the kind of giggle which seldom
+survives the nursery. She knew no more about boys than any other lady
+in the house, but was a patently genuine and good-hearted girl, and
+deservedly popular in the school.
+
+When Harry went to bed that night he smelt the smoke of a candle,
+though he carried his own in his hand. Woodman was apparently fast
+asleep, but, on being questioned, he won Harry's heart by confessing
+without hesitation or excuse. He had _The Red Eric_ and a candle-end
+under his pillow, and the wax was still soft when he gave them up.
+Harry sat on the side of his bed and duly lectured him on the
+disobedience and the danger of the detected crime, while the criminal
+lay with his great eyes wide open, and his hair almost as white as the
+pillow beneath it. When he had done the small boy said--
+
+"If they had spoken to me like that, sir, last time, sir, I never
+should have done it again."
+
+"You shouldn't have done it in any case," said Harry. "You've got to
+promise me that it's the last time."
+
+"It's so hard to go asleep the first night of the term, sir," sighed
+Woodman. "You keep thinking of this time yesterday and this time last
+week, sir."
+
+Harry's eye was on the little irons lying on top of the little heap of
+clothes, but he put on the firmest face he could.
+
+"That's the same for all," he said. "How do you know I don't feel like
+that myself? Now, you've got to give me your word that you won't ever
+do this again!"
+
+"But suppose they say what they said before, sir?"
+
+"Give me your word," said Harry.
+
+"Very well, sir, I never will."
+
+"Then I give you mine, Woodman, to say nothing about this; but mind--I
+expect you to keep yours."
+
+The great eyes grew greater, and then very bright. "I'll promise not to
+open another book this term, sir--if you like, sir," the little boy
+cried. But Harry told him that was nonsense and to go to sleep, and
+turned in himself glowing with new ideas. If he could but influence
+these small boys as Innes had influenced him! The thought kept him
+awake far into his first night at Teddington. His life there had begun
+more happily than he could have dared to hope.
+
+Morning brought the day-boys and work which was indeed within even
+Harry's capacity. It consisted principally in "hearing" lessons set by
+Mrs. Bickersteth; and it revealed the educational system in vogue in
+that lady's school. It was the system of question and answer, the
+question read from a book by the teacher, the answer repeated by rote
+by the boy, and on no condition to be explained or enlarged upon by
+extemporary word of mouth. Harry fell into this error, but was promptly
+and publicly checked by the head-mistress, with whom some of the elder
+boys were studying English history (from the point of view of Mrs.
+Markham and her domestic circle) at the other end of the baize-covered
+dining-table.
+
+"It is quite unnecessary for you to enter into explanations, Mr.
+Ringrose," said Mrs. Bickersteth down the length of the table. "I have
+used _Little Steps_ for very many years, and I am sure that it explains
+itself, in a way that little people can understand, better than you can
+explain it. Where it does not go into particulars, _Little Arthur_
+does; so no impromptu explanations, I beg."
+
+Whereafter Harry received the answers to the questions in _Little Steps
+to Great Events_ without comment, and was equally careful to take no
+explanatory liberties with _Mangnall's Questions_ or with the _Child's
+Guide to Knowledge_ when these works came under his nose in due course.
+
+Saturday was, of course, a half-holiday; nor could the term yet be said
+to have begun in earnest. It appeared there were some weekly boarders
+who would only return on the Monday, while Mr. Scrafton also was not
+due until that day. Meanwhile an event occurred on the Saturday
+afternoon which quite took the new master's mind off the boys who were
+beginning to fill it so pleasantly: an event which perplexed and
+distracted him on the very threshold of this new life, and yet one with
+a deeper and more sinister significance than even Harry Ringrose
+supposed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+AT FAULT.
+
+
+Harry had been requested to put on his boots in order to take the elder
+boys for a walk. He was to keep them out for about an hour and a half,
+but nothing had been said as to the direction he should take, and he
+was indiscreet enough to start without seeking definite instruction on
+the point.
+
+"Do you always walk two-and-two?" he asked the boys, as they made for
+the High Street in this doleful order.
+
+"Yes, sir," said two or three.
+
+"But we needn't if you give us leave not to," added the younger Wren,
+with a small boy's quickness to take advantage.
+
+"No, you must do as you always do, at any rate until we get out of the
+village," said Harry as they came to the street. "Now which way do you
+generally go?"
+
+The boys saw their chance of the irregular, and were not slow to air
+their views. Bushey Park appeared to be the customary resort, and the
+proverbial mischief of familiarity was discernible in the glowing
+description which one boy gave of Kingston Market on a Saturday
+afternoon and in the enthusiasm with which another spoke for Kneller
+Hall. Richmond Park, said a third, would be better than Bushey Park,
+only it was rather a long walk.
+
+To Harry, however, who had come round by Wimbledon the day before, it
+was news, and rather thrilling news, that Richmond Park was within a
+walk at all. The boys told him it would be near enough when they made a
+bridge at Teddington.
+
+"There's the ferry," said one; and when Harry said, "Oh, there is a
+ferry, then?" a little absently, his bias was apparent to the boys.
+
+"The ferry, the ferry," they wheedled, jumping at the idea of such an
+adventure.
+
+"It's splendid over Ham Common, sir."
+
+"The ferry, sir, the ferry!"
+
+Of course it was very weak in Harry, but the notion of giving the boys
+a little extra pleasure had its own attraction for him, and his only
+scruple was the personal extravagance involved. However, he had some
+silver in his pocket, and the ferryman's toll only came to pennies that
+Harry could not grudge when he saw the delight of the boys as they
+tumbled aboard. One of them, indeed, nearly fell into the river--which
+caused the greatest boy of them all his first misgivings. But across
+Ham fields they hung upon his arms in the friendliest and pleasantest
+fashion, begging and coaxing him to tell them things about Africa; and
+he was actually in the midst of the yarn that had failed on paper, when
+there occurred on the Common that which was to puzzle him in the future
+even more than it startled him at the moment. A lady and gentleman
+strolled into his ken from the opposite direction, and that instant the
+story ceased.
+
+"Go on, sir, go on! What happened then?"
+
+"I'll tell you presently; here are some friends of mine, and you
+fellows must wait a moment."
+
+He shook them off and stepped across the road to where his friends were
+passing without seeing him. Thus his back was turned to the boys, who
+fortunately could not see how he blushed as he raised his hat.
+
+"It's Mr. Ringrose!" cried Fanny Lowndes.
+
+"The deuce it is!" her father exclaimed. "Why, Ringrose, what the
+blazes are you doing down here, and who are your young friends?"
+
+"I'm awfully sorry I didn't let you know," said Harry, "but the whole
+thing was so sudden. As I told you when you came to see us, Miss
+Lowndes, I have been trying for a mastership for some time; and just as
+I had given it up----"
+
+"You have got one!"
+
+"Yes, quite unexpectedly, at the beginning of this week."
+
+The girl looked both glad and sorry, but her father's nose was
+twitching with amusement and his eyes twinkling in their gold frames.
+
+"You did well to take what you could get," said he, lowering his voice
+so that nothing could be heard across the road. "Writing for your
+living means writing for your life, and that's no catch; but by Jove,
+Ringrose, you ought to get off some good things with such a capital
+safety-valve as boys always on hand! When you can't think of a rhyme,
+run round and box their ears till one comes. When you get a rejected
+manuscript, try hammering their knuckles with the ruler! Where's the
+school, Ringrose, and who keeps it?"
+
+Harry hung his head.
+
+"I am almost ashamed to tell you. It's a dame's school--at Teddington."
+
+"A dame's school at Teddington! Not Mrs. Bickersteth's?"
+
+"Yes--do you know it?"
+
+Harry had looked up in time to catch the other's expression, and it was
+a very singular one. The lad had never seen such a look on any other
+face, but on this face he had seen it once before. He had seen it in
+the train, during the journey back to London, on the day that he could
+never forget. It was the look that had afterwards struck him as a
+guilty look, though, to be sure, he had never thought about it from the
+moment when he took up his father's letter, and saw at a glance that it
+was genuine, until this one.
+
+"Do I know it?" echoed Lowndes, recovering himself. "Only by
+repute--only by repute. So you have gone there!" he added below his
+breath, strangely off his guard again in a moment.
+
+"Come," said Harry, "do you know something against the school, or
+what?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no; nothing against it, and very little about it," replied
+Lowndes. "Only the school is known in these parts--people in Richmond
+send their boys there--that is all. I have heard very good accounts of
+it. Are you the only master?"
+
+"No, there's a daily pedagogue, named Scrafton, who seems to be
+something of a character, but I haven't seen him yet. Do you know
+anything about him?"
+
+The question was innocently asked, for Harry's curiosity had been
+aroused by the repeated necessity of preventing the boys from opening
+their hearts to him about Mr. Scrafton. If he had stopped to think, he
+would have seen that he had the answer already--and Lowndes would not
+have lost his temper.
+
+"How should I know anything about him?" he cried. "Haven't I just asked
+you if you were the only master? Either your wits are deserting you,
+Ringrose, or you wish to insult me, my good fellow. In any case we must
+be pushing on, and so, I have no doubt, must you."
+
+Harry could not understand this ebullition, which was uttered with
+every sign of personal offence, from the ridiculously stiff tones to
+the remarkably red face. He simply replied that he had spoken without
+thinking and had evidently been misunderstood, and he turned without
+more ado to shake hands with Miss Lowndes. The father's goodwill had
+long ceased to be a matter of vital importance to him; but it went to
+his heart to see how pale Miss Fanny had turned during this exchange of
+words, and to feel the trembling pressure of that true friend's hand.
+It was as though she were asking him to forgive her father, at whose
+side she walked so dejectedly away that it was not pure selfishness
+which made Harry Ringrose long just then to change places with Gordon
+Lowndes.
+
+The whole colloquy had not lasted more than two or three minutes; yet
+it had ended in the most distinct rupture that had occurred, so far,
+between Harry and his parents' friend; and that about the most minute
+and seemingly insignificant point which had ever been at issue between
+them.
+
+The boys found their new master poor company after this. He finished
+his story in perfunctory fashion, nor would he tell another. He not
+only became absent-minded and unsociable, but displayed an unsuspected
+capacity for strictness which was really irritability. More than one
+young wiseacre whispered a romantic explanation, but the majority
+remembered that it was to the gentleman old Ring-o'-ring-o'-roses had
+chiefly addressed himself; and the general and correct impression was
+that the former had been "waxy" with old Ring-in-the-nose. Harry's
+nickname was not yet fixed.
+
+Those, however, with whom he had been "waxy" in his turn had a
+satisfaction in store for them at the school, where Mrs. Bickersteth
+awaited them, watch in hand, and with an angry spot on each
+fresh-coloured cheek. She ordered the boys downstairs to take their
+boots off, and in the same breath requested Mr. Ringrose to speak to
+her in the study, in a tone whose significance the boys knew better
+than Harry.
+
+"I was under the impression, Mr. Ringrose, that I said an hour and a
+half?" began the lady, with much bitter-sweetness of voice and manner.
+
+Harry pulled out his own watch, and began apologising freely; he was
+some twenty minutes late.
+
+"When I say an hour and a half," continued the schoolmistress, "I do
+not mean two hours. I beg you will remember that in future. May I ask
+where you have been?"
+
+Harry said they had been to Richmond Park. The lady's eyes literally
+blazed.
+
+"You have walked my boys to Richmond Park and back? Really, Mr.
+Ringrose, I should have thought you would know better. The distance is
+much too great. I am excessively angry to hear they have been so far."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Harry, with humility, "but I don't think the
+distance was quite so great as you imagine. Though we have walked back
+through Kingston, we made a short cut in going, for I took the liberty
+of taking the boys across the river in the ferry-boat."
+
+This was the last straw, and for some moments Mrs. Bickersteth was
+practically speechless with indignation. Then with a portentous
+inclination of her yellow head, "It _was_ a liberty," said she; "a very
+great liberty indeed, I call it! I requested you to take them for a
+walk. I never dreamt of your risking their lives on the river. Have the
+goodness to understand in future, Mr. Ringrose, that I strongly
+disapprove of the boys going near the river. It is a most undesirable
+place for them--most unsootable in every way. Excessively angry I am!"
+
+This speech might have been heard over half the house, and by the end
+Harry was fairly angry himself. But for his mother, and for a
+resolution he had made not to take Mrs. Bickersteth seriously, but to
+put up with all he possibly could, it is highly probable that the
+Hollies, Teddington, would have known Harry Ringrose for twenty-four
+hours only. As it was he maintained a sarcastic silence, and, when the
+wrathful lady had quite finished, left her with a bow and the assurance
+that what had happened should not occur again; he merely permitted
+himself to put some slight irony into his tone.
+
+And, indeed, the insulting character of a reprimand which was not,
+however, altogether unmerited, worried him far less in early retrospect
+than the inexplicable manner of Gordon Lowndes on Ham Common. What did
+he know about the school? What could have brought that odd look back to
+his face? And why in the world should the master of an excellent temper
+have lost it on provocation so ludicrously slight? These were the
+questions that kept Harry Ringrose awake and restless in the still
+small hours of the Sabbath morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+MR. SCRAFTON.
+
+
+In the basement was a good-sized but ill-lighted room where three long
+tables, resting on trestles, were sufficiently crowded on the four days
+of the week when the day-boys stayed to dinner. On the two
+half-holidays only one table was in use, and the boarders scarcely
+filled it, with Miss Maudsley and Mr. Ringrose in state at either end.
+But on Sundays all meals were in the big schoolroom, and were graced by
+the presence of Mrs. Bickersteth's City sons, who brought with them a
+refreshing whiff of the outside world, besides contributing to Harry's
+enjoyment in other ways. He never forgot those Sunday meals. He was
+fond of describing them to his friends in after years.
+
+At breakfast on his first Sunday he was quite sure that Mrs.
+Bickersteth had heard of the death of a near relative. Her face and
+voice were those of a chief mourner, and she appeared to be shedding
+tears as she heard the boys their Collect at the breakfast table,
+rewarding those who knew it with half a cold sausage apiece. The boys
+were by no means badly fed, but that half-sausage was their one weekly
+variant from porridge and bread-and-butter for breakfast, and they used
+to make pathetically small bites of it. Mrs. Bickersteth, however,
+scarcely broke her fast, but would suffer all day, and every Sabbath,
+from what Harry came to consider some acute though intermittent form of
+religious melancholia. Towards the end of breakfast the sons would come
+down in wool-work slippers, a little heavy after "sleeping in," and it
+was not at this meal that they were most entertaining.
+
+The next hour was one of the few which Harry had entirely to himself.
+Most days he was on duty from eight in the morning to half-past eight
+at night, but the hour between Sunday breakfast and morning service was
+the new master's very own, and he spent it in a way which surely would
+have made Mrs. Bickersteth's remarkable hair stand straight on end.
+Even Sunday letter-writing was forbidden in her Sabbatarian household,
+and yet Harry had the temerity to spend this hour in composing vulgar
+verses for the _Tiddler_. He had discovered that contributions for the
+Saturday's issue must reach the office on the Monday, and it is to be
+feared that the consequent urgency of the enterprise led him into still
+more reprehensible excesses. What he could not finish in his bedroom he
+would mentally continue in church, whither it was his duty to take the
+majority of the boys, while the rest accompanied the Bickersteths to
+chapel.
+
+The dinner that followed was what Harry enjoyed. It was an excellent
+dinner, and all but Mrs. Bickersteth were invariably in the best of
+spirits. This lady used to stand at the head of her table and carve the
+hissing round of secular beef with an air of Christian martyrdom quite
+painful to watch. Not that it affected her play with the carving-knife,
+which was so skilful that Harry Ringrose used to wonder why the
+schoolmistress must needs lap a serviette round either forearm, and a
+third about her ample waist, for the better protection of her Sunday
+silk. This, however, was a trick of the whole family, who might have
+formed the nucleus of a Society for the Preservation of Sunday Clothes.
+Thus Reggie, the younger and more dapper son, used to appear on these
+occasions in a brown velvet coat and waistcoat, with his monogram on
+every button, but would mar the effect by tucking his table-napkin well
+in at the neck and spreading it out so as to cover as much as possible
+of his person. Lennie, the elder and more sedate, though he had no such
+grandeur to protect, nevertheless took similar precautions; while the
+good-natured Baby used to pull off a pair of immensely long cuffs, the
+height of a recent fashion, and solemnly place them on the table beside
+her tumbler, before running any risks.
+
+Water was the beverage of one and all, yet the spirits of the majority
+would rise with the progress of the meal. Reggie, who was a very
+facetious person, would begin to say things nicely calculated to make
+the boys titter; the elder brother would air a grumpy wit of his own;
+and Mrs. Bickersteth would shake the cap awry on her yellow head and
+beg them both to desist. The good-hearted Baby would add her word in
+vindication of the harmless character of her brothers' jokes, and at
+the foot of the table the governess would trim her sails with great
+dexterity, looking duly depressed when she caught Mrs. Bickersteth's
+eye and coyly tickled on encountering those of the gentlemen. Harry sat
+between Leonard Bickersteth and a line of little boys, and facing the
+flaxen-haired Baby, who gave him several kindly, reassuring smiles for
+which he liked her. The young men also treated him in a friendly
+fashion; but he was quite as careful as his fair colleague not to
+commit himself to too open an appreciation of their sallies.
+
+The boys were in Harry's charge for the afternoon, but it seemed that
+on Sundays they never went for a walk for walking's sake. Occasionally,
+as it turned out, he would be requested to take them to some children's
+service; but on that first Sunday, and as a rule, they spent the
+afternoon in the smaller school-room upstairs, where some strictly
+Sabbatarian periodicals were given out for the day's use, and only such
+books as _Sunday Echoes in Week-day Hours_, and the stories of Miss
+Hesba Stretton, permitted to be read. Harry used to feel sorry for
+little Woodman on these occasions. He would catch the small boy's great
+eyes wandering wistfully to the shelf in which his _Mangnall's
+Questions_ and _The Red Eric_ showed side by side; or the eyes would
+stare into vacancy by the hour together, seeing doubtless his
+Devonshire home, and all that his "very superior people" would be doing
+there at the moment. Harry liked Woodman the best of the boys, partly
+because he had a variety of complaints but never uttered one. The new
+master was much too human, and perhaps as much too unsuited by
+temperament for his work, not to have favourites from the first, and
+Woodman and Gifford were their names.
+
+After tea they all went off to evening service, and after that came a
+peaceful half-hour in the pretty drawing-room, where the boys sang
+hymns till bed-time. There was something sympathetic in this
+proceeding, the conduct of which was in Baby Bickersteth's kindly
+hands. The young lady presided at the piano, which she played
+admirably, and the boys stood round her in a semicircle, and each boy
+chose his favourite hymn. Lennie and Reggie joined in from their
+chairs, and Mrs. Bickersteth's lips would move as she followed the
+words in a hymn-book. When the last hymn had been sung, the
+schoolmistress read prayers; and when the boys said good-night she
+kissed each of them in a way that quite touched Harry on the Sunday
+evening after his arrival. He saw the boys to bed in a less captious
+frame of mind than had been his all day, and when he turned in himself
+he was rather ashamed of some of his previous sentiments towards the
+schoolmistress. He had seen the pathos of her pious depression, and he
+was beginning to divine the hourly irritants of keeping school at Mrs.
+Bickersteth's time of life. Instead of his cynical resolve not to take
+her seriously, he lay down chivalrously vowing to resent nothing from a
+woman who was also old. He seemed to have seen a new side of the
+schoolmistress, and henceforth she had his sympathy.
+
+Indeed there was a something human in all these people; they had kind
+hearts, when all was said; and Harry Ringrose began to feel that for a
+time at any rate, he need not be unhappy in their midst. He had still
+to encounter the master spirit of the place.
+
+When all the boys were standing round the long dining-table next
+morning, having taken turns in reading a Chapter aloud, Mrs.
+Bickersteth made an announcement as she closed her Testament.
+
+"This term," said she, "Mr. Scrafton is coming at half-past ten instead
+of at eleven, and those boys who are to go to him will be in their
+places in the upper schoolroom at twenty-five minutes past ten each
+morning."
+
+A list followed of the boys who were promoted to go to Mr. Scrafton
+that term; it ended with the name of little Woodman. Harry happened to
+be engaged in the background in the intellectual task of teaching a
+tiny child his alphabet. He could not help seeing some ruddy cheeks
+turn pale as the list was read; but Woodman, with a fine
+regardlessness, was reading a letter from Devonshire behind another
+boy's back.
+
+Punctually at ten-thirty a thunderous knock resounded from the front
+door, and Harry was sorry that he had not been looking out of the
+window. He saw Mrs. Bickersteth jump up and bustle from the room with a
+most solicitous expression, and he heard a loud voice greeting her
+heartily in the hall. Heavy feet ran creaking up the stairs a few
+minutes later, and Mrs. Bickersteth returned to her task of hearing
+tables and setting sums.
+
+Meanwhile Harry was devoting himself to the very smallest boys in the
+school, mites of five and six, whose nurses brought them in the morning
+and came back for them at one o'clock. About eleven, however, Mrs.
+Bickersteth suggested that these little men would be the better for a
+breath of air, and would Mr. Ringrose kindly take them into the
+back-garden for ten minutes, and see that they did not run on the
+grass? Now, Harry's pocket was still loaded with a missive addressed to
+the editor of _Tommy Tiddler_, which obviously must be posted by his
+own hand, and might even now be too late. He therefore asked permission
+to go as far as the pillar-box at the corner, in order to post a
+letter; and Mrs. Bickersteth, who was luckily in the best of tempers,
+not only nodded blandly, but added that she would be excessively
+obliged if Mr. Ringrose would also post some letters of hers which he
+would find upon the hall-table. So Harry sallied forth, with an infant
+in sailor-clothes holding each of his hands, and whom should he find
+loitering at the corner but Gordon Lowndes?
+
+"Why, Ringrose," cried he, "this is well met indeed! I was just on my
+way to have a word with you. I was looking for the house."
+
+The hearty manner and the genial tone would have been enough for Harry
+at an earlier stage of his acquaintance with this man; but now
+instinctively he knew them for a cloak, and he would not relinquish the
+small boys' hands for the one which he felt was awaiting his, though
+his eyes had never fallen from Lowndes's spectacles.
+
+"I am not sure that you would have been able to see me," was his reply.
+"I am on duty even now. What was the point?"
+
+"Is it impossible for me to have a word with you alone?"
+
+Harry told the little boys to walk on slowly to the pillar. "It will
+literally have to be a word," he added pointedly. Yet his curiosity was
+whetted. What could the man want with him here and now?
+
+"Very well--very well," said Lowndes briskly. "I merely desire to
+apologise for my--my hastiness when we met on Saturday. I fear--that
+is, my daughter tells me--but indeed I am conscious myself--that I
+quite misunderstood your meaning, Ringrose, on a point in itself too
+trifling to be worth naming. You may remember, however, that you asked
+me if I knew anything about a person of whose very existence I had just
+exposed my ignorance?"
+
+"I remember," said Harry. "A mere slip of the tongue, due to my
+curiosity about the man."
+
+"And is your curiosity satisfied?" inquired Lowndes, becoming suddenly
+preoccupied in wiping the dust from his eye-glasses.
+
+"Well, I haven't seen him yet, though he is in the house."
+
+"Ah!" said Lowndes, as though he had not listened. "Well, Ringrose, all
+I wanted was to tell you frankly that I didn't mean to be rude to you
+on Saturday afternoon; so I took the train on here before going to the
+City; and now I've just time to catch one back--so good-bye."
+
+"It was hardly worth while taking so much trouble," said Harry dryly;
+for he knew there was some other meaning in the move, though as yet he
+could not divine what.
+
+"Hardly worth while?" said Lowndes. "My dear boy, that's not very kind.
+I have always been fond of you, Ringrose, and for your own sake as well
+as on every other ground I should be exceedingly sorry to offend you.
+Things are looking up with the Company, you know, and I can't afford to
+quarrel with our future Secretary!"
+
+And with that cunning unction he walked away laughing, but Harry knew
+there was no laughter in his heart, and that every word he had spoken
+was insincere. What then was the meaning? To keep friendly with him,
+doubtless; but why? And such were the possibilities of Gordon Lowndes,
+and such the imagination of Harry Ringrose, that the latter took his
+little boys back to the school with the very wildest and most
+far-fetched explanations surging through his brain.
+
+In the hall he heard a strident voice raging in the schoolroom
+overhead. He could not help going a little way upstairs to discover
+whether anything serious was the matter. And outside the schoolroom
+door stood one of the biggest boys, crying bitterly, with his collar
+torn from its stud, and one ear and one cheek as crimson as though that
+side of his face had been roasted before a fire.
+
+At one o'clock the whole school went for a walk before dinner, and it
+was then that Harry at last set eyes on the formidable Scrafton, as he
+came downstairs in his creaking shoes, with his snuff-box open in his
+hand, and his extraordinary head thrown back to take a pinch. There are
+some faces which one has to see many times before one knows them, as it
+were, by heart; there are others which one passes in the street with a
+shudder, and can never afterwards forget; and here was a face that
+would have haunted Harry Ringrose even though he had never seen it but
+this once.
+
+A magnificent forehead was its one fine feature; the light blue eyes
+beneath were spoilt by their fiery rims, and yet they gleamed with a
+fierce humour and a keen intelligence which lent them distinction of a
+kind. These were the sole redeeming points. The rest was either cruel
+or unclean or both. The creature's skin was very smooth and yellow, and
+it shone with an unwholesome gloss. Abundant hair, of a dirty
+iron-grey, was combed back from the forehead without a parting, and
+gathered in unspeakable curls on the nape of a happily invisible neck.
+A long, lean nose, like a vulture's beak, overhung a grey moustache
+with a snuffy zone in the centre, and lost pinches of snuff lingered in
+a flowing beard of great length. The man wore a suit of pristine black,
+now brown with age and snuff, and Harry noticed a sallow gleam between
+his shoes and his trousers as he came creaking down the stairs. In warm
+weather he wore no socks.
+
+"This is the new master of whom I spoke to you," said Mrs. Bickersteth,
+who was waiting in the hall to introduce Harry to Mr. Scrafton.
+
+"That a master?" bellowed Scrafton. "Why, I thought it was a new boy!"
+And he let out a roar of laughter that left his blue eyes full of
+water; then he strode across the hall with a horrible hand
+out-stretched; the long nails had jagged, black rims, and in another
+moment Harry was shuddering from a clasp that was at once clammy and
+strong.
+
+"What's your name?" asked Mr. Scrafton, grinning like a demon in
+Harry's face.
+
+"Mr. Ringrose," said Mrs. Bickersteth.
+
+"What name?" roared Scrafton. He had turned from Harry to the
+schoolmistress. Harry saw her quail, and he took the liberty of
+repeating his surname in a very distinct voice.
+
+"Where do you come from?" demanded Scrafton, turning back to Harry, or
+rather upon him, with his red-rimmed eyes glaring out of an absolutely
+bloodless face.
+
+Harry answered the question with his head held high.
+
+"Son of Henry Ringrose, the ironmaster?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I thought so! A word with you, ma'am," cried Scrafton--and himself led
+the way into Mrs. Bickersteth's study.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ASSAULT AND BATTERY.
+
+
+Harry was left alone in the hall. The boys were in the basement,
+putting on their boots. There were high words in the study, and yet
+Scrafton seemed to be speaking much below his normal pitch. Harry
+sauntered into the deserted schoolroom to avoid eavesdropping. And as
+if in spite of him, the voices rose, and this much reached his ears:
+
+"I tell you it will ruin the school!"
+
+"Then let me tell you, Mr. Scrafton, that the school is mine, and I
+have done it with my eyes open."
+
+"The son of a common swindler! I know it to my cost----"
+
+To his cost! How could he know it to his cost, this suburban
+schoolmaster? Harry had shut the door; he stood against it in a torment
+of rage and shame, his fingers on the handle, only listening, only
+waiting, for that other door to open. So in the end the two doors
+opened as one, and the two masters met in the hall and glared in each
+other's faces without a word.
+
+"Mr. Ringrose!" cried Mrs. Bickersteth hastily.
+
+Harry turned from the baleful yellow face in a paroxysm of contempt and
+loathing, and was next moment closeted with a trembling old woman whose
+pitiable agitation was another tribute to the terrible Scrafton.
+
+Mrs. Bickersteth's observations were both brief and broken. She had
+just heard from Mr. Scrafton what indeed was not exactly new to her.
+The name was uncommon. Her sons had recalled the case on the arrival of
+Harry's application for the junior mastership. They had not painted the
+case quite so black as Mr. Scrafton had done, and they had all agreed
+that the--the sin of the father--should not disqualify the son. She had
+not meant to let Mr. Ringrose know that she knew (Harry thanked her in
+a heartfelt voice), but she had hoped that nobody else would know: and
+Mr. Scrafton knew for one.
+
+"Do you want to get rid of me?" asked Harry bluntly.
+
+The lady winced.
+
+"Not unless you want to go. No--no--I have neither the inclination nor
+the right to take such a course. But if, after this, you would rather
+not stay, I--I would not stand in your way, Mr. Ringrose."
+
+Harry saw how it was with Mrs. Bickersteth. She did not want to be
+unjust, she did not want to give in to Scrafton, but oh! if Mr.
+Ringrose would save the situation by going of his own accord!
+
+"Will you give me the afternoon to think it over?" said he.
+
+"Certainly," said Mrs. Bickersteth. "I wish you to consult your own
+feelings only. I wish to be just, Mr. Ringrose, and--and to meet your
+ideas. If you are going to town, any time before ten o'clock will be
+time enough for your return."
+
+Harry expressed his gratitude, and said that in that case it would be
+unnecessary for him to absent himself before the close of afternoon
+school; nor did he do so; for he was not going to town at all.
+
+He was going straight to Richmond Hill, to put the whole matter before
+Gordon Lowndes, and to beg the explanation he felt certain the other
+could give. Why should Scrafton have lost his colour and his temper at
+the bare mention of the name of Ringrose? Was it true that he knew that
+name already "to his cost"? Then how did he know it to his cost, and
+since when, and what was the subtle connection between Mr. Ringrose and
+this same Scrafton? Was Lowndes aware of any?
+
+Yes, there was something that Lowndes knew, something that he had known
+on the Saturday afternoon, something to account for his surprise on
+learning to what school Harry had gone as master. He had indignantly
+denied all knowledge of Scrafton, but Harry could no longer accept that
+gratuitous and inexplicable repudiation. It was the very fact that he
+did know something about Scrafton, something which he wished to keep to
+himself, that had made him angrily disclaim such knowledge.
+
+Harry was coming back to his old idea that Lowndes had been more deeply
+implicated in his father's flight than anybody supposed. He no longer
+suspected foul play--that was impossible in the face of the letter from
+Dieppe--but he did suspect complicity on the part of Lowndes. What if
+Lowndes had swindled wholesale in the ironmaster's name, and what if
+Scrafton were one of his victims?
+
+What if Lowndes could tell him where his father lay in hiding abroad!
+
+The thought brought a happy moment and an hour of bitterness; no, it
+were better they should never know; better still if he were dead. And
+the bitter hour that followed was the last and the loveliest of a warm
+September day; and Harry Ringrose spent it in walking across Ham Common
+and through Richmond Park, in the mellow sunset, on his way to Richmond
+Hill.
+
+When he got there it was dusk, and two men were pacing up and down the
+little garden in front of Lowndes's house. Harry paused at the gate.
+The men had their heads close together, and were conversing so
+earnestly that they never saw him. They were Lowndes and Scrafton.
+
+Harry stepped back without a sound. All his suppositions had been built
+upon the hypothesis that these two were enemies; it had never entered
+his head that they might be friends. To find them together was the last
+thing he had expected, and the discovery chilled him in a way for which
+he could not instantly account. He knew there was good reason for it,
+but in his first discomfiture he could not find the reason.
+
+He stole back along the road, a shower of new suspicions sticking like
+arrows in his soul. The very vagueness of his sensations added to their
+sickening effect. His brain heaved as though with wine, and when he
+clapped a hand to his head it came back dripping. He was at the corner
+of the road before he knew what he was going to do, and there he spent
+minutes hesitating and considering. Unable to make up his mind, he
+crossed over and returned to reconnoitre from the other side. To and
+fro walked Lowndes and Scrafton, on the gravel path in front of the
+lighted window opposite; and faster than their feet, but lower than
+their footfalls, went their tongues.
+
+Harry had not heard a word before. At this distance it was impossible
+for him to catch a syllable, and he was glad of it. He would watch his
+men and bide his time. It might be his best policy to do nothing, to
+say nothing, for the present; but he would keep an eye on the house
+while he thought it over.
+
+The difficulty was for the observer himself to escape observation. The
+road was so quiet that if he strolled up and down, those other
+saunterers in the garden could not fail to have their attention
+attracted to him sooner or later. It was so narrow that they had only
+to look up in order to see him leaning against the paling of the
+opposite house. This house, however, was unoccupied, and behind the
+paling, in the segment of a circle formed by the shortest of suburban
+carriage drives, grew a clump of laurels which tempted Harry to do a
+very foolish thing. He crept into the garden of the unoccupied house,
+and from a point of vantage among the laurels he watched the two men in
+the garden over the way.
+
+Up and down they walked, backward and forward, and their low voices
+never ceased; backward and forward, up and down; and now the light of a
+lamp made oval flames of Lowndes's glasses, now the taller Scrafton's
+cormorant profile was stamped for an instant on the lighted blinds,
+while the loathsome sound of his snuff-taking came again and again
+across the quiet road.
+
+So these men were friends: and Lowndes had carefully implied that they
+were not even acquainted. Why should he have gone out of his way to do
+that? He had flown into a temper when that careful implication was
+inadvertently ignored; and had afterwards so feared the tell-tale
+effect of this unguarded outbreak that he had gone all the way to
+Teddington with elaborate apologies and ingenious explanations.
+
+Stay: no: he had gone to Teddington with an ulterior motive, which only
+this instant dawned upon Harry Ringrose. Now he thought of it, there
+had been an obvious absence of premeditation about both the apology and
+the explanation; in fact, he had never before heard the fluent Lowndes
+hesitate so often for a word. Why? Because he had gone to Teddington
+that morning with quite another object, and at last Harry saw what it
+was.
+
+He remembered Mrs. Bickersteth's announcement that this term Mr.
+Scrafton was coming half-an-hour earlier than formerly. He remembered
+how cleverly Lowndes had contrived to discover that Scrafton was
+already in the house. He had never forgotten Scrafton's face on hearing
+the new master's name. The thing was plain as daylight, and Harry only
+wondered how and why he had not seen it at once. Gordon Lowndes had
+gone to Teddington simply and solely to intercept his friend Scrafton,
+and to warn him that he was about to meet a son of the missing Henry
+Ringrose.
+
+But why warn him? What had Harry's father been to Scrafton, or Scrafton
+to Harry's father? The lad's blood ran hot with suspicion, ran cold
+with surmise: there were the two men who could tell him the truth,
+there within twenty yards of him: he heard their every footfall in the
+gravel, heard one taking snuff, and the other talking, talking, talking
+in an endless whisper. Yet he could not walk boldly across the road and
+challenge them to tell him the truth! He was not sure that it would be
+a wise thing to do, but it galled him to feel that he could not do it.
+Lowndes loved a scene as much as he hated one, but Harry felt he could
+have stood up to Lowndes alone. Scrafton was a loathly being, but he
+would not have daunted Harry by himself. It was the two together, the
+coarse bully and the keen-witted man of the world, strong men both,
+whom the lad could not bring himself to challenge in cold blood. He
+had, indeed, too much sense; but, in an agony of self-upbraiding
+consciousness, he kept blaming and hating himself for having too little
+pluck. He thought of the motto on his bedroom wall at home. He would
+have it down; it was not for him. It was only for those who had some
+pluck to lose.
+
+And as he cowered in the garden of the empty house, a white face among
+the leaves, impotent, bewildered, self-tormenting, the front door
+opened across the road, and a supple, strong figure stood so straight
+in the mouth of the lighted passage, a silhouette crowned with gold by
+the lamp within. For an instant Harry's heart seemed to stop, and the
+next instant to rush from his keeping to that lighted door. He had
+forgotten the existence of Fanny Lowndes.
+
+"Dinner is ready," she said. Harry heard the words distinctly: there
+was no reason to lower that honest voice. But he thought that he
+detected an unwonted note of fear--one of disgust he could swear
+to--and instantly his mind was going over every conversation he had
+ever had with the girl, hunting for that unwonted note which was yet
+not entirely unfamiliar. He felt certain that he had heard it before.
+
+"One moment," replied Lowndes; and his voice sank once more, and so
+continued volubly for some minutes: then the pair went in.
+
+But Harry lingered among his laurels, strongly impelled to go
+incontinently with his questions and his suspicions to the one friend
+of whose sympathy he felt sure, of whose truth and honour there was no
+question. Yet to that one friend he could never go, for was she not
+also the only child of Gordon Lowndes?
+
+And what then was his wisest course? Should he do nothing, for the
+present, but return to Teddington, continue in the school, and watch
+this Scrafton from day to day? Or should he wait until Scrafton was
+gone, and then confront Lowndes with an uncompromising demand for
+explanations? Prudence advised one course, gallantry another; but the
+question was to receive a sufficiently sensational solution. It so
+happened that the burglary season had set in early that autumn in the
+Thames valley, and the Richmond police in particular were already
+greatly on their mettle. A certain young constable, at once desirous of
+his stripes and yet not a little alarmed by his own enterprise, had
+obtained leave to go on his beat in noiseless boots, and he came into
+Greville Road about the time that Lowndes and Scrafton went indoors.
+Not a sound came from his muffled feet, but that only seemed to make
+his heart beat the louder; for it was a very human young constable, and
+the majority of the recent burglaries had taken place at this very
+hour, while the families were at dinner.
+
+Suddenly the young policeman stood still and all but shaking in his
+soundless boots: for a few feet from his nose, where he least expected
+it, in the garden of an empty house, was a pale face among the laurels,
+with dark eyes upon the house across the road. A palpable burglar
+choosing his window. A desperate fellow, judging by his face, and yet
+one to be taken single-handed if he were alone.
+
+Harry did not hear the hand feeling for the truncheon, nor yet the
+leather tongue leaping from the brass button; but he smelt the dark
+lantern burning about a second before the light was flashed in his
+face.
+
+"Wad-you-doing-there?"
+
+The low voice was drunken in its excitement.
+
+Harry recoiled among the laurels, guiltily enough, for he was horribly
+startled.
+
+"Come-out-o'-that!" growled the young constable through his teeth to
+prevent their chattering, and with his words still running together.
+"Come-out-o'-that; you've-got-to-come-along-with-me!"
+
+"Why?" cried Harry, frightened into self-possession on the spot.
+
+"You know why! Think I didn't see you watching that house? Out you
+come!"
+
+The constable also was becoming master of his nerves. Harry, indeed,
+neither looked nor spoke like a very desperate person.
+
+"Look here, officer," said he, "you're making a mistake. Do I look a
+burglar?"
+
+"Come out and I'll tell you."
+
+"Well, but look here: you're not going to run me in if I do?"
+
+"I'm not so sure about that."
+
+"You can't!" cried Harry, losing his temper. "What charge have you to
+bring against me?"
+
+"Trespassing with intent! You may satisfy the sergeant, and if you do
+he won't detain you. But I've got to do my dooty, and if you won't come
+out I'll make you, but if you take my advice you'll come quietly."
+
+"Oh, I'll come quietly," said Harry, "if I've got to come."
+
+His tone was one of unaffected resignation. To be haled before the
+police was a new and most grotesque experience, at which he could have
+laughed outright but for the dread lest his superior officers might
+prove as crass as this callow constable. That he would have to go,
+however, appeared inevitable; and though the thought of calling Lowndes
+to vouch for his respectability did occur to him, it was instantly
+dismissed, and that of resistance never occurred to him at all. Harry
+was a very peaceable person, but he was also very excitable and
+impulsive, and what he now did was done without a moment's thought. He
+had opened the gate, which was wide and heavy, with the kind of latch
+which allows a gate to swing past the post on either side, and on the
+pavement stood a young police man with his lantern and something
+glittering in its light. It was a pair of handcuffs, and the sight of
+them was responsible for what followed. Instead of passing through the
+gate, as he seemed in the act of doing, Harry clapped both hands to the
+bar and rushed at the policeman with the gate in front of him. Every
+bar struck a different section of the man's body: his lantern fell with
+a clatter, his handcuffs with a tinkle, and he himself was hurled
+heavily into the road, along which Harry was scampering like a wild
+thing. At the corner he stopped to look back, because no footsteps were
+following and no whistle had been blown. The lantern had not gone out,
+for a jet of light spouted from the pavement half-way across the road,
+where it ran into a dark-blue heap. Otherwise the little road was quite
+deserted.
+
+Some minutes later, when the whistles began to blow, the man they blew
+for just heard them from the heights of the hill; but he had had the
+presence of mind to walk up to the park gates, and through them at a
+pace almost leisurely; and long before ten o'clock he was sitting over
+little Woodman's fire in his room at the Hollies, Teddington, and
+wondering whether it was he or another who had been through the
+adventures of the evening.
+
+He had decided to remain at the school, and Mrs. Bickersteth had
+accepted his decision without comment. The schoolmistress little dreamt
+to whom a paragraph referred which caught her eye in the next issue of
+the _Surrey Comet_:--
+
+    RICHMOND BURGLARS.
+
+    ASSAULT ON THE POLICE.
+
+    As Constable John Tinsley, Richmond division, Metropolitan Police,
+    was on his rounds on Monday evening last, he noticed a man lurking
+    in the garden of an empty house on the hill, and, on demanding an
+    explanation, was savagely assaulted and left senseless in the road.
+    There can be little doubt, from the bruises on Tinsley's body, that
+    the ruffian felled him with some blunt instrument, and afterwards
+    kicked him as he lay insensible. Tinsley is now on duty again, but
+    considers he has had a lucky escape. He describes his assailant as
+    a thick-set and powerful young fellow of the working class, and has
+    little doubt that he was one of the brutal and impudent thieves who
+    are at present a pest of the neighbourhood.
+
+Harry Ringrose would not have recognised himself had he not been on the
+look-out for some such item: when he did, he breathed more freely,
+though not freely enough to show himself unnecessarily on Richmond
+Hill. The paragraph he cut out and treasured for many years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+BIDING HIS TIME.
+
+
+When Scrafton's knock thundered through the house on the morning after
+Harry's adventure, Mrs. Bickersteth again rose hastily and bustled from
+the schoolroom; and for the next five minutes the ears of the junior
+master had some cause to tingle. When the schoolmistress returned she
+would not look at Harry, who was well aware that she had secretly
+wished him to resign, and that conscience alone forbade her to send him
+away in obedience to Scrafton's demands. That such demands had been
+made the day before, and reiterated this morning, Harry was as certain
+as though he had heard them; but the certainty only cemented his
+resolve to stay where he was, to give not the smallest pretext for his
+dismissal, and to watch Scrafton, patiently, steadily, day after day,
+for some explanation of his animus against himself and of his
+mysterious relations with Gordon Lowndes.
+
+It chanced that the middle of that September was as warm as midsummer,
+and on the first Wednesday of the term a whisper of cricket went round
+the school. It appeared that on Wednesday and Friday afternoons,
+throughout the summer, the boys played cricket in Bushey Park, and as
+it was still summer weather they were to do so this afternoon.
+
+"Are you going to take us, sir?" asked Gifford, as they were changing
+into flannels, under Harry's supervision, in their dormitory, after
+dinner.
+
+"Not that I know of," said Harry. "Who generally does?"
+
+"Mr. Scrafton, and he doesn't know the rules----"
+
+"Read 'em through once, years ago----"
+
+"And thinks he understands the game----"
+
+"And scores and umpires----"
+
+"And gives two men out at once!"
+
+Here, duty compelled Harry to administer a general snub; but he
+determined to go to Bushey Park and see the cricket for himself; and
+when the day-boys had assembled in flannels also, and Mr. Scrafton,
+flourishing a long blackthorn, had marched them all off in double file,
+the junior master had his chance. Little Woodman was left behind. He
+was not allowed to play cricket. Harry was requested to take him for a
+walk instead; and, on inquiring whether there would be any objection to
+their going to Bushey Park to watch the game, received permission to do
+so on the understanding that Woodman was not to sit on the grass or to
+stand about too long.
+
+The wickets had just been pitched when they arrived, and Scrafton and
+the biggest boy, kneeling behind either middle stump, were taking
+sights for a common block-hole which Scrafton proceeded to dig at great
+depth at either end. When the game began no player was allowed to take
+an independent guard; but meanwhile Scrafton had caught sight of Harry
+and his charge, and had borne down upon them with his blue eyes
+flashing suspicion and animosity.
+
+"What have you come for?" he thundered in Harry's face.
+
+"To--watch you," replied Harry, watching him very calmly as he spoke.
+
+"Who gave you leave?"
+
+"Mrs. Bickersteth. Do you dislike being watched?"
+
+So mild was the look, so bland the tone, that it was impossible to tell
+whether the ambiguity was intentional or accidental. Scrafton glared at
+Harry for one eloquent moment; then his blue eyes fell and fastened
+furiously upon the little fellow at Harry's side.
+
+"And you," he roared, flourishing his blackthorn over the small boy's
+head, "what right have you here? A blockhead who can't say his first
+declension has no right idling out o' doors. Take care, Master
+Woodman--take very great care to-morrow!"
+
+And with the grin of an ogre behind the lifted blackthorn, Mr. Scrafton
+turned on the heels of the shoes he wore next his skin, and rushed back
+to the pitch.
+
+"I expect Mr. Scrafton's bark is worse than his bite," Harry could not
+help saying to the trembling child at his side. "The brute!" he cried
+in the same breath. He could not help that either. The blackthorn had
+fallen heavily across the shoulders of a boy who had been throwing
+catches without leave. Little Woodman never said a word.
+
+After this Harry could not trust himself to remain without interfering,
+and he knew only too well what the result of such interference would
+be. So Woodman and he walked to the far side of the ground, and only
+watched the game for a few minutes, from a safe distance; yet it left
+as vivid an impression in Harry's mind as the finest cricket he had
+ever seen at Lord's. There stood Scrafton in his rusty suit, the
+murderous blackthorn tucked under an arm, his pocket-book and snuff-box
+in one hand, the pencil with which he scored in the other. Never was
+game played in more sombre earnest, for neither side had the temerity
+to applaud, and the umpire and scorer was also judge and flagellator of
+the fielders, who pursued the ball slowly at the risk of being
+themselves pursued with the blackthorn. Just before Harry went he saw
+his friend Gifford given out because the ball had rolled against the
+stumps without removing the bails. The boy had been making runs, and he
+seemed dissatisfied. Scrafton took a pinch of snuff, put his pencil in
+his pocket, and advanced flourishing his blackthorn in a manner that
+made Harry turn his back on the game for good. But that night, when the
+boarders undressed, there was a long, lean bruise across Gifford's
+shoulders.
+
+The blackthorn remained in the umbrella-stand while Scrafton roared and
+blustered in the upper schoolroom. But when it was he who took the boys
+for their walk, the blackthorn went too--and was busy. And on the
+chimney-piece upstairs there used to lie a long black ruler which was
+said to hurt even more, which Harry yearned to pitch into the middle of
+the Thames.
+
+During the first half of the term he never saw the inside of that room
+under Scrafton's terrific rule; but his roaring voice could be heard
+all over the house; and now and then, when Harry had occasion to pass
+the door, he would pause to listen to the words.
+
+"Look at the sweat on my hand," was what he once heard. "Look at the
+sweat on my hand! It's sweating to give Master Murray what he
+deserves!"
+
+With that Scrafton could be heard taking a tremendous pinch of snuff;
+but Harry was still on the stairs when a couple of resounding smacks,
+followed by a storm of sobs, announced that Master Murray (aetat. 11)
+had received his alleged deserts. The boy's ears were red and swollen
+for the rest of that day.
+
+At first Harry could not understand how a religious woman like Mrs.
+Bickersteth could countenance and keep such a flagrant bully, since
+what he heard at odd times must be heard morning after morning by some
+member of the household. The explanation dawned upon him by degrees.
+Scrafton had been there so many years that he had gained an almost
+complete ascendency over every adult in the establishment. The one
+instance in which Harry knew Mrs. Bickersteth to stand firm was that of
+his own continuance in the school. The one member of the Bickersteth
+family whom he ever heard breathe a syllable against Scrafton was the
+good-hearted, golden-haired Baby. Harry once met her face to face on
+the stairs when a roaring and a thumping and a sobbing were going on
+behind that terrible closed door. Harry looked at her grimly. Miss
+Bickersteth reddened to the roots of her yellow hair.
+
+"It does sound dreadful," she admitted. "But--but Mr. Scrafton's kinder
+than you think; he sounds worse than he is. And he teaches them so
+well; and--and he has been here so many years!"
+
+Harry thought there was a catch in her voice as she brushed past him;
+for one thump had sounded louder than the rest; and first a slate had
+fallen, and then a boy. Indeed it was a common thing to hear the boys
+whispering that so-and-so had been knocked down that day. But the fiend
+was clever enough to keep his fist for their bodies, his flat hand for
+their faces; the wretched little victims were never actually
+disfigured.
+
+That he was a clever teacher Harry did not doubt. With quick receptive
+material he was probably something more, and there were one or two boys
+whom that baleful face, that ready hand, and that roaring voice did not
+instantly daze and stupefy, and who were consequently getting on
+remarkably well under Mr. Scrafton. With his repulsive personality, and
+his more repulsive practices, the man had yet a touch of genius. He
+wrote the boys' names in their Latin Grammars in the most perfect and
+beautiful copperplate hand that Harry had ever seen. And those quicker
+boys would show him sums worked out by no recognised rule, but with
+half the figures expended in the "key": for Scrafton had a shorter and
+better rule of his own for every rule in arithmetic.
+
+Weeks went by before Harry and this man exchanged another word; but
+daily they met and looked each other in the face, and daily the younger
+man became surer and surer that the look those blue eyes shot at him
+was instinct with a special venom, a peculiar malice, only to be
+explained by the unravelment of that mystery which he was as far as
+ever from unravelling. And every night of all these weeks he lay awake
+wondering, wondering; yet every day the daily duties claimed and
+absorbed his whole attention; and he took no step because he had found
+no clue, and was still determined to find one; also because there were
+certain cogent reasons for his keeping this mastership, for its own
+sake, for one term at least. Mrs. Ringrose was still at the seaside
+with the Walthews. She wrote to tell Harry how kind they were to her;
+when they returned she was to remain with them until he rejoined her.
+Meanwhile the flat was costing nothing but its rent, and Harry was not
+only earning his board, lodgings, and ten pounds for the term, but from
+ten to fifteen shillings a week from the excellent and munificent
+_Tiddler_. If he chose to throw up the mastership at Christmas, they
+would be able to start the New Year on a much sounder financial basis
+than would have been possible had he never obtained it.
+
+So October wore into November, and the autumn tints became warmer and
+richer in Bushey Park, and Harry grew fond of his walks with the boys,
+and very fond of the boys themselves. Somehow his discovery on Richmond
+Hill came to seem less significant than it had appeared at the time.
+The idea grew upon Harry Ringrose (who was fully alive to the defects
+of his own imaginative quality) that very likely there was a much
+simpler explanation of Lowndes's lie than he had suspected at the time:
+and though he loathed Scrafton for his brutality to the boys, and never
+failed to meet that baleful eye as though he saw through its bloodshot
+blue into the brain beyond, the look became a mechanical part of his
+day's routine, and it was only in the long nights that the old
+suspicions haunted him. So it was when the clash came between Harry
+Ringrose and "I, Jeremiah Scrafton" (as the harpy loved to call himself
+to the boys); and with the clash, not suspicion any more, but the dire
+conviction of some rank and nameless, yet undiscovered, villainy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+HAND TO HAND.
+
+
+It all came of the junior master's clandestine connection with the
+_Tiddler_.
+
+Harry Ringrose used many precautions in the matter of his little
+journalistic skeleton. He imagined it safe enough in the locked drawer
+in which he treasured such copies of the lively periodical as contained
+his stealthy contributions. But, just as the most cautious criminal is
+often guilty of the greatest carelessness, so Harry committed one gross
+blunder every week; and, again like so many malefactors, his own vanity
+was the cause of his undoing. He must see himself in print each week at
+the earliest possible opportunity.
+
+The boys began by wondering why they always passed Teddington Station
+on the Saturday walk, and why they were invariably left outside for at
+least a minute. Then they wondered what paper it was the master bought.
+He never let them see it. Yet he habitually took a good look at it
+before rejoining them, which he nearly always did in the best of
+tempers, though once or twice it was just the opposite. At last one
+sophisticated boy bet another that it was a sporting paper, and the
+other boy stole into the station at Harry's heels and with great
+gallantry discovered what it was. The same Saturday Harry was observed
+scribbling things (probably puns) on his shirt cuff, and referring to
+these that evening when he said he had to write a letter, and writing
+the letter in irregular short lines. It is to be feared that a few of
+the boys then turned unscrupulous detectives, and the discovery of an
+envelope addressed to the editor of _Tommy Tiddler_ proved a mere
+question of time.
+
+The next thing was to find out what he wrote, and about this time Harry
+had a shock. A day-boy was convicted of bringing a _Tiddler_ to lessons
+at the instigation of a boarder, and the whole school heard of it after
+Bible-reading, when the incriminating pennyworth was taken between the
+tongs and publicly cremated for a "low, pernicious, disreputable paper,
+which I hope never to see in my school again." Harry was not present at
+the time, but these were Mrs. Bickersteth's words when she told him
+what she had done, and begged him to be good enough to keep a sharp
+look-out for future numbers of the "degrading thing." He had the new
+one in his pocket as he bowed.
+
+About this time young Woodman was laid up in the bedroom at the top of
+the house, and Harry had to keep the fire in and the kettle steaming
+all night. The little fellow had grown upon him more and more, and yet
+for a child he was extraordinarily reserved. Harry could never tell
+whether Scrafton knocked him about or not; and once when Woodman
+attributed a set of bruised knuckles to his having struck another boy
+(a thing he was never known to do), Harry could have laughed at the
+pious lie if he had not been too angry at the thought of anybody
+ill-treating such a shadow of a boy. Yet nobody was especially good to
+little Woodman: for Baby Bickersteth was good to all.
+
+Once or twice the boy's parents came to see him, young, wealthy people,
+against whom Harry formed a possibly unwarrantable prejudice; and on
+these occasions, before being sent downstairs to see them, the child
+was first taken upstairs and his light hair made lank and rank with
+pomatum, and his pale face burnished with much soap. While he was ill,
+however, the Woodmans ran down from their hotel in town one Sunday
+morning and spent an hour in the sick-room before hurrying back. Harry
+was present when Mrs. Bickersteth came in from chapel and heard of it.
+He followed the irate lady upstairs (to put away his Sunday hat), and
+he heard her tell the invalid what she thought of his father for coming
+up into her bedrooms in her absence. Gentlemen in her bedrooms she did
+not allow; it was a most ungentlemanly liberty to take; and so on and
+so on, until Harry saw such tears in the boy's eyes as Scrafton himself
+could not have wrung. A new book was lying on the bed when Harry
+quitted this painful scene. He saw it next under Mrs. Bickersteth's
+arm; and he had to go upstairs again to say a word to the boy, though
+it should cost him his beggarly place fifty times over.
+
+"I don't mind what they say to me," whimpered Woodman. "I only mind
+what they say about my people."
+
+Harry found it possible to take the other side without unkindness. Mrs.
+Bickersteth had said more than she meant. Most people did when they
+were angry. Ladies were always sensitive about untidiness, and, of
+course, the room was untidy. She had not meant to hurt Woodman's
+feelings.
+
+"But my mater brought me a new Ballantyne, sir," said the boy. "It was
+the one that's just come out, and Bick--Mrs. Bickersteth--has taken it
+away from me."
+
+His tears ran again.
+
+"Well, I'll lend you something instead," said Harry.
+
+"Thanks awfully, sir."
+
+"I'll lend you anything you like!" quoth Harry recklessly.
+
+He was thinking of some novels in the locked drawer.
+
+"Honest Injun, sir?"
+
+Harry laughed. The boy had a quaint way with him that never went too
+far, he was the one fellow with whom it was quite safe to joke, and it
+was delightful to see his dark eyes drying beneath the bright look that
+only left them when Woodman was really miserable.
+
+"Honest Injun, Woodman."
+
+"Then lend me a _Tiddler_."
+
+"A what?"
+
+"A _Tommy Tiddler_, sir," said Woodman demurely.
+
+"How on earth do you know I have one?" cried Harry aghast.
+
+"Everybody knows you get it every Saturday from the station, sir."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Woodman. "But--but I do wish you'd show me
+what you write in it, sir. I swear I won't tell the other fellows!"
+
+Harry was temporarily dumb. Then he burst out in an excited whisper:
+how in the wide world did they know he wrote for the thing? Woodman
+would not say. A lot of them did know it, but they had agreed not to
+sneak--for which observation he apologised in the same breath. Woodman
+whispered too; never were two such conspirators.
+
+And the immediate result was altogether inevitable. Harry loved a word
+of praise from anybody, like many a better man, and Woodman was as much
+above the average boy in sense of humour as he was below him in the
+ordinary endowments. That Sunday, before he went to sleep, he had read
+every false rhyme and every unblushing inversion of Harry's which had
+yet found their way into print. It may have been very demoralising--it
+has never been held that Harry had even the makings of an ideal
+pedagogue--but the small boy actually went to sleep with a _T.T._ under
+his pillow. And next day when he was permitted abroad in his room, and,
+after the doctor's visit, to go down to Mr. Scrafton for an hour, it
+was with _T.T._ stowed hastily in his jacket pocket that Woodman made
+his reappearance in the upper schoolroom.
+
+Unaware that he had been allowed to leave his bed, Harry contrived to
+run upstairs during the morning with a boy's magazine which one of the
+other boarders had received from home that morning. Finding the room
+empty, Harry only hoped his convalescent was breaking the journey from
+bed to Scrafton in some more temperate zone, but on his way downstairs
+he could not help pausing at that sinister shut door, and this was what
+he heard.
+
+"Where did you get it?" No answer--thud. "Where--did--you--get it?" No
+answer--thud--and so on some four or five times, with a dull thud after
+each fruitless reiteration.
+
+Cold breath seemed to gather on Harry's forehead as on glass; an
+instinct told him what was happening.
+
+"I am going on, you know," continued Scrafton, dropping his normal
+bluster for a snarl of subtler malice, "until--you--tell--me--where--
+you--got----"
+
+A blow was falling between each word, and what Harry saw as he entered
+was Scrafton leaning across a corner of the table, with his ogre's face
+glaring into little Woodman's, and the unlucky _Tiddler_ grasped in his
+left hand, while with his right fist he kept punching, punching,
+punching, with unvarying aim and precision, between the shoulder and
+the chest of the child. No single blow would have drawn a tear, nor
+might the series have left a mark, but the little white face was
+positively deathly with the cumulative pain, and, though his lips might
+have been sewn together, a tear dropped on Woodman's slate as Harry
+entered softly. Next instant Scrafton was seated on the floor, and
+Harry Ringrose standing over him, brandishing the chair that he had
+tugged from under the bully's body.
+
+"You infernal villain!" cried the younger man. "I've a good mind to
+brain you where you sit!"
+
+It was more easily said than done. Scrafton seized a leg of the chair
+in either hand, and, leaping up, began jabbing Harry with the back,
+while his yellow face worked hideously, and his blue eyes flamed with
+blood. Not a word was said as the two men stood swaying with the chair
+between them; and Mrs. Bickersteth, who had heard the fall and Harry's
+voice, was in time for this tableau, with its ring of small scared
+faces raised in horror.
+
+"Mr. Scrafton!" she cried. "Mr. Ringrose! pray what are _you_ doing
+here?"
+
+"What am I doing?" shouted Harry. "Teaching this brute you keep to
+torture these children--teaching him what I ought to have taught him
+weeks ago. Oh, I had some idea of what went on, but none that it was so
+bad! I have seen these boys' bruises caused by this bully. I ought to
+have told you long ago. I tell you now, and I dare you to keep him in
+your school. If you do I call in the police!"
+
+Poor Harry was quite beside himself. He had lost his head and his
+temper too completely to do justice to his case. His chest was heaving,
+his face flaming, and even now he looked at Scrafton as though about to
+tear that foul beard out by the roots. Scrafton grinned like a fiend,
+and took three tremendous pinches of snuff.
+
+"Mr. Scrafton has been with me twenty-two years," said Mrs.
+Bickersteth. "I shall hear him first. Then I will deal with you once
+and for all. Meanwhile I shall be excessively obliged if you will
+retire to your room."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind," retorted Harry Ringrose.
+
+"Then you are no longer a master in my school."
+
+"Thank God for that!"
+
+Mrs. Bickersteth turned her back upon him, and through all his
+righteous heat the youth felt suddenly ashamed. In an instant he was
+cool.
+
+Scrafton was telling his story. Mrs. Bickersteth had forbidden the low
+paper, _Tommy Tiddler_, to be brought into the school, and Master
+Woodman not only had a copy in his pocket, but stubbornly refused to
+say how he had come by it. A little persuasion was being used, when Mr.
+Ringrose rushed in, said Scrafton, and committed a murderous assault
+upon him with that chair.
+
+"A little persuasion!" jeered Harry, breaking out again. "A little
+torture, you brute! Now I will tell you where he came by that paper. I
+lent it him."
+
+"You--a paid master in my school--lend one of my boys that vulgar,
+vicious, abominable paper, after I have forbidden it in the school?"
+
+"Yes--I did wrong. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Bickersteth, for that and
+for the way I spoke just now--to you--not to him," Harry took care to
+add, with a contemptuous jerk of the head towards Scrafton. "As for
+this unlucky rag," picking it up, "it may or may not be vulgar, but I
+deny that it is either vicious or abominable. I shouldn't write for it
+if it were."
+
+"You _write_ for it?"
+
+"Have done ever since I was here."
+
+"Then," cried Mrs. Bickersteth, "even if you had not behaved as you
+have behaved this morning--even if you had not spoken as you have
+spoken--in my presence--in the presence of the boys--you should leave
+my school this day. You are not fit for your position."
+
+"And never was," roared Scrafton, taking another huge pinch and
+snapping the snuff from his fingers; "and perhaps, ma'am, you'll listen
+to. Jeremiah Scrafton another time. What did I tell you the first time
+I saw him. A common swindler's whelp--like father, like son."
+
+So Scrafton took his chance, but now it was Harry's. He walked up to
+the other and stared him steadily in the face. It was the look Harry
+had given him five days out of the seven for many a week, but never had
+it been quite so steady or so cool.
+
+"I won't strike you, Scrafton," said he; "no, thank you! But we're not
+done with each other yet. You've not heard the last of me--or of my
+father."
+
+"There's plenty wish they hadn't heard the last of him," rejoined
+Scrafton brutally.
+
+"Well, you haven't, any way; and when you hear of him again, you
+ruffian," continued Harry, under his breath, "it will be to some
+purpose. I know something--I mean to know all. And it surprises you!
+What do you suppose I stayed here for except to watch you? And I'll
+have you watched still, Scrafton. Trust me not to lose sight of you
+till I am at the bottom of your villainy."
+
+Not a word of this was heard by Mrs. Bickersteth or by the boys; they
+merely saw Scrafton's face set in a grin that had suddenly become
+ghastly, and the snuff spilling from the box between his blue-nailed
+fingers, as Harry Ringrose turned upon his heel and strode from the
+room.
+
+He took the stairs three at a time, in his eagerness to throw his
+things into his portmanteau and to go straight from the guilty man
+downstairs to the guilty man in Leadenhall Street or on Richmond Hill;
+he would find him wherever he was; he would tear the truth from that
+false friend's tongue. And this new and consuming excitement so lifted
+him outside of his present surroundings, that it was as though the
+school was not, as though the last two months had not been; and it was
+only when he rose perspiring from his strapped portmanteau that the
+glint of medicine bottles caught his eye, bringing the still lingering
+odours of the sick-room back to his nostrils, and to his heart a tumult
+of forgotten considerations.
+
+Instead of hurrying downstairs he strode up and down his room until a
+note was brought to him from Mrs. Bickersteth. It begged him as a
+gentleman to go quietly and at once, and it enclosed a cheque for ten
+pounds, or his full salary for the unfinished term. Harry felt touched
+and troubled. The lady wrote a good bold hand, but her cheque was so
+tremulously signed that he wondered whether they would cash it at the
+bank. He had qualms, too, about accepting the full amount; but the
+thought of his mother overcame them, and that of the boys fortified him
+to send down a stamped receipt with a line in which he declined to go
+before Mrs. Bickersteth's sons returned from the City.
+
+He remained upstairs all day, however, in order to cause no additional
+embarrassment before the boys, and, when his ears told him that
+afternoon school had begun, he was still further touched at the arrival
+of his dinner on a tray. On the strength of this he begged for an
+interview with Mrs. Bickersteth, and, when Baby Bickersteth came up to
+say her mother was quite unequal to seeing him, Harry apologised freely
+and from his heart for the violence to which he had given way in his
+indignation. But he said that he must see her brothers before he went,
+as nothing could alter his opinion of the ferocious Scrafton, or of the
+monstrosity of retaining such a man in such a position.
+
+"And you," he cried, looking boldly into the doll-like eyes, "you agree
+with me! Then back me up this evening, and you will never, never, never
+regret it!"
+
+The girl coloured as she left him without a word; but he thought the
+blue eyes were going to fill, and he hoped for the best in the evening.
+Alas! he was leaning on reeds, and putting his faith in a couple of
+sober, unimaginative citizens, who, seeing Harry excited, deducted some
+seventy per cent. from his indictment, and met his every charge with
+the same stolid answer.
+
+"We were under him ourselves," they said, "and you see, we are none the
+worse."
+
+"But you were Mrs. Bickersteth's sons. And I don't say these boys will
+be any the worse when they grow up. I only say it is a crime to let
+such little chaps be so foully used."
+
+"You have said quite enough," replied Leonard, gruffly. "It's not the
+slightest use your saying any more."
+
+"So I see!" cried Harry bitterly.
+
+"You've upset my mother," put in Reggie, "but you don't bully us."
+
+"No!" exclaimed Harry. "I'll leave that to Scrafton--since even the men
+of the house daren't stand up to him!"
+
+This brought them to their feet.
+
+"Will you have the goodness to go?" thundered Lennie.
+
+"Or have we to make you?" drawled Reginald.
+
+"You may try," said Harry, truculently. "I'm on to have it out with
+anybody, though I'd rather it were a brute like Scrafton than otherwise
+good fellows who refuse to see what a brute he is. But you will have to
+see. You haven't heard the last of this; you'll be sorry you didn't
+hear the last of it from me."
+
+"You threaten us?" cried Lennie Bickersteth, throwing the drawing-room
+door open in a way that was in itself a threat. Harry stalked through
+with an eye that dared them to use their hands. He put on his hat and
+overcoat, flung open the front door, picked up his portmanteau and his
+hat-box, and so wheeled round on the threshold.
+
+"I mean," he said, "to communicate with the parents of every boy who
+has been under Scrafton this term. They shall question the boys
+themselves."
+
+He turned again, and went slowly down the steps; before he was at the
+bottom the big door had slammed behind him for ever. And yet again did
+he turn at the wooden gate between the stucco pillars. There was his
+window, the end window of the top row, the window with the warm red
+light behind the blind. Even as he watched, the blind was pulled back,
+and a little lean figure in white stood between it and the glass.
+
+It was a moonlight night, made lighter yet by a fall of snow that
+afternoon, and Harry saw the little fellow so distinctly for the last
+time! He was alternately waving a handkerchief with all his might and
+digging at his eyes with it as though he meant to blacken them. It was
+Harry's first sight of Woodman since the scene in the schoolroom, and
+it was destined to be his last in life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+MAN TO MAN.
+
+
+The flat was in utter darkness when Harry arrived between nine and ten.
+He was disappointed, and yet not surprised. He knew that his mother was
+to have returned from the sea by this time, but that was all he did
+know. He found the porter, and asked him how he was redirecting the
+letters.
+
+The man gave Mr. Walthew's address. Harry groaned.
+
+"Mrs. Ringrose has never been back since she first went away?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"You have the key of the flat?"
+
+"Yes, sir; my wife goes up there every day."
+
+"Then get her to go up now and light the gas stove and lay the table.
+I'll bring in the provisions if she'll do that and make my bed for me.
+Tell her I know it's late, but----"
+
+"That's all right, sir," interrupted the porter, a familiar but
+obliging soul; and when Harry returned in ten minutes, with his slices
+of pressed beef and his French rolls and butter, from the delightful
+shop round a couple of corners, the flat was lighted like a
+public-house, and you lost sight of your breath in the minute
+dining-room where the asbestos was reddening in the grate.
+
+Yet it was a sorry home-coming, that put Harry painfully in mind of his
+last, and he felt very wistful and lonely when he had finished his
+supper and written a few lines to his mother. He came in from posting
+them with an ounce of birdseye, and dragged an easy chair from under
+its dust-sheet in the other room, and so arranged himself comfortably
+enough in front of the gas stove. But his first pipe for several weeks
+did no more for him than Weber's Last Waltz, which duly welcomed him
+through the ceiling. He was unused to solitude, and the morrow's
+interview with Lowndes sat heavily on his nerves. His one consolation
+was that it would take place before his mother's return. She must know
+nothing until he knew all. And he had begged her not to hurry back on
+his account.
+
+In the sideboard that was so many sizes too large for the room--the
+schoolroom sideboard of the old home--he at last laid hands upon some
+whisky, and in his loneliness and suppressed excitement he certainly
+drank more than was good for him before going to bed. Immense and
+immediate confidence accrued, only to evaporate before it was wanted;
+and morning found him nervous, depressed, and dearly wishing that he
+had gone hot from Scrafton to Lowndes the day before. But the bravest
+man is he who goes trembling and yet smiling into action, and, after
+all, it was a sufficiently determined face that Harry Ringrose carried
+through the sloppy City streets that foggy forenoon.
+
+In the outer office the same small clerk was perched on the same tall
+stool: but Bacchus sat solitary, in his top-coat and with a redder nose
+than ever, at the desk in the inner office, the door of which was
+standing open.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Backhouse," said Harry entering. "Mr. Lowndes is
+out?"
+
+"Very much out."
+
+"Doesn't he come here now?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr. Backhouse, but can you tell me where I
+can find him?"
+
+"Offices of the Crofter Fisheries."
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"Hartington House, Cornhill."
+
+So brusque was his manner, so different from Harry's recollection of
+the red-nosed man, that the young fellow thanked him for his
+information with marked stiffness, whereupon the other sprang up and
+clapped on his hat.
+
+"I don't mean to be rude to you, Mr. Ringrose, but I'm sick of that
+man's name," cried he: "it gives me a thirst every time I hear it.
+Didn't you know about the Company? It comes out next week--they're
+going to have a solid page in every morning paper on Monday--capital
+one million, and everything but Royalty on the board! Lowndes has made
+himself General Manager with God knows how many thousand a year, and I
+was to be Secretary with five hundred. He promised it to me again and
+again--he had the use of these offices rent free for months--and used
+to borrow from the housekeeper when I had nothing--and now he gives it
+over my head to one of his aristocratic pals. I tell you, Mr. Ringrose,
+it makes me dry to think of it! Come and let me buy you a drink."
+
+Harry thanked him but declined, and, on the way downstairs, asked
+whether Lowndes still lived at Richmond.
+
+"He may be there still," said Bacchus, "but I hear he's going to move
+into an abbey or castle--I forget which--as soon as the Company comes
+out. He's renting it furnished from one of these belted blokes he's got
+in with. So you won't have the least little split? Well, good-bye then,
+Mr. Ringrose, and may Gordon Lowndes prove a better friend to you than
+he has to me!"
+
+Harry could not help smiling grimly as he headed for Cornhill. The
+grievance of Bacchus was as much his own. Most heartily he wished he
+had no worse.
+
+Hartington House proved to be a modern pile with a lift worked by a
+smart boy in buttons; and the offices of the Crofter Fisheries,
+Limited, occupied the whole of one floor. If Harry had felt nervous
+when climbing the familiar stairs in Leadenhall Street, he might well
+have been overpowered by the palatial character of the new premises. A
+commissionaire with as many medals as a Field-Marshal handed his card
+to one gentleman, who passed it on to another gentleman, who carried it
+through a ground-glass door. Harry was then conducted into a luxurious
+waiting-room in which two or three busy-looking men were glancing
+alternately at their watches and at the illustrated papers which
+strewed the table. A single gigantic salmon occupied a glass case
+running the length of the mantelpiece, while several new oil paintings
+hung upon the walls. Harry noticed that the subjects were exclusively
+Scottish, and that one at least was by a distinguished Academician, of
+whose name the most was made in black letters on a gilt tablet.
+
+In such surroundings the visitor found it a little difficult to
+rehearse what he had determined to say to Lowndes, and it was no
+misfortune that kept him waiting the better part of an hour. The delay
+gave him time to gather his wits and to recollect his points. It
+prepared him for a new Gordon Lowndes. It steadied his feet when they
+sank into the rich carpet of a still more sumptuous apartment, in the
+middle of which stood the most magnificent desk he had ever seen; it
+kept his eye from being distracted from the resplendent gentleman who
+sat at the desk, the gentleman with the orchid in the silken lapel of
+his frock-coat, and with everything new upon him but the gold
+eye-glasses that bridged the twitching nose.
+
+Before his mouth opened beneath his waxed moustache, Harry felt
+convinced that Lowndes had seen Scrafton, and was fully prepared for
+this visit.
+
+"Well, Ringrose, what can I do for you?" he cried, as Harry advanced,
+and his tone was both cold and sharp.
+
+"Ask your typist to step into another room," replied Harry, glancing
+towards the young girl at the clicking Remington.
+
+Lowndes opened his eyes. Indeed, Harry had begun better than he himself
+expected, and his confidence increased as the other turned to his
+typist.
+
+"Be good enough to leave us for a minute, Miss Neilson; we shan't be
+longer," said Lowndes pointedly. "Now," he added, "kindly take a seat,
+Ringrose."
+
+But Harry came and stood at the other side of the magnificent desk.
+
+"I want to ask you two or three questions, Mr. Lowndes," said he
+quietly.
+
+"About the Company, eh?"
+
+"No, not about the Company, Mr. Lowndes."
+
+"Then this is neither the time nor place, and it will have to be a very
+short minute. But blaze away."
+
+"What is there between you and that man Scrafton?" asked Harry, and for
+the life of him he could steady his voice no longer. His very lip was
+trembling now.
+
+"Which man Scrafton?" asked Lowndes, beginning to smile.
+
+"You know as well as I do!" Harry almost shouted. "The other master in
+the school at Teddington--the man whose existence you pretended not to
+know of when I met you that afternoon on Ham Common. I ask you what
+there is between you. I ask you why you pretended there was nothing
+that Saturday afternoon--that Monday morning when you came to intercept
+him and pretended you had come to see me. I ask you what there was
+between that ruffian and--my father!"
+
+His voice was almost breaking in his passion and his agony, but he was
+no longer nervous and self-conscious. That agony of doubt and of
+suspicion--that passionate determination to know the truth--had already
+floated him beyond the shoals of self. Lowndes waved a soothing hand,
+and his tone altered instantly. It was as though he realised that he
+was dealing with a dangerous fellow.
+
+"Steady, Ringrose, steady!" said he. "You must answer me one question
+if you want answers to all those."
+
+And there was a touch of the old kindness in his tone, a strange and
+disconcerting touch, for it sounded genuine.
+
+"As many as you like--_I_ have nothing to hide," cried Harry. And he
+had the satisfaction of making Lowndes wince.
+
+"What makes you think I am acquainted with the man you mention?"
+
+"What makes me think it?" echoed Harry, with a hard laugh. "Why, I've
+seen you together!"
+
+"When?" cried Lowndes.
+
+"The very day I saw you last. I came over to tell you something I'd
+heard the fellow say. I wanted to consult you of all men! And there
+were the two of you walking up and down your garden path."
+
+"Was it the evening?"
+
+"Yes, it was, and you walked up and down by the hour--like
+conspirators--like confederates!"
+
+Lowndes had started up and was leaning across his desk. His hands
+gripped the edge of it. His face was ghastly.
+
+"Spy!" he hissed. "You listened to what we were saying."
+
+"I didn't," retorted Harry. "You knew one gentleman even then."
+
+There were several sorts of folly in this speech: no sooner was it
+uttered than Harry saw one. Had he been less ready to deny the
+eavesdropping he might have learnt something now. By pretending to know
+much he might have learnt all. He had lost a chance.
+
+And Gordon Lowndes--that arch-exponent of the game of bluff--was quick
+as lightning to appreciate his good fortune. The blood rushed back to
+his face, his hands came away from the mahogany (two little tell-tale
+dabs they left behind them), and he sank back into his luxurious
+chair--with a droop of the eyelids and ever so slight a shake of the
+head--an artist deploring the inartistic for art's sake while he
+welcomed it for his own.
+
+Harry was furious at his false move, and at this frank though tacit
+recognition of the lost advantage.
+
+"I wish I had listened!" he cried. "God knows what I should have heard,
+but something you dare not tell me, that I can see. There! I have been
+fool enough to answer your questions; now it's your turn to answer
+mine, and to tell me what there is between you and Scrafton."
+
+"Well, he's a man I've had a slight acquaintance with for a year or
+two. He lodges--or he did lodge--in Richmond. I scraped acquaintance
+with him because his face interested me. But it isn't more interesting
+than the man himself, who is the one genius I know--the one walking
+anachronism----"
+
+"I know all about that," interrupted Harry. "Why did you pretend you
+knew nothing about him? That's what I want to get at. You don't deny
+you led me to think you had never heard of him?"
+
+"No--I did my best to do so."
+
+"You admit it now! And why did you do your best? What was the meaning
+of it? What had you to gain?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Then why did you do it?"
+
+"My good fellow, that's my business."
+
+"Mine too," said Harry thickly. "This man knows something of my father;
+you know something of this man; and first you pretend you don't--and
+then you try to prepare him for meeting me. I suppose you admit it was
+Scrafton you came to see that morning?"
+
+"Well, I confess I wanted to put salt on the fellow; and, as he'd left
+Richmond, that was my only way."
+
+"Exactly!" cried Harry. "You wanted to put salt on him because there
+was some mystery between the two of you and my father, and you were
+frightened he'd let something out. By God, Lowndes, there's some
+treachery too, if there isn't crime! Sit still. I'm not going to stop.
+Ring your bell if you like, and I'll tell every man in the office--I'll
+tell every big-wig on the board. There's treachery somewhere--there may
+be crime--and I've suspected it from the beginning. Yes, I suspected
+you the first time I set eyes upon you. I suspected you when we talked
+about my poor father in his own room and in the train. You looked a
+guilty man then--you look a guilty man now. Confess your guilt, or, by
+the living Lord, I'll tell every director of this Company! Ah, you may
+laugh--that's your dodge when you're in a corner--you've told me so
+often enough--but you were white a minute ago!"
+
+The laugh had stopped and the whiteness returned as Lowndes sprang up
+and walked quickly round the desk to where Harry stood. He laid a hand
+on Harry's arm. The boy shook it off. And yet there was a kindness
+behind the other's glasses--the old kindness that had disconcerted
+Harry once already.
+
+"Consider what you are saying, Ringrose," said Lowndes quietly. "You're
+going on like a young madman. Pull yourself together and just consider.
+You talk of telling tales in a way that is neither nice nor wise. What
+do you know to tell?"
+
+This simple question was like ice on the hot young head.
+
+"Enough, at any rate," he stammered presently, "to put me on the track
+of more."
+
+"Then I advise you to find out the more before you make use of
+threats."
+
+"I intend to do so. I'll be at the bottom of your villainy yet!"
+
+Lowndes darkened.
+
+"Do you want to force me to have you turned out?" he asked fiercely.
+"Upon my word, Ringrose, you try the patience of the best friend you
+ever had. Didn't I stand by you when you landed? Didn't I do the best I
+could for you when I was on the rocks myself? Now I'm afloat again I
+want to stand by you still, but you make it devilish difficult. I
+honestly meant to make you Secretary of this Company, but when the chap
+who helped me to pull it through asked for the billet, what could I do?
+Here's an envelope that will show you I haven't forgotten you; take it,
+Ringrose, and look at it at your convenience, and try to think more
+charitably of an old friend. Recollect that I was your father's friend
+first."
+
+"So you say," said Harry, taking the long thick envelope and looking
+straight through the gold-rimmed glasses. "I will believe you when you
+tell me where he is."
+
+"I know no more than the man in the moon."
+
+"You were at the bottom of his disappearance!"
+
+"I give you my word that I was not."
+
+"You know whether he is dead or alive!"
+
+"I do not, Ringrose."
+
+"Then tell me where you saw him last!"
+
+"You sicken me," cried Lowndes, losing his temper suddenly. "I told you
+the whole story six months ago, and now you want me to tell it you
+again so that you may challenge every point. I'll answer no more of
+your insolent questions, and I'll tell the commissionaire to mark you
+down and never to admit you again. You hold in your hand fifty shares
+in this Company. Next week they will be worth a hundred pounds--next
+month perhaps a thousand--next year very likely five. Take them for
+your mother's sake, if not for your own, and for God's sake let me
+never see your face again!"
+
+"From the man who may be at the bottom of our disgrace? No, thank
+you--not until you tell me what you did with my father--you and
+Scrafton between you!"
+
+"I have already answered you."
+
+"Then so much for your fifty shares."
+
+The long envelope spun into the fire. Lowndes darted to his desk,
+caught the electric bell that dangled over it, and pressed the button.
+Harry stalked to the door, turned round, and faced him for the last
+time.
+
+"You will not tell me the truth; very well, I will find it out. I will
+find it out," cried Harry Ringrose in a breaking voice, "if I have to
+spend my whole life in doing so. And if you have wronged my father I
+will have no mercy on you; and if you have not--all I ask is--that
+you--have no mercy on me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE END OF THE BEGINNING.
+
+
+Harry drifted through the fog, the sport of misery and rage. He was a
+beaten man, and slow as another to own it to himself. Now he swore that
+he and he alone would unravel the mystery of his father's fate; now the
+sense of his own impotence appalled him; but at last the bitter fact of
+his defeat came home to him in all its nakedness.
+
+Yes, he had been beaten by a readier and a keener wit, and the most
+plausible tongue a villain ever wagged. He had been at the mercy of
+that specious charlatan, that unscrupulous blackleg, that scoundrel
+self-confessed. He knew it now. Lowndes had put him in the wrong. He
+was no match for a man like that. Nevertheless, he was in the right,
+and one day it would be proved--and one day Lowndes would get his
+deserts.
+
+And yet--and yet--there were words and looks and tones that had sounded
+genuine enough. The man was not wholly false or bad. His good side, his
+staunch side, had shown itself again and again, in good and staunch
+actions performed without ostentation, and in motive transparently
+pure. That side existed in him still, and Harry felt that he had spoken
+as though it did not. He was sorry for many things he had said. He
+wished he had said other things instead or as well. He wished he had
+not flung those shares into the fire, though they proved that Lowndes
+had expected him, and they must have been intended for a sop. Still he
+was sorry he had thrown them on the fire; and he wished he could unsay
+that boast about his being a gentleman because he had not listened;
+other considerations apart, it struck him now almost as a contradiction
+in terms.
+
+So to existing tortures he must needs add that of savage
+self-criticism. It was the morbid wont of Harry Ringrose, the penalty
+of a temperament. In a little, however, sheer perplexity gripped his
+mind again, and wrenched it from himself. The old unanswered questions
+were upon him once more.
+
+What had there been between Lowndes and Scrafton and his own poor
+father? Were these men in league with the fugitive? Had they planned
+the wrong which had ruined and disgraced his family? Lowndes had long
+ago confessed that the raising of the £20,000 was his idea, that the
+actual acquisition of the £10,000 was his deed. The chances were that
+his scheme had gone further and cut deeper, and that at least a part of
+the plunder was for himself. Then what had he done with his share--and
+what had Scrafton done with his?
+
+How else could Scrafton come in?
+
+Harry thought of that ghoulish face, of those cruel hands, and the
+blood ran cold in every vessel. If ever he had seen a man capable of
+any crime, a man without bowels, as Lowndes was without principle, that
+man was Jeremiah Scrafton. What if between them they had murdered the
+ironmaster for those ten thousand pounds? What if they had driven him
+out of his mind and clapped him into an asylum, or into some vile den
+of Scrafton's? Ever quicker to imagine than to reason, the young fellow
+tasted all the horror of his theories before he realised their
+absurdity: where, again, were the proceeds of the crime? Lowndes was
+only now emerging from the very depths of poverty, while as for
+Scrafton, he was either an extremely poor man, or a stage miser come to
+life. Besides, there was the letter from Dieppe.
+
+So he went from one blind alley of the brain to another; and of all the
+faces that passed him in the fog, there was none he knew--he had no
+friend to turn to in his sore dilemma. And he was trudging westward,
+going back to face his mother and to live with her in the little flat,
+with this miserable mystery unsolved, with these haunting suspicions
+unconfirmed, and therefore to be locked indefinitely in his own bosom.
+Vultures for his vitals, and yet he must face them, and alone.
+
+No one to tell--no friend to consult. The words were a dirge in his
+heart. Suddenly they changed their tune and became a question. He
+stopped dead in the street. It was the Strand. He had just passed the
+gulf of fog which hid Waterloo Bridge.
+
+He stood some minutes, ostensibly studying the engravings in the shop
+at the Adam Street corner, and looking again and again at his watch as
+though anxious to know the time, but too absent to bear it in mind. It
+was five minutes to one when he looked first; by five minutes past that
+shop-window and the Strand itself knew Harry Ringrose no more. He was
+deep in the yellow gulf, which was dimly bridged by the lights of the
+bridge.
+
+The train took an hour to feel its way to Richmond: it was worse than
+the hour spent in the waiting-room of the Crofter Fisheries, Limited.
+
+At Richmond the fog was white. To make an end of it, Harry took a cab,
+and kept the man waiting while he asked if Miss Lowndes was in. A smart
+parlour-maid told him that she was; otherwise there was no change.
+
+Fanny rose hastily from a low chair in front of a blazing fire; her
+face was flushed but smiling, and she held up a paper in one hand while
+she gave Harry the other.
+
+He took it mechanically. He had not meant to take it at all. It was the
+wretched _Tiddler_, of all papers, which disarmed him.
+
+"I was just thinking about you," said his friend. "I was trying to find
+out which is yours this week."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+There was no life in his voice. His heart had leapt with pleasure, only
+to begin aching in a new place.
+
+"We take it in every week on your account," said Fanny Lowndes.
+
+"You mean that you do," said Harry, pointedly.
+
+She coloured afresh.
+
+"No; it is my father who brings it home from the City."
+
+"Then he never will again!"
+
+For some seconds their eyes were locked.
+
+"Mr. Ringrose, what do you mean? Your tone is so strange. Has anything
+happened?"
+
+"Not to your father. He and I have quarrelled--that's all."
+
+"When?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"And you have come to tell me about that!"
+
+"I didn't mean to do so. I came to speak to one of the only two friends
+I have in the world besides my mother. I came to speak to you
+while--while you would speak to me. And now I've gone and spoilt it
+all!"
+
+"Of course you haven't," said the girl, with her kind smile. "Sit down
+and tell me all about it. I think all the more of you for saying the
+worst thing first." Yet she looked alarmed, and her tone was only less
+agitated than his.
+
+"It is not the worst," groaned Harry Ringrose, "and I can't sit down to
+say the sort of thing I've come to say. Oh, but I was a coward to come
+to you at all! It was because I had no one else to turn to; and you
+have always been my friend; but it was a cowardly thing to do! I will
+go away again without saying a word."
+
+She had sunk down upon her low chair, and was leaning forward so that
+he could not see her face, but only the red gold of her hair in the
+ruddy firelight.
+
+"No; now you must go on," she said, without raising her face.
+
+"It is about your father--and mine."
+
+"I expected that."
+
+"I asked him some plain questions which he could not--or would
+not--answer. In desperation--in distraction--I have come to put those
+questions to you!"
+
+"It is useless," was the low reply. "I cannot answer them--either."
+
+"Wait until you hear what they are. They are very simple. What was
+there between Scrafton and your father and mine? What had your father
+and Scrafton to do with my father's flight? That's all I ask--that's
+all I want to know."
+
+"I cannot tell you what you want to know."
+
+"Cannot," he said gently, "or dare not?"
+
+"Cannot!" she cried, and was on her feet with the word, her burning
+face flung back and her grey eyes flashing indignation.
+
+Harry bowed.
+
+"That is enough for me," he said, "and I apologise for those last
+words--but you would understand them if you had heard all that passed
+this morning."
+
+"I do not want to know what passed. My father's affairs are not
+necessarily mine. I cannot tell you what you want to know because--I do
+not know myself."
+
+"You have made that clear to me," said Harry, staring out of the window
+and through the fog. He could see the gate with the ridiculous name
+still painted upon it. It stood wide open as he had left it in his
+haste. He thought of the first time he had seen it and entered by it;
+he thought of the second time, which had also been the last; and all at
+once he thought of a question asked upon the other side of the gate,
+and never answered, nor repeated, nor yet remembered, from that day to
+this.
+
+He turned to his companion.
+
+"You once told me that you knew my father?"
+
+"Yes, I knew him."
+
+"You have seen him here in this house?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am going to ask you what I asked you once before. You did not answer
+then. I entreat you to do so now. When was the last time you saw my
+father in this house?"
+
+The girl drew back in dismay; not a syllable came from her parted lips.
+
+"Was it since I asked you the question last?" cried Harry, his
+imagination at its wildest work in a moment.
+
+"No."
+
+"Was it after he was supposed to have disappeared?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Was it after he left my mother up north?"
+
+Miss Lowndes turned away, but there was a mirror over the mantelpiece,
+and in it he could see her scarlet anguish. Harry set his teeth. He
+must know the truth--the truth came first.
+
+"So he was here on his way through town. I understood it was my mother
+who saw him last. I have to thank you--I do so from my heart--for
+setting me so far upon the right track. Oh, I know what it must be to
+you to have such things forced from you! I hate to press you like this.
+No, Miss Lowndes, duty or no duty, you have only to say the word, and I
+will leave you alone." He could not bear the sight of her quivering
+shoulders, of the pretty pink ear that was all her hands now let him
+see of her face. Unconsciously, however, he had made his strongest
+appeal in his latest words; his magnanimity fired that of the girl, his
+consideration touched her to the quick, and she turned to him with
+noble impulse in her frank, wet eyes.
+
+"I will tell you of the last time I saw your father," she cried, "on
+one condition. You are to question me no more when I have finished."
+
+Harry took her hand.
+
+"I promise," he said, and released it instantly. It was no time to
+think of her. He must think only of his purpose--his duty--his sacred
+obligation as a son.
+
+"It was on Easter Eve," said his friend steadily. "I was up in my
+room--it was just dinner-time--and I saw him come in at the gate." She
+could not conceal a shudder. "He looked terrible--terrible--so sad and
+so old! My father must have seen him too. I heard their voices, but I
+did not hear what they said; my father lowered his voice, and I thought
+I heard him telling Mr. Ringrose to do the same. It was all I did hear.
+My father came upstairs and said a business friend had come
+unexpectedly, and would I mind not coming down? So my dinner was sent
+up to me, and afterwards in the dark I saw them go together to the
+gate; and at the very gate they met that dreadful man--that man whose
+face alone is enough to haunt one. Oh, you know him better than any of
+us! You are a master in the same school."
+
+"Not now," said Harry. "I left yesterday on that man's account. Didn't
+he come here yesterday to tell your father?"
+
+"Not here. He may have been to the new offices. I saw last night there
+had been some unpleasantness. Unpleasantness! If you knew what we have
+suffered from that monster! One reason why we got in such difficulties
+was because he was always coming----" She checked herself suddenly,
+with a gesture of disgust and of some underlying emotion.
+
+"And is that all?" asked Harry gently. "Am I to know nothing beyond
+that meeting at the gate?"
+
+"No, I will tell you the very last I saw of your father--and I will
+tell you what I think. The very last I saw of him was when they all
+three went out together after talking for a few minutes in the
+dining-room below mine. I did not hear a word. What I think is--may God
+forgive me, whether I am right or wrong--that the flight was arranged
+in those few minutes."
+
+"You think your father knew all about it?"
+
+"I cannot help thinking that."
+
+"When did he come back?"
+
+The girl turned white.
+
+"Your promise!" she gasped. "You promised to ask no more questions!"
+
+"I see," said Harry, grimly. "Your father crossed the Channel with
+mine. This is news indeed!"
+
+"It is not!" cried Miss Lowndes. "I don't admit it. I don't know it. I
+don't believe it. He told me he had been up in Scotland; he was always
+going up to Scotland then. Oh, why do you try to wring more from me
+than I know? I have told you all I know for a fact. Why do you break
+your promise?"
+
+"I didn't mean to," he answered brokenly. "And yet--it was my duty--to
+my poor father."
+
+"Your father is gone," she cried. "Spare mine--and me."
+
+"Do you mean that he is--dead?"
+
+She looked at him an instant with startled eyes, as though his had read
+the secret suspicion of her heart; then with a wild sob, "I do not
+know, I do not know," she cried piteously. With that she burst into
+tears. He tried to soothe her. "Leave me--leave me," was all her
+answer, and in his helplessness he turned to do so--to leave her bowed
+down and weeping passionately--weeping as he had never seen woman weep
+before--in the chair from which she had risen to welcome him--with that
+foolish paper still lying crumpled at her feet.
+
+It was so he saw her when he turned again at the door, for a last look
+at his friend. The white fog pressed against the panes; a little mist
+there was in the room, but the fire burnt very brightly, and against
+the glow were those small ears pink with shame, those strong hands
+racked with anguish, that fine head bowed low, that lissom figure bent
+double in the beautiful abandon of a woman's grief. Young blood took
+fire. He forgot everything but her. He could not and he would not leave
+her so; in an instant his arms were about her, he was kissing her hair.
+
+"I love you--I love you--I love you!" he whispered. "Let us think of
+nothing else. If we are never to see each other again, thank God I have
+told you that!"
+
+She pushed him back in horror.
+
+"But it is dreadful, if it is true," she said; and yet she held her
+breath until he vowed it was.
+
+"I have loved you for months," he said, "though I didn't know it at
+first. I never meant to love you. I couldn't help myself--it makes me
+love you all the more." And his arms were round her once more, in the
+first earnest passion of his life, in the first sweet flood of that
+passion.
+
+"If you love me," she whispered, "will you ask no more questions of
+me--or of anybody? They will not bring your father back. They may only
+implicate--my ather--just as he is coming through his hard, hard
+struggles. Can you not leave it in the hands of Providence--for my
+sake? It is all I ask; and I think--if you do--it may all come
+right--some day."
+
+"With you?" he cried. "With you and me?"
+
+"Who knows?" she answered. "You may not care for me so long; but when
+there are no more mysteries--well, yes--perhaps."
+
+"Shall I ever see you meanwhile?"
+
+"Not until there are no more mysteries--or quarrels."
+
+"Yet you will not let me try to clear them up."
+
+"I want you to leave them in the hands of Providence--for my sake."
+
+"It is hard!"
+
+"But if you love me you will promise."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The cab was still waiting in the mist. Harry sprang into it, wild with
+unhidden grief, as one fresh from a death-bed. His perplexity was
+returning--his conscience was beginning to gnaw--yet one difficulty was
+solved.
+
+He had promised.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+A hansom stood at the curb below the flats; the porter was taking down
+the luggage; a lady and a gentleman were on the stairs.
+
+"I hope, for every reason, that we shall find him in," the gentleman
+was saying. "If not I must wait a little, for I feel that a few words
+from me may be of value to him at this juncture, quite apart from the
+little proposal I have to make."
+
+"I would not count on his accepting it," the lady ventured to observe.
+
+"My dear Mary----"
+
+Uncle Spencer got no further. Harry's arms were round his mother's
+neck. And in a few moments they were all three in the flat, where the
+porter's wife had the fires lighted and everything comfortable in
+response to a telegram from Mrs. Ringrose.
+
+"But we must have the gas lit," cried the lady. "I want to look at you,
+my dear, and I cannot in this fog."
+
+"It'll keep, mother, it'll keep," said Harry, who had his own reasons
+for not courting a close inspection.
+
+"I quite agree with Henry," said Mr. Walthew. "To light the gas before
+it is actually dark is an extravagance which _I_ cannot afford. I do
+not permit it in my house, Mary." Harry promptly struck a match.
+
+"Come, my boy, and let me have a look at you," said Mrs. Ringrose when
+the blinds were drawn. She drew his face close to hers. "Let him say
+what he likes," she whispered: "I have been with them all this time.
+Never mind, my darling," she cried aloud; "it must have been a horrid
+place, and I am thankful to have you back."
+
+Mr. Walthew prepared to say what he liked, his pulpit the hearthrug,
+and his theme the fiasco of the day before.
+
+"I must say, Mary, that your sentiments are astounding. Naturally he
+looks troubled. He has lost the post it took him four months to secure.
+I confess, Henry, that I, for my part, was less surprised this morning
+than when I heard you had obtained your late situation. With the very
+serious limitations which I learnt from your own lips, however, you
+could scarcely hope to hold your own in a scholastic avocation. I told
+you so, in effect, at the time, if you remember. Was it the Greek or
+the mathematics that caused your downfall?"
+
+Harry had not said what it was in his letter. He now explained, with a
+grim smile as he thought of _Mangnall's Questions_ and _Little Steps to
+Great Events_. He described Scrafton's brutality in a few words, and in
+fewer still the scene of the day before. His mother's indignation was
+even louder than her applause. Uncle Spencer looked horrified at them
+both.
+
+"So it was insubordination!" cried he. "You took the side of the boys
+against their master and your elder! Really, Henry, there is no more to
+be said. Your mother's sympathy I consider most misplaced. I tell you
+frankly that you need expect none from me."
+
+"Did I say I expected any, Uncle Spencer?"
+
+"That," said Mr. Walthew, "is a remark worthy of your friend Mr.
+Lowndes, the most impudent fellow I ever met in my life."
+
+"He is no longer a friend of mine," said Harry Ringrose.
+
+"I am glad to hear it, Henry."
+
+"Do you mean that you have quarrelled?" cried Mrs. Ringrose.
+
+"For good, mother; you shall hear about it afterwards. I can't forgive
+a liar, and no more must you. I have bowled Lowndes out in a thundering
+lie--and told him what I thought of him--that's all."
+
+Mrs. Ringrose looked troubled, but inquisitive for particulars. Her
+brother did not smile, but for an instant his expression ceased to be
+that of a professional mute.
+
+"'Liar' and 'lie,'" said he, "are stronger language than I approve of,
+Henry; but if anybody deserves such epithets I feel sure it is Mr.
+Gordon Lowndes. The man impressed me as a falsehood-teller when he came
+to my house, and I feel sure that the prospectus of this new Crofter
+Company, which reached me this morning, is nothing but a tissue of
+untruths from beginning to end. A thoroughly bad man, Henry, a lost and
+irredeemable sinner, who might have dragged you with him to fire
+eternal!"
+
+"I did not find him thoroughly bad, Uncle Spencer," said his nephew
+civilly. "On the contrary, I believe there is more good in him than in
+most of us; but--you can't depend upon him, and there you are."
+
+"Yet you would defend him!" exclaimed Mr. Walthew, with a sneer. "Well,
+well, I have no time to argue with you, Henry; _my_ time is precious,
+so may I ask how you propose to fill yours now? You have tried and
+failed for the City; you have tried and failed for the Law; and now you
+have tried schoolmastering, and failed still more conspicuously. What
+do you think of trying next?"
+
+"Something that I have been trying for some time without failing so
+badly as at the other things."
+
+"Literature!" cried Mrs. Ringrose.
+
+"Literature, forsooth!" echoed the clergyman, before Harry had time to
+repudiate the word. "I suppose, Mary, that you are alluding to the
+productions you have shown me in the paper with the unspeakable name?
+Well, Henry, if that's your literature, let's say no more about it;
+only I am almost sorry you did not fail there, too. You cannot,
+however, devote all or even much of your time to such buffoonery, and
+it was to speak to you about some permanent occupation that I
+accompanied your mother this afternoon. What should you say to the
+Civil Service?"
+
+"I couldn't possibly get into it, uncle."
+
+"Into the higher branches you certainly could not, Henry. But a
+second-class clerkship in one of the lower branches I think you might
+obtain, with ordinary application and perseverance. I am only sorry it
+did not occur to me before."
+
+"What are the lower branches?" asked Harry, doubtfully.
+
+"The Excise and the Customs are two."
+
+"And the salary?"
+
+"From eighty-five to two hundred pounds in the Excise, which is the
+service I recommend. I have been making inquiries about it this
+morning. A parishioner of mine is sending his son in for it. The lad is
+to attend classes at Exeter Hall, under the auspices of the Young Men's
+Christian Association, and I understand that mensuration is the only
+really difficult subject. What I propose to do, Henry, is to present
+you to-morrow with a ticket for the course of these classes which
+commences next week."
+
+"You are very kind, Uncle Spencer----"
+
+Mr. Walthew waved his hand as though not totally unaware of it.
+
+"But----"
+
+"But what?" cried Uncle Spencer.
+
+"I believe before very, very long I should make as much money with my
+pen."
+
+"You decline my offer?"
+
+"I am exceedingly grateful for it."
+
+"Yet you elect to go on writing rubbish for an extremely vulgar paper
+for the rest of your days."
+
+"Not for the rest of my days, I hope, Uncle Spencer. I mean it to be a
+stepping-stone to better things."
+
+"So you think you can earn eighty-five pounds a year by your pen!"
+sneered the clergyman, buttoning up his overcoat.
+
+"I mean to try," said Harry, provoked into a firmer tone.
+
+"Is this your deliberate decision?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Then I am sorry I wasted my time by coming so far to hold out a
+helping hand to you. It is the last time, Henry. You may go your own
+way after this. Only, when your pen brings you to the poorhouse, don't
+come to me--that's all!"
+
+Harry contrived to keep his temper without effort. Pinpricks do not
+hurt a man with a mortal wound. As for Mrs. Ringrose, she had fled
+before the proposal which she knew was coming, and of the result of
+which she felt equally sure. But she came to her door to bid the
+offended clergyman good-bye, and at last her boy and she were alone. He
+flung his arms round her neck.
+
+"I am never going to leave you again!" he cried passionately. "I am not
+going to look for any more work. I am going to stop at home and write
+for _T.T._ until I can teach myself to write something better. I am
+going to work for you and for us both. I am going to do my work beside
+you, and you're going to help me. We ought never to have separated.
+Nothing shall ever separate us again!"
+
+"Until you marry," murmured Mrs. Ringrose.
+
+"I will never marry!" cried her boy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+YOUNG INK.
+
+
+So it was that Harry Ringrose took finally to his pen towards the close
+of the most momentous year of his existence; for four years from that
+date there was but one sort of dramatic interest in his life. There was
+the dramatic interest of the electric bell; and that was all.
+
+In the early days, when the roll of the little steel drum broke a
+silence or cut short a speech, the eyes of mother and son would meet
+involuntarily with the same look. Her needles would cease clicking. His
+pen would spring from the unfinished word. Each had the other's
+thought, and neither uttered it. Many a man had fled the country in his
+panic, to pluck up courage and return in his cooler senses. Many a man
+effaced himself for a time, but few for ever. The ironmaster's last
+letter confessed flight and promised self-effacement. He might have
+thought better of it--that might be he at the bell. One of the two
+within got over this feeling in time; the other never did.
+
+The dogged plodder at the desk endured other heartburnings of which the
+little steel drum beat the signal. Knockers these flats had not, and
+the postman usually rang a second before he thrust the letter through
+the door. It was a breathless second for Harry Ringrose. He developed
+an incredibly fine ear for what came through. He was never deceived in
+the thud of a rejected manuscript. He used to vow that a proof fell
+with peculiar softness, and, later, that a press-cutting was
+unmistakable because you could not hear it fall. He had an essay on the
+subject in his second book, published when he was twenty-five.
+
+His first book had been one of the minor successes of its season. It
+had made a small, a very small, name for Harry, but had developed his
+character more than his fame. It is an ominous coincidence, however,
+that in conception his first book was as barefaced and as cold-blooded
+as his first verses in _Uncle Tom's Magazine_.
+
+For nearly three years he had been writing up, for as many guineas as
+possible, those African anecdotes which he had brought home with him
+for conversational purposes. In this way he had wasted much excellent
+material, to which, however, he was not too proud to return when he
+knew better. Heaven knows how many times he used the lion in the
+moonlight and his friend the Portuguese murderer of Zambesi blacks. One
+would have thought--he thought himself--that he had squeezed the last
+drop from his African orange, when one fine day he saw the way to make
+the pulp pay better than the juice. It was not his own way. It was the
+way of the greatest humorist then living. Harry took the whole of his
+two years abroad, and eyed them afresh from that humorist's point of
+view, as he apprehended it. He saw the things the great man would have
+seized upon, and the way it seemed to Harry he would have treated them.
+The result was a comic lion in the moonlight, and a more or less
+amusing murderer. He had treated these things tragically hitherto.
+
+The book purported to be fact, and was certainly not fiction, for
+which, indeed, our young author had no definite aptitude. It earned him
+an ambiguous compliment from various reviewers who insisted on dubbing
+him the English So-and-so; but it was lucky for Harry that the new
+humour was then an unmade phrase. His humour was not new, but that
+would not have saved it from the category. It was keen enough, however,
+in its way, and not too desperately subtle for the man on the
+knifeboard. Yet Harry's first book, after "going" for a few weeks,
+showed a want of staying power, and was but a very moderate success
+after all. A few papers hailed Mr. Ringrose as the humorist for whom
+England had been sighing since the death of Charles Dickens, and
+predicted that his book would be the book of the season and of many
+seasons to come. Such enthusiasm was inevitable from organs which let
+loose at least one genius a week; but Harry did not realise the
+inevitability all at once. For a week or two he could not give his name
+in a shop without a wholly unnecessary blush; while he took his mother
+to look at empty houses in West End squares, thanks to indiscriminate
+praise from irresponsible quarters. On the whole, however, Harry had no
+reason to complain of the treatment accorded to his first-born; and, to
+descend to lower details, he sold the copyright for a small sum, which
+was, nevertheless, quite as much as the publishers could possibly have
+made out of it.
+
+But it was in indirect ways that this book did most for Harry Ringrose.
+It made new friends for him at a time when his acquaintance was badly
+in need of some fresh blood. Years of immersion in solitary work must
+narrow and may warp a man; and the almost exclusive companionship of
+his dear mother, whose only interest he was in the present, and who
+vastly overrated his merits, was a joy too great not to be purchased at
+a price. It kept the lad's heart tender and his life of fair report,
+but it tended to monopolise his sympathies, and it did not increase his
+knowledge of the outside world. In the world of letters he had made but
+one friend in those first three years. This was a youth of Harry's own
+age, who, with a board-school education, was on the staff of an evening
+paper, in a position which the public-school boy was certainly not
+competent to fill. Harry stormed this fortress with a little article on
+"Portuguese Africa"--which the Editor would label "By an
+Afrikander"--and the acquaintance was struck up outside that
+gentleman's door. It ripened in a bar to which the young fellows used
+to repair whenever Harry was in the Strand. There, over a glass of
+bitter--or two--or three--he used to hear at first hand of the great
+novelists whom he longed to meet, but with whom his friend the
+journalist seemed on enviable terms. It was merely that the latter was
+in the heart of the big game, whereas Harry was playing a very little
+game of his own, in an exceedingly remote corner of the field.
+
+His book was not a huge success, but it succeeded well enough to take
+him out of his corner. His friend the journalist (who managed to review
+the thing himself in his paper) wrote to tell Harry of a distinguished
+lady who was so enchanted with it that she begged him to take the
+author to see her. Harry had no means of knowing that the lady's
+enchantment was as chronic as the enthusiasm of the paper which had
+hailed him as a genius, and that the demand was not for himself, but
+for the latest name. He was still a very simple-minded person, and he
+waited on this lady with all alacrity, and under her wing made his bow
+in the sort of society of which he had heard with envy in the Gaiety
+bar. It cannot be said, however, that he did anybody much credit; he
+had been too long in his corner, and had an awkward manner when not
+perfectly at home. Yet a number of other ladies asked him to go and see
+them, and one invited him to dinner at her smart house--where the
+wretched Harry distinguished himself by freezing into a solid block of
+self-consciousness and hardly opening his mouth.
+
+But it was all very valuable experience, and, instead of two or three,
+he knew a good many people by the end of that winter. He became a
+member of a club, and got on intimate terms with men whose names and
+work had become familiar to him in these years. They enlarged his
+sympathies--they extended his boundaries on every side. And they made
+him know himself as he had not known himself before. All at once he
+realised that he had fewer interests than other men, that his nose had
+been too close to his own grindstone, that the mind he had been slaving
+to develop had grown narrow in the process. It was a rather bitter
+discovery, until one day it struck him there was another side to
+narrowness, and he sat down and began his "Plea for Narrow Minds" on
+the spot. This article secured a better place in the periodicals than
+anything Harry Ringrose had then written. It attracted some attention
+during the month of its appearance, and even on republication in his
+second book. But it was generally considered a frivolous adventure in
+mere paradox (on a par with a companion paper "On Enjoying Bad
+Health"), whereas it was really a reaction against the writer's own
+self-criticism.
+
+"Cant is not necessarily humbug," declared our scribe, "and there is
+probably less hypocrisy in the cant of breadth than in any other kind
+of cant. It may spring from a laudable ambition to be on the side of
+the good angels in all things. But it is apt to crystallise in a pose.
+For my part, when I meet a typically broad-minded man, who sees good in
+everybody and merit in everything, either I suspect his sincerity or I
+doubt his depth. I want to know if he is saying (_a_) what he thinks,
+or (_b_) what he thinks he ought to think. Either he is insincere and a
+prig, or he means what he says and is shallow. Those wonderfully wide
+sympathies are too often sympathy spread thin. The odds are against
+your being very deep as well as very broad."
+
+There were those critics who remarked that the sapient essayist came
+under both his own categories, whereupon Harry lay awake all night
+wondering whether he did. And it was "A Plea for Narrow Minds" that
+drew from Miss Lowndes the letter which she never posted, but which
+came into Harry's hands long afterwards. She agreed with him in part,
+but by no means on the whole; in fact, her letter was a remonstrance,
+written impulsively in a dainty boudoir of Berkeley Square, and found
+long afterwards in an escritoire. Harry often wondered whether the
+woman he loved ever read what he wrote. She read everything he signed,
+and would never have dropped _Tommy Tiddler_ had she dreamt he was
+still a comic singer in its columns. But Harry saw nothing and heard
+but little of his quondam friends. He knew they lived in Berkeley
+Square--he knew they were very rich. He had heard of the dividend the
+Crofter Fisheries were paying, and what he would have to give now for
+the shares which he had committed to the flames. He had also read
+_Truth's_ opinion of the concern, and wondered why the action for so
+obvious a libel hung fire. He sometimes wondered, too, how it was that
+he never met either the father or the daughter from whom he had severed
+with such different emotions on the same thick November day. He did not
+know that the daughter once fled from a party on hearing he was
+expected--and was sorry afterwards.
+
+Curiously enough, the very article which failed to gain the good
+opinion he coveted most, was so fortunate as to secure that of Harry's
+most severe and least respected critic. The Reverend Spencer Walthew
+read religion between the lines, and, having written to thank his
+nephew for his spirited though veiled attack on the Broad Church party,
+concluded by begging him to have a go at the Ritualists.
+
+"I have seldom had a more unexpected pleasure," wrote the Evangelical
+divine, "than you have given me by this shrewd blow against the vice of
+tolerance and the ultra-charitable spirit which I regard as one of the
+great dangers of the age. We want no charity for the heretic and the
+ritualist--with whom I trust you will deal unmercifully without delay.
+I cannot conclude, Henry, without telling you what a relief it is to me
+to see you at last turning your attention to serious subjects. I feel
+sure that they are the only ones worthy of a Christian's pen. I have
+never concealed from you my pain and disgust at the levity of almost
+all your writings hitherto, although I have tried to do justice to the
+literary quality, which, on the whole, has been distinctly better than
+might have been expected. It is the greater pleasure to me, therefore,
+to recognise the serious purpose and the lofty aim of your latest
+essay. May you never again descend to 'humorous' accounts of your
+'adventures,' or to inferior versifying for papers which are not to be
+seen in respectable houses!"
+
+Harry, however, had never ceased his connection with the _Tiddler_,
+although it was not one of the things he mentioned to the notorious
+interviewer who came to patronise him in those days, and to whom he
+caught his mother showing the parody on Gray's Elegy. _T.T._ had been a
+good friend to Harry at the foot of the hill, and he was not going to
+desert just yet, even if he could have afforded to do so. Of the £51
+10s. 9d. which he managed to make in the first year, £34 4s. was from
+the _Tiddler's_ coffers; of the third year's £223 14s. 6d. (a mighty
+leap from the intermediate year), £55 12s. was from the same genial
+source. And so we find him towards the end of the fourth year--not
+quite such a good one as the last--fighting hard to touch the second
+hundred for the second time, and writing verses in his pyjamas at
+midnight at the close of a long day's work on an ungrateful book.
+
+The flat is no longer that in which Harry Ringrose found his mother; it
+is a slightly larger one in the same mansions on a higher floor; and
+instead of Weber's Last Waltz, a lusty youth, who arrived there on the
+same night as Harry, supplies the unsolicited accompaniment inseparable
+from life in a flat.
+
+Only one room has been gained by the change; but in it sleeps a
+servant, an old retainer of the family; and the sitting-room is larger,
+so that there is ample room in it for the rather luxurious desk which
+Harry has bought himself, and at which we find him seated, his back to
+the books and his nose in his rhyming dictionary, taking his most
+trivial task seriously, as was ever his wont, on a warm night in the
+middle of September.
+
+He is a little altered--not much. He is thicker set; the legs in the
+pyjamas are less lean. His face is older, but still extremely young. He
+has tried to grow a moustache, but failed, and given it up; and the two
+blots of whisker show that he has no candid girl friend now; and the
+blue stubble on his chin means that his mother is away. His black hair
+inclines to length, not altogether because he thinks it looks
+interesting, but chiefly because he has been too busy to get it cut. He
+has not yet affected the _pince-nez_ or the spectacles of the average
+literary man. But he is smoking at his desk; he will be smoking
+presently in his bed; and on a small table stand a bottle of whisky and
+a syphon.
+
+Suddenly a ring at the bell.
+
+At half-past twelve at night a prolonged tattoo on the little steel
+drum!
+
+Harry was greatly startled, as a man may easily be who is working at
+night after working all day. Yet he would have been much more startled
+the September before.
+
+Since then his books had come out, and he had made a number of friends.
+Only the night before a play-actor had looked in after his "show," and
+they had sat up reading Keats against Shelley, and capping Swinburne
+with Rossetti, until the whisky was finished and daylight shamed them
+in their cups. Harry thoroughly enjoyed a Bohemian life in his mother's
+absence, though indeed she let him do exactly as he liked when she was
+there. Was it the actor again, or was it....
+
+Not for months had the old fancy seized him with the ringing of the
+bell. It was only the lateness of the hour which brought it back
+to-night. Yet the look with which the young fellow rose was one that he
+wore often enough when there were none to see. It was a look of utter
+misery barbed with shame unspeakable and undying. Sometimes the mother
+had seen it--and taken the shame and the misery for his share of their
+common hidden grief. She little knew!
+
+The gas was burning in the passage, but lowered on the common landing
+outside. Harry could see nothing through the ground glass which formed
+the upper portion of the door. He flung it open. A tall man was
+standing on the mat.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Ringrose," said he, and took a tremendous pinch of
+snuff as Harry drew back in dismay.
+
+It was Jeremiah Scrafton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+SCRAFTON'S STORY.
+
+
+Harry had not heard of him for nearly four years, had not set eyes on
+him since their scuffle at the school. But only a few days later
+Leonard Bickersteth had called at the flat with strange news of
+Scrafton. He had never returned to the Hollies; he had disappeared from
+his lodgings; it was impossible to trace his whereabouts. The motive of
+his flight, on the other hand, seemed pretty clear. Mrs. Bickersteth
+had been questioning the boys, with the result that Harry's charges
+were sufficiently proved, as Scrafton must have known they would be,
+and hence his sudden desertion. Leonard Bickersteth had proceeded, on
+his mother's behalf, to make Harry an apology and an offer which did
+that lady equal credit. But the younger man was too perturbed either to
+accept the one or to decline the other as cordially or as civilly as he
+desired. He had his own explanation of Scrafton's flight. It had been a
+nightmare to him ever since. And here was the central figure of that
+nightmare standing before him in the flesh, with his snuff-box in his
+hand, and the old ferocious grin upon his pallid glistening face.
+
+"Surprised to see me, are you?" cried Scrafton, taking another pinch.
+
+"I am," said Harry, looking the other in the face, and yet reflecting
+its pallor.
+
+"You'll be still more surprised when you hear what I've come to tell
+you. Ain't you going to ask me in?"
+
+"Come in by all means, if you wish," said Harry, coldly.
+
+"I do wish," was the answer. "Are you alone?"
+
+"Absolutely," said Harry, as he closed the door and led the way into
+the sitting-room.
+
+"I thought you lived with your mother?"
+
+"She is away."
+
+"Do you keep a servant?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not next door, I hope?" said Scrafton, tapping the wall to gauge its
+thickness.
+
+"No, at the other end of the flat; and she's used to late comers."
+
+Scrafton glanced at Harry obliquely out of his light-blue eyes. Then
+they fell on the whisky bottle, and he favoured Harry with a different
+look.
+
+"Help yourself."
+
+Scrafton did so with his left hand so clasped about the glass that it
+was impossible to see how much he took. His hand seemed bonier than
+formerly, but it was no less grimy, and the fingernails were still
+rimmed with black. He was dressed as of old, only better. It was a
+moderately new frock-coat, and as he sat down with his glass Harry saw
+that he did wear socks. His beard and moustache were whiter; they
+showed the snuff-stains all the more.
+
+It was the rocking-chair this man was desecrating with his pestilent
+person; while Harry, having shut the door, had reseated himself at his
+desk, but turned his chair so that he sat facing Scrafton, with an
+elbow on his blotting-pad.
+
+"I have come," said the visitor, putting his glass down empty, "to tell
+you the truth about your father."
+
+"I thought as much."
+
+"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," continued
+Scrafton, eying the bottle wistfully. "Do you suppose now that he is
+living or dead?"
+
+"I have no idea."
+
+"He is dead."
+
+Harry did not open his mouth. He could not appreciate the news of his
+father's death, but then he would have been equally slow to realise
+that he was alive. So completely had the missing ironmaster passed out
+of the world of ascertainable fact and of positive statement; so dead
+was he already to his son.
+
+"When did he die?" asked the latter presently; and his voice was
+unmoved.
+
+"On the night between Good Friday and Easter Day."
+
+"This year?"
+
+"No; over four years ago."
+
+Harry leapt to his feet.
+
+"Where was it he died?"
+
+"At sea----"
+
+"At sea!"
+
+"Between Newhaven and Dieppe."
+
+"But how--how?"
+
+"He was murdered."
+
+Harry seemed to have known it all along. He could not utter another
+syllable. But his wild eyes and his outstretched hands asked their
+question plainly.
+
+"By your friend Gordon Lowndes," said Scrafton coolly.
+
+Harry came down heavily in his chair, and his hands lay on the desk,
+and his face lay in his hands; but he was acutely conscious, and he
+heard the furtive trickle as Scrafton seized the opportunity of
+replenishing his glass. The man drank. To anybody but an innocent it
+might have been obvious four years ago. He was one of those whom drink
+made pallid and ferocious; to get more from him while still sober,
+Harry started up as suddenly as he had subsided, causing the other to
+spill some liquor in his beard.
+
+"Take all you want," cried Harry, "only tell me everything first. I
+must know everything now. I have suspected it so long."
+
+He leant forward to listen, this time with an elbow on each knee, but
+with his face again buried in his hands. Scrafton kept a gleaming eye
+upon him, as he dried his beard with his coat-sleeve, and supplemented
+the spirit with a couple of his most sickening inhalations.
+
+"I will begin at the beginning," said he; "but you needn't have any
+fears about my not reaching the end, for I've never had less than a
+bottle a night when I could get it, and the man doesn't breathe who
+ever saw Jeremiah Scrafton the worse. What you have here is only enough
+to make me thirsty, and I may want another bottle broached before I'm
+done. Meanwhile, to begin at the beginning, you must know that it is
+some years now since I made our friend's acquaintance at Richmond. We
+spotted each other one night by the river, and though he was old enough
+to be your father, and I was old enough to be his, I'm hanged if it
+wasn't like a man and a woman! He took to me, and I took to him. We
+were both clever men, and we were both poor men. His head was full of
+ways of making his pile, and my head was full of one way worth all his
+put together. You're a dunce at mathematics, Master Ringrose. Have you
+ever played roulette?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then you wouldn't understand my system, even if I was to tell it you,
+and I wouldn't do that for a thousand pounds. Lowndes has offered me
+more than that for it--wanted to form a syndicate to work it--offered
+me half profits; but not for Jeremiah! I'll double the capital that's
+put in, and I'll pay it back with cent. per cent. interest, but I'll
+rot before I do more. I told him so years ago, and I've never budged. I
+never told him or anybody else my system, and I never will. I may not
+live to work it now. I may never get another chance of the capital. But
+if I don't benefit from it, nobody else ever shall; it's my secret, and
+it'll go with me to the worm. One comfort is that nobody else is likely
+to hit upon it--no other living mathematician has the brain!"
+
+Harry could not help looking up; and there sat Scrafton in his mother's
+chair, his head thrown sublimely back, a grin of exultation amid the
+rank hair upon his face, and the light of drunken genius in his fiery
+blue eyes. There was something arrestive about the man; a certain vile
+distinction; a certain demoniac fascination, which diverted Harry's
+attention in spite of himself. It was with an effort that he shook the
+creature from his brain, and asked how all this affected his poor
+father's fate.
+
+"There is a weak point common to every system," replied Scrafton, "and
+want of money was the one weak point of mine. Without capital it was no
+use."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"With a thousand I'd have backed myself to bring it off; with five it
+was a moral certainty; with ten a dead certainty. Now do you see where
+your father came in?"
+
+"It was ten thousand pounds Lowndes got him!"
+
+"And twenty I'd have handed him, cent. per cent., on what he put in."
+
+"Go on," said Harry, hoarsely.
+
+Scrafton grinned until his yellow fangs gleamed through their snuffy
+screen; he took another pinch before complying. "It's waste of breath,"
+said he, "for you must see for yourself what happened next. Lowndes
+knows I've been waiting all my life for a man with ten thousand pounds
+and the nerve to trust me, but he comes to make sure of me before going
+down to your father with the ten thousand and the dodge of making it
+twenty. I'm his man, of course; but your father won't listen to it; as
+good as shows our friend the door, but keeps the money, and says he'll
+pay it back himself, and then fail like an honest man. Back comes old
+Lowndes to Richmond, with his tail between his legs, on the Thursday
+night. Next day's Good Friday, and your father spends it at
+home--thinking about it--thinking about it--saying good-bye to
+everything--making up his mind to fail next day. All right, I'll stop
+if you like; he couldn't do it, that's all; and on the Saturday
+evening, just as I was going to ask Lowndes if the crash had come, and
+if we couldn't run down together and try again before it did, who
+should I meet coming out of the gate but Lowndes and the man himself!
+He'd caved in of his own accord. I was the very man they wanted, and in
+five minutes we were all three on our way to the station. It was then
+after eight, I recollect, but we just caught a fast train to Waterloo,
+and from there we galloped to London Bridge, and jumped into the
+boat-train as she was moving out of the station at nine sharp."
+
+"Which boat-train?" asked Harry suspiciously. It was his first chance
+of cross-examination. Up to this point every statement tallied with the
+statements of Fanny Lowndes, made now nearly four years ago, but
+unforgettable in the smallest detail. And for an instant he was back in
+the little room at Richmond, the bright fire within, the white fog
+without, and the face of his beloved red with shame and wet with agony.
+Good God, what a barrier it had been! Her father the murderer of his!
+He remembered that the thought had occurred to him, but only in his
+wild moments, never seriously. And she must have suspected--might even
+have known it--at the time!
+
+"What did you say?" said Harry, for, in the sudden tumult of his
+thoughts, Scrafton's answer had been lost upon him.
+
+"It was the train for Newhaven, that runs in connection with the boat
+to Dieppe."
+
+"What was your destination?" asked Harry, alert and suspicious once
+more.
+
+"Monte Carlo."
+
+"That was no way to go."
+
+"It was an unusual way; your father insisted upon it on that account;
+he was the less likely to be seen and recognised."
+
+Harry started up, mixed some whisky and soda water for himself, and
+tossed it off at a gulp.
+
+"Now," he said, "tell me the worst--tell me the end--and you shall
+finish the bottle."
+
+"As you like," said the other. "It isn't the most hospitable way of
+treating a man; but as you like--especially as there's very little to
+tell. I'll tell you exactly what I saw and discovered; neither more nor
+less; for, first of all, you must understand that we were all three to
+travel separately. I went third in the train and second on the boat,
+but they took first-class tickets right through. They were not to look
+at me, nor I at them. At Newhaven I saw them, but turned my back. They
+were both very quiet, and I foresaw no trouble. Of foul play I never
+dreamt until Lowndes stole into the second saloon and touched me on the
+shoulder. Nobody saw him, for it was a nasty night, and all but me were
+sick and prostrate. But I was practising my little combination with a
+pencil and a bit of paper, and I tell you his face gave me a turn. He
+said it was sea-sickness; but I knew better even then.
+
+"I was to go aft and see Ringrose that minute. What was the matter? He
+was trying to back out--swearing he'd return by the next boat and face
+his creditors like a man. Would I go and reassure him of the absolute
+certainty of doubling his ten thousand? So I got up, and Lowndes led
+the way to the private cabin your father had taken for the night.
+
+"And a wicked night it was! I recollect holding on for dear life as we
+made our way aft along the gallery where the private berths were. On
+one side the rail hung over the sea, on the other a line of doors and
+portholes hung over us, and underneath you had a wet deck at an angle
+that felt like forty-five. It was very dark, just light enough to see
+that we had the lee-side down there to ourselves. And when Lowndes
+opened one of the doors and climbed into one of the cabins he nearly
+fell out again on top of me. Or so he pretended. The cabin was empty. I
+pushed him in and shut the door, and stood with my back to it. Your
+father had vanished; yet there were his ulster and his travelling cap
+on the settee; and Lowndes's teeth were chattering in his head.
+
+"'He's jumped overboard!' says he.
+
+"'You pushed him over,' says I. 'You may as well make a clean breast of
+it, for I see it in your face.'
+
+"In another minute he had confessed the whole thing. Your father had
+been leaning over that rail, feeling fit to die, and swearing he was
+going back by the next boat. In a fit of passion Lowndes had tipped him
+over the side, and in the black darkness, and the noise of the wind and
+the engines, he had gone down without a cry. That was the end of Henry
+Ringrose. He was drowned in the Channel in the small hours of Easter
+Day, four years and a half ago. Instead of a runaway swindler he was a
+murdered man--and now you know who murdered him!"
+
+Harry never spoke. His face was still in his hands.
+
+Scrafton opened his snuff-box and took an impatient pinch.
+
+"I tell you that your father is a murdered man," he cried, "and Gordon
+Lowndes is his murderer!"
+
+Harry looked up with a curious smile.
+
+"It's a lie," said he. "He wrote to my mother from Dieppe."
+
+"Show me the letter."
+
+"I can't; and wouldn't if I could."
+
+"It was a forgery."
+
+"But I have seen it."
+
+"I can't help that."
+
+"I thought it might be a forgery until I came to examine it," admitted
+Harry.
+
+"It was one. You can only have examined the first page."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"It was genuine; the next was not. The letter was written on both sides
+of half a sheet, and the other half torn off. If you could get hold of
+it I would show you in a minute."
+
+"You shall show me!" cried Harry Ringrose. "If you prove what you
+say----"
+
+He checked himself with a gesture of misery and bewilderment. What was
+he to do if the man proved what he said? What would it be his duty to
+do?
+
+He knew where his mother kept the letters she most prized, the ones
+that he had himself written her from Africa, and this last letter from
+her husband. He went into her room and broke open her desk without
+compunction. It was no time for nice scruples on so vital a point. And
+yet when he returned to the other room, and found Scrafton smacking his
+lips over the tumbler that he had filled and almost drained in those
+few moments, it seemed a sacrilege to let such eyes see such a letter.
+Instinctively he drew back from those outstretched unclean talons; but
+Scrafton only burst into hoarse laughter.
+
+"Don't I tell you it's more than half a forgery?" cried he. "Oh, keep
+it yourself, by all manner of means. I've seen it before, thank you.
+But it's waste of time looking at the front page; that's genuine, I
+tell you; turn over and try the other."
+
+"I believe that's genuine too."
+
+"Then you'd believe anything. Why, it's written in different ink, to
+begin with. Hold it to the light and you'll see."
+
+Harry did so; and the ink on both sides looked black at first sight;
+but closer inspection revealed a subtle difference.
+
+"It was begun in blue-black ink," gasped Harry, "and finished in some
+other kind."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"But the pen seems to have been the same."
+
+"It was the gold pen your father used to carry about with him in his
+waistcoat pocket. But it seems he felt hot when he returned to the
+berth, after writing this letter in the saloon, for I found his
+waistcoat hanging on one of the hooks, and the pen was in the pocket."
+
+"You say 'after writing this letter.'"
+
+"I meant the first page of it. The second is a forgery. Look again at
+both, and you will see that whereas there is a kind of regular
+irregularity about the first page, due to the motion of the boat, the
+irregularity of the second is a sham. It was the most difficult part to
+imitate."
+
+Harry could see that it was so; but at these last words he looked up
+suddenly from the letter.
+
+"You speak as though you had committed the forgery yourself," said he.
+
+"I did," was the calm reply. "Lowndes couldn't have used his pen like
+that to save his life. Don't excite yourself, young fellow. I make no
+secret that I was his accessory after the fact. I am going to confess
+that in open court, and I don't much care what they do with me--so long
+as they hang the dog who refused to give me a sixpence this evening."
+
+He glared horribly out of his now bloodshot eyes, and took snuff with a
+truculent snap of his filthy fingers.
+
+"So that's what brings you to me?" said Harry Ringrose. "You would have
+done better to take your confession straight to the police; but since
+you are here you had better go on if you want to convince me. You say
+my father went overboard in mid-Channel. How was it he was afterwards
+seen in Dieppe?"
+
+Scrafton leant forward with his demon's grin.
+
+"He wasn't," said he. "_I_ was seen in his ulster, with his comforter
+round my beard, and his travelling cap over my eyes. It was I who
+walked into thin air, as the papers said, from the _café_ in Dieppe.
+And it was in the _café_ the second page of the letter was written, as
+you see it now. As your father wrote it, the letter finished on the
+fourth page, the two in between being left blank. I finished it on the
+second page, and then tore off the fourth. I have it here."
+
+And he produced the greasy pocket-book which he had used as a
+score-book in Bushey Park.
+
+"Let me see it," whispered Harry.
+
+"Will you give me your word to return it instantly?"
+
+"My word of honour."
+
+The page of writing that was now put into Harry's trembling hands is
+printed underneath the genuine beginning of his father's letter, and
+above the forgery.
+
+    "S.S. _Seine_,
+    "Easter Morning,
+    "188--
+
+    "My dearest Wife,
+
+    "Half frantic with remorse, degradation, sorrow, and shame, I sit
+    down to write you the last letter you may ever receive from your
+    unhappy husband.
+
+    "When I said good-bye to you this morning I could not tell you that
+    it might be good-bye for ever. I told you I was going up to town on
+    business. How could I tell you that the business was to take my
+    passage for the Continent? Yet it was nothing else, and I write
+    this midway between Newhaven and Dieppe, where I shall post it.
+
+    "My wife, I could not bear to give back the ten thousand pounds
+    that was only half enough to save us. I am going where I hope to
+
+        (genuine)
+
+    double it in a night. A man is going with me who has an infallible
+    system; also another man who swears by the first man, and whom I
+    myself can trust. I know that it is a mad as well as a wicked thing
+    to do. I am going to gamble with other men's money--to play for my
+    home and for my life. Yes; if I lose, my end will be the end of
+    many another dishonest fool at Monte Carlo. You will never see me
+    again.
+
+    "I am altogether beside myself. I am not mad, but I am near to
+    madness. I do not think I should have done such a wild thing in my
+    sane senses--and yet these men are so sure! Forgive me whether I
+    win or lose, whether I live or die, and let our boy profit by my
+    example and my end. I can say no more. My brain is on fire. I may
+    or may not post this. But I was obliged to tell you. God bless you!
+    God bless you!
+
+    "Your distracted husband."
+
+        (forgery)
+
+    "be forgotten altogether, going with other men's money! I know that
+    it is a mad as well as a wicked thing to do. I do not think I
+    should have done such a wild thing in my sane senses, but I am
+    altogether beside myself. I am not mad, but I am near to madness.
+
+    "Good-bye for ever. You will never see me again. Forgive me whether
+    I live or die; and let our boy profit by my example and my end. I
+    can say no more. My brain is on fire. God bless you! God bless you!
+
+    "Your distracted husband."
+
+The devilish ingenuity of the fraud was not lost upon the reader.
+Hardly a word, hardly a phrase was used in the forgery for which there
+was not a definite model in the original, and the imitation was no
+less miraculous as a whole than when taken word by word. The very
+incoherence of the letter was one of its most convincing features; the
+way in which it began by saying it might be "good-bye for ever," and
+ended by confessing that it was, was just the way a maddened man might
+choose for breaking the news of his terrible intention.
+
+Judged impartially, side by side, the genuine page looked no more
+genuine than the other.
+
+The clock struck two: the younger man raised his face from a long
+reverie, and there were the terrible eyes of Scrafton still upon him.
+He was equally at a loss what to think, what to believe, what to do;
+but all at once his eyes fell upon the "copy" on his desk; it must go
+by the three o'clock post, or it would be too late for the next issue.
+
+Mechanically he began folding up his various contributions--punning
+paragraphs--four-line quips--a set of verses that he had completed. The
+other set, upon which he had been engaged on Scrafton's entry, he
+tossed aside, but all that was ready he put into a long envelope, which
+he addressed, weighed, and stamped as though nobody had been there.
+Scrafton watched him with his grinning eyes, but leapt up and overtook
+Harry as he was leaving the room.
+
+"You're not going out, are you?"
+
+"Yes, to the post."
+
+"What, like that?"
+
+"Not a soul will be about, and there's a pillar just under the
+windows."
+
+"What is it you want to post?"
+
+"Nonsense for a comic paper."
+
+Harry held up his envelope. The other read the address, and it quenched
+the suspicion in his fiery eyes, but opened them very wide.
+
+"So you can think of your comic paper after this!"
+
+"I must think of something, or I shall go mad."
+
+"Well, where's another bottle of whisky before you go?"
+
+Harry fetched one from the dining-room, and in another moment he was on
+the stairs, with an overcoat over his pyjamas, and the latch-key in his
+hand. His brain was in a whirl. He had no idea what to do when he
+returned, what steps to take, and no clear sight of his duty by his
+dead father. If he was dead, there was an end. But how could he believe
+the word of that ghoul upstairs? And yet, was there anything to be
+gained by his returning with the police? For the very idea had occurred
+to Harry, of which Scrafton had at first suspected and then acquitted
+him.
+
+He could see his way no farther than the posting of his "copy"; that
+little commonplace necessity had come as a timely godsend to him; he
+only wished the pillar was a mile instead of a yard away.
+
+As he emerged from the mansions a couple of men retired farther into
+the shadow of the opposite houses; as he turned from the pillar-box one
+of these men was crossing the road towards him, having recognised
+Harry; and it was the very man of whom he was thinking--of whom he was
+trying to think as his own father's murderer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+A MASTERSTROKE.
+
+
+"Well, Ringrose!"
+
+Gordon Lowndes did not look a day older since Harry had seen him last.
+He wore a light cape over his evening dress, a crush-hat on his head,
+and behind and below the same gold-rimmed glasses there twinkled and
+trembled the shrewd eyes and the singular sharp-pointed nose. The eyes
+were as full of friendship as in the earliest days of the intimacy that
+had come to a violent end nearly four years ago. And they had lost the
+old furtive look which had inspired vague suspicion from the first;
+nothing could have been franker or kindlier than their glance; but
+Harry recoiled with a ghastly face.
+
+The story he had just heard was still ringing in his ears. It might not
+be true in every detail, but it was circumstantial, there was the proof
+of the letter, and much of the rest bore the stamp of truth. Certain it
+was that a foul crime had been committed, and that one of these two men
+had been the other's accomplice, if not in its commission then after
+the fact. And what was Lowndes doing here, and what was Scrafton doing
+upstairs, unless they were accomplices still?
+
+A vague feeling that he had been tricked and trapped, to what end he
+could not conceive, made Harry put his back to the railings, clench his
+fists, and set his teeth; yet there was nothing in the other's look to
+support such a theory.
+
+"Come, Ringrose," said he, "I think I know what's the matter! I know
+whom you've got upstairs. I can guess what he's been telling you."
+
+"You can?"
+
+"Certainly I can. In point of fact, it's not guesswork at all. He was
+good enough to warn me of his intention."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He's been telling you that I did what he did himself."
+
+"Which of you am I to believe?" cried Harry in a frenzy. "You are
+villains both! I believe you did it between you!"
+
+"Steady, Ringrose, steady. I have given you provocation in the past,
+but I am not provoking you now. That your father's fate was different
+from what I led you to believe it would be idle to deny any longer,
+especially as I am here to clear up the mystery once and for all. Take
+me upstairs and you shall know the truth."
+
+"What! Trust myself to the two of you?"
+
+Lowndes pointed to the shadowy figure across the road.
+
+"And to the man who is with me."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"The first detective in London," whispered Lowndes, in his pat,
+decisive way. "Now, will you take me up to bowl out Scrafton, or shall
+I call to him to come down, and make a scene here in the street? My
+dear Ringrose, I may have my faults, but do you seriously mean to take
+his word before mine?"
+
+"Come up if you like," said Harry, shortly; and Lowndes turned to the
+man in the shadow.
+
+"When I throw up a window," Harry heard him say, and he led the way
+upstairs, feeling once more as though he were walking into a trap with
+his eyes open.
+
+"Leave the key in the door," whispered Lowndes again as they stood on
+the mat. "Then he will be able to come and help us if necessary."
+
+There was something strangely trustworthy in his face and his voice;
+something new in Harry's knowledge of the man. He left the key in the
+door, and he felt next moment that he had done right. Scrafton had
+leapt to his feet with fear and ferocity in his face, and the empty
+spirit-bottle caught up in his hand.
+
+"What do _you_ want?" he roared. "What are _you_ doing here? You fool,
+I've told him everything! Shut the door, you, young fellow; now he's
+come we won't let him slip."
+
+Harry humoured him by shutting it. He had only to look on their two
+faces to see which was the villain now.
+
+"I've told him!" repeated Scrafton, in a loud, jeering voice. "I told
+you I'd round on you if ever you went back on me, and I've been as good
+as my word. He knows now who persuaded his father to go abroad, and he
+knows why. He knows who went with him. He knows who pushed him
+overboard and took the money."
+
+"It's pretty plain, isn't it?" said Lowndes to Harry. "Be prepared to
+close with him the moment he lifts that bottle higher than his
+shoulder, and I'll tell you honestly what I did do. It will save time,
+however, if you first tell me what this fellow says I did."
+
+Harry did so in the fewest words, while they both stood watching
+Scrafton, grinning in their faces as he held the empty bottle in rest.
+His grin broadened as the tale proceeded. And so strange was the
+growing triumph in the fierce blue eyes, if it were all untrue, that at
+the end Harry turned to Lowndes and asked him point-blank whether there
+was any truth in it at all.
+
+"Heaps," was the reply. "It's nothing but the truth up to a certain
+point. I am not here to exonerate myself from fault, Ringrose, and not
+even altogether from crime. It is perfectly true that it was at my
+instigation your father consented to go abroad and put his faith in
+this fellow's system. It was a wild scheme, if you like, but it was
+either that or certain ruin, and I'd have risked it myself without the
+slightest hesitation. I firmly believe, too, that it would have come
+off if we'd kept cool and played well together--for make no mistake
+about the mere ability of our friend with the bottle--but it never came
+to that. Your father weakened on it halfway across the Channel, and
+vowed he'd go back by the next boat and fail like a man. That's true
+enough, and it's also true that after reasoning with him in vain I went
+to send Scrafton to reassure him about the system; and here's where the
+lies begin. I didn't go back with him to the empty cabin. I followed
+him in a few minutes, and there he was alone, and there and then he
+started accusing me of what he'd obviously done himself."
+
+"Obviously!" jeered Scrafton. "So obviously that he made no attempt to
+prove it at the time!"
+
+"I stood no chance of doing so. It would have been oath against oath.
+And meanwhile, Ringrose, there were the two of us in a tight place
+together--and the French lights in sight! There was nothing for it but
+to pull together for the time being, and to avoid discovery of your
+father's disappearance at all costs. What was done couldn't be undone;
+and discovery would have meant destruction to us both, without anybody
+else being a bit the better. So Scrafton went ashore muffled up in your
+father's ulster, as he has told you himself; and, indeed, the rest of
+his story is--only too true."
+
+"You consented to this?" cried Harry, recoiling from both men, as one
+stood shamefaced and the other took snuff with a triumphant flourish.
+
+"Consented to it?" roared Scrafton. "He proposed it, bless you!"
+
+"That's not true, Lowndes?"
+
+"I'm ashamed to say it is, Ringrose. We were in a frightful hole.
+Something had to be done right there and then."
+
+"So you went ashore together?"
+
+"No; we arranged to meet."
+
+"To concoct the forgery I've been shown to-night? You had a hand in
+that, had you?"
+
+"I had a voice."
+
+"Yet none of the guilt is yours!"
+
+The tone cut like a knife. Lowndes had been hanging his head, but his
+spectacles flashed as he raised it now.
+
+"I never said that!" cried he. "God knows I was guilty enough after the
+event; and God knows, also, that I did what I could to make it up to
+you and yours in every other way later on. You may smile in my face--I
+deserve it--but what would you have gained if I had blown the gaff?
+Nothing at all; whereas I should have been bowled out in getting your
+father abroad with the very money I'd raised to save the ship; and that
+alone would have been the very devil for me. No Crofter Fisheries! Very
+likely Wormwood Scrubs instead! I couldn't face it; so I held my
+tongue, and I've been paying for it to this ruffian ever since."
+
+"Paying for it!" echoed Scrafton. "Paying _me_ to hold _my_ tongue;
+that's what he means!"
+
+"It is true enough," said Lowndes quietly, in answer to a look from
+Harry.
+
+"He admits it!" cried Scrafton, snuffing horribly in his exultation;
+"he might just as well admit the whole thing. Who but a guilty man pays
+another to hold his tongue?"
+
+"I have confessed the full extent of my guilt," said Lowndes, in the
+same quiet voice.
+
+"Then why were you such a blockhead as to put yourself at my mercy
+to-night?" roared the other, his bloodshot eyes breaking into a sudden
+blaze of fury.
+
+Lowndes stood a little without replying; and Harry Ringrose, still
+wavering between the two men, and as yet distrusting and condemning
+them equally in his heart, saw all at once a twinkle in the spectacled
+eyes which weighed more with him than words. A twitch of the sharp nose
+completed a characteristic look which Harry could neither forget nor
+misunderstand; it was not that of the losing side; and now, for the
+first time, the lad could believe it was a real detective, and not a
+third accomplice, who was waiting in the street below.
+
+"Do you think I am the man to put myself at your mercy?" asked Lowndes
+at length, and with increased serenity.
+
+"You've done so, you blockhead! You've put the rope round your own
+neck!"
+
+"On the contrary, my good Scrafton, I've simply waited until I was
+certain of slipping it round yours. You would see that for yourself if
+you hadn't drunk your brain to a pulp. You would have seen it by the
+way I sent you to the devil this evening. However, I think you're
+beginning to see it now!"
+
+"I see nothing," snarled Scrafton; "and you can prove nothing! But if I
+can't hang you, I can tell enough to make you glad to go out and hang
+yourself. It doesn't much matter what happens to me. I'm old and poor,
+and about done for in any case, or I might think more of my own skin.
+But you're on the top of the wave--and I'll have you back in the
+trough! You're living on the fat of the land--you shall see how you
+like skilly! Never mind who did the trick; who took the money when it
+was done?"
+
+Harry turned once more to Lowndes, and, despite his late convictions,
+the question was reflected in his face.
+
+"The notes went overboard with your father," said Lowndes. "The gold we
+found in his bag in the cabin."
+
+"And what did you do with the gold?"
+
+Scrafton echoed the question with his jeering laugh.
+
+"Ringrose," said Lowndes, "it didn't amount to very much; what I
+consented to take I used for your mother and you, so help me God!"
+
+"Your mother and my eye!" cried Scrafton. "A likely yarn!"
+
+"I believe it," said Harry, after a pause.
+
+"You believe him?" screamed Scrafton.
+
+"Certainly--before you."
+
+"After all the lies he's owned up to?"
+
+"After everything!"
+
+Scrafton gnashed his teeth, and his bloodshot eyes blazed again.
+
+"You had my version first, you blockhead!" he burst out. "You never
+would have had his otherwise. Can't you see he's only trying to turn
+the tables on me? I tell you he threw your father into the sea, so he
+turns round and says I did it! Let him prove a word of it. Do you hear,
+you lying devil? Prove it; prove it if you can!"
+
+Lowndes stepped over to the window and threw up the centre sash very
+casually.
+
+"It's a warm night for this sort of thing," he remarked. "Prove it, do
+you say? That's exactly what I'm going to do, if you'll give me time.
+Steady with that bottle, though--watch him, Ringrose--that's better! So
+you still insist on having a proof, eh? Do you think I'd have refused
+your demands this evening if I hadn't had one? My good fellow, there
+was a man in my house at the time who is in a position to convict you
+at last. He has been on your track for years--and here he is!"
+
+As the door opened, Harry kept his eyes on Scrafton, and on the empty
+bottle he still gripped by the neck. Instead of being raised, it
+slipped through his slackened fingers and fell upon the hearthrug. A
+moment later Scrafton himself crashed in a heap where he stood.
+
+Harry turned round; a bronzed gentleman with snow-white whiskers had
+entered the room and was holding out his arms to him, the tears
+standing thick in his eyes.
+
+"My son--my son!"
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The mist was clearing from Harry's eyes; a trembling hand held each of
+his; trembling lips had touched his forehead.
+
+"Father--father--is it really you?"
+
+"By God's mercy--only."
+
+"They said you were drowned!"
+
+"I was saved by a miracle."
+
+"Yet you have kept away from us all these years!"
+
+"It was the least I could do, Harry. The slur was on you and your
+mother. I had cast it on you; it was for me to remove it; or never to
+show my face again. God has been very good to me. I will tell you all.
+I am only sorry I consented to this scene."
+
+Lowndes was kneeling over the prostrate Scrafton, loosening the snuffy
+raiment, feeling the feeble heart, pouring more whisky into the fallen
+mouth that reeked of it already.
+
+"Is there nothing we can do?" said Mr. Ringrose.
+
+"He will be all right in a minute or two."
+
+"I am sorry I was a party to this business!"
+
+"Not a bit of it, my dear sir! It was what he deserved. Sorry I told
+you your father was a detective, Ringrose. I wanted you to believe me
+for once before you saw him, that was all. You'll never believe me
+again--and that's what _I_ deserve."
+
+He had looked round for a moment from the senseless man; now he bent
+over him once more; and father and son stepped forward anxiously. The
+high forehead, the dirty, iron-grey hair, and the long lean nose, were
+all that they could see; the glistening skin was of a leaden pallor.
+
+"Is it more than a faint?" asked Mr. Ringrose. "Ah! I am thankful."
+
+The blue eyes had opened; the flowing beard was moving from side to
+side; a feeble hand feeling for a waistcoat pocket.
+
+"My snuff-box," he whined. "I want my snuff-box."
+
+Harry found it and gave it to him; and after the first pinch Scrafton
+was sitting upright; after the second he was struggling to his feet
+with their help, and scowling at them all in turn. He shook off their
+hands as soon as he felt his feet under him; and with a fine effort he
+tried to stalk, but could only totter, to the door. Harry was very loth
+to let him go, but it was his father who held the door open, while
+Lowndes nodded his approval of the course.
+
+But in the doorway Scrafton turned and glared at the trio like a sick
+grey wolf, and shook an unclean fist in their faces before he went.
+
+They heard him taking snuff upon the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+RESTITUTION.
+
+
+Shortly after Scrafton's departure, Gordon Lowndes also took his leave.
+It was not, however, until he had offered Harry his hand with much
+diffidence, and the younger man had grasped it without a moment's
+hesitation. At this the other coloured and dropped his eyes, but stood
+for some moments returning Harry's pressure twofold.
+
+"Ringrose," he faltered, "I would give all I'm worth to-night to have
+told the truth in the beginning. But how could I? I might as well have
+blown my brains out. I--I tried to be your friend instead. I suppose
+you'll never let me be your friend any more?"
+
+It is doubtful whether any man could have said these words to Harry
+Ringrose, in any conceivable circumstances, without receiving some such
+response as that which instantly burst from his lips. Want of
+generosity was not one of Harry's faults; yet he had no sooner forgiven
+Lowndes, once and for all, and with a whole heart, than an inner voice
+reminded him that he had but served self-interest in doing so; and the
+reason, coming home to him like a bullet, gave a strange turn to his
+emotions.
+
+The father was sitting in a deep reverie in his wife's chair: his face
+was in his hands: he neither saw nor heard. Harry looked at him,
+hesitated, and in the end not only saw Lowndes to the door but
+accompanied him downstairs in the first leaden light of the September
+morning. He had something more to say.
+
+He merely wanted to know whether Miss Lowndes was in town, and whether
+he might call. Yet he only got it out as they were shaking hands for
+the last time.
+
+"You mean at Berkeley Square?" said Lowndes.
+
+"Yes--if I may."
+
+"You'll have to be quick about it, Ringrose. We leave there in a day or
+two. The men are already in the house. Still, I've no doubt she'll be
+glad to see you."
+
+"Taking a country seat?" asked Harry, smiling.
+
+"No, a suburban one: the sort of thing we had at Richmond, only rather
+better."
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"A fact."
+
+"But the Crofters are paying such a dividend?"
+
+Gordon Lowndes shrugged his shoulders with a gesture that reminded
+Harry of former days.
+
+"A paltry fourteen per cent.!" said he. "I'm sick of it. I thought we
+should all be millionaires by this time. I've sold out, and, of course,
+at a good enough figure; but we've been doing ourselves pretty well
+these last few years, and I haven't got much change out of the Crofters
+after all. In point of fact, it would take a few thousands to clear me;
+but, on the other hand, the credit's better than ever it was, and I'm
+simply chock-a-block with new plans. Loaded to the muzzle, Ringrose,
+and just spoiling for the fray! I know my nature better than ever I
+knew it before. I wasn't built for sitting in a chair and drawing my
+salary and receiving my dividends. I've found that out. It's worrying
+the thing through that I enjoy; there's some sport in that. However,
+I'm as lively as an old cheese with schemes and ideas; and one of them,
+at least, should appeal to you. It's a composite daily paper on
+absolutely new lines--that is, on all existing lines run parallel for a
+penny. My idea is to knock out the _Times_ and the _Guardian_ on one
+hand, and _Punch_ and the _Pink 'Un_ on the other. What should you say
+to coming in as comic editor at a four-figure screw?"
+
+"Where's the capitalist?" was what Harry said.
+
+"Where is he not?" cried Lowndes. "Every man Jack of them would jump at
+it! I made such a success of the Crofters that I could raise a million
+to-morrow for any crack-brained scheme I liked to put my name to. Yes,
+my boy, I'll have my pick of the capitalists this time; have them
+coming to me with their hats in one hand and their cheque-books in the
+other; but, between ourselves, I don't think we shall have far to seek
+for our man, Ringrose!"
+
+"What do you mean?" cried Harry, his curiosity whetted by the other's
+tone.
+
+"Ask your father," was the reply. "I may be mistaken, and he mayn't
+have made such a pile as I imagine; but he'll tell you as soon as he
+has you to himself; and meanwhile I'll warn Fanny that you're going to
+look her up."
+
+A hansom tinkled and twinkled across the jaws of Earl's Court Road; and
+as the light-hearted rapscallion darted off in pursuit, few would have
+believed with what a deed he had been connected; fewer still with what
+emotion he had lamented his wickedness not five minutes ago.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The father had not stirred, but he looked up as Harry burst in,
+breathless and ashamed.
+
+"What, have you been out?"
+
+"Yes, father," with deep humility.
+
+"And where is Lowndes?"
+
+"I have been seeing him off."
+
+"I never heard him go," said Mr. Ringrose, with a deep sigh. "The old
+things about me--they carried me back into the past. One question,
+Harry, and then you shall hear all you care to know. We found out from
+the commissionaire that your mother is at Eastbourne. What is she doing
+there?"
+
+"I thought it would set her up for the winter."
+
+"Is she not well?"
+
+"Perfectly, father; but--she likes it, and--we were able to do it last
+year."
+
+"She is in lodgings, then, and alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When does the next train leave?"
+
+"Eight-ten," said Harry, a minute later.
+
+Mr. Ringrose had shaded his eyes once more. They shone like a young
+man's as with a sudden gesture he whisked his hand away and snatched at
+his watch.
+
+"Only five hours more! Thank God--thank God--that I can look her in the
+face to-day!"
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+"Do you remember how I taught you to swim when you were a tiny shrimp?
+It was my one accomplishment in my own boyhood, my one love among
+outdoor sports, and I sometimes think it must have been implanted in me
+for the express purpose of saving my life when the time came. Certainly
+nothing else could have saved it; and I cannot think that I was spared
+by mere chance, Harry, but intentionally, for better things. Mine had
+been an easy life up to that time; even in my difficulties it had been
+an easy life. Well, it has not been easy since!
+
+"He stunned me first--that's how it happened. He struck me a murderous
+blow as I was leaving him to go in search of Lowndes. I knew no more
+until I was in the water. Then, before my head was clear, my limbs were
+doing their work. I was keeping myself afloat. I kept myself afloat
+until close upon daylight, when a French fisherman picked me up. He
+carried me to his cottage on the coast, and treated me from first to
+last with a kindness which I hope still to reward. At the time I bought
+his silence, with but little faith in his sticking to his bargain; now
+I know how loyally he must have done so. When I left him it was to find
+my way to Havre, and at Havre I took ship for Naples. I had still a
+little paper-money which had not come to me from Lowndes, and which I
+did not think likely to leave traces. With this money I transhipped at
+Naples, after reading of my own mysterious disappearance from Dieppe.
+Yes, that puzzled me; but I thought and thought, and hit at last upon
+something not altogether unlike the actual explanation. No, I never
+contemplated returning to unmask the villain who had attempted my
+murder. I was beginning to feel almost grateful to him. It was to him I
+owed such a fresh start as no ruined man ever had before.... Harry,
+Harry, don't look like that! My ruin was complete in any case. How
+could I come back and say I had been running away with the money, but
+had thought better of it? I could have come back in the beginning, and
+met my creditors without telling them what I had been tempted to do.
+This was impossible now. It was too late to undo the immediate effects
+of my disappearance; it was not too late to begin life afresh under
+another name and in another land. Rightly or wrongly, that is what I
+resolved to do--for my family's sake as much as for my own. They must
+forgive me, or my heart will break!"
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+It was to Durban that the fugitive had taken ship at Naples. He had
+landed on those shores within a month of the day on which his son had
+quitted them. And the first man he met there was one who recognised him
+on the spot. But good came of it; the man was an old friend, and proved
+a true one; he was down from Johannesburg on business, and when he
+returned Mr. Ringrose accompanied him. With this staunch friend the
+ironmaster's secret was safe; and partly through him, and partly with
+him--for within the year the pair were partners--the man who had lost a
+fortune bit by bit in the old country had made another by leaps and
+bounds in the new. Which was a sufficiently romantic story when Harry
+came to hear it in detail at a later date. At the time it was but the
+bare fact that the father cared to chronicle or the son to hear. It was
+the result on which Mr. Ringrose preferred to dwell. That very day he
+had returned with interest (before he knew that his wife had been
+paying it all these years) the money those four old friends had lent
+him through Gordon Lowndes. He had barely touched it, and would have
+returned it long ago, only he did not want his wife and son to know
+that he was alive until he could come back to them a rich enough man to
+atone in some degree for the wrong that he had done them--for the
+poverty and the shame they had endured for his sake.
+
+Harry said that Lowndes had spoken as though his father was a
+millionaire. Mr. Ringrose smiled slightly as he shook his head.
+
+"That's entirely his own idea," said he. "There might have been some
+truth in it in a few more years; but, as it is, it was no great pile I
+set myself to make, and I am more than content in having made it. In
+point of fact I am a poorer man than I was when you were born, but I am
+a free man for the first time for many years. This very day I have paid
+every penny that I owed here in town. A cheque is also on its way to
+the old firm, with which they can settle to-morrow any outstanding
+liabilities, and put the rest into the works in my name. And now I can
+face your mother. I could not do it until I could tell her this."
+
+Yet he had not been a dozen hours in England; the cheques had been
+written on board, and posted the moment he landed. On reaching London
+he had gone straight to Gordon Lowndes, and it was only the almost
+simultaneous arrival of Scrafton which had kept him so long from
+seeking his own. Scrafton, who had latterly taken to pestering his
+victim almost daily, had ultimately left him (to the delight of
+Lowndes) with the avowed intention of carrying out his old threat and
+going straight to Harry Ringrose. In what followed Harry's father had
+once more yielded, against his better judgment, to Gordon Lowndes.
+
+"It was his frankness that did it," said Mr. Ringrose; "he told me
+everything, before he need have told me anything at all, in his sheer
+joy at seeing me alive. He told me everything that he has since told
+you, and upon my word I am not sure that you or I would have acted very
+differently in his place. It was while we were talking that Scrafton
+called, and I learned for myself how Lowndes had suffered at his hands.
+I could not refuse to give him his revenge, though I should have vastly
+preferred to give it him there. Scrafton had gone, however, and Lowndes
+seemed almost equally anxious that you should judge between them, as it
+were, on their merits. So he had his way ... I am glad you have made it
+up with him, Harry. He is a strange mixture of good and bad, but which
+of us is not? And which of us does not need forgiveness from the other?
+I--most of all--need it from you!"
+
+"And I from you," said Harry in a low voice.
+
+"You? Why?"
+
+"Four years ago I suspected foul play. I was sure of it. Some other
+time I will tell you why."
+
+"I rather think Lowndes has told me already. Well?"
+
+"I held my tongue! I found out most on the promise of not trying to
+find out any more. I shall never forgive myself for making that
+promise--and keeping it."
+
+"Nay; thank God you did that!"
+
+"You don't know what I mean."
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Every day I have felt a traitor to you!"
+
+"I think there has been a little morbid exaggeration," said Mr.
+Ringrose, with his worn smile. "What good could you have done? And to
+whom did you make this promise?"
+
+Harry told him with a red face.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The night was at an end. Milk-carts clattered in the streets; milkmen
+clattered on the stairs. Harry put out the single light that had been
+burning all night in the sober front of the many-windowed mansions; and
+in the early morning he took his father over the flat. The rooms had
+never seemed so few--so tiny. Mr. Ringrose made no remark until he was
+back in the only good one that the flat contained.
+
+"And your mother has made shift here all these years!" he exclaimed
+then, and the remorse in his voice had never sounded so acute.
+
+"Oh, no; we have only been here a year."
+
+"Where were you before?"
+
+"In a smaller flat downstairs."
+
+"A smaller one than this? God forgive me! I was not prepared for much;
+but from what I read I did expect more than this!"
+
+"From what you read?" cried Harry. "Read where?"
+
+A new light shone in the father's face. "In some paragraphs I once
+stumbled across in some paper--I have them in my pocket at this
+moment!" said he. "Did you suppose I never saw your name in the papers,
+Harry? It has been my one link with you both. I saw it first by
+accident, and ever since I have searched for it, and sent for
+everything I could hear of that had your name to it. So I have always
+had good news of you; and sometimes between the lines I have thought I
+read good news of your mother too. God bless you ... God bless you ...
+for working for her ... and taking my place."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The old servant wept over her old master as though her heart would
+break with gladness. Her breakfast was a sorry thing, but no sooner was
+it on the table than she was sent down for a hansom, and she was still
+whistling when the gentlemen rushed after her and flew to find one for
+themselves. It was ten minutes to eight, and their train left Victoria
+at ten minutes past.
+
+Mrs. Ringrose was reading quietly in her room--reading some proof-sheets
+which Harry had posted to her the day before--when she heard the bell
+ring and her boy's own step upon the stairs. "You have news!" she cried
+as he entered; then at his face--"He has come back!"
+
+"Mother, did you expect it?"
+
+"I have expected it every morning of all these years. I have prayed for
+it every night."
+
+"Your prayer is answered!"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"I left him in the cab----"
+
+"But he could not wait!" cried a broken voice; and as Harry stood aside
+to let his father pass, he could see nothing through his own tears, but
+he never forgot the next words he heard.
+
+"I have paid them all--all--all!" his father cried. "I can look the
+world in the face once more!"
+
+"I care nothing about that," his mother answered. "You have come back
+to me. Oh! you have come back!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+A TALE APART.
+
+
+Harry Ringrose used sometimes to complain of his life from a literary
+point of view. This piece of ingratitude he was wont to couch in the
+technical terminology with which his conversation was rather freely
+garnished. He acknowledged that his "African horse had good legs," as
+Gordon Lowndes would remind him; it was the later years that set him
+grumbling. In Harry's opinion they were full of "good stuff," which he
+longed to "handle"; but the facts were so badly "constructed" (as facts
+will be) that all the king's horses and all the king's men could not
+pull them to pieces and put them together again without spoiling them.
+Then there were the "unities": our author was not quite clear as to
+their meaning, but he had an uncomfortable presentiment that they would
+prove another difficulty. And the "dramatic interest" lacked
+continuity. It was also of too many different kinds. The play began in
+one theatre, went on in another, and finished across the river. Worst
+of all was the "love story:" it disappeared for years, and then came
+altogether in a lump.
+
+This was true. It did. And if Harry Ringrose had essayed the task to
+which his innate subjectivity and the want of better ideas often drew
+him, there is no saying how much he would have made of scenes which the
+impersonal historian is content simply to mention. Of such was the
+meeting which took place within a few hours of that other meeting in
+the Eastbourne lodgings. Yet this proved to be the beginning of a new
+story rather than the end of an old one, which poor Harry meant it to
+be, as he returned alone to town the same afternoon, and drove straight
+to Berkeley Square.
+
+His excitement is not to be described. It seemed but a day since the
+leave-taking in the little shabby drawing-room on Richmond Hill. He
+remembered his own words so clearly. He remembered her replies. There
+were no more mysteries now; there were no more quarrels; and he cared
+still, as he had always done, Heaven knew! If only she still cared for
+him--if only there was nobody else--what was there to hinder it for
+another minute?
+
+Nothing, one would have thought: yet it was dusk when Harry rang the
+bell in a shivering glow of hope and fear, and nearly midnight when he
+came away downcast and disheartened: and during all those hours but one
+he had been pressing an unsuccessful suit: though he had her word for
+it that there was nobody else.
+
+What was there, then?
+
+Those six years which had once given Harry Ringrose a misleading sense
+of safety.
+
+And literally nothing else!
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+He called again next day. He hindered the removal on the plea of making
+himself useful. And in season and out of season he tried his luck in
+vain.
+
+In the broad light of day he was met by a new and awful argument: his
+beloved showed him what she declared to be a genuine and flagrant
+crow's-foot; and he only a boy of twenty-five!
+
+The removal was soon over, and for Harry the town emptied itself just
+as it was filling for everybody else; so then he took to writing
+tremendous letters; and an answer was never wanting in the course of a
+day or so; only it was never the answer he besought.
+
+Her fondness for him was obvious and not denied; only she had got it
+into her head that those six years between them were an insuperable
+bar, that a boy like Harry could not possibly know his own mind, and,
+therefore, that it would be manifestly unfair to take him at his word.
+
+So the thing resolved itself into a question of time; and, in the midst
+of other changes in his life, Harry did his best to bury himself in his
+work; but his comic verses were as much as he could manage, and for
+several weeks in succession these were the feeblest feature in _Tommy
+Tiddler_.
+
+Then he went to her in despair.
+
+"I can't stand it any longer!"
+
+"Then give it up."
+
+"I've waited five months!"
+
+"I said six."
+
+"Surely five is enough to show whether a fellow knows his own mind?"
+
+"Some of it may be mere obstinacy."
+
+"Well, then, it's playing the very mischief with my work."
+
+"Then what _will_ it be when we are married?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"I mean to say if we ever are."
+
+"Fanny, you said _when_!"
+
+"I meant _if_."
+
+"But you _said_ WHEN!!"
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+It was the thin edge of the wedge.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+This protracted siege had other sides. It was not a joke to either
+party. Yet each tried to treat it as one. The man tried to conceal his
+disappointment, his inevitable chagrin; the woman, her deep and
+selfless anxiety as to whether, in all the years before them, he would
+be happy always--truly happy--happy as a man could be. She looked so
+far ahead, and he such a little way. Sometimes they told each other
+their thoughts; sometimes they were less happy than lovers ought to be;
+but all these months their inner lives were very full. They did not
+stagnate in each other's love. They lived intensely and they felt
+acutely. And that is why, if Harry Ringrose were to tell his own love
+story, and tell it honestly, it would be a tale apart.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+When the time came there was some little heart-burning as to who should
+perform the ceremony. Harry had set his heart on being married by his
+dear Mr. Innes. This man still filled a unique place in his life.
+Indeed the many friendships that he had struck up in the last year or
+two only emphasised the value of that friend of friends: there was no
+one like Mr. Innes. They had not seen a great deal of each other during
+these last years; but they had never quite lost touch; and of the many
+influences to which the younger man's nature responded only too
+readily, as strings to every wind, there was none so constant or so
+helpful as that of the old master to whom he was now content to be as a
+boy all his days. It was not that he had paid very many visits to the
+school at Guildford: it was that each had left its own indelible
+impress on his mind, its own high resolves and noble yearnings in his
+heart. So it was natural enough that Harry Ringrose should want that
+man to marry him to whom he vowed that he owed such shreds of virtue as
+he possessed. And Fanny wished it too, for she had been with Harry to
+Guildford, and caught his enthusiasm, and knelt by his side one summer
+evening in the chapel where he had knelt as a boy. But it was not to
+be; there was a clergy-man in the family; it would be impossible to
+pass him over.
+
+Harry thought it would be not only possible but highly desirable, since
+his Uncle Spencer disapproved so cordially of Gordon Lowndes; but Mrs.
+Ringrose (with whom her son had warm words on the subject) very justly
+observed that such disapproval had not once been expressed since the
+engagement was announced; nor had her brother uttered one syllable to
+mar her own great happiness in her husband's return, but had shown a
+more tender sympathy in her joy than in her trouble; after which he
+must marry them, or they could be married without their mother. The
+matter was settled by a private appeal to Innes himself, who sided
+against Harry, and by a note from Mr. Walthew, in which that gentleman
+accepted the responsibility with fewer reservations than Harry had ever
+known him make before.
+
+"To tell you the truth," wrote Uncle Spencer, "it is against all my
+principles to make engagements so many weeks ahead; but every rule has
+its exception, and I shall be very happy to officiate on December 1st,
+if I am spared, and if it has not seemed good to you meanwhile to
+postpone the event. I must say that in my poor judgment a longer
+engagement would have shown greater wisdom: your Aunt and I waited some
+five years and a quarter! As you say that you are determined to depend
+(almost entirely) on your own efforts, it would have been well, in our
+opinion, to follow our example, and to wait until your literary
+position is more established than your warmest admirer can consider it
+to be at present. At the same time, my dear Henry, if marriage leads
+you into a less frivolous vein of writing (such as I once hoped you
+were about to adopt), I for one shall be thankful--if only you are also
+able to make both ends meet."
+
+Gordon Lowndes read this letter with such uproarious delight that Harry
+was sorry he had shown it to him.
+
+"There's that brother of mine," said he; "the chap we wired to for the
+tenner; _he_ would want a finger in the pie if he knew. But he's
+forgotten our existence since we left Berkeley Square, and I'm hanged
+if I remember his again. Besides, he's as High as your uncle's Low, and
+they might set on each other in the church. On the whole I'm sorry it
+isn't to be your schoolmaster friend. I want to meet that man,
+Ringrose. I want to turn that school of his into a Limited Liability
+Company."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+It took place very quietly on a bright keen winter's day. Harry's
+parents were there, and Gordon Lowndes, and another. Mr. Walthew
+performed the ceremony in a slow and sober fashion which added
+something to its solemnity; the church was very still and empty; and in
+one awful pause the bridegroom's voice deserted him, in the mere
+fulness of his boyish heart. But the hand that he was holding pressed
+his with the familiar, firm, kind pressure, and it was from his heart
+of hearts that the lagging words burst:
+
+"I will!"
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND EDITION.
+
+MY LORD DUKE.
+
+By E. W. HORNUNG,
+
+_Author of "The Rogue's March," "Tiny Luttrell," "A Bride from the
+Bush," etc._
+
+Price 6s.
+
+    "'My Lord Duke' is _thoroughly clever and amusing_."--_Athenæum._
+
+    "From the first page to the last Mr. Hornung's story is
+    _fascinating and powerful_."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+    "_Worth any dozen of the novels_ which would compete with it for
+    popular favour."--_Daily Mail._
+
+    "One of the most agreeable novels that we can
+    remember."--_Academy._
+
+    "Mr. Hornung is to be congratulated on having produced _a bright
+    and amusing story_."--_Daily Telegraph._
+
+    "'The Dook,' as he first calls himself, and Olivia are _delightful
+    creations_ of an undeniable freshness and originality."--_Morning
+    Post._
+
+    "Full of boisterous mirth, and _leaves the pleasantest of
+    impressions_."--_Scotsman._
+
+    "With this tale Mr. Hornung has made a _distinct step forward_
+    as a novelist. A capital story."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+    "The tale is _skilfully constructed_, and the final unravelling
+    of its threads is likely to come as a surprise even to the most
+    hardened of novel-readers."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+    "For many persons, no doubt, the interest of the story will
+    culminate in the discovery of 'the rightful heir,' but life at
+    'The Towers' has incidents exciting and amusing enough, quite
+    independent of its conclusion."--_Illustrated London News._
+
+
+CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, _London, Paris & Melbourne_.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND EDITION.
+
+THE ROGUE'S MARCH.
+
+By E. W. HORNUNG,
+
+_Author of "My Lord Duke," "Tiny Luttrell," "A Bride from the Bush,"
+etc._
+
+Price 6s.
+
+    "It is a tragic, fascinating, extraordinarily vivid story, which
+    it is difficult to put down when we begin to read it, and the
+    impression of which it is impossible for a while to shake
+    off."--_Daily News._
+
+    "We have had, so far as I know, no one on whom the mantle of
+    Charles Reade can be said to have fallen. In the author of 'The
+    Rogue's March' we seem to have found him."--_Illustrated London
+    News._
+
+    "'The Rogue's March' may be commended without the least reservation
+    as a most spirited and interesting story, admirably told, and
+    without a dull page from cover to cover. It will be interesting to
+    see if Mr. Hornung will follow up this book with others of the same
+    kind. If he does so, the mantle of the author of 'It's Never Too
+    Late to Mend' and 'Hard Cash' will have fallen on worthy
+    shoulders."--_Sketch._
+
+    "It was with the greatest possible difficulty that we refrained
+    from scampering through the pages of each chapter to see what
+    happened in the end of it. Mr. Hornung keeps us in a state of
+    palpitating wonder all through, and then surprises us at the
+    last."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+    "One of the most exciting tales that has appeared during many
+    seasons."--_Morning Post._
+
+
+SECOND EDITION.
+
+TINY LUTTRELL.
+
+By E. W. HORNUNG,
+
+_Author of "My Lord Duke," "The Rogue's March," "A Bride from the
+Bush," etc._
+
+Price 6s.
+
+    "Mr. Hornung's Australian stories have won him many admirers, and
+    his 'Tiny Luttrell' cannot fail to increase his reputation and
+    their number. The bush is depicted with a vividness, a sympathy, a
+    restraint that make you long to take the next ship to Melbourne.
+    The English rectory and its neighbours are handled with no less
+    skill."--_National Observer._
+
+    "'Tiny Luttrell' is a most artistic story, and takes up ground on
+    which the author has no rival."--_Bristol Mercury._
+
+
+CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, _London, Paris & Melbourne_.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: IMPORTANT WORKS OF FICTION BY
+
+  Signatures of authors
+
+  PUBLISHED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED,
+  _London, Paris & Melbourne_.]
+
+
+_By J. M. BARRIE._
+
+Sentimental Tommy. The Story of his Boyhood.
+
+_Illustrated Edition._ Cloth, 6s.
+
+    "Exceedingly fascinating and delightful."--_St. James's Gazette._
+
+The Little Minister. _Illustrated Edition_, 6s.
+
+    "Here is another book of genius. 'Tis a big word, and one not
+    often used in this place. But we use it now with a full sense
+    of the weight of it, and a clear perception of our own
+    responsibility."--_National Observer._
+
+
+_By R. L. STEVENSON._
+
+Treasure Island. 3s. 6d. Library Edition, 6s.
+
+    "Of 'Treasure Island' it may be truly said that it is worthy to
+    rank with 'Robinson Crusoe.'"--_Daily News._
+
+The Master of Ballantrae. 3s. 6d. Library Edition, 6s.
+
+    "In this work Mr. Stevenson surpasses all his former
+    performances."--_The Times._
+
+The Black Arrow. 3s. 6d. Library Edition, 6s.
+
+    "'The Black Arrow' has been justly compared, and not to its
+    disadvantage, with 'Ivanhoe.'"--_Daily News._
+
+Kidnapped. 6s. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "The adventures in 'Kidnapped' are so continuously thrilling as to
+    preclude the chance of anyone laying the book down before the last
+    page is reached."--_St. James's Gazette._
+
+Catriona. A Sequel to "Kidnapped." 6s. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "Without vain pretence to any spirit of prophecy, one may affirm,
+    with some show of confidence, that here, between the covers of this
+    volume, is the supreme imaginative boon of the year."--_Daily
+    Chronicle._
+
+Island Nights' Entertainments. 6s. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "Three of the best stories that Mr. Stevenson has ever given to the
+    world."--_The World._
+
+The Wrecker. 6s. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+By R. L. STEVENSON and LLOYD OSBOURNE.
+
+    Mr. ANDREW LANG, in the _New Review_, says:--"'The Wrecker' seems
+    much the most enticing romance at present before the world."
+
+
+_By ARCHIBALD FORBES._
+
+The Black Watch. 6s.
+
+    "A worthy tribute to the splendid corps to which it has
+    reference."--_Army News._
+
+Memories and Studies of War and Peace. 6s.
+
+    "A living, vivid page from the history of our time."--_Daily News._
+
+
+_By STANLEY WEYMAN._
+
+The Man in Black. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "A short story which we cannot but think must have charmed Victor
+    Hugo himself."--_Saturday Review._
+
+The Story of Francis Cludde. 6s.
+
+    "There is one book among all these new books which kept a weary
+    reviewer from his bed. That book is 'Francis Cludde.'"--MR. ANDREW
+    LANG, in the _New Review_.
+
+From the Memoirs of a Minister of France. 6s.
+
+    "A most agreeable and fascinating book, worthy of the author of
+    'The Gentleman of France,' than which there can be no higher
+    praise."--_Scotsman._
+
+
+_By MAX PEMBERTON._
+
+A Woman of Kronstadt. 6s.
+
+A Puritan's Wife. Illustrated. 6s.
+
+    "'A Puritan's Wife' is without question Mr. Pemberton's best
+    story."--_British Weekly._
+
+The Impregnable City. Illustrated. 6s. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "Those of us who are willing, and fain, to keep young as long as
+    possible will read Mr. Pemberton's latest romance, 'The Impregnable
+    City,' with the keenest delight."--_The Sketch._
+
+The Sea-Wolves. Illustrated. 6s. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "A story easy to begin and difficult, if not impossible, to leave
+    off--at any rate, until the last page is reached; and then one
+    has to stop, not because one will, but simply because one
+    must."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+The Iron Pirate. Illustrated. 5s. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "One of the most thrilling books of adventure we have met with for
+    some time."--_Athenæum._
+
+
+_By RIDER HAGGARD._
+
+King Solomon's Mines. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "To tell the truth, we would give many novels, say eight hundred
+    (that is about the yearly harvest), for such a book."--_Saturday
+    Review._
+
+
+_By ANTHONY HOPE._
+
+Father Stafford. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "The book will be heartily enjoyed by everyone who reads it, and
+    will enhance its author's reputation."--_Scotsman._
+
+
+_By BERTRAM MITFORD._
+
+The White Shield. _Cheap Edition_. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "The adventures described are very exciting, and very cleverly
+    worked out, some of the points being particularly ingenious."--_Bristol
+    Mercury._
+
+
+_By S. WALKEY._
+
+Rogues of the "Fiery Cross." 5s.
+
+    "Boys will follow the story with bated breath."--_Dundee
+    Advertiser._
+
+
+_By FRANK STOCKTON._
+
+A Story-Teller's Pack. 6s.
+
+    "Perfect Stocktonese, which I recommend to all who are willing to
+    be led into the pleasant paths of frivolity by this delightful
+    writer."--_Academy._
+
+Mrs. Cliff's Yacht. 6s.
+
+    Stirring adventure and genuine humour characterise this new work
+    from Mr. Stockton's pen. It is charmingly illustrated.
+
+The Adventures of Captain Horn. 6s.
+
+    "Mr. Frank Stockton has prepared for his many admirers a great
+    surprise and a surpassing treat."--_The Speaker._
+
+Pomona's Travels. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "Written with the happy blending of quaint naïveté and saturnine
+    humour that is a familiar and ever-entertaining characteristic of
+    Mr. Frank Stockton's fictional works."--_Daily Telegraph._
+
+
+_By G. B. BURGIN._
+
+Tuxter's Little Maid. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "'Tuxter's Little Maid,' by G. B. Burgin, is one of those rare
+    fictitional masterpieces upon which the judicious critic feels
+    inclined to lavish his whole stock of laudatory terms."--_Daily
+    Telegraph._
+
+
+_By JOHN BLOUNDELLE-BURTON._
+
+The Hispaniola Plate. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "A tale of piracy and treasure-seeking, heaped up, pressed
+    down, and running over with buccaneers, sharks, and foul
+    weather."--_Scotsman._
+
+
+_By LESLIE KEITH._
+
+'Lisbeth. 6s.
+
+    Mr. J. M. BARRIE, writing of Leslie Keith's new novel "'Lisbeth,"
+    says that the characters "are real Scots, drawn with great truth
+    and power."
+
+
+_By HESBA STRETTON and * * * * * * * *, a well-known Russian Exile._
+
+The Highway of Sorrow. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "'The Highway of Sorrow' is intensely interesting."--_Daily
+    Chronicle._
+
+
+_By MRS. PARR._
+
+The Squire. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "'The Squire' can be described as among the most charming of the
+    always charming works of the authoress."--_Graphic._
+
+
+_By COMMANDER CLAUDE HARDING, R.N._
+
+The Capture of the "Estrella." 3s. 6d.
+
+    "A story brimful of capital sensation, and told in the simple
+    straight-forward style which appeals at once to the juvenile
+    heart."--_Daily Telegraph._
+
+
+_By J. MACLAREN COBBAN._
+
+The Avenger of Blood. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "Mr. Maclaren Cobban's spirited romance commends itself at once to
+    the moralist and the pleasure-seeking reader."--_Athenæum._
+
+
+_Works by Q._
+
+Ia: A Love Story. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "'Ia,' a Cornish tale, will rank as one of the strongest of Q's
+    short stories."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
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+
+    A Selection of Short Stories, uniform with "Noughts and Crosses"
+    and "The Delectable Duchy."
+
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+
+    "A fascinating story which may be confidently recommended to those
+    who have a taste for romance of the weird, mystic, and thrilling
+    kind."--_Daily News._
+
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+
+    "Q has never written anything more fresh or lively than 'I Saw
+    Three Ships'; and everyone who enjoys a breezy, humorous, and fiery
+    story should make haste to read it."--_Scotsman._
+
+A Blot of Ink. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "Q has given us a delightful translation of M. Bazin's pleasant
+    little story. It is only a trifle, delicate as a soap-bubble,
+    but the colours of the sketch are laid on with masterly skill,
+    and an atmosphere of brilliant sunshine pervades the whole
+    book."--_Speaker._
+
+Noughts and Crosses: Stories, Studies, and Sketches. 5s.
+
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+    attractiveness and value."--_Globe._
+
+The Splendid Spur. 5s.
+
+    "'The Splendid Spur' is decidedly Q's most successful effort, and
+    we do not scruple to say that it raises its author to a high place
+    in the new school of novelists--the school of action."--_The
+    Times._
+
+The Blue Pavilions. 5s.
+
+    "'The Blue Pavilions,' by Q, is about as good a tale of dramatic
+    and exciting adventure as the Baron remembers to have read--for
+    some time, at least.... As a one-barrel novel, this ought to score
+    a gold right in the centre."--_Punch._
+
+The Astonishing History of Troy Town. 5s.
+
+    "Original, amusing, and well carried out."--_Morning Post._
+
+    "The book is singularly fresh, taking, and spirited."--_St. James's
+    Gazette._
+
+The Delectable Duchy. Stories, Studies, and Sketches. 5s.
+
+    "Open this book where you may, you will light upon something that
+    attracts and holds."--_Globe._
+
+
+_By A. CONAN DOYLE._
+
+The Doings of Raffles Haw. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "So full of life and variety that it is difficult to lay it down
+    before the end is reached."--_Liverpool Mercury._
+
+
+_By HERBERT COMPTON._
+
+A King's Hussar. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "It is rarely our privilege to call public attention to so
+    interesting, instructive, and wholesome a book as 'A King's
+    Hussar.'"--_Daily Telegraph._
+
+A Free Lance in a Far Land. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "To those who like a good, healthy, and yet thrilling tale, this
+    book may be heartily recommended."--_Admiralty and Horse Guards
+    Gazette._
+
+
+_By W. CLARK RUSSELL._
+
+What Cheer! Dedicated by permission to H.R.H. The Duke of York. Cloth
+gilt, 6s.
+
+    "There is something always fresh and invigorating about Mr. Clark
+    Russell's sea stories, and his latest contribution cannot fail to
+    attract a wide circle of readers."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+List, ye Landsmen! A Romance of Incident. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "Never has he more cunningly contrived a tale full of romance and
+    adventure. The breeze in which he delights rushes through his
+    descriptions of wild plotting."--_Globe._
+
+
+_By JAMES PAYN._
+
+A Modern Dick Whittington. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "The work abounds in the quaint humour and turns of expression
+    which give to Mr. Payn's style a character of its own."--_The
+    Times._
+
+
+_By HORACE HUTCHINSON._
+
+Fairway Island. _Cheap Edition_, 2s. 6d.
+
+    "Whoever wishes to make a boy supremely happy can accomplish
+    his purpose at a cheap rate by presenting him with 'Fairway
+    Island.'"--_British Weekly._
+
+
+_By SHAN F. BULLOCK._
+
+The Awkward Squads; and other Ulster Stories. _Cheap Edition_, 3s.
+6d.
+
+    "These stories have a delightful humorousness and raciness of the
+    soil which rises to something like a tragic intensity."--_Scotsman._
+
+
+_By A. E. WICKHAM._
+
+Loveday: A Tale of a Stirring Time. 6s.
+
+    "A romantic love-plot is worked out to a happy conclusion amid
+    the most adventurous surroundings, in which interest never
+    flags."--_Lloyd's._
+
+
+_By G. MANVILLE FENN._
+
+The Queen's Scarlet. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "An interesting book about soldiers and their surroundings, written
+    with a graphic simplicity not often found in the military
+    novel."--_Morning Post._
+
+
+_By L T. MEADE._
+
+The Medicine Lady. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "A strikingly successful venture. She interests us in her heroine
+    in the very first chapter."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+
+_By FRANK BARRETT._
+
+Out of the Jaws of Death. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "An originally treated and cleverly constructed plot."--_Saturday
+    Review._
+
+The Admirable Lady Biddy Fane. _Cheap Edition_, 3s. 6d.
+
+    "A tale of adventure than which we have read few more thrilling,
+    and it may possibly rank even above 'Allan Quatermain.'"--_Athenæum._
+
+
+_By EGERTON CASTLE._
+
+"La Bella" and Others. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "'La Bella' will be welcomed with a sense of refreshing pungency by
+    readers who have been cloyed by a too long succession of insipid
+    sweetness and familiar incident."--_Athenæum._
+
+
+_By BARRY PAIN._
+
+Playthings and Parodies. 3s. 6d.
+
+    "For whimsical audacity and quaint unexpectedness, 'Playthings and
+    Parodies' would be hard to beat."--_Punch._
+
+
+_By MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS._
+
+A Prison Princess. A Romance of Millbank Penitentiary. 3s. 6d.
+
+
+_By LILIAN TURNER._
+
+The Lights of Sydney. Illustrated. 3s. 6d.
+
+
+_By Mrs. MOLESWORTH._
+
+Leona. 3s. 6d.
+
+
+_By MORLEY ROBERTS._
+
+The Reputation of George Saxon; and other Stories. 3s. 6d.
+
+
+_By W. CARLTON DAWE._
+
+Mount Desolation. An Australian Romance. 3s. 6d.
+
+
+_By ELIZABETH STEWART PHELPS._
+
+Fourteen to One, etc. 3s. 6d.
+
+
+_By LAWRENCE FLETCHER._
+
+Into the Unknown. 3s. 6d.
+
+Zero the Slaver. 3s. 6d.
+
+
+_By HEADON HILL._
+
+Spectre Gold.
+
+By a Hair's-Breadth. 6s.
+
+    "How refreshing is a real good story of organized crime and its
+    detection.... The book kept at least one reader out of bed an hour
+    after his usual time for retiring."--_Athenæum._
+
+
+_By ELLEN THORNEYCROFT FOWLER._
+
+Cupid's Garden. 6s.
+
+    "Most delightful stories of love and marriage, and the humours of
+    the human heart. Most delectable are the surprises that await us.
+    The conversation is amazingly clever."--_Methodist Times._
+
+
+_By FRANCES HEATH FRESHFIELD._
+
+The Wrothams of Wrotham Court. 6s.
+
+    "A love story of the seventeenth century. The pictures of London
+    which form the background of the story have been carefully
+    done."--_Academy._
+
+
+_By SARAH PITT._
+
+A Limited Success. 6s.
+
+    "'A Limited Success' is a clever story, cleverly told, and
+    decidedly interesting."--_Christian World._
+
+
+_By W. G. TARBET._
+
+Ill-Gotten Gold: A Story of a Great Wrong and a Great Revenge. 6s.
+
+    "'Ill-Gotten Gold' is a story of stirring interest.... A series
+    of exciting events lead to a powerful and highly dramatic
+    ending."--_Scotsman._
+
+
+_By E. W. HORNUNG._
+
+Young Blood. 6s.
+
+My Lord Duke. 6s.
+
+    "The plot is ingenious, and bright with graphic scenes. From the
+    first page to the last Mr. Hornung's story is fascinating and
+    powerful."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+The Rogue's March. Cloth gilt, 6s.
+
+    "A most spirited and interesting story, admirably told, and without
+    a dull page from cover to cover."--_Sketch._
+
+"Tiny Luttrell." 6s.
+
+    "'Tiny Luttrell' has a young Australian lady for its heroine--a
+    charming incorporation of contradictions and
+    inconsistencies."--_Daily Telegraph._
+
+
+CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, _London; Paris & Melbourne_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Young Blood, by E. W. Hornung
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42902 ***