“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 las
t.
“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.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 130
