Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  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 b
est. 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.