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.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 141
