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."