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.