BEGGAR AND CHOOSER.
The one communication which Harry Ringrose had received from Gordon
Lowndes was little more than a humorous acknowledgment of the sum
refunded to him after the sale of the trophies. The writer warmly
protested against the payment of a debt which he himself had never
regarded in that light. The worst of it was that he was not in a
position to refuse such payment. The prospects of the Highland
Crofters' Salmon and Trout Supply Association, Limited, were if
anything rosier than ever. But it was an axiom that the more gigantic
the concern, the longer and more irritating the initial delay, and no
news of the Company would be good news for some time to come.
"Meanwhile I am here every day of my life," concluded Lowndes, "and
pretty nearly all day. Why the devil don't you look me up?"
Indeed, Harry might have done so on any or all of those dreadful days
which took him a beggar to the City of London. His reason for not doing
so was, however, a very simple one. He did not want Lowndes to think
that he disbelieved in the H.C.S. & T.S.A., as he must if he knew that
Harry was assiduously seeking work elsewhere. Harry was not altogether
sure that he did utterly disbelieve in that colossal project. But it
was difficult to put much confidence in it after the revelations at
Richmond, and when it was obvious that the promoter's own daughter
lacked confidence in his schemes. Certainly it was impossible to feel
faith enough in the Highland Crofters' to leave lesser stones unturned.
And yet to let Lowndes know what he was doing might be to throw away
three hundred a year.
So Harry had avoided Leadenhall Street on days when the
company-promoter's boisterous spirits and exuberant good-humour would
have been particularly grateful to him. But this was before he became a
successful literary man. He wanted Lowndes to hear of his success; he
particularly wanted him to tell his daughter. He was not sure that he
should avoid Leadenhall Street another time, nor did he when it came.
This was after the successful effort had realised only half-a-guinea,
and when some subsequent attempt was coming back in disgrace by every
post. Mrs. Ringrose had taken a leaf out of Harry's book, and committed
a letter to the post without even letting him know that she had written
one. An answer came by return, and this she showed to Harry in
considerable trepidation. It was from the solicitor whom she had
mentioned on the day after Harry's arrival. In it Mr. Wintour Phipps
presented his compliments to Mrs. Ringrose, and stated that he would be
pleased to see her son any afternoon between three and four o'clock.
"I thought old friends were barred?" Harry said, reproachfully. "I
thought we were agreed about that, mother?"
"But this is not an old friend of yours or mine, my dear. I never knew
him; I only know what your father did for him. He paid eighty pounds
for his stamps, so I think he might do something for you! And so does
he, you may depend, or he would not write that you are to go and see
him."
"He doesn't insist upon it," said Harry, glancing again at the
solicitor's reply. "He puts it pretty formally, too!"
"Have I not told you that I never met him? It was your father and his
father who were such old friends."
"So he writes to you through a clerk!"
"How do you know?"
"It's the very hand they all tell me I ought to cultivate."
"I have no doubt he is a very busy man. I have often heard your father
say so. Yet he can spare time to see you! You will go to him, my
boy--to please your mother?"
"I will think about it, dear."
The mid-day post brought back another set of rejected verses. Harry
swallowed his pride.
"It's all right, mother; I'll go and see that fellow this afternoon."
And there followed the last of the begging interviews, which in
character and result had little to differentiate it from all the rest.
Harry did indeed feel less compunction in bearding his father's god-son
than in asking favours of complete strangers. He also fancied that he
was better fitted for the law than for business, and, when he came to
Bedford Row, he could picture himself going there quite happily every
day. The knowledge, too, that this Wintour Phipps was under obligations
to his father, sent the young fellow up a pair of dingy stairs with a
confidence which had not attended him on any former errand of the kind.
And yet in less than ten minutes he was coming down again, with his
beating heart turned to lead, but with a livelier contempt for his own
innocence than for the hardness of the world as most lately exemplified
by Wintour Phipps. Nor would the last of these interviews be worth
mentioning but for what followed; for it was on this occasion that
Harry went on to Leadenhall Street to get what comfort he could from
the one kind heart he knew of in the City of London.
But there an unexpected difficulty awaited him. He remembered the
number, but he looked in vain for the name of Gordon Lowndes among the
others that were painted on the passage wall as you went in. So he
doubted his memory and tried other numbers; but results brought him
back to the first, and he climbed upstairs in quest of the name that
was not in the hall. He never found it; but as he reached the fourth
landing a peal of unmistakable laughter came through a half-open door.
And Harry took breath, for he had found his friend.
"Very well," he heard a thin voice saying quietly, "since you refuse me
the slightest satisfaction, Mr. Lowndes, I shall at once take steps."
"Steps--steps, do you say?" roared Lowndes himself. "All right, take
steps to the devil!"
And a small dark man came flying through the door, which was instantly
banged behind him. Harry caught him in his arms, and then handed him
his hat, which was rolling along the stone landing. The poor man
thanked him in an agitated voice, and was tottering down the stairs,
when he turned, and with sudden fury shook his umbrella at the shut
door.
"The dirty scamp!" he cried. "The bankrupt blackguard!"
Harry never forgot the words, nor the working, whiskered face of the
man who uttered them. He stood where he was until the trembling
footfalls came up to him no more. Then he knocked at the door. Lowndes
himself flung it open, and the frown of a bully changed like lightning
to the most benevolent and genial smile.
"You!" he cried. "Come in, Ringrose--come in; I'm delighted to see
you."
"Yes, it's me," said Harry, letting drop the hearty hand which he felt
to be a savage fist unclenched to greet him. "Who did you think it
was?"
"Why, the man you must have met upon the stairs! A little rat of a
creditor I've chucked out this time, but will throw over the banisters
if he dares to show his nose up here again."
Harry was forcibly reminded of the butcher at Richmond.
"So this is the other way of treating them?" said he.
"This is the other way. Ha! ha! I recollect what you mean. Well, I have
some sympathy with a small tradesman whom the fortune of war has kept
out of his money for weeks and months; not a particle for a little Jew
who has the insolence to come up here and browbeat and threaten me in
my own office for a few paltry pounds! If he had written me a civil
note, reminding me of the debt, which was really so small that I'd
forgotten all about it, he should have had his money in time. Now he
may whistle for it till he's black in the face!"
Lowndes's indignation was so much more impressive than that of the
little dark man on the stairs, that Harry's sympathies changed sides
without his knowledge. He merely felt his heart warm to Lowndes as the
latter took him by the arm and led him through the outer office (in
which an undersized urchin was mastheaded on an abnormally high stool)
into an inner one, where a red-nosed man sat at the far side of a large
double desk.
"My friend Mr. Backhouse," said Lowndes, introducing the red-nosed man.
"We're not partners; not even in the same line of business; but we
share the office between us, and the clerks, too--don't we, Bacchus?"
The red-nosed man grinned at his blotting-pad, and Harry perceived that
the "clerks" consisted of the small child in the outer office.
"I noticed your name down below in the passage," said Harry to Mr.
Backhouse, "but I couldn't see yours, Mr. Lowndes. I nearly went away
again."
"Ah! it's in Backhouse's name we have the office; it suits my hand to
keep mine out of it. I'm playing a deep game, Ringrose--one of the
deepest that ever was played in the City of London. I stand to win a
million of money!"
Lowndes had assumed an air of suitable subtlety and mystery; his eyes
were half-closed behind their gold-rimmed lenses, and he nodded his
head slowly and impressively as he stood with his back to the
fireplace. Harry noticed that he still wore the shabby frock-coat, and
that his trousers were as baggy as ever at the knees. He could not help
asking how the deep game was progressing.
"Slowly, Ringrose, slowly, but as surely as the stride of time itself.
My noble Earl is up in the Highlands with his yacht. Insisted on
looking into the thing with his own eyes. That's what's keeping us all,
but I expect him back in another week, and then, Ringrose, you may
throw up your hat; for I have not the slightest shadow of a doubt as to
the result of the old chap's investigations."
Here the clock struck four, and the red-nosed man, who had also a stiff
leg, put on his hat, and stumped out of the office.
"Now we can talk," said Lowndes, shutting the door, giving Harry a
chair, and sitting down himself. "He'll be gone ten minutes. It's his
whisky-time; he has a Scotch whisky every hour as regularly as the
clock strikes. Wonderful man, Bacchus, for I never saw him a penn'orth
the worse. Some day he'll go pop. But never mind him, Ringrose, and
never mind the Company; tell us how the world's been using you, my boy;
that's more to the point."
So Harry told him about the accepted verses, and Gordon Lowndes not
only promised to tell his daughter, but was himself most emphatic in
encouraging Harry to go on as he had begun. It might be his true
vocation after all. If he wrote a book and made a hit it would be a
better thing even than the Secretaryship of the H.C.S. & T.S.A. The
delay there was particularly hard lines on Harry. Lowndes only hoped he
was letting no chances slip meanwhile.
"It is always conceivable," said he, "that my aristocratic directors
may each have a loafing younger son whom they may want to shove into
the billet. You may depend upon me, Ringrose, to resist such jobbery
tooth-and-nail; but, if I were you, I wouldn't refuse the substance for
the shadow; you could always chuck it up, you know, and join us just
the same."
"Then you won't be offended," said Harry, greatly relieved, "if I tell
you that I have had one or two other irons in the fire?"
"Offended, my boy? I should think you a duffer if you had not."
In another minute Harry had made a clean breast of his other journeys
to the City, and was recounting the latest of those miserable
experiences when Lowndes cut him short.
"What!" cried he, "your father paid for the fellow's stamps, and he
refused to pay for yours?"
"We never got so far as that," said Harry bitterly. "He wanted a
premium with me, and that settled it. He said three hundred guineas was
the usual thing, but in consideration of certain obligations he had
once been under to my father (he wasn't such a fool as to go into
particulars), he would take me for a hundred and fifty. And he made a
tremendous favour of that. He expected me to go down on my knees with
gratitude, I daresay, but I just told him that a hundred and fifty was
as far beyond me as three hundred, and said good afternoon and came
away. Mind you, I don't blame him. Why should I expect so much for so
little? He's no worse than any of the rest; they're all the same, and I
don't blame any of them. Who am I that I should go asking favours of
any one of them? My God, I've asked my last!"
"You're your father's son, that's who you are," said Gordon Lowndes.
"What your father did for this skunk of a solicitor, he should be the
first man to do for you. What's his name, by the way?"
"Phipps."
"Not Wintour Phipps?"
Harry nodded; and his nod turned up every light in the other's
expressive face. Gordon Lowndes seized his hat and was on his legs in
an instant, as radiant and as eager as when he set out to chasten and
correct Harry's tailors. Such little punitive crusades were in fact the
salt and pepper of his existence.
"My boy," he cried, "I've known Wintour Phipps for years. I know enough
to strike Wintour Phipps off the rolls to-morrow. I guess he'll do
anything for me, will Wintour Phipps! So you sit just as tight as wax
till I come back. I shan't be long." And he was gone before Harry
grasped his meaning sufficiently to interfere. For the young fellow was
apt to be slow-witted when taken by surprise: and though he ran
headlong down the stairs a minute later, he was only in time to see
Lowndes dive into a hansom on the other side of the crowded street, and
be driven away.
He could do nothing now. He was annoyed with Lowndes, and yet the man
meant well--by Harry, at all events Others might take him as they found
him, and call him a scamp if they chose. Very possibly he was one;
indeed, on his own showing, in his own stories, he was nothing else.
But he had a kind heart, and Harry's needs and rebuffs inclined him to
rate a sympathetic rogue far higher in the moral scale than a callous
paragon. Whatever else might be said of Lowndes, there was no end to
the trouble he would take for another. Even when he insisted on doing
what the person most concerned would have had him leave undone (as in
this instance), it was impossible not to feel grateful to him for doing
anything at all. His unselfish enthusiasm in other people's causes was
beyond all praise. He might not be a good man, but that was a virtue
which many a good man had not.
Still Harry was annoyed. What Gordon Lowndes had gone to say to Wintour
Phipps he could only conjecture; but the object was plainly
intercessory, and Harry hated the thought of such intercession on his
behalf. There was nothing for it, however, but to climb upstairs again
(he had done so), and patiently to await the return of Lowndes. So the
afternoon passed. Mr. Backhouse stumped in, took his hat off, wrote
letters, reached his hat, and stumped out again. But still no Lowndes.
"Good-night," said Harry to the retreating Bacchus.
"Oh, I'm not going--I shall be back directly," replied that methodical
man. "I have a little business down below." And he was back in ten
minutes, sucking his moustache, and followed almost immediately by
Gordon Lowndes, who stalked into the room with an air which Harry had
not before seen him affect. His triumph was self-evident, but it was
beautifully suppressed. He put down his hat with exasperating
deliberation, and then stood beaming at Harry through his glasses.
"Well?" said Harry.
"It's all right," said Lowndes, very quietly, as of a foregone
conclusion: "you may start work to-morrow, Ringrose. Our friend Phipps
will be only too glad to have you. He will pay for the stamps for your
articles, and, so far from charging you a premium, he will give you a
small salary from the beginning. It won't be much, but then articled
clerks as a rule get nothing. Our friend Phipps is going to make an
exception in your case--and just you let me know when he treats you
again as he did this afternoon. He never will! You'll find him tame
enough now. You're to go to him again to-morrow morning; and you see if
he don't receive you with open arms!"
"But why?" cried Harry. "What have you said?"
"What have I said? Well, I reminded him of a trifling incident which
there was no need to remind him of at all, for the mere thought of it
turned him pale the moment he saw me. So I took the liberty of showing
him what might still happen if he didn't do exactly what I wanted about
you. My boy, the thing was settled in two minutes. A rising young
fellow like Wintour Phipps is not the man to be struck off the rolls if
he knows it! But I wasn't coming away without having the whole thing
down in black and white, and here it is."
From his inner pocket he took out a long blue envelope and slapped it
down on the desk.
"May I see?" said Harry in a throbbing voice.
"Certainly; it's your business now, not mine."
Harry ran his eye over the brief document. Then he looked up.
"It's my business now--not yours?"
"To be sure."
"Then I'm very much obliged to you, Mr. Lowndes, but here's an end of
it."
He tore the paper twice across, and carefully dropped it into the
waste-paper basket. Then he looked up again. And he had never seen
Lowndes really pale until that moment, nor really red until the next.
Yet the storm passed over after all.
"Well--upon--my--soul!" said Gordon Lowndes, very slowly, but with more
humour and less wrath in each successive word. "And you're the man who
wanted a billet!"
"I want one still, but not on such terms. I'd rather starve."
"There's no accounting for taste."
"But I'm very sorry, I am indeed, that you should have troubled
yourself to no purpose," continued Harry, holding out his hand with
genuine emotion. "It was awfully good of you, and I shall never forget
it."
"Nonsense--nonsense!" said Lowndes sharply. "Don't name it, my good
fellow. We all look at these things differently--don't we, Bacchus? You
wouldn't have had any scruples, would you? No more would I, my boy, I
tell you frankly. But don't name it again. It was no trouble at all,
and, even if it had been, there's nothing I wouldn't do for any of you,
Ringrose, and now you know it. Hurt my feelings? Not a bit of it, my
dear boy, I'm only frightened I hurt yours. Good night, good night, and
my love to the old lady. Cut away home and tell her I've no more
principles than Bacchus has brains!"
But Harry thought the matter over in the Underground; and it was many a
day before he mentioned it at the flat.