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."