CHAPTER I.
THE OLD HOME.
Harry Ringrose came of age on the happiest morning of his life. He wason dry land at last, and flying north at fifty miles an hour instead ofat some insignificant and yet precarious number of knots. He would beat home to eat his birthday breakfast after all; and half the night hesat awake in a long ecstasy of grateful retrospect and deliciousanticipation, as one by one the familiar stations were hailed and leftbehind, each an older friend than the last, and each a deadlier enemyto sleep. Worn out by excitement, however, he lay down for a minutebetween Crewe and Warrington, and knew no more until the guard came tohim at the little junction across the Westmoreland border. Harrystarted up, the early sun in his sleepy eyes, and for an instant thefirst-class smoking-compartment was his state-room aboard the ship_Sobraon_, and the guard one of his good friends the officers. Thenwith a rush of exquisite joy the glorious truth came home to him, andhe was up and out that instant--the happiest and the luckiest youngrascal in the land.
It was the 19th of May, and a morning worthy the month and theoccasion. The sun had risen in a flawless sky, and the dear old Englishbirds were singing on all sides of the narrow platform, as HarryRingrose stretched his spindle-legs upon it and saw his baggage out ofthe long lithe express and into the little clumsy local which was tocarry him home. The youth was thin and tall, yet not ungainly, with athatch of very black hair, but none upon his sun-burnt face. He wasshabbily dressed, his boots were down at heel and toe, there werebuttons missing from his old tweed coat, and he wore a celluloid collarwith his flannel shirt. On the other hand, he was travellingfirst-class, and the literary supplies tucked under his arm had costthe extravagant fellow several shillings at Euston book-stall. Yet hehad very little money in his pocket. He took it all out to count. Itamounted to five shillings and sixpence exactly, of which he gavehalf-a-crown to the guard for waking him, and a shilling to a porterhere at the junction, before continuing his journey in the littletrain. This left him a florin, and that florin was all the money hepossessed in the world.
He was, however, the only child of a father who would give him as muchas he wanted, and, what was rarer, of one with sufficient sense ofhumour to appreciate the prodigal's return without a penny in hispocket or a decent garment on his back. Whether his people would beequally pleased at being taken completely by surprise was not quite socertain. They might say he ought to have let them know what ship he wascoming by, or at least have sent a telegram on landing. Yet all alonghe had undertaken to be home for his twenty-first birthday, and itwould only have made them anxious to know that he had trusted himselfto a sailing-vessel. Fifty days instead of twenty from the Cape! It hadnearly cost him his word; but, now that it was over, the narrow marginmade the joke all the greater; and Harry Ringrose loved a joke betterthan most things in the world.
The last two years of his life had been a joke from beginning to end:for in the name of health he had been really seeking adventure andundergoing the most unnecessary hardships for the fun of talking aboutthem for the rest of his days. He pictured the first dinner-party afterhis return, and the faces of some dozen old friends when they heard ofthe leopards under the house, the lion in the moonlight, and (when theladies had withdrawn) of the notorious murderer with whom Harry hadoften dined. They should perceive that the schoolboy they rememberedwas no longer anything of the sort, but a man of the world who had seenmore of it than themselves. It is true that for a man of the worldHarry Ringrose was still somewhat youthfully taken up with himself andhis experiences; but his heart was rich with love of those to whom hewas returning, and his mind much too simple to be aware of its ownegotism. He only knew that he was getting nearer and nearer home, andthat the joy of it was almost unendurable.
His face was to the carriage window, his native air streamed down histhroat and blew a white lane through his long black hair. Miles ofgreen dales rushed past under a network of stone walls, to change soonto mines and quarries, which in their turn developed into furnaces andworks, until all at once the sky was no longer blue and the land nolonger green. And when Harry Ringrose looked out of the oppositewindow, it was across grimy dunes that stretched to a breakwater builtof slag, with a discoloured sea beyond.
The boy rolled up his rug and changed his cap for a villainous sombreropreserved for the occasion. He then made a selection from his lavishsupply of periodical literature, and when he next looked out the trainwas running in the very shadow of some furnaces in full blast. Themorning sun looked cool and pale behind their monstrous fires, andHarry took off the sombrero to his father's ironworks, though with arather grim eye, which saw the illuminated squalor of the scene withoutappreciating its prosperity. Sulphurous flames issued from all fourfurnaces; at one of the four they were casting as the train passed, andthe molten incandescent stream ran white as the wire of an electriclight.
After the works came rank upon rank of workmen's streets running rightand left of the line; then the ancient and historic quarter of thetown, with its granite houses and its hilly streets, all much as it hadbeen a hundred years before the discovery of iron-stone enriched andpolluted a fair countryside. Then the level-crossing, without acreature at the gates at such an hour; finally a blank drab platformwith the long loose figure of the head-porter standing out upon it asthe homeliest sight of all. Harry clapped him on the cap as the traindrew up; but either the man had forgotten him, or he was offended, forhe came forward without a smile.
"Well, David, how are you? Your hand, man, your hand! I'm back from thewilds. Don't you know me?"
"I do now, sir."
"That's right! It does me good to see an old face like yours. Gentlywith this green box, David, it's full of ostrich-eggs, that's why I hadit in the carriage. There's four more in the van; inspan the lot tillwe send in for them, will you? I mean to walk up myself. Come, gently,I say!"
The porter had dropped the green box clumsily, and now sought to coverhis confusion by saying that the sight of Master Harry, that altered,had taken him all aback. Young Ringrose was justly annoyed; he hadtaken such care of that green box for so many weeks. But he did notwithhold the florin, which was being pocketed for a penny when the mansaw what it was and handed it back.
"What, not enough for you?" cried Harry.
"No, sir, too much."
The boy stared and laughed.
"Don't be an ass, David; I don't come home from Africa every day! Ifyou'd been with me you'd think yourself lucky to get home at all! Youjust inspan those boxes, and we'll send for them after breakfast."
The man mumbled that it was not worth two shillings. Harry said thatwas his business. The porter hung his head.
"I--I may have broken them eggs."
"Oh, well, if you have, two bob won't mend 'em; cling on to it, man,and don't drop them again."
The loose-limbed porter turned away with the coin, but without a word,while Harry went off in high good-humour, though a little puzzled bythe man's manner. It was not a time to think twice of trifles, however,and, at all events, he had achieved the sportsmanlike feat of emptyinghis pockets of their last coin. He strode out of the station with amerry, ringing tread. Half the town heard him as he went whistlingthrough the streets and on to the outlying roads.
The one he took was uphill and countrified. High hedgerows bloomed oneither hand, and yet you could hear the sea, and sometimes see it, andon this side of the town it was blue and beautiful. Our wayfarer metbut one other, a youth of his own age, with whom he had played andfought since infancy, though the families had never been intimate.Harry halted and held out his hand, which was ignored, the otherpassing with his nose in the air, and a tin can swinging at his side,on his way to some of the works. Harry coloured up and said a hard wordsoftly. Then he remembered how slow his old friend the porter had beento recognise him; and he began to think he must have grown up out ofknowledge. Besides accounting for what would otherwise have been aninexplicable affront, the thought pleased and flattered him. He strodeon serenely as before, sniffing the Irish Sea
at every step.
He passed little lodges and great gates with never a glance at the finehouses within: for to Harry Ringrose this May morning there were butone house and one garden in all England. To get to them he broke atlast into a run, and only stopped when the crest of the hill broughthim, breathless, within sight of both. There was the long front wall,with the gates at one end, the stables at the other, and the freshleaves bulging over every intervening brick. And down the hill, behindthe trees, against the sea, were the windows, the gables, the chimneys,that he had been dreaming of for two long years.
His eyes filled with a sudden rush of tears. "Thank God!" he mutteredbrokenly, and stood panting in the road, with bowed bare head andtwitching lips. He could not have believed that the mere sight of homewould so move him. He advanced in an altered spirit, a sense of his ownunworthiness humbling him, a hymn of thanksgiving in his heart.
And now the very stones were eloquent, and every yard marked by somelandmark forgotten for two years, and yet familiar as ever at the firstglance. Here was the mark a drunken cabman had left on the gatepost inHarry's school-days; there the disused summerhouse with the windowstill broken by which Harry had escaped when locked in by the veryyouth who had just cut him on the road. The drive struck him as alittle more overgrown. The trees were greener than he had ever knownthem, the bank of rhododendrons a mass of pink without precedent in hisrecollection; but then it was many years since Harry had seen the placeso late in May, for he had gone out to Africa straight from school.
As for the dear house, the creepers had spread upon the ruddy stone andthe tiles had mellowed, but otherwise there seemed to be no change. Itwould look its old self when the blinds were up: meantime Harry fixedhis eyes upon those behind which his parents would still be fastasleep, and he wondered, idly at first, why they had given up sleepingwith a window open. It had been their practice all the year round; andthe house had been an early-rising house; yet not a fire waslighted--not a chimney smoking--not a window open--not a blinddrawn--though close upon seven o'clock by the silver watch that hadbeen with Harry through all his adventures.
His hand shook as he put the watch back in his pocket. The possibilityof his parents being away--of his surprise recoiling upon himself--hadnever occurred to him until now. How could they be away? They neverdreamt of going away before the autumn. Besides, he had told them hewas coming home in time to keep his birthday. They were not away--theywere not--they were not!
Yet there he stood--in the sweep of the drive--but a few yards from thesteps--and yet afraid to ring and learn the truth! As though the truthmust be terrible; as though it would be a tragedy if they did happen tobe from home!
It would serve him right if they were.
So at last, with such a smile as a man may force on the walk to thegallows, Harry Ringrose dragged himself slowly to the steps, and stillmore slowly up them; for they were dirty; and something else about theentrance was different, though he could not at first tell what. It wasnot the bell, which he now pulled, and heard clanging in the kitchenloud enough to rouse the house; he was still wondering what it was whenthe last slow tinkling cut his speculations short.
Strange how so small a sound should carry all the way from the kitchen!
He rang again before peering through one of the narrow ruby panes thatlighted the porch on each side of the door. He could see no fartherthan the wall opposite, for the inner door was to the right, and in therich crimson light the porch looked itself at first sight. Thensimultaneously Harry missed the mat, the hat stand, a stag's antlers;and in another instant he knew what it was that had struck him asdifferent about the entrance. He ought not to have been able to peerthrough that coloured light at all. The sill should have supported thestatuette of Night which matched a similar representation of Morning onthe other side of the door. Both were gone; and the distant bell, stillpealing lustily from his second tug, was breaking the silence of anempty house.
Harry was like a man waking from a trance: the birds sang loud in hisears, the sun beat hot on his back, while he himself stood staring athis own black shadow on the locked door, and wondering what it was, forit never moved. Then, in a sudden frenzy, he struck his hand throughthe ruby glass, and plucked out the pieces the putty still held inplace, until he was able to squeeze through bodily. Blood dripped fromhis fingers and smeared the handle of the unlocked inner door as heseized and turned it and sprang within. The hall was empty. The stairswere bare.
He ran into room after room; all were stripped from floor to ceiling.The sun came in rods through the drawn blinds: on the walls were themarks of the pictures: on the floors, a stray straw here and there.
He cried aloud and railed in his agony. He shouted through the house,and his voice came back to him from the attics. Suddenly, in a grate,he espied a printed booklet. It was an auctioneer's list. The sale hadtaken place that very month.
The calmness of supreme misery now stole over Harry Ringrose, and hesaw that his fingers were bleeding over the auctioneer's list. He tookout his handkerchief and wiped them carefully--he had no tears tostaunch--and bound up the worst finger with studious deliberation.Apathy succeeded frenzy, and, utterly dazed, he sat down on the stairs,for there was nowhere else to sit, and for some minutes the only soundin the empty house was the turning of the leaves of the auctioneer'slist.
Suddenly he leapt to his feet: another sound had broken the silence,and it was one that he seemed to have heard only yesterday: a sound sofamiliar in his home, so home-like in itself, that it seemed even nowto give the lie to his wild and staring eyes.
It was the sound of wheels in the gravel drive.