CHAPTER XXIV.
YOUNG INK.
So it was that Harry Ringrose took finally to his pen towards the closeof the most momentous year of his existence; for four years from thatdate there was but one sort of dramatic interest in his life. There wasthe dramatic interest of the electric bell; and that was all.
In the early days, when the roll of the little steel drum broke asilence or cut short a speech, the eyes of mother and son would meetinvoluntarily with the same look. Her needles would cease clicking. Hispen would spring from the unfinished word. Each had the other'sthought, and neither uttered it. Many a man had fled the country in hispanic, to pluck up courage and return in his cooler senses. Many a maneffaced himself for a time, but few for ever. The ironmaster's lastletter confessed flight and promised self-effacement. He might havethought better of it--that might be he at the bell. One of the twowithin got over this feeling in time; the other never did.
The dogged plodder at the desk endured other heartburnings of which thelittle steel drum beat the signal. Knockers these flats had not, andthe postman usually rang a second before he thrust the letter throughthe door. It was a breathless second for Harry Ringrose. He developedan incredibly fine ear for what came through. He was never deceived inthe thud of a rejected manuscript. He used to vow that a proof fellwith peculiar softness, and, later, that a press-cutting wasunmistakable because you could not hear it fall. He had an essay on thesubject in his second book, published when he was twenty-five.
His first book had been one of the minor successes of its season. Ithad made a small, a very small, name for Harry, but had developed hischaracter more than his fame. It is an ominous coincidence, however,that in conception his first book was as barefaced and as cold-bloodedas his first verses in _Uncle Tom's Magazine_.
For nearly three years he had been writing up, for as many guineas aspossible, those African anecdotes which he had brought home with himfor conversational purposes. In this way he had wasted much excellentmaterial, to which, however, he was not too proud to return when heknew better. Heaven knows how many times he used the lion in themoonlight and his friend the Portuguese murderer of Zambesi blacks. Onewould have thought--he thought himself--that he had squeezed the lastdrop from his African orange, when one fine day he saw the way to makethe pulp pay better than the juice. It was not his own way. It was theway of the greatest humorist then living. Harry took the whole of histwo years abroad, and eyed them afresh from that humorist's point ofview, as he apprehended it. He saw the things the great man would haveseized upon, and the way it seemed to Harry he would have treated them.The result was a comic lion in the moonlight, and a more or lessamusing murderer. He had treated these things tragically hitherto.
The book purported to be fact, and was certainly not fiction, forwhich, indeed, our young author had no definite aptitude. It earned himan ambiguous compliment from various reviewers who insisted on dubbinghim the English So-and-so; but it was lucky for Harry that the newhumour was then an unmade phrase. His humour was not new, but thatwould not have saved it from the category. It was keen enough, however,in its way, and not too desperately subtle for the man on theknifeboard. Yet Harry's first book, after "going" for a few weeks,showed a want of staying power, and was but a very moderate successafter all. A few papers hailed Mr. Ringrose as the humorist for whomEngland had been sighing since the death of Charles Dickens, andpredicted that his book would be the book of the season and of manyseasons to come. Such enthusiasm was inevitable from organs which letloose at least one genius a week; but Harry did not realise theinevitability all at once. For a week or two he could not give his namein a shop without a wholly unnecessary blush; while he took his motherto look at empty houses in West End squares, thanks to indiscriminatepraise from irresponsible quarters. On the whole, however, Harry had noreason to complain of the treatment accorded to his first-born; and, todescend to lower details, he sold the copyright for a small sum, whichwas, nevertheless, quite as much as the publishers could possibly havemade out of it.
But it was in indirect ways that this book did most for Harry Ringrose.It made new friends for him at a time when his acquaintance was badlyin need of some fresh blood. Years of immersion in solitary work mustnarrow and may warp a man; and the almost exclusive companionship ofhis dear mother, whose only interest he was in the present, and whovastly overrated his merits, was a joy too great not to be purchased ata price. It kept the lad's heart tender and his life of fair report,but it tended to monopolise his sympathies, and it did not increase hisknowledge of the outside world. In the world of letters he had made butone friend in those first three years. This was a youth of Harry's ownage, who, with a board-school education, was on the staff of an eveningpaper, in a position which the public-school boy was certainly notcompetent to fill. Harry stormed this fortress with a little article on"Portuguese Africa"--which the Editor would label "By anAfrikander"--and the acquaintance was struck up outside thatgentleman's door. It ripened in a bar to which the young fellows usedto repair whenever Harry was in the Strand. There, over a glass ofbitter--or two--or three--he used to hear at first hand of the greatnovelists whom he longed to meet, but with whom his friend thejournalist seemed on enviable terms. It was merely that the latter wasin the heart of the big game, whereas Harry was playing a very littlegame of his own, in an exceedingly remote corner of the field.
His book was not a huge success, but it succeeded well enough to takehim out of his corner. His friend the journalist (who managed to reviewthe thing himself in his paper) wrote to tell Harry of a distinguishedlady who was so enchanted with it that she begged him to take theauthor to see her. Harry had no means of knowing that the lady'senchantment was as chronic as the enthusiasm of the paper which hadhailed him as a genius, and that the demand was not for himself, butfor the latest name. He was still a very simple-minded person, and hewaited on this lady with all alacrity, and under her wing made his bowin the sort of society of which he had heard with envy in the Gaietybar. It cannot be said, however, that he did anybody much credit; hehad been too long in his corner, and had an awkward manner when notperfectly at home. Yet a number of other ladies asked him to go and seethem, and one invited him to dinner at her smart house--where thewretched Harry distinguished himself by freezing into a solid block ofself-consciousness and hardly opening his mouth.
But it was all very valuable experience, and, instead of two or three,he knew a good many people by the end of that winter. He became amember of a club, and got on intimate terms with men whose names andwork had become familiar to him in these years. They enlarged hissympathies--they extended his boundaries on every side. And they madehim know himself as he had not known himself before. All at once herealised that he had fewer interests than other men, that his nose hadbeen too close to his own grindstone, that the mind he had been slavingto develop had grown narrow in the process. It was a rather bitterdiscovery, until one day it struck him there was another side tonarrowness, and he sat down and began his "Plea for Narrow Minds" onthe spot. This article secured a better place in the periodicals thananything Harry Ringrose had then written. It attracted some attentionduring the month of its appearance, and even on republication in hissecond book. But it was generally considered a frivolous adventure inmere paradox (on a par with a companion paper "On Enjoying BadHealth"), whereas it was really a reaction against the writer's ownself-criticism.
"Cant is not necessarily humbug," declared our scribe, "and there isprobably less hypocrisy in the cant of breadth than in any other kindof cant. It may spring from a laudable ambition to be on the side ofthe good angels in all things. But it is apt to crystallise in a pose.For my part, when I meet a typically broad-minded man, who sees good ineverybody and merit in everything, either I suspect his sincerity or Idoubt his depth. I want to know if he is saying (_a_) what he thinks,or (_b_) what he thinks he ought to think. Either he is insincere and aprig, or he means what he says and is shallow. Those wonderfully widesympathies are too often sympathy spread thin. The odds are aga
instyour being very deep as well as very broad."
There were those critics who remarked that the sapient essayist cameunder both his own categories, whereupon Harry lay awake all nightwondering whether he did. And it was "A Plea for Narrow Minds" thatdrew from Miss Lowndes the letter which she never posted, but whichcame into Harry's hands long afterwards. She agreed with him in part,but by no means on the whole; in fact, her letter was a remonstrance,written impulsively in a dainty boudoir of Berkeley Square, and foundlong afterwards in an escritoire. Harry often wondered whether thewoman he loved ever read what he wrote. She read everything he signed,and would never have dropped _Tommy Tiddler_ had she dreamt he wasstill a comic singer in its columns. But Harry saw nothing and heardbut little of his quondam friends. He knew they lived in BerkeleySquare--he knew they were very rich. He had heard of the dividend theCrofter Fisheries were paying, and what he would have to give now forthe shares which he had committed to the flames. He had also read_Truth's_ opinion of the concern, and wondered why the action for soobvious a libel hung fire. He sometimes wondered, too, how it was thathe never met either the father or the daughter from whom he had severedwith such different emotions on the same thick November day. He did notknow that the daughter once fled from a party on hearing he wasexpected--and was sorry afterwards.
Curiously enough, the very article which failed to gain the goodopinion he coveted most, was so fortunate as to secure that of Harry'smost severe and least respected critic. The Reverend Spencer Walthewread religion between the lines, and, having written to thank hisnephew for his spirited though veiled attack on the Broad Church party,concluded by begging him to have a go at the Ritualists.
"I have seldom had a more unexpected pleasure," wrote the Evangelicaldivine, "than you have given me by this shrewd blow against the vice oftolerance and the ultra-charitable spirit which I regard as one of thegreat dangers of the age. We want no charity for the heretic and theritualist--with whom I trust you will deal unmercifully without delay.I cannot conclude, Henry, without telling you what a relief it is to meto see you at last turning your attention to serious subjects. I feelsure that they are the only ones worthy of a Christian's pen. I havenever concealed from you my pain and disgust at the levity of almostall your writings hitherto, although I have tried to do justice to theliterary quality, which, on the whole, has been distinctly better thanmight have been expected. It is the greater pleasure to me, therefore,to recognise the serious purpose and the lofty aim of your latestessay. May you never again descend to 'humorous' accounts of your'adventures,' or to inferior versifying for papers which are not to beseen in respectable houses!"
Harry, however, had never ceased his connection with the _Tiddler_,although it was not one of the things he mentioned to the notoriousinterviewer who came to patronise him in those days, and to whom hecaught his mother showing the parody on Gray's Elegy. _T.T._ had been agood friend to Harry at the foot of the hill, and he was not going todesert just yet, even if he could have afforded to do so. Of the L5110s. 9d. which he managed to make in the first year, L34 4s. was fromthe _Tiddler's_ coffers; of the third year's L223 14s. 6d. (a mightyleap from the intermediate year), L55 12s. was from the same genialsource. And so we find him towards the end of the fourth year--notquite such a good one as the last--fighting hard to touch the secondhundred for the second time, and writing verses in his pyjamas atmidnight at the close of a long day's work on an ungrateful book.
The flat is no longer that in which Harry Ringrose found his mother; itis a slightly larger one in the same mansions on a higher floor; andinstead of Weber's Last Waltz, a lusty youth, who arrived there on thesame night as Harry, supplies the unsolicited accompaniment inseparablefrom life in a flat.
Only one room has been gained by the change; but in it sleeps aservant, an old retainer of the family; and the sitting-room is larger,so that there is ample room in it for the rather luxurious desk whichHarry has bought himself, and at which we find him seated, his back tothe books and his nose in his rhyming dictionary, taking his mosttrivial task seriously, as was ever his wont, on a warm night in themiddle of September.
He is a little altered--not much. He is thicker set; the legs in thepyjamas are less lean. His face is older, but still extremely young. Hehas tried to grow a moustache, but failed, and given it up; and the twoblots of whisker show that he has no candid girl friend now; and theblue stubble on his chin means that his mother is away. His black hairinclines to length, not altogether because he thinks it looksinteresting, but chiefly because he has been too busy to get it cut. Hehas not yet affected the _pince-nez_ or the spectacles of the averageliterary man. But he is smoking at his desk; he will be smokingpresently in his bed; and on a small table stand a bottle of whisky anda syphon.
Suddenly a ring at the bell.
At half-past twelve at night a prolonged tattoo on the little steeldrum!
Harry was greatly startled, as a man may easily be who is working atnight after working all day. Yet he would have been much more startledthe September before.
Since then his books had come out, and he had made a number of friends.Only the night before a play-actor had looked in after his "show," andthey had sat up reading Keats against Shelley, and capping Swinburnewith Rossetti, until the whisky was finished and daylight shamed themin their cups. Harry thoroughly enjoyed a Bohemian life in his mother'sabsence, though indeed she let him do exactly as he liked when she wasthere. Was it the actor again, or was it....
Not for months had the old fancy seized him with the ringing of thebell. It was only the lateness of the hour which brought it backto-night. Yet the look with which the young fellow rose was one that hewore often enough when there were none to see. It was a look of uttermisery barbed with shame unspeakable and undying. Sometimes the motherhad seen it--and taken the shame and the misery for his share of theircommon hidden grief. She little knew!
The gas was burning in the passage, but lowered on the common landingoutside. Harry could see nothing through the ground glass which formedthe upper portion of the door. He flung it open. A tall man wasstanding on the mat.
"Good evening, Mr. Ringrose," said he, and took a tremendous pinch ofsnuff as Harry drew back in dismay.
It was Jeremiah Scrafton.