Young Blood

"I am waiting to hear."

"'Money lost – little lost.'"

"It's easy to say that."

"'Honour lost – much lost.'"

"I call it everything."

"No, mother, wait! 'Pluck lost – all lost!' It's only pluck that's everything. We must never lose that, mother, we must never lose that!"

"God grant we never may."

CHAPTER V

A WET BLANKET

The morning sun filled the front rooms of the flat, and the heavy hearts within were the lighter for its cheery rays. Sorrow may outlive the night, and small joy come in the morning; but yet, if you are young and sanguine, and the month be May, and the heavens unspotted, and the air nectar, then you may suddenly find yourself thrilling with an unwarrantable delight in mere life, and that in the very midst of life's miseries. It was so with young Harry Ringrose, on the morning following his tragic home-coming; it was even so with Harry's mother, who was as young at heart as her boy, and fully as sanguine in temperament. They had come down from the high ground of the night. The everyday mood had supervened. Harry was unpacking his ostrich eggs in the narrow passage, and thoroughly enjoying a pipe; in her own room his mother sat cleaning her silver, incredible contentment in her face, because her boy was in and out all the morning, and the little flat was going to bring them so close together.

"That's the lot," said Harry when the bed was covered with the eggs. "Now, mother, which do you think the best pair?"

"They all look the same to me."

"They are not. Look at this pair in my hands. Can't you see that they're much bigger and finer than the rest?"

"I daresay they are."

"They're for you, mother, these two."

And he set them on the table among the spoons and forks and plate-powder. She kissed him, but looked puzzled.

"What shall you do with the rest?"

"Sell them! Five shillings a pair; five tens are fifty; that's two-pound-ten straight away."

"I won't have you sell them!"

"They are mine, mother, and I must."

"You'll be sorry for it when you have a good situation."

"Ah, when!" said Harry, and he was out again with a laugh.

A noise of breaking wood came from the passage. He was opening another case. His mother frowned at her miniature in the spoon she had in hand, and when he returned, brandishing a brace of Kaffir battle-axes, she would hardly look at them.

"I feel sure Wintour Phipps would take you into his office," said Mrs. Ringrose.

"I never heard of him. Who is he?"

"A solicitor; your father paid for his stamps when he was articled."

"An old friend, then?"

"Not of mine, for I never saw him; but he was your father's godson."

"It comes to the same thing, and I can't go to him, mother. Face old friends I cannot! You and I are starting afresh, dear; I'm prepared to answer every advertisement in the papers, and to take any work I can get, but not to go begging favours of people who would probably cut us in the street. I don't expect to get a billet instantly; that's why I mean to sell all this truck – for the benefit of the firm."

"You had much better write an article about your experiences, and get it into some magazine, as you said you would last night."

Indeed, they had discussed every possible career in the night, among others that of literature, which the mother deemed her son competent to follow on the strength of certain contributions to his school magazine, and of the winning parody in some prize competition of ancient history. He now said he would try his hand on the article some day, but it would take time, and would anybody accept it when written? That was the question, said Harry, and his mother had a characteristic answer.

"If you wrote to the Editor of Uncle Tom's Magazine," said she, "and told him you had taken it in as long as you could remember – I bought in the bound volumes for you, my boy – I feel sure that he would accept it and pay for it too."

"Well, we'll see," said Harry, with a laugh. "Meanwhile we must find somebody to accept all these curios, and to pay for them. I see no room for them here."

"There is certainly very little."

"I wonder who would be the best people to go to?"

Mrs. Ringrose considered.

"I should try Whitbreds," said she at last, "since you are so set upon it. They sell everything; and I have had all my groceries from them for so many years that they can hardly refuse to take something from us."

To the simple-hearted lady, whom fifty years had failed to sophisticate, there seemed nothing unreasonable in the expectations which she formed of others, for they were one and all founded upon the almost fanatical loyalty which was a guiding impulse of her own warm heart. In her years of plenty it was ever the humblest friend who won her warmest welcome, and the lean years to come proved powerless to check this generous spirit. Mrs. Ringrose would be illogically staunch to tradesmen whom she had dealt with formerly, and would delight their messengers with unnecessary gratuities because she had been accustomed to give all her life; but so unconscious was she of undue liberality on her part that she was apt to credit others with her own extravagance in charity, and to feel it bitterly when not done by as perhaps she alone would have done. It simply astounded her when three of her husband's old friends, who had in no way suffered by him, successively refused her secret supplication for a desk for her boy in their offices: she would herself have slept on the floor to have given the child of any one of them a bed in her little flat.

But the treadmill round in search of work was not yet begun, though Harry was soon enough to find himself upon the wheel. Even as he unpacked his native weapons a weighty step was ascending the common stair, and the electric bell rang long and aggressively just as Mrs. Ringrose decided that it would be worth her son's while to let his trophies go for fifty pounds.

"A tall man in a topper!" whispered Harry, bursting quietly in. "I saw him through the ground glass; who can it be?"

"Your Uncle Spencer," said Mrs. Ringrose, looking straight at Harry over the wash-leather and the mustard-pot.

"Uncle Spencer!" Harry looked aghast. "What's bringing him, mother?"

"I wrote to him directly I got the telegram."

"You never said so!"

"No; I knew you wouldn't be pleased."

"Need I see him?"

"It is you he has come to see. Go, my boy; take him into the sitting-room, and I will join you when you have had your talk. Meanwhile, remember that he is your mother's brother, and will exert his influence to get you a situation; he has come so promptly, I shouldn't be surprised if he has got you one already! And you are letting him ring twice!"

Indeed, the avuncular thumb had already pressed the button longer than was either necessary or polite, and Harry went to the door with feelings which he had difficulty in concealing as he threw it open. Uncle Spencer stood without in a stiff attitude and in sombre clerical attire; he beheld his nephew without the glimmer of a smile on his funereal, bearded countenance, while his large hand was slow in joining Harry's, and its pressure perfunctory.

"So sorry to keep you waiting, but – but I forgot we hadn't a servant," fibbed Harry to be polite. "Do come in, Uncle Spencer."

"I thought nobody could be at home," was the one remark with which the clergyman entered; and Harry sighed as he heard that depressing voice again.