And Lowndes let out a roar of laughter that might have been heard throughout the mansions; but Harry looked at his mother, who was smiling over her knitting, before he allowed himself to smile and to ask what had happened.
“Your mother had written to tell him I was going to call,” said Lowndes, wiping the tears from his eyes, “and when I did go he wanted proof of my identity because I didn’t happen to have a card on me. I suppose he thought I looked a shady cuss, so he took it into his head I wasn’t the real Simon Pure. You see, there’s nothing rash about your uncle; as for me, I burst out laughing in his face, and that made matters worse. He said he’d want a witness then — a witness to my identity before he’d discuss his sister’s affairs with me. ‘All right,’ says I, ‘you shall have half a dozen witnesses, for I’ll call my underclothes! There’s “Gordon Lowndes” on my shirt and collar — there’s “Gordon Lowndes” on my pants and vest — and if there isn’t “Gordon Lowndes” on both my socks there’ll be trouble when I get home,’ I told him; and I was out of my coat and waistcoat before he could stop me. I’d have gone on, too, but that was enough for your uncle! I can see him now — it was on his doorstep — but he let me in after that!”
Harry had a hearty, boyish laugh which it was a pleasure to hear, and Mrs. Ringrose heard it now as she had not heard it for two years; for she had shown that the story did not offend her by laughing herself; and besides, the boy also could see his uncle, with sable arms uplifted, and this impudent Bohemian coolly stripping on the doorstep. His innate impudence was brought home to Harry in different fashion a moment later, when the visitor suddenly complained of the light, and asked why on earth there was only one gas-bracket in a room of that size.
“Because I could not afford more,” replied Mrs. Ringrose.
“Afford them, my dear madam? There should have been no question of affording them!” cried Gordon Lowndes. “You should have brought what you wanted from your own house.”
“But it wasn’t our own,” sighed Mrs. Ringrose; “it belonged to — our creditors.”
“Your creditors!” echoed Lowndes, with scathing scorn. “It makes me positively ill to hear an otherwise sensible lady speak of creditors in that submissive tone! I regard it as a sacred obligation on all of us to get to windward of our creditors, by fair means or foul. We owe it to our fellow-creatures who may find themselves similarly situated to-morrow or next day. If we don’t get to windward of our creditors, be very sure they’ll get to windward of us. But to pamper and pet the enemy — as though they’d dare to say a word about a petty gas-bracket! — was a perfect crime, my dear Mrs. Ringrose, and one that showed a most deplorable lack of public spirit. I only wish I’d thought of your gas-brackets when I was down there the day before yesterday!”
“Why? What would you have done?” demanded Harry with some heat.
“Come away with one in my hat!” roared Lowndes. “Come away with the chandelier next my skin!”
And he broke into a great guffaw in which Harry Ringrose joined in his own despite. It was absurd to apply conventional standards to this sworn enemy of convention. It was impossible to be angry with Gordon Lowndes. Harry determined to take no further offence at anything he might say or do, but to follow his mother’s tacit example and to accept her singular friend on her own tolerant terms. Nor was it hard to see when the lad made amiable resolutions; they flew like flags upon his face; and Mrs. Ringrose was able to go to bed and to leave the pair together with an easy mind.
Whereupon they sat up till long after midnight, and Harry, having relinquished all thought of entertaining Gordon Lowndes, was himself undeniably entertained. He had seen something of the world (less than he thought, but still something), yet he had never met with anybody half so interesting as Lowndes, who had been everywhere, seen everything, and done most things, in his time. He had made and lost a fortune in different companies, the names of which Harry hardly caught, for they set him speculating upon the new Company which was to make his own small fortune too. Lowndes, however, refused to be drawn back to that momentous subject. Nor were all the exploits he recounted of a financial cast; there were some which Harry would have flatly disbelieved the day before; but one and all were consistent with the character of the man as he had seen it since.
Great names seemed as familiar to him as his own, and, after the scene at the tailors’, Harry could well believe that Mr. Lowndes had heckled a very eminent politician to his inconvenience, if not to the alleged extent of altering the entire course of a General Election. He was also the very man to have defended in person an action for libel, and to have lost it by the little error of requesting the judge to “be good enough to hold his tongue.” The consequences had been serious indeed, but Lowndes described them with considerable relish. His frankness was not the least of his charms as a raconteur. Before he went he had confessed to one crime at least — that of blackmailing a surgeon-baronet for a thousand pounds in his own consulting-room.
“He got a hold of the bell-rope,” said Lowndes, “but it was no use his playing the game of bluff with me. I simply laughed in his face. He’d murdered a poor man’s wife — vivisected her, Ringrose — taken her to pieces like a watch — and he’d got to pay up or be exposed.”
For it was disinterested blackmail, so that even this story was characteristic if incredible. It illustrated what may be termed an officious altruism — which Harry had seen operating in his own behalf — side by side with a perfectly piratical want of principle which Lowndes took no pains to conceal. It was impossible for an impressionable young fellow, needing a friend, not to be struck by one so bluff, so masterful, so kind-hearted, and probably much less unscrupulous than it pleased him to appear; and it was impossible for Harry Ringrose not to put the kind heart first, as he came upstairs after seeing Lowndes into a hansom, and thought how joyfully he would come up them if he were sure of earning even one hundred a year.
And Lowndes said three!
“I am thankful you like him,” said Mrs. Ringrose, who was still awake. “But — we all can see the faults of those we really like — and there’s one fault I do see in Mr. Lowndes. He is so sanguine!” Mrs. Ringrose might have added that we see those faults the plainest when they are also our own.
“Sanguine!” said Harry. “How?”
“He expects Lord Banff to make up his mind this week.”
“Well?”
“It has been ‘this week’ all this year!”
Harry looked very sad.
“Then you don’t think much of my chances of that — three hundred? I might have seen you didn’t at the time.”
“No, my boy, I do not. Of his will to help you there can be no question; his ability is another matter; and we must not rely on him.”
“But you say he has helped you so much?”
“In a different way.”
“Well,” said Harry after a pause, “in spite of what you say, he seems quite sure himself that everything will be settled to-morrow. He has an appointment with Lord Banff in the afternoon. He wants to see me afterwards, and has asked me to go down and spend the evening with them at Richmond.”
Mrs. Ringrose lay conspicuously silent.
“Who are ‘they,’ mother?” continued her son. “Somehow or other he is a man you never associate with a family, he’s so complete in himself. Is he married?”
“His wife is dead.”
“Then there are children?”
“One daughter, I believe.”
“Don’t you know her?”
“No; and I don’t want to!” cried Mrs. Ringrose. So broke the small storm which had been brewing in her grave face and altered voice.
“Why not, mother?”
“She has never been near me! Here I have been nearly two months, and she has never called. I shall refuse to see her when she does. The father can come, but we are beneath the daughter. We are in trouble, you see! I only hope you’ll have very little to say to her.”
“I won’t go at all if you’d
rather I didn’t.”
“No, you must go; but be prepared for a snub — and to snub her!”
The bitterness of a sweet woman is always startling, and Harry had never heard his mother speak so bitterly. Her spirit infected him, and he left her with grim promises. Yet he went to bed more interested than ever in Gordon Lowndes.
CHAPTER VII.
ON RICHMOND HILL.
It was the hour before sunset when Harry Ringrose took the train from Earl’s Court to Richmond, and, referring to an envelope which Lowndes had given him overnight, inquired his way to Sandringham, Greville Road, Richmond Hill. Having no experience of suburban London, he was prepared to find a mansion not absolutely unworthy of its name, and was rather astonished at having to give that of the road to the policeman who directed him. He had half expected that officer to look impressed and say, “Oh, yes, Mr. Lowndes’s; the large house on the hill; you can’t mistake it.” For though he gathered that Lowndes was only about to become a millionaire, and that his contempt for creditors was founded upon some former personal experience of that obnoxious class, it nevertheless appeared to Harry that his friend must be pretty well off as it was. At all events, he thought nothing of losing the last train and driving all this way home.
Harry had never been in Richmond before, and the picturesque features with which its narrow streets still abound were by no means lost upon him. Here a quaint gable, and there a tile roof, sunken and discoloured with sheer age, reminded him that he was indeed in the old country once more; and he rejoiced in the fact with a blessed surcease of the pain and shame with which his home-coming had been fraught. May was in his blood; and as he climbed the hill the words of the old song, that another Richmond claims, rang so loud in his head that he had a work to keep them back from his lips: —
“On Richmond Hill there lives a lass,
More bright than May-day morn;
Whose charms all other maids’ surpass —
A rose without a thorn.
This lass so neat, with smiles so sweet,
Has won my right good will.
I’d crowns resign to call her mine,
Sweet lass of Richmond Hill!”
The young fellow could not help thinking that it was a lass of Richmond Hill he was about to meet, and wondering whether her smiles would prove sweet, and her charms superior to those of all other maids. Harry Ringrose had never been in love. He had been duly foolish in his callow day, but that was nothing. From the firm pedestal of one-and-twenty he could look back, and lay his hand upon his heart, and aver with truth that it had never been irretrievably lost. Nevertheless, Harry was quite prepared to lose his heart as soon as ever he realised the ideal which was graven upon it; or he had been so prepared until the revelation of these last days had hurled such idle aspirations to the winds. But, for some reason, the memory of that revelation did not haunt him this evening; and, accordingly, he was so prepared once more.
One of the many inconveniences of preconceiving your fate lies in the nervous feeling that it may be lurking round every corner in the shape of every woman you are about to meet. Even when he met them Harry was not always sure. His ideal was apt to be elastic in the face of obvious charms. It was only the impossibles that he knew at sight, such as the girl who was climbing the hill ahead of him at this moment. Harry would not have looked twice at her but for one circumstance.
She was tall and well-built, on a far larger scale than Harry cared about, and yet she was continually changing a bag which she carried from one hand to the other. It was a leather travelling-bag, of no excessive size, but as she carried it in one hand her body bent itself the other way; and she never had it in the same hand long.
The hill was steep and seemed interminable; it was the warm evening of a hot day; and Harry, slowly overhauling the young woman, might have seen that she had pretty hair and ears, but he could think of nothing but her burden and her fatigue. He could not even think of himself and his ideals, and had so ceased committing his besetting sin. What he did see, however, was that the girl was a lady, and he heartily wished that she were not. He longed to carry that bag for her, but he could not bring himself to offer to do so. He had too much delicacy or too little courage.
Irresolutely he slackened his pace; he was ashamed, despite his scruples, to pass her callously without a word. He was close behind her now. He heard her breathing heavily. Was there nothing he could say? Was there no way of putting it without offence? Harry was still thinking when the knot untied itself. The girl had stopped dead, and put the bag down with a deep sigh, and Harry had caught it up without thinking any more.
“What are you doing?” cried the girl. “Give that back to me at once.”
Her voice was very indignant, but also a little faint; and the note of alarm with which it began changed to one of authority as she saw that, at any rate, she was not dealing with a thief.
“I beg your pardon,” said Harry, very red, as he raised his hat with his unoccupied hand; “but — but you really must let me carry it a little way for you.”
“I could not dream of it. Will you kindly give it me back this instant?”
The girl was now good-humoured but very firm. She also had coloured, but her lips remained pale with fatigue. And she had very fine, fearless, grey eyes; but Harry found he could defy them in such a cause, so that they flashed with anger, and a foot — no very small one — stamped heartily on the pavement.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I did; but — —”
“Give it to me!”
“It’s so heavy.”
“Give it to me!”
He was wondering whether the bag was full of jewels, that she was in such a state about it, when all at once she grabbed at the handle he still hesitated to relinquish. The bag came open between them — and to his amazement he saw what it contained.
Coals!
A few fell out upon the pavement. Harry stooped, put them in again, and shut the bag. The young lady had moved away. She was walking on slowly ahead, and from her shoulders Harry feared that she was crying. He followed miserably but doggedly with the bag.
She never looked round, and he never took his eyes from those broad, quivering shoulders. He felt an officious brute, but he had a certain fierce consolation too: he had got his way — he had not been beaten by a woman. And the heaviness of the bag, no longer to be wondered at, was in itself a justification; he also had changed it from hand to hand, and that more than once, before they came to the top of the hill.
Here he followed his leader down a broad turning to the left, and thence along a smaller road until she stopped before the low wooden gate of a shabby little semi-detached house. Evidently this was her destination, and she was waiting for her bag. And now Harry lost confidence with every step he took, for the girl stood squarely with her back to the gate, and her eyes were dry but very bright, as though she meant to give him a bit of her mind before she let him go.
“You may put it down here.”
Harry did so without a word.
“Thank you. You are a stranger to Richmond, I think?”
The thanks had sounded ironical, and the question took Harry aback. The grey eyes looked amused, and it was the last expression he had expected in them.
“How did you know that?” he simply asked.
“You are too sunburnt for Richmond, and — perhaps — too gallant!”
“Or officious?”
Her pleasant tone put him at his ease.
“No; it was very kind of you, and one good turn deserves another. Were you looking for any particular road or house?”
“Yes, for Sandringham, in the Greville Road.”
She stood aside and pointed to the name on the little wooden gate.
“Why, this is it!” gasped Harry Ringrose.
“Yes; this is Sandringham,” said the girl, with a sort of shamefaced humour. “No wonder you are disappointed!”
His eyes came guiltily from the little house with the big name
. “Then are you Miss Lowndes?” he inquired aghast.
“That is my name — Mr. Ringrose.”
Spoken with the broadest smile, this was the last straw so far as Harry’s manners were concerned.
“How on earth do you know mine?” cried he.
“I guessed it in the road.”
“How could you?”
“How did I know you were a stranger to Richmond?” rejoined Miss Lowndes. “Anybody could see that you have come from foreign parts; and I had heard all about you from my father. Besides, I expected you. I only hoped to get home first with my coals. And to be caught like this — it’s really too bad!”
“I am awfully sorry,” murmured Harry, and with such obvious sincerity that Miss Lowndes smiled again.
“I think you may be!” said she. “One may find that stupidity in the kitchen has run one short of coals at the very moment when they are wanted most, and the quickest thing may be for one to go oneself and borrow a few from a friend. But it’s hard lines to be caught doing so, Mr. Ringrose, for all that!”
So this was the explanation. To Harry Ringrose it was both simple and satisfying; but before he could say a word Miss Lowndes had changed the subject abruptly by again pointing to the grand name on the gate.
“This is another thing I may as well explain for your benefit, Mr. Ringrose; it is one of my father’s little jokes. When he came here he was so tickled by the small houses with the large names that he determined to beat his neighbours at their own game. It was all I could do to prevent him from having ‘Buckingham Palace’ painted on the gate. So you are quite forgiven for finding it difficult to believe that this was the house, and also for upsetting my coals. And now I think we may shake hands and go in.”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 133