For Fortune and Glory. Lewis Hough
that at the door?”
“It’s me,” said a youth—dressed in a chocolate coat with brass buttons—entering the room.
“Oh, happy Josiah!” exclaimed Kavanagh; “careless of rules, and allowing your nominative and accusative cases to wander about at their own sweet will; what pangs would be yours at mid-day to-morrow if you were a scholar instead of a page, and said ‘Hominem sum,’ or uttered any other equivalent to your late remark! Shades of Valpy and Arnold—‘It’s me!’ ”
“Mr. Wheeler wants to see you at once,” said Josiah, not listening to the criticism on his grammar, and addressing Forsyth.
“My tutor wants to see me? What on earth about, I wonder?”
Obviously, the best way to satisfy his curiosity on this head was to go at once, and this he did.
Mr. Wheeler sat at the paper-laden desk in his private study, under the brilliant light of a lamp with a green glass shade over it. There was no other light in the room, which was consequently in shadow, while the tutor was in a flood of illumination.
“Sit down, Forsyth,” he said. “I am sorry to say I have bad news for you from home.”
“My mother!”
“No, no, my boy; bad enough, but not so bad as that. There are money losses. Your father was connected with a bank, and it has been unfortunate. It seems that it was a great shock to him, and he was not in very good health. You may have known that?”
“Yes, sir, yes. I noticed that he looked ill when I went home at Christmas.”
“To be sure—yes. Then you will not be surprised at this sudden blow having affected him very seriously?”
Harry could not take it all in at once; he had to sit silent awhile, and let the meaning of his tutor’s words sink in. At length he asked—“Is he dead?” And the sound of his own voice uttering the word made him give a sob.
“No,” said Mr. Wheeler; “he is very ill, and insensible, but living, and while there is life there is hope, you know. People often recover from fits, and this seems to be an attack of that nature. But it is as well that you should go home at once. Put a few things together, and you will catch the 8:30 train. A fly and your travelling money shall be ready by the time you are.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Harry, and went back to his Dame’s House in a dazed state. Strachan and Kavanagh heard him come upstairs, and as he went straight to his own room they followed him.
“Well, have you got the medal for alcaics?” asked Strachan, for they had concluded that that was the news his tutor had for him. But seeing his friend’s face he stopped short.
“Something the matter, old fellow, I am afraid,” he said. “Bad news from home?”
“Yes,” said Harry, in a voice he just kept from faltering. “I must go home to-night; my father is ill.”
“I am awfully sorry,” said Strachan, uncomfortably, wanting to do something to aid or cheer his friend, and unable to think what. Kavanagh made no remark, but, seeing at a glance how the land lay, took a candle to the box-room, caught up a travelling bag belonging to Forsyth, and brought it down to him just as he was going to call Josiah to find it for him.
It was not long before he got some things into it, and was ready to start. A grip of the hand from each of his friends and he was gone.
What a bad time he had during that short journey; feverishly impatient, and yet dreading to get to the end of it. It was an express train, and he got to London in an hour, and was just in time for another on the short line to his home. So he reached Holly Lodge by eleven. Before he could ring the door opened. Trix was listening for the wheels, and ran to let him in. She had been crying, but was very quiet.
“He is alive, but cannot see or hear,” she said. “Come.”
His mother was there, and two doctors, who looked very grave. One soon left, but the other, who was the regular medical attendant and a friend, remained, not, as he plainly said, that he could do anything for the sick man, who was dying. And in the course of the night he passed away without regaining consciousness.
But there is no good in dwelling upon that, or on the gloom of the next few weeks. Poor Mr. Forsyth had a heart disease, and when the Great Transit Bank came to final smash, the agitation killed him then and there.
For he was quite ruined. It was not only the money he had invested in the bank which was gone, but, as a large shareholder, he was responsible for the enormous sums due to those who had dealt with the bank.
Harry thought at first that they were penniless, and wondered almost in despair how he should be able to support his mother and sister. For he had learned no trade, he was not a skilled artisan, and mere manual labour and clerk-work are, he knew, very poorly paid.
But when Mrs. Forsyth had recovered sufficiently from the first shock of her grief to grapple with the cares of every-day life, she showed him that it was not so bad as he had feared.
“There is my five thousand pounds,” she said—“my very own, which I had before marriage, and which is secured to me. Two hundred and fifty pounds a year I get from it, and it has always been a little pocket-money which I had, without going to your dear father for every penny. And now we must manage to live upon it.”
Of course they had to go into a very small house, and could not take the whole of that. And Harry did not go back to Harton, but began to try at once for immediate employment which might bring some little grist to the mill. And he was more fortunate than young fellows generally are when starting on that heart-breaking search, for he had something to go upon. He went straight to the London representative of the Egyptian house of business with which his father had been connected, told his story, and asked for employment.
“But your father was bought out fully, and you have no claim on us, you know,” said the merchant.
“I make no claim, sir,” replied Harry; “I ask a favour. I don’t know why you should employ me more than anybody else, but still I thought the connection might interest you. My father had a hand in establishing the business, and I had a hope that that might weigh with you, if you have found it a good one.”
“Well, you have had a hard trial, and it is to your credit that you want to go to work at once instead of sitting down in despair. The worst of it is that you have been educated at Harton, and can know nothing of what is useful in an office. What sort of hand do you write?”
“A shocking bad one, I fear, but any one can read it. And I am not so very bad at figures. And I am ready to learn. Won’t you give me a chance, and pay me nothing till I am useful?”
“There is one thing, at any rate, you have learned at Harton,” said the other, with a smile, “and that is to speak up boldly, and to speak out plainly. I was a friend of your poor father’s, and shall be glad to help you, since you are reasonable and see matters in their right light. But you must not expect much.”
So Harry was taken into the office as a clerk just for a month on trial. And he showed so much zeal and intelligence that he was taken into regular employment at the end of it, and received a five-pound note for his work during the time of probation. And the joy and triumph with which he brought home this, the first money he had ever earned, to his mother and sister in the evening, cheered them all up in a manner to which they had been strangers since ruin and death had fallen upon the household.
Many castles did they build in the air that evening, but they were not extravagant, their highest present ambition being to have the whole cottage, which was but eight-roomed, to themselves, and to keep two maids instead of one. And this, if Harry’s salary rose to a hundred and fifty, they thought they might manage. Of course it was a dreary life for him after what he had been accustomed to, but he made the best of it, and really interested himself in Egyptian trade, till he became a connoisseur in gum. His principal recreation was shooting at the Wimbledon butts on Saturday