Chapter 3

FROM GAY TO GRAVE.

Tea was a comfortable meal at Harton in the winter half of the year, when the boys had fires in their rooms, at least, for social fellows who clubbed together. Not but what it is cosy to linger over the meal with a book in your hand, or propped up, as you sit alone at the corner of the table, half turned to the hearth.

But Forsyth, Strachan, and Kavanagh liked to mess together, and Strachan's room being the largest of the three, they selected that to have their breakfast and tea in. All their cups, saucers, and so on, were kept in a cupboard in that room, but toasting or such other light cookery as their fags performed for them was done in their respective apartments, for the avoidance of overcrowding and dispute amongst the operators. Also, when bloaters, sprats, or sausages were in question, it was well not to feed in the room in which the smell of preparation was most powerful.

Though the half was drawing to its close, the evening board was bountifully spread; for Forsyth's birthday had come off two days before, and brought with it a token from home--a wicker token which the Lord Mayor himself would not have despised. There was a ham, succulent and tender; a tongue, fresh, not tinned, boiled, not stewed, of most eloquent silence; a packet of sausages, a jar of marmalade, and, most delicious of all, some potted shrimps. Harry knew, but did not tell, that every one of those shrimps had been stripped of its shell by the hands of Trix, who plumed herself, with unquestionable justice, upon her shrimp-potting. Unfathomable is the depth of female devotion; fancy any one being able to skin a shrimp, prawn, or walnut, and not eat it! The shrimps, the sausages, were gone, the tongue was silent for ever, but the ham and the marmalade remained.

The three friends were the oldest boys in the house, and almost in the school. Two of them, Strachan and Kavanagh, were to leave at the end of the half, and Forsyth was to do so after the next.

"Where's Kavanagh?" said the latter, coming into the room and sitting down by the fire.

"At his tutor's," said Strachan; "he is bound to be in directly. Let the tea brew a bit longer."

"It's uncommonly cold this evening; going to snow, I think. I hate snow in February; there is no chance of real frost for skating, and it spoils the football. Oh, here's Kavanagh."

The youth named strolled deliberately in at the moment, sat down at the table, and began to shave off a slice of ham.

"Has the cold wind made you hungry, or has the effort to understand that chorus in Euripides exhausted you?"

"I never try to understand what I firmly believe to have no meaning whatever," drawled Kavanagh; "and I am never hungry. I consider it bad form to be hungry; it shows that a fellow does not eat often enough. Now the distinguishing mark of a gentleman is that he has too many meals a day ever to feel hungry."

"I see; then you are only carving the ham for us."

"That does not exactly follow. Never jump to conclusions. A fire may not actually require coals, yet you may put some on to keep it going; so it is with a gentleman's stomach. You may take ham to appease hunger, or you may take it to prevent the obtrusion of that vulgar sensation. Not that I object to helping you fellows. The carving of ham is an art, a fourpenny piece representing the maximum of thickness which the lean should obtain. With a carving-knife and fork this ideal is not too easy of attainment, but with these small blunt tools it requires a first-rate workman to approach it. Now this slice, which I sacrifice on the altar of friendship, is, I regret to say, fully as thick as a shilling."

At this moment a little boy, Kavanagh's fag, came into the room bearing a muffin on a toasting-fork.

"Devereux!" said Kavanagh, severely, "do you know what Louis the Fourteenth of France said when his carriage drew up, as he stepped outside his front door?"

"No."

"He said, `I almost had to wait!' Now I, too, say to you that my tea is poured out, my ham cut, and I almost had to wait. Not quite, happily not quite, or the consequences to you would have been--terrible!"

The little boy did not look very frightened, in spite of the tone in which the last word was uttered. Kavanagh had never been known wilfully to hurt anything weaker than himself in his life. As he was tall and strong, this is saying a great deal.

The two other fags grinned; one of them filled up the tea-pot, and then Strachan said "Go!" and all three lower boys vanished in a twinkling to prepare their own teas.

"We shall not have many more teas together," said Forsyth.

"No, but we may dinners," replied Strachan.

"Suppose we all get into the same regiment."

"The job is to get into any regiment at all," said Kavanagh. "There is that abominable examination to be got over. Awfully clever and hard reading fellows get beaten in it every time, I can tell you."

"Well, but I believe it is easier through the Militia than direct into Sandhurst, is it not? And that is the way you and I are going to try. At any rate, then we can go into the same Militia regiment, and that will give us two trainings, besides preliminary drills, and so forth, to have some fun together. And Forsyth must come in too."

"I have not quite made up my mind to go into the army, or rather to try for it, at all yet," said Forsyth. "It seems such a waste of time to sap for it, and then be sold after all. I can never do half so well as I fairly ought in an examination, because I take so long to remember things I know quite well, even if I have plenty of time to think them out. I can learn, but I can't cram, so I fear I should never be in it."

"Oh, have a shy, man; it is only going in for something else if you fail. And there is no life like the army if you succeed."

"If we fail, we fail. `But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail,'" quoted Kavanagh.

"Well, it is very tempting; perhaps I shall try," said Forsyth.

"Look here, then," said Strachan, "there are two vacancies amongst the sub-lieutenants in the fourth battalion of the Blankshire, and my father is a friend of the Colonel. I am to have one, and I have no doubt you, Kavanagh, will get the other. There is almost sure to be another vacancy before the next training, and if there is, don't you think your friends would let you leave Harton at once, and take it? Then you could serve one training this year, and another next year, and be ready to go in for the Competitive at the same time that we do."

"Thanks, old fellow," said Forsyth. "I will talk it over with my people when I go home at Easter, and will let you know as quickly as I can."

"That is settled then. Oh, we won't say good-bye yet awhile."

"It is a strange thing," said Kavanagh, who, having finished his tea, had tilted his chair so that his back leaned against the wall, while his feet rested on another chair, less for the comfort of the position, than to afford him an opportunity of admiring his well-cut trousers, his striped socks, and his dandy shoes; "it is a strange thing that there should only be one career fit for a fellow to follow, and that it should be impossible for a fellow to get into it."

"It sounds rather like a sweeping assertion that, doesn't it?" observed Strachan, who was helping himself to marmalade.

"That is because you do not grasp the meaning which I attach to the word _fellow_. I do not allude to the ordinary mortal, who might be a lawyer, or a parson, or a painter, or fiddler, or anything, and who might get any number of marks in an examination. I mean by fellows, the higher order of beings, who are only worth consideration; I do not define them, because that is impossible; you must know, or you mustn't know, according to your belonging to them or not. Anyhow, there they are, and everything and everybody else is only of value so far as he, she, or it is conducive to their comfort and well-being. For them the army is the only fit profession, and only a few of them can get enough marks to enter it."

"Am I one of these extra superfines?" asked Strachan.

"You may be, perhaps, if you don't eat too much marmalade."

"Come, you are pretty fond of jam yourself, Kavanagh," cried Forsyth.

"Well, yes; we all have our little weaknesses."

"That reminds me," said Strachan, turning round and poking the fire. "Our school career is drawing to a close, and I have never made my confession. I committed a crime last November which I have never owned, which no one suspects, but which weighs, whenever I think of it, on my conscience."

"Unburden," said Kavanagh.

"Well, then, you may remember that the weather was very mild up to the seventh of the month."

"Don't; but grant it. Go ahead."

"On the eighth of November it grew suddenly colder, and I got out my winter things, and in the afternoon I changed. Having done so, I put my pencil in the right-hand waistcoat pocket. There was something round and hard there--a lozenge? No, a shilling, which had remained there ever since I changed my winter clothes in the spring. Now at that time we were reduced to anchovy paste for breakfast, and our bare rations for tea. Money was spent, tick was scarce, stores were exhausted. Faithful to a friendship which has all things in common. I went out to Dell's and bought a pot of apricot jam for tea, the time for which had arrived. As ill-luck would have it, both you fellows were detained at something or another--French, I rather think. I had to go to my tutor myself at seven, so I could not wait, and began my tea alone. Well, the jam was good, very good, hanged good; I never ate such jam! Had I had quite a third of it? Not quite, perhaps; I gave myself the benefit of the doubt. But, then, the gap looked awful. Happy thought! I would turn it out into a saucer, and you might take it for a sixpenny pot. After all, not expecting any, you would be pleased with that. But it looked rather more than a sixpenny pot, so I had a bit more to reduce. And then--you would not come, and you knew nothing about it. Why make two bites of a cherry? I finished it, threw the pot out of window, and held my tongue. But oh! Next day, when Kavanagh received his weekly allowance, and laid it out in treacle and sprats for the public good, I did indeed feel guilty."

"But you ate the sprats and treacle all the same, I expect."

"I did. I would not shirk my punishment, and flinch from the coals of fire which were heaped on my head. I even enjoyed them. But my conscience has been very sore, and feels better now than it has done for a long time."

"You have not got absolution yet," said Forsyth.

"Not by long chalks," cried Kavanagh. "Jam! And apricot of all jams. If you really want to wipe out the crime you must make restitution."

"Gladly; but would not that be difficult?"

"Not at all; you can do it in kind. At compound interest three pots will clear you, I should say; or, if it don't run to that, say two."

"Two will do," echoed Forsyth. "Who's 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