III
Conversation at dinner in the Masters' Common-Room turned one evening upon Harrington. "Old Harrington's pretty bad again," Pritchard had said. "I heard in the town to-day that he'd had another stroke."
Speed, curiously startled by the utterance of the name, exclaimed "What, the Harringtons who keep the bookshop?—I didn't know he was ill."
"Been ill ever since I can remember," replied Pritchard, laconically.
Then Speed remembered something that the Head had once told him about Harrington being a littérateur and and an author of books on ethics.
"I never met him," he said, tentatively, seeking to guide the conversation into a discussion of the man.
Pritchard, ever ready to follow up a lead given to him, remarked: "You missed something, then. He was quite a character. Used to teach here once, you know."
"Really?"
"Used to try to, anyway, when they'd let him. Couldn't keep any sort of discipline. During his first prep they poured ink down his neck."
"Pritchard needn't talk," interposed Clanwell, laughing. "During his first prep they mixed carbide and water under his chair." The rest of the Common-Room, among whom Pritchard was no favourite, joined in the laughter. Then Clanwell took up the thread, kinder in his narrative than Pritchard had been. "I liked Harrington. He was a good sort, but he wasn't made for a schoolmaster. I told him so, and after his breakdown he took my advice and left the profession."
"Breakdown?" said Speed. "He had a breakdown then?"
"Yes, his wife died when his daughter was born. He never told us anything about it. One morning he collapsed over a four alpha English form. I was next door. I was used to a row, but the terrible pandemonium made me wonder if anything had happened. I went in and found the little devils giving him sportive first-aid. They'd half undressed him. My word!—I picked out those that were in my house and gave them a tidy thrashing. Don't you remember, Lavery?"
"I remember," said the indolent Lavery, "you trying to persuade me to do the same with my little lot."
"But Harrington?" queried Speed, anxious that the conversation should not be diverted into other channels.
"Oh, well," resumed Clanwell, "he left Millstead and took to—shall we call it literature?"
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean?—" Clanwell laughed. "D'you mean to tell me you haven't heard of Samuel Harrington, author of the famous 'Helping-Hand-Books'?"
"I haven't."
"Then I must lend you one or two of them. They'll do you good. Lavery and I attribute our remarkable success in life to our careful study of them, don't we, Lavery?"
"Do we, Clanwell?"
Ransome, wizened and Voltairish, and agreeable company when stirred to anecdote, began: "Ah! 'How to be Powerful' was the best, though I think 'How to Become a Dominating Personality' was pretty good. The drollest of all was 'How to Meet Difficulties.' Speed has a treat in store if he hasn't read them. They're all in the school-library. The fellow used to send the Head free autographed copies of each one of them as it appeared."
Ransome, rarely beguiled into conversation, always secured a respectful audience. After a silence he went on: "I used to know old Harrington pretty well after he took to—writing. He once told me the entire circumstances of his début into the literary profession. It was rather droll."
Ransome paused, and Speed said: "I'd like to hear it."
A murmur of assent followed from the rest, and Ransome, not without pleasure at the flattery of his being eagerly listened to, crumbled a piece of bread by his plate and resumed. "He told me that one morning after he'd left Millstead he was feeling especially miserable and having a breakfast of tea and dry bread. So he said, anyway. Remember that, at that time, he had a baby to look after. The postman brought him, that morning, a letter from an old school friend of his, a rector in Somerset, asking him if he would care to earn half-a-guinea by writing for him an address on 'Self-Control' for the Young Women's Sunshine Club at Little Pelthing, Somerset. I remember the name of the club and the village because I remember they struck me as being rather droll at the time. Harrington said the letter, or part of it, went something like this: I have just become the proud father of a most wonderful little baby boy, and you can imagine how infernally busy as well as infernally happy I am. Could you oblige me with an address on 'Self-Control'?—You were always rather good at dashing off essays when we were at school. The address should have a strong moral flavour and should last from half-an-hour to forty minutes.' ... Well, Harrington sat down to write that address on 'Self-Control.' He told me that he knew all that anybody need know about self-control, because he was using prodigious quantities of it all the time he was writing. Anyway, it was a fine address. The Reverend Henry Beauchamp Northcroft—another name droll enough to be remembered—delivered it to the united assembly of the Little Pelthing Young Women's Sunshine Club, and everybody said it was the finest and most inspiring address they had ever heard from his lips. It glowed, as it were, from within; it radiated hope; it held a wonderful and sublime message for mankind. And, in addition, it lasted from half-an-hour to forty minutes. Nor was this all. A wealthy and philanthropic lady in the Reverend Henry Beauchamp Northcroft's congregation—Harrington did tell me her name, but I suspect it was not droll enough for me to remember it—suggested that, at her expense, the address should be printed and published in pamphlet form. With Harrington's consent this was done, and, so he told me, no fewer than twenty-five thousand copies of 'Self-Control' were despatched to various centres in England, America, the Colonies, and on board His Majesty's ships."
"Do you believe all this?" exclaimed Clanwell, laughing, to the Common-Room in general.
"Whether you believe it or not," replied Ransome, severely, "it's sufficiently droll for it to be worth hearing. And a large part of it is true, at any rate."
"Go on then," said Clanwell.
Ransome (spreading himself out luxuriously), went on: "It seemed to Harrington that having, to put it vulgarly, scored a fine though anonymous bull's-eye with 'Self-Control,' he might, with profit, attempt to do similar business on his own account. Accordingly, he wrote a collection of some half-dozen didactic essays on such subjects as 'Immortality,' 'Health and Wealth,' 'The Art of Happiness,' and so on, and sent them to a well-known publisher of works on religion and ethics. This fellow, after a most unethical delay of several months, returned them with his curt regrets and the information that such stuff was a drug on the publishing market. Then Harrington, nothing in the least daunted, sent them straightway off again to a publisher of sensational novels. This last gentleman, he was a gentleman, for he replied almost immediately, agreeing to publish if Mr. Harrington would—I'm quoting hazily from the letter which Harrington showed me—if he would 'undertake to supply a further eighteen essays to make up a book of the customary eighty-thousand-word length.'—'You have a distinct vein of humour,' wrote Mr. Potts, of Larraby and Potts, Limited—that was the firm—'and we think your work would be very saleable if you would throw off what appears to be a feeling of restraint.'—So I guess Harrington just threw off this feeling of restraint, whatever exactly it was, and began on those eighteen essays.... I hope this tale isn't boring you."
"Not at all!"—"Go on!"—came the chorus. Ransome smiled.
"There isn't much to go on to. The book of essays was called 'Sky-Signs,' and it was reviewed rather pleasantly in some of the papers. Then followed 'About It and About,' a further bundle of didactic essays, which ran into five editions in six months. And then 'Through my Lattice Window,' which was the sort of book you were not ashamed to take into the pew with you and read during the offertory, provided, of course, that it was handsomely bound in black morocco. And lastly came the Helping-Hand-Books, which Mr. Speed must read if he is to consider his education complete. That's all. The story's over."
After the first buzz of comment Speed said: "I suppose he made plenty of money out of that sort of thing?"
Ransome replied: "Yes, he made it and then he lost it. He dabbled in finance and had a geometrical theory about the rise and fall of rubber shares. Then he got plentifully in debt and when his health began to give way he took the bookshop because he thought it would be an easy way to earn money. He'd have lost on that if his daughter hadn't been a born business-woman."
"But surely," said Clanwell, "the money kept on trickling in from his books?"
Ransome shook his head. "No, because he'd sold the copyrights for cash down. He was a child in finance. But all the same he knew how to make money. For that you should refer to his book, 'How to be Successful,' passim. It's full of excellent fatherly advice."
Ransome added, with a hardly perceptible smile: "There's also a chapter about Courtship and Marriage. You might find it interesting, Mr. Speed."
Speed blushed furiously.
Afterwards, strolling over to the House with Clanwell, Speed said: "I say, was that long yarn Ransome told about Harrington true, do you think?" Clanwell replied: "Well, it may have been. You can never be quite certain with Ransome, though. But he does know how to tell a story, doesn't he?" Speed agreed.
Late that night the news percolated, somehow or other, that old Harrington was dead.