CHAPTER I.—HAROLD AND TED HAVE IT OUT.
He was a thoroughly manly little fellow—nobody questioned that for a moment, not even Ted; and yet there he sat, his head bowed upon his folded arms, while now and then something very like a sob seemed to shake the well-knit figure and give the boyish head an undignified little bob.
When at last he looked up, behold proof positive. There were tears not only in his eyes, but on the sleeve of his Eton jacket; and there was no longer any question but that Harold Harris, sturdy little Englishman though he was, had been having what is known on both sides of the water as a good, hard cry.
“How old was he?” asks Young America, a little mistrustful as to the right sort of stuff; but what does it matter how old he was, since this is certain, that he was not the boy to cry under any circumstances without abundant reason. It was evident now, however, that he was fast getting the better of himself. He sat up, and resting his head on one hand, reached with the other for the paper-knife, and began cutting queer little geometrical figures on the big silver-cornered blotter that half covered the table. It was evident too that his thoughts were not at all on what he was doing, and that the hard cry was being followed by a good, hard think. But this did not last long; Harold was simply trying to make up his mind, as the phrase goes, and that soon accomplished, he drew pen, paper and ink toward him and commenced writing a letter, with his head on one side and his lips tightly pursed together. Indeed, he never unpursed them until that same letter was sealed and directed and the stamp affixed with a very determined little air, as though firmly resolved that the thing he had done should brook no undoing. Then he slipped into his coat and hurried out to post it, and a few yards from the door he met Ted, who was just coming home.
“Hello, there!” cried Ted, coming to a halt with his hands in his pockets; “where are you going this time of night?”
“Out,” replied Harold, starting off at a run, for it was wet and damp, and, to use England's English, “quite nasty.” Ted gave a low whistle of surprise, Harold as a rule was such a civil fellow. But no matter. What did he care where he was going, and entering the house with a latch-key, he tossed his hat on to a hook and started upstairs, his thoughts already far afield from all that concerned his younger brother. Back they came again, however, as he reached the landing, and the old clock struck twelve. “So late as that?” he said to himself, and deciding to wait for Harold, he turned and went down again to the library. He hoped he should not have to wait long, for, since he was rather counting on a good night's rest, nothing more exciting seemed to offer. In the mean time, he would make himself as comfortable as possible on the library lounge. Indeed, to make himself as comfortable as possible had gradually grown to be the one thing worth striving for in the estimation of this young gentleman. A beautiful portrait of his mother hung over the library mantel, but it belonged to a closed chapter of his life, and he had almost forgotten its existence. He had never dreamed this would be so; he had never meant it should be; but that did not alter the fact that, flattered and made much of ever since he went up to Oxford, he had somehow had little time to think of his mother, and, sorrier than that, little inclination. Death was such a desperately gloomy thing to contemplate! Besides, to keep thinking about it did not bring any one back. And yet, as much as in him lay, Ted had loved his mother, and been very proud of her too. It seemed hard that she should not have lived a great while longer. But then she had been so very sad sometimes, and life of course wasn't worth very much under those conditions. When it ceased to be awfully jolly, perhaps it was just as well to have done with it. For him, thank his stars! that unhappy period had not yet arrived. To be a Christ Church Senior, with plenty of money and plenty of friends and a head that easily mastered enough learning to make a good showing, left little to be desired, especially when already endowed with a handsome face and a physique that every man envied—at least, so thought Theodore Harris, and so thought and affirmed the half score of intimate friends who enjoyed many of the good things of this life through his bounty. It was a pity that there was not one among them with insight enough to gauge the complacent fellow aright, and at the same time with honesty enough to take him to task for the profitless life he was leading. But nobody did, and so on he fared, thoughtless and selfish, and so wholly absorbed in the present that even alone and at midnight, with his eyes resting full upon his mother's portrait, he had no thought to give it nor the worthier past that it stood for. Indeed, to judge from the discontented look on his face, his mind did not rise for a moment above the level of his annoyance at being kept waiting.
“Why don't the fellow come back?” he muttered angrily, realizing, as he heard the clock strike half-past twelve, that he had been actually inconvenienced for a whole half hour; and shortly after “the fellow did come back,” the dearest little fellow in the world too, by the way, and shut to the big front door and locked it as he had done night after night during the last two years, while Ted was up at Oxford, and he had been living alone with the servants in the pretty little home there at Windsor.