Chapter Four.Acquaintances New and Old.Roger’s projected jaunt in London did not turn out as satisfactorily as he had anticipated, as he caught a heavy cold on the first day, which kept him a prisoner in his hotel. Mr Armstrong needed all his authority to restrain the invalid within bounds; and it was only by threatening to convey him bodily home that the boy consented to nurse himself. Even so, it was as much as he could do to shake off his cold sufficiently on the morning of the arrival of the “Oriana” to accompany his tutor to the Dock to greet his unknown kinsfolk.As he shouldered his way on board over the crowded gangway, he found himself speculating somewhat nervously as to which of the numerous passengers standing about the deck was his new guardian. Was it the ferocious man with the great black beard who was swearing at his Indian servant in a voice loud enough to be heard all over the ship? Or was it the dissipated-looking fellow who walked unsteadily across the motionless ship, and finally clung for support to the deck railings? Or was it the discontented-looking little person who scowled at the company at large from the bridge? Or was it the complacent man with the expansive presence and leonine head, who smoked a big cigar and was exchanging a few effusive farewells with a small group of fellow-voyagers?Roger accosted one of the stewards—“Will you please tell Captain Oliphant that Mr Roger Ingleton is on board, with Mr Armstrong, and would like to see him?”The man gave a look up and down and went straight to the expansive person before mentioned.The visitors could see the gentleman start a little as the steward delivered his message, and pitch his cigar away as, with a serious face, he walked in their direction.“My poor dear boy,” said he, taking Roger’s hand, “thisisgood of you—very good. How glad I am to see you! How is your dear mamma?”“Mother is very well. Have you had a good voyage? Oh, this is Mr Armstrong.”Mr Armstrong all this while had been staring through his eye-glass at his co-trustee in no very amiable way, and now replied to that gentleman’s greeting with a somewhat stiff “How do you do?” “Where on earth did I see you before, my gentleman?” said he to himself, and having put the riddle, he promptly gave it up.Mr Oliphant displayed very little interest in his fellow-guardian, but said to Roger—“The children will be so delighted to see you. We have talked so much of you. They will be here directly; they are just putting together their things in the cabin. But now tell me all about yourself, my boy.”Roger did not feel equal to this comprehensive task, and said, “I suppose you’ll like to go straight on to Maxfield, wouldn’t you?”“Oh, yes! It may be a day before we get our luggage clear, so we will come to your hotel to-night and go on to-morrow. Why, my boy, what a cough you have! Ah! here comes Rosalind.”The figure which approached the group was that of a young lady about seventeen years of age, tall and slim, clad in a loose cloak which floated about her like a cloud, and considerably encumbered with sundry shawls and bags on one arm, a restive dog in another, and a hat which refused to remain on her head in the wind.Mr Armstrong was perhaps no great connoisseur of female charms, but he thought, as he slowly tried to make up his mind whether he should venture to assist her, that he had rarely seen a more interesting picture.Her face was flushed with the glow of youth and health. An artist might have found fault with it here and there, but to the tutor it seemed completely beautiful. The fine poise of her head upon the dainty neck, the classic cut of mouth and nostril, the large dark liquid eyes, the snowy forehead, the short clustering wind-tossed hair, the frank countenance, the refinement in every gesture—all combined to astonish the good man into admiration. Yet, with all his admiration, he felt a little afraid of this radiant apparition. Consequently, by the time he had half decided to advance to her succour, his ward had stepped forward and forestalled him.“Let me help you, Cousin Rosalind,” said Roger.She turned on him a look half surprise, half pleasure, and then allowing him to take cloaks, bags, dog, and all, said—“Really, papa, you must go and help down in the cabin. It’s an awful chaos, and Tom and Jill are making it ten times worse. Do go.” And she sat down with a gesture of despair on one of the benches, and proceeded to adjust her unruly hat. While doing this she looked up at Roger, who stood meekly before her with her belongings.“Thanks! Don’t mind holding them; put them down anywhere, Roger, and do, there’s a dear boy, go and help father and the others in that horrid, horrid cabin.”Roger, more flurried and docile than he had felt himself for a long while, dropped the baggage, and thrusting the dog into Armstrong’s hands, flew off to obey the behests of his new cousin.The young lady now looked up in charming bewilderment at the tutor, who could not fail to read the question in her eyes, and felt called upon to answer it.“May I introduce myself?” said he. “I am Frank Armstrong, Roger’s tutor.”“I’m so glad,” said she with a little laugh. “I’d imagined you a horrid elderly person with a white cravat and tortoise-shell spectacles. Itissuch a relief!”And she sighed at the mere recollection of her forebodings.“There’s no saying what we may become in time,” said Mr Armstrong.“I suppose,” said she, eyeing him curiously once more, “you’re the other trustee, or whatever it’s called? I hope you and father will get on well. I can’t see what use either of you can be. Roger looks as if he could take care of himself. Are you awfully fond of him?”“I am rather,” said the tutor in a voice which quite satisfied his hearer.“Heigho!” said she presently, picking up the dog and stroking its ears. “I’m glad this dreadful voyage is over. Mr Armstrong, what do they all think about all of us coming to Maxfield? If I lived there, I should hate it.”“Mrs Ingleton, I know, is very pleased.”“Yes, but you men aren’t. There’ll be fearful rows, I know. I wish we’d stayed behind in India. It’s hateful to be stuck down where you aren’t wanted, for every one to vote you a nuisance!”“I can hardly imagine any one votingyoua nuisance,” said Mr Armstrong, half-frightened at his own temerity.She glanced up with a little threatening of a blaze in her eyes. “Don’t!” said she. “That’s the sort of thing the silly young gentlemen say on board ship. I don’t like it.”The poor tutor winced as much under this rebuff as if he had been just detected in a plot to run away with his fair companion; and having nothing to say in extenuation of his crime, he relapsed into silence.Miss Oliphant, apparently unaware of the effect of her little protest, stroked her dog again and said—“Are you an artist?”“No; are you?”“I want to be. I’d give anything to get out of going to Maxfield, and have a room here in town near the galleries. It will be awful waste of time in that dull place.”“Perhaps your father—” began the tutor; but she took him up half angrily.“My father intends us to stay at Maxfield. In fact, you may as well know it at once, and let Roger know it too. We’re as poor as church-mice, and can’t afford to do anything else. Oh, how I wish we had stopped where we were!” And her voice actually trembled as she said the words.It was an uncomfortable position for Mr Armstrong. Once again his mother-wit failed him, and he watched the little hand as it moved up and down the dog’s back in silence.“I tell you this,” continued the young lady, “because tutors are generally poor, and you’ll understand it. I wish papa understood it half as well. I do believe he really enjoys the prospect of going and landing himself and all of us at that place.”“You forget that it is by the desire and invitation of the old Squire,” said the tutor.“Father might easily have declined. He ought to have. He wasn’t like you, fond of Roger. He doesn’t care—at least I fancy he doesn’t—much about Roger at all. Oh, I wish I could earn enough to pay for every bite every one of us eats!”To the tutor’s immense relief, at this point Captain Oliphant reappeared, followed by Roger with a boy and little girl.The boy was some years the junior of the heir of Maxfield, a rotund, matter-of-fact, jovial-looking lad, sturdy in body, easy in temper, and perhaps by no means brilliant in intellect. The turmoil of debarkation failed to ruffle him, and the information given him in sundry quarters that he was thefons et origoof all the confusion in the cabin failed to impress him. Everything that befell Tom Oliphant came in the day’s work, and would probably vanish with the night’s sleep. Meanwhile it was the duty of every one, himself included, to be jolly. So he accepted his father’s chidings and Roger’s greetings in equally good part; agreed with every word the former said, and gave in his allegiance to the latter with one and the same smile, and thought to himself how jolly to be in England at last, and perhaps some day to see the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race.The little maid who tripped at his side was perhaps ten or eleven—an odd blending of the sister’s beauty and alertness with the brother’s vigorous contentment. A prophet, versed in such matters, would have predicted that ten years hence Miss “Jill” Oliphant might seriously interfere with the shape of her elder sister’s nose. But as no prophets were present, only a fogey like Mr Armstrong and an inexperienced boy like Roger, no one concerned themselves about the future, but voted the little lady of ten a winsome child.“Well, thanks for allyourhelp,” said Tom to his elder sister. “I don’t know what we should have done without her. Eh, Roger?”“Upon my word, withyouin charge down there,” retorted the young lady, “I wouldn’t have been safe in that awful place a minute longer. I wonder you haven’t packed up Jill in one of the trunks.”“Oh, Cousin Roger took care of me,” said Miss Jill demurely.“I hope Armstrong did the same to you, Rosalind,” said Roger. “Here, Tom; this is my tutor, Frank Armstrong—a brick. Here, Jill; say how do you do to Mr Armstrong.”Jill horrified Mr Armstrong by putting up her face to be kissed. Indeed the poor gentleman as he shook the glass out of his eye and gazed down at this forward young person in consternation, presented so pitiable a spectacle, that Rosalind, Roger, and Tom all began to laugh.“She won’t bite,” said Tom reassuringly.Mr Armstrong, thus encouraged, took off his hat, and stooping down, kissed the child on the brow, much to that little lady’s satisfaction. This important operation performed, Captain Oliphant expressed concern for Roger’s cough, and proposed that his ward should take the girls and himself to the hotel, while no doubt Mr Armstrong would not mind remaining to help Tom with the luggage. By which excellent arrangement the party succeeded at last in getting clear of the “Oriana.”The tutor had his hands full most of that morning Tom Oliphant’s idea of looking after the luggage was to put his hands in his pockets and whistle pleasantly up and down the upper deck; nor was it till Mr Armstrong took him bodily below, and made him point out one by one the family properties (among which, by the way, he included several articles belonging to other owners), that he could be reduced to business at all.Then for half an hour he worked hard; at the end of which time he turned to his companion with a friendly grin.“Thanks awfully, Mr Armstrong. I say, I wonder if you’ll be my tutor as well as Frank’s? I heard father say something about it! Wouldn’t it be stunning?”Mr Armstrong gave a qualified assent.“I’m not a bit clever, you know, like Rosalind, but I’d like to have a tutor awfully. I say, haven’t we done enough with these blessed boxes? They’ll be all right now. Should we have time to see Christy’s Minstrels on our way to the hotel, do you think? I’d like it frightfully.”“My dear boy,” said Mr Armstrong, “if we are to get all the things properly cleared and labelled and sent off to Maxfield, we shall have no time for anything else. If the way you stick to your lessons is anything like the way you stick to this task, I don’t envy your tutor.”This covert threat at once reduced Tom to a sense of discipline, and he made a gallant effort to secure Mr Armstrong’s good opinion.The tutor was right. It was well on in the afternoon when they had the baggage finally disposed of, and were free to follow to the hotel.Here they found, instead of the party they expected, a hurriedly scrawled line from Roger.“Dear Armstrong,—“Oliphant has taken it into his head to go down to Maxfield at once by the two train. So we are starting. I’m sorry he can’t wait, so as all to go together. If you are back in time to come by the evening train, do come. If not, first train in the morning.“Yours ever,“R.I.”It was too late to get a train that day; so Mr Armstrong, much disgusted, had to make up his mind to remain. Tom, on the contrary, was delighted, and proposed twenty different plans for spending the evening, which finally resolved themselves into the coveted visit to Christy’s Minstrels.The tutor, in no very festive humour, allowed himself to be overborne by the eagerness of his young companion, and found himself in due time jammed into a seat in a very hot hall, listening to the very miscellaneous performance of the coloured gentlemen who “never perform out of London.”The tutor, who had some ideas of his own on the subject of music, listened very patiently, sometimes pleased, sometimes distressed, and always conscious of the enthusiastic delight of his companion, whose unaffected comments formed to him the most amusing part of the entertainment.“Isn’t that, stunning?”“Thanks awfully, Mr Armstrong, for bringing me.”“Hooray! Bones again!”“I say, I’m looking forward to the break-down; ain’t you?” and so on.Whatever Mr Armstrong’s anticipations may have been as to the rapture of the coming “break-down,” he contained himself admirably, and with his glass inquiringly stuck in his eye, listened attentively to all that went on, and occasionally speculated as to how Miss Rosalind Oliphant was enjoying her visit to Maxfield.The programme was half over, and Tom was repairing the ravages of nature with a bun, when Mr Armstrong became suddenly aware of a person in the row but one in front looking round fixedly in his direction.To judge by the close-cropped, erect hair and stubbly chin of this somewhat disreputable-looking individual, he was a foreigner; and when presently, catching the tutor’s eye, he began to indulge in pantomimic gestures of recognition, it was safe to guess he was a Frenchman.“Who’s that chap nodding to you?” said Tom with his mouth full. “Is he tipsy?”“He lays himself open to the suspicion,” said Mr Armstrong slowly. “At any rate, as I vote we go put and get some fresh air, he will have to find some one else to make faces at. Come along.”Tom did not at all like risking his seat, and particularly charged the lady next to him to preserve it from invasion at the risk of her life.Then wondering a little at Mr Armstrong’s impatience to reach the fresh air, he followed him out.The Frenchman witnessed the proceeding with some little disappointment, and sat craning his neck in the direction in which they had gone for some minutes. Then, as if moved by a similar yearning for fresh air, he too left his seat and went out.The band was beginning to play as he did so, and most of the loiterers were crowding back for the second part.“You go in; I’ll come directly,” said Mr Armstrong to the boy.Tom needed no second invitation, and a moment later had forgotten everything in the delightful prelude to the “break-down.” He did not even observe that Mr Armstrong had not returned to his seat.“Well, Gustav,” said that gentleman in French as the foreigner approached him, where he waited in the outer lobby.“Eh bien, man cher,” replied the other, “’ow ’appy I am to see you. I can speak ze Englise foine,n’est ce pas?”“What are you doing in London?”“I am vaiter,garçonat ze private hotel. ’Zey give me foods and drinks and one black coat, but not no vage.Oh, mon ami, it is ver’ ver’ ’ard.”“And the old man?”“Ah, hélas! he is ver’ ver’ ill. He vill die next week.Moi, I can not to him go; and Marie, she write me she must leave Paris this day to her duties. It is sad for the poor oldpèreto die with not von friend to ’old ’is ’and. Ah! if ze petite Françoise yet lived,ma pauvre enfant, she would stay and—”“Stop!” said the tutor imperatively. “Is he still in the old place?”“Hélas, non! you make ze joke, you. Ve are ver’ ver’ poor, and ’ave no homes.Mon père, he is to the hôpital. Thank ’eaven, they ’ave zere give ’im ze bed to die.”“Which hospital is he at?” said the tutor.“De Saint Luc.”“I will see him.”The Frenchman gave a little hysterical laugh; then, with tears in his eyes, he seized the hand of the Englishman and wrung it rapturously.“Oh, mon ami, mon cher ami!” cried he, “’eaven will bless you. I am ’appy that you say that. You vill see ’im? Yes? You vill ’old ’is ’and ven he do die? He sall have one friend to kiss his poorfront? Oh, I am content; I am gay.”How long he would have gone on thus it is hard to say. Mr Armstrong cut short the scene rather abruptly.“There, there!” said he. “Good-bye, Gustav. I shall go very soon, and will come and see you when I return.” And he went back to the performance.“You’ve missed it!” said Tom, as he dropped into his seat. “It was the finest ‘break-down’ you ever saw! That one next but one to Bones kept it up best. We couldn’t get an encore out of them. Never mind; perhaps they’ll have another to finish up. There’s lot’s more in the programme.”Mr Armstrong watched it all with the same critical interest as before, but his mind was far away. It wandered to the foreign city, to the gaunt pauper hospital there, to a little low bed where lay an old dying friendless man, tossing and moaning for the laggard death to give him rest. He saw nothing of what went on before him; he felt none of the merry boy’s nudges at his side; he even forgot Roger and Maxfield.The performance was over at last.“Well, thatwasa jolly spree! I wish it was coming all over again,” chirped the boy. “Oh, thank you awfully, Mr Armstrong, for bringing me. Did you like it too? That last break-down wasn’t up to the other, but I’m glad you’ve seen one of them, at any rate.”As they crowded out, Mr Armstrong was surprised and a little vexed to see Gustav still hanging about the lobby waiting for him. He dropped behind the boy for a moment and beckoned him.“Well, Gustav?” said he impatiently.“Ah,mon ami,” said the Frenchman, putting a little bunch of early violets into the tutor’s hands, “vill you give ’im zese from me? ’Tis all I can send. But he will love zem for the sake of me and ze little Françoise. Adieu, adieu,mon cher ami.”It took not a minute; but in that time Tom had wandered serenely on, never dreaming that his protector was not close at his heels. Nor did he discover his mistake till he found himself half-way up Piccadilly, enlarging to a stranger at his side on the excellence of the evening’s performance. Then he looked round and missed his companion. The pavement was crowded with wayfarers of all sorts, some pressing one way, some another. Among them all the boy could not discover the stalwart form of Mr Armstrong. He pushed back to the hall, but he was not there. He followed one or two figures that looked like his; but they were strangers all. Then he returned up the street at a run, hoping to overtake him; but in vain.He knew nothing of London; he did not even know the name of the hotel; he had no money in his pocket.He was, in short, lost.As for Mr Armstrong, not seeing his charge at the door, he had started to run in the direction of the hotel, which was the opposite direction to that taken by Tom. Seeing no sign of the prodigal, he too returned to the hall, just after Tom had started a second time on the contrary tack; and so for an hour these two played hide and seek; sometimes almost within reach of one another; at others, with the whole length of the street between them.At last the crowd on the pavement thinned, and the tutor, sorely chagrined, started off to the hotel, on the chance of the boy having turned up there. No Tom was there. Tom, in fact, was at that moment debating somewhere about a mile and a half away whether he should not try to make his way to the “Oriana” at the Docks, and remain quietly there till claimed. What a joke it would all be when hewasfound! What an adventure for his first night in London!It was not very easy even for Tom Oliphant to derive much amusement from these philosophical reflections, and he looked about him rather dismally for some one of whom to inquire his way.A seedy-looking person was standing under a lamppost hard by, trying to light a cigarette in the wind. Tom decided to tackle him.“Please can you tell me the way to the Docks where the P and O steamers come in?” said he.The man let drop his match and stared at the boy.“Vy,” said he with an odd shrug, “that is some long walks from here.Mais, comment. Vas you not at ze Christy Minstrel to-night viz a nice gentleman?”“Rather!” said the boy. “Were you there? I say, wasn’t it a clipping turn out? I did like it, especially the break-down. I say, I’m lost. The fellow who was looking after me has lost me.”“Oh, you ’ave lost ’im. I am ’appy you to find. You sall not valk to ze Dock, no. I sall give you sleeps at ze hotel, and to-morrow you sall find zat dear gentleman. Come wiz me.”“Oh, but you know, he’ll be looking for me; besides, I’ve got no tin. Father forgot to leave me any. I’d better go to the Docks, I say.”“You sall not. Zey will be all shut fast zere. No, my dear friend, you sall come sleep at my hotel, and you sall have nothings to pay. It will be all right. I would die for to help ze friend of my friend.”“Is Mr Armstrong a friend of yours?” asked the boy. “I thought you were only cheeking him that time in the Hall. Oh, all right, if you know him. Thanks awfully.”Gustav, as delighted as a cat who has found her kitten, led the boy off jubilantly to his third-rate hotel off the Strand, taking the precaution, as he passed, to leave word at the Hall that if a gentleman called who had lost a boy, he should be told where he would find him.He smuggled Tom up to his own garret, and made him royally welcome with three-quarters of his scanty supper and the whole of his narrow bed, sleeping himself on the floor cheerfully for the sake of thecher amiwho had that night promised to go to Paris to hold the hand of his dying father.About three in the morning there was a loud ringing of the bell and a sound of steps and voices on the stairs, and presently Mr Armstrong entered the room.Gustav sprang up with his finger on his lips, pointing to the sleeping boy.“Oh,mon ami,” whispered he, “’ow ’appy I am you ’ave found ’im. But I keep him ver’ safe. I love to do it, for you are ver’ good to me and thepauvre père. He sall rest here till to-day, vile you (hélas! that I have no two beds to offer you), you sall take one in ze hotel, and at morning we sall all be ’appy together.”Mr Armstrong grimly accepted this proposal, and took a room for the night at Gustav’s hotel.The next morning, scarcely waiting to take breakfast or bid another adieu to his grateful friend, he hurried the genial Tom, who had enjoyed himself extremely, to the station, and carried him down by express train to Maxfield.
Roger’s projected jaunt in London did not turn out as satisfactorily as he had anticipated, as he caught a heavy cold on the first day, which kept him a prisoner in his hotel. Mr Armstrong needed all his authority to restrain the invalid within bounds; and it was only by threatening to convey him bodily home that the boy consented to nurse himself. Even so, it was as much as he could do to shake off his cold sufficiently on the morning of the arrival of the “Oriana” to accompany his tutor to the Dock to greet his unknown kinsfolk.
As he shouldered his way on board over the crowded gangway, he found himself speculating somewhat nervously as to which of the numerous passengers standing about the deck was his new guardian. Was it the ferocious man with the great black beard who was swearing at his Indian servant in a voice loud enough to be heard all over the ship? Or was it the dissipated-looking fellow who walked unsteadily across the motionless ship, and finally clung for support to the deck railings? Or was it the discontented-looking little person who scowled at the company at large from the bridge? Or was it the complacent man with the expansive presence and leonine head, who smoked a big cigar and was exchanging a few effusive farewells with a small group of fellow-voyagers?
Roger accosted one of the stewards—
“Will you please tell Captain Oliphant that Mr Roger Ingleton is on board, with Mr Armstrong, and would like to see him?”
The man gave a look up and down and went straight to the expansive person before mentioned.
The visitors could see the gentleman start a little as the steward delivered his message, and pitch his cigar away as, with a serious face, he walked in their direction.
“My poor dear boy,” said he, taking Roger’s hand, “thisisgood of you—very good. How glad I am to see you! How is your dear mamma?”
“Mother is very well. Have you had a good voyage? Oh, this is Mr Armstrong.”
Mr Armstrong all this while had been staring through his eye-glass at his co-trustee in no very amiable way, and now replied to that gentleman’s greeting with a somewhat stiff “How do you do?” “Where on earth did I see you before, my gentleman?” said he to himself, and having put the riddle, he promptly gave it up.
Mr Oliphant displayed very little interest in his fellow-guardian, but said to Roger—
“The children will be so delighted to see you. We have talked so much of you. They will be here directly; they are just putting together their things in the cabin. But now tell me all about yourself, my boy.”
Roger did not feel equal to this comprehensive task, and said, “I suppose you’ll like to go straight on to Maxfield, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, yes! It may be a day before we get our luggage clear, so we will come to your hotel to-night and go on to-morrow. Why, my boy, what a cough you have! Ah! here comes Rosalind.”
The figure which approached the group was that of a young lady about seventeen years of age, tall and slim, clad in a loose cloak which floated about her like a cloud, and considerably encumbered with sundry shawls and bags on one arm, a restive dog in another, and a hat which refused to remain on her head in the wind.
Mr Armstrong was perhaps no great connoisseur of female charms, but he thought, as he slowly tried to make up his mind whether he should venture to assist her, that he had rarely seen a more interesting picture.
Her face was flushed with the glow of youth and health. An artist might have found fault with it here and there, but to the tutor it seemed completely beautiful. The fine poise of her head upon the dainty neck, the classic cut of mouth and nostril, the large dark liquid eyes, the snowy forehead, the short clustering wind-tossed hair, the frank countenance, the refinement in every gesture—all combined to astonish the good man into admiration. Yet, with all his admiration, he felt a little afraid of this radiant apparition. Consequently, by the time he had half decided to advance to her succour, his ward had stepped forward and forestalled him.
“Let me help you, Cousin Rosalind,” said Roger.
She turned on him a look half surprise, half pleasure, and then allowing him to take cloaks, bags, dog, and all, said—
“Really, papa, you must go and help down in the cabin. It’s an awful chaos, and Tom and Jill are making it ten times worse. Do go.” And she sat down with a gesture of despair on one of the benches, and proceeded to adjust her unruly hat. While doing this she looked up at Roger, who stood meekly before her with her belongings.
“Thanks! Don’t mind holding them; put them down anywhere, Roger, and do, there’s a dear boy, go and help father and the others in that horrid, horrid cabin.”
Roger, more flurried and docile than he had felt himself for a long while, dropped the baggage, and thrusting the dog into Armstrong’s hands, flew off to obey the behests of his new cousin.
The young lady now looked up in charming bewilderment at the tutor, who could not fail to read the question in her eyes, and felt called upon to answer it.
“May I introduce myself?” said he. “I am Frank Armstrong, Roger’s tutor.”
“I’m so glad,” said she with a little laugh. “I’d imagined you a horrid elderly person with a white cravat and tortoise-shell spectacles. Itissuch a relief!”
And she sighed at the mere recollection of her forebodings.
“There’s no saying what we may become in time,” said Mr Armstrong.
“I suppose,” said she, eyeing him curiously once more, “you’re the other trustee, or whatever it’s called? I hope you and father will get on well. I can’t see what use either of you can be. Roger looks as if he could take care of himself. Are you awfully fond of him?”
“I am rather,” said the tutor in a voice which quite satisfied his hearer.
“Heigho!” said she presently, picking up the dog and stroking its ears. “I’m glad this dreadful voyage is over. Mr Armstrong, what do they all think about all of us coming to Maxfield? If I lived there, I should hate it.”
“Mrs Ingleton, I know, is very pleased.”
“Yes, but you men aren’t. There’ll be fearful rows, I know. I wish we’d stayed behind in India. It’s hateful to be stuck down where you aren’t wanted, for every one to vote you a nuisance!”
“I can hardly imagine any one votingyoua nuisance,” said Mr Armstrong, half-frightened at his own temerity.
She glanced up with a little threatening of a blaze in her eyes. “Don’t!” said she. “That’s the sort of thing the silly young gentlemen say on board ship. I don’t like it.”
The poor tutor winced as much under this rebuff as if he had been just detected in a plot to run away with his fair companion; and having nothing to say in extenuation of his crime, he relapsed into silence.
Miss Oliphant, apparently unaware of the effect of her little protest, stroked her dog again and said—
“Are you an artist?”
“No; are you?”
“I want to be. I’d give anything to get out of going to Maxfield, and have a room here in town near the galleries. It will be awful waste of time in that dull place.”
“Perhaps your father—” began the tutor; but she took him up half angrily.
“My father intends us to stay at Maxfield. In fact, you may as well know it at once, and let Roger know it too. We’re as poor as church-mice, and can’t afford to do anything else. Oh, how I wish we had stopped where we were!” And her voice actually trembled as she said the words.
It was an uncomfortable position for Mr Armstrong. Once again his mother-wit failed him, and he watched the little hand as it moved up and down the dog’s back in silence.
“I tell you this,” continued the young lady, “because tutors are generally poor, and you’ll understand it. I wish papa understood it half as well. I do believe he really enjoys the prospect of going and landing himself and all of us at that place.”
“You forget that it is by the desire and invitation of the old Squire,” said the tutor.
“Father might easily have declined. He ought to have. He wasn’t like you, fond of Roger. He doesn’t care—at least I fancy he doesn’t—much about Roger at all. Oh, I wish I could earn enough to pay for every bite every one of us eats!”
To the tutor’s immense relief, at this point Captain Oliphant reappeared, followed by Roger with a boy and little girl.
The boy was some years the junior of the heir of Maxfield, a rotund, matter-of-fact, jovial-looking lad, sturdy in body, easy in temper, and perhaps by no means brilliant in intellect. The turmoil of debarkation failed to ruffle him, and the information given him in sundry quarters that he was thefons et origoof all the confusion in the cabin failed to impress him. Everything that befell Tom Oliphant came in the day’s work, and would probably vanish with the night’s sleep. Meanwhile it was the duty of every one, himself included, to be jolly. So he accepted his father’s chidings and Roger’s greetings in equally good part; agreed with every word the former said, and gave in his allegiance to the latter with one and the same smile, and thought to himself how jolly to be in England at last, and perhaps some day to see the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race.
The little maid who tripped at his side was perhaps ten or eleven—an odd blending of the sister’s beauty and alertness with the brother’s vigorous contentment. A prophet, versed in such matters, would have predicted that ten years hence Miss “Jill” Oliphant might seriously interfere with the shape of her elder sister’s nose. But as no prophets were present, only a fogey like Mr Armstrong and an inexperienced boy like Roger, no one concerned themselves about the future, but voted the little lady of ten a winsome child.
“Well, thanks for allyourhelp,” said Tom to his elder sister. “I don’t know what we should have done without her. Eh, Roger?”
“Upon my word, withyouin charge down there,” retorted the young lady, “I wouldn’t have been safe in that awful place a minute longer. I wonder you haven’t packed up Jill in one of the trunks.”
“Oh, Cousin Roger took care of me,” said Miss Jill demurely.
“I hope Armstrong did the same to you, Rosalind,” said Roger. “Here, Tom; this is my tutor, Frank Armstrong—a brick. Here, Jill; say how do you do to Mr Armstrong.”
Jill horrified Mr Armstrong by putting up her face to be kissed. Indeed the poor gentleman as he shook the glass out of his eye and gazed down at this forward young person in consternation, presented so pitiable a spectacle, that Rosalind, Roger, and Tom all began to laugh.
“She won’t bite,” said Tom reassuringly.
Mr Armstrong, thus encouraged, took off his hat, and stooping down, kissed the child on the brow, much to that little lady’s satisfaction. This important operation performed, Captain Oliphant expressed concern for Roger’s cough, and proposed that his ward should take the girls and himself to the hotel, while no doubt Mr Armstrong would not mind remaining to help Tom with the luggage. By which excellent arrangement the party succeeded at last in getting clear of the “Oriana.”
The tutor had his hands full most of that morning Tom Oliphant’s idea of looking after the luggage was to put his hands in his pockets and whistle pleasantly up and down the upper deck; nor was it till Mr Armstrong took him bodily below, and made him point out one by one the family properties (among which, by the way, he included several articles belonging to other owners), that he could be reduced to business at all.
Then for half an hour he worked hard; at the end of which time he turned to his companion with a friendly grin.
“Thanks awfully, Mr Armstrong. I say, I wonder if you’ll be my tutor as well as Frank’s? I heard father say something about it! Wouldn’t it be stunning?”
Mr Armstrong gave a qualified assent.
“I’m not a bit clever, you know, like Rosalind, but I’d like to have a tutor awfully. I say, haven’t we done enough with these blessed boxes? They’ll be all right now. Should we have time to see Christy’s Minstrels on our way to the hotel, do you think? I’d like it frightfully.”
“My dear boy,” said Mr Armstrong, “if we are to get all the things properly cleared and labelled and sent off to Maxfield, we shall have no time for anything else. If the way you stick to your lessons is anything like the way you stick to this task, I don’t envy your tutor.”
This covert threat at once reduced Tom to a sense of discipline, and he made a gallant effort to secure Mr Armstrong’s good opinion.
The tutor was right. It was well on in the afternoon when they had the baggage finally disposed of, and were free to follow to the hotel.
Here they found, instead of the party they expected, a hurriedly scrawled line from Roger.
“Dear Armstrong,—
“Oliphant has taken it into his head to go down to Maxfield at once by the two train. So we are starting. I’m sorry he can’t wait, so as all to go together. If you are back in time to come by the evening train, do come. If not, first train in the morning.
“Yours ever,
“R.I.”
It was too late to get a train that day; so Mr Armstrong, much disgusted, had to make up his mind to remain. Tom, on the contrary, was delighted, and proposed twenty different plans for spending the evening, which finally resolved themselves into the coveted visit to Christy’s Minstrels.
The tutor, in no very festive humour, allowed himself to be overborne by the eagerness of his young companion, and found himself in due time jammed into a seat in a very hot hall, listening to the very miscellaneous performance of the coloured gentlemen who “never perform out of London.”
The tutor, who had some ideas of his own on the subject of music, listened very patiently, sometimes pleased, sometimes distressed, and always conscious of the enthusiastic delight of his companion, whose unaffected comments formed to him the most amusing part of the entertainment.
“Isn’t that, stunning?”
“Thanks awfully, Mr Armstrong, for bringing me.”
“Hooray! Bones again!”
“I say, I’m looking forward to the break-down; ain’t you?” and so on.
Whatever Mr Armstrong’s anticipations may have been as to the rapture of the coming “break-down,” he contained himself admirably, and with his glass inquiringly stuck in his eye, listened attentively to all that went on, and occasionally speculated as to how Miss Rosalind Oliphant was enjoying her visit to Maxfield.
The programme was half over, and Tom was repairing the ravages of nature with a bun, when Mr Armstrong became suddenly aware of a person in the row but one in front looking round fixedly in his direction.
To judge by the close-cropped, erect hair and stubbly chin of this somewhat disreputable-looking individual, he was a foreigner; and when presently, catching the tutor’s eye, he began to indulge in pantomimic gestures of recognition, it was safe to guess he was a Frenchman.
“Who’s that chap nodding to you?” said Tom with his mouth full. “Is he tipsy?”
“He lays himself open to the suspicion,” said Mr Armstrong slowly. “At any rate, as I vote we go put and get some fresh air, he will have to find some one else to make faces at. Come along.”
Tom did not at all like risking his seat, and particularly charged the lady next to him to preserve it from invasion at the risk of her life.
Then wondering a little at Mr Armstrong’s impatience to reach the fresh air, he followed him out.
The Frenchman witnessed the proceeding with some little disappointment, and sat craning his neck in the direction in which they had gone for some minutes. Then, as if moved by a similar yearning for fresh air, he too left his seat and went out.
The band was beginning to play as he did so, and most of the loiterers were crowding back for the second part.
“You go in; I’ll come directly,” said Mr Armstrong to the boy.
Tom needed no second invitation, and a moment later had forgotten everything in the delightful prelude to the “break-down.” He did not even observe that Mr Armstrong had not returned to his seat.
“Well, Gustav,” said that gentleman in French as the foreigner approached him, where he waited in the outer lobby.
“Eh bien, man cher,” replied the other, “’ow ’appy I am to see you. I can speak ze Englise foine,n’est ce pas?”
“What are you doing in London?”
“I am vaiter,garçonat ze private hotel. ’Zey give me foods and drinks and one black coat, but not no vage.Oh, mon ami, it is ver’ ver’ ’ard.”
“And the old man?”
“Ah, hélas! he is ver’ ver’ ill. He vill die next week.Moi, I can not to him go; and Marie, she write me she must leave Paris this day to her duties. It is sad for the poor oldpèreto die with not von friend to ’old ’is ’and. Ah! if ze petite Françoise yet lived,ma pauvre enfant, she would stay and—”
“Stop!” said the tutor imperatively. “Is he still in the old place?”
“Hélas, non! you make ze joke, you. Ve are ver’ ver’ poor, and ’ave no homes.Mon père, he is to the hôpital. Thank ’eaven, they ’ave zere give ’im ze bed to die.”
“Which hospital is he at?” said the tutor.
“De Saint Luc.”
“I will see him.”
The Frenchman gave a little hysterical laugh; then, with tears in his eyes, he seized the hand of the Englishman and wrung it rapturously.
“Oh, mon ami, mon cher ami!” cried he, “’eaven will bless you. I am ’appy that you say that. You vill see ’im? Yes? You vill ’old ’is ’and ven he do die? He sall have one friend to kiss his poorfront? Oh, I am content; I am gay.”
How long he would have gone on thus it is hard to say. Mr Armstrong cut short the scene rather abruptly.
“There, there!” said he. “Good-bye, Gustav. I shall go very soon, and will come and see you when I return.” And he went back to the performance.
“You’ve missed it!” said Tom, as he dropped into his seat. “It was the finest ‘break-down’ you ever saw! That one next but one to Bones kept it up best. We couldn’t get an encore out of them. Never mind; perhaps they’ll have another to finish up. There’s lot’s more in the programme.”
Mr Armstrong watched it all with the same critical interest as before, but his mind was far away. It wandered to the foreign city, to the gaunt pauper hospital there, to a little low bed where lay an old dying friendless man, tossing and moaning for the laggard death to give him rest. He saw nothing of what went on before him; he felt none of the merry boy’s nudges at his side; he even forgot Roger and Maxfield.
The performance was over at last.
“Well, thatwasa jolly spree! I wish it was coming all over again,” chirped the boy. “Oh, thank you awfully, Mr Armstrong, for bringing me. Did you like it too? That last break-down wasn’t up to the other, but I’m glad you’ve seen one of them, at any rate.”
As they crowded out, Mr Armstrong was surprised and a little vexed to see Gustav still hanging about the lobby waiting for him. He dropped behind the boy for a moment and beckoned him.
“Well, Gustav?” said he impatiently.
“Ah,mon ami,” said the Frenchman, putting a little bunch of early violets into the tutor’s hands, “vill you give ’im zese from me? ’Tis all I can send. But he will love zem for the sake of me and ze little Françoise. Adieu, adieu,mon cher ami.”
It took not a minute; but in that time Tom had wandered serenely on, never dreaming that his protector was not close at his heels. Nor did he discover his mistake till he found himself half-way up Piccadilly, enlarging to a stranger at his side on the excellence of the evening’s performance. Then he looked round and missed his companion. The pavement was crowded with wayfarers of all sorts, some pressing one way, some another. Among them all the boy could not discover the stalwart form of Mr Armstrong. He pushed back to the hall, but he was not there. He followed one or two figures that looked like his; but they were strangers all. Then he returned up the street at a run, hoping to overtake him; but in vain.
He knew nothing of London; he did not even know the name of the hotel; he had no money in his pocket.
He was, in short, lost.
As for Mr Armstrong, not seeing his charge at the door, he had started to run in the direction of the hotel, which was the opposite direction to that taken by Tom. Seeing no sign of the prodigal, he too returned to the hall, just after Tom had started a second time on the contrary tack; and so for an hour these two played hide and seek; sometimes almost within reach of one another; at others, with the whole length of the street between them.
At last the crowd on the pavement thinned, and the tutor, sorely chagrined, started off to the hotel, on the chance of the boy having turned up there. No Tom was there. Tom, in fact, was at that moment debating somewhere about a mile and a half away whether he should not try to make his way to the “Oriana” at the Docks, and remain quietly there till claimed. What a joke it would all be when hewasfound! What an adventure for his first night in London!
It was not very easy even for Tom Oliphant to derive much amusement from these philosophical reflections, and he looked about him rather dismally for some one of whom to inquire his way.
A seedy-looking person was standing under a lamppost hard by, trying to light a cigarette in the wind. Tom decided to tackle him.
“Please can you tell me the way to the Docks where the P and O steamers come in?” said he.
The man let drop his match and stared at the boy.
“Vy,” said he with an odd shrug, “that is some long walks from here.Mais, comment. Vas you not at ze Christy Minstrel to-night viz a nice gentleman?”
“Rather!” said the boy. “Were you there? I say, wasn’t it a clipping turn out? I did like it, especially the break-down. I say, I’m lost. The fellow who was looking after me has lost me.”
“Oh, you ’ave lost ’im. I am ’appy you to find. You sall not valk to ze Dock, no. I sall give you sleeps at ze hotel, and to-morrow you sall find zat dear gentleman. Come wiz me.”
“Oh, but you know, he’ll be looking for me; besides, I’ve got no tin. Father forgot to leave me any. I’d better go to the Docks, I say.”
“You sall not. Zey will be all shut fast zere. No, my dear friend, you sall come sleep at my hotel, and you sall have nothings to pay. It will be all right. I would die for to help ze friend of my friend.”
“Is Mr Armstrong a friend of yours?” asked the boy. “I thought you were only cheeking him that time in the Hall. Oh, all right, if you know him. Thanks awfully.”
Gustav, as delighted as a cat who has found her kitten, led the boy off jubilantly to his third-rate hotel off the Strand, taking the precaution, as he passed, to leave word at the Hall that if a gentleman called who had lost a boy, he should be told where he would find him.
He smuggled Tom up to his own garret, and made him royally welcome with three-quarters of his scanty supper and the whole of his narrow bed, sleeping himself on the floor cheerfully for the sake of thecher amiwho had that night promised to go to Paris to hold the hand of his dying father.
About three in the morning there was a loud ringing of the bell and a sound of steps and voices on the stairs, and presently Mr Armstrong entered the room.
Gustav sprang up with his finger on his lips, pointing to the sleeping boy.
“Oh,mon ami,” whispered he, “’ow ’appy I am you ’ave found ’im. But I keep him ver’ safe. I love to do it, for you are ver’ good to me and thepauvre père. He sall rest here till to-day, vile you (hélas! that I have no two beds to offer you), you sall take one in ze hotel, and at morning we sall all be ’appy together.”
Mr Armstrong grimly accepted this proposal, and took a room for the night at Gustav’s hotel.
The next morning, scarcely waiting to take breakfast or bid another adieu to his grateful friend, he hurried the genial Tom, who had enjoyed himself extremely, to the station, and carried him down by express train to Maxfield.
Chapter Five.A Churchyard Cough.When Mr Armstrong with his jovial charge arrived about midday at Maxfield, he was struck with the transformation scene which had taken place since he quitted it gloomily a day or two before.The house was the same, the furniture was untouched, the ordinary domestic routine appeared to be unaltered, but a sense of something new pervaded the place which he could interpret only by the one word—Oliphant.The captain had made a touching entry—full of sympathy, full of affection, full of a desire to spare his dear cousin all business worry, full of the responsibility that was on him to take charge of the dear fatherless boy, full of that calm sense of duty which enables a man to assert himself on all occasions for the good of those committed to his care. As for his charming daughters, they had floated majestically into their quarters—Miss Rosalind a trifle defiantly, making no secret of her dislike of the whole business; Miss Jill merrily, delighted with the novelty and beauty of this new home, so much more to her mind than the barrack home in India. And Roger, despite all his sinister anticipations, found himself tolerant already of the new guardian, and more than tolerant of hissuite.For somehow his pulses had taken to beating a little quicker since yesterday, and when half a dozen times that evening he had heard a summons down the landing to come and hang this picture, or like a dear boy unfasten that strap, or like an angel come and make himself agreeable, unless he intended his cousins to sit by themselves all the evening as penance for coming where they were not wanted,—at all such summonses Roger Ingleton had experienced quite a novel sensation of nervousness and awkwardness, which contributed to make him very uncomfortable.“Why,” said he, as he and his tutor greeted one another again in Mr Armstrong’s room, “why, it seems ages since I saw you, and yet it’s only yesterday. I wish we could all have come down together. Do you know, Armstrong, I half fancy it’s not going to be as awful as I expected.”“That’s all right,” said Mr Armstrong, who had already begun to entertain a contrary impression.“Oliphant seems civilly disposed, and not inclined to interfere; and the girls—well they seem harmless enough. How do you like Tom?”“Tom’s a nice, quiet, business-like boy,” said the tutor with a grin. “I’ll tell you more about him soon, but at present I have no time. I must catch the four o’clock train back to London.”“What! What ever for?” exclaimed Roger, with falling face.“Urgent private affairs. I shall be away perhaps a week,” said Mr Armstrong shortly, in a tone which discouraged Roger from making further inquiries.“I’m awfully sorry,” said he; “I shall miss you specially just now.”“If I could have taken any other time, I would,” said the tutor, busily throwing his things into his bag all the time; “but I am going to a death-bed.”“Oh, Armstrong, I’m so sorry. Is it a relation?”“As I regard relations, yes. Now I must go and make my apologies to your mother. I’ll come and see you before I go.”He found the lady sitting in the library in consultation with Captain Oliphant. The table was spread with the late Squire’s papers and documents, concerning which the Captain was evincing considerable interest.The tutor glared a little through his glass at the spectacle of this industry, and disposing of his co-trustee’s greeting with a half nod, accosted Mrs Ingleton.“I must ask you to excuse me for a few days, Mrs Ingleton. I have just received news which render a journey necessary.”“Indeed!” said Captain Oliphant, looking up from his papers. “I am afraid, Mr Armstrong, we must ask you to postpone it, as there are a good many business matters of importance to be gone into, which will require the attention of all the trustees. It is an inconvenient time to seek for leave of absence.”The tutor’s mouth stiffened ominously.“You take unnecessary interest in my affairs, sir. I shall be at your service on my return. Mrs Ingleton, I am sorry for this interruption in Roger’s studies. It shall be as brief as I can make it.”“Oh, of course, Mr Armstrong,” said the lady, “I hope it is nothing serious. We shall be glad to have you back to consult about things; that is all Captain Oliphant means, I’m sure.”The tutor bowed.“I really hope,” said Captain Oliphant blandly, “Mr Armstrong will appreciate my desire to cooperate harmoniously in the sacred trust laid upon us all by the dying wish of our dear friend.”“I have no wish to do anything else, sir,” said the tutor shortly, “if you will allow me. Good-bye, Mrs Ingleton.”Roger was a good deal concerned to notice the grim cloud on his friend’s face, when he returned for a moment to his room for his bag. He knew him too well to ask questions, but made up for his silence by the warmth of his farewell.“Come back soon, Armstrong; it will be awfully slow while you’re away. Let’s carry your bag down-stairs.”As they passed the end of the lobby, a certain door chanced to open, and Armstrong caught a vision of an easel and a fair head beyond, and beyond that a mantelpiece decorated with all sorts of Oriental and feminine knick-knacks. He might have observed more had his glass been up, and had he not been eagerly accosted by Miss Jill, who just then was running out of the room.“Mr Armstrong! Mr Armstrong!” shouted she in glee. “Rosalind, he’s come back; here he is!”And without more ado she caught the embarrassed tutor by the arm and demanded a kiss. He compromised feebly by patting her head, whereat Miss Jill pouted.“You’re more unkind than yesterday,” she said; “you kissed me then.”“You shouldn’t ask Mr Armstrong to do horrid things,” said Miss Rosalind, coming to the door.The tutor, very hot and flurried, replied to this cruel challenge by saluting the little tyrant and bowing to her sister.“Won’t you come in and see the studio?” said the latter. “It’s a little less dreadful than yesterday, thanks to Roger. What are you carrying that bag for, Roger?”“Armstrong’s going up to town for a few days.”“How horrid!” said Miss Rosalind, with vexation in her voice; “just while Jill and I are feeling so lonely, cooped up here like nuns, with not a soul to talk to, and knowing we’re in everybody’s way.”“Armstrong has a sad enough reason for going,” said Roger; “but I say, it’s not very complimentary to me to say you’ve not a soul to talk to.”The half-jesting petulance in Rosalind’s face had given place to a look almost of pain as she held out her hand.“Good-bye, Mr Armstrong,” said she. “I didn’t know you were in trouble.”“Itwillbe jolly when you come home,” chimed in Jill.Somehow in Mr Armstrong’s ears, as he whirled along to town that afternoon, those two pretty farewells rang continuous changes. When, at evening, he took his seat in the Dover express, they still followed him, now in solos, now in duet, now in restless fugue. On the steamer they rose and fell with the uneasy waves and played in the whistling wind. As he sped towards Paris, past the acacia hedges and poplar avenues, among foreign scenes, amidst the chatter of foreign tongues, surrounded by foreign faces, he still caught the sound of those two distant voices—one quiet and low, the other gay and piping; and even when, at last, he dropped asleep and forgot everything else, they joined in with the rattle of the rail to give him his lullaby. Such are the freaks of which a sensitive musical ear is often the victim.At Maxfield, meanwhile, he remained in the minds of one or two of the inmates.The two young ladies, assisted by their cousin, and genially obstructed by their easy-going brother, proceeded seriously in the task of adorning the studio; now and then speculating about the absent tutor, and now and then feeling very dejected and lonely. Roger did his best to enliven the evening and make his visitors feel at home. But although Tom and Jill readily consented to be comforted, Miss Rosalind as stubbornly refused, and protested a score of times that the cabin of the “Oriana” itself was preferable to the misery of being condemned, as she termed it, to eat her head off in this dismal place. She was sorry for Mr Armstrong, but she was vexed too that he should go off the very first day after her arrival, and leave her to fight her battles alone. After that talk on the steamer, she had, in her own mind, reckoned on him as an ally, and it disappointed her not to find him at her bidding after all.But she was not the only person whose mind was exercised by the tutor’s abrupt exodus.Captain Oliphant felt decidedly hurt by the manner of his going. It argued a lack of appreciation of the newly arrived trustee’s position in the household on which he had hardly calculated; and it bespoke a spirit of independence in the tutor himself, which his colleague could not but regard as unpromising. Indeed, when, after the day’s labours, Captain Oliphant sought the seclusion of his own apartment, this amiable, pleasant-spoken gentleman grew quite warm with himself.“Who is this grandee?” he asked himself. “A man hired at a few pounds a year and fed at the Maxfield table, in order to help the heir to a little quite unnecessary knowledge of the ancient classics and modern sciences. What was the old dotard,”—the old dotard, by the way, was Captain Oliphant’s private manner of referring to the lamented “dear one,” whose name so often trembled on his lips in public,—“what was the old dotard thinking about? At any rate, I should like to know a little more about the fellow myself.”With this laudable intention he questioned Mrs Ingleton next morning.“He is a good friend to dear Roger,” said the mother. “Roger is devoted to him. I am sure you will get to like him, Edward. He is perhaps a little odd in his manner, but he has a good heart.”This was about all Mrs Ingleton knew, except that he was a University man and an accomplished musician.Captain Oliphant was not much enlightened by this description. He sat down, and for the third time carefully read over the “dear one’s” will.“I think,” said he at lunch-time, “I will stroll over to Yeld this afternoon and see Mr Pottinger. Roger, will you walk with me? A walk would do you good. You are looking pale, my boy.”“Oh, I’m all right,” said Roger, whose cough, however, was still obstinate. “I’ll come with pleasure.”A walk of five miles on a damp afternoon through drenched country lanes may be a good specific for a cough in India, but in England it occasionally fails in this respect. Roger was wet through when he reached Yeld.“I shall not be long,” said the Captain as they reached the attorney’s door. “Don’t catch cold, there’s a good fellow. Remember your health is very precious.”Roger undertook to act on this considerate advice, and occupied his time of waiting by strolling up and down the High Street in the rain, paying a call here and there at one or two shops, and finally dropping in to see his friend Dr Brandram.The Captain meanwhile was having an interesting chat with the attorney.After introducing himself and receiving the suitable congratulations, he said—“Mr Ingleton’s will, Mr Pottinger, so far as I can understand it, seems fairly simple, and I am ready and anxious to perform my part of its provisions.”“Yes. You see, after all, it is only a matter of two years’ trouble. As soon as Master Roger comes of age you will be released.”“Unless,” says the Captain, laughing, “he marries, becomes mad, or goes to prison, isn’t that it? What a curious proviso!”“It is. The old Squire had his peculiarities, like most of us. He set his heart on this boy turning out well.”“Ah! I presume this tutor, Mr Armstrong, has very high qualifications, since so much depends on him.”“Of that I can’t say, Captain Oliphant. To tell you the truth, I never quite understood that appointment. But doubtless the Squire knew best.”“Doubtless. He must have had a very high opinion of him to associate him with Mrs Ingleton and me in the guardianship. I take it, by the way, that hardly extends beyond his present duties as tutor.”“That’s just it,” said Mr Pottinger. “According to the will, he has the right to participate in every action taken by the other trustees, either as regards the boy, or the estate, or anything else.”“How very singular! You don’t mean to say that he is to be consulted in matters of finance or the management of the property?”“Technically, yes—if he claims it. I imagine, however, he is hardly aware of this, and I am not inclined to urge him to claim it. I should be sorry to give you an unfavourable impression, Captain Oliphant, but I do not like this Mr Armstrong.”“He appears to be well thought of at Maxfield,” said the Captain.“My private opinion is—but you must not let it influence you—that he is somewhat of an adventurer. I know nothing of his antecedents.”“Indeed! not even where he lives?”“No; the Squire was reticent on the matter. He told me he had good recommendations with him, and that he was an Oxford man.”“Surely that should be satisfactory. I hope we shall find him not difficult to get on with, after all. We shall have to wait a week or so, however, before putting the question to the test, as he has just gone off rather abruptly, and at this particular time rather inopportunely, on a journey, for what object I do not know.”“Humph!” said the attorney. “I do not like mysteries. However, I trust it will be as you say.”Dr Brandram, when presently the Captain called in for his ward, was in by no means a good temper.“I have been blowing Roger up sky-high,” said he, puffing his smoke rather viciously in the Captain’s direction, “for behaving like a lunatic. The idea of his coming out and getting himself wet through with this cold upon him.”“Dear, dear!” said the Captain; “has he got wet through? Why, my dear boy, what did I tell you?”“You shouldn’t have let him come,” said the doctor bluntly. “He’s no business to play tricks with himself.”“Really, doctor,” said Roger, laughing and coughing alternately, “I’m not a baby.”“You’re worse,” said the doctor severely. “Don’t let it happen again. You must go home in a fly; I won’t allow you to walk. Armstrong wouldn’t have let you do it.”It grated on the Captain’s nerves to hear the tutor thus quoted in what seemed to be a reflection on himself.“Roger, my boy,” said he, “you are fortunate to have somebody to look well after you. I quite agree with the doctor; we must drive home. I hope your things are dry.”“He’s made me change everything I had on,” said Roger.“Quite right—quite right!”The doctor took an opportunity before the fly arrived of talking to the Captain seriously about his ward’s health.“He’s not robust, you can see that yourself,” said he, “and he won’t take care of himself, that’s equally evident. You must make him do it, or I won’t answer for the consequences.”The Captain laughed pleasantly. “My duties grow on me apace,” said he. “I have come over from India to look after his morals, his estate, his education, and now I find I must add to them the oversight of—”“Of his flannels. Certainly; see they are well aired, that’s more important than any of the others. Good-bye!”The Maxfield household was a dismal one that evening. Mrs Ingleton in distress had prevailed on Roger to go to bed. Miss Rosalind, defrauded in one day of her two allies, sulked in a dignified way in her own room, and visited her displeasure with the world in general on poor Jill, who consoled herself by beginning a letter to her “dear Mr Armstrong.” Tom, having wandered joyously over the whole house, making friends with everybody and admiring everything, was engaged in the feverish occupation of trying to find his stamp album, which he had left behind in India.The only serene member of the party was Captain Oliphant, who in the arm-chair of the library smoked an excellent cigar and ruminated on things at large.“Poor lad!” said he to himself, “great pity he’s so delicate. Not at all a pleasant cough—quite a churchyard tone about it. Tut! tut! I’m not favourably impressed with that doctor; an officious bumpkin, he seems to me. And this Armstrong—I should really like to know a little more about him. Pottinger was decidedly of my way of thinking. Not a nice fellow at all, Armstrong. Wrong sort of companion for Roger. Poor fellow! how he’s coughing to-night.”And this kindly soul actually laid down his cigar and went out into the passage to listen.“Shocking cough,” said he as he returned and relit his cigar. Then he took out a document from his pocket—a copy of the will, in fact—and read it again. Which done, he relapsed into genial meditation ones more.Presently his kindly feelings prompted him to pay his ward a visit.“Well, my boy, how are you? Better, I hope.”“Oh, yes,” said Roger, coughing; “it’s only a cold in my head. I’ll soon be all right. I’m awfully sorry to desert the girls and Tom, tell them.”“Nothing I can do for you, is there?”“Thanks very much. I’m all right. I shall get to sleep pretty soon. Good night, Cousin Edward.”“Good night, dear boy. Another time you must take better care of yourself. Remember your life is precious to us all.”With these affectionate words Captain Oliphant left the room, candle in hand. As he passed his daughter’s boudoir he looked in. It was empty. The young ladies had long since taken refuge in their bedroom. All the house, in fact, except Captain Oliphant, had done the same.That gentleman, as he passed another door which stood half open, could not resist a friendly impulse to peep in. It was a snug room, with a piano in one corner, and foils, boxing gloves, Oxford prints, and other tokens of a bachelor proprietorship displayed on the walls. The table was littered with classical exercises, music scores, and letters. A college boating-jacket hung behind the door, and one or two prize-goblets decorated the mantelpiece.Captain Oliphant displayed a genial interest in everything. He read the inscriptions on the goblets, glanced casually through the papers, read the addresses on a few of the letters, and generally took stock of the apartment. Of course, like an honourable gentleman, he disturbed nothing, and presently, distressed by a sudden fit of coughing from the direction of his ward’s room, he hastily stepped out into the lobby again and made his way back to the library.Before he went to bed this methodical person committed three several matters to paper. In his memorandum-book he wrote the name of a certain college at Oxford, and a date, corresponding, oddly enough, to the name and date on one of the goblets in Mr Armstrong’s room.That done, he scrawled a post card to Dr Brandram, requesting him to call and see Roger, whose cough was still a little troublesome.After that, he pulled out of his pocket and read with a somewhat pained expression a letter he had received the day before by the Indian mail. It was gather long, but the passage which pained Captain Oliphant particularly ran thus:—“The trouble about the mess accounts is not blown over yet. I have done what I can for you. I hope you will make it unnecessary for me to enter into details with the parties chiefly interested in that affair. It depends pretty much on what you are able to tell me, whether I can give you the time you mention in your last. You will consult your own interests best by being quite square,” and so on.The expression which Captain Oliphant mentally applied to the writer as he re-read this pleasant passage was not wholly flattering, and his countenance, as I have said, bore traces of considerable pain. However, after a little meditation it cleared somewhat, and he wrote:—“It seems to me a pity you should take up a position which can only end in trouble all round. You know how things stand, and how impossible it is to hasten matters. At the present moment there seems every probability of my being able to discharge all my accounts—yours among them—considerably earlier than the time first mentioned. It is worth your while, under the circumstances, reconsidering what, you must allow me to say, is a preposterous claim for interest. Of course, if you charge me for the full term, I have very little inducement to settle up sooner. Turn it over, like a sensible man, and believe me, meanwhile,“Yours truly,“E.O.“P.S.—I enclose a copy of the clauses of the will most likely to interest you. I am sorry to say my ward is in very bad—I might say seriously bad—health. He has a constitutional complaint, which, I greatly fear, will make this winter a most anxious time to us all.”After this, Captain Oliphant soothed himself down with a cigarette, and spent a little time in admiring contemplation of an excellent portrait of Mrs Ingleton on the wall. Finally, he went cheerfully to bed.
When Mr Armstrong with his jovial charge arrived about midday at Maxfield, he was struck with the transformation scene which had taken place since he quitted it gloomily a day or two before.
The house was the same, the furniture was untouched, the ordinary domestic routine appeared to be unaltered, but a sense of something new pervaded the place which he could interpret only by the one word—Oliphant.
The captain had made a touching entry—full of sympathy, full of affection, full of a desire to spare his dear cousin all business worry, full of the responsibility that was on him to take charge of the dear fatherless boy, full of that calm sense of duty which enables a man to assert himself on all occasions for the good of those committed to his care. As for his charming daughters, they had floated majestically into their quarters—Miss Rosalind a trifle defiantly, making no secret of her dislike of the whole business; Miss Jill merrily, delighted with the novelty and beauty of this new home, so much more to her mind than the barrack home in India. And Roger, despite all his sinister anticipations, found himself tolerant already of the new guardian, and more than tolerant of hissuite.
For somehow his pulses had taken to beating a little quicker since yesterday, and when half a dozen times that evening he had heard a summons down the landing to come and hang this picture, or like a dear boy unfasten that strap, or like an angel come and make himself agreeable, unless he intended his cousins to sit by themselves all the evening as penance for coming where they were not wanted,—at all such summonses Roger Ingleton had experienced quite a novel sensation of nervousness and awkwardness, which contributed to make him very uncomfortable.
“Why,” said he, as he and his tutor greeted one another again in Mr Armstrong’s room, “why, it seems ages since I saw you, and yet it’s only yesterday. I wish we could all have come down together. Do you know, Armstrong, I half fancy it’s not going to be as awful as I expected.”
“That’s all right,” said Mr Armstrong, who had already begun to entertain a contrary impression.
“Oliphant seems civilly disposed, and not inclined to interfere; and the girls—well they seem harmless enough. How do you like Tom?”
“Tom’s a nice, quiet, business-like boy,” said the tutor with a grin. “I’ll tell you more about him soon, but at present I have no time. I must catch the four o’clock train back to London.”
“What! What ever for?” exclaimed Roger, with falling face.
“Urgent private affairs. I shall be away perhaps a week,” said Mr Armstrong shortly, in a tone which discouraged Roger from making further inquiries.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said he; “I shall miss you specially just now.”
“If I could have taken any other time, I would,” said the tutor, busily throwing his things into his bag all the time; “but I am going to a death-bed.”
“Oh, Armstrong, I’m so sorry. Is it a relation?”
“As I regard relations, yes. Now I must go and make my apologies to your mother. I’ll come and see you before I go.”
He found the lady sitting in the library in consultation with Captain Oliphant. The table was spread with the late Squire’s papers and documents, concerning which the Captain was evincing considerable interest.
The tutor glared a little through his glass at the spectacle of this industry, and disposing of his co-trustee’s greeting with a half nod, accosted Mrs Ingleton.
“I must ask you to excuse me for a few days, Mrs Ingleton. I have just received news which render a journey necessary.”
“Indeed!” said Captain Oliphant, looking up from his papers. “I am afraid, Mr Armstrong, we must ask you to postpone it, as there are a good many business matters of importance to be gone into, which will require the attention of all the trustees. It is an inconvenient time to seek for leave of absence.”
The tutor’s mouth stiffened ominously.
“You take unnecessary interest in my affairs, sir. I shall be at your service on my return. Mrs Ingleton, I am sorry for this interruption in Roger’s studies. It shall be as brief as I can make it.”
“Oh, of course, Mr Armstrong,” said the lady, “I hope it is nothing serious. We shall be glad to have you back to consult about things; that is all Captain Oliphant means, I’m sure.”
The tutor bowed.
“I really hope,” said Captain Oliphant blandly, “Mr Armstrong will appreciate my desire to cooperate harmoniously in the sacred trust laid upon us all by the dying wish of our dear friend.”
“I have no wish to do anything else, sir,” said the tutor shortly, “if you will allow me. Good-bye, Mrs Ingleton.”
Roger was a good deal concerned to notice the grim cloud on his friend’s face, when he returned for a moment to his room for his bag. He knew him too well to ask questions, but made up for his silence by the warmth of his farewell.
“Come back soon, Armstrong; it will be awfully slow while you’re away. Let’s carry your bag down-stairs.”
As they passed the end of the lobby, a certain door chanced to open, and Armstrong caught a vision of an easel and a fair head beyond, and beyond that a mantelpiece decorated with all sorts of Oriental and feminine knick-knacks. He might have observed more had his glass been up, and had he not been eagerly accosted by Miss Jill, who just then was running out of the room.
“Mr Armstrong! Mr Armstrong!” shouted she in glee. “Rosalind, he’s come back; here he is!”
And without more ado she caught the embarrassed tutor by the arm and demanded a kiss. He compromised feebly by patting her head, whereat Miss Jill pouted.
“You’re more unkind than yesterday,” she said; “you kissed me then.”
“You shouldn’t ask Mr Armstrong to do horrid things,” said Miss Rosalind, coming to the door.
The tutor, very hot and flurried, replied to this cruel challenge by saluting the little tyrant and bowing to her sister.
“Won’t you come in and see the studio?” said the latter. “It’s a little less dreadful than yesterday, thanks to Roger. What are you carrying that bag for, Roger?”
“Armstrong’s going up to town for a few days.”
“How horrid!” said Miss Rosalind, with vexation in her voice; “just while Jill and I are feeling so lonely, cooped up here like nuns, with not a soul to talk to, and knowing we’re in everybody’s way.”
“Armstrong has a sad enough reason for going,” said Roger; “but I say, it’s not very complimentary to me to say you’ve not a soul to talk to.”
The half-jesting petulance in Rosalind’s face had given place to a look almost of pain as she held out her hand.
“Good-bye, Mr Armstrong,” said she. “I didn’t know you were in trouble.”
“Itwillbe jolly when you come home,” chimed in Jill.
Somehow in Mr Armstrong’s ears, as he whirled along to town that afternoon, those two pretty farewells rang continuous changes. When, at evening, he took his seat in the Dover express, they still followed him, now in solos, now in duet, now in restless fugue. On the steamer they rose and fell with the uneasy waves and played in the whistling wind. As he sped towards Paris, past the acacia hedges and poplar avenues, among foreign scenes, amidst the chatter of foreign tongues, surrounded by foreign faces, he still caught the sound of those two distant voices—one quiet and low, the other gay and piping; and even when, at last, he dropped asleep and forgot everything else, they joined in with the rattle of the rail to give him his lullaby. Such are the freaks of which a sensitive musical ear is often the victim.
At Maxfield, meanwhile, he remained in the minds of one or two of the inmates.
The two young ladies, assisted by their cousin, and genially obstructed by their easy-going brother, proceeded seriously in the task of adorning the studio; now and then speculating about the absent tutor, and now and then feeling very dejected and lonely. Roger did his best to enliven the evening and make his visitors feel at home. But although Tom and Jill readily consented to be comforted, Miss Rosalind as stubbornly refused, and protested a score of times that the cabin of the “Oriana” itself was preferable to the misery of being condemned, as she termed it, to eat her head off in this dismal place. She was sorry for Mr Armstrong, but she was vexed too that he should go off the very first day after her arrival, and leave her to fight her battles alone. After that talk on the steamer, she had, in her own mind, reckoned on him as an ally, and it disappointed her not to find him at her bidding after all.
But she was not the only person whose mind was exercised by the tutor’s abrupt exodus.
Captain Oliphant felt decidedly hurt by the manner of his going. It argued a lack of appreciation of the newly arrived trustee’s position in the household on which he had hardly calculated; and it bespoke a spirit of independence in the tutor himself, which his colleague could not but regard as unpromising. Indeed, when, after the day’s labours, Captain Oliphant sought the seclusion of his own apartment, this amiable, pleasant-spoken gentleman grew quite warm with himself.
“Who is this grandee?” he asked himself. “A man hired at a few pounds a year and fed at the Maxfield table, in order to help the heir to a little quite unnecessary knowledge of the ancient classics and modern sciences. What was the old dotard,”—the old dotard, by the way, was Captain Oliphant’s private manner of referring to the lamented “dear one,” whose name so often trembled on his lips in public,—“what was the old dotard thinking about? At any rate, I should like to know a little more about the fellow myself.”
With this laudable intention he questioned Mrs Ingleton next morning.
“He is a good friend to dear Roger,” said the mother. “Roger is devoted to him. I am sure you will get to like him, Edward. He is perhaps a little odd in his manner, but he has a good heart.”
This was about all Mrs Ingleton knew, except that he was a University man and an accomplished musician.
Captain Oliphant was not much enlightened by this description. He sat down, and for the third time carefully read over the “dear one’s” will.
“I think,” said he at lunch-time, “I will stroll over to Yeld this afternoon and see Mr Pottinger. Roger, will you walk with me? A walk would do you good. You are looking pale, my boy.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” said Roger, whose cough, however, was still obstinate. “I’ll come with pleasure.”
A walk of five miles on a damp afternoon through drenched country lanes may be a good specific for a cough in India, but in England it occasionally fails in this respect. Roger was wet through when he reached Yeld.
“I shall not be long,” said the Captain as they reached the attorney’s door. “Don’t catch cold, there’s a good fellow. Remember your health is very precious.”
Roger undertook to act on this considerate advice, and occupied his time of waiting by strolling up and down the High Street in the rain, paying a call here and there at one or two shops, and finally dropping in to see his friend Dr Brandram.
The Captain meanwhile was having an interesting chat with the attorney.
After introducing himself and receiving the suitable congratulations, he said—
“Mr Ingleton’s will, Mr Pottinger, so far as I can understand it, seems fairly simple, and I am ready and anxious to perform my part of its provisions.”
“Yes. You see, after all, it is only a matter of two years’ trouble. As soon as Master Roger comes of age you will be released.”
“Unless,” says the Captain, laughing, “he marries, becomes mad, or goes to prison, isn’t that it? What a curious proviso!”
“It is. The old Squire had his peculiarities, like most of us. He set his heart on this boy turning out well.”
“Ah! I presume this tutor, Mr Armstrong, has very high qualifications, since so much depends on him.”
“Of that I can’t say, Captain Oliphant. To tell you the truth, I never quite understood that appointment. But doubtless the Squire knew best.”
“Doubtless. He must have had a very high opinion of him to associate him with Mrs Ingleton and me in the guardianship. I take it, by the way, that hardly extends beyond his present duties as tutor.”
“That’s just it,” said Mr Pottinger. “According to the will, he has the right to participate in every action taken by the other trustees, either as regards the boy, or the estate, or anything else.”
“How very singular! You don’t mean to say that he is to be consulted in matters of finance or the management of the property?”
“Technically, yes—if he claims it. I imagine, however, he is hardly aware of this, and I am not inclined to urge him to claim it. I should be sorry to give you an unfavourable impression, Captain Oliphant, but I do not like this Mr Armstrong.”
“He appears to be well thought of at Maxfield,” said the Captain.
“My private opinion is—but you must not let it influence you—that he is somewhat of an adventurer. I know nothing of his antecedents.”
“Indeed! not even where he lives?”
“No; the Squire was reticent on the matter. He told me he had good recommendations with him, and that he was an Oxford man.”
“Surely that should be satisfactory. I hope we shall find him not difficult to get on with, after all. We shall have to wait a week or so, however, before putting the question to the test, as he has just gone off rather abruptly, and at this particular time rather inopportunely, on a journey, for what object I do not know.”
“Humph!” said the attorney. “I do not like mysteries. However, I trust it will be as you say.”
Dr Brandram, when presently the Captain called in for his ward, was in by no means a good temper.
“I have been blowing Roger up sky-high,” said he, puffing his smoke rather viciously in the Captain’s direction, “for behaving like a lunatic. The idea of his coming out and getting himself wet through with this cold upon him.”
“Dear, dear!” said the Captain; “has he got wet through? Why, my dear boy, what did I tell you?”
“You shouldn’t have let him come,” said the doctor bluntly. “He’s no business to play tricks with himself.”
“Really, doctor,” said Roger, laughing and coughing alternately, “I’m not a baby.”
“You’re worse,” said the doctor severely. “Don’t let it happen again. You must go home in a fly; I won’t allow you to walk. Armstrong wouldn’t have let you do it.”
It grated on the Captain’s nerves to hear the tutor thus quoted in what seemed to be a reflection on himself.
“Roger, my boy,” said he, “you are fortunate to have somebody to look well after you. I quite agree with the doctor; we must drive home. I hope your things are dry.”
“He’s made me change everything I had on,” said Roger.
“Quite right—quite right!”
The doctor took an opportunity before the fly arrived of talking to the Captain seriously about his ward’s health.
“He’s not robust, you can see that yourself,” said he, “and he won’t take care of himself, that’s equally evident. You must make him do it, or I won’t answer for the consequences.”
The Captain laughed pleasantly. “My duties grow on me apace,” said he. “I have come over from India to look after his morals, his estate, his education, and now I find I must add to them the oversight of—”
“Of his flannels. Certainly; see they are well aired, that’s more important than any of the others. Good-bye!”
The Maxfield household was a dismal one that evening. Mrs Ingleton in distress had prevailed on Roger to go to bed. Miss Rosalind, defrauded in one day of her two allies, sulked in a dignified way in her own room, and visited her displeasure with the world in general on poor Jill, who consoled herself by beginning a letter to her “dear Mr Armstrong.” Tom, having wandered joyously over the whole house, making friends with everybody and admiring everything, was engaged in the feverish occupation of trying to find his stamp album, which he had left behind in India.
The only serene member of the party was Captain Oliphant, who in the arm-chair of the library smoked an excellent cigar and ruminated on things at large.
“Poor lad!” said he to himself, “great pity he’s so delicate. Not at all a pleasant cough—quite a churchyard tone about it. Tut! tut! I’m not favourably impressed with that doctor; an officious bumpkin, he seems to me. And this Armstrong—I should really like to know a little more about him. Pottinger was decidedly of my way of thinking. Not a nice fellow at all, Armstrong. Wrong sort of companion for Roger. Poor fellow! how he’s coughing to-night.”
And this kindly soul actually laid down his cigar and went out into the passage to listen.
“Shocking cough,” said he as he returned and relit his cigar. Then he took out a document from his pocket—a copy of the will, in fact—and read it again. Which done, he relapsed into genial meditation ones more.
Presently his kindly feelings prompted him to pay his ward a visit.
“Well, my boy, how are you? Better, I hope.”
“Oh, yes,” said Roger, coughing; “it’s only a cold in my head. I’ll soon be all right. I’m awfully sorry to desert the girls and Tom, tell them.”
“Nothing I can do for you, is there?”
“Thanks very much. I’m all right. I shall get to sleep pretty soon. Good night, Cousin Edward.”
“Good night, dear boy. Another time you must take better care of yourself. Remember your life is precious to us all.”
With these affectionate words Captain Oliphant left the room, candle in hand. As he passed his daughter’s boudoir he looked in. It was empty. The young ladies had long since taken refuge in their bedroom. All the house, in fact, except Captain Oliphant, had done the same.
That gentleman, as he passed another door which stood half open, could not resist a friendly impulse to peep in. It was a snug room, with a piano in one corner, and foils, boxing gloves, Oxford prints, and other tokens of a bachelor proprietorship displayed on the walls. The table was littered with classical exercises, music scores, and letters. A college boating-jacket hung behind the door, and one or two prize-goblets decorated the mantelpiece.
Captain Oliphant displayed a genial interest in everything. He read the inscriptions on the goblets, glanced casually through the papers, read the addresses on a few of the letters, and generally took stock of the apartment. Of course, like an honourable gentleman, he disturbed nothing, and presently, distressed by a sudden fit of coughing from the direction of his ward’s room, he hastily stepped out into the lobby again and made his way back to the library.
Before he went to bed this methodical person committed three several matters to paper. In his memorandum-book he wrote the name of a certain college at Oxford, and a date, corresponding, oddly enough, to the name and date on one of the goblets in Mr Armstrong’s room.
That done, he scrawled a post card to Dr Brandram, requesting him to call and see Roger, whose cough was still a little troublesome.
After that, he pulled out of his pocket and read with a somewhat pained expression a letter he had received the day before by the Indian mail. It was gather long, but the passage which pained Captain Oliphant particularly ran thus:—
“The trouble about the mess accounts is not blown over yet. I have done what I can for you. I hope you will make it unnecessary for me to enter into details with the parties chiefly interested in that affair. It depends pretty much on what you are able to tell me, whether I can give you the time you mention in your last. You will consult your own interests best by being quite square,” and so on.
“The trouble about the mess accounts is not blown over yet. I have done what I can for you. I hope you will make it unnecessary for me to enter into details with the parties chiefly interested in that affair. It depends pretty much on what you are able to tell me, whether I can give you the time you mention in your last. You will consult your own interests best by being quite square,” and so on.
The expression which Captain Oliphant mentally applied to the writer as he re-read this pleasant passage was not wholly flattering, and his countenance, as I have said, bore traces of considerable pain. However, after a little meditation it cleared somewhat, and he wrote:—
“It seems to me a pity you should take up a position which can only end in trouble all round. You know how things stand, and how impossible it is to hasten matters. At the present moment there seems every probability of my being able to discharge all my accounts—yours among them—considerably earlier than the time first mentioned. It is worth your while, under the circumstances, reconsidering what, you must allow me to say, is a preposterous claim for interest. Of course, if you charge me for the full term, I have very little inducement to settle up sooner. Turn it over, like a sensible man, and believe me, meanwhile,“Yours truly,“E.O.“P.S.—I enclose a copy of the clauses of the will most likely to interest you. I am sorry to say my ward is in very bad—I might say seriously bad—health. He has a constitutional complaint, which, I greatly fear, will make this winter a most anxious time to us all.”
“It seems to me a pity you should take up a position which can only end in trouble all round. You know how things stand, and how impossible it is to hasten matters. At the present moment there seems every probability of my being able to discharge all my accounts—yours among them—considerably earlier than the time first mentioned. It is worth your while, under the circumstances, reconsidering what, you must allow me to say, is a preposterous claim for interest. Of course, if you charge me for the full term, I have very little inducement to settle up sooner. Turn it over, like a sensible man, and believe me, meanwhile,
“Yours truly,
“E.O.
“P.S.—I enclose a copy of the clauses of the will most likely to interest you. I am sorry to say my ward is in very bad—I might say seriously bad—health. He has a constitutional complaint, which, I greatly fear, will make this winter a most anxious time to us all.”
After this, Captain Oliphant soothed himself down with a cigarette, and spent a little time in admiring contemplation of an excellent portrait of Mrs Ingleton on the wall. Finally, he went cheerfully to bed.
Chapter Six.A Case of Eviction.A week passed and Mr Armstrong did not return. By the end of that time Miss Rosalind Oliphant, for better or worse, had settled down into her new quarters, and made herself as much at home as a fair Bohemian can do anywhere. She still resented the fate which brought her to Maxfield at all, and annoyed her father constantly by casting their dependence on the hospitality of the place in his teeth.“I wish you had some business, father,” said she, “so that we could pay our way. I don’t suppose my pictures will ever sell, but every penny I earn shall go to Roger. Couldn’t we go and live in the lodge, somewhere where we can—”“Rosalind,” said her father, “you vex me by talking like a child. After the education I have tried to provide for you, I had a right to hope you would at least regulate your tongue by a little common-sense. Do you not know that I have given up my profession, everything, in order to come to do my duty here?”“I wish you hadn’t,” said the girl doggedly; “it would have been so easy to decline the trust and remain independent. It’s awful to think we’ve nothing to live on but what we get out of Roger’s money.”“Foolish girl,” said her father with a forced laugh, “you are a delightful specimen of a woman’s incapacity to understand the very rudiments of business. Why, you absurd child, old Roger Ingleton’s will bequeathed me £300 a year for acting as the boy’s guardian.”“Yes, for two years. And Roger would have been all that richer if you’d declined. I’m sure his mother and Mr Armstrong are plenty to look after him. I’d have liked you so much better, dear father, if you’d stayed in the army.”“I’m afraid, my poor girl, it is useless to argue with you. When you do get a wrong idea into your head, nothing will induce you to part with it, even if it involves an injustice to your poor father.”“Father,” said she, “you know it is because I love you and—”“Enough,” said he rather sternly. “I know you mean well.”And he went.At the door, however, he returned and said—“By the way, Rosalind, I must mention one matter; not for discussion, but as my express wish. You named Mr Armstrong just now. I desire that you hold no communication with him. I have reason for knowing he is not a desirable person at all.”“If so, you had better take us away from here,” said Rosalind, flushing. “You’ve no right to let us stay.”“Silence, miss, and bear in mind what I tell you. Do you understand?”Rosalind had taken up her brush and was painting furiously at her picture.Captain Oliphant having waited a minute for an answer and getting none, stalked out of the room a model of parental anguish. As for Miss Rosalind, she painted away for a quarter of an hour, and then said to herself—“Is he?”With which profound inquiry she laid down her brush and went to visit her invalid cousin.Roger was up, though still coughing, and ensconced in his study.“How jolly of you to come!” said he.“I came because I’d nothing else to do,” said she, “I’m not jolly at all.”“Why, what’s the row?”“Can’t you guess? Don’t you know that I owe you already for a week’s board and lodgings and haven’t earned sixpence to pay you.”“I shall put you in the county court,” said Roger solemnly.“It’s no joke to me,” said she.“I know it isn’t, and I wish to goodness I could help you out. By the way, though,” added he, jumping up from his chair, “I’ve got it.”“Don’t,” said she; “you’ll only start the cough. What have you got? An idea?”“Yes. Rosalind, do you know I’m going to get some painting-lessons?”“Where? Oh, I wish I could afford some too. Is there any one near here who teaches?”“Yes. Some one who’s just starting. A rather jolly girl, only she has an awful temper; and I’m afraid, when she sees what a poor hand I make, she’ll have no patience with me.”Rosalind looked at him steadily, and then smiled.“How nice of you! May I really try? I’ll teach you all I know.”“Will you promise to be nice, and never to fly out at me?”“No, I’ll promise nothing of the sort. But if you learn well, I’ll be very proud.”“And your terms?”She looked at him again.“Would a shilling an hour be an awful lot?”“No. It’s very moderate. I accept the terms. I’ll begin to-day.”This satisfactory bargain being concluded. Miss Rosalind inquired how her new pupil’s cold was.“Nearly all right. I’m glad to have got rid of it before Armstrong comes back.”“When will that be?”“I don’t know. He hasn’t written a line. I hope he’ll come soon.”“Are you awfully fond of him!” asked Rosalind.“Rather,” replied the boy.“That’s exactly what he said when I asked him if he was fond of you.”“Odd,” said Roger with a laugh. “But, I say, what do you think of my den? Isn’t it rather snug?”“I like one of the pictures,” said Rosalind, pointing to a certain portrait on the mantelpiece.“I’m awfully glad,” said Roger. “Do you know who it is?”“No.”“A brother of mine who died long before I was born.”Rosalind took the picture in her hands and carried it to the window. The scrutiny lasted some minutes. Then she replaced it on the chimney-piece.“Well,” said Roger, “do you like him?”“Yes, I do.”“Aren’t you a little afraid of him, too?”“Not a bit. He looks like a hero.”Roger sighed.“I’m glad there’s one in the family,” said he.“Why not two? I say, will your tutor mind your having painting-lessons of me?”“Mind? Not he. I shouldn’t be surprised if he wants to have some too.”Rosalind laughed.“That would be too terrible,” said she. “But I must go now. Will you lend me this picture for a little? I’d like to look at it again.”Roger laughed.“Oh yes, if you’ll promise not to fall in love with him for good.”When Roger presented himself at the appointed hour in his cousin’s studio, he found that young lady very much in earnest and not at all disposed to regard her new functions as a jest. Roger, who had come expecting to be amused, found himself ignominiously set down at a table beside the amenable Tom (who had been coerced into joining the class) and directed to copy a very elementary representation of a gable of a cottage which the instructress had set up on the easel. Six times was he compelled to tackle this simple object before his copy was pronounced passable; and until that Rosalind sternly discouraged all conversation or inattention.“Really, Roger,” said she, when at last he meekly submitted his final copy, “for a boy of your age you are an uncommonly rough hand. Tom is a much more promising pupil than you.”“I haven’t promised you a bob an hour, though,” rejoined that not-to-be-flattered genius, beginning to whistle.“Silence, sir!” said Miss Rosalind, stamping her little foot with something like temper; “as long as you are in my class you must do as I tell you.”Here Roger protested.“You’re rather strict,” said he. “I don’t mind working hard and attending to all you say, but I vote we enjoy ourselves too—all three of us.”“You mean,” said Rosalind petulantly, “that you come here to play, while I try to work.”“No, I don’t. I come to do both, and I want you to, as well.”“Very well then, I withdraw from my engagement,” said the young lady, with an ominous flush; “we don’t agree about art. Unless you can give yourself up to it while you are about it, it’s not meant for you—and—and I’m very sorry indeed I made such a stupid mistake as to think you meant what you said when you told me you wanted to learn.”And she took the copy down from the easel.“Look here, Rosalind,” said Roger, in unusual perturbation, “I’m so sorry. You’re quite right. Of course one can’t do two things at once. I’ll—”“You’re a dear boy, as I’ve said before,” said Miss Oliphant, brightening up suddenly and accepting her victory serenely. “Now please both of you draw the picture again from memory as exactly as you can.”“What’s the long and short of it all?” presently whispered Tom, who had been supremely indifferent to the argument. “Is it larks or no larks?”“Shut up!—that’s what it is,” said Roger.“All right; thanks,” said Tom contentedly.And for a quarter of an hour more the two worked steadily and silently, the only sound in the room being the scratching of their pencils and Rosalind’s occasional terse criticisms over their shoulders.This little incident opened Roger’s eyes considerably. He was astonished at himself afterwards for taking his rebuff so meekly, and submitting to what, after all, was rather a preposterous regulation. He was aware that he would not have submitted to any one but Rosalind, or possibly Armstrong. Why he should do so to her he did not particularly know; unless it was because he felt it would be pleasanter on the whole to have her as a friend than as a foe.When, three days later, Mr Armstrong neither appeared nor communicated with any member of the household, the uneasiness which his prolonged absence caused found expression in several different ways. Miss Jill cried in a corner; Miss Rosalind tossed her head and painted fiercely; Roger, already pulled down with a return of his cough, moped in his own room; while his mother, impressed by the growing indignation of her cousin, began to work herself into a mild state of wrath. Tom alone was serene.“I expect he’s having a jolly time with that French chap,” he volunteered at the family dinner.“With whom?” inquired his father pricking his ears.“Oh, a chum of his; not half a bad sort of cove, only he dropped all his ‘h’s.’ He turned up at Christy’s, you know, but missed the best break-down, while he and Mr Armstrong were hob-nobbing outside. I saw it, though. It was prime.”“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” demanded Captain Oliphant.“I didn’t know you’d care about it,” said his son in mild surprise. “You see, it was this way. The fellow had wooden shoes on, and when the music began slow he began a shuffle, and gradually put on the pace till you couldn’t tell one foot from the other.”Here Miss Rosalind broke into a derisive laugh.“Really, Tom,” said she, “you are too clever. However did you guess that we were all dying to hear how a break-down is danced?”“I didn’t till father said so.”Here Roger and the two young ladies laughed again; whereat Tom, concluding he had said something good unawares, laughed too, and thought to himself how jolly it is to be clever and keep the table at a roar.In private Captain Oliphant pursued the subject of Gustav and his relations (apart from their mutual connexion with the break-down) with the Maxfield tutor.He received very little satisfaction from his inquiry. Tom was so full of his main topic that the other events of that memorable evening in town occupied but a secondary place in his memory.He recollected Gustav as a good-natured foreigner whom Armstrong called by his Christian name, and who talked French in return. He could not remember where he lived, except that it was ten minutes’ walk from Christy’s Minstrels; nor had he the slightest idea what the two men talked about, except that Armstrong had promised to hold somebody’s hand, and that Gustav had tried to kiss him by way of recompense.Captain Oliphant chose to take a very serious view of this disclosure. It fitted in exactly with his theory that the tutor was an adventurer of “shady antecedents,” and, as such, an undesirable companion for the late “dear one’s” orphan-boy.“I should not feel I was doing my duty,” said he to Mr Pottinger that afternoon, “if I were not to follow this up. We don’t know whom we have to deal with; and the fact of Mr Ingleton having confided in him really, you know, weighs very little with me; old men of enfeebled intellect, my dear Pottinger, are so easily hoodwinked.”“Quite so. Does it not occur to you, Captain, that a simple solution of the difficulty would be for Mrs Ingleton to send her boy to college?”“Mrs Ingleton,” said the Captain, “is unfortunately incapable of regarding this subject in any light but that of her son’s likings. And Roger Ingleton, minor, is infatuated.”“Humph!” said the lawyer, “I thought so. Then I agree with you, it will be useful to institute a few inquiries.”“Leave that to me,” said the captain. “By the way, what about that piece of land you were speaking of?”“Ah!” said the lawyer, making as near an approach to a blush as he could muster, “the fact is, Hodder’s lease falls in next week. He has had it at a ridiculously low figure, and is not a profitable tenant.”“That is the old dotard who is always croaking about Maxfield in the days before the Flood?”“Well, almost as remote a period. He was here in the time of the late squire’s father. At any rate his lease falls in; and I happen to know a person who is willing to give twenty per cent more for the land than he pays. I can’t tell you his name,” said the lawyer, looking sufficiently conscious, “but I happen to know he would be a better tenant to Maxfield than the old man.”Mr Pottinger amused himself with making a little mystery about a matter that was no secret to Captain Oliphant. That gallant gentleman knew as well as the lawyer did that Mr Pottinger himself, whose land adjoined Hodder’s, was the eligible tenant in question.“There will be no difficulty about that, Pottinger. Of course, you must give Hodder the option of offering your friend’s price. If he does not, it is clearly the duty of the executors to take the better tenant.”He took up his hat and turned to go.“By the way,” said he at the door, “it will hardly be necessary, I take it, to go through the farce of bringing a trifling matter of this kind before the other executors; Mrs Ingleton should really be spared all worry of this sort; and as for the other one—well, he chooses to be somewhere else.”“Quite so, quite so. If you and Mrs Ingleton sign the lease it will be sufficient,” said Mr Pottinger.Unluckily for the pleasantly arranged plan of these two good gentlemen, Miss Rosalind Oliphant took it into her pretty head a day or so afterwards to call at old Hodder’s cottage in passing, to ask for a glass of milk. The young lady was in a very discontented frame of mind. She was angry with Mr Armstrong for staying away so long. Not that she cared what he did, but till he came back she felt she did not know the full extent of the forces arrayed against her at Maxfield; and she wanted to know the worst. Besides, although Roger was diligently prosecuting his art studies and displaying the most docile obedience to her discipline, she could not help thinking he would not have taken to art except to please her; and that displeased her mightily. Besides, Tom, her brother, was too silly for anything; he insisted on enjoying himself, whoever else was miserable; and Jill was very little better. Altogether, Miss Oliphant was out of humour, and felt this walk would do her good.She found the Hodder family in mighty tribulation. The old man sat in his corner with his hat on the floor beside him, crying and boohing like a child. And his two little granddaughters looked on at his grief, pale and half-frightened, knowing something bad had happened, but unable to guess what.“Why, Hodder,” said Miss Rosalind, “whatever’s the matter? What a noise you’re making! What has happened?”“Happened!” cried the old man with a voice quavering into a shrill treble. “How would he like it himself? Seventy years, boy and man, have I sat here, like my father before me. I’ve seen yon elm grow from a stick to what she is now. I’ve buried all my kith and kin bar them two lassies.”“Of course, I know you’re very old. But why are you crying?” demanded Rosalind.“Crying! Wouldn’t you cry, Missy, if you was to be turned neck and crop into the road at threescore years and ten?”“Nonsense. What do you mean?”“Come Tuesday,” sobbed the old man, “me and the lassies will be trespassers in this here very place.”“What!” exclaimed Miss Rosalind, “do you mean you’re to be turned out? Who dares to do such a thing?”“You go and ask Mr Pottinger, if you doubt it,” blubbered the old man. “He ought to know.”Without another word, Miss Rosalind flung herself from the cottage and marched straight for the lawyer’s, pale, with bosom heaving and a light in her eyes, that Armstrong, had he been there to see it, would have shivered at.“Mr Pottinger,” said she, breaking unceremoniously into the lawyer’s private room, “what is this I hear! How dare you frighten old Hodder by talking about his leaving his farm?”The lawyer stared at this beautiful apparition, not knowing whether to be amused or angry. It was the first time any one in Maxfield had addressed him in this strain, and the sensation was so novel that he felt fairly taken aback.“Really, dear young lady, I am delighted with any excuse that gives me the pleasure of a visit from—”“Mr Pottinger,” said the young lady in a tone which made him open his eyes still wider, “will you tell me, yes or no, if what Hodder tells me is true?”“That depends on what Hodder says,” replied the lawyer, trying to look cheerful.“He says he has had notice to leave his farm next week. Is that true?”“That entirely depends on himself, if Imustsuffer cross-examination from so charming a counsel.”“You mean—”“I mean, my pretty young lady, that if he chooses to pay the new rent he is entitled to stay.”“You have raised his rent?—a poor old man of seventy-five?”“I have no power to do that. But I understand he has had the land for next to nothing. It is worth more now.”“Mr Pottinger,” said Miss Rosalind, “let me tell you that if you have any hand in this wicked business you are a bad man, whatever you profess to be. I shouldn’t sleep to-night if I failed to tell you that. So is everybody who dares treat an old man thus.”“Pardon me, Miss Oliphant, that is not quite respectful to your own father.”She rounded on him with trembling lips.“My father,” she began and faltered—“my father is not the sort of man to do a thing of this kind unless he were cajoled into it by some—some—some one like you, Mr Pottinger—”With which she left the room, much to the lawyer’s relief, who tried to laugh to himself at the pretty vixen, but couldn’t be as merry as he would have wished.Rosalind, on her return to Maxfield, went straight with flashing eyes to Roger’s room, and told him the story.“Roger,” she said, “if you are half a man you will stop it. You are master here, or will be. Are you going to let this poor old man be turned out of his home? You are not the dear boy I take you for, if you are.”“Of course it must be stopped,” said Roger, amazed at her vehemence; “and it shall be. I always thought Pottinger a sneak. I assure you, Rosalind, I shall make poor old Hodder happy before we are a day older. So good-bye; I’ll go at once.”But he was no match for the lawyer, who politely recounted the circumstances and referred him to his guardians, who, however, as he pointed out, had no choice but to accept the best-paying tenant.“It is done in your interest, my dear boy,” said Mr Pottinger. “We are bound to consider your interests, whether you like it or not.”Mortified beyond measure, both on his own account and at the prospect of facing Rosalind, Roger returned slowly to Maxfield. As he entered, a hand was laid on his shoulder; Mr Armstrong had come back.
A week passed and Mr Armstrong did not return. By the end of that time Miss Rosalind Oliphant, for better or worse, had settled down into her new quarters, and made herself as much at home as a fair Bohemian can do anywhere. She still resented the fate which brought her to Maxfield at all, and annoyed her father constantly by casting their dependence on the hospitality of the place in his teeth.
“I wish you had some business, father,” said she, “so that we could pay our way. I don’t suppose my pictures will ever sell, but every penny I earn shall go to Roger. Couldn’t we go and live in the lodge, somewhere where we can—”
“Rosalind,” said her father, “you vex me by talking like a child. After the education I have tried to provide for you, I had a right to hope you would at least regulate your tongue by a little common-sense. Do you not know that I have given up my profession, everything, in order to come to do my duty here?”
“I wish you hadn’t,” said the girl doggedly; “it would have been so easy to decline the trust and remain independent. It’s awful to think we’ve nothing to live on but what we get out of Roger’s money.”
“Foolish girl,” said her father with a forced laugh, “you are a delightful specimen of a woman’s incapacity to understand the very rudiments of business. Why, you absurd child, old Roger Ingleton’s will bequeathed me £300 a year for acting as the boy’s guardian.”
“Yes, for two years. And Roger would have been all that richer if you’d declined. I’m sure his mother and Mr Armstrong are plenty to look after him. I’d have liked you so much better, dear father, if you’d stayed in the army.”
“I’m afraid, my poor girl, it is useless to argue with you. When you do get a wrong idea into your head, nothing will induce you to part with it, even if it involves an injustice to your poor father.”
“Father,” said she, “you know it is because I love you and—”
“Enough,” said he rather sternly. “I know you mean well.”
And he went.
At the door, however, he returned and said—
“By the way, Rosalind, I must mention one matter; not for discussion, but as my express wish. You named Mr Armstrong just now. I desire that you hold no communication with him. I have reason for knowing he is not a desirable person at all.”
“If so, you had better take us away from here,” said Rosalind, flushing. “You’ve no right to let us stay.”
“Silence, miss, and bear in mind what I tell you. Do you understand?”
Rosalind had taken up her brush and was painting furiously at her picture.
Captain Oliphant having waited a minute for an answer and getting none, stalked out of the room a model of parental anguish. As for Miss Rosalind, she painted away for a quarter of an hour, and then said to herself—
“Is he?”
With which profound inquiry she laid down her brush and went to visit her invalid cousin.
Roger was up, though still coughing, and ensconced in his study.
“How jolly of you to come!” said he.
“I came because I’d nothing else to do,” said she, “I’m not jolly at all.”
“Why, what’s the row?”
“Can’t you guess? Don’t you know that I owe you already for a week’s board and lodgings and haven’t earned sixpence to pay you.”
“I shall put you in the county court,” said Roger solemnly.
“It’s no joke to me,” said she.
“I know it isn’t, and I wish to goodness I could help you out. By the way, though,” added he, jumping up from his chair, “I’ve got it.”
“Don’t,” said she; “you’ll only start the cough. What have you got? An idea?”
“Yes. Rosalind, do you know I’m going to get some painting-lessons?”
“Where? Oh, I wish I could afford some too. Is there any one near here who teaches?”
“Yes. Some one who’s just starting. A rather jolly girl, only she has an awful temper; and I’m afraid, when she sees what a poor hand I make, she’ll have no patience with me.”
Rosalind looked at him steadily, and then smiled.
“How nice of you! May I really try? I’ll teach you all I know.”
“Will you promise to be nice, and never to fly out at me?”
“No, I’ll promise nothing of the sort. But if you learn well, I’ll be very proud.”
“And your terms?”
She looked at him again.
“Would a shilling an hour be an awful lot?”
“No. It’s very moderate. I accept the terms. I’ll begin to-day.”
This satisfactory bargain being concluded. Miss Rosalind inquired how her new pupil’s cold was.
“Nearly all right. I’m glad to have got rid of it before Armstrong comes back.”
“When will that be?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t written a line. I hope he’ll come soon.”
“Are you awfully fond of him!” asked Rosalind.
“Rather,” replied the boy.
“That’s exactly what he said when I asked him if he was fond of you.”
“Odd,” said Roger with a laugh. “But, I say, what do you think of my den? Isn’t it rather snug?”
“I like one of the pictures,” said Rosalind, pointing to a certain portrait on the mantelpiece.
“I’m awfully glad,” said Roger. “Do you know who it is?”
“No.”
“A brother of mine who died long before I was born.”
Rosalind took the picture in her hands and carried it to the window. The scrutiny lasted some minutes. Then she replaced it on the chimney-piece.
“Well,” said Roger, “do you like him?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Aren’t you a little afraid of him, too?”
“Not a bit. He looks like a hero.”
Roger sighed.
“I’m glad there’s one in the family,” said he.
“Why not two? I say, will your tutor mind your having painting-lessons of me?”
“Mind? Not he. I shouldn’t be surprised if he wants to have some too.”
Rosalind laughed.
“That would be too terrible,” said she. “But I must go now. Will you lend me this picture for a little? I’d like to look at it again.”
Roger laughed.
“Oh yes, if you’ll promise not to fall in love with him for good.”
When Roger presented himself at the appointed hour in his cousin’s studio, he found that young lady very much in earnest and not at all disposed to regard her new functions as a jest. Roger, who had come expecting to be amused, found himself ignominiously set down at a table beside the amenable Tom (who had been coerced into joining the class) and directed to copy a very elementary representation of a gable of a cottage which the instructress had set up on the easel. Six times was he compelled to tackle this simple object before his copy was pronounced passable; and until that Rosalind sternly discouraged all conversation or inattention.
“Really, Roger,” said she, when at last he meekly submitted his final copy, “for a boy of your age you are an uncommonly rough hand. Tom is a much more promising pupil than you.”
“I haven’t promised you a bob an hour, though,” rejoined that not-to-be-flattered genius, beginning to whistle.
“Silence, sir!” said Miss Rosalind, stamping her little foot with something like temper; “as long as you are in my class you must do as I tell you.”
Here Roger protested.
“You’re rather strict,” said he. “I don’t mind working hard and attending to all you say, but I vote we enjoy ourselves too—all three of us.”
“You mean,” said Rosalind petulantly, “that you come here to play, while I try to work.”
“No, I don’t. I come to do both, and I want you to, as well.”
“Very well then, I withdraw from my engagement,” said the young lady, with an ominous flush; “we don’t agree about art. Unless you can give yourself up to it while you are about it, it’s not meant for you—and—and I’m very sorry indeed I made such a stupid mistake as to think you meant what you said when you told me you wanted to learn.”
And she took the copy down from the easel.
“Look here, Rosalind,” said Roger, in unusual perturbation, “I’m so sorry. You’re quite right. Of course one can’t do two things at once. I’ll—”
“You’re a dear boy, as I’ve said before,” said Miss Oliphant, brightening up suddenly and accepting her victory serenely. “Now please both of you draw the picture again from memory as exactly as you can.”
“What’s the long and short of it all?” presently whispered Tom, who had been supremely indifferent to the argument. “Is it larks or no larks?”
“Shut up!—that’s what it is,” said Roger.
“All right; thanks,” said Tom contentedly.
And for a quarter of an hour more the two worked steadily and silently, the only sound in the room being the scratching of their pencils and Rosalind’s occasional terse criticisms over their shoulders.
This little incident opened Roger’s eyes considerably. He was astonished at himself afterwards for taking his rebuff so meekly, and submitting to what, after all, was rather a preposterous regulation. He was aware that he would not have submitted to any one but Rosalind, or possibly Armstrong. Why he should do so to her he did not particularly know; unless it was because he felt it would be pleasanter on the whole to have her as a friend than as a foe.
When, three days later, Mr Armstrong neither appeared nor communicated with any member of the household, the uneasiness which his prolonged absence caused found expression in several different ways. Miss Jill cried in a corner; Miss Rosalind tossed her head and painted fiercely; Roger, already pulled down with a return of his cough, moped in his own room; while his mother, impressed by the growing indignation of her cousin, began to work herself into a mild state of wrath. Tom alone was serene.
“I expect he’s having a jolly time with that French chap,” he volunteered at the family dinner.
“With whom?” inquired his father pricking his ears.
“Oh, a chum of his; not half a bad sort of cove, only he dropped all his ‘h’s.’ He turned up at Christy’s, you know, but missed the best break-down, while he and Mr Armstrong were hob-nobbing outside. I saw it, though. It was prime.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” demanded Captain Oliphant.
“I didn’t know you’d care about it,” said his son in mild surprise. “You see, it was this way. The fellow had wooden shoes on, and when the music began slow he began a shuffle, and gradually put on the pace till you couldn’t tell one foot from the other.”
Here Miss Rosalind broke into a derisive laugh.
“Really, Tom,” said she, “you are too clever. However did you guess that we were all dying to hear how a break-down is danced?”
“I didn’t till father said so.”
Here Roger and the two young ladies laughed again; whereat Tom, concluding he had said something good unawares, laughed too, and thought to himself how jolly it is to be clever and keep the table at a roar.
In private Captain Oliphant pursued the subject of Gustav and his relations (apart from their mutual connexion with the break-down) with the Maxfield tutor.
He received very little satisfaction from his inquiry. Tom was so full of his main topic that the other events of that memorable evening in town occupied but a secondary place in his memory.
He recollected Gustav as a good-natured foreigner whom Armstrong called by his Christian name, and who talked French in return. He could not remember where he lived, except that it was ten minutes’ walk from Christy’s Minstrels; nor had he the slightest idea what the two men talked about, except that Armstrong had promised to hold somebody’s hand, and that Gustav had tried to kiss him by way of recompense.
Captain Oliphant chose to take a very serious view of this disclosure. It fitted in exactly with his theory that the tutor was an adventurer of “shady antecedents,” and, as such, an undesirable companion for the late “dear one’s” orphan-boy.
“I should not feel I was doing my duty,” said he to Mr Pottinger that afternoon, “if I were not to follow this up. We don’t know whom we have to deal with; and the fact of Mr Ingleton having confided in him really, you know, weighs very little with me; old men of enfeebled intellect, my dear Pottinger, are so easily hoodwinked.”
“Quite so. Does it not occur to you, Captain, that a simple solution of the difficulty would be for Mrs Ingleton to send her boy to college?”
“Mrs Ingleton,” said the Captain, “is unfortunately incapable of regarding this subject in any light but that of her son’s likings. And Roger Ingleton, minor, is infatuated.”
“Humph!” said the lawyer, “I thought so. Then I agree with you, it will be useful to institute a few inquiries.”
“Leave that to me,” said the captain. “By the way, what about that piece of land you were speaking of?”
“Ah!” said the lawyer, making as near an approach to a blush as he could muster, “the fact is, Hodder’s lease falls in next week. He has had it at a ridiculously low figure, and is not a profitable tenant.”
“That is the old dotard who is always croaking about Maxfield in the days before the Flood?”
“Well, almost as remote a period. He was here in the time of the late squire’s father. At any rate his lease falls in; and I happen to know a person who is willing to give twenty per cent more for the land than he pays. I can’t tell you his name,” said the lawyer, looking sufficiently conscious, “but I happen to know he would be a better tenant to Maxfield than the old man.”
Mr Pottinger amused himself with making a little mystery about a matter that was no secret to Captain Oliphant. That gallant gentleman knew as well as the lawyer did that Mr Pottinger himself, whose land adjoined Hodder’s, was the eligible tenant in question.
“There will be no difficulty about that, Pottinger. Of course, you must give Hodder the option of offering your friend’s price. If he does not, it is clearly the duty of the executors to take the better tenant.”
He took up his hat and turned to go.
“By the way,” said he at the door, “it will hardly be necessary, I take it, to go through the farce of bringing a trifling matter of this kind before the other executors; Mrs Ingleton should really be spared all worry of this sort; and as for the other one—well, he chooses to be somewhere else.”
“Quite so, quite so. If you and Mrs Ingleton sign the lease it will be sufficient,” said Mr Pottinger.
Unluckily for the pleasantly arranged plan of these two good gentlemen, Miss Rosalind Oliphant took it into her pretty head a day or so afterwards to call at old Hodder’s cottage in passing, to ask for a glass of milk. The young lady was in a very discontented frame of mind. She was angry with Mr Armstrong for staying away so long. Not that she cared what he did, but till he came back she felt she did not know the full extent of the forces arrayed against her at Maxfield; and she wanted to know the worst. Besides, although Roger was diligently prosecuting his art studies and displaying the most docile obedience to her discipline, she could not help thinking he would not have taken to art except to please her; and that displeased her mightily. Besides, Tom, her brother, was too silly for anything; he insisted on enjoying himself, whoever else was miserable; and Jill was very little better. Altogether, Miss Oliphant was out of humour, and felt this walk would do her good.
She found the Hodder family in mighty tribulation. The old man sat in his corner with his hat on the floor beside him, crying and boohing like a child. And his two little granddaughters looked on at his grief, pale and half-frightened, knowing something bad had happened, but unable to guess what.
“Why, Hodder,” said Miss Rosalind, “whatever’s the matter? What a noise you’re making! What has happened?”
“Happened!” cried the old man with a voice quavering into a shrill treble. “How would he like it himself? Seventy years, boy and man, have I sat here, like my father before me. I’ve seen yon elm grow from a stick to what she is now. I’ve buried all my kith and kin bar them two lassies.”
“Of course, I know you’re very old. But why are you crying?” demanded Rosalind.
“Crying! Wouldn’t you cry, Missy, if you was to be turned neck and crop into the road at threescore years and ten?”
“Nonsense. What do you mean?”
“Come Tuesday,” sobbed the old man, “me and the lassies will be trespassers in this here very place.”
“What!” exclaimed Miss Rosalind, “do you mean you’re to be turned out? Who dares to do such a thing?”
“You go and ask Mr Pottinger, if you doubt it,” blubbered the old man. “He ought to know.”
Without another word, Miss Rosalind flung herself from the cottage and marched straight for the lawyer’s, pale, with bosom heaving and a light in her eyes, that Armstrong, had he been there to see it, would have shivered at.
“Mr Pottinger,” said she, breaking unceremoniously into the lawyer’s private room, “what is this I hear! How dare you frighten old Hodder by talking about his leaving his farm?”
The lawyer stared at this beautiful apparition, not knowing whether to be amused or angry. It was the first time any one in Maxfield had addressed him in this strain, and the sensation was so novel that he felt fairly taken aback.
“Really, dear young lady, I am delighted with any excuse that gives me the pleasure of a visit from—”
“Mr Pottinger,” said the young lady in a tone which made him open his eyes still wider, “will you tell me, yes or no, if what Hodder tells me is true?”
“That depends on what Hodder says,” replied the lawyer, trying to look cheerful.
“He says he has had notice to leave his farm next week. Is that true?”
“That entirely depends on himself, if Imustsuffer cross-examination from so charming a counsel.”
“You mean—”
“I mean, my pretty young lady, that if he chooses to pay the new rent he is entitled to stay.”
“You have raised his rent?—a poor old man of seventy-five?”
“I have no power to do that. But I understand he has had the land for next to nothing. It is worth more now.”
“Mr Pottinger,” said Miss Rosalind, “let me tell you that if you have any hand in this wicked business you are a bad man, whatever you profess to be. I shouldn’t sleep to-night if I failed to tell you that. So is everybody who dares treat an old man thus.”
“Pardon me, Miss Oliphant, that is not quite respectful to your own father.”
She rounded on him with trembling lips.
“My father,” she began and faltered—“my father is not the sort of man to do a thing of this kind unless he were cajoled into it by some—some—some one like you, Mr Pottinger—”
With which she left the room, much to the lawyer’s relief, who tried to laugh to himself at the pretty vixen, but couldn’t be as merry as he would have wished.
Rosalind, on her return to Maxfield, went straight with flashing eyes to Roger’s room, and told him the story.
“Roger,” she said, “if you are half a man you will stop it. You are master here, or will be. Are you going to let this poor old man be turned out of his home? You are not the dear boy I take you for, if you are.”
“Of course it must be stopped,” said Roger, amazed at her vehemence; “and it shall be. I always thought Pottinger a sneak. I assure you, Rosalind, I shall make poor old Hodder happy before we are a day older. So good-bye; I’ll go at once.”
But he was no match for the lawyer, who politely recounted the circumstances and referred him to his guardians, who, however, as he pointed out, had no choice but to accept the best-paying tenant.
“It is done in your interest, my dear boy,” said Mr Pottinger. “We are bound to consider your interests, whether you like it or not.”
Mortified beyond measure, both on his own account and at the prospect of facing Rosalind, Roger returned slowly to Maxfield. As he entered, a hand was laid on his shoulder; Mr Armstrong had come back.