Chapter Nineteen.A Feeble Clue.Mr Fastnet’s lodgings were a good deal less imposing than Roger, who had hitherto only met the owner at the club, had pictured to himself. In fact, the small sitting-room, with bedroom to match, commonly furnished, reeking of tobacco, and hung all round with sporting and dramatic prints, was quite as likely a refuge for an unfledged medical student as for a person of the swagger and presence of Mr Felix Fastnet.“No use to me,” he explained, interpreting his young guest’s thought, “except as a dog-kennel. I live at the club—breakfast, lunch, dinner—everything; but I was so disgusted with the performance of that young cad to-night that I even prefer the dog-kennel. Have a soda?”Roger accepted, and sat down by the fire.“Yes,” growled on his host; “I’m father of that club, and I don’t like to see it degraded. If he’d gone for you, and kicked you into the street, I shouldn’t have lifted a finger to stop him. He could have made hay of you if I’d chosen, a sickly youngster like you.”“I wonder he did not,” said Roger; “but, Mr Fastnet, now I have met you, I want to ask you a question.”“Ask away.”“My name, as you know, is Roger Ingleton. Have you never met any one of my name before?”“Bless me, no. Why should I?”“I had a namesake once who came to London, and I wondered if you possibly knew him.”“My dear sir, I don’t know quite all the young men who have come to London during the last twenty years. What makes you think it?”“My namesake was a brother—son of my father’s first wife. He left home and disappeared. Rumour says he went to London, where he was last heard of in company of a companion named Fastnet.”Mr Fastnet put down his glass.“Eh?” said he. “The Fastnets are not a big clan. Are you sure that was the name?”“It was certainly the name that reached me.”“Must refer to some one else then. I never knew or heard of any one of the name of Ingleton in my life.”Roger’s countenance fell. The new scent appeared likely to be a false one after all.“How long ago is all this?” asked his host.“More than twenty years. My brother left home in a pique, and, I’m afraid, went to the bad in—”“Twenty years?” said Mr Fastnet, putting down his cigar beside the glass. “What sort of fellow was he? A harum-scarum young dog, with impudent eyes, and a toss of his head that would have defied the bench of bishops?”“That is he,” said Roger excitedly.“Sit down!” continued Fastnet—“curly hair, arms like a young Hercules, as obstinate as a bulldog, with a temper like a tiger?”“Yes, yes! that must be the same.”“Left his mother and father in a furious tantrum, with a vow to cut off his head before he showed face at home again? A regular young demon, as honest as the Bank of England—no taste for vice in any shape or form, but plunged into it just to spite his friends, civil enough when you got him on the weather side, and no fool? Was that the fellow?”“I’m sure you describe the very man,” said Roger.“Man? He was a boy; a raw-boned green boy, smarting under a sense of injustice, a regular, thorough-paced young Ishmaelite as you ever saw. I should fancy I did know him. But his name was not Ingleton.”“What was it?”“Jack Rogers.”“No doubt he adopted his own Christian name as a disguise.”“Very likely. I could never get him to talk about his people. His one object was to lose himself—body and soul—it seemed to me. Bless you, I had little enough voice in his proceedings. I was wild enough, but I promise you I was a milksop to him. Neck or nothing was his motto, and he lived up to it. The one drawback to success in his particular line was that he would insist on being a gentleman. Fatal complaint to any one who wants to go to the bad.”“Have you any idea what became of my brother?”“Not in the least. He knocked about with me for about a year, till he suddenly discovered he was living on me. Not that I minded; I had pots of money—it’s been my curse. Never had to do a day’s work in my life. He pulled up short at that, pawned his watch, and refused to take another crust of bread, and left me without a penny in his pocket. I only heard once of him afterwards. He wrote to enclose a five-pound note.”“Have you got his letter? Can you remember where he wrote from?” asked Roger excitedly.“I don’t believe there was a letter. The note was wrapped up in an old play-bill of some strolling company of actors. I remember it now,” added Fastnet, laughing and re-lighting his cigar. “Yes, it wasHamlet. Rogers was cast for the ghost in one act, Polonius in another, and the grave-digger in another. I remember how I roared when I read it. Fancy that fellow as Polonius!”“Can’t you remember the town?”“Not a ghost of an idea. Some little village in the Midlands probably, whereHamletwould be appreciated. I remember, by the way, the bill—pity I didn’t keep it—mentioned that this enterprising company was going to give a performance in Boulogne, of all places. It occurred to me it would be a source of great consolation to our fellow-countrymen in that dismal colony to witness Jack Rogers in the ghost for one night only.”“That would be eighteen or nineteen years ago,” said Roger, with a sigh at the hopelessness of his quest. “You have heard nothing since?”“Not a syllable. Have some more sherry?”Roger reached his hotel that night in more than mental distress. The fatigue and anxiety of the last few days had had their inevitable result on his health, and though the penalty had been postponed, it was coming to account at last.When his worthy guardian returned on the following day, he was much shocked to find his ward really ill. He did his best. He tried to induce the patient to make an effort to “shake off” his ailments. He sat up late in his room at night, talking and attempting to amuse him. He even purchased a few amateur specifics; and finally, when the boy was as ill as ill could be, called in a pettifogging practitioner, who might be trusted to bungle the case.“Regular bad case,” said that learned gentleman, after the third or fourth visit. “May last a week with care.”The good captain naturally grew concerned. Matters seemed to be progressing beyond even his expectations. The practitioner’s verdict speedily got wind in the hotel. Visitors came anxiously to inquire after the young gentleman’s condition, and urged a second opinion. And one or two were inconsiderate enough to suggest that the patient was not having fair play.Under these distressing circumstances, Captain Oliphant decided to write a line to Dr Brandram.“Roger has unfortunately taken a chill. Will you kindly forward me the prescription which benefited him so much last summer, as I am naturally anxious to omit no precaution for the dear fellow’s good. He is being well cared for, and will, I trust, be all right in a day or two.”Dr Brandram’s reply to this transparent communication was to order his dogcart and take the first train to London. Before starting, he had time to send a telegram to Armstrong to meet him at the hotel the same evening.Little dreaming of the effect of his message, Captain Oliphant was spending a resigned afternoon in the sick-room. Fate was working on his side once more. Mr Ratman had apparently vanished into space. Mr Armstrong was out of the way. The practitioner’s face had been longer than ever when he took his leave a few hours ago. The difficulties and disappointments of the past few months were giving way to better prospects. The good man’s conscience accused him of no actual injury to his ward. On the contrary, he could honestly say he had devoted time, money, personal fatigue, to tending him. He had secured him medical attendance, he had advised the family doctor of his indisposition. He had sat up with him day and night. Was it his fault if the illness took a bad turn, and the Maxfield property changed its owner? He should like to meet the man who could lay anything at his door.Roger turned on his pillow and began to wander—“Tell him I believe it. I’ll go and find the grave-digger. Ask Fastnet, and Compton, and all of them. No more sherry, thanks. Yes, sir, I said you were no gentleman. I repeat it. You have no right to mention her name. Shut the door, Rosalind. There’s only eleven months to do it in. He is waiting at the General Post Office. Armstrong has gone away. They expelled him from the club.”“Poor fellow,” sighed the captain, as he smoothed the sufferer’s pillow; “poor fellow! How absurdly he talks.”So engrossed was he in his ministrations that he failed to perceive the door behind him softly open and a gentleman enter.Mr Armstrong had outstripped the doctor in the race to town. Without a word the tutor walked to the bed and bent over the troubled form of his pupil. Then with face almost as white as that of his enemy, he turned.“What brings you here?” gasped the captain.“How long has he been like this?” demanded the tutor.“Do you hear my question?”“Do you hear mine?”The weaker man capitulated, with a malediction, to the stronger.“Since yesterday. He is being carefully tended.”“By whom—you alone?”“By a doctor.”“What doctor?”“When I know your right to catechise me, I will answer,” snarled the captain.Mr Armstrong rang the bell.“Light the fire here at once,” said he to the maid, “and then send the messenger up.”In the interval the two men stood eyeing one another, while the patient from time to time tossed on his pillow and muttered to himself.Mr Armstrong hurriedly scrawled two notes.“Take a cab, and leave this note at — Hospital. Let the nurse I have asked for come back in the cab at once. Then go on with this note to Sir William Dove, and bring word from him the earliest moment he can be here. Don’t lose an instant.”“Captain Oliphant,” said he, as soon as the messenger had gone, “three is too many for this room. I am here to relieve guard. You need rest. Dr Brandram will be here any moment. Bring him up directly he comes.”Captain Oliphant was certainly deserving of a little sympathy. He had borne the burden and heat of the day, and now another was entering into his labour. But the tutor’s tone had an ugly ring about it, which, for the moment, cowed the injured gentleman, and constrained him, after glowering for a moment or two, and trying to articulate a protest, meekly to withdraw.“My responsibility ends where yours begins,” said he, with his best sneer. “I grudge none of the trouble I have taken for the dear boy, but I must decline to remain here as the assistant of Signor Francisco the music-hall cad.”“I can imagine it might be painful,” said Mr Armstrong drily; “but the immediate thing to be desired is that you should not consume the oxygen in this room. Explanations will do later.”Captain Oliphant was not at hand that evening to meet the doctors. A business engagement had summoned him to Maxfield, where he rejoiced the hearts of his two children by a sudden arrival at breakfast-time.A curt note from Armstrong the same afternoon apprised him that his movements had been anticipated.“Doctors not without hope. Admirable nurse secured. Brandram and I remain here.”Captain Oliphant derived scant consolation from this announcement, and quite forgot his business engagement in his mortification and ill temper. He dropped in during the day to see Mr Pottinger, to discuss his grievance with that legal luminary. But Mr Pottinger, as the reader is aware, had complications of another kind to disclose. He astonished his visitor with an account of the surprise visit of Mr Ratman a few days previously, and of that gentleman’s astounding claims to the name of Ingleton.“What!” exclaimed the captain, “you mean to say that scoundrel actually claimed to be the lost son? I always had a high opinion of his impudence, but I never imagined it capable of that. Why, my dear sir, I have known him as a pettifogging money-lender in India for years.”“Quite so; but did you know why and when he came to India?”“I can’t say I did. Surely you don’t credit his story?”“Well, not exactly. But it strikes me the gentleman will give us some difficulty.”“Why? What good can it do him even if he is what he claims! He cannot upset the will, which emphatically cuts him out of every possibility of benefit.”“No; that leaves him no loophole, certainly. But he may calculate on working on the chivalry of his younger brother, or if that fails, on blackmailing him.”“If so, he will have us to deal with. For once in a way Armstrong and I are likely to be of the same opinion. Surely there is evidence enough to prosecute for conspiracy.”“Hardly. He claims nothing but the name. He admits he has no rights. My opinion, Captain Oliphant, is that we have not heard the end of him.”“Very likely not, especially as I unluckily owe him money.”“That is awkward. The sooner you square accounts and get rid of him the better.”“Easier said than done,” remarked the captain, and returned with a decided headache to Maxfield.Roger, with Armstrong to nurse him, with Dr Brandram to attend him, with his own strong bias towards life to buoy him up, emerged slowly from the valley of the shadow of death, and in due time stood once more on his feet. Weeks before that happened he had told and heard all that was to be said about his lost brother. Dr Brandram had recounted the incident at Miss Jill’s party, and he in turn had confided to his tutor his meeting with Fastnet, and the feeble clue in which that conference had resulted.“Armstrong, old fellow,” said he one day at the close of the year, “won’t you help me in this? I know you hate the business, and think me a fool for my pains. I must do it, with you or without you, and would sooner do it with you. In ten months it will be too late.”“I hate the business, as you say, but you may count on me; only don’t ask me to hail Mr Ratman as Squire of Maxfield, or subscribe a penny to his maintenance, a day before his claim is proved.”“You are a brick; I was a cad ever to doubt it. Let us start next week for Boulogne.”“Quite so,” said the tutor, screwing his glass viciously into his eye; “let us go to Boulogne by all means.”
Mr Fastnet’s lodgings were a good deal less imposing than Roger, who had hitherto only met the owner at the club, had pictured to himself. In fact, the small sitting-room, with bedroom to match, commonly furnished, reeking of tobacco, and hung all round with sporting and dramatic prints, was quite as likely a refuge for an unfledged medical student as for a person of the swagger and presence of Mr Felix Fastnet.
“No use to me,” he explained, interpreting his young guest’s thought, “except as a dog-kennel. I live at the club—breakfast, lunch, dinner—everything; but I was so disgusted with the performance of that young cad to-night that I even prefer the dog-kennel. Have a soda?”
Roger accepted, and sat down by the fire.
“Yes,” growled on his host; “I’m father of that club, and I don’t like to see it degraded. If he’d gone for you, and kicked you into the street, I shouldn’t have lifted a finger to stop him. He could have made hay of you if I’d chosen, a sickly youngster like you.”
“I wonder he did not,” said Roger; “but, Mr Fastnet, now I have met you, I want to ask you a question.”
“Ask away.”
“My name, as you know, is Roger Ingleton. Have you never met any one of my name before?”
“Bless me, no. Why should I?”
“I had a namesake once who came to London, and I wondered if you possibly knew him.”
“My dear sir, I don’t know quite all the young men who have come to London during the last twenty years. What makes you think it?”
“My namesake was a brother—son of my father’s first wife. He left home and disappeared. Rumour says he went to London, where he was last heard of in company of a companion named Fastnet.”
Mr Fastnet put down his glass.
“Eh?” said he. “The Fastnets are not a big clan. Are you sure that was the name?”
“It was certainly the name that reached me.”
“Must refer to some one else then. I never knew or heard of any one of the name of Ingleton in my life.”
Roger’s countenance fell. The new scent appeared likely to be a false one after all.
“How long ago is all this?” asked his host.
“More than twenty years. My brother left home in a pique, and, I’m afraid, went to the bad in—”
“Twenty years?” said Mr Fastnet, putting down his cigar beside the glass. “What sort of fellow was he? A harum-scarum young dog, with impudent eyes, and a toss of his head that would have defied the bench of bishops?”
“That is he,” said Roger excitedly.
“Sit down!” continued Fastnet—“curly hair, arms like a young Hercules, as obstinate as a bulldog, with a temper like a tiger?”
“Yes, yes! that must be the same.”
“Left his mother and father in a furious tantrum, with a vow to cut off his head before he showed face at home again? A regular young demon, as honest as the Bank of England—no taste for vice in any shape or form, but plunged into it just to spite his friends, civil enough when you got him on the weather side, and no fool? Was that the fellow?”
“I’m sure you describe the very man,” said Roger.
“Man? He was a boy; a raw-boned green boy, smarting under a sense of injustice, a regular, thorough-paced young Ishmaelite as you ever saw. I should fancy I did know him. But his name was not Ingleton.”
“What was it?”
“Jack Rogers.”
“No doubt he adopted his own Christian name as a disguise.”
“Very likely. I could never get him to talk about his people. His one object was to lose himself—body and soul—it seemed to me. Bless you, I had little enough voice in his proceedings. I was wild enough, but I promise you I was a milksop to him. Neck or nothing was his motto, and he lived up to it. The one drawback to success in his particular line was that he would insist on being a gentleman. Fatal complaint to any one who wants to go to the bad.”
“Have you any idea what became of my brother?”
“Not in the least. He knocked about with me for about a year, till he suddenly discovered he was living on me. Not that I minded; I had pots of money—it’s been my curse. Never had to do a day’s work in my life. He pulled up short at that, pawned his watch, and refused to take another crust of bread, and left me without a penny in his pocket. I only heard once of him afterwards. He wrote to enclose a five-pound note.”
“Have you got his letter? Can you remember where he wrote from?” asked Roger excitedly.
“I don’t believe there was a letter. The note was wrapped up in an old play-bill of some strolling company of actors. I remember it now,” added Fastnet, laughing and re-lighting his cigar. “Yes, it wasHamlet. Rogers was cast for the ghost in one act, Polonius in another, and the grave-digger in another. I remember how I roared when I read it. Fancy that fellow as Polonius!”
“Can’t you remember the town?”
“Not a ghost of an idea. Some little village in the Midlands probably, whereHamletwould be appreciated. I remember, by the way, the bill—pity I didn’t keep it—mentioned that this enterprising company was going to give a performance in Boulogne, of all places. It occurred to me it would be a source of great consolation to our fellow-countrymen in that dismal colony to witness Jack Rogers in the ghost for one night only.”
“That would be eighteen or nineteen years ago,” said Roger, with a sigh at the hopelessness of his quest. “You have heard nothing since?”
“Not a syllable. Have some more sherry?”
Roger reached his hotel that night in more than mental distress. The fatigue and anxiety of the last few days had had their inevitable result on his health, and though the penalty had been postponed, it was coming to account at last.
When his worthy guardian returned on the following day, he was much shocked to find his ward really ill. He did his best. He tried to induce the patient to make an effort to “shake off” his ailments. He sat up late in his room at night, talking and attempting to amuse him. He even purchased a few amateur specifics; and finally, when the boy was as ill as ill could be, called in a pettifogging practitioner, who might be trusted to bungle the case.
“Regular bad case,” said that learned gentleman, after the third or fourth visit. “May last a week with care.”
The good captain naturally grew concerned. Matters seemed to be progressing beyond even his expectations. The practitioner’s verdict speedily got wind in the hotel. Visitors came anxiously to inquire after the young gentleman’s condition, and urged a second opinion. And one or two were inconsiderate enough to suggest that the patient was not having fair play.
Under these distressing circumstances, Captain Oliphant decided to write a line to Dr Brandram.
“Roger has unfortunately taken a chill. Will you kindly forward me the prescription which benefited him so much last summer, as I am naturally anxious to omit no precaution for the dear fellow’s good. He is being well cared for, and will, I trust, be all right in a day or two.”
Dr Brandram’s reply to this transparent communication was to order his dogcart and take the first train to London. Before starting, he had time to send a telegram to Armstrong to meet him at the hotel the same evening.
Little dreaming of the effect of his message, Captain Oliphant was spending a resigned afternoon in the sick-room. Fate was working on his side once more. Mr Ratman had apparently vanished into space. Mr Armstrong was out of the way. The practitioner’s face had been longer than ever when he took his leave a few hours ago. The difficulties and disappointments of the past few months were giving way to better prospects. The good man’s conscience accused him of no actual injury to his ward. On the contrary, he could honestly say he had devoted time, money, personal fatigue, to tending him. He had secured him medical attendance, he had advised the family doctor of his indisposition. He had sat up with him day and night. Was it his fault if the illness took a bad turn, and the Maxfield property changed its owner? He should like to meet the man who could lay anything at his door.
Roger turned on his pillow and began to wander—
“Tell him I believe it. I’ll go and find the grave-digger. Ask Fastnet, and Compton, and all of them. No more sherry, thanks. Yes, sir, I said you were no gentleman. I repeat it. You have no right to mention her name. Shut the door, Rosalind. There’s only eleven months to do it in. He is waiting at the General Post Office. Armstrong has gone away. They expelled him from the club.”
“Poor fellow,” sighed the captain, as he smoothed the sufferer’s pillow; “poor fellow! How absurdly he talks.”
So engrossed was he in his ministrations that he failed to perceive the door behind him softly open and a gentleman enter.
Mr Armstrong had outstripped the doctor in the race to town. Without a word the tutor walked to the bed and bent over the troubled form of his pupil. Then with face almost as white as that of his enemy, he turned.
“What brings you here?” gasped the captain.
“How long has he been like this?” demanded the tutor.
“Do you hear my question?”
“Do you hear mine?”
The weaker man capitulated, with a malediction, to the stronger.
“Since yesterday. He is being carefully tended.”
“By whom—you alone?”
“By a doctor.”
“What doctor?”
“When I know your right to catechise me, I will answer,” snarled the captain.
Mr Armstrong rang the bell.
“Light the fire here at once,” said he to the maid, “and then send the messenger up.”
In the interval the two men stood eyeing one another, while the patient from time to time tossed on his pillow and muttered to himself.
Mr Armstrong hurriedly scrawled two notes.
“Take a cab, and leave this note at — Hospital. Let the nurse I have asked for come back in the cab at once. Then go on with this note to Sir William Dove, and bring word from him the earliest moment he can be here. Don’t lose an instant.”
“Captain Oliphant,” said he, as soon as the messenger had gone, “three is too many for this room. I am here to relieve guard. You need rest. Dr Brandram will be here any moment. Bring him up directly he comes.”
Captain Oliphant was certainly deserving of a little sympathy. He had borne the burden and heat of the day, and now another was entering into his labour. But the tutor’s tone had an ugly ring about it, which, for the moment, cowed the injured gentleman, and constrained him, after glowering for a moment or two, and trying to articulate a protest, meekly to withdraw.
“My responsibility ends where yours begins,” said he, with his best sneer. “I grudge none of the trouble I have taken for the dear boy, but I must decline to remain here as the assistant of Signor Francisco the music-hall cad.”
“I can imagine it might be painful,” said Mr Armstrong drily; “but the immediate thing to be desired is that you should not consume the oxygen in this room. Explanations will do later.”
Captain Oliphant was not at hand that evening to meet the doctors. A business engagement had summoned him to Maxfield, where he rejoiced the hearts of his two children by a sudden arrival at breakfast-time.
A curt note from Armstrong the same afternoon apprised him that his movements had been anticipated.
“Doctors not without hope. Admirable nurse secured. Brandram and I remain here.”
Captain Oliphant derived scant consolation from this announcement, and quite forgot his business engagement in his mortification and ill temper. He dropped in during the day to see Mr Pottinger, to discuss his grievance with that legal luminary. But Mr Pottinger, as the reader is aware, had complications of another kind to disclose. He astonished his visitor with an account of the surprise visit of Mr Ratman a few days previously, and of that gentleman’s astounding claims to the name of Ingleton.
“What!” exclaimed the captain, “you mean to say that scoundrel actually claimed to be the lost son? I always had a high opinion of his impudence, but I never imagined it capable of that. Why, my dear sir, I have known him as a pettifogging money-lender in India for years.”
“Quite so; but did you know why and when he came to India?”
“I can’t say I did. Surely you don’t credit his story?”
“Well, not exactly. But it strikes me the gentleman will give us some difficulty.”
“Why? What good can it do him even if he is what he claims! He cannot upset the will, which emphatically cuts him out of every possibility of benefit.”
“No; that leaves him no loophole, certainly. But he may calculate on working on the chivalry of his younger brother, or if that fails, on blackmailing him.”
“If so, he will have us to deal with. For once in a way Armstrong and I are likely to be of the same opinion. Surely there is evidence enough to prosecute for conspiracy.”
“Hardly. He claims nothing but the name. He admits he has no rights. My opinion, Captain Oliphant, is that we have not heard the end of him.”
“Very likely not, especially as I unluckily owe him money.”
“That is awkward. The sooner you square accounts and get rid of him the better.”
“Easier said than done,” remarked the captain, and returned with a decided headache to Maxfield.
Roger, with Armstrong to nurse him, with Dr Brandram to attend him, with his own strong bias towards life to buoy him up, emerged slowly from the valley of the shadow of death, and in due time stood once more on his feet. Weeks before that happened he had told and heard all that was to be said about his lost brother. Dr Brandram had recounted the incident at Miss Jill’s party, and he in turn had confided to his tutor his meeting with Fastnet, and the feeble clue in which that conference had resulted.
“Armstrong, old fellow,” said he one day at the close of the year, “won’t you help me in this? I know you hate the business, and think me a fool for my pains. I must do it, with you or without you, and would sooner do it with you. In ten months it will be too late.”
“I hate the business, as you say, but you may count on me; only don’t ask me to hail Mr Ratman as Squire of Maxfield, or subscribe a penny to his maintenance, a day before his claim is proved.”
“You are a brick; I was a cad ever to doubt it. Let us start next week for Boulogne.”
“Quite so,” said the tutor, screwing his glass viciously into his eye; “let us go to Boulogne by all means.”
Chapter Twenty.The Ghost of Hamlet.It is possible to conceive of a more hopeful task than hunting up and down a large French town for tidings of a strolling player who, for one night only, played the ghost inHamlettwenty years ago. But Roger, as, early in the year, he stepped ashore at Boulogne with Armstrong at his side, felt sanguine and of good cheer.His recovery had been slow, and not without interruption. As soon as he could be moved he had returned to Maxfield, only to find Rosalind still away, and his guardian obdurate to any suggestion for expediting her return.As to the proposed journey to Boulogne, the gallant captain looked upon that as a symptom of serious mental exhaustion on the part of the invalid. Roger, however, was in a mood impervious to argument.When the time actually came, the captain surprised every one by giving in more readily than any one had expected. The truth was, Mr Ratman, though lost to sight, contrived to make himself very dear to his debtor’s memory, and already a legal document had reached Maxfield demanding the payment in full of a certain bill within a certain date on pain of certain consequences. And Captain Oliphant felt it would be distinctly convenient, for a while, to be relieved of the presence both of his co-trustee and his ward. He felt himself quite competent to deal with the trust moneys which were shortly about to come in without assistance.When, therefore, Roger with some hesitation returned to the charge, he said, somewhat severely—“You are old enough to decide for yourself, my boy. You know my view of the matter. I conclude you are not going alone?”“No; Armstrong is coming.”“Naturally. I wish you joy. On your return I shall be happy to resume my responsibility for your welfare. I cannot profess to feel oppressed by it in your absence.”This was enough. True, the captain contrived to get in a parting shot by announcing that Rosalind was likely to return shortly to Maxfield. But even that did not suffice to change the lad’s purpose.“Don’t be very long away,” said Jill to Mr Armstrong. “You are always going and leaving us. Rosalind will be very, very sorry to find you are away. She likes you—she told me so; but she doesn’t like you half as much as I do.”The tutor flushed uncomfortably.“Oh,” said Tom, “you’re always spoons on somebody, Jill. I heard you tell that Duke chap you liked him better than anybody in the world.”“O Tom! how dare you tell such a wicked falsehood? I told him I liked himnearlyas much as Mr Armstrong, but not quite. Really I did, Mr Armstrong.”“I am very jealous of the Duke,” said Mr Armstrong gravely.Once across the Channel, Roger’s spirits rose. He had a presentiment he was on the right track. Like a knight of old, set down to a desperate task, the fighting blood rose joyously within him. Whatever it cost, whoever deserted him, whoever opposed him, he would find his brother, and give to him his own.For days they went hither and thither, inquiring at cafés, theatres, cabarets, custom-houses, police stations, and even cemeteries, without success. Most of the persons accosted laughed and shrugged their shoulders to be asked if they remembered the visit of strolling players to the town as far back as twenty years. Others bridled up suspiciously, as if the question were a preliminary to their detection in some old evil deed. Others utterly failed to comprehend the question; and a few pityingly tapped their own foreheads, and shook their heads at the two half-witted English holiday-makers. But no one could tell a word about Rogers.A fortnight passed, and the thoughts of both, dispirited and worn, turned homeward. Rosalind, a letter had informed them, was back at Maxfield.Of the two, perhaps Mr Armstrong displayed less disposition to own himself beaten. He had worked like a horse all the time. Roger had been compelled to own that without him his mission would have been a feeble farce. Not a stone did the dogged tutor leave unturned. Not a difficulty did he shirk. Not a man or woman, however forbidding, did he hesitate to tackle, who in the remotest degree might be suspected of being likely to give information. Now that it came to giving in, he hung back, reluctant to dip his colours.“To-day’s Thursday,” said he. “Let’s give ourselves till Saturday. If nothing turns up by then, I am your man to slink home.”Roger, a little ashamed to find the first last and the last first in the race after all, readily assented. And the two worked unflagging for two days longer.Friday evening came, and the two sat dismally down totable d’hôtewith defeat staring them in the face. They said very little, but each knew the mortification in the other’s breast.At last, when the meal was over, Mr Armstrong said—“I suppose we had better go and get our tickets.”“I suppose so.”But thebureauwas closed for the night, and the two took a solitary walk along the beach. They walked on further than usual in the clear moonlight, till at last the tutor looked at his watch.“It’s nine o’clock,” said he; “we must go back.”“Let’s take the country road back.”“It is a mile longer.”“Never mind. It is our last night.”So they struck up by the cliffs, and followed the chalky country road back to Boulogne.About two miles from the town the cheery lights of a waysideaubergeattracted their attention.“Let us get some coffee here,” said Armstrong.This solitary tavern rejoiced in the name of “Café d’Angleterre,” but if its owner expected thereby to attract the custom of Mr John Bull, he was singularly mistaken. The chief customers of the place were labourers and navvies, who by their noisy jargon were evidently innocent of all pretensions to a foreign tongue.Seeing two strangers, presumably able to pay ready money for what they consumed, the old landlord invited his visitors into the bar parlour, where at his own table he set before them that delightful concoction of chicory and sifted earth which certain provincial Frenchmen callcafé. And being a gregarious and inquisitive old man, and withal proud of his tolerable stock of English, he took the liberty of joining them.“Inglese?” inquired he, with a pantomimic shrug.“Quite so,” said the tutor, putting up his glass, and inspecting the fellow carefully.“This is the ‘Café d’Angleterre,’” said the landlord, “but,hélas! it is long since the Inglese gentleman come here. They like too well the great town.”“Ah, Boulogne has grown. Can you remember the place twenty years ago?”“Can I? I can remember forty years.”“I wonder,” broke in Roger, too impatient to allow his tutor to lead up gradually to the inevitable question, “if you can remember some English players coming over here about eighteen years ago and acting a play calledHamletin English.”The landlord blew a cloud of smoke from his lips, and stared round at the speaker as if he had been a ghost.“Why do you ask me that?’Amlet! Can I forget it?”Here was a bolt out of the blue! The tutor’s eye-glass dropped with a clatter against his cup, and Roger fetched a breath half gasp, half sigh.“You remember it!” exclaimed he, seizing the man’s hand; “do you know, we have been a fortnight in Boulogne trying to find some one who did!”“Would notyouremember it,” replied the Frenchman, with a gesticulation, “if ’Amlet had put up at your inn and gone away without paying his bill?”“Did one of the actors stay here, then?”“One? There was twenty ’Amlets, and Miladi ’Amlets, and Mademoiselle ’Amlets. They all stay here,en famille. The house is full of ’Amlets. The stable is full. They bring with them a castle of ’Amlet, and a grave of ’Amlet. My poor house was all ’Amlet!”“And,” inquired Mr Armstrong, flushed with the sudden discovery, but as cool as ever, “you had a pass to see the play, of course?”“Mon dieu! it was all the pay I got. ’Amlet come to my house with his twenty hungry mouth, and eat me up, flesh and bone. He sleep in my beds, he sleep on my roof, he sleep in my stable. The place is ’Amlet’s. And all my pay is one piece of card bidding me see him play himself.”“And was it well played?” Asked Mr Armstrong.“Well played? How do I know? But six persons came to see it—I one—and in six minutes it is all done. Your English ’Amlet will not play to the empty bench. He call down the curtain, and bid us go where we please. Not even will he pay us back our money. Then, when he come to leave the hall himself,voilà, he has no money to pay his rent. His baggage is seized, and ’Amlet fights.Mon dieu, there wasune émeutein Boulogne that night; and before day ’Amlet has vanish like his own ghost, and I am a robbed man;voilà.”“Very rough on you,” said the tutor. “So there was a ghost among the players?”“Why no? It would not be’Amletwithout.”“Did the ghost stay here too?”“Hélas! yes. He eat, and drink, and sleep, and forgets to pay, like the rest.”“What did you lose by him?” asked Roger, with parched lips.“Ah, monsieur, I was a Napoleon poorer for every ’Amlet in my house that night.”Roger put down two sovereigns on the table.“That is to pay for the ghost,” said he, flushing. “He was my brother.”The landlord stared in blank amazement.“Your brother! Monsieur le Ghost of’Amletwas—pardieu!” exclaimed he, looking hard at his guest, “and he was like you. It was no fault of his’Amletdid not take the favour, for he play in the first act and make us all laugh. If the other ’Amlets had been so amusing as him, the house would have been full—packed. Ha! now you say it, he was a gentleman, this poor Monsieur le Ghost. He held himself apart from the noisy company, and sulk in a corner, while they laugh, and drink, and sing the song. They were afraid of him, and,mon dieu! they might be—for once, when Monsieur Rosencrantz, as I remember, came and threw some absinthe—my absinthe, messieurs—in his face, Monsieur le Ghost he knocked him down with a blow that sounded—oh, like a clap of the thunder. And this pauvre ghost,” added the man, “was monsieur’s brother!Hélas! he was come down very poor—his coat was rags, and his boots were open to the water of heaven. He eat little. Ah, monsieur, I have deceived you. He cost me not five franc; for, when I remember, he ate nothings—he starve himself.”“Was he ill?” asked Armstrong.“Worse,” said the landlord, lowering his voice; “he was in love. I could see it. She laugh and make the mock at him, and play coquet with the others before his face. It nearly killed him—this pauvre ghost. He would have give his hand for a kind glance, but he got it never.”“Who was the girl?” asked Roger.“But a child, the minx—fifteen, perhaps sixteen, years, no more. She played the part of a page-boy, and only so because monsieur, her father, was manage the play. He was Frenchman, this monsieur, but mademoiselle was English like her mother.Hélas! monsieur, your brother was deep in love. But there was no hope for him. A fool could see that.”This was all the host could tell them. He had never heard since of any member of the ill-fated company. He could introduce them to no one who remembered their visit. A few there might be who when appealed to might have recalled the disturbance on the night of the performance, and the absconding of the players. But who they were and what became of them no one could say.On their return to the hotel at Boulogne at midnight they found a telegram and a letter awaiting them.The former was from Dr Brandram to Mr Armstrong—“Come at once.”The letter was a missive addressed to Roger at Maxfield from London, and forwarded back to Boulogne. It was from Mr Fastnet.“Dear Ingleton,—Oddly enough I stumbled yesterday across the very piece of paper I spoke to you of. Here it is for what it was worth.”Roger eagerly opened the yellow sheet. It announced a performance ofHamletat Folkestone by a celebrated company of stars under the direction of a Monsieur Callot. Among the actors was a Mr John Rogers, who took the part of the ghost in the first act. Further down was mentioned a Miss Callot, who acted the part of a page. And the bill announced that after the performance in Folkestone the company would perform for two nights only in Boulogne. More important, however, than any other particular was a footnote that Monsieur Callot was “happy to receive pupils for instruction in the dramatic art at his address, 2 Long Street, London, W. Terms moderate. Singing and dancing taught by Madame Callot.”Here at last seemed a clue. The pulses of the two friends quickened as they read and re-read the time-worn document.“The boat sails in two hours,” said Mr Armstrong, “I must leave you in town. Brandram would not telegraph for me like this unless he meant it.”“I suppose it means my bro— Ratman, has turned up again. If so, Armstrong—”“Well?” inquired the tutor, digging his glass deep into his eye.Roger said nothing.On the following afternoon Mr Armstrong had a pleasant game of Association football with Tom on the Maxfield lawn, and Miss Jill, who volunteered as umpire, gave every point in favour of the tutor.Just about the time when he kicked his final goal, Roger Ingleton, minor, in London arrived at the dreary conclusion, after an hour’s painful study of directories and maps, that there was no such street as Long Street, London, W.
It is possible to conceive of a more hopeful task than hunting up and down a large French town for tidings of a strolling player who, for one night only, played the ghost inHamlettwenty years ago. But Roger, as, early in the year, he stepped ashore at Boulogne with Armstrong at his side, felt sanguine and of good cheer.
His recovery had been slow, and not without interruption. As soon as he could be moved he had returned to Maxfield, only to find Rosalind still away, and his guardian obdurate to any suggestion for expediting her return.
As to the proposed journey to Boulogne, the gallant captain looked upon that as a symptom of serious mental exhaustion on the part of the invalid. Roger, however, was in a mood impervious to argument.
When the time actually came, the captain surprised every one by giving in more readily than any one had expected. The truth was, Mr Ratman, though lost to sight, contrived to make himself very dear to his debtor’s memory, and already a legal document had reached Maxfield demanding the payment in full of a certain bill within a certain date on pain of certain consequences. And Captain Oliphant felt it would be distinctly convenient, for a while, to be relieved of the presence both of his co-trustee and his ward. He felt himself quite competent to deal with the trust moneys which were shortly about to come in without assistance.
When, therefore, Roger with some hesitation returned to the charge, he said, somewhat severely—
“You are old enough to decide for yourself, my boy. You know my view of the matter. I conclude you are not going alone?”
“No; Armstrong is coming.”
“Naturally. I wish you joy. On your return I shall be happy to resume my responsibility for your welfare. I cannot profess to feel oppressed by it in your absence.”
This was enough. True, the captain contrived to get in a parting shot by announcing that Rosalind was likely to return shortly to Maxfield. But even that did not suffice to change the lad’s purpose.
“Don’t be very long away,” said Jill to Mr Armstrong. “You are always going and leaving us. Rosalind will be very, very sorry to find you are away. She likes you—she told me so; but she doesn’t like you half as much as I do.”
The tutor flushed uncomfortably.
“Oh,” said Tom, “you’re always spoons on somebody, Jill. I heard you tell that Duke chap you liked him better than anybody in the world.”
“O Tom! how dare you tell such a wicked falsehood? I told him I liked himnearlyas much as Mr Armstrong, but not quite. Really I did, Mr Armstrong.”
“I am very jealous of the Duke,” said Mr Armstrong gravely.
Once across the Channel, Roger’s spirits rose. He had a presentiment he was on the right track. Like a knight of old, set down to a desperate task, the fighting blood rose joyously within him. Whatever it cost, whoever deserted him, whoever opposed him, he would find his brother, and give to him his own.
For days they went hither and thither, inquiring at cafés, theatres, cabarets, custom-houses, police stations, and even cemeteries, without success. Most of the persons accosted laughed and shrugged their shoulders to be asked if they remembered the visit of strolling players to the town as far back as twenty years. Others bridled up suspiciously, as if the question were a preliminary to their detection in some old evil deed. Others utterly failed to comprehend the question; and a few pityingly tapped their own foreheads, and shook their heads at the two half-witted English holiday-makers. But no one could tell a word about Rogers.
A fortnight passed, and the thoughts of both, dispirited and worn, turned homeward. Rosalind, a letter had informed them, was back at Maxfield.
Of the two, perhaps Mr Armstrong displayed less disposition to own himself beaten. He had worked like a horse all the time. Roger had been compelled to own that without him his mission would have been a feeble farce. Not a stone did the dogged tutor leave unturned. Not a difficulty did he shirk. Not a man or woman, however forbidding, did he hesitate to tackle, who in the remotest degree might be suspected of being likely to give information. Now that it came to giving in, he hung back, reluctant to dip his colours.
“To-day’s Thursday,” said he. “Let’s give ourselves till Saturday. If nothing turns up by then, I am your man to slink home.”
Roger, a little ashamed to find the first last and the last first in the race after all, readily assented. And the two worked unflagging for two days longer.
Friday evening came, and the two sat dismally down totable d’hôtewith defeat staring them in the face. They said very little, but each knew the mortification in the other’s breast.
At last, when the meal was over, Mr Armstrong said—
“I suppose we had better go and get our tickets.”
“I suppose so.”
But thebureauwas closed for the night, and the two took a solitary walk along the beach. They walked on further than usual in the clear moonlight, till at last the tutor looked at his watch.
“It’s nine o’clock,” said he; “we must go back.”
“Let’s take the country road back.”
“It is a mile longer.”
“Never mind. It is our last night.”
So they struck up by the cliffs, and followed the chalky country road back to Boulogne.
About two miles from the town the cheery lights of a waysideaubergeattracted their attention.
“Let us get some coffee here,” said Armstrong.
This solitary tavern rejoiced in the name of “Café d’Angleterre,” but if its owner expected thereby to attract the custom of Mr John Bull, he was singularly mistaken. The chief customers of the place were labourers and navvies, who by their noisy jargon were evidently innocent of all pretensions to a foreign tongue.
Seeing two strangers, presumably able to pay ready money for what they consumed, the old landlord invited his visitors into the bar parlour, where at his own table he set before them that delightful concoction of chicory and sifted earth which certain provincial Frenchmen callcafé. And being a gregarious and inquisitive old man, and withal proud of his tolerable stock of English, he took the liberty of joining them.
“Inglese?” inquired he, with a pantomimic shrug.
“Quite so,” said the tutor, putting up his glass, and inspecting the fellow carefully.
“This is the ‘Café d’Angleterre,’” said the landlord, “but,hélas! it is long since the Inglese gentleman come here. They like too well the great town.”
“Ah, Boulogne has grown. Can you remember the place twenty years ago?”
“Can I? I can remember forty years.”
“I wonder,” broke in Roger, too impatient to allow his tutor to lead up gradually to the inevitable question, “if you can remember some English players coming over here about eighteen years ago and acting a play calledHamletin English.”
The landlord blew a cloud of smoke from his lips, and stared round at the speaker as if he had been a ghost.
“Why do you ask me that?’Amlet! Can I forget it?”
Here was a bolt out of the blue! The tutor’s eye-glass dropped with a clatter against his cup, and Roger fetched a breath half gasp, half sigh.
“You remember it!” exclaimed he, seizing the man’s hand; “do you know, we have been a fortnight in Boulogne trying to find some one who did!”
“Would notyouremember it,” replied the Frenchman, with a gesticulation, “if ’Amlet had put up at your inn and gone away without paying his bill?”
“Did one of the actors stay here, then?”
“One? There was twenty ’Amlets, and Miladi ’Amlets, and Mademoiselle ’Amlets. They all stay here,en famille. The house is full of ’Amlets. The stable is full. They bring with them a castle of ’Amlet, and a grave of ’Amlet. My poor house was all ’Amlet!”
“And,” inquired Mr Armstrong, flushed with the sudden discovery, but as cool as ever, “you had a pass to see the play, of course?”
“Mon dieu! it was all the pay I got. ’Amlet come to my house with his twenty hungry mouth, and eat me up, flesh and bone. He sleep in my beds, he sleep on my roof, he sleep in my stable. The place is ’Amlet’s. And all my pay is one piece of card bidding me see him play himself.”
“And was it well played?” Asked Mr Armstrong.
“Well played? How do I know? But six persons came to see it—I one—and in six minutes it is all done. Your English ’Amlet will not play to the empty bench. He call down the curtain, and bid us go where we please. Not even will he pay us back our money. Then, when he come to leave the hall himself,voilà, he has no money to pay his rent. His baggage is seized, and ’Amlet fights.Mon dieu, there wasune émeutein Boulogne that night; and before day ’Amlet has vanish like his own ghost, and I am a robbed man;voilà.”
“Very rough on you,” said the tutor. “So there was a ghost among the players?”
“Why no? It would not be’Amletwithout.”
“Did the ghost stay here too?”
“Hélas! yes. He eat, and drink, and sleep, and forgets to pay, like the rest.”
“What did you lose by him?” asked Roger, with parched lips.
“Ah, monsieur, I was a Napoleon poorer for every ’Amlet in my house that night.”
Roger put down two sovereigns on the table.
“That is to pay for the ghost,” said he, flushing. “He was my brother.”
The landlord stared in blank amazement.
“Your brother! Monsieur le Ghost of’Amletwas—pardieu!” exclaimed he, looking hard at his guest, “and he was like you. It was no fault of his’Amletdid not take the favour, for he play in the first act and make us all laugh. If the other ’Amlets had been so amusing as him, the house would have been full—packed. Ha! now you say it, he was a gentleman, this poor Monsieur le Ghost. He held himself apart from the noisy company, and sulk in a corner, while they laugh, and drink, and sing the song. They were afraid of him, and,mon dieu! they might be—for once, when Monsieur Rosencrantz, as I remember, came and threw some absinthe—my absinthe, messieurs—in his face, Monsieur le Ghost he knocked him down with a blow that sounded—oh, like a clap of the thunder. And this pauvre ghost,” added the man, “was monsieur’s brother!Hélas! he was come down very poor—his coat was rags, and his boots were open to the water of heaven. He eat little. Ah, monsieur, I have deceived you. He cost me not five franc; for, when I remember, he ate nothings—he starve himself.”
“Was he ill?” asked Armstrong.
“Worse,” said the landlord, lowering his voice; “he was in love. I could see it. She laugh and make the mock at him, and play coquet with the others before his face. It nearly killed him—this pauvre ghost. He would have give his hand for a kind glance, but he got it never.”
“Who was the girl?” asked Roger.
“But a child, the minx—fifteen, perhaps sixteen, years, no more. She played the part of a page-boy, and only so because monsieur, her father, was manage the play. He was Frenchman, this monsieur, but mademoiselle was English like her mother.Hélas! monsieur, your brother was deep in love. But there was no hope for him. A fool could see that.”
This was all the host could tell them. He had never heard since of any member of the ill-fated company. He could introduce them to no one who remembered their visit. A few there might be who when appealed to might have recalled the disturbance on the night of the performance, and the absconding of the players. But who they were and what became of them no one could say.
On their return to the hotel at Boulogne at midnight they found a telegram and a letter awaiting them.
The former was from Dr Brandram to Mr Armstrong—
“Come at once.”
“Come at once.”
The letter was a missive addressed to Roger at Maxfield from London, and forwarded back to Boulogne. It was from Mr Fastnet.
“Dear Ingleton,—Oddly enough I stumbled yesterday across the very piece of paper I spoke to you of. Here it is for what it was worth.”
“Dear Ingleton,—Oddly enough I stumbled yesterday across the very piece of paper I spoke to you of. Here it is for what it was worth.”
Roger eagerly opened the yellow sheet. It announced a performance ofHamletat Folkestone by a celebrated company of stars under the direction of a Monsieur Callot. Among the actors was a Mr John Rogers, who took the part of the ghost in the first act. Further down was mentioned a Miss Callot, who acted the part of a page. And the bill announced that after the performance in Folkestone the company would perform for two nights only in Boulogne. More important, however, than any other particular was a footnote that Monsieur Callot was “happy to receive pupils for instruction in the dramatic art at his address, 2 Long Street, London, W. Terms moderate. Singing and dancing taught by Madame Callot.”
Here at last seemed a clue. The pulses of the two friends quickened as they read and re-read the time-worn document.
“The boat sails in two hours,” said Mr Armstrong, “I must leave you in town. Brandram would not telegraph for me like this unless he meant it.”
“I suppose it means my bro— Ratman, has turned up again. If so, Armstrong—”
“Well?” inquired the tutor, digging his glass deep into his eye.
Roger said nothing.
On the following afternoon Mr Armstrong had a pleasant game of Association football with Tom on the Maxfield lawn, and Miss Jill, who volunteered as umpire, gave every point in favour of the tutor.
Just about the time when he kicked his final goal, Roger Ingleton, minor, in London arrived at the dreary conclusion, after an hour’s painful study of directories and maps, that there was no such street as Long Street, London, W.
Chapter Twenty One.Sharks by Land and Water.Mr Brandram’s abrupt summons to Mr Armstrong was not due to the reappearance on the scene of the mysterious Robert Ratman. It was, in fact, at the instance of Miss Rosalind Oliphant that the doctor sent his message.That young lady had returned a week ago to find everything at Maxfield awry. Her father was gloomy, mysterious, and haggard. The rumour of Mr Ratman’s extraordinary claims had become the common property of the village. Roger and his tutor were away, no one exactly knew where or on what errand.On the day following her return she walked across from the Vicarage to visit her father.He sat in the library, abstracted, pale, and limp. The jaunty, Anglo-Indian veneer had for the time being dropped off, unmasking the worried exterior of a chicken-hearted man.At the sight of his daughter he pulled himself together, and crushed in his hand the letter which he had been reading.“Why, my child,” said he, with unusual cordiality, “this is a pleasant apparition. Cruel girl, to desert us for so long. We have hardly existed without you, Roger and his tutor are away in France holiday-making, while I remain here on duty with no one to cheer me up.”“Dear father,” said Rosalind, kissing him, “how worried you look! What is the matter? Won’t you tell me?”The father’s eyes dwelt for a moment on her fair earnest face—so like her mother’s, so unlike a daughter of his—then they fell miserably.“Worried?” said he. “Do I show it as plainly as all that? I flattered myself I kept it to myself.”“Any one can see you are unhappy, father. Why?”“I am in difficulties, my child, which you could not understand.”“I could. Do tell me.”“The fact is,” said the captain, taking up his pen and dotting the blotting-pad as he spoke, “that when on former occasions I have tried to claim your sympathy I—well, I was not quite successful. I do not want the pain of a similar failure again.”“I would do anything, anything to help you, if I could!”He took her hand and held it in his.“I am in great straits,” said he. “An old Indian debt has followed me here. I cannot meet it, and ruin stares me in the face. You know I am a poor man; that I am living on other people—you have reminded me of that often enough; that of all the money which passes my hands, scarcely enough to live on belongs by right to me. You know all that?”“Yes; I know that we are poor. How much do you owe?” she asked.“I cannot say. Not long ago it was some hundreds, but by this time it is nearer thousands. Nothing grows so rapidly as a debt, my child—even,” added he, with an unctuous drop of his voice, “a debt of honour.”“And will not your creditor wait?”“My creditor has waited, but refuses to do so any longer. In a month from now, my child, your father and those he loves best will be paupers.”“Is there no way of meeting it? None whatever?”“I cannot pay; I shrink from borrowing. The trust funds in my charge are sacred—”“Of course!” said she, astonished that he should name them in such a connection. “Is there nothing else?”“My creditor is Robert Ratman—or as he calls himself, and possibly is, Roger Ingleton. As you know, he claims to be the elder brother of our Roger, and I—”“Yes, yes,” said she; “Roger told me about that. He is your creditor?”“He is. I got into his clutches in India, little guessing who he was, and he is crushing me now. There is but one way, and one only, of escaping him—and that way is, I fear, impossible, Rosalind.”“What is it?” said she, with pale face, knowing what was to come.“He loves you. As my son-in-law he would be no longer my creditor.”She drew away her hand with a shudder.“Father,” said she, in a dry hard voice which startled him, “do you really mean this?”“Is it a time for jesting?” said he. “I ask nothing of you. I merely state facts. You dislike him—there is an end of it. Only remember we are not now dealing with Robert Ratman, but with an injured man who has not had a fair chance. The good in him,” continued the father, deluded by the passive look on his daughter’s face, and becoming suddenly warm in his championship of the absent creditor, “has been smothered; but for aught we know it may still be there. A wife—”She stopped him with a peremptory motion of her hand.“Please do not say anything more. Your debt—when does it fall due?”“In a week or ten days, my child. Consider—”She interrupted again.“No more, please,” she said, almost imploringly. “I will think what can be done to help you in a week. Good-bye, dear father.”She stooped, with face as white as marble, and touched his forehead with her cold lips.“Loyal girl,” said the father, when the door had closed behind her; “she will stand by me yet. After all, Ratman has his good points—clever, cheerful, good man of business—”Here abruptly the soliloquy ended, and Captain Oliphant buried his face in his hands, a miserable man.To Rosalind, as she walked rapidly across the park, there came but one thought. Her father—how could she help him? how could she save him, not so much from his debts as from the depths into which they were plunging him?“My poor father,” said she. “Only a man in desperate plight could think of such a remedy. He never meant it. He does not really suppose—no, no; he said he did not ask anything. He told me because I asked. Poor darling father!”And with something very like a sob she hurried on to Yeld.She went straight to Dr Brandram’s.“Well, my dear young lady, it does one good to see you back,” said he; “but bless me, how pale you look.”“Do I? I’m quite well, thank you. Dr Brandram,” said she, “do you know anything about this Mr Ratman?”The Doctor stared at this abrupt inquiry.“Nothing more than you and every one else does—that he is a rank impostor!”“I don’t mean that. I mean, where is he? I want to see him very much.”“You want to see him? He has vanished, and left no track. Is it nothing I can help you in?”“No,” said she, looking very miserable. “I hoped you could have told me where to find him. Good-bye, and thank you.”She departed, leaving the doctor sorely disturbed and bewildered. He stood watching her slight figure till it disappeared in the Vicarage garden, and then shrugging his shoulders, said, “Something wrong, somewhere. Evidently not a case for me to be trusted with. It’s about time Armstrong came home.”Whereupon he walked over to the post office and dispatched the telegram which, as the reader knows, procured Tom Oliphant the unspeakable pleasure of a game of football on the following afternoon.“Well,” said the tutor to his friend in the doctor’s parlour that evening, “what’s all this about?”“That’s what I’m not likely to know myself,” said the doctor; and he narrated the circumstances of Miss Oliphant’s mysterious call.“Humph!” said the tutor. “She wants to see him in his capacity of Robert Ratman, evidently, and not of Roger Ingleton, major.”“So it seemed to me.”“And you say she had just come from visiting her father at Maxfield?”“Yes.”“On the principle that two and two make four, I suppose we may conclude that my co-trustee is on toast at present,” said the tutor.“And further, that that co-trustee being somebody’s father, you are the man to get him off it.”The tutor’s face clouded, and his glass dropped with a twang from his eye.“Don’t make that mistake again, Brandram—unless,” and here his lips relaxed into a quiet smile, “you mean by somebody, Miss Jill.”Dr Brandram read a good deal in this short sentence, and, like a good friend, let the subject drop.“As Tom has gone to the Rectory to dinner,” said the tutor, “I take it the neighbourhood for twenty miles round will know of my return by this time. Meanwhile I must go back and possibly find out some thing from Oliphant himself.”Captain Oliphant, however, was in no mood for confidences. The sudden return of his co-trustee was extremely unwelcome at this juncture—indeed so manifestly unwelcome that Mr Armstrong was convinced he had come back not a day too soon.The captain professed great annoyance and indignation at what he termed the desertion of his ward, and demanded to know when the tutor proposed to return to his duties.“In fact, sir,” said he, “I desire to know what brings you here in this uncalled-for manner.”“Business, my dear sir,” replied the tutor. “It need not incommode you.”“Your proper place is with your pupil. Where have you left him?”“In London, prosecuting a search which neither you nor I consider to be very hopeful. I should not be surprised to see him back any day.”“And may I ask the nature of the very pressing business which forms the pretext of this abrupt return? Am I to understand you and my ward have quarrelled?”“No, sir; we are excellent friends. It’s getting late; I’ll say good night.”“By the way,” said he at the door, “while I am here, there are a few small matters connected with the accounts which seemed to my unpractised eye, when I went through Pottinger’s books, to require some little elucidation. If you have an hour or so to spare to-morrow, I should like to go through them with you. Good night.”He did not stay to notice the sudden pallor of his colleague’s face, nor did he overhear the gasp which greeted the closing of the door.The captain did not go to bed that night. For an hour he sat motionless in his chair, staring blankly into the fire; then, with a sudden access of industry, he went to the safe, and producing account-books, bank books, cheques, and other documents, spent some troubled hours over their contents. That done, for another hour he paced the floor, dismally smoking a cigar. Finally, when the early March dawn filtered through the blinds, he quitted the house, and surprised Mr Pottinger by an unexpected visit at breakfast-time. Thence he proceeded to the bank; and after transacting his business there, returned easier in mind, but exhausted in body, to the seclusion of his room at Maxfield.The tutor meanwhile was abroad on horseback with Tom and Jill. The three took a scamper over the downs, and returned by way of the shore. Biding with Tom and Jill, as may be imagined, was a series of competitive exercises, rather than a straightforward promenade. Tom was an excellent rough horseman; and Jill, when Mr Armstrong was at hand, was not the young lady to stick at anything. They had tried handicaps, water-jumps, hurdles, and were about to start for a ding-dong gallop along the mile of hard strand which divided them from Maxfield, when the tutor’s eye detected, perched a little way up the cliff, the figure of a young lady sketching.“I’ll start you two,” said he, “I scratch for this race. Ride fair, Tom; and Jill, give the mare her head when you get past the boulders. I shall go back by the downs. Are you ready now? Pull in a bit, Tom. Now—off you go!”Not waiting to watch the issue of this momentous contest, he turned to where Rosalind sat, and reining up at the foot of her perch, dismounted.She came down to meet him, palette in hand.“Mr Armstrong, I am so glad to see you. I want to speak to you dreadfully. Are you in a great hurry?”“Not at all. Brandram told me you were in trouble, and I was wondering when and where I should have the opportunity of asking how I can help you.”He tied his horse to a stake, and helped her back to her seat on the cliff.There was an awkward pause, which he occupied by examining her picture with a critical air.“Do you like it?” said she.“I don’t know. I’m no great judge. Do you?”“I did, before you came. I’m not so sure now. Do sit down and let me say what I want to say.”The tutor, with a flutter at his breast, sat meekly, keeping his eyes still on the picture.“Mr Armstrong, it’s about Mr Ratman.”“So Brandram said. What of him?”Rosalind told her father’s story, except that she omitted any reference to the desperate proposition for satisfying his claims.“I am sure it is a fraud, or blackmail, or something of the sort. For all that, he threatens to ruin father.”“What does the debt amount to?”“Father spoke of thousands.”“Does the creditor offer no terms?”Rosalind flushed, and looked round.“None; that is, none that can be thought of for a moment.”“I understand,” said the tutor, to whom the reservation was explicit enough.“The difficulty is, that he has disappeared. If we could find him I would—”“You would allow me to go to him,” said the tutor. “No doubt the opportunity will soon come. He wants money; he is bound to turn up.”“But why should you be mixed up in father’s troubles?” asked Rosalind after a pause.“Your father’s troubles are yours; your troubles are—shall we say?—Roger’s; Roger’s troubles are mine.”There was another long silence, during which Rosalind took up her brushes and began work again on the picture, Mr Armstrong critically looking on.“Have you no troubles of your own, then, that you have so much room in you for those of other people?” she said at last.“I have had my share, perhaps. Your picture, with its wide expanse of calm sea, was just reminding me of one of them.”“Tell me about it.”“It was years ago, when, before I was a singer in London— You knew I followed that honourable vocation once, don’t you?”“I have heard father speak of it. Why not?”“No reason at all. But before that I worked at the equally honourable profession of a common sailor on a ship between New York and Ceylon. At that time I was about as wild and reckless as they make them, and deluded myself into the foolish belief that I enjoyed it. How I had come to that pass I needn’t tell you. It wasn’t all of a sudden, or without the assistance of other people. I had a comrade on board—a man who had once been a gentleman, but had come down in the world; who was nearly as bad as I, but not quite; for he sometimes talked of his home and his mother, and wished himself dead, which I never had the grace to do.”“Are you making this all up for my benefit,” asked Rosalind, “or is it true?”“The story would not be worth telling if it were not true,” said Mr Armstrong, screwing his glass into his eye and taking a fresh survey of the picture. “One very hot summer we were becalmed off Colombo, and lay for days with nothing to do but whistle for a wind and quarrel among ourselves. My mate and I kept the peace for a couple of days, but then we fell out like the rest. I forget what it was about—a trifle, probably a word. We didn’t fight on deck—it was too hot—but jumped overboard and fought in the water. I remember, as I plunged, I caught sight, a hundred yards away, of an ugly grey fin lying motionless on the water, and knew it belonged to a shark. But I didn’t care. Well, we two fought in the water—partly in spite, partly to pass the time. Suddenly I could see my opponent’s swarthy face become livid. ‘Good God!’ he gasped; ‘a shark!’ and quick as thought he caught me by the shoulders and pushed me between him and the brute. I heard it swish up, and saw it half turn with gaping jaws. In that moment I lived over my life again, with all its folly and crime, and for the first time for years I prayed. How it happened I cannot tell; the shark must either have made a bad shot at me or else I must have ducked instinctively, for I remember feeling the scrape of his fin across my cheek and being pushed aside by his great tail. Next moment my mate’s hands let go their grip of me and there was a yell such as I pray I may never hear again. When at last they hauled me on board I was not the same man who three minutes before had dived into the water. That was the scene your picture reminded me of, Miss Oliphant. You have told me one of your troubles, and I have told you one of mine, which makes us quits. But my horse is getting fidgety down there; I must look after him. Good-bye.”Mr Armstrong was a little surprised, when he came to go through the accounts with his co-trustee that afternoon, to find that he must have been mistaken in his previous supposition that they were not all correct and straightforward. Everything appeared quite plain and properly accounted for, and he agreed with the figures, rather abashed to feel that, after all, he was not as acute a man of business as he had flattered himself. Mr Pottinger and the captain rallied him about his deserted mares’-nest, and bored him with invitations to go through all the items again, to give him a chance of proving them wrong. He declined with thanks, and signed the balance with the best grace he could summon.“Odd,” said he to himself, as he strode home after the interview; “either you must be very clever or I must be very stupid. I should greatly like to know which it is.”
Mr Brandram’s abrupt summons to Mr Armstrong was not due to the reappearance on the scene of the mysterious Robert Ratman. It was, in fact, at the instance of Miss Rosalind Oliphant that the doctor sent his message.
That young lady had returned a week ago to find everything at Maxfield awry. Her father was gloomy, mysterious, and haggard. The rumour of Mr Ratman’s extraordinary claims had become the common property of the village. Roger and his tutor were away, no one exactly knew where or on what errand.
On the day following her return she walked across from the Vicarage to visit her father.
He sat in the library, abstracted, pale, and limp. The jaunty, Anglo-Indian veneer had for the time being dropped off, unmasking the worried exterior of a chicken-hearted man.
At the sight of his daughter he pulled himself together, and crushed in his hand the letter which he had been reading.
“Why, my child,” said he, with unusual cordiality, “this is a pleasant apparition. Cruel girl, to desert us for so long. We have hardly existed without you, Roger and his tutor are away in France holiday-making, while I remain here on duty with no one to cheer me up.”
“Dear father,” said Rosalind, kissing him, “how worried you look! What is the matter? Won’t you tell me?”
The father’s eyes dwelt for a moment on her fair earnest face—so like her mother’s, so unlike a daughter of his—then they fell miserably.
“Worried?” said he. “Do I show it as plainly as all that? I flattered myself I kept it to myself.”
“Any one can see you are unhappy, father. Why?”
“I am in difficulties, my child, which you could not understand.”
“I could. Do tell me.”
“The fact is,” said the captain, taking up his pen and dotting the blotting-pad as he spoke, “that when on former occasions I have tried to claim your sympathy I—well, I was not quite successful. I do not want the pain of a similar failure again.”
“I would do anything, anything to help you, if I could!”
He took her hand and held it in his.
“I am in great straits,” said he. “An old Indian debt has followed me here. I cannot meet it, and ruin stares me in the face. You know I am a poor man; that I am living on other people—you have reminded me of that often enough; that of all the money which passes my hands, scarcely enough to live on belongs by right to me. You know all that?”
“Yes; I know that we are poor. How much do you owe?” she asked.
“I cannot say. Not long ago it was some hundreds, but by this time it is nearer thousands. Nothing grows so rapidly as a debt, my child—even,” added he, with an unctuous drop of his voice, “a debt of honour.”
“And will not your creditor wait?”
“My creditor has waited, but refuses to do so any longer. In a month from now, my child, your father and those he loves best will be paupers.”
“Is there no way of meeting it? None whatever?”
“I cannot pay; I shrink from borrowing. The trust funds in my charge are sacred—”
“Of course!” said she, astonished that he should name them in such a connection. “Is there nothing else?”
“My creditor is Robert Ratman—or as he calls himself, and possibly is, Roger Ingleton. As you know, he claims to be the elder brother of our Roger, and I—”
“Yes, yes,” said she; “Roger told me about that. He is your creditor?”
“He is. I got into his clutches in India, little guessing who he was, and he is crushing me now. There is but one way, and one only, of escaping him—and that way is, I fear, impossible, Rosalind.”
“What is it?” said she, with pale face, knowing what was to come.
“He loves you. As my son-in-law he would be no longer my creditor.”
She drew away her hand with a shudder.
“Father,” said she, in a dry hard voice which startled him, “do you really mean this?”
“Is it a time for jesting?” said he. “I ask nothing of you. I merely state facts. You dislike him—there is an end of it. Only remember we are not now dealing with Robert Ratman, but with an injured man who has not had a fair chance. The good in him,” continued the father, deluded by the passive look on his daughter’s face, and becoming suddenly warm in his championship of the absent creditor, “has been smothered; but for aught we know it may still be there. A wife—”
She stopped him with a peremptory motion of her hand.
“Please do not say anything more. Your debt—when does it fall due?”
“In a week or ten days, my child. Consider—”
She interrupted again.
“No more, please,” she said, almost imploringly. “I will think what can be done to help you in a week. Good-bye, dear father.”
She stooped, with face as white as marble, and touched his forehead with her cold lips.
“Loyal girl,” said the father, when the door had closed behind her; “she will stand by me yet. After all, Ratman has his good points—clever, cheerful, good man of business—”
Here abruptly the soliloquy ended, and Captain Oliphant buried his face in his hands, a miserable man.
To Rosalind, as she walked rapidly across the park, there came but one thought. Her father—how could she help him? how could she save him, not so much from his debts as from the depths into which they were plunging him?
“My poor father,” said she. “Only a man in desperate plight could think of such a remedy. He never meant it. He does not really suppose—no, no; he said he did not ask anything. He told me because I asked. Poor darling father!”
And with something very like a sob she hurried on to Yeld.
She went straight to Dr Brandram’s.
“Well, my dear young lady, it does one good to see you back,” said he; “but bless me, how pale you look.”
“Do I? I’m quite well, thank you. Dr Brandram,” said she, “do you know anything about this Mr Ratman?”
The Doctor stared at this abrupt inquiry.
“Nothing more than you and every one else does—that he is a rank impostor!”
“I don’t mean that. I mean, where is he? I want to see him very much.”
“You want to see him? He has vanished, and left no track. Is it nothing I can help you in?”
“No,” said she, looking very miserable. “I hoped you could have told me where to find him. Good-bye, and thank you.”
She departed, leaving the doctor sorely disturbed and bewildered. He stood watching her slight figure till it disappeared in the Vicarage garden, and then shrugging his shoulders, said, “Something wrong, somewhere. Evidently not a case for me to be trusted with. It’s about time Armstrong came home.”
Whereupon he walked over to the post office and dispatched the telegram which, as the reader knows, procured Tom Oliphant the unspeakable pleasure of a game of football on the following afternoon.
“Well,” said the tutor to his friend in the doctor’s parlour that evening, “what’s all this about?”
“That’s what I’m not likely to know myself,” said the doctor; and he narrated the circumstances of Miss Oliphant’s mysterious call.
“Humph!” said the tutor. “She wants to see him in his capacity of Robert Ratman, evidently, and not of Roger Ingleton, major.”
“So it seemed to me.”
“And you say she had just come from visiting her father at Maxfield?”
“Yes.”
“On the principle that two and two make four, I suppose we may conclude that my co-trustee is on toast at present,” said the tutor.
“And further, that that co-trustee being somebody’s father, you are the man to get him off it.”
The tutor’s face clouded, and his glass dropped with a twang from his eye.
“Don’t make that mistake again, Brandram—unless,” and here his lips relaxed into a quiet smile, “you mean by somebody, Miss Jill.”
Dr Brandram read a good deal in this short sentence, and, like a good friend, let the subject drop.
“As Tom has gone to the Rectory to dinner,” said the tutor, “I take it the neighbourhood for twenty miles round will know of my return by this time. Meanwhile I must go back and possibly find out some thing from Oliphant himself.”
Captain Oliphant, however, was in no mood for confidences. The sudden return of his co-trustee was extremely unwelcome at this juncture—indeed so manifestly unwelcome that Mr Armstrong was convinced he had come back not a day too soon.
The captain professed great annoyance and indignation at what he termed the desertion of his ward, and demanded to know when the tutor proposed to return to his duties.
“In fact, sir,” said he, “I desire to know what brings you here in this uncalled-for manner.”
“Business, my dear sir,” replied the tutor. “It need not incommode you.”
“Your proper place is with your pupil. Where have you left him?”
“In London, prosecuting a search which neither you nor I consider to be very hopeful. I should not be surprised to see him back any day.”
“And may I ask the nature of the very pressing business which forms the pretext of this abrupt return? Am I to understand you and my ward have quarrelled?”
“No, sir; we are excellent friends. It’s getting late; I’ll say good night.”
“By the way,” said he at the door, “while I am here, there are a few small matters connected with the accounts which seemed to my unpractised eye, when I went through Pottinger’s books, to require some little elucidation. If you have an hour or so to spare to-morrow, I should like to go through them with you. Good night.”
He did not stay to notice the sudden pallor of his colleague’s face, nor did he overhear the gasp which greeted the closing of the door.
The captain did not go to bed that night. For an hour he sat motionless in his chair, staring blankly into the fire; then, with a sudden access of industry, he went to the safe, and producing account-books, bank books, cheques, and other documents, spent some troubled hours over their contents. That done, for another hour he paced the floor, dismally smoking a cigar. Finally, when the early March dawn filtered through the blinds, he quitted the house, and surprised Mr Pottinger by an unexpected visit at breakfast-time. Thence he proceeded to the bank; and after transacting his business there, returned easier in mind, but exhausted in body, to the seclusion of his room at Maxfield.
The tutor meanwhile was abroad on horseback with Tom and Jill. The three took a scamper over the downs, and returned by way of the shore. Biding with Tom and Jill, as may be imagined, was a series of competitive exercises, rather than a straightforward promenade. Tom was an excellent rough horseman; and Jill, when Mr Armstrong was at hand, was not the young lady to stick at anything. They had tried handicaps, water-jumps, hurdles, and were about to start for a ding-dong gallop along the mile of hard strand which divided them from Maxfield, when the tutor’s eye detected, perched a little way up the cliff, the figure of a young lady sketching.
“I’ll start you two,” said he, “I scratch for this race. Ride fair, Tom; and Jill, give the mare her head when you get past the boulders. I shall go back by the downs. Are you ready now? Pull in a bit, Tom. Now—off you go!”
Not waiting to watch the issue of this momentous contest, he turned to where Rosalind sat, and reining up at the foot of her perch, dismounted.
She came down to meet him, palette in hand.
“Mr Armstrong, I am so glad to see you. I want to speak to you dreadfully. Are you in a great hurry?”
“Not at all. Brandram told me you were in trouble, and I was wondering when and where I should have the opportunity of asking how I can help you.”
He tied his horse to a stake, and helped her back to her seat on the cliff.
There was an awkward pause, which he occupied by examining her picture with a critical air.
“Do you like it?” said she.
“I don’t know. I’m no great judge. Do you?”
“I did, before you came. I’m not so sure now. Do sit down and let me say what I want to say.”
The tutor, with a flutter at his breast, sat meekly, keeping his eyes still on the picture.
“Mr Armstrong, it’s about Mr Ratman.”
“So Brandram said. What of him?”
Rosalind told her father’s story, except that she omitted any reference to the desperate proposition for satisfying his claims.
“I am sure it is a fraud, or blackmail, or something of the sort. For all that, he threatens to ruin father.”
“What does the debt amount to?”
“Father spoke of thousands.”
“Does the creditor offer no terms?”
Rosalind flushed, and looked round.
“None; that is, none that can be thought of for a moment.”
“I understand,” said the tutor, to whom the reservation was explicit enough.
“The difficulty is, that he has disappeared. If we could find him I would—”
“You would allow me to go to him,” said the tutor. “No doubt the opportunity will soon come. He wants money; he is bound to turn up.”
“But why should you be mixed up in father’s troubles?” asked Rosalind after a pause.
“Your father’s troubles are yours; your troubles are—shall we say?—Roger’s; Roger’s troubles are mine.”
There was another long silence, during which Rosalind took up her brushes and began work again on the picture, Mr Armstrong critically looking on.
“Have you no troubles of your own, then, that you have so much room in you for those of other people?” she said at last.
“I have had my share, perhaps. Your picture, with its wide expanse of calm sea, was just reminding me of one of them.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It was years ago, when, before I was a singer in London— You knew I followed that honourable vocation once, don’t you?”
“I have heard father speak of it. Why not?”
“No reason at all. But before that I worked at the equally honourable profession of a common sailor on a ship between New York and Ceylon. At that time I was about as wild and reckless as they make them, and deluded myself into the foolish belief that I enjoyed it. How I had come to that pass I needn’t tell you. It wasn’t all of a sudden, or without the assistance of other people. I had a comrade on board—a man who had once been a gentleman, but had come down in the world; who was nearly as bad as I, but not quite; for he sometimes talked of his home and his mother, and wished himself dead, which I never had the grace to do.”
“Are you making this all up for my benefit,” asked Rosalind, “or is it true?”
“The story would not be worth telling if it were not true,” said Mr Armstrong, screwing his glass into his eye and taking a fresh survey of the picture. “One very hot summer we were becalmed off Colombo, and lay for days with nothing to do but whistle for a wind and quarrel among ourselves. My mate and I kept the peace for a couple of days, but then we fell out like the rest. I forget what it was about—a trifle, probably a word. We didn’t fight on deck—it was too hot—but jumped overboard and fought in the water. I remember, as I plunged, I caught sight, a hundred yards away, of an ugly grey fin lying motionless on the water, and knew it belonged to a shark. But I didn’t care. Well, we two fought in the water—partly in spite, partly to pass the time. Suddenly I could see my opponent’s swarthy face become livid. ‘Good God!’ he gasped; ‘a shark!’ and quick as thought he caught me by the shoulders and pushed me between him and the brute. I heard it swish up, and saw it half turn with gaping jaws. In that moment I lived over my life again, with all its folly and crime, and for the first time for years I prayed. How it happened I cannot tell; the shark must either have made a bad shot at me or else I must have ducked instinctively, for I remember feeling the scrape of his fin across my cheek and being pushed aside by his great tail. Next moment my mate’s hands let go their grip of me and there was a yell such as I pray I may never hear again. When at last they hauled me on board I was not the same man who three minutes before had dived into the water. That was the scene your picture reminded me of, Miss Oliphant. You have told me one of your troubles, and I have told you one of mine, which makes us quits. But my horse is getting fidgety down there; I must look after him. Good-bye.”
Mr Armstrong was a little surprised, when he came to go through the accounts with his co-trustee that afternoon, to find that he must have been mistaken in his previous supposition that they were not all correct and straightforward. Everything appeared quite plain and properly accounted for, and he agreed with the figures, rather abashed to feel that, after all, he was not as acute a man of business as he had flattered himself. Mr Pottinger and the captain rallied him about his deserted mares’-nest, and bored him with invitations to go through all the items again, to give him a chance of proving them wrong. He declined with thanks, and signed the balance with the best grace he could summon.
“Odd,” said he to himself, as he strode home after the interview; “either you must be very clever or I must be very stupid. I should greatly like to know which it is.”
Chapter Twenty Two.Mr Ratman visits his Property.“Dear Armstrong,” wrote Roger from London about a week after the tutor’s return to Maxfield, “you will be surprised to hear I am just off to Paris to look for a Mr Pantalzar. This is how it comes about. Long Street does not exist, as I told you, nor any trace of the family Callot. But old Directories are still available, and in one of these I found that fifteen years ago there was a Long Street, and that Number 2 was then occupied by a person of the uncommon name I have mentioned. The name seemed too promising a one to be let drop; so I tracked it down to the year before last, when I found a Pantalzar was proprietor of a cook-shop in Shoreditch. Of course, when I went to inquire, my gentleman had vanished. I’m sick of asking the interminable question, ‘Does So-and-so live here?’ The present cook-man, however, remembered the queer name as that belonging to his predecessor, and informed me that, not having made the business pay over here, he had decamped two years ago without saying good-bye to his creditors, and announced his intention of starting acaféin Paris. This, then, is my off-chance. Unless he has changed his name, I should be able to discover him in Paris; and if he turns out to be the man who once lived at Number 2 Long Street, he may be able to tell me something about the Callots; and the Callots, if by a miracle I can find them, may be able to tell me something about Rogers, the Ghost inHamlet. I only wish you were coming to back me up, but, from what you say, I would ever so much rather you remained on the spot at Maxfield. I hope it will be possible to help Oliphant out of his fix. Try. You’d better write to thePoste Restanteat Paris. Remember me at home.“Yours ever,—“R. Ingleton.”The tutor read this letter with a somewhat troubled countenance. It proved to him that his ward was desperately in earnest in his uphill quest, and it filled him with some concern to feel that he himself was not, where he should have liked to be, at the boy’s side.But to leave Maxfield at present seemed impossible. Rosalind claimed his help on behalf of her father; and the possibility that any day Mr Ratman might turn up and court exposure decided the tutor to remain where he was. Another motive for this step was a haunting perplexity as to the hallucination under which he had apparently laboured with regard to the estate accounts. He never flattered himself he was a particularly good man of business, but it puzzled him to explain why a few weeks ago there should have appeared to be discrepancies and irregularities to the tune of several hundred pounds, whereas now everything was in startling apple-pie order.Much to Mr Pottinger’s annoyance, he took to visiting the honest lawyer’s office every other day, and spent hours in trying to discover where it was he had made his great mistake. Mr Pottinger was unable to render him any assistance; and the captain, when once he referred to the subject, only smiled pityingly and advised him to take a few lessons in the elements of finance; which advice, to do him justice, the tutor humbly proceeded to take. The result was to deepen his perplexity and cause him to regret that he had so compliantly countersigned an account which, every time he studied it in the light of his new wisdom, appeared to bristle with problems.Faithful to her promise, at the end of a week Rosalind presented herself at Maxfield.“Well, my child?” said the parent blandly, laying down his newspaper.“I said I would come and speak again about what you were saying the other day. Have you heard any more from your creditor?”“Things remain, as far as he is concerned, instatu quo; and I am no nearer being able to satisfy him to-day than I was a week ago; unless, indeed—”“All I have to say,” said Rosalind nervously, “is, that I would work like a slave to help you, if I could.”“Is that all?” asked the captain with falling face.“You know it is, father. You knew it a week ago. You knew I would even go to this man and on my knees beg him to be merciful.”Her father laughed dismally.“In other words,” said he, “you can do nothing. I do not complain; I expected nothing, and I have not been disappointed. I was foolish to think such a thing possible; Heaven knows I have been punished for my folly.”She tried hard to keep back the tears, and rose to go.“Stay!” said he sternly; “I have a question to ask you. A week ago you seemed to hold a different mind to this. What has changed it?”“No,” said she, “it was out of the question; you said so yourself.”“I ask you,” repeated he sternly, and not heeding her protest, “what has changed it? Have you taken counsel with any one on the subject? Have you spoken to any one of this wretched business?”“Yes; I have spoken to Mr Armstrong.”“Exactly. I thought as much. I understand. Leave me, Rosalind.”“Father, you are wrong— Oh, but you must hear me,” she said, as he raised his hand deprecatingly and took up his newspaper. “You must not misunderstand. I told Mr Armstrong of your difficulties, and who your creditor was. I told him no more. My only object was to see if there was any way to help you.”“You mean to tell me,” said he, interrupting in an angry voice, “that you considered it consistent with your duty as a daughter to gossip about my private affairs with a scoundrel who—”“No, father,” she said. “Mr Armstrong is a gentleman—”“Naturallyyousay so. But enough of this. I forbid you, as I have already done, to hold any communication with Mr Armstrong. Know that, of the two men, the man you affect to scorn is infinitely less a villain than this smug hypocrite. Go!”She made no reply, but went, choking with misery and a smarting sense of injustice. No longer was it easy to hug herself into the delusion that this was all a horrid dream. Her father stood on the brink of ruin, and she could not help him.“If only,” said she, “it had been anything else! O God, pity my poor father!”The captain’s thoughts were of a very different kind. He had clung to the hope that Rosalind would after all solve his difficulties by undertaking the venture he had set before her. He had already in imagination soothed his own conscience and smoothed away all the difficulties which beset the undertaking.“It might be for her good, after all, dear girl! She will reclaim him. A fortune lies before them; for Roger will be easily convinced, and will surrender his claim to them. Ratman is too long-sighted not to see that I can help him in the matter, and that on my own terms. We shall start fresh with a clear balance-sheet, and live in comfort.” Now, however, these bright hopes were dashed, and to the captain’s mind he owed his failure, first and last, to Mr Frank Armstrong. Had he not come home, he said to himself, Rosalind would have yielded.With him still at Maxfield everything came to a dead lock. Ratman could not be propitiated, still less satisfied. The accounts would be restlessly scrutinised.Rosalind, and in less degree Tom and Jill, would be mutinous. Roger, at home or abroad, would be beyond reach.All the grudges of the past months seemed to culminate in this crowning injury; and if to wish ill to one’s fellow is to be a murderer, Captain Oliphant had already come perilously near to adding one new sin to his record.But where, all this while, was the ingenuous Mr Ratman? Why had he not, true to his word, come to claim his own—if not the Maxfield estate, at any rate the little balance due to him from his old Indian crony?The captain, after a week or two of disappointed dread, was beginning to recover a little of his ease of mind, and flattering himself that, after all his creditor’s bark was worse than his bite, when the blow abruptly fell.Mr Armstrong had gone for the day to visit one of his very few old college friends on the other side of the county, and Tom, released from his lessons (the captain’s animosity for the tutor, by the way, stopped short at withdrawing his son from the benefit of the gratuitous education of which for the last year that youth had been the recipient) was trundling a “boneshaker” bicycle along the Yeld lanes, when he perceived the jaunty form of Mr Ratman, bag in hand and cigar in mouth, strolling leisurely in the direction of Maxfield.Tom, who was only a beginner in the art of cycling, was so taken aback by this apparition, that, after one or two furious lurches from one side of the road to the other, and a frantic effort to keep his balance, he came ignominiously to the ground at the very feet of the visitor.“Hullo!” said that worthy; “as full of fun as ever, I see.”“Hullo, Ratty!” said Tom, picking himself up; “got over your kicking?”This genial reference to the circumstances under which the so-called lost heir had last quitted Maxfield grated somewhat harshly on the feelings of the gentleman to whom it was addressed.“Look here, young fellow,” said he, “you’d better keep a civil tongue in your head, or I shall have to pull your ear.”“Try it,” retorted Tom.Mr Ratman seemed inclined to accept the invitation; but as he was anxious for information just now, he decided to forego the experiment.“Is your father at home?” he demanded.“Rather. You’d better go back the way you came. We know all about you up there,” said Tom.“That’s all right. And how are your pretty sisters, Tommy?”If any insult more than another could disturb the temper of Master Oliphant, it was to be called “Tommy,” as many of the rustic youths of the neighbourhood knew to their cost. He therefore replied shortly, “Find out,” and proceeded to address himself to the task of remounting his machine.“That’s what I’m going to do. Here, let me hold it for you, or you’ll break your neck.”“Look here,” said the outraged Tom, thoroughly roused by this crowning indignity, “I don’t want to be seen out here talking to cads. I don’t mind fighting you. If you don’t care for that, keep your cheek to yourself, and go and talk to somebody who’s fond of rot. I’m not.” And the young bruiser, who had an uncommonly broad pair of shoulders, looked so threatening that Mr Ratman began to feel a little concerned.“Ha, ha!” said he, “how well you do it! I always liked you, Tommy, my boy. I’ll let your tutor know what a credit you are to him.”“I wish to goodness Armstrong was at home,” growled Tom; “he’d make you sit up.”This was just the information Mr Ratman had been anxious to get. The prospect of encountering Mr Armstrong had interfered considerably with his pleasure in arranging this visit. But if he was out of the way—well, so much more the luck of Mr Ratman. Therefore, without wasting time in further parley with this possible brother-in-law, he proceeded jauntily on his way.“You won’t fight, then?” said Tom by way of farewell.“Some day.”“All right. Coward! Good-bye, Mr Roger Ingleton, major!”Having relieved himself of which appropriate sentiment, Tom felt decidedly better, and walked his bicycle down the hill, determined to keep clear of Maxfield till the evening.Mr Ratman, somewhat ruffled, but on the whole cheerful, swaggered on to his destination.The captain was luxuriously smoking a cigar and solacing himself with a sporting paper, when Raffles sent his heart to his mouth by announcing—“Mr Ingleton, sir, to see you.”“Ah, Ratman!” said he with a forced air of welcome as his creditor entered. “I didn’t recognise you by your new name. You’re keeping it up, then?”“What do you mean?” demanded Mr Ratman, taking an easy-chair and helping himself to a cigar from the captain’s box. “It’s you who are keeping it up, I fancy. I’ll trouble you to drop the Ratman.”The captain laughed unpleasantly.“As you like,” said he.“Now to business. Of course, you’re ready to make good these little bills,” and he pulled four or five blue slips from his pocket.“No, I’m not. You may as well know it at once.”“Hum! What do you propose, then? Do you know there’s a writ out?”“I propose nothing. I want to know what you propose.”The two men regarded one another in silence; one insolent and sneering, the other desperate and scowling.“What do I propose?” said Ratman, puffing away cheerfully. “Scarcely anything—only to make a little communication to the War Office, give a few instructions to the Sheriff, write a paragraph or two to the county papers, and tell a few interesting anecdotes to your charming daughters.”Captain Oliphant started to his feet with a smothered exclamation.“Not the last, Ratman! I’m in your clutches; but for Heaven’s sake don’t bring them into it!”Ratman laughed.“Youwillinsist on forgetting my name, my dear fellow. Yes, that’s my little programme. I fancy I may as well begin at the end.”“Look here,” pleaded the victim; “I know it’s no use appealing to your pity, for you have none; or your honesty, for you’ve less of that than I have. But doesn’t it occur to you that it would be decidedly against your interest to ruin me just now?”“What do you mean?” said Ratman with a yawn.“Why, you claim a certain name, and you have to prove your claim. Roger has got the romantic notion into his head that if his elder brother can be found, that brother shall have the property. He is more than half inclined to credit your story already. You have to satisfy two other persons, of whom I am one. Do you understand?”“Perfectly,” said Mr Ratman, who began to be interested. “I anticipate no difficulty there.”“You forget that at present only a sickly boy stands between myself and the property. It would surely mean something on my part for me to admit a second life between.”“What is the use of talking nonsense?” said Ratman. “Even if you did, for the sake of a little longer credit I might give you, own my right to my own name, what’s the use of that, when this man Armstrong has to be satisfied too? If you could crack that nut there might be something in it.”The captain groaned. He knew that every project would be pulled up short at this sticking-point.“Come,” said Ratman encouragingly, “if you could work things in that direction, it might be worth my while to give you time.”“I can do nothing. The fellow is immovable. In six months—”“In six months everything will be too late. And now, what about the other matter? Is that all right?”Once more the captain groaned. “I can say nothing about it yet. She knows my wishes, but as Robert Ratman she will not hear a word of it. As Roger Ingleton, the elder, you may depend on it the matter will take another view. All depends on your success there. When that’s achieved, the rest will come if you give her time.”Mr Ratman sneered.“You are a glib talker, Oliphant. I admire you. Now listen. You want credit, and you know how to buy it. One way or another, this business must come to an end. I’ll take new bills with interest at three months. By that time everything must be square and smooth; otherwise you’ll be sorry you and your children were born, my boy. Order dinner. I’m going back by the six train. Pass me that paper, and don’t disturb me any more by your talking.”As Mr Ratman, very well satisfied with his day’s business, strolled serenely back through the park that afternoon, he was surprised to hear light footsteps behind him, and, on turning, to discover that his pursuer, of all people, was Miss Rosalind Oliphant.“Hullo!” said he, “this is flattering, with a vengeance.”“Mr Ratman, I want to speak to you, please,” said Rosalind, very pale and nervous.“Excuse me,” said he, “that’s not my name; my name is Roger Ingleton. What’s the matter?”“It’s about my father. Have you seen him?”“Just left the dear man.”“He says he owes you money, and that you threaten to ruin him. Is that so?”“Upon my word, if you want to know, it is.”“How much is it, please?”Ratman laughed.“Nothing. A trifle. Fifteen hundred pounds or thereabouts.”“Fifteen hundred!” faltered she. “Does he owe you all that.”The little she had to offer was a drop in the bucket only.“Look here,” said he; “Miss Rosy, your father’s in a fix. I don’t want to be hard on him, but I must have my money or its equivalent. Now, I should consider it a very fair equivalent to be allowed to call him father-in-law. I may not be up to your mark in some things, Miss Rosalind, but I’ve a good name, and I flatter myself I know beauty when I see it. Now, think over it. It’s the only chance your father’s got, and you might do worse for yourself than become the mistress of Maxfield. Good-bye. Shake hands.”She drew herself up with an air and a flush of colour which redoubled his admiration, and without a word, turned away with rapid steps.Mr Ratman was sorely tempted to follow this beautiful creature, who, in all his chequered career, had been the only human being to discover the few last dregs of affection in his nature. As much as it was possible in such a man, he was in love with this debtor’s daughter. The sensation was novel and exhilarating enough to afford him food for cheerful reflection as he walked on towards the station.So engrossed was he in his day-dreams that he forgot that even country trains are occasionally punctual, and that, at least, he had not much time left him to catch the one he aimed at. Indeed, it was not till, within a few minutes of the station, he caught sight of the train already standing at the platform that it occurred to him to bestir himself. He ran, shouted, and waved his arm all at the same time, but to no effect. The whistle blew as he entered the yard, and as he reached the platform the guard’s van was gliding out of the station.Thoroughly ruffled—for this was the last train to town—Mr Ratman vented his wrath on the world in general, and the railway officials in particular, even including in his objurgations an unlucky passenger who had arrived by the train and shared with him the uninterrupted possession of the platform.“Easy, young man,” said the latter, a substantial-looking, bony individual with a wrinkled face, and speaking with a decided American twang. “You’ll hurt yourself, I reckon, if you talk like that. It’s bad for the jaws.”Mr Ratman took a contemptuous survey of the stranger and quitted the platform.His first idea was to return to Maxfield and demand entertainment there for the night. But since he would have to walk all the way, and the first train in the morning left Yeld at eight, he decided to put up at the little hotel of the village instead, and with that object threw himself and his bag into the omnibus of that establishment which waited on the trains.Somewhat to his disgust, the stranger, after collecting his baggage, entered the same vehicle and took a seat opposite him.“Wal,” said he, “you’ll have time to cool down before the next train, young man. Putting up at the hotel?”“Where else should I put up?” growled Ratman. “What business is it of yours?”“I guess it’s my business to get all the information I can on this trip. I came over this side to learn.”“You’ve come to a queer hole to do it,” said Ratman, beginning to feel he might as well resign himself to circumstances.“Just so. It’s changed a bit since I was here last. We had to drive from Barbeck then.”“So you know the place, do you?” inquired Ratman.“That’s so,” was the laconic rejoinder. “A resident, likely?”“Well, not at present, or I shouldn’t be going to the inn.”“Down here on business, I reckon? I was a bagman myself once.”“You’re wrong again. I’ve been down to see my property, if you want to know.”“Large estate, no doubt? Anywhere near my friend Ingleton’s plot, now?”Mr Ratman stared at the stranger with something like consternation.“Ingleton!” he exclaimed. “What do you know of Ingleton?”Here the omnibus pulled up.“Wal, I reckon I should know something of my own family,” drawled the stranger as he alighted. “What say?—shall we have a snack of something in the parlour! Come along.”The landlord led the way into the coffee-room. He knew Mr Ratman by this time.“Sorry we can’t give you and your friend the private room, sir, but there’s only one other gentleman in the coffee-room, and he’s going directly.”As they entered, the other gentleman, who was drying his boots at the fire, turned round, and Mr Ratman had the rapture of finding himself face to face with Mr Armstrong.
“Dear Armstrong,” wrote Roger from London about a week after the tutor’s return to Maxfield, “you will be surprised to hear I am just off to Paris to look for a Mr Pantalzar. This is how it comes about. Long Street does not exist, as I told you, nor any trace of the family Callot. But old Directories are still available, and in one of these I found that fifteen years ago there was a Long Street, and that Number 2 was then occupied by a person of the uncommon name I have mentioned. The name seemed too promising a one to be let drop; so I tracked it down to the year before last, when I found a Pantalzar was proprietor of a cook-shop in Shoreditch. Of course, when I went to inquire, my gentleman had vanished. I’m sick of asking the interminable question, ‘Does So-and-so live here?’ The present cook-man, however, remembered the queer name as that belonging to his predecessor, and informed me that, not having made the business pay over here, he had decamped two years ago without saying good-bye to his creditors, and announced his intention of starting acaféin Paris. This, then, is my off-chance. Unless he has changed his name, I should be able to discover him in Paris; and if he turns out to be the man who once lived at Number 2 Long Street, he may be able to tell me something about the Callots; and the Callots, if by a miracle I can find them, may be able to tell me something about Rogers, the Ghost inHamlet. I only wish you were coming to back me up, but, from what you say, I would ever so much rather you remained on the spot at Maxfield. I hope it will be possible to help Oliphant out of his fix. Try. You’d better write to thePoste Restanteat Paris. Remember me at home.
“Yours ever,—
“R. Ingleton.”
The tutor read this letter with a somewhat troubled countenance. It proved to him that his ward was desperately in earnest in his uphill quest, and it filled him with some concern to feel that he himself was not, where he should have liked to be, at the boy’s side.
But to leave Maxfield at present seemed impossible. Rosalind claimed his help on behalf of her father; and the possibility that any day Mr Ratman might turn up and court exposure decided the tutor to remain where he was. Another motive for this step was a haunting perplexity as to the hallucination under which he had apparently laboured with regard to the estate accounts. He never flattered himself he was a particularly good man of business, but it puzzled him to explain why a few weeks ago there should have appeared to be discrepancies and irregularities to the tune of several hundred pounds, whereas now everything was in startling apple-pie order.
Much to Mr Pottinger’s annoyance, he took to visiting the honest lawyer’s office every other day, and spent hours in trying to discover where it was he had made his great mistake. Mr Pottinger was unable to render him any assistance; and the captain, when once he referred to the subject, only smiled pityingly and advised him to take a few lessons in the elements of finance; which advice, to do him justice, the tutor humbly proceeded to take. The result was to deepen his perplexity and cause him to regret that he had so compliantly countersigned an account which, every time he studied it in the light of his new wisdom, appeared to bristle with problems.
Faithful to her promise, at the end of a week Rosalind presented herself at Maxfield.
“Well, my child?” said the parent blandly, laying down his newspaper.
“I said I would come and speak again about what you were saying the other day. Have you heard any more from your creditor?”
“Things remain, as far as he is concerned, instatu quo; and I am no nearer being able to satisfy him to-day than I was a week ago; unless, indeed—”
“All I have to say,” said Rosalind nervously, “is, that I would work like a slave to help you, if I could.”
“Is that all?” asked the captain with falling face.
“You know it is, father. You knew it a week ago. You knew I would even go to this man and on my knees beg him to be merciful.”
Her father laughed dismally.
“In other words,” said he, “you can do nothing. I do not complain; I expected nothing, and I have not been disappointed. I was foolish to think such a thing possible; Heaven knows I have been punished for my folly.”
She tried hard to keep back the tears, and rose to go.
“Stay!” said he sternly; “I have a question to ask you. A week ago you seemed to hold a different mind to this. What has changed it?”
“No,” said she, “it was out of the question; you said so yourself.”
“I ask you,” repeated he sternly, and not heeding her protest, “what has changed it? Have you taken counsel with any one on the subject? Have you spoken to any one of this wretched business?”
“Yes; I have spoken to Mr Armstrong.”
“Exactly. I thought as much. I understand. Leave me, Rosalind.”
“Father, you are wrong— Oh, but you must hear me,” she said, as he raised his hand deprecatingly and took up his newspaper. “You must not misunderstand. I told Mr Armstrong of your difficulties, and who your creditor was. I told him no more. My only object was to see if there was any way to help you.”
“You mean to tell me,” said he, interrupting in an angry voice, “that you considered it consistent with your duty as a daughter to gossip about my private affairs with a scoundrel who—”
“No, father,” she said. “Mr Armstrong is a gentleman—”
“Naturallyyousay so. But enough of this. I forbid you, as I have already done, to hold any communication with Mr Armstrong. Know that, of the two men, the man you affect to scorn is infinitely less a villain than this smug hypocrite. Go!”
She made no reply, but went, choking with misery and a smarting sense of injustice. No longer was it easy to hug herself into the delusion that this was all a horrid dream. Her father stood on the brink of ruin, and she could not help him.
“If only,” said she, “it had been anything else! O God, pity my poor father!”
The captain’s thoughts were of a very different kind. He had clung to the hope that Rosalind would after all solve his difficulties by undertaking the venture he had set before her. He had already in imagination soothed his own conscience and smoothed away all the difficulties which beset the undertaking.
“It might be for her good, after all, dear girl! She will reclaim him. A fortune lies before them; for Roger will be easily convinced, and will surrender his claim to them. Ratman is too long-sighted not to see that I can help him in the matter, and that on my own terms. We shall start fresh with a clear balance-sheet, and live in comfort.” Now, however, these bright hopes were dashed, and to the captain’s mind he owed his failure, first and last, to Mr Frank Armstrong. Had he not come home, he said to himself, Rosalind would have yielded.
With him still at Maxfield everything came to a dead lock. Ratman could not be propitiated, still less satisfied. The accounts would be restlessly scrutinised.
Rosalind, and in less degree Tom and Jill, would be mutinous. Roger, at home or abroad, would be beyond reach.
All the grudges of the past months seemed to culminate in this crowning injury; and if to wish ill to one’s fellow is to be a murderer, Captain Oliphant had already come perilously near to adding one new sin to his record.
But where, all this while, was the ingenuous Mr Ratman? Why had he not, true to his word, come to claim his own—if not the Maxfield estate, at any rate the little balance due to him from his old Indian crony?
The captain, after a week or two of disappointed dread, was beginning to recover a little of his ease of mind, and flattering himself that, after all his creditor’s bark was worse than his bite, when the blow abruptly fell.
Mr Armstrong had gone for the day to visit one of his very few old college friends on the other side of the county, and Tom, released from his lessons (the captain’s animosity for the tutor, by the way, stopped short at withdrawing his son from the benefit of the gratuitous education of which for the last year that youth had been the recipient) was trundling a “boneshaker” bicycle along the Yeld lanes, when he perceived the jaunty form of Mr Ratman, bag in hand and cigar in mouth, strolling leisurely in the direction of Maxfield.
Tom, who was only a beginner in the art of cycling, was so taken aback by this apparition, that, after one or two furious lurches from one side of the road to the other, and a frantic effort to keep his balance, he came ignominiously to the ground at the very feet of the visitor.
“Hullo!” said that worthy; “as full of fun as ever, I see.”
“Hullo, Ratty!” said Tom, picking himself up; “got over your kicking?”
This genial reference to the circumstances under which the so-called lost heir had last quitted Maxfield grated somewhat harshly on the feelings of the gentleman to whom it was addressed.
“Look here, young fellow,” said he, “you’d better keep a civil tongue in your head, or I shall have to pull your ear.”
“Try it,” retorted Tom.
Mr Ratman seemed inclined to accept the invitation; but as he was anxious for information just now, he decided to forego the experiment.
“Is your father at home?” he demanded.
“Rather. You’d better go back the way you came. We know all about you up there,” said Tom.
“That’s all right. And how are your pretty sisters, Tommy?”
If any insult more than another could disturb the temper of Master Oliphant, it was to be called “Tommy,” as many of the rustic youths of the neighbourhood knew to their cost. He therefore replied shortly, “Find out,” and proceeded to address himself to the task of remounting his machine.
“That’s what I’m going to do. Here, let me hold it for you, or you’ll break your neck.”
“Look here,” said the outraged Tom, thoroughly roused by this crowning indignity, “I don’t want to be seen out here talking to cads. I don’t mind fighting you. If you don’t care for that, keep your cheek to yourself, and go and talk to somebody who’s fond of rot. I’m not.” And the young bruiser, who had an uncommonly broad pair of shoulders, looked so threatening that Mr Ratman began to feel a little concerned.
“Ha, ha!” said he, “how well you do it! I always liked you, Tommy, my boy. I’ll let your tutor know what a credit you are to him.”
“I wish to goodness Armstrong was at home,” growled Tom; “he’d make you sit up.”
This was just the information Mr Ratman had been anxious to get. The prospect of encountering Mr Armstrong had interfered considerably with his pleasure in arranging this visit. But if he was out of the way—well, so much more the luck of Mr Ratman. Therefore, without wasting time in further parley with this possible brother-in-law, he proceeded jauntily on his way.
“You won’t fight, then?” said Tom by way of farewell.
“Some day.”
“All right. Coward! Good-bye, Mr Roger Ingleton, major!”
Having relieved himself of which appropriate sentiment, Tom felt decidedly better, and walked his bicycle down the hill, determined to keep clear of Maxfield till the evening.
Mr Ratman, somewhat ruffled, but on the whole cheerful, swaggered on to his destination.
The captain was luxuriously smoking a cigar and solacing himself with a sporting paper, when Raffles sent his heart to his mouth by announcing—
“Mr Ingleton, sir, to see you.”
“Ah, Ratman!” said he with a forced air of welcome as his creditor entered. “I didn’t recognise you by your new name. You’re keeping it up, then?”
“What do you mean?” demanded Mr Ratman, taking an easy-chair and helping himself to a cigar from the captain’s box. “It’s you who are keeping it up, I fancy. I’ll trouble you to drop the Ratman.”
The captain laughed unpleasantly.
“As you like,” said he.
“Now to business. Of course, you’re ready to make good these little bills,” and he pulled four or five blue slips from his pocket.
“No, I’m not. You may as well know it at once.”
“Hum! What do you propose, then? Do you know there’s a writ out?”
“I propose nothing. I want to know what you propose.”
The two men regarded one another in silence; one insolent and sneering, the other desperate and scowling.
“What do I propose?” said Ratman, puffing away cheerfully. “Scarcely anything—only to make a little communication to the War Office, give a few instructions to the Sheriff, write a paragraph or two to the county papers, and tell a few interesting anecdotes to your charming daughters.”
Captain Oliphant started to his feet with a smothered exclamation.
“Not the last, Ratman! I’m in your clutches; but for Heaven’s sake don’t bring them into it!”
Ratman laughed.
“Youwillinsist on forgetting my name, my dear fellow. Yes, that’s my little programme. I fancy I may as well begin at the end.”
“Look here,” pleaded the victim; “I know it’s no use appealing to your pity, for you have none; or your honesty, for you’ve less of that than I have. But doesn’t it occur to you that it would be decidedly against your interest to ruin me just now?”
“What do you mean?” said Ratman with a yawn.
“Why, you claim a certain name, and you have to prove your claim. Roger has got the romantic notion into his head that if his elder brother can be found, that brother shall have the property. He is more than half inclined to credit your story already. You have to satisfy two other persons, of whom I am one. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly,” said Mr Ratman, who began to be interested. “I anticipate no difficulty there.”
“You forget that at present only a sickly boy stands between myself and the property. It would surely mean something on my part for me to admit a second life between.”
“What is the use of talking nonsense?” said Ratman. “Even if you did, for the sake of a little longer credit I might give you, own my right to my own name, what’s the use of that, when this man Armstrong has to be satisfied too? If you could crack that nut there might be something in it.”
The captain groaned. He knew that every project would be pulled up short at this sticking-point.
“Come,” said Ratman encouragingly, “if you could work things in that direction, it might be worth my while to give you time.”
“I can do nothing. The fellow is immovable. In six months—”
“In six months everything will be too late. And now, what about the other matter? Is that all right?”
Once more the captain groaned. “I can say nothing about it yet. She knows my wishes, but as Robert Ratman she will not hear a word of it. As Roger Ingleton, the elder, you may depend on it the matter will take another view. All depends on your success there. When that’s achieved, the rest will come if you give her time.”
Mr Ratman sneered.
“You are a glib talker, Oliphant. I admire you. Now listen. You want credit, and you know how to buy it. One way or another, this business must come to an end. I’ll take new bills with interest at three months. By that time everything must be square and smooth; otherwise you’ll be sorry you and your children were born, my boy. Order dinner. I’m going back by the six train. Pass me that paper, and don’t disturb me any more by your talking.”
As Mr Ratman, very well satisfied with his day’s business, strolled serenely back through the park that afternoon, he was surprised to hear light footsteps behind him, and, on turning, to discover that his pursuer, of all people, was Miss Rosalind Oliphant.
“Hullo!” said he, “this is flattering, with a vengeance.”
“Mr Ratman, I want to speak to you, please,” said Rosalind, very pale and nervous.
“Excuse me,” said he, “that’s not my name; my name is Roger Ingleton. What’s the matter?”
“It’s about my father. Have you seen him?”
“Just left the dear man.”
“He says he owes you money, and that you threaten to ruin him. Is that so?”
“Upon my word, if you want to know, it is.”
“How much is it, please?”
Ratman laughed.
“Nothing. A trifle. Fifteen hundred pounds or thereabouts.”
“Fifteen hundred!” faltered she. “Does he owe you all that.”
The little she had to offer was a drop in the bucket only.
“Look here,” said he; “Miss Rosy, your father’s in a fix. I don’t want to be hard on him, but I must have my money or its equivalent. Now, I should consider it a very fair equivalent to be allowed to call him father-in-law. I may not be up to your mark in some things, Miss Rosalind, but I’ve a good name, and I flatter myself I know beauty when I see it. Now, think over it. It’s the only chance your father’s got, and you might do worse for yourself than become the mistress of Maxfield. Good-bye. Shake hands.”
She drew herself up with an air and a flush of colour which redoubled his admiration, and without a word, turned away with rapid steps.
Mr Ratman was sorely tempted to follow this beautiful creature, who, in all his chequered career, had been the only human being to discover the few last dregs of affection in his nature. As much as it was possible in such a man, he was in love with this debtor’s daughter. The sensation was novel and exhilarating enough to afford him food for cheerful reflection as he walked on towards the station.
So engrossed was he in his day-dreams that he forgot that even country trains are occasionally punctual, and that, at least, he had not much time left him to catch the one he aimed at. Indeed, it was not till, within a few minutes of the station, he caught sight of the train already standing at the platform that it occurred to him to bestir himself. He ran, shouted, and waved his arm all at the same time, but to no effect. The whistle blew as he entered the yard, and as he reached the platform the guard’s van was gliding out of the station.
Thoroughly ruffled—for this was the last train to town—Mr Ratman vented his wrath on the world in general, and the railway officials in particular, even including in his objurgations an unlucky passenger who had arrived by the train and shared with him the uninterrupted possession of the platform.
“Easy, young man,” said the latter, a substantial-looking, bony individual with a wrinkled face, and speaking with a decided American twang. “You’ll hurt yourself, I reckon, if you talk like that. It’s bad for the jaws.”
Mr Ratman took a contemptuous survey of the stranger and quitted the platform.
His first idea was to return to Maxfield and demand entertainment there for the night. But since he would have to walk all the way, and the first train in the morning left Yeld at eight, he decided to put up at the little hotel of the village instead, and with that object threw himself and his bag into the omnibus of that establishment which waited on the trains.
Somewhat to his disgust, the stranger, after collecting his baggage, entered the same vehicle and took a seat opposite him.
“Wal,” said he, “you’ll have time to cool down before the next train, young man. Putting up at the hotel?”
“Where else should I put up?” growled Ratman. “What business is it of yours?”
“I guess it’s my business to get all the information I can on this trip. I came over this side to learn.”
“You’ve come to a queer hole to do it,” said Ratman, beginning to feel he might as well resign himself to circumstances.
“Just so. It’s changed a bit since I was here last. We had to drive from Barbeck then.”
“So you know the place, do you?” inquired Ratman.
“That’s so,” was the laconic rejoinder. “A resident, likely?”
“Well, not at present, or I shouldn’t be going to the inn.”
“Down here on business, I reckon? I was a bagman myself once.”
“You’re wrong again. I’ve been down to see my property, if you want to know.”
“Large estate, no doubt? Anywhere near my friend Ingleton’s plot, now?”
Mr Ratman stared at the stranger with something like consternation.
“Ingleton!” he exclaimed. “What do you know of Ingleton?”
Here the omnibus pulled up.
“Wal, I reckon I should know something of my own family,” drawled the stranger as he alighted. “What say?—shall we have a snack of something in the parlour! Come along.”
The landlord led the way into the coffee-room. He knew Mr Ratman by this time.
“Sorry we can’t give you and your friend the private room, sir, but there’s only one other gentleman in the coffee-room, and he’s going directly.”
As they entered, the other gentleman, who was drying his boots at the fire, turned round, and Mr Ratman had the rapture of finding himself face to face with Mr Armstrong.