Roger Ingleton, Minor Part 2

To the stable-boy's not altogether polite inquiry, Mr Armstrong replied, "Mr Ingleton of Maxfield is ill. Call Robbins, and tell him to put the horses in immediately, to take his mistress and Mr Roger home; and get some one in the house to call them. Don't delay an instant."

This peremptory speech fairly aroused the sleepy stable-boy, and in a few minutes Mr Armstrong was standing in the hall of the Grange talking to a footman.

"Take me up to his room," said he, pus.h.i.+ng the bewildered servant before him up the staircase.

The man, not at all sure that he was not in the grip of an armed burglar, ascended the stair in a maze, not daring to look behind him.

At the end of a corridor he stopped.

"Is that the room? Give me the lamp! Go and tell your master to get up. Say a messenger has come with bad news from Maxfield; and look here--put some wraps in the carriage, and have some coffee or wine ready in the hall in ten minutes."

The fellow, greatly rea.s.sured by this short parley, went off to fulfil his instructions, while the tutor, with what was very like a sigh, opened the door and entered his pupil's bedroom.

Roger Ingleton, minor, lay sound asleep, with his arms behind his head and a smile on his resolute lips. As the light of the lamp fell on his face, it looked very pale, with its frame of black curly hair and the deep fringe of its long eyelashes; but the finely-chiselled nostrils and firm mouth redeemed it from all suspicion of weakness. Even as he slept you might judge this lad of nineteen had a will of his own hidden up in the delicate framework of his body, and resembled his father at least in this, that his outer man was too narrow a tenement for what it contained. Almost at the first flash of the light his big black eyes opened, and he started to a sitting posture, bewildered, scared.

"Oh! why, hullo, Armstrong! what's the matter?"

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Roger, but--"

The boy bounded out of bed and stood facing his tutor in his night- dress.

"But I want you to dress as sharp as you can. Your father is unwell."

"Unwell?" repeated the boy, s.h.i.+vering. "You do not mean he is dead?"

"No--no; but ill. He has had a stroke. Dr Brandram is with him. I thought it better not to wait till the morning before fetching you."

"Mother--does she know?"

"By this time."

"Why ever did we not go back?" groaned the boy. "Is there _any_ hope, Armstrong?"

"Some--yes. Go to your mother and tell her so. The carriage will be ready in five minutes."

In five minutes the boy and his mother descended to the hall, where already their host and hostess were down to bid them farewell. It was difficult to imagine that the slender dark-eyed handsome woman, who stood there and looked round for a moment so white and trembling and bewildered, was really the mother of the young man on whose arm she leant. Even under a blow such as this Mrs Ingleton belied her age by a decade. She was still on the sunny side of forty. You and I might have doubted if she was yet thirty.

Captain Curtice and his wife had the true kindness to attempt no words as they sympathisingly bade their visitors farewell. When the hall-door opened and let in the cold blast, the poor lady staggered a moment and clung closer to her son's side. Then abandoning composure to the wintry winds, she found her best refuge in tears, and let herself be led to the carriage.

The tutor helped to put her in, and looked inquiringly at his pupil.

"Come in too, please," said the latter; "there is room inside."

Mr Armstrong would fain have taken his seat beside Robbins on the box.

He hated scenes, and tears, and tragedies of all sorts. But there was something in his pupil's voice which touched him. He took his place within, and prayed that the moments might fly till they reached Maxfield.

Scarcely a word was spoken. Once Roger hazarded a question, but it was the signal for a new outburst on his mother's part; and he wisely desisted, and leant back in his corner, silent and motionless. As for the tutor, with the front seat to himself, he nursed his knee, and gazed fixedly out of the window the whole way.

What weeks those two hours seemed! How the horses laboured, and panted, and halted! And how interminably dismal was the dull m.u.f.fled crunching of the wheels through the snow!

At length a blurred light pa.s.sed the window, and the tutor released his knee and put up his eye-gla.s.s.

"Here we are," said he; "that was the lodge."

Roger slowly and reluctantly sat forward, and wrapped his mother's shawl closer round her.

Raffles stood on the door-step, and in the hall beyond Mr Armstrong could see the doctor standing.

As he stepped out, the page touched him on the arm.

"No 'urry," whispered he; "all over!"

Whereupon the tutor quietly crept away to the seclusion of his own room.

CHAPTER TWO.

THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD.

The household of Maxfield, worn-out by the excitement of the night, slept, or rather lay in bed, till hard on midday.

The tutor, as he slowly turned on his side and caught sight of the winter sun through the frost-bespangled window, felt profoundly disinclined to rise. He shrank from the tasks that awaited him--the task of witnessing the grief of the widow and the pale looks of the orphan heir, the dismal negotiations with undertakers and clergymen and lawyers, the stupid questions of the domestics, the sickly fragrance of stephanotis in the house. Then, too, there was the awkward uncertainty as to his own future. What effect would the tragedy of last night have on that? Was it a notice to quit, or what? He should be sorry to go.

He liked the place, he liked his pupil, and further, he had nowhere else to go. Altogether Mr Armstrong felt very reluctant to exchange his easy bed for the chances and changes of the waking world. Besides, lastly, the water in his bath, he could see, was frozen; and it was hopeless on a day like this to expect that Raffles would bring him sufficient hot, even to shave with.

However, the tutor had had some little practice before now in doing what he did not like. With a sigh and a s.h.i.+ver, therefore, he flung aside his blankets and proceeded to break the ice literally, and take his bath. After that he felt decidedly better, and with the help of a steady ten minutes grind at the dumb-bells, he succeeded in pulling himself together.

He had reached this stage in his toilet when a knock came at the door.

"Come in, Raffles," said Mr Armstrong, beginning to see some prospect of a shave after all.

It was not Raffles, but Dr Brandram, equipped for the road.

"I'm off, Armstrong," said he. "I'd ask you to come and drive me, only I think you are wanted here. See the boy eats enough and doesn't mope.

You must amuse him if you can. You understand what I told you last night was not for him. By the way,"--here the doctor held out a sealed packet--"this was lying on the old man's table last night. It was probably to give it to you that he sent for you in the afternoon, and then forgot it. Well, good-bye. I shall come to-morrow if the roads are pa.s.sable. I only hope, for my sake, all this will not make any difference to your remaining at Maxfield."

Mr Armstrong finished his toilet leisurely, and then proceeded to examine the packet.

It was a large envelope, addressed, "Frank Armstrong, Esquire," in the old man's quavering hand.

Within was another envelope, firmly sealed, on which the same hand had written these words--

"_To be given unopened into the hands of Roger Ingleton, junior, on his twentieth birthday_."

The effort of writing those few words had evidently been almost more than the writer could accomplish, for towards the end the letters became almost illegible, and the words were huddled in a heap at the corner of the paper. The sealing, too, to judge from the straggling blots of wax all over and the ineffective marks of the seal, must have been the labour of a painful morning to the feeble, half-blind old man.

To the tutor, however, as he held the missive in his hand, and looked at it with the reverence one feels for a token from the dead, it seemed to make one or two things tolerably clear.

First, that the contents, whatever they were, were secret and important, else the old man would never have taken upon himself a labour he could so easily have devolved upon another. Secondly, that this old man, rightly or wrongly, regarded Frank Armstrong as a man to be trusted, and contemplated that a year hence he would occupy the same position with regard to the heir of Maxfield as he did now.