Chapter Fifteen.
Strong Hearts and Weak Tempers.
In the sad confusion which followed upon Mrs Ingleton’s sudden death, no one appeared to remark the abrupt departure of Mr Robert Ratman. Roger certainly never bestowed a thought on the occurrence, and if any of the other members of the household thought twice about it, they all—even Jill—kept their ideas on the subject to themselves.
To Roger the week that followed his twentieth birthday was the most dismal of his life. When a similar blow had fallen months ago he had been too bewildered and benumbed to realise fully his own loss. Now he realised everything only too vividly.
His own trouble; the loss of the last near relative he had in the world; his own sickly health, chaining him down when he would fain seek comfort in action; the uncertainty of his position as heir of Maxfield; the hopeless task before him of finding his lost brother; Rosalind’s indifference to his affection—all seemed now to pile up in one great mountain to oppress him, and he half envied the gentle dead her quiet resting-place.
It was in the second week after the funeral, when Maxfield once more began to assume its normal aspect, and Captain Oliphant was allowing himself to hope that, notwithstanding the removal of his latest “dear departed,” things were likely to shape themselves a trifle more comfortably for his own designs in her absence—it was in the middle of November that a letter was handed to Roger as he dressed one morning in his room.
It bore the London post-mark, and looked mysterious enough to induce Roger to lay down his brushes and open it there and then. This is what it said:—
“Dear Roger,—You’ll have been expecting to hear from me, as no doubt your moral friend, Mr Armstrong, has told you who I am. I don’t fancy you are specially pleased with the discovery, and it may suit you to turn up your nose at your affectionate brother. You may turn up what you like, but it doesn’t alter the fact. I am your brother. When I heard of my father’s death I was in India, and made up my mind to come home on the chance the old boy had forgiven me and left me some of the needful in his will. Your guardian, Oliphant, had little idea that the Indian chum who made such a long journey to pay him a visit at Maxfield was really the man to whom the place ought to have belonged if every one had his rights. Of course I soon found out my mistake. The old man kept up his grudge to the end, and cut me out of his will without even a shilling. So you’ve nothing to be afraid of. I dare say when you come into the property you will do something for your big brother. Meanwhile I don’t expect much out of the pair of hypocrites my father chose to leave as your guardians. But as I am hard up, and you can probably do what you like with your pocket-money, let me have a £10 note once and again, say fortnightly, addressed to Robert Ratman, to be called for at the General Post Office. If I don’t get this, I shall conclude the Ingletons are true to their reputation of being a good deal fonder of their money than their flesh and blood.
“I don’t know whether I shall turn up again or not. It will depend pretty much on what I hear. No doubt you’ve set me down as a cad and a blackleg. Perhaps I am. I’ve not had the advantages you have. But, cad or no cad, I’ve a right to sign myself your brother,—
“Roger Ingleton, alias Robert Ratman.”
Roger read this remarkable epistle once or twice, in a state of mind bordering on stupefaction. Robert Ratman, cad, sharper, blasphemer, insolent profligate, his brother! The notion was ludicrous. And yet, when he tried to laugh, the laugh died on his lips. He walked over to the portrait on the wall and looked at the wild, mocking boy’s face there. For a moment, as he met its gaze, it seemed to grow older and coarser—the light died out of the eyes, the mouth lost its strength, the lines of shame and vice came out on the brow. Then the old face looked out again—the face of the lost Roger Ingleton.
“Ratman my brother!” he groaned to himself.
Then of a sudden he seemed to see it all. It was a fraud, an imposition, an impudent plot to extort money. But no! As he read the letter again that hope vanished. This was not the letter of an impostor. Had it been, there would have been more about his rights, more brotherly affection, a greater anxiety to appear in good colours. As it was, the writer wrote in the reckless vein of a man who knows he is detested and expects little; who owes a grudge to fortune for his bad luck, and being hard up for money, appeals not to his rights, but to the good nature of his more lucky younger brother.
What a sad letter it seemed, read in that light. And how every word drove the unhappy heir of Maxfield deeper and deeper into the slough of perplexity.
Three weeks ago, when his dead father’s letter had come into his hands, he had not hesitated for a moment as to his duty or his desire in the matter. He had cheerfully accepted the task of finding that lost, aggrieved, perhaps hardly-used brother, to whom his heart went out as he gazed on the likeness of what he once had been.
But now! To abdicate in favour of this blackguard. To look for him, to tell him that Maxfield was his, to have to depend on his generosity for a livelihood, to see the good name of Ingleton represented in the county by a drunken profligate. What a task was that. The writer evidently did not know of the second will, or suspect that after all Maxfield was his own. No one knew of that document but Roger and Armstrong. For a moment there returned to the boy’s mind the words of his father’s letter—
“If after reading the papers you choose to destroy them, no one will blame you; no one will know—you will do no one an injury. You are free to act as you choose.”
And Armstrong, the only other being who had seen the papers, had urged him to avail himself of the permission thus accorded. Why not take the advice and save Maxfield and the family name, and himself—ay, and Rosalind—from the discredit that threatened. He could yet be generous, beyond his hopes, to the prodigal. He would pay to get him abroad, to—to—
A flush of shame mounted to the boy’s cheeks as he suddenly discovered himself listening to these unworthy suggestions.
“Heaven help me,” he said, “to be a man.” It was a brief inward fight, though a sore one.
Roger Ingleton, weak in body, often dull of wit and infirm of temper, had yet certain old-fashioned ideas of his own as to how it behoves a gentleman to act.
He cherished, too, certain still older-fashioned ideas as to how when a Christian gentleman wants help and courage he may obtain it. And he was endowed with that glorious obstinacy which, when it once satisfies itself on a question of right and wrong, declines to listen to argument.
Therefore when, later than usual, he joined the family party at breakfast, it was with a grim sense of a misery ahead to be faced, but by no manner of means to be avoided.
For fear the reader should be disposed to rank Roger at once among the saints, let it be added that he took his place in as genuine a bad temper as a strong mind and a weak body between them are capable of generating.
“Roger, my dear boy,” said the captain mournfully, as became the weeds he wore, “you are looking poorly. You need a change. We both need one after the trouble we have been through. I think a run up to London would brace us up. Would you like it?”
“I don’t know,” said Roger shortly. “I don’t think so.”
“It is trying to you, I am sure, to remain here, in your delicate health, among so many sad associations—”
“I’m quite well, thank you,” said the boy. “Tom, how does the football get on?”
“Oh,” said Tom, rather taken aback by the introduction of so congenial a theme from so unexpected a quarter, “I’ve not played very much lately. Jill and I had a little punt about yesterday; but we did it quite slowly, you know, and I had my crape on my arm.”
Jill flushed up guiltily. The housekeeper, who since Mrs Ingleton’s death had assumed the moral direction of the young lady, had expostulated with her in no mild terms on the iniquity of young ladies playing football, even of a funereal order, and she felt it very treacherous on the part of the faithless Tom to divulge her ill-doings now.
She felt reassured, however, when Mr Armstrong smiled grimly.
“Nobody could see,” said she; “and Tom did want a game so dreadfully.”
“We played Association,” said Tom. “Jill got two goals and I got fifty-six.”
“No, I got three,” said Jill.
“Oh, that first wasn’t a goal,” said Tom. “You see, she got past me with a neat bit of dribbling; but she ran, and the rule was only to walk, you know, because of being in mourning.”
“I really didn’t run, I only walked very fast,” said Jill.
“I should think you might allow her the goal,” said Mr Armstrong.
Mr Armstrong was always coming to Jill’s rescue; and if any of her heart had been left to win, he would have won it now. Tom gave in, and said he supposed he would have to let her count it; and was vastly consoled for his self-denial by Roger’s proposal to join him in a game that very day.
Before that important function came off, however, Roger and his tutor had a somewhat uncomfortable talk in the library.
“You are feeling out of sorts, old fellow,” said the latter when they were left alone.
“I’ve had a letter,” said Roger.
“Another?”
“Read it, please.”
“If you wish it, I will. Last time, however, it wasn’t a success consulting me.”
“I want you to read this.”
The tutor took the letter and turned to the signature.
His brow knitted as he did so, and the lines grew deeper and more scornful as he turned to the beginning and read through.
“If I were you,” said he, returning it, “I would frame this letter as a good specimen of a barefaced fraud.”
It irritated Roger considerably, in his present over-wrought frame of mind—and particularly after the memorable inward struggle of that morning—to have what seemed so serious a matter to him regarded by any one else as a jest. For once in a way the tutor failed to understand his ward.
“It does not seem to be a fraud at all,” said Roger. “Why didn’t you tell me of it before?”
“I did not regard the statement seriously. Nor do I now. There is lie written in every line of the letter. A clumsy attempt to extort money, which ought not to be allowed to succeed. He gives not a single proof of his identity. I horsewhipped him on the night of your birthday for insulting a lady, and—”
“What lady?” asked Roger.
“Miss Oliphant,” said the tutor, flushing a little. “He then, as a desperate expedient for getting off the punishment he deserved, blurted out this preposterous story. And having once published it, it appears he means to make capital out of it. Roger, old fellow, you are no fool.”
“I am fool enough to believe there is something in the story,” said Roger; “at any rate I must follow it up. If this Ratman is my brother—”
The tutor, who himself was showing signs of irritation, laughed abruptly.
“It may be a joke to you, but it is none to me,” said Roger angrily. “It may not concern you—”
“It concerns me very much,” said the tutor. “I am your guardian, and it is my duty to protect you from schemers.”
The two stood looking at one another, and in that moment each relented a little of his anger.
“I know, old fellow,” said Roger, “you think you are doing me a kindness, but—”
“Pardon me—kindness is not the word. I appeal to your common-sense—”
Unlucky speech! Roger, who was painfully aware that he was not clever, was naturally touchy at any reference to his common-sense.
“It doesn’t seem much use discussing,” said he. “I made a mistake in showing you the letter.”
“I heartily regret you did.”
“I hoped you would have helped me in my difficulty.”
“I will do anything for you except believe, without proof, and in spite of every probability, that Ratman is your brother.”
“He is just the age my brother would have been now.”
“So is George the coachman, so am I, so are half a dozen men in the village.”
“He certainly has some resemblance to the portrait.”
“I could find you a score more like it in London.”
“The long and short of it is, Armstrong, I cannot look to you to back me up in this.”
“To make Robert Ratman into Roger Ingleton?—I fear not. To back you up in all else, and be at your call whether you think well or ill of me—certainly.”
They parted angrily, though without a quarrel. Mr Armstrong had rarely felt himself so put out, and crashed away ruthlessly at his piano all the morning.
Roger, perhaps conscious that logic was not on his side, whatever instinct and feeling might be, retired disappointed and miserable to the park, and never remembered his appointment with the eager Tom.
At lunch-time he said to Captain Oliphant—
“When did you think of going to town?”
“At the end of the week, my boy. What do you say to coming?”
“Yes—I’ll come.”
The Captain darted a triumphant glance in the direction of the tutor. But the tutor was investigating the contents of a game pie in the endeavour to discover a piece of egg for Miss Jill.
After a pause that young lady took up her discourse.
“If father and Roger go to town, Tom, we shall have dear Mr Armstrong all to ourselves.”
“Hooroo!” said Tom; “that is, if it’s holidays.”
“I am thinking of going to Oxford next week,” said the tutor, elaborately folding up his napkin, addressing his co-trustee. “Have you any message I can give to any of your acquaintances there?”
“I think it would be a pity for you to leave Maxfield just now. One of us should remain.”
“Yes, do stay. We’ll have such larks,” said Tom. “We’ll get Rosalind to come and stay, and then we shall be able to play regular matches, ladies against gentlemen, you know.”
“No. Mr Armstrong and I will stand Rosalind and you,” suggested Jill.
Even these allurements failed.
“I shall make my visit as short as possible. I have, as you know, a few creditors in Oxford on whom I am anxious to call. Let me give you a little cheese, Roger.”
That evening when, as usual, the tutor looked in to say good night to his ward, Roger said rather gloomily—
“I suppose you object to my going to London?”
“On the contrary, I rather envy you.”
“Of course you understand I am going up to make inquiries?”
“Naturally. With Captain Oliphant’s assistance?”
“No. I’m not inclined to tell him anything at present. He has no idea that Ratman is anything but an Indian acquaintance.”
“My address will be ‘“Green Dragon,” Oxford,’” said the tutor.
“By the way,” said Roger—both men were talking in the forced tones which belong to an unacknowledged estrangement—“Whether this matter is right or not, I propose to write to Ratman and enclose him £10.”
“Naturally,” said the tutor.
“I am tied down, as you know, in the matter of my pocket-money, and can’t well spare it out of my present allowance. I want the trustees to give me an extra allowance.”
“In other words, you want your trustees to keep Mr Robert Ratman at the rate of £250 a year. I shall agree to that the day that he satisfies me he is Roger Ingleton.”
“I expected you would refuse. I must ask Captain Oliphant.”
“I’m afraid he will require my sanction to any such arrangement.”
“What! Do you mean to say that I am at your mercy in a matter like this?”
“I fear that is unhappily the case. I can resolve the matter by resigning my tutorship.”
Had it come to that? Roger glanced up with a scared look which for the moment clouded out the vexation in his face.
“Excuse me, Armstrong. All this worry is bad for my temper. I’m afraid I lost it.”
“I can sympathise,” said the tutor, “for I have lost mine. Good night.”