Chapter Six.
A Case of Eviction.
A week passed and Mr Armstrong did not return. By the end of that time Miss Rosalind Oliphant, for better or worse, had settled down into her new quarters, and made herself as much at home as a fair Bohemian can do anywhere. She still resented the fate which brought her to Maxfield at all, and annoyed her father constantly by casting their dependence on the hospitality of the place in his teeth.
“I wish you had some business, father,” said she, “so that we could pay our way. I don’t suppose my pictures will ever sell, but every penny I earn shall go to Roger. Couldn’t we go and live in the lodge, somewhere where we can—”
“Rosalind,” said her father, “you vex me by talking like a child. After the education I have tried to provide for you, I had a right to hope you would at least regulate your tongue by a little common-sense. Do you not know that I have given up my profession, everything, in order to come to do my duty here?”
“I wish you hadn’t,” said the girl doggedly; “it would have been so easy to decline the trust and remain independent. It’s awful to think we’ve nothing to live on but what we get out of Roger’s money.”
“Foolish girl,” said her father with a forced laugh, “you are a delightful specimen of a woman’s incapacity to understand the very rudiments of business. Why, you absurd child, old Roger Ingleton’s will bequeathed me £300 a year for acting as the boy’s guardian.”
“Yes, for two years. And Roger would have been all that richer if you’d declined. I’m sure his mother and Mr Armstrong are plenty to look after him. I’d have liked you so much better, dear father, if you’d stayed in the army.”
“I’m afraid, my poor girl, it is useless to argue with you. When you do get a wrong idea into your head, nothing will induce you to part with it, even if it involves an injustice to your poor father.”
“Father,” said she, “you know it is because I love you and—”
“Enough,” said he rather sternly. “I know you mean well.”
And he went.
At the door, however, he returned and said—
“By the way, Rosalind, I must mention one matter; not for discussion, but as my express wish. You named Mr Armstrong just now. I desire that you hold no communication with him. I have reason for knowing he is not a desirable person at all.”
“If so, you had better take us away from here,” said Rosalind, flushing. “You’ve no right to let us stay.”
“Silence, miss, and bear in mind what I tell you. Do you understand?”
Rosalind had taken up her brush and was painting furiously at her picture.
Captain Oliphant having waited a minute for an answer and getting none, stalked out of the room a model of parental anguish. As for Miss Rosalind, she painted away for a quarter of an hour, and then said to herself—
“Is he?”
With which profound inquiry she laid down her brush and went to visit her invalid cousin.
Roger was up, though still coughing, and ensconced in his study.
“How jolly of you to come!” said he.
“I came because I’d nothing else to do,” said she, “I’m not jolly at all.”
“Why, what’s the row?”
“Can’t you guess? Don’t you know that I owe you already for a week’s board and lodgings and haven’t earned sixpence to pay you.”
“I shall put you in the county court,” said Roger solemnly.
“It’s no joke to me,” said she.
“I know it isn’t, and I wish to goodness I could help you out. By the way, though,” added he, jumping up from his chair, “I’ve got it.”
“Don’t,” said she; “you’ll only start the cough. What have you got? An idea?”
“Yes. Rosalind, do you know I’m going to get some painting-lessons?”
“Where? Oh, I wish I could afford some too. Is there any one near here who teaches?”
“Yes. Some one who’s just starting. A rather jolly girl, only she has an awful temper; and I’m afraid, when she sees what a poor hand I make, she’ll have no patience with me.”
Rosalind looked at him steadily, and then smiled.
“How nice of you! May I really try? I’ll teach you all I know.”
“Will you promise to be nice, and never to fly out at me?”
“No, I’ll promise nothing of the sort. But if you learn well, I’ll be very proud.”
“And your terms?”
She looked at him again.
“Would a shilling an hour be an awful lot?”
“No. It’s very moderate. I accept the terms. I’ll begin to-day.”
This satisfactory bargain being concluded. Miss Rosalind inquired how her new pupil’s cold was.
“Nearly all right. I’m glad to have got rid of it before Armstrong comes back.”
“When will that be?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t written a line. I hope he’ll come soon.”
“Are you awfully fond of him!” asked Rosalind.
“Rather,” replied the boy.
“That’s exactly what he said when I asked him if he was fond of you.”
“Odd,” said Roger with a laugh. “But, I say, what do you think of my den? Isn’t it rather snug?”
“I like one of the pictures,” said Rosalind, pointing to a certain portrait on the mantelpiece.
“I’m awfully glad,” said Roger. “Do you know who it is?”
“No.”
“A brother of mine who died long before I was born.”
Rosalind took the picture in her hands and carried it to the window. The scrutiny lasted some minutes. Then she replaced it on the chimney-piece.
“Well,” said Roger, “do you like him?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Aren’t you a little afraid of him, too?”
“Not a bit. He looks like a hero.”
Roger sighed.
“I’m glad there’s one in the family,” said he.
“Why not two? I say, will your tutor mind your having painting-lessons of me?”
“Mind? Not he. I shouldn’t be surprised if he wants to have some too.”
Rosalind laughed.
“That would be too terrible,” said she. “But I must go now. Will you lend me this picture for a little? I’d like to look at it again.”
Roger laughed.
“Oh yes, if you’ll promise not to fall in love with him for good.”
When Roger presented himself at the appointed hour in his cousin’s studio, he found that young lady very much in earnest and not at all disposed to regard her new functions as a jest. Roger, who had come expecting to be amused, found himself ignominiously set down at a table beside the amenable Tom (who had been coerced into joining the class) and directed to copy a very elementary representation of a gable of a cottage which the instructress had set up on the easel. Six times was he compelled to tackle this simple object before his copy was pronounced passable; and until that Rosalind sternly discouraged all conversation or inattention.
“Really, Roger,” said she, when at last he meekly submitted his final copy, “for a boy of your age you are an uncommonly rough hand. Tom is a much more promising pupil than you.”
“I haven’t promised you a bob an hour, though,” rejoined that not-to-be-flattered genius, beginning to whistle.
“Silence, sir!” said Miss Rosalind, stamping her little foot with something like temper; “as long as you are in my class you must do as I tell you.”
Here Roger protested.
“You’re rather strict,” said he. “I don’t mind working hard and attending to all you say, but I vote we enjoy ourselves too—all three of us.”
“You mean,” said Rosalind petulantly, “that you come here to play, while I try to work.”
“No, I don’t. I come to do both, and I want you to, as well.”
“Very well then, I withdraw from my engagement,” said the young lady, with an ominous flush; “we don’t agree about art. Unless you can give yourself up to it while you are about it, it’s not meant for you—and—and I’m very sorry indeed I made such a stupid mistake as to think you meant what you said when you told me you wanted to learn.”
And she took the copy down from the easel.
“Look here, Rosalind,” said Roger, in unusual perturbation, “I’m so sorry. You’re quite right. Of course one can’t do two things at once. I’ll—”
“You’re a dear boy, as I’ve said before,” said Miss Oliphant, brightening up suddenly and accepting her victory serenely. “Now please both of you draw the picture again from memory as exactly as you can.”
“What’s the long and short of it all?” presently whispered Tom, who had been supremely indifferent to the argument. “Is it larks or no larks?”
“Shut up!—that’s what it is,” said Roger.
“All right; thanks,” said Tom contentedly.
And for a quarter of an hour more the two worked steadily and silently, the only sound in the room being the scratching of their pencils and Rosalind’s occasional terse criticisms over their shoulders.
This little incident opened Roger’s eyes considerably. He was astonished at himself afterwards for taking his rebuff so meekly, and submitting to what, after all, was rather a preposterous regulation. He was aware that he would not have submitted to any one but Rosalind, or possibly Armstrong. Why he should do so to her he did not particularly know; unless it was because he felt it would be pleasanter on the whole to have her as a friend than as a foe.
When, three days later, Mr Armstrong neither appeared nor communicated with any member of the household, the uneasiness which his prolonged absence caused found expression in several different ways. Miss Jill cried in a corner; Miss Rosalind tossed her head and painted fiercely; Roger, already pulled down with a return of his cough, moped in his own room; while his mother, impressed by the growing indignation of her cousin, began to work herself into a mild state of wrath. Tom alone was serene.
“I expect he’s having a jolly time with that French chap,” he volunteered at the family dinner.
“With whom?” inquired his father pricking his ears.
“Oh, a chum of his; not half a bad sort of cove, only he dropped all his ‘h’s.’ He turned up at Christy’s, you know, but missed the best break-down, while he and Mr Armstrong were hob-nobbing outside. I saw it, though. It was prime.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” demanded Captain Oliphant.
“I didn’t know you’d care about it,” said his son in mild surprise. “You see, it was this way. The fellow had wooden shoes on, and when the music began slow he began a shuffle, and gradually put on the pace till you couldn’t tell one foot from the other.”
Here Miss Rosalind broke into a derisive laugh.
“Really, Tom,” said she, “you are too clever. However did you guess that we were all dying to hear how a break-down is danced?”
“I didn’t till father said so.”
Here Roger and the two young ladies laughed again; whereat Tom, concluding he had said something good unawares, laughed too, and thought to himself how jolly it is to be clever and keep the table at a roar.
In private Captain Oliphant pursued the subject of Gustav and his relations (apart from their mutual connexion with the break-down) with the Maxfield tutor.
He received very little satisfaction from his inquiry. Tom was so full of his main topic that the other events of that memorable evening in town occupied but a secondary place in his memory.
He recollected Gustav as a good-natured foreigner whom Armstrong called by his Christian name, and who talked French in return. He could not remember where he lived, except that it was ten minutes’ walk from Christy’s Minstrels; nor had he the slightest idea what the two men talked about, except that Armstrong had promised to hold somebody’s hand, and that Gustav had tried to kiss him by way of recompense.
Captain Oliphant chose to take a very serious view of this disclosure. It fitted in exactly with his theory that the tutor was an adventurer of “shady antecedents,” and, as such, an undesirable companion for the late “dear one’s” orphan-boy.
“I should not feel I was doing my duty,” said he to Mr Pottinger that afternoon, “if I were not to follow this up. We don’t know whom we have to deal with; and the fact of Mr Ingleton having confided in him really, you know, weighs very little with me; old men of enfeebled intellect, my dear Pottinger, are so easily hoodwinked.”
“Quite so. Does it not occur to you, Captain, that a simple solution of the difficulty would be for Mrs Ingleton to send her boy to college?”
“Mrs Ingleton,” said the Captain, “is unfortunately incapable of regarding this subject in any light but that of her son’s likings. And Roger Ingleton, minor, is infatuated.”
“Humph!” said the lawyer, “I thought so. Then I agree with you, it will be useful to institute a few inquiries.”
“Leave that to me,” said the captain. “By the way, what about that piece of land you were speaking of?”
“Ah!” said the lawyer, making as near an approach to a blush as he could muster, “the fact is, Hodder’s lease falls in next week. He has had it at a ridiculously low figure, and is not a profitable tenant.”
“That is the old dotard who is always croaking about Maxfield in the days before the Flood?”
“Well, almost as remote a period. He was here in the time of the late squire’s father. At any rate his lease falls in; and I happen to know a person who is willing to give twenty per cent more for the land than he pays. I can’t tell you his name,” said the lawyer, looking sufficiently conscious, “but I happen to know he would be a better tenant to Maxfield than the old man.”
Mr Pottinger amused himself with making a little mystery about a matter that was no secret to Captain Oliphant. That gallant gentleman knew as well as the lawyer did that Mr Pottinger himself, whose land adjoined Hodder’s, was the eligible tenant in question.
“There will be no difficulty about that, Pottinger. Of course, you must give Hodder the option of offering your friend’s price. If he does not, it is clearly the duty of the executors to take the better tenant.”
He took up his hat and turned to go.
“By the way,” said he at the door, “it will hardly be necessary, I take it, to go through the farce of bringing a trifling matter of this kind before the other executors; Mrs Ingleton should really be spared all worry of this sort; and as for the other one—well, he chooses to be somewhere else.”
“Quite so, quite so. If you and Mrs Ingleton sign the lease it will be sufficient,” said Mr Pottinger.
Unluckily for the pleasantly arranged plan of these two good gentlemen, Miss Rosalind Oliphant took it into her pretty head a day or so afterwards to call at old Hodder’s cottage in passing, to ask for a glass of milk. The young lady was in a very discontented frame of mind. She was angry with Mr Armstrong for staying away so long. Not that she cared what he did, but till he came back she felt she did not know the full extent of the forces arrayed against her at Maxfield; and she wanted to know the worst. Besides, although Roger was diligently prosecuting his art studies and displaying the most docile obedience to her discipline, she could not help thinking he would not have taken to art except to please her; and that displeased her mightily. Besides, Tom, her brother, was too silly for anything; he insisted on enjoying himself, whoever else was miserable; and Jill was very little better. Altogether, Miss Oliphant was out of humour, and felt this walk would do her good.
She found the Hodder family in mighty tribulation. The old man sat in his corner with his hat on the floor beside him, crying and boohing like a child. And his two little granddaughters looked on at his grief, pale and half-frightened, knowing something bad had happened, but unable to guess what.
“Why, Hodder,” said Miss Rosalind, “whatever’s the matter? What a noise you’re making! What has happened?”
“Happened!” cried the old man with a voice quavering into a shrill treble. “How would he like it himself? Seventy years, boy and man, have I sat here, like my father before me. I’ve seen yon elm grow from a stick to what she is now. I’ve buried all my kith and kin bar them two lassies.”
“Of course, I know you’re very old. But why are you crying?” demanded Rosalind.
“Crying! Wouldn’t you cry, Missy, if you was to be turned neck and crop into the road at threescore years and ten?”
“Nonsense. What do you mean?”
“Come Tuesday,” sobbed the old man, “me and the lassies will be trespassers in this here very place.”
“What!” exclaimed Miss Rosalind, “do you mean you’re to be turned out? Who dares to do such a thing?”
“You go and ask Mr Pottinger, if you doubt it,” blubbered the old man. “He ought to know.”
Without another word, Miss Rosalind flung herself from the cottage and marched straight for the lawyer’s, pale, with bosom heaving and a light in her eyes, that Armstrong, had he been there to see it, would have shivered at.
“Mr Pottinger,” said she, breaking unceremoniously into the lawyer’s private room, “what is this I hear! How dare you frighten old Hodder by talking about his leaving his farm?”
The lawyer stared at this beautiful apparition, not knowing whether to be amused or angry. It was the first time any one in Maxfield had addressed him in this strain, and the sensation was so novel that he felt fairly taken aback.
“Really, dear young lady, I am delighted with any excuse that gives me the pleasure of a visit from—”
“Mr Pottinger,” said the young lady in a tone which made him open his eyes still wider, “will you tell me, yes or no, if what Hodder tells me is true?”
“That depends on what Hodder says,” replied the lawyer, trying to look cheerful.
“He says he has had notice to leave his farm next week. Is that true?”
“That entirely depends on himself, if I must suffer cross-examination from so charming a counsel.”
“You mean—”
“I mean, my pretty young lady, that if he chooses to pay the new rent he is entitled to stay.”
“You have raised his rent?—a poor old man of seventy-five?”
“I have no power to do that. But I understand he has had the land for next to nothing. It is worth more now.”
“Mr Pottinger,” said Miss Rosalind, “let me tell you that if you have any hand in this wicked business you are a bad man, whatever you profess to be. I shouldn’t sleep to-night if I failed to tell you that. So is everybody who dares treat an old man thus.”
“Pardon me, Miss Oliphant, that is not quite respectful to your own father.”
She rounded on him with trembling lips.
“My father,” she began and faltered—“my father is not the sort of man to do a thing of this kind unless he were cajoled into it by some—some—some one like you, Mr Pottinger—”
With which she left the room, much to the lawyer’s relief, who tried to laugh to himself at the pretty vixen, but couldn’t be as merry as he would have wished.
Rosalind, on her return to Maxfield, went straight with flashing eyes to Roger’s room, and told him the story.
“Roger,” she said, “if you are half a man you will stop it. You are master here, or will be. Are you going to let this poor old man be turned out of his home? You are not the dear boy I take you for, if you are.”
“Of course it must be stopped,” said Roger, amazed at her vehemence; “and it shall be. I always thought Pottinger a sneak. I assure you, Rosalind, I shall make poor old Hodder happy before we are a day older. So good-bye; I’ll go at once.”
But he was no match for the lawyer, who politely recounted the circumstances and referred him to his guardians, who, however, as he pointed out, had no choice but to accept the best-paying tenant.
“It is done in your interest, my dear boy,” said Mr Pottinger. “We are bound to consider your interests, whether you like it or not.”
Mortified beyond measure, both on his own account and at the prospect of facing Rosalind, Roger returned slowly to Maxfield. As he entered, a hand was laid on his shoulder; Mr Armstrong had come back.