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 in Hamlet twenty 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 him nearly as 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 to table d’hôte with 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 the bureau was 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 wayside auberge attracted 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 call café. 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 called Hamlet in 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 not you remember 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 was une émeute in 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 ’Amlet without.”
“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 ’Amlet was—pardieu!” exclaimed he, looking hard at his guest, “and he was like you. It was no fault of his ’Amlet did 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 of Hamlet at 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.