Chapter Thirteen.
A Voice from the Dead.
Roger Ingleton’s reflections, as he lay awake on the morning of his twentieth birthday, were not altogether self-congratulatory. He was painfully aware that he was what he himself would have styled a poor creature. He was as weak, physically, as a girl; he was not particularly clever; he was given to a melancholy which made him pass for dull in society. Ill-health dogged him whenever he tried to achieve anything out of the commonplace. His tenantry regarded him still as a boy, and very few of his few friends set much store by him for his own sake apart from his fortune.
“A poor show altogether,” said he to himself. “That boy on the wall there would have made a much better thing of it. There’s some go in him, especially the copy that Rosalind—”
Here he pulled up. In addition to his other misfortunes, it occurred to him now definitely for the first time that he was in love.
“She doesn’t care two straws about me,” said he ungratefully; “that is, except in a sisterly way. Why should she? I know nothing about art, which she loves. I’m saddled with pots of money, which she hates. The only way I can interest her is by being ill. I’m not even scape-grace enough to make it worth her while to take me in hand to reform me. Heigho! It’s a pity that brother of mine had not lived. Yes, you,” he added, shaking his head at the portrait, “with your wild harum-scarum face and mocking laugh. You’d have suited her, and been able to make her like you—I can’t. I believe she thinks more of Armstrong than me. Not much wonder either. Only, wouldn’t he be horrified if any one suggested such a thing!”
And the somewhat dismal soliloquy ended in a some what dismal laugh, as the heir of Maxfield assumed the perpendicular and pulled up his blind.
Mr Armstrong, fresh from his dip in the sea, came in before he had finished dressing.
“Well, old fellow,” said he, “many happy returns! How are you—pretty fit?”
“I’m not sorry there’s a year between each,” said the boy.