After a year, his troubles in the latter capacity were abruptly cut short by the illness and death of the young lady; a blow which staggered the parents and broke up the establishment at Long Street. It failed, however, to drive Rogers from the party, who, with a romantic loyalty, attached himself to the fortunes of the old people, and became like a son to them in their distresses.
Eventually the bereaved family migrated to Paris, whence Pantalzar had once heard from the father, who had found employment as stall manager of a third-rate theatre in one of the fauxbourg. Hither Roger tracked him, and after dogged search, often baffled, sometimes apparently hopeless, discovered some one who remembered the reputed son of the old couple, who, as far as this witness could remember, was thought to have hired himself out as billiard-marker in an hotel in one of the southern suburbs of the city.
Thus far he had succeeded when he wrote home. What transpired subsequently, and how he dropped for a season out of all knowledge, the reader already knows.
The suspense occasioned by his sudden disappearance, as may be imagined, added a new element of wretchedness to the situation at Maxfield. Telegrams, letters, inquiries, alike failed to discover his whereabouts or the secret of his silence. As post after post came and brought neither message nor tidings, the hearts of the watchers grew sick. To the tutor especially, tied as he was to the scene of the tragedy, those three weeks were a period of torture. He urged Dr Brandram to go over to Paris to make inquiries; but the Doctor, after a fortnight of fruitless search, returned empty-handed.
Mr Armstrong thereupon resolved at all hazards to quit his post and go himself. He knew something of Paris. He had old associations with the city, and once, as the reader has heard, possessed acquaintances there. If any one could find the boy, he thought he could; and with such trusty substitutes as the Doctor and Mr Headland, who remained at Yeld, to leave behind, he felt that he might, nay rather that he must, venture on the journey.
It was on the morning of his departure, as he was waiting for the trap to carry him to the station, that Roger’s telegram was put in his hand:—
“Come—have been ill—better now—Hotel Soult—no news.”
Twenty-four hours later the tutor was at his pupil’s side, with a heavy weight lifted from his heart, and resolved, come what would, not to quit his post till he had the truant safe back at Maxfield.
The news he brought with him served to drive from Roger’s mind all thoughts of continuing his sojourn a day longer than was necessary to recover his strength.
“It seems pretty certain,” said he, “that my brother, when he left here, returned to England, and probably went to sea very soon after. There is no object in staying here. Look in that room there, Armstrong. That’s the billiard-room in which he spent most of his time, and that’s the very table on which he let himself be beaten regularly for the good of the house.”