Roger Ingleton, Minor Part 1

Roger Ingleton, Minor.

by Talbot Baines Reed.

CHAPTER ONE.

A SUMMONS.

The snow lay thick round Maxfield Manor. Though it had been falling scarcely an hour, it had already transfigured the dull old place from a gloomy pile of black and grey into a gleaming vision of white. It lodged in deep piles in the angles of the rugged gables, and swirled up in heavy drifts against the hall-door. It sat heavily on the broad ivy- leaves over the porch, and blotted out lawn, path, and flowerbed in a universal pall of white velvet. The wind-flattened oaks in the park were become tables of snow; and away over the down, to the edge of the cliff itself, the dazzling canopy stretched, making the gulls as they skimmed its surface in troubled flight appear dingy, and the uneasy ocean beyond more than ever grey and leaden.

And the snow was falling still, and promised to make a night of it. At least so thought one of the inmates of the manor-house as he got up from his music-stool and casually looked out of the fast-darkening window, thanking his stars that it mattered little to him, in his cosy bachelor- den, whether it went on a night or a fortnight. This complacent individual was a man at whom one would be disposed to look twice before coming to any definite conclusion respecting him. At the first glance you might put him down for twenty-five; at the second, you would wonder whether you had possibly made a slight miscalculation of twenty years.

His keen eyes, his smooth face, his athletic figure, his somewhat dandified dress were all in favour of the young man. The double line across his brow, the enigmas about his lips, the imperturbable gravity of his features bespoke the elder. Handsome he was not--he was hardly good-looking, and the nervous twitch of his eyebrow as it came down over his single eye-gla.s.s constantly disfigured him. What was his temper, his character, his soul, you might sit for a month before him and never discover. But from his deep ma.s.sive chest, his long arms, his lithe step, and the poise of his head upon his broad shoulders, you would probably conclude that his enemy, if he had one, would do well not to frequent the same dark lane as Mr Frank Armstrong.

This afternoon, as he draws his curtain and lights his lamp, he is pa.s.sably content with himself and the world; for he has just discovered a new volume of Schumann that takes his fancy. He has no quarrel, therefore, with the snow, except that by its sudden arrival it will probably hold his promising pupil, Master Roger, prisoner for the night at Castleridge, where he and his mother have driven for dinner. The tutor has sufficient interest in his work to make him regret this interruption of his duties, but for the present he will console himself with Schumann. So he returns to his music-stool--the one spot in creation where he allows that he can be really happy--and loses himself in a maze of sweet sound.

So engrossed is he in his congenial occupation, that he is quite unaware of the door behind him opening and a voice saying--

"Beg pardon, sir, but the master wants you."

Raffles, the page-boy, who happened to be the messenger, was obliged to deliver his summons three times--the last time with the accompaniment of a tap on the tutor's shoulder--before that _virtuoso_ swung round on his stool and demanded--

"What is it, Raffles?"

"Please, sir, the master wants you hinstanter."

Mr Armstrong was inclined to compliment Raffles on his Latin, but on second thoughts (the tutor's second thoughts murdered a great number of his good sayings) he considered that neither the page nor himself would be much better for the jest, and spared himself.

He nodded to the messenger to go, and closing the piano, screwed his eye-gla.s.s in his eye, ready to depart.

"Please, sir," said Raffles at the door, "the governor he's d.i.c.ky to- day. You'd best have your heye on 'im."

"Thank you, Raffles; I will," said the tutor, going out.

He paced the long pa.s.sage which led from his quarters to the oak hall, whistling _sotto voce_ a bar or two of the Schumann as he went; then his manner became sombre as he crossed the polished boards and entered the pa.s.sage beyond which led to his employer's library.

Old Roger Ingleton was sitting in the almost dark room, staring fixedly into the fire. There was little light except that of the flickering embers in his dim, worn face. Though not yet seventy, his spare form was bent into the body of an old, old man, and the hands, which feebly tapped the arms of the chair on which they rested, were the worn-out members of a man long past his work. He saw little and heard less; nor was he ever to be met outside the confines of his library, or, in summer weather, the sunny balcony on to which it opened. Only when he talked were you able to realise that this worn-out body did not belong to a t.i.thonus, but to a man whose inward faculties were still alert and vigorous, whatever might be said of his outward failure. Could he but have been accommodated with the physical frame of a man of fifty, he had spirit enough to fill it, and become once more what he was twenty years ago, a complete man.

"Sit down, Armstrong," said he, when presently his dim eyes and ears became aware of the tutor's presence. "There's no need to light the lamp, and you need not trouble to talk, for I should not be able to hear you."

The tutor shook the eye-gla.s.s out of his eye, and seated himself at a corner of the hearth in silence.

Mr Ingleton, having thus prepared his audience, looked silently into the fire for another half-hour, until the room was dark, and all the tutor could see was a wan hand fidgeting uneasily on the arm of the chair.

Then with a weary effort the Squire turned his head and began, as if continuing a conversation.

"I have not been un.o.bservant, Armstrong. You came at a time when Roger needed a friend. So far you have done well by him, and I am content with my choice of a tutor. What contents me more is to think you are not yet tired of your charge. I rather envy you, Armstrong. I came to grief where you succeeded. I once flattered myself I could bring up a boy--he happened to be my son, too--but--"

Here the old man resumed his gaze into the fire, and the room was as silent as the grave for a quarter of an hour. The tutor began to be uneasy. Perhaps he had yearnings for his piano and Schumann. For all that, he sat like a statue and waited. At last the Squire moved again.

"I dreaded a repet.i.tion of that, Armstrong. Had he lived--" Here he stopped again abruptly.

The tutor waited patiently for five minutes and then screwed his eye- gla.s.s into his eye.

As he did so, the old man uttered a sound very like a snore. Mr Armstrong gave an imperceptible shrug of his shoulders and inwardly meditated a retreat, when the sound came through the darkness again.

There was something in it which brought the tutor suddenly to his feet.

He struck a match and hastily lit a candle.

Squire Ingleton sat there just as he had sat an hour ago when the tutor found him, except that the hand on the chair-arm was quiet, and his chin sunk a little deeper in his chest. The tutor pa.s.sed the candle before the old man's face, and then, scarcely less pallid than his master, rang the bell.

"Raffles," said he, as the page entered, "come here, quick. The Squire is ill."

"I said he was d.i.c.ky," gasped the boy. "I knowed it whenever--"

"Hold your tongue, sir, and help me lift him to the sofa."

Between them they moved the stricken man to the couch, where he lay open-eyed, speechless, appealing.

"We must get Dr Brandram, Raffles."

"That'll puzzle you," said the boy, "a night like this, and the two 'orses at Castleridge."

"Is there any chance of your mistress returning to-night?"

"Not if Tom Robbins knows it. He's mighty tender of his 'orses, and a night like this--"

"Go and fetch the housekeeper at once," said the tutor.

Raffles vanished.

Mr Armstrong was not the man to lose his head on an emergency, but now, as he bent over the helpless paralytic, and tried to read his wants in the eyes that looked up into his, he found it needed a mighty effort to pull himself together and resolve how to act.

He must go for the doctor, five miles away. There was no one else about the place who could cover the ground as quickly. But if he went, he must leave the sufferer to the tender mercies of Raffles and the housekeeper--a prospect at which Mr Armstrong shuddered; especially when the latter self-important functionary entered, talking at large, and proposing half a dozen contradictory specifics in the short pa.s.sage from the door to the sick-couch.

Mr Armstrong only delayed to suggest meekly that his impression was that a warm bath would, under the circ.u.mstances, be of benefit, and then, not waiting for the contemptuous "Much you know about it" which the suggestion evoked, he set off.

It was no light task on a night like this to plough through the snow for five miles in search of help, and the lanes to Yeld were, even in open weather, none of the easiest. But the tutor was not the kind of man to trouble himself about difficulties of that sort, provided only he could find the doctor in, and transport him in a reasonable time to Maxfield.

As he pa.s.sed the stables, he glanced within, on the off-chance of finding a horse available. But the place was empty, and not even a stable-boy could be made to hear his summons.

So he tramped out into the road, where the snow lay a foot deep, and with long strides carved his way through it towards Yeld. Half a mile on he overtook a country cart, heavily laden and stuck fast in the snow.

"Ah! Hodder," said he to the nonplussed old man in charge, "you may as well give it up."

"So I are without your telling," growled the countryman.

"Very well; I want your horse for a couple of hours. The Squire's ill, and I have to fetch the doctor."

And without another word, and heedless of the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of the bewildered Hodder, he began to loose the animal's girths.