Roger Ingleton, Minor Part 31

"No, but they may require the a.s.sistance of Robert Ratman to keep them from being ashamed of their own father, Mr Armstrong."

The tutor glared through his gla.s.s. He understood this threat.

"What of that?" said he.

"Merely," said Mr Ratman, "that it depends pretty much on you whether they are to continue to believe themselves the children of an officer and a gentleman, or of a--a fugitive from justice. That's the position, Mr Tutor. The responsibility rests with you. If you choose to go, I shall not undeceive them; if you don't--well, it may suit me to open their eyes; there!"

The tutor inspected his man from top to toe in a dangerous way, which made the recipient of the stare decidedly uncomfortable. Then, pulling himself together with an effort, Mr Armstrong coolly inquired, "Have you anything more to say?"

"That's about enough, isn't it? I give you a week."

"Thanks, very much," said Mr Armstrong, as he turned on his heel.

Roger, after a long ramble in the park with his fair tormentor, returned about noon, flushed and excited.

"Armstrong, old man," said he, "what's to be done? She's kind to me-- horribly kind; but whenever I get near the subject she laughs me off it, and holds me at arm's length. What's the use of my name and my money and my prospects, if they can't win her? If I jest, she's serious, and if I'm serious, she jests--we can't hit it. What's to be done, I say?"

"Patience," said the tutor; "it took several years to capture Troy."

"All very well for an old bachelor like you. I expected you'd say something like that. I know I could make her happy if she'd let me try.

But she won't even let me tell her I love her. What should you do yourself?"

Mr Armstrong coloured up at the bare notion of such a dilemma.

"I think I might come to you and ask your advice," said he.

Roger laughed rather sadly.

"I know," said he. "Of course it's a thing one has to play off one's own bat, but I sometimes wish I were anything but the heir of Maxfield.

She might care for me then."

"You can disinherit yourself by becoming a criminal, or marrying under age--"

"Or dying--thank you," said the boy. "You are something like a consoler. I know it's a shame to bore you about it, but I've no one else to talk to."

"I'd give my right hand to help you, old fellow," said the tutor; "but, as you say, I'm absolutely no use in a case like this."

"I know. Come upstairs and play something."

"By the way," said the tutor, as they reached the study, "I've something to give you. You may as well have it now."

And he went to his desk and took out an envelope.

"It will explain itself," said he, handing it to the boy.

He sat down at the piano, and wandered over the keys, while Roger, too full of his own cares to give much heed to the missive in his hands, walked over to the window and looked out across the park. The afternoon sun was glancing across the woods, and gleaming far away on the sea.

"If only she would share it with me," thought he to himself, "how proud I should be of the dear old place. But what good is it all to me if she condemns me to possess it all myself?"

Then with a sigh he turned his back on the scene, and let his eyes fall on the letter.

He started as he recognised the dead hand of his father in the inscription--

"_To be given unopened into the hands of Roger Ingleton junior, on his twentieth birthday_."

His breath came fast as he broke the seal and looked within. The envelope contained two enclosures, a doc.u.ment and a letter. The latter, which he examined first, was dated scarcely a fortnight before the old man's death, written in the same trembling hand as the words on the envelope.

"My dear son," it said, "this will reach you long after the hand that writes it is still and cold. My days are numbered, and for better or worse are rapidly flying to their account. But before I go, I have something to say to you. Read this, and the paper I enclose herewith.

If, after reading them, you choose to destroy them, no one will blame you; no one will know--you will do no one an injury. You are free to act as you choose. What follows is not a request from me, still less a command. It is a confidence--no more."

Roger put down the letter. His head was in a whirl. He only half heard the notes of the tutor's sonata as they rose and fell on his ear.

Presently, with beating heart, he read on--

"You had a brother once--a namesake--whom you never saw, and perhaps never heard of. You never mourned his loss, for he was gone before you were born. Twenty-two years ago he was a boy of 16--a fine, high- spirited Ingleton. Like a fool, I thought I could bring him up to be a fine man. But I failed--I only spoiled him. He grew up wild, self- willed, obstinate--a sorrow to his mother, an enemy to his father. The day came when we quarrelled. I accused him unjustly of fraud. He retorted insolently. In my pa.s.sion I struck him, and he struck back. I fought my own boy and beat him; but my victory was the evil crisis of my life, for he left home vowing he would die sooner than return. His mother died of a broken heart. I had to live with mine; too proud to repent or admit my fault. Then came a rumour that the boy was dead. I never believed it; yet wrote him off as dead. Now, as I near my end, I still discredit the story; I am convinced he still lives. In that conviction, I have made a new will, which is the paper enclosed. As you will see, it provides that if he should return before you attain your majority, he becomes sole heir to the property; if not found before that time, the will under which you inherit all remains valid. You are at liberty to keep or destroy this new will as you choose. Nor, if you keep it, are you bound to do anything towards finding your lost brother.

But should you desire to make inquiries, I am able to give you this feeble clue--that, after leaving home, he went to the bad in London in company with a companion named Fastnet, but where they lived I know not.

Also, that the rumour of his death came to me from India. I can say no more, only that I am his and your loving father,--

"Roger Ingleton."

Towards the end the writing became very weak and straggling, and what to the boy was the most important pa.s.sage was well-nigh illegible. When, after reading it a second time, he looked up, it was hard to believe he was the same Roger Ingleton who, a few minutes since, had broken the seal of that mysterious letter. The tutor, lost in his music, played on; the sun still flashed on the distant sea, the park still stretched away below him--but all seemed part of another world to the heir of Maxfield.

His brother--that wild-eyed, fascinating, defiant boy in the picture-- lived still, and all this place was his. Till that moment Roger had never imagined what it would be to be anything but the heir of Maxfield.

Every dream of his for the future had Maxfield painted into the background. He loved the place as his own, as his sphere in life, as his destiny. Was that a dream after all? Were all his castles in the air to vanish, and leave him a mere dependant in a house not his own?

He took up the doc.u.ment and read it over. It was brief and abrupt.

Referring to the former will, it enjoined that all its provisions should remain strictly in force as if no codicil or later will had been executed until the 26th of October, 1886, on which day Roger Ingleton the younger should attain his majority. But if on or before that day the elder son, whom the testator still believed to be living, should be found and identified, the former will on that day was to become null and void, and the elder son was to become sole possessor of the entire property. If, on the contrary, he should not be found or have proved his ident.i.ty by that day, then the former will was to hold good absolutely, and the codicil became null and void.

Such, shorn of its legal verbiage, was the doc.u.ment which Roger, by the same hand that executed it, was invited, if he wished, to destroy.

Perhaps for a moment, as his eyes glanced once more across the park, and a vision of Rosalind flitted across his mind, he was tempted to avail himself of his liberty. But if the idea endured a moment it had vanished a moment after.

He went up to the piano, where Mr Armstrong, still in the clouds, was roaming at will over the chords, and laid his father's letter on the keyboard.

"Read that, please, Armstrong."

The tutor wheeled round on his stool, and put up his gla.s.s. Something in the boy's voice arrested him.

He glanced first at his pupil, then at the paper.

"A private letter?" said he.

"I want your help; please read it."

The tutor's inscrutable face, as he perused the letter carefully from beginning to end, afforded very little direction to the boy who sat and watched him anxiously. Having read it once, Mr Armstrong turned back to the first page and read it again; and then with equal care perused the codicil. When all was done, he returned them slowly to the envelope and handed it back.

"Well?" said Roger, rather impatiently.

"It is a strange birthday greeting," said Mr Armstrong, "and comes, I fear, from a mind unhinged. Your father had more than one delusion near the end. But on the night before he died he told me this elder son of his was dead. This was written before that."