Roger Ingleton, Minor Part 29

"It is necessary to be particular in money matters," said the captain, "especially where the money of others is involved. Perhaps you will check my figures, sir, and let me know if you agree in the result."

Mr Armstrong spent an afternoon painfully going over the agent's and banker's accounts, and satisfying himself that all was absolutely correct and in order. He countersigned the balance-sheet, and went out of his way to thank Captain Oliphant for taking so much of the labour as to save both him and Mrs Ingleton a great deal of time.

"Thank you," said the captain drily; "a compliment from Signor Francisco is worth receiving. But it is uncalled-for. Good afternoon, sir."

Mr Armstrong flushed, and screwed his gla.s.s violently in his eye.

"A civil, pleasant-spoken gentleman," said he to himself as he returned to his room.

A few days later, the day before the birthday, Captain Oliphant received a telegram couched in the following lordly terms--

"Arrive 5.30. Send trap to meet me.--Ratman."

He frowned to himself as he read it. The tone did not betoken peace.

It rather called to mind a good many unpleasant reflections, the chief of which was that Mr Ratman would find matters no further advanced as regarded the widow, the heir, or the tutor. The only comfort was that he could hardly make himself disagreeable about the bill.

The coachman was sent down with the dogcart; but if Mr Ratman expected any further demonstration of welcome, he was disappointed. Mrs Ingleton was in bed; Jill was dining at the Rectory; Roger and Armstrong were taking a long ride; Tom was poaching on the Maxfield preserves.

Only Captain Oliphant was at home.

"Oh, you're here to receive me, are you?" snarled the visitor. "How long has it taken you to organise this flattering reception, I should like to know?"

"I really have nothing to do with other persons' arrangements," said the captain. "If they happen to be out, it's not my concern."

"But it's mine. You ought to have sent the heir down to meet me--I've not seen him yet--and had those girls of yours here to give me afternoon tea. Where are they?"

The captain attempted to explain.

"That won't do for me," said the visitor, "not by any means. They should have been on the spot. When did the tutor leave?"

"He is still here."

"Still here!" said Ratman, with a curse. "Didn't I tell you he was to be packed off before I came?"

"You said a good many things, Ratman. I expected he would have gone a fortnight ago; but he can't be moved."

Ratman growled out a string of oaths.

"Get me some tea," said he, "and tell them to take my traps upstairs.

What time do we dine?"

"I was going to propose that we should dine together in my room at seven," said the captain.

"Not good enough. I'll dine with the lot of you at the big table. And now, about my bill."

Now was the captain's turn.

"What about it?" said he.

"What about it? I want the money for it--that's what's about it."

"All right, keep your temper. You shall have the hundred to-morrow when it's due."

Ratman glanced up at his host with a leer.

"Whose till have you been robbing now?" he said.

Captain Oliphant frowned.

"You haven't a very genial way about you, Ratman. Try a cigar."

"Oh, bless you," said he, "I ask no questions. It's all one to me, so long as it's solid pounds, shillings and pence."

"You wait till to-morrow, and it will be all right," said the Captain; "and meanwhile, my dear fellow, try to make yourself agreeable, and don't spoil sport by being unreasonably exacting. Ah, here's the tea!"

At dinner that evening, Mr Ratman found his only companions Captain Oliphant, Roger, and Mr Armstrong. The talk was difficult, the captain working hard to give his guest a friendly lead; Mr Armstrong trying to appear oblivious of the fact that he had knocked the fellow down twice for a cad; and Roger as head of the house, trying to be affable to a person whom he had expected to find detestable, and who quite came up to expectations.

As the meal went on Mr Ratman showed alarming symptoms of requiring no friendly lead to encourage his powers of conversation. Despite his host's deprecatory signals, he began to tell stories of an offensive character, and joke about matters not generally held to be amusing in a company of gentlemen. Captain Oliphant grew hot and nervous. Mr Armstrong leant back coolly in his chair, and kept his eye curiously on the speaker, an apparently interested listener. Roger, after the first surprise, flushed wrathfully and fidgeted ominously with his napkin ring.

He was nearly at the end of his tether, and an awkward scene might have ensued, had not Tom opportunely broken in upon the party, very hungry and flushed with a good afternoon's sport.

"Hullo, Ratman!" said he, greeting the visitor; "turned up again? Got over your black eye all right? I've told Armstrong to let me know when the next mill comes off, and I'll hold the sponge? Been telling them some of your rummy stories? I roared over that you told me about the--"

"Be quiet, Tom, and go and wash yourself before dinner," said his father.

"All right. But I say, Ratman, you'd better steer clear of my young sister Jill. She's got a downer on you, and so has--"

"Do you hear, sir?" shouted the father.

Somehow this genial interruption robbed Mr Ratman of his ideas, and stopped the flow of his discourse, much to the relief of the remainder of the party.

"Well?" said Mr Armstrong, when he and his ward met afterwards in the room of the latter, "how do you like our new visitor?"

"So badly that I am thankful for once that Rosalind has gone."

Mr Armstrong looked hard at his ward for a moment. Then he twitched his gla.s.s uncomfortably, and replied in an absent sort of way--

"Quite so--quite so."

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 pa.s.s 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.