Roger Ingleton, Minor Part 5

"Mr Armstrong," said she, "I hope for all our sakes you see your way to accept the duties my dear husband requested of you."

"I have written to Mr Pottinger to notify my consent."

"I am so glad. I shall have to depend on you for so much. It will be so good for Roger to have you with him. His father was always anxious about him--most anxious. You know, Mr Armstrong," added she, "if there is any--any question as to salary, or anything I can do to make your position here comfortable, you must tell me. For Roger's sake I am anxious you should be happy here."

"Thank you, madam. I am most comfortable," said Mr Armstrong, looking anything but what he described himself. He had a detestation of business interviews, and wished profoundly he was out of this.

"I am sure you will like Captain Oliphant," said the widow. "I have not seen him for many years--indeed, since shortly after Roger was born; but we have heard from him constantly, and Mr Ingleton had a high opinion of him. He is a very distant cousin of mine, you know."

"So I understand."

"Poor fellow! his wife died quite young. His three children will be quite grown up now, poor things. Well, thank you very much, Mr Armstrong. I hope we shall always be good friends for dear Roger's sake. Good-bye."

Roger, as may be imagined, had not waited a whole week before ascertaining his tutor's intentions.

He had been a good deal staggered at first by his father's will, with its curious provisions; but, amongst a great deal that was perplexing and disappointing in it, he derived no little comfort from the fact that Mr Armstrong was to be one of his legal protectors.

"I don't see, you know," said he, as he lounged against his tutor's mantelpiece one evening. "I don't see why a fellow of nineteen can't be trusted to behave himself without being tied up in this way. It's my impression I know as well how to behave now as I am likely to do when I am twenty-one."

"That is a reflection in advance on my dealings with you during the next two years," said the tutor with a grin, as he swung himself half round on the piano-stool so as to get his hand within reach of the keys.

"I don't mind _you_," said the boy, "but I hope this Cousin Edward, or whoever he is, won't try to 'deal' with me too."

"I am informed he is virtue and amiability itself," said the tutor.

"If he is, all serene. I'll take my walks abroad with one little hand in yours, and the other in his, like a good boy. If he's not, there'll be a row, Armstrong. In antic.i.p.ation of which I feel in the humour for a turn at the foils."

So they adjourned into the big empty room dedicated to the manly sports of the man and his boy, and there for half an hour a mortal combat raged, at the end of which Roger pulled off his mask and said, panting--

"Where did you learn foils, Armstrong? For a year I've been trying to run you through the body, and I've never even yet scratched your arm."

"I fenced a good deal at Oxford."

"Ah! I wonder if I shall ever go to Oxford? This will cuts me out of that nicely."

"Not at all. How?"

"Well, you can't be my tutor here while I'm an undergraduate there, can you? I'd sooner give up Oxford than you, Armstrong."

"Kind of you--wrong of you too, perhaps. But at twenty-one you'll be your own master."

"I may not be in the humour then. Besides, I shall have my hands full of work here then. It's hard lines to have to kick my heels in idleness for two years, while I've so many plans in my head for improving the place, and to have to ask your leave to spend so much as a halfpenny."

"It is rather tragic. It strikes me, however, that Cousin Edward will be the financial partner of our firm. I shall attend to the literary part of the business."

"And poor mother has to umpire in all your squabbles. Upon my word, why couldn't I have been treated like a man straight off, instead of being washed and dressed and fed with a spoon and wheeled in a perambulator by three respectable middle-aged persons, who all vote me a nuisance."

"In the first place, Roger Ingleton, I am not yet middle-aged. In the second place, I do not vote you a nuisance. In the third place, if you stand there much longer like that, with your coat off, you will catch your death of cold, which would annoy me exceedingly."

This was one of many conversations which took place. It was difficult to say whether Mr Armstrong took his new duties seriously or not. He generally contrived to say something flippant about them when his pupil tackled him on the subject, but at the same time he rarely failed to give the boy a hint or two that somewhere hidden away behind the cool, odd exterior of the man, there lurked a very warm corner for the fatherless heir of Maxfield.

For the next week or two the days pa.s.sed uneventfully. The manor-house settled down to its old routine, minus the old man who had once been its master. The villagers, having satisfied themselves that things were likely to be pretty much the same for them under the new _regime_ as the old, resumed their usual ways, and touched their caps regularly to the young Squire. The trampled gra.s.s in Yeld churchyard lifted its head again, and a new inscription was added to the family roll on the door of the vault.

"Armstrong," said the heir one day, as he stood inspecting this last memorial, "I have a good mind to have my brother's name put on here too."

This was the first time the tutor had ever heard the boy mention his brother. Indeed, he had, like Dr Brandram, doubted whether Roger so much as knew that he had had a brother.

"What brother?" he inquired vaguely.

"Oh, he died long ago, before I was born. He was the son of father's first wife, you know," pointing to the inscription of Ruth Ingleton's name. "He is not buried here--he died abroad, I believe--but I think his death should be recorded with the others. Don't you?"

"Certainly," said the tutor.

"I must try to find the exact date," said Roger as they walked away.

"My father would hardly ever talk about him; his death must have been a knock-down blow to him, and I believe it broke his mother's heart.

Sometimes I wish he had lived. He was called Roger too. I dare say Brandram or the Vicar can tell me about it."

Mr Armstrong was a good deal concerned at this unexpected curiosity on the boy's part. He doubted whether it would not be better to tell him the sad story at once, as he had heard it from the doctor. He disliked secrets extremely, especially when he happened to be the custodian of them; and painful as the discovery of this one might be to his ward, it might be best that he should know it now, instead of hovering indefinitely in profitless mystery.

It was, therefore, with some sense of relief that, half-way home, he perceived Dr Brandram in the road ahead. The doctor was, in fact, bound for Maxfield.

"By the way, doctor," said the tutor, determined to take the bull by the horns, and glaring at his friend rather fiercely through his eye-gla.s.s, "we were talking about you just now. Roger has been telling me about an elder brother of his who died long ago and thinks some record of the death should be made on the vault. I think so too."

"I was saying," said Roger, "my father never cared to talk about it; so, except that he died abroad, and that his name was the same as mine, I really don't know much about him. Did you know him?"

The doctor looked uncomfortable, and not altogether grateful to Mr Armstrong for landing him in this dilemma.

"Don't you think," said he, ignoring the last question, "as the Squire did not put up an inscription, it would be better to leave the tomb as it is?"

"I don't see that," said the boy. "Of course I should say where he really did die. Where was that, by the way?"

"I really did not hear. Abroad, I understood your father to say."

"Was he delicate, then, that he had to go away? How old was he, doctor?"

"Upon my word, he was so seldom at home, and, when he was, I saw so little of him, that my memory is very hazy about him altogether. He can't have been more than a boy of fifteen or sixteen, I should say. By the way, Roger, how does the new cob do?"

"Middling. He's rather lumpy to ride. I shall get mother to swop him for a horse, if she can. I say, doctor, what was he like?"

"Who?--The cob? Oh, your brother! I fancy he was a fine young fellow, but not particularly good-looking."

"At all like me?"

"Not at all, I should say. But really, as I say, I can recall very little about him."

The doctor uttered this in a tone which conveyed so broad a hint that he did not relish the subject, that Roger, decidedly mystified, desisted from further inquiries.

"What on earth," said the former to Mr Armstrong, when at last they had reached Maxfield and the boy had left them, "what on earth has put all this into his head?"