Roger Ingleton, Minor Part 56

"No one of that name was here. I had English, one or two--Bardsley, and Jackson, and Smith; he was a gentleman, but he was not young. He was fifty years, Mr Smith--a good servant. Also there was Monsieur Callow."

"Callot!" exclaimed Roger, starting at the familiar name. "Was he an Englishman?"

"Surely. C-a-l-l-o-w--Callow. Ah! he was a droll one, was Monsieur Callow, and a gentleman too. I never had a billiard-marker like him.

He could play any man, and lose by one point; and he could recite and sing; and oh, he eat so little! Every one laughed at him; but he laughed little himself, and thought himself too good for his fellow- waiters."

"What was he like?" asked Roger, flushing with excitement.

"A fine young man, with long curly hair, and whiskers and a beard. He was afraid of nothing, tall and strong. Ah me! I have seen him knock a man down at a blow. He was a wild, reckless man, was Monsieur Callow; but a good servant, and oh! a beautiful billiard player. He always knew how to lose a game, and oh! it made my table so popular!"

"Had he any friends in Paris?"

"Yes; he went often to see his father--so he told me--an actor who gave lessons. I never saw _Monsieur le pere_."

"How long did he stay with you?"

"Callow? For five years he served me well. Then there was a _fracas_, a quarrel; I remember it now. An English officer was here, and played with him, and was beaten. 'Twas the only time I ever knew Callow win a game; but he lost his temper this time, and won. Then Milord called him a cheat, and without a word Monsieur Callow knocked him down. The police came, and Monsieur Callow knocked _him_ down. Then he put on his hat and walked, and I never saw him more. He always said he would go to sea, and I think he would keep his word. Ah, a telegram! 'Tis long since telegrams came to my hotel. _Helas_! not for me; for you, Monsieur."

It was from Armstrong.

"Shall be with you, ten to-morrow morning."

The three weeks which had pa.s.sed at Maxfield had been terrible.

The discovery of Captain Oliphant's body at the foot of the cliff, with the clear traces of a struggle on the brink above, had created a profound sensation at Maxfield and the country round.

For a day the air was full of wild conjectures of suicide, incident, foul play; until the last-named theory was finally confirmed by the discovery in the tightly-clenched hand of the dead man of a fragment of a promissory note bearing the signature of Robert Ratman.

To the tutor, as he held the paper in his hand, everything became startlingly clear. This was the last act of a tragedy which had been going on for months; and now that the curtain had abruptly fallen, he could not help, in the midst of this horror, owning to a sense of thankfulness, for the sake of others, that the troubled career of his rival and enemy had stopped short at a point beyond which nothing but disgrace and scandal and misery awaited it.

From that disgrace it was his business now, by every means in his power, to shield the innocent brother and sisters who still honoured the dead man as their father.

Many a grievous task had been thrown upon the tutor in his day, but none cost him more effort than this, of breaking to the children of his enemy the news of their father's death. But he went through it manfully and ably.

Rosalind, on whom the blow fell hardest, because on her spirit the burden of her father's cares had lain heaviest, rose, with a heroine's courage, to the occasion, and earned the tutor's boundless grat.i.tude by making his task easy. She said little; she understood everything. She remembered nothing but the father's love--his old caresses and confidences and kindnesses. The tears she shed blotted out all the anxieties and misgivings and heart-sinkings of recent weeks. All that remained was crowded with love.

Tom, dulled and stunned, took the story in gradually, and got used to it as he went along. He came and slept at night in the tutor's room, and felt how much worse things might have been had it not been for the stalwart protector who put hope and cheer into him, and filled the blank in his heart with st.u.r.dier views of life than the boy had ever harboured there before.

As for Jill, for a week all was blackness and darkness to her. She felt deserted--lost. She cried herself to sleep at night, and by day wandered over the house, peeping into her father's room, and half expecting to see him back. Then her gentle spirit took courage, and she looked up, and her eyes lit with comfort and hope on Mr Armstrong.

Everything could not be lost if he was there; and when he sometimes came, and took her little hand in his, and invited her to be his companion in his rides, or sought her out in her lonely walks and made her teach him the haunts of her favourite flowers or read to him from her favourite books, she began to think there was still some joy left on earth.

"Dear Mr Armstrong," she said one day when, by invitation, she came to make afternoon tea for him in his room, "you are so awfully kind to me!

If I was only as old as Rosalind, I would marry you."

This rather startling declaration took the tutor considerably aback. He laughed and said--

"You are very nice as you are, Jill."

"You think I'm silly, I know," said she, "but I'm not. Would you hate me if I was older?"

"I don't think I could hate you, not even if you were a hundred."

"I love you ever so much," said she. "Please don't believe what Tom said about the Duke. I don't like him a millionth part as much as you."

"Poor Duke!" said the tutor.

"Really and truly. And oh, Mr Armstrong, if you would only wait I would love to marry you some day! How soon shall I be big enough?"

This was getting embarra.s.sing. But the tutor was in a tender mood, and had it not in his heart to thwart the little Leap-year maid. "Time flies fast," said he; "you'll be grown up before we know where we all are."

She sighed.

"I know you'd sooner have Rosalind. But she doesn't care for you as much as I do. She likes Roger best; but I don't; I like you fifty thousand times better. Would it be an _awful_ bother, Mr Armstrong?"

"What! to have Jill for my little wife?" said he. "Not a bit. If ever I want one, she's the first person I mean to ask."

With this declaration Jill had to rest content. It solaced her sorrow vastly; and even though Rosalind, to whom she confided the compact under a pledge of secrecy, scolded and laughed at her alternately, she felt a new prospect open before her, and set herself resolutely to the task of growing up worthy of Mr

Armstrong's affection.

But amid all these troubles and hopes at Maxfield, two questions were on every one's lips: "Where was Roger? Where was Robert Ratman?"

Roger had written once after reaching Paris, a letter full of hope, which had arrived a few days before Captain Oliphant's death. He had succeeded at last in tracking the man Pantalzar to a low lodging in the city, and from him had ascertained somewhat of the history of the Callot family. They had lodged with him at Long Street in London, where they had given lessons in acting, elocution, and music; and Pantalzar clearly remembered the lad Rogers as a constant visitor at the house, partly in the capacity of a promising student of the dramatic art, and partly as a hopeless lover of his preceptor's wayward daughter.

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 a.s.sociations 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 subst.i.tutes 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."

The tutor walked across to the folding-doors and surveyed the dingy room with critical interest.

"And that must have been little more than twelve years ago," said he.