Read Ebook: Roger Ingleton Minor by Reed Talbot Baines

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Ebook has 2666 lines and 90372 words, and 54 pages

years ago."

"Ah!" replied the tutor, chirruping encouragement to the horses.

"Roger Ingleton's life twenty years ago was a life to make an insurance company cheerful," said the doctor.

"What changed it?"

"He had a scape-grace son. They fell out--there was a furious quarrel-- and one day the father and son--ugh!--fought, with clenched fists, sir, like two--two costermongers!--and the boy did not get the best of it. He left home, and no wonder, and was never heard of since. Faugh! it was a sickening business."

"That explains what he was saying this afternoon about a son he had once. He was telling me about it when he was struck."

"Ay! that blow has been owing him for twenty years. It is the last round of the fight, Armstrong. But," continued he, "this is all a secret. No one knows it at Maxfield. I doubt if your pupil so much as imagines he ever had a brother."

"He has never mentioned it to me," said the tutor.

"No need that he should know," said the doctor. "Let the dead bury his dead."

"Is he dead, then?"

"Before the Squire married again," said the doctor, "the poor boy went straight to the dogs, and they made an end of him. There! let's talk of something else. I don't know why I tell you what has never passed my lips for twenty years."

"I wish you hadn't," said Mr Armstrong shortly, whipping up his horses.

The two men remained silent during most of that cold, laborious journey. The doctor's few attempts at conversation fell flat, and he took refuge finally in his pipe. As for the tutor, he had his hands full, steering his team between the lane-side ditches, and thinking of the wrecked life that lay waiting at the journey's end.

It was nearly ten o'clock before the dim lights of Maxfield Manor showed ahead. The snow on the home-drive was undisturbed by the wheels of any other vehicle. The mother and son had not returned, at any rate, yet.

As the two men entered, the hall was full of scared domestics, talking in undertones, and feeding on the occasional bulletin which the privileged Raffles was permitted to carry from the sick-room to the outer world.

At the sight of the doctor and Mr Armstrong, they sneaked off grudgingly to their own territories, leaving Raffles to escort the gentlemen to the scene of the tragedy.

Old Roger Ingleton lay on the sofa, with eyes half-closed, upturned to the ceiling; alive still, but no more. Cups and wine-glasses on the table near told of the housekeeper's fruitless experiments at restoration, and the inflamed countenance of that ministering angel herself spoke ominously of the four hours during which the sufferer's comfort had been under her charge.

The tutor, after satisfying himself that his mission had not been too late, retired to the fireplace, where he leaned dismally, and watched through his eye-glass the doctor's examination.

After a few minutes, the latter walked across to him.

"Did you say Mrs Ingleton and the boy will not be back till the morning?"

"Probably not."

"If so, they will be too late; he will not last the night."

"I will fetch them," said Mr Armstrong quietly.

"Good fellow! you are having a night of it. I shall remain here; so you can take whichever of my horses you like. The mare will go best."

"Thanks!" said the tutor, pulling himself together for this new task.

Before he quitted the room, he stepped up to the couch and bent for a moment over the helpless form of his employer. There was no recognition in the glazed eyes, and the hand, which he just touched with his own, was nerveless and dead already.

With a silent nod to the doctor Mr Armstrong left the room, and was presently once more ploughing on horseback through the deep snow.

It was well this man was a man of iron and master of himself, or he might have flagged under this new effort, with the distressing prospect awaiting him at his journey's end.

As it was, he urged doggedly forward, forgetful of the existence of such an individual as Frank Armstrong, and dwelling only on the dying man behind and the mourners ahead.

The clock was chiming one in Castleridge Church when at length he reined up his spent horse at the stable entrance to the Grange. Here for a weary quarter of an hour he rang, called, and whistled before the glimmer of a lantern gave promise of an answer.

To the stable-boy's not altogether polite inquiry, Mr Armstrong replied, "Mr Ingleton of Maxfield is ill. Call Robbins, and tell him to put the horses in immediately, to take his mistress and Mr Roger home; and get some one in the house to call them. Don't delay an instant."

This peremptory speech fairly aroused the sleepy stable-boy, and in a few minutes Mr Armstrong was standing in the hall of the Grange talking to a footman.

"Take me up to his room," said he, pushing the bewildered servant before him up the staircase.

The man, not at all sure that he was not in the grip of an armed burglar, ascended the stair in a maze, not daring to look behind him.

At the end of a corridor he stopped.

"Is that the room? Give me the lamp! Go and tell your master to get up. Say a messenger has come with bad news from Maxfield; and look here--put some wraps in the carriage, and have some coffee or wine ready in the hall in ten minutes."

The fellow, greatly reassured by this short parley, went off to fulfil his instructions, while the tutor, with what was very like a sigh, opened the door and entered his pupil's bedroom.

Roger Ingleton, minor, lay sound asleep, with his arms behind his head and a smile on his resolute lips. As the light of the lamp fell on his face, it looked very pale, with its frame of black curly hair and the deep fringe of its long eyelashes; but the finely-chiselled nostrils and firm mouth redeemed it from all suspicion of weakness. Even as he slept you might judge this lad of nineteen had a will of his own hidden up in the delicate framework of his body, and resembled his father at least in this, that his outer man was too narrow a tenement for what it contained. Almost at the first flash of the light his big black eyes opened, and he started to a sitting posture, bewildered, scared.

"Oh! why, hullo, Armstrong! what's the matter?"

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Roger, but--"

The boy bounded out of bed and stood facing his tutor in his night- dress.

"But I want you to dress as sharp as you can. Your father is unwell."

"Unwell?" repeated the boy, shivering. "You do not mean he is dead?"

"No--no; but ill. He has had a stroke. Dr Brandram is with him. I thought it better not to wait till the morning before fetching you."

"Mother--does she know?"

"Some--yes. Go to your mother and tell her so. The carriage will be ready in five minutes."

In five minutes the boy and his mother descended to the hall, where already their host and hostess were down to bid them farewell. It was difficult to imagine that the slender dark-eyed handsome woman, who stood there and looked round for a moment so white and trembling and bewildered, was really the mother of the young man on whose arm she leant. Even under a blow such as this Mrs Ingleton belied her age by a decade. She was still on the sunny side of forty. You and I might have doubted if she was yet thirty.

Captain Curtice and his wife had the true kindness to attempt no words as they sympathisingly bade their visitors farewell. When the hall-door opened and let in the cold blast, the poor lady staggered a moment and clung closer to her son's side. Then abandoning composure to the wintry winds, she found her best refuge in tears, and let herself be led to the carriage.

The tutor helped to put her in, and looked inquiringly at his pupil.

"Come in too, please," said the latter; "there is room inside."

Mr Armstrong would fain have taken his seat beside Robbins on the box. He hated scenes, and tears, and tragedies of all sorts. But there was something in his pupil's voice which touched him. He took his place within, and prayed that the moments might fly till they reached Maxfield.

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