Mr Brandram's abrupt summons to Mr Armstrong was not due to the
reappearance on the scene of the mysterious Robert Ratman. It was, in
fact, at the instance of Miss Rosalind Oliphant that the doctor sent his
message.
That young lady had returned a week ago to find everything at Maxfield
awry. Her father was gloomy, mysterious, and haggard. The rumour of
Mr Ratman's extraordinary claims had become the common property of the
village. Roger and his tutor were away, no one exactly knew where or on
what errand.
On the day following her return she walked across from the Vicarage to
visit her father.
He sat in the library, abstracted, pale, and limp. The jaunty, Anglo-
Indian veneer had for the time being dropped off, unmasking the worried
exterior of a chicken-hearted man.
At the sight of his daughter he pulled himself together, and crushed in
his hand the letter which he had been reading.
"Why, my child," said he, with unusual cordiality, "this is a pleasant
apparition. Cruel girl, to desert us for so long. We have hardly
existed without you, Roger and his tutor are away in France holiday-
making, while I remain here on duty with no one to cheer me up."
"Dear father," said Rosalind, kissing him, "how worried you look! What
is the matter? Won't you tell me?"
The father's eyes dwelt for a moment on her fair earnest face--so like
her mother's, so unlike a daughter of his--then they fell miserably.
"Worried?" said he. "Do I show it as plainly as all that? I flattered
myself I kept it to myself."
"Any one can see you are unhappy, father. Why?"
"I am in difficulties, my child, which you could not understand."
"I could. Do tell me."
"The fact is," said the captain, taking up his pen and dotting the
blotting-pad as he spoke, "that when on former occasions I have tried to
claim your sympathy I--well, I was not quite successful. I do not want
the pain of a similar failure again."
"I would do anything, anything to help you, if I could!"
He took her hand and held it in his.
"I am in great straits," said he. "An old Indian debt has followed me
here. I cannot meet it, and ruin stares me in the face. You know I am
a poor man; that I am living on other people--you have reminded me of
that often enough; that of all the money which passes my hands, scarcely
enough to live on belongs by right to me. You know all that?"
"Yes; I know that we are poor. How much do you owe?" she asked.
"I cannot say. Not long ago it was some hundreds, but by this time it
is nearer thousands. Nothing grows so rapidly as a debt, my child--
even," added he, with an unctuous drop of his voice, "a debt of honour."
"And will not your creditor wait?"
"My creditor has waited, but refuses to do so any longer. In a month
from now, my child, your father and those he loves best will be
paupers."
"Is there no way of meeting it? None whatever?"
"I cannot pay; I shrink from borrowing. The trust funds in my charge
are sacred--"
"Of course!" said she, astonished that he should name them in such a
connection. "Is there nothing else?"
"My creditor is Robert Ratman--or as he calls himself, and possibly is,
Roger Ingleton. As you know, he claims to be the elder brother of our
Roger, and I--"
"Yes, yes," said she; "Roger told me about that. He is your creditor?"
"He is. I got into his clutches in India, little guessing who he was,
and he is crushing me now. There is but one way, and one only, of
escaping him--and that way is, I fear, impossible, Rosalind."
"What is it?" said she, with pale face, knowing what was to come.
"He loves you. As my son-in-law he would be no longer my creditor."
She drew away her hand with a shudder.
"Father," said she, in a dry hard voice which startled him, "do you
really mean this?"
"Is it a time for jesting?" said he. "I ask nothing of you. I merely
state facts. You dislike him--there is an end of it. Only remember we
are not now dealing with Robert Ratman, but with an injured man who has
not had a fair chance. The good in him," continued the father, deluded
by the passive look on his daughter's face, and becoming suddenly warm
in his championship of the absent creditor, "has been smothered; but for
aught we know it may still be there. A wife--"
She stopped him with a peremptory motion of her hand.
"Please do not say anything more. Your debt--when does it fall due?"
"In a week or ten days, my child. Consider--"
She interrupted again.
"No more, please," she said, almost imploringly. "I will think what can
be done to help you in a week. Good-bye, dear father."
She stooped, with face as white as marble, and touched his forehead with
her cold lips.
"Loyal girl," said the father, when the door had closed behind her; "she
will stand by me yet. After all, Ratman has his good points--clever,
cheerful, good man of business--"
Here abruptly the soliloquy ended, and Captain Oliphant buried his face
in his hands, a miserable man.
To Rosalind, as she walked rapidly across the park, there came but one
thought. Her father--how could she help him? how could she save him,
not so much from his debts as from the depths into which they were
plunging him?
"My poor father," said she. "Only a man in desperate plight could think
of such a remedy. He never meant it. He does not really suppose--no,
no; he said he did not ask anything. He told me because I asked. Poor
darling father!"
And with something very like a sob she hurried on to Yeld.
She went straight to Dr Brandram's.
"Well, my dear young lady, it does one good to see you back," said he;
"but bless me, how pale you look."
"Do I? I'm quite well, thank you. Dr Brandram," said she, "do you
know anything about this Mr Ratman?"
The Doctor stared at this abrupt inquiry.
"Nothing more than you and every one else does--that he is a rank
impostor!"
"I don't mean that. I mean, where is he? I want to see him very much."
"You want to see him? He has vanished, and left no track. Is it
nothing I can help you in?"
"No," said she, looking very miserable. "I hoped you could have told me
where to find him. Good-bye, and thank you."
She departed, leaving the doctor sorely disturbed and bewildered. He
stood watching her slight figure till it disappeared in the Vicarage
garden, and then shrugging his shoulders, said, "Something wrong,
somewhere. Evidently not a case for me to be trusted with. It's about
time Armstrong came home."
Whereupon he walked over to the post office and dispatched the telegram
which, as the reader knows, procured Tom Oliphant the unspeakable
pleasure of a game of football on the following afternoon.
"Well," said the tutor to his friend in the doctor's parlour that
evening, "what's all this about?"
"That's what I'm not likely to know myself," said the doctor; and he
narrated the circumstances of Miss Oliphant's mysterious call.
"Humph!" said the tutor. "She wants to see him in his capacity of
Robert Ratman, evidently, and not of Roger Ingleton, major."
"So it seemed to me."
"And you say she had just come from visiting her father at Maxfield?"
"Yes."
"On the principle that two and two make four, I suppose we may conclude
that my co-trustee is on toast at present," said the tutor.
"And further, that that co-trustee being somebody's father, you are the
man to get him off it."
The tutor's face clouded, and his glass dropped with a twang from his
eye.
"Don't make that mistake again, Brandram--unless," and here his lips
relaxed into a quiet smile, "you mean by somebody, Miss Jill."
Dr Brandram read a good deal in this short sentence, and, like a good
friend, let the subject drop.
"As Tom has gone to the Rectory to dinner," said the tutor, "I take it
the neighbourhood for twenty miles round will know of my return by this
time. Meanwhile I must go back and possibly find out some thing from
Oliphant himself."
Captain Oliphant, however, was in no mood for confidences. The sudden
return of his co-trustee was extremely unwelcome at this juncture--
indeed so manifestly unwelcome that Mr Armstrong was convinced he had
come back not a day too soon.
The captain professed great annoyance and indignation at what he termed
the desertion of his ward, and demanded to know when the tutor proposed
to return to his duties.
"In fact, sir," said he, "I desire to know what brings you here in this
uncalled-for manner."
"Business, my dear sir," replied the tutor. "It need not incommode
you."
"Your proper place is with your pupil. Where have you left him?"
"In London, prosecuting a search which neither you nor I consider to be
very hopeful. I should not be surprised to see him back any day."
"And may I ask the nature of the very pressing business which forms the
pretext of this abrupt return? Am I to understand you and my ward have
quarrelled?"
"No, sir; we are excellent friends. It's getting late; I'll say good
night."
"By the way," said he at the door, "while I am here, there are a few
small matters connected with the accounts which seemed to my unpractised
eye, when I went through Pottinger's books, to require some little
elucidation. If you have an hour or so to spare to-morrow, I should
like to go through them with you. Good night."
He did not stay to notice the sudden pallor of his colleague's face, nor
did he overhear the gasp which greeted the closing of the door.
The captain did not go to bed that night. For an hour he sat motionless
in his chair, staring blankly into the fire; then, with a sudden access
of industry, he went to the safe, and producing account-books, bank
books, cheques, and other documents, spent some troubled hours over
their contents. That done, for another hour he paced the floor,
dismally smoking a cigar. Finally, when the early March dawn filtered
through the blinds, he quitted the house, and surprised Mr Pottinger by
an unexpected visit at breakfast-time. Thence he proceeded to the bank;
and after transacting his business there, returned easier in mind, but
exhausted in body, to the seclusion of his room at Maxfield.
The tutor meanwhile was abroad on horseback with Tom and Jill. The
three took a scamper over the downs, and returned by way of the shore.
Biding with Tom and Jill, as may be imagined, was a series of
competitive exercises, rather than a straightforward promenade. Tom was
an excellent rough horseman; and Jill, when Mr Armstrong was at hand,
was not the young lady to stick at anything. They had tried handicaps,
water-jumps, hurdles, and were about to start for a ding-dong gallop
along the mile of hard strand which divided them from Maxfield, when the
tutor's eye detected, perched a little way up the cliff, the figure of a
young lady sketching.
"I'll start you two," said he, "I scratch for this race. Ride fair,
Tom; and Jill, give the mare her head when you get past the boulders. I
shall go back by the downs. Are you ready now? Pull in a bit, Tom.
Now--off you go!"
Not waiting to watch the issue of this momentous contest, he turned to
where Rosalind sat, and reining up at the foot of her perch, dismounted.
She came down to meet him, palette in hand.
"Mr Armstrong, I am so glad to see you. I want to speak to you
dreadfully. Are you in a great hurry?"
"Not at all. Brandram told me you were in trouble, and I was wondering
when and where I should have the opportunity of asking how I can help
you."
He tied his horse to a stake, and helped her back to her seat on the
cliff.
There was an awkward pause, which he occupied by examining her picture
with a critical air.
"Do you like it?" said she.
"I don't know. I'm no great judge. Do you?"
"I did, before you came. I'm not so sure now. Do sit down and let me
say what I want to say."
The tutor, with a flutter at his breast, sat meekly, keeping his eyes
still on the picture.
"Mr Armstrong, it's about Mr Ratman."
"So Brandram said. What of him?"
Rosalind told her father's story, except that she omitted any reference
to the desperate proposition for satisfying his claims.
"I am sure it is a fraud, or blackmail, or something of the sort. For
all that, he threatens to ruin father."
"What does the debt amount to?"
"Father spoke of thousands."
"Does the creditor offer no terms?"
Rosalind flushed, and looked round.
"None; that is, none that can be thought of for a moment."
"I understand," said the tutor, to whom the reservation was explicit
enough.
"The difficulty is, that he has disappeared. If we could find him I
would--"
"You would allow me to go to him," said the tutor. "No doubt the
opportunity will soon come. He wants money; he is bound to turn up."
"But why should you be mixed up in father's troubles?" asked Rosalind
after a pause.
"Your father's troubles are yours; your troubles are--shall we say?--
Roger's; Roger's troubles are mine."
There was another long silence, during which Rosalind took up her
brushes and began work again on the picture, Mr Armstrong critically
looking on.
"Have you no troubles of your own, then, that you have so much room in
you for those of other people?" she said at last.
"I have had my share, perhaps. Your picture, with its wide expanse of
calm sea, was just reminding me of one of them."
"Tell me about it."
"It was years ago, when, before I was a singer in London-- You knew I
followed that honourable vocation once, don't you?"
"I have heard father speak of it. Why not?"
"No reason at all. But before that I worked at the equally honourable
profession of a common sailor on a ship between New York and Ceylon. At
that time I was about as wild and reckless as they make them, and
deluded myself into the foolish belief that I enjoyed it. How I had
come to that pass I needn't tell you. It wasn't all of a sudden, or
without the assistance of other people. I had a comrade on board--a man
who had once been a gentleman, but had come down in the world; who was
nearly as bad as I, but not quite; for he sometimes talked of his home
and his mother, and wished himself dead, which I never had the grace to
do."
"Are you making this all up for my benefit," asked Rosalind, "or is it
true?"
"The story would not be worth telling if it were not true," said Mr
Armstrong, screwing his glass into his eye and taking a fresh survey of
the picture. "One very hot summer we were becalmed off Colombo, and lay
for days with nothing to do but whistle for a wind and quarrel among
ourselves. My mate and I kept the peace for a couple of days, but then
we fell out like the rest. I forget what it was about--a trifle,
probably a word. We didn't fight on deck--it was too hot--but jumped
overboard and fought in the water. I remember, as I plunged, I caught
sight, a hundred yards away, of an ugly grey fin lying motionless on the
water, and knew it belonged to a shark. But I didn't care. Well, we
two fought in the water--partly in spite, partly to pass the time.
Suddenly I could see my opponent's swarthy face become livid. `Good
God!' he gasped; `a shark!' and quick as thought he caught me by the
shoulders and pushed me between him and the brute. I heard it swish up,
and saw it half turn with gaping jaws. In that moment I lived over my
life again, with all its folly and crime, and for the first time for
years I prayed. How it happened I cannot tell; the shark must either
have made a bad shot at me or else I must have ducked instinctively, for
I remember feeling the scrape of his fin across my cheek and being
pushed aside by his great tail. Next moment my mate's hands let go
their grip of me and there was a yell such as I pray I may never hear
again. When at last they hauled me on board I was not the same man who
three minutes before had dived into the water. That was the scene your
picture reminded me of, Miss Oliphant. You have told me one of your
troubles, and I have told you one of mine, which makes us quits. But my
horse is getting fidgety down there; I must look after him. Good-bye."
Mr Armstrong was a little surprised, when he came to go through the
accounts with his co-trustee that afternoon, to find that he must have
been mistaken in his previous supposition that they were not all correct
and straightforward. Everything appeared quite plain and properly
accounted for, and he agreed with the figures, rather abashed to feel
that, after all, he was not as acute a man of business as he had
flattered himself. Mr Pottinger and the captain rallied him about his
deserted mares'-nest, and bored him with invitations to go through all
the items again, to give him a chance of proving them wrong. He
declined with thanks, and signed the balance with the best grace he
could summon.
"Odd," said he to himself, as he strode home after the interview;
"either you must be very clever or I must be very stupid. I should
greatly like to know which it is."