CHAPTER II

A DIFFICULT POSITION

CAPTAIN FORTESCUE was in good time for his train, and secured a corner seat in the carriage. He bought a book at the stall and opened it when the train started, but he read only a few pages. He was wondering why his father had sent for him, and what explanation of the telegram he would receive on his arrival.

When he was last at home, he had thought his father was aged and altered, and therefore he had suspected that illness was the reason of his summons. Yet, from the letter received the day before, he had evidently been out as usual, and it contained no hint of his feeling indisposed at the time of writing it. Was there any other cause which had led to this unexpected and sudden call to return home at once?

Between Captain Fortescue and his father there was nothing whatever in common. Their ideas, their way of looking at things, their habits of life were totally and diametrically opposed. His father was a wealthy man, but not even his son could stretch his filial affection sufficiently far to call him a gentleman.

Mr. Fortescue was a man who had risen, people were accustomed to say, when they spoke of him. And yet he had not risen. His position in life was altered; instead of being a miner, obliged to work hard for his daily bread, he had become a landed proprietor. How this had been accomplished, his son had not the remotest idea; but he had never risen. He was exactly the same uneducated, vulgar man that he had been in his days of hard work and poverty. He could barely read or write, both were done in his own fashion, and he never made the slightest effort to improve in either. He cared for little but eating and drinking: he domineered over his servants and dependants at one moment, and spoilt them the next: he was lavish in his expenditure at times, and at other times would haggle over a halfpenny: he had not even learnt to speak King's English; his talk was the talk of the mine; even his groom could speak more grammatically, and could express himself with a less provincial accent.

No one realized all this more than Mr. Fortescue's own son; and yet it gave him a pang even to harbour the thought of it for a moment. For he had been a good father to him in many ways. He had shouted at him and blustered at him from his youth up, but he had never grudged him anything. He had lavished money in the most prodigal way on his son's education. He had sent him to the most expensive preparatory school that could be found, when he was only seven years old. From thence, the boy had gone to Eton, and in due course had passed into Sandhurst. No nobleman's son had ever had more spent upon him. The best coaching that London could produce had been his; he had been given every opportunity, every possible advantage.

Fortescue had been gazetted to a cavalry regiment, and his pay consequently was far from adequate for his expenses; but no money that he needed was withheld from him. A handsome allowance was supplemented by numerous cheques, to supply the wherewithal for various outgoings in the way of travelling or pleasure. The Honourable Evelyn Berington, Lady Earlswood's younger son, who had been his friend throughout the whole of his Sandhurst course, had far less money to spend than he had. And all this made Fortescue feel that, whatever his father might be, and however much his lack of refinement might jar upon him, it was his bounden duty to give him the affection and respect due from a loyal and grateful son. Besides which, Kenneth Fortescue was a man of honest religious belief. He knew the requirements of the Fifth Commandment. He know that, so far as it was possible for him to honour his father, that honour must be readily and cheerfully given.

And yet, at times, the incongruity of his position was keenly realized by him. He felt it very strongly on this particular December night, when he was being carried away swiftly into the darkness north of Birmingham. That was the real reason which prevented him from reading as he journeyed on; he was too busy doing battle with himself; he was fighting against his natural repugnance to all that was common or vulgar, his innate shrinking from the home where refinement of feeling or expression found no place. He was deeply grateful to his father for all that he had done for him in the past; and yet, that night, he was inclined to think that it had been a terrible mistake. He had been educated out of his proper position; his friends and acquaintances were all men moving in an utterly different circle; his sympathies and interests and attractions were in a sphere which he could never have any right to enter. If Lady Earlswood had seen his father, she would never have dreamt for a moment of inviting him to her Christmas house-party or of reckoning him amongst her friends.

Captain Fortescue was a most honourable man, and he felt sometimes as if he were a walking impostor. There had been times when he had suddenly felt it incumbent on him to tell them the truth, and had even been on the very verge of doing so. As they had walked together by the sea, under the blue Italian sky, he had, more than once, been on the point of blurting out the fact that he was the son of a man who had once been a common miner.

He had, however, at the last moment, withheld from making this disclosure; not so much because he was afraid of what they might think of him, or of how they might treat him, but because he had felt that it would be hardly treating his father fairly, were he to reveal what that father had told him in the strictest confidence. If he, by his honest toil, had earned the money to place himself in a position of affluence, and moreover to give his son the education of a gentleman, was it right that that son should publish his father's humble origin to the world?

Thus time had drifted on, and he had moved in the highest circles, and had been received into the best society, and no one knew anything of his father beyond the fact that he lived at Ashcliffe Towers, near Sheffield, had a large estate, and was evidently a very wealthy man.

When, two hours later, the train ran into the large Sheffield station, his thoughts were still pursuing the same unpleasant and difficult course. He called a hansom and was soon driving rapidly through the busy streets and out towards the country beyond. As he went, he wondered again what he should find at his journey's end, and whether his father would come out as usual to welcome him on his arrival. After about half an hour's drive, the cab turned in at a lodge gate, and he could see, through the fir trees in the avenue, the lights in the windows of his home.

An old butler came to the door in answer to the cabman's ring. He had lived with his father for years, and had known him from a boy. Mr. Fortescue objected to keeping many servants; they were only a trouble, he said, and he did not care to have a young jackanapes of a footman to stand and watch him when he ate. Elkington had white hair, and his hand trembled as he took the bag from the driver. He did not speak until the man had driven off, and then he said:

"I'm glad you've come, sir!"

"What's the matter, Elkington? Is my father ill?"

"Very ill, sir," said the old man. "Come into the library, sir; the doctor's upstairs now."

"That bag's too heavy for you, Elkington! It makes you pant: let me take it."

"No, no, sir; I can manage all right. I'm getting a bit short of wind, that's all."

"I heard from my father yesterday; he seemed quite well then."

"Yes, sir; and he was all right yesterday, and when he got up this morning. He came down to breakfast as usual; he always will have it at eight, you know. Well, he'd just sat down and was beginning, when there come a big ring at the front door bell. It's Watson's duty to go to the door when I'm waiting, but she never came down, and just as I was getting the master his bacon, the bell rings again. Well, he shouted and he stormed—beg your pardon, sir; you know how he carries on; you'll forgive me saying it."

"I know, Elkington; go on."

"So I put the bacon down, sir, and I went myself to see who was there. It was a boy with a telegram; he held out the yellow envelope to me, and he stood waiting while I took it in to the master.

"'What have you got there, Elkington?' he said. And when he saw what it was, he turned the colour of the table-cloth—that ghastly and white.

"'Take it out of the envelope, Elkington,' he says, 'my hand trembles so.'

"So I took it out and handed it to him, and he just looked at it one minute, and then he fell back in his chair in a dead faint, and the telegram slipped down on the floor under the table. I was that frightened, sir, I didn't know what to do. And then Watson came running in to know what was the matter. She do give herself airs, that woman, sir! Well, if you'll believe me, she swept me aside, and she took the master in her charge, and no one should touch him or do anything for him but herself. I said I would go for the doctor, and she said, 'No, I shouldn't, and he would be all right presently.'

"By-and-by the telegraph boy comes out of the hall and asks, 'Is he wanted, and is there any answer?' So I went out and sent him off; and I ran in the front and told Roger, the garden-boy, to fly off for Dr. Cholmondeley. Even Watson was glad when he came, for we thought he was dead, but the doctor brought him round; it was weakness of the heart, he said, and he was to be kept very quiet."

"I'm glad you sent for me, Elkington."

"It was the master did that, sir. I went in his room to take some hot water, and I heard him say to Watson: 'Send for the Captain,' he says. 'No, sir, you keep quiet,' she says; 'you don't want the Captain here; you're all right now.' You'd never believe, sir, how that woman lords it over him! Why, none of the rest of us dares to contradict the old gentleman; but, ever since she came here, she's been worming herself into his favour, and making herself that useful to him he thinks he can't get on without her. But this time she was not going to get her own way. I heard what she said, and I went up to the bed and said: 'Shall I wire for the Captain, sir?' and the old gentleman nodded his head, and Watson looked as if she would kill me. She doesn't like you, doesn't Watson, sir."

"I know she doesn't, and I don't like her."

"So I sent off the wire, and I'm glad you've come, sir; you weren't long getting off."

"No, Elkington, but I only just caught the express. Is that the doctor coming down?"

"I believe so, sir; I'll bring him in here."

The next minute the doctor entered. He was a middle-aged man, with a quiet, dignified manner which inspired confidence in his patients.

"Captain Fortescue, I believe."

"Yes, doctor; I am very anxious to hear what you think of my father."

"It's a case of shock," said the doctor. "He received some bad news, I gather, this morning, and that is a great strain upon a man of his age. The action of the heart is weak—in fact, it had nearly ceased altogether. He has pulled round a little now, but there may be a relapse at any time."

"Perhaps I had better not see him to-night."

"Under ordinary circumstances I should most certainly have agreed with you, but he is most anxious to see you. He heard the cab stop, and he asked if you had come. Watson advised him to wait a little. Good faithful soul that Watson, I should imagine!"

Captain Fortescue did not answer.

"You don't like her?"

"No, I don't, but I really can hardly tell you why. Then you think I had better go up?"

"Yes, if he insists upon seeing you. Did it ever occur to you that he might have some special reason for wishing to see you, something that he wanted particularly to say to you or to ask you?"

"No. Has he, do you think?"

"I fancy so. I may be wrong, mind you, but I've a great idea that it is something more than mere affection that has made him so anxious for you to arrive. I have been in several times to-day, and each time he has asked if the Captain has come, and whether I thought he would be able to speak to the Captain when he did come."

"Well, I shall see when I go up," said Captain Fortescue. "I don't know in the least what it could be."

A knock at the door interrupted them.

"Come in," said the Captain.

A middle-aged woman entered. She was short in stature, with sharp features and a receding chin, and was heavily marked by smallpox.

"Has my father sent for me, Watson?"

"No, sir, he does not feel well enough to see you now; he will see you after dinner."

With these words, she left the room.

"Better so," said the doctor, as he took leave; "better for you and better for him."