Roger Ingleton, Minor

by Talbot Baines Reed

“Sit down, Armstrong,” said he, when presently his dim eyes and ears became aware of the tutor’s presence. “There’s no need to light the lamp, and you need not trouble to talk, for I should not be able to hear you.”

The tutor shook the eye-glass out of his eye, and seated himself at a corner of the hearth in silence.

Mr Ingleton, having thus prepared his audience, looked silently into the fire for another half-hour, until the room was dark, and all the tutor could see was a wan hand fidgeting uneasily on the arm of the chair.

Then with a weary effort the Squire turned his head and began, as if continuing a conversation.

“I have not been unobservant, Armstrong. You came at a time when Roger needed a friend. So far you have done well by him, and I am content with my choice of a tutor. What contents me more is to think you are not yet tired of your charge. I rather envy you, Armstrong. I came to grief where you succeeded. I once flattered myself I could bring up a boy—he happened to be my son, too—but—”

Here the old man resumed his gaze into the fire, and the room was as silent as the grave for a quarter of an hour. The tutor began to be uneasy. Perhaps he had yearnings for his piano and Schumann. For all that, he sat like a statue and waited. At last the Squire moved again.

“I dreaded a repetition of that, Armstrong. Had he lived—” Here he stopped again abruptly.

The tutor waited patiently for five minutes and then screwed his eye-glass into his eye.

As he did so, the old man uttered a sound very like a snore. Mr Armstrong gave an imperceptible shrug of his shoulders and inwardly meditated a retreat, when the sound came through the darkness again. There was something in it which brought the tutor suddenly to his feet. He struck a match and hastily lit a candle.

Squire Ingleton sat there just as he had sat an hour ago when the tutor found him, except that the hand on the chair-arm was quiet, and his chin sunk a little deeper in his chest. The tutor passed the candle before the old man’s face, and then, scarcely less pallid than his master, rang the bell.