Chapter XII

On Sundays if the Bracknels got up late they went to bed early. At eleven o’clock only the light in Rusk’s room was still burning--the rest of the house was wrapped in darkness, though not wholly in slumber. May was awake, and Denis too was awake--awake and dreaming; the day, in fact, was ending as it had begun. There was a difference in one respect. In the morning he had been tireless, happy, eager; now an infinite lassitude had fallen upon him, and the sunlight of the morning was as far away as though it had never been. He felt weary and lonely, his mouth was drooped and tired, and as he sat up in bed hugging his knees and gazing out through the window, he seemed to be watching against the silent darkness the tragedy of his life slowly weaving itself out in strange and changing scenes. A reaction from the excitement of the past few hours had set in; he felt a kind of weariness of all things bad and good. He could have hidden his face on the pillow and cried himself to sleep; he could have welcomed the end of life as coming with the ending of the day. He was unhappy; he had never been very happy it now seemed to him, though usually he had been able to forget everything but the actually passing moment. He had no illusions about himself, about what had been, about what was now, or about what was still to come. He had no illusions about the people who formed his world, about life itself, so far as he knew it, about anything. He knew that he was unsound physically; that mentally also he was different from others, from healthy, normal people like Rusk, for instance--probably unsound there, too!--that even in appearance he was peculiar. He had read love tales that had fired his imagination for an hour, but he knew that no one would ever love _him_ in that way. He was too sickly and queer. Probably he would be well-off some day, for his father was a very rich man, but he did not see that even this would make any great difference. After all, he had everything he wanted now--everything of that kind; and what did it mean to him? There was nothing that suggested itself to his ambition as particularly attractive; there was nothing he wanted to do; there was nothing he wanted to be. He was tired, tired to death....

His hands caught at the crumpled sheets and he shut his eyes tightly; his whole face was expressive of an infinite dejection. At length he could bear his loneliness no longer; he felt he must speak to some one, and got out of bed and softly opened his door. There was only one person to whom he _could_ speak. He went along the passage and knocked at the door of the next room. He heard Rusk moving inside and then the handle turned.

Rusk stood there in the lamplight, holding a book, his finger still keeping the place, while he looked at the figure before him, barefooted, and clad in a light sleeping-suit, with his coarse black hair straggling over his forehead, and his curious narrow eyes unnaturally bright.

“I want to speak to you,” Denis said. “I knew you would be up reading. Do you mind? I will go away if you don’t want me.”

“But why aren’t you asleep? Of course I don’t mind, only you’d better go back to bed, and not stand there catching cold.”

“But I want to talk to you.”

“All right; I’ll come with you.” He laid down his book and followed Denis to his own room. There, when his pupil was once more under the bedclothes, he sat down beside him. “What is it?” he asked. “You led us all a nice dance to-day. I ought to be rowing you up about it.”

“I wanted to tell you that I was there when you came to look for me,” said Denis, suddenly reminded of this incident, and seizing it as an excuse for having disturbed his tutor. “I was angry at your coming; I had always kept it as a kind of secret place. I was hiding in the bushes watching you when you called my name.”

“Oh, you were hiding, were you?” said Rusk, good-humouredly. “I had a strong suspicion that you weren’t very far away. And you were angry with me for going to your den? But, my dear fellow, I didn’t go till well on in the afternoon, when everyone was beginning to wonder what on earth had happened to you. Such considerations don’t trouble you, I suppose?--your people imagining you have dropped into the river, or broken your leg, or been run over by a motor, or perhaps all three?”

“I didn’t think about them. At any rate, it wasn’t the first time I had been out; and so far as I saw nobody looked particularly anxious when I came back. You all looked very comfortable.”

“And what were you up to? Why didn’t you get hungry?”

“I did. That’s what brought me home.”

“Brought you home at half-past six in the evening!”

“Well, I wasn’t doing any harm. What’s the use of bothering about it?”

“And why can’t you go to sleep now?”

“I don’t know; but it’s not because I have a bad conscience.... I feel melancholy and rotten--that is all.”

“What about?”

“About everything--everything that concerns myself.”

“My dear boy, you’re tired.”

“I knew you would say that.... Well, it doesn’t matter.”

“Shall I read to you?”

He shook his head. “I don’t feel like reading. Tell me about what you did when you were a boy.... Do you think if I had known you then that we should have been friends?”

Rusk doubted it, but he only said, “Why not?”

“We’re good friends now, at any rate: that’s one comfort.”

He lay quiet for a long time, and presently, thinking that he had fallen asleep, Rusk went back on tip-toe to his own room.

But Denis was not asleep. He had realized that what he needed was beyond his companion’s power to give him--that was all. Rusk had always been sympathetic and kind, but the boy felt instinctively that he would never perfectly understand him. He was too different. His tutor’s spirit was in many ways really younger than his own. Probably there was nothing on earth that could ever give him what he sought.

He wondered if he should see anything of Rusk later on--when they had ceased to be master and pupil? He doubted it. Rusk would have his profession to follow. Yet his tutor was the only friend he had ever found.

The moon had risen above the trees and a silvery light lay across the floor. He watched it, and gradually he grew drowsy, and at last he fell asleep. It seemed to him that he was awakened by a slight sound--his name softly spoken. He opened his eyes and half sat up in bed. It was the voice he had heard in the woods; or was he dreaming again? The room was as light almost as it was by day. The white radiance of the moon was pouring in, and as he looked at it, it gradually grew denser and turned to something pale and cloudy--and then--and then to something else.... There was a figure bending over him, a pale, dim form that leaned down and took him in its arms. He felt a kind of coldness pass into his body with a curious, shivering joy; he felt a kiss upon his cheek and then a longer kiss upon his mouth: he lay in a half-conscious swoon....

When he again opened his eyes it was broad daylight and he had an idea that it was late. He was languid and loath to get up, and he turned in his bed and then lay still. He began to remember things. What was it that had taken place last night? Had it been a dream? He felt a curious reluctance to inquire into it too closely....

Outside, on the roof, just above his window, a bird was chirping. He lay and listened to it. He did not try to think very clearly, and presently he slipped back again into sleep.