Chapter XXXII

Rusk had gone in search of Denis: he wanted to tell the boy of this unexpected alteration in their plans--he had an idea it would make him very happy--but Denis was neither in his own room nor in the library. As Rusk approached the door of this latter apartment for the second time, it seemed to him that he caught a glimpse of a white face peering down from an upper landing, but, if he were right, it had vanished again too quickly for him to recognise it, or even to be quite sure that his imagination had not deceived him. He wondered what had happened to Amy, and what had been the result of the family council. To send him away with Denis? Well, that part of it at all events was highly satisfactory. He entered the room, which was lit only by the red glow of the fire, and, sitting down in an armchair, betook himself to planning out in detail an imaginary tour. He was so absorbed by these thoughts that he was unconscious of a figure standing near the door and hardly visible in the fitful light--a figure that had stolen into the room as noiselessly as a ghost, and that had even something ghostly in its appearance, in its attitude of dim, watchful stillness, of a kind of sadness and remoteness, as of one gazing into a lost world. The figure had been standing there for two or three minutes before Rusk at last looked up and beheld it. When he did so, he started and half rose to his feet, but it motioned to him to sit still, and he obeyed.

“I wanted to see you before to-morrow. I am going away to-morrow morning, and you are going abroad with Denis, aren’t you? I wanted to say good-bye.”

There was a note in this strange, sad voice, which Rusk had never heard before. It seemed to have had all life crushed out of it; it was like something that had been living and full of colour and was now white and dead. He made some vague sound of acquiescence. “I want you to forgive me before you go. I shall not see you again.”

Rusk did not meet her eyes. “There is nothing to forgive,” he muttered uneasily. “I am sorry.... I don’t know what to say.... I am sorry....”

They were both standing now, and he longed for her to go, but she did not go. The fire blazing up showed him for a few seconds the whiteness of her face. He felt desperately afraid that somebody might come in, and tried to think how he could get rid of her at once. Then she took a step toward him and he felt her kiss him on his cheek. He made no movement of any kind. The next moment she was gone. He had a tremendous sense of relief, yet now that he had seen the last of her he could afford to be more sympathetic, and behind the somewhat melodramatic character of her farewell he recognised a suffering that was at any rate sincere. All the same, he knew that he still did not like her--not even now, in this hour of her defeat, when she seemed so unhappy and so ill.

His thoughts turned to Denis, and he would have gone upstairs to look for him, had he not feared that he might possibly come across Amy again, and he really could not afford to risk that. It did not matter. Denis himself a few minutes later entered the room, sitting down quietly at the opposite corner of the hearth.

Rusk could see his strange, expressive face as the flicker of the fire passed across it. He watched him without at once beginning to tell him the news. Then he remembered that his pupil believed this to be their last evening together, and told him.

Denis came over and sat on the arm of his chair. He faced his tutor, a deep, happy light in his eyes, but Rusk could see that they had filled with tears. His tears did not fall, however, and his affection and gratitude--for he insisted on looking on the whole thing as being entirely due to his friend--shone out with a warmth and spontaneity that made Rusk almost ashamed of the little he had actually done. What he had done most of all had been very nearly to spoil everything, yet Denis was positively radiant, and Rusk saw that this long journey to be made with him was of all things what he most desired. He had looked upon it as too improbable, too delightful, ever to come true; he had never mentioned it, on that account, but he had sometimes dreamed of it--it all came out now, in the gladness of realisation. He chattered to Rusk about it, about what they would do together, what they would see--wonderful things, it appeared!--all the roads of the world lay before them! Then he seemed to notice that his companion was a little lacking in enthusiasm.

“What is the matter?” he asked more slowly. “Do you not want to go? You seem----” He came to a pause and Rusk answered quickly:

“My dear fellow, of course I want to go. There is nothing I want more. We shall have a tremendous time.”

But Denis was only partially reassured. “Why are you melancholy then?” he asked doubtfully.

“I’m not melancholy,” said Rusk, smiling, and laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Aren’t you sorry a little, yourself,” he inquired ingeniously, “to say good-bye for so long to everything here? We’ve been very happy, you know. And then, I may never be back again.”

“Of course you’ll be back,” cried Denis gaily. “You mustn’t be morbid, you know.” But he was satisfied with Rusk’s explanation, and re-embarked on a series of imaginary adventures, while Rusk, as he listened to his prattle, thought of something else.

* * * * *

It was in another tone, however, that the boy said to him a few hours later: “I’m glad we are going away.” He was silent after this, but not with any intention of eliciting a reply from his tutor, who had been unusually quiet all the evening. Denis himself had been wandering restlessly about, dropping disconnected remarks from time to time, in relation to their trip, and he was standing now before the window, his back turned to the room, his hands in his trousers pockets, his forehead pressed against the glass, gazing out into the darkness. Presently he pursued his thought further: “There is something strange about this place,” he said slowly, without turning round. “I don’t know what it is--but I can feel it--it is always hanging over us, and I am glad I am going to leave it behind.... There was a time when I liked it, I think--but it has changed, lately, and I don’t like it any more.”

These mysterious words were uttered with a good many pauses between them, and they reached Rusk as he sat before the fire in an attitude of extreme comfort, his legs stretched out to their full extent, his head leaning against a cushion, a pipe in his mouth. A faint sound of wind came and went in the trees with a peculiar, musical sighing.

“I should like to go somewhere where there is light--plenty of light. It is too dark here.... There is something strange about this place,” he said again. “There have been other lives lived here--I don’t know when--I don’t know how long ago; but they have altered it, they have infected it, they are still here in some unnatural, impossible way, they still have a kind of power.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what on earth you are talking about,” answered Rusk, phlegmatically, “nor where you pick up your ideas.”

Denis still gazed out straight before him. “I pick them up here,” he said. “They’re floating in the air here; and I want to get away from them....”

Rusk said nothing, not being in a mood for argument.

“They’re there--there,” the boy went on, pointing into the outer darkness. “They’re there; coming and going; not imaginary at all; they are as distinct as the touch of a fog on your cheek.... However, I know you hate talking about such things.”

“I don’t hate it,” Rusk said good-humouredly. “I don’t particularly like it; but that is all. It seems to give you an unending pleasure, so I suppose it is all right.”

“Does it?” He began to draw with his finger on the glass.

“Aren’t you forever producing such fancies?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure. I suppose I am, if you say so.”

There was a longish pause, and then he came over and sat down on the hearthrug at his tutor’s feet. “Why should I be like that?” he asked thoughtfully, looking into the red heart of the fire.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” said Rusk, fixing his cushion, which had slipped down too low.

“I suppose I must always have been that way. I remember a thing I did more than once when I was a kid, and which I can’t understand now at all....” He paused. “Shall I tell you?”

“Fire away,” said Rusk, simply.

But Denis stared at the red, glowing coals for some time before he began. The firelight flickered across his face, and touched his black, coarse hair. Rusk was knocking the ashes from his pipe when he commenced his tale. “There was an old, deserted, decaying house which I imagined was haunted. I had heard, I don’t remember how, that a murder had been committed there, and whether the story was true or false, I know this was really the reason why the house had been empty for so long. It stood in its own grounds at a good distance from the road, and two or three times when I managed to get away from my governess--I had a governess then, a Miss McAlpine--I came to it by myself in the late afternoon, when it was just beginning to get dark. It was a big pale house, a sort of fungus-colour, low and square, with a flat roof railed in by a lot of queer little pillars. Some of the pillars had been broken, and the doorstep was broken and all covered with dark green moss. The brick and plaster were mouldering away, and the knocker was thick with rust that came off on your hand. In all the windows were tall, dark, narrow shutters, closely fastened, but worn and decayed. One of them, on an upper floor, was broken, and by climbing a tree you could get a glimpse of a bare, unfurnished room, and it was in this room that I always imagined the murder had taken place. The kitchens and pantries were underground, and a grating ran round the house, and below the grating was a stone passage. Bushes of red barberry grew close up to the side of the house, and at the back and front were avenues of tall, black trees. I used sometimes to pull branches of the barberry and take them home with me. The garden had run wild; weeds and shrubs and flowers all grew together in a kind of jungle; the box had grown quite high, and the paths were almost hidden. The place had a queer, deserted look. It may have been only my fancy, but it seemed to me a kind of heavy shadow hung over it even in the broad sunshine. There was a smell of dampness and decay, and the house looked haunted. I can’t explain why, but the sight of it gave you a chill. There was something evil about it--a sort of blight. I used to be as frightened as anything when I came up to it along the winding paths. The sound of a twig snapping under my foot would make my heart bump so that I could hear the noise of it. And then suddenly, at a turn, the house would be there. The mere sight of it, so quiet and queer and gloomy, with its closed shutters, used to send a chill into my stomach. I imagined there might be a white, dreadful face watching me. I thought the door might be suddenly opened, or a hand laid on my shoulder. If the door _had_ opened, by any chance, I know I should have died. Every minute I was jerking my head round to see what was behind me. What I wanted to do was to run away as hard as ever I could, but what I did was just the opposite. Something seemed to drag me on till I had climbed the six steps to the hall-door. There I would stand for a minute or so, and then give a tug at the bell. The wires, I think, must have got entangled in some way, for they made the most hideous noise that sounded all over the house. Even though I knew it was coming it nearly killed me. Once I collapsed on the step and just rolled myself down, the way you do in a dream. Then it was over; I could go; I could run for my life, without looking behind.... It was queer--queer--! Why should anyone do such things?”

His voice died away. Rusk sat puffing at his pipe. “_I_ never did them,” he said stolidly.

“I know I was an awful little fool,” Denis apologised, “but I wasn’t very old at the time.” He ceased speaking, and his narrow eyes half closed, as if he were suddenly fallen into a dream.

“Where is the house?”

Denis looked up strangely, but he did not answer till Rusk had repeated his question. Then he said in a low, level voice, but with a curious suggestion of reluctance: “This is the house.”

Rusk stared. “This?”

“Yes. Papa bought it and had it repaired and altered--almost rebuilt. Another roof was put on, and everything was set right. We used to live over beyond the Birches.”

A silence followed, during which Rusk smoked on steadily. “I thought you had been living here much longer than that,” was all he at last said.

“No. Rebecca is the only one who belongs to the old days.”

“You mean she was here with the people who had the place before you?”

“No, not that. I mean that she was here, at the lodge. But there was nobody living in the house in her time.” Suddenly he leaned back his head and looked up. “What are you thinking about? Why are you so grave? You’ve hardly smiled once all the evening.” His own smile, as he spoke, had a kind of soft beauty. There was something very gentle and lovable about him.

“I’m not grave. I was only admiring the dramatic way in which you ended your tale.”

“It was quite unintentional. I wouldn’t have told you the ending at all, if you hadn’t asked me to. It wasn’t a nice thing to tell you. Perhaps there never was a murder; and, at any rate, if there was, it must have happened a long time ago.”

Rusk laughed. “Do you think you have frightened me?”

“No. But still it isn’t a very pleasant thing to know of. I once asked papa about it, but he got so angry that I never heard the answer. I am sure he would be furious if he knew I was talking about it now. Servants, you know, if they hear of such things, always insist on leaving, especially if it is particularly inconvenient that they should do so. Papa probably got the house cheap on account of what had happened, or at any rate on account of the story. What do you think of it all?”

“Do you mean what do I think of you?”

“Oh, I know that already. You think I’m morbid.”

Rusk blew out a cloud of smoke very deliberately, and watched it dissolve. “No, I shouldn’t exactly call it morbid. Most people appear to like frightening themselves. I confess I’ve never been able quite to understand why. Still they must enjoy it, or they wouldn’t do a lot of the things they do do. Of course, I don’t know that many of them would take just such drastic measures to get a thrill as you seem to have done. The majority, I imagine, limit themselves to somewhat milder doses--a chamber of horrors, or a melodrama, or some such stuff.”

“I’m not such a fool now, you know,” the boy assured him sweetly.

“I wonder?”

“You’re not very polite!”

“I suppose not. But----”

“But what?”

“Well, I’ve always felt a strong dislike for---- well, for all that kind of thing.”

“And you think I’m the other way?”

“Oh no, I should be sorry to believe that.”

“I don’t _really_ like such things,” Denis protested. “If I could, I would never think of them again.... I won’t think of them when we are away,” he went on softly. “They simply won’t be there. We’ll be too happy--or I shall be too happy, at any rate. I’m very happy now.”

Rusk smiled as he turned to him. “I don’t expect you’ll be disappointed.”

“I was miserable this afternoon, when I thought you were going away, and that perhaps I should never see you again. I tried not to realise it: I made up my mind not to think of it until after I had said good-bye to you, for I knew you would not have decided to go if it had not been absolutely necessary.”

“You’re a good boy,” said Rusk, laying his hand on his shoulder. “That’s what one means by friendship, I imagine--at any rate it is my idea of it.” To which remark Denis made no reply.

But he had begun to think. There were things happening all around him which he did not perfectly understand. He could weave them together in a kind of pattern, yet there were threads missing, and the pattern was blurred and broken. They sat on in silence, and from the red glow of the fire a deep delightful homeliness and peacefulness seemed to pour out into the room, filling it, making it beautiful with a rare and exquisite beauty that existed more for the spirit than the sense. He felt himself bathed by it; it washed up around him like a great warm, sunny sea; he felt happier than he had ever yet felt, and he wondered a little how it had all come about. Why was he to be allowed to go away with Rusk? Why was it that Rusk himself had been going away? Why was it that all had been changed at the last moment? He knew it had something to do with his sister; she was a part of his woven pattern, a vivid thread coming and going more frequently than any other. He remembered her in their room last night. Why had she come, and why had she been angry with him when he had awakened and recognised her? She had wanted to see Rusk alone, of course--to talk to him privately--but there were surely other places where they could have met! It was all strange enough, and there had been something strange, too, in the air, when he had come into the study yesterday evening and found them together. He had disturbed something, he had broken some mood which he had felt floating vaguely in the atmosphere. Rusk had been embarrassed; but why, again, unless there was by chance something between them, some understanding, something which Amy at all events wanted to bring about? He knew more concerning his sister than anyone imagined, more concerning everything. He had his sense of life, and of the moving forces of life; he had intuitions which covered more ground than the asking and answering of questions. He would never ask questions. Fortunately it was all none of his business, not even the pressure which he felt must have been brought to bear upon Rusk and which had so suddenly been removed. His business now was to taste life for himself as he had never tasted it, to develop a capacity for happiness which he felt springing up in every part of his being. It was as if he were emerging from dusk into sunlight: the strange shadows of his world, its darkness, its mists and dreams, were melting into something brighter and more healthy. He felt his hold on existence growing stronger, tremendously stronger; there had been a few hours that afternoon when it had died down, when it had almost flickered out altogether; but the afternoon was by this time infinitely remote.

And then he wondered if he should live long? The thought came to him without any apparent cause. He knew he had already been near death a year, somewhat more than a year, ago. At the time it had not frightened him, had not greatly interested him even; but he remembered someone coming into a hushed and dim room where he had been lying for many days very ill--someone talking to him kindly and soothingly--a clergyman--and then the same figure, quite unexpectedly, kneeling down beside his bed to pray for him. At the time it had stirred nothing deeper in him than a languid acquiescence; it had been unreal, faint, fainter even than a dream. All he had been conscious of was an immense lassitude, a weakness that had seemed to wrap him round like a vast tepid bath in which he floated without effort, without pain. He had got better, but only very slowly, because he had not cared whether he got better or not, because he had made no struggle to return to life. Yet he had always had an idea that life might be delightful--if--if everything were different. It was all so much a matter of personal relations, he had thought,--ideal, imaginary relations, impossible, impossible for him at all events, though everything depended on them. An immense capacity for caring for people had constituted, though he did not know it, his great stumbling-block. There was, in the spirit of this boy, an almost divine quality of unselfishness, of loyalty and affection, which no one, even of those who cared most for him--his mother, May, Rusk--had ever really fathomed. They had seen a part of it, but not all. They had seen a part of it, because it would have been impossible to live with him and be altogether blind to it--was it not outwardly there in his expression, his eyes?--but they had not seen it all, because they had been incapable of fully comprehending the subtlety of his mind. Rusk had come nearest to divining it, and it had suggested to him, indirectly, certain possibly false ideas, which are noteworthy, principally, because of their origin: such as, that the highest beauties are never the easiest to get at, and that the most beautiful thing in the whole world is perhaps intelligence.

And his pupil was intelligent, adorably intelligent. The fact was there now for anybody to see, as he sat on the hearth-rug in the flickering firelight. His eyes made his whole face--ugly, charming, though it might strike, and in the past had often struck, different observers as being--his beautiful, strange, narrow eyes made his whole face beautiful, with that suggestion of delicacy and depth which has nothing in the world to do with the skilful moulding of the potter’s clay.

The fire slumbered and flickered in the grate. There was something strangely intimate, something almost watchful, in the quiet of the room. It seemed to await some wonderful word as the lips of the sleeping princess in the palace awaited the kiss of the prince--or so it appeared to the boy, who had moved a little, and leaned his head back against the side of the chair, A curious idea came to him that he had reached a definite point in his life--the last page of a chapter, the last act of a drama. Yet what could very well be less dramatic than merely to sit here with his friend, following the waving flight of his own fancies, in this stillness that was built up of their friendship, of their trust and esteem? Only, oddly, unaccountably, he felt it to be dramatic, almost as much so as if he had himself invented a wonderful incident that was to follow. Rusk’s pipe could not make it prosaic, nor his leaning forward to strike a match against the top bar of the grate. It amused him to wonder how these thoughts would strike his tutor were he to put them into words, but they were not the kind of thoughts one ever puts into words; they were incommunicable; one had to have them for one’s self or one did not have them at all.

The fire broke and fell in with a slight noise; a tongue of flame shot up and quivered and danced like a spirit dancing on a mountain; the reflection quivered and danced upon the ceiling.

Rusk moved again in his chair, sinking lower into it, altering the position of the cushion against which his head leaned, and propping up his feet against a narrow ledge above the grate. He removed his pipe from his mouth. “Suppose you read something to me,” he said.

“I shall have to light the lamp if I do.”

“Well, repeat something to me--you know lots of things.”

“Just anything that comes into my head?”

“Yes; whatever you like.”

Denis was silent. His eyes half closed. When he spoke again his voice had dropped into a kind of low monotonous rhythm, a sort of unemphasised music that seemed to sway backward and forward, moved by the meaning of the words he repeated, by the passionate emotion that underlay them, as a branch of seaweed moves backward and forward with the rise and fall of the sea:

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember’d kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d
On tips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.”