Chapter XXXVI

On going downstairs they found Miss Birch and Miss Anna in the drawing-room. The two ladies had come over to convey their sympathies to their old friend, who, with May, was talking to them now.

Rusk had not seen Mrs. Bracknel since the morning. She was seated with her hands folded in her lap, in profile against a dark green curtain, and her thin, sallow face, hollow-cheeked, the skin drawn close over the delicate skull, seemed already altered by the shock she had received. He heard Miss Birch offering to put Denis up, and Mrs. Bracknel thanking her; she would be very glad if they would. Amy would arrive that night probably, and her uncle and two of her cousins would be with her; and there were more people expected to-morrow. The funeral had been arranged for an early hour on Thursday morning. Alfred had been very thoughtful and was looking after everything.

Rusk had sent off a wire telling his people that they might expect him on the following day, but he had now decided to alter his plans. He crossed the room and sat down on a vacant chair close to Miss Anna, and began to talk to her in a low voice. He asked her if she could put him up as well as Denis. The boy was in a very nervous state, he told her, and if she could arrange to take them both he would feel much more comfortable about him. He had intended going home, but he really did not like to leave Denis unless it was absolutely necessary that he should do so. Of course Miss Anna assented, and it was decided--Rusk himself proposed it--that they both of them should go back with her and her sister when they left. Having settled this much, and asking Miss Anna to settle the rest, he went upstairs and packed a bag with such things as they would need. When he came down again the Miss Birches were already saying good-bye. He waited for them in the hall and he felt distinctly relieved when, a minute or two later, they were all walking down the avenue together under the dark bare trees. He had a dim sense of something evil--something evil and strange, though indefinite--floating in the air--a horror, a kind of spiritual blight, which he hoped to shake from him when he left the house behind. It was a house he now wished never to enter again. Too much that was unpleasant had happened there; it was for him as well as for Denis beginning to be haunted; a kind of fixed, unnatural gloom had settled upon it.

How long had he been living there? A few months only, yet they seemed to him like years! Into that brief time so much had been crowded that, when he looked at it, it stretched back and back as if to the beginning of his life. But, once he had Denis safely away, he would have broken with it for ever. The very hour they embarked on the steamer would mark the commencement of a new period. It seemed to him now inconceivable that he should ever really have left without Denis. When one’s life became bound up with another life so closely as that, was separation really possible?--just when it appeared to be inevitable would not something _always_ happen to prevent it? There were unseen, unknown forces at work, moving, at any rate, if not controlling, destiny. It seemed to him, in his present mood, that the only power in the world lay in these unseen, unknown forces. _They_ were reality. He had lost faith in appearance, in matter as he had hitherto conceived of it. The solid ground he trod upon might dissolve at any moment, the whole aspect of things change, but spirit was eternal. It was as if he were on the point of awakening from some heavy, stupid slumber, as if the curtains of sleep already trembled to the pull that would draw them back, as if he could catch even now, _through_ the curtain, the dimmed, softened glow of the flaming vision beyond.

And all this time he was walking beside Miss Harriet Birch, with Denis and Miss Anna some forty or fifty yards ahead; and they had not yet reached the lodge. When Miss Harriet spoke to him he answered in monosyllables, but after they had passed out of the grounds and on to the open road beyond, he endeavoured to shake off the mysterious burden which oppressed him, and to talk a little of his plan for taking the boy abroad. Very soon, however, that topic, too, slipped unnoticed away; quite unconsciously he relapsed into silence, and it was still in silence that, a quarter of an hour later, they reached their destination.

The evening passed off better than he had expected. There was a careful avoidance of all lugubrious topics, and Denis himself seemed brighter and more natural.

It was fairly late when they retired to the room they were to share. Denis, wearied out physically and mentally, seemed to fall asleep very soon, but Rusk lay awake a long time--as long as he could, for he had a feeling that it would be better for him to be on guard. It was almost day when he at last sank into a kind of slumber, and even then he did not sleep soundly, but every now and again would open his eyes with a sudden start, and an unaccountable impression that something, he knew not what, was trying to get into the room. Then he would reassure himself that he had only been dreaming, and would presently doze off again to find no sounder rest than before.

At last he gave it up altogether, and, lighting a candle and wrapping himself in his dressing-gown, he went down to the library to get a book. When he came upstairs again he paused beside Denis’s bed, and shading the light with his hand looked down at the sleeping boy. He lay on his side, his brown face, his black coarse hair, strikingly dark against the white pillow. His eyes were shut, but as Rusk watched him it seemed to him that he was trembling. Was he shivering? Was he cold? And suddenly Rusk knew that he was not asleep. “Denis,” he said softly, and the boy opened his eyes. Rusk put his hand on his forehead: it was damp.... And again a tremor passed through him. His eyes stared up, unblinking, bright, dry and strange, but he said nothing. Then it flashed upon Rusk that he was in a state of mortal terror. He felt a deep, an immense, compassion for him. He wondered how long he had been like that--perhaps for hours ...! The ways of Providence were strange....

“Come into my bed,” he said simply, and, as Denis made no movement, “Come,” he repeated. The boy got up and crossed over to the other bed. “I’m going to read,” Rusk went on, as soon as they were under the clothes. “Be a good boy and try to go to sleep.”

Denis turned on his side. He had not spoken a word, but he gave now a long low sigh as of infinite relief. Almost immediately he fell into a heavy slumber that was like the unconsciousness following upon utter exhaustion. He slept far on into the morning--even the fire being lit, even Rusk getting up and dressing, did not awaken him--and when the tutor came upstairs again after breakfast he was still asleep. Rusk sat down at a table near the window and began to write a letter home, explaining his change of plan. He had finished it and was addressing the envelope when Denis awoke. The boy sat up, his eyes still dark and liquid with sleep.

“Is it late?”

“Not very. Going on for twelve. I’ll ring and they’ll bring you up some breakfast.”

“Hadn’t I better wait till I go down?” asked Denis, doubtfully.

“Oh, no. It’s all right. I told them you would have it up here.” He smiled, and approaching the bed, “Well, how are you feeling?” he asked, patting him on the shoulder.

“Oh, I’m all right, thanks.”

Rusk was sure his long sleep must really have done him good: he looked better, too. Rusk sat down on the side of the bed and talked to him till his breakfast was brought up.

Then he went over to the fire and unfolded the morning paper. Nearly the first thing that caught his eyes was an obituary notice, half a column in length. He was glad he had seen it: he would keep the paper out of Denis’s way. He began to read. In half a column there was lots of room to touch upon all Mr. Bracknel’s virtues, and the notice in fact did so. It pointed out that in his commercial career he had set an example of high principle and integrity it would be difficult to over-estimate; it dwelt on the various services he had rendered the city in his capacity of Councillor and Member of the Harbour Board; it intimated that he had been asked to stand for West Belfast on the occasion of the last general election; it mentioned the deep regret that had been experienced throughout the city at the news of the premature termination to an inspiring and useful career; it expressed the universal sympathy that was felt with the bereaved family in their distress; and, finally, it stated that he left behind him two sons and two daughters, and that the elder son, Mr. Alfred Bracknel, had for some years past occupied a responsible position in the business, the fine old traditions of which he would doubtless carry on in a manner worthy of his father’s name.

For Rusk, for some reason, these remarks--which everybody else, he knew, would consider quite appropriate--glimmered in the light of an irony so dreary that he wondered if he were growing utterly cynical and sceptical. He reflected that all that remained of the “admirable citizen” would by this time have been conveyed to his own house, and that Alfred, in a black suit and with a mourning-band round his hat, would already have proceeded to bethink himself of the “fine old traditions.”

He folded up the paper and put it away. Denis had finished his breakfast. He had eaten very little. It would have been wiser, Rusk now saw, had Doctor Birch’s advice about taking him away been followed. Fortunately the funeral would take place to-morrow. To-night he would get Doctor Birch to give the boy a narcotic, and to-morrow night, or at least the night after, they could start.