Chapter XXXVIII

Rusk and Miss Anna returned a good deal later than they had expected to, and just in time for dinner. They found Doctor Birch in the drawing-room with his sister, but Denis was not there, and the tutor immediately asked for him.

“Was he not with you?” wondered Miss Birch, glancing up from her work. “I have been in the house all afternoon, and I haven’t seen a sign of him. Perhaps he is in the library.”

“I will go and see,” said Rusk, at once rising. He had a sudden feeling of uneasiness, which increased as he passed from one empty room to another where he thought his pupil might possibly be. But he could find no trace of him, and presently returned to announce his lack of success.

“Could he have gone back to the house for anything?” Miss Birch suggested. “I somehow took it for granted he was with you, and never thought of looking.”

Rusk shook his head. “I am sure he would not go to the house. He did not like it. I mean,” he added hastily, “he was glad to come away. It reminded him too much of this unfortunate affair.”

“Of his father?”

Rusk nodded. “I am going out to look for him,” he said, taking a step toward the door.

“But won’t you wait for him here? Won’t you have dinner first?” Miss Birch asked in some surprise. “He can’t have gone very far,” she added. “At any rate, I don’t see that you are in the least likely to find him if you do go.”

“I think I shall go all the same,” Rusk persisted. “I shouldn’t have left him this afternoon. It was a stupid thing to do.”

“But why? Surely he doesn’t need so much looking after as all that!”

“And you left him in the safest place in the world,” Miss Anna interposed. “You left him reading in the library. No harm could possibly come to him there.”

Rusk, however, was not to be persuaded; he had already opened the door, though he stood hesitating on the threshold.

“I may as well go with you if you _are_ going,” Doctor Birch remarked quietly. “Better tell them to keep dinner till we come back, Anna.”

The two men put on their overcoats and went out together. It was very dark and they knew they were bound on a somewhat hopeless errand. “Which way shall we take?” Doctor Birch asked. “I suppose it doesn’t greatly matter. If we are looking for him really, though, perhaps we ought to go in different directions.”

“There is a place where I think he may be,” Rusk replied. “If he is not there, I don’t know where he is.”

They paced on for some minutes side by side through the darkness. There seemed, on the face of it, very little reason for anxiety, yet a sort of dim foreboding of disaster began to weigh upon them, growing heavier and heavier. A bitter wind, cold as if laden with snow, blew out of the black, starless sky, sweeping across their path and dying away with a remote desolate cry in the bare trees. Rusk was haunted by a vision of Denis wandering alone in the darkness and listening to that dreary sound. He tried to persuade himself that he was foolishly anxious, but he would have given everything he possessed to have seen the boy coming down the road at that moment on his way home. He had a sickening knowledge that if he had stayed in the house with him that afternoon all would have been well. The others had excused him, had treated his idea on this point as ridiculous, but the others did not know what he knew. His suspense became almost unbearable, and he unconsciously increased his pace, till Doctor Birch found it difficult to keep up with him.

“You think he has gone back to the house after all?” Doctor Birch suddenly asked, as they turned in at the back gate.

“No. Along here.”

He led him to the edge of the plantation, but once among the trees everything was black as pitch, and they found it extremely difficult to make their way. Rusk had imagined that by this time he knew the whereabouts of the spot he was in search of, yet in the darkness he lost his bearings and it was half an hour or more before they managed to hit on the right place. They could see no one there when they did discover it, and when they called aloud they could get no answer.

“I wish we had thought of bringing a lantern,” Rusk exclaimed.

“But what makes you think he would come here?” asked the Doctor uneasily. He had stepped up to the edge of the pool. Both men looked down at the black, still water, and there was a short silence.

“He used to come here very often,” said Rusk at length. “I never told you about it--I see now I was wrong. I can’t explain it all at present, but when I found he was not in the house I thought he might----” He turned to Doctor Birch, but, though he was almost touching him, his companion’s face was only visible as something pale and indistinct in the surrounding darkness. “Do you think there is any chance of his--his----?” He did not finish the sentence.

“Of his what?” Doctor Birch asked nervously.

“Of his being down there?” And Rusk made an invisible motion toward the water.

The Doctor hesitated, evidently not altogether surprised by the suggestion. “I--I--you surely don’t think so? Why should he be? What put such an idea into your head?”

“He is not well. There has been something troubling him.... I did not tell you about that either.”

“But surely-- Is it deep?”

“Deep enough for that. Of course he can swim: but if it should have been intentional?”

Doctor Birch laid a would-be-reassuring hand on the younger man’s arm. “I think you are alarming yourself unnecessarily,” he said. “It is infinitely more probable that we shall find him comfortably seated at home when we get there.”

But in spite of these words a sombre foreboding seemed to have gripped Rusk with the strength of a conviction. “I am going to see,” he said.

“See! How can you see? Do you mean you will dive?”

“Yes: there is no other way.”

“But the water is like ice. If he is there he is not alive now. Time enough when we really know that he is missing.”

“But why should he have gone out at all? He told me he was not going out.”

“And he changed his mind after you were gone! I don’t see anything very extraordinary about that.”

Doctor Birch had stepped aside toward the edge of the shrubbery, and he now struck a match. Rusk heard him give a sharp exclamation. “He is here. He has-- Quick; strike a light.” The Doctor was cutting at something with his knife and Rusk sprang to his assistance.

“Is it he? Is he dead?” he gasped out, sick with the horror of it all.

“I don’t know. Make a blaze, can you?--with paper--anything.” The Doctor bent over the slight, prostrate form. “How could he do it?” he murmured to himself. “How could he do it?”

There was a silence that seemed to Rusk to last for ever. The Doctor was still bending over the body.

“Is he dead?” Rusk asked again, as the light he had kindled flickered and went out.

“Yes.... poor little chap. It must have been done at least an hour ago.... He did it with his braces.”

Rusk did not speak.

“Is there a short way out? Can we carry him?” the Doctor inquired mechanically.

There was another silence while Rusk stooped down and lifted his pupil’s body in his arms. Doctor Birch followed him as he made his way through the trees. “Who is to tell his mother?” he asked rather blankly, and as if speaking more to himself than to his companion. He kept on repeating the question at intervals, as if he could think of nothing else. “It is very unfortunate. I don’t know how we are to tell her.”