Chapter V

Left to himself, Rusk of course took a closer survey of his room. It appeared to him to be extremely comfortable, giving, as Denis had said, on to the lawn at the side of the house, and with a couple of large casement windows that might prove draughty in winter but were very delightful just now. He opened them wide, leaning far out into a night as soft as velvet and breathing the coolness of the air, as he considered the rather startling climax to his first evening with the Bracknels. He detested scenes; emotional outbursts of any kind made him feel uncomfortable, and this one had been so especially crude, and he himself, through no fault of his own, had been so unpleasantly mixed up with it. He had disagreeable imaginings of what might happen in the future. It was evident that he must be remarkably careful. Difficulties of this particular kind naturally had not been among those he had contemplated when he had accepted his post, and he felt they were the ones with which he was least able to deal. He was still at the window and still engaged with these thoughts when he fancied he heard someone tapping at his door. He drew in his head and shoulders. “Come in,” he cried, taking a step toward the centre of the room. The door opened and Mrs. Bracknel appeared. She entered softly and begged his pardon for having disturbed him. “I came to see if you have everything you want,” she said in her low sweet voice. “You must tell me if there is anything I can do to make you more comfortable.”

“I am sure I shall be perfectly comfortable, thank you,” Rusk replied, feeling slightly embarrassed. “It all seems very nice,” he went on, as she still stood there. “I was just looking out into the garden.”

“It is very quiet in the moonlight,” Mrs. Bracknel murmured. “But I am disturbing you, Mr. Rusk.”

“No, no--not at all,” Rusk hastened to assure her, as if a conversation with Mrs. Bracknel were the one thing he had been pining for. A pause followed this remark.

“I thought I should like to talk to you for a minute or two, if you don’t mind, and it occurred to me that this would be a good time, but of course it will do perfectly well in the morning. I’m afraid my not being a very good sleeper myself sometimes makes me inconsiderate of other people. Do tell me if you are too tired.”

“Not at all--not at all,” Rusk again replied. “Besides, it’s quite early, isn’t it? As a matter of fact I always read for an hour or so before turning in.”

“Then if I’m not keeping you from bed I’m keeping you from your book, which is just as bad. However, I shan’t be long.... I wanted to speak to you about Denis.”

Rusk felt relieved, he didn’t quite know why. He recognized now from whom his pupil had got the sweetness of his smile. Mrs. Bracknel seemed different when her husband was not present. “Won’t you sit down?” he asked, pushing forward the armchair. She accepted it, and he himself took a less comfortable seat at the foot of the bed.

“You are very young, Mr. Rusk, aren’t you?” she began, softly.

“I’m twenty-three,” Rusk said.

“Yes! I should have thought you were even younger. It makes it so much easier for me to say what I am going to say when I remember your age. If you were ten years older I should be afraid that you might snub me for interfering.”

“Oh, I hope I shouldn’t do that,” answered Rusk. He was still a little shy, a little nervous, and his manner had a certain involuntary stiffness that he was himself conscious of.

“I know Mr. Bracknel has already spoken to you about Denis, and I expect he told you that he had been at school, and that he had had several tutors, and that he was hard to manage--didn’t he? And he told you that you must be very strict?”

“He did say something of the sort,” Rusk admitted artlessly.

“Yes; I know he looks at it in that way, and I suppose it is natural that he should. But there are some things, Mr. Rusk, a boy’s father does not understand so well as his mother.”

“A good many, I should say,” replied Rusk, gallantly. “I expect fathers are nearly always wrong.” He could see that she was very anxious about something, but he did not know quite how to reassure her. “I think it will be all right,” he went on at a venture, and already feeling more at his ease. “I mean to say, I don’t think you need be afraid.” He paused for a moment, and then added with a heightened colour, “I’m fairly decent, you know; and at any rate I like him.”

Mrs. Bracknel’s thin, transparent hands were crossed on her lap, and her large, dark, gentle eyes rested on the honest, comely face of the young man before her. He felt a certain pity for her, she looked so excessively fragile; and he noticed that her lips were quite bloodless. He felt suddenly in sympathy with her.

“It is because I thought I saw that you liked him, Mr. Rusk, that I wanted to talk to you about him. We have not been very successful up to the present in finding anyone for him. He was at school for a few months--at a school in the south of England. It was near the sea, and we thought it might make him stronger, but he was most unhappy there, and he got ill, very ill--in fact the doctor thought he could not recover. Then we tried having him taught at home, but somehow things have not gone very well up to the present. His tutors did not seem to understand him, and he did not like them. Of course I am sure he was often very trying, and I should not have been surprised if they had lost patience with him now and then; but I really think they did not understand him. He is a good boy; he is very affectionate and sweet-tempered, but he is a little different from other boys, I suppose; and he sometimes does strange things. Still----”

“We all do strange things now and then,” Rusk observed optimistically.

“His father gets angry with him and punishes him--but it is not good for him; I know, in fact, that it does him harm. Denis has taken a liking to you, Mr. Rusk. I saw it at dinner, though he did not open his lips--but that was only because he was shy.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll get on famously,” Rusk said. His young cheerful voice gave almost the effect of a promise to his words. “I don’t see why in the world we shouldn’t?”

Mrs. Bracknel smiled. “I just thought it might be better to tell you a little about him--that it might make it easier for you.”

“Thank you very much: I’m sure it will.”

“I don’t wish to make excuses for him, of course--but sometimes there are such things as good excuses. Don’t you think so, Mr. Rusk?”

“Of course there are,” said Rusk boldly. “I’m obliged to use a good many myself.”

Mrs. Bracknel regarded him gravely, with sweet, gentle, serious eyes, before which his little joke somehow faded away.

“At school, for instance, and here at home, too, he was always getting into trouble--about his lessons, about not working better, about other things. I daresay he is inclined to be a little idle, and I know he is often absent-minded, and careless about being in time for meals, and other things of that sort: but there is something, I think, at the back of it all. When he was a child, I remember, I was dreadfully frightened and unhappy about him, because he was so different from what my other children had been. There were times when he would sit perfectly still, and when I couldn’t get him to play, or to take notice of anything. It seemed so unnatural for a young child to be quiet like that, and I didn’t know what was the matter. I thought, too, he would never learn to read. Then one day, when he was about ten years old, his nurse showed him a Bible with queer, ornamented letters that somehow caught his fancy, and he learned to read almost at once. It is just the same now: there are some things which he doesn’t seem able to learn; but I don’t believe it is because he is stupid or careless or obstinate. It is simply a mental peculiarity that he has.”

“It is a fairly common one,” said Rusk, without any ironical intention. Then, as Mrs. Bracknel did not reply: “I’m inclined to think there’s not much use trying to learn things that merely bore you to death.”

“Yes, don’t you think so, Mr. Rusk? I have always thought so. But his father wants him to have a sound commercial education as well as--as the ordinary thing, you know.”

Rusk looked somewhat puzzled though he tried very hard not to. “Ah yes--a sound commercial education,” he repeated vaguely. “What exactly does he mean by that, I wonder?”

“By a sound commercial education? I’m afraid I don’t know. I thought _you_ would know. It is the expression he always uses.” There was something almost plaintive in Mrs. Bracknel’s tone.

“I see.”

“Now and then he puts Denis through a sort of examination, and it is always after that that things reach a crisis. Denis is never able to give the kind of answer his father seems to want.”

“I see: I see,” Rusk murmured again, but this time somewhat blankly. “I don’t think he mentioned anything about that to me. In fact I’m sure he didn’t. I’m afraid----”

“Ah well, don’t bother about it,” said Mrs. Bracknel gently. “I’m sure it will be all right.”

Rusk hoped that it would be, but he felt rather doubtful. Mrs. Bracknel, however, rose and held out her hand. “And now you must forgive me for having kept you up so long.” Her eyes rested on him, her sweet, half-timid smile. “Good-night, Mr. Rusk; I hope it isn’t yet too late for your book.”

Left for the second time to himself, Rusk went over to the armchair she had vacated. He wheeled it close to the window, and, making himself comfortable, began to turn over in his mind what she had told him. He felt that he had come into the midst of a strange family, and that the day had been almost eventful. He thought a little of Mrs. Bracknel; then of Amy; and then of his pupil;--then of his own home, so curiously different from this; and lastly of Cambridge and of his friends there, of the men who had gone down at the same time as he had, of those who were still up. There were some letters he must get off his hands soon, but not to-night; it was too late. He looked out across the moonlit lawn, and a kind of dreaminess came over him. He sat there for a long time. At a little distance the trees were dimly massed, black and motionless against the sky. The air was warm and soft, and full of a fragrance of hidden leaf and flower. Everything was extraordinarily quiet. He supposed that all the rest of the household had gone to sleep, and he had just decided that it was time that he too should turn in, when he thought he saw a figure moving below him, but keeping close to the house. Rusk’s dreaminess slipped from him in a flash, and he became all at once very wide awake indeed. He leaned out of the window as far as he could without toppling over. Yes, it was there!--a slight, dark form, skirting now the edge of the lawn, and making for the shrubbery beyond. A moment or two later it was lost to view, but Rusk had had time to believe that he had recognised Denis. After all, who else could it be? Not a burglar at all events: it was a boy’s figure, and it was going from the house, not trying to enter it. To make quite sure, he softly opened his door and tapped lightly on that of the room his pupil had told him was his. There was no answer, and Rusk turned the handle. The moonlight streamed in through the unblinded window, pale and radiant, and he did not need to strike a match to see that the room was unoccupied. He advanced a few steps. The bed bore the trace of someone having lain upon it, but without having turned down the clothes. Rusk retraced his steps, and re-entered his own room. This time he undressed and went to bed.