Chapter VI

Next morning, after breakfast, Rusk and his pupil retired to a room called the library, which contained perhaps a couple of hundred volumes, nearly all of them unreadable--volumes Mr. Bracknel, in a moment of intellectual expansion, had bought at an auction where things were going rather cheap. To this musty collection a few third-rate novels had been added from time to time by the girls, but the room had never been used and had latterly been set apart for Denis’s studies. Master and pupil sat down now at the table, and the former endeavoured, by a variety of more or less ingenious questions, to get some idea of the boy’s scholastic acquirements. He found these to be, on the whole, more striking than encouraging, though after his conversation of the night before he had not expected very much. Still, if Mrs. Bracknel had represented her younger son as being somewhat wayward and of peculiar tastes, her description of him found even more than justification in the extraordinary manner in which his studies appeared to have been pursued. In the gardens of learning, at all events, it was very evident that he had wandered at his own sweet will, and some of the flowers he had pulled there were a trifle bewildering to an anxious young preceptor whose own studies had been conducted according to the most strictly orthodox methods. Denis was very intelligent; that at least was obvious; and for a boy of his age it seemed to Rusk that he had found his way through some extremely remarkable works. His mother had expressed the difficulty she had experienced in teaching him to read, but he had evidently since then made up abundantly for lost time. He had read a good deal; far too much; and it had all been so unpractical, so much in the air, that it had left him childishly ignorant in regard to many things that Rusk had hitherto associated with the very foundations of any education--the things he himself had learned at school, the things that it appeared to him everyone must learn. He began to see fairly clearly how his predecessors might have found their pupil rather trying, for after an hour’s investigation he was still extremely hazy as to where exactly they ought to begin. It was not safe to take anything for granted except his companion’s intelligence and perfect candour.

“I can’t quite get at how you have been working,” Rusk said in the end. “What is your own idea in the matter? You have followed your own ideas pretty exclusively, haven’t you? so that you ought to be able to tell me. If you were left altogether to yourself, for instance, what would you do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t suppose I should do anything.”

“Oh, but you _have_ done things. You haven’t just taken the line of least resistance. What is it you care for in a book, for example? What kind of books do you like?”

“I like different kinds,” Denis replied, without throwing a great deal of light on the subject.

“Evidently; but there must be some that give you more pleasure than others.”

The boy shrugged his shoulders. He leaned back in his chair, his hands in his pockets, a slightly bored look on his face. A band of sunlight lay on the table between them. It just touched the top of the boy’s head in passing. “I don’t know,” he said.

There was something slightly irritating about these replies, but Rusk was not easily irritated. “Why do you read at all, then?” he asked.

“I’m sure I can’t tell you. I suppose it is when I feel rather sick of myself and of most other things.”

Rusk made a sound expressive of dissatisfaction at what seemed to him an exhibition of juvenile cynicism. “There is something very much wrong with you if you are sick of things at your age,” he remarked a little dryly.

“Perhaps there is; but I’m afraid I can’t help that either.”

Rusk had an idea that this last remark bordered on impertinence, but he wasn’t absolutely sure. There was something in the boy’s face that seemed to contradict such an interpretation--that extraordinary sweetness in his eyes, which from the first had struck him as being eminently lovable. “Well, you’ll have to work a good deal more systematically than you have been doing,” was all he answered. “I may as well tell you that at once.”

Denis smiled. He looked across the table at his tutor. “I’ll do anything you like,” he said kindly.

Rusk broke into a laugh. He had had a vague idea of dignity to be kept up, but it all somehow now melted away in a sense of amused companionship. This curious, urbane, friendly boy was altogether too different from the probable pupil he had pictured in his mind to allow him to make use of any preconceived methods and plans. He felt that their relation would have to be one of simple friendship, or else that it would be frankly impossible.

“By the way, how old are you?” he asked.

“Fifteen--nearly sixteen.... I know I’m frightfully ignorant for my age.”

“Oh, you’re not particularly old,” said Rusk, good-humouredly.

“I think we shall get on all right,” Denis added, after a moment.

Rusk’s mouth twitched slightly at the corners. “If you only do a little work I daresay we shall.” He glanced out of the window into the green and gold of the summer morning. “I think we might work a little at cricket, too, if we get a net fixed up.”

“I’m awfully rotten at games,” Denis said apologetically. “I’ve never had any practice either.”

“Then we’ll have to begin as soon as possible. You play tennis, don’t you? You were playing when I arrived last night.”

“Oh, yes, after a fashion. I like it well enough, but I’m no good. I mean to say, it will be no fun for you playing with me.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m not such a tremendous blood myself.”

He next set him a few easy questions in mathematics, only to discover that in this science at all events his pupil’s mind was absolutely virgin soil. He remembered what Mrs. Bracknel had told him, and decided that he had hit upon one of the subjects that hadn’t proved interesting. But at this juncture there came a quick tap at the door, followed immediately by the turning of the handle.

“May I come in?” asked Amy, leaning her head, with its red-gold hair, like a wonderful aureole, into the room, while she held the door ajar and smiled at Rusk, who had turned round at the noise. “I want to get a book.” Her smile persisted, but she made no movement to come any farther till Rusk rose from his chair. She laughed as she looked him straight in the eyes, and it was he who first averted his gaze. “Oh, please don’t get up or I shall think I am disturbing you.”

She went over to the shelves.

“It would be a pity to give you so wrong an impression,” said Denis slowly, tilting back his chair.

Amy gave him a glance, and her face changed. “Don’t be impertinent,” she answered sharply, “and before you speak wait till you are spoken to. I don’t envy you, Mr. Rusk, having to teach my brother.”

“If that is intended as a----” Denis began, but his sister looked quickly at Rusk:

“Now he’s going to be clever,” she said.

After the scene of the previous night the young Englishman felt this visit to be slightly embarrassing, and he did not quite know what to do. He did not feel inclined, while Amy was in the room, to go on with the explanation he had been in the midst of when she had entered. To wait in silence, however, made him feel foolish, and to feel foolish naturally annoyed him. He had a suspicion that she really wanted nothing, but had come in out of mere curiosity, and he hoped she would not make a habit of doing so. He had an idea that it might be as well to let her know at once that he did not care for interruptions, but he was too shy, and he contented himself with the thought that he would do so if the thing ever occurred again.

In the meantime Amy, who did not in the least share the new tutor’s diffidence, had seated herself, very much at her ease, in an armchair. “My brother Alfred is going to-morrow to Switzerland,” she announced. “Papa is sending him. He’s to go into the business there, and he doesn’t like it. He’s been grumbling at mamma and May and me for the last half-hour; as if we had anything to do with it! Before papa, of course, he’s as quiet as a lamb.”

“He doesn’t care for the idea, then?” asked Rusk politely.

“Care for it? I should think not. It means leaving all his friends here; and of course there will be no one over there. He says he hates foreigners.”

“He’s seen so many,” Denis murmured.

Amy glanced at him. “Of course he’s not so brilliant as you; but we all can’t be that. _You_ have been to Switzerland, Mr. Rusk, haven’t you?” she went on.

“Only for a week or two.”

“To climb the mountains, I suppose?”

“I did a little climbing while I was there.”

“I’m sure you did. I should think you would be awfully good at everything of that sort.” Amy looked at him in perfectly frank admiration.

“I say, you know,” Denis began, “we’re supposed to be----”

“Oh, do shut up. Of all the odious little prigs! _You’ll_ never climb a mountain at any rate.” Once more she turned to Rusk, and to his annoyance he found himself colouring. She struck him as being extraordinarily bold; certainly he had never met a young girl like her before. The fact was that for some reason her good looks did not particularly attract him, and he was thus left more free to be conscious of the crudeness of her manner and of its excessive freedom.

“Well, I must see if my book is here,” she rattled on, but without getting up.

“Can I help you?” asked Rusk, stepping forward.

“No, thanks; I’m ashamed to tell you the title. You are too learned, and this is only a love-story. Are you fond of love-stories, Mr. Rusk, or do you despise them?”

“Oh, I like a good novel very well.” He was conscious that his words sounded idiotically pedantic, and he had a sort of uneasy feeling that he was amusing her.

“The hero of this book comes from Norway,” Amy pursued deliberately. “He is very tall, and young, and handsome; with yellow hair and blue eyes.”

She kept her own eyes on Rusk’s face as she enumerated this fortunate person’s attractions, and again the young man felt himself colouring. Decidedly he did not like Miss Amy Bracknel’s manner. He turned to Denis. “Well, I think we’d better go on with our algebra,” he said hastily, seating himself at the table beside the boy. But he still felt that Amy’s eyes were fixed on him, and he grew more and more uncomfortable as he endeavoured to bring some light to his pupil’s extremely hazy ideas of the subject before them.

“How can you be so stupid, Denis?” Amy broke in suddenly. “I wonder Mr. Rusk has any patience left.”

“You might have seen he has a good deal,” her brother replied, without looking up.

“Thank you,” said Amy, rising from her chair. She sauntered across the room, but Rusk did not make any movement to open the door for her; he was entirely absorbed in Denis’s sum.

When he heard the door close he glanced up and met the boy’s narrow grey eyes, which were fixed on him with a curious expression he did not quite understand. As soon as Denis encountered Rusk’s gaze, however, his own dropped. Neither of them said anything till the boy asked some question about his work and their lesson proceeded without further interruption.