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.