“Do you think the lamp will keep you awake?” Rusk asked.
It was a reading-lamp and threw a bright light only in one direction,
leaving the rest of the room in shadow.
Denis was already in bed. “No,” he murmured, drowsily.
“You are sure?”
“Quite sure, thanks.” And he turned over on his pillow.
Rusk put on his dressing-gown and sat down. He would have given a good
deal to know what had been, what was now, passing in Denis’s mind; but
how in the world was he to find out? The boy was perfectly inscrutable;
it was really amazing how little Rusk could count on his betraying
himself.
For an hour the young man sat in an attitude of one too comfortable or
too drowsy to take the trouble to go to bed, but in reality he was
extremely _un_comfortable, extremely wakeful and solicitous. He came to
the conclusion that he had made a most hopeless fool of himself, and
that he might hear a good deal more of the matter before he was done
with it. Why had he been such an idiot--he who, up to that moment, had
been so careful? There was something incredibly stupid and disagreeable
about the whole episode, and it might have all kinds of consequences.
Suppose May were to tell her mother! It would simply mean that he should
have to go, and he knew all that this in its turn signified. Nothing
could ever have been further from his desire than to sacrifice Denis to
Amy, yet what else had he done? And he did not even care for her! This
particular element in the matter might savour delightfully of the irony
characteristic of human affairs, but Rusk was in no mood to appreciate
irony. The thought that Doctor Birch attached so great an importance to
his remaining with his pupil awoke, instead, all sorts of unpleasant
possibilities within his mind. Doctor Birch had never entered into
particulars, but this left only a freer field to Rusk’s unaided
imagination, which proceeded now to improvise on several lugubrious
themes, while his whole being was stirred into a violent resentment
against the girl directly responsible.
Denis had dropped asleep long ago, and his low, regular breathing was
the only sound audible in the dim, quiet room. Rusk, leaning his head
back, gazed up at the ceiling without discovering much inspiration
there. Everything, he felt, depended on what May would do, on the
relation existing between the two girls. He had got no further than
this, when the handle of the door turned silently and the door itself
was opened. He started, for he had heard no footsteps in the passage
outside, and, with the movement he gave, he knocked a book off the edge
of the table. It fell to the floor with what seemed a quite unnecessary
bang--enough, he thought, to waken the whole house. Amy was there,
standing in the doorway, her long red hair floating about her shoulders.
She was dressed in something loose and soft and white, which revealed
the creamy pallor of her beautiful rounded arms. Her feet were bare. She
advanced into the room a step or two, closing the door carefully behind
her.
“I came to see if you were still angry with me,” she said in a low
voice. “I thought perhaps you might be reading; I looked for a light
under your door. There is something I must tell you.”
In the obscurity of the room, and with her gaze fixed on Rusk, she had
not noticed the other bed. Now it gave a sharp creak, and glancing in
that direction she saw her brother sitting up and staring at her, his
eyes still dark and liquid with sleep. She started, and barely checked
the little cry that rose in her throat. “What are you doing here?” she
whispered furiously, her face completely transformed, distorted by a
rage and disappointment that were like the swift leaping up of a fire
in a darkened house. In a moment she had recovered herself, but that
bright, brief flash had been intensely, cruelly revealing, and Rusk
could see nothing else.
“He has come to keep me company,” he answered. He had grown very red in
the face and stood, erect and frowning, in an attitude that barred Amy’s
further progress.
“I suppose you were frightened to sleep by yourself,” she went on
fiercely to her brother. “You poor, little, puny, miserable coward. You
were frightened of the dark, weren’t you?”
Denis, still half-asleep, blinked at her without replying. He then
turned to his tutor. “What does she want?” he asked quaintly.
“Nothing. Lie down and go to sleep again.”
Denis obeyed. At all events he lay down and shut his eyes, turning his
back to the other occupants of the room. Rusk took a step toward him as
if to see that he had done so. He remained for a few seconds in this
position, purposely, and when he looked round again Amy had disappeared.
He swore softly, though rather savagely, to himself, as he stared out
into the dark passage, but he made no movement, waiting, as if to give
her time to get back to her own room. He gave her plenty, several
minutes in fact; then he shut the door and began to undress. Denis still
lay there, with his face to the wall, in an absolute silence that
somehow did not suggest slumber. If he _were_ asleep, Rusk felt
half-inclined to wake him up and ask him just what ideas had been
forming themselves in his mind during the past few hours. But he did not
yield to this impulse. “Damnation,” he muttered, as he picked up the
fallen book.