On going downstairs they found Miss Birch and Miss Anna in the
drawing-room. The two ladies had come over to convey their sympathies to
their old friend, who, with May, was talking to them now.
Rusk had not seen Mrs. Bracknel since the morning. She was seated with
her hands folded in her lap, in profile against a dark green curtain,
and her thin, sallow face, hollow-cheeked, the skin drawn close over the
delicate skull, seemed already altered by the shock she had received. He
heard Miss Birch offering to put Denis up, and Mrs. Bracknel thanking
her; she would be very glad if they would. Amy would arrive that night
probably, and her uncle and two of her cousins would be with her; and
there were more people expected to-morrow. The funeral had been arranged
for an early hour on Thursday morning. Alfred had been very thoughtful
and was looking after everything.
Rusk had sent off a wire telling his people that they might expect him
on the following day, but he had now decided to alter his plans. He
crossed the room and sat down on a vacant chair close to Miss Anna, and
began to talk to her in a low voice. He asked her if she could put him
up as well as Denis. The boy was in a very nervous state, he told her,
and if she could arrange to take them both he would feel much more
comfortable about him. He had intended going home, but he really did not
like to leave Denis unless it was absolutely necessary that he should do
so. Of course Miss Anna assented, and it was decided--Rusk himself
proposed it--that they both of them should go back with her and her
sister when they left. Having settled this much, and asking Miss Anna to
settle the rest, he went upstairs and packed a bag with such things as
they would need. When he came down again the Miss Birches were already
saying good-bye. He waited for them in the hall and he felt distinctly
relieved when, a minute or two later, they were all walking down the
avenue together under the dark bare trees. He had a dim sense of
something evil--something evil and strange, though indefinite--floating
in the air--a horror, a kind of spiritual blight, which he hoped to
shake from him when he left the house behind. It was a house he now
wished never to enter again. Too much that was unpleasant had happened
there; it was for him as well as for Denis beginning to be haunted; a
kind of fixed, unnatural gloom had settled upon it.
How long had he been living there? A few months only, yet they seemed to
him like years! Into that brief time so much had been crowded that, when
he looked at it, it stretched back and back as if to the beginning of
his life. But, once he had Denis safely away, he would have broken with
it for ever. The very hour they embarked on the steamer would mark the
commencement of a new period. It seemed to him now inconceivable that he
should ever really have left without Denis. When one’s life became bound
up with another life so closely as that, was separation really
possible?--just when it appeared to be inevitable would not something
_always_ happen to prevent it? There were unseen, unknown forces at
work, moving, at any rate, if not controlling, destiny. It seemed to
him, in his present mood, that the only power in the world lay in these
unseen, unknown forces. _They_ were reality. He had lost faith in
appearance, in matter as he had hitherto conceived of it. The solid
ground he trod upon might dissolve at any moment, the whole aspect of
things change, but spirit was eternal. It was as if he were on the point
of awakening from some heavy, stupid slumber, as if the curtains of
sleep already trembled to the pull that would draw them back, as if he
could catch even now, _through_ the curtain, the dimmed, softened glow
of the flaming vision beyond.
And all this time he was walking beside Miss Harriet Birch, with Denis
and Miss Anna some forty or fifty yards ahead; and they had not yet
reached the lodge. When Miss Harriet spoke to him he answered in
monosyllables, but after they had passed out of the grounds and on to
the open road beyond, he endeavoured to shake off the mysterious burden
which oppressed him, and to talk a little of his plan for taking the boy
abroad. Very soon, however, that topic, too, slipped unnoticed away;
quite unconsciously he relapsed into silence, and it was still in
silence that, a quarter of an hour later, they reached their
destination.
The evening passed off better than he had expected. There was a careful
avoidance of all lugubrious topics, and Denis himself seemed brighter
and more natural.
It was fairly late when they retired to the room they were to share.
Denis, wearied out physically and mentally, seemed to fall asleep very
soon, but Rusk lay awake a long time--as long as he could, for he had a
feeling that it would be better for him to be on guard. It was almost
day when he at last sank into a kind of slumber, and even then he did
not sleep soundly, but every now and again would open his eyes with a
sudden start, and an unaccountable impression that something, he knew
not what, was trying to get into the room. Then he would reassure
himself that he had only been dreaming, and would presently doze off
again to find no sounder rest than before.
At last he gave it up altogether, and, lighting a candle and wrapping
himself in his dressing-gown, he went down to the library to get a book.
When he came upstairs again he paused beside Denis’s bed, and shading
the light with his hand looked down at the sleeping boy. He lay on his
side, his brown face, his black coarse hair, strikingly dark against the
white pillow. His eyes were shut, but as Rusk watched him it seemed to
him that he was trembling. Was he shivering? Was he cold? And suddenly
Rusk knew that he was not asleep. “Denis,” he said softly, and the boy
opened his eyes. Rusk put his hand on his forehead: it was damp.... And
again a tremor passed through him. His eyes stared up, unblinking,
bright, dry and strange, but he said nothing. Then it flashed upon Rusk
that he was in a state of mortal terror. He felt a deep, an immense,
compassion for him. He wondered how long he had been like that--perhaps
for hours ...! The ways of Providence were strange....
“Come into my bed,” he said simply, and, as Denis made no movement,
“Come,” he repeated. The boy got up and crossed over to the other bed.
“I’m going to read,” Rusk went on, as soon as they were under the
clothes. “Be a good boy and try to go to sleep.”
Denis turned on his side. He had not spoken a word, but he gave now a
long low sigh as of infinite relief. Almost immediately he fell into a
heavy slumber that was like the unconsciousness following upon utter
exhaustion. He slept far on into the morning--even the fire being lit,
even Rusk getting up and dressing, did not awaken him--and when the
tutor came upstairs again after breakfast he was still asleep. Rusk sat
down at a table near the window and began to write a letter home,
explaining his change of plan. He had finished it and was addressing the
envelope when Denis awoke. The boy sat up, his eyes still dark and
liquid with sleep.
“Is it late?”
“Not very. Going on for twelve. I’ll ring and they’ll bring you up some
breakfast.”
“Hadn’t I better wait till I go down?” asked Denis, doubtfully.
“Oh, no. It’s all right. I told them you would have it up here.” He
smiled, and approaching the bed, “Well, how are you feeling?” he asked,
patting him on the shoulder.
“Oh, I’m all right, thanks.”
Rusk was sure his long sleep must really have done him good: he looked
better, too. Rusk sat down on the side of the bed and talked to him till
his breakfast was brought up.
Then he went over to the fire and unfolded the morning paper. Nearly the
first thing that caught his eyes was an obituary notice, half a column
in length. He was glad he had seen it: he would keep the paper out of
Denis’s way. He began to read. In half a column there was lots of room
to touch upon all Mr. Bracknel’s virtues, and the notice in fact did so.
It pointed out that in his commercial career he had set an example of
high principle and integrity it would be difficult to over-estimate; it
dwelt on the various services he had rendered the city in his capacity
of Councillor and Member of the Harbour Board; it intimated that he had
been asked to stand for West Belfast on the occasion of the last general
election; it mentioned the deep regret that had been experienced
throughout the city at the news of the premature termination to an
inspiring and useful career; it expressed the universal sympathy that
was felt with the bereaved family in their distress; and, finally, it
stated that he left behind him two sons and two daughters, and that the
elder son, Mr. Alfred Bracknel, had for some years past occupied a
responsible position in the business, the fine old traditions of which
he would doubtless carry on in a manner worthy of his father’s name.
For Rusk, for some reason, these remarks--which everybody else, he knew,
would consider quite appropriate--glimmered in the light of an irony so
dreary that he wondered if he were growing utterly cynical and
sceptical. He reflected that all that remained of the “admirable
citizen” would by this time have been conveyed to his own house, and
that Alfred, in a black suit and with a mourning-band round his hat,
would already have proceeded to bethink himself of the “fine old
traditions.”
He folded up the paper and put it away. Denis had finished his
breakfast. He had eaten very little. It would have been wiser, Rusk now
saw, had Doctor Birch’s advice about taking him away been followed.
Fortunately the funeral would take place to-morrow. To-night he would
get Doctor Birch to give the boy a narcotic, and to-morrow night, or at
least the night after, they could start.