AN AWAKENING
It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no
little distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his
breakfast-table. The goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with
his hat and cloak. The excited empiric of the dark-room was a creature
of that ruby light alone. Dr. Baumgartner was shaved and clad like
other men, the iron-grey hair carefully brushed back from a lofty
forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his well-kept hands.
There was a third person, and only a third, at table in the immature
shape of a young lady whom the doctor introduced as his niece Miss
Platts, and addressed as Phillida.
Pocket thought he had never heard of nobler atonement for unmitigable
surname. He could not help thinking that this Phillida did not look the
one to flout a fellow, after the fashion of the only other Phillida he
had ever heard of, and then that it was beastly cheek to start thinking
of her like that and by her Christian name. But he was of the age and
temperament when thoughts will come of contact with young animals of
the opposite sex. He looked at her sidelong from time to time, but all
four eyes dropped directly they met; she seemed as shy and
uninteresting as himself; her conversation was confined to table
attentions to her uncle and his guest.
Pocket made more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing
against the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. “We have a full-size
table at home,” he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that
instant. “I like a small one best,” he assured the doctor, who shook
his head and smiled.
“Honestly, sir, and snob-cricket better than the real thing! I’m no
good at real games.”
The statement was too true, but not the preference.
“That must be awkward for you, at an English public school,” was the
doctor’s comment.
Pocket heaved an ingenuous sigh. It was hateful. He blamed the asthma
as far as modesty would permit. He was modest enough in his
breakfast-table talk, yet nervously egotistical, and apt to involve
himself in lengthy explanations. He had two types of listener—the dry
and the demure—to all he said.
“And they let you come up to London alone!” remarked Dr. Baumgartner
when he got a chance.
“But it wasn’t their fault that I——”
Pocket stopped at a glance from his host, and plunged into profuse
particulars exonerating his house-master, but was cut short again.
Evidently the niece was not to know where he had spent the night.
“I suppose there are a number of young men at your—establishment?” said
the doctor, exchanging a glance with Miss Platts.
“There are over four hundred boys,” replied Pocket, a little puzzled.
“And how many keepers do they require?”
A grin apologised for the word.
“There must be over thirty masters,” returned Pocket more pointedly
than before. He was not going to stand chaff about his public school
from a mad German doctor.
“And they arm you for the battle of life with Latin and Greek, eh?”
“Not necessarily; there’s a Modern Side. You can learn German if you
like!” said Pocket, not without contempt.
“Do you?”
“I don’t like,” said the boy gratuitously.
“Then we must stick to your excellent King’s English.”
Pocket turned a trifle sulky. He felt he had not scored in this little
passage. Then he reflected upon the essential and extraordinary
kindness which had brought him to a decent breakfast-table that
morning. That made him ashamed; nor could he have afforded to be too
independent just yet, even had he been so disposed in his heart. His
asthma was a beast that always growled in the background; he never knew
when it would spring upon him with a roar. Breakfast pacified the
brute; hot coffee always did; but the effects soon wore off, and the
boy was oppressed again, yet deadly weary, long before it was time for
him to go to Welbeck Street.
“Is there really nothing you can take?” asked Dr. Baumgartner, standing
over him in the drawing-room, where Pocket sat hunched up in the big
easy-chair.
“Nothing now, I’m afraid, unless I could get some of those cigarettes.
And Dr. Bompas would kick up an awful row!”
“But it’s inhuman. I’ll go and get them myself. He should prescribe for
such an emergency.”
“He has,” said Pocket. “I’ve got some stuff in my bag; but it’s no use
taking it now. It’s meant to take in bed when you can have your sleep
out.”
And he was going into more elaborate details than Dr. Bompas had done,
when the other doctor cut him short once more.
“But why not now? You can sleep to your heart’s content in that chair;
nobody will come in.”
Pocket shook his head.
“I’m due in Welbeck Street at twelve.”
“Well, I’ll wake you at quarter to, and have a taxi ready at the door.
That will give you a good two hours.”
Pocket hesitated, remembering the blessed instantaneous effect of the
first bottle under the bush.
“Would you promise to wake me, sir? You’re not going out?”
“I shall be in again.”
“Then it is a promise?”
Pocket would have liked it in black and white.
“Certainly, my young fellow! Is the stuff in your bag?”
It was, and the boy took it with much the same results as overnight. It
tasted sweeter and acted quicker; that was the only difference. The
skin seemed to tighten on his face. His fingers tingled at the ends It
was not at all an unpleasant sensation, especially as the labour in his
breast came to an end as if by magic. The faintly foreign accents of
Dr. Baumgartner sounded unduly distant in his last words from the open
door. It was scarcely shut before the morning’s troubles ceased
deliciously in the cosy chair.
Yet they seemed to begin again directly, and this was a horrid crop! Of
course he was back in Hyde Park; but the sky must have rained red paint
in his absence, or else the earth was red-hot and the sky reflected it.
No! the grass was too wet for that. It might have been wet with blood.
Everything was as red as beet-root, as wet and red and one’s body
weltering in it like the slain! Reddest of all was the old
photographer, who turned into Mr. Spearman in cap and gown, who turned
into various members of the Upton family, one making more inconsequent
remarks than the other, touching wildly on photography and the flitting
soul, and between them working the mad race up to such a pace and pitch
that Pocket woke with a dreadful start to find Dr. Baumgartner standing
over him once more in the perfectly pallid flesh.
“I’ve had a beast of a dream!” said Pocket, waking thoroughly. “I’m in
a cold perspiration, and I thought it was cold blood! What time is it?”
“A quarter to six,” said the doctor, who had invited the question by
taking out his watch.
“A quarter to twelve, you mean!”
“No—six.”
And the boy was shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had
gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he
bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little
garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely
in the shadow of the house.
“You promised to wake me!” gasped Pocket, almost speechless. “You’ve
broken your word, sir!”
“Only in your own interest,” replied the other calmly.
“I believe you were waiting for me to wake—to catch my soul, or some
rot!” cried the boy, with bitter rudeness; but he looked in vain for
the stereoscopic or any other sort of camera, and Dr. Baumgartner only
shrugged his shoulders as he opened an evening paper.
“I apologise for saying that,” the boy resumed, with a dignity that
sounded near to tears. “I know you meant it for the best—to make up for
my bad night—you’ve been very kind to me, I know! But I was due in
Welbeck Street at twelve o’clock, and now I shall have to bolt to catch
the six-thirty from St. Pancras.”
“You won’t catch the six-thirty from St. Pancras,” replied Baumgartner,
scarcely looking up from his paper.
“I will unless I’m in some outlandish part of London!” cried Pocket,
reflecting for the first time that he had no idea in what part of
London he was. “I must catch it. It’s the last train back to school.
I’ll get into an awful row if I don’t!”
“You’ll get into a worse one if you do,” rejoined the doctor, looking
over his paper, and not unfeelingly, at the boy.
“What about?”
Pocket held his breath instinctively as their eyes met. Baumgartner
answered with increased compassion and restraint, a grey look on his
grey face:
“Something that happened this morning. I fear you will be wanted here
in town about it.”
“Do tell me what, sir!”
“Can you face things, my young fellow?”
“Is it about my people—my mother?” the boy cried wildly, at her funeral
in a flash.
“No—yourself.”
“Then I can!”
The doctor overcame his final hesitation.
“Do you remember a man we left behind us on the grass?”
“Perfectly; the grass looked as wet as it felt just now in my dream.”
“Exactly. Didn’t it strike you as strange that he should be lying there
in the wet grass?”
“I thought he was drunk.”
“He was dead!”
Pocket was shocked; he was more than shocked, for he had never
witnessed death before; but next moment the shock was uncontrollably
mitigated by a sudden view of the tragic incident as yet another
adventure of that adventurous night. No doubt one to retail in
reverential tones, but a most thrilling adventure none the less. He
only failed to see why it should affect him as much as the doctor
suggested. True, he might be called as witness at the inquest; his very
natural density was pierced with the awkward possibility of that. But
then he had not even known the man was dead.
Had the doctor?
Yes.
Pocket wondered why he had not been told at the time, but asked another
question first.
“What did he die of?”
“A bullet!”
“Suicide?”
“No.”
“Not murder?”
“This paper says so.”
“Does it say who did it?”
“It cannot.”
“Can you?”
“Yes!”
“Tell me.”
The doctor threw out both hands in a despairing gesture.
“Have I to tell you outright, my young fellow, that you did it
yourself?”