‘All right. To-morrow night. And my old friend, Monsieur Leysin, shall be our guide. He knows the way, and he knows the people too.’
Lord Ernie seized his hands with enthusiasm. His vigour was so disconcerting that it seemed to affect his physical appearance. The body grew almost visibly; his very clothes hung on him differently; he was no longer a nonentity yawning beneath an ancient pedigree and title; he was an aggressive personality. The boy in him rushed into manhood, as it were, while still retaining boyish speech and gesture. It was uncanny. ‘We’ll go more than once, I vote; go again and again. This is a place and a half. It’s my place with a vengeance——!’
‘Not exactly the kind of place your father would wish you to linger in,’ his tutor interrupted. ‘But we might stay a day or two—especially as you like it so.’
‘It’s far better than the towns and the rotten embassies; better than fifty Simlas and Bombays and filthy Cairos,’ cried the other eagerly. ‘It’s just the thing I need, and when I get home I’ll show ’em something. I’ll prove it. Why, they simply won’t know me!’ He laughed, and his face shone with a kind of vivid radiance in the glare of the electric light. The transformation was more than curious. Waiting a moment to see if more would follow, Hendricks moved slowly then towards the door, with the remark that it was advisable now to go to bed since they would be up late the following night—when he noticed for the first time that the pillow and sheets were crumpled and that the bed had already been lain in. The first suspicion flashed back upon him with new certainty.
Lord Ernie was already taking off his heavy coat, preparatory to undressing. He looked up quickly at the altered tone of voice.
‘Bindy,’ the tutor said with a touch of gravity, ‘you were alone just now—weren’t you—of course?’
The other sat up from stooping over his boots. With his hands resting on the bed behind him, he looked straight into his companion’s eyes. Lying was not among his faults. He answered slowly after a decided interval.
‘I—I was asleep,’ he whispered, evidently trying to be accurate, yet hesitating how to describe the thing he had to say, ‘and had a dream—one of my real, vivid dreams when something happens. Only, this time, it was more real than ever before. It was’—he paused, searching for words, then added—‘sweet and awful.’
And Hendricks repeated the surprising sentence. ‘Sweet and awful, Bindy! What in the world do you mean, boy?’
Lord Ernie seemed puzzled himself by the choice of words he used.