‘So you hate me now, I suppose?’ he said.
‘No, I don’t. But I hate the black dog. I thought you were splendid at first. And even now I think you’re splendid inside, really. Only something’s happened. It is like bewitchment, I do think. Couldn’t you do anything to stop it? I’d help you, really I would. I say, I’m sorry if I’ve scratched too hard.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Rupert with what was plainly an effort. ‘Sometimes I’m like this. I feel as if I was some one else. I can’t explain. Now you can laugh if you like. I only thought I’d tell you. Don’t tell the others. It’s perfectly beastly. I suppose I could help it if I knew the way. Only I don’t.’
‘Suppose you had a bath,’ suggested Charlotte. ‘Aunt Emmeline says when children feel naughty you should always wash their faces; and if it’s true of children, it must be true of bigger people,’ she added hastily, answering Rupert’s frown, ‘because your face is made of the same sort of stuff, however old you are.’
‘That was part of it,’ said Rupert, ‘when I saw the river to-day. Can you swim? I can. And I promised my father I’d never go into the water to swim unless there was some man there, and—— My father’s in India, you know,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘It was he taught me to swim.’ He walked to the window and looked out. ‘I thought I was going back to India with him. And then the doctors said some rotten rigmarole, and my father went without me, and I was all right again three months after, and I might as well have gone with him, only then it was too late; and then things began to happen that I never thought could. And nothing will ever be right again.’
‘Look here,’ said Charlotte, ‘I’m frightfully sorry I scratched you, and about your father and your not going. Look here, don’t come with us this afternoon. You go down to Mr. Penfold’s. He’s the clergyman. He said the other day he’d teach Charles to swim, so I know he can. If you go directly, he’ll take you down to the river and you can drown dull care in the Medway.’
‘Do you think he’d mind?’
‘Mind? He’d love it,’ said Charlotte. ‘Just go and say the three C.’s said I could swim, and I can too!’
‘I can’t like that,’ said Rupert; ‘but if you sent me with something, a book or anything, then I could bring in swimming in a natural sort of way and see what he said.’
‘Say we said was there any more of the translated Latin book we could have. Will that do? You know Latin, so that will be all right. I say, I hope they haven’t gone without us. They’re a most awful time. Look here, cut off to Mr. Penfold’s before they come back, if you like. I shall just say you’re gone. You just go.’