Now Mr. Bennison was a conscientious man. Left alone in the silence of the night all desire for sleep deserted him. He was horrified at his own depravity. He had deliberately broken his own rule. He had been false to his ideals.
He had refused to satisfy the curiosity of the young when and where it appeared. A child had come to him for help in the middle of the night and he had refused him or her. The child, moreover, might repeat the story. It might get about. People might hold it up against him.
After wrestling with his conscience for half an hour he arose and sought William in his room. At four o’clock he was still trying to solve the intelligence tests for William. William stood by wearing that expression that Mr. Bennison was beginning to dislike intensely.
At 4:15 Mr. Bennison, looking wild and dishevelled, returned to his room. But he was a broken man. He struggled no longer against Fate. Five o’clock found him explaining to William exactly why Charles I had been put to death.
Six o’clock found him trying to fathom the meaning of “plunger” and “inductance” and “slider” and various other words that occurred in the chapter on Wireless. It fortunately never occurred to him that they were all terms with which William was perfectly familiar.
As he held his head and tried to think from what Greek or Latin words the terms might have been derived, he missed the flicker that occasionally upset the perfect repose of William’s features.
At seven o’clock he felt really ill and went downstairs to try to find a whisky-and-soda. It was not William’s fault that he fell over the knitting on which Mrs. Brown had been engaged the evening before, and which had slipped from her chair on to the floor. His frenzied efforts to disentangle his feet entangled them still further.
At last, with teeth bared in rage and wearing the air of a Samson throwing off his enemies, he tore wildly at the wool, and scattering bits of this material and unravelled socks about him, he strode forward to the sideboard. He could not find a whisky-and-soda. After upsetting a cruet in the sideboard cupboard he went guiltily back to his bedroom.
His bed looked tidier than he imagined he had left it, and very inviting. Perhaps he might get just half an hour’s sleep before he got up.... He flung himself on to the bed. His feet met with an unexpected resistance half-way down the bed, bringing his knees sharp up to his chin. The bed was wrong. The bed was all wrong. The bed was all very wrong.
For a few seconds Mr. Bennison forgot the traditions of self-restraint and moderation of language on which he had been reared. William, standing in the doorway, listened with interest.