“I’m an awful fool,” he said. “I was frightened, and I can’t think why. Just as if you weren’t protection enough against anything. Oh, Father, you’re a brick: I do love you.”
Colin drew the boy down on the edge of the bed, and sat close to him.
“But what was the matter, my darling?” he said. “Tell me about it.”
“It wasn’t anything,” said Dennis. “I’m a bloody fool--sorry.--But, just for a second, it was nightmare again, and I thought somehow it wasn’t you standing there. It was like some awful conjuring-trick.... And I wanted you. And I’ve got you. I won’t be such an ass again.”
“Sure you’re all right?” said Colin. “We can’t have you getting panics, Dennis, and being an ass.”
“You shan’t,” he said. “It’s all gone. I say, I’m keeping you up. I must undress and go to bed, or you’ll never get there.”
Dennis got up, and stood there between his father’s knees, erect and tranquil again. He peeled off his hose and vest, and put on his pyjamas. Just then his eye fell on the great sapphire that lay on the floor.
“Why, you’ve dropped the sapphire, Father,” he said.
“So I see. Never mind that. I’ll pick it up. Now into bed with you.”
“How can I when you’re sitting there? No, don’t get up. I’ll crawl in.”
Dennis inserted one leg between his pillow and where Colin sat and drew himself into bed, curling himself against his father.
Dennis raised himself in bed, and kissed him.
“It’s been a lovely evening,” he said. “And it’ll be just as lovely to-morrow with you and mother and me. I wish I wasn’t going back to Eton on Thursday.”
Colin, with the stone in his hand, went out and down the few steps of the corridor to the door of his room. Once again, and this time with a more direct and personal defeat, Dennis had routed him. Before, he had directed the force that governed and protected him on the boy as he slept, and who could tell in what fury of lambent evil it had begun to encompass him? But now, he himself, whom above all Dennis loved and trusted, had approached him with the same initiation, and yet all his love and trust had not given Dennis confidence: the spiritual semaphore of his instinct had hung out the red light of danger. The boy had recoiled from what he brought with a shrinking that was not reassured by the fact that it was his father who brought it. He had detected the nature of it, and all his affection would not suffer him to take it, even from the hands he loved, and this time Dennis had been broad awake, knowing well what he was doing. Here then was a more personal rebuff: it appeared that all Colin’s trouble to endear himself to the boy (and with what success he had accomplished that!) was useless for the purpose for which he had intended it. Indeed it was far worse than useless, for in the process Dennis had somehow entered his heart, and for the second time he had been unable to persist.