CHAPTER XXVIII “LIKE LUCIFER” Mr. Heriot himself showed Jan to his room, the spare bedroom on the private side of the house, where he was to remain until he went. All his belongings had been brought down from dormitory, and some few already from his study. The bed was made and turned down, with clean sheets as if for a guest; and there was an adjoining dressing-room at his disposal, with the gas lit and hot water placed in readiness by some unenlightened maid. This led Heriot to explain, gruffly enough, the special consideration to which Mr. Thrale had referred. “The whole thing’s a secret from the house so far, and of course the servants don’t know anything about it. They probably think you’re suspected of measles, not strongly enough for the Sanatorium but too strongly for the sick-room in the boys’ part. I shall allow that impression to prevail until—as long as you remain.” “Thank you, sir.” “I remember better days, Rutter; we had seen a good many together before you came to anything like this, I’m quite sure.” His glasses flashed. “Yet all the time——” He stopped himself as before, turned on his heel and shut a window which he had opened on entering the room. And now Jan grasped what it was that his house-master kept remembering, but could not trust himself to mention. And the mutual constraint made the prisoner thankful when he was bidden an abrupt good-night, and left alone at last. Alone in the condemned cell, or rather a luxurious suite of cells! The luxury was an irony not lost on Jan; he was as much alive to every detail of his environment as he had been towards the end of the match. And the grim humours of the situation, which had only come home to him since his interview with the Head Master, were still a relief after the deceptive solemnity of that ordeal. He must never again forget that he was guiltless. That made all the difference in the world. Would he have been able to think of condemned cells if he had deserved to be in one, or of the portmanteau he now discovered in the dressing-room, lying ready to be packed, as the open coffin of his school life? And yet it was, it was! But the waking night was a long succession of obstacles to oblivion. Forgotten circumstances came back with new and dolorous significance; this began when he emptied his pockets before undressing, and missed his watch. It was the first night in all his schooldays that he had been without the small gold watch which had been his mother’s when she ran away from home. Again he remembered wondering if the boys would laugh at him for having a lady’s watch; but they were marvellously decent about some things; not one of them had ever made a single remark about it. The little gold watch had timed him through all these years, and the first time he left it behind him he came to grief. It was only in the studies; but it would never bring his luck back now.