Baumgartner gave it up for the night. He was coming back in the early,
early lovely summer’s morning; then they would see, would they not?
Pocket had a last wave from the hideous meerschaum head, and a nod from
the other. He was alone for the night. And he meant to be alone next
morning when the doctor took his early walk; let him prowl by himself.
Pocket was not going with him. He had never been more determined about
anything than that. It was an animal instinct of fear and deep
revulsion, an impulse quite distinct from a further determination to
slip away in his turn as soon as the coast was clear. On this course he
was equally decided, but on other and more palpable grounds.
Baumgartner had broken his side of their treaty, so the treaty was torn
up with the letter which had never gone. And Pocket was going instead
of his letter—going straight to his people to tell them all, and have
that poor innocent man set free before the day was out.
The night’s immunity was meanwhile doubly precious; but it had been
secured, or rather its continuance could only be assured, at a price
which he wondered even now if he could pay. He was a growing, hungry
boy, no longer ailing in wind or limb. Distress of mind was his one
remaining ill; the rest was sham; and distress of mind did not prevent
him from feeling ravenous after fasting ten or eleven hours. Here was
food still within his reach, even at his side; but he felt committed
to his declaration that he could not eat. If the tray were still
untouched in the morning, surely there could be no further question of
his going out with Baumgartner; but there was an “if.” The boy was not
used to being very stern with himself; his strongest point was not
self-denial. Much of his moral stamina had been expended in nightly
tussles for mere breath; he had grit enough there. But his temperament
was self-indulgent, and that he triumphed over positive pangs only
shows the power of that rival instinct not to accompany the doctor a
yard from his door.
Yet it meant more hours with the food beside him than he could endure
lying still. He got up, inch by inch, for he knew who lay underneath;
and he opened the window, which Baumgartner had broken his promise to
open, by even slower and more laborious degrees. He leant out as he had
done that first morning, it might have been a month ago; and this scene
must have challenged comparison with that, had his mind been even as
free from dread and terror as it had been then. But all he saw was the
few remaining lighted windows in the backs of those other houses; he
could not have sworn there was a moon. The moon poured no beam of
comfort on his aching head; but the lighted windows were as the open
eyes of honest men, who would not see him come to harm; and the last
rumble in the streets was a faint but cheering chorus for lonely ears.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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