"Thank you, my dear boy," said Mr. Francis, "but I haven't the heart to play this morning. Besides, Harry might be dozing; we should run the risk of disturbing him."
Harry Vail owned a plain, gloomy house in Cavendish Square, forbidding to those who looked at it from the street, chilling to those who looked at the street from it. It was furnished in the heavy and expensive early Victorian style, and solid mahogany frowned at its inmates. During his minority it had been let for a term of years, but on his coming of age he had taken it again himself, and here, when the gloom and darkness of February and swollen waters made Vail more suitable for the amphibious than the dry-shod, he came to receive in exchange the more sociable fogs of London. Parliament had assembled, the roadways were no longer depleted, and Harry was beginning to find that, in spite of the friendlessness which he had been afraid was his, there were many houses which willingly opened their doors and welcomed him inside. Friends of his father, acquaintances of his own, were all disposed to be pleasant toward this young man, about whom there lingered a certain vague atmosphere of romance—a thing much valued by a prosaic age. He was young, attractive to the eye; he stood utterly alone in the world, with the burden or theglory of a great name on his shoulders, and people found in him a charming, youthful modesty, mixed with an independence of the sturdiest, which, while accepting a favour from none, seemed to cry aloud for friendliness and bask therein when it was found, with the mute, unmistakable gratitude of a dumb animal. His own estimate of his loneliness had probably been accentuated by the year he had spent just before he came of age in studying languages in France and Germany, but in the main it was, when he made it, correct. But at his time of life change comes quickly; the young man who does not rapidly expand and enlarge, must, it may be taken for certain, be as rapidly closing up. Within a month of his arrival in London it was beyond question that the latter morbid process was not at operation in Harry.
He and Geoffrey were seated one night in the smoking room in the Cavendish Square house talking over a glass of whisky and soda. They had dined with a friend, and Harry had inveigled Geoffrey out of his way to spend an hour with him before going home.
"No, I certainly am not superstitious," he was saying, "but if I were, I really should be very much impressed by what has happened. I never heard of a stranger series of coincidences. You remember the lines engraved round the Luck:
"'When the Luck is found again,Fear both fire and frost and rain.'
"Well, as you know, two days after I found the Luck, I slipped on the steps as we were going out shooting, and sprained my ankle—in consequence of not looking where I was going, say you, and I also, for that matter. The Luck, say the superstitious: that is the frost. As soon as I get right, I go out shooting again, get wet through, and catch a pretty bad chill—because I didn't go and change, say you. The Luck, say the superstitious: that is the rain. Finally, the very day you left, I tripped over the hearthrug, fell into the fire, and burned half my hair off. Well, if that isn't fire I don't know what is. 'Fear both fire and frost and rain,' you see. Certainly I have suffered from all three, but if old Francis could only give me a cold, and a sprained ankle, and a burn, I don't think much of his magic. Well, I've paid the price, and now there is the Luck to look forward to. Dear me, I'm afraid I've been jawing."
"I wonder if you believe it at all," said Geoffrey. "For myself, I should chuck the beastly pot into the lake, not because I believed it, but for fear that I some day might. If you get to believe that sort of thing, you are done."
"I am sure I don't believe it," said the other, "and so I shall not chuck the beastly pot into the lake. Nor would you if it were yours. But, if I did believe it, Geoff, there would be all the more reason for keeping it. Don't you see, I've been through the penalties, now let me have the prizes. That's the way to look at it. I don'tlook at it, I must remind you, in that way; I only say, what a strange series of coincidences! You can hardly deny that that is so."
"What have you done with it?" asked Geoffrey.
"The beastly pot? It's down at Vail. Uncle Francis is there, too. I wanted him to come up to London with me, but he wouldn't. Now, there's a cruel thing, Geoff. My God, it makes my blood boil when I think of it!"
"Think of what?"
"Of the persistent ill luck which has dogged my uncle throughout his life. Of the odious—well, not suspicion, it is not so definite as that—which seems to surround him. I was at Lady Oxted's the other night, and mentioned him casually, but she said nothing and changed the subject. Oh, it was not a mere chance; the thing has happened before."
Geoffrey squirted some soda water into his glass.
"Suspicion! what do you mean?" he asked.
"No; suspicion is the wrong word. Uncle Francis told me all about his life on the last evening that I was at Vail, and I never heard anything so touching, so cruel, or so dignified. All his life he has been the victim of an ill luck so persistent that it looks as if some malignant power must have been pursuing him. Well, I am going to try to make it up to him. I wonder if a rather long and very private story about his affairs would interest you at all?"
"Rather. I should like to hear it."
"Well, this is almost exactly as he told it me, from the beginning. He was a twin of my grandfather's; there's a piece of bad luck to start with, and being just half a minute late about coming into the world, he is a younger son, which is no fun, I can tell you, in our impoverished family."
"That may happen to anybody," said Geoffrey; "I'm a younger son myself, but I don't scream over that."
Harry laughed.
"Nor does he. Don't interrupt, Geoff. Then he married a very rich girl, who died three years afterward, childless, leaving all her money back to her own relatives. It was a most unhappy marriage from the first; but don't aim after cheap cynicism, and say that the real tragedy there was not her death, but the disposition of her property. I can tell you beforehand that this was not the case. He was devoted to her."
"Well?"
Harry's voice sank.
"And then, twenty-two years ago, came that awful affair of young Harmsworth's death. Did you ever hear it spoken of?"
Geoffrey was silent a moment.
"Yes, I have heard it spoken of," he said at length.
Harry flushed.
"Ah! in connection with my uncle, I suppose?" he said.
"Yes; his name was mentioned in connection with it."
"It is a crying shame!" said Harry hotly. "And so people talk of it still, do they? I never heard of it till he told me all about it the other night. That is natural: people would not speak of it to me."
"I only know the barest outline," said Geoffrey. "Tell me what Mr. Francis told you."
"Well, it was this way: He was staying down at our house in Derbyshire, which was subsequently sold, for my grandfather had made him a sort of agent there after his wife's death, and he would be there for months together. Next to our place was a property belonging to some people called Harmsworth, and at this time, twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, young Harmsworth—his name was Harold—had only just come into it, having had a very long minority like me. Uncle Francis used to be awfully good to him, and two years before he had got him out of a scrape by advancing to him a large sum of money. It was his own, and it was this loan which had crippled him so much on his wife's death. The arrangement had been that it should be paid immediately Harold Harmsworth came of age. Well, he was not able to do this at once, for his affairs were all upside down, and he asked for and received a renewal of it. For security, he gave him the reversion of his life-insurance policy."
Again Harry's voice sank to near a whisper.
"Two days after this arrangement had beenmade, young Harmsworth and Uncle Francis were pottering about the hedgerows alone, just with a dog, to get a rabbit or two, or anything that came in their way, and, getting over a fence, Harmsworth's gun went off, killing him instantly. Think how awful!"
"Why people will get over fences without taking their cartridges out is more than I could ever imagine," said Geoffrey; "but they will continue to do so till the end of time. I beg pardon."
"Well, here comes the most terrible part of the whole affair," went on the other. "There was an inquest, and though my uncle was scarcely fit to attend, for he says he was almost off his head with so dreadful a thing happening, he had to go. He gave his account of the matter, and said that he himself was nearly hit by some of the shot. That, he tells me, was his impression, but he is willing to believe that it was not so, for, as he says, your imagination may run riot at so ghastly a time. But it was a most unfortunate thing to have said, for it seemed to be quite incompatible with the other evidence. Then, when it was known about the insurance policy, horrible, sinister rumours began to creep about. He was closely questioned as to whether he knew for what purpose young Harmsworth wanted the money he had advanced him, and he would not say. Neither would he tell me, but I understood that there was something disgraceful; blackmail, I suppose. He had an awful scene with Mrs. Harmsworth, Harold'smother. His friends, of course, scouted the idea of the possibility of such a possibility, but others, acquaintances, cooled toward him, though not exactly believing what was in the air; others cut him direct. It was only the medical evidence at the inquest, which showed that the injury of which Harmsworth died could easily have been inflicted by himself, that saved my uncle, in all probability, from being brought to trial. He said to me that it would have been better if he had, for then he would have been completely cleared, whereas now the matter will never be reopened."
"What an awful story!" said Geoffrey.
"Yes, and that was not the end of his trouble. Ten years later he had to declare bankruptcy, and my father gave him an annuity. But since his death it has not been paid; I never knew anything about it, and he would not allow that I should be told, and he has lived in horriblepensionsabroad. That seems to me such extraordinary delicacy, not letting me know. I never found out till I came of age."
"You have continued it?"
"Of course. I hope, also, he will live with me for the main part. I have offered him a couple of permanent rooms at Vail, for he would not come to London. O Geoffrey, it was the most pitiful story! And to think of him, bright, cheery, as we saw him down there, and know what an appalling load of undeserved misery he has supported so long! Now, it seems to me to be a brave man's part to bear misfortune calmly,without whimpering, but one would think it required a courage of superhuman kind to be able to remain sociable, cheerful, merry, even. But, oh, how bitter he is when he shows one all his thoughts! He warned me to rely on nobody; he said there was not a man in the world, even less a woman, who would stick to you if you were in trouble. Trouble comes; they are vanished like melting snow; a heap of dirt is left behind. Then he suddenly burst into tears and told me to forget all he had said, for he had given me the outpourings of a disappointed, soured man. I was young; let me trust every one as long as I could, let me make friends right and left; only, if trouble came, and they fell away, then, if I could find consolation therein, I might remember that the same thing had happened to others also."
Geoffrey was staring absently into the fire; his cigarette had gone out, and his whisky was untasted.
"By Gad!" he said. "Poor old beggar!"
And Harry, knowing that the British youth does not express sympathy in verbose paragraphs, or show his emotion by ejaculatory cries, was satisfied that the story had touched his friend.
Day by day and week by week Harry moved more at his ease in the world of people of whom hitherto he had known so little. The wall of the castle which he had erected round himself, compacted of his own diffidence and a certainhauteurof disposition, fell like the fortifications of Jericho at the blast of the trumpet, and it was a youngman, pleasant in body and mind, pleased with little, but much anxious to please, that came forth. His dinner invitation to some new house would be speedily indorsed by the greater intimacy of a Saturday till Monday, and the days were few on which he sat down to a cover for one in Cavendish Square.
Among these more particular friends with whom previous acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy, Lady Oxted, an old friend of Harry's father, stood pre-eminent. Here he soon becameami de la maison, dropping in as he chose, well knowing he was welcome; and such a footing, speedily and unquestioningly gained, was to one of a life previously so recluse a pleasure new and altogether delightful; for Lady Oxted had the power of creating the atmosphere of home, and home was one of those excellent things which Harry had hitherto lacked. He had not consciously missed it, because he had never yet known it, but his gradual understanding of it made him see how large an empty room there had been in his heart. To come uninvited, and to linger unconscionably long; to say firmly that he must be going, and yet to linger, he found to be an index to certain domestic and comfortable joys of life, not lightly to be placed low in that delightful miscellany. His nature, from his very youth, was not yet enough formed to be labelled by so harsh an epithet as austere, but hitherto he had not known the quiet monotonies which can be the cause of so much uneventful happiness. Evenfor those whose bulk of enjoyment is flavoured with the thrill of adventure and the frothier joys of living, who most need excitement and crave for stimulus, there yet are times for the unbending of the bow, when the child within them cries out for mere toys and companionship, and the soul longs to sit by the meditative fire rather than do battle with winds and stern events. And Harry was not one of those who need home least; simply, he had been frozen, but now, for the first time, the genial warmth of living began to touch him; he was like a plant put in some sunned and watered place, and its appropriate buds began to appear in this time of the singing bird. Here, too, he met romance with tremulous mouth and the things of which poets have sung.
One evening, toward the end of June, Lady Oxted was driving home from Victoria Station, where she had gone to meet the arrival of the Continental express. By her side sat a girl of little more than twenty, who, by the eager, questioning glances which she cast at that inimitable kaleidoscope of life as seen in the London streets, must probably have been deprived of this admirable spectacle for some time, for her gaze was quickened to an interest not habitual to Londoners, however deep is their devotion to the town of towns. The streets were at their fullest, in this height of the season and the summer, and the time of day being about half past five, the landau could make but a leisurely progress through the glittering show. The girl's cheek was flushed with the warm, healthy tinge which is the prerogative of those who prefer the air as God made it to the foul gases which men shut up in their houses, and, as they drove, she poured out a rapid series of questions and comments to Lady Oxted.
"Oh, I just love this stuffy old London!" she said; "but what have they done with the Duke of Wellington on his horse? The corner looksquite strange without it. Oh! there's a policeman keeping everybody back. Do you think it's the Queen? I hope it is. Why, it's only a fat little man with a beard in a brougham! Who is he, Aunt Violet, and why aren't we as good as he? Just fancy, it is three years since I have been in London—that's not grammar, is it?—and I had the greatest difficulty in making mother let me come. Indeed, if it hadn't been for your letter, saying that you would let me stay with you, I never should have come. And then the difficulties about the time I should stop! It wasn't worth while going for a month, and two months was too long. So I made it three."
"Well, it is delightful to have you, anyhow, dear Evie," said Lady Oxted. "And it really was time you should see London again. Your mother is well?"
"Very—as well as I am; and that means a lot. But she won't come to England, Aunt Violet, except for that one day every year, and I am beginning to think she never will now. It is twenty-one, nearly twenty-two years ago, that she settled at Santa Margarita—the year I was born."
"Yes, dear, yes," said Lady Oxted, a little hurriedly, and she would seemingly have gone on to speak of something else, but the girl interrupted her.
"You know her reason, of course, Aunt Violet," she said quietly, but with a certain firm resolve to speak. "No, let me go on: she told me about it only the other day. Of course, poorHarold's death must have been terrible for her, but it is awful, it is awful, I think, to take it the way she does. She still thinks that he died by no accident, but that he was intentionally shot by some man with whom he was out shooting. I asked her what his name was, but she would not tell me. And for all this time, once a year, on the day of Harold's death, she comes to England, puts red flowers on his grave, and returns. Oh, it is awful!"
Lady Oxted did not reply at once. "She still thinks so about it?" she asked at length.
"Yes; she told me herself. But I hope, perhaps, that her refusing to tell me the man's name—I asked only the evening before I left—may mean that she is beginning to wish to forget it. She wished, at any rate, that I should not know. Do you think it may be so?"
"I can't tell, Evie. Your mother——" and she stopped.
"Yes?"
"Only this. Your mother is hard to get at, inaccessible. It is almost impossible to know what she feels on subjects about which she feels deeply. I once tried to talk to her about it, but she would not. She heard what I had to say, but that was all."
The girl assented, then paused a moment.
"Poor mother, what an awful year for her!" she said. "She had only married my father, you know, a few months before Harold's death, and before the year was out Harold, her only son, wasdead, and she was left twice a widow and childless. I was not born for six months after my father's death. How strange never to have seen one's father!"
They drove in silence for a space. Then the girl said suddenly:
"Aunt Violet, promise me that you will never tell me the name of the man who was out shooting with Harold. You see my mother would not tell me when I asked her; surely that means she wishes that I should not know."
Lady Oxted felt herself for the moment in great perplexity. She had the rational habit, now growing rare, of thinking what she was saying, and meaning something by what she said, and, as her answer was conceivably a matter of some importance, she paused, thinking intently.
"I am not sure that I had better promise you that," she said at last.
Evie looked surprised.
"Why not?" she asked.
"I can't quite tell you," she said. "Give me time, dear—I will either make you the promise you ask, or tell you why I do not make it, this evening. In the meantime, Evie, I ask you, as a favour, to avoid thinking about it as far as you are able. Ah! here we are."
Indeed, the sight of Grosvenor Square was very welcome to Lady Oxted, for just now she had no clearness of mind on the question which the girl had put to her, but very great clearness as to the fact that there were delicate though remoteissues possibly at stake. Here was she with a three months' charge of Evie Aylwin, the half sister of poor Harold Harmsworth, daughter of his mother, whose attitude toward Mr. Francis admitted of no dubiety, while the most constant visitor at their house was the nephew of the man to whom so terrible a suspicion attached. That the two should not meet verged on impossibilities; and was it fair, either on one or the other, that they should run the ordinary chances of an attractive girl and a handsome boy together, without knowing in what curious and sombre prenatal ordination of Fate they were cast? It would be like indicating summer rain in hard lines of ink to say that Lady Oxted expected them to fall in love with each other, but among the possibilities such a contingency could not be reckoned very remote or unlikely. Probable, the most hardened matchmaker could not call it, but where was the celibate who would say it was impossible? The sudden, unexpected demand of the girl, "Promise me you will never tell me his name," had been, unknown to her, a request which presupposed the solution of a problem of a most complicated kind. Lady Oxted, it is true, had asked for time—already, she was afraid, unwisely; that, however, was done, and she had until the evening the power of making or refusing to make that promise. If she made it, she shouldered herself with the responsibility of countenancing the free intercourse of the two, and the mutual attraction to which it might easily give rise, and of seeing it pursue itscourse to its possible evolution in love and marriage. The girl was staying with her; Harry Vail was so assiduous in his presence that he could scarcely be called a visitor; both were supremely eligible. It was clearly idle to overlook the possibility. Given that these things occurred, she foresaw a moment, possibly very unpleasant, and certainly to be laid to her door, when Mrs. Aylwin heard of the engagement of her daughter to the man on whose name, in her mind, rested the stain of so intimate a bloodguiltiness.
But this unwelcome conclusion brought with it a sudden reaction of hopefulness. Evie Aylwin had asked her mother the name of Harold's companion on that fatal morning, and had been denied the information. Did not that argue a loophole of encouraging amplitude? Surely, to the weaving feminine mind it meant that the mother, though perhaps neither repenting nor regretting the black influence which this suspicion, founded or unfounded, had had on herself, yet wished her daughter to move in absolute freedom, avoiding none, open to all; to conduct her life with perfect liberty, not knowing more, being prevented by her own mother from knowing anything with definite label of that tragic affair. Else how was it conceivable that she should not have said those two words, "Francis Vail"? Mrs. Aylwin, so reasoned this acute lady, must have known—for who did not know?—the strange, solitary history of the last, and the head of the house, and was not her refusal to mentionthe uncle's name a silent recognition, if rightly interpreted, that the two might meet?
The thought was a pleasant one, for she was much attached to both Harry and the girl, and for a moment she let her fancy build a fantastic dome in air. If Mrs. Aylwin had recognised this, and the inference was not unreasonable, did not the recognition imply a hope, though of the faintest and most unformulated, that now she saw her long, bitter suspicion to have been a mistake? Then her silence would amount even to a wish that the two might meet, and that one of her blood might, in the remote possibilities, wipe away by this union that of her blood which had been shed.
To take the other side, if she did not make this promise, she had to refuse, with what softenings and limitations you will, to bind herself. In case, then, of what event, to meet what contingency, would she make the reservation—under what circumstances, that is to say, did she desire to leave herself free? Clearly, in case of the possible happening, of the two falling under the spell of each other. But in that case (clearly, also, she was afraid) it would be far better to tell the girl now, at once, and save her the greater shock. To hear the name Vail now, this moment, would be nothing to her. To hear the name Vail in its more sinister connection, when already it had a vital sound to her ear, was a pang that might be saved her now, but not hereafter.
Again, still dealing with these remote possibilities,in which connection alone her decision had any significance, was it conceivably fair to Harry to reveal, though in the most intimate way and the most pain-sparing words, the stain that hung over his name? Long ago Lady Oxted had settled with herself that the affair was dead and buried. At the time, even, it had been no more than an unproved and dark suspicion, though endowed with all the mysterious vitality of evil; but was she, of all women, who held that to repeat an evil tale is only one degree removed from inventing it, to stir, for any purpose, that coiled worm of suspicion? The thought was an abhorrence to her, and Evie's mother, it seemed, in her own dealings with her own child, had indorsed her unwillingness. But it was certain that, if the name had to be told, it must be told now, for, supposing the two remained strangers to intimacy, there would be no greater harm done now than afterward; but if intimacy was otherwise to be, it was better to kill it in the womb than to let it live and destroy it afterward.
A third alternative remained: to write to Mrs. Aylwin, saying quite simply that Harry Vail was an intimate friend of hers, that he was attractive and of unblemished character and reputation (so much she was bound to say for the young man's sake), and what did the mother want done? But such a letter, she felt, would be a thing to blush over, even when alone. How demented a matchmaker she would appear!
Back swung the balance. She was in theposition of mother to the girl, and the mother, out of her own mouth, had desired that she should not know the name. That desire had reached Lady Oxted casually, not knowing to whom it journeyed; but it had arrived, and she was bound to respect it. The promise was as good as made.
Evie had gone to her room after tea, and these various fences faced Lady Oxted on all sides till the ringing of the dressing bell. But that sound suggested the dinner table to her, and at the thought of the dinner table she suddenly felt the conclusions wrested from her, for she remembered for the first time that Harry dined with them that night. And though she did not expect that, on entering the drawing-room, he would immediately throw himself on his knees at Evie's feet, it seemed to her that, as a controlling power, she was put on the shelf; that the issues of things were in younger and stronger hands than hers.
She found a letter or two for her in the hall, and taking these in her hand she went upstairs.
"'The Luck of the Vails,'" she said to herself, and the phrase shaped itself to her steps, a step to a syllable.
Still, with her letters in her hand, she looked in at Evie's room, and, finding her "betwixt and between," went on to her own; and, as her maid did her hair, she opened them. The first was from Harry.
"The greatest luck," it ran. "The Grimstoneshave influenza in the house, and have put me off. So I can and will and shall come to you for Sunday at Oxted. I shall see you this evening, but I can't resist writing this."
"Kismet!" murmured Lady Oxted, "or something very like it."
Dinner was over, and of Lady Oxted's party there only remained by eleven o'clock but a couple of her guests. There was a ball at one house, an evening party at another, a concert at a third, and each claimed its grilling quota, leaving even at this hour only Harry Vail and Geoffrey Langham. Lord Oxted, as was his wont, had retired to his study, as soon as his duties as host would permit, without positively violating decency, but the two young men still lingered, making an intimate party.
During the last few months Harry had continued to so expand that it would have been difficult to recognise in him the hero of that recluse coming-of-age party but half a year ago. But this change was the result of no violent revolution; his nature had in no way been wrested from its normal development, merely that development had been long retarded, and was now proportionately rapid. For years his solitary home had ringed him with frost, the want of kindly fireside interests had led him on the path that leads to the great, unexplored deserts of the recluse; but the impulse given, the plunge into the world taken,he had thriven and grown with marvellous alacrity. Indeed, the stunted habit of his teens remained in him now only as shown in a certain impression he produced of holding himself still somewhat in reserve; in a disposition, notable in an age which loves to expose its internal organism to the gaze of sympathizing friends, to be his own master; to retain, if he wished, a privacy of his own, and to guard, as a sacred trust, his right to his own opinion in matters which concerned himself.
Lady Oxted, however, on this as on many other occasions, felt herself obliged to find fault with him, and the presence of her niece, it would appear, did not impose bounds on her candour.
"You are getting lazy and self-contented, Harry," she remarked on this particular evening. "You are here in London professing to lead the life of the people with whom you associate, and you are shirking it."
Harry looked up with mild wonder at this assault, and drew his chair a little closer up to the half circle they made round the open window, for the night was stifling, and the candles had drooped during fish.
"I never professed anything of the kind," he said; "and I don't yet understand in the slightest degree what you mean. But, no doubt, I soon shall."
"I will try to make it plain to you," said Lady Oxted. "You have chosen to come to London and lead the silly, frivolous life we all lead. That,to begin with, is ridiculous of you. There is no need for you to be in London, and why any fairly intelligent young man ever is, unless he has business which takes him there, passes my understanding. You might be down at Vail, looking after your property, or you might be travelling."
"I still don't understand about my professing to lead the life of the people among whom I move," said Harry.
"I am coming to that. You have chosen to spend these three months in London without any better reason for it than that everybody else does so. That being so, you ought to behave like everybody else. For instance, when Mrs. Morris wanted to take you to her sister's dance to-night, you ought to have gone; also Lady Wraysbury asked you to go to the concert at the Hamiltons'. Again you refused."
"She wanted you to come too," said Harry, "at least, she asked you," he added, getting in a back-hander.
"I'm an old woman, and I choose to sit by my own fire."
"Won't you have it lit?" asked Harry. "And I chose to sit there too. But I will go away, if you like."
"And will you go to the dance?"
"Not in the least; if you send me away, I shall go to bed."
"You speak as if you were all the six great powers, sending an ultimatum to Heligoland," said Lady Oxted.
"Not in the least; if you send me away, I shall go."
Lady Oxted laughed.
"Heligoland replies that the six great powers may wait ten minutes," she said.
Harry turned to Evie Aylwin.
"Yes, I feel just as you do," he said eagerly, reverting at once to the conversation which had been interrupted by Lady Oxted's strictures. "I love the sense of being in the middle of millions of people, each of whom, just like you and me, have their own private paradise and joy of life, which the world probably never guesses."
Evie looked at him quickly.
"Have you a private joy, Lord Vail?" she asked. "Do tell me what it is. A thing that is private is always interesting."
Harry laughed.
"It is called the Luck," he said; "the Luck of the Vails."
"Are you really beginning to believe in that nonsense, Harry?" asked Lady Oxted.
"I have begun," said he.
"O Aunt Violet, how horrid you are!" cried Evie. "Do let Lord Vail tell me about it. It is private: I am dying to know."
"Shall I? I will make it short, then," said Harry, "for Lady Oxted's sake."
"I would rather that you made it long for mine," said the girl; "but that is as you please."
Lady Oxted gave a loud and quite voluntary sigh.
"Poor, dear Harry!" she said. "Geoffrey, let us talk about something extremely tangible the while. You are on the Stock Exchange. Speak to me of backwardation and contango. That may counteract the weakening effect of Harry's nonsense. Are you a bear?"
Harry smiled, and drew his chair closer to the girl's. "I will talk low," he said, "so that we shall not offend Lady Oxted, and you must promise to stop me if you get bored. Anyhow, you brought it on yourself, for you asked me about my private joy. This is it."
Blue eyes, deepened by the shaded light to violet, looked into his as he began his tale; into hers looked brown eyes, which seemed black. He told her of the ancient history of the cup, and she listened with interest to a story that might have claimed attention even from a stranger. Then he came to his own finding of it in an attic upon a winter's day; to the three accidents to himself, each trivial, which had followed the finding; and her eyes—which up till now had been at one time on his, at another had strayed with a certain consciousness and purpose (for he never looked elsewhere than at hers) now this way, now that, had superintended the disentangling of a piece of lace which had caught in her bracelet, or had guided her finger as it traced the intricate ivory of her fan handle—became absorbed. They saw only Harry's big, dark eyes, or, at their widest circuit, his parted lips, from which the words came. Her own mouth, thin, finely lipped, drooped a little atthe centre with interest and expectation, and the even line of teeth showed in the red a band of ivory set in pomegranate. Once she impatiently swept back a tress of hair which drooped over her ear, but the playing of her fingers with her fan had become unconscious, and her eyes no longer followed them. And it would seem that Harry had forgotten his promise to make the story short for Lady Oxted's sake, and had rather acceded silently to the girl's request to make it long for hers, for the startling revelations about backwardations and bears had long languished before the tale was done.
At last Harry's voice stopped, and there was silence a moment, though both still looked at the other. Then Evie gave a little sharp, involuntary sigh, and her eyebrows met in a frown.
"Throw it away, Lord Vail," she said sharply. "Throw it away at once, where it will be lost, lost. It is a terrible thing! And yet, and yet, how can one believe it? The thing is gold and gems, that is all. Ah! how I should like to see it! It must be magnificent, this Luck of yours. All the same, it is terrible. How can it be your private joy?"
Harry rose. If he was not in earnest, it was an admirable counterfeit.
"Do you not see?" he said. "'Fear both fire and frost and rain,' runs the rhyme. But think what the cup is called: it is the Luck of the Vails, and the Vails are—well, they are I and my uncle at least. Ah! I forget one more thing. Only two days ago my uncle found the key of itscase. It was locked when I found it; it had to be broken open. Well, I fell into the fire; I caught a chill in the rain; I sprained my ankle, owing to the frost. I have paid the penalties of the Luck. Now, don't you see I am waiting for the Luck itself? Indeed, perhaps it has begun," he added.
"How so?" asked the girl with security, for she knew he was not the kind of man to pay inane compliments.
"Since I found it, I have begun to become human," he said gravely. "Indeed, six months ago I had no friend in the world except Geoffrey."
"What's that about me?" asked Geoffrey, who was playing piquet with Lady Oxted.
"I was only saying you weren't such a brute as you appeared," said Harry, without looking round; "I'm a true friend, Geoff." Then, dropping his voice again, "Then, on the finding of the Luck, I became—oh, I don't know what I became—what I am, anyhow!"
He leaned back again in his chair, blushing a little at his own unpremeditated burst of egotism.
"Of course, soberly, and in the light of 9a.m., I don't believe in it," he continued. "But my having those three little accidents was a very curious coincidence, following as they did on the heels of my finding the Luck. Anyhow, it pleases me to think that there may be one coincidence more—that those three little bits of bad luck will be followed by a piece of very good luck. That is my private joy—the thought ofsome great, good thing happening to me. And then, oh, then, won't I just take the Luck, and stamp on it, and throw the rent pieces to the four winds of heaven!"
There was a moment's silence as his voice, slightly raised, gave out the blindly spoken words, which had yet a certain ring of truth about them. But as soon as they were spoken Evie's mood changed.
"Oh, you mustn't!" she cried; "you could not bring yourself to destroy such a lovely thing. Those stars of emeralds, those clear-set diamond handles, oh! it makes my mouth water to think of them. I love jewels!"
Lady Oxted at this point was deep in the heavily swollen waters of Rubicon, and her tone was of ill-suppressed acidity.
"Is the nursery rhyme nearly finished?" she asked.
Harry advanced to her and held out his hand.
"Make it up, Lady Oxted," he said. "My fault entirely!"
Evie followed him.
"Dear Aunt Violet," she said, "shake hands with Lord Vail this moment. He has given me the most exciting half hour; and you may die in the night, and then you'll be sorry you spoke unkindly to him. And now we'll talk about liquidation as much as you please. Oh! you are playing bezique.—Really, Lord Vail, your story was one of the most interesting I have ever heard; yousee it isn't over yet; you still have the Luck. That makes all the difference; one is never told a ghost story till the house is pulled down, or all the people who have seen the ghost are in lunatic asylums. But your story is now only at the beginning. Upon my word, I can't make up my mind what you ought to do with the Luck. But I'll tell you some day, when I feel certain. Oh! I shall never feel certain," she cried. "You must act as you please!"
"I have your leave?" he said, quite gravely and naturally.
"Yes."
At that again their eyes met, but though they had looked at each other so long and so steadily on this first evening of their acquaintance, on this occasion neither of them prolonged the glance.
Presently after, the two young men left and strolled back to Geoffrey's rooms in Orchard Street, on the way to Cavendish Square. Both were of the leisurely turn of mind that delights in observation and makes no use whatever of that which it has observed; and scorning the paltry saving of time and shoe leather to be secured by a cab, they went on foot through the night bright with lamps of carriages and jingling with bells of hansoms.
"Well, I've had an awfully nice evening," said Harry. "Extra nice, I mean, though it is always jolly at the Oxteds."
"I thought you were enjoying yourself," said the other, "when you refused to go to the concert,for which, as you remember, only this afternoon you were wishing for an invitation. Afterward, also, I thought you were enjoying yourself."
"Oh, for God's sake don't try to be sly!" exclaimed Harry. "I wish I was a better hand at telling a story. But all the same I think it didn't bore Miss Aylwin. After all, the Luck is a very curious thing," he added.
"You are going to Oxted for the Sunday, are you not?" asked Geoffrey.
"Yes; the Grimstones have the flue in the house, bless them! And you go home, don't you? Oh, I never saw such wonderful eyes in my life!" he cried.
"You are alluding to mine, apparently?" said Geoffrey.
"Yes, of course I am. Deep violet by candlelight, and soft somehow like velvet."
"Very handsome of you. I'll look to-night when I go to bed. My hair, too, soft and fluffy, and the colour of the sun shining through a mist."
Harry laughed.
"The habit of being funny is growing on you, Geoff," he said. "Take it in time, old chap, and see some good man about it. Oh! it's rot going to bed now; let's come to the club; it's only just down Park Lane. I'm not feeling like bed just yet."
Meantime, at the house they had just left, Evie had gone up to bed, leaving Lady Oxted to do what she called "write two notes," a simplediplomatic method of stating that she did not herself mean to come upstairs immediately. These written, she announced, she would come to talk for five minutes, and they would take, perhaps, a quarter of an hour to write. In other words, as soon as Evie had gone, she went downstairs to seek her husband in his room, where she would be sure to find him sitting by a green reading lamp in mild exasperation at anything which the Government might happen to have done with regard either to a kindly old President of a South African republic or the second standard for board schools.
"Violet, it is really too bad," said he, as she entered. "Have you read the Home Secretary's speech at Manchester? He says—let me see, where is it?"
"Dear Bob," said his wife, "whatever he said, you would quite certainly disagree with it. But never mind showing it me this minute. I want your advice about another matter."
A faint smile came over Lord Oxted's thin, sharp face; he usually smiled when his wife came to him for advice. He put down his paper and crossed one leg over the other.
"What sort of advice?" he asked. "Be far more explicit before you consult me. Do you want to tell me of some decision you have made, and wish me to agree with you, or is it possible that you have not yet made your decision? It is as well to know, Violet, and it may save me from misunderstanding you."
Lady Oxted laughed.
"I am not yet sure which it is," she said. "Let me tell you my story, and by that time, you see, I may have made up my mind, in which case I shall want the first sort of advice; but if I have not, the second."
"That sounds fair," he assented.
In a few words she told him all that had passed between her and Evie.
"And now," she concluded, "am I to promise or not?"
Lord Oxted was a cynic in a certain mild and kindly fashion.
"Certainly promise," he said. "And, being a woman, you will probably at the very back of your mind—the very back, I say—reserve to yourself the right to break it if it becomes inconvenient to keep it."
"Don't be rude, Bob. I think I shall promise, but at the same time write to Mrs. Aylwin."
Her husband chuckled quietly.
"That is precisely what I meant," he said, "only I did not put the reservation quite so far forward in your mind. Did the two young people get on well together?"
"Too well. Harry has developed an amazing knack of getting on well with people. And he is coming to us for the Sunday."
"Then most likely you are already too late. You should have thought of these things before, Violet. Your after-thoughts, it is true, are often admirable, but, so to speak, they never catch thetrain. Bear this also in mind: if anything happens, if the two get engaged, we shall be liable at any moment to a crushing descent from Mrs. Aylwin. If she comes, I go. That is all."
"But she is charming."
"And completely overpowering. I will not be made to feel like a child in my own house. Dear me, you have probably got into a mess, Violet. Good-night, dear."
"You agree with me, then?" she asked.
"Completely, entirely, fervently, for it is clear to me that you want the first sort of advice."
Lady Oxted went slowly upstairs and to Evie's room. Her maid had already left her, and the two settled themselves down for a talk. The night was hot, and Evie, in a white dressing gown with a touch of blue ribbon, lounged coolly by the open window. The hum of ambient London came up to them like the sound of drowsy, innumerable bees, and the girl listened in a sort of ecstasy.
"Hark! hark!" she cried; "hundreds and thousands and millions of people are there! Lord Vail felt just as I do about it. Oh, what a host of pleasant things there are in the world!" she cried, stretching out her arms as if to take the whole swarming town to her breast. Then she turned quickly away into the room again.
"Now, dear aunt," she said, "before we settle down to talk, and I have lots to say, let me know that one thing. Do you promise never to tell me the name of that man?"
Lady Oxted did not pause.
"Yes, I promise," she said.
"Thank you. So that is all right. It would be dreadful, would it not, if I had been obliged to be afraid that every particularly delightful person that I met was the son, or the nephew, or the cousin of that man, or even the man himself? But now that is all right; mother would not tell me, and you (knowing her wish, is it not so?) also will not. O Aunt Violet, I intend to enjoy myself so! What a jolly world it is, to be sure! I am so glad God thought of it! Is that profane? No, I think not."
Lady Oxted, it has been said, had anticipated one unpleasant moment. This, she considered, made two. And though it was not her habit to question the decrees of Providence, she wondered what she had done to deserve a position where the converse of candour was so sorely in demand. But she had not much time for thought, for Evie continued:
"Only one evening gone," she said, "and that not yet gone, and what pleasure I have already had! Aunt Violet, how could you want Lord Vail not to tell me the story of the Luck? It was the most exciting thing I have ever heard, and, as I told him, he is only at the beginning of it. Italy, the South, is supposed to be the home of romance, but I do not find it there. Then I come to England, and in London, in Grosvenor Square, I hear within an hour or two of my arrival that story. I think——" She stopped suddenly, got up, and sat down on the sofa by Lady Oxted.
"Lord Vail—who is he?" she asked. "What pleasant people you have at your house, Aunt Violet! He is so nice. So is his friend—Mr. Langton, is it not? So was the man who took me in to dinner. What was his name? I did not catch it."
There was not much comfort here. The girl had forgotten, or not heard, the name of the man who took her in to dinner; she had got Geoffrey Langham's name wrong, and out of all these "nice people" there was only one name right.
"Langham, dear—not Langton," said Lady Oxted, "and the man who took you in to dinner was Mr. Tresham. Surely you must have heard his name. He is in the Cabinet. Really, Evie, you do not appreciate the fine people I provide for your entertainment."
The girl laughed lazily, but with intense enjoyment.
"Not appreciate?" she said. "Words fail me to tell you how I appreciate them all. Mr. Tresham was simply delightful. We talked about dachshunds, which I love, and what else—oh! diamonds. I love them also. Aunt Violet, I should like to see the Luck: it must be a wonderful thing. So Mr. Tresham is a Conservative?"
"It is supposed so," said Lady Oxted, with slight asperity. "When the Conservatives are in power, dear, the Cabinet is rarely composed of Liberals."
The girl laughed again.
"Dear Aunt Violet, you are a little hard on uspoor innocents this evening. You blew up Lord Vail in the most savage manner, and now you are blowing me up. What have we done? Well, now, tell me about Mr. Langham."
"Geoffrey is a younger son of Lord Langham," said the other. "He is on the stock exchange, and is supposed to know nothing whatever about stock-broking."
"How very good-looking he is!" said Evie. "If I wanted to exchange stock, I should certainly ask him to do it for me. Somehow, people with nice faces inspire me with much more confidence than those whom I am assured have beautiful minds. One can see their faces: that makes so much difference!"
Lady Oxted assented, and waited with absolute certainty for the next question. This tribute to Geoffrey's good looks did not deceive her for a moment: it was a typical transparency. And when the next question came, she only just checked herself from saying, "I thought so."
"And now tell me about Lord Vail," said Evie, after a pause.
"Well, he seemed to be telling you a good deal himself," said Lady Oxted. "What can I add? He is not yet twenty-two; he is considered pleasant; he is poor; he is the head of what was once a great family."
"But his people?" asked Evie.
"He has no father, no mother, no brothers or sisters."
"Poor fellow!" said Evie, thoughtfully. "Buthe doesn't look like a person who need be lonely, or who was lonely, for that matter. Has he no relations?"
"Of his name only one," said Lady Oxted, feeling that Providence was really treating her with coarse brutality; "that is his uncle, his great-uncle, rather, Francis Vail," and, as she spoke, she thought to herself in how widely different a connection she might have had to use those two words.
"Do you know him?"
"I used to, but never intimately. He has not lived in the world lately. For the last six months he has been down at Harry's place in Wiltshire. The boy has been exceedingly good to him."
"Is he fond of him?"
"Very, I believe," said Lady Oxted. "He often speaks of him, and always with affection and a tenderness that is rather touching."
"That is nice of him," said the girl with decision, "for I suppose he can not be expected to have much in common with him. And so the old man lives with him. He is old, I suppose, as he is Lord Vail's great-uncle."
"He is over seventy," said Lady Oxted, turning her back to the storm.
"And Harry Vail is poor, you say?"
"Considering what the Vails have been, very poor," said Lady Oxted. "But you probably know as much about that as I, since Harry took so very long telling you the story of the Luck. It was lost once in the reign of Queen Anne, and during the South-Sea Bubble——"
"Yes, he told me about that," said Evie. "It is strange, is it not?"
Suddenly she sat up as if with an effort.
"Oh! to-morrow, and to-morrow, and lots more of them!" she cried. "Tell me what we shall do to-morrow, Aunt Violet. I am sure it will all be delightful, and for that very reason I want to think about it beforehand. I am a glutton about pleasure. Will you take me somewhere in the morning, and will delightful people come to lunch? Then in the afternoon we go to Oxted, do we not? I love the English country. Who will be coming? Is it a beautiful place? What is the house like? Tell me all about everything."
"Including about going to bed and going to sleep, Evie?" asked the other. "It is long after twelve, do you know?"
The girl got up.
"And you want to go to bed," she said. "I am so sorry, Aunt Violet! I ought to have seen you were tired. You look tired."
"And you—don't you want to go to sleep? You were travelling all last night."
The girl looked at the smooth pillow and sheet folded back. "Ah! it does look nice," she said. "But, indeed, I don't feel either sleepy or tired. Anyhow, Aunt Violet, I am not going to keep you up. Oh, I am so glad you got mother to let me come and stay with you! I shall have a good time. Good-night."
"Good-night, dear. You have everything?"
"Everything—more than everything."
Lady Oxted always breakfasted in her own room, and before she appeared next morning she had spent a long hour in wrestling over her letter to Mrs. Aylwin. She had been desirous to tell the unvarnished truth, and yet to steer clear of a production by a demented matchmaker, and her letter, it must be confessed, was an admirable performance. Evie had told her, so she wrote, of her mother's refusal to let her know the name of the man at whose door she laid, or used to lay, Harold's death, and, taking this to mean that Mrs. Aylwin, for any reason, did not wish Evie to know it, the writer had, at Evie's request, promised on her own part not to tell her. The present Lord Vail, she must add, Mr. Francis's nephew, was a constant visitor at her house, and he and Evie had already met. Mrs. Aylwin, she was bound to understand, put no prohibition on their meeting in the way they were sure to meet during the season. Lord Vail was a young man, pleasant, attractive, and of excellent disposition.
Lady Oxted laid down her pen for a moment at this point, then hurriedly took it up to add an amiable doxology, and sign it. She felt convincedshe could not do better; convinced, also, that if she gave the matter further consideration, it would end in her doing much worse. Then she took Evie out with a warm and approving conscience.
That afternoon they left London, as had been originally planned, to spend the Sunday at their country house in Sussex. During the hours of the night, Lady Oxted had sternly interrogated herself as to whether she ought, on any lame or paltry excuse, to put Harry off; but on the strength of her promise given to Evie, and the letter she was about to write to Mrs. Aylwin, she felt she could not take any step in the matter till she received her answer. To put him off, argued the inward voice, was to act contrary to the spirit of her promise, which entailed not only silence of the lips, but abstinence from any manœuvring or outflanking movement of this kind. This reasoning seemed sound, and as it went in harness with her instinct, she obeyed it without question.
The house stood high on a broad ridge of the South Downs, commanding long views of rolling fields alternating with the more sombre green of the woods. To the east lay the heathery heights of Ashdown Forest, peopled with clumps and companies of tall Scotch fir; southward the smooth austerity of the hills behind Brighton formed the horizon line. Thatched roofs nestled at cosy intervals beside the double hedgerows which indicated roads; a remote church spire pricked the sky, or an occasional streamer ofsmoke indicated some train burrowing distantly at the bottom of valleys, before it again plunged with a shriek into the bases of the tunnelled hills; but, except for these, the evidences of humanity were to be sought in vain. The house itself was partly Elizabethan, in part of Jacobean building, picturesquely chimneyed, and high in the pitch of its outside roofs; inside, it was panelled and oaken-beamed, spacious of hearth, and open of fireplace. Round it ran level lawns, fringed with flower beds, wall-encompassed, which as they receded farther from the house gradually lost formality, and merged by imperceptible steps into untutored Nature. Here, for instance, you would pass from the trim velvet of the nearer lawns into the thick lush grass of an orchard planted with apples and the Japanese cherry; but the grass was thick in spring, with the yellow of the classical daffodil; and scarlet of the anemone was spilled thereon, and the dappled heads of the fritillary rose, bell-shaped. Here, again, in a different direction the lawn farther from the house was invaded by a band of lilac bushes, and to the wanderer here a Scotch fir would suddenly stand sentinel at a turn of the grassy path, while, if his walk took him but fifty yards more remote, the lilacs would have ceased, and he would be treading the brown, silent needles of the fir grove, exchanging for the sweet, haunting smell of the garden shrubs the clean odour of the pine. In a word, it was a place apt to reflect the moods of the inhabitants: the sombrely disposed might easily see in thepines a mirror of their thought; the lilacs, whose smell is ever a host of memories, would call up a hundred soft images in hearts otherwise disposed; while, for the lover of pointed conversation, whatmilieucould be more suitable than the formality of the lawns nearer the house, which, clean and trim cut as French furniture, irresistibly gave to those who sat and talked there a certain standard of precision? Beyond, again, the orchard was every evening a singing contest of nightingales, and through the soft foliage of fruitful trees, moon and stars cast deep shadows and diapers of veiled light into grassy alleys.
The party was but a small one, for influenza had for the last month been pursuing its pleasant path of decimation through London, and, as Mr. Tresham remarked, while they drank their coffee in the tent on the lawn after lunch next day:
"Those of us who are not yet dead are not yet out of its clutches."
Lady Oxted sighed.
"I had it once a week throughout last summer," she said. "It is such a consolation, when it is about, to know that the oftener you have it the more liable you become to it!"
Mrs. Antrobus finished her coffee, and tried to feel her pulse.
"I never can find it," she said, "and that is so frightening! It may have stopped, for all I know."
"Dear lady," said Mr. Tresham, "I will promise to tell you whether it has stopped or not,not more than a minute after it has done so. Alas! it will then be too late."
"Ah! there it is," said Mrs. Antrobus at length. "One, two. Ithasstopped now. Take the time, Mr. Tresham, and tell me when a minute has gone."
"Your mother is the only really healthy person I know," said Lady Oxted to Evie. "Whether she is ill or not, she always believes that she is perfectly well. And as long as one fully believes that, as she does, it really matters little how ill one is!"
Lord Oxted got slowly out of his chair.
"Some doctor lately analyzed a cubic inch of air in what we should call a clean London drawing-room," he said. "He found that it contained over two hundred bacilli, each of which, if they lived carefully and married, would, with its family, be soon able to kill the strongest man. I surrendered as soon as I heard it!"
"Quite the best thing to do," said Mr. Tresham, "for otherwise they would kill you. It is better to give yourself up, and be taken alive!"
"It is certainly better to remain alive," said Mrs. Antrobus. "That is why we all go to bed now when we get the influenza. We surrender, like Lord Oxted, and so the bacilli do not kill us, but only send us away to the seaside. It is the people who will not surrender who die. Personally I should never dream of going about with a high temperature. It sounds so improper!"
Evie was sitting very upright in her chair, listeningto this surprising conversation. She had seen Mrs. Antrobus for the first time the evening before, and had made Lady Oxted laugh by asking whether she was a little mad. It had been almost more puzzling to be told that she was not, than if she had been told that she was. And at this remark about her temperature, Evie suddenly looked round, as if for a sympathizing eye. An eye there certainly was, and she felt as if, in character of a hostess, she had looked for and caught Harry Vail's. At any rate, he instantly rose, she with him, and together they strolled out of the Syrian tent on the lawn, and down toward the cherry-planted orchard.
For a few paces they went in silence, each feeling as if a preconcerted signal had passed between them. Then Evie stopped.
"I wonder if it is rude to go away?" she said. "Do you think we ought to go back?"
"It is never any use going back," said Harry. "Certainly, in this case it would not do. They would think——" and a sudden boldness came over him; "they would think we had quarrelled."
Evie laughed.
"That would never do," she said, "for I feel just now as if you were an ally, my only one. What strange things Mrs. Antrobus says! Perhaps they are clever?" She made this suggestion hopefully, without any touch of sarcasm.
"Most probably," said Harry. "That would be an excellent reason, anyhow, for my finding them quite impossible to understand."
"Don't you understand them? Then we certainly are allies. You know I asked my aunt last night whether she was at all mad, and she seemed surprised that I should think so. But, really, when a woman says that she wishes she had been her own mother, because she would have been so much easier to manage than her daughter—what does it all mean?" she asked.
"Oh, she's not mad," said Harry. "It is only a way she has. There are lots of people like her. I don't mind it myself: you only have to laugh; there is no necessity for saying anything."
"And as little opportunity," remarked Evie.
She paused, then pulled a long piece of feathery grass from its sheath.
"England is delightful," she said with decision. "I find it simply delightful, from Mrs. Antrobus upward or downward. Just think, Lord Vail, I have not been here for three years! What has happened since then?"
"To whom?"
"To anybody. You, for example."
"Have I not told you? I have come of age. I have found the Luck."
Evie threw the grass spearwise down wind. She had not exactly meant to speak so personally.
"Ah, the Luck!" she exclaimed. "Lord Vail, do promise to show it me!"
Thereat Harry again grew bold.
"Nothing easier," he said. "I have to go down to Vail next week. Persuade Lady Oxted to bring you down for a day or two. The Luckis the only inducement, I am afraid; it and some big, bare, Wiltshire downs."
"Big, large, and open?" she asked.
"All that. Does it please you?"
"Immensely. I should love to come. And the Luck is there? You must know that I am horribly inquisitive; perhaps, if you were indulgent, you would say interested, and leave out the horribly, in other people's concerns. So, tell me, what do you hope the Luck will bring you?"
"I don't dare to hope. I am inclined to wait a little."
Evie frowned.
"That would be all very well for a woman," she said, "but it won't do for a man. It is a woman's part to sit at home and wait for the luck. But it is a man's to go and seek it."
"I am on the lookout for it. I am always on the lookout for it," he said.
Some shadow passed across the brightness of Evie's eyes; again the personal note had been a little too distinct in her speech, and she replied quickly:
"That is right. I should go for the highest if I were you. I think I should plot a revolution, and make myself King of England. Something big of that sort!"
"I had not thought of that," said Harry; "and I sometimes wonder—it is all nonsense, you know, about the Luck, and of course I don't really believe in it—but I sometimes wonder——"
He paused a moment.
"I wonder whether you would care to hear some more family history?" he said at length.
"Is it as exciting as the Luck?" asked the girl.
"I don't know if you will find it so. It is certainly more tragic."
"Do tell me!" she said.
"Promise me to exercise your right of stopping me, as before."
"I never stopped you!" she exclaimed.
Harry laughed.
"No. I meant that you had the right to," he said. "Do you really want to hear it? It is intimate stuff."
"Indeed I do," she said.
Harry paused a moment, then began his story.
"There lives at Vail," he said, "a man whom I honour as much as any one in the world, my great-uncle, Francis Vail. He is old, he has led the most unhappy life, yet, if you met him casually, you would say he was a man who had never seen sorrow, so cheerful is he, so full of kindly spirits."
"He is your only relation, is he not?" asked the girl.
"He is. Who told you?"