"Electric light throughout, Uncle Francis,"he said, "and hot water laid on upstairs. There is the ultimatum. The house is more behindhand than the park. Therefore the house first."
"You see exactly what that will come to?" asked Mr. Francis.
"Yes; according to the estimates you have given me, I can afford so much, and the park palings may go to the deuce. One does not live in the park palings, and, since you mention it, I daresay I shall ask people here a good deal next winter. Let's see; this is mid-June. Let them begin as soon as Lady Oxted and Miss Aylwin have been, and they should be out of the house again by October; though the British workman always takes a longer lease than one expects. I shall want to be here in October. Oh, I wish it were October. Pheasant-shooting, you know," he added, in a tone of apology.
He tore up some sheets of figures, then looked up at his uncle.
"You will like to have people here, will you not, Uncle Francis?" he asked. "There shall be young people for you to play with, and old people for me to talk to. And we'll shoot, and, oh, lots of things."
He got off his chair, stretching himself slowly and luxuriously.
"Thank goodness, I have made up my mind," he said. "I thought I was never going to. Come out for a stroll before lunch."
Whether it was that the multiplicity of these arithmetical concerns came between the two, or,as Harry sometimes fancied, his uncle was not disposed to return to that intimacy of talk which had followed his strange seizure on the first night, did not certainly appear. The upshot, however, admitted of no misunderstanding, and, engrossed in these subjects, the two did not renew their conversation about Miss Aylwin and all that bordered there. As far as concerned his own part, Harry did not care to speak of what was so sacred to him, and so near and far; she was the subject for tremulous, solitary visions; to discuss was impossible, and to trespass near that ground was to make him silent and awkward. No great deal of intuition was necessary on Mr. Francis's part to understand this, and he also gave a wide berth to possible embarrassments.
The Sunday afternoon following, Harry left again for London, for he was dining out that night. He said good-bye to his uncle immediately after lunch, for at the country church there was a children's service which Mr. Francis had to attend, since he was in charge of a certain section of the congregation—those children, in fact, who attended his class in the village Sunday school.
Harry had held long sessions in his mind as to whether he should or should not ask other people to Vail to meet Lady Oxted and Miss Aylwin at the end of the month. It was but a thin hospitality, he was afraid, to bring two ladies down to Wiltshire to spend a country Sunday, and provide for their entertainment only the society of himself and his uncle; and this fear gradually deepening to certainty, he hurriedly asked four or five other guests, only two days before the projected visit, in revolt all the time at the obligations of a host. All of these, however, as was not unnatural at this fullest time in the year, were otherwise engaged, and he opened each letter of regret with increasing satisfaction. He had been balked in the prosecution of his duty; it was no use at this late hour trying again.
There were also other reasons against having a party. His uncle's health, for instance, so he wrote to him, had not been very good since his attack. He had been left rather weak and shattered by it, and though his letter was full of that zest and cheerfulness which was so habitual a characteristic with him, Harry felt that it mightbe better, particularly since his first meeting with Miss Aylwin would of necessity be somewhat of an emotional strain to him, not to tax him further, either with the arrangements incidental to a larger party or with their entertainment. These dutiful considerations, it must be confessed, though perfectly genuine, all led down the paths of his own desires, for it was just the enforced intimacy of apartie carréein the country from which he promised himself such an exquisite pleasure. With a dozen people in the house, his time would not be his own; he would have to look after people, make himself agreeable to everybody, and be continually burdened with the hundred petty cares of a host. But, the way things were, all that Sunday they would be together, if not in fours then in pairs, and the number of possible combinations of four people in pairs he could see at once was charmingly limited.
But, though to him personally the refusal of others to come to his feast was not an occasion of regret, an excuse to the two ladies as to the meagreness of the entertainment he was providing for them, however faltering and insincere, was still required. This he made with a marvellously radiant face, a few evenings before their visit, as he sat with them in Lady Oxted's box at the opera.
"I have to make a confession," he said, drawing his chair up at the end of the second act of Lohengrin, "and, as you are both so delighted with the music, I will do so now, in the hopesthat you may let me off easily. There is absolutely no one coming to meet you at Vail; there will be my Uncle Francis and myself, and that is all."
Evie turned to him.
"That is charming of you," she said, "and you have paid us a compliment. It is nothing to be asked as merely one of a crowd, but your asking us alone shows that you don't expect to get bored with us. Make your courtesy, Aunt Violet!"
"But there's the Luck," said Lady Oxted. "I gathered that the Luck was the main object of our expedition, though how it was going to amuse us I don't know, any more than I know how Dr. Nansen expected the north pole to amuse him. And why, if you wanted to see it, Evie, Harry could not send for it by parcel post, I never quite grasped."
"Or luggage train, unregistered," said Evie. "Why did you not give it to the first tramp you met, Lord Vail, and ask him to take it carefully to London, for it was of some value, and leave it at a house in Grosvenor Square the number of which you had forgotten? How stupid of you not to think of that! And did you see the Luck when you were down last week?"
"Yes; it came to dinner every night. I used to drink its health."
"Good gracious! I shall have to take my very smartest things," cried Evie. "Fancy having to dress up to the Luck every evening!"
"Give it up, dear, give it up," said Lady Oxted. "The Luck will certainly make you look shabby, whatever you wear. Oh! those nursery rhymes!—Ah! here's Bob.—Bob, what can have made you come to the opera?"
Lord Oxted took his seat, and gazed round the house before replying.
"I think it was your absolute certainty that I should not," he replied. "I delight in confuting the infallible; for you are an infallible, Violet. It is not your fault; you can not help it."
Lady Oxted laughed.
"My poor man," she said, "how shallow you must be not to have seen that I only said that in order to make you come!"
"I thought of that," he said, "but rejected the suspicion as unworthy. You laid claim, very unconvincingly I allow, the other day to a passion for truth and honour. Indeed, I gave you the benefit of a doubt which never existed.—And you all go down to Vail on Saturday. I should like to come, only I have not been asked."
"No, dear," said Lady Oxted. "I forbade Harry to ask you."
"Oh! you didn't," began Harry.
"I quite understand," said Lord Oxted; "you refrained from asking me on your own account, and if you had suggested such a thing, my wife would have forbidden you. One grows more and more popular, I find, as the years pass."
"Dear Uncle Bob, you are awfully popularwith me," said Evie. "Shall I stop and keep you company in London?"
"Yes; please do," said he.
"But won't it be rather rude to Lord Vail?"
"Yes, but he will forgive you," said Lord Oxted.
"Indeed, I sha'n't, Miss Aylwin," said Harry. "Don't think it. But will you then come to Vail, Lord Oxford? I thought it would be no use asking you."
"I may not be popular," said he, "but I have still a certain pride."
Here the orchestra poised and plunged headlong into the splendid overture of the third act; and Lady Oxted, whose secret joy was the hope that she might, in the fulness of time, grow to tolerate Wagner by incessant listening to him, glared furiously at the talkers and closed her eyes. Lord Oxted, it was observed by the others, thereupon stole quietly out of the box.
The curtain rose with the Wedding March, and that done, and the lovers alone, that exquisite duet began, rising, like the voices of two larks, from height to infinite height of passion, as clear and pure as summer heavens. Then into the soul of that feeblest of heroines began to enter doubt and hesitation, the desire to know what she had promised not to ask grew in the brain, until it made itself words, undermining and unbuilding all that on which love rests. Thereafter, the woman having failed, came tumult and death, the hopeless lovers were left face to face with theruin that want of trust will bring upon all that is highest, and with the drums and the slow, measured rhythm of despair, the act ended.
"The hopeless, idiotic fool of a girl!" remarked Evie, with extreme precision, weighing her words. "Oh! I lose my patience with her."
"I thought your tone sounded a little impatient," said Lady Oxted.
"A little? Why, if Lohengrin had said he wanted to write a letter, she could have looked round the corner to see that he was not flirting with one of the chorus, and have opened his letter afterward. If there is one thing I despise, it is a suspicious woman."
"You must find a great many despicable things in this world," remarked Lady Oxted.
"Dear aunt, if you attempt to be cynical, I shall go home in a hansom by myself," said Evie.
"Do, dear; and Harry and I will follow in the brougham. Do you want to stay for the last act?"
"No; I would sooner go away. I am rather tired, and Elsa has put me in a bad temper. Good-bye, Lord Vail, and expect us on Saturday afternoon; please order good weather. It will be enchanting; I am so looking forward to it!"
Harry himself went down to Vail on Friday afternoon, for he wished both to satisfy himself that everything was arranged for the comfort of his visitors, and also to meet them himself when they came. The only train he could conveniently catch did not stop at his nearest station, and hetelegraphed home that they should meet him at Didcot. This implied a ten-mile drive, and his train being late on arrival, he put the cobs to their best pace in order to reach Vail in time for dinner. Turning quickly and rather recklessly into the lodge gates, he had to pull up sharply in order to avoid collision with one of his own carriages which was driving away from the house. A stable helper not in livery held the reins, and by his side sat a man of dark, spare aspect, a stranger to him. As soon as they had passed, he turned round to the groom who sat behind.
"Who was that?" he asked.
"I don't know his name, my lord," said he, "but I drove him from the station last Monday. He has been staying with Mr. Francis since then."
Harry was conscious of a slight feeling of vexation, arising from several causes. In the first place (and here a sense of his dignity spoke), any guest, either of his or his uncle's, ought to be driven to the station properly, not by a man in a cap and a brown coat. In the second place, though he was delighted that Uncle Francis should ask any friend he chose to stay with him, Harry considered that he ought to have been told. He had received a long letter from his uncle two days ago, in which he went at some length into the details of his days, but made no mention of a guest. In the third place, the appearance of the man was somehow grossly and uncomfortably displeasing to him.
These things simmered in his mind as he drove up the long avenue, and every now and then a little bubble of resentment, as it were, would break on the surface. He half wondered at himself for the pertinacity with which his mind dwelt on them, and he determined, with a touch of that reserve and secrecy which still lingered in corners and angles of his nature, that if his uncle did not choose of his own initiative to tell him about this man, he would ask no questions, but merely not forget the circumstance. This reticence on his own part, so he told himself, was in no way to be put down to secretiveness, but rather to decency of manners. His uncle might have the Czar of all the Russias, if he chose, to stay with him, and if he did not think fit to mention that autocrat's visit, even though it was in all the daily papers, it would be rude even for his nephew to ask him about it. But he knew, if he faced himself quite honestly, that though good manners were sufficient excuse for the reticence he preferred to employ, secretiveness and nothing else was the reason for it. Certainly he wished that the man had not been so disrelishing to the eye; there was something even sinister about the glance he had got of him.
Mr. Francis was in the most cheery and excellent spirits, and delighted to see him. He was employed in spudding plantains from the lawn as the carriage drove up. But, abandoning this homely but useful performance as soon as heheard the wheels on the road, he ran almost to meet him.
"Ages, it seems literally ages, since you were here, dear boy!" he said. "And see, Harry, I have not been idle in preparing for our charming visitors. Croquet!" and he pointed to a large deal box that lay underneath the clipped yew hedge. "Templeton and I found the box in a gardener's shed," he said, "and we have been washing and cleaning it up. Ah! what a fascinating game, and how it sets off the ingenuity of the feminine mind! I was a great hand at it once, and I think I can strike the ball still. Come, dear boy, let us get in; it is already dinner time. Ah! my flute; it would never do to leave that," and he tripped gaily off to a garden seat near, on which lay the case containing the favourite instrument.
It happened that at dinner the same night Mr. Francis passed Harry through a sort of affectionate catechism, asking him to give an exhaustive account of the manner in which he had spent the hours since he left Vail a fortnight ago. Harry complied with his humour, half shy, half proud of the number that had to be laid inside Lady Oxted's door, and when this was finished:
"Now it is my turn, Uncle Francis," he said. "Begin at the beginning, and tell me all as fully as I have to you."
"Well, dear Harry, if I have not galloped about like you, taking ditch and fence, I have trotted along a very pleasant road," he said. "All the week after you left me I was much employedin writing about estimates and details with regard to the electric light. You must look at those to-morrow; they will be rather more expensive than we had anticipated, unless you have fewer lights of higher power. However, that business was finished, I remember, on Saturday; on Sunday I had my class, and dawdled very contentedly through the day. And all this week I have been busy in little ways—one day will serve for another; at the books all the morning, and in the afternoon pottering about alone, doing a bit of gardener's work here, feeding the pheasants there—and they are getting on capitally—or down at the farm. Then very often a nap before dinner, and a blow on the flute afterward. A sweet, happy, solitary time."
The servants had left the room, and as Mr. Francis said these words, he looked closely at Harry, and saw his face, so he thought, harden. The lips were a little compressed, the arch of the eyebrows raised ever so little; something between surprise and a frown contracted them. He had already thought it more than possible that Harry might have met the other trap driving away from the house, and he thought he saw confirmation of it in his face. He sighed.
"Ah, Harry," he said, "can you not trust me?"
Mr. Francis's voice was soft, almost broken; his blue eyes glistened in the candlelight, but still looking intently at his nephew. And, at the amenity and affection in his tone, the boy'sreserve and secretiveness, which he had labelled good manners, utterly broke down.
"You have read my thoughts," he said, "and I apologize. But why, why not have told me, Uncle Francis? You could not have thought I should mind your having who you liked here?"
Mr. Francis sighed again.
"I will tell you now," he said, slightly accentuating the last word. "I did not tell you before; I purposely concealed it now; yes, I even used the word solitary about my life during the last week, in order to save you anxiety."
"Anxiety?" asked Harry.
"Yes; you met, probably somewhere near the lodge gates, one of your carriages going to the station. A man out of livery drove it; a man of middle age sat by him. He was my doctor, Harry, and he came here on Monday last. I wished"—and his tone was frankness to the core—"I wished to get him out of the house before you came; I did not know you were coming till this afternoon, and I saw he could just catch the train to town. I ordered the carriage to take him instantly, and the man had not time to get into livery. That is all."
At once Harry was all compunction and anxiety; he left his chair at the end of the table, and drew it close beside his uncle.
"Dear Uncle Francis," he said, "what was his opinion of your health? He was satisfied?"
"Fairly well satisfied," said Mr. Francis. "The upshot was that I must live very quietly,and take no great exertion, and guard against quick movements. I might then hope, I might certainly hope, to live several more years yet. At my age, he said, one must not go hurdle-racing. Seventy-three! Well, well, I am getting on for seventy-three!"
Harry was tongue-tied with a sort of vague contrition—for what, he could hardly tell. He had been put in the wrong, but so generously and kindly that he could not resent it. He had had no suspicions of any kind, and his uncle's simple frankness had made him wear the aspect of the suspector. Indeed, where could suspicion look in? Suspicions—what of? The gist of his feeling had been that he should have been told, and here was the considerable reason why he had not—a reason sensible, conclusive, and dictated by thoughtful affections. Yet he felt somehow ashamed of himself, and his shame was too ill-defined for speech. But there was no long pause, for Mr. Francis almost immediately got up from his chair, with a nimbleness of movement which perhaps his doctor would not have liked.
"Well! a truce to these sombrenesses, Harry," he said. "Indeed, I am brisk enough yet. Ah, what a pleasure to have you here instead of that excellent, kind, unsociable fellow! I have such a good story for you; let us go to the billiard room; I could not tell you before the servants, though I have had it on the tip of my tongue all the evening. The doctor recommended me billiards after dinner; gentle, slowexercise like that was just the thing, he said. Well, that story——"
Harry rose too.
"One word more," he said. "Is your doctor a really first-rate man? You remember, I wanted you to see a good man. What is his name?"
"Dr. Godfrey," said Mr. Francis, "32 Half-Moon Street. He is a first-rate man. I have known him since he was a boy."
The two ladies were to arrive about tea time next day, and, as the hour drew on, a lively restlessness got hold of Harry. He could neither sit, nor stand, nor read, but after a paragraph of a page, the meaning of which slipped from his mind even as his eyes hurried over the lines, he would be off on an aimless excursion to the dining room, forget what he had gone about, and return with the same haste to his book. Then he would remember that he wanted the table to-night in the centre of the room, not pushed, as they had been having it, into the window; and there must be a place left for the Luck in the middle of the table. Again he would be off to the dining room; there was the table in the centre of the room, and in the centre of the table a place for the Luck, for he had given twenty repetitions of the order to Templeton, which was exactly twenty repetitions more than were necessary. Harry, in fact, was behaving exactly like the cock sparrow in mating time, strutting before its lady—an instinct in all young males. But there were not enough flowers; there must be more flowers and less silver. How could Dutch silverbe ornamental in the neighbourhood of that gorgeous centrepiece, and how, said his heart to him, could the Luck be ornamental, considering who should sit at his table?
He went back again to the hall, after giving these directions, where tea was laid. Mr. Francis was out on the lawn; he could see his yellow Panama hat like a large pale flower under the trees; the windows were all open, and the gentle hum of the warm afternoon came languidly in. Suddenly a fuller note began to overscore these noises in gradualcrescendo, the crisp gravel grated underneath swift wheels, and next moment he was at the door. And, at sight of the girl, all his Marthalike cares, the Dutch silver, the position of the table, slipped from him. Here was the better part.
"Welcome!" he said; "and welcome and welcome!" and he held the girl's hand far longer than a stranger would; and it was not withdrawn. A little added colour shone in her cheeks, and her eyes met his, then fell before them. "So you have not stayed to keep Lord Oxted company," he said. "I can spare him pity.—How are you, Lady Oxted?"
"Did you think I should?" asked Evie.
"No; I felt quite certain you would not," said Harry, with the assurance which women love. "Do come in; tea is ready."
"And I am ready," said Evie.
"And this is the hall," continued Harry, as they entered, "where every one does everything.Oh! there is a drawing-room: if you wish we will be grand and go to the drawing-room. I had it made ready; but let us stop here.—Will you pour out tea, Lady Oxted."
Lady Oxted took a rapid inventory of the tapestry and portraits.
"I rather like drinking tea in a cow shed," she remarked.
In a few moments Mr. Francis entered with his usual gay step, and in his hand he carried his large hat.
"How long since we met last, Lady Oxted!" he said. "And what a delight to see you here!"
"Miss Aylwin, Uncle Francis," said Harry, unceremoniously.
The old man turned quickly.
"Ah! my dear Miss Aylwin," he said—"my dear Miss Aylwin," and they shook hands.
Harry gave a little sigh of relief. Ever since his uncle's attack, a fortnight ago, he had felt in the back of his mind a little uneasiness about this meeting. It seemed he might have spared himself the pains. Nothing could have been simpler or more natural than Mr. Francis's manner; yet the warmth of his hand-shake, the form of words, more intimate than a man would use to a stranger, were admirably chosen—if choice were not a word too full of purpose for so spontaneous a greeting—to at once recognise and obliterate the past. The meeting was, as it were, a scene of reconciliation between two who had never set eyes on each other before, and between whom thehorror of their vicarious estrangement would never be mentioned or even be allowed to be present in the mind. And Mr. Francis's words seemed to Harry to meet the situation with peculiar felicity.
The old man seated himself near Lady Oxted.
"This is an occasion," he said, "and both Harry and I have been greatly occupied with his house-warming. But the weather—there was little warming there to be done; surely we have ordered delightful weather for you. Harry told me that Miss Aylwin wished for a warm day. Indeed, his choice does not seem to me, a poor northerner, a bad one; but Miss Aylwin has perhaps had too much Italian weather to care for our poor imitation."
"Lord Vail refused to promise," said Evie; "at least he did not promise anything about the weather. I was afraid he would forget."
"Ah! but I told my uncle," said Harry. "He saw about it: you must thank him."
Evie was sitting opposite the fireplace, and her eye had been on the picture of old Francis which hung above it. At these words of Harry's she turned to Mr. Francis with a smile, and her mouth half opened for speech. But something arrested the words, and she was silent; and Harry, who had been following every movement of hers, tracing it with the infallible minute intuition of a lover to its desiring thought, guessed that the curious resemblance between the two had struck with a force that for the moment took awayspeech. But, before the pause was prolonged, she answered.
"I do thank you very much," she said. "And have you arranged another day like this for to-morrow?"
She looked, as she spoke, out of the open windows and into the glorious sunshine, and Harry rose.
"Shall we not go out?" he said. "Uncle Francis will think we do not appreciate his weather if we stop in."
Evie rose too.
"Yes, let us go out at once," she said. "But let me first put on another hat. I am not in London, and my present hat simplyisLondon. O Lord Vail, I long to look at that picture again, but I won't; I will be very self-denying, for I am sure—I am sure it is the Luck in the corner of it."
She put up her hand so as to shield the picture from even an accidental glance.
"Will you show me my way?" she asked. "I will be down again in a minute."
Harry took her up the big staircase, lit by a skylight, and lying in many angles.
"Yes, you have guessed," he said. "It is the Luck: you will see the original to-night at dinner. Did anything else strike you in the picture? Oh, I saw it did."
"Yes, a curious false resemblance. I feel sure it is false, for I think that portrait represents not a very pleasant old gentleman. But youruncle, Lord Vail—I never saw such a dear, kind face!"
Harry flushed with pleasure.
"So now you understand," he said, "what your coming here must mean to him. Ah! this is your maid, is she not? I will wait in the hall for you."
The two elder folk had already strolled out, when Harry returned to the hall, a privation which he supported with perfect equanimity, and in a few minutes he and his companion followed. As they crossed the lawn, Harry swept the points of the compass slowly with his stick.
"Flower garden, kitchen garden, woods, lake, farm, stables," he said.
Evie's eye brightened.
"Stables, please," she said. "I am of low horsey tastes, you must know, and I was afraid you were not going to mention them. We had the two most heavenly cobs I ever saw to take us from the station."
"Yes, Jack and Jill," said Harry. "But not cobs—angels. Did you drive them?"
"No, but I longed to. May I, when we go back on Monday?"
"Tuesday is their best day," said Harry; "except Wednesday."
They chattered their way to the stables, where the two angels were even then at their toilets.
"There is not much to show you," said Harry. "There are the cobs that brought you.—Good-evening, Jim."
The man who was grooming them looked up, touched his bare head, and without delay went on with the hissing toilet, as a groom should. Evie looked at him keenly, then back to her companion, and at the man again.
"Yes, they are beautiful," she said, and as they turned, "is Vail entirely full of doubles?" she asked.
Harry smiled, and followed her into the stables of the riding horses.
"Jim is more like me than that picture of old Francis is like my uncle," he said. "I really think I shall have to get rid of him. The likeness might be embarrassing."
"I wouldn't do that," said Evie. "Our Italian peasants say it is good luck to have a double about."
"Good luck for which?"
"For both. Really, I never saw such an extraordinary likeness."
They spent some quarter of an hour looking over the horses, and returned leisurely toward the house, passing it and going on to the lake. The sun was still not yet set, and the glory of the summer evening a thing to wonder at. Earth and sky seemed ready to burst with life and colour; it was as if a new world was imminent to be born, and from the great austere downs drew a breeze that was the breath of life, but dry, unbreathed. Evie appropriated it in open draughts, with head thrown back.
"Aunt Violet was quite right, Lord Vail,when she said you should never come to London," she exclaimed. "How rude she was to you that night, and how little you minded! Even now, when I have been here only an hour, I can no longer imagine how one manages to breathe in that stuffy, shut-in air. Winter, too, winter must be delicious here, crisp and bracing."
"So it would seem this evening," said Harry, "but you must see it first under a genuine November day. A mist sometimes spreads slowly from the lake, so thick that even I could almost lose my way between it and the house. It does not rise high, and I have often looked from the windows of the second story into perfectly clear air, while if you went out at the front door you would be half drowned in it. Higher up the road again you will be completely above it, and I have seen it lying below as sharply defined as the lake itself, and if you walk down from that wood up there, it is like stepping deeper and deeper into water. A bad one will rise as high as the steps of those two buildings you see to the right of the house, like kiosks, standing on a knoll, under which the road winds in front of the trees."
"And the house is all surrounded like an island? What odd buildings! What are they?"
"One is a summerhouse; I couldn't now tell you which. We used to have tea in it sometimes, I remember, when I was quite little. The other is the ice house—a horrible place: it used to haunt me. I remember shrieking with terror once when my nurse took me in. It was almost completelydark, and I can hear now the echo one's step made; and there was a great black chasm in the middle of the floor with steps leading down, as I thought, to the uttermost pit. Two chasms I think there were; one was a well. But the big one was that which terrified me, though I dare say it was only ten or twelve feet deep. Things dwindle so amazingly as one grows up! I wish I could see this lake, for instance, as I saw it when I was a child. It used to appear to me as large as the sea seems now; and as for the sluice, it might have been the Iron Gates of the Danube."
"I know: things do get smaller," said Evie, "but, after all, this lake and the sluice are not quite insignificant yet. What a splendid rush of water! And I dare say the ice-house chasm is still sufficient to kill any one who falls in. That, after all, is enough for practical purposes. But then, even if they grow smaller, how much more beautiful they become! When you were little, you never saw half the colour or half the shape you see now. The trees were green, the sky was blue, but they gave one very surface impressions to what they give one now."
"Oh, I rather believe in the trailing clouds of glory," said Harry.
"Then make an effort to disbelieve in them every day," said Evie. "Shades of the prison house begin to grow around the growing boy, do they? What prison house does the man mean, if you please? Why, the world, this beautiful,delightful world. Indeed, we are very fortunate convicts! And Wordsworth called himself a lover of Nature!" she added, with deep scorn.
"Certainly the world has been growing more beautiful to me lately," said Harry.
"Of course it has. Please remind me that I have to cut my throat without delay if ever you hear me say that the world is growing less beautiful. But just imagine a person who loved Nature talking of the world as a prison house! Who was it said that Wordsworth only found in stones the sermons he had himself tucked under them, to prevent the wind blowing them away?"
"I don't know. It sounds like the remark of an unindolent reviewer."
Evie laughed.
"Fancy talking about reviewers on an evening like this!" she said. "Oh, there's a Canadian canoe. May we go in it?"
The far end of the lake was studded with little islands only a few yards in circumference for the most part, but, as Evie explained, large enough for the purpose. And then, like two children together, they played at red Indians and lay in wait for a swan, and attempted to stalk a moor hen with quite phenomenal ill success. No word of any tender kind was spoken between them; they but laughed over the nonsense of their own creating, but each felt as they landed that in the last hour their intimacy had shot up like the spike of the aloe flower. For when a man and a maid can win back to childhood again, and play like childrentogether, it is certain that no long road lies yet to traverse before they really meet.
Lady Oxted was doomed that night to a very considerable dose—a dose for an adult, in fact—of what she had alluded to as nursery rhymes, for the Luck seemed absolutely to fascinate the girl, and Harry, seeing how exclusively it claimed her eyes, more than once reconsidered the promise he had made her to have it to dinner the next evening as well. She would hardly consent to touch it, and Harry had positively to put it into her hands, so that she might read for herself its legend of the elements. They drank their coffee while still at table, and Evie's eye followed the jewel till Templeton had put it into its case. Then, as the last gleam vanished:
"I am like the Queen of Sheba," she said, "and there is no more spirit left in me. If you lose the Luck, Lord Vail, you may be quite sure that it is I who have stolen it; and when I am told that two men in plain clothes are waiting in the drawing-room, I shall know what they have come about. Now for some improving conversation about facts and actualities, for Aunt Violet's sake."
Sunday afternoon was very hot, and Lady Oxted, Evie, and Harry lounged it away under the shade of the trees on the lawn. Mr. Francis had not been seen since lunch time, but it was clear that he was busy with his favourite diversion, for brisk and mellow blowings on the flute came from the open window of his sitting room.Harry had mentioned this taste of his to the others, and it had been received by Lady Oxted with a short and rather unkind laugh, which had been quite involuntary, and of which she was now slightly ashamed. But Evie had thought the thing pleasant and touching, rather than absurd, and had expressed a hope that he would allow her to play some accompaniments for him after dinner. If Aunt Violet, she added incisively, found the sound disagreeable, no doubt she would go to her own room.
Harry was in the normal Sunday afternoon mood, feeble and easily pleased, and the extreme and designed offensiveness of the girl's tone made him begin to giggle hopelessly. Evie thereupon caught the infection, for laughter is more contagious than typhus, and her aunt followed. The hysterical sounds apparently reached Mr. Francis's ears, in some interval between tunes, for in a moment his rosy face and white hair appeared framed in the window, and shortly afterward he came briskly across the grass to them.
"It is getting cooler," he said gaily, "and I am going to be very selfish and ask Miss Aylwin to come for a stroll with me. My lazy nephew, I find, has not taken her through the woods, and I insist on her seeing them.—Will you be very indulgent to me, Miss Evie, and accept a devoted though an aged companion?"
Evie rose with alacrity.
"With the greatest pleasure," she said.—"Are you coming, too, Aunt Violet?"
"Not for the wide, wide world," said Lady Oxted, "will I walk one yard!—Harry, stop where you are, and keep me company."
The two walkers went up under the knoll on which stood the ice house, talking and laughing in diminuendo. Harry saw Mr. Francis offer the girl his arm for the steep ascent, and it pleased him in some secret fashion to see that, though her light step was clearly in no need of exterior aid, she accepted it. With this in his mind he turned to Lady Oxted.
"It is a great success," he said. "They are delighted with each other. Think what it must mean to my uncle!"
Lady Oxted stifled a yawn.
"Who are delighted?" she asked.
Harry pointed at the two figures halfway up the slope.
"You knew whom I meant perfectly," he remarked.
"I did. I really don't know why I asked. By the way, Harry, I apologize for laughing just now. Your uncle is the most charming and courteous old gentleman. And he is devoted to you. In fact, I got just a little tired of your name yesterday evening before dinner."
Harry did not reply; he was still watching the two. They had surmounted the knoll, and in another moment the iron gate leading into the ride through the wood closed behind them, and they passed out of sight among the trees.
Mr. Francis was, as has been indicated, veryfond of young people, and those who had the pleasure of his acquaintance always found him a delightful companion. He had an intimate knowledge of natural history, and this afternoon, as he walked with the girl, he would now pick some insignificant herb from the grass, with a sentence or two on its notable medicinal qualities, now with a face full of happy radiance hold up his hand while a bird trilled in the bushes in rapt and happy attention.
"A goldfinch, Miss Evie," he whispered; "there is no mistaking that note. Let us come very quietly, and perhaps we shall catch sight of the beauty. That lazy nephew of mine," he went on, when they had seen the gleam of the vanishing bird, "he was saying the other day that there were no goldfinches in Wiltshire. I dare say he will join us here soon. He almost always comes up here on Sunday afternoon. It used to be his father's invariable Sunday walk."
They strolled quietly along for some half hour, up winding and zigzag paths which would lead them presently to the brae above the wood, and disclose to them, so Mr. Francis said, a most glorious prospect. Below them, down the steep hillside up which they had circuitously made their way, lay the blue slate roof of the stables; in the yard they could see a retriever sleeping, and the sound of a man whistling came up very clear through the stillness of the afternoon. Then they turned a corner—the last, so Mr. Francis said—and the path which had hitherto been all loops andturns straightened itself out as it gained the end of the ridge up which the wood climbed. But here they were no longer alone, for not fifty yards in front of them they saw a girl in a pink dress, and with her a young man in straw hat and dark blue serge, of strangely familiar figure; his arm was about her waist. On the instant the man turned, and Evie, to her indescribable amazement, saw that it was Lord Vail. He said a word hurriedly to the girl, and turned off down a side path, while the girl walked quickly on. The glance had been momentary.
A short, stifled exclamation came from Mr. Francis.
"Ah, the foolish fellow!" he cried; and then, without a pause: "Yes, as I told you, there are only beeches up here, Miss Evie. Those oaks which you were admiring so much seem to stop as suddenly as if you had drawn a line of demarcation halfway up the hill. Now why is that, I wonder? The oak is the harder of the two, yet it is the beeches that prefer the colder situation. Strange, is it not? There used to be oaks here, but they have all died."
They soon came out at the top of the hill, where the glorious prospect which Mr. Francis had promised Evie spread largely round them. But he had grown silent and distrait, quite unlike himself, and instead of rhapsodizing over the magnificence of the rolling hills, he gazed for a moment but sadly, pointed out to his companion various distant landmarks, as if he did not expecther to be interested, and remarked that it was time for them to turn. Nor was Evie much more talkative; the sight of Harry with that girl had strangely wounded her. Little had she thought, when Mr. Francis said he often spent his Sunday afternoons here, that she would see him thus! She told herself that he was perfectly at liberty to walk in his own woods with any one he pleased, but that he had availed himself of that liberty she felt like an insult offered to her. Her quick eye had taken in the girl in a moment; her dress, the way she put her feet down when she walked, all spoke of a certain class. Ten to one she was the daughter of the gamekeeper or butler. Ah, how disgusting men were!
Mr. Francis walked by her in silence, with a frown on his usually serene brow, and, it would seem, some matter in debate. Suddenly he turned to her.
"Dear Miss Evie," he said, "will you allow a very old man to take a very great liberty? Do not think too hardly of Harry, poor fellow, I beg of you! He has been much alone, without companions, and young men will be young men, you know. And I would stake—yes, I would stake all I have—that what you and I have seen was a mere harmless little flirtation, a few words said on either side, not meant by either, a kiss or two perhaps changing owners. Harry is young, but he is a good fellow, and an honest. You are disgusted, naturally, but I have never known—believe me, I have never known—these little foolishnessesof his mean anything. They are altogether superficial and innocent."
He spoke with a very kind and serious voice, and with much of entreaty in his tone. But Evie's eyes were still hard and angry; she thought she had never heard so tame a defence.
"This sort of thing has gone on before, then?" she asked.
"Ah! do not force me," pleaded Mr. Francis. "I will go bail, I tell you, on Harry's honesty."
"Certainly I will not force you," she said. "Come, Mr. Francis, this is not a nice subject. Let us have no more of it. That was really Oxford we saw just now, was it? How wonderfully clear the air must be here!"
They passed down through the wood and to the house, where they both turned in. But in a minute or two Evie found she had left a book on the lawn, and went out to fetch it. Tea was laying there, and under the trees, where she had left them an hour ago, were Lady Oxted and Harry, at full length in their garden chairs, both, it would seem, fast asleep. And at that sight a sudden question asked itself in the girl's mind: How could it possibly be Harry they had seen in the wood? And before the question was asked the answer came, and she said softly to herself, "Jim."
Her book was lying close to the sleepers, but she had already forgotten about it, and she turned quietly away, casting one glance at Harry, whose straw hat was lying on the grass, and noticingwith a faint, unconvincing sense of justification that his clothes were also of dark-blue serge. But habitually honest, even with herself, she knew that her self-judged case would be summed up dead against her, and she set her teeth for a lonely and most humiliating ten minutes. Without definite purpose in her mind, except that association should be an added penance, she went to the lake, and sat down in the Canadian canoe in which they had played red Indians the evening before.
How could she, she asked herself, have been so distrustful, so malicious, so ready to blacken? She had seen a young man walking with a girl, and she had been knave enough, and also fool enough (which was bitter), to accept the shallow evidence of her eyes when they told her that he was Harry. Had she not been warned against such wicked credulity, even as Elsa had been warned by Lohengrin, by the sight of that slim, handsome groom last night in the stable yard? Had she not said to Harry, "Is Vail full of doubles?" Out of her own mouth should she be judged. A worse than Elsa was sitting in the Canadian canoe. For half an hour at least she had believed that Harry was flirting with a servant girl, that he was capable of leaving her to suppose that he was going to keep Lady Oxted company under the trees, and as soon as her back was turned set off to meet his village beauty. Loyalty! a feeling she professed to admire! How would any girl in her position, who had an ash ofwhat had once been loyalty, have acted? She would have flatly refused to believe any evidence; sight, hearing, every sense would have been powerless to touch her. Harry could not do such a thing. How did she know that? For the present that was beside the point; she knew it, and that was enough. Perhaps—and the warm colour came to her face—perhaps she would come to that presently.
She sat up, and beat the water with the flat of the paddle. "Fool, fool, base little fool!" she whispered, a syllable to a stroke.
Suddenly she stopped, the paddle poised.
"I have never known these little foolishnesses of his mean anything," rang in her ears. So! This sort of thing had happened before.... What? Was she again skulking and suspecting, even after the lesson she had received? She had believed, though only for half an hour, the evidence of her own eyes, and she had suffered for it. Was she now to believe the evidence of somebody else's tongue? Yet Mr. Francis had said it, that dear old fellow, who was evidently so devoted to Harry, so pained at what they had seen. No, it did not matter if the four major prophets had said it. She knew better than all the stained glass in Christendom, and again she belaboured the water to the rhythm of "Fool, fool, base little fool!"
For a few moments her thoughts flew off to Mr. Francis. He must have known that Harry's twin brother was a groom in the stables, yet hehad been as certain as she that it was Harry they had surprised in the wood. He had been at pains to persuade her that the fault was venial, to assure her that young men would be young men, that Harry was honest. Why had he felt so certain on so slight a glance that it was Harry? What did it mean? Then she whisked Mr. Francis from her mind. He was as despicable as she, neither more nor less. He was as great a fool as she.
Was he? Was he? Did he know Harry as well as she—he who had known him all his life, she who had known him a month, no more? Certainly he did not, could not. She, who knew him so well, had rightly accused herself of disloyalty to him, compared herself to Elsa, and him.... Did she then owe him loyalty? Ah! a big word.
She put the dripping paddle back in the boat, for she was in wider fields than self-reproach has ever hedged about, and leaned forward, hearing the ripples lap and cluck on the sides. Supposing any one else—Geoffrey Langham, for instance—had chosen to walk in a wood with a dairymaid, would she have cared? would it have stung her? Not a jot. Then why——
At this she rose, slipped out of the boat, and for a moment looked at the wavering outline of her reflection in the lake. Then she stood upright, her arms fallen by her side, and a little voice spoke within her, which she tried to tell herself was not she.
"I surrender," it said.
She walked back to the lawn, proud and shy of the revelation she had made to herself, and with a mind once more unshadowed. Lady Oxted apparently had just awoke, and was looking distractedly round, as if she found herself in a strange bedroom. Harry, with one arm thrown behind his head, still slumbered.
"Unconscious innocent, tea!" said Lady Oxted, truculently poking him in the ribs with her parasol.
Harry opened both his eyes very wide, like a mechanical doll awaking.
"Why did you do that?" he said; "I have been lying here quietly, thinking. Have they come back from their walk?"
"No," said Lady Oxted, "they are lost. A search party went out about three hours ago to look for them. Rockets and other signals of distress have been seen intermittently from the downs."
Harry sat up and saw Evie, and instantly turned his back on Lady Oxted.
"Did you have a nice walk?" he asked. "I wish I had come with you. I"—and he looked round to see whether the parasol was within range—"I have been terribly bored this afternoon. Lady Oxted has positively no conversation."
Evie looked first at him, then at her aunt.
"Well, you both look all the better for your—your silence," she said. "Yes, Lord Vail, we had a charming walk. And we surprised your double love-making in the wood."
"Oh, yes, the dairymaid," said Harry. "She's as pretty as a picture."
"I always wonder where the lower orders get their good looks from," said Lady Oxted, parenthetically.
Harry picked up his straw hat.
"Probably from the lower orders," he remarked. "Let's have tea. Sleeping is such hungry work, is it not, Lady Oxted? I am sure you must be famished."
"Elephantine wit," sighed that lady. "When Harry is so kind as to make a joke, which is unfortunately not so rare as one might wish, I always feel as if heavy feet were trampling about directly overhead."
"And when Lady Oxted makes a joke," said the lad, "which is not so often as her enemies would wish, she always reminds me of a sucking spring directly under foot. I give one water-logged cry, and am swallowed up. Do pour out tea for us, Lady Oxted. You are such an excellent tea-maker!"
"The score is fifteen all," remarked Evie.
"When did Harry score?" demanded Lady Oxted, seating herself at the urn.
"Just now, dear aunt.—And so Jim is to marry the dairymaid, Lord Vail."
"And who is Jim?" asked Lady Oxted.
"My double. I wish I knew as much about horses as he. Yes, Jim is walking out with the dairymaid."
"I have heard enough about Jim," said LadyOxted decisively. "Here is Mr. Francis.—Mr. Francis, take my side: there is a league against me.
"A charming one," said Mr. Francis, directing his gay glance to Evie.
But the girl did not meet it; she looked quite gravely and deliberately away.
Harry was leaving next morning with the two women, being unable to induce Lady Oxted to stop another day, and in consequence he sat up late that night after they had gone to bed, looking over the details of the expense of putting in the electric light. The cheapest plan, it appeared, would be to utilize the power supplied by the fall of water from the lake, for this would save the cost of engines to drive the dynamos. In this case it would be necessary to build the house for them over the sluice; but this, so wrote the engineer, would not interfere with the landscape, for the roof would only just be seen above the belt of trees. Or, if Lord Vail did not mind a little extra expense, a tasteful erection might be made, which, instead of diminishing, would positively add to the beauty of the view from the house. Then followed a horrific sketch of Gothic style.
Harry's thoughts were disposed to go wandering that night, and he gave but a veiled and fugitive attention to the figures. The lake suggested other things to him brighter than all the thirty-two-power lamps of this electric light. Thelatter, it appeared, could be in the house by September, but the other was in the house now. In any case there should be no horrors, ornamental or otherwise, over the sluice; and he turned to the second estimate, which included engines, with a great determination to think of nothing else.
The scene of this distracted vigil was his uncle's sitting room, where all the papers were to hand. Mr. Francis had sat up with him for half an hour or so, but Harry had then persuaded him to go to bed, for all the evening he had appeared somewhat tired and worried. Then from the next door there came, for some half hour, the faint sounds of brushings and splashings, that private orchestra of bedtime, and after that the house was still.
Harry settled down again to his work, and before long his mind was made up. He would have, he saw, to screw and pinch a little, but on no account should anything, Gothic or not, spoil the lower end of the lake; then pouring himself out some whisky and soda, he took a last cigarette.
The table where he worked was fully occupied, but orderly. A row of reference books—Bradshaw, The Peerage, Whitaker's Almanac, and others—stood in a green morocco case to the left of the inkstand; to the right, in a silver frame, a large photograph of himself. Among other books, he was amused to see a Zadkiel's Almanac, and he drew it from its place and turned idly over a leaf or two. There was a cross in red inkopposite the date of January 3d, on which day, so said this irresponsible seer, a discovery of gold would be made. Harry thought vaguely for a moment of South Africa and the Klondike, then suddenly gave a little gasp of surprise. That had been the day on which he had found the Luck.
The coincidence was strange, but stranger was the fact that his uncle, who had so often remonstrated with him on his half-laughing, half-serious notice of the coincidences which had followed its discovery, should have a Zadkiel at all; strangest that he should have noted this date. Then suddenly a wave of superstitious fear came over him, and he shut Zadkiel hastily up, for fear of seeing other dates marked. Two minutes later he was already laughing at himself, though he did not reopen Zadkiel, and as he took his candle to go to bed his eye fell on a red morocco "Where is it?" which lay on the table. He knew that there was some address he wanted to verify, but it was a few minutes before he had turned to G. There was the name "Dr. Godfrey, 32 Wimpole Street," and on each side of it minute inverted commas. He looked at it in some astonishment, for he would have been ready to swear that his uncle had told him 32 Half Moon Street.
He went straight to his room, however, without wasting conjecture or surmise over this, undressed and blew out his candle. Outside, a great moon was swung high in heaven, no leaf trembled on the trees, but through the summer night the songs of many nightingales bubbled liquidly.
A few nights afterward he and Geoffrey were sitting alone in the house in Cavendish Square. Harry had been full of figures, wondering what was the least sum on which this London house could be made decently habitable. One room wanted a fresh paper, distemper was essential to another, most required fresh carpets, and stamped leather was imperatively indicated for the hall. Geoffrey listened with quiet amusement, for Harry was talking with such pellucid transparency that it was difficult not to smile. Then the question of electric light at Vail was touched upon, and suddenly he stopped, rose, and beat the ashes of his pipe out into the grate.
"By the way, Geoff," he said, "supposing you looked out the name of a man whom you did not know, and had only once heard of, in a 'Where is it?' belonging to a friend, and found the name in inverted commas, what inference, if any, would you draw? No, it is not a riddle; purely a matter of curiosity."
Geoffrey yawned.
"Even Sherlock Holmes would not infer there," he said; "and even his friend Watson could not fail in such a perfectly certain conclusion."
"What conclusion?"
"Wait a moment; let us be an obtuse detective. Is the person from whom you have heard the name the same as the person to whom the 'Where is it?' belongs? Lord, I give points to Watson!"
"It happens that it is so. Does that influence your conclusion?"
"It only makes it even surer; no, it can't do that, but it leaves it as sure as it was. Of course, the name in the 'Where is it?' is not the man's real name; not the name he goes by, anyhow."
"So it seemed possible to me."
"Then you were wrong. There is no question of possibility. It is dealing with absolute certainties. Now satisfy my curiosity. I have not much, but I have some."
"Bit by bit," said Harry. "Have you ever heard of a Dr. Godfrey, heart specialist, I take it, who lives at 32 Wimpole Street?"
"Never. But Wimpole Street is just round the corner. I imagine he will have a plate on his door. I thought your heart was in a parlous state."
"Oh, don't be funny," said Harry, "but come along."
Geoffrey got up.
"Shall I have to hold your hand?" he asked.
"No; I am not going to consult him. Indeed, there is no mystery about the whole matter. Simply Dr. Godfrey is my uncle's doctor, and he consulted him the other day about his heart. I happened to look out the doctor's address in his 'Where is it?' and found the name in inverted commas. Oh! by the way, there is a red book by you. Look out 32 Half Moon Street. Does Dr. Godfrey live there?"
Geoffrey turned up the street.
"Certainly not," he said. "But why?"
"Nothing," said Harry, unwilling to mention the different address. "Come, Geoff."
They were there in less than a couple of minutes: Harry had not even put on a hat for the traversing of so few paving stones. An incandescent gas lamp stood just opposite the door, and both number and plate were plainly visible. On the plate in large square capitals was "Dr. G. Armytage."
They read it in silence, and turned home again. Geoffrey had pursed up his lips for a whistle, but refrained.
"We spell it Armytage, and pronounce it Godfrey," he said at length. "Sometimes we even spell it Godfrey. Or perhaps G. stands for Godfrey. Not that it makes any difference."
Harry laughed, but he was both puzzled and a little troubled. Then the remembrance of the evening when he had seen the strange and distasteful man—Dr. Armytage it must now be supposed—driving away from the house, came to his mind. How excellent and kindly on that occasion had been the reasons for which his uncle had desired that the visit should remain unknown to Harry! And after that lesson, should not the pupil give him credit for some motive, unguessable even as that had been, but equally thoughtful? He had given him a wrong name and a wrong address; in his own reference book that same wrong name, but with inverted commas, appeared. Harry, being human and of discreetyears, did not relish being misled in this manner, but he told himself there might be admirable reason for it, which he could not conjecture. He had intended, it is true, to see Dr. Godfrey privately, so as to get his first-hand opinion on his uncle's condition; but he was not at all sure that he would ring Dr. Armytage's door-bell.
Lady Oxted, a few days after this, fell a victim to influenza, and after a decent interval, Geoffrey, who for the remainder of the summer had let his own rooms in Orchard Street and lived with Harry, called on the parts of both to ask how she was, was admitted, and taken upstairs to her sitting room. Her voice was very hoarse, a temperature thermometer lay on the table by her, and he felt himself a very foolhardy young man.
"It is no use your being afraid of it," said that lady to him by way of greeting, "because on the one hand the certain way to get it is to be afraid of it, and on the other you have to stop and talk to me. I have seen no one all day; not even Bob, as I don't want fresh cases in the house, and of course I haven't allowed Evie near me. Oh, I am reeking of infection: make up your mind to that."
"But I don't matter," said Geoffrey.
"Not the least scrap. Really, it is too provoking getting it again. I believe every doctor in Wimpole Street has seen me through at least one attack. I shall begin on Cavendish Square soon. Now talk."
The thought of Dr. Armytage and the strange confusion of names and addresses had often been present in Geoffrey's mind since he and Harry had made that short and inconclusive expedition to number 32 Wimpole Street, and here, perhaps, was an opportunity for adding a brick to that vague structure that was in outline only in his mind.
"Have you tried Dr. Godfrey?" he asked.
"I never heard of him. Otherwise I should have tried him. Where does he live?"
"It is not quite certain," said Geoffrey; "personally I believe at 32 Wimpole Street."
"Is this supposed to be bright and engaging conversation?" asked Lady Oxted, "which will interest the depressed influenza patient?"
"It may interest you in time," said Geoffrey. "To continue, have you ever heard of a Dr. G. Armytage, heart specialist, of 32 Wimpole Street?"
The effect of this was instantaneous. Lady Oxted sat up on her sofa, and her shawl whisked the temperature thermometer to the ground, smashing the ball.
"Yes, of course I have," she said; "so have you, I imagine. Or perhaps you were not born. How detestably young, young men are!"
"They get over it," said Geoffrey.
"Yes, and become middle-aged, which is worse. Now tell me all you know, categorically, about Dr. Armytage."
"I don't know that there is one for certain,"said Geoffrey. "True, his plate is on the door. I don't know if I have a right to tell you. In any case, really, I know nothing."
Lady Oxted made an impatient gesture.
"It concerns Francis Vail, of course," she said.
Geoffrey stared.
"How did you know that?" he asked.
"I will tell you when you have finished your story," she said, "which, I may remind you, you have not yet begun."
Harry had told his friend about his chance encounter at the lodge gates with the doctor, and Geoffrey could pass on the story complete; Mr. Francis's silence about his visit there; his excellent reason for silence; the false name given to Harry, and, so he thought, the false address; the false name in his reference book with the Wimpole Street address; and finally their visit to the door. Lady Oxted heard him with gathering interest, it would appear, and long before the end she was off her sofa and walking up and down the room.
"And now for your story," said he. "How did you know that it concerned Mr. Francis?"
Lady Oxted sat down again.
"G. Armytage is Godfrey Armytage," she said, "a side point only. You have told your tale very clearly, Geoffrey. But there is one weak point in the evidence."
"Evidence? What evidence?" asked Geoffrey.
"Yes; evidence is the wrong word—chain of circumstance, if you will. The weak point is that there is no certain proof of the identity of Dr. Godfrey with Dr. Armytage. It is certain to you and me, I grant you, but still— Did Harry say what this man he met driving to the station was like?"
"'Not a canny man' were his words," said Geoffrey; "'dark, clean-shaven, forty, and distasteful.'"
"That is on all fours," said Lady Oxted.
"You haven't answered my question," Geoffrey reminded her.
"No—I will. Did you ever hear of the Harmsworth case—the death of Harold Harmsworth?"
"Yes. Harry told me about it."
"All? The evidence of the doctors?"
"No, not that."
"Harold Harmsworth was shot, you will remember. At the coroner's inquest the whole question naturally turned on the distance from his head at which the gun which killed him was fired. This, you will easily understand, was of the utmost importance, for if the muzzle of the gun was not more than, say, a yard or four feet off, it was certainly possible that he had shot himself accidentally. But imagine the gun to have been ten feet off, it becomes certain that some gun not his own shot him. Now, his head was shattered; it looked to the ordinary mind as if the injury must have been done by shot that hadalready begun to spread—I can not speak technically. But the doctor who maintained that the shot might easily have been fired within the shorter distances—who was responsible, in fact, for the case not going beyond the coroner—was Dr. Godfrey Armytage."
Geoffrey was silent a moment.
"Well, it is all natural enough," he said at length, "Mr. Francis, on your own showing, has probably known the man for a long time; it is natural also that he did not wish to tell Harry his real name, for it was connected with that dreadful tragedy. It is also natural, if Dr. Armytage is an eminent man, that he should wish to consult a doctor he knew about his condition. Why not?"
"For this reason," said Lady Oxted: "Dr. Armytage is not a heart specialist any more than you or I. He is a surgeon, and not a very reputable one. I needn't go into details. But it would be as sensible to go to him, if you suffered from the heart, as to go to a cabinetmaker."