"What's the matter?" asked the other.
"Nothing; get on."
They went down to the outer door, and looked at it again from the outside. Though he had been through it twice that morning, yet, when it was closed, Geoffrey could not see where it was, so perfect was the joining of it.
"And the bit of broken brick is the handle to pull it to," said Harry, with interest. But he was visibly preoccupied, and his delight was clouded; there was no childish joy in him. Geoffrey guessed the reason for it, and at lunch afterward Harry spoke.
"That was a candle of Uncle Francis's, Geoff," he said. "It was his monogram," and he looked up as if expecting that his information was surprising. But Geoffrey went on eating quite calmly.
"So I supposed," he said.
"Then you think he knows of the secret passage?"
"I feel sure he does."
Harry's face clouded a little more; it was dark already.
"Are you weighing your words?" he asked. "Do you mean exactly what you say?"
"Exactly. Is not the new candle and the matches proof enough for you?"
"It ought to be. Yet I don't know. I suppose you mean that you have further proof."
"I don't suppose anything would convince you if that candle doesn't," said Geoffrey, not yet wishing to tell Harry of Mr. Francis's nocturnal visit.
Harry pondered this awhile.
"No, I don't suppose it would," he observed at length. "Anyhow, Geoff, if he didn't tell us he knew of the passage, we won't tell him that we do. You used to call me secretive, I remember. I dare say you were right."
"It seems to run in the family," said the other.
"You mean that Uncle Francis is secretive, too. Well, I think he might have told me of the passage. Halloo! there are the horses. Just wait; I must go through it again. The candle spoiled all my pleasure this morning, and it is heavenly, simply heavenly. Twenty-six bob, you say. Dirt cheap, too."
Two mornings after this discovery of the passage, as they were sitting at breakfast, a telegram was brought in for Harry.
"Brougham to meet the evening train," he said to the man, after reading it, "and tell them to get Mr. Francis's rooms ready."
"He comes to-night?" asked Geoffrey.
"Yes; I did not expect him so soon. But he is only coming for a couple of days, he says. He has taken the flat in Wimpole Street; I suppose he means to go back there."
"What is he coming here for?"
"Can't say—to get some furniture and things, I suspect. Then the passage is to be a secret, eh, Geoff?"
"Why, surely," said Geoffrey; "like a box hedge. I shouldn't take the slightest pleasure in it if I thought other people knew——"
"But you said you were sure that Uncle Francis did know," interrupted Harry.
"Let me finish my sentence, if you don't mind. I was about to say that I shouldn't take the slightest pleasure in it if I thought that other people knew that I knew."
Harry broke a piece of toast meditatively.
"I'm not sure about it," he said. "Personally I felt rather aggrieved that Uncle Francis had not told me anything about it. Well, wouldn't he as naturally feel aggrieved if I don't tell him?"
"It is superfluous to tell him," said Geoffrey, "because he knows already. Secondly, it will spoil all my pleasure if he knows we know, and I shall wish I hadn't found the thing at all. Fifthly and lastly, you never paid me that twenty-six bob; and, thirdly, it is your house, after all."
Harry was silent. Then suddenly:
"Geoffrey," he said, "tell me what further proof you have, apart from the candle, that Uncle Francis does know about it. I'll draw you a cheque after breakfast; haven't got any money."
"Is that a bribe?" asked Geoffrey.
"Yes."
"And you really wish to know?"
"Yes, I ask you," said Harry. "No, it is not a bribe. If soberly you would rather not tell me, don't."
For a moment Geoffrey could not make up his mind whether he wished Harry to know or not. If only the tale would have put him on his guard, he would have had no hesitation about telling him all—his conversation with Lady Oxted, the looped cotton, the midnight visit. But he felt that the right time had not come, though it might come any day. On the other hand, it was difficult to speak merely of Mr. Francis's visit without betraying some hint of his suspicions, andthis he did not want to do. But the balance of advantage seemed to incline toward telling him; for if he did not, in answer to so direct an invitation, Harry would not unnaturally accuse him, though silently no doubt, of unfounded suspicions against a man whom he himself honoured very highly. So he determined to speak.
"Three nights ago," he said, "on the evening of the gun-room affair, you went to bed early, and I sat in the hall and dozed. I awoke suddenly and saw Mr. Francis's face looking round the corner by the staircase."
Harry pushed back his chair.
"What!" he said.
"Oh, I was not dozing then. We talked for some time, and he told me why he had come with this secrecy. He also asked me not to tell you. But I don't mind."
"And why had he come?" asked Harry.
"All day, he said, he had been haunted by a strong premonition of evil, and he had come to make sure you were safe."
"That's odd," said Harry. "On the day of the gun-room affair—well?"
"For one reason and another," continued Geoffrey, "I felt sure he had not come in by the front door. At any rate, I proved that he did not leave by it, for I put some stamp paper over the joining, and in the morning it was still untorn. And then, if you remember, I said I felt yew-hedgy, and found the passage."
Harry got up, and began pacing up and down the dining room.
"But how ridiculous!" he said. "Why couldn't he have told me? Was he ashamed of his premonition?"
"He told me he was."
Harry felt unreasonably annoyed.
"I won't have my house burglariously entered by anybody," he said, "Uncle Francis or another. I shall tell him so."
"As you will," said Geoffrey, inwardly anxious that he should not.
"Then I shall not tell him so," said Harry, "and I sha'n't tell him that I know about the secret passage. But next time he tries to use it, he shall find no candle there. I've a good mind to block the place up, Geoff."
"Oh, don't do that! 'Tisn't fair on me."
"I shall do exactly as I damn please!" said Harry. "We'll be finding it full of kitchen maids next. No, I can't block it up before I've shown it Evie. But I shall go there every day and take away his candle if he puts fresh ones. Lord, I got quite heated about it!"
"That's right," said Geoffrey; "don't be sat upon by anybody."
"Anyhow you'd better not try," said Harry viciously.
He continued quarter-decking about the room for a few times in silence, and his annoyance subsided.
"And the old fellow really came down becausehe had a presentiment about me," he went on. "Geoff, that's an odd thing now. It looks as if the Luck touched more than me; it gave Uncle Francis a hint of what it was doing. You know the Luck's getting on; it is making more reasonable attempts on me. Do you think I've been encouraging it too much? Perhaps I have; we won't drink its health to-night."
"I would if I were you," said Geoffrey. "Perhaps in that way you have put the old thing in a good temper. Well, keep it up; it can't avoid having shots at you, but it always manages to miss."
"Ah, you are beginning to believe in it too."
"Not a bit. All the effect the Luck has is to make you talk arrant nonsense about it. I believe in it, indeed! I was just humouring you."
"Your notions of the humorous are obscure," observed Harry.
Mr. Francis arrived late that night, full of little anecdotes about his house-hunting, and loud in praises of his flat. He had only come, as he had said, for a couple of days, to collect some books and sticks of furniture, and by the end of the month at the outside he hoped to have it completely habitable. His pleasure in it was that of a child with a new toy, delightful to hear, and they sat up late, listening to his fresh, cheerful talk, and hearkening between whiles to an extraordinary heavy rain which had come on before sunset and was beating at the windows.
This deluge was continuous all night, and nextmorning they woke to the same streaming heavens; the sky was a lowering arch of deluge, the rain relentless. Harry and Geoffrey, who regarded the sky and the open heavens as the proper roof for man, and houses merely as a shelter for unusual inclemency, had felt not the smallest inclination to stir abroad, but Mr. Francis at lunch announced his intention of walking, rain or no rain.
"It doesn't hurt me," he said; "a brisk walk, whatever the weather. So neither of you will come?"
Harry looked out on to the soupy, splashing gravel.
"Geoff, shall we go for a swim?" he said.
"Thank you, no. I'm too old for mud pies."
Mr. Francis laughed heartily.
"So am not I," he said.—"Well, Harry?"
"It certainly is raining," said the lad.
"Not a doubt of it," assented Mr. Francis.
Geoffrey turned to Harry suddenly.
"Fear both fire and frost and rain," he said, in a low tone.
Harry went briskly toward the door.
"Thanks, Geoff, that settles it," he said. "An excellent reason for going, and getting it over to-day if possible.—Yes, Uncle Francis, I'll put on my boots and come. I'm not made of paper any more than you."
Geoffrey followed him into the hall, a sudden vague foreboding filling him.
"Don't go, Harry!" he said.
"You are beginning to believe in it, you know," said Harry.
"Indeed I am not."
"Looks like it," and Mr. Francis joining them, he went off whistling.
Very much rain must have fallen during the night, for yesterday the lake was not notably higher than its normal limits, whereas now, so few hours afterward, it had swollen so as to over-top the stonework of the sluice, and a steady rush of water fell over the ledge into the outlet below. This, ordinarily a smooth-flowing chalk stream, was now a riotous race of headlong water, sufficient to carry a man off his feet, and, as they paused a minute or two to watch the grand rush of it, they could see that, even in so short a space, the flow of water over the stonework was increasing in volume, showing that the lake was rising every minute. The gate walls of the sluice were not very thick, and seemed hardly built for such a press of water; in one or two places Mr. Francis observed that there appeared to be cracks right through them, for water spurted out as from a hose. The sluice itself seemed to have got somewhat choked with thedébrisof branches and leaves with which the storm had covered the surface of the lake, and a Saragossa Sea of drift stretched out to a considerable radius from it.
Adjoining the main lock was a small wooden water gate, designed, no doubt, for the relief in time of flood, but this was shut down, and Harry, splashing through the water, tried to pull it up,in order to give an additional outlet, but the wood was swollen with the wet, and he could not stir it. Mr. Francis observed his actions with some attention; his feet were firmly planted on the stone slab that covered the sluice, and the water rose like a frill over his boots, as, with bent and straining figure, he exerted his utmost force to raise the gate. Once, as for firmer purchase he wedged his right foot against the side of the water channel and bowed to a final effort, the block of stonework on which he stood seemed to tremble. A cry of warning rose to Mr. Francis's lips, but it remained unuttered; only his face wore an expression of intense conflicting expectation. But Harry's efforts were fruitless, and soon desisting, he splashed his way back. Elsewhere the lake was rapidly encroaching on the outskirts of the lawn; pools of rain lay in the lower undulations of it, and these, joining with its swollen waters, formed long, liquid tongues and bays. Here a clump of bushes stood out like an island in a lagoon, here an outlying flower bed was altogether submerged, and the dark soil was floated by the water in a spreading stain over the adjoining grass.
"This will never do," said Harry; "the place will be in a mess for months if we don't get the water off somehow. It is that choked sluice which is doing all the mischief. We had better go up to the farm, Uncle Francis, and send some men to clear it. Lord, how it rains!"
"Yes, that will be the best plan," said he."Stay, Harry, I will go, and do you run back to the sluice, my dear fellow, and see if it is raised quite to the top; we never looked at that. You might get a big stick also, and begin clearing away the stuff that chokes it. And have another pull at the wooden gate. If you can get that open, it is all right. Go and break your back over it, my dear boy; it seemed to yield a little that last pull you gave. What muscles, what muscles!" he said, feeling his arm. "Try again at the wooden sluice, and be quick. There is no time to lose; we shall have the water up to the house in less than an hour if this goes on."
Mr. Francis went off at a rapid amble in the direction of the farm, and Harry returned to wrestle with the wooden sluice. Even in the few minutes that they had been away the water had risen beyond belief, and when again he splashed across the stone slab of the sluice to the smaller gate, the swift-flowing stream over the top of it was half knee-deep, and pressed against him like a strong man. It was no longer possible to see the spouting escape beneath, for the arch of turbid water was continuous and unbroken from side to side.
He wrapped his handkerchief round the ring which raised the gate, and again putting shoulder and straining back into it, bent to his task. One foot he had braced against the stone coping of the side, the other he pressed to the ironwork of the main sluice, and, pulling firmly and strongly till he felt the muscles of his spine stand out likewoven cords, he knew that something stirred. At that he paused a moment, the strong flood pouring steadily round him, and collecting himself, bent down again and called on every sinew for one sudden effort. On the instant he felt the stone slab on which he stood reel under his left foot, and half guessing, for the moment was too brief for conscious conclusion, that the sluice had given way bodily, sprang for all he was worth from the overturning mass. But the effort was an effort made in air; his right foot slipped from the edge of the coping, and the whole sluice wall turned under him, throwing him, as luck would have it, clear of the toppling mass, but full into the stream below. As he fell he caught at the masonry of the sides of the channel, to prevent himself being carried down.
For one half second his grasp was firm; at the next, with an incredible roar of water, the released flood poured down from the lake, brushing his hand from its grasp as lightly as a man whisks a settling fly from sugar, and rolled him over and over among the screamingdébris, now tossing him into mid stream, now burying him in the yellow, turbulent flood, now throwing him up on the top of a wave like chaff in a high wind, as helpless as a suckling child in the grip of some wild beast. Impotently and without purpose he snatched at hurrying wreckage, even at the twisted ropes of water that hurled him along, conscious only of the wild excitement of this foregone battle, without leisure to be afraid. He seemed to himself to bemotionless, while the banks and lawns shot by him with an inconceivable swiftness, but bearing toward him, as he suddenly remembered, with the same giddy speed, the bridge over which the road to the lodge passed. How often had he stood there, watching the trout poise and dart in the clear, flowing water!
A turn in the stream bed, and he saw it rushing up toward him like an approaching train, the water already nearly on a level with its arch, and soon to be how vastly higher with the wave of the flood that carried him, he in the van of the torrent from the broken sluice. His first instinct was a resolve to clutch at it, in order to stop himself; but in a moment realizing that, if he wished to make death certain, this was the way of it, he huddled himself together, burying his head in the water. He just saw the first of the flood strike against the bridge in a huge feather of broken turbulence, and then came a darkness full of loud chucklings and suckings, as if the water laughed inwardly with evil merriment. Once, in that blind moment, his shoulder was banged against the gorged arch, once he felt his coat catch against some projecting stone, and it was as if the weight of the whole world was pressed against him, as for a half second he checked the stream, the next he was torn free again, and out into daylight once more.
Not till then did the chance of his possible ultimate escape strike him with a sense that he might possibly have a share in that matter; hithertothe wild pace had given a certain bewilderment to his thoughts not unpleasant in itself. All reasoning power, all remembrance of what had gone before, all realization of what might follow after had been choked; his consciousness, a mere pin point, did not do more than receive the sensation of the passing moment. But after the bridge had been passed it sprouted and grew, he became Harry Vail again, a man with wits and limbs that were meant to be used, and therewith the will to use them. But the power to use them was a thing arbitrarily directed by the flood; breath was the prime necessity, and it was a matter requiring both effort and an ebb of the encircling wave to fling his face free from that surging and broken van of water and get air. Only with this returning increase of consciousness was he aware that he was out of breath with his prolonged ducking, for, broadly speaking, he had not decently breathed once since he had tumbled with the tumbling sluice. So with a downward and backward kick, the instinct of treading water, he raised his head from the yellow race, and felt the air sweet and essential. Three long breaths he took, throat-filling, lung-filling, like a man half dead with drought, and, as he struggled to overlook the water for the fourth time, it was for the purpose of using eyes as well as lungs; and what he saw caused hope to leap high in his heart, though he had not known he had been hopeless. For here the stream had already widely overflowed its banks, now no longer held in by themasonry of the first stretch below the sluice, and every gallon of water that came down spread itself over a widely increased area; speed and the concentrated volume were even now diminishing. The sense that he was bound and helpless, a swathed child, passed from him, and, pushing steadily with his arms and feet (so random a stroke could scarcely be called swimming), he soon saw that he was appreciably leaving the main rush of the stream. Before long he was brought up with a violent jerk; his foot had struck the ground, and the water stood up over his head like a yellow frill. But that was no more than a playful buffet, after the grimness of his struggle; he staggered to his feet again, and, now no longer swimming, after a few more splashing efforts, stood firm and upright in waist-high water, leaning with all his weight against the press of the flood. Then step by plunging step he got to land, and at last stood utterly free on the good safe earth.
He stood and dripped for a moment, the water running from all points of himself and his clothes, as if off the ribs of an umbrella; then wringing out the baggier folds with his hands, he tried to start running toward the house. But twenty paces told him he was dead beat, and dropping to a soberer pace, he made his splashing way across the fields. Suddenly he stopped.
"The Luck," he cried aloud to the weeping sky; "it was the rain that did it! Blooming old, futile old Luck! It couldn't kill a bluebottle."
This was an inspiring thought, and he went the more lightly for it, taking note, with a delightful sense of danger past, of the distance of his water journey. And what was that spouting column of yellowness and foam three hundred yards farther up, standing like a fountain in mid stream? And with a sudden gasp of reasoned recognition he knew it to be the bridge over which the road passed, under which so few minutes ago he had himself been whirled. Cold and shivering as he was, he could not resist a moment's pause when he came opposite it, and he turned away again with a sense of respect for the Luck which his last words, shouted to the streaming heavens, had lacked. Under that he had blindly burrowed, helpless as a baby in an express, to stop his headlong course.
"Not such a bad attempt of the Luck, after all," he said to himself.
Five minutes later he had cast his water trail over the gravel and into the hall. Geoffrey was deep in an armchair, reading.
"Geoffrey, old chap, the Luck's been having another go," he cried, almost triumphantly. "But it can't pull it off, it simply can't. Get me some hot whisky and water, will you, and come to my room. I'm going to get between blankets a bit. Nothing like taking care of one's self, and running no risks. I'll tell you all about it. Can't stop now."
Geoffrey's book flew on to the floor as he sprang out of his chair.
"O Harry, what has happened?" he cried; "what has he done now?"
"Old Francis?" asked Harry, pointing at the picture. "He's used the rain this time. Penny squirt, you know. Hurry up, and come to my room. Whisky rather strong, please."
Harry was out of his clinging clothes in a couple of minutes, and, dropping them into an empty hip bath where they could lie innocuous to carpets, got into blankets, and sipping his whisky, told Geoffrey all his story from the moment of the dismemberment of the sluice to his staggering landing half a mile downstream.
"And if ever you want to travel expeditiously by water," he said, in conclusion, "I recommend you a six-foot flood in a narrow channel. But avoid a water-choked bridge ahead of you. Man, it gives you a wambling inside, and no mistake. All the same it makes you feel an A-1 hero afterward, I can tell you that for cert. Why, I'm choking with pride, just choking, though what the particular achievement is I can't tell you. I had to go underneath it, and there were no two words to it. Well, I went."
"But what had happened to Mr. Francis?" asked Geoffrey. "Couldn't he see that the thing was tottery?"
"No, of course not, you dolt; he'd gone trotting off to the farm. Oh, I didn't tell you that part, so you're not a dolt. We went out together, as you saw, and I took a haul on that old stricken sluice, but I couldn't make it budge. So we beganwalking away, to get men from the farm, but the water was rising so fast that he went on there alone, and I went back to have another pull at it—which I did, with this blessed result; and, O Geoffrey, how dry and warm the rain felt when I had got out of that flood race! Lord! I thought I was done; no, I didn't think it, I only knew I was. But not till I got out did the blessed solution strike me: it was the Luck having another shot. And again it has failed—fire and frost and rain. We've had the whole trio again, and be damned to them! But there's a hitch somewhere; old Francis can't pull it off. Really, I am almost sorry for him!"
Harry's voice was resonant with conviction and triumph; it was as if he had won a battle that was inevitable between him and a subtle foe. The danger he had been through was swallowed up in the victory he had gained. But this lightness of heart found no echo in Geoffrey.
"I don't like it, Harry," he said; "I don't like it one bit. I do not believe in the Luck; it is childish, and you do not believe in the Luck. We have played at make-believe like children, as we played with the discovery of the passage in the yew hedge. And the passage in the yew hedge is far the more real of the two. But it is time to stop all that. Why should these things come to you in such damnable continuity? Why within a few days should you nearly fall into an ice house, then go within an ace of blowing your head off, and finally be carried down in that mill-raceof death? There is no use also in saying it is coincidence. Things do not happen like that."
"No, you are right, not by mere coincidence," said Harry; "but they do happen; they have happened to me."
The windows of the room looked out straight over the lawn on to the lower end of the lake, where the sluice lay, and Geoffrey, as Harry divested himself of the blankets he had swathed round him and rubbed himself down with a rough towel, went and sat in the window-seat, looking out.
"And it's no use saying that I don't believe in the Luck," he went on; "I do believe in it, at least I think I do, which, as far as I am concerned, comes to exactly the same thing. Oh, it is nonsense!" he cried suddenly. "I don't think I really believe in it, but I like to think I do. There is the truth as near as I can get it. And yet, perhaps, that isn't the truth; perhaps I do believe in it. Oh, who knows whether I believe in it or not? I'm sure I don't."
Geoffrey did not reply for a moment. He had felt morally certain after the gun-room accident that, if danger of death again looked into Harry's face, it would be Mr. Francis who brought it there; he had even said to himself that it would be by rain that danger would come. By rain, indeed, it had been, but where, taxing ingenuity to the utmost, did Mr. Francis come in? Harry had been alone, Mr. Francis halfway to the farm.What if Harry was right?—and the thought challenged his reasonable self.
"How can you talk such utter nonsense?" he said angrily. "How can that pewter pot break down a sluice, and put a cartridge in your gun, and make you go to the ice house instead of the summerhouse?"
"'Tain't pewter!" said Harry's voice, muffled in the shirt he was putting on.
At that moment Geoffrey's eye caught sight of the figure of Mr. Francis trotting gaily through the rain down the side of the lake, from the direction of the farm, and he disappeared behind the bushes that screened the sluice from the house. Almost immediately he reappeared again, this time coming toward the house with the same lightness of step. He must have seen, thought Geoffrey, that the flood had carried away the sluice. Harry, he must have known, was probably there when it was carried away. What reconstruction of facts would fit these factors? At present none, but perhaps Mr. Francis could supply them. He rose.
"Mr. Francis is just coming in," he said, "but I do not see the farm men."
Harry came across to the window.
"They are probably following," he said. "Go down to him, Geoff, and tell him I'm all right."
"You will be down soon?"
"Yes, in a couple of minutes. You might order tea, too."
Geoffrey went slowly downstairs, reciting to himself exactly all he knew. One point was salient: Mr. Francis had certainly seen the broken sluice. And he entered the hall.
Mr. Francis had taken off his waterproof, and was sitting comfortably in a chair. He looked up with his cheery smile when Geoffrey came in.
"Ah! my dear boy," he said, "you were quite right not to come out. The weather was odious; I have never seen such rain. But one feels better, after all, for a breath of air."
"I preferred the house," said Geoffrey. "Was the water in the lake very high?"
"Yes, it was a good deal swollen. In fact, it has carried away a considerable portion of the sluice. It must be seen to."
"A dangerous moment," observed Geoffrey, picking up a magazine and turning over the pages.
"Yes, I wish I had seen it go. A fine sight it must have been, six feet of water in that narrow channel. But we were on the way to the farm,I suppose, when it happened. I must talk—I must talk to Harry about it this evening. It will want mending at once."
At this moment Geoffrey heard Harry's foot on the stairs just outside the hall. Though he knew nothing of psychology, he believed this to be a psychological moment.
"Is he out still?" he asked, seeing out of the corner of his eye that he was even now entering the hall.
"I suppose so," said Mr. Francis. "He left me on the way up to the farm."
Harry had now entered the hall, and his step was noiseless on the thick carpet. Mr. Francis, with his chair facing the fire, could not see him, but another half-dozen paces would bring him close.
"You are wrong," said Geoffrey slowly, "for he seems to have come in. This is he, is it not? Or his ghost?"
Mr. Francis, contrary to the doctor's orders, made an exceedingly brisk movement, springing to his feet and facing about. He saw Harry; he cast one brief look at Geoffrey, to which fear and a devilish enmity contributed largely, and turned to his nephew again in perfect control of himself and without further hesitation. Geoffrey had scarce time to tell himself that there was an awkward choice he had to make.
"Ah! my dear boy," he cried, "so you are all right. I felt sure you would be. But for a moment, for one moment, I was anxious, when Icame back from the farm with the men and we found the sluice broken."
Geoffrey stared in sheer astonishment at the man's glibness.
"With the men?" he asked. "Surely not."
"Dear fellow," said Mr. Francis, with the most natural manner, "how pedantically exact you are! I must be exact, too, it seems. I was a little ahead of them, for I ran back from the farm, being just a little uneasy about the weight of water that I knew must be pressing on the sluice. I thought, indeed, that when Harry made his first attempt to pull it up, it was a little unsafe for any one to stand there."
Suddenly all his doubts and certainties surged up in Geoffrey's mind.
"Did you warn him?" he asked.
Geoffrey saw Harry's eyebrows knit themselves together in a frown of perplexity which he could not decipher. But Mr. Francis turned to him with the eagerness of a boy anxious to confess.
"I did not," he said, "and all the time that I was going to the farm the thing weighed on me. I ought to have—I ought to have given way to my old-maid feeling of insecurity. But I was afraid—yes, dear lad, I was afraid Harry would laugh at me. Ah, how I repented my silence when I came back and found the sluice gone—gone!" he repeated.
"Yes, it went," said Harry. "I went too."
Mr. Francis looked at him a moment witheyes of horror diminishing to a pin point; then he gave a little low cry and sank down in his chair again.
"What do you say? what do you say?" he murmured. "You were there; you were——"
"Oh, the sluice broke as I was standing on it, having another pull at the wooden gate, as you suggested, and down I went," said Harry. "The flood took me right under the bridge, rather a difficult matter, and a quarter of a mile farther down. Then I got out."
Mr. Francis lifted up his hands in a weary, uncertain manner.
"Under the bridge—under the bridge!" he said hoarsely.
"It would not take him over," remarked Geoffrey.
Mr. Francis seemed not to hear this comment.
"What can I say?" he cried. "What can I say or do? And to think that it was my fault! I ought to have warned you; I ought to have been on the safe side. I did not with my reasonable mind think that there was any danger, but I was uneasy. Harry, do not blame me too much: I remember advising you one day last winter when you came in wet from shooting, to go and change, and indeed, my dear boy, you did not receive my advice very patiently. I thought of that; I thought I would not weary you with my meddling misgivings."
"I don't blame you in the least, Uncle Francis," said Harry. "You didn't think the sluicelooked sufficiently unsafe to make it better that you should warn me. I also did not realize that it was in a dangerous condition. There is no harm done."
"I can not forgive myself," said Mr. Francis.
Harry laughed.
"Ah! there I can not help you," he said. "For my own part I can only assure you that there is nothing to forgive. There, that's all right," he added rather gruffly, desiring to have no scene.
Geoffrey had listened to this with a look of pleased attention, as a man may regard a little scene in a play, which he knows well. Mr. Francis had been through his part with great dexterity: here another actor—himself—should appear.
"And now for your story, Mr. Francis," he said very cheerfully, "as Harry will not give us curdling details. Let me see: you went to the farm, and ran back again, and I saw you go to the sluice. You found it gone. Dear, dear, how terrible for you! So you came quietly back to the house and sat yourself down in front of the fire, where I found you ten minutes ago."
Mr. Francis looked up with a scared eye.
"I hoped and trusted no accident had happened to him," he said. "I came to the house to make sure that he was safe. Ah! I can not talk of it, I can not talk of it," he cried suddenly.
"But ten minutes ago you told me that you supposed that Harry was still out," persisted Geoffrey. "What a strange thing is the humanmind! Here, for instance, I do not follow your thoughts at all. You were uneasy for Harry's safety, for fear of the sluice giving way, and as soon as you saw for certain that it had given way, you felt no further anxiety. You sat here in front of the fire, though, as you told me, you supposed Harry was out still."
Mr. Francis rose from his chair in great agitation.
"What do you mean? What are you saying?" he cried in a high, tremulous voice. "Do you know what your words mean?"
"My words mean exactly what they appear to mean," said Geoffrey quietly, feeling that the signal had been given and the time was come. "Hear me: how curious a thing, I said, is the human mind! The sluice you thought looked a little unsafe, and you were uneasy for Harry's safety as you went to the farm, for he was making at your suggestion an attempt to raise the wooden gate. You come back, and find symptoms of the confirmation of your fears: the sluice is broken. Harry is not there. Then you walk quietly back to the house, and tell me you suppose that Harry is out still. I repeat that I do not follow your train of thought. It is curious.—Harry, does not this seem to you also to be curious?"
Harry looked from one to the other a moment, puzzled and bewildered. Geoffrey spoke so quietly and collectedly that it was impossible not to listen calmly to what he said, impossible also not to understand what he meant. On theother hand, he was saying things that were absolutely incredible. From Geoffrey he looked to Mr. Francis, who was standing between them. The old man's mouth quivered, his agitation was momentarily increasing. Then suddenly he recollected the doctor's warning that all agitation was bad for him, and he was his uncle, his friend, and an old man.
"Stop, Geoffrey!" he cried; "don't speak.—Uncle Francis, don't listen to him: he doesn't mean what you think he means. There is some ghastly misunderstanding.—Geoff, you damned idiot!"
Mr. Francis's face grew paler and more mottled, his breathing was growing short and laboured, and Harry was in an agony of terror that another of those awful seizures would come upon him. But in a moment he spoke, slowly, and with little pauses for breath.
"Harry," he said, "either your friend—apologizes unreservedly for—what he has said—or one of us—leaves the house—now, this evening. It will be for you—to decide—which of us leaves it."
At these words another terror seized Harry—the terror of the precipice at the edge of which all three of them stood. Whatever happened now, it seemed to him, a catastrophe must be: one friend or the other (and as he thought of the two, his mind veered backward and forward like a shifting weathercock) must go. But the primary necessity was, by any means in his power, to stop further words just now, for he feared each momentthat Mr. Francis would be seized as he stood.
"Uncle Francis, come away," he said, taking his arm, "you are agitated; so is Geoffrey; so am I. It is no use talking about a thing in heat. Wait, just wait.—Geoffrey, if you say another word I'll knock your silly head off!"
But Mr. Francis regarded his nephew no more than he regarded the fly that buzzed in the pane.
"What do you mean?" he said, coming closer to Geoffrey and shaking off Harry's hand; "what do you mean by what you have just said? Apologize for it instantly; do you hear? Indeed, it seems to me that I am very good-natured to be willing to accept an apology."
Harry put in a word he knew to be hopeless.
"Go on, Geoff," he said, impatiently, anxious for the moment only about his uncle. "Uncle Francis has understood what you said in some different way from what you meant. I don't know what it's all about, but let's have no more nonsense."
Geoffrey turned on that eager face but an absent and staring eye, hardly hearing his words, for they called up nothing whatever in his mind which answered to them—only collecting himself to speak fully and without excitement. He hardly gave a thought to how Harry might take it, so large and immediate was the need of speaking, so tremendous the part in this horrible nightmare inevitably his.
"I do not apologize," he said, "not only becauseI do not wish to, but because I am simply unable. I indorse every word I have said. I have also more to say. Will you hear it, Harry? I should prefer to tell you alone, but I suppose that is impossible."
"Quite impossible, I assure you, you young viper!" said Mr. Francis, in a voice so cool and self-contained that Harry looked at him in utter surprise. The bursting agitation of a few minutes ago had passed; his voice, horrid and cold, was the faithful index of his face. And at his words Harry suddenly saw the futility of trying to interfere. The thing was gone beyond his reach; it was as impossible now to stop what was coming as it would have been to stop that hustling flood from the lake by a word to it. He waited, frozen almost to numbness with dread and nauseous misgiving for what should follow, till Geoffrey, in response to Mr. Francis's assurance, spoke.
"Your uncle," he said, "has for months past been plotting and scheming against you, your happiness, your life. He tried in the first place, by every means in his power, to prevent your marriage with Miss Aylwin. On the Sunday last June when she was down here they walked in the wood together, and saw——"
"I know all about that," said Harry.
"I doubt it. Do you know, for instance, that Mr. Francis tried to persuade Miss Aylwin to overlook the fact that she had seen you walking with a dairymaid? Do you know that he never suggested to her that the supposed 'you' mightbe Jim, that he told her that all 'your previous little foolishness'—the exact phrase—had been quite innocent? I think you did not know that."
The whole scene still seemed utterly unreal to Harry; he could not believe that it was going on. He turned to his uncle.
"Well?" he said.
"Ah, I am on my trial then!" said Mr. Francis, very evilly. "Harry, my dear boy, it is only because this fellow has been your friend that I stop and listen to these monstrous insinuations. I am asked, I believe, what I have to say to this. Well, what has been said is literally true. I mistook the groom for you. So did Miss Aylwin. We both made a mistake. As for 'previous little foolishnesses,' that of course is a pure invention on the part of some imaginative person."
"Miss Aylwin told Lady Oxted; Lady Oxted told me," said Geoffrey, as quietly as if he was giving a reference to some small point of business.
Mr. Francis just shrugged his shoulders.
"I remember last winter," he said, "that we used to play a very diverting game called Russian scandal."
"The next move you know, Harry," continued Geoffrey, still taking the smallest notice of Mr. Francis. "He wrote to tell you that Miss Aylwin was already engaged."
Harry wore an inscrutable face.
"Go on," he said.
"That also did not come off," said Geoffrey, "and you were engaged. Ten days ago we camedown here. On the first morning you asked Mr. Francis which of the two houses on the knoll was the ice house and which the summerhouse——"
"Ah, you have broken your word to me!" cried Harry. "You promised to keep that secret from my uncle."
A violent trembling had seized Mr. Francis.
"What! What!" he murmured, half rising from his chair.
"I have broken my word to you," said Geoffrey, still seemingly unconscious of the presence of a third person. "I am sorry, but I can not help it. You followed the directions he gave you, and nearly met your death. We came back together, and found him playing the flute in the garden, dancing to it as he played. Then you went into the house. I remained outside and watched him. He went up the knoll to the two houses, and tried the door of the ice house. He found it locked, opened the summerhouse and looked in. Try to reconstruct what was in his mind. He made no allusion to his mistake. Had he already forgotten that he had given you a direction that nearly sent you to your death? Or was the mistake yours? He told you to go to the left hand of the two houses, so you said to me. Is that the case?"
Harry did not at once reply; he looked eagerly, imploringly at his friend, but he could find no words to express a feeling he could not comprehend; he did not know, ever so vaguely, whathe thought. In despair and utter perplexity he faced quickly round to his uncle. Mr. Francis was sitting with half-closed eyes; his hands, like the hands of a blind man, groped and picked at the buttons in the arm of his chair, stricken, helpless. Suddenly, as if with a drowning effort, he threw his head back and saw Harry.
"No, no," he said, "not the left hand, not the left hand! I never said that. Oh, the Luck, the cursed, cursed Luck! I could not—indeed, I could not have said the left hand. 'Do not go to the left hand by mistake'; I can hear myself saying the words now. Oh, weary, weary day! But you went there, you went to the ice house instead of the summerhouse; you went from the brightness of God's sunshine into the dark—to that edge—to the edge of the well. O my God! my God! Eli! Eli!" and the cry was wrung from him like water from a twisted cloth.
The old man buried his face in his hands, collapsing like a broken doll. He regarded neither Harry nor his accuser; the anguish of his spirit covered him like a choking wave, and into it he went down without a struggle, but only that moaning sob, a sight and a sound to stagger the unbelief of an infidel. And Harry—no infidel, but a lad of kindly heart and generous impulse, quick to believe good, a laggard to impute harm—could not but be moved.
Geoffrey neither looked at the bowed figure nor wavered, and his face was flint. But though that moaning cry, that passionate incoherence didnot move him, yet the sight of Harry's face, with its bewilderment of perplexity and compassionate trouble, filled him with a sudden fear. To himself, that bent and venerable head was a mockery of grief, a fraud finished and exquisite, and he was more afraid of Harry's divided mind, on which Mr. Francis played as on an instrument of music, than he had been of the evil and hunted face that had come down from the gun room, as he stood behind the curtain, in those dead hours ten days ago.
Mr. Francis sat huddled in his chair, his face invisible, his fingers clasped in his white head, and long, dry sobs lifted and relaxed his figure, like the pulsation of a wave. And though Geoffrey, so few minutes ago, had turned himself to steel, he could not go on speaking with that silent stricken figure in front of him. The low, heart-broken murmuring, the silent sobs, filched resolution from him. Once and twice he began to speak, but no sentence would come. As many times he told himself that he must go on, that he knew that this feigned anguish was a thing to awake horror or laughter, but never pity. Yet it affected him as a scene in the play affects the stalls. It was all unreal, he knew it was unreal, yet he could not immediately speak. Suddenly, and long before—it seemed while he was still cursing his infirmity of purpose—Harry came to his side.
"Go away, Geoff; go away," he whispered. "Leave me with him. Whatever you have tosay, you can not and must not say it now. Look there and judge! It may kill him. Go away, there's a good fellow!"
He got up at once: that was enough. Harry was still willing to hear him, now or at another time, it did not matter. All he wanted was that Harry should hear him to the end, and then his part was done. Exposure—there was no pleasure in the act of it; he only wanted that it should be there. Truly the man was vile, and an enemy, but he did not covet the post of executioner as such. By him, it is true, justice was done, the murderer was put out of a world with the welfare of which his presence was incompatible, and a man to do it there must be, but who did not shudder at the shadow of the hangman? That dry, inarticulate sobbing, which he had no need to tell himself was but a counterfeit grief, yet wore the respectable semblance of woe. What, again, if remorse had at length touched Mr. Francis? What if the imminence of his exposure had at last revealed to him his immeasurable enormity? If such a possibility was within the range of the most distant horizon, how contemptible would be his own part in trampling in a truth that was realized! All that was generous within him, and there was nothing that was not, revolted from so despicable a rôle.
But against that possibility how large and near loomed the probability that these grovelling pangs were but of the same texture as the rest! No, he was not taken in; he registered privatelythe unalterable conviction that Mr. Francis was Mr. Francis still, for no opprobrious word conveyed to him half the horror of all which that canonized name implied. Yet Harry was by him, asking him, not bidding him to go. That was sufficient; and even as he told himself it was sufficient, back swung the balance again. What duty could be more obvious, more staring than to finish now, at once, with that ineffable old man? Yet he sat there sobbing. And without another word Geoffrey turned and went, leaving uncle and nephew together.
It was not long before Harry joined him in the smoking room.
"Uncle Francis has gone to his room," he said. "He is quieter now; I could leave him safely. But I have telegraphed for the doctor; I daren't take the responsibility of not sending for him. He kept asking me one question, Geoff; he kept repeating and repeating it: Which of you two is to go. He says he will not stop here another night if you remain here. God knows whether I have decided right!"
"It is I who go, you mean?" said Geoffrey.
"Yes, it is you."
Harry sat down wearily, as if tired out; that, too, was his prevailing feeling; body and mind were dead beat. Geoffrey rose.
"Since that is so," he said, "I ask you, before I go, to hear the rest of my story—indeed, I must tell it you. Then I shall have done all I can. Oh, it will not take long," he added, with a suddeninexpressible bitterness. "In half an hour I shall be gone!"
Harry sprung up as if he had been stung.
"I do not deserve that from you, Geoff," he said. "Do you think I want to get rid of you? Do you think it is fine fun for me to tell you to go? I am not conscious of any great pleasure in it."
"No, I am sorry," said Geoffrey. "I had no business to say that or to think that. But—O Harry, before I go, for the dear Lord's sake, hear me! I have not been speaking idly. Do you think, in turn, that it is fine fun for me to get up and bring these awful accusations against Mr. Francis?"
"Of course I don't. But the whole thing I have to put on one side for the present. Uncle Francis will not stop in the house while you are here, Geoff, and I can not let him go, whatever the truth may be, while he is like this. I dreaded every moment that a seizure might come on him again. Besides, he is an old man; he is my uncle. For the present, then, I am like this: I neither believe what you have told me nor do I disbelieve it; I put it aside; though, before long, when my uncle is recovered, I shall have to do the one or the other. Either I shall believe, be convinced you are right, and then God knows what I shall do, or I shall think your accusations wild and incredible, and, I warn you, too infinitely base for words. And then, too," he added, suddenly, "God knows what I shall do! But at present, asI tell you, there is no question of that. My certain and immediate duty is to look after Uncle Francis."
"I ask you then, before I go," said Geoffrey, "to hear the remainder of what I have to say."
"Certainly; but whatever you tell me, I shall not attempt to judge of it now. You had just spoken about the confusion which came in somewhere between the ice house and the summerhouse."
So Geoffrey told him of the loop of cotton he had found round the post of the gun rack; of Mr. Francis's visit to the gun room, and finally of his own finding him in the afternoon, after the breaking of the sluice, sitting before the fire in the hall "supposing" that Harry had not yet come in. And Harry heard in silence and without comment.
"That is all?" he asked, when Geoffrey had finished. "You are sure there is nothing more? You are sure, also, you have been exact throughout?"
"That is all," said Geoffrey, "and I have been exact."
"Then, dear old boy," said Harry, "let us for the present put it from our minds. Your carriage will be round in ten minutes; I told them to pack for you. And tell me that you agree with me when I have to ask you to go. I feel—I know—that I can not do otherwise."
"Yes, you are right, and God guard you!" said Geoffrey.
Then suddenly the whole flood of fears and suspicions and certainties surged in his mind together and overflowed it. He was leaving Harry alone with that hellish man. Who knew what he might not attempt next? Every fibre in his being cried aloud to him that danger of subtle and deadly sort hung suspended over Harry, imminent to fall so long as that white-haired old man was under the same roof. But what could he do? He could not force Harry to see the clearness of that which was so clear to him; he could not even make him exercise his judgment upon it. And his anxiety for him broke bounds.
"Yes, you are right," he said. "But I can not persuade myself that I am right to go. O Harry! I ask you once again, Do you tell me to go?"
Harry got up and leaned his head on the chimney-piece.
"Don't make it harder for me, Geoff," he said.
Here was a ray of hope.
"I will make it as hard as I can," said Geoffrey. "I appeal to anything that will move you. We are old friends, Harry. Wiser and better friends you will find, but none more faithful. You are doing a cruel thing."
Harry turned round suddenly.
"Stop," he said. "I tell you to go. O Geoff! who is doing the cruel thing? You know—O my God! won't this nightmare cease?"
Geoffrey saw his lips quivering; his own alsowere not steady. He came close to him, and laid his hands on his shoulders.
"What have we done, Harry," he said, "that this should happen to us? You have answered me. But promise me one thing. I insist on that."
"I will promise you anything you think right to ask me, Geoff," said he, "and you know it, provided only it does not make me cancel what I have said, and what I have decided to do."
"It does not. It is simply this: Three times within the last ten days you have been in imminent danger. God knows what it all means, but it is certain that many dangers surround you on all sides. I ask you to promise to be careful. I don't ask you to consider all I have told you now; you must do that when you feel that you can. You promise me this?"
"Willingly."
"And let it be soon that you consider what I have said. Judge the thing as you would judge for another, and God send you the right judgment! That is all I want."
"Amen to that," said Harry.
Dr. Armytage, for whom Harry had telegraphed, arrived about nine that night. He had left London immediately on receipt of the summons without dining, and having seen his patient, came downstairs to join Harry in a belated meal. In appearance he was a dark man and spare, his chin and upper lip blue-black from a strong crop of hair close shaven; heavy eyebrows nearly met over his aquiline nose; his mouth had a certain secrecy and tightness about it. But his manner was that of a man reserved but competent; his thin, delicate hands were neat and firm in their movements; and Harry, torn and distracted by a world of bewilderment, found it an unutterable relief to have put one out of all his perplexities, the care of his uncle, into such adequate hands. For the moment, at least, the boon of the doctor's arrival quite overscored that sinister impression he had formed of him when, in the summer, he had passed him driving to the station.
With regard to his patient he was grave, but not alarming. Grave, however, one felt he would always be, and Harry remembered Mr. Francis's criticism of him, that he knew too much, and hadalways in his mind the most remote consequences of any lesion, however insignificant.
"I can give you no certain account of him to-night, Lord Vail," he said. "I found Mr. Francis in a lethargic state, the natural reaction from, so I understand, an agitating scene that took place this afternoon. I did not even speak to him, for I thought it better not to rouse him, as he seemed in a fair way to get a good night's rest. But I spoke to his man, who told me that he thought something agitating and painful had taken place. May I ask you if this is the case?"
"Yes," said Harry, "a friend of mine, Mr. Francis, and I, had a terrible scene this afternoon."
"Can you tell me about it; the merest outline only? You see, if Mr. Francis experiences any return of this agitation, which is, to put it frankly, so dangerous, it might be very likely useful that I should know about it, and be able to soothe him with something more specific than wide generalities."
Harry paused; they were alone over dessert.
"It is all very horrible," he said at length, "and I can hardly speak of it. But I can tell you this: Within the last ten days I have had three very narrow escapes from a violent and sudden death."
Dr. Armytage put down with neat haste the glass he was raising to his lips, and gave Harry one quick glance from below his bushy eyebrows. Startling though the words were, you would hardlyhave expected such sudden alertness and interest from so self-contained a man.
"Yes?" he said.
"Well, for one at least of these my uncle blames himself," said Harry. "That certainly was one of the causes of his agitation, though perhaps not the greatest immediate cause. Oh, it is awful to speak of it!" he cried. "Tell me what you advise. Had I better tell you everything?"
"I repeat, it may possibly be of use to me," said the doctor. "All you say, of course, will be under the seal of my profession."
The servants had entered the room with coffee, and Harry did not immediately reply. Templeton, as usual, carried the case of the Luck, and even as he took the jewel into his hand, Harry hurriedly filled a wineglass.
"The Luck," he said in no very cordial tone. Then turning to the doctor.
"Please excuse me," he said. "It is a custom I have got into. Yes, that is the Luck; my uncle may have spoken to you about it. You would like to look at it?"
The doctor waved it away.
"Another time, another time," he said, and waited till the servants had left the room. Then:
"Yes," he continued, "I have heard Mr. Francis speak of it. An extraordinary delusion in so clear-headed a man, is it not? He thinks—I hope I am not intruding into family secrets, Lord Vail—he soberly thinks that the Luck bringsblessings and curses on your house. I may say the idea almost possesses him."
"Surely you are mistaken," said Harry. "He is always laughing, sometimes even he is distressed at my believing—ah! not believing, but thinking I believe in it. But very curious things have happened," he added.
"There is doubtless some mistake," said the doctor. "But to return: All you tell me will be under the seal of my profession."
"You mean that I speak to one who is necessarily as silent as the grave," said Harry. "You will pardon my insistence on this."
"I give you my word on it," said the doctor.
"Well, it is a strange, dark story," said Harry, "and if I speak a little incoherently, you will know by the end what perplexities I am in. Now there are two kiosks—sort of places near the house; one is a summerhouse, one an ice house. I got the keys one morning, and asked my uncle which was which. He told me quite distinctly that the left-hand one was the summerhouse. He made a mistake, and I went whistling into the ice house—they were both shuttered and quite dark inside—and came within an ace of falling into the big tank. I am quite sure I went to the one he told me was the summerhouse."
"Number one," said the doctor.
"Next morning he went up to London," continued Harry, "and I and Geoffrey Langham, this friend of mine who left to-day, were going out for a day's shooting. My gun was standing inthe rack, and as I took it up it went off, narrowly missing me. The last person who had used that gun and who had left the cartridge in it was my uncle."
"Number two," said the doctor.
"To-day he and I went out together and looked at the flooded lake. I tried to raise an extra sluice that we have, and finding that I could not make it move, we went up toward the farm to get men to help. But, again at his suggestion, he went on to the farm, and I went back to have another try at it. As I was standing on the main sluice, pulling, the whole thing gave way, and I went down with the flood-water, as near to being drowned as any one can wish to be. My uncle had thought the sluice not very safe, but he had not thought it worth mentioning."
The doctor was silent awhile.
"You bear a charmed life, Lord Vail," he said at length. "But I think you have more to tell me."
Harry gave him one dumb, appealing glance, and met eyes which were grave but not unkind, firm and deeply interested. He had the impression that they had long been watching him.
"Yes, I have more—I have more," he said, with agitation, "and it is horribly painful! Dr. Armytage, I have two great friends—or so I think—my uncle, and this Geoffrey Langham, a fellow of my own age or thereabouts. This afternoon, to my uncle's face, though I am bound to say he would have preferred to tell me privately, Geoffreymade horrible insinuations—accusations. He said that Uncle Francis had long been my enemy; that he had tried to prevent my engagement; that he had failed there, and that in this affair, for instance, my uncle had intentionally—had intentionally——" and a strangling knot tied itself in his throat, choking utterance.
The doctor pushed the water-bottle gently a little closer to Harry, and he poured himself out some and drank it, unconscious that any suggestion had been made to him.
"Then there was an awful scene," he went on. "My uncle was nearly off his head, I believe, with remorse and horror for those words which had so nearly sent me to my death, and this was aggravated, I must suppose, by black, ungovernable rage against Geoffrey. I felt that I had never seen an angry man before. He refused to stay another night in the house with him; he asked me continually which of them it was who should go. He could not, of that I was convinced, in that state, and I sent Geoff off. Besides, I can not—simply I can not—believe in Geoff's accusations. It is flatly impossible that Uncle Francis should be guilty of the least intention which Geoff attributed to him. Do I not know him? There must be some other explanation. And if you want to know what my other explanation is, it has stood in front of you at dinner. It was the Luck: fire and frost and rain—the ice house, the gun, the sluice. Oh, it has happened once before like that."
"Yes, Mr. Francis told me," said the doctor, still looking very intently at him.
Harry flicked the ash off his cigarette.
"Here am I, then," he said. "Of my two best friends, one lies upstairs; the other, God knows if I shall ever see the other again! I have to tell him whether I believe what he said. And I can not believe it. It is monstrous; he is monstrous to have thought it. Yet I see why he thought it; to any one not believing in the Luck, there was no other explanation. There are other things too. I need not trouble you with them. He came to the conclusion, for instance, that my uncle wished to stop my engagement—prevent it rather, for I was not engaged then. They were specious—good Lord! they were specious enough. But I have been considering them all, and I simply can not believe them. It is not that I wilfully shut my eyes; I hold them open with pincers and chisels, so to speak, but I am unable—that is clear—to believe anything of this. How could it be possible? God does not allow such things, I tell you."
"That is your verdict, then. You believe nothing against your uncle," said the other with an intonation absolutely colourless.
"I can not."
"May I tell your uncle this, Lord Vail?" asked the doctor presently. "If his agitation returns, I can think of nothing which would so much tend to soothe it as the assurance that these accusations are to you absolutely void andempty. These vile accusations," he added in a moment.
"Yes, they are vile," said Harry, half to himself.
"May I then use my discretion to tell him so, if I think it desirable?" asked the doctor, pressing his point. "It would be better, I think, for me to tell him than you. That would be agitating work for both of you," he said, watching the lad closely.
"Oh, you may tell him whatever you damn please!" cried Harry, with the sudden petulance of nerves utterly overwrought.
Instantly the doctor's face changed. The symptom for which he had been waiting had come.
"Now, then, Lord Vail," he said, with a peremptoriness which startled Harry, "I do not want two patients instead of one. You were on the verge of hysterics, let me tell you. We will have none of that, please."
This treatment was shrewd and prompt. Judging rapidly and correctly, he saw that any word of sympathy or kindness would be likely to throw Harry altogether off the balance, and he was justified when, in answer to this rough speech, he saw an angry flush spring to his face.
"I am not accustomed to be spoken to like that," he said hotly.
"No, it was a liberty on my part," said the doctor. "Please excuse it. But I think you willacknowledge that I was right. You are your own man again now."
Harry considered this a moment, then smiled.
"Yes, you were perfectly right," he said candidly. "But I have had rather a trying time to-day."
"Indeed you have, and I may say now that I am very sorry for you. I recommend you therefore to go to bed, and not to write to your friend to-night, nor to think what you will say to him when you do."
"And to go to sleep very quietly and soundly till morning," said Harry. "Excellent advice, Dr. Armytage."
"Oh, you will do all these things if you follow my directions," said the doctor.
"I should like to hear them, then."