E. F. Benson

“ Oh, I just love that husband of mine," she said.
"So you have told me before," said Lady Oxted acidly.
"What a prickly aunt!" said Evie. "Dear Aunt Violet, if Geoffrey and the beloved physician and Jim weren't such darlings, all of them, I should be jealous of them—I should indeed."
"What a lot of darlings you have, Evie!" said the other.
"I know I have. I wish there were twice as many. For the whole point of the world is the darlings. A person with no darlings is dead—dead and buried. And the more darlings you have, by so much the more is the world alive. ”

“ Francis's absence came upon him with a great taste of sweetness. True, this last attempt had been made when the old man was not actually in the house; but so long as he was away, Geoffrey did not fear another trap. It would not be like a man of that infernal cunning to leave lying about, as it were, a series of nooses into which any one might step; his desire would not so far outstrip his prudence. It had been by the merest chance that Geoffrey had noticed that slight check to the lifting of the gun from the rack, by the merest chance that he had found the looped cotton ”

“ How it sparkles! It was a good idea of yours to have it on the table, Harry. It makes a noonday in the room. How the Luck welcomes you home, my dear boy! But though I can not sparkle like that, not less do I welcome you."
Indeed, that winking splendour in the centre of the table was enough to strike sight into blind eyeballs. The candles that lit the table, though shaded from the eye of the diner, poured their unobtruded rays on to it from fifty angles, and each stone glowed with an inward and ever-varying light. ”

“ A foot more, a foot less—and as he thought of it, Geoffrey bit his lip for fear of screaming—and brain and bone would have been shredded over the gun-room floor. Accidents would happen; there had always been accidents and there always would be, but, unlike misfortunes, they nearly always came singly. What was this malignancy that haunted Harry, dogging his steps? What dim figure, deadly and full of hate, hovered on the wing by him, ready to strike? Cartridges do not automatically find their way to guns that are cleaned and placed in the stand, as dust collects in corners. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Francis, who, while they were in the shadow of the deep lane banks, had carried his hat on his knee, letting the wind blow refreshingly through his thick white hair, put it on again.
"Ah, Harry, I hope you will some time, and soon, find a friend, and dearer than a friend, for life," he said, "who will speedily make you forget your old uncle. But give him a seat in the chimney corner, that he asks, though he asks no more, and let him nurse your children on his knee. He has a way with children; they never cry with him. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Francis's hands went suddenly to his head, as if they had been on wires, and he clutched despairingly at his hair.
"It is true—it is all too true!" he moaned. "I did use Harry's gun. I did fire one shot only two days ago. Can I have left the other cartridge in? It is possible, it is terribly possible. Ah, my God! what an awful punishment for a little piece of carelessness! Ah, what a lesson, what a lesson! Supposing he had shot himself—oh! supposing——"
Geoffrey watched him for some few moments in silence, as he rocked himself backward and forward in his chair. ”

“ He had trusted the doctor on evidence of the most diaphanous kind, unsupported by any testimony of another. The sleeping-draught given to Harry, the brushing aside of the revolver he had passed to him, when to shoot was impossible—these, with a calculated gravity of face and an assumption of anxious sincerity, had been enough to convince him of the man's honesty. He could have screamed aloud at the thought, and every moment whirled Harry nearer, helpless and unsuspecting, to that house of death! ”

“ Let me at least ask you, Harry, not to be slow. Tell us about the doctor, as we are to go backward. Did his name begin with an A?"
"Quite right," said Harry, "and it went on with an R."
Lady Oxted dropped her white elephants on the carpet and sat down by Evie.
"Armytage?" she asked, and the fooling was gone from her voice.
"Right again. You had much better tell the whole story for yourself, hadn't you?"
"No; when other people begin to talk about the Luck, I take no part in the conversation," said she, "except, at least, when Geoffrey is here, and then I talk of bears and bulls." ”

“ It was not long before Lady Oxted found that to be chaperon to a very considerable heiress could not be regarded, even by the most negligent, as a sinecure, while to fulfil its duties at all adequately cost a vast deal of time and thought. Had the girl been dull, heavy, serious, or plain, her task would have been lighter; but as it was, Lady Oxted became, before a fortnight was past, a really hard-worked woman. Evie's appetite for gaiety was insatiable; she took to London like a bird to the air; found everybody charming, and everybody returned the compliment. ”

“ As it was, he just howled and wept, so he told me, and Geoff sat by him and said: 'Cheer up, old chap!' and 'Damn it all, Harry!—yes, I don't care,' and gave him a whisky and soda, and slapped him on the back, and did all the things that men do. They didn't kiss each other and scream, and say that nobody loved them, as we should have done. And as like as not they played a game of billiards afterward, and felt immensely better. I suppose David and Jonathan were like that. Oh, I want Harry always to have a lot of men friends," she cried. ”

“ Then, with a hollow note from the wheels, they rolled over the bridge and turned in under the monstrous shapes of the cut-box hedge to the gravel sweep in front of the house. There it stood, the shadow of one of the wings fallen half across the courtyard, stately and grave, full of dignity and grave repose, surely no unworthy gift to offer to any. And at that thought a sudden pulse leaped within him.
"It is all unworthy," Harry said to himself, banishing with an effort that irrepressible thrill of joy, "and I the unworthiest of all." ”

“ Francis's man had placed on the floor near the body it was possible to see that the colour of the face was less patched. Then the valet turned to Harry, who, white-faced and awe-struck, stood at his shoulder.
"He will do well now, my lord," said Sanders. "It was lucky you did not touch him. Mr. Francis has had these fits before; cardiac, the doctors say; but the right thing is to lay him flat."
"He is not dead? He will not die?" cried Harry, shaking the man by the shoulder, as if to make him hear. ”

“ No man morally sane could devise and steadily prosecute so finished a scheme; the very thoroughness and consistency of the three attempts stamped them as the work of a madman. Nine tenths of the blood murderously shed on the earth was to be put down to a spasm of ungovernable anger and hate, which at the moment possessed the murderer; this long premeditation, this careful following of one idea by which frost, fire, and rain should be the direct causes of Harry's death, was not to be attributed—so devilish and so finished was the application—to a sane author. ”

“ Fancy caring about people of twenty or so, when you are over seventy. What wonderful vitality!"
Whatever shadow of approaching cloud, so thought Geoffrey, might darken Lady Oxted's view of the future, it was clear that to Harry there could not have been a more serene horizon. Since that first afternoon down at Oxted he had not exchanged a further word with her or any one else on the subject, and by degrees that ghastly conversation had grown gradually fainter in his mind, and it was to him now more of the texture of a remembered nightmare than an actual experience. ”

“ The doctor rose.
"I repeat, it is too early to expect anything," he said. "A difficult situation takes time. If it does not take time, it is not difficult. Be sure of that. One thing alone I was certain of: that any letter from you, believing as you do so utterly in your uncle's absolute innocence—if I could put your feelings more strongly I would—could not tend to mend matters. It would only accentuate your estrangement—temporary, I hope—with your friend. And now have I your pardon for doing what I have done?"
"Not yet," said Harry. ”

“ He played with a wandering attention and an uncertain finger, without the gusto of the artist, and his eye ever rested anxiously on Harry, who had more than once complained of the cold, and now sat huddled up by a mountainous fire, bright-eyed and with a burning skin, which seemed to him to cover an interior of ice. At last Mr. Francis could stand it no longer, and laying down his flute came across to where he sat, and with an extraordinary amenity of voice, yet firmly——
"I insist on your going to bed, Harry," he said. "You have caught a chill; it is idle to deny it. ”

“ From immemorial time men had believed that certain powers and qualities dwelt in precious stones. There was danger in opals, and warning; they turned stale and dim in the presence of an enemy, and no opal, he remarked, was set in bowl or handle or foot of the cup. Else—here his thought was confused, for the Luck was the potency—it might have sickened and paled when Mr. Francis ate his dinner near it. The amethyst drove away the fumes of wine; in diamonds there was sovereignty; sapphires conferred judgment deep and clear as themselves on their possessor. ”

“ Francis quickened his pace, like a man who has made up his mind.
"You did quite right to tell her, Harry," he said, "quite right. It would come to her better from you than from any one else. Also, it is far better that she should know before she came here, and before you get to know each other better. I have always a dread of the chance word, so dear to novelists, which leads to suspicion or revelations. How intolerable the fear of that would have been! We should all have been in a false position. But now she knows; we have no longer any fear as to how she may take the knowledge ”

“ Soon light footsteps came along the passage outside; they went by his door, by Harry's, and grew fainter. The closing of a distant latch was just audible, then all was darkness and silence. The first part of the night's work was over.
Geoffrey lit his candle again, smiling with a certain grimness to himself. His next move, evolved during this last half hour of waiting and listening, had a simple ingenuity about it which pleased him. It meant another journey to the hall, after a precautionary pause, and the only apparatus required was a little piece of stamp paper. ”

“ Here he soon became ami de la maison, dropping in as he chose, well knowing he was welcome; and such a footing, speedily and unquestioningly gained, was to one of a life previously so recluse a pleasure new and altogether delightful; for Lady Oxted had the power of creating the atmosphere of home, and home was one of those excellent things which Harry had hitherto lacked. He had not consciously missed it, because he had never yet known it, but his gradual understanding of it made him see how large an empty room there had been in his heart. To come uninvited, and to linger unconscionably long ”

“ The fast-fading light was coppery in colour, and the darkness came on apace as the great bank of congested cloud shouldered its way over the sky, but, despite the gloom, there was a great precision of outline in hill and tree.
Harry turned from the window.
"We shall have to light the lamps," he said. "It is impossible to see indoors. Really, it looks like the day of judgment! Shall we have a game of billiards, Geoff?"
As he spoke, the door was opened with hurried stealth, and Mr. Francis, pale and strangely shrunken to the appearance, came in. ”

“ His face was flushed with colour; the bright blue eyes, a little puckered up in this sudden change from darkness to the glare of the electric light, moved slowly from Jim to the doctor and back again. But no word passed the thin, compressed lips.
Suddenly the alertness of the face was gone like a burst bubble; the mouth opened and drooped, the eyes grew staring and sightless; the left hand only seemed to retain its vitality, and felt gropingly on the carpet for the Luck. ”

“ Francis advanced a step, so that he could see into the hansom.
"Ah, and Lady Oxted too!" he remarked gently.—"Drive on, cabman."
The horse broke into a rapid trot, and he and the doctor were left standing together.
Mr. Francis stood looking after the diminishing vehicle for a moment, still smiling.
"And Lady Oxted, and Lady Oxted," he continued to murmur to himself. Then he turned briskly to his companion and in gentle, low-modulated tones and without haste:
"A charming woman—one whom one is delighted to call friend," he said. "And dear Geoffrey too—dear Geoffrey, Harry's great friend. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fear both fire and frost and rain."
"Very pretty," said Geoffrey, with a critical air, but Mr. Francis made no reply. His eyes were still fixed on the jewel.
"But what is it?" asked Harry.
"This? The cup?" he said. "It is what I have read to you. It is the Luck of the Vails."
Geoffrey laughed. "You've got it, Harry, anyhow," he said, "for weal or woe. How does it run? Fear fire and frost and rain. Take care of yourself, old man, and don't smoke in bed, and don't skate over deep water."
Mr. Francis turned to him quickly, with a sudden recovery of his briskness. ”

“ It is a cold job to grow old, Geoffrey; it is even colder to grow old and still feel young. Poor Harry simply thought me a meddling old fogy when I wanted him to take precautions against catching a chill, and I ought to have known that he would think me so. ”

“ 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 simply is London. 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." ”