lady oxted always breakfasted in her own room, and before she appeared next morning she had spent a long hour in wrestling over her letter to mrs. aylwin. she had been desirous to tell the unvarnished truth, and yet to steer clear of a production by a demented matchmaker, and her letter, it must be confessed, was an admirable performance. evie had told her, so she wrote, of her mother's refusal to let her know the name of the man at whose door she laid, or used to lay, harold's death, and, taking this to mean that mrs. aylwin, for any reason, did not wish evie to know it, the writer had, at evie's request, promised on her own part not to tell her. the present lord vail, she must add, mr. francis's nephew, was a constant visitor at her house, and he and evie had already met. mrs. aylwin, she was bound to understand, put no prohibition on their meeting in the way they were sure to meet during the season. lord vail was a young man, pleasant, attractive, and of excellent disposition.
lady oxted laid down her pen for a moment at this point, then hurriedly took it up to add an amiable doxology, and sign it. she felt convinced[pg 82] she could not do better; convinced, also, that if she gave the matter further consideration, it would end in her doing much worse. then she took evie out with a warm and approving conscience.
that afternoon they left london, as had been originally planned, to spend the sunday at their country house in sussex. during the hours of the night, lady oxted had sternly interrogated herself as to whether she ought, on any lame or paltry excuse, to put harry off; but on the strength of her promise given to evie, and the letter she was about to write to mrs. aylwin, she felt she could not take any step in the matter till she received her answer. to put him off, argued the inward voice, was to act contrary to the spirit of her promise, which entailed not only silence of the lips, but abstinence from any man?uvring or outflanking movement of this kind. this reasoning seemed sound, and as it went in harness with her instinct, she obeyed it without question.
the house stood high on a broad ridge of the south downs, commanding long views of rolling fields alternating with the more sombre green of the woods. to the east lay the heathery heights of ashdown forest, peopled with clumps and companies of tall scotch fir; southward the smooth austerity of the hills behind brighton formed the horizon line. thatched roofs nestled at cosy intervals beside the double hedgerows which indicated roads; a remote church spire pricked the sky, or an occasional streamer of[pg 83] smoke indicated some train burrowing distantly at the bottom of valleys, before it again plunged with a shriek into the bases of the tunnelled hills; but, except for these, the evidences of humanity were to be sought in vain. the house itself was partly elizabethan, in part of jacobean building, picturesquely chimneyed, and high in the pitch of its outside roofs; inside, it was panelled and oaken-beamed, spacious of hearth, and open of fireplace. round it ran level lawns, fringed with flower beds, wall-encompassed, which as they receded farther from the house gradually lost formality, and merged by imperceptible steps into untutored nature. here, for instance, you would pass from the trim velvet of the nearer lawns into the thick lush grass of an orchard planted with apples and the japanese cherry; but the grass was thick in spring, with the yellow of the classical daffodil; and scarlet of the anemone was spilled thereon, and the dappled heads of the fritillary rose, bell-shaped. here, again, in a different direction the lawn farther from the house was invaded by a band of lilac bushes, and to the wanderer here a scotch fir would suddenly stand sentinel at a turn of the grassy path, while, if his walk took him but fifty yards more remote, the lilacs would have ceased, and he would be treading the brown, silent needles of the fir grove, exchanging for the sweet, haunting smell of the garden shrubs the clean odour of the pine. in a word, it was a place apt to reflect the moods of the inhabitants: the sombrely disposed might easily see in the[pg 84] pines a mirror of their thought; the lilacs, whose smell is ever a host of memories, would call up a hundred soft images in hearts otherwise disposed; while, for the lover of pointed conversation, what milieu could be more suitable than the formality of the lawns nearer the house, which, clean and trim cut as french furniture, irresistibly gave to those who sat and talked there a certain standard of precision? beyond, again, the orchard was every evening a singing contest of nightingales, and through the soft foliage of fruitful trees, moon and stars cast deep shadows and diapers of veiled light into grassy alleys.
the party was but a small one, for influenza had for the last month been pursuing its pleasant path of decimation through london, and, as mr. tresham remarked, while they drank their coffee in the tent on the lawn after lunch next day:
"those of us who are not yet dead are not yet out of its clutches."
lady oxted sighed.
"i had it once a week throughout last summer," she said. "it is such a consolation, when it is about, to know that the oftener you have it the more liable you become to it!"
mrs. antrobus finished her coffee, and tried to feel her pulse.
"i never can find it," she said, "and that is so frightening! it may have stopped, for all i know."
"dear lady," said mr. tresham, "i will promise to tell you whether it has stopped or not,[pg 85] not more than a minute after it has done so. alas! it will then be too late."
"ah! there it is," said mrs. antrobus at length. "one, two. it has stopped now. take the time, mr. tresham, and tell me when a minute has gone."
"your mother is the only really healthy person i know," said lady oxted to evie. "whether she is ill or not, she always believes that she is perfectly well. and as long as one fully believes that, as she does, it really matters little how ill one is!"
lord oxted got slowly out of his chair.
"some doctor lately analyzed a cubic inch of air in what we should call a clean london drawing-room," he said. "he found that it contained over two hundred bacilli, each of which, if they lived carefully and married, would, with its family, be soon able to kill the strongest man. i surrendered as soon as i heard it!"
"quite the best thing to do," said mr. tresham, "for otherwise they would kill you. it is better to give yourself up, and be taken alive!"
"it is certainly better to remain alive," said mrs. antrobus. "that is why we all go to bed now when we get the influenza. we surrender, like lord oxted, and so the bacilli do not kill us, but only send us away to the seaside. it is the people who will not surrender who die. personally i should never dream of going about with a high temperature. it sounds so improper!"
evie was sitting very upright in her chair, listening[pg 86] to this surprising conversation. she had seen mrs. antrobus for the first time the evening before, and had made lady oxted laugh by asking whether she was a little mad. it had been almost more puzzling to be told that she was not, than if she had been told that she was. and at this remark about her temperature, evie suddenly looked round, as if for a sympathizing eye. an eye there certainly was, and she felt as if, in character of a hostess, she had looked for and caught harry vail's. at any rate, he instantly rose, she with him, and together they strolled out of the syrian tent on the lawn, and down toward the cherry-planted orchard.
for a few paces they went in silence, each feeling as if a preconcerted signal had passed between them. then evie stopped.
"i wonder if it is rude to go away?" she said. "do you think we ought to go back?"
"it is never any use going back," said harry. "certainly, in this case it would not do. they would think——" and a sudden boldness came over him; "they would think we had quarrelled."
evie laughed.
"that would never do," she said, "for i feel just now as if you were an ally, my only one. what strange things mrs. antrobus says! perhaps they are clever?" she made this suggestion hopefully, without any touch of sarcasm.
"most probably," said harry. "that would be an excellent reason, anyhow, for my finding them quite impossible to understand."
[pg 87]
"don't you understand them? then we certainly are allies. you know i asked my aunt last night whether she was at all mad, and she seemed surprised that i should think so. but, really, when a woman says that she wishes she had been her own mother, because she would have been so much easier to manage than her daughter—what does it all mean?" she asked.
"oh, she's not mad," said harry. "it is only a way she has. there are lots of people like her. i don't mind it myself: you only have to laugh; there is no necessity for saying anything."
"and as little opportunity," remarked evie.
she paused, then pulled a long piece of feathery grass from its sheath.
"england is delightful," she said with decision. "i find it simply delightful, from mrs. antrobus upward or downward. just think, lord vail, i have not been here for three years! what has happened since then?"
"to whom?"
"to anybody. you, for example."
"have i not told you? i have come of age. i have found the luck."
evie threw the grass spearwise down wind. she had not exactly meant to speak so personally.
"ah, the luck!" she exclaimed. "lord vail, do promise to show it me!"
thereat harry again grew bold.
"nothing easier," he said. "i have to go down to vail next week. persuade lady oxted to bring you down for a day or two. the luck[pg 88] is the only inducement, i am afraid; it and some big, bare, wiltshire downs."
"big, large, and open?" she asked.
"all that. does it please you?"
"immensely. i should love to come. and the luck is there? you must know that i am horribly inquisitive; perhaps, if you were indulgent, you would say interested, and leave out the horribly, in other people's concerns. so, tell me, what do you hope the luck will bring you?"
"i don't dare to hope. i am inclined to wait a little."
evie frowned.
"that would be all very well for a woman," she said, "but it won't do for a man. it is a woman's part to sit at home and wait for the luck. but it is a man's to go and seek it."
"i am on the lookout for it. i am always on the lookout for it," he said.
some shadow passed across the brightness of evie's eyes; again the personal note had been a little too distinct in her speech, and she replied quickly:
"that is right. i should go for the highest if i were you. i think i should plot a revolution, and make myself king of england. something big of that sort!"
"i had not thought of that," said harry; "and i sometimes wonder—it is all nonsense, you know, about the luck, and of course i don't really believe in it—but i sometimes wonder——"
he paused a moment.
[pg 89]
"i wonder whether you would care to hear some more family history?" he said at length.
"is it as exciting as the luck?" asked the girl.
"i don't know if you will find it so. it is certainly more tragic."
"do tell me!" she said.
"promise me to exercise your right of stopping me, as before."
"i never stopped you!" she exclaimed.
harry laughed.
"no. i meant that you had the right to," he said. "do you really want to hear it? it is intimate stuff."
"indeed i do," she said.
harry paused a moment, then began his story.
"there lives at vail," he said, "a man whom i honour as much as any one in the world, my great-uncle, francis vail. he is old, he has led the most unhappy life, yet, if you met him casually, you would say he was a man who had never seen sorrow, so cheerful is he, so full of kindly spirits."
"he is your only relation, is he not?" asked the girl.
"he is. who told you?"
"lady oxted. i beg your pardon. i did not mean to interrupt."
"he has led a life of continuous and most unmerited misfortune," said harry, "and when i began just now 'i wonder,' i was going to say, i wonder whether the luck will come to him? you[pg 90] see it is a family thing. he, one would think, might get the good, not i. and i honestly assure you that i should be more than delighted if he did."
"it is about him you would tell me?" asked evie.
"about him. i need not give you the smaller details. his unhappy marriage, his sudden poverty, his bankruptcy even, for there is one thing in his life so terrible that it seems to me to overshadow everything else."
they had come to a garden seat at the far end of the orchard, and here evie sat down. harry stood beside her, one foot on the bench, looking not at her, but out over the creamy, sleeping landscape.
"it is nearly twenty-two years ago," he said, "that my uncle was staying down at an estate we used to have in derbyshire, which has since been sold. the place next us belonged to some people called harmsworth— what?"
an involuntary exclamation had come to evie's lips, but she checked it before it was speech.
"nothing," she said, quietly. "please go on.
"and young harmsworth," continued harry, "who had just come of age, was a great friend with my uncle, who was as kind to him as he is to all young people, as kind as he always is, and that i hope you will soon know for yourself. well, one day the two were out shooting together——"
[pg 91]
evie made a sudden, quick movement.
"and harold harmsworth accidentally shot himself," she said.
harry paused in utter surprise.
"you know the story?" he said.
"yes, i know it."
"you, too!" he cried. "good god, the thing is past this more than twenty years; and people still talk of it. oh, it is monstrous! so i need not tell you the rest."
"no," said evie quietly. "your uncle was unjustly—for so i fully believe—unjustly suspected of having shot him. it is monstrous, i quite agree with you. but i am not so monstrous as you think," she added, rather faintly.
in a moment harry's heightened colour died from his face.
"miss aylwin, i did not say that!" he exclaimed earnestly. "forgive me if i have said anything that hurt you. but, indeed, i did not say that."
evie looked at him a moment. she knew the thing which she had so much desired not to know, but the knowledge, strangely enough, did not frighten or affect her.
"no; in justice to you, i will say that you did not. but you broke out, 'it is monstrous,' when i told you i knew the story."
again the colour rose to his face, but now not vehement, only ashamed.
"i did," he said; "it is quite true. i spoke violently and unjustifiably. but if you knew my[pg 92] poor uncle, miss aylwin, i do not think you would find it hard to forgive me; you would see at once why i spoke so hastily. he is the kindest and best of men, and the most soft-hearted. think what that suspicion must have been to him, the years, so many of them and all so bitter, in which it has never been cleared up!"
"i do think," she said softly, "and i like you for your violence, lord vail. you are loyal; it is no bad thing to be loyal. but——" and she looked up at him, "but you must not think that i am a willing listener to gossip and old scandal that does not concern me."
"i do not think that," cried harry. "indeed, i never thought that."
his words rang out and died on the hot air, and still the girl made no answer. this way and that was her mind divided: should she tell him all, should she tell him nothing? the latter was the easier path, for his last words had the ring of truth in them, convincing, unmistakable, and she, so to speak, was acquitted without a stain on her character, did she decide not to speak. but something within her, intangible and imperative, urged other counsels. her reason gave her no account of these, but simple instinct only called to her. what prompted that instinct, from what deep and vital source it rose, she did not pause to consider. simply, it was there, with reason warring on the other side. the battle was brief and momentous. immediately, almost, she spoke.
"i am sure you never thought that," she said,[pg 93] "but i wish"—and her pulse ticked full and rapid—"i wish to prove to you how it was not through gossip that the knowledge came to me, for this is how i heard it: my mother was harold harmsworth's mother."
harold drew a long breath which hung suspended in his lungs. his eye was fixed on the eyes of the girl in a long glance of sheer astonishment, and hers were not withdrawn. at last—
"god forgive us all!" he said. "and do you forgive me?"
evie got up quickly, with a glowing face.
"forgive you? what is there for which i can forgive you, lord vail?" she said. "and i honour you for your championship of your kinsman, who has suffered, as i believe, unmeritedly and most cruelly," and her heart spoke the words which her lips framed.
they walked back in silence toward the house, for to each the moment was too good to spoil by further speech, and the silence was spontaneous and desired, the distance of the poles away from awkwardness. to harry, at any rate, it seemed too precious to risk of it the loss of a moment; he would not have opened his lips, except that one word should issue therefrom, for all his luck could bring him, and that word he dared not utter yet; he scarcely even knew if, so to speak, it was there yet. and in evie the triumph of her just speech over a more conventional reticence filled her with a deep and secret joy. she ought to have said what she had said, she could have said[pg 94] no less, and she felt it in every beat and leaping pulse of her body. the recognised and proper reserve of a girl to a young man meant to her at that moment less than nothing; her words, she knew, had put her on to a new and more intimate footing with him, but she could not have spoken otherwise, or have spoken not at all. she had said what was due from one human being, be he boy or girl, or man or woman, to another human being, king or peasant. she had said no more than she need, but, humanly speaking, she could not have said less. the thing had been well done.
but just before they reached the lawn again she spoke.
"my mother, of course, told me the story," she said. "i asked her for the name of—for your uncle's name, but she would not tell me. it is better," and again her blood spoke, "it is better thus."
next moment they turned the corner, and found the party as they had left it, for they had been gone scarcely ten minutes. mrs. antrobus was lighting one cigarette from the stump of another.
