harry left london at the end of the month, paid a couple of visits in england, then went to scotland for the remainder of august, and loitered there, since he was at the same two houses as evie till september had reached its second decade of days, and then travelled south again with her. she was on her way straight to santa margarita to spend the remainder of the month of months with her mother, and harry saw her off by the boat express from victoria, she having sternly and absolutely refused to let him do anything so foolish as to travel to dover with her.
"you would propose coming to calais next," she said, "and calais is but a step to paris. i know you, harry. and—and how i hate the journey, and how i should love it if you were with me!"
"oh, let me come!" said he.
"not even to herne hill," and the train slid out of the vaulted gloom of the station.
geoffrey joined him late on the same day, and next afternoon they set off together down to vail. stock brokering, it appeared, was like pheasants,[pg 210] quite impossible in september, and he was going to spend the remainder of the month with harry, unless some unforeseen urgency called him back. this, he considered, was not in the least degree likely to happen, for the unforeseen so seldom occurs.
"the house is all upside down, geoff," said harry to him as they drove from the station; "and all the time which you do not employ in getting severe electric shocks over unprotected wires, you will probably spend in falling into hot and cold water alternately upstairs. the housemaids' closets seem to me just now the only really important thing in england. i thought it better not to tell you all this before we started, for fear of your not coming."
"oh, i can always go back," said geoffrey. "is mr. francis there?"
"just now he is, but he is going away in a few days," said harry. "in fact, he is only waiting till i come, to put the unprotected wires into my hands."
"is he well?"
"yes, extraordinarily well, and he asked after you in his last letter to me. also he seems wonderfully happy at the thought of my marriage. so we are both pleased. well, i'm sure i don't wonder; it will be a sort of death blow to that tragedy twenty years old and more now, a sort of seal and attestation of the vileness of the suspicion. besides, you know, it's pretty nice for any one to have evie in the house always."
[pg 211]
"is he going to continue being with you, then?" asked geoffrey.
"certainly; as much as he will. evie and i settled all that without any disagreement, thank you. he is also thinking of having a little ventre à terre, as somebody said, in town, a sort of little independence of his own. i am delighted that he will; six months ago he couldn't bear the thought of going about among people again, but now it is all changed: he will begin to live again, after all these years. dear old fellow, what a good friend he has been to me! 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. for several days afterward, it is true, it had remained very unpleasantly vivid to him; she had been so ingenious in her presentation of undeniable facts that at the time, and perhaps for a fortnight afterward, it had nearly seemed to him that mr. francis had been plotting with diabolical ingenuity against this match. if such were the case, his apparent delight at it assumed an aspect[pg 212] infinitely grave and portentous; his smiles would have been creditable to a fiend. but as the sharper edge of memory grew dulled, these thoughts, which had never been quite sufficiently solid to be called sober suspicions, became gradually nebulous again. two circumstances had been the foundation of lady oxted's theory, each separately capable of explanation, and in making a judgment so serious it was the acme of unfairness, so it seemed to him now, to put the two together and judge. each must be weighed and considered on its separate merits, and if neither had weight alone, then neither had weight together. there had been darker insinuations to follow; at these geoffrey now laughed, so baseless appeared their fabric. dr. armytage might or might not be a reputable man, but the idea of connecting his visit to vail, when one remembered how long he had known mr. francis, with something sinister and unspoken with regard to harry, was really a triumph for the diseased imagination which is one of the sequel? of influenza.
oddly enough, as if by thought transference, harry's next words bore some relation to this train of ideas which had been passing through geoffrey's mind.
"do you remember that evening when we went to find dr. godfrey, geoff?" he said. "well, i have so often thought about it since that i have determined to tell uncle francis about it, and ask him to explain it all."
[pg 213]
this appeared an excellent plan to geoffrey, for, little as he believed in the solidity of lady oxted's bubbles of imagination, it would still be a good thing to have them pricked.
"do," he said. "ask him some time when i am there. i should like to see his face when his little ruse is exposed. it might be a useful lesson. personally, i never know how to look when my little ruses are discovered."
harry laughed.
"there's an excellent explanation behind, you may be sure of that," he said.
accordingly, at dinner that night, in a pause in the conversation, harry suddenly asked:
"seen dr. godfrey again, uncle francis?"
"no, i have had no occasion to send for him, i am thankful to say," he answered. "i have been wonderfully well these last two months."
"geoff and i went to see him one night at 32 wimpole street," continued harry. "oh, we were not going to consult him. but we just went to his house."
it would have been hard to say whether a pause followed this speech. in any case it was but a moment before mr. francis broke out into his hearty, cheerful laugh.
"and i'll be bound you didn't go in!" he cried. "dear godfrey, he would have been delighted to see you, though. ah, harry! what a good thing you and i are friends! we are always finding each other out. so you actually went to 32 wimpole street, and found not dr. godfrey on[pg 214] the plate, but dr. armytage. how did you get his address, you rascal?"
"your 'where is it?' was lying on your table the last night i was here, when i worked at the electric-light estimates. i turned to g."
"simple," said mr. francis. "everything is simple when you know all about it. and my explanation is simple too. i didn't want you to go to armytage, and fuss yourself about me, so, when you asked me for his name, i told you, if you remember, his christian name—godfrey—and i am afraid i gave you the wrong address. he is a dear fellow, a dear good fellow, but the sort of man who warns you against tetanus, if you cut yourself shaving. he would certainly have alarmed you, how unnecessarily look at me now and judge. he knows too much; i am always telling him so. he knows how many things may go wrong, and he bears them all in mind. yes, my dear boy, i deceived you purposely. do you acquit me? i throw myself on your mercy, but i beg you to bear in mind how kindly were my intentions."
"without a stain on your character," said harry.
coffee was brought in at this moment, templeton as usual bearing the case of the luck, which had been the centrepiece at dinner.
"ah! they are going to put the luck to bed," said harry. "i drink to the luck. get up, geoff."
geoffrey rose in obedience to the toastmaster,[pg 215] and, looking across at mr. francis, saw that his hand trembled a little. his genial smile was there, but it seemed to geoffrey, in that momentary glance he had of him over the flowers, that it was a smile rather of habit than happiness. his glass was full, and a few drops were spilled as he raised it to his mouth. the thing, trivial as it was, struck him with a curious sense of double consciousness: it seemed to him that this was a repetition of some previous experience, exact in every particular. but it passed off immediately, and the vague, rather uncomfortable impression it made on him sank below the surface of his mind. it was already dim as soon as it was made.
"so we are together again, we three," said mr. francis, when he had drunk to the luck, and carefully watched its stowage in its case. "it is like those jolly times we had last christmas, when this dear fellow came of age. what a chapter of little misfortunes he had too! when he was not slipping on the steps, he was falling into the fire; when he was not falling into the fire, he was catching a severe chill!"
"not my fault," said harry. "it was all the luck!"
"dear boy, you are always jesting about the luck! do be careful, harry; if you do not take care, some day you will find that you have fancied yourself into believing it. six, eight months have passed since then; what have you suffered since at the hands of fire and frost and rain?"
"ah! don't you see?" cried harry. "the[pg 216] curse came first; then the luck itself. i met evie. is not that stupendous? perhaps the curse will wake up again, and i shall sprain my ankle worse than before, and burn my hand more seriously, before—before the middle of november. i don't care; it's cheap, and i wonder they can turn out happiness at such a trifling cost. i suspect there's no sweating commission at the place where the old scoundrel who made the luck has gone!"
mr. francis looked really pained.
"come, come, harry," he said gravely. "let us go, boys. they will be wanting to clear away."
this implication of rebuke nettled harry. he was a little excited, a little intoxicated with his joy of life, a little headstrong with youth and health, and he did not quite relish being pulled up like this, even though only before geoffrey. but he did not reply, and with a scarcely perceptible shrug of his shoulders followed mr. francis out. shortly after, his uncle got out his flute, and melodies of corelli and baptiste tinkled merrily under the portraits of the race.
next day uncle and nephew had estate business to occupy them; "their work," mr. francis gaily declared, 'twould, like topmost jargarus, take the morning, and geoffrey was given a dog and a keeper and a gun to amuse himself till lunch time. he wanted nothing better, and soon after breakfast he was off and away for all he could find in wood and hedgerow. the stubbles only[pg 217] and the small brown bird were dedicated for to-morrow.
mr. francis and harry worked on till one, but on the striking of that hour the latter revolted.
"i can't go on any more," he said. "i simply can't. come out till lunch, uncle francis; it is only an hour."
mr. francis smiled and shook his head.
"not to-day, dear boy," he replied; "there is this packet of letters i have to get through before the post. but do you get out, harry, and sweep the cobwebs away."
harry stood up, stretching himself after the long session.
"cobwebs—what cobwebs?" he asked.
"those in your curly head."
"there are no such cobwebs. o uncle francis, as we are talking of cobwebs, i want to get that summerhouse on the knoll put in order—the one close to the ice house, i mean. have you the keys? by the way, which is which?"
mr. francis was writing, and, as harry spoke, though he did not look up, his pen ceased travelling.
"yes, a very good idea," he said, after a moment. "the keys are in the cabinet there; two of the same, the same key fits both. indeed"—and his pen began slowly moving again—"indeed, you will find plenty of cobwebs there. the summerhouse is the one on the left as you ascend the knoll going from the house. don't go plunging into the ice house by mistake. they are both[pg 218] shuttered on the inside; it would be a good thing if you were to open all the windows, and let them get a good blow out. shall i—oh, no! i must stick to my work."
harry found the keys, and as he turned to leave the room—
"the one on the left is the summerhouse?" he asked again.
"yes, the one on the left," said mr. francis, again fully absorbed in his writing.
harry, key in hand, went out whistling and hatless. the morning was a page out of heaven, and as he strolled slowly up the steep, grassy bank, where the two outhouses stood, with the scents and sounds of life and summer vivid in eye and nostril, he felt that his useful occupation of the hours since breakfast had been a terrible waste, when he might have been going quietly and alert with geoffrey through cover and up hedgerow, to the tapping of sticks and the nosing of the spaniels. however, he had been through the farm accounts with minute care; there would be no call for such another morning till the closing of the next quarter.
the two buildings toward which he went were exactly alike, of a hybrid kiosk sort of appearance, fantastic and ridiculous, yet vaguely pleasing. each was octagonal, with three blank sides, four windows, and a door. still whistling and full of pleasant thoughts, he fitted the key into the lock of the one to the left hand, and turning it, walked in. the interior was dark, for, as mr.[pg 219] francis had told him, all the windows were shuttered inside, and coming out of the bright sunlight, for a moment or two he saw nothing. for the same reason, no doubt, it struck him as being very cold.
he had taken three or four rather shuffling steps across the paved floor when suddenly he stopped. somehow, though he saw nothing, his ear instinctively, hardly consciously, warned him that the sound of his steps was not normal. there should have been—the whole feeling was not reasoned, but purely automatic and instinctive—no echo to them in so circumscribed a building, but an echo there was, faint, hollow, and remote, but audible. at this his whistling stopped, his steps also, and drawing a loose match from his trousers pocket he struck a match. less than another pace in front of him was a black space, on which the match cast no illumination; it remained black.
harry felt a little beady dew break out on his forehead and on the short down of his upper lip, but his nerves did not tell him that he was afraid. he waited exactly where he was, till the match had burned more bravely, and then he chucked it forward over the blackness. it went through it, and for two or three seconds no sound whatever came to him. then he heard a little expiring hiss.
still not conscious of fright, he went back, with the light of another match, for the door had swung shut behind him, and in another moment[pg 220] was out again, with the sweet, soft sunshine round him and the firm grass beneath his feet. he looked round; yes, he had gone to the left-hand building, the one his uncle had told him was the summerhouse. he had nearly, also, not come out again.
at this sobering reflection a belated spasm of fear, for he had felt none at the moment of danger, seized him, but laying violent hold of himself he marched up to the other door, unlocked it, and throwing it open, waited on the threshold till his eyes had got accustomed to the darkness. then seeing a couple of wicker tables and some garden chairs peer through the gloom, he went in turn to each window, unshuttered it, and threw it open.
at this moment the iron gate leading into the woods close behind clanged suddenly, and with a jump that testified to his jangled nerves he looked out. it was geoffrey, gun on shoulder, coming back to the house. harry leaned out of the window.
"come in here, geoff," he said.
geoffrey looked round.
"halloo; have you been opening the old summerhouse?" he asked.
"yes," said harry, very deliberately, "i've been opening the old summerhouse."
geoffrey handed his gun to the keeper, who was close behind him, and vaulted in through one of the open windows.
"rare good morning we've had," he said.[pg 221] "you should have come, harry. why, you look queer! what's the matter?"
harry had sat down in one of the garden chairs, and was leaning back, feeling suddenly faint.
"i've had the devil of a fright," he said. "i went gaily marching into the ice house by mistake, and only just stopped on the lip of the ice tank or the well—i don't know which it was. either would probably have done."
"lord! how can you be such an ass?" cried geoffrey. "you knew that one of the two was an ice house, and yet you go whistling along out of the sunshine into pit-mirk, and never reflect that the chances are exactly even that next moment you will be in kingdom come."
"give me a cigarette, and don't jaw," said harry, and he smoked a minute or two without speaking.
"say nothing about this to my uncle," he said at length. "i believe it would frighten him to death. i asked him just before i came out which was the summerhouse, and he told me the left-hand one of the two as you go up from the house. well, he made a mistake. it turns out that the left-hand one is the ice house."
"what?" shouted geoffrey, his whole talk with lady oxted suddenly springing into his mind like a jack-in-the-box.
"can't you hear what i say?" asked harry, rather irritable from his fright. "uncle francis had forgotten which was which, and i nearly went,[pg 222] as you put it, in kingdom come in consequence. there's nothing to shout about. for god's sake, don't let him know what happened! i really believe it might be the death of him."
"it was nearly the death of you," said geoffrey.
"well, it wasn't quite, and so there's the end of it. anyhow, don't tell him; i insist on your not telling him. come, let's go down to the house. i'm steadier now; i don't remember being frightened at the moment, but when there was no longer any reason to be frightened my knees withered under me."
as they approached the house across the upper lawn, they saw mr. francis, some distance off, in one of the shady alleys going down to the lake, walking away from them. the panama hat with its bright ribbon was on his head, at his mouth was the flute, and quick trills and runs of some light-hearted southern dance floated toward them. suddenly, it would seem, the gaiety of his own music took irresistible hold on him, for, with a preliminary pirouette and a little cut in the air, his feet were taken by the infection, and the two lads lost sight of him round a bend in the path, performing brisk impromptu steps to his melody.
they looked at him, then at each other a moment, in silence, harry with a dawning smile, geoffrey with a deepening frown.
"i wouldn't tell him about the ice-house affair for ten thousand pounds!" said harry.[pg 223] "geoff, i wonder if you and i will be as gay as that when we are over seventy years old?"
"it is highly improbable," said geoffrey.
it still wanted a quarter of an hour to lunch time, and harry went indoors to finish up. geoffrey, however, remained outside, and, as soon as harry was gone, began playing a very curious and original game by himself. this consisted in stalking mr. francis, and was played in the following manner: he hurried over the grass to the entrance of the path where they had last seen him, and followed cautiously from bush to bush. soon he had the sound of the flute again to guide him, but after a little, hearing that it was getting louder, he retired on his own steps, and from the shade of certain rhododendrons observed the cheery old gentleman coming back again along the path he had taken. mr. francis passed not thirty yards from the stalker; then the music ceased, and he crossed the lawn in the direction of the two kiosks. at that a sudden nameless thrill of horror took hold of geoffrey, and creeping after him till both kiosks had cleared the angle of the house, he observed his doings with a fascinated attention.
mr. francis went first to the ice house and turned the handle of the door, but apparently found it locked. he stood there a few seconds, flute in hand, and, taking off his panama hat, passed a handkerchief over his forehead, for the day was very warm. then it would seem that the open windows of the summerhouse caught his[pg 224] eye, and in turn trying that door, he found it open. he did not, however, enter, but merely held the door open, standing on the threshold. then he turned, and rather slowly—for the grass, maybe, was slippery from a long drought—began to descend again toward the house. geoffrey, on his part, made a wide circuit through the shrubbery, and emerged on to the gravel in front of the house just as mr. francis entered. the latter saw him, but apparently had no word for him, and on the moment the bell for lunch rang.
their meals usually were merry and talkative: lunch to-day, perhaps, only proved the rule, for it was eminently silent. geoffrey was gloomy and preoccupied, his mind in an endless tangle of indecision, shocked, horrified, yet ever telling himself that this nightmare of a morning could not be true. harry also, his nerves still on edge with the experience of the last hour, was inclined to brevity of question and answer; while the brisk cheerfulness of mr. francis, which as a rule would cover the paucity of two, seemed replaced by a kind of dreamy tenderness; he sighed, ate little; it was as if his mind dwelt on some regret of what might have been. perhaps the weather was in part responsible for this marked decay of elasticity, for the clear warmth of the morning had given place to a dead sultriness of heat; the atmosphere had grown heavy and full of thunder. at last, as they rose from a very silent meal—
"i went up to the summerhouse this morning, uncle francis," said harry, with the air of a[pg 225] man who had thought carefully over what he was going to say. "it wants putting in order, for it is damp and very cobwebby, as you warned me. but it would be worth while to do it; there is a charming view from the windows. i shall send a couple of servants up to clean it, and make it a bit more habitable."
"do, dear boy, do," said mr. francis. "dear old place, dear old place! your father used to be so fond of it!"
the threatening of a storm grew every moment more imminent, and the two young men, who had intended to ride over the downs, decided to postpone their expedition. they stood together at the window of the smoking room, watching the awful and mysterious mobilization of cloud, the hard black edges of thunder, ragged as if bitten off some immense pall, coming up against what wind there was, and rising higher every moment toward the zenith, ready to topple and break. once a scribble of light, some illegible, gigantic autograph was traced against the blackness, and the gongs of thunder, as yet remote, testified its authenticity. before long a few large drops of rain jumped like frogs on the gravel path below the windows, and a hot local eddy of unaccountable wind, like a grappling iron let down from the moving vapours above, scoured across the lawn, stirring and rattling the dry-leaved laurels in the shrubbery, and expunging as it passed the reflections on the lake. it died away; the little breeze there had been drooped like a[pg 226] broken wing; the willows by the water were motionless as in a picture; a candle on the lawn would have burned with as steady a flame as in a glass shade within a sealed room. 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.
"ah! here you are," he said; "i was afraid you had gone out, and that i was alone. is it not horrible? we are going to have a terrific storm. what a relief to find you here! i—i should have been so anxious if you had been out in this!"
"we were just going to the billiard room," said harry. "come with us, uncle francis; we will play pool, or cut in and out."
"thank you, dear harry, but i could not possibly play with the storm coming on," he said. "thunder always affects me horribly. but if you will let me, i will come with you, and perhaps mark for you. i can not bear being alone in a thunderstorm."
they went to the billiard room, and harry lit[pg 227] the lamps, while mr. francis, creeping like a mouse round the walls, and taking advantage of the cover of the curtains, began hurriedly closing the shutters.
"oh, why do you do that?" asked harry. "we shall not see the lightning."
even as he spoke a swift streamer of violet light shot down, bisecting the square of window where mr. francis was nervously tugging at a shutter, and for a moment showing vividly the dark and stagnant shapes of the drooping trees. mr. francis's hand fell from the shutter as if it had been struck, and with a little moaning sigh he covered his face with his hands. almost simultaneously a reverberating crash, not booming or rumbling, but short and sharp, answered the lightning, and mr. francis hurried with crouching steps to the sofa.
"put up all the shutters, i implore you, harry!" he said in a stifled voice. "shut them quickly, and draw the curtains over them. ah!" he cried, with a whistling intake of breath, "there it is again!"
his terror was too evident and deep-seated not to be pitied, and the two young men hastily closed all the shutters, drawing the curtains over them, as mr. francis had requested.
"is it done? is it done?" he asked in a muffled voice, his face half buried in a sofa cushion. "be quick—oh, be quick!"
for an hour he sat there with closed eyes and finger-muffled ears, while the storm exploded[pg 228] overhead, the picture of cowering terror, while the other two played a couple of games. from time to time, if there had been a comparatively long interval of quiet, he would begin to take a little interest in the play, and once, even when for some five minutes the steady tattoo of the rain on the leads overhead had continued unbroken by any more violent sound, he went to the marking board. but next moment a dirling peal made the rest drop from his hand, and at a shuffling run he went back to the sofa, and again hid ears and eyes.
the storm passed gradually away, the sharp crack of the overhead thunder gave place to distant and yet more distant rumblings; and the afternoon was not over when mr. francis, cautiously opening a chink of shutter, let in a long, dusty ray of sunshine. the heavens were clear again, washed by the rain, and of a most pellucid blue, and mr. francis, recovering with mercurial rapidity, went gaily from window to window, unshuttering.
"what a relief, what a blessed relief!" he cried. "how delicious is this freshness after the storm! ah, the beauty of the world! i drink it in; it is meat and drink to me."
he nodded to the others.
"i must go out," he said; "i must go out and see if this horrible storm that is past has done any damage. i am afraid some trees may have been struck by that cruel lightning, in all their strength and beauty. it is terrible to think of, that exquisite,[pg 229] delicate life, rent, shattered in a moment by the flame!"
he went out, and the two others looked at each other like augurs.
"nerves," said harry.
"bad conscience," said geoffrey, and these were all the comments made by either on mr. francis's hour of purgatory.
it was too late when the storm was over to go the intended ride, and after tea harry and geoffrey sauntered aimlessly out, played red indians again among the islands of the lake (a game which, on the present occasion, was far less delightful to harry than when he had played it last), and finally came homeward as dusk fell. as they passed down the box hedge, it suddenly occurred to harry (so imaginative had been the realism with which his friend had played red indians) that geoffrey was perhaps capable of seeing the secret of the inside passage in a suitably romantic light, and he took him round to the back of the hedge.
"a mystery, geoff, a deep, dark mystery," he said, and shutting his eyes against the springing twigs which had overgrown the door, jumped into the hedge. the elastic fibres of the box flew back like a spring into their normal position; and geoffrey, who for the moment had been intent, with back turned, on the lighting of a cigarette, looked up when that operation was over, and found that harry had vanished as suddenly and as completely as any lady in the cabinet trick. in the dusk it was impossible, except to any one who[pg 230] knew where to look, to see any difference of uniformity in the texture of the hedge, and the illusion of his vanishing was complete.
"here, geoff, come in," said harry, still invisible, "and don't put out that match. it is darker than the plague of egypt!"
"come where—how? where are you?"
harry laughed, and held back the twigs.
"that was a great success," he said. "and—o geoffrey—if you have a spark of the romantic left in you, and i think you have, for you were a masterly red indian, this ought to make it blaze. look! a tunnel right down the hedge. isn't that secret and heavenly? think how many plots we might overhear, if people were only kind enough to make them as they went down the road! think of the stirring rescues you could make, hiding here till the pursuit went by!"
geoffrey was quite suitably impressed.
"i call this really ancestral," he said. "talk low, harry; we may be overheard. where does it lead to?"
"right down to the house, and comes out by another door like the one we went in by, just opposite the gun-room window. geoff, if you'll conceal yourself here all to-morrow i'll bring your meals when i can slip away without attracting attention. you mustn't smoke, i'm afraid."
"oh, if only there was the smallest cause for doing so!" said geoff. "does no one know it, except you and me?"
"i don't think so. i daren't ask uncle francis[pg 231] if he does, for fear he does. i shall tell evie, but no one else. lord! what a baby one is! why does this give me pleasure? there! just peep out at the end, geoffrey, so that if you are pursued from the house you will know where the door is; but be cautious. now we'll walk up again inside, and steal softly out where we came in, else some one from the house might see us. no, i think not another match. it's too risky."
"i should like to give one low whistle," said geoffrey.
"just as a signal. all right."
even as the whistle was on his lips, there came from somewhere close at hand a sudden gush of notes from a flute, and the two stood there huddled against each other in the narrow passage, petrified into sudden silence and immobility, but shaken with inward laughter. peering, on tiptoe as it were, through the hedge, they could just make out the figure of mr. francis, walking airily along the grass border by the edge of the drive, on his way to the house. soon his feet sounded crisp and distant on the gravel, and the two idiots breathed again.
"a near thing," said harry. "let us go back. geoff, if you had lit that match, we should almost certainly have been discovered."
mr. francis left early the next morning for london, to see two or three little flats, one of which he thought might perhaps be compassable by the modest sum he was prepared to give for a pied-à-terre in town. none of them were in very[pg 232] fashionable districts; the one which seemed to him most promising was in wigmore street, and this held forth the additional advantage of being near cavendish square. harry had telegraphed to the care-taker there to get a couple of rooms ready for his uncle, and without his knowledge (for he would certainly have deprecated such a step) he had sent up from vail a kitchen maid, who was also a very decent cook, in order to make him more comfortable. mr. francis had breakfasted, and the trap to take him to the station was already at the door when the two young men came down, and he hailed them genially from the threshold as his luggage was put up.
"good-morning, dear boys!" he cried. "you will have a lovely day for your shoot. it is perfect after yesterday's storm. yes, i am just off, i am sorry to say. i shall stop at least a week in town, i expect, harry; but i will let you know when i am thinking of coming back."
harry went out just as his uncle climbed nimbly up into the dogcart; geoffrey had stayed in the hall, and was glancing at the paper.
"uncle francis," he said, "do take that more expensive flat in de vere gardens, if you find it suits you better. don't consider the extra expense at all; i can manage that for you perfectly."
"you are too generous to me, dear harry," said the other, stretching down and grasping his hand. "but no, dear boy, i could not think of it. i shall be immensely comfortable in that one[pg 233] in wigmore street. but thank you, thank you.—luggage all in? drive on, jim," he said abruptly.
harry turned indoors and went across the hall to the dining room. but mr. francis, after having driven not more than a couple of hundred yards, stopped the cart, and descending, began to walk toward the house. halfway there he stopped, and stood for a moment lost in thought; then, with an air of a taken decision, went on more quickly. on the threshold again he stopped, biting his lip, and frowning heavily.
at that moment geoffrey got up from his paper, and crossing the door into the entrance hall, on his way to join harry in the dining room, saw him through the glass door, standing like this, and went to see why he had come back. and the face that met him was the face of old francis—a wicked, malignant mask, even as harry had seen it that day when the sun shone brightly on the picture. but next moment it changed and melted.
"i thought you had gone," said geoffrey. "have you forgotten something?"
"yes, my flute," said mr. francis, not looking at him; and picking it up from where it lay on the piano, he went out again, and walked quickly up the drive to where the dogcart was waiting.
"that was not what he came for," thought geoffrey to himself.
