Produced by Annie R. McGuire
THE LUCK OF THE VAILS
BY E. F. BENSON.
* * * * *
The Luck of the Vails.
12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
This romance of modern life is characterized by intense and culminating
interest and remarkable dramatic power. The reader's attention is
absorbed at the outset, and he is held in suspense to the last of these
vivid and fascinating pages.
Mammon and Co.
12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
This novel by a popular author deals with personages living in the same
society that was characterized by "Dodo" and "The Rubicon." Mr. Benson
is thoroughly acquainted with the society in which he places the scenes
of his novels of London life. In "Mammon & Co." the good genius of the
tale is an American girl. The book will be found to be one of exceeding
interest throughout.
Dodo.
_A Detail of the Day._ 12mo. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.
"'Dodo' is a delightfully witty sketch of the 'smart' people of
society.... The writer is a true artist."--_London Spectator._
The Rubicon.
12mo. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.
"The anticipations which must have been formed by all readers of 'Dodo'
will in no wise be disappointed by 'The Rubicon.' The new work is well
written, stimulating, unconventional, and, in a word, characteristic.
Intellectual force is never absent, and the keen observation and
knowledge of character, of which there is abundant evidence, are aided
by real literary power."--_Birmingham Post._
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
THE LUCK OF
THE VAILS
* * * * *
_A NOVEL_
* * * * *
By E. F. BENSON
AUTHOR OF DODO, MAMMON AND CO.
ETC.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
BY D. APPLETON and COMPANY.
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE SHADOWS DANCE 1
II. THE COMING OF THE LUCK 13
III. THE SPELL BEGINS TO WORK 25
IV. THE STORY OF MR. FRANCIS 42
V. A POINT IN CASUISTRY 53
VI. THE POINT SOLVED--THE MEETING 63
VII. THE POINT IN CASUISTRY SOLVES ITSELF 81
VIII. THE SECOND RETURN TO VAIL 95
IX. CARDIAC 109
X. MR. FRANCIS IS BETTER 124
XI. MR. FRANCIS SEES HIS DOCTOR 141
XII. THE MEETING IN THE WOOD 154
XIII. HARRY ASKS A QUESTION 177
XIV. LADY OXTED'S IDEA 193
PART II
XV. FROST 209
XVI. FIRE 234
XVII. A BIRD OF NIGHT 255
XVIII. RAIN 284
XIX. GEOFFREY LEAVES VAIL 302
XX. DR. ARMYTAGE ARRIVES 321
XXI. GEOFFREY MEETS THE DOCTOR 335
XXII. LADY OXTED HAS A BAD NIGHT 357
XXIII. THE MEETING IN GROSVENOR SQUARE 376
XXIV. JIM GOES TO BED 393
XXV. MR. FRANCIS SLEEPS 424
EPILOGUE 439
THE LUCK OF THE VAILS
* * * * *
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE SHADOWS DANCE
The short winter's day was drawing to its close, and twilight, the steel
and silver twilight of a windless frost, falling in throbs of clear dusk
over an ice-bound land. The sun, brilliant but cold as an electric lamp,
had not in all the hours of its shining been of strength sufficient to
melt the rime congealed during the night before, and each blade of grass
on the lawns, each spray and sprig on the bare hedgerows, had remained a
spear of crystals minute and innumerable. The roofs of house and cottage
sparkled and glimmered as with a soft internal lustre in the light of
the moon, which had risen an hour before sunset, and the stillness of
great cold, a thing more palpably motionless than even the stricken
noonday of the south, gripped all in its vice. Silent, steadfast lights
had sprung up and multiplied in the many-windowed village, but not a
bird chirped nor dog barked. Labourers were home from the iron of the
frozen fields, doors were shut, and the huge night was at hand.
This sequestered village of Vail lies in a wrinkle of the great
Wiltshire downs, and is traversed by the Bath road. The big inn, the
Vail Arms, seems to speak of the more prosperous days of coach and horn,
but now its significance to the shrill greyhounds of the railway is of
the smallest, and they pass for the most part without even a shriek of
salute. About a mile beyond it to the outward-bound traveller stands the
big house, screened by some ten furlongs of park, and entering the gate
he will find himself in a noble company of secular trees, beech in the
majority, and of stately growth. Shortly before the house becomes
visible a spacious piece of meadow land succeeds to the park; thence the
road, passing over a broad stone bridge which spans the chalk stream
flowing from the sheet of water above, is bounded on either side by
terraced lawns of ancient and close-napped turf, intersected at
intervals by gravel walks, and turning sharply to the right, follows a
long box hedge once cut into tall and fantastic shapes. But it seems
long to have lacked the shears and pruning hand, for all precision of
outline has been lost, and what were once the formal figures of bird and
beast have swelled into monstrous masses of deformed shape, wrought, you
would think, by the imagination of a night hag into things inhuman.
Here, as seen in the dim light, a thin neck would bulge into some
ghastliness of a head, hydrocephalous or tumoured with long-standing
disease; here a bird with dwindled body and scarecrow wings stood on
the legs of a colossus; here conjecture would vainly seek for a
reconstruction.
The end of one of the wings of the house, which was built round three
sides of a quadrangle, abutted on to this hedge so closely that a
peacock with thick, bloated tail, peered into the gun-room window; in
the centre of the gravel sweep rose a bronze Triton fountain bearded,
like an old man, with long dependence of icicle. A bitter north wind had
accompanied the early days of the frost, and this icy fringe had grown
out sideways from the lip of the basin, blown aside even as it
congealed. Flower beds, a ribbon of dark, untenanted earth, ran
underneath the windows, which rose in three stories, small-paned and
Jacobean. As dark fell, lights sprang out in the walls as the stars in
the field of heaven, but to right and left of the front door there came
through a row of windows, yet uncurtained, a redder and less constant
gleam than the shining of oil or wax, now growing, now diminishing,
leaping out at one moment to a great vividness, at the next suddenly
dying down again, so that in the corners of the room there was a
continual battle of shadows. Now, as the flames from the wood burning on
the great open hearth grew dim, whole battalions of them would collect
and gather again; with the kindling of some fresh stuff, they would be
routed and disappear. This fitfulness of illumination played also
strange tricks with the tapestries that hung on two of the four sides of
the hall; figures started suddenly into being and were blotted out
before the eye had clearly visualized them, and in the inconstancy of
the light a nervous man might say to himself that stir and movement were
going on among them; again they rode to hounds, or took the jesses off
the hawk.
The present is the heir of all the achievement of former ages, and while
this great house with its mile-long avenue, its tapestries, its
pictures, its air of magnificent English stability, finely represented
all that had gone before, all that was going on now was inclosed in the
two large arm-chairs drawn close to this ideal fire, in each of which
sat a young man. They talked, but in desultory fashion, with frequent
but not awkward pauses of some length, for any social duty of keeping
the conversation going was to them quite outside a practical call. They
had been shooting all this superb, frosty day, and the return to warmth
and indoors, though productive of profound content, does not conduce to
loquacity.
"Yes, a bath would be a very good thing," said one; "but it is perhaps a
question whether in the absolutely immediate future tea would not be a
better!"
This was too strong a suggestion to be merely called a hint, and the
other rose.
"Sorry, Geoffrey," he said, "I never ordered tea. I was thinking--no, I
don't think I was thinking. Tea first, bath afterward," he added,
meditatively.
Geoffrey Langham stroked an imperceptible mustache.
"That's what I was thinking," he said; "and I am glad to see you
appreciate the importance of little things, Harry. Little things like
tea and baths matter far the most."
"Anyhow they occur much the oftenest," said Lord Vail.
"I was beginning to be afraid tea wasn't going to occur at all," said
Geoffrey.
Harry Vail appeared to consider this.
"You were wrong then," he said, "and you are on the way to become a
sensuous voluptuary."
"On the way?" said Geoffrey. "I have arrived. Ah! and tea is following
my excellent example."
The advent of lamps banished the mustering and dispersal of the leaping
shadows and threw the two figures seated on either side of the tea table
into strong light, and, taken together, into even stronger contrast. The
birthright of a good digestion, you would say, had been given to each,
and for no mess of pottage had either bartered the clear eye and firm
leanness of perfect health; but apart from this, and a certain lithe
youthfulness, it would have been hard at first sight even, when
resemblances are more obvious than differences, to see a single point of
likeness between the two. Geoffrey Langham, that sensuous voluptuary,
seemed the seat and being of serene English cheerfulness, and his face,
good-looking from its very pleasantness, contrasted strongly with that
of the other, which was handsome in spite of a marked and grave reserve,
that a stranger might easily have mistaken for sullenness. Indeed, many
who might soon have ceased to be strangers had done so; and though Harry
Vail had perhaps no enemies, he was in the forlorner condition of having
very few friends. Indeed, had he been made to enumerate them, his list
would have begun with Geoffrey, and it is doubtful whether it would not
also have ended with him.
But these agreeable influences of tea and light seemed to produce a
briskening effect on the two, and their talk, which, since they came in,
had touched a subject only to dismiss it, settled down into a more
marked channel.
"Yes, it is a queer sort of coming-of-age party for me," said Lord Vail,
"and it really was good of you to come, Geoffrey. I wonder whether any
one has ever come of age in so lonely a manner. I have only one relative
in the world who can be called even distantly near. He comes this
evening--oh, I told you that."
"Your uncle," said Geoffrey.
"Great-uncle, to be accurate. He is my grandfather's youngest brother,
and, what is so odd, he is my heir. One always thinks of heirs as being
younger than one's self."
"Cut him off with a shilling," said Geoffrey.
"Well, there isn't much more in any case, except this great barrack of a
house. What there is, however, goes to him. And it can hardly be
expected that he will marry and have children now."
"How old is he?" asked Geoffrey.
"Something over seventy."
"And after him?"
"The Lord knows! Anybody; the first person you meet if you walk down
Piccadilly perhaps; perhaps you, perhaps the prime minister. Honestly, I
haven't any idea."
"Marry then, at once," said Geoffrey, "and disappoint the man in the
street, and the prime minister, your uncle, and me."
Harry Vail got up and stood with his back to the fire, stretching out
his long-fingered hands to the blaze behind him.
"What advice!" he said. "You might as well advise me to have a Greek
nose. Some people have it, some do not; it is fate."
"Marriage is a remarkably common fate," remarked Geoffrey, "commoner
than a Greek nose. I have seen many married people without it."
"It is commoner for certain sorts of people," said Harry; "but you know
I----" and he stopped.
"Well?" asked the other.
"I am not of those sorts--the sorts who go smiling through the world and
are smiled on in return. It was always the same with me. I am not
truculent, or savage, or sulky, I believe, but somehow I remain
friendless. I should be a hermit if there were any nowadays."
"Liver!" said Geoffrey decidedly. "The fellow of twenty-one who says
that sort of thing about himself has got liver. 'Self-Analysis, or the
Sedentary Life,' a tract by Geoffrey Langham. Here endeth the gospel."
Harry smiled.
"I don't think about my character, as a rule," he said. "I don't lead a
sedentary life, and I haven't got liver. But if one is a recluse it is
as well to recognise the fact. I haven't got any real friends like
everybody else."
"Thank you," said Geoffrey; "don't apologize."
"I shall if I like; indeed, I think I will. No one but a friend would
have come down here."
"Oh, I don't know about that," said the other; "I would stay with people
I positively loathed for shooting no worse than we had to-day. In the
matter of friends, what you said was inane. You might have heaps of
friends if you chose. But you don't find friends by going into a room
alone and locking the door behind you."
"Ah! I do that, do I?" said Harry, with a certain eager interest in his
tone.
"Just a shade. You might have heaps of friends."
"That may be, or may not. It is certain that I have not. Oh, well, this
is unprofitable. Take a cigarette from the recluse."
They smoked in silence a minute or two.
"Your uncle?" asked Geoffrey; "he comes to-night, you said."
"Yes; I expect him before dinner. You've never seen him?"
"Never. What is he like?"
Harry pointed to a picture that hung above the fireplace.
"Like that," he said--"exactly like that."
Geoffrey looked at it a moment, shading his eyes from the lamp.
"Fancy-dress ball, I suppose?" he said.
"No; the costume of the period," said Harry. "It is not my uncle at all,
but an ancestor of sorts. The picture is by Holbein, but, oddly enough,
it is the very image of Uncle Francis."
"Francis Vail, second baron," spelled out Geoffrey, from the faded
lettering on the frame.
"Yes, his name was Francis, too."
"What is that great cup he is holding?" asked the other.
"Ah! I wondered whether you would notice that. I will show it you this
evening. At least, I am certain that what I have found is it."
"It looks rather a neat thing," said Geoffrey. "But I can't say as much
for the second baron, Harry. He seems to me a wicked old man."
"There is no doubt that he was. Among other charming deeds, he almost
certainly killed his own father. He was smothered in debt, came down
here to try to get his father to pay up for him, and met with a pretty
round refusal, it appears. That night the house was broken into, and the
old man was found murdered in his bed. The burglar seems to have been a
curious man; he took nothing--not a teaspoon."
"Good Lord! I am glad I'm not of ancestral family. Which is the room,
_the_ room?"
Harry laughed.
"The one at the end of the passage upstairs. Shall I tell them to move
your things there?"
"That is true hospitality," said Geoffrey; "but I won't bother you. Do
either of them walk?"
"Francis does. So if you meet that gentleman about, and find he is
unsubstantial, you will know that you have seen a ghost."
"And if substantial, it will only be your uncle."
"Exactly; so you needn't faint immediately."
Geoffrey got up and examined the picture with more attention.
"If your uncle is like that," he said, "I'm not so sure that I wouldn't
sooner meet the ghost."
"I'm afraid it is too late to put him off now," said Harry; "and, unless
there is a railway accident, you will certainly meet him at dinner. But
I don't understand your objection to my poor old ancestor's portrait. I
have always wondered that such an awful old wretch could be made to look
so charming."
"There is hell in his eyes!" said Geoffrey.
Harry left his chair and leaned on the chimney-piece also, looking up at
the picture.
"Certainly, if you think he looks wicked," he said, "you will see no
resemblance between him and my uncle. Uncle Francis is a genial,
pink-faced old fellow, with benevolent white hair. When I used to come
down here, years ago, before my father's death, for the holidays, he
always used to be awfully good to me. But he has been abroad the last
three years, and I haven't seen him. But I remember him as the most
charming old man."
"Then, in essentials, he is not like that portrait," said Geoffrey,
turning away. "Well, I'm for the bath."
"After you. Turn on the hot water when you're out, Geoff."
Harry did not immediately sit down again when his friend left him, but
continued for a little while to look at the second baron, trying to see
in it what Geoffrey had seen, what he himself had always failed to see.
He moved from where he stood to where Geoffrey had been standing, still
looking at it, when suddenly, no doubt by some curious play of light on
the canvas, there flitted across the face for a moment some expression
indefinably sinister. It was there but for a flash, and vanished again,
and by no change in his point of view could he recapture it. Soon he
gave up the attempt, and, with only an idle and fleeting wonder at the
illusion, he sat down, took up a book and yawned over a page that
conveyed nothing to him. Then frankly and honestly he shut it up, and
lay comfortably back in his chair, looking at the fire. He must even
have dropped into a doze, for, apparently without transition, in the
strange unformulated fashion of dreams, he thought that his uncle had
come, dressed (and this did not seem remarkable) in the fashion of the
Holbein portrait, and having greeted him with his well-remembered,
hearty manner, had sat down in the other of the two arm-chairs; and,
though unconscious of having gone to sleep, he certainly came to himself
with a start, to find the chair opposite untenanted, and the sound of
his own name ringing in his ears. Immediately afterward it was repeated,
and, looking up to the gallery that ran across one side of the hall and
communicated with certain of the bedrooms, he saw Geoffrey leaning over
in his dressing-gown.
"Bath's ready," he said; "and the portrait is looking at you."
"Thanks. I've been to sleep, I think. Did you call me more than once,
Geoff?"
"No; the other time it was the second baron."
Harry was still a little startled.
"You really only called once?" he asked again.
"Yes; only once. Why?"
"Nothing. Halloo! I hear wheels. That must be my uncle. Turn the hot
water off, there's a good chap. I must just see him before I come
upstairs."