THE SPELL BEGINS TO WORK
Mr. Francis was by choice an early riser, and next morning, before
either of the young men were awake, he had been splashing and gasping in
his cold tub, had felt with the keenest enjoyment the genial afterglow
produced on his braced and invigorated skin by the application of the
rough towel, and was now out on the terrace, pacing briskly along the
dry gravel walk on this adorable winter morning, waiting cheerfully for
his desired breakfast. Now and then he would break into a nimble trot
for fifty paces, or even give a little skip in the air as a child does,
from the sheer exhilaration of his pulses. His thoughts, too, must have
been as sparkling as the morning itself, as brisk and cheery as his own
physical economy, for from time to time he would troll out a bar or two
of some lusty song, or stop to chirrup with pursed lips to the stiff,
half-frozen birds, and his pleasant, close-shaven face was continually
wreathed in smiles. Here was one at least in whom old age had brought no
spell of freezing to laggard blood, no dulling of that zest of life
which is so often and so erroneously considered as an attribute of youth
only; life was still immensely enjoyable, and all things were
delightful to his sympathetic eye.
Such a buoyancy of spirits is a most engaging thing, provided only it be
natural and unforced. But too often the old, who remain young, have the
aspect as of grizzly kittens; their spirits are but a parody of
youthfulness, their antics broken-winded and spasmodic. In a moment they
fall from the heights of irresponsible gaiety to an equally
unwarrantable churlishness; they maintain no level way; their tempers
are those of jerking marionettes, a performance of jointed dolls.
But how different was the joyousness of Mr. Francis! Nothing could be
more native to him than his morning exhilaration. Authentic was the
merriment that sparkled in his light-blue eyes, authentic the lightness
of his foot as it tripped along the gravel walk; and none could doubt
that his fine spirits were effortless and unaffected.
To reach so ripe an age as that to which Mr. Francis had attained means,
even to those whose life has lain in the pleasantest lines, to have had
to bear certain trials, sorrows, misunderstandings, necessarily incident
to the mere passage of years. To bear these bravely and without
bitterness is the part of any robust nature; to bear them with unabated
cheerfulness and without any loss of the zest for life is a rarer gift;
and the silver-haired old gentleman who paced so gaily up and down the
terraced walks, while he waited for young men to have their fill of
sleep and make a tardy appearance, was a figure not without galantry.
Here were no impatient gestures; he was hungry, but the time of waiting
would not be shortened by fretfulness, nor had he any inclination to so
unamiable a failing, and for nearly half an hour he pursued his cheery
walk up and down. At length the welcome booming of the gong sounded
distantly, and he tripped toward the house.
Harry was down, the clock pointing to an indulgent half past nine, but
the youthful moroseness of morning sat on his brow. To so old a
traveller through life as his uncle, the ways of weaning this were
manifold, and he broke into speech.
"Splendid morning, my dear boy," he said; "and the ice, they tell me,
bears. What will you do? What shall we do? Are you shooting to-day, or
skating? And will you like to take a tramp round the old place with me,
as you suggested last night?"
Harry was examining dishes on the side-table with a supercilious air.
"Very cold, is it not?" he said. "We were thinking of shooting. Do you
shoot, Uncle Francis?"
"I will shoot with pleasure, if you will let me," he said. "Yes, it is
cold--too cold for pottering about, as you say. Fish cakes, eggs and
bacon, cold game. Yes, I'll begin with a fish cake. What a hungry place
Vail is! I am famished, literally famished. And where is Geoffrey?"
"Geoffrey was going to his bath when I came down," said Harry. "It is to
be hoped he will be more nearly awake after it. He had one eye open
only when I saw him."
"Fine gift to be able to sleep like that," said Mr. Francis; "I heard
you two boys go up to bed last night, and sat an hour reading after
that. But I awoke at eight, as I always do, and got up."
Harry's morose mood was on the thaw.
"And have you been waiting for us since then, Uncle Francis?" he said.
"Really, I am awfully sorry. We'll have breakfast earlier to-morrow. It
was stupid of me."
"Not a bit, not a bit, Harry. I like a bit of a walk before breakfast.
Wonderful thing for the circulation after your bath. Ah, here's
Geoffrey.--Good-morning, my dear boy!"
"We'll shoot, to-day, Geoff, as we settled," said Harry. "Uncle Francis
will come with us. Wake up, you pig."
Geoffrey yawned.
"How's the Luck?" he said. "Lord! I had such a nightmare, Harry! You,
and the Luck, and Mr. Vail, and the picture of the wicked baron all
mixed up together somehow. I forget how it went."
"Very remarkable!" said Harry. "I dreamed of the Luck, too, now you
mention it. We must have dreamed the same thing, Geoff, because I also
have forgotten how it went."
"And I," said Mr. Francis, "dreamed about nothing at all, very
pleasantly, all night. And what a morning I awoke to! Just the day for a
good tramp in the woods. Dear me, Harry, what a simpleton your dear
father used to think me! 'What are you going to do?' he would ask me,
and I would only want a pocketful of cartridges, a snack of cold lunch,
and leave to prowl about by myself without a keeper, no trouble to
anybody."
"Yes, that's good fun," said Geoffrey. "Now it's a rabbit, or over the
stubble a partridge. Then a bit of cover, and you put up a pheasant.
Let's have a go-as-you-please day, Harry."
"The poetry of shooting," said Mr. Francis. "Cold partridge for any one
but me? No? You lads have no appetites!"
The keeper had been given his orders the day before, and very soon after
breakfast the three shooters were ready to start. They went out by a
garden door which gave on a flight of some dozen stone steps leading to
the lawn; Mr. Francis, leading the way, nearly fell on the topmost of
them, for they were masked with ice, and half turned as he recovered
himself, to give a word of warning to the others. But he was too late,
and Harry, who followed him, not looking to his feet, but speaking to
Geoffrey over his shoulder at the same moment almost, had slipped on the
treacherous stone and fallen sprawling, dropping his gun, and clutching
ineffectually at the railing to save himself. Mr. Francis gave one
exclamation of startled dismay, and ran to his assistance.
"My dear fellow," he cried, "I hope you are not hurt?"
Harry lay still a moment, his mouth twisted with pain; then, taking
hold of the railing, pulled himself to his feet, and stood with bowed
head, gripping hard on the banister.
"All sideways on my ankle," he said.--"Just see if my gun's all right,
Geoff.--Yes, I've twisted it, I'm afraid." He paused another moment,
faint and dizzy, with a feeling of empty sickness, and then hobbled up
the steps again.
"An awful wrench," he said. "Just give me your arm, Uncle Francis, will
you? I can hardly put my foot to the ground."
Leaning on him, he limped back into the hall and dragged off his boot.
"Yes, it feels pretty bad," he said; "I came with my whole weight on to
it. I shall be as lame as a tree."
Mr. Francis was on his knees, and in a moment had stripped off Harry's
stocking with quick, deft fingers.
"What bad luck! what awfully bad luck!" he said. "Put a cold-water
compress on it at once, my dear boy. It is already swelling!"
Harry lifted his leg on to a chair opposite.
"It's just a sprain," he said. "Go out, Uncle Francis, you and Geoffrey.
I'll put a bandage on."
Templeton had answered Mr. Francis's ringing of the bell, and was
dismissed again with orders for cold water and linen.
"Not till I have seen you comfortable, my dear fellow," said Mr.
Francis. "Dear me, what bad luck! Does it hurt you, Harry?"
"No, no, it is nothing," said the boy rather impatiently, irritated both
by the pain and the fussing. "Do go out, Uncle Francis, with Geoffrey,
and leave me. The men are waiting by the home cover. I can look after
myself perfectly."
Mr. Francis still seemed half loath to leave him, and, had he followed
his inclinations, he would have instituted himself as sick-nurse, to
change the bandage or read to him. But it was the part of wisdom to
humour the patient, who quite distinctly wished to be left alone; and as
even the most solicitous affection could not find grounds for anxiety in
the sprain, with a few more sympathetic words, he followed Geoffrey, who
was chafing to be gone. The latter, indeed, might have appeared somewhat
cold and unsympathetic in contrast with Mr. Francis and his repeated
lamentations; but his "Bad luck, Harry!" and Harry's grunt in reply, had
something of telegraphic brevity, not misunderstood.
In spite of his protestations that he was no more than an indifferent
shot, it soon appeared that Mr. Francis was more than a decently capable
performer with the gun, and his keenness and accuracy as a sportsman
were charmingly combined with the knowledge and observation of a
naturalist. He pointed out to his companion several rare and infrequent
birds which they saw during the morning, and implored the keeper that
they might not be shot for curiosities.
"Half the time I am shooting," he said to Geoffrey, "I am of a divided
mind. Is it not a shame to kill these beautiful and innocent things? I
often wonder--ah!" up went his gun, and a high pheasant was torn from
the sky, leaving a few light neck feathers floating there.
"And even while the words are in my mouth, I go and contradict my
sentiments," he said, ejecting the smoking cartridge. "What a bundle of
incongruous opposites is a man!"
They shot for not more than a couple of hours after lunch, for the sun
set early, and Mr. Francis confessed to a certain unreasonable desire to
get home quickly and see how Harry had fared.
"Indeed, I was half minded to stay with him in spite of his wish," he
said, "for the hours will have been lonely to him. But he is like all
the Vails--self-reliant, and beholden to no one."
They were crossing the last meadow before they should again reach the
garden, and, even as he spoke, a hare got up from its form in the
tussocky grass not more than ten yards from them and scuttled
noiselessly, head down, across the field. Geoffrey had already taken the
cartridges from his barrel, and Mr. Francis raised his gun to his
shoulder, hesitated a moment, and then fired. He hit the beast just as
it gained the fence of the cover from which they had come; they saw it
bowled over, and drag on a pace or two into cover; then suddenly, from
where it had disappeared, there came a screaming horribly human. Mr.
Francis paused, then turned quite pale, and Geoffrey, seeing his
stricken face, imagined he thought that he had wounded a beater.
"It is only the hare," he said; "the men were all out two minutes ago."
Mr. Francis turned to him.
"Only the hare!" he cried; "yes, only the hare! How dreadful, how
dreadful! I have wounded it," and he started off running to where the
beast had been last seen, and disappeared in the cover.
Geoffrey sent a couple of beaters to assist in the search, but himself
went on to the house, wondering a little at the inconsistency which
would allow a man to shoot at a hare running straight away in a bad
light, and yet send him hot foot after it when wounded. Yet the
inconsistency was pleasing; keenness was responsible for the doubtful
shot, an indubitable horror of causing an animal pain prompted the
pursuit of it. He found Harry lying up, his ankle somewhat severely
sprained, but it no longer pained him, and he asked after his uncle.
"Just at the last moment he shot a hare, wounding it," he said, "and ran
back to try to recover it. He will be in at once, I should think."
But half an hour passed, yet still he did not come, and Harry was
already wondering what could have happened, when he appeared, all smiles
again.
"Dear lad, have you had a very tedious day?" he asked. "The thought of
you has been constantly in my mind. I should have been in half an hour
ago with Geoffrey, but I wounded a hare, and had to go and look for it.
Thank God, I found it. The poor beast was quite dead. But it screamed:
it was terrible, terrible!"
There was a good piano, by Bechstein, standing in the hall, and that
evening, after dinner, as Harry lay on the sofa nursing his injury,
while his uncle sitting by him recalled a hundred little reminiscences
of his own young years which he had spent here, Geoffrey, who was an
accurate performer of simple tunes, played idly and softly to himself,
listening half to his own music, half to the talk of the others. Now he
would indicate some graceful, inevitable fragment of Bach, now a verse
of some chevalier song, all with a tinkling, elementary technic, but
with a certain facility of finger and decided aptitude for the right
notes. By degrees, as this went on, a kind of restlessness gained on Mr.
Francis; he would break off in the middle of a story to hum a bar of the
tune Geoffrey was playing, beating time to it with a waving hand, or
turn round in his chair to say over his shoulder: "A graceful melody, my
dear boy; please play us that again."
But before long this restlessness grew more emphatic, and at last he
jumped nimbly out of his chair.
"I must fetch my flute," he exclaimed, "I must positively fetch my
flute. I play but indifferently, as you will hear, but it is such a
pleasure to me! What a charming instrument is the flute, so pastoral;
the nearest thing we know to the song of birds! Be indulgent, my dear
Geoffrey, to the whim of an old fellow, and play some easy
accompaniments for me. I have a quantity of little pieces for the flute
by Corelli and Baptiste."
He hurried to the door, and they heard his step quickly crossing the
gallery above. In a few moments he reappeared again, a little out of
breath, but with a beaming face. He fitted his flute together with
affectionate alacrity, turned to the piano, and opened a volume of easy
minuets and sarabands.
"There, this one," he said; "it is a breath of heaven, a real breath of
heaven. You have two bars of introduction. Ah! a shade slower, my dear
boy; it is an antique measure, you must remember. Graceful, leisurely.
Yes, that is exactly right."
He knew the music by heart, and when once they were fairly started,
turned from the piano toward Harry. His cheerful, ruddy face composed
itself into an expression of beatific content, his eyes were half
closed, the eyebrows a little raised, and his body swayed gently to the
rhythm of the tune. The formal delicacy of the composition enthralled
him; perhaps it brought with it the aroma of his youth, the minuets he
had danced fifty years ago, perhaps it was only the sweet and certain
development of the melody which so moved him. At the end, in any case,
he could not quite command his voice, and he patted Geoffrey gently on
the shoulder by way of thanks.
"The next," he said; "we can not pass by the next. The two are complete
only together."
They played then some half dozen little pieces, ending with a quick
ripple of a gavotte, to put them in good spirits again, so said Mr.
Francis; and at the last he lovingly packed up his flute again and left
it on the piano, saying that they must be very indulgent to him and let
him play again.
Two or three days after this, Harry was sufficiently recovered to be
able to go out again, though still limpingly, and it was arranged that
they should shoot certain of the covers near the house which might be
expected to furnish them with a good day's sport, and at the same time
would entail but little walking. The frost had, twenty-four hours ago,
completely broken before a warm and violent wind from the southwest, and
the dead leaves which had lain in glued and compacted heaps were once
more driven about in scurrying multitudes. The sky was low and ominous,
a rack of torn and flying cloud, and scudding showers fell ever and
again. But the sport was excellent, and they little heeded the angry
fretfulness of the heavens.
Their beats took them at no time far from the house, and they returned
there for lunch, but by this time the weather had grown so vastly more
inclement that Mr. Francis cried off the resumption of the day; but
Harry, eager for out-of-doors after his two days' imprisonment,
persuaded Geoffrey to come out again. The rain was a steady downpour in
the slackened wind, but his argument that they were not made of paper
carried weight.
They returned, drenched indeed, but with a satisfactory report of
themselves and the birds, to find Mr. Francis performing very
contentedly on his flute before the hall fire. But he jumped up briskly
as they appeared.
"Dear boys, how wet you are!" he cried. "Of course, you will change your
clothes at once, will you not? and I should recommend a glass of hot
whisky and water. Shall I ring the bell? I told Templeton to see that
there was abundance of hot water for your baths."
This incessant solicitude of his uncle, however clearly arising from
affection, was on the way to get on Harry's nerves and arouse
opposition. At any rate, the suggestion that he should guard against a
chill predisposed him not to be in any hurry to go upstairs.
"Oh, tea first," he said, not meaning it; "one can change
afterward.--Are you going now, Geoff? Ring the bell as you pass, will
you?"
A positive cloud dimmed the brightness of Mr. Francis's face.
"Dear boy, you are being horribly imprudent," he said; "do let me
persuade you to change at once."
This drove determination home. Harry was unpleasantly conscious of the
clinging flabbiness of soaking clothes, but had their touch shaken him
with an ague it would not have moved him from his chair. He intended to
do that which he chose to do.
"Oh, I'm all right, Uncle Francis," he said. "I never catch cold."
Tea came, and Harry ate and drank with studied leisure, and conversed
politely to his uncle. Already he felt the premonitory prickling of the
skin which precedes a chill, but it was nearly half an hour before he
lounged upstairs. He did not intend to be fussed over and treated like a
child; the advice to go and change had been so obviously sensible that
it should never have been offered, and to the contrariness of youth was
impossible to accept. Thus the well-meant but ill-timed counsel drove
him into an opposite.
Again, after dinner, the evening was melodious with the breathings of
Mr. Francis's flute, but the childlike pleasure which the performer had
taken before in his own performance was sensibly dimmed. 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. Dear lad, do not be so foolish. I have
troubled and worried you, I am afraid, with my fussy care for you, and I
am very sorry for it. But do not make a bad matter worse, and do not
punish me, I ask you, as well as yourself, for my ill-timed suggestions.
I have apologized; be generous."
Harry got up. It was impossible that a mere superficial boyish
obstinacy, of which he was already ashamed, should stand out against
this, and besides he felt really unwell.
"Yes, I am afraid I have caught a chill," he said. "It was foolish of me
not to change as you advised me when I came in. It was even more foolish
of me to have been annoyed at your excellent suggestion that I should."
Mr. Francis's face brightened.
"Now get to bed at once, my dear boy," he said, "and I have no doubt you
will be all right in the morning. You have plenty of blankets?
Good-night."
But Harry was by no means all right in the morning, and it seemed that
for his uncle the joy of life was dead. There was no brisk early walk
for him to-day. Vail was no longer a hungry place, and his breakfast was
but the parody of a meal. Unreasonably, he blamed himself for his
nephew's indisposition, and the morning passed for him in blank turnings
over of the leaves of undecipherable books, in reiterated visits to the
kitchen with suggestions as to a suitable invalid diet, and disconnected
laments to Geoffrey over this untoward occurrence.
"Ah! this will teach a foolish old man to hold his tongue," he said. "It
will teach him, also, that old fellows can not understand the young.
How excellent were my intentions, but how worse than impotent, how
disastrous! 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. I forget my white
hairs. How are you, my dear boy, this morning? I hope you have not a
chill, too? I am anxious and unsettled to-day."
"Oh, Harry was an ass," said the other. "But there's nothing at all to
be anxious about. He has a chill, rather a sharp one, and, with greater
Wisdom than he showed yesterday, he stops in bed. Is that Punch there?
Thank you very much."
Mr. Francis walked to the window, lit a cigarette, and threw it away,
barely tasted.
"I wonder if Harry would like me to read to him," he said.
Geoffrey looked up with an arrested smile.
"I think I should leave him quite alone," he said. "I've just been up to
him. He's as cross as a bear, and wouldn't speak to me. So I came away."
"But that is so unlike him!" said Mr. Francis. "He must be ill, he must
be really ill."
Geoffrey began to understand Harry's feelings the day before.
"If I were you I wouldn't fuss either him or myself," he said. "People
don't die of a cold in the head."
"Shall I send for the doctor?" asked Mr. Francis. "We might tell Harry
that he happened to call about some case of distress in the village, and
wished to consult him about it. Then we could get his opinion. I think,
under the circumstances, one might venture on so small an equivocation."
Geoffrey closed his Punch.
"I shouldn't do anything of the kind if I were you," he said. "What an
abominable morning! I'll play some accompaniments for you, if you like."
"Thank you, my dear boy," said Mr. Francis, "but I haven't the heart to
play this morning. Besides, Harry might be dozing; we should run the
risk of disturbing him."