THE POINT IN CASUISTRY SOLVES ITSELF
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
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 manoeuvring 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 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 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, 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 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."
"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 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.
"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 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----"
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 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, "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 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.