The Luck of the Vails. E. F. Benson
making an intimate party.
During the last few months Harry had continued to so expand that it would have been difficult to recognise in him the hero of that recluse coming-of-age party but half a year ago. But this change was the result of no violent revolution; his nature had in no way been wrested from its normal development, merely that development had been long retarded, and was now proportionately rapid. For years his solitary home had ringed him with frost, the want of kindly fireside interests had led him on the path that leads to the great, unexplored deserts of the recluse; but the impulse given, the plunge into the world taken, he had thriven and grown with marvellous alacrity. Indeed, the stunted habit of his teens remained in him now only as shown in a certain impression he produced of holding himself still somewhat in reserve; in a disposition, notable in an age which loves to expose its internal organism to the gaze of sympathizing friends, to be his own master; to retain, if he wished, a privacy of his own, and to guard, as a sacred trust, his right to his own opinion in matters which concerned himself.
Lady Oxted, however, on this as on many other occasions, felt herself obliged to find fault with him, and the presence of her niece, it would appear, did not impose bounds on her candour.
"You are getting lazy and self-contented, Harry," she remarked on this particular evening. "You are here in London professing to lead the life of the people with whom you associate, and you are shirking it."
Harry looked up with mild wonder at this assault, and drew his chair a little closer up to the half circle they made round the open window, for the night was stifling, and the candles had drooped during fish.
"I never professed anything of the kind," he said; "and I don't yet understand in the slightest degree what you mean. But, no doubt, I soon shall."
"I will try to make it plain to you," said Lady Oxted. "You have chosen to come to London and lead the silly, frivolous life we all lead. That, to begin with, is ridiculous of you. There is no need for you to be in London, and why any fairly intelligent young man ever is, unless he has business which takes him there, passes my understanding. You might be down at Vail, looking after your property, or you might be travelling."
"I still don't understand about my professing to lead the life of the people among whom I move," said Harry.
"I am coming to that. You have chosen to spend these three months in London without any better reason for it than that everybody else does so. That being so, you ought to behave like everybody else. For instance, when Mrs. Morris wanted to take you to her sister's dance to-night, you ought to have gone; also Lady Wraysbury asked you to go to the concert at the Hamiltons'. Again you refused."
"She wanted you to come too," said Harry, "at least, she asked you," he added, getting in a back-hander.
"I'm an old woman, and I choose to sit by my own fire."
"Won't you have it lit?" asked Harry. "And I chose to sit there too. But I will go away, if you like."
"And will you go to the dance?"
"Not in the least; if you send me away, I shall go to bed."
"You speak as if you were all the six great powers, sending an ultimatum to Heligoland," said Lady Oxted.
"Not in the least; if you send me away, I shall go."
Lady Oxted laughed.
"Heligoland replies that the six great powers may wait ten minutes," she said.
Harry turned to Evie Aylwin.
"Yes, I feel just as you do," he said eagerly, reverting at once to the conversation which had been interrupted by Lady Oxted's strictures. "I love the sense of being in the middle of millions of people, each of whom, just like you and me, have their own private paradise and joy of life, which the world probably never guesses."
Evie looked at him quickly.
"Have you a private joy, Lord Vail?" she asked. "Do tell me what it is. A thing that is private is always interesting."
Harry laughed.
"It is called the Luck," he said; "the Luck of the Vails."
"Are you really beginning to believe in that nonsense, Harry?" asked Lady Oxted.
"I have begun," said he.
"O Aunt Violet, how horrid you are!" cried Evie. "Do let Lord Vail tell me about it. It is private: I am dying to know."
"Shall I? I will make it short, then," said Harry, "for Lady Oxted's sake."
"I would rather that you made it long for mine," said the girl; "but that is as you please."
Lady Oxted gave a loud and quite voluntary sigh.
"Poor, dear Harry!" she said. "Geoffrey, let us talk about something extremely tangible the while. You are on the Stock Exchange. Speak to me of backwardation and contango. That may counteract the weakening effect of Harry's nonsense. Are you a bear?"
Harry smiled, and drew his chair closer to the girl's. "I will talk low," he said, "so that we shall not offend Lady Oxted, and you must promise to stop me if you get bored. Anyhow, you brought it on yourself, for you asked me about my private joy. This is it."
Blue eyes, deepened by the shaded light to violet, looked into his as he began his tale; into hers looked brown eyes, which seemed black. He told her of the ancient history of the cup, and she listened with interest to a story that might have claimed attention even from a stranger. Then he came to his own finding of it in an attic upon a winter's day; to the three accidents to himself, each trivial, which had followed the finding; and her eyes—which up till now had been at one time on his, at another had strayed with a certain consciousness and purpose (for he never looked elsewhere than at hers) now this way, now that, had superintended the disentangling of a piece of lace which had caught in her bracelet, or had guided her finger as it traced the intricate ivory of her fan handle—became absorbed. They saw only Harry's big, dark eyes, or, at their widest circuit, his parted lips, from which the words came. Her own mouth, thin, finely lipped, drooped a little at the centre with interest and expectation, and the even line of teeth showed in the red a band of ivory set in pomegranate. Once she impatiently swept back a tress of hair which drooped over her ear, but the playing of her fingers with her fan had become unconscious, and her eyes no longer followed them. And it would seem that Harry had forgotten his promise to make the story short for Lady Oxted's sake, and had rather acceded silently to the girl's request to make it long for hers, for the startling revelations about backwardations and bears had long languished before the tale was done.
At last Harry's voice stopped, and there was silence a moment, though both still looked at the other. Then Evie gave a little sharp, involuntary sigh, and her eyebrows met in a frown.
"Throw it away, Lord Vail," she said sharply. "Throw it away at once, where it will be lost, lost. It is a terrible thing! And yet, and yet, how can one believe it? The thing is gold and gems, that is all. Ah! how I should like to see it! It must be magnificent, this Luck of yours. All the same, it is terrible. How can it be your private joy?"
Harry rose. If he was not in earnest, it was an admirable counterfeit.
"Do you not see?" he said. "'Fear both fire and frost and rain,' runs the rhyme. But think what the cup is called: it is the Luck of the Vails, and the Vails are—well, they are I and my uncle at least. Ah! I forget one more thing. Only two days ago my uncle found the key of its case. It was locked when I found it; it had to be broken open. Well, I fell into the fire; I caught a chill in the rain; I sprained my ankle, owing to the frost. I have paid the penalties of the Luck. Now, don't you see I am waiting for the Luck itself? Indeed, perhaps it has begun," he added.
"How so?" asked the girl with security, for she knew he was not the kind of man to pay inane compliments.
"Since I found it, I have begun to become human," he said gravely. "Indeed, six months ago I had no friend in the world except Geoffrey."
"What's that about me?" asked Geoffrey, who was playing piquet with Lady Oxted.