The Luck of the Vails: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

"But didn't Kimber clean the gun afterward?"

"No," said Harry. "Uncle Francis's man always cleans his gun, and he probably, seeing him return to the house almost immediately after he had set out, and go into the garden, naturally thought that he had decided not to shoot, and did not clean the gun. That is why the second barrel was clean; no shot had been fired from it, and Uncle Francis simply forgot that he had left one cartridge in. The whole thing hangs completely together. Then came I, picked up the gun quickly, no doubt hitting the trigger against something, and there is a hole in the ceiling."

Once again Geoffrey thought of the looped cotton, and once again decided not to tell Harry. There was no use, at present, especially since Mr. Francis was not here, in giving him so sinister a piece of information.

"That certainly clears up a lot," he said, conscious of the deadly-double meaning of his words.

"It clears it all up," said Harry, "and I'll tell you now that I felt horribly uncomfortable about it all morning, though I was not frightened. Of course it was awfully careless of Uncle Francis to leave that cartridge in, and awfully careless of his man not to look to the gun. He thought Uncle Francis had not been shooting, for he must have returned to the house not more than a quarter of an hour after he set out, but he would have saved some lath and plaster if he had made sure. Here we are. Now for the rough!"

Mr. Francis, Geoffrey now believed beyond doubt, in his secret mind, was no less accountable for this gun-room explosion than for the mistake about the ice house; and Harry's story, proof to the other of his direct hand, was in a way a relief to him. All the morning he had feared and dreaded indications of a second hand, of a gamekeeper privy to the deed, of a servant suborned, and in particular his fancy had fixed on that dark man of Mr. Francis's, him with the foxlike face and tread of a cat. About him there was something secret and stealthy, so said his imagination, heated by the horrid occurrences of these two days; yet his secrecy and stealth were less abominable than the smiles of his master, his sunny cheerfulness, his playings on the flute. So lately as this morning Geoffrey had laughed when he thought of that flute; flutes in connection with white hairs and old age had seemed to him amusing, ridiculous. But now the memory of his own merriment amazed him; no tears were bitter enough for the contemplation of this deadliness of hypocrisy and hate; and he thought of the Italian airs and the tripping step of the performer with a bewilderment of horror. He had not known how finished an article could be turned out of the workshops of Satan.

But at this the full relief occasioned by Mr. Francis's absence came upon him with a great taste of sweetness. True, this last attempt had been made when the old man was not actually in the house; but so long as he was away, Geoffrey did not fear another trap. It would not be like a man of that infernal cunning to leave lying about, as it were, a series of nooses into which any one might step; his desire would not so far outstrip his prudence. It had been by the merest chance that Geoffrey had noticed that slight check to the lifting of the gun from the rack, by the merest chance that he had found the looped cotton; but apart from this, had either attempt succeeded, no evidence of any kind to implicate anybody would have remained. And not the least of his cunning was shown in the way that he took advantage of Harry's credulity in the power of the Luck. By frost and by fire he had schemed his death, and Geoffrey would have laid odds that if either by the arrow by day or the terror by night Harry's life again stood in jeopardy, in some manner, vague perhaps, but simple to trace, rain would be the agent. Here, then, he told himself was a clew of a kind. To guard against rain, it is true, was a vast and ill-defined project, for such an agency might be held to include many forms of death, from drowning to pneumonia, but it was, he felt sure, through the supposed potencies of the Luck that Mr. Francis was striking.

They spent a most rewarding hour that afternoon over the rough, and the evening passed, as is the privilege of shooters, in lazy, dozing content. One game of billiards had been succeeded by a nominal reading of the evening papers, and Harry had gone upstairs to bed at eleven, yawning fit to wrench off a jaw not firmly muscle-knit, but Geoffrey, on the excuse of being too comfortable in his big chair to move just yet, had sat on in the hall, not ill pleased to be alone, for he had many things to ponder, and he had not yet made up his mind what he ought to do. Conclusive as the evidence seemed to him, Harry, he well knew, would not possibly listen to it; to tell Harry what he believed, meant simply that he left the house. Something far more conclusive must occur before he told Harry, and Geoffrey prayed silently that nothing more conclusive should ever be on foot: he was quite satisfied with the demonstration as it stood. And he curled himself more closely in his chair and began to think.

What, after all, if this series of events was due to the Luck? Certainly, immediately after its finding, three accidents, by fire and frost and rain, had happened to Harry, for none of which could Mr. Francis be held remotely responsible. What if, now, these more serious accidents were to be referred to the same agency? Geoffrey found himself smiling at the absurdity of the thought, yet he still continued to consider it. He did not believe it, so he told himself; his reasonable mind entirely rejected the possibility that a thing inanimate, the work of men's hands, be it made of wood and stone, or gold and precious stones, could control destiny. It mattered not, as far as the Luck was concerned, how one thought of destiny: it was the laws of Nature, if you will, unalterable, of an inexorable logic, or, to refer the matter one step back, it was the will of God, who had set these natural laws at work. Yet were not the sins of the fathers visited on the children? Was it not possible, though ever so dimly and unconjecturably, that some subtle law of this hereditary kind governed the destinies of the Vails, and that without supposing that a cup of gold could be responsible for danger, sudden death, and, on the other hand, for the meting out of great happiness and prosperity, yet that the belief in some man's mind as he watched the chasing of the legend on that plaque of gold was true? He had observed, let us suppose, and correctly observed, some tide in the affairs of the Vails; he had embodied it allegorically in that rhyme on the cup, and the allegory was true, because that which it illustrated was true.