The Luck of the Vails: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

Harry wore an inscrutable face.

"Go on," he said.

"That also did not come off," said Geoffrey, "and you were engaged. Ten days ago we came down here. On the first morning you asked Mr. Francis which of the two houses on the knoll was the ice house and which the summerhouse——"

"Ah, you have broken your word to me!" cried Harry. "You promised to keep that secret from my uncle."

A violent trembling had seized Mr. Francis.

"What! What!" he murmured, half rising from his chair.

"I have broken my word to you," said Geoffrey, still seemingly unconscious of the presence of a third person. "I am sorry, but I can not help it. You followed the directions he gave you, and nearly met your death. We came back together, and found him playing the flute in the garden, dancing to it as he played. Then you went into the house. I remained outside and watched him. He went up the knoll to the two houses, and tried the door of the ice house. He found it locked, opened the summerhouse and looked in. Try to reconstruct what was in his mind. He made no allusion to his mistake. Had he already forgotten that he had given you a direction that nearly sent you to your death? Or was the mistake yours? He told you to go to the left hand of the two houses, so you said to me. Is that the case?"

Harry did not at once reply; he looked eagerly, imploringly at his friend, but he could find no words to express a feeling he could not comprehend; he did not know, ever so vaguely, what he thought. In despair and utter perplexity he faced quickly round to his uncle. Mr. Francis was sitting with half-closed eyes; his hands, like the hands of a blind man, groped and picked at the buttons in the arm of his chair, stricken, helpless. Suddenly, as if with a drowning effort, he threw his head back and saw Harry.

"No, no," he said, "not the left hand, not the left hand! I never said that. Oh, the Luck, the cursed, cursed Luck! I could not—indeed, I could not have said the left hand. 'Do not go to the left hand by mistake'; I can hear myself saying the words now. Oh, weary, weary day! But you went there, you went to the ice house instead of the summerhouse; you went from the brightness of God's sunshine into the dark—to that edge—to the edge of the well. O my God! my God! Eli! Eli!" and the cry was wrung from him like water from a twisted cloth.

The old man buried his face in his hands, collapsing like a broken doll. He regarded neither Harry nor his accuser; the anguish of his spirit covered him like a choking wave, and into it he went down without a struggle, but only that moaning sob, a sight and a sound to stagger the unbelief of an infidel. And Harry—no infidel, but a lad of kindly heart and generous impulse, quick to believe good, a laggard to impute harm—could not but be moved.