The Luck of the Vails: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

Geoffrey neither looked at the bowed figure nor wavered, and his face was flint. But though that moaning cry, that passionate incoherence did not move him, yet the sight of Harry's face, with its bewilderment of perplexity and compassionate trouble, filled him with a sudden fear. To himself, that bent and venerable head was a mockery of grief, a fraud finished and exquisite, and he was more afraid of Harry's divided mind, on which Mr. Francis played as on an instrument of music, than he had been of the evil and hunted face that had come down from the gun room, as he stood behind the curtain, in those dead hours ten days ago.

Mr. Francis sat huddled in his chair, his face invisible, his fingers clasped in his white head, and long, dry sobs lifted and relaxed his figure, like the pulsation of a wave. And though Geoffrey, so few minutes ago, had turned himself to steel, he could not go on speaking with that silent stricken figure in front of him. The low, heart-broken murmuring, the silent sobs, filched resolution from him. Once and twice he began to speak, but no sentence would come. As many times he told himself that he must go on, that he knew that this feigned anguish was a thing to awake horror or laughter, but never pity. Yet it affected him as a scene in the play affects the stalls. It was all unreal, he knew it was unreal, yet he could not immediately speak. Suddenly, and long before—it seemed while he was still cursing his infirmity of purpose—Harry came to his side.

"Go away, Geoff; go away," he whispered. "Leave me with him. Whatever you have to say, you can not and must not say it now. Look there and judge! It may kill him. Go away, there's a good fellow!"

He got up at once: that was enough. Harry was still willing to hear him, now or at another time, it did not matter. All he wanted was that Harry should hear him to the end, and then his part was done. Exposure—there was no pleasure in the act of it; he only wanted that it should be there. Truly the man was vile, and an enemy, but he did not covet the post of executioner as such. By him, it is true, justice was done, the murderer was put out of a world with the welfare of which his presence was incompatible, and a man to do it there must be, but who did not shudder at the shadow of the hangman? That dry, inarticulate sobbing, which he had no need to tell himself was but a counterfeit grief, yet wore the respectable semblance of woe. What, again, if remorse had at length touched Mr. Francis? What if the imminence of his exposure had at last revealed to him his immeasurable enormity? If such a possibility was within the range of the most distant horizon, how contemptible would be his own part in trampling in a truth that was realized! All that was generous within him, and there was nothing that was not, revolted from so despicable a rôle.

But against that possibility how large and near loomed the probability that these grovelling pangs were but of the same texture as the rest! No, he was not taken in; he registered privately the unalterable conviction that Mr. Francis was Mr. Francis still, for no opprobrious word conveyed to him half the horror of all which that canonized name implied. Yet Harry was by him, asking him, not bidding him to go. That was sufficient; and even as he told himself it was sufficient, back swung the balance again. What duty could be more obvious, more staring than to finish now, at once, with that ineffable old man? Yet he sat there sobbing. And without another word Geoffrey turned and went, leaving uncle and nephew together.

It was not long before Harry joined him in the smoking room.

"Uncle Francis has gone to his room," he said. "He is quieter now; I could leave him safely. But I have telegraphed for the doctor; I daren't take the responsibility of not sending for him. He kept asking me one question, Geoff; he kept repeating and repeating it: Which of you two is to go. He says he will not stop here another night if you remain here. God knows whether I have decided right!"

"It is I who go, you mean?" said Geoffrey.

"Yes, it is you."

Harry sat down wearily, as if tired out; that, too, was his prevailing feeling; body and mind were dead beat. Geoffrey rose.