But now he could scarcely believe that the lad who had meditated thus six months ago, not dismally but without joy, could be the same as he who stood with a kindled eye beneath old Francis's picture. He looked at his own hand as he raised his teacup, he looked at his boots and his trousers. Yes, they were certainly his, and he it had been who had drunk tea here before. What then had happened, he asked himself? He had discovered the world, that was all; and Columbus had only discovered America. And the world was quite full of charming things and people in particular; to descend to details, or to generalize on the whole, he hardly knew which was which; it was full of one person.
[CHAPTER IX]
CARDIAC
Mr. Francis soon joined him for tea, and, after proposing a stroll in ten minutes' time, had gone to his room to answer an urgent letter. Harry was well content to wait, for nothing could come amiss to a mood so harmonious as his, and, lighting a cigarette, he strolled round the walls, beholding his forbears. Opposite the portrait of old Francis, second baron, he stood long, and his eye sought and dwelt on the Luck as a familiar object. The sun, streaming through the western windows, fell full on to the picture, and the jewels, so cunning and exact was their portrayal, sparkled with an extraordinary vividness in the gleam. The Luck! Was it the Luck which had given him these days of wonderful happiness, with so great and unspeakable a hope for the days to come? Was this the huge reward it granted him, for which he had paid but with a cold in the head, a burn on the hand, a sprain of the foot? How curious, at the least, those three coincidences following so immediately on the finding of the Luck had been. How curious, also, this awakening of his (dating from the same time) from the solitary lethargy of his first twenty-one years! For the awakening had come with the coming of Uncle Francis, and his own instant attachment to him. It was indeed he—he and Geoffrey, at any rate, between them on their visit here—who had started him on the voyage which had already resulted in the discovery of the world. It was then that his potential self had begun to rustle and stir in the chrysalis of isolation which had grown up round it, very feebly and tentatively indeed at first, but by degrees cracking and bursting its brown bark, then standing with quivering and momently expanding wings, which gradually unfolded and grew strong for flight. The Luck! Was it indeed the gems and the gold which had done this for him? It was much, it was very much, but to him now how infinitely more than he had, did he desire! Six months ago he had desired nothing, for he was dead; but now, being alive, how he yearned for more, one thing more!
A sudden idea seized him, and he rang the bell, and, until it was answered, looked again at the picture. Old Francis's face, he thought, and old Francis's hands, did not fare so well in the sunlight as the glorious jewel which he held. The hands clutched rather than held the cup; the lines of them were greedy and grasping, they gripped the treasure with nervous tension, and in the face there were ugly lines which he had never noticed before, but which bore out the evidence of the hands; avarice sat on that throne, and cunning as deep as the sea, and cruelty and evil mastery. Still looking and wondering, he suddenly saw the face in a different light; it was no longer a vile soul that looked from those eyes, but the kind, cheerful spirit of his own uncle. He started, for the change had the vividness of actuality, and at the moment the bell was answered by the old butler.
"Ah, Templeton," he cried, "I am glad to see you. All well? That's right. I rang to say that I wanted you to get out the Luck—the big cup, you know, which you and I found in the attic last Christmas, and put it on the table to-night as a centrepiece."
"Mr. Francis has the key, my lord," said Templeton. "It is on his private bunch."
"Ask him to give it you, then. Say it was by my order. Oh, here he is!—Uncle Francis, I want the key of the case in which is the Luck. I want to have it on the table to-night."