The Luck of the Vails: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

His heart leaped as he received his uncle's message, and he got up immediately, and putting on only a dressing gown and slippers, went out with a rough towel over his arm for a dip in the lake before breakfast. The sluice at the lower end of it, where a cool ten feet of water invited him, lay not more than a couple of hundred yards from the house, across a stretch of nearly level lawn, and hidden from both road and house by a screen of bushes. Sleep still lingered like cobwebs in drowsy corners of his brain, but all the horror of the evening and its almost more horrible repetitions during the earlier hours of the night had been swept away by the news of the morning, and it was with a thrill of pleasure, as indescribable as the scent itself of this clean morning, that he drank deep of the freshness of the young day. The sun was already high, but the grass that lay in the shadow of house and bush was still not dry of its night dews, and a thousand liquid gems brushed his bare ankle. The gentle thunder of the sluice made a soft low bass to the treble of birds and the hum of country sounds, that summer symphony which pauses only for the solo of the nightingale during the short, dark hours. The lightest of breezes ruffled the lake, scarcely shattering the mirrored trees and sky that leaned over it, and Harry stood for a moment, white and bare to the soft wind, with the sun warm on his shoulders, wondering at the beauty of his bath. Then, with arms shot out above his head, and his body braced to a line, he sprang off the stone slab of the sluice and disappeared in a soda water of bubbles and flying spray.

Surely that moment, he thought, as he rose again to the surface, was the crown and acme of bodily sensation. The sleep had been swept from him; house, bed, pillows, and darkness had gone; he was renewed, starting fresh again, cool and clean, with all the beautiful round world waiting for him. Expectancy and hope of happiness, interest, awakening love, were all strung to their highest pitch in his completeness of bodily well-being; his soul was moulded in every part to its environment, freed of its bodily burden, and with a song in his mouth he stepped out of the water for the glow of the towel.

He sauntered leisurely back to the house, purring to himself at the delight which the moment gave him. How could there be men who found their pleasure in eating and drinking, in the life of crowded rooms and smoky towns, when in half the acres of all England and round all its coasts were such possibilities? How, above all, was it possible to exist for a moment, if one had not the privilege of being violently in love? Then, with a laugh at himself, he suddenly found that he was hungry, ravenous, and his step quickened.

Half an hour later he was seated at breakfast, but already the first mood of the day was past. He had for an hour gone free, untrammelled by all the obligations which events and circumstances entail, but now he was captured again. One thing in particular wove a heavy chain round him. He had seen with amazed horror the effect on his uncle of that news that he had thought would be so welcome. Was it reasonable to suppose, then, that if a name alone produced so ill-starred a result, he could bear the sight of the girl? After the catastrophe of the night before it would be cruelty of a kind not to be contemplated to return again to the subject. The disappointment was grievous. That visit of Lady Oxted's and Evie's, so bright in anticipation that his mind's eye could scarcely look on it undazzled, must be given up. Plain, simple duty, the ordinary, incontrovertible demands of blood and kinship, compelled him to it. His own happiness could not be purchased at the cost of suffering to that kindly old man; and who knew how much he might be suffering even now?

Then, with the mercurial fluctuation of those in love, he fell from the sky-scraping summits into a black, bottomless gulf of despondency. Evie could not come here, she could never come here, he told himself. And at that, and all which that implied, he pushed his chair quickly back from the table, and left a half-eaten breakfast. His reasonable mind could not make itself heard; it told him that he was pushing things comically far; that he was imagining an inconceivable situation, when he concluded that a young man must not marry because of the feeling of his great-uncle on the subject; but his mood was not amenable to reason. The world had gone as black as an east wind, and all the flowers were withered.

He heaved a lover's sigh, and, going out of the glass door into the garden, walked moodily up and down the lawn for a space, consumed with pity, half for himself, half for his uncle. Directly above were the windows of his own bedroom, wide open, and a housemaid within was singing at her work. Farther on were the two rooms in which his uncle chiefly lived, a big-sized dressing room in which he slept, and next door the bedroom which he had turned into a sitting room. These windows were also open, and Harry, even on the noiseless grass, trod gently as he passed them, with that instinct for hushed quiet which all feel in the presence of suffering. "Poor old fellow! poor, dear old fellow!" he thought to himself, with a pang of compunction at the shock he had so unwittingly caused that cheerful, suffering spirit.

Then, suddenly, as he passed softly below, there came from the windows, mingling in unspeakable discord with the housemaid's song, a quick shower of notes from a flute.

Harry paused. The player was evidently feeling his fingers in the execution of a run, and a moment afterward the dainty, tripping air of "La Donna é mobile" came dancing out into the sunlight like a summer gnat. Twice the delicate tune was played with great precision and admirable light-heartedness, which contrasted vividly with the listener's mood, and was instantly succeeded by some other Italian air, unknown to the lad, but as gay as a French farce.

Harry had paused, open-mouthed, with astonishment. His own thoughts about his kinsman, sombre and full of tenderness, were all sent flying by the cheerful measure which the kinsman was executing so delightfully. A smile began to dawn in the corners of his mouth, enlightenment returned to his eye, and, standing out on the gravel path, he shouted up.

"Uncle Francis!" he cried; "Uncle Francis!"