The Luck of the Vails: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

"No; I would sooner go away. I am rather tired, and Elsa has put me in a bad temper. Good-bye, Lord Vail, and expect us on Saturday afternoon; please order good weather. It will be enchanting; I am so looking forward to it!"

Harry himself went down to Vail on Friday afternoon, for he wished both to satisfy himself that everything was arranged for the comfort of his visitors, and also to meet them himself when they came. The only train he could conveniently catch did not stop at his nearest station, and he telegraphed home that they should meet him at Didcot. This implied a ten-mile drive, and his train being late on arrival, he put the cobs to their best pace in order to reach Vail in time for dinner. Turning quickly and rather recklessly into the lodge gates, he had to pull up sharply in order to avoid collision with one of his own carriages which was driving away from the house. A stable helper not in livery held the reins, and by his side sat a man of dark, spare aspect, a stranger to him. As soon as they had passed, he turned round to the groom who sat behind.

"Who was that?" he asked.

"I don't know his name, my lord," said he, "but I drove him from the station last Monday. He has been staying with Mr. Francis since then."

Harry was conscious of a slight feeling of vexation, arising from several causes. In the first place (and here a sense of his dignity spoke), any guest, either of his or his uncle's, ought to be driven to the station properly, not by a man in a cap and a brown coat. In the second place, though he was delighted that Uncle Francis should ask any friend he chose to stay with him, Harry considered that he ought to have been told. He had received a long letter from his uncle two days ago, in which he went at some length into the details of his days, but made no mention of a guest. In the third place, the appearance of the man was somehow grossly and uncomfortably displeasing to him.

These things simmered in his mind as he drove up the long avenue, and every now and then a little bubble of resentment, as it were, would break on the surface. He half wondered at himself for the pertinacity with which his mind dwelt on them, and he determined, with a touch of that reserve and secrecy which still lingered in corners and angles of his nature, that if his uncle did not choose of his own initiative to tell him about this man, he would ask no questions, but merely not forget the circumstance. This reticence on his own part, so he told himself, was in no way to be put down to secretiveness, but rather to decency of manners. His uncle might have the Czar of all the Russias, if he chose, to stay with him, and if he did not think fit to mention that autocrat's visit, even though it was in all the daily papers, it would be rude even for his nephew to ask him about it. But he knew, if he faced himself quite honestly, that though good manners were sufficient excuse for the reticence he preferred to employ, secretiveness and nothing else was the reason for it. Certainly he wished that the man had not been so disrelishing to the eye; there was something even sinister about the glance he had got of him.

Mr. Francis was in the most cheery and excellent spirits, and delighted to see him. He was employed in spudding plantains from the lawn as the carriage drove up. But, abandoning this homely but useful performance as soon as he heard the wheels on the road, he ran almost to meet him.

"Ages, it seems literally ages, since you were here, dear boy!" he said. "And see, Harry, I have not been idle in preparing for our charming visitors. Croquet!" and he pointed to a large deal box that lay underneath the clipped yew hedge. "Templeton and I found the box in a gardener's shed," he said, "and we have been washing and cleaning it up. Ah! what a fascinating game, and how it sets off the ingenuity of the feminine mind! I was a great hand at it once, and I think I can strike the ball still. Come, dear boy, let us get in; it is already dinner time. Ah! my flute; it would never do to leave that," and he tripped gaily off to a garden seat near, on which lay the case containing the favourite instrument.

It happened that at dinner the same night Mr. Francis passed Harry through a sort of affectionate catechism, asking him to give an exhaustive account of the manner in which he had spent the hours since he left Vail a fortnight ago. Harry complied with his humour, half shy, half proud of the number that had to be laid inside Lady Oxted's door, and when this was finished: