The Luck of the Vails. E. F. Benson

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THE POINT IN CASUISTRY SOLVES ITSELF

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      Lady Oxted always breakfasted in her own room, and before she appeared next morning she had spent a long hour in wrestling over her letter to Mrs. Aylwin. She had been desirous to tell the unvarnished truth, and yet to steer clear of a production by a demented matchmaker, and her letter, it must be confessed, was an admirable performance. Evie had told her, so she wrote, of her mother's refusal to let her know the name of the man at whose door she laid, or used to lay, Harold's death, and, taking this to mean that Mrs. Aylwin, for any reason, did not wish Evie to know it, the writer had, at Evie's request, promised on her own part not to tell her. The present Lord Vail, she must add, Mr. Francis's nephew, was a constant visitor at her house, and he and Evie had already met. Mrs. Aylwin, she was bound to understand, put no prohibition on their meeting in the way they were sure to meet during the season. Lord Vail was a young man, pleasant, attractive, and of excellent disposition.

      Lady Oxted laid down her pen for a moment at this point, then hurriedly took it up to add an amiable doxology, and sign it. She felt convinced she could not do better; convinced, also, that if she gave the matter further consideration, it would end in her doing much worse. Then she took Evie out with a warm and approving conscience.

      That afternoon they left London, as had been originally planned, to spend the Sunday at their country house in Sussex. During the hours of the night, Lady Oxted had sternly interrogated herself as to whether she ought, on any lame or paltry excuse, to put Harry off; but on the strength of her promise given to Evie, and the letter she was about to write to Mrs. Aylwin, she felt she could not take any step in the matter till she received her answer. To put him off, argued the inward voice, was to act contrary to the spirit of her promise, which entailed not only silence of the lips, but abstinence from any manœuvring or outflanking movement of this kind. This reasoning seemed sound, and as it went in harness with her instinct, she obeyed it without question.

      The house stood high on a broad ridge of the South Downs, commanding long views of rolling fields alternating with the more sombre green of the woods. To the east lay the heathery heights of Ashdown Forest, peopled with clumps and companies of tall Scotch fir; southward the smooth austerity of the hills behind Brighton formed the horizon line. Thatched roofs nestled at cosy intervals beside the double hedgerows which indicated roads; a remote church spire pricked the sky, or an occasional streamer of smoke indicated some train burrowing distantly at the bottom of valleys, before it again plunged with a shriek into the bases of the tunnelled hills; but, except for these, the evidences of humanity were to be sought in vain. The house itself was partly Elizabethan, in part of Jacobean building, picturesquely chimneyed, and high in the pitch of its outside roofs; inside, it was panelled and oaken-beamed, spacious of hearth, and open of fireplace. Round it ran level lawns, fringed with flower beds, wall-encompassed, which as they receded farther from the house gradually lost formality, and merged by imperceptible steps into untutored Nature. Here, for instance, you would pass from the trim velvet of the nearer lawns into the thick lush grass of an orchard planted with apples and the Japanese cherry; but the grass was thick in spring, with the yellow of the classical daffodil; and scarlet of the anemone was spilled thereon, and the dappled heads of the fritillary rose, bell-shaped. Here, again, in a different direction the lawn farther from the house was invaded by a band of lilac bushes, and to the wanderer here a Scotch fir would suddenly stand sentinel at a turn of the grassy path, while, if his walk took him but fifty yards more remote, the lilacs would have ceased, and he would be treading the brown, silent needles of the fir grove, exchanging for the sweet, haunting smell of the garden shrubs the clean odour of the pine. In a word, it was a place apt to reflect the moods of the inhabitants: the sombrely disposed might easily see in the pines a mirror of their thought; the lilacs, whose smell is ever a host of memories, would call up a hundred soft images in hearts otherwise disposed; while, for the lover of pointed conversation, what milieu could be more suitable than the formality of the lawns nearer the house, which, clean and trim cut as French furniture, irresistibly gave to those who sat and talked there a certain standard of precision? Beyond, again, the orchard was every evening a singing contest of nightingales, and through the soft foliage of fruitful trees, moon and stars cast deep shadows and diapers of veiled light into grassy alleys.

      The party was but a small one, for influenza had for the last month been pursuing its pleasant path of decimation through London, and, as Mr. Tresham remarked, while they drank their coffee in the tent on the lawn after lunch next day:

      "Those of us who are not yet dead are not yet out of its clutches."

      Lady Oxted sighed.

      "I had it once a week throughout last summer," she said. "It is such a consolation, when it is about, to know that the oftener you have it the more liable you become to it!"

      Mrs. Antrobus finished her coffee, and tried to feel her pulse.

      "I never can find it," she said, "and that is so frightening! It may have stopped, for all I know."

      "Dear lady," said Mr. Tresham, "I will promise to tell you whether it has stopped or not, not more than a minute after it has done so. Alas! it will then be too late."

      "Ah! there it is," said Mrs. Antrobus at length. "One, two. It has stopped now. Take the time, Mr. Tresham, and tell me when a minute has gone."

      "Your mother is the only really healthy person I know," said Lady Oxted to Evie. "Whether she is ill or not, she always believes that she is perfectly well. And as long as one fully believes that, as she does, it really matters little how ill one is!"

      Lord Oxted got slowly out of his chair.

      "Some doctor lately analyzed a cubic inch of air in what we should call a clean London drawing-room," he said. "He found that it contained over two hundred bacilli, each of which, if they lived carefully and married, would, with its family, be soon able to kill the strongest man. I surrendered as soon as I heard it!"

      "Quite the best thing to do," said Mr. Tresham, "for otherwise they would kill you. It is better to give yourself up, and be taken alive!"

      "It is certainly better to remain alive," said Mrs. Antrobus. "That is why we all go to bed now when we get the influenza. We surrender, like Lord Oxted, and so the bacilli do not kill us, but only send us away to the seaside. It is the people who will not surrender who die. Personally I should never dream of going about with a high temperature. It sounds so improper!"

      Evie was sitting very upright in her chair, listening to this surprising conversation. She had seen Mrs. Antrobus for the first time the evening before, and had made Lady Oxted laugh by asking whether she was a little mad. It had been almost more puzzling to be told that she was not, than if she had been told that she was. And at this remark about her temperature, Evie suddenly looked round, as if for a sympathizing eye. An eye there certainly was, and she felt as if, in character of a hostess, she had looked for and caught Harry Vail's. At any rate, he instantly rose, she with him, and together they strolled out of the Syrian tent on the lawn, and down toward the cherry-planted orchard.

      For a few paces they went in silence, each feeling as if a preconcerted signal had passed between them. Then Evie stopped.

      "I wonder if it is rude to go away?" she said. "Do you think we ought to go back?"

      "It is never any use going back," said Harry. "Certainly, in this case it would not do. They would think——" and a sudden boldness came over him; "they would think we had quarrelled."

      Evie laughed.

      "That would never do," she said, "for I feel just now as if you were an ally, my only one. What strange things Mrs. Antrobus says! Perhaps they are clever?" She made this suggestion hopefully, without any touch of sarcasm.

      "Most probably," said Harry. "That would be an excellent reason, anyhow, for my finding them quite impossible to understand."

      "Don't