one evening, toward the end of june, lady oxted was driving home from victoria station, where she had gone to meet the arrival of the continental express. by her side sat a girl of little more than twenty, who, by the eager, questioning glances which she cast at that inimitable kaleidoscope of life as seen in the london streets, must probably have been deprived of this admirable spectacle for some time, for her gaze was quickened to an interest not habitual to londoners, however deep is their devotion to the town of towns. the streets were at their fullest, in this height of the season and the summer, and the time of day being about half past five, the landau could make but a leisurely progress through the glittering show. the girl's cheek was flushed with the warm, healthy tinge which is the prerogative of those who prefer the air as god made it to the foul gases which men shut up in their houses, and, as they drove, she poured out a rapid series of questions and comments to lady oxted.
"oh, i just love this stuffy old london!" she said; "but what have they done with the duke of wellington on his horse? the corner looks[pg 54] quite strange without it. oh! there's a policeman keeping everybody back. do you think it's the queen? i hope it is. why, it's only a fat little man with a beard in a brougham! who is he, aunt violet, and why aren't we as good as he? just fancy, it is three years since i have been in london—that's not grammar, is it?—and i had the greatest difficulty in making mother let me come. indeed, if it hadn't been for your letter, saying that you would let me stay with you, i never should have come. and then the difficulties about the time i should stop! it wasn't worth while going for a month, and two months was too long. so i made it three."
"well, it is delightful to have you, anyhow, dear evie," said lady oxted. "and it really was time you should see london again. your mother is well?"
"very—as well as i am; and that means a lot. but she won't come to england, aunt violet, except for that one day every year, and i am beginning to think she never will now. it is twenty-one, nearly twenty-two years ago, that she settled at santa margarita—the year i was born."
"yes, dear, yes," said lady oxted, a little hurriedly, and she would seemingly have gone on to speak of something else, but the girl interrupted her.
"you know her reason, of course, aunt violet," she said quietly, but with a certain firm resolve to speak. "no, let me go on: she told me about it only the other day. of course, poor[pg 55] harold's death must have been terrible for her, but it is awful, it is awful, i think, to take it the way she does. she still thinks that he died by no accident, but that he was intentionally shot by some man with whom he was out shooting. i asked her what his name was, but she would not tell me. and for all this time, once a year, on the day of harold's death, she comes to england, puts red flowers on his grave, and returns. oh, it is awful!"
lady oxted did not reply at once. "she still thinks so about it?" she asked at length.
"yes; she told me herself. but i hope, perhaps, that her refusing to tell me the man's name—i asked only the evening before i left—may mean that she is beginning to wish to forget it. she wished, at any rate, that i should not know. do you think it may be so?"
"i can't tell, evie. your mother——" and she stopped.
"yes?"
"only this. your mother is hard to get at, inaccessible. it is almost impossible to know what she feels on subjects about which she feels deeply. i once tried to talk to her about it, but she would not. she heard what i had to say, but that was all."
the girl assented, then paused a moment.
"poor mother, what an awful year for her!" she said. "she had only married my father, you know, a few months before harold's death, and before the year was out harold, her only son, was[pg 56] dead, and she was left twice a widow and childless. i was not born for six months after my father's death. how strange never to have seen one's father!"
they drove in silence for a space. then the girl said suddenly:
"aunt violet, promise me that you will never tell me the name of the man who was out shooting with harold. you see my mother would not tell me when i asked her; surely that means she wishes that i should not know."
lady oxted felt herself for the moment in great perplexity. she had the rational habit, now growing rare, of thinking what she was saying, and meaning something by what she said, and, as her answer was conceivably a matter of some importance, she paused, thinking intently.
"i am not sure that i had better promise you that," she said at last.
evie looked surprised.
"why not?" she asked.
"i can't quite tell you," she said. "give me time, dear—i will either make you the promise you ask, or tell you why i do not make it, this evening. in the meantime, evie, i ask you, as a favour, to avoid thinking about it as far as you are able. ah! here we are."
indeed, the sight of grosvenor square was very welcome to lady oxted, for just now she had no clearness of mind on the question which the girl had put to her, but very great clearness as to the fact that there were delicate though remote[pg 57] issues possibly at stake. here was she with a three months' charge of evie aylwin, the half sister of poor harold harmsworth, daughter of his mother, whose attitude toward mr. francis admitted of no dubiety, while the most constant visitor at their house was the nephew of the man to whom so terrible a suspicion attached. that the two should not meet verged on impossibilities; and was it fair, either on one or the other, that they should run the ordinary chances of an attractive girl and a handsome boy together, without knowing in what curious and sombre prenatal ordination of fate they were cast? it would be like indicating summer rain in hard lines of ink to say that lady oxted expected them to fall in love with each other, but among the possibilities such a contingency could not be reckoned very remote or unlikely. probable, the most hardened matchmaker could not call it, but where was the celibate who would say it was impossible? the sudden, unexpected demand of the girl, "promise me you will never tell me his name," had been, unknown to her, a request which presupposed the solution of a problem of a most complicated kind. lady oxted, it is true, had asked for time—already, she was afraid, unwisely; that, however, was done, and she had until the evening the power of making or refusing to make that promise. if she made it, she shouldered herself with the responsibility of countenancing the free intercourse of the two, and the mutual attraction to which it might easily give rise, and of seeing it pursue its[pg 58] course to its possible evolution in love and marriage. the girl was staying with her; harry vail was so assiduous in his presence that he could scarcely be called a visitor; both were supremely eligible. it was clearly idle to overlook the possibility. given that these things occurred, she foresaw a moment, possibly very unpleasant, and certainly to be laid to her door, when mrs. aylwin heard of the engagement of her daughter to the man on whose name, in her mind, rested the stain of so intimate a bloodguiltiness.
but this unwelcome conclusion brought with it a sudden reaction of hopefulness. evie aylwin had asked her mother the name of harold's companion on that fatal morning, and had been denied the information. did not that argue a loophole of encouraging amplitude? surely, to the weaving feminine mind it meant that the mother, though perhaps neither repenting nor regretting the black influence which this suspicion, founded or unfounded, had had on herself, yet wished her daughter to move in absolute freedom, avoiding none, open to all; to conduct her life with perfect liberty, not knowing more, being prevented by her own mother from knowing anything with definite label of that tragic affair. else how was it conceivable that she should not have said those two words, "francis vail"? mrs. aylwin, so reasoned this acute lady, must have known—for who did not know?—the strange, solitary history of the last, and the head of the house, and was not her refusal to mention[pg 59] the uncle's name a silent recognition, if rightly interpreted, that the two might meet?
the thought was a pleasant one, for she was much attached to both harry and the girl, and for a moment she let her fancy build a fantastic dome in air. if mrs. aylwin had recognised this, and the inference was not unreasonable, did not the recognition imply a hope, though of the faintest and most unformulated, that now she saw her long, bitter suspicion to have been a mistake? then her silence would amount even to a wish that the two might meet, and that one of her blood might, in the remote possibilities, wipe away by this union that of her blood which had been shed.
to take the other side, if she did not make this promise, she had to refuse, with what softenings and limitations you will, to bind herself. in case, then, of what event, to meet what contingency, would she make the reservation—under what circumstances, that is to say, did she desire to leave herself free? clearly, in case of the possible happening, of the two falling under the spell of each other. but in that case (clearly, also, she was afraid) it would be far better to tell the girl now, at once, and save her the greater shock. to hear the name vail now, this moment, would be nothing to her. to hear the name vail in its more sinister connection, when already it had a vital sound to her ear, was a pang that might be saved her now, but not hereafter.
again, still dealing with these remote possibilities,[pg 60] in which connection alone her decision had any significance, was it conceivably fair to harry to reveal, though in the most intimate way and the most pain-sparing words, the stain that hung over his name? long ago lady oxted had settled with herself that the affair was dead and buried. at the time, even, it had been no more than an unproved and dark suspicion, though endowed with all the mysterious vitality of evil; but was she, of all women, who held that to repeat an evil tale is only one degree removed from inventing it, to stir, for any purpose, that coiled worm of suspicion? the thought was an abhorrence to her, and evie's mother, it seemed, in her own dealings with her own child, had indorsed her unwillingness. but it was certain that, if the name had to be told, it must be told now, for, supposing the two remained strangers to intimacy, there would be no greater harm done now than afterward; but if intimacy was otherwise to be, it was better to kill it in the womb than to let it live and destroy it afterward.
a third alternative remained: to write to mrs. aylwin, saying quite simply that harry vail was an intimate friend of hers, that he was attractive and of unblemished character and reputation (so much she was bound to say for the young man's sake), and what did the mother want done? but such a letter, she felt, would be a thing to blush over, even when alone. how demented a matchmaker she would appear!
back swung the balance. she was in the[pg 61] position of mother to the girl, and the mother, out of her own mouth, had desired that she should not know the name. that desire had reached lady oxted casually, not knowing to whom it journeyed; but it had arrived, and she was bound to respect it. the promise was as good as made.
evie had gone to her room after tea, and these various fences faced lady oxted on all sides till the ringing of the dressing bell. but that sound suggested the dinner table to her, and at the thought of the dinner table she suddenly felt the conclusions wrested from her, for she remembered for the first time that harry dined with them that night. and though she did not expect that, on entering the drawing-room, he would immediately throw himself on his knees at evie's feet, it seemed to her that, as a controlling power, she was put on the shelf; that the issues of things were in younger and stronger hands than hers.
she found a letter or two for her in the hall, and taking these in her hand she went upstairs.
"'the luck of the vails,'" she said to herself, and the phrase shaped itself to her steps, a step to a syllable.
still, with her letters in her hand, she looked in at evie's room, and, finding her "betwixt and between," went on to her own; and, as her maid did her hair, she opened them. the first was from harry.
"the greatest luck," it ran. "the grimstones[pg 62] have influenza in the house, and have put me off. so i can and will and shall come to you for sunday at oxted. i shall see you this evening, but i can't resist writing this."
"kismet!" murmured lady oxted, "or something very like it."
