two mornings after this discovery of the passage, as they were sitting at breakfast, a telegram was brought in for harry.
"brougham to meet the evening train," he said to the man, after reading it, "and tell them to get mr. francis's rooms ready."
"he comes to-night?" asked geoffrey.
"yes; i did not expect him so soon. but he is only coming for a couple of days, he says. he has taken the flat in wimpole street; i suppose he means to go back there."
"what is he coming here for?"
"can't say—to get some furniture and things, i suspect. then the passage is to be a secret, eh, geoff?"
"why, surely," said geoffrey; "like a box hedge. i shouldn't take the slightest pleasure in it if i thought other people knew——"
"but you said you were sure that uncle francis did know," interrupted harry.
"let me finish my sentence, if you don't mind. i was about to say that i shouldn't take the slightest pleasure in it if i thought that other people knew that i knew."
[pg 285]
harry broke a piece of toast meditatively.
"i'm not sure about it," he said. "personally i felt rather aggrieved that uncle francis had not told me anything about it. well, wouldn't he as naturally feel aggrieved if i don't tell him?"
"it is superfluous to tell him," said geoffrey, "because he knows already. secondly, it will spoil all my pleasure if he knows we know, and i shall wish i hadn't found the thing at all. fifthly and lastly, you never paid me that twenty-six bob; and, thirdly, it is your house, after all."
harry was silent. then suddenly:
"geoffrey," he said, "tell me what further proof you have, apart from the candle, that uncle francis does know about it. i'll draw you a cheque after breakfast; haven't got any money."
"is that a bribe?" asked geoffrey.
"yes."
"and you really wish to know?"
"yes, i ask you," said harry. "no, it is not a bribe. if soberly you would rather not tell me, don't."
for a moment geoffrey could not make up his mind whether he wished harry to know or not. if only the tale would have put him on his guard, he would have had no hesitation about telling him all—his conversation with lady oxted, the looped cotton, the midnight visit. but he felt that the right time had not come, though it might come any day. on the other hand, it was difficult to speak merely of mr. francis's visit without betraying some hint of his suspicions, and[pg 286] this he did not want to do. but the balance of advantage seemed to incline toward telling him; for if he did not, in answer to so direct an invitation, harry would not unnaturally accuse him, though silently no doubt, of unfounded suspicions against a man whom he himself honoured very highly. so he determined to speak.
"three nights ago," he said, "on the evening of the gun-room affair, you went to bed early, and i sat in the hall and dozed. i awoke suddenly and saw mr. francis's face looking round the corner by the staircase."
harry pushed back his chair.
"what!" he said.
"oh, i was not dozing then. we talked for some time, and he told me why he had come with this secrecy. he also asked me not to tell you. but i don't mind."
"and why had he come?" asked harry.
"all day, he said, he had been haunted by a strong premonition of evil, and he had come to make sure you were safe."
"that's odd," said harry. "on the day of the gun-room affair—well?"
"for one reason and another," continued geoffrey, "i felt sure he had not come in by the front door. at any rate, i proved that he did not leave by it, for i put some stamp paper over the joining, and in the morning it was still untorn. and then, if you remember, i said i felt yew-hedgy, and found the passage."
[pg 287]
harry got up, and began pacing up and down the dining room.
"but how ridiculous!" he said. "why couldn't he have told me? was he ashamed of his premonition?"
"he told me he was."
harry felt unreasonably annoyed.
"i won't have my house burglariously entered by anybody," he said, "uncle francis or another. i shall tell him so."
"as you will," said geoffrey, inwardly anxious that he should not.
"then i shall not tell him so," said harry, "and i sha'n't tell him that i know about the secret passage. but next time he tries to use it, he shall find no candle there. i've a good mind to block the place up, geoff."
"oh, don't do that! 'tisn't fair on me."
"i shall do exactly as i damn please!" said harry. "we'll be finding it full of kitchen maids next. no, i can't block it up before i've shown it evie. but i shall go there every day and take away his candle if he puts fresh ones. lord, i got quite heated about it!"
"that's right," said geoffrey; "don't be sat upon by anybody."
"anyhow you'd better not try," said harry viciously.
he continued quarter-decking about the room for a few times in silence, and his annoyance subsided.
"and the old fellow really came down because[pg 288] he had a presentiment about me," he went on. "geoff, that's an odd thing now. it looks as if the luck touched more than me; it gave uncle francis a hint of what it was doing. you know the luck's getting on; it is making more reasonable attempts on me. do you think i've been encouraging it too much? perhaps i have; we won't drink its health to-night."
"i would if i were you," said geoffrey. "perhaps in that way you have put the old thing in a good temper. well, keep it up; it can't avoid having shots at you, but it always manages to miss."
"ah, you are beginning to believe in it too."
"not a bit. all the effect the luck has is to make you talk arrant nonsense about it. i believe in it, indeed! i was just humouring you."
"your notions of the humorous are obscure," observed harry.
mr. francis arrived late that night, full of little anecdotes about his house-hunting, and loud in praises of his flat. he had only come, as he had said, for a couple of days, to collect some books and sticks of furniture, and by the end of the month at the outside he hoped to have it completely habitable. his pleasure in it was that of a child with a new toy, delightful to hear, and they sat up late, listening to his fresh, cheerful talk, and hearkening between whiles to an extraordinary heavy rain which had come on before sunset and was beating at the windows.
this deluge was continuous all night, and next[pg 289] morning they woke to the same streaming heavens; the sky was a lowering arch of deluge, the rain relentless. harry and geoffrey, who regarded the sky and the open heavens as the proper roof for man, and houses merely as a shelter for unusual inclemency, had felt not the smallest inclination to stir abroad, but mr. francis at lunch announced his intention of walking, rain or no rain.
"it doesn't hurt me," he said; "a brisk walk, whatever the weather. so neither of you will come?"
harry looked out on to the soupy, splashing gravel.
"geoff, shall we go for a swim?" he said.
"thank you, no. i'm too old for mud pies."
mr. francis laughed heartily.
"so am not i," he said.—"well, harry?"
"it certainly is raining," said the lad.
"not a doubt of it," assented mr. francis.
geoffrey turned to harry suddenly.
"fear both fire and frost and rain," he said, in a low tone.
harry went briskly toward the door.
"thanks, geoff, that settles it," he said. "an excellent reason for going, and getting it over to-day if possible.—yes, uncle francis, i'll put on my boots and come. i'm not made of paper any more than you."
geoffrey followed him into the hall, a sudden vague foreboding filling him.
"don't go, harry!" he said.
[pg 290]
"you are beginning to believe in it, you know," said harry.
"indeed i am not."
"looks like it," and mr. francis joining them, he went off whistling.
very much rain must have fallen during the night, for yesterday the lake was not notably higher than its normal limits, whereas now, so few hours afterward, it had swollen so as to over-top the stonework of the sluice, and a steady rush of water fell over the ledge into the outlet below. this, ordinarily a smooth-flowing chalk stream, was now a riotous race of headlong water, sufficient to carry a man off his feet, and, as they paused a minute or two to watch the grand rush of it, they could see that, even in so short a space, the flow of water over the stonework was increasing in volume, showing that the lake was rising every minute. the gate walls of the sluice were not very thick, and seemed hardly built for such a press of water; in one or two places mr. francis observed that there appeared to be cracks right through them, for water spurted out as from a hose. the sluice itself seemed to have got somewhat choked with the débris of branches and leaves with which the storm had covered the surface of the lake, and a saragossa sea of drift stretched out to a considerable radius from it.
adjoining the main lock was a small wooden water gate, designed, no doubt, for the relief in time of flood, but this was shut down, and harry, splashing through the water, tried to pull it up,[pg 291] in order to give an additional outlet, but the wood was swollen with the wet, and he could not stir it. mr. francis observed his actions with some attention; his feet were firmly planted on the stone slab that covered the sluice, and the water rose like a frill over his boots, as, with bent and straining figure, he exerted his utmost force to raise the gate. once, as for firmer purchase he wedged his right foot against the side of the water channel and bowed to a final effort, the block of stonework on which he stood seemed to tremble. a cry of warning rose to mr. francis's lips, but it remained unuttered; only his face wore an expression of intense conflicting expectation. but harry's efforts were fruitless, and soon desisting, he splashed his way back. elsewhere the lake was rapidly encroaching on the outskirts of the lawn; pools of rain lay in the lower undulations of it, and these, joining with its swollen waters, formed long, liquid tongues and bays. here a clump of bushes stood out like an island in a lagoon, here an outlying flower bed was altogether submerged, and the dark soil was floated by the water in a spreading stain over the adjoining grass.
"this will never do," said harry; "the place will be in a mess for months if we don't get the water off somehow. it is that choked sluice which is doing all the mischief. we had better go up to the farm, uncle francis, and send some men to clear it. lord, how it rains!"
"yes, that will be the best plan," said he.[pg 292] "stay, harry, i will go, and do you run back to the sluice, my dear fellow, and see if it is raised quite to the top; we never looked at that. you might get a big stick also, and begin clearing away the stuff that chokes it. and have another pull at the wooden gate. if you can get that open, it is all right. go and break your back over it, my dear boy; it seemed to yield a little that last pull you gave. what muscles, what muscles!" he said, feeling his arm. "try again at the wooden sluice, and be quick. there is no time to lose; we shall have the water up to the house in less than an hour if this goes on."
mr. francis went off at a rapid amble in the direction of the farm, and harry returned to wrestle with the wooden sluice. even in the few minutes that they had been away the water had risen beyond belief, and when again he splashed across the stone slab of the sluice to the smaller gate, the swift-flowing stream over the top of it was half knee-deep, and pressed against him like a strong man. it was no longer possible to see the spouting escape beneath, for the arch of turbid water was continuous and unbroken from side to side.
he wrapped his handkerchief round the ring which raised the gate, and again putting shoulder and straining back into it, bent to his task. one foot he had braced against the stone coping of the side, the other he pressed to the ironwork of the main sluice, and, pulling firmly and strongly till he felt the muscles of his spine stand out like[pg 293] woven cords, he knew that something stirred. at that he paused a moment, the strong flood pouring steadily round him, and collecting himself, bent down again and called on every sinew for one sudden effort. on the instant he felt the stone slab on which he stood reel under his left foot, and half guessing, for the moment was too brief for conscious conclusion, that the sluice had given way bodily, sprang for all he was worth from the overturning mass. but the effort was an effort made in air; his right foot slipped from the edge of the coping, and the whole sluice wall turned under him, throwing him, as luck would have it, clear of the toppling mass, but full into the stream below. as he fell he caught at the masonry of the sides of the channel, to prevent himself being carried down.
for one half second his grasp was firm; at the next, with an incredible roar of water, the released flood poured down from the lake, brushing his hand from its grasp as lightly as a man whisks a settling fly from sugar, and rolled him over and over among the screaming débris, now tossing him into mid stream, now burying him in the yellow, turbulent flood, now throwing him up on the top of a wave like chaff in a high wind, as helpless as a suckling child in the grip of some wild beast. impotently and without purpose he snatched at hurrying wreckage, even at the twisted ropes of water that hurled him along, conscious only of the wild excitement of this foregone battle, without leisure to be afraid. he seemed to himself to be[pg 294] motionless, while the banks and lawns shot by him with an inconceivable swiftness, but bearing toward him, as he suddenly remembered, with the same giddy speed, the bridge over which the road to the lodge passed. how often had he stood there, watching the trout poise and dart in the clear, flowing water!
a turn in the stream bed, and he saw it rushing up toward him like an approaching train, the water already nearly on a level with its arch, and soon to be how vastly higher with the wave of the flood that carried him, he in the van of the torrent from the broken sluice. his first instinct was a resolve to clutch at it, in order to stop himself; but in a moment realizing that, if he wished to make death certain, this was the way of it, he huddled himself together, burying his head in the water. he just saw the first of the flood strike against the bridge in a huge feather of broken turbulence, and then came a darkness full of loud chucklings and suckings, as if the water laughed inwardly with evil merriment. once, in that blind moment, his shoulder was banged against the gorged arch, once he felt his coat catch against some projecting stone, and it was as if the weight of the whole world was pressed against him, as for a half second he checked the stream, the next he was torn free again, and out into daylight once more.
not till then did the chance of his possible ultimate escape strike him with a sense that he might possibly have a share in that matter; hitherto[pg 295] the wild pace had given a certain bewilderment to his thoughts not unpleasant in itself. all reasoning power, all remembrance of what had gone before, all realization of what might follow after had been choked; his consciousness, a mere pin point, did not do more than receive the sensation of the passing moment. but after the bridge had been passed it sprouted and grew, he became harry vail again, a man with wits and limbs that were meant to be used, and therewith the will to use them. but the power to use them was a thing arbitrarily directed by the flood; breath was the prime necessity, and it was a matter requiring both effort and an ebb of the encircling wave to fling his face free from that surging and broken van of water and get air. only with this returning increase of consciousness was he aware that he was out of breath with his prolonged ducking, for, broadly speaking, he had not decently breathed once since he had tumbled with the tumbling sluice. so with a downward and backward kick, the instinct of treading water, he raised his head from the yellow race, and felt the air sweet and essential. three long breaths he took, throat-filling, lung-filling, like a man half dead with drought, and, as he struggled to overlook the water for the fourth time, it was for the purpose of using eyes as well as lungs; and what he saw caused hope to leap high in his heart, though he had not known he had been hopeless. for here the stream had already widely overflowed its banks, now no longer held in by the[pg 296] masonry of the first stretch below the sluice, and every gallon of water that came down spread itself over a widely increased area; speed and the concentrated volume were even now diminishing. the sense that he was bound and helpless, a swathed child, passed from him, and, pushing steadily with his arms and feet (so random a stroke could scarcely be called swimming), he soon saw that he was appreciably leaving the main rush of the stream. before long he was brought up with a violent jerk; his foot had struck the ground, and the water stood up over his head like a yellow frill. but that was no more than a playful buffet, after the grimness of his struggle; he staggered to his feet again, and, now no longer swimming, after a few more splashing efforts, stood firm and upright in waist-high water, leaning with all his weight against the press of the flood. then step by plunging step he got to land, and at last stood utterly free on the good safe earth.
he stood and dripped for a moment, the water running from all points of himself and his clothes, as if off the ribs of an umbrella; then wringing out the baggier folds with his hands, he tried to start running toward the house. but twenty paces told him he was dead beat, and dropping to a soberer pace, he made his splashing way across the fields. suddenly he stopped.
"the luck," he cried aloud to the weeping sky; "it was the rain that did it! blooming old, futile old luck! it couldn't kill a bluebottle."
[pg 297]
this was an inspiring thought, and he went the more lightly for it, taking note, with a delightful sense of danger past, of the distance of his water journey. and what was that spouting column of yellowness and foam three hundred yards farther up, standing like a fountain in mid stream? and with a sudden gasp of reasoned recognition he knew it to be the bridge over which the road passed, under which so few minutes ago he had himself been whirled. cold and shivering as he was, he could not resist a moment's pause when he came opposite it, and he turned away again with a sense of respect for the luck which his last words, shouted to the streaming heavens, had lacked. under that he had blindly burrowed, helpless as a baby in an express, to stop his headlong course.
"not such a bad attempt of the luck, after all," he said to himself.
five minutes later he had cast his water trail over the gravel and into the hall. geoffrey was deep in an armchair, reading.
"geoffrey, old chap, the luck's been having another go," he cried, almost triumphantly. "but it can't pull it off, it simply can't. get me some hot whisky and water, will you, and come to my room. i'm going to get between blankets a bit. nothing like taking care of one's self, and running no risks. i'll tell you all about it. can't stop now."
geoffrey's book flew on to the floor as he sprang out of his chair.
[pg 298]
"o harry, what has happened?" he cried; "what has he done now?"
"old francis?" asked harry, pointing at the picture. "he's used the rain this time. penny squirt, you know. hurry up, and come to my room. whisky rather strong, please."
harry was out of his clinging clothes in a couple of minutes, and, dropping them into an empty hip bath where they could lie innocuous to carpets, got into blankets, and sipping his whisky, told geoffrey all his story from the moment of the dismemberment of the sluice to his staggering landing half a mile downstream.
"and if ever you want to travel expeditiously by water," he said, in conclusion, "i recommend you a six-foot flood in a narrow channel. but avoid a water-choked bridge ahead of you. man, it gives you a wambling inside, and no mistake. all the same it makes you feel an a-1 hero afterward, i can tell you that for cert. why, i'm choking with pride, just choking, though what the particular achievement is i can't tell you. i had to go underneath it, and there were no two words to it. well, i went."
"but what had happened to mr. francis?" asked geoffrey. "couldn't he see that the thing was tottery?"
"no, of course not, you dolt; he'd gone trotting off to the farm. oh, i didn't tell you that part, so you're not a dolt. we went out together, as you saw, and i took a haul on that old stricken sluice, but i couldn't make it budge. so we began[pg 299] walking away, to get men from the farm, but the water was rising so fast that he went on there alone, and i went back to have another pull at it—which i did, with this blessed result; and, o geoffrey, how dry and warm the rain felt when i had got out of that flood race! lord! i thought i was done; no, i didn't think it, i only knew i was. but not till i got out did the blessed solution strike me: it was the luck having another shot. and again it has failed—fire and frost and rain. we've had the whole trio again, and be damned to them! but there's a hitch somewhere; old francis can't pull it off. really, i am almost sorry for him!"
harry's voice was resonant with conviction and triumph; it was as if he had won a battle that was inevitable between him and a subtle foe. the danger he had been through was swallowed up in the victory he had gained. but this lightness of heart found no echo in geoffrey.
"i don't like it, harry," he said; "i don't like it one bit. i do not believe in the luck; it is childish, and you do not believe in the luck. we have played at make-believe like children, as we played with the discovery of the passage in the yew hedge. and the passage in the yew hedge is far the more real of the two. but it is time to stop all that. why should these things come to you in such damnable continuity? why within a few days should you nearly fall into an ice house, then go within an ace of blowing your head off, and finally be carried down in that mill-race[pg 300] of death? there is no use also in saying it is coincidence. things do not happen like that."
"no, you are right, not by mere coincidence," said harry; "but they do happen; they have happened to me."
the windows of the room looked out straight over the lawn on to the lower end of the lake, where the sluice lay, and geoffrey, as harry divested himself of the blankets he had swathed round him and rubbed himself down with a rough towel, went and sat in the window-seat, looking out.
"and it's no use saying that i don't believe in the luck," he went on; "i do believe in it, at least i think i do, which, as far as i am concerned, comes to exactly the same thing. oh, it is nonsense!" he cried suddenly. "i don't think i really believe in it, but i like to think i do. there is the truth as near as i can get it. and yet, perhaps, that isn't the truth; perhaps i do believe in it. oh, who knows whether i believe in it or not? i'm sure i don't."
geoffrey did not reply for a moment. he had felt morally certain after the gun-room accident that, if danger of death again looked into harry's face, it would be mr. francis who brought it there; he had even said to himself that it would be by rain that danger would come. by rain, indeed, it had been, but where, taxing ingenuity to the utmost, did mr. francis come in? harry had been alone, mr. francis halfway to the farm.[pg 301] what if harry was right?—and the thought challenged his reasonable self.
"how can you talk such utter nonsense?" he said angrily. "how can that pewter pot break down a sluice, and put a cartridge in your gun, and make you go to the ice house instead of the summerhouse?"
"'tain't pewter!" said harry's voice, muffled in the shirt he was putting on.
at that moment geoffrey's eye caught sight of the figure of mr. francis trotting gaily through the rain down the side of the lake, from the direction of the farm, and he disappeared behind the bushes that screened the sluice from the house. almost immediately he reappeared again, this time coming toward the house with the same lightness of step. he must have seen, thought geoffrey, that the flood had carried away the sluice. harry, he must have known, was probably there when it was carried away. what reconstruction of facts would fit these factors? at present none, but perhaps mr. francis could supply them. he rose.
"mr. francis is just coming in," he said, "but i do not see the farm men."
harry came across to the window.
"they are probably following," he said. "go down to him, geoff, and tell him i'm all right."
"you will be down soon?"
"yes, in a couple of minutes. you might order tea, too."
