into his glass.
"Suspicion! what do you mean?" he asked.
"No; suspicion is the wrong word. Uncle Francis told me all about his life on the last evening that I was at Vail, and I never heard anything so touching, so cruel, or so dignified. All his life he has been the victim of an ill luck so persistent that it looks as if some malignant power must have been pursuing him. Well, I am going to try to make it up to him. I wonder if a rather long and very private story about his affairs would interest you at all?"
"Rather. I should like to hear it."
"Well, this is almost exactly as he told it me, from the beginning. He was a twin of my grandfather's; there's a piece of bad luck to start with, and being just half a minute late about coming into the world, he is a younger son, which is no fun, I can tell you, in our impoverished family."
"That may happen to anybody," said Geoffrey; "I'm a younger son myself, but I don't scream over that."
Harry laughed.
"Nor does he. Don't interrupt, Geoff. Then he married a very rich girl, who died three years afterward, childless, leaving all her money back to her own relatives. It was a most unhappy marriage from the first; but don't aim after cheap cynicism, and say that the real tragedy there was not her death, but the disposition of her property. I can tell you beforehand that this was not the case. He was devoted to her."
"Well?"
Harry's voice sank.
"And then, twenty-two years ago, came that awful affair of young Harmsworth's death. Did you ever hear it spoken of?"
Geoffrey was silent a moment.
"Yes, I have heard it spoken of," he said at length.
Harry flushed.
"Ah! in connection with my uncle, I suppose?" he said.
"Yes; his name was mentioned in connection with it."
"It is a crying shame!" said Harry hotly. "And so people talk of it still, do they? I never heard of it till he told me all about it the other night. That is natural: people would not speak of it to me."
"I only know the barest outline," said Geoffrey. "Tell me what Mr. Francis told you."
"Well, it was this way: He was staying down at our house in Derbyshire, which was subsequently sold, for my grandfather had made him a sort of agent there after his wife's death, and he would be there for months together. Next to our place was a property belonging to some people called Harmsworth, and at this time, twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, young Harmsworth—his name was Harold—had only just come into it, having had a very long minority like me. Uncle Francis used to be awfully good to him, and two years before he had got him out of a scrape by advancing to him a large sum of money. It was his own, and it was this loan which had crippled him so much on his wife's death. The arrangement had been that it should be paid immediately Harold Harmsworth came of age. Well, he was not able to do this at once, for his affairs were all upside down, and he asked for and received a renewal of it. For security, he gave him the reversion of his life-insurance policy."
Again Harry's voice sank to near a whisper.
"Two days after this arrangement had been made, young Harmsworth and Uncle Francis were pottering about the hedgerows alone, just with a dog, to get a rabbit or two, or anything that came in their way, and, getting over a fence, Harmsworth's gun went off, killing him instantly. Think how awful!"
"Why people will get over fences without taking their cartridges out is more than I could ever imagine," said Geoffrey; "but they will continue to do so till the end of time. I beg pardon."
"Well, here comes the most terrible part of the whole affair," went on the other. "There was an inquest, and though my uncle was scarcely fit to attend, for he says he was almost off his head with so dreadful a thing happening, he had to go. He gave his account of the matter, and said that he himself was nearly hit by some of the shot. That, he tells me, was his impression, but he is willing to believe that it was not so, for, as he says, your imagination may run riot at so ghastly a time. But it was a most unfortunate thing to have said, for it seemed to be quite incompatible with the other evidence. Then, when it was known about the insurance policy, horrible, sinister rumours began to creep about. He was closely questioned as to whether he knew for what purpose young Harmsworth wanted the money he had advanced him, and he would not say. Neither would he tell me, but I understood that there was something disgraceful; blackmail, I suppose. He had an awful scene with Mrs. Harmsworth, Harold's mother. His friends, of course, scouted the idea of the possibility of such a possibility, but others, acquaintances, cooled toward him, though not exactly believing what was in the air; others cut him direct. It was only the medical evidence at the inquest, which showed that the injury of which Harmsworth died could easily have been inflicted by himself, that saved my uncle, in all probability, from being brought to trial. He said to me that it would have been better if he had, for then he would have been completely cleared, whereas now the matter will never be reopened."
"What an awful story!" said Geoffrey.
"Yes, and that was not the end of his trouble. Ten years later he had to declare bankruptcy, and my father gave him an annuity. But since his death it has not been paid; I never knew anything about it, and he would not allow that I should be told, and he has lived in horrible pensions abroad. That seems to me such extraordinary delicacy, not letting me know. I never found out till I came of age."
"You have continued it?"
"Of course. I hope, also, he will live with me for the main part. I have offered him a couple of permanent rooms at Vail, for he would not come to London. O Geoffrey, it was the most pitiful story! And to think of him, bright, cheery, as we saw him down there, and know what an appalling load of undeserved misery he has supported so long! Now, it seems to me to be a brave man's part to bear misfortune calmly, without whimpering, but one would think it required a courage of superhuman kind to be able to remain sociable, cheerful, merry, even. But, oh, how bitter he is when he shows one all his thoughts! He warned me to rely on nobody; he said there was not a man in the world, even less a woman, who would stick to you if you were in trouble. Trouble comes; they are vanished like melting snow; a heap of dirt is left behind. Then he suddenly burst into tears and told me to forget all he had said, for he had given me the outpourings of a disappointed, soured man. I was young; let me trust every one as long as I could, let me make friends right and left; only, if trouble came, and they fell away, then, if I could find consolation therein, I might remember that the same thing had happened to others also."
Geoffrey was staring absently into the fire; his cigarette had gone out, and his whisky was untasted.
"By Gad!" he said. "Poor old beggar!"
And Harry, knowing that the British youth does not express sympathy in verbose paragraphs, or show his emotion by ejaculatory cries, was satisfied that the story had touched his friend.
Day by day and week by week Harry moved more at his ease in the world of people of whom hitherto he had known so little. The wall of the castle which he had erected round himself, compacted of his own diffidence and a certain hauteur of disposition, fell like the fortifications of Jericho at the blast of the trumpet, and it was a young man, pleasant in body and mind, pleased with little, but much anxious to please, that came forth. His dinner invitation to some new house would be speedily indorsed by the greater intimacy of a Saturday till Monday, and the days were few on which he sat down to a cover for one in Cavendish Square.
