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Title: Colin

Author: E. F. Benson

Release date: November 28, 2019 [eBook #60802]
                Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLIN ***

                                 COLIN

                             E. F. BENSON




                           _By_ E. F. BENSON


                         COLIN
                         MISS MAPP
                         PETER
                         LOVERS AND FRIENDS
                         DODO WONDERS--
                         “QUEEN LUCIA”
                         ROBIN LINNET
                         ACROSS THE STREAM
                         UP AND DOWN
                         AN AUTUMN SOWING
                         THE TORTOISE
                         DAVID BLAIZE
                         DAVID BLAIZE AND THE BLUE DOOR
                         MICHAEL
                         THE OAKLEYITES
                         ARUNDEL
                         OUR FAMILY AFFAIRS


                  _New York: George H. Doran Company_




                                 COLIN

                                  BY
                             E. F. BENSON

                   NEW [Illustration: colophon] YORK

                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




                           COPYRIGHT, 1923,

                      BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


                            [Illustration]


                               COLIN. II

                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                 COLIN

_Colin_ comprises the first part only of this romance; it will be
completed in a second volume which will tell of the final fading of the
Legend with which the story opens.

                                                               E. F. B.




                                 COLIN




                              _Book One_




CHAPTER I


Neither superstition nor spiritual aspiration signified anything
particular to the Staniers, and for many generations now they had been
accustomed to regard their rather sinister family legend with cynical
complacency. Age had stolen the strength from it, as from some
long-cellared wine, and in the Victorian era they would, to take their
collective voice, have denied that, either drunk or sober, they believed
it. But it was vaguely pleasant to have so antique a guarantee that they
would be so sumptuously looked after in this world, while as for the
next....

The legend dated from the time of Elizabeth, and was closely connected
with the rise of the family into the pre-eminent splendour which it had
enjoyed ever since. The Queen, in one of her regal journeys through her
realm (during which she slept in so incredible a number of beds),
visited the affiliated Cinque Port of Rye, and, after taking dinner with
the mayor, was riding down one of the steep, cobbled ways when her horse
stumbled and came down on its knees.

She would certainly have had a cruel fall if a young man had not sprung
forward from the crowd and caught her before her Grace’s head was dashed
against the stones. He set her on her feet, swiftly releasing the
virgin’s bosom from his rough embrace, and, kneeling, kissed the hem of
her skirt.

The Queen bade him rise, and, as she looked at him, made some
Elizabethan ejaculation of appreciative amazement--a “zounds,” or a
“gadzooks,” or something.

There stood Colin Stanier in the full blossom of his twenty summers,
ruddy as David and blue-eyed as the sea. His cap had fallen off, and he
must needs toss back his head to free his face from the tumble of his
yellow hair. His athletic effort to save her Grace had given him a
moment’s quickened breath, and his parted lips showed the double circle
of his white teeth.

But, most of all, did his eyes capture the fancy of his Sovereign; they
looked at her, so she thought, with the due appreciation of her majesty,
but in their humility there was mingled something both gay and bold, and
she loved that any man, young or old, high or humble, should look at her
thus.

She spoke a word of thanks, and bade him wait on her next day at the
Manor of Brede, where she was to lie that night. Then, motioning her
courtiers aside with a testy gesture, she asked him a question or two
while a fresh horse was being caparisoned and brought for her, and
allowed none other but Colin to help her to mount....

It was thought to be significant that at supper that night the virgin
sighed, and made her famous remark to my Lord of Essex that she wished
sometimes that she was a milk-maid.

Colin Stanier’s father was a man of some small substance, owning a
little juicy land that was fine grazing for cattle, and the boy worked
on the farm. He had some strange, magical power over the beasts; a
savage dog would slaver and fawn on him, a vicious horse sheathed its
violence at his touch, and, in especial at this season of lambing-time,
he wrought wonders of midwifery on the ewes and of nursing on the lambs.
This authoritative deftness sprang from no kindly love of animals;
cleverness and contempt, with a dash of pity, was all he worked with,
and this evening, after the Queen had passed on, it was reluctantly
enough that he went down to the low-lying fields where his father’s
sheep were in pregnancy. The old man himself, as Colin ascertained, had
taken the excuse of her Grace’s visit to get more than usually
intoxicated, and the boy guessed that he himself would be alone half the
night with his lantern and his ministries among the ewes.

So, indeed, it proved, and the moon had sunk an hour after midnight,
when he entered the shed in the lambing-field to take his bite of supper
and get a few hours’ sleep. He crunched his crusty bread and bacon in
his strong teeth, he had a draught of beer, and, wrapping himself in his
cloak, lay down. He believed (on the evidence of his memoirs) that he
then went to sleep.

Up to this point the story is likely enough; a pedant might unsniffingly
accept it. But then there occurred (or is said to have occurred) the
event which forms the basis of the Stanier legend, and it will certainly
be rejected, in spite of a certain scrap of parchment still extant and
of the three centuries of sequel, by all sensible and twentieth-century
minds.

For, according to the legend, Colin woke and found himself no longer
alone in the shed; there was standing by him a finely-dressed fellow who
smiled on him. It was still as dark as the pit outside--no faintest ray
of approaching dawn yet streaked the eastern sky, yet for all that Colin
could see his inexplicable visitor quite plainly.

The stranger briefly introduced himself as his Satanic majesty, and,
according to his usual pleasant custom, offered the boy all that he
could wish for in life--health and beauty (and, indeed, these were his
already) and wealth, honour, and affluence, which at present were sadly
lacking--on the sole condition that at his death his soul was to belong
to his benefactor. The bargain--this was the unusual feature in the
Stanier legend--was to hold good for all his direct descendants who,
unless they definitely renounced the contract on their own behalf, would
be partakers in these benefits and debtors in the other small matter.

For his part, Colin had no sort of hesitation in accepting so tempting
an offer, and Satan thereupon produced for his perusal (he was able to
read) a slip of parchment on which the conditions were firmly and
plainly stated. A scratch with his knife on the forearm supplied the ink
for the signature, and Satan provided him with a pen. He was bidden to
keep the document as a guarantee of the good faith of his bargainer; the
red cloak flashed for a moment in front of his eyes, dazzling him, and
he staggered and fell back on the heap of straw from which he had just
risen.

The darkness was thick and impenetrable round him, but at the moment a
distant flash of lightning blinked in through the open door, showing him
that the shed was empty again. Outside, save for the drowsy answer of
the thunder, all was quiet, but in his hand certainly was a slip of
parchment.

The same, so runs the legend, is reproduced in the magnificent Holbein
of the young man which hangs now above the mantelpiece in the hall of
Stanier. Colin Stanier, first Earl of Yardley, looking hardly older than
he did on this momentous night, stands there in Garter robes with this
little document in his hand. The original parchment, so the loquacious
housekeeper points out to the visitors who to-day go over the house on
the afternoons when it is open to the public, is let into the frame of
the same portrait.

Certainly there is such a piece of parchment there, just below the title
of the picture, but the ink has so faded that it is impossible to
decipher more than a word or two of it. The word “diabolus” must be more
conjectured than seen, and the ingenious profess to decipher the words
“quodcunque divitiarum, pulchritud” ... so that it would seem that Colin
the shepherd-boy, if he signed it, must have perused and understood
Latin.

This in itself is so excessively improbable that the whole business may
be discredited from first to last. But there is no doubt whatever that
Colin Stanier did some time sign a Latin document (for his name in ink,
now brown, is perfectly legible) which has perished in the corroding
years, whether he understood it or not, and there seems no doubt about
the date in the bottom left-hand corner....

The constructive reader will by this time have got ready his
interpretation about the whole cock-and-bull story, and a very sensible
one it is. The legend is surely what mythologists call ætiological.
There was--he can see it--an old strip of parchment signed by Colin
Stanier, and this, in view of the incredible prosperity of the family,
coupled with the almost incredible history of their dark deeds, would be
quite sufficient to give rise to the legend. In mediæval times,
apparently, such Satanic bargains were, if not common, at any rate not
unknown, and the legend was, no doubt, invented in order to account for
these phenomena, instead of being responsible for them.

Of legendary significance, too, must be the story of Philip Stanier,
third Earl, who is said to have renounced his part in the bargain, and
thereupon fell from one misfortune into another, was branded with an
incurable and disfiguring disease, and met his death on the dagger of an
injured woman. Ronald Stanier, a nephew of the above, was another such
recusant; he married a shrew, lost a fortune in the South Sea bubble,
and had a singularly inglorious career.

But such instances as these (in all the long history there are no more
of them, until credence in the legend faded altogether), even if we
could rely on their authenticity, would only seem to prove that those
who renounced the devil and all his works necessarily met with
misfortune in this life, which is happily not the case, and thus they
tend to disprove rather than confirm the whole affair.

Finally, when we come to more modern times, and examine the records of
the Stanier family from, let us say, the advent of the Hanoverian
dynasty, though their splendour and distinction is ever a crescent, not
a waning moon, there can be no reason to assign a diabolical origin to
such prosperity. There were black sheep among them, of course, but when
will you not find, in records so public as theirs, dark shadows thrown
by the searchlight of history? Bargains with the powers of hell, in any
case, belong to the romantic dusk of the Middle Ages, and cannot find
any serious place in modern chronicles.

       *       *       *       *       *

But to quit these quagmires of superstition for the warranted and
scarcely less fascinating solidity of fact, Colin Stanier next day
obediently craved audience with the Queen at the Manor of Brede. By a
stroke of intuition which does much to account for his prosperous
fortune, he did not make himself _endimanché_, but, with his shepherd’s
crook in his hand and a new-born lamb in his bosom, he presented himself
at the house where the Queen lodged. He would have been contemptuously
turned back with buffets by the halberdiers and yeomen who guarded the
entrance, but the mention of his name sufficed to admit him with a
reluctant alacrity.

He wore but the breeches and jerkin in which he pursued his work among
the beasts, his shapely legs were bare from knee to ankle, and as he
entered the porch, he kicked off the shoes in which he had walked from
Rye. His crook he insisted on retaining, and the lamb which, obedient to
the spell that he exercised over young living things, lay quiet in his
arms.

Some fussy Controller of the Queen’s household would have ejected him
and chanced the consequences, but, said Colin very quietly, “It is by
her Majesty’s orders that I present myself, and whether you buffet me or
not, prithee tell the Queen’s Grace that I am here.”

There was something surprising in the dignity of the boy; and in the
sweet-toned, clear-cut speech, so unlike the utterance of the mumbling
rustic, and the Controller, bidding him wait where he was, shuffled
upstairs, and came back with extraordinary expedition.

“The Queen’s Grace awaits you, Mr.----”

“Stanier,” said Colin.

“Mr. Stanier. But your crook, your lamb----”

“Let us do her Majesty’s bidding,” said Colin.

He was ushered into the long hall of Brede Manor, and the Controller,
having thrown the door open, slipped away with an alertness that
suggested that his presence was desirable there no more, and left the
boy, barefooted, clasping his lamb, with a rush-strewn floor to
traverse. There was a table down the centre of it, littered with papers,
and hemmed in with chairs that suggested that their occupants had
hurriedly vacated them. At the end was seated a small, bent figure,
conspicuous for her ruff and her red hair, and her rope of pearls, and
her eyes bright and sharp as a bird’s.

Colin, sadly pricked on the soles of his feet by the rushes, advanced
across that immeasurable distance, looking downwards on his lamb. When
he had traversed the half of it, he raised his eyes for a moment, and
saw that the Queen, still quite motionless, was steadily regarding him.
Again he bent his eyes on his lamb, and when he had come close to that
formidable figure, he fell on his knees.

“A lamb, madam,” he said, “which is the first-fruits of the spring. My
crook, which I lay at your Grace’s feet, and myself, who am not worthy
to lie there.”

Again Colin raised his eyes, and the wretch put into them all the gaiety
and boldness which he gave to the wenches on the farm. Then he dropped
them again, and with his whole stake on the table, waited, gambler as he
was, for the arbitrament.

“Look at me, Colin Stanier,” said the Queen.

Colin looked. There was the tiny wrinkled face, the high eyebrows, the
thin-lipped mouth disclosing the discoloured teeth.

“Madam!” he said.

“Well, what next?” said Elizabeth impatiently.

“My body and soul, madam,” said Colin, and once more he put into his
eyes and his eager mouth that semblance of desire which had made
Mistress Moffat, the wife of the mayor, box his ears with a blow that
was more of a caress.

The Queen felt precisely the same as Mistress Moffat, and drew her hand
down over his smooth chin. “And it is your wish to be my shepherd-boy,
Colin?” she asked. “You desire to be my page?”

“I am sick with desire,” said Colin.

“I appoint you,” she said. “I greet and salute you, Colin Stanier.”

She bent towards him, and neither saint nor devil could have inspired
Colin better at that moment. He kissed her (after all, he had been
offered the greeting) fairly and squarely on her withered cheek, and
then, without pause, kissed the hem of her embroidered gown. He had done
right, just absolutely right.

“You bold dog!” said the Queen. “Stand up.”

Colin stood up, with his arms close by his side, as if at attention in
all his shapeliness and beauty, and the Queen clapped her hands.

The side door opened disclosing halberdiers, and through the door by
which Colin had entered came the Controller.

“Colin Stanier is my page,” she said, “and of my household. Summon my
lords again; we have not finished with our Spanish business. The lamb--I
will eat that lamb, and none other, at the feast of Easter.”

Within the week Colin was established in attendance on the Queen, and
the daring felicity which had marked his first dealings with her never
failed nor faltered. His radiant youth, the gaiety of his boyish
spirits, the unfailing tact of his flattery, his roguish innocence, the
fine innate breeding of the yeoman-stock, which is the best blood in
England, wove a spell that seemed to defy the usual fickleness of her
favouritism. Certainly he had wisdom as far beyond his years as it was
beyond his upbringing, and wisdom coming like pure water from the curves
of that beautiful young mouth, made him frankly irresistible to the
fiery and shrewd old woman.

From being her page he was speedily advanced to the post of confidential
secretary, and queer it was to see the boy seated by her side at some
state council while she rated and stormed at her lords for giving her
some diplomatic advice which her flame-like spirit deemed spiritless.
Then, in mid-tirade, she would stop, tweak her secretary by his rosy
ear, and say, “Eh, Colin, am I not in the right of it?”

Very often she was not, and then Colin would so deftly insinuate further
considerations, prefacing them by, “As your Grace and Majesty so wisely
has told us” (when her Grace and Majesty had told them precisely the
opposite) that Elizabeth would begin to imagine that she had thought of
these prudent things herself.

The Court in general followed the example of their royal mistress, and
had not Colin’s nature, below its gaiety and laughter, been made of some
very stern stuff, he must surely have degenerated into a spoilt, vain
child, before ever he came to his full manhood. Men and women alike were
victims of that sunny charm; to be with him made the heart sing, and
none could grudge that a boy on whom God had showered every grace of
mind and body, should find the mere tawdry decorations of riches and
honour his natural heritage.

Then, too, there was this to consider: the Queen’s fickle and violent
temper might topple down one whom she had visited but yesterday with her
highest favours, and none but Colin could induce her to restore the
light she had withdrawn. If you wanted a boon granted, or even a
vengeance taken, there was no such sure road to its accomplishment as to
secure Colin’s advocacy, no path that led so straight to failure as to
set the boy against you. For such services it was but reasonable that
some token of gratitude should be conferred on him by the suppliant,
some graceful acknowledgment which, in our harsh modern way, we should
now term “commission,” and Colin’s commissions, thus honestly earned,
soon amounted to a very pretty figure. Whether he augmented them or not
by less laudable methods, by threats or what we call by that ugly word
“blackmail,” is a different matter, and need not be gone into.

Yet, surrounded as he was by all that might have been expected to turn a
boy’s head, Colin remained singularly well-balanced, and whatever tales
might be told about his virtue, the most censorious could find no fault
with his prudence. The Queen created him at the age of twenty-five
Knight of the Garter and Earl of Yardley, a title which his descendants
hold to this day, and presented him with the Manor of Yardley in
Buckinghamshire, and the monastic lands of Tillingham on the hills above
the Romney Marsh. He incorporated the fine dwelling-house of the evicted
abbot into the great and glorious mansion of Stanier, the monks’
quarters he demolished altogether, and the abbey church became the
parish church of Tillingham for worship, and the chapel and
burying-place of the Staniers for pride.

But, though the Queen told him once and again that it was time her Colin
took a wife, he protested that while her light was shed on him not Venus
herself could kindle desire in his heart. This was the only instance in
which he disobeyed Gloriana’s wishes, but Gloriana willingly pardoned
his obduracy, and rewarded it with substantial benefits.

On her death, which occurred when he was thirty, he made a very suitable
match with the heiress of Sir John Reeves, who brought him, in addition
to a magnificent dowry, the considerable acreage which to-day is part of
the London estate of the Staniers. He retired from court-life, and
divided the year between Stanier and London, busy with the embellishment
of his houses, into which he poured those treasures of art which now
glorify them.

He was, too, as the glades and terraces of Stanier testify, a gardener
on a notable scale, and his passion in this direction led him to evict
his father from the farm where Colin’s own boyhood was passed, which lay
on the level land below the hill, in order to make there the long,
ornamental water which is one of the most agreeable features of the
place.

His father by this time was an old man of uncouth and intemperate
habits, and it could not perhaps be expected that the young earl should
cherish his declining years with any very personal tenderness. But he
established him in a decent dwelling, gave him an adequate maintenance
with a permission to draw on the brewery for unlimited beer, and made
only the one stipulation that his father should never attempt to gain
access to him. The old man put so liberal an interpretation on his
beer-rights, that he did not enjoy them very long.

This taint of hardness in Colin’s character was no new feature. He had
left the home of his boyhood without regret or any subsequent affection
of remembrance: he had made his pleasurable life at Court a profitable
affair, whereas others had spent their salaries and fortunes in
maintaining their suitable magnificence, and, like the great Marlborough
a few generations later, he had allowed infatuated women to pay pretty
handsomely for the privilege of adoring him, and the inhumanities, such
as his eviction of his father, with which his married life was
garlanded, was no more than the reasonable development of earlier
tendencies. Always a great stickler for the majesty of the law, he
caused certain sheep-stealers on the edge of his property to be hanged
for their misdeeds, and why should not the lord of Tillingham have
bought their little properties from their widows at a more than
reasonable price?

Though his own infidelities were notorious, the settlements of his
marriage were secure enough, and when he had already begotten two sons
of the hapless daughter of Sir John Reeves, he invoked the aid of the
law to enable him to put her away and renew his vow of love and honour
to the heiress of my Lord Middlesex. She proved to be a barren crone,
and perhaps had no opportunity of proving her fruitfulness, but she was
so infatuated with him that by the settlements she gave him
unconditionally the Broughton property which so conveniently adjoined
his own.

       *       *       *       *       *

To go back again for a moment to that obscure matter of the Stanier
legend, it appears that on the day on which each of his sons came of
age, their father made them acquainted with the agreement he had made on
behalf of himself and the heirs of his body, and shewed them the signed
parchment. They had, so he pointed out to them, the free choice of
dissociating themselves from that bargain, and of taking the chance of
material prosperity here and of salvation hereafter; he enjoined on them
also the duty of transmitting the legend to their children in the manner
and at the time that it had been made known to themselves.

Neither Ronald, the elder, nor his brother Philip felt the least qualm
about the future, but they both had a very considerable appreciation of
the present, and on each occasion the parchment was restored to its
strong box with no loss of validity as regards the next generation.
Ronald soon afterwards made one of those prudent marriages for which for
generations the Staniers have been famous; Philip, on the other hand,
who presently made for himself at the Court a position hardly less
brilliant than his father’s had been, found celibacy, with its
accompanying consolations, good enough for him.

This is too polite an age to speak of his infamies and his amazing
debauches, but his father was never tired of hearing about them, and
used to hang on the boy’s tales when he got leave of absence from the
Court to spend a week at home. Ronald was but a prude in comparison with
the other two, protesting at Philip’s more atrocious experiences. His
notion, so he drunkenly tried to explain himself (for his grandfather’s
pleasures made strong appeal to him) was that there were things that no
gentleman would do, whatever backing he had, and with a curious
superstitious timidity he similarly refused to play dice on the
Communion table in the old monastic chapel....

For full forty years after the death of the Queen, Colin, Knight of the
Garter and first Earl of Yardley, revelled at the banquet of life. All
that material prosperity could offer was his; his princely purchases,
his extravagances, his sumptuous hospitalities were powerless to check
the ever-swelling roll of his revenues; he enjoyed a perfect bodily
health, and up to the day of his death his force was unabated, his eye
undimmed, and the gold in his hair untouched by a single thread of
silver.

As the years went on, his attachment to this stately house of Stanier
grew to a passion, and however little credence we may give to the
legend, it is certain that his descendants inherit from Colin Stanier
that devotion to the place where they were born. No Stanier, so it is
said, is ever completely happy away from the great house that crowns the
hill above the Romney Marsh; it is to them a shrine, a Mecca, a golden
Jerusalem, the home of their hearts, and all the fairest of foreign
lands, the most sunny seas, the most sumptuous palaces are but
wildernesses or hovels in comparison with their home. To such an extent
was this true of Colin, first Earl, that for the last ten years of his
life he scarcely left the place for a night.

But though his bodily health remained ever serene and youthful, and
youth’s excesses, continued into old age, left him unwrinkled of skin
and vigorous in desire, there grew on him during the last year of his
life a malady neither of body nor of mind, but of the very spirit and
essence of his being. The compact that he believed himself to have made
had been fully and honestly observed by the other high contracting
party, and as the time drew near that his own share in the bargain must
be exacted from him, his spirit, we must suppose, conscious that the
imprint of the divine was so shortly to be surcharged with the stamp and
superscription of hell, was filled with some remorseful terror, that in
itself was a foretaste of damnation.

He ate, he drank, he slept, he rioted, he brought to Stanier yet more
treasures of exquisite art--Italian pictures, bronzes of Greek
workmanship, Spanish lace, torn, perhaps, from the edges of
altar-cloths, intaglios, Persian Pottery, and Ming porcelain from China.
His passion for beauty, which had all his life been a torch to him, did
not fail him, nor yet the wit and rapier-play of tongue, nor yet the
scandalous chronicles of Philip. But in the midst of beauty or
debauchery, there would come to his mind with such withering of the
spirit as befel Belshazzar when the writing was traced on the wall, the
knowledge of his approaching doom.

As if to attempt to turn it aside or soften the inexorable fate, he gave
himself to deeds of belated pity and charitableness. He endowed an
almshouse in Rye; he erected a fine tomb over his father’s grave; he
attended daily service in the church which he had desecrated with his
dice-throwings. And all the time his spirit told him that it was too
late, he had made his bed and must lie on it: for he turned to the God
whom he had renounced neither in love nor in sincerity, nor in fear of
Him, but in terror of his true master.

But when he tried to pray his mind could invoke no holy images, but was
decked with pageants of debauchery, and if he formed his lips to pious
words there dropped from them a stream of obscenities and blasphemy. At
any moment the terror would lay its hand on his spirit, affecting
neither body nor mind, but addressing itself solely to the immortal and
deathless part of him. It was in vain that he attempted to assure
himself, too, that in the ordering of the world neither God nor devil
has a share, for even the atheism in which he had lived deserted him as
the hour of his death drew near.

The day of his seventieth birthday arrived: the house was full of
guests, and in honour of the occasion there was a feast for the tenants
of the estate in the great hall, while his own friends, making a
company of some fifty, sat at the high table on the dais. All day
distant thunder had muttered obscurely among the hills, and by the time
that the lights were lit in the hall, and the drinking deep, a heavy
pall had overspread the sky.

Lord Yardley was in fine spirits that night. For years he had had a
presentiment that he would do no more than reach the exact span
appointed for the life of men, and would die on his seventieth birthday,
and here was the day as good as over, and if that presentiment proved to
be unfulfilled he felt that he would face with a stouter scepticism the
other terror. He had just risen from his place to reply to the toast of
the evening, and stood, tall and comely, the figure of a man still in
the prime of life, facing his friends and dependents. Then, even while
he opened his lips to speak, the smile was struck from his face, and
instead of speech there issued from his mouth one wild cry of terror.

“No, no!” he screamed, and with his arm pushed out in front of him as if
to defend himself against some invisible presence, he fell forward
across the table.

At that moment the hall leaped into blinding light, and an appalling
riot of thunder answered. Some said that he had been struck and, indeed,
on his forehead there was a small black mark as of burning, but those
nearest felt no shock, and were confident that the stroke which had
fallen on him preceded the flash and the thunder: he had crashed forward
after that cry and that gesture of terror, before even the lightning
descended.... And Ronald reigned in his stead.

       *       *       *       *       *

By the patent of nobility granted to Colin Stanier by Elizabeth, the
estates and title descended not through heirs male only, but through the
female line. If an Earl of Yardley died leaving only female issue, the
girl became Countess of Yardley in her own right, to the exclusion of
sons begotten by her father’s or grandfather’s younger brother. It was
perhaps characteristic of the Queen to frame the charter thus--she had
done so of her own invention and devising--for thus she gratified her
own sense of the capability of her sex, and also felt some phantom of
posthumous delight in securing, as far as she could, that the honours
that she had showered on her favourite should descend in direct line.
But for many generations her foresight and precaution seemed needless,
since each holder of the title bore sons only, and the line was straight
as a larch, from father to son. By some strange arbitrament of fate it
so happened that younger sons (following the unchaste example of Philip)
died in legal celibacy, or, if they married, were childless, or became
so in that generation or the next. Thus the family is unique in having
to this day no collateral branches, and in this the fancifully disposed
may be prone to see a certain diabolical observance of the original
bond. No dowries for daughters had to be provided, and such portions as
were made for younger sons soon rolled back again into the sea of family
affluence.

The purchase of land formed the main outlet for the flood of
ever-increasing revenue, and as surely as Lord Yardley entered upon his
new acreages, mineral wealth would be discovered on the freshly-acquired
property (as was the case in the Cornish farms, where the Stanier lode
of tin was found), or if when, at a later date, as in a mere freak, he
purchased barren fields fit only for grazing, by the sea, it was not
long before the Prince Regent found that the Sussex coast enjoyed a
bracing and salubrious air, and lo! all the grazing-lands of Lord
Stanier became building sites. Whatever they touched turned to gold, and
that to no anæmic hands incapable of enjoying the lusts and splendours
of life. Honours fell on them thick as autumn leaves: each holder of the
title in turn has won the Garter, and never has the Garter been bestowed
on them without solid merit to carry it. Three have been Prime
Ministers, further three ambassadors to foreign countries on difficult
and delicate businesses; in the Napoleonic wars there was a great
general.... But all these records are public property.

Less known, perhaps, is the fact that no Lord Yardley has ever yet died
in his bed or received the religious consolation that would fit him to
go forth undismayed on his last dark, solitary journey, and though each
in turn (with the sad exception of Philip, third Earl, and his nephew,
the recusant Ronald) has lived to the comfortable age of seventy, swift
death, sometimes with violence, has been the manner of his exit. Colin,
fourth Earl, committed suicide under circumstances which made it
creditable that he should do so; otherwise strange seizures,
accompanied, it would appear, by some inexplicable terror, has been the
manner of the demise.

And what, in this brief history of their annals, can be said of the
legend, except that from being a terrible truth to Colin, first Earl, it
has faded even as has faded the ink which records that mythical
bargaining? It is more than a hundred years ago now that the Lord
Yardley of the day caused the parchment to be inserted in the frame of
his infamous ancestor, where it can be seen now every Thursday afternoon
from three to five, when Stanier is open, without fee, to decently-clad
visitors, and the very fact that Lord Yardley (_temp._ George III.)
should have displayed it as a curiosity, is the measure of the
incredulity with which those most closely concerned regarded it. A man
would not put up for all the world to see the warrant that he should
burn eternally in the fires of hell if he viewed it with the slightest
tremor of misgiving. It was blasphemous even to suppose that worldly
prosperity (as said the excellent parson at Stanier who always dined at
the house on Sunday evening and slept it off on Monday morning) was
anything other than the mark of divine favour, and many texts from the
Psalmist could be produced in support of his view. Thus fortified by
port and professional advice, Lord Yardley decreed the insertion of the
document into the frame that held the picture of that ancestor of his
whose signature it bore, and gave a remarkably generous subscription to
the organ-fund. Faded as was the writing then, it has faded into greater
indecipherability since, and with it any remnant of faith in its
validity.

Yet hardly less curious to the psychologist is the strange nature of
these Staniers. Decked as they are with the embellishment of
distinction, of breeding, and beauty, they have always seemed to their
contemporaries to be lacking in some quality, hard to define but easy to
appreciate or, in their case, to miss. A tale of trouble will very
likely win from them some solid alleviation, but their generosity, you
would find, gave always the impression of being made not out of love or
out of sympathy, but out of contempt.

Their charm--and God knows how many have fallen victims to it--has been
and is that of some cold brilliance, that attracts even as the beam of a
lighthouse attracts the migrating birds who dash themselves to pieces
against the glass that shields it; it can scarcely be said to be the
fault of the light that the silly feathered things broke themselves
against its transparent, impenetrable armour. It hardly invited: it only
shone on business which did not concern the birds, so there was no
definite design of attraction or cruelty in its beams, only of
brilliance and indifference. That is the habit of light; such, too, are
the habits of birds; the light even might be supposed by sentimentalists
faintly to regret the shattered wing and the brightness of the drowned
plumage.

But, so it is popularly supposed, it is quite easy, though not very
prudent, to arouse unfavourable emotion in a Stanier; you have but to
vex him or run counter to his wish, and you will very soon find yourself
on the target of a remorseless and vindictive hate. No ray of pity, so
it is said, softens the hardness of that frosty intensity; no
contrition, when once it has been aroused, will thaw it. Forgiveness is
a word quite foreign to their vocabulary, and its nearest equivalent is
a contemptuous indifference. Gratitude, in the same way, figures as an
obsolete term in the language of their emotions. They neither feel it
nor expect it: it has no currency. Whatever you may be privileged to do
for a Stanier, he takes as a mite in the endowment which the world has
always, since the days of our Elizabethan Colin, poured into their
treasuries, while if he has done you a good turn, he has done so as he
would chuck a picked bone to a hungry dog: the proper course for the dog
is to snatch it up and retire into its corner to mumble it.

It would be strange, then, if, being without ruth or love, a Stanier
could bestow or aspire to friendship with man or woman, and, indeed,
such an anomaly has never occurred. But, then, it must be remembered
that Staniers, as far as we can find out from old letters and diaries
and mere historical documents, never wanted friendship nor, indeed,
comprehended it. Their beauty and their charm made easy for them the
creation of such relationships as they desired, the assuaging of such
thirst as was theirs, after which the sucked rind could be thrown away;
and though through all their generations they have practised those
superb hospitalities which find so apt a setting at Stanier, it is
rather as gods snuffing up the incense of their worshippers than as
entertaining their friends that they fill the great house with all who
are noblest by birth or distinction.

George IV., for instance, when Prince Regent, stayed there, it may be
remembered, for nearly a fortnight, having been asked for three days,
during which time the entire House of Lords with their wives spent in
noble sections two nights at Stanier, as well as many much younger and
sprightlier little personages just as famous in the proper quarter. The
entire opera from Drury Lane diverted their evening one night, baccarat
(or its equivalent) beguiled another, on yet another the Prince could
not be found....

       *       *       *       *       *

Not so fortunate, perhaps, save in being the mistresses of all this
splendour, and invariably the mothers of handsome sons, have been the
successive wives in this illustrious line. For with whatever natural
gaiety, with whatever high and independent spirit these ladies married
the sons of the house, they seemed always to have undergone some gloomy
and mysterious transformation. It was as if they were ground in a mill,
and ground exceeding small, and as if the resulting powder of grain was
mixed and kneaded and baked into the Stanier loaf.

Especially was this the case with her who married the young Lord Stanier
of the day; long before she succeeded to her full honours she had been
crushed into the iron mould designed for the Countesses of Yardley. In
public, dignity and stateliness and fine manner would distinguish her,
but below these desirable insignia of her station, her character and
individuality seemed to have been reduced to pulp, to have been frozen
to death, to have been pounded and brayed in some soul-shattering
mortar. Perhaps when first as a bride she entered through the glass
doors which were only opened when the eldest son brought home his wife,
or when there was welcomed at Stanier some reigning monarch, her heart
would be all afire with love and virgin longing for him with whom she
passed through those fatal portals, but before the honeymoon was over
this process that tamed and stifled and paralysed would have begun its
deadly work.

For the eldest son and his wife there was reserved a floor in one of the
wings of the house; they had no other establishment in the country, and
here, when not in London, the family dwelt in patriarchal fashion. When
no guests were present, the heir-apparent and his wife breakfasted and
lunched in the privacy of their wing, if so they chose; they had their
own horses, their own household of servants, but every evening, when the
warning bell for dinner sounded, the major-domo came to the door of
their apartments and preceded them down to the great gallery where, with
any other sons and daughters-in-law, they awaited the entrance of Lord
Yardley and his wife. Then came the stately and almost speechless
dinner, served on gold plate, and after that a rubber of whist,
decorous and damning, until Lady Yardley retired on the stroke of ten,
and the sons joined their father in the billiard-room.

Such evenings were rare (for usually throughout the shooting season
there were guests in the house), but from them we can conjecture some
sketch of the paralysing process: this was the conduct of a family
evening in the mere superficial adventure of dining and passing a
sociable evening, and from it we can estimate something of the effect of
parallel processes applied to the thoughts and the mind and the
aspirations and the desires of a young wife. No Stanier wanted love or
gave it; what he wanted when he took his mate was that in obedience and
subjection she should give him (as she always did) a legitimate and
healthy heir. She was not a Stanier, and though she wore the family
pearls like a halter, she was only there on sufferance and of necessity,
and though her blood would beat with the true ichor in the arteries of
the next generation, she was in herself no more than the sucked
orange-rind.

The Staniers were too proud to reckon an alliance with any family on the
face of the earth as anything but an honour for the family concerned;
even when, as happened at the close of the eighteenth century, a
princess of the Hohenzollern line was married to the heir, she was
ground in the mill like any other. In her case she shared to the full in
the brutal arrogance of her own family, and had imagined that it was she
who, by this alliance, had conferred, not accepted, an honour. She had
supposed that her husband and his relations would give her the deference
due to royalty, and it took her some little time to learn her lesson,
which she appears to have mastered.

A hundred years later the Emperor William II. of Germany had a reminder
of it which caused him considerable surprise. On one of his visits to
England he deigned to pass a week-end at Stanier, and though received as
a reigning monarch with opening of the glass doors, he found that his
condescension in remembering that he was connected with the family was
not received with the rapture of humility which he had expected. He had
asked to be treated by the members of the family as Cousin Willie, and
they did so with a nonchalance that was truly amazing.

Such, in brief, was the rise of the Staniers, and such the outline of
their splendour.




CHAPTER II


By the middle of the nineteenth century the fading of the actual deed
signed by Colin Stanier had scarcely kept pace with the fading of the
faith in it: this had become the mildest of effete superstitions. About
that epoch, also, the continuity of Stanier tradition was broken, for
there was born in the direct line not only two sons but a daughter,
Hester, who, a couple of centuries ago, would probably have been
regarded as a changeling, and met an early fate as such. She was as
lovely as the dawn, and had to the full, with every feminine grace
added, a double portion of the Stanier charm, but in her disposition no
faintest trace of traditional inheritance could be found; instead of
their inhuman arrogance, their icy self-sufficiency, she was endowed
with a gaiety and a rollicking gutter-snipe enjoyment of existence,
which laughed to scorn the dignity of birth.

Being of the inferior sex, her father decreed that she should be brought
up in the image of the tradition which ground so small the women who had
married into the family; she must become, like her own mother, aloof and
calm and infinitely conscious of her position. But neither precept nor
example had the smallest effect on her: for dignity, she had
boisterousness; for calm, buoyant, irrepressible spirits; and for
self-control, a marked tendency to allure and kindle the
susceptibilities of the other sex, were he peer or ploughboy.

Alone, too, of her race, she had no spark of that passionate affection
for her home that was one of the most salient characteristics of the
others.

She gave an instance of this defect when, at the age of fifteen, she ran
away from Stanier half-way through August, while the family were in
residence after the season in London, being unable to stand the thought
of that deadly and awful stateliness which would last without break till
January, when the assembling of the Houses of Parliament would take them
all back to the metropolis which she loved with extraordinary fervour.
Part of the way she went in a train, part of the way she rode, and
eventually arrived back at the huge house in St. James’s Square, now
empty and sheeted, and persuaded the caretaker, who had been her nurse
and adored her with unique devotion, to take her in and send no news to
Stanier of her arrival.

“Darling Cooper,” she said, with her arms round the old woman’s neck and
her delicious face bestowing kisses on her, “unless you promise to say
nothing about my coming here, I shall leave the house and get really
lost. They say a healthy girl can always get a living.”

“Eh, my dear,” said Cooper, much shocked, “what are you saying?”

Hester’s look of seraphic ignorance that she had said anything unusual
reassured Cooper.

“What am I saying?” asked Hester. “I’m just saying what I shall do. I
shall buy a monkey and a barrel-organ and dress like a gipsy and tell
fortunes. But I won’t go back to that awful Stanier.”

“But it’s your papa’s house,” said Cooper. “Young ladies have to live
with their families till they are married.”

“This one won’t,” said Hester. “And I believe it’s true, Cooper, that we
own it through the power of the devil. It’s a dreadful place: there’s a
blight on it. Grandmamma was turned to stone there, and mamma has been
turned to stone, and they’re trying to turn me to stone.”

Poor Cooper was in a fair quandary; she knew that Hester was perfectly
capable of rushing out of the house unless she gave her the desired
promise, and then with what face would she encounter Lord Yardley, how
stammer forth the miserable confession that Hester had been here? Not
less impossible to contemplate was the housing of this entrancing imp,
and keeping to herself the secret of Hester’s whereabouts. Even more
impossible was the third count of giving Hester the promise, and then
breaking it by sending a clandestine communication to her mother, for
that would imply the loss of Hester’s trust in her, and she could not
face the idea of those eyes turned reproachfully on her as on some
treacherous foe.

She hesitated, and the artful Hester noted her advantage.

“Darling Cooper, you wouldn’t like me to be turned to stone,” she said.
“I know I should make a lovely statue, but it’s better to be alive.”

“Eh, my dear, be a good girl and go back to Stanier,” pleaded Cooper.
“Think of your mamma and the anxiety she’s in about you.”

Hester made “a face.” “It’s silly to say that,” she said. “Mamma
anxious, indeed! Mamma couldn’t be anxious: she’s dead inside.”

Cooper felt she could not argue the point with any conviction, for she
was entirely of Hester’s opinion.

“And I’ve had no tea, Cooper,” said the girl, “and I am so hungry.”

“Bless the child, but I’ll get you your tea,” said Cooper. “And then
you’ll be a good girl and let me send off a telegram....”

What Hester’s future plans really were she had not yet determined to
herself; she was still acting under the original impulse which had made
her run away. Come what might, she had found the idea of Stanier utterly
impossible that morning; the only thing that mattered was to get away.

But as Cooper bustled about with the preparations of the tea, she began
to consider what she really expected. She was quite undismayed at what
she had done, and was on that score willing to confront any stone faces
that might be-Gorgon her, but her imagination could not picture what she
was going to do. Would she live here _perdue_ for the next six months
till the family of stone brought their Pharaoh-presence into London
again? She could not imagine that. Was it to come, then, to the
threatened barrel-organ and the monkey and the telling of fortunes? Glib
and ready as had been her speech on that subject, it lacked reality when
seriously contemplated in the mirror of the future.

But if she was not proposing to live here with Cooper, or to run away
definitely--a prospect for which, at the age of fifteen, she felt
herself, now that it grimly stared her in the face, wholly unripe--there
was nothing to be done, but to-day or to-morrow, or on one of the
conceivable to-morrows, to go back again. And yet her whole nature
revolted against that.

She was sitting in the window-seat of the big hall as this dismal debate
went on in her head, but all the parties to that conference were agreed
on one thing--namely, that Cooper should not telegraph to her mother,
and that, come what might, Cooper should not be imagined to be an
accomplice. Just then she heard a step on the threshold outside, and
simultaneously the welcome jingle of a tea-tray from the opposite
direction. Hester tiptoed towards the latter of these sounds, and found
Cooper laden with good things on a tray advancing up the corridor.

“Go back to your room, Cooper,” she whispered; “there is some one at the
door. I will see who it is.”

“Eh, now, let me open the door,” said Cooper, visibly apprehensive.

“No! Go away!” whispered Hester, and remained there during imperative
peals of the bell till Cooper had vanished.

She tried, by peeping sideways out of the hall window, to arrive at the
identity of this impatient visitor, but could see nothing of him. Then,
with cold courage, she went to the front-door and opened it. She
expected something bad--her mother, perhaps, or her brothers’ tutor, or
the groom of the chambers--but she had conjectured nothing so bad as
this, for on the doorstep stood her father.

That formidable figure was not often encountered by her. In London she
practically never saw him at all; in the country she saw him but once a
day, when, with the rest of the family, she waited in the drawing-room
before dinner for his entrance with her mother. Then they all stood up,
and paired off to go in to dinner. In some remote manner Hester felt
that she had no existence for him, but that he, at close quarters, had a
terrible existence for her. Generally, he took no notice whatever of
her, but to-day she realised that she existed for him in so lively a
manner that he had come up from Stanier to get into touch with her. Such
courage as she had completely oozed out of her: she had become just a
stone out of the family quarry.

“So you’re here,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

“Yes,” said Hester.

“And do you realise what you’ve done?” he asked.

“I’ve run away,” said she.

“I don’t mean that,” said he; “that’s soon remedied. But you’ve made me
spend half the day travelling in order to find you. Now you’re going to
suffer for it. Stand up here in front of me.”

As he spoke he drew off his fine white gloves and put the big sapphire
ring that he wore into his pocket. At that Hester guessed his purpose.

“I shan’t,” she said.

He gave her so ill-omened and ugly a glance that her heart quailed. “You
will do as I tell you,” he said.

Hester felt her pulses beating small and quick. Fear perhaps accounted
for that, but more dominant than fear in her mind was the sense of her
hatred of her father. He was like a devil, one of those contorted
waterspouts on the church at home. She found herself obeying him.

“Now I am going to punish you,” he said, “for being such a nuisance to
me. By ill-luck you are my daughter, and as you don’t know how a
daughter of mine ought to behave, I am going to show you what happens
when she behaves as you have done. Your mother has often told me that
you are a wilful and vulgar child, disobedient to your governesses, and,
in a word, common. But now you have forced your commonness upon my
notice, and I’m going to make you sorry for having done so. Hold your
head up.”

He drew back his arm, and with his open hand smacked her across her
cheek; with his left hand he planted a similar and stinging blow. Four
times those white thin fingers of his blazoned themselves on her face,
and then he paused.

“Well, why don’t you cry?” he said.

“Because I don’t choose to,” said Hester.

“Put your head up again,” said he.

She stood there firm as a rock for half a dozen more of those bitter
blows, and then into his black heart there came a conviction, bitterer
than any punishment he had inflicted on her, that he was beaten. In
sheer rage at this he took her by her shoulders and shook her violently.
And then came the end, for she simply collapsed on the floor, still
untamed. Her bodily force might fail, but she flew no flag of surrender.

She came to herself again with the sense of Cooper near her. She turned
weary eyes this way and that, but saw nothing of her father.

“Oh, Cooper, has that devil gone?” she asked.

“Eh, my lady,” said Cooper, “who are you talking of? There’s no one here
but his lordship.”

Hester raised herself on her elbow and saw that awful figure standing by
the great chimneypiece. The first thought that came into her mind was
for Cooper.

“I wish to tell you that ever since I entered the house Cooper has been
saying that she must telegraph to you that I was here,” she said.

He nodded. “That’s all right then, Cooper,” he said.

Hester watched her father take the sapphire ring from his waistcoat
pocket. He put this on, and then his gloves.

“Her ladyship will stay here to-night, Cooper,” he said. “And you will
take her to the station to-morrow morning and bring her down to
Stanier.”

He did not so much as glance at Hester, and next moment the front door
had closed behind him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hester arrived back at Stanier next day after this abortive expedition,
and it was clear at once that orders had been issued that no word was to
be said to her on the subject of what she had done. She had mid-day
dinner with her governess, rode afterwards with her brothers, and as
usual stood up when her father entered the drawing-room in the evening.
The awful life had closed like a trap upon her again, rather more
tightly than before, for she was subject to a closer supervision.

But though the apparent victory was with her father, she knew (and was
somehow aware that he knew it, too) that her spirit had not yielded one
inch to him, and that he, for all his grim autocracy, was conscious, as
regards her, of imperfect mastery. If he had broken her will, so she
acutely argued, she would not now have been watched; her doings would
not, as they certainly were, have been reported to him by the governess.
That was meat and drink to her. But from being a mere grim presence in
the background he had leaped into reality, and with the whole force of
her nature, she hated him.

The substance of the Stanier legend, faint though the faith in it had
become, was, of course, well known to her, and every morning, looking
like some young sexless angel newly come to earth, she added to her very
tepid prayers the fervent and heartfelt petition that the devil would
not long delay in exacting his part of the bargain.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two years passed, and Hester became aware that there were schemes on
foot for marrying her off with the utmost possible speed. The idea of
marriage in the abstract was wholly to her mind, since then she would be
quit of the terrible life at Stanier, but in the concrete she was not
so content with her selected deliverer. This was the mild and highborn
Marquis of Blakeney, a man precisely twice her age, of plain, serious
mind and irreproachable morals. He adored her in a rapt and tongue-tied
manner, and no doubt Hester had encouraged him with those little smiles
and glances which she found it impossible not to bestow on any male
denizen of this earth, without any distinct ulterior views. But when it
became evident, by his own express declaration made with the permission
of her father, that he entertained such views, Hester wondered whether
it would be really possible to kiss that seal-like whiskered face with
any semblance of wifely enthusiasm.

Had there been any indication that her pious petition with regard to the
speedy ratification of the Stanier legend as regards her father would be
granted, she would probably have recommended the mild Marquis to take
his vows to other shrines, but her father seemed to be suffering no
inconvenience from her prayers, and she accepted the rapt and
tongue-tied devotion. Instantly all the bonds of discipline and
suppression were relaxed; even in her father’s eyes her engagement made
her something of a personage, and Hester hated him more than ever.

And then the vengeance of winged, vindictive love, more imperious than
her father, overtook and punished her, breaking her spirit, which he had
never done. At a dance given at Blakeney Castle to celebrate the
engagement, she saw young Ralph Brayton, penniless and debonair, with no
seal-face and no marquisate, and the glance of each pierced through the
heart of the other. He was the son of the family solicitor of Lord
Blakeney, and even while his father was drawing out the schedule of
munificent settlements for the bride-to-be, the bride gave him something
more munificent yet, and settled it, her heart, upon him for all
perpetuity.

She did her best to disown, if not to stifle, what had come upon her,
and had her marriage but been fixed for a month earlier than the day
appointed, she would probably have married her affianced bridegroom,
and let love hang itself in its own silken noose and chance its being
quite strangled. As it was, even while her room at Stanier was silky and
shimmering with the appurtenances of a bride, she slipped out one night
as the moon set, and joined her lover at the park gates. By dawn they
had come to London, and before evening she was safe in the holding of
her husband’s arms.

On the news reaching Lord Yardley he had a stroke from which he did not
recover for many years, though he soon regained sufficient power of
babbling speech to make it abundantly clear that he would never see
Hester again. As she was equally determined never to see him, their
wills were in complete harmony. That brutal punishment she had received
from those thin white hands two years before, followed by the bondage of
her life at home, had rendered her perfectly callous as regards him. Had
he been sorry for it, she might have shrugged her pretty shoulders and
forgotten it; for that cold pale slab of womanhood, her mother, she felt
nothing whatever.

This outrageous marriage of Hester’s, followed by her father’s stroke,
were contrary to all tradition as regards the legend, for these
calamities, indeed, looked as if one of the high contracting parties was
not fulfilling his share of the bargain, and the behaviour of Philip,
Lord Stanier, the stricken man’s eldest son, added weight to the
presumption that the luck of the Staniers (to put it at that) was on the
wane--fading, fading like the ink of the original bond. Instead of
marrying at the age of twenty or twenty-one, as his father and
forefathers had done, he remained obstinately celibate and ludicrously
decorous. In appearance he was dark, heavy of feature, jowled even in
his youth by a fleshiness of neck, and built on massive lines in place
of the slenderness of his race, though somehow, in spite of these
aberrations from the type, he yet presented an example, or, rather, a
parody, of the type. But when you came to mind, and that which lies
behind body and mind alike, that impenetrable essence of individuality,
then the professors in heredity would indeed have held up bewildered
hands of surrender. He was studious and hesitating, his mental processes
went with a tread as deliberate as his foot, and in place of that swift
eagerness of the Stanier mind, which, so to speak, threw a lasso over
the mental quarry with one swing of a lithe arm, and entangled it, poor
Philip crept on hands and knees towards it and advanced ever so
imperceptibly nearer. In the matter of mode of life the difference
between him and the type was most marked of all. Hitherto the eldest son
had married early and wisely for the sole object of the perpetuation of
the breed, and having arrived at that, pursued the ways of youth in
copious indiscretions which his wife, already tamed and paralysed, had
no will to resent. Philip, on the other hand, living in the gloom of the
house beneath the stroke and the shadow that had fallen on his father,
seemed to have missed his youth altogether. Life held for him no
bubbling draught that frothed on his lips and was forgotten; he
abstained from all the fruits of vigour and exuberance. One family
characteristic alone was his--the passionate love of his home, so that
he preferred even in these conditions to live here than find freedom
elsewhere. There he dreamed and studied, and neither love nor passion
nor intrigue came near him. He cared little for his mother; his father
he hated and feared. And yet some germ of romance, perhaps, lay dormant
but potential in his soul, for more and more he read of Italy, and of
the swift flowering of love in the South....

       *       *       *       *       *

It seemed as if the hellish bargain made three hundred years ago had
indeed become obsolete, for the weeks and months added themselves
together into a swiftly mounting total of years, while a nightmare of
eclipsed existence brooded over the great house at Stanier. Since the
stroke that had fallen on him after Hester’s runaway match, Lord Yardley
would have no guests in the house, and with the constancy of the
original Colin, would never leave the place himself. Grinning and
snarling in his bath-chair, he would be drawn up and down its long
galleries by the hour together, with his battered and petrified spouse
walking by his side, at first unable to speak with any coherence, but as
the years went on attaining to a grim ejaculatory utterance that left no
doubt as to his meaning.

Sometimes it was his whim to enter the library, and if Philip was there
he would give vent to dreadful and stuttering observations as he
clenched and unclenched the nerveless hands that seemed starving to
throttle his son’s throat. Then, tired with this outpouring of emotion,
he would doze in his chair, and wake from his doze into a paroxysm of
tremulous speechlessness. At dinner-time he would have the riband of the
Garter pinned across his knitted coat and be wheeled, with his wife
walking whitely by his side, into the gallery, where the unmarried
Philip, and his newly-married brother and his wife, stood up at his
entrance, and without recognition he would pass, jibbering, at the head
of that small and dismal procession, into the dining-room.

He grew ever thinner and more wasted in body, but such was some
consuming fire within him that he needed the sustenance of some growing
and gigantic youth. He was unable to feed himself, and his attendant
standing by him put into that open chasm of a mouth, still lined with
milk-white teeth, his monstrous portions. A couple of bites was
sufficient to prepare for the gulp, and again his mouth was ready to
receive.

Then, when the solid entertainment was over, and the women gone, there
remained the business of wine, and, sound trencherman though he was, his
capacity over this was even more remarkable. He took his port by the
tumblerful, the first of which he would drink like one thirsty for
water, and this in some awful manner momentarily restored his powers of
speech. Like the first drops before a storm, single words began dripping
from his lips, as this restoration of speech took place, his eye,
brightening with malevolence, fixed itself on Philip, and night after
night he would gather force for the same lunatic tirade.

“You sitting there,” he would say, “you, Philip, you aren’t a Stanier!
Why don’t you get a bitch to your kennel, and rear a mongrel or two? You
heavy-faced lout, you can’t breed, you can’t drink, you can do nought
but grow blear-eyed over a pack of printed rubbish. There was Hester:
she married some sort of sweeper, and barren she is at that. I take
blame to myself there: if only I had smacked her face a dozen times
instead of once, I’d have tamed her: she would have come to heel. And
the third of you, Ronald there, with your soapy-faced slut of a wife,
you’d be more in your place behind a draper’s counter than here at
Stanier. And they tell me that there’s no news yet that you’re going to
give an heir to the place. Heir, good God....”

Ronald had less patience than his brother. He would have drunk pretty
stiffly by now, and he would bang the table and make the glasses jingle.

“Now you keep a civil tongue in your head, father,” he said, “and I’ll
do the same for you. A pretty figure you cut with your Garter and your
costermonger talk. It’s your own nest you’re fouling, and you’ve fouled
it well. There was never yet a Stanier till you who took to a bath-chair
and a bib and a man to feed him when he couldn’t find the way to his own
mouth.”

“Here, steady, Ronald!” Philip would say.

“I’m steadier than that palsy-stricken jelly there,” said Ronald. “If he
leaves me alone I leave him alone: it isn’t I who begin. But if you or
he think I’m going to sit here and listen to his gutter-talk, you’re in
error.”

He left his seat with a final reversal of the decanter and banged out of
the room.

Then, as likely as not, the old man would begin to whimper. Though,
apparently, he did all he could to make residence at Stanier impossible
for his sons, he seemed above all to fear that he would succeed in doing
so.

“Your brother gets so easily angered with me,” he would say. “I’m sure I
said nothing to him that a loving father shouldn’t. Go after him, Phil,
and ask him to come back and drink a friendly glass with his poor
father.”

“I think you had better let him be, sir,” said Philip. “He didn’t relish
what you said of his wife and his childlessness.”

“Well, I meant nothing, I meant nothing. Mayn’t a father have a bit of
chaff over his wine with his sons? As for his wife, I’m sure she’s a
very decent woman, and if it was that which offended him, there’s that
diamond collar my lady wears. Bid her take it off and give it to Janet
as a present from me. Then we shall be all comfortable again.”

“I should leave it alone for to-night,” said Philip. “You can give it
her to-morrow. Won’t you come and have your rubber of whist?”

His eye would brighten again at that, for in his day he had been a great
player, and if he went to the cards straight from his wine, which for a
little made order in the muddle and confusion of his brain, he would
play a hand or two with the skill that had been an instinct with him.
His tortoise-shell kitten must first be brought him, for that was his
mascotte, which reposed on his lap, and for the kitten there was a
saucerful of chopped fish to keep it quiet. It used to drag fragments
from the dish on to the riband of the Garter, and eat from there.

He could not hold the cards himself, and they were arranged in a stand
in front of him, and his attendant pulled out the one to which he
pointed a quivering finger. If the cards were not in his favour he would
chuck the kitten off his knee. “Drown it; the devil’s in it,” he would
mumble. Then, before long, the gleam of lucidity rent in his clouds by
the wine would close up again, and he would play with lamentable lunatic
cunning, revoking and winking at his valet, and laughing with pleasure
as the tricks were gathered. At the end he would calculate his winnings
and insist on their being paid. They were returned to the loser when his
valet had abstracted them from his pocket....

Any attempt to move him from Stanier had to be abandoned, for it brought
on such violent agitation that his life was endangered if it were
persisted in, and even if it had been possible to certify him as insane,
neither Philip nor his brother nor his wife would have consented to his
removal to a private asylum, for some impregnable barrier of family
pride stood in the way. Nor, perhaps, would it have been easy to obtain
the necessary certificate. He had shown no sign of homicidal or suicidal
mania, and it would have been hard to have found any definite delusion
from which he suffered. He was just a very terrible old man, partly
paralytic, who got drunk and lucid together of an evening. He certainly
hated Philip, but Philip’s habits and Philip’s celibacy were the causes
of that; he cheated at cards, but the sane have been known to do
likewise.

Indeed, it seemed as if after their long and glorious noon in which, as
by some Joshua-stroke, the sun had stayed his course in the zenith, that
the fortunes of the Staniers were dipping swiftly into the cold of an
eternal night. In mockery of that decline their wealth, mounting to more
prodigious heights, resembled some Pharaoh’s pyramid into which so soon
a handful of dust would be laid. In the last decade of the nineteenth
century the long leases of the acres which a hundred years ago had been
let for building land at Brighton were tumbling in, and in place of
ground-rents the houses came into their possession, while, with true
Stanier luck, this coincided with a revival of Brighton as a
watering-place. Fresh lodes were discovered in their Cornish properties,
and the wave of gold rose ever higher, bearing on it those who seemed
likely to be the last of the name. Philip, now a little over forty years
old, was still unmarried; Ronald, ten years his junior, was childless;
and Lady Hester Brayton, now a widow, had neither son nor daughter to
carry on the family.

Already it looked as if the vultures were coming closer across the
golden sands of the desert on which these survivors were barrenly
gathered, for an acute and far-seeing solicitor had unearthed a family
of labourers living in a cottage in the marsh between Broomhill and
Appledore, who undoubtedly bore the name of Stanier, and he had secured
from the father, who could just write his name, a duly-attested document
to the effect that if Jacob Spurway succeeded in establishing him in the
family possessions and honours, he would pay him the sum of a hundred
thousand pounds in ten annual instalments. That being made secure, it
was worth while secretly to hunt through old wills and leases, and he
had certainly discovered that Colin Stanier (_æt._ Elizabeth) had a
younger brother, Ronald, who inhabited a farm not far from Appledore and
had issue. That issue could, for the most part, be traced, or, at any
rate, firmly inferred right down to the present. Then came a most
gratifying search through the chronicles and pedigrees of the line now
in possession, and, explore as he might, John Spurway could find no
collateral line still in existence. Straight down, from father to son,
as we have seen, ran the generations; till the day of Lady Hester
Brayton, no daughter had been born to an Earl of Yardley, and the line
of such other sons as the lords of Stanier begot had utterly died out.
The chance of establishing this illiterate boor seemed to Mr. Jacob
Spurway a very promising one, and he not only devoted to it his time and
his undoubted abilities, but even made a few clandestine and judicious
purchases. There arrived, for instance, one night at the Stanier cottage
a wholly genuine Elizabethan chair in extremely bad condition, which was
modestly placed in the kitchen behind the door; a tiger-ware jug found
its way to the high chimneypiece and got speedily covered with dust, and
a much-tarnished Elizabethan sealtop spoon made a curious addition to
the Britannia metal equipage for the drinking of tea.

But if this drab and barren decay of the direct line of Colin Stanier
roused the interest of Mr. Spurway, it appeared in the year 1892 to
interest others not less ingenious, and (to adopt the obsolete terms of
the legend) it really looked as if Satan remembered the bond to which he
was party, and bestirred himself to make amends for his forgetfulness.
And first--with a pang of self-reproach--he turned his attention to this
poor bath-chaired paralytic, now so rapidly approaching his seventieth
year. Then there was Philip to consider, and Ronald.... Lady Hester he
felt less self-reproachful about, for, unhampered by children, and
consoled for the loss of her husband by the very charming attentions of
others, she was in London queen of the smart Bohemia, which was the only
court at all to her mind, and was far more amusing than the garden
parties at Buckingham Palace to which, so pleasant was Bohemia, she was
no longer invited.

So then, just about the time that Mr. Spurway was sending Elizabethan
relics to the cottage in the Romney Marsh, there came over Lord Yardley
a strange and rather embarrassing amelioration of his stricken state.
From a medical point of view he became inexplicably better, though from
another point of view it could be as confidently stated that he became
irretrievably worse. His clouded faculties were pierced by the sun of
lucidity again, the jerks and quivers of his limbs and his speech gave
way to a more orderly rhythm, and his doctor congratulated himself on
the eventual success of a treatment that for twenty years had produced
no effect whatever. Strictly speaking, that treatment could be more
accurately described as the absence of treatment: Sir Thomas Logan had
said all along that the utmost that doctors could do was to assist
Nature in effecting a cure: a bath-chair and the indulgence of anything
the patient felt inclined to do was the sum of the curative process. Now
at last it bore (professionally speaking) the most gratifying fruit.
Coherence visited his speech, irrespective of the tumblers of port
(indeed, these tumblers of port produced a normal incoherence), his
powerless hands began to grasp the cards again, and before long he was
able to perambulate the galleries through which his bath-chair had so
long wheeled him, on his own feet with the aid of a couple of sticks.
Every week that passed saw some new feat of convalescence and the
strangeness of the physical and mental recovery touched the fringes of
the miraculous.

But while Sir Thomas Logan, in his constant visits to Stanier during
this amazing recovery, never failed to find some fresh and surprising
testimonial to his skill, he had to put away from himself with something
of an effort certain qualms that insisted on presenting themselves to
him. It seemed even while his patient’s physical and mental faculties
improved in a steady and ascending ratio of progress, that some
spiritual deterioration balanced, or more than balanced, this recovery.
Hard and cruel Lord Yardley had been before the stroke had fallen on
him--without compassion, without human affection--now, in the renewal of
his vital forces, these qualities blazed into a conflagration, and it
was against Philip, above all others, that their heat and fury were
directed.

While his father was helpless Philip had staunchly remained with him,
sharing with his mother and with Ronald and his wife the daily burden of
companionship. But now there was something intolerable in his father’s
lucid and concentrated hatred of him. Daily now Lord Yardley would come
into the library where Philip was at his books, in order to glut his
passion with proximity. He would take a chair near Philip’s, and, under
pretence of reading, would look at him in silence with lips that
trembled and twitching fingers. Once or twice, goaded by Philip’s steady
ignoring of his presence, he broke out into speeches of hideous abuse,
the more terrible because it was no longer the drunken raving of a
paralytic, but the considered utterance of a clear and hellish brain.

Acting on the great doctor’s advice, Philip, without saying a word to
his father, made arrangements for leaving Stanier. He talked the matter
over with that marble mother of his, and they settled that he would be
wise to leave England for the time being. If his father, as might so
easily happen, got news of him in London or in some place easily
accessible, the awful law of attraction which his hatred made between
them might lead to new developments: the more prudent thing was that he
should efface himself altogether.

Italy, to one of Philip’s temperament, appeared an obvious asylum, but
beyond that his whereabouts was to be left vague, so that his mother,
without fear of detection in falsehood, could say that she did not know
where he was. She would write him news of Stanier to some forwarding
agency in Rome, with which he would be in communication, and he would
transmit news of himself through the same channel.

One morning before the house was astir, Philip came down into the great
hall. Terrible as these last years had been, rising to this climax which
had driven him out, it was with a bleeding of the heart that he left the
home that was knitted into his very being, and beat in his arteries. He
would not allow himself to wonder how long it might be before his
return: it did not seem possible that in his father’s lifetime he should
tread these floors again, and in the astounding rejuvenation that there
had come over Lord Yardley, who could say how long this miracle of
restored vitality might work its wonders?

As he moved towards the door a ray of early sunlight struck sideways on
to the portrait of Colin Stanier, waking it to another day of its
imperishable youth. It illumined, too, the legendary parchment let into
the frame; by some curious effect of light the writing seemed to Philip
for one startled moment to be legible and distinct....




CHAPTER III


One morning, within a month of his departure from Stanier, Philip was
coming slowly up from his bathing and basking on the beach, pleasantly
fatigued, agreeably hungry, and stupefied with content. He had swum and
floated in the warm crystal of the sea, diving from deep-water rocks
into the liquid caves, where the sunlight made a shifting net of
luminous scribbles over the jewelled pebbles; he had lain with half-shut
eyes watching the quivering of the hot air over the white bank of
shingle, with the sun warm on his drying shoulders and penetrating, it
seemed, into the marrow of his bones and illuminating the very hearth
and shrine of his spirit.

The hours had passed but too quickly, and now he was making his
leisurely way through vineyards and olive-farms back to the road where a
little jingling equipage would be waiting to take him up to his villa on
the hill above the town of Capri. On one side of the path was a
sun-flecked wall, where, in the pools of brightness, lizards lay as
immobile as the stones themselves; the edges of these pools of light
bordered by continents of bluish shadow wavered with the slight stirring
of the olive trees above them. Through the interlacement of these boughs
he caught glimpses of the unstained sky and the cliffs that rose to the
island heights. On the other side the olive groves declined towards the
edge of the cliff, and through their branches the sea, doubly tinged
with the sky’s blueness, was not less tranquil than the ether.

Presently, still climbing upwards, he emerged from the olive groves,
while the vineyards in plots and terraces followed the outline of the
hill. Mingled with them were orchards of lemon trees bearing the globes
of the young green fruit together with flower; and leaf and flower and
fruit alike reeked of an inimitable fragrance. There were pomegranates
bearing crimson flowers thick and waxlike against the wall of an ingle
house that bordered the narrow path; a riot of morning-glory was new
there every day with fresh unfoldings of blown blue trumpets. Out of the
open door came an inspiriting smell of frying, and on the edge of the
weather-stained balcony were rusty petroleum tins in which carnations
bloomed. A space of level plateau, with grass already bleached yellow by
this spell of hot weather, crowned the hill, and again he descended
between lizard-tenanted walls through vineyards and lemon groves.

His rickety little carriage was waiting, the horse with a smart
pheasant’s feather erect on its head, the driver with a carnation stuck
behind his ear; the harness, for the sake of security, was supplemented
with string. The whip cracked, the horse tossed its pheasant’s feather
and jingled its bells, and, followed by a cloud of dust, Philip creaked
away up the angled road, musing and utterly content.

He could scarcely believe, as the little equipage ambled up the hill,
that the individual known by his name, and wearing his clothes, who had
lived darkly like a weevil in that joylessness of stately gloom, was the
same as this sun-steeped sprawler in the creaking carriage. He had come
out of a nightmare of tunnel into the wholesome and blessed day, and was
steeped in the colour of the sun. It was but a few weeks ago that,
without anticipation of anything but relief from an intolerable
situation, he had stolen out of Stanier, but swift æons of evolution had
passed over him since then. There was not more difference between the
darkness of those English winter days that had brooded in the halls and
galleries of Stanier and this caressing sun that pervaded sea and sky,
than there was between his acceptance of life then and his embrace of
life now. Now it was enough to be alive: the very conditions of
existence spelled content, and at the close of every day he would have
welcomed a backward shift of the hours so that he might have that
identical day again, instead of welcoming the close of each day in the
assurance of that identical day not coming again. There would be others,
but from the total sum one unit had been subtracted. It had perished: it
had dropped into the well of years.

Philip had no need to ask himself what constituted the horror of those
closed years, for it was part of his consciousness, which called for no
catechism, that it was his father’s existence; just the fact of him
distilled the poison, thick as dew on a summer night, which made them
thus. He had to the full the Stanier passion for the home itself, but as
long as his father lived, the horror of the man so pervaded the place,
so overrode all other sentiments with regard to it, that he could not
think of the one apart from the other, for hatred, acid and corrosive,
grew like some deadly mildew on the great galleries and the high halls.

It was no mere passive thing, an absence of love or affection, but a
positive and prosperous growth: a henbane or a deadly nightshade
sprouted and flowered and flourished there. Dwelling on it even for the
toss of his horse’s head, as they clattered off the dusty road on to the
paved way outside the town, Philip felt his hands grow damp.

He had come straight through to Rome and plunged himself, as in a
cooling bath, in the beauty and magnificence of the antique city. He had
wandered through galleries, had sat in the incense-fragrant dusk of
churches, had spent long hours treading the vestiges of the past,
content for the time to feel the spell of healing which the mere
severing himself from Stanier had set at work. But soon through that
spell there sounded a subtler incantation, coming not from the haunts of
men nor the achievements of the past, but from the lovely heart of the
lovely land itself which had called forth these manifestations.

He had drifted down to Naples, and across the bay to the enchanted
island hanging like a cloud on the horizon where the sea and sky melted
into each other. As yet he wanted neither man nor woman, the exquisite
physical conditions of the southern summer were in themselves the
restoration he needed, with a truce from all human entanglements.
Potent, indeed, was their efficacy; they ran through his heart like
wine, rejuvenating and narcotic together, and to-day he could scarcely
credit that a fortnight of eventless existence had flowed over him in
one timeless moment of magic, of animal, unreflecting happiness.

Curious good fortune in elementary material ways had attended him. On
the very day of his arrival, as he strolled out from his hotel in the
dusk up the moon-struck hill above the town, he had paused beneath the
white garden wall of a villa abutting on the path, and even as in
imagination he pictured the serenity and aloofness of it, his eye caught
a placard, easily legible in the moonlight, that it was to let, and with
that came the certainty that he was to be the lessee.

Next morning he made inquiry and inspection of its cool whitewashed
rooms, tiled, floored and vaulted. Below it lay its terraced garden,
smothered with neglected rose-trees and from the house, along a short
paved walk, there ran a vine-wreathed pergola, and a great stone pine
stood sentinel. A capable _contadina_ with her daughter were easily
found who would look after him, and within twenty-four hours he had
transferred himself from the German-infested hotel. Soon, in answer to
further inquiries, he learned that at the end of his tenure a purchase
might be effected, and the negotiations had begun.

To-day for the first time he found English news awaiting him, and the
perusal of it was like the sudden and vivid recollection of a nightmare.
Lord Yardley, so his mother wrote, was getting more capable every day;
he had even gone out riding. He had asked no questions as to where
Philip had gone, or when he would return, but he had given orders that
his name should not be mentioned, and once when she had inadvertently
done so, there had been a great explosion of anger. Otherwise life went
on as usual: Sir Thomas had paid a visit yesterday, and was very much
gratified by his examination of his patient, and said he need not come
again, unless any unfavourable change occurred, for another month. His
father sat long after dinner, and the games of whist were often
prolonged till midnight....

Philip skimmed through the frozen sheets ... his mother was glad he was
well, and that sea-bathing suited him.... It was very hot, was it
not?--but he always liked the heat.... The hay had been got in, which
was lucky, because the barometer had gone down.... He crumpled them up
with a little shudder as at a sudden draught of chilled air....

There was another from his sister Hester.

“So you’ve run away, like me, so the iceberg tells me,” she wrote. “I
only wonder that you didn’t do it long ago. This is just to congratulate
you. She says, too, that father is ever so much better, which I think is
a pity. Why should he be allowed to get better? Mother says it is like a
miracle, and if it is, I’m sure I know who worked it.

“Really, Phil, I am delighted that you have awoke to the fact that there
is a world outside Stanier--good Lord, if Stanier was all the world,
what a hell it would be! You used never to be happy away from the place,
I remember, but I gather from what mother says that it became absolutely
impossible for you to stop there.

“There’s a blight on it, Phil: sometimes I almost feel that I believe in
the legend, for though it’s twenty years since I made my skip, if ever I
have a nightmare, it is that I dream that I am back there, and that my
father is pursuing me over those slippery floors in the dusk. But I
shall come back there, if you’ll allow me, when he’s dead: it’s he who
makes the horror....”

Once again Philip felt a shiver of goose-flesh, and sending his sister’s
letter to join the other in the empty grate, strolled out into the hot
stillness of the summer afternoon, and he hailed the sun like one
awakening from such a nightmare as Hester had spoken of. All his life he
had been sluggish in the emotions, looking at life in the mirror of
other men’s minds, getting book knowledge of it only in a cloistered
airlessness, not experiencing it for himself--a reader of travels and
not a voyager. But now with his escape from Stanier had come a
quickening of his pulses, and that awakening which had brought home to
him the horror of his father had brought to him also a passionate sense
of the loveliness of the world.

Regret for the wasted years of drowsy torpor was there, also; here was
he already on the meridian of life, with so small a store of remembered
raptures laid up as in a granary for his old age, when his arm would be
too feeble to ply the sickle in the ripe cornfields. A man, when he
could no longer reap, must live on what he had gathered: without that he
would face hungry and empty years. When the fire within began to burn
low, and he could no longer replenish it, it was ill for him if the
house of his heart could not warm itself with the glow that experience
had already given him. He must gather the grapes of life, and tread them
in his winepress, squeezing out the uttermost drop, so that the ferment
and sunshine of his vintage would be safe in cellar for the comforting
of the days when in his vineyard the leaves were rotting under wintry
skies. Too many days had passed for him unharvested.

That evening, after his dinner, he strolled down in the warm dusk to the
piazza. The day had been a _festa_ in honour of some local saint, and
there was a show of fireworks on the hill above the town, and in
consequence the piazza and the terrace by the funicular railway, which
commanded a good view of the display, was crowded with the young folk of
the island. Rockets aspired, and bursting in bouquets of feathered fiery
spray, dimmed the stars and illumined the upturned faces of handsome
boys and swift-ripening girlhood. Eager and smiling mouths started out
of the darkness as the rockets broke into flower, eager and young and
ready for love and laughter, fading again and vanishing as the
illumination expired.

It was this garden of young faces that occupied Philip more than the
fireworks, these shifting groups that formed and reformed, smiling and
talking to each other in the intervals of darkness. The bubbling ferment
of intimate companionship frothed round him, and suddenly he seemed to
himself to be incapsulated, an insoluble fragment floating or sinking in
this heady liquor of life. There came upon him sharp and unexpected as a
blow dealt from behind, a sense of complete loneliness.

Every one else had his companion: here was a group of chattering boys,
there of laughing girls, here the sexes were mingled. Elder men and
women had a quieter comradeship: they had passed through the fermenting
stage, it might be, but the wine of companionship with who knew what
memories were in solution there, was theirs still. All these rapturous
days he had been alone, and had not noticed it; now his solitariness
crystallised into loneliness.

With a final sheaf of rockets the display came to an end, and the crowd
began to disperse homewards. The withdrawal took the acuteness from
Philip’s ache, for he had no longer in front of his eyes the example of
what he missed, his hunger was not whetted by the spectacle of food.

The steps of the last loiterers died away, and soon he was left alone
looking out over the vine-clad slope of the steep hill down to the
Marina. Warm buffets of air wandered up from the land that had lain all
day in its bath of sunlight, rippling round him like the edge of some
spent wave; but already the dew, moistening the drought of day, was
instilling into the air some nameless fragrance of damp earth and herbs
refreshed. Beyond lay the bay, conjectured rather than seen, and, twenty
miles away, a thin necklet of light showed where Naples lay stretched
and smouldering along the margin of the sea. If a wish could have
transported Philip there, he would have left the empty terrace to see
with what errands and adventures the city teemed, even as the brain
teems with thoughts and imaginings.

Into the impersonal seduction of the summer night some human element of
longing had entered, born of the upturned faces of boys and girls
watching the rockets, and sinking back, bright-eyed and eager, into the
cover of darkness, even as the sword slips into its sheath again. Youth,
in the matter of years, was already past for him, but in his heart until
now youth had not yet been born. No individual face among them all had
flown a signal for him, but collectively they beckoned; it was among
such that he would find the lights of his heart’s harbour shining across
the barren water, and kindling desire in his eyes.

It was not intellectual companionship that he sought nor the unity and
absorption of love, for Philip was true Stanier and had no use for love;
but he craved for youth, for beauty, for the Southern gaiety and
friendliness, for the upleap and the assuagement of individual desire.
Till middle-age he had lived without the instincts of youth; his tree
was barren of the golden fruits of youth’s delight. Now, sudden as his
change of life, his belated springtime flooded him.

It was in Naples that he found her, in the studio of an acquaintance he
had made when he was there first, and before midsummer Rosina Viagi was
established in the villa. She was half English by birth, and in her gold
hair, heavy as the metal and her blue eyes, she shewed her mother’s
origin. But her temperament was of the South--fierce and merry, easily
moved to laughter, and as easily to squalls of anger that passed as
swiftly as an April shower, and melted into sunlight again. She so
enthralled his senses that he scarcely noticed, for those first months,
the garish commonness of her mind: it scarcely mattered; he scarcely
heeded what she said so long as it was those full lips which formed the
silly syllables. She was greedy, and he knew it, in the matter of
money, but his generosity quite contented her, and he had got just what
he had desired, one who entirely satisfied his passion and left his mind
altogether unseduced.

Then with the fulfillment of desire came the leanness that follows, a
swift inevitable Nemesis on the heels of the accomplishment of an
unworthy purpose. He had dreamed of the gleam of romance in those
readings of his at Stanier, and awoke to find but a smouldering wick.
And before the summer was dead, he knew he was to become a father.

In the autumn the island emptied of its visitors, and Rosina could no
longer spend her evenings at the café or on the piazza, with her
countrywomen casting envious glances at her toilettes, and the men
boldly staring at her beauty. She was genuinely fond of Philip, but her
native gaiety demanded the distraction of crowds, and she yawned in the
long evenings when the squalls battered at the shutters and the panes
streamed with the fretful rain.

“But are we going to stop here all the winter?” she asked one evening as
she gathered up the piquet cards. “It gets very melancholy. You go for
your great walks, but I hate walking; you sit there over your book, but
I hate reading.”

Philip laughed. “Am I to clap my hands at the rain,” he said, “and say,
‘Stop at once! Rosina wearies for the sun’?”

She perched herself on the arm of his chair, a favourite attitude for
her supplications. “No, my dear,” she said, “all your money will not do
that. Besides, even if the rain obeyed you and the sun shone, there
would still be nobody to look at me. But you can do something.”

“And what’s that?”

“Just a little apartment in Naples,” she said. “It is so gay in Naples
even if the sirocco blows or if the tramontana bellows. There are the
theatres; there are crowds; there is movement. I cannot be active, but
there I can see others being active. There are fresh faces in the
street, there is gaiety.”

“Oh, I hate towns!” said Philip.

She got up and began to speak more rapidly. “You think only of
yourself,” she said. “I mope here; I am miserable. I feel like one of
the snails on the wall, crawling, crawling, and going into a dusty
crevice. That is not my nature. I hate snails, except when they are
cooked, and then I gobble them up, and wipe my mouth and think no more
of them. You can read your book in a town just as well as here, and you
can take a walk in a town. Ah, do, Philip!”

Suddenly and unexpectedly Philip found himself picturing his days here
alone, without Rosina. He did not consciously evoke the image; it
presented itself to him from outside himself. The island had certainly
cast its spell over him: just to be here, to awake to the sense of its
lotus-land tranquillity, and to go to sleep knowing that a fresh
eventless day would welcome him, made him content. He could imagine
himself now alone in this plain vaulted room, with the storm swirling
through the stone-pine outside, and the smell of burning wood on the
hearth without desiring Rosina’s presence.

“Well, it might be done,” he said. “We could have a little nook in
Naples, if you liked. I don’t say that I should always be there.”

Rosina’s eyes sparkled. “No, no, that would be selfish of me,” she said.
“You would come over here for a week when you wished, as you are so fond
of your melancholy island....” She stopped, and her Italian
suspiciousness came to the surface. “You are not thinking of leaving
me?” she asked.

“Of course I am not,” he said impatiently. “You imagine absurdities.”

“I have heard of such absurdities. Are you sure?”

“Yes, you silly baby,” said he.

She recovered her smiles. “I trust you,” she said. “Yes, where were we?
You will come over here when you want your island, and you will be
there when you want me. Oh, Philip, do you promise me?”

Her delicious gaiety invaded her again, and she sat herself on the floor
between his knees.

“Oh, you are kind to me!” she said. “I hope your father will live for
ever, and then you will never leave me. There is no one so kind as you.
We will have a flat, will we not? I know just such an one, that looks on
to the Castello d’Ovo, and all day the carriages go by, and we will go
by, too, and look up at our home, and wonder who are the happy folk who
live there, and every one who sees me will envy me for having a man who
loves me. And we will go to the restaurants where there are lights and
glitter, and the band plays, and I will be happier than the day is long.
Let us go over to-morrow. I will tell Maria to pack....”

It was just this impetuous prattling childishness which had enthralled
him at first, and even while he told himself now how charming it was, he
knew that he found it a weariness and an unreality. The same Rosina ten
minutes before would be in a gale of temper, then, some ten minutes
after, under a cloud of suspicious surmise. His own acceptance of her
proposal that they would be together at times, at times separate, was,
in reality, a vast relief to him, yet chequering that relief was that
curious male jealousy that the woman whom he had chosen to share his
nights and days should contemplate his absences with his own equanimity.
While he reserved to himself the right of not being utterly devoted to
her, he claimed her devotion to him.

It had come to that. It was not that his heart beat to another tune, his
eyes did not look elsewhere; simply the swiftly-consumed flame of
passion was now consciously dying down, and while he took no
responsibility for his own cooling, he resented her share in it. He
treated her, in fact, as Staniers had for many generations treated their
wives, but she had an independence which none of those unfortunate
females had enjoyed. He had already made a handsome provision for her;
and he was quite prepared to take a full financial responsibility for
his fatherhood. Yet, while he recognised how little she was to him, he
resented the clear fact of how little he was to her.

He got up. “You shall have it all your own way, darling,” he said.
“We’ll go across to Naples to-morrow; we’ll find a flat--the one you
know of--and you shall see the crowds and the lights again....”

“Ah, you are adorable,” said she. “I love you too much, Philip.”

He established her to her heart’s content, and through the winter
divided the weeks between Naples and the island. She had no hold on his
heart, and on his mind none; but, at any rate, he desired no one else
but her, and as the months went by there grew in him a tenderness which
had not formed part of the original bond. Often her vanity, her childish
love of ostentation, a certain querulousness also which had lately
exhibited itself, made him long for the quiet solitude across the bay.
Sometimes she would be loth to let him go, sometimes in answer to her
petition he would put off his departure, and then before the evening was
over she would have magnified some infinitesimal point of dispute into a
serious disagreement, have watered it with her tears, sobbed out that he
was cruel to her, that she wished he had gone instead of remaining to
make himself a tyrant. He shared her sentiments on that topic, and would
catch the early boat next morning.

And yet, even as with a sigh of relief he settled himself into his chair
that night by the open fireplace, and congratulated himself on this
recapture of tranquillity, he would miss something.... She was not there
to interrupt him, to scold him, to rage at him, but she had other moods
as well, when she beguiled and enchanted him. That was no deep-seated
spell, nor had it ever been. Its ingredients were but her physical
grace, and the charm of her spontaneous gaiety.

Perhaps next morning he would get a long scrawled letter from her,
saying that he had been a brute to leave her, that she had not been out
all day, but had sat and cried, and at that he would count himself lucky
in his solitude. And even while he felt as dry as sand towards her,
there would come seething up through its aridity this moist hidden
spring of tenderness.

He had made just such an escape from her whims and wilfulness one day
towards the end of February, but before the evening was half over he had
tired of this solitude that he had sought. His book did not interest
him, and he felt too restless to go to bed. Restlessness, at any rate,
might be walked off, and he set out to tramp and tranquillise himself.

The moon was near to its full, the night warm and windless, and the air
alert with the coming of the spring. Over the garden beds hung the
veiled fragrance of wallflowers and freezias, and their scent in some
subtle way suggested her presence. Had she been there she would, in the
mood in which he had left her, have jangled and irritated him, but if a
wish would have brought her he would have wished it.

He let himself out of the garden gate, and mounted the steep path away
from the town, thinking by brisk movement to dull and fatigue himself
and to get rid of the thought of her. But like a wraith, noiseless and
invisible, she glided along by him, and he could not shake her off. She
did not scold him or nag at him: she was gay and seductive, with the
lure of the springtime tingling about her, and beckoning him. Soon he
found himself actively engaged in some sort of symbolic struggle to
elude her, and taking a rough and steeper path, thought that he would
outpace her.

Here the way lay over an uncultivated upland, and as he pounded along he
drank in the intoxicating ferment of the vernal night. The earth was
dew-drenched, and the scent of the aromatic plants of the hillside
served but as a whet to his restless thoughts, and still, hurry as he
might, he could not escape from her and from a certain decision that
she seemed to be forcing on him. Finally, regardless of the dew, and
exhausted with the climb, he sat down and began to think it out.

They had been together now for eight months, and though she often
wearied and annoyed him, he could not imagine going back to the solitary
life which, when first he came to Capri, had been so full of
enchantment. They had rubbed and jarred against each other, but never
had either of them, loose though the tie had been, considered leaving
each other. They had been absolutely faithful, and were, indeed, married
in all but the testimony of a written contract.

It had been understood from the first that, on his father’s death,
Philip would take up the reins of his government at home, leaving her in
all material matters independent and well off, and in all probability
her dowry, cancelling her history, would enable her to make a favourable
marriage. But though that had been settled between them, Philip found
now, as he sat with her wraith still silent, still invisible, but
insistently present, that not till this moment had he substantially
pictured himself without her, or seen himself looking out for another
woman to be mother of his children. He could see himself going on
quarrelling with Rosina and wanting her again, but the realisation of
his wanting any one else was beyond him.

On the other hand, his father, in this miraculous recovery of his
powers, might live for years, and who knew whether, long before his
death, both he and Rosina might not welcome it as a deliverance from
each other?

But not less impossible also than the picturing of himself without
Rosina, was the imagining of her installed as mistress at Stanier. Try
as he might, he could not make visible to himself so unrealisable a
contingency. Rosina at Stanier ... Rosina.... Yet, so soon, she would be
the mother of his child.

The moon had sunk, and he must grope his way down the hillside which he
had mounted so nimbly in the hope of escape from the presence that
hovered by him. All night it was with him, waiting patiently but
inexorably for the answer he was bound to give. He could not drive it
away, he could not elude it.

There arrived for him next morning an iced budget from his mother. All
went on as usual with that refrigerator. There had been a gale, and four
elm trees had been blown down.... Easter was early this year; she hoped
for the sake of the holiday-makers that the weather would be fine.... It
was odd to hear of the warm suns and the sitting out in the evening....
Was he not tired of his solitary life?...

Philip skimmed his way rapidly through these frigidities, and then
suddenly found himself attending.

“I have kept my great news to the end,” his mother wrote, “and it makes
us all, your father especially, very happy. We hope before March is over
that Ronald will have an heir. Janet is keeping very well, and your
father positively dotes on her now. The effect on him is most marked. He
certainly feels more kindly to you now that this has come, for the other
day he mentioned your name and wondered where you were. It was not
having a grandchild that was responsible for a great deal of his
bitterness towards you, for you are the eldest....”

Philip swept the letter off the table and sat with chin supported in the
palms of his hands, staring out of the open window, through which came
the subtle scent of the wallflower. As a traveller traces his journey,
so, spreading the situation out like a map before him, he saw how his
road ran direct and uncurving. Last night, for all his groping and
searching, he could find no such road marked; there was but a track, and
it was interrupted by precipitous unnegotiable places, by marshes and
quagmires through which no wayfarer could find a path. But with the
illumination of this letter it was as if an army of road-makers had been
busy on it. Over the quagmire there was a buttressed causeway, through
the precipitous cliffs a cutting had been blasted. There was yet time;
he would marry Rosina out of hand, and his offspring, not his brother’s,
should be heir of Stanier.

The marriage making their union valid and legitimatising the child that
should soon be born, took place on the first of March at the English
Consulate, and a week later came the news that a daughter had been born
to his sister-in-law. On the tenth of the same month Rosina gave birth
to twins, both boys. There was no need for any riband to distinguish
them, for never had two more dissimilar pilgrims come forth for their
unconjecturable journey. The elder was dark like Philip, and unlike the
most of his father’s family; the other blue-eyed, like his mother, had a
head thick-dowered with bright pale gold. Never since the days of Colin
Stanier, founder of the race and bargainer in the legend, had gold and
blue been seen together in a Stanier, and “Colin,” said Philip to
himself, “he shall be.”

During that month the shuttle of fate flew swiftly backwards and
forwards in the loom of the future. Thirty-six years had passed since
Ronald, the latest born of his race, had come into life, ten years more
had passed over Philip’s head before, within a week of his brother and
within a fortnight of his marriage, he saw the perpetuation of his
blood. And the shuttle, so long motionless for the Staniers, did not
pause there in its swift and sudden weavings.

At Stanier that evening Ronald and his father sat long over their wine.
The disappointment at Ronald’s first child being a girl was utterly
eclipsed in Lord Yardley’s mind by the arrival of an heir at all, and he
had eaten heavily in boisterous spirits, and drunk as in the days when
wine by the tumblerful was needed to rouse him into coherent speech. But
now no attendant was needed to hold his glass to his lips: he was as
free of movement as a normal man.

“We’ll have another bottle yet, Ronnie,” he said. “There’ll be no whist
to-night, for your mother will have gone upstairs to see after Janet.
Ring the bell, will you?”

The fresh bottle was brought, and he poured himself out a glassful and
passed it to his son.

“By God, I haven’t been so happy for years as I’ve been this last week,”
he said. “You’ve made a beginning now, my boy; you’ll have a son next.
And to think of Philip, mouldering away all this time. He’s forty-six
now; he’ll not get in your way. A useless fellow, Philip; sitting like a
crow all day in the library, like some old barren bird. I should like to
have seen his face when he got the news. But I’ll write him to-morrow
myself, and say that if he cares to come home I’ll treat him civilly.”

“Poor old Phil!” said Ronald. “Do write to him, father. I daresay he
would like to come back. He has been gone a year, come May.”

Lord Yardley helped himself again. His hand was quite steady, but his
face was violently flushed. Every night now, since the birth of Ronald’s
baby, he had drunk deeply, and but for this heightened colour, more
vivid to-night than usual, the wine seemed scarcely to produce any
effect on him. All day now for a week he had lived in this jovial and
excited mood, talking of little else than the event which had so
enraptured him.

“And Janet’s but thirty yet,” he went on, forgetting again about Philip,
“and she comes of a fruitful stock: the Armitages aren’t like us; they
run to quantity. Not that I find fault with the quality. But a boy,
Ronald.”

A servant had come in with a telegram, which he presented to Lord
Yardley, who threw it over to Ronald.

“Just open it for me,” he said. “See if it requires any answer.”

Ronald drew a candle nearer him; he was conscious of having drunk a good
deal, and the light seemed dim and veiled. He fumbled over the envelope,
and drawing out the sheet, unfolded it. He stared at it with mouth
fallen open.

“It’s a joke,” he said in a loud, unsteady voice. “It’s some silly
joke.”

“Let’s have it, then,” said his father. “Who’s the joker?”

“It’s from Philip,” said he. “He says that he’s married, and that his
wife has had twins to-day--boys.”

Lord Yardley rose to his feet, the flush on his face turning to purple.
Then, without a word, he fell forward across the table, crashing down
among the glasses and decanters.

       *       *       *       *       *

A fortnight after the birth of the twins, Rosina, who till then had been
doing well, developed disquieting symptoms with high temperature. Her
illness declared itself as scarlet fever, and on the 6th of April she
died.

Surely in those spring weeks there had been busy superintendence over
the fortunes of the Staniers. Philip, till lately outcast from his home
and vagrant bachelor, had succeeded to the great property and the
honours and titles of his house. Two lusty sons were his, and there was
no Rosina to vex him with her petulance and common ways. All tenderness
that he had had for her was diverted into the persons of his sons, and
in particular of Colin. In England, in this month of April, the beloved
home awaited the coming of its master with welcome and rejoicing.




                              _Book Two_




CHAPTER I


Colin Stanier had gone straight from the tennis-court to the
bathing-place in the lake below the terraced garden. His cousin Violet,
only daughter of his uncle Ronald, had said that she would equip herself
and follow him, and the boy had swum and dived and dived and swum
waiting for her, until the dressing-bell booming from the turret had
made him reluctantly quit the water. He was just half dry and not at all
dressed when she came.

“Wretched luck!” she said. “Oh, Colin, do put something on!”

“In time,” said Colin; “you needn’t look!”

“I’m not looking. But it was wretched luck. Mother....”

Colin wrapped a long bath-towel round himself, foraged for cigarettes
and matches in his coat pocket, and sat down by her.

“Mother?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. Mother was querulous, and so she wanted some one to be
querulous to.”

“Couldn’t she be querulous to herself?” asked Colin.

“No, of course not. You must have a partner or a dummy if you’re being
querulous. I wasn’t more than a dummy, and so when she had finished the
rest of it she was querulous about that. She said I was unsympathetic.”

“Dummies usually are,” said Colin. “Cigarette?”

“No, thanks. This one was, because she wanted to come and bathe. Did you
dive off the top step?”

“Of course not. No audience,” said Colin. “What’s the use of doing
anything terrifying unless you impress somebody? I would have if you had
come down.”

“I should have been thrilled. Oh, by the way, Raymond has just
telephoned from town to say that he’ll be here by dinner-time. He’s
motoring down.”

Colin considered this. “Raymond’s the only person older than myself whom
I envy,” he said. “He’s half an hour older than me. Oh, I think I envy
Aunt Hester, but then I adore Aunt Hester. I only hate Raymond.”

“Just because he’s half an hour older than you?” asked the girl.

“Isn’t that enough? He gets everything just because of that unlucky
half-hour. He’ll get you, too, if you’re not careful.”

Colin got up and gathered his clothes together.

“He’ll have Stanier,” he observed. “Isn’t that enough to make me detest
him? Besides, he’s a boor. Happily, father detests him, too; I think
father must have been like Raymond at his age. That’s the only comfort.
Father will do the best he can for me. And then there’s Aunt Hester’s
money. But what I want is Stanier. Come on.”

“Aren’t you going to dress?” asked Violet.

“Certainly not. As soon as I get to the house I shall have to undress
and dress again.”

“Not shoes?” asked she.

“Not when the dew is falling. Oh, wet grass is lovely to the feet. We’ll
skirt the terrace and go round by the lawn.”

“And why is it that you envy Aunt Hester?” asked the girl.

“Can’t help it. She’s so old and wicked and young.”

Violet laughed. “That’s a very odd reason for envying anybody,” she
said. “What’s there to envy?”

“Why, the fact that she’s done it all,” said Colin frowning. “She has
done all she pleased all her life, and she’s just as young as ever. If I
wasn’t her nephew, she would put me under her arm, just as she did her
husband a thousand years ago, and marry me to-morrow. And then you
would marry Raymond, and--and there we would all be. We would play whist
together. My dear, those ghastly days before we were born! Grandfather
with his Garter over his worsted jacket and a kitten on his knee, and
grandmamma and Aunt Janet and your father and mine! They lived here for
years like that. How wonderful and awful!”

“They’re just as wonderful now,” said Violet. “And....”

“Not quite so awful; grandfather isn’t here now, and he must have been
the ghastliest. Besides, there’s Aunt Hester here to tone them up, and
you and I, if it comes to that. Not to mention Raymond. I love seeing my
father try to behave nicely to Raymond. Dead failure.”

Colin tucked his towel round him; it kept slipping first from one
shoulder, then the other.

“I believe Raymond is falling in love with you,” he said. “He’ll propose
to you before long. Your mother will back him up, so will Uncle Ronald.
They would love to see you mistress here. And you’d like it yourself.”

“Oh--like it?” said she. She paused a moment. “Colin, you know what I
feel about Stanier,” she said. “I don’t think anybody knows as well as
you. You’ve got the passion for it. Wouldn’t you give anything for it to
be yours? Look at it! There’s nothing like it in the world!”

They had come up the smooth-shaven grass slope from the lake, and stood
at the entrance through the long yew-hedge that bordered the line of
terraces. There were no ghastly monstrosities in its clipped bastion; no
semblance of peacocks and spread tails to crown it: it flowed downwards,
a steep, uniform embattlement of stiff green, towards the lake,
enclosing the straight terraces and the deep borders of flower-beds. The
topmost of these terraces was paved, and straight from it rose the long
two-storied façade of mellow brick balustraded with the motto, “Nisi
Dominus ædificavit,” in tall letters of lead, and from floor to roof it
was the building of that Colin Stanier whose very image and incarnation
stood and looked at it now.

So honest and secure had been the workmanship that in the three
centuries which had elapsed since first it nobly rose to crown the hill
above Rye scarcely a stone of its facings had been repaired, or a
mouldering brick withdrawn. It possessed, even in the material of its
fashioning, some inexplicable immortality, even as did the fortunes of
its owners. Its mellowing had but marked their enrichment and stability;
their stability rivalled that of the steadfast house. The sun, in these
long days of June, had not yet quite set, and the red level rays made
the bricks to glow, and gave a semblance as of internal fire to the
attested guarantee of the motto. Whoever had builded, he had builded
well, and the labour of the bricklayers was not lost.

A couple of years ago Colin, still at Eton, had concocted a mad freak
with Violet. There had been a fancy-dress ball in the house, at which he
had been got up to represent his ancestral namesake, as shewn in the
famous Holbein. There the first Colin appeared as a young man of
twenty-five, but the painter had given him the smooth beauty of boyhood,
and his descendant, in those rich embroidered clothes, might have passed
for the very original and model for the portrait.

This, then, had been their mad freak: Violet, appearing originally in
the costume of old Colin’s bride, had slipped away to her room, when the
ball was at its height, and changed clothes with her cousin. She had
tucked up her hair under his broad-brimmed jewelled hat, he had
be-wigged himself and easily laced his slimness into her stiff brocaded
gown, and so indistinguishable were they that the boys, Colin’s friends
and contemporaries, had been almost embarrassingly admiring of him,
while her friends had found her not less forward. A slip by Colin in the
matter of hoarse laughter at an encircling arm and an attempt at a kiss
had betrayed him into forgetting his brilliant falsetto and giving the
whole thing away.

Not less like to each other now than then, they stood at the entrance of
the terraces. He had gained, perhaps, a couple of inches on her in
height, but the piled gold of her hair, and his bare feet equalised
that. No growth of manhood sheathed the smoothness of his cheeks; they
looked like replicas of one type, still almost sexless in the glow of
mere youth. Theirs was the full dower of their race, health and
prosperity, glee and beauty, and the entire absence of any moral
standard.

Faun and nymph, they stood there together, she in the thin blouse and
white skirt of her tennis-clothes, he in the mere towel of his bathing.
He had but thrown it on anyhow, without thought except to cover himself,
and yet the folds of it fell from his low square shoulders with a
plastic perfection. A hand buried in it held it round his waist, tightly
outlining the springing of his thighs from his body. With her, too, even
the full tennis-skirt, broad at the hem for purposes of activity, could
not conceal the exquisite grace of her figure; above, the blouse
revealed the modelling of her arms and the scarcely perceptible swell of
her breasts. High-bred and delicate were they in the inimitable grace of
their youth; what need had such physical perfection for any dower of the
spirit?

She filled her eyes with the glow of the sunlit front, and then turned
to him. “Colin, it’s a crime,” she said, “that you aren’t in Raymond’s
place. I don’t like Raymond, and yet, if you’re right and he means to
propose to me, I don’t feel sure that I shall refuse him. It won’t be
him I refuse, if I do, it will be Stanier.”

“Lord, I know that!” said Colin. “If I was the elder, you’d marry me
to-morrow.”

“Of course I should, and cut out Aunt Hester. And the funny thing,
darling, is that we’re neither of us in love with the other. We like
each other enormously, but we don’t dote. If you married Aunt Hester I
shouldn’t break my heart, nor would you if I married Raymond.”

“Not a bit. But I should think him a devilish lucky fellow!”

She laughed. “So should I,” she said. “In fact, I think him devilish
lucky already. Colin, if I do refuse him, it will be because of you.”

“Oh, chuck it, Violet!” said he.

She nodded towards the great stately house. “It’s a big chuck,” she
said.

From the far side of the house there came the sound of motor-wheels on
the gravel, and after a moment or two the garden door at the centre of
the terrace opened, and Raymond came out. He was not more than an inch
or so shorter than his brother, but his broad, heavy, short-legged build
made him appear short and squat. His eyebrows were thick and black, and
already a strong growth of hair fringed his upper lip. While Colin might
have passed for a boy of eighteen still, the other would have been taken
for a young man of not less than twenty-five. He stood there for a
minute, looking straight out over the terrace, and the marsh below.
Then, turning his eyes, he saw the others in the dusky entrance through
the yew-hedge, and his face lit up. He came towards them.

“I’ve only just come,” he said. “Had a puncture. How are you, Violet?”

“All right. But how late you are! We’re all late, in fact. We must go
and dress.”

Raymond looked up and down Colin’s bath-towel, and his face darkened
again. But he made a call on his cordiality.

“Hullo, Colin,” he said. “Been bathing? Jolly in the water, I should
think.”

“Very jolly,” said Colin. “How long are you down for?”

He had not meant any particular provocation in the question, though he
was perfectly careless as to whether Raymond found it there or not. He
did, and his face flushed.

“Well, to be quite candid,” he said, “I’m down here for as long as I
please. With your permission, of course.”

“How jolly!” said Colin in a perfectly smooth voice, which he knew
exasperated his brother. “Come on, Vi, it’s time to dress.”

“Oh, there’s twenty minutes yet,” said Raymond. “Come for a few minutes’
stroll, Vi.”

Colin paused for her answer, slightly smiling, and looking just above
Raymond’s head. The two always quarrelled whenever they met, though
perhaps “quarrel” is both too strong and too superficial a word to
connote the smouldering enmity which existed between them, and which the
presence of the other was sufficient to wreathe with little flapping
flames. Envy, as black as hell and as deep as the sea, existed between
them, and there was no breath too light to blow it into incandescence.
Raymond envied Colin for absolutely all that Colin was, for his skin and
his slimness, his eyes and his hair, and to a degree unutterably
greater, for the winning smile, the light, ingratiating manner that he
himself so miserably lacked, even for a certain brusque heedlessness on
Colin’s part which was interpreted, in his case, into the mere
unselfconsciousness of youth. In the desire to please others, Raymond
held himself to be at least the equal of his brother, yet, where his
efforts earned for him but a tepid respect, Colin would weave an
enchantment. If Raymond made some humorous contribution to the
conversation, glazed eyes and perfunctory comment would be all his
wages, whereas if Colin, eager and careless, had made precisely the same
offering, he would have been awarded attention and laughter.

Colin, on the other hand, envied his brother not for anything he was,
but for everything he had. Theirs was no superficial antagonism; the
graces of address and person are no subjects for light envy, nor yet the
sceptred fist of regal possessions. That fist was Raymond’s; all would
be his; even Violet, perhaps, Stanier certainly, would be.

At this moment the antagonism flowered over Violet’s reply. Would she go
for a stroll with Raymond or wouldn’t she? Colin cared not a blade of
grass which she actually did; it was her choice that would feed his
hatred of his brother or make him chuckle over his discomfiture. For an
infinitesimal moment he diverted his gaze from just over Raymond’s head
to where, a tiny angle away, her eyes were level with his. He shook his
head ever so slightly; some drop of water perhaps had lodged itself from
his diving in his ear.

“Oh, we shall all be late,” said she, “and Uncle Philip hates our being
late. Only twenty minutes, did you say? I must rush. Hair, you know.”

She scudded off along the paved terrace without one glance behind her.

“Want a stroll, Raymond?” said Colin. “I haven’t got to undress, only to
dress. I needn’t go for five minutes yet.”

Raymond had seen the headshake and Colin’s subsequent application of the
palm of a hand to his ear was a transparent device. Colin, he made sure,
meant him to see that just as certainly as he meant Violet to do so. The
success of it enraged him, and not less the knowledge that it was meant
to enrage him. Colin’s hand so skilfully, so carelessly, laid these
traps which silkenly gripped him. He could only snarl when he was
caught, and even to snarl was to give himself away.

“Oh, thanks very much,” he said, determined not to snarl, “but, after
all, Vi’s right. Father hates us being late. How is he? I haven’t seen
him yet.”

“Ever so cheerful,” said Colin. “Does he know you are coming, by the
way?”

“Not unless Vi has told him. I telephoned to her.”

“Pleasant surprise,” said Colin. “Well, if you don’t want to stroll, I
think I’ll go in. Vi’s delighted that you’ve come.”

Once again Raymond’s eye lit up. “Is she?” he asked.

“Didn’t you think so?” said Colin, standing first on one foot and then
on the other, as he slipped on his tennis shoes to walk across the
paving of the terrace.

       *       *       *       *       *

There had been no break since the days of Colin’s grandfather in the
solemnity of the ceremonial that preceded dinner. Now, as then, the
guests, if there were any, or, if not, the rest of the family, were
still magnificently warned of the approach of the great hour, and,
assembling in the long gallery which adjoined the dining-room, waited
for the advent of Lord Yardley.

That piece of ritual was like the Canon of the Mass, invariable and
significant. It crystallised the centuries of the past into the present;
dinner was the function of the day, dull it might be, but central and
canonical, and the centre of it all was the entrance of the head of the
family. He would not appear till all were ready; his presence made
completion, and the Staniers moved forward by order. So when the
major-domo had respectfully enfolded the flock in the long gallery, he
took his stand by the door into the dining-room. That was the signal to
Lord Yardley’s valet who waited by the door at the other end of the
gallery which led into his master’s rooms. He threw that open, and from
it, punctual as the cuckoo in the clock, out came Lord Yardley, and
every one stood up.

But in the present reign there had been a slight alteration in the minor
ritual of the assembling, for Colin was almost invariably late, and the
edict had gone forth, while he was but yet fifteen, and newly promoted
to a seat at dinner, that Master Colin was not to be waited for: the
major-domo must regard his jewelled flock as complete without him. He,
with a “Sorry, father,” took his vacant place when he was ready, and his
father’s grim face would soften into a smile. Raymond’s unpunctuality
was a different matter, and he had amended this weakness.

To-night there were no guests, and when the major-domo took his stand at
the dining-room door to fling it open on the remote entry of Lord
Yardley from the far end of the gallery, all the family but Colin were
assembled. Lord Yardley’s mother, now over eighty, white and watchful
and bloodless, had been as usual the first to arrive, and, leaning on
her stick, had gone to her chair by the fireplace, in which, upright and
silent, she waited during these canonical moments. She always came to
dinner, though not appearing at other meals, for she breakfasted and
lunched in her own rooms, where all day, except for a drive in the
morning, she remained invisible. Now she held up her white hand to
shield her face from the fire, for whatever the heat of the evening,
there was a smouldering log there for incense.

Ronald Stanier sat opposite her, heavy and baggy-eyed, breathing sherry
into the evening paper. His wife, the querulous Janet, was giving half
an ear to Raymond’s account of his puncture, and inwardly marvelling at
Lady Hester’s toilet. Undeterred by the weight of her sixty years, she
had an early-Victorian frock of pink satin, high in the waist and of
ample skirt. On her undulated wig of pale golden hair, the colour and
lustre of which had not suffered any change of dimness since the day
when she ran away with her handsome young husband, she wore a wreath of
artificial flowers; a collar of pearls encircled her throat which was
still smooth and soft. The dark eyebrows, highly arched, gave her an
expression of whimsical amusement, and bore out the twinkle in her blue
eyes and the little upward curve at the corner of her mouth. She was
quite conscious of her sister-in-law’s censorious gaze; poor Janet had
always looked like a moulting hen....

By her stood Violet, who had but this moment hurried in, and whose
entrance was the signal for Lord Yardley’s valet to open the door. She
had heard Colin splashing in his bath as she came along the passage,
though he had just bathed.

Then, with a simultaneous uprising, everybody stood, old Lady Yardley
leaned on her stick, Ronald put down the evening paper, and Raymond
broke off the interesting history of his punctured wheel.

Philip Yardley went straight to his mother’s chair, and gave her his
arm. In the dusk, Raymond standing between him and the window was but a
silhouette against the luminous sky. His father did not yet know that he
had arrived, and mistook him for his brother.

“Colin, what do you mean by being in time for dinner?” he said. “Most
irregular.”

“It’s I, father,” said Raymond.

“Oh, Raymond, is it?” said Lord Yardley. “I didn’t know you were here.
Glad to see you.”

The words were sufficiently cordial, but the tone was very unlike that
in which he had supposed himself to be addressing Colin. That was not
lost on Raymond; for envy, the most elementary of all human passions, is
also highly sensitive.

“You came from Cambridge?” asked his father, when they had sat down, in
the same tone of studious politeness. “The term’s over, I suppose.”

“Yes, a week ago,” said Raymond. As he spoke he made some awkward
movement in the unfolding of his napkin, and upset a glass which crashed
on to the floor. Lord Yardley found himself thinking, “Clumsy brute!”

“Of course; Colin’s been here a week now,” he said, and Raymond did not
miss that. Then Philip Yardley, considering that he had given his son an
adequate welcome, said no more.

These family dinners were not, especially in Colin’s absence and in
Raymond’s presence, very talkative affairs. Old Lady Yardley seldom
spoke at all, but sat watching first one face and then another, as if
with secret conjectures. Ronald Stanier paid little attention to
anything except to his plate and his glass, and it was usually left to
Violet and Lady Hester to carry on such conversation as there was. But
even they required the stimulus of Colin, and to-night the subdued blink
of spoons on silver-gilt soup-plates reigned uninterrupted. These had
just ceased when Colin appeared, like a lamp brought into a dusky room.

“Sorry, father,” he said. “I’m late, you know. Where’s my place? Oh,
between Aunt Hester and Violet. Ripping.”

“Urgent private affairs, Colin?” asked his father.

“Yes, terribly urgent. And private. Bath.”

The whole table revived a little, as when the gardener waters a drooping
bed of flowers.

“But you had only just bathed,” said Violet.

“That’s just why I wanted a bath. Nothing makes you so messy and sticky
as a bathe. And there were bits of grass between my toes, and a small
fragment of worm.”

“And how did they get there, dear?” asked Aunt Hester, violently
interested.

“Because I walked up in bare feet over the grass, Aunt Hester,” said
Colin. “It’s good for the nerves. Come and do it after dinner.”

Lord Yardley supposed that Colin had not previously seen his brother,
and that seeing him now did not care to notice his presence. So, with
the same chill desire to be fair in all ways to Raymond, he said:

“Raymond has come, Colin.”

“Yes, father, we’ve already embraced,” said he. “Golly, I don’t call
that soup. It’s muck. Hullo, granny dear, I haven’t seen you all day.
Good morning.”

Lady Yardley’s face relaxed; there came on her lips some wraith of a
smile. Colin’s grace and charm of trivial prattle was the only ray that
had power at all to thaw the ancient frost that had so long congealed
her. Ever since her husband’s death, twenty years ago, she had lived
some half of the year here, and now she seldom stirred from Stanier,
waiting for the end. Her life had really ceased within a few years of
her marriage; she had become then the dignified lay-figure, emotionless
and impersonal, typical of the wives of Staniers, and that was all that
her children knew of her. For them the frost had never thawed, nor had
she, even for a moment, lost its cold composure, even when on the night
that the news of Raymond’s and Colin’s birth had come to Stanier, there
came with it the summons that caused her husband to crash among the
glasses on the table. Nothing and nobody except Colin had ever given
brightness to her orbit, where, like some dead moon, she revolved in the
cold inter-stellar space.

But at the boy’s salutation across the table, she smiled. “My dear, what
an odd time to say good morning,” she said. “Have you had a nice day,
Colin?”

“Oh, ripping, grandmamma!” said he. “Enjoyed every minute of it.”

“That’s good. It’s a great waste of time not to enjoy....” Her glance
shifted from him to Lady Hester. “Hester, dear, what a strange gown,”
she said.

“It’s Aunt Hester’s go-away gown after her marriage,” began Colin.
“She....”

“Colin,” said his father sharply, “you’re letting your tongue run away
with you.”

Very unusually, Lady Yardley turned to Philip. “You mustn’t speak to
Colin like that, dear Philip,” she said. “He doesn’t know about those
things. And I like to hear Colin talk.”

“Very well, mother,” said Philip.

“Colin didn’t have a mother to teach him what to say, and what not to
say,” continued Lady Yardley; “you must not be harsh to Colin.”

The stimulus was exhausted and she froze into herself again.

Colin had been perfectly well aware during this, that Raymond was
present, and that nothing of it was lost on him. It would be too much to
say that he had performed what he and Violet called “the grandmamma
trick” solely to rouse Raymond’s jealousy, but to know that Raymond
glowered and envied was like a round of applause to him. It was from no
sympathy or liking for his grandmother that he thawed her thus and
brought her back from her remoteness; he did it for the gratification
of his own power in which Raymond, above all, was deficient.... Like
some antique bird she had perched for a moment on Colin’s finger; now
she had gone back into her cage again.

Colin chose that night to take on an air of offended dignity at his
father’s rebuke, and subsided into silence. He knew that every one would
feel his withdrawal, and now even Uncle Ronald who, with hardly less
aloofness than his mother, for he was buried in his glass and platter,
and was remote from everything except his vivid concern with food and
drink, tried to entice the boy out of his shell. Colin was pleased at
this: it was all salutary for Raymond.

“So you’ve been bathing, Colin,” he said.

“Yes, Uncle Ronald,” said he.

“Pleasant in the water?” asked Uncle Ronald.

“Quite,” said Colin.

Aunt Hester made the next attempt. They were all trying to please and
mollify him. “About that walking in the grass in bare feet,” she said.
“I should catch cold at my age. And what would my maid think?”

“I don’t know at all, Aunt Hester,” said Colin very sweetly.

Raymond cleared his throat. Colin was being sulky and unpleasant, and
he, the eldest, would make things agreeable again. No wonder Colin
subsided after that very ill-chosen remark about Aunt Hester.

“There’s a wonderful stride been made in this wireless telegraphy,
father,” he said. “There were messages transmitted to Newfoundland
yesterday, so I saw in the paper. A good joke about it in _Punch_. A
fellow said, ‘They’ll be inventing noiseless thunder next.’”

There was a dead silence, and then Colin laughed loudly.

“Awfully good, Raymond,” he said. “Very funny. Strawberries, Aunt
Hester?”

That had hit the mark. Leaning forward to pull the dish towards him, he
saw the flush on Raymond’s face.

“Really? As far as Newfoundland?” said Lord Yardley.

       *       *       *       *       *

By now the major-domo was standing by the dining-room door again, and
Philip rose. His mother got up and stood, immobile and expressionless,
till the other women had passed out in front of her. Then, as she went
out, she said exactly what she had said for the last sixty years.

“You will like a game of whist, then, soon?”

Generally when the women had gone, the others moved up towards the host.
To-night Philip took up his glass and placed himself next Colin. The
decanters were brought round and placed opposite him, and he pushed them
towards Raymond.

“Help yourself, Raymond,” he said.

Then he turned round in his armchair to the other boy.

“Still vexed with me, Colin?” he said quietly.

“Of course not, father,” he said. “Sorry I sulked. But you did shut me
up with such a bang.”

“Well, open yourself at the same place,” said Philip.

“Rather. Aunt Hester’s dress, wasn’t it? Isn’t she too divine? If she
ever dies, which God forbid, you ought to have her stuffed and dressed
just like that, and put in a glass case in the hall to shew how young it
is possible to be when you’re old. But, seriously, do get a portrait
done of her to hang here. There’s nothing of her in the gallery.”

“Any other orders?” asked Philip.

“I don’t think so at present. Oh, by the way, are you going to Italy
this year?”

“Yes, I think I shall go out there before long for a few weeks as usual.
Why?”

“I thought that perhaps you would take me. I’ve got four months’
vacation, you see, now that I’m at Cambridge, and I’ve never been to
Italy yet.”

Philip paused; he was always alone in Italy. That was part of the
spell. “You’d get dreadfully bored, Colin,” he said. “I shall be at the
villa in Capri: there’s nothing to do except swim.”

Colin divined in his father’s mind some reluctance other than that which
he expressed. He dropped his eyes for a moment, then raised them again
to his father’s face, merry and untroubled.

“You don’t want me to come with you, father,” he said. “Quite all right,
but why not have told me so?”

Philip looked at the boy with that expression in his face that no one
else ever saw there; the tenderness for another, the heart’s need of
another, which had shot into fitful flame twenty years ago, had never
quite been extinguished; it had always smouldered there for Colin.

“I’ll think it over,” he said, and turned round in his chair.

“You were telling me something about wireless, Raymond,” he said. “As
far as Newfoundland! That is very wonderful. A few years ago scientists
would have laughed at such an idea as at a fairy-tale or a superstition.
But the superstitions of one generation become the science of the next.”

Raymond by this time was in a state of thorough ill-temper. He had
witnessed all the evening Colin’s easy triumphs; he had seen how Colin,
when annoyed, as he had been at his father’s rebuke, went into his
shell, and instantly every one tried to tempt him out again. Just now in
that low-voiced conversation between his brother and his father, he had
heard his father say, “Still vexed with me?” in a sort of suppliance....
He determined to try a manœuvre that answered so well.

“I should have said just the opposite,” he remarked, re-filling his
glass. “I should have thought that the science and beliefs of one
generation became the superstitions of the next. Our legend, for
instance; that was soberly believed once.”

Philip Yardley did not respond quite satisfactorily. “Ah!” he said,
getting up. “Well, shall we be going?”

Raymond had just poured himself out a glass of port, and, very
unfortunately, he remembered a precisely similar occasion on which his
father, just when Colin had done the same, proposed an adjournment. He
repeated the exact words Colin had used then.

“Oh, you might wait till I’ve finished my port,” he said.

That did not produce the right effect. On the previous occasion his
father had said, “Sorry, old boy,” and had sat down again.

“You’d better follow us, then,” said Philip. “But don’t drink any more,
Raymond. You’ve had as much as is good for you.”

Raymond’s face blazed. To be spoken to like that, especially in front of
his uncle and brother, was intolerable. He got up and pushed his
replenished glass away, spilling half of it. Instantly Colin saw his
opportunity, and knowing fairly well what would happen, he put his hand
within Raymond’s arm in brotherly remonstrance.

“Oh, I say, Raymond!” he said.

Raymond shook him off. “Leave me alone, can’t you?” he said angrily.

Then he turned to his father. “I didn’t mean to spill the wine, father,”
he said. “It was an accident.”

“Accidents are liable to happen, when one loses one’s temper,” said
Philip. “Ring the bell, please.”

There were two tables for cards laid out in the drawing-room, and
Raymond, coming in only a few seconds after the others, found that,
without waiting for him, the bridge-table had already been made up with
Lady Hester, Violet, his father, and Colin. They had not given him a
chance to play there, and now for the next hour he was condemned to play
whist with his grandmother and his uncle and aunt, a dreary pastime.

At ten old Lady Yardley went dumbly to bed, and there was the choice
between sitting here until the bridge was over, or of following Uncle
Ronald into the smoking-room. But that he found he could not do; his
jealousy of Colin, both as regards his father and as regards Violet,
constrained him as with cords to stop and watch them, and contrast their
merriment with his own ensconced and sombre broodings.

And then there was Violet herself. Colin’s conjecture had been perfectly
right, for in the fashion of Staniers, he must be considered as in the
process of falling in love with her. The desire for possession, rather
than devotion, was the main ingredient in the bubbling vat, and that was
very sensibly present. She made a ferment in his blood, and though he
would not have sacrificed anything which he really valued, such as his
prospective lordship of Stanier, for her sake, he could not suffer the
idea that she should not be his. He knew, too, how potent in her was the
Stanier passion for the home, and that he counted as his chief asset,
for he had no illusion that Violet was in love with him. Nor was she, so
he thought, in love with Colin; the two were much more like a couple of
chums than lovers.

So he sat and watched them round the edge of the newspaper which had
beguiled Uncle Ronald’s impatience for dinner. The corner where he sat
was screened from the players by a large vase of flowers on the table
near them, and Raymond felt that he enjoyed, though without original
intention, the skulking pleasures of the eavesdropper.

Colin, as usual, was to the fore. Just now he was dummy to his partner,
Aunt Hester, who, having added a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles to
complete her early-Victorian costume, was feeling a shade uneasy. She
had just done what she most emphatically ought not to have done, and was
afraid that both her adversaries had perceived it. Colin had perceived
it, too; otherwise the suit of clubs was deficient. Violet had already
alluded to this.

“Oh, Aunt Hester!” cried Colin. “What’s the use of pretending you’ve not
revoked? Don’t cling on to that last club; play it, and have done with
it. If you don’t, you’ll revoke again.”

Aunt Hester still felt cunning; she thought she might be able to bundle
it up in the last trick. “But I ain’t got a club, Colin,” she said,
reverting to mid-Victorian speech.

“Darling Aunt Hester, you mean ‘haven’t,’” said Colin. “‘Ain’t’ means
‘aren’t,’ and it isn’t grammar even then, though you are my aunt.
‘Ain’t....’”

Lord Yardley, leaning forward, pulled Colin’s hair. It looked so golden
and attractive, it reminded him.... “Colin, are you dummy, or ain’t
you?” he asked.

“Certainly, father. Can’t you see Aunt Hester’s playing the hand? I
shouldn’t call it playing, myself. I should call it playing at playing.
Club, please, Aunt Hester.”

“Well, if you’re dummy, hold your tongue,” said Lord Yardley. “Dummy
isn’t allowed to speak, and....”

“Oh, those are the old rules,” said Colin. “The new rules make it
incumbent on dummy to talk all the time. Hurrah, there’s Aunt Hester’s
club, aren’t it? One revoke, and a penalty of three tricks....”

“Doubled,” said his father.

“Brute,” said Colin, “and no honours at all! Oh yes, fourteen to us
above. Well played, Aunt Hester! Wasn’t it a pity? Your deal, Vi.”

Colin, having cut the cards, happened to look up at the big vase of
flowers which stood close to the table. As he did so, there was a
trivial glimmer, as of some paper just stirred, behind it. He had
vaguely thought that Uncle Ronald and Raymond had both gone to the
smoking-room, but there was certainly some one there, and which of the
two it was he had really no idea. Every one else, adversaries and
partner, was behaving as if there was no one else in the room, so why
not he?

“Raymond’s got the hump this evening,” he said cheerfully. “He won at
whist--Lord, what a game!--because I saw Aunt Janet pay him half-a-crown
with an extraordinarily acid expression, and ask for change. So as he’s
won at cards, he will be blighted in love. I expect he’s had a knock
from the young thing at the tobacconist’s in King’s Parade. I think she
likes me best, father. But it’ll be the same daughter-in-law. She
breathes through her nose, and is marvellously genteel. Otherwise she’s
just like Violet.”

“Pass,” said Violet.

“Hurrah! I knew it would make you pessimistic to be called like a
tobacconist’s....”

Philip Yardley laid down his cards and actually laughed. “Colin, you
low, vulgar brute,” he said, “don’t talk so much!”

Colin imitated Raymond’s voice and manner to perfection. “I should have
said just the opposite,” he remarked. “I should have thought you wanted
me to talk more, and make trumps.”

Violet caught on. “Oh, you got him exactly, Colin,” she said. “What did
he say that about?”

“Go on, Colin,” said his father. “We shall never finish.”

Colin examined his hand. “Three no-trumps,” he said. “Not one, nor two,
but three. Glorious trinity!”

There was no counter-challenge, and as Lord Yardley considered his lead,
Colin looked up through the vase of flowers once more. There was some
one there still, and he got up to fetch a match from a side-table. That
gave him a clearer view of what lay beyond.

“Hullo, Raymond?” he said. “Thought you’d gone to the smoking-room.”

“No; just looking at the paper,” said Raymond. “I’m going now.”

“Oh, but we’ll have another rubber,” said Colin. “Cut in?”

“No, thanks,” said Raymond.

Colin waited till the door had closed behind him. “Lor!” he said.

“Just shut that door, Colin,” said Lord Yardley.

Lady Hester was thrilled about the tobacconist’s young thing; it really
would be rather a good joke if one of the boys, following his father’s
example, married a “baggage” of that sort, and she determined to pursue
the subject with Colin on some future occasion. She loved such loose
natural talk as he treated her to; he told her all his escapades. He was
just such a scamp as Colin the first must have been, and with just such
gifts and utter absence of moral sense was he endowed.

Indeed, the old legend, so it seemed to her, lived again in Colin,
though couched in more modern terms. It was the mediæval style to say
that for the price of the soul, Satan was willing to dower his
beneficiary with all material bounty and graces; more modernly, you said
that this boy was an incorrigible young Adonis, who feared neither God
nor devil. True, the lordship of Stanier was not yet Colin’s, but
something might happen to that grim, graceless Raymond.

How the two hated each other, and how different were the exhibitions of
their antagonism! Raymond hated with a glowering, bilious secrecy, that
watched and brooded; Colin with a gay contempt, a geniality almost. But
if the shrewd old Lady Hester had been asked to wager which of the two
was the most dangerous to the other, she would without hesitation have
put her money on Colin.

The second rubber was short, but as hilarious as the first, and on its
conclusion Lady Hester hurried to bed, saying that she would be “a
fright” in the morning if she lost any more sleep. Violet followed her,
Philip withdrew to his own room, and Colin sauntered along to the
smoking-room in quest of whisky. His Uncle Ronald was still there,
rapidly approaching the comatose mood of midnight, which it would have
been inequitable to call intoxication and silly to call sobriety.
Raymond sprawled in a chair by the window.

“Hullo, Uncle Ronald, still up?” said Colin. “You’ll get scolded.”

Uncle Ronald lifted a sluggish eyelid. “Hey?” he said. “Oh, Colin, is
it? What’s the time, my boy?”

“Half-past twelve,” said Colin, adding on another half-hour. He wanted
to get rid of his uncle and see how he stood with his brother. No doubt
they would have a row.

“Gobbless me,” said Ronald. “I shall turn in. Just a spot more whisky.
Good night, boys.”

As soon as he had gone Raymond got out of his chair and placed himself
where he could get his heels on the edge of the low fender-kerb. He
hated talking “up” to Colin, and this gave him a couple of inches.

“I want to ask you something,” he said.

“Ask away,” said Colin.

“Did you know I was in the room when you imitated me just now?”

“Hadn’t given a thought to it,” said Colin.

“It’s equally offensive whether you mimic me before my face or behind my
back,” said Raymond. “It was damned rude.”

“Shall I come to you for lessons in manners?” asked Colin. “What do you
charge?”

Colin spoke with all the lightness of good-humoured banter, well aware
that if Raymond replied at all, he would make some sledge-hammer
rejoinder. He would swing a cudgel against the rapier that pricked him,
yet never land a blow except on the air, or, maybe, his own foot.

“It’s beastly insolence on your part,” said Raymond.

“And that’s very polite,” said Colin. “You may mimic me how and where
and when you choose. If it’s like, I shall laugh. If it isn’t, well, I
shall still laugh.”

“I haven’t got your sense of humour,” said Raymond.

“Clearly, nor Violet’s. She thought I had got you to a ‘t.’ You probably
heard what she said from your sequestered corner behind your newspaper.”

Raymond advanced a step. “Look here, Colin, do you mean to imply that I
was listening?”

Colin laughed. “And I want to ask you a question,” he said. “Didn’t you
know that we all thought you had gone away?”

Raymond disregarded this. “Then there’s another thing. What do you mean
by telling father about the girl at the tobacconist’s? You know it was
nothing at all.”

“Rather,” said Colin. “I said so. You seem to forget that I told him
that I was the favourite. That’s the part you didn’t like.”

Raymond flushed. “It’s all very well for you to say that,” he said. “But
you know perfectly well that my father doesn’t treat us alike. Things
which are quite harmless in his eyes when you do them appear very
different to him when I’m the culprit. I had had a knock from a
tobacconist’s girl, had I? You’re a cad to have told him that quite
apart from its being a lie.”

Colin laughed with irritating naturalness. “Is this the first lesson in
manners?” he said. “I’m beginning to see the hang of it. You call the
other fellow a cad and a liar. About my father’s not treating us alike,
that’s his affair. But I should never dream of calling you a liar for
saying that. We’re not alike: why should he treat us alike? You’ve got a
foul temper, you see; that doesn’t add to your popularity with anybody.”

He spoke in the same voice in which he might have told Raymond that he
had a speck of dust on the coat, and yawned rather elaborately.

“Take care you don’t rouse it,” said Raymond.

“Why not? It rather amuses me to see you in a rage.”

“Oh, it does, does it?” said Raymond with his voice quivering.

“I assure you of it. I’m having a most amusing evening, thanks to you.
And this chat has been the pleasantest part of it. Pity that it’s so
late.”

Raymond, as usual, had throughout, the worst of these exchanges and was
quite aware of it. He had been ill-bred and abusive through his loss of
temper while Colin, insolent though his speech and his manner had been,
had kept within the bounds of civil retort in his sneers and contempt.
In all probability he would give an account of it all to Violet
to-morrow, and there was no need for him to embroider; a strictly
correct version of what had passed was quite disagreeable enough.

This Raymond wanted to avoid in view of his desire that Violet should
look on him as favourably as possible. Whether he meant to propose to
her during his visit here, he hardly knew himself, but certainly he
wanted to be in her good books. This, and this alone, prompted him now;
he hated Colin, all the more because he had been absolutely unable to
ruffle him or pierce the fine armour of his composure, but as regards
Violet, and perhaps his father, he feared him.

“I’m afraid I’ve lost my temper, Colin,” he said. “And I owe you an
apology for all I’ve said. You had annoyed me by mimicking me and by
telling father about that girl at Cambridge.”

Colin felt that he had pulled the wings off a fly that had annoyed him
by its buzzing; the legs might as well follow....

“Certainly you owe me an apology,” he said. “But, considering
everything, I don’t quite know whether you are proposing to pay it.”

Raymond turned on him fiercely. “Ah, that’s you all over!” he said.

“Oh, we’re being quite natural,” said Colin. “So much better.”

He paused a moment.

“Now I don’t want to be offensive just now,” he said, “so let’s sit down
and try to tolerate each other for a minute. There.”

Raymond longed to be at his throat, to feel his short, strong fingers
throttling the life out of that smooth white neck. But some careless
superior vitality in Colin made him sit down.

“Let’s face it, Raymond,” he said. “We loathe each other like poison,
and it is nonsense to pretend we don’t. Unfortunately, you are the
eldest, so in the end you will score, however much I annoy you. But put
yourself in my place; imagine yourself the younger with your foul
temper. You would probably try to kill me. Of course, by accident. But
I’m not intending to kill you. I am very reasonable; you must be
reasonable, too. But just put yourself in my place.”

Raymond shifted in the chair in which Colin, with a mere gesture of a
finger, had made him sit. “Can’t we possibly get on better together,
Colin?” he said. “After all, as you say, I come into everything on my
father’s death. I have Stanier, I have the millions where you have the
thousands. I can be very useful to you. You adore the place, and I can
let you come here as often and as long as you like, and I can also
prevent your setting foot in it. If you’ll try to be decent to me, I
promise you that you shan’t regret it.”

Colin put his head on one side and looked at his brother with an air of
pondering wonder. “Oh, that cock won’t fight,” he said. “You know as
well as I do that when you are master here, I would sooner go to hell
than come here, and you would sooner go to hell than let me come.
Perhaps I’ve got a dull imagination, but it’s no use my trying to
imagine that. Do be sensible. If you could do anything to injure me at
this moment when you are proposing a truce, you know that you would do
it. But you can’t. You can’t hurt me in any way whatever. But what you
do know is that I can hurt you in all sorts of ways. I can poison my
father’s mind about you--it’s pretty sick already. I can poison Violet’s
mind, and that’s none too healthy. You see, they both like me most
tremendously, and they don’t very much like you. It’s just the same at
Cambridge. I’ve got fifty friends: you haven’t got one. I dare say it’s
not your fault: anyhow, we’ll call it your misfortune. But you want me
to do something for you in return for nothing you can do for me, or,
perhaps, nothing that you will do for me.”

Raymond frowned; when he was thinking he usually frowned. When Colin was
thinking he usually smiled.

“If in the future there is anything I can do for you, Colin,” he said,
“I will do it. I want to be friends with you. Good Lord, isn’t that
reasonable? We’re brothers.”

Colin leaned forward in his chair. He was aware of the prodigious nature
of what he was meaning to say. “Give me Stanier, Raymond,” he said.
“With what father is leaving me, and with what Aunt Hester is leaving
me, I can easily afford to keep it up. I don’t ask you for any money. I
just want Stanier. Of course, it needn’t actually be mine. But I want to
live here, while you live somewhere else. There’s the Derbyshire house,
for instance. I’ve got Stanier in my blood. If, on father’s death,
you’ll do that, there’s nothing I won’t do for you.”

He paused.

“I can do a good deal, you know,” he said. “And I can refrain from doing
a good deal.”

The proposal was so preposterous that Raymond fairly laughed. Instantly
Colin got up.

“That sounds pleasant,” he said. “Good night, Raymond. I wouldn’t have
any more whisky, if I were you. Father seemed to think you’d had enough
drink before the end of dinner.”




CHAPTER II


Breakfast at Stanier was a shade less stately than dinner. The table was
invariably laid for the complete tale of its possible consumers, and a
vicarious urn bubbled at the end of the board with an empty teapot in
front of it, in case of old Lady Yardley coming down to breakfast and
dispensing tea. She had not come down for over twenty years, but the urn
still awaited her ministrations.

On the arrival of tidings that she was having breakfast in her room, the
urn was taken away, and if news filtered through the butler to the
footman that some one else was breakfasting upstairs, a place at the
table was removed. Hot dishes above spirit-lamps stood in a row on the
sideboard, and there remained till somebody had come down or till, from
the removal of knives and forks, it was clear that nobody was coming.

But when Lady Hester was in the house, these dishes were always sure of
a partaker, for, after her cold bath, she breakfasted downstairs, as she
considered her bedroom a place to sleep and dress in, not to eat in. The
urn would have been removed by this time, for Lady Yardley’s maid would
have taken her tray upstairs, and for Lady Hester and for any one else
who appeared there was brought in a separate equipage of tea or coffee,
hot and fresh, and deposited in front of the occupied chair.

This morning she was the first to arrive, dressed in a white coat and
blouse and a jaunty little straw hat turned up at the back and decorated
with pheasants’ feathers. Provision of fish and bacon was brought her,
and an ironed copy of a daily paper. There were still four places left
at the table unremoved, and she promised herself a chatty breakfast.

Raymond was the next comer, but he did not much conduce to chattiness.
He looked heavy-eyed and sulky, only grunted in response to her
salutation, and immured himself behind the _Daily Mail_. Lady Hester
made one further attempt at sociability, and asked him if he had slept
well, but as he had nothing to add to his “No, not very,” she considered
herself free from any further obligation.

Then there came a very welcome addition to his grievous company, for
Colin entered through the door that opened on to the terrace. Flannel
trousers, coat and shirt open at the neck was all his costume, and there
was a bathing towel over his shoulder.

“Morning, Aunt Hester,” he said. “Morning, Raymond.”

He paused in order to make quite sure that Raymond made no response, and
sat down next his aunt.

“Been bathing,” he said. “Hottest morning that ever was. Why didn’t you
come, too, Aunt Hester? You’d look like a water-nymph. I say, what a
nice hat! Whom are you going to reduce to despair? Hullo, three
letters!”

“How many of them are love-letters?” asked Aunt Hester archly.

“All, of course,” said Colin. “There’s one from Cambridge.”

“That’ll be the young woman in the tobacconist’s shop whom you told us
about,” began Aunt Hester.

“Sh!” said Colin, nodding towards Raymond. “Sore subject.”

Raymond, pushing back his chair, could not control himself from casting
one furious glance at Colin, and went out.

“Well, that’s one bad-tempered young man gone,” said Lady Hester
severely. She could understand people being thieves and liars, but to
fail in pleasantness and geniality was frankly unintelligible to her.

“Why does he behave like that, my dear?” she continued. “He hadn’t a
word to chuck at me like a bone to a dog, when I wished him good
morning. What makes him like that? He ain’t got a belly-ache, has he?”

Colin, as he swam in the sunshine this morning, had devoted some amount
of smiling reflection as to his policy with regard to Raymond. Raymond
had rejected his amazing proposal with a derisive laugh; he did not
think that an alliance with his brother was worth that price, and he
must take the consequences of his refusal.

Violet entered at this moment; that was convenient, for she, too, could
hear about the quarrel last night at one telling.

“Oh, we had a row last night,” he said. “It was pitched a little higher
than usual, and I suppose Raymond’s suffering from after-effects. He was
perfectly furious with me for having mimicked him, and wasn’t the least
soothed by my saying he might mimic me as often as he pleased. Then I
was told I was a cad and a liar for that nonsense I talked about the
tobacconist’s. After I had stood as much as I could manage, I left him
to his whisky, and I don’t imagine there’ll be much left of it. Oh, I
say, Violet, did you shut the door when you came in? I believe it’s
open; I’ll do it.”

Colin got up, went to the door which was indeed ajar, and looked out
into the long gallery. Raymond, it so happened, was sitting in the
nearest window-seat lighting his pipe.

Colin nodded to him. “Just shutting the door,” he said, and drew back
into the dining-room, rattling and pushing the door to make sure that
the latch had gone home. He felt sure that what he had just said to
Raymond (that very innocent piece of information!) would go home, too.

“He was just outside,” said Colin softly, returning to the
breakfast-table. “Wasn’t it lucky I thought of shutting the door?”

“Go on; what else?” asked Violet.

“Nothing more. Of course, it was very awkward his having overheard what
we all said at our bridge. That had riled him. It was best to be sure
that there wouldn’t be a repetition of it this morning. But if people
will sit behind a newspaper and a vase of flowers, it’s difficult to be
aware of their presence. People ought to betray their presence in the
usual manner by coughing or sneezing. I shall have a thorough search of
the room first before I say anything about anybody. If I want to say you
are an old darling, Aunt Hester, I shall look behind the coal-scuttle
first.”

Colin, whatever his private sentiments were, had an infinite lightness
of touch in the expression of them. He had declared, not to Violet
alone, but to Raymond himself, that he frankly detested him, and yet
there was a grace about the manner of the presentment that rendered his
hatred, if not laudable, at any rate, venial. And his account of the
quarrel last night was touched with the same graceful brush. Without
overstepping the confines of truth, he left the impression that he had
been reasonable and gentle, Raymond headstrong and abusive.

This, too, was part of his policy; when others were present, he would
make himself winningly agreeable to Raymond, and shew a control and an
indulgence highly creditable in view of his brother’s brusque ways, and
take no provocation at his hands. That would accentuate the partisanship
of the others, which already was his, and would deprive Raymond of any
lingering grain of sympathy. When he and Raymond were alone, he would
exercise none of this self-restraint; he would goad and sting him with a
thousand biting darts.

The three strolled out presently into the gallery; Lady Hester and
Violet passed Raymond without speech, but Colin sauntered up to him.

“Coming out to play tennis presently?” he asked.

Colin’s careful closing of the dining-room door had not been lost on his
brother. Raymond had interpreted it just as Colin wished him to, and he
was boiling with rage.

“No, I’m not,” said he.

Colin turned to where Violet was standing, just shrugged his shoulders
with a lift of the eyebrows, and went on towards her without spoken
comment.

“Tennis soon, Vi?” he asked. “We’ll have to play a single.”

“Right. That will be jolly,” said Violet. “In half an hour?”

Colin nodded, and passed on to Lady Hester. “Come out, Aunt Hester, and
let’s sit in the shade somewhere till Vi’s ready. It’s lovely outside.”

“I must have me sunshade,” said she, “or I shall spoil me complexion.”

“That’ll never do,” said Colin. “None of your young men will fall in
love with you, if you do that. I’ll get it for you. Which will you have,
the blue one with pink ribands, or the pink one with blue ribands?”

“Neither, you wretch,” said Aunt Hester. “The yaller one.”

They found an encampment of basket-chairs under the elms beyond the
terrace, and Colin went straight to the business on which he wanted
certain information. This, too, was an outcome of his meditations in the
swimming-pool.

“I asked father to take me out to Italy this summer,” he said, “and it
was quite clear that he had some objection to it. Have you any idea what
it was?”

“My dear, it’s no use asking me,” said Aunt Hester. “Your father’s never
spoken to me about anything of the sort, and he ain’t the sort of man to
ask questions of. But for all these years he has gone off alone for a
month every summer. Perhaps he only just wants to get rid of us all for
a while.”

Colin extended himself on the grass, shading his eyes against the glare
with his hand. His ultimate goal was still too far off to be
distinguished even in general outline, far less in any detailed aspect.
He was but exploring, not knowing what he should find, not really
knowing what he looked for.

“Perhaps that’s it,” he said. “In any case, it doesn’t matter much. But
I did wonder why father seemed not to welcome the idea of my going with
him. He usually likes to have me with him. He’s devoted to Italy, isn’t
he, and yet he never talks about it.”

Colin spoke with lazy indifference, knowing very well that the surest
way of getting information was to avoid any appearance of anxiety to
obtain it, and, above all, not to press for it. Suggestions had to be
made subconsciously to the subject.

“Never a word,” said Lady Hester, “and never has to my knowledge, since
he brought you and Raymond back twenty years ago.”

“Were you here then?” asked Colin.

“Yes, and that was the first time I saw Stanier since I was seventeen.
Your grandfather never spoke to me after my marriage, and for that
matter, I wouldn’t have spoken to him. He was an old brute, my dear, was
your grandfather, and Raymond’ll be as like him as two peas.”

“Not as two peas, darling,” said Colin, “as one pea to another pea.”

“Oh, bother your grammar,” said Lady Hester. “Speech is given us to show
what we mean. You know what I mean well enough. But as soon as your
grandfather died, Philip made me welcome here, and has made me welcome
ever since. Yes, my dear, the first I saw of you, you were laughing, and
you ain’t stopped since.”

“Did you know my mother?” asked Colin quietly.

He was getting on to his subject again, though Lady Hester was not aware
of it.

“No. Never set eyes on her. Nobody of the family knew she existed until
you were born, and less than a month after that she was dead. Your
father had left home, one May or June it must have been, for he couldn’t
stand your grandfather any more than I could, and not a word did any one
but your grandmother hear of him, and that only to say it was a fine
day, and he was well, till there came that telegram to say that he was
married and had a pair of twins. Your grandfather was at dinner,
sitting over his wine with your Uncle Ronald--he used to drink enough to
make two men tipsy every night of his life--and up he got when your
uncle read the telegram to him, and crash he went among the decanters,
and that was the end of him. Then your mother died, and back came your
father with you and Raymond, within a twelvemonth of the time he’d gone
away. And not a word about that twelvemonth ever passes his lips.”

Colin let a suitable pause speak for the mildness of his interest in all
this. “He must have been married, then, very soon after he went to
Italy,” he said.

“Must have, my dear,” said Lady Hester.

It was exactly then that Colin began to see a faint outline, shrouded
though it was by the mists of twenty years, that might prove to be the
object of his exploration. Very likely it was only a mirage, some
atmospheric phantom, but he intended to keep his eye on it, and, if
possible, get nearer to it. A certain _nuance_ of haste and promptitude
with which Lady Hester had agreed to his comment perhaps brought it in
sight.

He sat up, clasping his knees with his hands, and appeared to slide off
into generalities. “How exceedingly little we all know of each other,”
he said. “What do I know of my father, for instance? Hardly anything.
And I know even less of my mother. Just her name, Rosina Viagi, and I
shouldn’t know that if it wasn’t for the picture of her in the gallery.
Who are the Viagis, Aunt Hester? Anybody?”

“Don’t know at all, my dear,” said she. “I know as little about them as
you. Quite respectable folk, I daresay, though what does it matter if
they weren’t?”

“Not an atom. Queen Elizabeth wished she was a milk-maid, didn’t she?”

“Lord, she’d have upset the milk-pails and stampeded the cows!” observed
Lady Hester. “Better for her to be a queen. Why, here’s your father.”

This was rather an unusual appearance, for Lord Yardley did not
generally shew himself till lunch-time. Colin instantly jumped up.

“Hurrah, father!” he said. “Come and talk. Cigarette? Chair?”

Lord Yardley shook his head. “No, dear boy,” he said. “I sent for you
and heard you were out, so I came to look for you. Have five minutes’
stroll with me.”

Colin took his father’s arm. “Rather,” he said. “Tell Vi that I’ll be
back in a few minutes if she comes out, will you, Aunt Hester?”

Philip stopped. “Another time will do, Colin,” he said, “if you’ve made
any arrangement with Violet.”

“Only vague tennis.”

They walked off up the shady alley of grass to where, at the end, an
opening cut in the trees gave a wide view over the plain. The ground in
front fell sharply away in slopes of steep turf, dotted with hawthorns a
little past the fulness of their flowering. A couple of miles away the
red roofs of Rye smouldered in the blaze of the day, outlined against
the tidal water of the joined rivers, that went seawards in expanse of
dyke-contained estuary. On each side of it stretched the green levels of
the marsh, with Winchelsea floating there a greener island on the green
of that grassy ocean, and along its margin to the south the sea like a
silver wire was extended between sky and land. To the right for
foreground lay the yew-encompassed terraces, built and planted by Colin
the first, the lowest of which fringed the broad water of the lake, and
along them burned the glory of the June flower-beds. Behind, framed in
the trees between which they had passed, the south-east front of the
house rose red and yellow between the lines of green.

The two stood silent awhile.

“Ah, Colin,” said his father, “we’re at one about Stanier. It beats in
your blood as it does in mine. I wish to God that when I was dead....”

He broke off.

“I want to talk to you about two things,” he said. “Raymond’s one of
them, but we’ll take the other first. About Italy. I’ll take you with me
if you want to come. I was reluctant, but I am reluctant no longer.
Apart from my inclination which, as I tell you, is for it now not
against it, you’ve got a certain right to come. You and I will live in
the villa where I lived with your mother. I’ve left it you, by the way.
My romance, my marriage with her, and our life together, was so short
and was so utterly cut off from everybody else that, as you know, I’ve
always kept it like that, severed from all of you. But you’re her son,
my dear, and in some ways you are so like her that it’s only right you
should share my memories and my ghosts. They’re twenty-one years old
now, and they’ve faded, but they are there. There’s only one thing I
want of you; that is, not to ask me any questions about her. Certain
things I’ll tell you, but anything I don’t tell you....”

He broke off for a moment.

“Anything I don’t tell you is my private affair,” he said.

“I understand, father,” said Colin.

“You’ll probably see your Uncle Salvatore,” continued Philip. “So be
prepared for a shock. He usually comes over when he hears I am at the
villa ... but never mind that. He takes himself off when he’s got his
tip. So that’s settled. If you get bored you can go away.”

“That is good of you, father,” said the boy.

“Now about the second point,” said Philip; “and that’s Raymond. He’s a
sulky, dark fellow, that brother of yours, Colin.”

Colin laughed. “Oh, put all the responsibility on me,” he said.

“Well, what’s to be done with him? He was in the long gallery just now
as I came out, and I spoke to him and was civil. But there he lounged,
didn’t even take his feet off the window-seat, and wouldn’t give me more
than a grunted ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ So I told him what I thought of his
manners.”

“Oh, did you? How good for him.”

“Well, I didn’t see why he should sulk at me,” said Philip. “After all,
it’s my house for the present, and if he is to quarter himself there,
without either invitation or warning, the least he can do is to treat me
like his host. I try to treat him like a guest, and like a son, for that
matter. Don’t I?”

“Yes, dear father,” said Colin. “You always try.”

“What do you mean, you impertinent boy?”

Colin laughed again. “Well, you don’t always succeed, you know. You
cover up your dislike of him....”

“Dislike?”

“Rather. You hate him, you know.”

Philip pondered over this. “God forgive me, I believe I do,” he said.
“But, anyhow, I try not to, and that’s the most I can do. And I will be
treated civilly in my own house. How long is he going to stop, do you
know?”

“I asked him that yesterday,” said Colin. “He said that, with my
permission--sarcastic, you know--he was going to stop as long as he
pleased.”

Philip frowned. “Oh, did he?” he said. “Perhaps my permission will have
something to do with it.”

“Oh, do tell him to pack off!” said Colin. “It was so ripping here
before he came. I had a row with him last night, by the way.”

“What about?”

“Oh, he chose to swear at me for mimicking him. That is how it began.
But Raymond will quarrel over anything. He’s not particular about the
pretext. Then there was what I said about the tobacconist’s wench.”

They had passed through the box-hedge on to the terrace just below the
windows of the long gallery. Colin raised his eyes for one half-second
as they came opposite the window-seat which Raymond had been occupying,
and saw the top of his black head just above the sill. He raised his
voice a little.

“Poor old Raymond,” he said. “We’ve got to make the best of him,
father. I suppose he can’t help being so beastly disagreeable.”

“He seems to think he’s got a monopoly of it,” said Philip. “But I’ll
show him I can be disagreeable, too. And if he can’t mend his ways, I’ll
just send him packing.”

“Oh, it would be ripping without him,” said Colin. “He might come back
after you and I have gone to Italy.”

       *       *       *       *       *

In pursuance of his general policy, Colin made the most persevering
attempts at lunch to render himself agreeable to his brother, for the
impression he wished to give was that he was all amiability and thereby
throw into blackest shadow against his own sunlight, Raymond’s
churlishness. A single glance at that glowering face was sufficient to
convince Colin that he had amply overheard the words which had passed
between his father and himself below the open window of the gallery, and
that he writhed under these courtesies which were so clearly of the
routine of “making the best of him.” All the rest of them would see how
manfully Colin persevered, and this geniality was a goad to Raymond’s
fury; he simply could not bring himself to answer with any appearance of
good-fellowship.

“What have you been at all morning, Raymond?” Colin asked him as he
entered. “I looked for you everywhere.”

“Been indoors,” said Raymond.

Colin just shook his head and gave a little sigh of despair, then began
again, determined not to be beaten. He saw his father watching and
listening, and Raymond knew that Lord Yardley was applauding Colin’s
resolve to “make the best of him.”

“You ought to have come down to the tennis-court and taken on Vi and me
together,” he said. “We shouldn’t have had a chance against you, but
we’d have done our best. Father, you must come and look at Raymond the
next time he plays; he’s become a tremendous crack.”

Raymond knew perfectly well that either Colin or Violet could beat him
single-handed. Yet how answer this treacherous graciousness?

“Oh, don’t talk such rot, Colin!” he said.

He looked up angrily just in time to see Colin and his father exchange a
glance.

“Well, what shall we do this afternoon?” said Colin, doggedly pleasant.
“Shall we go and play golf? It would be awfully nice of you if you’d
drive me down in your car.”

“You know perfectly well that I loathe golf,” said Raymond.

“Sorry,” said Colin.

Colin laughed, and without the smallest touch of ill-humour, gave it up
and turned to Violet.

“We’ll have our game in that case, shall we, Vi?” he asked. “Father, may
we have a car to take us down?”

“By all means,” said Philip. “Hester and I will come down with you, go
for a drive, and pick you up again. You’d like that, Hester?”

“Oh, but that will leave Raymond alone....” began Colin.

Raymond broke in: “That’s just what I want you to do with me,” he
snapped.

Colin got up. “I’ll just go and see granny for a minute,” he said. “I
told her I would look in on her after lunch....”

Philip had listened to Colin’s advances and Raymond’s rebuffs with a
growing resentment at his elder son’s behaviour, and as the others went
out he beckoned him to stop behind.

“Look here, Raymond,” he said when the door had closed. “I had to speak
to you after breakfast for your rudeness to me, and all lunch-time
you’ve been as disagreeable as you knew how to be to your brother. And
if you think I’m going to stand these sulks and ill-temper, you’ll very
speedily find yourself mistaken. Colin did all that a good-natured boy
could to give you a chance of making yourself decently agreeable, and
every time he tried you snapped and growled at him.”

“Do you wish me to answer you or not, sir?” asked Raymond.

“Certainly. I have every desire to be scrupulously fair to you,” said
Philip. “I will hear anything you wish to say.”

“Then, father, I wish to say that you’re not fair to me. If I’m late for
dinner, do you chaff me in the way you do Colin? Last night you asked
him with a chuckle, ‘Urgent private affairs?’ That was all the rebuke he
got. If he says he hasn’t finished his wine, you sit down again, and say
‘Sorry.’ If I haven’t, you tell me I’ve had enough already. Colin’s your
favourite, and you show it every minute of the day. You dislike me, you
know.”

There was quite enough truth in this to make the hearing of it
disagreeable to his father. “I didn’t ask you to discuss my conduct, but
to consider your own,” he said. “But you shall have it your own way. My
conduct to you is the result of yours to me, and yours to everybody
else. Look at yourself and Colin dispassionately, and tell me whether I
could be as fond of you as of him. I acknowledge I’m not. Are you fond
of me, if it comes to that? But I’m polite to you, until you annoy me
beyond endurance, as you are continually doing. If Colin had behaved at
lunch as you’ve behaved, I should have thought he was ill.”

“And I’m only sulky,” said Raymond.

“You’re proving it every moment,” said his father. “That’s quite a good
instance.”

Raymond paused, biting his lip. “You judge Colin’s behaviour to me,
father,” he said, “by what you see of it. You think he’s like that to me
when we’re alone. He’s not: he’s fiendish to me. Don’t you understand
that when you’re there, or anybody else is there, he acts a part, to
make you think that he’s ever so amiable?”

“And how do you behave to him when you’re alone together?” asked
Philip. “If I take your word about Colin, I must take Colin’s about
you.”

“You’ve done that already, I expect,” said Raymond.

His father got up. “I see I haven’t made myself clear,” he said. “Try to
grasp that that’s the sort of remark I don’t intend to stand from you
for a moment. If I have any further complaint to make of you, you leave
the house. You’ve got to be civil and decently behaved. Otherwise you
go. I do not choose to have my general enjoyment of life, or Colin’s, or
your uncle’s, or your aunt’s, spoiled by your impertinences and
snarlings. You’ll have to go away; you can go to St. James’s Square if
you like, but I won’t have you here unless you make a definite effort to
be a pleasanter companion. As I told Colin this morning, you seem to
think that being disagreeable is a monopoly of your own, but you’ll find
that I can be disagreeable, too, and far more effectively than lies in
your power.”

Philip was quite aware that he was speaking with extreme harshness, with
greater harshness, in fact, than he really intended. But the sight of
that heavy brooding face, the knowledge that this was his elder son, who
would reign at Stanier when he was dead to the exclusion of Colin, made
his tongue bitter beyond control.

“Well, that’s all I’ve got to say to you,” he said. “I won’t have you
insolent and uncivil to me or any one in this house. I’m master here for
the present, and, rightly or wrongly, I shall do as I choose. And I
won’t have you quarrelling with Colin. You tell me that when I’m not
here and when you’re alone with him, he’s fiendish to you; that was the
word you used. Now don’t repeat that, because I don’t believe it. You’re
jealous of Colin, that’s why you say things like that; you want to
injure him in my eyes. But you only injure yourself.”

At that moment there came into Philip’s mind some memory, now more than
twenty years old, of himself in Raymond’s position, stung by the lash of
his father’s vituperations, reduced to the dumb impotence of hatred.
Though he felt quite justified in all he had said to the boy, he knew
that his dislike of him had plumed and barbed his arrows, and he
experienced some sort of reluctant sympathy with him.

“I’ve spoken strongly,” he said, “because I felt strongly, but I’ve
done. If you’ve got anything more to say to me, say it.”

“No,” said Raymond.

“Very good. I shan’t refer to it all again, and it’s up to you to do
better in the future. Put a check on yourself. Believe me, that if you
do you will have a better time with me and every one else.... Think it
over, Raymond; be a sensible fellow.”

The departure of the others gave Raymond abundance of leisure for
solitary reflection, and his father’s remarks plenty of material for the
same. Stinging as those hot-minted sentences had been, he felt no
resentment towards the orator; from his own point of view--a perfectly
reasonable one--his father was justified in what he said. What he did
not know, and what he refused to know, was the truth about Colin, who
neglected no opportunity which quickness of speech and an unrivalled
instinct gave him as to what rankled and festered, of planting his darts
when they were alone together. Raymond accepted Colin’s hatred of him,
just as he accepted his own of Colin, as part of the established order
of things, but what made him rage was this new policy of his brother’s
to win sympathy for himself and odium for him, by public politeness and
affectionate consideration. No one observing that, as his father had
done, could doubt who was the aggressor in their quarrels--the genial,
sweet-tempered boy, or he, the morose and surly. And yet, far more often
than not, it was Colin who intentionally and carefully exasperated him.
It amused Colin, as he had said, to see his brother in a rage, and he
was ingenious at providing himself with causes of entertainment.

And what, above all, prompted his father’s slating of him just now?
Again it was Colin; it was his championship of his favourite which had
given the sting to his tongue. Here, too, Raymond acquitted his father
of any motive beyond the inevitable one. Nobody could possibly help
liking Colin better than himself, and it was the recognition of that
which made his mind brush aside all thought of his father, and attach
itself with claws and teeth to the root of all this trouble. He was slow
in his mental processes whereas Colin was quick, and Colin could land a
hundred stinging darts, could wave a hundred maddening flags at him,
before he himself got in a charge that went home. That image of the
arena entirely filled his thought. Colin, the light, applauded matador,
himself the savage, dangerous animal.

But one day--and Raymond clenched his hands till the nails bit the skin,
as he pictured it--that light, lissome figure, with its smiling face and
its graceful air, would side-step and wheel a moment too late, and it
would lie stretched on the sand, while he gored and kneaded it into a
hash of carrion. “Ah!” he said to himself, “that’ll be good; that’ll be
good.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The intensity and vividness of the image surprised him; he came to
himself, sitting on the terrace, with the hum of bees drowsy in the
flower-beds, as if from some doze and dream. He had not arrived at it
from any consecutive interpretation of his hate for Colin; it had not
been evolved out of his mind, but had been flashed on to it as by some
vision outside his own control. But there it was, and now his business
lay in realising it.

He saw at once that he must be in no hurry. Whether that goring and
kneading of Colin was to be some act of physical violence or the
denouement of a plot which should lead to some disgraceful exposure,
Raymond knew he must plan nothing rashly, must test the strength of
every bolt and rivet in his construction. Above all, he must appear, and
continue to appear, to have taken his father’s strictures to heart, and
for the sake, to put it at its lowest, of being allowed to stay on at
Stanier, to observe the general amenities of sociability, and in
particular to force himself into cordial responses to Colin’s public
attentions.

Temporarily, that would look bitterly like a victory for Colin; with his
father to back him, it would seem as if Colin had reduced his brother to
decent behaviour. But that could not be helped; he must for many weeks
yet cultivate an assiduous civility and appear to have seen the error of
his sulky ways in order to lull suspicion fast asleep. At present Colin
was always watchful for hostile manœuvres; it would be a work of time
and patience before he would credit that Raymond had plucked his
hostility from him.

Then there was Violet. Not only had his intemperate churlishness damaged
him with his father, but not less with her. That had to be repaired, for
though to know that Stanier was to her, even as to Colin, an
enchantment, an obsession, she might find that the involved condition of
marrying him in order to become its mistress was one that she could not
face. She did not love him, she did not even like him, but he divined
that her obsession about Stanier, coupled with the aloofness and
independence that characterised her, might make her accept a
companionship that was not positively distasteful to her.

It was not the Stanier habit to love; love did not form part of the
beauty with which nature had dowered them. The men of the family sought
a healthy mate; for the women of the family, so few had there ever been,
no rule could be deduced. But Violet, so far as he could tell, followed
the men in this, and for witness to her inability to love, in the sense
of poets and romanticists, was her attitude to Colin.

Had he been the younger, Raymond would have laughed at himself for
entertaining any notion of successful rivalry. Colin, with the lordship
of Stanier, would have been no more vulnerable than was the moon to a
yokel with a pocket-pistol. But he felt very sure that love, as a
relentless and compelling factor in this matter, had no part in her
strong liking for Colin. Neither her feeling for him nor his for her
was ever so slightly dipped in any infinite quality; it was ponderable,
and he himself had in his pocket for weight in the other scale, her
passion for Stanier.

       *       *       *       *       *

Colin strolled gracefully into the smoking-room that evening when the
whist and bridge were over, marvelling at the changed Raymond who had
been so courteous at dinner and so obligingly ready to play whist at
poor granny’s table. He himself had kept up that policy of solicitous
attention to his brother, which had made Raymond grind his teeth at
lunch that day, but the effect this evening was precisely the opposite.
Raymond had replied with, it must be supposed, the utmost cordiality of
which he was capable. It was a grim, heavy demeanour at the best, but
such as it was....

No doubt, however, Raymond was saving up for such time as they should be
alone, the full power of his antagonism, and Colin, pausing outside the
smoking-room, considered whether he should not go to bed at once and
deprive his brother of the relief of unloading himself. But the desire
to bait him was too strong, and he turned the door-handle and entered.

“So you got a wigging after lunch to-day,” he remarked. “It seems to
have brought you to heel a bit. But you can let go now, Raymond. You
haven’t amused me all evening with your tantrums.”

Raymond looked up from his illustrated paper. He knew as precisely what
“seeing red” meant as did the bull in the arena. He had to wait a moment
till that cleared.

“Hullo, Colin,” he said. “Have you come for a drink?”

“Incidentally. My real object was to see you and to have one of our
jolly chats. Did father pitch it in pretty hot? I stuck up for you this
morning when we talked you over.”

Raymond was off his guard, forgetting that certain knowledge he
possessed was derived from overhearing. “Yes, you said you must make
the best of me ...” he began.

Colin was on to that like a flash. “Now, how on earth could you have
known that?” he asked. “Father didn’t tell you.... I know! I said that
just as I was passing under the window in the gallery where you were
sitting after breakfast. My word, Raymond, you’ve a perfect genius for
eavesdropping. It was only last night that you hid behind the
flower-vase and heard me mimic you, and if I hadn’t shut the door of the
dining-room this morning, you’d have listened to what Aunt Hester and
Violet and I were saying, and then you overhear my conversation with
father. You’re a perfect wonder.”

Raymond got up, his eyes blazing. “Take care, Colin,” he said. “Don’t go
too far.”

Colin laughed. “Ah, that’s better,” he said. “Now you’re more yourself.
I thought I should get at you soon.”

Raymond felt his mouth go dry, but below the violence of his anger there
was something that made itself heard. “You’ll spoil your chance if you
break out,” it said. “Keep steady....” He drained his glass and turned
to his brother.

“Sorry, Colin,” he said, “but I’m not going to amuse you to-night.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Colin. “I’ve hardly begun yet. Your
manner at dinner, now, and your amiability. It was not really a success.
No naturalness about it. It sat on you worse than your sulkiest moods.
You reminded me of some cad in dress-clothes trying to catch the note of
the ordinary well-bred man. Better be natural. I’ll go on sticking up
for you; I’ll persuade father not to pack you off. I’ve a good deal of
influence with him. I shall say you’re injuring yourself by not behaving
like a sulky boor. Besides, you can’t do it; if your geniality at dinner
was an attempt to mimic me, I must tell you that nobody could guess who
it was meant for. Vi was very funny about it.”

“Really? What did she say?” asked Raymond.

“Oh, naturally I can’t give her away,” said Colin. “But perhaps you’ll
hear her say it again if you’re conveniently placed.”

“You know quite well Vi didn’t say anything about it,” said Raymond at a
venture.

“Naturally, you know best. And, talking of Vi, are you going to propose
to her? I wouldn’t if I were you; take my hint and save yourself being
laughed at.”

“Most friendly of you,” said Raymond. “But there are some things that
are my business.”

“And not an affectionate brother’s?” asked Colin. “You don’t know how I
feel for you. It makes me wince when I see you blundering and making the
most terrible _gaffes_. It’s odd that I should have had a brother like
you, and that you should be a Stanier at all.”

Colin threw a leg over the arm of his chair. It was most astonishing
that not only in public but now, when there was no reason that Raymond
should keep up a semblance of control, that he should be so impervious
to the shafts that in ordinary stung him so intolerably.

“You’re so awkward, Raymond,” he said. “However much you try, you can’t
charm anybody or make any one like you. You’ve neither manners, nor
looks, nor breeding. You’ve got the curse of the legend without its
benefits. You’re a coward, too; you’d like nothing better than to slit
my throat, and yet you’re so afraid of me that you daren’t even throw
that glass of whisky and soda in my face.”

For a moment it looked as if Raymond was about to do precisely that; the
suggestion was almost irresistible. But he loosed his hand on it again.

“That would only give you the opportunity to go to my father and tell
him,” he said. “You would say I had lost my temper with you. I don’t
intend to give you any such opportunity.”

Even as he spoke he marvelled at his own self-control. But the plain
fact was that the temptation to lose it had no force with him to-night.
For the sake of his ultimate revenge, whatever that might be, that
goring and kneading of Colin, it was no less than necessary that he
should seem to have put away from him all his hostility. Colin and the
rest of them--Violet above all--must grow to be convinced in the change
that had come over him.

He rose. “Better give it up, Colin,” he said. “You’re not going to rile
me. You’ve had a good try at it, for I never knew you so studiedly
insolent. But it’s no use. Good night.”

       *       *       *       *       *

During the fortnight which intervened before the departure of Lord
Yardley and Colin to Italy, Raymond never once faltered in the task he
had set himself. There was no act of patience too costly for the due
attainment of it, no steadfastness of self-control in the face of
Colin’s gibes that was not worth the reward which it would ultimately
bring. He avoided as far as possible being alone with his brother, but
that, in the mere trivial round of the day, happened often enough to
give Colin the opportunity of planting a dart or two. But now they
seemed to have lost all penetrative force; so far from goading him into
some ill-aimed response, they were but drops of showers on something
waterproof.

Colin was disposed at first to attribute this incredible meekness to the
effect of his father’s strictures. Raymond had been given to understand
without any possible mistake, that, unless he mended his ways, he would
have to leave Stanier, and that, no doubt, accounted for his assumption
of public amiability. But his imperviousness in private to any
provocation was puzzling. He neither answered Colin’s challenges nor
conducted any offensive of his own. At the most a gleam or a flush told
that some jibe had gone home, but no angry blundering reply would give
opportunity for another. For some reason Raymond banked up his
smouldering fires, not letting them blaze.

His impotence to make his brother wince and rage profoundly irritated
Colin. He had scarcely known before how deep-rooted was his pleasure in
so doing; how integral a part of his consciousness was his hatred of
him, which now seemed to have been deprived of its daily bread.

Not less irritating was the effect that Raymond’s changed behaviour
produced on his father and on Violet. His father’s civilities to him
began to lose the edge of their chilliness; a certain cordiality warmed
them. If the boy was really taking himself in hand, Lord Yardley must,
in common duty and justice, encourage and welcome his efforts, and the
day before the departure for Italy, he made an opportunity for
acknowledging this. Once more after lunch, he nodded to Raymond to stay
behind the others.

“I want to tell you, Raymond,” he said, “that I’m very much pleased with
you. You’ve been making a strong effort with yourself, and you’re
winning all down the line. And how goes it with you and Colin in
private?”

Raymond took rapid counsel with himself. “Very well indeed, sir,” he
said. “We’ve had no rows at all.”

“That’s good. Now what are your plans while Colin and I are away? Your
Uncle Ronald and Violet are going to stop on here. I think your aunt’s
going up to London. You can establish yourself at St. James’s Square, if
you like, or remain here.”

“I’ll stop here if I may,” said Raymond. “I don’t care about London.”

Philip smiled. “Very good,” he said. “You’ll have to take care of Violet
and keep her amused.”

Raymond answered with a smile. “I’ll do my best, father,” he said.

“Well, all good wishes,” said his father. “Let me know how all goes.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Colin had seen throughout this fortnight Raymond’s improvement of his
position with regard to Lord Yardley, and he had felt himself jealously
powerless to stop it. Once he had tried, with some sunnily-told tale of
Raymond’s ill-temper, to put the brake on it, but his father had stopped
him before he was half through with it. “Raymond’s doing very well,” he
said. “I don’t want to hear anything against him.” A further light was
shed for Colin that evening.

He and Violet, when the rubber of whist was over and Lady Yardley had
gone upstairs, strolled out into the hot dusk of the terrace with linked
arms, but with no more stir of emotion in their hearts than two
schoolboy friends, whose intimacy was to be severed by a month of
holiday, would have experienced. The shadow cast by the long yew hedge
from the moon near to its setting had enveloped them in its clear
darkness, the starlight glimmered on the lake below, and in the elms
beyond the nightingales chanted.

“Listen at them, look at it all,” said Colin impatiently. “Starlight and
shadow and nightingales and you and me as cool as cucumbers. You look
frightfully attractive, too, to-night, Vi: why on earth don’t I fall
madly in love with you?”

“Oh, my dear, don’t!” said Violet. “You might make me fall in love with
you. But I suppose I needn’t be afraid. You can’t fall in love with
anybody, Colin, and I daresay I can’t either. But I shall try.”

“And what do you mean by that?” asked Colin.

“It’s pretty obvious,” she said.

“Raymond, do you mean?” asked Colin.

“Of course. What’s come over him? There’s something attractive about
him, after all; he’s got charm. Who would have thought it?”

Though Colin had just now truthfully declared that he was in no way in
love with his cousin, he felt a pang of jealousy just as authentic as
that which the notion of Raymond’s possession of Stanier caused in him.

“But you can’t, Violet!” he said. “That boor....”

“I’m not so sure that he is a boor. He’s keeping the boor in a box,
anyhow, and has turned the key on him. He’s quite changed. You can’t
deny it.”

Colin slipped his arm out of Violet’s. “Raymond’s cleverer than I
thought,” he said. “All this fortnight it has puzzled me to know what
he’s been at, but now I see. He’s been improving his position with
father and with you.”

“He has certainly done that,” said Violet.

“So, if he asks you, you intend to marry him?” asked Colin.

“I think so.”

“I shall hate you if you do,” said he.

“Why? How can it matter to you? If you were in love with me it would be
different, or if I were in love with you. Oh, we’ve talked it all over
before; there’s nothing new.”

They had passed through the cut entrance in the yew hedge into the
moonlight, and Violet, turning, looked at her companion. Colin’s face
was brilliantly illuminated. By some optical illusion that came and went
in a flash, he looked at that moment as if his face was lit from within,
so strangely it shone against the dark serge of the hedge for
background. There was an unearthly beauty about it that somehow appalled
her. He seemed like some incarnation, ageless and youthful, of the
fortunes of the house. But the impression was infinitesimal in duration,
and she laughed.

“Colin, you looked so wonderful just now,” she said. “You looked like
all the Staniers rolled into one.”

Somehow this annoyed him. “Raymond included, I suppose?” he asked. “But
you’re wrong; there is something new. Hitherto you’ve only considered
Raymond as a necessary adjunct to being mistress here; now you’re
considering him as a man you can imagine loving. Hasn’t he got enough
already? Good God, how I hate him!”

He had hardly spoken when there emerged from the entrance in the hedge
through which they had just passed, Raymond himself. Colin, white with
fury, turned on him.

“Hullo, at it again?” he said. “You’ve overheard something nice this
time!”

Raymond’s mouth twitched, but he gave no other sign. “Father has just
sent me out to tell you that he wants to speak to you before you go to
bed,” he said, and, turning, went straight back to the house.

Violet waited till the sound of his step had vanished. “Colin, you’re a
brute,” she said. “You’re fiendish!”

“I know that,” said Colin. “Who ever supposed I was an angel?”

“And it’s acting like a fool to treat Raymond like that,” she went on.
“Can you afford to make him hate you?”

He laughed. “I’ve afforded it as long as I can remember,” he said. “It
amuses me.”

“Well, it doesn’t amuse me to see you behave like a fiend,” said Violet.
“And do you know that you lost your temper? I’ve never seen you do that
yet.”

Colin licked his lips; his mouth felt dry. “That was an odd thing,” he
observed. “Now I know what I make Raymond feel like when we chat
together. But it’s amazing that Raymond should have done the same to me.
I must go in to father.”

They moved back into the shadow of the hedge and Colin stopped.

“I say, Vi, give me a kiss,” he said.

She drew back a moment, wondering why she did so. “But, my dear, why?”
she asked.

“We’re cousins,” he said. “Why shouldn’t you? I should awfully like to
kiss you.”

She had got over her momentary surprise, which was, no doubt, what made
her hesitate. There was no conceivable reason, though they did not kiss
each other, why they should not.

“And if I won’t?” she said.

“I shall think it unkind of you.”

She came close to him. “Oh, Colin, I’m not unkind,” she said, and kissed
him.

He stood with his hands on her shoulders, not letting her go, though
making no attempt to kiss her again. “That was delicious of you,” he
said.

Suddenly and quite unexpectedly to herself, Violet found her heart
beating soft and fast, and she was glad of the darkness, for she knew
that a heightened colour had sprung to her face. Was Colin, too, she
wondered, affected in any such way?

His light laugh, the release of her shoulders from his cool hands,
answered her.

“Good Lord! To think that perhaps Raymond will be kissing you next,” he
said. “How maddening!”




CHAPTER III


From the first some call of his Italian blood had made itself audible to
Colin; even as their train emerged out of the drip and roaring darkness
of the Mont Cenis tunnel, there had been a whisper in his ears that this
was the land of his birth to which he had come, and that whisper had
grown into full-voiced welcome when, at the hot close of day, he and his
father had strolled out after dinner along the sea-front of Naples.
Though he had never been here yet, sight, scent, and sound alike told
him that he was not so much experiencing what was new as recognising
what, though dormant, had always been part of him, bred into the very
fibre and instinct of him. It was not that he hailed or loved this lure
of the South; it would be more apt to say that he nodded to it, as to an
old acquaintance--taken for granted rather than embraced.

This claiming and appropriation by Colin of his native place unfroze in
his father the reticence that he had always observed with regard to that
year he had spent in Italy into which had entered birth and death, and
all that his life held of romance. That, till now, had been incapsulated
within him, or at the most, like the ichor in some ductless gland, was
performing some mysterious function in his psychology. Now this claim of
Colin’s on the South, his easy stepping into possession by right of his
parentage, unsealed in Philip the silence he had so long preserved.

Colin, as he regarded his surroundings with friendly and familiar eyes,
was visibly part of his old romance; the boy’s mother lived again in
that sunny hair, those eyes, and the clear olive skin, just as surely as
did old Colin of the Holbein portrait. But now Stanier was far away, and
the spell of the South as potent as when Philip, flying from the glooms
and jibes of that awful old man, his father, first came under its
enchantment. And Colin, of all that dead time, alone was a vital and
living part of its manifestation. Through the medium of memory he
stirred his father’s blood; Philip felt romance bubble in him again as
he walked along the familiar ways with the flower that had blossomed
from it. He felt, too, that Colin silently (for he asked no question)
seemed to claim the right to certain knowledge; he seemed to present
himself, to be ready, and, indeed, it would be singular if, having
brought him here, his father did not speak of that which, every year,
had taken him on his solitary pilgrimage to the South.

They were to spend the greater part of the next day in Naples, leaving
by the afternoon boat for Capri, and as they finished their breakfast on
a shady veranda, Philip spoke:

“Well, we’ve got all the morning,” he said, “to trundle about in. The
museum is very fine; would you like to see it?”

“No, I should hate it,” said Colin.

“But it’s a marvellous collection,” said Philip.

“I daresay; but to see a museum would make me feel like a tourist. At
present I don’t, and it’s lovely.”

He looked at his father as he spoke, and once again, this time
compellingly, Philip saw confident expectancy in his eyes. Colin was
certainly waiting for something.

“Then will you come with me on a sentimental journey?” he asked.

“Ah, father, won’t I just!” he said. “After all, you and I are on a
sentimental journey.”

There seemed to Philip in his devotion to Colin, something exquisitely
delicate about this. He had wanted but, instinctively had not asked,
waiting for his rights to be offered him.

“Come, then,” he said. “I’ll show you where we lived, your mother and I.
I’ll show you our old haunts, such as survive. You belong to that life,
Colin.”

Colin paused a moment, sitting quite still, for a span of clear,
concentrated thought. He desired to say precisely the right thing, the
thing that his father would most value. It was not in the smallest
degree affection for his father which prompted that; it was the wish
that the door should be thrown open as wide as possible--that all the
keys should be put into his hand.

“I know I do,” he said. “I’ve known that for years, but I had to wait
for you to want me to share it. It had to be you who took me into it.”

He saw approval gleam in his father’s eyes. This was clearly the right
tack.

“And you must remember I know nothing whatever about your life with my
mother,” he said. “You’ve got to begin at the beginning. And ... and make
it long, father.”

It was not surprising that Colin’s presence gave to this sentimental
journey a glow which it had lacked during all those years when Philip
made his annual solitary visit here. Already the mere flight of years,
and the fact that he had never married again, had tinged that long-past
time with something of the opalescence which sunlit mist confers on
objects which in themselves hardly rise above the level of the mean and
the prosaic; and what now survived for him in memory was Rosina’s
gaiety, her beauty, her girlish charm, with forgetfulness for her vapid
vanity, her commonness, and the speed with which his senses even had
been sated with her. But it was an unsubstantial memory of blurred and
far-off days, girt with regrets and the emptiness of desires dead and
unrecoverable.

Now Colin’s presence gave solidity to it all; it was as if the sunlit
mist had been withdrawn from the dim slopes which it covered, and lo!
the reality was not mean or prosaic, but had absorbed the very tints and
opalescences which had cloaked it. There was Colin, eager and
sympathetic, yet checking any question of his own, and but thirsty for
what his father might give him, and in the person of the boy who was the
only creature in the world whom Philip loved, and in whom Rosina lived,
that tawdry romance of his was glorified. To tell Colin, about his
mother here, in the places where they had lived together, was to make a
shrine of them.

The flat which he and Rosina had occupied in Naples, when the autumnal
departure of visitors from Capri rendered the island so desolating to
her urban nature, happened to be untenanted, and a couple of lire
secured their admittance. It still held pieces of furniture which had
been there twenty years ago, and Colin, moving quietly to and fro, his
eyes alight with interest in little random memories which his father
recalled, was like a ray of sunlight shining into a place that had long
slept in dust and shadows. Mother and son reacted on each other in
Philip’s mind; a new tenderness blossomed for Rosina out of his love for
Colin, and he wondered at himself for not having brought them together
like this before.

Here were the chairs which they used to pull out on to the veranda when
the winter sun was warm; here was the Venetian looking-glass which
Rosina could never pass without a glance at her image, and now, as Colin
turned towards it, there were Rosina’s eyes and golden hair that flashed
back at Philip out of the past and made a bridge to the present.

And there, above all, was the bedroom, with the glitter of sun on the
ceiling cast there from the reflecting sea, where, at the close of a
warm, windy day of March, the first cry of a new-born baby was heard.
And by that same bedside, at the dawn of an April morning, Philip had
seen the flame of Rosina’s life flicker and waver and expire. He
regretted her more to-day than at the hour when she had left him. Some
unconscious magic vested in Colin cast that spell.

For all these recollections Colin had the same eager, listening face and
the grave smile. Never even in his baiting of Raymond had he shewn a
subtler ingenuity in adapting his means to his end. He used his father’s
affection for him to prize open the locks of a hundred caskets, and
enable him to see what was therein. He wanted to know all that his
father would tell him about that year which preceded his birth, and not
asking questions was the surest way of hearing what he wanted.

Already he had found that his Aunt Hester knew very little about that
year, or, if she knew, she had not chosen to tell him certain things.
His curiosity, when he had talked to her under the elms, had been but
vague and exploratory, but, it will be remembered, it had become
slightly more definite when, in answer to his comment that his father
and mother must have been married very soon after his arrival in Italy,
Aunt Hester had given a very dry assent.

Now his curiosity was sharply aroused about that point, for with all his
father’s communicativeness this morning, he had as yet said no word
whatever that bore on the date of their marriage. Colin felt by an
instinct which defied reason, that there was something to be known here;
the marriage, the scene, the date of it, must have passed through his
father’s mind, and yet he did not choose, in all this sudden breakdown
of long reticence, to allude to it. That was undeniably so; a question,
therefore, would certainly be useless, for believing as he did, that his
father had something to conceal, he would not arrive at it in that way.

They were standing now in the window looking over the bay, and Philip
pointed to the heat-veiled outline of Capri, floating, lyre-shaped, on
the fusing-line of sea and sky.

“We were there all the summer,” he said, “in the villa you will see this
evening. Then your mother found it melancholy in the autumn and we came
here--I used to go backwards and forwards, for I couldn’t quite tear
myself away from the island altogether.”

That struck Colin as bearing on his point; it was odd, wasn’t it, that a
newly-married couple should do that? You would have expected them to
live here or there, but together.... Then, afraid that his father would
think he was pondering on that, he changed the topic altogether.

“I have loved hearing about it all,” he said. “But somehow--don’t be
shocked, father--I can’t feel that Raymond comes into it one atom. We’ve
been realising you and my mother and the squalling thing that I was. But
I can’t feel Raymond with us then any more than he’s with us now. Let’s
keep Italy to ourselves, father. Poor old Raymond!”

That shifting of the topic was skilfully designed and subtly executed.
Colin confessed to alienation from Raymond and yet with a touch of
affectionate regret. His father was less guarded.

“Raymond’s got nothing to do with Italy,” he said. “There’s not a single
touch of your mother in him. We’ve got this to ourselves, Colin. Raymond
will have Stanier.”

“Lucky dog!” said Colin.

There was one item connected with the marriage that he might safely ask,
and as they went downstairs he put it to his father, watching him very
narrowly.

“I feel I know all about my mother now,” he said, “except just one
thing.”

Lord Yardley turned quickly to him. “I’ve told you all I can tell you,”
he said sharply.

That was precisely what Colin had been waiting for. There was something
more, then. But the question which he was ready with was harmless
enough.

“I only wanted to know where you were married,” he said. “That’s the one
thing you haven’t told me.”

There was no doubt that this was a relief to his father; he had clearly
expected something else, not the “where” of the boy’s question, but the
“when,” which by now had definitely crystallised in Colin’s mind.

“Oh, that!” he said. “Stupid of me not to have told you. We were married
at the British Consulate.”

They passed out into the noonday.

“Mind you remember that, Colin,” said his father. “On my death the
marriage will have to be proved; it will save a search. Your birth was
registered there, too. And Raymond’s.”

Such was the sum of information that Colin took on board with him that
afternoon when they embarked on the steamer for Capri, and though in one
sense it took him back a step, in another it confirmed the idea that had
grown up in his mind. He felt certain (here was the confirmation) that
if he had asked his father when the marriage took place, he would have
been told a date which he would not have believed. Lord Yardley would
have said that they had been married very soon after his arrival
twenty-one years ago. He had waited with obvious anxiety for Colin’s one
question, and he had hailed that question with relief, for he had no
objection to the boy’s knowing where the contract was made.

And the retrograde step was this: that whereas he had been ready to
think that his father’s marriage was an event subsequent to his own
birth and Raymond’s, he was now forced to conclude (owing to the fact
that his father told and impressed on him to remember, that it had been
performed at the British Consulate) that he and Raymond were
legitimately born in wedlock. That seemed for the present to be a
_cul-de-sac_ in his researches.

The warm, soft air streamed by, and the wind made by the movement of the
boat enticed Colin out from under the awning into the breeze-tempered
blaze of the sun. He went forward and found in the bows a place where he
could be alone and study, like a map, whatever could be charted of his
discoveries.

That willingness of his father to tell him where the marriage had taken
place was somehow disconcerting; it implied that the ceremony made valid
whatever had preceded it. He had himself been born in mid-March, and he
did not attempt to believe that his father had been married in the
previous June, the month when he had first come to Italy. But he could
not help believing that his father had married before his own birth.

Colin was one of those rather rare people who can sit down and think.
Everybody can sit down and let his mind pleasantly wander over a hundred
topics, but comparatively few can tether it, so to speak, so that it
grazes on a small circle only. This accomplishment Colin signally
possessed, and though now there could be no practical issue to his
meditations, he set himself to carve out in clear, cutting strokes what
he would have done in case he had discovered that he and Raymond alike
were born out of wedlock. He imagined that situation to himself; he
cropped at it, he grazed on it....

The disclosure, clearly, if the fact had been there, would not have come
out till his father’s death, and he could see himself looking on the
face of the dead without the slightest feeling of reproach. He knew that
his father was leaving him all that could be left away from Raymond; he
was heir also to Aunt Hester’s money.

But in that case Stanier, and all that went with the title, would not be
Raymond’s at all; Raymond would be nameless and penniless. And Colin’s
beautiful mouth twitched and smiled. “That would have been great fun,”
he said to himself. “Raymond would have been nobody and have had
nothing. Ha! Raymond would not have had Stanier, and I should have
ceased to hate him. I should have made him some small allowance.”

Yes, Stanier would have passed from Raymond, and it and all that it
meant would have gone to Violet ... and at that the whole picture
started into life and colour. If only now, at this moment, he was
possessed of the knowledge that he and Raymond alike were illegitimate,
with what ardour, with what endless subtlety, would he have impelled
Violet to marry him! How would he have called upon the legendary
benefactor who for so long had prospered and befriended the Staniers, to
lend him all the arts and attractions of the lover! With such wiles to
aid him, he would somehow have forced Violet to give up the idea of
marrying Raymond in order to get Stanier, and instead, renouncing
Stanier, take him, and by her renunciation for love’s sake, find in the
end that she had gained (bread upon the waters) all that she had
imagined was lost.

And he, Colin, in that case, would be her husband, master of Stanier to
all intents and purposes. Willingly would he have accepted, eagerly
would he have welcomed that. He wanted what he would never get unless
Raymond died, except at some such price as that. But it was no use
thinking about it; his father’s insistence on the place where he and
Rosina were married made it certain that no such fortunate catastrophe
could be revealed at his death.

Presently Lord Yardley joined him as they passed along the headland on
which Sorrento stands, and there were stories of the visit that he and
Rosina made here during the summer. Colin listened to these with
suppressed irritation; what did he care whether they had spent a week at
Sorrento or not? Of all that his father had to tell him, he had mastered
everything that mattered, and he began to find in these recollections a
rather ridiculous sentimentality. He knew, of course, that he himself
was responsible for this; it was he, Rosina’s son, and his father’s love
for him, that conjured up these tendernesses. He was responsible, too,
in that all the morning he had listened with so apt a sympathy to
similar reminiscences. But then he hoped that he was about to learn
something really worth knowing, whereas now he was convinced that there
was nothing of that sort to know. Fond as his father had always been of
him, he easily detected something new in his voice, his gestures, the
soft eagerness of his eyes; it was as if in him his father was falling
in love with Rosina.

Sunset burned behind Capri as their steamer drew near to it, and the
eastern side lay in clear shadow though the sea flared with the
reflected fires of the sky, and that, too, seemed to produce more
memories.

“You are so like her, Colin,” said his father, laying his arm round the
boy’s neck, “and I can imagine that twenty-one years have rolled back,
and that I am bringing her across to Capri for the first time. It was
just such an evening as this, sunset and a crescent moon. I had already
bought the villa; we were going back to it together.”

“Straight from the Consulate?” asked Colin quietly.

“What?” asked Philip.

“From the Consulate, father,” he repeated.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Philip quickly, and his voice seemed to ring
utterly untrue. “Straight from the Consulate. Ha! there’s Giacomo, my
boatman. He sees us.”

“Does he remember my mother?” asked Colin.

“Surely. But don’t ask him about her. These fellows chatter on for ever,
and it’s half lies.”

Colin laughed. “As I shouldn’t understand one word of it,” he said, “it
would make little difference whether it was all lies.”

Once again, and more markedly than ever, as they drove up the angled
dusty road set in stone walls and bordered by the sea of vineyards, the
sense of homecoming seized Colin. It was not that his father was by him
or that he was going to his father’s house; the spell worked through the
other side of his parentage, and he felt himself strangely more akin to
the boys who, trudging homewards, shouted a salutation to their driver,
to the girls who clustered on the doorsteps busy with their needle, than
to the grave man who sat beside him and watched with something of a
lover’s tenderness his smiles and glances and gestures. Philip read
Rosina into them all, and she who had so soon sated him till he wearied
of her, woke in him, through Colin, a love that had never before been
given her.

“I cannot imagine why I never thought of bringing you out to Italy
before,” said Philip, “or why, when you asked me to take you, I
hesitated.”

Colin tucked his arm into his father’s. He was wonderfully skilful in
displaying such little signs of affection, which cost him nothing and
meant nothing, but were so well worth while.

“Do I seem to fit into it all, father?” he said. “I am so glad if I do.”

“You more than fit into it, my dear,” said Philip. “You’re part of it.
Why on earth did I never see that?”

“Part of it, am I? That’s exactly what I’ve been feeling all day. I’m at
home here. Not but what I’m very much at home at Stanier.”

Lord Yardley clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I wish to God you
were my eldest son,” he said. “I would give anything if that were
possible. I would close my eyes ever so contentedly when my time comes
if I knew that you were going to take my place.”

“Poor old Raymond!” said Colin softly. “He’s doing his best, father.”

“I suppose he is. But you’re a generous fellow to say that; I shan’t
forget it. Here we are; bundle out.”

Their carriage had stopped in the piazza, and Colin getting out, felt
his lips curl into a smile of peculiar satisfaction. That his father
should believe him to be a generous fellow was pleasant in itself, and
the entire falsity of his belief added spice to the morsel. He seemed to
like it better just because it was untrue.

       *       *       *       *       *

Colin stepped into the drifting summer existence of visitors to the
island with the same aptness as that which had graced his entry to his
mother’s native land. He went down to the bathing-beach after breakfast
with a book and a packet of cigarettes, and spent a basking amphibious
morning. Sometimes his father accompanied him, and after a
constitutional swim, sat in the shade while Colin played the fish in the
sea or the salamander on the beach. On other mornings Lord Yardley
remained up at the villa, which suited Colin quite well, for this
uninterrupted companionship of his father was very tedious. But he
always managed to leave the impression that he wanted Lord Yardley to
come with him.

And so much this morning did Colin want to be alone that, had Philip
said that he was coming with him, he would probably have pleaded a
laziness or indisposition, for he had that morning received a letter
from Violet which called for solitary and uninterrupted reflection.
To-day, however, Philip’s brother-in-law, Salvatore Viagi, had announced
his advent, “to pay his fraternal respects and give his heart’s
welcome,” so ran his florid phrase--and Philip remained at the villa to
receive these tributes.

“It’s a nuisance,” he said, “for I should have liked a dip. But I should
have to hurry back to get here before him.”

Colin laughed. “You speak as if he might steal the silver,” he said.

“Perfectly capable of it,” said his father. “No, I shouldn’t have said
that. But he’s perfectly capable of asking for it.”

Colin perceived that there was no danger of his father’s coming down to
bathe with him. “Surely he can wait till we get back,” he said. “Come
down and bathe, father!”

Philip shook his head. “No, I can’t,” he said. “Salvatore would think it
very odd and rude if I were not here. He wouldn’t understand: he would
think I was intentionally unceremonious.”

“He sounds rather a bounder,” observed Colin.

“He does,” said Philip drily.

       *       *       *       *       *

Colin took Violet’s letter down to the beach with him, and after a short
dip of refreshment from his dusty walk, came out cool and shining from
the sea to dispose himself on the beach that quivered in the hot sun,
and ponder over it. He read it again twice through, stirring it into his
brains and his emotions, till it seemed to form part of him....

So Raymond had proposed to her, and, having asked for a week’s delay in
her answer, she, while the matter was still private, had to tell Colin
that, as far as she knew her own intentions, she was meaning to accept
him. And yet this letter in which she said that she was going to marry
his brother, seemed hardly less than a love-letter to himself.

She appeared to remember that last evening at Stanier when, under the
moon-cast shadow of the yews, she had given him the kiss he asked for,
just as vividly as did Colin. It was vivid to him because he had asked
for that with a definite calculated end in view, and with the same end
in view he had exclaimed how maddening it was to think that Raymond
would kiss her next. No doubt Raymond had done so, and Violet, though
she said she meant to marry him, had, perhaps, begun to know something
more of her own heart. That was why the evening was vivid to her,
exactly as he had intended it should be. She had learned that there was
a difference between him and Raymond, which being mistress at Stanier
might counterbalance, but did not cancel.

The wetness had dried from Colin’s sun-tanned shoulders, and, lying down
at length on the beach, he drew from his pocket Violet’s letter in order
to study one passage again which had puzzled him. Here it was:

     “You were perfectly brutal to Raymond that evening,” she wrote,
     “and he was admirable in his answer to your rudeness. If we are to
     remain friends you must not behave to him like that. You don’t like
     each other, but he, at any rate now, has control over himself, and
     you must copy his example.”

     (“Lord! me copying Raymond’s example,” thought Colin to himself, in
     an ecstatic parenthesis.)

     “I shall always do my best to make peace between you, for I am very
     fond of you, but Raymond’s side will in the future be mine. You
     were nice to me afterwards, but, dear Colin, you mustn’t ask me to
     kiss you again. Raymond wouldn’t like it....”

With this perusal all that was puzzling vanished. “That’s not genuine;
none of that’s genuine,” thought Colin. “She says what she’s trying to
feel, what she thinks she ought to feel, and doesn’t feel.” He turned
the page.

     “I hope my news won’t hurt you,” she went on. “After all, we’ve
     settled often enough that we weren’t in love with each other, and
     so when that night you said it was maddening to think of Raymond
     kissing me next, it couldn’t make any difference to you as you
     aren’t in love with me....”

No, the news did not hurt Colin, so he told himself, in the way that
Violet meant, and she was quite right about the reason of that: he was
not in love with her. But it struck him that the news must undeniably
hurt Violet herself; she was trying to wriggle away from it, while at
the same time she tried to justify herself and that unfortunate (or
should he call it fortunate?) kiss she had given him.

He glanced hastily over the rest; there were more allusions to that last
evening, more scolding and exhortations about his conduct to Raymond,
and, as a postscript, the request that he should send her just one line,
to say he wasn’t hurt. This letter of hers was absolutely private, but
she had to tell him what was about to happen. In a week’s time both she
and Raymond would write to his father, who, so Raymond thought, was not
unprepared.

Colin tore off the final half-sheet of Violet’s letter, and with his
stylograph scribbled his answer on it. He had long ago made up his mind
what he should say:

“VIOLET, MY DEAR” (he wrote),

     “It was delightful of you to tell me, and I send you a million
     congratulations. I am so pleased, for now you will be mistress of
     Stanier, and you seem quite to have fallen in love with Raymond. I
     must be very nice to him, or he’ll never let me come to Stanier in
     days to come, and you will take his side, as you say. But how could
     I be hurt at your news? It is simply charming.

     “Father and I are having a splendid time out here. I shall try to
     persuade him to stop on after this month. Of course we shall come
     back before your marriage. When is it to be, do you think?

                                                        “Best love from

                                                               “COLIN.”



The ink in this hot sun dried almost as quickly as he wrote, and he had
scarcely signed his own name when it wore the appearance not of a
tentative sketch but of a finished communication ready for the post,
and, reading it over, he found that this was so: he could not better it.
So slipping it back into his pocket, he went across the beach again for
a longer swim, smiling to himself at the ease with which he had divined
Violet’s real mind, and at the fitness of his reply. As he swam he
analysed his own purpose in writing exactly like that.

He had expressed himself with all the cordial geniality of which he was
capable: he had welcomed Violet’s choice. He had endorsed, as regards
his own part of the situation, her proposition that he ought not to be
hurt, since they were not in love with each other, and the eagerness of
his endorsement (that swift enthusiastic scrawl) would quite certainly
pique her. He had adopted her attitude, and knew that she would wish he
had another; the same, in fact, which he had expressed when he had said
that it was maddening to think that she would be kissing Raymond next.
Colin knew well how fond she was of him, and his letter would be like
this plunge into the clear crystal of the sea which, while it cooled
you, was glowingly invigorating.

He was quite prepared to find that in a week’s time she and Raymond
would write to his father saying that they were engaged, but not for a
moment did he believe that they would ever be married. He had but to
keep up his cordial indifference till Violet found it intolerable. To
have remonstrated with her, to have allowed that her news hurt him, was
to give Violet just what she wanted. A loveless marriage faced her,
while all the time she was not heart-whole, and however much she wanted
Stanier, she would be daily more conscious that the conditions on which
she got it were a diet of starvation.

“She _is_ rather in love with me,” thought Colin, “and very likely my
letter will drive her into accepting him. But if only I can keep cool
and pleasant, she’ll never marry him. Devilish ingenious! And then
there’s Raymond!”

Colin laughed aloud as he thought of Raymond, who really lay at the
bottom of all these plans. Even if it had been possible now, before
Violet accepted him, to intervene in some way and cause her to refuse
instead of to take him, he would not have stirred a finger, for thus he
would baulk himself of the completeness of Raymond’s discomfiture, since
Raymond would feel the breaking off of his engagement more bitterly than
an original refusal. Let Violet accept him first and then throw him
over. That would be a real counter-irritant to the sting of Raymond’s
primogeniture, an appreciable counterweight to his future possession of
Stanier.

It had been a check in that fraternal feud that Raymond’s birth and his
own were certainly legitimate, and that nothing now could stand in the
way of his brother’s succession, but if the check in that direction had
not occurred, there would never have been any chance of Violet’s
marrying him, and Raymond would have been spared the wounding
humiliation which instinctively, Colin felt sure, was to be dealt him.
Raymond was genuinely desirous of her; he would feel her loss very
shrewdly. If only, by some diabolical good fortune, Raymond could lose
them both! Colin saw himself, Violet by his side, smilingly observing
Raymond’s final departure from Stanier, and hoping that he would have a
pleasant journey.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alas! it was time to swim shorewards again, for the morning boat from
Naples which was carrying Salvatore Viagi had already gone by on its
tourist route to the Blue Grotto, and Salvatore would have disembarked
at the Marina. He felt curious to see Uncle Salvatore, and was
determined to make himself uncommonly pleasant, for there might be
things which Salvatore knew which his father had not told him. The date
of the marriage, for instance; though he despaired of any practical use
arising from that, Colin would like to know when it took place.

He dressed and strolled up through the vineyards through which,
twenty-one years ago, his father had gone, tasting for the first time
the liberty and gaiety of the South, and found his little jingling
conveyance awaiting him. His quiet concentrated hate of Raymond sat
smiling beside him up the dusty road, and he rejoiced in its
companionship.

Colin found that Salvatore had arrived, and his father was waiting lunch
for him, and so without decoration of himself in the way of brushings or
putting on tie or socks, he went straight to the salon. There was
sitting there a very gorgeously-dressed gentleman, and his heart fell as
he saw him, for it would be difficult to cultivate cordial relationships
with so exquisite a bounder, whatever information might be the reward of
his efforts.

Salvatore was clad in ill-fitting broadcloth, florid with braid; he wore
patent leather shoes, a tie of pink billows in which nestled a
preposterous emerald, cuffs and collar clearly detachable, and a gold
watch-chain from which a large, cheap locket depended. Luxuriant hair,
suspiciously golden and carefully curled, crowned his face; fierce
moustaches, brushed and waxed, were trained away to show a mouth full of
dazzling teeth, and his features were just those of a wax bust,
representing the acme of masculine beauty, that may be seen in the
window of a hairdresser.

With this troubadour was sitting his father, stiff and starched and
iced. Colin guessed that this period of waiting had been embarrassing,
for both seemed highly relieved at his entry, and the troubadour bounded
to his feet with a tenor cry of welcome.

“_Collino mio!_” he exclaimed, kissing him, to Colin’s great surprise,
on both cheeks. “Ah, the joy of the day when I behold my own nephew! And
you are so like her, so like her. Look on the image of her which I ever
carry about with me! I do not forget her, no, no!”

He opened the locket, and showed Colin a photograph faded into
illegibility.

“Her eyes, her nose, her mouth,” he said. “I see again the features of
my adored Rosina!”

This was so much worse than could possibly have been expected, that the
only thing to be done was to treat it all as some game, some monstrous
charade. This was the stock of which he had come; his mother was sister
to this marvellous mountebank. At that moment Colin hated his father;
how could he have joined himself to any of such a family? It was clearer
than ever that, whatever the history of that year preceding his birth
had been, it had not begun with marriage. His father had been prey to a
pretty face.

Then he set himself to play the game.

“Dear Uncle Salvatore!” he said. “I can’t tell you how I’ve been looking
forward to seeing you. I hurried in, as you see, when I heard you were
here, without dressing or tidying myself. I could not wait. And you
think I am like my mother?”

“But you are a true Viagi! You are the very image of her. And if I place
myself beside you, my noble brother-in-law will not, I think, fail to
mark a certain family resemblance.”

He put his hand on Colin’s shoulder as if for a Bank Holiday photograph,
and rose on his toes to make himself the taller.

At that his noble brother-in-law, catching Colin’s merry glance, which
shouted to him, “Play up, father, play up!” seemed to determine to make
the best of it, too.

“Amazing resemblance,” he said, rising. “Two brothers. Shall we go in to
lunch? Please go on, Salvatore.”

“With the escort of my brother Colin,” said Salvatore, in tremendous
good spirits. He had clearly, so he thought, found a friendly heart in
Colin, who would no doubt in time warm the heart of his brother-in-law,
which at present seemed inclined to be chilly. It was desirable that a
more generous warmth should be diffused there, before they came to speak
of financial matters.

Philip’s efforts in answer to Colin’s unspoken bidding, to see the
humorous side of their visitor, were put to a sad strain before that
portentous meal was over. Salvatore was bent on making a fine and
dashing impression, and adopted for that end a manner compounded of brag
and rich adulation.

“Your cousins, Collino, my own beloved children!” he exclaimed. “Never
will Vittoria and Cecilia forgive me, if I do not on my return prove to
have got your promise to pay them a visit before you quit Italy. We must
persuade your father to spare you for a day; you must dine and sleep,
and, ho, ho! who knows but that when our ladies have gone to bed, you
and I will not play the bachelor in our gay Naples? It would, I am
afraid, be useless to urge you, my dear Philip, to be of the party, but
ah! the happiness, ah! the honour that there would be in the Palazzo
Viagi, if Lord Yardley would make himself of the family! But I know, I
know: you come here to enjoy your quiet and blessed memories.”

“Very good of you, Salvatore,” said Philip. “But, as you say, I come
here for quiet. I am afraid I shall hardly be able to get across to
Naples.”

“Ah! _Il eremito_, as we say! The hermit, is it not?”

“You speak excellent English, Uncle Salvatore,” said Colin.

“And should I not? Was not English the language of my adored mother? It
is Vittoria’s dream to go to England. Some day, perhaps, I will take
Vittoria to see the home of her English ancestors, of her grandmother
and of yours, my Colin. But the expense! _Dio!_ the expense of travel.
Once it was not so with the Viagi; they did not need to count their
soldi, and now there are no soldi to count! They were rich once; their
wealth was colossal, and had it not been for nefarious enemies,
slanderers, and swindlers, they would be rich still, and a line of
princes. As it is, they have nothing left them but their pride, and from
that, whatever their poverty, they will never part. I, the head of the
family, proclaim that to the world.”

“Very proper,” said Philip.

Salvatore had hit himself quite a severe blow on the chest as he
proclaimed his pride, which had set him coughing. This was curable by a
considerable draught of hock, which started him again on the adulatory
tack.

“A nectar! Nectar of the gods,” he exclaimed. “There is no such wine to
be obtained in my beggarly country. But you must be a millionaire to
drink it. I would die happy drowned in wine like that.”

“You must take a bottle or two away with you,” said Philip, rising. “If
you will excuse me for ten minutes, there are a couple of letters I want
to finish for this afternoon’s post. And then, perhaps, you will spare
me a quarter of an hour, Salvatore, for a talk. There will be plenty of
time before your boat goes.”

“Dear friend, my time is yours,” said Salvatore, “and the boat may go to
Naples without me if we have not finished. I brought a small toilet bag
in case I stopped the night. I can no doubt find a room at some modest
hotel.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Philip, leaving him and
Colin together.

Salvatore poured himself out some more of the nectar when the door had
closed (he was making sure of taking a bottle at least with him), and
pointed dramatically to his heart.

“My noble and venerated brother-in-law has never rallied from the shock
of your mother’s death,” he said. “His heart broke. He lives only for
the day when he will rejoin her. Till then it is a solace to him to
minister to those who were nearest and dearest to Rosina. So generous a
heart! Do you think I made a good impression on him to-day?”

“Admirable! Excellent!” said Colin. “Now talk to me about the old days,
Uncle Salvatore. A glass of brandy? Did you see my father that year he
spent in Italy, when he married my mother, and when I was born?”

Salvatore paused in the sipping of his brandy and made a splendid scowl
with gesture of fist and rolling eyes. Quick as a lizard, Colin saw that
he must appear to know facts which hitherto were only conjecture to him,
if he was to learn the cause of these grimaces.

“I know all, of course, Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “You can speak to me
quite freely.”

“And yet you ask if I was there!” said Salvatore. “Should I have
permitted it? I was but a boy of eighteen, and in a bank at Rome, but,
had I known, boy as I was, I should have gone to your father and have
said, ‘Marry my sister out of hand or face the vengeance of Salvatore
Viagi.’”

Colin held out his hand. “You would have done well, Uncle Salvatore,” he
said. “I thank you for my mother’s sake.”

This was so deeply affecting to Salvatore that he had to take a little
more brandy. This made him take a kindlier view of his noble
brother-in-law.

“Yet I wrong him,” he said. “There was no need for Salvatore Viagi to
intervene for his sister’s honour. She died Countess of Yardley, an
alliance honourable to both of our families.”

“Indeed, yes,” said Colin. “I am proud of my Viagi blood. The marriage
was at the British Consulate, of course. What day of the month was it,
do you remember?”

Salvatore made a negative gesture. “The exact date escapes me,” he said.
“But it was spring: March, it would have been March, I think. Two
letters I got from my beloved Rosina at that time; in one she told of
the marriage, in the next of the birth of her sons. I have those letters
still. Treasured possessions, for the next news of my Rosina was that
her sweet soul had departed! My God, what lamentations were mine! What
floods of never-ceasing tears!”

Colin thought rapidly and intently as he replenished his uncle’s glass
with brandy. No definite scheme formed itself in his mind, but, whatever
possibilities future reflection might reveal to him, it would clearly be
a good thing to get hold of those letters. He might conceivably want to
destroy them.

He leaned forward towards Salvatore. “Dear Uncle Salvatore,” he said, “I
am going to ask a tremendous favour of you. I have nothing of my
mother’s, and I never saw her, as you know. But I am learning to love
her, and those letters would be so treasured by me. You have the memory
of her, all those delightful days you must have spent together. Will you
give me those letters? I hope before long to come across to Naples and
see you and my cousins, and it would good of you if you would give me
them. Then I shall have something of hers.”

A sob sounded in Salvatore’s voice. “You shall have them, my Colin,” he
said, “and in turn perhaps you can do something for me. Intercede, I
pray you, with your father. He is a generous, a noble soul, but he does
not know my needs, and I am too proud to speak of them. Tell him, then,
that you wrung out of me that I am in abject poverty. Vittoria is
growing up, and dowerless maidens are not sought after.”

“Of course I will do all I can,” said Colin warmly. “I will talk to my
father as soon as you have gone. And I may say that he listens to me.”

“I will send off the letters to you to-night,” he said. “And what joy
will there be in Casa Viagi, when my girls know that their cousin Colin
is to visit us! When will that happy day be?”

“Ah, I must write to you about that,” said Colin, noticing that the
Palazzo had become a Casa. “Leave me your card. And now it is time for
you to talk to my father; I will see if he is ready. But not a word of
all we have been saying, to him.”

“Trust me, my nephew,” said Salvatore gaily.




CHAPTER IV


Colin used his good offices with his father to such effect that he
succeeded in procuring for Salvatore a further substantial cheque, in
addition to that which he had carried off with the two bottles of wine
that afternoon. His uncle apparently thought better of his reckless
generosity in sending the letters of which Colin was desirous quite
unconditionally, but the receipt of the second cheque was sufficient,
and the morning’s post two days later brought them.

They were written in ill-spelled English, and contained precisely what
his uncle had told him. The first, dated March 1, gave the information
that she had been married that morning to Philip Lord Stanier; the
second, dated March 17, stated that a week ago she had given birth to
twins. They were quite brief, conveyed no other news, and had evidently
been preserved with care, for the purple ink in which they were written
was quite unfaded. But apart from the fact now definitely known to Colin
that his father had legalised his life with Rosina but ten days before
he himself and Raymond were born, they did not help in any way towards
the attainment of the double object which now was putting out firm,
fibrous roots in his mind as the ideal project, namely to prove by some
means yet utterly unconjecturable the illegitimacy of Raymond and
himself, and, by marrying Violet, who in that case would succeed to the
title and the estates, to become master of Stanier. Indeed these letters
were but a proof the more of what was no doubt sufficiently attested in
the register of the British Consulate, namely, that the marriage had
taken place previously to his own birth.

It seemed a hopeless business. Even if, by some rare and lucky
mischance, there was any irregularity in the record at the Consulate,
these letters, so long as they were in existence, constituted, if not a
proof, at any rate a strong presumption in favour of the marriage having
taken place on the first of the month, and it might be better to destroy
them out of hand so that such testimony as they afforded could not by
any possibility be produced. And yet he hesitated; somehow, in his
subconscious mind, perhaps, there was a stir and a ferment which bubbled
with a suggestion that had not yet reached his consciousness. Might not
something conceivably be done with them?... It was maddening that just
ten days out of all those uneventful hundreds of days which had elapsed
since, should suffice to wreck any project that he might make.

And then a bubble of that ferment broke into his conscious mind. There
was the letter, announcing the marriage which had taken place that day
dated March 1. There was the letter dated March 17 announcing the birth
of himself and Raymond a week previously. What if by the insertion of a
single numeral in front of the “1” of the first date, he converted it
into March 31st? As far as these two letters went, they would in that
case show precisely what he desired.

Psychologically, too, there would be a reasonable interpretation. In his
father, it would be argued, there had sprung up after the birth of his
sons, a tenderness and an affection for the mother of them, and he had
married her so that she, in the future, might bear him legitimate
offspring. Already she had borne two lusty and healthy sons; the union
was vigorous and fruitful.

Colin got up from the long chair in his bedroom where he had taken these
letters, and began softly pacing up and down the floor, lithe and alert,
and smiling. His father was coming down with him to bathe that morning,
but there was a quarter of an hour yet before he need join him
downstairs, and a great deal of thinking might be put into a quarter of
an hour if you could only concentrate.

He knew he was very far yet from the attainment of his ambition, for
that register at the Consulate, which somehow he must manage to see,
might contain insuperable obstacles to success. There might, for
instance, be other entries between March 1 of that year and March 31, so
that even if he could contrive to alter the first date into the second
it would throw those other entries, if such existed, out of their
chronological order; the marriage contracted on March 31 would precede
those that lay in between the two dates. In that case he might have to
tear out the page in which this entry occurred, and that might be quite
impossible of accomplishment.

It would not be wise, at any rate, to tamper with the date on this first
letter of his mother’s, till he knew how the ground lay at the
Consulate. But given that it proved possible to make some alteration in
the register or tear out a page, how conclusively would his case be
established, if, in support of that, there were produced those letters
of his mother?

Salvatore the troubadour.... Colin frowned and bit his lip at the
thought of Salvatore, who would be ready to swear that, when he parted
with those letters to Colin, the one that conveyed the news of his
sister’s marriage was dated March 1, not March 31. There were experts on
such subjects, too; prying, meticulous men who made a profession of
detecting little things like altered dates, and produced evidence about
a difference of hand or a difference in the analysis of two inks.

Yet if the register at the Consulate was found to endorse the evidence
of the letters? The same detective-minded folk would examine the record
at the Consulate, and might arrive at the damnable conclusion that it,
too, had been tampered with. And if the letters which bore signs of
being tampered with were in Colin’s possession, and he was known to have
visited the register at the Consulate, there would be an unwelcome
conclusion as to who had committed a forgery. Penal servitude was not
an agreeable substitute for Stanier.

Colin focused his clear brain, as if it had been a lens, on Salvatore.
He had been very decorative and melodramatic on the subject of his
sister’s honour, but there had been much of cheap strutting, of tinsel,
of footlights about that. And Salvatore, so Colin reasoned with a
melting and a smoothing out of his frown, was not all strutting and
swagger. There was a very real side to that impecunious uncle with his
undowered Vittoria. His concern for his sister’s honour was not surely
so dominant in him as his desire for coin. A suitable cheque would no
doubt induce him to recollect that the first of Rosina’s letters
announced the births of the twins, the second, that of March 31, her
marriage.

Salvatore, for love of Vittoria (to put it at that), would probably see
the sense of allowing his memory of the dates at the head of this letter
to be faulty. He would not be obliged to perjure himself in any way; all
he had got to do (given that a page had been torn out of the register at
the Consulate, or that the date of the marriage as recorded there was
March 31) was to swear that his sister’s letters had always been in his
possession until he had given them to his attractive nephew.... Yes,
Salvatore would surely not prove an insuperable obstacle; he would rate
the living, himself and Vittoria, higher than the dead.

For one moment, brief as that in which, according to the legend, the
ancestral Colin had considered whether he should close with that strange
offer made him in the sheep-fold, his descendant, his living
incarnation, hesitated when he thought of his father. His father had
always been devoted to him, and such affection as Colin was capable of
was his. But, after all, Philip would necessarily be dead when (and if)
the discovery was made that Rosina’s letter to her brother gave the date
of the marriage as March 31, and when, on search being made in the
register of the British Consulate, it was discovered that, owing to a
page being missing, there was no record of the marriage at all, or that
the date given there corresponded with that of Rosina’s letter.

Colin had no intention of producing this evidence in his father’s
lifetime; there might be counter-proofs which his father could produce.
If he could only make some dealing with the register and with the date
on the letter, he would let the whole matter sleep till his father was
dead. Then nothing could hurt him; you cannot hurt the dead. Even
if--Colin gave little thought to this--the spirit of the dead survived
in consciousness of the living, would not his father’s spirit gladly
make this posthumous sacrifice of his earthly honour and rejoice to see
Colin, his beloved, master of Stanier? So his hesitation was fleeting as
breath on a frosty morning, it appeared but mistily, and dispersed.

His father, out in the garden, was calling him, and with a cheerful
response he picked up his towels and went downstairs. For the present
there was but one necessary step to be taken; he had to get a day in
Naples before he left, and pay a visit to the British Consulate. It was
no use making any further plans beyond that, in his ignorance of what he
should find there. A visit to his uncle, and a night spent there, might
possibly serve as an excuse.

Philip had also heard from his brother-in-law this morning: the
communication was not so satisfactory to him, as Colin’s post had been.

“I’ve heard from Salvatore,” he said. “He’s a nauseating fellow, Colin.”

“Oh, no; only a comic, father,” said Colin gaily. “You take him too
heavily.”

“Read that,” said Philip.

The letter was certainly characteristic, and as Colin read his smile
broadened into a laugh. The writer spoke of the deep humiliation it was
for a Viagi to take gifts from any; it had not been so with them once,
for the family had been the dispensers of a royal bounty. Indeed, two
considerations only made it possible for him to do so, the first his
paternal devotion to his two sweet maids, Vittoria and Cecilia, the
second his fraternal devotion to his noble and generous relative. That
sentiment did honour to them both, and with happy tears of gratitude he
acknowledged the safe receipt of the cheque. He wrote with some
distraction, for his sweet maids kept interrupting him to know if he had
sent their most respectful love to their uncle, and had reminded their
dearest Colin that they looked for his advent with prodigious excitement
and pleasure. They demanded to know when that hour would dawn for them.
One bottle of the nectar of France would be preserved for that day to
drink the health of his friend, his relative, his noblest of
benefactors. He signed himself “Viagi,” as if the princely honours had
been restored.

“Oh, but priceless,” said Colin. “Haven’t you got a sense of humour,
father?”

“Not where Salvatore is concerned. As for your going over to dine and
sleep, I shan’t let you. Do you know we’ve only got a fortnight more
here, Colin?”

“I know; isn’t it awful?” said Colin with a sigh. “But about my going
over for a night. I wonder if I hadn’t better do that. It would be kind,
you know. He would like it.”

Philip passed his hand over the boy’s shoulders.

“Colin, are you growing wings?” he said.

“Yes, and they don’t go well with my cloven hoofs. In other words, I
should loathe spending the night there, and yet Uncle Salvatore would
like it. Then I don’t want to leave you.”

“Don’t then. Salvatore, thanks to you, has got double his usual
allowance. You’ve done enough for him.”

“Yes, but that didn’t cost me anything,” said Colin. “It only cost you.
I’ve still my debt to pay for the wonderful entertainment he gave me
here. Besides he is actually my uncle: I’m a Viagi. Princely line,
father!”

“Don’t marry one of the young princesses,” said his father.

Colin had one moment’s acute thought before he answered. It struck him
that his father could hardly have said that if in his very self he had
loved his mother. But what he had said just came from his very self....
He laughed.

“I’ll promise not to, however entrancing Vittoria is,” he said. “Ah, how
divine the sea looks this morning. I long to be in it.”

A sudden idea occurred to him.

“Do let us stop on another fortnight, father,” he said. “Can’t we?”

“I can’t,” said he. “I must get back by the end of the month. But--” he
paused a moment and Colin knew that he had caught his own idea, which
his suggestion was designed to prompt. “There’s no reason why you
shouldn’t have another fortnight here if you want,” he said.

Colin had fallen behind his father on the narrow path to the
bathing-place, and gave a huge grin of satisfaction at his own subtlety.

“Oh, I should love that!” he said, “though it won’t be half as much fun
as if you would stop too. And then I can go over to Naples with you when
you start homewards, and make my wings sprout by staying with Uncle
Salvatore.”

Nothing could have fallen out more conveniently, and Colin, as for the
next two hours he floated in the warm sea and basked on the hot pebbles,
had a very busy mind in his lazy, drifting body. His father’s absence
would certainly make his investigations easier. He could, for instance,
present Lord Yardley’s card at the Consulate with his own, and get leave
to inspect the register with a view to making a copy of it, in
accordance with his father’s wishes. Better yet, he could spend a few
days in Naples, make the acquaintance of the Consul in some casual
manner, and produce his request on the heels of an agreeable impression.
He would not, in any case, be limited to a single visit, or tied by the
necessity of acting at once. He would not have to fire his bribe, with
regard to the letters like a pistol in Salvatore’s face, he would be
careful and deliberate, not risking a false step owing to the need of
taking an immediate one. And all the time the suggestion of stopping on
here alone had not come from himself at all. His father had made it.

On the way up to the villa again after the morning’s bathe, they often
called at the post-office in the piazza for letters that had arrived by
the midday post. To-day these were handed under the grille to Colin,
and, sorting them out between his father and himself, he observed that
there were two for Lord Yardley in the handwritings of Raymond and
Violet. Possibly these were only the dutiful and trivial communications
of those at home, but possibly Violet’s week of postponement had been
shortened.

“Two from Stanier for you, father,” he said. “Violet and Raymond. The
rest for me.”

His father looked at the envelopes.

“Yes, Raymond’s spider scrawl is evident enough,” he said. “I never saw
such a handwriting except yours; his and yours I can never tell apart.
One wants leisure to decipher you and Raymond.”

Colin simmered with impatience to see his father put both of these
letters into his pocket, and simmered even more ebulliently when, having
put them on the table at lunch, his father appeared to forget completely
about them, and left them there when lunch was over. But Colin could
remind him of that, and presently the one from Violet lay open.

His father gave an exclamation of surprise, and then was absorbed in it.
It appeared to be short, for presently he had finished, and, still
without a word to Colin, opened the letter from Raymond. Here
exclamations of impatience at the ugly, illegible handwriting took the
place of surprise, and it was ten minutes more before he spoke to Colin.
He, meantime, had settled with himself, in case these letters contained
what he guessed for certain that they must contain, that since Violet’s
previous warning to him was private, he would let the news that his
father would presently tell him be a big emotional surprise to him. This
would entail dissimulation, but that was no difficulty. Colin knew
himself to be most convincing when his brain, not his sincerity,
dictated his behaviour.

“Have Violet and Raymond written to you to-day?” asked his father.

Colin yawned. He generally took a siesta after the long morning in the
sea and sun, and it was already past his usual hour. There was a
pleasant fiction that he retired to write letters.

“No,” he said, getting up. “Well, I’m off, father. Lots of letters....”

“Wait a moment. Violet and Raymond send me news which pleases me very
much. They’re engaged to be married.”

Colin stared, then laughed.

“I’d forgotten it was the first of April,” he said. “I thought we were
in June.”

“We are,” said his father. “But it’s no joke, Colin. I’m quite serious.”

Colin looked fixedly at his father for a moment.

“Ah!” he said, and getting up walked to the window. He stood there with
his back to the room twirling the blind-string, and seeming to
assimilate the news. Then, as if making a strong effort with himself, he
turned himself again, all sunshine.

“By Jove, Raymond will be happy!” he said. “How--how perfectly splendid!
He’s head over ears in love with her, has been for the last six months.
Lucky dog! He’s got everything now!”

He could play on his father like some skilled musician, making the chord
he wanted to sound with never a mistake. Those words “he’s got
everything now,” conveyed exactly the impression he intended, namely,
that Violet was, to him, an important part in Raymond’s possessions.
That was the right chord.

It sounded.

“But it was a great surprise to you, Colin,” he said.

“Yes, father,” said Colin.

“The surprise, then, was that Violet has accepted him,” said Lord
Yardley gently. He felt himself to be probing Colin’s mind ever so
tenderly, while Colin looked at him wide-eyed like a child who trusts
his surgeon.

“Yes, father,” he said again. “It surprised me very much.”

This was magnificent; he knew just what was passing in his father’s
mind; unstinted admiration of himself for having so warm-heartedly
welcomed the news of Raymond’s good fortune, and unstinted sympathy
because his father had guessed a reason why Violet’s engagement was a
shock to him. This was immensely to the good, for when, as he felt no
doubt would happen, Violet threw over Raymond for himself, Lord Yardley
would certainly remember with what magnanimous generosity he had
congratulated Raymond on his success. Whether anything came of his
project about the register or not, he was determined to marry Violet,
for so the thirst of his hatred of his brother would be assuaged. But
how long and how sweet would the drink be, if in the cup was mingled the
other also.

His father came across the room to where he still stood by the window,
and laid loving hands on his shoulders.

“Colin, old boy,” he said. “Are you fond of Violet--like that?”

Colin nodded without speech.

“I had no idea of it,” said Lord Yardley. “I often watched you and her
together, and I thought you were only as brother and sister. Upon my
word, Raymond seems to have got everything.”

Colin’s smile was inimitable. It seemed to fight its way to his
beautiful mouth.

“I’ve got you, father,” he said, out of sheer exuberance of wickedness.

The subject was renewed that night when they sat under the
vine-wreathed pergola where they had dined. The sun, bowling down the
steep cliff away westward, had just plunged into the sea, and darkness
came swiftly over the sky, without that long-drawn period of fading
English twilight in which day is slowly transformed into night. Here
night leaped from its lair in the East and with a gulp absorbed the
flames of sunset and swiftly the stars sprang from the hiding-places
where all day they had lain concealed, and burning large and low made a
diffused and penetrating greyness of illumination that dripped like
glowing rain from the whole heavens.

Dim and veiled though that luminance was, compared to the faintest of
the lights of day, it gave a curious macabre distinctness to everything,
and Colin’s face, in a pool of star-shine that filtered between the
trailing garlands of the vines, wore to his father some strange,
wraith-like aspect. So often had he sat here in such light as this with
Rosina opposite him, and all that he loved in Rosina seemed now to have
been reincarnated, spectre-like, in the boy he cared more for than he
cared for all the rest of the world. All that he had missed in the woman
who had satisfied and so soon sated his physical senses, flowered in
Colin with his quick intelligence, his sunny affection.... And his
father, for all his longing, could do nothing to help him in this
darkness which had overshadowed the dawn of love for him.

Instead of Colin, Raymond had got all, that son of his whom he had never
liked even, and had always, in some naturally-unnatural manner, been
jealous of, in that he would inherit all that his own fingers would one
day relax their hold on. Had it been Colin who would grasp the sceptre
of the Staniers, Philip would, as he had said, close his eyes for his
last sleep in unenvious content. And now Raymond had got the desire of
his heart as well, which, too, was the desire of Colin’s heart.

All day, since the arrival of those letters, Colin had been very quiet,
yet without any bitterness; grave and sweet, but only a shadow, a ghost
of himself for gaiety. Now his face, pale in the starlight, was
ghostlike also, and his father divined in it an uncomplaining suffering,
infinitely pathetic.

“Colin, I wish I could do anything for you,” he said, with unusual
emotion. “You are such a dear fellow, and you bear it all with such
wonderful patience. Wouldn’t it do you good now to curse Raymond a
little?”

Colin felt that he must not overdo the angelic rôle.

“Oh, I’ve been doing so,” he said, “but I think I shall stop. It’s no
use. It wouldn’t hurt Raymond, even if he knew about it, and it doesn’t
help me. And it’s certainly time I stopped sulking. Have I been very
sulky all evening, father? Apologies.”

“You’ve been a brick. But about stopping out here alone. Are you sure
you won’t mope and be miserable? Perhaps I might manage to stay out with
you an extra week.”

That would not do at all. Colin hastened to put that out of the
question.

“Oh, but you must do nothing of the kind,” he said quickly. “I know
you’ve got to get back. I shan’t mope at all. And I think one gets used
to things quicker alone. There’s only just one thing I wonder about.
Have we both been quite blind about Violet? Has she been in love with
Raymond without our knowing it? I, at any rate, had no idea of it. She’s
in love with him now, I suppose. Did her letter give you that
impression?”

Philip hesitated. Violet’s letter, short and unemotional, had not given
him any such impression. But so triumphantly successful had been Colin’s
assumption of the unembittered, though disappointed, lover, that he
paused, positively afraid that Colin would regret that Violet’s heart
was not so blissfully engaged as his brother’s. Before he answered Colin
spoke again:

“Ah, I see,” he said. “She’s in love with him, and you are afraid it
will hurt me to know it. Ripping of you.... After all, she’s lucky, too,
isn’t she? She’s got the fellow she loves, and she’ll be mistress of
Stanier. I think she adores Stanier almost as much as you and I,
father.”

Colin felt he could not better this as a conclusion. He rose and
stretched himself.

“There!” he said. “That expresses what I feel in my mind. It has been
cramped all day, and now I’ve stretched it, and am not going to have
cramp any more. What shall we do? Stroll down to the piazza, or sit here
and play piquet? I vote for the piazza. Diversion, you know.”

Colin pleaded sleepiness on their return from the piazza as an excuse
for early retirement, but the sleepiness was not of the sort that led to
sleep, and he lay long awake, blissfully content and wondering at
himself with an intense and conscious interest. Never before had it so
forcibly struck him that deception was a thing that was dear to him
through some inherent attraction of its own, irrespective of what
material advantages it might bring him; it was lovely in itself,
irrespective of the fruit it bore. Never yet, too, had it struck him at
all that he disliked love, and this was a discovery worth thinking over.

Often, especially during these last weeks, he had known that his
father’s love for him bored him, as considered as an abstract quality,
though he welcomed it as a means to an end. That end invariably had been
not only the material advantages it brought him, but the gratification
of his own hatred of Raymond. For, so he unerringly observed, his own
endearing of himself to his father served to displace Raymond more and
more, and to-day’s manœuvres were a brilliant counter-attack to the
improved position Raymond had made for himself in those last weeks at
Stanier. But, apart from these ends, he had no use for any love that was
given him, nor any desire to give in return. To hate and to get, he
found, when he looked into himself, was the mainspring which moved
thought, word, and action.

Outside, the evening breeze had quite died down, but the silent
tranquillity of the summer night was broken by the sound of a footfall
on the garden terrace below the window, which he knew must be that of
his father strolling up and down there. For a moment that rather vexed
him; it seemed to disturb his own isolation, for he wanted to be
entirely encompassed in himself. It was inconsiderate of his father to
go quarter-decking out there, intruding into his own consciousness;
besides, Colin had told him that he was sleepy, and he should have kept
quiet.

But then the explanation of his ramble up and down occurred to Colin.
There could be no doubt that his father was troubled for him, and was
made restless by thinking of him and his disappointment. That made Colin
smile, not for pleasure in his father’s love, but for pleasure in his
trouble. He was worrying himself over Colin’s aching heart, and the boy
had a smile for that pleasing thought; it had an incense for him.

       *       *       *       *       *

He began to wonder, idly at first, but with growing concentration,
whether he hated his father. He did not wish him ill, but ... but
supposing this business of the register was satisfactorily accomplished,
and supposing he succeeded, as he felt no doubt he would, in causing
Violet to throw over Raymond and marry himself, he did not see that
there would be much gained by his father’s continued existence. He would
be in the way then, he would stand between him and his mastership,
through Violet, of Stanier. That, both from his passion for the place,
and from the joyous triumph of ejecting Raymond, was the true object of
his life: possession and hatred, to get and to hate. His father, when
these preliminary feats had been carried through, would be an obstacle
to his getting, and he supposed that he would hate him then.

Lying cool and naked under his sheet, Colin suddenly felt himself flush
with the exuberance of desire and vitality. Hate seemed as infinite as
love; you could not plumb the depths of the former any more than you
could scale the heights of the other, while acquisition, the clutching
and the holding, stretched as far as renunciation; he who lived for
himself would not be satisfied until he had grasped all, any more than
he who lived for others would not be satisfied until he had given all,
retaining nothing out of self-love.

With Violet as his wife, legal owner of Stanier, and Raymond outcast and
disinherited, it seemed to Colin that he would have all he wanted, and
yet in this flush of desire that combed through him now, as the tide
combs through the weeds of the sea, he realised that desire was infinite
and could never be satisfied when once it had become the master passion.
No one who is not content will ever be content, and none so burned with
unsatisfied longing as he. If he could not love he could hate, and if he
could not give he could get.

The steps on the terrace below had long ceased, though, absorbed in this
fever of himself, he had not noticed their cessation. His activity of
thought communicated itself to his body, and it was impossible in this
galvanic restlessness to lie quiet in bed. Movement was necessary, and,
wrapping his sheet round him, he went to his open window and leaned out.

The night was starlit and utterly tranquil; no whisper of movement
sounded from the stone-pine that stood in the garden and challenged by
its stirring the most imperceptible of breezes. Yet to his sense the
quiet tingled with some internal and tremendous vibration; a force was
abroad which held it gripped and charged to the uttermost, and it was
this force, whatever it was, that thrilled and possessed him. The warm,
tingling current of it bathed and intoxicated him; it raced through his
veins, bracing his muscles and tightening up the nerves and vigour of
him, and, stretching out his arms, he let the sheet drop from him so as
to drink it in through every thirsting pore of his body. Like the
foaming water in a loch, it rose and rose in him, until the limit of his
capacity was reached, and his level was that of the river that poured it
into him. And at that, so it seemed, when now he had opened himself out
to the utmost to receive it, the pressure which had made him restless
was relieved, and, unutterably tired and content, he went back to bed,
and instantly sank into the profound gulfs of healthy and dreamless
slumber.

His father had usually finished breakfast when Colin appeared, but next
morning it was the boy who was in advance.

“Hurrah, I’ve beaten you for once, father,” he said when Lord Yardley
appeared. “The tea’s half cold; shall I get you some more?”

“No, this will do. Slept well, Colin?”

“Like a top, like a pig, like a hog, like a dog.”

“Good.”

Lord Yardley busied himself with breakfast for a while.

“Curious things dreams are,” he said. “I dreamed about things I hadn’t
thought of for years. You were so vividly mixed up in them, too, that I
nearly came into your room to see if you were all right.”

“I was,” said Colin. “I was wonderfully all right. What was the dream?”

“Oh, one of those preposterous hashes. I began dreaming about Queen
Elizabeth and old Colin. She was paying him a visit at Stanier and asked
to see the parchment on which he signed the bond of the legend. He
shewed it her, but the blood in which he had signed his own name was so
faded that she told him he must sign it again if he wanted it to be
valid. I was present and saw it all, but I had the feeling that I was
invisible. Then came the nightmare part. He pricked his arm to get the
ink, and dipped a pen in it. And then, looking closely at him, I saw
that it wasn’t old Colin at all, but you, and that it wasn’t Queen
Elizabeth but Violet. I told you not to sign, and you didn’t seem
conscious of me, and then I shouted at you, in some nightmare of fear,
and awoke, hearing some strangled scream of my own, I suppose.”

Colin had been regarding his father as he spoke with wide, eager eyes.
But at the conclusion he laughed and lit a cigarette.

“Well, if you had come in, you certainly wouldn’t have found me signing
anything,” he said. “But I cut myself shaving this morning. I call that
a prophetic dream. And I must write to Vi and Raymond this morning, so
that will be the signing.”




CHAPTER V


Lord Yardley’s residence at his villa at Capri had, as usual, leaked
into the diplomatic consciousness, and the English Ambassador at Rome,
an old acquaintance of his, had, as usual, reminded him of a friendly
presence in Rome, which would be delighted to welcome him if the welcome
afforded any convenience. To leave by the very early boat from Capri,
and thus catch the Paris express that evening was a fatiguing
performance, would he not, therefore, when the regretted day for his
departure came, take the more reasonable midday boat, dine and spend the
night at the Embassy, and be sent off from there next day in comfort,
for the morning express from Rome entailed only one night in the train
instead of two? The British Consul at Naples would see to his seclusion
in the transit from Naples to Rome, where he would be met and wafted to
the Embassy. Otherwise an early start from Capri, and a hurried train
connection in Rome, would deprive His Excellency of the great pleasure
of a renewal of cordiality.

His Excellency, it may be remarked, liked an invitation to Stanier, and
there was method in his thoughtfulness. This proposal arrived a week
before Lord Yardley’s departure; a heat wave had drowned the country,
and already he looked with prospective horror on the notion of two
nights in the train.... It entailed a night in Paris, and, if he was to
arrive in England for a debate in the House, a departure from Capri by
the midday boat on Tuesday, instead of the early boat on Wednesday. It
entailed, in fact, a few hours less of Colin.

Colin saw the shining of his star. Never had anything, for his purpose,
been so excellently opportune. The British Consul would be at the
station to see his father off, and so, beyond doubt, would he himself,
on a visit to Uncle Salvatore. An acquaintanceship would be made under
the most auspicious and authentic circumstances.

“It all fits in divinely, father,” he said. “I shall come across with
you, see you off from Naples, and then do my duty at Uncle Salvatore’s.
Probably, if there was nothing to take me to Naples, I should never have
gone, but now I shall have to go. Do let me kill two birds with one
stone. I shall see the last of you--one bird--without having to get up
at five in the morning, and I shall have made my visit to Uncle
Salvatore inevitable--two birds. Say ‘yes’ and I’ll write to him at
once.”

It was in the belief that this arrangement had been made, that Lord
Yardley left Naples a week afterwards. Mr. Cecil, the British Consul,
had come to the station to secure for him the reserved compartment to
Rome, and, that being done, had lingered on the platform till the train
started. At the last moment, as he and Colin stood together there, and
while the train was already in motion, Colin sprang on to the footboard
for a final good-bye, and with a kiss leaped off again. There came a
sharp curve and the swaying carriages behind hid the platform from his
father.

Colin turned to Mr. Cecil. Salvatore was in the background for the
present.

“It was delightful of you to come to see my father off,” he said. “He
appreciated it immensely.”

Colin paused a moment, just the pause that a bather takes before he gets
up speed for a running header into the sea.

“He left me a small matter to talk to you about,” he said. “I wonder if
I might refer to it now.”

Mr. Cecil gave a plump, polite little bow.

“Pray do, Mr. Stanier,” he said.

“My father wants a copy of the register of his marriage,” he said, “and
he asked me to copy it out for him. The marriage was performed at the
British Consulate, and if you would be so good as to let me copy it and
witness it for me, I should be so grateful. May I call on you in the
morning about it? It will save trouble, he thinks, on his death, if
among his papers there is an attested copy.”

“A pleasure,” said Mr. Cecil.

“You are too kind. And you will do me one further kindness? I am going
back to Capri to-morrow for another fortnight, and it would be so good
of you if you would tell me of a decent hotel where I can pass the
night. I shall not be able, I am afraid, to catch the early boat, with
this business of the copying to do, for it leaves, does it not, at nine,
and the Consulate will not be open by then.”

Colin was at full speed now; his running feet had indeed left the
ground, and he was in the air. But he was already stiffened and taut, so
to speak, for the plunge; he had made all preparation, and fully
anticipated a successful dividing of the waters. For he had already made
himself quite charming to Mr. Cecil, and attributed his lingering on the
platform as much to the pleasure of a sociable ten minutes with him as
to the honour done to his father.

“But I will not hear of you staying at a hotel,” said Mr. Cecil, “if I
can persuade you to pass the night at my flat. It adjoins the Consulate
offices, and is close to where the Capri boat lies. Indeed, if you wish
to catch the early boat, we can no doubt manage that little business of
yours to-night. It will take only a few minutes.”

Colin suffered himself to be persuaded, and they drove back to the
Consulate. Office hours were already over, and presently Mr. Cecil led
the way into the archive-room, where, no doubt, Colin’s search would be
rewarded. But there had come in for him a couple of telegrams delivered
after the clerks had gone, and he went to his desk in the adjoining room
to answer these, leaving the boy with the volume containing the year of
his father’s marriage. The month, so said Colin, was not known to him.
His father had told him, but he had forgotten--a few minutes’ search,
however, would doubtless remedy that.

So Mr. Cecil, leaving an official form with him on which to copy the
entry, fussed away into the next room, and Colin instantly opened the
volume. The year was 1893, and the month, as he very well knew, was
March.... There it was on March the first, and he ran his eye down to
the next entry. Marriages at the Naples Consulate apparently were not
frequent, and the next was dated April the fourth.

Colin had already his pen in hand to make the copy, and it remained
poised there a moment. There was nothing more necessary than to insert
one figure before the single numeral, and the thing would be done. It
remained after that only to insert a similar “three” in the letter which
his mother had written to Salvatore announcing her marriage. On this hot
evening the ink would dry as soon as it touched the page. And yet he
paused, his brain beginning to bubble with some notion better yet, more
inspired, more magically apt....

Colin gave a little sigh and the smile dawned on his face. He wrote in a
“three,” making the date of March 1 into March 31, and then once again
he paused, watching with eager eyes for the ink to dry on the page.
Then, taking up a penknife which lay on the table beside him, he erased,
but not quite erased, the “three” he had just written there. He left
unerased, as if a hurried hand had been employed on the erasure, the
cusp of the figure, and a minute segment of a curve both above and below
it.

Looking at the entry as he looked at it now, when his work was done,
with but casual carefulness, any inspector of it would say that it
recorded the marriage of Philip Lord Stanier to Rosina Viagi on the
first of March. But had the inspector’s attention been brought to bear
more minutely on it, he must, if directed to hold the page sideways to
the light, have agreed that there had been some erasure made in front of
the figure denoting the day of the month; for there was visible the
scratching of a penknife or some similar instrument. Then, examining it
more closely, he would certainly see the cusp of a “three,” the segment
of the upper curve, and a dot of ink in the place where the lower
segment would have been.

These remnants would scarcely have struck his eye at all, had not he
noticed that there were the signs of an erasure there. With them, it was
impossible for the veriest tyro in conjecture not to guess what the
erasure had been.

The whole thing took but a half-minute, and at the expiration of that,
Colin was employed on the transcription of the record of the marriage.
He knew that he had to curb a certain trembling of his hand, to reduce
to a more regular and slower movement the taking of his breath, which
came in pants, as if he had been running.

Half a minute ago, no notion of what he had already accomplished had
entered his head; his imagination had not travelled further than the
possibility of changing the date which he knew he should find here into
one thirty days later. Out of the void, out of the abyss, this
refinement in forgery had come to him, and he already recognised without
detailed examination how much more astute, how infinitely more cunning,
was this emended tampering. Just now he could spare but a side glance at
that, for he must copy this entry (unaware that pen and pen-knife had
been busy there) and take it to plump Mr. Cecil for his signature, but
the sharp, crisp tap of conviction in his mind told him that he had done
more magnificently well than his conscious brain had ever suggested to
him.

No longer time than was reasonable for this act of copying alone had
elapsed before Colin laid down his pen and went into the next room.

“Well, Mr. Stanier, have you done your copying?” asked Cecil.

“Yes. Shall I bring it here for your signature?” said Colin.

Mr. Cecil climbed down from the high stool where he was perched like
some fat, cheerful little bird.

“No, no,” he said. “We must be more business-like than that. I must
compare your copy with the original entry before I give you my
signature.”

Colin knew that the skill with which he had effected the alteration
which yet left the entry unaltered, would now be put to the test, but he
felt no qualm whatever as to detection. The idea had been inspired, and
he had no doubt that the execution of it was on the same level of
felicitous audacity. They passed back into the archive-room together,
and the Consul sat himself before the volume and the copy.

“Yes, March the first, March the first,” he said, comparing the two,
“Philip Lord Stanier, Philip Lord Stanier, quite correct. Ha! you have
left out a full stop after his name, Mr. Stanier. Yes, Rosina Viagi, of
93 Via Emmanuele....”

He wrote underneath his certificate that this was a true and faithful
copy of the entry in the Consular archives, signed his name, stamped it
with the official seal and date, and handed it to Colin.

“That will serve your father’s purpose,” he said, and replacing the
volume on its shelf, locked the wire door of its bookcase.

“If you will be so good as to wait five minutes,” he said, “I will just
finish answering a telegram that demands my attention, and then I shall
be at your service for the evening.”

He gave a discreet little chuckle.

“We will dine _en garçon_,” he said, “at a restaurant which I find more
than tolerable, and shall no doubt contrive some pleasant way of passing
the evening. Naples keeps late hours, Mr. Stanier, and I should not be
surprised if you found the first boat to Capri inconveniently early. We
shall see.”

Mr. Cecil appeared to put off the cares and dignity of officialdom with
singular completeness when the day’s work was over, and Colin found he
had an agreeably juvenile companion, ready to throw himself with zest
into the diversions, whatever they might be, of the evening. He ate
with the appetite of a lion-cub, consumed a very special wine in
magnificent quantities, and had a perfect battery of smiles and winks
for the Neapolitans who frequented the restaurant.

“_Dulce est desipere in loco_,” he remarked gaily, “and that’s about the
sum of the Latin that remains to me, and, after all, it can be expressed
equally well in English by saying ‘All work, no play, makes Jack a dull
boy.’ And when we have finished our wine, all the amusements of this
amusing city are at your disposal. There is an admirable cinematograph
just across the road, there is a music-hall a few doors away, but if you
choose that, you must not hold me responsible for what you hear there.
Or if you think it too hot a night for indoor entertainment, there is
the Galleria Umberto, which is cool and airy, but again, if you choose
that, you must not hold me responsible for what you see there. Children
of nature: that is what we Neapolitans are. We, did I say? Well, I feel
myself one of them, when the Consulate is shut, not when I am on duty,
mark that, Mr. Stanier. But my private life is my own, and then I shed
my English skin.”

In spite of the diversions of the city, Colin was brisk enough in the
morning to catch the early boat, and once more, as he had done a month
ago on his initial visit to the island, he sequestered himself from the
crowd under the awning, and sought solitude in the dipping bows of the
little steamer. To-day, however, there was no chance of his meditations
being interrupted by his father with tedious talk of days spent at
Sorrento; no irksome demonstrations of love were there to be responded
to, but he could without hindrance explore not only his future path,
but, no less, estimate the significance of what he had done already.

Once more, then, the register of his father’s marriage was secure in the
keeping of the Consulate, Mr. Cecil had looked at it, compared Colin’s
copy, which now lay safe in the breast-pocket of his coat, with the
original, and had certified it to be correct. Colin had run no risk by
inserting and then erasing a figure which might prove on scrutiny to be
a subsequent addition; Mr. Cecil himself had been unaware that any
change had been wrought on the page. But when the register on Lord
Yardley’s death should be produced in accordance with the plan that was
already ripening and maturing in Colin’s mind, a close scrutiny would
reveal that it had been tampered with. Some hand unknown had clearly
erased a figure there, altering the date from March 31 to March 1. The
object of that would be clear enough, for it legalised the birth of the
twins Rosina had borne. It was in the interest of any of four people to
commit that forgery--of his father, of his mother, of Raymond, and of
himself. Rosina was dead now these many years; his father, when the
register was next produced, would be dead also, and from dead lips could
come neither denial nor defence. Raymond might be left out of the
question altogether, for never yet had he visited his mother’s native
city, and of those alive when the register was produced, suspicion could
only possibly attach to himself. It would have been in his interest to
make that alteration, which should establish his legitimacy as well as
that of his brother.

Colin, as he sat alone in the bows, fairly burst out laughing, before he
proceeded to consider the wonderful sequel. He would be suspected, would
he?... Then how would it come about that it was he, who in the nobility
of stainless honour would produce his own mother’s letter, given him by
his uncle, in which she announced to her brother that she was married at
the British Consulate on the 31st of March? Had he been responsible for
that erasure in the Consulate register, to legitimatise his own birth,
how, conceivably, could he not only not conceal, but bring forward the
very evidence that proved his illegitimacy? Had he tampered with the
Consular book, he must have destroyed the letter which invalidated his
forgery. But, instead of destroying it, he would produce it.

There was work ahead of him here and intrigue in which Salvatore must
play a part. The work, of course, was in itself nothing; the insertion
at the top of one of the two letters he owned of just that one figure
which he had inserted and erased again in the register was all the
manual and material business; a bottle of purple ink and five minutes’
practice would do that. But the intrigue was more difficult. Salvatore
must be induced to acquiesce in the fact that the date of the letter
announcing Rosina’s marriage was subsequent to that announcing the birth
of the twins. That would require thought and circumspection; there must
be no false step there.

And all this was but a preliminary manœuvring for the great action
whereby, though at the cost of his own legitimacy, he should topple
Raymond down from his place, and send him away outcast and penniless,
and himself, with Violet for wife, now legal owner of all the wealth and
honours of the family, become master of Stanier. She might for the love
of him, which he believed was budding in her heart, throw Raymond over
and marry him without cognisance of what he had done for her. But he
knew, from knowledge of himself, how overmastering the passion for
Stanier could be, and it might happen that she would choose Raymond with
all that marriage to him meant, and stifle the cry of her love.

In that case (perhaps, indeed, in any case), Colin might find it better
to make known to her the whole, namely that on his father’s death she
would find herself in a position to contest the succession and claim
everything for her own. Which of them, Raymond or himself, would she
choose to have for husband in these changed circumstances? She disliked
and proposed to tolerate the one for the sake of the great prize of
possession; she was devoted to the other, who, so she would learn, had
become possessed of the fact on which her ownership was established.

Or should he tell her all? Reveal his part in it? On this point he
allowed his decision to remain in abeyance; what he should do, whether
he should tell Violet nothing, or part, or all, must depend on
circumstances, and for the present he would waste no more time over
that. For the present, too, he would keep the signed and certified copy
of his father’s marriage.

The point which demanded immediate consideration was that concerning
Salvatore. Colin puzzled this out, sometimes baffled and frowning,
sometimes with a clear course lying serene in front of his smiling eyes,
as the steamer, leaving the promontory of the mainland behind,
approached the island. He must see Salvatore, whom he had quite omitted
to see in Naples, as soon as possible, and it would be much better to
see him here, in the privacy of the villa, than seek him, thought Colin,
in the publicity of the Palazzo Viagi, surrounded by those siren dames,
Vittoria and Cecilia.

He would write at once, a pensive and yet hopeful little epistle to
Uncle Salvatore wondering if he would come across to Capri yet once
again, not for the mere inside of a day only, but for a more hospitable
period. His father had left for England, Colin was alone, and there were
matters to be talked over that weighed on his conscience.... That was a
good phrase; Uncle Salvatore would remember what Colin had already done
in the matter of the reduplicated cheque, and it would seem that the
generous fellow had a debt of conscience yet unliquidated; this conveyed
precisely the right impression.

In a postscript he would hint at the French nectar which, still dozing
in the cellar.... He hesitated a moment, and then decided not to mention
the subject of his mother’s letters, for it was better that since they
were the sole concern of his visit, Uncle Salvatore should have the
matter sprung upon him.... A bottle of purple ink ... no, that would not
be necessary yet, for the later that you definitely committed yourself
to a course of action the better.

Colin’s letter produced just the effect that he had calculated on;
Salvatore read into the conscience-clause a generous impulse and
congratulated himself on the departure of that grim, dry brother-in-law
to whom (for he had tried that before) tears and frayed cuffs made no
appeal. He had accordingly given that up, and for his last visit here
made himself nobly resplendent. But to Colin, in the guilelessness of
his blue-eyed boyhood, a tale of pinching and penury might be a suitable
revelation, and it was a proud but shabby figure which presented itself
at the villa a few evenings later, without more luggage than could be
conveniently conveyed in a paper parcel. Colin, who had been observing
the approach from the balcony of his bedroom, ran down, choking with
laughter that must be choked, to let his uncle in.

“Ah, this is nice,” he said. “You have no idea how welcome you are. It
was good of you to take pity on my loneliness. What a jolly evening we
shall have. And Vittoria and Cecilia? How are they?”

A gleam brightened Uncle Salvatore’s gloom, and he fervently pressed
Colin’s hand.

“They are well, thank God,” he said. “And while that is so, what matters
anything?”

He appeared with a gesture of his hand to pluck some intruding creature
from the region of his heart, and throw it into the garden-beds. Then he
gave a little skip in the air.

“Collino _mio_!” he said. “You charm away my sad thoughts. Whatever
happens to-morrow, I will be gay to-night. I will not drag your
brightness down into my gloom and darknesses. Away with them, then!”

Colin fathomed the mountebank mind with an undeviating plummet. The
depth (or shallowness) of it answered his fairest expectations. He found
nothing inconsistent in this aspect of Salvatore with that which he had
last presented here; the two, in fact, tallied with the utmost
exactitude as the expression of one mind. They both chimed true to the
inspiring personality. He waited, completely confident, for the advent
of the opportunity.

That came towards the end of dinner: without even having been
hilarious, Salvatore had at least been cheerful, and now, as suddenly as
if a tap had been turned off, the flow of his enjoyment ceased. He
sighed, he cleared his throat, he supported his head on his hands, and
stared at the tablecloth. To Colin these signals were unmistakable.

“You’re in trouble, Uncle Salvatore,” he said softly, “and now for the
first time I am glad that my father has gone back to England. If he were
here, I should not be able to say what I mean to say, for, after all, he
is my father, and he has always been most generous to me. But he is not
equally generous to others who have claims on him. I have tried to make
him see that, and, as you and I know, I have succeeded to some small
extent. But the extent to which I have succeeded does not satisfy me.
Considering all that I know, I am determined to do better for you than I
have been able to make him do. If I am his son, I am equally my mother’s
son. And you are her brother.”

Colin paused a moment, and, sudden as a highland spate, inspiration
flooded his mind. He had not thought out with any precision what he
meant to say, for that must depend on Salvatore, who might, equally
well, have adopted the attitude of a proud and flashy independence. But
he had declared for frayed cuffs and a fit of gloom, and Colin shaped
his course accordingly.

“And I can’t forget,” he said, “that it was you who put me in possession
of certain facts when you sent me those two letters of my mother. I
learned from them what I had never dreamed of before. I never in the
wildest nightmare thought that my father had not married your sister
till after my birth. I should have had to know that sometime: on my
father’s death it must have come out. And you have shown a wonderful
delicacy in breaking the fact to me like that. I thank you for that,
Uncle Salvatore; I owe you a deep debt of gratitude which I hope to
repay!”

Colin listened to his own voice, which seemed to make itself articulate
without any directing will of his own. The summer night was charged with
the force of obedience to which his tongue moved against his teeth, and
his lips formed letters, and his throat gave the gutturals. Literally,
he did not know what he was going to say till he heard himself saying
it. The breeze whispered in the stone-pine, and he spoke....

The breeze was still now and the stone-pine was silent. But he had said
enough to make it necessary that Salvatore should reply. Presently a bat
would flit through the arches of the pergola where they dined, or the
wind would stir in the pine, and then he would speak again. There was
just that same stir abroad on the night when he had listened from his
bedroom to his father’s footfalls on the terrace.

“What do you mean, Collino?” said his uncle excitedly. “I cannot
understand what you say. My sainted Rosina married your father on the
first of March, for I glanced at the letters again before I sent them to
you. Your birth....”

Colin interrupted.

“Ah, a bat,” he said. “I love bats. If you hold a handkerchief up does
not a bat come to it? Let us interrupt our conversation for a moment.”

He spread his handkerchief over his head, and next moment Salvatore
leaped to his feet, for there, beady-eyed and diabolical, with hooked
wings as of parchment, spread out on either side of its furry body, one
of the great southern bats alighted, making a cap for Colin’s golden
head. Only for a moment it stopped there, and then flitted off into the
dusk again.

“Soft, furry thing,” said Colin. “But you hate them, do you, Uncle
Salvatore? It was stupid of me. Let us talk again!”

He hitched his chair a little closer to the table, and looked Salvatore
straight in the eyes.

“But you have forgotten the dates on those letters you gave me,” he
said. “My mother was married to my father not on the first of March,
but on the thirty-first. The second letter recording Raymond’s birth and
mine was written on the seventeenth.”

Again he paused.

“Raymond and I were born,” he said slowly and distinctly, “before my
father’s marriage. The letters which you gave me prove it. If further
proof was wanted, you would find it at the Consulate where the marriage
took place. Some one has tampered with the register, and the date has
been made to look as if it recorded the first of March. But it does not:
it records the thirty-first of March, and the ‘three’ has been erased.
But it is still visible. I saw it myself, for I went across to Naples to
see my father off, and subsequently at the Consulate made a copy of the
entry. I should have proposed myself to stay with you that night, Uncle
Salvatore, but I had no spirit left in me to see anybody. When you sent
me those two letters of my mother, I hoped against hope perhaps, that
there was some ghastly mistake. I nearly destroyed them, indeed, in
order that from them, at any rate, there should be no conceivable
evidence. But when I saw the entry in the book at the Consulate, with
the mark of the erasure visible to any careful scrutiny, I knew that it
was no use to fight against facts. On my father’s death, the evidence of
the date of his marriage must be produced, and it will be clear what
happened. My mother bore him two boys--I was one. Subsequently he
married her, hoping, I have no doubt, to beget from her an heir to the
name and the property.”

The wind sighed heavily in the pine, and little stirs of it rustled the
vine-leaves.

“Is it at no cost to me,” said Colin, “that I keep my mother’s letter
which proves Raymond and me to be bastards? Oh, it is an ugly word, and
if you were me, you would know that it is an ugly thing. Without my
mother’s letter which you sent me, it would be hard indeed to prove,
indeed, any one might copy out the entry at the Consulate and fail to
see the erasure altogether. Raymond, at my father’s death would
succeed, and I, his twin, beloved of him, would take an honourable place
in the eyes of the world, for it is not nothing to be born a Stanier.”

Colin’s voice was soft and steadfast.

“But my mother’s letter to you makes it impossible for me to have honour
in the eyes of the world, and to preserve my own,” he said. “Ah, why did
you send me those two letters, Uncle Salvatore? It was in all innocence
and kindness that you sent them, and you need not remind me that I asked
for them. Having seen them, what could any one with a shred of honour do
but to admit the truth of the whole ghastly business? The only wish that
I have is that my father shall not know that I know. All I want is that
he, when the hour of his death comes, should hope that the terrible
fraud which has been practised, will never be detected. But for that
letter of my mother’s, that would undoubtedly have happened. The
register at the Consulate would have been copied at his death by some
clerk, and the Consul would have certificated its accuracy. Look at me,
then, now, and look at yourself in the same light, you of unblemished
descent, and me and Raymond!”

Salvatore had certainly woke out of his dejection.

“But it’s impossible,” he cried, beating the table. “I sent you two
letters; the first, dated March the first, announced my sainted Rosina’s
marriage to your father. Where is it? Produce it!”

Colin was quite prepared for that. He put his sun-browned fingers into
his breast-pocket, and drew out a paper.

“I can’t show you the original letters,” he said, “because it was
clearly my duty to put them into inviolable custody as soon as possible.
I sent them, in fact, as soon as I had seen the register at the
Consulate, to my bank, with orders that they were to be kept there until
I gave further instructions, or until the news of my death reached them.
In that case, Uncle Salvatore, I gave instructions that they were to be
sent to my father. But before I despatched them to the bank, I made a
copy of them, and here that copy is.”

He passed over to his uncle the copy he had made of the letter that
afternoon, before (instead of sending it to the bank) he locked the
original safely away upstairs. It was an accurate copy, except that it
was dated March 31. Salvatore took it and read it; it tallied, but for
the date, with his recollection of it.

“But it is impossible!” he said. “For years I have known that letter.
When I gave it you it was dated March the first.”

“Do you imply that I altered it?” asked Colin. “Not a living eye has
seen that letter but mine. Give me any reason for altering it. Why
should I make myself nameless and illegitimate?”

Salvatore looked that in the face. The validity of it stared at him
unflinchingly.

“But I can’t believe it; there is some huge mistake,” said Salvatore.
“Often have I read that letter of Rosina’s. March the first was the date
of her marriage. I will swear to that; nothing shall shake my belief in
that.”

Colin shook his head in answer.

“What good will that do?” he said. “You gave the letter to me, and no
hand but mine has ever touched it. The letter must be produced some day,
not for many years, I hope and trust, but on my father’s death it must
come to light. How will your recollections stand in the face of that
evidence which all can see?”

Salvatore glanced round. They were alone with the fitful wind in the
pine.

“Destroy the letter, Collino,” he said. “Save your mother’s honour and
your own.”

Colin gave him one glance, soft and pitiful.

“Ah, you must not suggest that to me,” he said. “You must not add force
to the temptation I can only just resist. But where would my honour be
if I did that? What shred of it would be left me? How could I live a
lie like that?”

Colin leaned forward and put his hand on Salvatore’s arm.

“I have got to accept my illegitimacy,” he said. “And if you are sorry
for me, as I think you are, you can shew it best by accepting it too. It
would be infinitely painful to me when this revelation is made, as it
will have to be made on my father’s death, to have you attempting to
save my mother’s honour and my own, as you put it just now, by insisting
that this letter bore another date. I should never have a moment’s peace
if I thought a scene like that was ahead of me. In fact, I want to be
assured against that, and the only way I can think of to make that safe
is that when you get back to Naples to-morrow you should write me a
couple of lines, saying how you feel for me in this discovery that is
new to me. And then I want you to name the discovery, which is the date
of my mother’s marriage. I want you to accept that date, and give me
proof that you accept it.”

Colin made a gesture with his hand, as if cutting off that topic, and
instantly spoke again.

“With my cousin Vittoria growing up,” he said, “you must be put to
expenses which it is impossible for you to meet out of the pittance my
father gives you. He wronged you and your family most terribly, and I
must repair that wrong. When I get that letter of yours, Uncle
Salvatore, I will send you a cheque for £500.”

Colin gave a glance at his uncle, to make sure that there was no
faintest sign of dissent. There was none, and he went on:

“I see you understand me,” he said, “so let us go a step further. If my
brother Raymond dies before my father, I will make that five hundred
pounds an annuity to you, and I will destroy both the letter I ask you
to write now, and the letter of my mother’s about which we have been
talking. You will never be asked to say anything about either of them.
If on the other hand my father dies first, and if I make the marriage
which I expect to make, I shall have to use your letter and that letter
of my mother’s. You may be asked to swear to the genuineness of the
letter which I hope you will write me to-morrow, and to the recollection
of my mother’s letter which will tally with it. Have another glass of
this delicious French wine.”

He had no need to think what he was saying, or frame a specious case. He
spoke quite simply and directly as if by some inspiration, as if he was
an Æolian harp hung in the wind which whispered through the stone-pine.

“I don’t think there is need for any discussion,” he said, “though, of
course, if you like to ask me any question, I will consider whether I
shall answer it. But I don’t think there is need for any question, is
there? You might tell me, I fancy, straight off, whether you accept or
reject my proposal. If you reject it, perhaps I had better tell you that
it is exceedingly unlikely that my father will give you any further
assistance financially, for, as you know, I have a good deal of
influence with him.

“It would not pay you to refuse, would it? And as to threatening me with
making this conversation of ours public, with a view to getting money
out of me, I know your gentlemanly feelings would revolt against such an
idea. Besides it would be singularly unremunerative, for no one would
possibly believe you. Our conversation and my proposal would strike
anybody as incredible. And you are not perjuring yourself in any way;
you did send me a letter of my mother’s, and you will, I hope, write me
another letter to-morrow, saying that the story of my mother’s marriage
is very shocking, which is indeed true. So shall it be ‘yes’ or ‘no,’
Uncle Salvatore?”

Salvatore, superstitious, like most Southern Italians, to the core,
found himself making the sign of the cross below the table. Apart from
the obvious material advantage of accepting Colin’s offer, he felt that
some fierce compelling agency was backing Colin up. That dreadful little
incident of the bat had already upset him, and now in Colin’s blue gay
glance so earnestly fixed on him, he divined some manifestation of the
evil eye, which assuredly it were not wise to provoke into action. And
as if, in turn, Colin divined his thought, he spoke again:

“Better say ‘yes,’ Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “My friends lead more
enjoyable lives than my enemies. But whatever you answer, I want your
answer now.”

Perhaps through some strange trick of light played by the guttering
candles, it suddenly seemed to Salvatore that Colin’s eyes undeviatingly
fixed on his face, seemed in themselves luminous, as if a smouldering
light actually burned behind them.

“I accept,” he said quickly, “for Vittoria’s sake.”

Colin took up his glass.

“I thought I should move your paternal heart, dear Uncle Salvatore,” he
said. “I drink to our pleasant bargain.”




CHAPTER VI


Though Colin had taken the news of his brother’s engagement with so
touching and unselfish a gentleness, his father, in spite of the joy of
seeing the boy again, looked forward to his arrival at Stanier with
considerable uneasiness. The trouble and the trial for him would be when
he saw Raymond and Violet together, though, to be sure, Violet did not
seem to him to embody any ideal of maidenly rapture with her affianced.
She seemed indeed to tolerate, rather than adore her lover, to permit
rather than to provoke, and to answer with an effort the innumerable
little signals of devotion which Raymond displayed for her. About the
quality of his devotion there could be no question. It was clear that in
his own fashion, and with all his heaviness and awkwardness in
expression, he was utterly in love with her. He had no eyes for any one
but her, but for her his eyes were dog-like in fidelity; when she was
absent his senses dozed.

They were, just for the present, this party of three. Lady Hester had
gone back to town after the departure of Colin and his father to the
South, and Ronald and his wife had betaken themselves for the month of
July to Marienbad, in order to enable him to continue eating too much
for the next eleven months without ill effects. Every evening old Lady
Yardley appeared for dinner and made the fourth, but she was not so much
a presence as a shadow. In Colin’s absence, she hardly ever spoke,
though each night she monotonously asked when he was expected back.
Then, after the rubber of whist, mutely conducted, she retired again,
and remained invisible till the approach of the next dinner-hour. So
long had she been whitely impassive that Philip scarcely noticed the
mist that was thickening about her mind.

Raymond, then, was comprehensible enough, he was head over ears in love
with Violet, and nothing and nobody but her had any significance for
him. But dog-like though his devotion was, it struck his father that
there was, in the absence of Violet’s response, something rather animal
about it. Had she met with more than mere toleration his glances, his
little secret caresses, his thirst for contact even of finger-tips or a
leaning shoulder, there would have been the spark, the leap of fire
which gives warmth and life to such things. But without it there was a
certain impalpable grossness: Raymond did not seem to care that his
touch should be responded to, it contented him to touch.

But though he, to his father’s mind, was comprehensible enough, Violet
puzzled him, for she seemed even before her marriage to have adopted the
traditional impassivity of Stanier brides; she had professed, in the one
interview she had had with him, a quiet acceptance of her position, and
a devotion to Raymond of which the expression seemed to be a mute
passivity. Towards the question of the date of her marriage she had no
contribution to give. Lord Yardley and Raymond must have the settling of
that, and with the same passivity she accepted a date in the first week
of October. Then the great glass doors would be opened, and the
bridegroom’s wing, long shuttered, for Philip’s bride had never come
here, would see the light again. She asked no question whatever about
Colin’s return; his name never presented itself on her lips unless mere
conventional usage caused it to be spoken. It was as if the boy with
whom she had been so intimately a friend, had ceased to exist for her.
But when Philip once consciously noted that omission, he began to wonder
if Violet was not comprehensible after all.... These days, in any case,
after Philip’s return, while Colin still lingered in Italy, were worthy
of the stateliest and deadliest Stanier traditions.

Colin had been expected all one long July afternoon. His announcement of
his arrival had been ambiguous, for he might catch the early train from
Paris, and thus the earlier boat, but the connection was uncertain, and
if he missed it he would not get to Dover till six in the evening. In
that case he would sleep in London, and come down to Stanier next day.

Philip had read this out at breakfast that morning, and for once Violet
shewed some interest in Colin.

“Why not send a motor to Dover, Uncle Philip?” she said. “It can get
there in time for the first boat, and if he is not on it, it can wait
for the second. He will arrive here then by dinner time.”

Raymond looked up from his paper at the sound of her voice.

“Vi, darling, what an absurd plan,” he said. “There are a hundred
chances to one on Colin’s not finding the motor. He’ll get straight into
the train from the boat.”

Violet instantly retreated into that strange shell of hers again.

“Ah, yes,” she said.

Philip’s curiosity put forth a horn at this. There was some new element
here, for Raymond seemed to resent the idea of special arrangements
being made for Colin.

“That’s not a bad idea of yours, Violet,” he said. “It will save Colin
going up to London.”

As he spoke he kept a sideways eye on Raymond.

“But, father, think of the crush getting off the boat,” he said. “The
chances are that Colin won’t see your chauffeur.”

He spoke with an impatient anger which he could not cloak, and which
rang out unmistakably in his voice.

“We’ll take the off chance then,” said his father.

Raymond got up. “Just as you like,” he said.

Philip paused a moment. The relations between himself and Raymond had
been excellent up till to-day. Raymond without charm (which was not his
fault), had been pleasant and agreeable, but now this matter of meeting
Colin had produced a spirit of jealous temper.

“Naturally I shall do just as I like,” he observed. “Ring the bell,
please, Raymond. The motor will have to start at once.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Though none of the three communicated the news of Colin’s arrival to old
Lady Yardley, it somehow got round to her, _via_ perhaps, some servant’s
gossip about a motor going to Dover, and most unusually she came
downstairs at tea-time with inquiries whether Colin had arrived. It was
soon clear that he could not have caught the early boat, or he would
have been here by now, and thus three hours at least must elapse before
his arrival could be looked for, but in spite of this, old Lady Yardley
did not go back to her room again, but remained upright and vigilant in
her chair on the terrace, where they had had tea, looking out over the
plain where, across the gardens and lake, appeared glimpses of the road
along which the motor must come.

Philip had intended to go for a ride, but he, too, when his servant told
him that his horse was round, lingered on and shewed no sign of moving.
Neither he nor his mother gave any reason for their remaining so
unusually here, but somehow the cause of it was common property. Colin
was coming. Raymond, similarly, had announced his intention of going to
bathe, but had not gone; instead he fidgeted in his chair, smoked, took
up and dropped the evening paper, and made aimless little excursions up
and down the terrace. His restlessness got on his father’s nerves.

“Well, go and bathe, if you mean to, Raymond,” he said, “or if you like
take my horse and go for a ride. But, for goodness’ sake, don’t keep
jumping about like that.”

“Thanks, I think I won’t ride, father,” he said. “I shall be having a
bathe presently. Or would you feel inclined for a game of tennis, Vi?”

“I think it’s rather too hot,” said she.

He sat down on the arm of her chair, but she gave no welcome to him, nor
appeared in any way conscious of his proximity. In that rather gross
fashion of his, he gently stroked a tendril of loose hair just behind
her ear. For a moment she suffered that without moving. Then she put up
her hand with a jerky, uncontrolled movement, and brushed his away.

“Oh, please, Raymond,” she said in a low voice.

He had a sullen look for that, and, shrugging his shoulders, got up and
went into the house. His father gave a sigh of relief, the reason for
which needed no comment.

“Colin will be here for dinner, won’t he?” asked old Lady Yardley.

“Yes, mother,” said Philip. “But won’t you go and rest before that?”

“I think I will sit here,” said she, “and wait for Colin.”

Presently Raymond was back again, with a copy of some illustrated paper.
Violet and Philip alike felt the interruption of his presence. They were
both thinking of Colin, and Raymond, even if he sat quiet, was a
disturbance, a distraction.... Soon he was by Violet’s side again,
shewing her some picture which he appeared to think might interest her,
and Philip, watching the girl, felt by some sympathetic vibration how
great an effort it was for her to maintain that passivity which, all
those days, had so encompassed her. The imminence of Colin’s arrival, he
could not but conjecture, was what troubled her tranquillity, and below
it there was some stir, some subaqueous tumult not yet risen to the
surface, and only faintly declaring itself in these rising bubbles....

Raymond had placed the paper on her knee, and, turning the page, let his
hand rest on her arm, bare to the elbow. Instantly she let it slip to
her side, and, raising her eyes at the moment, caught Philip’s gaze. The
recognition of something never mentioned between them took place, and
she turned to Raymond’s paper again.

“Quite excellent,” she said. “Such a good snapshot of Aunt Hester. Show
it to Uncle Philip.”

Raymond could not refuse to do that, and the moment he had stepped over
to Philip’s side, she got up.

That passivity was quite out of her reach just now in this tension of
waiting. Soon Colin would be here, and she would have to face and accept
the situation, but the waiting for it.... If only even something could
happen to Colin which would prevent his arrival. Why had she suggested
that sending of the motor to Dover? Had she not done that, he could not
have got here till to-morrow morning, and she would have had time to
harden, to crystallise herself, to render herself impervious to any
touch from outside.

She was soon to be a Stanier bride, and there in the tall chair with the
ivory cane was the pattern and example for her. It was on old Lady
Yardley that she must frame herself, quenching any fire of her own, and
content to smoulder her life away as mistress of the family home which
she so adored, and of all the countless decorations and riches of her
position. Never had the wonder and glory of the place seemed to her so
compelling as when now, driven from the terrace by Raymond’s
importunity, she walked along its southern front and through the archway
in the yew-hedge where she and Colin had stood on his last night here.
It dozed in the tranquillity of the July evening, yellow and
magnificent, the empress of human habitations. Round it for pillow were
spread its woodlands, on its breast for jewel lay the necklace of deep
flower-beds; tranquil and stable through its three centuries, it seemed
the very symbol and incarnation of the pride of its owners; to be its
mistress and the mother of its lords yet unborn was a fate for which she
would not have exchanged a queen’s diadem.

Whatever conditions might be attached to it, she would accept them--as
indeed she had already pledged herself to do--with the alacrity with
which its founder had, in the legend, signed his soul away in that
bargain which had so faithfully been kept by the contracting parties....
And it was not as if she disliked Raymond; she was merely utterly
indifferent to him, and longing for the time when, in the natural course
of things, he would surely grow indifferent to her. How wise and
indulgent to his male frailties would she then show herself; how
studiously and how prudently blind, with the blindness of those who
refuse to see, to any infidelities.

Had there not been in the world a twin-brother of his, or, even if that
must be, if she had not stood with him under this serge-arch of yews
beneath the midsummer moon and given him that cousinly kiss, she would
not now be feeling that his return, or, at any rate, the waiting for it,
caused a tension that could scarcely be borne. She had made her choice
and had no notion--so her conscious mind told her--of going back on it;
it was just this experience of seeing Colin again for the first time
after her choice had been made that set her nerves twanging at Raymond’s
touch. Could she, by a wish or the wave of a wand, put off Colin’s
advent until she had actually become Raymond’s wife, how passionately
would she have wished, how eagerly have waved. Or if by some magic,
black or white, she could have put Colin out of her life, so that never
would she set eyes on him again or hear his voice, his banishment from
her would at that moment have been accomplished. She would not admit
that she loved him; she doggedly told herself that she did not, and her
will was undeviatingly set on the marriage which would give her Stanier.

Surely she did not love Colin; they had passed all their lives in the
tranquillity of intimate friendship, unruffled by the faintest breath of
desire. And then, in spite of her dogged assertion, she found that she
asked herself, incredulously enough, whether on that last evening of
Colin’s the seed of fire had not sprouted in her? She disowned the
notion, but still it had reached her consciousness, and then fiercely
she reversed and denied it, for she abhorred the possibility. It would
be better that she should hate Colin than love him.

       *       *       *       *       *

The evening was stiflingly hot, and in the park, where her straying feet
had led her, there was no breath of wind stirring to disperse the
heaviness. The air seemed thick with fecundity and decay; there was the
smell of rotting wood, of crumbling fungi overripe that mingled with the
sharp scent of the bracken and the faint aroma of the oaks, and buzzing
swarms of flies gave token of their carrion banquets. The open ground to
the north of the house was no better; to her sense of overwrought
expectancy, it seemed as if some siege and beleaguerment held her. She
wanted to escape, but an impalpable host beset her, not of these buzzing
flies only and of the impenetrable oppression of the sultry air, through
which she could make no _sortie_, but, internally and spiritually, of
encompassing foes and hostile lines through which her spirit had no
power to break.

There on the terrace, from which, as from under some fire she could not
face, she had lately escaped, there would be the physical refreshment of
the current of sea-wind moving up, as was its wont towards sunset,
across the levels of the marsh; but there, to this same overwrought
consciousness, would be Raymond, assiduous and loverlike, with odious
little touches of his affectionate fingers. But, so she told herself, it
was enforced on her to get used to them; he had a right to them, and it
was Colin, after all, who was responsible for her shrinking from them,
even as she shrank from the evil buzzings of the flies. If only she had
not kissed Colin, or if, having done that, he had felt a tithe of what
it had come to signify to her.

But no hint of heart-ache, no wish that fate had decreed otherwise, had
troubled him. He had asked for a cousinly kiss, and in that light
geniality of his he had said, out of mere politeness, and out of hatred
for Raymond (no less light and genial) that it was “maddening” to think
that his brother would be the next visitor there.

She had waited for his reply to her letter announcing that Raymond had
proposed to her and that she was meaning to accept him, with a quivering
anxiety which gave way when she received his answer to a sense of revolt
which attempted to call itself relief. He seemed, so far from finding
the news “maddening,” to welcome and rejoice in it. He congratulated her
on achieving her ambition of being mistress of Stanier, and on having
fallen in love with Raymond. He could not be “hurt”--as she had
feared--at her news; it was altogether charming.

She had expressed the charitable hope that he would not be hurt, and
with claws and teeth her charity had come home to roost. It had dreadful
habits in its siesta; it roosted with fixed talons and sleepless lids;
it cried to the horses of the night to go slowly, and delay the dawn,
for so it would prolong the pleasures of its refreshment. And each day
it rose with her, strengthened and more vigorous. Had Colin only
rebelled at her choice, that would have comforted her; she would have
gathered will-power from his very opposition. But with his acquiescing
and welcoming, she had to bear the burden of her choice alone. If he had
only cared he would have stormed at her, and like the Elizabethan flirt,
she would have answered his upbraidings with a smile. As it was, the
smile was his, not hers. Almost, to win his upbraidings, she would have
sacrificed the goodly heritage--all the honour and the secular glory of
it.

Perhaps by now, for she had wandered far, the rest of them might have
dispersed, her grandmother to the seclusion of her own rooms, Uncle
Philip to the library, and Raymond to the lake, and she let herself into
the house by the front door and passed into the hall. The great Holbein
above the chimney piece smiled at her with Colin’s indifferent lips; the
faded parchment was but a blur in the dark frame, and she went through
into the long gallery which faced the garden front. All seemed still
outside, and after waiting a moment in the entrance, she stepped on to
the terrace, and there they were still; her grandmother alert and
vigilant, Philip beside her, and Raymond dozing in his chair, with his
illustrated paper fallen from his knee. What ailed them all that they
waited like this; above all, what ailed her, that she cared whether they
waited or not?

Soundless though she hoped her first footfalls on the terrace had been,
they were sufficient to rouse Raymond. He sat up, his sleepiness all
dispersed.

“Hullo, Vi!” he said. “Where have you been?”

“Just for a stroll,” said she.

“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come with you.”

Suddenly old Lady Yardley rose, and pointed down on to the road across
the marsh.

“Colin is coming,” she said. “There’s his motor.”

Certainly a mile away there was, to Violet’s young eyes, an
infinitesimal speck on the white riband, but to the dimness of the old,
that must surely have been invisible. Lord Yardley, following the
direction of her hand, could see nothing.

“No, mother, there’s nothing to be seen yet,” he said, proving that he,
too, was absorbed in this unaccountable business of waiting for Colin.

“But I am right,” she said. “You will see that I am right. I must go to
the front door to welcome him.”

She let the stick, without which she never moved, slide from her hand,
and with firm step and upright carriage, walked superbly down the
terrace to the door of the gallery.

“He is coming home,” she cried. “He is coming for his bride, and there
will be another marriage at Stanier. Let the great glass doors be
opened; they have not been opened for the family since I came here sixty
years ago. They were never opened for my poor son Philip. I will open
them, if no one else will. I am strong to-night.”

Philip moved to her side.

“No; it’s Raymond you are thinking of, mother,” he said. “They will be
opened in October. You shall see them opened then.”

She paused, some shade of doubt and anxiety dimming this sudden
brightness, and laid her hand on her son’s shoulder.

“Raymond?” she said. “Yes, of course, I was thinking of Raymond.
Raymond and Violet. But to please me, my dear, will you not open them
now for Colin? Colin has been so long away, it is as if a bridegroom
came when Colin comes. We are only ourselves here; the Staniers may do
what they like in their own house, may they not? I should love to have
the glass doors open for Colin’s return.”

The speck she had seen or divined on the road had come very swiftly
nearer, and now it could be seen that some white waving came from it.

“I believe it is Colin, after all,” said Raymond. “How could she have
seen?”

Old Lady Yardley turned a grave glance of displeasure on him.

“Do not interrupt me when I am talking to your father,” she said. “The
glass doors, Philip.”

Raymond with a smile, half-indulgent of senile whims, half-protesting,
turned to the girl.

“Glass doors, indeed,” he said. “The next glass doors are for us, eh,
Violet?”

Surely some spell had seized them all. Violet found herself waiting as
tensely as her grandmother for Philip’s reply. She was hardly conscious
of Raymond’s hand stealing into hers; all hung on her uncle’s answer.
And he, as if he, too, were under the spell, turned furiously on
Raymond.

“The glass doors are opened when I please,” he said. “Your turn will
come to give orders here, Raymond, but while I am at Stanier I am
master. Once for all understand that.”

He turned to his mother again.

“Yes, dear mother,” he said, “you and I will go and open them.”

Inside the house no less than among the watchers on the terrace the
intelligence that Colin was at hand had curiously spread. Footmen were
in the hall already, and the major-domo was standing at the entrance
door, which he had thrown open, and through which poured a tide of hot
air from the baking gravel of the courtyard. Exactly opposite were the
double glass doors, Venetian in workmanship, and heavily decorated with
wreaths and garlands of coloured glass. The bolts and handles and hinges
were of silver, and old Lady Yardley, crippled and limping no longer,
moved quickly across to them, and unloosing them, threw them open.
Inside was the staircase of cedar wood, carved by Gibbons, which led up
to the main corridor, opposite the door that gave entrance to the suite
of rooms occupied by the eldest son and his wife.

What strange fancy possessed her brain none knew, and why Philip allowed
and even helped her in the accomplishment of her desire was as obscure
to him as to the others, but with her he pushed the doors back and the
sweet odour of the cedar wood, confined there for the last sixty years,
flowed out like the scent of some ancient vintage. Then, even as the
crunching of the motor on the gravel outside was heard, stopping
abruptly as the car drew up at the door, she swept across to the
entrance.

Already Colin stood in the doorway. For coolness he had travelled
bareheaded and the gold of his hair, tossed this way and that, made a
shining aureole round his head. His face, tanned by the southern suns,
was dark as bronze below it, and from that ruddy-brown his eyes,
turquoise blue, gleamed like stars. He was more like some lordly
incarnation of life and sunlight and spring-splendour than a handsome
boy, complete and individual; a presence of wonder and enchantment stood
there.... Then, swift as a sword-stroke, the spell which had held them
all was broken; it was but Colin, dusty and hot from his journey, and
jubilant with his return.

“Granny darling!” he said, kissing her. “How lovely of you to come and
meet me like this. Father! Ever so many thanks for sending the motor for
me. Ah, and there are Violet and Raymond. Raymond, be nice to me; let me
kiss you, for, though we’re grown up, we’re brothers. And Violet; I want
a kiss from Violet, too. She mustn’t grudge me that.... What! The glass
doors open. Ah! of course, in honour of the betrothal. Raymond, you
lucky fellow, how I hate you. But I thought that was only done when the
bridegroom brought his bride home.”

“A whim of your grandmother’s,” said Philip hastily, disowning
apparently his share in it.

Instantly Colin was by the old lady’s side again.

“Granny, how nice of you!” he said. “But you’ve got to find me a bride
first before I go up those stairs. And even then, it’s only the eldest
son who may, isn’t it? But it was nice of you to open the doors because
I was coming home.”

He had kissed Raymond lightly on the cheek, and Violet no less lightly,
and both in their separate and sundered fashions were burning at it,
Raymond in some smouldering fury at what he knew was Colin’s falseness,
Violet with the hot searing iron of his utter indifference; and then
light as foam and iridescent as a sunlit bubble of the same, he was back
with his father again, leaving them as in some hot desert place. And
dinner must now be put off, growled Raymond to himself, because Colin
wanted to have a bathe first and wash off the dust and dryness of his
journey, and his father would stroll down after him and bring his towel,
so that he might run down at once without going upstairs.

       *       *       *       *       *

Colin had come home, it appeared, with the tactics that were to compass
his strategy rehearsed and ready. Never had his charm been of so sunny
and magical a quality, and, by contrast, never had Raymond appeared more
uncouth and bucolic. But Raymond now, so ran his father’s unspoken
comment on the situation, had an ugly weapon in his hand, under the
blows of which Colin winced and started, for more than ever he was
prodigal of those little touches and caresses which he showered on
Violet. Philip could not blame him for it; it was no more than natural
that a young man, engaged and enamoured, should use the light license
of a lover; indeed, it would have been unnatural if he had not done so.

Often and often, ten times in the evening, Philip would see Colin take
himself in hand and steadfastly avert his eyes from the corner where
Raymond and Violet sat. But ever and again that curious habit of
self-torture in lovers whom fate has not favoured would assert itself,
and his eyes would creep back to them, and seeing Raymond in some
loverlike posture, recall themselves. And as often the sweetness of his
temper, and his natural gaiety, would reassert its ray, and the usual
light nonsense, the frequent laugh, flowed from him. Exquisite, too, was
his tact with Violet; he recognised, it was clear, that their old
boy-and-girl intimacy must, in these changed conditions, be banished. He
could no longer go away with her alone to spend the morning between
tennis-court and bathing pool, or with his arm round her neck, stroll
off with a joint book to read reclined in the shade. Not only would that
put Raymond into a false position (he, the enamoured, the betrothed)
but, so argued the most pitiless logic of which his father was capable,
that resumption of physical intimacy, as between boy and boy, would be a
tearing of Colin’s very heart-strings not only for himself but for her
also. In such sort of intimacy Colin, with his brisk blood and ardent
lust of living, could scarcely help betraying himself, and surely then,
Violet, little though she might care for Raymond, would see her pool of
tranquil acceptance shattered by this plunge of a stone into the centre
of it. Her liking for Colin was deep, and she would not fail to see that
for her he had even profounder depths. A light would shine in those
drowned caves, and Colin, as wise as he was tender, seemed to shew his
wisdom by keeping on the surface with Violet, and only shining on her
tranquillity, never breaking it.

Sometimes--so thought his father--he shewed her a face which, in virtue
of their past intimacy, was almost too gaily indifferent; she would
attempt some perfectly trivial exhibition of their old relations, perch
herself on the arm of his chair, and with the contrast of his bronzed
face and golden hair, tell him that he must gild his face like the
grooms in “Macbeth” or dye his hair. But on the instant he would be
alert and spring up, leaving her there, for the need of a cigarette or a
match. He allowed her not the most outside chance of resuming ordinary
cousinly relations with him. His motive was sound enough; loving her he
mistrusted himself. She was sealed to be his brother’s wife, and he must
not trust himself within sight of the notice to trespassers. It was
better to make himself a stranger to her than to run the risk of
betraying himself. So, at least, it struck an outsider to Colin’s
consciousness.

He avoided, then, all privacy with Violet, and no less carefully he
avoided privacy with Raymond. If the three men were together and his
father left them, Colin would be sure to follow him, and if they all
three sat up together in the smoking-room, Colin would anticipate the
signal of a silence or of his father’s yawning or observation of the
clock, to go to bed himself. Here, again, he almost overdid the part,
for as the first week after his return went by, Philip, firmly
determined to be just to Raymond, thought he saw in him some kind of
brotherly affection for Colin, which the latter either missed or
intentionally failed to respond to. There could be no harm in a
seasonable word, and when, one morning Raymond, after half a dozen chill
responses from his brother, had left him and Colin together, Philip
thought that the seasonable word was no less than Raymond’s due. But the
seasonable word had to be preceded by sympathy.

He sat down in the window seat by Colin.

“Well?” he said.

Those blue eyes, gay but veiled by suffering, answered him.

“It’s damned hard on you, Colin,” he said. “Are you getting used to it,
old boy?”

Colin, with one of those inimitable instinctive movements, laid his hand
on his father’s shoulder.

“No, not a bit,” he said. “But I’ve got to. I can’t go on like this. I
must feel friendly to Raymond and Violet. I must manage to rejoice in
their happiness. Got any prescription for me, father? I’ll take it,
whatever it is. Lord! How happy I used to be.”

All that Philip had missed in Rosina was here now; the tender, subtle
mind, which should have been the complement of her beauty. His sympathy
was up in arms for this beloved child of hers, and his sense of fairness
elsewhere.

“Raymond’s doing his best, Colin,” he said. “I wonder....” and he
paused.

“You can say nothing that will hurt me, father,” said Colin. “Go on.”

“Well, I wonder if you’re responding to that. To put it frankly,
whenever he makes any approach to you, you snub him.”

Colin lifted his head.

“Snub him?” he said. “How on earth can I snub Raymond? He’s got
everything. I might as well snub God.”

This was a new aspect.

“I can’t do otherwise, father,” said the boy. “I can only just behave
decently to Raymond in public and avoid him in private. Don’t bother
about Raymond. Raymond hates me, and if I gave him any opportunity, he
would merely gloat over me. I can’t behave differently to him; I’m doing
the best I can. If you aren’t satisfied with me, I’ll go away again till
it’s all over and irrevocable. Perhaps you would allow me to go back to
Capri.”

Philip’s heart yearned to him. “I wish I could help you,” he said.

“You do help me. But let’s leave Raymond out of the question. There’s a
matter that bothers me much more, and that’s Violet. If I let myself go
at all, I don’t know where I should be. What am I to do about her? Am I
right, do you think, in the way I’m behaving? We were chums--then she
became to me, as I told you, so much more than a chum. I can’t get back
on to the old footing with her; it would hurt too much. And she’s hurt
that I don’t. I can see that. I think I was wrong to come back here at
all, and yet how lovely it was! You all seemed pleased to see me--all
but Raymond--and I didn’t guess the bitterness of it.”

It was inevitable that Philip should recall his surprise at Violet’s
passivity. Colin, whose heart he knew, had been, in all outward
appearance, just as passive, and he could not help wondering whether
that passivity of Violet’s cloaked a tumult as profound as Colin’s. The
suspicion had blinked at him before, like some flash of distant
lightning; now it was a little more vivid. If that were true, if from
that quarter a storm were coming up, better a thousand times that it
should come now than later. Tragic, indeed, would it be if, after she
had married Raymond, it burst upon them all.... But he had nothing
approaching evidence on the subject; it might well be that his wish that
Violet could have loved Colin set his imagination to work on what had
really no existence outside his own brain.

“I hate seeing you suffer, Colin,” he said, “and if you want to go back
to Capri, of course you may. But you’ve got to get used to it some time,
unless you mean to banish yourself from Stanier altogether. Don’t do
that.”

Colin pressed his father’s arm.

“I’ll do better, father,” he said. “I’ll begin at once. Where’s Violet?”

It was in pursuance of this resolve, it must be supposed, that when Lady
Yardley’s rubber of whist was over that night, Colin moved across to the
open door on to the terrace where Violet was standing. In some spasm of
impatience at Raymond’s touch she had just got up from the sofa where he
had planted himself close to her, leaving him with an expression, half
offended, half merely hungry....

“Five minutes stroll outside, Vi?” he asked.

“It’s rather late,” she said.

“Right,” said Colin cheerfully, and went forth alone, whistling into the
darkness.

The moment he had gone Violet regretted not having gone too. Since
Colin’s return she had not had a half-hour all told alone with him, and
the tension of his entire indifference to her was becoming intolerable.
She had not dreamed that he would cut himself off from her with this
hideous completeness, nor yet how much she longed for the renewal of the
old intimacy. Bitterest of all was the fact that she meant nothing to
him, for he had never been more light-heartedly gay. Where Philip,
knowing what he did, saw strained and heroic effort, she saw only the
contemptuous ignoring of herself and Raymond.... And now, with that same
craving for self-torture that is an obsession to the luckless in love,
when Colin made his first advance to her again, she must needs reject
it. There was Raymond watching her, and revolt against that hungry look
of his decided her. She stepped out on to the terrace.

Colin had come to the far end of it; his whistling directed her; and now
in the strong starlight, she could see the glimmer of his shirt-front.
She felt her knees trembling and hid the reason out of sight as she
strolled, as unconcernedly as she could, towards him. Soon he perceived
her and his whistling stopped.

“Hullo, Vi,” he said, “so you’ve come out after all. That’s ripping.”

They were close to each other now, and bright was the stream of
starlight on him.

“Managed to tear yourself away from Raymond for five minutes?” he asked.
“I was beginning to think I should never have a word with you again.”

“That’s your fault,” said she. “You have been a brute all this last
week.”

“I? A brute?” said Colin. “What do you mean? I thought I had been
conducting myself superbly....”

He looked up quickly at the oblong of light that flowed from the open
door into the gallery, and saw that it framed a shadow.

“Hullo, there’s Raymond,” he said, “looking after us. Here we are,
Raymond. Come and join us.”

He heard Violet’s clicked tongue of impatience.

“I had to say that,” he whispered. “He won’t come.”

Colin’s psychology was correct enough; Raymond had not meant to be seen,
he only meant to see. Besides he had a grievance against Violet for her
impatience just now; he was annoyed with her.

“No, thanks,” he said, “I’m going to the smoking-room.”

“That’s to punish you, Vi,” said Colin with a tremble of laughter in his
voice. “But perhaps we had better go in. You mustn’t vex him.”

Nothing could have been better calculated.

“Is one of the conditions of my engagement that I mustn’t speak to you?”
she asked. “Certainly it seems like it.”

Colin tucked his arm into Violet’s.

“Well, we’ll break it for once,” he said. “Now you’re vexed with me.
That’s very unreasonable of you. You made your choice with your eyes
open. You’ve chosen Raymond and Stanier. It stands to reason we can’t
always be together. You can’t have Raymond and Stanier and me. It was
your own doing. And I thought everything was going so well. Whenever I
look up I see you and him holding hands, or else he’s kissing the back
of your neck.”

“Ah!” said Violet with a little shiver.

“You’ve got to get used to it, Vi,” said he. “You’ve got to pay for
having Stanier. Isn’t it worth it?”

He heard her take a quick breath; her control was swaying like a curtain
in the wind.

“Oh, don’t be such a brute to me, Colin,” she said. “I hadn’t realised
that--that you would desert me like this.”

Colin just passed his tongue over his lips.

“Oh, that doesn’t mean anything to you,” he said.

“But it does, it does,” said she.

They were back now in the shadow of the yew-hedge, where one night she
had kissed him. As he thought of that he knew that she was thinking of
it too.

“Give Raymond up,” he said. “Let him and Stanier go. It will be the
wisest thing you can do.”

He paused a moment, and all the witchery of the night came to the
reinforcement of his charm.

“I want you, Vi,” he said. “Promise me. Give me a kiss and seal it.”

For one second she wavered, and then drew back from him.

“No, I can’t do that,” she said. “I’ll give you a kiss, but it seals no
promise.”

“Kiss me then,” said he, now confident.

There was no mistaking the way in which she surrendered to him. She
stood enfolded by him, lambent and burning. She knew herself to be
bitterly unwise, but for the moment the sweetness was worth all the
waters of Marah that should inundate her.

“Ah, you darling, never mind your promise,” said he. “I shall have that
later. Just now it’s enough that you should hate Raymond and love me.”

She buried her face on his shoulder.

“Colin, Colin, what am I to do?” she whispered.

He could see well that, though her heart was his, the idea of giving up
Stanier still strove with her. To-night she might consent to marry him;
to-morrow that passion for possession might lay hands on her again. She
was bruised but not broken, and instantly he made up his mind to tell
her the secret of his mother’s letter and of the entry at the Consulate.
That would clinch it for ever. When she knew that by giving up Raymond
and Stanier together, she retained just all she wanted out of her
contract and gained her heart’s desire as well----

“What are you to do?” he said. “You are to do exactly what you are
doing. You’re to cling to me, and trust me. Ah, you’re entrancing! But
I’ve got something to tell you, Vi, something stupendous. We must go in;
I can’t tell you here, for not even the trees nor the terrace must know,
though it concerns them.”

“But, Colin, about Raymond. I can’t be sure....”

He pressed her to him, thrilled all through at this ebb and flow of her
emotional struggle.

“You’ve finished with Raymond, I tell you,” he said. “You’ve given him
up and you’ve given up Stanier, haven’t you; you’ve given up
everything?”

Some diabolical love of cruelty for its own sake; of torturing her by
prolonging the decision which pulled at her this way and that, possessed
him.

“It’s a proud hour for me, Vi,” he said. “I love Stanier as madly as you
do, and you’ve given it up for me. I adore you for doing that; you’ll
never repent it. I just hug these moments, though there must come an end
to them. Let us go in, or Raymond will be looking for us again. Go
straight to your room. I shall come there in five minutes, for there’s
something I must tell you to-night. I must just have one look at Raymond
first. That’s for my own satisfaction.”

Colin could not forego that look at Raymond. He knew how he should find
him, prospering with a glass of whisky, disposed, as his father had
said, to be brotherly, having all the winning cards in his hand. Stanier
would be his, and, before that, Violet would be his, and Colin might be
allowed, if he were very amiable, to spend a week here occasionally when
Raymond came to his throne, just as now he had been allowed a starlit
stroll with Violet. These were indulgences that would not be noticed by
his plenitude, morsels let fall from the abundant feast. The life only
of one man, already old, lay between him and the full consummation;
already his foot was on the steps where the throne was set. Just one
glance then at victorious Raymond....

Raymond fulfilled the highest expectations. Whisky had made him
magnanimous; he was pleased to have granted Colin that little starlit
stroll with Violet, it was a crumb from the master’s table. His heavy
face wore a look of great complacency as his brother entered.

“Hullo, Colin,” he said. “Finished making love to Violet?”

Colin grinned. “You old brute!” he said. “Not content with having
everything yourself, you must mock me for my beggary. You lucky fellow.”

He poured himself out a drink and sat down.

“Raymond, I had no idea how devoted Violet was to you till to-night,” he
said. “I think she’s afraid to let herself go, to shew it too much.”

The grossness of Raymond, his animal proprietorship, was never more
apparent. It was enough for him to desire her.

“Oh, Vi’s all right,” he said.

Colin felt his ribs a-quiver with the spasm of his suppressed laughter.
He distrusted his power of control if he subjected himself to further
temptation.

“I’m off to bed,” he said. “I just looked in to envy you.”

“Where’s Vi?” asked Raymond.

Colin bethought himself that he did not want Raymond knocking at
Violet’s door for a good-night kiss.

“Oh, she went upstairs half an hour ago,” he said. “She told me she was
awfully sleepy. In fact, she soon got tired of me.”

He drank in a final impression of Raymond’s satisfied face and went
upstairs, going first to his room, where from his locked despatch-case
he took the two letters which Salvatore had given him, and which now
bore the dates of March 17 and March 31. Then, passing down the long
corridor, he came to her room; the door was ajar, and he rapped softly
and then entered.

Violet, in anticipation of his coming, had sent her maid away, and was
brushing her hair, golden as Colin’s own, before her glass. Often and
often in the days of their intimacy had he come in for a talk during
this ritual; on dry, frosty nights Violet would put out her light, and
pale flashes of electricity and cracklings and sparks would follow the
progress of her brush. Her hair would float up from her head and cling
to Colin’s fingers as sea-weed that had lain unexpanded on the shore
spreads out, floating and undulating, in the return of the tide.
To-night it lay thick and unstirred, rippling for a moment under her
brush, and then subsiding again into a tranquil sheet of gold.

She saw him enter in the field of her mirror and heard the click of the
key as he turned it.

“Just in case Raymond takes it into his head to say good-night to you,”
he said.

She had risen from her chair and stood opposite to him.

“What have you got to tell me, Colin?” she said.

He looked at her a moment with parted lips and sparkling eyes. Each
seemed the perfect complement of the other; together they formed one
peerless embodiment of the glory of mankind. Through them both there
passed some quiver of irresistible attraction, and, as two globules of
quick-silver roll into one, so that each is merged and coalesced in the
other, so with arms interlaced and faces joined, they stood there, two
no longer. Even Colin’s hatred for Raymond flickered for that moment and
was nearly extinguished since for Violet he existed no more. Then the
evil flame burned up again, and he loosed Violet’s arms from round his
neck.

“Now you’re to sit and listen to me,” he said. “What I have got to tell
you will take no time at all.”

He opened the envelope which he had brought with him, and drew out the
two letters. He had decided not to tell Violet any more than what, when
his father was dead, all the world would know.

“Salvatore Viagi gave me these,” he said. “He is my mother’s brother,
you know, and I saw him at Capri. They were written by my mother to him,
and announce the birth of Raymond and me and her marriage to my father.
Take them, Vi, look at the dates and read them in order.”

She gave him one quick glance, took them from him, read them through and
gave them back to him. Then in dead silence she got up and stood close
to him.

“I see,” she said. “On Uncle Philip’s death, Stanier, everything will be
mine. According to those letters, that is.”

He nodded. “Yes, on the one condition, of course, that you and I are
wife and husband.”

She looked at him again with a smile breaking through her gravity.

“I promised that before I knew,” she said. “And now that I know that
Stanier will be mine, instead of believing that my choice forfeited it,
it isn’t very likely that I shall change my mind.”

“There’s something else, you know, too,” he said. “You’re marrying....”

She interrupted. “I’m marrying Colin,” she said. “But as regard you. Is
it horrible for you? Ah ... I’ve been thinking of myself only. Stanier
and myself.”

She moved away from him and walked to the end of the room, where,
pushing the blind aside, she looked out on to the terrace where they had
stood this evening. As clearly as if she spoke her thoughts aloud, Colin
knew what was the debate within her. It lasted but a moment.

“Colin, if--if you hate it,” she said, “tear that letter up. I’ve got
you, and I would sooner lose Stanier than let you be hurt. Tear it up!
Let Raymond have Stanier so long as I don’t go with it.... Oh, my dear,
is it the same me, who so few weeks ago chose Raymond, and who so few
hours ago wondered if I could give up Stanier, even though to get it
implied marrying him? And now, nothing whatever matters but you.”

Instantly Colin felt within himself that irritation which love
invariably produced in him. Just so had his father’s affection, except
in so far as it was fruitful of material benefits, fatigued and annoyed
him, and this proposal of Violet’s, under the same monstrous impulsion,
promised, in so far from being fruitful, to prove itself some scorching
or freezing wind which would wither and blast all that he most desired.
But, bridling his irritation, he laughed.

“That wouldn’t suit me at all,” he said, “and besides, Vi, how about
honour? Stanier will be legally and rightfully yours. How on earth could
I consent to the suppression of this? But lest you should think me too
much of an angel--father asked me one day how my wings were getting
on--I tell you quite frankly that it will be sweet as honey to send
Raymond packing. My adoring you doesn’t prevent my hating him. And as
for what is called irregularity in birth, who on earth cares? I don’t.
I’m a Stanier all right. Look at half the dukes in England, where do
they spring from? Actresses, flower-girls, the light loves of
disreputable kings. Who cares? And, besides, my case is different: my
father married my mother.”

Up and down his face her eyes travelled, seeing if she could detect
anywhere a trace of reluctance, and searched in vain.

“Are you quite sure, Colin?” she asked.

“Absolutely. There’s no question about it.”

Once more she held him close to her.

“Oh, it’s too much,” she whispered. “You and Stanier both mine. My heart
won’t hold it all.”

“Hearts are wonderfully elastic,” said he. “One’s heart holds everything
it desires, if only it can get it. Now there’s a little more to tell
you.”

“Yes? Come and sit here. Tell me.”

She drew him down on to the sofa beside her.

“Well, my uncle sent me these letters,” said he, “but, naturally, they
won’t be enough by themselves. It was necessary to find out what was the
entry in the register of their marriage. My father had told me where it
took place, at the British Consulate in Naples, and I got the Consul to
let me see the register. I told him I wanted to make a copy of it. I saw
it. The marriage apparently took place not on the 31st of March, but on
the 1st. But then I looked more closely, and saw that there had been an
erasure. In front of the ‘1’ there had been another figure. But whoever
had made that erasure had not done it quite carefully enough. It was
possible to see that a ‘3’ had been scratched out. The date as
originally written was ‘31’ not ‘1.’ That tallies with the date on my
mother’s letter.”

Colin’s voice took on an expression of tenderness, incredibly sweet.

“Vi, darling,” he said, “you must try to forgive my father, if it was he
who made or caused to be made that erasure which might so easily have
passed unnoticed, as indeed it did, for when the Consul prepared my copy
with the original he saw nothing of it; word by word he went over the
two together. You must forgive him, though it was a wicked and a
terrible fraud that my father--I suppose--practised, for unless he had
other children, he was robbing you of all that was rightfully yours.

“I think the reconstruction of it is easy enough. My mother died, and he
was determined that his son, one of them, should succeed. I imagine he
made, or procured the making, of that erasure after my mother’s death.
He had meant to marry her, indeed he did marry her, and I think he must
have desired to repair the wrong, the bitter wrong, he did her in the
person of her children. I’ve got something to forgive him, too, and
willingly I do that. We must both forgive him, Vi. I the bastard, and
you the heiress of Stanier.”

Violet would have forgiven Satan himself for all the evil wrought on the
face of the earth from the day when first he set foot in Paradise.

“Oh, Colin, yes,” she said. “Freely, freely!”

“That’s sweet of you. That is a great weight off my mind. And you’ll
make your forgiveness effective, Vi?”

She did not grasp this.

“In what way?” she asked.

“I mean that you won’t want to make an exposure of this now,” said he.
“I should like my father never to know that I have found out what he
did. I should like him to die thinking that Raymond will succeed him,
and that his fraud is undiscovered. Of course, you would be within your
rights if you insisted on being established as the heiress to Stanier
now. There are certain revenues, certain properties always made over to
the heir on coming of age, and Raymond and I come of age in a few
months. Can you let Raymond enjoy them for my father’s sake? He has
always been amazingly good to me.”

“Oh, Colin, what a question!” she said. “What do you take me for? Would
that be forgiveness?”

“That’s settled then; bless you for that. The only objection is that
Raymond scores for the present, but that can’t be helped. And there’s
just one thing more. About--about what has happened between us. Shall I
tell my father to-morrow? Then we can settle how Raymond is to be told.”

“Oh, Colin, to-morrow?” said she. “So soon?”

He laughed. “To-night if you like,” he said, “though it’s rather late.
Of course, if you want to put it off, and have Raymond nosing about you
still like a ferret....”

“Don’t!”

“He shan’t then. Now I must go. One kiss, Vi.”

She clung to him. “I’m frightened of Raymond,” she said. “What will he
do?”

“Howl like a wounded bear, I suppose. Hullo!”

There was the sound of knocking at the door, and Raymond’s voice:

“Violet,” he said. “May I come in; just to say good-night?”

Colin frowned. “Been listening, probably,” he whispered, “and heard
voices.”

Without pause he went to the door, and turned the key and handle
together.

“Come in, Raymond,” he said as he opened it. “Violet’s been talking of
nothing but you. So here we all are, bride and bridegroom and best man.
Let’s have one cigarette before we all go to bed.”

Raymond wore his most savage look. “I thought you had gone to bed,” he
said, “and I thought you said Violet had gone to bed half an hour before
that?”

“Oh, Raymond, don’t be vexed,” said Colin. “Haven’t you got everything?”

In just such a voice, dexterously convincing, had he pleaded with Violet
that she should forgive his father....




CHAPTER VII


Philip was waiting in his library for Raymond’s entry, wanting to feel
sorry for him, but as often as he could darken his mind behind that
cloud, the edges of it grew dazzlingly bright with the thought of Colin,
and the sun re-emerging warmed and delighted him....

Yet he was sorry for Raymond, and presently he would express his
sympathy, coldly and correctly, he was afraid, with regret and truism
and paternal platitudes; but duty would dictate his sentiments. At the
most he could not hope for more than to give the boy the impression he
was sorry, and conceal from him his immensurable pleasure in the news
Colin had made known to him. All these weeks, ever since, on that
morning in Capri, he had learned of Raymond’s engagement and Colin’s
desire, he had never been free from heartache, and his favourite’s
manliness, his refusal to be embittered, his efforts with himself, gaily
heroic, had but rendered those pangs the more poignant. And in the hour
of his joy Colin had shewn just the same marvellous quickness of
sympathy for Raymond’s sorrow, as, when Philip had first told him of the
engagement, he had shewn for Raymond’s happiness.

“I would have given anything to spare Raymond this, father,” he had
said. “As you know, I kept all I felt to myself. I didn’t let Violet see
how miserable I was, and how I wanted her. And then last night--it was
like some earthquake within. Everything toppled and fell; Vi and I were
left clinging to each other.”

After Colin, Philip had seen Violet, and she, too, had spoken to him
with a simplicity and candour.... She had already begun to love Colin,
she thought, before she accepted Raymond, but how she loved Stanier.
She had been worldly, ambitious, stifling the first faint calls of her
heart, thinking, as many a girl thought, whose nature is not yet wholly
awake, that Raymond would “do,” as regards herself, and “do”
magnificently as regards her longing for all that being mistress of
Stanier meant to her. Then came Colin’s return from Italy, and the
whisper of her heart grew louder. She could not help contrasting her
lover with her friend, and in that new light Raymond’s attentions to
her, his caresses, his air--she must confess--of proprietorship grew
odious and insufferable. And then, just as Colin had said, came the
earthquake. In that disruption, all that from the worldly point of view
seemed so precious, turned to dross.

At that point she hesitated a moment, and Philip had found himself
recording how like she was to Colin. With just that triumphant glow of
happiness with which he had said: “Raymond has got Stanier, father,
Violet and I have got each other,” so Violet now, after her momentary
hesitation, spoke to him.

“Stanier, for which I longed, Uncle Philip, doesn’t exist for me any
more. How could I weigh it against Colin?”

Colin’s happiness ... nothing could dim that sunshine for his father,
and the sunshine was not only of to-day, it was the sunshine that had
shone on him and Rosina more than twenty years ago. His heart melted
with the love that through Colin reacted on her. Surely she must rejoice
at the boy’s happiness to-day! Raymond, to be sure, was the fruit of her
body also, but it was through Colin that she lived, he was the memory
and the gracious image of her beauty.

Raymond entered, snapping the golden thread.

“You wanted to see me, father,” he said.

Philip had been attempting to drill himself into a sympathetic bearing
towards his son, but Raymond’s actual presence here in succession to
Colin and Violet, brought sheer helplessness. For the brightness and
beam of the others there was this solid self-sufficiency. It seemed as
if a crime had been averted in the transference of the girl to another
bridegroom. What unnatural union would have been made by this mating of
her! His heart sang; it were vain to try to throttle it into silence.

“Yes, Raymond; sit down,” said he, indicating a place on the sofa where
he sat.

“Oh, thanks, it doesn’t matter. I’ll stand,” said Raymond.

“I’ve got bad news for you,” said Philip. “You must brace yourself to
it.”

“Let’s have it,” said Raymond.

Philip felt his sympathy slipping from him. He wanted chiefly to get it
over; there was no use in attempting to lead up to it.

“It concerns you and Violet,” he said.

A savage look as of a hungry dog from whom his dinner is being snatched,
came across Raymond’s face.

“Well?” he said.

“She wished me to tell you that she can’t marry you,” said his father.
“She asks you to set her free from her engagement.”

The savagery of that sullen face grew blacker. “I don’t accept that from
you,” he said. “If it’s true, Violet will have to tell me herself.”

Philip made a great effort with himself. “It is true,” he said, “and I
want at once to tell you that I’m very sorry for you. But it would have
been very painful for her to tell you, and it was I who suggested that I
should break her decision to you. I hope you won’t insist on having it
from her.”

“She has got to tell me,” said Raymond. “And is that all, father? If so,
I’ll go to her at once.”

“No, there’s more,” said he.

Raymond’s face went suddenly white; his mouth twitched, he presented a
mask of hatred.

“And so it’s Colin who has got to tell me the rest,” he said. “Is that
it?”

“She is going to marry Colin.”

For a moment Raymond stood perfectly still; just his hands were moving;
knitted together they made the action of squeezing something. Once it
seemed that he tried to speak, but no word came; only the teeth shewed
in his mouth.

“Colin has got to tell me then,” he said. “I will see Colin first.”

Philip got up and laid a hand of authority on Raymond’s shoulder. The
boy, for all his quietness, seemed beside himself with some pent-up fury
all the more dangerous for its suppression.

“You must not see either of them in the state you are in now,” he said.

“That’s my affair,” said Raymond.

“It’s mine, too. You’re my son and so is Colin. You must wait till
you’ve got more used to what has happened. And you must remember this,
that a few weeks ago Colin was in the same case as you are now. He loved
Violet, and it was I then, out in Capri, who told him that Violet was
going to marry you. And he took it like a man, like the generous fellow
he is. His first words were: ‘By Jove, Raymond will be happy!’ I shall
never forget that, and you mustn’t either, Raymond.”

Raymond gave a dry snap of a laugh.

“I won’t,” he said. “That’s just what Colin would say. Perfect
character, isn’t he? Only last night I found him talking to Violet in
her bedroom. I wasn’t pleased, and he begged me not to be vexed, as I
had got everything. He had taken Violet from me when he said that, or if
not, he came back when Violet was in bed, and got engaged to her then.
Engaged!”

“Now stop that, Raymond,” said his father.

“Very good. He was already engaged to her when he told me I had got
everything. You don’t understand Colin. He hates more than he loves. He
has hated me all my life. ‘By Jove, Raymond will be happy!’ I’ll be even
with Colin some day. Now I’m going to see him. Or shall I say: ‘By
Jove, Colin will be happy?’ Then you’ll consider me a generous fellow.”

Once again Philip tried to put himself in Raymond’s place, and made
allowance for his bitter blackness. His hand went on to the boy’s
shoulder again, with less of authority and more of attempted affection.

“Raymond, you must do better than this,” he said. “You would be very
unwise to see Colin and Violet just now, but if you insist on doing so,
you shall see them in my presence. I can’t trust you, in the mood you’re
in, not to be violent, not to say or do something which you would
bitterly repent, and which they would find it hard to forgive. And if,
which I deny, Colin has always hated you, what about yourself?”

Both of them now were on bed-rock. By implication, by admission, by
denial even, they had got down to the hatred that, like a vein of
murderous gold, ran through the very foundation of the brothers’
existence. Who knew what struggle might have taken place, what prenatal
wrestling in the very womb of life, of which the present antagonism was
but a sequel, logical and inevitable!

Even as Philip spoke, he half-realised the futility of bringing argument
to bear on Raymond’s nature, for this hatred sprang from some
ineradicable instinct, an iron law on which intelligence and reason
could but perch like a settling fly. He could deny that Colin hated his
brother, he could urge Raymond to show himself as generous as he
believed Colin to have been, but nothing that he could say, no
persuasion, no authority could mitigate this fraternal hostility. And
even while he denied Colin’s animosity, with the evidence he had already
brought forward to back it, he found himself wondering if at heart Colin
could feel the generosity he had expressed, or whether it was not a mere
superficial good-nature, mingled with contempt perhaps, that had given
voice to it.

Raymond had ceased from the clutching and squeezing of his hands.

“You don’t know what Colin is,” he said, “and I know it is no use trying
to convince you. I shan’t try. You judge by what you see of him and me,
and you put me down for a black-hearted, sullen fellow, and he’s your
heart’s darling.”

“You’ve got no right to say that,” said Philip.

“But can I help knowing it, father?” asked he.

Philip felt that his very will-power was in abeyance; he could not even
want to readjust the places which his two sons held in his heart, or,
rather, to find place in his heart for the son who had never been
installed there yet. And there would be no use in “wanting,” even if he
could accomplish that. Colin held every door of his heart, and with a
grudging sense of justice towards Raymond, he was aware that Colin would
grant no admittance to his brother. Or was that conviction only the echo
of his own instinct that he wanted no one but Colin there? He had no
love to spare for Raymond. Such spring of it as bubbled in him must fall
into Colin’s cup, the cup that never could be filled.

How could he but contrast the two? Here was Raymond, sullen in his
defeat, attempting (and with unwelcome success) to put his father in the
wrong, jealous of the joy that had come to Colin, insisting,
Shylock-like, on such revenge as was in his power, the pound of flesh
which would be his, in making a scene with the girl who had chosen as
her heart bade her, and the boy who was her choice. On the other side
was Colin, who, when faced with an identical situation, had accepted his
ill-luck with a wave of welcome for the more fortunate. And Raymond
would have it that that splendid banner was but a false flag, under
cover of whose whiteness a treacherous attack might be made.

“I don’t know that we need pursue that,” said Philip. “Your feelings are
outside my control, but what is in my control is to be just to you in
spite of them. I have tried to tell you with all possible sympathy
of----”

“Of Violet’s jilting me,” interrupted Raymond. “And you have clearly
shewn me, father, your sympathy with Colin’s happiness.”

Philip felt every nerve jarring. “I am not responsible for your
interpretations of myself,” he said, “nor do I accept them. If your
design is to be intolerably offensive to me, you must work out your
design somewhere else. I am not going to have you stop here in order to
amuse yourself with being rude to me, and spoiling the happiness of
others----”

“Ah! Just so!” said Raymond. “Colin.”

Philip was exasperated beyond endurance.

“Quite right,” he said. “I am not going to have you spoiling Colin’s
happiness. And Violet’s. I should have suggested you leaving Stanier for
the present for your own sake, if you had allowed me to show sympathy
for you. As you do not, I suggest that you should do so for Colin’s
sake. You may go to St. James’s Square if you like, and if you can
manage to behave decently, you may stop on there when we come up next
week. But that depends on yourself. Now if you want to see Violet and
your brother you may, but you will see them here in my presence. I will
send for them now, if that is your wish. When you have seen them you
shall go. Well?”

Suddenly the idea of leaving Colin and Violet here became insupportable
to Raymond. He _had_ to see them as lovers, and hate them for it: his
hate must be fed with the sight of them.

“Must I go, father?” he said.

“Yes; you have forced me to be harsh with you. It was not my intention.
Now do you want to see them?”

Raymond hesitated: if Colin could be cunning, he could be cunning too.
“I should like to see them both,” he said.

Philip rang the bell, and in the pause before they came, Raymond went
across to the window-seat, and sat there with face averted, making no
sign, and in the silence Philip reviewed what he had done. He had no
wish, as he had said, to be harsh to Raymond, but what possible gain to
any one was his remaining here? He would be a misery to himself, and no
entertainment to others; and yet the boy wanted to stop, thinking
perhaps that thus he would be sooner able to accept the position. It was
impossible to grudge him any feasible alleviation of the blow that, so
far from stunning him, had awakened all that was worst in him. Much must
depend on his behaviour now to Colin and Violet.

They entered together. Colin looked first at his father; then, without
pause, seeing the huddled figure in the window-seat, went straight to
Raymond. All else, Violet even, was forgotten.

He laid his hand on Raymond’s shoulder. “Oh, Raymond,” he said, “we’re
brutes. I know that.”

Philip thought he had never seen anything so exquisite as that instinct
of Colin’s to go straight to his brother. Could Raymond recognise the
beauty of that?... And was it indeed Raymond who now drew Colin on to
the window-seat beside him?

“That’s all right, Colin,” he said. “You couldn’t help it. No one can
help it when it comes. I couldn’t.”

He stood up. “Father’s told me about it all,” he said, “and I just
wanted to see you and Violet for a moment in order to realise it. I’ve
got it now. Good-bye, Colin; good-bye, Violet.”

He went across to his father with hand outstretched. “Thanks ever so
much for letting me go to St. James’s Square,” he said. “And I’m sorry,
father, for behaving as I did. I know it’s no use just saying that; I’ve
got to prove it. But that’s all I can do for the present.”

He went straight out of the room without once looking back.

“Is Raymond going away?” asked Colin.

“Yes. It’s better so.”

Colin heard this with a chill of disappointment, for among his
pleasurable anticipations had been that of seeing Raymond wince and
writhe at the recasting of their parts. Raymond would have hourly before
his eyes his own rôle played by another, and with what infinitely
greater grace. The part of heroine would be filled by its “creator,”
but, in this remodelled piece, what sparkle and life she would put into
her scenes. Where she had been wooden and impassive, she would be eager
and responsive, that icy toleration would melt into a bubbling liquor of
joy. Then there would be the part now to be filled by Raymond; would he
fill that with Colin’s tact and sweetness? Of minor characters there
would be his father and grandmother, and with what convincing sincerity
now would they fill their places.... But Raymond’s absence would take
all the sting and fire out of the play.

“Oh, father, does he feel like that?” asked Colin. “Did he feel he
couldn’t bear to stop? I’m sorry.”

“No, it was I who told him to go,” said Philip. “He behaved outrageously
just now with me.”

“But he’s sorry,” said Colin. “He wants to do better. Mayn’t he stop?
He’ll be wretched all alone up in London.”

A sudden thought struck him, a touch of genius. “But it concerns Vi
most,” he said. “What do you vote, darling?”

“By all means let him stop,” said she. Nothing but Colin’s wish, here
clearly indicated, could have any weight with her.

“Then may he, father?” he asked. “That is good of you. Come and tell
him, Vi.”

Raymond was in the hall. He had just ordered his car, and was now about
to telephone to the housekeeper in town to say he was coming, when Colin
and Violet came out of the library. Philip followed them to complete the
welcome, and saw Colin go up to his brother.

“Raymond, don’t go,” he said. “We all want you to stop. Vi does, father
does, I do.”

Raymond saw his father in the doorway. “May I stop, then, father?” he
said.

“By all means. We all wish it,” said he.

Raymond looked back again at his brother. Colin was standing just below
the portrait of his ancestor, the very image and incarnation of him.

“I’ve got you to thank, I expect, Colin,” he said.

Their eyes met; Colin’s glittered like a sword unsheathed in the
sunlight of his hatred and triumph; Raymond’s smouldered in the
blackness of his hatred and defeat.

“I wish there was anything I could do for you, Ray,” said Colin gently.

       *       *       *       *       *

The entertainment which Colin had anticipated from these alterations in
the cast of this domestic drama did not fall short of his expectations.
He held Raymond in the hollow of his hand, for Raymond’s devotion to
Violet, gross and animal though it had been, gave Colin a thousand
opportunities of making him writhe with the shrewd stings of jealousy,
and with gay deliberation he planted those darts. The _coup de grâce_
for Raymond would not come yet, his father’s death would give the signal
for that; but at present there was some very pretty baiting to be done.
Not one of those darts, so becomingly beribboned, failed to hit its
mark: a whispered word to Violet which made the colour spring bright and
eager to her face, a saunter with her along the terrace in the evening,
and, even more than these, Colin’s semblance of sparing Raymond’s
feelings, his suggestion that he should join them in any trivial
pursuit--all these were missiles that maddingly pierced and stung.

No less adequately did Philip and old Lady Yardley fill their minor
parts; he, with the sun of Colin’s content warming him, was genial and
thoughtful towards Raymond in a way that betrayed without possibility of
mistake the sentiment from which it sprang; while Lady Yardley, braced
and invigorated by the same emotion, was strangely rejuvenated, and her
eyes, dim with age, seemed to pierce the mists of the encompassing years
and grew bright with Colin’s youth.

As regards his own relations with Violet, Colin found he could, for the
present anyhow, manage very well; the old habits of familiarity and
intimacy appeared to supply response sufficient; for she, shuddering
now, as at some nightmare, at her abandoned engagement to Raymond and
blinded with the splendour of the dawn of her love, saw him as a god
just alighted on the gilded and rosy hills.... Colin shrugged his
shoulders at her illusion; she presented to him no such phantasmal
apparition, but he could give her liking and friendship, just what she
had always had from him. Soon, so he hoped, this vision of himself would
fade from her eyes, for even as he had found his father’s paternal
devotion to him in Capri a fatiguing and boring business, so he foresaw
a much acuter _gêne_ that would spring from a persistence of Violet’s
love. No doubt, however, she would presently become more reasonable.

What above all fed Colin’s soul was to stroll into the smoking-room when
Violet had gone upstairs, and his father had retired to his library, and
to make Raymond drink a cup more highly spiced with gall than that which
had refreshed him in public. Raymond had usually got there first, while
Colin lingered a moment longer with Violet, and had beside him a
liberally mixed drink, and this would serve for Colin’s text:

“Hullo, Raymond! Drowning dull care?” he asked. “That’s right. I can’t
bear seeing you so down. By Jove, didn’t Violet look lovely to-night
with her hair brought low over her forehead?”

“Did she?” said Raymond. He tried to entrench himself in self-control;
he tried to force himself to get up and go, but hatred of Colin easily
stormed those defences. “Stop and listen,” said that compelling voice.
“Glut yourself with it: Love is not for you; hate is as splendid and as
absorbing....”

“Did she?” echoed Colin. “As if you hadn’t been devouring her all the
evening! But we all have our turn, don’t we? Every dog has its day. Last
week I used to see you and Violet; now you see Violet and me. Tell me,
Raymond, does Violet look happy? We can talk so confidentially, can’t
we, as we have both been in the same position? What a ticklish thing it
is to be a girl’s lover. How it ages one! I feel sixty. But does she
seem happy? She used to wear a sort of haunted look last week. I suppose
that was her wonder and her misgiving at a man’s brutal adoration. It
frightened her. As if we weren’t frightened too! Did the idea of
marriage terrify you as it terrifies me? A girl’s adoration is just as
brutal.”

Colin moved about the room as he spoke, dropping the sentences out like
measured doses from some phial of a potent drug. After each he paused,
waiting for a reply, and drinking glee from the silence. In that same
silence Raymond was stoking his fires which were already blazing.

“Yes, every dog has its day,” he said, replenishing his glass.

“And every dog has his drink,” said Colin. “Lord, how you’ll get your
revenge when your day comes! What sweetness in your cup that Vi and I
will never be allowed to come to Stanier again. You’ll like that,
Raymond. You’ll have married by that time. I wonder if it will be the
tobacconist’s girl who’ll have hooked you. You’ll be happier with her
than Vi, you know, and I shouldn’t wonder if Vi will be happier with me
than with you....”

Still there was silence on Raymond’s part.

“You must be more cheerful, Raymond,” said Colin. “Whatever you may do
to me hereafter, you had better remember that I’m top-dog just now. I
shall have to ask father to send you away after all, if you don’t make
yourself more agreeable. It was I who made him allow you to stop here,
and I will certainly have you sent away if you’re not kinder to me. You
must be genial and jolly, though it’s a violence to your nature. You
must buck up and be pleasant. So easy, and so profitable. Nothing to
say?”

There was a step outside, and their father entered. He carried an opened
letter in his hand.

“I’ve just had a note from the governor of the asylum at Repstow,” he
said. “One of their patients has escaped, a homicidal lunatic.”

“Gosh, I’ll lock my door,” said Colin. “No use for him. What else,
father?”

“It’s no joke, Colin. The keeper at the Repstow Lodge was out attending
to the pheasants’ coops this afternoon, and while he was gone a man
vaulted over the fence, frightened his wife into hysterics, and decamped
with his gun and a bag of cartridges. Then he bolted into the woods.
It’s almost certain that he is the escaped lunatic.”

Raymond, who had been listening intently, yawned.

“But they’re out after him, I suppose,” he said. “They’ll be sure to
catch him.”

Colin wondered what that yawn meant.... To any boy of twenty--to himself
anyhow--there was a spice of excitement about the news. It was
impossible not to be interested. But Raymond did not seem to be
interested.... Or did he wish it to appear that he was not interested?

Colin, with an eye on Raymond, turned to his father. Two or three more
little darts were ready for his brother, at which he would not yawn....

“Oh, father,” said he, “come and sleep in my room and we’ll take
watches. What glorious fun. You shall take the watch from midnight till,
till half-past eight in the morning, and then you’ll wake me up, and
I’ll take the watch till five in the afternoon without a wink of sleep.
Then Raymond and Vi can slumber in safety. Now I shall go upstairs and
say good-night to Vi----”

“Better not tell her about it to-night,” said Lord Yardley.

“Rather not: we shall have other things to talk about, thanks. But not a
minute before half-past eight, father. Good-night; good-night, Raymond.
Sleep well.”

Raymond, in spite of these good wishes, passed an almost sleepless
night. If he shut his eyes it was to see Colin’s mocking face floating
on the darkness of his closed lids, and to have echoing in his ears the
mockery of Colin’s jibes. As he passed Violet’s door on his way up to
bed he had heard the sound of speech and laughter from within, and his
jealousy seemed to arrest his tip-toeing steps, so that what he might
overhear should give it the bitter provender it loved. But some new-born
fear of Colin made him go on instead of lingering: Colin seemed
prospered in all he did by some hellish protection; a mysterious
instinct might warn him that there was a listener, and he would throw
open the door and with a laugh call Violet to see who was eavesdropping
on the threshold.... Then after they had laughed and pointed at him,
Colin would shut the door again, locking it for fear of--of a homicidal
maniac--and the talking would go on again till it was quenched in
kisses....

He had tossed and turned as on a gridiron, with the thought of Colin and
Violet together to feed and to keep the fire alive. He did not believe
that Colin loved her; if she had not promised to marry himself, he would
not have sought her. It was from hatred of himself that he had given her
a glance and a smile and whistled her to him, so that she threw away
like a scrap of waste-paper the contract that would have installed her
as mistress of the house she adored. Colin had idly beckoned, just to
gratify his hate, and she had flamed into love for him.

What subtle arts of contrivance and intrigue were his also! He had
wanted to feast that same hatred on the sight of his brother’s defeat
and discomfiture, and a word from him had been sufficient to make his
father revoke his edict and let him remain at Stanier. Thus Colin earned
fresh laurels in the eyes of the others for his compassionate
forbearance, and by so doing accomplished his own desire of having
Raymond there, like a moth on a pin.

As the hours went on strange red fancies crossed his brain. He imagined
himself going to his father’s room and smothering him, so that next day
he would be master of Stanier, and free to turn Colin out. Not another
hour should he stay in the place. Out he should go, and Violet with him.
Better still would it be to come behind Colin with a noose in his hand,
which he would draw tight round his neck and laugh to see his face go
black and his eyes start from his head with the strangling.... That
would satisfy him; he could forgive Colin when he lay limp and lifeless
at his feet, but till then he would never know a moment’s peace or a
tranquil hour.

All this week his fever of hatred had been mounting in his blood,
to-night the heat of it made to flower in his brain this garden of
murderous images. And all the time he was afraid of Colin, afraid of his
barbed tongue, his contemptuous hate, above all, of the luck that caused
him to prosper and be beloved wherever he went. Just at birth one stroke
of ill-luck had befallen him, but that was all....

Earlier in the evening, he remembered, an idea had flitted vaguely
through his head, which had suggested to him some lucky accident.... He
had purposely yawned when that notion presented itself, so that Colin
should not see that he took any interest in what was being talked about.

For the moment he could not recollect what it had been; then he
remembered how his father had come into the smoking-room and told them
that a homicidal lunatic had got hold of a gun and was at large,
probably in the park.... That was it; he had yawned then, for he had
pictured to himself Colin strolling through the leafy ways and suddenly
finding himself face to face with the man. There would be a report and
Colin would lie very still among the bracken till his body was found.
Ants and insects would be creeping about him.

That had been the faint outline of the picture; now in the dark it
started into colour. What if once again Colin’s luck failed him, and in
some remote glade he found himself alone with Raymond? He himself would
have a gun with him, and he would fire it point-blank at Colin’s face
and leave him there. It would be supposed that the escaped mad-man had
encountered him....

It was but a wild imagining, born of a sleepless night, but as he
thought of it, Raymond’s eyelids flickered and closed, and just before
dawn he fell asleep. When he was called a few hours later, that was the
first image that came into his mind, and by the light of day it wore a
soberer, a more solid aspect. What if it was no wild vision of the
night, but a thing that might actually happen?

       *       *       *       *       *

No fresh news when they met at breakfast was to hand about the escaped
man; indeed, in answer to an inquiry sent by Lord Yardley to the asylum,
there came the reply that, though search-parties were out after him,
nothing had as yet been seen of him. Colin was engaged to play a round
of golf on the Rye links, and the chance of falling in with him seemed
so remote that soon after breakfast he went off on his motor-bicycle,
promising, in order to soothe Violet’s apprehensions, to travel at the
rate of not less than forty miles an hour. That did not please her
either; in fact, there was no pleasing her about his expedition, whether
he went fast or slow; so he kissed her, and told her to order her
mourning. At the last moment, however, at his father’s wish, he slipped
a revolver into his pocket.

Raymond, as usual, refused to play golf, and preferred a wander in the
park with a gun as a defensive measure for himself, and as an offensive
measure against the plague of wood-pigeons. They were most numerous in
the woods that lay on the steep slope through which the road to Repstow
passed. That had been Colin’s road, too, and when Raymond set out a
quarter of an hour later, the dust raised by his motor-bicycle still
hung in the windless air.

Ten minutes walking brought him to the point where the road which
hitherto had lain across the open grass of the park descended into the
big belt of wood which stretched as far as the lodge-gates. On each side
of it the ground rose sharply, covered on the one side by firs and
birches with groundwork of heather, on the other by the oaks of what was
known as the Old Park. According to tradition they were of the plantings
of Elizabeth’s Colin, and for age and grandeur they might well be so,
for stately and venerable they rose from the short deer-nibbled turf,
well-spaced with full freedom for roots and branch alike. No other trees
were on that slope, but these great, leafy sentinels stood each with his
ring of shade round him, like well-tried veterans who have earned their
leisure and the dignified livery of repose. A low wall of grey stone,
some four feet high, mossy and creviced and feathered with small ferns,
separated this Old Park from the road.

It was among these great oaks that the pigeons congregated, and Raymond
was soon busy with them. This way and that, startled by his firing, they
flew, often wary and slipping out of the far side of a tree and
interposing its branches between him and them so that he could get no
sight of them, but at other times coming out into the open and giving
him a fair shot. Before long the whole battalion of them were in
commotion, wheeling and flying off and returning again, and in an hour’s
time he had shot some forty of them, not reckoning half a dozen more,
which, winged or otherwise wounded, trailed off on his approach,
fluttering on in front of him. Raymond was quite willing to put any such
out of their misery, if they would only stop still and be killed like
sensible birds, but on a hot morning it was too much to expect him to go
trotting after the silly things, especially when he had killed so many.
He took no pleasure in the cruelty of leaving them to die; he was simply
indifferent.

He had come almost to the end of his cartridges, and if he was to
continue his shooting, he would have to go back to the house for more
ammunition or borrow some from the keeper at the Repstow lodge. That was
nearer than the house, but before going he sat down in the shade of one
of old Colin’s oaks to cool down and have a cigarette.

For the last hour he had been completely absorbed in his sport; now with
a snap like that of a released spring his mind leaped back to that which
had occupied it as he walked here and saw the dust of his brother’s
motor-bicycle hanging in the air. He had locked up in his mind, when he
began his shooting, all connection with that, his hate, the sleepless
night with its visions that seemed so wild at the time, but which, on
his waking, had taken on so much quieter and more likely an aspect, and
now, when he unlocked his mind again, he found that they had grown like
fungi in the darkness of a congenial atmosphere. They were solid and
mature: where before there had been but a fairy-ring of imagination,
where nightly elves had danced, there were now those red, firm-fleshed,
poisoned growths, glistening and corrupt.

His subconscious mind poured out its storage: it had been busy while he
was shooting, and wonderfully acute. It reminded him now that a quarter
of a mile further on, the Old Park came to an end, and one clump of
rhododendrons stood behind the wall which ran along the road. Just here
the road took a sharp turn to the right: a man walking along it (or, for
that matter, bicycling along it) would only come into sight of any one
who might happen to be by that rhododendron bush half-a-dozen yards
before he came to it himself, and anything else he might see there (a
gun, for instance) would be at point-blank range. Such a gun-barrel
would rest conveniently on the top of the wall; any one who happened to
be holding the weapon would be concealed between the wall and the
bush....

These pictures seemed to be shewn Raymond rather than to be imagined by
him; it was as if some external agency held open the book which
contained them and turned over the leaves. It might prove to be himself
who would presently lie _perdu_ there, but he had no sense of any
personal volition or share in the matter. His hatred of Colin had
somehow taken counsel (even as doctors consult over a bad case) with the
necessity that Colin should die, and this was their advice; Raymond was
but the patient who in the apathy of sickness was going to do as they
told him, not caring much what happened, only conscious that if this
advice was successful in all its aspects, he would be restored to
complete health.

He hardly knew if he hated Colin any more; all that he was certain of
was that there existed--somewhere--this black dynamic enmity. He hardly
knew whether it was he who was about to shoot Colin, as presently on his
motor-bicycle he would come round that sharp bend by the rhododendron
bush. All that he was certain of was that Colin would presently lie dead
on the road with his face all shattered by the shot. The homicidal
maniac, of course, escaped from the asylum, must have been his murderer.

There was no use for more cartridges than the two which he now slipped
into his gun. If the fellow hidden behind the rhododendron bush could
not kill Colin with two shots, he could not kill him with twenty, and
Raymond, looking carefully round, began moving quietly down the slope to
the corner, keeping in the shadow of the leafage of the splendid trees.
His foot was noiseless on the cropped plush of the turf, and he passed
quickly over the patches of sun between the shadows of the oaks, pausing
every now and then to make sure there was no one passing along the road
or the hillside, who was within sight of him. But there was no one to be
seen; after the cessation of his shooting, the deer had come back to
their favourite grazing-ground, and were now cropping at the short,
sweet grass, or lying with twinkling ears alert in the shade. No one was
moving up there at the top of the Old Park, where a foot-path made a
short cut to the house from the Repstow Lodge, or the deer would not be
so tranquil, while his own sharp eye assured him that within the circle
of his vision there was none astir.

His remembrance of the rhododendron bush close to the angle in the road,
was astonishingly accurate. The top of the grey wall was a most
convenient rest for his gun, and a man coming round the corner from the
direction of Repstow would suddenly find himself within six yards of the
barrels. Probably he would never see them at all; there would be just a
flash of flames close to his startled eyes, perhaps even the report of
the explosion would never reach him.

That was the only imperfect touch in these schemes which had been thus
presented to Raymond; he would like Colin to know, one-half second
before he died, whose hand had pulled the trigger and put a muzzle on
his mocking mouth and a darkness over his laughing eyes, and he
determined that when the beat of Colin’s approaching motor-bicycle
sounded loud round the corner he would stand up and show himself. It
would be all too late for Colin to swerve or duck then, and he should
just see who had the last laugh. Raymond felt that he would laugh as he
fired.... Till that moment it was best to conceal himself from the road,
and he leaned against the wall, crouching a little, with the muzzle of
his gun resting on it.... It was already after one o’clock. Colin would
be here any minute now.

       *       *       *       *       *

A quarter of an hour before, Colin had arrived at the Repstow lodge with
a puncture in his hind tyre. Luck was kind to him as usual; the puncture
had occurred only a few yards down the road, and he could leave his
machine with the lodge-keeper, and send a mechanic from the garage to
repair it and bring it back to the house. For himself, he would take the
short cut through the top of the Old Park back home; that reduced the
distance by at least a half, and on this hot morning the soft-turfed
shade would be pleasant.

Then a sudden thought struck him, and he asked whether the escaped
madman had been captured; the walk home would be less exciting but
perhaps pleasanter if they had caught him. And again it appeared that
Colin’s affairs were being well looked after; the man had been found on
the other side of the park half an hour ago; cleverly taken, so the
keeper said. He must have been in the woods all night, and they came
upon him as he dozed, seizing the gun he had possessed himself of before
he woke and getting a noose round his arms.

So that was all right, and Colin, with a smile for the keeper’s wife and
a sixpenny piece for the small child who regarded him with wide,
wondering eyes, set off for the mile walk to the house. He took his
revolver out of his pocket with the intention of giving it to the
keeper, and having it brought up to the house with the bicycle; but then
thought better of it, and, emptying the cartridges out, replaced it. It
made a rather weighty bulge in his coat, but on general principles it
was wise not to leave fire-arms about.

The thought of Raymond at his pigeon-shooting occurred to him as he
walked, but no sound of firing came from the direction of the Old Park,
which now lay close in front of him, and he supposed that his brother
would have gone home by this time. What a sullen, awkward fellow he was;
how he winced under Colin’s light artillery; how impotently Raymond
hated him.... Colin could not imagine hating any one like that and not
devising something deadly. But Raymond devised nothing; he just
continued hating and doing nothing.

Colin had come to the beginning of the Old Park; the path lying along
the top of it wound in and out of the great oaks; below to the right lay
the road with the low stone wall running beside it. The road had been
out of sight hitherto, forming a wider circuit, but just below him now
there was a sharp corner and it came into view.

But what was that bright line of light on the top of the wall just at
that point? Something caught the sun, vividly gleaming. For some reason
he was imperatively curious to know what gleamed there, just as if it
intimately concerned him, and half-closing his eyes to focus it and
detach it from that baffling background of dappled light and shadow, he
saw. Simultaneously and unbidden the idea of Raymond out shooting
pigeons occurred to him. But what was he doing--if it were
Raymond--hidden behind that dark-leaved rhododendron-bush with his gun
resting on the wall and pointing at the road? That was a singular way of
shooting pigeons, very singular.

Colin’s face broke into one great smile, and he slipped behind one of
the oaks. Looking out he saw that another tree lower down the slope hid
the rhododendron bush from him, and keeping behind the broad trunk he
advanced down the hill in its direction. Twice again, in similar cover,
he approached, and, peering round the tree, he could now see Raymond
close at hand. Raymond’s back was towards him; he held his gun, with the
end of the barrels resting on the top of the wall, looking at the angle
of the road round which, but for that puncture in his bicycle, he
himself would already have come.

There was now but one big tree between him and his brother, and on
tiptoe, as noiselessly as a hunting tiger, he crept up to it, and,
drawing his revolver from his pocket, he came within ten paces of him.
Then some faint sound of his advance--a twig, perhaps, snapping beneath
his step--or some sense of another’s presence reached Raymond, and he
turned his head quickly in Colin’s direction. He found himself looking
straight down the barrel of his revolver.

“Raymond, if you stir except to do precisely what I tell you, I shall
shoot,” said Colin quietly. “If you take your eyes off me I shall
shoot.”

Colin’s finger was on the trigger, his revolver as steady as if a man of
stone held it.

“Open the breech of your gun,” he said, “and let the barrels drop....
Now hold it in one hand, with your arm stretched out.... That’s right.
Good dog!... Now lay the gun down and turn round with your back to
me.... Stop like that without moving.... Remember that I am covering
you, and I could hardly miss at this distance.”

Colin picked up the gun and took the two cartridges out and put them in
his pocket. Not till they clinked against the revolver cartridges that
lay there did he remember that all the time his pistol had been
unloaded. He stifled a laugh.

“Take off your cartridge-bag, Raymond,” he said, “and put it on the
ground.”

“There are no more in it,” said Raymond, speaking for the first time.

“You ill-conditioned swine, do as I tell you,” said Colin. “I shan’t
give you an order twice again.... Well, what you said seems to be true,
but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re to do as I tell you.
Now have you got any more cartridges in your pockets?”

“No.”

Colin thought he had better make sure of this for himself, and passed
his hand over Raymond’s coat-pockets.

“Now you stand just where you are,” he said, “because we’ve got to talk.
But first I’ll put some cartridges in my own revolver. It has been
perfectly empty all this time. Isn’t that damned funny, Raymond, dear?
There were you expecting every moment would be your last, and obeying me
like the sweet, obedient boy you are. Laugh, can’t you? It’s one of the
funniest things that ever happened.”

Colin lit a cigarette with shouts of laughter.

“Well, to business,” he said. “Turn round and let’s see your face. Do
you know a parlour-trick called thought-reading? I’m going to tell you
what you’ve been thinking about. You expected me to come round that
corner on my bike; and from behind the wall you were going to fire
point-blank at me. Not at all a bad idea. There was the homicidal
lunatic, you thought, loose in the woods, and my death would have been
put down to him.... But you would have been hanged for it all the same,
because he was taken nearly an hour ago without firing a shot. So I’ve
saved you from the gallows. Good idea of yours, but it had a flaw in
it.”

Colin came a step nearer his brother, his eyes dancing.

“Raymond, I can’t resist it,” he said. “You’ve got to stand quite still,
while I smack your filthy face just once, hard. It’ll hurt you, I’m
afraid, but you’ve just got to bear it. If you resist in any way, I
shall tell my father exactly what has happened this morning as soon as I
get in. I shall tell him at lunch before Violet and the servants. I may
settle to tell him in any case; that depends on how our talk goes off.
But if you don’t stand still like a good boy, I shall certainly tell
him. Now! Shut your eyes and see what I’ll give you.... There! It quite
stung my fingers, so I’m sure it stung your face. Sit down; no, I think
you look nicer standing. Let me think a moment.”

Colin lit another cigarette, and stared at his brother as he smoked it.

“You’ve been wise about one thing,” he said, “in not attempting to deny
the truth of my pretty thought-reading. You’re beaten, you see; you
daren’t deny it. You’re a whipped cur, who daren’t even growl. Lucky for
you that you’re such a coward.... Now, I’ve settled what to do with you.
As soon as we get in, you shall write out for me a confession. You shall
say that you intended to shoot me, and put down quite shortly and
clearly what your plan was. You shall sign, and my father and I will
sign it as witnesses. He shan’t read it; I will tell him that it is a
private friendly little matter between you and me, and we just want his
signature.

“I’m devilish good to you, you know; it’s lucky that that affair about
my revolver-cartridges amused me; that, and smacking your face. Then I
shall send your confession to my bank, to be kept unopened there, except
in case of my death, in which case it is to be sent to my father.
That’ll keep you in order, you see. You won’t dare to make any other
attempt on my life, because if it were successful, it would be known
that you had tried to kill me before, and that would be a suspicious
circumstance. How’s your face?... Answer, can’t you?”

“It’s all right,” said Raymond.

“Good Lord, I don’t want to know about your face. What do you say to my
proposal? The alternative is that I tell my father and Violet all about
it. I rather fancy--correct me if I am wrong--that he will believe me.
Shocking affair, but true. Answer.”

“I accept it,” said Raymond.

“Of course you do. Now pick up your gun. Did you have good sport with
the pigeons? Answer pleasantly.”

“I got about forty,” said Raymond.

“And you hoped to get one more at that corner, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Damned rude of you to call me a pigeon. I’ll pay you out for that.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Philip was out on the terrace when the two boys came in. Colin took
Raymond’s arm affectionately when he saw him.

“Hullo, father,” he said. “We’ve had such a ripping morning. I won my
match, and Raymond downed forty pigeons, and they’ve caught the madman.
Oh, my bicycle punctured, by the way, but that was a blessing in
disguise, for I had a jolly walk through the Old Park, and found
Raymond. We’ve had a nice talk, too, and we want you to witness
something for us after lunch.”

“What’s that?” said Philip.

“Oh, just a private little arrangement that only concerns us.... Shan’t
we show it father, Ray?”

“Oh, I think not,” said he.

Colin raised his eyebrows as he met his father’s glance. “All right,” he
said. “Just as you like.”




CHAPTER VIII


Colin was lying on the beach of the men’s bathing-place at Capri after
an hour’s swim. A great wave of heat had swept over Europe, and now,
though it was late in October, the conditions of summer still prevailed.
It might have been June still, and he here with his father, quietly
making the plans that had turned out so well. On this beach it was that
he lay, pondering his reply to Violet’s letter which told him she was
engaged to Raymond. He had thought out his reply here, that
congratulatory reply, saying how delightful her news was, and as for
feeling hurt.... That had been a thorn to Violet, which had pricked and
stung her, as she had confessed. She had confessed it to him between
dusk and dawn on their marriage-night.

He knew all about it; that casual kiss in the dusk of the yew-hedge the
night before he and his father left for Italy had begun it; his
indifference to her had made her ache, and his arrival back in England
had made the ache intolerable. To be mistress at Stanier had become
worthless to her, and to reward her sense of its worthlessness, had come
the news that she would not be that only....

Colin stirred his sun-stained body to get a fresh bed of hot sand and
pebbles for his back. He had absorbed the heat of those on which he had
been lying, but a little kneading movement of his elbow brought him on
to another baked patch. That was gloriously hot; it made him pant with
pleasure, as he anticipated one more cool rush into the sea. He purred
and thought of the lovely days that had passed, of the lovely day that
was here, of the lovely days that awaited him. Quite methodically, he
began at the beginning.

Violet and he had been married in the first week of October, on the
very day indeed that had been arranged for her marriage with Raymond.
There was a suave brutality about that; he had made Raymond, under some
slight hint of pressure, advocate it. Raymond (under that same hint) had
become marvellously agreeable; he had been almost sentimental and had
urged Violet to be married on that day. He himself would be best man, if
Colin would allow him, instead of being bridegroom. Her happiness, it
appeared, was of greater import to him than his own.

Little conversations with Colin in the smoking-room, before Colin went
up to say good-night to Violet, were responsible for this Scotch
sentimentality. Raymond had been quite like a noble character in a
sloshy play. He had understood and entered into the situation; he had
given up without bitterness; he had rejoiced at his brother’s happiness
and had been best man. The happy pair had left that afternoon for Italy.

The attitude which he had forced on Raymond gave Colin the most intense
satisfaction. He had been made to appear to be affectionate and loving,
high-minded and altruistic, and Colin knew what wormwood that must be to
him. It was tiresome enough, as he knew from his experience of the last
fortnight, to be supposed to love when you only liked, but how
infinitely more galling it must be to be supposed to love when you
hated. But he did Raymond justice; a mere hint at publicity for that
paper which lay at his bankers together with his mother’s letters and
that confirmatory line from Uncle Salvatore, produced wonderful results.
Raymond could be bridled now with a single silken thread.

Colin’s thought turned over that leaf of the past, and pored over the
present--this delightful, actual present. There was the sun baking his
chest and legs, and the hot sand and pebbles warm to his back, while the
cool, clear sea awaited him when the rapture of heat became no longer
bearable. Violet had not come down with him to-day. She had taken to the
rather more sophisticated bathing establishment at the Marina, where
more complete bathing-dresses were worn, and men did not dress and
undress in the full eye of day. Colin quite agreed with her that the
Marina was more suitable for her; this bay was really the men’s
bathing-place and though women could come here if they chose, they were
rather apt to be embarrassing and embarrassed. She would find the huts
at the Marina more satisfactory and still more satisfactory to him was
to be rid of her for a few hours.

There was a stern, pitiless insistency about love which bored him. He
could not be quite tranquil when, from moment to moment, he had to make
some kind of response. A glance or a smile served the purpose, but when
Violet was there he had, unless he betrayed himself, always to be on the
look out. This love was a foreign language to him, and he must attend,
if he were to reply intelligently. He liked her, liked her quite
immensely, but that which was a tireless instinct to her was to him a
mental effort. It was no effort, on the other hand, to be with Raymond,
for there his instinct of hatred functioned flawlessly and
automatically.

Colin turned over that page of the present, and cast his eyes over the
future. At the first glance all seemed prosperous there. His father had
aged considerably during the last few months, and just before their
marriage had had a rather alarming attack of vertigo, when, after a hot
game of tennis, he had gone down with Colin to the bathing-pool to swim
himself cool. The boy had not been the least frightened; he had brought
his father to land without difficulty, and on his own responsibility had
telephoned for his father’s doctor to come down to Stanier. The report
had been quite reassuring, but a man who had left his sixtieth birthday
behind him must not over-exert himself at tennis and then bathe. Nature,
the wise old nurse, protested.

This suggested eventualities for the future; no doubt his father would
now be more prudent and enjoy a long ripe old age. Colin quite
acquiesced; his father had been so consistently good to him that he
scarcely felt any impatience about that. But what this morning occupied
him with regard to the future was the idea, not of his father’s death,
but of Raymond’s. In this uncertain world accidents or illness might
carry off even the strongest and sulkiest, and he himself would then be
in a very odd position. Supposing (as was natural) his father died
first, Raymond (on the strong case that could be built on the evidence
of his mother’s letter to Salvatore and the erasure in the Consulate
archives), would, no doubt, be incontinently “hoofed out” of his
promised land, and Violet be in possession, with him as husband to the
owner. But if Raymond died first, Colin by his juggling would merely
have robbed himself of the birthright which would be rightfully his. It
had been a great stroke to provide at his father’s death for Raymond’s
penniless illegitimacy, and, by himself marrying Violet, to submerge his
own. Not possibly could he have provided for the eventuality of
Raymond’s pre-deceasing his father as well, but now that he had married
Violet it was worth while brooding and meditating over the other.
Something might conceivably be done, if Raymond died first, though he
could not as yet fashion the manner of it.

       *       *       *       *       *

The morning had sped by all too quickly, and by now the other bathers
had gone and the beach was empty, and Colin plunged once more into that
beloved sea. The cool, brisk welcome of it encompassed him, its vigour
seemed to penetrate his very marrow and brain with its incomparable
refreshment, and he began to think of this problem with a magical
lucidity....

Colin regretfully left the water and put his clothes into the boat in
which he had been rowed round from the Marina, meaning to dress on the
way there. Young Antonio, the son of Giacomo, Philip’s old boatman, had
brought him round here, and was now asleep in a strip of shadow at the
top of the beach, waiting till Colin was ready to return. There he lay,
with his shirt open at the neck and a carnation perched behind his ear,
lithe and relaxed like some splendid young Faun. The boy’s mouth smiled
as he slept.

Was he dreaming, thought Colin, of some amorous adventure proper to his
age and beauty? His black hair grew low on his forehead, the black
lashes swept his smooth, brown cheek; it seemed a pity to awake him, and
for a minute or two Colin studied his face. Violet before now had
remarked on his extraordinary resemblance, except in point of colouring,
to Colin, and he wondered if, through his noble Viagi blood, they were
related. He liked to think he resembled this merry Nino; he would almost
have been willing to give him his blueness of eye and golden hair, and
take in exchange that glossy black, which caught the tints of the sky
among its curls.

Then Nino stirred, stretched a lazy arm and found his hand resting on
Colin’s shoulder. At that he sprang up.

“Ah, pardon, signor,” he said. “I slept. You have not been waiting?”

Colin had picked up Italian with great ease and quickness; it came
naturally to his tongue.

“I’ve been watching you smiling as you slept, Nino,” he said. “What have
you been dreaming about?”

Nino laughed. “And if I was not dreaming of the signorino himself,” he
cried.

“What about me?” demanded Colin.

“Oh, just a pack of nonsense,” he said. “We were in the boat, and it
moved of itself without my rowing, and together we sat in the stern, and
I was telling you the stories of the island. You have heard the most of
them, I think, by now.... Are you not going to dress?”

“I’ll dress in the boat,” said Colin. “But there’s that story of Tiberio
which you wouldn’t tell me when the signora was with us.”

“Indeed a story of Tiberio is not fit for the signora. A fat, bald old
man was Tiberio; and as ugly as a German. Seven palaces he had on Capri;
there was one here, and so shameful were the things done in it that, so
the priests say, the sea rose and swallowed it. But I do not know that
the priests are right. They say that, do you think, signor, to frighten
us from the wickedness of Tiberio? And one day Tiberio saw--_scusi,
signor_....”

How attractive was the pagan gaiety of these young islanders! They
believed in sunshine and wine and amusement, and a very good creed it
was. They took all things lightly, except the scirocco. Love was a
pleasant pastime, an affair of eager eyes and a kiss and a smile at
parting, for had he not seen Nino himself in a corner of the piazza
yesterday making signals to his girl (or one of them), and then
strolling off in the warm dark? They were quite without any moral sense,
but it was ludicrous to call that wicked. Pleasure sanctified all they
did; they gave it and took it, and slept it off, and sought it again.
How different from the bleak and solemn Northerners!

Imagine, mused Colin, as this really unspeakable history of Tiberio
gaily unfolded itself, encouraging a gardener’s boy to regale you with
bawdy tales. How he would snigger over the indecency, thus making it
indecent; how heavy and dreary it would all be! But here was Nino with
his dancing eyes and his laughing mouth and his “_scusi, signor,_” and
all was well. These fellows had charm and breeding for their birthright,
and, somehow, minds which vice did not sully.

The end of the story was rapidly told, with gestures to help out the
meanings of recondite words, for they were approaching the Marina, and
Colin’s signora was waiting for him there, as Nino had already seen with
a backward glance.... An amazing moral was tacked on the conclusion of
those dreadful doings of Tiberio, for when Tiberio died, God permitted
the devil to torture him from morning to night as the anniversary of
that orgy came round.

“But that’s not likely, Nino,” said Colin, deeply interested. “If
Tiberio were so wicked, the devil would not want to torture him. He
would be the devil’s dear friend.”

Nino took both oars in one hand for a second and crossed himself.

“What do you do that for, Nino?” asked Colin.

“It is safer,” said Nino. “Who knows where the devil is?”

Colin made an admirably apposite remark: a thing that Neapolitans said,
so Mr. Cecil had told him, when they found themselves talking about the
devil, and Nino was duly appreciative.

“That is good!” said he. “That muddles him up.... Yes, signor, it is as
you say. If Tiberio were very wicked, he and the devil would be very
good friends. Do you believe in the devil, signor, in England?”

“We’re not quite sure. And in Capri, Nino?”

“Not when the sky is blue, like ... like the signor’s eyes,” said Nino.
“But when there is scirocco, we are not so certain.”

The prow of the boat hissed and was quenched against the sandy beach.
There, under the awning of the stabilimento, was Violet, rather fussed
at the leisurely progress of Colin’s boat, for in two minutes more the
funicular would start, and if they missed that there was the dusty drive
up to the town.

“Quick, darling, quick,” she called out. “We have only a couple of
minutes.”

“Oh, don’t fuss,” said he. “Run on, if you want to. Nino and I are
talking folk-lore.”

He felt in his pockets and spoke in Italian again.

“Nino, I haven’t got a single penny,” he said, “to pay you for your
boat. If you are in the town to-night, come to the villa and I will pay
you. If not, to-morrow. I shall want your boat again at ten.”

“_Sicuro!_” said the boy. “_Buon appetit._”

He stepped into the water and held out his bare arm like a rail for
Colin to lean on as he jumped on to the beach.

“Thanks,” he said. “Same to you, Nino. Villa Stanier; you know.”

Violet was waiting at the edge of the beach. The midday steamer had just
come in from Naples, and now there was no need to hurry, for the
funicular would certainly wait for the passengers who were landing in
small boats at the quay.

“Nice bathe, darling?” she said as Colin joined her.

Colin found himself mildly irritated by her always saying “darling.” She
could not speak to him without that adjunct, which might surely be taken
for granted.

“Yes, darling,” he said. “Lovely bathe, darling. And you, darling?”

There was certainly an obtuseness about Violet which had not been hers
in the old days. She seemed to perceive no impression of banter, however
good-natured, in this repetition. Instead, that slight flush, which
Colin now knew so well, spread over her face.

“Yes, darling, the water was lovely,” she said. “Like warm silk.”

“Ugh!” said Colin. “Fancy swimming about in silk. What horrible ideas
you have.”

“Don’t be so literal,” said she. “Just a silky feeling. Look at these
boat-loads of people. Aren’t they queer? That little round red one, like
a tomato, just getting out.”

Colin followed her glance; there was no doubt whom she meant, for the
description was exactly apt. But even as he grinned at the vividness of
her vegetable simile, a sense of recognition twanged at his memory. The
past, which he had thought over this morning, was sharply recalled, and
somehow, somehow, the future entered into it.

“Why, that’s Mr. Cecil,” he said, “the Consul at Naples. You must know
him, Vi.”

Mr. Cecil greeted Colin with welcome and deference. Consular business
had brought him to Capri; he had no idea that Mr. Stanier was here. Was
Lord Yardley here also?

“No, but somebody much more important,” laughed Colin. “My wife--we’re
on our honeymoon. Violet, this is Mr. Cecil, who was so kind to me when
I was here last. Mr. Cecil’s our Consul at Naples.”

It was natural that Mr. Cecil should have his lunch with them, though he
pleaded shortness of time. He was going back by the afternoon boat.

“But you clearly must have lunch somewhere,” said Colin, “and we’ll give
you a very bad one probably, but a quick one if you are in a hurry. Ah,
that’s delightful of you.”

Colin was hugely cordial, exerting the utmost of his charm. He even
curtailed his siesta in order to walk down with his visitor to the
Consular office in the town, and gratefully promised, on behalf of
Violet and himself, to spend the night at his house on their way back to
England. He wanted that; he had made up his mind to get that invitation,
for it formed part of the plan which had come to him in his final swim
that morning, before he got into Nino’s boat and heard that horrible
scandal concerning Tiberio. He wanted Violet to pass the night at the
Consulate. There might arise emergencies which would render that
convenient.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was like her to have waited for his return instead of going to her
room for the afternoon sleep, and there she was under the pergola where
they had lunched at the far end of the garden. She was sitting with her
back to the garden-door and did not see him enter, and, quick as a
lizard and as silent-footed, Colin tip-toed into the house. If she saw
him, she would discuss Mr. Cecil, she would linger in the garden, and,
as likely as not, linger in his room, and he wanted his nap. If she
chose to sit out under the pergola, it was no business of his; there was
no proof after all that she was waiting for his return. Another day he
would take a sandwich down to the bathing place, and, like Nino, have
his siesta in some strip of shade down there, where no one would disturb
him or wait for him or want to talk with him. Violet was a dear; it was
hardly possible to have too much of her, but just now and then it was
nice to have no one watching you and loving you.

A couple of hours later he strolled, still coatless, into the great cool
sitting-room; she was already there, waiting to make tea for him.

“I never heard you come in, darling,” she said. “I was waiting for your
return in the pergola, and then eventually I came in and peeped into
your room, and there you were fast asleep.”

“Funny I shouldn’t have seen you,” said Colin. “I just went down with
Mr. Cecil to the piazza, and was back in less than half-an-hour. I adore
Mr. Cecil, he enjoys himself so much, and drinks such a lot of wine. A
gay dog!”

“Oh, I thought he was a dreadful little man,” said Violet.

“You’re too refined,” said Colin. “You don’t like little red bounders.
By the way, I’ve solemnly promised him that you and I will spend the
night at his house in Naples on our way home.”

“Darling, how could you?” asked Violet.

“To please him. He thinks you’re marvellous, by the way. Don’t elope
with him, Vi. Besides it’s a good thing to be friends with a Consul. He
reserves carriages and oils the wheels of travel.”

“Colin, you’re full of surprises,” said she. “I should have thought Mr.
Cecil was the very type of man you would have found intolerable.”

Colin laughed. “You don’t allow for my Viagi blood,” he said. “The
bounding Viagi blood. Shouldn’t I love to see you and Uncle Salvatore
together! Now what shall we do? Let’s go for an enormous walk till
dinner-time.”

She came behind him and stroked the short hair at the back of his neck.

“Darling, would you mind if I didn’t come all the way?” she asked. “I’m
rather tired; I had a long swim this morning. I’ll start with you, and
make myself comfortable and wait for you to come back.”

“Don’t come at all, Vi, if you’re tired,” he said. “I can’t have you
tired. And then if you sit down and wait for me, I shall feel you’re
waiting, and hurry in consequence. Besides, I shall have to come back
the same way.”

“Then I’ll certainly come with you all the way,” said she. “It’s more
laziness with me than tiredness.”

Colin moved his head out of reach of the caressing fingers as if by
accident.

“You tickle me,” he said. “And if you’re obstinate, I shan’t go for a
walk at all, and I shall get fat like Mr. Cecil. Stop at home and be
lazy for once, Vi.”

Colin, as usual, had his own way, and managed in his inimitable manner
to convey the impression that he was very unselfish in foregoing her
companionship. He established her with a book and a long chair, and,
greatly to his own content, went off alone up the steep hillside of
Monte Solaro. It was but a parody of a path that lay through the dense
bush of aspen and arbutus that clothed the slopes, and he would have had
to keep holding the stiff elastic shoots back for Violet to pass, to
have tarried and dawdled for her less vigorous ascent, had she come with
him. But now, having only his own pace to suit, he soon emerged above
this belt of woodland that buzzed with flies in a hot, stagnant air, and
came to the open uplands that stretched to the summit.

The September rains and the thick dews of October had refreshed the
drought of the summer, and, as if spring were here already, the dried
and yellow grasses, tall and seeding, stood grounded in a new velvet of
young growth, and tawny autumn lilies reared their powdered stamens
laden with pollen. Still upwards he passed, and the air was cooler, and
a wind spiced with long travel over the sea, blew lightly but steadily
from the north-west. Presently he had reached the top; all the island
lay at his feet, and the peaks of the nearer mainland were below him,
too, floating, promontory after promontory, on the molten rim of the
sea. Far away to the west, like the shadow of a cloud, he could just
descry the coast of Corsica; all the world and the glory of the sea lay
at his feet, and how he lusted for it! What worship and fealty was he
not ready to give for the possession and enjoyment of it?

There was no crime, thought Colin, that he would not commit if by that
the flame of life burned brighter; he would do a child to death or rob a
sacristy of its holy vessels, or emulate the deeds of Tiberius to feed
that flame ... and he laughed to himself thinking of the amazing history
told by Nino with the black eyes and laughing mouth. Surely Tiberius
must have made an alliance and a love-match with evil itself, such gusto
did he put into his misdeeds. In this connection the thought of the
family legend occurred to him. Dead as the story was, belonging to the
mists of mediævalism, you could not be a Stanier without some feeling of
proprietorship in it.

Naturally, it was up to anybody to make a bargain for his soul with the
devil if he believed in the existence of such things as devils or souls,
and certainly for generations, when sons of his house came of age, they
had either abjured their original benefactor or made alliance with him.
Of course, they had really made their choice already, but it was quaint
and picturesque to ratify it like that.... But for generations now that
pleasant piece of ritual had dropped into misuse: it would be rather
jolly, mused Colin, when he came of age next March, to renew it.

The edges of his thoughts lost their sharpness, even as the far-off
capes and headlands below melted into the blue field of sea and sky, and
as he lay in the little sheltered hollow which he had found at the very
summit of the peak, they merged into a blurred panorama of sensation.
His life hitherto, with its schemings and acquirings, became of one
plane with the future and all that he meant the future to bring him; he
saw it as a whole, and found it exquisitely good. Soon now he must
return to the love that awaited him in the villa, and before many days
now he must go back to England; a night at the Consulate first with
Violet, and then just a waiting on events till his father’s death or
Raymond’s.... His eyelids dropped, the wind rustled drowsily in his
ears....

Colin sat up with a start; he had not been conscious of having gone to
sleep, but now, wide-awake again, it certainly seemed as if his brain
recorded other impressions than those of this empty eminence. Had there
been some one standing by him, or was it only the black shadow of that
solitary pine which his drowsiness had construed into the figure of a
man? And had there been talking going on, or was it only the whisper of
the wind in the dried grasses which sounded in his ears? In any case, it
was time to go, for the sun had declined westwards, and, losing the
flames and rays of its heat, was already become but a glowing molten
ball close above the sea. How strangely the various states of
consciousness melted into each other, though the sense of identity
persisted. Whatever happened that remained....

       *       *       *       *       *

At the corner of the garden, perched on the wall which ran alongside the
steep footpath up from the town, was a little paved platform, where they
often sat after dinner. There had been a letter for Colin from his
father which had arrived during his walk, and now, holding it close to
his eyes to catch the last of the swiftly-fading light, he communicated
pieces of its contents to Violet.

“Raymond’s gone back to Cambridge,” he said. “Father seems reconciled to
his absence. That’s funny now; there’s my elder brother an undergraduate
and me a married man and not of age yet. It was touch and go whether it
wasn’t the other way about, Vi.”

“Oh, don’t, Colin!” said she. “I can’t bear to think of it.”

“But you did think of it. Wasn’t that a nice surprise for you when I
told you that to marry me didn’t mean giving up Stanier? That made all
the difference.”

She came close to him. “Colin, don’t be such a brute,” she said.
“There’s just one thing you mustn’t jest about and that’s my love for
you. I wish almost I wasn’t going to get Stanier in order to show you.
Don’t jest about it.”

“I won’t then. Serious matter! But don’t you jest about getting Stanier.
Vi, if you would move your head an inch I should get more light.”

“What else does he say?” she asked.

Colin ran his eyes down the page. “Lots of affection,” he said. “He
wants us back. Uncle Ronald’s down at Stanier, and Aunt Hester. Then
some more affection. Oh, he has had another little attack of giddiness,
nothing to worry about. So we won’t worry. And Aunt Hester’s going off a
bit, apparently, getting to repeat herself, father says. And then some
more affection.”

Colin lit a match for his cigarette, disclosing a merry face that swam
before Violet’s eyes after the darkness had closed on it again.

“That’s so like old people,” he said. “Aunt Hester wrote to me the other
day saying she was quite shocked to see how slowly my father walked.
She’s quite fond of him, but somehow it gives old people a little secret
satisfaction to look for signs of breaking up in each other.”

“Colin, you’ve got a cruel eye sometimes,” said Violet.

“Not in the least; only a clear one. And then there’s father saying that
Aunt Hester is beginning to repeat herself, and in the same dip of the
pen he repeats himself for the third time, sending us his love.”

Violet gave a quick little sigh. “At the risk of repeating myself, you
really are cruel,” she said. “When you love, you have to say it again
and again. You might as well say that if you’re hungry you mustn’t ask
for something to eat, because you ate something yesterday.... It’s a
permanent need of life. I hope you don’t think I’m breaking up because I
have told you more than once that I rather like you.”

“Poor Vi! Sadly changed!” said Colin, teasing her.

“I have changed,” she said, “but not sadly. We’re both changed, you
know, Colin. A year ago we no more thought of falling in love with each
other than of killing each other. But I don’t call the change sad.”

Colin felt extremely amiable this evening, pleasantly fatigued by his
walk, and pleasantly exhilarated by his dinner, but he had to stir up
his brains to find a suitable reply. There was the unfair part of it;
Violet talked on this topic without effort; indeed, it was an effort for
her not to, whereas he had to think....

“But you call it serious,” he said. “I mustn’t laugh about it, and I
mustn’t weep. What am I to do?”

“Nothing, darling. I want you just to be.”

He determined not to let his amiability be ruffled.

“I certainly intend to ‘be’ as long as ever I can,” he said. “I love
being. It’s wonderfully agreeable to be. And I would much sooner be here
than at Cambridge with Raymond.”

“Ah, poor Raymond!” said Violet.

That exasperated Colin; to pity or to like Raymond appeared to him a sin
against hate.

“My dear, how can you talk such nonsense?” he said. “That’s pure
sentimentality, Vi, born of the dark and the stars. You don’t really
pity Raymond any more than I do, and I’m sure I don’t. I hate him; I
always have, and I don’t pretend otherwise. Why, just now you were
telling me not to mention him, and two minutes afterwards you are
saying, ‘Poor Raymond.’”

“You were reminding me of what might have happened,” she said. “It was
that I could not bear to think of. But I can be sorry for Raymond. After
all, he took it very well when Uncle Philip told him what we were going
to do. I believe he wanted me to be happy in spite of himself.”

This was too much for Colin; the temptation to stop Violet indulging in
any further sympathy with Raymond was irresistible. She should know
about Raymond, and hate him as he himself did. He had promised Raymond
not to tell his father of a certain morning in the Old Park, but he had
never promised not to tell Violet. Why he had not already done so he
hardly knew; perhaps he was keeping it for some specially suitable
occasion, such as the present moment.

“He wanted you to be happy, did he?” he exclaimed. “Do you really think
that? If so, you won’t think it much longer. Now, do you remember the
morning when there was an escaped lunatic in the park?”

“Yes,” said she.

“Raymond went out shooting pigeons, and I played golf. My bicycle
punctured, and I walked home through the Old Park. There I found Raymond
crouching behind the wall meaning to shoot me as I came round that sharp
corner of the road. I came close up behind him while he watched for me
by the rhododendrons, and, oh Lord! we had a scene! Absolutely
scrumptious! There was I covering him with my revolver, which, all the
time, hadn’t got a cartridge in it, and I made him confess what he was
up to....”

“Stop, Colin; it’s not true!” cried she.

“It is true. He confessed it, and wrote it all down, and father and I
witnessed it; and he signed it, and it’s at my bank now. Perhaps he
thought you would be happier with him than me, and so from unselfish
notions he had better fire a barrel of Number Five full in my face. All
for your sake, Violet! My word, what unutterable bunkum!”

His hate had submerged him now; that final bitter ejaculation showed it
clearly enough, and it pierced Violet like some metallic stab. He had no
vestige of consideration for her, no faintest appreciation of the horror
of his stinging narrative, which pealed out with some hellish sort of
gaiety. She could not speak; she could only crouch and shudder.

Colin got up, scintillating with satisfaction. “I promised him not to
tell father,” he said, “which was an act of great clemency. Perhaps it
will be too great some day and I shall. And I didn’t distinctly mean to
tell you, but you really forced me to when your heart began bleeding
for that swine, and saying he wanted to make you happy. Come, Vi, buck
up! Raymond didn’t get me. It was clever of him, by the way, to see his
opportunity when the looney was loose. I rather respected that. Let’s go
indoors and have our piquet.”

She got up in silence, just pressed his arm, and went up the gravelled
path towards the house. Colin was about to follow when, looking over the
garden-wall, he saw Nino’s figure coming up the path, and remembered he
had told him that, if he were in the town, he might come up to the
villa, and receive the liras he was owed for his boat this morning.

Instantly the picture of sitting with Nino out here in the dusk, with a
bottle of wine between them, presented itself. Gay and garrulous would
Nino be, that bright-eyed, laughing Faun, more Faun-like than ever at
night, with Tiberian or more modern tales and wonderful gesticulations.
That would be a welcome relaxation after this tragic, irritating talk
with Violet; he was much more attuned to Nino’s philosophy. Indoors
there would be a game of piquet with those foolish pasteboard
counterfeits of kings and queens and knaves, and five liras as the
result of all that dealing and meditation and exchange of cards. That
knave Nino would be far more amusing.... And even piquet was not the
worst of the tedium he would find indoors. There was Violet, clearly
very much upset by his tale; she would be full of yearnings and
squeezings and emotional spasms. To-morrow she would be more herself
again, and would bring a lighter touch to life than she would be
disposed to give it to-night. He really could not spend the evening with
Violet if it could possibly be avoided.

He called in a low voice to Nino:

“Signor!” said Nino, with gay, upturned face.

“Wait ten minutes, Nino,” he whispered. “If I don’t come out again, you
must go. I shall want your boat to-morrow morning. But wait ten
minutes, and then, perhaps, I shall be able to give you a glass of wine
and hear more stories, if you have half an hour to spare.”

“_Si_, signor,” whispered Nino, pleased at this mystification and
intrigue.

Colin followed quickly after Violet. She was in the big studio, where a
cardtable was laid, walking up and down still horrified and agitated.
She placed her hands on Colin’s shoulders and dropped her head there. It
required all his self-control not to jerk himself free.

“Oh, Colin!” she said. “The horror of it. How can I ever speak to
Raymond again? I wish you hadn’t told me.”

There was blame in this, but he waived his resentment at that for the
present.

“I wish I hadn’t indeed, darling,” he said, “if it’s disturbed you so
much, and I’m afraid it has. Go to bed now; you look awfully tired; we
won’t have our piquet to-night. We shall neither of us attend.”

“It’s all so terrible,” she said. “Supposing your bicycle hadn’t
punctured?”

He laughed. “I remember I was annoyed when it happened, but it was a
blessing after all,” he said. “The point that concerns us is that it
did, and another point is that you’re not to sit up any longer.”

“But you’d like a game,” she said. “What will you do with yourself?”

Colin knew his power very well. He turned, drawing one of her hands that
rested on his shoulder round his neck.

“The first thing I shall do with myself is to take you to your room,” he
said, “and say good-night to you. The second is to sit up for another
half-hour and think about you. The third to look in on tiptoe and see
that you’re asleep. The fourth, which I hope won’t happen, is to be very
cross with you if you’re not. Now, I’m not going to argue, darling.”

The ten minutes were passing, and without another word he marched her
to her room, she leaning on him with that soft, feminine, clinging
touch, and closed her Venetian shutters for her, leaving the windows
wide.

“Now promise me you’ll go to sleep,” he said. “Put it all out of your
mind. Raymond’s at Cambridge. You’ve got not to think about him; I
don’t. Good-night, Vi!”

At the door he paused a moment, wondering if she had heard him speak to
Nino over the wall. In case she had, it were better to conceal nothing.

“I’m just going downstairs to give Nino what I owe him for his boat this
morning,” he said. “I told him to come up for it. I shall just peep in
on you, Vi, when I go to bed. If you aren’t asleep, I shall be vexed.
Good-night, darling!”

Colin went downstairs again and opened the garden door into the road.
There was Nino sitting on the step outside. He beckoned him in and shut
the door behind him.

“Come and have a glass of wine, Nino,” he said. “Come quietly, the
signora has gone to bed.”

He led the way into the dining-room, and brought out a bottle of wine.

“There, sit down,” he said softly. “Cigarettes? Wine? Now for another of
your histories only fit for boys to hear, not women. So Tiberius had
supper with a gilded girl to wait on him, and a gilded boy to give him
wine. And what then?”

The atrocious tale shocked nobody; this bright-eyed Nino was just a Faun
with the candour of the woodland and the southern night for conscience.
In face and limb and speech he was human, but not of the humanity which
wrestles with evil and distrusts joy. And just as Colin knew himself to
be, except in his northern colouring, another Nino in bodily form, so,
in a resemblance more remarkable yet, he recognised his spiritual
kinship with this incandescent young pagan. Violet, he thought, had once
been like that, but this love had come which in some way had altered
her, giving her a mysterious fatiguing depth, a dim, tiresome profundity
into which she seemed to want to drag him too. All her charm, her
beauty, were hers still, but they had got tinged and stained with this
tedious gravity. She had lost the adorable soullessness, which knew no
instinct beyond its own desire, and on which no frost of chill morality
had ever fallen....

Colin had been hospitable towards Nino’s glass; the boy was becoming
Faun and Bacchant in one; he ought to have had a wreath of vine-leaves
in his hair. It amused Colin to see how gracefully intoxication gained
on him; there would be no sort of _vin triste_ about Nino, only a
livelier gesticulation to help out the difficulties of pronunciation.

“And then the melancholy seized Tiberius,” said Nino with a great
hiccup, “for all that he had done, and it must be a foolish fellow,
signor, who is melancholy for what he has done. I would be more likely
to get the melancholy when I was old for the things I might have done
and had not. And the signor is like me, I think. Ah, thank you, no more
wine. I am already half tipsy. But it is very good wine.”

“Talk yourself sober, then, Nino,” said Colin, filling his glass.

“What, then, shall I tell you? All Capri is in love with the signora and
you, some with one and some with the other. It was thought at first that
you must be brother and sister, so like you are, and both golden. You
were too young, they thought, to be married; it was playtime still with
you.”

“Are you going to marry, Nino?” asked Colin.

“There is time yet. Presently perhaps. I do not reap in spring.”

There spoke the Faun, the woodland, the drinker of sweet beverages, who
drank with filled cup till the drink was done, and wiped his mouth and
smiled and was off again. By a luxury in contrast, Colin envisaged
Violet lying cool and white in the room above, sleeping, perhaps,
already in answer to the suggestive influence of his wish, while he
below breathed so much more freely in this atmosphere of Fauns, where
nothing was wicked and nothing was holy, and love was not an affair of
swimming eyes and solemn mouth. Love was a laugh.... Nino, the handsome
boy, no longer existed for him in any personal manner. Nino was just
part of the environment, a product and piece of the joyous paganism with
which the night was thick. The pale-blue flower of the plumbago that
clothed the southern wall of the house nodded in the open window-frame;
the stir of the wind whispered; the star-light, with a moon lately
risen, all strove to be realised, and, Nino seemed some kind of
bilingual interpreter of them, no more than that, who, being boy, spoke
with human voice, and, being Faun, spoke the language of Nature, cruel
and kindly Nature, who loved joy and was utterly indifferent to sorrow.
She went on her course with largesse for lovers and bankruptcy for the
bilious and the puritan. She turned her face away from pain, and, with a
thumb reversed, condemned it. She had no use for suffering or for the
ugly. The bright-eyed and the joyful were her ministers, on whatever
errand they came. Thought and tenderness and any aspiration after the
spiritual were her foes, for in such ascetic fashion of living there was
sorrow, there was fatigue and striving.

Colin was at home here. Like a fish put back into water, after a panting
excursion into a rarefied air, his gills expanded again, and drank in
the tide.

“And have you chosen your girl yet, Nino?” he asked.

“_Dio!_ No. I am but twenty. Presently I will look about and find who is
fat and has a good dowry. There is Seraphina Costi; she has an elder
brother, but the inheritance will be hers. He passes for the son of
Costi, but we all know he is no son of Costi. It was like this, Signor
Colin....”

“_Si_, Signor Nino,” said Colin.

“_Scusi!_ But to me you are Signor Colin. No, with loving thanks, no
more wine. My father says it is a waste to drink good wine when one is
drunk. My father was boatman to your father before you and I were born.
That is strange to think on; how the old oaks flourish and bear leaf
still. Two stepmothers already have I had, and there may be a third yet.
Have you stepmothers, signor? I would put all old women out of the way,
and all old men. The world is for the young. Sometimes I think to
myself, would it not be very easy to put my hands round my father’s
neck, and squeeze and squeeze again, and wait till he was still, and
then leave him thus and go to bed. They would find him there in the
morning; perhaps I should be the first to find him, and it would be said
that he had died in his chair, all cool and comfortable.”

Colin was conscious of some rapturous surprise at himself in his
appreciation of the evening as it was, compared with the evening as it
might have been. Normally, he would have played a couple of games of
piquet with Violet, and thereafter have drowsily rejoined her. There
would have been whispers of love and then sleep, all that was already
routine to him. Instead, he, through the medium of this wonderful Faun,
was finding himself, and that was so much better than finding Violet.
Nino, with those swift gesticulations, was shewing him not Nino, but
himself. But by now the boy was getting extremely drunk--the vision was
clouding over. There was time for just another question or two.

“But aren’t you afraid of Satana?” asked Colin, “if you kill your
father?”

“Why should I be afraid? Satana is a good friend to me and I to him. Why
should we fall out, he and I?”

Those full eyelids drooped, and as, on this morning, the lashes swept
the brown cheek.

“Nino, you must go to bed,” said Colin.

“_Si_, signor! But I doubt if I could carry myself down to the Marina
to-night. I have the legs of the old woman, as I shall know when I come
to stand up. May I sleep myself sober in your garden beside the cistern?
It is the signor’s fault--_scusi_--that I am thus; my fault for taking,
but his for giving.”

Colin rapidly pondered this.... Should Violet be wakeful and open her
Venetian blinds, she would surely see him there. He pointed to the sofa
against the wall.

“Lie down there, Nino,” he said, “and I will bring you a rug. You will
be more comfortable than on the gravel. You must be off before dawn.
Just wait a minute.”

Colin kicked off his shoes, so as not to disturb Violet, ran upstairs
and peeped into her room. There was silence and stillness there, and
going into his dressing-room next door, he picked up a folded rug off
his bed, and went downstairs with it. Nino was bowed over the table,
helpless and inert, and Colin choked down a spasm of laughter within
him.

“Nino, wake up for one minute,” he said. “Put your arm round my neck and
let me lay you down. Oh, do as I tell you, Nino!”

Nino leaned his whole weight on Colin’s encircled neck, and was laid
down on the sofa. Colin loosed the smart tie with which he had adorned
himself for this visit to the villa, and unbuckled his leather belt, and
taking out a ten lira note from his purse, he thrust it into Nino’s
breast-pocket.

“I’ve put ten liras in your pocket, Nino; don’t forget.”

“But that is too much, signor,” murmured Nino with a guarding hand on
his pocket.

“Not for such an agreeable evening. Good-night; I shall want you and
your boat again to-morrow morning.”

“_Sicuro!_ _Felice notte_, signor.”

Colin went up to bed with no desire for sleep, for his blood tingled and
bubbled in his veins. He wished now, amusing though it had been, that he
had not made Nino tipsy so soon, for he longed to continue holding up
the mirror to himself. In that reflecting surface he could see much that
he had only suspected in himself, and this Nino unwaveringly confirmed.
Never, till Nino had so gaily asserted that he did not fear the devil,
for the devil was his very good friend, had Colin so definitely realised
that, whatever the truth about his Elizabethan ancestor might be, he had
accepted the legend as his own experience.

Twice before had some inkling of this come into his mind, once when
lying here and listening to his father’s footfall on the terrace below
he had realised that hate was as infinite as love, and once again this
afternoon, when betwixt sleeping and waking on the top of Monte Solaro,
he had received the impression of taking part in some dream-like
colloquy. But on both these occasions he had but dealt in abstractions
and imaginings, to-night Nino had shown him himself in the concrete. Ah,
how good it was to be so well looked after, to have this superb youthful
vitality, this rage for enjoyment; above all, never to be worried and
perplexed by any conflict of motives; never to feel the faintest
striving towards a catalogue of tedious aspirations. To take and never
to give, to warm your hands at the glowing fires of hate and stoke those
fires with the dry rubbish called love.... It was worth any price to
secure immunity from these aches and pains of consciousness.

       *       *       *       *       *

Colin announced to Violet his intention of taking his lunch down to the
bathing-place next morning, and having his siesta there, and he saw with
impatient amusement that she instantly put out of sight the fact that
she would spend a solitary day and thought only of him.

“That will be lovely for you,” she said. “You’ll get a long enough bathe
for once, and not have to break it off to get back to lunch.”

“And what will you do?” he asked.

“Think of you enjoying yourself,” said she.

Colin marvelled in silence. That was a good instance of the change in
Violet; in the old days she would at the most have acquiesced, if
argument were useless. Now the only argument that seemed to have any
weight with her was his enjoyment. Anyhow they were at one about that.

Colin spent a most satisfactory day. There was Nino waiting for him at
the Marina rather heavy-eyed, but looking precisely as a Bacchant should
after a characteristic night.

“You were wonderfully drunk last night, Nino,” said Colin, as they
pushed off over the waveless bay.

Nino grinned. “_Molto, molto!_” he said cheerfully. “But I slept well,
and I shall bathe, and then it will be as if I had drunk no more than a
glass of water.”

“And will you confess that to the priest?” asked Colin.

“It may have gone from my mind,” said Nino. “God only remembers
everything. And indeed I do not know much about last night, but that I
enjoyed myself.”

“That’s all that is worth remembering about anything,” remarked Colin.

A long bathe followed, and a bask on the beach and again a bathe. Then
came lunch, lying in a strip of shadow and stories from Nino, and sleep,
and it was not till late in the afternoon that Colin found himself
reluctantly loitering back to the villa where Violet awaited him. He
beguiled himself with wondering what he would do if she were not there;
if, as in some fairy-tale, she had disappeared leaving no trace behind.
But hardly had he come within sight of the white garden wall when he saw
her out on the balcony of his room. She waved at him, as if she had gone
there to catch the first sight of him, and then disappeared. Next moment
she was at the garden-gate, walking down to meet him. Was there news,
perhaps from England. Raymond? His father?

“What is it?” he asked, as he came within speaking distance. “Nothing
wrong?” (“Nothing right?” would have expressed his thought more
accurately.)

“Nothing,” said she, “I only came to meet you. Nice day?”

“Delicious. Long bathe, good lunch, long sleep. Stories from Nino.”

Colin hesitated a moment. He was rather curious to see what Violet would
think of last night.

“Nino’s an amusing youth,” he said. “He came up here as I told you, for
the money I owed him, and so I gave him a glass of wine, two in fact. He
told me the most horrible tales about Tiberius and others, and then got
frightfully drunk. He simply couldn’t walk, and slept on the sofa in the
dining-room.”

“Oh, Colin, how disgusting!” said she. “I hope you’ve said you don’t
want his boat any more.”

“I’ve said nothing of the kind. I want it every day.”

Violet had nothing to say to this, and Colin felt his irritation at her
rising.

“Well, what is it?” he said. “Why shouldn’t Nino get drunk?”

“But you shouldn’t have let him, Colin,” said she. “It’s coarse.”

“But I come of a low family,” said he. “Viagi one side and Stanier on
the other. How many generations of Staniers have got drunk most nights
of their lives?”

Violet stopped at the gate. “What would you think of me, Colin, if I
took that little girl who helps in the kitchen and made her drunk?” she
asked.

“I should think you were a very odd young woman,” said Colin. “But I
should be all for your doing what you wanted to.”

“Whatever it is?”

“Don’t you think so? Most people don’t want to do anything at all; it’s
certainly better to do anything than nothing. You may make Maria drunk
as often as you please provided you assure me that you really like it.”

“I infer that you liked making Nino drunk.”

Colin clapped his hands. “Bravo!” he said. “You’ve guessed right. I
wanted to find out when Nino was most himself, tipsy or sober, and now I
know that it is sober. I shan’t make him drunk again. I longed to see
pure Faunishness, but Nino sober is Faunier than Nino drunk.”

“Faunishness?” asked she.

“Yes, joyful, immoral, wicked, lovely nature. Without a rag to cover,
not its shame, but its glory. Nino is naked sober. He was too heavenly
last night, before--er--the coarseness. He thought of killing his father
because he keeps giving him stepmothers, and is generally rather in the
way. And when I asked him if he weren’t afraid of the devil, he said:
‘Why should I be? The devil is a very good friend to me.’ Wasn’t that
queer? Just as if he were a Stanier. I felt as if Nino were my brother;
though, of course, he could never supplant Raymond in my heart. But then
Raymond’s my twin: that is why we are so wrapped up in each other.”

Violet felt as if some light-winged creature was settling on her now
here, now there, and stinging her. Just so did Colin make her wince.

“And as for the wickedness--or coarseness, was it not?--of making any
one drunk,” he added, “I don’t agree with you. If people are most really
themselves when they are rather tipsy, they should be rather tipsy as
often as possible. When is Uncle Ronald at his best? Why when his dear
nephew has been sitting by him after dinner, and filling up his glass
for him. Let’s have tea.... Oh, dear, I can’t do right. I did wrong to
tell you about Raymond yesterday, and I did wrong to tell you about Nino
to-day. I shall lead a double life, darling, and tell you nothing.”

Dimly, as he spoke, Violet was aware of some reverberation of dismay
that his words and his manner stirred in her. Was Colin really like
that? Were those light words just gibes and jokes--not very pleasant
ones--or were they authentic glimpses of himself? It seemed that her
very faith was at stake; at all costs she must refuse to acknowledge so
unthinkable a possibility.... That could not be Colin; he was just
teasing her. She must reply with the same outrageousness.

“Darling, lead more than a double life,” she said. “Such lots of people
do that. Lead three or four. I’ll do the same. We’ll have as many lives
as a cat between us.... Now tell me some of Nino’s stories, or I shall
be afraid that they weren’t what mother might call quite nice.”

“I don’t think for a moment she would call them quite nice,” said he.

       *       *       *       *       *

The month of Indian summer, with warm days and windless nights, passed
by in golden procession, but now with the deepening of autumn the
_ponente_ from the west, veering sometimes to a chillier quarter sucked
the basking out of the bathing, and the evenings grew long with the
passage into November. The sunshine lost its force, rain was scribbled
across it, the grey sea-clouds expunged it, the wind roared in it. It
was like passing out of daylight into some dank and dripping tunnel,
where windows are closed and voices silent, and the magic of the day is
quenched. More tunnel-like even was a certain darkness that fell between
the two yet on their honeymoon, and in that darkness they grew apart
like strangers; they were just passengers who chanced to be together in
the same compartment.

To Violet that darkness consisted of her own ignorance, or so she felt
it, of what Colin really was, and in proportion as she began to guess at
him, it grew of more nightmare-like impenetrability. He had his moods of
entrancing charm, of eager affection, but now these seemed more like
some will-o’-the-wisp dancing above a marsh, than a flame that while it
consumed, yet fed her and warmed her. His light was not meant for her,
it only happened to fall on her; she was in the circle of its
brightness.

She could not avoid pursuing the thought and seeing where it led her.
She could see no change in him, she perceived that he had always been
like this, and that it was her own light, so to speak, the illumination
of her love which had revealed him to her.

She began to question who or what it was that shed that charm and evoked
that enchantment, and shuddered at her own conjecture. Hints as to that
came from other quarters: there was his complete indifference as to his
father’s health; true, Lord Yardley had told him not to worry, for there
was no cause for that, but how could the son of so devoted a father be
so immune to any sort of anxiety? Not less significant was his attitude
towards Raymond, that, namely, of contemptuous hate. He despised Raymond
(that was clear) for his failure to kill him, he hated him, not for
having made his attempt so much as for being Raymond.

And there was a puzzle for Violet. Raymond, from what Colin had told
her, could now never stand in his way; and at Lord Yardley’s death he
would simply cease to exist as an obstacle to all that Colin desired.
But Colin still hated; it was just the fact of Raymond, not the fact of
Raymond having planned to kill him. And there, indeed, was a true flame
burning. Colin’s feeling about Raymond had an authentic heat of its own.
Hate, in fact, was real to him in a way that love was not.

There was yet one more puzzle. Colin was determined to spend the night
at the house of the British Consul in Naples. Not once or twice only,
but constantly, he alluded to this. If he wanted it, Violet knew that he
would get it, and for herself it made no great matter. She considered
Mr. Cecil a “little red bounder,” as Colin had phrased it, and could not
understand his insistence on the point. He got impatient now when, he
having alluded to their night in Naples, she asked why he wanted it, and
his answer, the same as ever, that it would please Mr. Cecil, who was a
useful little red bounder, carried no conviction. There was something
behind and she could not conceive what it was.

The day of their departure was still uncertain, when a second morning of
driving rain caused Colin to come down to breakfast with his mind made
up.

“It’s quite intolerable,” he said. “Capri without the heat and sun is
like a pantomime without the fairies. What a cursed place; it only
exists in the summer. Let’s go to-day, Vi. We’ll catch the midday
boat.”

“But it goes in two hours,” said she.

“The sooner the better.”

“But, darling....” she said.

“Oh, Lord, throw your things into your boxes, and sit on them, darling!”
said Colin. “If they’re spoiled you shall have new ones. But I can’t
endure this island any more. We ought to have left before the weather
broke, instead of stopping on.”

“But I really don’t think I can be ready,” she said. “Besides, you
wanted to stay the night with Mr. Cecil. You can’t pounce on him.”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve just sent Giuseppe down to the telephone
office to say that we shall arrive to-night,” said Colin.

Violet felt a justifiable rebellion at this; she choked it down with a
not very convincing lightness.

“But, darling, you’re being too autocratic,” she said. “How would it be
if you went and I caught you up to-morrow? Then you could have your
adorable Mr. Cecil all to yourself.”

Colin turned on her with a blaze of white fury in his eyes. Of that she
caught one glimpse, authentic and terrifying. Then, as if by some
magical and instantaneous solvent, it melted before he spoke into his
most charming mood.

“I know I oughtn’t to have telephoned, darling, until I had consulted
you,” he said. “But it’s your fault; you’ve spoiled me. You’ve made me
think that if I want to do a thing very much, you’ll agree to it. I
apologise. It was stupid of me. Now if you really don’t want to come,
just say so, and I’ll run down to the town and reverse my first message
if it has gone. It shall be exactly as you like.”

Violet had to take one moment to steady herself. That glimpse of Colin,
the most complete she had had yet of something that lay below, had
gripped her very soul with terror. That stabbed at her and passed, and
from whence it had come she knew not, nor whither it had gone. Only
Colin remained.

“My dear, of course I’ll come,” she said.

“Ah, that’s delicious of you,” said he.

She went upstairs to tell her maid to pack everything at once, as they
were off this morning. She found her knees trembling with the effect of
that moment of abject terror, but already, in its vanishing, it had
taken away with it any impression that could be analysed. Just that
stroke, stunning as a blow, and then Colin again.




CHAPTER IX


For many years now with Philip Yardley a widower and his mother old,
Stanier had withdrawn itself from the splendour of its traditional
hospitalities, but now with the installation of Violet and Colin there,
on their return from Italy, it blossomed out again into lavish and
magnificent flower. Throughout November a succession of parties
assembled there for the pheasant shooting, and in the early frosts of
that December the wild fowl, snipe and duck and teal in the marshes, and
the unprecedented abundance of woodcock in the park, gave an added
lustre to the battues. In the evening, after an hour’s concert, or some
theatrical entertainment for which the artists had come from London or
Paris, the band reassembled in the long gallery, and dancing kept the
windows bright almost till the rising of the late dawn.

There were many foreign royalties in England that year, and none left
without a visit to Stanier, accompanied by cousins of the English house.
Stanier, in fact, opened its doors, as in the days before the stroke
fell on Philip’s father, and fairly outshone its own records for
magnificence. Colossal in extravagance, there was yet nothing insensate
in its splendour; it shone, not for purposes of dazzling, but only as
reasserting its inherent and historical gorgeousness.

Violet seemed born to the position which she now occupied. While Colin’s
father lived, it was his pleasure that she should be hostess here, and
she picked up the reins, and drove the great gold coach along, as if she
had been born and trained all her life for that superb rôle. She and
Colin, at Philip’s wish, occupied the wing which was only tenanted by
the heir and his wife, and though at his death, so he supposed, they
would not step from porch to possession, he loved to give them this
vicarious regency.

Out of the silver safe there had come for her the toilet set by Paul
Lamerie, boxes and brushes, candle-stick and spirit lamp, and, above
all, the great square mirror mounted on a high base. Amarini of
chiselled metal supported it on each side; there was no such piece known
in museum or royal closet. A double cable-band encircled the base, and
the man who was in charge of the plate showed Colin how, by pressing a
stud in the cable just above the maker’s mark, the side of the base
sprang open disclosing a secret drawer. For some reason not even known
to himself, Colin had not passed on that curious contrivance to Violet.

Then Philip had brought out for her, as Colin’s wife, those incredible
jewels, which his mother, tenant for life, had long suffered to repose
in their chests, and one night she gleamed with the Stanier pearls,
another she smouldered among the burning pools of the rubies, another
she flashed with the living fire of those cascades of diamonds, and more
than once she wore the sapphire to which so strange a story was
attached. Some said that it had once belonged to the regalia, and that
Elizabeth had no more right to give it to her favourite who founded the
splendour of to-day, than she had to bequeath to him the sceptre of her
realm, but though twice an attempt had been made on the part of the
Crown to recover it, once at Elizabeth’s death, and once with the coming
of the German Dynasty, the Crown had not proved successful on either of
these inauspicious occasions, and had to content itself with what it
had.

This great stone was of 412 carats in weight, soft cornflower blue in
colour, and matchless in aqueous purity. How it had got among the Crown
jewels none knew, but its possession was even then considered a presage
and a fulfilment of prosperity, for, beyond doubt, Elizabeth had worn it
on her withered breast every day while her fleet was sailing to
encounter the Armada. By tradition the wearer was decked with no other
jewels when it blazed forth, and indeed its blue flame would have
withered any lesser decoration. It figured in the Holbein portrait of
its original possessor in the Stanier line, as a brooch to Colin’s
doublet, and there once more, impersonating his ancestor, Colin wore it
at the fancy dress ball which concluded the last of these December
parties. This took place the night before Raymond came back from
Cambridge.

Strange undercurrents, swirling and eddying, moved so far below the
surface of the splendour that no faintest disturbance reached it.
Admirable as was the manner in which Violet filled her part, it was not
of her that Philip thought, or at her that he looked, when he waited
with her and Colin for the entrance of royal visitors before dinner in
the great hall. Day after day the glass doors were opened, but to his
way of thinking it was neither for Violet nor for them that they swung
wide, but for Colin. His own life he believed to be nearly consumed, but
about the ash of it there crept red sparks, and these, too, were
Colin’s. All his emotions centred there. It was for him and his
matchless charm, that these great gatherings were arranged. Philip
obliterated himself, and feasted his soul on the sight of Colin as lord
of Stanier. While Raymond lived that could never come to pass, but he
beguiled himself with the fantasy that when his own eyes grew dim in
death, Colin’s splendour would light the halls from which he himself had
faded. That of all the material magnificence of which he still was
master, had power to stimulate him; sceptical of any further future for
himself, and incurious as to what that might be, if it existed at all,
the only future that he desired was for the son on whom all his love was
centred. He knew that he was cheating himself, that this sight of Colin
playing host at Stanier was one that, in all human probability, would
never after his death be realised, but it was in his power now to give
Colin a taste of it, and himself share its sweetness. For this reason he
had arranged that these gorgeous weeks of entertainment should take
place before Raymond got back from Cambridge, for with Raymond here,
Raymond, the heavy and the unbeloved, must necessarily exclude Colin
from the place which his father so rapturously resigned to him. At
Christmas there would be just the family party, and he would be very
civil to his eldest son.

Such was the course pursued by one of these undercurrents; two others
sprang from Violet, one in direct opposition to that of her
father-in-law. For she knew that, so far from his death dethroning her
and giving the sovereignty to Raymond, it but passed on to her with
complete and personal possession. Could his spirit revisit these earthly
scenes, it would behold her in ownership on her own account of all the
titles and splendours that had been his. Raymond--there alone her
knowledge marched with his desire--would be without status here, while
for Colin there would be just such position as his marriage with her
gave him. She, exalted now by Philip’s desire, to play hostess in virtue
of her marriage, would be hostess indeed hereafter, and Colin host
through his relationship to her.

These weeks had given her a hint, a foretaste, of what would be hers,
and once more, as in her maidenhood, she felt that she would have made
any marriage in order to robe herself thus. The splendour of what she
was lent had set light to her old ambitions again, and this was all to
be hers, not lent, but her own. She would enter into the fabled
inheritance of the legend, that legend to which, for its very
remoteness, she had never given two serious thoughts. But now, though it
still wore, like a cloak over its head, its unconvincing mediævalism,
the shape of it vaguely outlined and indifferently regarded, had
something sinister about it. It did not matter; it was only an ugly
shadow in the background, but now she averted her eyes from it, instead
of merely not noticing it.

Here, then, was the second undercurrent, which, sluggish and veiled, yet
steadily moved within her. For though with the passing of the
inheritance to her, it would be she who came within the scope and focus
of the legend, which, frankly, when looked in the face, presented that
meaningless, age-worn countenance, she felt that she was in the grip of
it not directly but, somehow, through Colin. She told herself that by no
combination of diabolical circumstance could that be; for, with the
knowledge that was hers about the date of Colin’s birth and his mother’s
marriage, it was he, he and Raymond, who had passed out of reach of the
parchment with its promises and its penalty. Yet instinct, unconvinced
by reason, told her that it was through Colin that she and the children
she would bear him, would be swept into the mysterious incredible eddy.
Was it the persistent luck that attended him which induced so wildly
superstitious a presage? Like some supernaturally protected being, he
passed along his way. Raymond’s attempt to kill him had, by the merest
most fortuitous circumstance of a punctured tyre, led to Raymond’s utter
helplessness in his hands.... Colin moved on a charmed pilgrimage,
idolised and adored by herself, by his father, by all who came in
contact with him and, she was beginning to see, he had no spark of love
in him that was kindled by these fires. Analyse him and you would find
no faintest trace of it. Perhaps, in spite of his twenty-one years now
so nearly complete, he had remained a child still in respect of the
heart’s emotions. Yet who could hate like Colin? Who, so she shuddered
to think, could have shewn, though but for a second, so white-hot a mask
of fury as he had once turned on herself?

She could not succeed in forgetting that, and all Colin’s warmth and
eagerness of affection to her ever since, could not wash that out. All
day, perhaps, in the hospitable discharge of their duties, they would
scarcely have a word together, but when at length for a few hours of
rest the house grew silent, he sought her side, relaxed and sleepy, yet
tingling, so she felt, with some quality of vitality that no one else
had a spark of. Youth and high spirits, the zest of life and the endless
power of enjoyment filled the house, but Colin alone, unwearied and
eminent as the sun, lit up all others. It was not the exuberance of his
health and energy that was the source of his burning; something inspired
them.

       *       *       *       *       *

The last night had come. To-morrow morning their guests would depart,
and during the day Raymond would arrive. That night there had been the
fancy dress ball, and she, wearing the crown and necklace and girdle
made by Cellini, had impersonated the ill-fated Duchess of Milan for
whom they were made, and who, while wearing them, had drunk the poisoned
draught which she had herself prepared for her lover. Colin adored that
story; the lover, a mere groom of the chambers, he averred, was a sort
of old Colin Stanier--all prospered with him, even to the removal of his
mistress in this manner, for she was growing old and wearied him with
her insatiable desire. Colin himself had appeared as his ancestor
wearing the great sapphire.

Violet had undressed and got into bed, while he remained downstairs with
two or three men who still lingered. The Cellini jewels lay on her
dressing-table, and feeling too sleepy to plait her hair, she had just
let it down, and it lay in a spread web of gold over her pillow. Then
the door from his dressing-room softly opened, and he looked in.

“Not asleep?” he asked.

“No, but nearly. Oh, Colin, stand under the light a moment. There! The
sapphire is alive to-night. It’s like a blue furnace of flame. Now
shield it from the light.”

Violet sat up in bed. “But it’s the most extraordinary thing!” she said.
“Not a ray from the lamp touches it, yet it’s burning as brightly as
ever. Where does the light come from? It comes from below it. I believe
it comes from you. I’m frightened of you. Are you a fire?”

It seemed to him no less than her that some conflagration not lit from
without burnt in the heart of the stone. Blue rays, generated within,
shot from it; it shone with some underlying brilliance, as if, as she
had said, it was he who kindled it.

“Watch it, then,” he said, unbuckling his cloak. Even as he detached it
from him, the fire in it grew dim; only the reflection from outside fed
it. Incredulous at what she thought she saw, willing to attribute it to
some queer effect of faceted surfaces, she laughed.

“You’ve killed it,” she said. “I think I shall have to give it you, when
it’s mine, so that you may keep it alive.”

“Ah, do,” he said. “When you come into your own--may that day be far
distant.”

“Indeed, yes,” she said.

He sat down on the edge of his bed, and began unloosing the jewelled
buttons of his doublet.

“I believe my father would almost give it me now,” he said, “though I
suppose he has no right to, just as Elizabeth gave it to the other
Colin. I simply adore it. I’ve been saying my prayers to it, standing in
front of the picture.”

“Is that what has kept you?” she asked.

“No, they didn’t take me long. The Prince kept me; he wanted to hear the
whole of the legend. He was frightfully impressed; he said he felt as if
the original Colin had been telling it him, and expects nightmare. He
also besought me to swear allegiance when I come of age and see what
happens. I really think I shall, though, after all, I haven’t got much
to complain of in the way of what the world can give.”

“But it will be I, really, to choose whether I do that or not,” said
Violet.

“Well, I couldn’t tell him that,” said Colin, “though as a matter of
fact, I forgot it. In any case it isn’t I to do that. Raymond’s the
apparent heir-apparent, and dear Raymond has shewn his allegiance pretty
well already, though one doesn’t quite see why Satan made my
bicycle-tyre to puncture. If he had been on Raymond’s side, my face
would have been nearly blown to bits. No, Raymond’s not his favourite.
Fancy Raymond being anybody’s favourite. Oh, Vi, a thousand pardons; he
was yours just for a little.”

Colin was slowly undressing as he gave utterance to these reflections.
He had taken off his shirt, and his arms, still brown from the tanning
of the sun and sea, were bare to the shoulder.

“You brute, Colin,” she said, “you brown, bare brute.”

“Shall I dress again,” said he, “if a bare arm shocks you?”

“No, I don’t mind that. It’s the brute I object to. By the way, Raymond
comes to-morrow--to-day rather. How on earth can I behave to him with
decency? Don’t you wish he wasn’t coming?”

Colin picked up a long tress of her hair and wound it round his arm.

“No, I’m looking forward to his coming,” he said, smiling. “I’m going to
make Raymond wish that he had never been born. I’m going to be
wonderfully agreeable to him, and everything I say shall have a double
meaning. Raymond wanted to kill me; well, I shall shew him that there
are other ways of scoring off people. My father isn’t very fond of
Raymond as it is, but when he sees how pleasant I am to him, and how
black and sulky Raymond is to me, he won’t become any fonder of him. I
must think it all out.... And then all the time Raymond will be
consoling himself with the thought that when father dies his day will
come, and he’ll reign in his stead. There’s the cream of it, Vi! He’ll
be longing for my father to die, you know, and when he does Raymond will
be worse off than ever. And you, you once said, ‘Poor Raymond!’ to me.
Raymond’s got to pay for that. I won’t have Raymond pitied.”

Never had Colin worn a more radiant face than when, walking in and out
of his dressing-room, brown and lithe, as he divested himself of his
gorgeous dress and put on his night clothes, his beautiful mouth framed
itself to this rhapsody of hatred. There was nothing passionate about
it, except its sincerity; he did not rage and foam on the surface of his
nature, he but gleamed with the fire that seemed so strangely to have
lit up those wonderful rays in the sapphire that he had been wearing. He
still held it in his hand when, after having turned out the lights in
his dressing-room, he closed the door and sprang to her side.

“I don’t like to leave it alone,” he said. “I must pin it to the
pillows. It will watch over us. With you and it by me, I shall lie in
enchantment between waking and sleeping, floating on the golden sea of
your hair. Raymond, let’s make plans for Raymond....”

She lay in the warm tide of his tingling vitality, and soon fell asleep.
But presently she tore herself out of the clutch of some hideous vision,
which faded from vagueness into non-existence as she woke and heard his
breathing, and felt his cheek resting on her shoulder.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next night, instead of the long cloth which, evening after evening,
had stretched from the window of the great dining-room to the
Elizabethan sideboard at the other end, there was spread near the fire,
for the night was cold, a small round table that just held the five of
them--Philip and his mother, Violet, Raymond, and Colin--and instead of
the rows of silver sconces in the dark panels, four red-shaded
candlesticks, sufficient for purposes of knife and fork, left the rest
of the room in a velvety dimness. Raymond had arrived only just in time
to dress for dinner, coming into the gallery but half a minute before
his father, while Colin, who all this week had been a model of
punctuality, had not appeared yet. Philip gave his arm to his mother,
and behind, unlinked, came Violet and Raymond. He had advanced to her
with elbow formally crooked, but she, busy with a sleeve-lace that had
caught in her bracelet, moved on apart from him. She had shaken hands
with him, and given him a cool cordial word, but she felt incapable of
more than that.

Philip sat down with a sigh of relief.

“A reasonable evening at last,” he said, “though I wouldn’t say that if
Colin were here. I believe he got fresher and livelier every day. Ah,
Raymond, you must know we’ve had some parties here. Colin took your
place, as you had to be at Cambridge.”

Raymond tried to put into his answer the geniality he did not feel.

“I know,” he said. “The daily picture papers have been full of Colin.
Are you having more people at Christmas, father?”

“No, just ourselves as usual.”

Raymond turned to Violet. “You had a fancy-dress ball last night, hadn’t
you?” he said. “I could have got down yesterday if I had known.”

Philip conjectured a reproach in this and resented it. The last few
weeks had been planned by him as “Colin’s show.” If Colin could not step
into his shoes when he was dead, he could wear them for a week or two
while he lived.

“I thought your term was not over till to-day,” he said.

“I could have got leave,” replied Raymond. “But I understand, father.”

Philip felt rising in him that ceaseless regret that Colin was not his
first-born. And that jealousy of Colin, implied in Raymond’s “I
understand” irritated his father. He wanted Colin to come and relieve
the situation, as he always did.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” he asked.

Suddenly old Lady Yardley joined in. “I know what he means, Philip,” she
said. “He means that he should have been host here, if you were going to
depute one of your sons to do the honours for you, and that you
preferred that Colin should do them instead. That is what he means.”

“There, mother, that’s enough,” said Philip.

An embarrassed silence ensued, broken by the sound of running steps in
the gallery. Just as they arrived at the door, which one of the footmen
opened, there was a loud crash and Colin slid in on his back, and had
begun to laugh before he picked himself up.

“Gosh, what a bang!” he said. “I believe somebody greased the boards in
the hope that I should be in a hurry and fall down. Sorry, father;
sorry, granny; sorry, Violet, for upsetting all your nerves.
Why--Raymond!”

Colin laid his hand affectionately on his brother’s shoulder.

“I never knew you had come,” he said. “How are you, dear Raymond? How’s
Cambridge? We have missed you in all this hullabaloo. Every one asked
after you and wanted to know why you weren’t here.”

Colin took the vacant place between Violet and his grandmother.

“How far have you all got?” he said. “Oh, very well, I won’t have any
soup. Now this is jolly! Just ourselves, Granny, and short coats and
black ties. Vi, darling, why didn’t you come and pull me out of my bath?
I was just lying soaking there; I had no idea it was so late.”

Colin spared one fleeting glance at his brother, and began to put into
words some of the things he had thought about in his bath.

“Raymond, it is time that you came home,” he said. “The pigeons are
worse than ever in the Old Park, and I’m no earthly use at that
snap-shooting between the oaks. Give me a rabbit coming towards me along
a road, not too fast, and a rest for my gun, I can hit it in the face as
well as anybody. But those pigeons among the oaks beat me.”

“Yes, we might have a morning in the Old Park to-morrow,” said his
father.

Colin looked at Violet as if she had called his attention to something.

“Yes, Vi, what?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, I thought you jogged my elbow. To-morrow, father? Oh, what a bore!
I promised to play golf. But I shall be back by one if I go on my
motor-bicycle. May I join you at that sharp corner in the road; that’s
about half-way to the keeper’s lodge, and I could come on with you from
there.”

“But that corner is at the far end of the Old Park,” said his father.

“Is it? The one I mean has a big rhododendron bush close to it. You know
where I mean, Raymond. Is it at the far end?”

“Yes, that’s the far end,” said Raymond.

“I believe you’re right. Oh, of course you’re right, and I’m idiotic.
It’s where I picked you up one day in the autumn when you had been after
the pigeons.”

Colin applied himself to his dinner, and caught the others up.

“There’s something in my mind connected with that day,” he said, “and I
can’t remember what it is. I had been playing golf, and I punctured, and
walked back along the ridge instead of wheeling my bicycle along the
road. Something funny: I remember laughing. Vi, darling, can’t you
remember? Or didn’t I tell you?”

Violet saw that even in the red glow of the candle-shades Raymond’s face
had turned white. There was red light upon it, but not of it.

“You certainly did not tell me,” she said in sheer pity. “I remember the
day, too. There was a man who had escaped from the asylum and stolen a
gun from the keeper’s....”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Colin. “I believe that’s on the track. A man
with a gun.”

Philip laughed.

“One of the most amusing things I ever heard, Colin,” he said. “I am
surprised at Violet’s forgetting it. Is that all?”

Colin turned to his grandmother. “Granny, they’re all laughing at me
because I can’t remember. Father’s laughing at me, so is Violet. You and
Raymond are the only kind ones. Man with a gun, Raymond shooting
pigeons. That makes two men with a gun. Then there was me.”

“The very best story, Colin. Most humorous,” said his father.

Colin sighed. “Sometimes I think of things just as I’m going to sleep,”
he said. “If I think of it to-night, I shall wake Violet and tell her,
and then she’ll remember it if I can’t. Man with a gun....”

“Oh, Colin, stop it,” said Violet.

“Well, let’s put it to the vote,” said Colin. “Father and Violet want me
to stop trying to remember it; little do they know how it would amuse
them if I did. Granny and I want me to go on--don’t you, dear--it all
depends on Raymond. What shall I do, Ray?”

Raymond turned to his father, appearing not to hear Colin’s question.

“Did you have good sport last week?” he asked.

“Ah, Raymond votes against us, Granny,” said Colin. “He’s too polite to
tell me directly. We’re squashed, Granny; we’ll squash them at whist
afterwards; you and I shall be partners, and we’ll play Raymond and
father for their immortal souls. It will be like the legend, won’t it?
Violet shall look on and wonder whether her poor husband is going to
heaven or hell. I keep my immortal soul in a drawer close to Violet’s
bedside, Granny. So if we lose, she will have to go up to her bedroom
and bring it down. Oh, I say, I’m talking too much. Nobody else can get
a word in edgeways.”

It was a fact that the other four were silent, but Raymond had the
faculty of producing silence in his neighbours. Cigarettes had come now
with coffee, and this was the usual signal for old Lady Yardley to rise.
To-night, however, she took no notice of the gold-mounted stick which
was put into her hand by Philip.

“Never mind them, my dear,” she said, “they are amusing themselves.
Listen to me, Colin.”

There was no other voice in the room but hers, the servants had gone
out, and again she spoke. No one moved; no one spoke; but Raymond
opposite her leaned forward; Violet leaned left-wise; Philip, with her
stick in his hand leaned to the right. She dropped her voice to a
whisper, but in the tense stillness a shout would not have been more
audible.

“There are strange things in this house, darling,” said she to Colin. “I
have been here sixty years, and I know better than anybody. Green leaf I
have been, and flower and fruit, and now I am withered. Sixty years ago,
my dear, I sold my soul to the master of it, and from that moment I have
been a ghost, oh, such a happy ghost, looking on at the glory of the
house. And then my son Philip married, and he brought you here, and the
moment I set eyes on you I loved you, for I knew that you were born of
the blood and the bargain....”

Philip drew back his chair and got up.

“There’s your stick, mother,” he said. “We’ll follow you quite soon, or
it will be too late for your game of whist.”

She fumbled for the crook of the handle, and rose; her eyes were bright,
and as blue as the sapphire Colin had worn last night.

“Yes, but I must talk to Colin again,” she said. “No one understands me
except Colin. There used to be other games than whist, Philip, at
Stanier. There was dice-throwing, you know, on the altar of God. We are
not so wicked now to all appearance. Whist in the gallery; far more
seemly.”

Raymond held the door open for her, and she hobbled through, Violet
following. As she passed out, Violet looked first at Raymond, and then
swiftly away, with a shudder, at Colin.

“Don’t be long, Uncle Philip,” she said in a low voice. “Grandmamma is
so queer to-night.”

Colin moved up next his father.

“Give me a glass of port, father,” he said. “Here’s Raymond back, and
I’m so glad to see him. Your health, Ray!”

He drank off his glass. “Father, isn’t it lovely to have Raymond back
again?” he said. “But--this is an aside--he’s putting on flesh. May your
shadow never grow more, Raymond. Tell us all about Cambridge; has it
been delightful? I’m sure it has; for otherwise you wouldn’t look so
prosperous. Speech! Mustn’t we have a speech from him, father?”

There, on one side of Philip, was Colin, brimming with good humour and
welcome, brimming, too, as he had shewn during dinner with the mere
nonsense born of happiness. On the other side was Raymond, serious and
unresponsive, without a spark to answer this crackling fire. There he
sat, and what sort of host would he have made during these last weeks?
He made no attempt to reply to Colin, and but fingered the stem of his
glass.

“You might tell us what has been going on, Raymond,” said his father.

“Nothing particular. Just the ordinary term. I’ve been playing for the
University at soccer. I shall probably be in the team.”

“And you never told us?” said Colin. “Lord! What a swell he is, father!
We’re not worthy to hear about it; that’s what is the matter with us.”

Philip turned to Raymond. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s pleasant news.
There’s Colin here, who won’t do anything more violent than golf.”

“Oh, father! What about shooting pigeons?” said Colin. “Oh, no, Raymond
did that. Bother! There was a man with a gun....”

Philip got up. “Now don’t get on to that again,” he said. “You’ve amused
us enough for one night....”

“But I may amuse Vi, mayn’t I, if I think of the rest of it?” asked
Colin.

Philip turned his back on him and took Raymond’s arm. He had the sense
of behaving with great fairness, but the impartiality demanded effort.

“Ring the bell, Colin, will you?” he said over his shoulder. “I’m
delighted to hear about your success in the--the football field,
Raymond. Games are taking the place of sport in this generation. Your
Uncle Ronald and I never played games; there was shooting, there was
riding....”

“Oh, but there’s lots of sport still,” said Colin. “Big game, father;
large animals. Not footballs, things that feel.... And then my bicycle
punctured. Oh, you wanted me to ring.”

At this rite of whist for the sake of old Lady Yardley, it was necessary
that one of the five should cut out. She herself and Philip took no part
in this chance; the rite was that both should play if there was not
another table to be formed. Raymond turned the highest card, and with a
paper to beguile him, sat just where he had sat when one night the
whist-table had broken up, and he heard Colin’s mimicry. As the four
others cut for deal, some memory of that must have come into Colin’s
mind.

“What an awful night that was, Vi,” he said, “when we were playing
bridge with Aunt Hester. She revoked, do you remember, and swore she
hadn’t. How we laughed. And then I thought everybody else had gone to
bed, and I--good Lord.... Yes!”

“Another of Colin’s amusing stories,” said his father.

“Sh-sh,” said Colin. “Granny, you always turn up the ace for your trump
card. Will you give me lessons?”

The rubber was very quickly over, and Raymond took Colin’s place. Colin
drew a chair up close to his brother, and instead of reading a paper in
the corner, watched his hand and the play of it with breathless
attention.

“Raymond; you’re a wizard,” he said at the end of it. “Every plan of
yours was right. You finessed and caught the king, you didn’t finesse
and caught the queen. Why don’t I have luck like yours? It’s enough to
make any fellow jealous; I shan’t look at your hand any more. I shall
look at Violet’s. My poor wife! Raymond’s got all the winning cards
again. Or, if he hasn’t, he’ll turn them into winning cards. He’ll down
you.”

“Colin, if you would talk just a little less,” said his father, “we
should be able to attend a little more.”

Raymond, if no one else, fully appreciated the utter absence of reproof
in his father’s voice. If it had been he who had been talking, there
would have been, at the best, a chill politeness there; at the worst, a
withering snub. But this was the candour of friend to friend.... About
that signed paper now, which Colin had deposited at his bank. He himself
had signed some sort of mad confession that he had planned to shoot
Colin. His will had bent to Colin’s like hot wax to strong fingers, but
could he not somehow get possession of it again? While it was in Colin’s
hands, it was like a toasting-fork in which that devil-twin of his
impaled and held him before the fire. All dinner-time Colin had scorched
him, and not less burning was this mocking kindliness which made the one
appear so warmly genial, the other awkward and ungracious. How long
would he be able to stand it? Presently, at the end of the rubber, Colin
would join him in the smoking-room and reveal another aspect, no doubt.
But he could rob him of that further indulgence, he would go to bed as
soon as the rubber was over.

The next hand finished it and Lady Yardley got up. She had won to-night
from Colin, and clinked a couple of half-sovereigns in her hand.

“But it will come back to you, darling,” she said. “Everything there is
will come to you if you are wise and careful. My eyes grow dim as I get
older, but there is another sort of sight that gets brighter. Oh, I see
very well.”

Philip went with her to the door.

“Your eyes are wonderful yet, mother,” he said. “There are years of
vision in them yet.”

As if Colin had read Raymond’s thought of going to bed, he turned to
Violet.

“I may be a little late to-night, darling,” he said. “Raymond and I are
going to have a long talk in the smoking-room.”

“Oh, I think not,” said Raymond. “I’m tired; I shall go to bed.”

Colin whisked round to him. “Not just yet, Ray,” he said. “I haven’t
seen you for so long. It would be nice of you to come and have a chat. I
know you will. Persuade him to do as I ask, Vi. Who knows what important
things I may have to tell about?”

Philip rejoined them. “I shall just come in and have a cigarette with
you boys,” he said. “Good-night, Violet.”

“Ah, that’s jolly,” said Colin.

They preceded him to the smoking-room, for he turned into his own room a
moment, and as soon as they were there Colin shut the door.

“Father will be with us in a minute,” he said, “and I can only just
begin my talk. But if you attempt to go to bed when he does, Raymond, I
shall tell him about the morning when you shot pigeons. Oddly enough, I
have remembered all about it. And to-morrow I’ll telephone for the
envelope I left at my bank. So it’s up to you.”

Colin came a step closer; with such an eagerness must some Borgia Pope
have looked on the white skin of the victim he had ordered to be flayed.

“It’s jolly seeing you again, you sulky blackguard,” he said. “Has
anybody smacked your face since I did it for you? You’re going to spend
the whole of the vacation here, unless I get tired of you and send you
away before. Ah, there’s father. Isn’t it jolly, father; Raymond hopes
to spend the whole of the vacation here.”

Philip did not seem as enthusiastic as Colin about this, but he was
adequately cordial, and, having smoked his cigarette in silence, got up
to go.

“Are you coming?” he said to his sons.

Colin nodded to Raymond to answer this.

“We were just going to have a talk first, father,” he said.

“Very good. Don’t sit up too late. Colin hasn’t been to bed till three
for the last fortnight.”

Colin waited till the door was shut.

“Now for our talk,” he said. “Isn’t Violet looking divine? Aren’t I a
lucky fellow? Even the thought of being mistress of Stanier wasn’t
enough to make her tolerate you. We had a lovely honeymoon, Raymond. We
often talked of you. Lord! How she loathes you! I should think even you
could see that. Now an interesting question. I ask for information. Do
you think she knows about that morning we were speaking of at dinner?”

“I have no means of telling,” said Raymond.

“Well, we’ll assume she doesn’t. Now I want you to observe her closely
again to-morrow, and see if you think she knows then. I’ve remembered
all about it, and, as you heard me say, I was thinking of telling her,
just drowsily and quietly to-night. And then to-morrow you’ll guess
whether I have done so or not. Take coffee for breakfast if you think I
have, tea, if you think I haven’t. What a jolly Christmas game!”

Colin poured himself out a glass of whisky and soda.

“Fancy father saying that I didn’t care for sport,” he said. “I adore
the thought of the sport I’m going to have with you. You used to be rude
to me when we were alone, now you have got to be polite. I can always
send for that paper which you signed and father witnessed. Now don’t be
tedious and say that the condition on which you signed was that I would
not tell him. What does that matter to me? You wanted to kill me; all
that I do now is in self-defence. Otherwise you might plan to kill me
again.”

He yawned. “I’m rather sleepy to-night, Raymond,” he said. “I thought
the satisfaction of seeing you again would make me wakeful. I shall go
upstairs. Violet will be pleased that I have not sat up late after all.
I shall sit on her bed and talk to her. Last night her hair made a
golden mat on the pillow. There is a marvellous fragrance in her hair.
Do you remember that from the days--not many of them--when you used to
kiss her? How she winced! Now it’s your turn to wince. We shall talk
about you, no doubt. And remember about the tea and the coffee
to-morrow.”

Day after day Colin amused himself thus; morning after morning Raymond
had to guess whether Violet had been told, until one evening, wearying
of this particular game, Colin casually mentioned that all his guessings
had been superfluous, for Violet had known ever since one day on their
honeymoon, when she had provoked him by saying, “Poor Raymond.” Even as
a cat with a mouse, so Colin played with him, taking no notice of him
except in ordinary intercourse, for nearly a whole day, and letting him
seem forgotten; then, with quivering shoulders, he would spring on him
again, tap him with sheathed claws and a velvet paw, or with more
forcible reminder, nip him with needle-like teeth. It was useless and
worse than useless for Violet to plead for him; her advocacy, her appeal
to the most elementary feeling of compassion only exasperated Colin.

“Darling, as if my brain wasn’t busy enough with Raymond, you must go
and add to my work like that!” he said. “I’ve got to cure you of being
sorry for Raymond as well. I thought you were cured when I told you he
tried to murder me. Just let your mind dwell on that. He planned to
shoot me from behind that wall. I’ll take you there to-morrow and show
you the place, to make it more vivid to you. One’s brother must not make
such plans and fail without suffering for it afterwards. Perhaps you
would prefer that he had succeeded? Ah! I made you shudder then. You
trembled deliciously.... I’ve got such a delightful Christmas present
for him, a little green jade pigeon with ruby eyes. It cost a lot of
money. The green--I shall explain to him--is his jealousy of me, for
he’s devoted to you still, and the red eyes are the colour of my blood,
and the whole will remind him of that amusing morning.”

The new year came in with three nights of sharp frost, and the ice on
the bathing lake grew thick enough to bear. The lake was artificial,
lying in a small natural valley through which a stream ran. A dam some
twelve feet high had been built across the lower end of it, in which was
the sluice gate; thus the stream, confined by the rising ground at the
sides, and the dam at the end, had spread itself into a considerable
sheet of water, shallow where the stream entered it, but some nine feet
deep at the lower end, where was the bathing-place and the header boards
and pavilions for bathers. The dam was planted with rhododendron bushes,
whose roots strengthened the barrier, and in summer the great bank of
blossom overhung the deep water. A path ran behind them crossing the
sluice by a stone bridge with balustrade.

Raymond had gone down there directly after breakfast, and came back with
the news that he had walked this way and that across the ice, and that
it seemed safe enough. For some reason which Colin failed to fathom, he
seemed in very cheerful spirits to-day; it might be that the end of the
Christmas vacation was approaching, when he would return to Cambridge;
it might be that he, like Colin, himself had seen the rapidity with
which old age was gaining on his father. There was humour in that.
Raymond looked forward, and little wonder, to his own succession here,
not knowing, poor shorn lamb, that he would be worse off than ever when
that unpropitious event occurred. As for the remission of subtle torture
which his return to Cambridge would give him, there were several days
yet, thought Colin; opportunity for much pleasant pigeon-conversation.

So Raymond got his skates, while Colin and Violet, sitting cosy in the
long gallery, wondered whether it was worth while going out, and he went
down by the long yew hedge to the lake, with brisk foot and brightened
eye. After all, other people besides Colin could make plans, and one of
his had matured this morning into a luscious ripeness. Sleepless nights
had been his, with hands squeezing for Colin’s throat and dawn breaking
in on the fierce disorder of his thoughts, before he had distilled his
brain down to the clear broth. Wild and vagrant fancies got hold of him,
goaded as he was to the verge of desperation by this inhuman
persecution; red madnesses had flashed before him, like the cloaks that
the matadors wave before the bull, and, whether he charged or not,
another ribanded dart pierced him. He had bitten his lip till the blood
flowed in order to recall himself to self-control, and to use those
hours of the night, when Colin was with Violet, to hew out some defence
to the fluttered red and the ribanded dart. There had been his handicap:
hate of Colin had made him violent, whereas Colin’s hate of him had made
Colin calm and self-possessed; he must cease to rage if he hoped to
arrive at any plan. So night after night he had curbed himself, making
his wits reduce their mad galloping to an orderly pace, and pull
steadily in harness.

The grass was encrusted with the jewels of frost; every step crunched a
miracle of design into powder, and now for the first time since he had
come to Stanier, Raymond fed with the braced joy of a frosty morning on
the banquet which the season spread. He was hungry for it, all these
days he had been starved and tortured, sick with apprehension, and
shuddering at the appearance of Colin with rack and pincers. But now he
was hungry again for the good things of life, and the long draught of
cold air was one of them, and the treading of the earth with muscles
alternately strong and relaxed was another, and the sense of the great
woodlands that would in no distant future be his, was a third, for how
old, how rapidly ageing, was his father; and the _congé_ he would soon
give to Colin and Violet was a fourth, sweeter than any. How sour had
turned his love of Violet, if indeed there had ever been any sweetness
in it. He lusted after her: that he knew, but just because she knew the
events of that morning, when all had gone so awry, he thought of her as
no more than a desirable mistress. Ha! there was a woodcock. In the
frost of the morning it had lain so close that he approached within
twenty yards of it before it got up. He was near enough to see how it
pulled itself forward, grasping a blade of grass in its reed-like bill,
before it could get those long wings free of the ground where it
squatted. With a flip flap, it skidded and swerved through the
rhododendron bushes; even if he had had a gun with him he could scarcely
have got a shot.

“Flip--flap”; it was just so that he had escaped from Colin’s barrels.
Those nights of thought, when he had bandaged the eyes of rage, had
given him simplicity at last, such simplicity as Colin had so carelessly
arrived at when he came through the oaks of the Old Park. He had trusted
to the extraordinary similarity of his own handwriting to that of Colin,
and had written a letter in Colin’s name to Colin’s bankers, requesting
them to send the letter which he had deposited there last August, with
the note on the outside of it about its eventual delivery in case of his
death, to his brother, Lord Stanier, whose receipt would be
forwarded.... Raymond knew it to be a desperate measure, but, after all,
nothing could be more desperate than his position here, bound hand and
foot to Colin, as long as that sealed envelope remained at Messrs.
Bertram’s. The bank might possibly make a further inquiry; telegraph to
Colin for confirmation, but even if that happened, Colin was doing his
worst already. No such disaster had followed. This morning Raymond had
received from the bank a registered letter, containing the unopened
envelope, forwarded to him by direction of Hon. Colin Stanier.

So now, as he went briskly towards the frozen lake, the confession which
he had signed was safe in the letter-case he carried in the inside
pocket of his coat, and for very luxury of living over again a mad
moment which now was neutralised, he drew it out and read it. There it
was ... in that crisis of guilt, covered by Colin’s pistol, he had
consented to any terms. But now, let Colin see what would be his
response when next he talked in flashes of that veiled lightning
concerning a shooting of pigeons, concerning a morning when there was a
lunatic at large....

Indeed Raymond determined that this very day he would fling the
challenge himself. Instead of sitting dumb under Colin’s blistering
jibes, he would defy him; he would insult and provoke him, till he was
stung into sending to the bank for the famous confession, vowing an
instant disclosure of the whole matter to his father. How Raymond would
snap a finger in his face for that threat, and how, when Colin received
the answer from the bank that the packet in question had been sent by
his own orders to his brother, would he choke with the derisive laughter
of hate! Who without solid proof would credit such a tale? Besides
(Raymond had it all ready now) no doubt Lord Yardley would remember
witnessing with Colin the paper about which he now impotently jabbered.
Had not the brothers come in together, ever so pleasantly, on that
morning of the pigeon-shooting, and asked for his witnessing signature?
That paper (so Raymond now framed it) had set forth how he had
determined to make a better job of brotherhood than he had hitherto
done, and to realise that Violet and Colin were mated in love. And
already the pact had fulfilled itself, for never had the two spent days
of such public fraternal amity. “Write to the bank for it in my name,”
Colin would be supposed to have said, “and tear it up, dear Ray! It’ll
be fun, too, to see if they can distinguish your handwriting from
mine”.... That was what Colin would find waiting for him if he sent to
the bank for the document on which this insane accusation was based.

His skates, fitted on to boots, clanked in his hand, his foot trod
briskly on the frozen soil that would soon be his own. Those eye-teeth
of Colin’s were drawn; his father aged rapidly, and, without doubt,
before many months, the park-gates would have clapped on to the final
exit of Colin and his wife. Perhaps he would let Stanier to some
dollar-gorged American; he had no feeling for it himself, and the other
two would abhor that. Never yet had Stanier been tenanted by aliens; it
was enough to make the dead turn in their graves. What was more
important, it would make the living writhe. Perhaps Colin--he would be
very rich, alas--would try to take it. The would-be lessees must be
closely scrutinised.

So here was the lake with its stiff frozen margin; a stamp on it and a
short slide over the black ice produced no cluck of remonstrance. The
pavilion of the bathing-place was on the other side, but a felled
tree-trunk made a comfortable seat for the exchange of his walking shoes
into the boots with skates on them. He had spent a winter month in
Switzerland two years before, and hungered for the bite of the blade on
the sweet fodder of that black field.... Instantly, as in swimming, the
instinct of that balance came back to him, and with long strokes he
curved out on to the delightful playground. Outside edge, and a dropped
turn, an outside back, and a taking up of the direction with the other
foot....

       *       *       *       *       *

Colin, at this moment, had made up his mind not to skate till after
lunch.

“I’m lazy,” he said to Violet. “I’m tired of baiting Raymond. He was
more cheerful than I like this morning, Vi. I shall smoke a cigarette
and think of something new. Lord! I’ve got no matches.”

There was a paper basket handy, and he drew a crumpled envelope from it,
meaning to get a light with it from the log fire. Uncrumpling it he saw
it was addressed to Lord Stanier, and idly turning it over, as he made
his spill, he saw the seal of his own bank. The envelope was registered.

He tore a narrow strip off the edge of it, and used it for his purpose.

“I should like to sit here talking to you all morning,” he said, “but
that beastly motor-bicycle of mine has gone wrong again. I think I’ll go
up to the stables to see about it. Skating this afternoon, isn’t it? I
hate seeing Raymond skate because he’s so good at it. But as I want to
skate myself, what’s to be done?”

Colin floated off in his crisp, graceful manner, and never was he so
alert as when he appeared to be loitering. Why had Raymond received a
registered envelope from Bertram’s? Bertram’s was not Raymond’s bank.
What had that envelope contained?

He strolled out of the front door; the stables lay to the right, but
Raymond, hugely cheerful that morning, had gone to the lake, which was
in the opposite direction. So deferring the matter of the bicycle he
went down by the yew hedge and along the path on the top of the dam
behind the rhododendrons. He could hear the ring of Raymond’s skates on
the frozen surface. Raymond would have to cease his sport and explain
the matter of the envelope.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hidden by the bushes, he had nearly come to the bridge over the sluice
when from close at hand there came a noise of loud crackings and
splintering across the lake and a great splash. For one moment Colin
stood quite still, his heart beating high and fast; then, with quickened
pace, he walked on to the bridge over the sluice. Some ten yards out was
a large hole in the surface with jagged edges; a cap and fragments of
broken ice floated on it, and bubbles rose from below.

“He has been carried under the ice,” thought Colin. “How cold it must
be! The water is deep there.”

What was to be done? Nothing it seemed. He could run up to the house and
get help, a rope, a plank, something to put out across that gaping hole
on which the sunlight glittered, but before he could return all hope
(all chance rather) of saving Raymond must have passed. Was there no
other plan? His mind, usually so ingenious and resourceful, seemed
utterly blank, save for an overwhelming curiosity as to whether Raymond
would come to the surface again, just once, just for a second.... As he
looked, leaning on the balustrade of the bridge, Raymond’s head
appeared; his face was white and wide-eyed, the lips of his open mouth
blue with the cold. Across those ten yards which separated them their
eyes met, Colin’s bright and sparkling with exuberant life, the other’s
stricken with the ultimate and desperate terror.

Colin waved his hand.

“So you’ve fallen in,” he said. “I’ll go and see what can be done. If
I’m too late, well, good-bye! Rather cold, isn’t it?”

The last words were spoken to emptiness. There was the cap still
floating and the stream of bubbles breaking on the surface of the
sparkling water.

Colin gave one leap in the air like some young colt whose limbs tingle
with the joy of life, and rubbed his hands which were chilled with
leaning on the bridge. Of course it was no use going to the house; the
shock and cold and the soft, smothering water would have done their work
long before he could bring help, and the resources of Stanier, so
powerful for the living had no succour or consolation for the dead.
Indeed, it would be better not to go to the house at all, for he could
not imagine himself, in this ecstatic moment, simulating haste and
horror and all that would be appropriate to the occasion. So making a
circuit through the woods, he strolled ten minutes later into the stable
yard to see about his bicycle. He had a pleasant word for the groom and
a joke for the motor-mechanic. Just then his brain could only be
occupied with trivial things; a great glittering curtain seemed to be
let down across it, behind which were stored treasures and splendours.
Presently, when he came to himself, he would inspect these.

He showed himself to Violet and his father, who were in the long
gallery, when he got back to the house, said a word about his
motor-bicycle, hoped that Raymond was having a good time, and went into
the smoking-room. Now was the time to pull up that glittering curtain.

Till then the fact of Raymond’s death, just the removal, the extinction
of him had hidden all that might lie behind it; now Colin saw with an
amazed gasp of interest how all the activity of his brain was needed to
cope with the situation. Raymond was finished with, while his father
still lived. The remote, the unexpected, the unlooked-for had occurred.
Yet not quite unlooked-for ... one morning dreaming on the Capri beach,
Colin had taken this possibility into account, had let it simmer and
mature in his brain, and as outcome had made Violet spend a night at the
house of the British Consul in Naples. How wise that had proved; he
would have been grinding his teeth if he had not done that.

Swiftly he ran over the whole process from the beginning, and though
there were problems ahead of him, so far his course had been flawless.
First had come the erasure in the Consulate register and the insertion
of that single numeral in his mother’s letter to Salvatore.... He would
have to see dear Uncle Salvatore again.... That had smoothed the way for
his marriage with Violet; that had ensured, even if Raymond lived to be
a hundred, his own mastership and that of his children after him at
Stanier. It was not mastership in name, for he would but be husband to
its mistress, but he knew that name alone would be lacking to the
completeness of possession. He could not have provided better for the
eventuality of his father’s death, which, according to all human
probability, would occur before Raymond’s. But fate, that blind
incalculable chance, had decreed otherwise, and Colin gave a frown and a
muttered exclamation to the recognition of the fact that had he left the
register alone, and torn up, instead of emending his mother’s letter, he
would now be heir to Stanier as he indeed truly was, in his own right.

It was a pity to have devoted all that ingenuity, to have saddled
himself with considerable expense as regards that troublesome Salvatore,
when fate all the time was busier and wiser than he.... Yet it had been
necessary, and it was no use wasting regret over it.

What stood in his way now was the letter and the register. With regard
to the former it was easy to destroy it, and to indicate to Salvatore
that all required of him was to hold his tongue, or, if necessary, to
tell a mere simple truth that he had given Colin two letters, one--he
seemed to recollect--dated March 1, in which his sister announced her
marriage, the other a fortnight later, giving news of the birth of the
twins. Uncle Salvatore, with his Viagi pride, so Colin smilingly
reflected, would be glad that the stain on the family honour could be
expunged; Rosina was married when she brought forth. For him, too, it
was pleasant to have the bar sinister lifted from him. It would not, he
allowed, have weighed heavily on him; in any case it would have been
amply compensated for by the enjoyment of Stanier and the expulsion of
Raymond, but now there was no need for that ounce of bitter.... So much,
then, for the letters; they could be destroyed. Violet would ask in vain
for their production to prove her possession.

“What letters do you mean, darling?” he would answer. Yes, those letters
should perish at once.

He turned his thoughts to the register. There at this moment it reposed
in that archive-room, bearing the erasure so easily overlooked, so
convincing when pointed out. You had but to look carefully, and, so to
speak, you could see nothing but the erased numeral: it stared at you.
He had, it was true, in his keeping a copy of that entry, certified to
be correct by Mr. Cecil, which bore the earlier date, but, now that
Violet had been informed of that erasure, she would, when Stanier
changed hands, insist on the production of the register, and, knowing
where to look and what to see, her lawyer would draw the conclusion,
which even in the absence of confirming letters, might easily satisfy a
jury. The register had been tampered with, and in whose interests but
Colin’s? And by what hand? Without doubt by his father’s (not that that
would hurt him then) or his own. There was danger, remote perhaps but
alive and smouldering, on that page; it must be quenched.

Colin recalled his meditations on the Capri beach which foresaw this
contingency with a vividness as clear as was the October air on that
morning. All the circumstances of it were equally sharp-edged in his
memory, the sense of the hot pebbles of the beach on which he lay, the
sea and its crystal embrace awaiting him when he got baked and pining
for its coolness, Nino, the joyous pagan boy asleep in the shade,
Vesuvius across the bay with the thin streamer of smoke. That was the
_milieu_ where thought came clean and clear to you, and clear and clean
that morning had his thoughts been, providing for this very situation.
The pieces of it lay in his brain like the last few fragments of a
puzzle; he had no need even to fit them together, for he could see how
curve corresponded with curve and angle with angle. All was in order,
ready to be joined up, now that Raymond no longer blocked his way, and
the key-piece round which the others fitted was undoubtedly that visit
of Violet to Mr. Cecil.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then came quick steps up the passage, and Violet burst in.

“Oh, Colin,” she said, “a terrible thing has happened! Uncle Philip and
I walked down to the lake. Raymond was not there; his boots were on the
bank, there was a hole where the ice had given way at the deep end.
Uncle Philip is getting men and ropes....”




CHAPTER X


It was not till well on in the afternoon that the body was recovered.
All day the cold had been intense, and the ropes with the tackle for
this terrible fishing got stiff and frozen. But at sunset they found it;
the stream had carried it along below the ice towards the sluice.

Philip sat up with Colin in the long gallery when Violet and Lady
Yardley had gone to bed. He felt no sorrow, for he had not liked
Raymond, he had not even loved him with his fatherhood, for all that had
been given to Colin.... Often and often he had longed that Colin had
been the eldest, now there was none other than Colin; he would have all
that his father coveted for him. But though he felt no sorrow, he felt
remorse and pity; remorse that he had not liked this dead son of his,
pity that he had died young.

“I reproach myself, Colin, most bitterly,” he had been saying. “It was
hard to be kind to poor Raymond, he kept kindness at arm’s length. But I
ought to have tried more. I ought to have taken example from you: you
never wearied of kindness.”

Colin laid his hand on his father’s arm. All the evening he had been
keeping things together by a tact so supreme that it appeared pure
naturalness. He had talked quite freely about Raymond; recalled a
hundred little incidents in which Raymond was a mild hero; his shooting,
his prospect of playing football for Cambridge.... It was clear, too,
that the tragedy had made very little impression on his grandmother, and
so he had taken it for granted that they would play their rubber of
whist. Why not?

“You mustn’t think of it like that, father,” he said. “You did what you
could. You made it very jolly for him here. He liked coming home; he
was going to stop here the whole of the Christmas vacation, you know. If
he had not been enjoying it, he would not have done that.”

Colin revelled in the underlying meaning of his words ... how Raymond
had been enjoying it, hadn’t he?

Philip’s servant came into the room; he carried on a tray Raymond’s
watch and chain, and a pocket-book.

“They found these on his lordship’s body, my lord,” he said. “I thought
it best to bring them you.”

Philip took them, and looked absently at the watch which had stopped at
a few minutes to eleven.

“He must have fallen in almost immediately,” he said. “I had better look
at what is in his pocket-book. It may contain papers that must be
attended to.”

Not until that moment had Colin given another thought to what Raymond
had received that morning in the envelope from Bertram’s bank. Now in a
flash he conjectured that whatever it was (and he felt no doubt of what
it was) it would be found in that pocket-book which his father even then
was opening. How lucky it was that he had not told his father about that
attempt of Raymond’s! How splendid would appear his own magnanimity, his
own unfailing kindness to him! He could emphasise them even more by a
reluctance that his father should examine these remains. The water, it
is true, might have got in and soaked the paper, if it was there, into
illegibility, but the leather of the pocket-book seemed to have resisted
well: it might easily prove to contain a legible document.

He got up in an excitement which his father did not understand.

“Are you wise to do that, do you think?” he asked in a quick, anxious
voice. “There may be something there which will pain you.”

“All his papers must be gone through,” said his father. “Have you any
reason, Colin?”

“I can’t explain,” said Colin.

Papers were coming out of the pocket-book now, in no way perished by
the long immersion; they were damp but they held together, and Colin
glanced with a lynx’s eye at them as his father unfolded them. There
were a couple of bills, he could see, which Philip laid on one side, and
then he came to a half-sheet of foolscap.... He read a line or two,
looked at the bottom of it and saw his own name....

“What is this?” he said. “It’s signed by Raymond and witnessed by you
and me.”

“Don’t look at it, father,” said Colin, knowing that it was inevitable
that his father must read anything that was witnessed by himself. “Let
me take it and burn it.”

“No, I can’t do that,” said Philip. “What does this mean? What....”

“Ah! don’t read it, don’t read it!” said Colin in a voice of piteous
pleading.

“I must.”

“Then listen to me instead. I will tell you.”

Never had his father looked so old and haggard as then. He had seen
enough of what was written there to light horror in his eyes and blanch
his face to a deadly whiteness.

“Tell me then,” he said.

Colin sat down on the edge of his father’s chair.

“It’s a terrible story,” he said, “and I hoped you should never know it.
But it seems inevitable. And remember, father, as I tell you, that
Raymond is dead....”

His voice failed for a moment.

“That means forgiveness, doesn’t it?” he said. “Death is forgiveness;
you see what I mean. It’s--it’s you who have to teach me that; you will
see.”

He collected himself again.

“It was after I came back from Capri in the summer, and after Vi was
engaged to me,” he said, “that what is referred to there took place.
He--poor Raymond--always hated me. He thought I had your love, which
should have been his as well. And then I had Violet’s love, after she
had accepted him for her husband. There was a thought in that which
made it so bitter that--that it poisoned him. He got poisoned; you must
think of it like that. And the thought, Raymond’s poisoned thought, was
this: He knew that Violet had the passion for Stanier which you and I
have. Yet when she was face to face with the marriage to him, she gave
up Stanier. Father dear, it wasn’t my fault that I loved her, you didn’t
think it was when I told you out in Capri? And it wasn’t her fault when
she fell in love with me.”

“No, Colin,” he said. “Love is like that. Go on, my dear.”

Colin spoke with difficulty now.

“Then came a day,” he said, “when a lunatic escaped from that asylum at
Repstow. You had news of it one night, and told Raymond and me. He was a
homicidal fellow, and he got hold of one of your keeper’s guns. Next
morning Raymond went to shoot pigeons, and I bicycled on my motor to
play golf. And then--then, father, we must suppose that the devil
himself came to Raymond. It wasn’t Raymond who planned what Raymond
did.... He expected me to come back along the road from the lodge, and
he--he hid in the bushes at that sharp corner with his gun resting on
the wall, and his plan was to shoot me. It would have been at the
distance of a few yards only.”

Lord Yardley interrupted; his voice was hoarse and nearly inaudible.

“Wait a minute, Colin,” he said. “All this reminds me of something I
have heard, and yet only half heard.”

Colin nodded. “I know,” he said. “I’ll tell that presently.... There was
poor Raymond waiting for me to come round the corner. There was this
madman loose in the park somewhere, and if the--the plan had succeeded,
it would have been supposed that it was the madman who had killed me.
But an accident happened: my bicycle punctured, and I walked back for
the trudge along the ridge of the Old Park.”

Colin choked for a moment.

“I caught the glint of sun on a gun-barrel by the wall at that sharp
corner,” he said, “and I wondered who or what that could be. It could
not be the escaped madman, for they had told me at the lodge that he had
been caught; and then I remembered that Raymond was out shooting
pigeons, and I remembered that Raymond hated me. It occurred to me
definitely then, and I felt sick at the thought, that he was waiting for
me. And then, father, the mere instinct of self-preservation awoke. If
it was Raymond, if I was terribly right, I could not go on like that in
constant fear of my life.... I had to make myself safe.

“I stole down, taking cover behind the oaks, till I got close and then I
saw it was Raymond. I was white with rage, and I was sick at heart. I
had a revolver with me, for you or Vi--you, I think--had persuaded me to
take it out in case I met the wretched madman, and, father, I _had_ met
a wretched madman. I covered him with it, and then I spoke to him. I
told him that if he moved except as I ordered him, I would kill him. He
collapsed; every atom of fight was out of him, and he emptied his gun of
its cartridges and laid it down. And all the time there wasn’t a
cartridge at all in my revolver: I had taken them out and forgotten to
put them back. It was after he had collapsed that I found that out.”

A wan smile, as unlike to Colin’s genial heat of mirth as the moonlight
is to the noonday sun, shivered and trembled on his mouth and vanished
again, leaving it so serious, so tender.

“He confessed,” he said. “But I had to make myself safe. I told him he
must put that confession into writing and sign it, and you and I would
witness it. That was done. I told you--do you remember?--that Raymond
and I had a secret pact, and we wanted your witness to his signature.
That was it; and it is that you hold in your hand now. I sent it to my
bank, Bertram’s, again in self-defence, for I knew that he would not
dare to make any attempt on me, since, if it were successful, however
far from suspicion he seemed to stand, there would come into your hands
the confession that he had attempted to kill me. Look at the envelope,
father. In case of my death, you will read there, it was to be delivered
to you.”

Philip did not need to look.

“Go on, Colin,” he said. “How did it come into Raymond’s possession?”

“I can only conjecture that. But this morning, after poor Ray had gone
out to skate, I wanted a light for my cigarette, and I had no matches. I
drew out something from the waste-paper basket. It was an envelope
directed to Raymond, and on the back was the seal of the bank. His
handwriting, as you know, was exactly like mine, a spider scrawl you
used to call it. I think he must have written to the bank in my name,
asking that what I had deposited there was to be sent to him. He would
never be safe till he had got that. And--and, oh, father, I should never
have been safe when he had got it.”

There was a long silence; Colin’s head was bent on his father’s
shoulder; he lay there quivering, while in Philip’s face the grimness
grew. Presently Colin spoke again:

“You said you had heard, or half heard, some of this,” he said. “I will
remind you. One night at dinner, the night Ray got back from Cambridge,
I made the usual nonsensical fool of myself. I seemed to try to
recollect something funny that had happened on the morning when Ray went
out to shoot pigeons. ‘A man with a gun,’ I said, and you and Vi voted
that I was a bore. But I think Raymond knew why I said it, and went on
with it till you were all sick and tired of me. I made a joke of it, you
see; I could not talk of it to him. I could not be heavy and say, ‘I
forgive you; I wipe it out.’ That would have been horrible for him. The
only plan I could think of was to make a joke of it, hoping he would
understand. I think he did; I think he saw what I meant. But yet he
wanted to be safe. Oh, Lord, how I understand that! How anxious I was to
be safe and not to have to tell you. But I have had to. If you had
listened to me, father, you would have burned that paper. Then no one
would ever have known.” (Of course Colin remembered that Violet knew,
but he went on without a pause:)

“I’m all to pieces to-night,” he said. “I have horrible fears and all
sorts of dreadful things occur to me. That paper is safe nowhere,
father. It wasn’t even safe--poor Ray--at my bank. Supposing Vi, by some
appalling mischance, got to see it. It would poison Raymond’s memory for
her. He did love her, I am sure of that, and though she didn’t love him,
she thinks tenderly and compassionately of him. She is not safe while it
exists. Burn it, father. Just look at it once first, if you want to know
that I have spoken quiet, sober truth, which I did not want to speak, as
you know, and then burn it.”

Philip’s first instinct was to throw it straight into the smouldering
logs. He believed every word Colin had said, but there was justice to be
done to one who could not plead for himself. He was bound to see that
Raymond had acted the story that Colin had told him. Dry-eyed and grim,
he read it from first word to last, and then stood up.

“Here it is,” he said. “You have been scrupulously accurate. I should
like you to see me burn it.”

The paper was damp, and for a little while it steamed above the logs.
Then, with a flap, a flame broke from it. A little black ash clung to
the embers and grew red, then a faint, grey ash ascended and
pirouetted.... Philip’s stern eyes melted, and he turned to his only
son.

“And now I have got to forget,” he said.

That seemed the very word Colin was waiting for.

“That’s easy,” he said. “It’s easy for me, dear father, so it can’t be
difficult, for I’m an awful brute. We shall have to make a pact, you and
I. We must burn what we know out of our hearts, just as you have burned
the evidence of it. It doesn’t exist any more. It was some wretched
dream.”

“Oh, Colin!” said his father, and in those words was all the wonder of
love which cannot credit the beauty, the splendour, that it
contemplates.

       *       *       *       *       *

Colin saw his father to his room, and then walked back down the great
corridor, quenching the lights as he went, for he had told the butler
that no one need sit up. He drew back the curtains of the window at the
head of the stairs as he passed and looked out on to the clearness of
the frosty midnight. Moonlight lay over the whiteness of the gardens and
terraces, but the yew hedge, black and unfrosted, seemed like some
funeral route to be followed to where the ice gleamed with a strange
vividness as if it were the skylight to some illuminated place below.
Then, letting the curtain fall again, he went softly past the head of
the lit passage where his room and Violet’s lay, to put out the light at
the far end of this corridor. In the last room to the left he knew
Raymond was lying, and he went in.

The last toilet had been finished and the body lay on its bed below a
sheet. Candles were burning, as if that which lay there dreaded the
darkness, and on the table by the bed was a great bowl of white hothouse
flowers. Colin had not seen Raymond since that white face looked at him
across the rim of broken ice; there had been disfigurement, he imagined,
and, full of curiosity, he turned back the sheet. There were little
scars on the nose and ears particularly, but nothing appalling, and he
looked long at Raymond’s face. The heavy eyelids were closed, the mouth
pouted sullenly; death had not changed him at all; he hardly looked
asleep, drowsy at the most. Not a ray of pity softened Colin’s smiling
face of triumph.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a month after Raymond’s death, the four of them, representing three
generations of Staniers, remained quietly there. His name was mentioned
less and less among them, for, after Colin’s disclosure to his father,
Philip avoided all speech about him, and, as far as he could, all
thought. Horror came with the thought of him. The most his father could
do was to try to forget him. But for an accident in that matter of a
punctured tyre, Colin would now be lying where Raymond lay, and all
sunshine would have passed from his declining years. He was no more than
sixty-six, but he was old; Colin used to wonder at the swift advance of
old age, like some evening shadow, which lengthened so rapidly. But
beyond the shadow Philip’s sky was full of light. His desire had been
realised, though by tragic ways, and his death, neither dreaded nor
wished-for, would realise it.

There were, however, events in the future which he anticipated with
eagerness; the first was Colin’s coming of age next March. For
generations that festival had been one of high prestige in the family,
and in spite of the recency of Raymond’s death, he meant to celebrate it
with due splendour.

The other was even more intimately longed-for; early in July, Violet
would, if all were well, become a mother; and to see Colin’s son, to
know that the succession would continue, was the dearest hope of his
life. And these two expectations brought back some St. Martin’s summer
of the spirit to him; he began to look forward, as is the way of youth,
instead of dwelling in the past. The lengthening shadow stayed, it even
retreated.... But Colin had an important piece of business to effect
before his father’s death, and he was waiting, without impatience but
watchfully, for an opportunity to set out on it. As usual, he wanted the
suggestion which would give him this opportunity to come, not from
himself, but from others; he would seem then to do what he desired
because it was urged on him.

A week of dark, foggy weather towards the end of February favoured his
plans. Influenza was about, and he had a touch of it, in no way serious,
indeed possibly useful. After a couple of days in his room he reappeared
again, but with all the fire gone out of him. He was silent and
depressed, and saw that his father’s eyes watched him with anxiety.

“Still feeling rather down?” asked Philip one morning, when Colin pushed
an untasted plate away from him at breakfast.

Colin made a tragic face at the window. Nothing could be seen outside,
the fog was opaque and impenetrable.

“That’s not very encouraging, father,” he said. “Not convalescing
weather.”

He appeared to pull himself together. “But there’s nothing to worry
about,” he said. “I should feel depressed in this damp darkness whether
I had had the flue or not.”

“You want the sun,” said Philip.

“Ah, the sun! Is there one? Do show it me.”

Philip walked to the window; thin rain was leaking through the fog. It
certainly was not inspiriting.

“Well, why not go and see it for yourself?” he said. “There’s sun
somewhere. Go off to the Riviera for a fortnight with Violet.”

“Oh, that would be divine if we only could,” said Colin. “But--I daresay
it’s funny of me--I don’t want Vi to go through the sort of journey you
have at this time of year. The trains are crammed; a fellow I know had
to stand all the way from Paris to Marseilles. I shouldn’t like her to
do that. Besides we can’t both leave you.”

“Go alone then. Violet will understand.”

Colin sighed.

“I don’t think I feel much like travelling either,” he said. “I’ll stick
it out, father. I can go to bed again. I think that’s the most
comfortable place. Besides the Riviera is like a monkey-house just now.”

“Go to the villa at Capri then.”

“Ah, don’t talk of it,” said Colin, getting up. “Can’t I see the
stone-pine frying in the sunshine. And the freesias will be out, and the
wall-flowers. Nino, your old boatman’s son, wrote to me the other day.
He said the spring had come, and the vines were budding, and it was
already hot! Hot! I could have cried for envy. Don’t let’s talk of it.”

“But I will talk about it,” said Philip. “I’m master here yet....”

“Father, I don’t like that joke,” said Colin.

“Very well. We’ll leave it out and be serious. I shall talk to Violet,
too.”

“No, no, no!” said Colin without conviction. “Hullo, here is Vi. Please
don’t mention the name of that beloved island again or I shall cry.
Morning, Vi. You’re enough sunshine for anyone.”

Colin strolled out of the room so as to leave the others together, and
presently Philip passed through the long gallery, and was certainly
engaged in telephoning for a while. It was a trunk-call, apparently, for
there was an interval between the ringing up and the subsequent
conversation. All that day neither Philip nor Violet made the least
allusion to Capri, but there was certainly something in the air.... The
last post that night, arriving while they were at cards, brought a
packet for Lord Yardley, which he opened.

“There, that’s the way to treat obstinate fellows like you, Colin,” he
observed, and tossed over to him the book of tickets to Naples and back.

“Father and Violet, you’re brutes,” he said. “I give up.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Colin was ever so easily persuaded by Mr. Cecil to spend a couple of
nights, if not more, in Naples, before he went across to the island, and
he had a youthful, pathetic tale to tell. They had had a terrible time
in England. No doubt Mr. Cecil had seen the notice of his brother’s
death--Mr. Cecil could imagine his father’s grief, and indeed his own
and Violet’s. Kind messages, by the way, from them both: they would none
of them forgive him, if he came to England this year and did not reserve
at least a week for them, either in London or at Stanier.... Then Colin
himself had caught influenza, and his father and wife had insisted on
his going south for a week or two and letting the sun soak into him. But
after that month of secluded mourning at Stanier, it was rather
heavenly--Colin looked like a seraph who had strayed into a sad world,
as he said this--to pass a couple of days in some sort of city where
there were many people, and all gay, some stir of life and distraction
from his own sorrowful thoughts.

“One has to buck up again some time,” said Colin, “and often I longed to
escape from Stanier and just go up to town and dine with some jolly
people, and go to a music-hall, and have supper somewhere, and forget it
all for a time. Shocking of me, I suppose.”

“No, no, I understand. I quite comprehend that, Colin,” said Cecil. “I
beg your pardon: I should say Lord Stanier.”

“Oh, don’t,” said Colin. “I hate the title. It was dear Raymond’s. You
never saw him, I think?”

Mr. Cecil had begun to feel like a family friend. He felt himself a sort
of uncle to this brilliant boy, so shadowed by woe, so eager to escape
out of the shadow. It was his mission, clearly, to aid in this cure,
physical and mental, of sunlight.

“No, never,” said he, “only you and your wife and your father. A
privilege!”

Colin drank the hospitable cocktail that stood at his elbow. His
definite plans were yet in the making, but he began to suspect that
alcohol in various forms would be connected with them. He had the
Stanier head as regards drink; it only seemed to collect and clarify his
wits, and he remembered that Mr. Cecil, on that night which he had spent
alone here, had quickly passed through joviality and perhaps want of
dignity, to bland somnolence.... He got up with an air of briskness and
mutual understanding.

“I’m not going to be a wet-blanket, Mr. Cecil,” he said. “I’ve told you
enough to make you see that I pine for enjoyment again. That little
restaurant where you and I went before--may we dine there again? I want
to see other people enjoying themselves, and I want the sun. Those are
my medicines; be a kind, good doctor to me.”

Mr. Cecil’s treatment, so he congratulated himself, seemed wonderfully
efficacious that evening. Colin cast all sad thoughts behind him, and
between one thing and another, and specially between one drink and
another, it was after twelve o’clock before they returned from their
dinner to Mr. Cecil’s flat again. Even then, a story was but half-told,
and Mr. Cecil drew his keys from his pocket to unlock a very private
drawer where there were photographs about which he now felt sure Colin
would be sympathetic.

“You’ll like them,” he giggled, as he produced these prints. “Help
yourself, Colin. I see they have put out some whisky for us.”

“Oh, Lord, how funny,” said Colin looking at what Mr. Cecil shewed him.
“But I can’t drink unless you do. Say when, Mr. Cecil.”

Mr. Cecil was looking at the next photograph, and Colin took advantage
of his preoccupation. The big bunch of keys by which this private, this
very private, drawer was opened still dangled from the lock.

“And this one,” said Mr. Cecil, applying himself to the liberal dose.

“But what a glorious creature,” said Colin. “May I help myself?”

Mr. Cecil had a confused idea that Colin had finished his first drink
and wanted another. So he finished his own and wanted another.

“Of course, my dear boy,” he said. “Just a night-cap, eh? A drop of
whisky at bed-time, I’ve noticed, makes one sleep all the sounder.”

Colin was on the apex of watchfulness. Photograph after photograph was
handed to him, but long before they came to the end of them the effects
of the night-cap were apparent in Mr. Cecil. The keys still hung from
the lock, and Colin, as he replaced the last of this unblushing series,
got up and stood between this table-drawer and his host.

“And that statuette there?” he said, pointing to the other side of the
room. “Surely we’ve seen a photograph of that?”

Mr. Cecil chuckled again; but the chuckle could hardly emerge from his
sleep-slack mouth.

“Ah, I’ll tell you about that to-morrow,” he said, looking round at it.

Colin, with one of his caressing, boyish movements, put his hand on Mr.
Cecil’s shoulder, and ever so imperceptibly drew him towards the door.

“I feel a different fellow altogether,” he said. “I shall sleep like a
top, and I have enjoyed myself. You ought to give up your consular work
and start a cure for depressed young men. You’d make a fortune.”

They were out in the passage by this time, and it was clear that the
night-cap had banished all thought of his keys from Mr. Cecil’s head. He
saw Colin to his room, lingered a moment to see that he had all he
wanted, and then went to his own.

“A charming young fellow,” he thought; performed a somnambulistic feat
of undressing, and fell into his bed.

Colin heard his door shut, and then in a moment turned off his light,
and, stealthily opening his own door, stood in the entry listening for
any sound. For a minute or two there were faint, muffled noises from his
host’s room, but soon all was still, except for the creaking of his own
shirt-front as he breathed. Then, re-entering his room, he stripped and
put on his pyjamas and soft felt slippers which would be noiseless on
the boards outside. Once more he stood there and waited, and now from
inside Mr. Cecil’s room came sounds rhythmical and reassuring. Enough
light dribbled in through the uncurtained windows to guide his steps
without fear of collision, and he glided into the room they had just
left and felt his way to the table where the keys still dangled. He
unloosed them, grasping them in the flap of his jacket, so that they
should not jingle as he moved, and went down the passage to the door of
the consular offices. The big key for the door was in the lock, and
turned noiselessly.

The archive-room lay to the right, and with the door into the house shut
behind him, he permitted himself the illumination of a match, and passed
through. The shutters were closed, and he lit a candle that stood on the
table for official sealing. There, in the wall, was the locked press
that he so well remembered, and the trial of half-a-dozen of the keys on
the bunch he carried gave him the one he looked for. The date labels
were on the back of the volumes, and he drew out that which comprised
the year he wanted. Quietly he turned over the leaves and found the page
which contained the contract between Rosina Viagi and Philip Lord
Stanier. Even in this one-candle-power light the erasure was visible to
the eye that looked for it. A paper-knife lay among the tools of writing
on the table, and folding the leaf back to its innermost margin he
severed it from the book and thrust it inside the cord of his trousers.

Bright-eyed and breathing quickly with excitement and success, he
replaced the volume and locked the press. He grasped the keys as before,
blew out the candle, quenching the smouldering wick in his fingers, and
went back, locking the door of the office behind him, into the room from
which he had fetched the keys. He replaced them in the drawer of
unblushing photographs and, pausing for a moment at his own door,
listened for the noise that had reassured him before. There it was,
resonant and rhythmical. He closed his door, turned up his light, and
drew the severed page from his trousers. He had been gone, so his watch
told him, not more than five minutes.

“Rosina Viagi to Philip Lord Stanier....” March 1, or March 31, mattered
no more. “I have but cancelled a forgery,” he thought to himself as he
pored over it. It was a pity to be obliged to destroy so ingenious a
work, which at one time gave him the mastership of Stanier, but
Raymond’s death had given it him more completely, and it no longer
served his end, but was only a danger. Yet should he destroy it, or....

His mind went back to the night that he and Violet had passed together
here. How supreme had been his wisdom over that! For supposing, on his
father’s death, that Violet threatened to contest his succession on the
information he had given her to induce her for certain to marry him,
what now would the register show but an excised leaf? In whose interest
had it been to remove that, except Violet’s, for with its disappearance
there vanished, as far as she knew, all record of the marriage. Had she
had an opportunity of doing so? Certainly, for had she not spent a night
here on the return from their honeymoon? Should she be so unwise as to
send her lawyer here to examine the register on the ground that it had
been tampered with, she would be faced with a tampering of an unexpected
kind. The leaf had gone; but how lucky that before its suspicious
disappearance, Colin had copied out the entry of the marriage and had it
certified as correct by the Consul himself. He had it safe, with its
date, March 1. That would be a surprise to poor Violet when she knew it,
and the finger of suspicion, wavering hitherto, would surely point in
one very definite direction.... As for the letter from Rosina to
Salvatore Viagi, of which she would profess knowledge on Colin’s
authority, what did she mean and where was the letter? Uncle Salvatore,
whom Colin would see to-morrow, would be found to know nothing about it.

About the destruction of this page.... Colin fingered his own smooth
throat as he considered that. Supposing Violet seriously and obstinately
threatened to contest the succession? And what if, when the page was
found to be missing, it was discovered in some locked and secret
receptacle of her own? That would be devilish funny.... Colin hoped, he
thought, that it would not come to that. He liked Violet, but she must
be good, she must be wise.

The click of an electric switch and the noise of a step outside sent his
heart thumping in his throat, and next moment he had thrust the page
into his despatch-box and turned the key on it. The step passed his
room, and was no longer audible, and with infinite precaution he turned
the handle, and holding the door just ajar, he listened. It had not gone
the whole length of the passage down to the entry to the consular
offices, and even while he stood there he heard the chink of keys. Then
the step was audible again, and the chink accompanied it. At that
comprehension came to him, confirmed next moment by the repeated click
of the electric switch and the soft closing of his host’s door.

“My luck holds,” thought Colin, and blessed the powers that so
wonderfully protected him. In another minute he was in bed, but even as
sleep rose softly about him, he woke himself with a laugh.

“That’s where I’ll put the leaf from the register,” he thought.
“Priceless! Absolutely priceless!”

It was no news to him when at breakfast next morning Mr. Cecil certified
the accuracy of his interpretation of the step.

“Amazingly careless I was last night,” he said. “I went straight to bed
after we had looked at those photographs, and fell asleep at once.”

“Night-cap,” said Colin. “I did exactly the same.”

“Well, my night-cap fell off,” said Mr. Cecil. “It fell off with a bang.
I hadn’t been to sleep more than a quarter of an hour when I woke with a
start.”

“Some noise?” asked Colin carelessly.

“No. I hadn’t heard anything, but my conscience awoke me, and I
remembered I had left my keys in the lock of that private drawer of
mine. I got out of bed in a fine hurry, for not only was that drawer
unlocked--that would never do, eh?--but on the bunch were keys of
cupboards and locked cases in the Consulate. But there the keys were
just where I had left them. I can’t think how I came to forget them when
I went to bed.”

Colin looked up with an irresistible gaiety of eye and mouth:

“I know,” he said. “You were so busy looking after your patient.... And
you gave me a lot of medicine, Dr. Cecil, wine, liqueurs, cocktails,
whiskies and sodas. I was as sleepy as an owl when I tumbled into bed.
How thirsty it makes one in the morning to be sleepy at night.”

Mr. Cecil broke into a chuckle of laughter.

“Precisely my experience,” he said. “Odd. Now can you amuse yourself
to-day till I’m free again?”

“Not so much as if you were with me,” said Colin. “But I must pay a duty
call on my uncle. I don’t say it will be amusing. Do you know him?
Salvatore Viagi.”

Mr. Cecil had not that happiness, and presently Colin went in search of
the mansion which Salvatore had once alluded to as the Palazzo Viagi.

Leaving nothing to chance that could be covered by design, he had
telegraphed from Rome yesterday to say he would make this visit, and
wanted a private interview with Salvatore. The Palazzo Viagi proved to
be a rather shabby flat in an inconspicuous street, but Salvatore
skipped from his chair with open arms to receive him, and assumed an
expression that was suitable to the late family bereavement and his joy
at seeing Colin.

“_Collino mio!_” he cried. “What a happy morning is this for your poor
uncle, yet, oh, what a terrible blow has fallen on us since last I saw
you! Dear friend, dear nephew, my heart bled for you when I saw the
news! So young, and with such brilliant prospects. Lamentable indeed.
Enough.”

He squeezed Colin’s hand and turned away for a moment to hide his
emotion at the death of one on whom he had never set eyes. He wore an
enormous black tie in token of his grief, but was otherwise as
troubadourial as ever.

“But we must put away sad thoughts,” he continued. “I am all on
tenter-hooks to know what brings you to my humble doors. Not further bad
news: no, not that? Your beloved father is well, I hope. Your beloved
wife also, and your revered grandmother. Yes? Put me out of my
suspense.”

The health of these was not so much an anxiety at this moment to
Salvatore as the desire to know that all was well with the very pleasant
financial assistance which Colin provided. It was easy, in fact, to
guess the real nature of his suspense, and consequently Colin found a
delicate pleasure in prolonging it a little.

“Yes, they’re all well,” he said. “My father bore the blow wonderfully
considering how devoted he was to Raymond. Violet, too, and my
grandmother. You can make your affectionate heart at ease about them
all.”

“Thank God! thank God!” said Salvatore. “I--I got your telegram. I have
made arrangements so that our privacy shall be uninterrupted. I have, in
fact, sent Vittoria and Cecilia to visit friends at Posilippo. Such
reproaches, such entreaties, when they heard their cousin Colin was
expected, but I was adamant.”

“And how are Vittoria and Cecilia?” asked Colin. The troubadour was
almost dancing with impatience.

“They are well, I am glad to say; they have the constitution of
ostriches, or whatever is healthiest in the animal kingdom. But time
presses, no doubt, with you, dear fellow; you will be in a hurry; duties
and pleasure no doubt claim you.”

“No, no,” said Colin. “I am quite at leisure for the day. I am staying
with Mr. Cecil our Consul. He is officially engaged all day, and all the
hours are at our disposal.... So at last I see the home of my mother’s
family. Was it here she lived, Uncle Salvatore?”

“No, in quite another street. My wretched penury drove me here. Even
with your bounty, dear Collino, I can scarcely make the two ends meet.”

Colin looked very grave.

“Indeed, I am very sorry to hear that,” he said.

“Ah! You have come to me with bad news,” exclaimed Salvatore, unable to
check himself any more. “Break it to me quickly. Vittoria....”

At last Colin had pity.

“Let’s come to business, Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “There’s no bad
news, at least if there is you will be making it for yourself. Now, do
you remember two letters of my mother which you once sent me? We had a
talk about them, and I want you to give me your account of them. Can you
describe them to me?”

Salvatore made a tragic gesture and covered his eyes with his hand. The
ludicrous creature made a farce of all he touched.

“They are graven on my heart,” he said. “Deep and bitterly are they
graven there. The first that I received, dated on the seventeenth of
March, told me of the birth of her twins, one named Raymond and
yourself. The second, dated March the thirty-first, announced her
marriage which had taken place that day with your father ...” and he
ground his teeth slightly.

Colin leaned forward to him.

“Uncle Salvatore you are a marvellous actor!” he said. “Why did you
never go on the stage? I can tell you why. You have no memory at all.”

Salvatore gave him a hunted kind of look. Was not his very existence
(and that of Vittoria and Cecilia) dependent on the accuracy of this
recollection?... Was Colin putting him to some sort of test to see if he
would stick to his impression of those letters.

“Dear fellow, those letters and those dates are engraved, as I have
previously assured you, on my heart. Alas! that it should be so....”

A sudden light dawned on him.

“You have come to tell me that I am wrong,” he said. “Is it indeed true
that my memory is at fault?”

“Absolutely with regard to the date of one of those letters,” said
Colin. “The date on that which announced my mother’s marriage was surely
March the first, Uncle Salvatore. You are right about the date of the
other.”

Colin suddenly broke into a shout of laughter. His uncle’s puckered brow
and his effort to recollect what he knew and what he had been told were
marvellous to behold. Presently he recovered himself.

“Seriously, Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “I want you to see if you cannot
recollect that the marriage letter was dated March the first. It is very
important that you should do that; it will be disastrous for you if you
don’t. I just want you to recollect clearly that I am right about it.
The letters will never be produced, for I have destroyed them both....
But surely when you sent me them you thought that it was as I say.
Probably you will never be called upon to swear to your belief, but just
possibly you may. It would be nice if you could recollect that; it would
remove the stain from the honour of your illustrious house, and, also,
parenthetically, from my poor shield.”

Colin paused a moment with legs crossed in an attitude of lazy ease; he
lay back in his low chair and scratched one ankle with the heel of his
shoe.

“Mosquitoes already!” he said, “what troublesome things there are in the
world! Mosquitoes you know, Uncle Salvatore, or want of money for
instance. If I were a scheming, inventive fellow, I should try to
arrange to give a pleasant annuity to mosquitoes on the condition of
their not biting me. If one bit me after that, I should withdraw my
annuity. What nonsense I am talking! It is getting into the sun and the
warmth and your delightful society that makes me foolish and cheerful.
Let us get back to what I was saying. I am sure you thought when you
gave me those dear letters that the date of your adored sister’s
marriage was the first of March. In all seriousness I advise you to
remember that it was so. That’s all; I believe we understand each other.
Vittoria’s future, you know, and all the rest of it. And on my father’s
death, I shall be a very rich man. But memory, what a priceless
possession is that! If you only had a good memory, Uncle Salvatore!...
Persuade me that you have a good memory. Reinstate, as far as you can,
the unblemished honour of the Viagis. Yes, that’s all.”

Colin got up and examined the odious objects that hung on the walls.
There was a picture framed in shells; there was a piece of needlework
framed in sea-weed; there was a chromo-lithograph of something sacred.
All was shabby and awful. A stench of vegetables and the miscellany
called _frutta di mare_ stole in through the windows from the barrows
outside this splendid Palazzo Viagi.

“But the record at the Consulate,” said Salvatore, with Italian
cautiousness. “You told me that though the date there appeared to be the
same as that which I certainly seem to recollect on the letter....”

Colin snapped himself round from an absent inspection of, no doubt,
Vittoria’s needlework.

“But what the deuce has that got to do with you, Uncle Salvatore?” he
said. “I want your recollection of the dates on the letters which we
have been speaking of and of nothing else at all. Do I not see
Vittoria’s handiwork in this beautiful frame of shells? How lucky she
has a set of clever fingers if her father has a bad memory! She will
have herself to support and him as well, will she not? And what do you
know of any register at the Consulate? The noble Viagis would not mix
themselves up with low folk like poor Mr. Cecil. In fact, he told me
that he had not the honour of your acquaintance. Do not give it him. Why
should you know Mr. Cecil? About that letter now....”

“It was certainly my impression,” began Salvatore.

Colin interrupted. “I don’t deal with your impressions,” he said. “Was
not the letter concerning my mother’s marriage dated the first of March?
That’s all; yes or no.”

Salvatore became the complete troubadour again, and his malachite studs
made him forget his black tie. Again he skipped from his chair with open
arms.

“I swear to it,” he said. “The restoration of my adored idol! It has
been a nightmare to me to think.... Ah, it was just that, a bad
dream.... Were not those letters imprinted on my heart?”

Colin evaded his embrace; he was like some monstrous goat in broadcloth.

“That’s all settled then,” he said. “You were only teasing me when you
pretended not to remember. You will be sure not to forget again, won’t
you? Forgetfulness is such a natural failing, but what dreadful
consequences may come of it. Let the thought of them be your nightmare
in the future, Uncle Salvatore. There’ll be pleasant realities instead
if you will only remember, and a pleasant reality is nicer than a bad
dream which comes true.... I’ll be going now, I think....”

“I cannot permit it,” exclaimed Salvatore. “Some wine, some biscuits!”

“Neither, thanks,” said Colin. “I had wine last night, though I can’t
remember the biscuits. Probably there were some. Vittoria and Cecilia!
What an anxiety removed with regard to their future!”

“And your movements, dear Collino?” exclaimed Salvatore. “You go to
Capri?”

Colin thought of the tawdry, bibulous evening that probably awaited him,
and his uncle’s question put a new idea into his head. His innate love
of wickedness made it desirable to him to hurt those who were fond of
him, if their affection could bring him no advantage. Uncle Salvatore,
at any rate, could do nothing more for him, and he was not sure that Mr.
Cecil could. Mr. Cecil had been a wonderful host last night; he had
fulfilled the utmost requirements of his guest in getting sleepy and
drunk, and was there any more use for Mr. Cecil? Drink and photographs
and leerings at the attractive maidens of Naples was a very stupid sort
of indulgence....

“Yes, to-morrow,” he said. “Perhaps even by the afternoon boat to-day.”

“But alone?” said Salvatore. “How gladly would I relieve your solitude.
I would bring Vittoria and Cecilia; how charming a family party.”

Colin felt some flamelike quiver of hatred spread through him. His
nerves vibrated with it; it reached to his toes and fingertips.

“A delightful suggestion,” he said, “for you and Vittoria and whatever
the other one’s name is. But I don’t want any of you, thank you. I
haven’t seen either of them, but I guess what they are like from you.
You’re like--you’re like a mixture of a troubadour and a mountebank, and
the man who cracks the whip at the horses in a circus, Uncle Salvatore.
You’re no good to me any more, but I can be awfully bad for you if you
lose your memory again. You know exactly what I want you to remember,
and you do remember it. You forgot it because I told you to forget it.
Now it has all come back to you, and how nice that is. But if you think
I am going to bore myself with you and Vittoria and the other, you make
a stupendous error. I’m very kind to you, you know; I’m your benefactor
to a considerable extent, so you mustn’t think me unkind when I utterly
refuse to saddle myself with your company. I butter your bread for you,
be content with that. Good-bye. Love to Vittoria!”

       *       *       *       *       *

So that was done, and he strolled back along the sea-front towards the
Consulate. Capri, a little more solid only than a cloud, floated on the
horizon, and with that delightful goal so near, it was miserable to
picture another tiresome crapulous evening with the little red bounder.
Last night, stupid and wearisome though the hours had been, they had
yielded him the prize he sought for, whereas to-night there would be no
prize of any sort in view. Those interminable drinks, those stupid
photographs, why waste time and energy in this second-hand sort of
debauchery? He had been prepared, when he started from England, to spend
with Mr. Cecil as much time as was necessary in order to achieve what
was the main object of his expedition, but that was accomplished now. He
would be so much happier at the villa, where he was, after all, expected
to-day, than in seeing Mr. Cecil get excited and familiar and
photographic and intoxicated.

The whispering stone-pine, the vine-wreathed pergola, the piazza full of
dusk and youth, the steps of belated passengers on the pathway outside
the garden made sweeter music than the voice of an inebriated Consul
with its hints and giggles. Stout, middle-aged people, if there had to
be such in the world, should keep quiet and read their books, and leave
the mysteries and joys of youth to the young.... It was there, in that
cloud that floated on the horizon, that he had first realised himself
and the hand that led him, in the scent-haunted darkness and the
whispering of the night wind; that fed his soul with a nourishment that
Mr. Cecil’s cocktails and photographs were starvingly lacking in. He
would feast there to-night.

A promise to spend another night at the Consulate on his return from
Capri made good his desertion to-day, for, in point of fact, Mr. Cecil
felt considerably off-colour this morning, and rather misdoubted his
capacity for carrying off with any semblance of enjoyment a repetition
of last night. His reproaches and disappointment were clearly
complimentary rather than sincere, and the afternoon boat carried Colin
on it. Once he had made that journey with his father, once with Violet,
but could a wish have brought either of them to his side he would no
more have breathed it than have thrown himself off the boat. He did not
want to be jostled and encumbered by love, or hear its gibberish, and
with eager eyes, revelling in the sense of being alone with his errand
already marvellously accomplished, he watched the mainland recede and
the island draw nearer through the fading twilight.

Lights were springing up along the Marina, and presently there was Nino
alongside in his boat, ready to ferry him ashore. He, with his joyous
paganism, his serene indifference to good or evil, was far closer to
what Colin hungered for than either his father or Violet, but closer
yet, so Colin realised, was the hatred between himself and his own dead
brother....

And then presently there was the garden dusky and fragrant with the
odour of wallflowers and freesias, and the whispering of the warm breeze
from the sea, and the oblong of light from the open door to welcome him.

On the table just within there lay a telegram for him, and with some
vivid presentiment of what it contained, he opened it. His father had
died quite suddenly a few hours ago.

The whisper of the pine grew louder, and the breeze suddenly freshening,
swept in at the door thick with garden scents, with greeting, with
felicitations.




CHAPTER XI


Just a fortnight later Colin was lying in one of the window seats of the
long gallery at Stanier reading through some papers which required his
signature. They had come by the post which Nino had just given him, for
he had brought the boy with him from Capri, with a view to making him
his valet. His own, he said, always looked as if he were listening to a
reading of the ten commandments, and Colin had no use for such a person.
Nino, at any rate, would bring cheerfulness and some touch of southern
gaiety with his shaving-water; besides, no servant approached the
Italian in dexterity and willingness.

And now that the pause of death was over, adjustments, businesses, the
taking up of life again had to begin, and his lawyer was getting things
in shape for his supervision. These particular papers were tedious and
hard to follow and were expressed in that curious legal shibboleth which
makes the unprofessional mind to wander. He tried to attend, but the
effort was like clinging to some slippery edge of ice; he could get no
firm hold of it, and the deep waters kept closing over him. There, below
the terrace, lay the lake where he had seen one such incident happen.

By that he had become heir to all that this fair, shining spring day
shewed him; his father’s death put him in possession, and now this
morning, wherever he turned his eyes, whether on lake or woodland, or
within on picture and carved ceiling, all were his. This stately home,
the light and desire of his eye, with all that it meant in wealth and
position, had passed again into the hands of Colin Stanier, handed down
from generation to generation, ever more prosperous, from his namesake
who had built its enduring walls and founded its splendours.

Of his father’s death there was but little to tell him, when, coming
straight back again from Capri, he had arrived here at the set of a
stormy day. Philip had reeled as he crossed the hall one morning, and
fallen on the hearthrug in front of the Holbein. For half an hour he had
lived, quite unconscious and suffering nothing, then his breathing had
ceased. Until the moment of his stroke, that bursting of some large
blood-vessel on the brain, he had been quite well and cheerful,
rejoicing in the fact that Colin by now had found the sun again, and
already longing for his return.

Violet had been Colin’s informant, and she told him these things with
that air of detachment from him which had characterised her intercourse
with him since Raymond had come home for that last Christmas vacation.
She had watched then with some secret horror dawning in her eyes,
Colin’s incessant torture of his brother. That dismay and darkness which
had spread its shadow on her in the month of their honeymoon, when first
she really began to know Colin, interrupted for a time by their return
home and the high festivals of the autumn, had returned to her then with
a fresh infusion of blackness. Never once had she spoken to him about
his treatment of Raymond, but he was conscious that she watched and
shuddered. It did not seem that her love for him was extinguished; that
horror of hers existed side by side with it; she yearned for his love
even while she shrank from his pitilessness. She feared him, too, not
only for the ruthless iron of him, but for the very charm which had a
power over her more potent yet.

Then came the weeks after Raymond’s death, and Colin thought he saw in
her a waning of her fear of him; that, he reflected, was natural. Some
time, so he read her mind, she knew she would be mistress here in her
own right; it seemed very reasonable that she should gain confidence.

For the last few days, when the wheels of life were now beginning to
turn again, he saw with a comprehending sense of entertainment that
there was something in Violet’s mind: she was trying to bring herself
up to a certain point, and it was not hard to guess what that was. She
was silent and preoccupied, and a dozen times a day she seemed on the
verge of speaking of that which he knew was the subject of her thought.
Till to-day her father and mother and Aunt Hester in becoming mourning
had been with them, now they had gone, and Violet’s restlessness had
become quite ludicrous. She had been in and out of the room half a dozen
times; she had sat down to read the paper, and next moment it had
dropped from her lap and she was staring at the fire again lost in
frowning thought.

Knowing what her communication when it came must be, Colin, from the
very nature of the case could not help her out with it, but he wished
that she would wrestle with and vanquish her hesitation. If it had been
he who in this present juncture had had to speak to Raymond on this
identical subject, how blithely would he have undertaken it. Then,
finally, Violet seemed to make up her mind to take the plunge, and sat
down on the edge of the seat where he lounged. He extended his arm and
put it round her.

“Well, Vi,” he said, “are you finding it hard to settle down? I am, too,
but we’ve got to do it. My dear, Aunt Hester’s little black bonnet! Did
you ever see anything so chic? Roguish; she gets sprightlier every day!”

Violet looked at him gravely.

“There’s something we have to talk about, Colin,” she said, “and we both
know what it is. Will you let me speak for a minute or two without
interrupting me?”

He put his finger on the line to which he had come in this tiresome
document, which his solicitor assured him required his immediate
attention.

“An hour or two, darling; the longer the better,” he said. “What is it?
Are you sure I know? Something nice I hope. Ah, is it about my birthday
perhaps? The last affair that dear father was busy over were plans for
my birthday. Of course I have counter-ordered everything and we must
keep it next year. Well, what is it? I won’t interrupt any more.”

Colin leaned back with his hand still under Violet’s arm, as if to draw
her with him. She bent with him a little way and then disengaged
herself.

“I hate what lies before me,” she said, “and I ask you to believe that I
have struggled with myself. I have tried, Colin, to give the whole thing
up, to let it be yours. But I can’t. I long to be Lady Yardley in my own
right, as you told me I should be on Uncle Philip’s death. All that it
means! I fancy you understand that. But I think I might have given that
up, if it was only myself of whom I had to think. I don’t know; I can’t
be sure.”

She paused, not looking at him. She did not want to know till all was
done how he was taking it. Of course he anticipated it: he knew it must
be, and here was the plain point of it....

“But I haven’t got only myself to think about,” she said. “Before many
months I shall bear you a child; I shall bear you other children after
that, perhaps. I am thinking of them and of you. Since we married I have
learned things about you. You are hard in a way that I did not know was
possible. You have neither love nor compassion. I must defend my
children against you; the only way I can do it is to be supreme myself.
I must hold the reins, not you. I will be good to you, and shall never
cease loving you, I think, but I can’t put myself in your hands, which I
should do, if I did not now use the knowledge which you yourself
conveyed to me. You did that with your eyes open; you asked for and
accepted what your position here will be, and you did it chiefly out of
hatred to Raymond. That was your motive, and it tells on my decision.
You hate more than you love, and I am frightened for my children.

“It is true that when I accepted Raymond, I did it because I should get
Stanier--be mistress here anyhow. But I think--I was wavering--that I
should have thrown him over before I married him and have accepted you,
though I knew that marriage with you forfeited the other. Then you told
me it was otherwise, that in forfeiting Stanier, I found it even more
completely.”

Colin--he had promised not to interrupt--gave no sign of any sort. His
finger still marked the place in this legal document.

“I have sent for my father’s solicitor,” she said, “and they have told
me he is here. But before I see him I wanted to tell you that I shall
instruct him to contest your succession. I shall tell him about the
register in the Consulate at Naples and about your mother’s letters to
your uncle. You said you would let me have them on your father’s death.
Would you mind giving me them now, therefore? He may wish to see them.”

Colin moved ever so slightly, and she for the first time looked at him.
There he lay, with those wide, child-like eyes, and the mouth that
sometimes seemed to her to have kissed her very soul away. He had a
smile for her grave glance; just so had he smiled when torturingly he
tried to remember exactly what had happened in the Old Park on the day
that Raymond shot pigeons. But even while she thought of his relentless,
pursuing glee, the charm of him, the sweet supple youth of him, all fire
and softness, smote on her heart.

“Won’t you go away, till it is all over?” she said. “It will be horrible
for you, Colin, and I don’t want you to suffer. The letters are all I
want of you; I will tell Mr. Markham about the register and he will do
whatever is necessary. Go back to your beloved island; you were robbed
of your stay there. Wait there until all this business, which will be
horrible for you, is done. You can see your dear Mr. Cecil again....”
she added, trying to smile back at him.

“Yes, I might do that,” said Colin thoughtfully. “In fact, I probably
shall. But I must try to take in what you have been saying. I can’t
understand it: you must explain. You referred, for instance, to my
mother’s letters. What letters? I don’t know of any letters of my
mother as being in existence. Still less have I got any. How could I
have? She died when I was but a few weeks old. Do mothers write letters
to the babies at their breasts?”

“The two letters to your uncle,” said she.

Colin planted a levering elbow by his side, and sat up.

“I suppose it is I who am mad,” he said, “because you talk quite quietly
and coherently, and yet I don’t understand a single word of what you
say. Letters from my mother to my uncle? Ah....”

He took her hand again, amending his plan in accordance with his talk
with Salvatore.

“You’re right,” he said. “Uncle Salvatore did once give me two letters
from my mother to him. Little faint things. I destroyed them not so long
ago: one should never keep letters. But you’re right, Vi. Uncle
Salvatore did give me a couple of letters once, but when on earth did I
mention them to you? What a memory you have got! It’s quite true; one
announced my mother’s marriage, the other spoke of the birth of poor
Raymond and me. But what of them? And what--oh, I must be mad--what in
heaven’s name do you mean, when you talk, if I understand you correctly,
about sending somebody out to Naples? The register in the Consulate
there? And my succession? Are they connected? Isn’t it usual for a son
to succeed his father? I’m all at sea--or am I asleep and dreaming?
Pinch me, darling. I want to wake up. What register?”

Some nightmare sense of slipping, slipping, slipping took hold of
Violet.

“The erasure in the register,” she said. “All that you told me.”

Colin swung his legs off the window-seat and got up. There was an
electric bell close at hand and he rang it.

“There’s some plot,” he said, “and I have no idea what it is. I want a
witness with regard to anything further that you wish to say to me.
What’s his name? Your father’s solicitor, I mean. Oh, yes, Markham.
Don’t speak another word to me.”

He turned his back on her and waited till a servant came in.

“Her ladyship wishes to see Mr. Markham,” he said. “Ask Mr. Markham to
come here at once.”

“Colin....” she began.

It was just such a face that he turned on her now as he had given to her
one evening at Capri.

“Not a word,” he said. “Hold your tongue, Violet. You’ll speak
presently.”

Mr. Markham appeared, precise and florid. Colin shook hands with him.

“My wife has a statement to make to you,” he said. “I don’t know what it
is: she has not yet made it. But it concerns me and the succession to my
father’s title and estates. It had therefore better be made to you in my
presence. Please tell Mr. Markham what you were about to tell me,
Violet.”

In dead silence, briefly and clearly, Violet repeated what Colin had
told her on the night that they were engaged. All the time he looked at
her, Mr. Markham would have said, with tenderness and anxiety, and when
she had finished he spoke:

“I hope you will go into this matter without any delay, Mr. Markham,” he
said. “My wife, as I have already told her, is perfectly right in saying
that my uncle--you will need his address--gave me two letters from my
mother to him. She is right also about the subject of those letters. But
she is under a complete delusion about the dates of them. I destroyed
them not so long ago, I am afraid, so the only person who can possibly
settle this is my uncle, to whom I hope you will apply without delay. No
doubt he will have some recollection of them; indeed, he cherished them
for years, and if the dates were as my wife says that I told her they
were, he must have known that my brother and I were illegitimate. So
much for the letters.”

Colin found Violet’s eyes fixed on him; her face, deadly pale, wore the
stillness of stone.

“With regard to my wife’s allegation about the register,” he said. “I
deny that I ever told her any such story. I have this to add: when my
father and I were in Naples last summer, I made, at his request, a copy
of the record of his marriage from the consular register. He thought, I
fancy, that in the event of his death, a certified copy of it, here in
England, might be convenient for the purpose of proving the marriage. I
made that copy myself, and Mr. Cecil, our Consul in Naples, certified it
to be correct. I gave it my lawyer a few days ago, when he was down
here, and it is, of course, open to your inspection.”

Colin paused and let his eyes rest wistfully on Violet.

“My wife, of course, Mr. Markham,” he said, “is under a delusion. But
she has made the allegation, and in justice to me, I think you will
agree that it must be investigated. She supposes--don’t you,
darling?--that there is an erasure in the register at the Consulate
showing that it has been tampered with, and that erasure points to an
attempt on some one’s part, presumably my father’s or my own, to
legitimatise his children. In answer to that I am content for the
present to say that when I made the copy I saw no such erasure, nor did
Mr. Cecil who certified the correctness of it. Mr. Cecil, to whom I will
give you an introduction, no doubt will remember the incident. I am glad
I have got that copy, for if the register proves to have been tampered
with, it may be valuable. My belief is that no such erasure exists. May
I suggest, Mr. Markham, that you or some trustworthy person should start
for Naples at once? You will take the affidavits--is it not--of my uncle
with regard to the letters, and of Mr. Cecil with regard to the
genuineness of the copy of my father’s marriage. You will also inspect
the register. The matter is of the utmost and immediate importance.”

He turned to Violet. “Vi, darling,” he said, “let us agree not to speak
of this again until Mr. Markham has obtained full information about it
all. Now, perhaps, you would like to consult him in private. I will
leave you.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Markham shared Colin’s view as to the urgency and importance of
setting this matter at rest, and left for Naples that evening with due
introductions to Salvatore and the Consul. Colin had a word with him
before he left, and with tenderness and infinite delicacy, spoke of
Violet’s condition. Women had these strange delusions, he believed, at
such times, and the best way of settling them was to prove that they had
no foundation. Mr. Markham, he was afraid, would find that he had made a
fruitless journey, as far as the ostensible reason for it went, but he
had seen for himself how strongly the delusion had taken hold on his
wife, and in that regard he hoped for the best results. In any case the
thing must be settled....

       *       *       *       *       *

Never had the sparkle and sunlight of Colin’s nature been so gay as
during these two days when they waited for the news that Mr. Markham
would send from Naples. It had been agreed that the issues of his errand
should not be spoken of until they declared themselves, and here, to all
appearance, was a young couple, adorably adorned with all the gifts of
Nature and inheritance, with the expectation of the splendour of half a
century’s unclouded days spread in front of them. They had lately passed
through the dark valley of intimate bereavement, but swiftly they were
emerging into the unshadowed light, where, in a few months now, the
glory of motherhood, the pride of fatherhood, awaited them. In two days
from now, as both knew, a disclosure would reach them which must be, one
way or the other, of tremendous import, but for the present, pending
that revelation, presage and conjecture, memory even of that interview
with Mr. Markham, which had sent him across the breadth of Europe, were
banished; they were as children in the last hour of holidays, as lovers
between whom must soon a sword be unsheathed.

They wandered in the woods where in the hot, early spring the daffodils
were punctual, and, “coming before the swallow dares,” took the winds of
March with beauty, and Colin picked her the pale cuckoo-pint which,
intoxicated with nonsense, he told her comes before the cuckoo dares....
They spoke of the friendship of their childhood which had so swiftly
blossomed into love, and of the blossom of their love that was budding
now.

All day the enchantment of their home and their companionship waved its
wand over them, and at night, tired with play, they slept the light
sleep of lovers. Certainly, for one or other of them, there must soon
come a savage awakening, or, more justly, the strangle-hold of
nightmare, but there were a few hours yet before the dreams of
spring-time and youth were murdered.

The third day after Mr. Markham’s departure for Naples was Colin’s
birthday, when he would come of age, and Violet, waking early that
morning, while it was still dark, found herself prey to some crushing
load and presage of disaster, most unpropitious, most unbirthday-like.
For the last two days, these days of waiting for news, they had made for
themselves a little artificial oasis of sunshine and laughter; now some
secret instinct told her that she could linger there no more. To-day,
she felt sure, would come some decisive disclosure, and she dreaded it
with a horror too deep for the plummet of imagination. In that dark hour
before dawn, when the vital forces are at their lowest, she lay hopeless
and helpless.

Colin had denied all knowledge of what he had himself told her; he had
been eager for Mr. Markham to disprove it.... He knew something which
she did not. What that could be she could form no idea at all. At the
worst, Salvatore would confirm his account of those letters, and no such
erasure as Colin had spoken of would be found in the register. Had he,
then, invented this merely to ensure her marrying him; and now that
Raymond’s death had given him mastership at Stanier, was he simply
denying what never existed at all? From what she knew of him now, he was
capable of having done that in order to make her throw over Raymond, but
it was not that which she dreaded. There was something more; a black
curtain seemed to hang before her, and presently some hot blast would
blow it high in the air, and she would see what lay behind it.

It was rapidly growing light, and outside the birds were busy with their
early chirrupings. By the window which last night Colin had opened,
pulling back the curtains, the silver of her Paul Lamerie toilet-set
glimmered with the increasing brightness. Colin lay close to her, with
face turned towards her, fast asleep. His cheek was on his hand, the
other arm, languid and slack, was stretched outside the bedclothes, his
mouth was a little parted, and it seemed to be smiling. And then he
stirred and, leaning his head a little back, his smile broadened and he
laughed in his sleep with open mouth. At that some nameless panic seized
her, and, stopping her ears, she buried her face in the clothes. A child
might laugh so, but was the merriment of his dream that of a child? Or
had some sense that did not sleep reminded him that his twenty-first
birthday was now dawning?

She feigned to be asleep when Nino’s tap came to the door of his
dressing-room, and she heard Colin get up. He spoke to her quietly, but
she did not answer or open her eyes. Then his room door opened and
closed and she was alone.

Colin was already at breakfast when she came down, and apparently his
mood of the last two days had suffered no ungenial change.

“Good morning, darling,” he said. “I tried to say that to you before,
but you were busy sleeping. What shall I give you? There’s some nasty
fish and some tepid bacon.”

He looked at her with some sort of wistful expectancy, as if wondering
if she would remember something, and the thoughts, the wild imaginings
which had made the dawn a plunge into some dark menace, dropped from her
mind like drugged creatures.

“Colin dear, your birthday. What can I give you?” she said, kissing him.
“It was the first thing I thought of when I woke. We’re the same age
again. I was a year ahead of you till this morning.”

“Delicious of you to remember it, Vi,” said he. “Yes, we’re forty-two
years old between us. A great age! Hullo, Nino.”

“_Pella signora_,” said Nino, and gave Violet a telegram.

Colin watched her fingers fumbling at the gummed flap of the envelope,
as if numb and nerveless. Then with a jerk she tore it across and opened
it. Only once before had he seen a living face as white as that, when
fingers were slipping from the ice.

“Read it for me,” she said at length. “I don’t seem to see what it
means.”

Colin took it; it had been sent from Naples late last night, and came
from Mr. Markham. He read:

     “Salvatore Viagi’s account of letters agrees with your husband’s.
     Page containing marriages of year and month in question has been
     cut out of register at Consulate.”

Colin passed the sheet back to Violet. She did not take it from his hand
and he let it drop on to the tablecloth. He leaned a little towards her.

“Vi, you’re magnificent,” he said. “That was a glorious stroke of yours!
That night when you and I stayed at the Consulate. No, darling, don’t
interrupt, let me speak for two or three minutes just as you did a few
mornings ago. Eat your bacon and listen.... I see now the reason of your
pretended reluctance to stay with Mr. Cecil. It put me off the scent
completely at the time.”

“What scent?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“I asked you not to interrupt. There we were on our honeymoon and so
casually, so unthinkingly, I told Mr. Cecil that we would stay with him
on our way home. You objected, but eventually you agreed. Your
reluctance to stay with him, as I say, put me quite off the scent.
Having done that you yielded. Little did I dream then of your superb
project....”

She gazed at him like some bird hypnotised by the snake that coil after
coil draws nearer. Colin, too, drew nearer; he pushed his chair sideways
and leaned towards her, elbows on the table.

“I remember that night so well,” he said. “I was sleeping in the
dressing-room next door to you, and the door was wide, for it was hot. I
heard you get out of bed. I heard your latch creak. Oh, yes, you called
to me first, and I did not answer. I called to you this morning, you
remember, and you did not answer. Sometimes one pretends to be asleep.
Till this minute I knew nothing for certain more of what you did. Now I
know. You were playing for a great stake: I applaud you. You got hold of
Mr. Cecil’s keys (he is careless about them) and tore that leaf out of
the register. You knew that on my father’s death his marriage to my
mother must be proved before Raymond or I (poor Raymond) could succeed,
for, of course, it was common property that he lived with her before
they were married. Giuseppe, his boatman, Uncle Salvatore, half-a-dozen
people, could have told you that. And then, oh! a crowning piece of
genius, you make up a cock-and-bull story about erasure and letters
which force us to have the register examined, and lo! there is no record
of the marriage at all. What is the presumption? That Raymond and I
were, well, an ugly word. But just there fate was unkind to you through
no fault of yours, except that failure is a fault and the most fatal
one. You did not know that I had made a copy of the entry and got it
signed and certified by our charming Mr. Cecil, before the curious
disappearance of that page. And then you made just one terrible mistake.
How could you have done it?”

She turned to him a face of marble, faultlessly chiselled, but wholly
lifeless.

“What mistake did I make?” she said.

“You kept that leaf,” said Colin pityingly. “A record of your triumph, I
suppose, like a cotillon-toy, to dream over when you were mistress
here.”

“Go on,” said she.

Colin came closer yet. “Darling, will you be awfully nice to me,” he
said, “and give me that leaf as a birthday present? It would be a
delightful souvenir. You know where it is.”

She paused. She remembered the tradition of the icy self-repression of
the Lady Yardleys who had preceded her, the frost that fell on them.
From personal knowledge there was her grandmother. That Arctic night was
darkening on her now, and she shivered.

“I don’t know where it is,” she said. “Make up another lie.”

He rose. “You must learn politeness, Violet,” he said. “You must learn
many useful things. I am being very kind to you. You don’t appreciate
that.”

Night had not quite fallen yet.

“Just as you were kind to Raymond,” she said.

He smiled at her. “Yes, the same sort of kindness,” he said.

He spoke to her as to a troublesome child with soft persuasion.

“Now you know where it is quite well, but you want to give me the
trouble of reminding you. You won’t say you’re sorry, or anything of
that sort. Not wise.”

“Spring the trap on me,” she said.

“Very well; you put it in the secret drawer in the stand of your lovely
Lamerie looking-glass, the evening we came back from our honeymoon. You
had left me talking to father, but as soon as you had gone, I followed
you. It was pure chance: I suspected nothing then. But I looked in from
my dressing-room and saw you with the secret drawer open, putting
something into it. I went downstairs again. But I am bound to say that
my curiosity was aroused; perhaps you might have been having a
billet-doux from Nino. So I took a suitable opportunity--I think it was
when you were at church--and satisfied myself about it.”

Colin reviewed this speech, which seemed to come to him impromptu,
except for the one fact that underlay it, which in a few minutes now
would be made manifest to Violet.

“So poor Nino was not my rival,” he said. “That was such a relief, Vi
darling, for I should have had to send him away. But I never really gave
a serious thought to that, for I believed you liked your poor Colin. But
what I found did surprise me. I could not believe that any one so clever
could have been so stupid as to keep the evidence of her cleverness.
When you have been clever, it is wise to destroy the evidence of your
cleverness. Shall we come?”

“But my looking-glass? A secret drawer?” said Violet. “There’s no secret
drawer that I know of.”

“No, no, of course not,” said Colin. “I shall be obliged to show it you.
But wait a minute. I had better have a witness of what I find in the
secret drawer of which you are ignorant. My solicitor is here, but with
this other disclosure, he might urge me to proceed against you for
conspiracy, which I don’t at present intend to do. Your maid, now; no,
you would not like her to know such things about you. She might
blackmail you. How about Nino? He will do no more than understand that a
paper has been found, and that he witnesses to the finding of it. One
has to protect oneself. I had to protect myself against Raymond. May I
ring for Nino?”

At that the Arctic night fell on Violet, and presently the three of them
were in her bedroom. Round the base of the looking-glass ran a repoussé
cable band, and Colin was explaining to her how, if she pressed the stud
at the corner of it, just where the silversmith’s name--L. A. for
Lamerie--was punched in the metal, the side of the base would fly open.
And so it was; she pressed it herself while he stood aside, and within
was the drawer and the folded paper.

Colin took a swift step and plucked the paper out, holding it at arm’s
length.

“There, darling, all your responsibility is over,” he said. “I will keep
it for you now. I will just open it and show you what it is, but do not
come too close or try to snatch it. There! Names of happy couples one
below the other, and in the space next the name the date of their
marriage. Half-way down the page you see the names we are looking for,
Rosina Viagi and Philip Lord Stanier and the date, March the first,
1893.”

He turned to Nino and spoke in Italian.

“And you, Nino,” he said, “you saw me take this paper out of the drawer
of the signora’s looking-glass. And now you see me--give me a big
envelope from the table--you see me put it in this envelope and close
it--it is as if I did a conjuring trick--and I sit down and write on the
envelope for the signora to read. I say that in your presence and in
mine the enclosed was taken from the secret drawer in the looking-glass
where it had been placed for safe custody by Violet Stanier, Countess of
Yardley, and given into the care of her husband, Colin Stanier, Earl of
Yardley. Sign it, Nino, and observe that I sign. I date it also. That’s
all, Nino; you may go.”

Colin laid his hand on Violet’s neck.

“It has been trying for you, dear,” he said. “Rest a little. But your
mind may be at ease now; the anxiety of having that in your possession
is removed, and it will be in safe keeping. I will give it at once to my
lawyer, with instructions that it is to be delivered to no one except to
me in person, and that at my death it is to be destroyed unopened. It
entirely depends on yourself as to whether it ever sees the light
again.... And then, when you are rested, shall we go for one of our
delicious rambles in the park. What’s that line of Wordsworth? ‘This
one day we’ll give to idleness.’ Thank you, darling, for your lovely
birthday present.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Never on Walpurgis Night nor at Black Mass had there ever been so
fervent an adorer to his god as Colin, so satanic a rite as that which
he had performed on this birthday morning. No need was there for him to
make any vow of lip-service, or by any acceptation of the parchment that
was set in the frame of the Holbein, to confirm his allegiance. The
spirit was more than the letter, and in no wanton ecstasy of evil could
he have made a more sacramental dedication of himself. It was not enough
for him to have forged, ever so cunningly, the evidence which, while
Raymond lived, proved his illegitimacy, nor, more cunningly yet, to have
got rid of that evidence when Raymond’s death cleared for him the steps
to the throne. He must in the very flower and felicity of wickedness
preserve that evidence in order to produce it as the handiwork of his
wife. The edifice would have been incomplete otherwise; it would have
lacked that soaring spire of infamy. But now all was done, and on his
birthday came the consecration of the abominable temple of himself to
the spirit he adored.

       *       *       *       *       *

He came to her room that night and sat as he so often did on the edge of
her bed.

“You have been perfect to me to-day, darling,” he said. “You have given
me the happiest birthday. You have been so quiet and serene and
controlled. And have you been happy?”

“Yes, Colin,” said she.

He pulled off his tie and flapped her fingers with the end of it.

“I think I shall go south again,” he said. “I was defrauded of my stay
in Capri owing to my father’s death. What about you? Had you not better
stay quietly at home? Get your father and mother to come down.”

“Just as you please,” said she.

“Let us settle it like that, then. And look at me a minute, Violet.”

She raised her eyes to his.

“Ah, that’s right,” he said. “You’ve had a lesson to-day, darling. It
has tired you, and I will leave you to sleep in one moment. We can’t
have you tired; you must take great care of yourself; eat well, sleep
well, be out a great deal. About that lesson. Take it to heart, Vi.
Never again try to cross my path: it’s much too dangerous. And you’ve no
delusions left about letters and registers, have you? Answer me, dear.”

“No,” said she.

“That’s good. Now I’ll leave you.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The March night was warm and moonlit, and Colin stood by the open window
letting the breeze stream in against his skin, and looked out over
terrace and lake and woodland. All that he had so passionately desired
since first he toddled about this stately home of his race was his, and
nothing now could upset his rights. And how wonderful the process of
arriving at it had been: every step of that way was memorable; fraud,
intrigue, trickery, matchless cruelty, had paved the road, and to-day
the road was finished.

He put out his light, and curled himself up in bed.... Violet’s
first-born must surely be a son, who should learn early and well from
lips that knew what they were saying the sober truth of that which in
the legend wore the habiliment of mediæval superstition. He should learn
how poor Uncle Raymond had allowed himself to love--yes, there was a
time when he had loved mother, and--was not that tiresome for
him--mother happened to prefer father. Well, poor Uncle Raymond had
loved, and that, perhaps, was his undoing, for he had fallen into the
lake, under the ice, and the icy water had smothered him, and the fishes
had nibbled him.... Colin chuckled to himself at the thought of
recounting that.

For a moment, as he looked out on to the night, he had experienced a
dulness and dimness of spirit as of a cloud passing over the bright
circle of the moon at the thought that he had accomplished all that had
so thrillingly occupied him. But at the thought of his fatherhood, the
brightness shone forth again. How fascinating it would be to till and to
sow in that soft soil, to rear the seedlings that he would water and
tend so carefully, to watch them putting forth the buds of poisonous
flowers that swelled and prospered till they burst the sheaths of
childhood and opened wide-petalled to night and day.

His thoughts, drowsy and content, turned towards Violet. Certainly there
had been noticeable in her all day a freezing, a congealment. She was
becoming like those impassive portraits of her predecessors, marble
women out of whose eyes looked some half-hidden horror....

A flash of lightning, very remote, blinked in through the uncurtained
oblong of the window opposite his bed, and a mutter of thunder, as
drowsy as himself, answered it. He slid his hand underneath his cheek,
and fell asleep.


THE END







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