Dennis’sholidays sped in an orgie of delightful amusements. There was the splendour of having a gun of his own, and being allowed to go out with the keepers and his father to blaze at rabbits and the pigeons among the trees in the Old Park. There was the splendour of a motor-bicycle given him by his father, and that of dining downstairs every night. But among all these experiences, there was none so enchanting as his father’s companionship....
Colin had suffered a defeat. He knew it, and he understood why, and learned a larger wisdom from it. He had been altogether too abrupt: excited and possessed himself, he had expected Violet to leap at once, in surrender and panic, over that huge gulf that separated them, when he asked her to come to the chapel with him. He should have known better, he told himself: it was demanding the impossible. The effect had been that, in her vital recoil, she had accomplished a supreme feat in the completion of her self-abandonment to the power of Love. She had made no reservation; she had cast herself on the spread arms of its sustaining force. It was quite consistent, too, that, the moment afterwards, when he had told her that, if she refused to come, he would take Dennis with him, she had said she would come. Love still upheld her and chose for her, and its force, he knew, had drained him of his, so that he no longer cared at that moment whether she came or not, or whether it was worth while even to fetch Dennis.... He could have done that, but it would have been a mere repetition of his original mistake. Dennis would no more leap to the sacrament of evil than Violet. The worship of evil demanded a dedication of the soul....
Dennis must be wooed like some shy maiden.... His boyish heart was affianced to his mother, and its clinging tentacles, vigorous as young shoots of ivy, must be ever so gently detached, so that the boy would scarcely know that any detachment was going on, and laid, full of the sap of spring, round his father’s encircling arm. Until that was done, Dennis would turn but a puzzled and incurious ear to anything of ultimate significance. Colin must abound in wholesome school-boy topics and interests, until the ivy clung close to him, and leaned on him for the support of its growth. Then, but not till then, could the education and enlistment of his instincts begin. It would be rather a bore, Colin thought: he would have to play golf with him, and go out to shoot the silly pigeons, and take him up to London perhaps to see the public-schools competition in racquets. Dennis evidently adored one of the boys who was playing for Eton, his senior by some four years. Colin wondered what sort of a fellow he was....
A dozen guests or so came down next afternoon to spend a week, and before that week was over their numbers were redoubled; they settled on Stanier like a flock of gay and chattering birds. They were at liberty all day to amuse themselves as they liked, tennis and fishing and golf were diversions enough for them all: Violet, admirable hostess as she was, saw that they were occupied, and devoted herself to the dowagery element among them, which liked motoring to points of interest or going to see friends in country-houses in the neighbourhood. There was breakfast and lunch at elastic hours and no full or formal assembly met until dinner-time. Then there was the immemorial ritual of the house reassembling itself: old Lady Yardley in alabaster silence and immobility was the first to arrive in the long gallery, and the guests collected, and when all were there the major-domo opened the door into Colin’s room, and he joined them. Just that one old-fashioned pompous moment was preserved: it was the Stanier use, like grace before meat. As he entered everyone stood up: it was only Colin of course, who next moment would be chattering like the rest of them or shouting with laughter, but just then he was Lord Yardley.
But most of the day, Colin would have had Dennis with him,and often the boy dressed early and spent this last half-hour before dinner with his father. Very likely the two would be playing some game together when the summons of the opening door came, but on the moment Colin would jump up, leaving whatever fascinating pursuit was in progress, and become somebody quite different.
“Now, behave yourself, Dennis, just for a minute,” he would say.... “We’ll go back to our game afterwards, if we can. My move....” That was part of Dennis’s education; just for that minute it was a solemn business to be Lord Yardley, the master of this magnificent inheritance, with its regal splendours. There was no other house in England like it, nor had there been for three centuries past, and it was his father’s now, and would one day be his, and plenteousness would be in its palaces so long as he into whose hands it was given remembered to whom he owed it, and rendered affiance and allegiance.
So grace was said, and the diversions of the evening began. Dennis must not be pompous, but at the back of his mind the knowledge of his potential magnificence must consolidate itself. At dinner there was a place for him by his father, for that was Colin’s order, and Dennis could see the charm that had been poured out on him in their employments together during the day now weave itself for these dazzling ladies. His mother, he knew, had not wanted him to come down to dinner when the house was full, but Colin had begged her, so it conveyed itself to his mind, to allow him, and Dennis secretly felt it to have been rather unkind of her to have tried to make him miss these wonderful hours. Of course there was a threat, veiled and not understood by him, behind this ‘begging,’ something about Dennis having nothing to do, while they were in at dinner, except say his prayers with Mr. Douglas and go to bed. Dennis had not understood that, for he never said his prayers with Mr. Douglas, but his mother consented to his coming down after that.
It was immensely amusing at dinner; there was his father, to begin, with, whose gaiety was irresistible; Dennis had not known how fascinating he could be over nothing at all. Whether he asked a silly riddle, or told an absurd story, or just joined in the general chatter, he cast the magic of mirthover everyone. And all the time old Lady Yardley, silent and aware, would be watching him. Perhaps her neighbours would attempt conversation with her, but they were swiftly defeated. Her business was to look at Colin. Now and then he caught her eye and shouted something encouraging to her, and he would say to her neighbour, “Darling old Granny: I hope she isn’t a nuisance. But she would break her heart if she didn’t come down to dinner. Look, we’re four generations. She and Aunt Hester and Violet and I and Dennis.”
After dinner there were all sorts of amusements: one night there was nothing but cards, with bridge-tables for those who cared about those sedate joys, and old Lady Yardley’s whist-table in the corner by the fire, which was its immemorial situation. Violet, Mr. Douglas and Aunt Hester were immolated there, and for the rest there was a delightful round game called poker. Once again his mother had suggested bed-time for Dennis, but again had Colin ‘begged’ for him.
“Give him half an hour, darling,” he had said. “He’ll get bored with it and won’t touch a card for the rest of his life. Nothing like early associations.... Dennis, your mother says you may sit up for half an hour, so you and I will be partners, and you shall have a small salary, as long as I win.”
“But if you lose. Father?” suggested the cautious Dennis.
“Then I shall sell your new dress-clothes, which I haven’t pinched you for yet, and buy a hurdy-gurdy, and collect coppers in St. James’s Square, till a copper collects me for obstructing your mother’s motor-car on the way to church. You shall be the monkey on the top of it, and go to prison with me.”
“Rather. I say, will you tell me how it goes?”
“You’ll soon see. Where are the counters? Who wants money and how much? Oh, I think unlimited, don’t you, Blanche? We’re all so prudent, and we’re all so poor that we shan’t lose our heads. Let’s all have a hundred pounds. That gives a false air of opulence.”
Lady Blanche Frampton counted her portion with avaricious fingers.
“I haven’t seen so much money for years,” she said. “Colin, you’ve given me ten shillings short.”
“No, I haven’t, dear. Add it up again. Let’s have six at this table and six at the other. Dennis doesn’t count. He’s going to bed in half an hour, if he doesn’t sit up longer.”
“But I want Dennis,” said Lady Blanche. “I’ll give you a pound for Dennis. He’d be a mascot, because you haven’t played before, have you, Dennis? Or is poker part of a modern boy’s education?”
“Yes, of course it is,” said Colin. “The Head holds poker-classes for the sixth form twice a week, and the House Master for those under fourteen. Dennis, attend to me, ‘Ich Deal’ as the Prince of Wales said. Now, there are pairs and two pairs, Dennis, and a flush, and a straight.... Who’s in? Everybody? Then who’s shy, and has not put his mite into the pool? Oh, I believe it’s the dealer.”
An hour later, Dennis, instead of being in bed, had been started by Colin on his own, with a capital of ten pounds. Luck favoured him, and presently it had doubled itself. Then luck went against him, and he lost every farthing of his capital. Twenty pounds ... he was Crœsus, and next moment penniless. The tragedy was quite appalling.
“Hullo, Dennis, cleaned out?” said Colin, observing this. “Poker’s not so entertaining after all.”
Dennis stiffened his rather drooping neck.
“I’ve enjoyed it tremendously,” he said. “Rare good run for my money.”
He gave that boyish cackle.
“And it was yours all the time,” he said. “Sorry, Father, for losing it.”
Colin had watched the tragedy and inwardly applauded. The boy was really plucky about it, and Colin respected pluck. It might be a virtue, but it was not connected with love.... How handsome he looked, with his flushed face and eager eyes, and chin slightly in the air, to show he cared nothing about the loss of that millionaire capital.
“Never mind,” he said. “Now, Dennis, would you rather go to bed with a sovereign in your pocket, or shall I start you again? But if you lose it this time, you won’t get a penny.”
“Oh Lord! I’ll go on,” said Dennis. “Ripping of you, Father.”
Another night there was a theatrical performance givenby three actors of a play that would certainly never see the London footlights, and once again Dennis sat between his father and Blanche Frampton. The surface of the first act scintillated with cynical witty nonsense, light as foam, and the boy bubbled with laughter. But presently his laughter was not so frequent. Something began to shew through the surface, and a soft perpendicular wrinkle engraved itself between Dennis’s eyebrows, and he puzzled out what seemed so clear and vastly entertaining to the rest of the audience.... Yes, soon he thought he had got it, and his brow cleared, but he didn’t laugh: it just did not happen to amuse him.
Colin’s attention had been about equally divided between the stage and the boy. The play was to his mind: it drew with deft distinctness the passion that exists only as a pastime and is a foe rather than a friend of love. The author had expended inimitable wit in its delineation, but before the act was over Colin was recognizing rather than appreciating the corrupt and subtle handling, and his conscious attention was more engaged with the effect it had on Dennis than with the entertainment he himself derived from it. During these last few days he had grown very proud of Dennis. There were his extraordinarily good looks to begin with; and he enjoyed himself enormously, but never boisterously. Everyone tried to spoil him, but no one succeeded: he was ever so friendly and well at ease, and without a trace of self-consciousness. His manners were excellent: there was no impression that he was behaving himself, he was perfectly natural with a winning boyish simplicity. Withal he was not grown-up and green-housed for his years, he was on the contrary extremely young.
Colin put his arm round him as the act closed with a frank emergence of polished indecency.
“Well, old boy, enjoying it?” he asked.
Dennis made one of those confiding boyish movements, fitting his shoulder close under his father’s arm.
“I liked the beginning,” he said. “But—but they’re rather playing the ass, aren’t they?”
Clearly he wasn’t enjoying it. Colin had distinctly hoped he would: that was why he had let him come. It was disappointing, but it was no use boring the boy with theseintriguing animals: the last thing he wanted to do was to bore him.
“Go away then,” he said, “if you don’t care about it. I thought it would amuse you.”
“I expect I’m awfully thick,” said Dennis.
“You are, my dear: you’re thick and fat with that enormous dinner you ate. Did you like your champagne?”
“Rather. I should think I did. May I have some to-morrow?”
“You must ask your mother.”
Dennis laughed.
“I’d much sooner ask you,” he said.
“You’re a wine-bibber. You’ll get gout and delirium tremens, and your mother will say it’s my fault.... Well, what about this next act? Are you going to stop or not?”
“I think I won’t,” said Dennis. “And will you come and say good night?”
“No: you’ll be asleep.”
“I shall keep awake, if you’re coming.”
“All right. Say good night to your mother, and tell her I’ve sent you to bed.”
“But you haven’t,” said Dennis.
“No, but that’ll make her pleased with me.”
Dennis stole out, and Blanche gave a sigh of relief.
“That’s a good thing,” she said. “Dennis was as much out of place here, as I should be playing football with him at Eton.”
“But you’d enjoy that,” said Colin. “You’d love being the one female in a crowd of handsome boys.”
She laughed.
“Yes, my dear, we all detest competition as we get older. But why did you let Dennis come at all? Either he’d wallow in it, which would be extremely bad for him, or he’d be bored with it.”
“I wanted to see which he would do. It would have been very interesting if he’d wallowed in it.”
“You’re no judge of character. You might have known he wouldn’t,” she said.
“Oh, do you think that children of that age have character?Aren’t they more like white sheets of paper, ready to be written on?”
“Colin, you’re an awful father! Fancy wanting this delicious, witty piece of muck to be written in poor Dennis’s first chapter! I’m glad he’s gone. I shall be able to enjoy it with a freer conscience. Oh, observe your Aunt Hester! She looks as if she was receiving early impressions, and finding them wonderfully agreeable. And, oh, look at your much revered grandmother! Did you ever see anyone so monumental?”
There she sat in the centre of the room, in a great chair of rose-coloured Genoese velvet. In this interval between the acts, the cut-glass chandelier over her head had been lit, and the blaze strongly illuminated that alabaster face, motionless, expressionless, inscrutable. And yet what sculptor’s skill could have wrought a countenance from which every sign of feeling or even of consciousness was so expunged? In a face of stone some expression lurks in the sightless eyes and the shadows at the corners of the mouth, and an attentive observer will seem to see the expression change, and discover some fresh hint of what the sculptor divined in his living model and chiselled into the lifeless stone. But here there was no such elasticity of interpretation possible. The closer you looked, the more you were baffled. And yet there was no tranquillity there as on the face of the dead. Lady Yardley’s face was immensely alive, but withwhatwas it alive?
“Talk of white paper....” said Blanche.
Colin laughed.
“Not a bit of it. Covered with strange writing,” he said. “Look!”
He leaned forward.
“Granny dear,” he called.
She turned her head in the direction of his voice. Then came recognition, for the blank eyes brightened and the folded lips uncurled. There was Something there: it was as if Colin had caused characters written in invisible ink to spring up over the blank surface. But they faded again before they could be read, and presently she turned back and looked up the curtain in front of the stage, where the footlights were just rekindled.
“Gracious me: it’s covered with writing!” said Blanche. “But quite unintelligible. What was it about?”
“It was about Stanier,” said Colin. “Stanier is the only thing she is conscious of. You see I’m the incarnation of it to her. And I think she’s beginning to see that Dennis will have something to do with it. But I really don’t believe she knows Violet by sight.”
Supper succeeded the play, and it was not till after one o’clock that Colin went upstairs. Dennis slept in a room close to his father’s: the door was ajar and there was a light within. Colin went in, and there was Dennis propped on pillows and sitting up in bed, but fast asleep. His yellow hair was tumbled over his forehead, his mouth was a little open, shewing the white rim of his lower teeth. Clearly he had sat up in bed in order to keep awake for his father’s coming, but his precautions had failed: sleep heavy and soft had come upon him.
Colin stood looking at him. There, indeed, in the unguardedness of slumber was the white paper. He looked extraordinarily young as he slept; his was the face of a child, still sexless, just a radiant piece of youth, holy in its innocence. Would it not be possible, without really waking him, to put into his soul now unprotected by the guard of its conscious self some suggestion which would, like a fruitful seed, lie buried there and take root and presently push some folded horn of growth above the soil?
Colin turned out the light by the switch near the door, and began to gather force into himself. It was not an effort of concentration at all, rather it was a complete relaxation. He had only to lie open and tranquil, like a dew-pond, and let it flow in from the air, from the night. Drop by drop at first, and then in ampler streams it came flooding in, making a tingling in his blood. More and more he must collect, attracting it with images of evil—how well he knew the process of it—till he was charged and brimming with it, and then he would direct it and turn it on that boyish figure that sat up in bed, not with an effort of will, but making himself, so to speak, just the channel through which it flowed. Throughout he must not think of himself at all, nor even of Dennis; he was no more than the reservoir which was storingwhat Dennis should receive. He must direct and convey that without quite waking the boy.
There was a hitch somewhere, an obstruction. At first he could not conjecture the nature of it. Then he perceived what it was. He was not surrendering himself thoroughly, some rebellious part of his soul, ever so faintly, was protecting Dennis’s beautiful face and slack limbs, and standing between the boy and the force that was seething about him. It would not allow Colin to be the channel, it blocked the way. Was it pride in the boy as he was? Was it pity? Was it something more powerful yet? Whatever it was, it was there.
Colin clutched at it, to wrench it away. He felt it give, and he felt the force foam by it towards Dennis’s bed.
There came from the bed some stir of movement, and a gasping breath. Then Dennis’s voice, muffled and strangling, as if there was a hand on his throat.
“No, no!” it cried. “No—— Ah....”
The boy’s breath came thick and fast.
“What is it? Who’s there?” he screamed. “Father ... Father....”
Colin reached up his hand for the switch and turned on the light. He did not intend to do it; his hand moved as if by some reflex action outside the power of his will, for there was something in that instinctive cry to him which set at work some uncontrollable mechanism within him.
Dennis was half out of bed, his face bathed in perspiration, his eyes wide and terrified. With a leap he sprang to Colin, never pausing to think how it was that he came to be standing there in the dark, and clung close to him.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, with his head buried on Colin’s shoulder. “Thank the Lord! Oh, I say, I’ve been so frightened. Something came into the room: I don’t know what it was, but something hellish. I say, it’s not here now, is it?”
Colin patted his shoulder.
“Why, Dennis, what’s the matter?” he said. “You’ve had a nightmare, that’s all. I came in here a minute ago, and found you asleep with your light burning. I turned it out.”
Dennis wiped his forehead with the back of his hand,raising a troubled face, out of which that sheer terror was beginning to fade.
“Was that all?” he said. “Are you sure there was nothing that came in? O-o-oh, I thought I was going to die of fright.”
Strange was it that so few minutes ago it was through his father’s presence and complicity that the terror had gripped Dennis by the throat, and that now it was that same presence which so quickly restored the boy’s confidence. With his father there he knew that nothing could hurt him, not nightmare, nor phantom, nor the terrors that walk in darkness.
“Get back into bed, old boy,” said Colin. “It’s late, you know. You must go to sleep.”
Dennis unwound his clinging arms and hopped back into bed.
“Oh, do wait two minutes,” he said. “It’s ... it’s awfully rotten of me, but I couldn’t stand to be alone in the dark again this moment. I never had such a horrible nightmare.”
“Well, just two minutes,” said Colin. “And what was the nightmare?”
Dennis pulled his father down till he sat on the edge of the bed, and held his hand.
“I don’t know what it was,” he said, with a shudder. “It felt like the devil. But it won’t come back, will it, when I go to sleep again?”
“Of course it won’t. You’re not frightened now, are you?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. If you promise me it won’t come back, I’m not frightened.”
“Yes, I promise you that,” said Colin.
Colin left a tranquil Dennis curled round in bed like a drowsy puppy when he went to his room a few minutes later. But he was not so tranquil himself. He had not imagined that any panic terror would seize the boy: he had only meant to plant a seed, a suggestion, ever so quietly, leaving it to mature.... Dennis would not come to love evil, so that, when the time for his choice arrived, he would choose ‘wisely and well,’ if it approached him with these strangling assaults of nightmare. Why had it happened like that, he wondered? No boy’s soul, at that age, was of such virgin and stainlesspurity that the breath of evil suffocated him.... More likely that it was his own divided purpose, his own struggle against that obstacle which somehow he had himself set up against the free flowing of the stream he had directed against Dennis. Some force, he felt sure, had reached the sleeping boy from him; that he had intended, and he had felt it flowing through him. But had it reached him in some fierce torrent, raging at having been checked in its passage, and settling on him with claws and teeth? Had it been like some wild beast, which, having been shewn its lawful and desired prey, was held back from it?
He must not approach Dennis again like that, nor seek to hold back the power that he directed. It was no conscious scruple on his part which had blocked the channel: the obstacle seemed to have made itself, and planted itself there. It was of the same nature as the instinct that made his hand search for the switch and turn up the light at Dennis’s appealing cry. He hated the boy to be frightened, quite apart from the fact that Dennis must of his own inclination welcome and cherish the power that was ready to protect him and be his friend even as it had been his father’s friend, and the friend of old Colin. It had come to Dennis to-night as a foe of malignancy and terror: that would never do....
Colin had slipped quickly out of his clothes, and now, before he got into bed, he drew up the blind, and throwing the window wide leaned out into the pregnant spring night. Thick and warm was the darkness, a floor of cloud covered the sky, and there would be rain before morning, the soft, fruitful, windless April rain which sent the sap flooding upwards through stem and branch till it burst into leaf and bud. The young growth needed not pelting showers and fierce suns; it prospered most in these still warm nights.... And Dennis was like these tender, sappy shoots: he must be left to grow quietly yet awhile, not drenched by deluge and speared by violent suns: these would only blast and wither him.... How panic-stricken the boy had been! That psychical onslaught had from its very vehemence been to him a hostile intrusion, not the advent of a protecting power. How instinctively in the shock and terror of it he had called to his father!
There was an irony about that: instinct was a blindignorant force, else Dennis would have shuddered and fled from his father, not clung to him with arms close pressed, and terrified face hidden on his shoulder. And yet (here was the puzzling, the baffling thing), Dennis had been perfectly right. At that cry of his in the dark, Colin had had no thought but the answering instinct to comfort and reassure him. His hand had shot out, independently of his purpose, to flash on the light, and he had given the boy the protection he sought. He couldn’t stand that wail of desolation.
What made him do that? Him, who had jeered and flouted Pamela to her self-destruction without a pang of pity, but only with devilish glee, who had let Nino die of fever with a shrug of his shoulders, who had worshipped evil and drunk of the derided sacrament of love, dedicating himself by rite and symbol, as by the daily conduct of his life, to his soul’s master, how came there that disloyalty to his affiance? How was it that there flourished in the garden of his soul that despicable weed? He had not done it in mere careless pity, as he might have raised a corner of netting to set free a bird that was caught there, nor had he done it with the deliberate reasoning that justified it to his mind afterwards, when he perceived that it would never do to have Dennis regard this directed force as hostile and malignant. He had done it because there was no question of choice: an inward compulsion, not to be resisted, had made him. And thus Dennis’s instinct was right. He called on him and he clung to him, exactly as he would have clung to his mother, because he loved her, and was certain of her love. Colin had given him, too, exactly what his mother would have given him.
There was no other conclusion, and instantly all Colin’s nature was in revolt. It had been an impulse of love that had taken hold of him; he had leaped to the protection of Dennis’s terror and of his innocence. He had denied his allegiance, he had rooted evil out of his heart for that moment, and ... and how curiously sweet it had been to have the boy in his arms like that, and see the terror and trouble vanish from his eyes! There was no woman in the world whom he would have suffered to take Dennis’s place at that clinging moment, no promise of physical rapture and consummation to follow that would have been so desirable as that comforting of Dennis,that sitting by him on his bed for five minutes while he tranquillized and composed himself.
He revolted and rebelled. It was not for this that he had grown proud of Dennis, delighting in his physical beauty, and in the sunshine of his boyish vigour, and in the grace and charm of him. He had enjoyed them with ever increasing zest because of the thought that someday Dennis would be one with him in his allegiance to the Lord of hate. He had seen himself bringing him to the tribunal of his choice, and beholding him choose as he himself, with never a moment of regret, had chosen. Who, in all the world of men with their callow consciences, their bloodless ideals, their cold duties, had prospered as he had done, or whose days succeeded each other in such procession of satisfaction? All that must be Dennis’s: it was his unique birthright to be allowed to choose all that the lust of the eye and the pride of the flesh and the glory of the world could bestow with never an ache of compunction, or a sigh of pity, or a pulse of love.
Colin got up; the rain had begun to hiss on the shrubs below his window. He must have been sitting here for more than an hour, for the chimes in the church a couple of hundred yards away struck three. He had not been thinking consciously or with purpose: it was as if pictures had been spread out in front of him on which he let his eyes rest. Now, as he went across to his bed, there came an intenser focussing. It was well enough that Dennis should come to him as he would have gone to his mother, drawn there by the bonds of his love. Colin had meant to oust Violet from the boy’s heart, and take her place, and, if nothing more at present, Dennis had given him a niche of his own there. He wanted Dennis’s affection and confidence, for it was through them that he would most surely lead him.... It was natural, too, that he himself should delight in the boy’s magnificent youth and abounding charm. But it was not well that his own heart should have gone out to Dennis like that. Whence had come that spark of soft authentic fire? Was it from some remote and infinite conflagration, the warmth and the light of which can penetrate the uttermost darkness?
Colin turned out his light, and curled himself up in bed as he had seen Dennis do.
“That would be a nightmare indeed,” he thought....
All that week and the two that followed Stanier outvied itself—for indeed there was no other competitor—in the splendour of its hospitalities. The great houses of England were now, for the most part, shut up, and the owners, crippled by the ruinous taxation, only lived in small corners of them, like picnicking tourists. Those who were fortunate let them to Americans or Argentines, preferring, like sensible folk, to live in comfort in smaller houses, rather than shiver in palaces they could not afford to warm, and which, after all, were very desolate abodes unless they were full of the life and merriment of guests. They sold their pictures, for who could afford to look at a Reynolds which hung unharvested on the walls, and not reap it into five hundred a year? They sold tapestries and ivories and plate; whatever could be alienated and turned into cash went to Christie’s, and, like some monstrous insatiable reptile, America, gorged already with the gold of Europe, spat a little of it out, and took some Majolica or some Beauvais tapestry instead. Lucky indeed were the impoverished landowners of England to find in their kinsmen across the Atlantic this delightful illusion that living in a castle conveyed culture, and to have somebody else’s family pictures on the walls quickened the ancestral sense, and that to eat off Caroline plate was like a course of history lectures....
Of hospitality as a kindly and sociable virtue, Colin had no opinion at all, that side of it did not concern him. Nor again did he in the least care, in itself, for mere lavish ostentation: he would just as soon, as far as personal inclination went, have had Stanier empty and serene in its established security as swarming with guests, some of whom he scarcely knew by sight, and for none of whom had he any real affection. Nor did the presence of two Royal personages, who had come down for three days directly after Easter, and found that they were able to honour him and Violet by staying for a week, give him any thrill of satisfaction. It was a matter of complete indifference to him whether they came or not, or whether they were so much amused that they stopped longer than they had intended. But what was to the point was that Stanier should carry on its tradition for magnificent entertainment, for that belonged to it, just as its legend did.It might be a deplorable waste of money, yielding an infinitesimal dividend of pleasure on the capital expended, but that could not be helped. Everything that could be procured to give gorgeousness must be there; one night, the Russian ballet danced on the enclosed terrace, and another there was a concert; whatever the diversion was, it was a matter of course that his guests should be thus amused for an hour or two, and it was Stanier that gave thecachetto the entertainment more than the artists.
When Stanier wasen fêteit was not to be supposed that the guests should be asked to spend the evening in polite or even impolite conversation, or in making words out of words. They might do so if they liked, if they wearied of that there was the concert or the ballet. But every evening (for this was just as much a part of Stanier as the rest) there was old Lady Yardley’s whist-table by the fire in the long gallery, and whoever was there, she had her two rubbers of whist. This was the Stanier use, and the presence of all the crowned heads in the world would not be suffered to interfere with it. One night Violet and a couple of guests played with her, another night Colin took his place there. That happened to be on the night of the Russian ballet, and, as the rubbers were unusually long, the other entertainment had to wait. When they were over, Colin, without explanation, escorted one of his Royal guests to the front row, and Violet the other. He rather enjoyed that: it was an object-lesson for Dennis to shew him that at Stanier the sovereignty of the house took precedence of anything and anyone else. He did not call Dennis’s attention to it, but he let Dennis see. And on Sunday, of course, Colin read the lessons at morning service.
All this week, too, and with what infinite address, the education of Dennis went on. Even the mistake that Colin had fallen into, in thinking that the direct force could be brought to bear upon him as he slept, in such a way that he would not be startled at it, had turned out not so badly, for that night Dennis had leaped to him to seek protection in love, and certainly the boy was fonder of him than ever. He did not want Dennis’s love in itself, any more than he had wanted Pamela’s or Violet’s, but he saw now into what an admirable weapon for his own use that love could be forged. Love should bethe goad, fashioned by Dennis himself, with which, when the time was ripe, Colin would drive him where he would. Already Dennis would sooner please his father than please himself: if his father gave him, by way of test, some rather irksome duty of hospitality to perform towards his guests the boy would obey him, not grudgingly at all but with that alacrity and joy which is Love’s obedience.... But it was no use forcing him to that of which his natural instincts warned him: “Let the young fruit ripen,” thought Colin. In similar preparation, it was good that Dennis should see what the prosperity of Stanier connoted, and what its lordship implied. Dennis was by no means the sort of boy whom mere splendour dazzled, but he must be impressed by the greatness of that to which this magnificence was just a whim, a flick of the fingers to summon diversion for a fortnight of Easter recess. Dennis was enjoying it vastly, and without doubt it was dawning on him that some day he would be in his father’s place, and if this sort of thing amused him, it was his to evoke, or if he had a mind for anything else, that would be his also. On the last night of the party, when all would disperse next morning, Colin meant to call his attention to that, and, very carefully, to the contract on which it depended. He knew now that Dennis would not leap to it, as he himself, at that age, would have done, but, so he reflected, the existence of Raymond, his elder twin, had even then schooled him in hate. Dennis had had no such schooling and incentive....
But this was not all that that night had revealed. It had revealed in himself a tenderness altogether alien to him. Even though he had been in the act of loosing on the boy the force which was to befriend him, his mere physical distress had sufficed to make him abandon that, and give him the protection he sought. All this week that memory had lain in his mind, and, below the occupations of the busy days, he had impatiently considered it, cavilling at his own faint-heartedness. Probably, certainly indeed, he had done wisely: the power with which he had sought to surround Dennis must come to him, not in this nightmare guise, but as a friendly and protecting influence; and to have continued then directing it on him would have been a great mistake. It might evenhave done some mental or spiritual hurt to the boy, for his whole nature had been up in arms to resist it, and who knew what deadly struggle might not have resulted? For the force which he had turned on him was no pretty toy-like drawing-room mesmerism, you could not play with it and try psychical experiments. It was a thing deadly and potent. Even when it was not resisted, but welcomed and embraced, its passion could manifest itself in disturbing and terrible ways, and Colin shuddered to think of Dennis in the grip of it in such manner as he had before now seen Vincenzo possessed when he served at the rites in the chapel. And Dennis had not yielded to it, he had struggled and fought.... But that, and Colin knew it, had not been the primary reason for his abandoning that midnight assault. The primary and instinctive reason had been that Dennis called to him with the insistent and compelling voice of love.... Strange, indeed, that he should have hearkened to it, for the voice of love was most unmusical in his ears, and made not melody but exasperating discord. Just so had it been with him when he came unperceived, on the day of his return home, into the gallery, and found Dennis and his mother there, happy and content for no reason except that they were together. At that moment (how quick Violet had been to notice it!) he had envied them, though he knew precisely what the ground of their happiness was.
Love and he had nothing to do with each other. He did not desire to have any commerce with love, either in giving or receiving. He had chosen, and the reward of his choice was that he had everything else, as long as his life lasted, but that. He had always hated love, and never would he consciously or deliberately make terms with it. But it was as if some shadowy semblance of it in the shape of Dennis had come silently and burglariously up to his well-guarded house of hate, and opened the sash of some unbolted window. He wanted Dennis’s love, because, as he had seen, that would be a useful weapon, but Dennis must not gain entrance to him....
He must make his house more secure. He had been careless, not seeing to its safety. Not once since he had returned home had he been to the chapel or strengthened himself in hisallegiance by sign or symbol. He remembered the glee with which he had built it, the glee with which he had found the book of wondrous blasphemies, and knew that the edge and keenness of his devotion was blunted. Was it this remissness which had allowed the wraith of Dennis to slip open the window-sash, or was it that this soft assault on his heart had caused the remissness? Of course during these last two weeks it had been almost impossible to attend these rites, but, as soon as the house was empty, he would make amends, with the intention of the abhorrence of love in his heart. At midnight now, the hour at which chiefly he used to love to attend the impious celebration, some entertainment was in progress, and he could not leave his guests, and, unlocking the door in his private study which communicated with the corridor, move along it past those infamous pictures with which it was decorated to the chapel. The altar with its black cloth would be blazing with lights, and presently Father Douglas robed only in that magnificent Italian cope would enter from his lodging followed by his server, tossing fresh clouds of incense into the air.
He must resist this stealthy menace of winged love. He must spread nets and lay traps for it, and, when it lay unresisting in his hand, squeeze it with strangling fingers till it ceased to flutter.
A fancy-dressball had been arranged for the last night. There were already some forty guests in the house, who, as Colin said, would form “a sort of nucleus,” and a special train was coming down from town arriving at ten and going back at three in the morning, and invitations had been sent to the neighbourhood for twenty miles round, with the hope that ladies and gentlemen would be Elizabethan, but begging the ladies not to be Elizabeth. Dozens of Elizabeths, he thought, of all shapes and sizes with crumpled ruffs and jewels off crackers were bewildering, and you collided with the Queen with improbable frequency. Instead Violet was to be the sole Elizabeth present, and Dennis was to appear as her young Colin in attendance.
Colin came into the wife’s room in a wonderfully good humour that morning to talk over the manner of their appearance. For several days he had scarcely had a word with her.
“I think we won’t stand by the door as host and hostess,” he said, “and shake hands. One has to say to everyone how wonderful and charming they look, and guess who they are. And then they have to say how wonderful and charming we look and guess who we are and the entrance gets blocked.”
“Oh, isn’t it rather rude not to receive guests?” she said.
“Not a bit. It’s perfectly proper swank. In fact, I don’t want you and Dennis to appear till the special has arrived and everyone is in the ballroom. The Royals will be on their dais at the end of the room, and the rest shall be marshalled round the walls, and you and Dennis and I will march up the wholelength of the room. And then we go straight into the Royal Quadrille. I’ve told them.”
“Very well,” said she. “But what about you? I don’t even know who you’re to be yet. You’ve always represented old Colin, at fancy-dress here, but you can’t if Dennis does.”
He laughed.
“Admirably reasoned,” he said. “Too many Colins would spoil the broth, like too many Queens. But I’m going to complete the group just a little way behind Dennis. Merely Mephistopheles: but he had something to do with it. Strictly Elizabethan too, though belonging to other ages as well.”
“Oh, Colin, that’s rather grim,” she said. “Why produce the family skeleton?”
“Well, it’s the skeleton on which the family has grown fat. Of course everybody thinks the legend is mediæval bunkum, but they’ll play up. Dennis will be an adorable Colin: I made him try his things on just now, and if the real one looked as enchanting as he I don’t wonder the Queen lost her aged heart. And as you’ve lost yours to Dennis, we shall have a real parallel. As for you, darling, you’ll be an anachronism but that can’t be helped. Elizabeth was an ugly old woman at the Colin epoch, and we can’t call you that exactly.”
She was silent a moment.
“I wonder if you’ll be vexed at what I want to say,” she said.
“How can I tell?” he said. “I don’t suppose I shall care much.”
“It’s this then. Please don’t get yourself up like Mephistopheles. It’s for Dennis’s sake I ask it. I want him to be among those who think the legend—what did you call it?—mediæval bunkum. Colin, do leave him to think that.”
He sat there looking at her with that brilliant sunny smile, that alertness of perpetual youth.
“Well, a fancy-dress ball is mediæval bunkum, isn’t it?” he said.
“But you aren’t,” said she. “All you do, all you are, has a tremendous reality for Dennis. Everything you do is perfect in his eyes.”
“That’s good. That’s the right filial attitude. Are you as right conjugally, darling? Besides, what do you believeabout the legend? Shouldn’t a child learn its faith at its mother’s knee? The legend is fairly real to you, isn’t it?”
There was the spirit that mocked. But when Dennis was concerned she was not afraid of him.
“There are many things I believe which I don’t want Dennis to believe,” she said.
He laughed.
“What an easy riddle!” he said. “You don’t want Dennis to believe that his father is an unmitigated devil. That’s the answer, so don’t trouble to say it isn’t. And as I believe in the legend too, it would be nice to have our only boy one with us. That’s the root of domestic bliss.”
“I can’t argue with you,” she said. “You mock at whatever I say.”
“But who asked you to argue?” said Colin. “I’m sure I didn’t. But as we’re on the subject I may as well say that my whole object in making a black guy of myself is to help Dennis to realize the legend. He has heard it, as everybody else has, but it’s nothing to him. Though a fancy-dress ball is only a sort of play, a play makes a thing more real to you. Dennis will be Colin in the play, and he’ll look round and see his dear Mephistopheles at his elbow.”
Colin paused to light a cigarette, and spoke with gathering impatience.
“He’s got to believe it sometime,” he said. “We all begin, you and I did, by thinking it just a picturesque old story, but somehow it grows into us, or we into it.”
“It’s the curse of the house,” said Violet suddenly. “And it’s believing in it that makes it real. Oh, Colin, let Dennis grow up without it becoming real to him! Then it will stop, it and all the horror and the misery it brings. You’re quite right: it grows into us. Don’t let it grow into him.”
He got up.
“Do you know, I really haven’t got time for an ethical discussion just now,” he said. “And why should I disinherit Dennis? That’s what it comes to. You may call the legend the curse of the house if you like, but it’s been big with blessings. You’ve got no sense of gratitude, darling. No family pride.”
“Pride!” said she.
“Yes, I said ‘pride,’ didn’t I? I wish you wouldn’t make yourself into a damned echo, and force me to be cross. We won’t discuss Dennis’s future any more: we’ll confine ourselves to the present. You and Dennis and I will come in as I have indicated. I want you to wear every jewel that you can cram on. Chiefly pearls, I think, but also that sort of large red plaster of rubies. Stomacher, isn’t it? But you mustn’t wear the Stanier sapphire. I want that for Dennis. You might give it me now, if you’ll open your safe.”
“But that’s all wrong,” she said. “The Queen never gave that to Colin till just before her death.”
“My dear, you needn’t tell me that. I suppose I know the history of Colin as well as you. But I want Dennis to wear it. I want it; that’s all.”
Colin had recovered his temper: he was all serenity and sun again.
“There’s something queer about the stone,” he said. “It never looks well on you: it loses half its light, whereas on me it blazes like a blue arc lamp. Everyone round looks blue, as in the Grotto at Capri. And I want to see what effect he has on it....”
Who could be as devilish as Colin, she found herself thinking, but who had such charm? One moment he would sneer and mock, the next he had dropped all that and without intention and certainly without effort he was like a boy again, making plans and having secrets with her. Often during this last week or two that enchanting side of him had popped out unawares. One moment his mouth would be full of veiled insults and scarcely veiled hostilities, the next, as now, he would be eager and pleasant.... More particularly had she observed this when he was with Dennis; though she knew that in his heart he had contemplated the boy’s initiation into all that was evil, she could not believe that it was not from his heart that, every now and then, there came up the impulse that made that soft light in his eye, that tenderness on his mouth. Could it be possible that he was getting to love Dennis? After all there had been that moment’s jealousy (of that she made no doubt) when he had seen Dennis and her together. Was that the grain of mustard-seed? Poor little seed, if it was: it would find poisoned soil and corrosive moisture for its growth.
“I’ll get you the stone,” she said. “It’s in the safe in my bedroom wall.”
Colin perched himself on the arm of the sofa where she sat.
“Oh, there’s no hurry,” he said. “Let’s have five minutes’ chat. I haven’t seen you all this week, and I haven’t told you what an incomparable hostess you’ve been. I always recognize merit, Vi, and you’ve been most meritorious. The sapphire now: there is something queer about that stone. Pearls always shine with you like moons, but the sapphire gets as stale as a piece of mildew. It’s because it was old Colin’s, I believe. His getting it seems to me his most remarkable achievement. He can never have been more hugely inspired than when he made that stingy old woman give it him. All else that she had given him, his Garter, his estates, cost her nothing. But fancy getting her to part with something that was hers, and that was worth a ransom. And you can’t look at it without seeing there’s something in it you don’t understand.”
She laughed.
“You speak as if there was something magical about it,” she said.
“Well, why shouldn’t there be? I’m not such a shallow ass as not to believe in the supernatural. And the whole point of the supernatural is that you can’t understand it. If you could understand it, it wouldn’t be supernatural.”
Suddenly he appeared to forget about the stone altogether.
“I want to ask you something,” he said. “Did Dennis by any chance tell you that about a week ago he had the most awful nightmare?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me exactly what he said.”
Violet thought a moment.
“He had gone up to bed, he told me, and, as he expected you to come and say good night to him, he didn’t put his light out, but propped himself up with pillows to keep awake. He thinks that he must have gone to sleep, though he didn’t know that he had. Then a great blackness, he said, came into the room and tried to force its way into him. He struggled and struggled, and called out to you. And then he found he wasawake and you were there, and comforted him. He said you were angelic to him.”
Colin turned quickly to her.
“What do you make of it?” he said.
“I make of it what Dennis made of it. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”
She looked at him, and saw there was something more. The notion somehow branded itself into her mind like the touch of a hot iron. There was the conviction, incredible and terrifying, that Colin had something more to do with that visitation than to bring comfort. But what?
“Tell me your side of it,” she said.
Colin’s face changed: the impatience and mockery came back.
“Good Lord, how can I have a side?” he said. “Wasn’t I right to comfort him? Or should I have scolded him for being frightened by a dream? Has he forgotten about it, do you think? I mean, does he accept it just as a nightmare and me as an angel?”
“I’m not certain. He was most frightfully scared. But it will wear off if he doesn’t have another nightmare. You remain an angel anyhow: that doesn’t wear off.”
Still that irrational conviction of some complicity of his—how insane it appeared when she faced it—beset her.
“Colin, he mustn’t have another nightmare,” she said. “Terror is so frightfully bad for a child.”
She saw Colin’s fingers beginning to twitch. When he was getting angry or impatient they made the strangest little movements as if some electric current was jerking them.
“I’m responsible for Dennis’s dreams then, am I?” he said. “Why else did you tell me he mustn’t have any more nightmares? What’s the meaning of that? Come, out with it; you did mean something.”
She could not state what after all was the most fantastical notion. It would not bear examination: it was just as much a nightmare as Dennis’s.
“I mean that you have the most extraordinary control over Dennis,” she said, “his whole soul is devoted to you. Waking or sleeping he would obey you. You know that as well as I do.”
Surely Colin had never been in so strange a weather-cock of a humour as he was this morning. At one moment he was ready to fly out at her with unbridled irritation, the next he was all sweetness and amiability. He put his arm round her.
“Vi, you and I are like Norns,” he said. “Aren’t they Norns who, in some dreary Wagner opera, sit in the dusk, and toss the shuttles of destiny to and fro? Dennis is flying from hand to hand between you and me. You catch him and weave, and then you toss him back to me, and I weave. There ought to be three Norns, though, oughtn’t there? Who is the third? I don’t believe we shall agree on the third.”
All her unfathomable distrust of him came flooding back on her. His purring content seemed to her like that of some lithe savage beast, basking in the sun, who next minute might deal some shattering lightning-blow with unsheathed claws. Who could trust him? Who had ever trusted him that did not repent (unless already it was too late to repent) of such a madness? And yet she believed that he was getting fond of Dennis, with a quality of affection not proud only and paternal, but personal. She made up her mind to stake on it.
“I don’t think we should disagree,” she said. “We both love him——”
He pulled his arm away from her, and, looking at him, she fancied she saw for a moment behind the brightness of his eye that dull red glow, not human, which you can see in the eye of a dog. One glimpse she got and no more, for he rose.
“I think we’ve bleated long enough on thevox humanastop,” he said. “Or shall we sing a short hymn before you give me the sapphire?”
She went into the bedroom next door and opened the safe that was built into the wall, and returned to him with the shagreen case. He took it from her without a word and left her.
The special train of saloon carriages, that brought the guests from London and ran without a stop into Rye, was on time, and by half-past ten the last of them had passed into the ballroom. The request that they should be as Elizabethan as possible was faithfully carried out; never was there such a one-period galaxy. No house but Stanier could have inducedpeople to pour out into the country for a few hours, but how they flocked to Stanier! For the last fortnight this Easter fête had been the talk of the town; and no-one of the amused and amusing world, who was so fortunate as to be bidden to the final and crowning splendour, could afford to miss it, and no-one who was bidden could afford to fall below the standard of its magnificence. Glittering and bravely attired was the throng, a joy to behold in these dingy days when never were women so garish and slovenly, and when men all wear the same ill-inspired livery. Every great jewel-chest in London that night must have been void of its finest treasures, for here was their gorgeous rendezvous.
No host or hostess was there to receive the guests; they flowed in, jewelled and kaleidoscopic, and wondered where Lady Yardley was and where Colin was, and collected and dispersed again in shimmering groups over the floor. Some of those staying in the house appeared to know something about their absence, but could give no further information beyond that the hosts would be sure to be here presently and, acting as marshals and masters of ceremony, gradually began clearing the centre of the room. Back and back towards the walls they enticed the crowd, and soon it was seen that this was some intentional manœuvre to secure an empty floor. In a gallery above the door into the hall the band was stationed still silent; on a dais at the other end were seated the two Royal guests who had been here all the week, with others who had come down to-night. Then, at some signal given from the far end of the room, a dozen chandeliers, hitherto unlit, blazed out, and the hosts arrived.
Violet advanced some few yards into the room, with her retinue close behind her. She was dressed in a gown of dark blue velvet, thickly embroidered in gold with the Tudor rose. The tall white collar of her ruff was edged with diamonds, and round her neck were the eight full rows of great pearls, the first three close round her throat, and five others, each longer than the last, falling in loops over her bosom, the fifth being clipped to the stomacher of large rubies, and round her waist was a girdle of the same stones. On her head she wore a net of diamonds that pressed closely down on her golden hair, so that it rose in soft resilient cushions through the meshes of it.Just behind her came Dennis, in trunk of white velvet and white silk hose. Over his shoulders, leaving his arms free, was a short cloak of dark red velvet; this was buckled at the neck with the great sapphire, and on his head was a white cap with an aigrette of diamonds. In his low-heeled rosetted shoes he was a shade shorter than his mother, and his face, flushed with excitement, was grave with the desire to acquit himself worthily. A pace behind him came Colin, a foil to the sparkle and splendour of the others, for from head to foot, trunk and hose and cloak, he was in black. Black too was his cap, with one red feather in it. He was a little the taller of the three, and, standing just behind Dennis’s white gleam, he seemed to encompass the boy with the protection of his blackness, and round the room as they stood there ran whispers of “The Legend: The Legend.” But people looked not so much at the jewels and the clothes and the gorgeous colouring, but at those three faces, all cast in one peerless mould, gold haired and blue eyed, the difference of age and sex quite overcome by the amazing likeness between the three of them. Here indeed was Stanier itself: the splendour of its jewels, its wealth, its palaces, its story shrunk into insignificance in the marvel of its incarnations.
They paused there a moment, and then Violet gave three deep curtsies, the first towards the dais in front, and then to right and left, to the rows of guests marshalled by the walls. There was Stanier in the person of its hostess saluting its visitors; Dennis and Colin stood quite still meantime, for they were but in attendance. As she moved forward again, the full blare of the band shattered the silence, and the welcome was over.
With the departure of the special train back to town the ball came to an end, and no attempt was made to carry it on to a dwindling and fatigued conclusion. It ended, as it had begun and continued, in a blaze, and after it there was no flickering of expiring flames and fading of its glow. Last of all Colin and Dennis came upstairs together.
Colin had been watching the boy all night. Dennis had suffered a short experience of high self-consciousness when he entered the crowded expectant room, but after that it had vanished altogether, and he had merely enjoyed himselfimmensely, without being in the least aware who he was. The radiance of his youth shone round him like a fire, no-one could look at him without a smile of pleasure that the world held such perfection of boyhood. All that Colin saw, and again and again his heart leaped to think that this was the son of his loins: no sculptor could have made so fair an image, no painter have found on his palette such colouring. Four generations of them were there that night, old Lady Yardley sat like some white alabaster statue of deathless age on the dais, then came Aunt Hester with a wreath round her head (Perdita or Ophelia, he supposed), outrageously flirting with every man she could get hold of, and succeeding, to do her justice, in getting hold of an incredible number, then came himself and Violet, and last the flower of them all.... The guests had had no greeting on their arrival, but the three stood at the ballroom door as they passed out, and it was with Dennis that they lingered. Frank and friendly but a little shy again at this multiplicity of smiles and greetings for himself, he stood there, erect and boyish, the bonniest figure in all that assemblage of beauty.
He tucked his hand into his father’s arm as they went up the broad stairs from the empty hall.
“Oh, Father, wasn’t it fun?” he said. “I wish we could have a fancy-dress ball every night. When shall we have another?”
“To-morrow, if we have one every night,” said Colin.
Dennis cackled with laughter.
“It’ll only be you and Mother and great-granny and me, won’t it, to-morrow? I say, are you coming to talk to me while I undress?”
“And after that may I go to bed?” said Colin.
“Oh, if you like I’ll come and talk to you, while you go to bed,” said he. “I’m not an atom tired.”
Colin looked at that radiant face, still fresh as morning, and for the first time he consciously noticed the sapphire that buckled his cloak. That gave the measure of his absorption in Dennis himself, for he had given him the stone to wear with a definite object. And now he saw how stale and unluminous it was. No blaze of light burned within it, itsbrilliance was dim compared to what it could be: it was splendid still, but no more than a shadow of its real self. He knew his own idea about the stone to be quite fantastic, but he felt a sudden spasm of anger with the boy that that great blue cornflower was so faded. Yet he felt he might have known it....
“No, I’ll see you to bed,” he said. “Here we are; turn up the light.”
The room flashed into brightness and Colin closed the door.
“Undo your cloak, Dennis,” he said, “and give me the sapphire.”
The boy stood in the full light of the lamp above the dressing-table, fumbling with it.
“Rather,” he said. “It’s like a bit of ice on my throat. I almost took it off during the ball, but I supposed it wasn’t a thing to leave about.... Oh, I can’t unfasten it: do it for me, Father.”
He held his head up, smiling into his father’s eyes; and moved by some uncontrollable impulse Colin kissed that smooth cheek. The boy was so splendidly handsome, of so winning a charm. “And after all,” as Colin thought to himself, as if in excuse of the affection of that caress, “he’s my own son....” Then he raised his hands to undo the fastening at which Dennis fumbled, and even as he touched it, light seemed to dawn somewhere deep in the heart of the sapphire.
“There you are,” he said, “there’s the ice-bag removed. It doesn’t look much like ice, does it?”
Dennis shook off his cloak.
“O-oh! It doesn’t look very icy,” he said. “Have I really been wearing that all evening? Why, it’s alive, it’s burning! Or is it only that it looks so bright against your black clothes? You ought to have worn it. Tell me about it: you said you would!”
Colin looked at the rays that danced in that blue furnace that he held. It was scarcely possible to believe that this awakened lustre was purely an imagined effect, and not imagined surely was the counsel that its splendour gave him to tell Dennis a little more about his birthright.
“Well, it was the last thing and the most splendid that the Queen ever gave old Colin,” he said. “He speaks of it in his Memoirs, which I’ll shew you——”
“Oh do; shew me them to-morrow. I should love to see them. The old rip! Sorry, Father: about the sapphire.”
Colin let his eyes rest again on the great stone, and then looked straight at Dennis.
“He says that his Lord and Benefactor caused him so mightily to please the Queen that she gave it him,” he said. “You must learn to love it, Dennis, for he calls it the finest fruit of his bargain.”
Dennis looked puzzled.
“His bargain?” he asked. “Oh, the legend. Then do you think he really believed in the legend?”
“Certainly he did, and wise he was too. You shall read how Satan came to him one night as he slept.”
Dennis had taken off his tunic, and stood there stock-still, his face now more definitely troubled.
“Like some horrible nightmare?” he asked.
Colin came a step nearer, black as the pit and fair of face, with the stone gleaming in his hand.
“A nightmare? Good heavens, no!” he said. “Like some wonderful dream, if you like, but it was no dream. It was gloriously real. You can’t understand yet what the bargain meant, for you’re only a boy, and there’s nothing that you really want which you don’t get. But imagine what it would be, when you grew up, to have every wish gratified.... The bargain holds not for old Colin alone but for all those who come after, you and me for instance, who by their own choice claim their right to share in it. The legend is no fairy tale, Dennis; it is sober, serious truth. It was a miracle, if you like, but the evidence for it is conclusive.”
The trouble deepened in Dennis’s eyes. When Colin first spoke of that visitor coming to his ancestor as he slept, there had started unbidden into his mind the remembrance of that nightmare from which his father had rescued him. And now again he felt that invasion pressing on him, and though it was surely his father who stood there, yet somehow his black robes and his red-feathered cap and that blue-blazing gift of Satan in his hand seemed to obscure him. Itwas as if some shadow had passed over him, and behind that shadow he was changing.
“Oh, don’t, Father!” he cried. “I hate it! It’s awfully stupid of me, but I do hate it. Please!”
There was no doubt that the boy was vaguely and yet deeply frightened: his voice rose shrilly, his hands were trembling. And once again Colin recoiled from the idea of Dennis’s terror. When he had directed the force towards him before, in the defencelessness of his sleep, it was easily intelligible that the invasion of it should alarm him, but now, speaking to him in his own person, with the authority that Dennis’s love for him gave, he had hoped that the boy would at any rate sip at the cup which he held out to him. But still he was troubled and alarmed, he was not mature enough yet to guess the lure of dreams and of desires. And yet that was not all that made Colin pause: if that had been all, he would have persisted, he would have induced Dennis somehow to taste the sweetness of evil, he would have pricked his arm to let just one drop of blood flow in which, so to speak, he could begin to write his name to the everlasting bond and bargain, to initial it at least. Dennis might be a little frightened, but the beginning would have been made.
What withheld him was not the wickedness of his intention, nor yet the unwisdom of frightening Dennis with it, but his own damnable squirming weakness in minding the boy’s terror. It was cowardly, it was even apostate of him to recoil from that, but he wavered before it, he lacked firmness and indifference. He must get rid of that scruple and the hateful tenderness that prompted it.
There Dennis stood, his bare arms stretched out to him, half-imploring, it seemed, and yet, by that same action, keeping him off. The throat-apple in the soft neck moved up and down in his agitation, as if struggling to keep his panting breath steady, and the red flower of his mouth quivered.
The great sapphire slipped from Colin’s hand and rolled on the floor. He let it lie there, unheeding or unknowing, and came close to Dennis, putting his arm round his neck. “Dennis, my dear,” he said, “what’s the matter? What ails you? Why, you’re having the nightmare again while you’re awake! This will never do.”
The boy’s attitude of defence, of keeping his father away from him, collapsed suddenly. He threw out his arms and caught his father round the shoulders.