“I think that will hurt you most,” he said.
There was no use in saying anything further, and she moved towards the door.
“I am going back to London to-morrow,” he said.
Violet heard nothing more from him during the days which intervened before Dennis’s arrival. As he knew the date of that, she expected him to come back that day, but there was still no sign from him, and she and the boy had to themselves these few days, before her mother and Aunt Hester came. Out of doors there was windless and sunny wintry weather: every night there was a frost, and the bare trees were decked with the whiteness of it, which lay thick over the lawns and grassy slopes till the sun resolved it. Below on the marsh there was spread a mantle of dense mist through which the rays could not penetrate, and when, on the third day, a breeze from the east folded it up, the whole plain from edge to edge was dazzling with the glistening fall of the hoar frost. On the lake, the lids of ice shooting out from the shallow water had already roofed the whole surface, with a promise of skating imminent, but this wind, with a veiled sun, though chillier by sensation than the briskness of the still, clear frost, melted the frozen floor, and brought up flocks of grey clouds, and that evening the snowfall began. For two days and nights, beneath a bitter wind, it fell without intermission, lying in thick drifts in hollow places, and giving the yew-hedge an unbroken coat of white: then, as the wind dropped, and the snow ceased, the sky cleared again, and a great frost, black and of exceeding sharpness, set in. Once more, and this time very swiftly, the chilled waters of the lake were congealed and the surface was dark like steel, and transparent as the water over which it lay. Two days before Christmas it already bore at the shallow end, and Dennis frenziedly began hunting for skates.
“There must be some, Mother,” he said, “if one only looks in the right place. You find them with broken golf-clubs and old croquet-mallets....” and he ran off to explore suitable regions.
There had been no further talk between them about his relations with his father. Every morning he asked if there was any news of his coming, but there had been none. Violet had suggested his getting some Eton friend to stay with him, and then only distantly, Dennis had answered with, it seemed to her, a recollection of last holidays. “Oh, I think I won’t, thanks,” he had said. “Father may come any day, mayn’t he?”.... Apart from that he had said nothing whatever, and to Violet every day of Colin’s absence was so much remission. Old Lady Yardley seemed to accept the boy as being Colin back from school again.... And all these days seemed to Violet like hours of calm, lit with a pale cold sunshine, which preceded some inconjecturable tempest.
Aunt Hester and her mother arrived that afternoon, and Aunt Hester instantly had her snow-boots unpacked, and went for a walk, while the light still lingered.
“I hate seeing the windows shuttered and the lamps lit, my dear,” she said. “It makes me feel that I am being put in a box, and I’m too near my latter end to waste my time now over boxes. But if you get a bit of a walk while they’re shutting up, the box seems pleasant enough when you get back to it. And I’ll be ready for my tea, too.”
Such Esquimaux practices, of course, made no appeal to Violet’s mother. She brought down from her room her Patience cards, and an altar-frontal which she was embroidering for Winchester Cathedral, and hoped to have ready by Easter. Of the two, for immediate employment, she settled on the altar-frontal, as she had a vague idea that she and Violet must have a great deal to say to each other, and it was impossible to talk while you were playing Patience, or, rather, it was impossible to play Patience if you talked. She had grown a shade greyer, a shade more ladylike, a shade more inaccessible. But she always did everything slowly.
“Dennis will be quite a big boy,” she observed. “I have not seen him since last year at this time.”
“Yes, he’s grown a great deal,” said Violet.... Could it be possible that Colin was not coming for Christmas?
“And Colin is well?” asked Mrs. Stanier.
“I hope so. He has been away for the last fortnight, and the wretch has never even said when he will be coming back.”
“It is a pity that he should miss Dennis’s holidays,” said Mrs. Stanier.
Violet had no sympathetic contribution to give to this sentiment, and her mother moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. They got dry and a little cracked in this very cold weather.
“I have brought a wreath for your father’s grave,” she said. “I made it entirely from flowers in my greenhouse. My gardener is very clever at getting me plenty of flowers throughout the winter.”
Violet rummaged her mind for some ardent rejoinder.
“That is always nice,” she said. “Flowers are a guarantee that spring will come. But the poor things will wither very quickly when you put them out in this icy air.”
“Yes, dear. But I should feel very remiss and hard if I did not always put a wreath on your father’s grave whenever I come to Stanier. I daresay it will not be for many more years that I shall do so.”
Violet laughed.
“Dear Mother, what nonsense,” she said. “Why, there’s my grandmother who was married before you were born: she plays her whist still, and walks in to dinner.”
“Her mind I suppose is now completely gone?” said Mrs. Stanier. “She did not recognize me at all last time I was here. And occasionally she mentioned your father as if he was with me still.”
The arrival of tea interrupted this lugubrious interchange of thought, followed by Dennis, triumphantly clashing a pair of skates, which were screwed on to boots, the leather of which was perished and wrinkled like withered funguses.
“They’re old enough,” he said, “but they’re all right. I’m going to put them on to my boots, so that they’ll be ready in the morning. I found them in a cupboard upstairs.”
Instantly it occurred to Violet whose those skates had been. For more than a dozen years now there had been no skating at Stanier, probably the last person who had skated on the lake was Raymond.... Almost certainly the skates were his, for they were workmanlike blades, screwed on to theboots, whereas the rest of them used to shoe themselves with strange antiquated wooden concerns, or skates with keys and catches which invariably came undone. But Raymond had spent a winter’s vacation once at Davos, and Violet remembered his laughing at her, when one of her skates unclasped itself and slithered across the ice.... Somehow, with fantastic disquiet, she hated the idea of Dennis using Raymond’s skates.
“Aren’t they too big for you?” she asked.
“Lord, yes,” said Dennis, “but they’re better than nothing. Hefty skates, too. I wonder whose they were?”
Mrs. Stanier put a small saccharine lozenge into her tea.
“The lake has not borne for many years,” she said. “I think we used to have harder winters once than we have now. The last year it bore ... ah, dear me, yes.”
The return of Aunt Hester from her tramp in the snow was a welcome advent. She professed herself vastly refreshed, and had a very pretty colour in her checks.
“Nothing like a frosty air for giving you an appetite,” she said, “and they say that the microbes all get killed in it, though for my part I never believed much in microbes. Everything’s microbes nowadays: if you’ve got a pain in your stomach from eating what you shouldn’t it’s a microbe, if you covet your neighbour’s wife they’ll make it out to be a microbe soon. Give me a good strong cup of tea, Violet dear: I hope it’s been standing. What’s that you’re working at, Margaret? A shawl for cold evenings?”
Mrs. Stanier drew in her breath with a sound of shocked sipping.
“No, Hester, it’s an altar-cloth for Winchester Cathedral,” she said.
“Well, I couldn’t see the pattern, and it looked to me like a shawl. And when’s that wretch Colin coming back? I thought I should find him here.”
“I’ve not heard a word from him,” said Violet. “I’ve been expecting him for some days.”
“Well, I shall have to flirt with Dennis till he comes,” said Aunt Hester.
“Rather,” said Dennis. “There’s the telephone ringing, Mother. Shall I go and see what it is?”
Dennis ran into the hall, leaving the skates which he was transferring to his own boots on the floor.
“Yes, who is it?” he asked.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Hullo, is that Dennis?” asked his father’s voice.
“Yes, Father.”
“Well, tell them to send down to the station to meet the 7.30 train. I’m coming by it.”
“Oh, ripping,” said Dennis. “I’ll tell them.”
Colin rang off again without another word.
Colin’s train was very late: he did not get up to the house till they were half way through dinner, and came in as he was. He was clearly in the best of spirits.
“Don’t get up, anybody,” he said. “Violet darling, how goes it? And Aunt Hester and Aunt Margaret. And Granny. An awful journey; they always cut off the heating apparatus when it’s more than usually cold.”
Dennis waited for a greeting, but there was none for him: Colin ignored him altogether, as if he had not been present; to all the others, no doubt in intentional contrast, he was extraordinarily cordial. But as he spoke now to one and now to another, with affection for Violet, with extravagant compliments for Aunt Hester, and sympathetic enquiries about the Girls’ Friendly Society for Aunt Margaret, who was a pillar of that admirable institution, Violet saw his eyes, as they flitted by Dennis, pause on the boy’s face from time to time with a look that peeped out like a lizard from a crevice and whisked in again. And then for the first time he spoke to him.
“Any tipsy school-friends coming this Christmas, Dennis?” he said. “My word, that was a beauty you treated us to in the summer.”
Dennis raised his eyes to his father’s, and even as they met, Violet saw that look pop out again, instantly sheathing itself in the iron of Colin’s voice.
“No, Father, I haven’t asked anybody these holidays,” he said quietly.
Colin paid no more attention to him, till the women got up to leave the table. Then he watched him to see what Dennis would do.
Dennis stood by the door he had opened, not knowing whether his father expected him to go with the others or stay. But his hesitation was enough.
“Perhaps you’d kindly shut that door,” he said. “You can leave yourself on whichever side of it you like.”
Dennis shut it, and came back to the table.
“Looking out for a drink, I suppose?” said Colin, rising. “Ring the bell when you’ve finished, I’m going into the other room.”
Dennis went to the door again to open it for his father and followed him.
Colin sat up late that night, thinking of Dennis and of little else. He thought of him, as he always did now, as his survivor and supplanter, who, in all probability, would rule at Stanier for twenty years after he was dead, unless he himself lingered on like his own grandmother till all the fires of life had grown cold. Then possibly he might out-live his son, and possibly there might be enough heat in his grey embers to chuckle at that, for he would sooner be the last of his race than be succeeded by Dennis. Who would come after him, he wondered, in that case. He knew there was a small homestead in the marsh, just outside his property, where there lived a farmer called Stanier, with a brood of scarecrow children. Perhaps they would establish their claim, and there would be a romantic sequel to these centuries of direct line and ever-increasing prosperity. But he would sooner have them reigning here than Dennis.
Of course there was another chance: the leaven of evil might yet work in the boy—for he was young still—and turn sour that sweet milk of love with which he dripped. But he meant to make no more experiments with regard to that. Dennis must come to it because he loved evil: he would only struggle against it and abhor it if he was forced to it. Besides, Colin knew he could not do it: he could bully and ill-treat him, striving to kill love in him, but the ultimate direct initiative was beyond him. He could wish him dead, he could wish him corrupted, but he could not take on himself the actual sacrifice. It was his own fault, he had allowed Dennis to enter his heart, where no-one else had ever been, and now, with all the vigour of his evil soul, it was as much as he coulddo to stop his advance. But never would he allow that love was stronger than he: he would fight it till it lay bleeding and helpless at his feet.
It had grown cold in his room: he fancied there was a draught from the door which led into the corridor to the now disused chapel. But, as he tried the door and found it shut, the notion came to him to visit the chapel where he had not been since last Easter, and he fetched the key and turned up the lights. It would be Christmas Eve to-morrow, he remembered; last year they had held a midnight mass there, and the sacring bell had rung simultaneously with the peal from the church near by. It was bitter to-night in the chapel, and he shivered as he stood there. In the air there still hung the faint stale odour of incense, and faint, too, and hardly to be recalled, was the thrill of satisfied evil with which once he had knelt there. There was the step off which Vincenzo had rolled when the slavering ecstasy in his face was struck from it by that mortal terror. How horrible to think that perhaps he had seen God at that moment! Poor Vincenzo!
Colin had a sneering smile at the thought of that. God did not come to you unless you permitted it, for otherwise there was no such thing as free-will. Vincenzo must have had a weak spot somewhere: he must have loved somebody for his own sake, and that perhaps gave God a permit. He must be careful then....
He went back into the silent house, and upstairs. He saw that Dennis’s door was ajar, and that there was a light within.
Morning brought no such deplorable disaster as a thaw, and soon after breakfast Dennis came into the gallery with his skates in his hand. Colin was by the fire, looking at the paper, and glanced up at him.
“Skating?” he said.
“Yes, the lake bears,” said Dennis.
Colin looked at the rusty skates on the boots he was carrying.
“Where did you get those?” he asked.
“I found them in a cupboard,” said Dennis. “They were on a pair of very old boots, so I took them off and put them on mine.”
It flashed through Colin’s mind that they were Raymond’s. He had meant to stop Dennis skating just for the mere sake of spoiling his enjoyment: now he rather liked the idea of his doing so.
“Well, don’t go out through here,” he said, “and let in the cold air. Go round by the hall. Perhaps I’ll come presently.”
Colin put the paper down. On just such a morning as this, clear and sunny after a night’s hard frost, had Raymond gone down alone to the lake, and he himself had strolled after him, in time to see the white face already blue-lipped rise out of a hole in the broken ice, where the lake lay deepest, and sink again before his eyes, as he leaned on the parapet by the sluice and asked him if it was not rather cold. The ice was always treacherous near where the stream came out of the lake.... Some inward certainty took possession of him. Preposterous though such a coincidence would be, he found himself believing that Dennis was now gaily tramping over the hard frozen snow to his death, and that he would be there to see it. Out of the window he saw the boy running down the white slopes beyond the yew-hedge, with his great coat on that reached nearly to his heels, and his breath smoking in the bitter air.... Three minutes later he was walking down over those same slopes.
Dennis had gone into the bathing-shed to put on his skates; presently when he got warm he would divest himself of his great-coat, but it was too cold for that yet: besides it would make a fall the softer. He tried the edge of the lake, and found it firm as a floor beneath him, and soon he extended the field of his manœuvres.
Colin heard the ring of his skates as he came down to the lake; he did not go to the bathing-shed, but kept straight on along the retaining bank, hidden from Dennis’s view by the rhododendrons. He felt it was all going to happen as he expected: the chain of coincidence was already strong, for was not Dennis alone on the virgin ice, just as Raymond had been, and was he not (marvellous that!) wearing the skates which Raymond had worn? There would be no more struggles to hate the boy, no more looking on him as his survivor and supplanter. Things did not go well with those whocrossed Colin, and who shuddered with nightmare at the approach of his protector.
There came a sudden crack, sharp as a rifle-shot, from the lake, and he heard a splash. The open gap in the rhododendron bushes, where the sluice-gate stood, was now only a few yards in front of him, and he ran there. Ten or twelve yards from the bank, where the water was deepest, there was a jagged hole in the ice, and Dennis’s cap floated on the bubbling water. Next moment he rose: only just his face thrown back appeared above the water, for his coat heavily weighted him. His eyes were staring with fright, his mouth already blue with cold. He saw Colin.
“Father!” he called.
And now in a moment Colin would be rid of his supplanter. It had happened without plan or effort of his, and he had only got to stop still for a few seconds and fill his mind with images of hate. He hated Dennis, and smiled to himself as he repeated that, while he met the boy’s eyes.
Dennis still looked at him: he had clutched a rim of the broken ice in one hand, but it broke as he tried to raise himself, and, still struggling, his head sank a little lower in the water that now covered his chin and mouth. And then with a flood that bore all opposition way, the knowledge burst on Colin that he loved him, and already perhaps it was too late.... He knew well, too, that it was risking his own life to jump into that deep water, paralyzingly cold, and swim out to him, and he knew that life was sweet, and he believed that death would be to him the open door through which he must go into the outer darkness of damnation. But swiftly he tore off his coat, for his arms would have to be strong for the two of them.
“Hold on, old boy,” he shouted. “We’ll have you out in a jiffy. Don’t be frightened.”
And those were sweet words to Dennis, and sweeter yet to him who spoke them.
Colin vaulted over the parapet of the sluice breaking another hole in the ice, and before he had come to the surface was striking out for the boy. He did not know whether the water was hot or cold; all that he was conscious of was the stark necessity of reaching Dennis. Before he got to him the boy’s head had disappeared, and plunging downwards he dived after him. There he was, still struggling but slowly sinking, and Colin caught hold first of his hair, then got an arm round him, and looking upwards saw the glint of the sun on the open water. Furiously kicking downwards he rose to the surface, pulling Dennis with him. But the boy’s thick coat was a terrible drag and got heavier every moment as the water soaked into it, and, few yards as they had to go, he thought for a moment that they would never reach the shore.
“Kick out for all you’re worth,” he panted. “We’ve got to get there. It’s just a few yards, Dennis.”
At last a rhododendron branch growing out over the water came within reach, and he caught hold of it. This brought him to the edge of the unbroken ice again, and, letting go of Dennis for a moment, he brought his elbow down full on to it, and broke another yard of passage. Then Dennis came within reach of further branches and felt the steep sides of the retaining bank beneath his feet. Next minute they had dragged themselves out of the water.
Colin turned to the boy, his teeth chattering with cold, and, now that Dennis was safe, his heart was hot with the tide of hate, momentarily driven back, but now flowing swiftly.
“You damned little idiot,” he said. “I suppose your plan was to drown me.”
A revulsion of feeling not less than that which seized Colin drove over the boy. All the time that they had been struggling in the water, with that strong arm upholding him, his heart had sung with the thought that his father had risked his life to save him, and now bitter as the icy water itself were his first words to him.
“Take off that coat of yours and run,” said Colin. “After all my trouble you needn’t stand here and freeze.”
Colin was now the more exhausted of the two, and after they had trotted some fifty yards together, Dennis staggering and hobbling in his skated boots, he had to stop.
“I can’t run any more,” he said. “Go on.”
He was terribly white of face, and his breath came in short panting sobs.
“That’s likely,” said Dennis. “Here, catch hold of me, Father. Give me your hand.”
Colin’s spirit rebelled, but the flesh was weak, and he let Dennis tuck his arm in his, and pound away up the hill. The boy’s vigour and young blood had reasserted themselves, the colour came back to his cheeks, while the elder man, after his frantic struggle for them both, was growing every moment more exhausted. But presently they came to the level paving of the terrace, and Violet from within saw them pass a window, and rushed to the door to open it. Colin was now near collapse, but between them they lifted him into the warmth.
“Ring the bell, Dennis,” she said. “What has happened?”
“I was drowning,” said Dennis, “and he saved me.”
A few hours in bed encircled with hot water-bottles and blankets soon restored Dennis, but the cold had taken a much firmer grip over his father. For several days, without ever being dangerously ill, he was in danger of so being, for his vitality, which had always been so serene and vigorous, failed to recuperate him, and repel the effects of that icy struggle and its sequel of exhaustion. Never before in his life had he known a day’s sickness: now it seemed as if the spring of his vital force was drained. He made but little resistance; he let himself lie passively there while nurses and doctors fought for him. But all the time, as he lay there, and so slowly recovered his strength, a struggle more grim than that to which others could minister had laid hold on him. The exuberant vitality of his love of hate had suffered a shock to which that of his chilled and exhausted physical frame was not comparable. That vitality, never before seriously threatened, but always bubbling with energy, had collapsed at the moment when he vaulted over the sluice and crashed into the ice on his way to save Dennis. He, who loved life with every fibre of his being, and with every fibre of his being hated love, knew well enough that he risked his life and betrayed his vow of hate, when he did that. A moment before he had been smiling at this wonderful coincidence which would rid him of a survivor and supplanter, even as in identical manner, and at this same spot, he had been rid of that elder twin of his who stood between him and the lordship he coveted. And then came the humiliating collapse of his hate, before this assault of love.
And now as he lay here hour after hour of sunny wintry days and fitful sleep, it was not so much that he thought all this over, as that it was presented to him from outside, like a picture on the wall, which too was painted within his eyelids, so that when he closed them the images were still there. He saw himself, risking everything for Dennis’s sake, not because Dennis was his son, for that for many weeks now had been a solid ground of hatred, but because he loved the boy. With whatever incredulity he tried to counter that, it always slipped under his guard and stabbed him. He was forced to admit it to himself for the wound it made bled, but instinctively he covered it from others even as from Dennis himself, to whom, the moment after the danger was over, he had addressed those bitter and railing words, which came hot and fluent from the instinct of his soul. But still the flickering fire of hate, doused for that moment with deep and icy water, was alive, and day after day he refused to see the boy and Violet. And though, as his bodily strength returned, that fire burned more bravely, there was always present the knowledge that he had betrayed the Lord and Benefactor who all his life had done such great things for him. Was it in revenge for that betrayal that he had physically collapsed like this? Was it a warning that those whose souls were dedicated to evil had better not have commerce with love?
There was but a day left out of Dennis’s holidays when Colin came downstairs for the first time. He had debated with himself whether to keep himself withdrawn till the boy had gone, but this would deprive him of the opportunity of testifying that he still hated him. He must put himself right.... And all the time, for other reasons than these, he knew he wanted to see Dennis. Not even to himself would he admit that, but in some closed cell the knowledge lurked.
Aunt Hester and Mrs. Stanier had gone: there were only Dennis and Violet at lunch when he came in. Neither had seen him for these two weeks, nor had they any clue as to his attitude towards them, except such as was implied by his refusal to see them. They were not left long in doubt.
They had both risen on his entry.
“Ah, Colin,” said she, “this is splendid.”
He turned upon her the full bleakness of his face.
“We’ll take the splendour for granted,” said he. “Ah, there’s Dennis. It’s splendid, isn’t it, Dennis, to have got rid of me for all your holidays? That’s what your mother means.”
Dennis looked at him unwaveringly. The moment when Colin had leaped in after him was so far more real than anything else that could be said or done in the whole world.
“But she doesn’t mean that, Father,” he said, “nor do I.”
“Oh, you’ve learned to contradict in my absence, have you?” asked Colin.
Dennis was still radiant.
“Sorry, Father,” he said.
The meal went on in silence, till Dennis, over-anxious to give no cause of offence, made a terrific crash with his pudding spoon.
“If you can’t eat your lunch decently, you had better leave the room,” said Colin.
Dennis took this to be a general objurgation, not a command.
“Sorry, Father,” he said again, and went on with his pudding.
“Did you hear what I said, Dennis?” asked Colin.
Dennis got up at once, but stood by his father’s chair a moment, scarlet in the face at this public ignominy, and very nervous, but determined to speak.
“I’ve never thanked you yet, Father,” he said, “for what you did for me. I can’t do more than thank you, for there’s nothing else I can do for you. But if there was——”
Colin wheeled round in his chair.
“Damn you, go away,” he said.
Therigour of the winter abated, and a rainy January was succeeded by a long spell of warm caressing weather, borrowed from May-time, so mild and sunny was it. The trees were bursting into early bud, the sallows were hung with catkins, primroses were a-bloom, and all over the marsh the ewes were with young. No shepherd there remembered so early a lambing season, nor one more fruitful.
Colin had spent a month on his beloved island, recuperating, and that very successfully, after his illness. Then one day, after a week of London, that longing for Stanier overcame him, and he drove down alone, with no plan but to stay there as long as he was content. He would find there only his grandmother, and she now kept to her room entirely, and no more preposterous rubbers of whist would be demanded in the evening. “After all, she has played two rubbers every night for seventy years,” thought Colin, and tried to work out the portentous sum of the total. But on his arrival, her nurse came down to tell him that she was mysteriously aware, it seemed, that he was coming, for she kept restlessly muttering to herself, “Colin will be here soon”: perhaps she would be quieted by the sight of him. So, rather grudgingly, for it must surely be a sheer waste of time, he went up to see her. There she lay in bed, pallid and immobile, with her pearls round her neck, and looked at him with that disconcerting, unwinking gaze, behind which there seemed to lie some frozen consciousness and knowledge. She was still repeating, even while she gazed at him, “Colin will be here soon,” but suddenly she stopped and gave that smile which looked as if it was the blurred reflection of something very far away, and she muttered no more.
Surely the spell of Stanier, thought Colin as he left her, that nameless magic of the legend and its gift, had so penetrated her, that now, when the ultimate mists thickened about her, that was the last illumination, dimly piercing the cold shadows, that shone on her. She still had some consciousness of him as the inheritor of it all, and he remained the last link, now wearing so thin, of her connection with the visible world. He could imagine that; the spell of Stanier was strong, and it would be so still, he thought, as he closed his dying eyes on its splendour and his doom. A long way off that seemed, on this young morning of spring.
He had started early from town, and the day was yet at noon when he arrived, and, reserving himself for a long outing after lunch, he wandered about the house, soaking himself in it, and inhaling its associations. He went into Violet’s rooms, he went into the room where Raymond’s dead body had lain, and thought of that fortunate morning which brought him his inheritance. Dennis’s room he passed without entering, and some twitch of exasperation took him at the thought of Dennis.
He was forever checking that truancy of his mind, overhauling it and bringing it back when it went on these illicit excursions. It would belong anyhow before he saw the boy, for in the Easter holidays he would be in Italy again, and assuredly Dennis should not accompany him.
He went down the broad staircase into the hall, with the portrait of old Colin facing him, with the parchment of the legendary contract he had made let into the frame. ‘O bonum commercium!’ he thought, and the picture smiled back at him across the prosperous centuries. Near by was the smoking-room: that too was a place where the dead had lain, and he recalled how he and good unsuspecting Doctor Martin had moved the remains of Vincenzo there. Then came the long gallery with the sunshine pouring in, and outside the terrace and the yew-hedge, where, beneath the summer night, Violet had said she loved him. There he had walked with Pamela too.... That silly Pamela: she might have been alive to-day and young still, if she had only not been so reckless as to love. You never know into what dangerous places love might lead you, into depths of unsubstantial air, or depths of icy water.And there, none too soon for his appetite, the door of the dining-room was opened, and his new valet whom he had brought from Italy told him that he was served. The boy was rather like Nino....
He drove out after lunch in the little two-seater that went lightly over the roads in the marsh rough with the scourings of the winter storms, out past the golf-links and along the sandy road towards Lydd. He intended to walk home across the marsh, and presently he got out for his tramp. The dykes were full of water, but it was always possible to find a way over footbridges and culverts. It might be devious and zig-zag, but you could progress in the required direction, and how more pleasantly, after the grime of London, could he pass a couple of hours than by strolling through the pastures bright with the young growth of spring, and populous with anxious ewes, and new-born lambs? There was Rye on the edge of the plain, and above it the woods of Stanier, with a glimpse of the house among them. That would be his general line, and with half the afternoon before him he would strike the Romney road before dusk and follow it along to the outskirts of the town, where his car would be waiting for him.
He had been walking for an hour with the sunlight warm on him, and the larks carolling in the lucent air, when the brightness began to grow dim, and looking up he saw that the sky was veiled with mist, through which the sun peered whitely. A little breeze had sprung up, and from seaward there was drifting in a fog off the Channel, where already the sirens were hooting. The warmth of the day had drawn up much moisture from the marsh into the air, and now, in the chill of the veiled sun, it was rapidly condensing into one of those thick white mists which, while Stanier on its hill still basked in sunshine, enveloped the lower ground. It was annoying, for he had still a mile to go before he struck the road, and he hurried on, to cover the ground as quickly as he could. But before he had gone half that distance the mist thickened to so dense an opacity that it was impossible to see more than a yard or two ahead. But, before it closed down on him, he had seen a gate some hundred yards in front, which wasclearly the outlet from this pasture in the direction of Rye, and he walked, as he thought, straight towards it.
Presently he came to a stop. Instead of there being a gate in front of him there was a broad dyke. He followed along this to the left, but it seemed to run on indefinitely, and retracing his steps he tried the other direction. This brought him to the gate, through which he passed, and, orientating himself from it, he started off afresh. But now he had no visible mark to guide him, for the encompassing mists had closed their white walls impenetrably round him. Before long in this baffling dimness he knew he had lost his bearings altogether: whether Rye was to the left or right of him or straight ahead he had no idea: he must just hope to find gates or footbridges across the dykes till he came to the road, searching blindfold for them. And it was growing dark: the daylight of the clear air above the fog was fading.
He had passed, ten minutes before, a shepherd’s hut put up for lambing, and now he determined to retrace his steps to this, and see if there was anyone there from whom he could get guidance, for at this season of the year the farmer or his shepherd often sat up all night, as once old Colin had done as a boy, for the needs of midwifery. But now he could not find the hut, and, giving up the search as vain, he thought that he would again retrace the steps of his fruitless exploration, and push on as best he might. Then with a sudden springing up of hope he saw a gate close ahead of him, but when he came to it he found it familiar in some bewildering manner. The staple was stiff just as was that of the last gate he had passed through, and on the lowest bar of it was caught a piece of white sheep’s wool, which he had noticed before. He must have come round in a circle to the point from which he had started when the mist grew thick.
This was all very uncomfortable, and he paused, wondering what to do next. If he could not find his way across a mile of pasture, it would be mere folly to attempt to go back on the course he had come. It would have been infinitely better to have gone into that shepherd’s hut when he had the chance, and waited for the mist to lift; now the wisest thing would be to try again to find his way back there, for it was somewhere close to this gate to which he had inadvertently returned.
He set off, and now with a clearer recollection of his bearings he met with better success, and presently he found the hut again. There was no one there, and there was no door to it, but at any rate there was a roof to cover him, and wooden walls for shelter, and inside there was a pile of straw, dry and plentiful, into which he could burrow for warmth while he waited.
The moisture of the mist was thick on his clothes, like dew on fleece, and his face and hands were chilled and wet with it. His long walk had tired him, and the relief of finding shelter and rest was great and he sat down on the straw and made himself as comfortable as he could. What time it was he had no idea, for he was without matches, and it was now so dark that he could not see his watch. The doorless entrance was but a glimmering greyness against the blackness of the interior, and he wondered whether, even if the mist cleared, he could find his way home before morning. Perhaps there was a moon, but time alone would show that, and his thoughts began to stray in other directions.
It was an odd adventure: just so had old Colin, when a shepherd boy, passed the night in some such hut as this, probably within a few hundred yards of where he himself now sat, and that certainly had been no unfortunate experience for him, for on that night the splendid fortunes and prosperity of the house of which now he himself was head had been founded. Health and wealth and honour and all that his heart desired had been granted to his ancestor on that night of the legend, into the inheritance of which he had entered by his love of evil, and his hate of love.... And then the thought of Dennis came up like a bubble to the surface of his mind, Dennis whom he hated and had tried to corrupt, and who was the heir to all his splendours.
Colin was getting drowsy in the warmth of his straw-bed; for a moment, as token of that, he thought he heard Dennis’s voice, and that roused him again. But sleep was the most reasonable manner of passing these hours of waiting, which might be long; and it was certainly better than thinking about Dennis. Thicker and thicker, like the mists outside, the dusk of sleep darkened round him.
He slept soundly and dreamlessly, and woke, after some interval of the length of which he had no idea, into the fullpossession of his faculties, so that he had no puzzled bewilderment as to where he was or how he had come here: this waking consciousness dovetailed precisely into that which had preceded his sleep. Probably he had slept long, for he woke alert and refreshed, warm and comfortable under the straw that he had pulled over him. But close on the heels of his waking there came the conviction that he was not alone here. He had gone to sleep alone, far away from the haunts of men in the isolation of the mist, but while he slept someone had come.
He sat up, and turning looked towards the blank doorway. It was still faintly visible, a dusky oblong in the blackness, but now it framed the figure as of a man, which stood there in the entry. Some shepherd was it, who, like himself, sought shelter?
“Hullo, who is that?” said Colin. “I have lost my way, and am sheltering here till the mist clears. Lord Yardley from Stanier.”
There was silence, then very quietly a voice spoke:
“I know who you are,” it said.
Colin felt his breath catch in his throat, and a pulse beat there. This was not the voice of a shepherd come here for the lambing or for shelter, and a fantastic notion flashed into his head. Here was he, sleeping in a remote hut in the marsh at lambing-time, even as old Colin had done, and he asked himself whether some renewal or re-enactment of the legend was at hand. The idea scarcely seemed strange, so intimately did the belief in the legend beat in his blood. It was no shepherd who spoke....
That shape in the doorway seemed to him rather larger than it had been at first: perhaps it had moved a silent step nearer him. It had outlined itself a little more clearly now: the shape of the shoulders and the head was more sharply defined; round the head there was a faint luminousness like the halo the moonlight casts round a man’s shadow on the grass.
In the silence that followed Colin asked himself whether he was still asleep, whether the whole adventure was a dream, whether he would presently wake up and find himself in his bed at Stanier. And then the voice spoke again, and he knewthat, whether he dreamed, or whether indeed he was awake, the substance of things unseen was in manifestation.
“Why did you save Dennis?” asked the quiet voice.
The question was utterly unexpected. But whoever this was, he had no claim to be answered. His Lord and Benefactor, if it was he, knew that his soul was set on evil and hate. And what right had any other power in heaven or earth or in the dark places to question him? Why he answered at all, he did not know; his voice seemed to take it upon itself to do so.
“I saved Dennis,” he said, “just simply because I chose to. It was my own business, and my will is free.”
“You might easily have been drowned,” said the voice. “Did you consider that?”
“I knew I was taking that risk,” said Colin.
“And did you consider what doom awaited you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you save Dennis?”
Colin began to catch a glimpse of the purport of the question. But nothing, he determined, should make him give the answer that he felt was required of him. Besides, such an answer, he told himself, was not true. He had been guilty, at the most, of a momentary weakness.
“I saved him, I tell you,” he said, “because I chose to. He was my only son. Was it not reasonable that I should wish him to live and continue my line?”
He was definitely uneasy now. His uneasiness irritated him into flippancy.
“Perhaps you are a bachelor,” he said, “and so you can’t be expected to understand that. In any case I don’t know what right you have to ask me, and I have no other answer for you.”
Once more there was silence. Then the quiet voice spoke again.
“Why did you save Dennis?” it asked.
The question was beginning to frighten him. He felt as if he was on the rack, and that each time the question came some lever was pulled, some cog clicked, and the ropes round his wrists and ankles were getting more taut. He could just feel the strain of them which would presently increase.
“Why did you save Dennis?” asked the voice again.
This time Colin clenched his teeth. Whatever torture might be in store, he would never answer that. There was no actual pain yet, only the anticipation of it. But surely years had passed since he found his way through the mist into this shed. It could not only have been last evening, as the dusk of this present night began to fall, that he had come here and covered himself up in the straw.
“It was on that very spot that you let your brother Raymond drown,” said the voice. “Why did you let Raymond drown without an effort to save him?”
For a moment that relieved the tension.
“Because I hated Raymond,” said Colin. “Because he stood between me and my inheritance.”
“But you hate Dennis too. Will he not inherit all that is yours?”
“Yes, I hate Dennis,” said Colin.
“Of course. You tried to corrupt him. You tried to make him miserable. You tried to kill his love for you. We are agreed on that then. You hate Dennis.”
The voice was silent again. The figure surely had moved closer, for now it towered above him. The faint luminousness round its head was brighter: he could see the boarding of the hut and the grey glimmer of the straw where he sat. And then again the voice spoke: Colin knew what it was about to say.
“Why did you save Dennis?” it asked.
At that the pain began, some hot shooting stab of agony. But he could bear that and worse than that. Every moment now seemed to have a quality it had never possessed before: the seconds which he could hear his watch ticking out were not long exactly: they were eternal.
The tension relaxed again.
“You hated Nino,” said the voice, “when he turned his back on you and your wickedness, and let him die. Did you not hate Nino?”
“Yes, I hated Nino then,” said Colin.
“And you hated Pamela. You mocked her, and drove her to her death. You were never sorry. It amused you. Did you not hate Pamela?”
“Yes, I hated Pamela,” said he.
“And you hate Violet. You hate the whole world. You hate the love which has been squandered on you. Do you not hate love?”
“Yes, I hate love.”
Again came the terrible pause, and he bit his lip, and tried to brace his muscles against the wrench that was coming.
“Why did you save Dennis?” came the question.
The ropes were tight now, and the pull made him gasp and cry out.
“In God’s name, who are you that torture me?” he screamed.
“You will know presently, when I have broken you.”
Colin clenched his hands tight, still utterly steadfast and untamed.
“Don’t imagine you’ll do that,” he said. “If that’s what you expect, you’re wasting your time.”
Again the silence of eternity fell.
“Do you believe in God, Colin Stanier?” said the voice.
“Yes,” said he. “You know that.”
“And do you hate God with all your heart?”
“Yes,” said Colin.
The figure receded a little. Perhaps, he thought, now that he had made his final and complete repudiation, which surely included all else, the torture was over, for the cruel wrench of that repeated question came no more, and he sank back utterly exhausted on his straw-bed, and sleep, or some such anodyne to sensation, came over him. Then once more he came to himself, alert and wholly awake.
Outside the mist had cleared, and he could see through the empty door-space the pasture covered with thick dew, and a few scattered sheep with their lambs beside them. It must be close on dawn, for in the east there was a long line of cloud, flushed red with the sun that had not yet risen on the earth. For the moment, with a pang of exquisite relief, he thought he was alone, and that the inquisition of the night was over. But how terribly real a dream could be! Dennis had known that when he woke from his nightmare, and threw himself into his father’s arms for protection. Andthis dream, even though now he was awake, had still that quality of eternity about it.
He sat up. And then he saw that the figure was by him once more, close to him now. It was still a shadow, dark and undecipherable, in spite of the flushed twilight of the coming day.
“Why did you save Dennis?” it asked.
The torture shot through him again, more poignant than ever to his racked spirit. He bowed his head, and felt the drops of agony grow thick on his forehead. But still he made no answer.
He raised his eyes, as if in obedience to a command, and saw the lines of cloud red in the dawn. And the voice spoke:
“See where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament. One drop would save your soul. But you would never call on Him, Colin, because you hate Him.”
He could not answer, so rending was the torture. He waited, writhing and stiffened against what was coming.
“Why did you save Dennis?” asked the voice.
At that the full fierceness of mortal agony was let loose on him, and that agony was eternal: it had existed before ever time began. The evil of all that he had done, the utter depravity of his soul, with its lust for hate and its hate of love, was torn and wrenched by the inflexible power of that which had made him so lightly vault over the parapet of the sluice, and strike out across the icy water towards Dennis. With all his force, with all his will he resisted, but his force faded, his will faltered and collapsed, and with a wail of pain he surrendered.
“I saved him because I loved him,” he cried. “I give in, you devil from the pit. For Christ’s sake don’t torture me any more!”
The rending agony in which he writhed ceased, the strain relaxed. Blinded with sweat and tears he looked at the figure that stood close to him now, but still it was no more than a shadow to him.
“Who are you?” he sobbed. “Why have you tortured me like this? Are you my Lord whom I have served so well? Who are you?”
At that the shadow brightened into a beam that dimmed the lines of morning, and filled the hut with a radiance on which he could not look. And once more, for the last time, the quiet voice spoke.
“I am Love,” it said.
THE ENDPRINTED BY THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX, ENGLAND.