Even as he spoke he marvelled at his own self-control. But the plain fact was that the temptation to lose it hadno force with him to-night. For the sake of his ultimate revenge, whatever that might be, that goring and kneading of Colin, it was no less than necessary that he should seem to have put away from him all his hostility. Colin and the rest of them—Violet above all—must grow to be convinced in the change that had come over him.
He rose. “Better give it up, Colin,” he said. “You’re not going to rile me. You’ve had a good try at it, for I never knew you so studiedly insolent. But it’s no use. Good night.”
During the fortnight which intervened before the departure of Lord Yardley and Colin to Italy, Raymond never once faltered in the task he had set himself. There was no act of patience too costly for the due attainment of it, no steadfastness of self-control in the face of Colin’s gibes that was not worth the reward which it would ultimately bring. He avoided as far as possible being alone with his brother, but that, in the mere trivial round of the day, happened often enough to give Colin the opportunity of planting a dart or two. But now they seemed to have lost all penetrative force; so far from goading him into some ill-aimed response, they were but drops of showers on something waterproof.
Colin was disposed at first to attribute this incredible meekness to the effect of his father’s strictures. Raymond had been given to understand without any possible mistake, that, unless he mended his ways, he would have to leave Stanier, and that, no doubt, accounted for his assumption of public amiability. But his imperviousness in private to any provocation was puzzling. He neither answered Colin’s challenges nor conducted any offensive of his own. At the most a gleam or a flush told that some jibe had gone home, but no angry blundering reply would give opportunity for another. For some reason Raymond banked up his smouldering fires, not letting them blaze.
His impotence to make his brother wince and rage profoundly irritated Colin. He had scarcely known before how deep-rooted was his pleasure in so doing; how integral a part of his consciousness was his hatred of him, which now seemed to have been deprived of its daily bread.
Not less irritating was the effect that Raymond’s changed behaviour produced on his father and on Violet. His father’s civilities to him began to lose the edge of their chilliness; a certain cordiality warmed them. If the boy was really taking himself in hand, Lord Yardley must, in common duty and justice, encourage and welcome his efforts, and the day before the departure for Italy, he made an opportunity for acknowledging this. Once more after lunch, he nodded to Raymond to stay behind the others.
“I want to tell you, Raymond,” he said, “that I’m very much pleased with you. You’ve been making a strong effort with yourself, and you’re winning all down the line. And how goes it with you and Colin in private?”
Raymond took rapid counsel with himself. “Very well indeed, sir,” he said. “We’ve had no rows at all.”
“That’s good. Now what are your plans while Colin and I are away? Your Uncle Ronald and Violet are going to stop on here. I think your aunt’s going up to London. You can establish yourself at St. James’s Square, if you like, or remain here.”
“I’ll stop here if I may,” said Raymond. “I don’t care about London.”
Philip smiled. “Very good,” he said. “You’ll have to take care of Violet and keep her amused.”
Raymond answered with a smile. “I’ll do my best, father,” he said.
“Well, all good wishes,” said his father. “Let me know how all goes.”
Colin had seen throughout this fortnight Raymond’s improvement of his position with regard to Lord Yardley, and he had felt himself jealously powerless to stop it. Once he had tried, with some sunnily-told tale of Raymond’s ill-temper, to put the brake on it, but his father had stopped him before he was half through with it. “Raymond’s doing very well,” he said. “I don’t want to hear anything against him.” A further light was shed for Colin that evening.
He and Violet, when the rubber of whist was over and Lady Yardley had gone upstairs, strolled out into the hot dusk of the terrace with linked arms, but with no more stir of emotion in their hearts than two schoolboy friends, whose intimacy was to be severed by a month of holiday, would have experienced. The shadow cast by the long yew hedge from the moon near to its setting had enveloped them in its clear darkness, the starlight glimmered on the lake below, and in the elms beyond the nightingales chanted.
“Listen at them, look at it all,” said Colin impatiently. “Starlight and shadow and nightingales and you and me as cool as cucumbers. You look frightfully attractive, too, to-night, Vi: why on earth don’t I fall madly in love with you?”
“Oh, my dear, don’t!” said Violet. “You might make me fall in love with you. But I suppose I needn’t be afraid. You can’t fall in love with anybody, Colin, and I daresay I can’t either. But I shall try.”
“And what do you mean by that?” asked Colin.
“It’s pretty obvious,” she said.
“Raymond, do you mean?” asked Colin.
“Of course. What’s come over him? There’s something attractive about him, after all; he’s got charm. Who would have thought it?”
Though Colin had just now truthfully declared that he was in no way in love with his cousin, he felt a pang of jealousy just as authentic as that which the notion of Raymond’s possession of Stanier caused in him.
“But you can’t, Violet!” he said. “That boor....”
“I’m not so sure that he is a boor. He’s keeping the boor in a box, anyhow, and has turned the key on him. He’s quite changed. You can’t deny it.”
Colin slipped his arm out of Violet’s. “Raymond’s cleverer than I thought,” he said. “All this fortnight it has puzzled me to know what he’s been at, but now I see. He’s been improving his position with father and with you.”
“He has certainly done that,” said Violet.
“So, if he asks you, you intend to marry him?” asked Colin.
“I think so.”
“I shall hate you if you do,” said he.
“Why? How can it matter to you? If you were in love with me it would be different, or if I were in love with you. Oh, we’ve talked it all over before; there’s nothing new.”
They had passed through the cut entrance in the yew hedge into the moonlight, and Violet, turning, looked at her companion. Colin’s face was brilliantly illuminated. By some optical illusion that came and went in a flash, he looked at that moment as if his face was lit from within, so strangely it shone against the dark serge of the hedge for background. There was an unearthly beauty about it that somehow appalled her. He seemed like some incarnation, ageless and youthful, of the fortunes of the house. But the impression was infinitesimal in duration, and she laughed.
“Colin, you looked so wonderful just now,” she said. “You looked like all the Staniers rolled into one.”
Somehow this annoyed him. “Raymond included, I suppose?” he asked. “But you’re wrong; there is something new. Hitherto you’ve only considered Raymond as a necessary adjunct to being mistress here; now you’re considering him as a man you can imagine loving. Hasn’t he got enough already? Good God, how I hate him!”
He had hardly spoken when there emerged from the entrance in the hedge through which they had just passed,Raymond himself. Colin, white with fury, turned on him.
“Hullo, at it again?” he said. “You’ve overheard something nice this time!”
Raymond’s mouth twitched, but he gave no other sign. “Father has just sent me out to tell you that he wants to speak to you before you go to bed,” he said, and, turning, went straight back to the house.
Violet waited till the sound of his step had vanished. “Colin, you’re a brute,” she said. “You’re fiendish!”
“I know that,” said Colin. “Who ever supposed I was an angel?”
“And it’s acting like a fool to treat Raymond like that,” she went on. “Can you afford to make him hate you?”
He laughed. “I’ve afforded it as long as I can remember,” he said. “It amuses me.”
“Well, it doesn’t amuse me to see you behave like a fiend,” said Violet. “And do you know that you lost your temper? I’ve never seen you do that yet.”
Colin licked his lips; his mouth felt dry. “That was an odd thing,” he observed. “Now I know what I make Raymond feel like when we chat together. But it’s amazing that Raymond should have done the same to me. I must go in to father.”
They moved back into the shadow of the hedge and Colin stopped.
“I say, Vi, give me a kiss,” he said.
She drew back a moment, wondering why she did so. “But, my dear, why?” she asked.
“We’re cousins,” he said. “Why shouldn’t you? I should awfully like to kiss you.”
She had got over her momentary surprise, which was, no doubt, what made her hesitate. There was no conceivable reason, though they did not kiss each other, why they should not.
“And if I won’t?” she said.
“I shall think it unkind of you.”
She came close to him. “Oh, Colin, I’m not unkind,” she said, and kissed him.
He stood with his hands on her shoulders, not letting her go, though making no attempt to kiss her again. “That was delicious of you,” he said.
Suddenly and quite unexpectedly to herself, Violet found her heart beating soft and fast, and she was glad of the darkness, for she knew that a heightened colour had sprung to her face. Was Colin, too, she wondered, affected in any such way?
His light laugh, the release of her shoulders from his cool hands, answered her.
“Good Lord! To think that perhaps Raymond will be kissing you next,” he said. “How maddening!”
From the first some call of his Italian blood had made itself audible to Colin; even as their train emerged out of the drip and roaring darkness of the Mont Cenis tunnel, there had been a whisper in his ears that this was the land of his birth to which he had come, and that whisper had grown into full-voiced welcome when, at the hot close of day, he and his father had strolled out after dinner along the sea-front of Naples. Though he had never been here yet, sight, scent, and sound alike told him that he was not so much experiencing what was new as recognising what, though dormant, had always been part of him, bred into the very fibre and instinct of him. It was not that he hailed or loved this lure of the South; it would be more apt to say that he nodded to it, as to an old acquaintance—taken for granted rather than embraced.
This claiming and appropriation by Colin of his native place unfroze in his father the reticence that he had always observed with regard to that year he had spent in Italy into which had entered birth and death, and all that his life held of romance. That, till now, had been incapsulated within him, or at the most, like the ichor in some ductless gland, was performing some mysterious function in his psychology. Now this claim of Colin’s on the South, his easy stepping into possession by right of his parentage, unsealed in Philip the silence he had so long preserved.
Colin, as he regarded his surroundings with friendly and familiar eyes, was visibly part of his old romance; the boy’s mother lived again in that sunny hair, those eyes, and the clear olive skin, just as surely as did old Colin of the Holbein portrait. But now Stanier was far away, and the spell of the South as potent as when Philip, flyingfrom the glooms and jibes of that awful old man, his father, first came under its enchantment. And Colin, of all that dead time, alone was a vital and living part of its manifestation. Through the medium of memory he stirred his father’s blood; Philip felt romance bubble in him again as he walked along the familiar ways with the flower that had blossomed from it. He felt, too, that Colin silently (for he asked no question) seemed to claim the right to certain knowledge; he seemed to present himself, to be ready, and, indeed, it would be singular if, having brought him here, his father did not speak of that which, every year, had taken him on his solitary pilgrimage to the South.
They were to spend the greater part of the next day in Naples, leaving by the afternoon boat for Capri, and as they finished their breakfast on a shady veranda, Philip spoke:
“Well, we’ve got all the morning,” he said, “to trundle about in. The museum is very fine; would you like to see it?”
“No, I should hate it,” said Colin.
“But it’s a marvellous collection,” said Philip.
“I daresay; but to see a museum would make me feel like a tourist. At present I don’t, and it’s lovely.”
He looked at his father as he spoke, and once again, this time compellingly, Philip saw confident expectancy in his eyes. Colin was certainly waiting for something.
“Then will you come with me on a sentimental journey?” he asked.
“Ah, father, won’t I just!” he said. “After all, you and I are on a sentimental journey.”
There seemed to Philip in his devotion to Colin, something exquisitely delicate about this. He had wanted but, instinctively had not asked, waiting for his rights to be offered him.
“Come, then,” he said. “I’ll show you where we lived, your mother and I. I’ll show you our old haunts, such as survive. You belong to that life, Colin.”
Colin paused a moment, sitting quite still, for a span of clear, concentrated thought. He desired to say precisely the right thing, the thing that his father would most value. It was not in the smallest degree affection for his father which prompted that; it was the wish that the door should be thrown open as wide as possible—that all the keys should be put into his hand.
“I know I do,” he said. “I’ve known that for years, but I had to wait for you to want me to share it. It had to be you who took me into it.”
He saw approval gleam in his father’s eyes. This was clearly the right tack.
“And you must remember I know nothing whatever about your life with my mother,” he said. “You’ve got to begin at the beginning. And ... and make it long, father.”
It was not surprising that Colin’s presence gave to this sentimental journey a glow which it had lacked during all those years when Philip made his annual solitary visit here. Already the mere flight of years, and the fact that he had never married again, had tinged that long-past time with something of the opalescence which sunlit mist confers on objects which in themselves hardly rise above the level of the mean and the prosaic; and what now survived for him in memory was Rosina’s gaiety, her beauty, her girlish charm, with forgetfulness for her vapid vanity, her commonness, and the speed with which his senses even had been sated with her. But it was an unsubstantial memory of blurred and far-off days, girt with regrets and the emptiness of desires dead and unrecoverable.
Now Colin’s presence gave solidity to it all; it was as if the sunlit mist had been withdrawn from the dim slopes which it covered, and lo! the reality was not mean or prosaic, but had absorbed the very tints and opalescences which had cloaked it. There was Colin, eager and sympathetic, yet checking any question of his own, and but thirsty for what his father might give him, and in the person of the boy who was the only creature in theworld whom Philip loved, and in whom Rosina lived, that tawdry romance of his was glorified. To tell Colin, about his mother here, in the places where they had lived together, was to make a shrine of them.
The flat which he and Rosina had occupied in Naples, when the autumnal departure of visitors from Capri rendered the island so desolating to her urban nature, happened to be untenanted, and a couple of lire secured their admittance. It still held pieces of furniture which had been there twenty years ago, and Colin, moving quietly to and fro, his eyes alight with interest in little random memories which his father recalled, was like a ray of sunlight shining into a place that had long slept in dust and shadows. Mother and son reacted on each other in Philip’s mind; a new tenderness blossomed for Rosina out of his love for Colin, and he wondered at himself for not having brought them together like this before.
Here were the chairs which they used to pull out on to the veranda when the winter sun was warm; here was the Venetian looking-glass which Rosina could never pass without a glance at her image, and now, as Colin turned towards it, there were Rosina’s eyes and golden hair that flashed back at Philip out of the past and made a bridge to the present.
And there, above all, was the bedroom, with the glitter of sun on the ceiling cast there from the reflecting sea, where, at the close of a warm, windy day of March, the first cry of a new-born baby was heard. And by that same bedside, at the dawn of an April morning, Philip had seen the flame of Rosina’s life flicker and waver and expire. He regretted her more to-day than at the hour when she had left him. Some unconscious magic vested in Colin cast that spell.
For all these recollections Colin had the same eager, listening face and the grave smile. Never even in his baiting of Raymond had he shewn a subtler ingenuity in adapting his means to his end. He used his father’s affection for him to prize open the locks of a hundred caskets, and enable him to see what was therein. He wanted to know all that his father would tell him about that year which preceded his birth, and not asking questions was the surest way of hearing what he wanted.
Already he had found that his Aunt Hester knew very little about that year, or, if she knew, she had not chosen to tell him certain things. His curiosity, when he had talked to her under the elms, had been but vague and exploratory, but, it will be remembered, it had become slightly more definite when, in answer to his comment that his father and mother must have been married very soon after his arrival in Italy, Aunt Hester had given a very dry assent.
Now his curiosity was sharply aroused about that point, for with all his father’s communicativeness this morning, he had as yet said no word whatever that bore on the date of their marriage. Colin felt by an instinct which defied reason, that there was something to be known here; the marriage, the scene, the date of it, must have passed through his father’s mind, and yet he did not choose, in all this sudden breakdown of long reticence, to allude to it. That was undeniably so; a question, therefore, would certainly be useless, for believing as he did, that his father had something to conceal, he would not arrive at it in that way.
They were standing now in the window looking over the bay, and Philip pointed to the heat-veiled outline of Capri, floating, lyre-shaped, on the fusing-line of sea and sky.
“We were there all the summer,” he said, “in the villa you will see this evening. Then your mother found it melancholy in the autumn and we came here—I used to go backwards and forwards, for I couldn’t quite tear myself away from the island altogether.”
That struck Colin as bearing on his point; it was odd, wasn’t it, that a newly-married couple should do that? You would have expected them to live here or there, but together.... Then, afraid that his father would thinkhe was pondering on that, he changed the topic altogether.
“I have loved hearing about it all,” he said. “But somehow—don’t be shocked, father—I can’t feel that Raymond comes into it one atom. We’ve been realising you and my mother and the squalling thing that I was. But I can’t feel Raymond with us then any more than he’s with us now. Let’s keep Italy to ourselves, father. Poor old Raymond!”
That shifting of the topic was skilfully designed and subtly executed. Colin confessed to alienation from Raymond and yet with a touch of affectionate regret. His father was less guarded.
“Raymond’s got nothing to do with Italy,” he said. “There’s not a single touch of your mother in him. We’ve got this to ourselves, Colin. Raymond will have Stanier.”
“Lucky dog!” said Colin.
There was one item connected with the marriage that he might safely ask, and as they went downstairs he put it to his father, watching him very narrowly.
“I feel I know all about my mother now,” he said, “except just one thing.”
Lord Yardley turned quickly to him. “I’ve told you all I can tell you,” he said sharply.
That was precisely what Colin had been waiting for. There was something more, then. But the question which he was ready with was harmless enough.
“I only wanted to know where you were married,” he said. “That’s the one thing you haven’t told me.”
There was no doubt that this was a relief to his father; he had clearly expected something else, not the “where” of the boy’s question, but the “when,” which by now had definitely crystallised in Colin’s mind.
“Oh, that!” he said. “Stupid of me not to have told you. We were married at the British Consulate.”
They passed out into the noonday.
“Mind you remember that, Colin,” said his father. “On my death the marriage will have to be proved; itwill save a search. Your birth was registered there, too. And Raymond’s.”
Such was the sum of information that Colin took on board with him that afternoon when they embarked on the steamer for Capri, and though in one sense it took him back a step, in another it confirmed the idea that had grown up in his mind. He felt certain (here was the confirmation) that if he had asked his father when the marriage took place, he would have been told a date which he would not have believed. Lord Yardley would have said that they had been married very soon after his arrival twenty-one years ago. He had waited with obvious anxiety for Colin’s one question, and he had hailed that question with relief, for he had no objection to the boy’s knowing where the contract was made.
And the retrograde step was this: that whereas he had been ready to think that his father’s marriage was an event subsequent to his own birth and Raymond’s, he was now forced to conclude (owing to the fact that his father told and impressed on him to remember, that it had been performed at the British Consulate) that he and Raymond were legitimately born in wedlock. That seemed for the present to be acul-de-sacin his researches.
The warm, soft air streamed by, and the wind made by the movement of the boat enticed Colin out from under the awning into the breeze-tempered blaze of the sun. He went forward and found in the bows a place where he could be alone and study, like a map, whatever could be charted of his discoveries.
That willingness of his father to tell him where the marriage had taken place was somehow disconcerting; it implied that the ceremony made valid whatever had preceded it. He had himself been born in mid-March, and he did not attempt to believe that his father had been married in the previous June, the month when he had first come to Italy. But he could not help believing that his father had married before his own birth.
Colin was one of those rather rare people who can sit down and think. Everybody can sit down and let his mind pleasantly wander over a hundred topics, but comparatively few can tether it, so to speak, so that it grazes on a small circle only. This accomplishment Colin signally possessed, and though now there could be no practical issue to his meditations, he set himself to carve out in clear, cutting strokes what he would have done in case he had discovered that he and Raymond alike were born out of wedlock. He imagined that situation to himself; he cropped at it, he grazed on it....
The disclosure, clearly, if the fact had been there, would not have come out till his father’s death, and he could see himself looking on the face of the dead without the slightest feeling of reproach. He knew that his father was leaving him all that could be left away from Raymond; he was heir also to Aunt Hester’s money.
But in that case Stanier, and all that went with the title, would not be Raymond’s at all; Raymond would be nameless and penniless. And Colin’s beautiful mouth twitched and smiled. “That would have been great fun,” he said to himself. “Raymond would have been nobody and have had nothing. Ha! Raymond would not have had Stanier, and I should have ceased to hate him. I should have made him some small allowance.”
Yes, Stanier would have passed from Raymond, and it and all that it meant would have gone to Violet ... and at that the whole picture started into life and colour. If only now, at this moment, he was possessed of the knowledge that he and Raymond alike were illegitimate, with what ardour, with what endless subtlety, would he have impelled Violet to marry him! How would he have called upon the legendary benefactor who for so long had prospered and befriended the Staniers, to lend him all the arts and attractions of the lover! With such wiles to aid him, he would somehow have forced Violet to give up the idea of marrying Raymond in order to get Stanier, and instead, renouncing Stanier, take him, and by herrenunciation for love’s sake, find in the end that she had gained (bread upon the waters) all that she had imagined was lost.
And he, Colin, in that case, would be her husband, master of Stanier to all intents and purposes. Willingly would he have accepted, eagerly would he have welcomed that. He wanted what he would never get unless Raymond died, except at some such price as that. But it was no use thinking about it; his father’s insistence on the place where he and Rosina were married made it certain that no such fortunate catastrophe could be revealed at his death.
Presently Lord Yardley joined him as they passed along the headland on which Sorrento stands, and there were stories of the visit that he and Rosina made here during the summer. Colin listened to these with suppressed irritation; what did he care whether they had spent a week at Sorrento or not? Of all that his father had to tell him, he had mastered everything that mattered, and he began to find in these recollections a rather ridiculous sentimentality. He knew, of course, that he himself was responsible for this; it was he, Rosina’s son, and his father’s love for him, that conjured up these tendernesses. He was responsible, too, in that all the morning he had listened with so apt a sympathy to similar reminiscences. But then he hoped that he was about to learn something really worth knowing, whereas now he was convinced that there was nothing of that sort to know. Fond as his father had always been of him, he easily detected something new in his voice, his gestures, the soft eagerness of his eyes; it was as if in him his father was falling in love with Rosina.
Sunset burned behind Capri as their steamer drew near to it, and the eastern side lay in clear shadow though the sea flared with the reflected fires of the sky, and that, too, seemed to produce more memories.
“You are so like her, Colin,” said his father, laying his arm round the boy’s neck, “and I can imagine that twenty-one years have rolled back, and that I am bringing her across to Capri for the first time. It was just such an evening as this, sunset and a crescent moon. I had already bought the villa; we were going back to it together.”
“Straight from the Consulate?” asked Colin quietly.
“What?” asked Philip.
“From the Consulate, father,” he repeated.
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Philip quickly, and his voice seemed to ring utterly untrue. “Straight from the Consulate. Ha! there’s Giacomo, my boatman. He sees us.”
“Does he remember my mother?” asked Colin.
“Surely. But don’t ask him about her. These fellows chatter on for ever, and it’s half lies.”
Colin laughed. “As I shouldn’t understand one word of it,” he said, “it would make little difference whether it was all lies.”
Once again, and more markedly than ever, as they drove up the angled dusty road set in stone walls and bordered by the sea of vineyards, the sense of homecoming seized Colin. It was not that his father was by him or that he was going to his father’s house; the spell worked through the other side of his parentage, and he felt himself strangely more akin to the boys who, trudging homewards, shouted a salutation to their driver, to the girls who clustered on the doorsteps busy with their needle, than to the grave man who sat beside him and watched with something of a lover’s tenderness his smiles and glances and gestures. Philip read Rosina into them all, and she who had so soon sated him till he wearied of her, woke in him, through Colin, a love that had never before been given her.
“I cannot imagine why I never thought of bringing you out to Italy before,” said Philip, “or why, when you asked me to take you, I hesitated.”
Colin tucked his arm into his father’s. He was wonderfully skilful in displaying such little signs of affection, which cost him nothing and meant nothing, but were so well worth while.
“Do I seem to fit into it all, father?” he said. “I am so glad if I do.”
“You more than fit into it, my dear,” said Philip. “You’re part of it. Why on earth did I never see that?”
“Part of it, am I? That’s exactly what I’ve been feeling all day. I’m at home here. Not but what I’m very much at home at Stanier.”
Lord Yardley clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I wish to God you were my eldest son,” he said. “I would give anything if that were possible. I would close my eyes ever so contentedly when my time comes if I knew that you were going to take my place.”
“Poor old Raymond!” said Colin softly. “He’s doing his best, father.”
“I suppose he is. But you’re a generous fellow to say that; I shan’t forget it. Here we are; bundle out.”
Their carriage had stopped in the piazza, and Colin getting out, felt his lips curl into a smile of peculiar satisfaction. That his father should believe him to be a generous fellow was pleasant in itself, and the entire falsity of his belief added spice to the morsel. He seemed to like it better just because it was untrue.
Colin stepped into the drifting summer existence of visitors to the island with the same aptness as that which had graced his entry to his mother’s native land. He went down to the bathing-beach after breakfast with a book and a packet of cigarettes, and spent a basking amphibious morning. Sometimes his father accompanied him, and after a constitutional swim, sat in the shade while Colin played the fish in the sea or the salamander on the beach. On other mornings Lord Yardley remained up at the villa, which suited Colin quite well, for this uninterrupted companionship of his father was very tedious. But he always managed to leave the impression that he wanted Lord Yardley to come with him.
And so much this morning did Colin want to be alone that, had Philip said that he was coming with him, hewould probably have pleaded a laziness or indisposition, for he had that morning received a letter from Violet which called for solitary and uninterrupted reflection. To-day, however, Philip’s brother-in-law, Salvatore Viagi, had announced his advent, “to pay his fraternal respects and give his heart’s welcome,” so ran his florid phrase—and Philip remained at the villa to receive these tributes.
“It’s a nuisance,” he said, “for I should have liked a dip. But I should have to hurry back to get here before him.”
Colin laughed. “You speak as if he might steal the silver,” he said.
“Perfectly capable of it,” said his father. “No, I shouldn’t have said that. But he’s perfectly capable of asking for it.”
Colin perceived that there was no danger of his father’s coming down to bathe with him. “Surely he can wait till we get back,” he said. “Come down and bathe, father!”
Philip shook his head. “No, I can’t,” he said. “Salvatore would think it very odd and rude if I were not here. He wouldn’t understand: he would think I was intentionally unceremonious.”
“He sounds rather a bounder,” observed Colin.
“He does,” said Philip drily.
Colin took Violet’s letter down to the beach with him, and after a short dip of refreshment from his dusty walk, came out cool and shining from the sea to dispose himself on the beach that quivered in the hot sun, and ponder over it. He read it again twice through, stirring it into his brains and his emotions, till it seemed to form part of him....
So Raymond had proposed to her, and, having asked for a week’s delay in her answer, she, while the matter was still private, had to tell Colin that, as far as she knew her own intentions, she was meaning to accept him. And yet this letter in which she said that she was going tomarry his brother, seemed hardly less than a love-letter to himself.
She appeared to remember that last evening at Stanier when, under the moon-cast shadow of the yews, she had given him the kiss he asked for, just as vividly as did Colin. It was vivid to him because he had asked for that with a definite calculated end in view, and with the same end in view he had exclaimed how maddening it was to think that Raymond would kiss her next. No doubt Raymond had done so, and Violet, though she said she meant to marry him, had, perhaps, begun to know something more of her own heart. That was why the evening was vivid to her, exactly as he had intended it should be. She had learned that there was a difference between him and Raymond, which being mistress at Stanier might counterbalance, but did not cancel.
The wetness had dried from Colin’s sun-tanned shoulders, and, lying down at length on the beach, he drew from his pocket Violet’s letter in order to study one passage again which had puzzled him. Here it was:
“You were perfectly brutal to Raymond that evening,” she wrote, “and he was admirable in his answer to your rudeness. If we are to remain friends you must not behave to him like that. You don’t like each other, but he, at any rate now, has control over himself, and you must copy his example.”(“Lord! me copying Raymond’s example,” thought Colin to himself, in an ecstatic parenthesis.)“I shall always do my best to make peace between you, for I am very fond of you, but Raymond’s side will in the future be mine. You were nice to me afterwards, but, dear Colin, you mustn’t ask me to kiss you again. Raymond wouldn’t like it....”
“You were perfectly brutal to Raymond that evening,” she wrote, “and he was admirable in his answer to your rudeness. If we are to remain friends you must not behave to him like that. You don’t like each other, but he, at any rate now, has control over himself, and you must copy his example.”
(“Lord! me copying Raymond’s example,” thought Colin to himself, in an ecstatic parenthesis.)
“I shall always do my best to make peace between you, for I am very fond of you, but Raymond’s side will in the future be mine. You were nice to me afterwards, but, dear Colin, you mustn’t ask me to kiss you again. Raymond wouldn’t like it....”
With this perusal all that was puzzling vanished. “That’s not genuine; none of that’s genuine,” thought Colin. “She says what she’s trying to feel, what shethinks she ought to feel, and doesn’t feel.” He turned the page.
“I hope my news won’t hurt you,” she went on. “After all, we’ve settled often enough that we weren’t in love with each other, and so when that night you said it was maddening to think of Raymond kissing me next, it couldn’t make any difference to you as you aren’t in love with me....”
“I hope my news won’t hurt you,” she went on. “After all, we’ve settled often enough that we weren’t in love with each other, and so when that night you said it was maddening to think of Raymond kissing me next, it couldn’t make any difference to you as you aren’t in love with me....”
No, the news did not hurt Colin, so he told himself, in the way that Violet meant, and she was quite right about the reason of that: he was not in love with her. But it struck him that the news must undeniably hurt Violet herself; she was trying to wriggle away from it, while at the same time she tried to justify herself and that unfortunate (or should he call it fortunate?) kiss she had given him.
He glanced hastily over the rest; there were more allusions to that last evening, more scolding and exhortations about his conduct to Raymond, and, as a postscript, the request that he should send her just one line, to say he wasn’t hurt. This letter of hers was absolutely private, but she had to tell him what was about to happen. In a week’s time both she and Raymond would write to his father, who, so Raymond thought, was not unprepared.
Colin tore off the final half-sheet of Violet’s letter, and with his stylograph scribbled his answer on it. He had long ago made up his mind what he should say:
“Violet, my dear” (he wrote),“It was delightful of you to tell me, and I send you a million congratulations. I am so pleased, for now you will be mistress of Stanier, and you seem quite to have fallen in love with Raymond. I must be very nice to him, or he’ll never let me come to Stanier in days to come, and you will take his side, as you say. But how could I be hurt at your news? It is simply charming.“Father and I are having a splendid time out here. I shall try to persuade him to stop on after this month. Of course we shall come back before your marriage. When is it to be, do you think?“Best love from“Colin.”
“Violet, my dear” (he wrote),
“It was delightful of you to tell me, and I send you a million congratulations. I am so pleased, for now you will be mistress of Stanier, and you seem quite to have fallen in love with Raymond. I must be very nice to him, or he’ll never let me come to Stanier in days to come, and you will take his side, as you say. But how could I be hurt at your news? It is simply charming.
“Father and I are having a splendid time out here. I shall try to persuade him to stop on after this month. Of course we shall come back before your marriage. When is it to be, do you think?
“Best love from“Colin.”
The ink in this hot sun dried almost as quickly as he wrote, and he had scarcely signed his own name when it wore the appearance not of a tentative sketch but of a finished communication ready for the post, and, reading it over, he found that this was so: he could not better it. So slipping it back into his pocket, he went across the beach again for a longer swim, smiling to himself at the ease with which he had divined Violet’s real mind, and at the fitness of his reply. As he swam he analysed his own purpose in writing exactly like that.
He had expressed himself with all the cordial geniality of which he was capable: he had welcomed Violet’s choice. He had endorsed, as regards his own part of the situation, her proposition that he ought not to be hurt, since they were not in love with each other, and the eagerness of his endorsement (that swift enthusiastic scrawl) would quite certainly pique her. He had adopted her attitude, and knew that she would wish he had another; the same, in fact, which he had expressed when he had said that it was maddening to think that she would be kissing Raymond next. Colin knew well how fond she was of him, and his letter would be like this plunge into the clear crystal of the sea which, while it cooled you, was glowingly invigorating.
He was quite prepared to find that in a week’s time she and Raymond would write to his father saying that they were engaged, but not for a moment did he believe that they would ever be married. He had but to keep up his cordial indifference till Violet found it intolerable. To have remonstrated with her, to have allowed that her news hurt him, was to give Violet just what she wanted.A loveless marriage faced her, while all the time she was not heart-whole, and however much she wanted Stanier, she would be daily more conscious that the conditions on which she got it were a diet of starvation.
“Sheisrather in love with me,” thought Colin, “and very likely my letter will drive her into accepting him. But if only I can keep cool and pleasant, she’ll never marry him. Devilish ingenious! And then there’s Raymond!”
Colin laughed aloud as he thought of Raymond, who really lay at the bottom of all these plans. Even if it had been possible now, before Violet accepted him, to intervene in some way and cause her to refuse instead of to take him, he would not have stirred a finger, for thus he would baulk himself of the completeness of Raymond’s discomfiture, since Raymond would feel the breaking off of his engagement more bitterly than an original refusal. Let Violet accept him first and then throw him over. That would be a real counter-irritant to the sting of Raymond’s primogeniture, an appreciable counterweight to his future possession of Stanier.
It had been a check in that fraternal feud that Raymond’s birth and his own were certainly legitimate, and that nothing now could stand in the way of his brother’s succession, but if the check in that direction had not occurred, there would never have been any chance of Violet’s marrying him, and Raymond would have been spared the wounding humiliation which instinctively, Colin felt sure, was to be dealt him. Raymond was genuinely desirous of her; he would feel her loss very shrewdly. If only, by some diabolical good fortune, Raymond could lose them both! Colin saw himself, Violet by his side, smilingly observing Raymond’s final departure from Stanier, and hoping that he would have a pleasant journey.
Alas! it was time to swim shorewards again, for the morning boat from Naples which was carrying Salvatore Viagi had already gone by on its tourist route to the BlueGrotto, and Salvatore would have disembarked at the Marina. He felt curious to see Uncle Salvatore, and was determined to make himself uncommonly pleasant, for there might be things which Salvatore knew which his father had not told him. The date of the marriage, for instance; though he despaired of any practical use arising from that, Colin would like to know when it took place.
He dressed and strolled up through the vineyards through which, twenty-one years ago, his father had gone, tasting for the first time the liberty and gaiety of the South, and found his little jingling conveyance awaiting him. His quiet concentrated hate of Raymond sat smiling beside him up the dusty road, and he rejoiced in its companionship.
Colin found that Salvatore had arrived, and his father was waiting lunch for him, and so without decoration of himself in the way of brushings or putting on tie or socks, he went straight to the salon. There was sitting there a very gorgeously-dressed gentleman, and his heart fell as he saw him, for it would be difficult to cultivate cordial relationships with so exquisite a bounder, whatever information might be the reward of his efforts.
Salvatore was clad in ill-fitting broadcloth, florid with braid; he wore patent leather shoes, a tie of pink billows in which nestled a preposterous emerald, cuffs and collar clearly detachable, and a gold watch-chain from which a large, cheap locket depended. Luxuriant hair, suspiciously golden and carefully curled, crowned his face; fierce moustaches, brushed and waxed, were trained away to show a mouth full of dazzling teeth, and his features were just those of a wax bust, representing the acme of masculine beauty, that may be seen in the window of a hairdresser.
With this troubadour was sitting his father, stiff and starched and iced. Colin guessed that this period of waiting had been embarrassing, for both seemed highly relieved at his entry, and the troubadour bounded to his feet with a tenor cry of welcome.
“Collino mio!” he exclaimed, kissing him, to Colin’s great surprise, on both cheeks. “Ah, the joy of the day when I behold my own nephew! And you are so like her, so like her. Look on the image of her which I ever carry about with me! I do not forget her, no, no!”
He opened the locket, and showed Colin a photograph faded into illegibility.
“Her eyes, her nose, her mouth,” he said. “I see again the features of my adored Rosina!”
This was so much worse than could possibly have been expected, that the only thing to be done was to treat it all as some game, some monstrous charade. This was the stock of which he had come; his mother was sister to this marvellous mountebank. At that moment Colin hated his father; how could he have joined himself to any of such a family? It was clearer than ever that, whatever the history of that year preceding his birth had been, it had not begun with marriage. His father had been prey to a pretty face.
Then he set himself to play the game.
“Dear Uncle Salvatore!” he said. “I can’t tell you how I’ve been looking forward to seeing you. I hurried in, as you see, when I heard you were here, without dressing or tidying myself. I could not wait. And you think I am like my mother?”
“But you are a true Viagi! You are the very image of her. And if I place myself beside you, my noble brother-in-law will not, I think, fail to mark a certain family resemblance.”
He put his hand on Colin’s shoulder as if for a Bank Holiday photograph, and rose on his toes to make himself the taller.
At that his noble brother-in-law, catching Colin’s merry glance, which shouted to him, “Play up, father, play up!” seemed to determine to make the best of it, too.
“Amazing resemblance,” he said, rising. “Two brothers. Shall we go in to lunch? Please go on, Salvatore.”
“With the escort of my brother Colin,” said Salvatore,in tremendous good spirits. He had clearly, so he thought, found a friendly heart in Colin, who would no doubt in time warm the heart of his brother-in-law, which at present seemed inclined to be chilly. It was desirable that a more generous warmth should be diffused there, before they came to speak of financial matters.
Philip’s efforts in answer to Colin’s unspoken bidding, to see the humorous side of their visitor, were put to a sad strain before that portentous meal was over. Salvatore was bent on making a fine and dashing impression, and adopted for that end a manner compounded of brag and rich adulation.
“Your cousins, Collino, my own beloved children!” he exclaimed. “Never will Vittoria and Cecilia forgive me, if I do not on my return prove to have got your promise to pay them a visit before you quit Italy. We must persuade your father to spare you for a day; you must dine and sleep, and, ho, ho! who knows but that when our ladies have gone to bed, you and I will not play the bachelor in our gay Naples? It would, I am afraid, be useless to urge you, my dear Philip, to be of the party, but ah! the happiness, ah! the honour that there would be in the Palazzo Viagi, if Lord Yardley would make himself of the family! But I know, I know: you come here to enjoy your quiet and blessed memories.”
“Very good of you, Salvatore,” said Philip. “But, as you say, I come here for quiet. I am afraid I shall hardly be able to get across to Naples.”
“Ah!Il eremito, as we say! The hermit, is it not?”
“You speak excellent English, Uncle Salvatore,” said Colin.
“And should I not? Was not English the language of my adored mother? It is Vittoria’s dream to go to England. Some day, perhaps, I will take Vittoria to see the home of her English ancestors, of her grandmother and of yours, my Colin. But the expense!Dio!the expense of travel. Once it was not so with the Viagi; they did not need to count their soldi, and now there are no soldito count! They were rich once; their wealth was colossal, and had it not been for nefarious enemies, slanderers, and swindlers, they would be rich still, and a line of princes. As it is, they have nothing left them but their pride, and from that, whatever their poverty, they will never part. I, the head of the family, proclaim that to the world.”
“Very proper,” said Philip.
Salvatore had hit himself quite a severe blow on the chest as he proclaimed his pride, which had set him coughing. This was curable by a considerable draught of hock, which started him again on the adulatory tack.
“A nectar! Nectar of the gods,” he exclaimed. “There is no such wine to be obtained in my beggarly country. But you must be a millionaire to drink it. I would die happy drowned in wine like that.”
“You must take a bottle or two away with you,” said Philip, rising. “If you will excuse me for ten minutes, there are a couple of letters I want to finish for this afternoon’s post. And then, perhaps, you will spare me a quarter of an hour, Salvatore, for a talk. There will be plenty of time before your boat goes.”
“Dear friend, my time is yours,” said Salvatore, “and the boat may go to Naples without me if we have not finished. I brought a small toilet bag in case I stopped the night. I can no doubt find a room at some modest hotel.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Philip, leaving him and Colin together.
Salvatore poured himself out some more of the nectar when the door had closed (he was making sure of taking a bottle at least with him), and pointed dramatically to his heart.
“My noble and venerated brother-in-law has never rallied from the shock of your mother’s death,” he said. “His heart broke. He lives only for the day when he will rejoin her. Till then it is a solace to him to minister to those who were nearest and dearest to Rosina. So generous a heart! Do you think I made a good impression on him to-day?”
“Admirable! Excellent!” said Colin. “Now talk to me about the old days, Uncle Salvatore. A glass of brandy? Did you see my father that year he spent in Italy, when he married my mother, and when I was born?”
Salvatore paused in the sipping of his brandy and made a splendid scowl with gesture of fist and rolling eyes. Quick as a lizard, Colin saw that he must appear to know facts which hitherto were only conjecture to him, if he was to learn the cause of these grimaces.
“I know all, of course, Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “You can speak to me quite freely.”
“And yet you ask if I was there!” said Salvatore. “Should I have permitted it? I was but a boy of eighteen, and in a bank at Rome, but, had I known, boy as I was, I should have gone to your father and have said, ‘Marry my sister out of hand or face the vengeance of Salvatore Viagi.’”
Colin held out his hand. “You would have done well, Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “I thank you for my mother’s sake.”
This was so deeply affecting to Salvatore that he had to take a little more brandy. This made him take a kindlier view of his noble brother-in-law.
“Yet I wrong him,” he said. “There was no need for Salvatore Viagi to intervene for his sister’s honour. She died Countess of Yardley, an alliance honourable to both of our families.”
“Indeed, yes,” said Colin. “I am proud of my Viagi blood. The marriage was at the British Consulate, of course. What day of the month was it, do you remember?”
Salvatore made a negative gesture. “The exact date escapes me,” he said. “But it was spring: March, it would have been March, I think. Two letters I got frommy beloved Rosina at that time; in one she told of the marriage, in the next of the birth of her sons. I have those letters still. Treasured possessions, for the next news of my Rosina was that her sweet soul had departed! My God, what lamentations were mine! What floods of never-ceasing tears!”
Colin thought rapidly and intently as he replenished his uncle’s glass with brandy. No definite scheme formed itself in his mind, but, whatever possibilities future reflection might reveal to him, it would clearly be a good thing to get hold of those letters. He might conceivably want to destroy them.
He leaned forward towards Salvatore. “Dear Uncle Salvatore,” he said, “I am going to ask a tremendous favour of you. I have nothing of my mother’s, and I never saw her, as you know. But I am learning to love her, and those letters would be so treasured by me. You have the memory of her, all those delightful days you must have spent together. Will you give me those letters? I hope before long to come across to Naples and see you and my cousins, and it would good of you if you would give me them. Then I shall have something of hers.”
A sob sounded in Salvatore’s voice. “You shall have them, my Colin,” he said, “and in turn perhaps you can do something for me. Intercede, I pray you, with your father. He is a generous, a noble soul, but he does not know my needs, and I am too proud to speak of them. Tell him, then, that you wrung out of me that I am in abject poverty. Vittoria is growing up, and dowerless maidens are not sought after.”
“Of course I will do all I can,” said Colin warmly. “I will talk to my father as soon as you have gone. And I may say that he listens to me.”
“I will send off the letters to you to-night,” he said. “And what joy will there be in Casa Viagi, when my girls know that their cousin Colin is to visit us! When will that happy day be?”
“Ah, I must write to you about that,” said Colin,noticing that the Palazzo had become a Casa. “Leave me your card. And now it is time for you to talk to my father; I will see if he is ready. But not a word of all we have been saying, to him.”
“Trust me, my nephew,” said Salvatore gaily.
Colin used his good offices with his father to such effect that he succeeded in procuring for Salvatore a further substantial cheque, in addition to that which he had carried off with the two bottles of wine that afternoon. His uncle apparently thought better of his reckless generosity in sending the letters of which Colin was desirous quite unconditionally, but the receipt of the second cheque was sufficient, and the morning’s post two days later brought them.
They were written in ill-spelled English, and contained precisely what his uncle had told him. The first, dated March 1, gave the information that she had been married that morning to Philip Lord Stanier; the second, dated March 17, stated that a week ago she had given birth to twins. They were quite brief, conveyed no other news, and had evidently been preserved with care, for the purple ink in which they were written was quite unfaded. But apart from the fact now definitely known to Colin that his father had legalised his life with Rosina but ten days before he himself and Raymond were born, they did not help in any way towards the attainment of the double object which now was putting out firm, fibrous roots in his mind as the ideal project, namely to prove by some means yet utterly unconjecturable the illegitimacy of Raymond and himself, and, by marrying Violet, who in that case would succeed to the title and the estates, to become master of Stanier. Indeed these letters were but a proof the more of what was no doubt sufficiently attested in the register of the British Consulate, namely, that the marriage had taken place previously to his own birth.
It seemed a hopeless business. Even if, by some rare and lucky mischance, there was any irregularity in therecord at the Consulate, these letters, so long as they were in existence, constituted, if not a proof, at any rate a strong presumption in favour of the marriage having taken place on the first of the month, and it might be better to destroy them out of hand so that such testimony as they afforded could not by any possibility be produced. And yet he hesitated; somehow, in his subconscious mind, perhaps, there was a stir and a ferment which bubbled with a suggestion that had not yet reached his consciousness. Might not something conceivably be done with them?... It was maddening that just ten days out of all those uneventful hundreds of days which had elapsed since, should suffice to wreck any project that he might make.
And then a bubble of that ferment broke into his conscious mind. There was the letter, announcing the marriage which had taken place that day dated March 1. There was the letter dated March 17 announcing the birth of himself and Raymond a week previously. What if by the insertion of a single numeral in front of the “1” of the first date, he converted it into March 31st? As far as these two letters went, they would in that case show precisely what he desired.
Psychologically, too, there would be a reasonable interpretation. In his father, it would be argued, there had sprung up after the birth of his sons, a tenderness and an affection for the mother of them, and he had married her so that she, in the future, might bear him legitimate offspring. Already she had borne two lusty and healthy sons; the union was vigorous and fruitful.
Colin got up from the long chair in his bedroom where he had taken these letters, and began softly pacing up and down the floor, lithe and alert, and smiling. His father was coming down with him to bathe that morning, but there was a quarter of an hour yet before he need join him downstairs, and a great deal of thinking might be put into a quarter of an hour if you could only concentrate.
He knew he was very far yet from the attainment of his ambition, for that register at the Consulate, which somehow he must manage to see, might contain insuperable obstacles to success. There might, for instance, be other entries between March 1 of that year and March 31, so that even if he could contrive to alter the first date into the second it would throw those other entries, if such existed, out of their chronological order; the marriage contracted on March 31 would precede those that lay in between the two dates. In that case he might have to tear out the page in which this entry occurred, and that might be quite impossible of accomplishment.
It would not be wise, at any rate, to tamper with the date on this first letter of his mother’s, till he knew how the ground lay at the Consulate. But given that it proved possible to make some alteration in the register or tear out a page, how conclusively would his case be established, if, in support of that, there were produced those letters of his mother?
Salvatore the troubadour.... Colin frowned and bit his lip at the thought of Salvatore, who would be ready to swear that, when he parted with those letters to Colin, the one that conveyed the news of his sister’s marriage was dated March 1, not March 31. There were experts on such subjects, too; prying, meticulous men who made a profession of detecting little things like altered dates, and produced evidence about a difference of hand or a difference in the analysis of two inks.
Yet if the register at the Consulate was found to endorse the evidence of the letters? The same detective-minded folk would examine the record at the Consulate, and might arrive at the damnable conclusion that it, too, had been tampered with. And if the letters which bore signs of being tampered with were in Colin’s possession, and he was known to have visited the register at the Consulate, there would be an unwelcome conclusion as towho had committed a forgery. Penal servitude was not an agreeable substitute for Stanier.
Colin focused his clear brain, as if it had been a lens, on Salvatore. He had been very decorative and melodramatic on the subject of his sister’s honour, but there had been much of cheap strutting, of tinsel, of footlights about that. And Salvatore, so Colin reasoned with a melting and a smoothing out of his frown, was not all strutting and swagger. There was a very real side to that impecunious uncle with his undowered Vittoria. His concern for his sister’s honour was not surely so dominant in him as his desire for coin. A suitable cheque would no doubt induce him to recollect that the first of Rosina’s letters announced the births of the twins, the second, that of March 31, her marriage.
Salvatore, for love of Vittoria (to put it at that), would probably see the sense of allowing his memory of the dates at the head of this letter to be faulty. He would not be obliged to perjure himself in any way; all he had got to do (given that a page had been torn out of the register at the Consulate, or that the date of the marriage as recorded there was March 31) was to swear that his sister’s letters had always been in his possession until he had given them to his attractive nephew.... Yes, Salvatore would surely not prove an insuperable obstacle; he would rate the living, himself and Vittoria, higher than the dead.
For one moment, brief as that in which, according to the legend, the ancestral Colin had considered whether he should close with that strange offer made him in the sheep-fold, his descendant, his living incarnation, hesitated when he thought of his father. His father had always been devoted to him, and such affection as Colin was capable of was his. But, after all, Philip would necessarily be dead when (and if) the discovery was made that Rosina’s letter to her brother gave the date of the marriage as March 31, and when, on search beingmade in the register of the British Consulate, it was discovered that, owing to a page being missing, there was no record of the marriage at all, or that the date given there corresponded with that of Rosina’s letter.
Colin had no intention of producing this evidence in his father’s lifetime; there might be counter-proofs which his father could produce. If he could only make some dealing with the register and with the date on the letter, he would let the whole matter sleep till his father was dead. Then nothing could hurt him; you cannot hurt the dead. Even if—Colin gave little thought to this—the spirit of the dead survived in consciousness of the living, would not his father’s spirit gladly make this posthumous sacrifice of his earthly honour and rejoice to see Colin, his beloved, master of Stanier? So his hesitation was fleeting as breath on a frosty morning, it appeared but mistily, and dispersed.
His father, out in the garden, was calling him, and with a cheerful response he picked up his towels and went downstairs. For the present there was but one necessary step to be taken; he had to get a day in Naples before he left, and pay a visit to the British Consulate. It was no use making any further plans beyond that, in his ignorance of what he should find there. A visit to his uncle, and a night spent there, might possibly serve as an excuse.
Philip had also heard from his brother-in-law this morning: the communication was not so satisfactory to him, as Colin’s post had been.
“I’ve heard from Salvatore,” he said. “He’s a nauseating fellow, Colin.”
“Oh, no; only a comic, father,” said Colin gaily. “You take him too heavily.”
“Read that,” said Philip.
The letter was certainly characteristic, and as Colin read his smile broadened into a laugh. The writer spoke of the deep humiliation it was for a Viagi to take gifts from any; it had not been so with them once, for the family had been the dispensers of a royal bounty. Indeed,two considerations only made it possible for him to do so, the first his paternal devotion to his two sweet maids, Vittoria and Cecilia, the second his fraternal devotion to his noble and generous relative. That sentiment did honour to them both, and with happy tears of gratitude he acknowledged the safe receipt of the cheque. He wrote with some distraction, for his sweet maids kept interrupting him to know if he had sent their most respectful love to their uncle, and had reminded their dearest Colin that they looked for his advent with prodigious excitement and pleasure. They demanded to know when that hour would dawn for them. One bottle of the nectar of France would be preserved for that day to drink the health of his friend, his relative, his noblest of benefactors. He signed himself “Viagi,” as if the princely honours had been restored.
“Oh, but priceless,” said Colin. “Haven’t you got a sense of humour, father?”
“Not where Salvatore is concerned. As for your going over to dine and sleep, I shan’t let you. Do you know we’ve only got a fortnight more here, Colin?”
“I know; isn’t it awful?” said Colin with a sigh. “But about my going over for a night. I wonder if I hadn’t better do that. It would be kind, you know. He would like it.”
Philip passed his hand over the boy’s shoulders.
“Colin, are you growing wings?” he said.
“Yes, and they don’t go well with my cloven hoofs. In other words, I should loathe spending the night there, and yet Uncle Salvatore would like it. Then I don’t want to leave you.”
“Don’t then. Salvatore, thanks to you, has got double his usual allowance. You’ve done enough for him.”
“Yes, but that didn’t cost me anything,” said Colin. “It only cost you. I’ve still my debt to pay for the wonderful entertainment he gave me here. Besides he is actually my uncle: I’m a Viagi. Princely line, father!”
“Don’t marry one of the young princesses,” said his father.
Colin had one moment’s acute thought before he answered. It struck him that his father could hardly have said that if in his very self he had loved his mother. But what he had said just came from his very self.... He laughed.
“I’ll promise not to, however entrancing Vittoria is,” he said. “Ah, how divine the sea looks this morning. I long to be in it.”
A sudden idea occurred to him.
“Do let us stop on another fortnight, father,” he said. “Can’t we?”
“I can’t,” said he. “I must get back by the end of the month. But—” he paused a moment and Colin knew that he had caught his own idea, which his suggestion was designed to prompt. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have another fortnight here if you want,” he said.
Colin had fallen behind his father on the narrow path to the bathing-place, and gave a huge grin of satisfaction at his own subtlety.
“Oh, I should love that!” he said, “though it won’t be half as much fun as if you would stop too. And then I can go over to Naples with you when you start homewards, and make my wings sprout by staying with Uncle Salvatore.”
Nothing could have fallen out more conveniently, and Colin, as for the next two hours he floated in the warm sea and basked on the hot pebbles, had a very busy mind in his lazy, drifting body. His father’s absence would certainly make his investigations easier. He could, for instance, present Lord Yardley’s card at the Consulate with his own, and get leave to inspect the register with a view to making a copy of it, in accordance with his father’s wishes. Better yet, he could spend a few days in Naples, make the acquaintance of the Consul in some casual manner, and produce his request on the heels of an agreeable impression. He would not, in any case, be limited to a single visit, or tied by the necessity of acting at once.He would not have to fire his bribe, with regard to the letters like a pistol in Salvatore’s face, he would be careful and deliberate, not risking a false step owing to the need of taking an immediate one. And all the time the suggestion of stopping on here alone had not come from himself at all. His father had made it.
On the way up to the villa again after the morning’s bathe, they often called at the post-office in the piazza for letters that had arrived by the midday post. To-day these were handed under the grille to Colin, and, sorting them out between his father and himself, he observed that there were two for Lord Yardley in the handwritings of Raymond and Violet. Possibly these were only the dutiful and trivial communications of those at home, but possibly Violet’s week of postponement had been shortened.
“Two from Stanier for you, father,” he said. “Violet and Raymond. The rest for me.”