She had expressed the charitable hope that he would not be hurt, and with claws and teeth her charity had come home to roost. It had dreadful habits in its siesta; it roosted with fixed talons and sleepless lids; it cried to the horses of the night to go slowly, and delay the dawn, for so it would prolong the pleasures of its refreshment. And each day it rose with her, strengthened and more vigorous. Had Colin only rebelled at her choice, that would have comforted her; she would have gathered will-power from his very opposition. But with his acquiescing and welcoming, she had to bear the burden of her choice alone. If he had only cared he would have stormed at her, and like the Elizabethan flirt, she would have answered his upbraidings with a smile. As it was, the smile was his, not hers. Almost, to win his upbraidings, she would have sacrificed the goodly heritage—all the honour and the secular glory of it.
Perhaps by now, for she had wandered far, the rest of them might have dispersed, her grandmother to the seclusion of her own rooms, Uncle Philip to the library, and Raymond to the lake, and she let herself into the house by the front door and passed into the hall. The great Holbein above the chimney piece smiled at her with Colin’s indifferent lips; the faded parchment was but a blur in the dark frame, and she went through into the long gallery which faced the garden front. All seemed still outside, and after waiting a moment in the entrance, she stepped on to the terrace, and there they were still; her grandmother alert and vigilant, Philip beside her, and Raymond dozing in his chair, with his illustrated paper fallen from his knee. What ailed them all that they waited like this; above all, what ailed her, that she cared whether they waited or not?
Soundless though she hoped her first footfalls on the terrace had been, they were sufficient to rouse Raymond. He sat up, his sleepiness all dispersed.
“Hullo, Vi!” he said. “Where have you been?”
“Just for a stroll,” said she.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come with you.”
Suddenly old Lady Yardley rose, and pointed down on to the road across the marsh.
“Colin is coming,” she said. “There’s his motor.”
Certainly a mile away there was, to Violet’s young eyes, an infinitesimal speck on the white riband, but to the dimness of the old, that must surely have been invisible. Lord Yardley, following the direction of her hand, could see nothing.
“No, mother, there’s nothing to be seen yet,” he said, proving that he, too, was absorbed in this unaccountable business of waiting for Colin.
“But I am right,” she said. “You will see that I am right. I must go to the front door to welcome him.”
She let the stick, without which she never moved, slide from her hand, and with firm step and upright carriage, walked superbly down the terrace to the door of the gallery.
“He is coming home,” she cried. “He is coming for his bride, and there will be another marriage at Stanier. Let the great glass doors be opened; they have not been opened for the family since I came here sixty years ago. They were never opened for my poor son Philip. I will open them, if no one else will. I am strong to-night.”
Philip moved to her side.
“No; it’s Raymond you are thinking of, mother,” he said. “They will be opened in October. You shall see them opened then.”
She paused, some shade of doubt and anxiety dimming this sudden brightness, and laid her hand on her son’s shoulder.
“Raymond?” she said. “Yes, of course, I was thinking of Raymond. Raymond and Violet. But to please me, my dear, will you not open them now for Colin? Colin has been so long away, it is as if a bridegroom came when Colin comes. We are only ourselves here; the Staniers may do what they like in their own house, may they not? I should love to have the glass doors open for Colin’s return.”
The speck she had seen or divined on the road had come very swiftly nearer, and now it could be seen that some white waving came from it.
“I believe it is Colin, after all,” said Raymond. “How could she have seen?”
Old Lady Yardley turned a grave glance of displeasure on him.
“Do not interrupt me when I am talking to your father,” she said. “The glass doors, Philip.”
Raymond with a smile, half-indulgent of senile whims, half-protesting, turned to the girl.
“Glass doors, indeed,” he said. “The next glass doors are for us, eh, Violet?”
Surely some spell had seized them all. Violet found herself waiting as tensely as her grandmother for Philip’s reply. She was hardly conscious of Raymond’s hand stealing into hers; all hung on her uncle’s answer. And he, as if he, too, were under the spell, turned furiously on Raymond.
“The glass doors are opened when I please,” he said. “Your turn will come to give orders here, Raymond, but while I am at Stanier I am master. Once for all understand that.”
He turned to his mother again.
“Yes, dear mother,” he said, “you and I will go and open them.”
Inside the house no less than among the watchers on the terrace the intelligence that Colin was at hand had curiously spread. Footmen were in the hall already, and the major-domo was standing at the entrance door, which he had thrown open, and through which poured a tideof hot air from the baking gravel of the courtyard. Exactly opposite were the double glass doors, Venetian in workmanship, and heavily decorated with wreaths and garlands of coloured glass. The bolts and handles and hinges were of silver, and old Lady Yardley, crippled and limping no longer, moved quickly across to them, and unloosing them, threw them open. Inside was the staircase of cedar wood, carved by Gibbons, which led up to the main corridor, opposite the door that gave entrance to the suite of rooms occupied by the eldest son and his wife.
What strange fancy possessed her brain none knew, and why Philip allowed and even helped her in the accomplishment of her desire was as obscure to him as to the others, but with her he pushed the doors back and the sweet odour of the cedar wood, confined there for the last sixty years, flowed out like the scent of some ancient vintage. Then, even as the crunching of the motor on the gravel outside was heard, stopping abruptly as the car drew up at the door, she swept across to the entrance.
Already Colin stood in the doorway. For coolness he had travelled bareheaded and the gold of his hair, tossed this way and that, made a shining aureole round his head. His face, tanned by the southern suns, was dark as bronze below it, and from that ruddy-brown his eyes, turquoise blue, gleamed like stars. He was more like some lordly incarnation of life and sunlight and spring-splendour than a handsome boy, complete and individual; a presence of wonder and enchantment stood there.... Then, swift as a sword-stroke, the spell which had held them all was broken; it was but Colin, dusty and hot from his journey, and jubilant with his return.
“Granny darling!” he said, kissing her. “How lovely of you to come and meet me like this. Father! Ever so many thanks for sending the motor for me. Ah, and there are Violet and Raymond. Raymond, be nice to me; let me kiss you, for, though we’re grown up, we’re brothers. And Violet; I want a kiss from Violet, too.She mustn’t grudge me that.... What! The glass doors open. Ah! of course, in honour of the betrothal. Raymond, you lucky fellow, how I hate you. But I thought that was only done when the bridegroom brought his bride home.”
“A whim of your grandmother’s,” said Philip hastily, disowning apparently his share in it.
Instantly Colin was by the old lady’s side again.
“Granny, how nice of you!” he said. “But you’ve got to find me a bride first before I go up those stairs. And even then, it’s only the eldest son who may, isn’t it? But it was nice of you to open the doors because I was coming home.”
He had kissed Raymond lightly on the cheek, and Violet no less lightly, and both in their separate and sundered fashions were burning at it, Raymond in some smouldering fury at what he knew was Colin’s falseness, Violet with the hot searing iron of his utter indifference; and then light as foam and iridescent as a sunlit bubble of the same, he was back with his father again, leaving them as in some hot desert place. And dinner must now be put off, growled Raymond to himself, because Colin wanted to have a bathe first and wash off the dust and dryness of his journey, and his father would stroll down after him and bring his towel, so that he might run down at once without going upstairs.
Colin had come home, it appeared, with the tactics that were to compass his strategy rehearsed and ready. Never had his charm been of so sunny and magical a quality, and, by contrast, never had Raymond appeared more uncouth and bucolic. But Raymond now, so ran his father’s unspoken comment on the situation, had an ugly weapon in his hand, under the blows of which Colin winced and started, for more than ever he was prodigal of those little touches and caresses which he showered on Violet. Philip could not blame him for it; it was no more than natural that a young man, engaged and enamoured, should usethe light license of a lover; indeed, it would have been unnatural if he had not done so.
Often and often, ten times in the evening, Philip would see Colin take himself in hand and steadfastly avert his eyes from the corner where Raymond and Violet sat. But ever and again that curious habit of self-torture in lovers whom fate has not favoured would assert itself, and his eyes would creep back to them, and seeing Raymond in some loverlike posture, recall themselves. And as often the sweetness of his temper, and his natural gaiety, would reassert its ray, and the usual light nonsense, the frequent laugh, flowed from him. Exquisite, too, was his tact with Violet; he recognised, it was clear, that their old boy-and-girl intimacy must, in these changed conditions, be banished. He could no longer go away with her alone to spend the morning between tennis-court and bathing pool, or with his arm round her neck, stroll off with a joint book to read reclined in the shade. Not only would that put Raymond into a false position (he, the enamoured, the betrothed) but, so argued the most pitiless logic of which his father was capable, that resumption of physical intimacy, as between boy and boy, would be a tearing of Colin’s very heart-strings not only for himself but for her also. In such sort of intimacy Colin, with his brisk blood and ardent lust of living, could scarcely help betraying himself, and surely then, Violet, little though she might care for Raymond, would see her pool of tranquil acceptance shattered by this plunge of a stone into the centre of it. Her liking for Colin was deep, and she would not fail to see that for her he had even profounder depths. A light would shine in those drowned caves, and Colin, as wise as he was tender, seemed to shew his wisdom by keeping on the surface with Violet, and only shining on her tranquillity, never breaking it.
Sometimes—so thought his father—he shewed her a face which, in virtue of their past intimacy, was almost too gaily indifferent; she would attempt some perfectlytrivial exhibition of their old relations, perch herself on the arm of his chair, and with the contrast of his bronzed face and golden hair, tell him that he must gild his face like the grooms in “Macbeth” or dye his hair. But on the instant he would be alert and spring up, leaving her there, for the need of a cigarette or a match. He allowed her not the most outside chance of resuming ordinary cousinly relations with him. His motive was sound enough; loving her he mistrusted himself. She was sealed to be his brother’s wife, and he must not trust himself within sight of the notice to trespassers. It was better to make himself a stranger to her than to run the risk of betraying himself. So, at least, it struck an outsider to Colin’s consciousness.
He avoided, then, all privacy with Violet, and no less carefully he avoided privacy with Raymond. If the three men were together and his father left them, Colin would be sure to follow him, and if they all three sat up together in the smoking-room, Colin would anticipate the signal of a silence or of his father’s yawning or observation of the clock, to go to bed himself. Here, again, he almost overdid the part, for as the first week after his return went by, Philip, firmly determined to be just to Raymond, thought he saw in him some kind of brotherly affection for Colin, which the latter either missed or intentionally failed to respond to. There could be no harm in a seasonable word, and when, one morning Raymond, after half a dozen chill responses from his brother, had left him and Colin together, Philip thought that the seasonable word was no less than Raymond’s due. But the seasonable word had to be preceded by sympathy.
He sat down in the window seat by Colin.
“Well?” he said.
Those blue eyes, gay but veiled by suffering, answered him.
“It’s damned hard on you, Colin,” he said. “Are you getting used to it, old boy?”
Colin, with one of those inimitable instinctive movements, laid his hand on his father’s shoulder.
“No, not a bit,” he said. “But I’ve got to. I can’t go on like this. I must feel friendly to Raymond and Violet. I must manage to rejoice in their happiness. Got any prescription for me, father? I’ll take it, whatever it is. Lord! How happy I used to be.”
All that Philip had missed in Rosina was here now; the tender, subtle mind, which should have been the complement of her beauty. His sympathy was up in arms for this beloved child of hers, and his sense of fairness elsewhere.
“Raymond’s doing his best, Colin,” he said. “I wonder....” and he paused.
“You can say nothing that will hurt me, father,” said Colin. “Go on.”
“Well, I wonder if you’re responding to that. To put it frankly, whenever he makes any approach to you, you snub him.”
Colin lifted his head.
“Snub him?” he said. “How on earth can I snub Raymond? He’s got everything. I might as well snub God.”
This was a new aspect.
“I can’t do otherwise, father,” said the boy. “I can only just behave decently to Raymond in public and avoid him in private. Don’t bother about Raymond. Raymond hates me, and if I gave him any opportunity, he would merely gloat over me. I can’t behave differently to him; I’m doing the best I can. If you aren’t satisfied with me, I’ll go away again till it’s all over and irrevocable. Perhaps you would allow me to go back to Capri.”
Philip’s heart yearned to him. “I wish I could help you,” he said.
“You do help me. But let’s leave Raymond out of the question. There’s a matter that bothers me much more, and that’s Violet. If I let myself go at all, I don’t know where I should be. What am I to do about her? Am Iright, do you think, in the way I’m behaving? We were chums—then she became to me, as I told you, so much more than a chum. I can’t get back on to the old footing with her; it would hurt too much. And she’s hurt that I don’t. I can see that. I think I was wrong to come back here at all, and yet how lovely it was! You all seemed pleased to see me—all but Raymond—and I didn’t guess the bitterness of it.”
It was inevitable that Philip should recall his surprise at Violet’s passivity. Colin, whose heart he knew, had been, in all outward appearance, just as passive, and he could not help wondering whether that passivity of Violet’s cloaked a tumult as profound as Colin’s. The suspicion had blinked at him before, like some flash of distant lightning; now it was a little more vivid. If that were true, if from that quarter a storm were coming up, better a thousand times that it should come now than later. Tragic, indeed, would it be if, after she had married Raymond, it burst upon them all.... But he had nothing approaching evidence on the subject; it might well be that his wish that Violet could have loved Colin set his imagination to work on what had really no existence outside his own brain.
“I hate seeing you suffer, Colin,” he said, “and if you want to go back to Capri, of course you may. But you’ve got to get used to it some time, unless you mean to banish yourself from Stanier altogether. Don’t do that.”
Colin pressed his father’s arm.
“I’ll do better, father,” he said. “I’ll begin at once. Where’s Violet?”
It was in pursuance of this resolve, it must be supposed, that when Lady Yardley’s rubber of whist was over that night, Colin moved across to the open door on to the terrace where Violet was standing. In some spasm of impatience at Raymond’s touch she had just got up from the sofa where he had planted himself close to her, leaving him with an expression, half offended, half merely hungry....
“Five minutes stroll outside, Vi?” he asked.
“It’s rather late,” she said.
“Right,” said Colin cheerfully, and went forth alone, whistling into the darkness.
The moment he had gone Violet regretted not having gone too. Since Colin’s return she had not had a half-hour all told alone with him, and the tension of his entire indifference to her was becoming intolerable. She had not dreamed that he would cut himself off from her with this hideous completeness, nor yet how much she longed for the renewal of the old intimacy. Bitterest of all was the fact that she meant nothing to him, for he had never been more light-heartedly gay. Where Philip, knowing what he did, saw strained and heroic effort, she saw only the contemptuous ignoring of herself and Raymond.... And now, with that same craving for self-torture that is an obsession to the luckless in love, when Colin made his first advance to her again, she must needs reject it. There was Raymond watching her, and revolt against that hungry look of his decided her. She stepped out on to the terrace.
Colin had come to the far end of it; his whistling directed her; and now in the strong starlight, she could see the glimmer of his shirt-front. She felt her knees trembling and hid the reason out of sight as she strolled, as unconcernedly as she could, towards him. Soon he perceived her and his whistling stopped.
“Hullo, Vi,” he said, “so you’ve come out after all. That’s ripping.”
They were close to each other now, and bright was the stream of starlight on him.
“Managed to tear yourself away from Raymond for five minutes?” he asked. “I was beginning to think I should never have a word with you again.”
“That’s your fault,” said she. “You have been a brute all this last week.”
“I? A brute?” said Colin. “What do you mean? I thought I had been conducting myself superbly....”
He looked up quickly at the oblong of light that flowed from the open door into the gallery, and saw that it framed a shadow.
“Hullo, there’s Raymond,” he said, “looking after us. Here we are, Raymond. Come and join us.”
He heard Violet’s clicked tongue of impatience.
“I had to say that,” he whispered. “He won’t come.”
Colin’s psychology was correct enough; Raymond had not meant to be seen, he only meant to see. Besides he had a grievance against Violet for her impatience just now; he was annoyed with her.
“No, thanks,” he said, “I’m going to the smoking-room.”
“That’s to punish you, Vi,” said Colin with a tremble of laughter in his voice. “But perhaps we had better go in. You mustn’t vex him.”
Nothing could have been better calculated.
“Is one of the conditions of my engagement that I mustn’t speak to you?” she asked. “Certainly it seems like it.”
Colin tucked his arm into Violet’s.
“Well, we’ll break it for once,” he said. “Now you’re vexed with me. That’s very unreasonable of you. You made your choice with your eyes open. You’ve chosen Raymond and Stanier. It stands to reason we can’t always be together. You can’t have Raymond and Stanier and me. It was your own doing. And I thought everything was going so well. Whenever I look up I see you and him holding hands, or else he’s kissing the back of your neck.”
“Ah!” said Violet with a little shiver.
“You’ve got to get used to it, Vi,” said he. “You’ve got to pay for having Stanier. Isn’t it worth it?”
He heard her take a quick breath; her control was swaying like a curtain in the wind.
“Oh, don’t be such a brute to me, Colin,” she said. “I hadn’t realised that—that you would desert me like this.”
Colin just passed his tongue over his lips.
“Oh, that doesn’t mean anything to you,” he said.
“But it does, it does,” said she.
They were back now in the shadow of the yew-hedge, where one night she had kissed him. As he thought of that he knew that she was thinking of it too.
“Give Raymond up,” he said. “Let him and Stanier go. It will be the wisest thing you can do.”
He paused a moment, and all the witchery of the night came to the reinforcement of his charm.
“I want you, Vi,” he said. “Promise me. Give me a kiss and seal it.”
For one second she wavered, and then drew back from him.
“No, I can’t do that,” she said. “I’ll give you a kiss, but it seals no promise.”
“Kiss me then,” said he, now confident.
There was no mistaking the way in which she surrendered to him. She stood enfolded by him, lambent and burning. She knew herself to be bitterly unwise, but for the moment the sweetness was worth all the waters of Marah that should inundate her.
“Ah, you darling, never mind your promise,” said he. “I shall have that later. Just now it’s enough that you should hate Raymond and love me.”
She buried her face on his shoulder.
“Colin, Colin, what am I to do?” she whispered.
He could see well that, though her heart was his, the idea of giving up Stanier still strove with her. To-night she might consent to marry him; to-morrow that passion for possession might lay hands on her again. She was bruised but not broken, and instantly he made up his mind to tell her the secret of his mother’s letter and of the entry at the Consulate. That would clinch it for ever. When she knew that by giving up Raymond and Stanier together, she retained just all she wanted out of her contract and gained her heart’s desire as well——
“What are you to do?” he said. “You are to do exactly what you are doing. You’re to cling to me, andtrust me. Ah, you’re entrancing! But I’ve got something to tell you, Vi, something stupendous. We must go in; I can’t tell you here, for not even the trees nor the terrace must know, though it concerns them.”
“But, Colin, about Raymond. I can’t be sure....”
He pressed her to him, thrilled all through at this ebb and flow of her emotional struggle.
“You’ve finished with Raymond, I tell you,” he said. “You’ve given him up and you’ve given up Stanier, haven’t you; you’ve given up everything?”
Some diabolical love of cruelty for its own sake; of torturing her by prolonging the decision which pulled at her this way and that, possessed him.
“It’s a proud hour for me, Vi,” he said. “I love Stanier as madly as you do, and you’ve given it up for me. I adore you for doing that; you’ll never repent it. I just hug these moments, though there must come an end to them. Let us go in, or Raymond will be looking for us again. Go straight to your room. I shall come there in five minutes, for there’s something I must tell you to-night. I must just have one look at Raymond first. That’s for my own satisfaction.”
Colin could not forego that look at Raymond. He knew how he should find him, prospering with a glass of whisky, disposed, as his father had said, to be brotherly, having all the winning cards in his hand. Stanier would be his, and, before that, Violet would be his, and Colin might be allowed, if he were very amiable, to spend a week here occasionally when Raymond came to his throne, just as now he had been allowed a starlit stroll with Violet. These were indulgences that would not be noticed by his plenitude, morsels let fall from the abundant feast. The life only of one man, already old, lay between him and the full consummation; already his foot was on the steps where the throne was set. Just one glance then at victorious Raymond....
Raymond fulfilled the highest expectations. Whisky had made him magnanimous; he was pleased to havegranted Colin that little starlit stroll with Violet, it was a crumb from the master’s table. His heavy face wore a look of great complacency as his brother entered.
“Hullo, Colin,” he said. “Finished making love to Violet?”
Colin grinned. “You old brute!” he said. “Not content with having everything yourself, you must mock me for my beggary. You lucky fellow.”
He poured himself out a drink and sat down.
“Raymond, I had no idea how devoted Violet was to you till to-night,” he said. “I think she’s afraid to let herself go, to shew it too much.”
The grossness of Raymond, his animal proprietorship, was never more apparent. It was enough for him to desire her.
“Oh, Vi’s all right,” he said.
Colin felt his ribs a-quiver with the spasm of his suppressed laughter. He distrusted his power of control if he subjected himself to further temptation.
“I’m off to bed,” he said. “I just looked in to envy you.”
“Where’s Vi?” asked Raymond.
Colin bethought himself that he did not want Raymond knocking at Violet’s door for a good-night kiss.
“Oh, she went upstairs half an hour ago,” he said. “She told me she was awfully sleepy. In fact, she soon got tired of me.”
He drank in a final impression of Raymond’s satisfied face and went upstairs, going first to his room, where from his locked despatch-case he took the two letters which Salvatore had given him, and which now bore the dates of March 17 and March 31. Then, passing down the long corridor, he came to her room; the door was ajar, and he rapped softly and then entered.
Violet, in anticipation of his coming, had sent her maid away, and was brushing her hair, golden as Colin’s own, before her glass. Often and often in the days of their intimacy had he come in for a talk during this ritual; ondry, frosty nights Violet would put out her light, and pale flashes of electricity and cracklings and sparks would follow the progress of her brush. Her hair would float up from her head and cling to Colin’s fingers as sea-weed that had lain unexpanded on the shore spreads out, floating and undulating, in the return of the tide. To-night it lay thick and unstirred, rippling for a moment under her brush, and then subsiding again into a tranquil sheet of gold.
She saw him enter in the field of her mirror and heard the click of the key as he turned it.
“Just in case Raymond takes it into his head to say good-night to you,” he said.
She had risen from her chair and stood opposite to him.
“What have you got to tell me, Colin?” she said.
He looked at her a moment with parted lips and sparkling eyes. Each seemed the perfect complement of the other; together they formed one peerless embodiment of the glory of mankind. Through them both there passed some quiver of irresistible attraction, and, as two globules of quick-silver roll into one, so that each is merged and coalesced in the other, so with arms interlaced and faces joined, they stood there, two no longer. Even Colin’s hatred for Raymond flickered for that moment and was nearly extinguished since for Violet he existed no more. Then the evil flame burned up again, and he loosed Violet’s arms from round his neck.
“Now you’re to sit and listen to me,” he said. “What I have got to tell you will take no time at all.”
He opened the envelope which he had brought with him, and drew out the two letters. He had decided not to tell Violet any more than what, when his father was dead, all the world would know.
“Salvatore Viagi gave me these,” he said. “He is my mother’s brother, you know, and I saw him at Capri. They were written by my mother to him, and announce the birth of Raymond and me and her marriage to myfather. Take them, Vi, look at the dates and read them in order.”
She gave him one quick glance, took them from him, read them through and gave them back to him. Then in dead silence she got up and stood close to him.
“I see,” she said. “On Uncle Philip’s death, Stanier, everything will be mine. According to those letters, that is.”
He nodded. “Yes, on the one condition, of course, that you and I are wife and husband.”
She looked at him again with a smile breaking through her gravity.
“I promised that before I knew,” she said. “And now that I know that Stanier will be mine, instead of believing that my choice forfeited it, it isn’t very likely that I shall change my mind.”
“There’s something else, you know, too,” he said. “You’re marrying....”
She interrupted. “I’m marrying Colin,” she said. “But as regard you. Is it horrible for you? Ah ... I’ve been thinking of myself only. Stanier and myself.”
She moved away from him and walked to the end of the room, where, pushing the blind aside, she looked out on to the terrace where they had stood this evening. As clearly as if she spoke her thoughts aloud, Colin knew what was the debate within her. It lasted but a moment.
“Colin, if—if you hate it,” she said, “tear that letter up. I’ve got you, and I would sooner lose Stanier than let you be hurt. Tear it up! Let Raymond have Stanier so long as I don’t go with it.... Oh, my dear, is it the same me, who so few weeks ago chose Raymond, and who so few hours ago wondered if I could give up Stanier, even though to get it implied marrying him? And now, nothing whatever matters but you.”
Instantly Colin felt within himself that irritation which love invariably produced in him. Just so had his father’s affection, except in so far as it was fruitful of materialbenefits, fatigued and annoyed him, and this proposal of Violet’s, under the same monstrous impulsion, promised, in so far from being fruitful, to prove itself some scorching or freezing wind which would wither and blast all that he most desired. But, bridling his irritation, he laughed.
“That wouldn’t suit me at all,” he said, “and besides, Vi, how about honour? Stanier will be legally and rightfully yours. How on earth could I consent to the suppression of this? But lest you should think me too much of an angel—father asked me one day how my wings were getting on—I tell you quite frankly that it will be sweet as honey to send Raymond packing. My adoring you doesn’t prevent my hating him. And as for what is called irregularity in birth, who on earth cares? I don’t. I’m a Stanier all right. Look at half the dukes in England, where do they spring from? Actresses, flower-girls, the light loves of disreputable kings. Who cares? And, besides, my case is different: my father married my mother.”
Up and down his face her eyes travelled, seeing if she could detect anywhere a trace of reluctance, and searched in vain.
“Are you quite sure, Colin?” she asked.
“Absolutely. There’s no question about it.”
Once more she held him close to her.
“Oh, it’s too much,” she whispered. “You and Stanier both mine. My heart won’t hold it all.”
“Hearts are wonderfully elastic,” said he. “One’s heart holds everything it desires, if only it can get it. Now there’s a little more to tell you.”
“Yes? Come and sit here. Tell me.”
She drew him down on to the sofa beside her.
“Well, my uncle sent me these letters,” said he, “but, naturally, they won’t be enough by themselves. It was necessary to find out what was the entry in the register of their marriage. My father had told me where it took place, at the British Consulate in Naples, and I got the Consul to let me see the register. I told him I wanted to make a copy of it. I saw it. The marriage apparentlytook place not on the 31st of March, but on the 1st. But then I looked more closely, and saw that there had been an erasure. In front of the ‘1’ there had been another figure. But whoever had made that erasure had not done it quite carefully enough. It was possible to see that a ‘3’ had been scratched out. The date as originally written was ‘31’ not ‘1.’ That tallies with the date on my mother’s letter.”
Colin’s voice took on an expression of tenderness, incredibly sweet.
“Vi, darling,” he said, “you must try to forgive my father, if it was he who made or caused to be made that erasure which might so easily have passed unnoticed, as indeed it did, for when the Consul prepared my copy with the original he saw nothing of it; word by word he went over the two together. You must forgive him, though it was a wicked and a terrible fraud that my father—I suppose—practised, for unless he had other children, he was robbing you of all that was rightfully yours.
“I think the reconstruction of it is easy enough. My mother died, and he was determined that his son, one of them, should succeed. I imagine he made, or procured the making, of that erasure after my mother’s death. He had meant to marry her, indeed he did marry her, and I think he must have desired to repair the wrong, the bitter wrong, he did her in the person of her children. I’ve got something to forgive him, too, and willingly I do that. We must both forgive him, Vi. I the bastard, and you the heiress of Stanier.”
Violet would have forgiven Satan himself for all the evil wrought on the face of the earth from the day when first he set foot in Paradise.
“Oh, Colin, yes,” she said. “Freely, freely!”
“That’s sweet of you. That is a great weight off my mind. And you’ll make your forgiveness effective, Vi?”
She did not grasp this.
“In what way?” she asked.
“I mean that you won’t want to make an exposure ofthis now,” said he. “I should like my father never to know that I have found out what he did. I should like him to die thinking that Raymond will succeed him, and that his fraud is undiscovered. Of course, you would be within your rights if you insisted on being established as the heiress to Stanier now. There are certain revenues, certain properties always made over to the heir on coming of age, and Raymond and I come of age in a few months. Can you let Raymond enjoy them for my father’s sake? He has always been amazingly good to me.”
“Oh, Colin, what a question!” she said. “What do you take me for? Would that be forgiveness?”
“That’s settled then; bless you for that. The only objection is that Raymond scores for the present, but that can’t be helped. And there’s just one thing more. About—about what has happened between us. Shall I tell my father to-morrow? Then we can settle how Raymond is to be told.”
“Oh, Colin, to-morrow?” said she. “So soon?”
He laughed. “To-night if you like,” he said, “though it’s rather late. Of course, if you want to put it off, and have Raymond nosing about you still like a ferret....”
“Don’t!”
“He shan’t then. Now I must go. One kiss, Vi.”
She clung to him. “I’m frightened of Raymond,” she said. “What will he do?”
“Howl like a wounded bear, I suppose. Hullo!”
There was the sound of knocking at the door, and Raymond’s voice:
“Violet,” he said. “May I come in; just to say good-night?”
Colin frowned. “Been listening, probably,” he whispered, “and heard voices.”
Without pause he went to the door, and turned the key and handle together.
“Come in, Raymond,” he said as he opened it. “Violet’s been talking of nothing but you. So here we allare, bride and bridegroom and best man. Let’s have one cigarette before we all go to bed.”
Raymond wore his most savage look. “I thought you had gone to bed,” he said, “and I thought you said Violet had gone to bed half an hour before that?”
“Oh, Raymond, don’t be vexed,” said Colin. “Haven’t you got everything?”
In just such a voice, dexterously convincing, had he pleaded with Violet that she should forgive his father....
Philip was waiting in his library for Raymond’s entry, wanting to feel sorry for him, but as often as he could darken his mind behind that cloud, the edges of it grew dazzlingly bright with the thought of Colin, and the sun re-emerging warmed and delighted him....
Yet he was sorry for Raymond, and presently he would express his sympathy, coldly and correctly, he was afraid, with regret and truism and paternal platitudes; but duty would dictate his sentiments. At the most he could not hope for more than to give the boy the impression he was sorry, and conceal from him his immensurable pleasure in the news Colin had made known to him. All these weeks, ever since, on that morning in Capri, he had learned of Raymond’s engagement and Colin’s desire, he had never been free from heartache, and his favourite’s manliness, his refusal to be embittered, his efforts with himself, gaily heroic, had but rendered those pangs the more poignant. And in the hour of his joy Colin had shewn just the same marvellous quickness of sympathy for Raymond’s sorrow, as, when Philip had first told him of the engagement, he had shewn for Raymond’s happiness.
“I would have given anything to spare Raymond this, father,” he had said. “As you know, I kept all I felt to myself. I didn’t let Violet see how miserable I was, and how I wanted her. And then last night—it was like some earthquake within. Everything toppled and fell; Vi and I were left clinging to each other.”
After Colin, Philip had seen Violet, and she, too, had spoken to him with a simplicity and candour.... She had already begun to love Colin, she thought, before sheaccepted Raymond, but how she loved Stanier. She had been worldly, ambitious, stifling the first faint calls of her heart, thinking, as many a girl thought, whose nature is not yet wholly awake, that Raymond would “do,” as regards herself, and “do” magnificently as regards her longing for all that being mistress of Stanier meant to her. Then came Colin’s return from Italy, and the whisper of her heart grew louder. She could not help contrasting her lover with her friend, and in that new light Raymond’s attentions to her, his caresses, his air—she must confess—of proprietorship grew odious and insufferable. And then, just as Colin had said, came the earthquake. In that disruption, all that from the worldly point of view seemed so precious, turned to dross.
At that point she hesitated a moment, and Philip had found himself recording how like she was to Colin. With just that triumphant glow of happiness with which he had said: “Raymond has got Stanier, father, Violet and I have got each other,” so Violet now, after her momentary hesitation, spoke to him.
“Stanier, for which I longed, Uncle Philip, doesn’t exist for me any more. How could I weigh it against Colin?”
Colin’s happiness ... nothing could dim that sunshine for his father, and the sunshine was not only of to-day, it was the sunshine that had shone on him and Rosina more than twenty years ago. His heart melted with the love that through Colin reacted on her. Surely she must rejoice at the boy’s happiness to-day! Raymond, to be sure, was the fruit of her body also, but it was through Colin that she lived, he was the memory and the gracious image of her beauty.
Raymond entered, snapping the golden thread.
“You wanted to see me, father,” he said.
Philip had been attempting to drill himself into a sympathetic bearing towards his son, but Raymond’s actual presence here in succession to Colin and Violet, brought sheer helplessness. For the brightness and beam of theothers there was this solid self-sufficiency. It seemed as if a crime had been averted in the transference of the girl to another bridegroom. What unnatural union would have been made by this mating of her! His heart sang; it were vain to try to throttle it into silence.
“Yes, Raymond; sit down,” said he, indicating a place on the sofa where he sat.
“Oh, thanks, it doesn’t matter. I’ll stand,” said Raymond.
“I’ve got bad news for you,” said Philip. “You must brace yourself to it.”
“Let’s have it,” said Raymond.
Philip felt his sympathy slipping from him. He wanted chiefly to get it over; there was no use in attempting to lead up to it.
“It concerns you and Violet,” he said.
A savage look as of a hungry dog from whom his dinner is being snatched, came across Raymond’s face.
“Well?” he said.
“She wished me to tell you that she can’t marry you,” said his father. “She asks you to set her free from her engagement.”
The savagery of that sullen face grew blacker. “I don’t accept that from you,” he said. “If it’s true, Violet will have to tell me herself.”
Philip made a great effort with himself. “It is true,” he said, “and I want at once to tell you that I’m very sorry for you. But it would have been very painful for her to tell you, and it was I who suggested that I should break her decision to you. I hope you won’t insist on having it from her.”
“She has got to tell me,” said Raymond. “And is that all, father? If so, I’ll go to her at once.”
“No, there’s more,” said he.
Raymond’s face went suddenly white; his mouth twitched, he presented a mask of hatred.
“And so it’s Colin who has got to tell me the rest,” he said. “Is that it?”
“She is going to marry Colin.”
For a moment Raymond stood perfectly still; just his hands were moving; knitted together they made the action of squeezing something. Once it seemed that he tried to speak, but no word came; only the teeth shewed in his mouth.
“Colin has got to tell me then,” he said. “I will see Colin first.”
Philip got up and laid a hand of authority on Raymond’s shoulder. The boy, for all his quietness, seemed beside himself with some pent-up fury all the more dangerous for its suppression.
“You must not see either of them in the state you are in now,” he said.
“That’s my affair,” said Raymond.
“It’s mine, too. You’re my son and so is Colin. You must wait till you’ve got more used to what has happened. And you must remember this, that a few weeks ago Colin was in the same case as you are now. He loved Violet, and it was I then, out in Capri, who told him that Violet was going to marry you. And he took it like a man, like the generous fellow he is. His first words were: ‘By Jove, Raymond will be happy!’ I shall never forget that, and you mustn’t either, Raymond.”
Raymond gave a dry snap of a laugh.
“I won’t,” he said. “That’s just what Colin would say. Perfect character, isn’t he? Only last night I found him talking to Violet in her bedroom. I wasn’t pleased, and he begged me not to be vexed, as I had got everything. He had taken Violet from me when he said that, or if not, he came back when Violet was in bed, and got engaged to her then. Engaged!”
“Now stop that, Raymond,” said his father.
“Very good. He was already engaged to her when he told me I had got everything. You don’t understand Colin. He hates more than he loves. He has hated me all my life. ‘By Jove, Raymond will be happy!’ I’ll be even with Colin some day. Now I’m going to seehim. Or shall I say: ‘By Jove, Colin will be happy?’ Then you’ll consider me a generous fellow.”
Once again Philip tried to put himself in Raymond’s place, and made allowance for his bitter blackness. His hand went on to the boy’s shoulder again, with less of authority and more of attempted affection.
“Raymond, you must do better than this,” he said. “You would be very unwise to see Colin and Violet just now, but if you insist on doing so, you shall see them in my presence. I can’t trust you, in the mood you’re in, not to be violent, not to say or do something which you would bitterly repent, and which they would find it hard to forgive. And if, which I deny, Colin has always hated you, what about yourself?”
Both of them now were on bed-rock. By implication, by admission, by denial even, they had got down to the hatred that, like a vein of murderous gold, ran through the very foundation of the brothers’ existence. Who knew what struggle might have taken place, what prenatal wrestling in the very womb of life, of which the present antagonism was but a sequel, logical and inevitable!
Even as Philip spoke, he half-realised the futility of bringing argument to bear on Raymond’s nature, for this hatred sprang from some ineradicable instinct, an iron law on which intelligence and reason could but perch like a settling fly. He could deny that Colin hated his brother, he could urge Raymond to show himself as generous as he believed Colin to have been, but nothing that he could say, no persuasion, no authority could mitigate this fraternal hostility. And even while he denied Colin’s animosity, with the evidence he had already brought forward to back it, he found himself wondering if at heart Colin could feel the generosity he had expressed, or whether it was not a mere superficial good-nature, mingled with contempt perhaps, that had given voice to it.
Raymond had ceased from the clutching and squeezing of his hands.
“You don’t know what Colin is,” he said, “and I know it is no use trying to convince you. I shan’t try. You judge by what you see of him and me, and you put me down for a black-hearted, sullen fellow, and he’s your heart’s darling.”
“You’ve got no right to say that,” said Philip.
“But can I help knowing it, father?” asked he.
Philip felt that his very will-power was in abeyance; he could not even want to readjust the places which his two sons held in his heart, or, rather, to find place in his heart for the son who had never been installed there yet. And there would be no use in “wanting,” even if he could accomplish that. Colin held every door of his heart, and with a grudging sense of justice towards Raymond, he was aware that Colin would grant no admittance to his brother. Or was that conviction only the echo of his own instinct that he wanted no one but Colin there? He had no love to spare for Raymond. Such spring of it as bubbled in him must fall into Colin’s cup, the cup that never could be filled.
How could he but contrast the two? Here was Raymond, sullen in his defeat, attempting (and with unwelcome success) to put his father in the wrong, jealous of the joy that had come to Colin, insisting, Shylock-like, on such revenge as was in his power, the pound of flesh which would be his, in making a scene with the girl who had chosen as her heart bade her, and the boy who was her choice. On the other side was Colin, who, when faced with an identical situation, had accepted his ill-luck with a wave of welcome for the more fortunate. And Raymond would have it that that splendid banner was but a false flag, under cover of whose whiteness a treacherous attack might be made.
“I don’t know that we need pursue that,” said Philip. “Your feelings are outside my control, but what is in my control is to be just to you in spite of them. I have tried to tell you with all possible sympathy of——”
“Of Violet’s jilting me,” interrupted Raymond. “Andyou have clearly shewn me, father, your sympathy with Colin’s happiness.”
Philip felt every nerve jarring. “I am not responsible for your interpretations of myself,” he said, “nor do I accept them. If your design is to be intolerably offensive to me, you must work out your design somewhere else. I am not going to have you stop here in order to amuse yourself with being rude to me, and spoiling the happiness of others——”
“Ah! Just so!” said Raymond. “Colin.”
Philip was exasperated beyond endurance.
“Quite right,” he said. “I am not going to have you spoiling Colin’s happiness. And Violet’s. I should have suggested you leaving Stanier for the present for your own sake, if you had allowed me to show sympathy for you. As you do not, I suggest that you should do so for Colin’s sake. You may go to St. James’s Square if you like, and if you can manage to behave decently, you may stop on there when we come up next week. But that depends on yourself. Now if you want to see Violet and your brother you may, but you will see them here in my presence. I will send for them now, if that is your wish. When you have seen them you shall go. Well?”
Suddenly the idea of leaving Colin and Violet here became insupportable to Raymond. Hehadto see them as lovers, and hate them for it: his hate must be fed with the sight of them.
“Must I go, father?” he said.
“Yes; you have forced me to be harsh with you. It was not my intention. Now do you want to see them?”
Raymond hesitated: if Colin could be cunning, he could be cunning too. “I should like to see them both,” he said.
Philip rang the bell, and in the pause before they came, Raymond went across to the window-seat, and sat there with face averted, making no sign, and in the silence Philip reviewed what he had done. He had no wish, as he had said, to be harsh to Raymond, but what possible gain to any one was his remaining here? He would bea misery to himself, and no entertainment to others; and yet the boy wanted to stop, thinking perhaps that thus he would be sooner able to accept the position. It was impossible to grudge him any feasible alleviation of the blow that, so far from stunning him, had awakened all that was worst in him. Much must depend on his behaviour now to Colin and Violet.
They entered together. Colin looked first at his father; then, without pause, seeing the huddled figure in the window-seat, went straight to Raymond. All else, Violet even, was forgotten.
He laid his hand on Raymond’s shoulder. “Oh, Raymond,” he said, “we’re brutes. I know that.”
Philip thought he had never seen anything so exquisite as that instinct of Colin’s to go straight to his brother. Could Raymond recognise the beauty of that?... And was it indeed Raymond who now drew Colin on to the window-seat beside him?
“That’s all right, Colin,” he said. “You couldn’t help it. No one can help it when it comes. I couldn’t.”
He stood up. “Father’s told me about it all,” he said, “and I just wanted to see you and Violet for a moment in order to realise it. I’ve got it now. Good-bye, Colin; good-bye, Violet.”
He went across to his father with hand outstretched. “Thanks ever so much for letting me go to St. James’s Square,” he said. “And I’m sorry, father, for behaving as I did. I know it’s no use just saying that; I’ve got to prove it. But that’s all I can do for the present.”
He went straight out of the room without once looking back.
“Is Raymond going away?” asked Colin.
“Yes. It’s better so.”
Colin heard this with a chill of disappointment, for among his pleasurable anticipations had been that of seeing Raymond wince and writhe at the recasting of their parts. Raymond would have hourly before his eyes his own rôle played by another, and with what infinitelygreater grace. The part of heroine would be filled by its “creator,” but, in this remodelled piece, what sparkle and life she would put into her scenes. Where she had been wooden and impassive, she would be eager and responsive, that icy toleration would melt into a bubbling liquor of joy. Then there would be the part now to be filled by Raymond; would he fill that with Colin’s tact and sweetness? Of minor characters there would be his father and grandmother, and with what convincing sincerity now would they fill their places.... But Raymond’s absence would take all the sting and fire out of the play.
“Oh, father, does he feel like that?” asked Colin. “Did he feel he couldn’t bear to stop? I’m sorry.”
“No, it was I who told him to go,” said Philip. “He behaved outrageously just now with me.”
“But he’s sorry,” said Colin. “He wants to do better. Mayn’t he stop? He’ll be wretched all alone up in London.”
A sudden thought struck him, a touch of genius. “But it concerns Vi most,” he said. “What do you vote, darling?”
“By all means let him stop,” said she. Nothing but Colin’s wish, here clearly indicated, could have any weight with her.
“Then may he, father?” he asked. “That is good of you. Come and tell him, Vi.”
Raymond was in the hall. He had just ordered his car, and was now about to telephone to the housekeeper in town to say he was coming, when Colin and Violet came out of the library. Philip followed them to complete the welcome, and saw Colin go up to his brother.
“Raymond, don’t go,” he said. “We all want you to stop. Vi does, father does, I do.”
Raymond saw his father in the doorway. “May I stop, then, father?” he said.
“By all means. We all wish it,” said he.
Raymond looked back again at his brother. Colin wasstanding just below the portrait of his ancestor, the very image and incarnation of him.
“I’ve got you to thank, I expect, Colin,” he said.
Their eyes met; Colin’s glittered like a sword unsheathed in the sunlight of his hatred and triumph; Raymond’s smouldered in the blackness of his hatred and defeat.
“I wish there was anything I could do for you, Ray,” said Colin gently.
The entertainment which Colin had anticipated from these alterations in the cast of this domestic drama did not fall short of his expectations. He held Raymond in the hollow of his hand, for Raymond’s devotion to Violet, gross and animal though it had been, gave Colin a thousand opportunities of making him writhe with the shrewd stings of jealousy, and with gay deliberation he planted those darts. Thecoup de grâcefor Raymond would not come yet, his father’s death would give the signal for that; but at present there was some very pretty baiting to be done. Not one of those darts, so becomingly beribboned, failed to hit its mark: a whispered word to Violet which made the colour spring bright and eager to her face, a saunter with her along the terrace in the evening, and, even more than these, Colin’s semblance of sparing Raymond’s feelings, his suggestion that he should join them in any trivial pursuit—all these were missiles that maddingly pierced and stung.
No less adequately did Philip and old Lady Yardley fill their minor parts; he, with the sun of Colin’s content warming him, was genial and thoughtful towards Raymond in a way that betrayed without possibility of mistake the sentiment from which it sprang; while Lady Yardley, braced and invigorated by the same emotion, was strangely rejuvenated, and her eyes, dim with age, seemed to pierce the mists of the encompassing years and grew bright with Colin’s youth.
As regards his own relations with Violet, Colin foundhe could, for the present anyhow, manage very well; the old habits of familiarity and intimacy appeared to supply response sufficient; for she, shuddering now, as at some nightmare, at her abandoned engagement to Raymond and blinded with the splendour of the dawn of her love, saw him as a god just alighted on the gilded and rosy hills.... Colin shrugged his shoulders at her illusion; she presented to him no such phantasmal apparition, but he could give her liking and friendship, just what she had always had from him. Soon, so he hoped, this vision of himself would fade from her eyes, for even as he had found his father’s paternal devotion to him in Capri a fatiguing and boring business, so he foresaw a much acutergênethat would spring from a persistence of Violet’s love. No doubt, however, she would presently become more reasonable.
What above all fed Colin’s soul was to stroll into the smoking-room when Violet had gone upstairs, and his father had retired to his library, and to make Raymond drink a cup more highly spiced with gall than that which had refreshed him in public. Raymond had usually got there first, while Colin lingered a moment longer with Violet, and had beside him a liberally mixed drink, and this would serve for Colin’s text:
“Hullo, Raymond! Drowning dull care?” he asked. “That’s right. I can’t bear seeing you so down. By Jove, didn’t Violet look lovely to-night with her hair brought low over her forehead?”
“Did she?” said Raymond. He tried to entrench himself in self-control; he tried to force himself to get up and go, but hatred of Colin easily stormed those defences. “Stop and listen,” said that compelling voice. “Glut yourself with it: Love is not for you; hate is as splendid and as absorbing....”
“Did she?” echoed Colin. “As if you hadn’t been devouring her all the evening! But we all have our turn, don’t we? Every dog has its day. Last week I used to see you and Violet; now you see Violet and me. Tellme, Raymond, does Violet look happy? We can talk so confidentially, can’t we, as we have both been in the same position? What a ticklish thing it is to be a girl’s lover. How it ages one! I feel sixty. But does she seem happy? She used to wear a sort of haunted look last week. I suppose that was her wonder and her misgiving at a man’s brutal adoration. It frightened her. As if we weren’t frightened too! Did the idea of marriage terrify you as it terrifies me? A girl’s adoration is just as brutal.”
Colin moved about the room as he spoke, dropping the sentences out like measured doses from some phial of a potent drug. After each he paused, waiting for a reply, and drinking glee from the silence. In that same silence Raymond was stoking his fires which were already blazing.
“Yes, every dog has its day,” he said, replenishing his glass.
“And every dog has his drink,” said Colin. “Lord, how you’ll get your revenge when your day comes! What sweetness in your cup that Vi and I will never be allowed to come to Stanier again. You’ll like that, Raymond. You’ll have married by that time. I wonder if it will be the tobacconist’s girl who’ll have hooked you. You’ll be happier with her than Vi, you know, and I shouldn’t wonder if Vi will be happier with me than with you....”
Still there was silence on Raymond’s part.
“You must be more cheerful, Raymond,” said Colin. “Whatever you may do to me hereafter, you had better remember that I’m top-dog just now. I shall have to ask father to send you away after all, if you don’t make yourself more agreeable. It was I who made him allow you to stop here, and I will certainly have you sent away if you’re not kinder to me. You must be genial and jolly, though it’s a violence to your nature. You must buck up and be pleasant. So easy, and so profitable. Nothing to say?”
There was a step outside, and their father entered. He carried an opened letter in his hand.
“I’ve just had a note from the governor of the asylum at Repstow,” he said. “One of their patients has escaped, a homicidal lunatic.”
“Gosh, I’ll lock my door,” said Colin. “No use for him. What else, father?”
“It’s no joke, Colin. The keeper at the Repstow Lodge was out attending to the pheasants’ coops this afternoon, and while he was gone a man vaulted over the fence, frightened his wife into hysterics, and decamped with his gun and a bag of cartridges. Then he bolted into the woods. It’s almost certain that he is the escaped lunatic.”
Raymond, who had been listening intently, yawned.
“But they’re out after him, I suppose,” he said. “They’ll be sure to catch him.”
Colin wondered what that yawn meant.... To any boy of twenty—to himself anyhow—there was a spice of excitement about the news. It was impossible not to be interested. But Raymond did not seem to be interested.... Or did he wish it to appear that he was not interested?
Colin, with an eye on Raymond, turned to his father. Two or three more little darts were ready for his brother, at which he would not yawn....
“Oh, father,” said he, “come and sleep in my room and we’ll take watches. What glorious fun. You shall take the watch from midnight till, till half-past eight in the morning, and then you’ll wake me up, and I’ll take the watch till five in the afternoon without a wink of sleep. Then Raymond and Vi can slumber in safety. Now I shall go upstairs and say good-night to Vi——”
“Better not tell her about it to-night,” said Lord Yardley.
“Rather not: we shall have other things to talk about, thanks. But not a minute before half-past eight, father. Good-night; good-night, Raymond. Sleep well.”
Raymond, in spite of these good wishes, passed an almost sleepless night. If he shut his eyes it was to seeColin’s mocking face floating on the darkness of his closed lids, and to have echoing in his ears the mockery of Colin’s jibes. As he passed Violet’s door on his way up to bed he had heard the sound of speech and laughter from within, and his jealousy seemed to arrest his tip-toeing steps, so that what he might overhear should give it the bitter provender it loved. But some new-born fear of Colin made him go on instead of lingering: Colin seemed prospered in all he did by some hellish protection; a mysterious instinct might warn him that there was a listener, and he would throw open the door and with a laugh call Violet to see who was eavesdropping on the threshold.... Then after they had laughed and pointed at him, Colin would shut the door again, locking it for fear of—of a homicidal maniac—and the talking would go on again till it was quenched in kisses....
He had tossed and turned as on a gridiron, with the thought of Colin and Violet together to feed and to keep the fire alive. He did not believe that Colin loved her; if she had not promised to marry himself, he would not have sought her. It was from hatred of himself that he had given her a glance and a smile and whistled her to him, so that she threw away like a scrap of waste-paper the contract that would have installed her as mistress of the house she adored. Colin had idly beckoned, just to gratify his hate, and she had flamed into love for him.
What subtle arts of contrivance and intrigue were his also! He had wanted to feast that same hatred on the sight of his brother’s defeat and discomfiture, and a word from him had been sufficient to make his father revoke his edict and let him remain at Stanier. Thus Colin earned fresh laurels in the eyes of the others for his compassionate forbearance, and by so doing accomplished his own desire of having Raymond there, like a moth on a pin.
As the hours went on strange red fancies crossed his brain. He imagined himself going to his father’s room and smothering him, so that next day he would be masterof Stanier, and free to turn Colin out. Not another hour should he stay in the place. Out he should go, and Violet with him. Better still would it be to come behind Colin with a noose in his hand, which he would draw tight round his neck and laugh to see his face go black and his eyes start from his head with the strangling.... That would satisfy him; he could forgive Colin when he lay limp and lifeless at his feet, but till then he would never know a moment’s peace or a tranquil hour.
All this week his fever of hatred had been mounting in his blood, to-night the heat of it made to flower in his brain this garden of murderous images. And all the time he was afraid of Colin, afraid of his barbed tongue, his contemptuous hate, above all, of the luck that caused him to prosper and be beloved wherever he went. Just at birth one stroke of ill-luck had befallen him, but that was all....
Earlier in the evening, he remembered, an idea had flitted vaguely through his head, which had suggested to him some lucky accident.... He had purposely yawned when that notion presented itself, so that Colin should not see that he took any interest in what was being talked about.
For the moment he could not recollect what it had been; then he remembered how his father had come into the smoking-room and told them that a homicidal lunatic had got hold of a gun and was at large, probably in the park.... That was it; he had yawned then, for he had pictured to himself Colin strolling through the leafy ways and suddenly finding himself face to face with the man. There would be a report and Colin would lie very still among the bracken till his body was found. Ants and insects would be creeping about him.
That had been the faint outline of the picture; now in the dark it started into colour. What if once again Colin’s luck failed him, and in some remote glade he found himself alone with Raymond? He himself would have a gun with him, and he would fire it point-blank at Colin’s face and leave him there. It would be supposed that the escaped mad-man had encountered him....
It was but a wild imagining, born of a sleepless night, but as he thought of it, Raymond’s eyelids flickered and closed, and just before dawn he fell asleep. When he was called a few hours later, that was the first image that came into his mind, and by the light of day it wore a soberer, a more solid aspect. What if it was no wild vision of the night, but a thing that might actually happen?