colin stanier had gone straight from the tennis-court to the bathing-place in the lake below the terraced garden. his cousin violet, only daughter of his uncle ronald, had said that she would equip herself and follow him, and the boy had swum and dived and dived and swum waiting for her, until the dressing-bell booming from the turret had made him reluctantly quit the water. he was just half dry and not at all dressed when she came.
“wretched luck!” she said. “oh, colin, do put something on!”
“in time,” said colin; “you needn’t look!”
“i’m not looking. but it was wretched luck. mother....”
colin wrapped a long bath-towel round himself, foraged for cigarettes and matches in his coat pocket, and sat down by her.
“mother?” he asked.
“oh, yes. mother was querulous, and so she wanted some one to be querulous to.”
“couldn’t she be querulous to herself?” asked colin.
“no, of course not. you must have a partner or a dummy if you’re being querulous. i wasn’t more than a dummy, and so when she had finished the rest of it she was querulous about that. she said i was unsympathetic.”
“dummies usually are,” said colin. “cigarette?”
“no, thanks. this one was, because she wanted to come and bathe. did you dive off the top step?”
“of course not. no audience,” said colin. “wha{66}t’s the use of doing anything terrifying unless you impress somebody? i would have if you had come down.”
“i should have been thrilled. oh, by the way, raymond has just telephoned from town to say that he’ll be here by dinner-time. he’s motoring down.”
colin considered this. “raymond’s the only person older than myself whom i envy,” he said. “he’s half an hour older than me. oh, i think i envy aunt hester, but then i adore aunt hester. i only hate raymond.”
“just because he’s half an hour older than you?” asked the girl.
“isn’t that enough? he gets everything just because of that unlucky half-hour. he’ll get you, too, if you’re not careful.”
colin got up and gathered his clothes together.
“he’ll have stanier,” he observed. “isn’t that enough to make me detest him? besides, he’s a boor. happily, father detests him, too; i think father must have been like raymond at his age. that’s the only comfort. father will do the best he can for me. and then there’s aunt hester’s money. but what i want is stanier. come on.”
“aren’t you going to dress?” asked violet.
“certainly not. as soon as i get to the house i shall have to undress and dress again.”
“not shoes?” asked she.
“not when the dew is falling. oh, wet grass is lovely to the feet. we’ll skirt the terrace and go round by the lawn.”
“and why is it that you envy aunt hester?” asked the girl.
“can’t help it. she’s so old and wicked and young.”
violet laughed. “that’s a very odd reason for envying anybody,” she said. “what’s there to envy?”
“why, the fact that she’s done it all,” said colin frowning. “she has done all she pleased all her life, and she’s just as young as ever. if i wasn’t her nephew, she would put me under her arm, just as she did her husband a{67} thousand years ago, and marry me to-morrow. and then you would marry raymond, and—and there we would all be. we would play whist together. my dear, those ghastly days before we were born! grandfather with his garter over his worsted jacket and a kitten on his knee, and grandmamma and aunt janet and your father and mine! they lived here for years like that. how wonderful and awful!”
“they’re just as wonderful now,” said violet. “and....”
“not quite so awful; grandfather isn’t here now, and he must have been the ghastliest. besides, there’s aunt hester here to tone them up, and you and i, if it comes to that. not to mention raymond. i love seeing my father try to behave nicely to raymond. dead failure.”
colin tucked his towel round him; it kept slipping first from one shoulder, then the other.
“i believe raymond is falling in love with you,” he said. “he’ll propose to you before long. your mother will back him up, so will uncle ronald. they would love to see you mistress here. and you’d like it yourself.”
“oh—like it?” said she. she paused a moment. “colin, you know what i feel about stanier,” she said. “i don’t think anybody knows as well as you. you’ve got the passion for it. wouldn’t you give anything for it to be yours? look at it! there’s nothing like it in the world!”
they had come up the smooth-shaven grass slope from the lake, and stood at the entrance through the long yew-hedge that bordered the line of terraces. there were no ghastly monstrosities in its clipped bastion; no semblance of peacocks and spread tails to crown it: it flowed downwards, a steep, uniform embattlement of stiff green, towards the lake, enclosing the straight terraces and the deep borders of flower-beds. the topmost of these terraces was paved, and straight from it rose the long two-storied fa?ade of mellow brick balustraded with the motto, “nisi{68} dominus ?dificavit,” in tall letters of lead, and from floor to roof it was the building of that colin stanier whose very image and incarnation stood and looked at it now.
so honest and secure had been the workmanship that in the three centuries which had elapsed since first it nobly rose to crown the hill above rye scarcely a stone of its facings had been repaired, or a mouldering brick withdrawn. it possessed, even in the material of its fashioning, some inexplicable immortality, even as did the fortunes of its owners. its mellowing had but marked their enrichment and stability; their stability rivalled that of the steadfast house. the sun, in these long days of june, had not yet quite set, and the red level rays made the bricks to glow, and gave a semblance as of internal fire to the attested guarantee of the motto. whoever had builded, he had builded well, and the labour of the bricklayers was not lost.
a couple of years ago colin, still at eton, had concocted a mad freak with violet. there had been a fancy-dress ball in the house, at which he had been got up to represent his ancestral namesake, as shewn in the famous holbein. there the first colin appeared as a young man of twenty-five, but the painter had given him the smooth beauty of boyhood, and his descendant, in those rich embroidered clothes, might have passed for the very original and model for the portrait.
this, then, had been their mad freak: violet, appearing originally in the costume of old colin’s bride, had slipped away to her room, when the ball was at its height, and changed clothes with her cousin. she had tucked up her hair under his broad-brimmed jewelled hat, he had be-wigged himself and easily laced his slimness into her stiff brocaded gown, and so indistinguishable were they that the boys, colin’s friends and contemporaries, had been almost embarrassingly admiring of him, while her friends had found her not less forward. a slip by colin in the matter of hoarse laughter at an encircling arm and an{69} attempt at a kiss had betrayed him into forgetting his brilliant falsetto and giving the whole thing away.
not less like to each other now than then, they stood at the entrance of the terraces. he had gained, perhaps, a couple of inches on her in height, but the piled gold of her hair, and his bare feet equalised that. no growth of manhood sheathed the smoothness of his cheeks; they looked like replicas of one type, still almost sexless in the glow of mere youth. theirs was the full dower of their race, health and prosperity, glee and beauty, and the entire absence of any moral standard.
faun and nymph, they stood there together, she in the thin blouse and white skirt of her tennis-clothes, he in the mere towel of his bathing. he had but thrown it on anyhow, without thought except to cover himself, and yet the folds of it fell from his low square shoulders with a plastic perfection. a hand buried in it held it round his waist, tightly outlining the springing of his thighs from his body. with her, too, even the full tennis-skirt, broad at the hem for purposes of activity, could not conceal the exquisite grace of her figure; above, the blouse revealed the modelling of her arms and the scarcely perceptible swell of her breasts. high-bred and delicate were they in the inimitable grace of their youth; what need had such physical perfection for any dower of the spirit?
she filled her eyes with the glow of the sunlit front, and then turned to him. “colin, it’s a crime,” she said, “that you aren’t in raymond’s place. i don’t like raymond, and yet, if you’re right and he means to propose to me, i don’t feel sure that i shall refuse him. it won’t be him i refuse, if i do, it will be stanier.”
“lord, i know that!” said colin. “if i was the elder, you’d marry me to-morrow.”
“of course i should, and cut out aunt hester. and the funny thing, darling, is that we’re neither of us in love with the other. we like each other enormously, but we don’t dote. if you married aunt hester i should{70}n’t break my heart, nor would you if i married raymond.”
“not a bit. but i should think him a devilish lucky fellow!”
she laughed. “so should i,” she said. “in fact, i think him devilish lucky already. colin, if i do refuse him, it will be because of you.”
“oh, chuck it, violet!” said he.
she nodded towards the great stately house. “it’s a big chuck,” she said.
from the far side of the house there came the sound of motor-wheels on the gravel, and after a moment or two the garden door at the centre of the terrace opened, and raymond came out. he was not more than an inch or so shorter than his brother, but his broad, heavy, short-legged build made him appear short and squat. his eyebrows were thick and black, and already a strong growth of hair fringed his upper lip. while colin might have passed for a boy of eighteen still, the other would have been taken for a young man of not less than twenty-five. he stood there for a minute, looking straight out over the terrace, and the marsh below. then, turning his eyes, he saw the others in the dusky entrance through the yew-hedge, and his face lit up. he came towards them.
“i’ve only just come,” he said. “had a puncture. how are you, violet?”
“all right. but how late you are! we’re all late, in fact. we must go and dress.”
raymond looked up and down colin’s bath-towel, and his face darkened again. but he made a call on his cordiality.
“hullo, colin,” he said. “been bathing? jolly in the water, i should think.”
“very jolly,” said colin. “how long are you down for?”
he had not meant any particular provocation in the question, though he was perfectly careless as to whether raymond found it there or not. he did, and his face flushed.{71}
“well, to be quite candid,” he said, “i’m down here for as long as i please. with your permission, of course.”
“how jolly!” said colin in a perfectly smooth voice, which he knew exasperated his brother. “come on, vi, it’s time to dress.”
“oh, there’s twenty minutes yet,” said raymond. “come for a few minutes’ stroll, vi.”
colin paused for her answer, slightly smiling, and looking just above raymond’s head. the two always quarrelled whenever they met, though perhaps “quarrel” is both too strong and too superficial a word to connote the smouldering enmity which existed between them, and which the presence of the other was sufficient to wreathe with little flapping flames. envy, as black as hell and as deep as the sea, existed between them, and there was no breath too light to blow it into incandescence. raymond envied colin for absolutely all that colin was, for his skin and his slimness, his eyes and his hair, and to a degree unutterably greater, for the winning smile, the light, ingratiating manner that he himself so miserably lacked, even for a certain brusque heedlessness on colin’s part which was interpreted, in his case, into the mere unselfconsciousness of youth. in the desire to please others, raymond held himself to be at least the equal of his brother, yet, where his efforts earned for him but a tepid respect, colin would weave an enchantment. if raymond made some humorous contribution to the conversation, glazed eyes and perfunctory comment would be all his wages, whereas if colin, eager and careless, had made precisely the same offering, he would have been awarded attention and laughter.
colin, on the other hand, envied his brother not for anything he was, but for everything he had. theirs was no superficial antagonism; the graces of address and person are no subjects for light envy, nor yet the sceptred fist of regal possessions. that fist was raymond’s; all would be his; even violet, perhaps, stanier certainly, would be.{72}
at this moment the antagonism flowered over violet’s reply. would she go for a stroll with raymond or wouldn’t she? colin cared not a blade of grass which she actually did; it was her choice that would feed his hatred of his brother or make him chuckle over his discomfiture. for an infinitesimal moment he diverted his gaze from just over raymond’s head to where, a tiny angle away, her eyes were level with his. he shook his head ever so slightly; some drop of water perhaps had lodged itself from his diving in his ear.
“oh, we shall all be late,” said she, “and uncle philip hates our being late. only twenty minutes, did you say? i must rush. hair, you know.”
she scudded off along the paved terrace without one glance behind her.
“want a stroll, raymond?” said colin. “i haven’t got to undress, only to dress. i needn’t go for five minutes yet.”
raymond had seen the headshake and colin’s subsequent application of the palm of a hand to his ear was a transparent device. colin, he made sure, meant him to see that just as certainly as he meant violet to do so. the success of it enraged him, and not less the knowledge that it was meant to enrage him. colin’s hand so skilfully, so carelessly, laid these traps which silkenly gripped him. he could only snarl when he was caught, and even to snarl was to give himself away.
“oh, thanks very much,” he said, determined not to snarl, “but, after all, vi’s right. father hates us being late. how is he? i haven’t seen him yet.”
“ever so cheerful,” said colin. “does he know you are coming, by the way?”
“not unless vi has told him. i telephoned to her.”
“pleasant surprise,” said colin. “well, if you don’t want to stroll, i think i’ll go in. vi’s delighted that you’ve come.”
once again raymond’s eye lit up. “is she?” he asked.
“didn’t you think so?” said colin, standing first on{73} one foot and then on the other, as he slipped on his tennis shoes to walk across the paving of the terrace.
there had been no break since the days of colin’s grandfather in the solemnity of the ceremonial that preceded dinner. now, as then, the guests, if there were any, or, if not, the rest of the family, were still magnificently warned of the approach of the great hour, and, assembling in the long gallery which adjoined the dining-room, waited for the advent of lord yardley.
that piece of ritual was like the canon of the mass, invariable and significant. it crystallised the centuries of the past into the present; dinner was the function of the day, dull it might be, but central and canonical, and the centre of it all was the entrance of the head of the family. he would not appear till all were ready; his presence made completion, and the staniers moved forward by order. so when the major-domo had respectfully enfolded the flock in the long gallery, he took his stand by the door into the dining-room. that was the signal to lord yardley’s valet who waited by the door at the other end of the gallery which led into his master’s rooms. he threw that open, and from it, punctual as the cuckoo in the clock, out came lord yardley, and every one stood up.
but in the present reign there had been a slight alteration in the minor ritual of the assembling, for colin was almost invariably late, and the edict had gone forth, while he was but yet fifteen, and newly promoted to a seat at dinner, that master colin was not to be waited for: the major-domo must regard his jewelled flock as complete without him. he, with a “sorry, father,” took his vacant place when he was ready, and his father’s grim face would soften into a smile. raymond’s unpunctuality was a different matter, and he had amended this weakness.
to-night there were no guests, and when the major-domo took his stand at the dining-room door to fling it open on the remote entry of lord yardley from the far{74} end of the gallery, all the family but colin were assembled. lord yardley’s mother, now over eighty, white and watchful and bloodless, had been as usual the first to arrive, and, leaning on her stick, had gone to her chair by the fireplace, in which, upright and silent, she waited during these canonical moments. she always came to dinner, though not appearing at other meals, for she breakfasted and lunched in her own rooms, where all day, except for a drive in the morning, she remained invisible. now she held up her white hand to shield her face from the fire, for whatever the heat of the evening, there was a smouldering log there for incense.
ronald stanier sat opposite her, heavy and baggy-eyed, breathing sherry into the evening paper. his wife, the querulous janet, was giving half an ear to raymond’s account of his puncture, and inwardly marvelling at lady hester’s toilet. undeterred by the weight of her sixty years, she had an early-victorian frock of pink satin, high in the waist and of ample skirt. on her undulated wig of pale golden hair, the colour and lustre of which had not suffered any change of dimness since the day when she ran away with her handsome young husband, she wore a wreath of artificial flowers; a collar of pearls encircled her throat which was still smooth and soft. the dark eyebrows, highly arched, gave her an expression of whimsical amusement, and bore out the twinkle in her blue eyes and the little upward curve at the corner of her mouth. she was quite conscious of her sister-in-law’s censorious gaze; poor janet had always looked like a moulting hen....
by her stood violet, who had but this moment hurried in, and whose entrance was the signal for lord yardley’s valet to open the door. she had heard colin splashing in his bath as she came along the passage, though he had just bathed.
then, with a simultaneous uprising, everybody stood, old lady yardley leaned on her stick, ronald put down{75} the evening paper, and raymond broke off the interesting history of his punctured wheel.
philip yardley went straight to his mother’s chair, and gave her his arm. in the dusk, raymond standing between him and the window was but a silhouette against the luminous sky. his father did not yet know that he had arrived, and mistook him for his brother.
“colin, what do you mean by being in time for dinner?” he said. “most irregular.”
“it’s i, father,” said raymond.
“oh, raymond, is it?” said lord yardley. “i didn’t know you were here. glad to see you.”
the words were sufficiently cordial, but the tone was very unlike that in which he had supposed himself to be addressing colin. that was not lost on raymond; for envy, the most elementary of all human passions, is also highly sensitive.
“you came from cambridge?” asked his father, when they had sat down, in the same tone of studious politeness. “the term’s over, i suppose.”
“yes, a week ago,” said raymond. as he spoke he made some awkward movement in the unfolding of his napkin, and upset a glass which crashed on to the floor. lord yardley found himself thinking, “clumsy brute!”
“of course; colin’s been here a week now,” he said, and raymond did not miss that. then philip yardley, considering that he had given his son an adequate welcome, said no more.
these family dinners were not, especially in colin’s absence and in raymond’s presence, very talkative affairs. old lady yardley seldom spoke at all, but sat watching first one face and then another, as if with secret conjectures. ronald stanier paid little attention to anything except to his plate and his glass, and it was usually left to violet and lady hester to carry on such conversation as there was. but even they required the stimulus of colin, and to-night the subdued blink of spoons on silver-{76}gilt soup-plates reigned uninterrupted. these had just ceased when colin appeared, like a lamp brought into a dusky room.
“sorry, father,” he said. “i’m late, you know. where’s my place? oh, between aunt hester and violet. ripping.”
“urgent private affairs, colin?” asked his father.
“yes, terribly urgent. and private. bath.”
the whole table revived a little, as when the gardener waters a drooping bed of flowers.
“but you had only just bathed,” said violet.
“that’s just why i wanted a bath. nothing makes you so messy and sticky as a bathe. and there were bits of grass between my toes, and a small fragment of worm.”
“and how did they get there, dear?” asked aunt hester, violently interested.
“because i walked up in bare feet over the grass, aunt hester,” said colin. “it’s good for the nerves. come and do it after dinner.”
lord yardley supposed that colin had not previously seen his brother, and that seeing him now did not care to notice his presence. so, with the same chill desire to be fair in all ways to raymond, he said:
“raymond has come, colin.”
“yes, father, we’ve already embraced,” said he. “golly, i don’t call that soup. it’s muck. hullo, granny dear, i haven’t seen you all day. good morning.”
lady yardley’s face relaxed; there came on her lips some wraith of a smile. colin’s grace and charm of trivial prattle was the only ray that had power at all to thaw the ancient frost that had so long congealed her. ever since her husband’s death, twenty years ago, she had lived some half of the year here, and now she seldom stirred from stanier, waiting for the end. her life had really ceased within a few years of her marriage; she had become then the dignified lay-figure, emotionless and impersonal, typical of the wives of staniers, and that was all that her children knew of her. for them the frost{77} had never thawed, nor had she, even for a moment, lost its cold composure, even when on the night that the news of raymond’s and colin’s birth had come to stanier, there came with it the summons that caused her husband to crash among the glasses on the table. nothing and nobody except colin had ever given brightness to her orbit, where, like some dead moon, she revolved in the cold inter-stellar space.
but at the boy’s salutation across the table, she smiled. “my dear, what an odd time to say good morning,” she said. “have you had a nice day, colin?”
“oh, ripping, grandmamma!” said he. “enjoyed every minute of it.”
“that’s good. it’s a great waste of time not to enjoy....” her glance shifted from him to lady hester. “hester, dear, what a strange gown,” she said.
“it’s aunt hester’s go-away gown after her marriage,” began colin. “she....”
“colin,” said his father sharply, “you’re letting your tongue run away with you.”
very unusually, lady yardley turned to philip. “you mustn’t speak to colin like that, dear philip,” she said. “he doesn’t know about those things. and i like to hear colin talk.”
“very well, mother,” said philip.
“colin didn’t have a mother to teach him what to say, and what not to say,” continued lady yardley; “you must not be harsh to colin.”
the stimulus was exhausted and she froze into herself again.
colin had been perfectly well aware during this, that raymond was present, and that nothing of it was lost on him. it would be too much to say that he had performed what he and violet called “the grandmamma trick” solely to rouse raymond’s jealousy, but to know that raymond glowered and envied was like a round of applause to him. it was from no sympathy or liking for his grandmother that he thawed her thus and brought her back from her{78} remoteness; he did it for the gratification of his own power in which raymond, above all, was deficient.... like some antique bird she had perched for a moment on colin’s finger; now she had gone back into her cage again.
colin chose that night to take on an air of offended dignity at his father’s rebuke, and subsided into silence. he knew that every one would feel his withdrawal, and now even uncle ronald who, with hardly less aloofness than his mother, for he was buried in his glass and platter, and was remote from everything except his vivid concern with food and drink, tried to entice the boy out of his shell. colin was pleased at this: it was all salutary for raymond.
“so you’ve been bathing, colin,” he said.
“yes, uncle ronald,” said he.
“pleasant in the water?” asked uncle ronald.
“quite,” said colin.
aunt hester made the next attempt. they were all trying to please and mollify him. “about that walking in the grass in bare feet,” she said. “i should catch cold at my age. and what would my maid think?”
“i don’t know at all, aunt hester,” said colin very sweetly.
raymond cleared his throat. colin was being sulky and unpleasant, and he, the eldest, would make things agreeable again. no wonder colin subsided after that very ill-chosen remark about aunt hester.
“there’s a wonderful stride been made in this wireless telegraphy, father,” he said. “there were messages transmitted to newfoundland yesterday, so i saw in the paper. a good joke about it in punch. a fellow said, ‘they’ll be inventing noiseless thunder next.’”
there was a dead silence, and then colin laughed loudly.
“awfully good, raymond,” he said. “very funny. strawberries, aunt hester?”
that had hit the mark. leaning forward to pull the dish towards him, he saw the flush on raymond’s face.{79}
“really? as far as newfoundland?” said lord yardley.
by now the major-domo was standing by the dining-room door again, and philip rose. his mother got up and stood, immobile and expressionless, till the other women had passed out in front of her. then, as she went out, she said exactly what she had said for the last sixty years.
“you will like a game of whist, then, soon?”
generally when the women had gone, the others moved up towards the host. to-night philip took up his glass and placed himself next colin. the decanters were brought round and placed opposite him, and he pushed them towards raymond.
“help yourself, raymond,” he said.
then he turned round in his armchair to the other boy.
“still vexed with me, colin?” he said quietly.
“of course not, father,” he said. “sorry i sulked. but you did shut me up with such a bang.”
“well, open yourself at the same place,” said philip.
“rather. aunt hester’s dress, wasn’t it? isn’t she too divine? if she ever dies, which god forbid, you ought to have her stuffed and dressed just like that, and put in a glass case in the hall to shew how young it is possible to be when you’re old. but, seriously, do get a portrait done of her to hang here. there’s nothing of her in the gallery.”
“any other orders?” asked philip.
“i don’t think so at present. oh, by the way, are you going to italy this year?”
“yes, i think i shall go out there before long for a few weeks as usual. why?”
“i thought that perhaps you would take me. i’ve got four months’ vacation, you see, now that i’m at cambridge, and i’ve never been to italy yet.”
philip paused; he was always alone in italy. that{80} was part of the spell. “you’d get dreadfully bored, colin,” he said. “i shall be at the villa in capri: there’s nothing to do except swim.”
colin divined in his father’s mind some reluctance other than that which he expressed. he dropped his eyes for a moment, then raised them again to his father’s face, merry and untroubled.
“you don’t want me to come with you, father,” he said. “quite all right, but why not have told me so?”
philip looked at the boy with that expression in his face that no one else ever saw there; the tenderness for another, the heart’s need of another, which had shot into fitful flame twenty years ago, had never quite been extinguished; it had always smouldered there for colin.
“i’ll think it over,” he said, and turned round in his chair.
“you were telling me something about wireless, raymond,” he said. “as far as newfoundland! that is very wonderful. a few years ago scientists would have laughed at such an idea as at a fairy-tale or a superstition. but the superstitions of one generation become the science of the next.”
raymond by this time was in a state of thorough ill-temper. he had witnessed all the evening colin’s easy triumphs; he had seen how colin, when annoyed, as he had been at his father’s rebuke, went into his shell, and instantly every one tried to tempt him out again. just now in that low-voiced conversation between his brother and his father, he had heard his father say, “still vexed with me?” in a sort of suppliance.... he determined to try a man?uvre that answered so well.
“i should have said just the opposite,” he remarked, re-filling his glass. “i should have thought that the science and beliefs of one generation became the superstitions of the next. our legend, for instance; that was soberly believed once.”
philip yardley did not respond quite satisfactorily. “ah!” he said, getting up. “well, shall we be going?{81}”
raymond had just poured himself out a glass of port, and, very unfortunately, he remembered a precisely similar occasion on which his father, just when colin had done the same, proposed an adjournment. he repeated the exact words colin had used then.
“oh, you might wait till i’ve finished my port,” he said.
that did not produce the right effect. on the previous occasion his father had said, “sorry, old boy,” and had sat down again.
“you’d better follow us, then,” said philip. “but don’t drink any more, raymond. you’ve had as much as is good for you.”
raymond’s face blazed. to be spoken to like that, especially in front of his uncle and brother, was intolerable. he got up and pushed his replenished glass away, spilling half of it. instantly colin saw his opportunity, and knowing fairly well what would happen, he put his hand within raymond’s arm in brotherly remonstrance.
“oh, i say, raymond!” he said.
raymond shook him off. “leave me alone, can’t you?” he said angrily.
then he turned to his father. “i didn’t mean to spill the wine, father,” he said. “it was an accident.”
“accidents are liable to happen, when one loses one’s temper,” said philip. “ring the bell, please.”
there were two tables for cards laid out in the drawing-room, and raymond, coming in only a few seconds after the others, found that, without waiting for him, the bridge-table had already been made up with lady hester, violet, his father, and colin. they had not given him a chance to play there, and now for the next hour he was condemned to play whist with his grandmother and his uncle and aunt, a dreary pastime.
at ten old lady yardley went dumbly to bed, and there was the choice between sitting here until the bridge was over, or of following uncle ronald into the smoking-room. but that he found he could not do; his jealousy of colin, both as regards his father and as regards violet,{82} constrained him as with cords to stop and watch them, and contrast their merriment with his own ensconced and sombre broodings.
and then there was violet herself. colin’s conjecture had been perfectly right, for in the fashion of staniers, he must be considered as in the process of falling in love with her. the desire for possession, rather than devotion, was the main ingredient in the bubbling vat, and that was very sensibly present. she made a ferment in his blood, and though he would not have sacrificed anything which he really valued, such as his prospective lordship of stanier, for her sake, he could not suffer the idea that she should not be his. he knew, too, how potent in her was the stanier passion for the home, and that he counted as his chief asset, for he had no illusion that violet was in love with him. nor was she, so he thought, in love with colin; the two were much more like a couple of chums than lovers.
so he sat and watched them round the edge of the newspaper which had beguiled uncle ronald’s impatience for dinner. the corner where he sat was screened from the players by a large vase of flowers on the table near them, and raymond felt that he enjoyed, though without original intention, the skulking pleasures of the eavesdropper.
colin, as usual, was to the fore. just now he was dummy to his partner, aunt hester, who, having added a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles to complete her early-victorian costume, was feeling a shade uneasy. she had just done what she most emphatically ought not to have done, and was afraid that both her adversaries had perceived it. colin had perceived it, too; otherwise the suit of clubs was deficient. violet had already alluded to this.
“oh, aunt hester!” cried colin. “what’s the use of pretending you’ve not revoked? don’t cling on to that last club; play it, and have done with it. if you don’t, you’ll revoke again.{83}”
aunt hester still felt cunning; she thought she might be able to bundle it up in the last trick. “but i ain’t got a club, colin,” she said, reverting to mid-victorian speech.
“darling aunt hester, you mean ‘haven’t,’” said colin. “‘ain’t’ means ‘aren’t,’ and it isn’t grammar even then, though you are my aunt. ‘ain’t....’”
lord yardley, leaning forward, pulled colin’s hair. it looked so golden and attractive, it reminded him.... “colin, are you dummy, or ain’t you?” he asked.
“certainly, father. can’t you see aunt hester’s playing the hand? i shouldn’t call it playing, myself. i should call it playing at playing. club, please, aunt hester.”
“well, if you’re dummy, hold your tongue,” said lord yardley. “dummy isn’t allowed to speak, and....”
“oh, those are the old rules,” said colin. “the new rules make it incumbent on dummy to talk all the time. hurrah, there’s aunt hester’s club, aren’t it? one revoke, and a penalty of three tricks....”
“doubled,” said his father.
“brute,” said colin, “and no honours at all! oh yes, fourteen to us above. well played, aunt hester! wasn’t it a pity? your deal, vi.”
colin, having cut the cards, happened to look up at the big vase of flowers which stood close to the table. as he did so, there was a trivial glimmer, as of some paper just stirred, behind it. he had vaguely thought that uncle ronald and raymond had both gone to the smoking-room, but there was certainly some one there, and which of the two it was he had really no idea. every one else, adversaries and partner, was behaving as if there was no one else in the room, so why not he?
“raymond’s got the hump this evening,” he said cheerfully. “he won at whist—lord, what a game!—because i saw aunt janet pay him half-a-crown with an extraordinarily acid expression, and ask for change. so as he’s won at cards, he will be blighted in love. i expect h{84}e’s had a knock from the young thing at the tobacconist’s in king’s parade. i think she likes me best, father. but it’ll be the same daughter-in-law. she breathes through her nose, and is marvellously genteel. otherwise she’s just like violet.”
“pass,” said violet.
“hurrah! i knew it would make you pessimistic to be called like a tobacconist’s....”
philip yardley laid down his cards and actually laughed. “colin, you low, vulgar brute,” he said, “don’t talk so much!”
colin imitated raymond’s voice and manner to perfection. “i should have said just the opposite,” he remarked. “i should have thought you wanted me to talk more, and make trumps.”
violet caught on. “oh, you got him exactly, colin,” she said. “what did he say that about?”
“go on, colin,” said his father. “we shall never finish.”
colin examined his hand. “three no-trumps,” he said. “not one, nor two, but three. glorious trinity!”
there was no counter-challenge, and as lord yardley considered his lead, colin looked up through the vase of flowers once more. there was some one there still, and he got up to fetch a match from a side-table. that gave him a clearer view of what lay beyond.
“hullo, raymond?” he said. “thought you’d gone to the smoking-room.”
“no; just looking at the paper,” said raymond. “i’m going now.”
“oh, but we’ll have another rubber,” said colin. “cut in?”
“no, thanks,” said raymond.
colin waited till the door had closed behind him. “lor!” he said.
“just shut that door, colin,” said lord yardley.
lady hester was thrilled about the tobacconist’s young thing; it really would be rather a good joke if one of the{85} boys, following his father’s example, married a “baggage” of that sort, and she determined to pursue the subject with colin on some future occasion. she loved such loose natural talk as he treated her to; he told her all his escapades. he was just such a scamp as colin the first must have been, and with just such gifts and utter absence of moral sense was he endowed.
indeed, the old legend, so it seemed to her, lived again in colin, though couched in more modern terms. it was the medi?val style to say that for the price of the soul, satan was willing to dower his beneficiary with all material bounty and graces; more modernly, you said that this boy was an incorrigible young adonis, who feared neither god nor devil. true, the lordship of stanier was not yet colin’s, but something might happen to that grim, graceless raymond.
how the two hated each other, and how different were the exhibitions of their antagonism! raymond hated with a glowering, bilious secrecy, that watched and brooded; colin with a gay contempt, a geniality almost. but if the shrewd old lady hester had been asked to wager which of the two was the most dangerous to the other, she would without hesitation have put her money on colin.
the second rubber was short, but as hilarious as the first, and on its conclusion lady hester hurried to bed, saying that she would be “a fright” in the morning if she lost any more sleep. violet followed her, philip withdrew to his own room, and colin sauntered along to the smoking-room in quest of whisky. his uncle ronald was still there, rapidly approaching the comatose mood of midnight, which it would have been inequitable to call intoxication and silly to call sobriety. raymond sprawled in a chair by the window.
“hullo, uncle ronald, still up?” said colin. “you’ll get scolded.”
uncle ronald lifted a sluggish eyelid. “hey?” he said. “oh, colin, is it? what’s the time, my boy?{86}”
“half-past twelve,” said colin, adding on another half-hour. he wanted to get rid of his uncle and see how he stood with his brother. no doubt they would have a row.
“gobbless me,” said ronald. “i shall turn in. just a spot more whisky. good night, boys.”
as soon as he had gone raymond got out of his chair and placed himself where he could get his heels on the edge of the low fender-kerb. he hated talking “up” to colin, and this gave him a couple of inches.
“i want to ask you something,” he said.
“ask away,” said colin.
“did you know i was in the room when you imitated me just now?”
“hadn’t given a thought to it,” said colin.
“it’s equally offensive whether you mimic me before my face or behind my back,” said raymond. “it was damned rude.”
“shall i come to you for lessons in manners?” asked colin. “what do you charge?”
colin spoke with all the lightness of good-humoured banter, well aware that if raymond replied at all, he would make some sledge-hammer rejoinder. he would swing a cudgel against the rapier that pricked him, yet never land a blow except on the air, or, maybe, his own foot.
“it’s beastly insolence on your part,” said raymond.
“and that’s very polite,” said colin. “you may mimic me how and where and when you choose. if it’s like, i shall laugh. if it isn’t, well, i shall still laugh.”
“i haven’t got your sense of humour,” said raymond.
“clearly, nor violet’s. she thought i had got you to a ‘t.’ you probably heard what she said from your sequestered corner behind your newspaper.”
raymond advanced a step. “look here, colin, do you mean to imply that i was listening?”
colin laughed. “and i want to ask you a question,” he said. “didn’t you know that we all thought you had gone away?{87}”
raymond disregarded this. “then there’s another thing. what do you mean by telling father about the girl at the tobacconist’s? you know it was nothing at all.”
“rather,” said colin. “i said so. you seem to forget that i told him that i was the favourite. that’s the part you didn’t like.”
raymond flushed. “it’s all very well for you to say that,” he said. “but you know perfectly well that my father doesn’t treat us alike. things which are quite harmless in his eyes when you do them appear very different to him when i’m the culprit. i had had a knock from a tobacconist’s girl, had i? you’re a cad to have told him that quite apart from its being a lie.”
colin laughed with irritating naturalness. “is this the first lesson in manners?” he said. “i’m beginning to see the hang of it. you call the other fellow a cad and a liar. about my father’s not treating us alike, that’s his affair. but i should never dream of calling you a liar for saying that. we’re not alike: why should he treat us alike? you’ve got a foul temper, you see; that doesn’t add to your popularity with anybody.”
he spoke in the same voice in which he might have told raymond that he had a speck of dust on the coat, and yawned rather elaborately.
“take care you don’t rouse it,” said raymond.
“why not? it rather amuses me to see you in a rage.”
“oh, it does, does it?” said raymond with his voice quivering.
“i assure you of it. i’m having a most amusing evening, thanks to you. and this chat has been the pleasantest part of it. pity that it’s so late.”
raymond, as usual, had throughout, the worst of these exchanges and was quite aware of it. he had been ill-bred and abusive through his loss of temper while colin, insolent though his speech and his manner had been, had kept within the bounds of civil retort in his sneers and contempt. in all probability he would give an account{88} of it all to violet to-morrow, and there was no need for him to embroider; a strictly correct version of what had passed was quite disagreeable enough.
this raymond wanted to avoid in view of his desire that violet should look on him as favourably as possible. whether he meant to propose to her during his visit here, he hardly knew himself, but certainly he wanted to be in her good books. this, and this alone, prompted him now; he hated colin, all the more because he had been absolutely unable to ruffle him or pierce the fine armour of his composure, but as regards violet, and perhaps his father, he feared him.
“i’m afraid i’ve lost my temper, colin,” he said. “and i owe you an apology for all i’ve said. you had annoyed me by mimicking me and by telling father about that girl at cambridge.”
colin felt that he had pulled the wings off a fly that had annoyed him by its buzzing; the legs might as well follow....
“certainly you owe me an apology,” he said. “but, considering everything, i don’t quite know whether you are proposing to pay it.”
raymond turned on him fiercely. “ah, that’s you all over!” he said.
“oh, we’re being quite natural,” said colin. “so much better.”
he paused a moment.
“now i don’t want to be offensive just now,” he said, “so let’s sit down and try to tolerate each other for a minute. there.”
raymond longed to be at his throat, to feel his short, strong fingers throttling the life out of that smooth white neck. but some careless superior vitality in colin made him sit down.
“let’s face it, raymond,” he said. “we loathe each other like poison, and it is nonsense to pretend we don’t. unfortunately, you are the eldest, so in the end you will score, however much i annoy you. but put yourself in{89} my place; imagine yourself the younger with your foul temper. you would probably try to kill me. of course, by accident. but i’m not intending to kill you. i am very reasonable; you must be reasonable, too. but just put yourself in my place.”
raymond shifted in the chair in which colin, with a mere gesture of a finger, had made him sit. “can’t we possibly get on better together, colin?” he said. “after all, as you say, i come into everything on my father’s death. i have stanier, i have the millions where you have the thousands. i can be very useful to you. you adore the place, and i can let you come here as often and as long as you like, and i can also prevent your setting foot in it. if you’ll try to be decent to me, i promise you that you shan’t regret it.”
colin put his head on one side and looked at his brother with an air of pondering wonder. “oh, that cock won’t fight,” he said. “you know as well as i do that when you are master here, i would sooner go to hell than come here, and you would sooner go to hell than let me come. perhaps i’ve got a dull imagination, but it’s no use my trying to imagine that. do be sensible. if you could do anything to injure me at this moment when you are proposing a truce, you know that you would do it. but you can’t. you can’t hurt me in any way whatever. but what you do know is that i can hurt you in all sorts of ways. i can poison my father’s mind about you—it’s pretty sick already. i can poison violet’s mind, and that’s none too healthy. you see, they both like me most tremendously, and they don’t very much like you. it’s just the same at cambridge. i’ve got fifty friends: you haven’t got one. i dare say it’s not your fault: anyhow, we’ll call it your misfortune. but you want me to do something for you in return for nothing you can do for me, or, perhaps, nothing that you will do for me.”
raymond frowned; when he was thinking he usually frowned. when colin was thinking he usually smiled.
“if in the future there is anything i can do for you,{90} colin,” he said, “i will do it. i want to be friends with you. good lord, isn’t that reasonable? we’re brothers.”
colin leaned forward in his chair. he was aware of the prodigious nature of what he was meaning to say. “give me stanier, raymond,” he said. “with what father is leaving me, and with what aunt hester is leaving me, i can easily afford to keep it up. i don’t ask you for any money. i just want stanier. of course, it needn’t actually be mine. but i want to live here, while you live somewhere else. there’s the derbyshire house, for instance. i’ve got stanier in my blood. if, on father’s death, you’ll do that, there’s nothing i won’t do for you.”
he paused.
“i can do a good deal, you know,” he said. “and i can refrain from doing a good deal.”
the proposal was so preposterous that raymond fairly laughed. instantly colin got up.
“that sounds pleasant,” he said. “good night, raymond. i wouldn’t have any more whisky, if i were you. father seemed to think you’d had enough drink before the end of dinner.”
