though colin had taken the news of his brother’s engagement with so touching and unselfish a gentleness, his father, in spite of the joy of seeing the boy again, looked forward to his arrival at stanier with considerable uneasiness. the trouble and the trial for him would be when he saw raymond and violet together, though, to be sure, violet did not seem to him to embody any ideal of maidenly rapture with her affianced. she seemed indeed to tolerate, rather than adore her lover, to permit rather than to provoke, and to answer with an effort the innumerable little signals of devotion which raymond displayed for her. about the quality of his devotion there could be no question. it was clear that in his own fashion, and with all his heaviness and awkwardness in expression, he was utterly in love with her. he had no eyes for any one but her, but for her his eyes were dog-like in fidelity; when she was absent his senses dozed.
they were, just for the present, this party of three. lady hester had gone back to town after the departure of colin and his father to the south, and ronald and his wife had betaken themselves for the month of july to marienbad, in order to enable him to continue eating too much for the next eleven months without ill effects. every evening old lady yardley appeared for dinner and made the fourth, but she was not so much a presence as a shadow. in colin’s absence, she hardly ever spoke, though each night she monotonously asked when he was expected back. then, after the rubber of whist, mutely conducted, she retired again, and remained invisible till the approach of the next dinner-hour. so long had she been whitely impassive that philip scarcely noticed the mist that was thickening about her mind.{177}
raymond, then, was comprehensible enough, he was head over ears in love with violet, and nothing and nobody but her had any significance for him. but dog-like though his devotion was, it struck his father that there was, in the absence of violet’s response, something rather animal about it. had she met with more than mere toleration his glances, his little secret caresses, his thirst for contact even of finger-tips or a leaning shoulder, there would have been the spark, the leap of fire which gives warmth and life to such things. but without it there was a certain impalpable grossness: raymond did not seem to care that his touch should be responded to, it contented him to touch.
but though he, to his father’s mind, was comprehensible enough, violet puzzled him, for she seemed even before her marriage to have adopted the traditional impassivity of stanier brides; she had professed, in the one interview she had had with him, a quiet acceptance of her position, and a devotion to raymond of which the expression seemed to be a mute passivity. towards the question of the date of her marriage she had no contribution to give. lord yardley and raymond must have the settling of that, and with the same passivity she accepted a date in the first week of october. then the great glass doors would be opened, and the bridegroom’s wing, long shuttered, for philip’s bride had never come here, would see the light again. she asked no question whatever about colin’s return; his name never presented itself on her lips unless mere conventional usage caused it to be spoken. it was as if the boy with whom she had been so intimately a friend, had ceased to exist for her. but when philip once consciously noted that omission, he began to wonder if violet was not comprehensible after all.... these days, in any case, after philip’s return, while colin still lingered in italy, were worthy of the stateliest and deadliest stanier traditions.
colin had been expected all one long july afternoon. his announcement of his arrival had been ambiguous, for{178} he might catch the early train from paris, and thus the earlier boat, but the connection was uncertain, and if he missed it he would not get to dover till six in the evening. in that case he would sleep in london, and come down to stanier next day.
philip had read this out at breakfast that morning, and for once violet shewed some interest in colin.
“why not send a motor to dover, uncle philip?” she said. “it can get there in time for the first boat, and if he is not on it, it can wait for the second. he will arrive here then by dinner time.”
raymond looked up from his paper at the sound of her voice.
“vi, darling, what an absurd plan,” he said. “there are a hundred chances to one on colin’s not finding the motor. he’ll get straight into the train from the boat.”
violet instantly retreated into that strange shell of hers again.
“ah, yes,” she said.
philip’s curiosity put forth a horn at this. there was some new element here, for raymond seemed to resent the idea of special arrangements being made for colin.
“that’s not a bad idea of yours, violet,” he said. “it will save colin going up to london.”
as he spoke he kept a sideways eye on raymond.
“but, father, think of the crush getting off the boat,” he said. “the chances are that colin won’t see your chauffeur.”
he spoke with an impatient anger which he could not cloak, and which rang out unmistakably in his voice.
“we’ll take the off chance then,” said his father.
raymond got up. “just as you like,” he said.
philip paused a moment. the relations between himself and raymond had been excellent up till to-day. raymond without charm (which was not his fault), had been pleasant and agreeable, but now this matter of meeting colin had produced a spirit of jealous temper.
“naturally i shall do just as i like,” he observed.{179} “ring the bell, please, raymond. the motor will have to start at once.”
though none of the three communicated the news of colin’s arrival to old lady yardley, it somehow got round to her, via perhaps, some servant’s gossip about a motor going to dover, and most unusually she came downstairs at tea-time with inquiries whether colin had arrived. it was soon clear that he could not have caught the early boat, or he would have been here by now, and thus three hours at least must elapse before his arrival could be looked for, but in spite of this, old lady yardley did not go back to her room again, but remained upright and vigilant in her chair on the terrace, where they had had tea, looking out over the plain where, across the gardens and lake, appeared glimpses of the road along which the motor must come.
philip had intended to go for a ride, but he, too, when his servant told him that his horse was round, lingered on and shewed no sign of moving. neither he nor his mother gave any reason for their remaining so unusually here, but somehow the cause of it was common property. colin was coming. raymond, similarly, had announced his intention of going to bathe, but had not gone; instead he fidgeted in his chair, smoked, took up and dropped the evening paper, and made aimless little excursions up and down the terrace. his restlessness got on his father’s nerves.
“well, go and bathe, if you mean to, raymond,” he said, “or if you like take my horse and go for a ride. but, for goodness’ sake, don’t keep jumping about like that.”
“thanks, i think i won’t ride, father,” he said. “i shall be having a bathe presently. or would you feel inclined for a game of tennis, vi?”
“i think it’s rather too hot,” said she.
he sat down on the arm of her chair, but she gave no welcome to him, nor appeared in any way conscious of his proximity. in that rather gross fashion of his, he{180} gently stroked a tendril of loose hair just behind her ear. for a moment she suffered that without moving. then she put up her hand with a jerky, uncontrolled movement, and brushed his away.
“oh, please, raymond,” she said in a low voice.
he had a sullen look for that, and, shrugging his shoulders, got up and went into the house. his father gave a sigh of relief, the reason for which needed no comment.
“colin will be here for dinner, won’t he?” asked old lady yardley.
“yes, mother,” said philip. “but won’t you go and rest before that?”
“i think i will sit here,” said she, “and wait for colin.”
presently raymond was back again, with a copy of some illustrated paper. violet and philip alike felt the interruption of his presence. they were both thinking of colin, and raymond, even if he sat quiet, was a disturbance, a distraction.... soon he was by violet’s side again, shewing her some picture which he appeared to think might interest her, and philip, watching the girl, felt by some sympathetic vibration how great an effort it was for her to maintain that passivity which, all those days, had so encompassed her. the imminence of colin’s arrival, he could not but conjecture, was what troubled her tranquillity, and below it there was some stir, some subaqueous tumult not yet risen to the surface, and only faintly declaring itself in these rising bubbles....
raymond had placed the paper on her knee, and, turning the page, let his hand rest on her arm, bare to the elbow. instantly she let it slip to her side, and, raising her eyes at the moment, caught philip’s gaze. the recognition of something never mentioned between them took place, and she turned to raymond’s paper again.
“quite excellent,” she said. “such a good snapshot of aunt hester. show it to uncle philip.”
raymond could not refuse to do that, and the moment he had stepped over to philip’s side, she got up.{181}
that passivity was quite out of her reach just now in this tension of waiting. soon colin would be here, and she would have to face and accept the situation, but the waiting for it.... if only even something could happen to colin which would prevent his arrival. why had she suggested that sending of the motor to dover? had she not done that, he could not have got here till to-morrow morning, and she would have had time to harden, to crystallise herself, to render herself impervious to any touch from outside.
she was soon to be a stanier bride, and there in the tall chair with the ivory cane was the pattern and example for her. it was on old lady yardley that she must frame herself, quenching any fire of her own, and content to smoulder her life away as mistress of the family home which she so adored, and of all the countless decorations and riches of her position. never had the wonder and glory of the place seemed to her so compelling as when now, driven from the terrace by raymond’s importunity, she walked along its southern front and through the archway in the yew-hedge where she and colin had stood on his last night here. it dozed in the tranquillity of the july evening, yellow and magnificent, the empress of human habitations. round it for pillow were spread its woodlands, on its breast for jewel lay the necklace of deep flower-beds; tranquil and stable through its three centuries, it seemed the very symbol and incarnation of the pride of its owners; to be its mistress and the mother of its lords yet unborn was a fate for which she would not have exchanged a queen’s diadem.
whatever conditions might be attached to it, she would accept them—as indeed she had already pledged herself to do—with the alacrity with which its founder had, in the legend, signed his soul away in that bargain which had so faithfully been kept by the contracting parties.... and it was not as if she disliked raymond; she was merely utterly indifferent to him, and longing for the time when, in the natural course of things, he would{182} surely grow indifferent to her. how wise and indulgent to his male frailties would she then show herself; how studiously and how prudently blind, with the blindness of those who refuse to see, to any infidelities.
had there not been in the world a twin-brother of his, or, even if that must be, if she had not stood with him under this serge-arch of yews beneath the midsummer moon and given him that cousinly kiss, she would not now be feeling that his return, or, at any rate, the waiting for it, caused a tension that could scarcely be borne. she had made her choice and had no notion—so her conscious mind told her—of going back on it; it was just this experience of seeing colin again for the first time after her choice had been made that set her nerves twanging at raymond’s touch. could she, by a wish or the wave of a wand, put off colin’s advent until she had actually become raymond’s wife, how passionately would she have wished, how eagerly have waved. or if by some magic, black or white, she could have put colin out of her life, so that never would she set eyes on him again or hear his voice, his banishment from her would at that moment have been accomplished. she would not admit that she loved him; she doggedly told herself that she did not, and her will was undeviatingly set on the marriage which would give her stanier.
surely she did not love colin; they had passed all their lives in the tranquillity of intimate friendship, unruffled by the faintest breath of desire. and then, in spite of her dogged assertion, she found that she asked herself, incredulously enough, whether on that last evening of colin’s the seed of fire had not sprouted in her? she disowned the notion, but still it had reached her consciousness, and then fiercely she reversed and denied it, for she abhorred the possibility. it would be better that she should hate colin than love him.
the evening was stiflingly hot, and in the park, where her straying feet had led her, there was no breath of wind{183} stirring to disperse the heaviness. the air seemed thick with fecundity and decay; there was the smell of rotting wood, of crumbling fungi overripe that mingled with the sharp scent of the bracken and the faint aroma of the oaks, and buzzing swarms of flies gave token of their carrion banquets. the open ground to the north of the house was no better; to her sense of overwrought expectancy, it seemed as if some siege and beleaguerment held her. she wanted to escape, but an impalpable host beset her, not of these buzzing flies only and of the impenetrable oppression of the sultry air, through which she could make no sortie, but, internally and spiritually, of encompassing foes and hostile lines through which her spirit had no power to break.
there on the terrace, from which, as from under some fire she could not face, she had lately escaped, there would be the physical refreshment of the current of sea-wind moving up, as was its wont towards sunset, across the levels of the marsh; but there, to this same overwrought consciousness, would be raymond, assiduous and loverlike, with odious little touches of his affectionate fingers. but, so she told herself, it was enforced on her to get used to them; he had a right to them, and it was colin, after all, who was responsible for her shrinking from them, even as she shrank from the evil buzzings of the flies. if only she had not kissed colin, or if, having done that, he had felt a tithe of what it had come to signify to her.
but no hint of heart-ache, no wish that fate had decreed otherwise, had troubled him. he had asked for a cousinly kiss, and in that light geniality of his he had said, out of mere politeness, and out of hatred for raymond (no less light and genial) that it was “maddening” to think that his brother would be the next visitor there.
she had waited for his reply to her letter announcing that raymond had proposed to her and that she was meaning to accept him, with a quivering anxiety which gave way when she received his answer to a sense of revolt which attempted to call itself relief. he seemed, so far{184} from finding the news “maddening,” to welcome and rejoice in it. he congratulated her on achieving her ambition of being mistress of stanier, and on having fallen in love with raymond. he could not be “hurt”—as she had feared—at her news; it was altogether charming.
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?{185}
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 think{186}ing 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 tide{187} of 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.{188} 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 use{189} the 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 perfectly{190} trivial 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?{191}”
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 i{192} right, 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....{193}
“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....{194}”
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.{195}
“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, and{196} trust 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 have{197} granted 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; on{198} dry, 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 my{199} father. 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 material{200} benefits, 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 apparently{201} took 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 of{202} this 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 all{203} are, 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....
