philip was waiting in his library for raymond’s entry, wanting to feel sorry for him, but as often as he could darken his mind behind that cloud, the edges of it grew dazzlingly bright with the thought of colin, and the sun re-emerging warmed and delighted him....
yet he was sorry for raymond, and presently he would express his sympathy, coldly and correctly, he was afraid, with regret and truism and paternal platitudes; but duty would dictate his sentiments. at the most he could not hope for more than to give the boy the impression he was sorry, and conceal from him his immensurable pleasure in the news colin had made known to him. all these weeks, ever since, on that morning in capri, he had learned of raymond’s engagement and colin’s desire, he had never been free from heartache, and his favourite’s manliness, his refusal to be embittered, his efforts with himself, gaily heroic, had but rendered those pangs the more poignant. and in the hour of his joy colin had shewn just the same marvellous quickness of sympathy for raymond’s sorrow, as, when philip had first told him of the engagement, he had shewn for raymond’s happiness.
“i would have given anything to spare raymond this, father,” he had said. “as you know, i kept all i felt to myself. i didn’t let violet see how miserable i was, and how i wanted her. and then last night—it was like some earthquake within. everything toppled and fell; vi and i were left clinging to each other.”
after colin, philip had seen violet, and she, too, had spoken to him with a simplicity and candour.... she had already begun to love colin, she thought, before she{205} accepted raymond, but how she loved stanier. she had been worldly, ambitious, stifling the first faint calls of her heart, thinking, as many a girl thought, whose nature is not yet wholly awake, that raymond would “do,” as regards herself, and “do” magnificently as regards her longing for all that being mistress of stanier meant to her. then came colin’s return from italy, and the whisper of her heart grew louder. she could not help contrasting her lover with her friend, and in that new light raymond’s attentions to her, his caresses, his air—she must confess—of proprietorship grew odious and insufferable. and then, just as colin had said, came the earthquake. in that disruption, all that from the worldly point of view seemed so precious, turned to dross.
at that point she hesitated a moment, and philip had found himself recording how like she was to colin. with just that triumphant glow of happiness with which he had said: “raymond has got stanier, father, violet and i have got each other,” so violet now, after her momentary hesitation, spoke to him.
“stanier, for which i longed, uncle philip, doesn’t exist for me any more. how could i weigh it against colin?”
colin’s happiness ... nothing could dim that sunshine for his father, and the sunshine was not only of to-day, it was the sunshine that had shone on him and rosina more than twenty years ago. his heart melted with the love that through colin reacted on her. surely she must rejoice at the boy’s happiness to-day! raymond, to be sure, was the fruit of her body also, but it was through colin that she lived, he was the memory and the gracious image of her beauty.
raymond entered, snapping the golden thread.
“you wanted to see me, father,” he said.
philip had been attempting to drill himself into a sympathetic bearing towards his son, but raymond’s actual presence here in succession to colin and violet, brought sheer helplessness. for the brightness and beam of the{206} others there was this solid self-sufficiency. it seemed as if a crime had been averted in the transference of the girl to another bridegroom. what unnatural union would have been made by this mating of her! his heart sang; it were vain to try to throttle it into silence.
“yes, raymond; sit down,” said he, indicating a place on the sofa where he sat.
“oh, thanks, it doesn’t matter. i’ll stand,” said raymond.
“i’ve got bad news for you,” said philip. “you must brace yourself to it.”
“let’s have it,” said raymond.
philip felt his sympathy slipping from him. he wanted chiefly to get it over; there was no use in attempting to lead up to it.
“it concerns you and violet,” he said.
a savage look as of a hungry dog from whom his dinner is being snatched, came across raymond’s face.
“well?” he said.
“she wished me to tell you that she can’t marry you,” said his father. “she asks you to set her free from her engagement.”
the savagery of that sullen face grew blacker. “i don’t accept that from you,” he said. “if it’s true, violet will have to tell me herself.”
philip made a great effort with himself. “it is true,” he said, “and i want at once to tell you that i’m very sorry for you. but it would have been very painful for her to tell you, and it was i who suggested that i should break her decision to you. i hope you won’t insist on having it from her.”
“she has got to tell me,” said raymond. “and is that all, father? if so, i’ll go to her at once.”
“no, there’s more,” said he.
raymond’s face went suddenly white; his mouth twitched, he presented a mask of hatred.
“and so it’s colin who has got to tell me the rest,” he said. “is that it?{207}”
“she is going to marry colin.”
for a moment raymond stood perfectly still; just his hands were moving; knitted together they made the action of squeezing something. once it seemed that he tried to speak, but no word came; only the teeth shewed in his mouth.
“colin has got to tell me then,” he said. “i will see colin first.”
philip got up and laid a hand of authority on raymond’s shoulder. the boy, for all his quietness, seemed beside himself with some pent-up fury all the more dangerous for its suppression.
“you must not see either of them in the state you are in now,” he said.
“that’s my affair,” said raymond.
“it’s mine, too. you’re my son and so is colin. you must wait till you’ve got more used to what has happened. and you must remember this, that a few weeks ago colin was in the same case as you are now. he loved violet, and it was i then, out in capri, who told him that violet was going to marry you. and he took it like a man, like the generous fellow he is. his first words were: ‘by jove, raymond will be happy!’ i shall never forget that, and you mustn’t either, raymond.”
raymond gave a dry snap of a laugh.
“i won’t,” he said. “that’s just what colin would say. perfect character, isn’t he? only last night i found him talking to violet in her bedroom. i wasn’t pleased, and he begged me not to be vexed, as i had got everything. he had taken violet from me when he said that, or if not, he came back when violet was in bed, and got engaged to her then. engaged!”
“now stop that, raymond,” said his father.
“very good. he was already engaged to her when he told me i had got everything. you don’t understand colin. he hates more than he loves. he has hated me all my life. ‘by jove, raymond will be happy!’ i’ll be even with colin some day. now i’m going to see{208} him. or shall i say: ‘by jove, colin will be happy?’ then you’ll consider me a generous fellow.”
once again philip tried to put himself in raymond’s place, and made allowance for his bitter blackness. his hand went on to the boy’s shoulder again, with less of authority and more of attempted affection.
“raymond, you must do better than this,” he said. “you would be very unwise to see colin and violet just now, but if you insist on doing so, you shall see them in my presence. i can’t trust you, in the mood you’re in, not to be violent, not to say or do something which you would bitterly repent, and which they would find it hard to forgive. and if, which i deny, colin has always hated you, what about yourself?”
both of them now were on bed-rock. by implication, by admission, by denial even, they had got down to the hatred that, like a vein of murderous gold, ran through the very foundation of the brothers’ existence. who knew what struggle might have taken place, what prenatal wrestling in the very womb of life, of which the present antagonism was but a sequel, logical and inevitable!
even as philip spoke, he half-realised the futility of bringing argument to bear on raymond’s nature, for this hatred sprang from some ineradicable instinct, an iron law on which intelligence and reason could but perch like a settling fly. he could deny that colin hated his brother, he could urge raymond to show himself as generous as he believed colin to have been, but nothing that he could say, no persuasion, no authority could mitigate this fraternal hostility. and even while he denied colin’s animosity, with the evidence he had already brought forward to back it, he found himself wondering if at heart colin could feel the generosity he had expressed, or whether it was not a mere superficial good-nature, mingled with contempt perhaps, that had given voice to it.
raymond had ceased from the clutching and squeezing of his hands.{209}
“you don’t know what colin is,” he said, “and i know it is no use trying to convince you. i shan’t try. you judge by what you see of him and me, and you put me down for a black-hearted, sullen fellow, and he’s your heart’s darling.”
“you’ve got no right to say that,” said philip.
“but can i help knowing it, father?” asked he.
philip felt that his very will-power was in abeyance; he could not even want to readjust the places which his two sons held in his heart, or, rather, to find place in his heart for the son who had never been installed there yet. and there would be no use in “wanting,” even if he could accomplish that. colin held every door of his heart, and with a grudging sense of justice towards raymond, he was aware that colin would grant no admittance to his brother. or was that conviction only the echo of his own instinct that he wanted no one but colin there? he had no love to spare for raymond. such spring of it as bubbled in him must fall into colin’s cup, the cup that never could be filled.
how could he but contrast the two? here was raymond, sullen in his defeat, attempting (and with unwelcome success) to put his father in the wrong, jealous of the joy that had come to colin, insisting, shylock-like, on such revenge as was in his power, the pound of flesh which would be his, in making a scene with the girl who had chosen as her heart bade her, and the boy who was her choice. on the other side was colin, who, when faced with an identical situation, had accepted his ill-luck with a wave of welcome for the more fortunate. and raymond would have it that that splendid banner was but a false flag, under cover of whose whiteness a treacherous attack might be made.
“i don’t know that we need pursue that,” said philip. “your feelings are outside my control, but what is in my control is to be just to you in spite of them. i have tried to tell you with all possible sympathy of——”
“of violet’s jilting me,” interrupted raymond. “and{210} you have clearly shewn me, father, your sympathy with colin’s happiness.”
philip felt every nerve jarring. “i am not responsible for your interpretations of myself,” he said, “nor do i accept them. if your design is to be intolerably offensive to me, you must work out your design somewhere else. i am not going to have you stop here in order to amuse yourself with being rude to me, and spoiling the happiness of others——”
“ah! just so!” said raymond. “colin.”
philip was exasperated beyond endurance.
“quite right,” he said. “i am not going to have you spoiling colin’s happiness. and violet’s. i should have suggested you leaving stanier for the present for your own sake, if you had allowed me to show sympathy for you. as you do not, i suggest that you should do so for colin’s sake. you may go to st. james’s square if you like, and if you can manage to behave decently, you may stop on there when we come up next week. but that depends on yourself. now if you want to see violet and your brother you may, but you will see them here in my presence. i will send for them now, if that is your wish. when you have seen them you shall go. well?”
suddenly the idea of leaving colin and violet here became insupportable to raymond. he had to see them as lovers, and hate them for it: his hate must be fed with the sight of them.
“must i go, father?” he said.
“yes; you have forced me to be harsh with you. it was not my intention. now do you want to see them?”
raymond hesitated: if colin could be cunning, he could be cunning too. “i should like to see them both,” he said.
philip rang the bell, and in the pause before they came, raymond went across to the window-seat, and sat there with face averted, making no sign, and in the silence philip reviewed what he had done. he had no wish, as he had said, to be harsh to raymond, but what possible gain to any one was his remaining here? he would be{211} a misery to himself, and no entertainment to others; and yet the boy wanted to stop, thinking perhaps that thus he would be sooner able to accept the position. it was impossible to grudge him any feasible alleviation of the blow that, so far from stunning him, had awakened all that was worst in him. much must depend on his behaviour now to colin and violet.
they entered together. colin looked first at his father; then, without pause, seeing the huddled figure in the window-seat, went straight to raymond. all else, violet even, was forgotten.
he laid his hand on raymond’s shoulder. “oh, raymond,” he said, “we’re brutes. i know that.”
philip thought he had never seen anything so exquisite as that instinct of colin’s to go straight to his brother. could raymond recognise the beauty of that?... and was it indeed raymond who now drew colin on to the window-seat beside him?
“that’s all right, colin,” he said. “you couldn’t help it. no one can help it when it comes. i couldn’t.”
he stood up. “father’s told me about it all,” he said, “and i just wanted to see you and violet for a moment in order to realise it. i’ve got it now. good-bye, colin; good-bye, violet.”
he went across to his father with hand outstretched. “thanks ever so much for letting me go to st. james’s square,” he said. “and i’m sorry, father, for behaving as i did. i know it’s no use just saying that; i’ve got to prove it. but that’s all i can do for the present.”
he went straight out of the room without once looking back.
“is raymond going away?” asked colin.
“yes. it’s better so.”
colin heard this with a chill of disappointment, for among his pleasurable anticipations had been that of seeing raymond wince and writhe at the recasting of their parts. raymond would have hourly before his eyes his own r?le played by another, and with what infinitely{212} greater grace. the part of heroine would be filled by its “creator,” but, in this remodelled piece, what sparkle and life she would put into her scenes. where she had been wooden and impassive, she would be eager and responsive, that icy toleration would melt into a bubbling liquor of joy. then there would be the part now to be filled by raymond; would he fill that with colin’s tact and sweetness? of minor characters there would be his father and grandmother, and with what convincing sincerity now would they fill their places.... but raymond’s absence would take all the sting and fire out of the play.
“oh, father, does he feel like that?” asked colin. “did he feel he couldn’t bear to stop? i’m sorry.”
“no, it was i who told him to go,” said philip. “he behaved outrageously just now with me.”
“but he’s sorry,” said colin. “he wants to do better. mayn’t he stop? he’ll be wretched all alone up in london.”
a sudden thought struck him, a touch of genius. “but it concerns vi most,” he said. “what do you vote, darling?”
“by all means let him stop,” said she. nothing but colin’s wish, here clearly indicated, could have any weight with her.
“then may he, father?” he asked. “that is good of you. come and tell him, vi.”
raymond was in the hall. he had just ordered his car, and was now about to telephone to the housekeeper in town to say he was coming, when colin and violet came out of the library. philip followed them to complete the welcome, and saw colin go up to his brother.
“raymond, don’t go,” he said. “we all want you to stop. vi does, father does, i do.”
raymond saw his father in the doorway. “may i stop, then, father?” he said.
“by all means. we all wish it,” said he.
raymond looked back again at his brother. colin was{213} standing just below the portrait of his ancestor, the very image and incarnation of him.
“i’ve got you to thank, i expect, colin,” he said.
their eyes met; colin’s glittered like a sword unsheathed in the sunlight of his hatred and triumph; raymond’s smouldered in the blackness of his hatred and defeat.
“i wish there was anything i could do for you, ray,” said colin gently.
the entertainment which colin had anticipated from these alterations in the cast of this domestic drama did not fall short of his expectations. he held raymond in the hollow of his hand, for raymond’s devotion to violet, gross and animal though it had been, gave colin a thousand opportunities of making him writhe with the shrewd stings of jealousy, and with gay deliberation he planted those darts. the coup de grace for raymond would not come yet, his father’s death would give the signal for that; but at present there was some very pretty baiting to be done. not one of those darts, so becomingly beribboned, failed to hit its mark: a whispered word to violet which made the colour spring bright and eager to her face, a saunter with her along the terrace in the evening, and, even more than these, colin’s semblance of sparing raymond’s feelings, his suggestion that he should join them in any trivial pursuit—all these were missiles that maddingly pierced and stung.
no less adequately did philip and old lady yardley fill their minor parts; he, with the sun of colin’s content warming him, was genial and thoughtful towards raymond in a way that betrayed without possibility of mistake the sentiment from which it sprang; while lady yardley, braced and invigorated by the same emotion, was strangely rejuvenated, and her eyes, dim with age, seemed to pierce the mists of the encompassing years and grew bright with colin’s youth.
as regards his own relations with violet, colin found{214} he could, for the present anyhow, manage very well; the old habits of familiarity and intimacy appeared to supply response sufficient; for she, shuddering now, as at some nightmare, at her abandoned engagement to raymond and blinded with the splendour of the dawn of her love, saw him as a god just alighted on the gilded and rosy hills.... colin shrugged his shoulders at her illusion; she presented to him no such phantasmal apparition, but he could give her liking and friendship, just what she had always had from him. soon, so he hoped, this vision of himself would fade from her eyes, for even as he had found his father’s paternal devotion to him in capri a fatiguing and boring business, so he foresaw a much acuter gêne that would spring from a persistence of violet’s love. no doubt, however, she would presently become more reasonable.
what above all fed colin’s soul was to stroll into the smoking-room when violet had gone upstairs, and his father had retired to his library, and to make raymond drink a cup more highly spiced with gall than that which had refreshed him in public. raymond had usually got there first, while colin lingered a moment longer with violet, and had beside him a liberally mixed drink, and this would serve for colin’s text:
“hullo, raymond! drowning dull care?” he asked. “that’s right. i can’t bear seeing you so down. by jove, didn’t violet look lovely to-night with her hair brought low over her forehead?”
“did she?” said raymond. he tried to entrench himself in self-control; he tried to force himself to get up and go, but hatred of colin easily stormed those defences. “stop and listen,” said that compelling voice. “glut yourself with it: love is not for you; hate is as splendid and as absorbing....”
“did she?” echoed colin. “as if you hadn’t been devouring her all the evening! but we all have our turn, don’t we? every dog has its day. last week i used to see you and violet; now you see violet and me. tell{215} me, raymond, does violet look happy? we can talk so confidentially, can’t we, as we have both been in the same position? what a ticklish thing it is to be a girl’s lover. how it ages one! i feel sixty. but does she seem happy? she used to wear a sort of haunted look last week. i suppose that was her wonder and her misgiving at a man’s brutal adoration. it frightened her. as if we weren’t frightened too! did the idea of marriage terrify you as it terrifies me? a girl’s adoration is just as brutal.”
colin moved about the room as he spoke, dropping the sentences out like measured doses from some phial of a potent drug. after each he paused, waiting for a reply, and drinking glee from the silence. in that same silence raymond was stoking his fires which were already blazing.
“yes, every dog has its day,” he said, replenishing his glass.
“and every dog has his drink,” said colin. “lord, how you’ll get your revenge when your day comes! what sweetness in your cup that vi and i will never be allowed to come to stanier again. you’ll like that, raymond. you’ll have married by that time. i wonder if it will be the tobacconist’s girl who’ll have hooked you. you’ll be happier with her than vi, you know, and i shouldn’t wonder if vi will be happier with me than with you....”
still there was silence on raymond’s part.
“you must be more cheerful, raymond,” said colin. “whatever you may do to me hereafter, you had better remember that i’m top-dog just now. i shall have to ask father to send you away after all, if you don’t make yourself more agreeable. it was i who made him allow you to stop here, and i will certainly have you sent away if you’re not kinder to me. you must be genial and jolly, though it’s a violence to your nature. you must buck up and be pleasant. so easy, and so profitable. nothing to say?”
there was a step outside, and their father entered. he carried an opened letter in his hand.{216}
“i’ve just had a note from the governor of the asylum at repstow,” he said. “one of their patients has escaped, a homicidal lunatic.”
“gosh, i’ll lock my door,” said colin. “no use for him. what else, father?”
“it’s no joke, colin. the keeper at the repstow lodge was out attending to the pheasants’ coops this afternoon, and while he was gone a man vaulted over the fence, frightened his wife into hysterics, and decamped with his gun and a bag of cartridges. then he bolted into the woods. it’s almost certain that he is the escaped lunatic.”
raymond, who had been listening intently, yawned.
“but they’re out after him, i suppose,” he said. “they’ll be sure to catch him.”
colin wondered what that yawn meant.... to any boy of twenty—to himself anyhow—there was a spice of excitement about the news. it was impossible not to be interested. but raymond did not seem to be interested.... or did he wish it to appear that he was not interested?
colin, with an eye on raymond, turned to his father. two or three more little darts were ready for his brother, at which he would not yawn....
“oh, father,” said he, “come and sleep in my room and we’ll take watches. what glorious fun. you shall take the watch from midnight till, till half-past eight in the morning, and then you’ll wake me up, and i’ll take the watch till five in the afternoon without a wink of sleep. then raymond and vi can slumber in safety. now i shall go upstairs and say good-night to vi——”
“better not tell her about it to-night,” said lord yardley.
“rather not: we shall have other things to talk about, thanks. but not a minute before half-past eight, father. good-night; good-night, raymond. sleep well.”
raymond, in spite of these good wishes, passed an almost sleepless night. if he shut his eyes it was to see{217} colin’s mocking face floating on the darkness of his closed lids, and to have echoing in his ears the mockery of colin’s jibes. as he passed violet’s door on his way up to bed he had heard the sound of speech and laughter from within, and his jealousy seemed to arrest his tip-toeing steps, so that what he might overhear should give it the bitter provender it loved. but some new-born fear of colin made him go on instead of lingering: colin seemed prospered in all he did by some hellish protection; a mysterious instinct might warn him that there was a listener, and he would throw open the door and with a laugh call violet to see who was eavesdropping on the threshold.... then after they had laughed and pointed at him, colin would shut the door again, locking it for fear of—of a homicidal maniac—and the talking would go on again till it was quenched in kisses....
he had tossed and turned as on a gridiron, with the thought of colin and violet together to feed and to keep the fire alive. he did not believe that colin loved her; if she had not promised to marry himself, he would not have sought her. it was from hatred of himself that he had given her a glance and a smile and whistled her to him, so that she threw away like a scrap of waste-paper the contract that would have installed her as mistress of the house she adored. colin had idly beckoned, just to gratify his hate, and she had flamed into love for him.
what subtle arts of contrivance and intrigue were his also! he had wanted to feast that same hatred on the sight of his brother’s defeat and discomfiture, and a word from him had been sufficient to make his father revoke his edict and let him remain at stanier. thus colin earned fresh laurels in the eyes of the others for his compassionate forbearance, and by so doing accomplished his own desire of having raymond there, like a moth on a pin.
as the hours went on strange red fancies crossed his brain. he imagined himself going to his father’s room and smothering him, so that next day he would be master{218} of stanier, and free to turn colin out. not another hour should he stay in the place. out he should go, and violet with him. better still would it be to come behind colin with a noose in his hand, which he would draw tight round his neck and laugh to see his face go black and his eyes start from his head with the strangling.... that would satisfy him; he could forgive colin when he lay limp and lifeless at his feet, but till then he would never know a moment’s peace or a tranquil hour.
all this week his fever of hatred had been mounting in his blood, to-night the heat of it made to flower in his brain this garden of murderous images. and all the time he was afraid of colin, afraid of his barbed tongue, his contemptuous hate, above all, of the luck that caused him to prosper and be beloved wherever he went. just at birth one stroke of ill-luck had befallen him, but that was all....
earlier in the evening, he remembered, an idea had flitted vaguely through his head, which had suggested to him some lucky accident.... he had purposely yawned when that notion presented itself, so that colin should not see that he took any interest in what was being talked about.
for the moment he could not recollect what it had been; then he remembered how his father had come into the smoking-room and told them that a homicidal lunatic had got hold of a gun and was at large, probably in the park.... that was it; he had yawned then, for he had pictured to himself colin strolling through the leafy ways and suddenly finding himself face to face with the man. there would be a report and colin would lie very still among the bracken till his body was found. ants and insects would be creeping about him.
that had been the faint outline of the picture; now in the dark it started into colour. what if once again colin’s luck failed him, and in some remote glade he found himself alone with raymond? he himself would have a gun with him, and he would fire it point-blank at coli{219}n’s face and leave him there. it would be supposed that the escaped mad-man had encountered him....
it was but a wild imagining, born of a sleepless night, but as he thought of it, raymond’s eyelids flickered and closed, and just before dawn he fell asleep. when he was called a few hours later, that was the first image that came into his mind, and by the light of day it wore a soberer, a more solid aspect. what if it was no wild vision of the night, but a thing that might actually happen?
no fresh news when they met at breakfast was to hand about the escaped man; indeed, in answer to an inquiry sent by lord yardley to the asylum, there came the reply that, though search-parties were out after him, nothing had as yet been seen of him. colin was engaged to play a round of golf on the rye links, and the chance of falling in with him seemed so remote that soon after breakfast he went off on his motor-bicycle, promising, in order to soothe violet’s apprehensions, to travel at the rate of not less than forty miles an hour. that did not please her either; in fact, there was no pleasing her about his expedition, whether he went fast or slow; so he kissed her, and told her to order her mourning. at the last moment, however, at his father’s wish, he slipped a revolver into his pocket.
raymond, as usual, refused to play golf, and preferred a wander in the park with a gun as a defensive measure for himself, and as an offensive measure against the plague of wood-pigeons. they were most numerous in the woods that lay on the steep slope through which the road to repstow passed. that had been colin’s road, too, and when raymond set out a quarter of an hour later, the dust raised by his motor-bicycle still hung in the windless air.
ten minutes walking brought him to the point where the road which hitherto had lain across the open grass of the park descended into the big belt of wood which stretched as far as the lodge-gates. on each side of it the{220} ground rose sharply, covered on the one side by firs and birches with groundwork of heather, on the other by the oaks of what was known as the old park. according to tradition they were of the plantings of elizabeth’s colin, and for age and grandeur they might well be so, for stately and venerable they rose from the short deer-nibbled turf, well-spaced with full freedom for roots and branch alike. no other trees were on that slope, but these great, leafy sentinels stood each with his ring of shade round him, like well-tried veterans who have earned their leisure and the dignified livery of repose. a low wall of grey stone, some four feet high, mossy and creviced and feathered with small ferns, separated this old park from the road.
it was among these great oaks that the pigeons congregated, and raymond was soon busy with them. this way and that, startled by his firing, they flew, often wary and slipping out of the far side of a tree and interposing its branches between him and them so that he could get no sight of them, but at other times coming out into the open and giving him a fair shot. before long the whole battalion of them were in commotion, wheeling and flying off and returning again, and in an hour’s time he had shot some forty of them, not reckoning half a dozen more, which, winged or otherwise wounded, trailed off on his approach, fluttering on in front of him. raymond was quite willing to put any such out of their misery, if they would only stop still and be killed like sensible birds, but on a hot morning it was too much to expect him to go trotting after the silly things, especially when he had killed so many. he took no pleasure in the cruelty of leaving them to die; he was simply indifferent.
he had come almost to the end of his cartridges, and if he was to continue his shooting, he would have to go back to the house for more ammunition or borrow some from the keeper at the repstow lodge. that was nearer than the house, but before going he sat down in the{221} shade of one of old colin’s oaks to cool down and have a cigarette.
for the last hour he had been completely absorbed in his sport; now with a snap like that of a released spring his mind leaped back to that which had occupied it as he walked here and saw the dust of his brother’s motor-bicycle hanging in the air. he had locked up in his mind, when he began his shooting, all connection with that, his hate, the sleepless night with its visions that seemed so wild at the time, but which, on his waking, had taken on so much quieter and more likely an aspect, and now, when he unlocked his mind again, he found that they had grown like fungi in the darkness of a congenial atmosphere. they were solid and mature: where before there had been but a fairy-ring of imagination, where nightly elves had danced, there were now those red, firm-fleshed, poisoned growths, glistening and corrupt.
his subconscious mind poured out its storage: it had been busy while he was shooting, and wonderfully acute. it reminded him now that a quarter of a mile further on, the old park came to an end, and one clump of rhododendrons stood behind the wall which ran along the road. just here the road took a sharp turn to the right: a man walking along it (or, for that matter, bicycling along it) would only come into sight of any one who might happen to be by that rhododendron bush half-a-dozen yards before he came to it himself, and anything else he might see there (a gun, for instance) would be at point-blank range. such a gun-barrel would rest conveniently on the top of the wall; any one who happened to be holding the weapon would be concealed between the wall and the bush....
these pictures seemed to be shewn raymond rather than to be imagined by him; it was as if some external agency held open the book which contained them and turned over the leaves. it might prove to be himself who would presently lie perdu there, but he had no sense of{222} any personal volition or share in the matter. his hatred of colin had somehow taken counsel (even as doctors consult over a bad case) with the necessity that colin should die, and this was their advice; raymond was but the patient who in the apathy of sickness was going to do as they told him, not caring much what happened, only conscious that if this advice was successful in all its aspects, he would be restored to complete health.
he hardly knew if he hated colin any more; all that he was certain of was that there existed—somewhere—this black dynamic enmity. he hardly knew whether it was he who was about to shoot colin, as presently on his motor-bicycle he would come round that sharp bend by the rhododendron bush. all that he was certain of was that colin would presently lie dead on the road with his face all shattered by the shot. the homicidal maniac, of course, escaped from the asylum, must have been his murderer.
there was no use for more cartridges than the two which he now slipped into his gun. if the fellow hidden behind the rhododendron bush could not kill colin with two shots, he could not kill him with twenty, and raymond, looking carefully round, began moving quietly down the slope to the corner, keeping in the shadow of the leafage of the splendid trees. his foot was noiseless on the cropped plush of the turf, and he passed quickly over the patches of sun between the shadows of the oaks, pausing every now and then to make sure there was no one passing along the road or the hillside, who was within sight of him. but there was no one to be seen; after the cessation of his shooting, the deer had come back to their favourite grazing-ground, and were now cropping at the short, sweet grass, or lying with twinkling ears alert in the shade. no one was moving up there at the top of the old park, where a foot-path made a short cut to the house from the repstow lodge, or the deer would not be so tranquil, while his own sharp eye assured him that within the circle of his vision there was none astir.{223}
his remembrance of the rhododendron bush close to the angle in the road, was astonishingly accurate. the top of the grey wall was a most convenient rest for his gun, and a man coming round the corner from the direction of repstow would suddenly find himself within six yards of the barrels. probably he would never see them at all; there would be just a flash of flames close to his startled eyes, perhaps even the report of the explosion would never reach him.
that was the only imperfect touch in these schemes which had been thus presented to raymond; he would like colin to know, one-half second before he died, whose hand had pulled the trigger and put a muzzle on his mocking mouth and a darkness over his laughing eyes, and he determined that when the beat of colin’s approaching motor-bicycle sounded loud round the corner he would stand up and show himself. it would be all too late for colin to swerve or duck then, and he should just see who had the last laugh. raymond felt that he would laugh as he fired.... till that moment it was best to conceal himself from the road, and he leaned against the wall, crouching a little, with the muzzle of his gun resting on it.... it was already after one o’clock. colin would be here any minute now.
a quarter of an hour before, colin had arrived at the repstow lodge with a puncture in his hind tyre. luck was kind to him as usual; the puncture had occurred only a few yards down the road, and he could leave his machine with the lodge-keeper, and send a mechanic from the garage to repair it and bring it back to the house. for himself, he would take the short cut through the top of the old park back home; that reduced the distance by at least a half, and on this hot morning the soft-turfed shade would be pleasant.
then a sudden thought struck him, and he asked whether the escaped madman had been captured; the walk home would be less exciting but perhaps pleasanter if{224} they had caught him. and again it appeared that colin’s affairs were being well looked after; the man had been found on the other side of the park half an hour ago; cleverly taken, so the keeper said. he must have been in the woods all night, and they came upon him as he dozed, seizing the gun he had possessed himself of before he woke and getting a noose round his arms.
so that was all right, and colin, with a smile for the keeper’s wife and a sixpenny piece for the small child who regarded him with wide, wondering eyes, set off for the mile walk to the house. he took his revolver out of his pocket with the intention of giving it to the keeper, and having it brought up to the house with the bicycle; but then thought better of it, and, emptying the cartridges out, replaced it. it made a rather weighty bulge in his coat, but on general principles it was wise not to leave fire-arms about.
the thought of raymond at his pigeon-shooting occurred to him as he walked, but no sound of firing came from the direction of the old park, which now lay close in front of him, and he supposed that his brother would have gone home by this time. what a sullen, awkward fellow he was; how he winced under colin’s light artillery; how impotently raymond hated him.... colin could not imagine hating any one like that and not devising something deadly. but raymond devised nothing; he just continued hating and doing nothing.
colin had come to the beginning of the old park; the path lying along the top of it wound in and out of the great oaks; below to the right lay the road with the low stone wall running beside it. the road had been out of sight hitherto, forming a wider circuit, but just below him now there was a sharp corner and it came into view.
but what was that bright line of light on the top of the wall just at that point? something caught the sun, vividly gleaming. for some reason he was imperatively curious to know what gleamed there, just as if it intimately concerned him, and half-closing his eyes to focus{225} it and detach it from that baffling background of dappled light and shadow, he saw. simultaneously and unbidden the idea of raymond out shooting pigeons occurred to him. but what was he doing—if it were raymond—hidden behind that dark-leaved rhododendron-bush with his gun resting on the wall and pointing at the road? that was a singular way of shooting pigeons, very singular.
colin’s face broke into one great smile, and he slipped behind one of the oaks. looking out he saw that another tree lower down the slope hid the rhododendron bush from him, and keeping behind the broad trunk he advanced down the hill in its direction. twice again, in similar cover, he approached, and, peering round the tree, he could now see raymond close at hand. raymond’s back was towards him; he held his gun, with the end of the barrels resting on the top of the wall, looking at the angle of the road round which, but for that puncture in his bicycle, he himself would already have come.
there was now but one big tree between him and his brother, and on tiptoe, as noiselessly as a hunting tiger, he crept up to it, and, drawing his revolver from his pocket, he came within ten paces of him. then some faint sound of his advance—a twig, perhaps, snapping beneath his step—or some sense of another’s presence reached raymond, and he turned his head quickly in colin’s direction. he found himself looking straight down the barrel of his revolver.
“raymond, if you stir except to do precisely what i tell you, i shall shoot,” said colin quietly. “if you take your eyes off me i shall shoot.”
colin’s finger was on the trigger, his revolver as steady as if a man of stone held it.
“open the breech of your gun,” he said, “and let the barrels drop.... now hold it in one hand, with your arm stretched out.... that’s right. good dog!... now lay the gun down and turn round with your back to me.... stop like that without moving.... remem{226}ber that i am covering you, and i could hardly miss at this distance.”
colin picked up the gun and took the two cartridges out and put them in his pocket. not till they clinked against the revolver cartridges that lay there did he remember that all the time his pistol had been unloaded. he stifled a laugh.
“take off your cartridge-bag, raymond,” he said, “and put it on the ground.”
“there are no more in it,” said raymond, speaking for the first time.
“you ill-conditioned swine, do as i tell you,” said colin. “i shan’t give you an order twice again.... well, what you said seems to be true, but that’s not the point. the point is that you’re to do as i tell you. now have you got any more cartridges in your pockets?”
“no.”
colin thought he had better make sure of this for himself, and passed his hand over raymond’s coat-pockets.
“now you stand just where you are,” he said, “because we’ve got to talk. but first i’ll put some cartridges in my own revolver. it has been perfectly empty all this time. isn’t that damned funny, raymond, dear? there were you expecting every moment would be your last, and obeying me like the sweet, obedient boy you are. laugh, can’t you? it’s one of the funniest things that ever happened.”
colin lit a cigarette with shouts of laughter.
“well, to business,” he said. “turn round and let’s see your face. do you know a parlour-trick called thought-reading? i’m going to tell you what you’ve been thinking about. you expected me to come round that corner on my bike; and from behind the wall you were going to fire point-blank at me. not at all a bad idea. there was the homicidal lunatic, you thought, loose in the woods, and my death would have been put down to him.... but you would have been hanged for it all the same, because he was taken nearly an hour ago without firing a{227} shot. so i’ve saved you from the gallows. good idea of yours, but it had a flaw in it.”
colin came a step nearer his brother, his eyes dancing.
“raymond, i can’t resist it,” he said. “you’ve got to stand quite still, while i smack your filthy face just once, hard. it’ll hurt you, i’m afraid, but you’ve just got to bear it. if you resist in any way, i shall tell my father exactly what has happened this morning as soon as i get in. i shall tell him at lunch before violet and the servants. i may settle to tell him in any case; that depends on how our talk goes off. but if you don’t stand still like a good boy, i shall certainly tell him. now! shut your eyes and see what i’ll give you.... there! it quite stung my fingers, so i’m sure it stung your face. sit down; no, i think you look nicer standing. let me think a moment.”
colin lit another cigarette, and stared at his brother as he smoked it.
“you’ve been wise about one thing,” he said, “in not attempting to deny the truth of my pretty thought-reading. you’re beaten, you see; you daren’t deny it. you’re a whipped cur, who daren’t even growl. lucky for you that you’re such a coward.... now, i’ve settled what to do with you. as soon as we get in, you shall write out for me a confession. you shall say that you intended to shoot me, and put down quite shortly and clearly what your plan was. you shall sign, and my father and i will sign it as witnesses. he shan’t read it; i will tell him that it is a private friendly little matter between you and me, and we just want his signature.
“i’m devilish good to you, you know; it’s lucky that that affair about my revolver-cartridges amused me; that, and smacking your face. then i shall send your confession to my bank, to be kept unopened there, except in, case of my death, in which case it is to be sent to my father. that’ll keep you in order, you see. you won’t dare to make any other attempt on my life, because if it were successful, it would be known that you had tried to{228} kill me before, and that would be a suspicious circumstance. how’s your face?... answer, can’t you?”
“it’s all right,” said raymond.
“good lord, i don’t want to know about your face. what do you say to my proposal? the alternative is that i tell my father and violet all about it i rather fancy—correct me if i am wrong—that he will believe me. shocking affair, but true. answer.”
“i accept it,” said raymond.
“of course you do. now pick up your gun. did you have good sport with the pigeons? answer pleasantly.”
“i got about forty,” said raymond.
“and you hoped to get one more at that corner, didn’t you?”
“yes.”
“damned rude of you to call me a pigeon. i’ll pay you out for that.”
philip was out on the terrace when the two boys came in. colin took raymond’s arm affectionately when he saw him.
“hullo, father,” he said. “we’ve had such a ripping morning. i won my match, and raymond downed forty pigeons, and they’ve caught the madman. oh, my bicycle punctured, by the way, but that was a blessing in disguise, for i had a jolly walk through the old park, and found raymond. we’ve had a nice talk, too, and we want you to witness something for us after lunch.”
“what’s that?” said philip.
“oh, just a private little arrangement that only concerns us.... shan’t we show it father, ray?”
“oh, i think not,” said he.
colin raised his eyebrows as he met his father’s glance. “all right,” he said. “just as you like.”
