just a fortnight later colin was lying in one of the window seats of the long gallery at stanier reading through some papers which required his signature. they had come by the post which nino had just given him, for he had brought the boy with him from capri, with a view to making him his valet. his own, he said, always looked as if he were listening to a reading of the ten commandments, and colin had no use for such a person. nino, at any rate, would bring cheerfulness and some touch of southern gaiety with his shaving-water; besides, no servant approached the italian in dexterity and willingness.
and now that the pause of death was over, adjustments, businesses, the taking up of life again had to begin, and his lawyer was getting things in shape for his supervision. these particular papers were tedious and hard to follow and were expressed in that curious legal shibboleth which makes the unprofessional mind to wander. he tried to attend, but the effort was like clinging to some slippery edge of ice; he could get no firm hold of it, and the deep waters kept closing over him. there, below the terrace, lay the lake where he had seen one such incident happen.
by that he had become heir to all that this fair, shining spring day shewed him; his father’s death put him in possession, and now this morning, wherever he turned his eyes, whether on lake or woodland, or within on picture and carved ceiling, all were his. this stately home, the light and desire of his eye, with all that it meant in wealth and position, had passed again into the hands of colin stanier, handed down from generation to generation, ever more prosperous, from his namesake who had built its enduring walls and founded its splendours.
of his father’s death there was but little to tell him,{317} when, coming straight back again from capri, he had arrived here at the set of a stormy day. philip had reeled as he crossed the hall one morning, and fallen on the hearthrug in front of the holbein. for half an hour he had lived, quite unconscious and suffering nothing, then his breathing had ceased. until the moment of his stroke, that bursting of some large blood-vessel on the brain, he had been quite well and cheerful, rejoicing in the fact that colin by now had found the sun again, and already longing for his return.
violet had been colin’s informant, and she told him these things with that air of detachment from him which had characterised her intercourse with him since raymond had come home for that last christmas vacation. she had watched then with some secret horror dawning in her eyes, colin’s incessant torture of his brother. that dismay and darkness which had spread its shadow on her in the month of their honeymoon, when first she really began to know colin, interrupted for a time by their return home and the high festivals of the autumn, had returned to her then with a fresh infusion of blackness. never once had she spoken to him about his treatment of raymond, but he was conscious that she watched and shuddered. it did not seem that her love for him was extinguished; that horror of hers existed side by side with it; she yearned for his love even while she shrank from his pitilessness. she feared him, too, not only for the ruthless iron of him, but for the very charm which had a power over her more potent yet.
then came the weeks after raymond’s death, and colin thought he saw in her a waning of her fear of him; that, he reflected, was natural. some time, so he read her mind, she knew she would be mistress here in her own right; it seemed very reasonable that she should gain confidence.
for the last few days, when the wheels of life were now beginning to turn again, he saw with a comprehending sense of entertainment that there was something in{318} violet’s mind: she was trying to bring herself up to a certain point, and it was not hard to guess what that was. she was silent and preoccupied, and a dozen times a day she seemed on the verge of speaking of that which he knew was the subject of her thought. till to-day her father and mother and aunt hester in becoming mourning had been with them, now they had gone, and violet’s restlessness had become quite ludicrous. she had been in and out of the room half a dozen times; she had sat down to read the paper, and next moment it had dropped from her lap and she was staring at the fire again lost in frowning thought.
knowing what her communication when it came must be, colin, from the very nature of the case could not help her out with it, but he wished that she would wrestle with and vanquish her hesitation. if it had been he who in this present juncture had had to speak to raymond on this identical subject, how blithely would he have undertaken it. then, finally, violet seemed to make up her mind to take the plunge, and sat down on the edge of the seat where he lounged. he extended his arm and put it round her.
“well, vi,” he said, “are you finding it hard to settle down? i am, too, but we’ve got to do it. my dear, aunt hester’s little black bonnet! did you ever see anything so chic? roguish; she gets sprightlier every day!”
violet looked at him gravely.
“there’s something we have to talk about, colin,” she said, “and we both know what it is. will you let me speak for a minute or two without interrupting me?”
he put his finger on the line to which he had come in this tiresome document, which his solicitor assured him required his immediate attention.
“an hour or two, darling; the longer the better,” he said. “what is it? are you sure i know? something nice i hope. ah, is it about my birthday perhaps? the last affair that dear father was busy over were plans for my birthday. of course i have counter-ordered every{319}thing and we must keep it next year. well, what is it? i won’t interrupt any more.”
colin leaned back with his hand still under violet’s arm, as if to draw her with him. she bent with him a little way and then disengaged herself.
“i hate what lies before me,” she said, “and i ask you to believe that i have struggled with myself. i have tried, colin, to give the whole thing up, to let it be yours. but i can’t. i long to be lady yardley in my own right, as you told me i should be on uncle philip’s death. all that it means! i fancy you understand that. but i think i might have given that up, if it was only myself of whom i had to think. i don’t know; i can’t be sure.”
she paused, not looking at him. she did not want to know till all was done how he was taking it. of course he anticipated it: he knew it must be, and here was the plain point of it....
“but i haven’t got only myself to think about,” she said. “before many months i shall bear you a child; i shall bear you other children after that, perhaps. i am thinking of them and of you. since we married i have learned things about you. you are hard in a way that i did not know was possible. you have neither love nor compassion. i must defend my children against you; the only way i can do it is to be supreme myself. i must hold the reins, not you. i will be good to you, and shall never cease loving you, i think, but i can’t put myself in your hands, which i should do, if i did not now use the knowledge which you yourself conveyed to me. you did that with your eyes open; you asked for and accepted what your position here will be, and you did it chiefly out of hatred to raymond. that was your motive, and it tells on my decision. you hate more than you love, and i am frightened for my children.
“it is true that when i accepted raymond, i did it because i should get stanier—be mistress here anyhow. but i think—i was wavering—that i should have thrown him over before i married him and have accepted you,{320} though i knew that marriage with you forfeited the other. then you told me it was otherwise, that in forfeiting stanier, i found it even more completely.”
colin—he had promised not to interrupt—gave no sign of any sort. his finger still marked the place in this legal document.
“i have sent for my father’s solicitor,” she said, “and they have told me he is here. but before i see him i wanted to tell you that i shall instruct him to contest your succession. i shall tell him about the register in the consulate at naples and about your mother’s letters to your uncle. you said you would let me have them on your father’s death. would you mind giving me them now, therefore? he may wish to see them.”
colin moved ever so slightly, and she for the first time looked at him. there he lay, with those wide, child-like eyes, and the mouth that sometimes seemed to her to have kissed her very soul away. he had a smile for her grave glance; just so had he smiled when torturingly he tried to remember exactly what had happened in the old park on the day that raymond shot pigeons. but even while she thought of his relentless, pursuing glee, the charm of him, the sweet supple youth of him, all fire and softness, smote on her heart.
“won’t you go away, till it is all over?” she said. “it will be horrible for you, colin, and i don’t want you to suffer. the letters are all i want of you; i will tell mr. markham about the register and he will do whatever is necessary. go back to your beloved island; you were robbed of your stay there. wait there until all this business, which will be horrible for you, is done. you can see your dear mr. cecil again ...” she added, trying to smile back at him.
“yes, i might do that,” said colin thoughtfully. “in fact, i probably shall. but i must try to take in what you have been saying. i can’t understand it: you must explain. you referred, for instance, to my mother’s letters. what letters? i don’t know of any letters of my{321} mother as being in existence. still less have i got any. how could i have? she died when i was but a few weeks old. do mothers write letters to the babies at their breasts?”
“the two letters to your uncle,” said she.
colin planted a levering elbow by his side, and sat up.
“i suppose it is i who am mad,” he said, “because you talk quite quietly and coherently, and yet i don’t understand a single word of what you say. letters from my mother to my uncle? ah....”
he took her hand again, amending his plan in accordance with his talk with salvatore.
“you’re right,” he said. “uncle salvatore did once give me two letters from my mother to him. little faint things. i destroyed them not so long ago: one should never keep letters. but you’re right, vi. uncle salvatore did give me a couple of letters once, but when on earth did i mention them to you? what a memory you have got! it’s quite true; one announced my mother’s marriage, the other spoke of the birth of poor raymond and me. but what of them? and what—oh, i must be mad—what in heaven’s name do you mean, when you talk, if i understand you correctly, about sending somebody out to naples? the register in the consulate there? and my succession? are they connected? isn’t it usual for a son to succeed his father? i’m all at sea—or am i asleep and dreaming? pinch me, darling. i want to wake up. what register?”
some nightmare sense of slipping, slipping, slipping took hold of violet.
“the erasure in the register,” she said. “all that you told me.”
colin swung his legs off the window-seat and got up. there was an electric bell close at hand and he rang it.
“there’s some plot,” he said, “and i have no idea what it is. i want a witness with regard to anything further that you wish to say to me. what’s his name? your{322} father’s solicitor, i mean. oh, yes, markham. don’t speak another word to me.”
he turned his back on her and waited till a servant came in.
“her ladyship wishes to see mr. markham,” he said. “ask mr. markham to come here at once.”
“colin ...” she began.
it was just such a face that he turned on her now as he had given to her one evening at capri.
“not a word,” he said. “hold your tongue, violet. you’ll speak presently.”
mr. markham appeared, precise and florid. colin shook hands with him.
“my wife has a statement to make to you,” he said. “i don’t know what it is: she has not yet made it. but it concerns me and the succession to my father’s title and estates. it had therefore better be made to you in my presence. please tell mr. markham what you were about to tell me, violet.”
in dead silence, briefly and clearly, violet repeated what colin had told her on the night that they were engaged. all the time he looked at her, mr. markham would have said, with tenderness and anxiety, and when she had finished he spoke:
“i hope you will go into this matter without any delay, mr. markham,” he said. “my wife, as i have already told her, is perfectly right in saying that my uncle—you will need his address—gave me two letters from my mother to him. she is right also about the subject of those letters. but she is under a complete delusion about the dates of them. i destroyed them not so long ago, i am afraid, so the only person who can possibly settle this is my uncle, to whom i hope you will apply without delay. no doubt he will have some recollection of them; indeed, he cherished them for years, and if the dates were as my wife says that i told her they were, he must have known that my brother and i were illegitimate. so much for the letters.{323}”
colin found violet’s eyes fixed on him; her face, deadly pale, wore the stillness of stone.
“with regard to my wife’s allegation about the register,” he said. “i deny that i ever told her any such story. i have this to add: when my father and i were in naples last summer, i made, at his request, a copy of the record of his marriage from the consular register. he thought, i fancy, that in the event of his death, a certified copy of it, here in england, might be convenient for the purpose of proving the marriage. i made that copy myself, and mr. cecil, our consul in naples, certified it to be correct. i gave it my lawyer a few days ago, when he was down here, and it is, of course, open to your inspection.”
colin paused and let his eyes rest wistfully on violet.
“my wife, of course, mr. markham,” he said, “is under a delusion. but she has made the allegation, and in justice to me, i think you will agree that it must be investigated. she supposes—don’t you, darling?—that there is an erasure in the register at the consulate showing that it has been tampered with, and that erasure points to an attempt on some one’s part, presumably my father’s or my own, to legitimatise his children. in answer to that i am content for the present to say that when i made the copy i saw no such erasure, nor did mr. cecil who certified the correctness of it. mr. cecil, to whom i will give you an introduction, no doubt will remember the incident. i am glad i have got that copy, for if the register proves to have been tampered with, it may be valuable. my belief is that no such erasure exists. may i suggest, mr. markham, that you or some trustworthy person should start for naples at once? you will take the affidavits—is it not—of my uncle with regard to the letters, and of mr. cecil with regard to the genuineness of the copy of my father’s marriage. you will also inspect the register. the matter is of the utmost and immediate importance.”
he turned to violet. “vi, darling,” he said, “let us agree not to speak of this again until mr. markham has{324} obtained full information about it all. now, perhaps, you would like to consult him in private. i will leave you.”
mr. markham shared colin’s view as to the urgency and importance of setting this matter at rest, and left for naples that evening with due introductions to salvatore and the consul. colin had a word with him before he left, and with tenderness and infinite delicacy, spoke of violet’s condition. women had these strange delusions, he believed, at such times, and the best way of settling them was to prove that they had no foundation. mr. markham, he was afraid, would find that he had made a fruitless journey, as far as the ostensible reason for it went, but he had seen for himself how strongly the delusion had taken hold on his wife, and in that regard he hoped for the best results. in any case the thing must be settled....
never had the sparkle and sunlight of colin’s nature been so gay as during these two days when they waited for the news that mr. markham would send from naples. it had been agreed that the issues of his errand should not be spoken of until they declared themselves, and here, to all appearance, was a young couple, adorably adorned with all the gifts of nature and inheritance, with the expectation of the splendour of half a century’s unclouded days spread in front of them. they had lately passed through the dark valley of intimate bereavement, but swiftly they were emerging into the unshadowed light, where, in a few months now, the glory of motherhood, the pride of fatherhood, awaited them. in two days from now, as both knew, a disclosure would reach them which must be, one way or the other, of tremendous import, but for the present, pending that revelation, presage and conjecture, memory even of that interview with mr. markham, which had sent him across the breadth of europe, were banished; they were as children in the last hour of{325} holidays, as lovers between whom must soon a sword be unsheathed.
they wandered in the woods where in the hot, early spring the daffodils were punctual, and, “coming before the swallow dares,” took the winds of march with beauty, and colin picked her the pale cuckoo-pint which, intoxicated with nonsense, he told her comes before the cuckoo dares.... they spoke of the friendship of their childhood which had so swiftly blossomed into love, and of the blossom of their love that was budding now.
all day the enchantment of their home and their companionship waved its wand over them, and at night, tired with play, they slept the light sleep of lovers. certainly, for one or other of them, there must soon come a savage awakening, or, more justly, the strangle-hold of nightmare, but there were a few hours yet before the dreams of spring-time and youth were murdered.
the third day after mr. markham’s departure for naples was colin’s birthday, when he would come of age, and violet, waking early that morning, while it was still dark, found herself prey to some crushing load and presage of disaster, most unpropitious, most unbirthday-like. for the last two days, these days of waiting for news, they had made for themselves a little artificial oasis of sunshine and laughter; now some secret instinct told her that she could linger there no more. to-day, she felt sure, would come some decisive disclosure, and she dreaded it with a horror too deep for the plummet of imagination. in that dark hour before dawn, when the vital forces are at their lowest, she lay hopeless and helpless.
colin had denied all knowledge of what he had himself told her; he had been eager for mr. markham to disprove it.... he knew something which she did not. what that could be she could form no idea at all. at the worst, salvatore would confirm his account of those letters, and no such erasure as colin had spoken of would be found in the register. had he, then, invented this merely to{326} ensure her marrying him; and now that raymond’s death had given him mastership at stanier, was he simply denying what never existed at all? from what she knew of him now, he was capable of having done that in order to make her throw over raymond, but it was not that which she dreaded. there was something more; a black curtain seemed to hang before her, and presently some hot blast would blow it high in the air, and she would see what lay behind it.
it was rapidly growing light, and outside the birds were busy with their early chirrupings. by the window which last night colin had opened, pulling back the curtains, the silver of her paul lamerie toilet-set glimmered with the increasing brightness. colin lay close to her, with face turned towards her, fast asleep. his cheek was on his hand, the other arm, languid and slack, was stretched outside the bedclothes, his mouth was a little parted, and it seemed to be smiling. and then he stirred and, leaning his head a little back, his smile broadened and he laughed in his sleep with open mouth. at that some nameless panic seized her, and, stopping her ears, she buried her face in the clothes. a child might laugh so, but was the merriment of his dream that of a child? or had some sense that did not sleep reminded him that his twenty-first birthday was now dawning?
she feigned to be asleep when nino’s tap came to the door of his dressing-room, and she heard colin get up. he spoke to her quietly, but she did not answer or open her eyes. then his room door opened and closed and she was alone.
colin was already at breakfast when she came down, and apparently his mood of the last two days had suffered no ungenial change.
“good morning, darling,” he said. “i tried to say that to you before, but you were busy sleeping. what shall i give you? there’s some nasty fish and some tepid bacon.”
he looked at her with some sort of wistful expectancy,{327} as if wondering if she would remember something, and the thoughts, the wild imaginings which had made the dawn a plunge into some dark menace, dropped from her mind like drugged creatures.
“colin dear, your birthday. what can i give you?” she said, kissing him. “it was the first thing i thought of when i woke. we’re the same age again. i was a year ahead of you till this morning.”
“delicious of you to remember it, vi,” said he. “yes, we’re forty-two years old between us. a great age! hullo, nino.”
“pella signora,” said nino, and gave violet a telegram.
colin watched her fingers fumbling at the gummed flap of the envelope, as if numb and nerveless. then with a jerk she tore it across and opened it. only once before had he seen a living face as white as that, when fingers were slipping from the ice.
“read it for me,” she said at length. “i don’t seem to see what it means.”
colin took it; it had been sent from naples late last night, and came from mr. markham. he read:
“salvatore viagi’s account of letters agrees with your husband’s. page containing marriages of year and month in question has been cut out of register at consulate.”
colin passed the sheet back to violet. she did not take it from his hand and he let it drop on to the tablecloth. he leaned a little towards her.
“vi, you’re magnificent,” he said. “that was a glorious stroke of yours! that night when you and i stayed at the consulate. no, darling, don’t interrupt, let me speak for two or three minutes just as you did a few mornings ago. eat your bacon and listen.... i see now the reason of your pretended reluctance to stay with mr. cecil. it put me off the scent completely at the time.”
“what scent?” she asked. “what do you mean?”
“i asked you not to interrupt. there we were on our{328} honeymoon and so casually, so unthinkingly, i told mr. cecil that we would stay with him on our way home. you objected, but eventually you agreed. your reluctance to stay with him, as i say, put me quite off the scent. having done that you yielded. little did i dream then of your superb project....”
she gazed at him like some bird hypnotised by the snake that coil after coil draws nearer. colin, too, drew nearer; he pushed his chair sideways and leaned towards her, elbows on the table.
“i remember that night so well,” he said. “i was sleeping in the dressing-room next door to you, and the door was wide, for it was hot. i heard you get out of bed. i heard your latch creak. oh, yes, you called to me first, and i did not answer. i called to you this morning, you remember, and you did not answer. sometimes one pretends to be asleep. till this minute i knew nothing for certain more of what you did. now i know. you were playing for a great stake: i applaud you. you got hold of mr. cecil’s keys (he is careless about them) and tore that leaf out of the register. you knew that on my father’s death his marriage to my mother must be proved before raymond or i (poor raymond) could succeed, for, of course, it was common property that he lived with her before they were married. giuseppe, his boatman, uncle salvatore, half-a-dozen people, could have told you that. and then, oh! a crowning piece of genius, you make up a cock-and-bull story about erasure and letters which force us to have the register examined, and lo! there is no record of the marriage at all. what is the presumption? that raymond and i were, well, an ugly word. but just there fate was unkind to you through no fault of yours, except that failure is a fault and the most fatal one. you did not know that i had made a copy of the entry and got it signed and certified by our charming mr. cecil, before the curious disappearance of that page. and then you made just one terrible mistake. how could you have done it?{329}”
she turned to him a face of marble, faultlessly chiselled, but wholly lifeless.
“what mistake did i make?” she said.
“you kept that leaf,” said colin pityingly. “a record of your triumph, i suppose, like a cotillon-toy, to dream over when you were mistress here.”
“go on,” said she.
colin came closer yet. “darling, will you be awfully nice to me,” he said, “and give me that leaf as a birthday present? it would be a delightful souvenir. you know where it is.”
she paused. she remembered the tradition of the icy self-repression of the lady yardleys who had preceded her, the frost that fell on them. from personal knowledge there was her grandmother. that arctic night was darkening on her now, and she shivered.
“i don’t know where it is,” she said. “make up another lie.”
he rose. “you must learn politeness, violet,” he said. “you must learn many useful things. i am being very kind to you. you don’t appreciate that.”
night had not quite fallen yet.
“just as you were kind to raymond,” she said.
he smiled at her. “yes, the same sort of kindness,” he said.
he spoke to her as to a troublesome child with soft persuasion.
“now you know where it is quite well, but you want to give me the trouble of reminding you. you won’t say you’re sorry, or anything of that sort. not wise.”
“spring the trap on me,” she said.
“very well; you put it in the secret drawer in the stand of your lovely lamerie looking-glass, the evening we came back from our honeymoon. you had left me talking to father, but as soon as you had gone, i followed you. it was pure chance: i suspected nothing then. but i looked in from my dressing-room and saw you with the secret drawer open, putting something into it. i went{330} downstairs again. but i am bound to say that my curiosity was aroused; perhaps you might have been having a billet-doux from nino. so i took a suitable opportunity—i think it was when you were at church—and satisfied myself about it.”
colin reviewed this speech, which seemed to come to him impromptu, except for the one fact that underlay it, which in a few minutes now would be made manifest to violet.
“so poor nino was not my rival,” he said. “that was such a relief, vi darling, for i should have had to send him away. but i never really gave a serious thought to that, for i believed you liked your poor colin. but what i found did surprise me. i could not believe that any one so clever could have been so stupid as to keep the evidence of her cleverness. when you have been clever, it is wise to destroy the evidence of your cleverness. shall we come?”
“but my looking-glass? a secret drawer?” said violet. “there’s no secret drawer that i know of.”
“no, no, of course not,” said colin. “i shall be obliged to show it you. but wait a minute. i had better have a witness of what i find in the secret drawer of which you are ignorant. my solicitor is here, but with this other disclosure, he might urge me to proceed against you for conspiracy, which i don’t at present intend to do. your maid, now; no, you would not like her to know such things about you. she might blackmail you. how about nino? he will do no more than understand that a paper has been found, and that he witnesses to the finding of it. one has to protect oneself. i had to protect myself against raymond. may i ring for nino?”
at that the arctic night fell on violet, and presently the three of them were in her bedroom. round the base of the looking-glass ran a repoussé cable band, and colin was explaining to her how, if she pressed the stud at the corner of it, just where the silversmith’s name—l. a. for lamerie—was punched in the metal, the side of the base{331} would fly open. and so it was; she pressed it herself while he stood aside, and within was the drawer and the folded paper.
colin took a swift step and plucked the paper out, holding it at arm’s length.
“there, darling, all your responsibility is over,” he said. “i will keep it for you now. i will just open it and show you what it is, but do not come too close or try to snatch it. there! names of happy couples one below the other, and in the space next the name the date of their marriage. half-way down the page you see the names we are looking for, rosina viagi and philip lord stanier and the date, march the first, 1893.”
he turned to nino and spoke in italian.
“and you, nino,” he said, “you saw me take this paper out of the drawer of the signora’s looking-glass. and now you see me—give me a big envelope from the table—you see me put it in this envelope and close it—it is as if i did a conjuring trick—and i sit down and write on the envelope for the signora to read. i say that in your presence and in mine the enclosed was taken from the secret drawer in the looking-glass where it had been placed for safe custody by violet stanier, countess of yardley, and given into the care of her husband, colin stanier, earl of yardley. sign it, nino, and observe that i sign. i date it also. that’s all, nino; you may go.”
colin laid his hand on violet’s neck.
“it has been trying for you, dear,” he said. “rest a little. but your mind may be at ease now; the anxiety of having that in your possession is removed, and it will be in safe keeping. i will give it at once to my lawyer, with instructions that it is to be delivered to no one except to me in person, and that at my death it is to be destroyed unopened. it entirely depends on yourself as to whether it ever sees the light again.... and then, when you are rested, shall we go for one of our delicious rambles in the park. what’s that line of wordsworth? ‘this{332} one day we’ll give to idleness.’ thank you, darling, for your lovely birthday present.”
never on walpurgis night nor at black mass had there ever been so fervent an adorer to his god as colin, so satanic a rite as that which he had performed on this birthday morning. no need was there for him to make any vow of lip-service, or by any acceptation of the parchment that was set in the frame of the holbein, to confirm his allegiance. the spirit was more than the letter, and in no wanton ecstasy of evil could he have made a more sacramental dedication of himself. it was not enough for him to have forged, ever so cunningly, the evidence which, while raymond lived, proved his illegitimacy, nor, more cunningly yet, to have got rid of that evidence when raymond’s death cleared for him the steps to the throne. he must in the very flower and felicity of wickedness preserve that evidence in order to produce it as the handiwork of his wife. the edifice would have been incomplete otherwise; it would have lacked that soaring spire of infamy. but now all was done, and on his birthday came the consecration of the abominable temple of himself to the spirit he adored.
he came to her room that night and sat as he so often did on the edge of her bed.
“you have been perfect to me to-day, darling,” he said. “you have given me the happiest birthday. you have been so quiet and serene and controlled. and have you been happy?”
“yes, colin,” said she.
he pulled off his tie and flapped her fingers with the end of it.
“i think i shall go south again,” he said. “i was defrauded of my stay in capri owing to my father’s death. what about you? had you not better stay quietly at home? get your father and mother to come down.”
“just as you please,” said she.{333}
“let us settle it like that, then. and look at me a minute, violet.”
she raised her eyes to his.
“ah, that’s right,” he said. “you’ve had a lesson to-day, darling. it has tired you, and i will leave you to sleep in one moment. we can’t have you tired; you must take great care of yourself; eat well, sleep well, be out a great deal. about that lesson. take it to heart, vi. never again try to cross my path: it’s much too dangerous. and you’ve no delusions left about letters and registers, have you? answer me, dear.”
“no,” said she.
“that’s good. now i’ll leave you.”
the march night was warm and moonlit, and colin stood by the open window letting the breeze stream in against his skin, and looked out over terrace and lake and woodland. all that he had so passionately desired since first he toddled about this stately home of his race was his, and nothing now could upset his rights. and how wonderful the process of arriving at it had been: every step of that way was memorable; fraud, intrigue, trickery, matchless cruelty, had paved the road, and to-day the road was finished.
he put out his light, and curled himself up in bed.... violet’s first-born must surely be a son, who should learn early and well from lips that knew what they were saying the sober truth of that which in the legend wore the habiliment of medi?val superstition. he should learn how poor uncle raymond had allowed himself to love—yes, there was a time when he had loved mother, and—was not that tiresome for him—mother happened to prefer father. well, poor uncle raymond had loved, and that, perhaps, was his undoing, for he had fallen into the lake, under the ice, and the icy water had smothered him, and the fishes had nibbled him.... colin chuckled to himself at the thought of recounting that.
for a moment, as he looked out on to the night, he had{334} experienced a dulness and dimness of spirit as of a cloud passing over the bright circle of the moon at the thought that he had accomplished all that had so thrillingly occupied him. but at the thought of his fatherhood, the brightness shone forth again. how fascinating it would be to till and to sow in that soft soil, to rear the seedlings that he would water and tend so carefully, to watch them putting forth the buds of poisonous flowers that swelled and prospered till they burst the sheaths of childhood and opened wide-petalled to night and day.
his thoughts, drowsy and content, turned towards violet. certainly there had been noticeable in her all day a freezing, a congealment. she was becoming like those impassive portraits of her predecessors, marble women out of whose eyes looked some half-hidden horror....
a flash of lightning, very remote, blinked in through the uncurtained oblong of the window opposite his bed, and a mutter of thunder, as drowsy as himself, answered it. he slid his hand underneath his cheek, and fell asleep.
