breakfast at stanier was a shade less stately than dinner. the table was invariably laid for the complete tale of its possible consumers, and a vicarious urn bubbled at the end of the board with an empty teapot in front of it, in case of old lady yardley coming down to breakfast and dispensing tea. she had not come down for over twenty years, but the urn still awaited her ministrations.
on the arrival of tidings that she was having breakfast in her room, the urn was taken away, and if news filtered through the butler to the footman that some one else was breakfasting upstairs, a place at the table was removed. hot dishes above spirit-lamps stood in a row on the sideboard, and there remained till somebody had come down or till, from the removal of knives and forks, it was clear that nobody was coming.
but when lady hester was in the house, these dishes were always sure of a partaker, for, after her cold bath, she breakfasted downstairs, as she considered her bedroom a place to sleep and dress in, not to eat in. the urn would have been removed by this time, for lady yardley’s maid would have taken her tray upstairs, and for lady hester and for any one else who appeared there was brought in a separate equipage of tea or coffee, hot and fresh, and deposited in front of the occupied chair.
this morning she was the first to arrive, dressed in a white coat and blouse and a jaunty little straw hat turned up at the back and decorated with pheasants’ feathers. provision of fish and bacon was brought her, and an ironed copy of a daily paper. there were still four places left at the table unremoved, and she promised herself a chatty breakfast.{92}
raymond was the next comer, but he did not much conduce to chattiness. he looked heavy-eyed and sulky, only grunted in response to her salutation, and immured himself behind the daily mail. lady hester made one further attempt at sociability, and asked him if he had slept well, but as he had nothing to add to his “no, not very,” she considered herself free from any further obligation.
then there came a very welcome addition to his grievous company, for colin entered through the door that opened on to the terrace. flannel trousers, coat and shirt open at the neck was all his costume, and there was a bathing towel over his shoulder.
“morning, aunt hester,” he said. “morning, raymond.”
he paused in order to make quite sure that raymond made no response, and sat down next his aunt.
“been bathing,” he said. “hottest morning that ever was. why didn’t you come, too, aunt hester? you’d look like a water-nymph. i say, what a nice hat! whom are you going to reduce to despair? hullo, three letters!”
“how many of them are love-letters?” asked aunt hester archly.
“all, of course,” said colin. “there’s one from cambridge.”
“that’ll be the young woman in the tobacconist’s shop whom you told us about,” began aunt hester.
“sh!” said colin, nodding towards raymond. “sore subject.”
raymond, pushing back his chair, could not control himself from casting one furious glance at colin, and went out.
“well, that’s one bad-tempered young man gone,” said lady hester severely. she could understand people being thieves and liars, but to fail in pleasantness and geniality was frankly unintelligible to her.
“why does he behave like that, my dear?” she continued. “he hadn’t a word to chuck at me like a bone{93} to a dog, when i wished him good morning. what makes him like that? he ain’t got a belly-ache, has he?”
colin, as he swam in the sunshine this morning, had devoted some amount of smiling reflection as to his policy with regard to raymond. raymond had rejected his amazing proposal with a derisive laugh; he did not think that an alliance with his brother was worth that price, and he must take the consequences of his refusal.
violet entered at this moment; that was convenient, for she, too, could hear about the quarrel last night at one telling.
“oh, we had a row last night,” he said. “it was pitched a little higher than usual, and i suppose raymond’s suffering from after-effects. he was perfectly furious with me for having mimicked him, and wasn’t the least soothed by my saying he might mimic me as often as he pleased. then i was told i was a cad and a liar for that nonsense i talked about the tobacconist’s. after i had stood as much as i could manage, i left him to his whisky, and i don’t imagine there’ll be much left of it. oh, i say, violet, did you shut the door when you came in? i believe it’s open; i’ll do it.”
colin got up, went to the door which was indeed ajar, and looked out into the long gallery. raymond, it so happened, was sitting in the nearest window-seat lighting his pipe.
colin nodded to him. “just shutting the door,” he said, and drew back into the dining-room, rattling and pushing the door to make sure that the latch had gone home. he felt sure that what he had just said to raymond (that very innocent piece of information!) would go home, too.
“he was just outside,” said colin softly, returning to the breakfast-table. “wasn’t it lucky i thought of shutting the door?”
“go on; what else?” asked violet.
“nothing more. of course, it was very awkward his having overheard what we all said at our bridge. that{94} had riled him. it was best to be sure that there wouldn’t be a repetition of it this morning. but if people will sit behind a newspaper and a vase of flowers, it’s difficult to be aware of their presence. people ought to betray their presence in the usual manner by coughing or sneezing. i shall have a thorough search of the room first before i say anything about anybody. if i want to say you are an old darling, aunt hester, i shall look behind the coal-scuttle first.”
colin, whatever his private sentiments were, had an infinite lightness of touch in the expression of them. he had declared, not to violet alone, but to raymond himself, that he frankly detested him, and yet there was a grace about the manner of the presentment that rendered his hatred, if not laudable, at any rate, venial. and his account of the quarrel last night was touched with the same graceful brush. without overstepping the confines of truth, he left the impression that he had been reasonable and gentle, raymond headstrong and abusive.
this, too, was part of his policy; when others were present, he would make himself winningly agreeable to raymond, and shew a control and an indulgence highly creditable in view of his brother’s brusque ways, and take no provocation at his hands. that would accentuate the partisanship of the others, which already was his, and would deprive raymond of any lingering grain of sympathy. when he and raymond were alone, he would exercise none of this self-restraint; he would goad and sting him with a thousand biting darts.
the three strolled out presently into the gallery; lady hester and violet passed raymond without speech, but colin sauntered up to him.
“coming out to play tennis presently?” he asked.
colin’s careful closing of the dining-room door had not been lost on his brother. raymond had interpreted it just as colin wished him to, and he was boiling with rage.
“no, i’m not,” said he.
colin turned to where violet was standing, just{95} shrugged his shoulders with a lift of the eyebrows, and went on towards her without spoken comment.
“tennis soon, vi?” he asked. “we’ll have to play a single.”
“right. that will be jolly,” said violet. “in half an hour?”
colin nodded, and passed on to lady hester. “come out, aunt hester, and let’s sit in the shade somewhere till vi’s ready. it’s lovely outside.”
“i must have me sunshade,” said she, “or i shall spoil me complexion.”
“that’ll never do,” said colin. “none of your young men will fall in love with you, if you do that. i’ll get it for you. which will you have, the blue one with pink ribands, or the pink one with blue ribands?”
“neither, you wretch,” said aunt hester. “the yaller one.”
they found an encampment of basket-chairs under the elms beyond the terrace, and colin went straight to the business on which he wanted certain information. this, too, was an outcome of his meditations in the swimming-pool.
“i asked father to take me out to italy this summer,” he said, “and it was quite clear that he had some objection to it. have you any idea what it was?”
“my dear, it’s no use asking me,” said aunt hester. “your father’s never spoken to me about anything of the sort, and he ain’t the sort of man to ask questions of. but for all these years he has gone off alone for a month every summer. perhaps he only just wants to get rid of us all for a while.”
colin extended himself on the grass, shading his eyes against the glare with his hand. his ultimate goal was still too far off to be distinguished even in general outline, far less in any detailed aspect. he was but exploring, not knowing what he should find, not really knowing what he looked for.
“perhaps that’s it,” he said. “in any case, it does{96}n’t matter much. but i did wonder why father seemed not to welcome the idea of my going with him. he usually likes to have me with him. he’s devoted to italy, isn’t he, and yet he never talks about it.”
colin spoke with lazy indifference, knowing very well that the surest way of getting information was to avoid any appearance of anxiety to obtain it, and, above all, not to press for it. suggestions had to be made subconsciously to the subject.
“never a word,” said lady hester, “and never has to my knowledge, since he brought you and raymond back twenty years ago.”
“were you here then?” asked colin.
“yes, and that was the first time i saw stanier since i was seventeen. your grandfather never spoke to me after my marriage, and for that matter, i wouldn’t have spoken to him. he was an old brute, my dear, was your grandfather, and raymond’ll be as like him as two peas.”
“not as two peas, darling,” said colin, “as one pea to another pea.”
“oh, bother your grammar,” said lady hester. “speech is given us to show what we mean. you know what i mean well enough. but as soon as your grandfather died, philip made me welcome here, and has made me welcome ever since. yes, my dear, the first i saw of you, you were laughing, and you ain’t stopped since.”
“did you know my mother?” asked colin quietly.
he was getting on to his subject again, though lady hester was not aware of it.
“no. never set eyes on her. nobody of the family knew she existed until you were born, and less than a month after that she was dead. your father had left home, one may or june it must have been, for he couldn’t stand your grandfather any more than i could, and not a word did any one but your grandmother hear of him, and that only to say it was a fine day, and he was well, till there came that telegram to say that he was married and{97} had a pair of twins. your grandfather was at dinner, sitting over his wine with your uncle ronald—he used to drink enough to make two men tipsy every night of his life—and up he got when your uncle read the telegram to him, and crash he went among the decanters, and that was the end of him. then your mother died, and back came your father with you and raymond, within a twelvemonth of the time he’d gone away. and not a word about that twelvemonth ever passes his lips.”
colin let a suitable pause speak for the mildness of his interest in all this. “he must have been married, then, very soon after he went to italy,” he said.
“must have, my dear,” said lady hester.
it was exactly then that colin began to see a faint outline, shrouded though it was by the mists of twenty years, that might prove to be the object of his exploration. very likely it was only a mirage, some atmospheric phantom, but he intended to keep his eye on it, and, if possible, get nearer to it. a certain nuance of haste and promptitude with which lady hester had agreed to his comment perhaps brought it in sight.
he sat up, clasping his knees with his hands, and appeared to slide off into generalities. “how exceedingly little we all know of each other,” he said. “what do i know of my father, for instance? hardly anything. and i know even less of my mother. just her name, rosina viagi, and i shouldn’t know that if it wasn’t for the picture of her in the gallery. who are the viagis, aunt hester? anybody?”
“don’t know at all, my dear,” said she. “i know as little about them as you. quite respectable folk, i daresay, though what does it matter if they weren’t?”
“not an atom. queen elizabeth wished she was a milk-maid, didn’t she?”
“lord, she’d have upset the milk-pails and stampeded the cows!” observed lady hester. “better for her to be a queen. why, here’s your father.”
this was rather an unusual appearance, for lord yard{98}ley did not generally shew himself till lunch-time. colin instantly jumped up.
“hurrah, father!” he said. “come and talk. cigarette? chair?”
lord yardley shook his head. “no, dear boy,” he said. “i sent for you and heard you were out, so i came to look for you. have five minutes’ stroll with me.”
colin took his father’s arm. “rather,” he said. “tell vi that i’ll be back in a few minutes if she comes out, will you, aunt hester?”
philip stopped. “another time will do, colin,” he said, “if you’ve made any arrangement with violet.”
“only vague tennis.”
they walked off up the shady alley of grass to where, at the end, an opening cut in the trees gave a wide view over the plain. the ground in front fell sharply away in slopes of steep turf, dotted with hawthorns a little past the fulness of their flowering. a couple of miles away the red roofs of rye smouldered in the blaze of the day, outlined against the tidal water of the joined rivers, that went seawards in expanse of dyke-contained estuary. on each side of it stretched the green levels of the marsh, with winchelsea floating there a greener island on the green of that grassy ocean, and along its margin to the south the sea like a silver wire was extended between sky and land. to the right for foreground lay the yew-encompassed terraces, built and planted by colin the first, the lowest of which fringed the broad water of the lake, and along them burned the glory of the june flower-beds. behind, framed in the trees between which they had passed, the south-east front of the house rose red and yellow between the lines of green.
the two stood silent awhile.
“ah, colin,” said his father, “we’re at one about stanier. it beats in your blood as it does in mine. i wish to god that when i was dead....”
he broke off.
“i want to talk to you about two things,” he said.{99} “raymond’s one of them, but we’ll take the other first. about italy. i’ll take you with me if you want to come. i was reluctant, but i am reluctant no longer. apart from my inclination which, as i tell you, is for it now not against it, you’ve got a certain right to come. you and i will live in the villa where i lived with your mother. i’ve left it you, by the way. my romance, my marriage with her, and our life together, was so short and was so utterly cut off from everybody else that, as you know, i’ve always kept it like that, severed from all of you. but you’re her son, my dear, and in some ways you are so like her that it’s only right you should share my memories and my ghosts. they’re twenty-one years old now, and they’ve faded, but they are there. there’s only one thing i want of you; that is, not to ask me any questions about her. certain things i’ll tell you, but anything i don’t tell you....”
he broke off for a moment.
“anything i don’t tell you is my private affair,” he said.
“i understand, father,” said colin.
“you’ll probably see your uncle salvatore,” continued philip. “so be prepared for a shock. he usually comes over when he hears i am at the villa ... but never mind that. he takes himself off when he’s got his tip. so that’s settled. if you get bored you can go away.”
“that is good of you, father,” said the boy.
“now about the second point,” said philip; “and that’s raymond. he’s a sulky, dark fellow, that brother of yours, colin.”
colin laughed. “oh, put all the responsibility on me,” he said.
“well, what’s to be done with him? he was in the long gallery just now as i came out, and i spoke to him and was civil. but there he lounged, didn’t even take his feet off the window-seat, and wouldn’t give me more than a grunted ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ so i told him what i thought of his manners.{100}”
“oh, did you? how good for him.”
“well, i didn’t see why he should sulk at me,” said philip. “after all, it’s my house for the present, and if he is to quarter himself there, without either invitation or warning, the least he can do is to treat me like his host. i try to treat him like a guest, and like a son, for that matter. don’t i?”
“yes, dear father,” said colin. “you always try.”
“what do you mean, you impertinent boy?”
colin laughed again. “well, you don’t always succeed, you know. you cover up your dislike of him....”
“dislike?”
“rather. you hate him, you know.”
philip pondered over this. “god forgive me, i believe i do,” he said. “but, anyhow, i try not to, and that’s the most i can do. and i will be treated civilly in my own house. how long is he going to stop, do you know?”
“i asked him that yesterday,” said colin. “he said that, with my permission—sarcastic, you know—he was going to stop as long as he pleased.”
philip frowned. “oh, did he?” he said. “perhaps my permission will have something to do with it.”
“oh, do tell him to pack off!” said colin. “it was so ripping here before he came. i had a row with him last night, by the way.”
“what about?”
“oh, he chose to swear at me for mimicking him. that is how it began. but raymond will quarrel over anything. he’s not particular about the pretext. then there was what i said about the tobacconist’s wench.”
they had passed through the box-hedge on to the terrace just below the windows of the long gallery. colin raised his eyes for one half-second as they came opposite the window-seat which raymond had been occupying, and saw the top of his black head just above the sill. he raised his voice a little.
“poor old raymond,” he said. “we’ve got to make{101} the best of him, father. i suppose he can’t help being so beastly disagreeable.”
“he seems to think he’s got a monopoly of it,” said philip. “but i’ll show him i can be disagreeable, too. and if he can’t mend his ways, i’ll just send him packing.”
“oh, it would be ripping without him,” said colin. “he might come back after you and i have gone to italy.”
in pursuance of his general policy, colin made the most persevering attempts at lunch to render himself agreeable to his brother, for the impression he wished to give was that he was all amiability and thereby throw into blackest shadow against his own sunlight, raymond’s churlishness. a single glance at that glowering face was sufficient to convince colin that he had amply overheard the words which had passed between his father and himself below the open window of the gallery, and that he writhed under these courtesies which were so clearly of the routine of “making the best of him.” all the rest of them would see how manfully colin persevered, and this geniality was a goad to raymond’s fury; he simply could not bring himself to answer with any appearance of good-fellowship.
“what have you been at all morning, raymond?” colin asked him as he entered. “i looked for you everywhere.”
“been indoors,” said raymond.
colin just shook his head and gave a little sigh of despair, then began again, determined not to be beaten. he saw his father watching and listening, and raymond knew that lord yardley was applauding colin’s resolve to “make the best of him.”
“you ought to have come down to the tennis-court and taken on vi and me together,” he said. “we shouldn’t have had a chance against you, but we’d have done our best. father, you must come and look at raymond the next time he plays; he’s become a tremendous crack.{102}”
raymond knew perfectly well that either colin or violet could beat him single-handed. yet how answer this treacherous graciousness?
“oh, don’t talk such rot, colin!” he said.
he looked up angrily just in time to see colin and his father exchange a glance.
“well, what shall we do this afternoon?” said colin, doggedly pleasant. “shall we go and play golf? it would be awfully nice of you if you’d drive me down in your car.”
“you know perfectly well that i loathe golf,” said raymond.
“sorry,” said colin.
colin laughed, and without the smallest touch of ill-humour, gave it up and turned to violet.
“we’ll have our game in that case, shall we, vi?” he asked. “father, may we have a car to take us down?”
“by all means,” said philip. “hester and i will come down with you, go for a drive, and pick you up again. you’d like that, hester?”
“oh, but that will leave raymond alone....” began colin.
raymond broke in: “that’s just what i want you to do with me,” he snapped.
colin got up. “i’ll just go and see granny for a minute,” he said. “i told her i would look in on her after lunch....”
philip had listened to colin’s advances and raymond’s rebuffs with a growing resentment at his elder son’s behaviour, and as the others went out he beckoned him to stop behind.
“look here, raymond,” he said when the door had closed. “i had to speak to you after breakfast for your rudeness to me, and all lunch-time you’ve been as disagreeable as you knew how to be to your brother. and if you think i’m going to stand these sulks and ill-temper, you’ll very speedily find yourself mistaken. colin did all that a good-natured boy could to give you a chance of{103} making yourself decently agreeable, and every time he tried you snapped and growled at him.”
“do you wish me to answer you or not, sir?” asked raymond.
“certainly. i have every desire to be scrupulously fair to you,” said philip. “i will hear anything you wish to say.”
“then, father, i wish to say that you’re not fair to me. if i’m late for dinner, do you chaff me in the way you do colin? last night you asked him with a chuckle, ‘urgent private affairs?’ that was all the rebuke he got. if he says he hasn’t finished his wine, you sit down again, and say ‘sorry.’ if i haven’t, you tell me i’ve had enough already. colin’s your favourite, and you show it every minute of the day. you dislike me, you know.”
there was quite enough truth in this to make the hearing of it disagreeable to his father. “i didn’t ask you to discuss my conduct, but to consider your own,” he said. “but you shall have it your own way. my conduct to you is the result of yours to me, and yours to everybody else. look at yourself and colin dispassionately, and tell me whether i could be as fond of you as of him. i acknowledge i’m not. are you fond of me, if it comes to that? but i’m polite to you, until you annoy me beyond endurance, as you are continually doing. if colin had behaved at lunch as you’ve behaved, i should have thought he was ill.”
“and i’m only sulky,” said raymond.
“you’re proving it every moment,” said his father. “that’s quite a good instance.”
raymond paused, biting his lip. “you judge colin’s behaviour to me, father,” he said, “by what you see of it. you think he’s like that to me when we’re alone. he’s not: he’s fiendish to me. don’t you understand that when you’re there, or anybody else is there, he acts a part, to make you think that he’s ever so amiable?”
“and how do you behave to him when you’re alone to{104}gether?” asked philip. “if i take your word about colin, i must take colin’s about you.”
“you’ve done that already, i expect,” said raymond.
his father got up. “i see i haven’t made myself clear,” he said. “try to grasp that that’s the sort of remark i don’t intend to stand from you for a moment. if i have any further complaint to make of you, you leave the house. you’ve got to be civil and decently behaved. otherwise you go. i do not choose to have my general enjoyment of life, or colin’s, or your uncle’s, or your aunt’s, spoiled by your impertinences and snarlings. you’ll have to go away; you can go to st. james’s square if you like, but i won’t have you here unless you make a definite effort to be a pleasanter companion. as i told colin this morning, you seem to think that being disagreeable is a monopoly of your own, but you’ll find that i can be disagreeable, too, and far more effectively than lies in your power.”
philip was quite aware that he was speaking with extreme harshness, with greater harshness, in fact, than he really intended. but the sight of that heavy brooding face, the knowledge that this was his elder son, who would reign at stanier when he was dead to the exclusion of colin, made his tongue bitter beyond control.
“well, that’s all i’ve got to say to you,” he said. “i won’t have you insolent and uncivil to me or any one in this house. i’m master here for the present, and, rightly or wrongly, i shall do as i choose. and i won’t have you quarrelling with colin. you tell me that when i’m not here and when you’re alone with him, he’s fiendish to you; that was the word you used. now don’t repeat that, because i don’t believe it. you’re jealous of colin, that’s why you say things like that; you want to injure him in my eyes. but you only injure yourself.”
at that moment there came into philip’s mind some memory, now more than twenty years old, of himself in raymond’s position, stung by the lash of his father’s vituperations, reduced to the dumb impotence of hatred.{105} though he felt quite justified in all he had said to the boy, he knew that his dislike of him had plumed and barbed his arrows, and he experienced some sort of reluctant sympathy with him.
“i’ve spoken strongly,” he said, “because i felt strongly, but i’ve done. if you’ve got anything more to say to me, say it.”
“no,” said raymond.
“very good. i shan’t refer to it all again, and it’s up to you to do better in the future. put a check on yourself. believe me, that if you do you will have a better time with me and every one else.... think it over, raymond; be a sensible fellow.”
the departure of the others gave raymond abundance of leisure for solitary reflection, and his father’s remarks plenty of material for the same. stinging as those hot-minted sentences had been, he felt no resentment towards the orator; from his own point of view—a perfectly reasonable one—his father was justified in what he said. what he did not know, and what he refused to know, was the truth about colin, who neglected no opportunity which quickness of speech and an unrivalled instinct gave him as to what rankled and festered, of planting his darts when they were alone together. raymond accepted colin’s hatred of him, just as he accepted his own of colin, as part of the established order of things, but what made him rage was this new policy of his brother’s to win sympathy for himself and odium for him, by public politeness and affectionate consideration. no one observing that, as his father had done, could doubt who was the aggressor in their quarrels—the genial, sweet-tempered boy, or he, the morose and surly. and yet, far more often than not, it was colin who intentionally and carefully exasperated him. it amused colin, as he had said, to see his brother in a rage, and he was ingenious at providing himself with causes of entertainment.
and what, above all, prompted his father’s slating of him just now? again it was colin; it was his champion{106}ship of his favourite which had given the sting to his tongue. here, too, raymond acquitted his father of any motive beyond the inevitable one. nobody could possibly help liking colin better than himself, and it was the recognition of that which made his mind brush aside all thought of his father, and attach itself with claws and teeth to the root of all this trouble. he was slow in his mental processes whereas colin was quick, and colin could land a hundred stinging darts, could wave a hundred maddening flags at him, before he himself got in a charge that went home. that image of the arena entirely filled his thought. colin, the light, applauded matador, himself the savage, dangerous animal.
but one day—and raymond clenched his hands till the nails bit the skin, as he pictured it—that light, lissome figure, with its smiling face and its graceful air, would side-step and wheel a moment too late, and it would lie stretched on the sand, while he gored and kneaded it into a hash of carrion. “ah!” he said to himself, “that’ll be good; that’ll be good.”
the intensity and vividness of the image surprised him; he came to himself, sitting on the terrace, with the hum of bees drowsy in the flower-beds, as if from some doze and dream. he had not arrived at it from any consecutive interpretation of his hate for colin; it had not been evolved out of his mind, but had been flashed on to it as by some vision outside his own control. but there it was, and now his business lay in realising it.
he saw at once that he must be in no hurry. whether that goring and kneading of colin was to be some act of physical violence or the denouement of a plot which should lead to some disgraceful exposure, raymond knew he must plan nothing rashly, must test the strength of every bolt and rivet in his construction. above all, he must appear, and continue to appear, to have taken his father’s strictures to heart, and for the sake, to put it at its lowest, of being allowed to stay on at stanier, to observe the{107} general amenities of sociability, and in particular to force himself into cordial responses to colin’s public attentions.
temporarily, that would look bitterly like a victory for colin; with his father to back him, it would seem as if colin had reduced his brother to decent behaviour. but that could not be helped; he must for many weeks yet cultivate an assiduous civility and appear to have seen the error of his sulky ways in order to lull suspicion fast asleep. at present colin was always watchful for hostile man?uvres; it would be a work of time and patience before he would credit that raymond had plucked his hostility from him.
then there was violet. not only had his intemperate churlishness damaged him with his father, but not less with her. that had to be repaired, for though to know that stanier was to her, even as to colin, an enchantment, an obsession, she might find that the involved condition of marrying him in order to become its mistress was one that she could not face. she did not love him, she did not even like him, but he divined that her obsession about stanier, coupled with the aloofness and independence that characterised her, might make her accept a companionship that was not positively distasteful to her.
it was not the stanier habit to love; love did not form part of the beauty with which nature had dowered them. the men of the family sought a healthy mate; for the women of the family, so few had there ever been, no rule could be deduced. but violet, so far as he could tell, followed the men in this, and for witness to her inability to love, in the sense of poets and romanticists, was her attitude to colin.
had he been the younger, raymond would have laughed at himself for entertaining any notion of successful rivalry. colin, with the lordship of stanier, would have been no more vulnerable than was the moon to a yokel with a pocket-pistol. but he felt very sure that love, as a relentless and compelling factor in this matter, had no part in her strong liking for colin. neither her feeling{108} for him nor his for her was ever so slightly dipped in any infinite quality; it was ponderable, and he himself had in his pocket for weight in the other scale, her passion for stanier.
colin strolled gracefully into the smoking-room that evening when the whist and bridge were over, marvelling at the changed raymond who had been so courteous at dinner and so obligingly ready to play whist at poor granny’s table. he himself had kept up that policy of solicitous attention to his brother, which had made raymond grind his teeth at lunch that day, but the effect this evening was precisely the opposite. raymond had replied with, it must be supposed, the utmost cordiality of which he was capable. it was a grim, heavy demeanour at the best, but such as it was....
no doubt, however, raymond was saving up for such time as they should be alone, the full power of his antagonism, and colin, pausing outside the smoking-room, considered whether he should not go to bed at once and deprive his brother of the relief of unloading himself. but the desire to bait him was too strong, and he turned the door-handle and entered.
“so you got a wigging after lunch to-day,” he remarked. “it seems to have brought you to heel a bit. but you can let go now, raymond. you haven’t amused me all evening with your tantrums.”
raymond looked up from his illustrated paper. he knew as precisely what “seeing red” meant as did the bull in the arena. he had to wait a moment till that cleared.
“hullo, colin,” he said. “have you come for a drink?”
“incidentally. my real object was to see you and to have one of our jolly chats. did father pitch it in pretty hot? i stuck up for you this morning when we talked you over.”
raymond was off his guard, forgetting that certain knowledge he possessed was derived from overhearing.{109} “yes, you said you must make the best of me ...” he began.
colin was on to that like a flash. “now, how on earth could you have known that?” he asked. “father didn’t tell you.... i know! i said that just as i was passing under the window in the gallery where you were sitting after breakfast. my word, raymond, you’ve a perfect genius for eavesdropping. it was only last night that you hid behind the flower-vase and heard me mimic you, and if i hadn’t shut the door of the dining-room this morning, you’d have listened to what aunt hester and violet and i were saying, and then you overhear my conversation with father. you’re a perfect wonder.”
raymond got up, his eyes blazing. “take care, colin,” he said. “don’t go too far.”
colin laughed. “ah, that’s better,” he said. “now you’re more yourself. i thought i should get at you soon.”
raymond felt his mouth go dry, but below the violence of his anger there was something that made itself heard. “you’ll spoil your chance if you break out,” it said. “keep steady....” he drained his glass and turned to his brother.
“sorry, colin,” he said, “but i’m not going to amuse you to-night.”
“oh, i don’t know about that,” said colin. “i’ve hardly begun yet. your manner at dinner, now, and your amiability. it was not really a success. no naturalness about it. it sat on you worse than your sulkiest moods. you reminded me of some cad in dress-clothes trying to catch the note of the ordinary well-bred man. better be natural. i’ll go on sticking up for you; i’ll persuade father not to pack you off. i’ve a good deal of influence with him. i shall say you’re injuring yourself by not behaving like a sulky boor. besides, you can’t do it; if your geniality at dinner was an attempt to mimic me, i must tell you that nobody could guess who it was meant for. vi was very funny about it.{110}”
“really? what did she say?” asked raymond.
“oh, naturally i can’t give her away,” said colin. “but perhaps you’ll hear her say it again if you’re conveniently placed.”
“you know quite well vi didn’t say anything about it,” said raymond at a venture.
“naturally, you know best. and, talking of vi, are you going to propose to her? i wouldn’t if i were you; take my hint and save yourself being laughed at.”
“most friendly of you,” said raymond. “but there are some things that are my business.”
“and not an affectionate brother’s?” asked colin. “you don’t know how i feel for you. it makes me wince when i see you blundering and making the most terrible gaffes. it’s odd that i should have had a brother like you, and that you should be a stanier at all.”
colin threw a leg over the arm of his chair. it was most astonishing that not only in public but now, when there was no reason that raymond should keep up a semblance of control, that he should be so impervious to the shafts that in ordinary stung him so intolerably.
“you’re so awkward, raymond,” he said. “however much you try, you can’t charm anybody or make any one like you. you’ve neither manners, nor looks, nor breeding. you’ve got the curse of the legend without its benefits. you’re a coward, too; you’d like nothing better than to slit my throat, and yet you’re so afraid of me that you daren’t even throw that glass of whisky and soda in my face.”
for a moment it looked as if raymond was about to do precisely that; the suggestion was almost irresistible. but he loosed his hand on it again.
“that would only give you the opportunity to go to my father and tell him,” he said. “you would say i had lost my temper with you. i don’t intend to give you any such opportunity.”
even as he spoke he marvelled at his own self-control. but the plain fact was that the temptation to lose it had{111} no force with him to-night. for the sake of his ultimate revenge, whatever that might he, that goring and kneading of colin, it was no less than necessary that he should seem to have put away from him all his hostility. colin and the rest of them—violet above all—must grow to be convinced in the change that had come over him.
he rose. “better give it up, colin,” he said. “you’re not going to rile me. you’ve had a good try at it, for i never knew you so studiedly insolent. but it’s no use. good night.”
during the fortnight which intervened before the departure of lord yardley and colin to italy, raymond never once faltered in the task he had set himself. there was no act of patience too costly for the due attainment of it, no steadfastness of self-control in the face of colin’s gibes that was not worth the reward which it would ultimately bring. he avoided as far as possible being alone with his brother, but that, in the mere trivial round of the day, happened often enough to give colin the opportunity of planting a dart or two. but now they seemed to have lost all penetrative force; so far from goading him into some ill-aimed response, they were but drops of showers on something waterproof.
colin was disposed at first to attribute this incredible meekness to the effect of his father’s strictures. raymond had been given to understand without any possible mistake, that, unless he mended his ways, he would have to leave stanier, and that, no doubt, accounted for his assumption of public amiability. but his imperviousness in private to any provocation was puzzling. he neither answered colin’s challenges nor conducted any offensive of his own. at the most a gleam or a flush told that some jibe had gone home, but no angry blundering reply would give opportunity for another. for some reason raymond banked up his smouldering fires, not letting them blaze.
his impotence to make his brother wince and rage pro{112}foundly irritated colin. he had scarcely known before how deep-rooted was his pleasure in so doing; how integral a part of his consciousness was his hatred of him, which now seemed to have been deprived of its daily bread.
not less irritating was the effect that raymond’s changed behaviour produced on his father and on violet. his father’s civilities to him began to lose the edge of their chilliness; a certain cordiality warmed them. if the boy was really taking himself in hand, lord yardley must, in common duty and justice, encourage and welcome his efforts, and the day before the departure for italy, he made an opportunity for acknowledging this. once more after lunch, he nodded to raymond to stay behind the others.
“i want to tell you, raymond,” he said, “that i’m very much pleased with you. you’ve been making a strong effort with yourself, and you’re winning all down the line. and how goes it with you and colin in private?”
raymond took rapid counsel with himself. “very well indeed, sir,” he said. “we’ve had no rows at all.”
“that’s good. now what are your plans while colin and i are away? your uncle ronald and violet are going to stop on here. i think your aunt’s going up to london. you can establish yourself at st. james’s square, if you like, or remain here.”
“i’ll stop here if i may,” said raymond. “i don’t care about london.”
philip smiled. “very good,” he said. “you’ll have to take care of violet and keep her amused.”
raymond answered with a smile. “i’ll do my best, father,” he said.
“well, all good wishes,” said his father. “let me know how all goes.”
colin had seen throughout this fortnight raymond’s improvement of his position with regard to lord yard{113}ley, and he had felt himself jealously powerless to stop it. once he had tried, with some sunnily-told tale of raymond’s ill-temper, to put the brake on it, but his father had stopped him before he was half through with it. “raymond’s doing very well,” he said. “i don’t want to hear anything against him.” a further light was shed for colin that evening.
he and violet, when the rubber of whist was over and lady yardley had gone upstairs, strolled out into the hot dusk of the terrace with linked arms, but with no more stir of emotion in their hearts than two schoolboy friends, whose intimacy was to be severed by a month of holiday, would have experienced. the shadow cast by the long yew hedge from the moon near to its setting had enveloped them in its clear darkness, the starlight glimmered on the lake below, and in the elms beyond the nightingales chanted.
“listen at them, look at it all,” said colin impatiently. “starlight and shadow and nightingales and you and me as cool as cucumbers. you look frightfully attractive, too, to-night, vi: why on earth don’t i fall madly in love with you?”
“oh, my dear, don’t!” said violet. “you might make me fall in love with you. but i suppose i needn’t be afraid. you can’t fall in love with anybody, colin, and i daresay i can’t either. but i shall try.”
“and what do you mean by that?” asked colin.
“it’s pretty obvious,” she said.
“raymond, do you mean?” asked colin.
“of course. what’s come over him? there’s something attractive about him, after all; he’s got charm. who would have thought it?”
though colin had just now truthfully declared that he was in no way in love with his cousin, he felt a pang of jealousy just as authentic as that which the notion of raymond’s possession of stanier caused in him.
“but you can’t, violet!” he said. “that boor....{114}”
“i’m not so sure that he is a boor. he’s keeping the boor in a box, anyhow, and has turned the key on him. he’s quite changed. you can’t deny it.”
colin slipped his arm out of violet’s. “raymond’s cleverer than i thought,” he said. “all this fortnight it has puzzled me to know what he’s been at, but now i see. he’s been improving his position with father and with you.”
“he has certainly done that,” said violet.
“so, if he asks you, you intend to marry him?” asked colin.
“i think so.”
“i shall hate you if you do,” said he.
“why? how can it matter to you? if you were in love with me it would be different, or if i were in love with you. oh, we’ve talked it all over before; there’s nothing new.”
they had passed through the cut entrance in the yew hedge into the moonlight, and violet, turning, looked at her companion. colin’s face was brilliantly illuminated. by some optical illusion that came and went in a flash, he looked at that moment as if his face was lit from within, so strangely it shone against the dark serge of the hedge for background. there was an unearthly beauty about it that somehow appalled her. he seemed like some incarnation, ageless and youthful, of the fortunes of the house. but the impression was infinitesimal in duration, and she laughed.
“colin, you looked so wonderful just now,” she said. “you looked like all the staniers rolled into one.”
somehow this annoyed him. “raymond included, i suppose?” he asked. “but you’re wrong; there is something new. hitherto you’ve only considered raymond as a necessary adjunct to being mistress here; now you’re considering him as a man you can imagine loving. hasn’t he got enough already? good god, how i hate him!”
he had hardly spoken when there emerged from the entrance in the hedge through which they had just passed,{115} raymond himself. colin, white with fury, turned on him.
“hullo, at it again?” he said. “you’ve overheard something nice this time!”
raymond’s mouth twitched, but he gave no other sign. “father has just sent me out to tell you that he wants to speak to you before you go to bed,” he said, and, turning, went straight back to the house.
violet waited till the sound of his step had vanished. “colin, you’re a brute,” she said. “you’re fiendish!”
“i know that,” said colin. “who ever supposed i was an angel?”
“and it’s acting like a fool to treat raymond like that,” she went on. “can you afford to make him hate you?”
he laughed. “i’ve afforded it as long as i can remember,” he said. “it amuses me.”
“well, it doesn’t amuse me to see you behave like a fiend,” said violet. “and do you know that you lost your temper? i’ve never seen you do that yet.”
colin licked his lips; his mouth felt dry. “that was an odd thing,” he observed. “now i know what i make raymond feel like when we chat together. but it’s amazing that raymond should have done the same to me. i must go in to father.”
they moved back into the shadow of the hedge and colin stopped.
“i say, vi, give me a kiss,” he said.
she drew back a moment, wondering why she did so. “but, my dear, why?” she asked.
“we’re cousins,” he said. “why shouldn’t you? i should awfully like to kiss you.”
she had got over her momentary surprise, which was, no doubt, what made her hesitate. there was no conceivable reason, though they did not kiss each other, why they should not.
“and if i won’t?” she said.
“i shall think it unkind of you.{116}”
she came close to him. “oh, colin, i’m not unkind,” she said, and kissed him.
he stood with his hands on her shoulders, not letting her go, though making no attempt to kiss her again. “that was delicious of you,” he said.
suddenly and quite unexpectedly to herself, violet found her heart beating soft and fast, and she was glad of the darkness, for she knew that a heightened colour had sprung to her face. was colin, too, she wondered, affected in any such way?
his light laugh, the release of her shoulders from his cool hands, answered her.
“good lord! to think that perhaps raymond will be kissing you next,” he said. “how maddening!”
