colin was lying on the beach of the men’s bathing-place at capri after an hour’s swim. a great wave of heat had swept over europe, and now, though it was late in october, the conditions of summer still prevailed. it might have been june still, and he here with his father, quietly making the plans that had turned out so well. on this beach it was that he lay, pondering his reply to violet’s letter which told him she was engaged to raymond. he had thought out his reply here, that congratulatory reply, saying how delightful her news was, and as for feeling hurt.... that had been a thorn to violet, which had pricked and stung her, as she had confessed. she had confessed it to him between dusk and dawn on their marriage-night.
he knew all about it; that casual kiss in the dusk of the yew-hedge the night before he and his father left for italy had begun it; his indifference to her had made her ache, and his arrival back in england had made the ache intolerable. to be mistress at stanier had become worthless to her, and to reward her sense of its worthlessness, had come the news that she would not be that only....
colin stirred his sun-stained body to get a fresh bed of hot sand and pebbles for his back. he had absorbed the heat of those on which he had been lying, but a little kneading movement of his elbow brought him on to another baked patch. that was gloriously hot; it made him pant with pleasure, as he anticipated one more cool rush into the sea. he purred and thought of the lovely days that had passed, of the lovely day that was here, of the lovely days that awaited him. quite methodically, he began at the beginning.
violet and he had been married in the first week of{230} october, on the very day indeed that had been arranged for her marriage with raymond. there was a suave brutality about that; he had made raymond, under some slight hint of pressure, advocate it. raymond (under that same hint) had become marvellously agreeable; he had been almost sentimental and had urged violet to be married on that day. he himself would be best man, if colin would allow him, instead of being bridegroom. her happiness, it appeared, was of greater import to him than his own.
little conversations with colin in the smoking-room, before colin went up to say good-night to violet, were responsible for this scotch sentimentality. raymond had been quite like a noble character in a sloshy play. he had understood and entered into the situation; he had given up without bitterness; he had rejoiced at his brother’s happiness and had been best man. the happy pair had left that afternoon for italy.
the attitude which he had forced on raymond gave colin the most intense satisfaction. he had been made to appear to be affectionate and loving, high-minded and altruistic, and colin knew what wormwood that must be to him. it was tiresome enough, as he knew from his experience of the last fortnight, to be supposed to love when you only liked, but how infinitely more galling it must be to be supposed to love when you hated. but he did raymond justice; a mere hint at publicity for that paper which lay at his bankers together with his mother’s letters and that confirmatory line from uncle salvatore, produced wonderful results. raymond could be bridled now with a single silken thread.
colin’s thought turned over that leaf of the past, and pored over the present—this delightful, actual present. there was the sun baking his chest and legs, and the hot sand and pebbles warm to his back, while the cool, clear sea awaited him when the rapture of heat became no longer bearable. violet had not come down with him to-day. she had taken to the rather more sophisticated{231} bathing establishment at the marina, where more complete bathing-dresses were worn, and men did not dress and undress in the full eye of day. colin quite agreed with her that the marina was more suitable for her; this bay was really the men’s bathing-place and though women could come here if they chose, they were rather apt to be embarrassing and embarrassed. she would find the huts at the marina more satisfactory and still more satisfactory to him was to be rid of her for a few hours.
there was a stern, pitiless insistency about love which bored him. he could not be quite tranquil when, from moment to moment, he had to make some kind of response. a glance or a smile served the purpose, but when violet was there he had, unless he betrayed himself, always to be on the look out. this love was a foreign language to him, and he must attend, if he were to reply intelligently. he liked her, liked her quite immensely, but that which was a tireless instinct to her was to him a mental effort. it was no effort, on the other hand, to be with raymond, for there his instinct of hatred functioned flawlessly and automatically.
colin turned over that page of the present, and cast his eyes over the future. at the first glance all seemed prosperous there. his father had aged considerably during the last few months, and just before their marriage had had a rather alarming attack of vertigo, when, after a hot game of tennis, he had gone down with colin to the bathing-pool to swim himself cool. the boy had not been the least frightened; he had brought his father to land without difficulty, and on his own responsibility had telephoned for his father’s doctor to come down to stanier. the report had been quite reassuring, but a man who had left his sixtieth birthday behind him must not over-exert himself at tennis and then bathe. nature, the wise old nurse, protested.
this suggested eventualities for the future; no doubt his father would now be more prudent and enjoy a long ripe old age. colin quite acquiesced; his father had been{232} so consistently good to him that he scarcely felt any impatience about that. but what this morning occupied him with regard to the future was the idea, not of his father’s death, but of raymond’s. in this uncertain world accidents or illness might carry off even the strongest and sulkiest, and he himself would then be in a very odd position. supposing (as was natural) his father died first, raymond (on the strong case that could be built on the evidence of his mother’s letter to salvatore and the erasure in the consulate archives), would, no doubt, be incontinently “hoofed out” of his promised land, and violet be in possession, with him as husband to the owner. but if raymond died first, colin by his juggling would merely have robbed himself of the birthright which would be rightfully his. it had been a great stroke to provide at his father’s death for raymond’s penniless illegitimacy, and, by himself marrying violet, to submerge his own. not possibly could he have provided for the eventuality of raymond’s pre-deceasing his father as well, but now that he had married violet it was worth while brooding and meditating over the other. something might conceivably be done, if raymond died first, though he could not as yet fashion the manner of it.
the morning had sped by all too quickly, and by now the other bathers had gone and the beach was empty, and colin plunged once more into that beloved sea. the cool, brisk welcome of it encompassed him, its vigour seemed to penetrate his very marrow and brain with its incomparable refreshment, and he began to think of this problem with a magical lucidity....
colin regretfully left the water and put his clothes into the boat in which he had been rowed round from the marina, meaning to dress on the way there. young antonio, the son of giacomo, philip’s old boatman, had brought him round here, and was now asleep in a strip of shadow at the top of the beach, waiting till colin was ready to return. there he lay, with his shirt open at{233} the neck and a carnation perched behind his ear, lithe and relaxed like some splendid young faun. the boy’s mouth smiled as he slept.
was he dreaming, thought colin, of some amorous adventure proper to his age and beauty? his black hair grew low on his forehead, the black lashes swept his smooth, brown cheek; it seemed a pity to awake him, and for a minute or two colin studied his face. violet before now had remarked on his extraordinary resemblance, except in point of colouring, to colin, and he wondered if, through his noble viagi blood, they were related. he liked to think he resembled this merry nino; he would almost have been willing to give him his blueness of eye and golden hair, and take in exchange that glossy black, which caught the tints of the sky among its curls.
then nino stirred, stretched a lazy arm and found his hand resting on colin’s shoulder. at that he sprang up.
“ah, pardon, signor,” he said. “i slept. you have not been waiting?”
colin had picked up italian with great ease and quickness; it came naturally to his tongue.
“i’ve been watching you smiling as you slept, nino,” he said. “what have you been dreaming about?”
nino laughed. “and if i was not dreaming of the signorino himself,” he cried.
“what about me?” demanded colin.
“oh, just a pack of nonsense,” he said. “we were in the boat, and it moved of itself without my rowing, and together we sat in the stern, and i was telling you the stories of the island. you have heard the most of them, i think, by now.... are you not going to dress?”
“i’ll dress in the boat,” said colin. “but there’s that story of tiberio which you wouldn’t tell me when the signora was with us.”
“indeed a story of tiberio is not fit for the signora. a fat, bald old man was tiberio; and as ugly as a german. seven palaces he had on capri; there was one{234} here, and so shameful were the things done in it that, so the priests say, the sea rose and swallowed it. but i do not know that the priests are right. they say that, do you think, signor, to frighten us from the wickedness of tiberio? and one day tiberio saw—scusi, signor....”
how attractive was the pagan gaiety of these young islanders! they believed in sunshine and wine and amusement, and a very good creed it was. they took all things lightly, except the scirocco. love was a pleasant pastime, an affair of eager eyes and a kiss and a smile at parting, for had he not seen nino himself in a corner of the piazza yesterday making signals to his girl (or one of them), and then strolling off in the warm dark? they were quite without any moral sense, but it was ludicrous to call that wicked. pleasure sanctified all they did; they gave it and took it, and slept it off, and sought it again. how different from the bleak and solemn northerners!
imagine, mused colin, as this really unspeakable history of tiberio gaily unfolded itself, encouraging a gardener’s boy to regale you with bawdy tales. how he would snigger over the indecency, thus making it indecent; how heavy and dreary it would all be! but here was nino with his dancing eyes and his laughing mouth and his “scusi, signor,” and all was well. these fellows had charm and breeding for their birthright, and, somehow, minds which vice did not sully.
the end of the story was rapidly told, with gestures to help out the meanings of recondite words, for they were approaching the marina, and colin’s signora was waiting for him there, as nino had already seen with a backward glance.... an amazing moral was tacked on the conclusion of those dreadful doings of tiberio, for when tiberio died, god permitted the devil to torture him from morning to night as the anniversary of that orgy came round.
“but that’s not likely, nino,” said colin, deeply interested. “if tiberio were so wicked, the devil would not{235} want to torture him. he would be the devil’s dear friend.”
nino took both oars in one hand for a second and crossed himself.
“what do you do that for, nino?” asked colin.
“it is safer,” said nino. “who knows where the devil is?”
colin made an admirably apposite remark: a thing that neapolitans said, so mr. cecil had told him, when they found themselves talking about the devil, and nino was duly appreciative.
“that is good!” said he. “that muddles him up.... yes, signor, it is as you say. if tiberio were very wicked, he and the devil would be very good friends. do you believe in the devil, signor, in england?”
“we’re not quite sure. and in capri, nino?”
“not when the sky is blue, like ... like the signor’s eyes,” said nino. “but when there is scirocco, we are not so certain.”
the prow of the boat hissed and was quenched against the sandy beach. there, under the awning of the stabilimento, was violet, rather fussed at the leisurely progress of colin’s boat, for in two minutes more the funicular would start, and if they missed that there was the dusty drive up to the town.
“quick, darling, quick,” she called out. “we have only a couple of minutes.”
“oh, don’t fuss,” said he. “run on, if you want to. nino and i are talking folk-lore.”
he felt in his pockets and spoke in italian again.
“nino, i haven’t got a single penny,” he said, “to pay you for your boat. if you are in the town to-night, come to the villa and i will pay you. if not, to-morrow. i shall want your boat again at ten.”
“sicuro!” said the boy. “buon appetit.”
he stepped into the water and held out his bare arm like a rail for colin to lean on as he jumped on to the beach.{236}
“thanks,” he said. “same to you, nino. villa stanier; you know.”
violet was waiting at the edge of the beach. the midday steamer had just come in from naples, and now there was no need to hurry, for the funicular would certainly wait for the passengers who were landing in small boats at the quay.
“nice bathe, darling?” she said as colin joined her.
colin found himself mildly irritated by her always saying “darling.” she could not speak to him without that adjunct, which might surely be taken for granted.
“yes, darling,” he said. “lovely bathe, darling. and you, darling?”
there was certainly an obtuseness about violet which had not been hers in the old days. she seemed to perceive no impression of banter, however good-natured, in this repetition. instead, that slight flush, which colin now knew so well, spread over her face.
“yes, darling, the water was lovely,” she said. “like warm silk.”
“ugh!” said colin. “fancy swimming about in silk. what horrible ideas you have.”
“don’t be so literal,” said she. “just a silky feeling. look at these boat-loads of people. aren’t they queer? that little round red one, like a tomato, just getting out.”
colin followed her glance; there was no doubt whom she meant, for the description was exactly apt. but even as he grinned at the vividness of her vegetable simile, a sense of recognition twanged at his memory. the past, which he had thought over this morning, was sharply recalled, and somehow, somehow, the future entered into it.
“why, that’s mr. cecil,” he said, “the consul at naples. you must know him, vi.”
mr. cecil greeted colin with welcome and deference. consular business had brought him to capri; he had no idea that mr. stanier was here. was lord yardley here also?
“no, but somebody much more important,” laughed{237} colin. “my wife—we’re on our honeymoon. violet, this is mr. cecil, who was so kind to me when i was here last. mr. cecil’s our consul at naples.”
it was natural that mr. cecil should have his lunch with them, though he pleaded shortness of time. he was going back by the afternoon boat.
“but you clearly must have lunch somewhere,” said colin, “and we’ll give you a very bad one probably, but a quick one if you are in a hurry. ah, that’s delightful of you.”
colin was hugely cordial, exerting the utmost of his charm. he even curtailed his siesta in order to walk down with his visitor to the consular office in the town, and gratefully promised, on behalf of violet and himself, to spend the night at his house on their way back to england. he wanted that; he had made up his mind to get that invitation, for it formed part of the plan which had come to him in his final swim that morning, before he got into nino’s boat and heard that horrible scandal concerning tiberio. he wanted violet to pass the night at the consulate. there might arise emergencies which would render that convenient.
it was like her to have waited for his return instead of going to her room for the afternoon sleep, and there she was under the pergola where they had lunched at the far end of the garden. she was sitting with her back to the garden-door and did not see him enter, and, quick as a lizard and as silent-footed, colin tip-toed into the house. if she saw him, she would discuss mr. cecil, she would linger in the garden, and, as likely as not, linger in his room, and he wanted his nap. if she chose to sit out under the pergola, it was no business of his; there was no proof after all that she was waiting for his return. another day he would take a sandwich down to the bathing place, and, like nino, have his siesta in some strip of shade down there, where no one would disturb him or wait for him or want to talk with him. violet was a{238} dear; it was hardly possible to have too much of her, but just now and then it was nice to have no one watching you and loving you.
a couple of hours later he strolled, still coatless, into the great cool sitting-room; she was already there, waiting to make tea for him.
“i never heard you come in, darling,” she said. “i was waiting for your return in the pergola, and then eventually i came in and peeped into your room, and there you were fast asleep.”
“funny i shouldn’t have seen you,” said colin. “i just went down with mr. cecil to the piazza, and was back in less than half-an-hour. i adore mr. cecil, he enjoys himself so much, and drinks such a lot of wine. a gay dog!”
“oh, i thought he was a dreadful little man,” said violet.
“you’re too refined,” said colin. “you don’t like little red bounders. by the way, i’ve solemnly promised him that you and i will spend the night at his house in naples on our way home.”
“darling, how could you?” asked violet.
“to please him. he thinks you’re marvellous, by the way. don’t elope with him, vi. besides it’s a good thing to be friends with a consul. he reserves carriages and oils the wheels of travel.”
“colin, you’re full of surprises,” said she. “i should have thought mr. cecil was the very type of man you would have found intolerable.”
colin laughed. “you don’t allow for my viagi blood,” he said. “the bounding viagi blood. shouldn’t i love to see you and uncle salvatore together! now what shall we do? let’s go for an enormous walk till dinner-time.”
she came behind him and stroked the short hair at the back of his neck.
“darling, would you mind if i didn’t come all the way?” she asked. “i’m rather tired; i had a long swim{239} this morning. i’ll start with you, and make myself comfortable and wait for you to come back.”
“don’t come at all, vi, if you’re tired,” he said. “i can’t have you tired. and then if you sit down and wait for me, i shall feel you’re waiting, and hurry in consequence. besides, i shall have to come back the same way.”
“then i’ll certainly come with you all the way,” said she. “it’s more laziness with me than tiredness.”
colin moved his head out of reach of the caressing fingers as if by accident.
“you tickle me,” he said. “and if you’re obstinate, i shan’t go for a walk at all, and i shall get fat like mr. cecil. stop at home and be lazy for once, vi.”
colin, as usual, had his own way, and managed in his inimitable manner to convey the impression that he was very unselfish in foregoing her companionship. he established her with a book and a long chair, and, greatly to his own content, went off alone up the steep hillside of monte solaro. it was but a parody of a path that lay through the dense bush of aspen and arbutus that clothed the slopes, and he would have had to keep holding the stiff elastic shoots back for violet to pass, to have tarried and dawdled for her less vigorous ascent, had she come with him. but now, having only his own pace to suit, he soon emerged above this belt of woodland that buzzed with flies in a hot, stagnant air, and came to the open uplands that stretched to the summit.
the september rains and the thick dews of october had refreshed the drought of the summer, and, as if spring were here already, the dried and yellow grasses, tall and seeding, stood grounded in a new velvet of young growth, and tawny autumn lilies reared their powdered stamens laden with pollen. still upwards he passed, and the air was cooler, and a wind spiced with long travel over the sea, blew lightly but steadily from the north-west. presently he had reached the top; all the island lay at his feet, and the peaks of the nearer mainland were below him, too, floating, promontory after promontory, on the molten{240} rim of the sea. far away to the west, like the shadow of a cloud, he could just descry the coast of corsica; all the world and the glory of the sea lay at his feet, and how he lusted for it! what worship and fealty was he not ready to give for the possession and enjoyment of it?
there was no crime, thought colin, that he would not commit if by that the flame of life burned brighter; he would do a child to death or rob a sacristy of its holy vessels, or emulate the deeds of tiberius to feed that flame ... and he laughed to himself thinking of the amazing history told by nino with the black eyes and laughing mouth. surely tiberius must have made an alliance and a love-match with evil itself, such gusto did he put into his misdeeds. in this connection the thought of the family legend occurred to him. dead as the story was, belonging to the mists of medi?valism, you could not be a stanier without some feeling of proprietorship in it.
naturally, it was up to anybody to make a bargain for his soul with the devil if he believed in the existence of such things as devils or souls, and certainly for generations, when sons of his house came of age, they had either abjured their original benefactor or made alliance with him. of course, they had really made their choice already, but it was quaint and picturesque to ratify it like that.... but for generations now that pleasant piece of ritual had dropped into misuse: it would be rather jolly, mused colin, when he came of age next march, to renew it.
the edges of his thoughts lost their sharpness, even as the far-off capes and headlands below melted into the blue field of sea and sky, and as he lay in the little sheltered hollow which he had found at the very summit of the peak, they merged into a blurred panorama of sensation. his life hitherto, with its schemings and acquirings, became of one plane with the future and all that he meant the future to bring him; he saw it as a whole, and found it exquisitely good. soon now he must return to the love that awaited him in the villa, and before many days now he must go back to england; a night at the consulate{241} first with violet, and then just a waiting on events till his father’s death or raymond’s.... his eyelids dropped, the wind rustled drowsily in his ears....
colin sat up with a start; he had not been conscious of having gone to sleep, but now, wide-awake again, it certainly seemed as if his brain recorded other impressions than those of this empty eminence. had there been some one standing by him, or was it only the black shadow of that solitary pine which his drowsiness had construed into the figure of a man? and had there been talking going on, or was it only the whisper of the wind in the dried grasses which sounded in his ears? in any case, it was time to go, for the sun had declined westwards, and, losing the flames and rays of its heat, was already become but a glowing molten ball close above the sea. how strangely the various states of consciousness melted into each other, though the sense of identity persisted. whatever happened that remained....
at the corner of the garden, perched on the wall which ran alongside the steep footpath up from the town, was a little paved platform, where they often sat after dinner. there had been a letter for colin from his father which had arrived during his walk, and now, holding it close to his eyes to catch the last of the swiftly-fading light, he communicated pieces of its contents to violet.
“raymond’s gone back to cambridge,” he said. “father seems reconciled to his absence. that’s funny now; there’s my elder brother an undergraduate and me a married man and not of age yet. it was touch and go whether it wasn’t the other way about, vi.”
“oh, don’t, colin!” said she. “i can’t bear to think of it.”
“but you did think of it. wasn’t that a nice surprise for you when i told you that to marry me didn’t mean giving up stanier? that made all the difference.”
she came close to him. “colin, don’t be such a brute,” she said. “there’s just one thing you mustn’t jest about{242} and that’s my love for you. i wish almost i wasn’t going to get stanier in order to show you. don’t jest about it.”
“i won’t then. serious matter! but don’t you jest about getting stanier. vi, if you would move your head an inch i should get more light.”
“what else does he say?” she asked.
colin ran his eyes down the page. “lots of affection,” he said. “he wants us back. uncle ronald’s down at stanier, and aunt hester. then some more affection. oh, he has had another little attack of giddiness, nothing to worry about. so we won’t worry. and aunt hester’s going off a bit, apparently, getting to repeat herself, father says. and then some more affection.”
colin lit a match for his cigarette, disclosing a merry face that swam before violet’s eyes after the darkness had closed on it again.
“that’s so like old people,” he said. “aunt hester wrote to me the other day saying she was quite shocked to see how slowly my father walked. she’s quite fond of him, but somehow it gives old people a little secret satisfaction to look for signs of breaking up in each other.”
“colin, you’ve got a cruel eye sometimes,” said violet.
“not in the least; only a clear one. and then there’s father saying that aunt hester is beginning to repeat herself, and in the same dip of the pen he repeats himself for the third time, sending us his love.”
violet gave a quick little sigh. “at the risk of repeating myself, you really are cruel,” she said. “when you love, you have to say it again and again. you might as well say that if you’re hungry you mustn’t ask for something to eat, because you ate something yesterday.... it’s a permanent need of life. i hope you don’t think i’m breaking up because i have told you more than once that i rather like you.”
“poor vi! sadly changed!” said colin, teasing her.
“i have changed,” she said, “but not sadly. we’re both changed, you know, colin. a year ago we no more{243} thought of falling in love with each other than of killing each other. but i don’t call the change sad.”
colin felt extremely amiable this evening, pleasantly fatigued by his walk, and pleasantly exhilarated by his dinner, but he had to stir up his brains to find a suitable reply. there was the unfair part of it; violet talked on this topic without effort; indeed, it was an effort for her not to, whereas he had to think....
“but you call it serious,” he said. “i mustn’t laugh about it, and i mustn’t weep. what am i to do?”
“nothing, darling. i want you just to be.”
he determined not to let his amiability be ruffled.
“i certainly intend to ‘be’ as long as ever i can,” he said. “i love being. it’s wonderfully agreeable to be. and i would much sooner be here than at cambridge with raymond.”
“ah, poor raymond!” said violet.
that exasperated colin; to pity or to like raymond appeared to him a sin against hate.
“my dear, how can you talk such nonsense?” he said. “that’s pure sentimentality, vi, born of the dark and the stars. you don’t really pity raymond any more than i do, and i’m sure i don’t. i hate him; i always have, and i don’t pretend otherwise. why, just now you were telling me not to mention him, and two minutes afterwards you are saying, ‘poor raymond.’”
“you were reminding me of what might have happened,” she said. “it was that i could not bear to think of. but i can be sorry for raymond. after all, he took it very well when uncle philip told him what we were going to do. i believe he wanted me to be happy in spite of himself.”
this was too much for colin; the temptation to stop violet indulging in any further sympathy with raymond was irresistible. she should know about raymond, and hate him as he himself did. he had promised raymond not to tell his father of a certain morning in the old park, but he had never promised not to tell violet. why{244} he had not already done so he hardly knew; perhaps he was keeping it for some specially suitable occasion, such as the present moment.
“he wanted you to be happy, did he?” he exclaimed. “do you really think that? if so, you won’t think it much longer. now, do you remember the morning when there was an escaped lunatic in the park?”
“yes,” said she.
“raymond went out shooting pigeons, and i played golf. my bicycle punctured, and i walked home through the old park. there i found raymond crouching behind the wall meaning to shoot me as i came round that sharp corner of the road. i came close up behind him while he watched for me by the rhododendrons, and, oh lord! we had a scene! absolutely scrumptious! there was i covering him with my revolver, which, all the time, hadn’t got a cartridge in it, and i made him confess what he was up to....”
“stop, colin; it’s not true!” cried she.
“it is true. he confessed it, and wrote it all down, and father and i witnessed it; and he signed it, and it’s at my bank now. perhaps he thought you would be happier with him than me, and so from unselfish notions he had better fire a barrel of number five full in my face. all for your sake, violet! my word, what unutterable bunkum!”
his hate had submerged him now; that final bitter ejaculation showed it clearly enough, and it pierced violet like some metallic stab. he had no vestige of consideration for her, no faintest appreciation of the horror of his stinging narrative, which pealed out with some hellish sort of gaiety. she could not speak; she could only crouch and shudder.
colin got up, scintillating with satisfaction. “i promised him not to tell father,” he said, “which was an act of great clemency. perhaps it will be too great some day and i shall. and i didn’t distinctly mean to tell you,{245} but you really forced me to when your heart began bleeding for that swine, and saying he wanted to make you happy. come, vi, buck up! raymond didn’t get me. it was clever of him, by the way, to see his opportunity when the looney was loose. i rather respected that. let’s go indoors and have our piquet.”
she got up in silence, just pressed his arm, and went up the gravelled path towards the house. colin was about to follow when, looking over the garden-wall, he saw nino’s figure coming up the path, and remembered he had told him that, if he were in the town, he might come up to the villa, and receive the liras he was owed for his boat this morning.
instantly the picture of sitting with nino out here in the dusk, with a bottle of wine between them, presented itself. gay and garrulous would nino be, that bright-eyed, laughing faun, more faun-like than ever at night, with tiberian or more modern tales and wonderful gesticulations. that would be a welcome relaxation after this tragic, irritating talk with violet; he was much more attuned to nino’s philosophy. indoors there would be a game of piquet with those foolish pasteboard counterfeits of kings and queens and knaves, and five liras as the result of all that dealing and meditation and exchange of cards. that knave nino would be far more amusing.... and even piquet was not the worst of the tedium he would find indoors. there was violet, clearly very much upset by his tale; she would be full of yearnings and squeezings and emotional spasms. to-morrow she would be more herself again, and would bring a lighter touch to life than she would be disposed to give it to-night. he really could not spend the evening with violet if it could possibly be avoided.
he called in a low voice to nino:
“signor!” said nino, with gay, upturned face.
“wait ten minutes, nino,” he whispered. “if i don’t come out again, you must go. i shall want your boat to{246}-morrow morning. but wait ten minutes, and then, perhaps, i shall be able to give you a glass of wine and hear more stories, if you have half an hour to spare.”
“si, signor,” whispered nino, pleased at this mystification and intrigue.
colin followed quickly after violet. she was in the big studio, where a cardtable was laid, walking up and down still horrified and agitated. she placed her hands on colin’s shoulders and dropped her head there. it required all his self-control not to jerk himself free.
“oh, colin!” she said. “the horror of it. how can i ever speak to raymond again? i wish you hadn’t told me.”
there was blame in this, but he waived his resentment at that for the present.
“i wish i hadn’t indeed, darling,” he said, “if it’s disturbed you so much, and i’m afraid it has. go to bed now; you look awfully tired; we won’t have our piquet to-night. we shall neither of us attend.”
“it’s all so terrible,” she said. “supposing your bicycle hadn’t punctured?”
he laughed. “i remember i was annoyed when it happened, but it was a blessing after all,” he said. “the point that concerns us is that it did, and another point is that you’re not to sit up any longer.”
“but you’d like a game,” she said. “what will you do with yourself?”
colin knew his power very well. he turned, drawing one of her hands that rested on his shoulder round his neck.
“the first thing i shall do with myself is to take you to your room,” he said, “and say good-night to you. the second is to sit up for another half-hour and think about you. the third to look in on tiptoe and see that you’re asleep. the fourth, which i hope won’t happen, is to be very cross with you if you’re not. now, i’m not going to argue, darling.”
the ten minutes were passing, and without another{247} word he marched her to her room, she leaning on him with that soft, feminine, clinging touch, and closed her venetian shutters for her, leaving the windows wide.
“now promise me you’ll go to sleep,” he said. “put it all out of your mind. raymond’s at cambridge. you’ve got not to think about him; i don’t. good-night, vi!”
at the door he paused a moment, wondering if she had heard him speak to nino over the wall. in case she had, it were better to conceal nothing.
“i’m just going downstairs to give nino what i owe him for his boat this morning,” he said. “i told him to come up for it. i shall just peep in on you, vi, when i go to bed. if you aren’t asleep, i shall be vexed. good-night, darling!”
colin went downstairs again and opened the garden door into the road. there was nino sitting on the step outside. he beckoned him in and shut the door behind him.
“come and have a glass of wine, nino,” he said. “come quietly, the signora has gone to bed.”
he led the way into the dining-room, and brought out a bottle of wine.
“there, sit down,” he said softly. “cigarettes? wine? now for another of your histories only fit for boys to hear, not women. so tiberius had supper with a gilded girl to wait on him, and a gilded boy to give him wine. and what then?”
the atrocious tale shocked nobody; this bright-eyed nino was just a faun with the candour of the woodland and the southern night for conscience. in face and limb and speech he was human, but not of the humanity which wrestles with evil and distrusts joy. and just as colin knew himself to be, except in his northern colouring, another nino in bodily form, so, in a resemblance more remarkable yet, he recognised his spiritual kinship with this incandescent young pagan. violet, he thought, had once been like that, but this love had come which in some way{248} had altered her, giving her a mysterious fatiguing depth, a dim, tiresome profundity into which she seemed to want to drag him too. all her charm, her beauty, were hers still, but they had got tinged and stained with this tedious gravity. she had lost the adorable soullessness, which knew no instinct beyond its own desire, and on which no frost of chill morality had ever fallen....
colin had been hospitable towards nino’s glass; the boy was becoming faun and bacchant in one; he ought to have had a wreath of vine-leaves in his hair. it amused colin to see how gracefully intoxication gained on him; there would be no sort of vin triste about nino, only a livelier gesticulation to help out the difficulties of pronunciation.
“and then the melancholy seized tiberius,” said nino with a great hiccup, “for all that he had done, and it must be a foolish fellow, signor, who is melancholy for what he has done. i would be more likely to get the melancholy when i was old for the things i might have done and had not. and the signor is like me, i think. ah, thank you, no more wine. i am already half tipsy. but it is very good wine.”
“talk yourself sober, then, nino,” said colin, filling his glass.
“what, then, shall i tell you? all capri is in love with the signora and you, some with one and some with the other. it was thought at first that you must be brother and sister, so like you are, and both golden. you were too young, they thought, to be married; it was playtime still with you.”
“are you going to marry, nino?” asked colin.
“there is time yet. presently perhaps. i do not reap in spring.”
there spoke the faun, the woodland, the drinker of sweet beverages, who drank with filled cup till the drink was done, and wiped his mouth and smiled and was off again. by a luxury in contrast, colin envisaged violet lying cool and white in the room above, sleeping, per{249}haps, already in answer to the suggestive influence of his wish, while he below breathed so much more freely in this atmosphere of fauns, where nothing was wicked and nothing was holy, and love was not an affair of swimming eyes and solemn mouth. love was a laugh.... nino, the handsome boy, no longer existed for him in any personal manner. nino was just part of the environment, a product and piece of the joyous paganism with which the night was thick. the pale-blue flower of the plumbago that clothed the southern wall of the house nodded in the open window-frame; the stir of the wind whispered; the star-light, with a moon lately risen, all strove to be realised, and, nino seemed some kind of bilingual interpreter of them, no more than that, who, being boy, spoke with human voice, and, being faun, spoke the language of nature, cruel and kindly nature, who loved joy and was utterly indifferent to sorrow. she went on her course with largesse for lovers and bankruptcy for the bilious and the puritan. she turned her face away from pain, and, with a thumb reversed, condemned it. she had no use for suffering or for the ugly. the bright-eyed and the joyful were her ministers, on whatever errand they came. thought and tenderness and any aspiration after the spiritual were her foes, for in such ascetic fashion of living there was sorrow, there was fatigue and striving.
colin was at home here. like a fish put back into water, after a panting excursion into a rarefied air, his gills expanded again, and drank in the tide.
“and have you chosen your girl yet, nino?” he asked.
“dio! no. i am but twenty. presently i will look about and find who is fat and has a good dowry. there is seraphina costi; she has an elder brother, but the inheritance will be hers. he passes for the son of costi, but we all know he is no son of costi. it was like this, signor colin....”
“si, signor nino,” said colin.
“scusi! but to me you are signor colin. no, with{250} loving thanks, no more wine. my father says it is a waste to drink good wine when one is drunk. my father was boatman to your father before you and i were born. that is strange to think on; how the old oaks flourish and bear leaf still. two stepmothers already have i had, and there may be a third yet. have you stepmothers, signor? i would put all old women out of the way, and all old men. the world is for the young. sometimes i think to myself, would it not be very easy to put my hands round my father’s neck, and squeeze and squeeze again, and wait till he was still, and then leave him thus and go to bed. they would find him there in the morning; perhaps i should be the first to find him, and it would be said that he had died in his chair, all cool and comfortable.”
colin was conscious of some rapturous surprise at himself in his appreciation of the evening as it was, compared with the evening as it might have been. normally, he would have played a couple of games of piquet with violet, and thereafter have drowsily rejoined her. there would have been whispers of love and then sleep, all that was already routine to him. instead, he, through the medium of this wonderful faun, was finding himself, and that was so much better than finding violet. nino, with those swift gesticulations, was shewing him not nino, but himself. but by now the boy was getting extremely drunk—the vision was clouding over. there was time for just another question or two.
“but aren’t you afraid of satana?” asked colin, “if you kill your father?”
“why should i be afraid? satana is a good friend to me and i to him. why should we fall out, he and i?”
those full eyelids drooped, and as, on this morning, the lashes swept the brown cheek.
“nino, you must go to bed,” said colin.
“si, signor! but i doubt if i could carry myself down to the marina to-night. i have the legs of the old woman, as i shall know when i come to stand up. may i sleep myself sober in your garden beside the cistern? it is{251} the signor’s fault—scusi—that i am thus; my fault for taking, but his for giving.”
colin rapidly pondered this.... should violet be wakeful and open her venetian blinds, she would surely see him there. he pointed to the sofa against the wall.
“lie down there, nino,” he said, “and i will bring you a rug. you will be more comfortable than on the gravel. you must be off before dawn. just wait a minute.”
colin kicked off his shoes, so as not to disturb violet, ran upstairs and peeped into her room. there was silence and stillness there, and going into his dressing-room next door, he picked up a folded rug off his bed, and went downstairs with it. nino was bowed over the table, helpless and inert, and colin choked down a spasm of laughter within him.
“nino, wake up for one minute,” he said. “put your arm round my neck and let me lay you down. oh, do as i tell you, nino!”
nino leaned his whole weight on colin’s encircled neck, and was laid down, on the sofa. colin loosed the smart tie with which he had adorned himself for this visit to the villa, and unbuckled his leather belt, and taking out a ten lira note from his purse, he thrust it into nino’s breast-pocket.
“i’ve put ten liras in your pocket, nino; don’t forget.”
“but that is too much, signor,” murmured nino with a guarding hand on his pocket.
“not for such an agreeable evening. good-night; i shall want you and your boat again to-morrow morning.”
“sicuro! felice notte, signor.”
colin went up to bed with no desire for sleep, for his blood tingled and bubbled in his veins. he wished now, amusing though it had been, that he had not made nino tipsy so soon, for he longed to continue holding up the mirror to himself. in that reflecting surface he could see much that he had only suspected in himself, and this nino unwaveringly confirmed. never, till nino had so{252} gaily asserted that he did not fear the devil, for the devil was his very good friend, had colin so definitely realised that, whatever the truth about his elizabethan ancestor might be, he had accepted the legend as his own experience.
twice before had some inkling of this come into his mind, once when lying here and listening to his father’s footfall on the terrace below he had realised that hate was as infinite as love, and once again this afternoon, when betwixt sleeping and waking on the top of monte solaro, he had received the impression of taking part in some dream-like colloquy. but on both these occasions he had but dealt in abstractions and imaginings, to-night nino had shown him himself in the concrete. ah, how good it was to be so well looked after, to have this superb youthful vitality, this rage for enjoyment; above all, never to be worried and perplexed by any conflict of motives; never to feel the faintest striving towards a catalogue of tedious aspirations. to take and never to give, to warm your hands at the glowing fires of hate and stoke those fires with the dry rubbish called love.... it was worth any price to secure immunity from these aches and pains of consciousness.
colin announced to violet his intention of taking his lunch down to the bathing-place next morning, and having his siesta there, and he saw with impatient amusement that she instantly put out of sight the fact that she would spend a solitary day and thought only of him.
“that will be lovely for you,” she said. “you’ll get a long enough bathe for once, and not have to break it off to get back to lunch.”
“and what will you do?” he asked.
“think of you enjoying yourself,” said she.
colin marvelled in silence. that was a good instance of the change in violet; in the old days she would at the most have acquiesced, if argument were useless. now the only argument that seemed to have any weight with{253} her was his enjoyment. anyhow they were at one about that.
colin spent a most satisfactory day. there was nino waiting for him at the marina rather heavy-eyed, but looking precisely as a bacchant should after a characteristic night.
“you were wonderfully drunk last night, nino,” said colin, as they pushed off over the waveless bay.
nino grinned. “molto, molto!” he said cheerfully, “but i slept well, and i shall bathe, and then it will be as if i had drunk no more than a glass of water.”
“and will you confess that to the priest?” asked colin.
“it may have gone from my mind,” said nino. “god only remembers everything. and indeed i do not know much about last night, but that i enjoyed myself.”
“that’s all that is worth remembering about anything,” remarked colin.
a long bathe followed, and a bask on the beach and again a bathe. then came lunch, lying in a strip of shadow and stories from nino, and sleep, and it was not till late in the afternoon that colin found himself reluctantly loitering back to the villa where violet awaited him. he beguiled himself with wondering what he would do if she were not there; if, as in some fairy-tale, she had disappeared leaving no trace behind. but hardly had he come within sight of the white garden wall when he saw her out on the balcony of his room. she waved at him, as if she had gone there to catch the first sight of him, and then disappeared. next moment she was at the garden-gate, walking down to meet him. was there news, perhaps from england. raymond? his father?
“what is it?” he asked, as he came within speaking distance. “nothing wrong?” (“nothing right?” would have expressed his thought more accurately.)
“nothing,” said she, “i only came to meet you. nice day?”
“delicious. long bathe, good lunch, long sleep. stories from nino.{254}”
colin hesitated a moment. he was rather curious to see what violet would think of last night.
“nino’s an amusing youth,” he said. “he came up here as i told you, for the money i owed him, and so i gave him a glass of wine, two in fact. he told me the most horrible tales about tiberius and others, and then got frightfully drunk. he simply couldn’t walk, and slept on the sofa in the dining-room.”
“oh, colin, how disgusting!” said she. “i hope you’ve said you don’t want his boat any more.”
“i’ve said nothing of the kind. i want it every day.”
violet had nothing to say to this, and colin felt his irritation at her rising.
“well, what is it?” he said. “why shouldn’t nino get drunk?”
“but you shouldn’t have let him, colin,” said she. “it’s coarse.”
“but i come of a low family,” said he. “viagi one side and stanier on the other. how many generations of staniers have got drunk most nights of their lives?”
violet stopped at the gate. “what would you think of me, colin, if i took that little girl who helps in the kitchen and made her drunk?” she asked.
“i should think you were a very odd young woman,” said colin. “but i should be all for your doing what you wanted to.”
“whatever it is?”
“don’t you think so? most people don’t want to do anything at all; it’s certainly better to do anything than nothing. you may make maria drunk as often as you please provided you assure me that you really like it.”
“i infer that you liked making nino drunk.”
colin clapped his hands. “bravo!” he said. “you’ve guessed right. i wanted to find out when nino was most himself, tipsy or sober, and now i know that it is sober. i shan’t make him drunk again. i longed to see pure faunishness, but nino sober is faunier than nino drunk.”
“faunishness?” asked she.{255}
“yes, joyful, immoral, wicked, lovely nature. without a rag to cover, not its shame, but its glory. nino is naked sober. he was too heavenly last night, before—er—the coarseness. he thought of killing his father because he keeps giving him stepmothers, and is generally rather in the way. and when i asked him if he weren’t afraid of the devil, he said: ‘why should i be? the devil is a very good friend to me?’ wasn’t that queer? just as if he were a stanier. i felt as if nino were my brother; though, of course, he could never supplant raymond in my heart. but then raymond’s my twin: that is why we are so wrapped up in each other.”
violet felt as if some light-winged creature was settling on her now here, now there, and stinging her. just so did colin make her wince.
“and as for the wickedness—or coarseness, was it not?—of making any one drunk,” he added, “i don’t agree with you. if people are most really themselves when they are rather tipsy, they should be rather tipsy as often as possible. when is uncle ronald at his best? why when his dear nephew has been sitting by him after dinner, and filling up his glass for him. let’s have tea.... oh, dear, i can’t do right. i did wrong to tell you about raymond yesterday, and i did wrong to tell you about nino to-day. i shall lead a double life, darling, and tell you nothing.”
dimly, as he spoke, violet was aware of some reverberation of dismay that his words and his manner stirred in her. was colin really like that? were those light words just gibes and jokes—not very pleasant ones—or were they authentic glimpses of himself? it seemed that her very faith was at stake; at all costs she must refuse to acknowledge so unthinkable a possibility.... that could not be colin; he was just teasing her. she must reply with the same outrageousness.
“darling, lead more than a double life,” she said. “such lots of people do that. lead three or four. i’ll do the same. we’ll have as many lives as a cat between{256} us.... now tell me some of nino’s stories, or i shall be afraid that they weren’t what mother might call quite nice.”
“i don’t think for a moment she would call them quite nice,” said he.
the month of indian summer, with warm days and windless nights, passed by in golden procession, but now with the deepening of autumn the ponente from the west, veering sometimes to a chillier quarter sucked the basking out of the bathing, and the evenings grew long with the passage into november. the sunshine lost its force, rain was scribbled across it, the grey sea-clouds expunged it, the wind roared in it. it was like passing out of daylight into some dank and dripping tunnel, where windows are closed and voices silent, and the magic of the day is quenched. more tunnel-like even was a certain darkness that fell between the two yet on their honeymoon, and in that darkness they grew apart like strangers; they were just passengers who chanced to be together in the same compartment.
to violet that darkness consisted of her own ignorance, or so she felt it, of what colin really was, and in proportion as she began to guess at him, it grew of more nightmare-like impenetrability. he had his moods of entrancing charm, of eager affection, but now these seemed more like some will-o’-the-wisp dancing above a marsh, than a flame that while it consumed, yet fed her and warmed her. his light was not meant for her, it only happened to fall on her; she was in the circle of its brightness.
she could not avoid pursuing the thought and seeing where it led her. she could see no change in him, she perceived that he had always been like this, and that it was her own light, so to speak, the illumination of her love which had revealed him to her.
she began to question who or what it was that shed that charm and evoked that enchantment, and shuddered at her own conjecture. hints as to that came from other{257} quarters: there was his complete indifference as to his father’s health; true, lord yardley had told him not to worry, for there was no cause for that, but how could the son of so devoted a father be so immune to any sort of anxiety? not less significant was his attitude towards raymond, that, namely, of contemptuous hate. he despised raymond (that was clear) for his failure to kill him, he hated him, not for having made his attempt so much as for being raymond.
and there was a puzzle for violet. raymond, from what colin had told her, could now never stand in his way; and at lord yardley’s death he would simply cease to exist as an obstacle to all that colin desired. but colin still hated; it was just the fact of raymond, not the fact of raymond having planned to kill him. and there, indeed, was a true flame burning. colin’s feeling about raymond had an authentic heat of its own. hate, in fact, was real to him in a way that love was not.
there was yet one more puzzle. colin was determined to spend the night at the house of the british consul in naples. not once or twice only, but constantly, he alluded to this. if he wanted it, violet knew that he would get it, and for herself it made no great matter. she considered mr. cecil a “little red bounder,” as colin had phrased it, and could not understand his insistence on the point. he got impatient now when, he having alluded to their night in naples, she asked why he wanted it, and his answer, the same as ever, that it would please mr. cecil, who was a useful little red bounder, carried no conviction. there was something behind and she could not conceive what it was.
the day of their departure was still uncertain, when a second morning of driving rain caused colin to come down to breakfast with his mind made up.
“it’s quite intolerable,” he said. “capri without the heat and sun is like a pantomime without the fairies. what a cursed place; it only exists in the summer. let’s go to-day, vi. we’ll catch the midday boat.{258}”
“but it goes in two hours,” said she.
“the sooner the better.”
“but, darling....” she said.
“oh, lord, throw your things into your boxes, and sit on them, darling!” said colin. “if they’re spoiled you shall have new ones. but i can’t endure this island any more. we ought to have left before the weather broke, instead of stopping on.”
“but i really don’t think i can be ready,” she said. “besides, you wanted to stay the night with mr. cecil. you can’t pounce on him.”
“as a matter of fact, i’ve just sent giuseppe down to the telephone office to say that we shall arrive to-night,” said colin.
violet felt a justifiable rebellion at this; she choked it down with a not very convincing lightness.
“but, darling, you’re being too autocratic,” she said. “how would it be if you went and i caught you up to-morrow? then you could have your adorable mr. cecil all to yourself.”
colin turned on her with a blaze of white fury in his eyes. of that she caught one glimpse, authentic and terrifying. then, as if by some magical and instantaneous solvent, it melted before he spoke into his most charming mood.
“i know i oughtn’t to have telephoned, darling, until i had consulted you,” he said. “but it’s your fault; you’ve spoiled me. you’ve made me think that if i want to do a thing very much, you’ll agree to it. i apologise. it was stupid of me. now if you really don’t want to come, just say so, and i’ll run down to the town and reverse my first message if it has gone. it shall be exactly as you like.”
violet had to take one moment to steady herself. that glimpse of colin, the most complete she had had yet of something that lay below, had gripped her very soul with terror. that stabbed at her and passed, and from whence{259} it had come she knew not, nor whither it had gone. only colin remained.
“my dear, of course i’ll come,” she said.
“ah, that’s delicious of you,” said he.
she went upstairs to tell her maid to pack everything at once, as they were off this morning. she found her knees trembling with the effect of that moment of abject terror, but already, in its vanishing, it had taken away with it any impression that could be analysed. just that stroke, stunning as a blow, and then colin again.
