for many years now with philip yardley a widower and his mother old, stanier had withdrawn itself from the splendour of its traditional hospitalities, but now with the installation of violet and colin there, on their return from italy, it blossomed out again into lavish and magnificent flower. throughout november a succession of parties assembled there for the pheasant shooting, and in the early frosts of that december the wild fowl, snipe and duck and teal in the marshes, and the unprecedented abundance of woodcock in the park, gave an added lustre to the battues. in the evening, after an hour’s concert, or some theatrical entertainment for which the artists had come from london or paris, the band reassembled in the long gallery, and dancing kept the windows bright almost till the rising of the late dawn.
there were many foreign royalties in england that year, and none left without a visit to stanier, accompanied by cousins of the english house. stanier, in fact, opened its doors, as in the days before the stroke fell on philip’s father, and fairly outshone its own records for magnificence. colossal in extravagance, there was yet nothing insensate in its splendour; it shone, not for purposes of dazzling, but only as reasserting its inherent and historical gorgeousness.
violet seemed born to the position which she now occupied. while colin’s father lived, it was his pleasure that she should be hostess here, and she picked up the reins, and drove the great gold coach along, as if she had been born and trained all her life for that superb r?le. she and colin, at philip’s wish, occupied the wing which was only tenanted by the heir and his wife, and though at his death, so he supposed, they would not step from porch{261} to possession, he loved to give them this vicarious regency.
out of the silver safe there had come for her the toilet set by paul lamerie, boxes and brushes, candle-stick and spirit lamp, and, above all, the great square mirror mounted on a high base. amarini of chiselled metal supported it on each side; there was no such piece known in museum or royal closet. a double cable-band encircled the base, and the man who was in charge of the plate showed colin how, by pressing a stud in the cable just above the maker’s mark, the side of the base sprang open disclosing a secret drawer. for some reason not even known to himself, colin had not passed on that curious contrivance to violet.
then philip had brought out for her, as colin’s wife, those incredible jewels, which his mother, tenant for life, had long suffered to repose in their chests, and one night she gleamed with the stanier pearls, another she smouldered among the burning pools of the rubies, another she flashed with the living fire of those cascades of diamonds, and more than once she wore the sapphire to which so strange a story was attached. some said that it had once belonged to the regalia, and that elizabeth had no more right to give it to her favourite who founded the splendour of to-day, than she had to bequeath to him the sceptre of her realm, but though twice an attempt had been made on the part of the crown to recover it, once at elizabeth’s death, and once with the coming of the german dynasty, the crown had not proved successful on either of these inauspicious occasions, and had to content itself with what it had.
this great stone was of 412 carats in weight, soft cornflower blue in colour, and matchless in aqueous purity. how it had got among the crown jewels none knew, but its possession was even then considered a presage and a fulfilment of prosperity, for, beyond doubt, elizabeth had worn it on her withered breast every day while her fleet was sailing to encounter the armada. by tradition the wearer was decked with no other jewels when it blazed{262} forth, and indeed its blue flame would have withered any lesser decoration. it figured in the holbein portrait of its original possessor in the stanier line, as a brooch to colin’s doublet, and there once more, impersonating his ancestor, colin wore it at the fancy dress ball which concluded the last of these december parties. this took place the night before raymond came back from cambridge.
strange undercurrents, swirling and eddying, moved so far below the surface of the splendour that no faintest disturbance reached it. admirable as was the manner in which violet filled her part, it was not of her that philip thought, or at her that he looked, when he waited with her and colin for the entrance of royal visitors before dinner in the great hall. day after day the glass doors were opened, but to his way of thinking it was neither for violet nor for them that they swung wide, but for colin. his own life he believed to be nearly consumed, but about the ash of it there crept red sparks, and these, too, were colin’s. all his emotions centred there. it was for him and his matchless charm, that these great gatherings were arranged. philip obliterated himself, and feasted his soul on the sight of colin as lord of stanier. while raymond lived that could never come to pass, but he beguiled himself with the fantasy that when his own eyes grew dim in death, colin’s splendour would light the halls from which he himself had faded. that of all the material magnificence of which he still was master, had power to stimulate him; sceptical of any further future for himself, and incurious as to what that might be, if it existed at all, the only future that he desired was for the son on whom all his love was centred. he knew that he was cheating himself, that this sight of colin playing host at stanier was one that, in all human probability, would never after his death be realised, but it was in his power now to give colin a taste of it, and himself share its sweetness. for this reason he had arranged that these gorgeous weeks of entertainment should{263} take place before raymond got back from cambridge, for with raymond here, raymond, the heavy and the unbeloved, must necessarily exclude colin from the place which his father so rapturously resigned to him. at christmas there would be just the family party, and he would be very civil to his eldest son.
such was the course pursued by one of these undercurrents; two others sprang from violet, one in direct opposition to that of her father-in-law. for she knew that, so far from his death dethroning her and giving the sovereignty to raymond, it but passed on to her with complete and personal possession. could his spirit revisit these earthly scenes, it would behold her in ownership on her own account of all the titles and splendours that had been his. raymond—there alone her knowledge marched with his desire—would be without status here, while for colin there would be just such position as his marriage with her gave him. she, exalted now by philip’s desire, to play hostess in virtue of her marriage, would be hostess indeed hereafter, and colin host through his relationship to her.
these weeks had given her a hint, a foretaste, of what would be hers, and once more, as in her maidenhood, she felt that she would have made any marriage in order to robe herself thus. the splendour of what she was lent had set light to her old ambitions again, and this was all to be hers, not lent, but her own. she would enter into the fabled inheritance of the legend, that legend to which, for its very remoteness, she had never given two serious thoughts. but now, though it still wore, like a cloak over its head, its unconvincing medi?valism, the shape of it vaguely outlined and indifferently regarded, had something sinister about it. it did not matter; it was only an ugly shadow in the background, but now she averted her eyes from it, instead of merely not noticing it.
here, then, was the second undercurrent, which, sluggish and veiled, yet steadily moved within her. for though with the passing of the inheritance to her, it would{264} be she who came within the scope and focus of the legend, which, frankly, when looked in the face, presented that meaningless, age-worn countenance, she felt that she was in the grip of it not directly but, somehow, through colin. she told herself that by no combination of diabolical circumstance could that be; for, with the knowledge that was hers about the date of colin’s birth and his mother’s marriage, it was he, he and raymond, who had passed out of reach of the parchment with its promises and its penalty. yet instinct, unconvinced by reason, told her that it was through colin that she and the children she would bear him, would be swept into the mysterious incredible eddy. was it the persistent luck that attended him which induced so wildly superstitious a presage? like some supernaturally protected being, he passed along his way. raymond’s attempt to kill him had, by the merest most fortuitous circumstance of a punctured tyre, led to raymond’s utter helplessness in his hands.... colin moved on a charmed pilgrimage, idolised and adored by herself, by his father, by all who came in contact with him and, she was beginning to see, he had no spark of love in him that was kindled by these fires. analyse him and you would find no faintest trace of it. perhaps, in spite of his twenty-one years now so nearly complete, he had remained a child still in respect of the heart’s emotions. yet who could hate like colin? who, so she shuddered to think, could have shewn, though but for a second, so white-hot a mask of fury as he had once turned on herself?
she could not succeed in forgetting that, and all colin’s warmth and eagerness of affection to her ever since, could not wash that out. all day, perhaps, in the hospitable discharge of their duties, they would scarcely have a word together, but when at length for a few hours of rest the house grew silent, he sought her side, relaxed and sleepy, yet tingling, so she felt, with some quality of vitality that no one else had a spark of. youth and high spirits, the zest of life and the endless power of enjoyment filled the{265} house, but colin alone, unwearied and eminent as the sun, lit up all others. it was not the exuberance of his health and energy that was the source of his burning; something inspired them.
the last night had come. to-morrow morning their guests would depart, and during the day raymond would arrive. that night there had been the fancy dress ball, and she, wearing the crown and necklace and girdle made by cellini, had impersonated the ill-fated duchess of milan for whom they were made, and who, while wearing them, had drunk the poisoned draught which she had herself prepared for her lover. colin adored that story; the lover, a mere groom of the chambers, he averred, was a sort of old colin stanier—all prospered with him, even to the removal of his mistress in this manner, for she was growing old and wearied him with her insatiable desire. colin himself had appeared as his ancestor wearing the great sapphire.
violet had undressed and got into bed, while he remained downstairs with two or three men who still lingered. the cellini jewels lay on her dressing-table, and feeling too sleepy to plait her hair, she had just let it down, and it lay in a spread web of gold over her pillow. then the door from his dressing-room softly opened, and he looked in.
“not asleep?” he asked.
“no, but nearly. oh, colin, stand under the light a moment. there! the sapphire is alive to-night. it’s like a blue furnace of flame. now shield it from the light.”
violet sat up in bed. “but it’s the most extraordinary thing!” she said. “not a ray from the lamp touches it, yet it’s burning as brightly as ever. where does the light come from? it comes from below it. i believe it comes from you. i’m frightened of you. are you a fire?”
it seemed to him no less than her that some conflagration not lit from without burnt in the heart of the stone.{266} blue rays, generated within, shot from it; it shone with some underlying brilliance, as if, as she had said, it was he who kindled it.
“watch it, then,” he said, unbuckling his cloak. even as he detached it from him, the fire in it grew dim; only the reflection from outside fed it. incredulous at what she thought she saw, willing to attribute it to some queer effect of faceted surfaces, she laughed.
“you’ve killed it,” she said. “i think i shall have to give it you, when it’s mine, so that you may keep it alive.”
“ah, do,” he said. “when you come into your own—may that day be far distant.”
“indeed, yes,” she said.
he sat down on the edge of his bed, and began unloosing the jewelled buttons of his doublet.
“i believe my father would almost give it me now,” he said, “though i suppose he has no right to, just as elizabeth gave it to the other colin. i simply adore it. i’ve been saying my prayers to it, standing in front of the picture.”
“is that what has kept you?” she asked.
“no, they didn’t take me long. the prince kept me; he wanted to hear the whole of the legend. he was frightfully impressed; he said he felt as if the original colin had been telling it him, and expects nightmare. he also besought me to swear allegiance when i come of age and see what happens. i really think i shall, though, after all, i haven’t got much to complain of in the way of what the world can give.”
“but it will be i, really, to choose whether i do that or not,” said violet.
“well, i couldn’t tell him that,” said colin, “though as a matter of fact, i forgot it. in any case it isn’t i to do that. raymond’s the apparent heir-apparent, and dear raymond has shewn his allegiance pretty well already, though one doesn’t quite see why satan made my bicycle-tyre to puncture. if he had been on raymond’s side, my face would have been nearly blown to bits. no,{267} raymond’s not his favourite. fancy raymond being anybody’s favourite. oh, vi, a thousand pardons; he was yours just for a little.”
colin was slowly undressing as he gave utterance to these reflections. he had taken off his shirt, and his arms, still brown from the tanning of the sun and sea, were bare to the shoulder.
“you brute, colin,” she said, “you brown, bare brute.”
“shall i dress again,” said he, “if a bare arm shocks you?”
“no, i don’t mind that. it’s the brute i object to. by the way, raymond comes to-morrow—to-day rather. how on earth can i behave to him with decency? don’t you wish he wasn’t coming?”
colin picked up a long tress of her hair and wound it round his arm.
“no, i’m looking forward to his coming,” he said, smiling. “i’m going to make raymond wish that he had never been born. i’m going to be wonderfully agreeable to him, and everything i say shall have a double meaning. raymond wanted to kill me; well, i shall shew him that there are other ways of scoring off people. my father isn’t very fond of raymond as it is, but when he sees how pleasant i am to him, and how black and sulky raymond is to me, he won’t become any fonder of him. i must think it all out.... and then all the time raymond will be consoling himself with the thought that when father dies his day will come, and he’ll reign in his stead. there’s the cream of it, vi! he’ll be longing for my father to die, you know, and when he does raymond will be worse off than ever. and you, you once said, ‘poor raymond!’ to me. raymond’s got to pay for that. i won’t have raymond pitied.”
never had colin worn a more radiant face than when, walking in and out of his dressing-room, brown and lithe, as he divested himself of his gorgeous dress and put on his night clothes, his beautiful mouth framed itself to this rhapsody of hatred. there was nothing passionate about{268} it, except its sincerity; he did not rage and foam on the surface of his nature, he but gleamed with the fire that seemed so strangely to have lit up those wonderful rays in the sapphire that he had been wearing. he still held it in his hand when, after having turned out the lights in his dressing-room, he closed the door and sprang to her side.
“i don’t like to leave it alone,” he said. “i must pin it to the pillows. it will watch over us. with you and it by me, i shall lie in enchantment between waking and sleeping, floating on the golden sea of your hair. raymond, let’s make plans for raymond....”
she lay in the warm tide of his tingling vitality, and soon fell asleep. but presently she tore herself out of the clutch of some hideous vision, which faded from vagueness into non-existence as she woke and heard his breathing, and felt his cheek resting on her shoulder.
the next night, instead of the long cloth which, evening after evening, had stretched from the window of the great dining-room to the elizabethan sideboard at the other end, there was spread near the fire, for the night was cold, a small round table that just held the five of them—philip and his mother, violet, raymond, and colin—and instead of the rows of silver sconces in the dark panels, four red-shaded candlesticks, sufficient for purposes of knife and fork, left the rest of the room in a velvety dimness. raymond had arrived only just in time to dress for dinner, coming into the gallery but half a minute before his father, while colin, who all this week had been a model of punctuality, had not appeared yet. philip gave his arm to his mother, and behind, unlinked, came violet and raymond. he had advanced to her with elbow formally crooked, but she, busy with a sleeve-lace that had caught in her bracelet, moved on apart from him. she had shaken hands with him, and given him a cool cordial word, but she felt incapable of more than that.
philip sat down with a sigh of relief.{269}
“a reasonable evening at last,” he said, “though i wouldn’t say that if colin were here. i believe he got fresher and livelier every day. ah, raymond, you must know we’ve had some parties here. colin took your place, as you had to be at cambridge.”
raymond tried to put into his answer the geniality he did not feel.
“i know,” he said. “the daily picture papers have been full of colin. are you having more people at christmas, father?”
“no, just ourselves as usual.”
raymond turned to violet. “you had a fancy-dress ball last night, hadn’t you?” he said. “i could have got down yesterday if i had known.”
philip conjectured a reproach in this and resented it. the last few weeks had been planned by him as “colin’s show.” if colin could not step into his shoes when he was dead, he could wear them for a week or two while he lived.
“i thought your term was not over till to-day,” he said.
“i could have got leave,” replied raymond. “but i understand, father.”
philip felt rising in him that ceaseless regret that colin was not his first-born. and that jealousy of colin, implied in raymond’s “i understand” irritated his father. he wanted colin to come and relieve the situation, as he always did.
“what exactly do you mean by that?” he asked.
suddenly old lady yardley joined in. “i know what he means, philip,” she said. “he means that he should have been host here, if you were going to depute one of your sons to do the honours for you, and that you preferred that colin should do them instead. that is what he means.”
“there, mother, that’s enough,” said philip.
an embarrassed silence ensued, broken by the sound of running steps in the gallery. just as they arrived at the door, which one of the footmen opened, there was a{270} loud crash and colin slid in on his back, and had begun to laugh before he picked himself up.
“gosh, what a bang!” he said. “i believe somebody greased the boards in the hope that i should be in a hurry and fall down. sorry, father; sorry, granny; sorry, violet, for upsetting all your nerves. why—raymond!”
colin laid his hand affectionately on his brother’s shoulder.
“i never knew you had come,” he said. “how are you, dear raymond? how’s cambridge? we have missed you in all this hullabaloo. every one asked after you and wanted to know why you weren’t here.”
colin took the vacant place between violet and his grandmother.
“how far have you all got?” he said. “oh, very well, i won’t have any soup. now this is jolly! just ourselves, granny, and short coats and black ties. vi, darling, why didn’t you come and pull me out of my bath? i was just lying soaking there; i had no idea it was so late.”
colin spared one fleeting glance at his brother, and began to put into words some of the things he had thought about in his bath.
“raymond, it is time that you came home,” he said. “the pigeons are worse than ever in the old park, and i’m no earthly use at that snap-shooting between the oaks. give me a rabbit coming towards me along a road, not too fast, and a rest for my gun, i can hit it in the face as well as anybody. but those pigeons among the oaks beat me.”
“yes, we might have a morning in the old park to-morrow,” said his father.
colin looked at violet as if she had called his attention to something.
“yes, vi, what?” he asked.
“nothing.”
“oh, i thought you jogged my elbow. to-morrow, father? oh, what a bore! i promised to play golf. but{271} i shall be back by one if i go on my motor-bicycle. may i join you at that sharp corner in the road; that’s about half-way to the keeper’s lodge, and i could come on with you from there.”
“but that corner is at the far end of the old park,” said his father.
“is it? the one i mean has a big rhododendron bush close to it. you know where i mean, raymond. is it at the far end?”
“yes, that’s the far end,” said raymond.
“i believe you’re right. oh, of course you’re right, and i’m idiotic. it’s where i picked you up one day in the autumn when you had been after the pigeons.”
colin applied himself to his dinner, and caught the others up.
“there’s something in my mind connected with that day,” he said, “and i can’t remember what it is. i had been playing golf, and i punctured, and walked back along the ridge instead of wheeling my bicycle along the road. something funny: i remember laughing. vi, darling, can’t you remember? or didn’t i tell you?”
violet saw that even in the red glow of the candle-shades raymond’s face had turned white. there was red light upon it, but not of it.
“you certainly did not tell me,” she said in sheer pity. “i remember the day, too. there was a man who had escaped from the asylum and stolen a gun from the keeper’s....”
“yes, that’s right,” said colin. “i believe that’s on the track. a man with a gun.”
philip laughed.
“one of the most amusing things i ever heard, colin,” he said. “i am surprised at violet’s forgetting it. is that all?”
colin turned to his grandmother. “granny, they’re all laughing at me because i can’t remember. father’s laughing at me, so is violet. you and raymond are the only kind ones. man with a gun, raymond shooting{272} pigeons. that makes two men with a gun. then there was me.”
“the very best story, colin. most humorous,” said his father.
colin sighed. “sometimes i think of things just as i’m going to sleep,” he said. “if i think of it to-night, i shall wake violet and tell her, and then she’ll remember it if i can’t. man with a gun....”
“oh, colin, stop it,” said violet.
“well, let’s put it to the vote,” said colin. “father and violet want me to stop trying to remember it; little do they know how it would amuse them if i did. granny and i want me to go on—don’t you, dear—it all depends on raymond. what shall i do, ray?”
raymond turned to his father, appearing not to hear colin’s question.
“did you have good sport last week?” he asked.
“ah, raymond votes against us, granny,” said colin. “he’s too polite to tell me directly. we’re squashed, granny; we’ll squash them at whist afterwards; you and i shall be partners, and we’ll play raymond and father for their immortal souls. it will be like the legend, won’t it? violet shall look on and wonder whether her poor husband is going to heaven or hell. i keep my immortal soul in a drawer close to violet’s bedside, granny. so if we lose, she will have to go up to her bedroom and bring it down. oh, i say, i’m talking too much. nobody else can get a word in edgeways.”
it was a fact that the other four were silent, but raymond had the faculty of producing silence in his neighbours. cigarettes had come now with coffee, and this was the usual signal for old lady yardley to rise. to-night, however, she took no notice of the gold-mounted stick which was put into her hand by philip.
“never mind them, my dear,” she said, “they are amusing themselves. listen to me, colin.”
there was no other voice in the room but hers, the servants had gone out, and again she spoke. no one moved;{273} no one spoke; but raymond opposite her leaned forward; violet leaned left-wise; philip, with her stick in his hand leaned to the right. she dropped her voice to a whisper, but in the tense stillness a shout would not have been more audible.
“there are strange things in this house, darling,” said she to colin. “i have been here sixty years, and i know better than anybody. green leaf i have been, and flower and fruit, and now i am withered. sixty years ago, my dear, i sold my soul to the master of it, and from that moment i have been a ghost, oh, such a happy ghost, looking on at the glory of the house. and then my son philip married, and he brought you here, and the moment i set eyes on you i loved you, for i knew that you were born of the blood and the bargain....”
philip drew back his chair and got up.
“there’s your stick, mother,” he said. “we’ll follow you quite soon, or it will be too late for your game of whist.”
she fumbled for the crook of the handle, and rose; her eyes were bright, and as blue as the sapphire colin had worn last night.
“yes, but i must talk to colin again,” she said. “no one understands me except colin. there used to be other games than whist, philip, at stanier. there was dice-throwing, you know, on the altar of god. we are not so wicked now to all appearance. whist in the gallery; far more seemly.”
raymond held the door open for her, and she hobbled through, violet following. as she passed out, violet looked first at raymond, and then swiftly away, with a shudder, at colin.
“don’t be long, uncle philip,” she said in a low voice. “grandmamma is so queer to-night.”
colin moved up next his father.
“give me a glass of port, father,” he said. “here’s raymond back, and i’m so glad to see him. your health, ray!{274}”
he drank off his glass. “father, isn’t it lovely to have raymond back again?” he said. “but—this is an aside—he’s putting on flesh. may your shadow never grow more, raymond. tell us all about cambridge; has it been delightful? i’m sure it has; for otherwise you wouldn’t look so prosperous. speech! mustn’t we have a speech from him, father?”
there, on one side of philip, was colin, brimming with good humour and welcome, brimming, too, as he had shewn during dinner with the mere nonsense born of happiness. on the other side was raymond, serious and unresponsive, without a spark to answer this crackling fire. there he sat, and what sort of host would he have made during these last weeks? he made no attempt to reply to colin, and but fingered the stem of his glass.
“you might tell us what has been going on, raymond,” said his father.
“nothing particular. just the ordinary term. i’ve been playing for the university at soccer. i shall probably be in the team.”
“and you never told us?” said colin. “lord! what a swell he is, father! we’re not worthy to hear about it; that’s what is the matter with us.”
philip turned to raymond. “that’s good,” he said. “that’s pleasant news. there’s colin here, who won’t do anything more violent than golf.”
“oh, father! what about shooting pigeons?” said colin. “oh, no, raymond did that. bother! there was a man with a gun....”
philip got up. “now don’t get on to that again,” he said. “you’ve amused us enough for one night....”
“but i may amuse vi, mayn’t i, if i think of the rest of it?” asked colin.
philip turned his back on him and took raymond’s arm. he had the sense of behaving with great fairness, but the impartiality demanded effort.
“ring the bell, colin, will you?” he said over his shoulder. “i’m delighted to hear about your success in the{275}—the football field, raymond. games are taking the place of sport in this generation. your uncle ronald and i never played games; there was shooting, there was riding....”
“oh, but there’s lots of sport still,” said colin. “big game, father; large animals. not footballs, things that feel.... and then my bicycle punctured. oh, you wanted me to ring.”
at this rite of whist for the sake of old lady yardley, it was necessary that one of the five should cut out. she herself and philip took no part in this chance; the rite was that both should play if there was not another table to be formed. raymond turned the highest card, and with a paper to beguile him, sat just where he had sat when one night the whist-table had broken up, and he heard colin’s mimicry. as the four others cut for deal, some memory of that must have come into colin’s mind.
“what an awful night that was, vi,” he said, “when we were playing bridge with aunt hester. she revoked, do you remember, and swore she hadn’t. how we laughed. and then i thought everybody else had gone to bed, and i—good lord.... yes!”
“another of colin’s amusing stories,” said his father.
“sh-sh,” said colin. “granny, you always turn up the ace for your trump card. will you give me lessons?”
the rubber was very quickly over, and raymond took colin’s place. colin drew a chair up close to his brother, and instead of reading a paper in the corner, watched his hand and the play of it with breathless attention.
“raymond; you’re a wizard,” he said at the end of it. “every plan of yours was right. you finessed and caught the king, you didn’t finesse and caught the queen. why don’t i have luck like yours? it’s enough to make any fellow jealous; i shan’t look at your hand any more. i shall look at violet’s. my poor wife! raymond’s got all the winning cards again. or, if he hasn’t, he’ll turn them into winning cards. he’ll down you.{276}”
“colin, if you would talk just a little less,” said his father, “we should be able to attend a little more.”
raymond, if no one else, fully appreciated the utter absence of reproof in his father’s voice. if it had been he who had been talking, there would have been, at the best, a chill politeness there; at the worst, a withering snub. but this was the candour of friend to friend.... about that signed paper now, which colin had deposited at his bank. he himself had signed some sort of mad confession that he had planned to shoot colin. his will had bent to colin’s like hot wax to strong fingers, but could he not somehow get possession of it again? while it was in colin’s hands, it was like a toasting-fork in which that devil-twin of his impaled and held him before the fire. all dinner-time colin had scorched him, and not less burning was this mocking kindliness which made the one appear so warmly genial, the other awkward and ungracious. how long would he be able to stand it? presently, at the end of the rubber, colin would join him in the smoking-room and reveal another aspect, no doubt. but he could rob him of that further indulgence, he would go to bed as soon as the rubber was over.
the next hand finished it and lady yardley got up. she had won to-night from colin, and clinked a couple of half-sovereigns in her hand.
“but it will come back to you, darling,” she said. “everything there is will come to you if you are wise and careful. my eyes grow dim as i get older, but there is another sort of sight that gets brighter. oh, i see very well.”
philip went with her to the door.
“your eyes are wonderful yet, mother,” he said. “there are years of vision in them yet.”
as if colin had read raymond’s thought of going to bed, he turned to violet.
“i may be a little late to-night, darling,” he said. “raymond and i are going to have a long talk in the smoking-room.{277}”
“oh, i think not,” said raymond. “i’m tired; i shall go to bed.”
colin whisked round to him. “not just yet, ray,” he said. “i haven’t seen you for so long. it would be nice of you to come and have a chat. i know you will. persuade him to do as i ask, vi. who knows what important things i may have to tell about?”
philip rejoined them. “i shall just come in and have a cigarette with you boys,” he said. “good-night, violet.”
“ah, that’s jolly,” said colin.
they preceded him to the smoking-room, for he turned into his own room a moment, and as soon as they were there colin shut the door.
“father will be with us in a minute,” he said, “and i can only just begin my talk. but if you attempt to go to bed when he does, raymond, i shall tell him about the morning when you shot pigeons. oddly enough, i have remembered all about it. and to-morrow i’ll telephone for the envelope i left at my bank. so it’s up to you.”
colin came a step closer; with such an eagerness must some borgia pope have looked on the white skin of the victim he had ordered to be flayed.
“it’s jolly seeing you again, you sulky blackguard,” he said. “has anybody smacked your face since i did it for you? you’re going to spend the whole of the vacation here, unless i get tired of you and send you away before. ah, there’s father. isn’t it jolly, father; raymond hopes to spend the whole of the vacation here.”
philip did not seem as enthusiastic as colin about this, but he was adequately cordial, and, having smoked his cigarette in silence, got up to go.
“are you coming?” he said to his sons.
colin nodded to raymond to answer this.
“we were just going to have a talk first, father,” he said.
“very good. don’t sit up too late. colin hasn’t been to bed till three for the last fortnight.{278}”
colin waited till the door was shut.
“now for our talk,” he said. “isn’t violet looking divine? aren’t i a lucky fellow? even the thought of being mistress of stanier wasn’t enough to make her tolerate you. we had a lovely honeymoon, raymond. we often talked of you. lord! how she loathes you! i should think even you could see that. now an interesting question. i ask for information. do you think she knows about that morning we were speaking of at dinner?”
“i have no means of telling,” said raymond.
“well, we’ll assume she doesn’t. now i want you to observe her closely again to-morrow, and see if you think she knows then. i’ve remembered all about it, and, as you heard me say, i was thinking of telling her, just drowsily and quietly to-night. and then to-morrow you’ll guess whether i have done so or not. take coffee for breakfast if you think i have, tea, if you think i haven’t. what a jolly christmas game!”
colin poured himself out a glass of whisky and soda.
“fancy father saying that i didn’t care for sport,” he said. “i adore the thought of the sport i’m going to have with you. you used to be rude to me when we were alone, now you have got to be polite. i can always send for that paper which you signed and father witnessed. now don’t be tedious and say that the condition on which you signed was that i would not tell him. what does that matter to me? you wanted to kill me; all that i do now is in self-defence. otherwise you might plan to kill me again.”
he yawned. “i’m rather sleepy to-night, raymond,” he said. “i thought the satisfaction of seeing you again would make me wakeful. i shall go upstairs. violet will be pleased that i have not sat up late after all. i shall sit on her bed and talk to her. last night her hair made a golden mat on the pillow. there is a marvellous fragrance in her hair. do you remember that from the{279} days—not many of them—when you used to kiss her? how she winced! now it’s your turn to wince. we shall talk about you, no doubt. and remember about the tea and the coffee to-morrow.”
day after day colin amused himself thus; morning after morning raymond had to guess whether violet had been told, until one evening, wearying of this particular game, colin casually mentioned that all his guessings had been superfluous, for violet had known ever since one day on their honeymoon, when she had provoked him by saying, “poor raymond.” even as a cat with a mouse, so colin played with him, taking no notice of him except in ordinary intercourse, for nearly a whole day, and letting him seem forgotten; then, with quivering shoulders, he would spring on him again, tap him with sheathed claws and a velvet paw, or with more forcible reminder, nip him with needle-like teeth. it was useless and worse than useless for violet to plead for him; her advocacy, her appeal to the most elementary feeling of compassion only exasperated colin.
“darling, as if my brain wasn’t busy enough with raymond, you must go and add to my work like that!” he said. “i’ve got to cure you of being sorry for raymond as well. i thought you were cured when i told you he tried to murder me. just let your mind dwell on that. he planned to shoot me from behind that wall. i’ll take you there to-morrow and show you the place, to make it more vivid to you. one’s brother must not make such plans and fail without suffering for it afterwards. perhaps you would prefer that he had succeeded? ah! i made you shudder then. you trembled deliciously.... i’ve got such a delightful christmas present for him, a little green jade pigeon with ruby eyes. it cost a lot of money. the green—i shall explain to him—is his jealousy of me, for he’s devoted to you still, and the red eyes are the colour of my blood, and the whole will remind him of that amusing morning.{280}”
the new year came in with three nights of sharp frost, and the ice on the bathing lake grew thick enough to bear. the lake was artificial, lying in a small natural valley through which a stream ran. a dam some twelve feet high had been built across the lower end of it, in which was the sluice gate; thus the stream, confined by the rising ground at the sides, and the dam at the end, had spread itself into a considerable sheet of water, shallow where the stream entered it, but some nine feet deep at the lower end, where was the bathing-place and the header boards and pavilions for bathers. the dam was planted with rhododendron bushes, whose roots strengthened the barrier, and in summer the great bank of blossom overhung the deep water. a path ran behind them crossing the sluice by a stone bridge with balustrade.
raymond had gone down there directly after breakfast, and came back with the news that he had walked this way and that across the ice, and that it seemed safe enough. for some reason which colin failed to fathom, he seemed in very cheerful spirits to-day; it might be that the end of the christmas vacation was approaching, when he would return to cambridge; it might be that he, like colin, himself had seen the rapidity with which old age was gaining on his father. there was humour in that. raymond looked forward, and little wonder, to his own succession here, not knowing, poor shorn lamb, that he would be worse off than ever when that unpropitious event occurred. as for the remission of subtle torture which his return to cambridge would give him, there were several days yet, thought colin; opportunity for much pleasant pigeon-conversation.
so raymond got his skates, while colin and violet, sitting cosy in the long gallery, wondered whether it was worth while going out, and he went down by the long yew hedge to the lake, with brisk foot and brightened eye. after all, other people besides colin could make plans, and one of his had matured this morning into a luscious ripeness. sleepless nights had been his, with hands{281} squeezing for colin’s throat and dawn breaking in on the fierce disorder of his thoughts, before he had distilled his brain down to the clear broth. wild and vagrant fancies got hold of him, goaded as he was to the verge of desperation by this inhuman persecution; red madnesses had flashed before him, like the cloaks that the matadors wave before the bull, and, whether he charged or not, another ribanded dart pierced him. he had bitten his lip till the blood flowed in order to recall himself to self-control, and to use those hours of the night, when colin was with violet, to hew out some defence to the fluttered red and the ribanded dart. there had been his handicap: hate of colin had made him violent, whereas colin’s hate of him had made colin calm and self-possessed; he must cease to rage if he hoped to arrive at any plan. so night after night he had curbed himself, making his wits reduce their mad galloping to an orderly pace, and pull steadily in harness.
the grass was encrusted with the jewels of frost; every step crunched a miracle of design into powder, and now for the first time since he had come to stanier, raymond fed with the braced joy of a frosty morning on the banquet which the season spread. he was hungry for it, all these days he had been starved and tortured, sick with apprehension, and shuddering at the appearance of colin with rack and pincers. but now he was hungry again for the good things of life, and the long draught of cold air was one of them, and the treading of the earth with muscles alternately strong and relaxed was another, and the sense of the great woodlands that would in no distant future be his, was a third, for how old, how rapidly ageing, was his father; and the congé he would soon give to colin and violet was a fourth, sweeter than any. how sour had turned his love of violet, if indeed there had ever been any sweetness in it. he lusted after her: that he knew, but just because she knew the events of that morning, when all had gone so awry, he thought of her as no more than a desirable mistress. ha! there was a woodcock.{282} in the frost of the morning it had lain so close that he approached within twenty yards of it before it got up. he was near enough to see how it pulled itself forward, grasping a blade of grass in its reed-like bill, before it could get those long wings free of the ground where it squatted. with a flip flap, it skidded and swerved through the rhododendron bushes; even if he had had a gun with him he could scarcely have got a shot.
“flip—flap”; it was just so that he had escaped from colin’s barrels. those nights of thought, when he had bandaged the eyes of rage, had given him simplicity at last, such simplicity as colin had so carelessly arrived at when he came through the oaks of the old park. he had trusted to the extraordinary similarity of his own handwriting to that of colin, and had written a letter in colin’s name to colin’s bankers, requesting them to send the letter which he had deposited there last august, with the note on the outside of it about its eventual delivery in case of his death, to his brother, lord stanier, whose receipt would be forwarded.... raymond knew it to be a desperate measure, but, after all, nothing could be more desperate than his position here, bound hand and foot to colin, as long as that sealed envelope remained at messrs. bertram’s. the bank might possibly make a further inquiry; telegraph to colin for confirmation, but even if that happened, colin was doing his worst already. no such disaster had followed. this morning raymond had received from the bank a registered letter, containing the unopened envelope, forwarded to him by direction of hon. colin stanier.
so now, as he went briskly towards the frozen lake, the confession which he had signed was safe in the letter-case he carried in the inside pocket of his coat, and for very luxury of living over again a mad moment which now was neutralised, he drew it out and read it. there it was ... in that crisis of guilt, covered by colin’s pistol, he had consented to any terms. but now, let colin see what would be his response when next he talked in flashes of{283} that veiled lightning concerning a shooting of pigeons, concerning a morning when there was a lunatic at large....
indeed raymond determined that this very day he would fling the challenge himself. instead of sitting dumb under colin’s blistering jibes, he would defy him; he would insult and provoke him, till he was stung into sending to the bank for the famous confession, vowing an instant disclosure of the whole matter to his father. how raymond would snap a finger in his face for that threat, and how, when colin received the answer from the bank that the packet in question had been sent by his own orders to his brother, would he choke with the derisive laughter of hate! who without solid proof would credit such a tale? besides (raymond had it all ready now) no doubt lord yardley would remember witnessing with colin the paper about which he now impotently jabbered. had not the brothers come in together, ever so pleasantly, on that morning of the pigeon-shooting, and asked for his witnessing signature? that paper (so raymond now framed it) had set forth how he had determined to make a better job of brotherhood than he had hitherto done, and to realise that violet and colin were mated in love. and already the pact had fulfilled itself, for never had the two spent days of such public fraternal amity. “write to the bank for it in my name,” colin would be supposed to have said, “and tear it up, dear ray! it’ll be fun, too, to see if they can distinguish your handwriting from mine”.... that was what colin would find waiting for him if he sent to the bank for the document on which this insane accusation was based.
his skates, fitted on to boots, clanked in his hand, his foot trod briskly on the frozen soil that would soon be his own. those eye-teeth of colin’s were drawn; his father aged rapidly, and, without doubt, before many months, the park-gates would have clapped on to the final exit of colin and his wife. perhaps he would let stanier to some dollar-gorged american; he had no feeling for it himself,{284} and the other two would abhor that. never yet had stanier been tenanted by aliens; it was enough to make the dead turn in their graves. what was more important, it would make the living writhe. perhaps colin—he would be very rich, alas—would try to take it. the would-be lessees must be closely scrutinised.
so here was the lake with its stiff frozen margin; a stamp on it and a short slide over the black ice produced no cluck of remonstrance. the pavilion of the bathing-place was on the other side, but a felled tree-trunk made a comfortable seat for the exchange of his walking shoes into the boots with skates on them. he had spent a winter month in switzerland two years before, and hungered for the bite of the blade on the sweet fodder of that black field.... instantly, as in swimming, the instinct of that balance came back to him, and with long strokes he curved out on to the delightful playground. outside edge, and a dropped turn, an outside back, and a taking up of the direction with the other foot....
colin, at this moment, had made up his mind not to skate till after lunch.
“i’m lazy,” he said to violet. “i’m tired of baiting raymond. he was more cheerful than i like this morning, vi. i shall smoke a cigarette and think of something new. lord! i’ve got no matches.”
there was a paper basket handy, and he drew a crumpled envelope from it, meaning to get a light with it from the log fire. uncrumpling it he saw it was addressed to lord stanier, and idly turning it over, as he made his spill, he saw the seal of his own bank. the envelope was registered.
he tore a narrow strip off the edge of it, and used it for his purpose.
“i should like to sit here talking to you all morning,” he said, “but that beastly motor-bicycle of mine has gone wrong again. i think i’ll go up to the stables to see about it. skating this afternoon, isn’t it? i hate seeing ray{285}mond skate because he’s so good at it. but as i want to skate myself, what’s to be done?”
colin floated off in his crisp, graceful manner, and never was he so alert as when he appeared to be loitering. why had raymond received a registered envelope from bertram’s? bertram’s was not raymond’s bank. what had that envelope contained?
he strolled out of the front door; the stables lay to the right, but raymond, hugely cheerful that morning, had gone to the lake, which was in the opposite direction. so deferring the matter of the bicycle he went down by the yew hedge and along the path on the top of the dam behind the rhododendrons. he could hear the ring of raymond’s skates on the frozen surface. raymond would have to cease his sport and explain the matter of the envelope.
hidden by the bushes, he had nearly come to the bridge over the sluice when from close at hand there came a noise of loud crackings and splintering across the lake and a great splash. for one moment colin stood quite still, his heart beating high and fast; then, with quickened pace, he walked on to the bridge over the sluice. some ten yards out was a large hole in the surface with jagged edges; a cap and fragments of broken ice floated on it, and bubbles rose from below.
“he has been carried under the ice,” thought colin. “how cold it must be! the water is deep there.”
what was to be done? nothing it seemed. he could run up to the house and get help, a rope, a plank, something to put out across that gaping hole on which the sunlight glittered, but before he could return all hope (all chance rather) of saving raymond must have passed. was there no other plan? his mind, usually so ingenious and resourceful, seemed utterly blank, save for an overwhelming curiosity as to whether raymond would come to the surface again, just once, just for a second.... as he looked, leaning on the balustrade of the bridge, raymond’s head appeared; his face was white and wide-{286}eyed, the lips of his open mouth blue with the cold. across those ten yards which separated them their eyes met, colin’s bright and sparkling with exuberant life, the other’s stricken with the ultimate and desperate terror.
colin waved his hand.
“so you’ve fallen in,” he said. “i’ll go and see what can be done. if i’m too late, well, good-bye! rather cold, isn’t it?”
the last words were spoken to emptiness. there was the cap still floating and the stream of bubbles breaking on the surface of the sparkling water.
colin gave one leap in the air like some young colt whose limbs tingle with the joy of life, and rubbed his hands which were chilled with leaning on the bridge. of course it was no use going to the house; the shock and cold and the soft, smothering water would have done their work long before he could bring help, and the resources of stanier, so powerful for the living had no succour or consolation for the dead. indeed, it would be better not to go to the house at all, for he could not imagine himself, in this ecstatic moment, simulating haste and horror and all that would be appropriate to the occasion. so making a circuit through the woods, he strolled ten minutes later into the stable yard to see about his bicycle. he had a pleasant word for the groom and a joke for the motor-mechanic. just then his brain could only be occupied with trivial things; a great glittering curtain seemed to be let down across it, behind which were stored treasures and splendours. presently, when he came to himself, he would inspect these.
he showed himself to violet and his father, who were in the long gallery, when he got back to the house, said a word about his motor-bicycle, hoped that raymond was having a good time, and went into the smoking-room. now was the time to pull up that glittering curtain.
till then the fact of raymond’s death, just the removal, the extinction of him had hidden all that might lie behind it; now colin saw with an amazed gasp of interest{287} how all the activity of his brain was needed to cope with the situation. raymond was finished with, while his father still lived. the remote, the unexpected, the unlooked-for had occurred. yet not quite unlooked-for ... one morning dreaming on the capri beach, colin had taken this possibility into account, had let it simmer and mature in his brain, and as outcome had made violet spend a night at the house of the british consul in naples. how wise that had proved; he would have been grinding his teeth if he had not done that.
swiftly he ran over the whole process from the beginning, and though there were problems ahead of him, so far his course had been flawless. first had come the erasure in the consulate register and the insertion of that single numeral in his mother’s letter to salvatore.... he would have to see dear uncle salvatore again.... that had smoothed the way for his marriage with violet; that had ensured, even if raymond lived to be a hundred, his own mastership and that of his children after him at stanier. it was not mastership in name, for he would but be husband to its mistress, but he knew that name alone would be lacking to the completeness of possession. he could not have provided better for the eventuality of his father’s death, which, according to all human probability, would occur before raymond’s. but fate, that blind incalculable chance, had decreed otherwise, and colin gave a frown and a muttered exclamation to the recognition of the fact that had he left the register alone, and torn up, instead of emending his mother’s letter, he would now be heir to stanier as he indeed truly was, in his own right.
it was a pity to have devoted all that ingenuity, to have saddled himself with considerable expense as regards that troublesome salvatore, when fate all the time was busier and wiser than he.... yet it had been necessary, and it was no use wasting regret over it.
what stood in his way now was the letter and the register. with regard to the former it was easy to destroy{288} it, and to indicate to salvatore that all required of him was to hold his tongue, or, if necessary, to tell a mere simple truth that he had given colin two letters, one—he seemed to recollect—dated march 1, in which his sister announced her marriage, the other a fortnight later, giving news of the birth of the twins. uncle salvatore, with his viagi pride, so colin smilingly reflected, would be glad that the stain on the family honour could be expunged; rosina was married when she brought forth. for him, too, it was pleasant to have the bar sinister lifted from him. it would not, he allowed, have weighed heavily on him; in any case it would have been amply compensated for by the enjoyment of stanier and the expulsion of raymond, but now there was no need for that ounce of bitter.... so much, then, for the letters; they could be destroyed. violet would ask in vain for their production to prove her possession.
“what letters do you mean, darling?” he would answer. yes, those letters should perish at once.
he turned his thoughts to the register. there at this moment it reposed in that archive-room, bearing the erasure so easily overlooked, so convincing when pointed out. you had but to look carefully, and, so to speak, you could see nothing but the erased numeral: it stared at you. he had, it was true, in his keeping a copy of that entry, certified to be correct by mr. cecil, which bore the earlier date, but, now that violet had been informed of that erasure, she would, when stanier changed hands, insist on the production of the register, and, knowing where to look and what to see, her lawyer would draw the conclusion, which even in the absence of confirming letters, might easily satisfy a jury. the register had been tampered with, and in whose interests but colin’s? and by what hand? without doubt by his father’s (not that that would hurt him then) or his own. there was danger, remote perhaps but alive and smouldering, on that page; it must be quenched.
colin recalled his meditations on the capri beach which{289} foresaw this contingency with a vividness as clear as was the october air on that morning. all the circumstances of it were equally sharp-edged in his memory, the sense of the hot pebbles of the beach on which he lay, the sea and its crystal embrace awaiting him when he got baked and pining for its coolness, nino, the joyous pagan boy asleep in the shade, vesuvius across the bay with the thin streamer of smoke. that was the milieu where thought came clean and clear to you, and clear and clean that morning had his thoughts been, providing for this very situation. the pieces of it lay in his brain like the last few fragments of a puzzle; he had no need even to fit them together, for he could see how curve corresponded with curve and angle with angle. all was in order, ready to be joined up, now that raymond no longer blocked his way, and the key-piece round which the others fitted was undoubtedly that visit of violet to mr. cecil.
then came quick steps up the passage, and violet burst in.
“oh, colin,” she said, “a terrible thing has happened! uncle philip and i walked down to the lake. raymond was not there; his boots were on the bank, there was a hole where the ice had given way at the deep end. uncle philip is getting men and ropes....{290}”
