Lord Yardley’s residence at his villa at Capri had, as usual, leaked
into the diplomatic consciousness, and the English Ambassador at Rome,
an old acquaintance of his, had, as usual, reminded him of a friendly
presence in Rome, which would be delighted to welcome him if the welcome
afforded any convenience. To leave by the very early boat from Capri,
and thus catch the Paris express that evening was a fatiguing
performance, would he not, therefore, when the regretted day for his
departure came, take the more reasonable midday boat, dine and spend the
night at the Embassy, and be sent off from there next day in comfort,
for the morning express from Rome entailed only one night in the train
instead of two? The British Consul at Naples would see to his seclusion
in the transit from Naples to Rome, where he would be met and wafted to
the Embassy. Otherwise an early start from Capri, and a hurried train
connection in Rome, would deprive His Excellency of the great pleasure
of a renewal of cordiality.
His Excellency, it may be remarked, liked an invitation to Stanier, and
there was method in his thoughtfulness. This proposal arrived a week
before Lord Yardley’s departure; a heat wave had drowned the country,
and already he looked with prospective horror on the notion of two
nights in the train.... It entailed a night in Paris, and, if he was to
arrive in England for a debate in the House, a departure from Capri by
the midday boat on Tuesday, instead of the early boat on Wednesday. It
entailed, in fact, a few hours less of Colin.
Colin saw the shining of his star. Never had anything, for his purpose,
been so excellently opportune. The British Consul would be at the
station to see his father off, and so, beyond doubt, would he himself,
on a visit to Uncle Salvatore. An acquaintanceship would be made under
the most auspicious and authentic circumstances.
“It all fits in divinely, father,” he said. “I shall come across with
you, see you off from Naples, and then do my duty at Uncle Salvatore’s.
Probably, if there was nothing to take me to Naples, I should never have
gone, but now I shall have to go. Do let me kill two birds with one
stone. I shall see the last of you--one bird--without having to get up
at five in the morning, and I shall have made my visit to Uncle
Salvatore inevitable--two birds. Say ‘yes’ and I’ll write to him at
once.”
It was in the belief that this arrangement had been made, that Lord
Yardley left Naples a week afterwards. Mr. Cecil, the British Consul,
had come to the station to secure for him the reserved compartment to
Rome, and, that being done, had lingered on the platform till the train
started. At the last moment, as he and Colin stood together there, and
while the train was already in motion, Colin sprang on to the footboard
for a final good-bye, and with a kiss leaped off again. There came a
sharp curve and the swaying carriages behind hid the platform from his
father.
Colin turned to Mr. Cecil. Salvatore was in the background for the
present.
“It was delightful of you to come to see my father off,” he said. “He
appreciated it immensely.”
Colin paused a moment, just the pause that a bather takes before he gets
up speed for a running header into the sea.
“He left me a small matter to talk to you about,” he said. “I wonder if
I might refer to it now.”
Mr. Cecil gave a plump, polite little bow.
“Pray do, Mr. Stanier,” he said.
“My father wants a copy of the register of his marriage,” he said, “and
he asked me to copy it out for him. The marriage was performed at the
British Consulate, and if you would be so good as to let me copy it and
witness it for me, I should be so grateful. May I call on you in the
morning about it? It will save trouble, he thinks, on his death, if
among his papers there is an attested copy.”
“A pleasure,” said Mr. Cecil.
“You are too kind. And you will do me one further kindness? I am going
back to Capri to-morrow for another fortnight, and it would be so good
of you if you would tell me of a decent hotel where I can pass the
night. I shall not be able, I am afraid, to catch the early boat, with
this business of the copying to do, for it leaves, does it not, at nine,
and the Consulate will not be open by then.”
Colin was at full speed now; his running feet had indeed left the
ground, and he was in the air. But he was already stiffened and taut, so
to speak, for the plunge; he had made all preparation, and fully
anticipated a successful dividing of the waters. For he had already made
himself quite charming to Mr. Cecil, and attributed his lingering on the
platform as much to the pleasure of a sociable ten minutes with him as
to the honour done to his father.
“But I will not hear of you staying at a hotel,” said Mr. Cecil, “if I
can persuade you to pass the night at my flat. It adjoins the Consulate
offices, and is close to where the Capri boat lies. Indeed, if you wish
to catch the early boat, we can no doubt manage that little business of
yours to-night. It will take only a few minutes.”
Colin suffered himself to be persuaded, and they drove back to the
Consulate. Office hours were already over, and presently Mr. Cecil led
the way into the archive-room, where, no doubt, Colin’s search would be
rewarded. But there had come in for him a couple of telegrams delivered
after the clerks had gone, and he went to his desk in the adjoining room
to answer these, leaving the boy with the volume containing the year of
his father’s marriage. The month, so said Colin, was not known to him.
His father had told him, but he had forgotten--a few minutes’ search,
however, would doubtless remedy that.
So Mr. Cecil, leaving an official form with him on which to copy the
entry, fussed away into the next room, and Colin instantly opened the
volume. The year was 1893, and the month, as he very well knew, was
March.... There it was on March the first, and he ran his eye down to
the next entry. Marriages at the Naples Consulate apparently were not
frequent, and the next was dated April the fourth.
Colin had already his pen in hand to make the copy, and it remained
poised there a moment. There was nothing more necessary than to insert
one figure before the single numeral, and the thing would be done. It
remained after that only to insert a similar “three” in the letter which
his mother had written to Salvatore announcing her marriage. On this hot
evening the ink would dry as soon as it touched the page. And yet he
paused, his brain beginning to bubble with some notion better yet, more
inspired, more magically apt....
Colin gave a little sigh and the smile dawned on his face. He wrote in a
“three,” making the date of March 1 into March 31, and then once again
he paused, watching with eager eyes for the ink to dry on the page.
Then, taking up a penknife which lay on the table beside him, he erased,
but not quite erased, the “three” he had just written there. He left
unerased, as if a hurried hand had been employed on the erasure, the
cusp of the figure, and a minute segment of a curve both above and below
it.
Looking at the entry as he looked at it now, when his work was done,
with but casual carefulness, any inspector of it would say that it
recorded the marriage of Philip Lord Stanier to Rosina Viagi on the
first of March. But had the inspector’s attention been brought to bear
more minutely on it, he must, if directed to hold the page sideways to
the light, have agreed that there had been some erasure made in front of
the figure denoting the day of the month; for there was visible the
scratching of a penknife or some similar instrument. Then, examining it
more closely, he would certainly see the cusp of a “three,” the segment
of the upper curve, and a dot of ink in the place where the lower
segment would have been.
These remnants would scarcely have struck his eye at all, had not he
noticed that there were the signs of an erasure there. With them, it was
impossible for the veriest tyro in conjecture not to guess what the
erasure had been.
The whole thing took but a half-minute, and at the expiration of that,
Colin was employed on the transcription of the record of the marriage.
He knew that he had to curb a certain trembling of his hand, to reduce
to a more regular and slower movement the taking of his breath, which
came in pants, as if he had been running.
Half a minute ago, no notion of what he had already accomplished had
entered his head; his imagination had not travelled further than the
possibility of changing the date which he knew he should find here into
one thirty days later. Out of the void, out of the abyss, this
refinement in forgery had come to him, and he already recognised without
detailed examination how much more astute, how infinitely more cunning,
was this emended tampering. Just now he could spare but a side glance at
that, for he must copy this entry (unaware that pen and pen-knife had
been busy there) and take it to plump Mr. Cecil for his signature, but
the sharp, crisp tap of conviction in his mind told him that he had done
more magnificently well than his conscious brain had ever suggested to
him.
No longer time than was reasonable for this act of copying alone had
elapsed before Colin laid down his pen and went into the next room.
“Well, Mr. Stanier, have you done your copying?” asked Cecil.
“Yes. Shall I bring it here for your signature?” said Colin.
Mr. Cecil climbed down from the high stool where he was perched like
some fat, cheerful little bird.
“No, no,” he said. “We must be more business-like than that. I must
compare your copy with the original entry before I give you my
signature.”
Colin knew that the skill with which he had effected the alteration
which yet left the entry unaltered, would now be put to the test, but he
felt no qualm whatever as to detection. The idea had been inspired, and
he had no doubt that the execution of it was on the same level of
felicitous audacity. They passed back into the archive-room together,
and the Consul sat himself before the volume and the copy.
“Yes, March the first, March the first,” he said, comparing the two,
“Philip Lord Stanier, Philip Lord Stanier, quite correct. Ha! you have
left out a full stop after his name, Mr. Stanier. Yes, Rosina Viagi, of
93 Via Emmanuele....”
He wrote underneath his certificate that this was a true and faithful
copy of the entry in the Consular archives, signed his name, stamped it
with the official seal and date, and handed it to Colin.
“That will serve your father’s purpose,” he said, and replacing the
volume on its shelf, locked the wire door of its bookcase.
“If you will be so good as to wait five minutes,” he said, “I will just
finish answering a telegram that demands my attention, and then I shall
be at your service for the evening.”
He gave a discreet little chuckle.
“We will dine _en garçon_,” he said, “at a restaurant which I find more
than tolerable, and shall no doubt contrive some pleasant way of passing
the evening. Naples keeps late hours, Mr. Stanier, and I should not be
surprised if you found the first boat to Capri inconveniently early. We
shall see.”
Mr. Cecil appeared to put off the cares and dignity of officialdom with
singular completeness when the day’s work was over, and Colin found he
had an agreeably juvenile companion, ready to throw himself with zest
into the diversions, whatever they might be, of the evening. He ate
with the appetite of a lion-cub, consumed a very special wine in
magnificent quantities, and had a perfect battery of smiles and winks
for the Neapolitans who frequented the restaurant.
“_Dulce est desipere in loco_,” he remarked gaily, “and that’s about the
sum of the Latin that remains to me, and, after all, it can be expressed
equally well in English by saying ‘All work, no play, makes Jack a dull
boy.’ And when we have finished our wine, all the amusements of this
amusing city are at your disposal. There is an admirable cinematograph
just across the road, there is a music-hall a few doors away, but if you
choose that, you must not hold me responsible for what you hear there.
Or if you think it too hot a night for indoor entertainment, there is
the Galleria Umberto, which is cool and airy, but again, if you choose
that, you must not hold me responsible for what you see there. Children
of nature: that is what we Neapolitans are. We, did I say? Well, I feel
myself one of them, when the Consulate is shut, not when I am on duty,
mark that, Mr. Stanier. But my private life is my own, and then I shed
my English skin.”
In spite of the diversions of the city, Colin was brisk enough in the
morning to catch the early boat, and once more, as he had done a month
ago on his initial visit to the island, he sequestered himself from the
crowd under the awning, and sought solitude in the dipping bows of the
little steamer. To-day, however, there was no chance of his meditations
being interrupted by his father with tedious talk of days spent at
Sorrento; no irksome demonstrations of love were there to be responded
to, but he could without hindrance explore not only his future path,
but, no less, estimate the significance of what he had done already.
Once more, then, the register of his father’s marriage was secure in the
keeping of the Consulate, Mr. Cecil had looked at it, compared Colin’s
copy, which now lay safe in the breast-pocket of his coat, with the
original, and had certified it to be correct. Colin had run no risk by
inserting and then erasing a figure which might prove on scrutiny to be
a subsequent addition; Mr. Cecil himself had been unaware that any
change had been wrought on the page. But when the register on Lord
Yardley’s death should be produced in accordance with the plan that was
already ripening and maturing in Colin’s mind, a close scrutiny would
reveal that it had been tampered with. Some hand unknown had clearly
erased a figure there, altering the date from March 31 to March 1. The
object of that would be clear enough, for it legalised the birth of the
twins Rosina had borne. It was in the interest of any of four people to
commit that forgery--of his father, of his mother, of Raymond, and of
himself. Rosina was dead now these many years; his father, when the
register was next produced, would be dead also, and from dead lips could
come neither denial nor defence. Raymond might be left out of the
question altogether, for never yet had he visited his mother’s native
city, and of those alive when the register was produced, suspicion could
only possibly attach to himself. It would have been in his interest to
make that alteration, which should establish his legitimacy as well as
that of his brother.
Colin, as he sat alone in the bows, fairly burst out laughing, before he
proceeded to consider the wonderful sequel. He would be suspected, would
he?... Then how would it come about that it was he, who in the nobility
of stainless honour would produce his own mother’s letter, given him by
his uncle, in which she announced to her brother that she was married at
the British Consulate on the 31st of March? Had he been responsible for
that erasure in the Consulate register, to legitimatise his own birth,
how, conceivably, could he not only not conceal, but bring forward the
very evidence that proved his illegitimacy? Had he tampered with the
Consular book, he must have destroyed the letter which invalidated his
forgery. But, instead of destroying it, he would produce it.
There was work ahead of him here and intrigue in which Salvatore must
play a part. The work, of course, was in itself nothing; the insertion
at the top of one of the two letters he owned of just that one figure
which he had inserted and erased again in the register was all the
manual and material business; a bottle of purple ink and five minutes’
practice would do that. But the intrigue was more difficult. Salvatore
must be induced to acquiesce in the fact that the date of the letter
announcing Rosina’s marriage was subsequent to that announcing the birth
of the twins. That would require thought and circumspection; there must
be no false step there.
And all this was but a preliminary manœuvring for the great action
whereby, though at the cost of his own legitimacy, he should topple
Raymond down from his place, and send him away outcast and penniless,
and himself, with Violet for wife, now legal owner of all the wealth and
honours of the family, become master of Stanier. She might for the love
of him, which he believed was budding in her heart, throw Raymond over
and marry him without cognisance of what he had done for her. But he
knew, from knowledge of himself, how overmastering the passion for
Stanier could be, and it might happen that she would choose Raymond with
all that marriage to him meant, and stifle the cry of her love.
In that case (perhaps, indeed, in any case), Colin might find it better
to make known to her the whole, namely that on his father’s death she
would find herself in a position to contest the succession and claim
everything for her own. Which of them, Raymond or himself, would she
choose to have for husband in these changed circumstances? She disliked
and proposed to tolerate the one for the sake of the great prize of
possession; she was devoted to the other, who, so she would learn, had
become possessed of the fact on which her ownership was established.
Or should he tell her all? Reveal his part in it? On this point he
allowed his decision to remain in abeyance; what he should do, whether
he should tell Violet nothing, or part, or all, must depend on
circumstances, and for the present he would waste no more time over
that. For the present, too, he would keep the signed and certified copy
of his father’s marriage.
The point which demanded immediate consideration was that concerning
Salvatore. Colin puzzled this out, sometimes baffled and frowning,
sometimes with a clear course lying serene in front of his smiling eyes,
as the steamer, leaving the promontory of the mainland behind,
approached the island. He must see Salvatore, whom he had quite omitted
to see in Naples, as soon as possible, and it would be much better to
see him here, in the privacy of the villa, than seek him, thought Colin,
in the publicity of the Palazzo Viagi, surrounded by those siren dames,
Vittoria and Cecilia.
He would write at once, a pensive and yet hopeful little epistle to
Uncle Salvatore wondering if he would come across to Capri yet once
again, not for the mere inside of a day only, but for a more hospitable
period. His father had left for England, Colin was alone, and there were
matters to be talked over that weighed on his conscience.... That was a
good phrase; Uncle Salvatore would remember what Colin had already done
in the matter of the reduplicated cheque, and it would seem that the
generous fellow had a debt of conscience yet unliquidated; this conveyed
precisely the right impression.
In a postscript he would hint at the French nectar which, still dozing
in the cellar.... He hesitated a moment, and then decided not to mention
the subject of his mother’s letters, for it was better that since they
were the sole concern of his visit, Uncle Salvatore should have the
matter sprung upon him.... A bottle of purple ink ... no, that would not
be necessary yet, for the later that you definitely committed yourself
to a course of action the better.
Colin’s letter produced just the effect that he had calculated on;
Salvatore read into the conscience-clause a generous impulse and
congratulated himself on the departure of that grim, dry brother-in-law
to whom (for he had tried that before) tears and frayed cuffs made no
appeal. He had accordingly given that up, and for his last visit here
made himself nobly resplendent. But to Colin, in the guilelessness of
his blue-eyed boyhood, a tale of pinching and penury might be a suitable
revelation, and it was a proud but shabby figure which presented itself
at the villa a few evenings later, without more luggage than could be
conveniently conveyed in a paper parcel. Colin, who had been observing
the approach from the balcony of his bedroom, ran down, choking with
laughter that must be choked, to let his uncle in.
“Ah, this is nice,” he said. “You have no idea how welcome you are. It
was good of you to take pity on my loneliness. What a jolly evening we
shall have. And Vittoria and Cecilia? How are they?”
A gleam brightened Uncle Salvatore’s gloom, and he fervently pressed
Colin’s hand.
“They are well, thank God,” he said. “And while that is so, what matters
anything?”
He appeared with a gesture of his hand to pluck some intruding creature
from the region of his heart, and throw it into the garden-beds. Then he
gave a little skip in the air.
“Collino _mio_!” he said. “You charm away my sad thoughts. Whatever
happens to-morrow, I will be gay to-night. I will not drag your
brightness down into my gloom and darknesses. Away with them, then!”
Colin fathomed the mountebank mind with an undeviating plummet. The
depth (or shallowness) of it answered his fairest expectations. He found
nothing inconsistent in this aspect of Salvatore with that which he had
last presented here; the two, in fact, tallied with the utmost
exactitude as the expression of one mind. They both chimed true to the
inspiring personality. He waited, completely confident, for the advent
of the opportunity.
That came towards the end of dinner: without even having been
hilarious, Salvatore had at least been cheerful, and now, as suddenly as
if a tap had been turned off, the flow of his enjoyment ceased. He
sighed, he cleared his throat, he supported his head on his hands, and
stared at the tablecloth. To Colin these signals were unmistakable.
“You’re in trouble, Uncle Salvatore,” he said softly, “and now for the
first time I am glad that my father has gone back to England. If he were
here, I should not be able to say what I mean to say, for, after all, he
is my father, and he has always been most generous to me. But he is not
equally generous to others who have claims on him. I have tried to make
him see that, and, as you and I know, I have succeeded to some small
extent. But the extent to which I have succeeded does not satisfy me.
Considering all that I know, I am determined to do better for you than I
have been able to make him do. If I am his son, I am equally my mother’s
son. And you are her brother.”
Colin paused a moment, and, sudden as a highland spate, inspiration
flooded his mind. He had not thought out with any precision what he
meant to say, for that must depend on Salvatore, who might, equally
well, have adopted the attitude of a proud and flashy independence. But
he had declared for frayed cuffs and a fit of gloom, and Colin shaped
his course accordingly.
“And I can’t forget,” he said, “that it was you who put me in possession
of certain facts when you sent me those two letters of my mother. I
learned from them what I had never dreamed of before. I never in the
wildest nightmare thought that my father had not married your sister
till after my birth. I should have had to know that sometime: on my
father’s death it must have come out. And you have shown a wonderful
delicacy in breaking the fact to me like that. I thank you for that,
Uncle Salvatore; I owe you a deep debt of gratitude which I hope to
repay!”
Colin listened to his own voice, which seemed to make itself articulate
without any directing will of his own. The summer night was charged with
the force of obedience to which his tongue moved against his teeth, and
his lips formed letters, and his throat gave the gutturals. Literally,
he did not know what he was going to say till he heard himself saying
it. The breeze whispered in the stone-pine, and he spoke....
The breeze was still now and the stone-pine was silent. But he had said
enough to make it necessary that Salvatore should reply. Presently a bat
would flit through the arches of the pergola where they dined, or the
wind would stir in the pine, and then he would speak again. There was
just that same stir abroad on the night when he had listened from his
bedroom to his father’s footfalls on the terrace.
“What do you mean, Collino?” said his uncle excitedly. “I cannot
understand what you say. My sainted Rosina married your father on the
first of March, for I glanced at the letters again before I sent them to
you. Your birth....”
Colin interrupted.
“Ah, a bat,” he said. “I love bats. If you hold a handkerchief up does
not a bat come to it? Let us interrupt our conversation for a moment.”
He spread his handkerchief over his head, and next moment Salvatore
leaped to his feet, for there, beady-eyed and diabolical, with hooked
wings as of parchment, spread out on either side of its furry body, one
of the great southern bats alighted, making a cap for Colin’s golden
head. Only for a moment it stopped there, and then flitted off into the
dusk again.
“Soft, furry thing,” said Colin. “But you hate them, do you, Uncle
Salvatore? It was stupid of me. Let us talk again!”
He hitched his chair a little closer to the table, and looked Salvatore
straight in the eyes.
“But you have forgotten the dates on those letters you gave me,” he
said. “My mother was married to my father not on the first of March,
but on the thirty-first. The second letter recording Raymond’s birth and
mine was written on the seventeenth.”
Again he paused.
“Raymond and I were born,” he said slowly and distinctly, “before my
father’s marriage. The letters which you gave me prove it. If further
proof was wanted, you would find it at the Consulate where the marriage
took place. Some one has tampered with the register, and the date has
been made to look as if it recorded the first of March. But it does not:
it records the thirty-first of March, and the ‘three’ has been erased.
But it is still visible. I saw it myself, for I went across to Naples to
see my father off, and subsequently at the Consulate made a copy of the
entry. I should have proposed myself to stay with you that night, Uncle
Salvatore, but I had no spirit left in me to see anybody. When you sent
me those two letters of my mother, I hoped against hope perhaps, that
there was some ghastly mistake. I nearly destroyed them, indeed, in
order that from them, at any rate, there should be no conceivable
evidence. But when I saw the entry in the book at the Consulate, with
the mark of the erasure visible to any careful scrutiny, I knew that it
was no use to fight against facts. On my father’s death, the evidence of
the date of his marriage must be produced, and it will be clear what
happened. My mother bore him two boys--I was one. Subsequently he
married her, hoping, I have no doubt, to beget from her an heir to the
name and the property.”
The wind sighed heavily in the pine, and little stirs of it rustled the
vine-leaves.
“Is it at no cost to me,” said Colin, “that I keep my mother’s letter
which proves Raymond and me to be bastards? Oh, it is an ugly word, and
if you were me, you would know that it is an ugly thing. Without my
mother’s letter which you sent me, it would be hard indeed to prove,
indeed, any one might copy out the entry at the Consulate and fail to
see the erasure altogether. Raymond, at my father’s death would
succeed, and I, his twin, beloved of him, would take an honourable place
in the eyes of the world, for it is not nothing to be born a Stanier.”
Colin’s voice was soft and steadfast.
“But my mother’s letter to you makes it impossible for me to have honour
in the eyes of the world, and to preserve my own,” he said. “Ah, why did
you send me those two letters, Uncle Salvatore? It was in all innocence
and kindness that you sent them, and you need not remind me that I asked
for them. Having seen them, what could any one with a shred of honour do
but to admit the truth of the whole ghastly business? The only wish that
I have is that my father shall not know that I know. All I want is that
he, when the hour of his death comes, should hope that the terrible
fraud which has been practised, will never be detected. But for that
letter of my mother’s, that would undoubtedly have happened. The
register at the Consulate would have been copied at his death by some
clerk, and the Consul would have certificated its accuracy. Look at me,
then, now, and look at yourself in the same light, you of unblemished
descent, and me and Raymond!”
Salvatore had certainly woke out of his dejection.
“But it’s impossible,” he cried, beating the table. “I sent you two
letters; the first, dated March the first, announced my sainted Rosina’s
marriage to your father. Where is it? Produce it!”
Colin was quite prepared for that. He put his sun-browned fingers into
his breast-pocket, and drew out a paper.
“I can’t show you the original letters,” he said, “because it was
clearly my duty to put them into inviolable custody as soon as possible.
I sent them, in fact, as soon as I had seen the register at the
Consulate, to my bank, with orders that they were to be kept there until
I gave further instructions, or until the news of my death reached them.
In that case, Uncle Salvatore, I gave instructions that they were to be
sent to my father. But before I despatched them to the bank, I made a
copy of them, and here that copy is.”
He passed over to his uncle the copy he had made of the letter that
afternoon, before (instead of sending it to the bank) he locked the
original safely away upstairs. It was an accurate copy, except that it
was dated March 31. Salvatore took it and read it; it tallied, but for
the date, with his recollection of it.
“But it is impossible!” he said. “For years I have known that letter.
When I gave it you it was dated March the first.”
“Do you imply that I altered it?” asked Colin. “Not a living eye has
seen that letter but mine. Give me any reason for altering it. Why
should I make myself nameless and illegitimate?”
Salvatore looked that in the face. The validity of it stared at him
unflinchingly.
“But I can’t believe it; there is some huge mistake,” said Salvatore.
“Often have I read that letter of Rosina’s. March the first was the date
of her marriage. I will swear to that; nothing shall shake my belief in
that.”
Colin shook his head in answer.
“What good will that do?” he said. “You gave the letter to me, and no
hand but mine has ever touched it. The letter must be produced some day,
not for many years, I hope and trust, but on my father’s death it must
come to light. How will your recollections stand in the face of that
evidence which all can see?”
Salvatore glanced round. They were alone with the fitful wind in the
pine.
“Destroy the letter, Collino,” he said. “Save your mother’s honour and
your own.”
Colin gave him one glance, soft and pitiful.
“Ah, you must not suggest that to me,” he said. “You must not add force
to the temptation I can only just resist. But where would my honour be
if I did that? What shred of it would be left me? How could I live a
lie like that?”
Colin leaned forward and put his hand on Salvatore’s arm.
“I have got to accept my illegitimacy,” he said. “And if you are sorry
for me, as I think you are, you can shew it best by accepting it too. It
would be infinitely painful to me when this revelation is made, as it
will have to be made on my father’s death, to have you attempting to
save my mother’s honour and my own, as you put it just now, by insisting
that this letter bore another date. I should never have a moment’s peace
if I thought a scene like that was ahead of me. In fact, I want to be
assured against that, and the only way I can think of to make that safe
is that when you get back to Naples to-morrow you should write me a
couple of lines, saying how you feel for me in this discovery that is
new to me. And then I want you to name the discovery, which is the date
of my mother’s marriage. I want you to accept that date, and give me
proof that you accept it.”
Colin made a gesture with his hand, as if cutting off that topic, and
instantly spoke again.
“With my cousin Vittoria growing up,” he said, “you must be put to
expenses which it is impossible for you to meet out of the pittance my
father gives you. He wronged you and your family most terribly, and I
must repair that wrong. When I get that letter of yours, Uncle
Salvatore, I will send you a cheque for £500.”
Colin gave a glance at his uncle, to make sure that there was no
faintest sign of dissent. There was none, and he went on:
“I see you understand me,” he said, “so let us go a step further. If my
brother Raymond dies before my father, I will make that five hundred
pounds an annuity to you, and I will destroy both the letter I ask you
to write now, and the letter of my mother’s about which we have been
talking. You will never be asked to say anything about either of them.
If on the other hand my father dies first, and if I make the marriage
which I expect to make, I shall have to use your letter and that letter
of my mother’s. You may be asked to swear to the genuineness of the
letter which I hope you will write me to-morrow, and to the recollection
of my mother’s letter which will tally with it. Have another glass of
this delicious French wine.”
He had no need to think what he was saying, or frame a specious case. He
spoke quite simply and directly as if by some inspiration, as if he was
an Æolian harp hung in the wind which whispered through the stone-pine.
“I don’t think there is need for any discussion,” he said, “though, of
course, if you like to ask me any question, I will consider whether I
shall answer it. But I don’t think there is need for any question, is
there? You might tell me, I fancy, straight off, whether you accept or
reject my proposal. If you reject it, perhaps I had better tell you that
it is exceedingly unlikely that my father will give you any further
assistance financially, for, as you know, I have a good deal of
influence with him.
“It would not pay you to refuse, would it? And as to threatening me with
making this conversation of ours public, with a view to getting money
out of me, I know your gentlemanly feelings would revolt against such an
idea. Besides it would be singularly unremunerative, for no one would
possibly believe you. Our conversation and my proposal would strike
anybody as incredible. And you are not perjuring yourself in any way;
you did send me a letter of my mother’s, and you will, I hope, write me
another letter to-morrow, saying that the story of my mother’s marriage
is very shocking, which is indeed true. So shall it be ‘yes’ or ‘no,’
Uncle Salvatore?”
Salvatore, superstitious, like most Southern Italians, to the core,
found himself making the sign of the cross below the table. Apart from
the obvious material advantage of accepting Colin’s offer, he felt that
some fierce compelling agency was backing Colin up. That dreadful little
incident of the bat had already upset him, and now in Colin’s blue gay
glance so earnestly fixed on him, he divined some manifestation of the
evil eye, which assuredly it were not wise to provoke into action. And
as if, in turn, Colin divined his thought, he spoke again:
“Better say ‘yes,’ Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “My friends lead more
enjoyable lives than my enemies. But whatever you answer, I want your
answer now.”
Perhaps through some strange trick of light played by the guttering
candles, it suddenly seemed to Salvatore that Colin’s eyes undeviatingly
fixed on his face, seemed in themselves luminous, as if a smouldering
light actually burned behind them.
“I accept,” he said quickly, “for Vittoria’s sake.”
Colin took up his glass.
“I thought I should move your paternal heart, dear Uncle Salvatore,” he
said. “I drink to our pleasant bargain.”