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