It was not till well on in the afternoon that the body was recovered.
All day the cold had been intense, and the ropes with the tackle for
this terrible fishing got stiff and frozen. But at sunset they found it;
the stream had carried it along below the ice towards the sluice.
Philip sat up with Colin in the long gallery when Violet and Lady
Yardley had gone to bed. He felt no sorrow, for he had not liked
Raymond, he had not even loved him with his fatherhood, for all that had
been given to Colin.... Often and often he had longed that Colin had
been the eldest, now there was none other than Colin; he would have all
that his father coveted for him. But though he felt no sorrow, he felt
remorse and pity; remorse that he had not liked this dead son of his,
pity that he had died young.
“I reproach myself, Colin, most bitterly,” he had been saying. “It was
hard to be kind to poor Raymond, he kept kindness at arm’s length. But I
ought to have tried more. I ought to have taken example from you: you
never wearied of kindness.”
Colin laid his hand on his father’s arm. All the evening he had been
keeping things together by a tact so supreme that it appeared pure
naturalness. He had talked quite freely about Raymond; recalled a
hundred little incidents in which Raymond was a mild hero; his shooting,
his prospect of playing football for Cambridge.... It was clear, too,
that the tragedy had made very little impression on his grandmother, and
so he had taken it for granted that they would play their rubber of
whist. Why not?
“You mustn’t think of it like that, father,” he said. “You did what you
could. You made it very jolly for him here. He liked coming home; he
was going to stop here the whole of the Christmas vacation, you know. If
he had not been enjoying it, he would not have done that.”
Colin revelled in the underlying meaning of his words ... how Raymond
had been enjoying it, hadn’t he?
Philip’s servant came into the room; he carried on a tray Raymond’s
watch and chain, and a pocket-book.
“They found these on his lordship’s body, my lord,” he said. “I thought
it best to bring them you.”
Philip took them, and looked absently at the watch which had stopped at
a few minutes to eleven.
“He must have fallen in almost immediately,” he said. “I had better look
at what is in his pocket-book. It may contain papers that must be
attended to.”
Not until that moment had Colin given another thought to what Raymond
had received that morning in the envelope from Bertram’s bank. Now in a
flash he conjectured that whatever it was (and he felt no doubt of what
it was) it would be found in that pocket-book which his father even then
was opening. How lucky it was that he had not told his father about that
attempt of Raymond’s! How splendid would appear his own magnanimity, his
own unfailing kindness to him! He could emphasise them even more by a
reluctance that his father should examine these remains. The water, it
is true, might have got in and soaked the paper, if it was there, into
illegibility, but the leather of the pocket-book seemed to have resisted
well: it might easily prove to contain a legible document.
He got up in an excitement which his father did not understand.
“Are you wise to do that, do you think?” he asked in a quick, anxious
voice. “There may be something there which will pain you.”
“All his papers must be gone through,” said his father. “Have you any
reason, Colin?”
“I can’t explain,” said Colin.
Papers were coming out of the pocket-book now, in no way perished by
the long immersion; they were damp but they held together, and Colin
glanced with a lynx’s eye at them as his father unfolded them. There
were a couple of bills, he could see, which Philip laid on one side, and
then he came to a half-sheet of foolscap.... He read a line or two,
looked at the bottom of it and saw his own name....
“What is this?” he said. “It’s signed by Raymond and witnessed by you
and me.”
“Don’t look at it, father,” said Colin, knowing that it was inevitable
that his father must read anything that was witnessed by himself. “Let
me take it and burn it.”
“No, I can’t do that,” said Philip. “What does this mean? What....”
“Ah! don’t read it, don’t read it!” said Colin in a voice of piteous
pleading.
“I must.”
“Then listen to me instead. I will tell you.”
Never had his father looked so old and haggard as then. He had seen
enough of what was written there to light horror in his eyes and blanch
his face to a deadly whiteness.
“Tell me then,” he said.
Colin sat down on the edge of his father’s chair.
“It’s a terrible story,” he said, “and I hoped you should never know it.
But it seems inevitable. And remember, father, as I tell you, that
Raymond is dead....”
His voice failed for a moment.
“That means forgiveness, doesn’t it?” he said. “Death is forgiveness;
you see what I mean. It’s--it’s you who have to teach me that; you will
see.”
He collected himself again.
“It was after I came back from Capri in the summer, and after Vi was
engaged to me,” he said, “that what is referred to there took place.
He--poor Raymond--always hated me. He thought I had your love, which
should have been his as well. And then I had Violet’s love, after she
had accepted him for her husband. There was a thought in that which
made it so bitter that--that it poisoned him. He got poisoned; you must
think of it like that. And the thought, Raymond’s poisoned thought, was
this: He knew that Violet had the passion for Stanier which you and I
have. Yet when she was face to face with the marriage to him, she gave
up Stanier. Father dear, it wasn’t my fault that I loved her, you didn’t
think it was when I told you out in Capri? And it wasn’t her fault when
she fell in love with me.”
“No, Colin,” he said. “Love is like that. Go on, my dear.”
Colin spoke with difficulty now.
“Then came a day,” he said, “when a lunatic escaped from that asylum at
Repstow. You had news of it one night, and told Raymond and me. He was a
homicidal fellow, and he got hold of one of your keeper’s guns. Next
morning Raymond went to shoot pigeons, and I bicycled on my motor to
play golf. And then--then, father, we must suppose that the devil
himself came to Raymond. It wasn’t Raymond who planned what Raymond
did.... He expected me to come back along the road from the lodge, and
he--he hid in the bushes at that sharp corner with his gun resting on
the wall, and his plan was to shoot me. It would have been at the
distance of a few yards only.”
Lord Yardley interrupted; his voice was hoarse and nearly inaudible.
“Wait a minute, Colin,” he said. “All this reminds me of something I
have heard, and yet only half heard.”
Colin nodded. “I know,” he said. “I’ll tell that presently.... There was
poor Raymond waiting for me to come round the corner. There was this
madman loose in the park somewhere, and if the--the plan had succeeded,
it would have been supposed that it was the madman who had killed me.
But an accident happened: my bicycle punctured, and I walked back for
the trudge along the ridge of the Old Park.”
Colin choked for a moment.
“I caught the glint of sun on a gun-barrel by the wall at that sharp
corner,” he said, “and I wondered who or what that could be. It could
not be the escaped madman, for they had told me at the lodge that he had
been caught; and then I remembered that Raymond was out shooting
pigeons, and I remembered that Raymond hated me. It occurred to me
definitely then, and I felt sick at the thought, that he was waiting for
me. And then, father, the mere instinct of self-preservation awoke. If
it was Raymond, if I was terribly right, I could not go on like that in
constant fear of my life.... I had to make myself safe.
“I stole down, taking cover behind the oaks, till I got close and then I
saw it was Raymond. I was white with rage, and I was sick at heart. I
had a revolver with me, for you or Vi--you, I think--had persuaded me to
take it out in case I met the wretched madman, and, father, I _had_ met
a wretched madman. I covered him with it, and then I spoke to him. I
told him that if he moved except as I ordered him, I would kill him. He
collapsed; every atom of fight was out of him, and he emptied his gun of
its cartridges and laid it down. And all the time there wasn’t a
cartridge at all in my revolver: I had taken them out and forgotten to
put them back. It was after he had collapsed that I found that out.”
A wan smile, as unlike to Colin’s genial heat of mirth as the moonlight
is to the noonday sun, shivered and trembled on his mouth and vanished
again, leaving it so serious, so tender.
“He confessed,” he said. “But I had to make myself safe. I told him he
must put that confession into writing and sign it, and you and I would
witness it. That was done. I told you--do you remember?--that Raymond
and I had a secret pact, and we wanted your witness to his signature.
That was it; and it is that you hold in your hand now. I sent it to my
bank, Bertram’s, again in self-defence, for I knew that he would not
dare to make any attempt on me, since, if it were successful, however
far from suspicion he seemed to stand, there would come into your hands
the confession that he had attempted to kill me. Look at the envelope,
father. In case of my death, you will read there, it was to be delivered
to you.”
Philip did not need to look.
“Go on, Colin,” he said. “How did it come into Raymond’s possession?”
“I can only conjecture that. But this morning, after poor Ray had gone
out to skate, I wanted a light for my cigarette, and I had no matches. I
drew out something from the waste-paper basket. It was an envelope
directed to Raymond, and on the back was the seal of the bank. His
handwriting, as you know, was exactly like mine, a spider scrawl you
used to call it. I think he must have written to the bank in my name,
asking that what I had deposited there was to be sent to him. He would
never be safe till he had got that. And--and, oh, father, I should never
have been safe when he had got it.”
There was a long silence; Colin’s head was bent on his father’s
shoulder; he lay there quivering, while in Philip’s face the grimness
grew. Presently Colin spoke again:
“You said you had heard, or half heard, some of this,” he said. “I will
remind you. One night at dinner, the night Ray got back from Cambridge,
I made the usual nonsensical fool of myself. I seemed to try to
recollect something funny that had happened on the morning when Ray went
out to shoot pigeons. ‘A man with a gun,’ I said, and you and Vi voted
that I was a bore. But I think Raymond knew why I said it, and went on
with it till you were all sick and tired of me. I made a joke of it, you
see; I could not talk of it to him. I could not be heavy and say, ‘I
forgive you; I wipe it out.’ That would have been horrible for him. The
only plan I could think of was to make a joke of it, hoping he would
understand. I think he did; I think he saw what I meant. But yet he
wanted to be safe. Oh, Lord, how I understand that! How anxious I was to
be safe and not to have to tell you. But I have had to. If you had
listened to me, father, you would have burned that paper. Then no one
would ever have known.” (Of course Colin remembered that Violet knew,
but he went on without a pause:)
“I’m all to pieces to-night,” he said. “I have horrible fears and all
sorts of dreadful things occur to me. That paper is safe nowhere,
father. It wasn’t even safe--poor Ray--at my bank. Supposing Vi, by some
appalling mischance, got to see it. It would poison Raymond’s memory for
her. He did love her, I am sure of that, and though she didn’t love him,
she thinks tenderly and compassionately of him. She is not safe while it
exists. Burn it, father. Just look at it once first, if you want to know
that I have spoken quiet, sober truth, which I did not want to speak, as
you know, and then burn it.”
Philip’s first instinct was to throw it straight into the smouldering
logs. He believed every word Colin had said, but there was justice to be
done to one who could not plead for himself. He was bound to see that
Raymond had acted the story that Colin had told him. Dry-eyed and grim,
he read it from first word to last, and then stood up.
“Here it is,” he said. “You have been scrupulously accurate. I should
like you to see me burn it.”
The paper was damp, and for a little while it steamed above the logs.
Then, with a flap, a flame broke from it. A little black ash clung to
the embers and grew red, then a faint, grey ash ascended and
pirouetted.... Philip’s stern eyes melted, and he turned to his only
son.
“And now I have got to forget,” he said.
That seemed the very word Colin was waiting for.
“That’s easy,” he said. “It’s easy for me, dear father, so it can’t be
difficult, for I’m an awful brute. We shall have to make a pact, you and
I. We must burn what we know out of our hearts, just as you have burned
the evidence of it. It doesn’t exist any more. It was some wretched
dream.”
“Oh, Colin!” said his father, and in those words was all the wonder of
love which cannot credit the beauty, the splendour, that it
contemplates.
* * * * *
Colin saw his father to his room, and then walked back down the great
corridor, quenching the lights as he went, for he had told the butler
that no one need sit up. He drew back the curtains of the window at the
head of the stairs as he passed and looked out on to the clearness of
the frosty midnight. Moonlight lay over the whiteness of the gardens and
terraces, but the yew hedge, black and unfrosted, seemed like some
funeral route to be followed to where the ice gleamed with a strange
vividness as if it were the skylight to some illuminated place below.
Then, letting the curtain fall again, he went softly past the head of
the lit passage where his room and Violet’s lay, to put out the light at
the far end of this corridor. In the last room to the left he knew
Raymond was lying, and he went in.
The last toilet had been finished and the body lay on its bed below a
sheet. Candles were burning, as if that which lay there dreaded the
darkness, and on the table by the bed was a great bowl of white hothouse
flowers. Colin had not seen Raymond since that white face looked at him
across the rim of broken ice; there had been disfigurement, he imagined,
and, full of curiosity, he turned back the sheet. There were little
scars on the nose and ears particularly, but nothing appalling, and he
looked long at Raymond’s face. The heavy eyelids were closed, the mouth
pouted sullenly; death had not changed him at all; he hardly looked
asleep, drowsy at the most. Not a ray of pity softened Colin’s smiling
face of triumph.
* * * * *
For a month after Raymond’s death, the four of them, representing three
generations of Staniers, remained quietly there. His name was mentioned
less and less among them, for, after Colin’s disclosure to his father,
Philip avoided all speech about him, and, as far as he could, all
thought. Horror came with the thought of him. The most his father could
do was to try to forget him. But for an accident in that matter of a
punctured tyre, Colin would now be lying where Raymond lay, and all
sunshine would have passed from his declining years. He was no more than
sixty-six, but he was old; Colin used to wonder at the swift advance of
old age, like some evening shadow, which lengthened so rapidly. But
beyond the shadow Philip’s sky was full of light. His desire had been
realised, though by tragic ways, and his death, neither dreaded nor
wished-for, would realise it.
There were, however, events in the future which he anticipated with
eagerness; the first was Colin’s coming of age next March. For
generations that festival had been one of high prestige in the family,
and in spite of the recency of Raymond’s death, he meant to celebrate it
with due splendour.
The other was even more intimately longed-for; early in July, Violet
would, if all were well, become a mother; and to see Colin’s son, to
know that the succession would continue, was the dearest hope of his
life. And these two expectations brought back some St. Martin’s summer
of the spirit to him; he began to look forward, as is the way of youth,
instead of dwelling in the past. The lengthening shadow stayed, it even
retreated.... But Colin had an important piece of business to effect
before his father’s death, and he was waiting, without impatience but
watchfully, for an opportunity to set out on it. As usual, he wanted the
suggestion which would give him this opportunity to come, not from
himself, but from others; he would seem then to do what he desired
because it was urged on him.
A week of dark, foggy weather towards the end of February favoured his
plans. Influenza was about, and he had a touch of it, in no way serious,
indeed possibly useful. After a couple of days in his room he reappeared
again, but with all the fire gone out of him. He was silent and
depressed, and saw that his father’s eyes watched him with anxiety.
“Still feeling rather down?” asked Philip one morning, when Colin pushed
an untasted plate away from him at breakfast.
Colin made a tragic face at the window. Nothing could be seen outside,
the fog was opaque and impenetrable.
“That’s not very encouraging, father,” he said. “Not convalescing
weather.”
He appeared to pull himself together. “But there’s nothing to worry
about,” he said. “I should feel depressed in this damp darkness whether
I had had the flue or not.”
“You want the sun,” said Philip.
“Ah, the sun! Is there one? Do show it me.”
Philip walked to the window; thin rain was leaking through the fog. It
certainly was not inspiriting.
“Well, why not go and see it for yourself?” he said. “There’s sun
somewhere. Go off to the Riviera for a fortnight with Violet.”
“Oh, that would be divine if we only could,” said Colin. “But--I daresay
it’s funny of me--I don’t want Vi to go through the sort of journey you
have at this time of year. The trains are crammed; a fellow I know had
to stand all the way from Paris to Marseilles. I shouldn’t like her to
do that. Besides we can’t both leave you.”
“Go alone then. Violet will understand.”
Colin sighed.
“I don’t think I feel much like travelling either,” he said. “I’ll stick
it out, father. I can go to bed again. I think that’s the most
comfortable place. Besides the Riviera is like a monkey-house just now.”
“Go to the villa at Capri then.”
“Ah, don’t talk of it,” said Colin, getting up. “Can’t I see the
stone-pine frying in the sunshine. And the freesias will be out, and the
wall-flowers. Nino, your old boatman’s son, wrote to me the other day.
He said the spring had come, and the vines were budding, and it was
already hot! Hot! I could have cried for envy. Don’t let’s talk of it.”
“But I will talk about it,” said Philip. “I’m master here yet....”
“Father, I don’t like that joke,” said Colin.
“Very well. We’ll leave it out and be serious. I shall talk to Violet,
too.”
“No, no, no!” said Colin without conviction. “Hullo, here is Vi. Please
don’t mention the name of that beloved island again or I shall cry.
Morning, Vi. You’re enough sunshine for anyone.”
Colin strolled out of the room so as to leave the others together, and
presently Philip passed through the long gallery, and was certainly
engaged in telephoning for a while. It was a trunk-call, apparently, for
there was an interval between the ringing up and the subsequent
conversation. All that day neither Philip nor Violet made the least
allusion to Capri, but there was certainly something in the air.... The
last post that night, arriving while they were at cards, brought a
packet for Lord Yardley, which he opened.
“There, that’s the way to treat obstinate fellows like you, Colin,” he
observed, and tossed over to him the book of tickets to Naples and back.
“Father and Violet, you’re brutes,” he said. “I give up.”
* * * * *
Colin was ever so easily persuaded by Mr. Cecil to spend a couple of
nights, if not more, in Naples, before he went across to the island, and
he had a youthful, pathetic tale to tell. They had had a terrible time
in England. No doubt Mr. Cecil had seen the notice of his brother’s
death--Mr. Cecil could imagine his father’s grief, and indeed his own
and Violet’s. Kind messages, by the way, from them both: they would none
of them forgive him, if he came to England this year and did not reserve
at least a week for them, either in London or at Stanier.... Then Colin
himself had caught influenza, and his father and wife had insisted on
his going south for a week or two and letting the sun soak into him. But
after that month of secluded mourning at Stanier, it was rather
heavenly--Colin looked like a seraph who had strayed into a sad world,
as he said this--to pass a couple of days in some sort of city where
there were many people, and all gay, some stir of life and distraction
from his own sorrowful thoughts.
“One has to buck up again some time,” said Colin, “and often I longed to
escape from Stanier and just go up to town and dine with some jolly
people, and go to a music-hall, and have supper somewhere, and forget it
all for a time. Shocking of me, I suppose.”
“No, no, I understand. I quite comprehend that, Colin,” said Cecil. “I
beg your pardon: I should say Lord Stanier.”
“Oh, don’t,” said Colin. “I hate the title. It was dear Raymond’s. You
never saw him, I think?”
Mr. Cecil had begun to feel like a family friend. He felt himself a sort
of uncle to this brilliant boy, so shadowed by woe, so eager to escape
out of the shadow. It was his mission, clearly, to aid in this cure,
physical and mental, of sunlight.
“No, never,” said he, “only you and your wife and your father. A
privilege!”
Colin drank the hospitable cocktail that stood at his elbow. His
definite plans were yet in the making, but he began to suspect that
alcohol in various forms would be connected with them. He had the
Stanier head as regards drink; it only seemed to collect and clarify his
wits, and he remembered that Mr. Cecil, on that night which he had spent
alone here, had quickly passed through joviality and perhaps want of
dignity, to bland somnolence.... He got up with an air of briskness and
mutual understanding.
“I’m not going to be a wet-blanket, Mr. Cecil,” he said. “I’ve told you
enough to make you see that I pine for enjoyment again. That little
restaurant where you and I went before--may we dine there again? I want
to see other people enjoying themselves, and I want the sun. Those are
my medicines; be a kind, good doctor to me.”
Mr. Cecil’s treatment, so he congratulated himself, seemed wonderfully
efficacious that evening. Colin cast all sad thoughts behind him, and
between one thing and another, and specially between one drink and
another, it was after twelve o’clock before they returned from their
dinner to Mr. Cecil’s flat again. Even then, a story was but half-told,
and Mr. Cecil drew his keys from his pocket to unlock a very private
drawer where there were photographs about which he now felt sure Colin
would be sympathetic.
“You’ll like them,” he giggled, as he produced these prints. “Help
yourself, Colin. I see they have put out some whisky for us.”
“Oh, Lord, how funny,” said Colin looking at what Mr. Cecil shewed him.
“But I can’t drink unless you do. Say when, Mr. Cecil.”
Mr. Cecil was looking at the next photograph, and Colin took advantage
of his preoccupation. The big bunch of keys by which this private, this
very private, drawer was opened still dangled from the lock.
“And this one,” said Mr. Cecil, applying himself to the liberal dose.
“But what a glorious creature,” said Colin. “May I help myself?”
Mr. Cecil had a confused idea that Colin had finished his first drink
and wanted another. So he finished his own and wanted another.
“Of course, my dear boy,” he said. “Just a night-cap, eh? A drop of
whisky at bed-time, I’ve noticed, makes one sleep all the sounder.”
Colin was on the apex of watchfulness. Photograph after photograph was
handed to him, but long before they came to the end of them the effects
of the night-cap were apparent in Mr. Cecil. The keys still hung from
the lock, and Colin, as he replaced the last of this unblushing series,
got up and stood between this table-drawer and his host.
“And that statuette there?” he said, pointing to the other side of the
room. “Surely we’ve seen a photograph of that?”
Mr. Cecil chuckled again; but the chuckle could hardly emerge from his
sleep-slack mouth.
“Ah, I’ll tell you about that to-morrow,” he said, looking round at it.
Colin, with one of his caressing, boyish movements, put his hand on Mr.
Cecil’s shoulder, and ever so imperceptibly drew him towards the door.
“I feel a different fellow altogether,” he said. “I shall sleep like a
top, and I have enjoyed myself. You ought to give up your consular work
and start a cure for depressed young men. You’d make a fortune.”
They were out in the passage by this time, and it was clear that the
night-cap had banished all thought of his keys from Mr. Cecil’s head. He
saw Colin to his room, lingered a moment to see that he had all he
wanted, and then went to his own.
“A charming young fellow,” he thought; performed a somnambulistic feat
of undressing, and fell into his bed.
Colin heard his door shut, and then in a moment turned off his light,
and, stealthily opening his own door, stood in the entry listening for
any sound. For a minute or two there were faint, muffled noises from his
host’s room, but soon all was still, except for the creaking of his own
shirt-front as he breathed. Then, re-entering his room, he stripped and
put on his pyjamas and soft felt slippers which would be noiseless on
the boards outside. Once more he stood there and waited, and now from
inside Mr. Cecil’s room came sounds rhythmical and reassuring. Enough
light dribbled in through the uncurtained windows to guide his steps
without fear of collision, and he glided into the room they had just
left and felt his way to the table where the keys still dangled. He
unloosed them, grasping them in the flap of his jacket, so that they
should not jingle as he moved, and went down the passage to the door of
the consular offices. The big key for the door was in the lock, and
turned noiselessly.
The archive-room lay to the right, and with the door into the house shut
behind him, he permitted himself the illumination of a match, and passed
through. The shutters were closed, and he lit a candle that stood on the
table for official sealing. There, in the wall, was the locked press
that he so well remembered, and the trial of half-a-dozen of the keys on
the bunch he carried gave him the one he looked for. The date labels
were on the back of the volumes, and he drew out that which comprised
the year he wanted. Quietly he turned over the leaves and found the page
which contained the contract between Rosina Viagi and Philip Lord
Stanier. Even in this one-candle-power light the erasure was visible to
the eye that looked for it. A paper-knife lay among the tools of writing
on the table, and folding the leaf back to its innermost margin he
severed it from the book and thrust it inside the cord of his trousers.
Bright-eyed and breathing quickly with excitement and success, he
replaced the volume and locked the press. He grasped the keys as before,
blew out the candle, quenching the smouldering wick in his fingers, and
went back, locking the door of the office behind him, into the room from
which he had fetched the keys. He replaced them in the drawer of
unblushing photographs and, pausing for a moment at his own door,
listened for the noise that had reassured him before. There it was,
resonant and rhythmical. He closed his door, turned up his light, and
drew the severed page from his trousers. He had been gone, so his watch
told him, not more than five minutes.
“Rosina Viagi to Philip Lord Stanier....” March 1, or March 31, mattered
no more. “I have but cancelled a forgery,” he thought to himself as he
pored over it. It was a pity to be obliged to destroy so ingenious a
work, which at one time gave him the mastership of Stanier, but
Raymond’s death had given it him more completely, and it no longer
served his end, but was only a danger. Yet should he destroy it, or....
His mind went back to the night that he and Violet had passed together
here. How supreme had been his wisdom over that! For supposing, on his
father’s death, that Violet threatened to contest his succession on the
information he had given her to induce her for certain to marry him,
what now would the register show but an excised leaf? In whose interest
had it been to remove that, except Violet’s, for with its disappearance
there vanished, as far as she knew, all record of the marriage. Had she
had an opportunity of doing so? Certainly, for had she not spent a night
here on the return from their honeymoon? Should she be so unwise as to
send her lawyer here to examine the register on the ground that it had
been tampered with, she would be faced with a tampering of an unexpected
kind. The leaf had gone; but how lucky that before its suspicious
disappearance, Colin had copied out the entry of the marriage and had it
certified as correct by the Consul himself. He had it safe, with its
date, March 1. That would be a surprise to poor Violet when she knew it,
and the finger of suspicion, wavering hitherto, would surely point in
one very definite direction.... As for the letter from Rosina to
Salvatore Viagi, of which she would profess knowledge on Colin’s
authority, what did she mean and where was the letter? Uncle Salvatore,
whom Colin would see to-morrow, would be found to know nothing about it.
About the destruction of this page.... Colin fingered his own smooth
throat as he considered that. Supposing Violet seriously and obstinately
threatened to contest the succession? And what if, when the page was
found to be missing, it was discovered in some locked and secret
receptacle of her own? That would be devilish funny.... Colin hoped, he
thought, that it would not come to that. He liked Violet, but she must
be good, she must be wise.
The click of an electric switch and the noise of a step outside sent his
heart thumping in his throat, and next moment he had thrust the page
into his despatch-box and turned the key on it. The step passed his
room, and was no longer audible, and with infinite precaution he turned
the handle, and holding the door just ajar, he listened. It had not gone
the whole length of the passage down to the entry to the consular
offices, and even while he stood there he heard the chink of keys. Then
the step was audible again, and the chink accompanied it. At that
comprehension came to him, confirmed next moment by the repeated click
of the electric switch and the soft closing of his host’s door.
“My luck holds,” thought Colin, and blessed the powers that so
wonderfully protected him. In another minute he was in bed, but even as
sleep rose softly about him, he woke himself with a laugh.
“That’s where I’ll put the leaf from the register,” he thought.
“Priceless! Absolutely priceless!”
It was no news to him when at breakfast next morning Mr. Cecil certified
the accuracy of his interpretation of the step.
“Amazingly careless I was last night,” he said. “I went straight to bed
after we had looked at those photographs, and fell asleep at once.”
“Night-cap,” said Colin. “I did exactly the same.”
“Well, my night-cap fell off,” said Mr. Cecil. “It fell off with a bang.
I hadn’t been to sleep more than a quarter of an hour when I woke with a
start.”
“Some noise?” asked Colin carelessly.
“No. I hadn’t heard anything, but my conscience awoke me, and I
remembered I had left my keys in the lock of that private drawer of
mine. I got out of bed in a fine hurry, for not only was that drawer
unlocked--that would never do, eh?--but on the bunch were keys of
cupboards and locked cases in the Consulate. But there the keys were
just where I had left them. I can’t think how I came to forget them when
I went to bed.”
Colin looked up with an irresistible gaiety of eye and mouth:
“I know,” he said. “You were so busy looking after your patient.... And
you gave me a lot of medicine, Dr. Cecil, wine, liqueurs, cocktails,
whiskies and sodas. I was as sleepy as an owl when I tumbled into bed.
How thirsty it makes one in the morning to be sleepy at night.”
Mr. Cecil broke into a chuckle of laughter.
“Precisely my experience,” he said. “Odd. Now can you amuse yourself
to-day till I’m free again?”
“Not so much as if you were with me,” said Colin. “But I must pay a duty
call on my uncle. I don’t say it will be amusing. Do you know him?
Salvatore Viagi.”
Mr. Cecil had not that happiness, and presently Colin went in search of
the mansion which Salvatore had once alluded to as the Palazzo Viagi.
Leaving nothing to chance that could be covered by design, he had
telegraphed from Rome yesterday to say he would make this visit, and
wanted a private interview with Salvatore. The Palazzo Viagi proved to
be a rather shabby flat in an inconspicuous street, but Salvatore
skipped from his chair with open arms to receive him, and assumed an
expression that was suitable to the late family bereavement and his joy
at seeing Colin.
“_Collino mio!_” he cried. “What a happy morning is this for your poor
uncle, yet, oh, what a terrible blow has fallen on us since last I saw
you! Dear friend, dear nephew, my heart bled for you when I saw the
news! So young, and with such brilliant prospects. Lamentable indeed.
Enough.”
He squeezed Colin’s hand and turned away for a moment to hide his
emotion at the death of one on whom he had never set eyes. He wore an
enormous black tie in token of his grief, but was otherwise as
troubadourial as ever.
“But we must put away sad thoughts,” he continued. “I am all on
tenter-hooks to know what brings you to my humble doors. Not further bad
news: no, not that? Your beloved father is well, I hope. Your beloved
wife also, and your revered grandmother. Yes? Put me out of my
suspense.”
The health of these was not so much an anxiety at this moment to
Salvatore as the desire to know that all was well with the very pleasant
financial assistance which Colin provided. It was easy, in fact, to
guess the real nature of his suspense, and consequently Colin found a
delicate pleasure in prolonging it a little.
“Yes, they’re all well,” he said. “My father bore the blow wonderfully
considering how devoted he was to Raymond. Violet, too, and my
grandmother. You can make your affectionate heart at ease about them
all.”
“Thank God! thank God!” said Salvatore. “I--I got your telegram. I have
made arrangements so that our privacy shall be uninterrupted. I have, in
fact, sent Vittoria and Cecilia to visit friends at Posilippo. Such
reproaches, such entreaties, when they heard their cousin Colin was
expected, but I was adamant.”
“And how are Vittoria and Cecilia?” asked Colin. The troubadour was
almost dancing with impatience.
“They are well, I am glad to say; they have the constitution of
ostriches, or whatever is healthiest in the animal kingdom. But time
presses, no doubt, with you, dear fellow; you will be in a hurry; duties
and pleasure no doubt claim you.”
“No, no,” said Colin. “I am quite at leisure for the day. I am staying
with Mr. Cecil our Consul. He is officially engaged all day, and all the
hours are at our disposal.... So at last I see the home of my mother’s
family. Was it here she lived, Uncle Salvatore?”
“No, in quite another street. My wretched penury drove me here. Even
with your bounty, dear Collino, I can scarcely make the two ends meet.”
Colin looked very grave.
“Indeed, I am very sorry to hear that,” he said.
“Ah! You have come to me with bad news,” exclaimed Salvatore, unable to
check himself any more. “Break it to me quickly. Vittoria....”
At last Colin had pity.
“Let’s come to business, Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “There’s no bad
news, at least if there is you will be making it for yourself. Now, do
you remember two letters of my mother which you once sent me? We had a
talk about them, and I want you to give me your account of them. Can you
describe them to me?”
Salvatore made a tragic gesture and covered his eyes with his hand. The
ludicrous creature made a farce of all he touched.
“They are graven on my heart,” he said. “Deep and bitterly are they
graven there. The first that I received, dated on the seventeenth of
March, told me of the birth of her twins, one named Raymond and
yourself. The second, dated March the thirty-first, announced her
marriage which had taken place that day with your father ...” and he
ground his teeth slightly.
Colin leaned forward to him.
“Uncle Salvatore you are a marvellous actor!” he said. “Why did you
never go on the stage? I can tell you why. You have no memory at all.”
Salvatore gave him a hunted kind of look. Was not his very existence
(and that of Vittoria and Cecilia) dependent on the accuracy of this
recollection?... Was Colin putting him to some sort of test to see if he
would stick to his impression of those letters.
“Dear fellow, those letters and those dates are engraved, as I have
previously assured you, on my heart. Alas! that it should be so....”
A sudden light dawned on him.
“You have come to tell me that I am wrong,” he said. “Is it indeed true
that my memory is at fault?”
“Absolutely with regard to the date of one of those letters,” said
Colin. “The date on that which announced my mother’s marriage was surely
March the first, Uncle Salvatore. You are right about the date of the
other.”
Colin suddenly broke into a shout of laughter. His uncle’s puckered brow
and his effort to recollect what he knew and what he had been told were
marvellous to behold. Presently he recovered himself.
“Seriously, Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “I want you to see if you cannot
recollect that the marriage letter was dated March the first. It is very
important that you should do that; it will be disastrous for you if you
don’t. I just want you to recollect clearly that I am right about it.
The letters will never be produced, for I have destroyed them both....
But surely when you sent me them you thought that it was as I say.
Probably you will never be called upon to swear to your belief, but just
possibly you may. It would be nice if you could recollect that; it would
remove the stain from the honour of your illustrious house, and, also,
parenthetically, from my poor shield.”
Colin paused a moment with legs crossed in an attitude of lazy ease; he
lay back in his low chair and scratched one ankle with the heel of his
shoe.
“Mosquitoes already!” he said, “what troublesome things there are in the
world! Mosquitoes you know, Uncle Salvatore, or want of money for
instance. If I were a scheming, inventive fellow, I should try to
arrange to give a pleasant annuity to mosquitoes on the condition of
their not biting me. If one bit me after that, I should withdraw my
annuity. What nonsense I am talking! It is getting into the sun and the
warmth and your delightful society that makes me foolish and cheerful.
Let us get back to what I was saying. I am sure you thought when you
gave me those dear letters that the date of your adored sister’s
marriage was the first of March. In all seriousness I advise you to
remember that it was so. That’s all; I believe we understand each other.
Vittoria’s future, you know, and all the rest of it. And on my father’s
death, I shall be a very rich man. But memory, what a priceless
possession is that! If you only had a good memory, Uncle Salvatore!...
Persuade me that you have a good memory. Reinstate, as far as you can,
the unblemished honour of the Viagis. Yes, that’s all.”
Colin got up and examined the odious objects that hung on the walls.
There was a picture framed in shells; there was a piece of needlework
framed in sea-weed; there was a chromo-lithograph of something sacred.
All was shabby and awful. A stench of vegetables and the miscellany
called _frutta di mare_ stole in through the windows from the barrows
outside this splendid Palazzo Viagi.
“But the record at the Consulate,” said Salvatore, with Italian
cautiousness. “You told me that though the date there appeared to be the
same as that which I certainly seem to recollect on the letter....”
Colin snapped himself round from an absent inspection of, no doubt,
Vittoria’s needlework.
“But what the deuce has that got to do with you, Uncle Salvatore?” he
said. “I want your recollection of the dates on the letters which we
have been speaking of and of nothing else at all. Do I not see
Vittoria’s handiwork in this beautiful frame of shells? How lucky she
has a set of clever fingers if her father has a bad memory! She will
have herself to support and him as well, will she not? And what do you
know of any register at the Consulate? The noble Viagis would not mix
themselves up with low folk like poor Mr. Cecil. In fact, he told me
that he had not the honour of your acquaintance. Do not give it him. Why
should you know Mr. Cecil? About that letter now....”
“It was certainly my impression,” began Salvatore.
Colin interrupted. “I don’t deal with your impressions,” he said. “Was
not the letter concerning my mother’s marriage dated the first of March?
That’s all; yes or no.”
Salvatore became the complete troubadour again, and his malachite studs
made him forget his black tie. Again he skipped from his chair with open
arms.
“I swear to it,” he said. “The restoration of my adored idol! It has
been a nightmare to me to think.... Ah, it was just that, a bad
dream.... Were not those letters imprinted on my heart?”
Colin evaded his embrace; he was like some monstrous goat in broadcloth.
“That’s all settled then,” he said. “You were only teasing me when you
pretended not to remember. You will be sure not to forget again, won’t
you? Forgetfulness is such a natural failing, but what dreadful
consequences may come of it. Let the thought of them be your nightmare
in the future, Uncle Salvatore. There’ll be pleasant realities instead
if you will only remember, and a pleasant reality is nicer than a bad
dream which comes true.... I’ll be going now, I think....”
“I cannot permit it,” exclaimed Salvatore. “Some wine, some biscuits!”
“Neither, thanks,” said Colin. “I had wine last night, though I can’t
remember the biscuits. Probably there were some. Vittoria and Cecilia!
What an anxiety removed with regard to their future!”
“And your movements, dear Collino?” exclaimed Salvatore. “You go to
Capri?”
Colin thought of the tawdry, bibulous evening that probably awaited him,
and his uncle’s question put a new idea into his head. His innate love
of wickedness made it desirable to him to hurt those who were fond of
him, if their affection could bring him no advantage. Uncle Salvatore,
at any rate, could do nothing more for him, and he was not sure that Mr.
Cecil could. Mr. Cecil had been a wonderful host last night; he had
fulfilled the utmost requirements of his guest in getting sleepy and
drunk, and was there any more use for Mr. Cecil? Drink and photographs
and leerings at the attractive maidens of Naples was a very stupid sort
of indulgence....
“Yes, to-morrow,” he said. “Perhaps even by the afternoon boat to-day.”
“But alone?” said Salvatore. “How gladly would I relieve your solitude.
I would bring Vittoria and Cecilia; how charming a family party.”
Colin felt some flamelike quiver of hatred spread through him. His
nerves vibrated with it; it reached to his toes and fingertips.
“A delightful suggestion,” he said, “for you and Vittoria and whatever
the other one’s name is. But I don’t want any of you, thank you. I
haven’t seen either of them, but I guess what they are like from you.
You’re like--you’re like a mixture of a troubadour and a mountebank, and
the man who cracks the whip at the horses in a circus, Uncle Salvatore.
You’re no good to me any more, but I can be awfully bad for you if you
lose your memory again. You know exactly what I want you to remember,
and you do remember it. You forgot it because I told you to forget it.
Now it has all come back to you, and how nice that is. But if you think
I am going to bore myself with you and Vittoria and the other, you make
a stupendous error. I’m very kind to you, you know; I’m your benefactor
to a considerable extent, so you mustn’t think me unkind when I utterly
refuse to saddle myself with your company. I butter your bread for you,
be content with that. Good-bye. Love to Vittoria!”
* * * * *
So that was done, and he strolled back along the sea-front towards the
Consulate. Capri, a little more solid only than a cloud, floated on the
horizon, and with that delightful goal so near, it was miserable to
picture another tiresome crapulous evening with the little red bounder.
Last night, stupid and wearisome though the hours had been, they had
yielded him the prize he sought for, whereas to-night there would be no
prize of any sort in view. Those interminable drinks, those stupid
photographs, why waste time and energy in this second-hand sort of
debauchery? He had been prepared, when he started from England, to spend
with Mr. Cecil as much time as was necessary in order to achieve what
was the main object of his expedition, but that was accomplished now. He
would be so much happier at the villa, where he was, after all, expected
to-day, than in seeing Mr. Cecil get excited and familiar and
photographic and intoxicated.
The whispering stone-pine, the vine-wreathed pergola, the piazza full of
dusk and youth, the steps of belated passengers on the pathway outside
the garden made sweeter music than the voice of an inebriated Consul
with its hints and giggles. Stout, middle-aged people, if there had to
be such in the world, should keep quiet and read their books, and leave
the mysteries and joys of youth to the young.... It was there, in that
cloud that floated on the horizon, that he had first realised himself
and the hand that led him, in the scent-haunted darkness and the
whispering of the night wind; that fed his soul with a nourishment that
Mr. Cecil’s cocktails and photographs were starvingly lacking in. He
would feast there to-night.
A promise to spend another night at the Consulate on his return from
Capri made good his desertion to-day, for, in point of fact, Mr. Cecil
felt considerably off-colour this morning, and rather misdoubted his
capacity for carrying off with any semblance of enjoyment a repetition
of last night. His reproaches and disappointment were clearly
complimentary rather than sincere, and the afternoon boat carried Colin
on it. Once he had made that journey with his father, once with Violet,
but could a wish have brought either of them to his side he would no
more have breathed it than have thrown himself off the boat. He did not
want to be jostled and encumbered by love, or hear its gibberish, and
with eager eyes, revelling in the sense of being alone with his errand
already marvellously accomplished, he watched the mainland recede and
the island draw nearer through the fading twilight.
Lights were springing up along the Marina, and presently there was Nino
alongside in his boat, ready to ferry him ashore. He, with his joyous
paganism, his serene indifference to good or evil, was far closer to
what Colin hungered for than either his father or Violet, but closer
yet, so Colin realised, was the hatred between himself and his own dead
brother....
And then presently there was the garden dusky and fragrant with the
odour of wallflowers and freesias, and the whispering of the warm breeze
from the sea, and the oblong of light from the open door to welcome him.
On the table just within there lay a telegram for him, and with some
vivid presentiment of what it contained, he opened it. His father had
died quite suddenly a few hours ago.
The whisper of the pine grew louder, and the breeze suddenly freshening,
swept in at the door thick with garden scents, with greeting, with
felicitations.