Dennis’s holidays sped in an orgie of delightful amusements. There was
the splendour of having a gun of his own, and being allowed to go out
with the keepers and his father to blaze at rabbits and the pigeons
among the trees in the Old Park. There was the splendour of a
motor-bicycle given him by his father, and that of dining downstairs
every night. But among all these experiences, there was none so
enchanting as his father’s companionship....
Colin had suffered a defeat. He knew it, and he understood why, and
learned a larger wisdom from it. He had been altogether too abrupt:
excited and possessed himself, he had expected Violet to leap at once,
in surrender and panic, over that huge gulf that separated them, when he
asked her to come to the chapel with him. He should have known better,
he told himself: it was demanding the impossible. The effect had been
that, in her vital recoil, she had accomplished a supreme feat in the
completion of her self-abandonment to the power of Love. She had made no
reservation; she had cast herself on the spread arms of its sustaining
force. It was quite consistent, too, that, the moment afterwards, when
he had told her that, if she refused to come, he would take Dennis with
him, she had said she would come. Love still upheld her and chose for
her, and its force, he knew, had drained him of his, so that he no
longer cared at that moment whether she came or not, or whether it was
worth while even to fetch Dennis.... He could have done that, but it
would have been a mere repetition of his original mistake. Dennis would
no more leap to the sacrament of evil than Violet. The worship of evil
demanded a dedication of the soul....
Dennis must be wooed like some shy maiden.... His boyish heart was
affianced to his mother, and its clinging tentacles, vigorous as young
shoots of ivy, must be ever so gently detached, so that the boy would
scarcely know that any detachment was going on, and laid, full of the
sap of spring, round his father’s encircling arm. Until that was done,
Dennis would turn but a puzzled and incurious ear to anything of
ultimate significance. Colin must abound in wholesome school-boy topics
and interests, until the ivy clung close to him, and leaned on him for
the support of its growth. Then, but not till then, could the education
and enlistment of his instincts begin. It would be rather a bore, Colin
thought: he would have to play golf with him, and go out to shoot the
silly pigeons, and take him up to London perhaps to see the
public-schools competition in racquets. Dennis evidently adored one of
the boys who was playing for Eton, his senior by some four years. Colin
wondered what sort of a fellow he was....
A dozen guests or so came down next afternoon to spend a week, and
before that week was over their numbers were redoubled; they settled on
Stanier like a flock of gay and chattering birds. They were at liberty
all day to amuse themselves as they liked, tennis and fishing and golf
were diversions enough for them all: Violet, admirable hostess as she
was, saw that they were occupied, and devoted herself to the dowagery
element among them, which liked motoring to points of interest or going
to see friends in country-houses in the neighbourhood. There was
breakfast and lunch at elastic hours and no full or formal assembly met
until dinner-time. Then there was the immemorial ritual of the house
reassembling itself: old Lady Yardley in alabaster silence and
immobility was the first to arrive in the long gallery, and the guests
collected, and when all were there the major-domo opened the door into
Colin’s room, and he joined them. Just that one old-fashioned pompous
moment was preserved: it was the Stanier use, like grace before meat. As
he entered everyone stood up: it was only Colin of course, who next
moment would be chattering like the rest of them or shouting with
laughter, but just then he was Lord Yardley.
But most of the day, Colin would have had Dennis with him, and often
the boy dressed early and spent this last half-hour before dinner with
his father. Very likely the two would be playing some game together when
the summons of the opening door came, but on the moment Colin would jump
up, leaving whatever fascinating pursuit was in progress, and become
somebody quite different.
“Now, behave yourself, Dennis, just for a minute,” he would say....
“We’ll go back to our game afterwards, if we can. My move....” That was
part of Dennis’s education; just for that minute it was a solemn
business to be Lord Yardley, the master of this magnificent inheritance,
with its regal splendours. There was no other house in England like it,
nor had there been for three centuries past, and it was his father’s
now, and would one day be his, and plenteousness would be in its palaces
so long as he into whose hands it was given remembered to whom he owed
it, and rendered affiance and allegiance.
So grace was said, and the diversions of the evening began. Dennis must
not be pompous, but at the back of his mind the knowledge of his
potential magnificence must consolidate itself. At dinner there was a
place for him by his father, for that was Colin’s order, and Dennis
could see the charm that had been poured out on him in their employments
together during the day now weave itself for these dazzling ladies. His
mother, he knew, had not wanted him to come down to dinner when the
house was full, but Colin had begged her, so it conveyed itself to his
mind, to allow him, and Dennis secretly felt it to have been rather
unkind of her to have tried to make him miss these wonderful hours. Of
course there was a threat, veiled and not understood by him, behind this
‘begging,’ something about Dennis having nothing to do, while they were
in at dinner, except say his prayers with Mr. Douglas and go to bed.
Dennis had not understood that, for he never said his prayers with Mr.
Douglas, but his mother consented to his coming down after that.
It was immensely amusing at dinner; there was his father, to begin,
with, whose gaiety was irresistible; Dennis had not known how
fascinating he could be over nothing at all. Whether he asked a silly
riddle, or told an absurd story, or just joined in the general chatter,
he cast the magic of mirth over everyone. And all the time old Lady
Yardley, silent and aware, would be watching him. Perhaps her neighbours
would attempt conversation with her, but they were swiftly defeated. Her
business was to look at Colin. Now and then he caught her eye and
shouted something encouraging to her, and he would say to her neighbour,
“Darling old Granny: I hope she isn’t a nuisance. But she would break
her heart if she didn’t come down to dinner. Look, we’re four
generations. She and Aunt Hester and Violet and I and Dennis.”
After dinner there were all sorts of amusements: one night there was
nothing but cards, with bridge-tables for those who cared about those
sedate joys, and old Lady Yardley’s whist-table in the corner by the
fire, which was its immemorial situation. Violet, Mr. Douglas and Aunt
Hester were immolated there, and for the rest there was a delightful
round game called poker. Once again his mother had suggested bed-time
for Dennis, but again had Colin ‘begged’ for him.
“Give him half an hour, darling,” he had said. “He’ll get bored with it
and won’t touch a card for the rest of his life. Nothing like early
associations.... Dennis, your mother says you may sit up for half an
hour, so you and I will be partners, and you shall have a small salary,
as long as I win.”
“But if you lose. Father?” suggested the cautious Dennis.
“Then I shall sell your new dress-clothes, which I haven’t pinched you
for yet, and buy a hurdy-gurdy, and collect coppers in St. James’s
Square, till a copper collects me for obstructing your mother’s
motor-car on the way to church. You shall be the monkey on the top of
it, and go to prison with me.”
“Rather. I say, will you tell me how it goes?”
“You’ll soon see. Where are the counters? Who wants money and how much?
Oh, I think unlimited, don’t you, Blanche? We’re all so prudent, and
we’re all so poor that we shan’t lose our heads. Let’s all have a
hundred pounds. That gives a false air of opulence.”
Lady Blanche Frampton counted her portion with avaricious fingers.
“I haven’t seen so much money for years,” she said. “Colin, you’ve given
me ten shillings short.”
“No, I haven’t, dear. Add it up again. Let’s have six at this table and
six at the other. Dennis doesn’t count. He’s going to bed in half an
hour, if he doesn’t sit up longer.”
“But I want Dennis,” said Lady Blanche. “I’ll give you a pound for
Dennis. He’d be a mascot, because you haven’t played before, have you,
Dennis? Or is poker part of a modern boy’s education?”
“Yes, of course it is,” said Colin. “The Head holds poker-classes for
the sixth form twice a week, and the House Master for those under
fourteen. Dennis, attend to me, ‘Ich Deal’ as the Prince of Wales said.
Now, there are pairs and two pairs, Dennis, and a flush, and a
straight.... Who’s in? Everybody? Then who’s shy, and has not put his
mite into the pool? Oh, I believe it’s the dealer.”
An hour later, Dennis, instead of being in bed, had been started by
Colin on his own, with a capital of ten pounds. Luck favoured him, and
presently it had doubled itself. Then luck went against him, and he lost
every farthing of his capital. Twenty pounds ... he was Crœsus, and next
moment penniless. The tragedy was quite appalling.
“Hullo, Dennis, cleaned out?” said Colin, observing this. “Poker’s not
so entertaining after all.”
Dennis stiffened his rather drooping neck.
“I’ve enjoyed it tremendously,” he said. “Rare good run for my money.”
He gave that boyish cackle.
“And it was yours all the time,” he said. “Sorry, Father, for losing
it.”
Colin had watched the tragedy and inwardly applauded. The boy was really
plucky about it, and Colin respected pluck. It might be a virtue, but it
was not connected with love.... How handsome he looked, with his flushed
face and eager eyes, and chin slightly in the air, to show he cared
nothing about the loss of that millionaire capital.
“Never mind,” he said. “Now, Dennis, would you rather go to bed with a
sovereign in your pocket, or shall I start you again? But if you lose it
this time, you won’t get a penny.”
“Oh Lord! I’ll go on,” said Dennis. “Ripping of you, Father.”
Another night there was a theatrical performance given by three actors
of a play that would certainly never see the London footlights, and once
again Dennis sat between his father and Blanche Frampton. The surface of
the first act scintillated with cynical witty nonsense, light as foam,
and the boy bubbled with laughter. But presently his laughter was not so
frequent. Something began to shew through the surface, and a soft
perpendicular wrinkle engraved itself between Dennis’s eyebrows, and he
puzzled out what seemed so clear and vastly entertaining to the rest of
the audience.... Yes, soon he thought he had got it, and his brow
cleared, but he didn’t laugh: it just did not happen to amuse him.
Colin’s attention had been about equally divided between the stage and
the boy. The play was to his mind: it drew with deft distinctness the
passion that exists only as a pastime and is a foe rather than a friend
of love. The author had expended inimitable wit in its delineation, but
before the act was over Colin was recognizing rather than appreciating
the corrupt and subtle handling, and his conscious attention was more
engaged with the effect it had on Dennis than with the entertainment he
himself derived from it. During these last few days he had grown very
proud of Dennis. There were his extraordinarily good looks to begin
with; and he enjoyed himself enormously, but never boisterously.
Everyone tried to spoil him, but no one succeeded: he was ever so
friendly and well at ease, and without a trace of self-consciousness.
His manners were excellent: there was no impression that he was behaving
himself, he was perfectly natural with a winning boyish simplicity.
Withal he was not grown-up and green-housed for his years, he was on the
contrary extremely young.
Colin put his arm round him as the act closed with a frank emergence of
polished indecency.
“Well, old boy, enjoying it?” he asked.
Dennis made one of those confiding boyish movements, fitting his
shoulder close under his father’s arm.
“I liked the beginning,” he said. “But--but they’re rather playing the
ass, aren’t they?”
Clearly he wasn’t enjoying it. Colin had distinctly hoped he would: that
was why he had let him come. It was disappointing, but it was no use
boring the boy with these intriguing animals: the last thing he wanted
to do was to bore him.
“Go away then,” he said, “if you don’t care about it. I thought it would
amuse you.”
“I expect I’m awfully thick,” said Dennis.
“You are, my dear: you’re thick and fat with that enormous dinner you
ate. Did you like your champagne?”
“Rather. I should think I did. May I have some to-morrow?”
“You must ask your mother.”
Dennis laughed.
“I’d much sooner ask you,” he said.
“You’re a wine-bibber. You’ll get gout and delirium tremens, and your
mother will say it’s my fault.... Well, what about this next act? Are
you going to stop or not?”
“I think I won’t,” said Dennis. “And will you come and say good night?”
“No: you’ll be asleep.”
“I shall keep awake, if you’re coming.”
“All right. Say good night to your mother, and tell her I’ve sent you to
bed.”
“But you haven’t,” said Dennis.
“No, but that’ll make her pleased with me.”
Dennis stole out, and Blanche gave a sigh of relief.
“That’s a good thing,” she said. “Dennis was as much out of place here,
as I should be playing football with him at Eton.”
“But you’d enjoy that,” said Colin. “You’d love being the one female in
a crowd of handsome boys.”
She laughed.
“Yes, my dear, we all detest competition as we get older. But why did
you let Dennis come at all? Either he’d wallow in it, which would be
extremely bad for him, or he’d be bored with it.”
“I wanted to see which he would do. It would have been very interesting
if he’d wallowed in it.”
“You’re no judge of character. You might have known he wouldn’t,” she
said.
“Oh, do you think that children of that age have character? Aren’t they
more like white sheets of paper, ready to be written on?”
“Colin, you’re an awful father! Fancy wanting this delicious, witty
piece of muck to be written in poor Dennis’s first chapter! I’m glad
he’s gone. I shall be able to enjoy it with a freer conscience. Oh,
observe your Aunt Hester! She looks as if she was receiving early
impressions, and finding them wonderfully agreeable. And, oh, look at
your much revered grandmother! Did you ever see anyone so monumental?”
There she sat in the centre of the room, in a great chair of
rose-coloured Genoese velvet. In this interval between the acts, the
cut-glass chandelier over her head had been lit, and the blaze strongly
illuminated that alabaster face, motionless, expressionless,
inscrutable. And yet what sculptor’s skill could have wrought a
countenance from which every sign of feeling or even of consciousness
was so expunged? In a face of stone some expression lurks in the
sightless eyes and the shadows at the corners of the mouth, and an
attentive observer will seem to see the expression change, and discover
some fresh hint of what the sculptor divined in his living model and
chiselled into the lifeless stone. But here there was no such elasticity
of interpretation possible. The closer you looked, the more you were
baffled. And yet there was no tranquillity there as on the face of the
dead. Lady Yardley’s face was immensely alive, but with _what_ was it
alive?
“Talk of white paper....” said Blanche.
Colin laughed.
“Not a bit of it. Covered with strange writing,” he said. “Look!”
He leaned forward.
“Granny dear,” he called.
She turned her head in the direction of his voice. Then came
recognition, for the blank eyes brightened and the folded lips uncurled.
There was Something there: it was as if Colin had caused characters
written in invisible ink to spring up over the blank surface. But they
faded again before they could be read, and presently she turned back and
looked up the curtain in front of the stage, where the footlights were
just rekindled.
“Gracious me: it’s covered with writing!” said Blanche. “But quite
unintelligible. What was it about?”
“It was about Stanier,” said Colin. “Stanier is the only thing she is
conscious of. You see I’m the incarnation of it to her. And I think
she’s beginning to see that Dennis will have something to do with it.
But I really don’t believe she knows Violet by sight.”
Supper succeeded the play, and it was not till after one o’clock that
Colin went upstairs. Dennis slept in a room close to his father’s: the
door was ajar and there was a light within. Colin went in, and there was
Dennis propped on pillows and sitting up in bed, but fast asleep. His
yellow hair was tumbled over his forehead, his mouth was a little open,
shewing the white rim of his lower teeth. Clearly he had sat up in bed
in order to keep awake for his father’s coming, but his precautions had
failed: sleep heavy and soft had come upon him.
Colin stood looking at him. There, indeed, in the unguardedness of
slumber was the white paper. He looked extraordinarily young as he
slept; his was the face of a child, still sexless, just a radiant piece
of youth, holy in its innocence. Would it not be possible, without
really waking him, to put into his soul now unprotected by the guard of
its conscious self some suggestion which would, like a fruitful seed,
lie buried there and take root and presently push some folded horn of
growth above the soil?
Colin turned out the light by the switch near the door, and began to
gather force into himself. It was not an effort of concentration at all,
rather it was a complete relaxation. He had only to lie open and
tranquil, like a dew-pond, and let it flow in from the air, from the
night. Drop by drop at first, and then in ampler streams it came
flooding in, making a tingling in his blood. More and more he must
collect, attracting it with images of evil--how well he knew the process
of it--till he was charged and brimming with it, and then he would
direct it and turn it on that boyish figure that sat up in bed, not with
an effort of will, but making himself, so to speak, just the channel
through which it flowed. Throughout he must not think of himself at all,
nor even of Dennis; he was no more than the reservoir which was storing
what Dennis should receive. He must direct and convey that without quite
waking the boy.
There was a hitch somewhere, an obstruction. At first he could not
conjecture the nature of it. Then he perceived what it was. He was not
surrendering himself thoroughly, some rebellious part of his soul, ever
so faintly, was protecting Dennis’s beautiful face and slack limbs, and
standing between the boy and the force that was seething about him. It
would not allow Colin to be the channel, it blocked the way. Was it
pride in the boy as he was? Was it pity? Was it something more powerful
yet? Whatever it was, it was there.
Colin clutched at it, to wrench it away. He felt it give, and he felt
the force foam by it towards Dennis’s bed.
* * * * *
There came from the bed some stir of movement, and a gasping breath.
Then Dennis’s voice, muffled and strangling, as if there was a hand on
his throat.
“No, no!” it cried. “No---- Ah....”
The boy’s breath came thick and fast.
“What is it? Who’s there?” he screamed. “Father ... Father....”
Colin reached up his hand for the switch and turned on the light. He did
not intend to do it; his hand moved as if by some reflex action outside
the power of his will, for there was something in that instinctive cry
to him which set at work some uncontrollable mechanism within him.
Dennis was half out of bed, his face bathed in perspiration, his eyes
wide and terrified. With a leap he sprang to Colin, never pausing to
think how it was that he came to be standing there in the dark, and
clung close to him.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, with his head buried on Colin’s shoulder.
“Thank the Lord! Oh, I say, I’ve been so frightened. Something came into
the room: I don’t know what it was, but something hellish. I say, it’s
not here now, is it?”
Colin patted his shoulder.
“Why, Dennis, what’s the matter?” he said. “You’ve had a nightmare,
that’s all. I came in here a minute ago, and found you asleep with your
light burning. I turned it out.”
Dennis wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, raising a troubled
face, out of which that sheer terror was beginning to fade.
“Was that all?” he said. “Are you sure there was nothing that came in?
O-o-oh, I thought I was going to die of fright.”
Strange was it that so few minutes ago it was through his father’s
presence and complicity that the terror had gripped Dennis by the
throat, and that now it was that same presence which so quickly restored
the boy’s confidence. With his father there he knew that nothing could
hurt him, not nightmare, nor phantom, nor the terrors that walk in
darkness.
“Get back into bed, old boy,” said Colin. “It’s late, you know. You must
go to sleep.”
Dennis unwound his clinging arms and hopped back into bed.
“Oh, do wait two minutes,” he said. “It’s ... it’s awfully rotten of me,
but I couldn’t stand to be alone in the dark again this moment. I never
had such a horrible nightmare.”
“Well, just two minutes,” said Colin. “And what was the nightmare?”
Dennis pulled his father down till he sat on the edge of the bed, and
held his hand.
“I don’t know what it was,” he said, with a shudder. “It felt like the
devil. But it won’t come back, will it, when I go to sleep again?”
“Of course it won’t. You’re not frightened now, are you?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. If you promise me it won’t come back,
I’m not frightened.”
“Yes, I promise you that,” said Colin.
Colin left a tranquil Dennis curled round in bed like a drowsy puppy
when he went to his room a few minutes later. But he was not so tranquil
himself. He had not imagined that any panic terror would seize the boy:
he had only meant to plant a seed, a suggestion, ever so quietly,
leaving it to mature.... Dennis would not come to love evil, so that,
when the time for his choice arrived, he would choose ‘wisely and well,’
if it approached him with these strangling assaults of nightmare. Why
had it happened like that, he wondered? No boy’s soul, at that age, was
of such virgin and stainless purity that the breath of evil suffocated
him.... More likely that it was his own divided purpose, his own
struggle against that obstacle which somehow he had himself set up
against the free flowing of the stream he had directed against Dennis.
Some force, he felt sure, had reached the sleeping boy from him; that he
had intended, and he had felt it flowing through him. But had it reached
him in some fierce torrent, raging at having been checked in its
passage, and settling on him with claws and teeth? Had it been like some
wild beast, which, having been shewn its lawful and desired prey, was
held back from it?
He must not approach Dennis again like that, nor seek to hold back the
power that he directed. It was no conscious scruple on his part which
had blocked the channel: the obstacle seemed to have made itself, and
planted itself there. It was of the same nature as the instinct that
made his hand search for the switch and turn up the light at Dennis’s
appealing cry. He hated the boy to be frightened, quite apart from the
fact that Dennis must of his own inclination welcome and cherish the
power that was ready to protect him and be his friend even as it had
been his father’s friend, and the friend of old Colin. It had come to
Dennis to-night as a foe of malignancy and terror: that would never
do....
Colin had slipped quickly out of his clothes, and now, before he got
into bed, he drew up the blind, and throwing the window wide leaned out
into the pregnant spring night. Thick and warm was the darkness, a floor
of cloud covered the sky, and there would be rain before morning, the
soft, fruitful, windless April rain which sent the sap flooding upwards
through stem and branch till it burst into leaf and bud. The young
growth needed not pelting showers and fierce suns; it prospered most in
these still warm nights.... And Dennis was like these tender, sappy
shoots: he must be left to grow quietly yet awhile, not drenched by
deluge and speared by violent suns: these would only blast and wither
him.... How panic-stricken the boy had been! That psychical onslaught
had from its very vehemence been to him a hostile intrusion, not the
advent of a protecting power. How instinctively in the shock and terror
of it he had called to his father!
There was an irony about that: instinct was a blind ignorant force,
else Dennis would have shuddered and fled from his father, not clung to
him with arms close pressed, and terrified face hidden on his shoulder.
And yet (here was the puzzling, the baffling thing), Dennis had been
perfectly right. At that cry of his in the dark, Colin had had no
thought but the answering instinct to comfort and reassure him. His hand
had shot out, independently of his purpose, to flash on the light, and
he had given the boy the protection he sought. He couldn’t stand that
wail of desolation.
What made him do that? Him, who had jeered and flouted Pamela to her
self-destruction without a pang of pity, but only with devilish glee,
who had let Nino die of fever with a shrug of his shoulders, who had
worshipped evil and drunk of the derided sacrament of love, dedicating
himself by rite and symbol, as by the daily conduct of his life, to his
soul’s master, how came there that disloyalty to his affiance? How was
it that there flourished in the garden of his soul that despicable weed?
He had not done it in mere careless pity, as he might have raised a
corner of netting to set free a bird that was caught there, nor had he
done it with the deliberate reasoning that justified it to his mind
afterwards, when he perceived that it would never do to have Dennis
regard this directed force as hostile and malignant. He had done it
because there was no question of choice: an inward compulsion, not to be
resisted, had made him. And thus Dennis’s instinct was right. He called
on him and he clung to him, exactly as he would have clung to his
mother, because he loved her, and was certain of her love. Colin had
given him, too, exactly what his mother would have given him.
There was no other conclusion, and instantly all Colin’s nature was in
revolt. It had been an impulse of love that had taken hold of him; he
had leaped to the protection of Dennis’s terror and of his innocence. He
had denied his allegiance, he had rooted evil out of his heart for that
moment, and ... and how curiously sweet it had been to have the boy in
his arms like that, and see the terror and trouble vanish from his eyes!
There was no woman in the world whom he would have suffered to take
Dennis’s place at that clinging moment, no promise of physical rapture
and consummation to follow that would have been so desirable as that
comforting of Dennis, that sitting by him on his bed for five minutes
while he tranquillized and composed himself.
He revolted and rebelled. It was not for this that he had grown proud of
Dennis, delighting in his physical beauty, and in the sunshine of his
boyish vigour, and in the grace and charm of him. He had enjoyed them
with ever increasing zest because of the thought that someday Dennis
would be one with him in his allegiance to the Lord of hate. He had seen
himself bringing him to the tribunal of his choice, and beholding him
choose as he himself, with never a moment of regret, had chosen. Who, in
all the world of men with their callow consciences, their bloodless
ideals, their cold duties, had prospered as he had done, or whose days
succeeded each other in such procession of satisfaction? All that must
be Dennis’s: it was his unique birthright to be allowed to choose all
that the lust of the eye and the pride of the flesh and the glory of the
world could bestow with never an ache of compunction, or a sigh of pity,
or a pulse of love.
Colin got up; the rain had begun to hiss on the shrubs below his window.
He must have been sitting here for more than an hour, for the chimes in
the church a couple of hundred yards away struck three. He had not been
thinking consciously or with purpose: it was as if pictures had been
spread out in front of him on which he let his eyes rest. Now, as he
went across to his bed, there came an intenser focussing. It was well
enough that Dennis should come to him as he would have gone to his
mother, drawn there by the bonds of his love. Colin had meant to oust
Violet from the boy’s heart, and take her place, and, if nothing more at
present, Dennis had given him a niche of his own there. He wanted
Dennis’s affection and confidence, for it was through them that he would
most surely lead him.... It was natural, too, that he himself should
delight in the boy’s magnificent youth and abounding charm. But it was
not well that his own heart should have gone out to Dennis like that.
Whence had come that spark of soft authentic fire? Was it from some
remote and infinite conflagration, the warmth and the light of which can
penetrate the uttermost darkness?
Colin turned out his light, and curled himself up in bed as he had seen
Dennis do.
“That would be a nightmare indeed,” he thought....
* * * * *
All that week and the two that followed Stanier outvied itself--for
indeed there was no other competitor--in the splendour of its
hospitalities. The great houses of England were now, for the most part,
shut up, and the owners, crippled by the ruinous taxation, only lived in
small corners of them, like picnicking tourists. Those who were
fortunate let them to Americans or Argentines, preferring, like sensible
folk, to live in comfort in smaller houses, rather than shiver in
palaces they could not afford to warm, and which, after all, were very
desolate abodes unless they were full of the life and merriment of
guests. They sold their pictures, for who could afford to look at a
Reynolds which hung unharvested on the walls, and not reap it into five
hundred a year? They sold tapestries and ivories and plate; whatever
could be alienated and turned into cash went to Christie’s, and, like
some monstrous insatiable reptile, America, gorged already with the gold
of Europe, spat a little of it out, and took some Majolica or some
Beauvais tapestry instead. Lucky indeed were the impoverished landowners
of England to find in their kinsmen across the Atlantic this delightful
illusion that living in a castle conveyed culture, and to have somebody
else’s family pictures on the walls quickened the ancestral sense, and
that to eat off Caroline plate was like a course of history lectures....
Of hospitality as a kindly and sociable virtue, Colin had no opinion at
all, that side of it did not concern him. Nor again did he in the least
care, in itself, for mere lavish ostentation: he would just as soon, as
far as personal inclination went, have had Stanier empty and serene in
its established security as swarming with guests, some of whom he
scarcely knew by sight, and for none of whom had he any real affection.
Nor did the presence of two Royal personages, who had come down for
three days directly after Easter, and found that they were able to
honour him and Violet by staying for a week, give him any thrill of
satisfaction. It was a matter of complete indifference to him whether
they came or not, or whether they were so much amused that they stopped
longer than they had intended. But what was to the point was that
Stanier should carry on its tradition for magnificent entertainment, for
that belonged to it, just as its legend did. It might be a deplorable
waste of money, yielding an infinitesimal dividend of pleasure on the
capital expended, but that could not be helped. Everything that could be
procured to give gorgeousness must be there; one night, the Russian
ballet danced on the enclosed terrace, and another there was a concert;
whatever the diversion was, it was a matter of course that his guests
should be thus amused for an hour or two, and it was Stanier that gave
the _cachet_ to the entertainment more than the artists.
When Stanier was _en fête_ it was not to be supposed that the guests
should be asked to spend the evening in polite or even impolite
conversation, or in making words out of words. They might do so if they
liked, if they wearied of that there was the concert or the ballet. But
every evening (for this was just as much a part of Stanier as the rest)
there was old Lady Yardley’s whist-table by the fire in the long
gallery, and whoever was there, she had her two rubbers of whist. This
was the Stanier use, and the presence of all the crowned heads in the
world would not be suffered to interfere with it. One night Violet and a
couple of guests played with her, another night Colin took his place
there. That happened to be on the night of the Russian ballet, and, as
the rubbers were unusually long, the other entertainment had to wait.
When they were over, Colin, without explanation, escorted one of his
Royal guests to the front row, and Violet the other. He rather enjoyed
that: it was an object-lesson for Dennis to shew him that at Stanier the
sovereignty of the house took precedence of anything and anyone else. He
did not call Dennis’s attention to it, but he let Dennis see. And on
Sunday, of course, Colin read the lessons at morning service.
All this week, too, and with what infinite address, the education of
Dennis went on. Even the mistake that Colin had fallen into, in thinking
that the direct force could be brought to bear upon him as he slept, in
such a way that he would not be startled at it, had turned out not so
badly, for that night Dennis had leaped to him to seek protection in
love, and certainly the boy was fonder of him than ever. He did not want
Dennis’s love in itself, any more than he had wanted Pamela’s or
Violet’s, but he saw now into what an admirable weapon for his own use
that love could be forged. Love should be the goad, fashioned by Dennis
himself, with which, when the time was ripe, Colin would drive him where
he would. Already Dennis would sooner please his father than please
himself: if his father gave him, by way of test, some rather irksome
duty of hospitality to perform towards his guests the boy would obey
him, not grudgingly at all but with that alacrity and joy which is
Love’s obedience.... But it was no use forcing him to that of which his
natural instincts warned him: “Let the young fruit ripen,” thought
Colin. In similar preparation, it was good that Dennis should see what
the prosperity of Stanier connoted, and what its lordship implied.
Dennis was by no means the sort of boy whom mere splendour dazzled, but
he must be impressed by the greatness of that to which this magnificence
was just a whim, a flick of the fingers to summon diversion for a
fortnight of Easter recess. Dennis was enjoying it vastly, and without
doubt it was dawning on him that some day he would be in his father’s
place, and if this sort of thing amused him, it was his to evoke, or if
he had a mind for anything else, that would be his also. On the last
night of the party, when all would disperse next morning, Colin meant to
call his attention to that, and, very carefully, to the contract on
which it depended. He knew now that Dennis would not leap to it, as he
himself, at that age, would have done, but, so he reflected, the
existence of Raymond, his elder twin, had even then schooled him in
hate. Dennis had had no such schooling and incentive....
But this was not all that that night had revealed. It had revealed in
himself a tenderness altogether alien to him. Even though he had been in
the act of loosing on the boy the force which was to befriend him, his
mere physical distress had sufficed to make him abandon that, and give
him the protection he sought. All this week that memory had lain in his
mind, and, below the occupations of the busy days, he had impatiently
considered it, cavilling at his own faint-heartedness. Probably,
certainly indeed, he had done wisely: the power with which he had sought
to surround Dennis must come to him, not in this nightmare guise, but as
a friendly and protecting influence; and to have continued then
directing it on him would have been a great mistake. It might even have
done some mental or spiritual hurt to the boy, for his whole nature had
been up in arms to resist it, and who knew what deadly struggle might
not have resulted? For the force which he had turned on him was no
pretty toy-like drawing-room mesmerism, you could not play with it and
try psychical experiments. It was a thing deadly and potent. Even when
it was not resisted, but welcomed and embraced, its passion could
manifest itself in disturbing and terrible ways, and Colin shuddered to
think of Dennis in the grip of it in such manner as he had before now
seen Vincenzo possessed when he served at the rites in the chapel. And
Dennis had not yielded to it, he had struggled and fought.... But that,
and Colin knew it, had not been the primary reason for his abandoning
that midnight assault. The primary and instinctive reason had been that
Dennis called to him with the insistent and compelling voice of love....
Strange, indeed, that he should have hearkened to it, for the voice of
love was most unmusical in his ears, and made not melody but
exasperating discord. Just so had it been with him when he came
unperceived, on the day of his return home, into the gallery, and found
Dennis and his mother there, happy and content for no reason except that
they were together. At that moment (how quick Violet had been to notice
it!) he had envied them, though he knew precisely what the ground of
their happiness was.
Love and he had nothing to do with each other. He did not desire to have
any commerce with love, either in giving or receiving. He had chosen,
and the reward of his choice was that he had everything else, as long as
his life lasted, but that. He had always hated love, and never would he
consciously or deliberately make terms with it. But it was as if some
shadowy semblance of it in the shape of Dennis had come silently and
burglariously up to his well-guarded house of hate, and opened the sash
of some unbolted window. He wanted Dennis’s love, because, as he had
seen, that would be a useful weapon, but Dennis must not gain entrance
to him....
He must make his house more secure. He had been careless, not seeing to
its safety. Not once since he had returned home had he been to the
chapel or strengthened himself in his allegiance by sign or symbol. He
remembered the glee with which he had built it, the glee with which he
had found the book of wondrous blasphemies, and knew that the edge and
keenness of his devotion was blunted. Was it this remissness which had
allowed the wraith of Dennis to slip open the window-sash, or was it
that this soft assault on his heart had caused the remissness? Of course
during these last two weeks it had been almost impossible to attend
these rites, but, as soon as the house was empty, he would make amends,
with the intention of the abhorrence of love in his heart. At midnight
now, the hour at which chiefly he used to love to attend the impious
celebration, some entertainment was in progress, and he could not leave
his guests, and, unlocking the door in his private study which
communicated with the corridor, move along it past those infamous
pictures with which it was decorated to the chapel. The altar with its
black cloth would be blazing with lights, and presently Father Douglas
robed only in that magnificent Italian cope would enter from his lodging
followed by his server, tossing fresh clouds of incense into the air.
He must resist this stealthy menace of winged love. He must spread nets
and lay traps for it, and, when it lay unresisting in his hand, squeeze
it with strangling fingers till it ceased to flutter.