A fancy-dress ball had been arranged for the last night. There were
already some forty guests in the house, who, as Colin said, would form
“a sort of nucleus,” and a special train was coming down from town
arriving at ten and going back at three in the morning, and invitations
had been sent to the neighbourhood for twenty miles round, with the hope
that ladies and gentlemen would be Elizabethan, but begging the ladies
not to be Elizabeth. Dozens of Elizabeths, he thought, of all shapes and
sizes with crumpled ruffs and jewels off crackers were bewildering, and
you collided with the Queen with improbable frequency. Instead Violet
was to be the sole Elizabeth present, and Dennis was to appear as her
young Colin in attendance.
Colin came into the wife’s room in a wonderfully good humour that
morning to talk over the manner of their appearance. For several days he
had scarcely had a word with her.
“I think we won’t stand by the door as host and hostess,” he said, “and
shake hands. One has to say to everyone how wonderful and charming they
look, and guess who they are. And then they have to say how wonderful
and charming we look and guess who we are and the entrance gets
blocked.”
“Oh, isn’t it rather rude not to receive guests?” she said.
“Not a bit. It’s perfectly proper swank. In fact, I don’t want you and
Dennis to appear till the special has arrived and everyone is in the
ballroom. The Royals will be on their dais at the end of the room, and
the rest shall be marshalled round the walls, and you and Dennis and I
will march up the whole length of the room. And then we go straight
into the Royal Quadrille. I’ve told them.”
“Very well,” said she. “But what about you? I don’t even know who you’re
to be yet. You’ve always represented old Colin, at fancy-dress here, but
you can’t if Dennis does.”
He laughed.
“Admirably reasoned,” he said. “Too many Colins would spoil the broth,
like too many Queens. But I’m going to complete the group just a little
way behind Dennis. Merely Mephistopheles: but he had something to do
with it. Strictly Elizabethan too, though belonging to other ages as
well.”
“Oh, Colin, that’s rather grim,” she said. “Why produce the family
skeleton?”
“Well, it’s the skeleton on which the family has grown fat. Of course
everybody thinks the legend is mediæval bunkum, but they’ll play up.
Dennis will be an adorable Colin: I made him try his things on just now,
and if the real one looked as enchanting as he I don’t wonder the Queen
lost her aged heart. And as you’ve lost yours to Dennis, we shall have a
real parallel. As for you, darling, you’ll be an anachronism but that
can’t be helped. Elizabeth was an ugly old woman at the Colin epoch, and
we can’t call you that exactly.”
She was silent a moment.
“I wonder if you’ll be vexed at what I want to say,” she said.
“How can I tell?” he said. “I don’t suppose I shall care much.”
“It’s this then. Please don’t get yourself up like Mephistopheles. It’s
for Dennis’s sake I ask it. I want him to be among those who think the
legend--what did you call it?--mediæval bunkum. Colin, do leave him to
think that.”
He sat there looking at her with that brilliant sunny smile, that
alertness of perpetual youth.
“Well, a fancy-dress ball is mediæval bunkum, isn’t it?” he said.
“But you aren’t,” said she. “All you do, all you are, has a tremendous
reality for Dennis. Everything you do is perfect in his eyes.”
“That’s good. That’s the right filial attitude. Are you as right
conjugally, darling? Besides, what do you believe about the legend?
Shouldn’t a child learn its faith at its mother’s knee? The legend is
fairly real to you, isn’t it?”
There was the spirit that mocked. But when Dennis was concerned she was
not afraid of him.
“There are many things I believe which I don’t want Dennis to believe,”
she said.
He laughed.
“What an easy riddle!” he said. “You don’t want Dennis to believe that
his father is an unmitigated devil. That’s the answer, so don’t trouble
to say it isn’t. And as I believe in the legend too, it would be nice to
have our only boy one with us. That’s the root of domestic bliss.”
“I can’t argue with you,” she said. “You mock at whatever I say.”
“But who asked you to argue?” said Colin. “I’m sure I didn’t. But as
we’re on the subject I may as well say that my whole object in making a
black guy of myself is to help Dennis to realize the legend. He has
heard it, as everybody else has, but it’s nothing to him. Though a
fancy-dress ball is only a sort of play, a play makes a thing more real
to you. Dennis will be Colin in the play, and he’ll look round and see
his dear Mephistopheles at his elbow.”
Colin paused to light a cigarette, and spoke with gathering impatience.
“He’s got to believe it sometime,” he said. “We all begin, you and I
did, by thinking it just a picturesque old story, but somehow it grows
into us, or we into it.”
“It’s the curse of the house,” said Violet suddenly. “And it’s believing
in it that makes it real. Oh, Colin, let Dennis grow up without it
becoming real to him! Then it will stop, it and all the horror and the
misery it brings. You’re quite right: it grows into us. Don’t let it
grow into him.”
He got up.
“Do you know, I really haven’t got time for an ethical discussion just
now,” he said. “And why should I disinherit Dennis? That’s what it comes
to. You may call the legend the curse of the house if you like, but it’s
been big with blessings. You’ve got no sense of gratitude, darling. No
family pride.”
“Pride!” said she.
“Yes, I said ‘pride,’ didn’t I? I wish you wouldn’t make yourself into a
damned echo, and force me to be cross. We won’t discuss Dennis’s future
any more: we’ll confine ourselves to the present. You and Dennis and I
will come in as I have indicated. I want you to wear every jewel that
you can cram on. Chiefly pearls, I think, but also that sort of large
red plaster of rubies. Stomacher, isn’t it? But you mustn’t wear the
Stanier sapphire. I want that for Dennis. You might give it me now, if
you’ll open your safe.”
“But that’s all wrong,” she said. “The Queen never gave that to Colin
till just before her death.”
“My dear, you needn’t tell me that. I suppose I know the history of
Colin as well as you. But I want Dennis to wear it. I want it; that’s
all.”
Colin had recovered his temper: he was all serenity and sun again.
“There’s something queer about the stone,” he said. “It never looks well
on you: it loses half its light, whereas on me it blazes like a blue arc
lamp. Everyone round looks blue, as in the Grotto at Capri. And I want
to see what effect he has on it....”
Who could be as devilish as Colin, she found herself thinking, but who
had such charm? One moment he would sneer and mock, the next he had
dropped all that and without intention and certainly without effort he
was like a boy again, making plans and having secrets with her. Often
during this last week or two that enchanting side of him had popped out
unawares. One moment his mouth would be full of veiled insults and
scarcely veiled hostilities, the next, as now, he would be eager and
pleasant.... More particularly had she observed this when he was with
Dennis; though she knew that in his heart he had contemplated the boy’s
initiation into all that was evil, she could not believe that it was not
from his heart that, every now and then, there came up the impulse that
made that soft light in his eye, that tenderness on his mouth. Could it
be possible that he was getting to love Dennis? After all there had been
that moment’s jealousy (of that she made no doubt) when he had seen
Dennis and her together. Was that the grain of mustard-seed? Poor little
seed, if it was: it would find poisoned soil and corrosive moisture for
its growth.
“I’ll get you the stone,” she said. “It’s in the safe in my bedroom
wall.”
Colin perched himself on the arm of the sofa where she sat.
“Oh, there’s no hurry,” he said. “Let’s have five minutes’ chat. I
haven’t seen you all this week, and I haven’t told you what an
incomparable hostess you’ve been. I always recognize merit, Vi, and
you’ve been most meritorious. The sapphire now: there is something queer
about that stone. Pearls always shine with you like moons, but the
sapphire gets as stale as a piece of mildew. It’s because it was old
Colin’s, I believe. His getting it seems to me his most remarkable
achievement. He can never have been more hugely inspired than when he
made that stingy old woman give it him. All else that she had given him,
his Garter, his estates, cost her nothing. But fancy getting her to part
with something that was hers, and that was worth a ransom. And you can’t
look at it without seeing there’s something in it you don’t understand.”
She laughed.
“You speak as if there was something magical about it,” she said.
“Well, why shouldn’t there be? I’m not such a shallow ass as not to
believe in the supernatural. And the whole point of the supernatural is
that you can’t understand it. If you could understand it, it wouldn’t be
supernatural.”
Suddenly he appeared to forget about the stone altogether.
“I want to ask you something,” he said. “Did Dennis by any chance tell
you that about a week ago he had the most awful nightmare?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me exactly what he said.”
Violet thought a moment.
“He had gone up to bed, he told me, and, as he expected you to come and
say good night to him, he didn’t put his light out, but propped himself
up with pillows to keep awake. He thinks that he must have gone to
sleep, though he didn’t know that he had. Then a great blackness, he
said, came into the room and tried to force its way into him. He
struggled and struggled, and called out to you. And then he found he
was awake and you were there, and comforted him. He said you were
angelic to him.”
Colin turned quickly to her.
“What do you make of it?” he said.
“I make of it what Dennis made of it. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”
She looked at him, and saw there was something more. The notion somehow
branded itself into her mind like the touch of a hot iron. There was the
conviction, incredible and terrifying, that Colin had something more to
do with that visitation than to bring comfort. But what?
“Tell me your side of it,” she said.
Colin’s face changed: the impatience and mockery came back.
“Good Lord, how can I have a side?” he said. “Wasn’t I right to comfort
him? Or should I have scolded him for being frightened by a dream? Has
he forgotten about it, do you think? I mean, does he accept it just as a
nightmare and me as an angel?”
“I’m not certain. He was most frightfully scared. But it will wear off
if he doesn’t have another nightmare. You remain an angel anyhow: that
doesn’t wear off.”
Still that irrational conviction of some complicity of his--how insane
it appeared when she faced it--beset her.
“Colin, he mustn’t have another nightmare,” she said. “Terror is so
frightfully bad for a child.”
She saw Colin’s fingers beginning to twitch. When he was getting angry
or impatient they made the strangest little movements as if some
electric current was jerking them.
“I’m responsible for Dennis’s dreams then, am I?” he said. “Why else did
you tell me he mustn’t have any more nightmares? What’s the meaning of
that? Come, out with it; you did mean something.”
She could not state what after all was the most fantastical notion. It
would not bear examination: it was just as much a nightmare as Dennis’s.
“I mean that you have the most extraordinary control over Dennis,” she
said, “his whole soul is devoted to you. Waking or sleeping he would
obey you. You know that as well as I do.”
Surely Colin had never been in so strange a weather-cock of a humour as
he was this morning. At one moment he was ready to fly out at her with
unbridled irritation, the next he was all sweetness and amiability. He
put his arm round her.
“Vi, you and I are like Norns,” he said. “Aren’t they Norns who, in some
dreary Wagner opera, sit in the dusk, and toss the shuttles of destiny
to and fro? Dennis is flying from hand to hand between you and me. You
catch him and weave, and then you toss him back to me, and I weave.
There ought to be three Norns, though, oughtn’t there? Who is the third?
I don’t believe we shall agree on the third.”
All her unfathomable distrust of him came flooding back on her. His
purring content seemed to her like that of some lithe savage beast,
basking in the sun, who next minute might deal some shattering
lightning-blow with unsheathed claws. Who could trust him? Who had ever
trusted him that did not repent (unless already it was too late to
repent) of such a madness? And yet she believed that he was getting fond
of Dennis, with a quality of affection not proud only and paternal, but
personal. She made up her mind to stake on it.
“I don’t think we should disagree,” she said. “We both love him----”
He pulled his arm away from her, and, looking at him, she fancied she
saw for a moment behind the brightness of his eye that dull red glow,
not human, which you can see in the eye of a dog. One glimpse she got
and no more, for he rose.
“I think we’ve bleated long enough on the _vox humana_ stop,” he said.
“Or shall we sing a short hymn before you give me the sapphire?”
She went into the bedroom next door and opened the safe that was built
into the wall, and returned to him with the shagreen case. He took it
from her without a word and left her.
* * * * *
The special train of saloon carriages, that brought the guests from
London and ran without a stop into Rye, was on time, and by half-past
ten the last of them had passed into the ballroom. The request that they
should be as Elizabethan as possible was faithfully carried out; never
was there such a one-period galaxy. No house but Stanier could have
induced people to pour out into the country for a few hours, but how
they flocked to Stanier! For the last fortnight this Easter fête had
been the talk of the town; and no-one of the amused and amusing world,
who was so fortunate as to be bidden to the final and crowning
splendour, could afford to miss it, and no-one who was bidden could
afford to fall below the standard of its magnificence. Glittering and
bravely attired was the throng, a joy to behold in these dingy days when
never were women so garish and slovenly, and when men all wear the same
ill-inspired livery. Every great jewel-chest in London that night must
have been void of its finest treasures, for here was their gorgeous
rendezvous.
No host or hostess was there to receive the guests; they flowed in,
jewelled and kaleidoscopic, and wondered where Lady Yardley was and
where Colin was, and collected and dispersed again in shimmering groups
over the floor. Some of those staying in the house appeared to know
something about their absence, but could give no further information
beyond that the hosts would be sure to be here presently and, acting as
marshals and masters of ceremony, gradually began clearing the centre of
the room. Back and back towards the walls they enticed the crowd, and
soon it was seen that this was some intentional manœuvre to secure an
empty floor. In a gallery above the door into the hall the band was
stationed still silent; on a dais at the other end were seated the two
Royal guests who had been here all the week, with others who had come
down to-night. Then, at some signal given from the far end of the room,
a dozen chandeliers, hitherto unlit, blazed out, and the hosts arrived.
Violet advanced some few yards into the room, with her retinue close
behind her. She was dressed in a gown of dark blue velvet, thickly
embroidered in gold with the Tudor rose. The tall white collar of her
ruff was edged with diamonds, and round her neck were the eight full
rows of great pearls, the first three close round her throat, and five
others, each longer than the last, falling in loops over her bosom, the
fifth being clipped to the stomacher of large rubies, and round her
waist was a girdle of the same stones. On her head she wore a net of
diamonds that pressed closely down on her golden hair, so that it rose
in soft resilient cushions through the meshes of it. Just behind her
came Dennis, in trunk of white velvet and white silk hose. Over his
shoulders, leaving his arms free, was a short cloak of dark red velvet;
this was buckled at the neck with the great sapphire, and on his head
was a white cap with an aigrette of diamonds. In his low-heeled rosetted
shoes he was a shade shorter than his mother, and his face, flushed with
excitement, was grave with the desire to acquit himself worthily. A pace
behind him came Colin, a foil to the sparkle and splendour of the
others, for from head to foot, trunk and hose and cloak, he was in
black. Black too was his cap, with one red feather in it. He was a
little the taller of the three, and, standing just behind Dennis’s white
gleam, he seemed to encompass the boy with the protection of his
blackness, and round the room as they stood there ran whispers of “The
Legend: The Legend.” But people looked not so much at the jewels and the
clothes and the gorgeous colouring, but at those three faces, all cast
in one peerless mould, gold haired and blue eyed, the difference of age
and sex quite overcome by the amazing likeness between the three of
them. Here indeed was Stanier itself: the splendour of its jewels, its
wealth, its palaces, its story shrunk into insignificance in the marvel
of its incarnations.
They paused there a moment, and then Violet gave three deep curtsies,
the first towards the dais in front, and then to right and left, to the
rows of guests marshalled by the walls. There was Stanier in the person
of its hostess saluting its visitors; Dennis and Colin stood quite still
meantime, for they were but in attendance. As she moved forward again,
the full blare of the band shattered the silence, and the welcome was
over.
With the departure of the special train back to town the ball came to an
end, and no attempt was made to carry it on to a dwindling and fatigued
conclusion. It ended, as it had begun and continued, in a blaze, and
after it there was no flickering of expiring flames and fading of its
glow. Last of all Colin and Dennis came upstairs together.
Colin had been watching the boy all night. Dennis had suffered a short
experience of high self-consciousness when he entered the crowded
expectant room, but after that it had vanished altogether, and he had
merely enjoyed himself immensely, without being in the least aware who
he was. The radiance of his youth shone round him like a fire, no-one
could look at him without a smile of pleasure that the world held such
perfection of boyhood. All that Colin saw, and again and again his heart
leaped to think that this was the son of his loins: no sculptor could
have made so fair an image, no painter have found on his palette such
colouring. Four generations of them were there that night, old Lady
Yardley sat like some white alabaster statue of deathless age on the
dais, then came Aunt Hester with a wreath round her head (Perdita or
Ophelia, he supposed), outrageously flirting with every man she could
get hold of, and succeeding, to do her justice, in getting hold of an
incredible number, then came himself and Violet, and last the flower of
them all.... The guests had had no greeting on their arrival, but the
three stood at the ballroom door as they passed out, and it was with
Dennis that they lingered. Frank and friendly but a little shy again at
this multiplicity of smiles and greetings for himself, he stood there,
erect and boyish, the bonniest figure in all that assemblage of beauty.
He tucked his hand into his father’s arm as they went up the broad
stairs from the empty hall.
“Oh, Father, wasn’t it fun?” he said. “I wish we could have a
fancy-dress ball every night. When shall we have another?”
“To-morrow, if we have one every night,” said Colin.
Dennis cackled with laughter.
“It’ll only be you and Mother and great-granny and me, won’t it,
to-morrow? I say, are you coming to talk to me while I undress?”
“And after that may I go to bed?” said Colin.
“Oh, if you like I’ll come and talk to you, while you go to bed,” said
he. “I’m not an atom tired.”
Colin looked at that radiant face, still fresh as morning, and for the
first time he consciously noticed the sapphire that buckled his cloak.
That gave the measure of his absorption in Dennis himself, for he had
given him the stone to wear with a definite object. And now he saw how
stale and unluminous it was. No blaze of light burned within it, its
brilliance was dim compared to what it could be: it was splendid still,
but no more than a shadow of its real self. He knew his own idea about
the stone to be quite fantastic, but he felt a sudden spasm of anger
with the boy that that great blue cornflower was so faded. Yet he felt
he might have known it....
“No, I’ll see you to bed,” he said. “Here we are; turn up the light.”
The room flashed into brightness and Colin closed the door.
“Undo your cloak, Dennis,” he said, “and give me the sapphire.”
The boy stood in the full light of the lamp above the dressing-table,
fumbling with it.
“Rather,” he said. “It’s like a bit of ice on my throat. I almost took
it off during the ball, but I supposed it wasn’t a thing to leave
about.... Oh, I can’t unfasten it: do it for me, Father.”
He held his head up, smiling into his father’s eyes; and moved by some
uncontrollable impulse Colin kissed that smooth cheek. The boy was so
splendidly handsome, of so winning a charm. “And after all,” as Colin
thought to himself, as if in excuse of the affection of that caress,
“he’s my own son....” Then he raised his hands to undo the fastening at
which Dennis fumbled, and even as he touched it, light seemed to dawn
somewhere deep in the heart of the sapphire.
“There you are,” he said, “there’s the ice-bag removed. It doesn’t look
much like ice, does it?”
Dennis shook off his cloak.
“O-oh! It doesn’t look very icy,” he said. “Have I really been wearing
that all evening? Why, it’s alive, it’s burning! Or is it only that it
looks so bright against your black clothes? You ought to have worn it.
Tell me about it: you said you would!”
Colin looked at the rays that danced in that blue furnace that he held.
It was scarcely possible to believe that this awakened lustre was purely
an imagined effect, and not imagined surely was the counsel that its
splendour gave him to tell Dennis a little more about his birthright.
“Well, it was the last thing and the most splendid that the Queen ever
gave old Colin,” he said. “He speaks of it in his Memoirs, which I’ll
shew you----”
“Oh do; shew me them to-morrow. I should love to see them. The old rip!
Sorry, Father: about the sapphire.”
Colin let his eyes rest again on the great stone, and then looked
straight at Dennis.
“He says that his Lord and Benefactor caused him so mightily to please
the Queen that she gave it him,” he said. “You must learn to love it,
Dennis, for he calls it the finest fruit of his bargain.”
Dennis looked puzzled.
“His bargain?” he asked. “Oh, the legend. Then do you think he really
believed in the legend?”
“Certainly he did, and wise he was too. You shall read how Satan came to
him one night as he slept.”
Dennis had taken off his tunic, and stood there stock-still, his face
now more definitely troubled.
“Like some horrible nightmare?” he asked.
Colin came a step nearer, black as the pit and fair of face, with the
stone gleaming in his hand.
“A nightmare? Good heavens, no!” he said. “Like some wonderful dream, if
you like, but it was no dream. It was gloriously real. You can’t
understand yet what the bargain meant, for you’re only a boy, and
there’s nothing that you really want which you don’t get. But imagine
what it would be, when you grew up, to have every wish gratified.... The
bargain holds not for old Colin alone but for all those who come after,
you and me for instance, who by their own choice claim their right to
share in it. The legend is no fairy tale, Dennis; it is sober, serious
truth. It was a miracle, if you like, but the evidence for it is
conclusive.”
The trouble deepened in Dennis’s eyes. When Colin first spoke of that
visitor coming to his ancestor as he slept, there had started unbidden
into his mind the remembrance of that nightmare from which his father
had rescued him. And now again he felt that invasion pressing on him,
and though it was surely his father who stood there, yet somehow his
black robes and his red-feathered cap and that blue-blazing gift of
Satan in his hand seemed to obscure him. It was as if some shadow had
passed over him, and behind that shadow he was changing.
“Oh, don’t, Father!” he cried. “I hate it! It’s awfully stupid of me,
but I do hate it. Please!”
There was no doubt that the boy was vaguely and yet deeply frightened:
his voice rose shrilly, his hands were trembling. And once again Colin
recoiled from the idea of Dennis’s terror. When he had directed the
force towards him before, in the defencelessness of his sleep, it was
easily intelligible that the invasion of it should alarm him, but now,
speaking to him in his own person, with the authority that Dennis’s love
for him gave, he had hoped that the boy would at any rate sip at the cup
which he held out to him. But still he was troubled and alarmed, he was
not mature enough yet to guess the lure of dreams and of desires. And
yet that was not all that made Colin pause: if that had been all, he
would have persisted, he would have induced Dennis somehow to taste the
sweetness of evil, he would have pricked his arm to let just one drop of
blood flow in which, so to speak, he could begin to write his name to
the everlasting bond and bargain, to initial it at least. Dennis might
be a little frightened, but the beginning would have been made.
What withheld him was not the wickedness of his intention, nor yet the
unwisdom of frightening Dennis with it, but his own damnable squirming
weakness in minding the boy’s terror. It was cowardly, it was even
apostate of him to recoil from that, but he wavered before it, he lacked
firmness and indifference. He must get rid of that scruple and the
hateful tenderness that prompted it.
There Dennis stood, his bare arms stretched out to him, half-imploring,
it seemed, and yet, by that same action, keeping him off. The
throat-apple in the soft neck moved up and down in his agitation, as if
struggling to keep his panting breath steady, and the red flower of his
mouth quivered.
The great sapphire slipped from Colin’s hand and rolled on the floor. He
let it lie there, unheeding or unknowing, and came close to Dennis,
putting his arm round his neck. “Dennis, my dear,” he said, “what’s the
matter? What ails you? Why, you’re having the nightmare again while
you’re awake! This will never do.”
The boy’s attitude of defence, of keeping his father away from him,
collapsed suddenly. He threw out his arms and caught his father round
the shoulders.
“I’m an awful fool,” he said. “I was frightened, and I can’t think why.
Just as if you weren’t protection enough against anything. Oh, Father,
you’re a brick: I do love you.”
Colin drew the boy down on the edge of the bed, and sat close to him.
“But what was the matter, my darling?” he said. “Tell me about it.”
“It wasn’t anything,” said Dennis. “I’m a bloody fool--sorry.--But, just
for a second, it was nightmare again, and I thought somehow it wasn’t
you standing there. It was like some awful conjuring-trick.... And I
wanted you. And I’ve got you. I won’t be such an ass again.”
“Sure you’re all right?” said Colin. “We can’t have you getting panics,
Dennis, and being an ass.”
Dennis laughed.
“You shan’t,” he said. “It’s all gone. I say, I’m keeping you up. I must
undress and go to bed, or you’ll never get there.”
Dennis got up, and stood there between his father’s knees, erect and
tranquil again. He peeled off his hose and vest, and put on his pyjamas.
Just then his eye fell on the great sapphire that lay on the floor.
“Why, you’ve dropped the sapphire, Father,” he said.
“So I see. Never mind that. I’ll pick it up. Now into bed with you.”
“How can I when you’re sitting there? No, don’t get up. I’ll crawl in.”
Dennis inserted one leg between his pillow and where Colin sat and drew
himself into bed, curling himself against his father.
“There, that’s all snug,” he said.
“Good night, then,” said Colin.
Dennis raised himself in bed, and kissed him.
“It’s been a lovely evening,” he said. “And it’ll be just as lovely
to-morrow with you and mother and me. I wish I wasn’t going back to Eton
on Thursday.”
Colin, with the stone in his hand, went out and down the few steps of
the corridor to the door of his room. Once again, and this time with a
more direct and personal defeat, Dennis had routed him. Before, he had
directed the force that governed and protected him on the boy as he
slept, and who could tell in what fury of lambent evil it had begun to
encompass him? But now, he himself, whom above all Dennis loved and
trusted, had approached him with the same initiation, and yet all his
love and trust had not given Dennis confidence: the spiritual semaphore
of his instinct had hung out the red light of danger. The boy had
recoiled from what he brought with a shrinking that was not reassured by
the fact that it was his father who brought it. He had detected the
nature of it, and all his affection would not suffer him to take it,
even from the hands he loved, and this time Dennis had been broad awake,
knowing well what he was doing. Here then was a more personal rebuff: it
appeared that all Colin’s trouble to endear himself to the boy (and with
what success he had accomplished that!) was useless for the purpose for
which he had intended it. Indeed it was far worse than useless, for in
the process Dennis had somehow entered his heart, and for the second
time he had been unable to persist.
The fault then, in great part, lay with himself. He made no doubt that
if, with Dennis’s love for him to assist him, he had reasoned and
persuaded, telling him that in sober truth this ancient bargain was
valid still, and that, when the day of his choice came, he could have
all that had been so richly showered on his father, something of what he
said would have remained in the boy’s mind, quietly fermenting there.
But he had failed to do anything of the kind: some incalculable impulse
had seized him, and he had thought of nothing except to reassure him.
He stood in his room, the door of which he had not even closed, looking
at the sapphire that blazed in his hand. That azure fire bade him go
back to Dennis now, and, conquering this despicable softness in himself,
tell him, with all the gusto of a splendid surprise (and he knew that a
tongue of skill and persuasion would be given him), that the legend was
alive to-day, that a power, mightier than the kings of the earth, was
alert and eager to befriend him, at so cheap a cost, for the price was
no more than that he should root out of his heart the sickly and
sentimental stuff, the injurious weakness called love which saps the
strength of a man and enslaves him to others. That was all that was
meant by the bargain and the signing of the soul away. That was the true
and the sensible way to look at it; and those who talked of it as being
a consignment to the outer darkness and eternal damnation, were merely
trying to frighten people by hoisting bogies.... Dennis would not
understand, but that wonderful and impressionable thing, a boy’s memory,
would retain letter and form of it, till bit by bit he began to
understand it, and then, from its having dwelt long in his mind, it
would appear familiar and friendly. Dennis would already be half asleep,
and his father would just sit and talk to him a minute or two, quietly
and affectionately, sowing seed, and smoothing the rich fruitful earth
of the boy’s mind over it....
He moved towards the door, opened it and went into the passage. And
then, as his hand was on the latch of Dennis’s door, he knew that even
if he went in, with his intention hot within him, his expedition would
be in vain. Dennis would sit up in bed, sleepily smiling, and welcoming
the intrusion, on any or no excuse, so long as the intruder was he. Once
more he would be disarmed by the defenceless.
The change that had to be wrought must begin with himself. There was no
doubt that he had allowed himself to get fond of the boy, and for that
reason he winced at the thought of the first incision. He must anneal
himself to the gay ruthlessness with which he dealt with others, with
which he had mocked Pamela to her doom, and jeered at his brother
Raymond struggling with the broken lids of ice, before he attempted to
deal with Dennis again. If only the boy was not so affectionate, how
easy it would be! He had thought of Dennis’s affection for him as a
weapon in his own hand, but at present it was a weapon in Dennis’s.
Perhaps he would have to snap that, or, wresting it from him, turn it
against him. At any rate he must anneal himself: he must weld the armour
of hate against love....
* * * * *
The general dispersal took place next morning; for an hour an almost
incessant stream of motors left the door, and Dennis and his father
were like ferry-boats conveying their visitors from the gallery where
they said good-bye to Violet to the hall. Vastly as the boy had enjoyed
this fortnight of crowd and turmoil, he got even gayer as it streamed
away, and when the last had left he executed a wild rampageous dance in
the hall.
“Hurrah, they’ve all gone!” he cried, “and now it’s just us, Father.
What shall we do all day? It’s my last day, you know; you must let me
have you all the time. What shall we do first?”
What was the use of spoiling Dennis’s last day, Colin asked himself. The
boy would be gone to-morrow for the next twelve weeks, and then would be
the time to rout out the intruder. Indeed, that uprooting should begin
to-night, that change in himself, that recantation of his recent
apostasy. At midnight, when Dennis had gone to bed, he would renew his
vows, and partake in the mockery of Love itself.
“Dennis, don’t whirl round me like that,” he said. “You make me giddy.
And it’s very grumpy of you, do you know, to be glad that your friends
have gone? How many tipped you?”
“Oh, a frightful lot,” said Dennis. “I’m rolling in riches. Will you
come and play golf? Or tennis, do you think? Or what about potting
rabbits? Or don’t you want to be bothered with me?”
“We’ll do just what you like,” said Colin. “Sit down and make up your
mind.”
“Oh, but it’s made up,” said the boy. “Golf first: we’ll drive over to
Rye in the two-seater. I’ll drive.”
Colin paused a moment.
“You don’t want to look at the Memoirs then?” he asked. “I’ll read
interesting bits to you, if you like.”
Dennis’s eyebrows drew themselves together. Some remembrance, was it, of
his vanished fears?
“Oh, I’d sooner play golf,” he said.
All day the two were together, and at dinner, for Aunt Hester had gone
back with the rest to London, there were just the four of them, at a
small round table in the dining-room, which last night had resounded to
the gaiety of fifty, and blazed with the costumes of Elizabeth. And yet
all that was essentially Stanier was gathered undiluted there; the
splendour and the sparkle of these last days had been no more than a
casual decoration it had plucked for itself and worn a little while and
thrown away again. Last night old Lady Yardley had sat up till the very
end of the ball, and all the week she had attended whatever
entertainment was provided, but these unusual hours seemed to have made
no call on her strength, and now bright-eyed and somehow terribly alive,
beneath that immobile alabastrine sheath of her body, she looked from
Dennis to his father and back again, as if searching, searching for some
assurance, some confirmation of what she desired. Of Violet, as usual,
she seemed unconscious.
The ball of laughter and talk had been thrown hither and thither merrily
enough all dinner time; Dennis and Colin were the chief performers, and
Violet had taken but little part in it. All day she had wrestled with a
secret jealousy; not once had Dennis, to whose last day at home she
usually devoted herself, appeared to want her, and since their guests
had left in the morning he had been exclusively with his father. It was
all very natural: his exuberance wanted his golf and his rabbit-shooting
and the activities of his budding manhood. And yet it was not the boy’s
fault that he had not spared her a half-hour out of his day, for at the
conclusion of each diversion, Colin had been at hand with another. Was
it simply for her discomfiture, and the exhibition of his own triumphant
rivalry that he had done that? Certainly that would have been a
sufficient motive for him, but she felt there was something else as
well, a larger issue, an ampler cause. If it had been that alone, he
would have had little oblique mockeries for her, would have called her
attention to his success, would even have told Dennis to go and talk to
her, and that when he had had a “nice talk” he was ready to fish or play
tennis.
And then, like a blown flame, those little surface-jealousies went out.
Was Colin planning some final employment for Dennis to-night? She knew
he had sent for Mr. Douglas this evening, and had had some private
interview with him, for she had unwittingly interrupted it, and seen the
breaking off of their topic when she entered the room.... At the
thought, that small green flame was quenched, and cold apprehension
gripped her. As dinner went on she ceased to take any part in those gay
crossing volleys, and became, like old Lady Yardley, silent and watchful
and aware. She seemed to enter into the spirit of all those generations
of silent and frozen women who were the wives and mothers of the race.
They had always been like that who were knit into the line through which
the legend was transmitted, and now she seemed to comprehend the nature
of that vesture of ice that clothed them, for they knew that it was
through their blood and the love of their conceiving bodies that the
Satanic bargain was kept alive, and that their sons were the inheritors
of the bond. Was that not enough to freeze the mother the fruit of whose
womb would be dedicated to hell, who watched the growing strength and
beauty of her son, and knew the consecration of evil to which, at his
choice, he gave his soul? She would see him prosperous beyond all other
heritors, beauty and health, honour and wealth, would be his, and her
spirit would freeze and burn in the ice of knowing that all this was but
the payment in dross for that which in the eyes of God was worth the
ransom of the precious blood.... Would she get used to that, she
wondered, so that the knowledge became part of her nature, and, as the
flocks of grey-winged years passed over her head, she would become so
one with Stanier, that the prosperity and continuance of the house would
grow into the very fibre of her nature. It was so, she guessed, with old
Lady Yardley; Colin and Dennis were the connotation of the world to her.
Over all else the penumbra and eclipse of age had passed, and just that
rim and nothing else was illuminated. Neither evil nor good, nor love
nor hate perhaps, existed for her any more, the sense of Stanier was her
only reaction to the exterior world.
Dinner was over and the coffee handed, and still Lady Yardley had not
broken that frost of her silence. But now there came a sudden
uncongealment.
“Stanier is itself again to-night,” she said. “They have gone, all the
fine folk who come like dogs when my Colin whistles to them. They lick
his hand and he feeds them.”
Colin turned to her.
“Granny dear, what nonsense!” he said. “And you shouldn’t call our
distinguished guests dogs. Didn’t you like having them here? I thought
you were enjoying it all.”
That wraith of a smile dimpled her mouth.
“Yes, I enjoyed it,” she said. “I enjoyed seeing them all doing homage
to Stanier, to my Colin.”
She looked from him to Dennis.
“And here is my Colin as he was when he was a boy,” she said. “When he
grows up they will do homage to him too. But before then he must know
the legend instead of only hearing it. Read, mark, learn and inwardly
digest. The prayer-book says that about the legend.”
Colin pushed back his chair.
“Granny, you are charming,” he said, “but we settled the first night
that I was here that we were to have no prophesying at dinner.”
“But I am not prophesying,” said she. “I am only saying what you and I
know and what presently he will know. It will be pleasant when we all
know, for then we can talk freely. Shall I tell him now, Colin? Shall I
break the sheet of ice? I would be out in the sun then, instead of being
cold. I will melt my frost----”
He took her stick and put it into her hand.
“Get up,” he said. “Go and melt the frost by the fire in the gallery,
where your card-table is ready for you. Now not a word more.”
She rose, still smiling, as if content with what she had said. She had
borne witness to what she knew, and what Colin knew, and whether he was
sharp with her or not was insignificant compared to that. Leaning on her
stick, she went out, followed by Violet.
Colin watched Dennis’s troubled face as he came back to the table after
closing the door behind the others. When first three weeks ago old Lady
Yardley had ‘prophesied,’ he had been puzzled, but excited and
fascinated. But since then he had learned something; waking or asleep he
had seen the outline of a terrible shadow, and it seemed to be the same
as that, whatever it was, of which she had just spoken.
“What does she mean?” he said. “What was all that about her telling me
and melting the frost?”
“Dottiness,” said Colin at once. “You discovered she was dotty weeks
ago. And just now, you remember, she thought that you were me as a boy
again. That wasn’t very clear-headed, was it? And all the rest was just
as muddled. Don’t think anything more about it, Dennis.”
That cloud did not clear away at once from Dennis’s forehead. His father
had clearly wanted to tell him something last night, and, by an unerring
instinct, he divined that this same something lurked behind what he had
just stopped old Lady Yardley from saying. It concerned the legend,
clearly; some practical personal application of the legend....
“Dennis, you’re not doing what I told you,” said Colin sharply. “You’re
thinking of Grannie’s dottiness.”
Dennis pulled in that sail of his mind which was still catching that
mysterious breeze.
“Righto,” he said.
“Come and sit next me then, you exclusive brute,” said Colin, “instead
of sitting at the other side of the table.... And you’ve liked your last
day, have you, Dennis?”
“Oh, Father, it has been lovely,” said Dennis, drawing a chair quite
close to him. “Why, they all went away at eleven, and I’ve been with you
ever since except when I had my bath, and even then you came in in the
middle. Ten solid hours with you. Not bad.”
“No, not very bad. You’ve made an elderly gent like me play golf and
tennis and shoot pigeons. I shall have a rest-cure after you’ve gone.”
“Do. Come and have it at Eton. There’s a nursing home somewhere in the
town. Elderly gent!”
“Well, don’t rub it in,” said Colin. “Come on, Dennis. We must go and
play whist. You and I will rook your mother and Granny. And then, after
being up till nearly four last night, you shall go softly and silently
to bed like the Snark.”
“Not silent. You’ll come and talk, won’t you?”
“Perhaps I’ll look in, but I don’t promise. I must sit up and do some
jobs.”
“Why?” said Dennis.
“Because you’ve prevented my doing them all day.”
Colin smiled to himself as he said that. It was most emphatically true:
he would concentrate on his jobs to-night.
Violet went upstairs with Dennis at bed-time, relieved of her immediate
fear, for Colin made no move to detain the boy, and whatever he had
planned for himself, he did not look for Dennis’s partnership. Colin sat
in his room when the others had gone up, and for half an hour, while he
was waiting for midnight, he read and mused over the Memoirs of his
ancestor. How symmetrical and consistent he had been till that senile
ague of terror palsied him in the last year of his life! Never once in
those fascinating pages was there a hint of any struggle in his soul,
any stirrings of compassion or love which disturbed the poise of his
undivided allegiance. Nor even at the end, did he waver in spirit, for
it was easy to see that his belated pieties, his formal acts of pity and
charity, sprang not from any turning of him in spirit towards God, but
from the mere physical terror of his approaching doom. He only added
cowardice, in fact, to his other sins, and went forth with a blacker
load than ever.... So early, too, must he have initiated his two sons
into the doctrines of the gospel, for long before the time came for
their choice they were ripe and ready.
Colin dropped his reading. There was yet time to go upstairs and bid
Dennis dress and come with him. But still the excuse held that the boy’s
soul was not ready for the sacrament of evil: he had to learn the
sweetness of evil for evil’s sake before he could take part in its
worship. He would understand nothing: the rite would be meaningless, or,
worse than that, would perhaps disgust and horrify him, and it was not
in disgust and horror that he must be drawn, but must spring with a leap
of the spirit towards a congenial mystery. And still Colin knew that all
this was an excuse only: and his reason for not fetching the boy was
that obstinate intruder in his own heart, which made him recoil from the
notion of Dennis being frightened or revolted. It was, in fact, himself
with whom he had to deal: he must cleanse his own heart of the
tenderness which was in bud there, and by the inspiration of evil root
out that alien weed. He must concentrate his mind on defiance and
hate....
There came a tap at the door which led into the corridor up to the
chapel. This was always kept locked, and the key to it, like a
latch-key, he wore on his watch-chain. Otherwise the chapel could only
be approached through Mr. Douglas’s lodging. He opened the door and
found Vincenzo standing there.
“Pronto, signor,” said Vincenzo, and fell behind him as he walked up the
corridor, leaving him at the door into the chapel, while he went through
to the priest’s dwelling to vest himself as server. Colin entered: the
chapel was redolent of stale incense, soon to be refreshed and renewed,
and blazed with lights.
Presently the priest entered, served by Vincenzo. He was robed in that
wonderful cope which, once stolen from some Italian sacristy, had been
bought by Colin in Naples. For a minute or so, he knelt with his back to
the altar and then, making the sign of the cross reversed, rose and
began.
Though he knew the ritual well, Colin closely followed the service in
the vellum-leaved book on his faldstool. Douglas had copied this in his
exquisite formal handwriting from the missal of wondrous blasphemies,
illuminating the initial letters with appropriate decoration and
sacrilegious parodies of holy scenes. Two years had it taken him, a
labour of love, and Colin, by keeping his attention on the book, strove
to devote his mind to the spirit of the blasphemy. He confessed his
fallings and his lapses from his vowed life, he tried to root Dennis out
of his heart. He let his mind dwell on evil and cruelty and hate. And
now the new clouds of incense rose from the censer that Vincenzo swung,
the altar gleamed through the fragrant sanctification, and the supreme
moment approached.
Colin felt the stir of the power seething round him, but he knew he no
longer went out to meet it with welcome and heart’s surrender. All the
pressure of his will was bent on doing so, but it was as if some grain
of grit had got into the psychic mechanism of his soul: it checked and
laboured, it did not respond with full smooth strokes. Why could he not
be like Vincenzo who knelt there, his face working with some diabolical
rapture? Vincenzo’s hands were clasped in front of him, his mouth
grinned and slavered, he shook and swayed in that fierce gale of
possession. The priest’s arms were raised now for consecration, and
Vincenzo’s eyes were fixed on them; in a moment more, on the completion
of the act, he would pull the rope of the bell that hung by him, and
the three muffled strokes....
Even as Colin looked, half-envying him, half-horrified at the tension of
the man’s face, Vincenzo suddenly rose to his feet, with hands stretched
out in front of him. He swayed as he stood, as if blown by a great wind,
and then crashed forward and fell full length on the altar-step.
The priest, with the wafer still unconsecrated in his hand, turned at
the thud of his fall. He placed the wafer back on the paten, and
beckoning to Colin stooped down by the man’s side. Vincenzo had rolled
on to his face and lay there trembling and twitching. They turned him
over; his eyes wide open seemed to be focussed in blank terror at
something close in front of them, and at the corners of his mouth foam
had gathered.
The priest felt for his pulse.
“What happened?” he said to Colin.
“He fell forward.... Well? Is he alive? Is he dead?”
“I can’t find any flicker of pulse,” said Douglas. “Can you get some
brandy? I’ve got none.”
“Yes, there’s sure to be a tray in the gallery. I’ll go and get it.”
Colin nodded towards the altar.
“Take the vessels back to your room,” he said, “and disrobe. I’ll be
back in a moment.”
Father Douglas knew something of first aid, but it was in vain that they
tried to restore the stricken man. The brandy, unswallowed, trickled out
of his mouth again, the raising and lowering of his arms started no
flicker of vitality.
“We must send for the doctor,” said Douglas. “But----”
Colin nodded, understanding him.
“Yes, not here of course,” he said. “We must move him. Now, for hell’s
sake, don’t let us make any mistake which we can’t correct afterwards.
First of all, we must take his cotta and cassock off.... Get a pair of
scissors, quick: we must cut the sleeves.”
Colin was perfectly alert and collected; coolly and swiftly he thought
over what was to be done. Just one glance of angry disgust he gave to
that distorted whitening face, which was the cause of all this trouble,
but for the present he needed all his wits to grapple with the
dispositions which must be made instantly and without the possibility of
correction afterwards. His brain was busy as they slipped the severed
vestments off Vincenzo, and he began to see the road.
“Lay him down again,” he said, when this was done. “We mustn’t move him
at all till we’ve settled everything. Cover his face, though; I hate
those dimmed glass eyes. God, what terror is there!”
He sat down on the step with his back to the body. “I want to smoke,” he
said. “Nothing like a cigarette for filtering your thoughts. Now look
here, Douglas, of course he mustn’t be found here at all: no doctor or
anybody else must come in here. Therefore it’s clear we’ve got to move
him. Luckily it’s late: the servants will have gone to bed: we shall
have the house to ourselves.”
The priest’s hands were trembling, he was utterly unnerved by the
catastrophe. Memories of years long past when he was a priest of God,
and when to the dying he gave the Bread of Angels for their soul’s
refreshment and support, stood before him like white statues, silent and
aware. Now, he was priest of a creed that mocked and defied, and at the
moment of supreme blasphemy this stroke had fallen. Was the visitation
from God or from Satan? Under which king? He buried his face in his
hands.
“The horror of it,” he whispered. “The terror----”
Colin turned sharply to him.
“Here, take some brandy,” he said, “as--as nobody else will. And you can
enjoy your terrors afterwards. At present you’ve got to help. We’ve got
to carry him away first. Good Lord, man, you’re not frightened of the
dead, are you? The world must be a jumpy place for you with its millions
of dead generations. And Vincenzo worshipped Satan: what better death do
you want for him?... Well, we’ll talk theology by and by. Think, man,
help me to make up a story that’s question-proof. And we must be quick,
too, these doctors have a trick of knowing how long a man’s been dead.
Perhaps he’s not even dead: we’re not doctors and we can’t tell.”
Colin smoked in silence a moment, frowning but bright-eyed. “Damned lot
of use you are,” he said. “But hold your tongue now. I’m getting at it.”
He got up briskly and began walking up and down the black marble floor
of the chapel.
“Come along,” he said. “You’ve got to help me to carry him out down the
corridor, and through my room and into the hall, and then, you’ll be
pleased to hear, all you’ve got to do is not to know that anything at
all has happened. You’ll come back here afterwards and put things away,
and then get to your bed and sleep or lie awake just as you feel
inclined. Look, there’s the censer overturned, and burning a hole in
that carpet. Spit on it or something.... My word, you’re lucky that this
didn’t happen when you were alone with him, but had someone with you who
doesn’t suffer from terror of the spirit. Now catch hold of him under
his knees and lift him when I’ve got hold of his shoulders. Why, the
man’s as light as a child. That’s the devout life.”
Under Colin’s directions they carried their burden with the slit cassock
still over his face, and the arm hanging limply down, out into the hall,
and laid him sprawling there, much as he had fallen. Then Colin twitched
the cassock from the face, and gave it to the priest.
“Lock up that and the cotta,” he said, “and bury them to-morrow in your
bit of garden. Or weight them, that will be better, and make a parcel of
them and chuck them into the lake above the sluice. And now go back to
the chapel, make everything ship-shape, just as you would have done if
this had not occurred, and get to bed. You know nothing, nothing.”
Colin looked at his ashen face, in contemptuous pity. “You’re all to
bits,” he said. “I suppose I shall have to come back and help you or
you’ll forget to lock the chapel or something. Wait a minute!”
He went to the telephone and got connected with the house of the doctor
at Rye.
“I’m Lord Yardley,” he said, as soon as he got a reply “and I’m so sorry
to trouble you, but would you make all haste to come up to Stanier? My
servant has had some sort of fit; he’s still unconscious. Thank you very
much.”
Colin saw Father Douglas through with his part of the business and then
waited in the hall, where he would hear the doctor’s wheels. There on
the floor lay the body curiously insignificant, and now he noticed that
the famous picture of old Colin, with the supposed deed of bargain let
into the frame, was on the wall just above where it lay. There was
something rather suitable about that.... But he gave no further thought
to it: over and over in his mind he conned what he was going to say:
framing answers to any questions that might be put, and above all
rehearsing his own initial statement. That was the important thing, it
was that which he must make so familiar to himself that he really
believed it to be true, for no doubt he would have to repeat it again at
the inquest. Over all else, though it teemed with surmise and wonder, he
drew an impenetrable curtain. Nothing else mattered just now but what he
must say to the doctor.
Before he had begun to expect his arrival, he heard the crunch of
motor-wheels, and undid the bolts of the door.
“Come in, Doctor,” he said. “It is good of you to have been so quick.
It’s my servant, Vincenzo, who has been with me a long time. There he
lies, exactly as he fell. I thought it wise not to move him in any way.
I tried to get him to swallow a mouthful of brandy, but I couldn’t.”
“Very wise of you, Lord Yardley,” said the doctor. “A man taken by a
seizure should always be left till it is ascertained of what nature his
seizure is. Now let me examine him.”
Dr. Martin knelt down by his patient. He felt for his pulse, he listened
at his chest, and with a light brought close he looked with narrow
scrutiny into the eyes. Then he rose to his feet.
“I’m sorry to say I can do nothing,” he said. “The man is dead.”
“Ah, poor fellow--poor Vincenzo,” said Colin. “It is terrible,
terrible.”
“Perhaps you would tell me exactly what happened,” said Dr. Martin.
“Yes, yes. Let us come into my room.... Sit down, Doctor. Now let me
think for a moment, my wits seem all abroad.”
Colin covered his eyes with his hand a moment: the clock on the
mantelpiece chimed the three quarters after twelve. He pointed to it,
and spoke.
“Vincenzo always sat up till I went to bed,” he said, “but often, if I
was sitting up late, I would ring for him, and tell him he needn’t wait.
This evening when my wife and my boy went upstairs, I came in here: it
must have been not long after eleven. I began reading the type-written
copy of an old family memoir, got interested in it, and did not notice
how the time went. When I looked up I saw that it was late: twenty
minutes past twelve or thereabouts. I had not finished my reading, and
so I rang the bell here, in order to tell Vincenzo that he need not sit
up. Almost immediately I heard the noise of some heavy fall. The house
had been silent for some time, and it startled me considerably. I went
out into the hall which we have just quitted and found the poor fellow
lying there. From the fact that I heard this noise immediately after
ringing my bell, I suppose that he had been waiting in the hall, where
he would hear my bell. I instantly rang you up, and remained there with
him till you came. I thought perhaps he might come to himself, and I
could be of use. It occurred to me to call some of the other servants,
but since I felt sure that it would be safer not to move him, there
seemed to be no object in that. Ah, yes, I tried to make him swallow
some brandy.”
“Quite so. You acted very wisely.”
Colin looked imploringly at the doctor.
“It would be a great relief to my mind,” he said, “if you could
definitely tell me that there was nothing I could have done to help
him.”
“I am positive there was nothing. Probably he was dead when he fell.
There is a question or two I should like to ask. When you rang me up,
you said he had had some sort of a fit. Had he suffered from fits
before?”
Colin almost smiled with pleasure at that question.
“He told me once that when he was a boy he was subject to them,” he
said. “He supposed he had outgrown them.”
“I see. Of course this was not a fit, medically speaking. No sign of an
epileptic seizure or anything of the kind. Sudden death: that’s all we
can say at present.”
“And from what, do you conjecture?” asked Colin.
“It is quite impossible to say. That of course will have to be
ascertained.”
“You can form no idea?”
“One would imagine he had some terrible shock. There was an expression
in his eyes of the most abject terror.”
Dr. Martin got up.
“Now would you like to summon one of your men to help us?” he said. “We
must move the body, of course. Is there some room near at hand where we
can place him till morning, when I will be back early to make all
arrangements--some room which you can lock up and give me the key or
keep it yourself?”
“Yes, there’s the smoking-room close at hand,” said Colin. “But there is
no need to call anybody. I will help you.”
They laid him on a sofa there, covering the face with a rug, and
presently, after the key was turned, and Colin had taken it from the
lock, he saw the doctor to the door. In his admirable way he had
conveyed the impression of being terribly shocked and keeping a firm
hand on himself.
“You can rest assured, Lord Yardley,” said the doctor, “that you did all
that could be done. You acted with great wisdom in not moving him, and
in sending at once for me. I wish I could have been of any use. Put your
mind quite at rest about that. You’ll sleep I hope?”
Colin raised soft swimming eyes.
“I feel as if I should,” he said. “Now it is all over I feel most
awfully tired. Good night, Dr. Martin. Ever so many thanks.”
Colin bolted and barred the door, switched off the lights in the hall
and went upstairs. Passing Dennis’s door, he saw that it still stood
ajar, and a line of brightness was rectangled round it. He pushed it
quietly open, expecting to see that Dennis had again fallen asleep while
waiting for him to come and say good night. This time, however, the boy
was wide-awake.
“Oh, Father, what an age you’ve been,” he said. “What have you been
doing?”
It was as if some shutter had been snapped down in Colin’s mind. Behind
it lay all that had happened in this last hour, bright and vivid as in
some decked shop window but now cut off from view.
“Dennis, you little wretch,” he said. “You ought to have been asleep
long ago.”
Dennis laughed.
“Oh don’t be silly,” he said. “You didn’t think I was going to sleep
without saying good night to you on my last night, did you? Come and sit
down for two minutes.”
Dennis wriggled away to the middle of the bed, leaving room for his
father to sit on the edge of it, and put up his knees to form a back for
him.
“I expected you to be snoring,” said Colin.
“I never snore!” said the indignant Dennis. “As for being asleep, I
didn’t want to go to sleep.... Finished your jobs?”
“Pretty well. I can leave the rest till morning.”
Dennis sniffed, wrinkling up his nose like a young terrier.
“Where have you been?” he said. “Your coat smells of Roman Catholic
churches.”
“Rot, my dear. Cigarettes.”
“But it isn’t rot. Well, never mind. I say, Father, we have had a
ripping holiday. And to-day’s been the best of all. And it’s ever so
much nicer here than in London. I love Stanier.”
“That’s a family affliction,” said Colin. “I wonder what you’ll do with
it, when I’m dead and you get it.”
“Oh, shut up. As if I should care about it without you.”
“Dennis, what compliments!” said Colin.
* * * * *
Colin went to his room, and let that shutter in his mind rattle up and
looked into that lighted window. Between the catastrophe and the coming
of the doctor his acuteness had been entirely busy over the account he
would be called upon to give, and there his cool ingenuity had served
him well: his story had been coherent and consistent, and he had
eliminated from it everyone but himself and the dead man, who could
bring forward no conflicting testimony. But for the moment he looked
only absently at that sensationally decked window, for he congratulated
himself on his wisdom in rejecting that wayward thought of taking Dennis
with him at midnight, only a little more than an hour ago, into the
chapel. If he had done that, what face would Dennis be wearing now?
Would he have curled down in bed so quietly and followed his father as
he went to the door with the shining of his tranquil, affectionate eyes?
Already he knew (and had shuddered to know) that there was in the legend
something more than a fairy story, something alive and Satanic from the
touch of which he shrank when it came near him. Colin would have told
him that what he was to see in the chapel was the worship of that power
which through the centuries had so wonderfully befriended the house, and
while he quivered in the face of that initiation, there would have come
this appalling, this unexpected stroke. The boy would have been
distraught with terror; evil which, for its own sake, he must sometime
choose as guardian of his soul and body, would have been to him for ever
a force that smote its suppliant with death, sudden and terrific. It
would have been disastrous if Dennis had seen that.
Colin looked into the lighted window. There, vivid as when the scene
itself was before his amazed eyes, he scrutinized the image of Vincenzo,
already writhing in the ecstasy of possession, and then falling forward
like that. Why had that happened? What was its psychical significance?
He had died, it appeared, of some shock of terror: panic yelled in his
wide silent eyes. Had there come to him some appalling revelation of
ultimate absolute evil, even as it had come to old Colin himself when,
at his birthday feast, he had shrieked out, “No! No!” and with repelling
hands had fallen dead across the table? Or had he looked in the eyes of
God, and seen there the infinite love of Him at Whom he mocked?
Colin felt himself shudder at that thought. That indeed would be enough
to shrivel the spirit of a man, like a burnt feather in a furnace. Hell
could not contain such torment as to realize that, through the night and
blackness of absolute evil, the love of God still shone without change
or dimness, even as the light of a steadfast star burns unblown by the
puny violence of terrestrial tempests.... If there had come to Vincenzo
at the moment of death only some vision or internal realization of the
wrath of God, that surely, to one whose joy it was to mock and defy Him,
would have been like a waved banner of victory, a sign that his mockery
had reached its mark: God’s anger would be a testimonial to his success.
But it would have been hell indeed to know that all his defiance and
rebellion had never caused the infinite Love and pity to waver, that for
him still ‘Christ’s blood streamed in the firmament.’ That would have
been sufficient to glaze with the terror of utter and ultimate defeat,
those dying eyes....
“See where Christ’s blood stream is the firmament”.... Colin muttered
the words to himself. They came, he remembered now, from the last scene
in Marlowe’s Faustus, just before the stroke of midnight, on which
Mephistopheles came to exact the payment of Faustus’s soul. That to
Faustus had been the ultimate anguish, and what if it had been so too to
him who now lay in the locked room downstairs?
Colin shrank from that thought, even as Dennis had shrunk from the
terror of his nightmare. It was better to suppose that there had come to
the man some fresh intuition into the power of evil, and that in the
panic of his eyes was the knowledge that his time was come, and that he
was eternally consigned to the protection of what he had worshipped. At
that so easily the flesh might quaver, in the dissolution of the body
from the spirit. That in comparison was a comforting thought: he felt
himself at home there and not afraid. He himself had chosen evil for his
good, and hell surely could be no other than the eternal severance of
the soul from God. It was physical terror merely that had distorted
Vincenzo’s face: and with that thought there sprang up in him the desire
to look on the dead once more, and convince himself that there were
imprinted on it just the tokens of this natural cowering before the face
of death. He had with him the key of the locked smoking-room, where the
body lay, and now, taking off his shoes so that his step should be
noiseless, he let himself out into the passage again. The switch was to
his hand just outside his door, and at his touch the passage and the
hall below flashed into light.
He paused after fitting the key into the door of the smoking-room. The
great portrait of old Colin seemed to smile on him; on the floor in
front of it was the rug on which Vincenzo’s body had sprawled, it was
crumpled into ridges where they had taken it up again. He entered the
death-chamber. There on the sofa with its face covered lay the body, and
standing there beside it he told himself again what he had come to see,
namely the tokens of physical terror, the shrinking of the flesh at the
touch of death. Then he drew the covering away.
Vincenzo’s eyes were closed--perhaps the doctor had done that. The face
was perfectly composed and tranquil, and looked younger than his years.
He did not seem to be dead: it was more reasonable to think that he was
asleep, and the mouth, slightly smiling, suggested that he dreamed of
happy affairs, of friends, of home. In life there had been something a
little sinister about his expression: now he looked contented and kind.
Colin covered his face again with a sullen spasm of misgiving. He feared
that tranquillity, he hated the conjectured cause of it; death had
stamped that face with terror, and something stronger than death had
smoothed that terror out again.
He went upstairs. Had the events of the evening begun to get on his
nerves, spurring them to unreal imaginings? Perhaps it was normal that,
after death, the face should grow tranquil again. But its tranquillity
was more disturbing by far than its distortion of terror had been.