Colin went into his wife’s room early next morning and gave her his
official version of Vincenzo’s death. They were both agreed that Dennis
should be told nothing of it, and before the hour for the removal of the
body came, to await the inquest in Rye, he took the boy out for a final
morning of rabbit-shooting. He had slept well and woke with nerves
quieted and refreshed: Dennis’s ignorance, too, both of what had
actually occurred and what was supposed to have occurred was in itself a
healing to those troubled fancies of the midnight, just as this warm
April morning was healing in its physical tonic to his nerves.
Indeed Stanier had never seemed so tranquil and serene an abode of
prosperous peace, as now when he walked with this tall fair son of his
along the terrace, and up the wooded slope beyond the chapel, where the
ruby glass of the windows was penetrated by the gleaming sunshine, and
shone like a fire. To be out of doors this morning was better than being
within, and better it was to walk in the warm wind than to breathe stale
incense smoke. Below them the broad lake glittered, and for a moment, in
a gap between the rhododendron bushes along the sluice-wall, the figure
of the priest, black against the vivid green of the young-leafed trees
beyond, came into sight and vanished again. He had gone down there, no
doubt, to do his part concerning the secret version of the events of the
night: Colin was pleased to have caught that glimpse of him. Later, when
Dennis had gone, he would have to see him.
But just for the present he let all that concerned the drowning of slit
cassock and cotta slip down into the depths of his mind, even as those
relics with the weight to sink them had dwindled into the darkness of
the deep water, where once Raymond lay. Soon he would have to fish these
problems and perplexities up again, and discuss them with the priest;
but for an hour or two, till Dennis departed, he would keep on the sunny
surface of this windy morning. There lay the house that he loved more
than anything or anyone in the world; he could almost fancy himself, if
this April day were only eternal, being happy here, as the deer were
happy, browsing on the fresh growth of spring time, and letting that
love of hate and of evil in his heart sink into quiescence, even
evaporate away. Would life lose all its effervescence without it?
Supposing now that the whole history of the legend from its inception to
his own passionate participation in it was a dream; supposing it rolled
away like those moving mists which an hour ago lay fleecy and thick over
the plain, and that with an opening of his eyes and a tranquil awakening
he found himself just here, mounting the steep slope with Dennis
chattering by him, and the house gleaming rosy-red below, and that all
which had given to him the thrill and the motive of life passed into
unsubstantial nothingness, so that even the memory of it was elusive and
hard to capture--would he look forward over the coming years as over a
desert featurelessness of barren sand?... The notion occurred to him for
just long enough to frame itself into a definite mental question, but
the moment it presented itself like that, he saw that any answer to it
must be inconceivable, simply because the question itself was so. He
could not with deliberation even frame the question for, in itself, it
presupposed an obliteration of all that which consciousness implied. He
might as well ask himself what he would think about if his brain was
incapable of thought.
He took Dennis down to the station after lunch, and on his return,
meaning to ask Douglas to come to see him, was told that he had already
asked if he could do so, and was waiting in his room. He went there, but
had he met in a crowd away from Stanier the figure that rose on his
entrance, he would scarcely have recognized it. The man’s upright,
athletic carriage was bowed and bent, he stumbled as he walked, and the
fresh-coloured face was a drawn white mask. So this was the diver with
whose help he had to try to bring up to the surface the submerged burden
of the night....
Colin did not mind other people looking ill. Their weakness only
emphasized to him his own superb health.
“Hullo,” he said. “You look rather poorly, Douglas. I might almost say
you look ghastly. Oh, by the way, I caught a glimpse of you this
morning, telling your beads no doubt down by the lake. I take it then
that you’ve done that little job. Is that so?”
“Yes, I did exactly what you asked me.”
“Capital. Then all that remains for you is to realize that up till this
moment you are not aware that anything unusual occurred. So much so, in
fact, that you must listen to a sad piece of news I’ve got for you.
Listen. My Italian servant, Vincenzo, had a sudden seizure shortly after
midnight in the hall. I had just rung my bell to tell him not to sit up,
and it appears that he was waiting for that. He was in the hall in fact
already. He got up, it would seem, to come to this room here, when a
seizure took him and he fell. I heard the noise of his fall, and found
him there, and, as one should never touch a man in a fit, I telephoned
for the doctor, who said he was dead. There will be an inquest which I
shall have to attend. Sad news, isn’t it? I shall miss him. I thought I
had better tell you. Any questions to ask? We’ll take your sympathy for
granted.”
Colin moved quietly about the room as he spoke. He lit a cigarette and
pointed to a chair.
“And now that I’ve taken that off your mind,” he said, “let us discuss
something quite different. Look at me, Douglas, and tell me, in your
capacity as spiritual expert, black and white, what happened last night?
Or, rather what caused that which we both saw?”
The priest raised his eyes to Colin. Terror, deep and still as a summer
sea, gleamed and darkled in them. The words came slowly at first, for
his twitching mouth stammered as he spoke.
“I can tell you what happened,” he said. “Just at the moment when evil
and defiance were mounting in a blaze of triumph in his soul, he saw
God. There is nothing else that can account for it. If he had seen Satan
himself, would the terror that smote soul and body asunder have come to
him? He might have fallen in a trance of adoration, but what cause would
there have been for terror? There was cause only for ecstasy. But was
that ecstasy which you and I saw on his face? I tell you it was the
despair of final defeat. He was at the mercy of Him whom he had made his
enemy. As I raised my hands in consecration, God came.”
Was it the infection only of that mute panic in the priest’s eyes that
caused Colin’s heart to beat suddenly small and quick, and his hands to
grow cold?
“That occurred to me,” he said.
There was a moment’s silence. The clock ticked, and just outside the
window a thrush sang.
Colin made a violent effort with himself. He attacked his fear, driving
it before him.
“We’re rotten Satanists, you and I,” he said. “We ought to be ashamed of
ourselves. As I tell you, that idea did occur to me, but I was, without
knowing it, overwrought last night and excited. I, too, when I saw that
terror in his face, thought that the sight of God alone, merciful and
pitiful, could have caused it, and I thought so even more strongly when,
half an hour later, I looked at his face again, and saw it was quiet and
serene. But I needn’t go into that. What I intend to do now and for ever
from this moment, is to put that notion away.”
“It doesn’t matter if you put it away or not,” said the priest. “It is
true.”
Colin made that silent, effortless relaxation, that opening of his heart
to the power that he loved and served, which is the essence of prayer.
He had just to remain like that, till it began to tingle and throb
within him, till he was charged and brimming with it. Soon he spoke.
“Of course the ways of God are inscrutable,” he observed, “but I don’t
take the slightest interest in them. Of course He’ll win in the end
somehow--it’s such a score to be Omnipotent. But it isn’t the end yet.
I’m going to have a good long run for my money first. Besides, the
notion is quite illogical: it doesn’t hold water. You were the
principal culprit last night, weren’t you? Why, in the name of justice,
weren’t you bagged instead of Vincenzo?”
“I wish to God I had been,” said the priest.
“Now will you explain why?”
“Because I am in hell.”
“This pleasant room?” asked Colin.
The priest got up.
“Can’t you understand?” he said. “Vincenzo has been conquered: he has
made his submission. He saw the truth of what he denied and mocked: it
was made real to him, in some manner inscrutable to us. And if that was
the end of life, it was the end of hell also.”
“Oh, I thought hell was eternal,” said Colin.
“Every moment holds eternity,” said the other. “Millions of years
multiplied by millions of years are no nearer eternity than the
millionth part of a second. Eternity isn’t quantity, it is quality.”
Something shone on Colin at that, as from an immense distance over
stormy water there shines some steadfast beam from a harbour light.
Instantly his whole will, strong in the power that possessed it, mocked
and derided.
“Ah, fine durable quality,” he said.
That abyss of terror in the priest’s eyes was veiled for a moment.
“Yes, the quality of God,” he said. “Nothing else but it exists at all.”
Colin stretched himself in his chair.
“Oh damn,” he said quietly. “I’m sure I beg your pardon, Douglas, but
when I try to impart a little lightness to your solemn gibberish, you
flop back again. Let us quit theology or demonology, or whatever we’re
talking about--I’m sure I haven’t the slightest idea what it is--and be
a little more practical. Now I hear you asked to see me. What did you
want to say?”
“I wanted to tell you that I am leaving Stanier to-day,” said Douglas.
Colin raised his eyebrows.
“That’s rather sudden, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes. It’s very sudden. What happened last night was sudden and what it
wrought in me.”
“And so I’m to be left without my--my librarian at a moment’s notice?”
said Colin.
“It would make no difference if I stopped,” said Douglas. “I could never
do my office again.”
Colin laid his hand on the priest’s shoulder, and put into his manner
all the whining charm which was his.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “you mustn’t think that I’m unsympathetic.
You’ve had a frightful shock, and it has absolutely upset your nerves.
It has had no effect on mine, as you see, but I quite understand that
you’re all abroad to-day. Now take a complete holiday for a month, and
don’t go near the--the library. We’re having a divine spring, May is
delicious down here. And then after a month you’ll find you’re yourself
again.”
Douglas shook his head.
“I couldn’t possibly stop here,” he said.
“Well, then, go out to Capri for a month or so. The villa is at your
disposal, and, of course, you’ll be my guest, though I shan’t be there.”
“That is kind of you,” said Douglas, “but I couldn’t do that either. I
must go.”
“But I can’t permit it,” said Colin. “You’re part of Stanier now, a very
important part too. Why, it’s through you that old Colin’s original
designs are complete. I built the chapel he planned before he turned
traitor, but what’s the use of a chapel, without a priest? It’s no more
than an empty picture frame. Last night was very upsetting, I quite
grant you that, but for a fit of the nerves you mustn’t break up the
very shrine of Stanier’s hidden life. Do you suppose it was chance that
caused us to meet? Why, we’ve often agreed it was the most miraculous
design. You can’t smash it up like that. Take a holiday by all means,
but you must come back.”
“I cannot stop here, and I can never come back here,” said Douglas. “The
place--how shall I say it--is saturated.”
Colin moved a step away from him.
“I think your attitude requires explanation,” he said. “Is Capri
saturated too?”
Douglas faced him.
“My attitude is perfectly simple,” he said. “For twelve years the
worship of evil has been my spiritual life, and last night my eyes were
opened to what I have been. Whether I can find salvation I don’t know,
but what I can do is to hate and loathe myself, and break off all
connection with those who are as I have been.”
“Ah, now we’re getting at it,” said Colin. “The saturation you speak
of--I am the saturator, I perceive. Is that it?”
“Yes: you and the evil which you worship.”
Colin’s blue eyes were still smiling and kind.
“I think you’re inconsistent,” he said. “Shouldn’t the zeal of the
convert inspire you to missionary work? A brand plucked from the burning
ought surely to want to spoil the fire by pulling out another brand.”
Douglas hesitated.
“I am afraid,” he said.
“Not of me?” asked Colin.
“Yes. You have a power for evil that is terrible. The legend is true: I
can’t stand up against you. And yet....”
“Go on,” said Colin.
“It’s this, and these are my last words to you. I have watched you this
last month, and you have changed. At least there is the shadow of change
over you. Till last night you have never come to the chapel, and last
night I could feel that you felt no true devotion. If I could hope to
assist that change, I might stop, but it has nothing to do with me. You
have let love approach you.... Dennis.... He loves you as you know very
well, and there is something in you, crush and throttle it as you will,
which goes out to him.”
Colin suddenly shot out his hand at him. Never, not even in the days of
Raymond, had he known so blistering and undiluted a stream of hate flood
his soul. This man, with whom he had been knit in the worship of evil,
not only had thrown it and him aside, but he had seen and spoken of that
which, like a disgrace, he had tried to cover up and excuse from
himself.
“That’s enough!” he said. “And let me tell you that you never spoke
words more ill-advised for your purpose than these. It’s the truth in
them that damns them. Do you think I don’t know that as well as you? And
don’t you see that if anything was wanted to encourage me to root that
change out of my heart, it would be that you, you trembling renegade,
should tell me of its shadow lying on me?”
He came close up to him again; there was not much of a smile in his eyes
now, and he spoke with a cold and deadly concentration.
“I know that I’ve been weak,” he said, “and it’s a tonic you’ve given me
for my weakness. There’ll be no more complaint of my lack of fervour:
what has frightened you has put resolve and courage into me. You, and
your truckling submission! Why, I shall hear of you teaching in a Sunday
school next. Perhaps you’d like Dennis to come and sit under you. I’ll
wring the weakness out of my heart as you wring the last drop of
moisture from a wet cloth, and out of Dennis’s heart I’ll pluck the
weeds of love and plant the flowers of hate there, thick as the spring
daffodils on the hill-side.”
Colin broke off suddenly.
“Go away,” he said, “while you have time. If you stop here you’ll see
something that will curl you up like Vincenzo. It won’t be the face of
God, but it will be something you can’t bear. You’re trembling in every
limb now. By God, there’ll be two inquests instead of one if you stop
here! You’re afraid of me, as you said, and that’s very prudent of you.”
How the power surged and foamed through him: it was like fire and wine
in his veins, buoyant and intoxicating.
“I would kill you now,” he said, “except for the fuss and bother that
would involve me in. There’s one mysterious death to be investigated
already, and you may thank your luck that it is so.”
It was true enough that Douglas had shrunk before him, holding up his
arm as if to ward off some impending blow. But now he suddenly
straightened himself up, as if new force had nerved him, and in the
strength of that he stood steadfast and unafraid before the power that
flickered in Colin’s eyes.
“I was afraid of you,” he said, “but it was my blindness that made me
afraid. Now, _de profundis_, I call on God, whom I have mocked at and
defied, but in whom you believe just as I do. I daresay you could kill
my body, for that is mortal, it is weak with sin and defilement, but
against me you are powerless as hate in the presence of love. You know
that yourself. And one day you will be conquered and make your
submission, too. You will go down into hell, as I have done, and find
that God is there also.”
He waited a moment watching, now without dismay, the furious impotence
of the other’s face. But no word came from Colin, and presently he moved
to the door.
“Good-bye, Lord Yardley,” he said. “And God will have mercy on your soul
in spite of you.”
Colin stood where he was, hearing Douglas’s steps pass across the
gallery and into the hall. His fingers still twitched with rage, he felt
himself charged and crackling with the friendly power, and he had no
doubt in his own soul that by the mere exercise of his will he could
have brought to bear some disastrous force on the man who had just
quitted him, that should exhibit itself in illness or misfortune, or in
ways more swift and terrible. And yet though the mere opening of the
sluice of pent-up evil would have done it, and though with every
conscious fibre of him he hated and wished evil, he did not do it. For
what might happen to Douglas was a side issue, not worth pursuing, and
as regards the main issue, namely his soul’s abhorrence of the power in
Whose name Douglas had withstood him, he knew that he was defeated
already. He had come up against something that did not fight him nor
strive against him; it merely stood there, patient and pitiful, serenely
existing.
He confessed defeat, but he did not acquiesce in it. Rather it stirred
in him, as he had said to Douglas, a more determined antagonism, and
took him farther than ever from any notion of submission. But Douglas
was right in saying that there was a breach in his defences, and that in
the breach stood Dennis, boyish and smiling and clad in that armour of
love and innocence. Somehow he must be stripped of that, and wounded,
and driven away from the crumbling wall of Colin’s defences, else he
would never be able to repair it. Of course the boy was not
convent-bred, he was no pious barley-sugar little saint, but a
high-spirited, vigorous fellow with a good leaven of mischief and boyish
naughtiness, but that was nothing. His armoured innocence lay in his
utter lack of the love of evil; when it came near him in the abstract,
he choked and shuddered at it, instinctively recoiling. Dennis had no
notion of hate, of the desire to hurt; the rudiments of cruelty, that
bramble full of thorns and red fruit, which when it has taken root in
the soul spreads over it quicker than any other lust, and chokes and
stabs to death any growth that impedes it, had no existence in him. He
liked enjoying himself, and there perhaps lay the seeds of selfishness,
but selfishness was a negative quality, compared with the other.
And there, more impregnable yet, the very breastplate of Dennis’s armour
which covered his heart, was his propensity for love. Colin knew that,
in these three weeks of his Easter holidays, he had made a sad mess in
attempting to use that as a weapon in his own hand. He had thought that
by making Dennis attached to himself he would be able to influence the
boy to his own ends, and lay his soul open for the introduction of that
which he intended to implant there. But a strangely miscalculated result
had ensued. Easily, indeed, by the exercise of that charm which was his
to command, had he won the boy’s heart, but; by some mischance of
carelessness, he had let Dennis’s love ooze into himself. That leak must
be stopped up. As it was, his house of hate was not impervious to those
soft April rains. Why was it, he wondered, that Dennis penetrated like
this, whereas Violet, whose love for him still lived, could make no
entrance? He could sit, so to speak, in the window and watch her
streaming on the pane, and never a drop come in, but Dennis dripped from
the roof, and entered through chink and cranny. Was it that with
Violet’s love there was mingled fear of him and horror, which cloyed its
power of penetration, whereas Dennis was pure limpid water? Dennis had
neither fear nor horror of him: he had clung to him in the midnight hour
of his fear, as to a rock and a sure defence, unknowing that it was from
there that he was assailed, and that he fled to him from whom he was
fleeing. There was love in all its innocence, and its awful power.
Above all, then, he must kill Dennis’s love for him. The weapon he had
thought to forge out of that had only been turned against himself, and
at the same time it was, in itself, Dennis’s chief protection. Dennis
loved no one, Colin was sure, as he loved him, and there was his cuirass
of security, which must be hammered into fragments which should pierce
and wound him, until he drew them out of his own breast, and cast them
from him as poisoned things, which were the origin of all his woe.
“Yes, that damned Douglas was right,” thought Colin, “and I’m grateful
to him for warning me. I’ll see to it.”
* * * * *
He sat there a few moments longer, then ejected the topic from his mind
altogether, and for distraction moved across to the window. The superb
and luminous afternoon was already near its close, and the tide of clear
shadow was creeping up the terrace. Below, the lake reflecting the sky
was a mirror of steely blue: beyond, the plain was dim with the mists
rising from its intersecting dykes. Its further edge and the line of the
sea which bounded it had vanished altogether, for a sea fog hung over
the Channel and was slowly drifting inland. Towards sunset in the chill
of evening following on warm days like this, it often spread right
across the plain, opaque and impenetrable, covering it completely, and,
like a sea, lapped round the lower edges of the higher ground, turning
its contours into bays and headlands. The hill of Rye rose above it like
an island, and the tops of any tall trees in the plain would float like
derelicts on its surface, but it submerged the featureless flat beyond,
and till it dispersed again, with a rising wind or the warmth of dawn,
it was bewildering and blinding, and a man caught by it unawares, where
there was no path to guide him, might lose his bearings altogether, and
wander half the night in aimless circles over pastures perfectly
familiar to him. To-night, reinforced by the moisture rising from the
dykes, the dense mist spread very rapidly and, even as Colin watched,
the whole plain vanished before his eyes. From the sea, the foghorns
were already hooting with hollow, long-drawn wails.
Colin turned from the window: the luminous west had grown pale, and this
march of the shadows and the mists was rather a dreary spectacle. But
within it was scarcely better. Two days ago at this time the house had
been seething with life and the fancy-dress ball was yet to come. Then
yesterday morning the guests had all gone, but there was still Dennis
here, and what a festival they had made of his last day! Then had come
that midnight catastrophe, of which the sequel had been the scene which
he had just gone through, and the departure of Douglas: that was over,
and there was no object to be served by brooding upon it. But above all
it was the absence of Dennis that contributed to this mood of slack
purposelessness, which was so unusual with him. Only this morning, as he
trudged up the slope with the boy for the silly rabbit-shooting, he had,
taking himself unawares, fancied that he could be content to expunge all
that had given the zest and alacrity to life, and browse here
animal-like, so long as he was at Stanier and Stanier was his. Here he
was at Stanier, but for some reason mists, chilly and obliterating, had
crept up round it, penetrating everywhere. Surely they had come before
they were due?--it was not evening with him yet, but broad noon, and
many years must pass before for him the sun set, and the frost of death
came on him, and Dennis plucked the reins from his nerveless hands.
For a moment he let himself visualise what manner of impotence would be
his at that hour. Just the power of hate would be left him, he thought,
and even the red of that would be fading, like the sunset outside, into
the grey encompassing mists, but surely as long as one touch of colour
remained there he would be hating the very existence of Stanier because
it was his no longer but Dennis’s, and hating Dennis for the dawning
pride of his ownership. How would he long then to summon some
cataclysmic force which would annihilate heritage and heritor alike!
What worse torment could there be for those uncharted aeons that should
follow, than to be condemned to exist, unseen and unheard here where he
stood now, and be actively aware of Dennis in possession with sons
growing up who would inherit after him, while he himself drifted
impalpably about, surrounded by the warmth of life which yet could not
thaw that ice-cold bubble that contained his consciousness? He must
school himself to think of Dennis enjoying all that had been torn from
him. Already Dennis was his potential foe, his supplanter....
It was time to eject these comfortless imaginings: all that he need
retain of them was this new conception of Dennis, for that surely might
prove an antidote to affection--and he went out of his room into the
long gallery, where Violet, all alone, was seated at her tea-table. She
put down the book she was reading as he sauntered up.
“Anyone dining to-night?” he said. “Or are you and Granny and I going to
spend a quiet evening of domestic bliss?”
She poured him out his cup of tea.
“We shall be alone as far as I know,” she said. “Would you like to ask
Mr. Douglas?”
Colin paused: that subject was one of those he had meant to put away
from him. But she should have it if she liked.
“Douglas has gone,” he observed.
“Gone?” asked she.
“Yes, I said ‘gone,’ didn’t I?” said Colin. “To spare you any more
questions, I don’t know where he’s gone, because he didn’t tell me.
Sometimes I thought he would be rather a good tutor for Dennis in his
holidays a little later on.”
He just glanced at Violet and saw she had understood.
“But that’s all over now,” he continued. “I shall have to conduct
Dennis’s holiday education myself.... Yes, the atmosphere of Stanier
didn’t suit Douglas. He was impolite enough to say that it was saturated
with me and that he couldn’t bear it for a moment longer. You’re
delighted I suppose, aren’t you?”
“I saw very little of him,” said Violet. “As you know, I didn’t like
him.”
“How very unchristian of you. What was the fault you found with him?”
“I don’t think we need go into that,” said she.
“How reticent you are, darling,” he said. “Sad, isn’t it, that there’s
so little mutual confidence and trust between us. I wonder if you’re
glad that Vincenzo has gone, too. Would you feel inclined to come to the
inquest with me, and say that Vincenzo was a lovable, God-fearing fellow
who had nothing on his mind, no fears, no worries?”
She looked at him with a sudden spasm of alarm.
“Colin, what do you mean?” she said. “He didn’t kill himself?”
He liked producing that look of terror in her eyes: he liked playing
with her fears.
“Of course I haven’t told you what really happened,” he said, “for, as
you know, I am always considerate and should hate to shock you. Perhaps
I will tell you sometime. But suicide, no, it wasn’t suicide. There’s a
little puzzle for you, Violet, to occupy your leisure, now that the
duties of a hostess no longer take all your time. Vincenzo dies very
suddenly one night, and Douglas finds he can’t breathe the same
atmosphere as me next day.... Ah, I guess what you’re conjecturing, but
it’s wrong. I wasn’t the cause, directly or indirectly, of Vincenzo’s
death. What a mind you’ve got, darling, to let that suspicion ever peep
into it!”
Colin spoke with a soft deliberation: he was like a great purring cat
with a mouse between his paws.
“You did think that, you know,” he said, “just as you still think that I
had, well, let’s say the tip of a finger in poor Pamela’s death.
Altogether, I feel rather lonely and deserted this afternoon. Here are
you, with dark suspicions about me, and then my old friend Douglas has
gone, and my old servant (he was a friend, too) Vincenzo has gone, and
then Dennis has gone, and all within twenty-four hours.”
He put down his cup and sat down on the rug by her feet, clasping his
knees.
“And I find so little sympathy,” he said. “I believe you’re not sorry
that Douglas and Vincenzo have gone, and I wonder, I really do wonder,
whether you’re sorry that Dennis has gone.”
There was a fiendish ingenuity. Violet suspected, at the bottom of this
question. How well he divined her mind! How like him, as if he was some
deft conjurer, to guess what was in it!
“Why, I miss Dennis most awfully,” she said. “The house seems dead
without him.”
Colin smiled.
“Yes, very pretty and Madonna-like,” he said. “But that wasn’t what I
asked you. I asked you if you were sorry Dennis had gone. That’s a
direct question enough: can’t you answer it directly?”
She rose with all her nerves on edge. But that would never do. If she
was to reach Colin at all, with the love that was the only efficient
power she had, she must eradicate her fear of him, brushing aside all
that she shuddered at, for that, cramped and clogged her movement
towards him.
“The question is direct enough,” she said, “but I can’t give you a
direct answer. You’ve made the boy devoted to you, that’s beyond
question, and sometimes I’ve been afraid, and wished he was not here.
But then I’ve wondered whether I haven’t misjudged you altogether.
Dennis is just as sweet and innocent as he has always been. And then
I’ve asked myself whether you haven’t begun to love him.... Oh, Colin,
if that’s only so! You know I would give my life for that.”
Colin jumped to his feet.
“If you think I’m going to listen to your damned sentimental
maunderings,” he said, “you’re awfully mistaken. Dennis is devoted to
me, that is perfectly true. I effected that for two reasons. One, which
concerns you, was in order to cut you out, dear Violet. I’ve done that,
and I’ve seen how you’ve writhed with jealousy once or twice under the
knowledge. The second reason was more important. I made Dennis love me,
in order that I might have unbounded influence over him, for, as you’ve
often told me, love is infinite in power. No wonder you were afraid;
but, as a matter of fact, I haven’t used that influence over him, in the
way that you expected. And now (perhaps this will be a relief to you)
I’m going to change my tactics. I don’t like love you know; I’m going to
make Dennis sorry he loved me. He hasn’t yet seen me with any--shall we
call it with any clarity of vision? So important for a boy to form
habits of accurate observation! He must get to dislike love, too,
because it wounds him and makes him bleed.”
There spoke the very spirit and essence of wickedness, and yet Violet
felt that it struggled for utterance, fighting its way to his lips. His
purpose was plain, but there was something which contested it, an
impediment that threatened its free exercise. He, so she guessed, was
aware of it too, for though he had never been in more deadly and bitter
a mood, never swifter with those characteristic gibes that pierced and
stung, she felt that there was an effort about them, as if the bow that
shot them had to be strung again and again instead of being always
ready. In superficial and trivial ways also, in the days that followed,
that struggle, whatever it was, seemed to manifest itself in strange
little indecisions which irritated him and made him unlike himself. One
day, for instance, he would tell her that connubial solitude, with an
immortal grandmother thrown in, was too delicate a form of happiness,
and that he would go up to London that afternoon, and an hour later he
would have changed his mind, and told her to ask down a party for the
week-end. Then, before she had done that, he would change his mind
again, and say that he wanted nobody, and spent the day rambling about
the park, or, in this hot spell of May weather, bathing and basking by
the lake. Another day he started off to drive to Eton and see Dennis, to
whom he had promised an early visit, but when that evening she asked him
how Dennis was, he told her he had not been there.
They were at dinner, just the three of them, when he rapped this out at
her, and it roused in old Lady Yardley some dim, disordered train of
thought, for she began to speak in that level monotone which came out of
her twilight mists.
“Yes, much wiser, much wiser,” she said. “Let there be no force, not
even persuasion. Let him come to it naturally: it is bred in the bone.
Do not make him drink of the spring: he will be thirsty someday, and
then he will go to it.”
Colin turned sharply round.
“Go to what, Granny?” he said. “What do you mean? What are you talking
about?”
“Aha, I am talking of what I know and what you know. We talk in parables
that are plain to us. He knew, too--that man who never comes here now.
Yes, and yet another. They have both gone. Only Colin and I are left
now, and the chapel is empty.”
She stopped as suddenly as she had begun, and rose, leaning on her
sticks.
But all through these days, while spring every hour was weaving fresh
embroideries, some black pattern was being worked, stitch by stitch, so
Violet felt, into Colin’s heart. Sometimes the needle was nimbly plied,
and then, despite herself, she shuddered at the depths that lay beneath
the bright surface of his gaiety, for it was when some black business
within went well that his mood was sunniest. Such was the case when he
came back from the inquest held on the body of Vincenzo. “There was an
autopsy,” he told her, “and though they rummaged about, so Dr. Martin
told me, with great thoroughness, they could find no cause of death
whatever. Visitation of God, that was all they could make of it, and I
daresay they were quite right. He was like Enoch, apparently: he was
translated. I wonder how Vincenzo would bear translation. I wonder what
he was translated into.”
It was difficult not to shudder at that.
“Colin, don’t talk like that,” she said. “You’re terrible.”
“Terrible? Why? I didn’t translate him. And then I gave my evidence, and
we were all very polite and complimentary, and bowed at each other with
respectful and mournful little smiles. I told them just what I told you,
and they all agreed I had acted with great wisdom and prudence. That was
quite true: they had no idea how true that was; and then we all bowed
again like--like a minuet. By the way, have you made anything of that
little puzzle I set you about the departure of Douglas following so
closely on the death of Vincenzo, and the reason he gave for it?”
Violet made no reply.
“Your manners are getting very bad, darling,” said Colin. “I asked you a
civil enough question. Now, here’s another queer thing. Both the doctor
and his assistant noticed a very curious smell about the frail earthly
tabernacle of poor Vincenzo. What do you think that was? You’ll never
guess, so I’ll tell you. There was a strong odour of incense. Now where
can that have come from? I could throw no light on it. Can you?”
She got up.
“Colin, supposing I told them there was more about Vincenzo’s death than
they know?” she said.
“Ah! That’s a great idea. What fun! Write an anonymous letter to the
coroner. And what will you say it was that they don’t know?... I thought
that information about the incense might interest you. Consider it in
connection with the puzzle.”
Another day, it seemed as if things did not go well with the black
embroidery, for he was savage and silent. Then it was she guessed that
something was struggling with him for its existence, and that he stabbed
at it, and tried to strangle it. Yet such days, lashed by blasts of his
bitter tongue, were more welcome to her than those on which he was
smiling and content and in harmony with himself.
As these weeks of May went by, Violet saw more and more clearly that she
had no significance for him at all, and it was just that which gave the
days their unspeakable tension. Sometimes she was the butt of his irony,
sometimes he completely disregarded her, but, whichever it was, he was
not concerned with her. She was just the traditional Stanier wife, whose
duty it was to provide an heir; after that she might freeze. He knew she
loved him, he knew she feared him, and he was quite indifferent to both.
It was Dennis round whom all his thoughts and all this strange hidden
contest centred, and unerringly she knew who were the combatants now
beginning to come into touch with each other. On the one side was all
that the legend stood for, the love of hate, and the hate of love.
Colin, all his life, had been an apt pupil in that deadly school:
perhaps no such scholar as he had ever graduated there. Already he had
tried to use love as an instrument of corruption, and he had failed and
changed his plan. Now, he was out to kill love, and in command of the
black panoply he was arraying himself to fight against a young boy who
stood there unaware that there was anyone but the father he adored
coming to meet him. He had no defence except love ... and yet was there
a traitor in the very heart of his foes?
And she had to stand aside and watch. Of what use was it to warn Dennis?
What form could that warning take? All he knew was that it was his
father coming to him. If she could somehow throw herself between them,
Colin would pass on over her, indifferent, scarcely even aware of her.
One thing only perhaps she could do, and that was to stamp out her fear
of him, for the only effect of fear was to paralyse....
Thus then, dimly and mistily, was the new situation forming. But it
would not present itself like that: it would take shape, when Dennis was
home again, in daily domestic ways, in ways cunning and cruel, in ways
perhaps affectionate and winning. But they would all contribute to the
end in view.