It was not until the first of the autumn shooting parties at Stanier was
nearly due that Colin came back from his island, and from then till
early in December a succession of guests passed through. Sometimes he
went up to town with the party that was leaving, returning a few days
afterwards with the new relay, and then again he was busy with his
duties as host. Sometimes he stopped here in the emptied house, but even
then Violet was never once alone with him for any private talk. He
pointedly avoided all chance of this, and on the only occasion when she
had attempted to break this ring of his seclusion from her, he had
flamed into devilish anger.
“Oh, for God’s sake clear out!” he said, “if you’ve come for a
heart-to-heart talk. You’ll know fast enough if I’ve got anything to say
to you.”
“But I want to talk to you,” she said. “I haven’t seen you since you
left here in August.”
He gave her one furious glance.
“You’d better go,” he said.
Dennis, she knew, wrote to him, for sometimes she would see that
laborious and legible script on one of his letters, so different from
the cursive scrawl which he gave her. Colin certainly read these, but he
never wrote to the boy, and one day there came to Violet, at the end of
one of Dennis’s letters, a postscript without comment. “Father has told
me not to write to him any more.” There was no reply to be made to that:
Dennis had stated it without comment, and without comment it had better
remain, for they understood each other on the subject which it
concerned. And yet, for some reason which she could not justify and
could scarcely even define, Violet felt that, underneath the harshness
of that injunction, there lay not so much the desire to wound as the
deliberate intention of so doing. Colin had sat down and thought of
that: it had not sprung from the open garden of his mind, but had been
reared with deliberate care. It had not been derived from instinct, but
from craft; that waspish little prohibition was no spontaneous product.
She might even regard it as a missile discharged not in offence but in
defence.... And then he never spoke of Dennis: not once did the boy’s
name pass his lips. To her who knew him so well, and had so often
shuddered at what he was, this carried the same interpretation. He
wanted no suggestion or reminder of Dennis to come near him, not even to
her did he mention him, though it was just here that she was most
vulnerable to the taunts and gibes that wounded. It was not like him to
spare the most sensitive spot for fear of hurting her; it was much more
probable that, somehow or other, he was sensitive there himself, and
forbore from a contact at which he would have himself winced.
They were alone for a few minutes together, one evening early in
December. Old Lady Yardley’s whist, at which her nurse had made the
fourth, was just over. These sepulchral games were now, in the dimness
that was falling ever duskier over her mind, no more than the mere
approximate symbol of a game; she held her cards and played them quite
fortuitously, and smiled as she gathered the random tricks. But after a
few hands of this phantom game had been dealt and disposed of, she was
quite content when told that her two rubbers were over, and that she had
won them both, though she would whimper in some vague distress if she
thought she was not going to get her whist. Even Colin had become now to
her a shadow among shadows; just occasionally some faint ray from her
mind illuminated him, but for the most part he was but a piece of that
grey background, ever receding, of the visible world. To-night, however,
some thought of him quickened her, just as she was being wheeled out of
the room, though all evening she had seemed unconscious of his presence,
for she turned in her chair and said, “My Colin is coming back from
Eton before long, and it will be well with Stanier again.”
Colin had got up and was half way along the gallery on his passage to
his own room, leaving Violet there. But at this he came back, and stood
in front of the fire.
“When does ‘her Colin’--I suppose she means that brat of yours and
mine--come home?” he asked.
Violet gave him the date, some five days before Christmas.
“I suppose you’ve made a calendar, as one used to do at school,” he
sneered, “and tear the days off as they pass.”
“Oh, no: I can remember without that,” said she. “There are eight days
more.”
“And what happens at Christmas?” he asked. “The usual intoxicating
family gathering?”
“Aunt Hester’s coming,” said Violet, “and my mother.”
“Very exhilarating,” observed Colin.
“Then why don’t you go to some friend for Christmas, if you feel like
that?” said she. “There’s no reason why you should be here, with a
handful of women.”
“There is, if you’ll excuse my contradicting you,” he said. “I must make
Dennis’s Christmas happy and joyful. And after all I have a certain
right to be at Stanier if I like. Or have you planned to give Dennis a
taste of what it will be like to be master here, when I’m out of the
way, just as my father gave you and me a taste of it one year, after
your discarded Raymond was out of the way? How well I remember that
somehow! Raymond was still at Cambridge, and my father made you and me
hostess and host at a big party, before Raymond came down. Perhaps
you’ve counted on my absence at Christmas, knowing how exhilarating I
find the company of my aunts, and are asking a large party with Dennis
to play host. Sure you haven’t?”
The question was too preposterous to need an answer, and he continued:
“I shall be here for Christmas with your permission,” he said, “just to
give Dennis a treat. You may have him alone a bit first and--and tonic
him up for so much pleasure. He kept writing to me when I was in Capri,
saying he wished I was here, and that he was sorry I should not be back
before he went to Eton. There was a sarcastic touch about that which
made me laugh.”
Violet shook her head.
“No, you’re wrong there,” she said. “There was nothing sarcastic about
it.”
He looked at her with a sort of malignant pity.
“You make me feel sick sometimes,” he said, “with that sort of remark. I
suppose Dennis thought it a positive joy to be thrashed by me.”
“You thrashed him?” said she.
“Do you really expect me to believe he hasn’t told you that?” sneered
Colin, “and that you haven’t wept over me for it?”
“It doesn’t matter to me whether you believe it or not,” said she.
“Dennis never said a word about it. What had he done?”
Colin smiled. “Nothing very particular----”
“And so you thrashed him! That was brutal of you.”
“Thank you for that kind word,” said he. “But I wish you wouldn’t
interrupt in the middle of a sentence. I didn’t thrash him for what he
did, but for what he was.”
It was just on occasions like these, when Colin, as now, was in his most
fiendish mood, that she felt this sudden pang of compassion for him.
“Oh, my poor Colin!” she said. “That’s what is the matter with you. It
isn’t what you do; it’s what you are.”
“The noble art of tu quoque,” remarked Colin. “But it’s a rather
meaningless art. Don’t my actions express me pretty well? I fancied I
shewed myself fairly frankly to Dennis in the summer.”
“No, you only shewed him what you’re trying to be,” said Violet.
“You shall explain that in a minute,” he said. “I was saying that I gave
a sincere exposition of myself. I hate Dennis, you see: I hate the fact
of his existence. Stanier will be his when I’ve gone to hell; probably
the knowledge of that will be what constitutes hell for me, and I allow
it will be damnable. But until then I can make it pretty damnable for
him.”
Colin took a cigarette.
“But there’s more than that,” he said. “I hate love and, if you’re
right--thanks for the hint--Dennis loves me. I’m going to kill that, not
only because I abominate it, but because it will help to wither Dennis’s
soul. I want to make him like me: I should delight in him then. I might
even be pleased to know that Stanier would be his. Is that all clear? If
so, you might explain what you meant when you said I only shewed him
what I’m trying to be.”
She looked at him as she might have looked at some sick child.
“It’s very simple,” she said. “You’re trying to hate Dennis, and you’re
trying to make him hate you. You’re acting as if you hated him. But
you’re not succeeding.”
She felt that she had never known him till then, so nakedly his soul
leaped into his eyes. She had no physical fear of him, it did not seem
to matter if he struck her or if he killed her, but at that moment she
looked into the nethermost pit, and her spirit cried out for the horror
of it. That reacted on her physically, she knew she turned as white as
paper, and that her heart fluttered in her throat like a bird ready to
take wing, but all that was a secondary effect. She knew that she had
spoken truly and she knew also that he recognized that, for otherwise he
would not have flamed into that icy fire of anger.
He took a step towards her, and she saw him clench his fists, so that
the knuckles shewed white on his brown hands.
“Stand up,” he said. “Are you mad that you speak to me like that?”
With a violent effort she controlled the shaking of her knees, and stood
in front of him with her hands hanging defencelessly by her side.
“No, Colin, I’m not mad at all,” she said.
He drew back his arm as if to strike her.
“I’ll give you one chance,” he said. “Are you sorry?”
“No. If you’re going to knock me down, do so. I shan’t tell Dennis.”
She looked him perfectly straight in the face, waiting for the blow. And
then suddenly she perceived that her defencelessness had beaten him.
“You’d better go,” he said. “You haven’t made things easier for Dennis,
I may tell you.”
Instantly all her courage which had sufficed for herself surrendered.
“Colin, it’s nothing to do with him,” she said. “Do what you like to me,
but don’t strike me through him.”
“I think that will hurt you most,” he said.
There was no use in saying anything further, and she moved towards the
door.
“I am going back to London to-morrow,” he said.
* * * * *
Violet heard nothing more from him during the days which intervened
before Dennis’s arrival. As he knew the date of that, she expected him
to come back that day, but there was still no sign from him, and she and
the boy had to themselves these few days, before her mother and Aunt
Hester came. Out of doors there was windless and sunny wintry weather:
every night there was a frost, and the bare trees were decked with the
whiteness of it, which lay thick over the lawns and grassy slopes till
the sun resolved it. Below on the marsh there was spread a mantle of
dense mist through which the rays could not penetrate, and when, on the
third day, a breeze from the east folded it up, the whole plain from
edge to edge was dazzling with the glistening fall of the hoar frost. On
the lake, the lids of ice shooting out from the shallow water had
already roofed the whole surface, with a promise of skating imminent,
but this wind, with a veiled sun, though chillier by sensation than the
briskness of the still, clear frost, melted the frozen floor, and
brought up flocks of grey clouds, and that evening the snowfall began.
For two days and nights, beneath a bitter wind, it fell without
intermission, lying in thick drifts in hollow places, and giving the
yew-hedge an unbroken coat of white: then, as the wind dropped, and the
snow ceased, the sky cleared again, and a great frost, black and of
exceeding sharpness, set in. Once more, and this time very swiftly, the
chilled waters of the lake were congealed and the surface was dark like
steel, and transparent as the water over which it lay. Two days before
Christmas it already bore at the shallow end, and Dennis frenziedly
began hunting for skates.
“There must be some, Mother,” he said, “if one only looks in
the right place. You find them with broken golf-clubs and old
croquet-mallets....” and he ran off to explore suitable regions.
There had been no further talk between them about his relations with his
father. Every morning he asked if there was any news of his coming, but
there had been none. Violet had suggested his getting some Eton friend
to stay with him, and then only distantly, Dennis had answered with, it
seemed to her, a recollection of last holidays. “Oh, I think I won’t,
thanks,” he had said. “Father may come any day, mayn’t he?”.... Apart
from that he had said nothing whatever, and to Violet every day of
Colin’s absence was so much remission. Old Lady Yardley seemed to accept
the boy as being Colin back from school again.... And all these days
seemed to Violet like hours of calm, lit with a pale cold sunshine,
which preceded some inconjecturable tempest.
Aunt Hester and her mother arrived that afternoon, and Aunt Hester
instantly had her snow-boots unpacked, and went for a walk, while the
light still lingered.
“I hate seeing the windows shuttered and the lamps lit, my dear,” she
said. “It makes me feel that I am being put in a box, and I’m too near
my latter end to waste my time now over boxes. But if you get a bit of a
walk while they’re shutting up, the box seems pleasant enough when you
get back to it. And I’ll be ready for my tea, too.”
Such Esquimaux practices, of course, made no appeal to Violet’s mother.
She brought down from her room her Patience cards, and an altar-frontal
which she was embroidering for Winchester Cathedral, and hoped to have
ready by Easter. Of the two, for immediate employment, she settled on
the altar-frontal, as she had a vague idea that she and Violet must have
a great deal to say to each other, and it was impossible to talk while
you were playing Patience, or, rather, it was impossible to play
Patience if you talked. She had grown a shade greyer, a shade more
ladylike, a shade more inaccessible. But she always did everything
slowly.
“Dennis will be quite a big boy,” she observed. “I have not seen him
since last year at this time.”
“Yes, he’s grown a great deal,” said Violet.... Could it be possible
that Colin was not coming for Christmas?
“And Colin is well?” asked Mrs. Stanier.
“I hope so. He has been away for the last fortnight, and the wretch has
never even said when he will be coming back.”
“It is a pity that he should miss Dennis’s holidays,” said Mrs. Stanier.
Violet had no sympathetic contribution to give to this sentiment, and
her mother moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. They got dry
and a little cracked in this very cold weather.
“I have brought a wreath for your father’s grave,” she said. “I made it
entirely from flowers in my greenhouse. My gardener is very clever at
getting me plenty of flowers throughout the winter.”
Violet rummaged her mind for some ardent rejoinder.
“That is always nice,” she said. “Flowers are a guarantee that spring
will come. But the poor things will wither very quickly when you put
them out in this icy air.”
“Yes, dear. But I should feel very remiss and hard if I did not always
put a wreath on your father’s grave whenever I come to Stanier. I
daresay it will not be for many more years that I shall do so.”
Violet laughed.
“Dear Mother, what nonsense,” she said. “Why, there’s my grandmother who
was married before you were born: she plays her whist still, and walks
in to dinner.”
“Her mind I suppose is now completely gone?” said Mrs. Stanier. “She did
not recognize me at all last time I was here. And occasionally she
mentioned your father as if he was with me still.”
The arrival of tea interrupted this lugubrious interchange of thought,
followed by Dennis, triumphantly clashing a pair of skates, which were
screwed on to boots, the leather of which was perished and wrinkled like
withered funguses.
“They’re old enough,” he said, “but they’re all right. I’m going to put
them on to my boots, so that they’ll be ready in the morning. I found
them in a cupboard upstairs.”
Instantly it occurred to Violet whose those skates had been. For more
than a dozen years now there had been no skating at Stanier, probably
the last person who had skated on the lake was Raymond.... Almost
certainly the skates were his, for they were workmanlike blades, screwed
on to the boots, whereas the rest of them used to shoe themselves with
strange antiquated wooden concerns, or skates with keys and catches
which invariably came undone. But Raymond had spent a winter’s vacation
once at Davos, and Violet remembered his laughing at her, when one of
her skates unclasped itself and slithered across the ice.... Somehow,
with fantastic disquiet, she hated the idea of Dennis using Raymond’s
skates.
“Aren’t they too big for you?” she asked.
“Lord, yes,” said Dennis, “but they’re better than nothing. Hefty
skates, too. I wonder whose they were?”
Mrs. Stanier put a small saccharine lozenge into her tea.
“The lake has not borne for many years,” she said. “I think we used to
have harder winters once than we have now. The last year it bore ... ah,
dear me, yes.”
The return of Aunt Hester from her tramp in the snow was a welcome
advent. She professed herself vastly refreshed, and had a very pretty
colour in her checks.
“Nothing like a frosty air for giving you an appetite,” she said, “and
they say that the microbes all get killed in it, though for my part I
never believed much in microbes. Everything’s microbes nowadays: if
you’ve got a pain in your stomach from eating what you shouldn’t it’s a
microbe, if you covet your neighbour’s wife they’ll make it out to be a
microbe soon. Give me a good strong cup of tea, Violet dear: I hope it’s
been standing. What’s that you’re working at, Margaret? A shawl for cold
evenings?”
Mrs. Stanier drew in her breath with a sound of shocked sipping.
“No, Hester, it’s an altar-cloth for Winchester Cathedral,” she said.
“Well, I couldn’t see the pattern, and it looked to me like a shawl. And
when’s that wretch Colin coming back? I thought I should find him here.”
“I’ve not heard a word from him,” said Violet. “I’ve been expecting him
for some days.”
“Well, I shall have to flirt with Dennis till he comes,” said Aunt
Hester.
“Rather,” said Dennis. “There’s the telephone ringing, Mother. Shall I
go and see what it is?”
Dennis ran into the hall, leaving the skates which he was transferring
to his own boots on the floor.
“Yes, who is it?” he asked.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Hullo, is that Dennis?” asked his father’s voice.
“Yes, Father.”
“Well, tell them to send down to the station to meet the 7.30 train. I’m
coming by it.”
“Oh, ripping,” said Dennis. “I’ll tell them.”
Colin rang off again without another word.
* * * * *
Colin’s train was very late: he did not get up to the house till they
were half way through dinner, and came in as he was. He was clearly in
the best of spirits.
“Don’t get up, anybody,” he said. “Violet darling, how goes it? And Aunt
Hester and Aunt Margaret. And Granny. An awful journey; they always cut
off the heating apparatus when it’s more than usually cold.”
Dennis waited for a greeting, but there was none for him: Colin ignored
him altogether, as if he had not been present; to all the others, no
doubt in intentional contrast, he was extraordinarily cordial. But as he
spoke now to one and now to another, with affection for Violet, with
extravagant compliments for Aunt Hester, and sympathetic enquiries about
the Girls’ Friendly Society for Aunt Margaret, who was a pillar of that
admirable institution, Violet saw his eyes, as they flitted by Dennis,
pause on the boy’s face from time to time with a look that peeped out
like a lizard from a crevice and whisked in again. And then for the
first time he spoke to him.
“Any tipsy school-friends coming this Christmas, Dennis?” he said. “My
word, that was a beauty you treated us to in the summer.”
Dennis raised his eyes to his father’s, and even as they met, Violet saw
that look pop out again, instantly sheathing itself in the iron of
Colin’s voice.
“No, Father, I haven’t asked anybody these holidays,” he said quietly.
Colin paid no more attention to him, till the women got up to leave the
table. Then he watched him to see what Dennis would do.
Dennis stood by the door he had opened, not knowing whether his father
expected him to go with the others or stay. But his hesitation was
enough.
“Perhaps you’d kindly shut that door,” he said. “You can leave yourself
on whichever side of it you like.”
Dennis shut it, and came back to the table.
“Looking out for a drink, I suppose?” said Colin, rising. “Ring the bell
when you’ve finished, I’m going into the other room.”
Dennis went to the door again to open it for his father and followed
him.
Colin sat up late that night, thinking of Dennis and of little else. He
thought of him, as he always did now, as his survivor and supplanter,
who, in all probability, would rule at Stanier for twenty years after he
was dead, unless he himself lingered on like his own grandmother till
all the fires of life had grown cold. Then possibly he might out-live
his son, and possibly there might be enough heat in his grey embers to
chuckle at that, for he would sooner be the last of his race than be
succeeded by Dennis. Who would come after him, he wondered, in that
case. He knew there was a small homestead in the marsh, just outside his
property, where there lived a farmer called Stanier, with a brood of
scarecrow children. Perhaps they would establish their claim, and there
would be a romantic sequel to these centuries of direct line and
ever-increasing prosperity. But he would sooner have them reigning here
than Dennis.
Of course there was another chance: the leaven of evil might yet work in
the boy--for he was young still--and turn sour that sweet milk of love
with which he dripped. But he meant to make no more experiments with
regard to that. Dennis must come to it because he loved evil: he would
only struggle against it and abhor it if he was forced to it. Besides,
Colin knew he could not do it: he could bully and ill-treat him,
striving to kill love in him, but the ultimate direct initiative was
beyond him. He could wish him dead, he could wish him corrupted, but he
could not take on himself the actual sacrifice. It was his own fault, he
had allowed Dennis to enter his heart, where no-one else had ever been,
and now, with all the vigour of his evil soul, it was as much as he
could do to stop his advance. But never would he allow that love was
stronger than he: he would fight it till it lay bleeding and helpless at
his feet.
It had grown cold in his room: he fancied there was a draught from the
door which led into the corridor to the now disused chapel. But, as he
tried the door and found it shut, the notion came to him to visit the
chapel where he had not been since last Easter, and he fetched the key
and turned up the lights. It would be Christmas Eve to-morrow, he
remembered; last year they had held a midnight mass there, and the
sacring bell had rung simultaneously with the peal from the church near
by. It was bitter to-night in the chapel, and he shivered as he stood
there. In the air there still hung the faint stale odour of incense, and
faint, too, and hardly to be recalled, was the thrill of satisfied evil
with which once he had knelt there. There was the step off which
Vincenzo had rolled when the slavering ecstasy in his face was struck
from it by that mortal terror. How horrible to think that perhaps he had
seen God at that moment! Poor Vincenzo!
Colin had a sneering smile at the thought of that. God did not come to
you unless you permitted it, for otherwise there was no such thing as
free-will. Vincenzo must have had a weak spot somewhere: he must have
loved somebody for his own sake, and that perhaps gave God a permit. He
must be careful then....
He went back into the silent house, and upstairs. He saw that Dennis’s
door was ajar, and that there was a light within.
* * * * *
Morning brought no such deplorable disaster as a thaw, and soon after
breakfast Dennis came into the gallery with his skates in his hand.
Colin was by the fire, looking at the paper, and glanced up at him.
“Skating?” he said.
“Yes, the lake bears,” said Dennis.
Colin looked at the rusty skates on the boots he was carrying.
“Where did you get those?” he asked.
“I found them in a cupboard,” said Dennis. “They were on a pair of very
old boots, so I took them off and put them on mine.”
It flashed through Colin’s mind that they were Raymond’s. He had meant
to stop Dennis skating just for the mere sake of spoiling his enjoyment:
now he rather liked the idea of his doing so.
“Well, don’t go out through here,” he said, “and let in the cold air. Go
round by the hall. Perhaps I’ll come presently.”
Colin put the paper down. On just such a morning as this, clear and
sunny after a night’s hard frost, had Raymond gone down alone to the
lake, and he himself had strolled after him, in time to see the white
face already blue-lipped rise out of a hole in the broken ice, where the
lake lay deepest, and sink again before his eyes, as he leaned on the
parapet by the sluice and asked him if it was not rather cold. The ice
was always treacherous near where the stream came out of the lake....
Some inward certainty took possession of him. Preposterous though such a
coincidence would be, he found himself believing that Dennis was now
gaily tramping over the hard frozen snow to his death, and that he would
be there to see it. Out of the window he saw the boy running down the
white slopes beyond the yew-hedge, with his great coat on that reached
nearly to his heels, and his breath smoking in the bitter air.... Three
minutes later he was walking down over those same slopes.
Dennis had gone into the bathing-shed to put on his skates; presently
when he got warm he would divest himself of his great-coat, but it was
too cold for that yet: besides it would make a fall the softer. He tried
the edge of the lake, and found it firm as a floor beneath him, and soon
he extended the field of his manœuvres.
Colin heard the ring of his skates as he came down to the lake; he did
not go to the bathing-shed, but kept straight on along the retaining
bank, hidden from Dennis’s view by the rhododendrons. He felt it was all
going to happen as he expected: the chain of coincidence was already
strong, for was not Dennis alone on the virgin ice, just as Raymond had
been, and was he not (marvellous that!) wearing the skates which Raymond
had worn? There would be no more struggles to hate the boy, no more
looking on him as his survivor and supplanter. Things did not go well
with those who crossed Colin, and who shuddered with nightmare at the
approach of his protector.
There came a sudden crack, sharp as a rifle-shot, from the lake, and he
heard a splash. The open gap in the rhododendron bushes, where the
sluice-gate stood, was now only a few yards in front of him, and he ran
there. Ten or twelve yards from the bank, where the water was deepest,
there was a jagged hole in the ice, and Dennis’s cap floated on the
bubbling water. Next moment he rose: only just his face thrown back
appeared above the water, for his coat heavily weighted him. His eyes
were staring with fright, his mouth already blue with cold. He saw
Colin.
“Father!” he called.
And now in a moment Colin would be rid of his supplanter. It had
happened without plan or effort of his, and he had only got to stop
still for a few seconds and fill his mind with images of hate. He hated
Dennis, and smiled to himself as he repeated that, while he met the
boy’s eyes.
Dennis still looked at him: he had clutched a rim of the broken ice in
one hand, but it broke as he tried to raise himself, and, still
struggling, his head sank a little lower in the water that now covered
his chin and mouth. And then with a flood that bore all opposition way,
the knowledge burst on Colin that he loved him, and already perhaps it
was too late.... He knew well, too, that it was risking his own life to
jump into that deep water, paralyzingly cold, and swim out to him, and
he knew that life was sweet, and he believed that death would be to him
the open door through which he must go into the outer darkness of
damnation. But swiftly he tore off his coat, for his arms would have to
be strong for the two of them.
“Hold on, old boy,” he shouted. “We’ll have you out in a jiffy. Don’t be
frightened.”
And those were sweet words to Dennis, and sweeter yet to him who spoke
them.
Colin vaulted over the parapet of the sluice breaking another hole in
the ice, and before he had come to the surface was striking out for the
boy. He did not know whether the water was hot or cold; all that he was
conscious of was the stark necessity of reaching Dennis. Before he got
to him the boy’s head had disappeared, and plunging downwards he dived
after him. There he was, still struggling but slowly sinking, and Colin
caught hold first of his hair, then got an arm round him, and looking
upwards saw the glint of the sun on the open water. Furiously kicking
downwards he rose to the surface, pulling Dennis with him. But the boy’s
thick coat was a terrible drag and got heavier every moment as the water
soaked into it, and, few yards as they had to go, he thought for a
moment that they would never reach the shore.
“Kick out for all you’re worth,” he panted. “We’ve got to get there.
It’s just a few yards, Dennis.”
At last a rhododendron branch growing out over the water came within
reach, and he caught hold of it. This brought him to the edge of the
unbroken ice again, and, letting go of Dennis for a moment, he brought
his elbow down full on to it, and broke another yard of passage. Then
Dennis came within reach of further branches and felt the steep sides of
the retaining bank beneath his feet. Next minute they had dragged
themselves out of the water.
Colin turned to the boy, his teeth chattering with cold, and, now that
Dennis was safe, his heart was hot with the tide of hate, momentarily
driven back, but now flowing swiftly.
“You damned little idiot,” he said. “I suppose your plan was to drown
me.”
A revulsion of feeling not less than that which seized Colin drove over
the boy. All the time that they had been struggling in the water, with
that strong arm upholding him, his heart had sung with the thought that
his father had risked his life to save him, and now bitter as the icy
water itself were his first words to him.
“Take off that coat of yours and run,” said Colin. “After all my trouble
you needn’t stand here and freeze.”
Colin was now the more exhausted of the two, and after they had trotted
some fifty yards together, Dennis staggering and hobbling in his skated
boots, he had to stop.
“I can’t run any more,” he said. “Go on.”
He was terribly white of face, and his breath came in short panting
sobs.
“That’s likely,” said Dennis. “Here, catch hold of me, Father. Give me
your hand.”
Colin’s spirit rebelled, but the flesh was weak, and he let Dennis tuck
his arm in his, and pound away up the hill. The boy’s vigour and young
blood had reasserted themselves, the colour came back to his cheeks,
while the elder man, after his frantic struggle for them both, was
growing every moment more exhausted. But presently they came to the
level paving of the terrace, and Violet from within saw them pass a
window, and rushed to the door to open it. Colin was now near collapse,
but between them they lifted him into the warmth.
“Ring the bell, Dennis,” she said. “What has happened?”
“I was drowning,” said Dennis, “and he saved me.”
* * * * *
A few hours in bed encircled with hot water-bottles and blankets soon
restored Dennis, but the cold had taken a much firmer grip over his
father. For several days, without ever being dangerously ill, he was in
danger of so being, for his vitality, which had always been so serene
and vigorous, failed to recuperate him, and repel the effects of that
icy struggle and its sequel of exhaustion. Never before in his life had
he known a day’s sickness: now it seemed as if the spring of his vital
force was drained. He made but little resistance; he let himself lie
passively there while nurses and doctors fought for him. But all the
time, as he lay there, and so slowly recovered his strength, a struggle
more grim than that to which others could minister had laid hold on him.
The exuberant vitality of his love of hate had suffered a shock to which
that of his chilled and exhausted physical frame was not comparable.
That vitality, never before seriously threatened, but always bubbling
with energy, had collapsed at the moment when he vaulted over the sluice
and crashed into the ice on his way to save Dennis. He, who loved life
with every fibre of his being, and with every fibre of his being hated
love, knew well enough that he risked his life and betrayed his vow of
hate, when he did that. A moment before he had been smiling at this
wonderful coincidence which would rid him of a survivor and supplanter,
even as in identical manner, and at this same spot, he had been rid of
that elder twin of his who stood between him and the lordship he
coveted. And then came the humiliating collapse of his hate, before this
assault of love.
And now as he lay here hour after hour of sunny wintry days and fitful
sleep, it was not so much that he thought all this over, as that it was
presented to him from outside, like a picture on the wall, which too was
painted within his eyelids, so that when he closed them the images were
still there. He saw himself, risking everything for Dennis’s sake, not
because Dennis was his son, for that for many weeks now had been a solid
ground of hatred, but because he loved the boy. With whatever
incredulity he tried to counter that, it always slipped under his guard
and stabbed him. He was forced to admit it to himself for the wound it
made bled, but instinctively he covered it from others even as from
Dennis himself, to whom, the moment after the danger was over, he had
addressed those bitter and railing words, which came hot and fluent from
the instinct of his soul. But still the flickering fire of hate, doused
for that moment with deep and icy water, was alive, and day after day he
refused to see the boy and Violet. And though, as his bodily strength
returned, that fire burned more bravely, there was always present the
knowledge that he had betrayed the Lord and Benefactor who all his life
had done such great things for him. Was it in revenge for that betrayal
that he had physically collapsed like this? Was it a warning that those
whose souls were dedicated to evil had better not have commerce with
love?
There was but a day left out of Dennis’s holidays when Colin came
downstairs for the first time. He had debated with himself whether to
keep himself withdrawn till the boy had gone, but this would deprive him
of the opportunity of testifying that he still hated him. He must put
himself right.... And all the time, for other reasons than these, he
knew he wanted to see Dennis. Not even to himself would he admit that,
but in some closed cell the knowledge lurked.
Aunt Hester and Mrs. Stanier had gone: there were only Dennis and Violet
at lunch when he came in. Neither had seen him for these two weeks, nor
had they any clue as to his attitude towards them, except such as was
implied by his refusal to see them. They were not left long in doubt.
They had both risen on his entry.
“Ah, Colin,” said she, “this is splendid.”
He turned upon her the full bleakness of his face.
“We’ll take the splendour for granted,” said he. “Ah, there’s Dennis.
It’s splendid, isn’t it, Dennis, to have got rid of me for all your
holidays? That’s what your mother means.”
Dennis looked at him unwaveringly. The moment when Colin had leaped in
after him was so far more real than anything else that could be said or
done in the whole world.
“But she doesn’t mean that, Father,” he said, “nor do I.”
“Oh, you’ve learned to contradict in my absence, have you?” asked Colin.
Dennis was still radiant.
“Sorry, Father,” he said.
The meal went on in silence, till Dennis, over-anxious to give no cause
of offence, made a terrific crash with his pudding spoon.
“If you can’t eat your lunch decently, you had better leave the room,”
said Colin.
Dennis took this to be a general objurgation, not a command.
“Sorry, Father,” he said again, and went on with his pudding.
“Did you hear what I said, Dennis?” asked Colin.
Dennis got up at once, but stood by his father’s chair a moment, scarlet
in the face at this public ignominy, and very nervous, but determined to
speak.
“I’ve never thanked you yet, Father,” he said, “for what you did for me.
I can’t do more than thank you, for there’s nothing else I can do for
you. But if there was----”
Colin wheeled round in his chair.
“Damn you, go away,” he said.