dim. The water was markedly colder here, and he thought how cold it must

have been to Raymond when the ice was thick above.... Then turning he kicked out, and shot upwards again into the sunshine and the sweet air.

Nino had followed hard on him, bringing his clothes and his tea, and as Colin came to the surface again, there he was on the header-board ready to dive. Colin swam towards him.

“See if you can get to the bottom, Nino,” he said, “where it’s deep opposite the sluice.”

Nino rose from his plunge, and laughed, shaking the water from his face.

“Scusi, signor,” he said, “but I do not like the depth below. That is the place for the dead.”

Colin laughed back at him.

“So it is,” he said. “‘Down among the dead men’: there’s a song about it. I don’t insist on your going there yet.”

“Grazie: molte grazie!” said Nino.

Soon Colin paddled to land, and lay basking on the grass. Never had he felt the current of life run more strongly through him, tingling for some outlet of self-expression. And yet just to be alive was enough, here in the home of his inheritance, which he, about whom he had been reading last night and this morning, had built to the glory of himself and those who came after. And it was more than kinship he seemed to claim with that engaging ruffian, it was identity; the memoirs shewed him his own mirrored self, astonishingly revealed. There was much more of them to come, at present he had but read a chapter or two, the sincerity of which he could vouch for by the picture it gave not of the writer only but of himself. He burned with his passions, bubbled with his hatreds, revelled in the largesse of ‘his Lord and benefactor.’ He had his son, too, whom one day he would initiate into the evil sacrament, and like Colin of old he would let Dennis see how mightily his father prospered in his allegiance, and how it went ill with those who crossed him, so that when the time came for Dennis’s choice he would choose with wisdom and prudence, as old Colin’s sons had done. As yet he was but a baby, scarcely able to walk, but soon he would learn what splendid paths were hewn for him, how royal a road....

The future lay before Colin wrapped in this sunlit mist, much as the plain of the marsh lay swathed in pearly vapours. Soon the heat would fold up that soft mantle of the cool night, and the plain glitter in the sun-steeped noon; and just so with him would the future emerge and shew its discovered delights. He had no wish to brush the mists away, or dive and grope into that obscurity. All would grow clear as his own life rose towards its noon ... as for the evening and the decay of day which would follow, it was idle to give a thought to them. Days were long in summer, and the day was given for enjoyment: he was a fool who wasted its goodly hours in thinking of what came next after it was done: sufficient unto the day was the good thereof.

He lay back on the cool green grass, while his body and limbs, still wet with his bathe, drank in the kindly heat, purring with sheer physical satisfaction. The activity of his vigour for the moment was satiated with his plunge and his swim, the bodily demands desired nothing more than this freshness and effulgence which soaked through his skin into his very marrow, and fed it with youth and pliant strength. Sinew and nerve and bone lay still and sunned and stretched, content with this blissful passivity. It could not last long: soon their vigour would stir and twitch in them again; and, even as they drowsed and purred, so for the moment his soul and the desires that lay behind the body were satisfied with the mere fact that he was at Stanier, in the midst of all that was his. Uncle Ronald with his gaping cod-fish mouth, Aunt Hester with her ridiculous sprightliness, his grandmother, that image of death in life, Violet even with her horror and love of him were mere puppets of a show over which he pulled down the curtain.

But this quiescence of the spirit was less lasting than that of his physical vigour, and even while he lay slack and stretched with his arm over his eyes to shield them from the glare, and his body still sunned itself without asking anything more than to lie open and naked, alertness and the twitch of activity began to beat in the pulses of his brain again. There was a broth of immediate interest bubbling there.... Violet had been tiresome last night: she had said she would not give a hint to her father and mother that they were not wanted; he must move in that matter himself then, and make her sorry she had struck that filial attitude ... and then there were the memoirs to read, which revealed him to himself ... and there was Dennis.

This stirring of his soul began to react on his body; it was delicious to lie here with the cool grass below and the sun above, but one could not do that for ever. He rolled over on to his side, and saw Nino sitting by him.

“Nino, it’s almost like basking at Capri,” he said. “I shall come down again after breakfast.--What time is it?”

Nino pulled a watch out of the pocket of his coat that lay on the grass.

“Ten o’clock,” he said.

Colin sat up.

“Then why the devil didn’t you tell me it was getting late?” he snapped.

“I thought you looked happy,” said Nino. “What does the time matter, signor, if you’re happy?”

Colin laughed.

“That’s a very sound observation,” he said. “But you ought to have told me I was already late for breakfast. Never mind, give me my clothes. I’ve got a lot to do. Yes, shirt and trousers and shoes. That’s all I want.”

Nino, but for a towel round his loins, was still as Nature had made him. But she had done it very nicely, and as he handed his master his clothes, Colin looked at his shapely shoulders and broad chest.

“You’d make an awfully good bronze statue, Nino,” he said. “You’d look nice in a museum, covered with verdigris, and with an arm and leg missing. How would you like to be an antique?”

“I like better being young,” said Nino.

Colin pulled his shirt over his head.

“So do I,” he said. “But Time’s a thief, Nino, and you can’t insure against his burglaries.”

This was too much for Nino’s English, and he raised a puzzled eye.

“You understand what I mean, though you don’t understand what I say,” observed Colin. “Do you believe in God, Nino?”

The boy crossed himself.

“Si, signor.”

“Then why are you such a dreadful bad lot?” asked Colin. “Don’t you know that He will punish you when you’re dead?”

Nino shrugged his brown shoulders.

“May be,” he said, “but I’m not dead yet.”

Colin laughed.

“Nor am I,” he said. “But why talk theology before breakfast?”

“Scusi!” said Nino. “But who began?”

Colin leaned against him as he stepped into his flannel trousers.

“I did,” he said. “Do you know, you’re extremely like me, Nino? I think you must be a Stanier. I wonder if the old fellow I’ve been reading about had an Italian mistress from whom you’re descended. We both believe in God, and are determined to go to the devil.... There you are talking theology again, and I told you to shut up!”

“I am dumb as a sheep,” said Nino.

“Ba-a-a,” said Colin.

* * * * *

Colin found his menagerie at breakfast, as he came in coatless, with his hair drying back into curls again, and his shirt open at the neck, with sleeves rolled up to his elbow. There was Aunt Hester, looking, so he thought to himself, like some aged hag under the delusion that it was still spring-time with her, the absurd old woman with her short skirt and girlish blouse, and beribboned hat. And there was Uncle Ronald, bleary-eyed and unsavoury beyond all words, in a velveteen coat, with his gouty knobbed hand all a-tremble as he lifted his tea-cup. And there was Aunt Margaret, looking, as she always did, as if the bells were ringing for church on Sunday morning, and she was just ready to start....

“I wonder what she finds to accuse herself of in the Confession,” thought Colin: “a want of diligence over her Patience, I suppose....” And there, with face suddenly and involuntarily lit up at his entrance, and as suddenly clouded again, was Violet.

“Good morning, everybody,” he said. “I’m late, and I’m not dressed, and I’m not sorry because I’ve been enjoying myself. Darling Aunt Hester, why didn’t you come down to bathe? You would make the most seductive water-nymph. And why has nobody got a complexion like yours? Give me a kiss, if you don’t mind my being unshaved.”

“Face like a peach,” said Hester. “Talk of complexions----”

“Aunt Hester, we mustn’t flirt with so many relatives present,” said Colin. “You’ll shock Violet. Uncle Ronald, you look awfully fit this morning. That’s the effect of good Doctor Colin coming home and seeing that you took that medicine for your gout. Now I’m going to make a nice dog’s dinner for myself, fish and bacon and a poached egg all on one plate. What’s everybody going to do this morning?”

“Sit in my skeleton, like that wag Sidney Smith,” said Aunt Hester.

“When and where?” asked Colin. “I want to come and look. You must have got a delicious skeleton, Aunt Hester, needn’t ask what Violet’s going to do. She’s going to attend a three-hours’ service of baby-worship. Violet and I talked about Dennis last night, didn’t we, darling? She wants to make him a string of amulets to keep off evil spirits. Sensible idea: it’s a wicked world. And Aunt Margaret’s going to write out menu-cards, and Uncle Ronald’s to take a glass of my famous sun-medicine at eleven. You’re all provided for.”

“Well, and what are you going to do?” asked Hester.

“Me? Studious morning, Aunt Hester, over my books.”

“Books, indeed!” said Aunt Hester. “Where’s the use of reading books when you’re young? When you’ve got to sit by the chimney-corner and keep your feet warm, then’s the call for books, for they pass the time and make you drop off and have a snooze. I’ve not taken to books yet, thank God.”

Colin laughed.

“My dear, you talk about taking to books as if it was like taking to drink,” he said. “Doesn’t she, Uncle Ronald?”

“Eh, what, I beg your pardon, Colin,” said he. Uncle Ronald was not very bright at breakfast, he liked to be left alone to drink several cups of strong tea. After that he could toy with a little toast and marmalade.

“I was only saying that Aunt Hester regards reading as a vice in the young, like drink, and hopes I shan’t take to it yet.”

Colin let his laughing eye dwell on Ronald long enough to be assured that he took in some of this, and then on Violet to see that she had arrived.... Then he turned to Aunt Hester again.

“One of the books I am going to read this morning is entirely about drink, Aunt Hester,” he said, “and nobody can guess what it is. There’s nothing but drink in it from beginning to end. Guess, Aunt Hester!”

“Oh, one of those rubbishy novels,” said Hester. “Seven and sixpence worth of gibberish. Don’t ask me!”

“Not a novel at all,” said Colin. “Every word in it is true. In fact it’s the cellar-book, and I shall see how much gin you’ve drunk, Aunt Hester, since I’ve been away. And then if I find you’ve drunk it all, so that there’s none left for Uncle Ronald and me, I shall go down to the lake and drown myself, and haunt you ever afterwards. Oh Lord, I wish somebody would stop me talking such awful drivel. Tell us about your new Patience, Aunt Margaret.”

Mrs. Stanier folded up her napkin very neatly. She would do the same with the napkin given her at lunch. She would fold up her napkin when the Last Trump sounded....

“I’m afraid I haven’t got a new Patience, Colin,” she said.

“Ah, the old is better. You must teach me one of your Patiences someday. Violet and I must learn Patience, to occupy the autumn evenings when we’re alone here.”

* * * * *

Colin was half-inclined to reconsider his plan for sending the menagerie on tour. Just as the lover is happiest when the object of his affection is with him, so dislike and contempt sun themselves in the presence of their derision, for it supplies them with fuel. It was amusing to plant little stinging darts, to speak of drink to Uncle Ronald, to flick Violet with an allusion to their solitary evenings in the autumn, to make everybody uncomfortable with the threat that he would drown himself in the lake, for that reminded them of Raymond. These darts were feathered with his gay inimitable geniality, which charmed and enchanted, with that sunniness that warmed their cold old bones, for so the point stung more smartly. Certainly that allusion to the time when he and Violet would be alone here gave them all something to think about....

Colin, before settling down to the Memoirs again, sent for his butler and the cellar-book, and rather enjoyed the fact that Uncle Robert had been consuming the 1860 port at a steady average of a bottle and a half a day. He was a sodden old brute, of course, but, as drink was all that he cared about, it shewed sense to annex as much as possible of the very best, for he always, it appeared, asked for that memorable vintage. But, though it was an agreeable diversion to look at his tremulous unsightliness of a morning, it did not counterweigh the heavy burden of his presence, and he had better go.... Violet would have to convey that to him, if only for the reason that she had said she would not. Colin thought he had a persuasive device about that....

All this was very trumpery, and, with a sense of turning to something better worth his attention, he took up the Memoirs again, and soon found himself delightfully absorbed in them. Never was there so sincere and unvarnished an autobiography; the author rejoiced in his presentation of himself. Most men when they paint themselves cannot avoid dipping their brush in the medium, if not of conscious falsity, at least in that of self-deception. They view themselves with a kindly eye, they gloss over or tone down, even to the point of omission, their uglier characteristics; they emphasise what is creditable, they find a sympathetic reason for their occasional frailties. All this may be honest enough in intention, for the reason that they have hoodwinked themselves and really see themselves in such and such a light, but here Colin found an honesty transcendent and diverting. For this ancestor of his had no desire, conscious or subconscious, to fashion an edifying image of himself; he had no mind to be decorated with virtuous phylacteries, and with plain deft strokes he presented this evil and sincere picture of himself. That picture was mirror as well as portrait, and it took Colin’s breath away to see himself so unerringly delineated.

....So the shepherd-boy waited on the Queen next morning, at the Manor of Brede. He had not dressed himself up in his best, but came in his shepherd’s garb, shirt and breeches and shoes, and he carried with him his crook and a young lamb. The varlets would have driven him from the door, but that he said it was by the Queen’s orders that he presented himself, and they, knowing the whims of that fiery dame, sent word to the Controller of her household that a lousy lad demanded audience of Her Grace. “Lad indeed I was,” indited the writer, “but no lousy one, for I had washed the muck of my lambing off me, and had bathed myself in the Rother, and I was cleaner and sweeter than any of they. So out came the Queen’s Controller, a pursey fellow, and he too would have shoo’ed me away, but I told him fairly there would be trouble for him, if Her Grace knew that I had been turned from her door. He went to tell Her Grace, and presently came back faster than he had gone, and brought me speedily into the Queen’s presence, me and my lamb and my crook. There she sat at the end of a great table, where she had been holding a Council, and she said never a word, but watched me. So I bent my eyes on the ground, but I lifted up my heart to my Lord and Benefactor, and prayed that he should guide my doings, and well he counselled me. I put myself in his hands, and thought no more what I should do or say but trusted him, and I walked past the long table towards where she sat, and the rushes on the floor pricked the soles of my feet, for I had left my shoes outside. Once only did I look up, and saw her still watching me, out of those sharp eyes, with their high eyebrows. How little was her face, I thought, and how red her hair, and how fine her ruff and how yellow her skin, and this was the Queen of England. Then I looked down again, and walked until I saw close in front of my bare toes the tip of her shoes set with pearls. And then I knelt down, and bowed myself and said:

“‘A lamb, madam, which is the first fruits of the spring. My crook which I lay at your Grace’s feet, and myself who am not worthy to lie there.’

“Then I raised my eyes and looked at her, gay and bold, as I look at the wenches, for wench she was, though the Queen of England. And then once more, as if blinded by her splendour, I abased myself, and she spoke.

“‘Look at me, Colin Stanier,’ she said.

“‘Madam,’ said I.

“‘Well, what next?’ quoth she impatiently.

“‘My body and soul, madam,’ said I. And I made my eyes dance at her, and my mouth to be eager.... She bent towards me, and drew her hand down my cheek.

“‘And is your desire to be my shepherd-boy, Colin?’ she asked. ‘You desire to be my page?’

“‘I am sick with desire,’ said I.

“‘I appoint you,’ says she. ‘I greet and salute you, Colin Stanier.’

“Now I had just that pause for consideration as she stroked my cheek and tweaked my chin, but even then, when I was but a downy boy, I never thought long whether I should do this or that, or should forbear, and I knew that a man fares better by taking risks than by shunning them, if he has his way to make. I knew, too, how a wench looks at a lad when she would like to be kissed by him, how her neck goes forward to him, and she turns her chin, and Queen or whore they are all alike in that. So my mind was made up, and straight I kissed her cheek, for she had saluted me as her page, and was I not to salute my Queen? Which when I had done, I abased myself again and kissed her smelly shoe.

“‘You bold dog!’ says she. ‘Stand up. I might well have you whipped for that.’

“‘And I should still be the infinite gainer, your Majesty,’ said I, and she laughed.

“That good thought then was the first of the benefits which my Lord gave me, and there was no whipping for me, but for the slap she gave me on the ear, and Her Grace clapped her hands, and in came the Controller of her household.

“‘Colin Stanier is my page,’ said she, ‘and attached to my person. See to it. And at the feast of Easter, I will dine off his lamb. Begone, Colin Stanier, and learn your duties, and see that you serve not the wenches as you have served me!’”

So there was Colin Stanier who last night had been among the ewes translated as at the wave of a magician’s wand into the Queen’s page. He returned home only to take from its hiding-place the bond he had signed, and within a week he had his fine new clothes and was in waiting on his mistress. Never for a moment, such was the conviction that inspired the record of his swift advancement in the favour of the Queen, and in the idolatry, no less, of the Court, did he doubt to whom he owed his amazing good fortune. Swiftly he acquired the art of reading and writing, and by the next Easter time he was the Queen’s page no longer, but her private and confidential adviser and secretary. The same felicity which had marked his first audacious dealing with her in the character of wench, never failed him, but he had a true appreciation of her fiery magnificence and courage as well as of those aged tendernesses of a childless woman who makes an idol of a boy or a lapdog to quench the thirst of her virginity. No lapdog indeed, was Colin, he could stand up to her in her foaming rages with her ministers, when they gave her spiritless advice in her dealings with trouble at home and political crises abroad, and with an oath she would say, “I cannot abide their twittering diplomacy: I shall go my own way, for when all is said and done I am Queen of England. Eh, Colin, am I not in the rights of it?” and she tweaked her secretary’s rosy ear, as he sat at her elbow. Very often she was not in the rights of it, and then Colin would indicate further arguments, prefacing them by saying, “As Your Grace has sagaciously told us, there is this too to be considered,” with such deftness that, though she had but so lately affirmed the flat contrary, he would make her believe that she had pointed these things out herself. Whoever rose or fell in that fickle favour, Colin remained there firmly rooted, and his advocacy with the Queen was the surest way to secure the granting of a boon, or the lightening of her displeasure.

“My Lord of Leicester came to me one day,” he recorded, “for he was sadly out of favour with Her Grace, and besought me to intercede for him. Nothing that he could do or say would meet with her approbation, he feared she would deprive him of his offices and worse than that, if her anger against him blazed up. He knew well that a word from me would cause it to do so, for I had but to tell her that he had laughed at her Latinity, and said that any youth in King’s College at Cambridge would be whipped for such grammatical errors as she made. It was pleasant to me to remind him of that, for not long before he had called me an upstart and a bumpkin from the marshes, and now he was a suppliant to the bumpkin. And well he had to pay for the bumpkin’s good word with the Queen, and it was not for that alone that he must sue to me. First, by reason of his insolence, he must make me his friend, and bleed for his unwisdom in slighting me. Otherwise, I threatened him that it would be my sad duty to inform Her Grace how poorly he thought of her Latinity. He was wise enough to see with my eyes, and rich enough to load my pocket, and so I bled him famously, and when I supped alone with Her Grace that night, and had delighted her with the bawdy talk that she loves, I told her that my lord of Leicester was the unhappiest of her subjects, for she had withdrawn her light from him, and, fool though he was, he had the wisdom to know that he must presently perish of cold, if the beam of her favour was not restored to him. She was loathe to hear me at first, but I pleaded with her and let her cuddle me, and said it befitted not her splendour to grudge a ray to my lord’s sorry dunghill. No flattery was too gross for her; she would believe she lit the stars at night, and presently I had my way with her. And I was wise in keeping faith with Lord Leicester, though it would have pleased me better to have taken his money, and then have told the Queen that he thought very poorly of her Latin, and I doubt not that my Lord and Benefactor would have liked me so to do, but I had yet my way to make and my future to see to, and none would sue to me if I did not keep my bargains.”

“Sheer blackmail,” said Colin to himself, as he turned the page. “And he delights in it. That was half the fun. I wonder what my lord of Leicester paid him!...”

While he was yet but five and twenty, the Queen created him Earl of Yardley, decorated him with the Most Noble Order of the Garter, and bestowed on him the monastery and lands of Tillingham, where soon he built the house of Stanier. She often told him that it was time for her Colin to take a wife to himself, but in this, with a sure wisdom, he positively refused to obey her, saying that Venus herself had no charms for him while Gloriana’s light was shed on him; and thus, though he disobeyed the letter of Her Grace’s command, she did not disapprove of the spirit which prompted his obstinacy. But he sought and copiously found consolations for his celibacy, and he devoted a long section of his memoirs to the account of them and of the diversions of his bachelorhood. He gave a list of the women whose favours he sought and obtained, “but indeed,” he commented, “it was they rather who sought me, though I was nothing loathe, for youth is the time for pleasure,” and enumerated their charms or their defects. As in his dealings with my lord of Leicester his favours must be paid for, “though I accomplished some pretty seductions for my own pleasure of which I was speedily weary.” Never a hint of love, of devotion, or of affection seemed to have dawned on him; he sought his own pleasure and profit, and what above all made to him the spice of these adventures was their wickedness.... He described at length how the spectacle of the love and devotion between a certain Sir James Bland and his young wife irritated him, and how, with a view to wrecking it, he first made friends with the husband, thereby to gain an intimate footing in their house, and cover his ulterior purpose, while he made himself cold to his friend’s wife. “She was accustomed to draw the eyes of men after her, though she had no eyes for any but her lord, and it piqued her to see I was indifferent to her. Presently, for all wenches are alike in heart, she must needs lay herself out to attract me and I softened towards her, so that there were not three gayer folk in all London than this devoted pair and their attached friend. This way and that I drew her into my net, so that she cooled to her husband, and became weary and restless and discontent. And then my Lord and Benefactor whispered to me that the time was ripe, and before long nought would restrain her but she cast herself at my feet, and so I gave her her way once or twice, but very soon she was tedious to me. But I was very merry all that month.”

Colin threw back his head and laughed. “I was very merry all that month” ... how well he knew the inward glee that this old kinsman of his must have experienced at the accomplishment of this pleasing design. He had been in harmony with himself all that month: that was what made him merry. And of course when the thing was done, it was done, and who, that was truly alive, cared to dwell on an achievement? He had bitten into the fruit, and swallowed its mellow flesh, and now there was but the rind and the stone, which he spat out. There were plenty more such fruits when he felt thirsty: no need then to mouth the stone and squeeze out the last drop of juice from the rind. Naked cruelty and the pleasure of seeing others suffer gave the savour to this and other adventures, and he described how he had gone to see a recusant tortured on the rack, till the joints were wrenched from their sockets.... Colin could understand that too.

He got up out of his chair, stretched himself and strolled to the window which looked out over the terrace and the lake. There was Aunt Hester sitting in the shade of the yew-hedge looking like some foolish autumnal butterfly, and close at hand on the terrace was Dennis in his perambulator. Some day Colin would read these Memoirs with him and explain what he did not understand. There would be some years to wait yet, eleven or twelve perhaps, till Dennis had been a term or two at school. That kneaded the dough of a boy’s mind: it was ready then to be moulded: it was soft and pliable and leavened.... Then Violet came out of the house, she stood close to the window out of which Colin looked. She did not see him for her eyes were on her son.

“Take him out of his pram, Nurse,” she called, “and see if he can get as far as me. Dennis! Come to me, Dennis.”

Dennis was lifted out paddling in the air and set down on the terrace. Again Violet called, and he looked this way and that, unable to localize the sound, though recognizing his name. Suddenly he saw his mother, and giving a crow of delight staggered towards her.

Colin forgot about the Memoirs for a moment. There was Violet stooping down with arms outstretched to the boy, her face all radiant with motherhood and love, and, at the sight of her, Colin felt that exasperated impatience which love always provoked in him. It was not for anything that Dennis could give her, that this beam transfigured her, it was just because he was Dennis. From her he looked at the child maintaining that difficult balance, which every moment threatened to topple, and there, too, in that dimpled laughing face, bright with the glory of this heroic adventure, there shone the same. That was even more exasperating to his mind. While a child’s intelligence was as elementary and undeveloped as this, there was this instinct triumphantly asserting itself. Love seemed to be as natural as breathing, and far more natural than walking.

Dennis had now got on the high seas: the safe harbour of the nurse with the perambulator was to him hugely remote, and equally remote was the harbour for which he was steering, and though he was progressing bravely across the billows of this perfectly level sea, the awful loneliness of his position suddenly overcame him. He staggered, he put his advancing foot in a most untenable position, collapsed on the ground, and sent up a signal of distress in a piercing yell. Before Colin knew what he was doing, he had opened the window.

“Not hurt is he, Violet?” he called.

She looked round, her face still all aglow. But her brightness faded as she saw him.

“Oh no, I’m sure he isn’t,” she said. “Put him on his feet again, Nurse. Come, Dennis, you’re half way already.”

Colin waited a moment longer, till the adventure outside was happily accomplished, rather astonished at himself for having taken any notice of it. He had felt, he supposed, just a sporting interest to see whether Dennis would stay the course: he was sorry when he came to grief. Then he went back to his far more congenial occupation.

He embarked now on the account of the building of Stanier, and the collection of its treasures: this, for the next two years, was clearly the great diversion and achievement of his ancestor’s energies. The Queen’s death, which occurred when he was thirty, was but casually mentioned, with a shrewd recognition of her greatness, and an impatient gibe for her vanity, and a congratulation for himself for having used her weakness as a quarry for the building of his own wealth and splendour. Her last gift to him was the great sapphire, that flawless and unique stone, which the Queen had worn every day when her fleet was out to meet the Armada. Priceless in itself, it was supposed to be a talisman which brought its owner prosperity in all he undertook. After her death there had been an attempt on the part of the Crown (renewed again when the Hanoverian dynasty came to the throne) to repossess itself of the jewel, on the grounds that it belonged to the regalia, and so could not be bestowed, but both times these efforts had failed, and the winking cornflower splendour still reposed in the jewel-safe at Stanier, a queen’s gift worth a king’s ransom. “Lucky it was,” said the Memoirs’ author, “that so few days before Her Grace’s death I had so mightily pleased her, for that was her last and noblest gift to me, and that was the finest fruit that I had plucked from my bargain. To my Lord and Benefactor I owe it, who shewed me how to please Her Grace so mightily that she gave me the most precious of all her jewels.” Equally cursory was the mention of his marriage with the daughter and heiress of Sir John Reeve, though he gave a detailed list of property which this ill-fated young woman brought to the house. Two sons were born to him, and soon after, having secured these great estates, he secured his wife’s divorce, and presently married the only daughter and child of Lord Middlesex. She gave him no further heirs, but brought considerable addition to his estates. “An unseemly woman,” so ran her husband’s comment, “and of a most unseemly temper, of which I would have none. She was red as a fox, but rich.”

But these events (apart perhaps from the birth of his two sons) were no more than acts of routine in his career, his passion was the creation of this palace and pleasaunce of Stanier. Only twelve years had elapsed between the day when he had gone, a bare-footed shepherd boy with his crook and his lamb, to wait upon the Queen at Brede, and now at her death he retired from Court life and came back, Earl and Knight of the Garter, to his estates at Tillingham. His father’s farm was close by, where the “drunken old sot” still lived, and Colin, coveting it for the completion of his gardens, found a way to dispute the ownership, claiming that it was part of the monastic land devised him by the Queen, and turned the old man out. He gave him, however, a decent enough dwelling-place for a man of his station, and adequate maintenance, and further allowed him to draw on his brewery for unlimited ale, making only the provision that the old man should never attempt to see him or obtain access to him: otherwise his maintenance should be withheld. This indulgence in the matter of the brewery may have been kind in intention, for assuredly the old man was fond of beer, but the effect was that he did not long enjoy the bounty. He was oftener drunk than sober, and, before the year was up, he had a stroke of which he died. Meantime the great house was rising rapidly, and in two years was complete up to the lettered balustrade, where you might read in Latin that, unless the Lord built the house, their labour was but lost that built it, and into it Lord Yardley poured the treasures that he was constantly acquiring: Oriental carpets, and French Tapestries, Chinese porcelain, Greek marbles, and Italian pictures: all arts and ages were sought by him, for there was kinship in all fine work, and a Greek relief of Heracles and Hylas might be flanked by a crucifixion by Tintoret on one side, and a portrait by Rembrandt on the other. He made, too, a wonderful collection of occult and magical books, that told the student how he might acquire supernatural powers, and among them was a missal, as Colin read “of wondrous blasphemies”.... Out of doors the work was pushed forward with the same expedition: the great terraced garden to the south of the house was levelled and stepped and encircled by the yew-hedge: below, the dam was pushed out across the dip of the valley in which had stood the house of his youth, and the lake formed. He planted, too, on the bare upland east of the house the oaks that flourished there now.

At this point in the type-written manuscript, there came an annotation directing him to a certain page in the original Memoirs, and Colin turned it up, and found that it referred to a loose sheet in the book dated 1642, which was the year before the author died. On this page was a rough sketch of the house and gardens as designed then, and as they existed now, but with the addition of certain buildings which apparently had never been erected. But while the plan of the house as it stood was only roughly indicated, this addition was drawn with considerable care and detail. It looked therefore, as if, after the completion of the house, this building was contemplated and planned, but never carried out. It consisted of a long passage, leading out of the room where he now sat, which had always been Lord Yardley’s private room, and communicating with a small house that stood, at the distance of sixty yards, on a knoll just outside the gardens. It was one-storied, and consisted of three rooms _en suite_ labelled ‘parlour,’ ‘bedchamber,’ and ‘dining-room,’ with a kitchen and quarters for a servant. But on the south side of it there was a spacious oblong room, equal in length to the three rooms adjoining, with a descriptive word attached to it. This was only faintly pencilled in, and was difficult to decipher. The initial letter ‘S’ was clear enough: the second might have been ‘o’ or ‘c’: then came a long letter that might have been either ‘t’ or ‘l,’ followed (with room for another letter between) by ‘arium,’ which was distinct and legible. Colin puzzled over this, and then a very reasonable solution struck him; the word no doubt was ‘solarium,’ implying an open gallery, facing south on the long side, as this did, and either open to the air or fronted with big windows, a winter-sitting-room, a sunning place.... Simultaneously, with a laugh, the significance of this discreet little establishment struck him. No doubt it was intended to be the quarters of the companion for the time being (for he soon wearied of each) with whom Lord Yardley solaced his leisure. There would be an impropriety perhaps in her being actually housed in the same dwelling as his wife and his sons; convenience and propinquity were alike served by her having her pleasant little establishment (with its solarium) at a short distance from the house and communicating with his own room. The interpretation was reasonable, simple and entertaining, but, to be sure, it did not seem very characteristic of his ancestor’s methods to be so tender of the feelings of his wife, and guard the morals of his sons from loose presences, and though Colin was pleased with his explanation and his decipherment of ‘Solarium,’ he was not quite satisfied with it, and put a slip of paper in the place, meaning to refer to it again. He turned back to the type-written copy, of which now not many pages remained for his perusal.

There was a short description of how, on the coming of age of his two sons, they each chose to be associated with the bargain he had made in the shepherd’s hut, and indeed, from the few details given about their characters and their escapades, the choice could not have been a matter of much difficulty to these young gentlemen. The younger, in especial, attached to the Court of his Majesty King James, seemed to have been as perfect and appalling a young rogue as even his father could have wished. Then there followed the entry that to-day was the author’s sixty-ninth birthday, and, thanks to the ever-constant goodness of his Lord and Benefactor, his health and strength were still unabated, and the pleasures of his youth still his. He blessed the day, now fifty-one years ago, when he had chosen so wisely and well, as the parchment, now preserved in his strong-room, testified, “How would I rejoice,” he wrote, “to build some shrine in honour of my Lord, where I would worship him who has wrought so great benefits upon me, some sanctuary, where I might worthily adore him”--and then suddenly in the middle of a sentence the Memoirs came to an end.

Colin put down the last sheet of the manuscript, and leaned back in his chair. He felt as if, Narcissus-like, he had all the morning been regarding himself as shewn in this Elizabethan mirror of his ancestor’s confessions. It was his own spirit so undeviatingly reflected there, and the contemplation of it was an act of self-recognition. All that he had read was a three hundred year old portrait of himself, even as he might have sat for the great picture in the hall, into the frame of which was now inserted the signed parchment of the bargain. Whatever was the literal and the material truth about that (his ancestor, clearly, who might be expected to know, confirmed it) there could be none about its spiritual authenticity. No-one who had seen the Memoirs could possibly have any doubt about that, and Colin knew that he, like most others of his race, eagerly associated himself with the bargain. He knew, too, that his choice was solid and real and no fantastic imagining; there was God on one side, there was Satan on the other. He had rejected God, and, not only for the benefits attached, but because he preferred evil to good, he had chosen Satan. Hate and evil were dear to him, he had no use for love.

There came the sound of the bell for luncheon, and he got up.... It was a strange thing that anyone so diligent in evil as the old man had been, should at the end of his life have turned coward and twitterer in the way he had done. His last year on earth had been a terrible one, for, so family tradition averred (and indeed the thing was attested), terror of what was coming fastened on his flesh like a monstrous growth, and he wrote no more in his diary of the sins that were so dear to him. He practised pious and charitable deeds, restoring the monastery church, on the altar of which he had often played dice. He endowed almshouses in Rye. He bought great tomes of the works of Christian fathers, and of the meditations of the Saints, and hour after hour he used to sit in the library to study these under the tuition of a priest who resided in the house, and ministered at the church, and no doubt it was then that he destroyed or dispersed that great collection of magical and occult works which he had brought together, for no vestige of them was now extant here. He cut himself off from the pleasures of youth, he fasted and prayed, in the hope of turning away the fate at which all his life he had mocked, and it was said that when on his knees he attempted to address the God whom he had rejected, no prayer or holy words would come from his lips, but that he mumbled unspeakable and obscene blasphemies. He seemed in fact, so it appeared to Colin, to have gone crazy, and though he continued throughout that year in the full serenity of his physical health, he let himself be the prey of his disordered and terrified soul, turning and truckling, not in love but in abject fear of the destiny he had chosen, to Him whose spirit he had defied. It was firmly rooted in his head, that he would die on his seventieth birthday, and that indeed (no doubt because he so firmly believed it) came to pass, and in an appalling manner. For he gave a feast that night to his tenants in honour of his birthday, and had risen to speak to them at the end of supper, when he put out his arm, as if pushing away some invisible presence, and shrieking “No, no!” fell forward, dead, across the table. At that moment there came a blinding flash of lightning, which certainly struck the hall, but those who were nearest to him said that his seizure had preceded the flash, and that it and the roar of thunder that followed were rather the endorsement of that judgment than the judgment itself. That year, anyhow, thought Colin, was a common and craven conclusion to his brilliant life; he did not fancy that he himself would suffer so deplorable a collapse, legend or no legend. But in the interval, he had more than all his ancestor’s lust for pleasure, and his hatred of love....

He put the manuscript in a drawer of his table, and with it the original copy of the diary, for he was not satisfied about the plan of that establishment with the ‘solarium.’ It seemed unlikely.... But if the word which designated that building was not ‘Solarium,’ what on earth could it be?