CHAPTER III

Colin went back to his room after the invariable rubber of whist that evening, with the intention of studying this plan more minutely, but, though the others had gone upstairs, he was not surprised to hear his door open, and Violet asking if she could speak to him. Indeed, he almost expected that interruption, and he smiled to himself when she entered....

There had been a horrid little scene at the close of dinner, a dovecote-fluttering in the menagerie, arising from Colin’s having instructed Nino to dispense the wine, and to be lavish in his ministrations to Uncle Ronald’s glass. The wine in question was Dagonet 1880, to which he was incapable of putting up the smallest resistance, and Nino did his duty so thoroughly that Uncle Ronald had got on very quickly, and had told a story which might possibly have passed with a snigger in a smoking-room of broad-minded men. Even Aunt Hester, who was as broad-minded as most people, had said “Better hold your tongue, Ronald: you’re disgracing yourself,” while that perfect piece of Patience, Aunt Margaret, bridled and folded her napkin, and diligently perused the menu-card which she had so neatly written out, though at that period of dinner its information was obsolete.... And then, when the women had adjourned, Uncle Ronald, having been told that there was not much 1860 port left, had partaken so freely of what there was, that he had become wonderfully voluble about the old days when he and his father used to sit here together. Colin had taken Nino’s place as dispenser of wine, and so sedulous was he that Uncle Ronald presently lost the power of coherent speech altogether, and, when he tried to rise, leaned lamentably against the table, and was assisted upstairs by the butler and Nino, which again was quite in accordance with the tradition of the house. Colin had joined the ladies alone, and said that his uncle had gone to bed with a nasty cough, such a troublesome cough, which made him feel a little giddy, and clogged the free functioning of the vocal chords.

All this, of course, was directed against Violet, who must be taught that if Colin expressed a wish that she should undertake some little mission, like telling her father and mother that they must no longer consider Stanier their house, she must be a good wife and obey....

Colin was just unlocking the drawer where he kept the Memoirs when she entered, and he hailed her with a smile and a word of welcome.

“That you, Vi?” he said. “Have you come for a little talk? That is nice. Sit down.”

She looked at him in silence as he brought the book out, continuing to stand.

“I thought I told you to sit down,” he said.

“No, I’ll stand,” she said.

He glanced at her still smiling.

“You had better do what I tell you,” he said. “That’s right. How simple, isn’t it? Now what have you come about? It’s something tedious, I suppose. About your father, eh? Wasn’t he horrid at dinner? He made me blush for his dyed hair. Such a story! Awful for you and Aunt Margaret. Granny, too, at her age! And the servants.”

She looked at him again in silence, then dropped her eyes.

“I suppose it is your plan to make him tipsy every night,” she said, “until I tell him that he and my mother are not to come back here after their visit to Aix.”

Colin nodded at her with that sunny smile of his.

“Absolutely correct,” he said. “How well we understand each other, dear! And you’ve come here to tell me you’re going to be good, and do as you’re told. Is that it?”

“Yes. I can’t sit by and see my father as I saw him to-night. What do you want me to say to him?”

“Oh, just that. Say that you understand that he’ll be settling down in London for the autumn, or for ever and ever.... Just a little tact and pleasantness.”

“Colin, it’s awfully hard on him,” she said. “He and mother have practically lived here since their marriage.”

“Yes, darling: a nice long visit, as I said yesterday. He must put his name in the visitors’ book, Saturday, 1890, or whenever it was, till Monday, 1913. And though I don’t often criticize you, I must remind you that you shouldn’t always think of yourself.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked she.

“I’ll explain. You’ve got no real filial feeling for either your father or mother, and that pricks your conscience. So, to mollify that smart, you take their side and want them to have a comfortable home here. That doesn’t cost you anything, and it gives you an atoning feeling inside. It is your cheap manner of making amends to them.”

There was just that grain of truth in this which made it impossible for Violet to deny it completely. She had not consciously thought of that, but, when he pointed it out, she knew it was so. There were plenty of other reasons, kindliness, affection, compassion, which prompted her, but he with his amazing subtlety had put his finger on the smallest and meanest of them all.

“You are an adept at seeing the worst side of everybody,” she said.

“Would it be rude if I suggested that the reason for that is that the worst side of people is so much more to the front than their best?” asked Colin. “We all put our worst foot foremost.... And then think of Dennis, Vi. Would you like him to have among the early recollections of his boyhood the memory of his grandfather telling bawdy stories and reeling up to bed after dinner in a squall of hiccups? And then, last and least, there’s myself. Your father bores and disgusts me. I hinted to him that he was not perhaps such a fixture here as he seemed to imagine, and now, please, you’re going to repeat that timid conviction, so that he may see that on this, as on every point, we’re at one. Mind, the suggestion has got to come from yourself not from me: otherwise he will think that I have asked you to make it. Now we’ve spent too much time and speech already over a trivial matter. You think I’m a brute, but then you often do that. I’m used to that: getting almost callous about it.”

He held up the sheaf of typed pages which had occupied him all the morning.

“I’ve had a delicious day,” he said, “for I’ve been reading the Memoirs of old Colin. I had them type-written, and they’re entrancing. He realized himself so wonderfully. There was neither false shame nor conceit about him. He was neither proud nor the reverse of being such a devil. I thought of letting some learned Antiquarian Society publish them. Odd, isn’t it, how all the puritanical, pure-minded people, chiefly women, who shiver and are shocked at what they call a bad man, and won’t visit him or have him to dinner, and heave any sort of brick at him, greedily devour any indecent memoir, and simply roll in it, like dogs when they’ve found some putrescent muck.... You’d have thought that, if they shudder at wickedness, they wouldn’t care to read about it. But they say it’s the historical interest that makes them devour it, which isn’t true. It’s the insatiable fascination that wickedness has for prudes. However, the Memoirs are enchanting: they ring so absolutely true: you feel you are looking at the very man himself. I even found myself believing in the literal truth of the legend. Sit down and dip into them, darling; you won’t find a dull page anywhere. Meantime I’m puzzling out a curious plan of some projected addition to the house, which he never executed.”

“I won’t read them to-night,” she said. “It is rather late.”

“Very good. I won’t insist on that as you’ve been a good girl otherwise. But you must read them some day. I want to know if a certain thing strikes you as it struck me.”

“What is that?” she asked.

“Why, that old Colin was a sort of prophet. I felt all the time as if he was writing not about himself but about me. How types repeat themselves: there is another character he mentions which so closely resembles someone we both know. Old Colin’s father in fact, Ronald Stanier, whom he describes as a drunken old sot. Good night, darling. Not a kiss? I suppose I don’t deserve one. You’re punishing me for being such a brute.”

She paused at the door. There he stood, looking gaily and yet wistfully at her, with his mouth a little open, and the soft fire of his youth burning in his eyes, and she yearned for him. Surely it was not only his beauty that she adored, that physical perfection of him. There was somebody, surely, imprisoned there, who called to her through the bars of his nature and its love of evil and its hate of love. As often as she had tried to reach that prisoner it was as if the guardians of his soul, monstrous and terrifying, pushed her panic-stricken away. She hated and feared them, and their ruthless wickedness, but in spite of them she knew that she would never cease from trying to get past them, and rescuing him who lay there in iron bondage.

She turned back into the room, her eyes troubled and eager, full of love, full of fear. Some gust of inspiration came to her.

“Colin, you hate love,” she said, “and I can’t help giving it you. I pity you so, you know; all my heart pours itself out round you in pity. You’ve tried to kill my love, but you can’t. It’s so much stronger than either you or me----”

He whipped round on her.

“Good Lord, you must have misheard me,” he said. “I asked you for a kiss, not a sermon. But I don’t want either. Go to bed.”

The door closed behind her, and he stood there a moment, simmering with anger and contempt at her undesired homily, with its puerile message. He could have laughed at the idea of love being strong: love was the most helpless and defenceless of all the pieces on the savage chessboard. It was vulnerable at every point, you could wound it wherever you thrust at it. Any clumsy stroke penetrated and made it bleed. Or you could rope it down to the rack, and quite without effort pull the lever that wrenched and distorted it, and made it white with silent agony.... But how strange that just now Violet should give vent to gabble like this, when a moment before she had shrunk from him and his brutality in his dealings with her and her father! In her small way she was like the martyrs praising and blessing God, as their limbs writhed with anguish, that they were accounted worthy to suffer for His sake. She was like that comely smoothed-limbed S. Sebastian in the gallery, for which Nino might have been the model, who seraphically smiled while he was being made a pin-cushion for arrows. Certainly Colin had tried, as she said, to kill her love, and often he had wounded it, though none of those thrusts, it would seem, had proved mortal.... He shrugged his shoulders; there were plenty more weapons in his armoury. Above all, there was one which as yet was not ready for use, for its blade was still soft and unannealed. But he wondered if her love would survive the thrust when Dennis was a sword of wickedness in his hand.

He brought out again the sketch-plan that had puzzled him, and examined it through a magnifying glass. Certainly the word which he had conjectured to be ‘Solarium’ did not stand this closer scrutiny, and now when he looked again at the plan itself, this oblong room, thus conjecturally labelled, could not be a solarium, for on the south, where you would expect it to be open, or to present a row of big windows to admit the sun, there were but two very narrow apertures marked there. At the east end, however, there was indicated a very big window, which took up nearly the whole length of the wall.

Colin turned his attention to the written word again. ‘Solarium’ it certainly was not, for the second letter was a ‘c’ surely, not an ‘o,’ and there was a faint cross-stroke over the ‘l’ which made a ‘t’ of it, and another letter, quite illegible, preceded the final ‘arium.’ “S,c,t,” thought Colin ... and suddenly a new solution dawned on him. It must be ‘S’ctuarium,’ abbreviated from ‘sanctuarium,’ a chapel, a shrine. As he scrutinized it, he was more than ever certain that he had hit on the true decipherment, but this only complicated the puzzle instead of solving it. For how was it possible to account for the author of these Memoirs planning to build a sanctuary? Sanctuary, however, it certainly was, and this identification explained the narrow lancets on the south wall, and the big east window.

He considered the history of his ancestor’s last year on earth, how, as the time approached for his death, he turned to God, not from love of Him but from fear of hell’s damnation. He broke off the chronicle of his iniquities, he built almshouses and indulged in fastings and charities with a view to avert the destiny that he had chosen and rejoiced in. That all fell in with the notion of his building a chapel, which communicated with his own room in the house, so that he could go there by day or night, for cowardly prayer and search for forgiveness of his trespasses. Then, too, on this assumption, the little dwelling-place that adjoined it could be explained: no doubt he intended that a priest should reside there, as domestic physician of his soul.

For the moment this hypothesis seemed to account for the whole project, and Colin unwillingly accepted it. It was disappointing: it was just another instance of that collapse and cowardice which came over his ancestor, and made his last year on earth such a pitiful surrender. And yet ... why did he not then put his plan into execution, if this was the design of it? For a whole year after the date recorded on this drawing, he practised his belated pieties, and yet never a sod was cut nor a brick laid in the erection of this chapel. Surely he would have hastened on the building of it with the same speed and enthusiasm with which he had built the house for his own glory. Clearly, if this solution was correct, and he had intended to build a chapel here with lodging for a priest, he abandoned it. But why, if his soul was set on pieties and repentance?

Colin got up from the chair in which he had been sitting for the last half-hour since Violet had left him, frowning and puzzling over this riddle. He felt that there was a key, which would fit the facts, and that he was hovering round its discovery. It was close at hand, but some sluggish mist of his own mind obscured it. He paced up and down his room for a minute or two, then went to the window, open behind its tapping blind, which he drew half up. Only the faintest night-wind stirred, the sky was bare, and the full moon rode high in the south among the stars. Just in front the terrace lay grey, and the garden dark, but beyond the square black line of the yew-hedge the lake shone so bright in the moonlight that it seemed a sheet of pale flame, brimming and molten. To right and left rose the swelling uplands of the park, and all this spacious stateliness within and without was the creation of that ancestor of his who had planned a sanctuary. Colin felt no doubt that his spirit survived in some remorseful hell, and what more poignant hell could there be for it, now shorn of its pomp and prosperity, and naked in the immaterial world, than the splendour of its earthly habitation where it no longer had a place? Somehow his spirit seemed close and ready to communicate: could it not give to one who so rapturously claimed kinship and sympathy with it, some hint, some expression of itself that should awake in him the comprehension of its strange desire to build a sanctuary?...

Colin stood quite still, looking out on to the silent tranquillity, not cudgelling his brain with conjecture any more, but letting it lie open and quiet to the midnight, to see if, from outside or from its own subconscious activity, there did not emerge what he was seeking for. It was curious that a satisfactory solution of this point seemed of such immense importance, but, rightly or wrongly, he believed that it held some great significance.... And certainly there was a power abroad to-night, something that tingled and throbbed in his veins. It was hard to keep still under it, not to let his brain busy itself with ingenious surmise, but he had done that already to the utmost of his power, and now, with this stir of force round him, he must let himself stay passive and receptive....

Suddenly the faint stirring of the night-breeze grew stronger, it ruffled his hair, it blew the cracking, flapping blind out horizontal into the room, and the pages of the manuscript on his table whispered and shivered as if they were talking to themselves and giggling together. And then the mist that had obscured his mind was whisked away, and he knew he had the explanation for which he had been seeking. In a couple of steps he was back at his table, and, open in the manuscript he had been reading all day, there lay before his eyes the final words of it which he had read uncomprehendingly before, but now saw to contain the key he looked for.

“How I would rejoice,” he said aloud, “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----”

There was no need to search further: all was clear. It was indeed a sanctuary he had planned, in honour not of God but of him who had given him all that his soul desired. Clear, too, at last, was the reason why he had never built it, for just then, when it was freshly planned, fear began to darken round him, and the shadows to stalk, and he turned from his Lord and Benefactor, and wrote no more in his praise, but prayed and fasted in impious piety.

One o’clock had already sounded, and Colin replaced the Memoirs in a drawer and turned the key on them. The gust from outside that seemed literally to have blown the mist from him, so that he saw sharp and distinct across the sundering centuries the purpose of this design and the sure reason for its abandonment, died into stillness again, but the night seemed charged and alive with consciousness. All day he had put himself to soak, so to speak, in the spirit that infused these Memoirs with so sympathetic a vitality: now, even when the book was finished, it was friendly round him, stimulating and quickening him, so that reinforced with its vigour the idea of the physical refreshment of sleep seemed ludicrous. To sleep was to abandon your consciousness for the sake of its recuperation: it was the expression of his consciousness that he needed.

He put his hand on the low window-sill, and vaulted out on to the terrace, where he had watched Dennis’s early essays in locomotion. In the stillness, past and present seemed melted into one: the centuries no longer represented the movement of time, they had not been borne away on its stream, but were static as if portrayed in a picture. It might have been on this very night that the original bargain was made, it might have been here and now that his ancestor was devising the sanctuary on the little plateau that lay among the oaks which he had planted. In the moonlight Colin could almost visualize the windowed corridor that had been planned to run from the corner of the room which he had just quitted, till it joined among the trees the west wall of the sanctuary. What a symbol would that shrine have been of old Colin’s life, what a jubilee of the dedication of himself! There without doubt he intended to celebrate those Satanic rites, that worship of evil for evil’s sake in which they, to whom the sacred service of love was a thing abhorred and derided, renewed their allegiance to the enemy of God, and in the blasphemy of the Black Mass drew near to their Lord and Benefactor, who strengthened and refreshed their souls. The shallow, the indifferent, who just made as pleasant a pilgrimage as possible out of life, or who, from vague instincts, tried to be good, or merely fell into evil because they were weak or self-indulgent, could have no part in that: it would be savourless as bran to any who had no living belief both in God and in Satan; for blasphemy signified nothing to souls who did not hate the sublime majesty of love. They who took part in its dark mysteries were they who believed in God, and who, by their deliberate choice, rejected and hated and defied Him. Old Colin would have been a fit worshipper there, had not that senile panic, hoisting the white flag of his surrender, overtaken him before his bond was due. It was a craven, pitiful end: it was not love of his life-long Enemy that drove him to that camp, but fear of him who had so magnificently befriended him.

Colin had wandered in the moonlight past the end of the terrace, and now stood on the plateau, where, according to the plan, the sanctuary was to have been built. Round him rose the tranced forest-trees, the grass, drenched with dew, glimmered like a spread sheet of moonstone. Then, suddenly springing up again, the wind warm and caressing made the branches of the oaks whisper and sway, and through him ran a great exaltation. He raised his hands, spreading his arms out wide.

“O Lord and Benefactor,” he said. “How will I rejoice to build a shrine in honour of thee....”

* * * * *

Colin woke from his dreamless sleep next morning, to find Nino’s hand on his bare shoulder, gently stirring him. His clothes were in a heap on the floor by his bedside, for when he came in he had but stripped himself and wrapped a sheet round him in which, cocoon-like, he had lain unstirring. He was conscious of a strong glow of happiness as he was thus recalled, and his lazy strength came soaking into him.

“Oh, Nino, what a nuisance you are,” he said. “You spend your beastly life in waking me.”

“Will you sleep again, then?” asked Nino.

“No, the mischief is done now. What’s the morning like? What’s the news?”

“A telephone message from Mrs. Hunt,” said Nino. “She would know if she may come down to-day for Sunday.”

Colin grinned. The moment Nino had said “telephone message” he had guessed from whom it came.

“Well then, she mayn’t,” he said. “Damned cheek! It would never do, would it, Nino?”

“She will be very happy, she said, if she may come,” observed Nino.

Colin raised himself a little, and drew his hand down his arm. The fact that he had decided that Pamela Hunt should not come, made him see causes for re-consideration.

“Just rub my arm,” he said, “I’ve been sleeping on it, and it isn’t awake. Of course, if it would make her happy, that’s a different thing. We ought always to make people happy, Nino, except when we’re making them miserable. Tell her she can come then. What’s the morning like?”

“_Splendore_,” said Nino.

“I shall bathe. I wish you’d carry me straight down to the lake and drop me into it.”

“Sicuro,” said Nino.

Colin looked at him, yawning.

“Get on then,” he said, wondering what he would do.

Nino bent down, and putting one arm below his neck, and the other under his knees, lifted him up.

“Right about turn,” said Colin. “March.”

Nino carried him as far as the door, and was evidently perfectly ready to bear him, with the sheet folded round him, down to the lake. He held him as easily as a child, and his face was all wreathed with merriment.

“I am your nurse,” he said. “You are my bambino, signor.”

Colin laughed.

“Oh, but this won’t do,” he said. “Put me down, Nino. People would think it so odd. There are enough oddities in the house without our adding to them. And go and telephone. Don’t keep a lady waiting.”

“But I was busy attending to my signor,” said Nino.

“I know. You’re a good boy. You shall come off to Capri with me before long. Follow me down when you’ve telephoned. I know there’s something I want to ask you about, and I shall remember it when the water has awakened me.”

As Colin ran downstairs, he was in two minds again as to whether he should allow Pamela Hunt to be happy or not. Their friendship, quite a recent one, had been founded on laughter and good looks and high spirits, but, since then, he had become aware that she was searching for more from him than that, was digging below those flimsy foundations of liking and laughter for something more profound. He did not really care about her in the least, but she was eminently ornamental, and he liked the bland unscrupulousness with which she pursued her way. Her suggestion, indeed, that she should come down to Stanier for the Sunday, where she knew he was in retreat in the bosom of his family, had a daring innocence about it which was rather attractive. Their friendship had already been a matter of extensive public comment in London, and it showed a charming disregard of the usual conventions that she should propose to share his domestic tranquillity. It was no secret from him that she was in love with him, and he was guilty of no fatuous gratification about that. In fact it seemed to him a pity, for he had nothing whatever for her, and beyond doubt she was getting serious and eager. However, she had proposed herself, and he had permitted it, and, after all, there might be some amusement out of it, some chilling disappointment for her, some ludicrous dénouement derived from his own indifference or, possibly, exasperation if she became tedious. He had not given her the smallest encouragement but that of laughter and chatter, and, if she chose to attempt to hunt him down, any consequences were of her own seeking. Then, too, how would Violet take it, in case some kind friend had whispered warnings to her? It might be an amusing Sunday.

He stepped out on to the terrace, already grilling in the sunshine, but it looked less real now than a few hours ago under the moon. The stage then had been alive with dark forces brewing drama, whereas now, in this sane freshness of day, it was mere paint and pasteboard, like that same stage seen next morning, when the actors had left it, and no drama vivified the splendid setting. But as he walked along the terrace to the yew-hedge it gained reality again. Just there would be the windowed corridor, and there close at hand was the plateau among the oaks. Yes, it was growing real again.

And at that he remembered what he had wanted to ask Nino. A couple of years ago when he was staying for the night with the very lively little English Consul at Naples, who had shewn him such curious Neapolitan diversions, he remembered his having said something about a cabaret, in a room behind which were held certain Satanic rites.... Possibly Nino might know, Nino had much gay native knowledge of an unexpected kind, and had many local stories to tell of the doings of the monstrous Emperor Tiberius, who took such wonderful holidays from the cares of State in Capri. These Satanic rites were as old as religion itself: in fact they were the earliest form in which religion, the belief in the supernatural, appeared, for originally the supernatural was an evil power to be propitiated. It was later that mankind had conceived of it as beneficent and loving....

Colin was out of the water when Nino came down.

“Well, have you made her happy?” he asked. “What an age you’ve been, Nino!”

Nino’s mouth twitched, and broke into a smile.

“Sis-signor,” he said. “She is very happy.”

“And what are you grinning at?” asked Colin.

“She thought it was you at the telephone,” he said. “She thought I had gone to fetch you.”

“And what did she say?” asked Colin.

Nino schooled his mouth into gravity.

“She said--scusi--but she said ‘Colin, darling, how perfectly sweet of you!’ So I said ‘Signora,’ and I think she understood for she--she rang away.”

“Rang off,” said Colin, “you’re thinking of ‘ran away.’”

“She is running away here,” said Nino.

Colin lay back on the grass.

“Why do men get in such a fuss about women?” he asked.

“Chi sa? There are plenty for all,” said Nino.

“Yes. Tell me more tales such as you told me at Capri about Tiberio.”

Nino laughed.

“Why does the signor love to hear of Tiberio? He was a fat old man.”

“Yes, but full of ideas. He liked wickedness: the sort of man who would worship the devil.”

“Sicuro!”

“Italy’s a very wicked country,” said Colin. “I believe they worship the devil still in Naples.”

Nino crossed himself.

“So it is said.”

“Why do you do that?” asked Colin. “I don’t believe you really think it protects you. It’s only a habit. Tell me about the worship of the devil in Naples.”

“I know little,” said Nino, “and though others find it diverting, I would not find diversion in it. Why do they want to behave like street boys, and make faces at holy things? And it is not prudent. May not lightning strike them, or madness come on them? There are many things which the priests say offend Il Padre, which are diverting. But this is not one of them.”

Colin gathered up his knees in his arms, his skin still shining with his bathe. What nonsense, as he often thought, were the English ideas of ‘class.’ Here was he, talking to his own valet on terms of perfect equality, and Nino accepting that as perfectly natural, though had Colin next moment said “Get me my shoes,” Nino would have jumped to his feet, his most obedient and respectful servant. These Southerners had fine breeding in their bones, whereas so many Englishmen of his own class had only got it on the skin. His brother Raymond, for instance, what a howling cad compared to Nino! Or Uncle Ronald last night, telling a smoking-room story, so that one really sickened at his grossness. Nino talking about the much more awful deeds of Tiberius was not gross at all. He was only gay.

“Nino, why do we talk theology before breakfast?” he said. “We did yesterday, and here we are at it again to-day. I was very theological last night: I suppose that’s it, and this is an overflow.... But don’t you see that it’s diverting to defy Il Padre, and be rude?”

“No, that is not diverting,” said Nino.

“Well, everyone must go to the devil in his own way. So if I wanted you to do something wicked, which didn’t divert you, I suppose you would refuse?”

“I shall always wish to please you,” said Nino.

“Well, you can please me now. I want to hear about the Black Mass. I think it might make me happy. Have they a book? Have they a missal?”

“Yes,” said Nino.

“Nino, you’re rather annoying. You’re becoming serious.”

Nino shook his head.

“I have no use for it,” he said, “and indeed I know little of it. They have a book, there is a priest, but he must be one who has been turned out of his office. But where is the good of it all? It is enough for me to do what is diverting, and wipe my mouth after, till I want to be diverted again.”

Colin reached out for a towel. The mere fact that Nino found something revolting in the idea of the Black Mass was naturally a reason for causing him to interest himself in it, but if he did not feel the fascination of defiance, he could be no true worshipper.... And somehow Nino was so perfectly delightful as he was: it might spoil the gaiety of his Paganism to tamper with his instincts. He only cared for diversion, there was no devotion about him....

“Nino, we’re wonderfully alike in some ways, as I’ve told you,” he said, “but we’re wonderfully different in this. I don’t believe you like hurting people, for instance. That’s where the difference lies.”

“Not if I am fond of them; only when I hate them,” said Nino.

“Oh, you’re no good,” said Colin. “Give me my shirt.”

Nino scrambled to his feet, and held it up for him.

“Have I displeased you?” he said.

“No. You’re a nice boy, but I believe you want to go to heaven when you die.”

“Sicuro,” said Nino.

* * * * *

Colin mentioned casually at breakfast that Pamela Hunt was arriving that afternoon.

“She telephoned this morning,” he said. “So of course I said we should be delighted. I forget if you know her, Vi.”

He, Violet and Aunt Hester were the only three down yet. The latter looked up from her well-furnished plate, for Aunt Hester always had a fine appetite for breakfast, and couldn’t bear the silly rubbish of those who said they were better without. Whether Violet knew her or not, it was evident that Aunt Hester knew something about her....

“Pamela Hunt coming here!” she said. “Well, I never!”

Colin turned to her with his most radiant smile.

“What is it that you ‘don’t ever,’ Aunt Hester?” he said.

Lady Hester returned to her plate. She had no desire to make mischief, but really, the way Pamela Hunt had run after Colin, and his perfect readiness to be caught!... They were always together: the whole world noticed it.

“Well, I hope we shall have a fine Sunday,” she said.

Colin, shooting a glance at Violet, saw that her attention had been aroused. Probably it could not fail to be aroused when Pamela arrived, but what on earth had that to do with this old Victorian creature, whose morals, as everybody knew, had been of the most indulgent order in her own affairs? Her old age and her wit had begun to whitewash her now, but it was a little too much that she should wish to change her name to Mrs. Grundy. It wasn’t nearly such a pretty name as Hester Brayton, nor did she look the part. However, he would deal with that soon.

“I hope so, too,” he said. “We’ll go to church together, Aunt Hester, and sing ‘A few more years shall roll.’ That’s so encouraging, isn’t it? Good morning, Uncle Ronald. Your cough’s better, I trust.”

Uncle Ronald presented a rueful appearance. People ought not, thought Colin, to be allowed to spoil the appearance of a room like this. Presently Aunt Margaret joined them: all the menagerie was here now except Grandmamma.... He turned to Aunt Hester again, with all his sunniest good humour.

“Aunt Hester, you’re got up to kill,” he said. “I never saw anything so saucy as your hat. Should I look as nice if I wore a hat at breakfast? I think I shall have breakfast in a bowler. Have you been out already?”

Aunt Hester felt encouraged.... It had been a mistake to make that ejaculation on the subject of Pamela Hunt, but it had ‘popped out.’ But Colin bore her no grudge, bless him: such a good-natured boy, he was, and she felt it would be quite easy to speak to him after breakfast, and beg him to reconsider the propriety of letting that baggage come down here. Of course Staniers weren’t saints, and she herself wasn’t a prude, thank God, but to bring that wench down here with Violet in the house was a ‘bit thick’ as they said nowadays....

She had finished her breakfast, and got up. Colin immediately followed her, and they strolled along to the shady end of the terrace.

“And now, my dear, I’m going to talk to you like a mother,” she said.

Colin took her arm.

“Ah, do,” he said. “That’ll be lovely.”

“Well, my dear, you’re doing what you shouldn’t,” she said. “All the world and his wife have been talking of the way that Pamela of yours is running after you. Don’t think I blame her for that, for that’s her business and yours and nobody else’s. But everyone’s been saying that you and she--well, with that snuffy old husband of hers, no wonder she’s wanting to make the most of her youth.”

They sat down in an encampment of chairs under the trees. Colin had wanted an excuse for getting rid of Aunt Hester, and she was evidently going to give him one.... It was so pleasant of people to dig their own graves. His eyes were soft and gay as he spoke.

“Dear Aunt Hester!” he said. “Go on.”

“My dear, you’re charming to me. I was afraid you looked vexed for a moment when that silly speech of mine popped out. So there it is--and it ain’t quite decent of you, my dear, to bring her down with Violet in the house. I don’t know what your relations with the woman are, though of course you’d tell me there are none, but whether there are or not doesn’t affect it. You oughtn’t to have her down here, for, even if Violet knows nothing about it now, there’ll be a host of kind friends to tell her, when they know that Pamela’s been to stay at Stanier, and it makes a fool of her. Don’t you ever make a fool of anybody, my dear, for they’ll heave it back at you sooner or later. That’s my experience.”

Colin felt a sudden inexplicable impulse of affection for this damaged old butterfly, which ought to have been hybernating. She was such a pagan, and she had enjoyed herself so in her time, and she had shrewd wicked little eyes like an elephant. But that softening towards her only made him impatient of himself, and he rallied against this insidious intrusion. Just a little more from her first.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.

“Yes, my dear, I am, but it’s nice of you to listen like this to an old woman like me. You ring her up, or get that young Italian ruffian of yours to ring her up, and say you’ve got the influenza. I’ve not forgotten what it’s like to be young and kick over the traces a bit, but down here you know....”

Colin sighed. He had got rid of the intrusive affection. She was just like an improper little doll.

“There’s one thing I want to know, Aunt Hester,” he said.

She looked at him a moment. Really he was the handsomest and most attractive boy she had ever seen. Anyone so endowed ought to have carte blanche to do as he pleased.

“Tell me, my dear,” she said.

“I will, as we’re talking so pleasantly and confidentially. I’ve been wondering what the deuce you’ve got to do with it. I believe I’m master here: I fancy I can invite anyone I choose. Perhaps I’m wrong: perhaps I’m only a dummy stuck at the head of the table, and the place is run by a syndicate of aged relatives. Certainly it seems to be, for there’s Uncle Ronald drinking the cellar up, and telling me he couldn’t dream of leaving Granny, and there’s Aunt Margaret, as adhesive here as a postage stamp, and now there’s you dictating to me about my morals and my guests. As for what you tell me the world and his wife say, how can you expect me to be interested in the gabble of a pack of your foul-minded old friends? You always liked gossiping in the gutter.”

Colin jumped up from his chair, and shook off Aunt Hester’s hand which lay on his arm. Cruelty is a whet to itself: it grows sharper with use.

“Do you know, I’m not going to stand it any more,” he said. “I’ve already told Violet to get it into Uncle Ronald’s head that he mustn’t expect to be here all the rest of his life, and now I tell you the same. You’ve got houses of your own and you can all go and live in them. As for telephoning, if there is any telephoning to be done, it’ll be you to telephone to your housekeeper to say you’ve got influenza and are coming home. I don’t want you to do that; I hate rushing things. But if you stop here a day or two longer--I shall be quite pleased if you do--you must first apologize for your damnable interference in things that don’t concern you. Really, Aunt Hester, for you to set yourself up as a guide to the young, is just a shade too grotesque.”

Aunt Hester sat still, her hands tight on the arms of her chair, and her mouth holding itself in. Into her eyes there came the small difficult tears of the old. She wiped them away with a little pink-bordered handkerchief, and got up.

“I’ll be telling my maid to pack,” she said.

“Just as you please,” said Colin.

“That’s what I please,” said she.

Colin felt a spasm of impotent fury with her. He could not have been more invincibly brutal, but he had not won. She went down with her flag flying, she was sinking unsubdued.

“Goodbye, my dear,” she said, “I was always devoted to you, and I thought you liked me. But you hate me, else you couldn’t have spoken to me like that. I’m sorry I was wrong about you. And I thank you for my visit.”

“So good of you to have come. Aunt Hester,” he said.

Violet had come out of the dining-room and was now close to them.

“I’ve got to go up to town, my dear,” said Aunt Hester, turning her back on Colin. “I must see to my togs.”

Violet cast one glance at Colin, who stood there all debonair and smiling.

“But you’ll be back this evening?” she said.

“No, my dear, not so soon as that,” said Aunt Hester, and tripped off to the house.

Violet turned to Colin.

“Has anything happened?” she said. “Why is Aunt Hester going?”

Colin followed the retreat of the sprightly little figure for a moment in silence. Then with a sigh he looked at Violet, shaking his head.

“It’s all wretched,” he said. “Yes, Aunt Hester’s quarrelled with me. She took it on herself to tell me I had no business to ask Pamela here. She said everyone believed I was having an affair with her, and that it was an insult to you to ask her here. Now that doesn’t happen to be true. Do you believe that, darling?”

Violet looked at him with that direct limpid gaze, so like his own.

“If you tell me so, of course I do,” she said.

“I do tell you so,” he said. “Even if it wasn’t true, what on earth has it to do with Aunt Hester? But her talking to me like that--she called it talking like a mother--gave me the opportunity I wanted, so I told her I was tired of being ruled by aged and parasitic relatives. I said I wasn’t in a hurry for her to go, but that, if she wanted to stop a bit longer, she must apologize. So she went to pack. That’s all.”

“Oh, Colin, poor old thing!” said Violet.

“Me, or Aunt Hester?” he asked.

“Aunt Hester. She didn’t mean to insult you.”

“I suppose then she did it by accident,” said he. “If so, she ought to have said she was sorry. How about the others, by the way? Have you spoken a seasonable word to Uncle Ronald?”

“Yes. He understands. He and my mother are thinking of going to-day. They would be off on Monday anyhow.”

“Golly: the animals are going out three by three,” observed Colin. “You and Pamela and I will be _à trois_. A quiet peaceful Sunday. I hope it will be fine, as Aunt Hester said.”

Violet turned towards the house.

“I must go and see Aunt Hester,” she said.

“What for? To commiserate with her for having a brutal nephew?” asked Colin.

“No, Colin. To say I am sorry she is going, but that, if she can’t see her way to apologize to you, there’s nothing else to be done. I believe what you tell me, and, that being so, she has wronged you.”

Colin paused.

“And supposing now I told you I was in love with Pamela?” he said.

Violet’s eyes wandered away from him a moment, and mused alone.

“I believe that at the bottom of my heart I should rejoice that you were in love with anybody,” she said.

Colin’s beautiful mouth curled with derision.

“God! That’s the last word in wifely devotion,” he said.

“But it’s true,” said she.

* * * * *

Ronald and his wife had decided not to alter their plans, but to stay till Monday, and thus Pamela’s arrival left the party numerically as they were. But her presence brought into it some sort of emotional intensity; flippant as was her speech, Violet divined a certain force behind the flippancy, below her wit there was will. Certainly she was extremely good-looking, black of eye and hair, olive in skin, a wonderful contrast to the fairness of Staniers. And flippancy and force alike, wit and will, were all shooting at one target....

“London is getting addled,” she was saying. “It always does half-way through July. The hens, that is the hostesses, sit and sit and sit, but nothing comes out, except a few engagements of their sons and their daughters, or rather of their fathers and their mothers. That would be nearer the truth. There was a summary of the ages of newly-married people in _The Times_ the other day. There were six over seventy, three over eighty, and one of ninety-two.”

“Deaths, surely, deaths,” said Ronald. Pamela had been making him feel young: he was glad he had settled to stop till Monday.

“No, dear Mr. Stanier, marriages,” she said. “The people who died were much younger, I noticed it particularly. How do you explain that, Colin?”

“That marriage keeps you young is the only explanation,” said he.

“No, my dear, you don’t grasp it. They were already wonderfully old when they married. Being old keeps you young is the only explanation I can think of. We must get old: otherwise we shall die instead of marrying.”

“And what was the age of the babies who were born on this remarkable day?” asked Colin.

“How can you ask? Babies are the oldest things in the world. You can’t compute their age, it is infinite: they are age itself. But by degrees, through experience, they get young. We come into the world all red and wrinkled, and we go out all white and wrinkled. We’ve been bled, that’s all.”

All the time, Violet felt, she was talking at Colin. These sprightly trifles, unreal as stage-dialogue, were but the steam that rose over what lay below. Whether she addressed Ronald or his wife or Violet herself, the steam blew always towards Colin. She talked impartially to one or another, just as she looked impartially at one or another, so that out of that very impartiality she might look at Colin, too. But on him her hovering glance settled for a moment. A woman always did that if she was in love with a man. She talked here and there, she glanced here and there, in order to make it natural that she should glance everywhere. But when she came to the face that she sought, she hovered no longer, but, just for a moment, she settled.

As certainly Violet knew that Colin was not in the least in love with her: he had never spoken a truer word than when he had told her that. He was amused with her, he looked long and very openly at her: he did not disguise his admiration. But he had no secret message for her, as she for him.... Lady Yardley’s voice broke in: she had been perfectly silent throughout dinner.

“Why is Hester not here, Colin?” she said. “Has this lady who has been amusing us all come to live here instead of Hester?”

Colin nodded to Violet, who rose.

“No, Granny darling,” he said. “This lady has only come to live with us till Monday, unless you can persuade her to stop. Now it’ll be time for your whist in ten minutes. Go on with Violet.”

Colin took a delicate pleasure that night in not allowing Uncle Ronald to drink more than one glass of port. He had told Violet that he would make him tipsy every night till she did as she was told and informed her father that he was not to regard Stanier as his home any longer; now, since she had been obedient, he would see that Uncle Ronald was lamentably sober. He could play whist to-night in fact, and Violet and her mother must make up the table for old Lady Yardley. This left him and Pamela free, and presently he strolled out with her on the terrace.

“It was delightful of you to propose yourself,” he said, “though, upon my word, I felt it was very selfish of me to let you come. How can I prevent your having a fearfully dull Sunday with nobody here? You’ve missed Aunt Hester: she adds a little spice sometimes to the plain family pudding.”

Pamela glanced up at the noble façade of the house. “And to the suburban villa,” she said. “No wonder you adore it. Be it ever so humble, Colin, there’s no place like home.”

Colin had been reflecting what he should do with Pamela. He had seen all that Violet saw, but his opportunity did not allure him. She was magnificently handsome, but she conveyed nothing to his senses. She was all very well as a unit, in the general crowd; she talked nonsense, she made him laugh, but he had no earthly use for her beyond that. He knew very well what she was after: what she was after walked by her side now, and his own entire indifference to her made that appear an unwarranted liberty. In his summary of her, she wanted--that was so characteristic of some women’s love--she wanted to possess him, by making herself indispensable to him. That was the way a woman worked. She put it that she gave herself to a man, whereas in reality she aimed at just the opposite, for she meant the man to give himself to her. She wanted always to undermine a man’s independence, and subject him to herself. She used her beauty, her wit, her short skirts, her powder-puff all for the same end, to enslave him to his desire for her. That sapped his strength, it sheared him of his manhood, even as Delilah cut Samson’s mane, so that he was helpless in her hands. A woman’s avowed abandonment of herself, her yielding, her weakness were all fetters of steel with which she cramped and enchained the man: her weakness, indeed, was precisely her strength. And she called this rapacity tenderness! It was the tenderness of a leech which softly fastens itself and softly clings till it is satiated with the blood of its victim. Then full-fed it drops off.

Thus at any rate he judged her quality, a quality greedy and common, that called itself self-surrendering. She was out for what she could get, and Colin had a certain sympathy with that, for it was sensible and intelligible. It had not, at any rate, anything in common with Violet’s love for him, which sought to give and not to get. That was wholly alien to him: its manifestations bored him, its spirit, just because it was so unintelligible to him, he hated and defied.... Pamela was not like that, nor again was she light, she did not think of this physical desire, which she called love, as a diversion. Had she offered him a part in a comedy, he might have accepted it: comedy was a pleasant pastime. But it was not that which she wanted: she was engaged, so he construed her, on nefarious designs against his liberty: and these must be met with counterplots, which would lead her on to some final debâcle.

They paused a moment as she looked up at the house. The moon to-night had only just risen, tawny and large on the horizon.

“Yes, I adore it,” he said. “It casts a spell on us all, you know. I would sooner be here than anywhere on this earth, but, as you know now, there are certain drawbacks to it.”

“Drawbacks? Shew me some,” she said.

“Ah, you’re too polite. Polite Pamela.... But imagine what dinner would have been like if it hadn’t been for you! Granny, Uncle Ronald, Aunt Margaret----”

“My dear, you’ve left out Violet,” she said. “I think she’s too fascinating.”

Colin saw that his counter-plot was positively opened by her. He put his arm through hers.

“I feel sure you have seen,” he said, “and I’m sure you’re sympathetic. Give me a drop of pity, Pamela. That’ll be rather healing, and then we’ll be gay again.”

“But pity? Why pity?” said she.

Colin stopped.

“Violet detests me,” he said. “Yes, I know you saw that, and naturally you couldn’t say it. But it’s said now. It’s sad, isn’t it? Just a little sad? It’s not her fault: any more than it’s my fault that I love her. And I suppose I shall get used to it. They say one gets used to anything. Wounds heal if you give them time. But, oh, how easily they’re torn open again! Look, here where we stand in the shadow of the yew-hedge is the very spot where Violet first kissed me: it was here she said she would marry me. Come away. I bleed.”

He saw her eyes sparkle and soften. They sparkled first: that was the genuine symptom. Then they softened: that was womanly sympathy. Her arm just pressed his encircled hand, and that perhaps was both. All this he read so easily, with that adeptness derived from the birthright of his inheritance. No saint of God could find good in people with such dexterity as he could find evil.

“My dear, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I hadn’t seen, more shame on my blindness. And really it never occurred to me that sorrow could come near you, for you always seem so robed in joy.”

“I’m glad. I mustn’t lose hold on joy,” said he quickly. “But what atrocious manners I’ve got! There’s nothing so thoroughly rude and middle-class as to tell your friends of your troubles.”

“There’s no greater compliment that you can pay, than to do just that,” she said. “But I should never have guessed, Colin, you’re a wonderful dissembler.”

He laughed.

“I’m a wonderful grouser,” he said. “Grouse too, Pamela. Be sociable: tell me the secret sorrows of your domestic life.”

“You know quite well I haven’t any. My husband and I are the greatest friends. Whenever we meet, which is about once a year, we have the most delightful talk, and always hope we shall meet again soon. In the intervals we hear of each other occasionally. I hear about his little affairs, and I suppose he would about mine if I had any. But I can’t behave as so many women seem to.”

Colin gave a little shudder.

“I should hate you if you did,” he said. “Don’t make me do that.”

That certainly was not part of Pamela’s plan.

“I promise that you shan’t for that reason,” she said. “But we won’t talk about me.... Oh, Colin, I hate your being unhappy. What can be done, my dear? You’ve got so much, too: you’ve got so many people who are devoted to you.”

He looked at her with eyes brilliant and wistful.

“Have I?” he said. “I don’t feel as if I had. People are friendly, I know, but I am only one in a crowd to them. They come down here in shoals in the autumn--next time you come, you shall really have some more amusing people to meet.”

She interrupted him.

“No, don’t do that,” she said. “The shoals of amusing people aren’t anything to me.”

“Ah, that’s nice of you,” said Colin.

They stood there a moment in silence: then he turned quickly to the house.

“We must go in,” he said. “Granny will have finished her whist, and then my uncle likes a chat in the smoking-room. You never knew I was such a domestic character, did you, Pamela?”

“I always knew you were a dear,” she said. “And you do like me a little, don’t you?”

* * * * *

Colin, when he found himself alone--Uncle Ronald was gloomily consuming whisky to make up for the dearth of port--was as pleased with his terrace-talk as his companion had been. There was the little side-show (gratis) of representing himself as yearning for Violet, but that was only an antechamber, so to speak, which he and Pamela were passing through, and there she saw him, the gay trappings of his brilliance stripped off him, hungry for love. And already Pamela--how well he read her--was at his side. Closer and closer must she get till she could not exist without him. All the time she would be posing as the consoling friend, the healer of wounds, and all the time to the truer vision she would be the hunting leopard hungry for the hot blood of its prey. And just as she thought she had got it, it would be the prey somehow that turned on her with derision and mockery. With the exact manner of that furious turning of the tables, Colin did not trouble himself: it could not be settled now, for it must depend on developments. Before long he would be going out to Capri: he might ask her there perhaps, for at Capri everything always turned out well. How often had he made plans, lying there on the beach between the bathes, and how surely had their accomplishment justified the design! The fruit was not ripe yet, though the moonshine on the terrace had brought it on towards maturity. To-morrow ought to be a nice growing day, too....

What a high morality he would then exhibit, and how delightful would be the mockery of it! His plan, thus vaguely outlined to himself, was a derisive parody of morality, in which a decent married man would be seen resisting the improper seductress: what could be nicer? It would be a veritable tract about a Messalina and a Galahad. And then you looked closer, and saw that hate and the desire to hurt twitched in every gesture of Galahad. There was the cream and felicity of it, for it would all be a defiance of love, a campaign of hostility and rebellion.

Colin stood up, stretching himself slowly and luxuriously. He had taken out again from its locked drawer, the plan of that annex which his ancestor had never erected, to study it further, but there was really no need of that. He had sent for his architect to come here on Monday morning, who must get to work on this outlined sketch-plan, and devise something in the style of the house, using old brick and weathered stone and timber. That would all be talked out on Monday, and the building of it begun at once. For to-morrow’s employment there was church in the morning, where he always read the lessons if he was at home, and after that there were fruits to be ripened, and very soon after that, certainly during this week, he would go off with Nino to Capri, for a month of basking and bathing and, he made no doubt, a moral interlude, for he meant to ask Pamela to visit him there. And researches must be made in underground Naples: that red ridiculous Consul, Mr. Cecil, would have to lend his friendly offices. He would get him to come over for a night to the island.

Colin looked round his room. Just there the door would be pierced that led into the corridor communicating with the sanctuary.