DENNIS’S holidays sped in an orgie of delightful amusements. There was the splendour of having a gun of his own, and being allowed to go out with the keepers and his father to blaze at rabbits and the pigeons among the trees in the Old Park. There was the splendour of a motor-bicycle given him by his father, and that of dining downstairs every night. But among all these experiences, there was none so enchanting as his father’s companionship....
Colin had suffered a defeat. He knew it, and he understood why, and learned a larger wisdom from it. He had been altogether too abrupt: excited and possessed himself, he had expected Violet to leap at once, in surrender and panic, over that huge gulf that separated them, when he asked her to come to the chapel with him. He should have known better, he told himself: it was demanding the impossible. The effect had been that, in her vital recoil, she had accomplished a supreme feat in the completion of her self-abandonment to the power of Love. She had made no reservation; she had cast herself on the spread arms of its sustaining force. It was quite consistent, too, that, the moment afterwards, when he had told her that, if she refused to come, he would take Dennis with him, she had said she would come. Love still upheld her and chose for her, and its force, he knew, had drained him of his, so that he no longer cared at that moment whether she came or not, or whether it was worth while even to fetch Dennis.... He could have done that, but it would have been a mere repetition of his original mistake. Dennis would no more leap to the sacrament of evil than Violet. The worship of evil demanded a dedication of the soul....
Dennis must be wooed like some shy maiden.... His boyish heart was affianced to his mother, and its clinging tentacles, vigorous as young shoots of ivy, must be ever so gently detached, so that the boy would scarcely know that any detachment was going on, and laid, full of the sap of spring, round his father’s encircling arm. Until that was done, Dennis would turn but a puzzled and incurious ear to anything of ultimate significance. Colin must abound in wholesome school-boy topics and interests, until the ivy clung close to him, and leaned on him for the support of its growth. Then, but not till then, could the education and enlistment of his instincts begin. It would be rather a bore, Colin thought: he would have to play golf with him, and go out to shoot the silly pigeons, and take him up to London perhaps to see the public-schools competition in racquets. Dennis evidently adored one of the boys who was playing for Eton, his senior by some four years. Colin wondered what sort of a fellow he was....
A dozen guests or so came down next afternoon to spend a week, and before that week was over their numbers were redoubled; they settled on Stanier like a flock of gay and chattering birds. They were at liberty all day to amuse themselves as they liked, tennis and fishing and golf were diversions enough for them all: Violet, admirable hostess as she was, saw that they were occupied, and devoted herself to the dowagery element among them, which liked motoring to points of interest or going to see friends in country-houses in the neighbourhood. There was breakfast and lunch at elastic hours and no full or formal assembly met until dinner-time. Then there was the immemorial ritual of the house reassembling itself: old Lady Yardley in alabaster silence and immobility was the first to arrive in the long gallery, and the guests collected, and when all were there the major-domo opened the door into Colin’s room, and he joined them. Just that one old-fashioned pompous moment was preserved: it was the Stanier use, like grace before meat. As he entered everyone stood up: it was only Colin of course, who next moment would be chattering like the rest of them or shouting with laughter, but just then he was Lord Yardley.
But most of the day, Colin would have had Dennis with him, and often the boy dressed early and spent this last half-hour before dinner with his father. Very likely the two would be playing some game together when the summons of the opening door came, but on the moment Colin would jump up, leaving whatever fascinating pursuit was in progress, and become somebody quite different.
“Now, behave yourself, Dennis, just for a minute,” he would say.... “We’ll go back to our game afterwards, if we can. My move....” That was part of Dennis’s education; just for that minute it was a solemn business to be Lord Yardley, the master of this magnificent inheritance, with its regal splendours. There was no other house in England like it, nor had there been for three centuries past, and it was his father’s now, and would one day be his, and plenteousness would be in its palaces so long as he into whose hands it was given remembered to whom he owed it, and rendered affiance and allegiance.
So grace was said, and the diversions of the evening began. Dennis must not be pompous, but at the back of his mind the knowledge of his potential magnificence must consolidate itself. At dinner there was a place for him by his father, for that was Colin’s order, and Dennis could see the charm that had been poured out on him in their employments together during the day now weave itself for these dazzling ladies. His mother, he knew, had not wanted him to come down to dinner when the house was full, but Colin had begged her, so it conveyed itself to his mind, to allow him, and Dennis secretly felt it to have been rather unkind of her to have tried to make him miss these wonderful hours. Of course there was a threat, veiled and not understood by him, behind this ‘begging,’ something about Dennis having nothing to do, while they were in at dinner, except say his prayers with Mr. Douglas and go to bed. Dennis had not understood that, for he never said his prayers with Mr. Douglas, but his mother consented to his coming down after that.
It was immensely amusing at dinner; there was his father, to begin, with, whose gaiety was irresistible; Dennis had not known how fascinating he could be over nothing at all. Whether he asked a silly riddle, or told an absurd story, or just joined in the general chatter, he cast the magic of mirth over everyone. And all the time old Lady Yardley, silent and aware, would be watching him. Perhaps her neighbours would attempt conversation with her, but they were swiftly defeated. Her business was to look at Colin. Now and then he caught her eye and shouted something encouraging to her, and he would say to her neighbour, “Darling old Granny: I hope she isn’t a nuisance. But she would break her heart if she didn’t come down to dinner. Look, we’re four generations. She and Aunt Hester and Violet and I and Dennis.”
After dinner there were all sorts of amusements: one night there was nothing but cards, with bridge-tables for those who cared about those sedate joys, and old Lady Yardley’s whist-table in the corner by the fire, which was its immemorial situation. Violet, Mr. Douglas and Aunt Hester were immolated there, and for the rest there was a delightful round game called poker. Once again his mother had suggested bed-time for Dennis, but again had Colin ‘begged’ for him.
“Give him half an hour, darling,” he had said. “He’ll get bored with it and won’t touch a card for the rest of his life. Nothing like early associations.... Dennis, your mother says you may sit up for half an hour, so you and I will be partners, and you shall have a small salary, as long as I win.”
“But if you lose. Father?” suggested the cautious Dennis.
“Then I shall sell your new dress-clothes, which I haven’t pinched you for yet, and buy a hurdy-gurdy, and collect coppers in St. James’s Square, till a copper collects me for obstructing your mother’s motor-car on the way to church. You shall be the monkey on the top of it, and go to prison with me.”
“Rather. I say, will you tell me how it goes?”
“You’ll soon see. Where are the counters? Who wants money and how much? Oh, I think unlimited, don’t you, Blanche? We’re all so prudent, and we’re all so poor that we shan’t lose our heads. Let’s all have a hundred pounds. That gives a false air of opulence.”
Lady Blanche Frampton counted her portion with avaricious fingers.
“I haven’t seen so much money for years,” she said. “Colin, you’ve given me ten shillings short.”
“No, I haven’t, dear. Add it up again. Let’s have six at this table and six at the other. Dennis doesn’t count. He’s going to bed in half an hour, if he doesn’t sit up longer.”
“But I want Dennis,” said Lady Blanche. “I’ll give you a pound for Dennis. He’d be a mascot, because you haven’t played before, have you, Dennis? Or is poker part of a modern boy’s education?”
“Yes, of course it is,” said Colin. “The Head holds poker-classes for the sixth form twice a week, and the House Master for those under fourteen. Dennis, attend to me, ‘Ich Deal’ as the Prince of Wales said. Now, there are pairs and two pairs, Dennis, and a flush, and a straight.... Who’s in? Everybody? Then who’s shy, and has not put his mite into the pool? Oh, I believe it’s the dealer.”
An hour later, Dennis, instead of being in bed, had been started by Colin on his own, with a capital of ten pounds. Luck favoured him, and presently it had doubled itself. Then luck went against him, and he lost every farthing of his capital. Twenty pounds ... he was Crœsus, and next moment penniless. The tragedy was quite appalling.
“Hullo, Dennis, cleaned out?” said Colin, observing this. “Poker’s not so entertaining after all.”
Dennis stiffened his rather drooping neck.
“I’ve enjoyed it tremendously,” he said. “Rare good run for my money.”
He gave that boyish cackle.
“And it was yours all the time,” he said. “Sorry, Father, for losing it.”
Colin had watched the tragedy and inwardly applauded. The boy was really plucky about it, and Colin respected pluck. It might be a virtue, but it was not connected with love.... How handsome he looked, with his flushed face and eager eyes, and chin slightly in the air, to show he cared nothing about the loss of that millionaire capital.
“Never mind,” he said. “Now, Dennis, would you rather go to bed with a sovereign in your pocket, or shall I start you again? But if you lose it this time, you won’t get a penny.”
“Oh Lord! I’ll go on,” said Dennis. “Ripping of you, Father.”
Another night there was a theatrical performance given by three actors of a play that would certainly never see the London footlights, and once again Dennis sat between his father and Blanche Frampton. The surface of the first act scintillated with cynical witty nonsense, light as foam, and the boy bubbled with laughter. But presently his laughter was not so frequent. Something began to shew through the surface, and a soft perpendicular wrinkle engraved itself between Dennis’s eyebrows, and he puzzled out what seemed so clear and vastly entertaining to the rest of the audience.... Yes, soon he thought he had got it, and his brow cleared, but he didn’t laugh: it just did not happen to amuse him.
Colin’s attention had been about equally divided between the stage and the boy. The play was to his mind: it drew with deft distinctness the passion that exists only as a pastime and is a foe rather than a friend of love. The author had expended inimitable wit in its delineation, but before the act was over Colin was recognizing rather than appreciating the corrupt and subtle handling, and his conscious attention was more engaged with the effect it had on Dennis than with the entertainment he himself derived from it. During these last few days he had grown very proud of Dennis. There were his extraordinarily good looks to begin with; and he enjoyed himself enormously, but never boisterously. Everyone tried to spoil him, but no one succeeded: he was ever so friendly and well at ease, and without a trace of self-consciousness. His manners were excellent: there was no impression that he was behaving himself, he was perfectly natural with a winning boyish simplicity. Withal he was not grown-up and green-housed for his years, he was on the contrary extremely young.
Colin put his arm round him as the act closed with a frank emergence of polished indecency.
“Well, old boy, enjoying it?” he asked.
Dennis made one of those confiding boyish movements, fitting his shoulder close under his father’s arm.
“I liked the beginning,” he said. “But—but they’re rather playing the ass, aren’t they?”
Clearly he wasn’t enjoying it. Colin had distinctly hoped he would: that was why he had let him come. It was disappointing, but it was no use boring the boy with these intriguing animals: the last thing he wanted to do was to bore him.
“Go away then,” he said, “if you don’t care about it. I thought it would amuse you.”
“I expect I’m awfully thick,” said Dennis.
“You are, my dear: you’re thick and fat with that enormous dinner you ate. Did you like your champagne?”
“Rather. I should think I did. May I have some to-morrow?”
“You must ask your mother.”
Dennis laughed.
“I’d much sooner ask you,” he said.
“You’re a wine-bibber. You’ll get gout and delirium tremens, and your mother will say it’s my fault.... Well, what about this next act? Are you going to stop or not?”
“I think I won’t,” said Dennis. “And will you come and say good night?”
“No: you’ll be asleep.”
“I shall keep awake, if you’re coming.”
“All right. Say good night to your mother, and tell her I’ve sent you to bed.”
“But you haven’t,” said Dennis.
“No, but that’ll make her pleased with me.”
Dennis stole out, and Blanche gave a sigh of relief.
“That’s a good thing,” she said. “Dennis was as much out of place here, as I should be playing football with him at Eton.”
“But you’d enjoy that,” said Colin. “You’d love being the one female in a crowd of handsome boys.”
She laughed.
“Yes, my dear, we all detest competition as we get older. But why did you let Dennis come at all? Either he’d wallow in it, which would be extremely bad for him, or he’d be bored with it.”
“I wanted to see which he would do. It would have been very interesting if he’d wallowed in it.”
“You’re no judge of character. You might have known he wouldn’t,” she said.
“Oh, do you think that children of that age have character? Aren’t they more like white sheets of paper, ready to be written on?”
“Colin, you’re an awful father! Fancy wanting this delicious, witty piece of muck to be written in poor Dennis’s first chapter! I’m glad he’s gone. I shall be able to enjoy it with a freer conscience. Oh, observe your Aunt Hester! She looks as if she was receiving early impressions, and finding them wonderfully agreeable. And, oh, look at your much revered grandmother! Did you ever see anyone so monumental?”
There she sat in the centre of the room, in a great chair of rose-coloured Genoese velvet. In this interval between the acts, the cut-glass chandelier over her head had been lit, and the blaze strongly illuminated that alabaster face, motionless, expressionless, inscrutable. And yet what sculptor’s skill could have wrought a countenance from which every sign of feeling or even of consciousness was so expunged? In a face of stone some expression lurks in the sightless eyes and the shadows at the corners of the mouth, and an attentive observer will seem to see the expression change, and discover some fresh hint of what the sculptor divined in his living model and chiselled into the lifeless stone. But here there was no such elasticity of interpretation possible. The closer you looked, the more you were baffled. And yet there was no tranquillity there as on the face of the dead. Lady Yardley’s face was immensely alive, but with what was it alive?
“Talk of white paper....” said Blanche.
Colin laughed.
“Not a bit of it. Covered with strange writing,” he said. “Look!”
He leaned forward.
“Granny dear,” he called.
She turned her head in the direction of his voice. Then came recognition, for the blank eyes brightened and the folded lips uncurled. There was Something there: it was as if Colin had caused characters written in invisible ink to spring up over the blank surface. But they faded again before they could be read, and presently she turned back and looked up the curtain in front of the stage, where the footlights were just rekindled.
“Gracious me: it’s covered with writing!” said Blanche. “But quite unintelligible. What was it about?”
“It was about Stanier,” said Colin. “Stanier is the only thing she is conscious of. You see I’m the incarnation of it to her. And I think she’s beginning to see that Dennis will have something to do with it. But I really don’t believe she knows Violet by sight.”
Supper succeeded the play, and it was not till after one o’clock that Colin went upstairs. Dennis slept in a room close to his father’s: the door was ajar and there was a light within. Colin went in, and there was Dennis propped on pillows and sitting up in bed, but fast asleep. His yellow hair was tumbled over his forehead, his mouth was a little open, shewing the white rim of his lower teeth. Clearly he had sat up in bed in order to keep awake for his father’s coming, but his precautions had failed: sleep heavy and soft had come upon him.
Colin stood looking at him. There, indeed, in the unguardedness of slumber was the white paper. He looked extraordinarily young as he slept; his was the face of a child, still sexless, just a radiant piece of youth, holy in its innocence. Would it not be possible, without really waking him, to put into his soul now unprotected by the guard of its conscious self some suggestion which would, like a fruitful seed, lie buried there and take root and presently push some folded horn of growth above the soil?
Colin turned out the light by the switch near the door, and began to gather force into himself. It was not an effort of concentration at all, rather it was a complete relaxation. He had only to lie open and tranquil, like a dew-pond, and let it flow in from the air, from the night. Drop by drop at first, and then in ampler streams it came flooding in, making a tingling in his blood. More and more he must collect, attracting it with images of evil—how well he knew the process of it—till he was charged and brimming with it, and then he would direct it and turn it on that boyish figure that sat up in bed, not with an effort of will, but making himself, so to speak, just the channel through which it flowed. Throughout he must not think of himself at all, nor even of Dennis; he was no more than the reservoir which was storing what Dennis should receive. He must direct and convey that without quite waking the boy.
There was a hitch somewhere, an obstruction. At first he could not conjecture the nature of it. Then he perceived what it was. He was not surrendering himself thoroughly, some rebellious part of his soul, ever so faintly, was protecting Dennis’s beautiful face and slack limbs, and standing between the boy and the force that was seething about him. It would not allow Colin to be the channel, it blocked the way. Was it pride in the boy as he was? Was it pity? Was it something more powerful yet? Whatever it was, it was there.
Colin clutched at it, to wrench it away. He felt it give, and he felt the force foam by it towards Dennis’s bed.
There came from the bed some stir of movement, and a gasping breath. Then Dennis’s voice, muffled and strangling, as if there was a hand on his throat.
“No, no!” it cried. “No—— Ah....”
The boy’s breath came thick and fast.
“What is it? Who’s there?” he screamed. “Father ... Father....”
Colin reached up his hand for the switch and turned on the light. He did not intend to do it; his hand moved as if by some reflex action outside the power of his will, for there was something in that instinctive cry to him which set at work some uncontrollable mechanism within him.
Dennis was half out of bed, his face bathed in perspiration, his eyes wide and terrified. With a leap he sprang to Colin, never pausing to think how it was that he came to be standing there in the dark, and clung close to him.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, with his head buried on Colin’s shoulder. “Thank the Lord! Oh, I say, I’ve been so frightened. Something came into the room: I don’t know what it was, but something hellish. I say, it’s not here now, is it?”
Colin patted his shoulder.
“Why, Dennis, what’s the matter?” he said. “You’ve had a nightmare, that’s all. I came in here a minute ago, and found you asleep with your light burning. I turned it out.”
Dennis wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, raising a troubled face, out of which that sheer terror was beginning to fade.
“Was that all?” he said. “Are you sure there was nothing that came in? O-o-oh, I thought I was going to die of fright.”
Strange was it that so few minutes ago it was through his father’s presence and complicity that the terror had gripped Dennis by the throat, and that now it was that same presence which so quickly restored the boy’s confidence. With his father there he knew that nothing could hurt him, not nightmare, nor phantom, nor the terrors that walk in darkness.
“Get back into bed, old boy,” said Colin. “It’s late, you know. You must go to sleep.”
Dennis unwound his clinging arms and hopped back into bed.
“Oh, do wait two minutes,” he said. “It’s ... it’s awfully rotten of me, but I couldn’t stand to be alone in the dark again this moment. I never had such a horrible nightmare.”
“Well, just two minutes,” said Colin. “And what was the nightmare?”
Dennis pulled his father down till he sat on the edge of the bed, and held his hand.
“I don’t know what it was,” he said, with a shudder. “It felt like the devil. But it won’t come back, will it, when I go to sleep again?”
“Of course it won’t. You’re not frightened now, are you?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. If you promise me it won’t come back, I’m not frightened.”
“Yes, I promise you that,” said Colin.
Colin left a tranquil Dennis curled round in bed like a drowsy puppy when he went to his room a few minutes later. But he was not so tranquil himself. He had not imagined that any panic terror would seize the boy: he had only meant to plant a seed, a suggestion, ever so quietly, leaving it to mature.... Dennis would not come to love evil, so that, when the time for his choice arrived, he would choose ‘wisely and well,’ if it approached him with these strangling assaults of nightmare. Why had it happened like that, he wondered? No boy’s soul, at that age, was of such virgin and stainless purity that the breath of evil suffocated him.... More likely that it was his own divided purpose, his own struggle against that obstacle which somehow he had himself set up against the free flowing of the stream he had directed against Dennis. Some force, he felt sure, had reached the sleeping boy from him; that he had intended, and he had felt it flowing through him. But had it reached him in some fierce torrent, raging at having been checked in its passage, and settling on him with claws and teeth? Had it been like some wild beast, which, having been shewn its lawful and desired prey, was held back from it?
He must not approach Dennis again like that, nor seek to hold back the power that he directed. It was no conscious scruple on his part which had blocked the channel: the obstacle seemed to have made itself, and planted itself there. It was of the same nature as the instinct that made his hand search for the switch and turn up the light at Dennis’s appealing cry. He hated the boy to be frightened, quite apart from the fact that Dennis must of his own inclination welcome and cherish the power that was ready to protect him and be his friend even as it had been his father’s friend, and the friend of old Colin. It had come to Dennis to-night as a foe of malignancy and terror: that would never do....
Colin had slipped quickly out of his clothes, and now, before he got into bed, he drew up the blind, and throwing the window wide leaned out into the pregnant spring night. Thick and warm was the darkness, a floor of cloud covered the sky, and there would be rain before morning, the soft, fruitful, windless April rain which sent the sap flooding upwards through stem and branch till it burst into leaf and bud. The young growth needed not pelting showers and fierce suns; it prospered most in these still warm nights.... And Dennis was like these tender, sappy shoots: he must be left to grow quietly yet awhile, not drenched by deluge and speared by violent suns: these would only blast and wither him.... How panic-stricken the boy had been! That psychical onslaught had from its very vehemence been to him a hostile intrusion, not the advent of a protecting power. How instinctively in the shock and terror of it he had called to his father!
There was an irony about that: instinct was a blind ignorant force, else Dennis would have shuddered and fled from his father, not clung to him with arms close pressed, and terrified face hidden on his shoulder. And yet (here was the puzzling, the baffling thing), Dennis had been perfectly right. At that cry of his in the dark, Colin had had no thought but the answering instinct to comfort and reassure him. His hand had shot out, independently of his purpose, to flash on the light, and he had given the boy the protection he sought. He couldn’t stand that wail of desolation.
What made him do that? Him, who had jeered and flouted Pamela to her self-destruction without a pang of pity, but only with devilish glee, who had let Nino die of fever with a shrug of his shoulders, who had worshipped evil and drunk of the derided sacrament of love, dedicating himself by rite and symbol, as by the daily conduct of his life, to his soul’s master, how came there that disloyalty to his affiance? How was it that there flourished in the garden of his soul that despicable weed? He had not done it in mere careless pity, as he might have raised a corner of netting to set free a bird that was caught there, nor had he done it with the deliberate reasoning that justified it to his mind afterwards, when he perceived that it would never do to have Dennis regard this directed force as hostile and malignant. He had done it because there was no question of choice: an inward compulsion, not to be resisted, had made him. And thus Dennis’s instinct was right. He called on him and he clung to him, exactly as he would have clung to his mother, because he loved her, and was certain of her love. Colin had given him, too, exactly what his mother would have given him.
There was no other conclusion, and instantly all Colin’s nature was in revolt. It had been an impulse of love that had taken hold of him; he had leaped to the protection of Dennis’s terror and of his innocence. He had denied his allegiance, he had rooted evil out of his heart for that moment, and ... and how curiously sweet it had been to have the boy in his arms like that, and see the terror and trouble vanish from his eyes! There was no woman in the world whom he would have suffered to take Dennis’s place at that clinging moment, no promise of physical rapture and consummation to follow that would have been so desirable as that comforting of Dennis, that sitting by him on his bed for five minutes while he tranquillized and composed himself.
He revolted and rebelled. It was not for this that he had grown proud of Dennis, delighting in his physical beauty, and in the sunshine of his boyish vigour, and in the grace and charm of him. He had enjoyed them with ever increasing zest because of the thought that someday Dennis would be one with him in his allegiance to the Lord of hate. He had seen himself bringing him to the tribunal of his choice, and beholding him choose as he himself, with never a moment of regret, had chosen. Who, in all the world of men with their callow consciences, their bloodless ideals, their cold duties, had prospered as he had done, or whose days succeeded each other in such procession of satisfaction? All that must be Dennis’s: it was his unique birthright to be allowed to choose all that the lust of the eye and the pride of the flesh and the glory of the world could bestow with never an ache of compunction, or a sigh of pity, or a pulse of love.
Colin got up; the rain had begun to hiss on the shrubs below his window. He must have been sitting here for more than an hour, for the chimes in the church a couple of hundred yards away struck three. He had not been thinking consciously or with purpose: it was as if pictures had been spread out in front of him on which he let his eyes rest. Now, as he went across to his bed, there came an intenser focussing. It was well enough that Dennis should come to him as he would have gone to his mother, drawn there by the bonds of his love. Colin had meant to oust Violet from the boy’s heart, and take her place, and, if nothing more at present, Dennis had given him a niche of his own there. He wanted Dennis’s affection and confidence, for it was through them that he would most surely lead him.... It was natural, too, that he himself should delight in the boy’s magnificent youth and abounding charm. But it was not well that his own heart should have gone out to Dennis like that. Whence had come that spark of soft authentic fire? Was it from some remote and infinite conflagration, the warmth and the light of which can penetrate the uttermost darkness?
Colin turned out his light, and curled himself up in bed as he had seen Dennis do.
“That would be a nightmare indeed,” he thought....
All that week and the two that followed Stanier outvied itself—for indeed there was no other competitor—in the splendour of its hospitalities. The great houses of England were now, for the most part, shut up, and the owners, crippled by the ruinous taxation, only lived in small corners of them, like picnicking tourists. Those who were fortunate let them to Americans or Argentines, preferring, like sensible folk, to live in comfort in smaller houses, rather than shiver in palaces they