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