THE Eton term came to an end in the last week of July, and Dennis found that, by leaving at some timeless hour, he could get down to Stanier by the middle of the morning. The idea was irresistible, for there would be time to have an hour or so bathing with his father before lunch, and keep the afternoon intact, and so, though the original plan had been to lunch with Aunt Hester, and, tipped and gorged, go on to Stanier afterwards, he telegraphed to her that he ‘had to’ go straight home, and sent a second telegram to his father to say that he would arrive at Rye at half-past eleven. He knew that Colin was there, for his mother had written to him a day or two before to say they had left London and were at Stanier.
The heat of the day promised well for the pleasure of diversions such as bathing, and the addition of excited anticipation made Dennis strip off his coat, when he had got into his train from London, and turn up his shirt sleeves to the elbow. These long summer holidays, with an extra week at the end in honour of a certain Royal visit to the school, contained an eternity of joys: not only was there Stanier to look forward to, but that visit to Capri with his father, which had been promised him. As the train neared Rye he hung out of the window to catch the first sight of the house glowing among its woods. There was just a glimpse of it, with its flag flying on the tower, and then the trees hid it again, and he must bounce across to the other side of the carriage to see his father standing on the platform, and wave to him. He would be there to meet him as certainly as Stanier was waiting for him on the hill.
The platform was rather full, and Dennis was still searching for Colin when the train drew up. He descended with arms full of agreeable impedimenta and then the very natural explanation of Colin’s absence occurred to him: without doubt he had driven down in the little two-seater, and was waiting for him outside. He went through the gate of egress, but in the station-yard there was no two-seater, nor any other conveyance from Stanier. Again an explanation was easy: his telegram had not yet been delivered. This was not quite the ecstasy of arrival that he had anticipated, but it was entirely his own fault.
The cab laboured up the long hill and jogged very sedately along the level up to the lodge-gate. At this rate he could traverse the short cut on foot more quickly than this deliberate quadruped would make the detour. Getting out at the lodge he struck across its park, arriving at the house before the cab came within sight. He ran through the hall and burst into his father’s room. But the room was empty.
There was his mother, anyhow, in a shady corner of the garden below the terrace, and he hailed her, and next moment was running down the steps and leaping the flower-beds. She rose to meet him, and caught him to her, close and clinging.
“Dennis, darling,” she said. “This is lovely. And, oh, my dear, what a heat you’re in!”
“I know: I ran across the park and got here before the old cab. And where’s Father?”
“He started an hour ago to drive up to London.”
“Oh, how rotten! I think that’s beastly of him. And didn’t he get my telegram to say I was coming this morning?”
Violet hesitated.
“Yes, dear, he did get it,” she said. “He thought that, having said you would come in the afternoon, you ought to have kept to your first plan.”
Dennis looked impartially at this verdict.
“I suppose I ought,” he said. “But as I found I could get here earlier, of course I did. And so he scored off me by making me come up in a cab, and going away himself. When will he be back?”
“Some time to-day. Late perhaps, he thought.”
Dennis’s sun was very certainly clouded, but sufficient brightness remained to illuminate a pleasant day. There was a bathe before lunch, and Violet took him to play golf, after a slight demur over the chance of his father arriving during their absence, and there was tea on the terrace, and a stroll through the woods with his gun. All these things had been rapturous in anticipation, and though nothing could quite rob them of their honey, it was not of that transcendent order.... Well did Violet understand that, and well she understood why Colin had suddenly settled to go up to town that day. Then came dinner, where his place was laid but unoccupied, and old Lady Yardley groping in the twilight which was darkening round her, now thinking that this was Colin back from school, now asking where Colin was.
But still he did not come, and about eleven Dennis, visibly perturbed and depressed, and his mother went up to bed.
“And you’re sure he hasn’t had an accident?” he asked.
“Yes, darling, quite sure. You mustn’t think of that.”
A bright idea struck Dennis.
“Oh, Mother, somebody must sit up for him to let him in,” he said. “Mayn’t I?”
“No, dear. I know he wouldn’t wish you to. Go to bed, darling, and get a long night. You were up early enough to-day.”
Dennis sighed.
“Well, I’ve had a ripping day with you, anyhow,” he said.
Dennis’s room looked out on to the front of the house, and before he got into bed he set his door ajar, and the window wide, so that by no chance could he miss the sound of his father’s arrival, and, without turning off his light, sat propped up in bed, prepared for any length of vigil, for, in spite of the day-long disappointments, he was sure that Colin would look in on him when he came, and it would never do to miss that conference. There were millions of things to tell and be told, but better than any would be the fact of his father’s presence sitting here on his bed, and after ever so long a talk wishing him good night and leaving him to fall asleep with the sense of him still lingering in the room.
It was not long before he heard the crunch of the gravel beneath the wheels of the motor, and he jumped out of bed to look out of the window and call to him. But they had been equally quick in letting him in, and Dennis had no more than a glimpse of him standing in the oblong of light from the open door, before it closed again behind him. But that was of no consequence: he would be here immediately, and Dennis leaped back into bed.
The minutes passed, but very likely Colin would want something to eat after his drive from London, before he came upstairs. Soon there came along the passage a step that Dennis knew, and his eyes, sparkling with the imminent joy, were fixed on his door, to see it swing open. But the steps stopped short before they reached it, and another door a little way down the passage was opened and closed.
“I suppose he thought it was very late, and that I should be asleep,” said Dennis to himself as he put out his light.
He slept late next morning and hurried downstairs to breakfast. His father, dressed in flannels with his hair still wet from his bathe, was standing by the window, opening his letters.
“Oh, there you are at last,” said Dennis, springing to him. Colin gave him a rather absent hand.
“Hullo, Dennis,” he said.
“Hullo, Father. I say, how late you were last night, and you never came to see me.”
“No. I managed to curb my impatience till this morning,” said Colin.
“O-oh! Sarcasm! And have you been bathing? Why didn’t you fetch me?”
“I didn’t imagine you had forgotten your way down to the lake, if you wanted to bathe.”
Dennis gave him one quick anxious glance. There was something wrong: perhaps the business in London yesterday had worried him, or perhaps his father was vexed with him, though it seemed very inexplicable, about that matter of the train yesterday.
“I’m sorry about my coming in the morning yesterday,” he said, “after I had told you the afternoon. But I thought it would be so ripping to get here before lunch.”
“Oh yes: that’s all right,” said Colin absently.
At this moment Violet came in, and Colin’s manner instantly changed.
“Ah, Vi, darling,” he said. “There you are! I got back very late last night, for I thought I would dine with Aunt Hester. She was quite delightful: also quite astounding. About eleven she went off to a dance in a short pink dress and a wreath of flowers. She promised to come down here to-day, and stop till I go to Capri.”
Dennis pricked an ear at this.
“Oh, when will that be, Father?” he said.
“One of these days.... And then, if she likes, and you don’t mind, darling, she can stop on here, though I really believe she would like best to come to Capri, and disport herself like a small, imperishable, highly-coloured sea-nymph. How she would astonish the islanders!”
Dennis gave a cackle of laughter at this picture. Best of all was the gay good humour in his father’s voice. Colin turned to him.
“Dennis, she told me that you had promised to lunch with her yesterday,” he said, “and that you sent a telegram saying you had to get down here. There was no compulsion on you to get down here that I’m aware of.”
“Oh, but I wanted to get down here so frightfully,” said Dennis.
“I see: anything you want frightfully has to happen,” said Colin, “and I suppose anything you want not to happen, isn’t allowed to. But in spite of that, next time you say you’ll go to see Aunt Hester and then throw her over at the last minute, it’s just conceivable that something may happen which you don’t like. Go and put your mother’s plate down for her.”
This was all bewildering, but Dennis did as he was told, and having finished his breakfast came and stood by his father’s chair.
“Well, what do you want?” asked Colin sharply.
Dennis flushed.
“Don’t hang about then. You can go if you’ve finished your breakfast.”
Dennis had a spirit of his own, and one thing was perfectly clear to him as he left the room, namely, that if his father did not want to be bothered with him, he was not going to make any importunate requests for his companionship. It was a horrid state of things, but no doubt temporary: he could parallel it by the bleakness which sometimes fell upon his house-master at school, for no apparent reason. This paternal bleakness, unknown in those last glorious Easter holidays, was of course far more depressing, for it took all the colour out of life. He was absolutely ignorant what cause of offence he had given; throwing over Aunt Hester and coming by another train were clearly inadequate as the reason for it, and all he could do, while it lasted, was to be prompt and obedient, and above everything to spring to him, whenever his sun should shine out again, without any shadow of resentment or reserve. This treatment was wounding and inexplicable, but he must keep his hurt to himself, and most certainly he must not go to his mother with querulous wonder as to what it was about. It concerned his father and himself, and nobody else: it would be disloyal to his unshaken allegiance to make moan.
Dennis had ample opportunity for loyalty in the next few days, for he could do nothing right in his father’s eyes. He scarcely saw him or had speech with him except at meals, and then, if he talked he was told not to jabber, if he was silent he was asked why he was so sulky. It was a heart-rending and inexplicable affair, and all the more puzzling because except with him Colin was in his gayest and most entrancing mood. Aunt Hester, who apparently had not in the least minded Dennis’s conduct, received the most delightful welcome for an indefinite period, and Colin chaffed her and made much of her, till she beamed again. With Violet he was the same; only Dennis had the power to check his geniality and cause him to rap out a reprimand of some kind. In the evening the four of them, with old Lady Yardley, played their whist, and he was left to amuse himself as he best could. Even then he could not escape censure. If he watched them; a dreary enough occupation, he was asked why he didn’t get a book and read a bit after his day of enjoyment: if he read it was supposed that whist was too old-fashioned for the young generation to interest themselves in. Once Aunt Hester intervened.
“Let him read or look on as he likes, dear,” she said to Colin. “He can please himself, surely.”
On that occasion only Colin was sharp with her.
“Dear Aunt Hester,” he said, “perhaps you’d mind your own business. We’re waiting for you to play.”
And then, after the dismal whist, there was the dismal going up to his room, with the knowledge that the door would not open, nor his father look in and sit on his bed, and make delightful plans for the next day.
A darker phase succeeded.
In the following week an Eton friend came to stay, and now at least there was someone to play with. Jim Airedale was an engaging and good-looking boy, devoted to Dennis, and even in this eclipse, the two of them, with all the resources of Stanier to chose from, might entertain themselves with considerable enjoyment. But all went more grievously for Dennis than ever. Colin appeared to take a great fancy to his friend, and at dinner, on the day of his arrival, talked to him delightfully, with occasional interspersions of snubs for Dennis. No one—as Dennis was bitterly aware—knew so well the road to a boy’s heart; he made Jim at ease in a couple of minutes, set him chattering in a couple more, and it was a hilarious meal that followed. After dinner he set Dennis down to play that weary whist, and took the other boy off to play billiards. When the whist was over, Dennis joined them and marked for them. Then at bedtime Colin took Jim up to his room, to see that everything was comfortable, and lingered there talking, while next door Dennis, half-undressed, sat on his bed, waiting for those merry sounds to cease. When all was quiet, he slipped out of his room to have a few words with Jim, and perhaps Colin was waiting for that, for as he passed his door, it opened quietly and there his father stood.
“Hullo, where are you going?” he asked.
Something in Dennis seemed to strain almost to breaking-point at the cold hostility of his tone.
“I’m just going to see Jim,” he said.
“Well, then, you had better just go back to your room again,” said Colin.
Next morning he took Jim off in the two-seater to play golf—Dennis would lend him his clubs—and they came back late for lunch, better friends than ever. Afterwards there was some rabbit-potting, at which Jim excelled, and Colin found occasion to say to Dennis, “I wonder if you’ll ever learn to shoot like that.” And there were dreadful games of lawn tennis, in which Colin, saying that he was the worst player of the four, must play with Jim, against Violet and Dennis. He really was the best, so of course they won. All this was sufficient to turn the boy’s head, and Jim became slightly condescending to his friend. But when he said to Dennis:
“I say, you’re father’s pretty rough on you sometimes,” with the intention of being consolatory and friendly, he found he had strangely miscalculated. Up went Dennis’s chin.
“Rough on me?” he said. “What on earth do you mean? He’s perfectly ripping to me.”
Finally, on the last evening of that nightmare week, Colin made it impossible for Jim, after a decent allowance of champagne at dinner, to refuse a couple of glasses of port. He became rather tipsy, and when, with a rolling eye and a menacing sense of rising nausea, he hurried away to his room, Colin watched him go with a shrug of the shoulders. “Nice sort of friends you bring to the house, Dennis,” he said. That seemed to round off the visit very pleasantly.
Colin was sitting up alone that night after the others had gone upstairs. He had been more brutal than usual with Dennis at dinner, and for the first time he had seen Dennis bite his lip, obviously to keep tears back.... But, in spite of all his pitiless persecution, he knew that he was no nearer to the attainment of his purpose. As far as Dennis himself was concerned, he had systematically and continuously hurt and wounded him in that attempt to which he was committed, to kill his love, but no failure could at present have been more complete. Often when the whip of his tongue had been cruellest, and his cunning to hurt most diabolical, he had looked at Dennis saying, “Well, answer me, can’t you?” and Dennis had raised to him troubled and bewildered eyes in which no spark of hate smouldered. There was no meekness about Dennis; he could answer back with his head up, quite unsubdued and unafraid, but in vain Colin looked for any sign that his love was ailing or like to die. And occasionally when he relaxed, and gave him a kind word, love leaped sparkling to his eyes and his beautiful mouth. What confirmed this impression was the pride of the boy, for he never, as Colin knew, uttered to his mother a single word of complaint, or went to her for comfort. Little as Colin knew of love, he knew that here was the noble pride of love, which would never admit failing or blemish in the object of its high affection.
Colin opened the door on to the terrace and strolled out into the warm pregnant night. There was something more indicative of failure than this impregnable loyalty of Dennis’s, and that was his own unchanged affection for the boy. In every possible way that could be devised by his alert perceptive brain, he had wounded and injured Dennis’s heart, and though there is no such royal road towards hate as to injure, he had made no headway at all. His devotion to hatred, his vow to himself, so faithfully kept, to all that was evil, had often made him bubble with secret glee to see Dennis wince under those barbed attacks, but all the time there existed that soft aching tenderness for him, so easy to stifle but so impossible to smother. Like eternity, as he had sneered to Douglas, it seemed of very durable stuff. All this fortnight’s persecution had done nothing to break it up. Uninvited, it had entered his heart, and nothing could stir it. He could act as if he had no other feeling for the boy than this contemptuous aversion, but something ached....
The night-breeze drew landward from the sea and sometimes it fell altogether, and there was dead calm, and again he heard its whispered approach in the trees by the lake, and presently it flowed over the garden and streamed on to the terrace. He tried, as he so often had done, to lay himself open to the spell that had woven the prosperity of Stanier; he thought of Dennis heir to all its glories and possessor of them when he had gone from this world, and at that the flicker of jealousy, a strange offspring of love and hate, shot up in his heart. But supposing Dennis died before he did.... Would he sooner see him lying dead, and know that he, at any rate, would never succeed to Stanier and its magnificence, or when death drew near to himself, see Dennis by his bedside, and picture him assuming what was his to enjoy no longer? On his deathbed surely he would entirely hate Dennis, and wish that he lay there in his stead.
At the end of the long façade there stood the chapel unused since Douglas’s departure, and Colin going back into his room let himself into the corridor which led to it, turning up the lights as he went. He had not been there since the night of Vincenzo’s death, and now it seemed to him that if he sat and meditated there, where so often he had made the consecration of himself to evil, he could arrive at some clearer and conscious realization of it. He told himself that he hated love, and delighted in hate, but no fervour warmed his creed. In that sanctuary of Satan the truth of that might shine more vividly on him, and he might get rid of that fancy that Dennis’s eyes, eager and ready to kindle; or sad but without reproach, were watching him. Surely they would not follow him where Dennis had never been.
Colin sat quiet in his place looking at the altar. The faint odour of incense still hung about, but emotionally the place was dead. He thought of Vincenzo twitching and grinning as he knelt: he thought of Douglas, lifting high the consecrated elements, so soon to be a mockery and a derision, but his mind gave no welcome or greeting to the remembrance....
Well, his deeds must atone for his lack of fervour, and presently he rose and went back through the silent house, and upstairs along the dim-lit passage.
Suddenly the desire came to him just to look at Dennis. The boy would certainly be asleep by now, for he must have learned that it was not much good to keep awake, on the chance of his father coming in to say good night. He would just open the door, turn on the light for a second and look at him and leave him. He told himself he wanted to remind himself that the boy would inherit all that he now loved and enjoyed; what he concealed from himself, stuffing it away out of sight, was that some human craving hungered for the sight of him. Dennis would be asleep; he would get no pleasure from what he did not know.
Colin opened the door quietly, and saw the room was light, and there was Dennis sitting up in bed. His face was bright with the unexpected surprise: and he stretched out his arms. There was something appealing and timid in the gesture.
“Oh, Father, how ripping!” he said.
Colin was helpless in the grip of that welcome. He tried to frame his tongue to some chilling reprimand, but none came.
“Dennis! Not asleep yet? And your light on? What does it mean?” he asked.
The boy broke out into a little bubble of a laugh.
“Why, I always keep it on till I hear you go to your room,” he said.
“Why?” asked Colin.
“Of course on the chance that you’d come in, as you always used to do. I knew you would sometime. Jolly glad I kept it on. Oh, come and sit down.”
Against his will and his purpose Colin came up to the bed. Dennis wriggled aside to make room for him, and put up his knees for him to lean against.
“I can’t stop,” said Colin, sitting down. “It’s fearfully late and you’re a villain for being awake.”
“All right: I’m a villain,” said Dennis.
“And you wait for me every night?” asked Colin.
Dennis nodded. Just then he could not trust himself to speak, but his shining eyes spoke for him.
“What shall we talk about,” asked Colin, “just for a minute?”
“Oh anything: it doesn’t matter a bit, as long as it’s you.”
At that moment Colin was happy. But he had hardly realized that, before, just as he had heard the night-wind coming up and whispering in the trees by the lake, he knew that there was approaching the blast of hate and evil which he had tried to conjure up in the chapel. He leant towards Dennis, put his arm round his neck and kissed him.
“Good night, old boy,” he said. “I won’t stop now. Sleep well.”
“Ever so well,” said Dennis.
Colin clicked out the light, and went to his room. Already his brain seethed with images of evil, vivid and alluring, and fierce at this treason of his. They swarmed like a loyal garrison to that breach in his defences where Dennis had stood, and drove him off. They urged Colin to pursue, to go back to the boy’s room, to let loose on him their assault, to defile and desecrate his innocence, to show him the ecstasy of evil, the charm of cruelty. What matter if panic or horror made nightmare round him? He would wake from them with new currents coursing in his veins, new desires stinging him to their fulfilment. Where was the good of his being heir to the legend if he did not enter into his birthright?
Fierce was the stress of that possession. Colin withstood it, feeling that if he yielded the very bonds of sanity would be loosed. If he went back to Dennis’s room now, he would go as a devil unchained, ready and eager to perpetrate any spiritual outrage and desecration, and who knew whether the very balance and poise of Dennis’s being, whom he had just left with all his serenity restored and the lamp of love bravely burning, might not be upset altogether? Already he was scarcely in his own control, and, maddened to an invincible lust of evil by the sight of that tender victim, he might let himself cross the boundary which separates the territories of human life from the untamed welter and chaos of prodigious forces which both threaten and maintain it. He had served Satan all his life alike in spirit and in works, and would serve him still, but while this stress, which seemed like some dervish possession, was on him, he could not trust himself with Dennis. Something of irremediable violence might happen, some fatal laceration of the fibres of the boy’s soul.
The crisis passed, leaving him conscious only of immense fatigue. There had been a struggle, not between himself alone and this Satanic power, but between it and something in himself, but not of himself, which opposed it. He was too tired to think any more, and, throwing off his clothes, sank into the dark of dreamless sleep.
He slept late, and waking brought with it a certain incredulousness at his memory of the night before; what had happened seemed buried, at any rate, under deep layers of consciousness, so that he could not handle and examine it. Much more accessible was the memory of his weakness in going in to Dennis at all. Whatever fruits might have ripened from this fortnight’s harshness to the boy, were certainly frost-bitten now, for Dennis knew, and hugged himself to know, that below these bleak cruelties the father he loved existed still. It was a foolish thing to have done, not only for that reason, but because he had weakened himself in allowing that spasm of affection to assert itself. But it is never too late, he thought, to mend foolishness by wise courses.
Dennis had finished breakfast when he got down, and he heard from Violet that he had gone for a morning in the water, leaving an urgent message for his father to follow.
“And the boy’s radiant this morning,” she said. “He told me you came into his room last night and were ‘ripping,’ so he said.”
Colin was busy at the side table.
“Oh! What else did he say?” he asked.
“Just that. I am glad you did it. That couple of minutes made him forget all the woes of these holidays.”
“Ah! He’s forgotten about them, has he?” said Colin.
“Absolutely; they’ve vanished. Oh yes, he wondered if I knew when you and he were going; to Capri. I said you hadn’t told me.”
“I shall go to-morrow. But how it concerns Dennis, I don’t know, unless, as is highly probable, he’s glad to get rid of me.”
“But aren’t you taking him?” asked Violet. “You promised to take him.”
“Did I? Well, now I promise you not to. Entirely for your sake, of course, darling. You’ll love having him here to yourself. You’ll be able to make up lost ground. Now I don’t want to hear anything more about Capri. I’ll tell Dennis myself. Why should I drag a brat like that about with me?”
Before long Colin strolled down to the lake. There was Dennis’s yellow head far out on the water, and his browned arms, glistening with wet, lifting themselves alternately as he surged back to the shed. By the time Colin had come to the smooth turf that margined the lake, he had got to land, and stood knee-deep in the shallow water, slim and shining with an April-face of happiness. He gave a great whoop of welcome when he saw his father.
“Hurrah, Father!” he said. “You have been quick. The water’s lovely; let’s bathe and lie about all morning. Oh, I say, I was diving just now, and found an awfully funny thing in the mud at the bottom. Looks as if it was lace of sorts. Catch!”
Dennis picked up a sodden grey ball which he had put on the bank and threw it at his father. At the moment Colin’s attention was attracted by some water-fowl swimming at the far end of the lake, and Dennis’s missile, wet and muddy, hit him full in the face.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Dennis. “I thought you were looking.”
The missile had fallen at Colin’s feet, and he saw at once that it must be the lace cotta which had been torn off Vincenzo’s body.
At the sight a horde of recollections drove in upon him; once more Vincenzo twitched and grinned, and the incense smoked. Those instincts of hate and cruelty which had dozed last night in the chapel, leaped up, bright-eyed and snarling. Then, too, this recovered relic had splashed him, the mud slimy and evil-smelling had dropped on to his white coat.
“Dennis, you’re a damned nuisance,” he said. “I’ll teach you to behave. What the devil do you mean by doing that?”
He plucked two lithe shoots of willow from a tree that grew by the water’s edge and stripped off the leaves.
“Come out,” he said, “and stand here with your back to me.”
Dennis looked at his father, and saw blind rage and fury in his face, as he peeled the willow wands.
“I’m awfully sorry, Father,” he said.
“You’ll be sorrier in a minute. Come here. I’m going to give you six of the smartest cuts you’ve ever had. It hurts more when you’re wet.”
Dennis stepped out of the water, and stood where his father pointed, and four strokes, savagely delivered, fell across his shoulders. He stood perfectly steady, gasping a little at the burning sting of them. As Colin slashed at him, he felt an exultant glee that at last he was hurting him to some purpose. He had spoiled the effect of his fortnight’s cruelty by that concession last night: this should start him afresh, with no apostasy to follow. He saw the red criss-cross of the strokes and the weals rising on the boy’s skin with some such ecstasy of satisfaction as he had seen Pamela standing in his room one night at Capri. And then in the middle of this chastisement he knew he could not strike Dennis again.
“That will do,” he said. “Turn round.”
Dennis turned and looked him straight in the eyes. In spite of the sharpness of the pain his face was in perfect control, his mouth was just a little compressed. And once more Colin knew that he had failed, for he saw there pain and bewilderment, mute reproach, but of fear not a trace nor yet of hate. With regard to himself he had failed also, for he had been literally unable to finish the punishment he had promised, and now he wanted to put his arm round Dennis’s neck, and kiss him, and tell him that he knew what a devil