Philip was waiting in his library for Raymond’s entry, wanting to feel sorry for him, but as often as he could darken his mind behind that cloud, the edges of it grew dazzlingly bright with the thought of Colin, and the sun re-emerging warmed and delighted him.... Yet he was sorry for Raymond, and presently he would express his sympathy, coldly and correctly, he was afraid, with regret and truism and paternal platitudes; but duty would dictate his sentiments. At the most he could not hope for more than to give the boy the impression he was sorry, and conceal from him his immensurable pleasure in the news Colin had made known to him. All these weeks, ever since, on that morning in Capri, he had learned of Raymond’s engagement and Colin’s desire, he had never been free from heartache, and his favourite’s manliness, his refusal to be embittered, his efforts with himself, gaily heroic, had but rendered those pangs the more poignant. And in the hour of his joy Colin had shewn just the same marvellous quickness of sympathy for Raymond’s sorrow, as, when Philip had first told him of the engagement, he had shewn for Raymond’s happiness.
“I would have given anything to spare Raymond this, father,” he had said. “As you know, I kept all I felt to myself. I didn’t let Violet see how miserable I was, and how I wanted her. And then last night—it was like some earthquake within. Everything toppled and fell; Vi and I were left clinging to each other.”
After Colin, Philip had seen Violet, and she, too, had spoken to him with a simplicity and candour.... She had already begun to love Colin, she thought, before she{205} accepted Raymond, but how she loved Stanier. She had been worldly, ambitious, stifling the first faint calls of her heart, thinking, as many a girl thought, whose nature is not yet wholly awake, that Raymond would “do,” as regards herself, and “do” magnificently as regards her longing for all that being mistress of Stanier meant to her. Then came Colin’s return from Italy, and the whisper of her heart grew louder. She could not help contrasting her lover with her friend, and in that new light Raymond’s attentions to her, his caresses, his air—she must confess—of proprietorship grew odious and insufferable. And then, just as Colin had said, came the earthquake. In that disruption, all that from the worldly point of view seemed so precious, turned to dross.
At that point she hesitated a moment, and Philip had found himself recording how like she was to Colin. With just that triumphant glow of happiness with which he had said: “Raymond has got Stanier, father, Violet and I have got each other,” so Violet now, after her momentary hesitation, spoke to him.
“Stanier, for which I longed, Uncle Philip, doesn’t exist for me any more. How could I weigh it against Colin?”
Colin’s happiness ... nothing could dim that sunshine for his father, and the sunshine was not only of to-day, it was the sunshine that had shone on him and Rosina more than twenty years ago. His heart melted with the love that through Colin reacted on her. Surely she must rejoice at the boy’s happiness to-day! Raymond, to be sure, was the fruit of her body also, but it was through Colin that she lived, he was the memory and the gracious image of her beauty.
Raymond entered, snapping the golden thread.
“You wanted to see me, father,” he said.
Philip had been attempting to drill himself into a sympathetic bearing towards his son, but Raymond’s actual presence here in succession to Colin and Violet, brought sheer helplessness. For the brightness and beam of the{206} others there was this solid self-sufficiency. It seemed as if a crime had been averted in the transference of the girl to another bridegroom. What unnatural union would have been made by this mating of her! His heart sang; it were vain to try to throttle it into silence.
“Yes, Raymond; sit down,” said he, indicating a place on the sofa where he sat.
“Oh, thanks, it doesn’t matter. I’ll stand,” said Raymond.
“I’ve got bad news for you,” said Philip. “You must brace yourself to it.”
“Let’s have it,” said Raymond.
Philip felt his sympathy slipping from him. He wanted chiefly to get it over; there was no use in attempting to lead up to it.
“It concerns you and Violet,” he said.
A savage look as of a hungry dog from whom his dinner is being snatched, came across Raymond’s face.
“Well?” he said.
“She wished me to tell you that she can’t marry you,” said his father. “She asks you to set her free from her engagement.”
The savagery of that sullen face grew blacker. “I don’t accept that from you,” he said. “If it’s true, Violet will have to tell me herself.”
Philip made a great effort with himself. “It is true,” he said, “and I want at once to tell you that I’m very sorry for you. But it would have been very painful for her to tell you, and it was I who suggested that I should break her decision to you. I hope you won’t insist on having it from her.”
“She has got to tell me,” said Raymond. “And is that all, father? If so, I’ll go to her at once.”
“No, there’s more,” said he.
Raymond’s face went suddenly white; his mouth twitched, he presented a mask of hatred.
“And so it’s Colin who has got to tell me the rest,” he said. “Is that it?{207}”
“She is going to marry Colin.”
For a moment Raymond stood perfectly still; just his hands were moving; knitted together they made the action of squeezing something. Once it seemed that he tried to speak, but no word came; only the teeth shewed in his mouth.
“Colin has got to tell me then,” he said. “I will see Colin first.”
Philip got up and laid a hand of authority on Raymond’s shoulder. The boy, for all his quietness, seemed beside himself with some pent-up fury all the more dangerous for its suppression.
“You must not see either of them in the state you are in now,” he said.
“That’s my affair,” said Raymond.
“It’s mine, too. You’re my son and so is Colin. You must wait till you’ve got more used to what has happened. And you must remember this, that a few weeks ago Colin was in the same case as you are now. He loved Violet, and it was I then, out in Capri, who told him that Violet was going to marry you. And he took it like a man, like the generous fellow he is. His first words were: ‘By Jove, Raymond will be happy!’ I shall never forget that, and you mustn’t either, Raymond.”
Raymond gave a dry snap of a laugh.
“I won’t,” he said. “That’s just what Colin would say. Perfect character, isn’t he? Only last night I found him talking to Violet in her bedroom. I wasn’t pleased, and he begged me not to be vexed, as I had got everything. He had taken Violet from me when he said that, or if not, he came back when Violet was in bed, and got engaged to her then. Engaged!”
“Now stop that, Raymond,” said his father.
“Very good. He was already engaged to her when he told me I had got everything. You don’t understand Colin. He hates more than he loves. He has hated me all my life. ‘By Jove, Raymond will be happy!’ I’ll be even with Colin some day. Now I’m going to see{208} him. Or shall I say: ‘By Jove, Colin will be happy?’ Then you’ll consider me a generous fellow.”
Once again Philip tried to put himself in Raymond’s place, and made allowance for his bitter blackness. His hand went on to the boy’s shoulder again, with less of authority and more of attempted affection.
“Raymond, you must do better than this,” he said. “You would be very unwise to see Colin and Violet just now, but if you insist on doing so, you shall see them in my presence. I can’t trust you, in the mood you’re in, not to be violent, not to say or do something which you would bitterly repent, and which they would find it hard to forgive. And if, which I deny, Colin has always hated you, what about yourself?”
Both of them now were on bed-rock. By implication, by admission, by denial even, they had got down to the hatred that, like a vein of murderous gold, ran through the very foundation of the brothers’ existence. Who knew what struggle might have taken place, what prenatal wrestling in the very womb of life, of which the present antagonism was but a sequel, logical and inevitable!
Even as Philip spoke, he half-realised the futility of bringing argument to bear on Raymond’s nature, for this hatred sprang from some ineradicable instinct, an iron law on which intelligence and reason could but perch like a settling fly. He could deny that Colin hated his brother, he could urge Raymond to show himself as generous as he believed Colin to have been, but nothing that he could say, no persuasion, no authority could mitigate this fraternal hostility. And even while he denied Colin’s animosity, with the evidence he had already brought forward to back it, he found himself wondering if at heart Colin could feel the generosity he had expressed, or whether it was not a mere superficial good-nature, mingled with contempt perhaps, that had given voice to it.
Raymond had ceased from the clutching and squeezing of his hands.{209}
“You don’t know what Colin is,” he said, “and I know it is no use trying to convince you. I shan’t try. You judge by what you see of him and me, and you put me down for a black-hearted, sullen fellow, and he’s your heart’s darling.”
“You’ve got no right to say that,” said Philip.
“But can I help knowing it, father?” asked he.
Philip felt that his very will-power was in abeyance; he could not even want to readjust the places which his two sons held in his heart, or, rather, to find place in his heart for the son who had never been installed there yet. And there would be no use in “wanting,” even if he could accomplish that. Colin held every door of his heart, and with a grudging sense of justice towards Raymond, he was aware that Colin would grant no admittance to his brother. Or was that conviction only the echo of his own instinct that he wanted no one but Colin there? He had no love to spare for Raymond. Such spring of it as bubbled in him must fall into Colin’s cup, the cup that never could be filled.
How could he but contrast the two? Here was Raymond, sullen in his defeat, attempting (and with unwelcome success) to put his father in the wrong, jealous of the joy that had come to Colin, insisting, Shylock-like, on such revenge as was in his power, the pound of flesh which would be his, in making a scene with the girl who had chosen as her heart bade her, and the boy who was her choice. On the other side was Colin, who, when faced with an identical situation, had accepted his ill-luck with a wave of welcome for the more fortunate. And Raymond would have it that that splendid banner was but a false flag, under cover of whose whiteness a treacherous attack might be made.
“I don’t know that we need pursue that,” said Philip. “Your feelings are outside my control, but what is in my control is to be just to you in spite of them. I have tried to tell you with all possible sympathy of——”
“Of Violet’s jilting me,” interrupted Raymond. “And{210} you have clearly shewn me, father, your sympathy with Colin’s happiness.”
Philip felt every nerve jarring. “I am not responsible for your interpretations of myself,” he said, “nor do I accept them. If your design is to be intolerably offensive to me, you must work out your design somewhere else. I am not going to have you stop here in order to amuse yourself with being rude to me, and spoiling the happiness of others——”
“Ah! Just so!” said Raymond. “Colin.”
Philip was exasperated beyond endurance.
“Quite right,” he said. “I am not going to have you spoiling Colin’s happiness. And Violet’s. I should have suggested you leaving Stanier for the present for your own sake, if you had allowed me to show sympathy for you. As you do not, I suggest that you should do so for Colin’s sake. You may go to St. James’s Square if you like, and if you can manage to behave decently, you may stop on there when we come up next week. But that depends on yourself. Now if you want to see Violet and your brother you may, but you will see them here in my presence. I will send for them now, if that is your wish. When you have seen them you shall go. Well?”
Suddenly the idea of leaving Colin and Violet here became insupportable to Raymond. He had to see them as lovers, and hate them for it: his hate must be fed with the sight of them.
“Must I go, father?” he said.
“Yes; you have forced me to be harsh with you. It was not my intention. Now do you want to see them?”
Raymond hesitated: if Colin could be cunning, he could be cunning too. “I should like to see them both,” he said.
Philip rang the bell, and in the pause before they came, Raymond went across to the window-seat, and sat there with face averted, making no sign, and in the silence Philip reviewed what he had done. He had no wish, as he had said, to be harsh to Raymond, but what possible gain to any one was his remaining here? He would be{211} a misery to himself, and no entertainment to others; and yet the boy wanted to stop, thinking perhaps that thus he would be sooner able to accept the position. It was impossible to grudge him any feasible alleviation of the blow that, so far from stunning him, had awakened all that was worst in him. Much must depend on his behaviour now to Colin and Violet.
They entered together. Colin looked first at his father; then, without pause, seeing the huddled figure in the window-seat, went straight to Raymond. All else, Violet even, was forgotten.
He laid his hand on Raymond’s shoulder. “Oh, Raymond,” he said, “we’re brutes. I know that.”
Philip thought he had never seen anything so exquisite as that instinct of Colin’s to go straight to his brother. Could Raymond recognise the beauty of that?... And was it indeed Raymond who now drew Colin on to the window-seat beside him?
“That’s all right, Colin,” he said. “You couldn’t help it. No one can help it when it comes. I couldn’t.”
He stood up. “Father’s told me about it all,” he said, “and I just wanted to see you and Violet for a moment in order to realise it. I’ve got it now. Good-bye, Colin; good-bye, Violet.”
He went across to his father with hand outstretched. “Thanks ever so much for letting me go to St. James’s Square,” he said. “And I’m sorry, father, for behaving as I did. I know it’s no use just saying that; I’ve got to prove it. But that’s all I can do for the present.”
He went straight out of the room without once looking back.
“Is Raymond going away?” asked Colin.
“Yes. It’s better so.”
Colin heard this with a chill of disappointment, for among his pleasurable anticipations had been that of seeing Raymond wince and writhe at the recasting of their parts. Raymond would have hourly before his eyes his own r?le played by another, and with what infinitely{212} greater grace. The part of heroine would be filled by its “creator,” but, in this remodelled piece, what sparkle and life she would put into her scenes. Where she had been wooden and impassive, she would be eager and responsive, that icy toleration would melt into a bubbling liquor of joy. Then there would be the part now to be filled by Raymond; would he fill that with Colin’s tact and sweetness? Of minor characters there would be his father and grandmother, and with what convincing sincerity now would they fill their places.... But Raymond’s absence would take all the sting and fire out of the play.
“Oh, father, does he feel like that?” asked Colin. “Did he feel he couldn’t bear to stop? I’m sorry.”
“No, it was I who told him to go,” said Philip. “He behaved outrageously just now with me.”
“But he’s sorry,” said Colin. “He wants to do better. Mayn’t he stop? He’ll be wretched all alone up in London.”
A sudden thought struck him, a touch of genius. “But it concerns Vi most,” he said. “What do you vote, darling?”
“By all means let him stop,” said she. Nothing but Colin’s wish, here clearly indicated, could have any weight with her.
“Then may he, father?” he asked. “That is good of you. Come and tell him, Vi.”
Raymond was in the hall. He had just ordered his car, and was now about to telephone to the housekeeper in town to say he was coming, when Colin and Violet came out of the library. Philip followed them to complete the welcome, and saw Colin go up to his brother.
“Raymond, don’t go,” he said. “We all want you to stop. Vi does, father does, I do.”
Raymond saw his father in the doorway. “May I stop, then, father?” he said.
“By all means. We all wish it,” said he.
Raymond looked back again at his brother. Colin was{213} standing just below the portrait of his ancestor, the very image and incarnation of him.
“I’ve got you to thank, I expect, Colin,” he said.
Their eyes met; Colin’s glittered like a sword unsheathed in the sunlight of his hatred and triumph; Raymond’s smouldered in the blackness of his hatred and defeat.
“I wish there was anything I could do for you, Ray,” said Colin gently.
 
The entertainment which Colin had anticipated from these alterations in the cast of this domestic drama did not fall short of his expectations. He held Raymond in the hollow of his hand, for Raymond’s devotion to Violet, gross and animal though it had been, gave Colin a thousand opportunities of making him writhe with the shrewd stings of jealousy, and with gay deliberation he planted those darts. The coup de grace for Raymond would not come yet, his father’s death would give the signal for that; but at present there was some very pretty baiting to be done. Not one of those darts, so becomingly beribboned, failed to hit its mark: a whispered word to Violet which made the colour spring bright and eager to her face, a saunter with her along the terrace in the evening, and, even more than these, Colin’s semblance of sparing Raymond’s feelings, his suggestion that he should join them in any trivial pursuit—all these were missiles that maddingly pierced and stung.
No less adequately did Philip and old Lady Yardley fill their minor parts; he, with the sun of Colin’s content warming him, was genial and thoughtful towards Raymond in a way that betrayed without possibility of mistake the sentiment from which it sprang; while Lady Yardley, braced and invigorated by the same emotion, was strangely rejuvenated, and her eyes, dim with age, seemed to pierce the mists of the encompassing years and grew bright with Colin’s youth.
As regards his own relations with Violet, Colin found{214} he could, for the present anyhow, manage very well; the old habits of familiarity and intimacy appeared to supply response sufficient; for she, shuddering now, as at some nightmare, at her abandoned engagement to Raymond and blinded with the splendour of the dawn of her love, saw him as a god just alighted on the gilded and rosy hills.... Colin shrugged his shoulders at her illusion; she presented to him no such phantasmal apparition, but he could give her liking and friendship, just what she had always had from him. Soon, so he hoped, this vision of himself would fade from her eyes, for even as he had found his father’s paternal devotion to him in Capri a fatiguing and boring business, so he foresaw a much acuter gêne that would spring from a persistence of Violet’s love. No doubt, however, she would presently become more reasonable.
What above all fed Colin’s soul was to stroll into the smoking-room when Violet had gone upstairs, and his father had retired to his library, and to make Raymond drink a cup more highly spiced with gall than that which had refreshed him in public. Raymond had usually got there first, while Colin lingered a moment longer with Violet, and had beside him a liberally mixed drink, and this would serve for Colin’s text:
“Hullo, Raymond! Drowning dull care?” he asked. “That’s right. I can’t bear seeing you so down. By Jove, didn’t Violet look lovely to-night with her hair brought low over her forehead?”
“Did she?” said Raymond. He tried to entrench himself in self-control; he tried to force himself to get up and go, but hatred of Colin easily stormed those defences. “Stop and listen,” said that compelling voice. “Glut yourself with it: Love is not for you; hate is as splendid and as absorbing....”
“Did she?” echoed Colin. “As if you hadn’t been devouring her all the evening! But we all have our turn, don’t we? Every dog has its day. Last week I used to see you and Violet; now you see Violet and me. Tell{215} me, Raymond, does Violet look happy? We can talk so confidentially, can’t we, as we have both been in the same position? What a ticklish thing it is to be a girl’s lover. How it ages one! I feel sixty. But does she seem happy? She used to wear a sort of haunted look last week. I suppose that was her wonder and her misgiving at a man’s brutal adoration. It frightened her. As if we weren’t frightened too! Did the idea of marriage terrify you as it terrifies me? A girl’s adoration is just as brutal.”
Colin moved about the room as he spoke, dropping the sentences out like measured doses from some phial of a potent drug. After each he paused, waiting for a reply, and drinking glee from the silence. In that same silence Raymond was stoking his fires which were already blazing.
“Yes, every dog has its day,” he said, replenishing his glass.
“And every dog has his drink,” said Colin. “Lord, how you’ll get your revenge when your day comes! What sweetness in your cup that Vi and I will never be allowed to come to Stanier again. You’ll like that, Raymond. You’ll have married by that time. I wonder if it will be the tobacconist’s girl who’ll have hooked you. You’ll be happier with her than Vi, you know, and I shouldn’t wonder if Vi will be happier with me than with you....”
Still there was silence on Raymond’s part.
“You must be more cheerful, Raymond,” said Colin. “Whatever you may do to me hereafter, you had better remember that I’m top-dog just now. I shall have to ask father to send you away after all, if you don’t make yourself more agreeable. It was I who made him allow you to stop here, and I will certainly have you sent away if you’re not kinder to me. You must be genial and jolly, though it’s a violence to your nature. You must buck up and be pleasant. So easy, and so profitable. Nothing to say?”
There was a step outside, and their father entered. He carried an opened letter in his hand.{216}
“I’ve just had a note from the governor of the asylum at Repstow,” he said. “One of their patients has escaped, a homicidal lunatic.”
“Gosh, I’ll lock my door,” said Colin. “No use for him. What else, father?”
“It’s no joke, Colin. The keeper at the Repstow Lodge was out attending to the pheasants’ coops this afternoon, and while he was gone a man vaulted over the fence, frightened his wife into hysterics, and decamped with his gun and a bag of cartridges. Then he bolted into the woods. It’s almost certain that he is the escaped lunatic.”
Raymond, who had been listening intently, yawned.
“But they’re out after him, I suppose,” he said. “They’ll be sure to catch him.”
Colin wondered what that yawn meant.... To any boy of twenty............