Colin II: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

The morning as Nino had said was already very hot, but the dew of the night before had been heavy, and in the shadow the grass was still shining with it, and the smell of the wet earth was fragrant with liquid freshness. Colin kicked off his shoes for the pleasure of walking barefooted; and for very lightness of heart ran whistling down the grass slope to the lake. There was a bathing shed on the bank towards the deep end with steps and spring-board, and next moment he had stripped off his pyjamas, and stood poised to cleave the deep water, where the rhododendrons and the white balustrade of the sluice were unwaveringly reflected. Taut as an arrow of sunlit limbs he flicked outwards from the board and disappeared in a fountain of foam.

He rose to the surface and struck out into the lake, swimming with overhead stroke, his shoulders gleaming as they lifted themselves alternately, his golden head now a-wash and now glistening in the sunlight as it emerged. Then when he was half-way across the lake, and opposite the sluice, he turned and swam straight towards it.... There the water was deepest, and there it slept in the shadow of the bushes, and now he dipped his head and dived, scooping with his arms, and pulling himself downwards. Down, down he pressed, till the twilight of the depths closed round him, and the bright surface above was veiled and dim. The water was markedly colder here, and he thought how cold it must have been to Raymond when the ice was thick above.... Then turning he kicked out, and shot upwards again into the sunshine and the sweet air.

Nino had followed hard on him, bringing his clothes and his tea, and as Colin came to the surface again, there he was on the header-board ready to dive. Colin swam towards him.

“See if you can get to the bottom, Nino,” he said, “where it’s deep opposite the sluice.”

Nino rose from his plunge, and laughed, shaking the water from his face.

“Scusi, signor,” he said, “but I do not like the depth below. That is the place for the dead.”

Colin laughed back at him.

“So it is,” he said. “‘Down among the dead men’: there’s a song about it. I don’t insist on your going there yet.”

“Grazie: molte grazie!” said Nino.

Soon Colin paddled to land, and lay basking on the grass. Never had he felt the current of life run more strongly through him, tingling for some outlet of self-expression. And yet just to be alive was enough, here in the home of his inheritance, which he, about whom he had been reading last night and this morning, had built to the glory of himself and those who came after. And it was more than kinship he seemed to claim with that engaging ruffian, it was identity; the memoirs shewed him his own mirrored self, astonishingly revealed. There was much more of them to come, at present he had but read a chapter or two, the sincerity of which he could vouch for by the picture it gave not of the writer only but of himself. He burned with his passions, bubbled with his hatreds, revelled in the largesse of ‘his Lord and benefactor.’ He had his son, too, whom one day he would initiate into the evil sacrament, and like Colin of old he would let Dennis see how mightily his father prospered in his allegiance, and how it went ill with those who crossed him, so that when the time came for Dennis’s choice he would choose with wisdom and prudence, as old Colin’s sons had done. As yet he was but a baby, scarcely able to walk, but soon he would learn what splendid paths were hewn for him, how royal a road....