Colin II: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

“Not a bit,” he said. “I have so often expected to get what doesn’t come to me, and then what comes instead is a disappointment. Moral: never ask, never expect! Take what is given you and be thankful, and if nothing is given you, do without it. But, my dear, I didn’t bring you up here to bore you with mild philosophical homilies.”

He threw away his threaded grass stems, and appeared to throw away with them his unspoken preoccupation.

“To get back to our topic,” he said, “I was telling you that Tiberius pitched the favourite of the night over the edge of the cliff. I always make pictures in my mind of Nino’s stories of Tiberius: he tells them so vividly. It was just here it happened at dawn, when the rising sun came over the top of the hills there above Sorrento so that it shone on this palace on the peak, but below it was still clear dusk. And Tiberius came out of the palace, rather bored and rather sleepy, followed by two black slaves who dragged his—his discard along. Then he made a sign to them, and they picked her up by the wrists and ankles and swung her once or twice and then let go. Out she went, a glimmer of white limbs, like a starfish, clutching at the empty air, and turning slowly over as she fell. She passed out of the sunlight into the shadow below, and then there was a little splash, just a little white feather on the sea, and that was all. Or, perhaps, if they did not swing her far enough, she would fall on the beach, and there would be no splash. Tiberius peered over the edge, and then went in to have his early morning tea, or whatever they took then, and probably dozed for a little. Perhaps the chill of the dawn had made him sneeze.... I shall write a picturesque guide-book to Capri some day, and send you a copy from the author.”

Pamela hastened to fit herself to his mood. He did not want to talk about the only thing that interested her, which was their personal relations to each other, and she was wise enough not to bore him by an insistent return to them. Men were like that; even if they were tremendously in love with a woman, they did not want to discuss it all day. They kept their other interests alive and intact: they played golf just the same, or talked politics, or ate their dinner. Whereas a woman when she was in love thought about nothing whatever else. But she did not make a man any fonder of her by limiting her conversation to that. And if he was not in love with her, she ruined her chance if she irritated him by bleating. She had to be sympathetic and interested in what occupied him, if she was to get her way with him. But how increasingly hard it was to be intelligent and companionable when only one thing mattered, and it was the part of wisdom not to mention that.

“Do write a guide-book to Capri,” she said. “You’re quite horrible about Tiberius and his Sunday palace, but you make it tremendously picturesque. You’re frightfully pitiless, you know. You haven’t a grain of sympathy for that poor white starfish. What had she done to be chucked over the edge?”

“Why, she had bored him!” said Colin lucidly. “After all, what more horrible outrage can we commit on each other?”

Pamela’s mind switched back to personal matters. She mustn’t bore Colin....

“Well, it was his own fault for having chosen her,” she said. “He ought to have seen she would have bored him!”

“Quite so. Of course he became more savage just because it was his fault.”

What a nuisance she was, he thought. Whatever he said to Pamela, she wanted to be bright and discuss it, and argue and interest him.... It was his fault also that he had allowed her to come here, and that had the same effect on him as on Tiberius.