“Better say ‘yes,’ Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “My friends lead more enjoyable lives than my enemies. But whatever you answer, I want your answer now.”
Perhaps through some strange trick of light played by the guttering candles, it suddenly seemed to Salvatore that Colin’s eyes undeviatingly fixed on his face, seemed in themselves luminous, as if a smouldering light actually burned behind them.
“I accept,” he said quickly, “for Vittoria’s sake.”
Colin took up his glass.
“I thought I should move your paternal heart, dear Uncle Salvatore,” he said. “I drink to our pleasant bargain.”
CHAPTER VI
Though Colin had taken the news of his brother’s engagement with so touching and unselfish a gentleness, his father, in spite of the joy of seeing the boy again, looked forward to his arrival at Stanier with considerable uneasiness. The trouble and the trial for him would be when he saw Raymond and Violet together, though, to be sure, Violet did not seem to him to embody any ideal of maidenly rapture with her affianced. She seemed indeed to tolerate, rather than adore her lover, to permit rather than to provoke, and to answer with an effort the innumerable little signals of devotion which Raymond displayed for her. About the quality of his devotion there could be no question. It was clear that in his own fashion, and with all his heaviness and awkwardness in expression, he was utterly in love with her. He had no eyes for any one but her, but for her his eyes were dog-like in fidelity; when she was absent his senses dozed.
They were, just for the present, this party of three. Lady Hester had gone back to town after the departure of Colin and his father to the South, and Ronald and his wife had betaken themselves for the month of July to Marienbad, in order to enable him to continue eating too much for the next eleven months without ill effects. Every evening old Lady Yardley appeared for dinner and made the fourth, but she was not so much a presence as a shadow. In Colin’s absence, she hardly ever spoke, though each night she monotonously asked when he was expected back. Then, after the rubber of whist, mutely conducted, she retired again, and remained invisible till the approach of the next dinner-hour. So long had she been whitely impassive that Philip scarcely noticed the mist that was thickening about her mind.
Raymond, then, was comprehensible enough, he was head over ears in love with Violet, and nothing and nobody but her had any significance for him. But dog-like though his devotion was, it struck his father that there was, in the absence of Violet’s response, something rather animal about it. Had she met with more than mere toleration his glances, his little secret caresses, his thirst for contact even of finger-tips or a leaning shoulder, there would have been the spark, the leap of fire which gives warmth and life to such things. But without it there was a certain impalpable grossness: Raymond did not seem to care that his touch should be responded to, it contented him to touch.
But though he, to his father’s mind, was comprehensible enough, Violet puzzled him, for she seemed even before her marriage to have adopted the traditional impassivity of Stanier brides; she had professed, in the one interview she had had with him, a quiet acceptance of her position, and a devotion to Raymond of which the expression seemed to be a mute passivity. Towards the question of the date of her marriage she had no contribution to give. Lord Yardley and Raymond must have the settling of that, and with the same passivity she accepted a date in the first week of October. Then the great glass doors would be opened, and the bridegroom’s wing, long shuttered, for Philip’s bride had never come here, would see the light again. She asked no question whatever about Colin’s return; his name never presented itself on her lips unless mere conventional usage caused it to be spoken. It was as if the boy with whom she had been so intimately a friend, had ceased to exist for her. But when Philip once consciously noted that omission, he began to wonder if Violet was not comprehensible after all.... These days, in any case, after Philip’s return, while Colin still lingered in Italy, were worthy of the stateliest and deadliest Stanier traditions.