“Granny darling!” he said, kissing her. “How lovely of you to come and meet me like this. Father! Ever so many thanks for sending the motor for me. Ah, and there are Violet and Raymond. Raymond, be nice to me; let me kiss you, for, though we’re grown up, we’re brothers. And Violet; I want a kiss from Violet, too. She mustn’t grudge me that.... What! The glass doors open. Ah! of course, in honour of the betrothal. Raymond, you lucky fellow, how I hate you. But I thought that was only done when the bridegroom brought his bride home.”
“A whim of your grandmother’s,” said Philip hastily, disowning apparently his share in it.
Instantly Colin was by the old lady’s side again.
“Granny, how nice of you!” he said. “But you’ve got to find me a bride first before I go up those stairs. And even then, it’s only the eldest son who may, isn’t it? But it was nice of you to open the doors because I was coming home.”
He had kissed Raymond lightly on the cheek, and Violet no less lightly, and both in their separate and sundered fashions were burning at it, Raymond in some smouldering fury at what he knew was Colin’s falseness, Violet with the hot searing iron of his utter indifference; and then light as foam and iridescent as a sunlit bubble of the same, he was back with his father again, leaving them as in some hot desert place. And dinner must now be put off, growled Raymond to himself, because Colin wanted to have a bathe first and wash off the dust and dryness of his journey, and his father would stroll down after him and bring his towel, so that he might run down at once without going upstairs.
Colin had come home, it appeared, with the tactics that were to compass his strategy rehearsed and ready. Never had his charm been of so sunny and magical a quality, and, by contrast, never had Raymond appeared more uncouth and bucolic. But Raymond now, so ran his father’s unspoken comment on the situation, had an ugly weapon in his hand, under the blows of which Colin winced and started, for more than ever he was prodigal of those little touches and caresses which he showered on Violet. Philip could not blame him for it; it was no more than natural that a young man, engaged and enamoured, should use the light license of a lover; indeed, it would have been unnatural if he had not done so.
Often and often, ten times in the evening, Philip would see Colin take himself in hand and steadfastly avert his eyes from the corner where Raymond and Violet sat. But ever and again that curious habit of self-torture in lovers whom fate has not favoured would assert itself, and his eyes would creep back to them, and seeing Raymond in some loverlike posture, recall themselves. And as often the sweetness of his temper, and his natural gaiety, would reassert its ray, and the usual light nonsense, the frequent laugh, flowed from him. Exquisite, too, was his tact with Violet; he recognised, it was clear, that their old boy-and-girl intimacy must, in these changed conditions, be banished. He could no longer go away with her alone to spend the morning between tennis-court and bathing pool, or with his arm round her neck, stroll off with a joint book to read reclined in the shade. Not only would that put Raymond into a false position (he, the enamoured, the betrothed) but, so argued the most pitiless logic of which his father was capable, that resumption of physical intimacy, as between boy and boy, would be a tearing of Colin’s very heart-strings not only for himself but for her also. In such sort of intimacy Colin, with his brisk blood and ardent lust of living, could scarcely help betraying himself, and surely then, Violet, little though she might care for Raymond, would see her pool of tranquil acceptance shattered by this plunge of a stone into the centre of it. Her liking for Colin was deep, and she would not fail to see that for her he had even profounder depths. A light would shine in those drowned caves, and Colin, as wise as he was tender, seemed to shew his wisdom by keeping on the surface with Violet, and only shining on her tranquillity, never breaking it.
Sometimes—so thought his father—he shewed her a face which, in virtue of their past intimacy, was almost too gaily indifferent; she would attempt some perfectly trivial exhibition of their old relations, perch herself on the arm of his chair, and with the contrast of his bronzed face and golden hair, tell him that he must gild his face like the grooms in “Macbeth” or dye his hair. But on the instant he would be alert and spring up, leaving her there, for the need of a cigarette or a match. He allowed her not the most outside chance of resuming ordinary cousinly relations with him. His motive was sound enough; loving her he mistrusted himself. She was sealed to be his brother’s wife, and he must not trust himself within sight of the notice to trespassers. It was better to make himself a stranger to her than to run the risk of betraying himself. So, at least, it struck an outsider to Colin’s consciousness.
He avoided, then, all privacy with Violet, and no less carefully he avoided privacy with Raymond. If the three men were together and his father left them, Colin would be sure to follow him, and if they all three sat up together in the smoking-room, Colin would anticipate the signal of a silence or of his father’s yawning or observation of the clock, to go to bed himself. Here, again, he almost overdid the part, for as the first week after his return went by, Philip, firmly determined to be just to Raymond, thought he saw in him some kind of brotherly affection for Colin, which the latter either missed or intentionally failed to respond to. There could be no harm in a seasonable word, and when, one morning Raymond, after half a dozen chill responses from his brother, had left him and Colin together, Philip thought that the seasonable word was no less than Raymond’s due. But the seasonable word had to be preceded by sympathy.
He sat down in the window seat by Colin.