Colin

by E. F. Benson

He had tossed and turned as on a gridiron, with the thought of Colin and Violet together to feed and to keep the fire alive. He did not believe that Colin loved her; if she had not promised to marry himself, he would not have sought her. It was from hatred of himself that he had given her a glance and a smile and whistled her to him, so that she threw away like a scrap of waste-paper the contract that would have installed her as mistress of the house she adored. Colin had idly beckoned, just to gratify his hate, and she had flamed into love for him.

What subtle arts of contrivance and intrigue were his also! He had wanted to feast that same hatred on the sight of his brother’s defeat and discomfiture, and a word from him had been sufficient to make his father revoke his edict and let him remain at Stanier. Thus Colin earned fresh laurels in the eyes of the others for his compassionate forbearance, and by so doing accomplished his own desire of having Raymond there, like a moth on a pin.

As the hours went on strange red fancies crossed his brain. He imagined himself going to his father’s room and smothering him, so that next day he would be master of Stanier, and free to turn Colin out. Not another hour should he stay in the place. Out he should go, and Violet with him. Better still would it be to come behind Colin with a noose in his hand, which he would draw tight round his neck and laugh to see his face go black and his eyes start from his head with the strangling.... That would satisfy him; he could forgive Colin when he lay limp and lifeless at his feet, but till then he would never know a moment’s peace or a tranquil hour.

All this week his fever of hatred had been mounting in his blood, to-night the heat of it made to flower in his brain this garden of murderous images. And all the time he was afraid of Colin, afraid of his barbed tongue, his contemptuous hate, above all, of the luck that caused him to prosper and be beloved wherever he went. Just at birth one stroke of ill-luck had befallen him, but that was all....

Earlier in the evening, he remembered, an idea had flitted vaguely through his head, which had suggested to him some lucky accident.... He had purposely yawned when that notion presented itself, so that Colin should not see that he took any interest in what was being talked about.

For the moment he could not recollect what it had been; then he remembered how his father had come into the smoking-room and told them that a homicidal lunatic had got hold of a gun and was at large, probably in the park.... That was it; he had yawned then, for he had pictured to himself Colin strolling through the leafy ways and suddenly finding himself face to face with the man. There would be a report and Colin would lie very still among the bracken till his body was found. Ants and insects would be creeping about him.

That had been the faint outline of the picture; now in the dark it started into colour. What if once again Colin’s luck failed him, and in some remote glade he found himself alone with Raymond? He himself would have a gun with him, and he would fire it point-blank at Colin’s face and leave him there. It would be supposed that the escaped mad-man had encountered him....

It was but a wild imagining, born of a sleepless night, but as he thought of it, Raymond’s eyelids flickered and closed, and just before dawn he fell asleep. When he was called a few hours later, that was the first image that came into his mind, and by the light of day it wore a soberer, a more solid aspect. What if it was no wild vision of the night, but a thing that might actually happen?

No fresh news when they met at breakfast was to hand about the escaped man; indeed, in answer to an inquiry sent by Lord Yardley to the asylum, there came the reply that, though search-parties were out after him, nothing had as yet been seen of him. Colin was engaged to play a round of golf on the Rye links, and the chance of falling in with him seemed so remote that soon after breakfast he went off on his motor-bicycle, promising, in order to soothe Violet’s apprehensions, to travel at the rate of not less than forty miles an hour. That did not please her either; in fact, there was no pleasing her about his expedition, whether he went fast or slow; so he kissed her, and told her to order her mourning. At the last moment, however, at his father’s wish, he slipped a revolver into his pocket.

Raymond, as usual, refused to play golf, and preferred a wander in the park with a gun as a defensive measure for himself, and as an offensive measure against the plague of wood-pigeons. They were most numerous in the woods that lay on the steep slope through which the road to Repstow passed. That had been Colin’s road, too, and when Raymond set out a quarter of an hour later, the dust raised by his motor-bicycle still hung in the windless air.