Colin

by E. F. Benson

Ten minutes walking brought him to the point where the road which hitherto had lain across the open grass of the park descended into the big belt of wood which stretched as far as the lodge-gates. On each side of it the ground rose sharply, covered on the one side by firs and birches with groundwork of heather, on the other by the oaks of what was known as the Old Park. According to tradition they were of the plantings of Elizabeth’s Colin, and for age and grandeur they might well be so, for stately and venerable they rose from the short deer-nibbled turf, well-spaced with full freedom for roots and branch alike. No other trees were on that slope, but these great, leafy sentinels stood each with his ring of shade round him, like well-tried veterans who have earned their leisure and the dignified livery of repose. A low wall of grey stone, some four feet high, mossy and creviced and feathered with small ferns, separated this Old Park from the road.

It was among these great oaks that the pigeons congregated, and Raymond was soon busy with them. This way and that, startled by his firing, they flew, often wary and slipping out of the far side of a tree and interposing its branches between him and them so that he could get no sight of them, but at other times coming out into the open and giving him a fair shot. Before long the whole battalion of them were in commotion, wheeling and flying off and returning again, and in an hour’s time he had shot some forty of them, not reckoning half a dozen more, which, winged or otherwise wounded, trailed off on his approach, fluttering on in front of him. Raymond was quite willing to put any such out of their misery, if they would only stop still and be killed like sensible birds, but on a hot morning it was too much to expect him to go trotting after the silly things, especially when he had killed so many. He took no pleasure in the cruelty of leaving them to die; he was simply indifferent.

He had come almost to the end of his cartridges, and if he was to continue his shooting, he would have to go back to the house for more ammunition or borrow some from the keeper at the Repstow lodge. That was nearer than the house, but before going he sat down in the shade of one of old Colin’s oaks to cool down and have a cigarette.

For the last hour he had been completely absorbed in his sport; now with a snap like that of a released spring his mind leaped back to that which had occupied it as he walked here and saw the dust of his brother’s motor-bicycle hanging in the air. He had locked up in his mind, when he began his shooting, all connection with that, his hate, the sleepless night with its visions that seemed so wild at the time, but which, on his waking, had taken on so much quieter and more likely an aspect, and now, when he unlocked his mind again, he found that they had grown like fungi in the darkness of a congenial atmosphere. They were solid and mature: where before there had been but a fairy-ring of imagination, where nightly elves had danced, there were now those red, firm-fleshed, poisoned growths, glistening and corrupt.

His subconscious mind poured out its storage: it had been busy while he was shooting, and wonderfully acute. It reminded him now that a quarter of a mile further on, the Old Park came to an end, and one clump of rhododendrons stood behind the wall which ran along the road. Just here the road took a sharp turn to the right: a man walking along it (or, for that matter, bicycling along it) would only come into sight of any one who might happen to be by that rhododendron bush half-a-dozen yards before he came to it himself, and anything else he might see there (a gun, for instance) would be at point-blank range. Such a gun-barrel would rest conveniently on the top of the wall; any one who happened to be holding the weapon would be concealed between the wall and the bush....

These pictures seemed to be shewn Raymond rather than to be imagined by him; it was as if some external agency held open the book which contained them and turned over the leaves. It might prove to be himself who would presently lie perdu there, but he had no sense of any personal volition or share in the matter. His hatred of Colin had somehow taken counsel (even as doctors consult over a bad case) with the necessity that Colin should die, and this was their advice; Raymond was but the patient who in the apathy of sickness was going to do as they told him, not caring much what happened, only conscious that if this advice was successful in all its aspects, he would be restored to complete health.

He hardly knew if he hated Colin any more; all that he was certain of was that there existed—somewhere—this black dynamic enmity. He hardly knew whether it was he who was about to shoot Colin, as presently on his motor-bicycle he would come round that sharp bend by the rhododendron bush. All that he was certain of was that Colin would presently lie dead on the road with his face all shattered by the shot. The homicidal maniac, of course, escaped from the asylum, must have been his murderer.

There was no use for more cartridges than the two which he now slipped into his gun. If the fellow hidden behind the rhododendron bush could not kill Colin with two shots, he could not kill him with twenty, and Raymond, looking carefully round, began moving quietly down the slope to the corner, keeping in the shadow of the leafage of the splendid trees. His foot was noiseless on the cropped plush of the turf, and he passed quickly over the patches of sun between the shadows of the oaks, pausing every now and then to make sure there was no one passing along the road or the hillside, who was within sight of him. But there was no one to be seen; after the cessation of his shooting, the deer had come back to their favourite grazing-ground, and were now cropping at the short, sweet grass, or lying with twinkling ears alert in the shade. No one was moving up there at the top of the Old Park, where a foot-path made a short cut to the house from the Repstow Lodge, or the deer would not be so tranquil, while his own sharp eye assured him that within the circle of his vision there was none astir.

His remembrance of the rhododendron bush close to the angle in the road, was astonishingly accurate. The top of the grey wall was a most convenient rest for his gun, and a man coming round the corner from the direction of Repstow would suddenly find himself within six yards of the barrels. Probably he would never see them at all; there would be just a flash of flames close to his startled eyes, perhaps even the report of the explosion would never reach him.

That was the only imperfect touch in these schemes which had been thus presented to Raymond; he would like Colin to know, one-half second before he died, whose hand had pulled the trigger and put a muzzle on his mocking mouth and a darkness over his laughing eyes, and he determined that when the beat of Colin’s approaching motor-bicycle sounded loud round the corner he would stand up and show himself. It would be all too late for Colin to swerve or duck then, and he should just see who had the last laugh. Raymond felt that he would laugh as he fired.... Till that moment it was best to conceal himself from the road, and he leaned against the wall, crouching a little, with the muzzle of his gun resting on it.... It was already after one o’clock. Colin would be here any minute now.