Colin moved his head out of reach of the caressing fingers as if by accident.
“You tickle me,” he said. “And if you’re obstinate, I shan’t go for a walk at all, and I shall get fat like Mr. Cecil. Stop at home and be lazy for once, Vi.”
Colin, as usual, had his own way, and managed in his inimitable manner to convey the impression that he was very unselfish in foregoing her companionship. He established her with a book and a long chair, and, greatly to his own content, went off alone up the steep hillside of Monte Solaro. It was but a parody of a path that lay through the dense bush of aspen and arbutus that clothed the slopes, and he would have had to keep holding the stiff elastic shoots back for Violet to pass, to have tarried and dawdled for her less vigorous ascent, had she come with him. But now, having only his own pace to suit, he soon emerged above this belt of woodland that buzzed with flies in a hot, stagnant air, and came to the open uplands that stretched to the summit.
The September rains and the thick dews of October had refreshed the drought of the summer, and, as if spring were here already, the dried and yellow grasses, tall and seeding, stood grounded in a new velvet of young growth, and tawny autumn lilies reared their powdered stamens laden with pollen. Still upwards he passed, and the air was cooler, and a wind spiced with long travel over the sea, blew lightly but steadily from the north-west. Presently he had reached the top; all the island lay at his feet, and the peaks of the nearer mainland were below him, too, floating, promontory after promontory, on the molten rim of the sea. Far away to the west, like the shadow of a cloud, he could just descry the coast of Corsica; all the world and the glory of the sea lay at his feet, and how he lusted for it! What worship and fealty was he not ready to give for the possession and enjoyment of it?
There was no crime, thought Colin, that he would not commit if by that the flame of life burned brighter; he would do a child to death or rob a sacristy of its holy vessels, or emulate the deeds of Tiberius to feed that flame ... and he laughed to himself thinking of the amazing history told by Nino with the black eyes and laughing mouth. Surely Tiberius must have made an alliance and a love-match with evil itself, such gusto did he put into his misdeeds. In this connection the thought of the family legend occurred to him. Dead as the story was, belonging to the mists of mediævalism, you could not be a Stanier without some feeling of proprietorship in it.
Naturally, it was up to anybody to make a bargain for his soul with the devil if he believed in the existence of such things as devils or souls, and certainly for generations, when sons of his house came of age, they had either abjured their original benefactor or made alliance with him. Of course, they had really made their choice already, but it was quaint and picturesque to ratify it like that.... But for generations now that pleasant piece of ritual had dropped into misuse: it would be rather jolly, mused Colin, when he came of age next March, to renew it.
The edges of his thoughts lost their sharpness, even as the far-off capes and headlands below melted into the blue field of sea and sky, and as he lay in the little sheltered hollow which he had found at the very summit of the peak, they merged into a blurred panorama of sensation. His life hitherto, with its schemings and acquirings, became of one plane with the future and all that he meant the future to bring him; he saw it as a whole, and found it exquisitely good. Soon now he must return to the love that awaited him in the villa, and before many days now he must go back to England; a night at the Consulate first with Violet, and then just a waiting on events till his father’s death or Raymond’s.... His eyelids dropped, the wind rustled drowsily in his ears....
Colin sat up with a start; he had not been conscious of having gone to sleep, but now, wide-awake again, it certainly seemed as if his brain recorded other impressions than those of this empty eminence. Had there been some one standing by him, or was it only the black shadow of that solitary pine which his drowsiness had construed into the figure of a man? And had there been talking going on, or was it only the whisper of the wind in the dried grasses which sounded in his ears? In any case, it was time to go, for the sun had declined westwards, and, losing the flames and rays of its heat, was already become but a glowing molten ball close above the sea. How strangely the various states of consciousness melted into each other, though the sense of identity persisted. Whatever happened that remained....
At the corner of the garden, perched on the wall which ran alongside the steep footpath up from the town, was a little paved platform, where they often sat after dinner. There had been a letter for Colin from his father which had arrived during his walk, and now, holding it close to his eyes to catch the last of the swiftly-fading light, he communicated pieces of its contents to Violet.
“Raymond’s gone back to Cambridge,” he said. “Father seems reconciled to his absence. That’s funny now; there’s my elder brother an undergraduate and me a married man and not of age yet. It was touch and go whether it wasn’t the other way about, Vi.”