“I infer that you liked making Nino drunk.”
Colin clapped his hands. “Bravo!” he said. “You’ve guessed right. I wanted to find out when Nino was most himself, tipsy or sober, and now I know that it is sober. I shan’t make him drunk again. I longed to see pure Faunishness, but Nino sober is Faunier than Nino drunk.”
“Yes, joyful, immoral, wicked, lovely nature. Without a rag to cover, not its shame, but its glory. Nino is naked sober. He was too heavenly last night, before—er—the coarseness. He thought of killing his father because he keeps giving him stepmothers, and is generally rather in the way. And when I asked him if he weren’t afraid of the devil, he said: ‘Why should I be? The devil is a very good friend to me.’ Wasn’t that queer? Just as if he were a Stanier. I felt as if Nino were my brother; though, of course, he could never supplant Raymond in my heart. But then Raymond’s my twin: that is why we are so wrapped up in each other.”
Violet felt as if some light-winged creature was settling on her now here, now there, and stinging her. Just so did Colin make her wince.
“And as for the wickedness—or coarseness, was it not?—of making any one drunk,” he added, “I don’t agree with you. If people are most really themselves when they are rather tipsy, they should be rather tipsy as often as possible. When is Uncle Ronald at his best? Why when his dear nephew has been sitting by him after dinner, and filling up his glass for him. Let’s have tea.... Oh, dear, I can’t do right. I did wrong to tell you about Raymond yesterday, and I did wrong to tell you about Nino to-day. I shall lead a double life, darling, and tell you nothing.”
Dimly, as he spoke, Violet was aware of some reverberation of dismay that his words and his manner stirred in her. Was Colin really like that? Were those light words just gibes and jokes—not very pleasant ones—or were they authentic glimpses of himself? It seemed that her very faith was at stake; at all costs she must refuse to acknowledge so unthinkable a possibility.... That could not be Colin; he was just teasing her. She must reply with the same outrageousness.
“Darling, lead more than a double life,” she said. “Such lots of people do that. Lead three or four. I’ll do the same. We’ll have as many lives as a cat between us.... Now tell me some of Nino’s stories, or I shall be afraid that they weren’t what mother might call quite nice.”
“I don’t think for a moment she would call them quite nice,” said he.
The month of Indian summer, with warm days and windless nights, passed by in golden procession, but now with the deepening of autumn the ponente from the west, veering sometimes to a chillier quarter sucked the basking out of the bathing, and the evenings grew long with the passage into November. The sunshine lost its force, rain was scribbled across it, the grey sea-clouds expunged it, the wind roared in it. It was like passing out of daylight into some dank and dripping tunnel, where windows are closed and voices silent, and the magic of the day is quenched. More tunnel-like even was a certain darkness that fell between the two yet on their honeymoon, and in that darkness they grew apart like strangers; they were just passengers who chanced to be together in the same compartment.