She went upstairs to tell her maid to pack everything at once, as they were off this morning. She found her knees trembling with the effect of that moment of abject terror, but already, in its vanishing, it had taken away with it any impression that could be analysed. Just that stroke, stunning as a blow, and then Colin again.
CHAPTER IX
For many years now with Philip Yardley a widower and his mother old, Stanier had withdrawn itself from the splendour of its traditional hospitalities, but now with the installation of Violet and Colin there, on their return from Italy, it blossomed out again into lavish and magnificent flower. Throughout November a succession of parties assembled there for the pheasant shooting, and in the early frosts of that December the wild fowl, snipe and duck and teal in the marshes, and the unprecedented abundance of woodcock in the park, gave an added lustre to the battues. In the evening, after an hour’s concert, or some theatrical entertainment for which the artists had come from London or Paris, the band reassembled in the long gallery, and dancing kept the windows bright almost till the rising of the late dawn.
There were many foreign royalties in England that year, and none left without a visit to Stanier, accompanied by cousins of the English house. Stanier, in fact, opened its doors, as in the days before the stroke fell on Philip’s father, and fairly outshone its own records for magnificence. Colossal in extravagance, there was yet nothing insensate in its splendour; it shone, not for purposes of dazzling, but only as reasserting its inherent and historical gorgeousness.
Violet seemed born to the position which she now occupied. While Colin’s father lived, it was his pleasure that she should be hostess here, and she picked up the reins, and drove the great gold coach along, as if she had been born and trained all her life for that superb rôle. She and Colin, at Philip’s wish, occupied the wing which was only tenanted by the heir and his wife, and though at his death, so he supposed, they would not step from porch to possession, he loved to give them this vicarious regency.
Out of the silver safe there had come for her the toilet set by Paul Lamerie, boxes and brushes, candle-stick and spirit lamp, and, above all, the great square mirror mounted on a high base. Amarini of chiselled metal supported it on each side; there was no such piece known in museum or royal closet. A double cable-band encircled the base, and the man who was in charge of the plate showed Colin how, by pressing a stud in the cable just above the maker’s mark, the side of the base sprang open disclosing a secret drawer. For some reason not even known to himself, Colin had not passed on that curious contrivance to Violet.
Then Philip had brought out for her, as Colin’s wife, those incredible jewels, which his mother, tenant for life, had long suffered to repose in their chests, and one night she gleamed with the Stanier pearls, another she smouldered among the burning pools of the rubies, another she flashed with the living fire of those cascades of diamonds, and more than once she wore the sapphire to which so strange a story was attached. Some said that it had once belonged to the regalia, and that Elizabeth had no more right to give it to her favourite who founded the splendour of to-day, than she had to bequeath to him the sceptre of her realm, but though twice an attempt had been made on the part of the Crown to recover it, once at Elizabeth’s death, and once with the coming of the German Dynasty, the Crown had not proved successful on either of these inauspicious occasions, and had to content itself with what it had.
This great stone was of 412 carats in weight, soft cornflower blue in colour, and matchless in aqueous purity. How it had got among the Crown jewels none knew, but its possession was even then considered a presage and a fulfilment of prosperity, for, beyond doubt, Elizabeth had worn it on her withered breast every day while her fleet was sailing to encounter the Armada. By tradition the wearer was decked with no other jewels when it blazed forth, and indeed its blue flame would have withered any lesser decoration. It figured in the Holbein portrait of its original possessor in the Stanier line, as a brooch to Colin’s doublet, and there once more, impersonating his ancestor, Colin wore it at the fancy dress ball which concluded the last of these December parties. This took place the night before Raymond came back from Cambridge.
Strange undercurrents, swirling and eddying, moved so far below the surface of the splendour that no faintest disturbance reached it. Admirable as was the manner in which Violet filled her part, it was not of her that Philip thought, or at her that he looked, when he waited with her and Colin for the entrance of royal visitors before dinner in the great hall. Day after day the glass doors were opened, but to his way of thinking it was neither for Violet nor for them that they swung wide, but for Colin. His own life he believed to be nearly consumed, but about the ash of it there crept red sparks, and these, too, were Colin’s. All his emotions centred there. It was for him and his matchless charm, that these great gatherings were arranged. Philip obliterated himself, and feasted his soul on the sight of Colin as lord of Stanier. While Raymond lived that could never come to pass, but he beguiled himself with the fantasy that when his own eyes grew dim in death, Colin’s splendour would light the halls from which he himself had faded. That of all the material magnificence of which he still was master, had power to stimulate him; sceptical of any further future for himself, and incurious as to what that might be, if it existed at all, the only future that he desired was for the son on whom all his love was centred. He knew that he was cheating himself, that this sight of Colin playing host at Stanier was one that, in all human probability, would never after his death be realised, but it was in his power now to give Colin a taste of it, and himself share its sweetness. For this reason he had arranged that these gorgeous weeks of entertainment should take place before Raymond got back from Cambridge, for with Raymond here, Raymond, the heavy and the unbeloved, must necessarily exclude Colin from the place which his father so rapturously resigned to him. At Christmas there would be just the family party, and he would be very civil to his eldest son.
Such was the course pursued by one of these undercurrents; two others sprang from Violet, one in direct opposition to that of her father-in-law. For she knew that, so far from his death dethroning her and giving the sovereignty to Raymond, it but passed on to her with complete and personal possession. Could his spirit revisit these earthly scenes, it would behold her in ownership on her own account of all the titles and splendours that had been his. Raymond—there alone her knowledge marched with his desire—would be without status here, while for Colin there would be just such position as his marriage with her gave him. She, exalted now by Philip’s desire, to play hostess in virtue of her marriage, would be hostess indeed hereafter, and Colin host through his relationship to her.