Indeed Raymond determined that this very day he would fling the challenge himself. Instead of sitting dumb under Colin’s blistering jibes, he would defy him; he would insult and provoke him, till he was stung into sending to the bank for the famous confession, vowing an instant disclosure of the whole matter to his father. How Raymond would snap a finger in his face for that threat, and how, when Colin received the answer from the bank that the packet in question had been sent by his own orders to his brother, would he choke with the derisive laughter of hate! Who without solid proof would credit such a tale? Besides (Raymond had it all ready now) no doubt Lord Yardley would remember witnessing with Colin the paper about which he now impotently jabbered. Had not the brothers come in together, ever so pleasantly, on that morning of the pigeon-shooting, and asked for his witnessing signature? That paper (so Raymond now framed it) had set forth how he had determined to make a better job of brotherhood than he had hitherto done, and to realise that Violet and Colin were mated in love. And already the pact had fulfilled itself, for never had the two spent days of such public fraternal amity. “Write to the bank for it in my name,” Colin would be supposed to have said, “and tear it up, dear Ray! It’ll be fun, too, to see if they can distinguish your handwriting from mine”.... That was what Colin would find waiting for him if he sent to the bank for the document on which this insane accusation was based.
His skates, fitted on to boots, clanked in his hand, his foot trod briskly on the frozen soil that would soon be his own. Those eye-teeth of Colin’s were drawn; his father aged rapidly, and, without doubt, before many months, the park-gates would have clapped on to the final exit of Colin and his wife. Perhaps he would let Stanier to some dollar-gorged American; he had no feeling for it himself, and the other two would abhor that. Never yet had Stanier been tenanted by aliens; it was enough to make the dead turn in their graves. What was more important, it would make the living writhe. Perhaps Colin—he would be very rich, alas—would try to take it. The would-be lessees must be closely scrutinised.
So here was the lake with its stiff frozen margin; a stamp on it and a short slide over the black ice produced no cluck of remonstrance. The pavilion of the bathing-place was on the other side, but a felled tree-trunk made a comfortable seat for the exchange of his walking shoes into the boots with skates on them. He had spent a winter month in Switzerland two years before, and hungered for the bite of the blade on the sweet fodder of that black field.... Instantly, as in swimming, the instinct of that balance came back to him, and with long strokes he curved out on to the delightful playground. Outside edge, and a dropped turn, an outside back, and a taking up of the direction with the other foot....
Colin, at this moment, had made up his mind not to skate till after lunch.
“I’m lazy,” he said to Violet. “I’m tired of baiting Raymond. He was more cheerful than I like this morning, Vi. I shall smoke a cigarette and think of something new. Lord! I’ve got no matches.”
There was a paper basket handy, and he drew a crumpled envelope from it, meaning to get a light with it from the log fire. Uncrumpling it he saw it was addressed to Lord Stanier, and idly turning it over, as he made his spill, he saw the seal of his own bank. The envelope was registered.
He tore a narrow strip off the edge of it, and used it for his purpose.
“I should like to sit here talking to you all morning,” he said, “but that beastly motor-bicycle of mine has gone wrong again. I think I’ll go up to the stables to see about it. Skating this afternoon, isn’t it? I hate seeing Raymond skate because he’s so good at it. But as I want to skate myself, what’s to be done?”
Colin floated off in his crisp, graceful manner, and never was he so alert as when he appeared to be loitering. Why had Raymond received a registered envelope from Bertram’s? Bertram’s was not Raymond’s bank. What had that envelope contained?
He strolled out of the front door; the stables lay to the right, but Raymond, hugely cheerful that morning, had gone to the lake, which was in the opposite direction. So deferring the matter of the bicycle he went down by the yew hedge and along the path on the top of the dam behind the rhododendrons. He could hear the ring of Raymond’s skates on the frozen surface. Raymond would have to cease his sport and explain the matter of the envelope.