“A delightful suggestion,” he said, “for you and Vittoria and whatever the other one’s name is. But I don’t want any of you, thank you. I haven’t seen either of them, but I guess what they are like from you. You’re like—you’re like a mixture of a troubadour and a mountebank, and the man who cracks the whip at the horses in a circus, Uncle Salvatore. You’re no good to me any more, but I can be awfully bad for you if you lose your memory again. You know exactly what I want you to remember, and you do remember it. You forgot it because I told you to forget it. Now it has all come back to you, and how nice that is. But if you think I am going to bore myself with you and Vittoria and the other, you make a stupendous error. I’m very kind to you, you know; I’m your benefactor to a considerable extent, so you mustn’t think me unkind when I utterly refuse to saddle myself with your company. I butter your bread for you, be content with that. Good-bye. Love to Vittoria!”
So that was done, and he strolled back along the sea-front towards the Consulate. Capri, a little more solid only than a cloud, floated on the horizon, and with that delightful goal so near, it was miserable to picture another tiresome crapulous evening with the little red bounder. Last night, stupid and wearisome though the hours had been, they had yielded him the prize he sought for, whereas to-night there would be no prize of any sort in view. Those interminable drinks, those stupid photographs, why waste time and energy in this second-hand sort of debauchery? He had been prepared, when he started from England, to spend with Mr. Cecil as much time as was necessary in order to achieve what was the main object of his expedition, but that was accomplished now. He would be so much happier at the villa, where he was, after all, expected to-day, than in seeing Mr. Cecil get excited and familiar and photographic and intoxicated.
The whispering stone-pine, the vine-wreathed pergola, the piazza full of dusk and youth, the steps of belated passengers on the pathway outside the garden made sweeter music than the voice of an inebriated Consul with its hints and giggles. Stout, middle-aged people, if there had to be such in the world, should keep quiet and read their books, and leave the mysteries and joys of youth to the young.... It was there, in that cloud that floated on the horizon, that he had first realised himself and the hand that led him, in the scent-haunted darkness and the whispering of the night wind; that fed his soul with a nourishment that Mr. Cecil’s cocktails and photographs were starvingly lacking in. He would feast there to-night.
A promise to spend another night at the Consulate on his return from Capri made good his desertion to-day, for, in point of fact, Mr. Cecil felt considerably off-colour this morning, and rather misdoubted his capacity for carrying off with any semblance of enjoyment a repetition of last night. His reproaches and disappointment were clearly complimentary rather than sincere, and the afternoon boat carried Colin on it. Once he had made that journey with his father, once with Violet, but could a wish have brought either of them to his side he would no more have breathed it than have thrown himself off the boat. He did not want to be jostled and encumbered by love, or hear its gibberish, and with eager eyes, revelling in the sense of being alone with his errand already marvellously accomplished, he watched the mainland recede and the island draw nearer through the fading twilight.
Lights were springing up along the Marina, and presently there was Nino alongside in his boat, ready to ferry him ashore. He, with his joyous paganism, his serene indifference to good or evil, was far closer to what Colin hungered for than either his father or Violet, but closer yet, so Colin realised, was the hatred between himself and his own dead brother....
And then presently there was the garden dusky and fragrant with the odour of wallflowers and freesias, and the whispering of the warm breeze from the sea, and the oblong of light from the open door to welcome him.
On the table just within there lay a telegram for him, and with some vivid presentiment of what it contained, he opened it. His father had died quite suddenly a few hours ago.
The whisper of the pine grew louder, and the breeze suddenly freshening, swept in at the door thick with garden scents, with greeting, with felicitations.
CHAPTER XI
Just a fortnight later Colin was lying in one of the window seats of the long gallery at Stanier reading through some papers which required his signature. They had come by the post which Nino had just given him, for he had brought the boy with him from Capri, with a view to making him his valet. His own, he said, always looked as if he were listening to a reading of the ten commandments, and Colin had no use for such a person. Nino, at any rate, would bring cheerfulness and some touch of southern gaiety with his shaving-water; besides, no servant approached the Italian in dexterity and willingness.