Colin

by E. F. Benson

And now that the pause of death was over, adjustments, businesses, the taking up of life again had to begin, and his lawyer was getting things in shape for his supervision. These particular papers were tedious and hard to follow and were expressed in that curious legal shibboleth which makes the unprofessional mind to wander. He tried to attend, but the effort was like clinging to some slippery edge of ice; he could get no firm hold of it, and the deep waters kept closing over him. There, below the terrace, lay the lake where he had seen one such incident happen.

By that he had become heir to all that this fair, shining spring day shewed him; his father’s death put him in possession, and now this morning, wherever he turned his eyes, whether on lake or woodland, or within on picture and carved ceiling, all were his. This stately home, the light and desire of his eye, with all that it meant in wealth and position, had passed again into the hands of Colin Stanier, handed down from generation to generation, ever more prosperous, from his namesake who had built its enduring walls and founded its splendours.

Of his father’s death there was but little to tell him, when, coming straight back again from Capri, he had arrived here at the set of a stormy day. Philip had reeled as he crossed the hall one morning, and fallen on the hearthrug in front of the Holbein. For half an hour he had lived, quite unconscious and suffering nothing, then his breathing had ceased. Until the moment of his stroke, that bursting of some large blood-vessel on the brain, he had been quite well and cheerful, rejoicing in the fact that Colin by now had found the sun again, and already longing for his return.

Violet had been Colin’s informant, and she told him these things with that air of detachment from him which had characterised her intercourse with him since Raymond had come home for that last Christmas vacation. She had watched then with some secret horror dawning in her eyes, Colin’s incessant torture of his brother. That dismay and darkness which had spread its shadow on her in the month of their honeymoon, when first she really began to know Colin, interrupted for a time by their return home and the high festivals of the autumn, had returned to her then with a fresh infusion of blackness. Never once had she spoken to him about his treatment of Raymond, but he was conscious that she watched and shuddered. It did not seem that her love for him was extinguished; that horror of hers existed side by side with it; she yearned for his love even while she shrank from his pitilessness. She feared him, too, not only for the ruthless iron of him, but for the very charm which had a power over her more potent yet.

Then came the weeks after Raymond’s death, and Colin thought he saw in her a waning of her fear of him; that, he reflected, was natural. Some time, so he read her mind, she knew she would be mistress here in her own right; it seemed very reasonable that she should gain confidence.

For the last few days, when the wheels of life were now beginning to turn again, he saw with a comprehending sense of entertainment that there was something in Violet’s mind: she was trying to bring herself up to a certain point, and it was not hard to guess what that was. She was silent and preoccupied, and a dozen times a day she seemed on the verge of speaking of that which he knew was the subject of her thought. Till to-day her father and mother and Aunt Hester in becoming mourning had been with them, now they had gone, and Violet’s restlessness had become quite ludicrous. She had been in and out of the room half a dozen times; she had sat down to read the paper, and next moment it had dropped from her lap and she was staring at the fire again lost in frowning thought.

Knowing what her communication when it came must be, Colin, from the very nature of the case could not help her out with it, but he wished that she would wrestle with and vanquish her hesitation. If it had been he who in this present juncture had had to speak to Raymond on this identical subject, how blithely would he have undertaken it. Then, finally, Violet seemed to make up her mind to take the plunge, and sat down on the edge of the seat where he lounged. He extended his arm and put it round her.

“Well, Vi,” he said, “are you finding it hard to settle down? I am, too, but we’ve got to do it. My dear, Aunt Hester’s little black bonnet! Did you ever see anything so chic? Roguish; she gets sprightlier every day!”

Violet looked at him gravely.

“There’s something we have to talk about, Colin,” she said, “and we both know what it is. Will you let me speak for a minute or two without interrupting me?”