Raymond turned on him fiercely. “Ah, that’s you all over!” he said.
“Oh, we’re being quite natural,” said Colin. “So much better.”
He paused a moment.
“Now I don’t want to be offensive just now,” he said, “so let’s sit down and try to tolerate each other for a minute. There.”
Raymond longed to be at his throat, to feel his short, strong fingers throttling the life out of that smooth white neck. But some careless superior vitality in Colin made him sit down.
“Let’s face it, Raymond,” he said. “We loathe each other like poison, and it is nonsense to pretend we don’t. Unfortunately, you are the eldest, so in the end you will score, however much I annoy you. But put yourself in my place; imagine yourself the younger with your foul temper. You would probably try to kill me. Of course, by accident. But I’m not intending to kill you. I am very reasonable; you must be reasonable, too. But just put yourself in my place.”
Raymond shifted in the chair in which Colin, with a mere gesture of a finger, had made him sit. “Can’t we possibly get on better together, Colin?” he said. “After all, as you say, I come into everything on my father’s death. I have Stanier, I have the millions where you have the thousands. I can be very useful to you. You adore the place, and I can let you come here as often and as long as you like, and I can also prevent your setting foot in it. If you’ll try to be decent to me, I promise you that you shan’t regret it.”
Colin put his head on one side and looked at his brother with an air of pondering wonder. “Oh, that cock won’t fight,” he said. “You know as well as I do that when you are master here, I would sooner go to hell than come here, and you would sooner go to hell than let me come. Perhaps I’ve got a dull imagination, but it’s no use my trying to imagine that. Do be sensible. If you could do anything to injure me at this moment when you are proposing a truce, you know that you would do it. But you can’t. You can’t hurt me in any way whatever. But what you do know is that I can hurt you in all sorts of ways. I can poison my father’s mind about you—it’s pretty sick already. I can poison Violet’s mind, and that’s none too healthy. You see, they both like me most tremendously, and they don’t very much like you. It’s just the same at Cambridge. I’ve got fifty friends: you haven’t got one. I dare say it’s not your fault: anyhow, we’ll call it your misfortune. But you want me to do something for you in return for nothing you can do for me, or, perhaps, nothing that you will do for me.”
Raymond frowned; when he was thinking he usually frowned. When Colin was thinking he usually smiled.
“If in the future there is anything I can do for you, Colin,” he said, “I will do it. I want to be friends with you. Good Lord, isn’t that reasonable? We’re brothers.”