“Well, that’s all I’ve got to say to you,” he said. “I won’t have you insolent and uncivil to me or any one in this house. I’m master here for the present, and, rightly or wrongly, I shall do as I choose. And I won’t have you quarrelling with Colin. You tell me that when I’m not here and when you’re alone with him, he’s fiendish to you; that was the word you used. Now don’t repeat that, because I don’t believe it. You’re jealous of Colin, that’s why you say things like that; you want to injure him in my eyes. But you only injure yourself.”
At that moment there came into Philip’s mind some memory, now more than twenty years old, of himself in Raymond’s position, stung by the lash of his father’s vituperations, reduced to the dumb impotence of hatred. Though he felt quite justified in all he had said to the boy, he knew that his dislike of him had plumed and barbed his arrows, and he experienced some sort of reluctant sympathy with him.
“I’ve spoken strongly,” he said, “because I felt strongly, but I’ve done. If you’ve got anything more to say to me, say it.”
“No,” said Raymond.
“Very good. I shan’t refer to it all again, and it’s up to you to do better in the future. Put a check on yourself. Believe me, that if you do you will have a better time with me and every one else.... Think it over, Raymond; be a sensible fellow.”
The departure of the others gave Raymond abundance of leisure for solitary reflection, and his father’s remarks plenty of material for the same. Stinging as those hot-minted sentences had been, he felt no resentment towards the orator; from his own point of view—a perfectly reasonable one—his father was justified in what he said. What he did not know, and what he refused to know, was the truth about Colin, who neglected no opportunity which quickness of speech and an unrivalled instinct gave him as to what rankled and festered, of planting his darts when they were alone together. Raymond accepted Colin’s hatred of him, just as he accepted his own of Colin, as part of the established order of things, but what made him rage was this new policy of his brother’s to win sympathy for himself and odium for him, by public politeness and affectionate consideration. No one observing that, as his father had done, could doubt who was the aggressor in their quarrels—the genial, sweet-tempered boy, or he, the morose and surly. And yet, far more often than not, it was Colin who intentionally and carefully exasperated him. It amused Colin, as he had said, to see his brother in a rage, and he was ingenious at providing himself with causes of entertainment.
And what, above all, prompted his father’s slating of him just now? Again it was Colin; it was his championship of his favourite which had given the sting to his tongue. Here, too, Raymond acquitted his father of any motive beyond the inevitable one. Nobody could possibly help liking Colin better than himself, and it was the recognition of that which made his mind brush aside all thought of his father, and attach itself with claws and teeth to the root of all this trouble. He was slow in his mental processes whereas Colin was quick, and Colin could land a hundred stinging darts, could wave a hundred maddening flags at him, before he himself got in a charge that went home. That image of the arena entirely filled his thought. Colin, the light, applauded matador, himself the savage, dangerous animal.
But one day—and Raymond clenched his hands till the nails bit the skin, as he pictured it—that light, lissome figure, with its smiling face and its graceful air, would side-step and wheel a moment too late, and it would lie stretched on the sand, while he gored and kneaded it into a hash of carrion. “Ah!” he said to himself, “that’ll be good; that’ll be good.”
The intensity and vividness of the image surprised him; he came to himself, sitting on the terrace, with the hum of bees drowsy in the flower-beds, as if from some doze and dream. He had not arrived at it from any consecutive interpretation of his hate for Colin; it had not been evolved out of his mind, but had been flashed on to it as by some vision outside his own control. But there it was, and now his business lay in realising it.
He saw at once that he must be in no hurry. Whether that goring and kneading of Colin was to be some act of physical violence or the denouement of a plot which should lead to some disgraceful exposure, Raymond knew he must plan nothing rashly, must test the strength of every bolt and rivet in his construction. Above all, he must appear, and continue to appear, to have taken his father’s strictures to heart, and for the sake, to put it at its lowest, of being allowed to stay on at Stanier, to observe the general amenities of sociability, and in particular to force himself into cordial responses to Colin’s public attentions.