Colin

by E. F. Benson

Colin used his good offices with his father to such effect that he succeeded in procuring for Salvatore a further substantial cheque, in addition to that which he had carried off with the two bottles of wine that afternoon. His uncle apparently thought better of his reckless generosity in sending the letters of which Colin was desirous quite unconditionally, but the receipt of the second cheque was sufficient, and the morning’s post two days later brought them.

They were written in ill-spelled English, and contained precisely what his uncle had told him. The first, dated March 1, gave the information that she had been married that morning to Philip Lord Stanier; the second, dated March 17, stated that a week ago she had given birth to twins. They were quite brief, conveyed no other news, and had evidently been preserved with care, for the purple ink in which they were written was quite unfaded. But apart from the fact now definitely known to Colin that his father had legalised his life with Rosina but ten days before he himself and Raymond were born, they did not help in any way towards the attainment of the double object which now was putting out firm, fibrous roots in his mind as the ideal project, namely to prove by some means yet utterly unconjecturable the illegitimacy of Raymond and himself, and, by marrying Violet, who in that case would succeed to the title and the estates, to become master of Stanier. Indeed these letters were but a proof the more of what was no doubt sufficiently attested in the register of the British Consulate, namely, that the marriage had taken place previously to his own birth.

It seemed a hopeless business. Even if, by some rare and lucky mischance, there was any irregularity in the record at the Consulate, these letters, so long as they were in existence, constituted, if not a proof, at any rate a strong presumption in favour of the marriage having taken place on the first of the month, and it might be better to destroy them out of hand so that such testimony as they afforded could not by any possibility be produced. And yet he hesitated; somehow, in his subconscious mind, perhaps, there was a stir and a ferment which bubbled with a suggestion that had not yet reached his consciousness. Might not something conceivably be done with them?... It was maddening that just ten days out of all those uneventful hundreds of days which had elapsed since, should suffice to wreck any project that he might make.

And then a bubble of that ferment broke into his conscious mind. There was the letter, announcing the marriage which had taken place that day dated March 1. There was the letter dated March 17 announcing the birth of himself and Raymond a week previously. What if by the insertion of a single numeral in front of the “1” of the first date, he converted it into March 31st? As far as these two letters went, they would in that case show precisely what he desired.

Psychologically, too, there would be a reasonable interpretation. In his father, it would be argued, there had sprung up after the birth of his sons, a tenderness and an affection for the mother of them, and he had married her so that she, in the future, might bear him legitimate offspring. Already she had borne two lusty and healthy sons; the union was vigorous and fruitful.

Colin got up from the long chair in his bedroom where he had taken these letters, and began softly pacing up and down the floor, lithe and alert, and smiling. His father was coming down with him to bathe that morning, but there was a quarter of an hour yet before he need join him downstairs, and a great deal of thinking might be put into a quarter of an hour if you could only concentrate.

He knew he was very far yet from the attainment of his ambition, for that register at the Consulate, which somehow he must manage to see, might contain insuperable obstacles to success. There might, for instance, be other entries between March 1 of that year and March 31, so that even if he could contrive to alter the first date into the second it would throw those other entries, if such existed, out of their chronological order; the marriage contracted on March 31 would precede those that lay in between the two dates. In that case he might have to tear out the page in which this entry occurred, and that might be quite impossible of accomplishment.

It would not be wise, at any rate, to tamper with the date on this first letter of his mother’s, till he knew how the ground lay at the Consulate. But given that it proved possible to make some alteration in the register or tear out a page, how conclusively would his case be established, if, in support of that, there were produced those letters of his mother?

Salvatore the troubadour.... Colin frowned and bit his lip at the thought of Salvatore, who would be ready to swear that, when he parted with those letters to Colin, the one that conveyed the news of his sister’s marriage was dated March 1, not March 31. There were experts on such subjects, too; prying, meticulous men who made a profession of detecting little things like altered dates, and produced evidence about a difference of hand or a difference in the analysis of two inks.

Yet if the register at the Consulate was found to endorse the evidence of the letters? The same detective-minded folk would examine the record at the Consulate, and might arrive at the damnable conclusion that it, too, had been tampered with. And if the letters which bore signs of being tampered with were in Colin’s possession, and he was known to have visited the register at the Consulate, there would be an unwelcome conclusion as to who had committed a forgery. Penal servitude was not an agreeable substitute for Stanier.