Colin

by E. F. Benson

Colin pleaded sleepiness on their return from the piazza as an excuse for early retirement, but the sleepiness was not of the sort that led to sleep, and he lay long awake, blissfully content and wondering at himself with an intense and conscious interest. Never before had it so forcibly struck him that deception was a thing that was dear to him through some inherent attraction of its own, irrespective of what material advantages it might bring him; it was lovely in itself, irrespective of the fruit it bore. Never yet, too, had it struck him at all that he disliked love, and this was a discovery worth thinking over.

Often, especially during these last weeks, he had known that his father’s love for him bored him, as considered as an abstract quality, though he welcomed it as a means to an end. That end invariably had been not only the material advantages it brought him, but the gratification of his own hatred of Raymond. For, so he unerringly observed, his own endearing of himself to his father served to displace Raymond more and more, and to-day’s manœuvres were a brilliant counter-attack to the improved position Raymond had made for himself in those last weeks at Stanier. But, apart from these ends, he had no use for any love that was given him, nor any desire to give in return. To hate and to get, he found, when he looked into himself, was the mainspring which moved thought, word, and action.

Outside, the evening breeze had quite died down, but the silent tranquillity of the summer night was broken by the sound of a footfall on the garden terrace below the window, which he knew must be that of his father strolling up and down there. For a moment that rather vexed him; it seemed to disturb his own isolation, for he wanted to be entirely encompassed in himself. It was inconsiderate of his father to go quarter-decking out there, intruding into his own consciousness; besides, Colin had told him that he was sleepy, and he should have kept quiet.

But then the explanation of his ramble up and down occurred to Colin. There could be no doubt that his father was troubled for him, and was made restless by thinking of him and his disappointment. That made Colin smile, not for pleasure in his father’s love, but for pleasure in his trouble. He was worrying himself over Colin’s aching heart, and the boy had a smile for that pleasing thought; it had an incense for him.

He began to wonder, idly at first, but with growing concentration, whether he hated his father. He did not wish him ill, but ... but supposing this business of the register was satisfactorily accomplished, and supposing he succeeded, as he felt no doubt he would, in causing Violet to throw over Raymond and marry himself, he did not see that there would be much gained by his father’s continued existence. He would be in the way then, he would stand between him and his mastership, through Violet, of Stanier. That, both from his passion for the place, and from the joyous triumph of ejecting Raymond, was the true object of his life: possession and hatred, to get and to hate. His father, when these preliminary feats had been carried through, would be an obstacle to his getting, and he supposed that he would hate him then.

Lying cool and naked under his sheet, Colin suddenly felt himself flush with the exuberance of desire and vitality. Hate seemed as infinite as love; you could not plumb the depths of the former any more than you could scale the heights of the other, while acquisition, the clutching and the holding, stretched as far as renunciation; he who lived for himself would not be satisfied until he had grasped all, any more than he who lived for others would not be satisfied until he had given all, retaining nothing out of self-love.

With Violet as his wife, legal owner of Stanier, and Raymond outcast and disinherited, it seemed to Colin that he would have all he wanted, and yet in this flush of desire that combed through him now, as the tide combs through the weeds of the sea, he realised that desire was infinite and could never be satisfied when once it had become the master passion. No one who is not content will ever be content, and none so burned with unsatisfied longing as he. If he could not love he could hate, and if he could not give he could get.

The steps on the terrace below had long ceased, though, absorbed in this fever of himself, he had not noticed their cessation. His activity of thought communicated itself to his body, and it was impossible in this galvanic restlessness to lie quiet in bed. Movement was necessary, and, wrapping his sheet round him, he went to his open window and leaned out.

The night was starlit and utterly tranquil; no whisper of movement sounded from the stone-pine that stood in the garden and challenged by its stirring the most imperceptible of breezes. Yet to his sense the quiet tingled with some internal and tremendous vibration; a force was abroad which held it gripped and charged to the uttermost, and it was this force, whatever it was, that thrilled and possessed him. The warm, tingling current of it bathed and intoxicated him; it raced through his veins, bracing his muscles and tightening up the nerves and vigour of him, and, stretching out his arms, he let the sheet drop from him so as to drink it in through every thirsting pore of his body. Like the foaming water in a loch, it rose and rose in him, until the limit of his capacity was reached, and his level was that of the river that poured it into him. And at that, so it seemed, when now he had opened himself out to the utmost to receive it, the pressure which had made him restless was relieved, and, unutterably tired and content, he went back to bed, and instantly sank into the profound gulfs of healthy and dreamless slumber.

His father had usually finished breakfast when Colin appeared, but next morning it was the boy who was in advance.