“Hurrah, I’ve beaten you for once, father,” he said when Lord Yardley appeared. “The tea’s half cold; shall I get you some more?”
“No, this will do. Slept well, Colin?”
“Like a top, like a pig, like a hog, like a dog.”
“Good.”
Lord Yardley busied himself with breakfast for a while.
“Curious things dreams are,” he said. “I dreamed about things I hadn’t thought of for years. You were so vividly mixed up in them, too, that I nearly came into your room to see if you were all right.”
“I was,” said Colin. “I was wonderfully all right. What was the dream?”
“Oh, one of those preposterous hashes. I began dreaming about Queen Elizabeth and old Colin. She was paying him a visit at Stanier and asked to see the parchment on which he signed the bond of the legend. He shewed it her, but the blood in which he had signed his own name was so faded that she told him he must sign it again if he wanted it to be valid. I was present and saw it all, but I had the feeling that I was invisible. Then came the nightmare part. He pricked his arm to get the ink, and dipped a pen in it. And then, looking closely at him, I saw that it wasn’t old Colin at all, but you, and that it wasn’t Queen Elizabeth but Violet. I told you not to sign, and you didn’t seem conscious of me, and then I shouted at you, in some nightmare of fear, and awoke, hearing some strangled scream of my own, I suppose.”
Colin had been regarding his father as he spoke with wide, eager eyes. But at the conclusion he laughed and lit a cigarette.
“Well, if you had come in, you certainly wouldn’t have found me signing anything,” he said. “But I cut myself shaving this morning. I call that a prophetic dream. And I must write to Vi and Raymond this morning, so that will be the signing.”