"Looking back now I can see that I never really liked him. I was aware of my caution and laughed at myself for it. I liked pretty things, you know, and I loved his jade and emeralds, and still more his prints. And he knew so much and was never tired of telling me and never seemed to laugh at one's ignorance.
"He was, as I have said, all the talk that summer. It was 'Mr. Crispin' this and 'Mr. Crispin' that—Mr. Crispin everything. The men didn't take to him much, but of course they wouldn't! They had always thought me a bit queer because I liked reading and played the piano. The first thing that people didn't like about him was his son. That beauty arrived at Haxt somewhere in September, and everybody hated him. I ask you, could you help it? And he was the exact opposite of his father. He didn't try to make himself agreeable to anybody—simply went about scowling and frowning. But it wasn't that people disliked—it was his relation to his father. He was absolutely in his father's power—that is the only way to put it—and there was something despicable, something almost obscene, you know, almost as though he were hypnotized, the way he obeyed him, listened to his voice, slaved away for him."
"I noticed something of that myself this evening," said Harkness.
"You couldn't help it if you saw them together. Somehow the son turning up beside the father made the father look queer—as though the son showed him up. People round Milton are not very perceptive, you know, but they soon smelt a rat, several rats in fact. For one thing the people in the village didn't like the Jap servants, then one or two maids that Crispin had hired abruptly left. They wouldn't say anything except that they didn't like the place, that old Crispin walked in his sleep or something of the kind.
"It was just about this time, early in October or so, that Crispin became friendly with the Tobins. Young Crispin had a cold or something and Tobin came up and doctored him. Crispin gave him the best liquor he'd ever had in his life so he came again and then again. That was the beginning of my dislike of Crispin. It seemed to me rotten of him, when Tobin was already going as fast downhill as he could, to give him an extra push. And Crispin liked doing that. One could see it at a glance. I hated him from the moment when I caught him watching with amused smiles Tobin fuddled in his chair. You can imagine that Tobin's drunkenness, having cared for Hesther as I had for so long, was a matter of some importance for me. I had tried to pull him up, without any sort of success, of course, and it simply maddened me to see what Crispin was doing. So I lost my temper and spoke out. I told him what I thought of him. He listened to me very quietly, then he suddenly threw his head up at me like a snake hissing. He said a lot of things. That was the first time I heard all his nonsensical stuff about sensations. We haven't time now, and anyway it wasn't very new—the philosophy that as this was our only existence we had better make the most of it, that we had been given our senses to use, not to stifle, and the rest of it. Omar put it better than Crispin.
"He had also a lot of talk about Power, that if he liked he could have any one in his power, and so could I if I liked. You had only to know other people's weaknesses enough. And more than that. Some stuff about its being good for people to suffer. That the thing that made life interesting and worth while was its intensity, and that life was never so intense as when we were suffering. That, after all, God liked us to suffer. Why shouldn't we be gods? We might be if we only had courage enough.
"It was then, that morning, that it first entered my head that there was something wrong with him—something wrong with his brain. It had never occurred to me during all those months because he had always been so logical, but now—he seemed to step across the little bridge that separates the sane from the insane. You know how small that bridge is?" Harkness nodded his head.
"Then all in a moment he took my arm and twisted it. I can't give you any sort of idea how queer and nasty that was. As he did it he peered into my face as though he didn't want to miss the slightest shadow of an expression. Then—I don't know if you noticed when he shook hands with you—his fingers haven't any bones in them, and yet they are beastly powerful. He ought to be soft all over and he isn't. He twisted my arm once and smiled. It was all I could do to keep from knocking him down. But I broke away, told him to go to hell and left the house. From that moment I hated him.
"It was directly after this that I noticed for the first time that he had his eye on Hesther, and he had his eye upon her exactly because she hated him and wouldn't go near him if she could possibly help it. I must stop for a moment and tell you something about her. You've seen her, but you cannot have any kind of idea how wonderful she really is.
"She has the most honourable loyal character you've ever seen in woman. And she's never been in love—she doesn't know what love is. Those are the two most important things about her. That doesn't mean that she's ignorant of life. There's nothing mean or sordid or disgusting that hasn't come into her experience through her beauty of a father, but she's stood up to it all—until this, this Crispin marriage. The first thing in her life she's funked.