For many years now with Philip Yardley a widower and his mother old, Stanier had withdrawn itself from the splendour of its traditional hospitalities, but now with the installation of Violet and Colin there, on their return from Italy, it blossomed out again into lavish and magnificent flower. Throughout November a succession of parties assembled there for the pheasant shooting, and in the early frosts of that December the wild fowl, snipe and duck and teal in the marshes, and the unprecedented abundance of woodcock in the park, gave an added lustre to the battues. In the evening, after an hour’s concert, or some theatrical entertainment for which the artists had come from London or Paris, the band reassembled in the long gallery, and dancing kept the windows bright almost till the rising of the late dawn. There were many foreign royalties in England that year, and none left without a visit to Stanier, accompanied by cousins of the English house. Stanier, in fact, opened its doors, as in the days before the stroke fell on Philip’s father, and fairly outshone its own records for magnificence. Colossal in extravagance, there was yet nothing insensate in its splendour; it shone, not for purposes of dazzling, but only as reasserting its inherent and historical gorgeousness.
Violet seemed born to the position which she now occupied. While Colin’s father lived, it was his pleasure that she should be hostess here, and she picked up the reins, and drove the great gold coach along, as if she had been born and trained all her life for that superb r?le. She and Colin, at Philip’s wish, occupied the wing which was only tenanted by the heir and his wife, and though at his death, so he supposed, they would not step from porch{261} to possession, he loved to give them this vicarious regency.
Out of the silver safe there had come for her the toilet set by Paul Lamerie, boxes and brushes, candle-stick and spirit lamp, and, above all, the great square mirror mounted on a high base. Amarini of chiselled metal supported it on each side; there was no such piece known in museum or royal closet. A double cable-band encircled the base, and the man who was in charge of the plate showed Colin how, by pressing a stud in the cable just above the maker’s mark, the side of the base sprang open disclosing a secret drawer. For some reason not even known to himself, Colin had not passed on that curious contrivance to Violet.
Then Philip had brought out for her, as Colin’s wife, those incredible jewels, which his mother, tenant for life, had long suffered to repose in their chests, and one night she gleamed with the Stanier pearls, another she smouldered among the burning pools of the rubies, another she flashed with the living fire of those cascades of diamonds, and more than once she wore the sapphire to which so strange a story was attached. Some said that it had once belonged to the regalia, and that Elizabeth had no more right to give it to her favourite who founded the splendour of to-day, than she had to bequeath to him the sceptre of her realm, but though twice an attempt had been made on the part of the Crown to recover it, once at Elizabeth’s death, and once with the coming of the German Dynasty, the Crown had not proved successful on either of these inauspicious occasions, and had to content itself with what it had.
This great stone was of 412 carats in weight, soft cornflower blue in colour, and matchless in aqueous purity. How it had got among the Crown jewels none knew, but its possession was even then considered a presage and a fulfilment of prosperity, for, beyond doubt, Elizabeth had worn it on her withered breast every day while her fleet was sailing to encounter the Armada. By tradition the wearer was decked with no other jewels when it blazed{262} forth, and indeed its blue flame would have withered any lesser decoration. It figured in the Holbein portrait of its original possessor in the Stanier line, as a brooch to Colin’s doublet, and there once more, impersonating his ancestor, Colin wore it at the fancy dress ball which concluded the last of these December parties. This took place the night before Raymond came back from Cambridge.
Strange undercurrents, swirling and eddying, moved so far below the surface of the splendour that no faintest disturbance reached it. Admirable as was the manner in which Violet filled her part, it was not of her that Philip thought, or at her that he looked, when he waited with her and Colin for the entrance of royal visitors before dinner in the great hall. Day after day the glass doors were opened, but to his way of thinking it was neither for Violet nor for them that they swung wide, but for Colin. His own life he believed to be nearly consumed, but about the ash of it there crept red sparks, and these, too, were Colin’s. All his emotions centred there. It was for him and his matchless charm, that these great gatherings were arranged. Philip obliterated himself, and feasted his soul on the sight of Colin as lord of Stanier. While Raymond lived that could never come to pass, but he beguiled himself with the fantasy that when his own eyes grew dim in death, Colin’s splendour would light the halls from which he himself had faded. That of all the material magnificence of which he still was master, had power to stimulate him; sceptical of any further future for himself, and incurious as to what that might be, if it existed at all, the only future that he desired was for the son on whom all his love was centred. He knew that he was cheating himself, that this sight of Colin playing host at Stanier was one that, in all human probability, would never after his death be realised, but it was in his power now to give Colin a taste of it, and himself share its sweetness. For this reason he had arranged that these gorgeous weeks of entertainment should{263} take place before Raymond got back from Cambridge, for with Raymond here, Raymond, the heavy and the unbeloved, must necessarily exclude Colin from the place which his father so rapturously resigned to him. At Christmas there would be just the family party, and he would be very civil to his eldest son.
Such was the course pursued by one of these undercurrents; two others sprang from Violet, one in direct opposition to that of her father-in-law. For she knew that, so far from his death dethroning her and giving the sovereignty to Raymond, it but passed on to her with complete and personal possession. Could his spirit revisit these earthly scenes, it would behold her in ownership on her own account of all the titles and splendours that had been his. Raymond—there alone her knowledge marched with his desire—would be without status here, while for Colin there would be just such position as his marriage with her gave him. She, exalted now by Philip’s desire, to play hostess in virtue of her marriage, would be hostess indeed hereafter, and Colin host through his relationship to her.
These weeks had given her a hint, a foretaste, of what would be hers, and once more, as in her maidenhood, she felt that she would have made any marriage in order to robe herself thus. The splendour of what she was lent had set light to her old ambitions again, and this was all to be hers, not lent, but her own. She would enter into the fabled inheritance of the legend, that legend to which, for its very remoteness, she had never given two serious thoughts. But now, though it still wore, like a cloak over its head, its unconvincing medi?valism, the shape of it vaguely outlined and indifferently regarded, had something sinister about it. It did not matter; it was only an ugly shadow in the background, but now she averted her eyes from it, instead of merely not noticing it.
Here, then, was the second undercurrent, which, sluggish and veiled, yet steadily moved within her. For though with the passing of the inheritance to her, it would{264} be she who came within the scope and focus of the legend, which, frankly, when looked in the face, presented that meaningless, age-worn countenance, she felt that she was in the grip of it not directly but, somehow, through Colin. She told herself that by no combination of diabolical circumstance could that be; for, with the knowledge that was hers about the date of Colin’s birth and his mother’s marriage, it was he, he and Raymond, who had passed out of reach of the parchment with its promises and its penalty. Yet instinct, unconvinced by reason, told her that it was through Colin that she and the children she would bear him, would be swept into the mysterious incredible eddy. Was it the persistent luck that attended him which induced so wildly superstitious a presage? Like some supernaturally protected being, he passed along his way. Raymond’s attempt to kill him had, by the merest most fortuitous circumstance of a punctured tyre, led to Raymond’s utter helplessness in his hands.... Colin moved on a charmed pilgrimage, idolised and adored by herself, by his father, by all who came in contact with him and, she was beginning to see, he had no spark of love in him that was kindled by these fires. Analyse him and you would find no faintest trace of it. Perhaps, in spite of his twenty-one years now so nearly complete, he had remained a child still in respect of the heart’s emotions. Yet who could hate like Colin? Who, so she shuddered to think, could have shewn, though but for a second, so white-hot a mask of fury as he had once turned on herself?
She could not succeed in forgetting that, and all Colin’s warmth and eagerness of affection to her ever since, could not wash that out. All day, perhaps, in the hospitable discharge of their duties, they would scarcely have a word together, but when at length for a few hours of rest the house grew silent, he sought her side, relaxed and sleepy, yet tingling, so she felt, with some quality of vitality that no one else had a spark of. Youth and high spirits, the zest of life and the endless power of enjoyment filled the{265} house, but Colin alone, unwearied and eminent as the sun, lit up all others. It was not the exuberance of his health and energy that was the source of his burning; something inspired them.
 
The last night had come. To-morrow morning their guests would depart, and during the day Raymond would arrive. That night there had been the fancy dress ball, and she, wearing the crown and necklace and girdle made by Cellini, had impersonated the ill-fated Duchess of Milan for whom they were made, and who, while wearing them, had drunk the poisoned draught which she had herself prepared for her lover. Colin adored that story; the lover, a mere groom of the chambers, he averred, was a sort of old Colin Stanier—all prospered with him, even to the removal of his mistress in this manner, for she was growing old and wearied him with her insatiable desire. Colin himself had appeared as his ancestor wearing the great sapphire.
Violet had undressed and got into bed, while he remained downstairs with two or three men who still lingered. The Cellini jewels lay on her dressing-table, and feeling too sleepy to plait her hair, she had just let it down, and it lay in a spread web of gold over her pillow. Then the door from his dressing-room softly opened, and he looked in.
“Not asleep?” he asked.
“No, but nearly. Oh, Colin, stand under the light a moment. There! The sapphire is alive to-night. It’s like a blue furnace of flame. Now shield it from the light.”
Violet sat up in bed. “But it’s the most extraordinary thing!” she said. “Not a ray from the lamp touches it, yet it’s burning as brightly as ever. Where does the light come from? It comes from below it. I believe it comes from you. I’m frightened of you. Are you a fire?”
It seemed to him no less than her that some conflagration not lit from without burnt in the heart of the stone.{266} Blue rays, generated within, shot from it; it shone with some underlying brilliance, as if, as she had said, it was he who kindled it.
“Watch it, then,” he said, unbuckling his cloak. Even as he detached it from him, the fire in it grew dim; only the reflection from outside fed it. Incredulous at what she thought she saw, willing to attribute it to some queer effect of faceted surfaces, she laughed.
“You’ve killed it,” she said. “I think I shall have to give it you, when it’s mine, so that you may keep it alive.”
“Ah, do,” he said. “When you come into your own—may that day be far distant.”
“Indeed, yes,” she said.
He sat down on the edge of his bed, and began unloosing the jewelled buttons of his doublet.
“I believe my father would almost give it me now,” he said, “though I suppose he has no right to, just as Elizabeth gave it to the other Colin. I simply adore it. I’ve been saying my prayers to it, standing in front of the picture.”
“Is that what has kept you?” she asked.
“No, they didn’t take me long. The Prince kept me; he wanted to hear the whole of the legend. He was frightfully impressed; he said he felt as if the original Colin had been telling it him, and expects nightmare. He also besought me to swear allegiance when I come of age and see what happens. I really think I shall, though, after all, I haven’t got much to complain of in the way of what the world can give.”
“But it will be I, really, to choose whether I do that or not,” said Violet.
“Well, I couldn’t tell him that,” said Colin, “though as a matter of fact, I forgot it. In any case it isn’t I to do that. Raymond’s the apparent heir-apparent, and dear Raymond has shewn his allegiance pretty well already, though one doesn’t quite see why Satan made my bicycle-tyre to puncture. If he had been on Raymond’s side, my face would have been nearly blown to bits. No,{267} Raymond’s not his favourite. Fancy Raymond being anybody’s favourite. Oh, Vi, a thousand pardons; he was yours just for a little.”
Colin was slowly undressing as he gave utterance to these reflections. He had taken off his shirt, and his arms, still brown from the tanning of the sun and sea, were bare to the shoulder.
“You brute, Colin,” she said, “you brown, bare brute.”
“Shall I dress again,” said he, “if a bare arm shocks you?”
“No, I don’t mind that. It’s the brute I object to. By the way, Raymond comes to-morrow—to-day rather. How on earth can I behave to him with decency? Don’t you wish he wasn’t coming?”
Colin picked up a long tress of her hair and wound it round his arm.
“No, I’m looking forward to his coming,” he said, smiling. “I’m going to make Raymond wish that he had never been born. I’m going to be wonderfully agreeable to him, and everything I say shall have a double meaning. Raymond wanted to kill me; well, I shall shew him that there are other ways of scoring off people. My father isn’t very fond of Raymond as it is, but when he sees how pleasant I am to him, and how black and sulky Raymond is to me, he won’t become any fonder of him. I must think it all out.... And then all the time Raymond will be consoling himself with the thought that when father dies his day will come, and he’ll reign in his stead. There’s the cream of it, Vi! He’ll be longing for my father to die, you know, and when he does Raymond will be worse off than ever. And you, you once said, ‘Poor Raymond!’ to me. Raymond’s got to pay for that. I won’t have Raymond pitied.”
Never had Colin worn a more radiant face than when, walking in and out of his dressing-room, brown and lithe, as he divested himself of his gorgeous dress and put on his night clothes, his beautiful mouth framed itself to this rhapsody of hatred. There was nothing passionate about{268} it, except its sincerity; he did not rage and foam on the surface of his nature, he but gleamed with the fire that seemed so strangely to have lit up those wonderful rays in the sapphire that he had been wearing. He still held it in his hand when, after having turned out the lights in his dressing-room, he closed the door and sprang to her side.
“I don’t like to leave it alone,” he said. “I must pin it to the pillows. It will watch over us. With you and it by me, I shall lie in enchantment between waking and sleeping, floating on the golden sea of your hair. Raymond, let’s make plans for Raymond....”
She lay in the warm tide of his tingling vitality, and soon fell asleep. But presently she tore herself out of the clutch of some hideous vision, which faded from vagueness into non-existence as she woke and heard his breathing, and felt his cheek resting on her shoulder.
 
The next night, instead of the long cloth which, evening after evening, had stretched from the window of the great dining-room to the Elizabethan sideboard at the other end, there was spread near the fire, for the night was cold, a small round table that just held the five of them—Philip and his mother, Violet, Raymond, and Colin—and instead of the rows of silver sconces in the dark panels, four red-shaded candlesticks, sufficient for purposes of knife and fork, left the rest of the room in a velvety dimness. Raymond had arrived only just in time to dress for dinner, coming into the gallery but half a minute before his father, while Colin, who all this week had been a model of punctuality, had not appeared yet. Philip gave his arm to his mother, and behind, unlinked, came Violet and Raymond. He had advanced to her with elbow formally crooked, but she, busy with a sleeve-lace that had caught in her bracelet, moved on apart from him. She had shaken hands with him, and given him a cool cordial word, but she felt incapable of more than that.
Philip sat down with a sigh of relief.{269}
“A reasonable evening at last,” he said, “though I wouldn’t say that if Colin were here. I believe he got fresher and livelier every day. Ah, Raymond, you must know we’ve had some parties here. Colin took your place, as you had to be at Cambridge.”
Raymond tried to put into his answer the geniality he did not feel.
“I know,” he said. “The daily picture papers have been full of Colin. Are you having more people at Christmas, father?”
“No, just ourselves as usual.”
Raymond turned to Violet. “You had a fancy-dress ball last night, hadn’t you?” he said. “I could have got down yesterday if I had known.”
Philip conjectured a reproach in this and resented it. The last few weeks had been planned by him as “Colin’s show.” If Colin could not step into his shoes when he was dead, he could wear them for a week or two while he lived.
“I thought your term was not over till to-day,” he said.
“I could have got leave,” replied Raymond. “But I understand, father.”
Philip felt rising in him that ceaseless regret that Colin was not his first-born. And that jealousy of Colin, implied in Raymond’s “I understand” irritated his father. He wanted Colin to come and relieve the situation, as he always did.
“What exactly do you mean by that?” he asked.
Suddenly old Lady Yardley joined in. “I know what he means, Philip,” she said. “He means that he should have been host here, if you were going to depute one of your sons to do the honours for you, and that you preferred that Colin should do them instead. That is what he means.”
“There, mother, that’s enough,” said Philip.
An embarrassed silence ensued, broken by the sound of running steps in the gallery. Just as they arrived at the door, which one of the footmen opened, there was a{270} loud crash and Colin slid in on his back, and had begun to laugh before he picked himself up.
“Gosh, what a bang!” he said. “I believe somebody greased the boards in the hope that I should be in a hurry and fall down. Sorry, father; sorry, granny; sorry, Violet, for upsetting all your nerves. Why—Raymond!”
Colin laid his hand affectionately on his brother’s shoulder.
“I never knew you had come,” he said. “How are you, dear Raymond? How’s Cambridge? We have missed you in all this hullabaloo. Every one asked after you and wanted to know why you weren’t here.”
Colin took the vacant place between Violet and his grandmother.
“How far have you all got?” he said. “Oh, very well, I won’t have any soup. Now this is jolly! Just ourselves, Granny, and short coats and black ties. Vi, darling, why didn’t you come and pull me out of my bath? I was just lying soaking there; I had no idea it was so late.”
Colin spared one fleeting glance at his brother, and began to put into words some of the things he had thought about in his bath.
“Raymond, it is time that you came home,” he said. “The pigeons are worse than ever in the Old Park, and I’m no earthly use at that snap-shooting between the oaks. Give me a rabbit coming towards me along a road, not too fast, and a rest for my gun, I can hit it in the face as well as anybody. But those pigeons among the oaks beat me.”
“Yes, we might have a morning in the Old Park to-morrow,” said his father.
Colin looked at Violet as if she had called his attention to something.
“Yes, Vi, what?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Oh, I thought you jogged my elbow. To-morrow, father? Oh, what a bore! I promised to play golf. But{271} I shall be back by one if I go on my motor-bicycle. May I join you at that sharp corner in the road; that’s about half-way to the keeper’s lodge, and I could come on with you from there.”
“But that corner is at the far end of the Old Park,” said his father.
“Is it? The one I mean has a big rhododendron bush close to it. You know where I mean, Raymond. Is it at the far end?”
“Yes, that’s the far end,” said Raymond.
“I believe you’re right. Oh, of course you’re right, and I’m idiotic. It’s where I picked you up one day in the autumn when you had been after the pigeons.”
Colin applied himself to his dinner, and caught the others up.
“There’s something in my mind connected with that day,” he said, “and I can’t remember what it is. I had been playing golf, and I punctured, and walked back along the ridge instead of wheeling my bicycle along the road. Something funny: I remember laughing. Vi, darling, can’t you remember? Or didn’t I tell you?”
Violet saw that even in the red glow of the candle-shades Raymond’s face had turned white. There was red light upon it, but not of it.
“You certainly did not tell me,” she said in sheer pity. “I remember the day, too. There was a man who had escaped from the asylum and stolen a gun from the keeper’s....”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Colin. “I believe that’s on the track. A man with a gun.”
Philip laughed.
“One of the most amusing things I ever heard, Colin,” he said. “I am surprised at Violet’s forgetting it. Is that all?”
Colin turned to his grandmother. “Granny, they’re all laughing at me because I can’t remember. Father’s laughing at me, so is Violet. You and Raymond are the only kind ones. Man with a gun, Raymond shooting{272} pigeons. That makes two men with a gun. Then there was me.”
“The very best story, Colin. Most humorous,” said his father.
Colin sighed. “Sometimes I think of things just as I’m going to sleep,” he said. “If I think of it to-night, I shall wake Violet and tell her, and then she’ll remember it if I can’t. Man with a gun....”
“Oh, Colin, stop it,” said Violet.
“Well, let’s put it to the vote,” said Colin. “Father and Violet want me to stop trying to remember it; little do they know how it would amuse them if I did. Granny and I want me to go on—don’t you, dear—it all depends on Raymond. What shall I do, Ray?”
Raymond turned to his father, appearing not to hear Colin’s question.
“Did you have good sport last week?” he asked.
“Ah, Raymond votes against us, Granny,” said Colin. “He’s too polite to tell me directly. We’re squashed, Granny; we’ll squash them at whist afterwards; you and I shall be partners, and we’ll play Raymond and father for their immortal souls. It will be like the legend, won’t it? Violet shall look on and wonder whether her poor husband is going to heaven or hell. I keep my immortal soul in a drawer close to Violet’s bedside, Granny. So if we lose, she will have to go up to her bedroom and bring it down. Oh, I say, I’m talking too much. Nobody else can get a word in edgeways.”
It was a fact that the other four were silent, but Raymond had the faculty of producing silence in his neighbours. Cigarettes had come now with coffee, and this was the usual signal for old Lady Yardley to rise. To-night, however, she took no notice of the gold-mounted stick which was put into her hand by Philip.
“Never mind them, my dear,” she said, “they are amusing themselves. Listen to me, Colin.”
There was no other voice in the room but hers, the servants had gone out, and again she spoke. No one moved;{273} no one spoke; but Raymond opposite her leaned forward; Violet leaned left-wise; Philip, with her stick in his hand leaned to the right. She dropped her voice to a whisper, but in the tense stillness a shout would not have been more audible.
“There are strange things in this house, darling,” said she to Colin. “I have been here sixty years, and I know better than anybody. Green leaf I have been, and flower and fruit, and now I am withered. Sixty years ago, my dear, I sold my soul to the master of it, and from that moment I have been a ghost, oh, such a happy ghost, looking on at the glory of the house. And then my son Philip married, and he brought you here, and the moment I set eyes on you I loved you, for I knew that you were born of the blood and the bargain....”
Philip drew back his chair and got up.
“There’s your stick, mother,” he said. “We’ll follow you quite soon, or it will be too late for your game of whist.”
She fumbled for the crook of the handle, and rose; her eyes were bright, and as blue as the sapphire Colin had worn last night.
“Yes, but I must talk to Colin again,” she said. “No one understands me except Colin. There used to be other games than whist, Philip, at Stanier. There was dice-throwing, you know, on the altar of God. We are not so wicked now to all appearance. Whist in the gallery; far more seemly.”
Raymond held the door open for her, and she hobbled through, Violet following. As she passed out, Violet looked first at Raymond, and then swiftly away, with a shudder, at Colin.
“Don’t be long, Uncle Philip,” she said in a low voice. “Grandmamma is so queer to-night.”
Colin moved up next his father.
“Give me a glass of port, father,” he said. “Here’s Raymond back, and I’m so glad to see him. Your health, Ray!{274}”
He drank off his glass. “Father, isn’t it lovely to have Raymond back again?” he said. “But—this is an aside—he’s putting on flesh. May your shadow never grow more, Raymond. Tell us all about Cambridge; has it been delightful? I’m sure it has; for otherwise you wouldn’t look so prosperous. Speech! Mustn’t we have a speech from him, father?”
There, on one side of Philip, was Colin, brimming with good humour and welcome, brimming, too, as he had shewn during dinner with the mere nonsense born of happiness. On the other side was Raymond, serious and unresponsive, without a spark to answer this crackling fire. There he sat, and what sort of host would he have made during these last weeks? He made no attempt to reply to Colin, and but fingered the stem of his glass.
“You might tell us what has been going on, Raymond,” said his father.
“Nothing particular. Just the ordinary term. I’ve been playing for the University at soccer. I shall probably be in the team.”
“And you never told us?” said Colin. “Lord! What a swell he is, father! We’re not worthy to hear about it; that’s what is the matter with us.”
Philip turned to Raymond. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s pleasant news. There’s Colin here, who won’t do anything more violent than golf.”
“Oh, father! What about shooting pigeons?” said Colin. “Oh, no, Raymond did that. Bother! There was a man with a gun....”
Philip got up. “Now don’t get on to that again,” he said. “You’ve amused us enough for one night....”
“But I may amuse Vi, mayn’t I, if I think of the rest of it?” asked Colin.
Philip turned his back on him and took Raymond’s arm. He had the sense of behaving with great fairness, but the impartiality demanded effort.
“Ring the bell, Colin, will you?” he said over his s............