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COLIN

E. F. BENSON

COLIN MISS MAPP PETER LOVERS AND FRIENDS DODO WONDERS-- "QUEEN LUCIA" ROBIN LINNET ACROSS THE STREAM UP AND DOWN AN AUTUMN SOWING THE TORTOISE DAVID BLAIZE DAVID BLAIZE AND THE BLUE DOOR MICHAEL THE OAKLEYITES ARUNDEL OUR FAMILY AFFAIRS

COLIN

BY E. F. BENSON

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COLIN. II

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

COLIN

E. F. B.

COLIN

Neither superstition nor spiritual aspiration signified anything particular to the Staniers, and for many generations now they had been accustomed to regard their rather sinister family legend with cynical complacency. Age had stolen the strength from it, as from some long-cellared wine, and in the Victorian era they would, to take their collective voice, have denied that, either drunk or sober, they believed it. But it was vaguely pleasant to have so antique a guarantee that they would be so sumptuously looked after in this world, while as for the next....

The legend dated from the time of Elizabeth, and was closely connected with the rise of the family into the pre-eminent splendour which it had enjoyed ever since. The Queen, in one of her regal journeys through her realm , visited the affiliated Cinque Port of Rye, and, after taking dinner with the mayor, was riding down one of the steep, cobbled ways when her horse stumbled and came down on its knees.

She would certainly have had a cruel fall if a young man had not sprung forward from the crowd and caught her before her Grace's head was dashed against the stones. He set her on her feet, swiftly releasing the virgin's bosom from his rough embrace, and, kneeling, kissed the hem of her skirt.

The Queen bade him rise, and, as she looked at him, made some Elizabethan ejaculation of appreciative amazement--a "zounds," or a "gadzooks," or something.

There stood Colin Stanier in the full blossom of his twenty summers, ruddy as David and blue-eyed as the sea. His cap had fallen off, and he must needs toss back his head to free his face from the tumble of his yellow hair. His athletic effort to save her Grace had given him a moment's quickened breath, and his parted lips showed the double circle of his white teeth.

But, most of all, did his eyes capture the fancy of his Sovereign; they looked at her, so she thought, with the due appreciation of her majesty, but in their humility there was mingled something both gay and bold, and she loved that any man, young or old, high or humble, should look at her thus.

She spoke a word of thanks, and bade him wait on her next day at the Manor of Brede, where she was to lie that night. Then, motioning her courtiers aside with a testy gesture, she asked him a question or two while a fresh horse was being caparisoned and brought for her, and allowed none other but Colin to help her to mount....

It was thought to be significant that at supper that night the virgin sighed, and made her famous remark to my Lord of Essex that she wished sometimes that she was a milk-maid.

Colin Stanier's father was a man of some small substance, owning a little juicy land that was fine grazing for cattle, and the boy worked on the farm. He had some strange, magical power over the beasts; a savage dog would slaver and fawn on him, a vicious horse sheathed its violence at his touch, and, in especial at this season of lambing-time, he wrought wonders of midwifery on the ewes and of nursing on the lambs. This authoritative deftness sprang from no kindly love of animals; cleverness and contempt, with a dash of pity, was all he worked with, and this evening, after the Queen had passed on, it was reluctantly enough that he went down to the low-lying fields where his father's sheep were in pregnancy. The old man himself, as Colin ascertained, had taken the excuse of her Grace's visit to get more than usually intoxicated, and the boy guessed that he himself would be alone half the night with his lantern and his ministries among the ewes.

So, indeed, it proved, and the moon had sunk an hour after midnight, when he entered the shed in the lambing-field to take his bite of supper and get a few hours' sleep. He crunched his crusty bread and bacon in his strong teeth, he had a draught of beer, and, wrapping himself in his cloak, lay down. He believed that he then went to sleep.

For, according to the legend, Colin woke and found himself no longer alone in the shed; there was standing by him a finely-dressed fellow who smiled on him. It was still as dark as the pit outside--no faintest ray of approaching dawn yet streaked the eastern sky, yet for all that Colin could see his inexplicable visitor quite plainly.

The stranger briefly introduced himself as his Satanic majesty, and, according to his usual pleasant custom, offered the boy all that he could wish for in life--health and beauty and wealth, honour, and affluence, which at present were sadly lacking--on the sole condition that at his death his soul was to belong to his benefactor. The bargain--this was the unusual feature in the Stanier legend--was to hold good for all his direct descendants who, unless they definitely renounced the contract on their own behalf, would be partakers in these benefits and debtors in the other small matter.

The darkness was thick and impenetrable round him, but at the moment a distant flash of lightning blinked in through the open door, showing him that the shed was empty again. Outside, save for the drowsy answer of the thunder, all was quiet, but in his hand certainly was a slip of parchment.

The same, so runs the legend, is reproduced in the magnificent Holbein of the young man which hangs now above the mantelpiece in the hall of Stanier. Colin Stanier, first Earl of Yardley, looking hardly older than he did on this momentous night, stands there in Garter robes with this little document in his hand. The original parchment, so the loquacious housekeeper points out to the visitors who to-day go over the house on the afternoons when it is open to the public, is let into the frame of the same portrait.

This in itself is so excessively improbable that the whole business may be discredited from first to last. But there is no doubt whatever that Colin Stanier did some time sign a Latin document which has perished in the corroding years, whether he understood it or not, and there seems no doubt about the date in the bottom left-hand corner....

Of legendary significance, too, must be the story of Philip Stanier, third Earl, who is said to have renounced his part in the bargain, and thereupon fell from one misfortune into another, was branded with an incurable and disfiguring disease, and met his death on the dagger of an injured woman. Ronald Stanier, a nephew of the above, was another such recusant; he married a shrew, lost a fortune in the South Sea bubble, and had a singularly inglorious career.

But such instances as these , even if we could rely on their authenticity, would only seem to prove that those who renounced the devil and all his works necessarily met with misfortune in this life, which is happily not the case, and thus they tend to disprove rather than confirm the whole affair.

Finally, when we come to more modern times, and examine the records of the Stanier family from, let us say, the advent of the Hanoverian dynasty, though their splendour and distinction is ever a crescent, not a waning moon, there can be no reason to assign a diabolical origin to such prosperity. There were black sheep among them, of course, but when will you not find, in records so public as theirs, dark shadows thrown by the searchlight of history? Bargains with the powers of hell, in any case, belong to the romantic dusk of the Middle Ages, and cannot find any serious place in modern chronicles.

He wore but the breeches and jerkin in which he pursued his work among the beasts, his shapely legs were bare from knee to ankle, and as he entered the porch, he kicked off the shoes in which he had walked from Rye. His crook he insisted on retaining, and the lamb which, obedient to the spell that he exercised over young living things, lay quiet in his arms.

Some fussy Controller of the Queen's household would have ejected him and chanced the consequences, but, said Colin very quietly, "It is by her Majesty's orders that I present myself, and whether you buffet me or not, prithee tell the Queen's Grace that I am here."

There was something surprising in the dignity of the boy; and in the sweet-toned, clear-cut speech, so unlike the utterance of the mumbling rustic, and the Controller, bidding him wait where he was, shuffled upstairs, and came back with extraordinary expedition.

"Stanier," said Colin.

"Let us do her Majesty's bidding," said Colin.

He was ushered into the long hall of Brede Manor, and the Controller, having thrown the door open, slipped away with an alertness that suggested that his presence was desirable there no more, and left the boy, barefooted, clasping his lamb, with a rush-strewn floor to traverse. There was a table down the centre of it, littered with papers, and hemmed in with chairs that suggested that their occupants had hurriedly vacated them. At the end was seated a small, bent figure, conspicuous for her ruff and her red hair, and her rope of pearls, and her eyes bright and sharp as a bird's.

Colin, sadly pricked on the soles of his feet by the rushes, advanced across that immeasurable distance, looking downwards on his lamb. When he had traversed the half of it, he raised his eyes for a moment, and saw that the Queen, still quite motionless, was steadily regarding him. Again he bent his eyes on his lamb, and when he had come close to that formidable figure, he fell on his knees.

"A lamb, madam," he said, "which is the first-fruits of the spring. My crook, which I lay at your Grace's feet, and myself, who am not worthy to lie there."

Again Colin raised his eyes, and the wretch put into them all the gaiety and boldness which he gave to the wenches on the farm. Then he dropped them again, and with his whole stake on the table, waited, gambler as he was, for the arbitrament.

"Look at me, Colin Stanier," said the Queen.

Colin looked. There was the tiny wrinkled face, the high eyebrows, the thin-lipped mouth disclosing the discoloured teeth.

"Madam!" he said.

"Well, what next?" said Elizabeth impatiently.

"My body and soul, madam," said Colin, and once more he put into his eyes and his eager mouth that semblance of desire which had made Mistress Moffat, the wife of the mayor, box his ears with a blow that was more of a caress.

The Queen felt precisely the same as Mistress Moffat, and drew her hand down over his smooth chin. "And it is your wish to be my shepherd-boy, Colin?" she asked. "You desire to be my page?"

"I am sick with desire," said Colin.

"I appoint you," she said. "I greet and salute you, Colin Stanier."

She bent towards him, and neither saint nor devil could have inspired Colin better at that moment. He kissed her fairly and squarely on her withered cheek, and then, without pause, kissed the hem of her embroidered gown. He had done right, just absolutely right.

"You bold dog!" said the Queen. "Stand up."

Colin stood up, with his arms close by his side, as if at attention in all his shapeliness and beauty, and the Queen clapped her hands.

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