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 (during which she slept in so incredible a number of beds), 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 (on the evidence of his memoirs) that he then went to sleep.

Up to this point the story is likely enough; a pedant might unsniffingly accept it. But then there occurred (or is said to have occurred) the event which forms the basis of the Stanier legend, and it will certainly be rejected, in spite of a certain scrap of parchment still extant and of the three centuries of sequel, by all sensible and twentieth-century minds.

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, indeed, these were his already) 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.

For his part, Colin had no sort of hesitation in accepting so tempting an offer, and Satan thereupon produced for his perusal (he was able to read) a slip of parchment on which the conditions were firmly and plainly stated. A scratch with his knife on the forearm supplied the ink for the signature, and Satan provided him with a pen. He was bidden to keep the document as a guarantee of the good faith of his bargainer; the red cloak flashed for a moment in front of his eyes, dazzling him, and he staggered and fell back on the heap of straw from which he had just risen.