“Yet there’s a sort of entertainment about Aunt Hester,” he said. “It amuses me to see how silly and preposterous she can be. But what about your deadly old father, darling? What can be said for Uncle Ronald?”
He waited to see if Violet could find anything to say for Uncle Ronald.
“Don’t bother your head over trying to find a decent point about him,” he said. “It’s so comfortable being able to talk him over quite frankly with you, because you’ve never had the slightest real feeling for him, and so I can say what’s in my mind without fear of hurting you. And probably I know him better than you, for it’s my privilege to sit over the table with him when you’ve taken the female part of the menagerie out of dinner, and to see him at his most characteristic moments. He’s really himself you know then, when I entice him out of his eclipse of sobriety, and he gets a little squiffy. He comes out then: the shadow of temperance passes off his bloated old face.”
She interrupted him, still shuddering at him.
“Ah, you’re dreadful!” she said. “Why do you let him get like that? You encourage him to: it amuses you in some horrible manner to see him degrade himself.”
“Lord! He doesn’t need much encouragement,” said Colin. “I fancy he encourages himself quite sufficiently when I’m not there to help him. To-morrow I shall just look at the cellar-book, and see how much he has encouraged himself since I’ve been away. Don’t misunderstand me now, wilfully or unintentionally, and think that I grudge him drinking a bottle or two of port every night, even though he’s rapidly finishing all the 1860 vintage which is quite irreplaceable. What I object to is that I should have to sit there and see him growing more purple and nauseous while he’s doing it. But clearly, as long as he’s with us, I can’t be so inhospitable as to stint my own uncle and your father of the only thing he cares about. Certainly I wish he would take to whisky, so that other guests of mine might get a few glasses of wine before he has finished it all, but Uncle Ronald doesn’t begin on whisky till he goes to the smoking-room.... The filthy old pig. Cigarette, darling? It will soothe you.”
Violet got up.
“Colin, I can’t stay and listen to you talking about my father like that,” she said. “It amuses you to make him drink, and it’s horrible of you.”
Colin lit his cigarette with great deliberation.
“Well, if you can’t stay and listen to me,” he said, “you can go away. But you’re not going: you want to hear what I’ve got to say next. Ah! You sit down again, I notice.”