He threw the match away, and again put his arm through Violet’s.
“I don’t grudge him his wine,” he said, “because I want everybody to do as he pleases. He may drink himself into his grave as soon as he likes or sooner for all I care, and in fact I give him the shovel, so to speak, to dig himself in. But what I do grudge is the damnable infliction of his company on me. And Uncle Ronald seems to think that Stanier belongs to him. I hinted, ever so gently to-night, that I supposed he would settle down in London when he comes back from Aix, and he said that was out of the question, because he couldn’t possibly think of leaving Granny. Now I hated that. To begin with Granny has no more use for him than she has for a toothache, and also it’s quite untrue. Supposing Granny—it doesn’t seem likely—were to die, he wouldn’t dream of leaving Stanier, unless I kicked him out. And what I hated most was his notion that he has a right to live at Stanier, and guzzle and snore his days away. He’s got a house in London; let him go and live there, and since he can’t leave Granny, I suppose he’ll take her with him. Aunt Margaret will go too then, though it doesn’t matter what Aunt Margaret does, as it’s impossible to tell whether she’s there or not. Sometimes I’m afraid of sitting down on her by mistake: it’s dreadfully difficult to be aware of her. Of course when one is aware of her, she’s a crashing bore. She fills up space somehow, without putting anything there. Such a lady, too! All her nature is swallowed up in being a lady. After all, Vi, they’ve paid Stanier a nice long visit. Something over twenty years, off and on, and chiefly on. But isn’t it time almost that the menagerie went to a new place? Barnum used to travel, you know: they all do.”
Violet had never contemplated any possibility of such a thing, nor imagined that Colin would. Always at Stanier there had been this background of relatives; what would it be like to be here alone with Colin? As if he had heard her unspoken thought, he answered it.
“And you and I are never together alone, Vi,” he said. “Never since our honeymoon at Capri have we been alone.”
“Do you want to be?” she asked.
He laughed.
“No, darling: I should hate it. I only wanted to see how you would look if I suggested it. You looked just as I imagined you would. But I daresay that won’t often happen: don’t be alarmed.... Now I’ve inserted into Uncle Ronald’s mind the notion that perhaps, when he comes back to England from Aix, he might live at his own charges for a bit, and I want you to-morrow, to touch on it again. In a little while he will get it into his head.... Not at once, of course: one couldn’t expect that. Tell him he may take away all the 1860 port that he hasn’t already drunk. That may be an inducement, or there mayn’t be much in it: I will go through the cellar-book. Granny, I’m afraid, won’t go with him, though he can’t leave her. We shall have a lot of people here all the autumn, I expect, and Uncle Ronald isn’t—well, he isn’t really up to parties any more. He behaves as if he was alone: he makes windy noises in his throat. And we’ll begin to ask Aunt Hester for certain dates, don’t you know: the twelfth to the seventeenth, underlined.”
“Stanier has always been a home to the older generation,” said Violet. “I don’t know how Father will take it.”
“He’ll take it neat, probably,” said Colin. “But I really don’t see why, because Stanier has always been a geological museum for family fossils, it should continue to be. That’s all about that, darling. Please do as I tell you. Ah, and how’s Dennis?”
“Very flourishing, and learning to walk so quickly.”