“Go to the villa at Capri then.”
“Ah, don’t talk of it,” said Colin, getting up. “Can’t I see the stone-pine frying in the sunshine. And the freesias will be out, and the wall-flowers. Nino, your old boatman’s son, wrote to me the other day. He said the spring had come, and the vines were budding, and it was already hot! Hot! I could have cried for envy. Don’t let’s talk of it.”
“But I will talk about it,” said Philip. “I’m master here yet....”
“Father, I don’t like that joke,” said Colin.
“Very well. We’ll leave it out and be serious. I shall talk to Violet, too.”
“No, no, no!” said Colin without conviction. “Hullo, here is Vi. Please don’t mention the name of that beloved island again or I shall cry. Morning, Vi. You’re enough sunshine for anyone.”
Colin strolled out of the room so as to leave the others together, and presently Philip passed through the long gallery, and was certainly engaged in telephoning for a while. It was a trunk-call, apparently, for there was an interval between the ringing up and the subsequent conversation. All that day neither Philip nor Violet made the least allusion to Capri, but there was certainly something in the air.... The last post that night, arriving while they were at cards, brought a packet for Lord Yardley, which he opened.
“There, that’s the way to treat obstinate fellows like you, Colin,” he observed, and tossed over to him the book of tickets to Naples and back.
“Father and Violet, you’re brutes,” he said. “I give up.”
Colin was ever so easily persuaded by Mr. Cecil to spend a couple of nights, if not more, in Naples, before he went across to the island, and he had a youthful, pathetic tale to tell. They had had a terrible time in England. No doubt Mr. Cecil had seen the notice of his brother’s death—Mr. Cecil could imagine his father’s grief, and indeed his own and Violet’s. Kind messages, by the way, from them both: they would none of them forgive him, if he came to England this year and did not reserve at least a week for them, either in London or at Stanier.... Then Colin himself had caught influenza, and his father and wife had insisted on his going south for a week or two and letting the sun soak into him. But after that month of secluded mourning at Stanier, it was rather heavenly—Colin looked like a seraph who had strayed into a sad world, as he said this—to pass a couple of days in some sort of city where there were many people, and all gay, some stir of life and distraction from his own sorrowful thoughts.