They walked off up the shady alley of grass to where, at the end, an opening cut in the trees gave a wide view over the plain. The ground in front fell sharply away in slopes of steep turf, dotted with hawthorns a little past the fulness of their flowering. A couple of miles away the red roofs of Rye smouldered in the blaze of the day, outlined against the tidal water of the joined rivers, that went seawards in expanse of dyke-contained estuary. On each side of it stretched the green levels of the marsh, with Winchelsea floating there a greener island on the green of that grassy ocean, and along its margin to the south the sea like a silver wire was extended between sky and land. To the right for foreground lay the yew-encompassed terraces, built and planted by Colin the first, the lowest of which fringed the broad water of the lake, and along them burned the glory of the June flower-beds. Behind, framed in the trees between which they had passed, the south-east front of the house rose red and yellow between the lines of green.
The two stood silent awhile.
“Ah, Colin,” said his father, “we’re at one about Stanier. It beats in your blood as it does in mine. I wish to God that when I was dead....”
He broke off.
“I want to talk to you about two things,” he said. “Raymond’s one of them, but we’ll take the other first. About Italy. I’ll take you with me if you want to come. I was reluctant, but I am reluctant no longer. Apart from my inclination which, as I tell you, is for it now not against it, you’ve got a certain right to come. You and I will live in the villa where I lived with your mother. I’ve left it you, by the way. My romance, my marriage with her, and our life together, was so short and was so utterly cut off from everybody else that, as you know, I’ve always kept it like that, severed from all of you. But you’re her son, my dear, and in some ways you are so like her that it’s only right you should share my memories and my ghosts. They’re twenty-one years old now, and they’ve faded, but they are there. There’s only one thing I want of you; that is, not to ask me any questions about her. Certain things I’ll tell you, but anything I don’t tell you....”
He broke off for a moment.
“Anything I don’t tell you is my private affair,” he said.
“I understand, father,” said Colin.
“You’ll probably see your Uncle Salvatore,” continued Philip. “So be prepared for a shock. He usually comes over when he hears I am at the villa ... but never mind that. He takes himself off when he’s got his tip. So that’s settled. If you get bored you can go away.”
“That is good of you, father,” said the boy.