“Did you know there were such people as my father?” said Peter.
“Oh, but he’s your father,” said Silvia quickly. “You mustn’t bring him in.”
“Why not? After all, it’s he who brings himself in. There’s only one word for him. Bounder. Uncle Abe isn’t a bounder exactly. Uncle Henry isn’t a bounder.”
“No, he’s just a cad,” said Silvia enthusiastically. “I love people being themselves, whatever they happen to be. I should enjoy them much more, though, if you weren’t here.”
“I can go to-morrow morning,” said Peter.
For one moment she thought that he spoke seriously: the next she laughed at herself for having been hoaxed by his assumed sincerity of voice: “assumed” it just had to be.
“Ah, you said that beautifully,” she announced; “and all the evening, do you know, you’ve been saying things beautifully, with your mask on, too, your best and smartest mask. I’ve been listening to you, and never for a moment could I catch a word or a silence on your part to show that you weren’t thoroughly amused and interested by the aunts. You behaved as if they were just the sort of people you were accustomed to meet, but rather more charming. You have been convincing, and you were convincing just now when you suggested going away to-morrow.”
Peter had not, of course, meant to convey that he really could go away to-morrow, but it had been quite easy for him to render his seriousness plausible, since, though impossible, this was a most agreeable project. But what rendered that project so attractive was the escape not from the aunts and uncles, with whom he was quite as willing to be diverted as their niece, but from his father. His father, in this milieu, with his bounce and his bounding, his general “make-up” of the large-souled, childlike artist, now humbly bespeaking the indulgence of his patrons, and immediately afterwards behaving as if he was Michael Angelo, was intolerable. His gaiety, his singing, his family grouping, with himself as aged and contemplative parent, while the moment before he had been twirling his moustaches and bellowing out the song of the toreador, were indecencies for a son’s eye. If only he had been slightly fuzzy and intoxicated with many liqueur brandies like Uncle Henry, that would have been a palliative: as it was he was only intoxicated with himself....
Peter recalled himself from these impious meditations to the needs of or (if not the needs) the appropriateness for the immediate occasion. Silvia and he had contrived a lovers’ interlude under the stars.
“Will you always be as charitable to me as you are to my father?” he asked. “When I am absurd and annoying, will you just be amused?”