He could not persuade himself that the invitations evoked enthusiasm,
indeed two of them were declined at the beginning. Only Nina accepted
at once. She wrote: "How on earth did you find Sweetbay again--is it
still on the map? Yes, I will come--and with 'no encumbrances'--but I
won't promise to be rural so long as all that. If I were you, I would
arrange with the Stores for constant supplies. Can you depend on the
cook?"
Regina was obviously indignant at the exclusion of her husband. She
replied that her cousin's remembrance of their childhood was "quite
touching." This was underlined. "But though I fully understand that
Toto's presence would spoil your romantic plan, I cannot pretend to
forget that I am now a wife, Conrad." Conrad was perturbed. He drove
to Regent's Park and showed the letter to Nina, and she said that her
sister couldn't forget she was a wife, because she had married a remote
relation of Lord Polpero's.
"They have stayed at the 'Abbey,' my dear; at least she tells me they
have as often as she condescends to dine with us--Regent's Park is 'so
far away' from their poky little place in Mayfair! She can just call
it 'Mayfair' without getting a remonstrance from the postal
authorities. An 'Abbey' has been too much for her. Of course Polpero
is a pauper, and the Abbey's a wreck, but I believe she slept with the
family-tree over her bed. It's about the only tree of Polpero's that
the woodman has spared, but 'Gina feels Norman."
Conrad was still perturbed. He hastened to appease Regina, and
moderating his desires, implored "Toto" to spare her to him just for a
week or two. "Toto" said promptly that to spend a couple of months at
Sweetbay was exactly what she needed for her cough. So she was won,
and there remained only Ted to conquer.
As a young professional man with nothing to do, Ted had naturally been
slow to answer the letter. Young professional men make a point of
delaying a long time before they answer letters--it shows how busy they
are. After they have plenty of work on hand they answer more quickly.
When he wrote, he declared that the notion of renewing their boyish
memories in such tranquil quarters appealed to him more forcibly than
he could say, but he was "so terribly hard pressed that he feared he
would get no change until he ran over to Monte Carlo at the end of the
term." He was at the Bar, waiting for briefs.
Conrad called at his chambers, and bore him off to dinner. Ted was
fortunately independent of his profession, and his immutable purpose
was to convince people that it was wearing him to death. In the
restaurant he bent over his melon a brow corrugated by the cares of
imaginary suits; he frowned at his soup through a monacle as if he were
perpending an "Opinion." But it was a dinner of supreme excellence,
and then they adjourned to the club. If it had not been Ted's club
too, and socially undistinguished, Conrad might have aspired to greater
favours now. Invite a man to a club for which he is ineligible
himself, and he will remember you with kindliness no less often than he
drawls, "A fellow was telling me in Brooks's the other day--" Before
they parted, Ted had consented quite cheerfully--for the later Ted--and
all was well.
So the evening came when Conrad sat in Mowbray Lodge looking forward to
the morrow and the arrival of the train due at twelve fifteen. And he
looked forward with more eagerness because the evening--strange to
say--was rather melancholy, and the knowledge that he was going to bed
in the room where he had slept as a boy induced a mood totally
different from the mood he had expected of it. He did not feel a boy
as he sat in the silent house, by a bad light, listening to the rain
patter on the shrubs. On the contrary he felt increasingly old and
increasingly mournful while the long evening wore away. The dreary
lamps depressed him, and the sad tick of the clock, and the ceaseless
dripping of the rain sent him to the whisky-bottle.
After breakfast next day he bought lamps--several of them--with duplex
burners. The roads were a little sloppy, but the sky was blue. He was
gratified to reflect that his cousins were doubtless blinking in a
black fog; the permanent pleasure of wintering in the country is the
thought of how unhappy our friends must be in town. In the forlornest
watering-places of the south coast you may notice, on a fine November
morning, people folding newspapers briskly, and looking heavenward with
a twinkle in their eyes. They are all returning thanks for the
sufferings of their friends in London.
The train due at twelve fifteen wound into view at twelve thirty-five.
They were there! Nina, alert, a smile on her thin, shrewd face;
Regina, with an air of having travelled under protest; Ted, bowed
beneath the weight of the Law Courts.
"So you've come!"
"At last! What a loathsome line!"
"Who's looking after the luggage? Is there a cab to be had?"
"Well, of course. Do you suppose it's a village?"
"How hot it is! You must be smothered in those furs, dear?" This to
Nina from 'Gina. 'Gina was always expensively clothed, and badly
dressed, but she couldn't vie with the Regent's Park sables. "You must
be half dead," she insisted compassionately; "it's as warm as the
Riviera."
"We boast of it in our advertisements," said Conrad, "but it isn't.
How did you leave Toto and the family?"
He heard that it was a fine day in town too, and secretly resented the
fact. The party drove away, another "fly" rumbling with the baggage in
their wake.
"The lane!" he exclaimed as he sprang out. "And it's the same as ever."
"I don't remember it a bit," said all three, gazing about them vaguely.
"The garden!" he displayed it in triumph.
"I fancied it was quite big," said Nina. "Funny how wee children's
eyes exaggerate, isn't it?" But she had not really been so wee as all
that.
"The hall, where Boultbee was always ragging us because we didn't wipe
our shoes!" He had thrown the door open before the maid could run
upstairs.
"Who was Boultbee?" asked Regina. "What a memory you have!"
They lunched; and they were blithe at luncheon; they discussed a
divorce case in smart circles. Regina said hurriedly that there was
"another side to the story." She knew no more about it than she had
read in the papers, but she now moved on the confines of smart circles,
and there are people who can never accustom themselves to advancement,
pecuniary or social.
"Her husband is such a scamp," she explained, "such a scamp. I don't
defend her, but there's so much that never came out in court. Dear
Lady Marminger, her mother, was always against the match; she always
felt it would be fatal. I recollect when we were staying at the Abbey
once--" She was the most obnoxious variety of snob: the middle-class
woman who has married into the fringe of society. If she had written
novels, everybody in them who wasn't a duchess would have been a duke.
"One of the cleverest things ever said in the divorce court," Ted began
judicially, "was when Hollburn was cross-examining----"
"Oh, the scamp theory is worn out," struck in Nina. "When a woman has
married a scamp, her family feel provided with an excuse for everything
odious she does all the rest of her life."
"Was when Hollburn was cross-examining--" He was not to be put off.
They were Nina, and 'Gina, and Ted, and Conrad welcomed them with both
hands, but he caught himself thinking that for any influence the
surroundings had upon the conversation he might as well have invited
them to Princes'.
He took Ted to see the summer-house when luncheon was over--the
summer-house in which they used to have their conferences when they
were such chums--and Ted was a disappointment. The summer-house had
withstood the years, but the chum had gone. He was affecting interest,
and it hurt--it hurt horribly, because he was Ted and they were where
they were. He was led to Rose Villa, where Mary Page had lived. The
sound of its name had made their hearts ache once, and the same name
was on the same gate-post, visible to the same eyes. He passed it by,
telling casual falsehoods about the extent of the practice that he
hadn't made, and when the post was pointed out, he murmured: "Oh, is
it? By Jove!"--maintained a perfunctory pause for ten seconds, and
broke it with, "Well, as I was saying----"
Afterwards they all sauntered to the esplanade, and Conrad owned to
himself that it was no animated scene. But the sun shone bright, and
when there is beautiful weather in Sweetbay it almost compensates for
the absence of everything else there.
"Like spring," he observed; "isn't it? Probably there's a fog in town
by now, or it's beginning to snow. We're all well out of it."
"Y-e-s," replied Nina. "You don't find it a little depressing seeing
so many people in bath-chairs, do you?"
"'So many people?'" Regina was derisive. "I've only seen seven human
beings since we arrived."
"Still the seven were all in bath-chairs," said Nina.
"One expects to meet people in bath-chairs at the seaside," Conrad
pleaded.
"But not sick people," she said, "here they are conscientious. It's a
pretty little band-stand; what time does the band play?"
"It'll begin in June, I think," he answered.
"June?" cried Regina.
"It's not the season," he pointed out. "Of course it's quiet just now."
"I don't wish to cavil," said Ted, with a forbearing smile, "but when
you tell us it is not the season, I am struck by a slight discrepancy
in your statements. A few minutes ago you told us it was a winter
place."
"Well, so it is, but it's first of all an English place. You mustn't
ask for bands to discourse in band-stands all the year round, my dear
fellow--such things don't happen.... A 'town band' enlivens the
streets once a week, I believe; I'm not an authority yet--I only came
down yesterday morning, and I've been setting my house in order.
There's a theatre," he added hopefully; "we might drop in to-night, if
you like. I can't say what is going on there, but we'll ascertain."
They spied a framed play-bill in a confectioner's window on the way
back, and stopped to examine it. Though the piece was familiar to
them, and the names of the company were strange, they crowded before
the play-bill cheerfully until they discovered that it bore an ancient
date. The theatre, they learnt, was now closed, excepting for an
orchestral concert every Thursday evening. This was Saturday.
"We'll have a jolly evening at home," said Conrad.
"There isn't a billiard table, I suppose?" inquired Regina; "I'm an
awful swell with the cue. I make them play every night at the Abbey
when we're there. Polpero chaffs me about it immensely; he's one of
the old school--sweet, but of the old school. It's such fun--I chaff
him back. Toto _roars_."
The inventory had not included a billiard table, but he remembered
after dinner that he had seen a Pier "Pavilion" advertised, and his
guests seemed encouraged when he mentioned it. Regina said it was fun
to be "bohemian" sometimes.
The place looked less animated still when they sped forth to be
"bohemian." Its aspect was no longer sedate, it was bereaved. The
vacant High Street mourned behind its shutters. At the Quadrant a
forsaken policeman kept a doleful eye on space.
"Everybody must be on the pier," said Conrad. "As soon as we turn the
corner we shall see the lights."
Their feet sprung echoes in the stricken town as they pressed forward;
and through the gloom that veiled a moaning sea, the pier became
distinguishable. But no light was on it save the light of a misty
moon, no gas-jet glimmered among the globes on either side. The
pay-box was black and tenantless; the gates were locked. Against them
leant a lonely board, announcing a "Refined Entertainment" for the
twenty-second evening of the previous month. The desolation of the
scene was tragic.
Their return was made in silence, and the first thing happened that
recalled the days of their childhood here: they all went to bed early.
Nina wanted to know if she could be given another room the next
morning. She remarked that the slowest railways always made the most
fuss, and that a train had been rehearsing outside her window half the
night. "It rattled and snorted, and clashed and clanked till three
o'clock." She acknowledged Conrad's regrets and assurances with a
plaintive sigh, and shook her head feebly at her coffee cup.
It was raining. That it can rain in Sweetbay for a fortnight on end
with no longer intervals than the entr'actes at a fashionable theatre
is not distinctive; the idiocrasy of Sweetbay is that it recommences
raining twenty times a day as if the deluge had bee, hoarded for a
year--it rains as if the heavens had fallen out. Nina and 'Gina, who
had ventured into the lane "between the showers," were drenched before
they could gain shelter, and they were taciturn when they had changed
their clothes.
The rain was still pelting when Ted went up to town on Monday, and a
vicious wind lashed "sunny Sweetbay" when he came back. On Tuesday the
ardour of the flood abated, but "the fairest spot in England" was
sodden under a persevering drizzle, and a letter by the evening post
made Regina nervous about the health of her baby. "Toto seemed a good
deal worried," she said, "and she thought under the circumstances she
ought to be at home." She departed on Wednesday in a cataract.
"Do you think she's good-looking?" asked Nina.
"She is not good-looking," said Conrad reflectively, "but she's so
convinced that she is that she almost persuades you in moments."
"That's it," Nina assented; "she attitudinises as if she were a beauty.
When they're shown photographs of her with her face bent, men are quite
eager to know her. Of course the baby's bosh."
"I'll confess that I'm not anxious about the baby myself, I'm afraid
she found it rather slow here. I got _Punch_ for her at the station,
and a servant went round before breakfast to order a foot-warmer--it's
necessary to give notice when you'll want a foot-warmer--but it was
weak reparation. You were all very good to come."
"If there were anything to read in the house, I wouldn't mind so much,"
she said, "I mean I wouldn't mind the weather. If it ever leaves off,
we might go and try to find 'a select library in connection with
Mudie's.'"
"There are heaps of books in the house--I can lend you all the poets."
"I would rather have something to read," she said, "thanks. Do you
think if we found one, it would be open oftener than once a week?"
"You mustn't misjudge the town by the theatre," he expostulated; "that
the theatre only opens once a week is due to a combination of
circumstances that I don't know anything about, but I am sanguine of
the shops opening every day."
"How long are you saddled with the place for?" Her tone was
sympathetic.
"I'm not sorry I took it," he answered. "Of course everything is more
or less a disappointment except the unattainable. When Columbus
reached the new world at last, the aborigines said, 'Well, what do you
think of Amurrica?' He said, 'I thought it would be bigger.' A bird
in the hand is not worth two in the bush; on the contrary, a lark in
the sky is worth two in the pudding. If you ever scratched those
pretty hands of yours getting a glow-worm out of a hedge, you know
that, when you have brought it home, you wondered why you had given
yourself so much inconvenience to acquire the little impostor.
Possession strains--it depresseth her that gives, and him that takes.
While it was in the hedge, the glow-worm shone no less divine than the
poet's star."
"Where was that?" she said.
"In a fable. Did you think I meant a star of the music-halls? They
weren't the fashion in poetry yet. He was a glorious poet enchanted by
a star of the heavens. He stretched his arms to it, he sang to it
nightly. And for his sake the star 'stooped earthward, and became a
woman.' And then the day came when the woman asked her lover which was
best--'The Star's beam, or the Woman's breast':--
"'I miss from heaven,' the man replied,
'A light that drew my spirit to it.'
And to the man the woman sigh'd,
'I miss from earth a poet.'"
"M-m, that's rather sensible," admitted Nina, "I like that--I suppose
it can't be really great poetry. What get on my nerves so in the
poetry of the Really Great are those irritating words that I knew were
coming, like 'porphyry' and 'empyrean,' and 'bower' and 'nymph;' and
then there are the titles--they always sound so dull because I never
know what they mean. Well, go on talking to me."
About eleven o'clock the downpour ceased, and presently a timid sunbeam
played upon a puddle. They went out to look for a library at noon.
There was no need for umbrellas.
The librarian was a listless young woman of "superior manners." When
not occupied among the literature, she assisted in the fancy
department. While Nina was lingering at the shelves, three other
readers went to the counter, and the first lady said:--
"Good morning. I want a ... book. Something--er--rather exciting."
The young woman threw an omniscient glance at the collection, and
plucked. The lady read the title aloud:--
"Is this rather exciting?"
"Oh yes, madam, that is very exciting."
"Oh." She ruffled the pages irresolutely. "It's not very long," she
murmured; "haven't you anything longer?"
The young woman plucked.
"Is this rather exciting?" asked the lady.
The librarian assured her that it was no less exciting than the other
novel.
"Oh," said the lady... "'The Face in the Drawer.' Oh ... I'll take
this one then. You know the address, don't you? Good morning."
The requirement of the second lady was: "Something pretty ... not too
short ... to last me through the week." Conrad almost expected to hear
the librarian reply that they had "A very durable line at three-three,"
but she plucked again.
"Shall I like it?" inquired the lady trustfully.
The young woman, listless, but confident, told her that she was
"Certain to like that."
"You're sure?" said the lady. "Oh, very well then--I'll have it. Good
day."
The third subscriber was still more free from the vice of favouritism.
She simply stated that she wanted "A nice book to read." The librarian
handed a book to her, and she accepted it as unquestioningly as if it
had been stamps in a post-office. In not one of the three cases had
any author's name been mentioned. There are popular writers, there is
a public besieging the libraries for their work, but the literary
choice of the Nation is bulk for its twopence and the tale admired by
the young woman at the desk.
"I hope you haven't been bored?" said Nina at last, holding out
half-a-dozen volumes to be carried for her.
"Not in the faintest degree," cried Conrad.
But he was exceedingly bored on the morrow when Ted returned to dinner
with elaborate excuses for bringing his visit to a sudden close. Yes,
the host was bored then; he knew so well while he responded: "What a
nuisance!" and "Of course it can't be helped," that Ted was not in the
least needed in town, only dull in Sweetbay. They were all to have
gone together to the "Orchestral Concert," and when the barrister
alleged that he felt "too worn out," Conrad was not pressing. Nina
went with him alone, and they walked some way before they spoke. She
understood that he was hurt; dimly she understood that he had shown a
stronger affection on his side than they had shown on theirs.
"So the experiment is a failure, Con?" she said.
He sighed. "I'm afraid there's no other word for it. It was rather
idiotic of me--I might have known you'd all be hipped."
"Oh, I don't think it's that," she declared; "as a professional man Ted
isn't free." She was ever ready to disparage Regina, but she had a
soft spot in her shrewdness for Ted. "Of course," she added after a
moment, "his going means that I shall have to go too; I can't stay with
you by myself, ridiculous as these things are."
"No, I thought of that," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry _you're_
going, Nina. It's no use trying to persuade him, I suppose? If you
told him you didn't want to go----"
Every woman is to be touched by oral sentiment, excepting the sentiment
of her lover whom she does not love. That irritates her to brutality.
Nina wavered:--
"I might," she owned. "Perhaps he could arrange."
"It would be very nice of you," he said; "and really when you get used
to Sweetbay, you'll find it has a--a certain charm. Hallo! What's the
matter here? Are we too soon?"
They were opposite the theatre, but the building was dark. His heart
sank; he felt that the stars in their courses were fighting against him.
"It isn't open," said Nina superfluously.
"We must have come too soon," he urged. "Let's cross over, and see
what time it begins."
For a minute or two they peered at the glum frontage, puzzled, and then
they descried--affixed by its flap to a large door--a small envelope.
It was an official announcement. On the envelope was written, "No
concert this evening."
They turned away, and moved in reverie towards the sea, which shimmered
within sight.
On the long lamp-blurred stretch of asphalt no one moved. A mile of
downcast lodging-houses, veiled in gloom, kept hopeless watch over a
blank Parade; in their dim fan-lights the legend of "Apartments" looked
the emblem of despair. To the right the black pier slumbered silently;
to the left a lugubrious hotel, unpeopled and unlit, imparted to the
view the last symbol of disaster. On a sudden, spasmodically--in the
wide-spread desolation--the town band burst into the overture to
"Zampa." It was the jocularity of hysteria at a funeral. Nina gave a
gulp, and clutched his arm.
"Conrad," she quavered, "let me go home to-morrow, or I shall cry!"
He did not plead with her; he recognised that there was some justice in
her plaint. He promised that she should go by an early train, and his
kindness cheered her.
She came down to breakfast with her hat on.
She, too, had _Punch_ and a foot-warmer, and again he doubted if they
were adequate to exculpate him.
"Try to bear no malice," he begged on the platform.
"You'll dine with us as soon as you come back, won't you?" she laughed.
"Good-bye, old chap," exclaimed Ted. He had risen quite vivacious.
"Mind you look me up when you're in town; let me know well ahead, and
I'll manage a spare evening."
"I expect I've left a lot of things behind," said Nina brightly,
bending to the window; "you might tell the servants to send them on."
"Yes, I'll tell them. Are you sure you don't want any more papers?"
"We're a long time starting, aren't we?" said Ted.
"You're just off," Conrad answered.
It was less than a week since he had loitered on the other side,
impatient for their arrival. He forced a smile, and stood bareheaded,
and turned from the station with a sigh.
"'Oh near ones, dear ones! you in whose right hands
Our own rests calm; whose faithful hearts all day
Wide open wait till back from distant lands
Thought, the tired traveller, wends his homeward way!
Helpmates and hearthmates, gladdeners of gone years'----
_Where are you?_" said Conrad.