The process for which Sir Paget’s reluctant amusement found a nickname was a natural one in the circumstances of the case. If the Dundrannan personality was potent, so was the Dundrannan property. Cragsfoot was a small affair compared even to Briarmount alone; Waldo was not yet master even of Cragsfoot, for Sir Paget was not the man to take off his clothes before bedtime. Besides Briarmount, there was Dundrannan Castle, with its deer and its fishing; there was the Villa San Carlo at Mentone; never mind what else there was, even after “public objects” and Captain Frost had, between them, shorn off so large a part of the Frost concerns and millions. Moreover, another process set in, and was highly developed by the time I returned to England in the autumn of 1918, when my last foreign excursion on Government service ended. Family solidarity, and an identity of business interests in many matters, brought Nina, and, by consequence, Waldo, into close and ever closer association with Godfrey Frost. The young man was not swallowed; he had too strong a brain and will of his own for that; but he was attached. The three of them came to form a triumvirate for dealing with the Frost concerns, settling the policy of the Frost family, defining the Frost attitude towards the world outside. And everybody else was outside of that inner circle, even though we of Cragsfoot might be only just outside. So as Waldo, on his marriage, had shifted his bodily presence from Cragsfoot to Briarmount, his mind and his predominant interests also centered there; and presently to his were added, in great measure, Godfrey Frost’s. Nina presided over this union of hearts and forces with a sure tact; she did not seek to play the despot, but she was the bond and the inspiration.
Naturally, then, if the three saw eye to eye in all these great matters, they also saw eye to eye, and felt heart to heart, on such a merely sentimental subject as the view to take of Lucinda—of whom, of course, Godfrey derived any idea that he had mainly from Nina. Probably the idea thus derived was that she was emphatically a person of whom the less said the better! Only—the curious fact crops up again—she was not one of whom Nina was capable of saying absolutely nothing, of giving no hints. Her husband excepted, anybody really near to her was sure to hear something of Lucinda. Besides, there was the information, sketchy indeed, but significant, which he had received from Aunt Bertha, and perhaps that had made him question his cousin; then either her answers or even her reluctance to answer would have been enlightening to a man of his intelligence.
He got home some time in October, and at his request I went to see him in London, while he was convalescent from that malaria which so seriously impeded Reconstruction. From him I heard the family plans. They were all three going shortly to Nina’s villa at Mentone for the winter. For the really rich it seemed that “the difficulties of the times” presented no difficulty at all; a big motor car was to take the party across France to their destination.
“You see, we’re largely interested in works near Marseilles, and I’m going out to have a look at them; Waldo’s got doctor’s orders, Nina goes to nurse him—and the kid can’t be left, of course. All quite simple. Why don’t you come too?”
“Perhaps I will—if I’m asked and can get a holiday. It sounds rather jolly.”
“Top-hole! Besides, the war’s going to end. Nina’ll ask you all right; and, as for a holiday, you can’t do much at your game till the tonnage is released, can you?”
He seemed about right there; on such questions he had a habit of being right. At the back of my mind, however, I was just faintly reluctant about embracing the project, a little afraid of too thick a Dundrannan atmosphere.
“Well, I must go to Cragsfoot first. After that perhaps—if I am invited.”
“Jolly old place, Cragsfoot!” he observed. “I don’t wonder you like to go there—even apart from your people. It’s unlucky that Nina’s taken against it, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know she had.”