"And among such places," concluded the lady firmly, "Sweetbay is pre-eminent.... But you will let me give you another cup of tea?"
CHAPTER III
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.