"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."