The interruption had jarred him, but it was not until the Closerie des Lilas was a hundred yards behind that he knew he had left the hall for the purpose of resuming his reverie in comfort. When he reached the Boulevard Saint-Michel his interest in the projects of five-and-twenty years ago was again so keen that he grieved to think they had been fruitless. Improving on history, he permitted the boys who were boys no more to amass the sovereign that they coveted, and, giving his fancy rein, lived through the glorious day which had never dawned. He tried very hard to be fair to Ted after Mary had welcomed them, though to prevent the conversation becoming a dualogue irked him a good deal. In moments he discovered that he was talking to her rather well for his age, and then he corrected himself with loving artistry. But he could seldom find it in his heart to correct Mary, and she said the prettiest things in the world. He came back to the present, swimming with tenderness for the little maiden of his retrospect. It shocked him to reflect that she must be about thirty-eight if she lived still, and might even have a marriageable daughter. The pathos of the marriageable daughter indeed overwhelmed him, and, taking a seat at the Taverne du Panthéon, he pictured himself waking to realise that he was only twelve years old and that all events subsequent to the epoch had been a dream.
The October air was bleak when he crossed on the morrow, and the deck rolled to meet the splashes of the waves. The idea of revisiting the watering-place—and the idea had germinated—attracted him less forcibly as his chair played see-saw with the taffrail, but he remembered that he had often been advised by advertisements "not to risk infection from foreigners, when he could winter in sunny Sweetbay, the fairest spot in England." The fact that it had a reputation as a winter resort encouraged him somewhat, and by the time he saw the lamps of Charing Cross he felt adventurous again. He also admired a girl on the platform. "There's nothing like an Englishwoman for beauty," he said; and the girl exclaimed: "Oh, I've left my little fur in my grip, right there!"
He fulfilled his programme the next morning. The drowsy station of Sweetbay seemed to him larger than of yore as he glanced about him, but he did not stop to gather information in the matter. His bag was in the fly, and he was rattled to an hotel where the manager appeared surprised to see him. Although his sensations on the boat had left him with no insistent longing for a room with a sea-view, he accepted one without complaint, and learning that luncheon was being served, descended to where three despondent-looking visitors were scattered among an acre of tables. Evidently people continued to go abroad in spite of the advice. However, he had not come to Sweetbay for society.
It was a neat and decorous little town awaiting him when he sallied forth from the hotel. Everything was very clean, very tidy. The pink-paved sidewalks, bordered by trees, glistened like coral; the snug villas, enclosed by euonymus hedges trimmed to precision, had a fresh and wholesome air, an air that made him think of honey soap and good rice puddings. He backed before the walls of the Parish Church. A play-bill of the Rosery Theatre, near by, seemed an anachronism, and even as he recalled Sweetbay it had been content with Assembly Rooms. On a hoarding he saw a poster of the Pier Pavilion—the pavilion was an innovation too. In the High Street photographs of some popular actors had invaded a shop window, and he was struck by the extraordinary resemblance they bore to one another—all wearing on the brow the frown of intellectuality, and carefully disordered hair. The Town Hall was a landmark. He murmured Matthew Arnold's line: "Expressive merely of the impotence of the architect to express anything," but the unparalleled ugliness of the building warmed him with recollections. He branched to the left, as he used to branch to the left when he carried Mary's bathing shoes, and surrendering himself to sentiment unreservedly now swung joyously for Eden.
And from this point landmarks flocked thick and fast. The way began to climb the hill, the hill began to show the boughs, the boughs began to veil the road, the road began to woo the lane, the lane began to near the house, and—like the old woman's pig—Conrad got over the stile.
And "Mowbray Lodge" was still painted on the gate! It was all so wonderfully the same for a moment in the shade behind the fir trees—so wonderfully—that he felt tearful. The scene had stood so still that there seemed something unreal in his returning here a man. Again he saw the slender columns of the long veranda, and the summer-house on which the weather-cock still perched. He looked, and looked wide-eyed, at a faded door—not green, not blue—and knew suddenly that behind that door there should be currant bushes and a tangle of nasturtium, and hens prinking on the path. His soul embraced the scene. And yet—and yet it was not the features which had lived in his mind that moved him most. The magic lay in the pervasive hush, and in a gust of the fir trees' smell, which he had forgotten until it swept him breathless across the years.
Yes, there seemed something unreal in his standing here a man. His spirit was listening—and he knew that it was listening—for calls from children who had grown to middle-age now; his gaze was waiting—even he knew that it was waiting—for the rush of childish figures which the scene should yield.
Presently he sought the space where they had played. But the Field of the Cloth of Gold was transformed. Where the dandelions had spread their splendour for Mary he saw a market-garden, and the sun that had made a halo for Mary glittered on glass. There was a quantity of glass, there were consequential rows of it, all raising money for somebody, all reminding the pilgrim that meadows move with the times. "Well, I suppose it's progress," said Conrad, shaking his head. But he missed the dandelions. He was a Conservative by instinct, though he was a Liberal by reason.
When he loitered back to the view of Mowbray Lodge, a lady of the age which it is gallant to call "uncertain" had come out on the veranda. She had a little shawl over her shoulders, and in her hand she held a pair of scissors with which she was clipping a palm. The placid gaze she lifted to him was not discouraging, and advancing towards her with a bow he said:—
"Pray forgive me for troubling you, but may I ask if Mr. Boultbee lives here now?"