The dinner was more successful than I had hoped for. Robina gave us melon as a hors d'oeuvre, followed by sardines and a fowl, with potatoes and vegetable marrow. Her cooking surprised me. I had warned young Bute that it might be necessary to regard this dinner rather as a joke than as an evening meal, and was prepared myself to extract amusement from it rather than nourishment. My disappointment was agreeable. One can always imagine a comic dinner.
I dined once with a newly married couple who had just returned from their honeymoon. We ought to have sat down at eight o'clock; we sat down instead at half-past ten. The cook had started drinking in the morning; by seven o'clock she was speechless. The wife, giving up hope at a quarter to eight, had cooked the dinner herself. The other guests were sympathised with, but all I got was congratulation.
"He'll write something so funny about this dinner," they said.
You might have thought the cook had got drunk on purpose to oblige me. I have never been able to write anything funny about that dinner; it depresses me to this day, merely thinking of it.
We finished up with a cold trifle and some excellent coffee that Robina brewed over a lamp on the table while Dick and Veronica cleared away. It was one of the jolliest little dinners I have ever eaten; and, if Robina's figures are to be trusted, cost exactly six-and-fourpence for the five of us. There being no servants about, we talked freely and enjoyed ourselves. I began once at a dinner to tell a good story about a Scotchman, when my host silenced me with a look. He is a kindly man, and had heard the story before. He explained to me afterwards, over the walnuts, that his parlourmaid was Scotch and rather touchy. The talk fell into the discussion of Home Rule, and again our host silenced us. It seemed his butler was an Irishman and a violent Parnellite. Some people can talk as though servants were mere machines, but to me they are human beings, and their presence hampers me. I know my guests have not heard the story before, and from one's own flesh and blood one expects a certain amount of sacrifice. But I feel so sorry for the housemaid who is waiting; she must have heard it a dozen times. I really cannot inflict it upon her again.
After dinner we pushed the table into a corner, and Dick extracted a sort of waltz from Robina's mandoline. It is years since I danced; but Veronica said she would rather dance with me any day than with some of the "lumps" you were given to drag round by the dancing-mistress. I have half a mind to take it up again. After all, a man is only as old as he feels.
Young Bute, it turned out, was a capital dancer, and could even reverse, which in a room fourteen feet square is of advantage.
Robina confided to me after he was gone that while he was dancing she could just tolerate him. I cannot myself see rhyme or reason in Robina's objection to him. He is not handsome, but he is good-looking, as boys go, and has a pleasant smile. Robina says it is his smile that maddens her. Dick agrees with me that there is sense in him; and Veronica, not given to loose praise, considers his performance of a Red Indian, both dead and alive, the finest piece of acting she has ever encountered. We wound up the evening with a little singing. The extent of Dick's repertoire surprised me; evidently he has not been so idle at Cambridge as it seemed. Young Bute has a baritone voice of some richness. We remembered at quarter-past eleven that Veronica ought to have gone to bed at eight.
We were all of us surprised at the lateness of the hour.
"Why can't we always live in a cottage and do just as we like? I'm sure it's much jollier," Veronica put it to me as I kissed her good night.
"Because we are idiots, most of us, Veronica," I answered.