"There's no victory without its casualty list," I replied to my friend Jellaby, the Whip, when he telegraphed a message of sympathy. There seemed nothing amiss with the sentiment, and I consoled myself with the prospect of wintering at San Remo with my mother.
"Can give you another seat to fight," Jellaby wired back, as my packing came to an end, and I ordered myself a place in the _train-de-luxe_.
"Must resist casualty habit," I returned and abandoned England for two months.
April was well advanced by the time I came back to Princes Gardens. When the bitterness of defeat is past, I know few sensations sweeter than that of not being in the House of Commons. It was irritating at first to be debarred from the smoking-room, but, as master of my own time, with no more interrupted dinners, no autumn sessions and no deputations to Ministers, I wondered what frenzy of enthusiasm could have made me for four years the slave of an urbane but vigilant young man like Jellaby, whose one duty in life was to lay me by the heels if I tried to leave the House unpaired.
"I said you'd outgrow the phase," my uncle commented one morning at breakfast. His daily post-bag brought him hundreds of letters; mine, since I had parted from Westminster, a couple of dozen at the outside.
"I may stand again if I can arrange always to winter on the Mediterranean," I said, "or if I can get returned unopposed. London in March and the Great Movement of Men in the Cranborne Division don't appeal to me, Bertrand, as they once did."
"What are you going to do with yourself?" he asked.
"Enjoy life," I answered appreciatively. "Read books again, dine at the Club a bit, run over to Normandy in the summer, see my friends.... By the way, the Lorings are back. He wants me to lunch with him today."
The note of invitation had piqued my curiosity. With his instinctive fear of giving himself away Loring had written no more than: "Lunch 2 p.m. here. Help me with heavy case of conscience." I sent an acceptance by telephone, sat half the morning in the Park watching the passers-by and in due course made my way to Curzon Street. The air was redolent of spring, and in its fire the whole world seemed to have flung its winter garment. Light dresses fluttered in the warm breeze, everything was new and clean and young; the very cart-horses welcomed the advent of May with shining harness and gay ribbons.