IV

“Wait for me, Isa-bel! Kezia, wait for me!”

There was poor little Lottie, left behind again, because she found it

so fearfully hard to get over the stile by herself. When she stood on

the first step her knees began to wobble; she grasped the post. Then

you had to put one leg over. But which leg? She never could decide. And

when she did finally put one leg over with a sort of stamp of

despair—then the feeling was awful. She was half in the paddock still

and half in the tussock grass. She clutched the post desperately and

lifted up her voice. “Wait for me!”

“No, don’t you wait for her, Kezia!” said Isabel. “She’s such a little

silly. She’s always making a fuss. Come on!” And she tugged Kezia’s

jersey. “You can use my bucket if you come with me,” she said kindly.

“It’s bigger than yours.” But Kezia couldn’t leave Lottie all by

herself. She ran back to her. By this time Lottie was very red in the

face and breathing heavily.

“Here, put your other foot over,” said Kezia.

“Where?”

Lottie looked down at Kezia as if from a mountain height.

“Here where my hand is.” Kezia patted the place.

“Oh, _there_ do you mean!” Lottie gave a deep sigh and put the second

foot over.

“Now—sort of turn round and sit down and slide,” said Kezia.

“But there’s nothing to sit down _on_, Kezia,” said Lottie.

She managed it at last, and once it was over she shook herself and

began to beam.

“I’m getting better at climbing over stiles, aren’t I, Kezia?”

Lottie’s was a very hopeful nature.

The pink and the blue sunbonnet followed Isabel’s bright red sunbonnet

up that sliding, slipping hill. At the top they paused to decide where

to go and to have a good stare at who was there already. Seen from

behind, standing against the skyline, gesticulating largely with their

spades, they looked like minute puzzled explorers.

The whole family of Samuel Josephs was there already with their

lady-help, who sat on a camp-stool and kept order with a whistle that

she wore tied round her neck, and a small cane with which she directed

operations. The Samuel Josephs never played by themselves or managed

their own game. If they did, it ended in the boys pouring water down

the girls’ necks or the girls trying to put little black crabs into the

boys’ pockets. So Mrs. S. J. and the poor lady-help drew up what she

called a “brogramme” every morning to keep them “abused and out of

bischief.” It was all competitions or races or round games. Everything

began with a piercing blast of the lady-help’s whistle and ended with

another. There were even prizes—large, rather dirty paper parcels which

the lady-help with a sour little smile drew out of a bulging string

kit. The Samuel Josephs fought fearfully for the prizes and cheated and

pinched one another’s arms—they were all expert pinchers. The only time

the Burnell children ever played with them Kezia had got a prize, and

when she undid three bits of paper she found a very small rusty

button-hook. She couldn’t understand why they made such a fuss....

But they never played with the Samuel Josephs now or even went to their

parties. The Samuel Josephs were always giving children’s parties at

the Bay and there was always the same food. A big washhand basin of

very brown fruit-salad, buns cut into four and a washhand jug full of

something the lady-help called “Limmonadear.” And you went away in the

evening with half the frill torn off your frock or something spilled

all down the front of your open-work pinafore, leaving the Samuel

Josephs leaping like savages on their lawn. No! They were too awful.

On the other side of the beach, close down to the water, two little

boys, their knickers rolled up, twinkled like spiders. One was digging,

the other pattered in and out of the water, filling a small bucket.

They were the Trout boys, Pip and Rags. But Pip was so busy digging and

Rags was so busy helping that they didn’t see their little cousins

until they were quite close.

“Look!” said Pip. “Look what I’ve discovered.” And he showed them an

old wet, squashed-looking boot. The three little girls stared.

“Whatever are you going to do with it?” asked Kezia.

“Keep it, of course!” Pip was very scornful. “It’s a find—see?”

Yes, Kezia saw that. All the same....

“There’s lots of things buried in the sand,” explained Pip. “They get

chucked up from wrecks. Treasure. Why—you might find—”

“But why does Rags have to keep on pouring water in?” asked Lottie.

“Oh, that’s to moisten it,” said Pip, “to make the work a bit easier.

Keep it up, Rags.”

And good little Rags ran up and down, pouring in the water that turned

brown like cocoa.

“Here, shall I show you what I found yesterday?” said Pip mysteriously,

and he stuck his spade into the sand. “Promise not to tell.”

They promised.

“Say, cross my heart straight dinkum.”

The little girls said it.

Pip took something out of his pocket, rubbed it a long time on the

front of his jersey, then breathed on it and rubbed it again.

“Now turn round!” he ordered.

They turned round.

“All look the same way! Keep still! Now!”

And his hand opened; he held up to the light something that flashed,

that winked, that was a most lovely green.

“It’s a nemeral,” said Pip solemnly.

“Is it really, Pip?” Even Isabel was impressed.

The lovely green thing seemed to dance in Pip’s fingers. Aunt Beryl had

a nemeral in a ring, but it was a very small one. This one was as big

as a star and far more beautiful.

V

As the morning lengthened whole parties appeared over the sand-hills

and came down on the beach to bathe. It was understood that at eleven

o’clock the women and children of the summer colony had the sea to

themselves. First the women undressed, pulled on their bathing dresses

and covered their heads in hideous caps like sponge bags; then the

children were unbuttoned. The beach was strewn with little heaps of

clothes and shoes; the big summer hats, with stones on them to keep

them from blowing away, looked like immense shells. It was strange that

even the sea seemed to sound differently when all those leaping,

laughing figures ran into the waves. Old Mrs. Fairfield, in a lilac

cotton dress and a black hat tied under the chin, gathered her little

brood and got them ready. The little Trout boys whipped their shirts

over their heads, and away the five sped, while their grandma sat with

one hand in her knitting-bag ready to draw out the ball of wool when

she was satisfied they were safely in.

The firm compact little girls were not half so brave as the tender,

delicate-looking little boys. Pip and Rags, shivering, crouching down,

slapping the water, never hesitated. But Isabel, who could swim twelve

strokes, and Kezia, who could nearly swim eight, only followed on the

strict understanding they were not to be splashed. As for Lottie, she

didn’t follow at all. She liked to be left to go in her own way,

please. And that way was to sit down at the edge of the water, her legs

straight, her knees pressed together, and to make vague motions with

her arms as if she expected to be wafted out to sea. But when a bigger

wave than usual, an old whiskery one, came lolloping along in her

direction, she scrambled to her feet with a face of horror and flew up

the beach again.

“Here, mother, keep those for me, will you?”

Two rings and a thin gold chain were dropped into Mrs Fairfield’s lap.

“Yes, dear. But aren’t you going to bathe here?”

“No-o,” Beryl drawled. She sounded vague. “I’m undressing farther

along. I’m going to bathe with Mrs. Harry Kember.”

“Very well.” But Mrs. Fairfield’s lips set. She disapproved of Mrs

Harry Kember. Beryl knew it.

Poor old mother, she smiled, as she skimmed over the stones. Poor old

mother! Old! Oh, what joy, what bliss it was to be young....

“You look very pleased,” said Mrs. Harry Kember. She sat hunched up on

the stones, her arms round her knees, smoking.

“It’s such a lovely day,” said Beryl, smiling down at her.

“Oh my _dear_!” Mrs. Harry Kember’s voice sounded as though she knew

better than that. But then her voice always sounded as though she knew

something better about you than you did yourself. She was a long,

strange-looking woman with narrow hands and feet. Her face, too, was

long and narrow and exhausted-looking; even her fair curled fringe

looked burnt out and withered. She was the only woman at the Bay who

smoked, and she smoked incessantly, keeping the cigarette between her

lips while she talked, and only taking it out when the ash was so long

you could not understand why it did not fall. When she was not playing

bridge—she played bridge every day of her life—she spent her time lying

in the full glare of the sun. She could stand any amount of it; she

never had enough. All the same, it did not seem to warm her. Parched,

withered, cold, she lay stretched on the stones like a piece of

tossed-up driftwood. The women at the Bay thought she was very, very

fast. Her lack of vanity, her slang, the way she treated men as though

she was one of them, and the fact that she didn’t care twopence about

her house and called the servant Gladys “Glad-eyes,” was disgraceful.

Standing on the veranda steps Mrs. Kember would call in her

indifferent, tired voice, “I say, Glad-eyes, you might heave me a

handkerchief if I’ve got one, will you?” And Glad-eyes, a red bow in

her hair instead of a cap, and white shoes, came running with an

impudent smile. It was an absolute scandal! True, she had no children,

and her husband.... Here the voices were always raised; they became

fervent. How can he have married her? How can he, how can he? It must

have been money, of course, but even then!

Mrs. Kember’s husband was at least ten years younger than she was, and

so incredibly handsome that he looked like a mask or a most perfect

illustration in an American novel rather than a man. Black hair, dark

blue eyes, red lips, a slow sleepy smile, a fine tennis player, a

perfect dancer, and with it all a mystery. Harry Kember was like a man

walking in his sleep. Men couldn’t stand him, they couldn’t get a word

out of the chap; he ignored his wife just as she ignored him. How did

he live? Of course there were stories, but such stories! They simply

couldn’t be told. The women he’d been seen with, the places he’d been

seen in... but nothing was ever certain, nothing definite. Some of the

women at the Bay privately thought he’d commit a murder one day. Yes,

even while they talked to Mrs. Kember and took in the awful concoction

she was wearing, they saw her, stretched as she lay on the beach; but

cold, bloody, and still with a cigarette stuck in the corner of her

mouth.

Mrs. Kember rose, yawned, unsnapped her belt buckle, and tugged at the

tape of her blouse. And Beryl stepped out of her skirt and shed her

jersey, and stood up in her short white petticoat, and her camisole

with ribbon bows on the shoulders.

“Mercy on us,” said Mrs. Harry Kember, “what a little beauty you are!”

“Don’t!” said Beryl softly; but, drawing off one stocking and then the

other, she felt a little beauty.

“My dear—why not?” said Mrs. Harry Kember, stamping on her own

petticoat. Really—her underclothes! A pair of blue cotton knickers and

a linen bodice that reminded one somehow of a pillow-case.... “And you

don’t wear stays, do you?” She touched Beryl’s waist, and Beryl sprang

away with a small affected cry. Then “Never!” she said firmly.

“Lucky little creature,” sighed Mrs. Kember, unfastening her own.

Beryl turned her back and began the complicated movements of some one

who is trying to take off her clothes and to pull on her bathing-dress

all at one and the same time.

“Oh, my dear—don’t mind me,” said Mrs. Harry Kember. “Why be shy? I

shan’t eat you. I shan’t be shocked like those other ninnies.” And she

gave her strange neighing laugh and grimaced at the other women.

But Beryl was shy. She never undressed in front of anybody. Was that

silly? Mrs. Harry Kember made her feel it was silly, even something to

be ashamed of. Why be shy indeed! She glanced quickly at her friend

standing so boldly in her torn chemise and lighting a fresh cigarette;

and a quick, bold, evil feeling started up in her breast. Laughing

recklessly, she drew on the limp, sandy-feeling bathing-dress that was

not quite dry and fastened the twisted buttons.

“That’s better,” said Mrs. Harry Kember. They began to go down the

beach together. “Really, it’s a sin for you to wear clothes, my dear.

Somebody’s got to tell you some day.”

The water was quite warm. It was that marvellous transparent blue,

flecked with silver, but the sand at the bottom looked gold; when you

kicked with your toes there rose a little puff of gold-dust. Now the

waves just reached her breast. Beryl stood, her arms outstretched,

gazing out, and as each wave came she gave the slightest little jump,

so that it seemed it was the wave which lifted her so gently.

“I believe in pretty girls having a good time,” said Mrs. Harry Kember.

“Why not? Don’t you make a mistake, my dear. Enjoy yourself.” And

suddenly she turned turtle, disappeared, and swam away quickly,

quickly, like a rat. Then she flicked round and began swimming back.

She was going to say something else. Beryl felt that she was being

poisoned by this cold woman, but she longed to hear. But oh, how

strange, how horrible! As Mrs. Harry Kember came up close she looked,

in her black waterproof bathing-cap, with her sleepy face lifted above

the water, just her chin touching, like a horrible caricature of her

husband.