IX
The next day, during the journey through the hot Veneto and up into the
mountains, the Wheater children and their problems were still so present
to Boyne that he was hardly conscious of where he was going, or why.
His last hours with his friends had ended on a note of happiness and
security. The new yacht, filled and animated by that troop of
irrepressible children, whom it took all Miss Scope’s energy and
ubiquity to keep from falling overboard or clambering to the mast-head,
seemed suddenly to have acquired a reason for existing. Cliffe Wheater,
in his speckless yachting cap and blue serge, moved about among his
family like a beneficent giant, and Mrs. Wheater, looking younger than
ever in her white yachting skirt and jersey, with her golden thatch
tossed by the breeze, fell into the prettiest maternal poses as her own
progeny and the “steps” scrambled over her in the course of a
rough-and-tumble game organised by Boyne and the young tutor.
The excursion had not begun auspiciously. Before the start from the
_pension_, Bun and Beechy, imprisoned above stairs during Lady Wrench’s
irruption, had managed to inflict condign punishment on Zinnie for not
having them fetched down with Blanca, and thus making them miss an
exciting visit and probable presents. Terry’s indifference to the whole
affair produced no effect on the irascible Italians; and as Zinnie, when
roused, was a fighter, and now had a gold necklace with real pearls to
defend, all Judith’s influence, and some cuffing into the bargain, were
needed to reduce the trio to order; after which Boyne had to plead that
they should not be deprived of their holiday. But once on the deck of
the “Fancy Girl” all disagreements were forgotten. It was a day of wind
and sparkle, with a lagoon full of racing waves which made the yacht
appear to be actually moving; and after Beechy had drenched her new
frock with tears of joy at being reunited to Chipstone, and Blanca and
Zinnie had shown Lady Wrench’s presents to every one, from the captain
to the youngest cook-boy, harmony once more reigned among the little
Wheaters.
Mr. Ormerod, with whom Terry was already at ease, soon broke down the
reserve of the others. He proved unexpectedly good at games which
involved scampering, hiding and pouncing, especially when Joyce and
Judith took part, and could be caught and wrestled with; and Cliffe
Wheater, parading the deck with Chip, whom he had adorned with a
miniature yachting cap with “Fancy Girl” on the ribbon, was the model of
a happy father. He pressed Boyne to chuck his other engagements and come
off down the Adriatic as far as Corfu and Athens; and Boyne, lounging
there in the bright air, the children’s laughter encircling him, and
Judith perched on the arm of his chair, asked himself why he didn’t, and
what better life could have to offer. “Uncle Edward would certainly have
accepted,” he thought, while his host, pouring himself another cocktail
from the deck-table at his elbow, went on persuasively: “We’ll round up
a jolly crowd for you, see if we don’t. Somebody’s sure to turn up
who’ll jump at the chance. Judy, can’t we hustle around and find him a
girl?”
“Here’s all the girl I want,” Boyne laughed, laying his hand on hers;
and a blush of pleasure rose to her face. “Oh, Martin—if you would—oh,
can’t you?” But even that he had resisted—even the ebb of her colour
when he shook his head. The wandering man’s determination to stick to
his decisions was strong in him. Too many impulses had solicited him in
too many lands: it was because, despite a lively imagination, he had so
often managed to resist them, that a successful professional career lay
behind him, and ahead—he hoped—comparative leisure, and the haven he
wanted.
He had tried to find a farewell present for Judith—some little thing
which, in quality if not costliness, should make up for her
disappointment at being done out of Lady Wrench’s. Judith’s frank avowal
of that disappointment had been a shock to him; but he reflected again
what a child she was, and called himself a prig for expecting her
standards to be other than those of the world she lived in. After all he
had had no time to search for anything rare, and could only push into
her hand, at the last moment, a commonplace trinket from the Merceria;
but her childish joy in it, and her way of showing that she valued it
doubly because it came from him, made the parting from her harder. And
now, alone in the dusty train, he was asking himself why he had not
stayed in Venice.
As a matter of fact there were several reasons; among them the
old-fashioned one that, months before, he had promised to meet Mrs.
Sellars in the Dolomites. In a world grown clockless and conscienceless,
Boyne was still punctual and conscientious; and in this case he had
schooled himself to think that what he most wanted was to see Rose
Sellars again. Deep within him he knew it was not so; at least, not
certainly so. Life had since given him hints of other things he might
want equally, want even more; his reluctance to leave Venice and his
newly-acquired friends showed that his inclinations were divided. But he
belonged to a generation which could not bear to admit that naught may
abide but mutability. He wanted the moral support of believing that the
woman who had once seemed to fill his needs could do so still. She
belonged to a world so much nearer to his than the Wheaters and their
flock that he could not imagine how he could waver between the two. Rose
Sellars’s world had always been the pole-star of his whirling skies, the
fixed point on which his need for permanence could build. He could only
conclude, now, that he combined with the wanderer’s desire for rest the
wanderer’s dread of immobility. “Hang it all, you can’t have it both
ways,” he rebuked himself; but secretly he knew that that was how the
heart of man had always craved it....
Had all that happened only forty-eight hours ago? Now, as he sat on the
balcony of the _châlet_, over against the mighty silver and crimson
flanks of the Cristallo group, the episode had grown incredibly remote,
and Boyne saw his problems float away from him like a last curl of mist
swallowed up in the blue behind the peaks.
Simply change of air, he wondered? The sudden rise into this pure ether
that was like a shouting of silver trumpets? Partly, perhaps—and all
that had chanced to go with it, in this wonderful resurrection of a life
he had secretly thought dead.
“Bethesda is what you ought to call this,” he murmured to himself. It
was so like Rose Sellars, the live Rose Sellars who had already replaced
his delicately embalmed mummy of her, to have found this _châlet_ on the
slope above the big hotels, a place so isolated and hidden that he and
she were alone in it with each other and the mountains. How could he
have so underrated his old friend’s sense of the wonder of the place,
and of what she owed to it, as to suppose that, even for two or three
weeks, she would consent to be a number in a red-carpeted passage, and
feed with the rest of the numbers in a blare of jazz and electricity?
The _châlet_ was only just big enough for herself and her maid, and the
cook who prepared their rustic meals; had there been a corner for Boyne,
she assured him that he should have had it. But perhaps it added to the
mystery and enchantment that to see her he had to climb from the dull
promiscuity of his hotel into a clear green solitude alive with the
tremor of water under meadow-grasses, and guarded by the great wings of
the mountains.
“You do really like it?” she had asked, as they sat, the first evening,
on the balcony smelling of fir-wood, and watched the cliffs across the
valley slowly decompose from flame to ashes.
“I like it most of all for being so like you,” he answered.
She laughed, and turned an amused ironic face on him—a face more than
ever like one of those light three-crayon drawings of which she had
always reminded him. “Like me? Which—the _châlet_ or the Cristallo
group?”
“Well, both; that’s the funny part of it.”
“It must make me seem a trifle out of drawing.”
“No; first aloof and aloft, and then again small and sunny and near.”
She sighed faintly, and then smiled. “Well, I prefer the last part of
the picture. I’d a good deal rather be a sunny balcony than a crystal
peak. But I enjoy looking out on the peak.”
“There you are—that’s what I meant! It’s the view from _you_ that I’ve
missed so, all these years.”
She received this in a silence softened by another little laugh. The
silence seemed to say: “That will do for our first evening,” the laugh:
“But I like it, you know!”
Aloud she remarked: “I’m glad you came up here after Venice and the
millionaires. It’s all to the good for the mountains—and for me.”
Their first direct talk about themselves had ended there, drifting away
afterward into reminiscences, questions, allusions, the picking up of
threads—a gradual leisurely reconstruction of their five years apart.
Now, on this second evening, he felt that he had situated her once more
in his own life, and established himself in hers. So far he had made no
allusion to his unsatisfied passion. In the past, by her own choice, her
sternly imposed will, their relation had been maintained in the strict
limits of friendship, and for the present he found it easier, more
natural, to continue on the same lines. It was neither doubt nor pride
that held him back, nor any uncertainty as to her feeling; but simply
his sense of the wellbeing of things as they were. In the course of his
life so much easy love had come his way, he had grown so weary of nights
without a morrow, that he needed to feel there was one woman in the
world whom he was half-afraid to make love to. Rose Sellars had chosen
that he should know her only as the perfect friend; just at first, he
thought, he would not disturb that carefully built-up picture. If he had
suspected a rival influence he would not have tolerated delay; but as
they travelled together over her past he grew more and more sure that it
was for him the cold empty years of her marriage had kept her. Manlike,
he was calmed rather than stimulated by this, though he would have
repudiated more indignantly than ever the idea that she was less
desirable because she was to be had. As a matter of fact, he found her
prettier and younger than when they had parted. Every change in her was
to her advantage, and he had instantly discarded his sentimental
remembrance of her—dense coils of silvery-auburn hair, and draperies
falling to the ankles—in favour of the new woman which her hair, dressed
to look short, and her brief skirts, had made of her. Freedom of spirit
and of body had mysteriously rejuvenated her, and he found her far more
intelligent and adaptable than he had guessed when their relation had
been obscured by his passion and her resistance. Now there was no
resistance—and his passion lay with folded wings. It was perfect.
Every day they went off on an excursion. Sometimes they hired a motor,
leaving it, far afield, for a long climb; but neither could afford such
luxuries often, nor did they much care for them. Usually they started on
foot, with stick and rucksack, getting back only as the great cliffs
hung their last lustre above the valley. Mrs. Sellars was a tireless
walker, proud of her light foot and firm muscles. She loved all the
delicate detail revealed only to walkers: the thrust of orchis or
colchicum through pine-needles, the stir of brooks, the uncurling of
perfumed fronds, the whirr of wings in the path, and that continual
pulsation of water and wind and grasses which is the heart-beat of the
forest. Boyne, always alive to great landscape, had hitherto been too
busy or preoccupied to note its particulars. It was years since he had
rambled among mountains without having to look at them with an
engineering eye, and calculate their relation to a projected railway or
aqueduct; and these walks opened his eyes to unheeded beauties. It was
like being led through the flowered borders of an illuminated missal of
which he had hitherto noticed only the central pictures.
Better still were the evenings. When he first came a full moon held them
late on the balcony, listening and musing, and sent him down dizzy with
beauty through the black fir-shadows to his hotel. When the moon had
waned, and the nights were fresh or cloudy, they sat by the fire, and
talked and talked, or turned over new books and reviews. Boyne, with his
bones and his brain so full of hard journeys and restless memories,
thought he would have liked to look forward to an eternity of such
evenings, in just such a hushed lamplit room, with a little sparkle of
fire, reviews and papers everywhere, and that quiet silvery-auburn head
with its mass of closely woven braids bending over a book across the
hearth. Rose Sellars’s way of being silently occupied without seeming
absorbed was deeply restful. And then her books! She always managed to
have just the ones he wanted to get hold of—to a homeless wandering man
it was not the least of her attractions. Once, taking up a volume they
had been talking of, Boyne recalled Judith Wheater’s wistful: “Perhaps
you might lend me some books.” From what fold of memory had the
question—and the very sound of the girl’s voice—come back to him? He was
abruptly reminded that it was a long time since he had given a thought
to the little Wheaters.
There had been so many years to cover in the exchange of reminiscences
that he had not yet touched on his encounter with them; and Mrs. Sellars
seemed to have forgotten the description of the little band which had
amused her in his letters. But now he was reminded, with a pang, of the
contrast between her ordered and harmonious life (she always reminded
him of Milton’s “How charming is divine philosophy!”) and the chaotic
experiences of the poor little girl who for a moment had displaced her
image. Inconceivably vulgar and tawdry, sordid and inarticulate, under
all the shouting and the tinsel, seemed that other life and those who
led it. Boyne would have brushed the vision away with contempt but for
the voice which had called to him out of the blur. With a sigh he put
down the book he had opened. Mrs. Sellars, who sat at the table writing,
looked up, and their eyes met. “What were you thinking of?”
He had a start of distrust—the first since he had been with her. Would
she understand if he tried to explain; if she did, would she sympathize?
He shrank from the risk, and evaded it. “Seeing you so hard at work
reminds me of all the letters I haven’t written since I’ve been here.”
She arched her eyebrows interrogatively, and he was sure she was
thinking: “Why doesn’t he tell me that he’s no one to write to when he’s
with me?” Aloud she said: “You know I’m burdened with any number of fond
relations who are consumed with the desire to know how I’m spending my
first holiday.”
“You’re a wonderful correspondent.”
As if scenting irony she rejoined: “So are you.”
“I haven’t been since I came here.”
“Well, come and share the inkpot.” She made the gesture of pushing it
over to him, but he shook his head and stood up. “The night’s too
lovely. Put on your cloak and come out on the balcony.”
She held her pen suspended, her eyes following his. “On the balcony? But
there’s no moon—”
“_Because_ there’s no moon,” he insisted, smiling.
At that, smiling too, she drifted out to him.
X
“DARLING MARTIN,
“It’s lovely here and very warm. Weve been baithing at the Lido and
weve been out on the yaht again. Buondelmontes wife the lion taimer is
dead and he has maried a rich American airess and Beechy and Bun are
very much exited they think theyle get lots of presents now like
Zinnie got from her mother and the one I was to get but Blanca took
it, but I do like yours a hundred times better Martin dear, because
you gave it to me and besides its much more orriginal.
“Ime worried because Buondelmonte mite want Bun back now hese rich and
it would kill Beechy if Bun went away but I made him sware again on
Scopys book he wont go whatever hapens.
“Mother and father had a grate big row because Mother wanted Zinnia
and Lord Rench invited on the yatch and father said he woudnt it was
too low, so she said why did he mind when she didn’t. She wants to
know the Duke of Mendip whose with them and Zinnia invites Gerald
every day to lunch and dine and that makes Joyce fureaous. You will
say I ought not to tell you this dear Martin then what can I do if
there is a Row between them about Gerald Terry will loose his tutor
and its too bad so I want to get away with the children as quick as we
can.
“Terry said he must see this before I send it to you because I spell
so badly but I wont let him because hed stop me sending it.
“Please Martin dear I do imploar you write and tell father to send us
off quickly. Terry’s temprature has gone up and Ime worried about
everything. How I wish you were here then theyde do what you say.
“Your Judith who misses you.”
“P.S. Please dont tell the Wheaters that Ive written.”
Boyne’s first thought, as he put the letter down, was that he was glad
it had come after what had happened that very evening on the balcony.
There had happened, simply, that the barriers created by a long habit of
reticence had fallen, and he had taken Rose Sellars into his arms. It
was a quiet embrace, the hushed surface of something deep and still. She
had not spoken; he thanked his gods for that. Almost any word might have
marred the moment, tied a tag to it, and fitted it with others into some
dusty pigeon-hole of memory. She had known how to be different—and that
was exquisite. Their quiet communion had silently flowered, and she had
let it. There was neither haste nor reluctance in her, but an
acquiescence so complete that what was deepest in both of them had
flowed together through their hands and lips.
“It will be so much easier now to consult her—she’ll understand so much
better.”
He didn’t quite know why he felt that; perhaps because the merging of
their two selves seemed to include every claim that others could have on
either of them. Only yesterday he might have felt a doubt as to how Mrs.
Sellars would view the Wheater problem, what she could possibly have in
common with any of the Wheaters, or their world; now it was enough that
she had him in common, and must share the burden because it was his.
He went over Judith’s letter again slowly, imagining how Mrs. Sellars’s
beautiful eyes would deepen as she read it. The very spelling was enough
to wring her heart. He would take the letter to her the next day.... But
the next day was here already. He pushed back his window, and leaned
out. In the cold colourless air a few stars were slowly whitening, while
behind the blackness of the hillside facing him the interstellar pallor
flowed imperceptibly into morning gold. His happiness, he thought, was
like that passing of colourless radiance into glow. It was joy enough to
lean there and watch the transmutation. Was it a sign of middle-age, he
wondered, to take beatitude so quietly? Well, Rose, for all her
buoyancy, was middle-aged too. Then he remembered their kiss, and
laughed the word away as the sun rushed up over the mountains.
All that day there was too much to do and to say; there were too many
plans to make; too many memories to retrace. Boyne did not forget Judith
Wheater’s letter; her problem lay like a vague oppression in the
background of his thoughts; but he found no way of fitting it into the
new pattern of his life. Just yet—
It was decided that he and Mrs. Sellars should linger on in the
mountains for another month—a month of mighty rambles, long hours of
summer sunlight, and nights illuminated by a waxing moon. After that,
Boyne’s idea had been that they should push on at once to Paris, and
there be married as quickly as legal formalities allowed. It was at this
hint of an immediate marriage that he first noticed, in Mrs. Sellars,
the recoil of the orderly deliberate woman whose life has been too
vacant for hurry, too hopeless for impatience. Theoretically, she told
him with a smile, she hated delay and fuss as much as he did—and how
could he question her eagerness to begin their new life? But
practically, she reminded him, there were difficulties, there might even
be obstacles. Oh, not real ones, of course! She laughed that away,
remarking with a happy blush that she was of age, and her own mistress.
(“Well, then—?” he interjected.) Well, there were people who had to be
considered; who might be offended by too great haste: her husband’s
family, for instance. She had never hit it off with them particularly
well, as Boyne knew; but that was the very reason, she insisted, why she
must do nothing that might give them cause.... (“Cause for what?”) Well,
to say unpleasant things. She couldn’t possibly marry within a year of
her husband’s death without seriously offending them—and latterly, she
had to admit, they had been very decent, especially about straightening
out Charles’s will, which had been difficult to interpret, Mr. Dobree
said.
“Mr. Dobree?”
“He’s been such a friend to me through everything, you know,” she
reminded him, a shade reproachfully; and he remembered then that Mr.
Dobree was the New York lawyer who had unravelled, as much as possible
to her advantage, the tangle of Charles Sellars’s will—the will of a
snubbed secretive man whose only vindictiveness had been posthumous. Mr.
Dobree had figured a good deal of late in Mrs. Sellars’s letters, and
she had given Boyne to understand that it was he who had brought the
Sellars family to terms about the will. Boyne vaguely remembered him as
a shy self-important man with dark-gray clothes that were always too new
and too well-cut—the kind of man whose Christian name one never knew,
but had to look up in the “Social Register,” and then was amused to find
it was Jason or Junius, only to forget it again at once—so fatally did
Mr. Dobree tend always to become Mr. Dobree once more. A man, in short,
who would have been called common in the New York of Boyne’s youth, but
now figured as “a gentleman of the old school,” and conscientiously
lived, and dressed, up to the character. Boyne suspected him of being in
love with Mrs. Sellars, and Mrs. Sellars of feeling, though she could
not return the sentiment, that it was not ungratifying to have inspired
it. But Boyne’s mind lingered on Mr. Dobree only long enough to smile at
him as the rejected suitor, and then came back to his own grievances.
“You don’t mean to say you expect me to wait a whole year from now?”
She laughed again. “You goose. A year from Charles’s death. It’s only
seven months since he died.”
“What of that? You were notoriously unhappy—”
“Oh, _notoriously_—”
He met her protest with a smile. “I admit the term is inappropriate. But
I don’t suppose anybody thinks your marriage was unmitigated bliss.”
“Don’t you see, dear? That’s the very reason.”
“Oh, hang reasons—especially unreasonable ones! Why have you got to be
unhappy now because you were unhappy then?”
“I’m not unhappy now. I don’t think I could be, ever again, if I tried.”
“Dear!” he rejoined. She excelled at saying nice things like that (and
was aware of it); but her doing so now was like putting kickshaws before
a hungry man. “It’s awfully sweet of you,” he continued; “but I shall be
miserable if you insist on things dragging on for another five months.
To begin with, I’m naturally anxious to get home and settle my plans. I
want some sort of a job as soon as I can get it; and I want _you_,” he
concluded, putting his arm about her.
Obviously, what struck her first in this appeal was not his allusion to
wanting her but to the need of settling his plans. All her idle married
years, he knew, had been packed with settling things, adjusting things,
adapting things, disguising things. She did see his point, she agreed at
once, and she wanted as much as he did to fix a date; but why shouldn’t
it be a later one? There were her own aunts too, who had always been so
kind. Aunt Julia, in particular, would be as horrified as the Sellarses
at her marrying before her year of mourning was over; and she
particularly wanted to consider Aunt Julia.
“Why do you particularly want to consider Aunt Julia? I seem to remember
her as a peculiarly stupid old lady.”
“Yes, dear,” she agreed. “But it’s just because she _is_ peculiarly
stupid—”
“If you call that a sufficient reason, we shall never get married. In a
family as large as yours there’ll always be somebody stupid left to
consider.”
“Thanks for your estimate of my family. But it’s not the only reason.”
Her colour rose a little. “You see, I’m supposed to be Aunt Julia’s
heir. I found it out because, as it happens, Mr. Dobree drew up her
will; and the doctors say any one of these attacks of gout—”
“Oh—.”
He couldn’t keep the disenchanted note out of his voice. The
announcement acted like a cold douche. It ought, in reason, to have sent
a pleasant glow through him, for he knew that, in spite of Mr. Dobree’s
efforts, Mrs. Sellars had been left with unexpectedly small means, and
the earnings of his own twenty years of hard work in hard climates had
been partly lost in unlucky investments. The kind of post he meant to
try for in New York—as consulting engineer to some large firm of
contractors—was not likely to bring in as much as his big jobs in the
past; and the appearance of a gouty aunt with benevolent testamentary
designs ought to have been an unmixed satisfaction. But trimming his
course to suit the whims of rich relations had never been his
way—perhaps because he had never had any rich relations. Anyhow, he was
not going to be dictated to by his wife’s; and it gave him a feeling of
manliness to tell her so.
“Of course, if it’s a case of choosing between Aunt Julia and me—” he
began severely.
She raised her eyebrows with that soft mockery he enjoyed so much when
it was not turned against himself. “In that case, dear, I should almost
certainly choose you.”
“Well, then, pack up, and let’s go straight off to Paris and get
married.”
“Martin, you ought to understand. I can’t be married before my year of
mourning’s out. For my own sake I can’t; and for yours.”
“Damn mine!”
“Very well; I have my personal reasons that I must stick to even if I
can’t make you understand them.” Her eyes filled, and she looked
incredibly young and wistful. “I don’t suppose I ought to expect you
to,” she added.
“You ought to expect me to understand anything that’s even remotely
reasonable.”
“I had hoped so.”
“Oh, dash it—” he began; and then broke off. With a secret dismay he
felt their lovers’ talk degenerating for the first time into a sort of
domestic squabble; if indeed so ungraceful a term could be applied to
anything as sweetly resilient as Rose’s way of gaining her end. Was
marriage always like that? Was the haven Boyne had finally made to be
only a stagnant backwater, like other people’s? Or was it because he had
been wandering and homeless for so long that the least restraint chafed
him, and arguments based on social considerations made him fume? He was
certainly in no position to quarrel with Mrs. Sellars for wishing to
better her fortunes, and the discussion ended by his lifting her hand to
his lips and saying: “You know I want only what you want.” The coward’s
way out—and he knew it. But since he had parted with the substance of
his independence, why cling to the form? He felt her eyes following his
inner debate, and knew that the sweetness of her smile was distilled out
of satisfaction at his defeat. “Damn it,” he thought, “what cannibals
marriage makes of people.” He suddenly felt as if they were already
married—as if they had been married a long time....
During their first fortnight not a cloud had shadowed their comradeship;
but now that love and marriage had intervened the cloud was there, no
bigger than the Scriptural one, but menacing as that proverbial vapour.
She was kinder than ever because she had gained her point; and he knew
it was because she had gained her point. But was it not his fault if he
had begun thus early to distinguish among her different qualities as if
they belonged to different vintage years, and to speculate whether the
quality of her friendship might not prove more exquisite than her love
could ever be? He was willing to assume the blame, since the joy of
holding her fast, of plunging into her enchanted eyes, and finding his
own enchantment there, was still stronger than any disappointment. If
love couldn’t be friendship too, as he had once dreamed it might, the
only thing to do was to make the most of what it was....
Judith Wheater’s letter had been for over a week in Boyne’s pocket when
he pulled it out, crumpled and smelling of tobacco.
He and Mrs. Sellars were reclining at ease on a high red ledge of rock,
with a view plunging down by pine-clad precipices, pastures and forests
to illimitable distances of blue Dolomite. The air sang with light, the
smell of crushed herbs rose like incense, and the hearts of the lovers
were glad with sun and wind, and the glow of a long climb followed by
such food as only a rucksack can provide.
“And now for a pipe,” Boyne said, in sleepy beatitude, stretching
himself out on the turf at Mrs. Sellars’s elbow. He fumbled for his
tobacco pouch, and drew out with it the forgotten letter.
“Oh, dash it—”
“What?”
“Poor little thing! I forgot this; I meant to show it to you days ago.”
“Who’s the poor little thing?”
For a moment he wavered. His old dread of her misunderstanding returned;
and he felt he could not bear to have her misunderstand that letter.
What was the use of showing it, after all? But she was holding out her
hand, and he had no alternative. She raised herself on her elbow, and
bent her lustrous head above the page. From where he lay he watched her
profile, and the subtle curves of the line from ear to throat. “How
lovely she still is,” he thought.
She read attentively, frowning a little in the attempt to decipher
Judith’s spelling, and her mouth melting into amusement or compassion.
Then she handed back the letter. “I suppose it’s from the little Wheater
girl you wrote about? Poor little thing indeed! It’s too dreadful. I
didn’t know there really _were_ such people. But who are the Wheaters
she speaks of in the postscript, who are not to be told?”
Boyne replied that those were her parents.
“Her parents? Why does she speak of them in that way?”
He explained that in the Wheater circles it was the custom among the
children to do so, the cross-tangle of divorces having usually given
them so many parents that it was more convenient to differentiate the
latter by their surnames.
“Oh, Martin, it’s too horrible! Are you serious? Did the poor child
really tell you that?”
“The governess did—as a matter of course.”
She made a little grimace. “The sort of governesses they must have, in a
world where the parents are like that!”
“Well, this particular one is a regular old Puritan brick. She and
Judith keep the whole show together.” And he told her about the juvenile
oath on Scopy’s “Cyclopædia of Nursery Remedies.”
“She doesn’t appear to have grounded her pupils very thoroughly in
spelling,” Mrs. Sellars commented; but her eyes were soft, and she took
the letter back, and began to read it over again.
“There’s a lot I don’t begin to understand. Who are these people that
Mrs. Wheater wants to invite on the yacht because they know a Duke, and
Mr. Wheater won’t because it’s too low?”
“They’re Lord and Lady Wrench. Wasn’t there a lot in the papers a month
or two ago about Lord Wrench’s marrying a movie star? He has a
racing-stable; I believe he’s very rich. Her name was Zinnia Lacrosse.”
“A perfect name. But why, in the Wheater world, are movie stars regarded
as too low? Too low for what—or for whom?” Her mouth narrowed
disdainfully on the question.
“Well, this one happens to have been Wheater’s wife—for a time.”
“His _wife_?”
“Not for long, though. They’ve been divorced for much longer than they
were married. So I suppose Mrs. Wheater doesn’t see the use of making a
retrospective fuss about it.”
“Practical woman! And who’s the Gerald that she and the other lady are
fighting for?”
“Oh, he’s the boy’s tutor; Terry’s tutor. Or was to have been. I’m
afraid he’s a rotter too. But Terry, poor chap, is the best fellow you
ever saw. I back him and Judith and Scopy to keep the ship on her
course, whatever happens. If only Terry’s health holds out.”
“And they get him another tutor.”
“As things go, he’s lucky if he has any.”
Mrs. Sellars again sighed out her contempt and amazement, and let the
letter fall. For a long time she sat without moving, her chin on her
hand, looking out over the great billowing landscape which rolled away
at their feet as if driven on an invisible gale. When she turned to
Boyne he saw that her eyes were full of a puzzled sadness. “Don’t the
Wheaters _care_ in the least about their children?”
In old days, in their melancholy inconclusive talks, she had often
confessed her grief at being childless; and now he heard in her voice
the lonely woman’s indignation at the unworthiness of those who had been
given what she was denied. “Don’t they _care_?” she repeated.
“Oddly enough, I believe they do. I’m afraid that’s going to be our
difficulty. Why should they have taken on the steps if they hadn’t
cared? They certainly seem very fond of the children, whenever they’re
with them. But it’s one thing to be fond of children, and another to
know how to look after them. My impression is that they realised their
incapacity long ago, and that’s why they dumped the whole problem on
Judy.”
“Long ago? But how old is Judy? This is the writing of a child of ten.”
“She’s had no time to learn any other, with six children to look after.
But I suppose she’s fifteen or sixteen.”
“Fifteen or sixteen!” Mrs. Sellars gave a little sigh. “Young enough to
be my daughter.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say: “I wish she had been!” But he
had an idea it might sound queerly, and instead he stretched out his
hand and took back the letter. The gesture seemed to rouse her to a
practical view of the question. “What are you going to do about it,
dearest?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me.”
This stimulated her to action, as he had known it would. He was glad
that he had consulted her: she had been full of sympathy, and might now
be of good counsel. How stupid it was ever to mistrust her!
“Of course you must write to her father.”
“Well—perhaps. But doing that won’t get us much forrarder.”
“Not if you appeal to him—point out that the children oughtn’t to be
kept in Venice any longer? Didn’t you say he knew the climate was bad
for the boy?”
“Yes; and Wheater will respond at once—in words! He’ll say: ‘Damn it,
Joyce, Boyne’s right. What are the children doing here? We’ll pack them
off to the Engadine to-morrow.’ Then he’ll cram my letter into his
pocket, and no one will ever see it again, except the valet when he
brushes his coat.”
“But the mother—Joyce, or whatever her name is? If he tells _her_—”
“Well, there’s the hitch.”
“What hitch?”
“Supposing she wants to keep the children in Venice on account of
Gerald?”
“Gerald? Oh, the tutor! Oh, Martin—” A shiver of disgust ran over her.
“And you dare to tell me she’s fond of her children!”
“So she is; awfully fond. But everything rushes past her in a whirl.
Life’s a perpetual film to those people. You can’t get up out of your
seat in the audience and change the current of a film.”
“What _can_ you do about it?”
He lay back on the grass, frowning up into the heavens. “Can’t think.
Unless I were to drop down to Venice for a day or two, and try talking
to them.” To his surprise, he found that the idea opened out before him
rather pleasantly. “Writing to that kind of people’s never any sort of
good,” he concluded.
Mrs. Sellars was sitting erect beside him, her eyes bent on his. They
had darkened a little, and the delicate bend of her lips narrowed as it
had when she asked what there could be in the Wheater world that movie
stars were too low for.
“Go back to Venice?” He felt the edge of resistance in her voice. “I
don’t see of what use that would be. It’s a good deal to ask you to take
that stifling journey again. And if you don’t know what to write, how
would you know any better what to say?”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t. But at any rate I could feel my way. And I might
comfort Judith a little.”
“Poor child! I wish you could.” She was all sweetness again. “But I
should try writing first. Don’t you think so? Write to her too, of
course. Whatever you decide, you’d better begin by feeling your way.
It’s always awkward to interfere in family matters, and if you turned up
again suddenly the Wheaters might think it rather odd.”
He was inclined to tell her that nothing would seem odd to the Wheaters
except what seemed inevitable and fore-ordained to her. But he felt an
irritated weariness of the whole subject. “I daresay you’re right,” he
agreed, pocketing his pipe and getting to his feet. It was not his idea
of a holiday that it should be interfered with by other people’s
bothers, and he put Judith’s letter back into his pocket with an
impatient thrust. After all, what business was it of his? He would write
the child a nice letter, of course; but Rose was right—the idea of going
down to Venice was absurd. Besides, Judith’s letter was more than a week
old, and ten to one the party had scattered by this time, and the
children were safe somewhere in the mountains. “Poor little thing, she’s
always rather overwrought, and very likely she just had a passing panic
when she wrote. Hang it, I wish she hadn’t written,” he concluded,
relieved to find a distant object for his irritation.
Arm in arm, he and his love wandered down the mountain.
XI
“Of course I’ve written to her—I wrote last night,” Boyne assured Mrs.
Sellars the next evening. He was conscious of a vague annoyance at being
called to account in the matter—as if he couldn’t deal with his own
correspondence without such reminders. But Mrs. Sellars’s next word
disarmed him. “I’m so glad, dear. I should have hated to feel that our
being so happy here had made you neglect your little friend.”
That was generous, he thought—and like her. He adored her when she said
things like that. It proved that, in spite of her little air of
staidness, she was essentially human and comprehending. He had persuaded
her that night—for fun, for a change, after her months of seclusion—to
come down and dine with him, not at his own modest hotel, but at the
towering “Palace” among the pines below the _châlet_, where he thought
the crowd and gaiety of the big restaurant might amuse her, and would at
any rate make their evenings at the _châlet_ more delicious by contrast.
They had finished dining, and were seated over their coffee in a corner
of the big panelled hall to which the other diners were slowly drifting
back. Boyne, seeing Mrs. Sellars, for the first time since his arrival,
in the company of women as graceful and well-dressed as herself, noted
with satisfaction that not one of them had exactly her quality. But the
groups about the other tables were amusing to study and speculate about,
and he sat listening to her concise and faintly ironic comments with an
enjoyment mellowed by the flavour of the excellent cigar he had acquired
from the head-waiter.
“The girl in peach-colour, over there by the column—lovely, isn’t she?
Only one has seen her a thousand times, in all the ‘Vogues’ and
‘Tatlers.’ Oh, Martin, won’t it be too awful if beauty ends by being
standardised too?”
Boyne rather thought it had been already, in the new generation, and
secretly reflected that Mrs. Sellars’s deepest attraction lay in her
belonging to a day when women still wore their charm with a difference.
“I’m sure if I owned one of these new beauties I shouldn’t always be
able to pick her out in a crowd,” he agreed.
She laughed her satisfaction, and then, sweeping the hall with lifted
eye-glass: “That one you would....”
“A new beauty? Where?”
“Beauty—no. Hardly pretty ... but different. The girl who’s just come
in. Where’s she vanished to? Oh, she’s speaking to the porter. Now she’s
looking this way—but you can’t see her from where you’re sitting. She’s
hardly more than a child; but the face is interesting.”
He barely caught the last words. The porter had come up with a message.
“Young lady asking for you, sir.” Boyne got to his feet, staring in the
direction indicated. He had not been mistaken. It was Judith Wheater who
stood there, frail and straight in her scant travelling dress, her hat
pulled down over her anxious eyes, so small and dun-coloured that she
was hardly visible among those showy bare-armed women. Yet Mrs. Sellars
had picked her out at once! Yes, there was something undeniably
“different”; just as there was about Mrs. Sellars herself. But this was
no time for such considerations. Where on earth had the child come from,
and what on earth had brought her?
“Wait a minute, will you? It’s some one I know.” He followed the porter
between the tables to where Judith stood in the shadow of the stairway.
“Child! Where in the world have you dropped from?”
“Oh, Martin, Martin! I was so afraid you’d gone!”
He caught her by both hands, and she lifted a drawn little face to his.
Well, why not? He had kissed her goodbye in Venice; now he touched his
lips to her cheek. “Judy, how in the world did you get here? Have the
heads of the clan come too?”
“Oh, Martin, Martin!” She kept fast hold of him, and he felt that she
was trembling. She paid no attention to his question, but turned and
glanced about her. “Isn’t there a writing-room somewhere that we could
go to? There’s never anybody in them after dinner.”
He guided her, still clinging to him, to one of the handsomely appointed
rooms opening off the corridor beyond the hall. As she had predicted,
its desks were deserted, its divans unoccupied. She dropped down by
Boyne, and threw her arms about his neck.
“Oh, Martin, say you’re glad! I must hear you say it!”
“Glad, child? Of course I’m glad.” Very gently he released himself. “But
you look dead-beat, Judy. What’s the matter? Has anything gone wrong?
Are your people here?”
She drew back a little and turned full on him her most undaunted face.
“If you mean father and mother, they’re in Venice. They don’t know we’re
here. You mustn’t be angry, Martin: we’ve run away.”
“Run away? Who’s run away?”
“All of us; with Scopy and Nanny. I always said we’d have to, some day.
Scopy and Terry and I managed it. We’re at the _Pension Rosenglüh_, down
the hill. Father and mother will never guess we’re here. They think
we’ve gone to America on the Cunarder that touched at Venice yesterday.
I left a letter to say we had. Terry was splendid; he invented it all.
We hired motors at Padua to come here. But I’m afraid he’s dreadfully
done up. This air will put him right though, won’t it?” She poured it
all out in the same tone of eager but impartial narrative, as if no one
statement in her tale were more surprising or important than the
others—except, of course, the matter of Terry’s health. “The air here is
something wonderful, Martin, isn’t it?” she pleaded; and he found
himself answering with conviction: “There’s simply nothing like it.”
Her face instantly grew less agitated. “I knew I was right to come,” she
sighed in a tired voice; and he felt as if she were indeed an
overwrought child, and the next moment might fall asleep on his
shoulder.
“Judy, you’re dreadfully done up yourself, and you look famished. It’s
after ten. Have you had anything to eat since you got here?”
“I don’t believe I have. There wasn’t time. I had to see the children
settled first, and then make sure you were here.”
“Of course I’m here. But before we do any more talking you’ve got to be
fed.”
“Well, it would be nice to have a bite,” she confessed, recovering her
usual confident tone.
“Wait here, and I’ll go and forage.” Boyne walked down the corridor and
back into the hall, where people were beginning to group themselves
about the bridge-tables. The fact of finding himself there roused him to
the recollection of having left Mrs. Sellars alone with his empty
coffee-cup. Till that moment he had forgotten her existence. He made his
way back to their corner, but it was deserted. In the so-called “salon,”
against a background of sham tapestries and gilt wall-lights, other
parties were forming about more bridge-tables; but there also there was
no sign of Mrs. Sellars.
“Oh, well, she’s got bored and gone home,” he thought, a little
irritably. Surely it would have been simpler and more friendly to
wait ... but that was just a part of her ceremoniousness. Probably she
had thought it more tactful to disappear. Damn tact! That was all he had
to say.... The important thing now was to give Judy something to eat,
and get her back to her _pension_. After that he would run up to the
_châlet_ and explain.
He found a waiter, learned that it was too late to resuscitate dinner,
and ordered ham sandwiches and cocktails to be brought at once to the
writing-room. On the whole, he found it simplified things to have Mrs.
Sellars out of the way. Perhaps there was something to be said for tact
after all.
The first sip of her cocktail brought the glow back to Judith’s eyes and
lips, the next made her preternaturally vivid and alert. She must eat,
he told her—eat at once, before she began to talk; and he pushed his own
sandwiches on to her plate, and watched her devouring them, and emptying
first her glass and then his. She sparkled at him across its brim, but
kept silence, obediently; then she asked for a cigarette, and leaned
back at ease against the cushions.
“Well, we’re all here,” she declared with satisfaction.
“Not Chip?” he questioned, incredulous.
“Chip? I should think so! Do you suppose I’d have stirred an inch
without Chip?”
“But what the deuce is it all about, child? Have you gone crazy, all of
you?”
“Father and mother have. They do, you know. I warned father we’d run
away if it happened again.”
“What happened?”
“Why, what I told you would. But I don’t suppose you ever got my letter?
I was sure you’d have answered it if you had.” She turned her eyes on
him with a look of such unshaken trust that he stammered uncomfortably:
“Tell me all about it now.”
“Well, everything went to smash. I knew it would. And then all the old
shouting began—about detectives, and lawyers, and mother’s alimony. You
know that’s what the children mean when they talk about mother’s old
friend Sally Money. They’ve heard about her ever since they can
remember. They think mother sends for her whenever anything goes
wrong....”
“And things have gone thoroughly wrong?”
“Worse than ever. They were dividing us up already. Bun and Beechy back
to Buondelmonte, because he’s married a rich American. And Zinnia is
ready to take Zinnie. Lord Wrench thinks she’s so awfully funny. And
father would have had Chip, of course, and we three older ones would
have begun to be sent back and forth again as we used to be, like the
shabby old books Scopy used to get out of the lending library at
Biarritz. You could keep the stupid ones as long as you liked, but the
jolly ones only a week.” She turned her burning face to his. “Now,
Martin, didn’t I _have_ to get them all away from it?”
The food and wine had sent such a flame through her that he began to
wonder if she had fever, or if it were only the glow of fatigue. He took
her hand and it was burning, like her face.
“Child, you’re too tired. All the rest will keep till to-morrow. Put on
your hat now, and I’ll take you down the hill to your _pension_.”
“But, Martin, you’ll promise and swear to see us through?”
“Through everything, bless you. On Scopy’s book. And now come along, or
you’ll fall asleep in your tracks.”
In reality he had never seen her so acutely wakeful; but she submitted
in silence to being bundled into her hat and coat, and linked her arm
confidingly in his as they threaded their way among the bridge-players
and out into the great emptiness of the night. The moon hung low above
the western peaks, and the village clock below them in the valley chimed
out the three quarters after eleven as they walked down the road between
blanched fields and sleeping houses. On the edge of the village a few
lights still twinkled; but the _Pension Rosenglüh_, demurely withdrawn
behind its white palings, showed a shuttered front to the moon. Boyne
opened the garden gate, and started to go up the doorstep ahead of
Judith. “Oh, you needn’t ring, Martin. It would wake everybody. I don’t
believe the door’s locked. I told Scopy to see that I wasn’t shut out.”
She tried the door-knob, which yielded hospitably, and then turned and
flung her arms about her companion.
“Martin, darling, I don’t believe I’d ever have dared if I hadn’t known
you’d see us through,” she declared with a resounding kiss.
“The devil you wouldn’t!” he murmured; but he pushed her gently in,
thinking: “I ought never to have given her that second cocktail.” From
the threshold he whispered: “Go upstairs as quietly as you can. I’ll be
down in the morning to see how you’re all getting on.” Then he shut the
door on her, and slipped out of the gate.
Midnight from the village clock! What would his friend say if he knocked
up the _châlet_ at that hour? Halfway to the hotel he left the road and
branched upward through the fir-wood, by a path he knew. But there were
no lights in the _châlet_.
XII
Before mounting to Mrs. Sellars’s the next morning Boyne went down to
the _Pension Rosenglüh_ to gather what farther details he could of the
strange flight of the little Wheaters.
As he reached the _pension_ gate he was met by Miss Scope, looking more
than commonly gaunt and ravaged, but as brightly resolute as her
fellow-conspirator. Her gray cotton glove enfolded Boyne’s hand in an
unflinching grasp, and she exclaimed at once how providential it was
that they should have caught him still at Cortina. She added that she
had been on the look-out for him, as both Judith and Terry were still
asleep, and she was sure he’d agree that they had better not be
disturbed, after all they’d been through; especially as Terry was still
feverish. The other children, he gathered, had already breakfasted, and
been shepherded out by Nanny and the nursemaid to the downs above the
valley; and meanwhile perhaps Mr. Boyne would come in and have a chat.
The word seemed light for the heavy news he was prepared to hear; but he
suspected that Miss Scope, like the Witch of Atlas, was used to racing
on the platforms of the wind, and laughed to hear the fire-balls roar
behind. At any rate, her sturdy composure restored his own balance, and
made him glad of the opportunity to hear her version of the adventure
before his next encounter with Judith.
Miss Scope was composed, as she always was—he was soon to learn—in real
emergencies. She had been through so many that they seemed to her as
natural and inevitable as thunder-storms or chicken-pox—as troublesome,
but no more to be fussed about. Nevertheless, she did not underrate the
gravity of the situation: to do so, he suspected, would have robbed it
of its savour. There had been cataclysms before—times when Judy had
threatened to go off and disappear with all the children—but till now
she had never even attempted to put her threats into execution. “And now
she’s carried it off with a master hand,” Miss Scope declared in a tone
of grim triumph.
But carried it where to? That was the question Boyne could not help
putting. He was sure Judith had been masterly—but where was it all going
to lead? Had any of them taken that into account, he asked?
Well, Miss Scope had to own that their departure had been too
precipitate for much taking into account. It had to be then or never—she
had seen that as clearly as Judy and Terry. The fact that Terry was with
them showed how desperate the situation was—
“Desperate? Really desperate?”
“Oh, Mr. Boyne! If you’d been through it twice before, as my poor
children have....”
Listening to the details of her story, he agreed that it must indeed
have been awful, and ended by declaring that he did not question
Judith’s reasons; but now that the first step in the mutiny was taken,
how did Miss Scope imagine that they were going to keep it up? In short,
what did they mean to do when they were found out?
“I think Judith counts very much on your intervention. That’s the reason
she was so anxious to find you still here. And of course she hopes
there’ll be time—time to consider, to choose a course of action. She
believes it will be some days before we’re found out, as you put it. I
daresay she’s told you that she left a letter ... Mr. Boyne,” said Miss
Scope, interrupting herself with her sternest accent, “I hope you don’t
think that, in ordinary circumstances, I should ever condone the least
deceit. The children will tell you that on that point I’m inexorable.
But these were not ordinary circumstances.” She cleared her throat, and
brought out: “Judith said in the letter that we’d sailed for America.
She thinks her father will hurry there to find them, and in that way we
shall gain a little time, for the steamer they’re supposed to be on is
not due in New York for ten days.”
The plan seemed puerile, even for so immature a mind as Judith’s; but
Boyne did not raise that point. He merely said: “I hope so. But
meanwhile what are you all going to live on? It costs something to feed
such an army.”
Miss Scope’s countenance turned from sallow to white. Her eyes forsook
his face, as they did when she talked of Terry, and she brought out,
hesitatingly: “Judith, I understand, has means....”
“Poor woman!” Boyne thought. “I believe she’s plumped in all her
savings.—I see,” he said. He was filled with a sudden loathing of all
the wasteful luxury, the vanity and selfishness and greed, out of which
this poor pale flower of compassion had sprung. “I see,” he repeated. He
stood up, and held out his hand. “You’re their real mother. If there’s
anything on earth I can do—to the limit of my small capacity—.” A tear
ran down the furrows of Miss Scope’s averted cheek. He knew it by the
hasty dab of her cotton hand. “I know—I know—. Oh, Mr. Boyne, it’s
providential, our finding you.”
He pressed her wet glove hard, and assured her that she could count on
him. He would go off now, he added, to reflect further on the problem,
and come back later, when Judy and Terry were awake.
It was after eleven when he reached the _châlet_; but luckily no long
excursion had been planned for that morning. Mrs. Sellars had told him
the night before that she had letters to write, and should not expect
him early. When he approached the little house in its clearing of
emerald turf he saw her on the balcony, her writing-materials on a table
at her elbow. But she was leaning on the rail, looking down the path by
which he always came. He waved his hand, and she answered with a
welcoming gesture. “Come up—I’m deep in papers,” she called down
cheerily.
“I came last night, but your lights were out, and I was afraid of the
cook,” he laughed, taking her in his arms as she went to meet him. The
day was warm, and she had put on a thin white dress which gave her a
springlike look. Her complexion too had a morning freshness, through
which the blood ran up to his kiss. “But not afraid of me?” she
questioned.
“Of you? I like that! You deserted me; it’s you who ought to be afraid.
I’ve come to make a row, you know.”
“You ought to have come to thank me for my tact. I saw you’d run across
old friends, and slipped out of the way.”
“I’d run across one young friend—Judith Wheater. When I came back to
tell you about it you’d gone.”
Her eyes lit up with curiosity and interest. “Your famous little Judith?
Really? Why, you always speak of her as such a child—I shouldn’t have
guessed....”
“You said yourself last night how young she looked—”
“Yes; awfully young; but still—grown up.”
“Well, she’s not grown up. She’s a child—a child tremendously to be
pitied. I want to tell you all about it. I want your help and your
advice. You don’t know what a quandary I’m in.”
She had gone back to her seat on the balcony, and he dropped into the
chair beside her. As he spoke her colour flickered up again, and she
smiled a little uncertainly. “A quandary—about that child?” The smile
faded, and her colour with it. “Martin, you don’t mean ... you
can’t...?”
He stared, perplexed, and then burst out laughing. “That the quandary’s
_mine_—about little Judith? Bless you, what an idea! Why, she’s hardly
out of the nursery.” He laughed again, partly to bridge over his
surprise and her constraint. It was incredible, what farfetched
delusions the most sensible women took up with, at the very moment when
one wanted them to look at a question like a man! “This is a very
different business,” he went on. “Not in the least sentimental, but
merely squalid. The Wheater _ménage_ has gone to smash again, and Judy’s
bolted with all the children, to try to prevent their being separated,
as they are whenever there’s a new deal.”
Mrs. Sellars sat looking at him with wide eyes and parted lips. The
situation was evidently too new to her to be at once intelligible, and
she repeated vaguely: “Bolted—bolted from whom?”
“From Joyce and Wheater. Gone clean away, without any warning.”
She was again silent, her eyes as it were fixed on this statement, which
seemed to carry her no farther toward comprehension.
“But bolted with whom? They can’t have gone away all by themselves?”
“The governess is with them, and the two nurses. In a crisis like this
they all stand by Judith. I’ve just been talking with the governess, and
she entirely approves. You see, they’ve been through this kind of thing
before.”
“Through the running away?”
“No, but through what led up to it. The last time, it appears, Judith
told her parents that if they were divorced again she meant to go off
with all the children, rather than have them separated from each other
as they were before. You see, whenever a smash comes the children are
divided up among the ex-parents, and some of them are pretty rotten, I
imagine—a blackmailing Italian prince, a rather notorious movie star,
and Lord knows who besides. Not to speak of the new elements to be
introduced, if Joyce and Wheater both marry again, as I’ve no doubt they
will, in no time.”
Mrs. Sellars, her chin resting on her hand, sat listening in a silence
still visibly compounded of bewilderment and disgust. For a minute after
Boyne had ceased speaking she did not move or look up. At last she said,
in a low voice: “It’s all too vile for belief.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “And it’s all true.”
“The horrors those children must know about—”
“It’s to save them from more horrors that Judith has carried them away.”
“I see—I see. Poor child!” Her face melted into pity. “Just at first it
was all too new to me. But now I’m beginning to understand. And I
suppose she came here hoping you would help her?”
“I suppose she didn’t have much time to think or choose, but vaguely
remembered I was here, as her letter showed.”
“But the money? Where in the world did they get the money? You can’t
transport a nursery-full of children from one place to another without
paying for it.”
Boyne hesitated a moment; but he felt he must not betray Miss Scope, and
merely answered that he hadn’t had time to go into all that yet, but
supposed that in an easy-going extravagant household like the Wheaters’
there were always some funds available, the more so as preparations were
already being made to send the children off to the mountains.
“Well, it’s all hideous and touching and crazy. Where are the poor
little things—at your hotel?” Mrs. Sellars had gone indoors, and was
picking up her hat and sunshade. “I should like you to take me down at
once to see them.”
Boyne was touched by the suggestion, but secretly alarmed at what might
happen if Mrs. Sellars were exposed unprepared to the simultaneous
assault of all the little Wheaters. He explained that Judith had taken
her flock to an inexpensive _pension_ in the village, and that the
younger children, when he had called there, were already away on the
downs, and Judith and Terry still sleeping off their emotions. Should he
go down again, he asked, and bring Judith back alone to the _châlet_?
“You’d better see her first without the others. You might find the seven
of them rather overwhelming.”
Seven? Mrs. Sellars confessed she hadn’t realised that there were
actually seven. She agreed that it would be perhaps better that she
should first see Judith without her brothers and sisters, and proposed
that Boyne should invite her to come back with him to the _châlet_ to
lunch. “If you think she won’t be too frightened of a strange old
woman?” The idea of Judith’s being frightened of anything or anybody
amused Boyne, but he thought it charming of Mrs. Sellars to suggest it,
and was glad, after all, that she was there to support and advise him.
When she had had a quiet talk with Judith he felt sure she would be on
the children’s side; and perhaps her practical vision might penetrate
farther than his into the riddle of what was to be done for them.
“If only,” he said to himself, “Judith doesn’t begin by saying something
that will startle her”; and he thought of warning Mrs. Sellars not to
expect a too great ingenuousness in his young friend. Then he reflected
that such a warning might unconsciously prejudice her against the girl,
and decided that it would be wiser to trust to Judith’s natural charm to
overcome anything odd in her conversation. If there were hints to be
given, he concluded, there would be less risk in giving them to Judith.
But the utility of giving hints in that quarter became equally dubious
at first sight of her. Refreshed and radiant after her night’s rest, and
unusually pretty in her light linen frock, and a spreading hat with a
rosy lining, Judith received him at the gate of the _pension_ in an
embrace which sent her hat flying among the currant-bushes, and exposed
her rumpled head and laughing eyes to his close inspection. “You look
like a pansy this morning,” he said, struck by the resemblance of her
short pointed oval and velvet-brown eyes to the eager inquisitive face
of the mountain flower. But Judith was no gardener, and rejected the
comparison with a grimace. “How horrid of you! Nasty wired things in
wreaths at funerals! I don’t feel a bit as if I were at a funeral. It’s
so jolly to be here, and to have found you. You’ve come to say you’ll
lunch with us, haven’t you? The children will be mad with joy. It was
partly because I promised them we’d find you here that they agreed to
come. Blanca and Zinnie unsettled them at first—they’re always afraid of
missing some excitement if they have a row with mother. But I told them
we’d have lots more excitement with you.” She was hanging on his arm,
and drawing him up the path to the house.
“I must tell the landlady you’re coming to lunch. Scopy’s upstairs with
Terry, and she told me to be sure not to forget, so that the cook could
give us something extra.” By this time they were in the little
sitting-room, which smelt of varnish and dried edelweiss, and had a
stuffed eagle perched above the stove. Judith sat down on the slippery
sofa, and dragged Boyne to a seat at her side. “And first, I was to ask
you what pudding you’d particularly like.”
“Oh, bless you, any pudding. But about lunch—”
She drew herself up, and tossed him an arch smile. “Or perhaps you’re
here incog., with a lady, and would rather not come? I told Scopy I
shouldn’t wonder—”
“Nonsense, Judith; how absurd—”
“Why absurd? Why shouldn’t you be here with a lady? _Vous êtes encore
très bien, mon cher...._” She drew her deep lids half shut, and slanted
an insinuating glance at him.
“Don’t talk like a manicure, child. As a matter of fact, I have an old
friend here who wants very much to see you, and who kindly suggested—”
“An old lady-friend?”
“Yes.”
“As old as Scopy?”
“No; probably not as old as your mother, even. I only meant—”
“But if she’s younger than mother, how can you say she’s old? Is she
prettier, too?” Judith broke in searchingly.
“I don’t know, really; I haven’t thought—”
“Well, I don’t believe she’s as well-dressed. Unless, perhaps, you think
Joyce’s clothes are sometimes just a shade _too_—”
“I haven’t thought about that either. What I mean by ‘old’ is that Mrs.
Sellars and I have been friends for years. She’s living in a _châlet_ on
the hill above the hotels; and she wants me to bring you up to lunch
with her today.”
“Me—only me?” Judith questioned, visibly surprised.
Boyne smiled. “Well, my dear, I’m sure she would have liked to invite
you all, Chip included; but her house is tiny and couldn’t possibly take
in the whole party. So, to avoid invidious distinctions, why not come by
yourself and make her acquaintance? I want you awfully to know her, for
no one can give you better advice than she can.”
Judith drew herself up stiffly and her face became a blank. “I don’t
want anybody’s advice but yours, Martin. But of course I’ll go if you
want me to.”
“It’s not a question of what I want. But you may be sure if my advice is
any good it will be because I’ve consulted Mrs. Sellars. Two’s not too
many to get you out of this predicament. I sometimes think you don’t
realise what an awful row you’re all in for.”
“If she’s not as old as mother, and you’ve never noticed how she’s
dressed, you must be in love with her,” Judith went on, as if his last
words had not made the least impression on her.
“I don’t see what difference it makes if I am or not,” he retorted,
beginning to lose his temper. “The point is that she happens to be one
of the kindest and most sensible women I know—”
“That’s what men always think,” said Judith thoughtfully. She drew back
to study him again through half-closed lids. “It’s a wonderful thing to
be in love,” she murmured; and then continued with a teasing smile:
“Blanca’s ever so much sharper than I am. She said: ‘Why’s Martin in
such an awful hurry to rush away from Venice, if he isn’t slipping off
on the quiet to meet a friend?’ I suppose,” she added, with a fall in
her voice, and a corresponding droop of the lips, “it was awfully stupid
of me to blunder in on you like this, and you’re racking your brains to
think how you can get rid of us all, and keep out of a row with father
and mother.”
Boyne, half-exasperated and half-touched, as he so often was in his
talks with her, and especially when he knew she wished to give him pain,
laid his hand reproachfully on hers. “Look here, Judith, I could shake
you when you talk such drivel. The only thing I’m racking my brains
about is how to help you to get what you want. To keep you all together,
as you are now, and yet not let your father and mother think that I’ve
had anything to do with this performance. You’re quite right; I do want
to stay on good terms with them, because if I do I may succeed in
persuading them that, whatever happens, they’ve no right to separate you
children again. If I do that I shall have done my best for you. But I
don’t see my way to it yet, and that’s why I want you to come and make
friends with Mrs. Sellars.”
To his surprise she listened in an attentive silence, and, when he had
ended, lifted to his the face of an obedient child. “Of course I’ll do
what you want, Martin. But don’t you think your friend would perhaps
understand better if I had Nanny bring up Chip to see her after lunch?”
“Bless you—of course she would,” he agreed enthusiastically; and she
thereupon proposed that before they started he should come upstairs and
see Terry.
XIII
Seeing Terry, Boyne had to admit, was the surest way of attaching one,
body and soul, to the cause of the little Wheaters. Whatever Mrs.
Sellars thought of Judith—a question of obvious uncertainty—there could
be no doubt as to what she would think of Terry.
There had been moments during the morning when Boyne did not see how any
good will on either part could bridge the distance between Mrs.
Sellars’s conception of life, and Judith Wheater’s experience of it; but
between Mrs. Sellars and Terry there would be nothing to explain or
bridge over. Their minds would meet as soon as their eyes did. “I’ll
bring her down to see him after lunch,” Boyne decided.
There was no hope of Terry’s being up that day. The excitement of the
flight, and the heat and fatigue of the journey, had used up his small
surplus of strength, and he could only lie staring at Boyne with eager
eyes, and protest that he knew the air of Cortina would put him all
right before long. Scopy had already had the doctor in, and administered
suitable remedies, and the patient’s temperature had dropped to nearly
normal. “If only father and mother will let us stay here I’m sure I
shall be patched up this time. And you’ll be here for a bit to look
after the children, won’t you, Martin?”