till the little Wheaters’ difficulty with their parents was on the way
to adjustment. He pointed out that negotiations would no doubt be
necessary, and Terry promptly rejoined: “That’s just why Judy and I
decided to come here. We knew that if we could get hold of you, you’d
back us up, and help us to make some kind of terms with father and
mother.” His eyes fixed his friend’s with a passionate insistence. “You
see, Martin, it won’t do, separating us again—it really won’t. We’re not
going to get any sort of education at this rate. And as for manners! The
children have all been completely demoralised since Zinnia’s visit. Now
they’ve heard of Buondelmonte’s marriage, and the steps have gone off
their base too; and as for Blanca she thinks of nothing but dressing-up
and flirtation.... As soon as things go wrong between father and mother
the children seem to feel it in the air; even before the actual fighting
begins, they all get out of hand. Zinnie gave Bun a black eye the other
day because he said he was going to be a Prince again, and live in his
father’s palace in Rome, and have his own Rolls ... a child who hardly
knows his letters!” Terry concluded with a gesture of contempt.
“I know, old man. It’s all wrong,” Boyne agreed, “and something’s got to
be done, and done soon. That’s what I’m going to try to make your father
and mother see. Meanwhile you must make the most of this respite to get
a good rest. I promise I’ll do what I can when the time comes.”
“Oh, you needn’t promise,” Terry said, letting his head sink back
contentedly on the pillows.
On the way up the hill with Judith, Boyne was able to gather some of the
details she had been too tired and excited to impart the night before.
Miss Scope’s confidences were always in the nature of sombre
generalizations. When it came to particulars, she retreated behind
professional secrecy; and Boyne had not liked to force her defences.
Besides, he knew that no such scruples would hamper Judith, who saw life
only in particulars. But, after all, there was nothing very unexpected
in Judith’s story. As she said, it was always the same old row over
again. As soon as Zinnia Lacrosse had cast a covetous eye on Gerald
Ormerod, Joyce had decided that she could not live without him. The
thought of his dining every night at the Lido with the Wrenches and the
Duke of Mendip, while she and Wheater sat alone on the deck of the
“Fancy Girl,” or made the most of such mediocre guests as they could
collect, was too much for a high-spirited woman; and Joyce had suddenly
requested her husband to sack the tutor. Wheater, surprised, had
protested that Terry liked him (and Terry did—he was very jolly, and a
good teacher, Judith impartially admitted); whereupon Joyce had declared
that if Ormerod wasn’t sent away at once she intended to divorce Wheater
and marry him. Wheater, of course, was furious, and there had been, in
Judith’s language, an all-round circus, complicated by the fact that
what Gerald really wanted was to marry _her_—
“What—what? Marry _you_? Have you all of you gone crazy?” Boyne found
himself indignantly repeating.
Judith smiled. “I’m not crazy. And I’m nearly sixteen. And I suppose I’m
a nairess.” (She pronounced the word as she wrote it.) “But you don’t
imagine I’d leave the children, do you? Besides, Terry says it would be
ridiculous to marry till I can learn how to spell.”
“My God—I should say it would,” cried Boyne furiously. What on earth
would come of it, he asked himself, if she opened the conversation with
Mrs. Sellars on this note? “Judith, look here—.”
“But I don’t know, after all,” she went on, in a reflective tone.
“Gerald says some of the greatest people never _could_ spell. Napoleon
couldn’t—or Madame de Sévigné—and Shakespeare signed his name
differently every time.”
“I see you’ve taken a course in history since I left,” Boyne sneered; to
which she responded with simplicity: “No; but he told me that one day
when he found me crying because of my awful spelling.”
“Well, you’re quite right to cry about your spelling. And Terry’s quite
right to say that the first thing you want is to have some sort of an
education, all of you.”
“Perhaps, then, it would have been better for me to marry Gerald,” she
rejoined, with a return of her uncanny impartiality. “But no,” she
interrupted herself; “I never could have kept the children if I had; so
what’s the use?”
“Well, here we are,” Boyne broke in nervously.
“Why, you poor child, how young you are, after all!” Mrs. Sellars
exclaimed, swaying forward to drop an impulsive kiss on Judith’s cheek.
Boyne’s first thought was, how young she looked herself, in her thin
black dress, her auburn head bent like an elder sister’s above Judith’s;
then how much too young Judith was to be conciliated by that form of
greeting.
Judith looked at her hostess with a smile. “Young for what?” she asked,
with an ominous simplicity.
“Why—for all your responsibilities,” the other answered, checked in her
premeditated spontaneity.
Judith was still smiling: a small quiet smile from which the watchful
Boyne augured no good.
“I suppose I ought to be flattered,” she said. “I know that at your age
and mother’s it’s thought awfully flattering to be called young. But,
you see, I’m not sixteen yet, so it’s nothing extraordinary to me.”
“Your being so young makes it extraordinarily kind of you to come and
see an old lady like me,” Mrs. Sellars smiled back, taking nervous
refuge in platitudes.
Judith considered her with calm velvety eyes. “Oh, but I wanted to come.
Martin says you’ll be a friend; and we need friends badly.”
Mrs. Sellars’s eyes at once softened. “Martin’s quite right. I’ll be as
good a friend as you’ll let me. I’m so glad you’ve come to share my
picnic lunch. And Martin will have told you how sorry I was not to have
room for the whole party in this tiny house.”
“Well,” said Judith, “he thought you’d find us rather overwhelming—”;
but Mrs. Sellars laughed this away as an unauthorized impertinence of
her old friend’s.
On the whole, things were beginning better than the old friend had
expected. He only hoped Rose wouldn’t mind Judith’s chucking down her
hat on the sitting-room sofa, and turning to the glass above the
mantelpiece to run her fingers through her tossed hair. Once at table,
Mrs. Sellars led the talk to the subject of the little Wheaters, whose
names she had cleverly managed to master, and whose acquaintance she
expressed the wish to make at the earliest opportunity, “steps” and all.
“For I assure you,” she added, “I’m not as easily overwhelmed as Martin
seems to think.”
Judith was always at her best when she was talking of the children, and
especially of Terry, whose name Mrs. Sellars had spoken with a sympathy
which brought a glow to the girl’s cheek. “Oh, Terry’s far and away the
best of us; you’ll love Terry. If only he could have half a chance. I
don’t mean about his health; father and mother have really done all they
could about that. But he’s never had any proper education, and he isn’t
strong enough yet to go to school.” She went on, forgetting herself and
her habit of being on the defensive, carried away by the need to explain
Terry, to put him in the handsomest possible light before this friend of
Martin’s, who was so evidently a person of standards and principles—like
Terry himself. It was just another bit of poor Terry’s bad luck, she
pursued; for ever so long he’d been begging and imploring their parents
to let him have a good tutor, like other boys of his age who weren’t
strong enough for school; and finally they had understood, and agreed
that he couldn’t be left any longer to Scopy and the nurses; and then,
when the tutor was finally found, and everything working so well, Joyce
had to take it into her head to marry him. Didn’t Mrs. Sellars agree
that it was a particularly rotten piece of luck?
Yes; Mrs. Sellars did agree. Only, Boyne saw from the curve of her lips,
“luck” was not precisely the noun she would have used, nor “rotten” the
adjective.
“But surely it’s just a passing whim of—of your mother’s. When it comes
to the point, she won’t break up everything in order to marry this young
man.”
Judith’s eyes widened. “Well, what can mother do—if she’s in love with
him?”
Mrs. Sellars lowered her lids softly, as if she were closing the eyes of
a dead self. “Why, she could ... she could ... think of all of you, my
dear.”
“Oh, she’ll do that,” Judith rejoined. “She has already. She and father
are fighting over us now. That’s why we bolted. Hasn’t Martin told you?”
“I think Martin felt he’d rather have you tell me about it yourself—that
is, as much as you care to,” said Mrs. Sellars, with tactful
evasiveness.
Judith pondered, her brows gathering in a puzzled frown. “I don’t know
that there’s anything more to tell. I brought the children away so that
we shouldn’t be separated again. If children don’t look after each
other, who’s going to do it for them? You can’t expect parents to, when
they don’t know how to look after themselves.”
“Ah, my dear,” murmured Mrs. Sellars. With an impulsive movement she put
her hand on Judith’s. “Just say that to your mother as you’ve said it to
me, and she’ll never give you up for anybody.”
Judith’s frown relaxed, and her eyebrows ran up incredulously. “She has
before, you know. What are you to do when you fall in love? That’s one
thing I never mean to do,” she announced, in a decisive tone. “Besides,
you know,” she went on, “one does get used to children. I suppose you’ve
never had any, have you?” Mrs. Sellars made a faint sign of negation.
“Oh, well,” Judith continued encouragingly, “I daresay it’s not too
late. But if you’d had all of us on your hands, and the three steps
besides, you’d probably take us for granted by this time. Not that
mother isn’t fond of us—only she has these heart-storms. That’s what
poor Doll Westway used to call them. And _she_ knew—”
Mrs. Sellars laid down the spoon with which she was absently stirring
her coffee. “Doll Westway—?”
Judith’s face lit up. “You knew her?”
“No,” said Mrs. Sellars, in a tone of rejection acutely familiar to
Boyne, but obviously unremarked by the girl.
“She was my very best friend,” Judith went on. “You never saw anybody so
lovely to look at. In tea-rose bathing tights—”
“My dear,” Mrs. Sellars interrupted, “don’t you think it seems a pity to
sit indoors in such weather? If you’ve finished your coffee, shall we
move out on the balcony? Martin, do find the cigarettes.” Her sweetness
suffused them like a silvery icing. Judith, obviously puzzled, rose to
follow her, and Boyne distributed cigarettes with a savage energy. Oh,
damn it, what had gone wrong again now?
But whatever had gone wrong was, for the moment at any rate, set right
by the appearance of a blue-veiled nurse who was conducting a rosy
little boy up the slope beneath the balcony. “Hullo! This way—here I
am!” Judith joyously signalled to the pair; and Mrs. Sellars, leaning
over the railing at her side, instantly declared: “Here’s somebody too
beautiful not to be the celebrated Chip.”
Yes; it was clever of Judith to have arranged that Chipstone should
appear at that moment. To a childless woman the sight of that armful of
health and good humour must be at once a pang and a balm. Mrs. Sellars’s
eyes met Boyne’s, smiling, trembling, and his signalled back: “Damn Aunt
Julia.” Chipstone had already filled the air with his immovable
serenity. They had gone back into the sitting-room to greet him, and he
settled himself Buddha-like on Mrs. Sellars’s knee, and laughed with
satisfaction at the sight of Judy and Martin and Nanny grouped
admiringly before him. Whatever came Chip’s way seemed to turn into
something as fresh as new milk with the bubbles on it.
“Oh, Chip’s a good enough fellow,” said Judith, fondly disparaging. “But
wait till you see Terry....”
“Terry couldn’t come; but the rest of us have,” announced a sharp little
voice outside the door.
“Good gracious! If it isn’t Zinnie!” Judith jumped up in a rush of
indignation; but before she could reach the door it had opened on the
self-possessed figure of her little step-sister, behind whose fiery mop
appeared the dark bobbing heads of Bun and Beechy.
“Well, if ever—I never did! Susan swore to me she’d never let ’em out of
her sight while we was away,” Nanny ejaculated, paling under Judith’s
wrathful glance.
“She never did, neither,” said Zinnie composedly. “She watched us almost
all the way; but we could run faster than her, ’cos she’s got a shoe’t
hurts her, ’n’ so after a while she had to give up chasing us. Didn’t
she?” This was flung back to the “steps” for corroboration.
But a masterly somersault had already introduced Bun to the centre
front, where he remained head down, bare legs and sandal-soles in air;
and Beechy had rushed up to Mrs. Sellars and flung her passionate arms
about Chipstone. “Oh, my Cheepo, we thought we’d losted you, and you
were dead,” she joyfully wailed; and Chip received her pæan with a rosy
grin.
“Yes, ’n’ Judy hadn’t ought to of sneaked away and left us all like
that, ’n’ not said anything ’bout coming here, but only ’ranged for Chip
to come and see you, when he’s the youngest of the bunch—ought she of?”
Zinnie appealed indignantly to Mrs. Sellars; who replied that it
evidently didn’t seem fair, but she must take the blame to herself for
living in such a small house that she hadn’t been able to invite them
all to lunch because the dining-room wouldn’t have held them. “And I
suppose,” she concluded diplomatically, “Chipstone was chosen to
represent you because he takes up the least room.”
“No, he doesn’t, either; I do!” shouted Bun, swiftly reversing himself
and facing Mrs. Sellars in a challenging attitude. “I can crawl through
a croky hoop, and I can—”
“You can’t hold your tongue, and Chip can, and that’s why I brought him,
and not the rest of you,” cried Judith, administering a shake to Bun,
while Nanny seized upon Beechy to stifle her incipient howl of sympathy.
“Oh, these dreadful children—.” It was another voice at the door, this
time so discreetly pitched, so sweetly deprecating, that Mrs. Sellars
instinctively rose to receive a visitor who seemed as little used as
herself to noisy company.
“I _am_ so sorry—.” Blanca was in the room now, slim, white-frocked,
imperturbable, with an air of mundane maturity which made Judith seem
like her younger sister.
“Poor Susan told me they’d run away from her when they found Nanny was
coming here with Chip, and I rushed after them, but couldn’t catch them.
I’m sorry, but it wasn’t my fault.” Prettily breathless, she excused
herself to Judith; but her long lashes were busy drawing Mrs. Sellars
and Boyne into their net. “Darling Martin!” She bestowed on him one of
her mother’s most studied intonations. “I’m Terry’s twin,” she explained
to Mrs. Sellars.
The latter, at ease with graces so like her own, replied with a smile
that, since Terry could not come, she appreciated his sending such a
charming delegate. Judith shot a grimace at Boyne, but Blanca, with a
sudden rush of sincerity, declared: “Oh, but when you’ve seen Terry you
won’t care for any of the rest of us.”
“Yes, she will; she’ll care for Beechy and me because we’re Roman
Princes!” Bun shouted, threatening another handspring which a gesture
from Judith curtailed.
Zinnie pushed him aside and planted herself firmly in front of their
hostess. “My mother could buy ’em all out if she wanted to, ’cos she’s a
movie star,” she affirmed in her thin penetrating voice. “But I’d never
let her, ’cos we all love each other very much, ’n’ Judy’s made us all
swear on Scopy’s book we’d stay together till we got married. I’m
probably going to marry Bun.”
At this announcement signs of damp despair revealed themselves on
Beechy’s features; but Bun, regardless of the emotions he excited,
interposed to say: “My _real_ mother was a lion-tamer; but that don’t
matter, ’cos she’s dead.”
Mrs. Sellars had risen to the occasion on one of her quick wing-beats.
Games, tea and more games had been improvised with the promptness and
skill which always distinguished her in social emergencies; and the
afternoon was nearly over when a band of replete and sleepy children
took their way home to the _Pension Rosenglüh_. On the threshold of the
_châlet_ Zinnie paused to call up to the balcony: “I s’pose ’f you’d
known we were coming you’d have had some presents ready for us—.” A cuff
from Judith nipped the suggestion, and the flock was hurried off down
the hill, but not too quickly to catch Mrs. Sellars’s response: “Come up
to-morrow and you’ll see!”
Mrs. Sellars, however, did not wait till the next day to return the
little Wheaters’ visit. Soon after their departure she gathered up an
armful of books, selected for Terry’s special delectation, and walked
down to the _pension_ with Boyne. The younger children were by this time
at supper; but the visitor was introduced to Miss Scope, and conducted
by her to Terry’s bedside. Neither Judith nor Boyne accompanied her,
since the doctor did not want his patient to see many people till he had
recovered from his fatigue. Mrs. Sellars, for this reason, remained only
for a few minutes with the little boy, and when she rejoined Boyne, who
was waiting for her at the gate, she said simply: “I’m glad I came.”
Boyne liked her for knowing that he would guess the rest. He had never
had any doubts about this meeting.
When he got back to his hotel he found the telegram which he had been
expecting since the morning. “For God’s sake wire at once if children
with you and Chipstone all right worried to death cannot understand
insane performance police traced them to Padua where they hired motors
for Botzen please ship them all back immediately will wire you funds.
Wheater.”
“Damn it—well, I’ll have to go and see him myself,” Boyne muttered,
crumpling up the paper and jamming it into his pocket. The message had
shattered his dream-paradise of a day, and now the sooner the business
ahead of him was over the better for everybody. But with a certain
satisfaction he concluded, after a glance at the clock: “Too late to
wire tonight, anyhow.”
XIV
“Here—how was I to answer this?” Boyne challenged Mrs. Sellars that
evening, pushing the telegram across the dinner-table, where they had
lingered over their wood-strawberries and cream.
She had been charming about the Wheater children after their departure;
appreciative of Judith—with a shade of reserve—discerning and tender
about Terry, and warmly motherly about the others. It was
heart-breaking, the whole business ... and so touching, the way they all
turned to Martin for help ... regarding him apparently as their only
friend (how well she understood that!) ... But what on earth was he
going to do about it? What possible issue did he see?
All through dinner they went in and out of the question, till Boyne,
feeling that, thanks to Terry, her sympathy was permanently secured,
drew the Wheater telegram from his pocket. Mrs. Sellars scrutinised it
thoughtfully.
“When did this come?”
“Just now. I found it when I went back to the hotel.”
She sighed. “Of course the Wheaters were bound to find out within
twenty-four hours where they’d gone. Poor little conspirators! I wish we
could have kept them a day or two longer ... especially with that boy so
overdone....”
“Well, perhaps we can.”
Her eyebrows queried: “How?” But instead of taking this up he said: “You
haven’t told me yet what I’m to answer.”
Her mobile brow sketched another query. “What _can_ you answer? Their
father’ll come and fetch them if you don’t send them back.”
“I certainly shan’t do that.”
“Shan’t—? Then what?” Her eyes darkened, and she took up the telegram
and studied it again; then she lifted a faintly mocking smile to Boyne.
“I confess I’m curious to hear your alternative.”
He considered this with a frown of perplexity. “Why should I answer at
all?”
“If you don’t, Wheater has only to telephone to your hotel, and find out
if you’re still here, and if you’ve been seen about with a party of
children.”
“I shan’t be here. I’ll pack off at once—to Pieve di Cadore, or
somewhere.”
“And the children?”
“I’ll take them with me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
She received this with a little silken laugh. “Then you’re a child
yourself, dear. How long do you suppose it will be before you’re run
down? You’ll only be making things worse for the children—and for
yourself.”
“Hang myself! But for them—.” He frowned and pondered again. “Well, damn
it; perhaps. But what have you got to suggest?”
“That you should persuade Judith to take them straight back, of course.
I’m awfully sorry for them all—and Terry especially. But as far as I can
see there’s nothing else to do.”
He stood up and began to pace the floor. “I’ll never do that.”
She leaned her white arms on the table and her smile followed his
impatient pacings. “Then what?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. Anyhow, I’ve got the night to think it over.”
“All the thinking in the world won’t get you any farther.”
He met her smile with a grin which was almost antagonistic. “I’ve got
out of one or two tighter places in my life before now.”
“I’ve no doubt you have,” she returned in her tone of slightly humorous
admiration.
There they had dropped the discussion, both too experienced in debate
not to feel its uselessness. And the next morning had, after all, told
Boyne, without any one’s help, what he intended to do. He decided that
his first step was to see Judith; and he was down at the pension before
the shutters of her room were unlatched. Miss Scope was summoned to the
sitting-room, and he told her that Judith must come down immediately to
see him.
“Bad news, Mr. Boyne—oh, I hope not?”
“Well, you didn’t seriously suppose it was going to take Wheater much
longer than this to run you down, did you?”
Miss Scope whitened. “Are the police after us?”
“The police?” He burst out laughing. “To arrest you for abduction? If
they do, it shall be over my dead body.”
She turned to go, and then paused to face him from the threshold.
“Whatever Judith did was done with my knowledge and consent—consent; I
don’t say approval,” she declared in an emphatic whisper.
“Of course, of course. But send her down at once, will you please?”
A moment later Judith was there, huddled into a scant poppy-coloured
dressing-gown, her hair tumbling thickly over childish eyes still misty
with sleep. “What is it, Martin? The police?”
He laughed again, this time more impatiently. “Don’t be ridiculous,
child. You’re as bad as Scopy. You didn’t really believe your father
would have you arrested, did you?”
She met this with another question, “What _is_ he going to do?”
Boyne handed her the telegram, and she flashed back: “You haven’t
answered it?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, we’ll have to start at once, I suppose.”
Boyne stared at her, so unprepared for this prompt abdication that the
feeling uppermost in him was a sudden sense of flatness. He had come
there ready to put up a fight, valiant if unresourceful, and now—
“Couldn’t we catch a steamer at Trieste?” she continued, apparently
pursuing some inward train of thought. The unexpected question jerked
him back out of his supineness.
“Trieste? Why Trieste?” He stared at her, puzzled. “Where to?”
“Oh, almost anywhere where they can’t reach us too quickly.” As if
unconscious of his presence, she continued to brood upon her problem.
“Perhaps, do you know, after all, we’d better go to America. Don’t you
think so? There’s Grandma Mervin—Joyce’s mother. We might go to her. And
meanwhile you can make the Wheaters think we’re still here, and so they
won’t be worried, and we shall have time to slip away.”
In spite of himself, Boyne’s first feeling was one of relief that she
meant to keep up the struggle. To begin with, it was more like her; and
he had reached the point of wanting her at all costs to be like herself.
But he kept his wits sufficiently to reply on a note of sarcasm: “Thank
you for the part for which I’m cast. But, my poor child, even if you
could get away to America without your parents’ knowing it, such
journeys cost money, and I don’t suppose—”
“Oh, I’ve oceans of money,” she answered with a startling composure.
“What do you call oceans of money? Scopy’s savings?” he taunted her.
Judith flushed up. “She told you?”
“She told me nothing. I guessed.”
Her head drooped for a moment; then she raised it with a confident
smile. “Well, of course I shall pay her back. She’s sure of that. She
knows I’m a nairess.”
“Heroic woman! But how far do you expect to go on what she’s
contributed?”
This also Judith faced with composure. “Not very—poor dear Scopy! But,
you see, I’ve got a lot besides.”
“A lot of money?”
She leaned her rumpled head back against the hard sofa, apparently
determined to enjoy his bewilderment for a moment longer before
enlightening him. “Don’t you call five thousand dollars a lot of money?”
she asked.
Boyne gave a whistle of astonishment, and she nodded softly in
corroboration.
“You had five thousand dollars—of your own?”
“No. But I knew where father had them.”
Boyne jumped to his feet, and stood glaring down at her incredulously.
“You knew—?”
“Don’t gape at me, Martin. If you like to call it so, I stole the money.
He always has a lot about, because it bores him so to write cheques.”
“And you helped yourself—to what you wanted?”
“It was awfully easy. I knew where the key was.” She seemed anxious to
disclaim any undeserved credit in the matter. “And, anyhow, I knew part
of it was intended for our expenses in the Engadine this summer. So it
really wasn’t exactly like stealing—was it?”
Boyne sat down again, this time in a chair on the farther side of the
room. There seemed to be something almost maleficent in the proximity of
the small scarlet figure with rumpled hair and sleep-misted eyes, curled
up defiantly in the sofa corner. “You told your father this, I suppose,
in the letter you left for him?”
“Told him I’d taken the money?” She laughed. “If I had, there wouldn’t
have been much use in taking it—would there?”
He groaned, and sat silent, his eyes fixed on the carefully scrubbed
boards of the floor. For a while he concentrated his whole attention on
one of their resinous knots; then, with limbs of lead, he slowly stood
up again. “Well, I wash my hands of you—all of you.”
Judith rose also, and went quickly up to him. “Martin,” she said in a
frightened voice, “what are you going to do?”
“Do? Nothing. You’d better answer that telegram yourself,” he retorted
roughly, shaking off the hand she had put out. He walked across the
room, blinked unseeingly at his hat and stick, which he had thrown down
on the table, and turned to go out of the door without remembering to
pick them up. On the threshold he was checked by Judith’s passionate
clutch on his arm. Her lifted face was wet and frightened. “Martin—why
don’t you say you think I’m a thief, and have done with it?”
He swung round on her. “I think you’re an unutterable fool. I think the
average Andaman islander has a more highly developed moral sense than
you.”
“I don’t know who they are. But Doll Westway always used to—”
“Used to what?”
“Go to her mother’s drawer. There wasn’t any other way. They all hate
the bother of paying bills—parents do.” She clung to him, her lips still
trembling.
“Miss Scope knows about this, I suppose?”
She nodded. “I persuaded her. She hated it awfully—but she saw there was
no other way. She’s saved so little herself—because she has a brother
who drinks....”
“And Terry? Does Terry know?”
“Oh, Martin! Terry? How could you think it? But you don’t really, do
you? You just said that to frighten me. Oh, Martin ... you’ll never tell
Terry, will you? I shall die if you do. It doesn’t matter about anybody
else....”
He stood silent, suffering her clasp of desperate entreaty, as if a
numbness had crept into the arm she held, and yet as if every nerve in
it were fire. Something of the same duality was in his brain as he
listened. It struck him dumb with the sense of his incapacity. All the
forces of pity—and of something closer to the soul than pity—were
fighting in him for her. But opposed to them was the old habit of
relentless unconditional probity; the working man’s faith in a standard
to be kept up, and imposed on others, at no matter what cost of
individual suffering. “I can’t let her drift,” was as near as he could
come to it....
“Martin, tell me what you want me to do,” she whispered, her lips
trembling. His own hardened.
“Sit down at that table and write to your father that you took the
money—and why you took it.”
For a while she considered this painfully. “If I don’t,” she finally
brought out, “shall you tell Terry?”
He gave her an indignant look. “Of course I shan’t tell Terry!”
“Very well. Then I will.”
Boyne flushed with the suddenness of his triumph, and most of all at the
reason for it. “That’s my Judy!”
She coloured too, as if surprised, but her face remained drawn and
joyless. “But if I do, the game’s up—isn’t it?”
“The game’s up anyhow, my dear.”
Her colour faded. “You mean you’re really going to give us away?”
He paused, and then said with deliberation: “I’m going to Venice at once
to see your father.”
“To tell him we’re here?”
“Of course.”
Her hand fell from his arm, and she stood drooping before him, all the
youth drained out of her face. He was frightened at the effect of his
words. Her boundless capacity for suffering struck him as the strangest
element in her tragic plight.
“Then you give us up altogether? You don’t care any longer what becomes
of us?”
He paused a moment, and then turned back into the room, and took her two
cold hands in his.
“Judith, look at me.” She obeyed.
“Can’t you understand that I care for only one thing at this moment?
That you should realise what you’ve done—”
“About the money?” she breathed.
“Of course. About the money.”
“You really think that matters more than anything else?”
The unexpectedness of the question suddenly cut him adrift from his
argument. It seemed to come out of some other plane of experience, to be
thrust at him from depths of pain and disillusionment that he had not
yet begun to sound.
“You see,” she pressed on, snatching at her opportunity, “if we could
only get to Grandma Mervin’s, I believe she’d keep us. At any rate,
she’d try to make mother see that we mustn’t be separated. I know she
would, because in her letters to mother she always calls us ‘those poor
children.’ She’s awfully old-fashioned, Grandma Mervin.... And the
money, Martin—father won’t find out for ever so long that it’s gone.
There was a lot more where I took it from. He always has such heaps with
him; and he never knows how much he’s spent. Once he had a valet who
stole a lot, and he didn’t discover it for months.... And without that
money we can’t possibly get to America....”
Boyne pulled himself together with an effort, averting his eyes from the
perilous mirage. “And you’re gambling on being as lucky as the other
thief?” There—saying that had cleared his conscience, and he could go on
more humanely: “Don’t you see, child, that this business of the money
spoils the whole thing? You’ve got to give it back to me; and I’ve got
to take it to your father. Then I’ll put up the best fight I can for
you.”
Of this appeal she seemed to hear only the last words. “You will—oh,
Martin, darling, you really will?”
In an instant her arms were about his neck, her wet face pressed against
his lips. (“Now ... now ... now ...” he grumbled.) “I knew it, Martin! I
knew in my soul you’d never chuck us,” she exulted in the sudden ecstasy
of her relief. Waves of buoyancy seemed to be springing beneath her
feet. “Martin, I know you’ll know just what to say to them,” she
chanted.
“Go upstairs, Judith, and get that money,” he admonished her severely.
She turned and left the room. While she was gone he stood gazing out of
the window. Of all the world of light and freedom before him, its
spreading mountain slopes, its spires of granite reared into a
cloud-pillared sky, and the giant blue shadows racing each other across
the valleys, he saw nothing but the narrow thread of railway winding
down to Venice and the Wheaters. He had still to make Judith write the
letter to her father. He had still to deliver her—this child who trusted
him—bound and helpless into the hands of the enemy.
XV
“Damn—damn, damn—oh, _damn_!” It seemed to be the only expletive at
Cliffe Wheater’s command, and Boyne felt that he had used it so often
that it was as worn out as an old elastic band, and no longer held his
scattered ideas together.
He plunged down into an armchair of the Lido Palace lounge—the Wheaters
had moved out to the Lido—and sat there, embraced by a cluster of huge
leather bolsters, his good-humoured lips tinged with an uneasy purple,
the veins in his blond temples swollen with a helpless exasperation.
“Damn!” he ejaculated again.
The place was empty. It was the hour of the afternoon sun-bath on the
sands below the hotel, and no one shared with them the cool twilight of
the hall but a knot of white-jacketed boys languishing near the lift,
and a gold-braided porter dozing behind his desk.
Boyne sat opposite to Wheater, in another vast slippery armchair to
which only a continual muscular effort could anchor his spare frame. He
sat and watched Cliffe Wheater with the narrow-lipped attention he might
have given to the last stages of a debate with a native potentate on
whom he was trying to impose some big engineering scheme which would
necessitate crossing the ruler’s territory.
But with the potentate it would have been only a question of matching
values; of convincing him of the material worth of what was offered. In
such negotiations the language spoken, when interpreted, usually turned
out to be the same. But in his talk with Wheater, Boyne had the sense of
using an idiom for which the other had no equivalents. Superficially
their vocabularies were the same; below the surface each lost its
meaning for the other. Wheater continued to toss uneasily on a sea of
incomprehension.
“What in hell can I do about it?” he demanded.
It was almost unintelligible that anything should have happened to him
against which his wealth and his health could not prevail. His first
idea seemed to be that it must be all a mistake—or somebody else’s
damned negligence. As if they had forgotten to set the burglar alarm, or
to order the motor, or to pay the fire-insurance, or to choke off a bore
at the telephone, or, by some other unstopped fissure in the tight
armour of his wellbeing, had suddenly let tribulation in on him. If he
could get at the offender—if he only could! But it was the crux of his
misery that apparently he couldn’t—
“Not that I blame the child,” he said suddenly, looking down with an
interrogative stare at his heavy blond-haired hands, with their glossy
nails and one broad gold ring with an uncut sapphire. He raised his eyes
and examined Boyne, who instantly felt himself leaping to the guard of
his own face.
“That business of the money—you understand, Judith didn’t in the least
realise...” Boyne began.
“Oh, damn the money.” That question was swept away with a brush of the
hand: Boyne had noticed that the poor little letter of confession he had
extracted from Judith had received hardly a glance from her father, who
had pocketed the bank-notes as carelessly as if they were a gambling
debt. Evidently the Lido Palace values were different. It was the
hideous inconvenience of it all that was gnawing at Wheater—and also, to
be fair to him, a vague muddled distress about his children. “I didn’t
know the poor little chaps cared so much,” was all this emotion wrung
from him; none the less, Boyne felt, it was sincere.
“They care most awfully for each other—and very much for you and Joyce.
What they need beyond everything is a home: a home with you two at its
head.”
“Oh, damn,” Wheater groaned again. It was as if Boyne had proposed to
him to ascend the throne of England. What was the use of dealing in
impossibles? There were things which even his money couldn’t buy—and
when you stripped him of the sense of its omnipotence he squirmed like a
snail out of its shell.
“Why can’t there not be rows?” he began again, perspiring with the
oppression of his helplessness.
“There wouldn’t be, if you and Joyce would only come to an
understanding.”
The aggrieved husband met this derisively. “Joyce—and an understanding!”
“Well—she’s awfully fond of the children; and so are you. And they’re
devoted to both of you, all of them. Why can’t you and she agree to bury
your differences, and arrange your lives so that you can keep the
children together, and give them something that looks like a home, while
you both ... well, do whatever you like ... privately....” Boyne felt
his lips drying as they framed this arid proposal.
Wheater leaned his elbows on his knees and gazed at the picture
presented. “Joyce doesn’t care to do what she likes privately,” he
replied, without irony.
“But the children—I’m sure she doesn’t want to part with them.”
“No; and no more do I. And what’s more, I won’t!” He brought down a
clenched fist on the leather protuberance at his elbow. It sank in
soggily, as if the Lido armchair had been the symbol of Joyce’s sullen
opposition. “By God, I can dictate my terms,” Wheater pursued,
sonorously but without conviction.
Boyne stood up with a sense of weariness. His bones felt as stiff as if
he had been trying to hang on to a jagged rock above a precipice; his
mind participated in their ache.
“Look here, Cliffe, what’s the use of threats? Of course you’re
all-powerful. Between you, Joyce and you can easily destroy these
children’s lives....”
“Oh, see here!” Wheater protested.
“Destroy their lives. Look at that poor Doll Westway, who was kicked
about from pillar to post.... Judith told me her miserable story....”
“I don’t see the resemblance. And what’s more I strongly object to being
classed with a down-and-outer like Charlie Westway. Why, man, no
law-court in the world would have given a blackguard like that the
custody of his children. Whereas mine will always be perfectly safe in
my hands, and Joyce knows it; and so do her lawyers.”
“I daresay; but the trouble is that the children need Joyce at least as
much as they do you. And they need something that neither one of you can
give them separately. They need you and Joyce together: that’s what a
home is made of—togetherness ... the mysterious atmosphere....” Boyne
broke off, nervously swallowing his own eloquence.
Wheater gave him a helpless look. “Have a drink?” he suggested. He waved
his hand to the white-coated guardians of the lift. Far off across the
empty reaches of the hall a waiter appeared with napkin and tray—sail
and raft of a desert ocean. “Hi!” Wheater called out feverishly. Boyne
wondered that he did not brandish his handkerchief at the end of a
stick. The two men drank in a desperate silence.
Capturing Joyce’s attention was less easy. It was difficult even to
secure her presence. Not that she avoided her husband—on the contrary,
she devoted all the time she could spare to arguing with him about their
future arrangements. And she had flung herself on Boyne in an agony of
apprehension about the children. But once assured of their safety she
remarked that their going off like that had served Cliffe right, and she
hoped it would be a lesson to him; and thereupon hurried away to a
pressing engagement on the beach, promising Boyne to see him when she
came up to dress for dinner—anywhere between eight and nine. She
supposed Cliffe would look after him in the interval?
It was nearer nine than eight when Boyne finally waylaid her in an upper
corridor, on the way back to her room. She relegated him to her
sitting-room while she got out of her bathing tights, and presently
reappeared swathed in perfumed draperies, with vivid eyes, tossed hair
as young as Judith’s, and the animating glow imparted by a new
love-affair. Boyne remembered Terry’s phrase: “With all the new ways the
doctors have of making parents young again,” and reflected that this
oldest one of all was still the most effective. She threw herself down
on a lounge, clasped her arms behind her head, and declared: “It was too
clever of Judith to give her father that scare. Now perhaps he’ll come
to his senses.” Yes, Boyne thought—she was going to be more difficult to
convince than Wheater.
“What do you call coming to his senses?”
“Why, giving all the children to me, of course—to me and Gerald.” Her
lids closed softly on the name. Boyne was frightened by a reminder of
Judith’s way of caressing certain thoughts and images with her lashes.
He hated anything in the mother that recalled what he most loved in her
daughter....
“The trouble is, Joyce, that what they want—what they need—is not you
and ... and anybody else ... but just you and Cliffe: their parents.”
“Me and Cliffe! An edifying spectacle!”
“Oh, well, they’ve discounted all that—at least Judith and Terry have.
And they’re incurably fond of you both. What the younger ones require,
of course, is just the even warmth of a home—like any other young
animals.”
She considered her shining nails, as if glassing her indolent beauty in
them.
“You see,” Boyne pressed on, “it’s all these changes of temperature that
are killing them.”
“What changes of temperature?”
“Well, every time there’s a new deal—I mean a new step-parent—there’s
necessarily a new atmosphere, isn’t there? Young things, you know, need
sameness—it’s their vital element.”
Joyce, at this point, surprised him by abounding in his own sense. It
was never she who wanted to change, she assured him. Hadn’t she come
back of her own accord to Cliffe, and loyally made the attempt all over
again—just on account of the children? And what had been the result, as
far as they were concerned? Simply their being compelled to assist, with
older and more enlightened eyes, at the same old rows and scandals (for
Cliffe was scandalous) which had already edified their infancy. Could
Boyne possibly advise the renewal of such conditions as a “vital
element” in their welfare, the poor darlings? It would be the most
disastrous experiment that could be made with them. Whereas, if they
would just firmly declare their determination to remain with Joyce, and
only with Joyce, Cliffe would soon come to his senses—and, anyhow, as
soon as another woman got hold of him, he wouldn’t know what to do with
the children, and would be only too thankful to know they were in safe
hands. And had Boyne considered what a boon it would be to dear Terry to
have Gerald always with him, not as a salaried tutor, but, better still,
as friend, companion, guardian—as everything his own father had failed
to be? Boyne must have seen what a fancy Terry had taken to Gerald. And
Gerald simply loved the boy. That consideration, Joyce owned, had
influenced her not a little in her determination to break with Wheater.
Joyce was much more articulate than her husband, and, paradoxical as it
seemed, proportionately harder to deal with. She swept away all Boyne’s
arguments on a torrent of sentimental verbiage; and she had the immense
advantage over Wheater of believing that the children would be perfectly
happy with her, whereas Wheater merely believed in his right to keep
them, whether his doing so made them happy or not.
But these considerations were interrupted by Joyce’s abrupt exclamation
that it was past nine already, and the Wrenches and the Duke of Mendip
were waiting for her ... of course dear Martin would join them at
dinner?... No; Martin thought he wouldn’t, thanks, in fact, he’d already
promised Cliffe....
“But Cliffe’s coming too. Oh, you didn’t know? My dear, he’s infatuated
with Sybil Lullmer. She came here to try and catch Mendip, and failing
that she’s quietly annexed Cliffe instead. Rather funny, isn’t it? But
of course that kind of woman sticks at nothing. With her record, why
should she? And Cliffe has had to make up with Zinnia Wrench because it
was the easiest way of being with Sybil.... So you will dine with us,
Martin, won’t you? And do tell me—you’re sure Chip’s perfectly
contented? And you think Cortina will do Terry good?”
Half an hour later, Boyne, who had sternly told himself that this also
was part of the game, sat at a table in the crowded Lido Palace
restaurant, overhanging the starlit whisper of the Adriatic. His seat
was between Zinnia Lacrosse and Joyce Wheater, and opposite him was a
small sleek creature, who reminded him, when she first entered, of
Judith—who had the same puzzled craving eyes, the same soft shadowy look
amid the surrounding glare. But when he faced her across the table, saw
her smile, heard her voice, he was furious with himself for the
comparison.
“Do you mean to say you don’t know Syb Lullmer?” Joyce whispered to him
under cover of the saxophones. “But you must have heard of her as Mrs.
Charlie Westway? She always manages to be in the spot-light. Her
daughter Doll committed suicide last year at Deauville. It was all
pretty beastly. Syb herself is always chock full of drugs. Doesn’t look
it, does she? She might be Judy’s age ... in this light. What do you
think of her?”
“I think she’s hideous.”
Mrs. Wheater stared. “Well, the dress-makers don’t. They dress her for
nothing. Look at her ogling Gerald! That’s what makes Cliffe so
frantic,” Cliffe’s wife smilingly noted. After a moment she added: “A
nice step-mother for my children! Do you wonder I’m putting up a fight
to keep them?”
From across the table Mrs. Lullmer was speaking in a low piercing whine.
When she spoke her large eyes became as empty as a medium’s, and her
lips moved just enough to let out a flat knife-edge of voice. “I told
Anastase I’d never speak to him again, or set foot in his place, if ever
I caught him selling one of the dresses he’d designed for me to a
respectable woman; and he said: ‘Why, I never saw one in my
establishment: did you?’ And I said to him: ‘Now you’ve insulted me, and
I’ll sue you for libel if you don’t take fifty per cent off my bill.’
I’m poor, you see,” Mrs. Lullmer concluded plaintively, sweeping the
table with her disarming gaze. The Duke, Zinnia, Lord Wrench and Cliffe
Wheater received the anecdote with uproarious approval. Gerald Ormerod
looked at the ceiling, and Joyce looked tenderly at Gerald. “I got off
twenty-five per cent anyhow,” Mrs. Lullmer whined, spreading her fluid
gaze over Boyne....
All about them, at other tables exactly like theirs, sat other men
exactly like Lord Wrench and Wheater, the Duke of Mendip and Gerald
Ormerod, other women exactly like Joyce and Zinnia and Mrs. Lullmer.
Boyne remembered Mrs. Sellars’s wail at the approach of a standardised
beauty. Here it was, in all its mechanical terror—endless and
meaningless as the repetitions of a nightmare. Every one of the women in
the vast crowded restaurant seemed to be of the same age, to be dressed
by the same dress-makers, loved by the same lovers, adorned by the same
jewellers, and massaged and manipulated by the same Beauty doctors. The
only difference was that the few whose greater age was no longer
disguisable had shorter skirts, and exposed a wider expanse of
shoulder-blade. A double jazz-band drowned their conversation, but from
the movement of their lips, and the accompanying gestures, Boyne
surmised that they were all saying exactly the same things as Joyce and
Zinnie and Mrs. Lullmer. It would have been unfashionable to be
different; and once more Boyne marvelled at the incurable simplicity of
the corrupt. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” he thought, “for they have
so many more things to talk about....”
Out in the offing the lights of the “Fancy Girl” drew an unheeded
triangle of stars, cruising up and down against the dusk. A breeze,
rising as darkness fell, carried the reflection toward the shore on a
multitude of little waves; but the sea no longer interested the diners,
for it was not the hour when they used it.
“I say—why shouldn’t we go and finish our cigars on board?” Cliffe
Wheater proposed, yearning, as always, to have his new toy noticed. The
night was languid, the guests were weary of their usual routine of
amusements, and the party, following the line of least resistance,
drifted down to the pier, where the “Fancy Girl”’s launch lay mingling
the glitter of its brasses with the glow of constellations in the
ripples.
“To-morrow morning, old man,” Wheater said, his arm in Boyne’s, “we’ll
have it all out about the children....”
XVI
Boyne knew that “morning,” in the vocabulary of the Lido, could not
possibly be construed as meaning anything earlier than the languid
interval between cocktails and lunch, or the still more torpid stretch
of time separating the process of digestion from the first afternoon
bath. All his energies were bent on getting the Wheaters to fix on one
or the other of these parentheses as the most suitable in which to
examine the question of their children’s future; and he accounted
himself lucky when they finally agreed to meet him in a quiet corner of
the hotel lounge before luncheon.
Unfortunately for this plan, no corner of the lounge—or of its adjacent
terraces—could be described as quiet at that particular hour. The whole
population of the “Palace” was thronging back through its portals in
quest of food and drink. Hardly had Boyne settled Mr. and Mrs. Wheater
in their fathomless armchairs (his only hope of keeping them there lay
in the difficulty of getting up in a hurry) when Lady Wrench drifted by,
polishing her nails with a small tortoiseshell implement, and humming a
Negro Spiritual in her hoarse falsetto.
“Goodness—what you people doing over here, plotting together in a
corner? Look as if you were rehearsing for a film....” She stopped,
wide-eyed, impudent, fundamentally indifferent to everything less
successful than her own success.
“I don’t know what we _are_ doing,” Joyce returned with a touch of
irritability. “Martin seems to think he ought to tell us how to bring up
the children.” It obviously seemed preposterous to her that Zinnia
Wrench should be idling about, polishing her nails and humming tunes,
while this severe mental effort was exacted of one who, the night
before, had been up as late, and danced as hard, as the other.
“Something’s _got_ to be decided,” Wheater growled uncertainly.
“Oh, well—so long,” smiled Lady Wrench. “I’m off to see Mendip’s new
tent; the one he’s just got over from: where is it? Morocco, I guess he
said. But isn’t that a sort of leather? Somewhere in South Africa,
anyhow.... They’re just rigging it up. It’s a wonder.”
“A new tent?” Joyce’s face lit up with curiosity, and the scattered
desire to participate in everything that was going.
“Yes; absolutely different from anything you’ve ever seen. The very last
thing. Sort of black Cubist designs on it. Might give Anastase ideas for
a bath-wrap. Hullo, Gerald—that you? I’ve been looking for you
everywhere; thought you’d got drowned. Come along and see Mendip’s
tent.”
Joyce raised a detaining hand. “Gerald—Mr. Ormerod! Please. I want you
to stay here. We’re discussing something about which I may need your
advice.”
“Oh, look here, Joyce, I say—” her husband interrupted.
His wife gave him a glance of aggrieved dignity. “You don’t want me to
be without advice, I suppose? You’ve got Martin’s.”
Wheater groaned: “This isn’t going to be a prize fight, is it?”
“I don’t know. It might. Sit down, please, Gerald.” Mrs. Wheater
indicated an armchair beside her own, and Ormerod reluctantly buried his
long limbs in it. “In this heat—” he murmured.
“Oh, well, s’long,” cried Lady Wrench, evaporating.
“Joyce—Cliffe! Look here: have you seen Mendip’s new tent?” Mrs.
Lullmer, exquisite, fadeless, her scant bathing tights inadequately
supplemented by a transparent orange scarf, paused in a plastic attitude
before the besieged couple. “Do let’s rush down and take a look at it
before cocktails. Come on, Cliffe.”
Mrs. Wheater drew her lips together, and a slow wave of crimson rose to
her husband’s perspiring temples.
“See here, Syb; we’re talking business.”
“Business?” Instantly Mrs. Lullmer’s vaporous face became as sharp-edged
as a cameo, and her eyes narrowed into two observation-slits. “Been put
on to something good, have you? I’m everlastingly broke. For God’s sake
tell me!” she implored.
Wheater laughed. “No. We’re only trying to settle about the children.”
“The children? Do you mean to say you’re talking about them still? That
reminds me—where’s my own child? Pixie, pet! Ah, there she is. Darling,
nip up to my room, will you, and get mummy one of those new lipsticks:
no, not _Baiser Défendu_, sweet, but _Nouveau Péché_—you know, the one
that fits into the gold bag the Duke gave me yesterday.”
An ethereal sprite, with a pre-Raphaelite bush of fair hair, and a tiny
sunburnt body, detached herself from a romp with a lift-boy to spring
away at her mother’s behest.
“Pixie’s such a darling—always does just as I tell her. If only my poor
Doll had listened to me!” Mrs. Lullmer observed to Boyne, with a
retrospective sigh which implied that the unhappy fate of her eldest
daughter had been the direct result of resistance to the maternal
counsels.
“Well—as I was saying—” Boyne began again, nervously....
But a fresh stream of bathers, reinforced by a troop of arrivals from
Venice who had steamed over to the Lido for lunch, closed in
vociferously about the Wheaters, and at the same instant the big clock
on the wall rang out the stroke of one.
“See here, old Martin—this is no time for business, is it? I believe
Joyce has asked half of these people to lunch,” Wheater confessed to his
friend with a shamefaced shrug. “But afterward—”
“All right. Afterward.”
Lunch was over; the Duke’s tent had been visited; and one by one the
crowd in restaurant and grill-room had dispersed for bathing or bridge.
“Why not here?” Boyne suggested patiently to Mrs. Wheater.
“Here?” She paused under the lifted flap of the stately Moroccan tent,
her astonishingly youthful figure outlined against the glitter of the
sands.
“Why not?” Boyne persisted. “It’s cool and quiet, and nobody is likely
to bother us. Why shouldn’t you and Cliffe go into this question with me
now?”
She wavered, irresolute. “Where’s Cliffe, to begin with? Oh, out
there—under Syb’s umbrella, of course. _I’m_ perfectly willing,
naturally—”
“Very well; I’ll go and recruit him.”
Boyne threaded his way between the prone groups on the beach to where
Mrs. Lullmer lay, under the shadow of a huge orange-coloured umbrella,
with Cliffe Wheater outspread beside her like a raised map of a
mountainous country.
“I say, Cliffe, Joyce is waiting for you in the Duke’s tent—for our
talk.”
Wheater raised a portion of his great bulk on a languid elbow. “What
talk?... Oh, all right.” His tone implied that, at the moment, it was
distinctly all wrong; but he got slowly to his feet, gave himself a
shake, lit a cigarette, and shambled away after Boyne. At the tent door
Mrs. Lullmer swiftly overtook them. “I suppose you don’t mind—” she
smiled at Joyce; and Wheater muttered, half to his wife and half to
Boyne: “She’s had so much experience with children.”
“All I want is what is best for mine,” said Mrs. Wheater coldly; adding,
as they re-entered the tent: “Martin, you’ll find Gerald somewhere
about. Won’t you please tell him to come?”
Wheater gave an angry shrug, and then settled down resignedly on one of
the heaps of embroidered Moroccan cushions disposed about the interior
of the tent. Boyne’s first inclination was to come back empty-handed
from a simulated quest for Ormerod; but, reflecting that if he did so
Joyce would seize on this as another pretext for postponement, he
presently returned accompanied by the tutor, in whose wake Lady Wrench
trailed her perfumed elegance. “See here, folks, I guess if anybody’s
got a right to be here I have,” she announced with a regal suavity.
“That is, if you’re proposing to make plans about my child.”
This argument seemed—even to Boyne—incontrovertible; and Lady Wrench
sank down upon her cushions with a smile of triumph.
“Pity Buondelmonte’s not here,” Wheater growled under his breath to
Boyne; and Lady Wrench, catching the name, instantly exclaimed: “But
Wrenny is—I left him this minute at the bar; and I don’t see why I
shouldn’t have my own husband’s advice about my own child.”
It was finally conceded that the benefit of Lord Wrench’s judgment could
not properly be denied to his wife; and, as Lord Wrench and the Duke of
Mendip were too inseparable to be detached from one another on so
trivial a pretext, and as the conference was taking place in the shelter
of the Duke’s own tent, it surprised no one—not even Boyne—when the two
gentlemen strolled in together, and accommodated themselves on another
pile of cushions. “Mendip wants to see how these things are done in
America,” Lord Wrench explained, before composing himself into a repose
which seemed suspiciously like slumber; while the small dry-lipped Duke
mumbled under his brief moustache: “Might come in useful—you never
know.”
“I’m sure _I_ don’t know exactly what we’re supposed to be talking
about,” Joyce Wheater began. “I’ve said a hundred times that all I care
for is what’s best for the children. Everybody knows I’ve sacrificed
everything for that once before. And what earthly use has it been?”
“Ah, that’s what I say,” Lady Wrench agreed with sudden sympathy. “You
might cut yourself in pieces for a man, and his dirty lawyers would come
and take your child away from you the next day, and haggle over every
cent of alimony. But if it comes to money, I’ll spend as much as
anybody—”
“Oh, shut up, Zinnia,” her husband softly intervened, and redisposed
himself to rest.
“I don’t think you ought any of you to look at the matter from a legal
stand-point,” Boyne interrupted. “My friends here are awfully fond of
their children, and we all know they want what’s best for them. The only
question is how that best is to be arrived at. It seems to me perfectly
simple—”
(“Solomon,” said the Duke, with his dry smile.)
“No. Exactly the reverse. Division is what I’m here to fight against—no;
not fight but plead.” Boyne turned to Cliffe Wheater. “For God’s sake,
old man, let the lot of them stay together.”
“Why, they _were_ together; they would have been, as long as they’d
stayed with me,” Wheater grumbled helplessly.
His wife reared her golden crest with a toss of defiance. “You don’t
suppose for a minute I’m going to abandon my children to the kind of
future Cliffe Wheater’s likely to provide for them? Gerald and I are
prepared—”
“So are Cliffe and I,” murmured Mrs. Lullmer, with a glance at the Duke
under her studied lashes. The Duke threw back his head, and became lost
in an inspection of the roof of the tent. “Cliffe and I,” repeated Mrs.
Lullmer, more incisively.
“Well, and what about me and Wrenny, I’d like to know?” Lady Wrench
broke in. “I guess I can afford the best lawyers in the country—”
“I don’t see that the law concerns these children,” Boyne intervened.
“What they need is not to be fought over, but just to be left alone.
Judith and Terry understand that perfectly. They know there is probably
going to be another change in their parents’ lives, but they want to
remain together, and not be affected by that change. I’m not here to
theorise or criticise—I’m simply here as the children’s spokesman.
They’re devoted to each other, and they want to stay together. Between
you all, can’t it be managed somehow—for a time, at any rate?”
“But my Pixie would be such a perfect little companion for Terry and
Blanca. She knows all the very nicest children everywhere. That’s one of
the great advantages of hotel life, isn’t it? And, after all, Judith may
be marrying soon, and then what will become of the others?” Mrs. Lullmer
turned a meaning smile on Boyne. “Haven’t _you_ perhaps thought of
Judith’s marrying soon, Mr. Boyne?” Boyne curtly replied that he hadn’t;
and Lady Wrench intervened: “I want my Zinnie to have a lovely simple
home life, out on our ranch in California. This kicking about in hotels
is too horribly demoralising for children.” She bent her great eyes
gently on Mrs. Lullmer. “You know something about that, Mrs. Lullmer.”
Mrs. Lullmer returned a look as gentle. “Oh, no; my children were never
on a ranch at Hollywood,” she said.
“Hollywood—Hollywood!” gasped Lady Wrench, paling with rage.
Mrs. Lullmer arched her delicate brows interrogatively. “Isn’t Hollywood
in California? Stupid of me! I was never in the West myself.”
Joyce Wheater raised herself on her elbow. “I’m sure I don’t see the use
of this. Four of the children are mine and Cliffe’s. I’ve always tried
to make them all happy. I’ve treated Zinnie, and Buondelmonte’s
children, exactly like my own; and this is all the thanks I get for it!
No one could be more competent than Gerald to direct Terry’s education;
which is something his father never happens to have thought of. But of
course everybody here is trying to put me in the wrong....”
Mrs. Lullmer looked her soft surprise. “Oh, no. Don’t say that, Joyce.
All I feel is that perhaps the poor babies haven’t been quite loved
enough. You don’t mind my suggesting it, do you? If they were mine, I
don’t think I should care so awfully much about making them into
high-brows. What I should want would be just to see them all healthy and
rosy and happy, and romping about all day like my little Pixie....”
“With lift-boys and barmen. Yes; I guess that is about the best
preparation for life in the smart set,” said Lady Wrench
parenthetically.
Mrs. Lullmer smiled. “Yes; Pixie’s little friends are all in what I
believe you call the ‘smart set.’ I confess I think that even more
important for a child than learning that Morocco is not in South
Africa.”
“Not in South Africa? Where is it, then, I’d like to know? Wrenny, you
told me—”
“Well,” said the Duke, getting up, “I’m off for a swim.”
This announcement instantly disorganised the whole group. Nothing—as
Boyne had already had occasion to remark—chilled their interest in
whatever they were doing as rapidly as the discovery that one of the
party had had enough of it, and was moving on to the next item of the
day’s programme. And no one could dislocate a social assemblage as
quickly as the Duke of Mendip. The shared sense that wherever he was,
there the greatest amount of excitement was obtainable, dominated any
divergence of view among his companions. Even Lord Wrench roused himself
from his slumbers and gathered up his long limbs for instant departure,
and his wife and Mrs. Lullmer followed his example.
“Mercy, what time is it? Why, there’s that diving match off Ella Muncy’s
raft!” Lady Wrench exclaimed. “I’ve got fifty pounds on the Grand Duke;
and directly afterward there’s the mannequin show for the smartest
bathing-dresses; I’ve given a prize for that myself.”
Mrs. Lullmer had taken a stick of rouge from her mesh-bag, and was
critically redecorating her small pensive face. “Coming, Cliffe?” she
negligently asked. “You’re one of the judges of the diving match, aren’t
you?”
Cliffe Wheater had scrambled heavily to his feet, and stood casting
perplexed glances about him. “I did say I’d be, I believe. Damn it
all—I’d no idea it was so late....”
“It’s always late in this place. I don’t see how we any of us stand it,”
murmured Mrs. Lullmer. “I always say we’re the real labouring classes.”
Joyce Wheater still sat negligently reclined. “Very well, then; I
suppose we may consider the matter settled.”
“Settled—settled? Why, what do you mean?” Wheater stammered uneasily
from the threshold.
“We came here to decide about the children, I believe. I assume that you
agree that I’m to keep my own.”
“Keep them? Keep them? I agree to no such thing. Martin, here, knows
what my conditions are. I’ve never agreed to any others, and never
shall—”
“Ormerod! Ormerod! Where the deuce is Gerald Ormerod? He’s next on the
diving programme, and Mrs. Muncy’s just sent word to say that
everything’s being held up—oh, here you are, Gerald! Come along, for
God’s sake, or I shall catch it....”
A bronzed young amphibian, dripping and sputtering from the sea, had
snatched back the tent flap, singled out Gerald Ormerod, still supine in
his corner, and dragged him to his feet. “Dash it, wake up, old man, or
there’ll be no end of a rumpus.”
Joyce Wheater sprang into sudden activity. “Gerald, Gerald—but of course
you mustn’t miss your turn! Cliffe, is the launch there to take us out
to the raft? How can I have forgotten all about it?” She addressed
herself plaintively to Boyne. “That’s what always happens—whenever
there’s any question of the children, I forget about everything
else....”
Wheater laid a persuasive hand on Boyne’s shoulder. “You see how it is,
old man. In this hell of a place there’s never any time for anything.
See here—come along with us to this diving match, won’t you? The sea’s
so calm I’ve had the launch lying to out there ever since lunch; we’ll
be out at the raft in no time.... No? You won’t? Well—sorry ... it’s a
pretty sight. To-morrow then.... Oh, you’re really off to-morrow
morning, are you? Can’t see why you don’t stay on a day or two, now
you’re here. Of course the children are all right where they are for the
present—we all know that. And if you stayed on for a day or two we could
go into the whole thing quietly.... No? Well, then—why, yes, tonight, of
course. Tell you what, old man: you and Joyce and I will go out to the
“Fancy Girl” after dinner, and talk the whole thing out by ourselves.
That suit you?”