XXV
Boyne had been wrong in imagining that Mrs. Sellars might come back
unannounced to assure herself of the effect of her letter. She did not
do so; and after two days he decided that he could no longer put off
sending some kind of answer.
Only, what could he say?
Being with the children all day and every day, sharing their meals,
their games and scrambles, had gradually detached his thoughts from Mrs.
Sellars, reducing her once more to the lovely shadow she had so long
been; with the difference that she was now a shadow irrevocably, whereas
before he had always believed she might become substantial. Finally he
girt himself to the task; and at once his irritation, his impatience,
seemed to materialise her again, as if she were fated to grow real only
when she thwarted or opposed him. He wondered if that were another of
the peculiarities of being in love. “People get too close to each
other—they can’t see each other for the nearness, I suppose,” he
reflected, not altogether satisfied with this explanation. He wrote:
“And as to what you propose about the children, do please believe that I
don’t mean to be unreasonable—but, unless I’m a little mad, your
suggestion apparently amounts to this: that I should shove them straight
back into the hell I’ve temporarily got them out of. For them that hell,
at least the worst of it, is being separated from each other; and you
ask me to separate them, when to keep them together is the one thing
that they and I have been fighting for. I make no comment on your
proposal to hand over the younger ones to Lady Wrench and Buondelmonte;
women like you are what they are at the price of not being able even to
picture such people as those two. But I know what they are, and never,
as long as I can help it, will I be a party to giving back into such
hands these children who have trusted me. And when you say that Judith,
thanks to whom the younger ones have developed a sense of solidarity and
mutual trust in a world which is the very negation of such feelings—that
Judith should be asked to see her work deliberately wrecked, and all the
feelings she has cultivated in the others trampled on—” He broke off,
flung down the pen, and sat hopelessly staring at what he had written.
“Oh, hell—that’s no use,” he groaned.
The truth was that, even in his most rebellious moments, he could not
trick himself into the idea that he had a grievance against Mrs.
Sellars. In reality it was the other way round. When he had gone to
Venice to negotiate with the Wheaters about the future of their mutinous
family he had gone as an affianced man. In pledging himself to his
strange guardianship he had virtually pledged Mrs. Sellars also, and
without even making his promise depend on her consent. He had simply
assumed that because she loved him she would approve of whatever he did,
would accept any situation he chose to put her in. He had behaved, in
short, like a romantic boy betrothed to a dreamer of his own age. All
this was true, and it was true also that Mrs. Sellars had never
reproached him with it. The sense of her magnanimity deprived his
argument of all its force, and benumbed his angry pen. He pushed away
the letter, pulled out another sheet, and scrawled on it: “Awfully sorry
but cannot undo what I have done do try to understand me dearest.”
Yes, a telegram was better: easier to write, at any rate.... He tore up
the letter, put on his hat, and walked down to the post-office with his
message.
For its answer he had only twenty-four hours to wait; and when Mrs.
Sellars’s telegram came it merely said: “I do understand you letter
follows....” Well, that was not unsatisfactory, as far as it went; but
when two days more had elapsed, it was not a letter but a small
registered packet which the postman put into Boyne’s hands. Even in the
act of signing the receipt, at his very first glance, he had guessed
what the packet contained. He went up to his room, a little dizzy with
the abruptness of the event, and angrily ripped off seal and string,
revealing the morocco box he had expected to find there. For a minute or
two he sat looking at the box, almost as unconscious of what he was
feeling as a man in the first minute or two after being stabbed or shot.
“So that’s that,” he said aloud. But what “that” was going to be he had
as yet no notion. It was a wound, of course—but was it mortal? He didn’t
know. Suddenly, with a mumbled curse at his own plight, he snapped the
box open and saw a thin slip of paper twisted about the sapphire ring.
On the paper he read: “I shall always remember; I shall never resent;
and that is why I want you to give this to some woman who can make you
as happy as you have made me.” He pitched the box and the paper aside,
and hid his face in his hands. After all he must have loved her, he
supposed—or at least the vision of her which their long separation had
created....
He was roused by a knock, and looking up with dazed eyes saw Judith
Wheater standing doubtfully on the threshold.
“Oh, Martin dear—were you asleep, or have you got one of those beastly
headaches?” She came in and closed the door without waiting for his
answer. “Have I disturbed you most awfully?” she questioned, passing her
cool hand softly over his hair.
“Yes—no.” He wondered whether her sharp eyes had already detected the
open ring-box, and the paper signed with Rose’s name. But to try to
conceal them would only attract her attention. He put up his hand and
pressed hers. “Yes—I believe I have got a beastly headache,” he said.
“Then I’d better be off, perhaps?” she interrupted reluctantly. She was
bending over him with the look she had when one of the children fell and
scraped a knee, and Boyne could not help smiling up into her anxious
eyes. “That depends on what you came for. What’s up? Anything wrong at
_Rosenglüh_?”
“Not particularly. But, you know, dear, we haven’t seen you for two
whole days....”
“You haven’t?” In the struggle which had been going on in his mind since
he had received Mrs. Sellars’s letter he had completely forgotten the
passage of time. “No more you have,” he exclaimed. “I didn’t realise I’d
neglected you all so shamefully. Fact is, I’ve been tied up to a boring
piece of business that I had to get off my chest. Sit down and have a
cigarette.” He fumbled for a box, and shoved it across the table to
Judith, who had settled down comfortably into his only armchair. “Oh,
Martin, how lovely to be here all alone with you!”
“Well, I don’t believe you’ll find me particularly good company,” he
rejoined, suddenly conscious of the ears of the acrimonious spinster
next door, and wondering if he ought not to propose to Judith to finish
her visit in the garden.
“Oh, yes, I shall, if you’ll let me talk to you,” she declared with her
rich candour; and Boyne laughed in spite of himself.
“I’ve never been able to prevent your talking when you wanted to,” he
remarked, lighting a cigarette; and Judith thrust her thin
shoulder-blades into the chair back, crossed her legs, and sighed
contentedly: “Few can.”
“Well, then—what’s your news?”
“A letter from mother, this morning.”
The laugh died on Boyne’s lips. The expected menace—here it was! He knew
Joyce never wrote unless she had news of overwhelming importance, and
usually of a disagreeable nature, to impart. “What does she say?” he
asked apprehensively.
“Not much. I can’t quite make out. She just says she’s given up Gerald,
and that she realises for the first time what a rotten rubbishy life
she’s been leading, and wants us all to forgive her for it.”
“She _does_? But then—?”
Judith shrugged away his anticipations with a faint smile. “Oh, that’s
not particularly new. Mother always realises about the rottenness of her
life when she’s going to make a change.”
“A change? What sort of a change?”
“Getting engaged to somebody else, generally.”
“Oh, come, my dear! Why shouldn’t it mean, this time, just what I’ve
always hoped: that your father and mother see they can’t get on without
you—all of you—and that they’re going to patch it up for good and all?”
Judith scanned him half-humorously through the veil of her
cigarette-smoke. “Like in the nicer kind of movies?”
“You young sceptic, you! Why not? Your mother’s too intelligent not to
be fed up with jazz some day—”
“That’s what she says. She says she’s met somebody who’s opened her eyes
to how wrong it all is—and that always means she’s going to get engaged
again.” Boyne was silent, and Judith added: “Anyhow, she’s leaving at
once for Paris to start divorce proceedings, because she says it’s too
wicked to live any longer with a man like father.”
The load dropped from Boyne’s heart. If Mrs. Wheater was leaving for
Paris without suggesting that the children should join her, it was at
least a respite—how long a one he couldn’t guess, but at any rate enough
to provide an excuse for deferring action. That was as far as his hopes
dared venture. But he met Judith’s eyes, and was surprised at their
untroubled serenity. “Aren’t you afraid—?” he began; and she rejoined
immediately: “With you here? Why should we be?”
Immediately the sense of his responsibility descended on him with a
redoubled weight. To have taken the risks he had for these children was
mad enough; but to find that his doing so had deified him in their
imagination, made them regard him as a sort of human sanctuary, turned
his apprehensions to dismay.
“But, my child—look here. We’ve been awfully lucky so far; but we
mustn’t forget that, any day, this arrangement of ours may go to smash.
How can I prevent it?”
She gave him all her confidence in a radiant look. “You have till now,
haven’t you? And if there’s another row, couldn’t we all nip over
quietly to America with you?” She paused, and then began again, with a
shade of hesitation that was new in her: “I suppose you’ll be married
very soon now, won’t you, Martin? And when I got mother’s letter this
morning we wondered—Terry and I wondered—whether, if Grandma Mervin is
afraid to take us in, we couldn’t all go and live with you in New York,
if we children paid a part of the rent? You see, father and mother
couldn’t possibly object to that, and I know you and Mrs. Sellars are
fond of Chip and the steps, and we big ones really wouldn’t be any
trouble. Scopy and I have saved up such a lot out of father’s allowance
that I daresay you could afford to take a biggish house; and we’d all be
awfully decent in the morning about not keeping the bath a minute longer
than we had a right to.”
The abruptness of Judith’s transitions from embittered shrewdness to
nursery simplicity was always disconcerting. When ways and means had to
be considered, the disenchanted maiden for whom life seemed to have no
surprises became once more the helpless little girl in the hands of
nurses and governesses. At such moments, Boyne thought, she was like a
young Daphne, half emerging into reality, half caught in the foliage of
fairyland.
“My dear child—”
She always responded to every change in his intonation; and as he spoke
he saw the shadow in her eyes before it reached her lips. Trying to keep
a smile on them, she interrupted: “Now I’ve said something stupid
again.”
“You’ve said something unexpected—that’s all. Give me a little time—”
She sprang up, and moved toward him with one of her impulsive darts.
“Martin! When people ask for time, it’s always for time to say no. Yes
has one more letter in it, but it doesn’t take half as long to say. And
now you’ll hate me for asking you something that you’ve got to take time
to answer.”
“Not a bit of it. I want time because I’ve got several answers. And the
first is: how do you know your Grandma Mervin won’t take you all in?”
She shook her head. “Because I wrote to her a month ago, and she’s
taking time before she answers. And besides—really and truly—I’ve always
known that if Grandma Mervin did take us in, she’d give us up again the
minute father shouted loud enough. You see,” Judith added, with a sudden
spring back to her wistful maturity, “grandma gets a big allowance from
father.”
“All right; that brings me to my second answer. How do you know your
father won’t order you back at once to the Lido—or wherever he is—if
your mother has definitely decided to leave him?”
“Because father’s gone off to Constantinople on the yacht with Syb—Mrs.
Lullmer, I mean—and a whole crowd of people.”
In spite of himself, Boyne again drew a breath of relief. If Wheater was
off on the “Fancy Girl” with a band of cronies, and his wife rushing to
Paris to start divorce proceedings, there might indeed be no need for an
immediate decision. Never had procrastination seemed so sweet.
“Well, my dear, in that case it would appear that they’re both going to
let you alone—for a while, at any rate. So why jump unnecessary
ditches?”
Judith responded with a joyful laugh. “Who wants to, darling? I don’t!
As long as you’re with us I always feel safe.” Again a little shiver of
apprehension ran over Boyne; but he dissembled it by joining in her
laugh. The more precarious was the tie between himself and the little
Wheaters, the more precious seemed the days he could still hope to spend
with them; he would not cloud another with vain fears. “Right you are.
Suppose we go and do something desperate to celebrate the occasion? What
about a good tramp for you and me, and then supper with the little
Wheaters?”
She stood looking at him with her happiest eyes. “Hurrah, Martin! I
haven’t seen you so jolly for days. Terry was afraid you were moping
because Mrs. Sellars had gone—he thought that was why you hadn’t been to
see us, and we decided that I’d better come up and find out.”
“Trust you to find out,” he grinned; and added sardonically: “I’m
bearing up, as you see. But come along. Don’t let’s waste any more
sunshine.”
She moved obediently toward the door, but stopped short halfway with an
exclamation of surprise. Boyne, who was rummaging in a corner for his
stick, turned about to see her standing before the ancient cradle.
“Oh, Martin, you—you keep your boots in it!” A reproachful flush rose to
her face, and was momentarily reflected in his own. Hang it—why was he
always such an untidy fellow? And why was a cradle so uncommonly handy
to hold boots? “Jove—how stupid! Must have been that confounded
chambermaid—” But he broke off in confusion as he caught Judith’s
incredulous eye. “Well, hang it, you know—I’ve nothing else to put in it
just at present,” he cried defiantly.
Her face softened, and she met his banter with the wistful tentative
gaze that he called her Monreale look. “But very soon you will have,
won’t you? A baby of your own, I mean,” she explained. “I suppose you
and Mrs. Sellars are going to be married as soon as she gets back with
her trousseau, aren’t you? Blanca and I were wondering if perhaps she’d
ask us to be bridesmaids....”
Boyne was flinging the boots out of the cradle with an angry hand, and
made no answer to this suggestion. Judith stood and watched him for a
few moments; then she went to his side and slipped her arm through his.
“Why, Martin—I believe you’re very unhappy!” she exclaimed.
“Unhappy? Unhappy?” He swung around on her, exasperated. “Well, yes; I
suppose I am unhappy. It’s a way people have, you know. But, for the
Lord’s sake, can’t you ever let things be? Can’t you ever keep from
treading on people’s toes? I—oh, damn it, Judy; look here, for God’s
sake don’t cry! I didn’t mean to say anything to hurt you.... I swear I
didn’t.... Only sometimes....”
“Oh, I know, I know—you mean I have no tact!” she wailed.
“Damn tact! I’m thankful you haven’t. There’s nothing I hate as much as
tact. But here—don’t look so scared, child. There’s no harm done ...
only don’t try meddling with grown up things. It’ll just wreck
everything if you do....”
“But how can I not meddle when I love you so, and when I see that things
are going wrong for you? Martin,” she flung out breathlessly, “you don’t
mean to say you’re not going to be married after all?”
Temptation suddenly twitched through him. It was as if saying “Yes” to
her question might be the magic formula of freedom. After all, there lay
the ring; he _was_ free, technically—had only to utter the words to make
them true. But he thrust his hands into his pockets and stood sullenly
planted before the corner of the table on which he had tossed the open
ring-box. “Not in this way,” he thought. Aloud he said: “I mean that I
don’t yet know when I’m going to be married. That’s all.”
“Positively all?” He nodded.
“Ah,” she sighed, relieved. It was evident that she identified herself
whole-heartedly with his sentimental troubles, of whatever nature and by
whomsoever they were caused.
She was still looking up at him, her face full of compunction and
perplexity, and suddenly he put his arm about her and bent his head to
her lips. They looked round and glowing, as they did in laughter or
emotion; they drew his irresistibly. But he turned his head aside, and
his kiss fell harmlessly on her cheek, near the tear-hung lashes.
“That’s my old Judy. Come, cheerio. On with your hat, and we’ll go up
the mountain.” He saw that she was still trembling, and took her by the
arm in the old brotherly way. “Come,” he repeated, “let’s go out.”
In the doorway she paused and flung a last tragic glance at the cradle.
“You poor old Martin, you! I suppose it’s because you’re so unhappy that
you put your boots in it?” she sighed.
XXVI
To Boyne the calm of the next day brought no reassurance. Too many
uncertainties hung close. After a night of pondering he had sent back
the ring to Mrs. Sellars, with a brief line saying that she was of
course free if she chose to be, but that he could not so regard himself
till they had had a talk, and she had convinced him that she would be
happier if their engagement ended.
He knew that he was merely using an old formula, the accepted one in
such cases, and he longed to get away from it, to be spontaneous,
honest, himself. But as he wrote it became clear to him that he was
terribly sorry for Rose Sellars, terribly sorry for having disappointed
her; and that such phrases—the kind he had been brought up on—were the
devices of decent people who hated to give pain, and were even capable
of self-sacrifice to avoid it. “After all, they were a lot better than
we are,” he thought; and the thought softened the close of his letter,
and impelled him to add: “Do be patient with me, dear. As soon as I can
get away I’ll come.”
This done, the whole problem vanished to the background of his mind. He
was hardly aware that he was no longer thinking of it. His life of
practical activities and swift decisions had given him the habit of
easily dismissing matters once dealt with. He flattered himself that he
could thus dispose of sentimental cares as easily as of professional
problems; and to a certain extent it was true. Behind the close-knit
foreground of his daily life there had hung for years the mirage of Rose
Sellars; but that mirage was now the phantom of a phantom, and he
averted his eyes lest he should find that it had faded into nothing.
After Mrs. Wheater’s letter to Judith there came no more alarms to the
_Pension Rosenglüh_; and the days slipped by in a security which seemed
satisfying to Judith, and even to Miss Scope. But summer was waning in
the high valleys of the Dolomites; tourists were scattering, the big
hotels preparing to close. By-and-by a cold sparkle began to fill the
air in the early mornings, and at night the temperature fell to
freezing. On the lower slopes the larches were turning to pale gold, and
the bare cliffs burned with an intenser fire against a sky as hard as
metal. The very magic of the hastening days warned Boyne that they could
not last, and that the change in the landscape symbolized another, as
imminent, in the fortunes of his party.
Mrs. Sellars had written again—sweetly and reasonably—saying that she
intended to remain for the present with Aunt Julia, who was settled in
Paris for two or three months. If Boyne really wished for another talk,
she added, she hoped he would be able to come before long; but in any
case he could count on her affectionate understanding. She closed her
letter with a friendly message to the children.
Boyne had been afraid that Judith would revert again to the subject of
his private anxieties; but she contrived, by a visible effort which made
him feel for the first time that she was really growing up, to keep off
the forbidden topic. His own return to a more equable mood no doubt
helped her; and so did the presence of the younger children and their
preceptors. Boyne half unconsciously avoided being alone with Judith;
and the shortening days and freshening temperature curtailed their
expeditions, and gave more time for games and romps around the cheerful
stove in the children’s dining-room.
It was there that, one rainy afternoon, he found himself sitting with
the younger children. Judith had gone with Miss Scope and Nanny to
Toblach, to fit out the family with autumn underclothes, Terry was
upstairs, working with his tutor, Chip asleep in Susan’s care; and
Blanca, in the corner nearest the stove, was brooding over a torn copy
of “The Tatler” with the passionate frown she always bent on the study
of fashion-plates. “Skirts _are_ going to be fuller,” she said. “I’ve
been telling Judy so for a month....”
Zinnie lifted her head from the rapt contemplation of an electric engine
which Bun was putting together under Boyne’s directions. “The lady that
was here today had her skirt longer; a lot longer than Judy’s,” she
remarked.
Beechy, whose attention was also riveted on the motions of Bun’s agile
fingers, interrupted indignantly: “She wasn’t pretty like our Judy.”
“The lady? What lady?” Boyne interposed, vaguely apprehensive. “Have you
got a new lodger here?”
Blanca re-entered the conversation with a sniff. “You wouldn’t have
taken her for one if you’d seen her. She’s not the _Rosenglüh_ kind. She
would certainly have been at the ‘Palace’ if it hadn’t been closed. Not
exactly smart, you know—smartness has been so overdone, hasn’t it? She
was—what’s that funny old word that Scopy loves?—distinguished. At
least, I _think_ that’s what distinguished means ... the way that lady
looked. Her clothes awfully plain; but not the least ‘sports.’ Rather
governessy, really ... like Scopy young, if Chanel could have dressed
her....” Blanca paused, reduced to silence by the hopelessness of the
attempt to fit her words to her meaning.
Boyne looked up from the engine. “Perhaps when you’ve finished with her
clothes you’ll tell me what she came for.”
“To see you—you—_you_!” cried Zinnie, executing a double handspring she
had lately learned from Bun, to the despair of Beechy, who was so fat
that she invariably collapsed midway of the same attempt. “I could have
told you that,” Zinnie added, “for I spoke to her.”
“You did? What impertinence!” cried Blanca, bounding from her seat. Bun,
flat on his stomach, his legs in the air, his curls mixed with the
engine, chanted over his shoulder: “Girls are always butting in—butting
in....”
“Nasty rotters, girls are!” sympathised Beechy, always ready to champion
her brother, and not as yet very clear as to her own sex.
Zinnie’s reprisals were checked by the discovery that the landlady’s
gold-fish aquarium, which usually stood in the larger and colder public
dining-room, had been brought in and placed on a stand before the
window. She tiptoed off to inspect this forbidden Paradise while Boyne
got to his feet and picked up the electric wire. “Where’s the battery?
Are your rails straight? Now, then, Bun, are you ready?” He turned to
Zinnie. “To see _me_, did you say? What on earth for? Did she tell you?”
“Tell Zinnie! So likely!” ejaculated Blanca with a shrug. She turned to
Boyne, drawing her lids together with her pretty cat-like smile.
“_Félicitations, cher ami. Elle était plutôt bien, la dame, vous
savez._”
“Oh, shucks—zif we didn’t all of us talk French!” commented Zinnie,
still watchfully circling about the aquarium.
The door opened, and a maid came in with a card which she handed
hesitatingly to Boyne. The name on it was: _Princess Buondelmonte_, and
underneath was written: “begs Mr. Boyne to see her on important
business.” Boyne crammed the card into his pocket without speaking,
conscious that the eyes of all the children were upon him.
“It’s the lady, it’s the lady, I know it is!” Zinnie piped. “I heard her
say she was coming back to see Martin. She’s come all the way from Rome
to see him.”
Blanca, at his side, had slid an insinuating hand in his. “From Rome?
Oh, Martin, who is it? Mayn’t I come with you, at any rate as far as the
door? I do want to see if her dress is made of kasha or crepella ...
just to be able to tell Judy....”
Boyne checked her firmly. “You’ve got to stay here and mind the infants.
It’s nothing important—I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He thanked his
stars that the lady had sent in her card instead of confiding her name
to the maid. He could not imagine what his noble visitor wanted of him,
but the very sight of the name had let loose all his fears. As he left
the room he turned and sent a last glance toward the group sprawling
around the engine, which had after all refused to start—orange curls
mixed with brown and dusky, sunburnt legs kicking high, voices mixed in
breathless controversy. How healthy and jolly they all looked! And how
good they smelt, with that mixed smell of woollen garments, and soap,
and the fruity fragrance of young bodies tumbled about together. As
Boyne looked back at them he thought how funny and dear they were, and
how different the world might have been if Rose Sellars had freed
herself when he and she were still young....
A lady with a slim straight back was standing in the sitting-room,
attentively examining the stuffed eagle above the stove. She turned at
Boyne’s entrance and revealed a small oval face, somewhat pale, with
excessively earnest gray eyes, and a well-modelled nose and brow. It
puzzled him to discover why an assemblage of such agreeable features did
not produce an effect of beauty; but a second glance suggested that it
was because their owner had never thought about being beautiful. That
she had graver preoccupations was immediately evident from the tone of
her slow and carefully-modulated speech. “Mr. Boyne?” she asked, as
though she feared he might deny his identity, and was immediately
prepared, if he did, to disprove the denial; and on his saying that he
was, she continued, with a touch of nervousness: “I have come all the
way from Rome to see my children.”
“Your children—?” Boyne echoed in astonishment; and she corrected
herself with a slight blush. “I should say the Prince’s. Or my
step-children. But I hate the word, for I feel about them already as if
they were my own.”
Boyne pushed an armchair forward, and she sat down, crossing her feet
neatly, and satisfying herself that the skirt which Zinnie described as
long was so adjusted as not to reveal too much of the pretty legs above
her slender ankles. “They _are_ here—Astorre and Beatrice?”
Boyne heard her with dismay, but kept up a brave exterior. “Here? Oh,
yes—certainly. Mr. and Mrs. Wheater sent all the children here a few
weeks ago—for the climate.”
Princess Buondelmonte met this with a smile of faint incredulity. “In
your charge, I understand? Yes. But of course you must know that Mr. and
Mrs. Wheater have really no business whatever to send my husband’s
children here, or anywhere else.” She paused a moment, and added: “And I
have come to take them home.”
“Oh, Princess—” Boyne exclaimed.
She raised her handsome eyebrows slightly, and said: “You seem
surprised.”
“Well—yes. At any rate, I’m awfully sorry.”
“Sorry? Don’t you think that children ought to be in their own home,
with their own parents?”
“Well, that depends.”
“Depends! How can it ever—?” She crimsoned suddenly, and then grew even
paler than before. “I don’t suppose you intend to insinuate—?” She broke
off, and he saw that her eyes had filled with tears. “For, of course,
that I won’t tolerate for a single instant,” she added a little
breathlessly, as though throwing herself on his mercy in a conflict she
felt to be unequal if it should turn on Prince Buondelmonte’s merits as
a father.
Boyne felt so sorry for her that he answered: “I wasn’t thinking of
insinuating anything. I only meant that this little group of children
have always been together, and it has made them so fond of each other
that they really regard themselves as one family. It seems a pity, it
seems cruel....”
“Cruel?” she interrupted. “The real cruelty has been to deprive the poor
little things for so long of a father’s influence, to take advantage
of ... of Prince Buondelmonte’s misfortunes, his undeserved misfortunes,
to keep his children without a real home, without family associations,
without ... without any guiding principle....” She leaned forward, her
grave almost terrified eyes on Boyne. “What guidance have they had? What
moral training? What religious education? Have you or your friends ever
thought that? It’s a big responsibility you’ve assumed. Have you never
thought you might some day be asked to account for the use you’ve made
of it?”
Boyne heard her with a growing wonder. She spoke slowly but fluently,
not as if repeating a lesson learned by rote, but as though she were
sustaining a thesis with the ease of a practised orator. There was
something didactic—perhaps forensic, rather—in her glib command of her
subject. He saw that she was trembling with nervousness, yet that her
nerves would never control her; and his heart sank.
“I’m afraid I can’t answer all your questions,” he said, “I’ve only been
with the children for a few weeks. Mr. and Mrs. Wheater asked me to keep
an eye on them during the ... the settling of certain family matters;
but I can assure you that since I’ve known them they’ve always been in
an atmosphere of the greatest kindness and affection; and I’m inclined
to think that’s the most important thing of all.”
Princess Buondelmonte listened attentively, her brows drawn together in
a cautious frown. “Of course I’m not prepared to admit that
unreservedly. I mean, the kindness of salaried assistants or ... or of
inexperienced persons may do as much harm as good. To any one who has
gone at all deeply into the difficult and absorbing subject of
child-psychology—” she paused, and added with an air of modest dignity:
“I ought perhaps to explain that I took my degree _cum laude_, in
Eugenics and Infant Psychology, at Lohengrin College, Texas. You may
have heard that my grandfather, Dr. Judson Tring, was the founder of the
college, and also its first President.” She stopped again, glanced half
proudly, half shyly at Boyne, as though to see how much this glimpse of
her genealogy had impressed him, and then pursued: “Can you give me, for
instance, any sort of assurance that Astorre and Beatrice have ever been
properly psychoanalyzed, and that their studies and games have been
selected with a view to their particular moral, alimentary, dental and
glandular heredity? Games, for instance, should be quite as carefully
supervised as studies ... but I know how little importance Europe still
attaches to these supremely vital questions.” No adequate answer
occurred to Boyne, and she rose from her seat with an impatient gesture.
“I don’t know that there is any use in continuing a discussion which
would not, in any case, affect my final decision, or Prince
Buondelmonte’s—”
“Oh, don’t say that!” Boyne exclaimed.
“Don’t—?”
“Not if it means you won’t listen to any plea—won’t first consider what
it’s going to be to these children to be suddenly uprooted....”
She interrupted: “It was not Prince Buondelmonte who first uprooted
them. It was through circumstances of which he was himself the victim—I
may say, Mr. Boyne, the _chivalrous_ victim—that he found himself
obliged (or thought himself obliged) to trust Astorre and Beatrice for a
while to Mrs. Wheater. He did it simply in order that no breath of
calumny should touch her.” The Princess paused, and added, with a
genuine tremor in her voice: “Though Mrs. Wheater was not his children’s
mother, my husband always remembers that for a time she bore his name.”
If the Princess’s aim had been to reduce her interlocutor to silence,
she had at last succeeded. Boyne sat speechless, wondering how much the
granddaughter of Dr. Judson Tring believed of what she was saying, and
to what extent her astounding version of the case was the result of
patient schooling on her husband’s part. He concluded that she was
incapable of deliberate deception, and fully convinced of the truth of
her assertions; and he knew this would make it all the harder to reason
with her. For a few moments the two faced each other without speaking;
then Boyne said: “But surely the fact that Prince Buondelmonte did leave
his children with Mrs. Wheater ought to be considered. If he was willing
to have her keep them he must have thought she knew how to take care of
them.”
The Princess again interrupted him. “My husband left his children with
Mrs. Wheater for the reasons I’ve told you; but also because, owing to
unfortunate circumstances, he had at the time no home to give them, and
they had no mother to care for them. Now all that is changed. Since our
marriage we have fortunately been able to buy back the Buondelmonte
palace in Rome, and I am as anxious as he is that his children should
come and live with us there.”
Boyne stood up impatiently. The talk was assuming more and more the tone
of a legal debate; conducted on such lines there seemed no reason for
its ever ending. If one accepted the Princess’s premises—and Boyne had
no way of disproving them—it was difficult to question her conclusions.
All he could do was to plead his lack of authority. He reminded his
visitor that Mrs. Wheater, to whom, for whatever reason, their father
had confided Bun and Beechy, had, in her turn, passed them over to their
present guardians, who were therefore answerable to her, and her only.
The Princess’s lips parted nervously on the first syllable of a new
protest; but Boyne interrupted: “Princess! It’s really so simple—I mean
the legal part. If your husband has a right to his children, no one can
prevent his getting them. The real issue seems to me quite different. It
concerns only the children themselves. They’re so desperately anxious
not to be separated; they’re so happy together. Of course none of that
is my doing. It’s their eldest step-sister—or whatever you like to call
her—Mrs. Wheater’s eldest daughter, Judith, who has kept the six of them
together through all the ups and downs of their parents’ matrimonial
troubles. Before you decide—”
The Princess lifted an imperative hand. “Mr. Boyne—I’m sorry. I can see
that you’re very fond of the children. But fondness is not
everything ... it may even be a source of moral danger. I’m afraid we
shouldn’t altogether agree as to the choice of the persons Mrs. Wheater
has left in charge of them—not even as to her own daughter. The soul of
a child—”
“Yes,” Boyne acquiesced; “that’s the very thing I’m pleading for. If you
could see them together....”
“Oh, but I intend to,” she responded briskly.
Her promptness took him aback. “Now, you mean?”
She gave a smiling nod. “Certainly. You don’t suppose I came from Rome
for any other reason? But you needn’t be afraid of my kidnapping them.”
Her eyes became severe again. “I hope it won’t have to come to that; but
of course I intend to see my husband’s children.”
“Oh, all right,” Boyne agreed. He was beginning to divine, under her
hard mechanical manner, something young and untried, something one might
still reach and appeal to; and he reflected that the sight of the
children would perhaps prove to be the simplest way of reaching it. “The
children are playing in the other room,” he said. “Shall I go and get
Bun and Beechy, or do you prefer to see them first with the others?”
The Princess said, yes, she thought she would like to see them all
together at their games. “Games have such a profound psychological
significance,” she explained with a smile.
“Well, I’m glad you’re going to take them by surprise. It’s always the
best way with children. You’ll see what jolly little beggars they are;
how they all understand each other; how well they get on together....
I’m counting on the sight to plead our cause.”
He led her down the passage and threw open the door of the children’s
dining-room.
On the threshold they were met by a burst of angry voices. Everything in
the room was noise and confusion, and the opening of the door remained
unheeded. In all his experience of the little Wheaters, Boyne had never
before seen them engaged in so fierce a conflict: it seemed incredible
that the participants should be only four. Some were screaming, some
vituperating, some doing both, and butting at each other, head down, at
the same time. The floor was strewn with the wreckage of battle, but the
agitated movements of the combatants made the origin of the dispute hard
to discover. “God,” Boyne ejaculated, stepping back.
Zinnie’s voice rose furiously above the others. “It wasn’t me’t upset
the ’quarium, I swear it wasn’t, Blanca—and those two wops know it just
as well as I do....”
Bun squealed back: “It was you that tried to bathe Chip’s rabbit in it,
you dirty little lying sneak, you!”
“No, I didn’t, neither; but Nanny don’t never give him enough to drink,
’n so I just ran up and brought him down while Chip was asleep, ’n if
Beechy hadn’t gone and butted in—”
“You rotten little liar, you, you know you were trying to find out if
rabbits can swim.”
“No, I wasn’t, either. And it was Beechy pushed me ’gainst the ’quarium,
and you know it was....”
“’Cos the rabbit was drownding, and Judy’d have killed you if you’d of
let it,” Beechy wailed.
“She’ll kill you anyhow if you call us wops again,” roared Bun.
Blanca, reluctantly torn from her study of “The Tatler,” had risen from
the stove-corner and was distributing slaps and shakes with a practised
hand. As she turned to the door, and saw Boyne and his visitor on the
threshold, her arms dropped to her sides, and she swept the shrieking
children into a corner behind her. “Oh, Martin, I’m so sorry! Did you
ever see such a pack of savages? They were playing some silly game, and
I didn’t realise....” She addressed herself to Boyne, but, as usual, it
was the newcomer who fixed her attention. “What will your friend think?”
she murmured with a deprecating glance.
Princess Buondelmonte, pale and erect, stood in the doorway and returned
her gaze. “I shall think just what I expected to,” she said coldly. She
turned to Boyne, and continued in a trembling voice: “It is just as I
was saying: nothing in a child’s education should be left to chance.
Games have to be directed even more carefully than studies.... Telling a
child that an older person will kill it seems to me so unspeakably
wicked.... This perpetuating of the old militarist instinct.... ‘Kill’
is one of the words we have entirely eliminated at Lohengrin....” Still
nervously, she addressed herself again to Blanca. “I do hope,” she said,
“that the particular little savage who made that threat doesn’t happen
to be mine—to be Prince Buondelmonte’s, I mean?”
Blanca was looking at her with a captivated stare. “You don’t mean to
say you’re his new wife? Are you the Princess Buondelmonte, really?”
“Yes, I’m the Princess Buondelmonte,” the visitor assented, with a smile
of girlish gratification which made her appear almost as young as
Blanca. It was manifest that, however heavily the higher
responsibilities weighed on her, she still enjoyed the sound of her new
title.
But Bun, brushing aside the little girls, had flung himself impetuously
upon her. “Are you really and truly my father’s new wife? Then you must
tell him he’s got to send me a gun at once, to shoot everybody who calls
me and Beechy a wop.”
The visitor stooped down, laying a timid yet resolute hand on his dark
head. “What I shall do, my dear, is to carry you off at once, you and
little Beatrice, to your own home—to your own dear father, who’s pining
for you—to a place where nobody ever talks about shooting and
killing....”
Bun’s face fell perceptibly. “Won’t my father give me a gun, don’t you
suppose? Then I don’t believe Beechy ’n me’d care such a lot about
going.”
The Princess’s lips narrowed with the same air of resolution which had
informed her hand. “Oh, but I’m afraid you’ve got to, Astorre. This is
not your real home, you know, and I’m going to take you both away to the
loveliest house ... and your father’ll give you lots of other things
you’ll like ever so much better....”
“Not than a gun, I won’t,” said Bun immovably.
XXVII
“Take away my children? Take them away from me?” Judith Wheater had
pushed open the door, and stood there, small and pale, in her dripping
mackintosh and bedraggled hat. She gave a little laugh, and her gray
eyes measured the stranger with a deliberate and freezing scrutiny. “I
don’t in the least know who you are,” she said, “but I know you don’t
know what you’re talking about....” She glanced away to the ravaged
scene, and the frightened excited faces of the children. “Heavens! What
an unholy mess! What on earth has been happening? Oh, the poor drenched
rabbit.... Here, wrap it up in my scarf.... Nanny, take the children
upstairs, and send Susan at once to tidy up. Yes, Blanca; you must go
too. If you can’t keep the little ones in order you’ve got to be treated
like one of them.” She turned to the bewildered visitor. “I’m Miss
Wheater. If you want to see me, will you please come into the
sitting-room?” Her eye fell on Boyne, who had drawn back into the dusk
of the passage, as if disclaiming any part in the impending drama.
“Martin,” she challenged him, “was it you who brought this lady here?”
“It’s the Princess Buondelmonte, Judith.”
Judith again scanned her with unrelenting eyes. “I’m afraid that won’t
make any difference,” she said. The Princess stood drooping her high
crest a little, as if unused to receiving instructions from one so much
smaller and younger than herself. Boyne remembered how Judith had awed
and baffled Mrs. Sellars on their first meeting, and his heart swelled
with irrational hopes. “Judith,” he cautioned her, below his breath.
“This way. You’ll come too, please, Martin.” She led them down the
passage, and into the sitting-room. After she had closed the door she
pushed forward a chair for the Princess Buondelmonte, and said with
emphasis: “Perhaps you don’t know that Mr. Boyne has been appointed the
guardian of the children.”
The Princess did not seat herself. She leaned on the back of the chair,
and smiled down at the champion of the little Wheaters. “They seem to
have a great many guardians. I hear you’re one of them too.”
“Me?” Judith’s eyes widened in astonishment. “I’m only their eldest
sister. All I do is just to try to look after them.”
Something in her accent seemed to touch the Princess, who seated herself
in the chair on which she had been leaning, made sure that her skirts
did not expose more than a decent extent of ankle, and began to speak in
a friendlier tone. “I’m sure you’re perfectly devoted to them—that all
you want is what’s best for them.”
Judith paused a moment. “That depends on what you mean by best. All I
want is for us all to stay together.”
The Princess made a sign of comprehension. “Yes.... But supposing it was
not what’s best for the children?”
“Oh, but it is,” said Judith decisively. The other hesitated, and she
pressed on: “Because nobody can possibly love them as much as Martin and
Miss Scope and me.”
“I see. But you seem to have forgotten that they have parents....”
“No. It’s the parents who’ve forgotten,” Judith flashed back.
“Not all of them. Since I’m here,” the Princess smiled.
“What? Because you’ve just married Prince Buondelmonte, and probably
think he ought to have remembered to look after Bun and Beechy? Well, I
think so too. Only he didn’t, you see; not when they were little, and
had to be wiped and changed and fed, and walked up and down when they
were cutting their teeth. And now that they’re big enough to cut up
their own food and be good company, I suppose you and he think it would
be fun to come and carry them off, the way you’d pick out a pair of
Pekes at a dog-show ... only you forget that in the meantime they’ve
grown to love _us_ and not you, and that they’re devoted to all the
other children, and that it would half kill them to be separated from
each other....”
“Oh—devoted?” the Princess protested with her dry smile.
“Of course they are. Why do you ask? Because they were having a scrap
when you came in? Did that tussle about a gold-fish frighten you? Have
you never seen children bite and scratch before?” Judith gave a
contemptuous shrug. “I pity you,” she said, “the first time you try to
give Bun castor-oil....”
Was it victory or defeat? Boyne and Judith sat late in the little
sitting-room, asking themselves that, after the Princess Buondelmonte
had gone. It had been Boyne’s idea—and almost his only contribution to
the fiery dialogue between the two—that the Princess should be invited
to return in the evening and share the children’s supper. The proposal,
seconded by Judith after a swift glance at Boyne, seemed to surprise
their visitor, and to disarm her growing hostility. The encounter with
Judith had not tended to soften her feelings, and for a moment it looked
as if things were taking a dangerous turn; but Boyne had intervened with
the suggestion that the Princess, having seen the children at their
worst, should be given a chance to meet them in pleasanter
circumstances. He added that he would be glad of another talk with her;
and as she did not leave till the next day, and was staying at an hotel
near his own, he asked if he might walk back there with her, and fetch
her down again for supper. She accepted both suggestions, and after a
mollified farewell to Judith, started up the hill with Boyne. He saw
that she was still inwardly agitated, and clutching desperately at what
remained of her resolution; and he put in a pacifying word in excuse of
Judith’s irritability, and assured the Princess that the Wheaters would
make no difficulty in recognising the Prince’s legal right to his
children. The real question, he went on, was surely quite different; was
one of delicacy, of good taste, if you chose to call it so. Mrs. Wheater
had taken in Beechy and Bun when their father was not able to; she had
given them the same advantages as her own children (the Princess, at
this, sounded an ironic murmur), and had shown them the same affection;
though all she had done, Boyne hastened to add, was as nothing to the
patient unflagging devotion of their step-sister—who technically wasn’t
even a step-sister. On that theme Boyne did not have to choose his
words. They poured out with a vehemence surprising even to himself. The
Princess, he supposed—whatever her educational theories were—would agree
that the first thing young children needed was to be loved enough; above
all, children exposed as they were in the Wheater world, where every new
divorce and remarriage thrust them again into unfamiliar surroundings.
Through all these changes, Boyne pointed out, Judith had clung to her
little flock, loving them, and teaching them to love each other; she had
even inspired governesses and nurses with her own passionate fidelity,
so that in a welter of change the group had remained together, protected
and happy. If only, Boyne pleaded, they could be left as they were for a
few years longer; perhaps if they could it would be found, when they
finally rejoined their respective families, that under Judith’s care
they had been better prepared for life than if their parents had
insisted on separating them.
The Princess listened attentively to his arguments, but said little in
reply; Boyne suspected that she had been taught not to commit herself
unless she was on familiar ground, and apparently she was unfamiliar
with the kind of plea he made. The sentiments he appealed to seemed to
have a sort of romantic interest for her, as feudal ruins might have for
an intelligent traveller; but he saw that there were no words for them
in her vocabulary.
When they went back to the _Pension Rosenglüh_ for supper the children,
headed by Terry and Blanca, presented a picture of such roseate harmony
that the Princess was evidently struck. To complete the impression,
Chip, who was always brought down at this hour to say goodnight, walked
in led by Nanny, placed a confiding palm in the strange lady’s, said
“Howoodoo,” and wound his fingers in her hair, which he pronounced to be
“ike Oody’s”—for Chip was beginning to generalise and to co-ordinate,
though his educators could not have put a name to the process, any more
than the Princess could to the instinctive motions of the heart.
Supper, on the whole, was a success. The children were unusually
well-behaved; even Zinnie subdued herself to the prevailing tone. Bun
and Beechy, seated one on each side of their new step-mother, and
visibly awed by her proximity, demeaned themselves with a restraint
which the Princess made several timid attempts to break down. It was
evident that what she had said about the prohibition of fire-arms still
rankled in Bun, and both children were prim and non-committal, as they
always were—to a degree unknown to the others—once their distrust was
aroused. The Princess, to conceal her embarrassment, discoursed volubly
about the historic interest of the ancestral palace which her husband
had succeeded in repurchasing, and promised Bun that one of its spacious
apartments should be fitted up as a modern playroom, in which he would
learn to replace his artless antics by the newest feats in scientific
gymnastics. Bun’s eyes glittered; but after a reflective silence he
shook his head. “We couldn’t,” he said, “not ’f we wanted to the most
awful way; ’cos we’ve all sworen a noath on Scopy’s book that we
wouldn’t.”
This solemn self-reminder caused Beechy’s eyes to fill, and Zinnie to
cry out: “We’d be damned black-hearted villains if we did!”
The Princess looked distressed. “What do you mean by swearing an oath,
Astorre?” she asked, pronouncing the words as if they were explosives
and must be handled with caution.
“I mean a nawful oath,” Bun explained, with an effort at greater
accuracy.
“But I can’t bear to hear children talk about swearing—or about villains
either,” his step-mother continued, turning with a reproachful smile to
Zinnie, who promptly rejoined: “Then you’d better not ever have any of
your own”; which caused the Princess to blush and lower her grave eyes.
To hide her constraint she addressed a question to the company in
general. “What is this book that you children speak of as Miss Scope’s?
The choice of books is so imp—”
None of the younger children could pronounce the name of the book, and
they therefore preserved a respectful silence; but Terry interrupted
with a laugh: “Oh, it’s the book that Scopy cures us all out of. It’s
called the ‘Cyclopædia of Nursery Remedies’.”
The Princess received this with a dubious frown. “I don’t remember a
book of that name being used in our courses at Lohengrin; is it a recent
publication?”
Miss Scope sat rigid and majestic at the opposite table-end. Thus
directly challenged, she replied reassuringly: “Dear me, no; it’s been
thoroughly tested. My mother and all my aunts used it in their families.
I believe even my grandmother—”
“Even your grandmother? But then the book must be completely
obsolete—and probably very dangerous.”
Miss Scope smiled undauntedly. “Oh, I think not. My mother always found
it most reliable. We were fourteen in the family, ten miles from the
railway, in Lancashire, and she brought us through all our illnesses on
it. In a family of that size one couldn’t always be sending for the
doctor....”
This gave her interlocutor’s dismay a new turn. “Fourteen in your
family? You don’t mean to say your mother had fourteen children?”
Miss Scope replied with undisguised pride that that was what she did
mean; and the Princess laid down her fork with the air of one about to
spring up and do battle against such deplorable abuses. “It’s
incredible...” she began; then broke off to add in a lower tone: “But I
suppose that at that time—” her glance at Miss Scope’s white head seemed
to say that the whole business was an old unhappy far-off thing, and she
resumed more hopefully: “In the United States such matters will soon be
regulated by legislation....”
She met Miss Scope’s horrified stare, and glanced nervously about the
table, as if realising that the subject, even at Lohengrin, might hardly
be considered suitable for juvenile ears. To relieve her embarrassment
she leaned across Bun and addressed herself once more to Zinnie.
“You must be Lady Wrench’s little girl, aren’t you, my dear? Only think,
I saw your mother the other day in Venice,” she said, in an affable
attempt to change the conversation.
Zinnie’s face sparkled with curiosity. “Oh, did you see her, truly? What
did she have on, do you remember?”
“Have on—?” The Princess hesitated, with a puzzled look, and Judith
intervened: “Zinnie has a passion for pretty clothes.”
“I think _yours_ are awfully pretty,” Zinnie insidiously put in,
addressing the Princess; and added: “Are you sure my mother didn’t give
you any presents to give us?”
“Zinnie!” came reprovingly from Miss Scope.
The Princess shook her head. “No; she didn’t give me any presents.
Perhaps she thinks you ought to come and get them. But she gave me a
message for you when she heard that I was coming here—she told me to
tell you how dreadfully she wanted to see her little girl again.”
Zinnie grew scarlet with excitement and gratification; such notice
lifted her at once above the other children. But an afterthought soon
damped her pride. “If she really feels like that I’d of thought she’d of
sent me a present,” she objected doubtfully.
“Presents aren’t everything. And it’s not very nice to associate the
people you love with the thought of what they may be going to give you.
Besides,” continued the Princess illogically, “if your mother is so
generous, think how many presents you’d get if you were always with
her.”
This seemed to plunge Zinnie into fresh perplexity. “Always with her?
How could I be? She doesn’t want to ’dopt the lot of us, does she? ’Cos
you see we’ve all sweared—”
“You mustn’t say swear,” said the Princess.
“Swore,” Zinnie corrected herself.
“I mean, not use such words,” the Princess explained.
“But we _did_,” said Zinnie, “on Scopy’s book; so she’d have to ’dopt us
all, with Judy. Do you s’pose she would?”
“I don’t know about that; perhaps it might be difficult. But why
shouldn’t she want to have her own little daughter with her?” The
Princess again leaned over, and laid a persuasive hand on Zinnie’s.
“Don’t you want me to take you back to Venice, to your own real mother,
when I go to-morrow?”
There was a pause of suspense. Boyne signed to Judith to keep silent,
and the children, taking the cue, remained with spoons above their
pudding, and eyes agape, while this perfidious proposal was submitted.
Zinnie, from crimson, had grown almost pale; the orange spirals of her
bushy head seemed to droop with her drooping lips. Her head sank on her
neck, and she twisted about in its crease of plumpness the necklace her
mother had given her. “What kind of presents ’d you s’pose they’d be?”
she questioned back with caution.
“Oh, I don’t know, dear. But you oughtn’t to think about that. You ought
to think only of your mother, and her wanting so much to have you. You
must give me an answer to take back to her. Shan’t I tell her you want
to go to her, Zinnie?”
Zinnie hung her head still lower. If it had been possible for a Wheater
child to be shy, she would have appeared so; but in reality she was only
struggling with a problem beyond her powers. At last she raised her
head, and looked firmly at the Princess. “I should like to consult my
lawyer first,” she said.
Boyne burst out laughing, and the Princess nervously joined him, perhaps
to cover the appearance of defeat.
Having so obviously failed to inspire the children with confidence, she
once more addressed herself to Miss Scope. “I should be so much
interested in talking over your educational system with you. I suppose
you’ve entirely eliminated enforced obedience, as we have at Lohengrin?”
“Enforced—?” Miss Scope gave an incredulous gasp, and her charges,
evidently struck by the question, again remained with suspended spoons,
and eyes eagerly fixed on the Princess. Miss Scope gave a curt laugh.
“I’ve never known children to obey unless they were forced to. If you
know a way to make them, I shall be glad to learn it,” she said drily.
This seemed to cause the Princess more disappointment than surprise.
“Ah, that’s just what we won’t do; _make them_. We leave them as free as
air, and simply suggest to them to co-operate. At Lohengrin co-operation
has superseded every other method. We teach even our little
two-year-olds voluntary co-operation. We think the idea of obedience is
debasing.” She turned with a smile to her step-son. “When Astorre and
Beatrice come to live with me the first thing I shall do is to make them
both co-operate.”
Bun received this unsmilingly, and Beechy burst into passionate weeping
and flung her arms jealously about her brother. “No—no, you bad wicked
woman, you mustn’t! You shan’t operate on Bun, only on me—if you
_must_!” she added in a final wail, her desperate eyes entreating her
step-mother.
“But, my dear, I don’t understand,” the Princess murmured; and Judith
hurriedly explained that Blanca had been operated upon for appendicitis
the previous year, and that the use of the word in connection with her
illness had had an intimidating effect on the younger children, and
especially on Beechy.
“But this is all wrong ... dreadfully wrong ...” the Princess said with
a baffled sigh. No one found an answer, and supper being over, Judith
proposed that they should return to the sitting-room. The children
followed, marshalled by Miss Scope, and the Princess again tried to
engage them in talk; but she could not break down the barrier of
mistrust which had been set up. Finally she suggested that they should
all play a game together—a quiet writing game she thought would be
interesting. A table was cleared, and paper and pencils found with some
difficulty, and distributed among the children, the youngest of whom
were lifted up onto sofa-cushions to make their seats high enough for
collaboration. The Princess explained that the game they were going to
play was called “Ambition,” and that it had been introduced into the
Vocational Department of Juvenile Psychology at Lohengrin in order to
direct children’s minds as early as possible to the choice of a career.
First of all, she continued, each was to write down what he or she would
most like to be or to do; then they were to fold the papers, and Mr.
Boyne was to shake them up in his hat, and read them out in turn, and as
he read the children were to try to guess who had made each choice.
The game did not start with as much _élan_ as its organiser had perhaps
hoped. The children were still oppressed by her presence, and all of
them but Terry hated writing, and were unused to abstract speculations
on the future; moreover, they probably felt that if they were to state
with sincerity what they wanted to be their aspirations would be
received with the friendly ridicule which grown ups manifest when
children express their real views.
All this made for delay and hesitation, and it was only Terry’s
persuasion, and the fear of disobeying the tall authoritative lady who
had suddenly invaded their lives, which finally set their pencils going.
Boyne received the papers, shook them up conscientiously, and began to
read them out.
“Al If Boy—oh, a _lift-boy_; yes—.” Zinnie’s burning blush revealed
her as the author of this ambition, and Boyne read on: “An
Ambassadoress”—Blanca, of course; and the added vowel certainly gave
the word a new stateliness. “A great Poet, or the best Writer of
Detective Stories,” in Terry’s concise hand, showed him torn between a
first plunge into Conan Doyle, and rapturous communion with “The
Oxford Book of English Verse.”
Boyne read on: “Never brush meye tethe,” laboriously printed out by
Beechy; “A Crow Bat”—an aspiration obviously to be ascribed to Bun: “A
noble character” (bless Scopy! As if she wasn’t one already—); and
lastly, in Judith’s rambling script: “An exploarer.” At the reading of
that, something darted through Boyne like a whirr of wings.
The ambitions expressed did not long serve to disguise the choosers, and
there was a prompt chorus of attributions as Boyne read out one slip
after the other. The Princess had apparently hoped that something more
striking would result. She said the game usually promoted discussion,
and she hoped the next stage in it would lead to freer self-expression.
The children, she explained, were now to say in turn why—that is, on
what grounds—they wanted to be this or that. But an awestruck silence
met her invitation to debate, and Beechy again began to show signs of
emotion. The Princess seemed much distressed, but was assured by Miss
Scope that this breach of manners was due only to over-excitement, and
the strain of sitting up later than usual—she hoped the Princess would
excuse her, but really the children had better go to bed. At this
suggestion all the faces round the table lit up except Zinnie’s, which
was clouded by a pout. She slipped down from her cushions with the
others, but when her turn came to file by the Princess for goodnight,
she held up the march-past to ask: “N’arn’t there going to be any prizes
after that game?”
She was swept off in Miss Scope’s clutch, and the Princess, after a
timid attempt at endearment, imperfectly responded to, when Bun and
Beechy took leave, sat down for a talk with Boyne and Judith. Much as
she had evidently seen to disapprove of in the bringing-up of the little
Wheaters she was in a less aggressive mood than in the afternoon;
something she had been unprepared for, and had only half understood, in
the relation of the children to each other and to their elders, seemed
imperceptibly to have shaken her convictions. Though she continued to
repeat the same phrases, it was with less emphasis; and she listened
more patiently to Boyne’s arguments, and to Judith’s entreaties.
Judith was presently called away to say goodnight to the children, and
as soon as the Princess and Boyne were alone, the former began abruptly:
“But you must listen to me, Mr. Boyne; you must understand me. It’s not
only that I cannot conscientiously approve of the way in which Beatrice
and Astorre are being brought up: it is that I need them myself—I need
them for my husband.” She coloured at the avowal, and went on hastily:
“If he is to begin a new life—and he _has_ begun it already—his first
step ought to be to take back his children. You must see that.... You
must see how I am situated....” Her voice broke, and Boyne suddenly felt
the same pity for her as when she had shown her fear that he might be
hinting a criticism of Prince Buondelmonte’s past.
“I’ll do what I can—only trust me,” he stammered.
Judith came back, and the Princess, still a little rigid from the effort
at self-control, began at once to thank her for her kindness, and to say
that she was afraid it was time to go. She would tell Prince
Buondelmonte, she added, with an effort at cordiality, that the children
seemed very well (_“physically_ well,” she explained), and she would
give him the assurance—she hoped she might?—that some sort of
understanding as to their future would soon be reached.
Victory or defeat? Judith and Boyne, sitting late, asked each other
which it was, but found no answer.
XXVIII
All the next day the rain continued. It was one of those steady
business-like rains which seem, in mountain places, not so much a
caprice of the weather as the drop-curtain punctually let down by Nature
between one season and the next. Behind its closely woven screen one had
the sense of some tremendous annual scene-shifting, the upheaval and
overturning of everything in sight, from the clouds bursting in snow on
the cliff-tops to the mattresses and blankets being beaten and aired in
the hotel windows.
These images were doubtless born of Boyne’s own mood. When he opened his
shutters on the morning after the Princess Buondelmonte’s apparition it
seemed to him as if she herself had hung that cold gray mist before the
window. He was afraid of everything now—of what the post might bring, of
what his own common-sense might dictate to him, above all, of seeing
Judith again, and having his apprehensions doubled by hers.
The worst of it was that, even should all their tormentors agree to
leave them in peace, they could not—more particularly on Terry’s
account—delay on that height through the coming weeks of storm and rain.
Moreover, all the hotels and _pensions_, which would reopen later for
the season of winter sports, were preparing to close for their yearly
cleaning and renovating. After the middle of October there would be no
demand for accommodation till the arrival of the Christmas lugers and
ski-ers. If it proved possible to keep the little Wheaters together any
longer the best plan would probably be to transport them to Riva or
Meran till winter and fine weather were established together in the
mountains.
Boyne turned over these things with the nervous minuteness with which
one makes plans for some one who is dying, and will never survive to see
them carried out. It seemed to give him faith in the future, a sense of
factitious security, as it sometimes does, beside a deathbed, to think:
“To-morrow I’ll see what the doctor says about a warmer climate.”
Judith and Miss Scope shared his idea about Meran or Riva, and for some
time had been talking vaguely of going down to look for rooms. But the
ever-recurring difficulty of persuading a boarding-house keeper to lodge
seven children made them decide that it would be best to try to hire an
inexpensive villa. The episode of the gold-fish and the rabbit had not
endeared them to their present landlady, and they felt the hopelessness
of trying to ingratiate themselves with another, in a place where they
were unknown, and where the autumn season would be at its height. It had
therefore been decided that Judith, Miss Scope and Boyne should motor to
Meran that very week to look over the ground. But on reflection Boyne
hesitated to leave the children alone with their nurses, even for so
short an absence. With Joyce in Paris, once more reorganising her life,
and the Princess Buondelmonte returning to Rome unsatisfied, danger
threatened on all sides. Any one of these cross-blasts might dash to
earth the frail nest which had resisted the summer’s breezes; and Boyne,
heavy-hearted, set out to call another council at the _Pension
Rosenglüh_.
As he left the hotel a telegram was handed to him. He glanced first at
the signature—Sarah Mervin—then read what went before. “I will gladly
receive own dear grandchildren subject to parents’ final settlement of
affairs fear cannot assume responsibility step-children letter
follows”.... “A lawyer’s cable,” Boyne growled as he pocketed it.
“That’s the reason it’s taken so long to compose.”
Fresh bitterness filled him as he saw one more prop withdrawn from under
the crazy structure of his hopes. “These people,” he reflected, “all act
on impulse where their own wants are concerned, and call in a lawyer
when it’s a question of anybody else’s.” But in his heart he was not
much surprised. Mrs. Mervin was no longer young, and it is natural for
ageing people to shrink from responsibilities. Besides, she might well
plead that it was no business of hers to take in children she had never
seen, and whose parents were eager, and financially able, to care for
them. On second thoughts, it really did not need Judith’s bald hint as
to the allowance her grandmother received from Cliffe Wheater to account
for the poor lady’s attitude. “I don’t see what else she could have
done,” the impartial Boyne was obliged to admit in the course of his
interminable argument with the other, the passionate and unreasonable
one.
What a Utopia he and Judith had been dreaming! He wondered now how he
could have lent himself to such pure folly.... Well, the dream was over,
and his was the grim business of making her see it.... Heavily he went
down the hill through the rain.
At the _pension_ Judith was watching for him from the window. She opened
the door and led him into the sitting-room, where a sulky fire
smouldered, puffing out acrid smoke. The landlady said it was always
like that—the stove always smoked on the first day of the autumn rains,
unless there was a little wind to make a draught. And there was not a
breath today; the only way was to leave a window open, Judith explained
as she turned to Boyne. Her face was colourless and anxious; he could
see that she had been treading the wheel of the same problems as
himself. The sight made him resolve to try and hide his own
apprehensions a little longer.
“Well, old Judy—here we are, after all; and not a breach in the walls
yet!”
“You mean she’s gone—the Princess?”
He nodded. “I saw her off to Rome an hour ago.”
Her eyes brightened, as they always did at his challenge; but it was
only a passing animation. “And you haven’t had any telegram?” she
questioned.
The question took him unprepared. “I—why, have you?”
“Yes. From mother. Here.” She produced the paper and thrust it
feverishly into his hand. Boyne’s anger rose—evidently; he thought, old
Mrs. Mervin had waited to communicate with her daughter before answering
him. What cowardice, what treachery! He pictured all these grown up
powers and principalities leagued together against the handful of babes
he commanded, and the bitterness of surrender entered into him. It was
not that any of these parents really wanted their children. If they had,
the break up of Judith’s dream, though tragic, would have been too
natural to struggle against. But it was simply that the poor little
things had become a bone of contention, that the taking or keeping
possession of them was a matter of pride or of expediency, like fighting
for a goal in some exciting game, or clinging to all one’s points in an
acrimoniously-disputed law-suit. Boyne unfolded Mrs. Wheater’s telegram,
and read: “You must come to Paris immediately bringing Chip I must see
you at once do not disobey me stop telegraph Hotel Nouveau Luxe Mother.”
The vague phrasing made it impossible to guess whether the message were
the result of a cable from Mrs. Mervin, or simply embodied a new whim of
Joyce’s. Boyne, on the whole, inclined to the latter view, and felt half
ready to exonerate Mrs. Mervin. After all, perhaps she had kept faith
with him, and her message was only the result of her own scruples.
He tossed the telegram onto the table with a shrug. “Is that all? You’ve
heard nothing else?”
Yes; it appeared she had. Nanny, the day before, had received a letter
from Mrs. Wheater’s maid Marguerite, an experienced person who wielded a
facile but rambling pen. This letter Judith had coaxed from Nanny,
unknown to Miss Scope; for Miss Scope, even in the extremest
emergencies, would not admit the possibility of her charges using, as a
means of information, what the Princess would have called “salaried
assistants.”
Marguerite’s news, if vague, was ample. It appeared that Mrs. Wheater
had met in Venice a gentleman a good deal older than herself, whose name
the maid could not even approximately spell, but who was quite different
from any of the other gentlemen in her mistress’s circle.
“Different—different how?”
“She says he’s made a different woman of mother,” Judith explained.
“He’s made her chuck Gerald, to begin with.”
“But, for God’s sake, why? I thought she was chucking your father on
account of Gerald.”
Judith went into this with the lucid impartiality she always applied to
the analysis of her parents’ foibles. She reminded Boyne that Joyce
never stuck long to one thing, and that she had decided to marry Gerald
chiefly in order to annoy her husband, and to have an excuse for
detaining the young tutor at the Lido when the children left. “He’s
rather a Lido man, Gerald is,” Judith commented, “and it made all the
other women so furious. That’s always rather fun, you know.”