The children

“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....”

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?”