Gwennie threw herself flat on the rock and went on talking. She was fat, but firm—delightfully brown and sturdy, with eyes like big blue jewels set in apricot-bloom.
"Me and David are the only people who've done any real swimming this afternoon. Olwen and Patrick are just sitting talking, and Dulcie hadn't even begun undressing when we started. She came down in her beach pyjamas. Dulcie says her daddy says, little ladies don't wear shorts. So I said I s'pose he wouldn't think Olwen a lady, or me, or anybody."
Gwennie emitted a short, scornful laugh.
Mervyn smiled, but paid no attention whatever. It seldom occurred to him to listen to the conversation of his children, unless one of them was seriously seeking information about sport, or machinery, or natural history. He left it to his wife, Mary, to enlighten them on other topics, although he was reluctantly aware that Mary's opinions and his own differed in many directions. Nevertheless, it was his optimistic conviction that Olwen and David and Gwennie would all eventually grow up into orthodox Christians, and good Conservatives, with only a very cautious and modified adherence to the principles of the League of Nations.
"... And Mr. Waller never seems to go into the water at all. He just sits about, getting himself sunburnt. Him and me are having a competition in brownness."
"Which is winning?" David enquired.
"I am," said Gwennie firmly.
Why hadn't Mary come down, Mervyn wondered. It was a mistake to let the children go about with people like Mrs. Romayne, and that common fellow calling himself a tutor. Mary should have known better.
It was Captain Morgan's custom to pass judgment, usually silently, on his wife's management of their children. He was very fond of her, but he thought her unpractical, and with ideas of which his mother would never have approved. His mother, actually, had been a censorious and narrow-minded Welshwoman, of the type that seeks to secure her children's affection, rather than their development as independent beings, but of this Mervyn Morgan was not at all aware. He had been brought up to believe that whatever the mothers of other people might be, his own was sacred, and to that belief—as to most of those in which he had been brought up—he still adhered, at forty-eight years old.
Mervyn Morgan had been to Eton and Oxford, he had joined the Army in 1914, had been in France and Flanders almost continuously throughout the War, and had been awarded the D.S.O. He had married a charming girl whom he had known ever since she had first ridden to hounds, and whose father's property joined that of the Morgans in South Wales; and he had gallantly, and not too unsuccessfully, farmed his own land ever since his father's death, two months after the Armistice. In person, he was tall and young-looking for his years, fair like his children, and a fine horseman. Nothing could be further removed from him than the whimsical, the mischievous, the subtle. Nevertheless, an analogy might be held to exist between Captain Morgan and the character of Peter Pan, for he was essentially of those who never grow up.
"Why don't we do something?" enquired Gwennie vigorously. "Let's swim back to the others. Or would you rather stay here, David?"
"Which would daddy rather?"
"I suppose time's getting on. Is Mrs. Romayne going to drive you back?"
"I'll walk with you, daddy," said David.
"So'll I."
"Then we'd better get a move on, or we shall be late for dinner."
"Isn't it marvellous having late dinner every night?" said Gwennie in an awed voice. "I don't see how we're ever going to be able to settle down at home again, after this. Look, I'm going to dive."
She dived very well. Her father had taught her.
This place, he thought, has brought their swimming on, if it's done nothing else.
It had been Mary's idea to come to the South of France in August. She had an extraordinary passion for the sun, and real, blazing heat. (She'd certainly got it, with the temperature at one-hundred-and-one degrees Fahrenheit by the Hotel thermometer.) An unexpected legacy had come to her the year before, and she had deliberately decided to spend one-third of it on taking them all to this place.
Mervyn had not approved, but he was a fair-minded man—it was Mary's money, and they had no debts to speak of—and one might reasonably argue that it would improve the children's French, and their swimming, and perhaps help Mary to catch fewer bronchial colds next winter.
They went—but Mervyn, on principle, continued to remind his wife that it was an extravagance, and that he, personally, would have enjoyed Scotland a great deal more. Besides, look at the Exchange!
There was a second splash, as David jumped into the water after Gwennie.
"Well——" said Mervyn.
He executed a beautiful swallow-dive, since there was no one to see him except his children, who were not looking.
He had really gone to the distant island-rock all by himself in order to have the fun of trick-diving, at which he was an adept.
It would have seemed out of the question, to Morgan, to display this accomplishment in front of casual acquaintances or strangers.
CHAPTER III
(1)
Cocktails in the hall before dinner had worked their accustomed miracle. Under their magical influence, a discovery had been made.
The villa—Les Mimosas—a mile or two from the Hôtel d'Azur in the direction of St. Raphael, to which the young Moons proposed to carry their letter of introduction, was none other than the villa where Mrs. Romayne's friend, Mrs. Wolverton-Gush, had arrived three days earlier.
"How marvellous!" ejaculated Angie Moon, absent-mindedly.
"Quite marvellous!" Hilary added. "The only thing is, the name wasn't Wolverton-Gush. I mean, one would know so well if it had been, wouldn't one?"
"Perhaps she's leading a double life," suggested Buckland facetiously.
"How perfectly marvellous!"
"Let's go down and see after dinner, shall we?"
"Let's all go," said Mrs. Romayne. "I could do with another drink, personally. Buck, call that garçong."
"I don't know his name."
"Idiot! Besides, it's Emile."
"Talking about names, Hilary, can you possibly remember who it was, at the Mimosas? We think we've lost the letter," explained Angie.
"It was Chrissie Something."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Romayne. "That's it, then. What's everyone going to have? Mine's a Bronx."
The Moons, perceiving that they were to be included in a distribution of free drinks, temporarily emerged from their languor.
Buckland gave the order, and included in it a dry Martini for his own consumption, and Mrs. Romayne signed the bill.
"I can tell you about Chrissie, more or less. Her name's Chrissie Challoner, and she's one of these creatures who write—don't ask me what, because I don't know."
"One's heard of her," said Hilary, with a slight readjustment of his horn-rimmed spectacles—a gesture that he unconsciously used whenever he was showing off his familiarity with the life of the intellect. (It was a peculiarity that had already been observed and condemned by Mr. Bolham.)
"One's heard of her. One or two novels. One hasn't read them, of course."
"Well, I must say I'd never heard of her. But it seems that someone or other lent her this villa, and she felt she couldn't cope with running