Mrs. Romayne screamed again, this time with derisive laughter.
"There wouldn't be much left of you, if I fell on you," she said crudely but accurately.
Waller privately winced. He was sensitive about himself in every possible aspect, but perhaps most of all where his small and skinny physical appearance was concerned.
Buckland, big and strong and hairy, thrust himself forward.
"Come on," he ordered masterfully. "I've got you."
He grasped Mrs. Romayne by the arm—the shoulder—the ankle—anywhere—half pushing and half lifting her down.
Denis Waller gritted his teeth.
He disliked Buckland intensely, and thought him a cad; nevertheless he envied him.
Why couldn't he have some of Buckland's self-confidence, his loud efficiency, and his easy success?
Denis slipped a little further down the rock, glanced round surreptitiously to see if anyone had noticed it and was despising him, and continued to slither, slowly and carefully—for he was rather frightened—in the rear of the party.
As he went, he comforted himself with a series of phantasies that had sustained him, varying hardly at all through the years, ever since his little boyhood.
The assumption on which most of these phantasies rested was to the effect that Denis Hannaford Waller had, in a past existence, been one of the world's Great Teachers—(which of them, he hardly liked to formulate even to himself, although he had his own secret convictions on the subject). Deliberately, on returning once more to earth, he had elected to embrace humiliation, an insignificant position, a frail and unimposing physique. Through the medium of these disadvantages, he would not only attain to a higher spirituality, but would continue his mission to humanity.
It was a large, indefinite mission, that embraced general understanding, and helpfulness, and service, and soon after attaining his seventeenth year, Denis had found that all these could be offered to, and welcomed by, girls of his own age or rather younger, of an intelligence slightly inferior to his own. Often and often these alliances of the spirit had landed him in difficulties, but he sincerely believed, on each occasion, that the difficulties had only been occasioned by the unworthiness, fickleness, or weakness, of the people whom he had tried to help. His own integrity he felt to be intact, and indeed morally—in the common acceptance of the term—he had remained impeccable, for he was both undersexed and inclined to a physical fastidiousness that he mistook for spirituality.
Mrs. Romayne, coarse-tongued and flamboyant, repelled rather than attracted him, but it was so essential to Denis Waller to be approved, and if possible liked, by all those with whom he was thrown into contact, that he always behaved exactly as if he admired and respected her very much. Dimly, he excused this insincerity to himself whenever he realised it—which occasionally happened if he woke up suddenly in the middle of the night—on the grounds that Mrs. Romayne might one day be Influenced by him.
Denis had a pathetic belief in the power of Influence, especially his own. He had often dreamed of obtaining a post as tutor in a private family, where he would have profited by his opportunities in a manner very different from that of Buckland—but the dream had remained a dream, in spite of tentative visits to various scholastic agencies, for his educational attainments were not very much more distinguished than were his athletic capabilities. Nevertheless, he continued to think of himself as an Influence, and it was, in fact, true that he had several times occasioned a temporary psychic disturbance in the lives of various young women with whom he had held long and personal conversations—in the course of which he had made frequent, and usually inaccurate, use of the word "psychological."
It would have required much less intelligence than Denis possessed, to suppose for one instant that he would ever be permitted to influence his employer. Denis did not fall into this error. But he still hoped, though ever more faintly, that one day Mr. Bolham—if he did not sack him first—might come to like him. Unfortunately, he had obtained the post of temporary secretary to Mr. Bolham partly by inducing a woman friend to write a glowing testimonial to his abilities, based almost entirely on what he had himself told her about them, and partly by undertaking, with an air of modest efficiency, to do a great many things of which he was, actually, more or less incapable. This incapacity had become obvious, almost at once, to his employer, and Denis lived in daily terror of being sent back to England, jobless and without a reference.
It was partly from a panic-stricken desire to have a possible second string to his bow that he took pains to ingratiate himself with the other visitors in the Hotel. One never knew when, and in what way, social contacts might become of practical use.
On a more exalted plane was his perfectly genuine wish to fulfil his own vision of himself as helping and influencing less evolved souls.
Lowering himself cautiously to the rocky plateau from which they were all to bathe, Denis reflected how terribly the boy Patrick Romayne needed help.
Perhaps he could win his confidence....
"So you've got here at last," observed Buckland, not very kindly.
He was changing into his bathing things without any particular regard for privacy.
Denis, more modestly, sought a pinnacle of rock and went behind it, when he instantly found himself face-to-face with Mrs. Romayne, half-in and half-out of a backless, and nearly frontless, emerald green swimming-suit.
"You can't come here," she shrieked.
"I'm most frightfully sorry—I beg your pardon."
Denis in reality was hardly more shocked or disturbed by the sight of a semi-naked woman than a child might have been, but he mistook his terror of having offended Mrs. Romayne for outraged masculine susceptibility, and retired in great discomposure to another projection of rock, where he undressed as quickly as possible.
The children were already in the water.
He watched the two younger Morgans, Gwennie and David, with some envy and admiration. They were only eight and ten years old, and swam well and fearlessly in water in which they were nowhere within their depths. He could see them moving steadily forward, shouting to one another in a conversational manner, and guessed that they were making for a rocky islet some sixty yards away, where a man's figure—that of their father—could be seen.
The eldest Morgan was not visible, neither was Patrick Romayne. As Denis emerged from behind his shelter, in a pair of blue bathing-pants without any top—for his desire to acquire a virile bronze was intense—he met Dulcie Courteney, whom he had forgotten all about, for she had not much personality and would certainly never rank as a social asset to anybody.
But he was at his best with children, whom he genuinely liked, so he smiled at her and said: "Hallo."
"Hallo, Mr. Waller. Are you going in immediately?"
"No, I don't think so," replied Denis, guessing that this was what she wanted him to say.
"Oh, good. Will you sit on the rocks with me, and sun-bathe, Mr. Waller? I don't mean really sun-bathe, of course."
"I quite understand. This would be rather a good place, wouldn't it? I'm afraid I've forgotten to bring any oil."
Denis had carefully forgotten to bring any oil ever since his first, rather expensive, bottle had come to an end. Other people were always sure to have plenty.
"I'll lend you my bottle," Dulcie volunteered eagerly. "You see, I don't really need it, do I? I've been here all the summer, so of course I'm brown. Though I don't think very fair people like me ever go quite as dark as if they weren't so fair, do you? Though of course, you're very fair yourself, Mr. Waller."
She