polite, deferential, but Nicole felt an undercurrent of “Who are these Numbers anyhow?” and she missed Dick’s easy talent of taking control of situations and making them all right — he had concentrated on what he was going to try to do.
The motor throttled down two hundred yards from shore and one of the young men dove flat over the edge. He swam at the aimless twisting board, steadied it, climbed slowly to his knees on it — then got on his feet as the boat accelerated. Leaning back he swung his light vehicle ponderously from side to side in slow, breathless arcs that rode the trailing side-swell at the end of each swing. In the direct wake of the boat he let go his rope, balanced for a moment, then back-flipped into the water, disappearing like a statue of glory, and reappearing as an insignificant head while the boat made the circle back to him.
Nicole refused her turn; then Rosemary rode the board neatly and conservatively, with facetious cheers from her admirers. Three of them scrambled egotistically for the honor of pulling her into the boat, managing, among them, to bruise her knee and hip against the side.
“Now you. Doctor,” said the Mexican at the wheel.
Dick and the last young man dove over the side and swam to the board. Dick was going to try his lifting trick and Nicole began to watch with smiling scorn. This physical showing-off for Rosemary irritated her most of all.
When the men had ridden long enough to find their balance, Dick knelt, and putting the back of his neck in the other man’s crotch, found the rope through his legs, and slowly began to rise.
The people in the boat, watching closely, saw that he was having difficulties. He was on one knee; the trick was to straighten all the way up in the same motion with which he left his kneeling position. He rested for a moment, then his face contracted as he put his heart into the strain, and lifted.
The board was narrow, the man, though weighing less than a hundred and fifty, was awkward with his weight and grabbed clumsily at Dick’s head. When, with a last wrenching effort of his back, Dick stood upright, the board slid sidewise and the pair toppled into the sea.
In the boat Rosemary exclaimed: “Wonderful! They almost had it.”
But as they came back to the swimmers Nicole watched for a sight of Dick’s face. It was full of annoyance as she expected, because he had done the thing with ease only two years ago.
The second time he was more careful. He rose a little testing the balance of his burden, settled down again on his knee; then, grunting “Alley oop!” began to rise — but before he could really straighten out, his legs suddenly buckled and he shoved the board away with his feet to avoid being struck as they fell off.
This time when the Baby Gar came back it was apparent to all the passengers that he was angry.
“Do you mind if I try that once more?” he called, treading water. “We almost had it then.”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
To Nicole he looked white-around-the-gills, and she cautioned him:
“Don’t you think that’s enough for now?”
He didn’t answer. The first partner had had plenty and was hauled over the side, the Mexican driving the motor boat obligingly took his place.
He was heavier than the first man. As the boat gathered motion, Dick rested for a moment, belly-down on the board. Then he got beneath the man and took the rope, and his muscles flexed as he tried to rise.
He could not rise. Nicole saw him shift his position and strain upward again but at the instant when the weight of his partner was full upon his shoulders he became immovable. He tried again — lifting an inch, two inches — Nicole felt the sweat glands of her forehead open as she strained with him — then he was simply holding his ground, then he collapsed back down on his knees with a smack, and they went over, Dick’s head barely missing a kick of the board.
“Hurry back!” Nicole called to the driver; even as she spoke she saw him slide under water and she gave a little cry; but he came up again and turned on his back, and “Château” swam near to help. It seemed forever till the boat reached them but when they came alongside at last and Nicole saw Dick floating exhausted and expressionless, alone with the water and the sky, her panic changed suddenly to contempt.
“We’ll help you up, Doctor… . Get his foot … all right … now altogether… .”
Dick sat panting and looking at nothing.
“I knew you shouldn’t have tried it,” Nicole could not help saying.
“He’d tired himself the first two times,” said the Mexican.
“It was a foolish thing,” Nicole insisted. Rosemary tactfully said nothing.
After a minute Dick got his breath, panting, “I couldn’t have lifted a paper doll that time.”
An explosive little laugh relieved the tension caused by his failure. They were all attentive to Dick as he disembarked at the dock. But Nicole was annoyed — everything he did annoyed her now.
She sat with Rosemary under an umbrella while Dick went to the buffet for a drink — he returned presently with some sherry for them.
“The first drink I ever had was with you,” Rosemary said, and with a spurt of enthusiasm she added, “Oh, I’m so glad to see you and know you’re all right. I was worried—” Her sentence broke as she changed direction “that maybe you wouldn’t be.”
“Did you hear I’d gone into a process of deterioration?”
“Oh, no. I simply — just heard you’d changed. And I’m glad to see with my own eyes it isn’t true.”
“It is true,” Dick answered, sitting down with them. “The change came a long way back — but at first it didn’t show. The manner remains intact for some time after the morale cracks.”
“Do you practise on the Riviera?” Rosemary demanded hastily.
“It’d be a good ground to find likely specimens.” He nodded here and there at the people milling about in the golden sand. “Great candidates. Notice our old friend, Mrs. Abrams, playing duchess to Mary North’s queen? Don’t get jealous about it — think of Mrs. Abram’s long climb up the back stairs of the Ritz on her hands and knees and all the carpet dust she had to inhale.”
Rosemary interrupted him. “But is that really Mary North?” She was regarding a woman sauntering in their direction followed by a small group who behaved as if they were accustomed to being looked at. When they were ten feet away, Mary’s glance flickered fractionally over the Divers, one of those unfortunate glances that indicate to the glanced-upon that they have been observed but are to be overlooked, the sort of glance that neither the Divers nor Rosemary Hoyt had ever permitted themselves to throw at any one in their lives. Dick was amused when Mary perceived Rosemary, changed her plans and came over. She spoke to Nicole with pleasant heartiness, nodded unsmilingly to Dick as if he were somewhat contagious — whereupon he bowed in ironic respect — as she greeted Rosemary.
“I heard you were here. For how long?”
“Until tomorrow,” Rosemary answered.
She, too, saw how Mary had walked through the Divers to talk to her, and a sense of obligation kept her unenthusiastic. No, she could not dine tonight.
Mary turned to Nicole, her manner indicating affection blended with pity.
“How are the children?” she asked.
They came up at the moment, and Nicole gave ear to a request that she overrule the governess on a swimming point.
“No,” Dick answered for her. “What Mademoiselle says must go.”
Agreeing that one must support delegated authority, Nicole refused their request, whereupon Mary — who in the manner of an Anita Loos’ heroine had dealings only with Faits Accomplis,