They raced round the beach. The sun, the wind, and the waves seemed to go with them; the water fell from them as they ran, and at last they flung themselves dry and breathless on to the hot sand.
Whilst they dressed, Tony dealt with the situation more practically and in detail.
“There are going to be a lot of difficulties, I’m afraid,” he said, as he stood with his shirt flapping about his legs, and his hands struggling with his collar. “In the first place, there’s mother. As I told you, she’s not got to know anything about it, because the minute she hears anything officially, of course, she’ll have to step in and ask about it, and then there’ll be no end of trouble with the governor and everybody. It’s not that she disapproves really, you know—your being there makes that all right; but she hasn’t got to realise it until it’s done. She won’t ask anything about it, but of course she can’t help wondering.”
“Well, I hope it is all right,” said Maradick anxiously. “My being a kind of moral danger-signal makes one nervous.”
“Oh! she trusts you,” said Tony confidently. “That’s why it’s so perfectly splendid your being there. And then,” went on Tony, “they are all of them wondering what we are at. You see, Treliss has that effect on people, or at any rate it’s having that kind of effect on us here and now. Everybody is feeling uneasy about something, and they are most of them putting it down to me. Things always do happen when you jumble a lot of people together in a hotel, the gods can’t resist a game; and when you complicate it by putting them in Treliss! My word!”
“Well, what’s the immediate complication?” asked Maradick. The water had made his hair curl all over his head, and his shirt was open at the neck and his sleeves rolled up over his arms.
“Well, the most immediate one,” said Tony slowly, “is Alice, Miss Du Cane. She was talking to me before lunch. It’s rather caddish to say anything about it, but I tell you everything, you know. Well, she seemed to think I’d been neglecting her and was quite sick about it. She never is sick about anything, because she’s much too solid, and so I don’t know what’s set her off this time. She suspects a lot.”
Maradick said nothing.
“But the funny thing is that they should worry at all. Before, when I’ve done anything they’ve always said, ‘Oh! Tony again!’ and left it at that. Now, when I’ve done nothing, they all go sniffing round.”
“Yes,” said Maradick, “that’s the really funny thing; that nothing has been done for them to sniff at, yet. I suppose, as a matter of fact, people have got so little to do in a hotel that they worry about nothing just to fill up time.”