But Rosemary had been a celebrity for only six months, and sometimes the French manners of her early adolescence and the democratic manners of America, these latter superimposed, made a certain confusion and let her in for just such things.
Mr. McKisco, a scrawny, freckle-and-red man of thirty, did not find the topic of the “plot” amusing.
He had been staring at the sea— now after a swift glance at his wife he turned to Rosemary and demanded aggressively:
“Been here long?”
“Only a day.”
“Oh.”
Evidently feeling that the subject had been thoroughly changed, he looked in turn at the others.
“Going to stay all summer?” asked Mrs. McKisco, innocently.
“If you do you can watch the plot unfold.”
“For God’s sake, Violet, drop the subject!” exploded her husband.
“Get a new joke, for God’s sake!”
Mrs. McKisco swayed toward Mrs. Abrams and breathed audibly:
“He’s nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” disagreed McKisco.
“It just happens I’m not nervous at all.”
He was burning visibly—a grayish flush had spread over his face, dissolving all his expressions into a vast ineffectuality.
Suddenly remotely conscious of his condition he got up to go in the water, followed by his wife, and seizing the opportunity Rosemary followed.
Mr. McKisco drew a long breath, flung himself into the shallows and began a stiff-armed batting of the Mediterranean, obviously intended to suggest a crawl—his breath exhausted he arose and looked around with an expression of surprise that he was still in sight of shore.
“I haven’t learned to breathe yet.
I never quite understood how they breathed.”
He looked at Rosemary inquiringly.
“I think you breathe out under water,” she explained.
“And every fourth beat you roll your head over for air.”
“The breathing’s the hardest part for me.
Shall we go to the raft?”
The man with the leonine head lay stretched out upon the raft, which tipped back and forth with the motion of the water.
As Mrs. McKisco reached for it a sudden tilt struck her arm up roughly, whereupon the man started up and pulled her on board.
“I was afraid it hit you.”
His voice was slow and shy; he had one of the saddest faces Rosemary had ever seen, the high cheekbones of an Indian, a long upper lip, and enormous deep-set dark golden eyes.
He had spoken out of the side of his mouth, as if he hoped his words would reach Mrs. McKisco by a circuitous and unobtrusive route; in a minute he had shoved off into the water and his long body lay motionless toward shore.
Rosemary and Mrs. McKisco watched him.
When he had exhausted his momentum he abruptly bent double, his thin thighs rose above the surface, and he disappeared totally, leaving scarcely a fleck of foam behind.
“He’s a good swimmer,” Rosemary said.
Mrs. McKisco’s answer came with surprising violence.
“Well, he’s a rotten musician.”
She turned to her husband, who after two unsuccessful attempts had managed to climb on the raft, and having attained his balance was trying to make some kind of compensatory flourish, achieving only an extra stagger.
“I was just saying that Abe North may be a good swimmer but he’s a rotten musician.”
“Yes,” agreed McKisco, grudgingly.
Obviously he had created his wife’s world, and allowed her few liberties in it.
“Antheil’s my man.”
Mrs. McKisco turned challengingly to Rosemary,
“Anthiel and Joyce.
I don’t suppose you ever hear much about those sort of people in Hollywood, but my husband wrote the first criticism of Ulysses that ever appeared in America.”
“I wish I had a cigarette,” said McKisco calmly.
“That’s more important to me just now.”
“He’s got insides—don’t you think so, Albert?”
Her voice faded off suddenly.
The woman of the pearls had joined her two children in the water, and now Abe North came up under one of them like a volcanic island, raising him on his shoulders.
The child yelled with fear and delight and the woman watched with a lovely peace, without a smile.
“Is that his wife?” Rosemary asked.