she would be made to study every day on the yacht, and if there was anything Miss Addington
didn't know, she would look it up in the encyclopedia, or the all-knowing Lanny would tell it to
her. Frances was now three years old, and her entourage was made up of Miss Severne, a
nurse, and the ex-cowboy from Texas. These ten persons arrived in the morning, and there was
fuss and clamor, because they all wanted this or that before they got onto a yacht, and it
seemed that so many bags and boxes had never before been heaped up in the entrance hall of a
palace.
In the evening the expedition entrained for Calais; four more of them now: Irma and her
husband, her maid and her Feathers—who, as Irma said over and over, was a fool, but a good
one, doing all the errands, the shopping, and telephoning; keeping the accounts and getting
hopelessly mixed up in them; talcing her scoldings with tears, and promising to reform and doing
her best, poor soul, but not having it in her, since she had been brought up as a lady, and
thought about her own ego more than she could ever think about her job.
There were now twice as many boxes and bags, and twice as much fuss, but carried on in low
tones, because Irma was strict about having the dignity of the family preserved. It was a
conspicuous family, and there were reporters at the station to see them off and to ask about
their proposed trip. Millions of people would read about their doings and get vicarious thrills;
millions would admire them and millions would envy them, but only a small handful would love
them—such appeared to be the way of the world.
VII
Next morning the party emerged on the station platform of the ancient seaport and bathing
resort. They waited while Lanny got busy on the telephone and ascertained that the yacht had
not yet been reported. They were loaded into taxis and taken to the Hotel du Commerce et
Excelsior, where the mountain of luggage was stacked in a room and Feathers set to watch over
it. A glorious spring day, and the family set out to find a point of vantage from which they could
watch the approach of the trim white
spectacle, never to be forgotten: the day at Ramsgate when they had been trying to get
married in a hurry, and the yacht and its gay-spirited owner had provided them with a way of
escape from the dominion of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Now the yacht was going to transport them to Utopia, or to some tropical isle with an ivory
tower on it—any place in the world where there were no Nazis yelling and parading and
singing songs about Jewish blood spurting from the knife. Oil-burning vessels make no
smudges of smoke on the horizon, so they must look for a dim speck that grew gradually
larger. Many such appeared from the east, but when they got larger they were something else.
So the party went to lunch, fourteen at one long table, and it was quite a job getting them
settled and all their orders taken and correctly distributed. Belonging to the important classes
as they did, neither they nor their servants must do anything to attract attention to themselves
in public, and this was impressed on a member of the family even at the age of three. Hush,
hush, Baby!
They sat on the esplanade and watched all afternoon. Some of them took a swim, some looked
at the sights of the town—the four-hundred-year-old bastion, the citadel, the church of Notre
Dame with a painting by Rubens. They bought postcards and mailed them to various friends.
Every now and then they would inspect the harbor again, but still there was no trim white
supper; they went out and watched till dark—but still no sign of the yacht.
They were beginning to be worried. Johannes had set a definite hour for leaving Bremerhaven,
and he was a precise man who did everything on time and had his employees do the same. If
anything unforeseen had turned up he would surely have telegraphed or telephoned. He had
specified in his last letter what hotel they should go to, so that he would know where to look
for them. They had sailed so often with him that they knew how many hours it would take to
reach Calais, and it had been planned for the yacht to arrive simultaneously with the train from
Paris. She was now twelve hours overdue.
Something must have happened, and they spent time discussing possibilities. Private yachts
which are properly cared for do not have machinery trouble in calm weather, nor do they butt
into the Frisian islands on the way from Germany to France. They travel as safely by night as
by day; but of course some fisherman's boat or other obstruction might conceivably have got in
the way. "Tire trouble!" said Lanny, the motorist.
VIII
When it was bedtime and still no word, he went to the telephone and put in a call for the
yacht
