WANDERFOOT (continued 4)

"What is it? Where am I?" she cried.

"All right; there's nothing very wrong ... you are only a little run down," the doctor soothed her, and the doctor's wife, standing by with sympathetic eyes, said gently: "You must rest a little while, and then have a cab to go home. You are thoroughly overtired."

They insisted on her taking a cab, but she dismissed it at the station, and, after the railway journey, once more made the long walk across the fields. When she reached home at last, very faint and weary, the night had fallen, but the little house lighted up, and as she came up the path she could hear Haidee's laugh ringing out, and Bran's merry crow. How happy they were, bless them!

As she reached the door something new and unaccustomed came out to meet her, some subtle difference in the atmosphere, the tone of the children's voices, and in a flash she knew the truth. Westenra had arrived during her absence!

He was sitting in the big double easy-chair, with Haidee squeezed beside him and Bran in his arms. The room was full of a kind of warm happiness.

"Oh, Joe!" she cried, and running forward, forgot Valdana, forgot everything but her joy in seeing him again, threw herself upon the little group and kissed them all alternately, wildly, like a mad creature.

"Yes, here I am," said Westenra, laughing, and the moment she heard his voice she knew there was something wrong. She had no idea of the strong odour of brandy she had brought into the little room with her, and she did not know until later what had happened during the afternoon. She only realised, with her quick and sure intuition, that Westenra was even more estranged from her than when they had parted in New York. There was a distance in his manner for which his last letter had hardly prepared her.

After the ice-cold misery of the first few moments she was dully thankful for his attitude. It was for the best. If he had ceased to care for her, so much the better for him: so much the less pain to be suffered in separation. She sat down and began to talk mechanically, eliciting details of his journey. It appeared he had arrived in the Island that morning. The steamer docked very late on account of fog. He had just missed a train, and had been obliged to wait for an hour at the station, and then it had taken him a considerable time to find the farm. He had lost his way and come round by an old unused route, which accounted for the fact of his missing Val, for he had arrived only a few moments after her departure. Haidee had shown him everything. They had been over the poultry houses, fed the rabbits, ridden the pony, and let the dogs loose to hunt the rats----

At this juncture of the narrative Haidee turned red, and gave a swift embarrassed glance at Westenra. He, however, stared steadily before him, a peculiar steely quality in his stare. Val saw Haidee's glance, and his strange look, but knew the meaning of neither, and was too unhappy to speculate on the subject.

"He 's had a tub, and I 've fixed up his things in the spare room," said Haidee presently.

"You seem to have got along very well without me," was all Val could say, with a pale smile. "I suppose I had better see about dinner now."

A strange evening was passed. Westenra could not conceal his joy at being with the children once more, but if he felt any at seeing Val he concealed it well under a gay cold manner. She on her side felt all her happiness swallowed up in dismay. Love was frozen in her heart.

After supper Bran was bathed before the bedroom fire and put to bed. He had to be admired first, and parade naked across the hearth-rug to show all his little muscles. He was able to walk well now, and was as perfect as only baby children can be before all their soft puppy-dog roundness turns to length. His parents devoured him with their eyes, forgetting their miserable problems for awhile in the joy of so beautiful a possession.

"I tell you this fellow is out to make new figures at the Olympics," said Westenra, who had all an Irishman's madness for athletics. "This is a champion!"

At last the children were in bed, the house silent. Garry and Val sat alone by the sitting-room fire, constrained and far apart.

"They look blooming," he said. "This place suits them better than New York apparently."

(Ah! in his joy at seeing the children blooming he had not noticed her haggard face! Symptoms that in others would have aroused his professional interest in her went unnoticed, or so it seemed. She remembered that she had once heard a doctor's wife quote rather bitterly:

"Shoemakers' children have broken boots; doctors' wives never get treatment.")

"Then you will not mind our going on living here, Joe--for awhile?" she said a little wearily.

"Do you wish it?" She did not answer at once. He looked at her gravely with something pitiful in his glance.

"The children are in great trim ... but you? I don't think it is any good to you to live like this."

(He had noticed, then! It had not escaped his keen eye that she was grown old and lined! Should she tell him about her neuralgia and the terrible time she had gone through with her nerves? But how sick he must be of women with nerves.... New York was full of them .... he had just come on holiday--better wait!)

"Oh, I am all right, Garrett," she said hastily. "A little neuralgic at times----"

"Ah!"

"But it is nothing ... nothing."

"I don't think you should go on living here. The idea was for you to get strong ... instead you have--" he hesitated, and looked at her gravely with indictment in his glance--"given way to nerves."

She glanced at him guiltily. It almost seemed to her that he had been going to say "given way to drink!" That he knew something of her struggle with the brandy--yet how could he?

"Oh, nerves!" she said, and laughed nervously.

"I think the only thing to be done," he continued steadily, "is for you to come back with me to New York."

"Oh, Garrett! ... I don't think.... I can't do that," she stammered desperately.

"You mean you don't want to?"

"It is not a matter of wanting."

He stood up then, stern-faced.

"Don't beat about the bush. This thing has got to be settled once and for all. Will or will you not?"

"I can't, Joe." She looked at him with haunted eyes.

"You can't break loose?"

"Break loose? What do you mean?"

"Never mind ... never mind ... poor Val!" Sternness had gone from him. "Well, that is settled, then--I go back without you." He got up heavily and turned away from the fire.

"I 'm dead-beat and must get rest, Val. Haidee has fixed me up very well in her nice little room; she told me you always meant me to have it."

He turned and looked at her, in his eyes a sudden bitterness and anger born of his longing to take into his arms and crush to him this woman who exiled him from her heart.

"Do you think it is quite fair, Val? Do you think you are playing the game?"

She looked at him with wistful, harried eyes.

"I am trying to, Joe--I----"

What could she say? Was this the moment to stab him with the truth? While she hesitated wretchedly, he turned away again, walking round the room, looking fiercely at the pictures and chintzes he knew had belonged to her past life.

"Haidee is growing into a nice girl," he said abruptly, switching his mind from a subject that maddened him.

Val, by the fire struggling with her misery and half-formed resolution, looked at him vaguely for a moment. Ah! he was speaking of Haidee--while she was torturing herself with the thought that he wanted her as she wanted him!

"Good-night!" he said harshly, and went his way up-stairs, without attempting to kiss her. She crouched down by the dying fire, and covered her face with her hands. Her heart was in great pain: the great pain of a little child. Footsteps overhead told her that he went first to her bedroom to take a last glimpse of Bran, and low murmurs betrayed the fact that Haidee was not yet asleep. At last his light, firm tread crossed the floor once more, then came the sound of his closing door.

Another hour must have passed when Val, still sitting by the fire, was startled to hear the patter of feet on the bare oak stairs, then to find a slim night-gowned figure beside her.

"Haidee!"

"I wanted to tell you something, Val, and was afraid I 'd be asleep before you came up."

"What is it?"

"Garry found all your empty brandy bottles in the dell; we were hunting the rats there with Billy and King." Her big brown eyes rested commiseratingly on Val. It was evident she felt guilty for having led Westenra to the dell, her very look of guilt had in it something damning to the poor pale culprit sitting there with a sick heart, no trace on her of the victory she had achieved two weeks ago. She had believed her sin as secret as her victory over it. Yet here it rose up against her in Haidee's eyes. The child knew nothing of the victory--only of the vice, though Val had never felt herself observed. And now Garry knew! That was the reason then of their embarrassed looks and averted eyes!

"Of course he didn't say anything. He pretended he did n't notice even. But you should have seen his face." She gazed dismally at Val. It was as though they had offended God. "And you smelt awfully of brandy when you came in--you do still."

"Go to bed, Haidee," said Val at last, sick with humiliation. She had meant to tell of the brandy episode some day, in some dear moment when all was clear between them once more. Now, through being accidentally betrayed, the incident had assumed a horrible aspect. She was afraid to think of what his thoughts on the subject must be. She longed to tell him all. To run up-stairs and cry at his door: "I didn't drink it all, Garry; two of the bottles were full when I threw them away." How silly and puerile that would sound. He would, perhaps, see nothing in her action but the terror of a confirmed drinker found out, might imagine that he had married a secret drunkard! She sat twisting her hands in an agony of misery. How could she tell him? What was the good? How dared she even kiss him as she had done when she came in? Valdana was alive--she was not even Joe's wife--what to do--what to do? ... How brutal life was!

Suddenly she fell to communing with her dead--those who had loved and believed in her and knew that however much she had failed in the heavy trials and afflictions of the last year, at least she had not been actuated by meanness or mere self-indulgence. They knew her as she used to be--fearless and sure of her actions--before love had laid bonds on her spirit, and sorrow and failure crushed her down. They understood, and would not altogether condemn. At last, curiously strengthened, she rose and went up-stairs, the firm purpose in her heart of going to Westenra to tell him everything.

She paused for a moment at his door--doubtless he was sleeping, dead-beat as he said. But that could not be helped. It was more important even than his sleep that all should be put right between them. She owed it to herself as well as to him. Softly she turned the handle of the door, but it did not open to her touch. Westenra had guarded himself against invasion. It was locked.

――――

At breakfast the next morning he announced that he was due in London in two days' time to deliver some lectures at one of the hospitals. After that he must make a visit to Ireland on a matter concerning some family property. He added vaguely that he should probably come back again to Jersey before very long, but Val took that for what it was--a bone thrown to Haidee, whose face had visibly lengthened and darkened on hearing this horrible news. Bran, smiling in his mother's arms, looked on affably--his father's comings and goings meant little to him as yet, so long as he had Val's soft cheek to rub his own against. She was very pale, but extraordinarily composed, and made no comment on his plans. She had withdrawn herself into some remote and distant land of her own--a land where no birds sang, nor flowers grew! After breakfast she left the others, and went about her household duties. A conference in the garden between Westenra and Haidee resulted in a resolution to walk down to St. Aubin's and hire bicycles for a day's outing. Haidee was strong as a Basuto pony, and Westenra loved nothing better than to be out in the open air. The bicycling is hilly in Jersey, and the two came home tired out in the evening. Haidee announced that they had done their side of the Island from Corbières to Plemmont Caves, and intended next day to visit Bouley Bay, Archirondelle, and the famous breakwater that cost half a million pounds and is of no more use than a load of rotten hay.

After the usual bath parade, at which Bran presided, Val once more had the fireside and her thoughts to herself. Haidee and Westenra, tired out, were glad to seek their beds.

The next day they started early. While Val was cutting sandwiches for them, Westenra half suggested that she should come too; but she smiled quite naturally, and said that even if there were any one to stay with Bran, it was so long since she had cycled she would only be a drag to them. "But I hope you will not be so tired to-night, Garrett," she finished quietly. "I want to have a little talk with you after dinner."

"Very well," he answered, looking at her curiously. He could not pretend to begin to understand her, or what she meant or wanted. He only knew that he, too, had something to say before he left Jersey the next day. Though outwardly he was composed, and in the company of Haidee even gay, affecting great interest in their excursions, his heart was heavy as a stone in him, and he was brooding over his wrongs as only an Irishman can. As it happened, rain began to fall heavily after lunch, and somewhat early in the afternoon the two cyclists returned wet and cross. Westenra bathed, and immediately began to pack his things for departure by the next morning's boat. The rest of the afternoon was spent with the children.

The sky had cleared by evening, and when after dinner Val and Westenra walked across the fields towards the cliff in the pale, clear, evening light, they could see the tide furling and unfurling its filmy laces of froth on St. Brelade's beach.

Though she had come out with a set purpose she found it hard to begin what she had to say. For all her remote manner and outward calm, her heart, throbbing full, bounded in her breast and beat in her throat until she felt suffocating. It was Westenra who spoke at last very gently, but with something of a requiem note in his words.

"So you see our love was not strong enough after all to weather the storms, Val!"

"Mine was ... mine is," her heart cried out, but she looked at him dully. She knew the futility of such words now. It was his own dead love he was keening, not hers.

"Our ship of dreams has gone to pieces."

"No," burst from her lips almost against her will.

"Yes, Val," his gentle tone became stern. "Face the facts."

They had seated themselves on some rocks near the edge of the cliff. Nothing broke the peace of the evening but the swirr and swish of the gentle tide on the beach below.

"You promised to burn your boats ... never to go back to old habits and possessions ... I find you with your old possessions about you----"

"Those pictures and chintzes? I wrote and told you how they came," she interrupted. "They can be burnt for all they are to me."

He moved his hand with a desperate gesture.

"That is nothing to the other. Can you deny that you have returned to one at least of your old habits?"

"Oh!" she cried, and sat up like one who has been struck. But his heart was full of fury, outraged hopes, and disappointment. He could not measure his words because she cried out.

"It was not your boats you burned, but my ship--my ship of dreams!"

He went further, he accused her of breaking his shrine, of succumbing to a vice that he detested and despised with all his soul. He said she had betrayed his love, and destroyed that quality in it which is essential and eternal.

"One must look up," he said, and looked down on her as she sat there, her face covered with her hands, very still under the torrent of fierce and cruel words that burst from him in the bitterness of outraged love and pride. Like all reserved people when driven into breaking silence he said too much. Afterwards there was a long silence. A curlew flying inland wailed faintly like a dying thing.

"I don't see what is before us," he muttered. "Everything is finished."

And at last she spoke--very quietly.

"Yes, everything is finished of our life together. But each of us is free to begin again."

"Free!" he echoed ironically, thinking of the mystical fatalistic threads that had bound and tangled them together from the first. "You and I will never be free of each other."

"Oh, yes--we are already. Listen! I want to tell you something that I ought to have told you long ago, only I was afraid of ... Ah! never mind of what I was afraid. But now that it is as you have said all over and finished, now that I see very well that not only do you not love me, but that you never have loved me and want nothing so much as to be free of me, I will tell it you--" and she added fiercely, "with pleasure."

"Tell ahead," he said drearily.

"I am not your wife, and never have been. Horace Valdana is alive--has never been dead!"

In the solemn mute moments that followed the curlew wailed again.

"What are you saying?" muttered Westenra, hoarsely. He had risen to his feet.

Then Val began to laugh, not hysterically, but just soft light-hearted laughter. She really felt light-hearted at that moment. It was as though something very, very heavy had been lifted from her shoulders, and she could stand up straight at last.

"It can't be true!" He was muttering like a man stunned. "How long have you known?"

"Oh, what does that matter!" she said. "It is true--that is all that concerns you." She reflected a moment. "But of course my mere word is of no value to you ... I have proofs in the house ... letters from him asking me to go to Canada with him." She began to laugh again.

"Good God!" muttered Westenra still dazed. "And Bran?"

That sobered her, drying the strange laughter on her lips and in her heart.

"Ah, Bran! ... Yes. My Brannie!" she said softly, her voice in those few low-spoken words expressing all that the woman voice can express of pity, sorrow, and love. It was Bran who would be the victim--Bran who would go fatherless, homeless, nameless--a vagabond like his mother with restless heart and wandering feet!

"He is mine," said Westenra suddenly.

"No, mine," she answered swiftly. They stood staring at each other like two duellists. He lost sight of all she had been to him--of all that she must have suffered. Dazed and horror-struck he only felt that his world was moving away from under his feet, and she was trying to rob him of the last hold, the most dear thing he had ever possessed.

"He is mine too ... I believe by law I could get him."

"Law! Have n't you found out yet that I am lawless?" She came close to him, staring into his eyes, a mocking light in her own. "You forget that I am the woman with no soul, no morals, and no roots, the careless vagabond whom you feared Haidee to come into contact with ... whom you apologised to your dead mother for having married...."

"Val, you are mad!" he said amazed, white to the lips. But she only laughed a little clanking laugh, and her voice that had so often sounded in his ears like the wild far music of his own land was hard now as iron on iron.

"Go your ways, my dear Garrett Westenra. You are free of the woman who burnt your ship!"

CHAPTER XII

CHILDREN OF ISHMAEL

"Life tests a plough in meadows made of stones,

Love takes a toll of spirit, mind, and bones."

MASEFIELD.

Raging he went from English shores. Raging, broken-hearted, more lonely than ever in his life before. Looking backwards to that voyage on which he and Val had first met, he realised that his loneliness then was peace and contentment compared with what he now felt. He had known what it was to share life right down to the core with another human being, and when that has once been, solitude redoubles its sting. A fantastic creature like Val, however uncomfortable she made life, could not be lost out of it without leaving a big, aching gap.

Yet, there he was on his way back to America, while in far Jersey Val sat on her rabbit-hutch staring at the sea with blind eyes, Bran playing unheeded at her knees, in her ears the faint, melancholy cry of the curlew.

After their wretched parting on St. Brelade's Cliffs, Westenra had paced the beach all night. When he reached the farm dawn brightened the sky, but none of the freshness of morning was in his drawn face. Haidee and Val were up, the fire made, breakfast ready. They seemed to take it for granted that he still meant to leave by that morning's boat for England, and indeed he had decided that it was the only thing to do. It would give him time to review the miserable situation and look for a way out of it. But before he went he encompassed a further interview with Val, though he got little of it but pain. She was in that subtle way of hers éloignée from him once more, had put immeasurable distance between them.

"I want you to tell me more of this," he said drearily. "I must have details to go on before I can do anything to right the matter."

"You cannot right it," she answered. "It must be left as it is."

"What do you mean?"

"It must never come out that Horace Valdana is alive. One cannot so disgrace England."

Briefly she related the facts as far as she knew them, and he saw that she was right. Impossible to disgrace a country to right a private affair--even if the country were one you hated. But what a situation! There seemed to him to be no way out of it. Val, for a deep reason of her own, withheld from him the fact of Valdana's broken health. She wished him to feel absolutely free of her. She kept repeating that, with sardonic inflexible eyes.

"You see, you are free! What more do you ask?"

He asked much more, but with that mocking smile on her pale lips he would not tell her so.

"I want my son," he said coldly.

"My son," she answered, and that found them once more at the pitch at which they had parted the night before, reason withdrawn, cold fury in its place. Only by a great effort had he controlled himself.

"I leave him with you, in trust."

"Because you must," she answered, eyes flickering with bitter triumph. "But will you not take Haidee before ill comes to her?"

He was helpless before the smile that writhed upon her stiff lips. What did she mean by these gibes concerning Haidee and his dead mother, which she flung at him like javelins? How had she read those secrets of his soul that he had never revealed to any one, scarcely acknowledged to himself? Had she with her queer almost clairvoyant instinct known all along and mocked and disdained him in her heart from the first? If he thought of her tenderness to Bran and to himself when he lay ill, her comradeship, her valiant gaiety, he could not believe it. When he looked at her mocking disdainful eyes he could believe anything.

"No; I leave Haidee in trust with you too," he said, then had been obliged to kiss the children hurriedly, and go on his way, or lose the boat.

In spite of his original intention to do so he did not return to Jersey before sailing to America. After black nights of reflection he saw that there was nothing to be gained by facing Val again in the mood that possessed her. The moment they looked into each other's eyes cold reason would once more withdraw from them and the fury of wounded love take its place. It was better to let Time do its work upon their trouble. So he sailed for America without seeing her or the children again, though it hurt him deeply to do it. And his days and nights upon the ship were haunted by the face of the woman in grey. Never since the voyage on the Bavaric had he dreamed that dream, but now never a night came without it. Towards the last part of the voyage, when calm had come to him, he wrote her a letter in which he hid the love that still ached in him, but tried to revive a little the old understanding comradeship they had shared.

But there was too much of compassion in that letter, and Val was sick of his compassion. Women can get sick of compassion when it leaves no room for self-respect.

――――

She stayed on in Jersey not because he asked her but because she must. One would call it existing rather than living as far as she was concerned. She felt as though her brain were dead and she had only her body left, that body which, however glad she would be to lay it down, she must conserve and take care of for the sake of Bran. For Haidee, too, she had a kind of responsible mother-feeling, though Haidee never encouraged tenderness in any one. But the case of Bran was different; the child of two such nervous people could not be otherwise than nervously organised, though of fine build and stamina, and Val knew that under any care but hers he would probably grow up a weakling. No, she must not die! But she tried to let her mind do so for a while, so that she might suffer less. She essayed to turn herself into a kind of vegetable; read nothing, talked to no one but the children, indulged in no kind of mental occupation. Only she worked out in the open as much as possible, with her nervous incapable hands, and at least she got a beautiful flower garden together.

She never saw or spoke to any one but the children. When Haidee got back from school they would all work together in the garden or clean out the stable, or make bran mashes for the pony colic, or run the dogs, and watch the chickens and rabbits in the open, though enthusiasm for this last occupation was distinctly on the wane. The only things any of them cared for now were the bees and the flowers. They did not make money out of these, but then the fowls did not make money either, only pretended to until the grain bill came in.

Bran was always to be found in the vicinity of the beehives, and at first Val had been terrified, but later she came to believe him one of the "band of little brothers" whom bees do not sting. Haidee could take no liberties with the strange, wise insects, and had a holy fear of them, but they were Bran's passionate loves.

As for eggs and chickens, and fat hens that would no longer lay, they were all sick of them as articles of diet. Haidee, who in New York days was used to attack with relish three city eggs of assorted flavours mixed in a tumbler, now turned away in weariness and disgust from the brown-shelled ones fresh from the nest.

And the rabbits were a thorn in the flesh, and a weariness to the sole of the foot! Eternally they were killed by stoats, eaten by rats, stolen, or else dug their way out from under the runs and fled for the open. If these modes of escape all failed, Bran, in his small way, would do what he could for them. When he came toddling indoors to declare with an effulgent smile his love for Haidee she would start up snapping:

"Yes, I know what that means. You've let the rabbits out. You always have when you love me. Have you, Bran?"

"Well, by aksdent, Haidee...."

"Oh, I know your aksdents...."

With blank faces she and Val would rush from the house and scoot after the scurrying rabbits. The latter usually got the best of the game and achieved liberty.

The truth had to be faced that there was no money to be made out of the farm. High hopes of a fortune had long since fallen to the dust. Chickens and rabbits are very charming to watch at their antics in the sunshine, but depending upon them for a living, unless you are an expert poultry farmer, is waste of time. Val realised it at last, and that other ways and means for obtaining money must be reflected upon. She had no intention of accepting another rap of Westenra's for either her own or Bran's support. So one day she sat down and wrote to Branker Preston, asking him if he could find an opening for some "Wanderfoot" articles.

"I cannot travel," she wrote, "but I have a good store of unused material in the cupboards of my mind, and I need money." Preston answered that he would not be long in finding a demand for anything she could supply. When, however, the demand came she found herself curiously unable to cope with it. The task of sitting down to write newspaper articles after a lapse of more than two years into domesticity was not an easy one. As love and maternity had absorbed her mother's art, so in a smaller degree the same things had encroached upon Val's gift. Added to which was a period of unbroken intercourse with chickens and rabbits, enlivened only by digging in the garden or running the pony up and down when he got colic. Such occupations are excellent for the health, and may even induce a good working philosophy, but they do not make the intellect to scintillate like the stars, nor bestow distinction upon that elusive quality in writing which is known as style. She found that when she tried to think connectedly on abstract subjects things slithered out of her mind and left a headache behind. After a few days, in which her brain seemed to act in delirium, and the written results read to her like the ravings of a suddenly liberated lunatic, she threw down her pen in despair.

"It is this brute of an island! I can never write here," she cried desperately. She had suffered too much there, and her instinct was always to flee from places where sorrow had smitten her, to save her soul alive before it was injured beyond aid. Such places seemed to have a power for evil over her. Moreover her feet had long ached to be gone from the small, cramped island. It had served its purpose. The children were healthy and strong, her own body recuperated. Now that she must take up her pen once more, plainly it was time to pull stakes. There was no inspiration for her in Jersey.

For another thing, she began to be afraid that if she remained much longer she might become a serious criminal; that is to say, one upon whom the law would lay hands. It was Farmer Scone who helped her to this conclusion and her final decision to go.

For months he had been making himself unpleasant--a long series of petty vexations and systemised annoyance--stoning her fowls, complaining to the police that her dogs worried his cows, letting his cattle break down her hedges, and encouraging his labourers to annoy Haidee by sniggering over the hedge when she was busy with the pony. Added to these things he had once more started walking through her grounds by the old disputed "right of way" past the back door.

One morning she and Haidee, just going out to fire at some crows in the fruit garden, ran into him and his grinning labourer carrying their scythes to a far hayfield. Val called him back, and speaking very self-controlledly told him that it must be understood, once and for all, that she would not permit this trespassing.

"Great Galumps!" he responded as usual, "and what will you do to me? Is it your husband from America, who only comes to see you for one day a year, that 'll be punching my head?"

"No," said Val, white to the lips, and raising her rook-rifle. "It is I that will be putting a hole through your large and very unsightly paunch."

"Yes, do, Val, do. Take a pot-shot at him--give him one in the tummy!" urged Haidee ecstatically. "Shall I get my revolver too?"

She hopped up-stairs, and Farmer Scone moved on at the double-quick, rather alarmed, for he did not at all like the look in Val's eyes, and to be sure no one knew what such creatures might do! He half determined to go down to the court-house at once and, complaining of menaces, "have the law on them," but reflected in time that as he was not "Jersey-born" he might not get his case, while running a possible risk of being fined for trespassing. He decided that his system of petty annoyance was the best.

In the meantime Val, too, was deciding something. On going into the house she met Haidee coming out, gaily priming her revolver.

"Put it away, Haidee," she said wearily. "Don't you understand I only said that in my rage with the insolent brute. You must never shoot at people. Awful trouble might come of it."

Haidee's face darkened sulkily.

"One can't do anything in this rotten island," she complained.

"We can get out of it," said Val, and Haidee brightened.

"Where would we go?"

"Oh, I don't know ... anywhere ... anywhere where we 'll never see a rabbit or a fowl again. I think I shall go mad if I stay among them another day."

"Me too--I'm sick of the beasts. Look at that cock-eyed eagle staring at us. Sh--sh, you brutes!"

"I wish I 'd never seen a hen in my life," said Val savagely.

"Let's get an axe and slay them all before we go," suggested Haidee. Suddenly her face grew long. "But where are we going to get the money from?"

The financial situation was such that even the children understood its simplicity; though if it had been more complicated Val would never have dreamed of not sharing it with them. Bran was able to tell to a penny how much the family purse contained, while Haidee as a matter of fact possessed a far finer appreciation of money values than either Westenra or Val.

"We 've got the rent," said the latter thoughtfully, and Haidee looked up quickly. With the lawlessness of youth she immediately jumped to the conclusion that Val meant to skip with the sum that was due to the landlord on September quarter-day, now close at hand. It was only a fourth of thirty-six pounds, but still, when times are hard and a sea voyage in contemplation, nine pounds are not to be despised. Val quickly dispelled this bright notion.

"I 'm not going to rob the landlord. All he will have to do is sell the farm-stock and my pretty London things, which of course we 'll leave. They will more than pay the rent for the rest of the lease, and enough left over to pay the bills we owe. We won't take anything but our clothes and a few books."

"What about Joy? Let's sell him. You know that old Farmer Le Seur offered fifteen pounds for him. I 'll go and tell him this morning, shall I?"

Val reflected a moment, and came to the conclusion that it would be juster to Westenra to sell the pony at that price than leave him to be sold for the small sum they owed, so she gave Haidee the desired permission.

"Oh, hurray! ... Oh, Val, what a lark!" Haidee pranced and capered like a Bashi-bazouk. "Let's go and pack."

They flew up-stairs and woke Bran to the news.

"We 're going away, Brannie Bran ... in a ship!"

Bran, sitting up in bed like a squdgy Japanese idol, took hold of his toes as though they were a bunch of rosebuds.

"Are we going to daddy?" he asked solemnly, and Val hid her face in his flannel nightgown.

"No, my Wing." She added on the spur of the moment, "We 're going to France."

He reflected awhile.

"Oh, dear buck!" he sighed at last (only he said jeer for dear). It was one of his expressions signifying disappointment, and Val felt a pang. But she would not be saddened, and soon had the children as wild as herself, dashing about the house and packing up, so glad was she to be setting out from the place where she had been a vegetable so long, and yet known such keen unhappiness.

Having got together all their trunks, the band of Ishmaelites boarded a cab for St. Helier. No one would have dreamed for a moment that they were setting out for another land. They drove down and spent the night opposite the quay, and sailed the next morning for Granville. Just at the last Val thought of sending Haidee to see if there were any letters at the post-office. As it happened, one had been forwarded by Branker Preston, but she did not read it till they were on board ship.

It was from Valdana, to say that, as she would not come, he was setting forth alone in excellent health to start life anew in Canada.

Part III

France

CHAPTER XIII

THE WAYS OF A LOVER

"For life is not the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan."--ROBERT SERVICE.

March was in like a lamb, and on a fair morning all the windows of Villa Duval stood open, letting in floods of sunlight, gusts of warm sea-scented wind, and the sound of waves crushing and swinging up and down the sandy beaches of Normandy. Perhaps it was because père Duval who built it was an old sailor and lighthouse-keeper that the rooms of the Villa were curiously like ship-cabins with their wooden walls and bare deck-like floors. Looking out through the porthole windows at the view of blue waves rippling from the bay up the river it would not have seemed unnatural to find the Villa gently rocking with the incoming tide. Down in the garden père Duval hoeing weeds fostered the illusion by croaking the ghost of an old sea song that he had lilted bravely enough forty years before from his fishing boat or when he kept the lighthouse at Les Sept Isles. He had built the Villa with his own hands after the sea and he had done with each other; but not for his own habitation. With its pink and blue tables and chairs made and lovingly painted by himself, beds from the Paris Bon Marché, stout bed-linen that had been part of mère Duval's marriage portion, marvellous mirrors and decorated crockery bought with trading coupons that represented many pounds of coffee from the Café Debray Company, it was considered far too wonderful and shining to be the habitation of a mere Normandy peasant. So the old man and his granddaughter Hortense lived in a couple of rooms beneath the wonder house, which was perched high and reached only by a flight of steps to the front door. The Villa lay nearer to the beach than any other in Mascaret, and for this reason was always one of the first to be taken by summer visitors. But at the end of the previous summer père Duval had achieved an extraordinary piece of luck in letting it for the whole autumn and winter to some mad Americans, who were now fixtures for the coming summer also.

The mad Americans had received this title by reason of their eccentric habits and customs, to say nothing of their clothes. They never wore anything, week-day or Sunday, but red woollen sweaters and short skirts, and the girl most shamelessly showed her legs bare to the knee. Also the whole band of three bathed in the sea on the coldest of winter days. Evidently their mental condition was known elsewhere than in Mascaret, for more than once when they were staying at Les Fusains, the villa they had first taken, letters came from America addressed to Les Insains, and the occupants of Les Fusains had received these bland and unblinking from the hands of Jean Baptiste the postman. The postmaster, who understood a little English, had explained the jest to his village cronies, adding that the writing of the eldest mad one so much resembled the writing of a hen, that it was small wonder that mistakes were made over her address. That they were Americans was certain, for every three months American Express money orders came for them, and the eldest Insain promptly changed these for French money mandats and forwarded them to the Credit Lyonnais in Paris. These fantastiques doings deeply impressed the villagers, and had provided them with many an interesting hour of gossip over their black coffee and cider.

And the "Insane ones" never knew a thing about it. On this mild March morning they were variously engaged in simple and peaceful occupations not unsuitable to those of feeble mind. Upstairs, one of them, a girl of sixteen with bare feet and hair swinging in long brown braids, was swishing the sheets from the beds and flicking all stray garments into corners. She considered that she was being certainly very noble and useful. Her face bore the expression of complacent beneficence assumed by those who are aware that they are doing the work of another person, and doing it ten times better than that other person. She wore a bathing dress that was slightly small for her, made combination-fashion, of twill whose pristine scarlet had long since been bleached by sea salt to a faint shell-pink. It was embroidered by black and white darns of a primitive, not to say aboriginal description. Her bare arms were decorated with some beaten copper bracelets of the New Art school, but her slim legs, brown and very long from the knee down, were innocent of stockings. She was tanned all over with the faint, transparent, sherry-coloured tan of a woodland nymph, and her delicately curved cheek wore the tint of woodland berries, wine-brown eyes full of sunshine and shadows, long, flickering, silky hair, a red, sulky mouth.

Haidee had grown into a beauty.

She swished the sheets of heavy linen from the beds and cast them in rumpled heaps upon the floor, taking many a glance out at the sea, whistling a tune at one moment, in another echoing with her high-pitched rather husky treble the lay of père Duval.

"Le bon Jesu marchait sur l'eau

Va sans peur mon petit bateau."

In the room below, listening to Haidee's rustling feet and the song of the sea, was Val Valdana. Two sheets of the Paris Daily Mail were spread upon the table to protect the cloth, while in wistful and desultory fashion she prepared the vegetables for lunch. Her thin brown fingers decked in their strange stones and old enamels were stained with potato juice, and a number of small new potatoes lay dimpling pink at the bottom of an earthenware bowl glazed brown without and pale yellow within. But Val's thoughts were not with the potatoes. She often let her hands fall among the curly peel scrapings on the table, and gazed sombrely, almost sightlessly before her. Shipwreck was in her eyes, and exile, and all the bitterness of bright hopes broken, and talent lying fallow and useless. Her lips looked as if the laughter had been bitten out of them in an attempt to keep within the desperate cry of her heart.

It was as well perhaps that overhead Haidee suddenly decided that helping to get lunch would be more amusing than making beds. Hasty and conclusive sounds denoted that she was "finishing up," directing by means of a few masterly flicks with a bath towel, all scraps of paper, stockings, stray shoes, letters, etc., into a proper and decent seclusion under the beds. Then her feet rustled on the stairs and through the kitchen, stayed for a moment at the front door from whence she threw a laugh and a call to Bran playing in the old boat across the road. A moment later the shell-pink bathing costume became part of the dining-room decoration, and its wearer, seated before the Daily Mail, attacked the potatoes with the same nobility of purpose she had used for the bedrooms. Val, leaning back in her chair, her hands listlessly on the table before her, her face full of a moody weariness, had plainly struck work. A silence prevailed broken only by the scratch of Haidee's knife on the potatoes. When she sometimes needed the handle of her knife to delicately scratch the tip of her nose she ceased work for an instant, while she glanced at Valentine, or through the open window at Bran's head bobbing up and down in the old Jules Duval. When her eyes strayed to the blue moving surface beyond she gave a sigh.

"What a day for a sail, Val!"

Val waked from her sombre dream, and looking for the first time with some shade of recognition at her, became aware of the bathing costume.

"I think you want to die of pneumonia, Haidee!"

"Oh, I 'm not cold, and it's so jolly and loose. It makes me feel as though summer is here already. Don't I wish it were June instead of rotten old March!"

She plumped a potato into the bowl and dexterously used the handle of the knife to flick a long streak of hair over her left shoulder.

"I do believe it's warm enough for a second swim to-day, Val ... let's hurry up and go down to the beach, shall we? ... Yes, do, let's."

"Who will get dèjeuner?" inquired Val, laconically.

"I could kick that rotten Hortense!" responded Haidee savagely, and all her cowboy instincts came out and sat upon her face. "Do you believe she is really sick?" she asked, in the manner of one propounding a problem in Algebra.

"Of course not.... She's sick of doing housework, that's all.... Any one would be."

Haidee considered this awhile scowling, but her thoughts passed to pleasanter subjects, and her face presently regained its harmony. From the kitchen came a sound like the purring of a man-eater of Tsavo enjoying a full meal, but it was only the boiler, which always purred when the stove was red-hot. Haidee made haste to finish the potatoes though her eyes considered many things. She regarded a brown print of Carlyle on the wall above Val's head, and wondered as often before if he had really gone about London with a hat of that shape! And had he really heaved half bricks at the people he did not like? ... that tickled her cowboy humour and she smiled broadly. How beautifully Mr. Whistler had draped that nice gendarme's cloak over the thin legs of the Sage of Craigenputtock!

Her glance wandered again to the expanse of blue water sparkling in the sun--the Barleville Bay and the river were both full now, and blue, blue! She wished she could collect all that blueness and put it into a jewel to hang round Val's neck. Val looked lovely with bits of blue on her--like an Arab Madonna, though she could also look like Mary Madgalene. Sometimes when she had Bran on her lap she looked happy and contented, but with far-away hills in her eyes--just like St. Anne in da Vinci's picture where Mary is sitting on her mother's knees while Jesus plays on the floor.

At other times, when she twisted a grey scarf around her hair and ran in the wind Val could look like a Spanish dancing girl, or a mad Malay. Again an artist in the Latin Quarter had done a water-colour of her in which, with her head a little on one side and a wistful inquiring look in her smoke-blue eyes, she reminded Haidee of a baby lion cub once seen in the Bronx Park Zoo. But to-day Val looked old and sad; her yellow serpent was eating at her heart, and Haidee knew why. The American mail had reached Cherbourg the day before, but no letter had come to Villa Duval. Hardly any letters came from Westenra now, except an occasional one to Haidee and the regular money draft every three months which Val as regularly sent away to a Paris bank and never touched except for paying Haidee's school fees.

"Never mind, Val," said Haidee, half in response to her own thoughts, half in continuation of their brief conversation. "As soon as your play is finished we 'll kick Hortense out" (Haidee's mind still dealt in kicks) "and get a proper bonne. We may be able to afford old M'am Legallais, don't you think? They say she can make lovely onion soup."

"The play will never be finished," said Val darkly. "Pots and pans won't let me finish it--they spoil the scenery. I think potatoes and cabbages! You can smell garlic and stewed veal in the love scenes. Oh! How can one go on living? If it were n't for you and Bran I would cut my head off."

"Cockerels!" said Haidee, in the same way as a rude boy might say "rats!" "Cut your hair off instead," she counselled unfeelingly, "it is getting awfully thin."

Val sprang up and ran like lightning into the next room, where there was a mirror on the wall. Her hair lay in feathery clouds about her face and forehead, and there seemed to be heaps of it, but it was true that when she came to do it up one small comb at the back held all in place. Yet she remembered the time not long ago when it had fallen to her waist as long and thick as Haidee's own.

"It is this confounded writing plays--and stewing veal!" she murmured, and stared at herself desperately. She had the eyes of the exile who never for one moment forgets his exile; only, it was not one country she mourned but many. Poor Val! she was too, that rare unhappy thing, a born lover. Never for one moment was the man she loved out of her mind; always, always he was there, haunting the rooms of her memory and the chapelle ardente of her heart, perfuming every thought, influencing every action. Because of him she cried aloud now:

"I will have it cut off, Haidee. Go and tell the barber to come this afternoon. I 'll have it cut close--shaved--so that it must grow thick again. I won't be an old woman without hair! Oh, Haidee--an old bald hag whom no one loves!" Desolation crept into her voice, it had long dwelt in her eyes.

"Don't be a silly, Val," said matter-of-fact Haidee. "I love you and Bran loves you and Garry loves you."

"No, no--Garry hates me--he never writes!" She flung herself into a chair, and two of the salt bitter tears that were always lurking in the background, but which she seldom shed, oozed out of her eyes as if they had come from a long distance and gave her great pain. Haidee made no attempt to comfort her, but presently went out of the house to where Bran was just casting off anchor from the Jules in view of a voyage to New York.

"Val 's crying," she said briefly.

"What for?" asked Bran, but immediately letting go anchor and beginning to climb in a business-like way over the side of the boat. The eye that he cocked at Haidee was of the same smoke-blue as his mother's, and held the same wistful lion-cub glance.

"Just the old yellow snake," said Haidee, already on her way back to put on the potatoes, for well she knew that if she did not there would be none for lunch that day.

Bran found Val swiftly, and climbing upon her knees began to kiss her wet eyes. She kissed him back passionately, holding him with such convulsive tightness that he was at last obliged to give a small howl.

"O--h! you're hurting me, Mammie--just a little bit."

She kissed him again then, comforting him, reproaching herself, and drying away her tears in his bright hair.

"You know I would n't hurt my little cubby-cub for a million pounds."

"Would you for a million millions?"

"Never!"

"For a ship as big as the Tu-te-onic?" Bran adored ships, and could imagine most crimes being committed to acquire one.

"Never, never, jamais!"

"Not if some one came and asked you to give me just a teeny weeny hurt?"

"If some one came to me and said, 'I 'll give you the whole sea full of ships with all the beautiful things in the world in them, if you just crush your little Bran's finger till he howls,' I would say, 'You get out of here, Beel, or I keel you.'"

Bran gave a joyful prance at the familiar quotation from Stephen Crane's story of Mexico Bill, long since transformed by Val into an exciting game, in which he performed the rô1e of Bill, and she and Haidee were two Mexican braves in sombreros and draped blankets. He was just about to propose a full-dress rehearsal of this drama when Val, reading the inspiration in his eye and feeling quite unfit for any such diversion, headed his mind off in another direction.

"If any one came and offered you a million pounds to hurt your mammie, would you do it?"

"No," said Bran, adding darkly, "but I'd ask him where he lived."

"And then?" Val smiled into his hair. There was a pause; at last in a soft whisper spoke Bran the brigand:

"I 'd take a sword and go and pierce him in the night and get his million pounds for you." He embraced her ardently. It was characteristic of her that she did not rebuke him for the lawlessness of his plan. She thoroughly understood the spirit that could rob, pillage, and even do murder for the sake of a loved one.

They began to laugh and play. Val suddenly fell in love with her plan to have her hair cut off. She arranged a red handkerchief on her head, turban-fashion, to see how she would look. Eventually she decided to wear a fez and return to her habit of cigarette smoking to match her new appearance. Haidee declared that she too would love a fez, so Val sat down and wrote to the Army and Navy Stores for two, on the condition that Haidee went to the village at once to tell the barber to come immediately after lunch. Now that she had decided to have her hair cut the thing could not be done soon enough to please her.

Regretfully Haidee changed her bathing-dress for her navy-blue skirt and scarlet sweater, also a floppy hat of brown suède for which Val had paid a pound in Jersey at a time when they were very hard up indeed, just because it suited Haidee's peculiar style of cowboy beauty. Looking like a handsome conspirator, she sallied forth down the road that led to the village, for Villa Duval lay a good half-mile from Mascaret, with nothing between but the blacksmith's shop, a hotel, and a couple of fishermen's cottages.

The blacksmith's wife's brother, known to all the world, including Haidee and Bran, as "mon oncle" was whitewashing the outside of the blacksmith's cottage against the day when the rose-tree trained over the door would burst into leaf and large pink roses. A little farther on, in front of the hotel, two men were scattering red brick dust over the long flower beds on the sloping lawns, preparatory to planting out the letters "Grand Hotel de la Mer" in blue and white lobelias, thus combining patriotism with an excellent advertisement of the hotel. When the May excursion boat moored alongside the digue, the first thing to greet the eyes of the passengers would be the blue and white lettering on the brick-red beds.

These signs and symbols of approaching summer cheered the heart of Haidee, and she hummed a little song to herself, as she went light-foot along the curving picturesque terrace that led to the village.

Already she seemed to smell upon the air the luscious heavy scent of travellers' joy that would presently hang in waxen bunches from the high walls of La Terrasse and Villa Albert. These were the only two villas on the Terrace, and they pertained variously to a Paris specialist in madness, and the controller-general of a great French bank. Between the two villas lay a large and valuable plot of ground, overgrown and tangled up with creepers, brambles, cabbage stalks, rose bushes, and seeding onions, set in the midst of which was a dilapidated one-room hut. The hut was the fly in the ointment of the specialist in lunacy and the controller-general. They could do nothing to remove this picturesque slum from their gates, for old veuve Michel, who lived there and drank two bottles of cognac a day and sang gay ribald songs by night, owned the land by right of some old French statute, and no one could turn her out for as long as she lived. Haidee and Bran considered veuve Michel a very charming person indeed. She was fat and merry and gentle, called them her nice little hens and gave them apples and pears (for she also owned an orchard up the cliff) all through the winter when there was no fruit to be got any nearer than Cherbourg. Naturally they liked and appreciated the old woman. Haidee had a good mind to go in and pay her a visit, but she decided it was better not, as old veuve would just be sleeping off her morning bottle of cognac preparatory to starting on the afternoon one; also Haidee remembered that she was hungry, and had better hurry back and help get lunch. Still she could not help stopping once or twice to examine for signs of little pink tips the lower branches of the tamarisk-trees which grew on one side of the Terrace--on the other side was the grey stone river wall with the tide lapping blue against it.

Haidee loved tamarisks with a joy that she was sure was unholy because they looked so wicked and painted somehow when they were all dressed out in their pink feathers. She fancied that Jezebel must have had a bunch of them stuck like an aigrette in her beautifully coiffée hair, and the same pink tint on her cheeks when she looked out of the window for the last time. Anyway why were tamarisks the only trees to be found growing in the ruins of Babylon? And why had she read somewhere, that in the days of ancient Rome tamarisks were bound around the heads of criminals? It was a nuisance to have to forsake these interesting meditations to enter the little soap-scented shop of the village barber, but she stayed no longer than to bid him come to the Villa at three o'clock to cut off Madame's hair. Next she called at Lemonier's to command a sack of coal, and noted that Lemonier had evidently been drunk again, for Madame had a black eye. It was funny to think that such a jolly big red man should be so cruel! Haidee meditated on this subject on the return journey, also on the horrible price of coal--sixty-five francs a ton and it disappeared like lightning. No one seemed to know why "Carr-diff," as they called it, should be so dear. Hortense, closely questioned on the subject by Val anxious for information, said that it must be because the people in England hated the French and were still angry that Normandy did not belong to them.

"Well, have n't you got any coal mines in your own blessed country?" asked Haidee.

"Certainement!" Hortense had replied indignantly. "We have Newcas-sel!"

――――

The barber arrived at three o'clock, and Val sat trembling before her dressing-table. She had arranged two mirrors so that she could view the whole proceeding, but as soon as the barber commenced she closed her eyes tight. Bran and Haidee stationed themselves at either side of the table to see fair play.

The barber was frankly amazed at the decision of Madame to cut off her feathery hair. Even at the last moment he asked--holding it up in his hands and shaking it out in sprays:

"Does Madame realise what a change it will make in her appearance? Would it not be better if Madame had it merely cut short, leaving about two inches all round à la Jeanne d'Arc, so--?" He stuck his little pudgy fingers out below her ears to show the desirable length.

"No, no, no!" cried Val, without opening her eyes. "Does he think I want to look like a pony with my mane hogged! Cut it off close, it must grow long and thick as it used to do. Tell him, Haidee."

Haidee told him as much as it was good for him to know--no mention of ponies.

"Bon!" said Monsieur le Barbier agreeably, but he looked doubtful, thinking to himself that hair seldom grew much after the age of thirty, and the lady looked well that. When one side was gone Val opened her eyes and gave a deep cry. If it could have been replaced then, she would have abandoned her idea and made the best of what she had. As it was she closed her eyes again, but during the rest of the operation great tears rolled down her face upon her tightly clasped hands. And when all was over the children were swept from the room and she locked herself in with her heart's bitterness. Even Bran was not permitted to comfort her.

It is true that nothing makes a greater difference to the appearance of a woman than to cut off her hair. The tale of every sin she has committed and every sorrow she has suffered seems to be written bare and unsheltered upon her face for all the world to read. What subtle alleviation there is in a frame of hair round the face of a sinner it is hard to say: but it is a problem whether Mary Magdalene, with all her shining story of repentance would have appealed to the love and chivalry of the world in quite the same way if she had been handed down through the ages without her wondrous hair.

When Valentine Valdana looked in the glass at her pale, oval face with no darkness above it to soften the fine lines of her temples, faintly hollowed cheeks, and sombre eyes whose defect appeared to have become suddenly accentuated, she longed in shame and dismay for a mask. It seemed to her that she had indecently exposed her sorrows to the world; that exile, misery, and all the failures of her life were plainly written for even the most unintelligent eye to read. A curious sense too of having done something disloyal to others in revealing her unhappiness crept into her mind for an instant, but she made haste to dismiss it, and would not even specify the vague "others" to herself. None knew better than she the power of a beloved hand to strike deepest, to hollow out cheeks, sharpen temples, and put shadows into eyes: but she would never have admitted it. Hers was no accusing heart. She blamed nobody but herself for her failures--not even the Fate that had bestowed on her that double nature of artist and lover which rarely if ever makes for happiness. She only felt the despair of the convict and almost wished herself one, so that she might hide in a cell. At length she sought her gay scarf of asphodel-blue and arranged it over her head like a nun's veil. It was thus that she presented herself to the children in the kindly dusk. Supper already stood upon the table. Haidee displayed unusual tact, but Bran was full of curiosity.

"Are you always going to wear that wale tied on you?" he inquired.

"Until my hair grows long again," said poor Val, biting her lip painfully.

"Sleep in it too?" Val nodded, and Haidee made haste to help Bran to pommes frites which he loved.

Next morning, Bran waking up and throwing out an arm for his matutinal hug, encountered something strange to his touch: something round, bumpy, and slightly scrubby, very different to the soft nest he was used to dabble his hand in as soon as he woke. The blue scarf had slipped down while Val slept and her shorn head lay cruelly outlined upon the pillow. Bran knelt up and considered her in consternation mingled with pity, then finding himself in the attitude of prayer, mechanically crossed himself and murmured his morning orison, his eyes still fixed on his mother's head:

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I give you my heart, take it please, and preserve it from sin."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I give you my soul and my life.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, help me in my last agony.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, grant that I live and die in thy holy company. Amen."

Immediately afterwards humour, that Irish vice, overcame all gentler feelings; like a certain famous Bishop of Down, Bran would lose a friend for a joke. He woke Val with a cruel jest:

"Bon jour, Monsieur le Curé!"

The curé of Mascaret was a Breton as rugged as his country, with haggard spiritual eyes and an upper lip you could built a fort on, as the saying is; he intensified his uncomeliness by wearing his hair so close-shaved that it was impossible to say where his tonsure began or ended. To be told by her loving but candid son that she resembled this good man was a cruel thrust to Val, and the memory of it darkened life for many days to come. She wrapped herself in gloom and the blue veil, and nothing more was heard of the fez cap and cigarettes except that in good time the Stores forwarded them and the French Customs taxed them. After once trying on the fez and finding herself the image of a sallow and melancholy Turk, she had cast it from her. Her one instinct was to hide her ugliness from every one. Even at the sight of John the Baptist she would fly and hide, and she never left the house except after dark, when for exercise she would sometimes race Haidee up and down the digue, or run along the beach at midnight, her scarf floating behind her in the wind, and her head bare to give her "roots" a chance.

These proceedings gravely annoyed the Customs officers distributed in the little straw-littered watch-huts that line the Normandy coast. Instead of tucking themselves in their blankets for a peaceful night, they were obliged to keep awake for fear the mad American woman meant either to commit suicide or meet a boat full of brandy and cigars from Jersey.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WAYS OF LITERATURE

"The voyage of even the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks."

From Jersey Val had made a bee-line for Paris which she knew well, and where she had hopes of renewing her mental energy by the sights and sounds of a great city and association with other brain workers. Autumn removals were in full swing and there was no great difficulty in finding house-room for herself and the children, though she was unprepared to find how Paris rents had risen since the days when she and her mother sojourned in the Latin Quarter. It was to that part of Paris she naturally turned--the only possible part for artists and writers to live, though the rich and empty-headed are fond of calling it the "wrong side" of the river. A studio seemed the most suitable form of residence, for she knew she would not be able to work in a small room, and she hated the sordid construction of a cheap flat. She was fortunate in finding a good atelier in a little secluded rue on the confines of the Quarter--a big, high room, with kitchen and small bedroom attached, looking out onto a little square yard with clusters of shrubs, ivied walls, and a few old battered statues that lent a picturesque air. Here she had settled down and with resolute energy begun the series of "Wanderfoot" articles for which Branker Preston had obtained a commission. It was an arduous task. No matter how much material is stored in the mind it is not easy to import the air and colour of far-off lands into a Paris atelier. The art of putting things down had not yet been recaptured either. Still, the stimulus of even the short journey from Jersey to Paris had done something for her, and though to her critical eye the articles she achieved seemed but pale echoes of her former work, they at least paid the rent and kept things going in rue Campagne Premiere. The continuation of Haidee's education became a problem needing instant attention; for Val very soon realised that the Latin Quarter with its liberal ideas of morality and its fascinating students was no place for a young impressionable girl. Her own child she would have allowed to stay, for she knew that anything with her nature would come to no harm among these careless, attractive people, to whom she felt herself blood-kin. But Haidee, the child of a pretty flighty mother, was of different stock. Besides, there was a responsibility to Westenra in the matter. There were no convents left in Paris, or indeed, in France. All those lovely homes where girls learned a sweet sedateness and many beautiful arts had been closed by a ruthless government. No more in France may the gentle coifed women impart composure and beauty of mind to English and American girls and train the aristocratic children of France to a love of Church and Country. What the loss is to the sum of the world's harmony can never be computed, but American and English mothers have a slight realisation of it.

It was in Belgium that Val at last found what was needed for Haidee--a little community of French nuns who, refusing to unveil, had been obliged to flee over the border, and there had founded a convent to which many good Catholics in Paris sent their children. It was well within Val's means too, for the living is cheap in Belgium, and the fare in the convent was simple though good. Haidee hated terribly to go, but Val was firm, though she held out the promise of early liberation if Haidee would work well at French and try and pass her brevet simple. This was no difficult task, for the girl had been well grounded in French during their sojourn in Jersey. Remained the problem of Bran--and little children are a problem in France to parents of limited means. No one caters for them as in other countries. No one even understands the art of teaching and amusing them at the same time, nor even how to feed them. There are no kindergartens and no milk puddings! Small wonder that French babies are small and sallow and sad! Since the nuns were driven out there are only the public Lycées where strong and weak, rough and gentle, are jumbled together with results that no thinking woman would welcome for her child. From their tenderest years French children are crammed with lessons, pushed ahead to pass exams, while the business of play so necessary for little children is almost entirely suppressed.

Val very certainly had no intention of confiding her son to such institutions. She was therefore obliged to hire a daily governess for him, for though, at his age, he needed little teaching, he had to be sent out of doors so that she might have silence and solitude wherein to work. Even this was a costly business. In England a nursery governess can be afforded by almost every one, but in France it costs one hundred francs a month to have your child well taken care of and taught his alphabet for a few hours a day.

Val did not grudge it, but what worried her was that Bran did not thrive. Paris was no place for him. The Luxembourg Gardens make a good play-ground for city-bred children, but Bran was Val's own child in his need of air and space and horizon. His bloom faded a little, and he began to look very fair and spiritual. Also his love of the picture and statue galleries seemed to his mother something too wistful and wonderful in a small boy, and brought tears to her pillow in the silence of many a night. Then she took him to Belgium for awhile and left him with Haidee and the good nuns. He was a shy creature, though he hated any one to know it, and believed he hid his secret well behind a set smile and little hardy incomprehensible sayings. When the nuns clustered round him calling him their "little Jesus," a favourite name in France for a pretty child, he disdained to shelter behind Val's skirts, as instinct bade him, but nothing could be got out of him except an enigmatic saying he always kept for strangers:

"The cat says bow-wow-wow, and

The dog says meow, meow, meow."

All the while he smiled his little bright smile and his eyes roving keenly noted every detail of the pale æsthetic faces. Even the tears in the Reverend Mother's eyes did not escape him. Afterward he said to Val:

"I like that one with the floating eyes. I think she wishes she had a nice little boy like me. Her voice was littler than a pin's head when she called me her petit Jesu. But why do they nearly all have green teeth?"

When Val kissed him farewell it nearly broke her heart to see the brave smile he maintained, though Haidee was sniffling and snuffling at his elbow, partly with momentary grief but mostly with indignation at being, as she rudely phrased it: "Shut up in a convent with a lot of old pussycats."

Back in Paris the studio seemed desolate and empty. Bran had become so much a part of his mother's being and life that without him she was like a bird from whom a wing had been torn. A month later Haidee wrote:

"I think Bran is fretting. Whenever I speak to him he puts that little fixed grin on his mouth, but you should see his eyes."

Within an hour Val was in the Brussels express speeding for that dear sight. On the journey back to Paris, happy now and healed of her broken wing, she heard all the history of his lonely nights and the "purply-red pain" that he got in his stomach when he thought of her. Cuddled to her side he wept as he had never wept whilst separated from her, and Val's tears ran down her face too while she listened, registering a vow that she would never part with him again.

So once more he went out with a governess and came home to his mother full of original criticisms of Moreau's pictures and the statues of Rodin, until one morning nearly two years after their arrival in Paris, and just when Haidee had arrived for the summer holidays, Val rose up from her bed with the itch for travel in her feet, and the longing quickly communicated to the children for the sight of a clear horizon. They tore their possessions from the walls, stuffed them into trunks, and shook the dust of Paris from their feet.

"Let's go to Italy and live on olives and spaghetti, "was Haidee's suggestion, but Bran knew the news of the world.

"We might get an earthquake!"

The size of the cheque from Branker Preston, however, was what really decided the affair, limiting them to wandering happily enough in Brittany. But the water and primitive methods of Breton cooks made Val think nervously of typhoid, and after a time she headed for Normandy. Normans are cleaner in their household ways than Bretons, of whom they slightingly speak as "les pores Bretons," declaring that they eat out of holes in the table and never wash the holes. Besides, Normandy in winter is milder than Brittany. So, travelling by highways and byways, they happened at last on Mascaret.

It was the tag end of September when they arrived. All the summer visitors were gone and the big silver beach deserted, but summer itself still lingered. They got an entrancing glimpse of the gentle green and gold beauty of the place before the chills of autumn set in. Even then they had been able to bathe and go sailing in the fishing boat of one of père Duval's sons, who was now in his turn lighthouse-keeper of Mascaret. For ten sunny October days, too, they had assisted with all the ardour of novitiates at père Duval's cider making, becoming acquainted with the secrets of cidre bouché, and the grades to be found in cidre ordinaire unto the third and fourth watering. They even sampled the latter as drunk by the fishermen and called for at the cafés by the name of le boisson avec le brulot dedans: which signifies cider very liberally diluted with French cognac. Then the winter closed in on Mascaret with wild gales and high-flowing tides. On Christmas Eve snow came softly down, so that the walk to midnight mass had been like acting in that scene painted by a Dutch painter where the village folk are seen winding their way through the snow, lanterns and hot-water bottles in their hands, to the distant church with windows full of red light. All the winter interests of the simple village had been sampled and shared by Val and the children, and they had been happier there than ever in France. The children loved the freedom of the place and the bonhomie of the French folk so different to English people of that class. The three went about in their red sweaters and lived a life of absolute unconvention. It was a good place to write a masterpiece in--if one were only a master--was Val's ironical thought, and in spite of her self-directed irony, she did achieve during the first months there a wonderful little curtain raiser, which Branker Preston had no difficulty in disposing of to a London manager. It dealt with Boers and Zulus, and had been well received, but unfortunately the play it had preceded in the bill was a failure and the two were withdrawn together before Val could greatly benefit, but it had brought in five guineas a week for six weeks, and this success had put her in heart for further work of the kind. She had sickened of writing "Wanderfoot" articles from a chair. She could by this time have written some very spirited ones on the subject of France in general and Normandy in particular, but she had her reasons for not wishing to attract attention to her whereabouts, as such articles would surely have done. Preston advised her to write a novel, but she knew she had neither the patience to spin a long story through many chapters to its end, nor the gift of character portrayal. What was hers was a sense for situation, colour, and atmosphere, and it occurred to her that the best vehicle for a display of these qualities was the theatre. Her first little venture had attracted the attention of several managers, and one of them told Preston that he was ready to consider a three-act play by her. It was this play she was busy upon now. But it was sometimes hard to transport the atmosphere of far-away tropical Natal into a little wooden villa facing the English Channel, with a wild spring gale tearing at the windows, and the rollers booming like cannon on the Barleville beach--for the promise of summer had gone as swiftly as it came, and the spring tides were flooding up the river flinging great walls of spray over the digue and splashing three feet deep across the Terrasse, right to the steps of the Hotel de la Mer, so that the journey to the village had to be made by a path up the cliff.

Val found that the only way to ignore Normandy and the bleak mists of La Manche was to sit over a chaufferette full of bright red embers of charcoal, letting the heat steal up her skirts and enveloping her whole person from the soles of her feet to her scalp in a lovely glow. Immediately she would begin to write things full of the tropical languor of Africa. In her brain palms waved, little pot-bellied Kaffirs rolled in the hot dirt, sunshine blazed over a blue and green land, the air was filled with the scent of mimosa, and great-limbed Zulus danced in rhythmic lines with chant and stamp and swing of assegai before Cetewayo, the great and cruel king.

Unfortunately, a chaufferette is not always an easy thing to manage. Like everything French it has a temperament, and is liable to moods when it will burn and moods when it won't. It is a wooden or tin box, perforated at the top and open at one side to admit an earthenware bowl full of the charcoal which is called charbon de bois--actually calcined morsels of green wood. The baker makes this charbon by sticking green wood branches into his hot oven after he has finished baking his bread, but each baker makes a limited supply only, and will not sell it except to people who buy his bread. Every one uses chaufferette in Normandy during the winter, and visitors are given one to put their feet on as soon as they enter a house, though sometimes when the host is rich enough to keep a perpetual fire going, a supply of hot bricks is kept in the oven instead.

Val's chaufferette was of most uncertain temper. Hortense always lit it in the morning, and left it by the writing-table. When Val came to it all that had to be done was to gently insert an old spoon under the little ash heap and lift it all round, when a red hot centre of glowing embers would disclose itself. But sometimes an old nail or piece of "Carr-diff" found its way by accident into the pot, then the charbon would immediately sulk itself into oblivion, or sometimes for no reason at all after being perfectly lighted it would just go out. Ensued a struggle in which Val and Haidee invariably came off second-best. They would take the pot out of its box and stand it on a window-sill with the window drawn low to make a draught; put it on the front door step and, kneeling down, blow on it until fine ash sat thick upon their noses and their eyes were full of tears; build paper bonfires on it; fan it wildly with newspapers. All to no avail! Usually that was the end of work and inspiration for the day. Val declared that she could not think with cold feet. But sometimes old père Duval, compassionate for the mad, would send up his wooden box, large enough for two men to warm their feet on, with a great iron saucepan full of glowing charbon inside, and Val would sit toasting over it and write things of a tropical languor extraordinary.

Haidee had passed her brevet simple, an exam, about equal to the English Oxford Junior, and the American 6th standard, and was now working for the brevet supérieure with a French woman who had been a governess before she married a retired commercial traveller and settled in Mascaret. The discovery of this good woman was a stroke of luck for Val, though certainly Haidee did not consider it so. However, her lessons only took up four hours a day. For the rest she and Bran idled joyous and care-free through life, climbing the cliff, fishing, digging for sand-eels, making long excursions inland, or meeting the fishing boats in the evening when they came in with the day's haul, and all the villagers would be at the port to bargain for fish. Haidee usually haggled for and bought a raie (dog-fish) for the next day's dinner, and Bran would run a stick through its ribald-looking mouth, and carry the slithery monstrous thing home, to be met by scowls from Hortense, who, stolid as she was, hated the sight of a raie, and could not face the business of washing and gutting it without cries of douleur and disgust.

"Ah! C'est craintive! C'est affreux!"

But meat was too dear for daily consumption, and raie the only fish brought in by the boats throughout the winter months, so it had to be eaten, and some one had to prepare it. And after all, wrestling with raie was one of the jobs for which Hortense was paid three francs a week. It was her business to come in the morning at seven o'clock, make the fires, and deliver "little breakfast" at each bedside; afterwards she swept and made the beds, then disappeared until just before lunch, when she came to perform upon the raie and execute one or two culinary feats that were beyond the scope of Val or Haidee--such as cutting up onions, which neither of them could accomplish without weeping aloud, or putting the chipped potatoes into a pan full of boiling dripping, a business that when conducted by Val made a rain of grease spots all over the kitchen and scalded every one in sight. After washing the midday dishes, and chopping up vegetables for the soup, Hortense would consider her function over for the day, and leave Val and Haidee to grapple as best they might with tea, supper, fires, and the chaufferette. The supper was no very great difficulty, merely a matter of putting the cut vegetables into a pot with a large lump of specially prepared and seasoned dripping, and standing said pot on the stove until supper-time, when its contents would be marvellously transformed into soupe à la graise, a savoury and nourishing broth eaten as an evening meal by every peasant in Normandy. The fires were the greatest nuisance. The stove in the kitchen either became a red-hot furnace and purred like a man-eater, or else went out; and the stove with an open grate in Val's room, which old man Duval had paid a month's rent for and gone all the way to Cherbourg to fetch, had a way of going out also before any one even noticed that it was low; then there would be much scratching with a poker, searching for kindling wood, pouring out of paraffin, sudden happy blazes that nearly took the roof off, and black smuts everywhere. When all was over, and a beautiful fire roaring after the united efforts of the family, Val would find that her chaufferette had gone out! It was hard to even think masterpieces among such distractions, to say nothing of writing them. Tea was easily got. Haidee made the toast on the salad fork, Val buttered it with dripping, Bran laid the table. Then all three sat with their feet on the stove, drinking out of the big coffee bowls, eating every scrap of the delicious smoky toast and licking their fingers afterwards. If Val had written anything funny or dramatic that day she would sometimes read it out to them, but for the most part her instinct was to hide what she wrote. She said she felt as if she had lost something afterwards, and if any one had been even looking at her written sheets they never seemed quite the same to her again--some virtue went out of her work the moment she shared it with any one.

Usually, after tea she settled down for another struggle with her ideas, and Bran and Haidee went for a prowl on the digue in the hope of adventures. Bran, whose mind was as full of fairies as if he had been born in the wilds of Ireland, was always in hope of meeting a giant or a dwarf, but he had learned not to mention these aspirations to Haidee. Anyway, there was always the village gossip to listen to in the petit port, where the fishing boats anchored and usually the excitement of watching the Quatre Frères come chup--chup--chupping up the river to her moorings. She was a natty and picturesque trawler, with a petrol engine that was the admiration of the village installed in her bowels. Because of this engine she was known as the Chalutier à petrole, but at Villa Duval she was called by Bran's translation of her name, The Cat's Frères. She never caught anything but raie, and of this despised species far fewer than any of the other boats, but she dashed in and out of the harbour with great slam and needed five men to handle her. There was a legend that the petrol engine frightened the fish away. It was known that the four brothers who owned her were anxious to get rid of her. Every one knew that she cost more than she brought in. But Haidee and Bran shared a fugitive hope that Val's play would make them all so rich that they would be able to acquire her as a pleasure boat.

Sometimes strange craft from Granville or a Brittany port would come in for the night, and there was the St. Joseph, a great fishing trawler from Lannion, carrying a master and seven hands, that put in when weather was heavy. Her sails were patched with every colour of the rainbow, her decks were filthy, and her years sat heavy upon her--you could hear her creaking and groaning two miles from shore: but to Haidee and Bran she stood for the true romance! She always brought in tons of fish, not only the everlasting raie, but deep-sea fish, and as soon as her arrival was heralded all the village sabots came clipper-clopping down the terrace, shawls clutched round bosoms, the wind flicking bright red spots in old cheeks, every one anxious to pick and choose from the mass of coal-fish, red gurnet, plaice, congers, and mullets that was hooked out of the hold and flung quivering ashore. The big weather-beaten fishermen in their sea-boots bandied jests with the carking old village wives and the girls showered laughter. In the end, the villagers departed with full baskets, and the seamen well content adjourned to the petit café close by for a "cup of coffee with a burn in it" and a good meal.

CHAPTER XV

WAYS SACRED AND SECULAR

"A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene."--EMERSON.

In May, the gentle month of May, the weather cleared up again, and green things commenced to sprout and bloom on the cliff above Villa Duval. The country-side began to bloom and blossom as the rose. From the high coast that lies facing the sea, Jersey could be discerned on clear days etched as if in India ink upon the horizon thirteen miles away. Clots of sea-samphire burst into flower, cleverly justifying its name of creste marine by just keeping out of reach of the high tides. The gorse showed dots of yellow amongst its prickles, and little brilliant blue squills stuck up their perky faces and gave out a sweet scent. All along the path to the lighthouse wild thyme came out in springy masses, and the mad Americans often went up that way for the special purpose of lying on it as on a soft, pink silk rug. It seemed to cause them a peculiar kind of joy to put their faces down in it, crying, "Oh! oh! oh!"

The garbage-hole across the road in front of Villa Duval which the dustman had been trying for many summers to transform into a building plot by filling it with empty tins and rubbish from the hotel, and which had been an eyesore all the winter, now suddenly became a place of beauty, for a lot of prickly, thistly-looking plants growing among the jam tins burst into a blaze of red and yellow. It turned out that they were poppies that had been keeping themselves secret all through the winter, and the yellow bright gold of "Our Lady's bedstraw." One day Haidee brought home some long, fragile trails of cinquefoil, one of the first spring things, and Val, worn and haggard under her blue veil, pinned it over her heart because she had read in old Elizabethan days that cinquefoil was supposed to be a cure for inflammations and fevers. She quoted to Haidee what an old herbalist had once written of such cures:

"Let no man despise them because they are plain and easy: the ways of God are all such."

Haidee flushed faintly and retired into awkward silence, shy like most girls of her age at the mention of God. She was going to make her communion the next day with the First Communion candidates, but it was not her first, for that had been made once when she was ill in New York. She was to be confirmed in June when the archbishop of a neighbouring parish intended to visit Mascaret and hold a confirmation service.