WANDERFOOT (continued 5)

It being Saturday afternoon Hortense as well as Haidee was due at the confessional for the recital of her weekly sins, therefore she bustled over the washing-up, announcing her intention of making a bon confession, as though the one she usually made was of an inferior brand.

"What are you going to tell?" asked Haidee, drying plates. She knew very well it was forbidden to talk about your confession, but the subject was a curiously fascinating one. Hortense had a "cupful of sins" for the curé's ear. She had been reading love stories in the Petit Journal (a forbidden paper because it is "against the Church"), telling the cards, and consulting her dream book; also she had missed Vespers twice and several meetings of the "Children of Mary," of which body she was a member. She computed that her pénitence would be as long as her arm.

"He will scold me well, I know," she said cheerfully, "for he saw me talking with Léon Bourget yesterday."

"What! that awful fisherman with the hump?"

"Yes; but he is not a bad fellow, mademoiselle, only all the fishermen here are wicked towards the curé because, as you know, he would not bury the mother of Jean le Petit, and they had to go and get the mayor to do it."

"Yes; but you must remember that she lived with old man le Petit without being married to him, and that is forbidden by the Church. She would not even repent on her death-bed and receive the Blessed Sacrament. How could the curé bury her after that?"

Haidee knew all about the little scandal, for the storm it occasioned had raged all the winter about the curé's head. The same day he had refused to bury mère le Petit he was obliged to go to Paris on Church business. On his return in the dusk of a December evening he was met at the station by all the fishermen in the village partially disguised in home-made masks, each carrying some instrument or implement with which to make hideous sounds; pots, pans, old trays, sheep-bells, and cow-horns had all been pressed into service, and the din was truly fearsome. The curé preserving his serenity was conducted to his presbytery by this scratch band, and on every dark night thereafter it had serenaded him from the shadows near his house. The blare sometimes continued until the small hours of the morning, keeping not only the unfortunate curé, but the whole village awake. The gendarmes from Barleville, the nearest police-station, had made several midnight raids with the stated intention of capturing the offenders, but their efforts were attended by a lack of success so striking as to suggest a certain amount of sympathy, not to say complicity, on the part of the law. At any rate, the curé's music, or "Mujik de Churie," as it was popularly pronounced, went on gaily, and there had been some kind of unofficial announcement that it would continue until the curé cleared out. Old pére Duval opined, however, that the entertainment was likely to cease with the arrival of the first summer visitors, for however vindictive the fishermen were they knew which side their bread was buttered on, and were politic enough not to want to drive away trade by their thrilling "mujik."

Having finished drying plates Haidee retired up-stairs to prepare her confession, telling Hortense to be sure and wait for her. She proceeded to write her sins down on a piece of paper. In spite of her good French she stammered so much from nervousness when confessing that the curé had arranged this method with her. She always gave him the piece of paper, which he took away to the sacristy while she waited in the confessional. When he had read her paper he came back, conferred penance and a little scolding, then gave her absolution.

With the aid of a French Catechism, which had a formula for confession in it, she proceeded to write out her sins, her method being to dive into the book first for a question and then into her soul for a sin that corresponded. Eventually the piece of paper contained the following statement:

"Je ne me suis pas confessé depuis trois semaines; j'ai recu l'absolution. Je m'accuse:

"De n'avoir pas fait ma priere du matin beaucoup de fois.

"De n'avoir pas fait ma prière du soir plusieurs fois.

"D'avoir manqué aux Vêpres 4 fois.

"D'avoir été distraite dans l'Église 2 fois.

"D'avoir été dissipée dans l'Église 2 fois.

"D'avoir désobéi à ma mère 2 fois.

"D'avoir manqué de respect envers elle 1 fois.

"De m'été disputée avec mon frère 2 fois.

"D'avoir fait des petits mensonges 4 fois.

"Je m'accuse de tous ces pèches et de ceux dont je ne me souviens pas.

"Je demande pardon de Dieu et à vous, mon père, la pénitence et l'absolution selon que vous m'en jugerez digne."

Whether this list of offences truly represented the burden of her transgressions for the past three weeks it would be hard to say. It is possible that Val could have made out a longer and more comprehensive one for her, as she often threatened to do when Haidee vexed her. Anyway, the latter folded up her piece of paper with a complacency that either betokened a clear conscience or a heart hardened in crime. She computed that her penance would be to recite a decade of the rosary, and she knew that the curé would then speak of the next Church feast, and of the wishes preferred by the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin, tell her to invoke the aid of the Saints when she felt herself tempted to sin, to try always to give a good example to her little brother, and to be very pious so that her mother would be converted and become a Catholic. Both Val and Haidee had long since given up explaining that they were not mother and daughter. They found that it saved time and a lot of questions just to let people think what they liked.

Putting on her hat Haidee now popped her head out of the window and gave a hoot to Hortense, who was below in the yard cleaning her boots on the garden seat. Just as they were about to start Val came down-stairs and begged Haidee to go to the butcher's shop on her way back, and bring home something for Sunday's dinner.

"What kind of something?" asked Haidee belligerently, for the butcher's shop had no allure for her. There ensued a discussion as to which was the most economical meat to get. Hortense, waiting at the bottom of the steps, piped in with the announcement that every one ought to eat lamb on First Communion Sunday. Val and Haidee looked at each other. Vaguely they knew that the price of lamb was high. But suddenly it came into Val's mind how sick the children must be of raie, and stewed veal, and that though funds were low the play was nearly finished. They would have a nice English dinner for once. Roast lamb and mint sauce! She gave Haidee her last louis to change.

"Pick some mint from the cliff-side as you come back," she enjoined. French peasants have no use for mint in their cooking. Some English visitors had once planted a root of it in pére Duval's garden, but after they were gone he flung it out again on to the cliff-side, where it had increased and multiplied until it was now a large bed.

In the butcher's shop Haidee found a number of villagers squabbling over beef-bones, and not a sign of lamb anywhere. The truth was that every portion of the one lamb killed early in the week had been sold, and though there were still one or two customers in need of First Communion lamb, Mother Durand knew better than to offer any of the freshly-killed beast that hung in the back shed. Peasants are well aware that freshly-killed meat should not be cut too early or it will be full of air, soft, flabby, and never tender. Mother Durand, under her calm exterior, was furiously angry with her man for having delayed the killing until now--after to-day there would be no demand for anything but beef-bones and veal until the summer visitors began to arrive. The young American mademoiselle asking guilelessly for lamb was a godsend. Waiting until the last villager had gone from the shop so that there would be no adverse comment on what she meant to do, she turned ingratiatingly to Haidee.

"But certainly, mademoiselle ... there is none in the shop ... but outside I have a lamb that is superbe ... just the thing for a première communion ... it is not for every one I would cut that lamb, but for such customers as you and your belle maman there is nothing I would not do." She returned presently from the back shed. "There, mademoiselle--a beautiful shoulder. Six francs."

Haidee was horrified at the price. Their dinner meat usually cost about one franc twenty, and she knew that there was much to be accomplished with Val's last twenty-franc piece.

"Could n't you give me a smaller one, Madame Durand? ... and not so dear?"

"Ah, mademoiselle, you should have said to me before that you wanted it small. It is cut now ... and what would I do with the pieces from it? Do you think I could sell them? But no."

So Haidee took the shoulder, and returned home with it tucked under her arm. On arrival as it happened old veuve Michel was in the kitchen with Val, having just brought home some odds and ends of family washing.

"What!" she cried, on seeing the lamb. "A shoulder of freshly-killed lamb, full of air and bubbles ... cut off the poor nice lamb while it had yet the hot life in it! Shame on the wretched woman Durand ... to take advantage thus of poor innocent Americans! ... Shame! But then every one knows how she treated her poor daughter who wanted to be a nun. Madame, the stones in the street are not more wicked than that woman Amélie Durand!"

Val, much disturbed by these sayings, examined the shoulder of mutton. Certainly it was very bubbly looking: warm too. She remembered now hearing the cook in New York storm over a piece of freshly-killed meat, declaring that it had been cut too soon and was not fit to eat.

"How ought I to cook it to make the best of it?" she inquired in dismay.

"Cook it!" cried Widow Michel, scarlet in the face from indignation combined with the effects of her afternoon bottle of cognac. "No good to cook it. Better to pluck a rock from the cliff-side and cook it."

"How much was it, Haidee?"

"Six francs."

"Mon Dieu! What imposition! Take it back, Haidee dear, and tell her that it is too dear and too fresh ... she must give us a pound of steak instead. We are too poor to buy meat we can't eat, you know, darling. Six francs! Did you pay for it?"

"Why, yes, of course I paid for it. You know I had the louis. Oh! blow Val, I don't care much about taking it back."

"But, Haidee, what's the use of talking like that ... we can't eat that bubbly lamb ... think of poor Brannie without dinner! I 'd go myself if I had any hair.... Tell her it 's ridiculous to have given you such meat. I remember now Hortense said that leg we had at Christmas and could n't eat was too freshly-killed--it was soft and tough at the same time, and all slithery when you tried to cut it. Don't you remember--it made you sick to look at it?"

Yes, Haidee remembered well enough, but she did n't like taking the shoulder back just the same. However, veuve Michel offered the moral support of her company, and she returned to Mother Durand. Half-an-hour later she was back at the Villa, the wretched shoulder of lamb still in her hands.

"She won't take it back. She says it 's a rule of the shop never to take back meat that has once gone out of it."

"But it was back within half-an-hour."

"Yes, I told her so--and you should have heard old veuve Michel going on at her, but she did n't care two sous. She said, 'Oh, yes, mademoiselle, carrying my lamb up and down the Terrasse in the hot sun--you think that improves the meat. Hein? Well, I don't think so. Dame, no!"

"Hot sun! I wish it were hot! They don't know what sun is in this odious climate," cried Val in wrath.

"I know--but she won't take it back." Haidee flung the shoulder despondently upon the table. But Val's monkey was up, and she was determined not to be outdone by the cunning little Norman woman. Also it seemed to her by now that if she offered the children that shoulder of lamb she would be offering them poisoned meat. She hated it. She would rather have eaten sea-sand. With trembling hands she arranged across her forehead the chi-chi that M. Poiret had made for her out of her own hair (the first time she had availed herself of it), put on a deep hat, tied a motor veil over all, then with Bran held by one hand and the shoulder of lamb in the other she set out to do battle with Mother Durand. Haidee, though sick of the subject, accompanied the expedition out of curiosity.

The little red-cheeked, hard-eyed woman--a typical shrewd Normandy peasant--was alone in the shop, tidying up her lard-bowls with a large flat knife.

"Madame Durand!" said Val, controlling her voice as best she could. "About this shoulder of lamb....?"

"Yes, madame! What about it?"

"You must take it back ... I do not care for freshly-killed meat...." She began to stumble with her French. "Not good for the stomach .... very hard ... wicked ... no good .... il faut give me back my six francs."

"But not at all, madame ... the meat is good ... superbe ... there is nothing the matter with it. I asked mademoiselle if she was willing I should cut from the freshly-killed lamb, and she said yes.... Alors?"

"Oh! How can you say so, Madame Durand?" cried Haidee indignantly. "I had no idea you were cutting it from a lamb all hot."

"Mademoiselle finds it very convenient to say that now ... très commode! But my husband and daughter were in the shop, and heard mademoiselle ask to have it cut from the lamb."

"Oh, Val! don't you believe it ... the old liar!" Haidee did not pick her words when indignant.

"In any case I will not have it back ... you can take it or leave it, madame," the old woman smiled the smile of one who plays a winning game.

"I will leave it then," said Val, losing all calmness. "Vous est pas juste ... vous est mal honnête ... voleur! It is because we are strangers that you take advantage of us ...it is the first time I have found such méchanterie in this village.... If you will not give me back my money you can keep it and the meat too!" She flung it down and raged from the shop.

"Comme wus voudrez, madame," responded Mother Durand, only too delighted with such a plan, and to see the backs of the departing trio. But two minutes later, just as she was removing the paper covering from the offending shoulder, Val returned. Stretching her firm, thin hand across the counter she gripped the meat once more.

"No! I won't let you keep it to sell again. Rather will I take it and give it to the first dog I meet!"

"As you please, madame," repeated Mother Durand blandly, not to be nonplussed, whatever might be her feelings.

Val stalked from the shop, the shoulder now devoid of wrappings in her hand. Haidee and Bran, sympathetic but apprehensive, waited without.

"She shall not have it. Find a dog, Haidee."

"Oh, Val! What's the good? ... keep it ... it will be better than nothing for dinner to-morrow."

"I would rather eat mud," said Val, white to the lips. "Find a dog."

But there was no dog in sight. They marched down the road, a silent band, looking to right and left for something canine. Usually the village was thick with hungry mongrels, but to-day it was as though the earth had opened to receive all flesh-eating quadrupeds. Not even a cat showed its face.

"Perhaps a giant"--murmured Bran. Haidee was congratulating herself that they would get home without further adventure, or that at least Val's fury would presently abate enough for her to abandon her idea, when, just in front of the Café Rosetta a lean liver-and-white pointer with the legs of a bull dog and the ears of a cocker spaniel strolled out. Val held the shoulder towards him.

"Here, boy, here--a good supper for you!"

The "boy" regarded her suspiciously for a moment, then came forward a step. She encouraged him with a kind word, and held the meat nearer, but, suspecting a trick, he backed growling. He had never seen a shoulder of lamb before except in a dream, and did not recognise the pink-and-white thing. He only recognised that they were strangers--probably knew them to be the mad Americans from Villa Duval. At any rate, after one long sniff he turned and walked sadly away. Val in a fury threw the lamb after him, but he never turned. Mournfully he slunk down the slope of the petit port to seek the garbage heaps in the river bed. As the three stood staring after him a little red-faced bonne came running out of the café.

"Qu'est ce qu'il y a, madame?" she cried. Val pointed to the meat lying in the dust.

"Take that and give it to a dog."

"But yes, madame; thank you, madame."

Smiling all over, she picked up the meat and dusted it carefully. They saw very well she did not mean to give it to a dog.

"It is not fit for human food," stammered Val, still shaking.

"But no, madame; thank you, madame."

She smiled and looked at it with fond eyes. Val could have struck her. On the Terrasse Haidee said:

"Val, how could you? It will be all over the town. Even the curé will know."

Val did not answer. Her rage expended, she was wondering what her Brannie was going to have for dinner the next day. Two great tears stole down her face.

When Haidee came back from eight o'clock Mass the next morning she noticed many of the villagers standing about in groups. They were evidently discussing some affair of great interest, but their grave and serious voices subsided into whispers at the sight of her, and while she passed a dead silence prevailed in each group. However, in front of Lemonier's shop an old beldame lifted her voice in the manner of a prophetess and gave forth the dark saying that "it was to be hoped that people who threw good meat to dogs would never live to feel the pangs of hunger!"

Haidee repeated this at home as a great joke, but was sorry she did, for Val turned pale as a condemned criminal, and her eyes searched the faces of both children as if for the outward signs of an inward gnawing at their vitals--but so far both looked plump and composed.

She spent the whole morning juggling with six eggs and a pint of milk, the result being an exceedingly wobbly-looking baked custard which appeared to supplement the meagre midday repast. At the sight of it Bran nearly lost his appetite for the potatoes baked in their jackets which his soul loved, and when pudding-time came he began to squirm and declare he was not hungry. With the name of Bran he appeared to have also inherited that great king's primitive tastes in food, for he cared for nothing except milk, oatmeal porridge, and potatoes with butter.

"Do eat some, Brannie," pleaded the pale and guilty Val. "I made it specially for you. It is lovely."

"Yes, I can see it is lovely," said Brannie, politely, edging away from the table. "But it smells like a pussy cat just after she has been drinking milk."

When Hortense arrived to wash up she reported that the two brothers of the bonne at the Café Rosetta were in the village, having been summoned from Cherbourg by telegraph to come and lunch with their sister on a shoulder of Première Communion lamb.

――――

The confirmation ceremony was most grand. It was the first time so important a personage as an Archbishop had visited Mascaret, and the villagers, sensible of the honour done them, were inclined to forgive the curé his imagined misdeeds for having arranged it. Not only were all the Premier Communion candidates from other villages present, but a great many of the summer visitors had arrived, and it was an enormous congregation that waited in the stuffy church. The Archbishop's train was late, but at last he came from the sacristy very crumpled and tired-looking in his gold and purple robes, and walking with faltering feet, for his years were heavy on him and he was weary with travelling. Everything about him seemed old, from the rich lace on his aube to his gentle blue eyes, which looked as though they saw visions of far-off places--everything but the small and wonderful white teeth in his sunken gentle mouth. His stole was beautifully painted with lilies, and his mitre of shining white and gold most splendid, but sometimes during the long service his head drooped a little under it and rested on his breast. There was such a weariness about him that Val was glad when she heard a few months later that he had laid aside his heavy and elaborate gold and white panoply of office and gone to rest. He had about twelve priests with him, keen, able-looking men, of a very different type to the simple curés who were herding their flocks from the surrounding villages, and they clustered about him as though to keep the eyes of the world from resting too long upon this venerable representative of the Pope. The Vicaire-Général, a splendid looking man with an eagle eye and a strong beaked nose, surveyed the church as a general might the field of battle, while the congregation chanted the Benedictus Dominus. It seemed to Val that when his eye rested on her he saw deep down into her heart and had no pity for her failures, being of the Napoleonic brand of man who has no use for any but the strong ones of earth.

After the Archbishop with crumpled crooked fingers had given his solemn benediction to the people, singing in a trembling yet wonderfully thrilling old voice,

"Sit nomen benedictum ... Adjutorium Domini ... Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus,"

he sat down just inside the chancel rails, and talkingly questioned the children on their catechism. Most of them were too shy to distinguish themselves much, though the son of the village milkman, an ugly cross-eyed boy, acquitted himself manfully. Later the Archbishop rested in his chair, his chin on his breast, seeming to sleep, while priests prowled and hovered round him. The Mascaret curé darted about the church giving instructions, and presently the children broke shrilly into the popular hymn:

"Je suis chrétien, voilà ma gloire,

Mon espérance et mon soutien,

Mon chant d'amour et de victoire,

Je suis chrétien! Je suis chrétien!"

The village boys loved this hymn. It lent itself to much lusty shouting in the last two lines of the chorus, and they delighted in it, passing winks to each other as they hurled it from their lungs with something of the same ardour as had served for the "mujik de churie." But later when they filed in long lines to where the old Archbishop sat waiting for them, their mien changed. No one could be vicious or violent before that beautiful tired presence waiting with white trembling hands to bless them. They came quietly, one by one, and knelt on the velvet cushion at his feet, the boys bashful and cloddish in their best smocks, the girls wearing the elaborate and top-heavy mob cap of silk and muslins and ribbons that it is the Normandy peasant woman's pride to perch above her harsh features. Haidee, in a white hemstitched muslin frock with a flounce of delicate lace round its edge, walked among them like some woodland sylph escaped from a Corot picture. Her long legs clad in white silk stockings and sandals created something of a scandal amongst the peasant mothers, whose ideas of decency bid them cover up the legs of their girls with the longest and heaviest skirts they can afford. Her headgear, too, was considered characteristic of the madness with which God had afflicted the occupants of Villa Duval, for it was a tulle veil bound about her brow by a wreath of real daisies, gathered and twined by Val and Bran.

Each child carried a tiny slip of paper on which was written the new name which must be assumed at confirmation as in baptism. This paper was handed to a priest who stood on the left of the Archbishop and who, glancing swiftly at it, transposed it into Latin and murmured it into the great prelate's ear. Haidee, who had chosen Joan, was astonished to hear the Archbishop thus address her:

"Joanna! I mark thee with the sign of the Cross, and I confirm thee par le chrême du salut, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." Then he gave her a little tap on the left cheek and held out his ring to her; she kissed it fervently and went away uplifted. In passing back a priest on the right stopped her and wiped away the holy chrism (composed of balm and oil) with a piece of cotton wool, which he let fall into a basket held by a choir boy whose blue eyes vaguely disturbed Haidee's saintly dream. A little farther on another priest intercepted her and wiped her forehead once more, none too gently she thought, with a rather dissipated-looking napkin. The cowboy look came over her face at that, and Val reflected that it was just as well there were no more priests to waylay her before she reached her seat, for that Wild-West scowl was often followed by acts which made up in vigour for what they lacked in dignity.

Val was not able to see the end of the ceremony, for just as the priests closed in on the Archbishop, one with a gilt bowl, another with soap and broidered towel, another to take his ring, Bran whispered to her in a panting whisper:

"Mammie! I 've got the gasps!"

There was nothing for it but retreat to the churchyard, for when Bran got "the gasps" the only cure for them was air and solitude. It was a nervous affliction which often seized him when he was deeply bored or, curiously enough, when he was intensely excited, making him gasp like a chicken with the pip, and Val would feel her heart come into her throat with every opening of his little beak. While he regained his breathing powers in the churchyard, she sat on a stone watching him, thinking how she would have liked the hands of the Archbishop on his precious head too. There was surely some special benediction in such delicate old hands; and though she asked no blessings for herself, she wanted them all for Garrett Westenra's son. And while she sat there musing, out of the sacristy door came the Archbishop himself. He, too, seemed afflicted with gasps, for his mouth opened and closed and his breath came in little pants. None of his priests were with him, only the village curé escorting him to the presbytery, and he seemed somewhat like a child escaped for a moment from his nurses. When he saw Bran's smiling face his own lit up and its weariness was for an instant wiped away.

"A little American Catholic," said the curé, but the old prelate had not waited for an introduction before making the sign of the Cross over Bran's bright head. Val knelt in the dust while the faltering feet passed by. She felt as though a star had fallen from heaven for her.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WAYS OF GIRLS

"Il n'est pas de rose assez tendre

Sur la palette du printemps,

Madame, pour oser prétendre

Lutter contre vos dix-sept ans."

GAUTIER.

"Did you see the people from Villa Shai-poo?" asked Haidee, as they walked home.

"No, which were they?" Val was away in a land of her own peopling and her eyes were vague.

"An awfully distinguished old man, with a little white goatee and nice American-looking boots; and two boys...." She stopped abruptly. Val's attention was attracted.

"What kind of boys?"

"Oh, well! I didn't notice them much. You know all French boys look as if they wear stays. I dare say these are n't so bad though. Hortense says the eldest is in a regiment très chic. The other one failed for the navy last year." Her manner was meant to suggest pointed indifference.

"They must be more than boys."

"The one with the greeny-blue eyes is twenty-four and the one with dark blue ones is nineteen and a half," responded Haidee. Val smiled at this artless testimony of her "indifference."

They were passing Shai-poo at the moment; a big, square, roomy-looking house, with those solid grey walls that stand for centuries and are so typical of Normandy, surrounded by a spacious garden full of the charm of careless grace--groups of trees, flowering grasses, little forests of tall bamboos, beds of brilliant flowers that looked as if they had sprung up by happy accident, winding paths, and a tea-house in the form of a Chinese pagoda. A great mainmast rooted from the bowels of a French war-ship of old type was erected in a clear open space that lay almost like a deck around it. From its top lazily floated a silk flag embroidered with the Chinese Royal arms.

"Their grandfather the Admiral must have arrived," said Haidee excitedly. "They only put up that flag for him--it is the one he took in the battle of Shai-poo. That is the mast of his old ship."

"Goodness, Haidee! what a lot you know about them! Who is the man with the goatee and the American boots then?"

"Oh, that's the father of Sacha, the one in the army. The other boy, Rupert, is a cousin and an orphan."

"Oh!" Val pondered these things in her heart. It was plain that Haidee was growing up, and beginning to take an interest in other things than hens and rabbits! Evidently too she had been listening to Hortense's gossip. Val felt guilty somehow, and wished wistfully that poor Haidee could have the society and companionship of a girl of her own age and world.

When they got home they found that John the Baptist had left some letters. One of them was from Harriott Kesteven, asking if Val would mind very much if she came to Mascaret for the summer months, bringing her girl Kitty. It seemed almost like an answer to Val's wish for society for Haidee.

Her only doubt was as to Westenra. Would this, even though he never knew or cared, be treachery to him--a last fire made of the blackened embers of a burnt boat?

It could scarcely be that after all! He had been at great pains these last few years to show her by his silence and coldness how little her doings mattered to him. Apparently on his return to America after the fatal visit to Jersey he had flung himself into work with the result that sometimes occurs in the lives of men; a temple of public success had begun to raise its walls above the grave of his private sorrows. International journals frequently mentioned his name in connection with some wonderful operation performed at his now famous nursing home. Under the ægis of the skilful Miss Holland the house in 68th Street had become something very like a gold mine, as the size of the quarterly cheques (which Val never used) gave proof. Of more importance was the fact that he had advanced with great strides in his scientific work, and the results of his experimental investigations in diabetes were the talk of medical Europe. There were rumours of his nomination for the next Nobel.

Small wonder if in this furious concentration on work and the fame it brought him, personal emotion as far as Val was concerned should be crushed out of his life like a useless, hurtful thing. That at last was the impression she gained from his letters to Haidee, conned and brooded over in the silence of the night when the children slept. True, love for Haidee and his son breathed from every line, but there was never a word in the cold courteous messages to Val that she could lay upon her heart to heal its aching wound. Time and distance had widened the breach between them until now it was a gaping ravine over which the correspondence with Haidee formed the last frail bridge. He had never put foot in Europe since the visit to Jersey, but taken all his vacations in different parts of America. Sometimes he wrote vaguely of coming over to see them all, but Val felt herself left outside his world now, and doubted that he seriously considered making a movement that would bring him back into hers. It seemed almost ironical to be wondering whether she would have his approval or not in allowing Harriott Kesteven to come to Mascaret. It was so patent that he had long since taken advantage of the circumstance that freed his life from hers.

She decided in the end that with a clear conscience she might wire to London the word "come."

"Of course I know there is a hotel in the place, Val," Mrs. Kesteven had written, "but we'd much rather come and picnic and be insane with you on the Dutch-treat plan, each paying our own share. Do let us."

And Val, though she knew her friend had two thousand a year, and was used to every comfort of modern civilisation, felt no hesitation about bidding her welcome. Harriott Kesteven was a woman after her own heart; one who could make herself just as much at home in the little wooden cabins of Villa Duval as in her luxurious London flat; who would rather tramp the desert with the friend of her heart than be borne in the silken litters of a stranger's caravan.

To herself Val could not disguise what a joy it would be to see Harriott again; to show her Bran--the one tangible treasure snatched from the grudging hand of Fate; to open her heart a little to eyes that were lovingly tolerant, and would smile rather than condemn. Friendship should be always such a joy: clear water in sight of a thirsty soul--a tree under which to rest after long travel!

Harriott having speedily wired back that she and her girl were starting at once, via Southampton and Jersey, preparations for their advent set in at Villa Duval. They were not very complicated preparations, however, merely a matter of clearing out the two spare cabins, and storing the boxes and baggage in one of pére Duval's lofts. Then a great gathering of wild flowers to stand in jam jars all over the house and a hunting expedition to the village for a bonne-à-tout-faire. A middle-aged stony-faced shrew bearing the poetical name of Azalie was captured, and a bargain struck with her to come in from seven in the morning till seven in the evening, for the sum of ten francs fifty a week, bread, coffee, and cider thrown in. Hortense was to act as her aide-de-camp.

Then on one afternoon the band of three went across to the digue not more than five hundred yards from their door, to meet the steamer from Jersey. It was the first boat of the year, and its arrival quite the event of the season, so all the world of Mascaret was leaning on the ropes put up by the Customs' officers to prevent passengers escaping before declaring themselves innocent of contraband. Val, with her chi-chi tied across her forehead, her face swathed in veils, stood biting her lips and trembling with emotion, nervous as a bird at the thought of seeing her friend again. She wondered fearfully if Harriott would find her greatly changed. Haidee, full of curiosity, was scowling under her brigand hat ready to get out all her porcupine-prickles if she did not like the other girl on sight. Bran pranced with excitement at the thought of seeing a big ship once more. Near by were standing the two young men from the Villa Shai-poo, and from behind her veils Val took stock of them and found them goodly to look upon. She liked their loose blue flannel suits, so different from the usual tight correct clothes worn by young Frenchmen at the seaside. She liked their clear skins and eyes too, and their sleek black heads. In fact, they were not very French-looking at all, but much more like Irish boys. The younger one especially, with his misty violet eyes and rather dreamy face, might easily have been mistaken for a west-of-Ireland lad. The elder and handsomer of the two possessed already the Frenchman's hardy eye for a woman, and Val intercepted several appraising glances cast in the direction of Haidee. The younger fellow contented himself with smiling at Bran, who smiled back in friendly fashion.

"I like that boy," he confided to Val, "he's got a hole 'n his chin and his hair is jet black." Bran decided all his likes and dislikes by colour and smell. His favourite colours were yellow, red, green, and wet-black. This last was very different to ordinary black, which was the colour of toothache. Little rheumatic pains which he sometimes got in his knees were grey. The worst pain you could get was a purply-red one which came when you were sad and gave you the stomach-ache. He had once solemnly stated that the only colour he hated was yellowy-pink, but as he always called yellow pink and pink yellow no one had been able to solve the riddle of this hated colour.

Long before the boat came alongside Val recognised Harriott by the condition of her hat. Mrs. Kesteven's hats invariably looked as though some one had been taking a siesta on them, but the moment she got close enough for her little soft, stern face to be seen no one thought of her hat any more. It was the same with her clothes. She always had an extraordinary stock of last year's gowns to "finish up," but under the thrall of her charming manners no one ever noticed that her skirt was wider than was fashionable and her sleeves the wrong shape. It would have been difficult to compute how many new spring gowns she had contributed that year to youthful poor relations, but she herself was "finishing up" a faded purple linen of weird cut, while the hat of battered violets on her head was certainly not in its first season. But all the glow of friendship and true affection was in her sunny eyes. She flew from the deck of the wheezy old steamer, and in spite of the Customs' officers' efforts to head her off, embraced Val over the ropes. Behind her came Kitty, very fair, pretty, and beautifully dressed. Haidee shot a scowl at her.

"A Smarty-Arty!" was her inward comment, though she was slightly overawed by Kitty's clothes.

"She 's taller than me, but her feet are bigger," thought Kitty.

"And this is my Brannikin, Harry."

"What a duck! ... give me a kiss, Bran."

But Bran retreated behind his mother's skirts murmuring:

"The cat says bow-wow-wow."

"Don't be silly, my Wing. Come on--and say how do you do. This is Kitty."

"Je sais bien," said Bran, and handed Kitty a hardy smile. Bran knew all things well--at least that was his favourite response to all remarks. When Val first took him to Notre Dame and they knelt together in the light of the wonderful rose-window, she whispered in his ear:

"Brannie, you are in the most beautiful church in the world."

"Je sais bien," he had answered blandly.

They all proceeded to Villa Duval, followed by the speculative glances of the crowd and the grocer's handcart carrying Harriott's luggage. Kitty and Haidee, subtly aware of the admiring eyes of the two young Frenchmen, assumed a demure air mingled with light and not too annihilating scorn.

Harriott expressed herself charmed with Villa Duval and all that therein was, from the rose-tree on the balustrade that bore both pink and white roses as a tribute to pére Duval's skill in grafting, to the meat-safe suspended by a chain from the dining-room floor to the cellar below. After inspecting the cabins, peeping out of the windows, and hearkening to the man-eater in the kitchen, she said:

"You don't know how lucky you are, Val, living in peace and simplicity like this. You ought to be a very happy woman."

"So I am--happy as a tomtit on a pump-handle," said Val, smiling gaily, but Harriott, who had the seeing eye, saw the heart-hunger behind the smile, and knew that happiness had eluded her friend once more.

"I 've no right to grumble, Harry. I 've got what I wanted--a son. You know I always felt my life would not be complete without a son--and he is the son of a real man. But, if one had forty sons, there would still always be that little round hole in one's heart which no child can ever quite fill--you know, Harriott."

Yes, Harriott knew. Not for nothing had her beautiful hair turned snow-white at thirty. She, too, had a void in her big, warm heart which neither Kitty nor the dozen impecunious youthful relations to whom she played godmother had been able to fill.

Haidee and Kitty soon became thick as thieves, and, like thieves, distrusted each other thoroughly. Blondes and brunettes nearly always do. Pretending to be quite unimpressed by each other's looks secretly each admired the other's type exceedingly, and in little ways, which they supposed no one noticed, tried to copy each other's good points in dress and style. It was funny to see Haidee, whose hair had always been a shameful sort of mane flying to the winds, now brush it out sleek and straight under a red ribbon (in opposition to Kitty's blue one) bound à la Grec above her brow, while Kitty could not rest until she had discarded her stockings and bought herself a pair of canvas sandals at Lemonier's. She was, to her annoyance, however, no more able to imitate the tan which covered Haidee, than the latter could acquire the milky whiteness of Kitty's complexion. They set each other off well--Haidee with her tall dark beauty, Kitty fair and fluffy as a Persian kitten. It was small wonder that wherever they went attention was focused upon them. The two French boys were always hovering in the vicinity, whether on the beach when the party went to bathe, on the digue to watch the Jersey boat arrive--now one of the daily interests--or out walking on the cliff. Often, as they sauntered in the lanes, the girls ahead, Harry and Val loitering and gossiping behind, the sound of bicycles would be heard and the two boys would whirr past, sending swift, hardy glances at the girls, making the occasion an excuse for apologetically lifting their caps.

"I 'm afraid it's neither you behind your blue veil, nor I with 'nearly fifty' scrawled across my features, who is causing such commotion in those two male bosoms," chuckled Harriott to Val.

"It gives one a little shock to feel so out of it!" said Val, laughing a little. "When men's eyes slip past to the girl behind, one begins to realise that one cannot stay in the great game for ever."

"For ever--no," said Harry; "but you 're not out of it yet, my dear--you 've only taken the blue veil for a while."

"Oh, Harry, I was out of it the moment Bran came. I got my prize, little as I deserved it, and retired from the arena. Even if I had n't loved my man I could never have continued to amuse myself that way once I had a son."

"That doesn't make the least difference to your attracting power, my dear. You are one of those women who will always have for men the same kind of pull as the moon for the sea."

Val laughed a little mournfully as she reflected that her moonlight quality had not the power to pull just the one man she wanted across the sea to her.

――――

On the third day after the Kestevens' arrival the Frenchmen achieved acquaintance with Bran on the beach. He came back to his party announcing that "Sacha" and "Rupert" had asked him if he would like to go out sailing with them.

"Come for a walk in their boat they said," he said, grinning gaily at their literal English. "And they asked if my sisters like going out for walks in a boat, too?"

Kitty and Haidee exchanged rapid eye-signals, then looked away at the sea. Harriott frowned.

"Why don't the idiotic creatures come and call on us like honest men, or send their women folk?"

"He's got no women folk but his sister, and she hasn't come from Paris yet," burst from Haidee suddenly.

"Whose sister?"

"Sacha's."

"She 's expected on Thursday," supplemented Kitty. A minute later the two discovered urgent business elsewhere--perhaps for fear of being questioned as to the source of their information.

Val and Harriott gazed at each other stupefied.

"Goodness! they know all about these French fellows. What are we to do?"

"Take no notice, Harry. Let them have their little excitement, dear things. A woman's life is so short. Bran said to me as we lay in bed this morning, 'Mammie, in 120 months, I 'll be fifteen; how old will you be?' And, my dear, I calculated and found it would bring me up to forty-two--and another 120 months to fifty-two, and then another, and life will be done! Have you ever thought of it, dear: that our lives are just a series of months in batches of 120?"

"You need not talk yet," sighed Harriott. "It's the last few batches that are so short. The years fly like greased lightning after forty."

"And the early ones seem so long and weary--until the first love adventure looms in sight. Ah! those first little adventures, how lovely they are! To realise that we are desirable ... that some one wants us ... finds us pretty and charming ... to feel the little wings of womanhood sprouting on our shoulder-blades! Oh, Harry, we mustn't grudge the enchantment of it to our girls! Don't you remember how delightful it was? Was anything that came after half so wonderful?"

"I know," said Harriott, the gentle light of reminiscence in her eye. "But this is a different matter, my dear. These are Frenchmen."

"But they are really very Irish-looking," laughed Val, who not being English never could understand the curious aversion that sits deep in almost every Englishwoman's heart for the male species across the Channel. "And those two kids are as happy and excited as larks in the wind. I 'm sure that kind of thing should never be suppressed, Harry."

"I dare say you are right, dear. Only we must make fun of them sometimes so that there shall be no danger of their taking it seriously. I think I 'd rather have Kitty take the veil than take a Frenchman."

That same evening as they all sat playing Bridge in the little wooden dining-room of Villa Duval, a whirr of bicycle wheels was heard without. Then a silence and the sound of some one walking softly over the glass and broken china with which the other side of the road was freely decorated. Under the table Haidee handed Kitty a hack on the shins, but their faces remained bland, their interest in the game unabated. It was a black night and to look out of the window availed nothing. A few moments later came the sound of bicycles in retreat. At bedtime the two girls stayed whispering and speculating long in Kitty's room, which overlooked the road, but the mystery of the bicycles was unexplained--until the next morning. Bran, standing on Val's bed, as was his pleasant custom when dressing, suddenly shouted--and a shout in Villa Duval could be heard through every room in the house.

"What's that red thing in my 'Jules Duval'?"

The Jules Duval, as has been explained, was pére Duval's old fishing boat, which had been fixed-up and painted to be the special joy and plaything of Bran. He adored boats and everything to do with the sea, and spent all his days in the Jules going imaginary voyages.

"There 's something red fastened to the mast," he shrieked excitedly, and upstairs two necks were craned to cracking point from Kitty's bedroom window. Insufficiently clothed as he was Bran tore out to the boat, and came back bearing in triumph an enormous cabbage rose--full blown, and rather tired from being up all night. Both girls put out their hands for it. Bran looked at them in surprise.

"Why, it was in my boat! Perhaps an angel put it there for me..." The girls turned away in wrath. Later they were each seen to go separately to the Jules and give a sort of casual glance into the bottom of it. It was possible, of course, that Bran might have overlooked something!

"Only one rose! How clever of those young scamps!" chuckled Val, and Harriott with joyful malice pinned the flopping rose to the breast of Bran's red sweater, where it drooped its life away.

The girls were constrained with each other all day. The tide was low and there was no excuse to go to the beach. Perhaps that was why the two took books and sat in the Jules all the morning pretending to read, but with a keen lookout on the road and all stray cyclists. Bran, greatly delighted to have passengers, took them several voyages to New York and back. Harry and Val, professing to be busy inside the Villa, cast many an intrigued glance from the windows. Nothing happened.

Next morning a basket of figs was found in the boat--beautiful, luscious, purple figs. Now the only fig-trees in Mascaret grew in the garden of the Admiral of Shai-poo!

Val and Harriott went to early Mass, and returning ran into the two heroes coming up from the river. They had been for an early morning sail, and wore a pleasantly disreputable air in their blue fisherman jerseys and turned-up coat collars. They cast sheepish glances at the two ladies, and the younger had the grace to blush.

"They really are nice-looking boys," Harriott admitted, but at the breakfast table a few minutes later she expressed herself differently.

"We met those two Romeos from the Villa Shai-poo as we were coming from Mass," she announced. "Seedy-looking fellows. One of them looked as if a tub might do him good."

The girls bristled like Irish terriers.

"Which one?" they demanded in one breath.

"The one with the drunken blue eyes," said Val, aware that this was sheer malice.

"Oh, that's Rupert!" Relief burst from Haidee. But Kitty's appetite was gone. She assumed a dark and menacing expression of countenance that her mother declared reminded her of Mendelssohn's Spring Song.

"It makes me want to prance and leap like Cissie Loftus imitating Maude Allen when I see you look like that, Kit," she said. But Kit remained cross as a cat and would not smile.

"And where did these figs come from?" asked Val in amaze.

"They are Bran's," quoth Haidee demurely. "An angel left them in the Jules for him."

It may have been religious fervour which then seized the girls or it may merely have been a fervour for going in the direction of Mascaret, at any rate they patronised both High Mass and Vespers and seemed to be discontented that there were no further services to attend.

In the evening, as it was Sunday, there were letters to write instead of the usual game of Bridge. Every one appeared to be deeply occupied, but a listening look was so apparent on two faces that Harriott could not resist a mischievous remark to Val.

"I wonder if the cabbages have come yet?" As if by some magical arrangement with fate there came on the instant the usual whirring sound followed by the crackling underfoot of broken crockery which had strayed from the garbage hole.

"What's that?" cried Bran nervously from his bed in the next room.

"Hush, my Wing! I expect it's only a basket of eggs arriving in the Jules," soothed his mother.

"Soon we shall not have to go to market, Val," remarked Harriott; "all that we need will be found in the boat. I wonder if it's a Customs' officer or a gendarme who is so kind?"

"I think a delicate attention on our part would be to tie a return bouquet on to the mainmast," said Val thoughtfully. "Should we go out and gather some, Harry--just to show that we enjoyed the figs?"

"Oh, no! Val," burst out Haidee, "you 'll spoil everything."

"Spoil?" said Val with wondering eyes. "Everything? Surely a little gratitude...? Old père Duval has some nice sunflowers."

But the girls had burst from the room in a rage. Val and Harriott, exploding with laughter, went for a walk down the digue in the mild darkness.

"Poor kids!" said Harriott. "Perhaps we really ought not to torment them so much."

"My dear, it is the proudest moment of their lives," laughed Val. "Their first conquest! At such times mothers are always looked upon as sort of ogresses anyway--we may as well be amused ogresses."

They had an adventure all to themselves that night. A little party of people passed them talking French, and bound like themselves for a stroll to the end of the breakwater. There were two ladies and two men, and in the latter Val felt certain she recognised the boys from Shai-poo. Behind them, at a little distance, smoking a deliciously fragrant cigar and humming cheerfully after the manner of a Frenchman who has just enjoyed a good dinner, strolled a third man, evidently belonging to the party, for he called out an occasional remark to the others. All disappeared into the blackness at the far end of the pier, where a lamp and storm-bell were built into a little chapel-shaped shelter. Val and Harriott, deciding not to walk farther, seated themselves by dint of a certain amount of physical exertion upon the high wall which runs beside the digue, their legs dangling, the sea below, the cool black night all round them. By and by the French party returned in the order of their going, the last man still lagging behind. He had perhaps lingered longer than the others to watch the seas dashing against the bulky end of the pier, for the advance party passed some five minutes before his cheerful humming was heard. As he came along a pale streak of gold from the far lighthouse swept over him, revealing him an elderly, distinguished man of the Légion d'honneur type. Val immediately recognised in him the man whom Haidee had pointed out as General Lorrain, the father of Sacha: he of the American boots and pointed goatee.

"Ah! Le phare est très chic ce soir!" He called out suddenly. He had seen them in the same sweeping line of light, but it never occurred to them that he mistook them for the ladies of his party until he came up and gave Harriott an affectionate squeeze on her ankle, repeating his remark:

"N'est ce pas, Comtesse--it gives a very chic illumination to-night, the lighthouse?"

Mrs. Kesteven gave a very chic gasp, and almost leaped from the wall into the sea below. And Val, realising what had happened, hastily leaned forward and in her bad French, always ten times worse when she was excited, cried:

"Mais--vous faisez une erreur, monsieur."

The poor man, horrified as Mrs. Kesteven herself, blurted out a throaty:

"Parr-don! Je vous demands parr-don, mesdames," and fled.

Val said her French did it--that wonderful phrase "faisez une erreur," quite unknown to the French grammar. But Harriott declared her suspicion that the quality of her woollen stockings was the cause of the poor man's panic.

"I imagine the French Comtesse whom that pinch was meant for is not much addicted to Jaeger and flannel lingerie," she said with a grim glint of humour in her eye. "Anyway it is a lesson to us not to sit out alone on dark nights."

Next morning there was a basket of grapes in the boat.

"This is really beginning to go a little too far," declared Val. "Either some one is robbing the Admiral's garden and wants to drag us into the affair as accomplices, or else there is an impression abroad that we are in need of food and clothing."

She and Harriott gravely discussed the point as to whether it would be better to put up a public notice by the wayside, or call in the gendarmes.

"Oh, mother!" cried Kitty in a voice of mingled consternation and impatience, and wriggled Mrs. Kesteven into her bedroom where she could harangue her without ribald interruption from Val. The minute Haidee got Val alone she said furiously:

"Oh, Val, you are a silly ass! You know quite well it 's them!"

"Them?"

"Those Lorrain boys. Do leave off rotting."

"Rotting?"

"Och! you!" cried Haidee in a black rage, and flung out of the room.

CHAPTER XVII

THE WAYS OF BOYS

"For every grain of wit a grain of folly."

All the same, Val and Harry were beginning to say to each other, "What next?"

It was a great relief that the Lorrain boys, most correctly dressed and apparently laced in their best corsets, came very ceremoniously to call that afternoon. They were accompanied by two ladies. One was Mademoiselle Celine Lorrain, the other the Comtesse de Vervanne, who had come to spend part of the summer with them. Upon being introduced to the latter, Val and Mrs. Kesteven, who knew what they knew about a chic lighthouse and a lady's ankle, exchanged a fleet glance that was not without humour.

Celine Lorrain, the sister of Sacha, was a girl of twenty-five, with eyes of Mediterranean blue in a rather broad sweet face. The boys had monopolised all the beauty of the family, but she had a singularly pure expression, and with her gallant bearing would have made an ideal Joan of Arc. The countess, of a very different type, was, it transpired, the bosom friend of another and married Lorrain sister. She was little and piquant and plump, and made-up as for the stage. Pearl powder lay thick as white velvet on her nose, and her dark-green eyes were artistically outlined with spode-blue shadows. A little mole on her chin had been carefully blackened--and in her cheeks was a wild-rose flush out of a box. A few gilt streaks in the little dark plaits she wore coiled over her ears jeune fille fashion told that at some past period her hair had been magically changed to gold, but was now returning to its original colour. No doubt she was extremely picturesque, and her manners were charming. But Val, who always looked at eyes, noticed that hers, in spite of their enshrouding blue shadows, were as cold as some still mountain lake, though, at the same time, full of the swift brightness of the Parisienne who misses nothing there is to see. She included the two women, the girls, and the room in one rapid enveloping glance, much as a painter might take a snapshot of something he meant to examine more carefully later on, and thereafter took upon herself the "expense of the conversation," as the French phrase runs. Unfortunately, her English was not so excellent as she believed it to be--though a good deal more amusing. In answer to Val's polite "How do you do?" she responded affably:

"Vary much." And later she related, with a pretty little high laugh: "It is the costume in France for strange womens to visit first, but we have taken the beef by the horns and come to see you in case you have not the spirit of the adventuress."

Mrs. Kesteven, fearing that Kitty and Haidee might disgrace themselves if they listened to much of this style of thing, gradually wriggled the conversation back into French, at which they were all fairly fluent, except Val who, however, understood everything. With a general intention to be amiable, time hung on no one's hands. Every one took tea, and the young men made themselves useful, twisting with ease in the tiny room to hand cups and bread and butter.

"We must all be friends and go walks and swims together," said the Comtesse. "I hear your girls swim beautifully, Madame Valdana. I want them to teach me."

"And would you let them go sailing with us in our little sailing boat?" a voice beguiled in Val's ear, and she found the misty blue eyes which she had maliciously described as "drunken" looking at her.

"Oh, I don't know about that," she said in her faltering French.

"You spik in English and I spik in French and we will understand us," he said, smiling charmingly at her. He reminded her intensely of Bran, and for this reason she felt a great leaning to him. Besides, no one could have helped liking him. His fresh clear skin was made fresher by the blueness of his eyes and the blackness of his hair. Added to his boyish beauty was a sort of good honest look that warmed the heart.

"We are very all right sailors," he continued, still politely expressing himself in English. "My cousin and I have sailed our boat here every year since we had ten years of age. You need not have fear of accidents."

"My sister often goes with us," chimed in Sacha, "but she's getting lazy. Mademoiselle your daughter and Mees Kesteven both say they adore to go on the sea."

Val let them remain under the impression that Haidee was her daughter, feeling that it gave her more authority to shake her head at the idea of the girls going sailing. But the chorus of beguilements continued and the two girls kept saying:

"Oh, do, Val ... do, mother ... do ... do...."

Bran made a diversion by bursting in, bright of eye, his fair hair wild, a strong scent of puppy dog about him, for he had been amusing himself with a litter of terriers bred by pére Duval.

He was introduced to the company, but his news would hardly keep until the ceremony was over.

"Mammie! At last I 've found out the difference between boy puppies and girl puppies. The boys----"

"Go and wash your hands for tea, darling."

"But, Mammie, the boys--

"Yes, I know, Bran, go now and wash your----"

"The boys have blue eyes and the girls have brown ones," he shouted indignantly as, hurt and astonished at his mother's strange lack of interest in his latest discovery, he was being pushed from the room by Haidee. Val suddenly ran after him and hugged him, and every one exploded into laughter.

Val and Harriott found themselves almost mesmerised into giving half-promises to let the girls go sailing, but after the visitors were gone and the last echo of the Comtesse's little gay sky-high laugh had died away, they gazed at each other doubtfully. The mesmerism was wearing off.

"I don't think we ought to let them go," Mrs. Kesteven said.

"I 'm sure we ought not," declared Val, wondering what Westenra would say if Haidee were drowned. There was a chorus of howls. Kitty put on her Spring Song face. Haidee's expression resembled that of a rhino about to charge.

"Mother, you promised...!"

"Oh, Val, you mean pig...!"

They burst from the room, scowling and muttering. Later even sobs were heard upstairs.

"Perhaps, after all...?" Harriott wavered.

"They are, I 'm sure, nice boys..." said Val, "and evidently good sailors. Shall we ask père Duval?"

They found the latter, as usual, hoeing his garden, Bran assisting him. Bran loved père Duval, who, he said, "smelt like a bar of iron that had been lying at the bottom of the sea for a few weeks ... all green and rusty, but yet nice."

"Of those two boys," the old man peered at them with his bleary eyes, "you need have no fear, mesdames. There are no better sailors on this coast. And round here it is very safe too--no bad winds--safe as heaven."

Less uneasy, they went upstairs to throw the oil of consent upon the stormy waters of rebellion. Immediately the two began to get out their sweaters and warm skirts as if to start at once, though the sail had been fixed for next morning. Harriott and Val stood smiling grimly, throwing little darts.

"I hope you 'll take your tubs before you go--even though you may get an unpremeditated dip," gibed Harriott.

"Yes; brush your teeth, dears, and your hair," supplemented the other tormentor. "Don't go out looking like a pair of rabbits plucked out of a dust barrel."

"Rabbits! Dust barrels!" snorted the girls, shaking their hair, each strong in the consciousness of annihilating beauty. Afterwards Haidee said with a superior smile to Kitty:

"Poor things! It must be awful to be old."

"Yes," said Kitty, who was sniffing a good deal. "They 're mad with jealousy. That's why I don't take any notice of all Mother's blither." She added thoughtfully: "I hope she doesn't find out I 've got a cold, before to-morrow morning. She 's such a fuss pot."

"Let's go to bed early, then she won't," suggested Haidee. And they went, and rose early too. Usually it was the work of two persons to pick them out of their blankets, but they were up at five, pinking and preening before the mirror, with many a glance from the window to see why the river was n't filling. The tide, it seemed, was unaccountably delayed that morning!

Val, who always rose at seven to make tea on her spirit lamp, took the usual cup to Harriott's bedside, and found Kitty there by special command. She was vehemently denying that she had a cold.

"I hawed god wud, buther, I ted you."

"Kitty, how can you say so? You can't speak properly. All traffic in your nose is absolutely suspended."

"It tiddent, buther!"

"You are snorting and snuffling like the bull of Bashan."

"I 'b dot, buther."

"I 'm sure it's no good for her to go out in that state," sighed Harriott afterwards. "But what would you? She 'd have broken a blood vessel if I 'd stopped her."

Val looked out of the window and reported gleefully:

"They are prowling up and down the digue like two hungry tigers. If they could only pull the tide in with ropes they would set to work at once."

At last there was water enough to float a boat, and the Lorrains' little craft was seen winging down the river from the petit port. The girls came racing back to get their warm coats. A moment later Bran's voice was heard from the front steps:

"I want to go too--I want to go too!" He had smelt what was in the wind, and hastily shuffling on his little garments was following the girls. With the cold brutality of an elder sister Haidee rebuffed him.

"No; you can't come. We don't want any kids."

"Besides, you can't swim," said Kitty more kindly.

"I can swim--I can swim!" averred Bran, and ran after them wailing passionately. "I can swim--I can swim!"

Val had to fly out and bring him home weeping on her shoulder.

"You shall have a beautiful boat all your own some day, my Wing, and we 'll sail away in it together."

She comforted him, drying his tears on her blue veil.

"Oh, jeer buck!" sniffled Bran, trying to cheer up, "and will daddy come too?"

Val thought of a lost ship in which she had thought to sail with all she loved to the islands of the blest, and her breath caught in her throat. "Yes, darling, let us pray so," she said, though she had no hope.

――――

From that day forward the Shai-pooites and the Duvalites were constantly together. The two parties joined forces and were as one man in all things that pertained to amusements and making the sunny days fly by.

There was always the daily excursion to the beach. Kitty and Haidee were as much at home in the water as two seals, and Val too was a good swimmer. Harriott always turned blue when she had been in two or three minutes, so her lot in life was to stay on the beach and rub Bran down when he came from floundering like a little scarlet tadpole in the surf. The Insanes wore red twill costumes, and resembled nothing so much as a band of Indians on the warpath when they came prancing from the cabins across the flat beach, with the Shai-pooites in dark blue maillots at their heels. A strange note of colour was a scarf of deep orange, which Val wore round her head, dock fashion. She never let her cropped head be seen by any one, though it was well covered now with little sprouting fluffy curls. Only Bran was allowed to see it in the nights, and loved to nestle against it, as a bird nestles against the downy breast of its mother. From the rest of the world she kept her distance, even in the sea, for she hated any one to see the curiousness of her face without its frame of hair.

The Comtesse was learning to "make the plank"--otherwise float, and on calm days incessant laughter came streaming over the smooth, silky waves, as her plump little person was held up by a ring of instructors. When all seemed well they let go, and immediately a shrill cry would ring out:

"Ah, mon Dieu! Je coule.... Je coule dans le milieu. I am sinking in ze middle!" And down she would drop and come up spluttering: "Ah! Quelle abomination de la désolation!"

But she never went in deep enough to damage the wild-rose flush in her cheeks and the blue mountain shadows round her eyes. The two English girls and Celine Lorrain came out always sleek as seals, their hair dripping and dank about them, but when Madame de Vervanne's cerise head-wrap was unbound, never a hair was out of place. She thoroughly understood the art of bathing beautifully. Later, arrayed in a wondrous kimono, she would take a sun bath on the beach, scuffling her bare feet daintily in the sand.

"Imaginez-vous!" she told Mrs. Kesteven. "I never knew until this year that I had Greek feet. Le vrai grec, with the arch and perfect toes--see?" She stuck out her short white foot. "An artist revealed it to me this year. Figure it to yourself! I have had them all these years and did not know."

She flung her little laugh to heaven, and the other women could not but join in it at this frank exhibition of vanity. Never was a little lady more thoroughly pleased with herself than Christiane de Vervanne, and, indeed, she was of those who add to the gaiety of nations. Without her cold, brilliant wit and Harriott Kesteven's gentle humour the party might easily have been heavy. Val, shrouding a brooding heart as well as a cropped head behind her blue veil, came forth little except when alone with Harriott or the children, whilst Kitty and Haidee, alternately weighed down by the new-born consciousness of their wonderful beauty and absolute desirability, were not amusing except unintentionally, and often indeed when their plans went wrong were sulky and quarrelsome. At other times they would be buoyed up to a pitch of perky inanity most provoking. But on the whole the two girls improved noticeably under the influence of their first flirtation. Haidee's cowboy habits dropped from her one by one never to return, and untidiness was no longer a habit. Kitty became gentler, too, and less inclined to treat her mother as a slave sent unto the world for her special benefit. Respect for their elders is one of the most attractive traits in the character of young French people, and the girls were quick to note the astonishment and disapproval of the Lorrains at any discourtesy shown by them to Val and Harriott. An actual demonstration of how parents should be treated could not be given by Sacha and Celine unfortunately, for (for reasons of his own at which Mrs. Kesteven and Val could make a good guess), General Lorrain, their only surviving parent, never called with his family at Villa Duval, nor even materialised when the English party took tea at Shai-poo. Val and Harriott often wondered whether he had taken the Comtesse into his confidence over the little contretemps on the digue when Mrs. Kesteven's ankle had been mistaken for that of Madame de Vervanne's. Certainly the latter gave no sign.

It transpired that she was in the position so unfortunate in France of having been obliged to divorce her husband. She was most frank about the details of her conjugal unhappiness, and the fact that she had been thrust a little way out of her own world since the divorce, did not seem to weigh her down very much. The Lorrains were among the few of her liberal and broad-minded friends to whom her position had made no difference. Her husband had been an officer in General Lorrain's regiment, and she married him when she was eighteen and he thirty and très connaisseur.

"Like most young girls I thought it was a very wonderful thing for him that I was conferring my innocence upon him--that he too shared my state of ecstatic bliss, and that it would last for ever. Quelle bêtise! Naturally for him it was nothing--he was soon ennuyée with my bliss. That is a mistake young girls make--they soon bore a sophisticated man with their simplicity."

"A sophisticated Frenchman, I dare say," said Harriott dryly.

"Ah! There you hit the affair on the back, Mistress Kesteven," agreed the Comtesse affably. "I do not spik of your Englishmen with the big hearts and the big feets."

She proceeded to describe the lady who stole her husband.

"She was my best friend, and I was very proud to know her--very chic, very Parisienne, and with the cleverness of forty. Ah! she was as subtle as an Egyptian! What chance had I against her when she began to put her cobra spells on de Vervanne? I could only look on like a fascinated rabbit." She burst into a peal of laughter. Val looked at her thoughtfully, wondering if she were the result of her ill luck or the cause of it. Certainly she had arrived at being much more like the cobra than the rabbit.

"Did you ever hear of the little baker's girl, who had to carry round the tarts and cakes to her master's customers? Some one said to her, 'Do you never take any of the nice tarts, my child?' 'Oh, no,' said she, 'that would be stealing. I only lick them, and that does no one any harm.'"

Harriott threw an apprehensive glance ahead. They were taking one of their long country walks, the younger folk marching in front, with Bran and a tea-basket to leaven their exuberance. It was a relief to see that they were out of ear-shot, for the Comtesse's baker-girl stories were apt to be very spiced bread indeed, and less likely to point a moral than to adorn some one without morals.

"If my friend had only been like the little boulangère," continued the Comtesse mournfully, "I would have said nothing. But no, she was greedy and wicked, and could not content herself except by stealing my nice cake." She trilled and bubbled with laughter. The other woman's thought, if interpreted, might have read much the same as Wolfe Tone's brief reflections on the subject of Madame de Vervanne's countrywomen:

"A fine morality, split me!"

At the same time it was impossible not to feel a touch of admiration for a woman who could turn her tragedy into laughter. Val was wistfully inclined to wish that she could achieve the same state of philosophy herself.

Meanwhile the Comtesse, very pleased with her little tale, and the thought that she had shocked the "women made of wood," as she secretly described all Englishwomen, walked ahead, for the path had narrowed, her skirt held high to avoid the brambles, revealing the famous Greek feet encased in high-heeled suède shoes, with a pair of boy's socks falling round her ankles. She affected these at the seaside, under the impression that she was being truly Arcadian. Suddenly she burst into a little song. Her voice was dainty and pretty, her specialty innocent nursery rhymes with a tang to the tail of them. She never sang anything that was not of eighteenth-century origin. All of her songs were about shepherdesses and boulangères--sometimes a curé would be introduced into the last verse, but his presence there rarely imported holiness.

When the kettle was singing over the fire of wood branches, and the band sat scattered at ease among golden clumps of gorse and purple heather, she trilled them one of the least frisky in her vocabulary:

"Philis plus avare que tendre,

Ne gagnant rien à refuser,

Un jour exigea de Sylvandre

Trente moutons pour un baiser!

"Le lendemain nouvelle affaire!

Pour le berger, le troc fut bon

Car il obtint de la bergère,

Trente baisers pour un mouton!

"Le lendemain Philis plus tendre,

Craignant de déplaire au berger,

Fut trop heureuse de lui rendre

Trente moutons pour un baiser!

"Le lendemain Philis peu sage

Aurait donné moutons et chien

Pour un baiser que le volage

A Lisette donnait pour rien."

After this contribution to the general well-being the Comtesse embraced Bran, who wriggled desperately to get away, for as he had secretly confided to his mother, he did not care for her smell. She said she would let him go if he would sing them a song, so Bran, in spite of his shyness, paid the price with two of his little impromptu anthems, chanting and rolling his eyes at them like a Zulu:

"Mary, Queen of Scots,

Went to sea

In a soft boat,

A boat as soft as cream."

"Bobyian went to church

But he had no money

So he took two sous out of the plate."

They all applauded and hugged him.

"Sapristi! You have the voice of an angel, mon ami," said Sacha.

"I know it well," answered Bran modestly in his pretty French.

"Ah! He is enormous, this Bran! He knows all things well," cried the Comtesse. "And can you tell me now, mon petit ange, where can I get such another little boy as you for myself?"

For the first time Bran's noted phrase faltered on his lips. He considered the point for a moment, but swiftly came to the conclusion that no little angel would care to leave his wings under a cloud in heaven, as he had done, to come down and seek the Comtesse for his mother, so he presently announced to a breathless audience:

"Je ne sais pas!"

"Ah, ha!" twittered the Comtesse. "I like better to hear you say so, my little hen, than to hear you answer that you know well."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE WAYS OF A LOVER

THE WAY OF THE SEA

"All the great things of life are simply done,

Creation, Death, and Love the Double Gate."

MASEFIELD.

One morning Harriott came into Val's room and found her writing at the table with the blue veil fallen off, lying on her shoulders.

"Why, Val!" she exclaimed in genuine astonishment. "Your hair is perfectly lovely! Never, never cover it up any more!"

"Really?" said Val shyly and flushing deep rose. "Do you think I might go without the veil now?"

"Do I think! Look at yourself!" She gave Val a gentle push towards her mirror, where the pale oval face was reflected, a very girlish face still in spite of sorrows, and framed now in a nebulous, wavering frame of feathery, fluttering curls.

"I never saw anything so dear," said Harriott, dipping her hand into the airy softness. "It is ten times prettier than it was before. How on earth did you manage it?"

"It must be the salad oil," said Val laughing. "I 've rubbed in a whole quart bottle during the winter. Poor Bran! Many is the morning he has come sniffing to my pillow with the question, 'Did you have potato salad for supper last night, Mammie?' Is n't it extraordinary what we women will do for vanity's sake, Harry. You 'd think I ought to know better at thirty-two, wouldn't you?"

"Thirty-two, what's that? Women are only just beginning to find themselves at thirty. You 're an infant still, my dear, and fortunately you look it." She added inconsequently, "I think that man of yours must be a pig."

A grave sadness came back into Val's face.

"Never say anything like that, Harry. Those are the kind of words that separate friends."

For a moment Mrs. Kesteven regarded her reproachfully, but her soul was too loyal a one to misunderstand Val's feelings. There was a great soul-likeness between the two women. Only that Val would be always more or less primitive, while Harriott Kesteven had come of a long line of cultivated ancestors, and was more highly civilised. But in the simple elementary things the two felt and saw alike.

"Forgive me, dearest," she said gently. "It is only that I hate to see you so alone--and lonely. You were not meant for such a life."

"I must be unworthy of companionship, for it is always taken from me," said Val, as if to herself, staring at her image in the glass. "I sometimes tremble because of Bran. Oh, Harry, if Bran--if Bran--!" Her eyes darkened with tears, her lips twisted in an anguish of terror and love and foreboding.

"Never think of such a thing," cried Harriott. "It is like inviting the daughter of Zeus to come after you. You will have Bran and much more than Bran, dear. Your life is far from over. There are those whom Sorrow elects her own for many years only to bless them in the end. All will come right with you yet, Val."

"Bless you, Harry! What would one do without friendship?"

"Well, you'll never have to do without me wherever you are, darling. Mine is one of the hands stretched across seas and hills to you. But I fear that my material body must leave you this day week; all sorts of things call me back to London."

"So soon?"

"My dear, do you realise that the summer is nearly over? While we have sat in the sunshine talking of old days, and watching the children grow their wings, two of our precious months are gone. Two of the hundred and twenty, Val!"

"Never mind, they 've left us something," said Val, kissing her.

From that day forward she discarded the blue veil. The French friends were amazed when they saw her without her shroudings. It had a curiously different effect upon them all. Something discontented and critical came into the still-lake eyes of Madame de Vervanne, but Celine used to like to come close and brush her cheek against Val's head as if she or Val were a kitten. The two boys seemed suddenly to wake up and realise that Val was still a factor in the game, at least Sacha did, and the look half gallant, half appraising, which he had so far kept only for Kitty and Haidee or any other pretty girl who happened along, began to lurk in his eye for Val also. With Rupert it was a little different. He had from the first recognised something vital and alluring behind the blue veil, and had never shown himself averse to leaving the girls to walk with Val, carrying her things, or holding one of Bran's hands while she held the other. There had come to exist between them one of those wordless sympathies that make for friendship. They spoke the same language, for there was one great bond between them--the wanderlust. Rupert, strange and rare thing in a Frenchman, had "the love for other lands!" Hoping to assuage his thirst for travel in a legitimate way, and one traditional in his family, he had entered for the Navy and had worked hard to get in from the Lycée St. Louis. But though his physical qualifications for that profession were perfect, he was no student and the exams. had been too much for him. Three times he had gone up, and failed, and the third time was the last. He was over nineteen, and the age limit for men entering the Navy was passed.

At odds and ends of times he told Val these things, and her heart went out to him while her mind greatly wondered at the stupidity of the French Government. Here was an ideal sailor lost to his country because he could not pass a difficult exam., that dealt largely with languages and mathematics, though you had only to watch him with his inferiors, the villagers and fishermen, to know that he possessed all the qualities characteristic of the good sailor and commander of men. Above all he was a lover of the sea. As an Englishman or American other gates to that "lover and mother of men" would have been open to him. But as a French gentleman having failed to get into the Navy, he was obliged to renounce the love of his life, for there was no other way, compatible with honour, of wooing her.

The next best thing then he declared was to join the Colonial Infantry, and achieve travel and adventure in foreign service. But such a decision thoroughly scandalised his family, for the Colonial Infantry is looked upon as the last resort of the destitute. Only men who have n't a penny of private income go to the Colonies, and it was considered a most unfitting fate for a man of such brilliant fortune as Rupert would be master of in a year or so. Even Sacha, who had no more than two hundred and twenty francs a year, disdained the Colonial Infantry and was in the "Dragons," preferring a cavalry regiment likely to be stationed within reach of Paris, living a life of gaiety on credit, always in debt, but always with an open chance of catching an heiress whose fortune would regulate his affairs and settle him in life.

The Colonial Infantry very often means quick promotion, but it also means travel and rough life in far places, and these things do not appeal to the ordinary young Frenchman, who is out for "life" of a very different kind. That they appealed to Rupert showed that he was far from being an ordinary Frenchman. In his family everything was still being done to try and dissuade him. But he showed no signs of budging from his purpose--for him the Colonial Infantry or nothing, he said, and had already accomplished the one year's military service essential to a candidate for St. Cyr. He told Val of his intentions, and she secretly upheld them and encouraged him to go his own way. For to her Rupert looked like one of those whom Nature chooses to track her across deserts and mountains and seas. He had the vague yet ardent eyes of the follower of the Lone Trail. Val recognised in him, boy as he was, a wanderer like herself, and it seemed to her that it would be a tragic thing to confine such a boy to the smug and conventional paths of life in France.

While the Kestevens were still in Mascaret, Rupert was looked upon as being more or less property at the disposal of Kitty, and Val had only an occasional opportunity for the long rambling talks she liked with him. But after the Kestevens had gone, and Val made her début, veilless, indeed hatless, with shining fluffy hair curling in the sun, her eyes containing a secret, and about her that certain flower-like grace which is the peculiar attribute of those who keep always a little dew in the heart, Rupert came hovering continually about her and she grew fonder than ever of him. A reef was taken in their friendship, and no one seemed to mind very much except Christiane de Vervanne. The little Comtesse took rather more than an ordinary interest in Rupert, and when she was about, Val with her seventh sense often felt in the air the presence of the little silken cobwebs that some women, spiderlike, spin out and weave about all young male things. However, Rupert so far appeared to be immune to any spells except those of the sea, and other lands. And because Val too felt these spells he loved to be with her. The Comtesse, on the other hand, looked upon such talk as the ravings of madness. She strongly opposed the Colonial Infantry scheme, and declared it a shame to think of one of La France's sons departing to other stupid countries. It was plain that she meant to do all she could to prevent such a catastrophe.

It was lovely autumn weather, and in the cool of every afternoon the party went forth on blackberrying expeditions, gathering the fruit which the peasants despise and leave to rot upon the hedges. Every morning Villa Duval was fragrant with the fresh scent of blackberries stewing in their own juice, to be eaten at tea time the same day. The flies and the wasps swarmed in, and at intervals all doors and windows would be closed and the family, assisted by the granite-eyed Azalie and armed with bath towels, would engage in a grande battue, and the wooden walls of the villa resounded with slaps and bangs. Only Bran would take no part in these massacres. He had a funny little objection to killing anything, and strongly disapproved of Azalie's methods.

"She is very unkind," he complained. "She just kills the flies. She does n't look into their eyes first to see whether they are poor or good or naughty."

"How do they look when they 're good, assie?" jeered Haidee.

Bran strangely but immediately glazed his eyes, and with some odd movement of his hands acutely suggested the attitude of a sick fly suffering with cold.

"And a naughty one?"

His eyes rolled, and he lifted a paw to his nose. A sprightly fly!

The days were slipping along very peacefully when suddenly Val's eyes were opened to the fact that Haidee was in danger. Her little girlish flirtation with Sacha Lorrain was growing into something more serious.

One afternoon, as Val was sitting in the Jules, with Bran at the imaginary wheel, a puff of wind blew a sheet of paper up into the air and over the side of the boat. Carelessly she took it up, but her idle glance crystallised into consternation when she found that it was a rough draft of what was evidently meant to be a poem, in Haidee's writing.

That an out-of-door, tomboy creature like Haidee should take to writing poems was strange enough, but what startled Val still more was its open dedication to Sacha. It ran into several verses:

"You are more beautiful than the rising sun,

And I love you more,

And I wish to steal you and keep you

As in the old, old law.

"For you are mine, you were born for me:

It is written in the book of Fate

That thou should 'st love me, and I love thee--

Do now, 'fore it is too late.

"Come to me now, to my ever open arms,

And make me glad,

And I will mark our meeting with an everlasting kiss

To make us sad."

Poor Haidee!

When Val had finished reading it her eyes were full of tears, though her lips smiled. It was not poetry, but in its broken, ill-balanced phrases it revealed what poetry does not always do--the heart of the writer and the big things in the writer's nature struggling to get out. The old cowboy rudeness and lawlessness were there, but Val was so thankful to God to see the sign of big things--of generosity, of the courage that dares, of soul. Yes, there under the beat of young passion's wing was another still small sweet sound--the voice of soul. What else did those two last lines reveal?

"...an everlasting kiss

To make us sad."

Only the soul knows the secret of that great sadness lurking under passion's wing!

Poor Haidee! So her feet, too, were touching the outer waves of that stormy sea where women sink or swim, and few reach the happy shore! Yet Val was proud to recognise that she was not afraid to put forth. This was no suppliant cry of one afraid to drown! Here was not one of the world's little clinging creatures that grip round a man's neck and pull him under. She, too, had the strong arm and the stout heart. She would give help, not only seek to take it. Yes, that was what Haidee's poor little poem revealed more than anything to Val--that she was one of life's givers.

"Thank God for it," said Val, "and let her give." After long thought, doubled up in Bran's boat and staring at the sea as was her way, she added: "but not to Sacha Lorrain."

It is not to be supposed that she had spent a whole summer of intimacy with the Lorrain family without drawing up some kind of a moral estimate of each member of it. They were not very harsh affairs, these little estimates. For it was ever Val's way to "heave her log" into the heart rather than the mind, and to what was in the pocket she never gave a thought. Like many of the cleverest women, she had no judgment, no gift of looking past the hardy eye and the smooth smile into the mind to see what was brewing there. But she had instincts, and sometimes inspirations, and a highly tuned ear for sincerity. Also, no act or look or word containing beauty was ever lost on her.