Chapter 10

————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 bluemaillotsat 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 littlecontretempson thediguewhen 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 andtrès 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 soonennuyéewith 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--verychic, 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 littleboulangère," 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-heeledsuèdeshoes, 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 andboulangères--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 SylvandreTrente moutons pour un baiser!"Le lendemain nouvelle affaire!Pour le berger, le troc fut bonCar 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 rendreTrente moutons pour un baiser!"Le lendemain Philis peu sageAurait donné moutons et chienPour un baiser que le volageA 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 seaIn a soft boat,A boat as soft as cream.""Bobyian went to churchBut he had no moneySo 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 XVIIITHE WAYS OF A LOVERTHE 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'sthat? 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 herdébut, 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 agrande 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 justkillsthe 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 theJules, 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 youAs in the old, old law."For you are mine, you were born for me:It is written in the book of FateThat 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 kissTo 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 kissTo 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.Well! it must be confessed that Sacha had emerged but poorly from her process of assessment. She had turned her ear and inclined her eye for many a long day for grace in him--and both had gone unrequited.If Sacha's worldly possessions were small, they still predominated over his jewels of the heart, while in mind he possessed much the same qualities as Christiane de Vervanne--gaiety, egotism, the hard, cold brilliance of a diamond, a straining ambition for all the worldly "good things of life." In their alikeness these two might have been brother and sister, while Celine and Rupert, though only cousins, much more closely resembled each other in nature and bearing.It seemed the usual irony of circumstance that had ordained for Sacha, who loved the good things of the world, comparative poverty, while to Rupert, the John o' Dreams and lover of seas and skies, was given wealth! The latter's father (the general's brother), with a head for finance, had gone into banking instead of the army, and thereafter married a banker's daughter with a fortune, which he had trebled and quadrupled to leave to their only son.However, Sacha, with a small income squeezed out of his father's pension, gave himself a very good time, and had every intention and likelihood of making a rich marriage. In the meantime he was open to any love experiences that came to hand. Like all young Frenchmen, he preferred women older than himself, and went in fear of the young girl--when she was French. But this summer no flirtations with women older than himself had offered; Mrs. Kesteven treated him like a grandson, Val was secret behind her veil, while the Comtesse's beguilements were not for him--he and she understood each other too well. Remained Haidee, who wasjeune filleindeed, without being French.Her daring boyish ways and fresh beauty attracted him immensely, and though he was an honourable fellow, according to his lights, the lights of a young French officer make no very great illumination, and apparently he had not been able to resist the temptation of making her fall in love with him.Val, reviewing the position, knew that it would be fatal to let Haidee lose her head over this young worldling. He was only amusing himself. No Frenchman who is poor ever contemplates marriage with a girl unless she happens to have adotworthy of consideration, in which case the affair becomes a ceremonious one in which parents and relations take an even more important part than the young people themselves. Val knew all this well, and that there was not the faintest idea of anything serious in Sacha Lorrain's mind. But, no doubt, it was very amusing to make a little American girl fall in love--and to him appeared harmless enough. Only, it would have to be put a stop to at once, though at first Val did not quite see how. Impossible to break off friendly relations all at once with the occupants of Shai-poo. They had all become too intimate for that. Besides, such an act would not serve its purpose. Haidee was too wilful and lawless not to find means of being with the Lorrains whatever Val did, and opposition would simply have the effect of making her keener. The only course open to Val was one that Sacha himself had suggested by his manner since she came out from behind her blue veil. Whether it was that he was piqued by her preference for his cousin, or whether he thought a little jealousy might be good for Haidee, it would be hard to say, but at any rate he had shown distinct signs and symbols of being attracted to Val. So far she had disregarded, while being greatly amused by his not very subtle efforts to flirt with her, but she now resolved to make a change in her tactics. If Sacha wanted a flirtation with a woman older than himself he should have it.She gave him an opening the very next day on one of their long excursions, and he grabbed it with a fervour that astonished her. She kept him at her side all the afternoon. Rupert took her defection good-naturedly, and devoted himself to Haidee, who rebuffed him and sulked. The next day, on the beach, Val did the same thing. Sacha became more fervent. Rupert began to look wounded. Haidee glared, and would not speak when they reached home.After all, it was an easy matter. What inexperienced girl, however pretty, can hold her own against a woman of the world, determined on capture--especially when the prey is only a youth? Sacha, his vanity flattered by Val's sudden interest in him, paid little attention to Haidee's scowls and sulks. And when Val realised how serious it was, saw how Haidee paled and flushed and lost her appetite, she lured the mothlike Sacha all the more within the radius of the flame which attracted him. She did not mean to burn him, only to dazzle him a little; but if his wings were slightly scorched, that was his affair. Haidee had got to be saved from unhappiness even at that cost.The thing was made easier by the departure of the Comtesse and Celine to pay a week's visit to some army friends stationed at Cherbourg. With no one left but the two boys, it was simple for Val to take entire possession of Sacha. Haidee was left to the share of Rupert. She liked Rupert well enough--no one could help it. But she was in love with Sacha. Before long the look of an assassin came into her eyes when she turned them upon Val. But Val did not falter in her purpose. Not even when Rupert withdrew from the quartette and let Sacha come alone to the villa. On such occasions they all went out together as usual, but Val kept Sacha by her side. She was the soul of gaiety, she flirted and spun fine threads. Haidee gloomed and grew paler. Val's heart ached for the girl, and she was sick of the business herself, but Sacha's leave was almost up. It was only a matter of days. She determined to stick at the wicket.On Sacha's last evening the whole party from Shai-poo came to Villa Duval with the suggestion of a moonlight walk to the cliff point near the lighthouse. The Comtesse and Celine had returned from Cherbourg bringing in tow a young cavalry lieutenant, a friend of Sacha's, and plainly a satellite of Christiane de Vervanne. The object of the walk was to re-cement a wooden cross upon the ruined walls of the old church of Mascaret. The village in some by-gone age had been situated on the North Foreland, but the gales and storms that besieged it there had driven the villagers inland, and no trace remained of habitation except the four walls of a primitive church, battered and time-stained, pitched perilously on the side of the cliff, like wreckage flung there by some wild storm from the sea below. The little wooden cross that leaned crazily on the east wall had been put there many years past by Rupert and Sacha, and it was a sort of religious rite with them to re-cement it upright in its place every year.It was a glorious night for a walk, and when they came to claim her, Val could make no excuse for not going, though all that day a wave of dreariness had possessed and submerged her, making her long to be alone. She could not plead that Bran would be lonely, for, tired out from an afternoon's net-fishing in the shallows of the river, he was deep asleep, and Hortense by some unwonted chance was available to watch over him. Besides, Haidee looked so wretched and wistful that compassion overcame reason in Val. She began to half doubt her right of interference. Because of this she allowed herself to be taken possession of by Rupert and Celine, while the Comtesse and her lieutenant went on ahead, so that nothing was left for Sacha to do but walk with Haidee. He did it with so bad a grace that the latter was even more unhappy than if she had been left to herself. The two walked in silence and when they were winding in single file round the face of the cliff Sacha made a determined effort to regain Val, but she cold-bloodedly hedged him off. She saw now very plainly that her labour was at an end. He and Haidee were so thoroughly estranged that all danger was past, and her task over. Subtly her manner changed then to one of half quizzing gaiety extremely disconcerting to the amorous Sacha, and yet with which he could find no fault, for her flirtation with him had been so delicately done that it could hardly bear that name. Puzzled and savage at the change in her he turned back to Haidee, but Haidee had her pride that wrestled with her poor little crushed love and for the time at least conquered it. She would not be left and again taken at will. She retired behind a sullen scowl. Sacha, for once, was at a loose end and did not like it a bit.Arrived at thevieille église, the two cousins climbed cautiously up the crumbling walls, Rupert with the string handle of the cement pot between his teeth. The rest of the party, scattered on the sloping cliff-side in the mother-of-pearl moonlight, sat watching them. Below, the sea, a star-spangled mirror, stretched from France to where Alderney humped against the sky-line. On the Jersey coast a powerful light winked spasmodically. The sky, clear in the east, was flecked overhead and in the west with tiny snatches of snowy cloud, regular as knitted stitches, or the scales on a mackerel's back.Softly the Comtesse began to sing to them:I"Au clair de la lune,Mon ami Pierrot,Prête-moi ta plumePour écrire un mot.Ma chandelle est morte,Je n' ai plus de feu.Ouvre-moi ta portePour 1' amour de Dieu!II"Au clair de la lunePierrot répondit:'Je n'ai pas de plume,Je suis dans mon lit!Va chez la voisine,Je crois qu' elle y est,Car dans sa cuisineOn bat le briquet.'III"Au clair de la luneL'aimable LubinFrappe chez la Brune,Elle repond soudain:'Qui frappe de la sorte?'Il dit à son tour:'Ouvrez votre portePour le dieu d'amour!'IV"Au clair de la luneOn n' y voit qu' un peu,On cherche la plumeOn cherche du feu.En cherchant de la sorteJe ne sais ce qu' on trouva,Mais je sais que la porteSur eux se ferma!""Ah!" she sighed softly in the silence that followed her song. "And now we all go back to Paris! That dear Paris!C'est comme un amant qu'il faut quitter pour un revoir plus chaud, et comme tout neuf! If you do not budge from it, it becomes like a husband, fatiguing andexigeant, who makes you work too much and never gives you room to breathe. But----" she gazed ecstatically towards Alderney in which direction the lieutenant and Rupert happened to be sitting. "Go away for a little while and you find yourself dreaming of the sweet suffocating embrace that exalts the veins----""How white the sea looks!" suddenly broke in Val. It troubled her to see how Haidee hung upon the pretty immodest phrases that slipped so easily from Christiane de Vervanne's lips. "What were those lines of yours, Sacha, about when the sea is milk-white and Jersey black as ink and a storm coming to-morrow?""Quand la mer est comme le lait, et Jersey tout noirOn peut attendre un orage avant demain soir,"quoted Sacha sulkily.The Comtesse shot an icy glance at Val. She did not like her rhapsodies interrupted."Épatant, that woman!" she murmured to her cavalry-man.On the walk home Sacha tried once more to re-arrange the order of the party and get Val to himself, but pitilessly she left him to the mercy of Haidee, furious and vengeful as a Gorgon. When they reached home it would have been hard to say whose was the crossest-looking of their two faces. Trinkling back farewells, the Shai-poo party continued on its way down theTerrasse, but Sacha stayed. He had gripped Val's hand over the little fence that enclosed the yard and would not let it go."I must speak to you," he said urgently, fiercely, and did not care that Haidee lingered within earshot, and when she heard his words started, then tore up the flight of steps into the villa."What is it, Sacha?" said Val, gently."You have been playing with me!" He was white-lipped and furious. She felt ashamed though her intention had been good."Oh, Sacha!--do not be angry! Surely you too were playing?--I----""No!" he shot out at her. "It was not play for me--I----"But she would have no declarations."Well--I am truly sorry--you must forgive me--I, am very fond of you, Sacha--both you and Rupert--but you must not think--Why, I am a very serious woman. Think, I have a son, and am almost old enough to be your mother!""Why did you not say that to me before? Why have you been to me these last weeks so full of allure, soattirant?" he asked savagely. "Sapristi! you have been fooling me. It has pleased you to play with my heart!"She thought it the wisest thing then to tell him the flat ungentle truth."As it pleased you to play with Haidee's."He glared at her, and she stood staring steadily back, the light of battle in her eye."Haidee is only a child--her heart is very tender and romantic. I could not have its first bloom rubbed off by you, Sacha--a sophisticated Frenchman who would laugh and go on your way. She is too good for that."He breathed hard."So!" He muttered at last, "That is it?""Yes, that is it." There was a silence. Then she said gently:"And in your heart you do not blame me, Sacha. Think if it had been your little sister, and you had seen her trying to waste her heart's first freshness foolishly, uselessly. What would you have done? I know well enough what you would have done.""You had no right to play----" he began, but he was softened."Oh yes, every right. Haidee is like my little sister."She put her left hand over the gate and laid it on the one which gripped her right."Come! There are no bones broken, Sacha. You know very well that you do not really care about me. This was just one of the little experiences of which you will have scores in your life; the remembrance of it may help you in others. But I have not found it uninteresting. You are a charming and attractive fellow--if I did not happen to be immune--(this was sheer guile on her part, but honey has a great healing quality in such cases). I assure you that I have found it anything but an uninteresting experience. Will you not pay me the same compliment and shake hands on it?"After a little pause he let go his grip of her right hand and took the other into a more gentle grasp. The scowl passed from his face. He was not a bad-hearted fellow--only one of his kind! A smile came into his hard blue eyes."B'en! All rite," he accepted, and kissed her hand, not without a show of grace.Val sighed as she went softly indoors, and a pain shot through her breast as she came upon Haidee in the sitting-room, head on the table, hair spread in every direction, absolute abandonment in her pose. A longing seized Val to sit down and put her arm round the girl's waist, but she knew Haidee too well to succumb to it. Instead, she pretended to notice nothing unusual."A headache, chicken?" she asked casually, and went to hang her hat behind the door. At the sound of her voice Haidee sprang up and stood facing her."I hate you--I hate you--" she cried passionately. "You always take away the people I love from me!""Oh, Haidee!" cried Val, sorrowfully, suddenly remembering the night she had found the child on Westenra's bed."I hate you!" she screamed in concentrated rage, her face dark with passion. "I will hurt you some day. You'll see!"She flung out of the room."So that is my reward for putting up with that silly ass for three weeks!" said Val to herself, and sighed once more. Wearily she lighted her candle and went to warm her heart with a glimpse of her son. He lay flung on the pillow like a warm pink rose. She burrowed her nose gently into his soft neck, scenting the lovely puppy dog scent that all young things have round their throats, scenting, too, the little stinky hands that in his yearning for bed he had only half-washed. With a wet sponge and some drops of eau-de-cologne she gently removed from them the mingled odour of shell-fish, bread and jam, and night dews. Then she made the sign of the Cross over him, and went to bed.

————

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 bluemaillotsat 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 littlecontretempson thediguewhen 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 andtrès 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 soonennuyéewith 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--verychic, 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 littleboulangère," 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-heeledsuèdeshoes, 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 andboulangères--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 SylvandreTrente moutons pour un baiser!"Le lendemain nouvelle affaire!Pour le berger, le troc fut bonCar 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 rendreTrente moutons pour un baiser!"Le lendemain Philis peu sageAurait donné moutons et chienPour un baiser que le volageA Lisette donnait pour rien."

"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 seaIn a soft boat,A boat as soft as cream.""Bobyian went to churchBut he had no moneySo he took two sous out of the plate."

"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.

"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'sthat? 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 herdébut, 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 agrande 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 justkillsthe 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 theJules, 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 youAs in the old, old law."For you are mine, you were born for me:It is written in the book of FateThat 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 kissTo make us sad."

"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 kissTo make us sad."

"...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.

Well! it must be confessed that Sacha had emerged but poorly from her process of assessment. She had turned her ear and inclined her eye for many a long day for grace in him--and both had gone unrequited.

If Sacha's worldly possessions were small, they still predominated over his jewels of the heart, while in mind he possessed much the same qualities as Christiane de Vervanne--gaiety, egotism, the hard, cold brilliance of a diamond, a straining ambition for all the worldly "good things of life." In their alikeness these two might have been brother and sister, while Celine and Rupert, though only cousins, much more closely resembled each other in nature and bearing.

It seemed the usual irony of circumstance that had ordained for Sacha, who loved the good things of the world, comparative poverty, while to Rupert, the John o' Dreams and lover of seas and skies, was given wealth! The latter's father (the general's brother), with a head for finance, had gone into banking instead of the army, and thereafter married a banker's daughter with a fortune, which he had trebled and quadrupled to leave to their only son.

However, Sacha, with a small income squeezed out of his father's pension, gave himself a very good time, and had every intention and likelihood of making a rich marriage. In the meantime he was open to any love experiences that came to hand. Like all young Frenchmen, he preferred women older than himself, and went in fear of the young girl--when she was French. But this summer no flirtations with women older than himself had offered; Mrs. Kesteven treated him like a grandson, Val was secret behind her veil, while the Comtesse's beguilements were not for him--he and she understood each other too well. Remained Haidee, who wasjeune filleindeed, without being French.

Her daring boyish ways and fresh beauty attracted him immensely, and though he was an honourable fellow, according to his lights, the lights of a young French officer make no very great illumination, and apparently he had not been able to resist the temptation of making her fall in love with him.

Val, reviewing the position, knew that it would be fatal to let Haidee lose her head over this young worldling. He was only amusing himself. No Frenchman who is poor ever contemplates marriage with a girl unless she happens to have adotworthy of consideration, in which case the affair becomes a ceremonious one in which parents and relations take an even more important part than the young people themselves. Val knew all this well, and that there was not the faintest idea of anything serious in Sacha Lorrain's mind. But, no doubt, it was very amusing to make a little American girl fall in love--and to him appeared harmless enough. Only, it would have to be put a stop to at once, though at first Val did not quite see how. Impossible to break off friendly relations all at once with the occupants of Shai-poo. They had all become too intimate for that. Besides, such an act would not serve its purpose. Haidee was too wilful and lawless not to find means of being with the Lorrains whatever Val did, and opposition would simply have the effect of making her keener. The only course open to Val was one that Sacha himself had suggested by his manner since she came out from behind her blue veil. Whether it was that he was piqued by her preference for his cousin, or whether he thought a little jealousy might be good for Haidee, it would be hard to say, but at any rate he had shown distinct signs and symbols of being attracted to Val. So far she had disregarded, while being greatly amused by his not very subtle efforts to flirt with her, but she now resolved to make a change in her tactics. If Sacha wanted a flirtation with a woman older than himself he should have it.

She gave him an opening the very next day on one of their long excursions, and he grabbed it with a fervour that astonished her. She kept him at her side all the afternoon. Rupert took her defection good-naturedly, and devoted himself to Haidee, who rebuffed him and sulked. The next day, on the beach, Val did the same thing. Sacha became more fervent. Rupert began to look wounded. Haidee glared, and would not speak when they reached home.

After all, it was an easy matter. What inexperienced girl, however pretty, can hold her own against a woman of the world, determined on capture--especially when the prey is only a youth? Sacha, his vanity flattered by Val's sudden interest in him, paid little attention to Haidee's scowls and sulks. And when Val realised how serious it was, saw how Haidee paled and flushed and lost her appetite, she lured the mothlike Sacha all the more within the radius of the flame which attracted him. She did not mean to burn him, only to dazzle him a little; but if his wings were slightly scorched, that was his affair. Haidee had got to be saved from unhappiness even at that cost.

The thing was made easier by the departure of the Comtesse and Celine to pay a week's visit to some army friends stationed at Cherbourg. With no one left but the two boys, it was simple for Val to take entire possession of Sacha. Haidee was left to the share of Rupert. She liked Rupert well enough--no one could help it. But she was in love with Sacha. Before long the look of an assassin came into her eyes when she turned them upon Val. But Val did not falter in her purpose. Not even when Rupert withdrew from the quartette and let Sacha come alone to the villa. On such occasions they all went out together as usual, but Val kept Sacha by her side. She was the soul of gaiety, she flirted and spun fine threads. Haidee gloomed and grew paler. Val's heart ached for the girl, and she was sick of the business herself, but Sacha's leave was almost up. It was only a matter of days. She determined to stick at the wicket.

On Sacha's last evening the whole party from Shai-poo came to Villa Duval with the suggestion of a moonlight walk to the cliff point near the lighthouse. The Comtesse and Celine had returned from Cherbourg bringing in tow a young cavalry lieutenant, a friend of Sacha's, and plainly a satellite of Christiane de Vervanne. The object of the walk was to re-cement a wooden cross upon the ruined walls of the old church of Mascaret. The village in some by-gone age had been situated on the North Foreland, but the gales and storms that besieged it there had driven the villagers inland, and no trace remained of habitation except the four walls of a primitive church, battered and time-stained, pitched perilously on the side of the cliff, like wreckage flung there by some wild storm from the sea below. The little wooden cross that leaned crazily on the east wall had been put there many years past by Rupert and Sacha, and it was a sort of religious rite with them to re-cement it upright in its place every year.

It was a glorious night for a walk, and when they came to claim her, Val could make no excuse for not going, though all that day a wave of dreariness had possessed and submerged her, making her long to be alone. She could not plead that Bran would be lonely, for, tired out from an afternoon's net-fishing in the shallows of the river, he was deep asleep, and Hortense by some unwonted chance was available to watch over him. Besides, Haidee looked so wretched and wistful that compassion overcame reason in Val. She began to half doubt her right of interference. Because of this she allowed herself to be taken possession of by Rupert and Celine, while the Comtesse and her lieutenant went on ahead, so that nothing was left for Sacha to do but walk with Haidee. He did it with so bad a grace that the latter was even more unhappy than if she had been left to herself. The two walked in silence and when they were winding in single file round the face of the cliff Sacha made a determined effort to regain Val, but she cold-bloodedly hedged him off. She saw now very plainly that her labour was at an end. He and Haidee were so thoroughly estranged that all danger was past, and her task over. Subtly her manner changed then to one of half quizzing gaiety extremely disconcerting to the amorous Sacha, and yet with which he could find no fault, for her flirtation with him had been so delicately done that it could hardly bear that name. Puzzled and savage at the change in her he turned back to Haidee, but Haidee had her pride that wrestled with her poor little crushed love and for the time at least conquered it. She would not be left and again taken at will. She retired behind a sullen scowl. Sacha, for once, was at a loose end and did not like it a bit.

Arrived at thevieille église, the two cousins climbed cautiously up the crumbling walls, Rupert with the string handle of the cement pot between his teeth. The rest of the party, scattered on the sloping cliff-side in the mother-of-pearl moonlight, sat watching them. Below, the sea, a star-spangled mirror, stretched from France to where Alderney humped against the sky-line. On the Jersey coast a powerful light winked spasmodically. The sky, clear in the east, was flecked overhead and in the west with tiny snatches of snowy cloud, regular as knitted stitches, or the scales on a mackerel's back.

Softly the Comtesse began to sing to them:

I"Au clair de la lune,Mon ami Pierrot,Prête-moi ta plumePour écrire un mot.Ma chandelle est morte,Je n' ai plus de feu.Ouvre-moi ta portePour 1' amour de Dieu!II"Au clair de la lunePierrot répondit:'Je n'ai pas de plume,Je suis dans mon lit!Va chez la voisine,Je crois qu' elle y est,Car dans sa cuisineOn bat le briquet.'III"Au clair de la luneL'aimable LubinFrappe chez la Brune,Elle repond soudain:'Qui frappe de la sorte?'Il dit à son tour:'Ouvrez votre portePour le dieu d'amour!'IV"Au clair de la luneOn n' y voit qu' un peu,On cherche la plumeOn cherche du feu.En cherchant de la sorteJe ne sais ce qu' on trouva,Mais je sais que la porteSur eux se ferma!"

"Au clair de la lune,

Mon ami Pierrot,

Prête-moi ta plume

Pour écrire un mot.

Ma chandelle est morte,

Je n' ai plus de feu.

Ouvre-moi ta porte

Pour 1' amour de Dieu!

"Au clair de la lune

Pierrot répondit:

'Je n'ai pas de plume,

Je suis dans mon lit!

Va chez la voisine,

Je crois qu' elle y est,

Car dans sa cuisine

On bat le briquet.'

III

"Au clair de la lune

L'aimable Lubin

Frappe chez la Brune,

Elle repond soudain:

'Qui frappe de la sorte?'

Il dit à son tour:

'Ouvrez votre porte

Pour le dieu d'amour!'

"Au clair de la lune

On n' y voit qu' un peu,

On cherche la plume

On cherche du feu.

En cherchant de la sorte

Je ne sais ce qu' on trouva,

Mais je sais que la porte

Sur eux se ferma!"

"Ah!" she sighed softly in the silence that followed her song. "And now we all go back to Paris! That dear Paris!C'est comme un amant qu'il faut quitter pour un revoir plus chaud, et comme tout neuf! If you do not budge from it, it becomes like a husband, fatiguing andexigeant, who makes you work too much and never gives you room to breathe. But----" she gazed ecstatically towards Alderney in which direction the lieutenant and Rupert happened to be sitting. "Go away for a little while and you find yourself dreaming of the sweet suffocating embrace that exalts the veins----"

"How white the sea looks!" suddenly broke in Val. It troubled her to see how Haidee hung upon the pretty immodest phrases that slipped so easily from Christiane de Vervanne's lips. "What were those lines of yours, Sacha, about when the sea is milk-white and Jersey black as ink and a storm coming to-morrow?"

"Quand la mer est comme le lait, et Jersey tout noirOn peut attendre un orage avant demain soir,"

"Quand la mer est comme le lait, et Jersey tout noir

On peut attendre un orage avant demain soir,"

quoted Sacha sulkily.

The Comtesse shot an icy glance at Val. She did not like her rhapsodies interrupted.

"Épatant, that woman!" she murmured to her cavalry-man.

On the walk home Sacha tried once more to re-arrange the order of the party and get Val to himself, but pitilessly she left him to the mercy of Haidee, furious and vengeful as a Gorgon. When they reached home it would have been hard to say whose was the crossest-looking of their two faces. Trinkling back farewells, the Shai-poo party continued on its way down theTerrasse, but Sacha stayed. He had gripped Val's hand over the little fence that enclosed the yard and would not let it go.

"I must speak to you," he said urgently, fiercely, and did not care that Haidee lingered within earshot, and when she heard his words started, then tore up the flight of steps into the villa.

"What is it, Sacha?" said Val, gently.

"You have been playing with me!" He was white-lipped and furious. She felt ashamed though her intention had been good.

"Oh, Sacha!--do not be angry! Surely you too were playing?--I----"

"No!" he shot out at her. "It was not play for me--I----"

But she would have no declarations.

"Well--I am truly sorry--you must forgive me--I, am very fond of you, Sacha--both you and Rupert--but you must not think--Why, I am a very serious woman. Think, I have a son, and am almost old enough to be your mother!"

"Why did you not say that to me before? Why have you been to me these last weeks so full of allure, soattirant?" he asked savagely. "Sapristi! you have been fooling me. It has pleased you to play with my heart!"

She thought it the wisest thing then to tell him the flat ungentle truth.

"As it pleased you to play with Haidee's."

He glared at her, and she stood staring steadily back, the light of battle in her eye.

"Haidee is only a child--her heart is very tender and romantic. I could not have its first bloom rubbed off by you, Sacha--a sophisticated Frenchman who would laugh and go on your way. She is too good for that."

He breathed hard.

"So!" He muttered at last, "That is it?"

"Yes, that is it." There was a silence. Then she said gently:

"And in your heart you do not blame me, Sacha. Think if it had been your little sister, and you had seen her trying to waste her heart's first freshness foolishly, uselessly. What would you have done? I know well enough what you would have done."

"You had no right to play----" he began, but he was softened.

"Oh yes, every right. Haidee is like my little sister."

She put her left hand over the gate and laid it on the one which gripped her right.

"Come! There are no bones broken, Sacha. You know very well that you do not really care about me. This was just one of the little experiences of which you will have scores in your life; the remembrance of it may help you in others. But I have not found it uninteresting. You are a charming and attractive fellow--if I did not happen to be immune--(this was sheer guile on her part, but honey has a great healing quality in such cases). I assure you that I have found it anything but an uninteresting experience. Will you not pay me the same compliment and shake hands on it?"

After a little pause he let go his grip of her right hand and took the other into a more gentle grasp. The scowl passed from his face. He was not a bad-hearted fellow--only one of his kind! A smile came into his hard blue eyes.

"B'en! All rite," he accepted, and kissed her hand, not without a show of grace.

Val sighed as she went softly indoors, and a pain shot through her breast as she came upon Haidee in the sitting-room, head on the table, hair spread in every direction, absolute abandonment in her pose. A longing seized Val to sit down and put her arm round the girl's waist, but she knew Haidee too well to succumb to it. Instead, she pretended to notice nothing unusual.

"A headache, chicken?" she asked casually, and went to hang her hat behind the door. At the sound of her voice Haidee sprang up and stood facing her.

"I hate you--I hate you--" she cried passionately. "You always take away the people I love from me!"

"Oh, Haidee!" cried Val, sorrowfully, suddenly remembering the night she had found the child on Westenra's bed.

"I hate you!" she screamed in concentrated rage, her face dark with passion. "I will hurt you some day. You'll see!"

She flung out of the room.

"So that is my reward for putting up with that silly ass for three weeks!" said Val to herself, and sighed once more. Wearily she lighted her candle and went to warm her heart with a glimpse of her son. He lay flung on the pillow like a warm pink rose. She burrowed her nose gently into his soft neck, scenting the lovely puppy dog scent that all young things have round their throats, scenting, too, the little stinky hands that in his yearning for bed he had only half-washed. With a wet sponge and some drops of eau-de-cologne she gently removed from them the mingled odour of shell-fish, bread and jam, and night dews. Then she made the sign of the Cross over him, and went to bed.

Back to Index Next