————The barber arrived at three o'clock, and Val sat trembling before her dressing-table. She had arranged two mirrors so that she could view the whole proceeding, but as soon as the barber commenced she closed her eyes tight. Bran and Haidee stationed themselves at either side of the table to see fair play.The barber was frankly amazed at the decision of Madame to cut off her feathery hair. Even at the last moment he asked--holding it up in his hands and shaking it out in sprays:"Does Madame realise what a change it will make in her appearance? Would it not be better if Madame had it merely cut short, leaving about two inches all roundà la Jeanne d'Arc, so--?" He stuck his little pudgy fingers out below her ears to show the desirable length."No, no, no!" cried Val, without opening her eyes. "Does he think I want to look like a pony with my mane hogged! Cut it off close, itmustgrow long and thick as it used to do. Tell him, Haidee."Haidee told him as much as it was good for him to know--no mention of ponies."Bon!" said Monsieur le Barbier agreeably, but he looked doubtful, thinking to himself that hair seldom grew much after the age of thirty, and the lady looked well that. When one side was gone Val opened her eyes and gave a deep cry. If it could have been replaced then, she would have abandoned her idea and made the best of what she had. As it was she closed her eyes again, but during the rest of the operation great tears rolled down her face upon her tightly clasped hands. And when all was over the children were swept from the room and she locked herself in with her heart's bitterness. Even Bran was not permitted to comfort her.It is true that nothing makes a greater difference to the appearance of a woman than to cut off her hair. The tale of every sin she has committed and every sorrow she has suffered seems to be written bare and unsheltered upon her face for all the world to read. What subtle alleviation there is in a frame of hair round the face of a sinner it is hard to say: but it is a problem whether Mary Magdalene, with all her shining story of repentance would have appealed to the love and chivalry of the world in quite the same way if she had been handed down through the ages without her wondrous hair.When Valentine Valdana looked in the glass at her pale, oval face with no darkness above it to soften the fine lines of her temples, faintly hollowed cheeks, and sombre eyes whose defect appeared to have become suddenly accentuated, she longed in shame and dismay for a mask. It seemed to her that she had indecently exposed her sorrows to the world; that exile, misery, and all the failures of her life were plainly written for even the most unintelligent eye to read. A curious sense too of having done something disloyal to others in revealing her unhappiness crept into her mind for an instant, but she made haste to dismiss it, and would not even specify the vague "others" to herself. None knew better than she the power of a beloved hand to strike deepest, to hollow out cheeks, sharpen temples, and put shadows into eyes: but she would never have admitted it. Hers was no accusing heart. She blamed nobody but herself for her failures--not even the Fate that had bestowed on her that double nature of artist and lover which rarely if ever makes for happiness. She only felt the despair of the convict and almost wished herself one, so that she might hide in a cell. At length she sought her gay scarf of asphodel-blue and arranged it over her head like a nun's veil. It was thus that she presented herself to the children in the kindly dusk. Supper already stood upon the table. Haidee displayed unusual tact, but Bran was full of curiosity."Are you always going to wear that wale tied on you?" he inquired."Until my hair grows long again," said poor Val, biting her lip painfully."Sleep in it too?" Val nodded, and Haidee made haste to help Bran topommes friteswhich he loved.Next morning, Bran waking up and throwing out an arm for his matutinal hug, encountered something strange to his touch: something round, bumpy, and slightly scrubby, very different to the soft nest he was used to dabble his hand in as soon as he woke. The blue scarf had slipped down while Val slept and her shorn head lay cruelly outlined upon the pillow. Bran knelt up and considered her in consternation mingled with pity, then finding himself in the attitude of prayer, mechanically crossed himself and murmured his morning orison, his eyes still fixed on his mother's head:"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I give you my heart, take it please, and preserve it from sin.""Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I give you my soul and my life."Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, help me in my last agony."Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, grant that I live and die in thy holy company. Amen."Immediately afterwards humour, that Irish vice, overcame all gentler feelings; like a certain famous Bishop of Down, Bran would lose a friend for a joke. He woke Val with a cruel jest:"Bon jour, Monsieur le Curé!"The curé of Mascaret was a Breton as rugged as his country, with haggard spiritual eyes and an upper lip you could built a fort on, as the saying is; he intensified his uncomeliness by wearing his hair so close-shaved that it was impossible to say where histonsurebegan or ended. To be told by her loving but candid son that she resembled this good man was a cruel thrust to Val, and the memory of it darkened life for many days to come. She wrapped herself in gloom and the blue veil, and nothing more was heard of the fez cap and cigarettes except that in good time the Stores forwarded them and the French Customs taxed them. After once trying on the fez and finding herself the image of a sallow and melancholy Turk, she had cast it from her. Her one instinct was to hide her ugliness from every one. Even at the sight of John the Baptist she would fly and hide, and she never left the house except after dark, when for exercise she would sometimes race Haidee up and down thedigue, or run along the beach at midnight, her scarf floating behind her in the wind, and her head bare to give her "roots" a chance.These proceedings gravely annoyed the Customs officers distributed in the little straw-littered watch-huts that line the Normandy coast. Instead of tucking themselves in their blankets for a peaceful night, they were obliged to keep awake for fear the mad American woman meant either to commit suicide or meet a boat full of brandy and cigars from Jersey.CHAPTER XIVTHE WAYS OF LITERATURE"The voyage of even the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks."From Jersey Val had made a bee-line for Paris which she knew well, and where she had hopes of renewing her mental energy by the sights and sounds of a great city and association with other brain workers. Autumn removals were in full swing and there was no great difficulty in finding house-room for herself and the children, though she was unprepared to find how Paris rents had risen since the days when she and her mother sojourned in the Latin Quarter. It was to that part of Paris she naturally turned--the only possible part for artists and writers to live, though the rich and empty-headed are fond of calling it the "wrong side" of the river. A studio seemed the most suitable form of residence, for she knew she would not be able to work in a small room, and she hated the sordid construction of a cheap flat. She was fortunate in finding a goodatelierin a little secludedrueon the confines of the Quarter--a big, high room, with kitchen and small bedroom attached, looking out onto a little square yard with clusters of shrubs, ivied walls, and a few old battered statues that lent a picturesque air. Here she had settled down and with resolute energy begun the series of "Wanderfoot" articles for which Branker Preston had obtained a commission. It was an arduous task. No matter how much material is stored in the mind it is not easy to import the air and colour of far-off lands into a Parisatelier. The art of putting things down had not yet been recaptured either. Still, the stimulus of even the short journey from Jersey to Paris had done something for her, and though to her critical eye the articles she achieved seemed but pale echoes of her former work, they at least paid the rent and kept things going in rue Campagne Premiere. The continuation of Haidee's education became a problem needing instant attention; for Val very soon realised that the Latin Quarter with its liberal ideas of morality and its fascinating students was no place for a young impressionable girl. Her own child she would have allowed to stay, for she knew that anything with her nature would come to no harm among these careless, attractive people, to whom she felt herself blood-kin. But Haidee, the child of a pretty flighty mother, was of different stock. Besides, there was a responsibility to Westenra in the matter. There were no convents left in Paris, or indeed, in France. All those lovely homes where girls learned a sweet sedateness and many beautiful arts had been closed by a ruthless government. No more in France may the gentle coifed women impart composure and beauty of mind to English and American girls and train the aristocratic children of France to a love of Church and Country. What the loss is to the sum of the world's harmony can never be computed, but American and English mothers have a slight realisation of it.It was in Belgium that Val at last found what was needed for Haidee--a little community of French nuns who, refusing to unveil, had been obliged to flee over the border, and there had founded a convent to which many good Catholics in Paris sent their children. It was well within Val's means too, for the living is cheap in Belgium, and the fare in the convent was simple though good. Haidee hated terribly to go, but Val was firm, though she held out the promise of early liberation if Haidee would work well at French and try and pass herbrevet simple. This was no difficult task, for the girl had been well grounded in French during their sojourn in Jersey. Remained the problem of Bran--and little children are a problem in France to parents of limited means. No one caters for them as in other countries. No one even understands the art of teaching and amusing them at the same time, nor even how to feed them. There are no kindergartens and no milk puddings! Small wonder that French babies are small and sallow and sad! Since the nuns were driven out there are only the public Lycées where strong and weak, rough and gentle, are jumbled together with results that no thinking woman would welcome for her child. From their tenderest years French children are crammed with lessons, pushed ahead to pass exams, while the business of play so necessary for little children is almost entirely suppressed.Val very certainly had no intention of confiding her son to such institutions. She was therefore obliged to hire a daily governess for him, for though, at his age, he needed little teaching, he had to be sent out of doors so that she might have silence and solitude wherein to work. Even this was a costly business. In England a nursery governess can be afforded by almost every one, but in France it costs one hundred francs a month to have your child well taken care of and taught his alphabet for a few hours a day.Val did not grudge it, but what worried her was that Bran did not thrive. Paris was no place for him. The Luxembourg Gardens make a good play-ground for city-bred children, but Bran was Val's own child in his need of air and space and horizon. His bloom faded a little, and he began to look very fair and spiritual. Also his love of the picture and statue galleries seemed to his mother something too wistful and wonderful in a small boy, and brought tears to her pillow in the silence of many a night. Then she took him to Belgium for awhile and left him with Haidee and the good nuns. He was a shy creature, though he hated any one to know it, and believed he hid his secret well behind a set smile and little hardy incomprehensible sayings. When the nuns clustered round him calling him their "little Jesus," a favourite name in France for a pretty child, he disdained to shelter behind Val's skirts, as instinct bade him, but nothing could be got out of him except an enigmatic saying he always kept for strangers:"The cat says bow-wow-wow, andThe dog says meow, meow, meow."All the while he smiled his little bright smile and his eyes roving keenly noted every detail of the pale æsthetic faces. Even the tears in the Reverend Mother's eyes did not escape him. Afterward he said to Val:"I like that one with the floating eyes. I think she wishes she had a nice little boy like me. Her voice was littler than a pin's head when she called me herpetit Jesu. But why do they nearly all have green teeth?"When Val kissed him farewell it nearly broke her heart to see the brave smile he maintained, though Haidee was sniffling and snuffling at his elbow, partly with momentary grief but mostly with indignation at being, as she rudely phrased it: "Shut up in a convent with a lot of old pussycats."Back in Paris the studio seemed desolate and empty. Bran had become so much a part of his mother's being and life that without him she was like a bird from whom a wing had been torn. A month later Haidee wrote:"I think Bran is fretting. Whenever I speak to him he puts that little fixed grin on his mouth, but you should see his eyes."Within an hour Val was in the Brussels express speeding for that dear sight. On the journey back to Paris, happy now and healed of her broken wing, she heard all the history of his lonely nights and the "purply-red pain" that he got in his stomach when he thought of her. Cuddled to her side he wept as he had never wept whilst separated from her, and Val's tears ran down her face too while she listened, registering a vow that she would never part with him again.So once more he went out with a governess and came home to his mother full of original criticisms of Moreau's pictures and the statues of Rodin, until one morning nearly two years after their arrival in Paris, and just when Haidee had arrived for the summer holidays, Val rose up from her bed with the itch for travel in her feet, and the longing quickly communicated to the children for the sight of a clear horizon. They tore their possessions from the walls, stuffed them into trunks, and shook the dust of Paris from their feet."Let's go to Italy and live on olives and spaghetti, "was Haidee's suggestion, but Bran knew the news of the world."We might get an earthquake!"The size of the cheque from Branker Preston, however, was what really decided the affair, limiting them to wandering happily enough in Brittany. But the water and primitive methods of Breton cooks made Val think nervously of typhoid, and after a time she headed for Normandy. Normans are cleaner in their household ways than Bretons, of whom they slightingly speak as "les pores Bretons," declaring that they eat out of holes in the table and never wash the holes. Besides, Normandy in winter is milder than Brittany. So, travelling by highways and byways, they happened at last on Mascaret.It was the tag end of September when they arrived. All the summer visitors were gone and the big silver beach deserted, but summer itself still lingered. They got an entrancing glimpse of the gentle green and gold beauty of the place before the chills of autumn set in. Even then they had been able to bathe and go sailing in the fishing boat of one ofpèreDuval's sons, who was now in his turn lighthouse-keeper of Mascaret. For ten sunny October days, too, they had assisted with all the ardour of novitiates atpèreDuval's cider making, becoming acquainted with the secrets ofcidre bouché, and the grades to be found incidre ordinaireunto the third and fourth watering. They even sampled the latter as drunk by the fishermen and called for at the cafés by the name ofle boisson avec le brulot dedans: which signifies cider very liberally diluted with French cognac. Then the winter closed in on Mascaret with wild gales and high-flowing tides. On Christmas Eve snow came softly down, so that the walk to midnight mass had been like acting in that scene painted by a Dutch painter where the village folk are seen winding their way through the snow, lanterns and hot-water bottles in their hands, to the distant church with windows full of red light. All the winter interests of the simple village had been sampled and shared by Val and the children, and they had been happier there than ever in France. The children loved the freedom of the place and thebonhomieof the French folk so different to English people of that class. The three went about in their red sweaters and lived a life of absolute unconvention. It was a good place to write a masterpiece in--if one were only a master--was Val's ironical thought, and in spite of her self-directed irony, she did achieve during the first months there a wonderful little curtain raiser, which Branker Preston had no difficulty in disposing of to a London manager. It dealt with Boers and Zulus, and had been well received, but unfortunately the play it had preceded in the bill was a failure and the two were withdrawn together before Val could greatly benefit, but it had brought in five guineas a week for six weeks, and this success had put her in heart for further work of the kind. She had sickened of writing "Wanderfoot" articles from a chair. She could by this time have written some very spirited ones on the subject of France in general and Normandy in particular, but she had her reasons for not wishing to attract attention to her whereabouts, as such articles would surely have done. Preston advised her to write a novel, but she knew she had neither the patience to spin a long story through many chapters to its end, nor the gift of character portrayal. What was hers was a sense for situation, colour, and atmosphere, and it occurred to her that the best vehicle for a display of these qualities was the theatre. Her first little venture had attracted the attention of several managers, and one of them told Preston that he was ready to consider a three-act play by her. It was this play she was busy upon now. But it was sometimes hard to transport the atmosphere of far-away tropical Natal into a little wooden villa facing the English Channel, with a wild spring gale tearing at the windows, and the rollers booming like cannon on the Barleville beach--for the promise of summer had gone as swiftly as it came, and the spring tides were flooding up the river flinging great walls of spray over thedigueand splashing three feet deep across the Terrasse, right to the steps of theHotel de la Mer, so that the journey to the village had to be made by a path up the cliff.Val found that the only way to ignore Normandy and the bleak mists ofLa Manchewas to sit over achaufferettefull of bright red embers of charcoal, letting the heat steal up her skirts and enveloping her whole person from the soles of her feet to her scalp in a lovely glow. Immediately she would begin to write things full of the tropical languor of Africa. In her brain palms waved, little pot-bellied Kaffirs rolled in the hot dirt, sunshine blazed over a blue and green land, the air was filled with the scent of mimosa, and great-limbed Zulus danced in rhythmic lines with chant and stamp and swing of assegai before Cetewayo, the great and cruel king.Unfortunately, achaufferetteis not always an easy thing to manage. Like everything French it has a temperament, and is liable to moods when it will burn and moods when it won't. It is a wooden or tin box, perforated at the top and open at one side to admit an earthenware bowl full of the charcoal which is calledcharbon de bois--actually calcined morsels of green wood. The baker makes this charbon by sticking green wood branches into his hot oven after he has finished baking his bread, but each baker makes a limited supply only, and will not sell it except to people who buy his bread. Every one useschaufferettein Normandy during the winter, and visitors are given one to put their feet on as soon as they enter a house, though sometimes when the host is rich enough to keep a perpetual fire going, a supply of hot bricks is kept in the oven instead.Val'schaufferettewas of most uncertain temper. Hortense always lit it in the morning, and left it by the writing-table. When Val came to it all that had to be done was to gently insert an old spoon under the little ash heap and lift it all round, when a red hot centre of glowing embers would disclose itself. But sometimes an old nail or piece of "Carr-diff" found its way by accident into the pot, then the charbon would immediately sulk itself into oblivion, or sometimes for no reason at all after being perfectly lighted it would just go out. Ensued a struggle in which Val and Haidee invariably came off second-best. They would take the pot out of its box and stand it on a window-sill with the window drawn low to make a draught; put it on the front door step and, kneeling down, blow on it until fine ash sat thick upon their noses and their eyes were full of tears; build paper bonfires on it; fan it wildly with newspapers. All to no avail! Usually that was the end of work and inspiration for the day. Val declared that she could notthinkwith cold feet. But sometimes oldpèreDuval, compassionate for the mad, would send up his wooden box, large enough for two men to warm their feet on, with a great iron saucepan full of glowing charbon inside, and Val would sit toasting over it and write things of a tropical languor extraordinary.Haidee had passed herbrevet simple, an exam, about equal to the English Oxford Junior, and the American 6th standard, and was now working for thebrevet supérieurewith a French woman who had been a governess before she married a retired commercial traveller and settled in Mascaret. The discovery of this good woman was a stroke of luck for Val, though certainly Haidee did not consider it so. However, her lessons only took up four hours a day. For the rest she and Bran idled joyous and care-free through life, climbing the cliff, fishing, digging for sand-eels, making long excursions inland, or meeting the fishing boats in the evening when they came in with the day's haul, and all the villagers would be at theportto bargain for fish. Haidee usually haggled for and bought araie(dog-fish) for the next day's dinner, and Bran would run a stick through its ribald-looking mouth, and carry the slithery monstrous thing home, to be met by scowls from Hortense, who, stolid as she was, hated the sight of araie, and could not face the business of washing and gutting it without cries ofdouleurand disgust."Ah! C'est craintive! C'est affreux!"But meat was too dear for daily consumption, andraiethe only fish brought in by the boats throughout the winter months, so it had to be eaten, and some one had to prepare it. And after all, wrestling withraiewas one of the jobs for which Hortense was paid three francs a week. It was her business to come in the morning at seven o'clock, make the fires, and deliver "little breakfast" at each bedside; afterwards she swept and made the beds, then disappeared until just before lunch, when she came to perform upon theraieand execute one or two culinary feats that were beyond the scope of Val or Haidee--such as cutting up onions, which neither of them could accomplish without weeping aloud, or putting the chipped potatoes into a pan full of boiling dripping, a business that when conducted by Val made a rain of grease spots all over the kitchen and scalded every one in sight. After washing the midday dishes, and chopping up vegetables for the soup, Hortense would consider her function over for the day, and leave Val and Haidee to grapple as best they might with tea, supper, fires, and thechaufferette. The supper was no very great difficulty, merely a matter of putting the cut vegetables into a pot with a large lump of specially prepared and seasoned dripping, and standing said pot on the stove until supper-time, when its contents would be marvellously transformed intosoupe à la graise, a savoury and nourishing broth eaten as an evening meal by every peasant in Normandy. The fires were the greatest nuisance. The stove in the kitchen either became a red-hot furnace and purred like a man-eater, or else went out; and the stove with an open grate in Val's room, which old man Duval had paid a month's rent for and gone all the way to Cherbourg to fetch, had a way of going out also before any one even noticed that it was low; then there would be much scratching with a poker, searching for kindling wood, pouring out of paraffin, sudden happy blazes that nearly took the roof off, and black smuts everywhere. When all was over, and a beautiful fire roaring after the united efforts of the family, Val would find that herchaufferettehad gone out! It was hard to even think masterpieces among such distractions, to say nothing of writing them. Tea was easily got. Haidee made the toast on the salad fork, Val buttered it with dripping, Bran laid the table. Then all three sat with their feet on the stove, drinking out of the big coffee bowls, eating every scrap of the delicious smoky toast and licking their fingers afterwards. If Val had written anything funny or dramatic that day she would sometimes read it out to them, but for the most part her instinct was to hide what she wrote. She said she felt as if she had lost something afterwards, and if any one had been even looking at her written sheets they never seemed quite the same to her again--some virtue went out of her work the moment she shared it with any one.Usually, after tea she settled down for another struggle with her ideas, and Bran and Haidee went for a prowl on thediguein the hope of adventures. Bran, whose mind was as full of fairies as if he had been born in the wilds of Ireland, was always in hope of meeting a giant or a dwarf, but he had learned not to mention these aspirations to Haidee. Anyway, there was always the village gossip to listen to in thepetit port, where the fishing boats anchored and usually the excitement of watching theQuatre Frèrescome chup--chup--chupping up the river to her moorings. She was a natty and picturesque trawler, with a petrol engine that was the admiration of the village installed in her bowels. Because of this engine she was known as theChalutier à petrole, but at Villa Duval she was called by Bran's translation of her name,The Cat's Frères. She never caught anything butraie, and of this despised species far fewer than any of the other boats, but she dashed in and out of the harbour with great slam and needed five men to handle her. There was a legend that the petrol engine frightened the fish away. It was known that the four brothers who owned her were anxious to get rid of her. Every one knew that she cost more than she brought in. But Haidee and Bran shared a fugitive hope that Val's play would make them all so rich that they would be able to acquire her as a pleasure boat.Sometimes strange craft from Granville or a Brittany port would come in for the night, and there was theSt. Joseph, a great fishing trawler from Lannion, carrying a master and seven hands, that put in when weather was heavy. Her sails were patched with every colour of the rainbow, her decks were filthy, and her years sat heavy upon her--you could hear her creaking and groaning two miles from shore: but to Haidee and Bran she stood for the true romance! She always brought in tons of fish, not only the everlastingraie, but deep-sea fish, and as soon as her arrival was heralded all the village sabots came clipper-clopping down the terrace, shawls clutched round bosoms, the wind flicking bright red spots in old cheeks, every one anxious to pick and choose from the mass of coal-fish, red gurnet, plaice, congers, and mullets that was hooked out of the hold and flung quivering ashore. The big weather-beaten fishermen in their sea-boots bandied jests with the carking old village wives and the girls showered laughter. In the end, the villagers departed with full baskets, and the seamen well content adjourned to thepetit caféclose by for a "cup of coffee with a burn in it" and a good meal.CHAPTER XVWAYS SACRED AND SECULAR"A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene."--EMERSON.In May, the gentle month of May, the weather cleared up again, and green things commenced to sprout and bloom on the cliff above Villa Duval. The country-side began to bloom and blossom as the rose. From the high coast that lies facing the sea, Jersey could be discerned on clear days etched as if in India ink upon the horizon thirteen miles away. Clots of sea-samphire burst into flower, cleverly justifying its name ofcreste marineby just keeping out of reach of the high tides. The gorse showed dots of yellow amongst its prickles, and little brilliant blue squills stuck up their perky faces and gave out a sweet scent. All along the path to the lighthouse wild thyme came out in springy masses, and the mad Americans often went up that way for the special purpose of lying on it as on a soft, pink silk rug. It seemed to cause them a peculiar kind of joy to put their faces down in it, crying, "Oh! oh! oh!"The garbage-hole across the road in front of Villa Duval which the dustman had been trying for many summers to transform into a building plot by filling it with empty tins and rubbish from the hotel, and which had been an eyesore all the winter, now suddenly became a place of beauty, for a lot of prickly, thistly-looking plants growing among the jam tins burst into a blaze of red and yellow. It turned out that they were poppies that had been keeping themselves secret all through the winter, and the yellow bright gold of "Our Lady's bedstraw." One day Haidee brought home some long, fragile trails of cinquefoil, one of the first spring things, and Val, worn and haggard under her blue veil, pinned it over her heart because she had read in old Elizabethan days that cinquefoil was supposed to be a cure for inflammations and fevers. She quoted to Haidee what an old herbalist had once written of such cures:"Let no man despise them because they are plain and easy: the ways of God are all such."Haidee flushed faintly and retired into awkward silence, shy like most girls of her age at the mention of God. She was going to make her communion the next day with the First Communion candidates, but it was not her first, for that had been made once when she was ill in New York. She was to be confirmed in June when the archbishop of a neighbouring parish intended to visit Mascaret and hold a confirmation service.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 abonconfession, 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 thePetit 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 herpénitencewould 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 burymèrele 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. OldpéreDuval 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 ofraie, 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 lastlouisto 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 inpéreDuval'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 issuperbe... just the thing for apremière communion... it is not for every one I would cut that lamb, but for such customers as you and yourbelle mamanthere 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 oldveuveMichel 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 thelouis. 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,veuveMichel 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 oldveuveMichel 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 thechi-chithat 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 suchméchanteriein 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 thepetit portto seek the garbage heaps in the river bed. As the three stood staring after him a little red-facedbonnecame 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 theTerrasseHaidee 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 thebonneat 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.
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The barber arrived at three o'clock, and Val sat trembling before her dressing-table. She had arranged two mirrors so that she could view the whole proceeding, but as soon as the barber commenced she closed her eyes tight. Bran and Haidee stationed themselves at either side of the table to see fair play.
The barber was frankly amazed at the decision of Madame to cut off her feathery hair. Even at the last moment he asked--holding it up in his hands and shaking it out in sprays:
"Does Madame realise what a change it will make in her appearance? Would it not be better if Madame had it merely cut short, leaving about two inches all roundà la Jeanne d'Arc, so--?" He stuck his little pudgy fingers out below her ears to show the desirable length.
"No, no, no!" cried Val, without opening her eyes. "Does he think I want to look like a pony with my mane hogged! Cut it off close, itmustgrow long and thick as it used to do. Tell him, Haidee."
Haidee told him as much as it was good for him to know--no mention of ponies.
"Bon!" said Monsieur le Barbier agreeably, but he looked doubtful, thinking to himself that hair seldom grew much after the age of thirty, and the lady looked well that. When one side was gone Val opened her eyes and gave a deep cry. If it could have been replaced then, she would have abandoned her idea and made the best of what she had. As it was she closed her eyes again, but during the rest of the operation great tears rolled down her face upon her tightly clasped hands. And when all was over the children were swept from the room and she locked herself in with her heart's bitterness. Even Bran was not permitted to comfort her.
It is true that nothing makes a greater difference to the appearance of a woman than to cut off her hair. The tale of every sin she has committed and every sorrow she has suffered seems to be written bare and unsheltered upon her face for all the world to read. What subtle alleviation there is in a frame of hair round the face of a sinner it is hard to say: but it is a problem whether Mary Magdalene, with all her shining story of repentance would have appealed to the love and chivalry of the world in quite the same way if she had been handed down through the ages without her wondrous hair.
When Valentine Valdana looked in the glass at her pale, oval face with no darkness above it to soften the fine lines of her temples, faintly hollowed cheeks, and sombre eyes whose defect appeared to have become suddenly accentuated, she longed in shame and dismay for a mask. It seemed to her that she had indecently exposed her sorrows to the world; that exile, misery, and all the failures of her life were plainly written for even the most unintelligent eye to read. A curious sense too of having done something disloyal to others in revealing her unhappiness crept into her mind for an instant, but she made haste to dismiss it, and would not even specify the vague "others" to herself. None knew better than she the power of a beloved hand to strike deepest, to hollow out cheeks, sharpen temples, and put shadows into eyes: but she would never have admitted it. Hers was no accusing heart. She blamed nobody but herself for her failures--not even the Fate that had bestowed on her that double nature of artist and lover which rarely if ever makes for happiness. She only felt the despair of the convict and almost wished herself one, so that she might hide in a cell. At length she sought her gay scarf of asphodel-blue and arranged it over her head like a nun's veil. It was thus that she presented herself to the children in the kindly dusk. Supper already stood upon the table. Haidee displayed unusual tact, but Bran was full of curiosity.
"Are you always going to wear that wale tied on you?" he inquired.
"Until my hair grows long again," said poor Val, biting her lip painfully.
"Sleep in it too?" Val nodded, and Haidee made haste to help Bran topommes friteswhich he loved.
Next morning, Bran waking up and throwing out an arm for his matutinal hug, encountered something strange to his touch: something round, bumpy, and slightly scrubby, very different to the soft nest he was used to dabble his hand in as soon as he woke. The blue scarf had slipped down while Val slept and her shorn head lay cruelly outlined upon the pillow. Bran knelt up and considered her in consternation mingled with pity, then finding himself in the attitude of prayer, mechanically crossed himself and murmured his morning orison, his eyes still fixed on his mother's head:
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I give you my heart, take it please, and preserve it from sin."
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I give you my soul and my life.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, help me in my last agony.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, grant that I live and die in thy holy company. Amen."
Immediately afterwards humour, that Irish vice, overcame all gentler feelings; like a certain famous Bishop of Down, Bran would lose a friend for a joke. He woke Val with a cruel jest:
"Bon jour, Monsieur le Curé!"
The curé of Mascaret was a Breton as rugged as his country, with haggard spiritual eyes and an upper lip you could built a fort on, as the saying is; he intensified his uncomeliness by wearing his hair so close-shaved that it was impossible to say where histonsurebegan or ended. To be told by her loving but candid son that she resembled this good man was a cruel thrust to Val, and the memory of it darkened life for many days to come. She wrapped herself in gloom and the blue veil, and nothing more was heard of the fez cap and cigarettes except that in good time the Stores forwarded them and the French Customs taxed them. After once trying on the fez and finding herself the image of a sallow and melancholy Turk, she had cast it from her. Her one instinct was to hide her ugliness from every one. Even at the sight of John the Baptist she would fly and hide, and she never left the house except after dark, when for exercise she would sometimes race Haidee up and down thedigue, or run along the beach at midnight, her scarf floating behind her in the wind, and her head bare to give her "roots" a chance.
These proceedings gravely annoyed the Customs officers distributed in the little straw-littered watch-huts that line the Normandy coast. Instead of tucking themselves in their blankets for a peaceful night, they were obliged to keep awake for fear the mad American woman meant either to commit suicide or meet a boat full of brandy and cigars from Jersey.
CHAPTER XIV
THE WAYS OF LITERATURE
"The voyage of even the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks."
From Jersey Val had made a bee-line for Paris which she knew well, and where she had hopes of renewing her mental energy by the sights and sounds of a great city and association with other brain workers. Autumn removals were in full swing and there was no great difficulty in finding house-room for herself and the children, though she was unprepared to find how Paris rents had risen since the days when she and her mother sojourned in the Latin Quarter. It was to that part of Paris she naturally turned--the only possible part for artists and writers to live, though the rich and empty-headed are fond of calling it the "wrong side" of the river. A studio seemed the most suitable form of residence, for she knew she would not be able to work in a small room, and she hated the sordid construction of a cheap flat. She was fortunate in finding a goodatelierin a little secludedrueon the confines of the Quarter--a big, high room, with kitchen and small bedroom attached, looking out onto a little square yard with clusters of shrubs, ivied walls, and a few old battered statues that lent a picturesque air. Here she had settled down and with resolute energy begun the series of "Wanderfoot" articles for which Branker Preston had obtained a commission. It was an arduous task. No matter how much material is stored in the mind it is not easy to import the air and colour of far-off lands into a Parisatelier. The art of putting things down had not yet been recaptured either. Still, the stimulus of even the short journey from Jersey to Paris had done something for her, and though to her critical eye the articles she achieved seemed but pale echoes of her former work, they at least paid the rent and kept things going in rue Campagne Premiere. The continuation of Haidee's education became a problem needing instant attention; for Val very soon realised that the Latin Quarter with its liberal ideas of morality and its fascinating students was no place for a young impressionable girl. Her own child she would have allowed to stay, for she knew that anything with her nature would come to no harm among these careless, attractive people, to whom she felt herself blood-kin. But Haidee, the child of a pretty flighty mother, was of different stock. Besides, there was a responsibility to Westenra in the matter. There were no convents left in Paris, or indeed, in France. All those lovely homes where girls learned a sweet sedateness and many beautiful arts had been closed by a ruthless government. No more in France may the gentle coifed women impart composure and beauty of mind to English and American girls and train the aristocratic children of France to a love of Church and Country. What the loss is to the sum of the world's harmony can never be computed, but American and English mothers have a slight realisation of it.
It was in Belgium that Val at last found what was needed for Haidee--a little community of French nuns who, refusing to unveil, had been obliged to flee over the border, and there had founded a convent to which many good Catholics in Paris sent their children. It was well within Val's means too, for the living is cheap in Belgium, and the fare in the convent was simple though good. Haidee hated terribly to go, but Val was firm, though she held out the promise of early liberation if Haidee would work well at French and try and pass herbrevet simple. This was no difficult task, for the girl had been well grounded in French during their sojourn in Jersey. Remained the problem of Bran--and little children are a problem in France to parents of limited means. No one caters for them as in other countries. No one even understands the art of teaching and amusing them at the same time, nor even how to feed them. There are no kindergartens and no milk puddings! Small wonder that French babies are small and sallow and sad! Since the nuns were driven out there are only the public Lycées where strong and weak, rough and gentle, are jumbled together with results that no thinking woman would welcome for her child. From their tenderest years French children are crammed with lessons, pushed ahead to pass exams, while the business of play so necessary for little children is almost entirely suppressed.
Val very certainly had no intention of confiding her son to such institutions. She was therefore obliged to hire a daily governess for him, for though, at his age, he needed little teaching, he had to be sent out of doors so that she might have silence and solitude wherein to work. Even this was a costly business. In England a nursery governess can be afforded by almost every one, but in France it costs one hundred francs a month to have your child well taken care of and taught his alphabet for a few hours a day.
Val did not grudge it, but what worried her was that Bran did not thrive. Paris was no place for him. The Luxembourg Gardens make a good play-ground for city-bred children, but Bran was Val's own child in his need of air and space and horizon. His bloom faded a little, and he began to look very fair and spiritual. Also his love of the picture and statue galleries seemed to his mother something too wistful and wonderful in a small boy, and brought tears to her pillow in the silence of many a night. Then she took him to Belgium for awhile and left him with Haidee and the good nuns. He was a shy creature, though he hated any one to know it, and believed he hid his secret well behind a set smile and little hardy incomprehensible sayings. When the nuns clustered round him calling him their "little Jesus," a favourite name in France for a pretty child, he disdained to shelter behind Val's skirts, as instinct bade him, but nothing could be got out of him except an enigmatic saying he always kept for strangers:
"The cat says bow-wow-wow, andThe dog says meow, meow, meow."
"The cat says bow-wow-wow, andThe dog says meow, meow, meow."
"The cat says bow-wow-wow, and
The dog says meow, meow, meow."
All the while he smiled his little bright smile and his eyes roving keenly noted every detail of the pale æsthetic faces. Even the tears in the Reverend Mother's eyes did not escape him. Afterward he said to Val:
"I like that one with the floating eyes. I think she wishes she had a nice little boy like me. Her voice was littler than a pin's head when she called me herpetit Jesu. But why do they nearly all have green teeth?"
When Val kissed him farewell it nearly broke her heart to see the brave smile he maintained, though Haidee was sniffling and snuffling at his elbow, partly with momentary grief but mostly with indignation at being, as she rudely phrased it: "Shut up in a convent with a lot of old pussycats."
Back in Paris the studio seemed desolate and empty. Bran had become so much a part of his mother's being and life that without him she was like a bird from whom a wing had been torn. A month later Haidee wrote:
"I think Bran is fretting. Whenever I speak to him he puts that little fixed grin on his mouth, but you should see his eyes."
Within an hour Val was in the Brussels express speeding for that dear sight. On the journey back to Paris, happy now and healed of her broken wing, she heard all the history of his lonely nights and the "purply-red pain" that he got in his stomach when he thought of her. Cuddled to her side he wept as he had never wept whilst separated from her, and Val's tears ran down her face too while she listened, registering a vow that she would never part with him again.
So once more he went out with a governess and came home to his mother full of original criticisms of Moreau's pictures and the statues of Rodin, until one morning nearly two years after their arrival in Paris, and just when Haidee had arrived for the summer holidays, Val rose up from her bed with the itch for travel in her feet, and the longing quickly communicated to the children for the sight of a clear horizon. They tore their possessions from the walls, stuffed them into trunks, and shook the dust of Paris from their feet.
"Let's go to Italy and live on olives and spaghetti, "was Haidee's suggestion, but Bran knew the news of the world.
"We might get an earthquake!"
The size of the cheque from Branker Preston, however, was what really decided the affair, limiting them to wandering happily enough in Brittany. But the water and primitive methods of Breton cooks made Val think nervously of typhoid, and after a time she headed for Normandy. Normans are cleaner in their household ways than Bretons, of whom they slightingly speak as "les pores Bretons," declaring that they eat out of holes in the table and never wash the holes. Besides, Normandy in winter is milder than Brittany. So, travelling by highways and byways, they happened at last on Mascaret.
It was the tag end of September when they arrived. All the summer visitors were gone and the big silver beach deserted, but summer itself still lingered. They got an entrancing glimpse of the gentle green and gold beauty of the place before the chills of autumn set in. Even then they had been able to bathe and go sailing in the fishing boat of one ofpèreDuval's sons, who was now in his turn lighthouse-keeper of Mascaret. For ten sunny October days, too, they had assisted with all the ardour of novitiates atpèreDuval's cider making, becoming acquainted with the secrets ofcidre bouché, and the grades to be found incidre ordinaireunto the third and fourth watering. They even sampled the latter as drunk by the fishermen and called for at the cafés by the name ofle boisson avec le brulot dedans: which signifies cider very liberally diluted with French cognac. Then the winter closed in on Mascaret with wild gales and high-flowing tides. On Christmas Eve snow came softly down, so that the walk to midnight mass had been like acting in that scene painted by a Dutch painter where the village folk are seen winding their way through the snow, lanterns and hot-water bottles in their hands, to the distant church with windows full of red light. All the winter interests of the simple village had been sampled and shared by Val and the children, and they had been happier there than ever in France. The children loved the freedom of the place and thebonhomieof the French folk so different to English people of that class. The three went about in their red sweaters and lived a life of absolute unconvention. It was a good place to write a masterpiece in--if one were only a master--was Val's ironical thought, and in spite of her self-directed irony, she did achieve during the first months there a wonderful little curtain raiser, which Branker Preston had no difficulty in disposing of to a London manager. It dealt with Boers and Zulus, and had been well received, but unfortunately the play it had preceded in the bill was a failure and the two were withdrawn together before Val could greatly benefit, but it had brought in five guineas a week for six weeks, and this success had put her in heart for further work of the kind. She had sickened of writing "Wanderfoot" articles from a chair. She could by this time have written some very spirited ones on the subject of France in general and Normandy in particular, but she had her reasons for not wishing to attract attention to her whereabouts, as such articles would surely have done. Preston advised her to write a novel, but she knew she had neither the patience to spin a long story through many chapters to its end, nor the gift of character portrayal. What was hers was a sense for situation, colour, and atmosphere, and it occurred to her that the best vehicle for a display of these qualities was the theatre. Her first little venture had attracted the attention of several managers, and one of them told Preston that he was ready to consider a three-act play by her. It was this play she was busy upon now. But it was sometimes hard to transport the atmosphere of far-away tropical Natal into a little wooden villa facing the English Channel, with a wild spring gale tearing at the windows, and the rollers booming like cannon on the Barleville beach--for the promise of summer had gone as swiftly as it came, and the spring tides were flooding up the river flinging great walls of spray over thedigueand splashing three feet deep across the Terrasse, right to the steps of theHotel de la Mer, so that the journey to the village had to be made by a path up the cliff.
Val found that the only way to ignore Normandy and the bleak mists ofLa Manchewas to sit over achaufferettefull of bright red embers of charcoal, letting the heat steal up her skirts and enveloping her whole person from the soles of her feet to her scalp in a lovely glow. Immediately she would begin to write things full of the tropical languor of Africa. In her brain palms waved, little pot-bellied Kaffirs rolled in the hot dirt, sunshine blazed over a blue and green land, the air was filled with the scent of mimosa, and great-limbed Zulus danced in rhythmic lines with chant and stamp and swing of assegai before Cetewayo, the great and cruel king.
Unfortunately, achaufferetteis not always an easy thing to manage. Like everything French it has a temperament, and is liable to moods when it will burn and moods when it won't. It is a wooden or tin box, perforated at the top and open at one side to admit an earthenware bowl full of the charcoal which is calledcharbon de bois--actually calcined morsels of green wood. The baker makes this charbon by sticking green wood branches into his hot oven after he has finished baking his bread, but each baker makes a limited supply only, and will not sell it except to people who buy his bread. Every one useschaufferettein Normandy during the winter, and visitors are given one to put their feet on as soon as they enter a house, though sometimes when the host is rich enough to keep a perpetual fire going, a supply of hot bricks is kept in the oven instead.
Val'schaufferettewas of most uncertain temper. Hortense always lit it in the morning, and left it by the writing-table. When Val came to it all that had to be done was to gently insert an old spoon under the little ash heap and lift it all round, when a red hot centre of glowing embers would disclose itself. But sometimes an old nail or piece of "Carr-diff" found its way by accident into the pot, then the charbon would immediately sulk itself into oblivion, or sometimes for no reason at all after being perfectly lighted it would just go out. Ensued a struggle in which Val and Haidee invariably came off second-best. They would take the pot out of its box and stand it on a window-sill with the window drawn low to make a draught; put it on the front door step and, kneeling down, blow on it until fine ash sat thick upon their noses and their eyes were full of tears; build paper bonfires on it; fan it wildly with newspapers. All to no avail! Usually that was the end of work and inspiration for the day. Val declared that she could notthinkwith cold feet. But sometimes oldpèreDuval, compassionate for the mad, would send up his wooden box, large enough for two men to warm their feet on, with a great iron saucepan full of glowing charbon inside, and Val would sit toasting over it and write things of a tropical languor extraordinary.
Haidee had passed herbrevet simple, an exam, about equal to the English Oxford Junior, and the American 6th standard, and was now working for thebrevet supérieurewith a French woman who had been a governess before she married a retired commercial traveller and settled in Mascaret. The discovery of this good woman was a stroke of luck for Val, though certainly Haidee did not consider it so. However, her lessons only took up four hours a day. For the rest she and Bran idled joyous and care-free through life, climbing the cliff, fishing, digging for sand-eels, making long excursions inland, or meeting the fishing boats in the evening when they came in with the day's haul, and all the villagers would be at theportto bargain for fish. Haidee usually haggled for and bought araie(dog-fish) for the next day's dinner, and Bran would run a stick through its ribald-looking mouth, and carry the slithery monstrous thing home, to be met by scowls from Hortense, who, stolid as she was, hated the sight of araie, and could not face the business of washing and gutting it without cries ofdouleurand disgust.
"Ah! C'est craintive! C'est affreux!"
But meat was too dear for daily consumption, andraiethe only fish brought in by the boats throughout the winter months, so it had to be eaten, and some one had to prepare it. And after all, wrestling withraiewas one of the jobs for which Hortense was paid three francs a week. It was her business to come in the morning at seven o'clock, make the fires, and deliver "little breakfast" at each bedside; afterwards she swept and made the beds, then disappeared until just before lunch, when she came to perform upon theraieand execute one or two culinary feats that were beyond the scope of Val or Haidee--such as cutting up onions, which neither of them could accomplish without weeping aloud, or putting the chipped potatoes into a pan full of boiling dripping, a business that when conducted by Val made a rain of grease spots all over the kitchen and scalded every one in sight. After washing the midday dishes, and chopping up vegetables for the soup, Hortense would consider her function over for the day, and leave Val and Haidee to grapple as best they might with tea, supper, fires, and thechaufferette. The supper was no very great difficulty, merely a matter of putting the cut vegetables into a pot with a large lump of specially prepared and seasoned dripping, and standing said pot on the stove until supper-time, when its contents would be marvellously transformed intosoupe à la graise, a savoury and nourishing broth eaten as an evening meal by every peasant in Normandy. The fires were the greatest nuisance. The stove in the kitchen either became a red-hot furnace and purred like a man-eater, or else went out; and the stove with an open grate in Val's room, which old man Duval had paid a month's rent for and gone all the way to Cherbourg to fetch, had a way of going out also before any one even noticed that it was low; then there would be much scratching with a poker, searching for kindling wood, pouring out of paraffin, sudden happy blazes that nearly took the roof off, and black smuts everywhere. When all was over, and a beautiful fire roaring after the united efforts of the family, Val would find that herchaufferettehad gone out! It was hard to even think masterpieces among such distractions, to say nothing of writing them. Tea was easily got. Haidee made the toast on the salad fork, Val buttered it with dripping, Bran laid the table. Then all three sat with their feet on the stove, drinking out of the big coffee bowls, eating every scrap of the delicious smoky toast and licking their fingers afterwards. If Val had written anything funny or dramatic that day she would sometimes read it out to them, but for the most part her instinct was to hide what she wrote. She said she felt as if she had lost something afterwards, and if any one had been even looking at her written sheets they never seemed quite the same to her again--some virtue went out of her work the moment she shared it with any one.
Usually, after tea she settled down for another struggle with her ideas, and Bran and Haidee went for a prowl on thediguein the hope of adventures. Bran, whose mind was as full of fairies as if he had been born in the wilds of Ireland, was always in hope of meeting a giant or a dwarf, but he had learned not to mention these aspirations to Haidee. Anyway, there was always the village gossip to listen to in thepetit port, where the fishing boats anchored and usually the excitement of watching theQuatre Frèrescome chup--chup--chupping up the river to her moorings. She was a natty and picturesque trawler, with a petrol engine that was the admiration of the village installed in her bowels. Because of this engine she was known as theChalutier à petrole, but at Villa Duval she was called by Bran's translation of her name,The Cat's Frères. She never caught anything butraie, and of this despised species far fewer than any of the other boats, but she dashed in and out of the harbour with great slam and needed five men to handle her. There was a legend that the petrol engine frightened the fish away. It was known that the four brothers who owned her were anxious to get rid of her. Every one knew that she cost more than she brought in. But Haidee and Bran shared a fugitive hope that Val's play would make them all so rich that they would be able to acquire her as a pleasure boat.
Sometimes strange craft from Granville or a Brittany port would come in for the night, and there was theSt. Joseph, a great fishing trawler from Lannion, carrying a master and seven hands, that put in when weather was heavy. Her sails were patched with every colour of the rainbow, her decks were filthy, and her years sat heavy upon her--you could hear her creaking and groaning two miles from shore: but to Haidee and Bran she stood for the true romance! She always brought in tons of fish, not only the everlastingraie, but deep-sea fish, and as soon as her arrival was heralded all the village sabots came clipper-clopping down the terrace, shawls clutched round bosoms, the wind flicking bright red spots in old cheeks, every one anxious to pick and choose from the mass of coal-fish, red gurnet, plaice, congers, and mullets that was hooked out of the hold and flung quivering ashore. The big weather-beaten fishermen in their sea-boots bandied jests with the carking old village wives and the girls showered laughter. In the end, the villagers departed with full baskets, and the seamen well content adjourned to thepetit caféclose by for a "cup of coffee with a burn in it" and a good meal.
CHAPTER XV
WAYS SACRED AND SECULAR
"A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene."--EMERSON.
In May, the gentle month of May, the weather cleared up again, and green things commenced to sprout and bloom on the cliff above Villa Duval. The country-side began to bloom and blossom as the rose. From the high coast that lies facing the sea, Jersey could be discerned on clear days etched as if in India ink upon the horizon thirteen miles away. Clots of sea-samphire burst into flower, cleverly justifying its name ofcreste marineby just keeping out of reach of the high tides. The gorse showed dots of yellow amongst its prickles, and little brilliant blue squills stuck up their perky faces and gave out a sweet scent. All along the path to the lighthouse wild thyme came out in springy masses, and the mad Americans often went up that way for the special purpose of lying on it as on a soft, pink silk rug. It seemed to cause them a peculiar kind of joy to put their faces down in it, crying, "Oh! oh! oh!"
The garbage-hole across the road in front of Villa Duval which the dustman had been trying for many summers to transform into a building plot by filling it with empty tins and rubbish from the hotel, and which had been an eyesore all the winter, now suddenly became a place of beauty, for a lot of prickly, thistly-looking plants growing among the jam tins burst into a blaze of red and yellow. It turned out that they were poppies that had been keeping themselves secret all through the winter, and the yellow bright gold of "Our Lady's bedstraw." One day Haidee brought home some long, fragile trails of cinquefoil, one of the first spring things, and Val, worn and haggard under her blue veil, pinned it over her heart because she had read in old Elizabethan days that cinquefoil was supposed to be a cure for inflammations and fevers. She quoted to Haidee what an old herbalist had once written of such cures:
"Let no man despise them because they are plain and easy: the ways of God are all such."
Haidee flushed faintly and retired into awkward silence, shy like most girls of her age at the mention of God. She was going to make her communion the next day with the First Communion candidates, but it was not her first, for that had been made once when she was ill in New York. She was to be confirmed in June when the archbishop of a neighbouring parish intended to visit Mascaret and hold a confirmation service.
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 abonconfession, 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 thePetit 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 herpénitencewould 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 burymèrele 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. OldpéreDuval 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 ofraie, 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 lastlouisto 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 inpéreDuval'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 issuperbe... just the thing for apremière communion... it is not for every one I would cut that lamb, but for such customers as you and yourbelle mamanthere 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 oldveuveMichel 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 thelouis. 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,veuveMichel 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 oldveuveMichel 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 thechi-chithat 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 suchméchanteriein 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 thepetit portto seek the garbage heaps in the river bed. As the three stood staring after him a little red-facedbonnecame 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 theTerrasseHaidee 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 thebonneat 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.