Wanderfoot Part 19

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

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

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

asked Haidee.

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

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

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

"Does Madame realise what a change it will make in her appearance?

Would it not be better if Madame had it merely cut short, leaving about two inches all round _a la Jeanne d'Arc_, so--?" He stuck his little pudgy fingers out below her ears to show the desirable length.

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

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

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

It is true that nothing makes a greater difference to the appearance of a woman than to cut off her hair. The tale of every sin she has committed and every sorrow she has suffered seems to be written bare and unsheltered upon her face for all the world to read. What subtle alleviation there is in a frame of hair round the face of a sinner it is hard to say: but it is a problem whether Mary Magdalene, with all her s.h.i.+ning 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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.body but herself for her failures--not even the Fate that had bestowed on her that double nature of artist and lover which rarely if ever makes for happiness. She only felt the despair of the convict and almost wished herself one, so that she might hide in a cell. At length she sought her gay scarf of asphodel-blue and arranged it over her head like a nun's veil. It was thus that she presented herself to the children in the kindly dusk. Supper already stood upon the table.

Haidee displayed unusual tact, but Bran was full of curiosity.

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

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

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

Next morning, Bran waking up and throwing out an arm for his matutinal hug, encountered something strange to his touch: something round, b.u.mpy, 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 att.i.tude 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 Cure!_"

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

These proceedings gravely annoyed the Customs officers distributed in the little straw-littered watch-huts that line the Normandy coast.

Instead of tucking themselves in their blankets for a peaceful night, they were obliged to keep awake for fear the mad American woman meant either to commit suicide or meet a boat full of brandy and cigars from Jersey.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WAYS OF LITERATURE

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

It was in Belgium that Val at last found what was needed for Haidee--a little community of French nuns who, refusing to unveil, had been obliged to flee over the border, and there had founded a convent to which many good Catholics in Paris sent their children. It was well within Val's means too, for the living is cheap in Belgium, and the fare in the convent was simple though good. Haidee hated terribly to go, but Val was firm, though she held out the promise of early liberation if Haidee would work well at French and try and pa.s.s her _brevet simple_.

This was no difficult task, for the girl had been well grounded in French during their sojourn in Jersey. Remained the problem of Bran--and little children are a problem in France to parents of limited means. No one caters for them as in other countries. No one even understands the art of teaching and amusing them at the same time, nor even how to feed them. There are no kindergartens and no milk puddings!

Small wonder that French babies are small and sallow and sad! Since the nuns were driven out there are only the public Lycees 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 pa.s.s 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 cl.u.s.tered round him calling him their "little Jesus," a favourite name in France for a pretty child, he disdained to shelter behind Val's skirts, as instinct bade him, but nothing could be got out of him except an enigmatic saying he always kept for strangers:

"The cat says bow-wow-wow, and The dog says meow, meow, meow."

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

"I like that one with the floating eyes. I think she wishes she had a nice little boy like me. Her voice was littler than a pin's head when she called me her _pet.i.t 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 p.u.s.s.ycats."

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!"