Wanderfoot Part 29

But she would have no declarations.

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

"Why did you not say that to me before? Why have you been to me these last weeks so full of allure, so _attirant_?" he asked savagely.

"Sapristi! you have been fooling me. It has pleased you to play with my heart!"

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

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

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

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

He breathed hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She flung out of the room.

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

The mackerel sky had not lied! The next morning was all glittering with sunlight under a steel blue sky swept clear by a September wind that tore up the sea and sent it pounding in great grey-green walls with spittering spraying tops to crash upon the sh.o.r.e. They were delicious to jump in, those great tawny breakers, and carried the jumper fifteen or twenty feet high before they hurled themselves with a roaring swish to cream along the beach. It was not a day to venture out far. Even good swimmers in such a sea contented themselves with going in only up to the armpits, waiting for the breaker to gather them up, then pa.s.s and leave them in flat, clear water ready for the next.

The Comtesse and Celine, tired from their journey the day before, sat and looked on, but Rupert, Val, Haidee, and Sacha, with half a dozen others, were in the water jumping like maniacs, diving through sheer solid green walls, disappearing under avalanches of foam, gasping, laughing, panting. Sometimes short, wild screams, almost as of terror, were jerked out of them as the breaker moved on them like some monster determined on destruction.

"_Quelle courage!_" said Christiane de Vervanne wonderingly. "And did you ever see anything like Madame Valdana screaming and jumping like a mad thing! She behaves with a great curiousness at times, that lady!"

"She is an original!" said Celine, who was fond of Val, and felt for her none of the antagonism which the generality of Frenchwomen, in spite of the _entente cordiale_ and Edward the Peacemaker, always will feel for Englishwomen. True, Val was not English, but Celine was unaware of the fact.

In time Val gave Haidee the signal to come out. They had been in quite half an hour, the breakers appeared to be getting worse, and the wind had turned bitterly cold. Every one but the members of their party had already left the water. The Frenchmen, however, Sacha, Rupert, and the young officer, were disinclined to come out. Instead it seemed as though with the departure of the ladies they felt free to go farther in. Val stood in the creaming froth watching them for a moment before she raced Haidee to the cabins.

"I wish they would n't," she said uneasily, and suddenly threw out her voice in a coo-ee.

"_Venez_! _Venez_, you boys! You've been in long enough!"

The laugh and shout in Sacha's voice that came blowing back seemed to be s.n.a.t.c.hed by the waves and torn to ribbons by the wind before it reached the beach. Val found herself s.h.i.+vering, and ran for the cabins. Just as she was dressed she heard a scream, and looking through the diamond-shaped hole in the door, saw Celine standing up stripping off her clothes to her knickerbockers, while the Comtesse stood by screaming and wringing her hands. A moment later every one was pouring out of the cabins, and Val and Haidee back in their wet bathing suits were running down to the water's edge. Only two heads were bobbing in the waves--the third had disappeared!

It was nearly half an hour later when they brought Sacha Lorrain's body to the beach. The delay came of no one knowing where he went down. Only Celine had seen the wave hit him full in the face and knock him backwards stunned, but when, followed by Val and Haidee, she swam out to the spot she had marked with her mind's eye, he was not there. They dived and swam under water all round the place. In that rough sea, with the waves growing every moment more violent and blinding, and churning up the sands, they could scarcely see a yard before them under water.

And of course every moment was of value. Some one had run to the _digue_ to get the lifeboat manned; some one else to Villa Duval for hot bottles. Azalie, her harsh face grown amazingly soft, stood laden with blankets. Fishermen joined the searchers in the water. Fishwives walked up and down the beach wringing their hands.

"The General's son! The Admiral's grandson! Monsieur Sacha!"

"Only the other day he was a _pet.i.t gars_ in his sailor's suit. It was my man who taught him to swim."

"He made his first communion the same day as my Jean!"

"Ah! The gay eyes he had!"

Before they found him every one from the village was grouped on the beach. Sacha's father--General Lorrain--the cure, the doctor, the mayor. All stood waiting with strained, fearful faces, while the boat pulled up and down, battered by the waves. The swimmers exhausted would come up to rest in the surf, then enter again. The suns.h.i.+ne had gone, and the storm Sacha had prophesied the night before was creeping like a black beast across the horizon. It was a sailor in the lifeboat who spied the body at last, and diving down into the water heaved it over the side. Then they pushed the boat in through the surf, and poor Sacha was taken out and laid on the sands he had trodden so blithely an hour before.

After the first half an hour every one knew there was no hope, though none voiced the knowledge. People just stood in silent groups a little way off from the central group that knelt, and swayed, and jerked and moved unceasingly. Rupert, white and exhausted, wrapped in his bathing toga, walked up and down the beach, stopping every now and then to try and get Celine away, but Celine would not come. She was rubbing Sacha's feet, and staring, staring at his cold, calm face. Every now and then she would say imploringly:

"Listen, Sacha! Sacha, my brother! _Veux tu ecoute?_"

The General, very calm and stern-faced, stood at the head of the group.

But sometimes he would go away suddenly and walk swiftly up and down with Rupert, for a moment or two, his head high, the little ribbon of honour a red dot on his upright breast, then return to look down again at the still, still face of his only son. He could do nothing. The operations were in the hands of competent men. The doctor from Barleville had come rus.h.i.+ng in his motor to reinforce the Mascaret doctor. Val, when she was dressed, sat on a rock with her arms round Bran, and could not bear to see the General's eyes. Haidee and Christiane de Vervanne were crouched close by.

All the sailors and lifeboatmen were acquainted with the business of resuscitation, and there was no lack of relays. When one batch of men wearied another took its place. But all was in vain. The body of Sacha Lorrain lay there, very gallant in its youth and beauty, but his soul was gone beyond recall, and

"...might not come again Homeward to any sh.o.r.e on any tide."

CHAPTER XIX

THE WAY OF NEMESIS