THE WAYS OF BOYS
"For every grain of wit a grain of folly."
All the same, Val and Harry were beginning to say to each other, "What
next?"
It was a great relief that the Lorrain boys, most correctly dressed and
apparently laced in their best corsets, came very ceremoniously to call
that afternoon. They were accompanied by two ladies. One was
Mademoiselle Celine Lorrain, the other the Comtesse de Vervanne, who had
come to spend part of the summer with them. Upon being introduced to
the latter, Val and Mrs. Kesteven, who knew what they knew about a
_chic_ lighthouse and a lady's ankle, exchanged a fleet glance that was
not without humour.
Celine Lorrain, the sister of Sacha, was a girl of twenty-five, with
eyes of Mediterranean blue in a rather broad sweet face. The boys had
monopolised all the beauty of the family, but she had a singularly pure
expression, and with her gallant bearing would have made an ideal Joan
of Arc. The countess, of a very different type, was, it transpired, the
bosom friend of another and married Lorrain sister. She was little and
piquant and plump, and made-up as for the stage. Pearl powder lay thick
as white velvet on her nose, and her dark-green eyes were artistically
outlined with spode-blue shadows. A little mole on her chin had been
carefully blackened--and in her cheeks was a wild-rose flush out of a
box. A few gilt streaks in the little dark plaits she wore coiled over
her ears _jeune fille_ fashion told that at some past period her hair
had been magically changed to gold, but was now returning to its
original colour. No doubt she was extremely picturesque, and her manners
were charming. But Val, who always looked at eyes, noticed that hers,
in spite of their enshrouding blue shadows, were as cold as some still
mountain lake, though, at the same time, full of the swift brightness of
the Parisienne who misses nothing there is to see. She included the two
women, the girls, and the room in one rapid enveloping glance, much as a
painter might take a snapshot of something he meant to examine more
carefully later on, and thereafter took upon herself the "expense of the
conversation," as the French phrase runs. Unfortunately, her English
was not so excellent as she believed it to be--though a good deal more
amusing. In answer to Val's polite "How do you do?" she responded
affably:
"Vary much." And later she related, with a pretty little high laugh:
"It is the costume in France for strange womens to visit first, but we
have taken the beef by the horns and come to see you in case you have
not the spirit of the adventuress."
Mrs. Kesteven, fearing that Kitty and Haidee might disgrace themselves
if they listened to much of this style of thing, gradually wriggled the
conversation back into French, at which they were all fairly fluent,
except Val who, however, understood everything. With a general
intention to be amiable, time hung on no one's hands. Every one took
tea, and the young men made themselves useful, twisting with ease in the
tiny room to hand cups and bread and butter.
"We must all be friends and go walks and swims together," said the
Comtesse. "I hear your girls swim beautifully, Madame Valdana. I want
them to teach me."
"And would you let them go sailing with us in our little sailing boat?"
a voice beguiled in Val's ear, and she found the misty blue eyes which
she had maliciously described as "drunken" looking at her.
"Oh, I don't know about that," she said in her faltering French.
"You spik in English and I spik in French and we will understand us," he
said, smiling charmingly at her. He reminded her intensely of Bran, and
for this reason she felt a great leaning to him. Besides, no one could
have helped liking him. His fresh clear skin was made fresher by the
blueness of his eyes and the blackness of his hair. Added to his boyish
beauty was a sort of good honest look that warmed the heart.
"We are very all right sailors," he continued, still politely expressing
himself in English. "My cousin and I have sailed our boat here every
year since we had ten years of age. You need not have fear of
accidents."
"My sister often goes with us," chimed in Sacha, "but she's getting
lazy. Mademoiselle your daughter and Mees Kesteven both say they adore
to go on the sea."
Val let them remain under the impression that Haidee was her daughter,
feeling that it gave her more authority to shake her head at the idea of
the girls going sailing. But the chorus of beguilements continued and
the two girls kept saying:
"Oh, do, Val ... _do_, mother ... _do_ ... _do_...."
Bran made a diversion by bursting in, bright of eye, his fair hair wild,
a strong scent of puppy dog about him, for he had been amusing himself
with a litter of terriers bred by _pere_ Duval.
He was introduced to the company, but his news would hardly keep until
the ceremony was over.
"Mammie! At last I 've found out the difference between boy puppies and
girl puppies. The boys----"
"Go and wash your hands for tea, darling."
"But, Mammie, the boys--
"Yes, I know, Bran, go now and wash your----"
"The boys have blue eyes and the girls have brown ones," he shouted
indignantly as, hurt and astonished at his mother's strange lack of
interest in his latest discovery, he was being pushed from the room by
Haidee. Val suddenly ran after him and hugged him, and every one
exploded into laughter.
Val and Harriott found themselves almost mesmerised into giving
half-promises to let the girls go sailing, but after the visitors were
gone and the last echo of the Comtesse's little gay sky-high laugh had
died away, they gazed at each other doubtfully. The mesmerism was
wearing off.
"I don't think we ought to let them go," Mrs. Kesteven said.
"I 'm sure we ought not," declared Val, wondering what Westenra would
say if Haidee were drowned. There was a chorus of howls. Kitty put on
her _Spring Song_ face. Haidee's expression resembled that of a rhino
about to charge.
"Mother, you _promised_...!"
"Oh, Val, you mean pig...!"
They burst from the room, scowling and muttering. Later even sobs were
heard upstairs.
"Perhaps, after all...?" Harriott wavered.
"They are, I 'm sure, nice boys..." said Val, "and evidently good
sailors. Shall we ask _pere_ Duval?"
They found the latter, as usual, hoeing his garden, Bran assisting him.
Bran loved _pere_ Duval, who, he said, "smelt like a bar of iron that
had been lying at the bottom of the sea for a few weeks ... all green
and rusty, but yet nice."
"Of those two boys," the old man peered at them with his bleary eyes,
"you need have no fear, mesdames. There are no better sailors on this
coast. And round here it is very safe too--no bad winds--safe as
heaven."
Less uneasy, they went upstairs to throw the oil of consent upon the
stormy waters of rebellion. Immediately the two began to get out their
sweaters and warm skirts as if to start at once, though the sail had
been fixed for next morning. Harriott and Val stood smiling grimly,
throwing little darts.
"I hope you 'll take your tubs before you go--even though you may get an
unpremeditated dip," gibed Harriott.
"Yes; brush your teeth, dears, and your hair," supplemented the other
tormentor. "Don't go out looking like a pair of rabbits plucked out of
a dust barrel."
"Rabbits! Dust barrels!" snorted the girls, shaking their hair, each
strong in the consciousness of annihilating beauty. Afterwards Haidee
said with a superior smile to Kitty:
"Poor things! It must be awful to be old."
"Yes," said Kitty, who was sniffing a good deal. "They 're mad with
jealousy. That's why I don't take any notice of all Mother's blither."
She added thoughtfully: "I hope she doesn't find out I 've got a cold,
before to-morrow morning. She 's such a fuss pot."
"Let's go to bed early, then she won't," suggested Haidee. And they
went, and rose early too. Usually it was the work of two persons to
pick them out of their blankets, but they were up at five, pinking and
preening before the mirror, with many a glance from the window to see
why the river was n't filling. The tide, it seemed, was unaccountably
delayed that morning!
Val, who always rose at seven to make tea on her spirit lamp, took the
usual cup to Harriott's bedside, and found Kitty there by special
command. She was vehemently denying that she had a cold.
"I hawed god wud, buther, I ted you."
"Kitty, how can you say so? You can't speak properly. All traffic in
your nose is absolutely suspended."
"It tiddent, buther!"
"You are snorting and snuffling like the bull of Bashan."
"I 'b _dot_, buther."
"I 'm sure it's no good for her to go out in that state," sighed
Harriott afterwards. "But what would you? She 'd have broken a blood
vessel if I 'd stopped her."
Val looked out of the window and reported gleefully:
"They are prowling up and down the _digue_ like two hungry tigers. If
they could only pull the tide in with ropes they would set to work at
once."
At last there was water enough to float a boat, and the Lorrains' little
craft was seen winging down the river from the _petit port_. The girls
came racing back to get their warm coats. A moment later Bran's voice
was heard from the front steps:
"I want to go too--I want to go too!" He had smelt what was in the
wind, and hastily shuffling on his little garments was following the
girls. With the cold brutality of an elder sister Haidee rebuffed him.
"No; you can't come. We don't want any kids."
"Besides, you can't swim," said Kitty more kindly.
"I can swim--I can swim!" averred Bran, and ran after them wailing
passionately. "I can swim--I _can_ swim!"
Val had to fly out and bring him home weeping on her shoulder.
"You shall have a beautiful boat all your own some day, my Wing, and we
'll sail away in it together."
She comforted him, drying his tears on her blue veil.
"Oh, jeer buck!" sniffled Bran, trying to cheer up, "and will daddy come
too?"
Val thought of a lost ship in which she had thought to sail with all she
loved to the islands of the blest, and her breath caught in her throat.
"Yes, darling, let us pray so," she said, though she had no hope.
----
From that day forward the Shai-pooites and the Duvalites were constantly
together. The two parties joined forces and were as one man in all
things that pertained to amusements and making the sunny days fly by.
There was always the daily excursion to the beach. Kitty and Haidee
were as much at home in the water as two seals, and Val too was a good
swimmer. Harriott always turned blue when she had been in two or three
minutes, so her lot in life was to stay on the beach and rub Bran down
when he came from floundering like a little scarlet tadpole in the surf.
The Insanes wore red twill costumes, and resembled nothing so much as a
band of Indians on the warpath when they came prancing from the cabins
across the flat beach, with the Shai-pooites in dark blue _maillots_ at
their heels. A strange note of colour was a scarf of deep orange, which
Val wore round her head, dock fashion. She never let her cropped head
be seen by any one, though it was well covered now with little sprouting
fluffy curls. Only Bran was allowed to see it in the nights, and loved
to nestle against it, as a bird nestles against the downy breast of its
mother. From the rest of the world she kept her distance, even in the
sea, for she hated any one to see the curiousness of her face without
its frame of hair.
The Comtesse was learning to "make the plank"--otherwise float, and on
calm days incessant laughter came streaming over the smooth, silky
waves, as her plump little person was held up by a ring of instructors.
When all seemed well they let go, and immediately a shrill cry would
ring out:
"_Ah, mon Dieu! Je coule.... Je coule dans le milieu_. I am sinking
in ze middle!" And down she would drop and come up spluttering: "Ah!
_Quelle abomination de la desolation!_"
But she never went in deep enough to damage the wild-rose flush in her
cheeks and the blue mountain shadows round her eyes. The two English
girls and Celine Lorrain came out always sleek as seals, their hair
dripping and dank about them, but when Madame de Vervanne's cerise
head-wrap was unbound, never a hair was out of place. She thoroughly
understood the art of bathing beautifully. Later, arrayed in a wondrous
kimono, she would take a sun bath on the beach, scuffling her bare feet
daintily in the sand.
"_Imaginez-vous!_" she told Mrs. Kesteven. "I never knew until this
year that I had Greek feet. _Le vrai grec_, with the arch and perfect
toes--see?" She stuck out her short white foot. "An artist revealed it
to me this year. Figure it to yourself! I have had them all these years
and did not know."
She flung her little laugh to heaven, and the other women could not but
join in it at this frank exhibition of vanity. Never was a little lady
more thoroughly pleased with herself than Christiane de Vervanne, and,
indeed, she was of those who add to the gaiety of nations. Without her
cold, brilliant wit and Harriott Kesteven's gentle humour the party
might easily have been heavy. Val, shrouding a brooding heart as well as
a cropped head behind her blue veil, came forth little except when alone
with Harriott or the children, whilst Kitty and Haidee, alternately
weighed down by the new-born consciousness of their wonderful beauty and
absolute desirability, were not amusing except unintentionally, and
often indeed when their plans went wrong were sulky and quarrelsome. At
other times they would be buoyed up to a pitch of perky inanity most
provoking. But on the whole the two girls improved noticeably under the
influence of their first flirtation. Haidee's cowboy habits dropped
from her one by one never to return, and untidiness was no longer a
habit. Kitty became gentler, too, and less inclined to treat her mother
as a slave sent unto the world for her special benefit. Respect for
their elders is one of the most attractive traits in the character of
young French people, and the girls were quick to note the astonishment
and disapproval of the Lorrains at any discourtesy shown by them to Val
and Harriott. An actual demonstration of how parents should be treated
could not be given by Sacha and Celine unfortunately, for (for reasons
of his own at which Mrs. Kesteven and Val could make a good guess),
General Lorrain, their only surviving parent, never called with his
family at Villa Duval, nor even materialised when the English party took
tea at Shai-poo. Val and Harriott often wondered whether he had taken
the Comtesse into his confidence over the little _contretemps_ on the
_digue_ when Mrs. Kesteven's ankle had been mistaken for that of Madame
de Vervanne's. Certainly the latter gave no sign.
It transpired that she was in the position so unfortunate in France of
having been obliged to divorce her husband. She was most frank about
the details of her conjugal unhappiness, and the fact that she had been
thrust a little way out of her own world since the divorce, did not seem
to weigh her down very much. The Lorrains were among the few of her
liberal and broad-minded friends to whom her position had made no
difference. Her husband had been an officer in General Lorrain's
regiment, and she married him when she was eighteen and he thirty and
_tres connaisseur_.
"Like most young girls I thought it was a very wonderful thing for him
that I was conferring my innocence upon him--that he too shared my state
of ecstatic bliss, and that it would last for ever. _Quelle betise_!
Naturally for him it was nothing--he was soon _ennuyee_ with my bliss.
That is a mistake young girls make--they soon bore a sophisticated man
with their simplicity."
"A sophisticated Frenchman, I dare say," said Harriott dryly.
"Ah! There you hit the affair on the back, Mistress Kesteven," agreed
the Comtesse affably. "I do not spik of your Englishmen with the big
hearts and the big feets."
She proceeded to describe the lady who stole her husband.
"She was my best friend, and I was very proud to know her--very _chic_,
very Parisienne, and with the cleverness of forty. Ah! she was as
subtle as an Egyptian! What chance had I against her when she began to
put her cobra spells on de Vervanne? I could only look on like a
fascinated rabbit." She burst into a peal of laughter. Val looked at
her thoughtfully, wondering if she were the result of her ill luck or
the cause of it. Certainly she had arrived at being much more like the
cobra than the rabbit.
"Did you ever hear of the little baker's girl, who had to carry round
the tarts and cakes to her master's customers? Some one said to her,
'Do you never take any of the nice tarts, my child?' 'Oh, no,' said
she, 'that would be stealing. I only lick them, and that does no one
any harm.'"
Harriott threw an apprehensive glance ahead. They were taking one of
their long country walks, the younger folk marching in front, with Bran
and a tea-basket to leaven their exuberance. It was a relief to see
that they were out of ear-shot, for the Comtesse's baker-girl stories
were apt to be very spiced bread indeed, and less likely to point a
moral than to adorn some one without morals.
"If my friend had only been like the little _boulangere_," continued the
Comtesse mournfully, "I would have said nothing. But no, she was greedy
and wicked, and could not content herself except by stealing my nice
cake." She trilled and bubbled with laughter. The other woman's
thought, if interpreted, might have read much the same as Wolfe Tone's
brief reflections on the subject of Madame de Vervanne's countrywomen:
"A fine morality, split me!"
At the same time it was impossible not to feel a touch of admiration for
a woman who could turn her tragedy into laughter. Val was wistfully
inclined to wish that she could achieve the same state of philosophy
herself.
Meanwhile the Comtesse, very pleased with her little tale, and the
thought that she had shocked the "women made of wood," as she secretly
described all Englishwomen, walked ahead, for the path had narrowed, her
skirt held high to avoid the brambles, revealing the famous Greek feet
encased in high-heeled _suede_ shoes, with a pair of boy's socks falling
round her ankles. She affected these at the seaside, under the
impression that she was being truly Arcadian. Suddenly she burst into a
little song. Her voice was dainty and pretty, her specialty innocent
nursery rhymes with a tang to the tail of them. She never sang anything
that was not of eighteenth-century origin. All of her songs were about
shepherdesses and _boulangeres_--sometimes a cure would be introduced
into the last verse, but his presence there rarely imported holiness.
When the kettle was singing over the fire of wood branches, and the band
sat scattered at ease among golden clumps of gorse and purple heather,
she trilled them one of the least frisky in her vocabulary:
"Philis plus avare que tendre,
Ne gagnant rien a refuser,
Un jour exigea de Sylvandre
Trente moutons pour un baiser!
"Le lendemain nouvelle affaire!
Pour le berger, le troc fut bon
Car il obtint de la bergere,
Trente baisers pour un mouton!
"Le lendemain Philis plus tendre,
Craignant de deplaire au berger,
Fut trop heureuse de lui rendre
Trente moutons pour un baiser!
"Le lendemain Philis peu sage
Aurait donne moutons et chien
Pour un baiser que le volage
A Lisette donnait pour rien."
After this contribution to the general well-being the Comtesse embraced
Bran, who wriggled desperately to get away, for as he had secretly
confided to his mother, he did not care for her smell. She said she
would let him go if he would sing them a song, so Bran, in spite of his
shyness, paid the price with two of his little impromptu anthems,
chanting and rolling his eyes at them like a Zulu:
"Mary, Queen of Scots,
Went to sea
In a soft boat,
A boat as soft as cream."
"Bobyian went to church
But he had no money
So he took two sous out of the plate."
They all applauded and hugged him.
"Sapristi! You have the voice of an angel, _mon ami_," said Sacha.
"I know it well," answered Bran modestly in his pretty French.
"Ah! He is enormous, this Bran! He knows all things well," cried the
Comtesse. "And can you tell me now, _mon petit ange_, where can I get
such another little boy as you for myself?"
For the first time Bran's noted phrase faltered on his lips. He
considered the point for a moment, but swiftly came to the conclusion
that no little angel would care to leave his wings under a cloud in
heaven, as he had done, to come down and seek the Comtesse for his
mother, so he presently announced to a breathless audience:
"_Je ne sais pas!_"
"Ah, ha!" twittered the Comtesse. "I like better to hear you say so, my
little hen, than to hear you answer that you know well."