THE WAYS OF A LOVER
THE WAY OF THE SEA
"All the great things of life are simply done,
Creation, Death, and Love the Double Gate."
MASEFIELD.
One morning Harriott came into Val's room and found her writing at the
table with the blue veil fallen off, lying on her shoulders.
"Why, Val!" she exclaimed in genuine astonishment. "Your hair is
perfectly lovely! Never, never cover it up any more!"
"Really?" said Val shyly and flushing deep rose. "Do you think I might
go without the veil now?"
"Do I think! Look at yourself!" She gave Val a gentle push towards her
mirror, where the pale oval face was reflected, a very girlish face
still in spite of sorrows, and framed now in a nebulous, wavering frame
of feathery, fluttering curls.
"I never saw anything so dear," said Harriott, dipping her hand into the
airy softness. "It is ten times prettier than it was before. How on
earth did you manage it?"
"It must be the salad oil," said Val laughing. "I 've rubbed in a whole
quart bottle during the winter. Poor Bran! Many is the morning he has
come sniffing to my pillow with the question, 'Did you have potato salad
for supper last night, Mammie?' Is n't it extraordinary what we women
will do for vanity's sake, Harry. You 'd think I ought to know better at
thirty-two, wouldn't you?"
"Thirty-two, what's _that_? Women are only just beginning to find
themselves at thirty. You 're an infant still, my dear, and fortunately
you look it." She added inconsequently, "I think that man of yours must
be a pig."
A grave sadness came back into Val's face.
"Never say anything like that, Harry. Those are the kind of words that
separate friends."
For a moment Mrs. Kesteven regarded her reproachfully, but her soul was
too loyal a one to misunderstand Val's feelings. There was a great
soul-likeness between the two women. Only that Val would be always more
or less primitive, while Harriott Kesteven had come of a long line of
cultivated ancestors, and was more highly civilised. But in the simple
elementary things the two felt and saw alike.
"Forgive me, dearest," she said gently. "It is only that I hate to see
you so alone--and lonely. You were not meant for such a life."
"I must be unworthy of companionship, for it is always taken from me,"
said Val, as if to herself, staring at her image in the glass. "I
sometimes tremble because of Bran. Oh, Harry, if Bran--if Bran--!" Her
eyes darkened with tears, her lips twisted in an anguish of terror and
love and foreboding.
"Never think of such a thing," cried Harriott. "It is like inviting the
daughter of Zeus to come after you. You will have Bran and much more
than Bran, dear. Your life is far from over. There are those whom
Sorrow elects her own for many years only to bless them in the end. All
will come right with you yet, Val."
"Bless you, Harry! What would one do without friendship?"
"Well, you'll never have to do without me wherever you are, darling.
Mine is one of the hands stretched across seas and hills to you. But I
fear that my material body must leave you this day week; all sorts of
things call me back to London."
"So soon?"
"My dear, do you realise that the summer is nearly over? While we have
sat in the sunshine talking of old days, and watching the children grow
their wings, two of our precious months are gone. Two of the hundred
and twenty, Val!"
"Never mind, they 've left us something," said Val, kissing her.
From that day forward she discarded the blue veil. The French friends
were amazed when they saw her without her shroudings. It had a
curiously different effect upon them all. Something discontented and
critical came into the still-lake eyes of Madame de Vervanne, but Celine
used to like to come close and brush her cheek against Val's head as if
she or Val were a kitten. The two boys seemed suddenly to wake up and
realise that Val was still a factor in the game, at least Sacha did, and
the look half gallant, half appraising, which he had so far kept only
for Kitty and Haidee or any other pretty girl who happened along, began
to lurk in his eye for Val also. With Rupert it was a little different.
He had from the first recognised something vital and alluring behind the
blue veil, and had never shown himself averse to leaving the girls to
walk with Val, carrying her things, or holding one of Bran's hands while
she held the other. There had come to exist between them one of those
wordless sympathies that make for friendship. They spoke the same
language, for there was one great bond between them--the wanderlust.
Rupert, strange and rare thing in a Frenchman, had "the love for other
lands!" Hoping to assuage his thirst for travel in a legitimate way,
and one traditional in his family, he had entered for the Navy and had
worked hard to get in from the Lycee St. Louis. But though his physical
qualifications for that profession were perfect, he was no student and
the exams. had been too much for him. Three times he had gone up, and
failed, and the third time was the last. He was over nineteen, and the
age limit for men entering the Navy was passed.
At odds and ends of times he told Val these things, and her heart went
out to him while her mind greatly wondered at the stupidity of the
French Government. Here was an ideal sailor lost to his country because
he could not pass a difficult exam., that dealt largely with languages
and mathematics, though you had only to watch him with his inferiors,
the villagers and fishermen, to know that he possessed all the qualities
characteristic of the good sailor and commander of men. Above all he
was a lover of the sea. As an Englishman or American other gates to
that "lover and mother of men" would have been open to him. But as a
French gentleman having failed to get into the Navy, he was obliged to
renounce the love of his life, for there was no other way, compatible
with honour, of wooing her.
The next best thing then he declared was to join the Colonial Infantry,
and achieve travel and adventure in foreign service. But such a
decision thoroughly scandalised his family, for the Colonial Infantry is
looked upon as the last resort of the destitute. Only men who have n't
a penny of private income go to the Colonies, and it was considered a
most unfitting fate for a man of such brilliant fortune as Rupert would
be master of in a year or so. Even Sacha, who had no more than two
hundred and twenty francs a year, disdained the Colonial Infantry and
was in the "Dragons," preferring a cavalry regiment likely to be
stationed within reach of Paris, living a life of gaiety on credit,
always in debt, but always with an open chance of catching an heiress
whose fortune would regulate his affairs and settle him in life.
The Colonial Infantry very often means quick promotion, but it also
means travel and rough life in far places, and these things do not
appeal to the ordinary young Frenchman, who is out for "life" of a very
different kind. That they appealed to Rupert showed that he was far
from being an ordinary Frenchman. In his family everything was still
being done to try and dissuade him. But he showed no signs of budging
from his purpose--for him the Colonial Infantry or nothing, he said, and
had already accomplished the one year's military service essential to a
candidate for St. Cyr. He told Val of his intentions, and she secretly
upheld them and encouraged him to go his own way. For to her Rupert
looked like one of those whom Nature chooses to track her across deserts
and mountains and seas. He had the vague yet ardent eyes of the
follower of the Lone Trail. Val recognised in him, boy as he was, a
wanderer like herself, and it seemed to her that it would be a tragic
thing to confine such a boy to the smug and conventional paths of life
in France.
While the Kestevens were still in Mascaret, Rupert was looked upon as
being more or less property at the disposal of Kitty, and Val had only
an occasional opportunity for the long rambling talks she liked with
him. But after the Kestevens had gone, and Val made her _debut_,
veilless, indeed hatless, with shining fluffy hair curling in the sun,
her eyes containing a secret, and about her that certain flower-like
grace which is the peculiar attribute of those who keep always a little
dew in the heart, Rupert came hovering continually about her and she
grew fonder than ever of him. A reef was taken in their friendship, and
no one seemed to mind very much except Christiane de Vervanne. The
little Comtesse took rather more than an ordinary interest in Rupert,
and when she was about, Val with her seventh sense often felt in the air
the presence of the little silken cobwebs that some women, spiderlike,
spin out and weave about all young male things. However, Rupert so far
appeared to be immune to any spells except those of the sea, and other
lands. And because Val too felt these spells he loved to be with her.
The Comtesse, on the other hand, looked upon such talk as the ravings of
madness. She strongly opposed the Colonial Infantry scheme, and
declared it a shame to think of one of La France's sons departing to
other stupid countries. It was plain that she meant to do all she could
to prevent such a catastrophe.
It was lovely autumn weather, and in the cool of every afternoon the
party went forth on blackberrying expeditions, gathering the fruit which
the peasants despise and leave to rot upon the hedges. Every morning
Villa Duval was fragrant with the fresh scent of blackberries stewing in
their own juice, to be eaten at tea time the same day. The flies and
the wasps swarmed in, and at intervals all doors and windows would be
closed and the family, assisted by the granite-eyed Azalie and armed
with bath towels, would engage in a _grande battue_, and the wooden
walls of the villa resounded with slaps and bangs. Only Bran would take
no part in these massacres. He had a funny little objection to killing
anything, and strongly disapproved of Azalie's methods.
"She is very unkind," he complained. "She just _kills_ the flies. She
does n't look into their eyes first to see whether they are poor or good
or naughty."
"How do they look when they 're good, assie?" jeered Haidee.
Bran strangely but immediately glazed his eyes, and with some odd
movement of his hands acutely suggested the attitude of a sick fly
suffering with cold.
"And a naughty one?"
His eyes rolled, and he lifted a paw to his nose. A sprightly fly!
The days were slipping along very peacefully when suddenly Val's eyes
were opened to the fact that Haidee was in danger. Her little girlish
flirtation with Sacha Lorrain was growing into something more serious.
One afternoon, as Val was sitting in the _Jules_, with Bran at the
imaginary wheel, a puff of wind blew a sheet of paper up into the air
and over the side of the boat. Carelessly she took it up, but her idle
glance crystallised into consternation when she found that it was a
rough draft of what was evidently meant to be a poem, in Haidee's
writing.
That an out-of-door, tomboy creature like Haidee should take to writing
poems was strange enough, but what startled Val still more was its open
dedication to Sacha. It ran into several verses:
"You are more beautiful than the rising sun,
And I love you more,
And I wish to steal you and keep you
As in the old, old law.
"For you are mine, you were born for me:
It is written in the book of Fate
That thou should 'st love me, and I love thee--
Do now, 'fore it is too late.
"Come to me now, to my ever open arms,
And make me glad,
And I will mark our meeting with an everlasting kiss
To make us sad."
Poor Haidee!
When Val had finished reading it her eyes were full of tears, though her
lips smiled. It was not poetry, but in its broken, ill-balanced phrases
it revealed what poetry does not always do--the heart of the writer and
the big things in the writer's nature struggling to get out. The old
cowboy rudeness and lawlessness were there, but Val was so thankful to
God to see the sign of big things--of generosity, of the courage that
dares, of soul. Yes, there under the beat of young passion's wing was
another still small sweet sound--the voice of soul. What else did those
two last lines reveal?
"...an everlasting kiss
To make us sad."
Only the soul knows the secret of that great sadness lurking under
passion's wing!
Poor Haidee! So her feet, too, were touching the outer waves of that
stormy sea where women sink or swim, and few reach the happy shore! Yet
Val was proud to recognise that she was not afraid to put forth. This
was no suppliant cry of one afraid to drown! Here was not one of the
world's little clinging creatures that grip round a man's neck and pull
him under. She, too, had the strong arm and the stout heart. She would
give help, not only seek to take it. Yes, that was what Haidee's poor
little poem revealed more than anything to Val--that she was one of
life's givers.
"Thank God for it," said Val, "and let her give." After long thought,
doubled up in Bran's boat and staring at the sea as was her way, she
added: "but not to Sacha Lorrain."
It is not to be supposed that she had spent a whole summer of intimacy
with the Lorrain family without drawing up some kind of a moral estimate
of each member of it. They were not very harsh affairs, these little
estimates. For it was ever Val's way to "heave her log" into the heart
rather than the mind, and to what was in the pocket she never gave a
thought. Like many of the cleverest women, she had no judgment, no gift
of looking past the hardy eye and the smooth smile into the mind to see
what was brewing there. But she had instincts, and sometimes
inspirations, and a highly tuned ear for sincerity. Also, no act or
look or word containing beauty was ever lost on her.
Well! it must be confessed that Sacha had emerged but poorly from her
process of assessment. She had turned her ear and inclined her eye for
many a long day for grace in him--and both had gone unrequited.
If Sacha's worldly possessions were small, they still predominated over
his jewels of the heart, while in mind he possessed much the same
qualities as Christiane de Vervanne--gaiety, egotism, the hard, cold
brilliance of a diamond, a straining ambition for all the worldly "good
things of life." In their alikeness these two might have been brother
and sister, while Celine and Rupert, though only cousins, much more
closely resembled each other in nature and bearing.
It seemed the usual irony of circumstance that had ordained for Sacha,
who loved the good things of the world, comparative poverty, while to
Rupert, the John o' Dreams and lover of seas and skies, was given
wealth! The latter's father (the general's brother), with a head for
finance, had gone into banking instead of the army, and thereafter
married a banker's daughter with a fortune, which he had trebled and
quadrupled to leave to their only son.
However, Sacha, with a small income squeezed out of his father's
pension, gave himself a very good time, and had every intention and
likelihood of making a rich marriage. In the meantime he was open to
any love experiences that came to hand. Like all young Frenchmen, he
preferred women older than himself, and went in fear of the young
girl--when she was French. But this summer no flirtations with women
older than himself had offered; Mrs. Kesteven treated him like a
grandson, Val was secret behind her veil, while the Comtesse's
beguilements were not for him--he and she understood each other too
well. Remained Haidee, who was _jeune fille_ indeed, without being
French.
Her daring boyish ways and fresh beauty attracted him immensely, and
though he was an honourable fellow, according to his lights, the lights
of a young French officer make no very great illumination, and
apparently he had not been able to resist the temptation of making her
fall in love with him.
Val, reviewing the position, knew that it would be fatal to let Haidee
lose her head over this young worldling. He was only amusing himself.
No Frenchman who is poor ever contemplates marriage with a girl unless
she happens to have a _dot_ worthy of consideration, in which case the
affair becomes a ceremonious one in which parents and relations take an
even more important part than the young people themselves. Val knew all
this well, and that there was not the faintest idea of anything serious
in Sacha Lorrain's mind. But, no doubt, it was very amusing to make a
little American girl fall in love--and to him appeared harmless enough.
Only, it would have to be put a stop to at once, though at first Val did
not quite see how. Impossible to break off friendly relations all at
once with the occupants of Shai-poo. They had all become too intimate
for that. Besides, such an act would not serve its purpose. Haidee was
too wilful and lawless not to find means of being with the Lorrains
whatever Val did, and opposition would simply have the effect of making
her keener. The only course open to Val was one that Sacha himself had
suggested by his manner since she came out from behind her blue veil.
Whether it was that he was piqued by her preference for his cousin, or
whether he thought a little jealousy might be good for Haidee, it would
be hard to say, but at any rate he had shown distinct signs and symbols
of being attracted to Val. So far she had disregarded, while being
greatly amused by his not very subtle efforts to flirt with her, but she
now resolved to make a change in her tactics. If Sacha wanted a
flirtation with a woman older than himself he should have it.
She gave him an opening the very next day on one of their long
excursions, and he grabbed it with a fervour that astonished her. She
kept him at her side all the afternoon. Rupert took her defection
good-naturedly, and devoted himself to Haidee, who rebuffed him and
sulked. The next day, on the beach, Val did the same thing. Sacha
became more fervent. Rupert began to look wounded. Haidee glared, and
would not speak when they reached home.
After all, it was an easy matter. What inexperienced girl, however
pretty, can hold her own against a woman of the world, determined on
capture--especially when the prey is only a youth? Sacha, his vanity
flattered by Val's sudden interest in him, paid little attention to
Haidee's scowls and sulks. And when Val realised how serious it was,
saw how Haidee paled and flushed and lost her appetite, she lured the
mothlike Sacha all the more within the radius of the flame which
attracted him. She did not mean to burn him, only to dazzle him a
little; but if his wings were slightly scorched, that was his affair.
Haidee had got to be saved from unhappiness even at that cost.
The thing was made easier by the departure of the Comtesse and Celine to
pay a week's visit to some army friends stationed at Cherbourg. With no
one left but the two boys, it was simple for Val to take entire
possession of Sacha. Haidee was left to the share of Rupert. She liked
Rupert well enough--no one could help it. But she was in love with
Sacha. Before long the look of an assassin came into her eyes when she
turned them upon Val. But Val did not falter in her purpose. Not even
when Rupert withdrew from the quartette and let Sacha come alone to the
villa. On such occasions they all went out together as usual, but Val
kept Sacha by her side. She was the soul of gaiety, she flirted and
spun fine threads. Haidee gloomed and grew paler. Val's heart ached for
the girl, and she was sick of the business herself, but Sacha's leave
was almost up. It was only a matter of days. She determined to stick
at the wicket.
On Sacha's last evening the whole party from Shai-poo came to Villa
Duval with the suggestion of a moonlight walk to the cliff point near
the lighthouse. The Comtesse and Celine had returned from Cherbourg
bringing in tow a young cavalry lieutenant, a friend of Sacha's, and
plainly a satellite of Christiane de Vervanne. The object of the walk
was to re-cement a wooden cross upon the ruined walls of the old church
of Mascaret. The village in some by-gone age had been situated on the
North Foreland, but the gales and storms that besieged it there had
driven the villagers inland, and no trace remained of habitation except
the four walls of a primitive church, battered and time-stained, pitched
perilously on the side of the cliff, like wreckage flung there by some
wild storm from the sea below. The little wooden cross that leaned
crazily on the east wall had been put there many years past by Rupert
and Sacha, and it was a sort of religious rite with them to re-cement it
upright in its place every year.
It was a glorious night for a walk, and when they came to claim her, Val
could make no excuse for not going, though all that day a wave of
dreariness had possessed and submerged her, making her long to be alone.
She could not plead that Bran would be lonely, for, tired out from an
afternoon's net-fishing in the shallows of the river, he was deep
asleep, and Hortense by some unwonted chance was available to watch over
him. Besides, Haidee looked so wretched and wistful that compassion
overcame reason in Val. She began to half doubt her right of
interference. Because of this she allowed herself to be taken
possession of by Rupert and Celine, while the Comtesse and her
lieutenant went on ahead, so that nothing was left for Sacha to do but
walk with Haidee. He did it with so bad a grace that the latter was
even more unhappy than if she had been left to herself. The two walked
in silence and when they were winding in single file round the face of
the cliff Sacha made a determined effort to regain Val, but she
cold-bloodedly hedged him off. She saw now very plainly that her labour
was at an end. He and Haidee were so thoroughly estranged that all
danger was past, and her task over. Subtly her manner changed then to
one of half quizzing gaiety extremely disconcerting to the amorous
Sacha, and yet with which he could find no fault, for her flirtation
with him had been so delicately done that it could hardly bear that
name. Puzzled and savage at the change in her he turned back to Haidee,
but Haidee had her pride that wrestled with her poor little crushed love
and for the time at least conquered it. She would not be left and again
taken at will. She retired behind a sullen scowl. Sacha, for once, was
at a loose end and did not like it a bit.
Arrived at the _vieille eglise_, the two cousins climbed cautiously up
the crumbling walls, Rupert with the string handle of the cement pot
between his teeth. The rest of the party, scattered on the sloping
cliff-side in the mother-of-pearl moonlight, sat watching them. Below,
the sea, a star-spangled mirror, stretched from France to where Alderney
humped against the sky-line. On the Jersey coast a powerful light
winked spasmodically. The sky, clear in the east, was flecked overhead
and in the west with tiny snatches of snowy cloud, regular as knitted
stitches, or the scales on a mackerel's back.
Softly the Comtesse began to sing to them:
I
"Au clair de la lune,
Mon ami Pierrot,
Prete-moi ta plume
Pour ecrire un mot.
Ma chandelle est morte,
Je n' ai plus de feu.
Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour 1' amour de Dieu!
II
"Au clair de la lune
Pierrot repondit:
'Je n'ai pas de plume,
Je suis dans mon lit!
Va chez la voisine,
Je crois qu' elle y est,
Car dans sa cuisine
On bat le briquet.'
III
"Au clair de la lune
L'aimable Lubin
Frappe chez la Brune,
Elle repond soudain:
'Qui frappe de la sorte?'
Il dit a son tour:
'Ouvrez votre porte
Pour le dieu d'amour!'
IV
"Au clair de la lune
On n' y voit qu' un peu,
On cherche la plume
On cherche du feu.
En cherchant de la sorte
Je ne sais ce qu' on trouva,
Mais je sais que la porte
Sur eux se ferma!"
"Ah!" she sighed softly in the silence that followed her song. "And now
we all go back to Paris! That dear Paris! _C'est comme un amant qu'il
faut quitter pour un revoir plus chaud, et comme tout neuf_! If you do
not budge from it, it becomes like a husband, fatiguing and _exigeant_,
who makes you work too much and never gives you room to breathe.
But----" she gazed ecstatically towards Alderney in which direction the
lieutenant and Rupert happened to be sitting. "Go away for a little
while and you find yourself dreaming of the sweet suffocating embrace
that exalts the veins----"
"How white the sea looks!" suddenly broke in Val. It troubled her to
see how Haidee hung upon the pretty immodest phrases that slipped so
easily from Christiane de Vervanne's lips. "What were those lines of
yours, Sacha, about when the sea is milk-white and Jersey black as ink
and a storm coming to-morrow?"
"Quand la mer est comme le lait, et Jersey tout noir
On peut attendre un orage avant demain soir,"
quoted Sacha sulkily.
The Comtesse shot an icy glance at Val. She did not like her rhapsodies
interrupted.
"_Epatant_, that woman!" she murmured to her cavalry-man.
On the walk home Sacha tried once more to re-arrange the order of the
party and get Val to himself, but pitilessly she left him to the mercy
of Haidee, furious and vengeful as a Gorgon. When they reached home it
would have been hard to say whose was the crossest-looking of their two
faces. Trinkling back farewells, the Shai-poo party continued on its
way down the _Terrasse_, but Sacha stayed. He had gripped Val's hand
over the little fence that enclosed the yard and would not let it go.
"I must speak to you," he said urgently, fiercely, and did not care that
Haidee lingered within earshot, and when she heard his words started,
then tore up the flight of steps into the villa.
"What is it, Sacha?" said Val, gently.
"You have been playing with me!" He was white-lipped and furious. She
felt ashamed though her intention had been good.
"Oh, Sacha!--do not be angry! Surely you too were playing?--I----"
"No!" he shot out at her. "It was not play for me--I----"
But she would have no declarations.
"Well--I am truly sorry--you must forgive me--I, am very fond of you,
Sacha--both you and Rupert--but you must not think--Why, I am a very
serious woman. Think, I have a son, and am almost old enough to be your
mother!"
"Why did you not say that to me before? Why have you been to me these
last weeks so full of allure, 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 assure you that I have found it anything but an
uninteresting experience. Will you not pay me the same compliment and
shake hands on it?"
After a little pause he let go his grip of her right hand and took the
other into a more gentle grasp. The scowl passed from his face. He was
not a bad-hearted fellow--only one of his kind! A smile came into his
hard blue eyes.
"_B'en_! All rite," he accepted, and kissed her hand, not without a
show of grace.
Val sighed as she went softly indoors, and a pain shot through her
breast as she came upon Haidee in the sitting-room, head on the table,
hair spread in every direction, absolute abandonment in her pose. A
longing seized Val to sit down and put her arm round the girl's waist,
but she knew Haidee too well to succumb to it. Instead, she pretended
to notice nothing unusual.
"A headache, chicken?" she asked casually, and went to hang her hat
behind the door. At the sound of her voice Haidee sprang up and stood
facing her.
"I hate you--I hate you--" she cried passionately. "You always take
away the people I love from me!"
"Oh, Haidee!" cried Val, sorrowfully, suddenly remembering the night she
had found the child on Westenra's bed.
"I hate you!" she screamed in concentrated rage, her face dark with
passion. "I will hurt you some day. You'll see!"
She flung out of the room.
"So that is my reward for putting up with that silly ass for three
weeks!" said Val to herself, and sighed once more. Wearily she lighted
her candle and went to warm her heart with a glimpse of her son. He lay
flung on the pillow like a warm pink rose. She burrowed her nose gently
into his soft neck, scenting the lovely puppy dog scent that all young
things have round their throats, scenting, too, the little stinky hands
that in his yearning for bed he had only half-washed. With a wet sponge
and some drops of eau-de-cologne she gently removed from them the
mingled odour of shell-fish, bread and jam, and night dews. Then she
made the sign of the Cross over him, and went to bed.
----
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 shore. 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 pass 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
snatched by the waves and torn to ribbons by the wind before it reached
the beach. Val found herself shivering, 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 _petit 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 sunshine 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 rushing 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 shore on any tide."