CHAPTER XVI

THE WAYS OF GIRLS

"Il n'est pas de rose assez tendre Sur la palette du printemps, Madame, pour oser pretendre Lutter contre vos dix-sept ans." GAUTIER.

"Did you see the people from Villa Shai-poo?" asked Haidee, as they walked home.

"No, which were they?" Val was away in a land of her own peopling and her eyes were vague.

"An awfully distinguished old man, with a little white goatee and nice American-looking boots; and two boys...." She stopped abruptly. Val's attention was attracted.

"What kind of boys?"

"Oh, well! I didn't notice them much. You know all French boys look as if they wear stays. I dare say these are n't so bad though. Hortense says the eldest is in a regiment _tres chic_. The other one failed for the navy last year." Her manner was meant to suggest pointed indifference.

"They must be more than boys."

"The one with the greeny-blue eyes is twenty-four and the one with dark blue ones is nineteen and a half," responded Haidee. Val smiled at this artless testimony of her "indifference."

They were passing Shai-poo at the moment; a big, square, roomy-looking house, with those solid grey walls that stand for centuries and are so typical of Normandy, surrounded by a spacious garden full of the charm of careless grace--groups of trees, flowering grasses, little forests of tall bamboos, beds of brilliant flowers that looked as if they had sprung up by happy accident, winding paths, and a tea-house in the form of a Chinese pagoda. A great mainmast rooted from the bowels of a French war-ship of old type was erected in a clear open space that lay almost like a deck around it. From its top lazily floated a silk flag embroidered with the Chinese Royal arms.

"Their grandfather the Admiral must have arrived," said Haidee excitedly. "They only put up that flag for him--it is the one he took in the battle of Shai-poo. That is the mast of his old ship."

"Goodness, Haidee! what a lot you know about them! Who is the man with the goatee and the American boots then?"

"Oh, that's the father of Sacha, the one in the army. The other boy, Rupert, is a cousin and an orphan."

"Oh!" Val pondered these things in her heart. It was plain that Haidee was growing up, and beginning to take an interest in other things than hens and rabbits! Evidently too she had been listening to Hortense's gossip. Val felt guilty somehow, and wished wistfully that poor Haidee could have the society and companionship of a girl of her own age and world.

When they got home they found that John the Baptist had left some letters. One of them was from Harriott Kesteven, asking if Val would mind very much if she came to Mascaret for the summer months, bringing her girl Kitty. It seemed almost like an answer to Val's wish for society for Haidee.

Her only doubt was as to Westenra. Would this, even though he never knew or cared, be treachery to him--a last fire made of the blackened embers of a burnt boat?

It could scarcely be that after all! He had been at great pains these last few years to show her by his silence and coldness how little her doings mattered to him. Apparently on his return to America after the fatal visit to Jersey he had flung himself into work with the result that sometimes occurs in the lives of men; a temple of public success had begun to raise its walls above the grave of his private sorrows. International journals frequently mentioned his name in connection with some wonderful operation performed at his now famous nursing home. Under the aegis of the skilful Miss Holland the house in 68th Street had become something very like a gold mine, as the size of the quarterly cheques (which Val never used) gave proof. Of more importance was the fact that he had advanced with great strides in his scientific work, and the results of his experimental investigations in diabetes were the talk of medical Europe. There were rumours of his nomination for the next Nobel.

Small wonder if in this furious concentration on work and the fame it brought him, personal emotion as far as Val was concerned should be crushed out of his life like a useless, hurtful thing. That at last was the impression she gained from his letters to Haidee, conned and brooded over in the silence of the night when the children slept. True, love for Haidee and his son breathed from every line, but there was never a word in the cold courteous messages to Val that she could lay upon her heart to heal its aching wound. Time and distance had widened the breach between them until now it was a gaping ravine over which the correspondence with Haidee formed the last frail bridge. He had never put foot in Europe since the visit to Jersey, but taken all his vacations in different parts of America. Sometimes he wrote vaguely of coming over to see them all, but Val felt herself left outside his world now, and doubted that he seriously considered making a movement that would bring him back into hers. It seemed almost ironical to be wondering whether she would have his approval or not in allowing Harriott Kesteven to come to Mascaret. It was so patent that he had long since taken advantage of the circumstance that freed his life from hers.

She decided in the end that with a clear conscience she might wire to London the word "come."

"Of course I know there is a hotel in the place, Val," Mrs. Kesteven had written, "but we'd much rather come and picnic and be insane with you on the Dutch-treat plan, each paying our own share. Do let us."

And Val, though she knew her friend had two thousand a year, and was used to every comfort of modern civilisation, felt no hesitation about bidding her welcome. Harriott Kesteven was a woman after her own heart; one who could make herself just as much at home in the little wooden cabins of Villa Duval as in her luxurious London flat; who would rather tramp the desert with the friend of her heart than be borne in the silken litters of a stranger's caravan.

To herself Val could not disguise what a joy it would be to see Harriott again; to show her Bran--the one tangible treasure snatched from the grudging hand of Fate; to open her heart a little to eyes that were lovingly tolerant, and would smile rather than condemn. Friendship should be always such a joy: clear water in sight of a thirsty soul--a tree under which to rest after long travel!

Harriott having speedily wired back that she and her girl were starting at once, via Southampton and Jersey, preparations for their advent set in at Villa Duval. They were not very complicated preparations, however, merely a matter of clearing out the two spare cabins, and storing the boxes and baggage in one of _pere_ Duval's lofts. Then a great gathering of wild flowers to stand in jam jars all over the house and a hunting expedition to the village for a _bonne-a-tout-faire_. A middle-aged stony-faced shrew bearing the poetical name of Azalie was captured, and a bargain struck with her to come in from seven in the morning till seven in the evening, for the sum of ten francs fifty a week, bread, coffee, and cider thrown in. Hortense was to act as her _aide-de-camp_.

Then on one afternoon the band of three went across to the _digue_ not more than five hundred yards from their door, to meet the steamer from Jersey. It was the first boat of the year, and its arrival quite the event of the season, so all the world of Mascaret was leaning on the ropes put up by the Customs' officers to prevent passengers escaping before declaring themselves innocent of contraband. Val, with her _chi-chi_ tied across her forehead, her face swathed in veils, stood biting her lips and trembling with emotion, nervous as a bird at the thought of seeing her friend again. She wondered fearfully if Harriott would find her greatly changed. Haidee, full of curiosity, was scowling under her brigand hat ready to get out all her porcupine-prickles if she did not like the other girl on sight. Bran pranced with excitement at the thought of seeing a big ship once more. Near by were standing the two young men from the Villa Shai-poo, and from behind her veils Val took stock of them and found them goodly to look upon. She liked their loose blue flannel suits, so different from the usual tight correct clothes worn by young Frenchmen at the seaside. She liked their clear skins and eyes too, and their sleek black heads. In fact, they were not very French-looking at all, but much more like Irish boys. The younger one especially, with his misty violet eyes and rather dreamy face, might easily have been mistaken for a west-of-Ireland lad. The elder and handsomer of the two possessed already the Frenchman's hardy eye for a woman, and Val intercepted several appraising glances cast in the direction of Haidee. The younger fellow contented himself with smiling at Bran, who smiled back in friendly fashion.

"I like that boy," he confided to Val, "he's got a hole 'n his chin and his hair is jet black." Bran decided all his likes and dislikes by colour and smell. His favourite colours were yellow, red, green, and wet-black. This last was very different to ordinary black, which was the colour of toothache. Little rheumatic pains which he sometimes got in his knees were grey. The worst pain you could get was a purply-red one which came when you were sad and gave you the stomach-ache. He had once solemnly stated that the only colour he hated was yellowy-pink, but as he always called yellow pink and pink yellow no one had been able to solve the riddle of this hated colour.

Long before the boat came alongside Val recognised Harriott by the condition of her hat. Mrs. Kesteven's hats invariably looked as though some one had been taking a siesta on them, but the moment she got close enough for her little soft, stern face to be seen no one thought of her hat any more. It was the same with her clothes. She always had an extraordinary stock of last year's gowns to "finish up," but under the thrall of her charming manners no one ever noticed that her skirt was wider than was fashionable and her sleeves the wrong shape. It would have been difficult to compute how many new spring gowns she had contributed that year to youthful poor relations, but she herself was "finishing up" a faded purple linen of weird cut, while the hat of battered violets on her head was certainly not in its first season. But all the glow of friendship and true affection was in her sunny eyes. She flew from the deck of the wheezy old steamer, and in spite of the Customs' officers' efforts to head her off, embraced Val over the ropes. Behind her came Kitty, very fair, pretty, and beautifully dressed. Haidee shot a scowl at her.

"A Smarty-Arty!" was her inward comment, though she was slightly overawed by Kitty's clothes.

"She 's taller than me, but her feet are bigger," thought Kitty.

"And this is my Brannikin, Harry."

"What a duck! ... give me a kiss, Bran."

But Bran retreated behind his mother's skirts murmuring:

"The cat says bow-wow-wow."

"Don't be silly, my Wing. Come on--and say how do you do. This is Kitty."

"_Je sais bien_," said Bran, and handed Kitty a hardy smile. Bran knew all things well--at least that was his favourite response to all remarks. When Val first took him to Notre Dame and they knelt together in the light of the wonderful rose-window, she whispered in his ear:

"Brannie, you are in the most beautiful church in the world."

"_Je sais bien_," he had answered blandly.

They all proceeded to Villa Duval, followed by the speculative glances of the crowd and the grocer's handcart carrying Harriott's luggage. Kitty and Haidee, subtly aware of the admiring eyes of the two young Frenchmen, assumed a demure air mingled with light and not too annihilating scorn.

Harriott expressed herself charmed with Villa Duval and all that therein was, from the rose-tree on the balustrade that bore both pink and white roses as a tribute to _pere_ Duval's skill in grafting, to the meat-safe suspended by a chain from the dining-room floor to the cellar below. After inspecting the cabins, peeping out of the windows, and hearkening to the man-eater in the kitchen, she said:

"You don't know how lucky you are, Val, living in peace and simplicity like this. You ought to be a very happy woman."

"So I am--happy as a tomtit on a pump-handle," said Val, smiling gaily, but Harriott, who had the seeing eye, saw the heart-hunger behind the smile, and knew that happiness had eluded her friend once more.

"I 've no right to grumble, Harry. I 've got what I wanted--a son. You know I always felt my life would not be complete without a son--and he is the son of a real man. But, if one had forty sons, there would still always be that little round hole in one's heart which no child can ever quite fill--you know, Harriott."

Yes, Harriott knew. Not for nothing had her beautiful hair turned snow-white at thirty. She, too, had a void in her big, warm heart which neither Kitty nor the dozen impecunious youthful relations to whom she played godmother had been able to fill.

Haidee and Kitty soon became thick as thieves, and, like thieves, distrusted each other thoroughly. Blondes and brunettes nearly always do. Pretending to be quite unimpressed by each other's looks secretly each admired the other's type exceedingly, and in little ways, which they supposed no one noticed, tried to copy each other's good points in dress and style. It was funny to see Haidee, whose hair had always been a shameful sort of mane flying to the winds, now brush it out sleek and straight under a red ribbon (in opposition to Kitty's blue one) bound _a la Grec_ above her brow, while Kitty could not rest until she had discarded her stockings and bought herself a pair of canvas sandals at Lemonier's. She was, to her annoyance, however, no more able to imitate the tan which covered Haidee, than the latter could acquire the milky whiteness of Kitty's complexion. They set each other off well--Haidee with her tall dark beauty, Kitty fair and fluffy as a Persian kitten. It was small wonder that wherever they went attention was focused upon them. The two French boys were always hovering in the vicinity, whether on the beach when the party went to bathe, on the _digue_ to watch the Jersey boat arrive--now one of the daily interests--or out walking on the cliff. Often, as they sauntered in the lanes, the girls ahead, Harry and Val loitering and gossiping behind, the sound of bicycles would be heard and the two boys would whirr past, sending swift, hardy glances at the girls, making the occasion an excuse for apologetically lifting their caps.

"I 'm afraid it's neither you behind your blue veil, nor I with 'nearly fifty' scrawled across my features, who is causing such commotion in those two male bosoms," chuckled Harriott to Val.

"It gives one a little shock to feel so out of it!" said Val, laughing a little. "When men's eyes slip past to the girl behind, one begins to realise that one cannot stay in the great game for ever."

"For ever--no," said Harry; "but _you 're_ not out of it yet, my dear--you 've only taken the blue veil for a while."

"Oh, Harry, I was out of it the moment Bran came. I got my prize, little as I deserved it, and retired from the arena. Even if I had n't loved my man I could never have continued to amuse myself that way once I had a son."

"That doesn't make the least difference to your attracting power, my dear. You are one of those women who will always have for men the same kind of pull as the moon for the sea."

Val laughed a little mournfully as she reflected that her moonlight quality had not the power to pull just the one man she wanted across the sea to her.

----

On the third day after the Kestevens' arrival the Frenchmen achieved acquaintance with Bran on the beach. He came back to his party announcing that "Sacha" and "Rupert" had asked him if he would like to go out sailing with them.

"Come for a walk in their boat they said," he said, grinning gaily at their literal English. "And they asked if my sisters like going out for walks in a boat, too?"

Kitty and Haidee exchanged rapid eye-signals, then looked away at the sea. Harriott frowned.

"Why don't the idiotic creatures come and call on us like honest men, or send their women folk?"

"He's got no women folk but his sister, and she hasn't come from Paris yet," burst from Haidee suddenly.

"Whose sister?"

"Sacha's."

"She 's expected on Thursday," supplemented Kitty. A minute later the two discovered urgent business elsewhere--perhaps for fear of being questioned as to the source of their information.

Val and Harriott gazed at each other stupefied.

"Goodness! they know all about these French fellows. What are we to do?"

"Take no notice, Harry. Let them have their little excitement, dear things. A woman's life is so short. Bran said to me as we lay in bed this morning, 'Mammie, in 120 months, I 'll be fifteen; how old will you be?' And, my dear, I calculated and found it would bring me up to forty-two--and another 120 months to fifty-two, and then another, and life will be done! Have you ever thought of it, dear: that our lives are just a series of months in batches of 120?"

"You need not talk yet," sighed Harriott. "It's the last few batches that are so short. The years fly like greased lightning after forty."

"And the early ones seem so long and weary--until the first love adventure looms in sight. Ah! those first little adventures, how lovely they are! To realise that we are desirable ... that some one wants us ... finds us pretty and charming ... to feel the little wings of womanhood sprouting on our shoulder-blades! Oh, Harry, we mustn't grudge the enchantment of it to our girls! Don't you remember how delightful it was? Was anything that came after half so wonderful?"

"I know," said Harriott, the gentle light of reminiscence in her eye. "But this is a different matter, my dear. These are _Frenchmen_."

"But they are really very Irish-looking," laughed Val, who not being English never could understand the curious aversion that sits deep in almost every Englishwoman's heart for the male species across the Channel. "And those two kids are as happy and excited as larks in the wind. I 'm sure that kind of thing should never be suppressed, Harry."

"I dare say you are right, dear. Only we must make fun of them sometimes so that there shall be no danger of their taking it seriously. I think I 'd rather have Kitty take the veil than take a Frenchman."

That same evening as they all sat playing Bridge in the little wooden dining-room of Villa Duval, a whirr of bicycle wheels was heard without. Then a silence and the sound of some one walking softly over the glass and broken china with which the other side of the road was freely decorated. Under the table Haidee handed Kitty a hack on the shins, but their faces remained bland, their interest in the game unabated. It was a black night and to look out of the window availed nothing. A few moments later came the sound of bicycles in retreat. At bedtime the two girls stayed whispering and speculating long in Kitty's room, which overlooked the road, but the mystery of the bicycles was unexplained--until the next morning. Bran, standing on Val's bed, as was his pleasant custom when dressing, suddenly shouted--and a shout in Villa Duval could be heard through every room in the house.

"_What's that red thing in my 'Jules Duval'?_"

The _Jules Duval_, as has been explained, was _pere_ Duval's old fishing boat, which had been fixed-up and painted to be the special joy and plaything of Bran. He adored boats and everything to do with the sea, and spent all his days in the _Jules_ going imaginary voyages.

"There 's something red fastened to the mast," he shrieked excitedly, and upstairs two necks were craned to cracking point from Kitty's bedroom window. Insufficiently clothed as he was Bran tore out to the boat, and came back bearing in triumph an enormous cabbage rose--full blown, and rather tired from being up all night. Both girls put out their hands for it. Bran looked at them in surprise.

"Why, it was in _my_ boat! Perhaps an angel put it there for me..." The girls turned away in wrath. Later they were each seen to go separately to the _Jules_ and give a sort of casual glance into the bottom of it. It was possible, of course, that Bran might have overlooked something!

"Only one rose! How clever of those young scamps!" chuckled Val, and Harriott with joyful malice pinned the flopping rose to the breast of Bran's red sweater, where it drooped its life away.

The girls were constrained with each other all day. The tide was low and there was no excuse to go to the beach. Perhaps that was why the two took books and sat in the _Jules_ all the morning pretending to read, but with a keen lookout on the road and all stray cyclists. Bran, greatly delighted to have passengers, took them several voyages to New York and back. Harry and Val, professing to be busy inside the Villa, cast many an intrigued glance from the windows. Nothing happened.

Next morning a basket of figs was found in the boat--beautiful, luscious, purple figs. Now the only fig-trees in Mascaret grew in the garden of the Admiral of Shai-poo!

Val and Harriott went to early Mass, and returning ran into the two heroes coming up from the river. They had been for an early morning sail, and wore a pleasantly disreputable air in their blue fisherman jerseys and turned-up coat collars. They cast sheepish glances at the two ladies, and the younger had the grace to blush.

"They really are nice-looking boys," Harriott admitted, but at the breakfast table a few minutes later she expressed herself differently.

"We met those two Romeos from the Villa Shai-poo as we were coming from Mass," she announced. "Seedy-looking fellows. One of them looked as if a tub might do him good."

The girls bristled like Irish terriers.

"Which one?" they demanded in one breath.

"The one with the drunken blue eyes," said Val, aware that this was sheer malice.

"Oh, that's Rupert!" Relief burst from Haidee. But Kitty's appetite was gone. She assumed a dark and menacing expression of countenance that her mother declared reminded her of Mendelssohn's _Spring Song_.

"It makes me want to prance and leap like Cissie Loftus imitating Maude Allen when I see you look like that, Kit," she said. But Kit remained cross as a cat and would not smile.

"And where did these figs come from?" asked Val in amaze.

"They are Bran's," quoth Haidee demurely. "An angel left them in the _Jules_ for him."

It may have been religious fervour which then seized the girls or it may merely have been a fervour for going in the direction of Mascaret, at any rate they patronised both High Mass and Vespers and seemed to be discontented that there were no further services to attend.

In the evening, as it was Sunday, there were letters to write instead of the usual game of Bridge. Every one appeared to be deeply occupied, but a listening look was so apparent on two faces that Harriott could not resist a mischievous remark to Val.

"I wonder if the cabbages have come yet?" As if by some magical arrangement with fate there came on the instant the usual whirring sound followed by the crackling underfoot of broken crockery which had strayed from the garbage hole.

"What's that?" cried Bran nervously from his bed in the next room.

"Hush, my Wing! I expect it's only a basket of eggs arriving in the _Jules_," soothed his mother.

"Soon we shall not have to go to market, Val," remarked Harriott; "all that we need will be found in the boat. I wonder if it's a Customs' officer or a gendarme who is so kind?"

"I think a delicate attention on our part would be to tie a return bouquet on to the mainmast," said Val thoughtfully. "Should we go out and gather some, Harry--just to show that we enjoyed the figs?"

"Oh, no! Val," burst out Haidee, "you 'll spoil everything."

"Spoil?" said Val with wondering eyes. "_Everything_? Surely a little gratitude...? Old _pere_ Duval has some nice sunflowers."

But the girls had burst from the room in a rage. Val and Harriott, exploding with laughter, went for a walk down the _digue_ in the mild darkness.

"Poor kids!" said Harriott. "Perhaps we really ought not to torment them so much."

"My dear, it is the proudest moment of their lives," laughed Val. "Their first conquest! At such times mothers are always looked upon as sort of ogresses anyway--we may as well be amused ogresses."

They had an adventure all to themselves that night. A little party of people passed them talking French, and bound like themselves for a stroll to the end of the breakwater. There were two ladies and two men, and in the latter Val felt certain she recognised the boys from Shai-poo. Behind them, at a little distance, smoking a deliciously fragrant cigar and humming cheerfully after the manner of a Frenchman who has just enjoyed a good dinner, strolled a third man, evidently belonging to the party, for he called out an occasional remark to the others. All disappeared into the blackness at the far end of the pier, where a lamp and storm-bell were built into a little chapel-shaped shelter. Val and Harriott, deciding not to walk farther, seated themselves by dint of a certain amount of physical exertion upon the high wall which runs beside the _digue_, their legs dangling, the sea below, the cool black night all round them. By and by the French party returned in the order of their going, the last man still lagging behind. He had perhaps lingered longer than the others to watch the seas dashing against the bulky end of the pier, for the advance party passed some five minutes before his cheerful humming was heard. As he came along a pale streak of gold from the far lighthouse swept over him, revealing him an elderly, distinguished man of the _Legion d'honneur_ type. Val immediately recognised in him the man whom Haidee had pointed out as General Lorrain, the father of Sacha: he of the American boots and pointed goatee.

"Ah! Le phare est tres chic ce soir!" He called out suddenly. He had seen them in the same sweeping line of light, but it never occurred to them that he mistook them for the ladies of his party until he came up and gave Harriott an affectionate squeeze on her ankle, repeating his remark:

"_N'est ce pas_, Comtesse--it gives a very _chic_ illumination to-night, the lighthouse?"

Mrs. Kesteven gave a very _chic_ gasp, and almost leaped from the wall into the sea below. And Val, realising what had happened, hastily leaned forward and in her bad French, always ten times worse when she was excited, cried:

"_Mais--vous faisez une erreur, monsieur._"

The poor man, horrified as Mrs. Kesteven herself, blurted out a throaty:

"_Parr-don! Je vous demands parr-don, mesdames,_" and fled.

Val said her French did it--that wonderful phrase "_faisez une erreur_," quite unknown to the French grammar. But Harriott declared her suspicion that the quality of her woollen stockings was the cause of the poor man's panic.

"I imagine the French Comtesse whom that pinch was meant for is not much addicted to Jaeger and flannel lingerie," she said with a grim glint of humour in her eye. "Anyway it is a lesson to us not to sit out alone on dark nights."

Next morning there was a basket of grapes in the boat.

"This is really beginning to go a little too far," declared Val. "Either some one is robbing the Admiral's garden and wants to drag us into the affair as accomplices, or else there is an impression abroad that we are in need of food and clothing."

She and Harriott gravely discussed the point as to whether it would be better to put up a public notice by the wayside, or call in the gendarmes.

"Oh, mother!" cried Kitty in a voice of mingled consternation and impatience, and wriggled Mrs. Kesteven into her bedroom where she could harangue her without ribald interruption from Val. The minute Haidee got Val alone she said furiously:

"Oh, Val, you are a silly ass! You know quite well it 's _them_!"

"_Them?_"

"Those Lorrain boys. Do leave off rotting."

"Rotting?"

"Och! _you!_" cried Haidee in a black rage, and flung out of the room.