Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
by the name of _le boisson avec le brulot dedans_: which signifies cider
very liberally diluted with French cognac. Then the winter closed in on
Mascaret with wild gales and high-flowing tides. On Christmas Eve snow
came softly down, so that the walk to midnight mass had been like acting
in that scene painted by a Dutch painter where the village folk are seen
winding their way through the snow, lanterns and hot-water bottles in
their hands, to the distant church with windows full of red light. All
the winter interests of the simple village had been sampled and shared
by Val and the children, and they had been happier there than ever in
France. The children loved the freedom of the place and the _bonhomie_
of the French folk so different to English people of that class. The
three went about in their red sweaters and lived a life of absolute
unconvention. It was a good place to write a masterpiece in--if one
were only a master--was Val's ironical thought, and in spite of her
self-directed irony, she did achieve during the first months there a
wonderful little curtain raiser, which Branker Preston had no difficulty
in disposing of to a London manager. It dealt with Boers and Zulus, and
had been well received, but unfortunately the play it had preceded in
the bill was a failure and the two were withdrawn together before Val
could greatly benefit, but it had brought in five guineas a week for six
weeks, and this success had put her in heart for further work of the
kind. She had sickened of writing "Wanderfoot" articles from a chair.
She could by this time have written some very spirited ones on the
subject of France in general and Normandy in particular, but she had her
reasons for not wishing to attract attention to her whereabouts, as such
articles would surely have done. Preston advised her to write a novel,
but she knew she had neither the patience to spin a long story through
many chapters to its end, nor the gift of character portrayal. What was
hers was a sense for situation, colour, and atmosphere, and it occurred
to her that the best vehicle for a display of these qualities was the
theatre. Her first little venture had attracted the attention of
several managers, and one of them told Preston that he was ready to
consider a three-act play by her. It was this play she was busy upon
now. But it was sometimes hard to transport the atmosphere of far-away
tropical Natal into a little wooden villa facing the English Channel,
with a wild spring gale tearing at the windows, and the rollers booming
like cannon on the Barleville beach--for the promise of summer had gone
as swiftly as it came, and the spring tides were flooding up the river
flinging great walls of spray over the _digue_ and splashing three feet
deep across the Terrasse, right to the steps of the _Hotel de la Mer_,
so that the journey to the village had to be made by a path up the
cliff.
Val found that the only way to ignore Normandy and the bleak mists of
_La Manche_ was to sit over a _chaufferette_ full of bright red embers
of charcoal, letting the heat steal up her skirts and enveloping her
whole person from the soles of her feet to her scalp in a lovely glow.
Immediately she would begin to write things full of the tropical languor
of Africa. In her brain palms waved, little pot-bellied Kaffirs rolled
in the hot dirt, sunshine blazed over a blue and green land, the air was
filled with the scent of mimosa, and great-limbed Zulus danced in
rhythmic lines with chant and stamp and swing of assegai before
Cetewayo, the great and cruel king.
Unfortunately, a _chaufferette_ is not always an easy thing to manage.
Like everything French it has a temperament, and is liable to moods when
it will burn and moods when it won't. It is a wooden or tin box,
perforated at the top and open at one side to admit an earthenware bowl
full of the charcoal which is called _charbon de bois_--actually
calcined morsels of green wood. The baker makes this charbon by
sticking green wood branches into his hot oven after he has finished
baking his bread, but each baker makes a limited supply only, and will
not sell it except to people who buy his bread. Every one uses
_chaufferette_ in Normandy during the winter, and visitors are given one
to put their feet on as soon as they enter a house, though sometimes
when the host is rich enough to keep a perpetual fire going, a supply of
hot bricks is kept in the oven instead.
Val's _chaufferette_ was of most uncertain temper. Hortense always lit
it in the morning, and left it by the writing-table. When Val came to
it all that had to be done was to gently insert an old spoon under the
little ash heap and lift it all round, when a red hot centre of glowing
embers would disclose itself. But sometimes an old nail or piece of
"Carr-_diff_" found its way by accident into the pot, then the charbon
would immediately sulk itself into oblivion, or sometimes for no reason
at all after being perfectly lighted it would just go out. Ensued a
struggle in which Val and Haidee invariably came off second-best. They
would take the pot out of its box and stand it on a window-sill with the
window drawn low to make a draught; put it on the front door step and,
kneeling down, blow on it until fine ash sat thick upon their noses and
their eyes were full of tears; build paper bonfires on it; fan it wildly
with newspapers. All to no avail! Usually that was the end of work and
inspiration for the day. Val declared that she could not _think_ with
cold feet. But sometimes old _pere_ Duval, compassionate for the mad,
would send up his wooden box, large enough for two men to warm their
feet on, with a great iron saucepan full of glowing charbon inside, and
Val would sit toasting over it and write things of a tropical languor
extraordinary.
Haidee had passed her _brevet simple_, an exam, about equal to the
English Oxford Junior, and the American 6th standard, and was now
working for the _brevet superieure_ with a French woman who had been a
governess before she married a retired commercial traveller and settled
in Mascaret. The discovery of this good woman was a stroke of luck for
Val, though certainly Haidee did not consider it so. However, her
lessons only took up four hours a day. For the rest she and Bran idled
joyous and care-free through life, climbing the cliff, fishing, digging
for sand-eels, making long excursions inland, or meeting the fishing
boats in the evening when they came in with the day's haul, and all the
villagers would be at the _port_ to bargain for fish. Haidee usually
haggled for and bought a _raie_ (dog-fish) for the next day's dinner,
and Bran would run a stick through its ribald-looking mouth, and carry
the slithery monstrous thing home, to be met by scowls from Hortense,
who, stolid as she was, hated the sight of a _raie_, and could not face
the business of washing and gutting it without cries of _douleur_ and
disgust.
"_Ah! C'est craintive! C'est affreux!_"
But meat was too dear for daily consumption, and _raie_ the only fish
brought in by the boats throughout the winter months, so it had to be
eaten, and some one had to prepare it. And after all, wrestling with
_raie_ was one of the jobs for which Hortense was paid three francs a
week. It was her business to come in the morning at seven o'clock, make
the fires, and deliver "little breakfast" at each bedside; afterwards
she swept and made the beds, then disappeared until just before lunch,
when she came to perform upon the _raie_ and execute one or two culinary
feats that were beyond the scope of Val or Haidee--such as cutting up
onions, which neither of them could accomplish without weeping aloud, or
putting the chipped potatoes into a pan full of boiling dripping, a
business that when conducted by Val made a rain of grease spots all over
the kitchen and scalded every one in sight. After washing the midday
dishes, and chopping up vegetables for the soup, Hortense would consider
her function over for the day, and leave Val and Haidee to grapple as
best they might with tea, supper, fires, and the _chaufferette_. The
supper was no very great difficulty, merely a matter of putting the cut
vegetables into a pot with a large lump of specially prepared and
seasoned dripping, and standing said pot on the stove until supper-time,
when its contents would be marvellously transformed into _soupe a la
graise_, a savoury and nourishing broth eaten as an evening meal by
every peasant in Normandy. The fires were the greatest nuisance. The
stove in the kitchen either became a red-hot furnace and purred like a
man-eater, or else went out; and the stove with an open grate in Val's
room, which old man Duval had paid a month's rent for and gone all the
way to Cherbourg to fetch, had a way of going out also before any one
even noticed that it was low; then there would be much scratching with a
poker, searching for kindling wood, pouring out of paraffin, sudden
happy blazes that nearly took the roof off, and black smuts everywhere.
When all was over, and a beautiful fire roaring after the united efforts
of the family, Val would find that her _chaufferette_ had gone out! It
was hard to even think masterpieces among such distractions, to say
nothing of writing them. Tea was easily got. Haidee made the toast on
the salad fork, Val buttered it with dripping, Bran laid the table. Then
all three sat with their feet on the stove, drinking out of the big
coffee bowls, eating every scrap of the delicious smoky toast and
licking their fingers afterwards. If Val had written anything funny or
dramatic that day she would sometimes read it out to them, but for the
most part her instinct was to hide what she wrote. She said she felt as
if she had lost something afterwards, and if any one had been even
looking at her written sheets they never seemed quite the same to her
again--some virtue went out of her work the moment she shared it with
any one.
Usually, after tea she settled down for another struggle with her ideas,
and Bran and Haidee went for a prowl on the _digue_ in the hope of
adventures. Bran, whose mind was as full of fairies as if he had been
born in the wilds of Ireland, was always in hope of meeting a giant or a
dwarf, but he had learned not to mention these aspirations to Haidee.
Anyway, there was always the village gossip to listen to in the _petit
port_, where the fishing boats anchored and usually the excitement of
watching the _Quatre Freres_ come chup--chup--chupping up the river to
her moorings. She was a natty and picturesque trawler, with a petrol
engine that was the admiration of the village installed in her bowels.
Because of this engine she was known as the _Chalutier a petrole_, but
at Villa Duval she was called by Bran's translation of her name, _The
Cat's Freres_. She never caught anything but _raie_, and of this
despised species far fewer than any of the other boats, but she dashed
in and out of the harbour with great slam and needed five men to handle
her. There was a legend that the petrol engine frightened the fish
away. It was known that the four brothers who owned her were anxious to
get rid of her. Every one knew that she cost more than she brought in.
But Haidee and Bran shared a fugitive hope that Val's play would make
them all so rich that they would be able to acquire her as a pleasure
boat.
Sometimes strange craft from Granville or a Brittany port would come in
for the night, and there was the _St. Joseph_, a great fishing trawler
from Lannion, carrying a master and seven hands, that put in when
weather was heavy. Her sails were patched with every colour of the
rainbow, her decks were filthy, and her years sat heavy upon her--you
could hear her creaking and groaning two miles from shore: but to Haidee