Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
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."
CHAPTER XVIII
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