Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
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."
CHAPTER XIX
THE WAY OF NEMESIS
"Spring is dead,
And summer is dead.
Oh! my heart,
And, oh! my head!"
It had always been understood that after the summer Haidee was to go
back to Paris to finish her education at the Versailles Lycee, while Val
and Bran put in another healthy, if desolate winter at Mascaret. Now
the latter part of the plan was impossible. The place was haunted, for
Val, by poor Sacha's ghost. She knew not where to go except it were
back to Paris. Bran was older now and his health established. Perhaps
if she could find a governess for him he would get along all right while
she worked! The need for work was imperative. Funds were down to zero.