The size of the cheque from Branker Preston, however, was what really decided the affair, limiting them to wandering happily enough in Brittany. But the water and primitive methods of Breton cooks made Val think nervously of typhoid, and after a time she headed for Normandy.

Normans are cleaner in their household ways than Bretons, of whom they slightingly speak as "_les pores Bretons_," declaring that they eat out of holes in the table and never wash the holes. Besides, Normandy in winter is milder than Brittany. So, travelling by highways and byways, they happened at last on Mascaret.

It was the tag end of September when they arrived. All the summer visitors were gone and the big silver beach deserted, but summer itself still lingered. They got an entrancing glimpse of the gentle green and gold beauty of the place before the chills of autumn set in. Even then they had been able to bathe and go sailing in the fishing boat of one of _pere_ Duval's sons, who was now in his turn lighthouse-keeper of Mascaret. For ten sunny October days, too, they had a.s.sisted with all the ardour of novitiates at _pere_ Duval's cider making, becoming acquainted with the secrets of _cidre bouche_, and the grades to be found in _cidre ordinaire_ unto the third and fourth watering. They even sampled the latter as drunk by the fishermen and called for at the cafes 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 ma.s.s 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 cla.s.s. 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 Terra.s.se, 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 a.s.segai 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, compa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.m.u.ts 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 b.u.t.tered 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 sc.r.a.p 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 _pet.i.t port_, where the fishing boats anch.o.r.ed 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 sh.o.r.e: but to Haidee and Bran she stood for the true romance! She always brought in tons of fish, not only the everlasting _raie_, but deep-sea fish, and as soon as her arrival was heralded all the village sabots came clipper-clopping down the terrace, shawls clutched round bosoms, the wind flicking bright red spots in old cheeks, every one anxious to pick and choose from the ma.s.s of coal-fish, red gurnet, plaice, congers, and mullets that was hooked out of the hold and flung quivering ash.o.r.e. The big weather-beaten fishermen in their sea-boots bandied jests with the carking old village wives and the girls showered laughter. In the end, the villagers departed with full baskets, and the seamen well content adjourned to the _pet.i.t cafe_ close by for a "cup of coffee with a burn in it" and a good meal.

CHAPTER XV

WAYS SACRED AND SECULAR

"A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene."--EMERSON.

In May, the gentle month of May, the weather cleared up again, and green things commenced to sprout and bloom on the cliff above Villa Duval. The country-side began to bloom and blossom as the rose. From the high coast that lies facing the sea, Jersey could be discerned on clear days etched as if in India ink upon the horizon thirteen miles away. Clots of sea-samphire burst into flower, cleverly justifying its name of _creste marine_ by just keeping out of reach of the high tides. The gorse showed dots of yellow amongst its p.r.i.c.kles, and little brilliant blue squills stuck up their perky faces and gave out a sweet scent. All along the path to the lighthouse wild thyme came out in springy ma.s.ses, and the mad Americans often went up that way for the special purpose of lying on it as on a soft, pink silk rug. It seemed to cause them a peculiar kind of joy to put their faces down in it, crying, "Oh! oh!

oh!"

The garbage-hole across the road in front of Villa Duval which the dustman had been trying for many summers to transform into a building plot by filling it with empty tins and rubbish from the hotel, and which had been an eyesore all the winter, now suddenly became a place of beauty, for a lot of p.r.i.c.kly, thistly-looking plants growing among the jam tins burst into a blaze of red and yellow. It turned out that they were poppies that had been keeping themselves secret all through the winter, and the yellow bright gold of "Our Lady's bedstraw." One day Haidee brought home some long, fragile trails of cinquefoil, one of the first spring things, and Val, worn and haggard under her blue veil, pinned it over her heart because she had read in old Elizabethan days that cinquefoil was supposed to be a cure for inflammations and fevers.

She quoted to Haidee what an old herbalist had once written of such cures:

"Let no man despise them because they are plain and easy: the ways of G.o.d are all such."

Haidee flushed faintly and retired into awkward silence, shy like most girls of her age at the mention of G.o.d. She was going to make her communion the next day with the First Communion candidates, but it was not her first, for that had been made once when she was ill in New York.

She was to be confirmed in June when the archbishop of a neighbouring parish intended to visit Mascaret and hold a confirmation service.

It being Sat.u.r.day afternoon Hortense as well as Haidee was due at the confessional for the recital of her weekly sins, therefore she bustled over the washing-up, announcing her intention of making a _bon_ confession, as though the one she usually made was of an inferior brand.

"What are you going to tell?" asked Haidee, drying plates. She knew very well it was forbidden to talk about your confession, but the subject was a curiously fascinating one. Hortense had a "cupful of sins" for the cure's ear. She had been reading love stories in the _Pet.i.t Journal_ (a forbidden paper because it is "against the Church"), telling the cards, and consulting her dream book; also she had missed Vespers twice and several meetings of the "Children of Mary," of which body she was a member. She computed that her _penitence_ would be as long as her arm.

"He will scold me well, I know," she said cheerfully, "for he saw me talking with Leon Bourget yesterday."

"What! that awful fisherman with the hump?"

"Yes; but he is not a bad fellow, mademoiselle, only all the fishermen here are wicked towards the cure because, as you know, he would not bury the mother of Jean le Pet.i.t, and they had to go and get the mayor to do it."

"Yes; but you must remember that she lived with old man le Pet.i.t without being married to him, and that is forbidden by the Church. She would not even repent on her death-bed and receive the Blessed Sacrament. How could the cure bury her after that?"

Haidee knew all about the little scandal, for the storm it occasioned had raged all the winter about the cure's head. The same day he had refused to bury _mere_ le Pet.i.t he was obliged to go to Paris on Church business. On his return in the dusk of a December evening he was met at the station by all the fishermen in the village partially disguised in home-made masks, each carrying some instrument or implement with which to make hideous sounds; pots, pans, old trays, sheep-bells, and cow-horns had all been pressed into service, and the din was truly fearsome. The cure preserving his serenity was conducted to his presbytery by this scratch band, and on every dark night thereafter it had serenaded him from the shadows near his house. The blare sometimes continued until the small hours of the morning, keeping not only the unfortunate cure, but the whole village awake. The gendarmes from Barleville, the nearest police-station, had made several midnight raids with the stated intention of capturing the offenders, but their efforts were attended by a lack of success so striking as to suggest a certain amount of sympathy, not to say complicity, on the part of the law. At any rate, the cure's music, or "_Mujik de Churie_," as it was popularly p.r.o.nounced, went on gaily, and there had been some kind of unofficial announcement that it would continue until the cure cleared out. Old _pere_ Duval opined, however, that the entertainment was likely to cease with the arrival of the first summer visitors, for however vindictive the fishermen were they knew which side their bread was b.u.t.tered on, and were politic enough not to want to drive away trade by their thrilling "mujik."

Having finished drying plates Haidee retired up-stairs to prepare her confession, telling Hortense to be sure and wait for her. She proceeded to write her sins down on a piece of paper. In spite of her good French she stammered so much from nervousness when confessing that the cure had arranged this method with her. She always gave him the piece of paper, which he took away to the sacristy while she waited in the confessional.

When he had read her paper he came back, conferred penance and a little scolding, then gave her absolution.

With the aid of a French Catechism, which had a formula for confession in it, she proceeded to write out her sins, her method being to dive into the book first for a question and then into her soul for a sin that corresponded. Eventually the piece of paper contained the following statement:

"Je ne me suis pas confesse depuis trois semaines; j'ai recu l'absolution. Je m'accuse:

"De n'avoir pas fait ma priere du matin beaucoup de fois.

"De n'avoir pas fait ma priere du soir plusieurs fois.

"D'avoir manque aux Vepres 4 fois.

"D'avoir ete distraite dans l'eglise 2 fois.

"D'avoir ete dissipee dans l'eglise 2 fois.

"D'avoir desobei a ma mere 2 fois.

"D'avoir manque de respect envers elle 1 fois.

"De m'ete disputee avec mon frere 2 fois.

"D'avoir fait des pet.i.ts mensonges 4 fois.

"Je m'accuse de tous ces peches et de ceux dont je ne me souviens pas.

"Je demande pardon de Dieu et a vous, mon pere, la penitence et l'absolution selon que vous m'en jugerez digne."

Whether this list of offences truly represented the burden of her transgressions for the past three weeks it would be hard to say. It is possible that Val could have made out a longer and more comprehensive one for her, as she often threatened to do when Haidee vexed her.

Anyway, the latter folded up her piece of paper with a complacency that either betokened a clear conscience or a heart hardened in crime. She computed that her penance would be to recite a decade of the rosary, and she knew that the cure would then speak of the next Church feast, and of the wishes preferred by the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin, tell her to invoke the aid of the Saints when she felt herself tempted to sin, to try always to give a good example to her little brother, and to be very pious so that her mother would be converted and become a Catholic. Both Val and Haidee had long since given up explaining that they were not mother and daughter. They found that it saved time and a lot of questions just to let people think what they liked.

Putting on her hat Haidee now popped her head out of the window and gave a hoot to Hortense, who was below in the yard cleaning her boots on the garden seat. Just as they were about to start Val came down-stairs and begged Haidee to go to the butcher's shop on her way back, and bring home something for Sunday's dinner.

"What kind of something?" asked Haidee belligerently, for the butcher's shop had no allure for her. There ensued a discussion as to which was the most economical meat to get. Hortense, waiting at the bottom of the steps, piped in with the announcement that every one ought to eat lamb on First Communion Sunday. Val and Haidee looked at each other.