CHAPTER XIV

THE WAYS OF LITERATURE

"The voyage of even the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks."

From Jersey Val had made a bee-line for Paris which she knew well, and

where she had hopes of renewing her mental energy by the sights and

sounds of a great city and association with other brain workers. Autumn

removals were in full swing and there was no great difficulty in finding

house-room for herself and the children, though she was unprepared to

find how Paris rents had risen since the days when she and her mother

sojourned in the Latin Quarter. It was to that part of Paris she

naturally turned--the only possible part for artists and writers to

live, though the rich and empty-headed are fond of calling it the "wrong

side" of the river. A studio seemed the most suitable form of

residence, for she knew she would not be able to work in a small room,

and she hated the sordid construction of a cheap flat. She was

fortunate in finding a good _atelier_ in a little secluded _rue_ on the

confines of the Quarter--a big, high room, with kitchen and small

bedroom attached, looking out onto a little square yard with clusters of

shrubs, ivied walls, and a few old battered statues that lent a

picturesque air. Here she had settled down and with resolute energy

begun the series of "Wanderfoot" articles for which Branker Preston had

obtained a commission. It was an arduous task. No matter how much

material is stored in the mind it is not easy to import the air and

colour of far-off lands into a Paris _atelier_. The art of putting

things down had not yet been recaptured either. Still, the stimulus of

even the short journey from Jersey to Paris had done something for her,

and though to her critical eye the articles she achieved seemed but pale

echoes of her former work, they at least paid the rent and kept things

going in rue Campagne Premiere. The continuation of Haidee's education

became a problem needing instant attention; for Val very soon realised

that the Latin Quarter with its liberal ideas of morality and its

fascinating students was no place for a young impressionable girl. Her

own child she would have allowed to stay, for she knew that anything

with her nature would come to no harm among these careless, attractive

people, to whom she felt herself blood-kin. But Haidee, the child of a

pretty flighty mother, was of different stock. Besides, there was a

responsibility to Westenra in the matter. There were no convents left

in Paris, or indeed, in France. All those lovely homes where girls

learned a sweet sedateness and many beautiful arts had been closed by a

ruthless government. No more in France may the gentle coifed women

impart composure and beauty of mind to English and American girls and

train the aristocratic children of France to a love of Church and

Country. What the loss is to the sum of the world's harmony can never

be computed, but American and English mothers have a slight realisation

of it.

It was in Belgium that Val at last found what was needed for Haidee--a

little community of French nuns who, refusing to unveil, had been

obliged to flee over the border, and there had founded a convent to

which many good Catholics in Paris sent their children. It was well

within Val's means too, for the living is cheap in Belgium, and the fare

in the convent was simple though good. Haidee hated terribly to go, but

Val was firm, though she held out the promise of early liberation if

Haidee would work well at French and try and pass her _brevet simple_.

This was no difficult task, for the girl had been well grounded in

French during their sojourn in Jersey. Remained the problem of

Bran--and little children are a problem in France to parents of limited

means. No one caters for them as in other countries. No one even

understands the art of teaching and amusing them at the same time, nor

even how to feed them. There are no kindergartens and no milk puddings!

Small wonder that French babies are small and sallow and sad! Since the

nuns were driven out there are only the public Lycees where strong and

weak, rough and gentle, are jumbled together with results that no

thinking woman would welcome for her child. From their tenderest years

French children are crammed with lessons, pushed ahead to pass exams,

while the business of play so necessary for little children is almost

entirely suppressed.

Val very certainly had no intention of confiding her son to such

institutions. She was therefore obliged to hire a daily governess for

him, for though, at his age, he needed little teaching, he had to be

sent out of doors so that she might have silence and solitude wherein to

work. Even this was a costly business. In England a nursery governess

can be afforded by almost every one, but in France it costs one hundred

francs a month to have your child well taken care of and taught his

alphabet for a few hours a day.

Val did not grudge it, but what worried her was that Bran did not

thrive. Paris was no place for him. The Luxembourg Gardens make a good

play-ground for city-bred children, but Bran was Val's own child in his

need of air and space and horizon. His bloom faded a little, and he

began to look very fair and spiritual. Also his love of the picture and

statue galleries seemed to his mother something too wistful and

wonderful in a small boy, and brought tears to her pillow in the silence

of many a night. Then she took him to Belgium for awhile and left him

with Haidee and the good nuns. He was a shy creature, though he hated

any one to know it, and believed he hid his secret well behind a set

smile and little hardy incomprehensible sayings. When the nuns

clustered round him calling him their "little Jesus," a favourite name

in France for a pretty child, he disdained to shelter behind Val's

skirts, as instinct bade him, but nothing could be got out of him except

an enigmatic saying he always kept for strangers:

"The cat says bow-wow-wow, and

The dog says meow, meow, meow."

All the while he smiled his little bright smile and his eyes roving

keenly noted every detail of the pale aesthetic faces. Even the tears

in the Reverend Mother's eyes did not escape him. Afterward he said to

Val:

"I like that one with the floating eyes. I think she wishes she had a

nice little boy like me. Her voice was littler than a pin's head when

she called me her _petit Jesu_. But why do they nearly all have green

teeth?"

When Val kissed him farewell it nearly broke her heart to see the brave

smile he maintained, though Haidee was sniffling and snuffling at his

elbow, partly with momentary grief but mostly with indignation at being,

as she rudely phrased it: "Shut up in a convent with a lot of old

pussycats."

Back in Paris the studio seemed desolate and empty. Bran had become so

much a part of his mother's being and life that without him she was like

a bird from whom a wing had been torn. A month later Haidee wrote:

"I think Bran is fretting. Whenever I speak to him he puts that little

fixed grin on his mouth, but you should see his eyes."

Within an hour Val was in the Brussels express speeding for that dear

sight. On the journey back to Paris, happy now and healed of her broken

wing, she heard all the history of his lonely nights and the "purply-red

pain" that he got in his stomach when he thought of her. Cuddled to her

side he wept as he had never wept whilst separated from her, and Val's

tears ran down her face too while she listened, registering a vow that

she would never part with him again.

So once more he went out with a governess and came home to his mother

full of original criticisms of Moreau's pictures and the statues of

Rodin, until one morning nearly two years after their arrival in Paris,

and just when Haidee had arrived for the summer holidays, Val rose up

from her bed with the itch for travel in her feet, and the longing

quickly communicated to the children for the sight of a clear horizon.

They tore their possessions from the walls, stuffed them into trunks,

and shook the dust of Paris from their feet.

"Let's go to Italy and live on olives and spaghetti, "was Haidee's

suggestion, but Bran knew the news of the world.

"We might get an earthquake!"

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 assisted 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 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

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

mass of coal-fish, red gurnet, plaice, congers, and mullets that was

hooked out of the hold and flung quivering ashore. 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 _petit cafe_ close by for a "cup of coffee with a burn

in it" and a good meal.