Wanderfoot Part 17

The truth had to be faced that there was no money to be made out of the farm. High hopes of a fortune had long since fallen to the dust.

Chickens and rabbits are very charming to watch at their antics in the sunshine, but depending upon them for a living, unless you are an expert poultry farmer, is waste of time. Val realised it at last, and that other ways and means for obtaining money must be reflected upon. She had no intention of accepting another rap of Westenra's for either her own or Bran's support. So one day she sat down and wrote to Branker Preston, asking him if he could find an opening for some "Wanderfoot"

articles.

"I cannot travel," she wrote, "but I have a good store of unused material in the cupboards of my mind, and I need money." Preston answered that he would not be long in finding a demand for anything she could supply. When, however, the demand came she found herself curiously unable to cope with it. The task of sitting down to write newspaper articles after a lapse of more than two years into domesticity was not an easy one. As love and maternity had absorbed her mother's art, so in a smaller degree the same things had encroached upon Val's gift. Added to which was a period of unbroken intercourse with chickens and rabbits, enlivened only by digging in the garden or running the pony up and down when he got colic. Such occupations are excellent for the health, and may even induce a good working philosophy, but they do not make the intellect to scintillate like the stars, nor bestow distinction upon that elusive quality in writing which is known as style. She found that when she tried to think connectedly on abstract subjects things slithered out of her mind and left a headache behind. After a few days, in which her brain seemed to act in delirium, and the written results read to her like the ravings of a suddenly liberated lunatic, she threw down her pen in despair.

"It is this brute of an island! I can never write here," she cried desperately. She had suffered too much there, and her instinct was always to flee from places where sorrow had smitten her, to save her soul alive before it was injured beyond aid. Such places seemed to have a power for evil over her. Moreover her feet had long ached to be gone from the small, cramped island. It had served its purpose. The children were healthy and strong, her own body recuperated. Now that she must take up her pen once more, plainly it was time to pull stakes.

There was no inspiration for her in Jersey.

For another thing, she began to be afraid that if she remained much longer she might become a serious criminal; that is to say, one upon whom the law would lay hands. It was Farmer Scone who helped her to this conclusion and her final decision to go.

For months he had been making himself unpleasant--a long series of petty vexations and systemised annoyance--stoning her fowls, complaining to the police that her dogs worried his cows, letting his cattle break down her hedges, and encouraging his labourers to annoy Haidee by sn.i.g.g.e.ring over the hedge when she was busy with the pony. Added to these things he had once more started walking through her grounds by the old disputed "right of way" past the back door.

One morning she and Haidee, just going out to fire at some crows in the fruit garden, ran into him and his grinning labourer carrying their scythes to a far hayfield. Val called him back, and speaking very self-controlledly told him that it must be understood, once and for all, that she would not permit this trespa.s.sing.

"Great Galumps!" he responded as usual, "and what will you do to me? Is it your husband from America, who only comes to see you for one day a year, that 'll be punching my head?"

"No," said Val, white to the lips, and raising her rook-rifle. "It is I that will be putting a hole through your large and very unsightly paunch."

"Yes, do, Val, _do_. Take a pot-shot at him--give him one in the tummy!" urged Haidee ecstatically. "Shall I get my revolver too?"

She hopped up-stairs, and Farmer Scone moved on at the double-quick, rather alarmed, for he did not at all like the look in Val's eyes, and to be sure no one knew what such creatures might do! He half determined to go down to the court-house at once and, complaining of menaces, "have the law on them," but reflected in time that as he was not "Jersey-born"

he might not get his case, while running a possible risk of being fined for trespa.s.sing. He decided that his system of petty annoyance was the best.

In the meantime Val, too, was deciding something. On going into the house she met Haidee coming out, gaily priming her revolver.

"Put it away, Haidee," she said wearily. "Don't you understand I only said that in my rage with the insolent brute. You must never shoot at people. Awful trouble might come of it."

Haidee's face darkened sulkily.

"One can't do anything in this rotten island," she complained.

"We can get out of it," said Val, and Haidee brightened.

"Where would we go?"

"Oh, I don't know ... anywhere ... anywhere where we 'll never see a rabbit or a fowl again. I think I shall go mad if I stay among them another day."

"Me too--I'm sick of the beasts. Look at that c.o.c.k-eyed eagle staring at us. Sh--sh, you brutes!"

"I wish I 'd never seen a hen in my life," said Val savagely.

"Let's get an axe and slay them all before we go," suggested Haidee.

Suddenly her face grew long. "But where are we going to get the money from?"

The financial situation was such that even the children understood its simplicity; though if it had been more complicated Val would never have dreamed of not sharing it with them. Bran was able to tell to a penny how much the family purse contained, while Haidee as a matter of fact possessed a far finer appreciation of money values than either Westenra or Val.

"We 've got the rent," said the latter thoughtfully, and Haidee looked up quickly. With the lawlessness of youth she immediately jumped to the conclusion that Val meant to skip with the sum that was due to the landlord on September quarter-day, now close at hand. It was only a fourth of thirty-six pounds, but still, when times are hard and a sea voyage in contemplation, nine pounds are not to be despised. Val quickly dispelled this bright notion.

"I 'm not going to rob the landlord. All he will have to do is sell the farm-stock and my pretty London things, which of course we 'll leave.

They will more than pay the rent for the rest of the lease, and enough left over to pay the bills we owe. We won't take anything but our clothes and a few books."

"What about Joy? Let's sell him. You know that old Farmer Le Seur offered fifteen pounds for him. I 'll go and tell him this morning, shall I?"

Val reflected a moment, and came to the conclusion that it would be juster to Westenra to sell the pony at that price than leave him to be sold for the small sum they owed, so she gave Haidee the desired permission.

"Oh, hurray! ... Oh, Val, what a lark!" Haidee pranced and capered like a Bashi-bazouk. "Let's go and pack."

They flew up-stairs and woke Bran to the news.

"We 're going away, Brannie Bran ... in a ship!"

Bran, sitting up in bed like a squdgy j.a.panese idol, took hold of his toes as though they were a bunch of rosebuds.

"Are we going to daddy?" he asked solemnly, and Val hid her face in his flannel nightgown.

"No, my Wing." She added on the spur of the moment, "We 're going to France."

He reflected awhile.

"Oh, dear buck!" he sighed at last (only he said jeer for dear). It was one of his expressions signifying disappointment, and Val felt a pang.

But she would not be saddened, and soon had the children as wild as herself, dashing about the house and packing up, so glad was she to be setting out from the place where she had been a vegetable so long, and yet known such keen unhappiness.

Having got together all their trunks, the band of Ishmaelites boarded a cab for St. Helier. No one would have dreamed for a moment that they were setting out for another land. They drove down and spent the night opposite the quay, and sailed the next morning for Granville. Just at the last Val thought of sending Haidee to see if there were any letters at the post-office. As it happened, one had been forwarded by Branker Preston, but she did not read it till they were on board ship.

It was from Valdana, to say that, as she would not come, he was setting forth alone in excellent health to start life anew in Canada.

Part III

France

CHAPTER XIII

THE WAYS OF A LOVER

"For life is not the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan."--ROBERT SERVICE.

March was in like a lamb, and on a fair morning all the windows of Villa Duval stood open, letting in floods of sunlight, gusts of warm sea-scented wind, and the sound of waves crushing and swinging up and down the sandy beaches of Normandy. Perhaps it was because _pere_ Duval who built it was an old sailor and lighthouse-keeper that the rooms of the Villa were curiously like ship-cabins with their wooden walls and bare deck-like floors. Looking out through the porthole windows at the view of blue waves rippling from the bay up the river it would not have seemed unnatural to find the Villa gently rocking with the incoming tide. Down in the garden _pere_ Duval hoeing weeds fostered the illusion by croaking the ghost of an old sea song that he had lilted bravely enough forty years before from his fishing boat or when he kept the lighthouse at Les Sept Isles. He had built the Villa with his own hands after the sea and he had done with each other; but not for his own habitation. With its pink and blue tables and chairs made and lovingly painted by himself, beds from the Paris Bon Marche, stout bed-linen that had been part of _mere_ Duval's marriage portion, marvellous mirrors and decorated crockery bought with trading coupons that represented many pounds of coffee from the Cafe Debray Company, it was considered far too wonderful and shining to be the habitation of a mere Normandy peasant.

So the old man and his granddaughter Hortense lived in a couple of rooms beneath the wonder house, which was perched high and reached only by a flight of steps to the front door. The Villa lay nearer to the beach than any other in Mascaret, and for this reason was always one of the first to be taken by summer visitors. But at the end of the previous summer _pere_ Duval had achieved an extraordinary piece of luck in letting it for the whole autumn and winter to some mad Americans, who were now fixtures for the coming summer also.

The mad Americans had received this t.i.tle by reason of their eccentric habits and customs, to say nothing of their clothes. They never wore anything, week-day or Sunday, but red woollen sweaters and short skirts, and the girl most shamelessly showed her legs bare to the knee. Also the whole band of three bathed in the sea on the coldest of winter days.

Evidently their mental condition was known elsewhere than in Mascaret, for more than once when they were staying at Les Fusains, the villa they had first taken, letters came from America addressed to Les Insains, and the occupants of Les Fusains had received these bland and unblinking from the hands of Jean Baptiste the postman. The postmaster, who understood a little English, had explained the jest to his village cronies, adding that the writing of the eldest mad one so much resembled the writing of a hen, that it was small wonder that mistakes were made over her address. That they were Americans was certain, for every three months American Express money orders came for them, and the eldest Insain promptly changed these for French money _mandats_ and forwarded them to the Credit Lyonnais in Paris. These _fantastiques_ doings deeply impressed the villagers, and had provided them with many an interesting hour of gossip over their black coffee and cider.