Wanderfoot Part 36

Shown him, and told him, and proved her words with deeds. And it was all old grief and pain now. Even if he had still retained any feeling for her she had gone back to Valdana. That ended it all as definitely as if she lay before him in her coffin. He would never have risked seeing her again if it had not been for his son.

Ah! his son! That was different. It was natural and justifiable that his veins should thrill at the sight of such a brave stripling. Bran, for all his elfin faun-like grace of body, had a big face, with the promise of big things lurking behind its plastic contours and deep-set eyes. He sprang into his father's arms and kissed him ardently.

"Oh! Daddy, I do love you."

Val's face curiously gave the impression that it had grown pale, while the colour in her cheeks and lips "stayed put"--almost as if it _had_ been "put." Haidee was interested in this phenomenon, but there was no time to give it more than pa.s.sing observation, for Rupert Lorrain suddenly flashed into the scene with the announcement that he would drive them back in his motor. They engaged in a bustle for luggage, of which Haidee had apparently brought a mountain--and a few moments later all were packed into Rupert's luxurious Panhard and flying along the _route Nationale_, Bran tooting the siren and singing at the top of his voice.

"Sing before breakfast, you 'll cry before tea," quoted Haidee at him.

She had to shriek to be heard.

"Shall we drop you at your hotel, Garrett? Or will you come to breakfast with us at the Villa?" Val's voice was the casual gentle voice of a good friend.

The realisation that he had been calmly and unquestioningly going back with this noisy crowd as though it belonged to him, to her villa which was not his, shocked him into a stiff answer.

"At the hotel, please. And I 'd like Bran to stay with me this morning, if you don't mind."

"Oh, yes," cried Bran, ecstatically. "I'll come."

"I'll bring him back safely to you after lunch."

"Of course," said Val, smiling radiantly. It is on record that martyrs could radiantly smile even when the slow fire was applied.

So he and Bran were dropped at the Metropole, not without many proprietary grumblings from Haidee and warnings from Rupert that he would be back to join them ere long. The car drove off amidst a shower of shouts and calls and farewells. Only Val sat silent under her poppies.

As soon as they were on their way once more, under cover of the motor's burr, Haidee said, staring Val defiantly in the eyes:

"Garry and I are engaged."

It never occurred to her that Rupert had in any way prepared the way for her announcement, and she was blinded with amazement and fury that Val took it so serenely. True she once more got the impression of pallor under that unwonted colour in Val's cheeks, but the latter's eyes were very big and bright and friendly when she said quietly:

"That is very wonderful news, chicken."

That was all! The lovely dark face under the Congo orchid grew darker.

"We shall be awfully happy," she said fiercely. "And never think of this rotten old Europe or any one in it again."

Val spoke a strange saying, laying her hand on the girl's.

"One should try alway to keep a little dew in one's heart, Haidee, or else, in the heat and weariness of the desert it may dry up and blow away like a leaf."

Haidee wrenched her hand away.

"And what do you think of being when you 're a man, Bran?"

Bran reflected a while, balancing a spoonful of strawberry ice-cream on the edge of his gla.s.s.

"Well, Daddy, sometimes I 'd like to be one of those professors that feed the animals at the Zoo, _you_ know. But after all, I think I prefer to be an engine driver." The little golden face looked up into Westenra's with the perfect confidence and frankness of a nature that has never been snubbed or thwarted. "You see one could be always going to new places."

Westenra's heart sank. He got a sudden vision of Val smiling that very smile of boyish confidence as she looked up from a deck chair saying:

"I would love to wake up in a new place every morning of my life."

Good G.o.d! was it possible that it was after all only a child, no better or worse than this golden-headed stripling, whom he had had in his hands all these years, treating harshly, misjudging, scolding, neglecting?

The thought was horrible, but it pierced as though it were true.

"What is the good of that, my boy?" he said gently. He shrank from losing that lovely confidence by an unsympathetic word, but--"What would you do in all those new places?"

"Do?" Bran mused a while. "Oh, there'd always be something to do, Daddy. Sometimes the people there would want a bridge made, or a tower built, or there might be a giant there eating all the little boys and girls. Then I would stay just long enough to kill the giant, you know, or make the bridge----"

"I see."

"Or sometimes I would just make a picture of the place."

"A picture?"

"Yes, I love to make pictures--then get on my engine again and away I 'd go."

So! This was what she had made his son into? A vagabond like herself, a wanderer, a seeker after nothingness? He said it bitterly to himself, yet there was no echoing bitterness in his heart. The boy's eyes were so sweet and clear. There seemed no base thought in any corner of him.

And that big head and wide glance--surely something great would come of them! The boy looked at the world as if it had been made for him.

Surely Raleigh had that spirit, and Drake, and Napoleon, and Cecil Rhodes. Surely it was the spirit of great adventure!

He spent a strangely happy day with his son. Unreal, yet as natural as if he himself had lived every moment of it before. When at last they came to the Villa of Little Days it was to find the others gathered together in the garden, sitting under the spiking pines. Capacious easy-chairs with bright cushions stood about on the gravelled terrace and everywhere was colour, colour. Blue above, and blue below, and round them on shrub and tree and plant every known and lovely shade that Nature could invent, all woven and blended as skilfully as the broidering on some masterpiece of tapestry. Val too had returned in jewels and dress to her love of oriental colouring. She had two large silver rings set with turquoises in her ears, and round her neck a chain of rugged chunks of malachite and turquoise-matrix. None of these things were expensive. She never bought jewels because they were valuable, but for the sheer colour of them and the joy that colour gave.

Diamonds said nothing to her and she would never have worn them if she had been a millionairess. The ear-rings were a spare pair of Marietta's which she had been delighted to sell Val for a couple of _louis_; matrix and malachite are, as every one knows, almost as common as sea-sh.e.l.ls--and so are violets common, and poppies of the field, and forget-me-nots; but none the less are they the colour-gifts of G.o.d and the world would be a less beautiful place without them. Her gown of some kind of flexible opaline silk blended with the colours of the garden, even with the poppy hat which she still wore. Westenra had never seen her look so much at peace with herself and her surroundings or realised before that she possessed beauty. He did not realise indeed that never had he seen Val in beautiful clothes nor in surroundings that were full of grace and peace. Always he had the picture of her rushing about the house in 68th Street like some driven wild thing, the worried look of a hunted creature in her eyes, the grey linen overalls typical of the grey hurrying life, making her eyes grey only, without a glint of the blueness which now made them so attractive.

They sat and talked, spying with field-gla.s.ses at the warships in the bay. Naval manoeuvres had been going on for some days, and a large portion of the French fleet lay out in the blue, throwing great purple shadows upon the water and sending up streamers of black smoke to heaven.

Rupert, as much at home in the family circle as if he belonged to it, seemed to wish to monopolise Haidee, but she kept withdrawing from his advances and plying herself to the task of playing proprietress to Westenra. She sat on the arm of his chair with her arm along his shoulders, deferring to him in everything, constantly referring to New York and their premeditated return there. Westenra, with Bran perched on the back of his chair, legs dangling round his father's neck, hands occupied with his father's hair, was forced into announcing plans of some kind. He disclosed a contemplated return to Paris to deliver two important lectures at the Sorbonne. That done, he should return South, and book by some tramp steamer which would take him home via Greece and Algeria, sailing from Ma.r.s.eilles.

"Don't forget that I'm coming too," said Haidee feverishly.

"How could I?" Westenra's smile was dry.

"Me too, Daddy," chirruped Bran. A kind of breathless stillness fell for an instant. Every one save Bran, busy with his father's hair, looked swiftly at Val and as swiftly away again. Val sat like a stone woman. In the silence Bran, who had gone on twisting his father's hair into little spikes, spoke again placidly:

"Me too, Daddy. I don't want to be away from you any more."

A pang of joy and triumph shot through Westenra, but it was mingled with something that cut like a knife on an open wound. Val was staring before her sightlessly. Yet a little smile played round her lips--a smile of some feeling Westenra hardly understood. There was something infinite in it, yet terribly human.

"You would rather go back to America than stay with me, Brannie?"

It was not pleading, nor sad, nor coaxing. Just a little simple question. Only she and Westenra knew how much hung on it, though one of the others had a very good notion of what was behind. Bran looked across at his mother hesitatingly. She had always trained him to truth and directness, yet he searched her face for a moment as if for a clue.

Bran hated to hurt any one's feelings--most of all his mother's. But she smiled on, and he could read nothing. He had never seen her eyes so empty before, and could not know by what great effort she had emptied them of all the fierce love and terror in her heart, so as to play fair, and not bias the issue. So after a little moment Bran said:

"I like daddy. He's got a hard smell--like steel. I don't want to be away from him any more." He slid an arm round his father's neck. No one looked at Val. Suddenly and amazingly Haidee cried out in a fury of indignation:

"You are a little pig, Bran! ... an ungrateful little pig!"