Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship) 15 – Stockley · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship) 15Part III · Ways Sacred and Secular
18
Literature · Romance
Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship) 15
Part III · Ways Sacred and Secular
StockleyEnglish
"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 prickles, 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 masses, 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 prickly, 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 God are all such."
Haidee flushed faintly and retired into awkward silence, shy like most girls of her age at the mention of God. 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 Saturday 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 Petit 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 Petit, and they had to go and get the mayor to do it."
"Yes; but you must remember that she lived with old man le Petit 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 Petit 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 pronounced, 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 buttered 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 petits 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. Vaguely they knew that the price of lamb was high. But suddenly it came into Val's mind how sick the children must be of raie, and stewed veal, and that though funds were low the play was nearly finished. They would have a nice English dinner for once. Roast lamb and mint sauce! She gave Haidee her last louis to change.
"Pick some mint from the cliff-side as you come back," she enjoined. French peasants have no use for mint in their cooking. Some English visitors had once planted a root of it in pere Duval's garden, but after they were gone he flung it out again on to the cliff-side, where it had increased and multiplied until it was now a large bed.
In the butcher's shop Haidee found a number of villagers squabbling over beef-bones, and not a sign of lamb anywhere. The truth was that every portion of the one lamb killed early in the week had been sold, and though there were still one or two customers in need of First Communion lamb, Mother Durand knew better than to offer any of the freshly-killed beast that hung in the back shed. Peasants are well aware that freshly-killed meat should not be cut too early or it will be full of air, soft, flabby, and never tender. Mother Durand, under her calm exterior, was furiously angry with her man for having delayed the killing until now--after to-day there would be no demand for anything but beef-bones and veal until the summer visitors began to arrive. The young American mademoiselle asking guilelessly for lamb was a godsend. Waiting until the last villager had gone from the shop so that there would be no adverse comment on what she meant to do, she turned ingratiatingly to Haidee.
"But certainly, mademoiselle ... there is none in the shop ... but outside I have a lamb that is superbe ... just the thing for a premiere communion ... it is not for every one I would cut that lamb, but for such customers as you and your belle maman there is nothing I would not do." She returned presently from the back shed. "There, mademoiselle--a beautiful shoulder. Six francs."
Haidee was horrified at the price. Their dinner meat usually cost about one franc twenty, and she knew that there was much to be accomplished with Val's last twenty-franc piece.
"Could n't you give me a smaller one, Madame Durand? ... and not so dear?"
"Ah, mademoiselle, you should have said to me before that you wanted it small. It is cut now ... and what would I do with the pieces from it? Do you think I could sell them? But no."
So Haidee took the shoulder, and returned home with it tucked under her arm. On arrival as it happened old veuve Michel was in the kitchen with Val, having just brought home some odds and ends of family washing.
"What!" she cried, on seeing the lamb. "A shoulder of freshly-killed lamb, full of air and bubbles ... cut off the poor nice lamb while it had yet the hot life in it! Shame on the wretched woman Durand ... to take advantage thus of poor innocent Americans! ... Shame! But then every one knows how she treated her poor daughter who wanted to be a nun. Madame, the stones in the street are not more wicked than that woman Amelie Durand!"
Val, much disturbed by these sayings, examined the shoulder of mutton. Certainly it was very bubbly looking: warm too. She remembered now hearing the cook in New York storm over a piece of freshly-killed meat, declaring that it had been cut too soon and was not fit to eat.
"How ought I to cook it to make the best of it?" she inquired in dismay.
"Cook it!" cried Widow Michel, scarlet in the face from indignation combined with the effects of her afternoon bottle of cognac. "No good to cook it. Better to pluck a rock from the cliff-side and cook it."
"How much was it, Haidee?"
"Six francs."
"Mon Dieu! What imposition! Take it back, Haidee dear, and tell her that it is too dear and too fresh ... she must give us a pound of steak instead. We are too poor to buy meat we can't eat, you know, darling. Six francs! Did you pay for it?"
"Why, yes, of course I paid for it. You know I had the louis. Oh! blow Val, I don't care much about taking it back."
"But, Haidee, what's the use of talking like that ... we can't eat that bubbly lamb ... think of poor Brannie without dinner! I 'd go myself if I had any hair.... Tell her it 's ridiculous to have given you such meat. I remember now Hortense said that leg we had at Christmas and could n't eat was too freshly-killed--it was soft and tough at the same time, and all slithery when you tried to cut it. Don't you remember--it made you sick to look at it?"
Yes, Haidee remembered well enough, but she did n't like taking the shoulder back just the same. However, veuve Michel offered the moral support of her company, and she returned to Mother Durand. Half-an-hour later she was back at the Villa, the wretched shoulder of lamb still in her hands.
"She won't take it back. She says it 's a rule of the shop never to take back meat that has once gone out of it."
"But it was back within half-an-hour."
"Yes, I told her so--and you should have heard old veuve Michel going on at her, but she did n't care two sous. She said, 'Oh, yes, mademoiselle, carrying my lamb up and down the Terrasse in the hot sun--you think that improves the meat. Hein? Well, I don't think so. Dame, no!"
"Hot sun! I wish it were hot! They don't know what sun is in this odious climate," cried Val in wrath.
"I know--but she won't take it back." Haidee flung the shoulder despondently upon the table. But Val's monkey was up, and she was determined not to be outdone by the cunning little Norman woman. Also it seemed to her by now that if she offered the children that shoulder of lamb she would be offering them poisoned meat. She hated it. She would rather have eaten sea-sand. With trembling hands she arranged across her forehead the chi-chi that M. Poiret had made for her out of her own hair (the first time she had availed herself of it), put on a deep hat, tied a motor veil over all, then with Bran held by one hand and the shoulder of lamb in the other she set out to do battle with Mother Durand. Haidee, though sick of the subject, accompanied the expedition out of curiosity.
The little red-cheeked, hard-eyed woman--a typical shrewd Normandy peasant--was alone in the shop, tidying up her lard-bowls with a large flat knife.
"Madame Durand!" said Val, controlling her voice as best she could. "About this shoulder of lamb....?"
"Yes, madame! What about it?"
"You must take it back ... I do not care for freshly-killed meat...." She began to stumble with her French. "Not good for the stomach .... very hard ... wicked ... no good .... il faut give me back my six francs."
"But not at all, madame ... the meat is good ... superbe ... there is nothing the matter with it. I asked mademoiselle if she was willing I should cut from the freshly-killed lamb, and she said yes.... Alors?"
"Oh! How can you say so, Madame Durand?" cried Haidee indignantly. "I had no idea you were cutting it from a lamb all hot."
"Mademoiselle finds it very convenient to say that now ... tres commode! But my husband and daughter were in the shop, and heard mademoiselle ask to have it cut from the lamb."
"Oh, Val! don't you believe it ... the old liar!" Haidee did not pick her words when indignant.
"In any case I will not have it back ... you can take it or leave it, madame," the old woman smiled the smile of one who plays a winning game.
"I will leave it then," said Val, losing all calmness. "Vous est pas juste ... vous est mal honnete ... voleur! It is because we are strangers that you take advantage of us ...it is the first time I have found such mechanterie in this village.... If you will not give me back my money you can keep it and the meat too!" She flung it down and raged from the shop.
"Comme wus voudrez, madame," responded Mother Durand, only too delighted with such a plan, and to see the backs of the departing trio. But two minutes later, just as she was removing the paper covering from the offending shoulder, Val returned. Stretching her firm, thin hand across the counter she gripped the meat once more.
"No! I won't let you keep it to sell again. Rather will I take it and give it to the first dog I meet!"
"As you please, madame," repeated Mother Durand blandly, not to be nonplussed, whatever might be her feelings.
Val stalked from the shop, the shoulder now devoid of wrappings in her hand. Haidee and Bran, sympathetic but apprehensive, waited without.
"She shall not have it. Find a dog, Haidee."
"Oh, Val! What's the good? ... keep it ... it will be better than nothing for dinner to-morrow."
"I would rather eat mud," said Val, white to the lips. "Find a dog."
But there was no dog in sight. They marched down the road, a silent band, looking to right and left for something canine. Usually the village was thick with hungry mongrels, but to-day it was as though the earth had opened to receive all flesh-eating quadrupeds. Not even a cat showed its face.
"Perhaps a giant"--murmured Bran. Haidee was congratulating herself that they would get home without further adventure, or that at least Val's fury would presently abate enough for her to abandon her idea, when, just in front of the Cafe Rosetta a lean liver-and-white pointer with the legs of a bull dog and the ears of a cocker spaniel strolled out. Val held the shoulder towards him.
"Here, boy, here--a good supper for you!"
The "boy" regarded her suspiciously for a moment, then came forward a step. She encouraged him with a kind word, and held the meat nearer, but, suspecting a trick, he backed growling. He had never seen a shoulder of lamb before except in a dream, and did not recognise the pink-and-white thing. He only recognised that they were strangers--probably knew them to be the mad Americans from Villa Duval. At any rate, after one long sniff he turned and walked sadly away. Val in a fury threw the lamb after him, but he never turned. Mournfully he slunk down the slope of the petit port to seek the garbage heaps in the river bed. As the three stood staring after him a little red-faced bonne came running out of the cafe.
"Qu'est ce qu'il y a, madame?" she cried. Val pointed to the meat lying in the dust.
"Take that and give it to a dog."
"But yes, madame; thank you, madame."
Smiling all over, she picked up the meat and dusted it carefully. They saw very well she did not mean to give it to a dog.
"It is not fit for human food," stammered Val, still shaking.
"But no, madame; thank you, madame."
She smiled and looked at it with fond eyes. Val could have struck her. On the Terrasse Haidee said:
"Val, how could you? It will be all over the town. Even the cure will know."
Val did not answer. Her rage expended, she was wondering what her Brannie was going to have for dinner the next day. Two great tears stole down her face.
When Haidee came back from eight o'clock Mass the next morning she noticed many of the villagers standing about in groups. They were evidently discussing some affair of great interest, but their grave and serious voices subsided into whispers at the sight of her, and while she passed a dead silence prevailed in each group. However, in front of Lemonier's shop an old beldame lifted her voice in the manner of a prophetess and gave forth the dark saying that "it was to be hoped that people who threw good meat to dogs would never live to feel the pangs of hunger!"
Haidee repeated this at home as a great joke, but was sorry she did, for Val turned pale as a condemned criminal, and her eyes searched the faces of both children as if for the outward signs of an inward gnawing at their vitals--but so far both looked plump and composed.
She spent the whole morning juggling with six eggs and a pint of milk, the result being an exceedingly wobbly-looking baked custard which appeared to supplement the meagre midday repast. At the sight of it Bran nearly lost his appetite for the potatoes baked in their jackets which his soul loved, and when pudding-time came he began to squirm and declare he was not hungry. With the name of Bran he appeared to have also inherited that great king's primitive tastes in food, for he cared for nothing except milk, oatmeal porridge, and potatoes with butter.
"Do eat some, Brannie," pleaded the pale and guilty Val. "I made it specially for you. It is lovely."
"Yes, I can see it is lovely," said Brannie, politely, edging away from the table. "But it smells like a pussy cat just after she has been drinking milk."
When Hortense arrived to wash up she reported that the two brothers of the bonne at the Cafe Rosetta were in the village, having been summoned from Cherbourg by telegraph to come and lunch with their sister on a shoulder of Premiere Communion lamb.
The confirmation ceremony was most grand. It was the first time so important a personage as an Archbishop had visited Mascaret, and the villagers, sensible of the honour done them, were inclined to forgive the cure his imagined misdeeds for having arranged it. Not only were all the Premier Communion candidates from other villages present, but a great many of the summer visitors had arrived, and it was an enormous congregation that waited in the stuffy church. The Archbishop's train was late, but at last he came from the sacristy very crumpled and tired-looking in his gold and purple robes, and walking with faltering feet, for his years were heavy on him and he was weary with travelling. Everything about him seemed old, from the rich lace on his aube to his gentle blue eyes, which looked as though they saw visions of far-off places--everything but the small and wonderful white teeth in his sunken gentle mouth. His stole was beautifully painted with lilies, and his mitre of shining white and gold most splendid, but sometimes during the long service his head drooped a little under it and rested on his breast. There was such a weariness about him that Val was glad when she heard a few months later that he had laid aside his heavy and elaborate gold and white panoply of office and gone to rest. He had about twelve priests with him, keen, able-looking men, of a very different type to the simple cures who were herding their flocks from the surrounding villages, and they clustered about him as though to keep the eyes of the world from resting too long upon this venerable representative of the Pope. The Vicaire-General, a splendid looking man with an eagle eye and a strong beaked nose, surveyed the church as a general might the field of battle, while the congregation chanted the Benedictus Dominus. It seemed to Val that when his eye rested on her he saw deep down into her heart and had no pity for her failures, being of the Napoleonic brand of man who has no use for any but the strong ones of earth.
After the Archbishop with crumpled crooked fingers had given his solemn benediction to the people, singing in a trembling yet wonderfully thrilling old voice,
"Sit nomen benedictum ... Adjutorium Domini ... Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus,"
he sat down just inside the chancel rails, and talkingly questioned the children on their catechism. Most of them were too shy to distinguish themselves much, though the son of the village milkman, an ugly cross-eyed boy, acquitted himself manfully. Later the Archbishop rested in his chair, his chin on his breast, seeming to sleep, while priests prowled and hovered round him. The Mascaret cure darted about the church giving instructions, and presently the children broke shrilly into the popular hymn:
"Je suis chretien, voila ma gloire,
Mon esperance et mon soutien,
Mon chant d'amour et de victoire,
Je suis chretien! Je suis chretien!"
The village boys loved this hymn. It lent itself to much lusty shouting in the last two lines of the chorus, and they delighted in it, passing winks to each other as they hurled it from their lungs with something of the same ardour as had served for the "mujik de churie." But later when they filed in long lines to where the old Archbishop sat waiting for them, their mien changed. No one could be vicious or violent before that beautiful tired presence waiting with white trembling hands to bless them. They came quietly, one by one, and knelt on the velvet cushion at his feet, the boys bashful and cloddish in their best smocks, the girls wearing the elaborate and top-heavy mob cap of silk and muslins and ribbons that it is the Normandy peasant woman's pride to perch above her harsh features. Haidee, in a white hemstitched muslin frock with a flounce of delicate lace round its edge, walked among them like some woodland sylph escaped from a Corot picture. Her long legs clad in white silk stockings and sandals created something of a scandal amongst the peasant mothers, whose ideas of decency bid them cover up the legs of their girls with the longest and heaviest skirts they can afford. Her headgear, too, was considered characteristic of the madness with which God had afflicted the occupants of Villa Duval, for it was a tulle veil bound about her brow by a wreath of real daisies, gathered and twined by Val and Bran.
Each child carried a tiny slip of paper on which was written the new name which must be assumed at confirmation as in baptism. This paper was handed to a priest who stood on the left of the Archbishop and who, glancing swiftly at it, transposed it into Latin and murmured it into the great prelate's ear. Haidee, who had chosen Joan, was astonished to hear the Archbishop thus address her:
"Joanna! I mark thee with the sign of the Cross, and I confirm thee par le chreme du salut, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." Then he gave her a little tap on the left cheek and held out his ring to her; she kissed it fervently and went away uplifted. In passing back a priest on the right stopped her and wiped away the holy chrism (composed of balm and oil) with a piece of cotton wool, which he let fall into a basket held by a choir boy whose blue eyes vaguely disturbed Haidee's saintly dream. A little farther on another priest intercepted her and wiped her forehead once more, none too gently she thought, with a rather dissipated-looking napkin. The cowboy look came over her face at that, and Val reflected that it was just as well there were no more priests to waylay her before she reached her seat, for that Wild-West scowl was often followed by acts which made up in vigour for what they lacked in dignity.
Val was not able to see the end of the ceremony, for just as the priests closed in on the Archbishop, one with a gilt bowl, another with soap and broidered towel, another to take his ring, Bran whispered to her in a panting whisper:
"Mammie! I 've got the gasps!"
There was nothing for it but retreat to the churchyard, for when Bran got "the gasps" the only cure for them was air and solitude. It was a nervous affliction which often seized him when he was deeply bored or, curiously enough, when he was intensely excited, making him gasp like a chicken with the pip, and Val would feel her heart come into her throat with every opening of his little beak. While he regained his breathing powers in the churchyard, she sat on a stone watching him, thinking how she would have liked the hands of the Archbishop on his precious head too. There was surely some special benediction in such delicate old hands; and though she asked no blessings for herself, she wanted them all for Garrett Westenra's son. And while she sat there musing, out of the sacristy door came the Archbishop himself. He, too, seemed afflicted with gasps, for his mouth opened and closed and his breath came in little pants. None of his priests were with him, only the village cure escorting him to the presbytery, and he seemed somewhat like a child escaped for a moment from his nurses. When he saw Bran's smiling face his own lit up and its weariness was for an instant wiped away.
"A little American Catholic," said the cure, but the old prelate had not waited for an introduction before making the sign of the Cross over Bran's bright head. Val knelt in the dust while the faltering feet passed by. She felt as though a star had fallen from heaven for her.
