That an out-of-door, tomboy creature like Haidee should take to writing poems was strange enough, but what startled Val still more was its open dedication to Sacha. It ran into several verses:
"You are more beautiful than the rising sun,
And I love you more,
And I wish to steal you and keep you
As in the old, old law.
"For you are mine, you were born for me:
It is written in the book of Fate
That thou should 'st love me, and I love thee--
Do now, 'fore it is too late.
"Come to me now, to my ever open arms,
And make me glad,
And I will mark our meeting with an everlasting kiss
To make us sad."
Poor Haidee!
When Val had finished reading it her eyes were full of tears, though her lips smiled. It was not poetry, but in its broken, ill-balanced phrases it revealed what poetry does not always do--the heart of the writer and the big things in the writer's nature struggling to get out. The old cowboy rudeness and lawlessness were there, but Val was so thankful to God to see the sign of big things--of generosity, of the courage that dares, of soul. Yes, there under the beat of young passion's wing was another still small sweet sound--the voice of soul. What else did those two last lines reveal?
"...an everlasting kiss
To make us sad."
Only the soul knows the secret of that great sadness lurking under passion's wing!
Poor Haidee! So her feet, too, were touching the outer waves of that stormy sea where women sink or swim, and few reach the happy shore! Yet Val was proud to recognise that she was not afraid to put forth. This was no suppliant cry of one afraid to drown! Here was not one of the world's little clinging creatures that grip round a man's neck and pull him under. She, too, had the strong arm and the stout heart. She would give help, not only seek to take it. Yes, that was what Haidee's poor little poem revealed more than anything to Val--that she was one of life's givers.
"Thank God for it," said Val, "and let her give." After long thought, doubled up in Bran's boat and staring at the sea as was her way, she added: "but not to Sacha Lorrain."
It is not to be supposed that she had spent a whole summer of intimacy with the Lorrain family without drawing up some kind of a moral estimate of each member of it. They were not very harsh affairs, these little estimates. For it was ever Val's way to "heave her log" into the heart rather than the mind, and to what was in the pocket she never gave a thought. Like many of the cleverest women, she had no judgment, no gift of looking past the hardy eye and the smooth smile into the mind to see what was brewing there. But she had instincts, and sometimes inspirations, and a highly tuned ear for sincerity. Also, no act or look or word containing beauty was ever lost on her.
Well! it must be confessed that Sacha had emerged but poorly from her process of assessment. She had turned her ear and inclined her eye for many a long day for grace in him--and both had gone unrequited.