"That makes even more bizarre the affair," said the Comtesse lightly. Then, knowing that she had said enough for the time being, she dismissed the subject and shortly afterwards departed with her Dragon.
As soon as she was gone Haidee, who was nothing if not prompt, sat down and wrote to Val for a sortie letter for the coming Sunday. She intended to investigate this mystery of the three studios for herself--likewise the story of Rupert's entanglement.
But to her acute annoyance the opportunity was not afforded her. A letter from Val came by return to the effect that she was too busy and worried to be able to receive Haidee that term. As a palliative she sent a parcel of books, an enormous box of exquisite chocolates from Boissier's, and a dozen tennis balls. Haidee was a devotee of tennis and always complained bitterly of the lack of balls, for tennis balls are outrageously expensive in France. These Val sent were of the best quality and must have cost at least three francs each. The mystery deepened.
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During the bad time of worriment and weariness with Valdana, Rupert was indeed a great stay to Val. Being stationed so close to Paris he was able to come often to the Lamartine Studios, and she was always glad to see the blue friendly eyes that had in them some of the space and compassion of sea and sky. There was something so loyal and reliable about him that she had actually told him the truth about Valdana, and been definitely aided by his sympathy and understanding. His influence was good, too, for Bran, who was beginning to reach that stage when the society and point of view of men means a great deal in a boy's life. And Bran had always had a special penchant for boys and men. It gave Val many a sharp pang, not of resentment but of sorrow, to observe in him a yearning for his father, for she knew that whatever she was able to do for her son, she could never assuage that longing, never give him the masculine companionship and influence of which he had been robbed. It grieved her terribly to think that in her son's life those lovely pliable years, when bonds between father and son are so simply but strongly fashioned from the one's weakness and the other's strength, were passing week by week, month by month. Glad enough then was she that he had at least the friendly brotherly affection and influence of so clear-hearted a boy as Rupert.
With Valdana she never allowed Bran to come into contact. Indeed, Valdana from the first was practically oblivious to those about him. His race was very nearly run. He had come to Val in the last lap of it, upheld by God knew what strange resolution to make her share to the bitter end their disastrous partnership. Having found her he seemed content to let life wreak her pitiless worst on him before he was allowed to depart to that death which he had once ignobly shirked, but whose embrace he now longed for with the ardour of a lover. His sufferings, indeed, were terrible. In the centre of the great lofty room he lay and wrestled with an agony that was almost unceasing. But he was well aware of being surrounded and enfolded by every comfort. Softened light, flowers, music, good nursing, everything that money and kindness could supply to alleviate pain was at hand, and he knew he had Val to thank, and vaguely wondered how she achieved it, but did not care much as long as she was by his bedside, in the pale blue linen overall she always assumed as soon as she entered. Cancer may or may not be infectious--that is one of the problems science has not yet solved--but with Bran so near she took no risks, changing even her clothes on entering and leaving the sick-room, which was an entirely self-contained appartement and atelier. She had been so fortunate as to obtain in the newly-finished building the whole of the immense floor of three studios. It rejoiced her to be able to give her Brannie one entirely to himself and his governess. That was one of the joys the seventy-five thousand pounds had brought her. She had already spent some hundreds of it on furnishing and the heavy expenses entailed by Valdana's needs. But the rest she had been wise enough to allow the kindly Bernstein to invest for her, and her mind was at rest at last and for the first time in her life from the gnawing tooth of poverty. She was doing no writing. Not only was her life, divided between Bran and the sick man, too full for such a thing, but at last she could permit herself the luxury of refraining from writing when she had nothing to say. That forced work in Mascaret had sickened her soul. Now she could let her creative faculty rest for a while at least and give undivided attention to this duty of hers to Valdana.
As for having Haidee home, it was out of the question. She felt herself unable to go into the matter of her relation to Valdana with any one so antagonistic to her as Haidee was at present. She knew that the girl still cherished bitterness against her for poor Sacha's defection, and she could only hope that with the coming of other interests, this feeling would pass away and allow a return to the old footing of comradeship and affection. She let Haidee profit too by the necklace windfall, sending her presents of music, books, and the countless pretty trifles that girls set store on. Bran went weekly with his governess to see her, and Rupert, urged by Val, went very often too. Rupert knew all about the affair of Sacha. Not from Val, but because by a strange coincidence Sacha had opened his heart to his cousin the night before his death. The two young men had shared the same room at Shai-poo, and in the silences of the night shared many confidences also. That was how Rupert had come to know the truth, and to keep his reverence and affection for Val unshaken.
"I love the sea, I love the music of the violin, and I love you--all with the same love," he told her one day. He had found her weeping alone in her studio. The strain of Valdana's hideous suffering and Westenra's long silence sometimes racked her so that she was glad of the relief of tears. "You know what Jean Paul Richter said of music,--'Thou speakest to me of things which in all my endless life I have found not--and shall not find';--that is what you and the sea and the violin say to me."
She blessed him for that, not from gratified vanity, but for comfort in the thought that others besides herself suffered from the cry of those things "that we find not nor shall find."
"Dear boy," she said, and stroked his hair as if he had been Bran while he knelt by her. "I love you too--as if you were my son, as your mother must have loved you, Rupert."