"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-shells--and so are violets common, and poppies of the field, and forget-me-nots; but none the less are they the colour-gifts of God 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-glasses 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 Marseilles.
"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."