Val found that the only way to ignore Normandy and the bleak mists of La Manche was to sit over a chaufferette full of bright red embers of charcoal, letting the heat steal up her skirts and enveloping her whole person from the soles of her feet to her scalp in a lovely glow. Immediately she would begin to write things full of the tropical languor of Africa. In her brain palms waved, little pot-bellied Kaffirs rolled in the hot dirt, sunshine blazed over a blue and green land, the air was filled with the scent of mimosa, and great-limbed Zulus danced in rhythmic lines with chant and stamp and swing of assegai before Cetewayo, the great and cruel king.

Unfortunately, a chaufferette is not always an easy thing to manage. Like everything French it has a temperament, and is liable to moods when it will burn and moods when it won't. It is a wooden or tin box, perforated at the top and open at one side to admit an earthenware bowl full of the charcoal which is called charbon de bois--actually calcined morsels of green wood. The baker makes this charbon by sticking green wood branches into his hot oven after he has finished baking his bread, but each baker makes a limited supply only, and will not sell it except to people who buy his bread. Every one uses chaufferette in Normandy during the winter, and visitors are given one to put their feet on as soon as they enter a house, though sometimes when the host is rich enough to keep a perpetual fire going, a supply of hot bricks is kept in the oven instead.

Val's chaufferette was of most uncertain temper. Hortense always lit it in the morning, and left it by the writing-table. When Val came to it all that had to be done was to gently insert an old spoon under the little ash heap and lift it all round, when a red hot centre of glowing embers would disclose itself. But sometimes an old nail or piece of "Carr-diff" found its way by accident into the pot, then the charbon would immediately sulk itself into oblivion, or sometimes for no reason at all after being perfectly lighted it would just go out. Ensued a struggle in which Val and Haidee invariably came off second-best. They would take the pot out of its box and stand it on a window-sill with the window drawn low to make a draught; put it on the front door step and, kneeling down, blow on it until fine ash sat thick upon their noses and their eyes were full of tears; build paper bonfires on it; fan it wildly with newspapers. All to no avail! Usually that was the end of work and inspiration for the day. Val declared that she could not think with cold feet. But sometimes old père Duval, compassionate for the mad, would send up his wooden box, large enough for two men to warm their feet on, with a great iron saucepan full of glowing charbon inside, and Val would sit toasting over it and write things of a tropical languor extraordinary.

Haidee had passed her brevet simple, an exam, about equal to the English Oxford Junior, and the American 6th standard, and was now working for the brevet supérieure with a French woman who had been a governess before she married a retired commercial traveller and settled in Mascaret. The discovery of this good woman was a stroke of luck for Val, though certainly Haidee did not consider it so. However, her lessons only took up four hours a day. For the rest she and Bran idled joyous and care-free through life, climbing the cliff, fishing, digging for sand-eels, making long excursions inland, or meeting the fishing boats in the evening when they came in with the day's haul, and all the villagers would be at the port to bargain for fish. Haidee usually haggled for and bought a raie (dog-fish) for the next day's dinner, and Bran would run a stick through its ribald-looking mouth, and carry the slithery monstrous thing home, to be met by scowls from Hortense, who, stolid as she was, hated the sight of a raie, and could not face the business of washing and gutting it without cries of douleur and disgust.

"Ah! C'est craintive! C'est affreux!"

But meat was too dear for daily consumption, and raie the only fish brought in by the boats throughout the winter months, so it had to be eaten, and some one had to prepare it. And after all, wrestling with raie was one of the jobs for which Hortense was paid three francs a week. It was her business to come in the morning at seven o'clock, make the fires, and deliver "little breakfast" at each bedside; afterwards she swept and made the beds, then disappeared until just before lunch, when she came to perform upon the raie and execute one or two culinary feats that were beyond the scope of Val or Haidee--such as cutting up onions, which neither of them could accomplish without weeping aloud, or putting the chipped potatoes into a pan full of boiling dripping, a business that when conducted by Val made a rain of grease spots all over the kitchen and scalded every one in sight. After washing the midday dishes, and chopping up vegetables for the soup, Hortense would consider her function over for the day, and leave Val and Haidee to grapple as best they might with tea, supper, fires, and the chaufferette. The supper was no very great difficulty, merely a matter of putting the cut vegetables into a pot with a large lump of specially prepared and seasoned dripping, and standing said pot on the stove until supper-time, when its contents would be marvellously transformed into soupe à la graise, a savoury and nourishing broth eaten as an evening meal by every peasant in Normandy. The fires were the greatest nuisance. The stove in the kitchen either became a red-hot furnace and purred like a man-eater, or else went out; and the stove with an open grate in Val's room, which old man Duval had paid a month's rent for and gone all the way to Cherbourg to fetch, had a way of going out also before any one even noticed that it was low; then there would be much scratching with a poker, searching for kindling wood, pouring out of paraffin, sudden happy blazes that nearly took the roof off, and black smuts everywhere. When all was over, and a beautiful fire roaring after the united efforts of the family, Val would find that her chaufferette had gone out! It was hard to even think masterpieces among such distractions, to say nothing of writing them. Tea was easily got. Haidee made the toast on the salad fork, Val buttered it with dripping, Bran laid the table. Then all three sat with their feet on the stove, drinking out of the big coffee bowls, eating every scrap of the delicious smoky toast and licking their fingers afterwards. If Val had written anything funny or dramatic that day she would sometimes read it out to them, but for the most part her instinct was to hide what she wrote. She said she felt as if she had lost something afterwards, and if any one had been even looking at her written sheets they never seemed quite the same to her again--some virtue went out of her work the moment she shared it with any one.

Usually, after tea she settled down for another struggle with her ideas, and Bran and Haidee went for a prowl on the digue in the hope of adventures. Bran, whose mind was as full of fairies as if he had been born in the wilds of Ireland, was always in hope of meeting a giant or a dwarf, but he had learned not to mention these aspirations to Haidee. Anyway, there was always the village gossip to listen to in the petit port, where the fishing boats anchored and usually the excitement of watching the Quatre Frères come chup--chup--chupping up the river to her moorings. She was a natty and picturesque trawler, with a petrol engine that was the admiration of the village installed in her bowels. Because of this engine she was known as the Chalutier à petrole, but at Villa Duval she was called by Bran's translation of her name, The Cat's Frères. She never caught anything but raie, and of this despised species far fewer than any of the other boats, but she dashed in and out of the harbour with great slam and needed five men to handle her. There was a legend that the petrol engine frightened the fish away. It was known that the four brothers who owned her were anxious to get rid of her. Every one knew that she cost more than she brought in. But Haidee and Bran shared a fugitive hope that Val's play would make them all so rich that they would be able to acquire her as a pleasure boat.

Sometimes strange craft from Granville or a Brittany port would come in for the night, and there was the St. Joseph, a great fishing trawler from Lannion, carrying a master and seven hands, that put in when weather was heavy. Her sails were patched with every colour of the rainbow, her decks were filthy, and her years sat heavy upon her--you could hear her creaking and groaning two miles from shore: but to Haidee and Bran she stood for the true romance! She always brought in tons of fish, not only the everlasting raie, but deep-sea fish, and as soon as her arrival was heralded all the village sabots came clipper-clopping down the terrace, shawls clutched round bosoms, the wind flicking bright red spots in old cheeks, every one anxious to pick and choose from the mass of coal-fish, red gurnet, plaice, congers, and mullets that was hooked out of the hold and flung quivering ashore. The big weather-beaten fishermen in their sea-boots bandied jests with the carking old village wives and the girls showered laughter. In the end, the villagers departed with full baskets, and the seamen well content adjourned to the petit café close by for a "cup of coffee with a burn in it" and a good meal.

CHAPTER XV

WAYS SACRED AND SECULAR