Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
Preston were not communicated with in order that he might propitiate the
London Daily, in whose interests she had come to America, something very
unpleasant and public might happen in the way of a lawsuit for a broken
contract. As such an affair would have been highly obnoxious to
Westenra, he gave in, but his dogged and bitter opposition revealed to
Val how deeply he felt on the subject of her past life, and stayed her
from making a further request that was very urgent in her heart.
She had a woman friend, Harriott Kesteven, who was very dear and near to
her, and she felt a great longing to let Harriott know of her changed
life. She possessed a keen appreciation of the claims and rights of
friendship, and it hurt her deeply to think how Harriott would suffer
over her mysterious disappearance from the known paths of her old life.
It was very feminine, too, that longing to share the secret of her
happiness with another woman, though it was only with Harriott that she
wished to do it. To let any one else into the wonder and beauty of it
all would have meant to spoil what was only for Westenra and herself.
However, she resisted the longing to communicate to Harriott even
indirectly what had happened. After all, that Westenra wished for
secrecy was reason enough to pit against a whole world of anxious and
loving friends!
And so they were married in a passionate hurry, and went away to spend a
few days together before starting the affair of house-hunting. Westenra,
whose vacation was already over, could not afford the time for a
honeymoon in the Adirondacks which he would have loved Val to see in all
the glory of autumn. They went no farther afield than a little house on
the edge of Bronx Park, whence, favoured by mild and lovely weather,
they adventured forth daily into the beautiful natural woods that skirt
this northern point of New York.
To Val at least those were flawless days. For once in her life she had
got what she wanted, and the gift had not turned to dust and ashes in
her hand. Happiness and gaiety radiated from her, and Westenra, caught
in the rays, reflected them back, so that no one would have guessed that
he was not so happy as she. Though, indeed, for a man who has the
perilous gift of seeing through life's red and golden apples to the
little spot of decay at the core, he was extraordinarily content. And at
last now that she was his wife he took her into his confidence about his
life and profession. Only to a certain extent, however, for he was a
deeply reserved man, and constitutionally unable to lay his heart and
inner thoughts bare (allowing that such a thing were desirable) to even
the best beloved of eyes. That he hid this intense reserve behind frank
manners and a witty tongue was a characteristic of his race. The Irish
are the jesters of the world, but their laughter is a screen for their
hopeless hearts and the deep melancholy of their souls.
Marriage is full of surprises, and not always happy ones. This barrier
of reserve that she soon divined in her husband was one of the things
that amazed Val. Her own heart was a book ready to open at the touch of
love. True, some of its pages were scrawled and scribbled, blotted too
in places and stained with tears; but there it was, ready to fly open to
a trusted hand. It was not her fault that Westenra had refused to turn
up those pages, but rather at his wish that they had been sealed and
locked away. Well! that was the book of yesterday. She had begun
another since they met, and there, at least, he might turn the pages
when he listed and read without misgiving.
But she longed and wished that he would trust her wholly too. Would let
her, if not into the secret chambers of his heart, then at least past
its outer portals. Spite of his frank, gay ways with her she knew well
by the subtle and winding paths in which the minds of women travel, that
behind his deep grey-green eyes there was another Garrett Westenra whom
she had not yet reached. The knowledge amazed her but did not daunt
her. Neither did it spoil her honeymoon. Her faith in love was of the
quality that moves mountains. In the meantime life was passing dear and
sweet.
But it was characteristic of each of them that until the first days in
New York Val did not even know that Westenra was a surgeon. It sounds
absurd and improbable and everything that is unpractical; but Val was
all of these things, and the fact is she had never given the matter five
minutes' thought. She knew he could do something and do it well: that
was written all over the man, and that was the only thing of importance.
Once or twice, struck by his logic and extraordinary faculty for stating
cases briefly and clearly, she had vaguely wondered if he were a lawyer.
It might perhaps be supposed that after her unhappy experience with
Valdana she would have exercised a certain caution in the choice of a
second husband. Not so--Valentine's was a nature that could never learn
caution. What she had learned, however, was a better judgment of men,
and she could not have been imposed upon twice by a man of Valdana's
stamp. Years of intimate friendship with men who "did and dared" had
taught her to know unerringly a "good" man when she met him, meaning by
"good," a man who worked with his brain and heart at some business, or
even game, in which his principles and honour were involved. In Westenra
she recognised the type instantly. This was no man shirking the battle
of life and seeking a woman to support him!
Therefore, if Westenra had announced his profession as that of a
travelling tinker, she would have been quite undismayed. Indeed, life
as the wife of a travelling tinker whom she happened to love would have
suited her very pleasantly.
As for Westenra, it has been stated that one of his principles was never
to give to fellow-travellers information about himself that did not
concern them; and on the ship, right up to the last night, he had
essayed to look upon Val as nothing more than a fellow-traveller;
therefore, his profession was no concern of hers. Afterwards, when it
was so swiftly settled that she was to become his wife, the information
did concern her, he made her free of it. She accepted it as she
accepted all things concerning him, with ardour and pride. It seemed to
her that she could not have chosen any more desirable profession in the
world for her man. She had known several doctors abroad, clever and
delightful men, but none of them had happened to be married, so she had
no idea as to what the special functions and duties of a doctor's wife
might be. Whatever they were she was quite ready to tackle them with a
stout heart for the sake of Garrett Westenra.
He had taken her to see his bachelor quarters in the deeps of the city
where for years he had lived and worked. They were simple almost to
bareness, but Val liked them well. They reminded her of her own
quarters in London, and she foresaw that with one good maid she would be
able to run her little home without the risk of Westenra's ever finding
out what a bad housekeeper he had married. It came as a shock to hear
that he was considering the matter of leaving these rooms to take a
house somewhere else, near Central Park for choice, where he could have
a fine operating-room and good accommodation for cases after operation.
It must of necessity be a very large house, with an efficient staff of
servants and nurses attached. The idea of collaboration with Godfrey had
been rejected. He had decided to stand or fall on his own merits.
"Would you mind very much, dearest?" he asked, somewhat diffidently. "I
know it is too bad to ask you to make your home in a sort of hospital,
but it is for both our sakes. The only way surgeons can really make
good on the money side is by having their own place for operations."
Something in her dismayed glance made him add slowly:
"But if you dislike the thought, we can have a home apart from it...."
"No, no," she said quickly. "Of course I don't dislike it. I want to
be right in your life, Joe, whatever you undertake."
Nevertheless her heart sank into her boots. Not for lack of courage,
but from a thorough knowledge of her own inefficiency for so responsible
a position as she might presently find herself occupying.
It was their last day in the woods. The late afternoon sunlight
flickered on them through the half-stripped trees, and leaves fluttered
and rustled all about the open glade where they sat. Val, with her
camping instinct, had lighted a little fire of twigs, just for the
pleasure of the sweet pungent odour of green burning and the sight of
smoke curling blue against the silver sky. This sudden news of
Westenra's sounded in her ears like the knell of all camp-fires, and
sunshine in woods and wild places. Panic seized her vagabond soul.
"Does the money side matter so much, Joe?" she faltered.
He smiled a little grimly. It had never mattered much to him, but she
could not know that.
"It has to matter in New York. The man who does n't rustle for the
dollars, and rustle successfully, gets left."
She looked at him wistfully. It seemed to her that she did not know
this rustler for dollars very well. It must be part of his hidden self
that he would not let her reach.
"I am not a rich man, Val. I told you that from the first, did n't I?"
He spoke coldly. "I cannot afford to disdain the opportunity that my
reputation affords for money-making,"--he had almost added "now," but
bit back the word in time. He was far from intending her to realise
what a change his marriage involved, what a sacrifice of plans and
principles it meant for him to be emerging once more from the laboratory
to take part in the scramble for dollars.
CHAPTER V
SQUIRREL IN A TRAP
"Do not thou make answer to an angry master."
"O speak that which is soft while he is uttering that which
is of wrath."
_Maxims of Art_.
The first thing, then, after leaving their honeymoon woods, was to find
a suitable house for the new venture. In the press of work that greeted
him on his return, Westenra found it impossible to give much time to
house-hunting, so this business practically devolved upon Val. Behold
her, then, utterly inexperienced in the conditions of American life, and
without a glimmering of intuition as to the requirements of an
up-to-date nursing home--whose ideal was a life in the wilds, sharing
the sunshine or the shade of a tree with her beloved, whose domestic
requirements vaguely included a pot and a blanket, who would have been
more at home on the veldt tracking a buck for dinner--rushing from one
end to the other of the most neoteric city in the world, inspecting
houses with "every modern improvement," weighing the advantages of
furnace-heating as compared to steam-heating, examining "open-work
plumbing" and "bathroom extensions," peering into kitchen ranges and
domestic offices, interesting herself in the things from which all her
life instinct had bade her fly, and from which she had fled!
But love was hers and a whole-hearted devotion to Westenra's interests
that even he could not quench, though he did his best. Nowhere could
she discover a house that pleased him. Every time she found something
she thought ideal, he would emerge for a few hours from his office and
completely demolish her hopes. Picking her find to pieces point by
point, he would thereafter retire and leave her to commence the search
anew.
Few things are more wearing to body and soul than a prolonged course of
house-hunting in a large city. There is nothing in the process to feed
the soul and everything to tire the body. At the end of a month Val's