Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
blows and face the same round next morning, could not but appeal to the
chivalry in Westenra, as well as awaken his own sense of humour.
CHAPTER VI
KISSES AND CROSSES
"For 'Im and 'E and 'It
(An' Two an' One makes Three)."
KIPLING.
Acquaintance with a further element in her husband's life to which she
had so far been a stranger was reserved for Val when at Easter his
adopted child, Haidee Halston, came home to 68th Street. Westenra, it
is true, had told her all the circumstances, and no one was better
qualified than Val to appreciate that sense of responsibility towards
the helpless and unprotected which had prompted him to take upon himself
the entire support and education of a friend's child. Westenra and Pat
Halston had been friends from boyhood. The same county in Ireland had
been their birthplace, they were at Carlow College together, and,
sailing for America within a year of each other, met again in New York,
and graduated together from Columbia University, where they obtained
their medical degree. Later, launched upon the same profession but
inspired by very different ambitions, the paths of the two friends had
diverged somewhat. Halston, greatly gifted and of a magnetic
personality, aimed for a fashionable practice that would bring him
social success as well as a fortune with which to pursue further
aims--in fact, like many another he meant medicine to serve him only as
a step to the more lucrative and exciting profession of politics,
wherefore he followed it only when it led him into the highways of the
rich and influential. Westenra, on the other hand, inspired by a racial
thirst for knowledge, as well as for eminence in his profession, did not
disdain the by-ways, even when they led him into the lowest slums of New
York. It was natural, in the circumstances, that the two men should see
little of each other, but the bond of boyhood held good, and when "Death
and Dismay" all too swiftly and unforeseen came to Halston, it was to
Westenra that he turned at the last. Poor Halston had, unfortunately,
put a spoke into his own wheel of ambition by marrying a lovely, but
very flighty English girl, who came to America as a governess in the
family of one of his fashionable patients. Halston adored his pretty
wife, but she made ducks and drakes with his money and brought him to
the verge of bankruptcy through her extravagance. When death by septic
poisoning swooped suddenly down on him, she was within a short period of
giving birth to their only child, and the thought of this darkened the
dying man's vision until Westenra, with a firm hand on his friend's,
gave his promise that the welfare of Mrs. Halston and her child would be
his most sacred task. Within a few weeks Mrs. Halston joined her
husband in the great beyond, and Westenra found himself the sole
guardian of the little baby girl fancifully called by its dying
mother--Haidee. That was ten years before, and now Haidee was a
beautiful, arrogant slip of a girl with deep dark eyes, a deep dark cave
or two in her soul, and the manners of a cowboy. The school at which
she had been educated for several years, to the extreme detriment of
Westenra's banking account, was one of those highly modern institutions
where at the most expensive rates girls are encouraged to "develop their
individuality," and Haidee, a hoyden by nature, had developed hers along
the cowboy-brigand line. Her idea of argument with servants or other
children was to push them down-stairs or administer a hack on the shins
with one of her extremely useful-looking feet.
These unsatisfactory reports had for a long time troubled the peace of
Westenra, whose sense of responsibility to Pat Halston's child was
perhaps a slightly exaggerated one. A vague idea had occurred to him of
sending her to a convent to see what the gentle influence of nuns could
do for her, but Haidee jibbed like a mule at the mention of nuns, and
declared darkly that if he sent her to a convent _he would see_.
When he spoke to Val of his worries on the subject she said, ready at
once to embrace any project or protege of his without thought of the
fresh tasks entailed:
"Oh, why not have her here for awhile, Joe? A little home life will tame
her down, I expect. Look how it has tamed even such a wild ass of the
desert as I," she added, with a gay smile in which there was more than a
touch of wistfulness. But Westenra said a trifle abruptly that he did
not fancy somehow it would be a good plan.
"You have enough worries already," he added, but not quite quickly
enough to prevent Val from perceiving that there was some other reason,
though she was far from guessing what that reason might be.
In the end, however, by the gift of circumstance, Haidee came to 68th
Street after all. For at the expiration of the Easter term the school
authorities wrote a brief but eloquent letter to the effect that they
wished to be relieved of the care of Westenra's ward. If it did not
exactly amount to an expulsion, it certainly could not be looked upon as
a certificate of good conduct for presentation at her next school, and
for the moment all thought of the convent had to be dismissed. So
Haidee came home from New Jersey, bag and baggage, and utterly unashamed
of her peccadilloes. Val, with a heart open for anything or any one
loved by Westenra, was eager to mother the motherless creature of whom
she had heard so much. But Haidee was apparently not in search of a
mother, and received her advances coldly and in a keep-off-the-grass
manner that only an American-bred child would have the _sang-froid_ to
use. More than a hint of hostility, too, was to be found in the
deep-set eyes, when they watched Val and Westenra together. The fact
was that to find her guardian installed in a house with "a strange
woman" had given the girl a great shock. Westenra, following his usual
habit of reserve, had prepared her for nothing of the kind when he said,
on his return journey from New Jersey:
"I am married now, Haidee."
She never dreamed that such a thing would make any difference to her
absolute monopoly of her beloved guardian, and indeed, because Val was
generous and he was kind, it would have made but little, if she had not
instantly determined to be as obnoxious and tiresome as she could be, in
the hope that Val would get tired of her and go away.
From the first she nobly contributed her share towards the business of
making life at No. 700 more unlivable than it was already. She fought
with the servants, got into the way of the nurses, and disturbed the
patients with her noise. A day-school was found for her near at hand,
and that kept her energies employed for a certain number of hours, but
her new teachers were soon on the war-path after her, and she arrived
home daily, flustered with combat, and bringing long accounts of their
tyranny and brutality! When it was time for her to go to school in the
mornings the house had to be hunted for her from top to bottom by Val or
a housemaid. She hated to go to bed, and there was a scene every night
before she could be induced to do so; then, on being left alone, she
would invariably hop out again, turn up the lights, and amuse herself in
some illicit fashion, such as hanging out of the window and dropping
things on the heads of patients coming up the front-door steps. Yet in
the mornings it almost needed a charge of dynamite to dislocate her from
her blankets. She had a rooted aversion to taking baths, and would
never brush her teeth unless some one stood over her and saw it done. In
fact, she had all the faults and naughtinesses of an ordinary child
strongly accentuated, and a sense of perversity extraordinarily
developed. Withal she was as clever as paint, and grew prettier every
day. What vexed Val most was that everlastingly she broke in upon
Westenra, claiming his attention for her troubles, her lessons, her
amusements, unless Val were on the alert to prevent it. She would wait
outside his office door and slip in "between patients" to relate some
woe, and Westenra would listen patiently and in the end the trouble
evaporated into smiles and laughter. But this wasted his time and told
upon his temper in some later affair of the day, or brought him up to
bed a little more tired than usual.
Presently, too, Haidee's jealousy of Val's place in Westenra's life
began to take a more active form, and if it had not been for her
disarming innocence of mind where worldly matters were concerned, Val
would have almost come to dislike her. Instead of which she felt pity
for the child who, in her adoration for Westenra, resented being ousted
from the central position in his life. Haidee could not or would not
understand why a mere wife should have first claim. She considered that
she herself possessed it, because she had been first in Westenra's life.
One night Val, going to her husband's room to see that everything was
prepared for him to go straight to rest as soon as he got in from a late
consultation, found Haidee in her nightgown, curled up and scowling, on
Westenra's bed.
"Haidee! What on earth--? I thought you were in bed and asleep long
ago."
"Well, I 'm not, you see," was the surly response.
"But, dear chicken, what are you doing here?"
"I 'm waiting for Garry."
"Oh, Haidee, how silly! When Garry comes home he 'll be dead tired and
not want to be bothered. You really must have a little consideration
for him, dear--besides, you ought to be in bed and asleep by now."
The child suddenly burst out at her like a tornado:
"Why aren't _you_ in bed and asleep, I 'd like to know ... why can _you_
wait up for him and not me? ... I know ... you think he belongs to you
... and that you can have him all the time. You are a greedy guts. You
have him every night ... why should n't I have him sometimes? You are
trying to take him right away from me. Who asked you to come from your
rotten old England and take my Garry away from me? Before you came he
was all mine ... when I was little he used to let me sleep with my arms
round his neck. But now, whenever I ask if I can come and sleep in his
bed he laughs and says I have grown too big and active with my hoofs.
But your hoofs are not too big, I suppose! Oh, no! ... and he 's not
too tired, however late he comes in for _you_ to come to his room and
talk to him.... Mean pig that you are ... greedy guts! I hate you ...
and I _will_ sleep with Garry ... I will, I will!"
She burst into a torrent of tears, and Val stood staring at her in
amazement that swiftly softened to pity. The trouble with Val was that
she could always feel sympathy for another person's point of view, and
that frame of mind is very disarming to anger. Immediately she threw
her arms round the sobbing creature and began to comfort her.
"Dear old thing, you mustn't feel like that about me. I don't want to
take him away from you. I know he is all you have. I only want you to
help me as much as you can to make things easier for him. Think how he
works ... for both of us--you and me! And how tired he is at nights....
As for my coming to his room ... dear chick, don't you understand that I
am his wife? When you are grown up you 'll marry some nice man ... and
you 'll want to be greedy over him too a little bit."
"I 'll never marry anybody. I always meant to marry Garry ... and now
_you_--" Vindictiveness came into her voice again, and Val's heart gave
a little weary sigh, for she was dead beat, and this was her legitimate
time of rest, hard wrung from the day. To have to face this exhausting
scene late at night seemed very much like the last straw that was one
too many for the camel.