Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
However, it was urgent to get it over and done with before Westenra came
in, so she stayed on talking to the unhappy child, trying to beguile her
from her misery and once and for all place their relationship on a
footing of sympathy and affection. It seemed almost a hopeless task,
but in the end the effective thing was that she told Haidee of what so
far she had spoken to no one but Westenra--her deep, sweet, secret joy
in the thought of the child that was coming. It was Haidee's first
glimpse into the workings of nature, and she sat wide-eyed and dumb,
searching Val from top to toe for circumstantial evidence, while Val,
with a faint flush in her pale face, but serene-eyed and in simple
words, following on Carpenter's advice in _Love's Coming of Age_, made
all clear to the child. She even, with a touch of guile, let Haidee
into the secret of suffering to be endured before the baby could come
into the world, believing that to touch the heart of the child to a
little sympathy might not be an unwise thing. And she was right: from
sympathy to compassion is a natural step, and Haidee went to bed in a
glow of good resolution to be as helpful and considerate as possible in
the days to come. Indeed, without turning into an angel, or even a
moderately good child, she did improve greatly in behaviour during the
next few months, while waiting with burning impatience for what was to
come when the bleak spring days were over.
June came at last, and brought its gift to Valentine and Westenra--a
son. Like an impetuous Irishman, as Val had declared, anxious to get
into the thick of the fight, he had practically started their married
life with them, and arrived as soon as compatibility with schedule
permitted. That was a great day in the Westenra household when the
golden head of a baby lit up like a star the gloom of dark and difficult
ways. Instead of one baby, indeed, there were three. Two of them
haggard and thin, but content and care-free as the third in that glad
hour of love made incarnate. Even Haidee softened and turned into a real
child as she hung with perpetual curiosity over the cot of the
new-comer.
"It's got blue eyes, just like the lion cubs in the Zoo.... Oh, look at
it clutching on to me! You are lucky, Val.... I wish I could get one,
too. Oh, _could n't_ I have it to sleep with me?"
She sulked bitterly when she was not permitted to take charge of it to
play with like a doll, and thereafter constantly complained to Westenra
of Val's greediness.
"You 'd think it was all hers--and how can it be if it is half yours?
And if it is yours it belongs to me too," was the burden of her
complaint.
When Val got up and resumed life again, the question of a name for the
baby arose. Val was all for Patrick.
"Patrick seems to stand for Ireland, and he is our link with Ireland,
Joe."
"It is an unlucky name with us," Westenra objected. "My father was
crazy for sons, but three he called Patrick died one after the other.
When I came they took no more risks, and gave me an old family name.
Choose another, Val."
"Well," she said shyly, after a little thought, "would you mind
Richard?"
"Richard?" he mused.
Val had long yearned to talk to Westenra of Dick Rowan, only the ban he
had placed on all past things had so far prevented her. But that the
day must come when no subject would be taboo between them, she felt
confident.
"We could call him Dick," she said. "I once cared very much----"
Westenra turned on her like a flash, white to the lips.
"Is that the way you burn your boats?" he said, in a low, hard voice,
and looked at her with furious eyes she did not know. While she stared
at him in pain and amazement he rose abruptly and left the room. Slowly
her eyes filled with tears. She made no further reference to the matter.
She did not know what to say. It seemed she could not refer to that
time and tell him who Dick was, and how good he had been to her without
giving pain. Therefore it was better to be silent. On the day of the
christening itself he said:
"We 'll call him Bran if you like, Val--one of Ireland's old savage
kings. I think that son of yours will be some one fine some day," he
added with a boyish, lovable smile, that had something of pride in it,
and something of humility too, and for those words Val forgave him and
was happy again. And the baby was baptised into the Holy Catholic
Church under the pagan and kingly name of Bran.
CHAPTER VII
MORE WINDING PATHS
"There is a crack in everything God has made."
EMERSON.
There is a saying that during the hot weather every one in New York,
except doctors and cats, leave the city. Westenra, with his yearly
habit of pulling stakes and heading for Europe at the first hint of
heat, had always been an exception to this rule, and he invariably
advised other men that his was the only possible way to keep fit after
nine months' hard work. But now, though the brazen heat beat down on to
the city and burnt up through the pavements as if Pluto had lighted a
special furnace under New York, Westenra laughed at his own advice and
made no move to get away. Val knew why, and the knowledge etched new
shadows under her salient cheek-bones. In spite of his working like a
bee from morning till night, the Sanatorium being constantly full, and
operations always in progress, Westenra was harassed for money. The
venture did not pay. An experienced woman at the head of things could
have made it pay. The stolid, lumpy German with a good hospital
training grafted on to a knowledge of household affairs would have made
a roaring success of it, and coined money for all concerned. Even an
ordinarily good manager with free hands and no nerves might have
achieved a margin of profit. The vagabond journalist not only could not
make it pay, she was turning it into a dead loss. Every day good money
went cantering after bad.
What Westenra should have done, even at that eleventh hour, was to
engage a capable, working matron to manage the place, while Val devoted
her loving fervour to the baby and himself. But he felt doubtful as to
the success of such an arrangement, first because Val would probably not
like to live elsewhere; secondly, because he had managed hospitals
before, and knew all about trouble with matrons. Experience had taught
him that in America women rarely work well except in the interests of
some one with whom they are in love. This rule applies very pertinently
to American nurses, who are usually middle-aged Germans intent on
marrying a doctor; but it may very well be applied to women all the
world over, though Westenra was not aware of the fact. What he did know
was that a managing matron would probably work for her own hand and not
for his. Even if she made a roaring success of the place, later there
would surely come the subtle introduction of other methods and other
interests than his, into his own hospital. Worst of all would be the
fact of strangers within his gates spying out the secrets of his
reserved nature, bearing witness to his moods and nerves, all the irk of
daily contact with people who were making a business out of his brains.
This idea of outsiders being "let in on him," of alien eyes coming close
enough to look over the wall behind which he kept his conflicting
tempers and emotions from the world, was peculiarly irritating to him.
Only Val, privileged by love, must have the gift of a share in his
torment, the right to hear his swears. With all others he smiled and
smiled and hid his heart, and put distance between himself and them.
And Val, because she was a true lover, understood and faithfully gave of
her body and soul to pad the bumps of life for him. Whatever else she
failed in, she failed not in playing the buffer between him and the
strangers who went to and fro in his house. He little knew what it cost
her in peace of mind and serenity of spirit, this jarring with natures
so unlike her own, and jangling with those who were making a business of
life. He only knew that in spite of her impracticability and
extravagance there was no one like her, and that the place in her
incompetent hands was dearer by far than it could ever be in surer hands
that were strange. It was beginning to dawn in his heart, with the
exquisite promise of the skies, all that she was to him, this woman who
walked by his side never faltering, smiling gallantly in defeat. It was
beginning to whisper through his senses like the haunting echo of bells
whose cadence he had known all his life that defeat after all did not
matter so much since he shared it with her--that it might in fact become
a form of victory. In any case he meant to struggle on with things as
they were, hoping and working for the best.
Unfortunately, his nerves after the year of extraordinary strain were in
rags. He really needed the rest and change that was due to him. His
body and brain clamoured for it, and his fine athlete's skin took into
itself a putty tint that was neither healthy nor becoming. In vain did
Val implore him to take ship for his native land. He laughed and refused
to go unless she and the children went too. But she knew what the cost
of such an exodus would mean, and sat tight as an eagle in her eyrie;
and her little brood pecked at her heart as though determined to get at
her life-blood. Haidee grew wickeder every hour, and Bran was the
naughtiest baby in the world, sleeping all day and howling all night,
withal drinking away his mother's strength and blooming on it like a
pink rose.
Valentine grew pale as a wraith and Westenra's old, haunting fear that
his brain would give out ate him by night and day; but neither of them
was a quitter. Both possessed that stupid and over-estimated kind of
courage that does not know when it is beaten. At last Fate, like an
overtried mother who is sick of giving gentle hints to unheeding
children, brought down her hand heavily upon them. First she smote the
man. In the blasting heat of late August, Westenra went down as only the
big and the strong can go down--like a felled oak. The brilliant
colleague whom Val hastily and fearfully summoned to her husband's
bedside expressed his diagnosis in the argot of the day.
"His nerves have run out and his stomach has gone back on him. If he
does n't slip up on us it will be a near thing, Mrs. Westenra."
And it was a near thing. If it had not been for Val, Westenra would
have found eternity sooner than he expected. But it was a bad time for
her. In addition to nursing her husband, she had to manage the
rampageous Bran, a domestic crisis brought about by a servant strike,
and an ice famine. Fortunately, there were no patients but one in the
house at the time, and the nurse in attendance happened to be an
exceptionally good one, who did all she could to relieve the strain. She
was an English woman, a Miss Holland, with an able brain behind a
pretty, calm face. She would willingly have undertaken the nursing of
Westenra besides her own patient, but he was so frequently delirious
that Val was afraid to let any one share in the nursing of him. She
knew how he would hate any stranger to hear his tormented ramblings, but
she did not realise for a long time that it would perhaps have been
better at any cost that another than she should have heard them. For all
that he had hidden from her came out now in broken snatches and groans,
half dream, half delirium. She learned of his longing for his
laboratory, of the sacrifice it had cost him to abandon it, of his
despair about the Sanatorium, money worries, all the irk domestic life
held for him. What was more terrible, she gleaned in broken fragments,
halting and disjointed, as though even in his delirium he had an