Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
his son. But that way madness lay. Sorrow and shame, worse things than
separation for a time, must come of that. No, she must bear it alone.
Her hand was to the plough and she must not turn weakly back. Even now
there was that to do that was part of the plot, and she must leave the
dear ones to go and do it.
"I think they can spare me for a little while," she thought, not without
a certain tender irony, for the crowd on the bed were so very wrapped up
in their own performances. Unnoticed, she slipped from the room, and
went to Westenra's office to typewrite a letter.
When she did not keep the appointment at Shrapp's Hotel with Valdana, he
had, as she foresaw, called at No. 700 in search of Alice Brook. On
hearing that she had left, he asked for an interview with Mrs. Westenra.
Fortunately, Val had not been with Garrett, but in her room resting with
a bad headache, when the new maid, a Wicklow girl of good type, who had
developed a great devotion for her mistress, brought in the card. By an
effort Val had managed to control herself and look with calmness upon
the inscribed name.
"Mr. John Seymour! Who is he? What does he want, Mary?"
"I don't know, ma'am, he did not say, but sure it's a sick man he is by
the colour av him."
"Go down and find out. If he is a patient, tell him the doctor is very
ill and will not be able to see patients for a month or two at least.
If he is in a hurry he had better go to Dr. Dillon, who is seeing all
Dr. Westenra's patients at present."
This gave her time, and would she thought allay Valdana's suspicion, if
he had one, of any connection between herself and Alice Brook. But she
was sick with apprehension and lay white on her pillow when the maid
reappeared; the answer was as expected: the gentleman's business was not
with the doctor, but with the mistress of the house.
"Sure, it's the character of the last housemaid he wants, ma'am. He 's
afther engaging her," Mary announced and Val's heart gave a great jump
of fright. The next moment she realised that this was most likely a
ruse, a mere excuse for finding out what he wanted to know of her
whereabouts.
"The character of Alice Brook?" she said mechanically.
"Yes, ma'am. And I took the liberty of telling him, ma'am, that you
could not be plagued with such affairs now, and you destroyed nursing
the doctor and all, and he 'd better be afther writing for what he
wants."
Val could have embraced the kindly creature, but she gave no sign, only
said quietly:
"You did quite right, Mary. But to save time you may tell this
gentleman, Mr.--," she looked at the card--"Mr. Seymour, that as far as
character goes Alice Brook was quite a good girl--honest, sober, an
early riser, diligent (she could not forbear a wry smile to think that
in the last three points at least the formula applied equally to
herself); her chief defect was that she was quite ignorant as to the
duties of a housemaid, and I had no time to train her. I cannot think
of anything further that it is necessary for him to know, but if there
should be he can write."
As the maid was leaving the room, she added thoughtfully:
"Don't let him linger asking questions, Mary. It seems a curious thing
for a gentleman to be occupying himself with a housemaid's references.
He may not be what he professes at all, but some scamp----"
She knew that upon that hint Mary would polish him off without ceremony,
and she felt no compunction in giving it. Could any one indeed be a
worse scamp? What was he there for but to spy out and blackmail, and
cause ruin and dismay to her and her loved ones? She trembled with rage
and terror when she thought of him being in the same house with Garrett
and Bran. But for an accident she might have been seen by him, or his
card brought up to her at Westenra's bedside! There was no reason for
him to have come to the house at all. True, she had not kept the
appointment, but she had kept faith with him in the matter of money, had
sold a greater part of her jewels, and sent him the proceeds by
registered post. At the same time she had written him a letter telling
him firmly that there was nothing to be gained by their meeting. She
reminded him that all question of their being anything to each other was
over many years past, and that certainly the circumstances of his
reappearance did not incline her to renew any kind of intimacy with him.
In consideration of his health she promised she would do her best for
him, and spare him any money she could.
"But it is no use hounding me," she wrote, full of the cold fury of a
mother robbing her loved ones to give to a wolf, for the money gained on
her jewels would have paid many a bill hanging over the household at the
moment. "You must not forget that I too need to live. And you are not
to torment me. If ever I make money again I will let you have all I
can, but I do not hold out any great hope. In the meantime take this,
and leave America with it. If I have anything to send you I will do so
through your mother. But leave me alone--surely you have caused me
enough sorrow! All I ask is to be left alone."
Thus she had written in her agony and desperation, and sent with the
letter the sum of one hundred and ten pounds. Yet a week later he was
on the doorstep intent on tracking her down! Well, she had cut the
ground from under his feet by her message through Mary. With the
information he had asked for concerning Alice Brook he had no further
pretext for calling at the house, or even writing. Not that she relied
on that. Horace Valdana had failed in all honourable things, but never
in lies, pretexts, and inventions. She could hardly suppose he would do
so now. As the event proved, she was right. For two weeks there was
silence. Almost she had begun to hope when there came a letter, polite
but formal, asking if Mrs. Westenra would have the kindness to oblige
the writer with the home address of her late housemaid, Alice Brook.
"She had been in my service for ten days or so" (ran the letter), "but
went out one day and never returned. I am much troubled, and should
like to communicate with her friends. I feel sure that you will give me
such assistance as you can in the matter. If you do not know her home
address, perhaps you can tell me from what agency you originally engaged
her? I may in that way be able to trace her.
"With apologies for troubling you,
"Believe me,
"Very truly yours,
"JANE SEYMOUR."
"_Jane Seymour!_" She could imagine with what a cynical smile he
produced that tag of history from the rag-bag of his memory, and made it
serve his purpose as a nom-de-plume. For though the name of good King
Hal's third queen might or might not have been borne by one of America's
fair daughters, the writing was the writing of Horace Valdana! It was
one more attempt to get on to the trail of his victim.
The address at the top of the letter was Number 439 West 19th
Street--the same number in fact as Shrapp's Hotel; but of course Mrs.
Westenra would not know this. She was to suppose it the number of the
private house occupied by Mrs. Jane Seymour! No doubt Mr. John Seymour
would be on the lookout for Mrs. Jane's correspondence!
This was the letter to which she now typed the following answer on her
husband's typewriter:
"MADAME,--I beg to state that I can give you no information concerning
the whereabouts of my late housemaid, Alice Brook. When I have once
supplied a discharged servant with a formal reference, I feel that my
responsibility to her is at an end. I must, therefore, request you to
relieve me of all further inquiries upon a subject in which I have
neither the time nor inclination to interest myself."
This missive, designedly as rude and arrogant as she knew how to make
it, she signed with a hieroglyphic signature in which might be
discovered after careful study some resemblance to "Anne Westenra" (her
second name was Anne), but that was quite unlike any signature ever put
on paper by Valentine Valdana.
In the end she almost spoiled all by one of those absent-minded mistakes
that sometimes betray the best laid plots and plans. She addressed the
envelope in her natural handwriting. She had stamped and closed it and
risen to ring for Mary to take it to the letter-box at the end of the
street (for since her _rencontre_ with Valdana she had not dared go
out), when, with her hand on the electric button, some bell in her brain
rang a warning that something was wrong. She stared at the letter in
her hand for a full minute before she recognised her _betise_, then the
shock sent her back to her seat half fainting, pale as a witch.
"What an escape! What an escape!" she muttered with dry lips. "I must
be going mad! My brain is giving way! Oh, if I had posted it!"
Valdana would have been quick to recognise her writing and see through
the whole thing--_that she was Mrs. Westenra_. All would have been
lost!
"But I would have torn down the letter-box--set fire to it--blown it
up--rather than he should have got the letter," she muttered fiercely.
In that moment she knew herself one of those who in the cause of love
are capable of crime; that there was not anything she would not do to
save her son from being branded illegitimate and Westenra from shame.
But she was shaken to the depths by her narrow escape, and the thought
that any moment her overtried brain might betray her. It was clear that
she must depart as soon as possible from New York. Her presence there
was a danger. The moment she reached England she could communicate with
Valdana's mother, and once he found she had gone from America, he too
would make for Europe.
From that day forward a gulf yawned between Westenra and his wife--a
gulf into whose depths every sweet memory they had ever shared seemed to
have disappeared. The only things that could have bridged it over were
confidence and love, but he no longer believed in her love, and she
could not give him her confidence. Desperate and dismayed, she saw the
chasm widening day by day between them, but though her spirit held out
arms to him imploring his love and belief in her loyalty, and in her
eyes she could not quench the light of tenderness, she stayed firm to
her purpose.
And Westenra felt the spirit arms entwining him, and saw the beacon in
her eyes, and cursed her for a false trifler, a juggler with the arts
and tricks of women. For when he approached her, lured by the beacon,
she retreated, subtly intervening between them that sense of distance.
And she was cold as death to his touch. Her hand, if he took it, lay
like a stone in his, her lips eluded him. They were to all intents and
purposes strangers to each other. She had never kissed him since he
came back to the world of consciousness! What could he suppose but that
her love for him was worn out.
All her kisses were for Bran it seemed. She would at times almost
violently snatch the child from his arms, and kiss it feverishly,
hungrily, just where he had kissed it, as if to drag the flavour of his
lips--or as Westenra bitterly thought, remove all trace of them--from
the little face.
He was a proud man, and his pride sustained him in this dark and
incomprehensible crisis of their life together. With extraordinary
self-control, born of his pity for her, he refrained from reproach or
any violent sign of his inward rage and pain; but often a sort of
primitive savagery in him ached to smite the eyes that mocked him with
their false tenderness, and there were moments when he longed to take
her by the throat and kill her, while he kissed the lips she withheld
from him.
Life was in fact an active wearing misery to them both.
He was once more sound in health. His plan was to go softly under the