Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
What a relief it would be to share the dreadful truth, have his support
to face it. Half the terror of the situation was in the attitude she
was obliged to assume towards him. Yet a kind of mother-love for him
too--that crooning, protective mother-love that every woman feels for a
beloved man cried out against this solution. She did not want him to
suffer. She did not want to wound and shame him as he would be wounded
and shamed if he found himself not married to her, and his son
illegitimate. She longed to save him from that pain. But now she saw
plainly that if Valdana were recovering Westenra would have to know. He
could not be kept for ever in the dark, suffering through her enigmatic
coldness. Ah! What misery was before them all; for Garrett wifeless
and childless; for Bran fatherless; for herself lonely and separated
from the man she loved.
For Valdana she felt no pity, for she knew that if he suffered it would
be only through his external senses, never through his heart. There was
no susceptivity, in that callous heart for any but himself.
It came into her head once or twice that she would throw morality to the
winds, conceal the truth from Westenra for ever, or at least until she
was found out, and returning to America get all the joy she could out of
life with him and her son. How desirable _now_ looked the vision of life
at 700 West 68!---beautiful as some far coral island with waving palms
and blue lagoons to the eyes of a drowning sailor! Yes, almost she
could make her mind up to do this thing; to accept the remote chance of
being found out, to embrace love and life with both arms; to "take the
Cash and let the Credit go."
But--_she could not_. Morality sprang up where she denied it. Not the
morality of family training nor church teaching, but of years of
instinctive choice between right and wrong, and attention to that still,
small voice whose judgment is so unfailingly sure. It had nothing to do
with convention, this decision. She had no sense at all of the power of
infallibility of social laws. It was just the law of the soul that
forbade it. Even had she not possessed this morality of the soul, there
was one other thing that would have held her back. Ever since Bran came
to her she had hugged to her heart a little phrase that cut into her
while she pressed it there.
"No man can be truly great who had not a great mother."
And great mothers are made by great sacrifice. Not that she aspired to
be anything within a hundred miles of greatness. How unlucky Bran had
been in his choice of a mother only she, conscious of her defects and
failings, could know. But from the first she had sworn to give him every
chance that sacrifice of herself could bestow. And here was the time for
her to make good the resolution.
CHAPTER XI
A SHIP ON THE ROCKS
"Love is not always two Souls picking flowers."--MASEFIELD.
These decisions did not prevent her from spending days and nights in an
agony of mental and physical pain. Neuralgia racked her until she
thought she must go mad. She became weak and haggard from want of
sleep. A longing for veronal seized her. Only, she was afraid of
veronal. In the past it had got a hold on her that nothing but
Westenra's influence could have broken, and vaguely she knew that one
cannot break twice from the same enemy. Westenra's power might not be
so overwhelming next time, the hold of the drug would be stronger.
Veronal, then, was forbidden; but she had no such feeling about alcohol.
She had given up drinking spirits and wine, not because it had any
temptation for her, but because Westenra hated women to drink. She was
not afraid of the power of brandy over her. And so one day, in a
delirium of pain and misery, she sent out the little servant for a
bottle of brandy.
Ah! what rapturous repose for a few hours! ... what glorious oblivion
from pain ... what a lifting of leaden clouds and rose-tinting of the
horizon with hope! When she felt the effect of a strong dose of brandy
going off and the scorpion claws beginning to tear at her eyes and
temples once more she took another dose. As soon as one bottle of brandy
was finished she sent for another. For weeks she forgot in this way
both mental and physical trouble, drowning her pain by day and sleeping
heavily by night. Then one morning in a blinding flash she realised what
she was doing. Going into the pantry she saw four empty bottles
standing there. She had seen them before, but now she _recognised_
them, and it was she who in one week had emptied them!
"I am taking to drink!" she cried, and the phrase heard so often in jest
amongst journalists took unto itself a new and awful significance that
made her recoil horror-stricken before the damning evidence. Two full
bottles stood by the empty ones. She had blindly ordered several
bottles at once in a panic of fear that pain might come upon her
sometime and find her unprepared. Even now the thirsty beast in her was
raising its head and crying out for what was at once tonic and narcotic.
And she was at one with the beast in its desire. She wanted the brandy,
madly desired it for its own sake, longed to feel it warm in her body
sending up a glow of comfort and well-being, soothing her pains with
velvety hands, dimming her vision of the truth with rosy-pink veils of
hope, filling her heart with the careless philosophy of the
drinker--that everything turns out well in the end, and "all is for the
best in the best of all possible worlds." Away with dull care and pain!
Her hand was already on the bottle, when in her mind, like a little
bright sword with which to fight an enemy, a thought beautifully clothed
in words presented itself:
"No man can be great who has not a great mother."
It is such phrases as these that help make the world's history. It is
thus that beautiful thoughts which have been treasured and loved reward
and befriend in times of stress. Val killed her desire for drink with
the weapon a writer had forged for her many years before, and that she
herself had brightened ready for use.
In a moment she had gathered up all the bottles, empty and full, thrust
them into a bag, and was carrying them out of the house. There was no
one about. Haidee was at school; the little maid had carried Bran down
the fields. She hurried with her burden to a deep dell that lay in the
farm grounds--a dell with trees growing round it, and grassy slopes full
of primroses and early violets. At the bottom grew a mass of nettles and
long rank grass, and into this she flung the bottles in a heap, and
hurried away from the sound of the liquid bubbling over the broken glass
and the strong spirity scent that rose amongst the weeds.
That was over; a leaf turned; a battle won!
Some terrible days came later. No vice puts in its insidious roots more
deeply than the drink vice, or more strongly resents being torn from its
chosen place. It clings and burns and aches, leaving scars, as ivy
leaves scars on the tree from which it is dragged away. But it was no
old deep-seated vice with Val, and victory was to her, though when the
battle was over she looked less like victory than defeat. In the end
she determined to see a doctor in St. Helier and get a tonic that would
pull her together before Westenra came home--an event that might occur
any time within the next six weeks.
One afternoon, then, on a day that Haidee had a holiday and could keep
an eye on Bran and the little maid, Val walked down to the station and
took a train for town. The way was long, and she in no great trim for
walking. Added to this unusual effort was a train journey and a weary
hunt for the house of the doctor whose address she had forgotten to
bring with her. All these things were responsible for the exhaustion
which caused her, after the doctor had examined and prescribed for her,
to faint quietly in her chair. When she regained consciousness she was
lying down in a shaded room, with the burning taste of brandy in her
mouth and the odour of it all about her--they had spilt it on her gown
whilst forcing it between her lips.
"What is it? Where am I?" she cried.
"All right; there's nothing very wrong ... you are only a little run
down," the doctor soothed her, and the doctor's wife, standing by with
sympathetic eyes, said gently: "You must rest a little while, and then
have a cab to go home. You are thoroughly overtired."
They insisted on her taking a cab, but she dismissed it at the station,
and, after the railway journey, once more made the long walk across the
fields. When she reached home at last, very faint and weary, the night
had fallen, but the little house lighted up, and as she came up the path
she could hear Haidee's laugh ringing out, and Bran's merry crow. How
happy they were, bless them!
As she reached the door something new and unaccustomed came out to meet
her, some subtle difference in the atmosphere, the tone of the
children's voices, and in a flash she knew the truth. Westenra had
arrived during her absence!
He was sitting in the big double easy-chair, with Haidee squeezed beside
him and Bran in his arms. The room was full of a kind of warm happiness.
"Oh, Joe!" she cried, and running forward, forgot Valdana, forgot
everything but her joy in seeing him again, threw herself upon the
little group and kissed them all alternately, wildly, like a mad
creature.
"Yes, here I am," said Westenra, laughing, and the moment she heard his
voice she knew there was something wrong. She had no idea of the strong
odour of brandy she had brought into the little room with her, and she
did not know until later what had happened during the afternoon. She
only realised, with her quick and sure intuition, that Westenra was even
more estranged from her than when they had parted in New York. There
was a distance in his manner for which his last letter had hardly
prepared her.
After the ice-cold misery of the first few moments she was dully
thankful for his attitude. It was for the best. If he had ceased to
care for her, so much the better for him: so much the less pain to be
suffered in separation. She sat down and began to talk mechanically,
eliciting details of his journey. It appeared he had arrived in the
Island that morning. The steamer docked very late on account of fog.
He had just missed a train, and had been obliged to wait for an hour at
the station, and then it had taken him a considerable time to find the
farm. He had lost his way and come round by an old unused route, which
accounted for the fact of his missing Val, for he had arrived only a few
moments after her departure. Haidee had shown him everything. They had
been over the poultry houses, fed the rabbits, ridden the pony, and let
the dogs loose to hunt the rats----
At this juncture of the narrative Haidee turned red, and gave a swift
embarrassed glance at Westenra. He, however, stared steadily before
him, a peculiar steely quality in his stare. Val saw Haidee's glance,
and his strange look, but knew the meaning of neither, and was too
unhappy to speculate on the subject.
"He 's had a tub, and I 've fixed up his things in the spare room," said
Haidee presently.
"You seem to have got along very well without me," was all Val could
say, with a pale smile. "I suppose I had better see about dinner now."
A strange evening was passed. Westenra could not conceal his joy at
being with the children once more, but if he felt any at seeing Val he
concealed it well under a gay cold manner. She on her side felt all her
happiness swallowed up in dismay. Love was frozen in her heart.
After supper Bran was bathed before the bedroom fire and put to bed. He