Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
palms waving, and a primitive well. From the back of this he had
removed the pale green colouring and there instead glowed the rich
ivory-grey thick yet luminous substance of the pearl.
"I was pretty certain of it from the first, that is why I was so keen.
It is one of the most wonderful necklaces the world has ever seen. It
once belonged to the Russian royal family--as your old man in Seville
did. He knew what he was doing when he gave it to your mother, and when
he wrote out that paper, which was a deed of gift, witnessed by his old
Chinese servant and the Russian consul. I had it translated first thing
this morning. It will hold good in a court of law. It was the Chinese
servant who painted the pictures on the pearls to hide and disguise
them, and by Gee! he was an artist, that fellow. Only a trained eye
like mine would have suspected the truth. And let me tell you, Mrs.
Valdana, with any one but you I should have made use of my knowledge to
my own advantage. It is my business to do so. Every business man is
entitled to make use of the ignorance of those he deals with. That is
business training, _we_ have learned it and paid for it, the other party
has n't. It is like a doctor's fees. You pay him because he knows
better than you. He has been in training for years, and paid with his
mind and his soul for that training, while you have been busy with other
things--training in another direction perhaps. Well, the time comes when
you need his training and you pay for it."
"I understand," said Val quietly.
He laughed.
"No, you don't understand at all. You could never understand such a
method. You have never got the best of any one in your life. That is
why I am not going to use my method in your case. But I can tell you,"
he added with a grim smile, "it is a unique case. I never did such a
thing before in my life and never will again. It is a good thing after
all that there are not many people like you in the world, Mrs. Valdana.
Jewellers with hearts might be ruined."
"It is very kind of you, but I can't accept this sacrifice of your
interests," said Val, stammering a little, very embarrassed and
uncomfortable. "I couldn't dream of accepting it," she added firmly.
"Don't worry--skip," said he laughing. "My sacrifice is only
comparative. At the worst I stand to make anything between five to
twenty-five thousand pounds out of the deal."
"Are you sure?"
"Dead sure--seventy-five thousand pounds sure," he said dryly. "My
philanthropy does n't run to such risks as that. It only means that if
you had n't happened to be _you_, it would have been I who took
seventy-five and the rest and you who got the speculative twenty-five."
"I think you are too kind," she said. "I don't know how to thank you."
"Don't try," he said blithely. "It will be a good deal all round, and
everybody happy. That old Russian knew something when he told your
mother to put it by for a day of need. Now I am going to fix the matter
instantly and give you a cheque for half the amount on the Bank of
France. The rest you shall have to-morrow. Sit down while I get busy."
She asked him to make out a clear statement of the sale, price, etc.,
and to give it to her. She had a special purpose in this. In the act
of writing he looked up suddenly.
"By the way, talking of doctors, do you remember a man called Westenra
who was on board the _Bavaric_?" He looked at her keenly, for he
remembered very well the talk of her interest in that same man. But of
the truth he had no inkling.
"Yes," she said slowly.
"Well, what do you think? I got appendicitis in New York last May, and
my partner, who is an American, said to me, 'There is only one man for
you, and he is the best man in New York; come along to his nursing
home.' And when I got there who was his famous guy but our man from the
_Bavaric_! What do you think of that?"
"I knew he was a surgeon," said Val evenly.
"Well, I tell you, I was surprised. He did me up bully. He 's got a
fine place there in 68th Street. A tip-top show; everything running on
wheels. And a corking, handsome girl that he 's going to marry, at the
head of things."
He applied himself to his writing.
"Is he not married already?" said Mrs. Valdana, and he thought, as he
had often thought before, what a strange melancholy cadence her voice
possessed.
"A widower, I believe. The nurses told me so at any rate. You know
what jolly gossips they are. But Miss Holland is a cut above the
ordinary American nurse, that's why they 're so jealous of her, I guess,
and ready to say that she 's been after the doctor for years, and only
made a success of the place because of that. And why not, I say?
That's what most women make a success of things for, isn't it, Mrs.
Valdana--some fellow?"
"Or a failure of things!" said Mrs. Valdana, following some train of
thought of her own. There was a deeper melancholy in her voice, and he
thought how tired and ill she looked.
"You ought to get away for a change, Mrs. Valdana," he said, when he
handed her the cheque and shook hands in farewell. "You look like a
woman who 's come to the end of her tether."
She felt like it too. She went home like a woman who has heard the
sentence of death pronounced upon her. In the Metro she lay back in her
corner with closed eyes and whispered to herself.
"What is the good? What is the good? Oh, that one might let go--lay it
all down and go to rest!"
But she knew she could not. There are always ropes to bind the hopeless
ones fast to life--to pull them forth from the shadows back to the bleak
grey road of life. Bran was her rope.
At the concierge's lodge she was informed that several visitors had
called and gone, but one, more persistent, waited for her on her
landing.
"He has been many times, poor soul," said she, "and one has not the
heart to refuse him entrance. I think he is one of those whom Art has
been too much for."
Val hardly heard her. A sort of numb dulness that had taken possession
of her prevented her from feeling anything but a passing vexation that
she might not be alone; heavily she climbed the stair and came at last
to the door. A tall loose figure in grey tweeds rose up at her from the
doorstep.
"Val! Will you forgive me for dogging you like this?" said a humble
trembling voice she did not know. She had to peer into his face and
examine him before it dawned upon her that it was Horace Valdana.
----
"How did you find me?" she said dully. He was sitting doubled up in the
most comfortable chair in the studio. But there was no comfort in his
face or attitude. His arms, pressed in a curious way against his
stomach, seemed holding something there that hurt him.
"Bribed one of Branker Preston's office boys."
This simple statement was in keeping with all the rest he had uttered
within the last hour. The man was changed. He was finished with lying
and subterfuge because life had finished with him--or was finishing
rapidly. The hand of death was on him at last, there could be no
mistake about it this time. His doom was dight. He had lied and lied,
but nothing he could now say availed, for his face told the truth. He
was doomed, and by some strange act of justice the fell disease that had
him in its grip was the very one he had only pretended to have years
before when playing for her sympathy and money.
And Val, during that hour in which she sat listening to him not so much
pleading his cause as merely stating his case in all its hideous
pitifulness, came to the decision that she had no longer right nor
reason for withholding such help as he begged. It had been a black,
terrible hour.
Not less so because she was really touched by the look of suffering on
his face, by those spasmodic jerks of his arms, and that habit of
holding fast to something within that ate like a rat at his vitals,
while sweat broke out on his forehead and a grey agony passed ghostlike
across his face. Her heart could never harden itself against suffering,
and she came nearer in those moments to forgetting the wrongs Valdana
had worked upon her than ever before.
And it looked uncommonly like her duty to forgive this man and take care
of him now that he so urgently needed it. There was no one else in the
world to do it. For his mother was dead, and his secret buried with
her. She had died very suddenly, the end doubtless brought on by the
dreadful anxiety of having to carry that same secret unshared. Such
provision as she could secretly make for him she had made, but it was
only a slight one, and Valdana had long been at the end of his
resources.
"And if you turn me down, Val, and you have every right to, I shan't
blame you a bit. I shall see what the Seine can do for me--though I 'd
rather it had been the old Thames."
A better man would have given the river first refusal perhaps, but
Valdana had never set up for a hero, and was not going to begin now.
In the end her decision was clinched as often happens by something
outside herself. A terrible spasm seized him, doubling him up right
there before her, turning him grey, and jerking a groan of agony from
the very depths of him. A fit of shivering succeeded, and it was plain
that the man was not fit to be up and about. His place was in bed,
under medical supervision.
With decision came energy, and in a few moments she had him lying on the
large divan in which she and Bran were used to sleep, covered up, and a
steaming cup of tea inside him. Then she ran downstairs to the
concierge's lodge and telephoned for a doctor. Afterwards she sent
round to Bran's governess to ask them to keep him for the night. They
were good responsible people, and she knew that she could trust them
with her child--for a night at least, until she knew what further was to
be done.
The doctor suggested a hospital; such a case, he said, needed constant
nursing and care.
"Unless you are well enough off to have a nurse to help you," and he
tried not to look doubtfully around him at the big bare studio, "I
should think you had better try and get rid of the responsibility of
this hopeless case by putting him into one of the English or American
hospitals here. You are American, are n't you?"
"I have plenty of money," said Val, leaving his question unanswered,
"and am quite able to have help in nursing him here. Please give me
full instructions and information."
The doctor looked surprised, and more so when, after he had examined
Valdana, she paid him his fee and took down the address of the best
cancer specialist in Paris.
"Not that he can do any good. The case is too far advanced for
operation--even I can tell you that. But he will be able to give the
best treatment for alleviation until the end comes--that won't be long,
I expect."
And the great specialist could do no more (as is more often the case
than people guess) than confirm the verdict of the ordinary
practitioner.
"A matter of months!" he said. "And they will be bad months--for others
beside the patient. You had better send him to a hospital."
But Val shook her head. She had determined to accept this duty that was
so clear to her; and there was money now to ease the way. Seventy-five
thousand pounds! How neatly that sum had been inserted into the gap of
circumstance by the clever hand of Fate!
CHAPTER XX
THE WAYS OF LIFE AND DEATH
"Oh them who plantest in the eyes and hearts of girls
The cult of wounding and the barbs of love!"
Translation from BAUDELAIRE'S Litany to Satan.
"Yes; she is very droll, your _belle-maman_," said the Comtesse de
Vervanne. "To live in three _ateliers_! That is _fantastique_! Three