Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
Daddy. Sometimes the people there would want a bridge made, or a tower
built, or there might be a giant there eating all the little boys and
girls. Then I would stay just long enough to kill the giant, you know,
or make the bridge----"
"I see."
"Or sometimes I would just make a picture of the place."
"A picture?"
"Yes, I love to make pictures--then get on my engine again and away I 'd
go."
So! This was what she had made his son into? A vagabond like herself, a
wanderer, a seeker after nothingness? He said it bitterly to himself,
yet there was no echoing bitterness in his heart. The boy's eyes were
so sweet and clear. There seemed no base thought in any corner of him.
And that big head and wide glance--surely something great would come of
them! The boy looked at the world as if it had been made for him.
Surely Raleigh had that spirit, and Drake, and Napoleon, and Cecil
Rhodes. Surely it was the spirit of great adventure!
He spent a strangely happy day with his son. Unreal, yet as natural as
if he himself had lived every moment of it before. When at last they
came to the Villa of Little Days it was to find the others gathered
together in the garden, sitting under the spiking pines. Capacious
easy-chairs with bright cushions stood about on the gravelled terrace
and everywhere was colour, colour. Blue above, and blue below, and
round them on shrub and tree and plant every known and lovely shade that
Nature could invent, all woven and blended as skilfully as the
broidering on some masterpiece of tapestry. Val too had returned in
jewels and dress to her love of oriental colouring. She had two large
silver rings set with turquoises in her ears, and round her neck a chain
of rugged chunks of malachite and turquoise-matrix. None of these
things were expensive. She never bought jewels because they were
valuable, but for the sheer colour of them and the joy that colour gave.
Diamonds said nothing to her and she would never have worn them if she
had been a millionairess. The ear-rings were a spare pair of Marietta's
which she had been delighted to sell Val for a couple of _louis_; matrix
and malachite are, as every one knows, almost as common as
sea-shells--and so are violets common, and poppies of the field, and
forget-me-nots; but none the less are they the colour-gifts of God and
the world would be a less beautiful place without them. Her gown of
some kind of flexible opaline silk blended with the colours of the
garden, even with the poppy hat which she still wore. Westenra had
never seen her look so much at peace with herself and her surroundings
or realised before that she possessed beauty. He did not realise indeed
that never had he seen Val in beautiful clothes nor in surroundings that
were full of grace and peace. Always he had the picture of her rushing
about the house in 68th Street like some driven wild thing, the worried
look of a hunted creature in her eyes, the grey linen overalls typical
of the grey hurrying life, making her eyes grey only, without a glint of
the blueness which now made them so attractive.
They sat and talked, spying with field-glasses at the warships in the
bay. Naval manoeuvres had been going on for some days, and a large
portion of the French fleet lay out in the blue, throwing great purple
shadows upon the water and sending up streamers of black smoke to
heaven.
Rupert, as much at home in the family circle as if he belonged to it,
seemed to wish to monopolise Haidee, but she kept withdrawing from his
advances and plying herself to the task of playing proprietress to
Westenra. She sat on the arm of his chair with her arm along his
shoulders, deferring to him in everything, constantly referring to New
York and their premeditated return there. Westenra, with Bran perched on
the back of his chair, legs dangling round his father's neck, hands
occupied with his father's hair, was forced into announcing plans of
some kind. He disclosed a contemplated return to Paris to deliver two
important lectures at the Sorbonne. That done, he should return South,
and book by some tramp steamer which would take him home via Greece and
Algeria, sailing from Marseilles.
"Don't forget that I'm coming too," said Haidee feverishly.
"How could I?" Westenra's smile was dry.
"Me too, Daddy," chirruped Bran. A kind of breathless stillness fell
for an instant. Every one save Bran, busy with his father's hair,
looked swiftly at Val and as swiftly away again. Val sat like a stone
woman. In the silence Bran, who had gone on twisting his father's hair
into little spikes, spoke again placidly:
"Me too, Daddy. I don't want to be away from you any more."
A pang of joy and triumph shot through Westenra, but it was mingled with
something that cut like a knife on an open wound. Val was staring
before her sightlessly. Yet a little smile played round her lips--a
smile of some feeling Westenra hardly understood. There was something
infinite in it, yet terribly human.
"You would rather go back to America than stay with me, Brannie?"
It was not pleading, nor sad, nor coaxing. Just a little simple
question. Only she and Westenra knew how much hung on it, though one of
the others had a very good notion of what was behind. Bran looked
across at his mother hesitatingly. She had always trained him to truth
and directness, yet he searched her face for a moment as if for a clue.
Bran hated to hurt any one's feelings--most of all his mother's. But
she smiled on, and he could read nothing. He had never seen her eyes so
empty before, and could not know by what great effort she had emptied
them of all the fierce love and terror in her heart, so as to play fair,
and not bias the issue. So after a little moment Bran said:
"I like daddy. He's got a hard smell--like steel. I don't want to be
away from him any more." He slid an arm round his father's neck. No one
looked at Val. Suddenly and amazingly Haidee cried out in a fury of
indignation:
"You are a little pig, Bran! ... an ungrateful little pig!"
She burst out crying, and jumping up ran to the house. Bran's eyes
slowly filled with tears.
"Haidee _is_ nasty!" he said in a trembling voice. "What have I done?"
In his trouble he turned naturally to his mother and the tenderness that
had never failed him.
"Nothing, my Wing. Haidee will be all right by and by. Here is
Marietta with the tea."
But Westenra would not take tea. He appeared to stiffen at the sight of
it. After Bran had swallowed a hurried _gouter_, as the French call it,
his father took him by the hand and they went away together for a walk
by the sea. When they came back at seven, Westenra excused himself, and
returned to the hotel with a promise to call after dinner.
----
That evening he and Val walked together through the twilight garden in
which Gambetta had pondered his plans and philosophies. They, too, had
a problem to consider. It had to come, this talk together. They both
had felt the imperativeness of it. And now both were remembering that
other walk on the moonlit cliffs above St. Brelade's Bay, when the
curlew wailed and cruel words were said that separated them as only
cruel words can separate, driving them apart for ever. Even as Val had
struggled that long-ago night for words to explain and condone the
situation Westenra struggled now, while Val walked beside him still and
white, but with some hidden strength in her which he felt while he could
not understand it.
The curious thing was that, though he had meant to upbraid her, though
his heart was bitter against her, he found himself speaking as if he,
not she, were the defalcator.
"I suppose you think me a cold-blooded brute?"
With that which Haidee had told her still tingling in her mind she could
not pretend to misunderstand, but she tried to be fair.
"You know your own interests best, Garrett."
"Oh, as to my interests--" He found that a strange answer, and
cogitated on it for a while.
"Haidee is devoted to you and your interests."
"Haidee? I should not be such a fool as to expect that--again?" No
doubt he meant that javelin to reach her. If it did she gave no sign.
Only her next words might have been a faint attempt at a return thrust.
"Even Haidee would not find it a very difficult life since things are so
prosperous with you now."
He answered swiftly: "Yes; the law of compensation has been busy with my
affairs. Unlucky in love--" The sentence remained unfinished.
They found that they were standing still, staring white-faced at each
other. For a moment they stayed so, then she said gently:
"Surely we have not come here to gibe at one another? I--I bear you no
ill-will, Garrett." It was such a strange way of expressing her
feelings that she could not help but stammer a little.
He laughed. Strange, that he who felt so old in the train that morning
should now feel young enough for fierce anger and rage.
"That is good of you. I am sorry I cannot with truth claim to
reciprocate your generosity."
The calmness that had amazed him sustained her now.
"Well, let us leave the subject then, and speak of one that matters more
to our future life--Bran. What about Bran?"
"You saw yourself to-day--you heard." He did not care to keep
exultation from his voice.
"You think it fair, then, to take away from me what I have lived and
worked for these last six years?"
"Have not I worked for him too?"
"You may have done so. It has made no difference to him."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that since we parted in Jersey, Bran, like myself, has neither
eaten nor drunk nor been clothed at your expense."
"But...?"
"The exact half of all moneys you have sent is lying at the Credit
Lyonnais. The other half has been spent explicitly on Haidee. You have
seen the bills."
His face darkened.
"How dared you treat me so?--my own son!"
"If you had come to see him it would have been different, but to stay
away year after year, and expect money to fill the gap that a father's
influence and love and tenderness should have filled ... that seemed to
me too mercenary, too unworthy treatment of _my_ son."
"No matter ... no matter ... it is an infamous thing you have done--a
crowning act of cruelty. I should have believed you incapable of it.
By God! how dared you let any one else feed and clothe my child?"
She looked at his furious face in genuine amazement.
"Had I no right to work for him?"
"_You_, yes; and I know you have--Haidee has told me. But this last
year ... and _now_. Who is paying for all this?" He swung his arm
savagely at the beauties of the garden. His gaze was full of rage and
contempt.
"In leaving Bran I left my honour with you--and you have sold it for
this mess of pottage! It is time he went with me!"
She faced him steadily, with the calmness born of long vigils with
misery.
"You are insulting me unnecessarily. No one has supported your son but
myself."
He stared at her in unbelieving wrath. But something about her words
and still gaze presently quieted the fury in his veins, and he spoke
more temperately.
"I will be glad to accept that. It is strange that by your own efforts
you should have become wealthy enough to surround him with beauty and
ease such as this--but if you say so I accept it."
There was a silence.
"My own efforts had nothing to do with it, Garrett. It is only that God
has been good to me. Did you ever hear the saying, that 'God takes care
of drunkards and children'?"
He regarded her long and earnestly.
"Are you a drunkard?" Anything less like one he had never seen. His
medical experience told him that she could not be one. No drunkard
could look as she did.