Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)
for. To _coucher a la belle etoile_! _Zut, alors_! I will come too.
It is understood."
Val laughed.
"You would soon be bored. One must be a wanderfoot by birth and
instinct."
But he repudiated the saying, and there was no boredom in his eye nor in
the eyes of any. An odd uneasiness possessed them all. Haidee looked
paler and was biting her lip. Bran had descended from his father's
shoulders and advancing on Val stood looking at her, a startling
reflection of her fierce wistfulness in his own eyes. But he still kept
a hand on his father's knee.
It was Marietta who broke up the seance by coming out to announce in an
autocratic manner that dinner would be ready in ten minutes. No one had
realised that it was so late. Westenra did not accept the invitation to
stay and dine as he was, but having secured its extension to the evening
sprang on his bicycle and rode for his hotel to the endangerment of
several lives on the _route Nationale_.
It hardly seemed an hour before he was back again, very big and handsome
in conventional dress, among the tranquil trees of the garden. The place
was silvered and transformed by the light of the moon, which, at the
full, hung like a great luminous pearl on the radiant breast of heaven.
The windows of the Villa were all set wide, and in the drawing-room
Haidee's fingers were weaving fairy tales at the piano with such magic
that they seemed real voices and hands that called and tugged at Val and
Rupert under the trees. The boy stirred restlessly in his chair,
gripping its sides. Since dinner Val had been sitting there, very
silent, while Haidee played.
When he heard the bell tinkle on the garden gate far below, and knew
that some one, probably Westenra, was entering, he said suddenly:
"I forgot to tell you that the other night when I walked home with the
doctor I happened to mention to him ... that ... well, that I was with
you at the funeral of Mr. Valdana."
"Ah!" Val sighed strangely and sat up straight in her chair. It was
too late for anything more to be said. Westenra was upon them. And
since Rupert, vacating his chair, was already on his way to the
drawing-room, it was quite simple and natural that Westenra should sit
down beside her. They talked, a little disjointedly about the beauty of
the night, how well Haidee played, what a charming fellow Rupert was.
Then he said suddenly:
"And you are really going back to that wild wandering life of yours,
Val?"
It was the first time he had called her Val in all these years. She
trembled a little, answering sadly:
"Like water, I must return to my own level."
"Then you should live on the mountain tops."
She trembled again and her heart ached a little more poignantly. Why
should he mock her?
"You think you will be happy?" His voice was not mocking, only very
gentle.
"Oh! happy?" she echoed. "Who is happy? But--
'Give me the long white road, and the grey path of the sea,
And the wind's will, and the birds' will, and the heartache
still in me,'
and I will reproach no one."
"Reproaching has never been a pastime of yours, I think--and you may be
glad of it, Val, for reproaches, like curses, have a way of coming home
to roost. My conscience is no better than an aviary----"
Her involuntary laugh lightened the strain a little, but Westenra was a
thorough man, and did not mean to leave it at that. Sombrely he
finished.
"I beg your forgiveness, Val, for every reproach I have ever made you in
your capacity as wife, mother--or lover. They were undeserved, every
one!"
Why should his voice have grown hoarse at the last, and her heart come
climbing up into her throat as if to suffocate her? It was some moments
before she could half-whisper, half-mutter a response.
"You are too generous; I deserved everything you ever said--but after
long thinking I see--that--we cannot all win out as wives and mothers.
Of some of us, when you 've said we are good lovers you 've said all. I
hoped I was a good mother too--but it is plain that I am not, for Bran,
even Bran on whom I had staked my last throw--even Bran leaves me--"
Strange that Haidee should choose this moment to launch forth into the
first trembling plaintive notes of the 17th Sonata, that wonderful paean
of terror and beauty under whose rushing spell seven and a half years
agone Val had lain her face against her husband's and shared with him
the greatest, sweetest secret that can ever lie between man and woman!
"Bran shall never leave you--if you will have me with him--or even if
you will not."
"Garrett--what are you saying?"
"'The years teach much that the days never know.' Val, I have realised
during the last seven days what I have been learning ever since you came
into my life, that everything is worthless but the love and happiness of
the woman you love."
"Oh, Joe!" she cried in great humility and wonder. "You with all your
gifts of mind and brain; with all you have done for science, and still
will do----!"
"It can all go to the devil," he said cheerfully. "I 'm coming to live
with you in a waggon on the veldt, to see the wildebeeste, whatever they
may be, grazing on the horizon, and hear the guinea-fowl calling from
the bush. These things have got a hold on my imagination and will never
let go. And if I can't do something for science, even out there on the
veldt, I 'm a poor sort of fellow and will deserve to be forgotten."
"But the rewards you have already won--that are just within your
grasp?--the chair at Columbia--the Nobel--the--" (She herself set no
store by such things, but well she knew how men value them more than
their immortal souls.)
"Too bad!" said Westenra, with an ironical smile. "Did you ever hear of
what John L. Sullivan said the day after his defeat at New Orleans? A
sympathiser came wheedling up to him, saying: 'It's too bad, Jawn! Too
bad! What 'll you do now?' Sullivan, real man that he always was, even
in defeat, growled back at him: 'What 'll I do now? Pugh! _Ain't I
John L. Sullivan still?_' Pretty good philosophy for a pug, Val! I can
only say in all humility--same here! Even in defeat I----"
His words were cut short by a very whirlwind of lace and tears and
laughter. A pair of arms were thrown round Val's neck, and a sobbing,
happy voice cried, loud enough for all who wished to hear:
"Oh, Val--I love you, and I beg your pardon. I am a pig from away
back--and a cat and a beast--but oh! I am so happy! Rupert and I are
going to get married to-morrow, and after we have been in Morocco a
little we shall come out and join you in your waggon."
Westenra stood up big and grim in the moonlight.
"Hell's blood and blazes!--and is _this_ the way I am thrown down at the
eleventh or any moment?--bring me the bridegroom, and I 'll eat him up
at one mouthful. I 'll beat the gizzard out of him--I'll----"
"_M'voila, Monsieur le Docteur_! Here I am," said Rupert, not without
dignity, and with great goodwill.
"Well, get out," said Westenra softly, "and take your bride to be with
you. That's all that's required of you for the time being."
He cared not how they went nor where, so long as he was alone once more
with this only woman of his life. He took her hand in his and drew her
close until her cheek lay against his as on a long-ago night, driving up
Broadway to 68th Street. Before them, through the trees, glimmered a
silver expanse of water, with grim warships lying at rest and little
red-sailed fishing boats rocking softly.
"Heart of my heart--does n't this seem to you a fair sea on which to
launch a new ship of dreams."
"No. Not a new ship, Joe. The same old ship. I have never been out of
it for an hour, or a moment."
THE END
----
By Cynthia Stockley
POPPY
The Story of a South African Girl
_With Frontispiece. $1.35 net. By mail, S1.50_
_The Bookman, in a long review, concludes by saying:_
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THE CLAW
A Story of South Africa
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The Broken Halo
By Florence L. Barclay
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_Over One Million Copies of Mrs.
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_The Melrose Prize Novel_
_Awarded Prize of $1250_
The Lure of the Little Drum
By Margaret Peterson
_12 deg.. With Portrait of Author. $1.35 net.
By mail, $1.50_
The adjudicators of the competition were
Joseph Conrad, W. J. Locke, and
Mary Cholmondeley
This strongly conceived dramatic and exciting story of Anglo-Indian life
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Threads of Grey and Gold
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As the title suggests, this is a literary tapestry in which have been
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