Literature · Romance

Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship) 10

Part II · Worry-Bells

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"Tout homme digne de ce nom A dans le coeur un Serpent jaune Installe comme sur un trone, Qui, s'il dit: 'Je veux!' repond: 'Non!'" BAUDELAIRE.

As the months went by and the first exhaustion of body and spirit in which she had left New York passed, Val's imagination once more woke up, and began to torment her nights, undoing the good effect of days spent in healthy occupation. In the soft, kind climate of Jersey her body must soon have regained all its old nervous strength if the spirit had not begun once more to chafe and wear its scabbard. Had she been a woman merely separated for a while from the man she loved with the certain hope of swift reunion, how happy she could have been in the thought of his joy in finding Bran so lovely and sturdy, Haidee strong and handsome, herself recovered! If only all had been well! But all was not well, and the realisation of this fact began to push serenity from her mind, waking up old aches and hungers she had believed long since extinguished--the longing to pack a knapsack and depart for the horizon, to bathe her soul in the Lethe of a distant sunset, and arise renewed and free of the cares and conventions of life. Her feet tingled to travel. The sky-line began to pull at, and "play" her as if it had a hook in her very vitals. With every ship that disappeared over the brim of the world went some shade of her inmost being. The song of the rolling stone sang in her veins:

"I have a love for other lands, Which thro' my home life dogs my way. My very soul scarce understands The love I have for other lands."

She got into the way of sitting on a rabbit-hutch staring before her at the empty sea until she saw it no longer, nor the sea-gulls that wheeled in circles, but only the wide veldt empty of all but a line of kops and a great berg to be passed on the morrow--changing pictures round an out-spanned waggon--oxen with heads bent, moving gradually onwards, the tinkling of a cattle-bell, evening fires lighted--Haidee and Bran bounding about examining new flowers, strange insects, the spoor of wild creatures--Westenra with a gun--problems gone out of his eye, the rustle of dollars forgotten--just a simple, primitive vagabond like herself. Ah! Vain day dreams! Even while she dreamed she could feel the wretched truth stirring at the back of her mind, waiting like some horrible yellow viper with head reared ready to strike.

Sleep became rare with her. However hard the day's work, she never had more than an hour or two of the dead slumber of exhaustion. Then, regular as an alarm, a little worry-bell would ring in her brain, dimly at first, then more and more insistent and clamorous. At last she would be as widely awake as if some one had taken her by the shoulders and shaken her out of sleep to hear some terrible and significant news.

"Wake up, Val Valdana, you have slept long enough! There is the little affair of Garrett Westenra's happiness to consider--and Garrett Westenra's son--and Horace Valdana's lease of life! There are several other affairs also, which in the daytime you are apt to consider of minor importance, but which you can see clearly in these small still hours are very important and pressing indeed--the affair of that grain bill for which you have not the ready money!--those new shoes Haidee requires!--the young cockerels eating off their heads--and how are you going to raise more money for Valdana?"

Ah! that yellow viper that sits in the human heart and haunts the human brain, crying yes when we cry no, and pleasure when we cry duty, and duty when we cry pleasure, and wake when we cry sleep--Val lay with it through the hours of many a weary night!

Only once had definite news come to her of Valdana, and that was about two months after she had settled in Jersey: a letter from his mother in answer to one Val had written telling of the rencontre in New York came through the medium of Val's agent in London. Old Mrs. Valdana's letter was dismal in tone and matter.

"Yes, Horace is indeed with us still, but not for long. Can you not be kind to him, Val?" was the cry from her mother-heart; but the same instinct in Val hardened her to the cry. She, too, was a mother, and in most women the mother-love comes before wife-love and friend-love, and even lover-love. Nature thus decrees it, that life may go unfalteringly on. So Val could not be kind to Valdana because it meant being hurtful to her son. Besides, what was the kindness asked? Of any affection for her he was utterly devoid, he desired nothing but money, which she did not possess. Her jewels were exhausted save a few rings, beautiful in colour and form, but of no great value, and her "comfort necklace," which she now wore continually under her dress. The best she could do was to write asking Branker Preston to take her furniture and possessions out of storage and put them up to auction. But she directed him to first ask her great friend, Harriott Kesteven to go through all trunks and drawers on a destructive expedition, burning all old letters, photographs, etc. Mrs. Kesteven complied with this request but not literally. Instead of burning them she had all papers and photographs, together with many personal things, precious though not intrinsic, packed up and sent to Val. There were sketches of places she had visited, a few ivories, books, draperies, curios, and some specially charming Japanese chintzes. When Val opened packages, her eyes darkened with tears. It seemed so long since she had lived with these things about her, and a heart comparatively care-free. A moment later she caught Bran to her breast.

"You are worth it all. You are my ivory, my roses, my fine gold, the best article I ever wrote. I have made my travels and my troubles into a vase of living porphyry."

Haidee took the things and arranged them about the farm sitting-room, transforming it. But Val could not rest until she had sat down and written to Westenra, telling him how the thing had occurred.

When, as the summer crept on, Westenra in his letters began to make tentative remarks about his coming vacation, Val's yellow viper was roused to high effort.

There are certain dark days on the calendar of every life; days when everything goes wrong, when things are lost and broken, mistaken words said, fatal promises made. One such day dawned for Val. She arose haggard from a sleepless night to attend to her household duties. It was a servantless interval, and there was the fire to make and breakfast to prepare. After waking Haidee, she put on an old dressing-gown, more notable for its warm lining than for its youth and beauty, and hurried down-stairs to feed the fowls who, "carking" bitterly at the back-door, were liable to wake Bran before his time. It affronted her furiously to open the door upon Farmer Scone and one of his labourers passing down her yard. He knew that it annoyed her to have him make this short cut across her grounds to reach one of his pasture fields, but he had done it repeatedly since she discovered his dishonesty in the marketing of her eggs, and discontinued dealing with him. If there had been a man at Cliff Farm he would never have dreamed of thus invading private property. But Val being alone he felt safe, and his mean nature rejoiced in taking advantage of a woman, whom he had discovered did not like to be rude to any one.

On this particular morning, however, neighbourly courtesy could no longer keep down just wrath. What infuriated Val was that she should be seen in her disreputable old gown. It always seemed like an affront put upon Garrett if she allowed any one to see her looking unkempt and untidy. A still greater offence was that these common oafs, who saw and judged only surface things, should so discover her.

"Good marning!" said Farmer Scone, affably familiar, but without raising his hand to his cap. The dislike and contempt she had long felt for the man rose in Val like a wave, and would no longer be contained. She drew herself up and, looking at him, as a queen might look at an insolent groom, said cuttingly:

"Please understand, Scone, that I do not care to have my yard used as a pathway. You must in the future go round by the road."

Scone's little pig-eyes regarded her with venom, then he laughed impudently.

"Great Galumps!" Not quick-witted, he was obliged to grope in the depths of his mind for a moment or two to see what he could produce to hurt the pale, proud woman, who looked at him as if he were less than dust. The best he could drag up from those dim depths was a sneer at her looks--she looked old that morning, poor Val, after her vigil with the serpent jaune, and there are some mean natures that love to taunt a woman with age. He turned to his labourer.

"By Jarge, Tom! The old woman got out of her bed wrong side this marning," said he, and the two burst into senseless guffaws, and marched on down the path. A further delicate witticism connecting the "old woman's" temper with the absence of "an old man" added to a grossly-expressed doubt as to whether she owned an "old man" at all, came back across the field. Val heard it and turned white.

"This is what I have come to!" she cried to herself in wrath and unhappiness. "A lonely, wretched woman whom pigs may insult! the victim of every base-tongued wretch----!"

She turned back into the house, and sat down in utter dejection by the kitchen table.

"They insult me because they see I have no husband to protect me," she mused bitterly. "I who have two!"

The sound of Bran crowing his little morning crow up-stairs helped her to recover, and she made the fire and put the kettle on for breakfast. A few moments later the postwoman knocked at the door, and handed in two letters. By the delicate irony of the god of black days the letters were from her two husbands! She sat down and began to laugh.

Far from being lonely and undesirable she was, it seemed, highly desired by each. Westenra's letter was somewhat cold, it is true, but the burden of it was quite clear: he intended sailing from New York within six weeks, and wished her to make preparations to return with him.

Valdana, writing from Berlin, via his mother and Val's agent, sent news that was plainly meant to be inspiriting. After a consultation held on his case by German specialists he was able to announce that his complaint was not cancer at all, but merely liver trouble induced by the South African climate, and over-exertion (the last was his own invention and took the place of the words "alcoholic excess" in the doctors' diagnosis). Moreover the specialists had given him every hope of a long life if he would set out for a country with a bracing climate, and he cheerfully handed on the hope to Val, as though it were some golden gift. The ultimate burden of his letter came to much the same thing as Westenra's. He wanted her with him. His mother was prepared to make a special sacrifice of certain securities to give him a fresh start in Canada. Would Val give him a fresh start too, and come with him?

And this was the woman whom pigs insulted because she had no husband to protect her! She laughed convulsively, as one might laugh who felt the first twinge of the rack, and when she had finished laughing she sat on reading and dully re-reading, her hands pressed to her temples. Suddenly a vibrating spasm of agony shot through her teeth and flew up like veins of red-hot fluid into her cheeks and eyes. Neuralgia, that torment of the troubled, had for weeks been lurking behind its friend and ally the yellow viper, and now chose this propitious moment to lay its scorpion claws upon her. All that day, and for many days after, she almost forgot the terrible problem of her marriage in the agony of her nerves.

Val had never professed a religion or belonged to any faith. She had just been taught to say her prayers and put her trust in God; no forms; no church. She supposed she must have been baptised as a child, but could not be sure. Her mother was a Catholic who loved the smell of incense, but never went to confession.

Thus she had grown up with an open mind for all faiths and no faith of her own. Yet, though she was not pious, religion had always attracted her, and sometimes at rare moments she had seen the vision of a Light beyond the world. At other times all forms of religion she knew of seemed a mere wearisome routine of duty and custom. But when in New York she had come into touch with practised Catholicism she felt the strong appeal of its Eternal beauty and the power of that wonderful faith to direct and hold emotional impulsive natures like her own from casting the soul after the heart. And she recognised at once that it was the only religion for her and for any child of hers who inherited her nature. So, at odd intervals in the rush and tear of the early days at No. 700 she had been preparing herself for baptism by trying to get a hold with her mind on the dogmas for which she cared nothing, but of which a knowledge is essential to any one wishing to enter the Catholic Church.

When her child was born there was an altar in her room with flowers on it and a veilleuse burning before the Sacred Heart, for it was the month of June. When Bran was baptised she desired greatly to enter the church with him, but her instruction was not complete, and her reception had been put off from day to day. Then came Westenra's sickness and Valdana's resurrection, putting an end to all thoughts of the kind. She had something to hide, and those who have such things to hide cannot enter the Catholic Church. Westenra supposed she had changed her mind, and thought none the better of her for it.

As a matter of fact she had at that juncture felt more need than ever for the help of religion in her life. She longed for the advice of grave good men.

And now again she felt that longing. Her own will to do right did not seem enough; and indeed reflect and analyse as she would she could not decide what was the right thing to do. What was it? Her sick brain put the question over and over again. Was it right to go back to Valdana? If so, why was it right when her heart and soul and every instinct in her fought against such a verdict? It could not be right to return. Valdana deserved nothing of her, had deserted her and her child, had done without her for years, had exploited her for the money she made, was a coward and a brute with whom association could only bring degradation. To go back to him would be to desert her child, for she could never let Bran come within his radius.

Ought she then to desert her child--her contribution to the world, her link in the golden chain of generations, her one word in the great eternal Sonnet?

Never! Though Westenra might be a devoted father Bran would never, without a mother, grow up to be the man she hoped. No little child can spare its mother,--though many, alas! by the hard decree of death, and oftener the cruel decisions of life, have to do so. There is something a mother gives a child which no one else in the whole wide world can give. Val had a curious belief too that just as no woman possessed a soul except through the man she loved and the child she passed on, so no son ever came to the full possession of his soul except through the love of a mother. From what strange fields of mental and physical suffering she had garnered those beliefs it would be difficult to determine, but they sat fast in her heart and she lived and breathed by them. Emerson seemed to her to share something of the belief when he wrote: "In my dealing with my child my Latin and Greek accomplishments and my money stand me nothing; but as much as I have of soul avails."

Apart from that she was sure that no boy ever yet came to the physical perfection his babyhood promised without a mother to brood and guard over his growing years. Who else but a mother will compute the effect of an extra blanket on a little sweating body, or the lack of one in winter? Will study the heart and mind and nerves and stomach of a child all through that period when each year of full content and harmony and health assures five years of strength and well-being later on?

Never, never could she leave Bran. Ought she then to tell Westenra? 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.

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