————Haidee got on well at school. Far from being troubled by lack of intelligence she was an exceedingly clever girl; but she hated study, and much preferred cleaning out rabbit-hutches or putting fresh straw in the hens' nests. Her passion was for a pony. There was a little governess-car in the Stable-house, and permission with the tenants to use it. Only there was nothing to pull it. But three months after their arrival Haidee looked up from a letter from Westenra, and announced the receipt of twenty pounds for the purchase of a pony. Val stared."You did n't ask for it, did you, Haidee?""Oh, no; I just mentioned that there was a cart, and how nice it would be if there was a horse, and how I would do all the looking after it myself, and we need n't have to pay a man at all," said Haidee airy and unblushing.Val did not reproach her, but she felt vexed that Westenra should be asked to hand out money when she, though hard-pressed, abstained to ask for anything but the price of everyday necessities. However, the pony was a great joy to Haidee, and she had an excuse at last for the stable-boy airs she loved to assume. Nothing pleased her better than to take off her skirts, and donning knickers and long boots, clean out the stable. She would swagger and swing her shovel and shout "Gittap!" and "Hey thar!" as though she had been brought up in a farmyard. Val's unconventional soul was hard to shock, but even she sometimes wondered what Westenra, who admired Vere-de-Vere repose in a woman, would say if he could hear his adopted child at her labour of love in Joy's stable. A compensating feature was that the girl was in superb health, and fortunately, there were no prim people at hand to be shocked. Indeed, as far as society was concerned Cliff Farm might have been situated at the Antipodes. No one came to call, and not a soul in the island suspected that the well-known writer, "Wanderfoot," was living peacefully among them, feeding bran mashes to a pony and setting broody hens.The only people who interested themselves in the occupants of Cliff Farm were the louts from the neighbouring farm, and their interest could very well have been dispensed with. When they looked over the hedge, and found Haidee in long boots and knickers, whistling as she cleaned out the stable, they stood sniggering; and when Val took pot shots with her rook rifle at the crows that picked the buds from the fruit-trees, they made it their business to find out if she had a gun licence. The genus lout is of much the same kidney all the world over. In Jersey the farmers have a great objection to "gentlemen farmers," and as Val seemed to come under that heading, they disliked her accordingly. Little she recked as long as they did not openly interfere. But she and Haidee were sometimes nervous in their lonely house, and Val would often get up in the night and fire a shot out the window, just to let stray loafers know that they were not afraid. Eventually they got a couple of dogs, and were more at ease.Their nearest neighbour, Scone, was a gross-looking man, with coarse ears and little pig-eyes; yet apparently he had the best kind of heart inside his ungainly body, for he was all good advice and helpful words to the occupants of Cliff Farm. He advised Val to keep a pig to eat her "waste," and incidentally volunteered to supply her with one from a litter of his own. Later he offered to take her chickens and eggs to market on condition that she bought her butter and milk from him.It was not until long afterwards that she discovered what mean advantage had been taken of her trusting belief in the inherent decency of man. These farming people disliked her. She was not one of them, and that was enough to call forth all their malice and ill-will. Scone had charged double what a pig would have cost at the market, and jested with his cronies on the subject. Also through his kind ministrations she was paying a penny more per quart for milk than any one in the island and receiving twopence less per dozen for her eggs.However, this knowledge came later. For the time Farmer Scone was all unction and good advice, and Mrs. Scone came often to the house to give Val the benefit of her knowledge of chickens. She was a common little woman, with a mouth full of decayed teeth, and a purple nose, but Val looked upon her as a type, and she never disdained to know types. Besides, Mrs. Scone was an oracle on chickens, or so she professed. Certainly most of her statements as to food, etc., were at variance with the poultry journals, but she sounded very practical and convincing, and Val had never had experience of people who from sheer malice give wrong advice, and was far from suspecting the depths of meanness that can lie in an ignorant mind.It was Mrs. Scone who advised her to rear capons for the market. Said she:"That'sthe thing to do with your cockerels. I have no time to try it myself, but you are so clever, Mrs. Westenra, and would be sure to make it pay. Turn your cockerels into capons. It is the most profitable business going.""Capons?" said Val, vague-eyed. "I always thought capons were fish, and that monks ate them for Friday's dinner.""Oh, dear me, no, they are not fish, though monks will eat them fast enough if they get the chance--any one will, they 're delicious. You 'll get from seven shillings and sixpence to ten shillings for them any day in the week," averred Mrs. Scone, and proceeded to explain to the open-mouthed Val and Haidee the process of caponising."So simple. Just cut a small slit above the wing of each bird with a pair of special scissors which you buy; then you hook up and remove the two little glands that lie along the backbone, and there you have your capon!--instead of a young cockerel that is always tearing about the run fighting and eating his head off without putting on any fat."Val was deeply intrigued. Cockerels had become one of her problems. More than half the chickens upon which she had counted for spring eggs had either succumbed to the pip, or never hatched out at all; of the remainder the larger proportion had turned out to be of male sex. Rose-coloured dreams of getting into touch with the Jesuit College on the hill above St. Helier and doing a flourishing business with the monks now floated through her mind. But she shivered at the thought of the caponising operation. She was physically incapable of cutting anything, even the head off a dead fish."Oh, I couldn't," she said, "at least I don't think I could.""A pity!" said Mrs. Scone. "There's a fortune in it for them as will do it--a mint of money."This gave Val pause. Had she, just because she was a coward about cutting things, any right to reject a scheme that had a mint of money in it? Was it fair to Westenra? After profound consideration, and much guileful persuasion by Haidee, always eager for experiments, she decided to at least give the idea a fair trial. So, on an afternoon, twelve of the finest cockerels were enthusiastically chased and captured by Haidee, aided by one of Farmer Scone's farm boys kindly lent for the occasion, and put under a rabbit-hutch to await their fate. A packing case constituted the operating table and the instruments of torture lay beside it--Val had sent for a little case from London (price thirty shillings). Mrs. Scone and Haidee held the first bird on the table, and Val under the direction of the former, with white face and trembling lips, made the first slit. The cockerel at the prick of the instrument screamed like a banshee, and Val's unnerved hand fell to her side."Oh! how brutal it seems!" she faltered.On the urgent advice of the others she attempted to finish the operation (with her eyes closed), but the cockerel objected strenuously, blood flew in every direction and heart-rending shrieks tore the air. White as ashes the operator let the scissors fall and staggered to the door. Mrs. Scone, purring solicitously, supported her into the open air."Dear me, dear me! What a good heart you have, to be sure, Mrs. Westenra!"Later, leaving Val sitting outside very sick, she returned to the operating theatre, and she, and Haidee and the farm hand between them performed on the rest of the cockerels with such vigour that three of them died the same night, and two more a few days later; four, after a long convalescence, recovered, but stayed languid and appetiteless for the remainder of their existence; while the rest, after a week or two recovering their usual sprightly temperament, fought, pursued each other, and ate up all the food as gaily as before.That was the end of the caponising business. The great scheme for supplying fat capons to the Jesuit College (not for Friday's dinner, of course, but as an article of nourishment proper to monasteries) never materialised.————Westenra in the meantime was writing grimly, and not often. From his letters Val gathered something of the strain of life at No. 700 West 68. The place was paying better now under Miss Holland's management, but, as she had foreseen, he hated to live in such close communion with people who were nothing to him. After the first few weeks he had gone into bachelor quarters once more, not his old ones in the city, but rooms near the sanatorium. Operations were coming in well, but there were big gaps in his banking account made by the fateful year of experiment. A note of weariness often crept into his letters--and when he wrote:"So glad you are happy--at last--with your fowls and rabbits. Do not let them absorb you altogether," it sounded to her very like a reproach. Often he said, "I envy you--with the children about you." But for the most part he rejoiced that the conditions of her life should be so ideal for health and happiness. Sometimes to Haidee he would cry out boyishly:"How I would like to be with you and Bran in the windy fields, running after the rabbits."Like every man whose boyhood has been spent in the country, he loved fields, and rabbits, and birds--all wood and hedge creatures; could describe the eggs and whistle the note of every bird in the British Isles. Haidee wrote him long accounts of the life at Cliff Farm, and when she began to make a collection of eggs by very carefully taking only one from a nest of four or five, if ever she had any doubt on the subject of parentage Westenra was never too busy to clear up the matter by return mail.He was obliged to economise narrowly, and the consciousness of this drove Val into a state of frenzy if obliged to spend an unexpected sou. But never having been trained in economy she had not the faintest notion of how to practise it, except by doing without personal things herself. No gowns; no new hats; no clothes at all, for herself. Yet somehow that did not make any difference to the bills. There was always the awful food problem, and the boot problem, and the problem of how to make hens lay without paying large grain bills, and a dozen other incidental problems!Like a good many people, Val had supposed that fowls fed themselves. Her brain had pictured them actively pursuing worms, and insects, and wild seeds during the intervals of laying. She found instead that they were like children in the matter of meals, always there on time. At dawn and eve, to say nothing of mid-day, she would find them standing dolorously at the back door with eyes cocked expectantly at whoever came out. Only after a good meal did they go forth to promenade, and then it was to lay their eggs in some distant hedge where nobody could find them.When the grain bills began to come in she realised that in the poultry business there was an output, as well as an intake, and that all her small profits were eaten up by the fowls.CHAPTER XWORRY-BELLS"Tout homme digne de ce nomA dans le coeur un Serpent jauneInstallé comme sur un trône,Qui, s'il dit: 'Je veux!' répond: '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 understandsThe 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, cryingyeswhen we cryno, andpleasurewhen we cryduty, anddutywhen we crypleasure, andwakewhen we crysleep--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 therencontrein 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 theserpent 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 aveilleuseburning 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 ownwillto 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,whywas 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 desirablenowlooked 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 XIA 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 sherecognisedthem, 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 had to be admired first, and parade naked across the hearth-rug to show all his little muscles. He was able to walk well now, and was as perfect as only baby children can be before all their soft puppy-dog roundness turns to length. His parents devoured him with their eyes, forgetting their miserable problems for awhile in the joy of so beautiful a possession."I tell you this fellow is out to make new figures at the Olympics," said Westenra, who had all an Irishman's madness for athletics. "This is a champion!"At last the children were in bed, the house silent. Garry and Val sat alone by the sitting-room fire, constrained and far apart."They look blooming," he said. "This place suits them better than New York apparently."(Ah! in his joy at seeing the children blooming he had not noticed her haggard face! Symptoms that in others would have aroused his professional interest in her went unnoticed, or so it seemed. She remembered that she had once heard a doctor's wife quote rather bitterly:"Shoemakers' children have broken boots; doctors' wives never get treatment.")"Then you will not mind our going on living here, Joe--for awhile?" she said a little wearily."Do you wish it?" She did not answer at once. He looked at her gravely with something pitiful in his glance."The children are in great trim ... but you? I don't think it is any good to you to live like this."(Hehadnoticed, then! It had not escaped his keen eye that she was grown old and lined! Should she tell him about her neuralgia and the terrible time she had gone through with her nerves? But how sick he must be of women with nerves.... New York was full of them .... he had just come on holiday--better wait!)"Oh, I am all right, Garrett," she said hastily. "A little neuralgic at times----""Ah!""But it is nothing ... nothing.""I don't think you should go on living here. The idea was for you to get strong ... instead you have--" he hesitated, and looked at her gravely with indictment in his glance--"given way to nerves."She glanced at him guiltily. It almost seemed to her that he had been going to say "given way to drink!" That he knew something of her struggle with the brandy--yet how could he?"Oh,nerves!" she said, and laughed nervously."I think the only thing to be done," he continued steadily, "is for you to come back with me to New York.""Oh, Garrett! ... I don't think.... I can't do that," she stammered desperately."You mean you don't want to?""It is not a matter of wanting."He stood up then, stern-faced."Don't beat about the bush. This thing has got to be settled once and for all. Will or will you not?""I can't, Joe." She looked at him with haunted eyes."You can't break loose?""Break loose? What do you mean?""Never mind ... never mind ... poor Val!" Sternness had gone from him. "Well, that is settled, then--I go back without you." He got up heavily and turned away from the fire."I 'm dead-beat and must get rest, Val. Haidee has fixed me up very well in her nice little room; she told me you always meant me to have it."He turned and looked at her, in his eyes a sudden bitterness and anger born of his longing to take into his arms and crush to him this woman who exiled him from her heart."Do you think it is quite fair, Val? Do you think you are playing the game?"She looked at him with wistful, harried eyes."I am trying to, Joe--I----"What could she say? Was this the moment to stab him with the truth? While she hesitated wretchedly, he turned away again, walking round the room, looking fiercely at the pictures and chintzes he knew had belonged to her past life."Haidee is growing into a nice girl," he said abruptly, switching his mind from a subject that maddened him.Val, by the fire struggling with her misery and half-formed resolution, looked at him vaguely for a moment. Ah! he was speaking of Haidee--while she was torturing herself with the thought that he wanted her as she wanted him!"Good-night!" he said harshly, and went his way up-stairs, without attempting to kiss her. She crouched down by the dying fire, and covered her face with her hands. Her heart was in great pain: the great pain of a little child. Footsteps overhead told her that he went first to her bedroom to take a last glimpse of Bran, and low murmurs betrayed the fact that Haidee was not yet asleep. At last his light, firm tread crossed the floor once more, then came the sound of his closing door.Another hour must have passed when Val, still sitting by the fire, was startled to hear the patter of feet on the bare oak stairs, then to find a slim night-gowned figure beside her."Haidee!""I wanted to tell you something, Val, and was afraid I 'd be asleep before you came up.""What is it?""Garry found all your empty brandy bottles in the dell; we were hunting the rats there with Billy and King." Her big brown eyes rested commiseratingly on Val. It was evident she felt guilty for having led Westenra to the dell, her very look of guilt had in it something damning to the poor pale culprit sitting there with a sick heart, no trace on her of the victory she had achieved two weeks ago. She had believed her sin as secret as her victory over it. Yet here it rose up against her in Haidee's eyes. The child knew nothing of the victory--only of the vice, though Val had never felt herself observed. And now Garry knew! That was the reason then of their embarrassed looks and averted eyes!"Of course he didn't say anything. He pretended he did n't notice even. But you should have seen his face." She gazed dismally at Val. It was as though they had offended God. "And you smelt awfully of brandy when you came in--you do still.""Go to bed, Haidee," said Val at last, sick with humiliation. She had meant to tell of the brandy episode some day, in some dear moment when all was clear between them once more. Now, through being accidentally betrayed, the incident had assumed a horrible aspect. She was afraid to think of what his thoughts on the subject must be. She longed to tell him all. To run up-stairs and cry at his door: "I didn't drink it all, Garry; two of the bottles were full when I threw them away." How silly and puerile that would sound. He would, perhaps, see nothing in her action but the terror of a confirmed drinker found out, might imagine that he had married a secret drunkard! She sat twisting her hands in an agony of misery. How could she tell him? What was the good? How dared she even kiss him as she had done when she came in? Valdana was alive--she was not even Joe's wife--what to do--what to do? ... How brutal life was!Suddenly she fell to communing with her dead--those who had loved and believed in her and knew that however much she had failed in the heavy trials and afflictions of the last year, at least she had not been actuated by meanness or mere self-indulgence.Theyknew her as she used to be--fearless and sure of her actions--before love had laid bonds on her spirit, and sorrow and failure crushed her down. They understood, and would not altogether condemn. At last, curiously strengthened, she rose and went up-stairs, the firm purpose in her heart of going to Westenra to tell him everything.She paused for a moment at his door--doubtless he was sleeping, dead-beat as he said. But that could not be helped. It was more important even than his sleep that all should be put right between them. She owed it to herself as well as to him. Softly she turned the handle of the door, but it did not open to her touch. Westenra had guarded himself against invasion. It was locked.
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Haidee got on well at school. Far from being troubled by lack of intelligence she was an exceedingly clever girl; but she hated study, and much preferred cleaning out rabbit-hutches or putting fresh straw in the hens' nests. Her passion was for a pony. There was a little governess-car in the Stable-house, and permission with the tenants to use it. Only there was nothing to pull it. But three months after their arrival Haidee looked up from a letter from Westenra, and announced the receipt of twenty pounds for the purchase of a pony. Val stared.
"You did n't ask for it, did you, Haidee?"
"Oh, no; I just mentioned that there was a cart, and how nice it would be if there was a horse, and how I would do all the looking after it myself, and we need n't have to pay a man at all," said Haidee airy and unblushing.
Val did not reproach her, but she felt vexed that Westenra should be asked to hand out money when she, though hard-pressed, abstained to ask for anything but the price of everyday necessities. However, the pony was a great joy to Haidee, and she had an excuse at last for the stable-boy airs she loved to assume. Nothing pleased her better than to take off her skirts, and donning knickers and long boots, clean out the stable. She would swagger and swing her shovel and shout "Gittap!" and "Hey thar!" as though she had been brought up in a farmyard. Val's unconventional soul was hard to shock, but even she sometimes wondered what Westenra, who admired Vere-de-Vere repose in a woman, would say if he could hear his adopted child at her labour of love in Joy's stable. A compensating feature was that the girl was in superb health, and fortunately, there were no prim people at hand to be shocked. Indeed, as far as society was concerned Cliff Farm might have been situated at the Antipodes. No one came to call, and not a soul in the island suspected that the well-known writer, "Wanderfoot," was living peacefully among them, feeding bran mashes to a pony and setting broody hens.
The only people who interested themselves in the occupants of Cliff Farm were the louts from the neighbouring farm, and their interest could very well have been dispensed with. When they looked over the hedge, and found Haidee in long boots and knickers, whistling as she cleaned out the stable, they stood sniggering; and when Val took pot shots with her rook rifle at the crows that picked the buds from the fruit-trees, they made it their business to find out if she had a gun licence. The genus lout is of much the same kidney all the world over. In Jersey the farmers have a great objection to "gentlemen farmers," and as Val seemed to come under that heading, they disliked her accordingly. Little she recked as long as they did not openly interfere. But she and Haidee were sometimes nervous in their lonely house, and Val would often get up in the night and fire a shot out the window, just to let stray loafers know that they were not afraid. Eventually they got a couple of dogs, and were more at ease.
Their nearest neighbour, Scone, was a gross-looking man, with coarse ears and little pig-eyes; yet apparently he had the best kind of heart inside his ungainly body, for he was all good advice and helpful words to the occupants of Cliff Farm. He advised Val to keep a pig to eat her "waste," and incidentally volunteered to supply her with one from a litter of his own. Later he offered to take her chickens and eggs to market on condition that she bought her butter and milk from him.
It was not until long afterwards that she discovered what mean advantage had been taken of her trusting belief in the inherent decency of man. These farming people disliked her. She was not one of them, and that was enough to call forth all their malice and ill-will. Scone had charged double what a pig would have cost at the market, and jested with his cronies on the subject. Also through his kind ministrations she was paying a penny more per quart for milk than any one in the island and receiving twopence less per dozen for her eggs.
However, this knowledge came later. For the time Farmer Scone was all unction and good advice, and Mrs. Scone came often to the house to give Val the benefit of her knowledge of chickens. She was a common little woman, with a mouth full of decayed teeth, and a purple nose, but Val looked upon her as a type, and she never disdained to know types. Besides, Mrs. Scone was an oracle on chickens, or so she professed. Certainly most of her statements as to food, etc., were at variance with the poultry journals, but she sounded very practical and convincing, and Val had never had experience of people who from sheer malice give wrong advice, and was far from suspecting the depths of meanness that can lie in an ignorant mind.
It was Mrs. Scone who advised her to rear capons for the market. Said she:
"That'sthe thing to do with your cockerels. I have no time to try it myself, but you are so clever, Mrs. Westenra, and would be sure to make it pay. Turn your cockerels into capons. It is the most profitable business going."
"Capons?" said Val, vague-eyed. "I always thought capons were fish, and that monks ate them for Friday's dinner."
"Oh, dear me, no, they are not fish, though monks will eat them fast enough if they get the chance--any one will, they 're delicious. You 'll get from seven shillings and sixpence to ten shillings for them any day in the week," averred Mrs. Scone, and proceeded to explain to the open-mouthed Val and Haidee the process of caponising.
"So simple. Just cut a small slit above the wing of each bird with a pair of special scissors which you buy; then you hook up and remove the two little glands that lie along the backbone, and there you have your capon!--instead of a young cockerel that is always tearing about the run fighting and eating his head off without putting on any fat."
Val was deeply intrigued. Cockerels had become one of her problems. More than half the chickens upon which she had counted for spring eggs had either succumbed to the pip, or never hatched out at all; of the remainder the larger proportion had turned out to be of male sex. Rose-coloured dreams of getting into touch with the Jesuit College on the hill above St. Helier and doing a flourishing business with the monks now floated through her mind. But she shivered at the thought of the caponising operation. She was physically incapable of cutting anything, even the head off a dead fish.
"Oh, I couldn't," she said, "at least I don't think I could."
"A pity!" said Mrs. Scone. "There's a fortune in it for them as will do it--a mint of money."
This gave Val pause. Had she, just because she was a coward about cutting things, any right to reject a scheme that had a mint of money in it? Was it fair to Westenra? After profound consideration, and much guileful persuasion by Haidee, always eager for experiments, she decided to at least give the idea a fair trial. So, on an afternoon, twelve of the finest cockerels were enthusiastically chased and captured by Haidee, aided by one of Farmer Scone's farm boys kindly lent for the occasion, and put under a rabbit-hutch to await their fate. A packing case constituted the operating table and the instruments of torture lay beside it--Val had sent for a little case from London (price thirty shillings). Mrs. Scone and Haidee held the first bird on the table, and Val under the direction of the former, with white face and trembling lips, made the first slit. The cockerel at the prick of the instrument screamed like a banshee, and Val's unnerved hand fell to her side.
"Oh! how brutal it seems!" she faltered.
On the urgent advice of the others she attempted to finish the operation (with her eyes closed), but the cockerel objected strenuously, blood flew in every direction and heart-rending shrieks tore the air. White as ashes the operator let the scissors fall and staggered to the door. Mrs. Scone, purring solicitously, supported her into the open air.
"Dear me, dear me! What a good heart you have, to be sure, Mrs. Westenra!"
Later, leaving Val sitting outside very sick, she returned to the operating theatre, and she, and Haidee and the farm hand between them performed on the rest of the cockerels with such vigour that three of them died the same night, and two more a few days later; four, after a long convalescence, recovered, but stayed languid and appetiteless for the remainder of their existence; while the rest, after a week or two recovering their usual sprightly temperament, fought, pursued each other, and ate up all the food as gaily as before.
That was the end of the caponising business. The great scheme for supplying fat capons to the Jesuit College (not for Friday's dinner, of course, but as an article of nourishment proper to monasteries) never materialised.
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Westenra in the meantime was writing grimly, and not often. From his letters Val gathered something of the strain of life at No. 700 West 68. The place was paying better now under Miss Holland's management, but, as she had foreseen, he hated to live in such close communion with people who were nothing to him. After the first few weeks he had gone into bachelor quarters once more, not his old ones in the city, but rooms near the sanatorium. Operations were coming in well, but there were big gaps in his banking account made by the fateful year of experiment. A note of weariness often crept into his letters--and when he wrote:
"So glad you are happy--at last--with your fowls and rabbits. Do not let them absorb you altogether," it sounded to her very like a reproach. Often he said, "I envy you--with the children about you." But for the most part he rejoiced that the conditions of her life should be so ideal for health and happiness. Sometimes to Haidee he would cry out boyishly:
"How I would like to be with you and Bran in the windy fields, running after the rabbits."
Like every man whose boyhood has been spent in the country, he loved fields, and rabbits, and birds--all wood and hedge creatures; could describe the eggs and whistle the note of every bird in the British Isles. Haidee wrote him long accounts of the life at Cliff Farm, and when she began to make a collection of eggs by very carefully taking only one from a nest of four or five, if ever she had any doubt on the subject of parentage Westenra was never too busy to clear up the matter by return mail.
He was obliged to economise narrowly, and the consciousness of this drove Val into a state of frenzy if obliged to spend an unexpected sou. But never having been trained in economy she had not the faintest notion of how to practise it, except by doing without personal things herself. No gowns; no new hats; no clothes at all, for herself. Yet somehow that did not make any difference to the bills. There was always the awful food problem, and the boot problem, and the problem of how to make hens lay without paying large grain bills, and a dozen other incidental problems!
Like a good many people, Val had supposed that fowls fed themselves. Her brain had pictured them actively pursuing worms, and insects, and wild seeds during the intervals of laying. She found instead that they were like children in the matter of meals, always there on time. At dawn and eve, to say nothing of mid-day, she would find them standing dolorously at the back door with eyes cocked expectantly at whoever came out. Only after a good meal did they go forth to promenade, and then it was to lay their eggs in some distant hedge where nobody could find them.
When the grain bills began to come in she realised that in the poultry business there was an output, as well as an intake, and that all her small profits were eaten up by the fowls.
CHAPTER X
WORRY-BELLS
"Tout homme digne de ce nomA dans le coeur un Serpent jauneInstallé comme sur un trône,Qui, s'il dit: 'Je veux!' répond: 'Non!'"BAUDELAIRE.
"Tout homme digne de ce nomA dans le coeur un Serpent jauneInstallé comme sur un trône,Qui, s'il dit: 'Je veux!' répond: 'Non!'"BAUDELAIRE.
"Tout homme digne de ce nom
A dans le coeur un Serpent jaune
Installé comme sur un trône,
Qui, s'il dit: 'Je veux!' répond: 'Non!'"
BAUDELAIRE.
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 understandsThe love I have for other lands."
"I have a love for other lands,Which thro' my home life dogs my way.My very soul scarce understandsThe love I have for other lands."
"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."
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, cryingyeswhen we cryno, andpleasurewhen we cryduty, anddutywhen we crypleasure, andwakewhen we crysleep--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 therencontrein 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.
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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 theserpent 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.
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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 aveilleuseburning 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 ownwillto 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,whywas 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 desirablenowlooked 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 sherecognisedthem, 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 had to be admired first, and parade naked across the hearth-rug to show all his little muscles. He was able to walk well now, and was as perfect as only baby children can be before all their soft puppy-dog roundness turns to length. His parents devoured him with their eyes, forgetting their miserable problems for awhile in the joy of so beautiful a possession.
"I tell you this fellow is out to make new figures at the Olympics," said Westenra, who had all an Irishman's madness for athletics. "This is a champion!"
At last the children were in bed, the house silent. Garry and Val sat alone by the sitting-room fire, constrained and far apart.
"They look blooming," he said. "This place suits them better than New York apparently."
(Ah! in his joy at seeing the children blooming he had not noticed her haggard face! Symptoms that in others would have aroused his professional interest in her went unnoticed, or so it seemed. She remembered that she had once heard a doctor's wife quote rather bitterly:
"Shoemakers' children have broken boots; doctors' wives never get treatment.")
"Then you will not mind our going on living here, Joe--for awhile?" she said a little wearily.
"Do you wish it?" She did not answer at once. He looked at her gravely with something pitiful in his glance.
"The children are in great trim ... but you? I don't think it is any good to you to live like this."
(Hehadnoticed, then! It had not escaped his keen eye that she was grown old and lined! Should she tell him about her neuralgia and the terrible time she had gone through with her nerves? But how sick he must be of women with nerves.... New York was full of them .... he had just come on holiday--better wait!)
"Oh, I am all right, Garrett," she said hastily. "A little neuralgic at times----"
"Ah!"
"But it is nothing ... nothing."
"I don't think you should go on living here. The idea was for you to get strong ... instead you have--" he hesitated, and looked at her gravely with indictment in his glance--"given way to nerves."
She glanced at him guiltily. It almost seemed to her that he had been going to say "given way to drink!" That he knew something of her struggle with the brandy--yet how could he?
"Oh,nerves!" she said, and laughed nervously.
"I think the only thing to be done," he continued steadily, "is for you to come back with me to New York."
"Oh, Garrett! ... I don't think.... I can't do that," she stammered desperately.
"You mean you don't want to?"
"It is not a matter of wanting."
He stood up then, stern-faced.
"Don't beat about the bush. This thing has got to be settled once and for all. Will or will you not?"
"I can't, Joe." She looked at him with haunted eyes.
"You can't break loose?"
"Break loose? What do you mean?"
"Never mind ... never mind ... poor Val!" Sternness had gone from him. "Well, that is settled, then--I go back without you." He got up heavily and turned away from the fire.
"I 'm dead-beat and must get rest, Val. Haidee has fixed me up very well in her nice little room; she told me you always meant me to have it."
He turned and looked at her, in his eyes a sudden bitterness and anger born of his longing to take into his arms and crush to him this woman who exiled him from her heart.
"Do you think it is quite fair, Val? Do you think you are playing the game?"
She looked at him with wistful, harried eyes.
"I am trying to, Joe--I----"
What could she say? Was this the moment to stab him with the truth? While she hesitated wretchedly, he turned away again, walking round the room, looking fiercely at the pictures and chintzes he knew had belonged to her past life.
"Haidee is growing into a nice girl," he said abruptly, switching his mind from a subject that maddened him.
Val, by the fire struggling with her misery and half-formed resolution, looked at him vaguely for a moment. Ah! he was speaking of Haidee--while she was torturing herself with the thought that he wanted her as she wanted him!
"Good-night!" he said harshly, and went his way up-stairs, without attempting to kiss her. She crouched down by the dying fire, and covered her face with her hands. Her heart was in great pain: the great pain of a little child. Footsteps overhead told her that he went first to her bedroom to take a last glimpse of Bran, and low murmurs betrayed the fact that Haidee was not yet asleep. At last his light, firm tread crossed the floor once more, then came the sound of his closing door.
Another hour must have passed when Val, still sitting by the fire, was startled to hear the patter of feet on the bare oak stairs, then to find a slim night-gowned figure beside her.
"Haidee!"
"I wanted to tell you something, Val, and was afraid I 'd be asleep before you came up."
"What is it?"
"Garry found all your empty brandy bottles in the dell; we were hunting the rats there with Billy and King." Her big brown eyes rested commiseratingly on Val. It was evident she felt guilty for having led Westenra to the dell, her very look of guilt had in it something damning to the poor pale culprit sitting there with a sick heart, no trace on her of the victory she had achieved two weeks ago. She had believed her sin as secret as her victory over it. Yet here it rose up against her in Haidee's eyes. The child knew nothing of the victory--only of the vice, though Val had never felt herself observed. And now Garry knew! That was the reason then of their embarrassed looks and averted eyes!
"Of course he didn't say anything. He pretended he did n't notice even. But you should have seen his face." She gazed dismally at Val. It was as though they had offended God. "And you smelt awfully of brandy when you came in--you do still."
"Go to bed, Haidee," said Val at last, sick with humiliation. She had meant to tell of the brandy episode some day, in some dear moment when all was clear between them once more. Now, through being accidentally betrayed, the incident had assumed a horrible aspect. She was afraid to think of what his thoughts on the subject must be. She longed to tell him all. To run up-stairs and cry at his door: "I didn't drink it all, Garry; two of the bottles were full when I threw them away." How silly and puerile that would sound. He would, perhaps, see nothing in her action but the terror of a confirmed drinker found out, might imagine that he had married a secret drunkard! She sat twisting her hands in an agony of misery. How could she tell him? What was the good? How dared she even kiss him as she had done when she came in? Valdana was alive--she was not even Joe's wife--what to do--what to do? ... How brutal life was!
Suddenly she fell to communing with her dead--those who had loved and believed in her and knew that however much she had failed in the heavy trials and afflictions of the last year, at least she had not been actuated by meanness or mere self-indulgence.Theyknew her as she used to be--fearless and sure of her actions--before love had laid bonds on her spirit, and sorrow and failure crushed her down. They understood, and would not altogether condemn. At last, curiously strengthened, she rose and went up-stairs, the firm purpose in her heart of going to Westenra to tell him everything.
She paused for a moment at his door--doubtless he was sleeping, dead-beat as he said. But that could not be helped. It was more important even than his sleep that all should be put right between them. She owed it to herself as well as to him. Softly she turned the handle of the door, but it did not open to her touch. Westenra had guarded himself against invasion. It was locked.