Wanderfoot Part 11

Life was in fact an active wearing misery to them both.

He was once more sound in health. His plan was to go softly under the stars for awhile and perform no serious operations, but he felt quite equal to taking up the ordinary threads of his practice again. His main worry was Val. Her resolution to go to Europe meant not only the _boulevers.e.m.e.nt_ of home and hospital, but of their whole future life.

He was far from wishing to keep a woman who did not care for him tied to his side. But he retained a kind of ungrounded hope that after she rested awhile from the heavy strain his illness had entailed, she would gradually return to her old, ardent generous self and give up the fantastic plan for leaving America. He saw very well that she must go somewhere. Her physique was in rags. She had grown so fragile that her bones almost pierced her skin, and her face was the face of a ghost.

His heart was wrung with pity for her. None more anxious than he that she should go away and rest, and to use his last cent for the purpose if need be. What hurt was that she should want to go so far and for so long; that she should have planned it all so eagerly while he lay sick, and hold fast to it so resolutely now that he was well. Once so pliant to all his wishes she was firm as a rock in this, and he had no will to oppose her. His heart was always tender for the sick, and it was plain to the dullest eye that she was a sick woman. He schooled himself to believe at last that her strange coldness was a result of this sickness.

He had half-killed her with overwork and worry, small wonder that she hated him! It was not treachery, not the quitting spirit, but the whim of a sick and weary child. The generous thing was to bear with her unreproaching, and at whatever cost to himself, humour her wish. It was in this spirit that he told her to pack up, and he would, when she gave the word, take steamer tickets for her and the children. He arranged for Mary, the Wicklow maid, to accompany her too. He would have offered to go himself, though he knew the hospital needed him, but that he could feel her projecting a very stone wall of opposition to such a purpose.

He had almost to insist on her taking Haidee at the last, for she seemed now to hang back from the idea, looking at him with strange eyes when he said that Haidee would be better in her care than any one else's. How could he know that his delirium had betrayed to her old doubts of his, which in sane moments he would himself have been ashamed of harbouring, and which had long since been banished from his mind by her bright gallantry. He had come to believe, indeed, that Haidee was better with Val than with any one. Further, he did not in the least want Haidee with him. She would not for one moment comfort him for the loss of Bran and his wife. He had only said the thing in that first bitterness of heart. Rather he looked upon Haidee's going as a safeguard to his own happiness, for if Val's illness grew worse, the child would be able to give him the news at once. Mary was going only for the voyage, and on arriving at Southampton would go straight on to Ireland where her mother needed her.

When he found at last that Val's reason for lingering in New York was that she was not satisfied with the people she was leaving behind to take charge of the house and his comfort, he summarily, even savagely, turned on her and told her he was well able to take care of himself.

Indeed, he considered this anxiety for his welfare somewhat forced and unnecessary. Well she knew what he needed for his welfare--that it was neither a good cook, nor a housekeeper, nor a matron for his hospital--and, knowing it, she still went from him, betook herself out of his life, put the ocean between them!

And so at the last, on one grey day late in the year, it was almost in bitterness they parted, haggard and broken, hiding their hearts from each other.

As the White Star liner steamed down the river he stood on the dock and waved farewell to the little group that now made up his dear portion of life; Haidee, all long tags of hair, yelling boisterously; Mary holding up Bran pink and shining; Val, wraith-like in her long grey silk cloak, seeming among her veils to be floating rather than leaning from the side of the ship, her hands put out at the last in an involuntary gesture as of entreaty--for what? Forbearance, forgiveness, understanding?

"G.o.d knows what is in her strange heart!" thought Westenra.

A gleam of light struck on something bright she wore--he recognised the beads of her weird necklace. The comfort necklace! He had never seen her wear it since the day she had swung it in her hand as they walked the deck of the _Bavaric_.

Poor Val! was she too in need of comfort then?

Was she thinking of the dream ship on which she had sailed so confidently into this very port not two years gone?

He turned heavily away.

Part II

Jersey

CHAPTER IX

NEW ROADS TO FORTUNE

"G.o.d delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future."--EMERSON.

Jersey, a small and smiling island set amidst the boisterous seas of the English Channel, is reputed to enjoy more winter sunshine than any seaside place in Great Britain. Be that as it may, for the first few months of Val's residence there, it wrapped itself so perpetually in soft warm shawls of mist, that she sometimes thought of writing to Rudyard Kipling and calling his attention to a place where the sun never so much as rose on the English flag. However, it is one of the cheapest spots in the world, and that is why Val chose it for her six months of waiting before she could tell Westenra the truth. The six months might possibly resolve themselves into twelve, one never knew! She was not hard-hearted enough to wish that Valdana would hurry his departure from the world, she only wished not to think about it at all. Jersey seemed to promise both peace and solitude in which to pull herself together after the strain of the last few months in New York.

They had sailed there straight from Southampton, and after a week's hunt, found a little furnished house out in the country, pitched high above St. Brelade's Bay. It was isolated and lonely, standing in the midst of its own wide fields and garden. The owners, army people who had used it for a sort of pleasure farm or summer residence, were now in India, and the property having remained unlet for some time was in a neglected condition. The house was scantily furnished, but against this fact the low rent was an offset.

Jersey is considered extraordinarily picturesque, but Val, spoilt by the wild scenery of Africa, majestic even in its barest, bleakest places, found the scenery pigmy though pretty. However, there was always the grandeur of the sea, beating in fury against the rugged, red coast, and the gracious misty emptiness of sky-line and horizon. She loved, too, to stand in the garden, dreaming of the lost land that lies sleeping under the water between Jersey and Brittany--that land of past centuries, which, before the sea in some strange empyrean convulsion swept over it, included forests in which were hordes of wolves, the "city of a hundred churches," and that wonderful cathedral in which, according to an old Breton ma.n.u.script the scarlet mantles of forty Lords of the Church could be counted at Ma.s.s every Sunday. At the great neap tides Jersey fishermen, far out, looking down from their boats into the clear depths, say they can still detect foliage that is not sea-weed swaying amid the branches of mighty forest oaks; and from the Brittany side, on still days keen eyes have detected, far down on the sea floor, the walls and ruined towers of the city of St. Ys.

But there was little time for dreaming at Cliff Farm. Val, with a resolution to cost Westenra as little as possible, did nearly all the work of the place herself, only employing a woman two or three times a week to do rough cleaning. But not content to economise only, she thrilled with a scheme to augment their slight income. A yearning to found a successful poultry and rabbit farm seized her soul. Haidee, bitten by the same mania, fostered the ambition, and with heads together over a poultry journal they read rapturously of fortunes to be made in this direction.

The first and vital thing, however, was to regain health and get the children well. Travelling had not agreed with Bran the pagan. On the ship he had been dreadfully sick and lost all his plumpness and lovely colouring, but in the mild mists of Jersey and Channel breezes, fresh and unpolluted by the microbes of cities, he began to bloom again.

Haidee, too, pallid when they first arrived, changed under the spell of the country. Like all persons who had been held long in cities she felt the joy of the open, of trees, and gra.s.s, and living things, and began to blossom and smile into a different creature. The old savage Haidee was still there under the skin, ready to come forth if scratched; but reasons for kicking physically and jibbing mentally were wonderfully absent in the simple farm life. Her only grievance was that she had to go in daily to school at a convent in St. Helier, from whence she invariably returned ornamented with scowls. But these pa.s.sed as soon as she got back to the work of digging and delving in the garden. It was the out-of-door work that put Val right, too, painting a faint colour in her thin cheeks, and laying dew on her jaded nerves. The kitchen garden, practically a field, was heavily infested with couch gra.s.s, but by n.o.ble efforts they cleared it and began in time to have their own vegetables for the table.

Val had told Westenra that she did not know how much life would cost her, and indeed with her vague ideas about money, she could not tell until she had tried. He had given her five hundred dollars, and the arrangement was that she would make that last as long as she could, and then write for more. Alas! it did not last very long. By the time travelling expenses were cleared, the hotel bill paid for their week's stay in St. Helier while they were seeking a house, Haidee's school fees advanced, and the little farm stocked with necessaries, there was not much of the five hundred dollars in sight.

Some of it, too, had been used in erecting houses and runs for the hens and rabbits that were to bring in a fortune! Val, with the amateur's delusion that after the initial expense all is profit, rushed into the usual mistake of overstocking.

"Every fowl is an a.s.set," she told herself, and bought fowls by the dozen, regardless of age, pedigree, or laying qualifications, until pulled up at the round turn by an article in the poultry journal on the importance of good breeding stock. Thereafter, she and Haidee decided to keep all the early purchases for "laying purposes only," and buy a special pen of thoroughbreds for breeding chickens. Earnestly they studied the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of the poultry journal. Prices for breeding pens were high.

"We can't afford to pay such sums, Haidee--but there is the exchange column! What about that?"

The exchange column was rich in proposals from philanthropists who apparently desired nothing better than to stock the British Isles with the best breeds of poultry at a dead loss to themselves. Pens of five, seven, and nine fowls of the purest pedigree were proffered for things patently not half the value of the poultry. Nothing but the most profound altruism, for instance, could have prompted the offer from an English rectory of "A magnificent prize-pen of Black Langshans for breeding purposes (four hens and a c.o.c.k) in exchange for clothing, provisions, or _anything useful_." If a sinister significance lurked in the last sentence the Cliff Farm enthusiasts possessed not the ungenerosity of soul to suspect it. Portraits of Black Langshans in the poultry book discovered them to be birds of a grace and elegance astonishing and the text declared them splendid layers of lovely pink eggs.

The pink eggs decided the matter. Val flew to make out a list of all she would give in exchange. Provisions they had none, but she possessed clothes to spare in so good a cause.

(1) A Liberty ball gown of old-gold satin.

(2) A motor coat made by Paquin, with a great hood of orange velvet.

(3) A pair of bronze evening shoes, embroidered with emerald b.u.t.terflies.

(4) A pair of old-paste buckles set in silver.

"It seems a shame to send them," said Haidee, stroking the orange velvet hood, the dawn of femininity in her eye. "They 're so awfully nice. I 'm sure they 're worth more than a pen of Langshans, Val."

"Yes, I know," said Val, gazing at the ball gown wistfully. "But where could I sell them, Haidee? One can't go hawking clothes for sale round Jersey. And we _must_ have the fowls and we _must n't_ spend Garry's money on experiments. Besides it is better to get rid of things like these, they only make one think of b.a.l.l.s and motors and frivolous things that don't matter a bit."

Haidee looked at her curiously.

"Just fancy _you_ ever having gone to b.a.l.l.s, Val--and ridden in motors!

I would never have believed it! I can't think of you in anything else but your big grey overall ap.r.o.ns."

Val flushed painfully. The grey overalls were a concomitant feature of life in New York only, but Haidee was not to know that.

"At any rate we 'll send the things. Now let us see what we can dig out in exchange for this pair of Belgian hares--they say they are the best kind for increasing and marketing. Oh, Haidee! perhaps we shall be able to make quite a lot of money!"

If they did not it would not be the fault of either of them, for they threw themselves heart and soul into the affairs of the farm. Val fed the fowls at early dawn, made hot mashes for them on cold mornings, cleaned out nests perpetually, ground up old china to make grit, and set broody hens on several dozen eggs, so as to have chickens ready for the spring markets. There was nothing she and Haidee disdained to do.

On cold winter nights when Bran was asleep they would sit curled over the fire calculating the fortunes they were going to make out of their chickens and computing the large sums that would presently come rolling in when the breeding pen was in full swing, the spring chickens hatched, and all the hens laying simultaneously. To make money at poultry farming seemed as easy as rolling off a log.

"It will be almost a shame to give it up," said Val, with brooding eyes.

"A paying concern like this! When the time comes for us to go back to America we shall have to instal some one to take charge. We may even some day be able to buy the farm out of our profits, Haidee! If we do, it shall be yours and Bran's, because you work like a little brick at it."

"I shall then buy up Scone's field and go in for Plymouth Rocks and Faverolles only," announced Haidee.

(Scone was their nearest neighbour, a farmer whose land adjoined their own.)

This was their method of calculation.