Wanderfoot Part 14

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 she _recognised_ them, 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 d.a.m.ning 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 gra.s.sy slopes full of primroses and early violets. At the bottom grew a ma.s.s of nettles and long rank gra.s.s, and into this she flung the bottles in a heap, and hurried away from the sound of the liquid bubbling over the broken gla.s.s 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 att.i.tude. 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 embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed. 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."

(He _had_ noticed, 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?"