Wanderfoot Part 37

She burst out crying, and jumping up ran to the house. Bran's eyes slowly filled with tears.

"Haidee _is_ nasty!" he said in a trembling voice. "What have I done?"

In his trouble he turned naturally to his mother and the tenderness that had never failed him.

"Nothing, my Wing. Haidee will be all right by and by. Here is Marietta with the tea."

But Westenra would not take tea. He appeared to stiffen at the sight of it. After Bran had swallowed a hurried _goter_, as the French call it, his father took him by the hand and they went away together for a walk by the sea. When they came back at seven, Westenra excused himself, and returned to the hotel with a promise to call after dinner.

That evening he and Val walked together through the twilight garden in which Gambetta had pondered his plans and philosophies. They, too, had a problem to consider. It had to come, this talk together. They both had felt the imperativeness of it. And now both were remembering that other walk on the moonlit cliffs above St. Brelade's Bay, when the curlew wailed and cruel words were said that separated them as only cruel words can separate, driving them apart for ever. Even as Val had struggled that long-ago night for words to explain and condone the situation Westenra struggled now, while Val walked beside him still and white, but with some hidden strength in her which he felt while he could not understand it.

The curious thing was that, though he had meant to upbraid her, though his heart was bitter against her, he found himself speaking as if he, not she, were the defalcator.

"I suppose you think me a cold-blooded brute?"

With that which Haidee had told her still tingling in her mind she could not pretend to misunderstand, but she tried to be fair.

"You know your own interests best, Garrett."

"Oh, as to my interests--" He found that a strange answer, and cogitated on it for a while.

"Haidee is devoted to you and your interests."

"Haidee? I should not be such a fool as to expect that--again?" No doubt he meant that javelin to reach her. If it did she gave no sign.

Only her next words might have been a faint attempt at a return thrust.

"Even Haidee would not find it a very difficult life since things are so prosperous with you now."

He answered swiftly: "Yes; the law of compensation has been busy with my affairs. Unlucky in love--" The sentence remained unfinished.

They found that they were standing still, staring white-faced at each other. For a moment they stayed so, then she said gently:

"Surely we have not come here to gibe at one another? I--I bear you no ill-will, Garrett." It was such a strange way of expressing her feelings that she could not help but stammer a little.

He laughed. Strange, that he who felt so old in the train that morning should now feel young enough for fierce anger and rage.

"That is good of you. I am sorry I cannot with truth claim to reciprocate your generosity."

The calmness that had amazed him sustained her now.

"Well, let us leave the subject then, and speak of one that matters more to our future life--Bran. What about Bran?"

"You saw yourself to-day--you heard." He did not care to keep exultation from his voice.

"You think it fair, then, to take away from me what I have lived and worked for these last six years?"

"Have not I worked for him too?"

"You may have done so. It has made no difference to him."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that since we parted in Jersey, Bran, like myself, has neither eaten nor drunk nor been clothed at your expense."

"But...?"

"The exact half of all moneys you have sent is lying at the Credit Lyonnais. The other half has been spent explicitly on Haidee. You have seen the bills."

His face darkened.

"How dared you treat me so?--my own son!"

"If you had come to see him it would have been different, but to stay away year after year, and expect money to fill the gap that a father's influence and love and tenderness should have filled ... that seemed to me too mercenary, too unworthy treatment of _my_ son."

"No matter ... no matter ... it is an infamous thing you have done--a crowning act of cruelty. I should have believed you incapable of it.

By G.o.d! how dared you let any one else feed and clothe my child?"

She looked at his furious face in genuine amazement.

"Had I no right to work for him?"

"_You_, yes; and I know you have--Haidee has told me. But this last year ... and _now_. Who is paying for all this?" He swung his arm savagely at the beauties of the garden. His gaze was full of rage and contempt.

"In leaving Bran I left my honour with you--and you have sold it for this mess of pottage! It is time he went with me!"

She faced him steadily, with the calmness born of long vigils with misery.

"You are insulting me unnecessarily. No one has supported your son but myself."

He stared at her in unbelieving wrath. But something about her words and still gaze presently quieted the fury in his veins, and he spoke more temperately.

"I will be glad to accept that. It is strange that by your own efforts you should have become wealthy enough to surround him with beauty and ease such as this--but if you say so I accept it."

There was a silence.

"My own efforts had nothing to do with it, Garrett. It is only that G.o.d has been good to me. Did you ever hear the saying, that 'G.o.d takes care of drunkards and children'?"

He regarded her long and earnestly.

"Are you a drunkard?" Anything less like one he had never seen. His medical experience told him that she could not be one. No drunkard could look as she did.

"No, Garrett. I can faithfully and truthfully say that I am not a drunkard."

Then she was a child. It was a child that he----!

"Let me tell you about it," she was saying. "About eleven months ago something that might be regarded in the light of a family legacy came to me. The necklace my mother gave me turned out to be of extremely valuable pearls. I sold it for seventy-five thousand pounds--it has since realised one hundred and twenty thousand. That is the secret of such comfort and ease as you now see us enjoying."

The story was amazing, but Westenra instinctively knew it to be true.