Wanderfoot Part 9

"It won't be for long, anyway. I 'm booked, Val. I have the same trouble as my father--cancer of the liver. Nothing can save me. It's only a matter of a few months ... a year at the outside." She had looked into his face keenly at that and recognised the possibility of his words being true. That strange hue in his cheeks might easily be the hue of death foreshadowing the atrocious malady from which his father suffered.

He had gone on to tell her that all he asked was to be allowed to live in peace, out of the world's sight, until his hour came. The truth must never be known, he said. Even he was not so dead to decency that he could not recognise that. He owed something to his family after all--to say nothing of his country! These had a right to expect silence from one who should have been dead. And he was willing enough to be silent.

The gnawing at his vitals had killed in him, he said, all taste for gaming and dissipation. He only wanted peace in some quiet country place, anywhere but America, which he hated with the fierce hatred of the waster surrounded by active energetic men. He had, it appeared, sought Val in the pretty certain belief that she could and would a.s.sist him to the quiet life he longed for, and when he found she could not he was more inclined to curse than to sympathise because her brain had "given out." She smiled a tortured smile at that. Her brain had indeed given out. That part at least of the story was true; and that she would never be able to write again as in the old days she knew was true too.

There is nothing like a year's tussling with domestic problems for dulling the wits. She felt that to earn a sure million she could not have produced the energy or material for one of her old gay vivid articles salted with wit and scented with the breeze. The power had gone from her. Wifehood had absorbed it. Maternity had eaten and drunk it up! Like Alice Brook, she could only work with her hands now; and, like Alice Brook, she was sadly incompetent even with these. For there really was a housemaid called Alice Brook at No. 700; an inefficient English girl who could not get on with the cook, and was without the faintest notion of her duties. As Val had no time to train her she was obliged to give her notice, and the girl was in fact leaving the house that night. This was why Val had felt so safe in her story.

When Valdana found out that she did not mean to meet him again, he would probably, as discreetly as he dared, make inquiries at No. 700 for Alice Brook. But Val would be prepared for him.

She sat still on that bench in Central Park until she had formed her plan. She would write to him within the next two days saying that nothing was to be gained by their meeting; that she had left 68th Street, and that if he did not worry her and try to find her, she would help him all she could with money, and from time to time send him, through his mother, such sums as she could earn. There was no question, of course, of her earning at present, but she possessed jewellery upon which she could raise certain sums. She would p.a.w.n some at once and send him fifty pounds for his pa.s.sage to England, thus ridding herself of his vicinity at least, and gaining untainted breathing s.p.a.ce in which to decide upon the next move. There must, she knew, be a terrible reconstruction of her life with Westenra, but as yet she was too weary and shocked to see far ahead. She only knew that she must go warily, like

"Ate Dea, treading so soft----"

Full of schemes that it revolted her to formulate, feeling a conspirator and traitor to all she loved, she at last retraced her steps homeward.

CHAPTER VIII

WOUNDS IN THE RAIN

"What will you do, love?

When I am going With white sail flowing, The seas beyond?

What will you do, love?

When waves divide us And friends may chide us, For being fond?"

SAMUEL LOVER.

Recuperation set in at last with Westenra, and he began to return to health almost as swiftly as he had departed from it, and with health came a full tide of love and grat.i.tude to the woman who had so devotedly nursed him back to life. But in the wraith at his bedside he hardly recognised Val. She had strangely changed, yet poignantly recalled to him that grey lady of long ago, whom in the past months of pain and fevered rush he had almost forgotten. Shadows seem to hang about her as in his dream. Almost it seemed as if she, instead of he, were returning from the Valley of the Shadow. He was struck to the heart by her worn and weary look. But when he put out hands of grat.i.tude and compa.s.sion to her, she seemed like the dream woman to elude them without moving. A long, long distance came between them. The old sad ache of lost lands was in her eyes and lingered about her lips. Consciousness came upon him suddenly that he loved this woman deeply, that she was the very heart of his heart ... then why should he have that sense of fear that she was escaping from him?

She smiled at him with exile in her eyes when he took her hand, and kissing it, thanked her for all her goodness to him.

"Bless you, dearest and best ... I am ashamed of myself for getting sick like this ... to have had you half-killing yourself nursing me ... what should I have done without you? What would I ever do without you ...

Brannie's mother?"

Was it his fancy that her hand seemed to grow a little rigid in his?

That a shadow pa.s.sed over her face? He had called her the sweetest thing he could think of, one that meant so much to him, the symbol of their love, the treasure saved from the rocks that had broken and wrecked them--the treasure with which they would build a new ship in which to sail the stormy seas. He could not know that ever since the days of delirium she had been yearning for some little word of _personal_ love, some little name that was all for her as lover, not mother only. Once more the sense of distance between them came to him.

She seemed suddenly to be a long way off. In effect, he had loosed her hand and she had moved away to the window. He did not see the heavy tears that scorched her eyes, but he noticed the droop of her shoulders and reproached himself.

"I 'm killing her," he thought sombrely, "and she is sick of it! Sick of nursing me, and of her life here! How can one blame her! I only wonder it did n't come sooner. How could I ever have hoped to keep a woman like her ... to make a slave of ... in a doctor's commonplace home!"

He closed his eyes again and the swift despondency of the invalid welled up in him. When she came back to his sofa the old moody shadow was on his face, the look of strain back about his brows. Timidly, and with her face turned from the light, so that he might not see the trace of her tears, she said:

"Is there anything you would like, Joe?"

"No, thank you, dear ... I have you!" He spoke gently, and put out his hand to her without opening his eyes. A moment later his sombre thought escaped from him almost involuntarily.

"I have you--though G.o.d knows for how long!" Then he waited for the touch of her lips on his, the rush of tender reproach for his unfaith.

He did not indeed know how pa.s.sionately hungry he was for those words--until they did not come! Nor how his lips ached for the touch of hers--until that long, still moment of waiting! Nothing happened; nothing came. No kiss, no word of protest. He could scarcely believe it at first. If he had not still been holding her hand, he might have supposed that she had risen and gone away. For he had not opened his eyes, but lay waiting as sometimes one waits with eyes closed for the coming of a beautiful thing. The knowledge flashed upon him suddenly that it was a long while since Val had kissed him. So long, that he could scarcely remember when. Was it before his illness? No: looking back down the vista of burning days of fever and discomfort, he could remember that before unconsciousness came upon him her fresh mouth was often laid like a rose upon his dry one and at the memory he longed again for its fragrance as a thirsty man in the desert longs for a cup of cold water. He was aware that when at last she did bend over him he would bind his arms round her, and holding her fast to his heart devour and consume her, and never let her go from him again. But in the same moment he was seized with the torment all true lovers know, the agonising knowledge that however much the lips may devour and the arms bind, and the heart strain to hold there is a limit to the reach of human love, a door to which the key will never be found, a barrier beyond which the aloof and lonely soul of the beloved sits stern and contemplative, for ever lonely in its secret place. This is the torment of all earthly love. No true lovers but have sought in each other's eyes the key of that implacable door, striven to drag the secret from each other's lips, known the darkness and desolation of that outer place! Lying there, waiting for his wife's kiss, Garrett Westenra suffered this torment for the first time.

It was characteristic of him that when at last he understood that she meant to make no response either by word or deed to the cry of his heart so thinly veiled beneath the sadness of his words, he did not question or upbraid her. He only lay very still, turning over and over in his mind the cruel fact that she was weary of him and of their life together. Between his half-closed lids he observed her, silent and white, looking down at the hand which, tightly held by his, lay on her knee. He realised then how fierce his grip had been, and relaxing it gently drew away his hand. What good to grip the casket so close when the jewel it had held for him was gone!

"What do you think we had better do, Val?" he said at last, speaking out of his pain, and meaning "with the rest of life." He did not expect so quick and definite a response as she made.

"I think that as soon as you feel well enough to travel you should go out West, and stay until you are quite strong again."

"You and the children too?"

"Oh! no, no!" she cried hastily--too hastily with so keen a listener intent on her. She saw her mistake and tried to cover it with calm reasoning words. "What change would it be for you with us everlastingly at your heels? Bran rampaging, Haidee worrying--and I--oh, of course, it would not do at all. You must see that." Her arguments might have sounded silly but for their urgency to convince, and her pleading eyes.

He stared straight before him, but missed no single shade of her face or voice.

"We will stay at home and mind things," she continued, "and be quite all right, until----"

"Until?"

"Until you come back...."

"And then?"

She knew she ought not to let him draw her on, that it would be better to wait until he returned, but she was an honest creature by nature, and though circ.u.mstances were plunging her deep in duplicity, she had not yet learned to conceal and wait. Besides, she wanted to get the pain over, the thing settled and done with, past recanting. If he were cold and angry so much the better for her. It would be easier to bear than if he tried to detain her with kind words.

"Then," she stammered, "Garrett, I think, we--the children and I--ought to go away for awhile ... to England, or France perhaps--some place where living is more reasonable than here, and I can get strong again, and be of some use to you...."

No word from him. He did not even raise his eyes. So she stumbled on hopelessly, embittered by his silence and misunderstanding, longing to have him see how much she cared, how it broke her heart to make such a suggestion, yet fearing that he would combat it.

"You know, Garrett, that I am no good in this place ... never have been.

Later perhaps when I am strong again I may be of some use ... when Bran is older.... You must see for yourself ... I cannot manage the house at present--(I have always mismanaged it)--with Bran wanting so much attention. It would be best to get one of your good nurses to take charge ... anybody could do it better than I...."

So she had it all planned out! She had arranged for "the rest of life"

without consulting him! All the time he lay sick she had been plotting to escape. Small wonder he felt the return of her old elusiveness, had become aware of distance between them.

Separation! That was to be the end of the voyage in the dream ship--of his life with the dream woman. Had it all been a dream perhaps? ... a dream full of dark places, with thorns for the flesh and pits for the feet ... but always--that was good to remember in this dark hour--always stars overhead. The stars had never before failed though they were dying out now. So she was a quitter after all! A deserter! Unfaithful to the post she had chosen. Somehow he could never have believed it except from her lips. It was hard to believe, looking at that face softly hollowed by weariness and worry, the faithful deep eyes, the tender lips, the hands grown diaphanous in his service. Nothing had been too hard or base in his household for those hands to strive with, he knew that. And how she had nursed him! That he owed his life to her was certain. And now, so soon, so soon, she nullified all, her tenderness and devotion, the precious unhappiness, the sacred sacrifices--the wonderful bonds that trouble shared can make, everything was broken and rendered void by this act of desertion!

It must be remembered that he came of a race of women who had, so to speak, habitually lived heroic lives. The men of his family, never able to offer ease to their women folk, expected heroism and self-sacrifice of them, and no Westenra woman had ever failed the expectation--_until now_! Yes, that was a thought that hurt. That ate like acid in an open wound. Val was not one of _them_! His wife, the woman on whom he had staked his honour and belief, was not of the stuff of which Westenra wives were made! Until that hour, spite of failure, trouble, and disappointment, he could have sworn away his soul on her loyalty--what did the mere failure of plans, or lack of money matter, when they had each other, were content to tread the same road together, the same ideals in their hearts, their eyes fixed on the same stars! And by G.o.d he could have sworn ... but what was the use! She had proved his judgment wrong, that was all. She was just the ordinary woman, sick of her job, anxious to get away from it. "Lots of women like her in America," he reflected sardonically. No one who knew the circ.u.mstance could blame her. He least of all would blame her. Only--his soul was sick within him! But, as always, he hid his wound from her. Not a sign of what he felt when at last he spoke, quietly, reflectively, almost it sounded to her, approvingly.

"No doubt it would be a very wise arrangement."

She had been twisting her hands in nervous agitation, her beautiful, strange eyes full of the ardour that had always been like wine to him, though he had never told her so. Now a rush of words came from her lips, she was almost incoherent in her grat.i.tude.

"Oh, Joe! ... if you think so ... if you won't mind ... it will not be for long ... only six months or so--a year perhaps."

He stared at her in bitter astonishment. (Only a year perhaps! Why not ten years--twenty years--the rest of life?)

"I will take such care of your Brannie for you.... I 'll never let him forget you for a moment ... and I 'll come back so different ... ready to tackle any problem ... you 'll see what a clever housewife I will be."

(He did n't want a clever housewife. He had believed he did, but now he knew that all he wanted was Val. He had arrived at desiring nothing better than her fantastic housekeeping and gipsy camping-out methods.

She had spoilt him for comfort and set rule.)