From the first the child had doubled her anxieties by being delicate, and in England its health did not improve. Many a time in the weary London months the mother tripped up the journalist just as the path looked a little clearer or was smoothening out to a surer footing. Many a promising opportunity of regular work had to be passed by because of some baby illness that needed all the careful nursing Val could give. But youth and courage were still on her side; and in her heart the secret conviction which thrills every mother--that her child is an important link in the chain of generations, that a woman's career and ambitions are as nothing compared to the keeping alight of the little flame which may some day become a beacon to humanity. What mother's heart has not trembled to this illusion? How many babies would ever reach maturity if this secret religion did not hold sway in women's hearts, urging them to sacrifice, pain, drudgery, and self-abnegation?
And after all the struggle was in vain. The baby died, and Val, more lonely and alone than ever before, wished that she too might die, for it seemed that life was never to hold anything for her but work. And oh! the weariness of work that has not love for its compelling force! Oh! the longitude and lassitude of life without loved ones in it!
Fortunately, something occurred at this time which not only took her away from the scene of her loss, but occupied her every thought for a considerable period. The Jameson Raid in the Transvaal shook England to the heart with various emotions, and called for a great deal of information that could only be acquired at the scene of operations. The Editor of the Imperialistic Daily, which had employed Dick Rowan, found himself keenly regretting the "Gadfly" and his deep knowledge of the internal workings of the Transvaal Government, then remembered "Wanderfoot" and her application of a year or so back. A search was instituted, and within a week Val was sailing for Africa full of instructions that gave her little time in which to remember the emptiness of her heart and the dull ache of loss, or anything but the affair she was sent upon--to get speech of both President Kruger and the members of the Reform Committee who lay in Pretoria Gaol.
The series of brilliant articles sent by her from Johannesburg dealing with the reign of terror at that time exercised by Transvaal Boers over the betrayed and despairing English population; the history, written in terse, mordant, heart-wringing phrases of that famous trial, when four of the Reform Committee were sentenced to death, and the rest to "two years' rotting" in a foul prison; these constituted the first steps in the ladder by which Valentine mounted alone and unaided, rung by rung, to journalistic fame. After that no more need to seek work; it sought her. There were commissions to India, Turkey, Russia, and Mexico, and with each new adventure were fresh laurels, for her work improved as the work of a writer can only improve when she gives it her heart and soul and serves no other god.
Thus, after struggling and climbing practically from the age of fourteen up the craggy hillside of Fame, she had in her twenty-sixth year reached a point nearer the top than do most women. True, it was not universal fame, but the fact remains, that to any one who read with understanding the British newspapers, her name stood for work both brilliant and sound, a fine temperament and a great future.
When success first began to come her way, Valdana cropped up again, smiling and ready to step back into her life. But sorrow had taught Val a few things and opened her eyes to the real worthlessness of her husband's character. She recognised coldly and clearly at last just what he was--a lazy, unscrupulous scoundrel. Even more unforgivable was the fact that he had not cared a rap whether his child lived or died of starvation: that she could never forget. Therefore, though she gave him money, even unto the half of her income, she refused to return to him or allow him to come back into her life. He became so troublesome, however, that she was on the point of seeking legal protection from him, when the Boer war broke out, and in the urgent interests of her newspaper she was obliged to put private affairs aside, and start immediately for Africa. After a year there of unceasing work and travel, she succumbed to a bad illness, resulting from overtaxed energy, and it was while she lay ill in Cape Town that Valdana made a fresh move in the game.
It must be mentioned that before his people, realising his lack of all moral sense, and fearful of future dishonour, had decided to despatch him to Africa, he was intended for the army, and had been educated and trained to that end. His parents' decision was a bitter blow to him, for the picturesque side of army life appealed to him greatly, and he chose to believe and to frequently air the modest opinion that in him a very gallant soldier had been lost to England. Now, when in England's dark hour she called for men to volunteer their services in Africa, came his chance, and with a promptness he only exhibited in his own interests, he applied for a commission in one of the corps raised in London. His application was at first refused, because there were plenty of good men of tried experience to fill such posts; but a clever use of his wife's name and work got him into the limelight. He did not even disdain to make use of her illness, and the fact that she had been brought almost to death's door in the service of the public. So finally he got his commission and sailed for the front in a glow of publicity.
Then, for a blackleg and a ne'er-do-well whom no one wanted, he did an extraordinary and unheard of thing--he died! And not content to merely die, he did the thing well; nobly and heroically he did it, in company with a dozen or so men of his troop. They were isolated in a farmhouse, surrounded by a large number of Boers, and refusing to surrender were cut up to a last man, and the house set afire over their wounded bodies. Some grudging curmudgeon had invented a tale to the effect that one of the band had slunk out, and, deserting his wounded comrades, escaped. But no one had ever been able to prove the lie, and even the Boers themselves gave evidence of the splendid courage of the little band, and especially of their leader, the last to die with a laugh upon his lips. All England rang with Horace Valdana's name. Val, already bright in the public eye, had the added lustre of her gallant husband's glory shed upon her. Shoals of sympathetic letters and telegrams reached her in Cape Town, and, on the occasion of her return to England, having been rigidly forbidden by the doctors to continue her war correspondence, she was met by crowds and cheered to the echo. But both sympathy and cheers were wasted upon her. She received them coldly and silently, without tears and without a widow's desolate mien. When it was presently observed that she also dispensed with the habiliments of wo, and went about in London as if nothing had happened, she was severely criticised, and people began to dislike her. Moreover, a mangled history of the unhappy marriage got out; it was soon known that there had been great faults on one side or the other. Tales with a tang to them of Valentine's friendships abroad with well-known men were told in the clubs, and as the men concerned had mostly died or disappeared, there was no one on the spot interested or well informed enough to dispute the truth of them. What was worse, an entirely cruel and untrue version of her relation to Dick Rowan during their travels and exploits together was bruited about, though always so carefully that the victim of the scandal only caught dim echoes of it, and was never able to seize and nail the lie to the mast. In the end, needless to say, the woman paid. "Gallant Horace Valdana" got more than the benefit of the doubt as far as the unhappy marriage was concerned, and his widow was sent to social Coventry.
Little she cared. The world meant nothing to her. She had wrestled too bitterly with life to set any undue value on the approval of society, even had she not possessed a congenital carelessness amounting to indifference to the opinions of any except those she loved. As long as those few knew the truth--as they could not help doing, knowing her--and their love loyally remained unaffected, she gave little heed to calumny; it was enough for her to realise that she was free at last of Valdana. She tried not to rejoice too much at that, but rather to weed out from her heart the last blade of bitterness and scorn of the dead man, so that the rest of life might be lived unpoisoned by hateful memories.
At this period of vague mental unrest and retrospection, the offer to her from a famous newspaper to visit America on its behalf came pleasantly à propos. Sick of London and the arid memories it contained for her, she was thankful to shake its dust from her feet for a time at least and turn her face to a new and unknown horizon.