Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)

by Cynthia Stockley

What Westenra should have done, even at that eleventh hour, was to engage a capable, working matron to manage the place, while Val devoted her loving fervour to the baby and himself. But he felt doubtful as to the success of such an arrangement, first because Val would probably not like to live elsewhere; secondly, because he had managed hospitals before, and knew all about trouble with matrons. Experience had taught him that in America women rarely work well except in the interests of some one with whom they are in love. This rule applies very pertinently to American nurses, who are usually middle-aged Germans intent on marrying a doctor; but it may very well be applied to women all the world over, though Westenra was not aware of the fact. What he did know was that a managing matron would probably work for her own hand and not for his. Even if she made a roaring success of the place, later there would surely come the subtle introduction of other methods and other interests than his, into his own hospital. Worst of all would be the fact of strangers within his gates spying out the secrets of his reserved nature, bearing witness to his moods and nerves, all the irk of daily contact with people who were making a business out of his brains. This idea of outsiders being "let in on him," of alien eyes coming close enough to look over the wall behind which he kept his conflicting tempers and emotions from the world, was peculiarly irritating to him. Only Val, privileged by love, must have the gift of a share in his torment, the right to hear his swears. With all others he smiled and smiled and hid his heart, and put distance between himself and them. And Val, because she was a true lover, understood and faithfully gave of her body and soul to pad the bumps of life for him. Whatever else she failed in, she failed not in playing the buffer between him and the strangers who went to and fro in his house. He little knew what it cost her in peace of mind and serenity of spirit, this jarring with natures so unlike her own, and jangling with those who were making a business of life. He only knew that in spite of her impracticability and extravagance there was no one like her, and that the place in her incompetent hands was dearer by far than it could ever be in surer hands that were strange. It was beginning to dawn in his heart, with the exquisite promise of the skies, all that she was to him, this woman who walked by his side never faltering, smiling gallantly in defeat. It was beginning to whisper through his senses like the haunting echo of bells whose cadence he had known all his life that defeat after all did not matter so much since he shared it with her--that it might in fact become a form of victory. In any case he meant to struggle on with things as they were, hoping and working for the best.

Unfortunately, his nerves after the year of extraordinary strain were in rags. He really needed the rest and change that was due to him. His body and brain clamoured for it, and his fine athlete's skin took into itself a putty tint that was neither healthy nor becoming. In vain did Val implore him to take ship for his native land. He laughed and refused to go unless she and the children went too. But she knew what the cost of such an exodus would mean, and sat tight as an eagle in her eyrie; and her little brood pecked at her heart as though determined to get at her life-blood. Haidee grew wickeder every hour, and Bran was the naughtiest baby in the world, sleeping all day and howling all night, withal drinking away his mother's strength and blooming on it like a pink rose.

Valentine grew pale as a wraith and Westenra's old, haunting fear that his brain would give out ate him by night and day; but neither of them was a quitter. Both possessed that stupid and over-estimated kind of courage that does not know when it is beaten. At last Fate, like an overtried mother who is sick of giving gentle hints to unheeding children, brought down her hand heavily upon them. First she smote the man. In the blasting heat of late August, Westenra went down as only the big and the strong can go down--like a felled oak. The brilliant colleague whom Val hastily and fearfully summoned to her husband's bedside expressed his diagnosis in the argot of the day.

"His nerves have run out and his stomach has gone back on him. If he does n't slip up on us it will be a near thing, Mrs. Westenra."

And it was a near thing. If it had not been for Val, Westenra would have found eternity sooner than he expected. But it was a bad time for her. In addition to nursing her husband, she had to manage the rampageous Bran, a domestic crisis brought about by a servant strike, and an ice famine. Fortunately, there were no patients but one in the house at the time, and the nurse in attendance happened to be an exceptionally good one, who did all she could to relieve the strain. She was an English woman, a Miss Holland, with an able brain behind a pretty, calm face. She would willingly have undertaken the nursing of Westenra besides her own patient, but he was so frequently delirious that Val was afraid to let any one share in the nursing of him. She knew how he would hate any stranger to hear his tormented ramblings, but she did not realise for a long time that it would perhaps have been better at any cost that another than she should have heard them. For all that he had hidden from her came out now in broken snatches and groans, half dream, half delirium. She learned of his longing for his laboratory, of the sacrifice it had cost him to abandon it, of his despair about the Sanatorium, money worries, all the irk domestic life held for him. What was more terrible, she gleaned in broken fragments, halting and disjointed, as though even in his delirium he had an instinct to hide it, something of the way he had struggled with himself to evade her coming into his life, of his mental resistance until the last, of the pity which rather than love had moved him to ask her to marry him, of his dread of her past, and fear for their future. Oh! bitter and bleak were the things that came to her ears in scraps and broken whispers and heavy sighs, and that pieced together by her weary yet quickened brain made a clear writing on the wall. All was plain to her at last: all that he had succeeded in keeping dark from her, the secret of his torment and his pain in the struggle. To her the upholding joy in the darkest hour had always been that the man was worth it, she loved him and considered him worthy of every sacrifice she could make. She saw now that he had had no such thought to uphold him. Though he had been too loyal to acknowledge the fact even to himself, the bitter drop in his cup must have been his belief that the woman was not worth the sacrifices marriage had entailed!

Sighs and dark mutterings told her why he had shrunk at first from Haidee's coming to 68th Street--some duty he had to Halston, to keep his child only among those whose lives had been pure and unspotted by the world. The meaning of his fury at Val's suggestion for his son's naming came whispering forth from fever-broken lips.

"Dick! ... How could she? A dissipated brute .... no woman safe from ... and she ... my woman, alone with him for months ... wild places ... lonely places."

She could not know where he had heard that scandalous tale. She could only bow her head and take the sword to her heart.

When she heard him muttering to his mother, explaining that she was his dream woman, that it had to be.... 'She is not like you, mother, but she came to me in dreams ... it had to be ... and now she is Bran's mother ... you must love my Bran's mother," she thought her heart would break for bitter aching. It seemed to her in that dark hour that nothing could ever hurt her any more. She defied Fate to do her any worse hurt. An unwise thing to do. Fate was in fact sitting in wait with a worse clout in her hand.

There came an afternoon when Westenra was so much better that he could talk a little, softly, if a trifle vaguely to Haidee who had crept in to hold his hand. His eyes, seeming to have grown lighter in his thin, strongly-featured face, travelled incessantly round the room, resting here and there as though they recognised landmarks in some country he had not visited for years. They rested on Val writing at a table near by, and noted the wraithlike face, pale as a bone, the weary lean of her against her own supporting arm, the droop of her lips and her shoulders. When she came over with the medicine, he said quietly: