CHAPTER XI

A SHIP ON THE ROCKS

"Love is not always two Souls picking flowers."--MASEFIELD.

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 damning 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 grassy slopes full of primroses and early violets. At the bottom grew a mass of nettles and long rank grass, and into this she flung the bottles in a heap, and hurried away from the sound of the liquid bubbling over the broken glass 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 attitude. 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 embarrassed 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 passed. 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?"

"Never mind ... never mind ... poor Val!" Sternness had gone from him. "Well, that is settled, then--I go back without you." He got up heavily and turned away from the fire.

"I 'm dead-beat and must get rest, Val. Haidee has fixed me up very well in her nice little room; she told me you always meant me to have it."

He turned and looked at her, in his eyes a sudden bitterness and anger born of his longing to take into his arms and crush to him this woman who exiled him from her heart.

"Do you think it is quite fair, Val? Do you think you are playing the game?"

She looked at him with wistful, harried eyes.

"I am trying to, Joe--I----"

What could she say? Was this the moment to stab him with the truth? While she hesitated wretchedly, he turned away again, walking round the room, looking fiercely at the pictures and chintzes he knew had belonged to her past life.

"Haidee is growing into a nice girl," he said abruptly, switching his mind from a subject that maddened him.

Val, by the fire struggling with her misery and half-formed resolution, looked at him vaguely for a moment. Ah! he was speaking of Haidee--while she was torturing herself with the thought that he wanted her as she wanted him!

"Good-night!" he said harshly, and went his way up-stairs, without attempting to kiss her. She crouched down by the dying fire, and covered her face with her hands. Her heart was in great pain: the great pain of a little child. Footsteps overhead told her that he went first to her bedroom to take a last glimpse of Bran, and low murmurs betrayed the fact that Haidee was not yet asleep. At last his light, firm tread crossed the floor once more, then came the sound of his closing door.

Another hour must have passed when Val, still sitting by the fire, was startled to hear the patter of feet on the bare oak stairs, then to find a slim night-gowned figure beside her.

"Haidee!"

"I wanted to tell you something, Val, and was afraid I 'd be asleep before you came up."

"What is it?"

"Garry found all your empty brandy bottles in the dell; we were hunting the rats there with Billy and King." Her big brown eyes rested commiseratingly on Val. It was evident she felt guilty for having led Westenra to the dell, her very look of guilt had in it something damning to the poor pale culprit sitting there with a sick heart, no trace on her of the victory she had achieved two weeks ago. She had believed her sin as secret as her victory over it. Yet here it rose up against her in Haidee's eyes. The child knew nothing of the victory--only of the vice, though Val had never felt herself observed. And now Garry knew! That was the reason then of their embarrassed looks and averted eyes!

"Of course he didn't say anything. He pretended he did n't notice even. But you should have seen his face." She gazed dismally at Val. It was as though they had offended God. "And you smelt awfully of brandy when you came in--you do still."

"Go to bed, Haidee," said Val at last, sick with humiliation. She had meant to tell of the brandy episode some day, in some dear moment when all was clear between them once more. Now, through being accidentally betrayed, the incident had assumed a horrible aspect. She was afraid to think of what his thoughts on the subject must be. She longed to tell him all. To run up-stairs and cry at his door: "I didn't drink it all, Garry; two of the bottles were full when I threw them away." How silly and puerile that would sound. He would, perhaps, see nothing in her action but the terror of a confirmed drinker found out, might imagine that he had married a secret drunkard! She sat twisting her hands in an agony of misery. How could she tell him? What was the good? How dared she even kiss him as she had done when she came in? Valdana was alive--she was not even Joe's wife--what to do--what to do? ... How brutal life was!

Suddenly she fell to communing with her dead--those who had loved and believed in her and knew that however much she had failed in the heavy trials and afflictions of the last year, at least she had not been actuated by meanness or mere self-indulgence. _They_ knew her as she used to be--fearless and sure of her actions--before love had laid bonds on her spirit, and sorrow and failure crushed her down. They understood, and would not altogether condemn. At last, curiously strengthened, she rose and went up-stairs, the firm purpose in her heart of going to Westenra to tell him everything.

She paused for a moment at his door--doubtless he was sleeping, dead-beat as he said. But that could not be helped. It was more important even than his sleep that all should be put right between them. She owed it to herself as well as to him. Softly she turned the handle of the door, but it did not open to her touch. Westenra had guarded himself against invasion. It was locked.

----

At breakfast the next morning he announced that he was due in London in two days' time to deliver some lectures at one of the hospitals. After that he must make a visit to Ireland on a matter concerning some family property. He added vaguely that he should probably come back again to Jersey before very long, but Val took that for what it was--a bone thrown to Haidee, whose face had visibly lengthened and darkened on hearing this horrible news. Bran, smiling in his mother's arms, looked on affably--his father's comings and goings meant little to him as yet, so long as he had Val's soft cheek to rub his own against. She was very pale, but extraordinarily composed, and made no comment on his plans. She had withdrawn herself into some remote and distant land of her own--a land where no birds sang, nor flowers grew! After breakfast she left the others, and went about her household duties. A conference in the garden between Westenra and Haidee resulted in a resolution to walk down to St. Aubin's and hire bicycles for a day's outing. Haidee was strong as a Basuto pony, and Westenra loved nothing better than to be out in the open air. The bicycling is hilly in Jersey, and the two came home tired out in the evening. Haidee announced that they had done their side of the Island from Corbieres to Plemmont Caves, and intended next day to visit Bouley Bay, Archirondelle, and the famous breakwater that cost half a million pounds and is of no more use than a load of rotten hay.

After the usual bath parade, at which Bran presided, Val once more had the fireside and her thoughts to herself. Haidee and Westenra, tired out, were glad to seek their beds.

The next day they started early. While Val was cutting sandwiches for them, Westenra half suggested that she should come too; but she smiled quite naturally, and said that even if there were any one to stay with Bran, it was so long since she had cycled she would only be a drag to them. "But I hope you will not be so tired to-night, Garrett," she finished quietly. "I want to have a little talk with you after dinner."

"Very well," he answered, looking at her curiously. He could not pretend to begin to understand her, or what she meant or wanted. He only knew that he, too, had something to say before he left Jersey the next day. Though outwardly he was composed, and in the company of Haidee even gay, affecting great interest in their excursions, his heart was heavy as a stone in him, and he was brooding over his wrongs as only an Irishman can. As it happened, rain began to fall heavily after lunch, and somewhat early in the afternoon the two cyclists returned wet and cross. Westenra bathed, and immediately began to pack his things for departure by the next morning's boat. The rest of the afternoon was spent with the children.

The sky had cleared by evening, and when after dinner Val and Westenra walked across the fields towards the cliff in the pale, clear, evening light, they could see the tide furling and unfurling its filmy laces of froth on St. Brelade's beach.

Though she had come out with a set purpose she found it hard to begin what she had to say. For all her remote manner and outward calm, her heart, throbbing full, bounded in her breast and beat in her throat until she felt suffocating. It was Westenra who spoke at last very gently, but with something of a requiem note in his words.

"So you see our love was not strong enough after all to weather the storms, Val!"

"Mine was ... mine is," her heart cried out, but she looked at him dully. She knew the futility of such words now. It was his own dead love he was keening, not hers.

"Our ship of dreams has gone to pieces."

"No," burst from her lips almost against her will.

"Yes, Val," his gentle tone became stern. "Face the facts."

They had seated themselves on some rocks near the edge of the cliff. Nothing broke the peace of the evening but the swirr and swish of the gentle tide on the beach below.

"You promised to burn your boats ... never to go back to old habits and possessions ... I find you with your old possessions about you----"

"Those pictures and chintzes? I wrote and told you how they came," she interrupted. "They can be burnt for all they are to me."

He moved his hand with a desperate gesture.

"That is nothing to the other. Can you deny that you have returned to one at least of your old habits?"

"Oh!" she cried, and sat up like one who has been struck. But his heart was full of fury, outraged hopes, and disappointment. He could not measure his words because she cried out.

"It was not your boats you burned, but my ship--my ship of dreams!"

He went further, he accused her of breaking his shrine, of succumbing to a vice that he detested and despised with all his soul. He said she had betrayed his love, and destroyed that quality in it which is essential and eternal.

"One _must_ look up," he said, and looked down on her as she sat there, her face covered with her hands, very still under the torrent of fierce and cruel words that burst from him in the bitterness of outraged love and pride. Like all reserved people when driven into breaking silence he said too much. Afterwards there was a long silence. A curlew flying inland wailed faintly like a dying thing.

"I don't see what is before us," he muttered. "Everything is finished."

And at last she spoke--very quietly.

"Yes, everything is finished of our life together. But each of us is free to begin again."

"Free!" he echoed ironically, thinking of the mystical fatalistic threads that had bound and tangled them together from the first. "You and I will never be free of each other."

"Oh, yes--we are already. Listen! I want to tell you something that I ought to have told you long ago, only I was afraid of ... Ah! never mind of what I was afraid. But now that it is as you have said all over and finished, now that I see very well that not only do you not love me, but that you never have loved me and want nothing so much as to be free of me, I will tell it you--" and she added fiercely, "with pleasure."

"Tell ahead," he said drearily.

"I am not your wife, and never have been. Horace Valdana is alive--has never been dead!"

In the solemn mute moments that followed the curlew wailed again.

"What are you saying?" muttered Westenra, hoarsely. He had risen to his feet.

Then Val began to laugh, not hysterically, but just soft light-hearted laughter. She really felt light-hearted at that moment. It was as though something very, very heavy had been lifted from her shoulders, and she could stand up straight at last.

"It can't be true!" He was muttering like a man stunned. "How long have you known?"

"Oh, what does that matter!" she said. "It is _true_--that is all that concerns you." She reflected a moment. "But of course my mere word is of no value to you ... I have proofs in the house ... letters from him asking me to go to Canada with him." She began to laugh again.

"Good God!" muttered Westenra still dazed. "And Bran?"

That sobered her, drying the strange laughter on her lips and in her heart.

"Ah, Bran! ... Yes. My Brannie!" she said softly, her voice in those few low-spoken words expressing all that the woman voice can express of pity, sorrow, and love. It was Bran who would be the victim--Bran who would go fatherless, homeless, nameless--a vagabond like his mother with restless heart and wandering feet!

"He is mine," said Westenra suddenly.

"No, mine," she answered swiftly. They stood staring at each other like two duellists. He lost sight of all she had been to him--of all that she must have suffered. Dazed and horror-struck he only felt that his world was moving away from under his feet, and she was trying to rob him of the last hold, the most dear thing he had ever possessed.

"He is mine too ... I believe by law I could get him."

"Law! Have n't you found out yet that I am lawless?" She came close to him, staring into his eyes, a mocking light in her own. "You forget that I am the woman with no soul, no morals, and no roots, the careless vagabond whom you feared Haidee to come into contact with ... whom you apologised to your dead mother for having married...."

"Val, you are mad!" he said amazed, white to the lips. But she only laughed a little clanking laugh, and her voice that had so often sounded in his ears like the wild far music of his own land was hard now as iron on iron.

"Go your ways, my dear Garrett Westenra. You are free of the woman who burnt your ship!"