CHAPTER XVIII
Valancy was acquainted with Barney by now well acquainted, it seemed, though she had spoken to him only a few times. But then she had felt just as well acquainted with him the first time they had met. She had been in the garden at twilight, hunting for a few stalks of white narcissus for Cissy’s room when she heard that terrible old Grey Slosson coming down through the woods from Mistawis one could hear it miles away. Valancy did not look up as it drew near, thumping over the rocks in that crazy lane. She had never looked up, though Barney had gone racketting past every evening since she had been at Roaring Abel’s. This time he did not racket past. The old Grey Slosson stopped with even more terrible noises than it made going. Valancy was conscious that Barney had sprung from it and was leaning over the ramshackle gate. She suddenly straightened up and looked into his face. Their eyes met Valancy was suddenly conscious of a delicious weakness. Was one of her heart attacks coming on? But this was a new symptom.
His eyes, which she had always thought brown, now seen close, were deep violet translucent and intense. Neither of his eyebrows looked like the other. He was thin too thin she wished she could feed him up a bit she wished she could sew the buttons on his coat and make him cut his hair and shave every day. There was something in his face one hardly knew what it was. Tiredness? Sadness? Disillusionment? He had dimples in his thin cheeks when he smiled. All these thoughts flashed through Valancy’s mind in that one moment while his eyes looked into hers.
“Good-evening, Miss Stirling.”
Nothing could be more commonplace and conventional. Any one might have said it. But Barney Snaith had a way of saying things that gave them poignancy. When he said good-evening you felt that it was a good evening and that it was partly his doing that it was. Also, you felt that some of the credit was yours. Valancy felt all this vaguely, but she couldn’t imagine why she was trembling from head to foot it must be her heart. If only he didn’t notice it!
“I’m going over to the Port,” Barney was saying. “Can I acquire merit by getting or doing anything there for you or Cissy?”
“Will you get some salt codfish for us?” said Valancy. It was the only thing she could think of. Roaring Abel had expressed a desire that day for a dinner of boiled salt codfish. When her knights came riding to the Blue Castle, Valancy had sent them on many a quest, but she had never asked any of them to get her salt codfish.
“Certainly. You’re sure there’s nothing else? Lots of room in Lady Jane Grey Slosson. And she always gets back some time, does Lady Jane.”
“I don’t think there’s anything more,” said Valancy. She knew he would bring oranges for Cissy anyhow he always did.
Barney did not turn away at once. He was silent for a little. Then he said, slowly and whimsically:
“Miss Stirling, you’re a brick! You’re a whole cartload of bricks. To come here and look after Cissy under the circumstances.”
“There’s nothing so bricky about that,” said Valancy. “I’d nothing else to do. And I like it here. I don’t feel as if I’d done anything specially meritorious. Mr. Gay is paying me fair wages. I never earned any money before and I like it.” It seemed so easy to talk to Barney Snaith, someway this terrible Barney Snaith of the lurid tales and mysterious past as easy and natural as if talking to herself.
“All the money in the world couldn’t buy what you’re doing for Cissy Gay,” said Barney. “It’s splendid and fine of you. And if there’s anything I can do to help you in any way, you have only to let me know. If Roaring Abel ever tries to annoy you ”
“He doesn’t. He’s lovely to me. I like Roaring Abel,” said Valancy frankly.
“So do I. But there’s one stage of his drunkenness perhaps you haven’t encountered it yet when he sings ribald songs ”
“Oh, yes. He came home last night like that. Cissy and I just went to our room and shut ourselves in where we couldn’t hear him. He apologised this morning. I’m not afraid of any of Roaring Abel’s stages.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll be decent to you, apart from his inebriated yowls,” said Barney. “And I’ve told him he’s got to stop damning things when you’re around.”
“Why?” asked Valancy slily, with one of her odd, slanted glances and a sudden flake of pink on each cheek, born of the thought that Barney Snaith had actually done so much for her. “I often feel like damning things myself.”
For a moment Barney stared. Was this elfin girl the little, old-maidish creature who had stood there two minutes ago? Surely there was magic and devilry going on in that shabby, weedy old garden.
Then he laughed.
“It will be a relief to have some one to do it for you, then. So you don’t want anything but salt codfish?”
“Not tonight. But I dare say I’ll have some errands for you very often when you go to Port Lawrence. I can’t trust Mr. Gay to remember to bring all the things I want.”
Barney had gone away, then, in his Lady Jane, and Valancy stood in the garden for a long time.
Since then he had called several times, walking down through the barrens, whistling. How that whistle of his echoed through the spruces on those June twilights! Valancy caught herself listening for it every evening rebuked herself then let herself go. Why shouldn’t she listen for it?
He always brought Cissy fruit and flowers. Once he brought Valancy a box of candy the first box of candy she had ever been given. It seemed sacrilege to eat it.
She found herself thinking of him in season and out of season. She wanted to know if he ever thought about her when she wasn’t before his eyes, and, if so, what. She wanted to see that mysterious house of his back on the Mistawis island. Cissy had never seen it. Cissy, though she talked freely of Barney and had known him for five years, really knew little more of him than Valancy herself.
“But he isn’t bad,” said Cissy. “Nobody need ever tell me he is. He can’t have done a thing to be ashamed of.”
“Then why does he live as he does?” asked Valancy to hear somebody defend him.
“I don’t know. He’s a mystery. And of course there’s something behind it, but I know it isn’t disgrace. Barney Snaith simply couldn’t do anything disgraceful, Valancy.”
Valancy was not so sure. Barney must have done something sometime. He was a man of education and intelligence. She had soon discovered that, in listening to his conversations and wrangles with Roaring Abel who was surprisingly well read and could discuss any subject under the sun when sober. Such a man wouldn’t bury himself for five years in Muskoka and live and look like a tramp if there were not too good or bad a reason for it. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was sure now that he had never been Cissy Gay’s lover. There was nothing like that between them. Though he was very fond of Cissy and she of him, as any one could see. But it was a fondness that didn’t worry Valancy.
“You don’t know what Barney has been to me, these past two years,” Cissy had said simply. “Everything would have been unbearable without him.”
“Cissy Gay is the sweetest girl I ever knew and there’s a man somewhere I’d like to shoot if I could find him,” Barney had said savagely.
Barney was an interesting talker, with a knack of telling a great deal about his adventures and nothing at all about himself. There was one glorious rainy day when Barney and Abel swapped yarns all the afternoon while Valancy mended tablecloths and listened. Barney told weird tales of his adventures with “shacks” on trains while hoboing it across the continent. Valancy thought she ought to think his stealing rides quite dreadful, but didn’t. The story of his working his way to England on a cattle-ship sounded more legitimate. And his yarns of the Yukon enthralled her especially the one of the night he was lost on the divide between Gold Run and Sulphur Valley. He had spent two years out there. Where in all this was there room for the penitentiary and the other things?
If he were telling the truth. But Valancy knew he was.
“Found no gold,” he said. “Came away poorer than when I went. But such a place to live! Those silences at the back of the north wind got me. I’ve never belonged to myself since.”
Yet he was not a great talker. He told a great deal in a few well-chosen words how well-chosen Valancy did not realise. And he had a knack of saying things without opening his mouth at all.
“I like a man whose eyes say more than his lips,” thought Valancy.
But then she liked everything about him his tawny hair his whimsical smiles the little glints of fun in his eyes his loyal affection for that unspeakable Lady Jane his habit of sitting with his hands in his pockets, his chin sunk on his breast, looking up from under his mismated eyebrows. She liked his nice voice which sounded as if it might become caressing or wooing with very little provocation. She was at times almost afraid to let herself think these thoughts. They were so vivid that she felt as if the others must know what she was thinking.
“I’ve been watching a woodpecker all day,” he said one evening on the shaky old back verandah. His account of the woodpecker’s doings was satisfying. He had often some gay or cunning little anecdote of the wood folk to tell them. And sometimes he and Roaring Abel smoked fiercely the whole evening and never said a word, while Cissy lay in the hammock swung between the verandah posts and Valancy sat idly on the steps, her hands clasped over her knees, and wondered dreamily if she were really Valancy Stirling and if it were only three weeks since she had left the ugly old house on Elm Street.
The barrens lay before her in a white moon splendour, where dozens of little rabbits frisked. Barney, when he liked, could sit down on the edge of the barrens and lure those rabbits right to him by some mysterious sorcery he possessed. Valancy had once seen a squirrel leap from a scrub pine to his shoulder and sit there chattering to him. It reminded her of John Foster.
It was one of the delights of Valancy’s new life that she could read John Foster’s books as often and as long as she liked. She could read them in bed if she wanted to. She read them all to Cissy, who loved them. She also tried to read them to Abel and Barney, who did not love them. Abel was bored and Barney politely refused to listen at all.
“Piffle,” said Barney.
CHAPTER XIX
Of course, the Stirlings had not left the poor maniac alone all this time or refrained from heroic efforts to rescue her perishing soul and reputation. Uncle James, whose lawyer had helped him as little as his doctor, came one day and, finding Valancy alone in the kitchen, as he supposed, gave her a terrible talking-to told her she was breaking her mother’s heart and disgracing her family.
“But why?” said Valancy, not ceasing to scour her porridge pot decently. “I’m doing honest work for honest pay. What is there in that that is disgraceful?”
“Don’t quibble, Valancy,” said Uncle James solemnly. “This is no fit place for you to be, and you know it. Why, I’m told that jail-bird, Snaith, is hanging around here every evening.”
“Not every evening,” said Valancy reflectively. “No, not quite every evening.”
“It’s it’s insufferable!” said Uncle James violently. “Valancy, you must come home. We won’t judge you harshly. I assure you we won’t. We will overlook all this.”
“Thank you,” said Valancy.
“Have you no sense of shame?” demanded Uncle James.
“Oh, yes. But the things I am ashamed of are not the things you are ashamed of.” Valancy proceeded to rinse her dishcloth meticulously.
Still was Uncle James patient. He gripped the sides of his chair and ground his teeth.
“We know your mind isn’t just right. We’ll make allowances. But you must come home. You shall not stay here with that drunken, blasphemous old scoundrel ”
“Were you by any chance referring to me, Mister Stirling?” demanded Roaring Abel, suddenly appearing in the doorway of the back verandah where he had been smoking a peaceful pipe and listening to “old Jim Stirling’s” tirade with huge enjoyment! His red beard fairly bristled with indignation and his huge eyebrows quivered. But cowardice was not among James Stirling’s shortcomings.
“I was. And, furthermore, I want to tell you that you have acted an iniquitous part in luring this weak and unfortunate girl away from her home and friends, and I will have you punished yet for it ”
James Stirling got no further. Roaring Abel crossed the kitchen at a bound, caught him by his collar and his trousers, and hurled him through the doorway and over the garden paling with as little apparent effort as he might have employed in whisking a troublesome kitten out of the way.
“The next time you come back here,” he bellowed, “I’ll throw you through the window and all the better if the window is shut! Coming here, thinking yourself God to put the world to rights!”
Valancy candidly and unashamedly owned to herself that she had seen few more satisfying sights than Uncle James’ coat-tails flying out into the asparagus bed. She had once been afraid of this man’s judgment. Now she saw clearly that he was nothing but a rather stupid little village tin-god.
Roaring Abel turned with his great broad laugh.
“He’ll think of that for years when he wakes up in the night. The Almighty made a mistake in making so many Stirlings. But since they are made, we’ve got to reckon with them. Too many to kill out. But if they come here bothering you I’ll shoo ’em off before a cat could lick its ear.”
The next time they sent Dr. Stalling. Surely Roaring Abel would not throw him into asparagus beds. Dr. Stalling was not so sure of this and had no great liking for the task. He did not believe Valancy Stirling was out of her mind. She had always been queer. He, Dr. Stalling, had never been able to understand her. Therefore, beyond doubt, she was queer. She was only just a little queerer than usual now. And Dr. Stalling had his own reasons for disliking Roaring Abel. When Dr. Stalling had first come to Deerwood he had had a liking for long hikes around Mistawis and Muskoka. On one of these occasions he had got lost and after much wandering had fallen in with Roaring Abel with his gun over his shoulder.
Dr. Stalling had contrived to ask his question in about the most idiotic manner possible. He said, “Can you tell me where I’m going?”
“How the devil should I know where you’re going, gosling?” retorted Abel contemptuously.
Dr. Stalling was so enraged that he could not speak for a moment or two and in that moment Abel had disappeared in the woods. Dr. Stalling had eventually found his way home, but he had never hankered to encounter Abel Gay again.
Nevertheless he came now to do his duty. Valancy greeted him with a sinking heart. She had to own to herself that she was terribly afraid of Dr. Stalling still. She had a miserable conviction that if he shook his long, bony finger at her and told her to go home, she dared not disobey.
“Mr. Gay,” said Dr. Stalling politely and condescendingly, “may I see Miss Stirling alone for a few minutes?”
Roaring Abel was a little drunk just drunk enough to be excessively polite and very cunning. He had been on the point of going away when Dr. Stalling arrived, but now he sat down in a corner of the parlour and folded his arms.
“No, no, mister,” he said solemnly. “That wouldn’t do wouldn’t do at all. I’ve got the reputation of my household to keep up. I’ve got to chaperone this young lady. Can’t have any sparkin’ going on here behind my back.”
Outraged Dr. Stalling looked so terrible that Valancy wondered how Abel could endure his aspect. But Abel was not worried at all.
“D’ye know anything about it, anyway?” he asked genially.
“About what?”
“Sparking,” said Abel coolly.
Poor Dr. Stalling, who had never married because he believed in a celibate clergy, would not notice this ribald remark. He turned his back on Abel and addressed himself to Valancy.
“Miss Stirling, I am here in response to your mother’s wishes. She begged me to come. I am charged with some messages from her. Will you” he wagged his forefinger “will you hear them?”
“Yes,” said Valancy faintly, eyeing the forefinger. It had a hypnotic effect on her.
“The first is this. If you will leave this this ”
“House,” interjected Roaring Abel. “H-o-u-s-e. Troubled with an impediment in your speech, ain’t you, Mister?”
“ this place and return to your home, Mr. James Stirling will himself pay for a good nurse to come here and wait on Miss Gay.”
Back of her terror Valancy smiled in secret. Uncle James must indeed regard the matter as desperate when he would loosen his purse-strings like that. At any rate, her clan no longer despised her or ignored her. She had become important to them.
“That’s my business, Mister,” said Abel. “Miss Stirling can go if she pleases, or stay if she pleases. I made a fair bargain with her, and she’s free to conclude it when she likes. She gives me meals that stick to my ribs. She don’t forget to put salt in the porridge. She never slams doors, and when she has nothing to say she don’t talk. That’s uncanny in a woman, you know, Mister. I’m satisfied. If she isn’t, she’s free to go. But no woman comes here in Jim Stirling’s pay. If any one does” Abel’s voice was uncannily bland and polite “I’ll spatter the road with her brains. Tell him that with A. Gay’s compliments.”
“Dr. Stalling, a nurse is not what Cissy needs,” said Valancy earnestly. “She isn’t so ill as that, yet. What she wants is companionship somebody she knows and likes just to live with her. You can understand that, I’m sure.”
“I understand that your motive is quite ahem commendable.” Dr. Stalling felt that he was very broad-minded indeed especially as in his secret soul he did not believe Valancy’s motive was commendable. He hadn’t the least idea what she was up to, but he was sure her motive was not commendable. When he could not understand a thing he straightway condemned it. Simplicity itself! “But your first duty is to your mother. She needs you. She implores you to come home she will forgive everything if you will only come home.”
“That’s a pretty little thought,” remarked Abel meditatively, as he ground some tobacco up in his hand.
Dr. Stalling ignored him.
“She entreats, but I, Miss Stirling,” Dr. Stalling remembered that he was an ambassador of Jehovah “I command. As your pastor and spiritual guide, I command you to come home with me this very day. Get your hat and coat and come now.”
Dr. Stalling shook his finger at Valancy. Before that pitiless finger she drooped and wilted visibly.
“She’s giving in,” thought Roaring Abel. “She’ll go with him. Beats all, the power these preacher fellows have over women.”
Valancy was on the point of obeying Dr. Stalling. She must go home with him and give up. She would lapse back to Doss Stirling again and for her few remaining days or weeks be the cowed, futile creature she had always been. It was her fate typified by that relentless, uplifted forefinger. She could no more escape from it than Roaring Abel from his predestination. She eyed it as the fascinated bird eyes the snake. Another moment
“Fear is the original sin,” suddenly said a still, small voice away back back back of Valancy’s consciousness. “Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.”
Valancy stood up. She was still in the clutches of fear, but her soul was her own again. She would not be false to that inner voice.
“Dr. Stalling,” she said slowly, “I do not at present owe any duty to my mother. She is quite well; she has all the assistance and companionship she requires; she does not need me at all. I am needed here. I am going to stay here.”
“There’s spunk for you,” said Roaring Abel admiringly.
Dr. Stalling dropped his forefinger. One could not keep on shaking a finger forever.
“Miss Stirling, is there nothing that can influence you? Do you remember your childhood days ”
“Perfectly. And hate them.”
“Do you realise what people will say? What they are saying?”
“I can imagine it,” said Valancy, with a shrug of her shoulders. She was suddenly free of fear again. “I haven’t listened to the gossip of Deerwood teaparties and sewing circles twenty years for nothing. But, Dr. Stalling, it doesn’t matter in the least to me what they say not in the least.”
Dr. Stalling went away then. A girl who cared nothing for public opinion! Over whom sacred family ties had no restraining influence! Who hated her childhood memories!
Then Cousin Georgiana came on her own initiative, for nobody would have thought it worth while to send her. She found Valancy alone, weeding the little vegetable garden she had planted, and she made all the platitudinous pleas she could think of. Valancy heard her patiently. Cousin Georgiana wasn’t such a bad old soul. Then she said:
“And now that you have got all that out of your system, Cousin Georgiana, can you tell me how to make creamed codfish so that it will not be as thick as porridge and as salt as the Dead Sea?”
“We’ll just have to wait,” said Uncle Benjamin. “After all, Cissy Gay can’t live long. Dr. Marsh tells me she may drop off any day.”
Mrs. Frederick wept. It would really have been so much easier to bear if Valancy had died. She could have worn mourning then.