CHAPTER XXIII
On one of Cissy’s wakeful nights, she told Valancy her poor little story. They were sitting by the open window. Cissy could not get her breath lying down that night. An inglorious gibbous moon was hanging over the wooded hills and in its spectral light Cissy looked frail and lovely and incredibly young. A child. It did not seem possible that she could have lived through all the passion and pain and shame of her story.
“He was stopping at the hotel across the lake. He used to come over in his canoe at night we met in the pines down the shore. He was a young college student his father was a rich man in Toronto. Oh, Valancy, I didn’t mean to be bad I didn’t, indeed. But I loved him so I love him yet I’ll always love him. And I didn’t know some things. I didn’t understand. Then his father came and took him away. And after a little I found out oh, Valancy, I was so frightened. I didn’t know what to do. I wrote him and he came. He he said he would marry me, Valancy.”
“And why and why? ”
“Oh, Valancy, he didn’t love me any more. I saw that at a glance. He he was just offering to marry me because he thought he ought to because he was sorry for me. He wasn’t bad but he was so young and what was I that he should keep on loving me?”
“Never mind making excuses for him,” said Valancy a bit shortly. “So you wouldn’t marry him?”
“I couldn’t not when he didn’t love me any more. Somehow I can’t explain it seemed a worse thing to do than the other. He he argued a little but he went away. Do you think I did right, Valancy?”
“Yes, I do. You did right. But he ”
“Don’t blame him, dear. Please don’t. Let’s not talk about him at all. There’s no need. I wanted to tell you how it was I didn’t want you to think me bad ”
“I never did think so.”
“Yes, I felt that whenever you came. Oh, Valancy, what you’ve been to me! I can never tell you but God will bless you for it. I know He will ‘with what measure ye mete.’”
Cissy sobbed for a few minutes in Valancy’s arms. Then she wiped her eyes.
“Well, that’s almost all. I came home. I wasn’t really so very unhappy. I suppose I should have been but I wasn’t. Father wasn’t hard on me. And my baby was so sweet while he lived. I was even happy I loved him so much, the dear little thing. He was so sweet, Valancy with such lovely blue eyes and little rings of pale gold hair like silk floss and tiny dimpled hands. I used to bite his satin-smooth little face all over softly, so as not to hurt him, you know ”
“I know,” said Valancy, wincing. “I know a woman always knows and dreams ”
“And he was all mine. Nobody else had any claim on him. When he died, oh, Valancy, I thought I must die too I didn’t see how anybody could endure such anguish and live. To see his dear little eyes and know he would never open them again to miss his warm little body nestled against mine at night and think of him sleeping alone and cold, his wee face under the hard frozen earth. It was so awful for the first year after that it was a little easier, one didn’t keep thinking ‘this day last year’ but I was so glad when I found out I was dying.”
“‘Who could endure life if it were not for the hope of death?’” murmured Valancy softly it was of course a quotation from some book of John Foster’s.
“I’m glad I’ve told you all about it,” sighed Cissy. “I wanted you to know.”
Cissy died a few nights after that. Roaring Abel was away. When Valancy saw the change that had come over Cissy’s face she wanted to telephone for the doctor. But Cissy wouldn’t let her.
“Valancy, why should you? He can do nothing for me. I’ve known for several days that this was near. Let me die in peace, dear just holding your hand. Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. Tell Father good-bye for me. He’s always been as good to me as he knew how and Barney. Somehow, I think that Barney ”
But a spasm of coughing interrupted and exhausted her. She fell asleep when it was over, still holding to Valancy’s hand. Valancy sat there in the silence. She was not frightened or even sorry. At sunrise Cissy died. She opened her eyes and looked past Valancy at something something that made her smile suddenly and happily. And, smiling, she died.
Valancy crossed Cissy’s hands on her breast and went to the open window. In the eastern sky, amid the fires of sunrise, an old moon was hanging as slender and lovely as a new moon. Valancy had never seen an old, old moon before. She watched it pale and fade until it paled and faded out of sight in the living rose of day. A little pool in the barrens shone in the sunrise like a great golden lily.
But the world suddenly seemed a colder place to Valancy. Again nobody needed her. She was not in the least sorry Cecilia was dead. She was only sorry for all her suffering in life. But nobody could ever hurt her again. Valancy had always thought death dreadful. But Cissy had died so quietly so pleasantly. And at the very last something had made up to her for everything. She was lying there now, in her white sleep, looking like a child. Beautiful! All the lines of shame and pain gone.
Roaring Abel drove in, justifying his name. Valancy went down and told him. The shock sobered him at once. He slumped down on the seat of his buggy, his great head hanging.
“Cissy dead Cissy dead,” he said vacantly. “I didn’t think it would ‘a’ come so soon. Dead. She used to run down the lane to meet me with a little white rose stuck in her hair. Cissy used to be a pretty little girl. And a good little girl.”
“She has always been a good little girl,” said Valancy.
CHAPTER XXIV
Valancy herself made Cissy ready for burial. No hands but hers should touch that pitiful, wasted little body. The old house was spotless on the day of the funeral. Barney Snaith was not there. He had done all he could to help Valancy before it he had shrouded the pale Cecilia in white roses from the garden and then had gone back to his island. But everybody else was there. All Deerwood and “up back” came. They forgave Cissy splendidly at last. Mr. Bradly gave a very beautiful funeral address. Valancy had wanted her old Free Methodist man, but Roaring Abel was obdurate. He was a Presbyterian and no one but a Presbyterian minister should bury his daughter. Mr. Bradly was very tactful. He avoided all dubious points and it was plain to be seen he hoped for the best. Six reputable citizens of Deerwood bore Cecilia Gay to her grave in decorous Deerwood cemetery. Among them was Uncle Wellington.
The Stirlings all came to the funeral, men and women. They had had a family conclave over it. Surely now that Cissy Gay was dead Valancy would come home. She simply could not stay there with Roaring Abel. That being the case, the wisest course decreed Uncle James was to attend the funeral legitimise the whole thing, so to speak show Deerwood that Valancy had really done a most creditable deed in going to nurse poor Cecilia Gay and that her family backed her up in it. Death, the miracle worker, suddenly made the thing quite respectable. If Valancy would return to home and decency while public opinion was under its influence all might yet be well. Society was suddenly forgetting all Cecilia’s wicked doings and remembering what a pretty, modest little thing she had been “and motherless, you know motherless!” It was the psychological moment said Uncle James.
So the Stirlings went to the funeral. Even Cousin Gladys’ neuritis allowed her to come. Cousin Stickles was there, her bonnet dripping all over her face, crying as woefully as if Cissy had been her nearest and dearest. Funerals always brought Cousin Stickles’ “own sad bereavement” back.
And Uncle Wellington was a pall-bearer.
Valancy, pale, subdued-looking, her slanted eyes smudged with purple, in her snuff-brown dress, moving quietly about, finding seats for people, consulting in undertones with minister and undertaker, marshalling the “mourners” into the parlour, was so decorous and proper and Stirlingish that her family took heart of grace. This was not could not be the girl who had sat all night in the woods with Barney Snaith who had gone tearing bareheaded through Deerwood and Port Lawrence. This was the Valancy they knew. Really, surprisingly capable and efficient. Perhaps she had always been kept down a bit too much Amelia really was rather strict hadn’t had a chance to show what was in her. So thought the Stirlings. And Edward Beck, from the Port road, a widower with a large family who was beginning to take notice, took notice of Valancy and thought she might make a mighty fine second wife. No beauty but a fifty-year-old widower, Mr. Beck told himself very reasonably, couldn’t expect everything. Altogether, it seemed that Valancy’s matrimonial chances were never so bright as they were at Cecilia Gay’s funeral.
What the Stirlings and Edward Beck would have thought had they known the back of Valancy’s mind must be left to the imagination. Valancy was hating the funeral hating the people who came to stare with curiosity at Cecilia’s marble-white face hating the smugness hating the dragging, melancholy singing hating Mr. Bradly’s cautious platitudes. If she could have had her absurd way, there would have been no funeral at all. She would have covered Cissy over with flowers, shut her away from prying eyes, and buried her beside her nameless little baby in the grassy burying-ground under the pines of the “up back” church, with a bit of kindly prayer from the old Free Methodist minister. She remembered Cissy saying once, “I wish I could be buried deep in the heart of the woods where nobody would ever come to say, ‘Cissy Gay is buried here,’ and tell over my miserable story.”
But this! However, it would soon be over. Valancy knew, if the Stirlings and Edward Beck didn’t, exactly what she intended to do then. She had lain awake all the preceding night thinking about it and finally deciding on it.
When the funeral procession had left the house, Mrs. Frederick sought out Valancy in the kitchen.
“My child,” she said tremulously, “you’ll come home now?”
“Home,” said Valancy absently. She was getting on an apron and calculating how much tea she must put to steep for supper. There would be several guests from “up back” distant relatives of the Gays’ who had not remembered them for years. And she was so tired she wished she could borrow a pair of legs from the cat.
“Yes, home,” said Mrs. Frederick, with a touch of asperity. “I suppose you won’t dream of staying here now alone with Roaring Abel.”
“Oh, no, I’m not going to stay here,” said Valancy. “Of course, I’ll have to stay for a day or two, to put the house in order generally. But that will be all. Excuse me, Mother, won’t you? I’ve a frightful lot to do all those “up back” people will be here to supper.”
Mrs. Frederick retreated in considerable relief, and the Stirlings went home with lighter hearts.
“We will just treat her as if nothing had happened when she comes back,” decreed Uncle Benjamin. “That will be the best plan. Just as if nothing had happened.”
CHAPTER XXV
On the evening of the day after the funeral Roaring Abel went off for a spree. He had been sober for four whole days and could endure it no longer. Before he went, Valancy told him she would be going away the next day. Roaring Abel was sorry, and said so. A distant cousin from “up back” was coming to keep house for him quite willing to do so now since there was no sick girl to wait on but Abel was not under any delusions concerning her.
“She won’t be like you, my girl. Well, I’m obliged to you. You helped me out of a bad hole and I won’t forget it. And I won’t forget what you did for Cissy. I’m your friend, and if you ever want any of the Stirlings spanked and sot in a corner send for me. I’m going to wet my whistle. Lord, but I’m dry! Don’t reckon I’ll be back afore tomorrow night, so if you’re going home tomorrow, good-bye now.”
“I may go home tomorrow,” said Valancy, “but I’m not going back to Deerwood.”
“Not going ”
“You’ll find the key on the woodshed nail,” interrupted Valancy, politely and unmistakably. “The dog will be in the barn and the cat in the cellar. Don’t forget to feed her till your cousin comes. The pantry is full and I made bread and pies today. Good-bye, Mr. Gay. You have been very kind to me and I appreciate it.”
“We’ve had a d d decent time of it together, and that’s a fact,” said Roaring Abel. “You’re the best small sport in the world, and your little finger is worth the whole Stirling clan tied together. Good-bye and good-luck.”
Valancy went out to the garden. Her legs trembled a little, but otherwise she felt and looked composed. She held something tightly in her hand. The garden was lying in the magic of the warm, odorous July twilight. A few stars were out and the robins were calling through the velvety silences of the barrens. Valancy stood by the gate expectantly. Would he come? If he did not
He was coming. Valancy heard Lady Jane Grey far back in the woods. Her breath came a little more quickly. Nearer and nearer she could see Lady Jane now bumping down the lane nearer nearer he was there he had sprung from the car and was leaning over the gate, looking at her.
“Going home, Miss Stirling?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Valancy slowly. Her mind was made up, with no shadow of turning, but the moment was very tremendous.
“I thought I’d run down and ask if there was anything I could do for you,” said Barney.
Valancy took it with a canter.
“Yes, there is something you can do for me,” she said, evenly and distinctly. “Will you marry me?”
For a moment Barney was silent. There was no particular expression on his face. Then he gave an odd laugh.
“Come, now! I knew luck was just waiting around the corner for me. All the signs have been pointing that way today.”
“Wait.” Valancy lifted her hand. “I’m in earnest but I want to get my breath after that question. Of course, with my bringing up, I realise perfectly well that this is one of the things ‘a lady should not do.’”
“But why why?”
“For two reasons.” Valancy was still a little breathless, but she looked Barney straight in the eyes, while all the dead Stirlings revolved rapidly in their graves and the living ones did nothing because they did not know that Valancy was at that moment proposing lawful marriage to the notorious Barney Snaith. “The first reason is, I I” Valancy tried to say “I love you” but could not. She had to take refuge in a pretended flippancy. “I’m crazy about you. The second is this.”
She handed him Dr. Trent’s letter.
Barney opened it with the air of a man thankful to find some safe, sane thing to do. As he read it his face changed. He understood more perhaps than Valancy wanted him to.
“Are you sure nothing can be done for you?”
Valancy did not misunderstand the question.
“Yes. You know Dr. Trent’s reputation in regard to heart disease. I haven’t long to live perhaps only a few months a few weeks. I want to live them. I can’t go back to Deerwood you know what my life was like there. And” she managed it this time “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. That’s all.”
Barney folded his arms on the gate and looked gravely enough at a white, saucy star that was winking at him just over Roaring Abel’s kitchen chimney.
“You don’t know anything about me. I may be a murderer.”
“No, I don’t. You may be something dreadful. Everything they say of you may be true. But it doesn’t matter to me.”
“You care that much for me, Valancy?” said Barney incredulously, looking away from the star and into her eyes her strange, mysterious eyes.
“I care that much,” said Valancy in a low voice. She was trembling. He had called her by her name for the first time. It was sweeter than another man’s caress could have been just to hear him say her name like that.
“If we are going to get married,” said Barney, speaking suddenly in a casual, matter-of-fact voice, “some things must be understood.”
“Everything must be understood,” said Valancy.
“I have things I want to hide,” said Barney coolly. “You are not to ask me about them.”
“I won’t,” said Valancy.
“You must never ask to see my mail.”
“Never.”
“And we are never to pretend anything to each other.”
“We won’t,” said Valancy. “You won’t even have to pretend you like me. If you marry me I know you’re only doing it out of pity.”
“And we’ll never tell a lie to each other about anything a big lie or a petty lie.”
“Especially a petty lie,” agreed Valancy.
“And you’ll have to live back on my island. I won’t live anywhere else.”
“That’s partly why I want to marry you,” said Valancy.
Barney peered at her.
“I believe you mean it. Well let’s get married, then.”
“Thank you,” said Valancy, with a sudden return of primness. She would have been much less embarrassed if he had refused her.
“I suppose I haven’t any right to make conditions. But I’m going to make one. You are never to refer to my heart or my liability to sudden death. You are never to urge me to be careful. You are to forget absolutely forget that I’m not perfectly healthy. I have written a letter to my mother here it is you are to keep it. I have explained everything in it. If I drop dead suddenly as I likely will do ”
“It will exonerate me in the eyes of your kindred from the suspicion of having poisoned you,” said Barney with a grin.
“Exactly.” Valancy laughed gaily. “Dear me, I’m glad this is over. It has been a bit of an ordeal. You see, I’m not in the habit of going about asking men to marry me. It is so nice of you not to refuse me or offer to be a brother!”
“I’ll go to the Port tomorrow and get a license. We can be married tomorrow evening. Dr. Stalling, I suppose?”
“Heavens, no.” Valancy shuddered. “Besides, he wouldn’t do it. He’d shake his forefinger at me and I’d jilt you at the altar. No, I want my old Mr. Towers to marry me.”
“Will you marry me as I stand?” demanded Barney. A passing car, full of tourists, honked loudly it seemed derisively. Valancy looked at him. Blue homespun shirt, nondescript hat, muddy overalls. Unshaved!
“Yes,” she said.
Barney put his hands over the gate and took her little, cold ones gently in his.
“Valancy,” he said, trying to speak lightly, “of course I’m not in love with you never thought of such a thing as being in love. But, do you know, I’ve always thought you were a bit of a dear.”