CHAPTER VI

The ordeal was not so dreadful, after all. Dr. Trent was as gruff and

abrupt as usual, but he did not tell her her ailment was imaginary. After

he had listened to her symptoms and asked a few questions and made a

quick examination, he sat for a moment looking at her quite intently.

Valancy thought he looked as if he were sorry for her. She caught her

breath for a moment. Was the trouble serious? Oh, it couldn’t be,

surely—it really hadn’t bothered her _much_—only lately it had got a

little worse.

Dr. Trent opened his mouth—but before he could speak the telephone at

his elbow rang sharply. He picked up the receiver. Valancy, watching

him, saw his face change suddenly as he listened,

“’Lo—yes—yes—_what_?—yes—yes”—a brief interval—“My God!”

Dr. Trent dropped the receiver, dashed out of the room and upstairs

without even a glance at Valancy. She heard him rushing madly about

overhead, barking out a few remarks to somebody—presumably his

housekeeper. Then he came tearing downstairs with a club bag in his

hand, snatched his hat and coat from the rack, jerked open the street

door and rushed down the street in the direction of the station.

Valancy sat alone in the little office, feeling more absolutely foolish

than she had ever felt before in her life. Foolish—and humiliated. So

this was all that had come of her heroic determination to live up to

John Foster and cast fear aside. Not only was she a failure as a

relative and non-existent as a sweetheart or friend, but she was not

even of any importance as a patient. Dr. Trent had forgotten her very

presence in his excitement over whatever message had come by the

telephone. She had gained nothing by ignoring Uncle James and flying in

the face of family tradition.

For a moment she was afraid she was going to cry. It _was_ all

so—ridiculous. Then she heard Dr. Trent’s housekeeper coming down the

stairs. Valancy rose and went to the office door.

“The doctor forgot all about me,” she said with a twisted smile.

“Well, that’s too bad,” said Mrs. Patterson sympathetically. “But it

wasn’t much wonder, poor man. That was a telegram they ’phoned over

from the Port. His son has been terribly injured in an auto accident in

Montreal. The doctor had just ten minutes to catch the train. I don’t

know what he’ll do if anything happens to Ned—he’s just bound up in the

boy. You’ll have to come again, Miss Stirling. I hope it’s nothing

serious.”

“Oh, no, nothing serious,” agreed Valancy. She felt a little less

humiliated. It was no wonder poor Dr. Trent had forgotten her at such a

moment. Nevertheless, she felt very flat and discouraged as she went

down the street.

Valancy went home by the short-cut of Lover’s Lane. She did not often

go through Lover’s Lane—but it was getting near supper-time and it

would never do to be late. Lover’s Lane wound back of the village,

under great elms and maples, and deserved its name. It was hard to go

there at any time and not find some canoodling couple—or young girls in

pairs, arms intertwined, earnestly talking over their little secrets.

Valancy didn’t know which made her feel more self-conscious and

uncomfortable.

This evening she encountered both. She met Connie Hale and Kate Bayley,

in new pink organdy dresses with flowers stuck coquettishly in their

glossy, bare hair. Valancy had never had a pink dress or worn flowers

in her hair. Then she passed a young couple she didn’t know, dandering

along, oblivious to everything but themselves. The young man’s arm was

around the girl’s waist quite shamelessly. Valancy had never walked

with a man’s arm about her. She felt that she ought to be shocked—they

might leave that sort of thing for the screening twilight, at least—but

she wasn’t shocked. In another flash of desperate, stark honesty she

owned to herself that she was merely envious. When she passed them she

felt quite sure they were laughing at her—pitying her—“there’s that

queer little old maid, Valancy Stirling. They say she never had a beau

in her whole life”—Valancy fairly ran to get out of Lover’s Lane. Never

had she felt so utterly colourless and skinny and insignificant.

Just where Lover’s Lane debouched on the street, an old car was parked.

Valancy knew that car well—by sound, at least—and everybody in Deerwood

knew it. This was before the phrase “tin Lizzie” had come into

circulation—in Deerwood, at least; but if it had been known, this car

was the tinniest of Lizzies—though it was not a Ford but an old Grey

Slosson. Nothing more battered and disreputable could be imagined.

It was Barney Snaith’s car and Barney himself was just scrambling up

from under it, in overalls plastered with mud. Valancy gave him a

swift, furtive look as she hurried by. This was only the second time

she had ever seen the notorious Barney Snaith, though she had heard

enough about him in the five years that he had been living “up back” in

Muskoka. The first time had been nearly a year ago, on the Muskoka

road. He had been crawling out from under his car then, too, and he had

given her a cheerful grin as she went by—a little, whimsical grin that

gave him the look of an amused gnome. He didn’t look bad—she didn’t

believe he was bad, in spite of the wild yarns that were always being

told of him. Of course he went tearing in that terrible old Grey

Slosson through Deerwood at hours when all decent people were in

bed—often with old “Roaring Abel,” who made the night hideous with his

howls—“both of them dead drunk, my dear.” And every one knew that he

was an escaped convict and a defaulting bank clerk and a murderer in

hiding and an infidel and an illegitimate son of old Roaring Abel Gay

and the father of Roaring Abel’s illegitimate grandchild and a

counterfeiter and a forger and a few other awful things. But still

Valancy didn’t believe he was bad. Nobody with a smile like that could

be bad, no matter what he had done.

It was that night the Prince of the Blue Castle changed from a being of

grim jaw and hair with a dash of premature grey to a rakish individual

with overlong, tawny hair, dashed with red, dark-brown eyes, and ears

that stuck out just enough to give him an alert look but not enough to

be called flying jibs. But he still retained something a little grim

about the jaw.

Barney Snaith looked even more disreputable than usual just now. It was

very evident that he hadn’t shaved for days, and his hands and arms,

bare to the shoulders, were black with grease. But he was whistling

gleefully to himself and he seemed so happy that Valancy envied him.

She envied him his light-heartedness and his irresponsibility and his

mysterious little cabin up on an island in Lake Mistawis—even his

rackety old Grey Slosson. Neither he nor his car had to be respectable

and live up to traditions. When he rattled past her a few minutes

later, bareheaded, leaning back in his Lizzie at a raffish angle, his

longish hair blowing in the wind, a villainous-looking old black pipe

in his mouth, she envied him again. Men had the best of it, no doubt

about that. This outlaw was happy, whatever he was or wasn’t. She,

Valancy Stirling, respectable, well-behaved to the last degree, was

unhappy and had always been unhappy. So there you were.

Valancy was just in time for supper. The sun had clouded over, and a

dismal, drizzling rain was falling again. Cousin Stickles had the

neuralgia. Valancy had to do the family darning and there was no time

for _Magic of Wings_.

“Can’t the darning wait till tomorrow?” she pleaded.

“Tomorrow will bring its own duties,” said Mrs. Frederick inexorably.

Valancy darned all the evening and listened to Mrs. Frederick and

Cousin Stickles talking the eternal, niggling gossip of the clan, as

they knitted drearily at interminable black stockings. They discussed

Second Cousin Lilian’s approaching wedding in all its bearings. On the

whole, they approved. Second Cousin Lilian was doing well for herself.

“Though she hasn’t hurried,” said Cousin Stickles. “She must be

twenty-five.”

“There have not—fortunately—been many old maids in our connection,”

said Mrs. Frederick bitterly.

Valancy flinched. She had run the darning needle into her finger.

Third Cousin Aaron Gray had been scratched by a cat and had

blood-poisoning in his finger. “Cats are most dangerous animals,” said

Mrs. Frederick. “I would never have a cat about the house.”

She glared significantly at Valancy through her terrible glasses. Once,

five years ago, Valancy had asked if she might have a cat. She had

never referred to it since, but Mrs. Frederick still suspected her of

harbouring the unlawful desire in her heart of hearts.

Once Valancy sneezed. Now, in the Stirling code, it was very bad form

to sneeze in public.

“You can always repress a sneeze by pressing your finger on your upper

lip,” said Mrs. Frederick rebukingly.

Half-past nine o’clock and so, as Mr. Pepys would say, to bed. But

First Cousin Stickles’ neuralgic back must be rubbed with Redfern’s

Liniment. Valancy did that. Valancy always had to do it. She hated the

smell of Redfern’s Liniment—she hated the smug, beaming, portly,

be-whiskered, be-spectacled picture of Dr. Redfern on the bottle. Her

fingers smelled of the horrible stuff after she got into bed, in spite

of all the scrubbing she gave them.

Valancy’s day of destiny had come and gone. She ended it as she had

begun it, in tears.