CHAPTER XIV

Life cannot stop because tragedy enters it. Meals must be made ready

though a son dies and porches must be repaired even if your only

daughter is going out of her mind. Mrs. Frederick, in her systematic

way, had long ago appointed the second week in June for the repairing

of the front porch, the roof of which was sagging dangerously. Roaring

Abel had been engaged to do it many moons before and Roaring Abel

promptly appeared on the morning of the first day of the second week,

and fell to work. Of course he was drunk. Roaring Abel was never

anything but drunk. But he was only in the first stage, which made him

talkative and genial. The odour of whisky on his breath nearly drove

Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles wild at dinner. Even Valancy, with

all her emancipation, did not like it. But she liked Abel and she liked

his vivid, eloquent talk, and after she washed the dinner dishes she

went out and sat on the steps and talked to him.

Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles thought it a terrible proceeding,

but what could they do? Valancy only smiled mockingly at them when they

called her in, and did not go. It was so easy to defy once you got

started. The first step was the only one that really counted. They were

both afraid to say anything more to her lest she might make a scene

before Roaring Abel, who would spread it all over the country with his

own characteristic comments and exaggerations. It was too cold a day,

in spite of the June sunshine, for Mrs. Frederick to sit at the

dining-room window and listen to what was said. She had to shut the

window and Valancy and Roaring Abel had their talk to themselves. But

if Mrs. Frederick had known what the outcome of that talk was to be she

would have prevented it, if the porch was never repaired.

Valancy sat on the steps, defiant of the chill breeze of this cold June

which had made Aunt Isabel aver the seasons were changing. She did not

care whether she caught a cold or not. It was delightful to sit there

in that cold, beautiful, fragrant world and feel free. She filled her

lungs with the clean, lovely wind and held out her arms to it and let

it tear her hair to pieces while she listened to Roaring Abel, who told

her his troubles between intervals of hammering gaily in time to his

Scotch songs. Valancy liked to hear him. Every stroke of his hammer

fell true to the note.

Old Abel Gay, in spite of his seventy years, was handsome still, in a

stately, patriarchal manner. His tremendous beard, falling down over

his blue flannel shirt, was still a flaming, untouched red, though his

shock of hair was white as snow, and his eyes were a fiery, youthful

blue. His enormous, reddish-white eyebrows were more like moustaches

than eyebrows. Perhaps this was why he always kept his upper lip

scrupulously shaved. His cheeks were red and his nose ought to have

been, but wasn’t. It was a fine, upstanding, aquiline nose, such as the

noblest Roman of them all might have rejoiced in. Abel was six feet two

in his stockings, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped. In his youth he had

been a famous lover, finding all women too charming to bind himself to

one. His years had been a wild, colourful panorama of follies and

adventures, gallantries, fortunes and misfortunes. He had been

forty-five before he married—a pretty slip of a girl whom his goings-on

killed in a few years. Abel was piously drunk at her funeral and

insisted on repeating the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah—Abel knew most

of the Bible and all the Psalms by heart—while the minister, whom he

disliked, prayed or tried to pray. Thereafter his house was run by an

untidy old cousin who cooked his meals and kept things going after a

fashion. In this unpromising environment little Cecilia Gay had grown

up.

Valancy had known “Cissy Gay” fairly well in the democracy of the

public school, though Cissy had been three years younger than she.

After they left school their paths diverged and she had seen nothing of

her. Old Abel was a Presbyterian. That is, he got a Presbyterian

preacher to marry him, baptise his child and bury his wife; and he knew

more about Presbyterian theology than most ministers, which made him a

terror to them in arguments. But Roaring Abel never went to church.

Every Presbyterian minister who had been in Deerwood had tried his

hand—once—at reforming Roaring Abel. But he had not been pestered of

late. Rev. Mr. Bently had been in Deerwood for eight years, but he had

not sought out Roaring Abel since the first three months of his

pastorate. He had called on Roaring Abel then and found him in the

theological stage of drunkenness—which always followed the sentimental

maudlin one, and preceded the roaring, blasphemous one. The eloquently

prayerful one, in which he realised himself temporarily and intensely

as a sinner in the hands of an angry God, was the final one. Abel never

went beyond it. He generally fell asleep on his knees and awakened

sober, but he had never been “dead drunk” in his life. He told Mr.

Bently that he was a sound Presbyterian and sure of his election. He

had no sins—that he knew of—to repent of.

“Have you never done anything in your life that you are sorry for?”

asked Mr. Bently.

Roaring Abel scratched his bushy white head and pretended to reflect.

“Well, yes,” he said finally. “There were some women I might have

kissed and didn’t. I’ve always been sorry for _that_.”

Mr. Bently went out and went home.

Abel had seen that Cissy was properly baptised—jovially drunk at the

same time himself. He made her go to church and Sunday School

regularly. The church people took her up and she was in turn a member

of the Mission Band, the Girls’ Guild and the Young Women’s Missionary

Society. She was a faithful, unobtrusive, sincere, little worker.

Everybody liked Cissy Gay and was sorry for her. She was so modest and

sensitive and pretty in that delicate, elusive fashion of beauty which

fades so quickly if life is not kept in it by love and tenderness. But

then liking and pity did not prevent them from tearing her in pieces

like hungry cats when the catastrophe came. Four years previously Cissy

Gay had gone up to a Muskoka hotel as a summer waitress. And when she

had come back in the fall she was a changed creature. She hid herself

away and went nowhere. The reason soon leaked out and scandal raged.

That winter Cissy’s baby was born. Nobody ever knew who the father was.

Cecily kept her poor pale lips tightly locked on her sorry secret.

Nobody dared ask Roaring Abel any questions about it. Rumour and

surmise laid the guilt at Barney Snaith’s door because diligent inquiry

among the other maids at the hotel revealed the fact that nobody there

had ever seen Cissy Gay “with a fellow.” She had “kept herself to

herself” they said, rather resentfully. “Too good for _our_ dances. And

now look!”

The baby had lived for a year. After its death Cissy faded away. Two

years ago Dr. Marsh had given her only six months to live—her lungs

were hopelessly diseased. But she was still alive. Nobody went to see

her. Women would not go to Roaring Abel’s house. Mr. Bently had gone

once, when he knew Abel was away, but the dreadful old creature who was

scrubbing the kitchen floor told him Cissy wouldn’t see any one. The

old cousin had died and Roaring Abel had had two or three disreputable

housekeepers—the only kind who could be prevailed on to go to a house

where a girl was dying of consumption. But the last one had left and

Roaring Abel had now no one to wait on Cissy and “do” for him. This was

the burden of his plaint to Valancy and he condemned the “hypocrites”

of Deerwood and its surrounding communities with some rich, meaty oaths

that happened to reach Cousin Stickles’ ears as she passed through the

hall and nearly finished the poor lady. Was Valancy listening to

_that_?

Valancy hardly noticed the profanity. Her attention was focussed on the

horrible thought of poor, unhappy, disgraced little Cissy Gay, ill and

helpless in that forlorn old house out on the Mistawis road, without a

soul to help or comfort her. And this in a nominally Christian

community in the year of grace nineteen and some odd!

“Do you mean to say that Cissy is all alone there now, with nobody to

do anything for her—_nobody_?”

“Oh, she can move about a bit and get a bite and sup when she wants it.

But she can’t work. It’s d——d hard for a man to work hard all day and

go home at night tired and hungry and cook his own meals. Sometimes I’m

sorry I kicked old Rachel Edwards out.” Abel described Rachel

picturesquely.

“Her face looked as if it had wore out a hundred bodies. And she moped.

Talk about temper! Temper’s nothing to moping. She was too slow to

catch worms, and dirty—d——d dirty. I ain’t unreasonable—I know a man

has to eat his peck before he dies—but she went over the limit. What

d’ye sp’ose I saw that lady do? She’d made some punkin jam—had it on

the table in glass jars with the tops off. The dawg got up on the table

and stuck his paw into one of them. What did she do? She jest took holt

of the dawg and wrung the syrup off his paw back into the jar! Then

screwed the top on and set it in the pantry. I sets open the door and

says to her, ‘Go!’ The dame went, and I fired the jars of punkin after

her, two at a time. Thought I’d die laughing to see old Rachel run—with

them punkin jars raining after her. She’s told everywhere I’m crazy, so

nobody’ll come for love or money.”

“But Cissy _must_ have some one to look after her,” insisted Valancy,

whose mind was centred on this aspect of the case. She did not care

whether Roaring Abel had any one to cook for him or not. But her heart

was wrung for Cecilia Gay.

“Oh, she gits on. Barney Snaith always drops in when he’s passing and

does anything she wants done. Brings her oranges and flowers and

things. There’s a Christian for you. Yet that sanctimonious, snivelling

parcel of St. Andrew’s people wouldn’t be seen on the same side of the

road with him. Their dogs’ll go to heaven before they do. And their

minister—slick as if the cat had licked him!”

“There are plenty of good people, both in St. Andrew’s and St.

George’s, who would be kind to Cissy if _you_ would behave yourself,”

said Valancy severely. “They’re afraid to go near your place.”

“Because I’m such a sad old dog? But I don’t bite—never bit any one in

my life. A few loose words spilled around don’t hurt any one. And I’m

not asking people to come. Don’t want ’em poking and prying about. What

I want is a housekeeper. If I shaved every Sunday and went to church

I’d get all the housekeepers I’d want. I’d be respectable then. But

what’s the use of going to church when it’s all settled by

predestination? Tell me that, Miss.”

“Is it?” said Valancy.

“Yes. Can’t git around it nohow. Wish I could. I don’t want either

heaven or hell for steady. Wish a man could have ’em mixed in equal

proportions.”

“Isn’t that the way it is in this world?” said Valancy

thoughtfully—but rather as if her thought was concerned with something

else than theology.

“No, no,” boomed Abel, striking a tremendous blow on a stubborn nail.

“There’s too much hell here—entirely too much hell. That’s why I get

drunk so often. It sets you free for a little while—free from

yourself—yes, by God, free from predestination. Ever try it?”

“No, I’ve another way of getting free,” said Valancy absently. “But

about Cissy now. She _must_ have some one to look after her——”

“What are you harping on Sis for? Seems to me you ain’t bothered much

about her up to now. You never even come to see her. And she used to

like you so well.”

“I should have,” said Valancy. “But never mind. You couldn’t

understand. The point is—you must have a housekeeper.”

“Where am I to get one? I can pay decent wages if I could get a decent

woman. D’ye think I like old hags?”

“Will I do?” said Valancy.