CHAPTER XXVIII

Summer passed by. The Stirling clan—with the insignificant exception of

Cousin Georgiana—had tacitly agreed to follow Uncle James’ example and

look upon Valancy as one dead. To be sure, Valancy had an unquiet,

ghostly habit of recurring resurrections when she and Barney clattered

through Deerwood and out to the Port in that unspeakable car. Valancy,

bareheaded, with stars in her eyes. Barney, bareheaded, smoking his

pipe. But shaved. Always shaved now, if any of them had noticed it.

They even had the audacity to go in to Uncle Benjamin’s store to buy

groceries. Twice Uncle Benjamin ignored them. Was not Valancy one of

the dead? While Snaith had never existed. But the third time he told

Barney he was a scoundrel who should be hung for luring an unfortunate,

weak-minded girl away from her home and friends.

Barney’s one straight eyebrow went up.

“I have made her happy,” he said coolly, “and she was miserable with

her friends. So that’s that.”

Uncle Benjamin stared. It had never occurred to him that women had to

be, or ought to be, “made happy.”

“You—you pup!” he said.

“Why be so unoriginal?” queried Barney amiably. “Anybody could call me

a pup. Why not think of something worthy of the Stirlings? Besides, I’m

not a pup. I’m really quite a middle-aged dog. Thirty-five, if you’re

interested in knowing.”

Uncle Benjamin remembered just in time that Valancy was dead. He turned

his back on Barney.

Valancy _was_ happy—gloriously and entirely so. She seemed to be living

in a wonderful house of life and every day opened a new, mysterious

room. It was in a world which had nothing in common with the one she

had left behind—a world where time was not—which was young with

immortal youth—where there was neither past nor future but only the

present. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of it.

The absolute freedom of it all was unbelievable. They could do exactly

as they liked. No Mrs. Grundy. No traditions. No relatives. Or in-laws.

“Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away,” as Barney quoted

shamelessly.

Valancy had gone home once and got her cushions. And Cousin Georgiana

had given her one of her famous candlewick spreads of most elaborate

design. “For your spare-room bed, dear,” she said.

“But I haven’t got any spare-room,” said Valancy.

Cousin Georgiana looked horrified. A house without a spare-room was

monstrous to her.

“But it’s a lovely spread,” said Valancy, with a kiss, “and I’m so glad

to have it. I’ll put it on my own bed. Barney’s old patch-work quilt is

getting ragged.”

“I don’t see how you can be contented to live up back,” sighed Cousin

Georgiana. “It’s so out of the world.”

“Contented!” Valancy laughed. What was the use of trying to explain to

Cousin Georgiana. “It is,” she agreed, “most gloriously and entirely

out of the world.”

“And you are really happy, dear?” asked Cousin Georgiana wistfully.

“I really am,” said Valancy gravely, her eyes dancing.

“Marriage is such a serious thing,” sighed Cousin Georgiana.

“When it’s going to last long,” agreed Valancy.

Cousin Georgiana did not understand this at all. But it worried her and

she lay awake at nights wondering what Valancy meant by it.

Valancy loved her Blue Castle and was completely satisfied with it. The

big living-room had three windows, all commanding exquisite views of

exquisite Mistawis. The one in the end of the room was an oriel

window—which Tom MacMurray, Barney explained, had got out of some

little, old “up back” church that had been sold. It faced the west and

when the sunsets flooded it Valancy’s whole being knelt in prayer as if

in some great cathedral. The new moons always looked down through it,

the lower pine boughs swayed about the top of it, and all through the

nights the soft, dim silver of the lake dreamed through it.

There was a stone fireplace on the other side. No desecrating gas

imitation but a real fireplace where you could burn real logs. With a

big grizzly bearskin on the floor before it, and beside it a hideous,

red-plush sofa of Tom MacMurray’s régime. But its ugliness was hidden

by silver-grey timber wolf skins, and Valancy’s cushions made it gay

and comfortable. In a corner a nice, tall, lazy old clock ticked—the

right kind of a clock. One that did not hurry the hours away but ticked

them off deliberately. It was the jolliest looking old clock. A fat,

corpulent clock with a great, round, man’s face painted on it, the

hands stretching out of its nose and the hours encircling it like a

halo.

There was a big glass case of stuffed owls and several deer

heads—likewise of Tom MacMurray’s vintage. Some comfortable old chairs

that asked to be sat upon. A squat little chair with a cushion was

prescriptively Banjo’s. If anybody else dared sit on it Banjo glared

him out of it with his topaz-hued, black-ringed eyes. Banjo had an

adorable habit of hanging over the back of it, trying to catch his own

tail. Losing his temper because he couldn’t catch it. Giving it a

fierce bite for spite when he _did_ catch it. Yowling malignantly with

pain. Barney and Valancy laughed at him until they ached. But it was

Good Luck they loved. They were both agreed that Good Luck was so

lovable that he practically amounted to an obsession.

One side of the wall was lined with rough, homemade book-shelves filled

with books, and between the two side windows hung an old mirror in a

faded gilt frame, with fat cupids gamboling in the panel over the

glass. A mirror, Valancy thought, that must be like the fabled mirror

into which Venus had once looked and which thereafter reflected as

beautiful every woman who looked into it. Valancy thought she was

almost pretty in that mirror. But that may have been because she had

shingled her hair.

This was before the day of bobs and was regarded as a wild, unheard-of

proceeding—unless you had typhoid. When Mrs. Frederick heard of it she

almost decided to erase Valancy’s name from the family Bible. Barney

cut the hair, square off at the back of Valancy’s neck, bringing it

down in a short black fringe over her forehead. It gave a meaning and a

purpose to her little, three-cornered face that it never had possessed

before. Even her nose ceased to irritate her. Her eyes were bright, and

her sallow skin had cleared to the hue of creamy ivory. The old family

joke had come true—she was really fat at last—anyway, no longer skinny.

Valancy might never be beautiful, but she was of the type that looks

its best in the woods—elfin—mocking—alluring.

Her heart bothered her very little. When an attack threatened she was

generally able to head it off with Dr. Trent’s prescription. The only

bad one she had was one night when she was temporarily out of medicine.

And it _was_ a bad one. For the time being, Valancy realised keenly

that death was actually waiting to pounce on her any moment. But the

rest of the time she would not—did not—let herself remember it at all.