CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVI

Finally Valancy went to bed. Before she went she re-read Dr. Trent’s

letter. It comforted her a little. So positive. So assured. The writing

so black and steady. Not the writing of a man who didn’t know what he

was writing about. But she could not sleep. She pretended to be asleep

when Barney came in. Barney pretended to go to sleep. But Valancy knew

perfectly well he wasn’t sleeping any more than she was. She knew he

was lying there, staring through the darkness. Thinking of what? Trying

to face—what?

Valancy, who had spent so many happy wakeful hours of night lying by

that window, now paid the price of them all in this one night of

misery. A horrible, portentous fact was slowly looming out before her

from the nebula of surmise and fear. She could not shut her eyes to

it—push it away—ignore it.

There could be nothing seriously wrong with her heart, no matter what

Dr. Trent had said. If there had been, those thirty seconds would have

killed her. It was no use to recall Dr. Trent’s letter and reputation.

The greatest specialists made mistakes sometimes. Dr. Trent had made

one.

Towards morning Valancy fell into a fitful doze with ridiculous dreams.

One of them was of Barney taunting her with having tricked him. In her

dream she lost her temper and struck him violently on the head with her

rolling-pin. He proved to be made of glass and shivered into splinters

all over the floor. She woke with a cry of horror—a gasp of relief—a

short laugh over the absurdity of her dream—a miserable sickening

recollection of what had happened.

Barney was gone. Valancy knew, as people sometimes know

things—inescapably, without being told—that he was not in the house or

in Bluebeard’s Chamber either. There was a curious silence in the

living-room. A silence with something uncanny about it. The old clock

had stopped. Barney must have forgotten to wind it up, something he had

never done before. The room without it was dead, though the sunshine

streamed in through the oriel and dimples of light from the dancing

waves beyond quivered over the walls.

The canoe was gone but Lady Jane was under the mainland trees. So

Barney had betaken himself to the wilds. He would not return till

night—perhaps not even then. He must be angry with her. That furious

silence of his must mean anger—cold, deep, justifiable resentment.

Well, Valancy knew what she must do first. She was not suffering very

keenly now. Yet the curious numbness that pervaded her being was in a

way worse than pain. It was as if something in her had died. She forced

herself to cook and eat a little breakfast. Mechanically she put the

Blue Castle in perfect order. Then she put on her hat and coat, locked

the door and hid the key in the hollow of the old pine and crossed to

the mainland in the motor boat. She was going into Deerwood to see Dr.

Trent. She must _know_.