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.


There was a rosebush on the little Stirling lawn, growing beside the gate. It was called "Doss's rosebush." Cousin Georgiana had given it to Valancy five years ago and Valancy had planted it joyfully. She loved roses. But—of course—the rosebush never bloomed. That was her luck. Valancy did everything she could think of and took the advice of everybody in the clan, but still the rosebush would not bloom. It throve and grew luxuriantly, with great leafy branches untouched of rust or spider; but not even a bud had ever appeared on it. Valancy, looking at it two days after her birthday, was filled with a sudden, overwhelming hatred for it. The thing wouldn't bloom: very well, then, she would cut it down. She marched to the tool-room in the barn for her garden knife and she went at the rosebush viciously. A few minutes later horrified Mrs. Frederick came out to the verandah and beheld her daughter slashing insanely among the rosebush boughs. Half of them were already strewn on the walk. The bush looked sadly dismantled.


"Doss, what on earth are you doing? Have you gone crazy?"


"No," said Valancy. She meant to say it defiantly, but habit was too strong for her. She said it deprecatingly. "I—I just made up my mind to cut this bush down. It is no good. It never blooms—never will bloom."


"That is no reason for destroying it," said Mrs. Frederick sternly. "It was a beautiful bush and quite ornamental. You have made a sorry-looking thing of it."


"Rose trees should bloom," said Valancy a little obstinately.


"Don't argue with me, Doss. Clear up that mess and leave the bush alone. I don't know what Georgiana will say when she sees how you have hacked it to pieces. Really, I'm surprised at you. And to do it without consulting me!"


"The bush is mine," muttered Valancy.


"What's that? What did you say, Doss?"


"I only said the bush was mine," repeated Valancy humbly.


Mrs. Frederick turned without a word and marched back into the house. The mischief was done now. Valancy knew she had offended her mother deeply and would not be spoken to or noticed in any way for two or three days. Cousin Stickles would see to Valancy's bringing-up but Mrs. Frederick would preserve the stony silence of outraged majesty.


Valancy sighed and put away her garden knife, hanging it precisely on its precise nail in the tool-shop. She cleared away the severed branches and swept up the leaves. Her lips twitched as she looked at the straggling bush. It had an odd resemblance to its shaken, scrawny donor, little Cousin Georgiana herself.


"I certainly have made an awful-looking thing of it," thought Valancy.


But she did not feel repentant—only sorry she had offended her mother. Things would be so uncomfortable until she was forgiven. Mrs. Frederick was one of those women who can make their anger felt all over a house. Walls and doors are no protection from it.


"You'd better go uptown and git the mail," said Cousin Stickles, when Valancy went in. "I can't go—I feel all sorter peaky and piny this spring. I want you to stop at the drugstore and git me a bottle of Redfern's Blood Bitters. There's nothing like Redfern's Bitters for building a body up. Cousin James says the Purple Pills are the best, but I know better. My poor dear husband took Redfern's Bitters right up to the day he died. Don't let them charge you more'n ninety cents. I kin git it for that at the Port. And what have you been saying to your poor mother? Do you ever stop to think, Doss, that you kin only have one mother?"


"One is enough for me," thought Valancy undutifully, as she went uptown.


She got Cousin Stickles' bottle of bitters and then she went to the post-office and asked for her mail at the General Delivery. Her mother did not have a box. They got too little mail to bother with it. Valancy did not expect any mail, except the Christian Times, which was the only paper they took. They hardly ever got any letters. But Valancy rather liked to stand in the office and watch Mr. Carewe, the grey-bearded, Santa-Clausy old clerk, handing out letters to the lucky people who did get them. He did it with such a detached, impersonal, Jove-like air, as if it did not matter in the least to him what supernal joys or shattering horrors might be in those letters for the people to whom they were addressed. Letters had a fascination for Valancy, perhaps because she so seldom got any. In her Blue Castle exciting epistles, bound with silk and sealed with crimson, were always being brought to her by pages in livery of gold and blue, but in real life her only letters were occasional perfunctory notes from relatives or an advertising circular.


Consequently she was immensely surprised when Mr. Carewe, looking even more Jovian than usual, poked a letter out to her. Yes, it was addressed to her plainly, in a fierce, black hand: "Miss Valancy Stirling, Elm Street, Deerwood"—and the postmark was Montreal. Valancy picked it up with a little quickening of her breath. Montreal! It must be from Doctor Trent. He had remembered her, after all.


Valancy met Uncle Benjamin coming in as she was going out and was glad the letter was safely in her bag.


"What," said Uncle Benjamin, "is the difference between a donkey and a postage-stamp?"


"I don't know. What?" answered Valancy dutifully.


"One you lick with a stick and the other you stick with a lick. Ha, ha!"


Uncle Benjamin passed in, tremendously pleased with himself.


Cousin Stickles pounced on the Times when Valancy got home, but it did not occur to her to ask if there were any letters. Mrs. Frederick would have asked it, but Mrs. Frederick's lips at present were sealed. Valancy was glad of this. If her mother had asked if there were any letters Valancy would have had to admit there was. Then she would have had to let her mother and Cousin Stickles read the letter and all would be discovered.


Her heart acted strangely on the way upstairs, and she sat down by her window for a few minutes before opening her letter. She felt very guilty and deceitful. She had never before kept a letter secret from her mother. Every letter she had ever written or received had been read by Mrs. Frederick. That had never mattered. Valancy had never had anything to hide. But this did matter. She could not have any one see this letter. But her fingers trembled with a consciousness of wickedness and unfilial conduct as she opened it—trembled a little, too, perhaps, with apprehension. She felt quite sure there was nothing seriously wrong with her heart but—one never knew.


Dr. Trent's letter was like himself—blunt, abrupt, concise, wasting no words. Dr. Trent never beat about the bush. "Dear Miss Sterling"—and then a page of black, positive writing. Valancy seemed to read it at a glance; she dropped it on her lap, her face ghost-white.


Dr. Trent told her that she had a very dangerous and fatal form of heart disease—angina pectoris—evidently complicated with an aneurism—whatever that was—and in the last stages. He said, without mincing matters, that nothing could be done for her. If she took great care of herself she might live a year—but she might also die at any moment—Dr. Trent never troubled himself about euphemisms. She must be careful to avoid all excitement and all severe muscular efforts. She must eat and drink moderately, she must never run, she must go upstairs and uphill with great care. Any sudden jolt or shock might be fatal. She was to get the prescription he enclosed filled and carry it with her always, taking a dose whenever her attacks came on. And he was hers truly, H. B. Trent.


Valancy sat for a long while by her window. Outside was a world drowned in the light of a spring afternoon—skies entrancingly blue, winds perfumed and free, lovely, soft, blue hazes at the end of every street. Over at the railway station a group of young girls was waiting for a train; she heard their gay laughter as they chattered and joked. The train roared in and roared out again. But none of these things had any reality. Nothing had any reality except the fact that she had only another year to live.


When she was tired of sitting at the window she went over and lay down on her bed, staring at the cracked, discoloured ceiling. The curious numbness that follows on a staggering blow possessed her. She did not feel anything except a boundless surprise and incredulity—behind which was the conviction that Dr. Trent knew his business and that she, Valancy Stirling, who had never lived, was about to die.


When the gong rang for supper Valancy got up and went downstairs mechanically, from force of habit. She wondered that she had been let alone so long. But of course her mother would not pay any attention to her just now. Valancy was thankful for this. She thought the quarrel over the rosebush had been really, as Mrs. Frederick herself might have said, Providential. She could not eat anything, but both Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles thought this was because she was deservedly unhappy over her mother's attitude, and her lack of appetite was not commented on. Valancy forced herself to swallow a cup of tea and then sat and watched the others eat, with an odd feeling that years had passed since she had sat with them at the dinner-table. She found herself smiling inwardly to think what a commotion she could make if she chose. Let her merely tell them what was in Dr. Trent's letter and there would be as much fuss made as if—Valancy thought bitterly—they really cared two straws about her.


"Dr. Trent's housekeeper got word from him today," said Cousin Stickles, so suddenly that Valancy jumped guiltily. Was there anything in thought waves? "Mrs. Judd was talking to her uptown. They think his son will recover, but Dr. Trent wrote that if he did he was going to take him abroad as soon as he was able to travel and wouldn't be back here for a year at least."


"That will not matter much to us," said Mrs. Frederick majestically. "He is not our doctor. I would not"—here she looked or seemed to look accusingly right through Valancy—"have him to doctor a sick cat."


"May I go upstairs and lie down?" said Valancy faintly. "I—I have a headache."


"What has given you a headache?" asked Cousin Stickles, since Mrs. Frederick would not. The question had to be asked. Valancy could not be allowed to have headaches without interference.


"You ain't in the habit of having headaches. I hope you're not taking the mumps. Here, try a spoonful of vinegar."


"Piffle!" said Valancy rudely, getting up from the table. She did not care just then if she were rude. She had had to be so polite all her life.


If it had been possible for Cousin Stickles to turn pale she would have. As it was not, she turned yellower.


"Are you sure you ain't feverish, Doss? You sound like it. You go and get right into bed," said Cousin Stickles, thoroughly alarmed, "and I'll come up and rub your forehead and the back of your neck with Redfern's Liniment."


Valancy had reached the door, but she turned. "I won't be rubbed with Redfern's Liniment!" she said.


Cousin Stickles stared and gasped. "What—what do you mean?"


"I said I wouldn't be rubbed with Redfern's Liniment," repeated Valancy. "Horrid, sticky stuff! And it has the vilest smell of any liniment I ever saw. It's no good. I want to be left alone, that's all."


Valancy went out, leaving Cousin Stickles aghast.


"She's feverish—she must be feverish," ejaculated Cousin Stickles.


Mrs. Frederick went on eating her supper. It did not matter whether Valancy was or was not feverish. Valancy had been guilty of impertinence to her.


Valancy did not sleep that night. She lay awake all through the long dark hours—thinking—thinking. She made a discovery that surprised her: she, who had been afraid of almost everything in life, was not afraid of death. It did not seem in the least terrible to her. And she need not now be afraid of anything else. Why had she been afraid of things? Because of life. Afraid of Uncle Benjamin because of the menace of poverty in old age. But now she would never be old—neglected—tolerated. Afraid of being an old maid all her life. But now she would not be an old maid very long. Afraid of offending her mother and her clan because she had to live with and among them and couldn't live peaceably if she didn't give in to them. But now she hadn't. Valancy felt a curious freedom.


But she was still horribly afraid of one thing—the fuss the whole jamfry of them would make when she told them. Valancy shuddered at the thought of it. She couldn't endure it. Oh, she knew so well how it would be. First there would be indignation—yes, indignation on the part of Uncle James because she had gone to a doctor—any doctor—without consulting HIM. Indignation on the part of her mother for being so sly and deceitful—"to your own mother, Doss." Indignation on the part of the whole clan because she had not gone to Dr. Marsh.


Then would come the solicitude. She would be taken to Dr. Marsh, and when Dr. Marsh confirmed Dr. Trent's diagnosis she would be taken to specialists in Toronto and Montreal. Uncle Benjamin would foot the bill with a splendid gesture of munificence in thus assisting the widow and orphan, and talk forever after of the shocking fees specialists charged for looking wise and saying they couldn't do anything. And when the specialists could do nothing for her Uncle James would insist on her taking Purple Pills—"I've known them to effect a cure when all the doctors had given up"—and her mother would insist on Redfern's Blood Bitters, and Cousin Stickles would insist on rubbing her over the heart every night with Redfern's Liniment on the grounds that it might do good and couldn't do harm; and everybody else would have some pet dope for her to take. Dr. Stalling would come to her and say solemnly, "You are very ill. Are you prepared for what may be before you?"—almost as if he were going to shake his forefinger at her, the forefinger that had not grown any shorter or less knobbly with age. And she would be watched and checked like a baby and never let do anything or go anywhere alone. Perhaps she would not even be allowed to sleep alone lest she die in her sleep. Cousin Stickles or her mother would insist on sharing her room and bed. Yes, undoubtedly they would.


It was this last thought that really decided Valancy. She could not put up with it and she wouldn't. As the clock in the hall below struck twelve Valancy suddenly and definitely made up her mind that she would not tell anybody. She had always been told, ever since she could remember, that she must hide her feelings. "It is not ladylike to have feelings," Cousin Stickles had once told her disapprovingly. Well, she would hide them with a vengeance.


But though she was not afraid of death she was not indifferent to it. She found that she resented it; it was not fair that she should have to die when she had never lived. Rebellion flamed up in her soul as the dark hours passed by—not because she had no future but because she had no past.


"I'm poor—I'm ugly—I'm a failure—and I'm near death," she thought. She could see her own obituary notice in the Deerwood Weekly Times, copied into the Port Lawrence Journal. "A deep gloom was cast over Deerwood, etc., etc."—"leaves a large circle of friends to mourn, etc., etc., etc."—lies, all lies. Gloom, forsooth! Nobody would miss her. Her death would not matter a straw to anybody. Not even her mother loved her—her mother who had been so disappointed that she was not a boy—or at least, a pretty girl.


Valancy reviewed her whole life between midnight and the early spring dawn. It was a very drab existence, but here and there an incident loomed out with a significance out of all proportion to its real importance. These incidents were all unpleasant in one way or another. Nothing really pleasant had ever happened to Valancy.


"I've never had one wholly happy hour in my life—not one," she thought. "I've just been a colourless nonentity. I remember reading somewhere once that there is an hour in which a woman might be happy all her life if she could but find it. I've never found my hour—never, never. And I never will now. If I could only have had that hour I'd be willing to die."


Those significant incidents kept bobbing up in her mind like unbidden ghosts, without any sequence of time or place. For instance, that time when, at sixteen, she had blued a tubful of clothes too deeply. And the time when, at eight, she had "stolen" some raspberry jam from Aunt Wellington's pantry. Valancy never heard the last of those two misdemeanours. At almost every clan gathering they were raked up against her as jokes. Uncle Benjamin hardly ever missed re-telling the raspberry jam incident—he had been the one to catch her, her face all stained and streaked.


"I have really done so few bad things that they have to keep harping on the old ones," thought Valancy. "Why, I've never even had a quarrel with any one. I haven't an enemy. What a spineless thing I must be not to have even one enemy!"


There was that incident of the dust-pile at school when she was seven. Valancy always recalled it when Dr. Stalling referred to the text, "To him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath." Other people might puzzle over that text but it never puzzled Valancy. The whole relationship between herself and Olive, dating from the day of the dust-pile, was a commentary on it.


She had been going to school a year, but Olive, who was a year younger, had just begun and had about her all the glamour of "a new girl" and an exceedingly pretty girl at that. It was at recess and all the girls, big and little, were out on the road in front of the school making dust-piles. The aim of each girl was to have the biggest pile. Valancy was good at making dust-piles—there was an art in it—and she had secret hopes of leading. But Olive, working off by herself, was suddenly discovered to have a larger dust-pile than anybody. Valancy felt no jealousy. Her dust-pile was quite big enough to please her. Then one of the older girls had an inspiration.


"Let's put all our dust on Olive's pile and make a tremendous one," she exclaimed.


A frenzy seemed to seize the girls. They swooped down on the dust-piles with pails and shovels and in a few seconds Olive's pile was a veritable pyramid. In vain Valancy, with scrawny, outstretched little arms, tried to protect hers. She was ruthlessly swept aside, her dust-pile scooped up and poured on Olive's. Valancy turned away resolutely and began building another dust-pile. Again a bigger girl pounced on it. Valancy stood before it, flushed, indignant, arms outspread.


"Don't take it," she pleaded. "Please don't take it."


"But why?" demanded the older girl. "Why won't you help to build Olive's bigger?"


"I want my own little dust-pile," said Valancy piteously.


Her plea went unheeded. While she argued with one girl another scraped up her dust-pile. Valancy turned away, her heart swelling, her eyes full of tears.


"Jealous—you're jealous!" said the girls mockingly.


"You were very selfish," said her mother coldly, when Valancy told her about it at night. That was the first and last time Valancy had ever taken any of her troubles to her mother.


Valancy was neither jealous nor selfish. It was only that she wanted a dust-pile of her own—small or big mattered not. A team of horses came down the street—Olive's dust pile was scattered over the roadway—the bell rang—the girls trooped into school and had forgotten the whole affair before they reached their seats. Valancy never forgot it. To this day she resented it in her secret soul. But was it not symbolical of her life?


"I've never been able to have my own dust-pile," thought Valancy.


The enormous red moon she had seen rising right at the end of the street one autumn evening of her sixth year. She had been sick and cold with the awful, uncanny horror of it. So near to her. So big. She had run in trembling to her mother and her mother had laughed at her. She had gone to bed and hidden her face under the clothes in terror lest she might look at the window and see that horrible moon glaring in at her through it.


The boy who had tried to kiss her at a party when she was fifteen. She had not let him—she had evaded him and run. He was the only boy who had ever tried to kiss her. Now, fourteen years later, Valancy found herself wishing that she had let him.


The time she had been made to apologise to Olive for something she hadn't done. Olive had said that Valancy had pushed her into the mud and spoiled her new shoes on purpose. Valancy knew she hadn't. It had been an accident—and even that wasn't her fault—but nobody would believe her. She had to apologise—and kiss Olive to "make up." The injustice of it burned in her soul tonight.


That summer when Olive had the most beautiful hat, trimmed with creamy yellow net, with a wreath of red roses and little ribbon bows under the chin. Valancy had wanted a hat like that more than she had ever wanted anything. She pleaded for one and had been laughed at—all summer she had to wear a horrid little brown sailor with elastic that cut behind her ears. None of the girls would go around with her because she was so shabby—nobody but Olive. People had thought Olive so sweet and unselfish.


"I was an excellent foil for her," thought Valancy. "Even then she knew that."


Valancy had tried to win a prize for attendance in Sunday School once. But Olive won it. There were so many Sundays Valancy had to stay home because she had colds. She had once tried to "say a piece" in school one Friday afternoon and had broken down in it. Olive was a good reciter and never got stuck.


The night she had spent in Port Lawrence with Aunt Isabel when she was ten. Byron Stirling was there; from Montreal, twelve years old, conceited, clever. At family prayers in the morning Byron had reached across and given Valancy's thin arm such a savage pinch that she screamed out with pain. After prayers were over she was summoned to Aunt Isabel's bar of judgment. But when she said Byron had pinched her Byron denied it. He said she cried out because the kitten scratched her. He said she had put the kitten up on her chair and was playing with it when she should have been listening to Uncle David's prayer. He was believed. In the Stirling clan the boys were always believed before the girls. Valancy was sent home in disgrace because of her exceedingly bad behavior during family prayers and she was not asked to Aunt Isabel's again for many moons.


The time Cousin Betty Stirling was married. Somehow Valancy got wind of the fact that Betty was going to ask her to be one of her bridesmaids. Valancy was secretly uplifted. It would be a delightful thing to be a bridesmaid. And of course she would have to have a new dress for it—a pretty new dress—a pink dress. Betty wanted her bridesmaids to dress in pink.


But Betty had never asked her, after all. Valancy couldn't guess why, but long after her secret tears of disappointment had been dried Olive told her. Betty, after much consultation and reflection, had decided that Valancy was too insignificant—she would "spoil the effect." That was nine years ago. But tonight Valancy caught her breath with the old pain and sting of it.


That day in her eleventh year when her mother had badgered her into confessing something she had never done. Valancy had denied it for a long time but eventually for peace' sake she had given in and pleaded guilty. Mrs. Frederick was always making people lie by pushing them into situations where they had to lie. Then her mother had made her kneel down on the parlour floor, between herself and Cousin Stickles, and say, "O God, please forgive me for not speaking the truth." Valancy had said it, but as she rose from her knees she muttered. "But, O God, you know I did speak the truth." Valancy had not then heard of Galileo but her fate was similar to his. She was punished just as severely as if she hadn't confessed and prayed.


The winter she went to dancing-school. Uncle James had decreed she should go and had paid for her lessons. How she had looked forward to it! And how she had hated it! She had never had a voluntary partner. The teacher always had to tell some boy to dance with her, and generally he had been sulky about it. Yet Valancy was a good dancer, as light on her feet as thistledown. Olive, who never lacked eager partners, was heavy.


The affair of the button-string, when she was ten. All the girls in school had button-strings. Olive had a very long one with a great many beautiful buttons. Valancy had one. Most of the buttons on it were very commonplace, but she had six beauties that had come off Grandmother Stirling's wedding-gown—sparkling buttons of gold and glass, much more beautiful than any Olive had. Their possession conferred a certain distinction on Valancy. She knew every little girl in school envied her the exclusive possession of those beautiful buttons. When Olive saw them on the button-string she had looked at them narrowly but said nothing—then. The next day Aunt Wellington had come to Elm Street and told Mrs. Frederick that she thought Olive should have some of those buttons—Grandmother Stirling was just as much Wellington's mother as Frederick's. Mrs. Frederick had agreed amiably. She could not afford to fall out with Aunt Wellington. Moreover, the matter was of no importance whatever. Aunt Wellington carried off four of the buttons, generously leaving two for Valancy. Valancy had torn these from her string and flung them on the floor—she had not yet learned that it was unladylike to have feelings—and had been sent supperless to bed for the exhibition.


The night of Margaret Blunt's party. She had made such pathetic efforts to be pretty that night. Rob Walker was to be there; and two nights before, on the moonlit verandah of Uncle Herbert's cottage at Mistawis, Rob had really seemed attracted to her. At Margaret's party Rob never even asked her to dance—did not notice her at all. She was a wallflower, as usual. That, of course, was years ago. People in Deerwood had long since given up inviting Valancy to dances. But to Valancy its humiliation and disappointment were of the other day. Her face burned in the darkness as she recalled herself, sitting there with her pitifully crimped, thin hair and the cheeks she had pinched for an hour before coming, in an effort to make them red. All that came of it was a wild story that Valancy Stirling was rouged at Margaret Blunt's party. In those days in Deerwood that was enough to wreck your character forever. It did not wreck Valancy's, or even damage it. People knew she couldn't be fast if she tried. They only laughed at her.


"I've had nothing but a second-hand existence," decided Valancy. "All the great emotions of life have passed me by. I've never even had a grief. And have I ever really loved anybody? Do I really love Mother? No, I don't. That's the truth, whether it is disgraceful or not. I don't love her—I've never loved her. What's worse, I don't even like her. So I don't know anything about any kind of love. My life has been empty—empty. Nothing is worse than emptiness. Nothing!" Valancy ejaculated the last "nothing" aloud passionately. Then she moaned and stopped thinking about anything for a while. One of her attacks of pain had come on.


When it was over something had happened to Valancy—perhaps the culmination of the process that had been going on in her mind ever since she had read Dr. Trent's letter. It was three o'clock in the morning—the wisest and most accursed hour of the clock. But sometimes it sets us free.


"I've been trying to please other people all my life and failed," she said. "After this I shall please myself. I shall never pretend anything again. I've breathed an atmosphere of fibs and pretences and evasions all my life. What a luxury it will be to tell the truth! I may not be able to do much that I want to do but I won't do another thing that I don't want to do. Mother can pout for weeks—I shan't worry over it. 'Despair is a free man—hope is a slave.'"


Valancy got up and dressed, with a deepening of that curious sense of freedom. When she had finished with her hair she opened the window and hurled the jar of potpourri over into the next lot. It smashed gloriously against the schoolgirl complexion on the old carriage-shop.


"I'm sick of the fragrance of dead things," said Valancy.


Uncle Herbert and Aunt Alberta's silver wedding was delicately referred to among the Stirlings during the following weeks as "the time we first noticed poor Valancy was—a little—you understand?"


Not for worlds would any of the Stirlings have said out and out at first that Valancy had gone mildly insane or even that her mind was slightly deranged. Uncle Benjamin was considered to have gone entirely too far when he had ejaculated, "She's dippy—I tell you, she's dippy," and was only excused because of the outrageousness of Valancy's conduct at the aforesaid wedding dinner.


But Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles had noticed a few things that made them uneasy before the dinner. It had begun with the rosebush, of course; and Valancy never was really "quite right" again. She did not seem to worry in the least over the fact that her mother was not speaking to her. You would never suppose she noticed it at all. She had flatly refused to take either Purple Pills or Redfern's Bitters. She had announced coolly that she did not intend to answer to the name of "Doss" any longer. She had told Cousin Stickles that she wished she would give up wearing that brooch with Cousin Artemas Stickles' hair in it. She had moved her bed in her room to the opposite corner. She had read Magic of Wings Sunday afternoon. When Cousin Stickles had rebuked her Valancy had said indifferently, "Oh, I forgot it was Sunday"—and had gone on reading it.


Cousin Stickles had seen a terrible thing—she had caught Valancy sliding down the bannister. Cousin Stickles did not tell Mrs. Frederick this—poor Amelia was worried enough as it was. But it was Valancy's announcement on Saturday night that she was not going to go to the Anglican church any more that broke through Mrs. Frederick's stony silence.


"Not going to church any more! Doss, have you absolutely taken leave——"


"Oh, I'm going to church," said Valancy airily. "I'm going to the Presbyterian church. But to the Anglican church I will not go."


This was even worse. Mrs. Frederick had recourse to tears, having found outraged majesty had ceased to be effective.


"What have you got against the Anglican church?" she sobbed.


"Nothing—only just that you've always made me go there. If you'd made me go to the Presbyterian church I'd want to go to the Anglican."


"Is that a nice thing to say to your mother? Oh, how true it is that it is sharper than a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child."


"Is that a nice thing to say to your daughter?" said unrepentant Valancy.


So Valancy's behaviour at the silver wedding was not quite the surprise to Mrs. Frederick and Christine Stickles that it was to the rest. They were doubtful about the wisdom of taking her, but concluded it would "make talk" if they didn't. Perhaps she would behave herself, and so far no outsider suspected there was anything queer about her. By a special mercy of Providence it had poured torrents Sunday morning, so Valancy had not carried out her hideous threat of going to the Presbyterian church.


Valancy would not have cared in the least if they had left her at home. These family celebrations were all hopelessly dull. But the Stirlings always celebrated everything. It was a long-established custom. Even Mrs. Frederick gave a dinner party on her wedding anniversary and Cousin Stickles had friends in to supper on her birthday. Valancy hated these entertainments because they had to pinch and save and contrive for weeks afterwards to pay for them. But she wanted to go to the silver wedding. It would hurt Uncle Herbert's feelings if she stayed away, and she rather liked Uncle Herbert. Besides, she wanted to look over all her relatives from her new angle. It would be an excellent place to make public her declaration of independence if occasion offered.


"Put on your brown silk dress," said Mrs. Stirling.


As if there were anything else to put on! Valancy had only the one festive dress—that snuffy-brown silk Aunt Isabel had given her. Aunt Isabel had decreed that Valancy should never wear colours. They did not become her. When she was young they allowed her to wear white, but that had been tacitly dropped for some years. Valancy put on the brown silk. It had a high collar and long sleeves. She had never had a dress with low neck and elbow sleeves, although they had been worn, even in Deerwood, for over a year. But she did not do her hair pompadour. She knotted it on her neck and pulled it out over her ears. She thought it became her—only the little knot was so absurdly small. Mrs. Frederick resented the hair but decided it was wisest to say nothing on the eve of the party. It was so important that Valancy should be kept in good humour, if possible, until it was over. Mrs. Frederick did not reflect that this was the first time in her life that she had thought it necessary to consider Valancy's humours. But then Valancy had never been "queer" before.


On their way to Uncle Herbert's—Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles walking in front, Valancy trotting meekly along behind—Roaring Abel drove past them. Drunk as usual but not in the roaring stage. Just drunk enough to be excessively polite. He raised his disreputable old tartan cap with the air of a monarch saluting his subjects and swept them a grand bow. Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles dared not cut Roaring Abel altogether. He was the only person in Deerwood who could be got to do odd jobs of carpentering and repairing when they needed to be done, so it would not do to offend him. But they responded with only the stiffest, slightest of bows. Roaring Abel must be kept in his place.


Valancy, behind them, did a thing they were fortunately spared seeing. She smiled gaily and waved her hand to Roaring Abel. Why not? She had always liked the old sinner. He was such a jolly, picturesque, unashamed reprobate and stood out against the drab respectability of Deerwood and its customs like a flame-red flag of revolt and protest. Only a few nights ago Abel had gone through Deerwood in the wee sma's, shouting oaths at the top of his stentorian voice which could be heard for miles, and lashing his horse into a furious gallop as he tore along prim, proper Elm Street.


"Yelling and blaspheming like a fiend," shuddered Cousin Stickles at the breakfast-table.


"I cannot understand why the judgment of the Lord has not fallen upon that man long ere this," said Mrs. Frederick petulantly, as if she thought Providence was very dilatory and ought to have a gentle reminder.


"He'll be picked up dead some morning—he'll fall under his horse's hoofs and be trampled to death," said Cousin Stickles reassuringly.


Valancy had said nothing, of course; but she wondered to herself if Roaring Abel's periodical sprees were not his futile protest against the poverty and drudgery and monotony of his existence. She went on dream sprees in her Blue Castle. Roaring Abel, having no imagination, could not do that. His escapes from reality had to be concrete. So she waved at him today with a sudden fellow feeling, and Roaring Abel, not too drunk to be astonished, nearly fell off his seat in his amazement.


By this time they had reached Maple Avenue and Uncle Herbert's house, a large, pretentious structure peppered with meaningless bay windows and excrescent porches. A house that always looked like a stupid, prosperous, self-satisfied man with warts on his face.


"A house like that," said Valancy solemnly, "is a blasphemy."


Mrs. Frederick was shaken to her soul. What had Valancy said? Was it profane? Or only just queer? Mrs. Frederick took off her hat in Aunt Alberta's spare-room with trembling hands. She made one more feeble attempt to avert disaster. She held Valancy back on the landing as Cousin Stickles went downstairs.


"Won't you try to remember you're a lady?" she pleaded.


"Oh, if there were only any hope of being able to forget it!" said Valancy wearily.


Mrs. Frederick felt that she had not deserved this from Providence.


"Bless this food to our use and consecrate our lives to Thy service," said Uncle Herbert briskly.


Aunt Wellington frowned. She always considered Herbert's graces entirely too short and "flippant." A grace, to be a grace in Aunt Wellington's eyes, had to be at least three minutes long and uttered in an unearthly tone, between a groan and a chant. As a protest she kept her head bent a perceptible time after all the rest had been lifted. When she permitted herself to sit upright she found Valancy looking at her. Ever afterwards Aunt Wellington averred that she had known from that moment that there was something wrong with Valancy. In those queer, slanted eyes of hers—"we should always have known she was not entirely right with eyes like that"—there was an odd gleam of mockery and amusement—as if Valancy were laughing at her. Such a thing was unthinkable, of course. Aunt Wellington at once ceased to think it.


Valancy was enjoying herself. She had never enjoyed herself at a "family reunion" before. In social function, as in childish games, she had only "filled in." Her clan had always considered her very dull. She had no parlour tricks. And she had been in the habit of taking refuge from the boredom of family parties in her Blue Castle, which resulted in an absent-mindedness that increased her reputation for dulness and vacuity.


"She has no social presence whatever," Aunt Wellington had decreed once and for all. Nobody dreamed that Valancy was dumb in their presence merely because she was afraid of them. Now she was no longer afraid of them. The shackles had been stricken off her soul. She was quite prepared to talk if occasion offered. Meanwhile she was giving herself such freedom of thought as she had never dared to take before. She let herself go with a wild, inner exultation, as Uncle Herbert carved the turkey. Uncle Herbert gave Valancy a second look that day. Being a man, he didn't know what she had done to her hair, but he thought surprisedly that Doss was not such a bad-looking girl, after all; and he put an extra piece of white meat on her plate.


"What herb is most injurious to a young lady's beauty?" propounded Uncle Benjamin by way of starting conversation—"loosening things up a bit," as he would have said.


Valancy, whose duty it was to say, "What?" did not say it. Nobody else said it, so Uncle Benjamin, after an expectant pause, had to answer, "Thyme," and felt that his riddle had fallen flat. He looked resentfully at Valancy, who had never failed him before, but Valancy did not seem even to be aware of him. She was gazing around the table, examining relentlessly every one in this depressing assembly of sensible people and watching their little squirms with a detached, amused smile.


So these were the people she had always held in reverence and fear. She seemed to see them with new eyes.


Big, capable, patronising, voluble Aunt Mildred, who thought herself the cleverest woman in the clan, her husband a little lower than the angels and her children wonders. Had not her son, Howard, been all through teething at eleven months? And could she not tell you the best way to do everything, from cooking mushrooms to picking up a snake? What a bore she was! What ugly moles she had on her face!


Cousin Gladys, who was always praising her son, who had died young, and always fighting with her living one. She had neuritis—or what she called neuritis. It jumped about from one part of her body to another. It was a convenient thing. If anybody wanted her to go somewhere she didn't want to go she had neuritis in her legs. And always if any mental effort was required she could have neuritis in her head. You can't think with neuritis in your head, my dear.


"What an old humbug you are!" thought Valancy impiously.


Aunt Isabel. Valancy counted her chins. Aunt Isabel was the critic of the clan. She had always gone about squashing people flat. More members of it than Valancy were afraid of her. She had, it was conceded, a biting tongue.


"I wonder what would happen to your face if you ever smiled," speculated Valancy, unblushingly.


Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, with her great, pale, expressionless eyes, who was noted for the variety of her pickle recipes and for nothing else. So afraid of saying something indiscreet that she never said anything worth listening to. So proper that she blushed when she saw the advertisement picture of a corset and had put a dress on her Venus de Milo statuette which made it look "real tasty."


Little Cousin Georgiana. Not such a bad little soul. But dreary—very. Always looking as if she had just been starched and ironed. Always afraid to let herself go. The only thing she really enjoyed was a funeral. You knew where you were with a corpse. Nothing more could happen to it. But while there was life there was fear.


Uncle James. Handsome, black, with his sarcastic, trap-like mouth and iron-grey side-burns, whose favourite amusement was to write controversial letters to the Christian Times, attacking Modernism. Valancy always wondered if he looked as solemn when he was asleep as he did when awake. No wonder his wife had died young. Valancy remembered her. A pretty, sensitive thing. Uncle James had denied her everything she wanted and showered on her everything she didn't want. He had killed her—quite legally. She had been smothered and starved.


Uncle Benjamin, wheezy, pussy-mouthed. With great pouches under eyes that held nothing in reverence.


Uncle Wellington. Long, pallid face, thin, pale-yellow hair—"one of the fair Stirlings"—thin, stooping body, abominably high forehead with such ugly wrinkles, and "eyes about as intelligent as a fish's," thought Valancy. "Looks like a cartoon of himself."


Aunt Wellington. Named Mary but called by her husband's name to distinguish her from Great-aunt Mary. A massive, dignified, permanent lady. Splendidly arranged, iron-grey hair. Rich, fashionable beaded dress. Had her moles removed by electrolysis—which Aunt Mildred thought was a wicked evasion of the purposes of God.


Uncle Herbert, with his spiky grey hair. Aunt Alberta, who twisted her mouth so unpleasantly in talking and had a great reputation for unselfishness because she was always giving up a lot of things she didn't want. Valancy let them off easily in her judgment because she liked them, even if they were in Milton's expressive phrase, "stupidly good." But she wondered for what inscrutable reason Aunt Alberta had seen fit to tie a black velvet ribbon around each of her chubby arms above the elbow.


Then she looked across the table at Olive. Olive, who had been held up to her as a paragon of beauty, behaviour and success as long as she could remember. "Why can't you hold yourself like Olive, Doss? Why can't you stand correctly like Olive, Doss? Why can't you speak prettily like Olive, Doss? Why can't you make an effort, Doss?"


Valancy's elfin eyes lost their mocking glitter and became pensive and sorrowful. You could not ignore or disdain Olive. It was quite impossible to deny that she was beautiful and effective and sometimes she was a little intelligent. Her mouth might be a trifle heavy—she might show her fine, white, regular teeth rather too lavishly when she smiled. But when all was said and done, Olive justified Uncle Benjamin's summing up—"a stunning girl." Yes, Valancy agreed in her heart, Olive was stunning.


Rich, golden-brown hair, elaborately dressed, with a sparkling bandeau holding its glossy puffs in place; large, brilliant blue eyes and thick silken lashes; face of rose and bare neck of snow, rising above her gown; great pearl bubbles in her ears; the blue-white diamond flame on her long, smooth, waxen finger with its rosy, pointed nail. Arms of marble, gleaming through green chiffon and shadow lace. Valancy felt suddenly thankful that her own scrawny arms were decently swathed in brown silk. Then she resumed her tabulation of Olive's charms.


Tall. Queenly. Confident. Everything that Valancy was not. Dimples, too, in cheeks and chin. "A woman with dimples always gets her own way," thought Valancy, in a recurring spasm of bitterness at the fate which had denied her even one dimple.


Olive was only a year younger than Valancy, though a stranger would have thought that there was at least ten years between them. But nobody ever dreaded old maidenhood for her. Olive had been surrounded by a crowd of eager beaus since her early teens, just as her mirror was always surrounded by a fringe of cards, photographs, programmes and invitations. At eighteen, when she had graduated from Havergal College, Olive had been engaged to Will Desmond, lawyer in embryo. Will Desmond had died and Olive had mourned for him properly for two years. When she was twenty-three she had a hectic affair with Donald Jackson. But Aunt and Uncle Wellington disapproved of that and in the end Olive dutifully gave him up. Nobody in the Stirling clan—whatever outsiders might say—hinted that she did so because Donald himself was cooling off. However that might be, Olive's third venture met with everybody's approval. Cecil Price was clever and handsome and "one of the Port Lawrence Prices." Olive had been engaged to him for three years. He had just graduated in civil engineering and they were to be married as soon as he landed a contract. Olive's hope chest was full to overflowing with exquisite things and Olive had already confided to Valancy what her wedding-dress was to be. Ivory silk draped with lace, white satin court train, lined with pale green georgette, heirloom veil of Brussels lace. Valancy knew also—though Olive had not told her—that the bridesmaids were selected and that she was not among them.


Valancy had, after a fashion, always been Olive's confidante—perhaps because she was the only girl in the connection who could not bore Olive with return confidences. Olive always told Valancy all the details of her love affairs, from the days when the little boys in school used to "persecute" her with love letters. Valancy could not comfort herself by thinking these affairs mythical. Olive really had them. Many men had gone mad over her besides the three fortunate ones.


"I don't know what the poor idiots see in me, that drives them to make such double idiots of themselves," Olive was wont to say. Valancy would have liked to say, "I don't either," but truth and diplomacy both restrained her. She did know, perfectly well. Olive Stirling was one of the girls about whom men do go mad just as indubitably as she, Valancy, was one of the girls at whom no man ever looked twice.


"And yet," thought Valancy, summing her up with a new and merciless conclusiveness, "she's like a dewless morning. There's something lacking."


Meanwhile the dinner in its earlier stages was dragging its slow length along true to Stirling form. The room was chilly, in spite of the calendar, and Aunt Alberta had the gas-logs lighted. Everybody in the clan envied her those gas-logs except Valancy. Glorious open fires blazed in every room of her Blue Castle when autumnal nights were cool, but she would have frozen to death in it before she would have committed the sacrilege of a gas-log. Uncle Herbert made his hardy perennial joke when he helped Aunt Wellington to the cold meat—"Mary, will you have a little lamb?" Aunt Mildred told the same old story of once finding a lost ring in a turkey's crop. Uncle Benjamin told his favourite prosy tale of how he had once chased and punished a now famous man for stealing apples. Second Cousin Jane described all her sufferings with an ulcerating tooth. Aunt Wellington admired the pattern of Aunt Alberta's silver teaspoons and lamented the fact that one of her own had been lost.


"It spoiled the set. I could never get it matched. And it was my wedding-present from dear old Aunt Matilda."


Aunt Isabel thought the seasons were changing and couldn't imagine what had become of our good, old-fashioned springs. Cousin Georgiana, as usual, discussed the last funeral and wondered, audibly, "which of us will be the next to pass away." Cousin Georgiana could never say anything as blunt as "die." Valancy thought she could tell her, but didn't. Cousin Gladys, likewise as usual, had a grievance. Her visiting nephews had nipped all the buds off her house-plants and chivied her brood of fancy chickens—"squeezed some of them actually to death, my dear."


"Boys will be boys," reminded Uncle Herbert tolerantly.


"But they needn't be ramping, rampageous animals," retorted Cousin Gladys, looking round the table for appreciation of her wit. Everybody smiled except Valancy. Cousin Gladys remembered that. A few minutes later, when Ellen Hamilton was being discussed, Cousin Gladys spoke of her as "one of those shy, plain girls who can't get husbands," and glanced significantly at Valancy.


Uncle James thought the conversation was sagging to a rather low plane of personal gossip. He tried to elevate it by starting an abstract discussion on "the greatest happiness." Everybody was asked to state his or her idea of "the greatest happiness."


Aunt Mildred thought the greatest happiness—for a woman—was to be "a loving and beloved wife and mother." Aunt Wellington thought it would be to travel in Europe. Olive thought it would be to be a great singer like Tetrazzini. Cousin Gladys remarked mournfully that her greatest happiness would be to be free—absolutely free—from neuritis. Cousin Georgiana's greatest happiness would be "to have her dear, dead brother Richard back." Aunt Alberta remarked vaguely that the greatest happiness was to be found in "the poetry of life" and hastily gave some directions to her maid to prevent any one asking her what she meant. Mrs. Frederick said the greatest happiness was to spend your life in loving service for others, and Cousin Stickles and Aunt Isabel agreed with her—Aunt Isabel with a resentful air, as if she thought Mrs. Frederick had taken the wind out of her sails by saying it first. "We are all too prone," continued Mrs. Frederick, determined not to lose so good an opportunity, "to live in selfishness, worldliness and sin." The other women all felt rebuked for their low ideals, and Uncle James had a conviction that the conversation had been uplifted with a vengeance.


"The greatest happiness," said Valancy suddenly and distinctly, "is to sneeze when you want to."


Everybody stared. Nobody felt it safe to say anything. Was Valancy trying to be funny? It was incredible. Mrs. Frederick, who had been breathing easier since the dinner had progressed so far without any outbreak on the part of Valancy, began to tremble again. But she deemed it the part of prudence to say nothing. Uncle Benjamin was not so prudent. He rashly rushed in where Mrs. Frederick feared to tread.


"Doss," he chuckled, "what is the difference between a young girl and an old maid?"


"One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless," said Valancy. "You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don't you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don't succeed."


Uncle Benjamin stared foolishly. Never in his life had he, Benjamin Stirling, of Stirling and Frost, been spoken to so. And by Valancy of all people! He looked feebly around the table to see what the others thought of it. Everybody was looking rather blank. Poor Mrs. Frederick had shut her eyes. And her lips moved tremblingly—as if she were praying. Perhaps she was. The situation was so unprecedented that nobody knew how to meet it. Valancy went on calmly eating her salad as if nothing out of the usual had occurred.


Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently. Uncle James, to back her up, asked where the dog had bitten her.


"Just a little below the Catholic church," said Aunt Alberta.


At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?


"Is that a vital part?" asked Valancy.


"What do you mean?" said bewildered Aunt Alberta, and Mrs. Frederick was almost driven to believe that she had served God all her years for naught.


Aunt Isabel concluded that it was up to her to suppress Valancy.


"Doss, you are horribly thin," she said. "You are all corners. Do you ever try to fatten up a little?"


"No." Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. "But I can tell you where you'll find a beauty parlor in Port Lawrence where they can reduce the number of your chins."


"Val-an-cy!" The protest was wrung from Mrs. Frederick. She meant her tone to be stately and majestic, as usual, but it sounded more like an imploring whine. And she did not say "Doss."


"She's feverish," said Cousin Stickles to Uncle Benjamin in an agonised whisper. "We've thought she's seemed feverish for several days."


"She's gone dippy, in my opinion," growled Uncle Benjamin. "If not, she ought to be spanked. Yes, spanked."


"You can't spank her." Cousin Stickles was much agitated. "She's twenty-nine years old."


"So there is that advantage, at least, in being twenty-nine," said Valancy, whose ears had caught this aside.


"Doss," said Uncle Benjamin, "when I am dead you may say what you please. As long as I am alive I demand to be treated with respect."


"Oh, but you know we're all dead," said Valancy, "the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried and some aren't—yet. That is the only difference."


"Doss," said Uncle Benjamin, thinking it might cow Valancy, "do you remember the time you stole the raspberry jam?"


Valancy flushed scarlet—with suppressed laughter, not shame. She had been sure Uncle Benjamin would drag that jam in somehow.


"Of course I do," she said. "It was good jam. I've always been sorry I hadn't time to eat more of it before you found me. Oh, look at Aunt Isabel's profile on the wall. Did you ever see anything so funny?"


Everybody looked, including Aunt Isabel herself, which of course, destroyed it. But Uncle Herbert said kindly, "I—I wouldn't eat any more if I were you, Doss. It isn't that I grudge it—but don't you think it would be better for yourself? Your—your stomach seems a little out of order."


"Don't worry about my stomach, old dear," said Valancy. "It is all right. I'm going to keep right on eating. It's so seldom I get the chance of a satisfying meal."


It was the first time any one had been called "old dear" in Deerwood. The Stirlings thought Valancy had invented the phrase and they were afraid of her from that moment. There was something so uncanny about such an expression. But in poor Mrs. Frederick's opinion the reference to a satisfying meal was the worst thing Valancy had said yet. Valancy had always been a disappointment to her. Now she was a disgrace. She thought she would have to get up and go away from the table. Yet she dared not leave Valancy there.


Aunt Alberta's maid came in to remove the salad plates and bring in the dessert. It was a welcome diversion. Everybody brightened up with a determination to ignore Valancy and talk as if she wasn't there. Uncle Wellington mentioned Barney Snaith. Eventually somebody did mention Barney Snaith at every Stirling function, Valancy reflected. Whatever he was, he was an individual that could not be ignored. She resigned herself to listen. There was a subtle fascination in the subject for her, though she had not yet faced this fact. She could feel her pulses beating to her finger-tips.


Of course they abused him. Nobody ever had a good word to say of Barney Snaith. All the old, wild tales were canvassed—the defaulting cashier-counterfeiter-infidel-murderer-in-hiding legends were thrashed out. Uncle Wellington was very indignant that such a creature should be allowed to exist at all in the neighbourhood of Deerwood. He didn't know what the police at Port Lawrence were thinking of. Everybody would be murdered in their beds some night. It was a shame that he should be allowed to be at large after all that he had done.


"What has he done?" asked Valancy suddenly.


Uncle Wellington stared at her, forgetting that she was to be ignored.


"Done! Done! He's done everything."


"What has he done?" repeated Valancy inexorably. "What do you know that he has done? You're always running him down. And what has ever been proved against him?"


"I don't argue with women," said Uncle Wellington. "And I don't need proof. When a man hides himself up there on an island in Muskoka, year in and year out, and nobody can find out where he came from or how he lives, or what he does there, that's proof enough. Find a mystery and you find a crime."


"The very idea of a man named Snaith!" said Second Cousin Sarah. "Why, the name itself is enough to condemn him!"


"I wouldn't like to meet him in a dark lane," shivered Cousin Georgiana.


"What do you suppose he would do to you?" asked Valancy.


"Murder me," said Cousin Georgiana solemnly.


"Just for the fun of it?" suggested Valancy.


"Exactly," said Cousin Georgiana unsuspiciously. "When there is so much smoke there must be some fire. I was afraid he was a criminal when he came here first. I felt he had something to hide. I am not often mistaken in my intuitions."


"Criminal! Of course he's a criminal," said Uncle Wellington. "Nobody doubts it"—glaring at Valancy. "Why, they say he served a term in the penitentiary for embezzlement. I don't doubt it. And they say he's in with that gang that are perpetrating all those bank robberies round the country."


"Who say?" asked Valancy.


Uncle Wellington knotted his ugly forehead at her. What had got into this confounded girl, anyway? He ignored the question.


"He has the identical look of a jail-bird," snapped Uncle Benjamin. "I noticed it the first time I saw him."


"'A fellow by the hand of nature marked, Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame',"


declaimed Uncle James. He looked enormously pleased over managing to work that quotation in at last. He had been waiting all his life for the chance.


"One of his eyebrows is an arch and the other is a triangle," said Valancy. "Is that why you think him so villainous?"


Uncle James lifted his eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.


"How do you know his eyebrows so well, Doss?" asked Olive, a trifle maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.


"Yes, how?" demanded Aunt Wellington.


"I've seen him twice and I looked at him closely," said Valancy composedly. "I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw."


"There is no doubt there is something fishy in the creature's past life," said Olive, who began to think she was decidedly out of the conversation, which had centred so amazingly around Valancy. "But he can hardly be guilty of everything he's accused of, you know."


Valancy felt annoyed with Olive. Why should she speak up in even this qualified defence of Barney Snaith? What had she to do with him? For that matter, what had Valancy? But Valancy did not ask herself this question.


"They say he keeps dozens of cats in that hut up back on Mistawis," said Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, by way of appearing not entirely ignorant of him.


Cats. It sounded quite alluring to Valancy, in the plural. She pictured an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies.


"That alone shows there is something wrong with him," decreed Aunt Isabel.


"People who don't like cats," said Valancy, attacking her dessert with a relish, "always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them."


"The man hasn't a friend except Roaring Abel," said Uncle Wellington. "And if Roaring Abel had kept away from him, as everybody else did, it would have been better for—for some members of his family."


Uncle Wellington's rather lame conclusion was due to a marital glance from Aunt Wellington reminding him of what he had almost forgotten—that there were girls at the table.


"If you mean," said Valancy passionately, "that Barney Snaith is the father of Cecily Gay's child, he isn't. It's a wicked lie."


In spite of her indignation Valancy was hugely amused at the expression of the faces around that festal table. She had not seen anything like it since the day, seventeen years ago, when at Cousin Gladys' thimble party, they discovered that she had got—SOMETHING—in her head at school. Lice in her head! Valancy was done with euphemisms.


Poor Mrs. Frederick was almost in a state of collapse. She had believed—or pretended to believe—that Valancy still supposed that children were found in parsley beds.


"Hush—hush!" implored Cousin Stickles.


"I don't mean to hush," said Valancy perversely. "I've hush—hushed all my life. I'll scream if I want to. Don't make me want to. And stop talking nonsense about Barney Snaith."


Valancy didn't exactly understand her own indignation. What did Barney Snaith's imputed crimes and misdemeanours matter to her? And why, out of them all, did it seem most intolerable that he should have been poor, pitiful little Cecily Gay's false lover? For it did seem intolerable to her. She did not mind when they called him a thief and a counterfeiter and jail-bird; but she could not endure to think that he had loved and ruined Cecily Gay. She recalled his face on the two occasions of their chance meetings—his twisted, enigmatic, engaging smile, his twinkle, his thin, sensitive, almost ascetic lips, his general air of frank daredeviltry. A man with such a smile and lips might have murdered or stolen but he could not have betrayed. She suddenly hated every one who said it or believed it of him.


"When I was a young girl I never thought or spoke about such matters, Doss," said Aunt Wellington, crushingly.


"But I'm not a young girl," retorted Valancy, uncrushed. "Aren't you always rubbing that into me? And you are all evil-minded, senseless gossips. Can't you leave poor Cissy Gay alone? She's dying. Whatever she did, God or the Devil has punished her enough for it. You needn't take a hand, too. As for Barney Snaith, the only crime he has been guilty of is living to himself and minding his own business. He can, it seems, get along without you. Which is an unpardonable sin, of course, in your little snobocracy." Valancy coined that concluding word suddenly and felt that it was an inspiration. That was exactly what they were and not one of them was fit to mend another.


"Valancy, your poor father would turn over in his grave if he could hear you," said Mrs. Frederick.


"I dare say he would like that for a change," said Valancy brazenly.


"Doss," said Uncle James heavily, "the Ten Commandments are fairly up to date still—especially the fifth. Have you forgotten that?"


"No," said Valancy, "but I thought you had—especially the ninth. Have you ever thought, Uncle James, how dull life would be without the Ten Commandments? It is only when things are forbidden that they become fascinating."


But her excitement had been too much for her. She knew, by certain unmistakable warnings, that one of her attacks of pain was coming on. It must not find her there. She rose from her chair.


"I am going home now. I only came for the dinner. It was very good, Aunt Alberta, although your salad-dressing is not salt enough and a dash of cayenne would improve it."


None of the flabbergasted silver wedding guests could think of anything to say until the lawn gate clanged behind Valancy in the dusk. Then—


"She's feverish—I've said right along she was feverish," moaned Cousin Stickles.


Uncle Benjamin punished his pudgy left hand fiercely with his pudgy right.


"She's dippy—I tell you she's gone dippy," he snorted angrily. "That's all there is about it. Clean dippy."


"Oh, Benjamin," said Cousin Georgiana soothingly, "don't condemn her too rashly. We must remember what dear old Shakespeare says—that charity thinketh no evil."


"Charity! Poppy-cock!" snorted Uncle Benjamin. "I never heard a young woman talk such stuff in my life as she just did. Talking about things she ought to be ashamed to think of, much less mention. Blaspheming! Insulting us! What she wants is a generous dose of spank-weed and I'd like to be the one to administer it. H-uh-h-h-h!" Uncle Benjamin gulped down the half of a scalding cup of coffee.


"Do you suppose that the mumps could work on a person that way?" wailed Cousin Stickles.


"I opened an umbrella in the house yesterday," sniffed Cousin Georgiana. "I knew it betokened some misfortune."


"Have you tried to find out if she has a temperature?" asked Cousin Mildred.


"She wouldn't let Amelia put the thermometer under her tongue," whimpered Cousin Stickles.


Mrs. Frederick was openly in tears. All her defences were down.


"I must tell you," she sobbed, "that Valancy has been acting very strangely for over two weeks now. She hasn't been a bit like herself—Christine could tell you. I have hoped against hope that it was only one of her colds coming on. But it is—it must be something worse."


"This is bringing on my neuritis again," said Cousin Gladys, putting her hand to her head.


"Don't cry, Amelia," said Herbert kindly, pulling nervously at his spiky grey hair. He hated "family ructions." Very inconsiderate of Doss to start one at his silver wedding. Who could have supposed she had it in her? "You'll have to take her to a doctor. This may be only a—er—a brainstorm. There are such things as brainstorms nowadays, aren't there?"


"I—I suggested consulting a doctor to her yesterday," moaned Mrs. Frederick. "And she said she wouldn't go to a doctor—wouldn't. Oh, surely I have had trouble enough!"


"And she won't take Redfern's Bitters," said Cousin Stickles.


"Or anything," said Mrs. Frederick.


"And she's determined to go to the Presbyterian church," said Cousin Stickles—repressing, however, to her credit be it said, the story of the bannister.


"That proves she's dippy," growled Uncle Benjamin. "I noticed something strange about her the minute she came in today. I noticed it before today." (Uncle Benjamin was thinking of "m-i-r-a-z-h.") "Everything she said today showed an unbalanced mind. That question—'Was it a vital part?' Was there any sense at all in that remark? None whatever! There never was anything like that in the Stirlings. It must be from the Wansbarras."


Poor Mrs. Frederick was too crushed to be indignant.


"I never heard of anything like that in the Wansbarras," she sobbed.


"Your father was odd enough," said Uncle Benjamin.


"Poor Pa was—peculiar," admitted Mrs. Frederick tearfully, "but his mind was never affected."


"He talked all his life exactly as Valancy did today," retorted Uncle Benjamin. "And he believed he was his own great-great grandfather born over again. I've heard him say it. Don't tell me that a man who believed a thing like that was ever in his right senses. Come, come, Amelia, stop sniffling. Of course Doss has made a terrible exhibition of herself today, but she's not responsible. Old maids are apt to fly off at a tangent like that. If she had been married when she should have been she wouldn't have got like this."


"Nobody wanted to marry her," said Mrs. Frederick, who felt that, somehow, Uncle Benjamin was blaming her.


"Well, fortunately there's no outsider here," snapped Uncle Benjamin. "We may keep it in the family yet. I'll take her over to see Dr. Marsh tomorrow. I know how to deal with pig-headed people. Won't that be best, James?"


"We must have medical advice certainly," agreed Uncle James.


"Well, that's settled. In the meantime, Amelia, act as if nothing had happened and keep an eye on her. Don't let her be alone. Above all, don't let her sleep alone."


Renewed whimpers from Mrs. Frederick.


"I can't help it. Night before last I suggested she'd better have Christine sleep with her. She positively refused—and locked her door. Oh, you don't know how she's changed. She won't work. At least, she won't sew. She does her usual housework, of course. But she wouldn't sweep the parlour yesterday morning, though we always sweep it on Thursdays. She said she'd wait till it was dirty. 'Would you rather sweep a dirty room than a clean one?' I asked her. She said, 'Of course. I'd see something for my labour then.' Think of it!"


Uncle Benjamin thought of it.


"The jar of potpourri"—Cousin Stickles pronounced it as spelled—"has disappeared from her room. I found the pieces in the next lot. She won't tell us what happened to it."


"I should never have dreamed it of Doss," said Uncle Herbert. "She has always seemed such a quiet, sensible girl. A bit backward—but sensible."


"The only thing you can be sure of in this world is the multiplication table," said Uncle James, feeling cleverer than ever.


"Well, let's cheer up," suggested Uncle Benjamin. "Why are chorus girls like fine stock raisers?"


"Why?" asked Cousin Stickles, since it had to be asked and Valancy wasn't there to ask it.


"Like to exhibit calves," chuckled Uncle Benjamin.


Cousin Stickles thought Uncle Benjamin a little indelicate. Before Olive, too. But then, he was a man.


Uncle Herbert was thinking that things were rather dull now that Doss had gone.


Valancy hurried home through the faint blue twilight—hurried too fast perhaps. The attack she had when she thankfully reached the shelter of her own room was the worst yet. It was really very bad. She might die in one of those spells. It would be dreadful to die in such pain. Perhaps—perhaps this was death. Valancy felt pitifully alone. When she could think at all she wondered what it would be like to have some one with her who could sympathise—some one who really cared—just to hold her hand tight, if nothing else—some one just to say, "Yes, I know. It's dreadful—be brave—you'll soon be better;" not some one merely fussy and alarmed. Not her mother or Cousin Stickles. Why did the thought of Barney Snaith come into her mind? Why did she suddenly feel, in the midst of this hideous loneliness of pain, that he would be sympathetic—sorry for any one that was suffering? Why did he seem to her like an old, well-known friend? Was it because she had been defending him—standing up to her family for him?


She was so bad at first that she could not even get herself a dose of Dr. Trent's prescription. But eventually she managed it, and soon after relief came. The pain left her and she lay on her bed, spent, exhausted, in a cold perspiration. Oh, that had been horrible! She could not endure many more attacks like that. One didn't mind dying if death could be instant and painless. But to be hurt so in dying!


Suddenly she found herself laughing. That dinner had been fun. And it had all been so simple. She had merely said the things she had always thought. Their faces—oh, their faces! Uncle Benjamin—poor, flabbergasted Uncle Benjamin! Valancy felt quite sure he would make a new will that very night. Olive would get Valancy's share of his fat hoard. Olive had always got Valancy's share of everything. Remember the dust-pile.


To laugh at her clan as she had always wanted to laugh was all the satisfaction she could get out of life now. But she thought it was rather pitiful that it should be so. Might she not pity herself a little when nobody else did?


Valancy got up and went to her window. The moist, beautiful wind blowing across groves of young-leafed wild trees touched her face with the caress of a wise, tender, old friend. The lombardies in Mrs. Tredgold's lawn, off to the left—Valancy could just see them between the stable and the old carriage-shop—were in dark purple silhouette against a clear sky and there was a milk-white, pulsating star just over one of them, like a living pearl on a silver-green lake. Far beyond the station were the shadowy, purple-hooded woods around Lake Mistawis. A white, filmy mist hung over them and just above it was a faint, young crescent. Valancy looked at it over her thin left shoulder.


"I wish," she said whimsically, "that I may have one little dust-pile before I die."


Uncle Benjamin found he had reckoned without his host when he promised so airily to take Valancy to a doctor. Valancy would not go. Valancy laughed in his face.


"Why on earth should I go to Dr. Marsh? There's nothing the matter with my mind. Though you all think I've suddenly gone crazy. Well, I haven't. I've simply grown tired of living to please other people and have decided to please myself. It will give you something to talk about besides my stealing the raspberry jam. So that's that."


"Doss," said Uncle Benjamin, solemnly and helplessly, "you are not—like yourself."


"Who am I like, then?" asked Valancy.


Uncle Benjamin was rather posed.


"Your Grandfather Wansbarra," he answered desperately.


"Thanks." Valancy looked pleased. "That's a real compliment. I remember Grandfather Wansbarra. He was one of the few human beings I have known—almost the only one. Now, it is of no use to scold or entreat or command, Uncle Benjamin—or exchange anguished glances with Mother and Cousin Stickles. I am not going to any doctor. And if you bring any doctor here I won't see him. So what are you going to do about it?"


What indeed! It was not seemly—or even possible—to hale Valancy doctorwards by physical force. And in no other way could it be done, seemingly. Her mother's tears and imploring entreaties availed not.


"Don't worry, Mother," said Valancy, lightly but quite respectfully. "It isn't likely I'll do anything very terrible. But I mean to have a little fun."


"Fun!" Mrs. Frederick uttered the word as if Valancy had said she was going to have a little tuberculosis.


Olive, sent by her mother to see if she had any influence over Valancy, came away with flushed cheeks and angry eyes. She told her mother that nothing could be done with Valancy. After she, Olive, had talked to her just like a sister, tenderly and wisely, all Valancy had said, narrowing her funny eyes to mere slips, was, "I don't show my gums when I laugh."


"More as if she were talking to herself than to me. Indeed, Mother, all the time I was talking to her she gave me the impression of not really listening. And that wasn't all. When I finally decided that what I was saying had no influence over her I begged her, when Cecil came next week, not to say anything queer before him, at least. Mother, what do you think she said?"


"I'm sure I can't imagine," groaned Aunt Wellington, prepared for anything.


"She said, 'I'd rather like to shock Cecil. His mouth is too red for a man's.' Mother, I can never feel the same to Valancy again."


"Her mind is affected, Olive," said Aunt Wellington solemnly. "You must not hold her responsible for what she says."


When Aunt Wellington told Mrs. Frederick what Valancy had said to Olive, Mrs. Frederick wanted Valancy to apologise.


"You made me apologise to Olive fifteen years ago for something I didn't do," said Valancy. "That old apology will do for now."


Another solemn family conclave was held. They were all there except Cousin Gladys, who had been suffering such tortures of neuritis in her head "ever since poor Doss went queer" that she couldn't undertake any responsibility. They decided—that is, they accepted a fact that was thrust in their faces—that the wisest thing was to leave Valancy alone for a while—"give her her head" as Uncle Benjamin expressed it—"keep a careful eye on her but let her pretty much alone." The term of "watchful waiting" had not been invented then, but that was practically the policy Valancy's distracted relatives decided to follow.


"We must be guided by developments," said Uncle Benjamin. "It is"—solemnly—"easier to scramble eggs than unscramble them. Of course—if she becomes violent——"


Uncle James consulted Dr. Ambrose Marsh. Dr. Ambrose Marsh approved their decision. He pointed out to irate Uncle James—who would have liked to lock Valancy up somewhere, out of hand—that Valancy had not, as yet, really done or said anything that could be construed as proof of lunacy—and without proof you cannot lock people up in this degenerate age. Nothing that Uncle James had reported seemed very alarming to Dr. Marsh, who put up his hand to conceal a smile several times. But then he himself was not a Stirling. And he knew very little about the old Valancy. Uncle James stalked out and drove back to Deerwood, thinking that Ambrose Marsh wasn't much of a doctor, after all, and that Adelaide Stirling might have done better for herself.


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."


"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?"


"Let us be calm," said Uncle Benjamin. "Let us be perfectly calm."


"Calm!" Mrs. Frederick wrung her hands. "How can I be calm—how could anybody be calm under such a disgrace as this?"


"Why in the world did you let her go?" asked Uncle James.


"Let her! How could I stop her, James? It seems she packed the big valise and sent it away with Roaring Abel when he went home after supper, while Christine and I were out in the kitchen. Then Doss herself came down with her little satchel, dressed in her green serge suit. I felt a terrible premonition. I can't tell you how it was, but I seemed to know that Doss was going to do something dreadful."


"It's a pity you couldn't have had your premonition a little sooner," said Uncle Benjamin drily.


"I said, 'Doss, where are you going?' and she said, 'I am going to look for my Blue Castle.'"


"Wouldn't you think that would convince Marsh that her mind is affected?" interjected Uncle James.


"And I said, 'Valancy, what do you mean?' And she said, 'I am going to keep house for Roaring Abel and nurse Cissy. He will pay me thirty dollars a month.' I wonder I didn't drop dead on the spot."


"You shouldn't have let her go—you shouldn't have let her out of the house," said Uncle James. "You should have locked the door—anything——"


"She was between me and the front door. And you can't realise how determined she was. She was like a rock. That's the strangest thing of all about her. She used to be so good and obedient, and now she's neither to hold nor bind. But I said everything I could think of to bring her to her senses. I asked her if she had no regard for her reputation. I said to her solemnly, 'Doss, when a woman's reputation is once smirched nothing can ever make it spotless again. Your character will be gone for ever if you go to Roaring Abel's to wait on a bad girl like Sis Gay.' And she said, 'I don't believe Cissy was a bad girl, but I don't care if she was.' Those were her very words, 'I don't care if she was.'"


"She has lost all sense of decency," exploded Uncle Benjamin.


"'Cissy Gay is dying,' she said, 'and it's a shame and disgrace that she is dying in a Christian community with no one to do anything for her. Whatever she's been or done, she's a human being.'"


"Well, you know, when it comes to that, I suppose she is," said Uncle James with the air of one making a splendid concession.


"I asked Doss if she had no regard for appearances. She said, 'I've been keeping up appearances all my life. Now I'm going in for realities. Appearances can go hang!' Go hang!"