"I won't mind. I'm only going as a looker-on. I don't expect to dance. I just want to see what a party up back is like. I've never seen anything except decorous Deerwood."
Cissy smiled rather dubiously. She knew much better than Valancy what a party "up back" might be like if there should be liquor. But again there mightn't be.
"I hope you'll enjoy it," she repeated.
Valancy enjoyed the drive there. They went early, for it was twelve miles to Chidley Corners, and they had to go in Abel's old, ragged top-buggy. The road was rough and rocky, like most Muskoka roads, but full of the austere charm of northern woods. It wound through beautiful, purring pines that were ranks of enchantment in the June sunset, and over the curious jade-green rivers of Muskoka, fringed by aspens that were always quivering with some supernal joy.
Roaring Abel was excellent company, too. He knew all the stories and legends of the wild, beautiful "up back," and he told them to Valancy as they drove along. Valancy had several fits of inward laughter over what Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Wellington, et al., would feel and think and say if they saw her driving with Roaring Abel in that terrible buggy to a dance at Chidley Corners.
At first the dance was quiet enough, and Valancy was amused and entertained. She even danced twice herself, with a couple of nice "up back" boys who danced beautifully and told her she did, too.
Another compliment came her way--not a very subtle one, perhaps, but Valancy had had too few compliments in her life to be over-nice on that point. She overheard two of the "up back" young men talking about her in the dark "lean-to" behind her.
"Know who that girl in green is?"
"Nope. Guess she's from out front. The Port, maybe. Got a stylish look to her."
"No beaut but cute-looking, I'll say. 'Jever see such eyes?"
The big room was decorated with pine and fir boughs, and lighted by Chinese lanterns. The floor was waxed, and Roaring Abel's fiddle, purring under his skilled touch, worked magic. The "up back" girls were pretty and prettily dressed. Valancy thought it the nicest party she had ever attended.
By eleven o'clock she had changed her mind. A new crowd had arrived--a crowd unmistakably drunk. Whiskey began to circulate freely. Very soon almost all the men were partly drunk. Those in the porch and outside around the door began howling "come-all-ye's" and continued to howl them. The room grew noisy and reeking. Quarrels started up here and there. Bad language and obscene songs were heard. The girls, swung rudely in the dances, became disheveled and tawdry. Valancy, alone in her corner, was feeling disgusted and repentant. Why had she ever come to such a place? Freedom and independence were all very well, but one should not be a little fool. She might have known what it would be like--she might have taken warning from Cissy's guarded sentences. Her head was aching--she was sick of the whole thing. But what could she do? She must stay to the end. Abel could not leave till then. And that would probably be not till three or four in the morning.
The new influx of boys had left the girls far in the minority and partners were scarce. Valancy was pestered with invitations to dance. She refused them all shortly, and some of her refusals were not well taken. There were muttered oaths and sullen looks. Across the room she saw a group of the strangers talking together and glancing meaningly at her. What were they plotting?
It was at this moment that she saw Barney Snaith looking in over the heads of the crowds at the doorway. Valancy had two distinct convictions--one was that she was quite safe now; the other was that this was why she had wanted to come to the dance. It had been such an absurd hope that she had not recognized it before, but now she knew she had come because of the possibility that Barney might be there, too. She thought that perhaps she ought to be ashamed for this, but she wasn't. After her feeling of relief her next feeling was one of annoyance with Barney for coming there unshaved. Surely he might have enough self-respect to groom himself up decently when he went to a party. There he was, bareheaded, bristly-chinned, in his old trousers and his blue homespun shirt. Not even a coat. Valancy could have shaken him in her anger. No wonder people believed everything bad of him.
But she was not afraid any longer. One of the whispering group left his comrades and came across the room to her, through the whirling couples that now filled it uncomfortably. He was a tall, broad-shouldered fellow, not ill-dressed or ill-looking but unmistakably half drunk. He asked Valancy to dance. Valancy declined civilly. His face turned livid. He threw his arm about her and pulled her to him. His hot, whiskied breath burned her face.
"We won't have fine-lady airs here, my girl. If you ain't too good to come here you ain't too good to dance with us. Me and my pals have been watching you. You've got to give us each a turn and a kiss to boot."
Valancy tried desperately and vainly to free herself. She was being dragged out into the maze of shouting, stamping, yelling dancers. The next moment the man who held her went staggering across the room from a neatly planted blow on the jaw, knocking down whirling couples as he went. Valancy felt her arm grasped.
"This way--quick," said Barney Snaith. He swung her out through the open window behind him, vaulted lightly over the sill and caught her hand.
"Quick--we must run for it--they'll be after us."
Valancy ran as she had never run before, clinging tight to Barney's hand, wondering why she did not drop dead in such a mad scamper. Suppose she did! What a scandal it would make for her poor people. For the first time Valancy felt a little sorry for them. Also, she felt glad that she had escaped from that horrible row. Also, glad that she was holding tight to Barney's hand. Her feelings were badly mixed and she had never had so many in such a brief time in her life.
They finally reached a quiet corner in the pine woods. The pursuit had taken a different direction and the whoops and yells behind them were growing faint. Valancy, out of breath, with a crazily beating heart, collapsed on the trunk of a fallen pine.
"Thanks," she gasped.
"What a goose you were to come to such a place!" said Barney.
"I--didn't--know--it--would--be like this," protested Valancy.
"You should have known. Chidley Corners!"
"It--was--just--a name--to me."
Valancy knew Barney could not realize how ignorant she was of the regions "up back." She had lived in Deerwood all her life and of course he supposed she knew. He didn't know how she had been brought up. There was no use trying to explain.
"When I drifted in at Abel's this evening and Cissy told me you'd come here I was amazed. And downright scared. Cissy told me she was worried about you but hadn't liked to say anything to dissuade you for fear you'd think she was thinking selfishly about herself. So I came on up here instead of going to Deerwood."
Valancy felt a sudden delightful glow irradiating soul and body under the dark pines. So he had actually come to look after her.
"As soon as they stop hunting for us we'll sneak around to the Muskoka road. I left Lady Jane down there. I'll take you home. I suppose you've had enough of your party."
"Quite," said Valancy meekly. The first half of the way home neither of them said anything. It would not have been much use. Lady Jane made so much noise they could not have heard each other. Anyway, Valancy did not feel conversationally inclined. She was ashamed of the whole affair--ashamed of her folly in going--ashamed for being found in such a place by Barney Snaith. By Barney Snaith, reputed jail-breaker, infidel, forger, and defaulter. Valancy's lips twitched in the darkness as she thought of it. But she was ashamed.
And yet she was enjoying herself--was full of a strange exultation--bumping over that rough road beside Barney Snaith. The big trees shot by them. The tall mulleins stood up along the road in stiff, orderly ranks like companies of soldiers. The thistles looked like drunken fairies or tipsy elves as their car-lights passed over them. This was the first time she had ever been in a car. After all, she liked it. She was not in the least afraid, with Barney at the wheel. Her spirits rose rapidly as they tore along. She ceased to feel ashamed. She c
eased to feel anything except that she was part of a comet rushing gloriously through the night of space.
All at once, just where the pine woods frayed out to the scrub barrens, Lady Jane became quiet--too quiet. Lady Jane slowed down quietly--and stopped.
Barney uttered an aghast exclamation. Got out. Investigated. Came apologetically back.
"I'm a doddering idiot. Out of gas. I knew I was short when I left home, but I meant to fill up in Deerwood. Then I forgot all about it in my hurry to get to the Corners."
"What can we do?" asked Valancy coolly.
"I don't know. There's no gas nearer than Deerwood, nine miles away. And I don't dare leave you here alone. There are always tramps on this road--and some of those crazy fools back at the Corners may come straggling along presently. There were boys there from the Port. As far as I can see, the best thing to do is for us just to sit patiently here until some car comes along and lends us enough gas to get to Roaring Abel's with."
"Well, what's the matter with that?" said Valancy.
"We may have to sit here all night," said Barney.
"I don't mind," said Valancy.
Barney gave a short laugh. "If you don't, I needn't. I haven't any reputation to lose."
"Nor I," said Valancy comfortably.
CHAPTER 21
"We'll just sit here," said Barney, "and if we think of anything worthwhile saying we'll say it. Otherwise, not. Don't imagine you're bound to talk to me."
"John Foster says," quoted Valancy, "'If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying.'"
"Evidently John Foster says a sensible thing once in a while," conceded Barney.
They sat in silence for a long while. Little rabbits hopped across the road. Once or twice an owl laughed out delightfully. The road beyond them was fringed with the woven shadow lace of trees. Away off to the southwest the sky was full of silvery little cirrus clouds above the spot where Barney's island must be.
Valancy was perfectly happy. Some things dawn on you slowly. Some things come by lightning flashes. Valancy had had a lightning flash.
She knew quite well now that she loved Barney. Yesterday she had been all her own. Now she was this man's. Yet he had done nothing--said nothing. He had not even looked at her as a woman. But that didn't matter. Nor did it matter what he was or what he had done. She loved him without any reservations. Everything in her went out wholly to him. She had no wish to stifle or disown her love. She seemed to be his so absolutely that thought apart from him--thought in which he did not predominate--was an impossibility.
She had realized, quite simply and fully, that she loved him, in the moment when he was leaning on the car door, explaining that Lady Jane had no gas. She had looked deep into his eyes in the moonlight and had known. In just that infinitesimal space of time everything was changed. Old things passed away and all things became new.
She was no longer unimportant, little old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant--justified to herself. Life was no longer empty and futile, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear.
Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was--this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this. She was no longer solitary. She was one of a vast sisterhood--all the women who had ever loved in the world.
Barney need never know it--though she would not in the least have minded his knowing. But she knew it and it made a tremendous difference to her. Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendor of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods. She had always envied the wind. So free. Blowing where it listed. Through the hills. Over the lakes. What a tang, what a zip it had! What a magic of adventure! Valancy felt as if she had exchanged her shop-worn soul for a fresh one, fire-new from the workshop of the gods. As far back as she could look, life had been dull--colorless--savorless. Now she had come to a little patch of violets, purple and fragrant--hers for the plucking. No matter who or what had been in Barney's past--no matter who or what might be in his future--no one else could ever have this perfect hour. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of the moment.
"Ever dream of ballooning?" said Barney suddenly.
"No," said Valancy.
"I do--often. Dream of sailing through the clouds--seeing the glories of sunset--spending hours in the midst of a terrific storm with lightning playing above and below you--skimming above a silver cloud floor under a full moon--wonderful!"
"It does sound so," said Valancy. "I've stayed on earth in my dreams."
She told him about her Blue Castle. It was so easy to tell Barney things. One felt he understood everything--even the things you didn't tell him. And then she told him a little of her existence before she came to Roaring Abel's. She wanted him to see why she had gone to the dance "up back."
"You see--I've never had any real life," she said. "I've just--breathed. Every door has always been shut to me."
"But you're still young," said Barney.
"Oh, I know. Yes, I'm 'still young'--but that's so different from young," said Valancy bitterly. For a moment she was tempted to tell Barney why her years had nothing to do with her future; but she did not. She was not going to think of death tonight.
"Though I never was really young," she went on--"until tonight," she added in her heart. "I never had a life like other girls. You couldn't understand. Why"--she had a desperate desire that Barney should know the worst about her--"I didn't even love my mother. Isn't it awful that I don't love my mother?"
"Rather awful--for her," said Barney drily.
"Oh, she didn't know it. She took my love for granted. And I wasn't any use or comfort to her or anybody. I was just a--a--vegetable. And I got tired of it. That's why I came to keep house for Mr. Gay and look after Cissy."
"And I suppose your people thought you'd gone mad."
"They did--and do--literally," said Valancy. "But it's a comfort to them. They'd rather believe me mad than bad. There's no other alternative. But I've been living since I came to Mr. Gay's. It's been a delightful experience. I suppose I'll pay for it when I have to go back--but I'll have had it."
"That's true," said Barney. "If you buy your experience it's your own. So it's no matter how much you pay for it. Somebody else's experience can never be yours. Well, it's a funny old world."
"Do you think it really is old?" asked Valancy dreamily. "I never believe that in June. It seems so young tonight--somehow. In that quivering moonlight--like a young, white girl--waiting."
"Moonlight here on the verge of up back is different from moonlight anywhere else," agreed Barney. "It always makes me feel so clean, somehow--body and soul. And of course the age of gold always comes back in spring."
It was ten o'clock now. A dragon of black cloud ate up the moon. The spring air grew chill--Valancy shivered. Barney reached back into the innards of Lady Jane and clawed up an old, tobacco-scented overcoat.
"Put that on," he ordered.
"Don't you want it yourself?" protested Valancy.
"No. I'm not going to have you catching cold on my hands."
"Oh, I won't catch cold. I haven't had a cold since I came to Mr. Gay's--though I've done the foolishest things. It's funny, too--I used to have them all the time. I feel so selfish taking your coat."
"You've sneezed three times. No use winding up your 'experience' up back with grippe or pneumonia."
He pulled it up tight about her throat and buttoned it on her. Valancy submitted with secret delight. How nice it was to have someone look after you so! She snuggled down into the tobaccoey folds and wished the night could last forever
.
Ten minutes later a car swooped down on them from "up back." Barney sprang from Lady Jane and waved his hand. The car came to a stop beside them. Valancy saw Uncle Wellington and Olive gazing at her in horror from it.
So Uncle Wellington had got a car! And he must have been spending the evening up at Mistawis with Cousin Herbert. Valancy almost laughed aloud at the expression on his face as he recognized her. The pompous, be-whiskered old humbug!
"Can you let me have enough gas to take me to Deerwood?" Barney was asking politely. But Uncle Wellington was not attending to him.
"Valancy, how came you here!" he said sternly.
"By chance or God's grace," said Valancy.
"With this jailbird--at ten o'clock at night!" said Uncle Wellington.
Valancy turned to Barney. The moon had escaped from its dragon and in its light her eyes were full of deviltry.
"Are you a jailbird?"
"Does it matter?" said Barney, gleams of fun in his eyes.
"Not to me. I only asked out of curiosity," continued Valancy.
"Then I won't tell you. I never satisfy curiosity." He turned to Uncle Wellington and his voice changed subtly.
"Mr. Stirling, I asked you if you could let me have some gas. If you can, well and good. If not, we are only delaying you unnecessarily."
Uncle Wellington was in a horrible dilemma. To give gas to this shameless pair! But not to give it to them! To go away and leave them there in the Mistawis woods--until daylight, likely. It was better to give it to them and let them get out of sight before anyone else saw them.
"Got anything to get gas in?" he grunted surlily.
Barney produced a two-gallon measure from Lady Jane. The two men went to the rear of the Stirling car and began manipulating the tap. Valancy stole sly glances at Olive over the collar of Barney's coat. Olive was sitting grimly staring straight ahead with an outraged expression. She did not mean to take any notice of Valancy. Olive had her own secret reasons for feeling outraged. Cecil had been in Deerwood lately and of course had heard all about Valancy. He agreed that her mind was changed and was exceedingly anxious to find out whence the derangement had been inherited. It was a serious thing to have in the family--a very serious thing. One had to think of one's--descendants.