"Think how many thousands of springs have been here on Mistawis--and all of them beautiful," said Valancy. "Oh, Barney, look at that wild plum! I will--I must quote from John Foster. There's a passage in one of his books--I've re-read it a hundred times. He must have written it before a tree just like that:
"'Behold the young wild plum-tree which has adorned herself after immemorial fashion in a wedding-veil of fine lace. The fingers of wood pixies must have woven it, for nothing like it ever came from an earthly loom. I vow the tree is conscious of its loveliness. It is bridling before our very eyes--as if its beauty were not the most ephemeral thing in the woods, as it is the rarest and most exceeding, for today it is and tomorrow it is not. Every south wind purring through the boughs will winnow away in a shower of slender petals. But what matter? Today it is queen of the wild places and it is always today in the woods.'"
"I'm sure you feel much better since you've got that out of your system," said Barney heartlessly.
"Here's a patch of dandelions," said Valancy, unsubdued. "Dandelions shouldn't grow in the woods, though. They haven't any sense of the fitness of things at all. They are too cheerful and self-satisfied. They haven't any of the mystery and reserve of the real wood-flowers."
"In short, they've no secrets," said Barney. "But wait a bit. The woods will have their own way even with those obvious dandelions. In a little while all that obtrusive yellowness and complacency will be gone and we'll find here misty, phantom-like globes hovering over those long grasses in full harmony with the traditions of the forest."
"That sounds John Fosterish," teased Valancy.
"What have I done that deserved a slam like that?" complained Barney.
One of the earliest signs of spring was the renaissance of Lady Jane. Barney put her on roads that no other car would look at, and they went through Deerwood in mud to the axles. They passed several Stirlings, who groaned and reflected that now spring was come and they would encounter that shameless pair everywhere. Valancy, prowling about Deerwood shops, met Uncle Benjamin on the street; but he did not realize until he had gone two blocks further on that the girl in the scarlet-collared blanket coat, with cheeks reddened in the sharp April air and the fringe of black hair over laughing, slanted eyes, was Valancy. When he did realize it, Uncle Benjamin was indignant. What business had Valancy to look like--like--like a young girl? The way of the transgressor was hard. Had to be. Scriptural and proper. Yet Valancy's path couldn't be hard. She wouldn't look like that if it were. There was something wrong. It was almost enough to make a man turn modernist.
Barney and Valancy clanged on to the Port, so that it was dark when they went through Deerwood again. At her old home Valancy, seized with a sudden impulse, got out, opened the little gate and tiptoed around to the sitting-room window. There sat her mother and Cousin Stickles drearily, grimly knitting. Baffling and inhuman as ever. If they had looked the least bit lonesome Valancy would have gone in. But they did not. Valancy would not disturb them for worlds.
CHAPTER 34
Valancy had two wonderful moments that spring. One day, coming home through the woods, with her arms full of trailing arbutus and creeping spruce, she met a man who she knew must be Allan Tierney. Allan Tierney, the celebrated painter of beautiful women. He lived in New York in winter, but he owned an island cottage at the northern end of Mistawis to which he always came the minute the ice was out of the lake. He was reputed to be a lonely, eccentric man. He never flattered his sitters. There was no need to, for he would not paint anyone who required flattery. To be painted by Allan Tierney was all the cachet of beauty a woman could desire. Valancy had heard so much about him that she couldn't help turning her head back over her shoulder for another shy, curious look at him. A shaft of pale spring sunlight fell through a great pine athwart her bare black head and her slanted eyes. She wore a pale green sweater and had bound a fillet of linnaea vine about her hair. The feathery fountain of trailing spruce overflowed her arms and fell around her. Allan Tierney's eyes lighted up.
"I've had a caller," said Barney the next afternoon, when Valancy had returned from another flower quest.
"Who?" Valancy was surprised but indifferent. She began filling a basket with arbutus.
"Allan Tierney. He wants to paint you, Moonlight."
"Me!" Valancy dropped her basket and her arbutus. "You're laughing at me, Barney."
"I'm not. That's what Tierney came for. To ask my permission to paint my wife--as the Spirit of Muskoka, or something like that."
"But--but--" stammered Valancy, "Allan Tierney never paints any but--any but--"
"Beautiful women," finished Barney. "Conceded. Q.E.D., Mistress Barney Snaith is a beautiful woman."
"Nonsense," said Valancy, stooping to retrieve her arbutus. "You know that's nonsense, Barney. I know I'm a heap better-looking than I was a year ago, but I'm not beautiful."
"Allan Tierney never makes a mistake," said Barney. "You forget, Moonlight, that there are different kinds of beauty. Your imagination is obsessed by the very obvious type of your cousin Olive. Oh, I've seen her--she's a stunner--but you'd never catch Allan Tierney wanting to paint her. In the horrible but expressive slang phrase, she keeps all her goods in the shop-window. But in your subconscious mind you have a conviction that nobody can be beautiful who doesn't look like Olive. Also, you remember your face as it was in the days when your soul was not allowed to shine through it. Tierney said something about the curve of your cheek as you looked back over your shoulder. You know I've often told you it was distracting. And he's quite batty about your eyes. If I wasn't absolutely sure it was solely professional--he's really a crabbed old bachelor, you know--I'd be jealous."
"Well, I don't want to be painted," said Valancy. "I hope you told him that."
"I couldn't tell him that. I didn't know what you wanted. But I told him I didn't want my wife painted--hung up in a salon for the mob to stare at. Belonging to another man. For of course I couldn't buy the picture. So even if you had wanted to be painted, Moonlight, your tyrannous husband would not have permitted it. Tierney was a bit squiffy. He isn't used to being turned down like that. His requests are almost like royalty's."
"But we are outlaws," laughed Valancy. "We bow to no decrees--we acknowledge no sovereignty."
In her heart she thought unashamedly:
"I wish Olive could know that Allan Tierney wanted to paint me. Me! Little-old-maid-Valancy-Stirling-that-was."
Her second wonder-moment came one evening in May. She realized that Barney actually liked her. She had always hoped he did, but sometimes she had a little, disagreeable, haunting dread that he was just kind and nice and chummy out of pity; knowing that she hadn't long to live and determined she should have a good time as long as she did live; but away back in his mind rather looking forward to freedom again, with no intrusive woman creature in his island fastness and no chattering thing beside him in his woodland prowls. She knew he could never love her. She did not even want him to. If he loved her he would be unhappy when she died--Valancy never flinched from the plain word. No "passing away" for her. And she did not want him to be the least unhappy. But neither did she want him to be glad--or relieved. She wanted him to like her and miss her as a good chum. But she had never been sure until this night that he did.
They had walked over the hills in the sunset. They had the delight of discovering a virgin spring in a ferny hollow and had drunk together from it out of a birch bark cup; they had come to an old tumble-down rail fence and sat on it for a long time. They didn't talk much, but Valancy had a curious sense of oneness. She knew that she couldn't have felt that if he hadn't liked her.
"You nice little thing," said Barney suddenly. "Oh, you nice little thing! Sometimes I feel you're too nice to be real--that I'm just dreaming you."
"Why can't I die now--this very minute--when I am so happy!" thought Valancy.
Well, it couldn't be so very long now. Somehow, Valancy had always felt she would live out the year Dr. Trent had allotted.
She had not been careful--she had never tried to be. But, somehow, she had always counted on living out her year. She had not let herself think about it at all. But now, sitting here beside Barney, with her hand in his, a sudden realization came to her. She had not had a heart attack for a long while--two months at least. The last one she had had was two or three nights before Barney was out in the storm. Since then she had not remembered she had a heart. Well, no doubt, it betokened the nearness of the end. Nature had given up the struggle. There would be no more pain.
"I'm afraid heaven will be very dull after this past year," thought Valancy. "But perhaps one will not remember. Would that be--nice? No, no. I don't want to forget Barney. I'd rather be miserable in heaven remembering him than happy forgetting him. And I'll always remember through all eternity--that he really, really liked me."
CHAPTER 35
Thirty seconds can be very long sometimes. Long enough to work a miracle or a revolution. In thirty seconds life changed wholly for Barney and Valancy Snaith.
They had gone around the lake one June evening in their disappearing propeller, fished for an hour in a little creek, left their boat there, and walked up through the woods to Port Lawrence two miles away. Valancy prowled a bit in the shops and got herself a new pair of sensible shoes. Her old pair had suddenly and completely given out, and this evening she had been compelled to put on the little fancy pair of patent-leather with rather high, slender heels, which she had bought in a fit of folly one day in the winter because of their beauty and because she wanted to make one foolish, extravagant purchase in her life. She sometimes put them on of an evening in the Blue Castle, but this was the first time she had worn them outside. She had not found it any too easy walking up through the woods in them, and Barney guyed her unmercifully about them. But in spite of the inconvenience, Valancy secretly rather liked the look of her trim ankles and high instep above those pretty, foolish shoes and did not change them in the shop as she might have done.
The sun was hanging low above the pines when they left Port Lawrence. To the north of it the woods closed around the town quite suddenly. Valancy always had a sense of stepping from one world to another--from reality to fairyland--when she went out of Port Lawrence and in a twinkling found it shut off behind her by the armies of the pines.
A mile and a half from Port Lawrence there was a small railroad station with a little station-house which at this hour of the day was deserted, since no local train was due. Not a soul was in sight when Barney and Valancy emerged from the woods. Off to the left a sudden curve in the track hid it from view, but over the treetops beyond, the long plume of smoke betokened the approach of a through train. The rails were vibrating to its thunder as Barney stepped across the switch. Valancy was a few steps behind him, loitering to gather Junebells along the little, winding path. But there was plenty of time to get across before the train came. She stepped unconcernedly over the first rail.
She could never tell how it happened. The ensuing thirty seconds always seemed in her recollection like a chaotic nightmare in which she endured the agony of a thousand lifetimes.
The heel of her pretty, foolish shoe caught in a crevice of the switch. She could not pull it loose.
"Barney--Barney!" she called in alarm.
Barney turned--saw her predicament--saw her ashen face--dashed back. He tried to pull her clear--he tried to wrench her foot from the prisoning hold. In vain. In a moment the train would sweep around the curve--would be on them.
"Go--go--quick--you'll be killed, Barney!" shrieked Valancy, trying to push him away.
Barney dropped on his knees, ghost-white, frantically tearing at her shoe-lace. The knot defied his trembling fingers. He snatched a knife from his pocket and slashed at it. Valancy still strove blindly to push him away. Her mind was full of the hideous thought that Barney was going to be killed. She had not thought for her own danger.
"Barney--go--go--for God's sake--go!"
"Never!" muttered Barney between his set teeth. He gave one mad wrench at the lace. As the train thundered around the curve he sprang up and caught Valancy--dragging her clear, leaving her shoe behind her. The wind from the train as it swept by turned to icy cold the streaming perspiration on his face.
"Thank God!" he breathed.
For a moment they stood stupidly staring at each other, two white, shaken, wild-eyed creatures. Then they stumbled over to the little seat at the end of the station-house and dropped on it. Barney buried his face in his hands and said not a word. Valancy sat, staring straight ahead of her with unseeing eyes at the great pine woods, the stumps of the clearing, the long, gleaming rails. There was only one thought in her dazed mind--a thought that seemed to burn it as a shaving of fire might burn her body.
Dr. Trent had told her over a year ago that she had a serious form of heart-disease--that any excitement might be fatal.
If that were so, why was she not dead now? This very minute? She had just experienced as much and as terrible excitement as most people experience in a lifetime, crowded into that endless thirty seconds. Yet she had not died of it. She was not an iota the worse for it. A little wobbly at the knees, as anyone would have been; a quicker heart-beat, as anyone would have; nothing more.
Why?
Was it possible Dr. Trent had made a mistake?
Valancy shivered as if a cold wind had suddenly chilled her to the soul. She looked at Barney, hunched up beside her. His silence was very eloquent: Had the same thought occurred to him? Did he suddenly find himself confronted by the appalling suspicion that he was married, not for a few months or a year, but for good and all to a woman he did not love and who had foisted herself upon him by some trick or lie? Valancy turned sick before the horror of it. It could not be. It would be too cruel--too devilish. Dr. Trent couldn't have made a mistake. Impossible. He was one of the best heart specialists in Ontario. She was foolish--unnerved by the recent horror. She remembered some of the hideous spasms of pain she had had. There must be something serious the matter with her heart to account for them.
But she had not had any for nearly three months.
Why?
Presently Barney bestirred himself. He stood up, without looking at Valancy, and said casually:
"I suppose we'd better be hiking back. Sun's getting low. Are you good for the rest of the road?"
"I think so," said Valancy miserably.
Barney went across the clearing and picked up the parcel he had dropped--the parcel containing her new shoes. He brought it to her and let her take out the shoes and put them on without any assistance, while he stood with his back to her and looked out over the pines.
They walked in silence down the shadowy trail to the lake. In silence Barney steered his boat into the sunset miracle that was Mistawis. In silence they went around feathery headlands and across coral bays and silver rivers where canoes were slipping up and down in the afterglow. In silence they went past cottages echoing with music and laughter. In silence drew up at the landing-place below the Blue Castle.
Valancy went up the rock steps and into the house. She dropped miserably on the first chair she came to and sat there staring through the oriel, oblivious of Good Luck's frantic purrs of joy and Banjo's savage glares of protest at her occupancy of his chair.
Barney came in a few minutes later. He did not come near her, but he stood behind her and asked gently if she felt any the worse for her experience. Valancy would have given her year of happiness to have been able honestly to answer "Yes."
"No," she said flatly.
Barney went into Bluebeard's Chamber and shut the door. She heard him pacing up and down--up and down. He had never paced like that before.
And an hour ago--only an hour ago--she had been so happy!
CHAPTER 36
Finally Valancy went to bed. Before she went she re-read Dr. Trent's letter. It comforted her a little. So positive. So assured. The writing so black and steady. Not the writing of a man who didn't know what he was writing about. But she could not
sleep. She pretended to be asleep when Barney came in. Barney pretended to go to sleep. But Valancy knew perfectly well he wasn't sleeping any more than she was. She knew he was lying there, staring through the darkness. Thinking of what? Trying to face--what?
Valancy, who had spent so many happy wakeful hours of night lying by that window, now paid the price of them all in this one night of misery. A horrible, portentous fact was slowly looming out before her from the nebula of surmise and fear. She could not shut her eyes to it--push it away--ignore it.
There could be nothing seriously wrong with her heart, no matter what Dr. Trent had said. If there had been, those thirty seconds would have killed her. It was no use to recall Dr. Trent's letter and reputation. The greatest specialists made mistakes sometimes. Dr. Trent had made one.
Towards morning Valancy fell into a fitful dose with ridiculous dreams. One of them was of Barney taunting her with having tricked him. In her dream she lost her temper and struck him violently on the head with her rolling-pin. He proved to be made of glass and shivered into splinters all over the floor. She woke with a cry of horror--a gasp of relief--a short laugh over the absurdity of her dream--a miserable sickening recollection of what had happened.
Barney was gone. Valancy knew, as people sometimes knew things--inescapably, without being told--that he was not in the house or in Bluebeard's Chamber either. There was a curious silence in the living-room. A silence with something uncanny about it. The old clock had stopped. Barney must have forgotten to wind it up, something he had never done before. The room without it was dead, though the sunshine streamed in through the oriel and dimples of light from the dancing waves beyond quivered over the walls.
The canoe was gone but Lady Jane was under the mainland trees. So Barney had betaken himself to the wilds. He would not return till night--perhaps not even then. He must be angry with her. That furious silence of his must mean anger--cold, deep, justifiable resentment. Well, Valancy knew what she must do first. She was not suffering very keenly now. Yet the curious numbness that pervaded her being was in a way worse than pain. It was as if something in her had died. She forced herself to cook and eat a little breakfast. Mechanically she put the Blue Castle in perfect order. Then she put on her hat and coat, locked the door and hid the key in the hollow of the old pine, and crossed to the mainland in the motor boat. She was going into Deerwood to see Dr. Trent. She must know.