"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 jailbird," snapped Uncle Benjamin. "I noticed it the first time I saw him."
"'A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and sighed 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 centered 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 defense 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's 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 misdemeanors 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 jailbird; 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 everyone 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 defenses were down.
<
br /> "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 gray 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 banister.
"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 parlor 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 labor 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.
CHAPTER 12
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 someone with her who could sympathize--someone who really cared--just to hold her hand tight, if nothing else--someone just to say, "Yes, I know. It's dreadful--be brave--you'll soon be better"; not someone 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! 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."
CHAPTER 13
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 apologize.
"You made me apologize 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.