CHAPTER I If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling's whole life would have been different. She would have gone, with the rest of her clan, to Aunt Wellington's engagement picnic and Dr. Trent would have gone to Montreal. But it did rain and you shall hear what happened to her because of it. Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn. She had not slept very well. One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are ...Read More

CHAPTER II When Cousin Stickles knocked at her door, Valancy knew it was half-past seven and she must get As long as she could remember, Cousin Stickles had knocked at her door at half-past seven. Cousin Stickles and Mrs. Frederick Stirling had been up since seven, but Valancy was allowed to lie abed half an hour longer because of a family tradition that she was delicate. Valancy got up, though she hated getting up more this morning than ever she had before. What was there to get up for? Another dreary day like all the days that had preceded ...Read More

CHAPTER III Breakfast was always the same. Oatmeal porridge, which Valancy loathed, toast and tea, and one teaspoonful of Mrs. Frederick thought two teaspoonfuls extravagant—but that did not matter to Valancy, who hated marmalade, too. The chilly, gloomy little dining-room was chillier and gloomier than usual; the rain streamed down outside the window; departed Stirlings, in atrocious, gilt frames, wider than the pictures, glowered down from the walls. And yet Cousin Stickles wished Valancy many happy returns of the day! "Sit up straight, Doss," was all her mother said. Valancy sat up straight. She talked to her mother and ...Read More

CHAPTER IV "Got your rubbers on?" called Cousin Stickles, as Valancy left the house. Christine Stickles had never once to ask that question when Valancy went out on a damp day. "Yes." "Have you got your flannel petticoat on?" asked Mrs. Frederick. "No." "Doss, I really do not understand you. Do you want to catch your death of cold again?" Her voice implied that Valancy had died of a cold several times already. "Go upstairs this minute and put it on!" "Mother, I don't need a flannel petticoat. My sateen one is warm enough." "Doss, remember you had bronchitis ...Read More

CHAPTER V Of course she must buy the tea in Uncle Benjamin's grocery-store. To buy it anywhere else was Yet Valancy hated to go to Uncle Benjamin's store on her twenty-ninth birthday. There was no hope that he would not remember it. "Why," demanded Uncle Benjamin, leeringly, as he tied up her tea, "are young ladies like bad grammarians?" Valancy, with Uncle Benjamin's will in the background of her mind, said meekly, "I don't know. Why?" "Because," chuckled Uncle Benjamin, "they can't decline matrimony." The two clerks, Joe Hammond and Claude Bertram, chuckled also, and Valancy disliked them a ...Read More

CHAPTER VI The ordeal was not so dreadful, after all. Dr. Trent was as gruff and abrupt as usual, he did not tell her ailment was imaginary. After he had listened to her symptoms and asked a few questions and made a quick examination, he sat for a moment looking at her quite intently. Valancy thought he looked as if he were sorry for her. She caught her breath for a moment. Was the trouble serious? Oh, it couldn't be, surely—it really hadn't bothered her much—only lately it had got a little worse. Dr. Trent opened his mouth—but before ...Read More

CHAPTER VII There was a rosebush on the little Stirling lawn, growing beside the gate. It was called "Doss's 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER VIII Valancy did not sleep that night. She lay awake all through the long dark hours—thinking—thinking. She made 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER IX Uncle Herbert and Aunt Alberta's silver wedding was delicately referred to among the Stirlings during the following 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 ...Read More

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

CHAPTER XI Meanwhile the dinner in its earlier stages was dragging its slow length along true to Stirling form. 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER XII Valancy hurried home through the faint blue twilight—hurried too fast perhaps. The attack she had when she 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, ...Read More

CHAPTER XIII Uncle Benjamin found he had reckoned without his host when he promised so airily to take Valancy 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER XIV Life cannot stop because tragedy enters it. Meals must be made ready though a son dies and 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER XV "Let us be calm," said Uncle Benjamin. "Let us be perfectly calm." "Calm!" Mrs. Frederick wrung her "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 ...Read More

CHAPTER XVI Valancy had walked out to Roaring Abel's house on the Mistawis road under a sky of purple amber, with a queer exhilaration and expectancy in her heart. Back there, behind her, her mother and Cousin Stickles were crying—over themselves, not over her. But here the wind was in her face, soft, dew-wet, cool, blowing along the grassy roads. Oh, she loved the wind! The robins were whistling sleepily in the firs along the way and the moist air was fragrant with the tang of balsam. Big cars went purring past in the violet dusk—the stream of summer ...Read More

CHAPTER XVII When Valancy had lived for a week at Roaring Abel's she felt as if years had separated from her old life and all the people she had known in it. They were beginning to seem remote—dream-like—far-away—and as the days went on they seemed still more so, until they ceased to matter altogether. She was happy. Nobody ever bothered her with conundrums or insisted on giving her Purple Pills. Nobody called her Doss or worried her about catching cold. There were no quilts to piece, no abominable rubber-plant to water, no ice-cold maternal tantrums to endure. She could ...Read More

CHAPTER XVIII Valancy was acquainted with Barney by now—well acquainted, it seemed, though she had spoken to him only few times. But then she had felt just as well acquainted with him the first time they had met. She had been in the garden at twilight, hunting for a few stalks of white narcissus for Cissy's room when she heard that terrible old Grey Slosson coming down through the woods from Mistawis—one could hear it miles away. Valancy did not look up as it drew near, thumping over the rocks in that crazy lane. She had never looked up, ...Read More

CHAPTER XIX Of course, the Stirlings had not left the poor maniac alone all this time or refrained from efforts to rescue her perishing soul and reputation. Uncle James, whose lawyer had helped him as little as his doctor, came one day and, finding Valancy alone in the kitchen, as he supposed, gave her a terrible talking-to—told her she was breaking her mother's heart and disgracing her family. "But why?" said Valancy, not ceasing to scour her porridge pot decently. "I'm doing honest work for honest pay. What is there in that that is disgraceful?" "Don't quibble, Valancy," said ...Read More

CHAPTER XX When Abel Gay paid Valancy her first month's wages—which he did promptly, in bills reeking with the of tobacco and whiskey—Valancy went into Deerwood and spent every cent of it. She got a pretty green crêpe dress with a girdle of crimson beads, at a bargain sale, a pair of silk stockings, to match, and a little crinkled green hat with a crimson rose in it. She even bought a foolish little beribboned and belaced nightgown. She passed the house on Elm Street twice—Valancy never even thought about it as "home"—but saw no one. No doubt her ...Read More

CHAPTER XXI "We'll just sit here," said Barney, "and if we think of anything worth while saying we'll say 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER XXII The next thing the Stirlings heard was that Valancy had been seen with Barney Snaith in a theatre in Port Lawrence and after it at supper in a Chinese restaurant there. This was quite true—and no one was more surprised at it than Valancy herself. Barney had come along in Lady Jane one dim twilight and told Valancy unceremoniously if she wanted a drive to hop in. "I'm going to the Port. Will you go there with me?" His eyes were teasing and there was a bit of defiance in his voice. Valancy, who did not conceal ...Read More

CHAPTER XXIII On one of Cissy's wakeful nights, she told Valancy her poor little story. They were sitting by open window. Cissy could not get her breath lying down that night. An inglorious gibbous moon was hanging over the wooded hills and in its spectral light Cissy looked frail and lovely and incredibly young. A child. It did not seem possible that she could have lived through all the passion and pain and shame of her story. "He was stopping at the hotel across the lake. He used to come over in his canoe at night—we met in the ...Read More

CHAPTER XXIV Valancy herself made Cissy ready for burial. No hands but hers should touch that pitiful, wasted little The old house was spotless on the day of the funeral. Barney Snaith was not there. He had done all he could to help Valancy before it—he had shrouded the pale Cecilia in white roses from the garden—and then had gone back to his island. But everybody else was there. All Deerwood and "up back" came. They forgave Cissy splendidly at last. Mr. Bradly gave a very beautiful funeral address. Valancy had wanted her old Free Methodist man, but Roaring ...Read More

CHAPTER XXV On the evening of the day after the funeral Roaring Abel went off for a spree. He been sober for four whole days and could endure it no longer. Before he went, Valancy told him she would be going away the next day. Roaring Abel was sorry, and said so. A distant cousin from "up back" was coming to keep house for him—quite willing to do so now since there was no sick girl to wait on—but Abel was not under any delusions concerning her. "She won't be like you, my girl. Well, I'm obliged to you. ...Read More

CHAPTER XXVI The next day passed for Valancy like a dream. She could not make herself or anything she seem real. She saw nothing of Barney, though she expected he must go rattling past on his way to the Port for a license. Perhaps he had changed his mind. But at dusk the lights of Lady Jane suddenly swooped over the crest of the wooded hill beyond the lane. Valancy was waiting at the gate for her bridegroom. She wore her green dress and her green hat because she had nothing else to wear. She did not look or ...Read More

CHAPTER XXVII Cousin Georgiana came down the lane leading up to her little house. She lived half a mile of Deerwood and she wanted to go in to Amelia's and find out if Doss had come home yet. Cousin Georgiana was anxious to see Doss. She had something very important to tell her. Something, she was sure, Doss would be delighted to hear. Poor Doss! She had had rather a dull life of it. Cousin Georgiana owned to herself that she would not like to live under Amelia's thumb. But that would be all changed now. Cousin Georgiana felt ...Read More

CHAPTER XXVIII Summer passed by. The Stirling clan—with the insignificant exception of Cousin Georgiana—had tacitly agreed to follow Uncle example and look upon Valancy as one dead. To be sure, Valancy had an unquiet, ghostly habit of recurring resurrections when she and Barney clattered through Deerwood and out to the Port in that unspeakable car. Valancy, bareheaded, with stars in her eyes. Barney, bareheaded, smoking his pipe. But shaved. Always shaved now, if any of them had noticed it. They even had the audacity to go in to Uncle Benjamin's store to buy groceries. Twice Uncle Benjamin ignored them. ...Read More

CHAPTER XXIX Valancy toiled not, neither did she spin. There was really very little work to do. She cooked meals on a coal-oil stove, performing all her little domestic rites carefully and exultingly, and they ate out on the verandah that almost overhung the lake. Before them lay Mistawis, like a scene out of some fairy tale of old time. And Barney smiling his twisted, enigmatical smile at her across the table. "What a view old Tom picked out when he built this shack!" Barney would say exultantly. Supper was the meal Valancy liked best. The faint laughter of ...Read More

CHAPTER XXX They didn't spend all their days on the island. They spent more than half of them wandering will through the enchanted Muskoka country. Barney knew the woods as a book and he taught their lore and craft to Valancy. He could always find trail and haunt of the shy wood people. Valancy learned the different fairy-likenesses of the mosses—the charm and exquisiteness of woodland blossoms. She learned to know every bird at sight and mimic its call—though never so perfectly as Barney. She made friends with every kind of tree. She learned to paddle a canoe as ...Read More

CHAPTER XXXI Autumn came. Late September with cool nights. They had to forsake the verandah; but they kindled a in the big fireplace and sat before it with jest and laughter. They left the doors open, and Banjo and Good Luck came and went at pleasure. Sometimes they sat gravely on the bearskin rug between Barney and Valancy; sometimes they slunk off into the mystery of the chill night outside. The stars smouldered in the horizon mists through the old oriel. The haunting, persistent croon of the pine-trees filled the air. The little waves began to make soft, sobbing ...Read More

CHAPTER XXXII New Year. The old, shabby, inglorious outlived calendar came down. The new one went up. January was month of storms. It snowed for three weeks on end. The thermometer went miles below zero and stayed there. But, as Barney and Valancy pointed out to each other, there were no mosquitoes. And the roar and crackle of their big fire drowned the howls of the north wind. Good Luck and Banjo waxed fat and developed resplendent coats of thick, silky fur. Nip and Tuck had gone. "But they'll come back in spring," promised Barney. There was no monotony. ...Read More

CHAPTER XXXIII Spring. Mistawis black and sullen for a week or two, then flaming in sapphire and turquoise, lilac rose again, laughing through the oriel, caressing its amethyst islands, rippling under winds soft as silk. Frogs, little green wizards of swamp and pool, singing everywhere in the long twilights and long into the nights; islands fairy-like in a green haze; the evanescent beauty of wild young trees in early leaf; frost-like loveliness of the new foliage of juniper-trees; the woods putting on a fashion of spring flowers, dainty, spiritual things akin to the soul of the wilderness; red mist ...Read More

CHAPTER XXXIV Valancy had two wonderful moments that spring. One day, coming home through the woods, with her arms 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER XXXV Thirty seconds can be very long sometimes. Long enough to work a miracle or a revolution. In 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER XXXVI Finally Valancy went to bed. Before she went she re-read Dr. Trent's letter. It comforted her a 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 ...Read More

CHAPTER XXXVII Dr. Trent looked at her blankly and fumbled among his recollections. "Er—Miss—Miss—" "Mrs. Snaith," said Valancy quietly. was Miss Valancy Stirling when I came to you last May—over a year ago. I wanted to consult you about my heart." Dr. Trent's face cleared. "Oh, of course. I remember now. I'm really not to blame for not knowing you. You've changed—splendidly. And married. Well, well, it has agreed with you. You don't look much like an invalid now, hey? I remember that day. I was badly upset. Hearing about poor Ned bowled me over. But Ned's as good ...Read More

CHAPTER XXXVIII Valancy walked quickly through the back streets and through Lover's Lane. She did not want to meet one she knew. She didn't want to meet even people she didn't know. She hated to be seen. Her mind was so confused, so torn, so messy. She felt that her appearance must be the same. She drew a sobbing breath of relief as she left the village behind and found herself on the "up back" road. There was little fear of meeting any one she knew here. The cars that fled by her with raucous shrieks were filled with ...Read More

CHAPTER XXXIX She must write a note. The imp in the back of her mind laughed. In every story had ever read when a runaway wife decamped from home she left a note, generally on the pin-cushion. It was not a very original idea. But one had to leave something intelligible. What was there to do but write a note? She looked vaguely about her for something to write with. Ink? There was none. Valancy had never written anything since she had come to the Blue Castle, save memoranda of household necessaries for Barney. A pencil sufficed for them, ...Read More

CHAPTER XL Valancy paused a moment on the porch of the brick house in Elm Street. She felt that ought to knock like a stranger. Her rosebush, she idly noticed, was loaded with buds. The rubber-plant stood beside the prim door. A momentary horror overcame her—a horror of the existence to which she was returning. Then she opened the door and walked in. "I wonder if the Prodigal Son ever felt really at home again," she thought. Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles were in the sitting-room. Uncle Benjamin was there, too. They looked blankly at Valancy, realising at once ...Read More

CHAPTER XLI Valancy looked dully about her old room. It, too, was so exactly the same that it seemed impossible to believe in the changes that had come to her since she had last slept in it. It seemed—somehow—indecent that it should be so much the same. There was Queen Louise everlastingly coming down the stairway, and nobody had let the forlorn puppy in out of the rain. Here was the purple paper blind and the greenish mirror. Outside, the old carriage-shop with its blatant advertisements. Beyond it, the station with the same derelicts and flirtatious flappers. Here the ...Read More

CHAPTER XLII It was not until early afternoon the next day that a dreadful old car clanked up Elm and stopped in front of the brick house. A hatless man sprang from it and rushed up the steps. The bell was rung as it had never been rung before—vehemently, intensely. The ringer was demanding entrance, not asking it. Uncle Benjamin chuckled as he hurried to the door. Uncle Benjamin had "just dropped in" to enquire how dear Doss—Valancy was. Dear Doss—Valancy, he had been informed, was just the same. She had come down for breakfast—which she didn't eat—gone back ...Read More

CHAPTER XLIII "But, Barney," protested Valancy after a few minutes, "your father—somehow—gave me to understand that you still loved "He would. Dad holds the championship for making blunders. If there's a thing that's better left unsaid you can trust him to say it. But he isn't a bad old soul, Valancy. You'll like him." "I do, now." "And his money isn't tainted money. He made it honestly. His medicines are quite harmless. Even his Purple Pills do people whole heaps of good when they believe in them." "But—I'm not fit for your life," sighed Valancy. "I'm not—clever—or well-educated—or——" "My ...Read More