"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 has 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.
CHAPTER VIII
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 every 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!"