Chapter 8 Valancy did not sleep that night.
She lay awake all through the long dark hours,
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 peacefully 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 vast whole jam fry,
Of them,
Would make men,
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,
Those.
Indignation on the part of the whole clan because she had not gone to Dr.
Marsh.
Then would come the solitude.
She would be taken to Dr.
Marsh.
And when Dr.
Marsh confirmed Dr.
Trent's diagnosis,
She would be taken to a specialist in Toronto and Montreal.
Uncle Benjamin would food the bill,
With the splendid gesture of Monifaisance,
In thus assisting the widow and orphan,
And talk forever after,
Of the shocking fee specialists charged for looking wise and saying they could not do anything.
And when the specialist 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.
Stolling 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 knobby with age.
And she would be watched and checked,
Like a baby and never let do anything,
Or to 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 would not put up with it.
And she wouldn't.
As she clocked 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 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 am poor,
I am ugly,
I am a failure,
And I am 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.
,
Leaves a large circle of friends to mourn.
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.
Then she reviewed her whole life between midnight and the early spring dawn.
It was a very trap existence.
But here and there,
An incident loomed out,
With a significance out of all proportions.
Portioned to its real importance,
These incidents were all unpleasant in one way or another.
Nothing really pleasant had ever happened to Valancy.
I never had one wholly happy hour in my life,
Not one,
She thought.
I've just been a colourless non-entity.
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 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 get popping up in her mind,
Like unbidden ghosts,
Without any sequence of time or place.
For instance,
That time when,
At sixteen,
She had glued a tub full 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 misdemeanours.
At almost every clan gathering,
They were raked up against her as jokes.
Uncle Benjamin hardly ever missed retelling 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 never even had a quarrel with anyone.
I haven't an enemy.
What a spineless thing I must be not to have even one enemy.
There was that incident of the dust pile at school when she was seven.
Valancy always recalled it when Dr.
Stolling referred to the text,
Other people might puzzle over that text,
But it never puzzled Valancy.
The whole relationship between herself and Olive,
Dating from the day of the dust pile,
Was a commentary on it.
She had been going to a school a year,
But Olive,
Who was a year younger,
Had just begun and had about her all the glamour of a new girl,
And an exceedingly pretty girl at that.
It was at recess and all the other girls,
Big and little,
Were out on the road in front of the school making dust piles.
The aim of each girl was to have the biggest pile.
Valancy was good at making dust piles,
There was an art in it,
And she had secret hopes of leading.
But Olive,
Working off by herself,
Was suddenly discovered to have a larger dust pile than anybody.
Valancy felt no jealousy.
Her dust pile was quite big enough to please her.
Then one of the other girls had an inspiration.
Let's put all our dust on Olive's pile and make a tremendous one,
She exclaimed.
A frenzy seemed to seize the girls.
They swooped down on the dust piles with pails and shovels,
And in a few seconds Olive's pile was a veritable pyramid.
In vain Valancy,
With scrawny,
Outstretched little arms,
Tried to protect hers.
She was ruthlessly swept aside.
Her dust pile scooped up and poured on Olive's.
Valancy turned away resolutely and began building another dust pile.
Again a bigger girl pounced on it.
Valancy stood before it,
Flushed indignant,
Arms outspread.
Don't take it,
She pleaded.
Please don't take it.
But why,
Demanded the other girl,
I want your help to build Olive's bigger.
I want my own little dust pile,
Said Valancy piteously.
Her plea went unheeded,
While she argued with one girl another scraped up her dust pile.
Valancy turned away,
Her heart sweating,
Her eyes full of tears.
Jealous,
You are jealous,
Said the girl smockingly.
You are very,
Very selfish.
You are very,
Very selfish,
Said her mother coldly,
When Valancy told her about it at night.
That was the first and last,
That was the first and last time Valancy had ever taken any of her troubles to her mother.
Valancy was neither jealous or selfish.
It was only that she wanted a dust pile of her own,
Small or big mattered not.
A team of horses came down the street.
Olive's dust pile was scattered over the roadway.
The bell rang.
Olive's dust pile was scattered over the roadway.
The bell rang.
The girls trooped into school and had forgotten the whole affair before they reached their seats.
Valancy never forgot it.
To this day she resented it,
In her secret soul,
But was it not symbolical of her life?
I have never been able to have my own dust pile,
Thought Valancy.
The enormous red moon she had seen rising right at the end of the street one autumn evening of her sixth year.
She had been sick and caught with the awful uncanny horror of it.
So near to her,
So big.
She had run in trembling to her mother,
And her mother had laughed at her.
She had gone to bed and hidden her face under the clothes,
In terror,
Lest she might look at the window and see that horrible moon glaring in at her,
Through it.
The boy who had tried to kiss her at a party when she was fifteen.
She had not let him.
She had evaded him and run.
He was the only boy who had ever tried to kiss her.
Now,
Fourteen years later,
Valancy found herself wishing that she had let him.
The time she had been made to apologize to Olive for something she hadn't done.
Olive had said that Valancy had pushed her into the mud and spoilt her new shoes on purpose.
Valancy knew she hadn't.
It had been an accident.
And even that wasn't her fault,
But nobody would believe her.
She had to apologize and kiss Olive to make up.
The injustice of it burned in her soul tonight.
That summer when Olive had the most beautiful hat,
Trimmed with creamy yellow net,
With a red of red roses and little ribbon bows under the chin.
Valancy had wanted a hat like that,
More than she had ever wanted anything.
She pleaded for one,
And had been laughed at.
All summer.
She had to wear a horrid little brown sailor with elastic hat that cut behind her ears.
None of the girls would go around with her because she was so shabby.
Nobody but Olive.
People had thought Olive so sweet and unselfish.
I was an excellent foil for her,
Thought Valancy.
Even then she knew that.
Valancy had tried to win a prize for attendance in Sunday school once,
But Olive won it.
There were so many Sundays Valancy had to stay home because she had colds.
She had once tried to say a piece in school one Friday afternoon and broken down in it.
Olive was a good reciter and never got stuck.
The night she had spent in Port Lawrence with Aunt Isabel,
When she was ten,
Byron Sterling was there,
From Montreal,
Twelve years old,
Conceited,
Clever.
At family prayers in the morning,
Byron had reached a cross and given Valancy's thin arm such a savage pinch that she screamed out with pain.
After prayers were over she was summoned to Aunt Isabel's bar of judgment,
But when she said Byron had pinched her,
Byron denied it.
He said she cried out because the kitten scratched her.
He said she had put the kitten up on her chair and was playing with it when she should have been listening to Uncle David's prayer.
He was believed.
In the Sterling clan,
Boys,
The boys were always believed before the girls.
Valancy was sent home in disgrace because of her exceedingly bad behavior during family prayers,
And she was not asked to Aunt Isabel's again for many moons.
The time cousin Betty Sterling was married.
Somehow Valancy got wind of the fact that Betty was going to ask her to be one of her bridesmaids.
Valancy was secretly uplifted.
It would be a delightful thing to be a bridesmaid.
And of course,
She would have to have a new dress for it.
A pretty new dress.
A pink dress.
Betty wanted her bridesmaids to dress in pink,
But Betty had never asked her after all.
Valancy couldn't guess why,
But long after her secret tears of disappointment had been dried,
Olive told her Betty after much consultation and reflection had decided that Valancy was too insignificant.
She would spoil the effect.
That was nine years ago,
But the night Valancy caught her breath with the old pain and sting of it,
That day in her eleventh year,
When her mother had battered her into confessing something she had never done,
Valancy had denied it for a long time,
But eventually for peace sake she had given in and pleaded guilty.
Miss Frederick was always making people lie by pushing them into situations where they had to lie.
Then her mother had made her kneel down on the parlor floor between herself and Cousin Stickles and say,
Oh God,
Please forgive me for not speaking the truth.
Valancy had said it,
But as she rose from her knees she muttered,
But oh God,
You know I did speak the truth.
Valancy had not then heard of Galileo,
But her fate was similar to his.
She was punished just as severely as she hadn't confessed and prayed.
