CHAPTER XVIII
Valancy was acquainted with Barney by now—well acquainted, it seemed, though she had spoken to him only a 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, though Barney had gone racketting past every evening since she had been at Roaring Abel’s. This time he did not racket past. The old Grey Slosson stopped with even more terrible noises than it made going. Valancy was conscious that Barney had sprung from it and was leaning over the ramshackle gate. She suddenly straightened up and looked into his face. Their eyes met—Valancy was suddenly conscious of a delicious weakness. Was one of her heart attacks coming on?—But this was a new symptom.
His eyes, which she had always thought brown, now seen close, were deep violet—translucent and intense. Neither of his eyebrows looked like the other. He was thin—too thin—she wished she could feed him up a bit—she wished she could sew the buttons on his coat—and make him cut his hair—and shave every day. There was something in his face—one hardly knew what it was. Tiredness? Sadness? Disillusionment? He had dimples in his thin cheeks when he smiled. All these thoughts flashed through Valancy’s mind in that one moment while his eyes looked into hers.
“Good-evening, Miss Stirling.”
Nothing could be more commonplace and conventional. Any one might have said it. But Barney Snaith had a way of saying things that gave them poignancy. When he said good-evening you felt that it was a good evening and that it was partly his doing that it was. Also, you felt that some of the credit was yours. Valancy felt all this vaguely, but she couldn’t imagine why she was trembling from head to foot—it must be her heart. If only he didn’t notice it!
“I’m going over to the Port,” Barney was saying. “Can I acquire merit by getting or doing anything there for you or Cissy?”
“Will you get some salt codfish for us?” said Valancy. It was the only thing she could think of. Roaring Abel had expressed a desire that day for a dinner of boiled salt codfish. When her knights came riding to the Blue Castle, Valancy had sent them on many a quest, but she had never asked any of them to get her salt codfish.
“Certainly. You’re sure there’s nothing else? Lots of room in Lady Jane Grey Slosson. And she always gets back some time, does Lady Jane.”
“I don’t think there’s anything more,” said Valancy. She knew he would bring oranges for Cissy anyhow—he always did.
Barney did not turn away at once. He was silent for a little. Then he said, slowly and whimsically:
“Miss Stirling, you’re a brick! You’re a whole cartload of bricks. To come here and look after Cissy—under the circumstances.”
“There’s nothing so bricky about that,” said Valancy. “I’d nothing else to do. And—I like it here. I don’t feel as if I’d done anything specially meritorious. Mr. Gay is paying me fair wages. I never earned any money before—and I like it.” It seemed so easy to talk to Barney Snaith, someway—this terrible Barney Snaith of the lurid tales and mysterious past—as easy and natural as if talking to herself.
“All the money in the world couldn’t buy what you’re doing for Cissy Gay,” said Barney. “It’s splendid and fine of you. And if there’s anything I can do to help you in any way, you have only to let me know. If Roaring Abel ever tries to annoy you——”
“He doesn’t. He’s lovely to me. I like Roaring Abel,” said Valancy frankly.
“So do I. But there’s one stage of his drunkenness—perhaps you haven’t encountered it yet—when he sings ribald songs——”
“Oh, yes. He came home last night like that. Cissy and I just went to our room and shut ourselves in where we couldn’t hear him. He apologised this morning. I’m not afraid of any of Roaring Abel’s stages.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll be decent to you, apart from his inebriated yowls,” said Barney. “And I’ve told him he’s got to stop damning things when you’re around.”
“Why?” asked Valancy slily, with one of her odd, slanted glances and a sudden flake of pink on each cheek, born of the thought that Barney Snaith had actually done so much for her. “I often feel like damning things myself.”
For a moment Barney stared. Was this elfin girl the little, old-maidish creature who had stood there two minutes ago? Surely there was magic and devilry going on in that shabby, weedy old garden.
Then he laughed.
“It will be a relief to have some one to do it for you, then. So you don’t want anything but salt codfish?”
“Not tonight. But I dare say I’ll have some errands for you very often when you go to Port Lawrence. I can’t trust Mr. Gay to remember to bring all the things I want.”
Barney had gone away, then, in his Lady Jane, and Valancy stood in the garden for a long time.
Since then he had called several times, walking down through the barrens, whistling. How that whistle of his echoed through the spruces on those June twilights! Valancy caught herself listening for it every evening—rebuked herself—then let herself go. Why shouldn’t she listen for it?
He always brought Cissy fruit and flowers. Once he brought Valancy a box of candy—the first box of candy she had ever been given. It seemed sacrilege to eat it.
She found herself thinking of him in season and out of season. She wanted to know if he ever thought about her when she wasn’t before his eyes, and, if so, what. She wanted to see that mysterious house of his back on the Mistawis island. Cissy had never seen it. Cissy, though she talked freely of Barney and had known him for five years, really knew little more of him than Valancy herself.
“But he isn’t bad,” said Cissy. “Nobody need ever tell me he is. He can’t have done a thing to be ashamed of.”
“Then why does he live as he does?” asked Valancy—to hear somebody defend him.
“I don’t know. He’s a mystery. And of course there’s something behind it, but I know it isn’t disgrace. Barney Snaith simply couldn’t do anything disgraceful, Valancy.”
Valancy was not so sure. Barney must have done something—sometime. He was a man of education and intelligence. She had soon discovered that, in listening to his conversations and wrangles with Roaring Abel—who was surprisingly well read and could discuss any subject under the sun when sober. Such a man wouldn’t bury himself for five years in Muskoka and live and look like a tramp if there were not too good—or bad—a reason for it. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was sure now that he had never been Cissy Gay’s lover. There was nothing like that between them. Though he was very fond of Cissy and she of him, as any one could see. But it was a fondness that didn’t worry Valancy.
“You don’t know what Barney has been to me, these past two years,” Cissy had said simply. “Everything would have been unbearable without him.”
“Cissy Gay is the sweetest girl I ever knew—and there’s a man somewhere I’d like to shoot if I could find him,” Barney had said savagely.
Barney was an interesting talker, with a knack of telling a great deal about his adventures and nothing at all about himself. There was one glorious rainy day when Barney and Abel swapped yarns all the afternoon while Valancy mended tablecloths and listened. Barney told weird tales of his adventures with “shacks” on trains while hoboing it across the continent. Valancy thought she ought to think his stealing rides quite dreadful, but didn’t. The story of his working his way to England on a cattle-ship sounded more legitimate. And his yarns of the Yukon enthralled her—especially the one of the night he was lost on the divide between Gold Run and Sulphur Valley. He had spent two years out there. Where in all this was there room for the penitentiary and the other things?
If he were telling the truth. But Valancy knew he was.
“Found no gold,” he said. “Came away poorer than when I went. But such a place to live! Those silences at the back of the north wind got me. I’ve never belonged to myself since.”
Yet he was not a great talker. He told a great deal in a few well-chosen words—how well-chosen Valancy did not realise. And he had a knack of saying things without opening his mouth at all.
“I like a man whose eyes say more than his lips,” thought Valancy.
But then she liked everything about him—his tawny hair—his whimsical smiles—the little glints of fun in his eyes—his loyal affection for that unspeakable Lady Jane—his habit of sitting with his hands in his pockets, his chin sunk on his breast, looking up from under his mismated eyebrows. She liked his nice voice which sounded as if it might become caressing or wooing with very little provocation. She was at times almost afraid to let herself think these thoughts. They were so vivid that she felt as if the others must know what she was thinking.
“I’ve been watching a woodpecker all day,” he said one evening on the shaky old back verandah. His account of the woodpecker’s doings was satisfying. He had often some gay or cunning little anecdote of the wood folk to tell them. And sometimes he and Roaring Abel smoked fiercely the whole evening and never said a word, while Cissy lay in the hammock swung between the verandah posts and Valancy sat idly on the steps, her hands clasped over her knees, and wondered dreamily if she were really Valancy Stirling and if it were only three weeks since she had left the ugly old house on Elm Street.
The barrens lay before her in a white moon splendour, where dozens of little rabbits frisked. Barney, when he liked, could sit down on the edge of the barrens and lure those rabbits right to him by some mysterious sorcery he possessed. Valancy had once seen a squirrel leap from a scrub pine to his shoulder and sit there chattering to him. It reminded her of John Foster.
It was one of the delights of Valancy’s new life that she could read John Foster’s books as often and as long as she liked. She could read them in bed if she wanted to. She read them all to Cissy, who loved them. She also tried to read them to Abel and Barney, who did not love them. Abel was bored and Barney politely refused to listen at all.
“Piffle,” said Barney.