CHAPTER XXXIV
Valancy had two wonderful moments that spring.
One day, coming home through the woods, with her arms full 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 not paint any one who required flattery. To be painted by Allan Tierney was all the cachet of beauty a woman could desire. Valancy had heard so much about him that she couldn’t help turning her head back over her shoulder for another shy, curious look at him. A shaft of pale spring sunlight fell through a great pine athwart her bare black head and her slanted eyes. She wore a pale green sweater and had bound a fillet of linnæa vine about her hair. The feathery fountain of trailing spruce overflowed her arms and fell around her. Allan Tierney’s eyes lighted up.
“I’ve had a caller,” said Barney the next afternoon, when Valancy had returned from another flower quest.
“Who?” Valancy was surprised but indifferent. She began filling a basket with arbutus.
“Allan Tierney. He wants to paint you, Moonlight.”
“Me!” Valancy dropped her basket and her arbutus. “You’re laughing at me, Barney.”
“I’m not. That’s what Tierney came for. To ask my permission to paint my wife—as the Spirit of Muskoka, or something like that.”
“But—but—” stammered Valancy, “Allan Tierney never paints any but—any but——”
“Beautiful women,” finished Barney. “Conceded. Q. E. D., Mistress Barney Snaith is a beautiful woman.”
“Nonsense,” said Valancy, stooping to retrieve her arbutus. “You know that’s nonsense, Barney. I know I’m a heap better-looking than I was a year ago, but I’m not beautiful.”
“Allan Tierney never makes a mistake,” said Barney. “You forget, Moonlight, that there are different kinds of beauty. Your imagination is obsessed by the very obvious type of your cousin Olive. Oh, I’ve seen her—she’s a stunner—but you’d never catch Allan Tierney wanting to paint her. In the horrible but expressive slang phrase, she keeps all her goods in the shop-window. But in your subconscious mind you have a conviction that nobody can be beautiful who doesn’t look like Olive. Also, you remember your face as it was in the days when your soul was not allowed to shine through it. Tierney said something about the curve of your cheek as you looked back over your shoulder. You know I’ve often told you it was distracting. And he’s quite batty about your eyes. If I wasn’t absolutely sure it was solely professional—he’s really a crabbed old bachelor, you know—I’d be jealous.”
“Well, I don’t want to be painted,” said Valancy. “I hope you told him that.”
“I couldn’t tell him that. I didn’t know what you wanted. But I told him I didn’t want my wife painted—hung up in a salon for the mob to stare at. Belonging to another man. For of course I couldn’t buy the picture. So even if you had wanted to be painted, Moonlight, your tyrannous husband would not have permitted it. Tierney was a bit squiffy. He isn’t used to being turned down like that. His requests are almost like royalty’s.”
“But we are outlaws,” laughed Valancy. “We bow to no decrees—we acknowledge no sovereignty.”
In her heart she thought unashamedly:
“I wish Olive could know that Allan Tierney wanted to paint me. Me! Little-old-maid-Valancy-Stirling-that-was.”
Her second wonder-moment came one evening in May. She realised that Barney actually liked her. She had always hoped he did, but sometimes she had a little, disagreeable, haunting dread that he was just kind and nice and chummy out of pity; knowing that she hadn’t long to live and determined she should have a good time as long as she did live; but away back in his mind rather looking forward to freedom again, with no intrusive woman creature in his island fastness and no chattering thing beside him in his woodland prowls. She knew he could never love her. She did not even want him to. If he loved her he would be unhappy when she died—Valancy never flinched from the plain word. No “passing away” for her. And she did not want him to be the least unhappy. But neither did she want him to be glad—or relieved. She wanted him to like her and miss her as a good chum. But she had never been sure until this night that he did.
They had walked over the hills in the sunset. They had the delight of discovering a virgin spring in a ferny hollow and had drunk together from it out of a birch-bark cup; they had come to an old tumble-down rail fence and sat on it for a long time. They didn’t talk much, but Valancy had a curious sense of oneness. She knew that she couldn’t have felt that if he hadn’t liked her.
“You nice little thing,” said Barney suddenly. “Oh, you nice little thing! Sometimes I feel you’re too nice to be real—that I’m just dreaming you.”
“Why can’t I die now—this very minute—when I am so happy!” thought Valancy.
Well, it couldn’t be so very long now. Somehow, Valancy had always felt she would live out the year Dr. Trent had allotted. She had not been careful—she had never tried to be. But, somehow, she had always counted on living out her year. She had not let herself think about it at all. But now, sitting here beside Barney, with her hand in his, a sudden realisation came to her. She had not had a heart attack for a long while—two months at least. The last one she had had was two or three nights before Barney was out in the storm. Since then she had not remembered she had a heart. Well, no doubt, it betokened the nearness of the end. Nature had given up the struggle. There would be no more pain.
“I’m afraid heaven will be very dull after this past year,” thought Valancy. “But perhaps one will not remember. Would that be—nice? No, no. I don’t want to forget Barney. I’d rather be miserable in heaven remembering him than happy forgetting him. And I’ll always remember through all eternity—that he really, really liked me.”