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edwindvinas
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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“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 ever 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