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distinguish her from Great-aunt Mary. A massive, dignified, permanent
lady. Splendidly arranged, iron-grey hair. Rich, fashionable beaded
dress. Had _her_ moles removed by electrolysis—which Aunt Mildred
thought was a wicked evasion of the purposes of God.
Uncle Herbert, with his spiky grey hair. Aunt Alberta, who twisted her
mouth so unpleasantly in talking and had a great reputation for
unselfishness because she was always giving up a lot of things she
didn’t want. Valancy let them off easily in her judgment because she
liked them, even if they were in Milton’s expressive phrase, “stupidly
good.” But she wondered for what inscrutable reason Aunt Alberta had
seen fit to tie a black velvet ribbon around each of her chubby arms
above the elbow.
Then she looked across the table at Olive. Olive, who had been held up
to her as a paragon of beauty, behaviour and success as long as she
could remember. “Why can’t you hold yourself like Olive, Doss? Why
can’t you stand correctly like Olive, Doss? Why can’t you speak
prettily like Olive, Doss? Why can’t you make an effort, Doss?”
Valancy’s elfin eyes lost their mocking glitter and became pensive and
sorrowful. You could not ignore or disdain Olive. It was quite
impossible to deny that she was beautiful and effective and sometimes
she was a little intelligent. Her mouth might be a trifle heavy—she
might show her fine, white, regular teeth rather too lavishly when she
smiled. But when all was said and done, Olive justified Uncle
Benjamin’s summing up—“a stunning girl.” Yes, Valancy agreed in her
heart, Olive was stunning.
Rich, golden-brown hair, elaborately dressed, with a sparkling bandeau
holding its glossy puffs in place; large, brilliant blue eyes and thick
silken lashes; face of rose and bare neck of snow, rising above her
gown; great pearl bubbles in her ears; the blue-white diamond flame on
her long, smooth, waxen finger with its rosy, pointed nail. Arms of
marble, gleaming through green chiffon and shadow lace. Valancy felt
suddenly thankful that her own scrawny arms were decently swathed in
brown silk. Then she resumed her tabulation of Olive’s charms.
Tall. Queenly. Confident. Everything that Valancy was _not_. Dimples,
too, in cheeks and chin. “A woman with dimples always gets her own
way,” thought Valancy, in a recurring spasm of bitterness at the fate
which had denied her even one dimple.
Olive was only a year younger than Valancy, though a stranger would
have thought that there was at least ten years between them. But nobody
ever dreaded old maidenhood for her. Olive had been surrounded by a
crowd of eager beaus since her early teens, just as her mirror was
always surrounded by a fringe of cards, photographs, programmes and
invitations. At eighteen, when she had graduated from Havergal College,
Olive had been engaged to Will Desmond, lawyer in embryo. Will Desmond
had died and Olive had mourned for him properly for two years. When she
was twenty-three she had a hectic affair with Donald Jackson. But Aunt
and Uncle Wellington disapproved of that and in the end Olive dutifully
gave him up. Nobody in the Stirling clan—whatever outsiders might
say—hinted that she did so because Donald himself was cooling off.
However that might be, Olive’s third venture met with everybody’s
approval. Cecil Price was clever and handsome and “one of the Port
Lawrence Prices.” Olive had been engaged to him for three years. He had
just graduated in civil engineering and they were to be married as soon
as he landed a contract. Olive’s hope chest was full to overflowing
with exquisite things and Olive had already confided to Valancy what
her wedding-dress was to be. Ivory silk draped with lace, white satin
court train, lined with pale green georgette, heirloom veil of Brussels
lace. Valancy knew also—though Olive had not told her—that the
bridesmaids were selected and that she was not among them.
Valancy had, after a fashion, always been Olive’s confidante—perhaps
because she was the only girl in the connection who could not bore
Olive with return confidences. Olive always told Valancy all the
details of her love affairs, from the days when the little boys in
school used to “persecute” her with love letters. Valancy could not
comfort herself by thinking these affairs mythical. Olive really had
them. Many men had gone mad over her besides the three fortunate ones.
“I don’t know what the poor idiots see in me, that drives them to make
such double idiots of themselves,” Olive was wont to say. Valancy would
have liked to say, “I don’t either,” but truth and diplomacy both
restrained her. She _did_ know, perfectly well. Olive Stirling was one
of the girls about whom men do go mad just as indubitably as she,
Valancy, was one of the girls at whom no man ever looked twice.
“And yet,” thought Valancy, summing her up with a new and merciless
conclusiveness, “she’s like a dewless morning. There’s _something_
lacking.”
CHAPTER XI
Meanwhile the dinner in its earlier stages was dragging its slow length
along true to Stirling form. The room was chilly, in spite of the
calendar, and Aunt Alberta had the gas-logs lighted. Everybody in the
clan envied her those gas-logs except Valancy. Glorious open fires
blazed in every room of her Blue Castle when autumnal nights were cool,
but she would have frozen to death in it before she would have
committed the sacrilege of a gas-log. Uncle Herbert made his hardy
perennial joke when he helped Aunt Wellington to the cold meat—“Mary,
will you have a little lamb?” Aunt Mildred told the same old story of