Datasets:
edwindvinas
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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72
One of the earliest signs of spring was the renaissance of Lady Jane.
Barney put her on roads that no other car would look at, and they went
through Deerwood in mud to the axles. They passed several Stirlings,
who groaned and reflected that now spring was come they would encounter
that shameless pair everywhere. Valancy, prowling about Deerwood shops,
met Uncle Benjamin on the street; but he did not realise until he had
gone two blocks further on that the girl in the scarlet-collared
blanket coat, with cheeks reddened in the sharp April air and the
fringe of black hair over laughing, slanted eyes, was Valancy. When he
did realise it, Uncle Benjamin was indignant. What business had Valancy
to look like—like—like a young girl? The way of the transgressor was
hard. Had to be. Scriptural and proper. Yet Valancy’s path couldn’t be
hard. She wouldn’t look like that if it were. There was something
wrong. It was almost enough to make a man turn modernist.
Barney and Valancy clanged on to the Port, so that it was dark when
they went through Deerwood again. At her old home Valancy, seized with
a sudden impulse, got out, opened the little gate and tiptoed around to
the sitting-room window. There sat her mother and Cousin Stickles
drearily, grimly knitting. Baffling and inhuman as ever. If they had
looked the least bit lonesome Valancy would have gone in. But they did
not. Valancy would not disturb them for worlds.
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.”