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edwindvinas
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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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.”
CHAPTER XXXV
Thirty seconds can be very long sometimes. Long enough to work a
miracle or a revolution. In thirty seconds life changed wholly for
Barney and Valancy Snaith.
They had gone around the lake one June evening in their disappearing
propeller, fished for an hour in a little creek, left their boat there,
and walked up through the woods to Port Lawrence two miles away.
Valancy prowled a bit in the shops and got herself a new pair of
sensible shoes. Her old pair had suddenly and completely given out, and
this evening she had been compelled to put on the little fancy pair of
patent-leather with rather high, slender heels, which she had bought in
a fit of folly one day in the winter because of their beauty and
because she wanted to make one foolish, extravagant purchase in her
life. She sometimes put them on of an evening in the Blue Castle, but
this was the first time she had worn them outside. She had not found it
any too easy walking up through the woods in them, and Barney guyed her
unmercifully about them. But in spite of the inconvenience, Valancy
secretly rather liked the look of her trim ankles and high instep above
those pretty, foolish shoes and did not change them in the shop as she
might have done.
The sun was hanging low above the pines when they left Port Lawrence.
To the north of it the woods closed around the town quite suddenly.
Valancy always had a sense of stepping from one world to another—from
reality to fairyland—when she went out of Port Lawrence and in a
twinkling found it shut off behind her by the armies of the pines.
A mile and a half from Port Lawrence there was a small railroad station
with a little station-house which at this hour of the day was deserted,
since no local train was due. Not a soul was in sight when Barney and
Valancy emerged from the woods. Off to the left a sudden curve in the
track hid it from view, but over the tree-tops beyond, the long plume
of smoke betokened the approach of a through train. The rails were
vibrating to its thunder as Barney stepped across the switch. Valancy
was a few steps behind him, loitering to gather June-bells along the
little, winding path. But there was plenty of time to get across before
the train came. She stepped unconcernedly over the first rail.
She could never tell how it happened. The ensuing thirty seconds always
seemed in her recollection like a chaotic nightmare in which she
endured the agony of a thousand lifetimes.