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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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72
CHAPTER XL
Valancy paused a moment on the porch of the brick house in Elm Street.
She felt that she ought to knock like a stranger. Her rosebush, she
idly noticed, was loaded with buds. The rubber-plant stood beside the
prim door. A momentary horror overcame her—a horror of the existence to
which she was returning. Then she opened the door and walked in.
“I wonder if the Prodigal Son ever felt really at home again,” she
thought.
Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles were in the sitting-room. Uncle
Benjamin was there, too. They looked blankly at Valancy, realising at
once that something was wrong. This was not the saucy, impudent thing
who had laughed at them in this very room last summer. This was a
grey-faced woman with the eyes of a creature who had been stricken by a
mortal blow.
Valancy looked indifferently around the room. She had changed so
much—and it had changed so little. The same pictures hung on the walls.
The little orphan who knelt at her never-finished prayer by the bed
whereon reposed the black kitten that never grew up into a cat. The
grey “steel engraving” of Quatre Bras, where the British regiment
forever stood at bay. The crayon enlargement of the boyish father she
had never known. There they all hung in the same places. The green
cascade of “Wandering Jew” still tumbled out of the old granite
saucepan on the window-stand. The same elaborate, never-used pitcher
stood at the same angle on the sideboard shelf. The blue and gilt vases
that had been among her mother’s wedding-presents still primly adorned
the mantelpiece, flanking the china clock of berosed and besprayed ware
that never went. The chairs in exactly the same places. Her mother and
Cousin Stickles, likewise unchanged, regarding her with stony
unwelcome.
Valancy had to speak first.
“I’ve come home, Mother,” she said tiredly.
“So I see.” Mrs. Frederick’s voice was very icy. She had resigned
herself to Valancy’s desertion. She had almost succeeded in forgetting
there was a Valancy. She had rearranged and organised her systematic
life without any reference to an ungrateful, rebellious child. She had
taken her place again in a society which ignored the fact that she had
ever had a daughter and pitied her, if it pitied her at all, only in
discreet whispers and asides. The plain truth was that, by this time,
Mrs. Frederick did not want Valancy to come back—did not want ever to
see or hear of her again.
And now, of course, Valancy was here. With tragedy and disgrace and
scandal trailing after her visibly. “So I see,” said Mrs. Frederick.
“May I ask why?”
“Because—I’m—not—going to die,” said Valancy huskily.
“God bless my soul!” said Uncle Benjamin. “Who said you were going to
die?”
“I suppose,” said Cousin Stickles shrewishly—Cousin Stickles did not
want Valancy back either—“I suppose you’ve found out he has another
wife—as we’ve been sure all along.”
“No. I only wish he had,” said Valancy. She was not suffering
particularly, but she was very tired. If only the explanations were all
over and she were upstairs in her old, ugly room—alone. Just alone! The
rattle of the beads on her mother’s sleeves, as they swung on the arms
of the reed chair, almost drove her crazy. Nothing else was worrying
her; but all at once it seemed that she simply could not endure that
thin, insistent rattle.
“My home, as I told you, is always open to you,” said Mrs. Frederick
stonily, “but I can never forgive you.”
Valancy gave a mirthless laugh.
“I’d care very little for that if I could only forgive myself,” she
said.
“Come, come,” said Uncle Benjamin testily. But rather enjoying himself.
He felt he had Valancy under his thumb again. “We’ve had enough of
mystery. What has happened? Why have you left that fellow? No doubt
there’s reason enough—but what particular reason is it?”
Valancy began to speak mechanically. She told her tale bluntly and
barely.
“A year ago Dr. Trent told me I had angina pectoris and could not live
long. I wanted to have some—life—before I died. That’s why I went away.
Why I married Barney. And now I’ve found it is all a mistake. There is
nothing wrong with my heart. I’ve got to live—and Barney only married
me out of pity. So I have to leave him—free.”
“God bless me!” said Uncle Benjamin. Cousin Stickles began to cry.
“Valancy, if you’d only had confidence in your own mother——”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Valancy impatiently. “What’s the use of going
into that now? I can’t undo this year. God knows I wish I could. I’ve
tricked Barney into marrying me—and he’s really Bernard Redfern. Dr.