“Not tonight. But I dare say I’ll have some errands for you very often when you go to Port Lawrence. I can’t trust Mr. Gay to remember to bring all the things I want.”
Barney had gone away, then, in his Lady Jane, and Valancy stood in the garden for a long time.
Since then he had called several times, walking down through the barrens, whistling. How that whistle of his echoed through the spruces on those June twilights! Valancy caught herself listening for it every evening—rebuked herself—then let herself go. Why shouldn’t she listen for it?
He always brought Cissy fruit and flowers. Once he brought Valancy a box of candy—the first box of candy she had ever been given. It seemed sacrilege to eat it.
She found herself thinking of him in season and out of season. She wanted to know if he ever thought about her when she wasn’t before his eyes, and, if so, what. She wanted to see that mysterious house of his back on the Mistawis island. Cissy had never seen it. Cissy, though she talked freely of Barney and had known him for five years, really knew little more of him than Valancy herself.
“But he isn’t bad,” said Cissy. “Nobody need ever tell me he is. He can’t have done a thing to be ashamed of.”
“Then why does he live as he does?” asked Valancy—to hear somebody defend him.
“I don’t know. He’s a mystery. And of course there’s something behind it, but I know it isn’t disgrace. Barney Snaith simply couldn’t do anything disgraceful, Valancy.”
Valancy was not so sure. Barney must have done something—sometime. He was a man of education and intelligence. She had soon discovered that, in listening to his conversations and wrangles with Roaring Abel—who was surprisingly well read and could discuss any subject under the sun when sober. Such a man wouldn’t bury himself for five years in Muskoka and live and look like a tramp if there were not too good—or bad—a reason for it. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was sure now that he had never been Cissy Gay’s lover. There was nothing like that between them. Though he was very fond of Cissy and she of him, as any one could see. But it was a fondness that didn’t worry Valancy.
“You don’t know what Barney has been to me, these past two years,” Cissy had said simply. “Everything would have been unbearable without him.”