CHAPTER XXIV

Valancy herself made Cissy ready for burial. No hands but hers should touch that pitiful, wasted little body. The old house was spotless on the day of the funeral. Barney Snaith was not there. He had done all he could to help Valancy before it—he had shrouded¹ the pale Cecilia in white roses from the garden—and then had gone back to his island. But everybody else was there. All Deerwood and “up back” came. They forgave Cissy splendidly at last. Mr. Bradly gave a very beautiful funeral address. Valancy had wanted her old Free Methodist man, but Roaring Abel was obdurate². He was a Presbyterian and no one but a Presbyterian minister should bury his daughter. Mr. Bradly was very tactful. He avoided all dubious³ points and it was plain to be seen he hoped for the best. Six reputable citizens of Deerwood bore Cecilia Gay to her grave in decorous Deerwood cemetery⁴. Among them was Uncle Wellington.

The Stirlings all came to the funeral, men and women. They had had a family conclave⁵ over it. Surely now that Cissy Gay was dead Valancy would come home. She simply could not stay there with Roaring Abel. That being the case, the wisest course—decreed Uncle James—was to attend the funeral—legitimise the whole thing, so to speak—show Deerwood that Valancy had really done a most creditable deed in going to nurse poor Cecilia Gay and that her family backed her up in it. Death, the miracle worker, suddenly made the thing quite respectable. If Valancy would return to home and decency⁶ while public opinion was under its influence all might yet be well. Society was suddenly forgetting all Cecilia’s wicked doings and remembering what a pretty, modest little thing she had been—“and motherless, you know—motherless!” It was the psychological moment—said Uncle James.

So the Stirlings went to the funeral. Even Cousin Gladys’ neuritis allowed her to come. Cousin Stickles was there, her bonnet⁷ dripping all over her face, crying as woefully as if Cissy had been her nearest and dearest. Funerals always brought Cousin Stickles’ “own sad bereavement⁸” back.

And Uncle Wellington was a pall-bearer.

Valancy, pale, subdued-looking, her slanted⁹ eyes smudged with purple, in her snuff-brown dress, moving quietly about, finding seats for people, consulting in undertones with minister and undertaker, marshalling the “mourners” into the parlour, was so decorous and proper and Stirlingish that her family took heart of grace. This was not—could not be—the girl who had sat all night in the woods with Barney Snaith—who had gone tearing bareheaded through Deerwood and Port Lawrence. This was the Valancy they knew. Really, surprisingly capable and efficient. Perhaps she had always been kept down a bit too much—Amelia really was rather strict—hadn’t had a chance to show what was in her. So thought the Stirlings. And Edward Beck, from the Port road, a widower¹⁰ with a large family who was beginning to take notice, took notice of Valancy and thought she might make a mighty¹¹ fine second wife. No beauty—but a fifty-year-old widower, Mr. Beck told himself very reasonably, couldn’t expect everything. Altogether, it seemed that Valancy’s matrimonial chances were never so bright as they were at Cecilia Gay’s funeral.

What the Stirlings and Edward Beck would have thought had they known the back of Valancy’s mind must be left to the imagination. Valancy was hating the funeral—hating the people who came to stare with curiosity at Cecilia’s marble-white face—hating the smugness—hating the dragging, melancholy¹² singing—hating Mr. Bradly’s cautious platitudes¹³. If she could have had her absurd way, there would have been no funeral at all. She would have covered Cissy over with flowers, shut her away from prying¹⁴ eyes, and buried her beside her nameless little baby in the grassy¹⁵ burying-ground under the pines of the “up back” church, with a bit of kindly¹⁶ prayer from the old Free Methodist minister. She remembered Cissy saying once, “I wish I could be buried deep in the heart of the woods where nobody would ever come to say, ‘Cissy Gay is buried here,’ and tell over my miserable¹⁷ story.”

But this! However, it would soon be over. Valancy knew, if the Stirlings and Edward Beck didn’t, exactly what she intended to do then. She had lain awake all the preceding night thinking about it and finally deciding on it.

When the funeral procession had left the house, Mrs. Frederick sought out Valancy in the kitchen.

“My child,” she said tremulously, “you’ll come home now?”

“Home,” said Valancy absently. She was getting on an apron¹⁸ and calculating how much tea she must put to steep for supper. There would be several guests from “up back”—distant relatives of the Gays’ who had not remembered them for years. And she was so tired she wished she could borrow a pair of legs from the cat.

“Yes, home,” said Mrs. Frederick, with a touch of asperity¹⁹. “I suppose you won’t dream of staying here now—alone with Roaring Abel.”

“Oh, no, I’m not going to stay here,” said Valancy. “Of course, I’ll have to stay for a day or two, to put the house in order generally. But that will be all. Excuse me, Mother, won’t you? I’ve a frightful²⁰ lot to do—all those “up back” people will be here to supper.”

Mrs. Frederick retreated in considerable relief, and the Stirlings went home with lighter²¹ hearts.

“We will just treat her as if nothing had happened when she comes back,” decreed Uncle Benjamin. “That will be the best plan. Just as if nothing had happened.”