Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now,
And nowhere you need to go.
Close your eyes and feel yourself sink into the support beneath you and let all the worries of the day drift away.
This is your time and your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.
There is nothing you need to be doing now,
And nowhere you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 24.
Valancy made Sissy ready for burial.
No hands but her should touch that pitiful wasted little body.
The old house was spotless on the day of the funeral,
And Barney Snaith was not there.
He had done all he could to help Valancy before it,
Shrouded the pale Cecilia in white roses from the garden,
And then he had gone back to his island.
But everybody else was there.
All dearwood and up back came.
They forgave Sissy splendidly at last.
Mr.
Brady gave a very beautiful funeral address.
Valancy had wanted her own free Methodist man,
But Roaring Abel was obdurate.
He was a Presbyterian,
And no one but a Presbyterian minnow should bury his daughter.
Mr.
Bradley was very tactful.
He avoided all dubious points,
And it was plain to be seen he hoped for the best.
Six reputable citizens of Dearwood bore Cecilia Gay to her grave in Decorah's Dearwood Cemetery.
Among them was Uncle Wellington.
The Stirlings all came to the funeral,
Men and women.
They had a family conclave over it.
Surely now that Sissy 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 Dearwood 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 decency,
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.
And so it was the Stirlings went to the funeral.
Even Cousin Gladys's neuritis allowed her to come.
Cousin Stickles was there,
Her bonnet dripping all over her face,
Crying as woefully as if Sissy had been her nearest and dearest.
Funerals always brought Cousin Stickles's own sad bereavement back.
And Uncle Wellington was a pallbearer.
Valancy,
Pale,
Subdued-looking,
Her slanted 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 Stirling-ish 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,
Bare-headed through Dearwood and Port Lawrence.
This was the Valancy they knew.
Really surprisingly capable and efficient she was.
Perhaps she had been kept down a bit too much.
Amelia 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 widower with a large family who was beginning to take notice,
Took notice of Valancy and thought she might make a mighty fine second wife.
No beauty,
But a fifty-year-old widower,
Mr Beck,
Taught himself very reasonably,
Could not 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 smartness,
Hating the dragging,
Melancholy singing,
Hating Mr Bradley's cautious platitudes.
If she could have had her absurd way,
There would have been no funeral at all.
She would have covered Sissy over with flowers,
Shut her away from prying eyes and buried her beside her nameless little baby in the grassy burying ground under the pines of the Up Back Church,
With a bit of kindly prayer from the old free Methodist minister.
She remembered Sissy saying once,
I wish I could be buried deep in the heart of the woods,
When nobody would ever come to say,
Sissy Gay is buried here,
And tell over my miserable story.
But this.
However soon it would 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 now she had finally decided what to do.
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 apron and calculating how much tea she must put to steak 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 now,
She wished she could borrow a pair of legs from the cat.
Yes,
Home,
Said Mrs Frederick,
With a touch of asperity.
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.
Now excuse me,
Mother,
Will you?
I've a frightful lot to do.
All those Up Back people will soon be here to supper.
This is a busy time for me.
Mrs Frederick retreated in considerable relief and the Stirlings went home with lighter hearts.
We will just treat her as if nothing had happened when she comes back,
Decreed Uncle Benjamin.
I'm sure that should be the best plan.
Just as if nothing whatsoever had happened.
