The Blue Castle: a novel
later, when Ellen Hamilton was being discussed, Cousin Gladys spoke of
her as “one of those shy, plain girls who can’t get husbands,” and
glanced significantly at Valancy.
Uncle James thought the conversation was sagging to a rather low plane
of personal gossip. He tried to elevate it by starting an abstract
discussion on “the greatest happiness.” Everybody was asked to state
his or her idea of “the greatest happiness.”
Aunt Mildred thought the greatest happiness—for a woman—was to be “a
loving and beloved wife and mother.” Aunt Wellington thought it would
be to travel in Europe. Olive thought it would be to be a great singer
like Tetrazzini. Cousin Gladys remarked mournfully that _her_ greatest
happiness would be to be free—absolutely free—from neuritis. Cousin
Georgiana’s greatest happiness would be “to have her dear, dead brother
Richard back.” Aunt Alberta remarked vaguely that the greatest
happiness was to be found in “the poetry of life” and hastily gave some
directions to her maid to prevent any one asking her what she meant.
Mrs. Frederick said the greatest happiness was to spend your life in
loving service for others, and Cousin Stickles and Aunt Isabel agreed
with her—Aunt Isabel with a resentful air, as if she thought Mrs.
Frederick had taken the wind out of her sails by saying it first. “We
are all too prone,” continued Mrs. Frederick, determined not to lose so
good an opportunity, “to live in selfishness, worldliness and sin.” The
other women all felt rebuked for their low ideals, and Uncle James had
a conviction that the conversation had been uplifted with a vengeance.
“The greatest happiness,” said Valancy suddenly and distinctly, “is to
sneeze when you want to.”
Everybody stared. Nobody felt it safe to say anything. Was Valancy
trying to be funny? It was incredible. Mrs. Frederick, who had been
breathing easier since the dinner had progressed so far without any
outbreak on the part of Valancy, began to tremble again. But she deemed
it the part of prudence to say nothing. Uncle Benjamin was not so
prudent. He rashly rushed in where Mrs. Frederick feared to tread.
“Doss,” he chuckled, “what is the difference between a young girl and
an old maid?”
“One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless,” said
Valancy. “You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my
recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don’t you hunt up some new riddles if
riddle you _must_? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you
don’t succeed.”
Uncle Benjamin stared foolishly. Never in his life had he, Benjamin
Stirling, of Stirling and Frost, been spoken to so. And by Valancy of
all people! He looked feebly around the table to see what the others
thought of it. Everybody was looking rather blank. Poor Mrs. Frederick
had shut her eyes. And her lips moved tremblingly—as if she were
praying. Perhaps she was. The situation was so unprecedented that
nobody knew how to meet it. Valancy went on calmly eating her salad as
if nothing out of the usual had occurred.
Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog
had bitten her recently. Uncle James, to back her up, asked where the
dog had bitten her.
“Just a little below the Catholic church,” said Aunt Alberta.
At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to
laugh at?
“Is that a vital part?” asked Valancy.
“What do you mean?” said bewildered Aunt Alberta, and Mrs. Frederick
was almost driven to believe that she had served God all her years for
naught.
Aunt Isabel concluded that it was up to her to suppress Valancy.
“Doss, you are horribly thin,” she said. “You are _all_ corners. Do you
_ever_ try to fatten up a little?”
“No.” Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. “But I can tell you
where you’ll find a beauty parlor in Port Lawrence where they can
reduce the number of your chins.”
“_Val-an-cy!_” The protest was wrung from Mrs. Frederick. She meant her
tone to be stately and majestic, as usual, but it sounded more like an
imploring whine. And she did not say “Doss.”
“She’s feverish,” said Cousin Stickles to Uncle Benjamin in an agonised
whisper. “We’ve thought she’s seemed feverish for several days.”
“She’s gone dippy, in my opinion,” growled Uncle Benjamin. “If not, she
ought to be spanked. Yes, spanked.”
“You can’t spank her.” Cousin Stickles was much agitated. “She’s
twenty-nine years old.”
“So there is that advantage, at least, in being twenty-nine,” said
Valancy, whose ears had caught this aside.
“Doss,” said Uncle Benjamin, “when I am dead you may say what you
please. As long as I am alive I demand to be treated with respect.”
“Oh, but you know we’re all dead,” said Valancy, “the whole Stirling
clan. Some of us are buried and some aren’t—yet. That is the only
difference.”
“Doss,” said Uncle Benjamin, thinking it might cow Valancy, “do you
remember the time you stole the raspberry jam?”
Valancy flushed scarlet—with suppressed laughter, not shame. She had
been sure Uncle Benjamin would drag that jam in somehow.
“Of course I do,” she said. “It was good jam. I’ve always been sorry I
hadn’t time to eat more of it before you found me. Oh, _look_ at Aunt
Isabel’s profile on the wall. Did you ever see anything so funny?”
Everybody looked, including Aunt Isabel herself, which of course,
destroyed it. But Uncle Herbert said kindly, “I—I wouldn’t eat any more
if I were you, Doss. It isn’t that I grudge it—but don’t you think it
would be better for yourself? Your—your stomach seems a little out of
order.”
“Don’t worry about my stomach, old dear,” said Valancy. “It is all
right. I’m going to keep right on eating. It’s so seldom I get the
chance of a satisfying meal.”
It was the first time any one had been called “old dear” in Deerwood.
The Stirlings thought Valancy had invented the phrase and they were
afraid of her from that moment. There was something so uncanny about
such an expression. But in poor Mrs. Frederick’s opinion the reference
to a satisfying meal was the worst thing Valancy had said yet. Valancy
had always been a disappointment to her. Now she was a disgrace. She
thought she would have to get up and go away from the table. Yet she
dared not leave Valancy there.
Aunt Alberta’s maid came in to remove the salad plates and bring in the
dessert. It was a welcome diversion. Everybody brightened up with a
determination to ignore Valancy and talk as if she wasn’t there. Uncle
Wellington mentioned Barney Snaith. Eventually somebody did mention
Barney Snaith at every Stirling function, Valancy reflected. Whatever
he was, he was an individual that could not be ignored. She resigned
herself to listen. There was a subtle fascination in the subject for
her, though she had not yet faced this fact. She could feel her pulses
beating to her finger-tips.
Of course they abused him. Nobody ever had a good word to say of Barney
Snaith. All the old, wild tales were canvassed—the defaulting
cashier-counterfeiter-infidel-murderer-in-hiding legends were thrashed
out. Uncle Wellington was very indignant that such a creature should be
allowed to exist at all in the neighbourhood of Deerwood. He didn’t
know what the police at Port Lawrence were thinking of. Everybody would
be murdered in their beds some night. It was a shame that he should be
allowed to be at large after all that he had done.
“What _has_ he done?” asked Valancy suddenly.
Uncle Wellington stared at her, forgetting that she was to be ignored.
“Done! Done! He’s done _everything_.”
“_What_ has he done?” repeated Valancy inexorably. “What do you _know_
that he has done? You’re always running him down. And what has ever
been proved against him?”
“I don’t argue with women,” said Uncle Wellington. “And I don’t need
proof. When a man hides himself up there on an island in Muskoka, year
in and year out, and nobody can find out where he came from or how he
lives, or what he does there, _that’s_ proof enough. Find a mystery and
you find a crime.”
“The very idea of a man named Snaith!” said Second Cousin Sarah. “Why,
the name itself is enough to condemn him!”
“I wouldn’t like to meet him in a dark lane,” shivered Cousin
Georgiana.
“What do you suppose he would do to you?” asked Valancy.
“Murder me,” said Cousin Georgiana solemnly.
“Just for the fun of it?” suggested Valancy.
“Exactly,” said Cousin Georgiana unsuspiciously. “When there is so much
smoke there must be some fire. I was afraid he was a criminal when he
came here first. I _felt_ he had something to hide. I am not often
mistaken in my intuitions.”
“Criminal! Of course he’s a criminal,” said Uncle Wellington. “Nobody
doubts it”—glaring at Valancy. “Why, they say he served a term in the
penitentiary for embezzlement. I don’t doubt it. And they say he’s in
with that gang that are perpetrating all those bank robberies round the
country.”
“_Who_ say?” asked Valancy.
Uncle Wellington knotted his ugly forehead at her. What had got into
this confounded girl, anyway? He ignored the question.
“He has the identical look of a jail-bird,” snapped Uncle Benjamin. “I
noticed it the first time I saw him.”
“‘A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame’,”
declaimed Uncle James. He looked enormously pleased over managing to
work that quotation in at last. He had been waiting all his life for
the chance.
“One of his eyebrows is an arch and the other is a triangle,” said
Valancy. “Is _that_ why you think him so villainous?”
Uncle James lifted _his_ eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted
his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to
function.
“How do _you_ know his eyebrows so well, Doss?” asked Olive, a trifle
maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion
two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.
“Yes, how?” demanded Aunt Wellington.
“I’ve seen him twice and I looked at him closely,” said Valancy
composedly. “I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw.”
“There is no doubt there is something fishy in the creature’s past
life,” said Olive, who began to think she was decidedly out of the
conversation, which had centred so amazingly around Valancy. “But he
can hardly be guilty of _everything_ he’s accused of, you know.”
Valancy felt annoyed with Olive. Why should _she_ speak up in even this
qualified defence of Barney Snaith? What had _she_ to do with him? For
that matter, what had Valancy? But Valancy did not ask herself this
question.
“They say he keeps dozens of cats in that hut up back on Mistawis,”
said Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, by way of appearing not entirely
ignorant of him.
Cats. It sounded quite alluring to Valancy, in the plural. She pictured
an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies.
“That alone shows there is something wrong with him,” decreed Aunt
Isabel.
“People who don’t like cats,” said Valancy, attacking her dessert with
a relish, “always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in
not liking them.”
“The man hasn’t a friend except Roaring Abel,” said Uncle Wellington.
“And if Roaring Abel had kept away from him, as everybody else did, it
would have been better for—for some members of his family.”
Uncle Wellington’s rather lame conclusion was due to a marital glance
from Aunt Wellington reminding him of what he had almost forgotten—that
there were girls at the table.
“If you mean,” said Valancy passionately, “that Barney Snaith is the
father of Cecily Gay’s child, he _isn’t_. It’s a wicked lie.”
In spite of her indignation Valancy was hugely amused at the expression
of the faces around that festal table. She had not seen anything like
it since the day, seventeen years ago, when at Cousin Gladys’ thimble
party, they discovered that she had got—SOMETHING—in her head at