The Blue Castle: a novel
school. _Lice_ in her head! Valancy was done with euphemisms.
Poor Mrs. Frederick was almost in a state of collapse. She had
believed—or pretended to believe—that Valancy still supposed that
children were found in parsley beds.
“Hush—hush!” implored Cousin Stickles.
“I don’t mean to hush,” said Valancy perversely. “I’ve hush-hushed all
my life. I’ll scream if I want to. Don’t make me want to. And stop
talking nonsense about Barney Snaith.”
Valancy didn’t exactly understand her own indignation. What did Barney
Snaith’s imputed crimes and misdemeanours matter to her? And why, out
of them all, did it seem most intolerable that he should have been
poor, pitiful little Cecily Gay’s false lover? For it _did_ seem
intolerable to her. She did not mind when they called him a thief and a
counterfeiter and jail-bird; but she could not endure to think that he
had loved and ruined Cecily Gay. She recalled his face on the two
occasions of their chance meetings—his twisted, enigmatic, engaging
smile, his twinkle, his thin, sensitive, almost ascetic lips, his
general air of frank daredeviltry. A man with such a smile and lips
might have murdered or stolen but he could not have betrayed. She
suddenly hated every one who said it or believed it of him.
“When _I_ was a young girl I never thought or spoke about such matters,
Doss,” said Aunt Wellington, crushingly.
“But I’m not a young girl,” retorted Valancy, uncrushed. “Aren’t you
always rubbing that into me? And you are all evil-minded, senseless
gossips. Can’t you leave poor Cissy Gay alone? She’s dying. Whatever
she did, God or the Devil has punished her enough for it. _You_ needn’t
take a hand, too. As for Barney Snaith, the only crime he has been
guilty of is living to himself and minding his own business. He can, it
seems, get along without you. Which _is_ an unpardonable sin, of
course, in your little snobocracy.” Valancy coined that concluding word
suddenly and felt that it was an inspiration. That was exactly what
they were and not one of them was fit to mend another.
“Valancy, your poor father would turn over in his grave if he could
hear you,” said Mrs. Frederick.
“I dare say he would like that for a change,” said Valancy brazenly.
“Doss,” said Uncle James heavily, “the Ten Commandments are fairly up
to date still—especially the fifth. Have you forgotten that?”
“No,” said Valancy, “but I thought _you_ had—especially the ninth. Have
you ever thought, Uncle James, how dull life would be without the Ten
Commandments? It is only when things are forbidden that they become
fascinating.”
But her excitement had been too much for her. She knew, by certain
unmistakable warnings, that one of her attacks of pain was coming on.
It must not find her there. She rose from her chair.
“I am going home now. I only came for the dinner. It was very good,
Aunt Alberta, although your salad-dressing is not salt enough and a
dash of cayenne would improve it.”
None of the flabbergasted silver wedding guests could think of anything
to say until the lawn gate clanged behind Valancy in the dusk. Then—
“She’s feverish—I’ve said right along she was feverish,” moaned Cousin
Stickles.
Uncle Benjamin punished his pudgy left hand fiercely with his pudgy
right.
“She’s dippy—I tell you she’s gone dippy,” he snorted angrily. “That’s
all there is about it. Clean dippy.”
“Oh, Benjamin,” said Cousin Georgiana soothingly, “don’t condemn her
too rashly. We _must_ remember what dear old Shakespeare says—that
charity thinketh no evil.”
“Charity! Poppy-cock!” snorted Uncle Benjamin. “I never heard a young
woman talk such stuff in my life as she just did. Talking about things
she ought to be ashamed to think of, much less mention. Blaspheming!
Insulting _us_! What she wants is a generous dose of spank-weed and I’d
like to be the one to administer it. H-uh-h-h-h!” Uncle Benjamin gulped
down the half of a scalding cup of coffee.
“Do you suppose that the mumps could work on a person that way?” wailed
Cousin Stickles.
“I opened an umbrella in the house yesterday,” sniffed Cousin
Georgiana. “I _knew_ it betokened some misfortune.”
“Have you tried to find out if she has a temperature?” asked Cousin
Mildred.
“She wouldn’t let Amelia put the thermometer under her tongue,”
whimpered Cousin Stickles.
Mrs. Frederick was openly in tears. All her defences were down.
“I must tell you,” she sobbed, “that Valancy has been acting very
strangely for over two weeks now. She hasn’t been a bit like
herself—Christine could tell you. I have hoped against hope that it was
only one of her colds coming on. But it is—it must be something worse.”
“This is bringing on my neuritis again,” said Cousin Gladys, putting
her hand to her head.
“Don’t cry, Amelia,” said Herbert kindly, pulling nervously at his
spiky grey hair. He hated “family ructions.” Very inconsiderate of Doss
to start one at _his_ silver wedding. Who could have supposed she had
it in her? “You’ll have to take her to a doctor. This may be only
a—er—a brainstorm. There are such things as brainstorms nowadays,
aren’t there?”
“I—I suggested consulting a doctor to her yesterday,” moaned Mrs.
Frederick. “And she said she wouldn’t go to a doctor—wouldn’t. Oh,
surely I have had trouble enough!”
“And she _won’t_ take Redfern’s Bitters,” said Cousin Stickles.
“Or _anything_,” said Mrs. Frederick.
“And she’s determined to go to the Presbyterian church,” said Cousin
Stickles—repressing, however, to her credit be it said, the story of
the bannister.
“That proves she’s dippy,” growled Uncle Benjamin. “I noticed something
strange about her the minute she came in today. I noticed it _before_
today.” (Uncle Benjamin was thinking of “m-i-r-a-z-h.”) “Everything she
said today showed an unbalanced mind. That question—‘Was it a vital
part?’ Was there any sense at all in that remark? None whatever! There
never was anything like that in the Stirlings. It must be from the
Wansbarras.”
Poor Mrs. Frederick was too crushed to be indignant.
“I never heard of anything like that in the Wansbarras,” she sobbed.
“Your father was odd enough,” said Uncle Benjamin.
“Poor Pa was—peculiar,” admitted Mrs. Frederick tearfully, “but his
mind was never affected.”
“He talked all his life exactly as Valancy did today,” retorted Uncle
Benjamin. “And he believed he was his own great-great grandfather born
over again. I’ve heard him say it. Don’t tell _me_ that a man who
believed a thing like _that_ was ever in his right senses. Come, come,
Amelia, stop sniffling. Of course Doss has made a terrible exhibition
of herself today, but she’s not responsible. Old maids are apt to fly
off at a tangent like that. If she had been married when she should
have been she wouldn’t have got like this.”
“Nobody wanted to marry her,” said Mrs. Frederick, who felt that,
somehow, Uncle Benjamin was blaming her.
“Well, fortunately there’s no outsider here,” snapped Uncle Benjamin.
“We may keep it in the family yet. I’ll take her over to see Dr. Marsh
tomorrow. _I_ know how to deal with pig-headed people. Won’t that be
best, James?”
“We must have medical advice certainly,” agreed Uncle James.
“Well, that’s settled. In the meantime, Amelia, act as if nothing had
happened and keep an eye on her. Don’t let her be alone. Above all,
don’t let her sleep alone.”
Renewed whimpers from Mrs. Frederick.
“I can’t help it. Night before last I suggested she’d better have
Christine sleep with her. She positively refused—_and locked her door_.
Oh, you don’t know how she’s changed. She won’t work. At least, she
won’t sew. She does her usual housework, of course. But she wouldn’t
sweep the parlour yesterday morning, though we _always_ sweep it on
Thursdays. She said she’d wait till it was dirty. ‘Would you rather
sweep a dirty room than a clean one?’ I asked her. She said, ‘Of
course. I’d see something for my labour then.’ Think of it!”
Uncle Benjamin thought of it.
“The jar of potpourri”—Cousin Stickles pronounced it as spelled—“has
disappeared from her room. I found the pieces in the next lot. She
won’t tell us what happened to it.”
“I should never have dreamed it of Doss,” said Uncle Herbert. “She has
always seemed such a quiet, sensible girl. A bit backward—but
sensible.”
“The only thing you can be sure of in this world is the multiplication
table,” said Uncle James, feeling cleverer than ever.
“Well, let’s cheer up,” suggested Uncle Benjamin. “Why are chorus girls
like fine stock raisers?”
“Why?” asked Cousin Stickles, since it had to be asked and Valancy
wasn’t there to ask it.
“Like to exhibit calves,” chuckled Uncle Benjamin.
Cousin Stickles thought Uncle Benjamin a little indelicate. Before
Olive, too. But then, he was a man.
Uncle Herbert was thinking that things were rather dull now that Doss
had gone.
CHAPTER XII
Valancy hurried home through the faint blue twilight—hurried too fast
perhaps. The attack she had when she thankfully reached the shelter of
her own room was the worst yet. It was really very bad. She might die
in one of those spells. It would be dreadful to die in such pain.
Perhaps—perhaps this was death. Valancy felt pitifully alone. When she
could think at all she wondered what it would be like to have some one
with her who could sympathise—some one who really cared—just to hold
her hand tight, if nothing else—some one just to say, “Yes, I know.
It’s dreadful—be brave—you’ll soon be better;” not some one merely
fussy and alarmed. Not her mother or Cousin Stickles. Why did the
thought of Barney Snaith come into her mind? Why did she suddenly feel,
in the midst of this hideous loneliness of pain, that _he_ would be
sympathetic—sorry for any one that was suffering? Why did he seem to
her like an old, well-known friend? Was it because she had been
defending him—standing up to her family for him?
She was so bad at first that she could not even get herself a dose of
Dr. Trent’s prescription. But eventually she managed it, and soon after
relief came. The pain left her and she lay on her bed, spent,
exhausted, in a cold perspiration. Oh, that had been horrible! She
could not endure many more attacks like that. One didn’t mind dying if
death could be instant and painless. But to be hurt so in dying!
Suddenly she found herself laughing. That dinner _had_ been fun. And it
had all been so simple. She had merely _said_ the things she had always
_thought_. Their faces—oh, their faces! Uncle Benjamin—poor,
flabbergasted Uncle Benjamin! Valancy felt quite sure he would make a
new will that very night. Olive would get Valancy’s share of his fat
hoard. Olive had always got Valancy’s share of everything. Remember the
dust-pile.
To laugh at her clan as she had always wanted to laugh was all the
satisfaction she could get out of life now. But she thought it was
rather pitiful that it should be so. Might she not pity herself a
little when nobody else did?
Valancy got up and went to her window. The moist, beautiful wind
blowing across groves of young-leafed wild trees touched her face with
the caress of a wise, tender, old friend. The lombardies in Mrs.
Tredgold’s lawn, off to the left—Valancy could just see them between
the stable and the old carriage-shop—were in dark purple silhouette
against a clear sky and there was a milk-white, pulsating star just
over one of them, like a living pearl on a silver-green lake. Far
beyond the station were the shadowy, purple-hooded woods around Lake
Mistawis. A white, filmy mist hung over them and just above it was a
faint, young crescent. Valancy looked at it over her thin left
shoulder.
“I wish,” she said whimsically, “that I may have _one_ little dust-pile
before I die.”
CHAPTER XIII