The Blue Castle: a novel

Dr. Stalling had contrived to ask his question in about the most idiotic manner possible. He said, “Can you tell me where I’m going?” “How the devil should I know where you’re going, gosling?” retorted Abel contemptuously. Dr. Stalling was so enraged that he could not speak for a moment or two and in that moment Abel had disappeared in the woods. Dr. Stalling had eventually found his way home, but he had never hankered to encounter Abel Gay again. Nevertheless he came now to do his duty. Valancy greeted him with a sinking heart. She had to own to herself that she was terribly afraid of Dr. Stalling still. She had a miserable conviction that if he shook his long, bony finger at her and told her to go home, she dared not disobey. “Mr. Gay,” said Dr. Stalling politely and condescendingly, “may I see Miss Stirling alone for a few minutes?” Roaring Abel was a little drunk—just drunk enough to be excessively polite and very cunning. He had been on the point of going away when Dr. Stalling arrived, but now he sat down in a corner of the parlour and folded his arms. “No, no, mister,” he said solemnly. “That wouldn’t do—wouldn’t do at all. I’ve got the reputation of my household to keep up. I’ve got to chaperone this young lady. Can’t have any sparkin’ going on here behind my back.” Outraged Dr. Stalling looked so terrible that Valancy wondered how Abel could endure his aspect. But Abel was not worried at all. “D’ye know anything about it, anyway?” he asked genially. “About _what_?” “Sparking,” said Abel coolly. Poor Dr. Stalling, who had never married because he believed in a celibate clergy, would not notice this ribald remark. He turned his back on Abel and addressed himself to Valancy. “Miss Stirling, I am here in response to your mother’s wishes. She begged me to come. I am charged with some messages from her. Will you”—he wagged his forefinger—“will you hear them?” “Yes,” said Valancy faintly, eyeing the forefinger. It had a hypnotic effect on her. “The first is this. If you will leave this—this——” “House,” interjected Roaring Abel. “H-o-u-s-e. Troubled with an impediment in your speech, ain’t you, Mister?” “—this _place_ and return to your home, Mr. James Stirling will himself pay for a good nurse to come here and wait on Miss Gay.” Back of her terror Valancy smiled in secret. Uncle James must indeed regard the matter as desperate when he would loosen his purse-strings like that. At any rate, her clan no longer despised her or ignored her. She had become important to them. “That’s _my_ business, Mister,” said Abel. “Miss Stirling can go if she pleases, or stay if she pleases. I made a fair bargain with her, and she’s free to conclude it when she likes. She gives me meals that stick to my ribs. She don’t forget to put salt in the porridge. She never slams doors, and when she has nothing to say she don’t talk. That’s uncanny in a woman, you know, Mister. I’m satisfied. If she isn’t, she’s free to go. But no woman comes here in Jim Stirling’s pay. If any one does”—Abel’s voice was uncannily bland and polite—“I’ll spatter the road with her brains. Tell him that with A. Gay’s compliments.” “Dr. Stalling, a nurse is not what Cissy needs,” said Valancy earnestly. “She isn’t so ill as that, yet. What she wants is companionship—somebody she knows and likes just to live with her. You can understand that, I’m sure.” “I understand that your motive is quite—ahem—commendable.” Dr. Stalling felt that he was very broad-minded indeed—especially as in his secret soul he did not believe Valancy’s motive _was_ commendable. He hadn’t the least idea what she was up to, but he was sure her motive was not commendable. When he could not understand a thing he straightway condemned it. Simplicity itself! “But your first duty is to your mother. _She_ needs you. She implores you to come home—she will forgive everything if you will only come home.” “That’s a pretty little thought,” remarked Abel meditatively, as he ground some tobacco up in his hand. Dr. Stalling ignored him. “She entreats, but I, Miss Stirling,”—Dr. Stalling remembered that he was an ambassador of Jehovah—“_I command._ As your pastor and spiritual guide, I command you to come home with me—this very day. Get your hat and coat and come _now_.” Dr. Stalling shook his finger at Valancy. Before that pitiless finger she drooped and wilted visibly. “She’s giving in,” thought Roaring Abel. “She’ll go with him. Beats all, the power these preacher fellows have over women.” Valancy _was_ on the point of obeying Dr. Stalling. She must go home with him—and give up. She would lapse back to Doss Stirling again and for her few remaining days or weeks be the cowed, futile creature she had always been. It was her fate—typified by that relentless, uplifted forefinger. She could no more escape from it than Roaring Abel from his predestination. She eyed it as the fascinated bird eyes the snake. Another moment— “_Fear is the original sin_,” suddenly said a still, small voice away back—back—back of Valancy’s consciousness. “_Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something._” Valancy stood up. She was still in the clutches of fear, but her soul was her own again. She would not be false to that inner voice. “Dr. Stalling,” she said slowly, “I do not at present owe _any_ duty to my mother. She is quite well; she has all the assistance and companionship she requires; she does not need me at all. I _am_ needed here. I am going to stay here.” “There’s spunk for you,” said Roaring Abel admiringly. Dr. Stalling dropped his forefinger. One could not keep on shaking a finger forever. “Miss Stirling, is there _nothing_ that can influence you? Do you remember your childhood days——” “Perfectly. And hate them.” “Do you realise what people will say? What they _are_ saying?” “I can imagine it,” said Valancy, with a shrug of her shoulders. She was suddenly free of fear again. “I haven’t listened to the gossip of Deerwood teaparties and sewing circles twenty years for nothing. But, Dr. Stalling, it doesn’t matter in the least to me what they say—not in the least.” Dr. Stalling went away then. A girl who cared nothing for public opinion! Over whom sacred family ties had no restraining influence! Who hated her childhood memories! Then Cousin Georgiana came—on her own initiative, for nobody would have thought it worth while to send her. She found Valancy alone, weeding the little vegetable garden she had planted, and she made all the platitudinous pleas she could think of. Valancy heard her patiently. Cousin Georgiana wasn’t such a bad old soul. Then she said: “And now that you have got all that out of your system, Cousin Georgiana, can you tell me how to make creamed codfish so that it will not be as thick as porridge and as salt as the Dead Sea?” * * * * * * * “We’ll just have to _wait_,” said Uncle Benjamin. “After all, Cissy Gay can’t live long. Dr. Marsh tells me she may drop off any day.” Mrs. Frederick wept. It would really have been so much easier to bear if Valancy had died. She could have worn mourning then. CHAPTER XX When Abel Gay paid Valancy her first month’s wages—which he did promptly, in bills reeking with the odour of tobacco and whiskey—Valancy went into Deerwood and spent every cent of it. She got a pretty green crêpe dress with a girdle of crimson beads, at a bargain sale, a pair of silk stockings, to match, and a little crinkled green hat with a crimson rose in it. She even bought a foolish little beribboned and belaced nightgown. She passed the house on Elm Street twice—Valancy never even thought about it as “home”—but saw no one. No doubt her mother was sitting in the room this lovely June evening playing solitaire—and cheating. Valancy knew that Mrs. Frederick always cheated. She never lost a game. Most of the people Valancy met looked at her seriously and passed her with a cool nod. Nobody stopped to speak to her. Valancy put on her green dress when she got home. Then she took it off again. She felt so miserably undressed in its low neck and short sleeves. And that low, crimson girdle around the hips seemed positively indecent. She hung it up in the closet, feeling flatly that she had wasted her money. She would never have the courage to wear that dress. John Foster’s arraignment of fear had no power to stiffen her against this. In this one thing habit and custom were still all-powerful. Yet she sighed as she went down to meet Barney Snaith in her old snuff-brown silk. That green thing had been very becoming—she had seen so much in her one ashamed glance. Above it her eyes had looked like odd brown jewels and the girdle had given her flat figure an entirely different appearance. She wished she could have left it on. But there were some things John Foster did not know. Every Sunday evening Valancy went to the little Free Methodist church in a valley on the edge of “up back”—a spireless little grey building among the pines, with a few sunken graves and mossy gravestones in the small, paling-encircled, grass-grown square beside it. She liked the minister who preached there. He was so simple and sincere. An old man, who lived in Port Lawrence and came out by the lake in a little disappearing propeller boat to give a free service to the people of the small, stony farms back of the hills, who would otherwise never have heard any gospel message. She liked the simple service and the fervent singing. She liked to sit by the open window and look out into the pine woods. The congregation was always small. The Free Methodists were few in number, poor and generally illiterate. But Valancy loved those Sunday evenings. For the first time in her life she liked going to church. The rumour reached Deerwood that she had “turned Free Methodist” and sent Mrs. Frederick to bed for a day. But Valancy had not turned anything. She went to the church because she liked it and because in some inexplicable way it did her good. Old Mr. Towers believed exactly what he preached and somehow it made a tremendous difference. Oddly enough, Roaring Abel disapproved of her going to the hill church as strongly as Mrs. Frederick herself could have done. He had “no use for Free Methodists. He was a Presbyterian.” But Valancy went in spite of him. “We’ll hear something worse than _that_ about her soon,” Uncle Benjamin predicted gloomily. They did. Valancy could not quite explain, even to herself, just why she wanted to go to that party. It was a dance “up back” at Chidley Corners; and dances at Chidley Corners were not, as a rule, the sort of assemblies where well-brought-up young ladies were found. Valancy knew it was coming off, for Roaring Abel had been engaged as one of the fiddlers. But the idea of going had never occurred to her until Roaring Abel himself broached it at supper. “You come with me to the dance,” he ordered. “It’ll do you good—put some colour in your face. You look peaked—you want something to liven you up.” Valancy found herself suddenly wanting to go. She knew nothing at all of what dances at Chidley Corners were apt to be like. Her idea of dances had been fashioned on the correct affairs that went by that name in Deerwood and Port Lawrence. Of course she knew the Corners’ dance wouldn’t be just like them. Much more informal, of course. But so much the more interesting. Why shouldn’t she go? Cissy was in a week of apparent health and improvement. She wouldn’t mind staying alone in the least. She entreated Valancy to go if she wanted to. And Valancy _did_ want to go. She went to her room to dress. A rage against the snuff-brown silk seized her. Wear _that_ to a party! Never. She pulled her green crêpe