The Blue Castle: a novel
have those three woollen cushions I worked last winter?”
“Take them—take everything!” said Mrs. Frederick.
“Oh, I don’t want everything—or much. I don’t want my Blue Castle
cluttered. Just the cushions. I’ll call for them some day when we motor
in.”
Valancy rose and went to the door. There she turned. She was sorrier
than ever for them all. _They_ had no Blue Castle in the purple
solitudes of Mistawis.
“The trouble with you people is that you don’t laugh enough,” she said.
“Doss, dear,” said Cousin Georgiana mournfully, “some day you will
discover that blood is thicker than water.”
“Of course it is. But who wants water to be thick?” parried Valancy.
“We want water to be thin—sparkling—crystal-clear.”
Cousin Stickles groaned.
Valancy would not ask any of them to come and see her—she was afraid
they _would_ come out of curiosity. But she said:
“Do you mind if I drop in and see you once in a while, Mother?”
“My house will always be open to you,” said Mrs. Frederick, with a
mournful dignity.
“You should never recognise her again,” said Uncle James sternly, as
the door closed behind Valancy.
“I cannot quite forget that I am a mother,” said Mrs. Frederick. “My
poor, unfortunate girl!”
“I dare say the marriage isn’t legal,” said Uncle James comfortingly.
“He has probably been married half a dozen times before. But _I_ am
through with her. I have done all I could, Amelia. I think you will
admit that. Henceforth”—Uncle James was terribly solemn about
it—“Valancy is to me as one dead.”
“Mrs. Barney Snaith,” said Cousin Georgiana, as if trying it out to see
how it would sound.
“He has a score of aliases, no doubt,” said Uncle Benjamin. “For my
part, I believe the man is half Indian. I haven’t a doubt they’re
living in a wigwam.”
“If he has married her under the name of Snaith and it isn’t his real
name wouldn’t that make the marriage null and void?” asked Cousin
Stickles hopefully.
Uncle James shook his head.
“No, it is the man who marries, not the name.”
“You know,” said Cousin Gladys, who had recovered and returned but was
still shaky, “I had a distinct premonition of this at Herbert’s silver
dinner. I remarked it at the time. When she was defending Snaith. You
remember, of course. It came over me like a revelation. I spoke to
David when I went home about it.”
“What—_what_,” demanded Aunt Wellington of the universe, “has come over
Valancy? _Valancy!_”
The universe did not answer but Uncle James did.
“Isn’t there something coming up of late about secondary personalities
cropping out? I don’t hold with many of those new-fangled notions, but
there may be something in this one. It would account for her
incomprehensible conduct.”
“Valancy is so fond of mushrooms,” sighed Cousin Georgiana. “I’m afraid
she’ll get poisoned eating toadstools by mistake living up back in the
woods.”
“There are worse things than death,” said Uncle James, believing that
it was the first time in the world that such a statement had been made.
“Nothing can ever be the same again!” sobbed Cousin Stickles.
Valancy, hurrying along the dusty road, back to cool Mistawis and her
purple island, had forgotten all about them—just as she had forgotten
that she might drop dead at any moment if she hurried.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Summer passed by. The Stirling clan—with the insignificant exception of
Cousin Georgiana—had tacitly agreed to follow Uncle James’ example and
look upon Valancy as one dead. To be sure, Valancy had an unquiet,
ghostly habit of recurring resurrections when she and Barney clattered
through Deerwood and out to the Port in that unspeakable car. Valancy,
bareheaded, with stars in her eyes. Barney, bareheaded, smoking his
pipe. But shaved. Always shaved now, if any of them had noticed it.
They even had the audacity to go in to Uncle Benjamin’s store to buy
groceries. Twice Uncle Benjamin ignored them. Was not Valancy one of
the dead? While Snaith had never existed. But the third time he told
Barney he was a scoundrel who should be hung for luring an unfortunate,
weak-minded girl away from her home and friends.
Barney’s one straight eyebrow went up.
“I have made her happy,” he said coolly, “and she was miserable with
her friends. So that’s that.”
Uncle Benjamin stared. It had never occurred to him that women had to
be, or ought to be, “made happy.”
“You—you pup!” he said.
“Why be so unoriginal?” queried Barney amiably. “Anybody could call me
a pup. Why not think of something worthy of the Stirlings? Besides, I’m
not a pup. I’m really quite a middle-aged dog. Thirty-five, if you’re
interested in knowing.”
Uncle Benjamin remembered just in time that Valancy was dead. He turned
his back on Barney.
Valancy _was_ happy—gloriously and entirely so. She seemed to be living
in a wonderful house of life and every day opened a new, mysterious
room. It was in a world which had nothing in common with the one she
had left behind—a world where time was not—which was young with
immortal youth—where there was neither past nor future but only the
present. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of it.
The absolute freedom of it all was unbelievable. They could do exactly
as they liked. No Mrs. Grundy. No traditions. No relatives. Or in-laws.
“Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away,” as Barney quoted
shamelessly.
Valancy had gone home once and got her cushions. And Cousin Georgiana
had given her one of her famous candlewick spreads of most elaborate
design. “For your spare-room bed, dear,” she said.
“But I haven’t got any spare-room,” said Valancy.
Cousin Georgiana looked horrified. A house without a spare-room was
monstrous to her.
“But it’s a lovely spread,” said Valancy, with a kiss, “and I’m so glad
to have it. I’ll put it on my own bed. Barney’s old patch-work quilt is
getting ragged.”
“I don’t see how you can be contented to live up back,” sighed Cousin
Georgiana. “It’s so out of the world.”
“Contented!” Valancy laughed. What was the use of trying to explain to
Cousin Georgiana. “It is,” she agreed, “most gloriously and entirely
out of the world.”
“And you are really happy, dear?” asked Cousin Georgiana wistfully.
“I really am,” said Valancy gravely, her eyes dancing.
“Marriage is such a serious thing,” sighed Cousin Georgiana.
“When it’s going to last long,” agreed Valancy.
Cousin Georgiana did not understand this at all. But it worried her and
she lay awake at nights wondering what Valancy meant by it.
Valancy loved her Blue Castle and was completely satisfied with it. The
big living-room had three windows, all commanding exquisite views of
exquisite Mistawis. The one in the end of the room was an oriel
window—which Tom MacMurray, Barney explained, had got out of some
little, old “up back” church that had been sold. It faced the west and
when the sunsets flooded it Valancy’s whole being knelt in prayer as if
in some great cathedral. The new moons always looked down through it,
the lower pine boughs swayed about the top of it, and all through the
nights the soft, dim silver of the lake dreamed through it.
There was a stone fireplace on the other side. No desecrating gas
imitation but a real fireplace where you could burn real logs. With a
big grizzly bearskin on the floor before it, and beside it a hideous,
red-plush sofa of Tom MacMurray’s régime. But its ugliness was hidden
by silver-grey timber wolf skins, and Valancy’s cushions made it gay
and comfortable. In a corner a nice, tall, lazy old clock ticked—the
right kind of a clock. One that did not hurry the hours away but ticked
them off deliberately. It was the jolliest looking old clock. A fat,
corpulent clock with a great, round, man’s face painted on it, the
hands stretching out of its nose and the hours encircling it like a
halo.
There was a big glass case of stuffed owls and several deer
heads—likewise of Tom MacMurray’s vintage. Some comfortable old chairs
that asked to be sat upon. A squat little chair with a cushion was
prescriptively Banjo’s. If anybody else dared sit on it Banjo glared
him out of it with his topaz-hued, black-ringed eyes. Banjo had an
adorable habit of hanging over the back of it, trying to catch his own
tail. Losing his temper because he couldn’t catch it. Giving it a
fierce bite for spite when he _did_ catch it. Yowling malignantly with
pain. Barney and Valancy laughed at him until they ached. But it was
Good Luck they loved. They were both agreed that Good Luck was so
lovable that he practically amounted to an obsession.
One side of the wall was lined with rough, homemade book-shelves filled
with books, and between the two side windows hung an old mirror in a
faded gilt frame, with fat cupids gamboling in the panel over the
glass. A mirror, Valancy thought, that must be like the fabled mirror
into which Venus had once looked and which thereafter reflected as
beautiful every woman who looked into it. Valancy thought she was
almost pretty in that mirror. But that may have been because she had
shingled her hair.
This was before the day of bobs and was regarded as a wild, unheard-of
proceeding—unless you had typhoid. When Mrs. Frederick heard of it she
almost decided to erase Valancy’s name from the family Bible. Barney
cut the hair, square off at the back of Valancy’s neck, bringing it
down in a short black fringe over her forehead. It gave a meaning and a
purpose to her little, three-cornered face that it never had possessed
before. Even her nose ceased to irritate her. Her eyes were bright, and
her sallow skin had cleared to the hue of creamy ivory. The old family
joke had come true—she was really fat at last—anyway, no longer skinny.
Valancy might never be beautiful, but she was of the type that looks
its best in the woods—elfin—mocking—alluring.
Her heart bothered her very little. When an attack threatened she was
generally able to head it off with Dr. Trent’s prescription. The only
bad one she had was one night when she was temporarily out of medicine.
And it _was_ a bad one. For the time being, Valancy realised keenly
that death was actually waiting to pounce on her any moment. But the
rest of the time she would not—did not—let herself remember it at all.
CHAPTER XXIX
Valancy toiled not, neither did she spin. There was really very little
work to do. She cooked their meals on a coal-oil stove, performing all
her little domestic rites carefully and exultingly, and they ate out on
the verandah that almost overhung the lake. Before them lay Mistawis,
like a scene out of some fairy tale of old time. And Barney smiling his
twisted, enigmatical smile at her across the table.
“What a view old Tom picked out when he built this shack!” Barney would
say exultantly.
Supper was the meal Valancy liked best. The faint laughter of winds was
always about them and the colours of Mistawis, imperial and spiritual,
under the changing clouds were something that cannot be expressed in
mere words. Shadows, too. Clustering in the pines until a wind shook
them out and pursued them over Mistawis. They lay all day along the
shores, threaded by ferns and wild blossoms. They stole around the
headlands in the glow of the sunset, until twilight wove them all into
one great web of dusk.
The cats, with their wise, innocent little faces, would sit on the
verandah railing and eat the tidbits Barney flung them. And how good
everything tasted! Valancy, amid all the romance of Mistawis, never
forgot that men had stomachs. Barney paid her no end of compliments on
her cooking.
“After all,” he admitted, “there’s something to be said for square
meals. I’ve mostly got along by boiling two or three dozen eggs hard at
once and eating a few when I got hungry, with a slice of bacon once in
a while and a jorum of tea.”