The Blue Castle: a novel
“We need some tea,” said Cousin Stickles. “She might go and get that if
she wants a walk—though this damp weather is bad for colds.”
They argued the matter for ten minutes longer and finally Mrs.
Frederick agreed rather grudgingly that Valancy might go.
CHAPTER IV
“Got your rubbers on?” called Cousin Stickles, as Valancy left the
house.
Christine Stickles had never once forgotten to ask that question when
Valancy went out on a damp day.
“Yes.”
“Have you got your flannel petticoat on?” asked Mrs. Frederick.
“No.”
“Doss, I really do not understand you. Do you want to catch your death
of cold _again_?” Her voice implied that Valancy had died of a cold
several times already. “Go upstairs this minute and put it on!”
“Mother, I don’t _need_ a flannel petticoat. My sateen one is warm
enough.”
“Doss, remember you had bronchitis two years ago. Go and do as you are
told!”
Valancy went, though nobody will ever know just how near she came to
hurling the rubber-plant into the street before she went. She hated
that grey flannel petticoat more than any other garment she owned.
Olive never had to wear flannel petticoats. Olive wore ruffled silk and
sheer lawn and filmy laced flounces. But Olive’s father had “married
money” and Olive never had bronchitis. So there you were.
“Are you sure you didn’t leave the soap in the water?” demanded Mrs.
Frederick. But Valancy was gone. She turned at the corner and looked
back down the ugly, prim, respectable street where she lived. The
Stirling house was the ugliest on it—more like a red brick box than
anything else. Too high for its breadth, and made still higher by a
bulbous glass cupola on top. About it was the desolate, barren peace of
an old house whose life is lived.
There was a very pretty little house, with leaded casements and dubbed
gables, just around the corner—a new house, one of those houses you
love the minute you see them. Clayton Markley had built it for his
bride. He was to be married to Jennie Lloyd in June. The little house,
it was said, was furnished from attic to cellar, in complete readiness
for its mistress.
“I don’t envy Jennie the man,” thought Valancy sincerely—Clayton
Markley was not one of her many ideals—“but I _do_ envy her the house.
It’s such a nice young house. Oh, if I could only have a house of my
own—ever so poor, so tiny—but my own! But then,” she added bitterly,
“there is no use in yowling for the moon when you can’t even get a
tallow candle.”
In dreamland nothing would do Valancy but a castle of pale sapphire. In
real life she would have been fully satisfied with a little house of
her own. She envied Jennie Lloyd more fiercely than ever today. Jennie
was not so much better looking than she was, and not so very much
younger. Yet she was to have this delightful house. And the nicest
little Wedgwood teacups—Valancy had seen them; an open fireplace, and
monogrammed linen; hemstitched tablecloths, and china-closets. Why did
_everything_ come to some girls and _nothing_ to others? It wasn’t
fair.
Valancy was once more seething with rebellion as she walked along, a
prim, dowdy little figure in her shabby raincoat and three-year-old
hat, splashed occasionally by the mud of a passing motor with its
insulting shrieks. Motors were still rather a novelty in Deerwood,
though they were common in Port Lawrence, and most of the summer
residents up at Muskoka had them. In Deerwood only some of the smart
set had them; for even Deerwood was divided into sets. There was the
smart set—the intellectual set—the old-family set—of which the
Stirlings were members—the common run, and a few pariahs. Not one of
the Stirling clan had as yet condescended to a motor, though Olive was
teasing her father to have one. Valancy had never even been in a
motorcar. But she did not hanker after this. In truth, she felt rather
afraid of motorcars, especially at night. They seemed to be too much
like big purring beasts that might turn and crush you—or make some
terrible savage leap somewhere. On the steep mountain trails around her
Blue Castle only gaily caparisoned steeds might proudly pace; in real
life Valancy would have been quite contented to drive in a buggy behind
a nice horse. She got a buggy drive only when some uncle or cousin
remembered to fling her “a chance,” like a bone to a dog.
CHAPTER V
Of course she must buy the tea in Uncle Benjamin’s grocery-store. To
buy it anywhere else was unthinkable. Yet Valancy hated to go to Uncle
Benjamin’s store on her twenty-ninth birthday. There was no hope that
he would not remember it.
“Why,” demanded Uncle Benjamin, leeringly, as he tied up her tea, “are
young ladies like bad grammarians?”
Valancy, with Uncle Benjamin’s will in the background of her mind, said
meekly, “I don’t know. Why?”
“Because,” chuckled Uncle Benjamin, “they can’t decline matrimony.”
The two clerks, Joe Hammond and Claude Bertram, chuckled also, and
Valancy disliked them a little more than ever. On the first day Claude
Bertram had seen her in the store she had heard him whisper to Joe,
“Who is that?” And Joe had said, “Valancy Stirling—one of the Deerwood
old maids.” “Curable or incurable?” Claude had asked with a snicker,
evidently thinking the question very clever. Valancy smarted anew with
the sting of that old recollection.
“Twenty-nine,” Uncle Benjamin was saying. “Dear me, Doss, you’re
dangerously near the second corner and not even thinking of getting
married yet. Twenty-nine. It seems impossible.”
Then Uncle Benjamin said an original thing. Uncle Benjamin said, “How
time does fly!”
“_I_ think it _crawls_,” said Valancy passionately. Passion was so
alien to Uncle Benjamin’s conception of Valancy that he didn’t know
what to make of her. To cover his confusion, he asked another conundrum
as he tied up her beans—Cousin Stickles had remembered at the last
moment that they must have beans. Beans were cheap and filling.
“What two ages are apt to prove illusory?” asked Uncle Benjamin; and,
not waiting for Valancy to “give it up,” he added, “Mir-age and
marri-age.”
“M-i-r-a-g-e is pronounced _mirazh_,” said Valancy shortly, picking up
her tea and her beans. For the moment she did not care whether Uncle
Benjamin cut her out of his will or not. She walked out of the store
while Uncle Benjamin stared after her with his mouth open. Then he
shook his head.
“Poor Doss is taking it hard,” he said.
Valancy was sorry by the time she reached the next crossing. Why had
she lost her patience like that? Uncle Benjamin would be annoyed and
would likely tell her mother that Doss had been impertinent—“to
_me_!”—and her mother would lecture her for a week.
“I’ve held my tongue for twenty years,” thought Valancy. “Why couldn’t
I have held it once more?”
Yes, it was just twenty, Valancy reflected, since she had first been
twitted with her loverless condition. She remembered the bitter moment
perfectly. She was just nine years old and she was standing alone on
the school playground while the other little girls of her class were
playing a game in which you must be chosen by a boy as his partner
before you could play. Nobody had chosen Valancy—little, pale,
black-haired Valancy, with her prim, long-sleeved apron and odd,
slanted eyes.
“Oh,” said a pretty little girl to her, “I’m so sorry for you. You
haven’t got a beau.”
Valancy had said defiantly, as she continued to say for twenty years,
“I don’t _want_ a beau.” But this afternoon Valancy once and for all
stopped saying that.
“I’m going to be honest with myself anyhow,” she thought savagely.
“Uncle Benjamin’s riddles hurt me because they are true. I _do_ want to
be married. I want a house of my own—I want a husband of my own—I want
sweet, little fat _babies_ of my own—” Valancy stopped suddenly aghast
at her own recklessness. She felt sure that Rev. Dr. Stalling, who
passed her at this moment, read her thoughts and disapproved of them
thoroughly. Valancy was afraid of Dr. Stalling—had been afraid of him
ever since the Sunday, twenty-three years before, when he had first
come to St. Albans’. Valancy had been too late for Sunday School that
day and she had gone into the church timidly and sat in their pew. No
one else was in the church—nobody except the new rector, Dr. Stalling.
Dr. Stalling stood up in front of the choir door, beckoned to her, and
said sternly, “Little boy, come up here.”
Valancy had stared around her. There was no little boy—there was no one
in all the huge church but herself. This strange man with the blue
glasses couldn’t mean her. She was not a boy.
“Little boy,” repeated Dr. Stalling, more sternly still, shaking his
forefinger fiercely at her, “come up here at once!”
Valancy arose as if hypnotised and walked up the aisle. She was too
terrified to do anything else. What dreadful thing was going to happen
to her? What _had_ happened to her? Had she actually turned into a boy?
She came to a stop in front of Dr. Stalling. Dr. Stalling shook his
forefinger—such a long, knuckly forefinger—at her and said:
“Little boy, take off your hat.”
Valancy took off her hat. She had a scrawny little pigtail hanging down
her back, but Dr. Stalling was shortsighted and did not perceive it.
“Little boy, go back to your seat and _always_ take off your hat in
church. _Remember!_”
Valancy went back to her seat carrying her hat like an automaton.
Presently her mother came in.
“Doss,” said Mrs. Stirling, “what do you mean by taking off your hat?
Put it on instantly!”
Valancy put it on instantly. She was cold with fear lest Dr. Stalling
should immediately summon her up front again. She would have to go, of
course—it never occurred to her that one could disobey the rector—and
the church was full of people now. Oh, what would she do if that
horrible, stabbing forefinger were shaken at her again before all those
people? Valancy sat through the whole service in an agony of dread and
was sick for a week afterwards. Nobody knew why—Mrs. Frederick again
bemoaned herself of her delicate child.
Dr. Stalling found out his mistake and laughed over it to Valancy—who
did not laugh. She never got over her dread of Dr. Stalling. And now to
be caught by him on the street corner, thinking such things!
Valancy got her John Foster book—_Magic of Wings_. “His latest—all
about birds,” said Miss Clarkson. She had almost decided that she would
go home, instead of going to see Dr. Trent. Her courage had failed her.
She was afraid of offending Uncle James—afraid of angering her
mother—afraid of facing gruff, shaggy-browed old Dr. Trent, who would
probably tell her, as he had told Cousin Gladys, that her trouble was
entirely imaginary and that she only had it because she liked to have
it. No, she would not go; she would get a bottle of Redfern’s Purple
Pills instead. Redfern’s Purple Pills were the standard medicine of the
Stirling clan. Had they not cured Second Cousin Geraldine when five
doctors had given her up? Valancy always felt very sceptical concerning
the virtues of the Purple Pills; but there _might_ be something in
them; and it was easier to take them than to face Dr. Trent alone. She
would glance over the magazines in the reading-room a few minutes and
then go home.
Valancy tried to read a story, but it made her furious. On every page
was a picture of the heroine surrounded by adoring men. And here was
she, Valancy Stirling, who could not get a solitary beau! Valancy
slammed the magazine shut; she opened _Magic of Wings_. Her eyes fell
on the paragraph that changed her life.
“_Fear is the original sin_,” wrote John Foster. “_Almost all the evil
in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of
something._ It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is