The Blue Castle (15 page)

“If he really has,” said Uncle James, who had just washed his hands of Valancy. “Who married you?”

“Mr. Towers, of Port Lawrence.”

“By a Free Methodist!” groaned Mrs. Frederick—as if to have been married by an imprisoned Methodist would have been a shade less disgraceful. It was the first thing she had said. Mrs. Frederick didn't know
what
to say. The whole thing was too horrible—too horrible—too nightmarish. She was sure she must wake up soon. After all their bright hopes at the funeral!

“It makes me think of those what-d'ye-call-'ems,” said Uncle Benjamin helplessly. “Those yarns—you know—of fairies taking babies out of their cradles.”

“Valancy could hardly be a changeling at twenty-nine,” said Aunt Wellington satirically.

“She was the oddest-looking baby I ever saw, anyway,” averred Uncle Benjamin. “I said so at the time—you remember, Amelia? I said I had never seen such eyes in a human head.”

“I'm glad
I
never had any children,” said Cousin Sarah. “If they don't break your heart in one way they do it in another.”

“Isn't it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up?” queried Valancy. “Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid.
That
would be worth the pain.”

“Dippy—clean dippy,” muttered Uncle Benjamin, with a vague, unsatisfactory feeling that somebody had said something like that before.

“Valancy,” said Mrs. Frederick solemnly, “do you ever pray to be forgiven for disobeying your mother?”

“I
should
pray to be forgiven for obeying you so long,” said Valancy stubbornly. “But I don't pray about that at all. I just thank God every day for my happiness.”

“I would rather,” said Mrs. Frederick, beginning to cry rather belatedly, “see you dead before me than listen to what you have told me today.”

Valancy looked at her mother and aunts, and wondered if they could ever have known anything of the real meaning of love. She felt sorrier for them than ever. They were so very pitiable. And they never suspected it.

“Barney Snaith is a scoundrel to have deluded you into marrying him,” said Uncle James violently.

“Oh,
I
did the deluding. I asked
him
to marry me,” said Valancy, with a wicked smile.

“Have you
no
pride?” demanded Aunt Wellington.

“Lots of it. I am proud that I have achieved a husband by my own unaided efforts. Cousin Georgiana here wanted to help me to Edward Beck.”

“Edward Beck is worth twenty thousand dollars and has the finest house between here and Port Lawrence,” said Uncle Benjamin.

“That sounds very fine,” said Valancy scornfully, “but it isn't worth
tha
t
”—she snapped her fingers—“compared to feeling Barney's arms around me and his cheek against mine.”

“
Oh
, Doss!” said Cousin Stickles. Cousin Sarah said, “Oh,
Dos
s
!” Aunt Wellington said, “Valancy, you need not be indecent.”

“Why, it surely isn't indecent to like to have your husband put his arm around you? I should think it would be indecent if you didn't.”

“Why expect decency from her?” inquired Uncle James sarcastically. “She has cut herself off from decency forevermore. She has made her bed. Let her lie on it.”

“Thanks,” said Valancy very gratefully. “How you would have enjoyed being Torquemada! Now, I must really be getting back. Mother, may I have those three woolen 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, “someday 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 recognize 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 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.

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 into 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 be 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 view 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 regime. But its ugliness was hidden by silver-gray 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 realized 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.