The Blue Castle (6 page)

Meanwhile the dinner in its earlier stages was dragging its slow length along true to Stirling form. The room was chilly, in spite of the calendar, and Aunt Alberta had the gas-logs lighted. Everybody in the clan envied her those gas-logs except Valancy. Glorious open fires blazed in every room of her Blue Castle when autumnal nights were cool, but she would have frozen to death in it before she would have committed the sacrilege of a gas-log. Uncle Herbert made his hardy perennial joke when he helped Aunt Wellington to the cold meat—“Mary, will you have a little lamb?” Aunt Mildred told the same old story of once finding a lost ring in a turkey's crop. Uncle Benjamin told
his
favorite prosy tale of how he had once chased and punished a now famous man for stealing apples. Second Cousin Jane described all her sufferings with an ulcerating tooth. Aunt Wellington admired the pattern of Aunt Alberta's silver teaspoons and lamented the fact that one of her own had been lost.

“It spoiled the set. I could never get it matched. And it was my wedding-present from dear old Aunt Matilda.”

Aunt Isabel thought the seasons were changing and couldn't imagine what had become of our good, old-fashioned springs. Cousin Georgiana, as usual, discussed the last funeral and wondered, audibly, “which of us will be the next to pass away.” Cousin Georgiana could never say anything as blunt as “die.” Valancy thought she could tell her, but didn't. Cousin Gladys, likewise as usual, had a grievance. Her visiting nephews had nipped all the buds off her house-plants and chivied her brood of fancy chickens—“squeezed some of them actually to death, my dear.”

“Boys will be boys,” reminded Uncle Herbert tolerantly.

“But they needn't be ramping, rampageous animals,” retorted Cousin Gladys, looking round the table for appreciation of her wit. Everybody smiled except Valancy. Cousin Gladys remembered that. A few minutes later, when Ellen Hamilton was being discussed, Cousin Gladys spoke of her as “one of those shy, plain girls who can't get husbands,” and glanced significantly at Valancy.

Uncle James thought the conversation was sagging to a rather low plane of personal gossip. He tried to elevate it by starting an abstract discussion on “the greatest happiness.” Everybody was asked to state his or her idea of “the greatest happiness.”

Aunt Mildred thought the greatest happiness—for a woman—was to be “a loving and beloved wife and mother.” Aunt Wellington thought it would be to travel in Europe. Olive thought it would be to be a great singer like Tetrazzini. Cousin Gladys remarked mournfully that
her
greatest happiness would be to be free—absolutely free—from neuritis. Cousin Georgiana's greatest happiness would be “to have her dear, dead brother Richard back.” Aunt Alberta remarked vaguely that the greatest happiness was to be found in “the poetry of life” and hastily gave some directions to her maid to prevent any one asking her what she meant. Mrs. Frederick said the greatest happiness was to spend your life in loving service for others, and Cousin Stickles and Aunt Isabel agreed with her—Aunt Isabel with a resentful air, as if she thought Mrs. Frederick had taken the wind out of her sails by saying it first. “We are all too prone,” continued Mrs. Frederick, determined not to lose so good an opportunity, “to live in selfishness, worldliness, and sin.” The other women all felt rebuked for their low ideals, and Uncle James had a conviction that the conversation had been uplifted with a vengeance.

“The greatest happiness,” said Valancy suddenly and distinctly, “is to sneeze when you want to.”

Everybody stared. Nobody felt it safe to say anything. Was Valancy trying to be funny? It was incredible. Mrs. Frederick, who had been breathing easier since the dinner had progressed so far without any outbreak on the part of Valancy began to tremble again. But she deemed it the part of prudence to say nothing. Uncle Benjamin was not so prudent. He rashly rushed in where Mrs. Frederick feared to tread.

“Doss,” he chuckled, “what is the difference between a young girl and an old maid?”

“One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless,” said Valancy. “You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don't you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you
must
? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don't succeed.”

Uncle Benjamin stared foolishly. Never in his life had he, Benjamin Stirling, of Stirling and Frost, been spoken to so. And by Valancy of all people! He looked feebly around the table to see what the others thought of it. Everybody was looking rather blank. Poor Mrs. Frederick had shut her eyes. And her lips moved tremblingly—as if she were praying. Perhaps she was. The situation was so unprecedented that nobody knew how to meet it. Valancy went on calmly eating her salad as if nothing out of the usual had occurred.

Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently. Uncle James, to back her up, asked where the dog had bitten her.

“Just a little below the Catholic church,” said Aunt Alberta.

At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?

“Is that a vital part?” asked Valancy.

“What do you mean?” said bewildered Aunt Alberta, and Mrs. Frederick was almost driven to believe that she had served God all her years for naught.

Aunt Isabel concluded that it was up to her to suppress Valancy.

“Doss, you are horribly thin,” she said. “You are
all
corners. Do you
ever
try to fatten up a little?”

“No.” Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. “But I can tell you where you'll find a beauty parlor in Port Lawrence where they can reduce the number of your chins.”

“
Val-an-cy
!
” The protest was wrung from Mrs. Frederick. She meant her tone to be stately and majestic, as usual but it sounded more like an imploring whine. And she did not say “Doss.”

“She's feverish,” said Cousin Stickles to Uncle Benjamin in an agonized whisper. “We've thought she's seemed feverish for several days.”

“She's gone dippy, in my opinion,” growled Uncle Benjamin. “If not, she ought to be spanked. Yes, spanked.”

“You can't spank her.” Cousin Stickles was much agitated. “She's twenty-nine years old.”

“So there is that advantage, at least, in being twenty-nine,” said Valancy, whose ears had caught this aside.

“Doss,” said Uncle Benjamin, “when I am dead you may say what you please. As long as I am alive I demand to be treated with respect.”

“Oh, but you know we're all dead,” said Valancy, “the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried and some aren't—yet. That is the only difference.”

“Doss,” said Uncle Benjamin, thinking it might cow Valancy, “do you remember the time you stole the raspberry jam?”

Valancy flushed scarlet—with suppressed laughter, not shame. She had been sure Uncle Benjamin would drag that jam in somehow.

“Of course I do,” she said. “It was good jam. I've always been sorry I hadn't time to eat more of it before you found me. Oh,
look
at Aunt Isabel's profile on the wall. Did you ever see anything so funny?”

Everybody looked, including Aunt Isabel herself which, of course, destroyed it. But Uncle Herbert said kindly, “I—I wouldn't eat any more if I were you, Doss. It isn't that I grudge it—but don't you think it would be better for yourself? Your—your stomach seems a little out of order.”

“Don't worry about my stomach, old dear,” said Valancy. “It is all right. I'm going to keep right on eating. It's so seldom I get the chance of a satisfying meal.”

It was the first time anyone had been called “old dear” in Deerwood. The Stirlings thought Valancy had invented the phrase and they were afraid of her from that moment. There was something so uncanny about such an expression. But in poor Mrs. Frederick's opinion the reference to a satisfying meal was the worst thing Valancy had said yet. Valancy had always been a disappointment to her. Now she was a disgrace. She thought she would have to get up and go away from the table. Yet she dared not leave Valancy there.

Aunt Alberta's maid came in to remove the salad plates and bring in the dessert. It was a welcome diversion. Everybody brightened up with a determination to ignore Valancy and talk as if she wasn't there. Uncle Wellington mentioned Barney Snaith. Eventually somebody did mention Barney Snaith at every Stirling function, Valancy reflected. Whatever he was, he was an individual that could not be ignored. She resigned herself to listen. There was a subtle fascination in the subject for her, though she had not yet faced this fact. She could feel her pulses beating to her finger-tips.

Of course they abused him. Nobody ever had a good word to say of Barney Snaith. All the old, wild tales were canvassed—the defaulting cashier-counterfeiter-infidel-murderer-in-hiding legends were thrashed out. Uncle Wellington was very indignant that such a creature should be allowed to exist at all in the neighborhood of Deerwood. He didn't know what the police at Port Lawrence were thinking of. Everybody would be murdered in their beds some night. It was a shame that he should be allowed to be at large after all that he had done.

“What
has
he done?” asked Valancy suddenly.

Uncle Wellington stared at her, forgetting that she was to be ignored.

“Done! Done! He's done
everything
.”

“
What
has he done?” repeated Valancy inexorably. “What do you
know
that he has done? You're always running him down. And what has ever been proved against him?”

“I don't argue with women,” said Uncle Wellington. “And I don't need proof. When a man hides himself up there on an island in Muskoka, year in and year out, and nobody can find out where he came from or how he lives, or what he does there,
that's
proof enough. Find a mystery and you find a crime.”

“The very idea of a man named Snaith!” said Second Cousin Sarah. “Why, the name itself is enough to condemn him!”

“I wouldn't like to meet him in a dark lane,” shivered Cousin Georgiana.

“What do you suppose he would do to you?” asked Valancy.

“Murder me,” said Cousin Georgiana solemnly.

“Just for the fun of it?” suggested Valancy.

“Exactly,” said Cousin Georgiana unsuspiciously. “When there is so much smoke there must be some fire. I was afraid he was a criminal when he came here first. I
felt
he had something to hide. I am not often mistaken in my intuitions.”

“Criminal! Of course he's a criminal,” said Uncle Wellington. “Nobody doubts it”—glaring at Valancy. “Why, they say he served a term in the penitentiary for embezzlement. I don't doubt it. And they say he's in with that gang that are perpetrating all those bank robberies round the country.”

“
Who
say?” asked Valancy.

Uncle Wellington knotted his ugly forehead at her. What had got into this confounded girl, anyway? He ignored the question.

“He has the identical look of a jailbird,” snapped Uncle Benjamin. “I noticed it the first time I saw him.”

“‘A fellow by the hand of nature marked,

Quoted and sighed to do a deed of shame,'”

declaimed Uncle James. He looked enormously pleased over managing to work that quotation in at last. He had been waiting all his life for the chance.

“One of his eyebrows is an arch and the other is a triangle,” said Valancy. “Is
that
why you think him so villainous?”

Uncle James lifted
his
eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.

“How do
you
know his eyebrows so well, Doss?” asked Olive, a trifle maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.

“Yes, how?” demanded Aunt Wellington.

“I've seen him twice and I looked at him closely,” said Valancy composedly. “I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw.”

“There is no doubt there is something fishy in the creature's past life,” said Olive, who began to think she was decidedly out of the conversation, which had centered so amazingly around Valancy. “But he can hardly be guilty of
everything
he's accused of, you know.”

Valancy felt annoyed with Olive. Why should
she
speak up in even this qualified defense of Barney Snaith? What had
she
to do with him? For that matter, what had Valancy? But Valancy did not ask herself this question.

“They say he keeps dozens of cats in that hut up back on Mistawis,” said Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, by way of appearing not entirely ignorant of him.

Cats. It sounded quite alluring to Valancy, in the plural. She pictured an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies.

“That alone shows there is something wrong with him,” decreed Aunt Isabel.

“People who don't like cats,” said Valancy, attacking her dessert with a relish, “always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them.”

“The man hasn't a friend except Roaring Abel,” said Uncle Wellington. “And if Roaring Abel had kept away from him, as everybody else did, it would have been better for—for some members of his family.”

Uncle Wellington's rather lame conclusion was due to a marital glance from Aunt Wellington reminding him of what he had almost forgotten—that there were girls at the table.

“If you mean,” said Valancy passionately, “that Barney Snaith is the father of Cecily Gay's child, he
isn't.
It's a wicked lie.”

In spite of her indignation Valancy was hugely amused at the expression of the faces around that festal table. She had not seen anything like it since the day, seventeen years ago, when at Cousin Gladys's thimble party, they discovered that she had got—SOMETHING—in her head at school.
Lice
in her head! Valancy was done with euphemisms.