The Blue Castle (9 page)

Valancy had walked out to Roaring Abel's house on the Mistawis road under a sky of purple and amber, with a queer exhilaration and expectancy in her heart. Back there, behind her, her mother and Cousin Stickles were crying—over themselves, not over her. But here the wind was in her face, soft, dew-wet, cool, blowing along the grassy roads. Oh, she loved the wind! The robins were whistling sleepily in the firs along the way and the moist air was fragrant with the tang of balsam. Big cars went purring past in the violet dusk—the stream of summer tourists to Muskoka had already begun—but Valancy did not envy any of their occupants. Muskoka cottages might be charming, but beyond, in the sunset skies, among the spires of the firs, her Blue Castle towered. She brushed the old years and habits and inhibitions away from her like dead leaves. She would
not
be littered with them.

Roaring Abel's rambling, tumble-down old house was situated about three miles from the village, on the very edge of “up back,” as the sparsely settled, hilly, wooded country around Mistawis was called vernacularly. It did not, it must be confessed, look much like a Blue Castle.

It had once been a snug place enough in the days when Abel Gay had been young and prosperous, and the punning, arched sign over the gate—“A. Gay, Carpenter,” had been fine and freshly painted. Now it was a faded, dreary old place, with a leprous, patched roof and shutters hanging askew. Abel never seemed to do any carpenter jobs about his own house. It had a listless air, as if tired of life. There was a dwindling grove of ragged, crone-like old spruces behind it. The garden, which Cissy used to keep neat and pretty, had run wild. On two sides of the house were fields full of nothing but mulleins. Behind the house was a long stretch of useless barrens, full of scrub pines and spruces, with here and there a blossoming bit of wild cherry, running back to a belt of timber on the shores of Lake Mistawis, two miles away. A rough, rocky, boulder-strewn lane ran through it to the woods—a lane white with pestiferous, beautiful daisies.

Roaring Abel met Valancy at the door.

“So you've come,” he said incredulously. “I never s'posed that ruck of Stirlings would let you.”

Valancy showed all her pointed teeth in a grin.

“They couldn't stop me.”

“I didn't think you'd so much spunk,” said Roaring Abel admiringly. “And look at the nice ankles of her,” he added, as he stepped aside to let her in.

If Cousin Stickles had heard this she would have been certain that Valancy's doom, earthly and unearthly, was sealed. But Abel's superannuated gallantry did not worry Valancy. Besides, this was the first compliment she had ever received in her life and she found herself liking it. She sometimes suspected she had nice ankles, but nobody had ever mentioned it before. In the Stirling clan ankles were among the unmentionables.

Roaring Abel took her into the kitchen, where Cissy Gay was lying on the sofa, breathing quickly, with little scarlet spots on her hollow cheeks. Valancy had not seen Cecilia Gay for years. Then she had been such a pretty creature, a slight blossom-like girl, with soft, golden hair, clear-cut, almost waxen features, and large, beautiful blue eyes. She was shocked at the change in her. Could this be sweet Cissy—this pitiful little thing that looked like a tired broken flower? She had wept all the beauty out of her eyes; they looked too big—enormous—in her wasted face. The last time Valancy had seen Cecilia Gay those faded, piteous eyes had been limpid, shadowy blue pools aglow with mirth. The contrast was so terrible that Valancy's own eyes filled with tears. She knelt down by Cissy and put her arms about her.

“Cissy dear, I've come to look after you. I'll stay with you till—till—as long as you want me.”

“Oh!” Cissy put her thin arms about Valancy's neck. “Oh—
will
you? It's been so—lonely. I can wait on myself—but it's been so
lonely.
It—would just be like—heaven—to have someone here—like you. You were always—so sweet to me—long ago.”

Valancy held Cissy close. She was suddenly happy. Here was someone who needed her—someone she could help. She was no longer a superfluity. Old things had passed away; everything had become new.

“Most things are predestinated, but some are just darn sheer luck,” said Roaring Abel, complacently smoking his pipe in the corner.

When Valancy had lived for a week at Roaring Abel's she felt as if years had separated her from her old life and all the people she had known in it. They were beginning to seem remote—dreamlike—far-away—and as the days went on they seemed still more so, until they ceased to matter altogether.

She was happy. Nobody ever bothered her with conundrums or insisted on giving her Purple Pills. Nobody called her Doss or worried her about catching cold. There were no quilts to piece, no abominable rubber-plant to water, no ice-cold maternal tantrums to endure. She could be alone whenever she liked, go to bed when she liked, sneeze when she liked. In the long, wondrous, northern twilights, when Cissy was asleep and Roaring Abel away, she could sit for hours on the shaky back veranda steps, looking out over the barrens to the hills beyond, covered with their fine, purple bloom, listening to the friendly wind singing wild, sweet melodies in the little spruces, and drinking in the aroma of the sunned grasses, until darkness flowed over the landscape like a cool, welcome wave.

Sometimes of an afternoon, when Cissy was strong enough, the two girls went into the barrens and looked at the wood-flowers. But they did not pick any. Valancy had read to Cissy the gospel thereof according to John Foster: “It is a pity to gather wood-flowers. They lose half their witchery away from the green and the flicker. The way to enjoy wood-flowers is to track them down to their remote haunts—gloat over them—and then leave them with backward glances, taking with us only the beguiling memory of their grace and fragrance.”

Valancy was in the midst of realities after a lifetime of unrealities. And busy—very busy. The house had to be cleaned. Not for nothing had Valancy been brought up in the Stirling habit of neatness and cleanliness. If she found satisfaction in cleaning dirty rooms she got her fill of it there. Roaring Abel thought she was foolish to bother doing so much more than she was asked to do, but he did not interfere with her. He was very well satisfied with his bargain. Valancy was a good cook. Abel said she got a flavor into things. The only fault he found with her was that she did not sing at her work.

“Folks should always sing at their work,” he insisted. “Sounds cheerful-like.”

“Not always,” retorted Valancy. “Fancy a butcher singing at his work. Or an undertaker.”

Abel burst into his great broad laugh.

“There's no getting the better of you. You've got an answer every time. I should think the Stirlings would be glad to be rid of you.
They
don't like being sassed back.”

During the day Abel was generally away from home—if not working, then shooting or fishing with Barney Snaith.

He generally came home at nights—always very late and often very drunk. The first night they heard him come howling into the yard, Cissy had told Valancy not to be afraid.

“Father never does anything—he just makes noise.”

Valancy, lying on the sofa in Cissy's room, where she had elected to sleep, lest Cissy should need attention in the night—Cissy would never have called her—was not at all afraid, and said so. By the time Abel had got his horses put away, the roaring stage had passed and he was in his room at the end of the hall crying and praying. Valancy could still hear his dismal moans when she went calmly to sleep. For the most part, Abel was a good-natured creature, but occasionally he had a temper. Once Valancy asked him coolly:

“What is the use of getting in a rage?”

“It's such a d—d relief,” said Abel.

They both burst out laughing together.

“You're a great little sport,” said Abel admiringly. “Don't mind my bad French. I don't mean a thing by it. Jest habit. Say, I like a woman that ain't afraid to speak to me. Sis there was always too meek—too meek. That's why she got adrift. I like you.”

“All the same,” said Valancy determinedly, “there is no use in sending things to hell as you're always doing. And I'm
not
going to have you tracking mud all over a floor I've just scrubbed. You
must
use the scraper whether you consign it to perdition or not.”

Cissy loved the cleanness and neatness. She had kept it so, too, until her strength failed. She was very pitifully happy because she had Valancy with her. It had been so terrible—long, lonely days and nights with no companionship save those dreadful old women who came to work. Cissy had hated and feared them. She clung to Valancy like a child.

There was no doubt that Cissy was dying. Yet at no time did she seem alarmingly ill. She did not even cough a great deal. Most days she was able to get up and dress—sometimes even to work about in the garden or the barrens for an hour or two. For a few weeks after Valancy's coming she seemed so much better that Valancy began to hope she might get well. But Cissy shook her head.

“No, I can't get well. My lungs are almost gone. And I—don't want to. I'm so tired, Valancy. Only dying can rest me. But it's lovely to have you here—you'll never know how much it means to me. But Valancy—you work too hard. You don't need to—Father only wants his meals cooked. I don't think you are strong yourself. You turn so pale sometimes. And those drops you take.
Are
you well, dear?”

“I'm all right,” said Valancy lightly. She would not have Cissy worried. “And I'm not working hard. I'm glad to have some work to do—something that really wants to be done.”

“Then”—Cissy slipped her hand wistfully into Valancy's—“don't let's talk any more about my being sick. Let's just forget it. Let's pretend I'm a little girl again—and you have come here to play with me. I used to wish that long ago—wish that you could come. I knew you couldn't, of course. But how I did wish it! You always seemed so different from the other girls—so kind and sweet—and as if you had something in yourself nobody knew about—some dear, pretty secret.
Had
you, Valancy?”

“I had my Blue Castle,” said Valancy, laughing a little. She was pleased that Cissy had thought of her like this. She had never suspected that anybody liked or admired or wondered about her. She told Cissy all about her Blue Castle. She had never told anyone about it before.

“Everyone has a Blue Castle, I think,” said Cissy softly. “Only every one had a different name for it.
I
had mine—once.”

She put her two thin hands over her face. She did not tell Valancy—then—who had destroyed her Blue Castle.

But Valancy knew that, whoever it was, it was not Barney Snaith.

Valancy was acquainted with Barney by now—well acquainted, it seemed, though she had spoken to him only a few times. But then she had felt just as well acquainted with him the first time they had met. She had been in the garden at twilight, hunting for a few stalks of white narcissus for Cissy's room when she heard that terrible old Grey Slosson coming down through the woods from Mistawis—one could hear it miles away. Valancy did not look up as it drew near, thumping over the rocks in the crazy lane. She had never looked up, though Barney had gone racketing past every evening since she had been at Roaring Abel's. This time he did not racket past. The old Grey Slosson stopped with even more terrible noises than it made going. Valancy was conscious that Barney had sprung from it and was leaning over the ramshackle gate. She suddenly straightened up and looked into his face. Their eyes met—Valancy was suddenly conscious of a delicious weakness. Was one of her heart attacks coming on?—But this was a new symptom.

His eyes, which she had always thought brown, now seen close were deep violet—translucent and intense. Neither of his eyebrows looked like the other. He was thin—too thin—she wished she could feed him up a bit—she wished she could sew the buttons on his coat—and make him cut his hair—and shave every day. There was
something
in his face—one hardly knew what it was. Tiredness? Sadness? Disillusionment? He had dimples in his thin cheeks when he smiled. All these thoughts flashed through Valancy's mind in that one moment while his eyes looked into hers.

“Good evening, Miss Stirling.”

Nothing could be more commonplace and conventional. Any one might have said it. But Barney Snaith had a way of saying things that gave them poignancy. When he said good evening you felt that it
was
a good evening and that it was partly his doing that it was. Also, you felt that some of the credit was yours. Valancy felt all this vaguely, but she couldn't imagine why she was trembling from head to foot—it
must
be her heart. If only he didn't notice it!

“I'm going over to the Port,” Barney was saying. “Can I acquire merit by getting or doing anything there for you or Cissy?”

“Will you get some salt codfish for us?” said Valancy. It was the only thing she could think of. Roaring Abel had expressed a desire that day for a dinner of boiled salt codfish. When her knights came riding to the Blue Castle, Valancy had sent them on many a quest, but she had never asked any of them to get her salt codfish.

“Certainly. You're sure there's nothing else? Lots of room in Lady Jane Grey Slosson. And she always gets back
some
time, does Lady Jane.”

“I don't think there's anything more,” said Valancy. She knew he would bring oranges for Cissy anyhow—he always did.

Barney did not turn away at once. He was silent for a little. Then he said, slowly and whimsically:

“Miss Stirling, you're a brick! You're a whole cartload of bricks. To come here and look after Cissy—under the circumstances.”

“There's nothing so bricky about that,” said Valancy. “I'd nothing else to do. And—I like it here. I don't feel as if I'd done anything specially meritorious. Mr. Gay is paying me fair wages. I never earned any money before—and I like it.” It seemed so easy to talk to Barney Snaith, someway—this terrible Barney Snaith of the lurid tales and mysterious past—as easy and natural as if talking to herself.

“All the money in the world couldn't buy what you're doing for Cissy Gay,” said Barney. “It's splendid and fine of you. And if there's anything I can do to help you in any way, you have only to let me know. If Roaring Abel ever tries to annoy you.”

“He doesn't. He's lovely to me. I like Roaring Abel,” said Valancy frankly.

“So do I. But there's one stage of his drunkenness—perhaps you haven't encountered it yet—when he sings ribald songs.”

“Oh, yes. He came home last night like that. Cissy and I just went to our room and shut ourselves in where we couldn't hear him. He apologized this morning. I'm not afraid of any of Roaring Abel's stages.”

“Well, I'm sure he'll be decent to you, apart from his inebriated yowls,” said Barney. “And I've told him he's got to stop damning things when you're around.”

“Why?” asked Valancy slyly, with one of her odd, slanted glances and a sudden flake of pink on each cheek, born of the thought that Barney Snaith had actually done so much for
her.
“I often feel like damning things myself.”

For a moment Barney stared. Was this elfin girl the little, old-maidish creature who had stood there two minutes ago? Surely there was magic and devilry going on in that shabby, weedy old garden.

Then he laughed.

“It will be relief to have someone to do it for you, then. So you don't want anything but salt codfish?”

“Not tonight. But I dare say I'll have some errands for you very often when you go to Port Lawrence. I can't trust Mr. Gay to remember to bring all the things I want.”

Barney had gone away, then, in his Lady Jane, and Valancy stood in the garden for a long time.

Since then he had called several times, walking down through the barrens, whistling. How that whistle of his echoed through the spruces on those June twilights! Valancy caught herself listening for it every evening—rebuked herself—then let herself go. Why shouldn't she listen for it?

He always brought Cissy fruit and flowers. Once he brought Valancy a box of candy—the first box of candy she had ever been given. It seemed sacrilege to eat it.

She found herself thinking of him in season and out of season. She wanted to know if he ever thought about her when she wasn't before his eyes, and, if so, what. She wanted to see that mysterious house of his back on the Mistawis island. Cissy had never seen it. Cissy, though she talked freely of Barney and had known him for five years, really knew little more of him than Valancy herself.

“But he isn't bad,” said Cissy. “Nobody need ever tell me he is. He
can't
have done a thing to be ashamed of.”

“Then why does he live as he does?” asked Valancy—to hear somebody defend him.

“I don't know. He's a mystery. And of course there's something behind it, but I
know
it isn't disgrace. Barney Snaith simply couldn't do anything disgraceful, Valancy.”

Valancy was not so sure. Barney must have done
something
—sometime. He was a man of education and intelligence. She had soon discovered that, in listening to his conversations and wrangles with Roaring Abel—who was surprisingly well read and could discuss any subject under the sun when sober. Such a man wouldn't bury himself for five years in Muskoka and live and look like a tramp if there were not too good—or bad—a reason for it. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was sure now that he had never been Cissy Gay's lover. There was nothing like
that
between them. Though he was very fond of Cissy and she of him, as anyone could see. But it was a fondness that didn't worry Valancy.

“You don't know what Barney has been to me, these past two years,” Cissy had said simply. “
Everything
would have been unbearable without him.”

“Cissy Gay is the sweetest girl I ever knew—and there's a man somewhere I'd like to shoot if I could find him,” Barney had said savagely.

Barney was an interesting talker, with a knack of telling a great deal about his adventures and nothing at all about himself. There was one glorious rainy day when Barney and Abel swapped yarns all the afternoon while Valancy mended tablecloths and listened. Barney told weird tales of his adventures with “shacks” on trains while hoboing it across the continent. Valancy thought she ought to think his stealing rides quite dreadful, but didn't. The story of his working his way to England on a cattle-ship sounded more legitimate. And his yarns of the Yukon enthralled her—especially the one of the night he was lost on the divide between the Gold Run and Sulphur Valley. He had spent two years out there. Where in all this was there room for the penitentiary and the other things?

If he were telling the truth. But Valancy knew he was.

“Found no gold,” he said. “Came away poorer than when I went. But such a place to live! Those silences at the back of the north wind
got
me. I've never belonged to myself since.”

Yet he was not a great talker. He told a great deal in a few well-chosen words—how well-chosen Valancy did not realize. And he had a knack of saying things without opening his mouth at all.

“I like a man whose eyes say more than his lips,” thought Valancy.

But then she liked everything about him—his tawny hair—his whimsical smiles—the little glints of fun in his eyes—his loyal affection for that unspeakable Lady Jane—his habit of sitting with his hands in his pockets, his chin sunk on his breast, looking up from under his mismated eyebrows. She liked his nice voice which sounded as if it might become caressing or wooing with very little provocation. She was at times almost afraid to let herself think these thoughts. They were so vivid that she felt as if the others
must
know what she was thinking.

“I've been watching a woodpecker all day,” he said one evening on the shaky old back veranda. His account of the woodpecker's doings was satisfying. He had often some gay or cunning little anecdote of the wood folk to tell them. And sometimes he and Roaring Abel smoked fiercely the whole evening and never said a word, while Cissy lay in the hammock swung between the veranda posts and Valancy sat idly on the steps, her hands clasped over her knees, and wondered dreamily if she were really Valancy Stirling and if it were only three weeks since she had left the ugly old house on Elm Street.

The barrens lay before her in a white moon splendor, where dozens of little rabbits frisked. Barney, when he liked, could sit down on the edge of the barrens and lure those rabbits right to him by some mysterious sorcery he possessed. Valancy had once seen a squirrel leap from a scrub pine to his shoulder and sit there chattering to him. It reminded her of John Foster.

It was one of the delights of Valancy's new life that she could read John Foster's book as often and as long as she wanted to. She read them all to Cissy, who loved them. She also tried to read them to Abel and Barney, who did not love them. Abel was bored and Barney politely refused to listen at all.

“Piffle,” said Barney.