The Blue Castle (11 page)

“I said, ‘Doss, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” and SHE said, I am going to look for my Blue Castle.’”

“Wouldn’t you think THAT would convince Marsh that her mind is affected?” interjected Uncle James.

“And
I
said, ‘Valancy, what DO you mean?’ And SHE said, ‘I am going to keep house for Roaring Abel and nurse Cissy. He will pay me thirty dollars a month.’ I wonder I didn’t drop dead on the spot.”

“You shouldn’t have let her go—you shouldn’t have let her out of the house,” said Uncle James. “You should have locked the door— anything—”

“She was between me and the front door. And you can’t realise how determined she was. She was like a rock. That’s the strangest thing of all about her. She used to be so good and obedient, and now she’s neither to hold nor bind. But I said EVERYTHING I could think of to bring her to her senses. I asked her if she had no regard for her reputation. I said to her solemnly, ‘Doss, when a woman’s reputation is once smirched nothing can ever make it spotless again. Your character will be gone for ever if you go to Roaring Abel’s to wait on a bad girl like Sis Gay. And she said, ‘I don’t believe Cissy was a bad girl, but I don’t care if she was.’ Those were her very words, ‘I don’t care if she was.’”

“She has lost all sense of decency,” exploded Uncle Benjamin.

“‘Cissy Gay is dying,’ she said, ‘and it’s a shame and disgrace that she is dying in a Christian community with no one to do anything for her. Whatever she’s been or done, she’s a human being.’”

“Well, you know, when it comes to that, I suppose she is,” said Uncle James with the air of one making a splendid concession.

“I asked Doss if she had no regard for appearances. She said, ‘I’ve been keeping up appearances all my life. Now I’m going in for realities. Appearances can go hang!’ GO HANG!”

“An outrageous thing!” said Uncle Benjamin violently. “An outrageous thing!”

Which relieved his feelings, but didn’t help any one else.

Mrs. Frederick wept. Cousin Stickles took up the refrain between her moans of despair.

“I told her—we BOTH told her—that Roaring Abel had certainly killed his wife in one of his drunken rages and would kill her. She laughed and said, ‘I’m not afraid of Roaring Abel. He won’t kill ME, and he’s too old for me to be afraid of his gallantries.’ What did she mean? What ARE gallantries?”

Mrs. Frederick saw that she must stop crying if she wanted to regain control of the conversation.

“
I
said to her, ‘Valancy, if you have no regard for your own reputation and your family’s standing, have you none for MY feelings?’ She said, ‘None.’ Just like that, ‘NONE!’”

“Insane people never DO have any regard for other people’s feelings,” said Uncle Benjamin. “That’s one of the symptoms.”

“I broke out into tears then, and she said, ‘Come now, Mother, be a good sport. I’m going to do an act of Christian charity, and as for the damage it will do my reputation, why, you know I haven’t any matrimonial chances anyhow, so what does it matter?’ And with that she turned and went out.”

“The last words I said to her,” said Cousin Stickles pathetically, “were, ‘Who will rub my back at nights now?’ And she said—she said—but no, I cannot repeat it.”

“Nonsense,” said Uncle Benjamin. “Out with it. This is no time to be squeamish.”

“She said”—Cousin Stickles’ voice was little more than a whisper— “she said—‘OH, DARN!’”

“To think I should have lived to hear my daughter swearing!” sobbed Mrs. Frederick,

“It—it was only imitation swearing,” faltered Cousin Stickles, desirous of smoothing things over now that the worst was out. But she had NEVER told about the bannister.

“It will be only a step from that to real swearing,” said Uncle James sternly.

“The worst of this”—Mrs. Frederick hunted for a dry spot on her handkerchief—“is that every one will know now that she is deranged. We can’t keep it a secret any longer. Oh, I cannot bear it!”

“You should have been stricter with her when she was young,” said Uncle Benjamin.

“I don’t see how I could have been,” said Mrs. Frederick— truthfully enough.

“The worst feature of the case is that that Snaith scoundrel is always hanging around Roaring Abel’s, said Uncle James. “I shall be thankful if nothing worse comes of this mad freak than a few weeks at Roaring Abel’s. Cissy Gay CAN’T live much longer.”

“And she didn’t even take her flannel petticoat!” lamented Cousin Stickles.

“I’ll see Ambrose Marsh again about this,” said Uncle Benjamin— meaning Valancy, not the flannel petticoat.

“I’ll see Lawyer Ferguson,” said Uncle James.

“Meanwhile,” added Uncle Benjamin, “let us be calm.”

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 some one here— like you. You were always—so sweet to me—long ago.”

Valancy held Cissy close. She was suddenly happy. Here was some one who needed her—some one 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—dream-like— 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 rubberplant 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 verandah 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 habits 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 flavour into things. The only fault he found with her was that she did not sing at her work.

“Folk 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 a 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—the 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.”