Lucy Montgomery - The Blue Castle

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."

"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 any one about it before.

"Every one has a Blue Castle, I think," said Cissy softly. "Only every one has a different name for it. _I_ had mine - once."

She put her two thin little 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 that crazy lane. She had never looked up, though Barney had gone racketting 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.