Lucy Montgomery - The Blue Castle
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- Название:The Blue Castle
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"Yes. I noticed that. But I thought it a mistake. I didn't know there were any Sterlings in Port Lawrence."
"She was the only one. A lonely old soul. Lived by herself with only a little home girl. She died two months after she was here - died in her sleep. My mistake couldn't have made any difference to her. But you! I can't forgive myself for inflicting a year's misery on you. It's time I retired, all right, when I do things like that - even if my son was supposed to be fatally injured. Can you ever forgive me?"
A year of misery! Valancy smiled a tortured smile as she thought of all the happiness Dr. Trent's mistake had bought her. But she was paying for it now - oh, she was paying. If to feel was to live she was living with a vengeance.
She let Dr. Trent examine her and answered all his questions. When he told her she was fit as a fiddle and would probably live to be a hundred, she got up and went away silently. She knew that there were a great many horrible things outside waiting to be thought over. Dr. Trent thought she was odd. Anybody would have thought, from her hopeless eyes and woebegone face, that he had given her a sentence of death instead of life. Snaith? Snaith? Who the devil had she married? He had never heard of Snaiths in Deerwood. And she had been such a sallow, faded, little old maid. Gad, but marriage HAD made a difference in her, anyhow, whoever Snaith was. Snaith? Dr. Trent remembered. That rapscallion "up back!" Had Valancy Stirling married HIM? And her clan had let her! Well, probably that solved the mystery. She had married in haste and repented at leisure, and that was why she wasn't overjoyed at learning she was a good insurance prospect, after all. Married! To God knew whom! Or what! Jailbird? Defaulter? Fugitive from justice? It must be pretty bad if she had looked to death as a release, poor girl. But why were women such fools? Dr. Trent dismissed Valancy from his mind, though to the day of his death he was ashamed of putting those letters into the wrong envelopes.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Valancy walked quickly through the back streets and through Lover's Lane. She did not want to meet any one she knew. She didn't want to meet even people she didn't know. She hated to be seen. Her mind was so confused, so torn, so messy. She felt that her appearance must be the same. She drew a sobbing breath of relief as she left the village behind and found herself on the "up back" road. There was little fear of meeting any one she knew here. The cars that fled by her with raucous shrieks were filled with strangers. One of them was packed with young people who whirled past her singing uproariously:
"My wife has the fever, O then, My wife has the fever, O then, My wife has the fever, Oh, I hope it won't leave her, For I want to be single again."
Valancy flinched as if one of them had leaned from the car and cut her across the face with a whip.
She had made a covenant with death and death had cheated her. Now life stood mocking her. She had trapped Barney. Trapped him into marrying her. And divorce was so hard to get in Ontario. So expensive. And Barney was poor.
With life, fear had come back into her heart. Sickening fear. Fear of what Barney would think. Would say. Fear of the future that must be lived without him. Fear of her insulted, repudiated clan.
She had had one draught from a divine cup and now it was dashed from her lips. With no kind, friendly death to rescue her. She must go on living and longing for it. Everything was spoiled, smirched, defaced. Even that year in the Blue Castle. Even her unashamed love for Barney. It had been beautiful because death waited. Now it was only sordid because death was gone. How could any one bear an unbearable thing?
She must go back and tell him. Make him believe she had not meant to trick him - she MUST make him believe that. She must say good- bye to her Blue Castle and return to the brick house on Elm Street. Back to everything she had thought left behind forever. The old bondage - the old fears. But that did not matter. All that mattered now was that Barney must somehow be made to believe she had not consciously tricked him.
When Valancy reached the pines by the lake she was brought out of her daze of pain by a startling sight. There, parked by the side of old, battered ragged Lady Jane, was another car. A wonderful car. A purple car. Not a dark, royal purple but a blatant, screaming purple. It shone like a mirror and its interior plainly indicated the car caste of Vere de Vere. In the driver's seat sat a haughty chauffeur in livery. And in the tonneau sat a man who opened the door and bounced out nimbly as Valancy came down the path to the landing-place. He stood under the pines waiting for her and Valancy took in every detail of him.
A stout, short, pudgy man, with a broad, rubicund, good-humoured face - a clean-shaven face, though an unparalysed little imp at the back of Valancy's paralysed mind suggested the thought, "Such a face should have a fringe of white whisker around it." Old- fashioned, steel-rimmed spectacles on prominent blue eyes. A pursey mouth; a little round, knobby nose. Where - where - where, groped Valancy, had she seen that face before? It seemed as familiar to her as her own.
The stranger wore a green hat and a light fawn overcoat over a suit of a loud check pattern. His tie was a brilliant green of lighter shade; on the plump hand he outstretched to intercept Valancy an enormous diamond winked at her. But he had a pleasant, fatherly smile, and in his hearty, unmodulated voice was a ring of something that attracted her.
"Can you tell me, Miss, if that house yonder belongs to a Mr. Redfern? And if so, how can I get to it?"
Redfern! A vision of bottles seemed to dance before Valancy's eyes - long bottles of bitters - round bottles of hair tonic - square bottles of liniment - short, corpulent little bottles of purple pills - and all of them bearing that very prosperous, beaming moon- face and steel-rimmed spectacles on the label. Dr. Redfern!
"No," said Valancy faintly. "No - that house belongs to Mr. Snaith."
Dr. Redfern nodded.
"Yes, I understand Bernie's been calling himself Snaith. Well, it's his middle name - was his poor mother's. Bernard Snaith Redfern - that's him. And now, Miss, you can tell me how to get over to that island? Nobody seems to be home there. I've done some waving and yelling. Henry, there, wouldn't yell. He's a one- job man. But old Doc Redfern can yell with the best of them yet, and ain't above doing it. Raised nothing but a couple of crows. Guess Bernie's out for the day."
"He was away when I left this morning," said Valancy. "I suppose he hasn't come home yet."
She spoke flatly and tonelessly. This last shock had temporarily bereft her of whatever little power of reasoning had been left her by Dr. Trent's revelation. In the back of her mind the aforesaid little imp was jeeringly repeating a silly old proverb, "It never rains but it pours." But she was not trying to think. What was the use?
Dr. Redfern was gazing at her in perplexity.
"When you left this morning? Do you live - over there?"
He waved his diamond at the Blue Castle.
"Of course," said Valancy stupidly. "I'm his wife."
Dr. Redfern took out a yellow silk handkerchief, removed his hat and mopped his brow. He was very bald, and Valancy's imp whispered, "Why be bald? Why lose your manly beauty? Try Redfern's Hair Vigor. It keeps you young."
"Excuse me," said Dr. Redfern. "This is a bit of a shock."
"Shocks seem to be in the air this morning." The imp said this out loud before Valancy could prevent it.
"I didn't know Bernie was - married. I didn't think he WOULD have got married without telling his old dad."
Were Dr. Redfern's eyes misty? Amid her own dull ache of misery and fear and dread, Valancy felt a pang of pity for him.
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