Lucy Montgomery - The Blue Castle

I thank you for all your kindness to me. I shall never forget it. Think as kindly of me as you can, because I did not mean to trap you. Good-bye.

Yours gratefully,

Valancy."

It was very cold and stiff, she knew. But to try to say anything else would be dangerous - like tearing away a dam. She didn't know what torrent of wild incoherences and passionate anguish might pour out. In a postscript she added:

"Your father was here today. He is coming back tomorrow. He told me everything. I think you should go back to him. He is very lonely for you."

She put the letter in an envelope, wrote "Barney" across it, and left it on the desk. On it she laid the string of pearls. If they had been the beads she believed them she would have kept them in memory of that wonderful year. But she could not keep the fifteen thousand dollar gift of a man who had married her of pity and whom she was now leaving. It hurt her to give UP her pretty bauble. That was an odd thing, she reflected. The fact that she was leaving Barney did not hurt her - yet. It lay at her heart like a cold, insensible thing. If it came to life - Valancy shuddered and went out -

She put on her hat and mechanically fed Good Luck and Banjo. She locked the door and carefully hid the key in the old pine. Then she crossed to the mainland in the disappearing propeller. She stood for a moment on the bank, looking at her Blue Castle. The rain had not yet come, but the sky was dark, and Mistawis grey and sullen. The little house under the pines looked very pathetic - a casket rifled of its jewels - a lamp with its flame blown out.

"I shall never again hear the wind crying over Mistawis at night," thought Valancy. This hurt her, too. She could have laughed to think that such a trifle could hurt her at such a time.

Valancy paused a moment on the porch of the brick house in Elm Street. She felt that she ought to knock like a stranger. Her rosebush, she idly noticed, was loaded with buds. The rubber-plant stood beside the prim door. A momentary horror overcame her - a horror of the existence to which she was returning. Then she opened the door and walked in.

"I wonder if the Prodigal Son ever felt really at home again," she thought.

Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles were in the sitting-room. Uncle Benjamin was there, too. They looked blankly at Valancy, realising at once that something was wrong. This was not the saucy, impudent thing who had laughed at them in this very room last summer. This was a grey-faced woman with the eyes of a creature who had been stricken by a mortal blow.

Valancy looked indifferently around the room. She had changed so much - and it had changed so little. The same pictures hung on the walls. The little orphan who knelt at her never-finished prayer by the bed whereon reposed the black kitten that never grew up into cat. The grey "steel engraving" of Quatre Bras, where the British regiment forever stood at bay. The crayon enlargement of the boyish father she had never known. There they all hung in the same places. The green cascade of "Wandering Jew" still tumbled out of the old granite saucepan on the windowstand. The same elaborate, never-used pitcher stood at the same angle on the sideboard shelf. The blue and gilt vases that had been among her mother's wedding- presents still primly adorned the mantelpiece, flanking the china clock of berosed and besprayed ware that never went. The chairs in exactly the same places. Her mother and Cousin Stickles, likewise unchanged, regarding her with stony unwelcome.

Valancy had to speak first.

"I've come home, Mother," she said tiredly.

"So I see." Mrs. Frederick's voice was very icy. She had resigned herself to Valancy's desertion. She had almost succeeded in forgetting there was a Valancy. She had rearranged and organised her systematic life without any reference to an ungrateful, rebellious child. She had taken her place again in a society which ignored the fact that she had ever had a daughter and pitied her, if it pitied her at all, only in discreet whispers and asides. The plain truth was that, by this time, Mrs. Frederick did not want Valancy to come back - did not want ever to see or hear of her again.

And now, of course, Valancy was here. With tragedy and disgrace and scandal trailing after her visibly.

"So I see," said Mrs. Frederick. "May I ask why?"

"Because - I'm - not - going to die," said Valancy huskily.

"God bless my soul!" said Uncle Benjamin. "Who said you were going to die?"

"I suppose," said Cousin Stickles shrewishly - Cousin Stickles did not want Valancy back either - "I suppose you've found out he has another wife - as we've been sure all along."

"No. I only wish he had," said Valancy. She was not suffering particularly, but she was very tired. If only the explanations were all over and she were upstairs in her old, ugly room - alone. Just alone! The rattle of the beads on her mother's sleeves, as they swung on the arms of the reed chair, almost drove her crazy. Nothing else was worrying her; but all at once it seemed that she simply could not endure that thin, insistent rattle.

"My home, as I told you, is always open to you," said Mrs. Frederick stonily, "but I can never forgive you."

Valancy gave a mirthless laugh.

"I'd care very little for that if I could only forgive myself," she said.

"Come, come," said Uncle Benjamin testily. But rather enjoying himself. He felt he had Valancy under his thumb again. "We've had enough of mystery. What has happened? Why have you left that fellow? No doubt there's reason enough - but what particular reason is it?"

Valancy began to speak mechanically. She told her tale bluntly and barely.

"A year ago Dr. Trent told me I had angina pectoris and could not live long. I wanted to have some - life - before I died. That's why I went away. Why I married Barney. And now I've found it is all a mistake. There is nothing wrong with my heart. I've got to live - and Barney only married me out of pity. So I have to leave him - free."

"God bless me!" said Uncle Benjamin. Cousin Stickles began to cry.

"Valancy, if you'd only had confidence in your own mother - "

"Yes, yes, I know," said Valancy impatiently, "What's the use of going into that now? I can't undo this year. God knows I wish I could. I've tricked Barney into marrying me - and he's really Bernard Redfern. Dr. Redfern's son, of Montreal. And his father wants him to go back to him."

Uncle Benjamin made a queer sound. Cousin Stickles took her black- bordered handkerchief away from her eyes and stared at Valancy. A queer gleam suddenly shot into Mrs. Frederick's stone-grey orbs.

"Dr. Redfern - not the Purple Pill man?" she said.

Valancy nodded. "He's John Foster, too - the writer of those nature books."

"But - but - " Mrs. Frederick was visibly agitated, though not over the thought that she was the mother-in-law of John Foster - "DR. REDFERN IS A MILLIONAIRE!"

Uncle Benjamin shut his mouth with a snap.

"Ten times over," he said.

Valancy nodded.

"Yes. Barney left home years ago - because of - of some trouble - some - disappointment. Now he will likely go back. So you see - I had to come home. He doesn't love me. I can't hold him to a bond he was tricked into."

Uncle Benjamin looked incredibly sly.

"Did he say so? Does he want to get rid of you?"

"No. I haven't seen him since I found out. But I tell you - he only married me out of pity - because I asked him to - because he thought it would only be for a little while."

Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles both tried to speak, but Uncle Benjamin waved a hand at them and frowned portentously.

"Let ME handle this," wave and wave and frown seemed to say. To Valancy:

"Well, well, dear, we'll talk it over later. You see, we don't quite understand everything yet. As Cousin Stickles says, you should have confided in us before. Later on - I dare say we can find a way out of this."