"Are you sure you didn't leave the soap in the water?" demanded Mrs. Frederick. But Valancy was gone. She turned at the corner and looked back down the ugly, prim, respectable street where she lived. The Stirling house was the ugliest on it--more like a red brick box than anything else. Too high for its breadth, and made still higher by a bulbous glass cupola on top. About it was the desolate, barren peace of an old house whose life is lived.
There was a very pretty house, with leaded casements and dubbed gables, just around the corner--a new house, one of those houses you love the minute you see them. Clayton Markley had built it for his bride. He was to be married to Jennie Lloyd in June. The little house, it was said, was furnished from attic to cellar, in complete readiness for its mistress.
"I don't envy Jennie the man," thought Valancy sincerely--Clayton Markley was not one of her many ideals--"but I do envy her the house. It's such a nice young house. Oh, if I could only have a house of my own--ever so poor, so tiny--but my own! But then," she added bitterly, "there is no use in yowling for the moon when you can't even get a tallow candle."
In dreamland nothing would do Valancy but a castle of pale sapphire. In real life she would have been fully satisfied with a little house of her own. She envied Jennie Lloyd more fiercely than ever today. Jennie was not so much better looking than she was, and not so very much younger. Yet she was to have this delightful house. And the nicest little Wedgwood teacups--Valancy had seen them; an open fireplace, and monogrammed linen; hemstitched tablecloths, and china-closets. Why did everything come to some girls and nothing to others? It wasn't fair.
Valancy was once more seething with rebellion as she walked along, a prim, dowdy little figure in her shabby raincoat and three-year-old hat, splashed occasionally by the mud of a passing motor with its insulting shrieks. Motors were still rather a novelty in Deerwood, though they were common in Port Lawrence, and most of the summer residents up at Muskoka had them. In Deerwood only some of the smart set had them, for even Deerwood was divided into sets. There was the smart set--the intellectual set--the old-family set--of which the Stirlings were members--the common run, and a few pariahs. Not one of the Stirling clan had as yet condescended to a motor, though Olive was teasing her father to have one. Valancy had never even been in a motorcar. But she did not hanker after this. In truth, she felt rather afraid of motorcars, especially at night. They seemed to be too much like big purring beasts that might turn and crush you--or make some terrible savage leap somewhere. On the steep mountain trails around her Blue Castle only gaily caparisoned steeds might proudly pace; in real life Valancy would have been quite contented to drive in a buggy behind a nice horse. She got a buggy drive only when some uncle or cousin remembered to fling her "a chance," like a bone to a dog.
CHAPTER 5
Of course she must buy the tea in Uncle Benjamin's grocery store. To buy it anywhere else was unthinkable. Yet Valancy hated to go to Uncle Benjamin's store on her twenty-ninth birthday. There was no hope that he would not remember it.
"Why," demanded Uncle Benjamin, leeringly, as he tied up her tea, "are young ladies like bad grammarians?"
Valancy, with Uncle Benjamin's will in the background of her mind, said meekly, "I don't know. Why?"
"Because," chuckled Uncle Benjamin, "they can't decline matrimony."
The two clerks, Joe Hammond and Claude Bertram, chuckled also, and Valancy disliked them a little more than ever. On the first day Claude Bertram had seen her in the store she had heard him whisper to Joe, "Who is that?" And Joe had said, "Valancy Stirling--one of the Deerwood old maids." "Curable or incurable?" Claude had asked with a snicker, evidently thinking the question very clever. Valancy smarted anew with the sting of that old recollection.
"Twenty-nine," Uncle Benjamin was saying. "Dear me, Doss, you're dangerously near the second corner and not even thinking of getting married yet. Twenty-nine. It seems impossible."
Then Uncle Benjamin said an original thing. Uncle Benjamin said, "How time does fly!"
"I think it crawls," said Valancy passionately. Passion was so alien to Uncle Benjamin's conception of Valancy that he didn't know what to make of her. To cover his confusion, he asked another conundrum as he tied up her beans--Cousin Stickles had remembered at the last moment that they must have beans. Beans were cheap and filling.
"What two ages are apt to prove illusory?" asked Uncle Benjamin; and, not waiting for Valancy to "give it up," he added, "Mir-age and marri-age."
"M-i-r-a-g-e is pronounced mirazh," said Valancy shortly, picking up her tea and her beans. For the moment she did not care whether Uncle Benjamin cut her out of his will or not. She walked out of the store while Uncle Benjamin stared after her with his mouth open. Then he shook his head.
"Poor Doss is taking it hard," he said.
Valancy was sorry by the time she reached the next crossing. Why had she lost her patience like that? Uncle Benjamin would be annoyed and would likely tell her mother that Doss had been impertinent--"to me!"--and her mother would lecture her for a week.
"I've held my tongue for twenty years," thought Valancy. "Why couldn't I have held it once more?"
Yes, it was just twenty, Valancy reflected, since she had first been twitted with her loverless condition. She remembered the bitter moment perfectly. She was just nine years old and she was standing alone on the school playground while the other little girls of her class were playing a game in which you must be chosen by a boy as his partner before you could play. Nobody had chosen Valancy--little, pale, black-haired Valancy, with her prim, long-sleeved apron and odd, slanted eyes.
"Oh," said a pretty little girl to her, "I'm so sorry for you. You haven't got a beau."
Valancy had said defiantly, as she continued to say for twenty years, "I don't want a beau." But this afternoon Valancy once and for all stopped saying that.
"I'm going to be honest with myself anyhow," she thought savagely. "Uncle Benjamin's riddles hurt me because they are true. I do want to be married. I want a house of my own--I want a husband of my own--I want sweet, little fat babies of my own--" Valancy stopped suddenly, aghast at her own recklessness. She felt sure that Rev. Dr. Stalling, who passed her at this moment, read her thoughts and disapproved of them thoroughly. Valancy was afraid of Dr. Stalling--had been afraid of him ever since the Sunday, twenty-three years before, when he had first come to St. Albans'. Valancy had been too late for Sunday school that day and she had gone into the church timidly and sat in their pew. No one else was in the church--nobody except the new rector, Dr. Stalling. Dr. Stalling stood up in front of the choir door, beckoned to her, and said sternly, "Little boy, come up here."
Valancy had stared around her. There was no little boy--there was no one in all the huge church but herself. This strange man with blue glasses couldn't mean her. She was not a boy.
"Little boy," repeated Dr. Stalling, more sternly still, shaking his forefinger fiercely at her, "come up here at once!"
Valancy arose as if hypnotized and walked up the aisle. She was too terrified to do anything else. What dreadful thing was going to happen to her? What had happened to her? Had she actually turned into a boy? She came to a stop in front of Dr. Stalling. Dr. Stalling shook his forefinger--such a long, knuckly forefinger--at her and said:
"Little boy, take off your hat."
Valancy took off her hat. She had a scrawny little pigtail hanging down her back, but Dr. Stalling was shortsighted and did not perceive it.
"Little boy, go back to your seat and always take off your hat in church. Remember!"
Valancy went back to her seat carrying her hat like an automaton. Presently her mother came in.
"Doss," said Mrs. Stirling, "what do you mean by taking off your hat? Put it on instantly!"
Valancy put it on instantly. She was cold with fear lest Dr. Stalling should immediately summon her up front again. She would have to go, of course--it never occurred to her that one could disobey the rector--and the church was full of people now. Oh, what would she
do if that horrible, stabbing forefinger were shaken at her again before all those people? Valancy sat through the whole service in an agony of dread and was sick for a week afterwards. Nobody knew why--Mrs. Frederick again bemoaned herself of her delicate child.
Dr. Stalling found out his mistake and laughed over it to Valancy--who did not laugh. She never got over her dread of Dr. Stalling. And now to be caught by him on the street corner, thinking such things!
Valancy got her John Foster book--Magic of Wings. "His latest--all about birds," said Miss Clarkson. She had almost decided that she would go home, instead of going to see Dr. Trent. Her courage had failed her. She was afraid of offending Uncle James--afraid of angering her mother--afraid of facing gruff, shaggy-browed old Dr. Trent, who would probably tell her, as he had told Cousin Gladys, that her trouble was entirely imaginary and that she only had it because she liked to have it. No, she would not go; she would get a bottle of Redfern's Purple Pills instead. Redfern's Purple Pills were the standard medicine of the Stirling clan. Had they not cured Second Cousin Geraldine when five doctors had given her up? Valancy always felt very skeptical concerning the virtues of the Purple Pills; but there might be something in them; and it was easier to take them than to face Dr. Trent alone. She would glance over the magazines in the reading-room a few minutes and then go home.
Valancy tried to read a story, but it made her furious. On every page was a picture of the heroine surrounded by adoring men. And here was she, Valancy Stirling, who could not get a solitary beau! Valancy slammed the magazine shut; she opened Magic of Wings. Her eyes fell on the paragraph that changed her life.
"Fear is the original sin," wrote John Foster. "Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that someone is afraid of something. It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading."
Valancy shut Magic of Wings and stood up. She would go and see Dr. Trent.
CHAPTER 6
The ordeal was not so dreadful after all. Dr. Trent was as gruff and abrupt as usual, but he did not tell her her ailment was imaginary. After he had listened to her symptoms and asked a few questions and made a quick examination, he sat for a moment looking at her quite intently. Valancy thought he looked as if he were sorry for her. She caught her breath for a moment. Was the trouble serious? Oh, it couldn't be, surely--it really hadn't bothered her much--only lately it had got a little worse.
Dr. Trent opened his mouth--but before he could speak the telephone at his elbow rang sharply. He picked up the receiver. Valancy, watching him, saw his face change suddenly as he listened, "'Lo--yes--yes--what?--yes--yes"--a brief interval--"My God!"
Dr. Trent dropped the receiver, dashed out of the room and upstairs without even a glance at Valancy. She heard him rushing madly about overhead, barking out a few remarks to somebody--presumably his housekeeper. Then he came tearing downstairs with a club bag in his hand, snatched his hat and coat from the rack, jerked opened the door and rushed down the street in the direction of the station.
Valancy sat alone in the little office, feeling more absolutely foolish than she had ever felt before in her life. Foolish--and humiliated. So this was all that had come of her heroic determination to live up to John Foster and cast fear aside. Not only was she a failure as a relative and non-existent as a sweetheart or friend, but she was not even of any importance as a patient. Dr. Trent had forgotten her very presence in his excitement over whatever message had come by the telephone. She had gained nothing by ignoring Uncle James and flying in the face of family tradition.
For a moment she was afraid she was going to cry. It was all so--ridiculous. Then she heard Dr. Trent's housekeeper coming down the stairs. Valancy rose and went to the office door.
"The doctor forgot all about me," she said with a twisted smile.
"Well, that's too bad," said Mrs. Patterson sympathetically. "But it wasn't much wonder, poor man. That was a telegram they 'phoned over from the Port. His son has been terribly injured in an auto accident in Montreal. The doctor had just ten minutes to catch the train. I don't know what he'll do if anything happens to Ned--he's just bound up in the boy. You'll have to come again, Miss Stirling. I hope it's nothing serious."
"Oh, no, nothing serious," agreed Valancy. She felt a little less humiliated. It was no wonder poor Dr. Trent had forgotten her at such a moment. Nevertheless, she felt very flat and discouraged as she went down the street.
Valancy went home by the shortcut of Lover's Lane. She did not often go through Lover's Lane--but it was getting near supper-time and it would never do to be late. Lover's Lane wound back of the village, under great elms and maples, and deserved its name. It was hard to go there at any time and not find some canoodling couple--or young girls in pairs, arms intertwined, earnestly talking over their secrets. Valancy didn't know which made her feel more self-conscious and uncomfortable.
This evening she encountered both. She met Connie Hale and Kate Bayley, in new pink organdy dresses with flowers stuck coquettishly in their glossy, bare hair. Valancy had never had a pink dress or worn flowers in her hair. Then she passed a young couple she didn't know, wandering along, oblivious to everything but themselves. The young man's arm was around the girl's waist quite shamelessly. Valancy had never walked with a man's arm about her. She felt that she ought to be shocked--they might leave that sort of thing for the screening twilight, at least--but she wasn't shocked. In another flash of desperate, stark honesty she owned to herself that she was merely envious. When she passed them she felt quite sure they were laughing at her--pitying her--"there's that queer little old maid, Valancy Stirling. They say she never had a beau in her whole life"--Valancy fairly ran to get out of Lover's Lane. Never had she felt so utterly colorless and skinny and insignificant.
Just where Lover's Lane debouched on the street, an old car was parked. Valancy knew that car well--by sound, at least--and everybody in Deerwood knew it. This was before the phrase "tin Lizzie" had come into circulation--in Deerwood, at least; but if it had been known, this car was the tinniest of Lizzies--though it was not a Ford but an old Grey Slosson. Nothing more battered and disreputable could be imagined.
It was Barney Snaith's car and Barney himself was just scrambling up from under it, in overalls plastered with mud. Valancy gave him a swift, furtive look as she hurried by. This was only the second time she had ever seen the notorious Barney Snaith, though she had heard enough about him in the five years that he had been living "up back" in Muskoka. The first time had been nearly a year ago, on the Muskoka road. He had been crawling out from under his car then, too, and he had given her a cheerful grin as she went by--a little, whimsical grin that gave him the look of an amused gnome. He didn't look bad--she didn't believe he was bad, in spite of the wild yarns that were always being told of him. Of course he went tearing in that terrible old Grey Slosson through Deerwood at hours when all decent people were in bed--often with old "Roaring Abel" who made the night hideous with howls--"both of them dead drunk, my dear." And every one knew that he was an escaped convict and a defaulting bank clerk and a murderer in hiding and an infidel and an illegitimate son of old Roaring Abel Gay and the father of Roaring Abel's illegitimate grandchild and a counterfeiter and a forger and a few other awful things. But still Valancy didn't believe he was bad. Nobody with a smile like that could be bad, no matter what he had done.
It was that night the Prince of the Blue Castle changed from a being of grim jaw and hair with a dash of premature gray to a rakish individual with overlong tawny hair dashed with red, dark-brown eyes, and ears that stuck out just enough to give him an alert look but not enough to be called flying jibs. But he still retained something a little grim about the jaw.
Barney Snaith looked even more disreputable than usual just now. It was very evident that he hadn't shaved for days, and his hands and arms, bare to the shoulders, were black with grease. But he was whistling gleefully to himself and he seemed so happy that Valancy envied him. S
he envied him his light-heartedness and his irresponsibility and his mysterious little cabin up on an island in Lake Mistawis--even his rackety old Grey Slosson. Neither he nor his car had to be respectable and live up to traditions. When he rattled past her a few minutes later, bareheaded, leaning back in his Lizzie at a rakish angle, his longish hair blowing in the wind, a villainous-looking old black pipe in his mouth, she envied him again. Men had the best of it, no doubt about that. This outlaw was happy, whatever he was or wasn't. She, Valancy Stirling, respectable, well-behaved to the last degree, was unhappy and had always been unhappy. So there you were.
Valancy was just in time for supper. The sun had clouded over, and a dismal, drizzling rain was falling again. Cousin Stickles had the neuralgia. Valancy had to do the family darning and there was no time for Magic of Wings.
"Can't the darning wait till tomorrow?" she pleaded.
"Tomorrow will bring its own duties," said Mrs. Frederick inexorably.
Valancy darned all the evening and listened to Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles talking the eternal, niggling gossip of the clan, as they knitted drearily at interminable black stockings. They discussed Second Cousin Lilian's approaching wedding in all its bearings. On the whole, they approved. Second Cousin Lilian was doing well for herself.
"Though she hasn't hurried," said Cousin Stickles. "She must be twenty-five."
"There have not--fortunately--been many old maids in our connection," said Mrs. Frederick bitterly.
Valancy flinched. She had run the darning needle into her finger.
Third Cousin Aaron Gray had been scratched by a cat and had blood-poisoning in his finger. "Cats are most dangerous animals," said Mrs. Frederick. "I would never have a cat about the house."
She glared significantly at Valancy through her terrible glasses. Once, five years ago, Valancy had asked if she might have a cat. She had never referred to it since, but Mrs. Frederick still suspected her of harboring the unlawful desire in her heart of hearts.
Once Valancy sneezed. Now, in the Stirling code, it was very bad form to sneeze in public.