CHAPTER I

If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole
life would have been entirely different. She would have gone, with the
rest of her clan, to Aunt Wellington’s engagement picnic and Dr. Trent
would have gone to Montreal. But it did rain and you shall hear what
happened to her because of it.

Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding
dawn. She had not slept very well. One does not sleep well, sometimes,
when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community
and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to
get a man.

Deerwood and the Stirlings had long since relegated Valancy to hopeless
old maidenhood. But Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a
certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way
yet—never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the
fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man.

Ay, _there_ lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old
maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as
dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellington or an Uncle Benjamin,
or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a
chance to be anything but an old maid. No man had ever desired her.

The tears came into her eyes as she lay there alone in the faintly
greying darkness. She dared not let herself cry as hard as she wanted
to, for two reasons. She was afraid that crying might bring on another
attack of that pain around the heart. She had had a spell of it after
she had got into bed—rather worse than any she had had yet. And she was
afraid her mother would notice her red eyes at breakfast and keep at
her with minute, persistent, mosquito-like questions regarding the
cause thereof.

“Suppose,” thought Valancy with a ghastly grin, “I answered with the
plain truth, ‘I am crying because I cannot get married.’ How horrified
Mother would be—though she is ashamed every day of her life of her old
maid daughter.”

But of course appearances should be kept up. “It is not,” Valancy could
hear her mother’s prim, dictatorial voice asserting, “it is not
_maidenly_ to think about _men_.”

The thought of her mother’s expression made Valancy laugh—for she had a
sense of humour nobody in her clan suspected. For that matter, there
were a good many things about Valancy that nobody suspected. But her
laughter was very superficial and presently she lay there, a huddled,
futile little figure, listening to the rain pouring down outside and
watching, with a sick distaste, the chill, merciless light creeping
into her ugly, sordid room.

She knew the ugliness of that room by heart—knew it and hated it. The
yellow-painted floor, with one hideous, “hooked” rug by the bed, with a
grotesque, “hooked” dog on it, always grinning at her when she awoke;
the faded, dark-red paper; the ceiling discoloured by old leaks and
crossed by cracks; the narrow, pinched little washstand; the
brown-paper lambrequin with purple roses on it; the spotted old
looking-glass with the crack across it, propped up on the inadequate
dressing-table; the jar of ancient potpourri made by her mother in her
mythical honeymoon; the shell-covered box, with one burst corner, which
Cousin Stickles had made in her equally mythical girlhood; the beaded
pincushion with half its bead fringe gone; the one stiff, yellow chair;
the faded old motto, “Gone but not forgotten,” worked in coloured yarns
about Great-grandmother Stirling’s grim old face; the old photographs
of ancient relatives long banished from the rooms below. There were
only two pictures that were not of relatives. One, an old chromo of a
puppy sitting on a rainy doorstep. That picture always made Valancy
unhappy. That forlorn little dog crouched on the doorstep in the
driving rain! Why didn’t _some one_ open the door and let him in? The
other picture was a faded, passe-partouted engraving of Queen Louise
coming down a stairway, which Aunt Wellington had lavishly given her on
her tenth birthday. For nineteen years she had looked at it and hated
it, beautiful, smug, self-satisfied Queen Louise. But she never dared
destroy it or remove it. Mother and Cousin Stickles would have been
aghast, or, as Valancy irreverently expressed it in her thoughts, would
have had a fit.

Every room in the house was ugly, of course. But downstairs appearances
were kept up somewhat. There was no money for rooms nobody ever saw.
Valancy sometimes felt that she could have done something for her room
herself, even without money, if she were permitted. But her mother had
negatived every timid suggestion and Valancy did not persist. Valancy
never persisted. She was afraid to. Her mother could not brook
opposition. Mrs. Stirling would sulk for days if offended, with the
airs of an insulted duchess.

The only thing Valancy liked about her room was that she could be alone
there at night to cry if she wanted to.

But, after all, what did it matter if a room, which you used for
nothing except sleeping and dressing in, were ugly? Valancy was never
permitted to stay alone in her room for any other purpose. People who
wanted to be alone, so Mrs. Frederick Stirling and Cousin Stickles
believed, could only want to be alone for some sinister purpose. But
her room in the Blue Castle was everything a room should be.

Valancy, so cowed and subdued and overridden and snubbed in real life,
was wont to let herself go rather splendidly in her day-dreams. Nobody
in the Stirling clan, or its ramifications, suspected this, least of
all her mother and Cousin Stickles. They never knew that Valancy had
two homes—the ugly red brick box of a home, on Elm Street, and the Blue
Castle in Spain. Valancy had lived spiritually in the Blue Castle ever
since she could remember. She had been a very tiny child when she found
herself possessed of it. Always, when she shut her eyes, she could see
it plainly, with its turrets and banners on the pine-clad mountain
height, wrapped in its faint, blue loveliness, against the sunset skies
of a fair and unknown land. Everything wonderful and beautiful was in
that castle. Jewels that queens might have worn; robes of moonlight and
fire; couches of roses and gold; long flights of shallow marble steps,
with great, white urns, and with slender, mist-clad maidens going up
and down them; courts, marble-pillared, where shimmering fountains fell
and nightingales sang among the myrtles; halls of mirrors that
reflected only handsome knights and lovely women—herself the loveliest
of all, for whose glance men died. All that supported her through the
boredom of her days was the hope of going on a dream spree at night.
Most, if not all, of the Stirlings would have died of horror if they
had known half the things Valancy did in her Blue Castle.

For one thing she had quite a few lovers in it. Oh, only one at a time.
One who wooed her with all the romantic ardour of the age of chivalry
and won her after long devotion and many deeds of derring-do, and was
wedded to her with pomp and circumstance in the great, banner-hung
chapel of the Blue Castle.

At twelve, this lover was a fair lad with golden curls and heavenly
blue eyes. At fifteen, he was tall and dark and pale, but still
necessarily handsome. At twenty, he was ascetic, dreamy, spiritual. At
twenty-five, he had a clean-cut jaw, slightly grim, and a face strong
and rugged rather than handsome. Valancy never grew older than
twenty-five in her Blue Castle, but recently—very recently—her hero had
had reddish, tawny hair, a twisted smile and a mysterious past.

I don’t say Valancy deliberately murdered these lovers as she outgrew
them. One simply faded away as another came. Things are very convenient
in this respect in Blue Castles.

But, on this morning of her day of fate, Valancy could not find the key
of her Blue Castle. Reality pressed on her too hardly, barking at her
heels like a maddening little dog. She was twenty-nine, lonely,
undesired, ill-favoured—the only homely girl in a handsome clan, with
no past and no future. As far as she could look back, life was drab and
colourless, with not one single crimson or purple spot anywhere. As far
as she could look forward it seemed certain to be just the same until
she was nothing but a solitary, little withered leaf clinging to a
wintry bough. The moment when a woman realises that she has nothing to
live for—neither love, duty, purpose nor hope—holds for her the
bitterness of death.

“And I just have to go on living because I can’t stop. I may have to
live eighty years,” thought Valancy, in a kind of panic. “We’re all
horribly long-lived. It sickens me to think of it.”

She was glad it was raining—or rather, she was drearily satisfied that
it was raining. There would be no picnic that day. This annual picnic,
whereby Aunt and Uncle Wellington—one always thought of them in that
succession—inevitably celebrated their engagement at a picnic thirty
years before, had been, of late years, a veritable nightmare to
Valancy. By an impish coincidence it was the same day as her birthday
and, after she had passed twenty-five, nobody let her forget it.

Much as she hated going to the picnic, it would never have occurred to
her to rebel against it. There seemed to be nothing of the
revolutionary in her nature. And she knew exactly what every one would
say to her at the picnic. Uncle Wellington, whom she disliked and
despised even though he had fulfilled the highest Stirling aspiration,
“marrying money,” would say to her in a pig’s whisper, “Not thinking of
getting married yet, my dear?” and then go off into the bellow of
laughter with which he invariably concluded his dull remarks. Aunt
Wellington, of whom Valancy stood in abject awe, would tell her about
Olive’s new chiffon dress and Cecil’s last devoted letter. Valancy
would have to look as pleased and interested as if the dress and letter
had been hers or else Aunt Wellington would be offended. And Valancy
had long ago decided that she would rather offend God than Aunt
Wellington, because God might forgive her but Aunt Wellington never
would.

Aunt Alberta, enormously fat, with an amiable habit of always referring
to her husband as “he,” as if he were the only male creature in the
world, who could never forget that she had been a great beauty in her
youth, would condole with Valancy on her sallow skin—

“I don’t know why all the girls of today are so sunburned. When _I_ was
a girl my skin was roses and cream. I was counted the prettiest girl in
Canada, my dear.”

Perhaps Uncle Herbert wouldn’t say anything—or perhaps he would remark
jocularly, “How fat you’re getting, Doss!” And then everybody would
laugh over the excessively humorous idea of poor, scrawny little Doss
getting fat.

Handsome, solemn Uncle James, whom Valancy disliked but respected
because he was reputed to be very clever and was therefore the clan
oracle—brains being none too plentiful in the Stirling connection—would
probably remark with the owl-like sarcasm that had won him his
reputation, “I suppose you’re busy with your hope-chest these days?”

And Uncle Benjamin would ask some of his abominable conundrums, between
wheezy chuckles, and answer them himself.

“What is the difference between Doss and a mouse?

“The mouse wishes to harm the cheese and Doss wishes to charm the
he’s.”

Valancy had heard him ask that riddle fifty times and every time she
wanted to throw something at him. But she never did. In the first
place, the Stirlings simply did not throw things; in the second place,
Uncle Benjamin was a wealthy and childless old widower and Valancy had
been brought up in the fear and admonition of his money. If she
offended him he would cut her out of his will—supposing she were in it.
Valancy did not want to be cut out of Uncle Benjamin’s will. She had
been poor all her life and knew the galling bitterness of it. So she
endured his riddles and even smiled tortured little smiles over them.

Aunt Isabel, downright and disagreeable as an east wind, would
criticise her in some way—Valancy could not predict just how, for Aunt
Isabel never repeated a criticism—she found something new with which to
jab you every time. Aunt Isabel prided herself on saying what she
thought, but didn’t like it so well when other people said what _they_
thought to _her_. Valancy never said what _she_ thought.

Cousin Georgiana—named after her great-great-grandmother, who had been
named after George the Fourth—would recount dolorously the names of all
relatives and friends who had died since the last picnic and wonder
“which of us will be the first to go next.”

Oppressively competent, Aunt Mildred would talk endlessly of her
husband and her odious prodigies of babies to Valancy, because Valancy
would be the only one she could find to put up with it. For the same
reason, Cousin Gladys—really First Cousin Gladys once removed,
according to the strict way in which the Stirlings tabulated
relationship—a tall, thin lady who admitted she had a sensitive
disposition, would describe minutely the tortures of her neuritis. And
Olive, the wonder girl of the whole Stirling clan, who had everything
Valancy had not—beauty, popularity, love,—would show off her beauty and
presume on her popularity and flaunt her diamond insignia of love in
Valancy’s dazzled, envious eyes.

There would be none of all this today. And there would be no packing up
of teaspoons. The packing up was always left for Valancy and Cousin
Stickles. And once, six years ago, a silver teaspoon from Aunt
Wellington’s wedding set had been lost. Valancy never heard the last of
that silver teaspoon. Its ghost appeared Banquo-like at every
subsequent family feast.

Oh, yes, Valancy knew exactly what the picnic would be like and she
blessed the rain that had saved her from it. There would be no picnic
this year. If Aunt Wellington could not celebrate on the sacred day
itself she would have no celebration at all. Thank whatever gods there
were for that.

Since there would be no picnic, Valancy made up her mind that, if the
rain held up in the afternoon, she would go up to the library and get
another of John Foster’s books. Valancy was never allowed to read
novels, but John Foster’s books were not novels. They were “nature
books”—so the librarian told Mrs. Frederick Stirling—“all about the
woods and birds and bugs and things like that, you know.” So Valancy
was allowed to read them—under protest, for it was only too evident
that she enjoyed them too much. It was permissible, even laudable, to
read to improve your mind and your religion, but a book that was
enjoyable was dangerous. Valancy did not know whether her mind was
being improved or not; but she felt vaguely that if she had come across
John Foster’s books years ago life might have been a different thing
for her. They seemed to her to yield glimpses of a world into which she
might once have entered, though the door was forever barred to her now.
It was only within the last year that John Foster’s books had been in
the Deerwood library, though the librarian told Valancy that he had
been a well-known writer for several years.

“Where does he live?” Valancy had asked.

“Nobody knows. From his books he must be a Canadian, but no more
information can be had. His publishers won’t say a word. Quite likely
John Foster is a nom de plume. His books are so popular we can’t keep
them in at all, though I really can’t see what people find in them to
rave over.”

“I think they’re wonderful,” said Valancy, timidly.

“Oh—well—” Miss Clarkson smiled in a patronising fashion that relegated
Valancy’s opinions to limbo, “I can’t say I care much for bugs myself.
But certainly Foster seems to know all there is to know about them.”

Valancy didn’t know whether she cared much for bugs either. It was not
John Foster’s uncanny knowledge of wild creatures and insect life that
enthralled her. She could hardly say what it was—some tantalising lure
of a mystery never revealed—some hint of a great secret just a little
further on—some faint, elusive echo of lovely, forgotten things—John
Foster’s magic was indefinable.

Yes, she would get a new Foster book. It was a month since she had
_Thistle Harvest_, so surely Mother could not object. Valancy had read
it four times—she knew whole passages off by heart.

And—she almost thought she would go and see Dr. Trent about that queer
pain around the heart. It had come rather often lately, and the
palpitations were becoming annoying, not to speak of an occasional
dizzy moment and a queer shortness of breath. But could she go to see
him without telling any one? It was a most daring thought. None of the
Stirlings ever consulted a doctor without holding a family council and
getting Uncle James’ approval. _Then_, they went to Dr. Ambrose Marsh
of Port Lawrence, who had married Second Cousin Adelaide Stirling.

But Valancy disliked Dr. Ambrose Marsh. And, besides, she could not get
to Port Lawrence, fifteen miles away, without being taken there. She
did not want any one to know about her heart. There would be such a
fuss made and every member of the family would come down and talk it
over and advise her and caution her and warn her and tell her horrible
tales of great-aunts and cousins forty times removed who had been “just
like that” and “dropped dead without a moment’s warning, my dear.”

Aunt Isabel would remember that she had always said Doss looked like a
girl who would have heart trouble—“so pinched and peaked always”; and
Uncle Wellington would take it as a personal insult, when “no Stirling
ever had heart disease before”; and Georgiana would forebode in
perfectly audible asides that “poor, dear little Doss isn’t long for
this world, I’m afraid”; and Cousin Gladys would say, “Why, _my_ heart
has been like that for _years_,” in a tone that implied no one else had
any business even to have a heart; and Olive—Olive would merely look
beautiful and superior and disgustingly healthy, as if to say, “Why all
this fuss over a faded superfluity like Doss when you have _me_?”

Valancy felt that she couldn’t tell anybody unless she had to. She felt
quite sure there was nothing at all seriously wrong with her heart and
no need of all the pother that would ensue if she mentioned it. She
would just slip up quietly and see Dr. Trent that very day. As for his
bill, she had the two hundred dollars that her father had put in the
bank for her the day she was born. She was never allowed to use even
the interest of this, but she would secretly take out enough to pay Dr.
Trent.

Dr. Trent was a gruff, outspoken, absent-minded old fellow, but he was
a recognised authority on heart disease, even if he were only a general
practitioner in out-of-the-world Deerwood. Dr. Trent was over seventy
and there had been rumours that he meant to retire soon. None of the
Stirling clan had ever gone to him since he had told Cousin Gladys, ten
years before, that her neuritis was all imaginary and that she enjoyed
it. You couldn’t patronise a doctor who insulted your
first-cousin-once-removed like that—not to mention that he was a
Presbyterian when all the Stirlings went to the Anglican church. But
Valancy, between the devil of disloyalty to clan and the deep sea of
fuss and clatter and advice, thought she would take a chance with the
devil.