The Blue Castle

alancy 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.

“Certainly. You’re sure there’s nothing else? Lots of room in Lady Jane
Grey Slosson. And she always gets back some time, does Lady Jane.”

“I don’t think there’s anything more,” said Valancy. She knew he would
bring oranges for Cissy anyhow—he always did.

Barney did not turn away at once. He was silent for a little. Then he
said, slowly and whimsically:

“Miss Stirling, you’re a brick! You’re a whole cartload of bricks. To
come here and look after Cissy—under the circumstances.”

“There’s nothing so bricky about that,” said Valancy. “I’d nothing else
to do. And—I like it here. I don’t feel as if I’d done anything
specially meritorious. Mr. Gay is paying me fair wages. I never earned
any money before—and I like it.” It seemed so easy to talk to Barney
Snaith, someway—this terrible Barney Snaith of the lurid tales and
mysterious past—as easy and natural as if talking to herself.

“All the money in the world couldn’t buy what you’re doing for Cissy
Gay,” said Barney. “It’s splendid and fine of you. And if there’s
anything I can do to help you in any way, you have only to let me know.
If Roaring Abel ever tries to annoy you——”

“He doesn’t. He’s lovely to me. I like Roaring Abel,” said Valancy
frankly.

“So do I. But there’s one stage of his drunkenness—perhaps you haven’t
encountered it yet—when he sings ribald songs——”

“Oh, yes. He came home last night like that. Cissy and I just went to
our room and shut ourselves in where we couldn’t hear him. He
apologised this morning. I’m not afraid of any of Roaring Abel’s
stages.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be decent to you, apart from his inebriated
yowls,” said Barney. “And I’ve told him he’s got to stop damning things
when you’re around.”

“Why?” asked Valancy slily, with one of her odd, slanted glances and a
sudden flake of pink on each cheek, born of the thought that Barney
Snaith had actually done so much for her. “I often feel like damning
things myself.”

For a moment Barney stared. Was this elfin girl the little, old-maidish
creature who had stood there two minutes ago? Surely there was magic
and devilry going on in that shabby, weedy old garden.

Then he laughed.

“It will be a relief to have some one to do it for you, then. So you
don’t want anything but salt codfish?”

“Not tonight. But I dare say I’ll have some errands for you very often
when you go to Port Lawrence. I can’t trust Mr. Gay to remember to
bring all the things I want.”

Barney had gone away, then, in his Lady Jane, and Valancy stood in the
garden for a long time.

Since then he had called several times, walking down through the
barrens, whistling. How that whistle of his echoed through the spruces
on those June twilights! Valancy caught herself listening for it every
evening—rebuked herself—then let herself go. Why shouldn’t she listen
for it?

He always brought Cissy fruit and flowers. Once he brought Valancy a
box of candy—the first box of candy she had ever been given. It seemed
sacrilege to eat it.

She found herself thinking of him in season and out of season. She
wanted to know if he ever thought about her when she wasn’t before his
eyes, and, if so, what. She wanted to see that mysterious house of his
back on the Mistawis island. Cissy had never seen it. Cissy, though she
talked freely of Barney and had known him for five years, really knew
little more of him than Valancy herself.

“But he isn’t bad,” said Cissy. “Nobody need ever tell me he is. He
can’t have done a thing to be ashamed of.”

“Then why does he live as he does?” asked Valancy—to hear somebody
defend him.

“I don’t know. He’s a mystery. And of course there’s something behind
it, but I know it isn’t disgrace. Barney Snaith simply couldn’t do
anything disgraceful, Valancy.”

Valancy was not so sure. Barney must have done something—sometime. He
was a man of education and intelligence. She had soon discovered that,
in listening to his conversations and wrangles with Roaring Abel—who
was surprisingly well read and could discuss any subject under the sun
when sober. Such a man wouldn’t bury himself for five years in Muskoka
and live and look like a tramp if there were not too good—or bad—a
reason for it. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was
sure now that he had never been Cissy Gay’s lover. There was nothing
like that between them. Though he was very fond of Cissy and she of
him, as any one could see. But it was a fondness that didn’t worry
Valancy.

“You don’t know what Barney has been to me, these past two years,”
Cissy had said simply. “Everything would have been unbearable without
him.”

“Cissy Gay is the sweetest girl I ever knew—and there’s a man somewhere
I’d like to shoot if I could find him,” Barney had said savagely.

Barney was an interesting talker, with a knack of telling a great deal
about his adventures and nothing at all about himself. There was one
glorious rainy day when Barney and Abel swapped yarns all the afternoon
while Valancy mended tablecloths and listened. Barney told weird tales
of his adventures with “shacks” on trains while hoboing it across the
continent. Valancy thought she ought to think his stealing rides quite
dreadful, but didn’t. The story of his working his way to England on a
cattle-ship sounded more legitimate. And his yarns of the Yukon
enthralled her—especially the one of the night he was lost on the
divide between Gold Run and Sulphur Valley. He had spent two years out
there. Where in all this was there room for the penitentiary and the
other things?

If he were telling the truth. But Valancy knew he was.

“Found no gold,” he said. “Came away poorer than when I went. But such
a place to live! Those silences at the back of the north wind got me.
I’ve never belonged to myself since.”

Yet he was not a great talker. He told a great deal in a few
well-chosen words—how well-chosen Valancy did not realise. And he had a
knack of saying things without opening his mouth at all.

“I like a man whose eyes say more than his lips,” thought Valancy.

But then she liked everything about him—his tawny hair—his whimsical
smiles—the little glints of fun in his eyes—his loyal affection for
that unspeakable Lady Jane—his habit of sitting with his hands in his
pockets, his chin sunk on his breast, looking up from under his
mismated eyebrows. She liked his nice voice which sounded as if it
might become caressing or wooing with very little provocation. She was
at times almost afraid to let herself think these thoughts. They were
so vivid that she felt as if the others must know what she was
thinking.

“I’ve been watching a woodpecker all day,” he said one evening on the
shaky old back verandah. His account of the woodpecker’s doings was
satisfying. He had often some gay or cunning little anecdote of the
wood folk to tell them. And sometimes he and Roaring Abel smoked
fiercely the whole evening and never said a word, while Cissy lay in
the hammock swung between the verandah posts and Valancy sat idly on
the steps, her hands clasped over her knees, and wondered dreamily if
she were really Valancy Stirling and if it were only three weeks since
she had left the ugly old house on Elm Street.

The barrens lay before her in a white moon splendour, where dozens of
little rabbits frisked. Barney, when he liked, could sit down on the
edge of the barrens and lure those rabbits right to him by some
mysterious sorcery he possessed. Valancy had once seen a squirrel leap
from a scrub pine to his shoulder and sit there chattering to him. It
reminded her of John Foster.

It was one of the delights of Valancy’s new life that she could read
John Foster’s books as often and as long as she liked. She could read
them in bed if she wanted to. She read them all to Cissy, who loved
them. She also tried to read them to Abel and Barney, who did not love
them. Abel was bored and Barney politely refused to listen at all.

“Piffle,” said Barney.