The Blue Castle

he next day passed for Valancy like a dream. She could not make
herself or anything she did seem real. She saw nothing of Barney,
though she expected he must go rattling past on his way to the Port for
a license.

Perhaps he had changed his mind.

But at dusk the lights of Lady Jane suddenly swooped over the crest of
the wooded hill beyond the lane. Valancy was waiting at the gate for
her bridegroom. She wore her green dress and her green hat because she
had nothing else to wear. She did not look or feel at all
bride-like—she really looked like a wild elf strayed out of the
greenwood. But that did not matter. Nothing at all mattered except that
Barney was coming for her.

“Ready?” said Barney, stopping Lady Jane with some new, horrible
noises.

“Yes.” Valancy stepped in and sat down. Barney was in his blue shirt
and overalls. But they were clean overalls. He was smoking a
villainous-looking pipe and he was bareheaded. But he had a pair of
oddly smart boots on under his shabby overalls. And he was shaved. They
clattered into Deerwood and through Deerwood and hit the long, wooded
road to the Port.

“Haven’t changed your mind?” said Barney.

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

That was their whole conversation on the fifteen miles. Everything was
more dream-like than ever. Valancy didn’t know whether she felt happy.
Or terrified. Or just plain fool.

Then the lights of Port Lawrence were about them. Valancy felt as if
she were surrounded by the gleaming, hungry eyes of hundreds of great,
stealthy panthers. Barney briefly asked where Mr. Towers lived, and
Valancy as briefly told him. They stopped before the shabby little
house in an unfashionable street. They went in to the small, shabby
parlour. Barney produced his license. So he had got it. Also a ring.
This thing was real. She, Valancy Stirling, was actually on the point
of being married.

They were standing up together before Mr. Towers. Valancy heard Mr.
Towers and Barney saying things. She heard some other person saying
things. She herself was thinking of the way she had once planned to be
married—away back in her early teens when such a thing had not seemed
impossible. White silk and tulle veil and orange-blossoms; no
bridesmaid. But one flower girl, in a frock of cream shadow lace over
pale pink, with a wreath of flowers in her hair, carrying a basket of
roses and lilies-of-the-valley. And the groom, a noble-looking
creature, irreproachably clad in whatever the fashion of the day
decreed. Valancy lifted her eyes and saw herself and Barney in the
little, slanting, distorting mirror over the mantelpiece. She in her
odd, unbridal green hat and dress; Barney in shirt and overalls. But it
was Barney. That was all that mattered. No veil—no flowers—no guests—no
presents—no wedding-cake—but just Barney. For all the rest of her life
there would be Barney.

“Mrs. Snaith, I hope you will be very happy,” Mr. Towers was saying.

He had not seemed surprised at their appearance—not even at Barney’s
overalls. He had seen plenty of queer weddings “up back.” He did not
know Valancy was one of the Deerwood Stirlings—he did not even know
there were Deerwood Stirlings. He did not know Barney Snaith was a
fugitive from justice. Really, he was an incredibly ignorant old man.
Therefore he married them and gave them his blessing very gently and
solemnly and prayed for them that night after they had gone away. His
conscience did not trouble him at all.

“What a nice way to get married!” Barney was saying as he put Lady Jane
in gear. “No fuss and flub-dub. I never supposed it was half so easy.”

“For heaven’s sake,” said Valancy suddenly, “let’s forget we are
married and talk as if we weren’t. I can’t stand another drive like the
one we had coming in.”

Barney howled and threw Lady Jane into high with an infernal noise.

“And I thought I was making it easy for you,” he said. “You didn’t seem
to want to talk.”

“I didn’t. But I wanted you to talk. I don’t want you to make love to
me, but I want you to act like an ordinary human being. Tell me about
this island of yours. What sort of a place is it?”

“The jolliest place in the world. You’re going to love it. The first
time I saw it I loved it. Old Tom MacMurray owned it then. He built the
little shack on it, lived there in winter and rented it to Toronto
people in summer. I bought it from him—became by that one simple
transaction a landed proprietor owning a house and an island. There is
something so satisfying in owning a whole island. And isn’t an
uninhabited island a charming idea? I’d wanted to own one ever since
I’d read Robinson Crusoe. It seemed too good to be true. And beauty!
Most of the scenery belongs to the government, but they don’t tax you
for looking at it, and the moon belongs to everybody. You won’t find my
shack very tidy. I suppose you’ll want to make it tidy.”

“Yes,” said Valancy honestly. “I have to be tidy. I don’t really
want to be. But untidiness hurts me. Yes, I’ll have to tidy up your
shack.”

“I was prepared for that,” said Barney, with a hollow groan.

“But,” continued Valancy relentingly, “I won’t insist on your wiping
your feet when you come in.”

“No, you’ll only sweep up after me with the air of a martyr,” said
Barney. “Well, anyway, you can’t tidy the lean-to. You can’t even enter
it. The door will be locked and I shall keep the key.”

“Bluebeard’s chamber,” said Valancy. “I shan’t even think of it. I
don’t care how many wives you have hanging up in it. So long as they’re
really dead.”

“Dead as door-nails. You can do as you like in the rest of the house.
There’s not much of it—just one big living-room and one small bedroom.
Well built, though. Old Tom loved his job. The beams of our house are
cedar and the rafters fir. Our living-room windows face west and east.
It’s wonderful to have a room where you can see both sunrise and
sunset. I have two cats there. Banjo and Good Luck. Adorable animals.
Banjo is a big, enchanting, grey devil-cat. Striped, of course. I don’t
care a hang for any cat that hasn’t stripes. I never knew a cat who
could swear as genteelly and effectively as Banjo. His only fault is
that he snores horribly when he is asleep. Luck is a dainty little cat.
Always looking wistfully at you, as if he wanted to tell you something.
Maybe he will pull it off sometime. Once in a thousand years, you know,
one cat is allowed to speak. My cats are philosophers—neither of them
ever cries over spilt milk.

“Two old crows live in a pine-tree on the point and are reasonably
neighbourly. Call ’em Nip and Tuck. And I have a demure little tame
owl. Name, Leander. I brought him up from a baby and he lives over on
the mainland and chuckles to himself o’ nights. And bats—it’s a great
place for bats at night. Scared of bats?”

“No; I like them.”

“So do I. Nice, queer, uncanny, mysterious creatures. Coming from
nowhere—going nowhere. Swoop! Banjo likes ’em, too. Eats ’em. I have a
canoe and a disappearing propeller boat. Went to the Port in it today
to get my license. Quieter than Lady Jane.”

“I thought you hadn’t gone at all—that you had changed your mind,”
admitted Valancy.

Barney laughed—the laugh Valancy did not like—the little, bitter,
cynical laugh.

“I never change my mind,” he said shortly.

They went back through Deerwood. Up the Muskoka road. Past Roaring
Abel’s. Over the rocky, daisied lane. The dark pine woods swallowed
them up. Through the pine woods, where the air was sweet with the
incense of the unseen, fragile bells of the linnæas that carpeted the
banks of the trail. Out to the shore of Mistawis. Lady Jane must be
left here. They got out. Barney led the way down a little path to the
edge of the lake.

“There’s our island,” he said gloatingly.

Valancy looked—and looked—and looked again. There was a diaphanous,
lilac mist on the lake, shrouding the island. Through it the two
enormous pine-trees that clasped hands over Barney’s shack loomed out
like dark turrets. Behind them was a sky still rose-hued in the
afterlight, and a pale young moon.

Valancy shivered like a tree the wind stirs suddenly. Something seemed
to sweep over her soul.

“My Blue Castle!” she said. “Oh, my Blue Castle!”

They got into the canoe and paddled out to it. They left behind the
realm of everyday and things known and landed on a realm of mystery and
enchantment where anything might happen—anything might be true. Barney
lifted Valancy out of the canoe and swung her to a lichen-covered rock
under a young pine-tree. His arms were about her and suddenly his lips
were on hers. Valancy found herself shivering with the rapture of her
first kiss.

“Welcome home, dear,” Barney was saying.