The Blue Castle

ew Year. The old, shabby, inglorious outlived calendar came down. The
new one went up. January was a month of storms. It snowed for three
weeks on end. The thermometer went miles below zero and stayed there.
But, as Barney and Valancy pointed out to each other, there were no
mosquitoes. And the roar and crackle of their big fire drowned the
howls of the north wind. Good Luck and Banjo waxed fat and developed
resplendent coats of thick, silky fur. Nip and Tuck had gone.

“But they’ll come back in spring,” promised Barney.

There was no monotony. Sometimes they had dramatic little private spats
that never even thought of becoming quarrels. Sometimes Roaring Abel
dropped in—for an evening or a whole day—with his old tartan cap and
his long red beard coated with snow. He generally brought his fiddle
and played for them, to the delight of all except Banjo, who would go
temporarily insane and retreat under Valancy’s bed. Sometimes Abel and
Barney talked while Valancy made candy for them; sometimes they sat and
smoked in silence à la Tennyson and Carlyle, until the Blue Castle
reeked and Valancy fled to the open. Sometimes they played checkers
fiercely and silently the whole night through. Sometimes they all ate
the russet apples Abel had brought, while the jolly old clock ticked
the delightful minutes away.

“A plate of apples, an open fire, and ‘a jolly goode booke whereon to
looke’ are a fair substitute for heaven,” vowed Barney. “Any one can
have the streets of gold. Let’s have another whack at Carman.”

It was easier now for the Stirlings to believe Valancy of the dead. Not
even dim rumours of her having been over at the Port came to trouble
them, though she and Barney used to skate there occasionally to see a
movie and eat hot dogs shamelessly at the corner stand afterwards.
Presumably none of the Stirlings ever thought about her—except Cousin
Georgiana, who used to lie awake worrying about poor Doss. Did she have
enough to eat? Was that dreadful creature good to her? Was she warm
enough at nights?

Valancy was quite warm at nights. She used to wake up and revel
silently in the cosiness of those winter nights on that little island
in the frozen lake. The nights of other winters had been so cold and
long. Valancy hated to wake up in them and think about the bleakness
and emptiness of the day that had passed and the bleakness and
emptiness of the day that would come. Now she almost counted that
night lost on which she didn’t wake up and lie awake for half an hour
just being happy, while Barney’s regular breathing went on beside her,
and through the open door the smouldering brands in the fireplace
winked at her in the gloom. It was very nice to feel a little Lucky cat
jump up on your bed in the darkness and snuggle down at your feet,
purring; but Banjo would be sitting dourly by himself out in front of
the fire like a brooding demon. At such moments Banjo was anything but
canny, but Valancy loved his uncanniness.

The side of the bed had to be right against the window. There was no
other place for it in the tiny room. Valancy, lying there, could look
out of the window, through the big pine boughs that actually touched
it, away up Mistawis, white and lustrous as a pavement of pearl, or
dark and terrible in the storm. Sometimes the pine boughs tapped
against the panes with friendly signals. Sometimes she heard the little
hissing whisper of snow against them right at her side. Some nights the
whole outer world seemed given over to the empery of silence; then came
nights when there would be a majestic sweep of wind in the pines;
nights of dear starlight when it whistled freakishly and joyously
around the Blue Castle; brooding nights before storm when it crept
along the floor of the lake with a low, wailing cry of boding and
mystery. Valancy wasted many perfectly good sleeping hours in these
delightful communings. But she could sleep as long in the morning as
she wanted to. Nobody cared. Barney cooked his own breakfast of bacon
and eggs and then shut himself up in Bluebeard’s Chamber till supper
time. Then they had an evening of reading and talk. They talked about
everything in this world and a good many things in other worlds. They
laughed over their own jokes until the Blue Castles re-echoed.

“You do laugh beautifully,” Barney told her once. “It makes me want
to laugh just to hear you laugh. There’s a trick about your laugh—as if
there were so much more fun back of it that you wouldn’t let out. Did
you laugh like that before you came to Mistawis, Moonlight?”

“I never laughed at all—really. I used to giggle foolishly when I felt
I was expected to. But now—the laugh just comes.”

It struck Valancy more than once that Barney himself laughed a great
deal oftener than he used to and that his laugh had changed. It had
become wholesome. She rarely heard the little cynical note in it now.
Could a man laugh like that who had crimes on his conscience? Yet
Barney must have done something. Valancy had indifferently made up
her mind as to what he had done. She concluded he was a defaulting bank
cashier. She had found in one of Barney’s books an old clipping cut
from a Montreal paper in which a vanished, defaulting cashier was
described. The description applied to Barney—as well as to half a dozen
other men Valancy knew—and from some casual remarks he had dropped from
time to time she concluded he knew Montreal rather well. Valancy had it
all figured out in the back of her mind. Barney had been in a bank. He
was tempted to take some money to speculate—meaning, of course, to put
it back. He had got in deeper and deeper, until he found there was
nothing for it but flight. It had happened so to scores of men. He had,
Valancy was absolutely certain, never meant to do wrong. Of course, the
name of the man in the clipping was Bernard Craig. But Valancy had
always thought Snaith was an alias. Not that it mattered.

Valancy had only one unhappy night that winter. It came in late March
when most of the snow had gone and Nip and Tuck had returned. Barney
had gone off in the afternoon for a long, woodland tramp, saying he
would be back by dark if all went well. Soon after he had gone it had
begun to snow. The wind rose and presently Mistawis was in the grip of
one of the worst storms of the winter. It tore up the lake and struck
at the little house. The dark angry woods on the mainland scowled at
Valancy, menace in the toss of their boughs, threats in their windy
gloom, terror in the roar of their hearts. The trees on the island
crouched in fear. Valancy spent the night huddled on the rug before the
fire, her face buried in her hands, when she was not vainly peering
from the oriel in a futile effort to see through the furious smoke of
wind and snow that had once been blue-dimpled Mistawis. Where was
Barney? Lost on the merciless lakes? Sinking exhausted in the drifts of
the pathless woods? Valancy died a hundred deaths that night and paid
in full for all the happiness of her Blue Castle. When morning came the
storm broke and cleared; the sun shone gloriously over Mistawis; and at
noon Barney came home. Valancy saw him from the oriel as he came around
a wooded point, slender and black against the glistening white world.
She did not run to meet him. Something happened to her knees and she
dropped down on Banjo’s chair. Luckily Banjo got out from under in
time, his whiskers bristling with indignation. Barney found her there,
her head buried in her hands.

“Barney, I thought you were dead,” she whispered.

Barney hooted.

“After two years of the Klondike did you think a baby storm like this
could get me? I spent the night in that old lumber shanty over by
Muskoka. A bit cold but snug enough. Little goose! Your eyes look like
burnt holes in a blanket. Did you sit up here all night worrying over
an old woodsman like me?”

“Yes,” said Valancy. “I—couldn’t help it. The storm seemed so wild.
Anybody might have been lost in it. When—I saw you—come round the
point—there—something happened to me. I don’t know what. It was as if I
had died and come back to life. I can’t describe it any other way.”