"It's a pity you couldn't have had your premonition a little sooner," said Uncle Benjamin drily.
"I said, 'Doss, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" and SHE said, I am going to look for my Blue Castle.'"
"Wouldn't you think THAT would convince Marsh that her mind is affected?" interjected Uncle James.
"And _I_ said, 'Valancy, what DO you mean?' And SHE said, 'I am going to keep house for Roaring Abel and nurse Cissy. He will pay me thirty dollars a month.' I wonder I didn't drop dead on the spot."
"You shouldn't have let her go - you shouldn't have let her out of the house," said Uncle James. "You should have locked the door - anything - "
"She was between me and the front door. And you can't realise how determined she was. She was like a rock. That's the strangest thing of all about her. She used to be so good and obedient, and now she's neither to hold nor bind. But I said EVERYTHING I could think of to bring her to her senses. I asked her if she had no regard for her reputation. I said to her solemnly, 'Doss, when a woman's reputation is once smirched nothing can ever make it spotless again. Your character will be gone for ever if you go to Roaring Abel's to wait on a bad girl like Sis Gay. And she said, 'I don't believe Cissy was a bad girl, but I don't care if she was.' Those were her very words, 'I don't care if she was.'"
"She has lost all sense of decency," exploded Uncle Benjamin.
"'Cissy Gay is dying,' she said, 'and it's a shame and disgrace that she is dying in a Christian community with no one to do anything for her. Whatever she's been or done, she's a human being.'"
"Well, you know, when it comes to that, I suppose she is," said Uncle James with the air of one making a splendid concession.
"I asked Doss if she had no regard for appearances. She said, 'I've been keeping up appearances all my life. Now I'm going in for realities. Appearances can go hang!' GO HANG!"
"An outrageous thing!" said Uncle Benjamin violently. "An outrageous thing!"
Which relieved his feelings, but didn't help any one else.
Mrs. Frederick wept. Cousin Stickles took up the refrain between her moans of despair.
"I told her - we BOTH told her - that Roaring Abel had certainly killed his wife in one of his drunken rages and would kill her. She laughed and said, 'I'm not afraid of Roaring Abel. He won't kill ME, and he's too old for me to be afraid of his gallantries.' What did she mean? What ARE gallantries?"
Mrs. Frederick saw that she must stop crying if she wanted to regain control of the conversation.
"_I_ said to her, 'Valancy, if you have no regard for your own reputation and your family's standing, have you none for MY feelings?' She said, 'None.' Just like that, 'NONE!'"
"Insane people never DO have any regard for other people's feelings," said Uncle Benjamin. "That's one of the symptoms."
"I broke out into tears then, and she said, 'Come now, Mother, be a good sport. I'm going to do an act of Christian charity, and as for the damage it will do my reputation, why, you know I haven't any matrimonial chances anyhow, so what does it matter?' And with that she turned and went out."
"The last words I said to her," said Cousin Stickles pathetically, "were, 'Who will rub my back at nights now?' And she said - she said - but no, I cannot repeat it."
"Nonsense," said Uncle Benjamin. "Out with it. This is no time to be squeamish."
"She said" - Cousin Stickles' voice was little more than a whisper - "she said - 'OH, DARN!'"
"To think I should have lived to hear my daughter swearing!" sobbed Mrs. Frederick,
"It - it was only imitation swearing," faltered Cousin Stickles, desirous of smoothing things over now that the worst was out. But she had NEVER told about the bannister.
"It will be only a step from that to real swearing," said Uncle James sternly.
"The worst of this" - Mrs. Frederick hunted for a dry spot on her handkerchief - "is that every one will know now that she is deranged. We can't keep it a secret any longer. Oh, I cannot bear it!"
"You should have been stricter with her when she was young," said Uncle Benjamin.
"I don't see how I could have been," said Mrs. Frederick - truthfully enough.
"The worst feature of the case is that that Snaith scoundrel is always hanging around Roaring Abel's, said Uncle James. "I shall be thankful if nothing worse comes of this mad freak than a few weeks at Roaring Abel's. Cissy Gay CAN'T live much longer."
"And she didn't even take her flannel petticoat!" lamented Cousin Stickles.
"I'll see Ambrose Marsh again about this," said Uncle Benjamin - meaning Valancy, not the flannel petticoat.
"I'll see Lawyer Ferguson," said Uncle James.
"Meanwhile," added Uncle Benjamin, "let us be calm."
CHAPTER XVI
Valancy had walked out to Roaring Abel's house on the Mistawis road under a sky of purple and amber, with a queer exhilaration and expectancy in her heart. Back there, behind her, her mother and Cousin Stickles were crying - over themselves, not over her. But here the wind was in her face, soft, dew-wet, cool, blowing along the grassy roads. Oh, she loved the wind! The robins were whistling sleepily in the firs along the way and the moist air was fragrant with the tang of balsam. Big cars went purring past in the violet dusk - the stream of summer tourists to Muskoka had already begun - but Valancy did not envy any of their occupants. Muskoka cottages might be charming, but beyond, in the sunset skies, among the spires of the firs, her Blue Castle towered. She brushed the old years and habits and inhibitions away from her like dead leaves. She would NOT be littered with them.
Roaring Abel's rambling, tumble-down old house was situated about three miles from the village, on the very edge of "up back," as the sparsely settled, hilly, wooded country around Mistawis was called vernacularly. It did not, it must be confessed, look much like a Blue Castle.
It had once been a snug place enough in the days when Abel Gay had been young and prosperous, and the punning, arched sign over the gate - "A. Gay, Carpenter," had been fine and freshly painted. Now it was a faded, dreary old place, with a leprous, patched roof and shutters hanging askew. Abel never seemed to do any carpenter jobs about his own house. It had a listless air, as if tired of life. There was a dwindling grove of ragged, crone-like old spruces behind it. The garden, which Cissy used to keep neat and pretty, had run wild. On two sides of the house were fields full of nothing but mulleins. Behind the house was a long stretch of useless barrens, full of scrub pines and spruces, with here and there a blossoming bit of wild cherry, running back to a belt of timber on the shores of Lake Mistawis, two miles away. A rough, rocky, boulder-strewn lane ran through it to the woods - a lane white with pestiferous, beautiful daisies.
Roaring Abel met Valancy at the door.
"So you've come," he said incredulously. "I never s'posed that ruck of Stirlings would let you."
Valancy showed all her pointed teeth in a grin.
"They couldn't stop me."
"I didn't think you'd so much spunk," said Roaring Abel admiringly. "And look at the nice ankles of her," he added, as he stepped aside to let her in.
If Cousin Stickles had heard this she would have been certain that Valancy's doom, earthly and unearthly, was sealed. But Abel's superannuated gallantry did not worry Valancy. Besides, this was the first compliment she had ever received in her life and she found herself liking it. She sometimes suspected she had nice ankles, but nobody had ever mentioned it before. In the Stirling clan ankles were among the unmentionables.
Roaring Abel took her into the kitchen, where Cissy Gay was lying on the sofa, breathing quickly, with little scarlet spots on her hollow cheeks. Valancy had not seen Cecilia Gay for years. Then she had been such a pretty creature, a slight blossom-like girl, with soft, golden hair, clear-cut, almost waxen features, and large, beautiful blue eyes. She was shocked at the change in her. Could this be sweet Cissy - this pitiful little thing that looked like a tired broken flower? She had wept all the beauty out of her eyes; they looked too big - enormous - in her wasted face. The last time Valancy had seen Cecilia Gay those faded, piteous eyes had been limpid, shadowy blue pools aglow with mirth. The contrast was so terrible that Valancy's own eyes filled with tears. She knelt down by Cissy and put her arms about her.