"Edward Beck is worth twenty thousand dollars and has the finest house between here and Port Lawrence," said Uncle Benjamin.
"That sounds very fine," said Valancy scornfully, "but it isn't worth THAT" - she snapped her fingers - "compared to feeling Barney's arms around me and his cheek against mine."
"OH, Doss!" said Cousin Stickles. Cousin Sarah said, "Oh, DOSS!" Aunt Wellington said, "Valancy, you need not be indecent."
"Why, it surely isn't indecent to like to have your husband put his arm around you? I should think it would be indecent if you didn't."
"Why expect decency from her?" inquired Uncle James sarcastically. "She has cut herself off from decency forevermore. She has made her bed. Let her lie on it."
"Thanks," said Valancy very gratefully. "How you would have enjoyed being Torquemada! Now, I must really be getting back. Mother, may I have those three woollen cushions I worked last winter?"
"Take them - take everything!" said Mrs. Frederick.
"Oh, I don't want everything - or much. I don't want my Blue Castle cluttered. Just the cushions. I'll call for them some day when we motor in."
Valancy rose and went to the door. There she turned. She was sorrier than ever for them all. THEY had no Blue Castle in the purple solitudes of Mistawis.
"The trouble with you people is that you don't laugh enough," she said.
"Doss dear," said Cousin Georgiana mournfully, "some day you will discover that blood is thicker than water."
"Of course it is. But who wants water to be thick?" parried Valancy. "We want water to be thin - sparkling - crystal-clear."
Cousin Stickles groaned.
Valancy would not ask any of them to come and see her - she was afraid they WOULD come out of curiosity. But she said:
"Do you mind if I drop in and see you once in a while, Mother?"
"My house will always be open to you," said Mrs. Frederick, with a mournful dignity.
"You should never recognise her again," said Uncle James sternly, as the door closed behind Valancy.
"I cannot quite forget that I am a mother," said Mrs. Frederick. "My poor, unfortunate girl!"
"I dare say the marriage isn't legal," said Uncle James comfortingly. "He has probably been married half a dozen times before. But _I_ am through with her. I have done all I could, Amelia. I think you will admit that. Henceforth" - Uncle James was terribly solemn about it - "Valancy is to me as one dead."
"Mrs. Barney Snaith," said Cousin Georgiana, as if trying it out to see how it would sound.
"He has a score of aliases, no doubt," said Uncle Benjamin. "For my part, I believe the man is half Indian. I haven't a doubt they're living in a wigwam."
"If he has married her under the name of Snaith and it isn't his real name wouldn't that make the marriage null and void?" asked Cousin Stickles hopefully.
Uncle James shook his head.
"No, it is the man who marries, not the name."
"You know," said Cousin Gladys, who had recovered and returned but was still shaky, "I had a distinct premonition of this at Herbert's silver dinner. I remarked it at the time. When she was defending Snaith. You remember, of course. It came over me like a revelation. I spoke to David when I went home about it."
"What - WHAT," demanded Aunt Wellington of the universe, "has come over Valancy? VALANCY!"
The universe did not answer but Uncle James did.
"Isn't there something coming up of late about secondary personalities cropping out? I don't hold with many of those new- fangled notions, but there may be something in this one. It would account for her incomprehensible conduct."
"Valancy is so fond of mushrooms," sighed Cousin Georgiana. "I'm afraid she'll get poisoned eating toadstools by mistake living up back in the woods."
"There are worse things than death," said Uncle James, believing that it was the first time in the world that such statement had been made.
"Nothing can ever be the same again!" sobbed Cousin Stickles.
Valancy, hurrying along the dusty road, back to cool Mistawis and her purple island, had forgotten all about them - just as she had forgotten that she might drop dead at any moment if she hurried.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Summer passed by. The Stirling clan - with the insignificant exception of Cousin Georgiana - had tacitly agreed to follow Uncle James' example and look upon Valancy as one dead. To be sure, Valancy had an unquiet, ghostly habit of recurring resurrections when she and Barney clattered through Deerwood and out to the Port in that unspeakable car. Valancy bareheaded, with stars in her eyes. Barney, bareheaded, smoking his pipe. But shaved. Always shaved now, if any of them had noticed it. They even had the audacity to go in to Uncle Benjamin's store to buy groceries. Twice Uncle Benjamin ignored them. Was not Valancy one of the dead? While Snaith had never existed. But the third time he told Barney he was a scroundrel who should be hung for luring an unfortunate, weak-minded girl away from her home and friends.
Barney's one straight eyebrow went up.
"I have made her happy," he said coolly, "and she was miserable with her friends. So that's that."
Uncle Benjamin stared. It had never occurred to him that women had to be, or ought to be, "made happy."
"You - you pup!" he said.
"Why be so unoriginal?" queried Barney amiably. "Anybody could call me a pup. Why not think of something worthy of the Stirlings? Besides, I'm not a pup. I'm really quite a middle-aged dog. Thirty-five, if you're interested in knowing."
Uncle Benjamin remembered just in time that Valancy was dead. He turned his back on Barney.
Valancy WAS happy - gloriously and entirely so. She seemed to be living in a wonderful house of life and every day opened a new, mysterious room. It was in a world which had nothing in common with the one she had left behind - a world where time was not - which was young with immortal youth - where there was neither past nor future but only the present. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of it.
The absolute freedom of it all was unbelievable. They could do exactly as they liked. No Mrs. Grundy. No traditions. No relatives. Or in-laws. "Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away," as Barney quoted shamelessly.
Valancy had gone home once and got her cushions. And Cousin Georgiana had given her one of her famous candlewick spreads of most elaborate design. "For your spare-room bed, dear," she said.
"But I haven't got any spare-room," said Valancy.
Cousin Georgiana looked horrified. A house without a spare-room was monstrous to her.
"But it's a lovely spread," said Valanacy, with a kiss, "and I'm so glad to have it. I'll put it on my own bed. Barney's old patch- work quilt is getting ragged."
"I don't see how you can be contented to live up back," sighed Cousin Georgiana. "It's so out of the world."
"Contented!" Valancy laughed. What was the use of trying to explain to Cousin Georgiana. "It is," she agreed, "most gloriously and entirely out of the world."
"And you are really happy, dear?" asked Cousin Georgiana wistfully.
"I really am," said Valancy gravely, her eyes dancing.
"Marriage is such a serious thing," sighed Cousin Georgiana.
"When it's going to last long," agreed Valancy.
Cousin Georgiana did not understand this at all. But it worried her and she lay awake at nights wondering what Valancy meant by it.
Valancy loved her Blue Castle and was completely satisfied with it. The big living-room had three windows, all commanding exquisite views of exquisite Mistawis. The one in the end of the room was an oriel window - which Tom MacMurray, Barney explained, had got out of some little, old "up back" church that had been sold. It faced the west and when the sunsets flooded it Valancy's whole being knelt in prayer as if in some great cathedral. The new moons always looked down through it, the lower pine boughs swayed about the top of it, and all through the nights the soft, dim silver of the lake dreamed through it.