CHAPTER II

When Cousin Stickles knocked at her door, Valancy knew it was half-past seven and she must get up. As long as she could remember, Cousin Stickles had knocked at her door at half-past seven. Cousin Stickles and Mrs. Frederick Stirling had been up since seven, but Valancy was allowed to lie abed half an hour longer because of a family tradition that she was delicate. Valancy got up, though she hated getting up more this morning than ever she had before. What was there to get up for? Another dreary¹ day like all the days that had preceded it, full of meaningless little tasks, joyless and unimportant, that benefited nobody. But if she did not get up at once she would not be ready for breakfast at eight o’clock. Hard and fast times for meals were the rule in Mrs. Stirling’s household. Breakfast at eight, dinner at one, supper at six, year in and year out. No excuses for being late were ever tolerated. So up Valancy got, shivering.

The room was bitterly cold with the raw, penetrating² chill of a wet May morning. The house would be cold all day. It was one of Mrs. Frederick’s rules that no fires were necessary after the twenty-fourth of May. Meals were cooked on the little oil-stove in the back porch. And though May might be icy and October frost-bitten, no fires were lighted until the twenty-first of October by the calendar. On the twenty-first of October Mrs. Frederick began cooking over the kitchen range and lighted a fire in the sitting-room³ stove in the evenings. It was whispered about in the connection that the late Frederick Stirling had caught the cold which resulted in his death during Valancy’s first year of life because Mrs. Frederick would not have a fire on the twentieth of October. She lighted it the next day—but that was a day too late for Frederick Stirling.

Valancy took off and hung up in the closet her nightdress of coarse, unbleached cotton, with high neck and long, tight sleeves. She put on undergarments of a similar nature, a dress of brown gingham, thick, black stockings and rubber-heeled boots. Of late years she had fallen into the habit of doing her hair with the shade of the window by the looking-glass pulled down. The lines on her face did not show so plainly then. But this morning she jerked the shade to the very top and looked at herself in the leprous mirror with a passionate⁴ determination to see herself as the world saw her.

The result was rather dreadful. Even a beauty would have found that harsh, unsoftened side-light trying. Valancy saw straight black hair, short and thin, always lustreless⁵ despite the fact that she gave it one hundred strokes of the brush, neither more nor less, every night of her life and faithfully rubbed Redfern’s Hair Vigor⁶ into the roots, more lustreless than ever in its morning roughness; fine, straight, black brows; a nose she had always felt was much too small even for her small, three-cornered, white face; a small, pale mouth that always fell open a trifle over little, pointed⁷ white teeth; a figure thin and flat-breasted, rather below the average height. She had somehow escaped the family high cheek-bones, and her dark-brown eyes, too soft and shadowy to be black, had a slant⁸ that was almost Oriental. Apart from her eyes she was neither pretty nor ugly—just insignificant-looking, she concluded bitterly. How plain the lines around her eyes and mouth were in that merciless light! And never had her narrow, white face looked so narrow and so white.

She did her hair in a pompadour. Pompadours had long gone out of fashion, but they had been in when Valancy first put her hair up and Aunt Wellington had decided⁹ that she must always wear her hair so.

“It is the only way that becomes you. Your face is so small that you must add height to it by a pompadour effect,” said Aunt Wellington, who always enunciated¹⁰ commonplaces as if uttering profound and important truths.

Valancy had hankered to do her hair pulled low on her forehead, with puffs¹¹ above the ears, as Olive was wearing hers. But Aunt Wellington’s dictum had such an effect on her that she never dared change her style of hairdressing again. But then, there were so many things Valancy never dared do.

All her life she had been afraid of something, she thought bitterly. From the very dawn of recollection, when she had been so horribly afraid of the big black bear that lived, so Cousin Stickles told her, in the closet under the stairs.

“And I always will be—I know it—I can’t help it. I don’t know what it would be like not to be afraid of something.”

Afraid of her mother’s sulky fits—afraid of offending Uncle Benjamin—afraid of becoming a target for Aunt Wellington’s contempt—afraid of Aunt Isabel’s biting comments—afraid of Uncle James’ disapproval—afraid of offending the whole clan’s opinions and prejudices—afraid of not keeping up appearances—afraid to say what sheCHAPTER III

Breakfast was always the same. Oatmeal porridge, which Valancy loathed¹², toast and tea, and one teaspoonful¹³ of marmalade. Mrs. Frederick thought two teaspoonfuls extravagant—but that did not matter to Valancy, who hated marmalade, too. The chilly¹⁴, gloomy little dining-room was chillier¹⁵ and gloomier than usual; the rain streamed down outside the window; departed Stirlings, in atrocious, gilt¹⁶ frames, wider than the pictures, glowered¹⁷ down from the walls. And yet Cousin Stickles wished Valancy many happy returns of the day!

“Sit up straight, Doss,” was all her mother said.

Valancy sat up straight. She talked to her mother and Cousin Stickles of the things they always talked of. She never wondered what would happen if she tried to talk of something else. She knew. Therefore she never did it.

Mrs. Frederick was offended with Providence¹⁸ for sending a rainy day when she wanted to go to a picnic, so she ate her breakfast in a sulky silence for which Valancy was rather grateful. But Christine Stickles whined¹⁹ endlessly on as usual, complaining about everything—the weather, the leak in the pantry, the price of oatmeal and butter—Valancy felt at once she had buttered her toast too lavishly—the epidemic²⁰ of mumps²¹ in Deerwood.

“Doss will be sure to ketch them,” she foreboded.

“Doss must not go where she is likely to catch mumps,” said Mrs. Frederick shortly.

Valancy had never had mumps—or whooping²² cough—or chicken-pox—or measles—or anything she should have had—nothing but horrible colds every winter. Doss’ winter colds were a sort of tradition in the family. Nothing, it seemed, could prevent her from catching²³ them. Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles did their heroic best. One winter they kept Valancy housed up from November to May, in the warm sitting-room. She was not even allowed to go to church. And Valancy took cold after cold and ended up with bronchitis in June.

“None of my family were ever like that,” said Mrs. Frederick, implying that it must be a Stirling tendency.

“The Stirlings seldom take colds,” said Cousin Stickles resentfully. She had been a Stirling.

“I think,” said Mrs. Frederick, “that if a person makes up her mind not to have colds she will not have colds.”

So that was the trouble. It was all Valancy’s own fault.

But on this particular morning Valancy’s unbearable²⁴ grievance²⁵ was that she was called Doss. She had endured it for twenty-nine years, and all at once she felt she could not endure it any longer. Her full name was Valancy Jane. Valancy Jane was rather terrible, but she liked Valancy, with its odd, out-land tang. It was always a wonder to Valancy that the Stirlings had allowed her to be so christened. She had been told that her maternal²⁶ grandfather, old Amos Wansbarra, had chosen the name for her. Her father had tacked²⁷ on the Jane by way of civilising it, and the whole connection got out of the difficulty by nicknaming her Doss. She never got Valancy from any one but outsiders.

“Mother,” she said timidly, “would you mind calling me Valancy after this? Doss seems so—so—I don’t like it.”

Mrs. Frederick looked at her daughter in astonishment²⁸. She wore glasses with enormously strong lenses that gave her eyes a peculiarly disagreeable appearance.

“What is the matter with Doss?”

“It—seems so childish,” faltered²⁹ Valancy.

“Oh!” Mrs. Frederick had been a Wansbarra and the Wansbarra smile was not an asset. “I see. Well, it should suit you then. You are childish enough in all conscience, my dear child.”

“I am twenty-nine,” said the dear child desperately³⁰.

“I wouldn’t proclaim it from the house-tops if I were you, dear,” said Mrs. Frederick. “Twenty-nine! I had been married nine years when I was twenty-nine.”

“I was married at seventeen,” said Cousin Stickles proudly.

Valancy looked at them furtively³¹. Mrs. Frederick, except for those terrible glasses and the hooked nose that made her look more like a parrot than a parrot itself could look, was not ill-looking. At twenty she might have been quite pretty. But Cousin Stickles! And yet Christine Stickles had once been desirable in some man’s eyes. Valancy felt that Cousin Stickles, with her broad, flat, wrinkled face, a mole³² right on the end of her dumpy nose, bristling³³ hairs on her chin, wrinkled yellow neck, pale, protruding³⁴ eyes, and thin, puckered³⁵ mouth, had yet this advantage over her—this right to look down on her. And even yet Cousin Stickles was necessary to Mrs. Frederick. Valancy wondered pitifully what it would be like to be wanted by some one—needed by some one. No one in the whole world needed her, or would miss anything from life if she dropped suddenly out of it. She was a disappointment to her mother. No one loved her. She had never so much as had a girl friend.

“I haven’t even a gift for friendship,” she had once admitted to herself pitifully.

“Doss, you haven’t eaten your crusts,” said Mrs. Frederick rebukingly³⁶.

It rained all the forenoon without cessation. Valancy pieced a quilt. Valancy hated piecing quilts. And there was no need of it. The house was full of quilts. There were three big chests, packed with quilts, in the attic³⁷. Mrs. Frederick had begun storing away quilts when Valancy was seventeen and she kept on storing them, though it did not seem likely that Valancy would ever need them. But Valancy must be at work and fancy work materials were too expensive. Idleness was a cardinal³⁸ sin in the Stirling household. When Valancy had been a child she had been made to write down every night, in a small, hated, black notebook, all the minutes she had spent in idleness that day. On Sundays her mother made her tot them up and pray over them.

On this particular forenoon of this day of destiny Valancy spent only ten minutes in idleness. At least, Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles would have called it idleness. She went to her room to get a better thimble and she opened Thistle Harvest guiltily at random³⁹.

“The woods are so human,” wrote John Foster, “that to know them one must live with them. An occasional saunter through them, keeping to the well-trodden paths, will never admit us to their intimacy⁴⁰. If we wish to be friends we must seek them out and win them by frequent, reverent⁴¹ visits at all hours; by morning, by noon, and by night; and at all seasons, in spring, in summer, in autumn, in winter. Otherwise we can never really know them and any pretence⁴² we may make to the contrary will never impose on them. They have their own effective way of keeping aliens at a distance and shutting their hearts to mere⁴³ casual sightseers. It is of no use to seek the woods from any motive⁴⁴ except sheer love of them; they will find us out at once and hide all their sweet, old-world secrets from us. But if they know we come to them because we love them they will be very kind to us and give us such treasures of beauty and delight as are not bought or sold in any market-place. For the woods, when they give at all, give unstintedly and hold nothing back from their true worshippers. We must go to them lovingly, humbly⁴⁵, patiently, watchfully⁴⁶, and we shall learn what poignant⁴⁷ loveliness lurks⁴⁸ in the wild places and silent intervals⁴⁹, lying under starshine and sunset, what cadences⁵⁰ of unearthly music are harped⁵¹ on aged pine boughs⁵² or crooned in copses of fir, what delicate savours exhale⁵³ from mosses⁵⁴ and ferns in sunny corners or on damp brooklands, what dreams and myths and legends of an older time haunt them. Then the immortal⁵⁵ heart of the woods will beat against ours and its subtle life will steal into our veins⁵⁶ and make us its own forever, so that no matter where we go or how widely we wander we shall yet be drawn⁵⁷ back to the forest to find our most enduring kinship.”

“Doss,” called her mother from the hall below, “what are you doing all by yourself in that room?”

Valancy dropped Thistle Harvest like a hot coal and fled downstairs to her patches; but she felt the strange exhilaration of spirit that always came momentarily to her when she dipped into one of John Foster’s books. Valancy did not know much about woods—except the haunted groves⁵⁸ of oak and pine around her Blue Castle. But she had always secretly hankered after them and a Foster book about woods was the next best thing to the woods themselves.

At noon it stopped raining, but the sun did not come out until three. Then Valancy timidly said she thought she would go uptown.

“What do you want to go uptown for?” demanded her mother.

“I want to get a book from the library.”

“You got a book from the library only last week.”

“No, it was four weeks.”

“Four weeks. Nonsense!”

“Really it was, Mother.”

“You are mistaken. It cannot possibly have been more than two weeks. I dislike contradiction. And I do not see what you want to get a book for, anyhow. You waste too much time reading.”

“Of what value is my time?” asked Valancy bitterly.

“Doss! Don’t speak in that tone to me.”

“We need some tea,” said Cousin Stickles. “She might go and get that if she wants a walk—though this damp weather is bad for colds.”

They argued the matter for ten minutes longer and finally Mrs. Frederick agreed rather grudgingly⁵⁹ that Valancy might go. really thought of anything—afraid of poverty in her old age. Fear—fear—fear—she could never escape from it. It bound her and enmeshed her like a spider’s web of steel. Only in her Blue Castle could she find temporary release. And this morning Valancy could not believe she had a Blue Castle. She would never be able to find it again. Twenty-nine, unmarried, undesired—what had she to do with the fairy-like chatelaine of the Blue Castle? She would cut such childish nonsense out of her life forever and face reality unflinchingly.

She turned from her unfriendly mirror and looked out. The ugliness of the view always struck her like a blow; the ragged⁶⁰ fence, the tumble-down old carriage-shop in the next lot, plastered with crude, violently coloured advertisements; the grimy railway station beyond, with the awful derelicts that were always hanging around it even at this early hour. In the pouring rain everything looked worse than usual, especially the beastly advertisement, “Keep that schoolgirl complexion⁶¹.” Valancy had kept her schoolgirl complexion. That was just the trouble. There was not a gleam of beauty anywhere—“exactly like my life,” thought Valancy drearily⁶². Her brief bitterness had passed. She accepted facts as resignedly as she had always accepted them. She was one of the people whom life always passes by. There was no altering that fact.

In this mood Valancy went down to breakfast.