Hello there,
Thank you so much for joining me for this reading of the next part of
The Blue Castle,
Which is a 1926 novel from Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery,
Who is best known for her book Anne of Green Gables.
So before we move further into the story here,
Let's just take a moment to take a nice big exhale.
Letting go of the day,
Letting go of whichever kind of baggage we might be bringing along with us,
Setting our tasks and thoughts aside.
The day is done now,
There's nowhere else that we've got to be,
Nothing else that we got to do.
We can just get comfortable,
Relax,
And listen to the next part of The Blue Castle.
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 dreary 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.
Tolerated.
So,
Up Valancy got,
Shivering.
The room was bitterly cold,
With the raw penetrating 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 24th 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 21st of October by the calendar.
On the 21st of October,
Mrs Frederick began
Cooking over the kitchen range and lighted a fire in the sitting room 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 20th 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 night dress 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 of 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 passionate determination to see herself as the world saw her.
The result was rather dreadful.
Even a beauty would have found that harsh,
Unsoftened sidelight trying.
Valancy saw straight black hair,
Short and thin,
Always lustreless 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 Red Fern's hair vigour 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 pointed
Open a trifle over little pointed white teeth,
A figure thin and flat-breasted,
Rather below the average height.
She had somehow escaped the family high cheekbones,
And her dark brown eyes,
Too soft and shadowy to be black,
Had a slant 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 decided 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 enunciated commonplaces as if uttering
Profound and important truths.
Valancy had hankered to do her hair pulled low on her forehead
With puffs over 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 to 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's disapproval.
Afraid of offending the whole clan's opinions and prejudices.
Afraid of not keeping up appearances.
Afraid to say what she 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.
29.
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 ragged 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 complexion.
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 drearily.
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.
Chapter Three
Breakfast was always the same.
Oatmeal porridge,
Which Valancy loathed,
Toast and tea,
And one teaspoonful of marmalade.
Mrs.
Frederick thought two teaspoonfuls extravagant.
But that did not matter to Valancy,
Who hated marmalade too.
The chilly,
Gloomy little dining room was chillier and gloomier than usual.
The rain streamed down outside the window.
Departed stirlings,
In atrocious gilt frames
Wider than the pictures,
Glowered 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 Providence 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 whined 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 epidemic of mumps in Deerwood.
Doss will be sure to catch them,
She forboded.
Doss must not go where she is likely to catch mumps,
Said Mrs.
Frederick shortly.
Valancy had never had mumps or whooping cough or chickenpox or measles or anything she should
Have had.
Nothing but horrible colds every winter.
Doss's winter colds were a sort of tradition in the family.
Nothing,
It seemed,
Could prevent her from catching 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 sterling tendency.
The sterlings seldom take colds,
Said Cousin Stickles,
Resentfully.
She had been a sterling.
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 unbearable grievance was
That she was called Doss.
She had endured it for 29 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 outland tang,
It was always a wonder to Valancy
That the sterlings had allowed her to be so christened.
She had been told that her maternal grandfather,
Old Amos Wandsborough,
Had chosen the name for her.
Her father had tacked 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 anyone 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 astonishment.
Astonishment.
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,
Faltered Valancy.
Oh,
Mrs.
Frederick had been a Wandsborough,
And the Wandsborough 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 desperately.
I wouldn't proclaim it from the housetops 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 furtively.
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 Cousin Stickles had once been desirable in some man's eyes.
Valancy felt that Cousin Stickles,
With her broad,
Flat,
Wrinkled face,
A mole right on the end of her dumpy nose,
Bristling hairs on her chin,
Wrinkled,
Yellow neck,
Pale,
Protruding eyes,
And thin,
Puckered 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 someone,
Needed by someone.
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 girlfriend.
I haven't even a gift for friendship,
She had once admitted to herself pitifully.
D'Arce,
You haven't eaten your crusts,
Said Mrs.
Frederick rebukingly.
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 attic.
Mrs.
Frederick had begun storing away quilts when Valancy was 17,
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 cardinal 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 10 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 random.
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 intimacy.
If we wish to be friends,
We must seek them out,
And win them by frequent,
Reverent 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 pretense 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 mere casual sightseers.
It is of no use to seek the woods from any motive 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 marketplace.
For the woods,
When they give at all,
Give unstintedly,
And hold nothing back from their true worshippers.
We must go to them lovingly,
Humbly,
Patiently,
Watchfully,
And we shall learn what poignant loveliness lurks in the wild places and silent intervals,
Lying under starshine and sunset,
What cadences of unearthly music are harped on aged pine boughs or crooned in copses of fir,
What delicate savours exhale from mosses and ferns in sunny corners or on damp brooklands,
What dreams and myths and legends of an older time haunt them.
Then the immortal heart of the woods will beat against ours,
And its subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own for ever,
So that no matter where we go,
Or how widely we wander,
We shall yet be drawn 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
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 groves 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 grudgingly,
That Valancy might go.
Chapter Four
Got your rubbers on,
Called Cousin Stickles as Valancy left the house.
Christine Stickles had never once forgotten to ask that question when Valancy went out on a damp day.
Yes.
Have you got your flannel petticoat on?
Asked Mrs Frederick.
No.
Doss,
I really do not understand you.
Do you want to catch your death of cold again?
Again?
Her voice implied that Valancy had died of a cold several times already.
Go upstairs this minute and put it on.
Mother,
I don't need a flannel petticoat.
My sateen one is warm enough.
Doss,
Remember you had bronchitis two years ago?
Go and do as you are told.
Valancy went,
Though nobody will ever know just how near she came
To hurling the rubber plant into the street before she went.
She hated that grey flannel petticoat more than any other garment she owned.
Olive never had to wear flannel petticoats.
Olive wore ruffled silk and sheer lawn and filmy laced flounces.
But Olive's father had married money and Olive never had bronchitis.
So there you were.
Are you sure you didn't leave the soap in the water?
In the water,
Demanded Mrs.
Frederick,
But Valancy was gone.
She turned at the corner and looked back down the ugly,
Prim,
Respectable street where she lived.
The sterling house was the ugliest on it.
More like a red brick box than anything else.
Too high for its breadth,
And made still higher by a bulbous glass cupola on top,
About it was the desolate,
Barren piece of an old house whose life is lived.
There was a very pretty little house with leaded casements and dubbed gables
Just around the corner.
A new house,
One of those houses you love the minute you see them.
Clayton Markley had built it for his bride.
He was to be married to Jenny Lloyd in June.
The little house,
It was said,
Was furnished from attic to cellar
In complete readiness for its mistress.
I don't envy Jenny the man,
Thought Valancy sincerely.
Clayton Markley was not one of her many ideals,
But I do envy her the house.
It's such a nice young house.
Oh,
If I could only have a house of my own.
Ever so poor,
So tiny,
But my own.
My own.
But then,
She added bitterly,
There is no use in yowling for the moon
When you can't even get a tallow candle.
In dreamland,
Nothing would do Valancy but a castle of pale sapphire.
In real life,
She would have been fully satisfied with a little house of her own.
She envied Jenny Lloyd more fiercely than ever today.
Jenny was not so much better looking than she was,
And not so very much younger.
Yet,
She was to have this delightful house,
And the nicest little Wedgwood teacups.
Valancy had seen them.
An open fireplace,
And monogrammed linen,
Hem-stitched tablecloths,
And china closets.
Why did everything come to some girls,
And nothing to others?
It wasn't fair.
Valancy was once more seething with rebellion as she walked along,
A prim,
Dowdy little figure
In her shabby raincoat and three-year-old hat,
Splashed occasionally by the mud of a passing
Motor with its insulting shrieks.
Motors were still rather a novelty in Deerwood,
Though they were common in Port Lawrence,
And most of the summer residents up at Muskoka had them.
In Deerwood,
Only some of the smart set had them,
For even Deerwood was divided into sets.
There was the smart set,
The intellectual set,
The old family set,
Of which the Stirlings were
Members,
The common run,
And a few pariahs.
Not one of the Stirling clan had,
As yet,
Condescended to a motor,
Though Olive was
Teasing her father to have one.
Valancy had never even been in a motor car,
But she did not hanker after this.
In truth,
She felt rather afraid of motor cars,
Especially at night.
They seemed to be too much like big purring beasts that might turn and crush you,
Or make some terrible,
Savage leap somewhere.
On the steep mountain trails around her blue castle,
Only gaily comparison steeds might
Proudly pace.
In real life,
Valancy would have been quite contented to drive in a buggy behind a nice
Horse.
She got a buggy drive only when some uncle or cousin remembered to fling her a chance,
Like a bone to a dog.
