Welcome to sleep stories with Steph It is time to relax.
And fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Close your eyes.
And feel yourself sink into the support beneath you.
And let all the worries of the day go.
Drift away.
This is your time.
And your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
And let it out with a long sigh.
That's it!
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 28 Summer passed by.
The Stirling clan,
With the insignificant exception of cousin Georgiana,
Had tactically agreed to follow Uncle James's example and look upon Valancy as one dead.
To be sure,
Valancy had an unquiet,
Ghostly habit of recurring resurrections when she and Barney cluttered through Deerwood and out to the port in that unspeakable car.
Balancy,
Bareheaded with stars in her eyes.
Barney bare-headed smoking his pipe.
But shaved?
Always shave now!
If any of them had noticed it.
They even had the audacity to go into 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 by the third time he told Barney he was a scoundrel 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'd 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 women had to be,
Or ought to be,
Made happy.
You POP!
He said.
Why be so unoriginal?
Queried Barney amiably.
Anybody who'd 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.
35 if you're interested.
Uncle Benjamin remembered just in time that Valancy was dead and he turned his back on Barney.
Valancy was happy,
Gloriously and entirely.
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 was unbelievable.
They could do exactly as they liked.
No Mrs Grandy,
No traditions,
No relatives or in-laws.
Peace.
Perfect peace with loved ones far away.
As Barney quoted shamelessly.
Fallency had gone home once and got her cushions.
Cousin Georgiana had given her one of her famous candlewick spreads of the most elaborate design.
For your spare room,
Bed,
Dear,
" she said.
But I haven't got any spare room.
Said Valancy.
Claus and Georgiana looked horrified.
House without a spare room was monstrous to her.
But it's a lovely spread,
" said Valancy with a kiss,
And I'm so glad to have it.
I'll put it on my own bed.
Barney's old patchwork quilt is getting quite ragged.
I don't see how you can be contented to live up there.
Sight.
Carson George-Yahona.
It's so out of the world.
Contented.
Balancy Law.
What was the use of trying to explain to cousin Georgiana?
It is,
She agreed.
Most gloriously and entirely out of this world.
And you're 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.
Valency.
Us and Georgiana did not understand these words at all.
It worried her,
And she lay awake at nights wondering what fancy meant.
Valancy,
Meanwhile,
Loved her blue castle and was completely satisfied with it.
The big living room had three windows,
All commanding exquisite views of exquisite mysteries.
The one in the end of the room was an Oriole window.
Which Tom McMurray,
Barney explained,
Had got out of some little old up-back church that had once been sold.
It faced the west and when the sun sets flooded in,
Balancing knelt in prayer as if in some great cathedral.
The new moons always looked down right through this window.
The lower pine bough swayed about the top of it,
And all through the night,
The soft,
Dim sliver of the lake dreamed through it.
There was a stone fireplace on the other side.
No desecrating gas imitation,
But a real fireplace where you could burn real logs.
With a big grizzly bear skin on the floor before it.
And beside it a hideous red plush sofa of Tom McMurray's regime.
But its ugliness was hidden by silver grey timber wool skins,
And Valancy's cushions made it gay and comfortable.
In one corner a nice tall lazy old clock ticked.
The right kind of a clock.
One that did not hurry the hours away.
But ticked them off deliberately.
It was the jolliest looking old clock,
A fat corpulent clock with a great round man's face painted on it,
The hands stretching out of its nose and the hours encircling it like a halo.
There was a big glass case of stuffed owls and several deer heads,
Likewise of Tom McMurray's vintage.
Some comfortable old chairs that asked to be sat upon.
A squat little chair with a cushion was prescriptively Banjo's.
If anybody else dared sit on it,
Banjo glared at him.
With his topaz-skewed,
Black-ringed eyes.
Banjo had an adorable habit of hanging over the back of it.
Trying to catch his own tail.
Losing his temper then,
Because he couldn't catch it.
Giving it a fierce bite for spite when he did catch it.
Yowling malignantly with pain.
Barney and Valancy laughed at him until they ached.
But it was their good luck they loved.
They were both agreed that Goodluck was so lovable that he practically amounted to an obsession.
One side of the wall was lined with rough,
Homemade bookshelves filled with books,
And between the two side windows hung an old mirror in a faded gilt frame,
With fat cupids gambling in the panel over the glass.
A mirror,
Valancy thought,
That must be like the fabled mirror into which Venus had once looked and which thereafter reflected as beautiful every woman who looked into it.
Balancy thought she was almost pretty in that mirror.
But that may have been because she'd shingled her hair.
This was before the day of Bob's,
And it was regarded as a wild,
Unheard-of proceeding.
Unless you had typhoid.
When Mrs Frederick heard of it,
She almost decided to erase Valancy's name from the family bible.
Barney cut the hair square off at the back of Valance's neck.
Bringing it down in a short black fringe over her forehead.
It gave a meaning and a purpose to her little three-cornered face that it had never possessed before.
Even her nose seems to irritate her.
Her eyes were bright,
And her sallow skin had cleared to the hue of creamy ivory.
The old family joke had come true.
She was really fat at last.
Anyway,
No longer skinny.
Valancy might never be beautiful,
But she was now of the type that looked its best in the woods.
Elfin.
Mocking.
Alluring.
Her heart seemed to bother her very little.
When an attack threatened,
She was generally able to head it off with Dr Trent's prescription.
The only bad one she had was one night when she was temporarily out of medicine.
And it was a bad one.
For the time being,
Valancy realized keenly Death was actually waiting to pounce on her at any moment.
But the rest of the time she would not.
Did not.
Let herself remember it.
At all.
