6 The Blue Castle - Read By Stephanie Poppins

Valancy Stirling is 29, unmarried, and has never been in love. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she finds her only consolation in the "forbidden" books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle. This is the place she can be who she truly wants to be.

After getting shocking news from a doctor about her state of ill health, Valancy decides to rebel against her family in true heroine style and live the life she was always meant to have.

In this episode, Barney Smith is considered.

Transcript

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 nowhere you need to go.

Close your eyes and feel yourself sink into the support beneath you and let all the worries of the day 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.

There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.

Happy listening.

Chapter 6 The ordeal was not so dreadful after all.

Dr.

Trent was as gruff and abrupt as usual but he did not tell Valancy her ailment was imaginary.

After he'd listened to her symptoms and asked a few questions and made a quick examination,

He sat for a moment looking at her quite intently.

She thought he looked as if he was sorry for her.

She caught her breath.

Was the trouble serious or could it be… Surely it really hadn't bothered her much,

Only lately it had got a little worse.

Dr.

Trent opened his mouth but before he could speak,

The telephone at his elbow rang sharply.

He picked up the receiver.

Valancy,

Watching him,

Saw his face change suddenly as he listened.

Yes,

Yes,

What?

Yes.

A brief interval.

My God.

Dr.

Trent dropped the receiver,

Dashed out of the room and upstairs without even a glance at Valancy.

She heard him rushing madly about overhead,

Barking out a few remarks,

Presumably to his housekeeper.

Then he came tearing downstairs with a club bag in his hand,

Snatched his hat and coat from the rack,

Jerked upon the street door and rushed down the street in the direction of the station.

Valancy sat alone in the little office feeling more absolutely foolish than she had ever done before in her life.

Foolish and humiliated.

So this was all that had come of her heroic determination to live up to John Foster and cast fear aside.

Not only was she a failure as a relative and non-existent as a sweetheart or friend,

But she was not even of any importance as a patient.

Dr.

Trent had forgotten her very presence in his excitement over whatever message had come by the telephone.

She had gained nothing by ignoring Uncle James and flying in the face of family tradition.

For a moment,

She was afraid she was going to cry.

It was all so ridiculous.

Then she heard Dr.

Trent's housekeeper coming down the stairs.

Valancy rose and went to the office door.

The doctor forgot all about me,

She said with a twisted smile.

Well,

That's too bad,

Said Mrs.

Patterson sympathetically.

But it wasn't much wonder,

Poor man.

That was a telegram they phoned over from the port.

His son's been terribly injured in an auto accident in Montreal.

The doctor had just ten minutes to catch the train.

I don't know what he'll do if anything happens to that boy.

He's just bound up in Ned,

You know.

He'll have to come again,

Miss Stirling.

I hope it's nothing serious.

Oh no,

Nothing serious,

Agreed Valancy.

She felt a little less humiliated.

It was no wonder poor Dr.

Trent had forgotten her at such a moment.

Nevertheless,

She felt very flat and discouraged as she went down the street.

Valancy went home by the shortcut of Lover's Lane.

She did not often go through Lover's Lane,

But it was getting near supper time and it would never do to be late.

Lover's Lane wound back of the village under great elms and maples and deserved its name.

It was hard to go there at any time and not find some canoodling couple,

Or young girls in pairs,

Arms intertwined,

Earnestly talking over their little secrets.

Valancy didn't know which made her feel more self-conscious and uncomfortable.

This evening she encountered both.

She met Connie Hale and Kate Bailey in new pink organdy dresses with flowers stuck coquettishly in their glossy bare hair.

Valancy had never had a pink dress or worn flowers in her hair.

Then she passed a young couple she didn't know,

Dandering along,

Oblivious to everything but themselves.

The young man's arm was around the girl's waist quite shamelessly.

Valancy had never walked with a man's arm about her.

She felt that she ought to be shocked.

They might leave that sort of thing for the screening twilight at least.

But she wasn't shocked.

In another flash of desperate,

Stark honesty,

She owned to herself she was merely envious.

When she passed them she felt quite sure they were laughing at her,

Pitying her.

That's that queer old little maid,

Valancy Stirling,

They'd say.

She's never had a beau in her whole life.

Valancy,

Fairly run out of lover's lane,

Never had she felt so utterly colourless and skinny and insignificant.

Just where it debauched on the street,

An old car was parked.

Valancy knew that car well,

By sound at least,

And everybody in Deerwood knew it.

This was before the phrase Tin Lizzie had come into circulation,

In Deerwood at least.

But if it had been known this car was the tinniest of Lizzie's,

Though it was not a Ford but an old grey slossen.

Nothing more battered and disreputable could be imagined.

It was Barney Snaith's car,

And Barney himself was just scrambling up from under it,

In overalls plastered with mud.

Valancy gave him a swift,

Furtive look as she hurried by.

This was only the second time she'd ever seen the notorious Barney Snaith,

Though she'd heard enough about him in the five years he'd been living up back in Muskoka.

The first time was nearly a year ago.

He'd been crawling out from under his car then too,

And he had given her a cheerful grin as she went by.

A little,

Whimsical grin that gave him the look of an amused gnome.

He didn't look bad.

She didn't believe he was bad,

In spite of the wild yarns that were always being told of him.

Of course he went tearing in that terrible old grey slossen through Deerwood at hours where all decent people were in bed,

Often with old roaring Abel,

Who made the night hideous with his howls,

Both of them dead drunk,

My dear.

And everyone knew he was an escaped convict and defaulting bank clerk and a murderer in hiding and an infidel and an illegitimate son of an old.

.

.

And a few other awful things.

But still Valancy didn't believe he was bad.

Nobody with a smile like that could be bad,

No matter what he'd done.

It was that night the Prince of the Blue Castle changed from being of grim jaw and hair with a dash of premature grey to a rakish individual with overlong,

Tawny hair dashed with red,

Dark brown eyes and ears that stuck out just enough to give him an alert look,

But not enough to be called flying gibs.

But he still retained something a little grim about the jaw.

Barney Smith looked even more disreputable than usual just now.

It was very evident he hadn't shaved for days and his hands and arms,

Bare to the shoulders,

Were black with grease.

But he was whistling gleefully to himself and he seemed so happy that Valancy envied him.

She envied him his light-heartedness and his irresponsibility and his mysterious little cabin up on the lake.

Even his rackety old grey slossen.

Neither he nor his car had to be respectable and live up to traditions.

When he rattled past her a few minutes later bare-headed,

Leaning back at a rakish angle,

His longish hair blowing in the wind,

A villainous old-looking black pipe in his mouth,

She envied him again.

Men had the best of it,

No doubt about that.

This outlaw was happy whatever he was or wasn't.

She,

Valancy Stirling,

Respectable,

Well-behaved to the last degree,

Was unhappy and has always been unhappy.

Valancy was just in time for supper.

The sun had clouded over and a dismal drizzling rain was falling again.

Cousin Stickles had the neuralgia,

Valancy had to do the family darning and there was no time for magic of wings.

Can't the darning wait till tomorrow?

She pleaded.

Tomorrow will bring its own duties,

Said Mrs Frederick inexorably.

Valancy darned all the evening and listened to Mrs Frederick and Cousin Stickles talking the eternal niggling gossip of the clan as they knitted drearily at interminable black stockings.

They discussed second cousin Lillian's approaching wedding in all its bearings.

On the whole they approved.

She was doing well for herself.

Though she hasn't hurried,

Said Cousin Stickles,

She must be twenty-five.

There have not fortunately been many old maids in our connection,

Said Mrs Frederick bitterly.

Valancy flinched.

She'd run the darning needle into her finger.

Third cousin Aaron Grey's been scratched by a cat and had blood poisoning in his finger,

Mrs Frederick continued.

Cats are most dangerous animals.

I would never have a cat about the house.

She glared significantly at Valancy through her terrible glasses.

Once,

Five years ago,

Valancy had asked if she might have a cat.

She had never referred to it since,

But Mrs Frederick still suspected her of harbouring the unlawful desire in her heart of hearts.

Once,

Valancy sneezed.

Now in the sterling code it was very bad form to sneeze in public.

You can always repress a sneeze by pressing your finger on your upper lip,

Said Mrs Frederick rebukingly.

Half past nine,

And so,

As Mr Peeps would say,

To bed.

But first,

Cousin Stickles' neuralgic back must be rubbed with red fern's liniment.

Valancy did that.

Valancy always had to do that.

She hated the smell of it.

She hated the smug,

Beaming,

Porkly,

Bewhiskered,

Bespeckled picture of Dr Redfern on the bottle.

After she got into bed,

Her fingers still smelled of the horrible stuff,

In spite of all the scrubbing she gave them.

Valancy's day of destiny had come and gone.

She ended it,

As she had begun,

In tears.