Blue Castle (Bedtime Story) Chapter 18

In The Blue Castle, Valancy Stirling learns that the moment she stops fearing life is the moment she truly begins to live. This reflection invites you to release the weight of expectation and rediscover the beauty of simply being. Through quiet awareness and gentle gratitude, we’ll explore how letting go can open the door to joy, freedom, and self-compassion.

Transcript

Chapter 18 Valancy was acquainted with Barney by now.

Well acquainted,

It seemed,

Though she had spoken to him only a few times.

But then she had felt just as well acquainted with him the first time they had met.

She had been in the garden at twilight,

Hunting for a few stalks of white gnasses for Sissi's room,

When she heard that terrible old grey slosson coming down through the woods from Miss Darvish.

One could hear it miles away.

Valancy did not look up as it drew near,

Thumping over the rocks in that crazy lane.

She had never looked up,

Though Barney had gone racketing past every evening,

Since she had been at roaring ables.

This time he did not racket past.

The old grey slosson stopped,

With even more terrible noises than it made going.

Valancy was conscious that Barney had sprung from it,

And was leaning over the ramshackle gate.

She suddenly straightened up and looked into his face.

Their eyes met.

Valancy was suddenly conscious of a delicious weakness.

Was one of her heart attacks coming on.

But this was a new symptom.

His eyes,

Which she had always thought brown,

Now seemed close,

Were deep violet.

Translucent and intense.

Neither of his eyebrows looked like the other.

He was thin.

Too thin.

She wished she could feed him up a bit.

She wished she could sew the buttons on his coat and make him cut his hair and shave every day.

There was something in his face.

One hardly knew what it was.

Tiredness.

Sadness.

Disillusionment.

He had pimples in his thin cheeks.

When he smiled,

All these thoughts flashed through Valancy's mind in that one moment while his eyes looked into hers.

Good evening,

Miss Sterling.

Nothing could be more commonplace and conventional.

Anyone might have said it.

But Barney Snade had a way of saying things that gave them poignancy.

When he said good evening,

You felt that it was a good evening and that it was partly his doing that it was.

Also you felt that some of the credit was yours.

Valancy felt all this vaguely,

But she couldn't imagine why.

She was trembling from head to foot.

It must be her heart.

If only he didn't notice it.

I am going over to the port,

Barney was saying.

Can I acquire merit by getting or doing anything there for you or Sissi?

Will you get some salt codfish for us,

Said Valancy.

It was the only thing she could think of.

Roaring Abel had expressed a desire that day for a dinner of salt codfish.

Then her knights came riding to the blue castle.

Valancy had sent them on many quests,

But she had never asked any of them to get her salt codfish.

Certainly you are sure there's nothing else.

Lots of room in Lady Jane Grey's Lassen,

And she always gets back some time.

Does Lady Jane?

I don't think there's anything more,

Said Valancy.

She knew he would bring oranges for Sissi anyhow.

He always did.

Barney did not turn away at once.

He was silent for a little.

Miss Stirling,

You are a brick.

You are a whole cartload of bricks.

To come here and look after Sissi under the circumstances.

There's nothing so bricky about that,

Said Valancy.

I had nothing else to do.

And I like it here.

I don't feel as if I'd done anything especially meritorious.

Mr.

Gay is paying me fair wages.

I never earned any money before.

And I like it.

It seemed so easy to talk to Barney Snape,

Somehow.

This terrible Barney Snape of the lurid tales and mysterious past.

As easy as if talking to herself.

All the money in the world couldn't buy what you are doing for Sissi Gay,

Said Barney.

It is plenty and fine of you.

And if there is anything I can do to help you in any way,

You have only to let me know.

If Roaring Abel ever tries to annoy you.

He doesn't.

He's lovely to me.

I like Roaring Abel,

Said Valancy frankly.

So do I.

But there's one stage of his drunkenness,

Perhaps you haven't encountered it yet,

When he sings ribald songs.

Oh yes,

He came home last night like that.

Sissi and I just went to our room and shut ourselves in where we couldn't hear him.

He apologized this morning.

I'm not afraid of Roaring Abel's stages.

Well,

I'm sure he'll be as decent to you,

Apart from his inebriated yowls,

Said Barney.

And I have told him he's got to stop damning things when you are around.

Why?

Asked Valancy slyly,

With one of her odd slanted glances and a silent flake of pink on each cheek.

Born of the thought that Valancy's maid had actually done so much for her.

I often feel like damning things myself.

For a moment Barney stared.

Was this elfin girl the little old maidish creature that stood there two minutes ago?

Surely there was magic and devilry going on in this shabby,

Weedy old garden.

Then he laughed.

It will be a relief to have someone to do it for you then.

So you don't want anything but salt codfish?

Not tonight,

But I dare say I'll have some errands for you very often when you go to Port Lawrence.

I can trust Mr.

Gay to remember to bring all the things I want.

Barney had gone away,

Then in his lady chain,

And Valancy stood in the garden for a long time.

Since then he had called several times,

Walking down through the barrens,

Whistling.

How that whistle of his echoed through the spruce airs on those June twilights.

Valancy caught herself listening for it every evening.

He bugged herself,

Then let herself go.

Why shouldn't she listen for it?

He always brought sissy fruit and flowers.

Once he brought Valancy a box of candy,

The first box of candy she had ever been given.

It seemed sacrilege to eat it.

She found herself thinking of him in season and out of season.

She wanted to know if he ever thought about her,

When she wasn't before his eyes,

And if so,

What.

She wanted to see that mysterious house of his back on the mischievous island.

Sissy had never seen it.

Sissy thought she talked freely of Barney,

And had known him for five years,

Really knew little more of him than Valancy himself.

But he isn't bad,

Said Sissy.

Nobody need ever tell me he is,

He can't have done a thing to be ashamed of.

Then why does he live as he does?

Asked Valancy,

To hear somebody defend him.

I don't know,

He's a mystery.

And of course there is something behind it,

But I know it isn't disgrace.

Barney Snape simply couldn't do anything disgraceful,

Valancy.

Valancy was not so sure.

Barney must have done something,

Sometime.

He was a man of education and intelligence.

She had soon discovered that,

In listening to his conversation and wrangles with Roaring Able,

Who was surprisingly well read and could discuss any subject under the sun when sober,

Such a man wouldn't bury himself for five years in Muskoka and live and look like a snob if there were,

Not too good or bad,

A reason for it.

But it didn't matter.

All that mattered was that she was sure now that he had never been Sissy Gay's lover.

There was nothing like that between them,

Though he was very fond of Sissy and she of him,

As anyone could see.

But it was fondness that did it very,

Valancy.

You don't know what Barney has been to me these past two years,

Sissy had said simply.

Everything would have been unbearable without him.

Sissy Gay is the sweetest girl I ever knew and there is a man somewhere I'd like to shoot if I could find him,

Barney had said savagely.

Barney was an interesting talker,

With a knack of telling a great deal about his adventures and nothing at all about himself.

There was one glorious rainy day when Barney and Able strapped the arms all the afternoon while Valancy mended table clothes and listened.

Barney told weird tales of his adventures with shacks on trains while hoboing it across the continent.

Valancy thought she ought to think his stealing rights quite dreadful,

But the story of his working his way to England on a cattle ship sounded more legitimate.

And his yawns of the Yukon enthralled her.

Especially the one of the night he was lost on the divide between Goat Run and Sulfur Valley.

He had spent two years out there,

Wherein all this was their room,

What the penitentiary and the other things.

If he were telling the truth,

But Valancy knew he was.

Found no gold,

He said,

Came away poorer than when I went,

But such a place to live,

Those silences at the back of the north wind got me.

I have never belonged to myself since.

Yet he was not a great talker.

He thought a great deal in a few well-chosen words.

How well-chosen,

Valancy did not realize,

And he had a knack of saying things without opening his mouth at all.

I like a man whose eyes say more than his lips,

Thought Valancy.

But then she liked everything about him.

His tawny hair.

His whimsical smiles.

The little glints of fun in his eyes.

His loyal affection for that unspeakable Lady Jane.

His habit of sitting with his hands in his pockets.

His chin sunk on his breast,

Looking up from under his mismatched eyebrows.

She liked his nice voice,

Which sounded as if it might become caressing wooing with very little provocation.

She was at times almost afraid to let herself think these thoughts.

They were so vivid that she felt as if the others must know what she was thinking.

I have been watching a woodpecker all day,

He said one evening on the shaky old back veranda.

His account of the woodpecker's doings was satisfying.

He had often some gay or cunning little anecdote of the woodfolk to tell them,

But sometimes he and Roaring Able smoked fiercely the whole evening and never said a word,

While Sissi lay in the hammock swung between the veranda post and Valancy sat idly on the steps.

Her hands clasped over her knees,

And wondered dreamily if she were really Valancy Stirling,

And if it were only three weeks since she had left the ugly old house on Elm Street.

The barrens lay before her in a white moon splendor,

Where dozens of little rabbits Frisk Barney,

When he liked,

Could sit down on the edge of the barrens and lure those rabbits right to him by some mysterious sorcery he possessed.

Valancy had once seen a squirrel leap from a scrap pine to his shoulder and sit there chattering to him.

It reminded her of John Foster.

It was one of the delights of Valancy's new life that she could read John Foster's books as often and as long as she liked.

She could read them in bed if she wanted to.

She read them all to Sissi,

Who loved them.

She also tried to read them to Able and Barney,

Who did not love them.

Able was bored and Barney politely refused to listen at all.

Piffle,

Said Barney.