The Blue Castle quotes

Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn. She had not slept very well.

One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man.

Deerwood and the Stirlings had long since relegated Valancy to hopeless old maidenhood.

I don’t say Valancy deliberately murdered these lovers as she outgrew them. One simply faded away as another came.

Things are very convenient in this respect in Blue Castles.

But, on this morning of her day of fate, Valancy could not find the key of her Blue Castle. Reality pressed on her too hardly, barking at her heels like a maddening little dog.

As far as she could look forward it seemed certain to be just the same until she was nothing but a solitary, little withered leaf clinging to a wintry bough.

The moment when a woman realises that she has nothing to live for⁠—neither love, duty, purpose nor hope⁠—holds for her the bitterness of death.

“And I just have to go on living because I can’t stop. I may have to live eighty years,” thought Valancy, in a kind of panic. “We’re all horribly long-lived. It sickens me to think of it.”

Valancy would have to look as pleased and interested as if the dress and letter had been hers or else Aunt Wellington would be offended.

And Valancy had long ago decided that she would rather offend God than Aunt Wellington, because God might forgive her but Aunt Wellington never would.

Aunt Alberta, enormously fat, with an amiable habit of always referring to her husband as “he,” as if he were the only male creature in the world, who could never forget that she had been a great beauty in her youth, would condole with Valancy …

Aunt Isabel, downright and disagreeable as an east wind, would criticise her in some way—Valancy could not predict just how, for Aunt Isabel never repeated a criticism—she found something new with which to jab you every time.

Aunt Isabel prided herself on saying what she thought, but didn’t like it so well when other people said what they thought to her.

Valancy never said what she thought.

Aunt Isabel prided herself on saying what she thought, but didn’t like it so well when other people said what they thought to her.

Valancy never said what she thought.

Cousin Georgiana—named after her great-great-grandmother, who had been named after George the Fourth—would recount dolorously the names of all relatives and friends who had died since the last picnic and wonder “which of us will be the first to go next.”

And there would be no packing up of teaspoons. The packing up was always left for Valancy and Cousin Stickles. And once, six years ago, a silver teaspoon from Aunt Wellington’s wedding set had been lost. Valancy never heard the last of that silver teaspoon.

Its ghost appeared Banquo-like at every subsequent family feast.

Oh, yes, Valancy knew exactly what the picnic would be like and she blessed the rain that had saved her from it. There would be no picnic this year.

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.

“Fear is the original sin,” wrote John Foster. “

Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that someone is afraid of something.

It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.”

But still Valancy didn’t believe he was bad.

Nobody with a smile like that could be bad, no matter what he had done.

It was that night the Prince of the Blue Castle changed from a 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 …

But though she was not afraid of death she was not indifferent to it. She found that she resented it; it was not fair that she should have to die when she had never lived.

Rebellion flamed up in her soul as the dark hours passed by⁠—not because she had no future but because she had no past.

“I’m poor—I’m ugly—I’m a failure—and I’m near death,” she thought. She could see her own obituary notice in the Deerwood Weekly Times, copied into the Port Lawrence Journal.

“You were very selfish,” said her mother coldly, when Valancy told her about it at night. That was the first and last time Valancy had ever taken any of her troubles to her mother.

Valancy was neither jealous nor selfish. It was only that she wanted a dust-pile of her own⁠—small or big mattered not.

A team of horses came down the street—Olive’s dust pile was scattered over the roadway—the bell rang—the girls trooped into school and had forgotten the whole affair before they reached their seats. Valancy never forgot it.

He said she cried out because the kitten scratched her. He said she had put the kitten up on her chair and was playing with it when she should have been listening to Uncle David’s prayer. He was believed.

In the Stirling clan the boys were always believed before the girls.

Valancy was sent home in disgrace because of her exceedingly bad behavior during family prayers and she was not asked to Aunt Isabel’s again for many moons.

That day in her eleventh year when her mother had badgered her into confessing something she had never done. Valancy had denied it for a long time but eventually for peace’ sake she had given in and pleaded guilty.

Mrs. Frederick was always making people lie by pushing them into situations where they had to lie.

Then her mother had made her kneel down on the parlour floor, between herself and Cousin Stickles, and say, “O God, please forgive me for not speaking the truth.”

No, I don’t. That’s the truth, whether it is disgraceful or not. I don’t love her—I’ve never loved her. What’s worse, I don’t even like her. So I don’t know anything about any kind of love. My life has been empty—empty.

Nothing is worse than emptiness.

Nothing!” Valancy ejaculated the last “nothing” aloud passionately. Then she moaned and stopped thinking about anything for a while. One of her attacks of pain had come on.

When it was over something had happened to Valancy—perhaps the culmination of the process that had been going on in her mind ever since she had read Dr. Trent’s letter.

It was three o’clock in the morning⁠—the wisest and most accursed hour of the clock. But sometimes it sets us free.

“I’ve been trying to please other people all my life and failed,” she said. “After this I shall please myself. I shall never pretend anything again. I’ve breathed an atmosphere of fibs and pretences and evasions all my life.

“I’ve been trying to please other people all my life and failed,” she said. “After this I shall please myself. I shall never pretend anything again. I’ve breathed an atmosphere of fibs and pretences and evasions all my life.

What a luxury it will be to tell the truth!

I may not be able to do much that I want to do but I won’t do another thing that I don’t want to do. Mother can pout for weeks—I shan’t worry over it. ‘Despair is a free man—hope is a slave.’ ”

“I’ve been trying to please other people all my life and failed,” she said. “

After this I shall please myself. I shall never pretend anything again.

I’ve breathed an atmosphere of fibs and pretences and evasions all my life. What a luxury it will be to tell the truth!

“

I’m sick of the fragrance of dead things

,” said Valancy.

“

Oh, if there were only any hope of being able to forget it!

” said Valancy wearily.

It was a convenient thing. If anybody wanted her to go somewhere she didn’t want to go she had neuritis in her legs. And always if any mental effort was required she could have neuritis in her head.

You can’t think with neuritis in your head, my dear.

“What an old humbug you are!” thought Valancy impiously.

“One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless,” said Valancy. “You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don’t you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must?

It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don’t succeed.

”

“Oh, but you know we’re all dead,” said Valancy, “the whole Stirling clan.

Some of us are buried and some aren’t⁠—yet. That is the only difference.

”

“And I don’t need proof. When a man hides himself up there on an island in Muskoka, year in and year out, and nobody can find out where he came from or how he lives, or what he does there, that’s proof enough.

Find a mystery and you find a crime.

”

Uncle James lifted his eyebrows.

Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.

“How do you know his eyebrows so well, Doss?” asked Olive, a trifle maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.

“I don’t mean to hush,” said Valancy perversely. “

I’ve hush-hushed all my life. I’ll scream if I want to.

Don’t make me want to. And stop talking nonsense about Barney Snaith.”

“No,” said Valancy, “but I thought you had—especially the ninth. Have you ever thought, Uncle James, how dull life would be without the Ten Commandments?

It is only when things are forbidden that they become fascinating.

”

“No,” said Valancy, “but I thought you had—especially the ninth.

Have you ever thought, Uncle James, how dull life would be without the Ten Commandments?

It is only when things are forbidden that they become fascinating.”

“

The only thing you can be sure of in this world is the multiplication table,

” said Uncle James, feeling cleverer than ever.

Life cannot stop because tragedy enters it.

Meals must be made ready though a son dies and porches must be repaired even if your only daughter is going out of her mind. Mrs.

Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles thought it a terrible proceeding, but what could they do? Valancy only smiled mockingly at them when they called her in, and did not go.

It was so easy to defy once you got started. The first step was the only one that really counted.

They were both afraid to say anything more to her lest she might make a scene before Roaring Abel, who would spread it all over the country with his own characteristic comments and exaggerations.

“Well, yes,” he said finally. “

There were some women I might have kissed and didn’t. I’ve always been sorry for that.

”

“I asked Doss if she had no regard for appearances. She said, ‘

I’ve been keeping up appearances all my life. Now I’m going in for realities.

Appearances can go hang!’ Go hang!”

“

Most things are predestinated, but some are just darn sheer luck,

” said Roaring Abel, complacently smoking his pipe in the corner.

The way to enjoy wood-flowers is to track them down to their remote haunts—gloat over them—and then leave them with backward glances, taking with us only the beguiling memory of their grace and fragrance.”

Valancy was in the midst of realities after a lifetime of unrealities.

And busy—very busy. The house had to be cleaned. Not for nothing had Valancy been brought up in the Stirling habits of neatness and cleanliness. If she found satisfaction in cleaning dirty rooms she got her fill of it there.

“Not always,” retorted Valancy. “

Fancy a butcher singing at his work. Or an undertaker.

”

There was something in his face—one hardly knew what it was. Tiredness? Sadness? Disillusionment? He had dimples 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.

Nothing could be more commonplace and conventional. Anyone might have said it. But Barney Snaith 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.

Nothing could be more commonplace and conventional. Anyone might have said it. But Barney Snaith 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 like a man whose eyes say more than his lips,

” thought Valancy.

Dr. Stalling felt that he was very broad-minded indeed—especially as in his secret soul he did not believe Valancy’s motive was commendable. He hadn’t the least idea what she was up to, but he was sure her motive was not commendable.

When he could not understand a thing he straightway condemned it. Simplicity itself!

“But your first duty is to your mother. She needs you. She implores you to come home—she will forgive everything if you will only come home.”

“There’s spunk for you,” said Roaring Abel admiringly.

Dr. Stalling dropped his forefinger. One could not keep on shaking a finger forever.

“Miss Stirling, is there nothing that can influence you? Do you remember your childhood days—”

Mrs. Frederick wept.

It would really have been so much easier to bear if Valancy had died. She could have worn mourning then.

“John Foster says,” quoted Valancy, “ ‘

If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends.

If you cannot, friends you’ll never be and you need not waste time in trying.’ ”

Valancy was perfectly happy.

Some things dawn on you slowly. Some things come by lightning flashes. Valancy had had a lightning flash.

She knew quite well now that she loved Barney. Yesterday she had been all her own. Now she was this man’s. Yet he had done nothing—said nothing. He had not even looked at her as a woman. But that didn’t matter.

She was no longer unimportant, little, old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant—justified to herself. Life was no longer empty and futile, and death could cheat her of nothing.

Love had cast out her last fear.

Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was—this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond.

She was no longer unimportant, little, old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant—justified to herself. Life was no longer empty and futile, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear.

Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was⁠—this possession of body, soul and mind!

With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this. She was no longer solitary.

“They did—and do—literally,” said Valancy. “But it’s a comfort to them.

They’d rather believe me mad than bad.

There’s no other alternative. But I’ve been living since I came to Mr. Gay’s. It’s been a delightful experience. I suppose I’ll pay for it when I have to go back—but I’ll have had it.”

“That’s true,” said Barney. “

If you buy your experience it’s your own. So it’s no matter how much you pay for it.

Somebody else’s experience can never be yours. Well, it’s a funny old world.”

“

You sound like a revival meeting,

” she said. “You really do.”

“I don’t believe I can be,” said Valancy. “I’m afraid I’m hopelessly proper.

I’ve been sitting here for three hours with Barney Snaith and he hasn’t even tried to kiss me. I wouldn’t have minded if he had, Olive.

”

There is something so satisfying in owning a whole island. And isn’t an uninhabited island a charming idea? I’d wanted to own one ever since I’d read Robinson Crusoe. It seemed too good to be true. And beauty!

Most of the scenery belongs to the government, but they don’t tax you for looking at it, and the moon belongs to everybody.

You won’t find my shack very tidy. I suppose you’ll want to make it tidy.”

His only fault is that he snores horribly when he is asleep. Luck is a dainty little cat. Always looking wistfully at you, as if he wanted to tell you something. Maybe he will pull it off sometime.

Once in a thousand years, you know, one cat is allowed to speak.

My cats are philosophers—neither of them ever cries over spilt milk.

“To that—that—aw—that—Barney Snaith. Why, they say he’s had a dozen wives already.”

“I’m the only one round at present,” said Valancy.

“What will your poor mother say?” moaned Cousin Georgiana.

“To marry a man you know nothing about,” thought Cousin Georgiana aloud.

“I know more about him than I know of Edward Beck,” said Valancy.

“Edward Beck goes to church,” said Cousin Georgiana. “Does Bar—does your husband?”

“Barney? Supper?” gasped Olive. “What do you mean, Valancy Stirling?”

“Valancy Snaith, by the grace of God.”

Valancy flaunted her wedding-ring in Olive’s stricken face. Then she nimbly stepped past her and into the house. Cousin Georgiana followed. She would not miss a moment of the great scene, even though Olive did look as if she were going to faint.

“She would have to keep up the Victorian traditions,” said Valancy, with a grin. She sat down, uninvited, on a chair. Cousin Stickles had begun to sob.

“Is there one day in your life that you haven’t cried?” asked Valancy curiously.

“Valancy,” said Uncle James, being the first to recover the power of utterance, “did you mean what you said just now?”

“Then,” said Uncle James violently, “you are a shameless creature, lost to all sense of propriety and virtue, and I wash my hands entirely of you. I do not want ever to see your face again.”

“What have you left to say when I commit murder?” asked Valancy.

Uncle Benjamin again appealed to God to bless his soul.

A dangerous spark appeared in Valancy’s eyes. They might say what they liked to and of her but they should not abuse Barney.

“Say ‘damn’ and you’ll feel better,” she suggested.

“I can express my feelings without blasphemy. And I tell you you have covered yourself with eternal disgrace and infamy by marrying that drunkard—”

“I can express my feelings without blasphemy. And I tell you you have covered yourself with eternal disgrace and infamy by marrying that drunkard—”

“You would be more endurable if you got drunk occasionally. Barney is not a drunkard.”

“He was seen drunk in Port Lawrence—pickled to the gills,” said Uncle Benjamin.

“I’m glad I never had any children,” said Cousin Sarah. “If they don’t break your heart in one way they do it in another.”

“Isn’t it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up?” queried Valancy. “Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid. That would be worth the pain.”

“Dippy—clean dippy,” muttered Uncle Benjamin, with a vague, unsatisfactory feeling that somebody had said something like that before.

“Valancy,” said Mrs. Frederick solemnly, “do you ever pray to be forgiven for disobeying your mother?”

“I should pray to be forgiven for obeying you so long,”

said Valancy stubbornly. “But I don’t pray about that at all. I just thank God every day for my happiness.”

“Lots of it.

I am proud that I have achieved a husband by my own unaided efforts.

Cousin Georgiana here wanted to help me to Edward Beck.”

“Oh, Doss!” said Cousin Stickles. Cousin Sarah said, “Oh, Doss!” Aunt Wellington said, “Valancy, you need not be indecent.”

“Why, it surely isn’t indecent to like to have your husband put his arm around you? I should think it would be indecent if you didn’t.”

“Why expect decency from her?” inquired Uncle James sarcastically. “She has cut herself off from decency forevermore. She has made her bed. Let her lie on it.”

Valancy rose and went to the door. There she turned. She was sorrier than ever for them all. They had no Blue Castle in the purple solitudes of Mistawis.

“The trouble with you people is that you don’t laugh enough,” she said.

“Doss, dear,” said Cousin Georgiana mournfully, “some day you will discover that blood is thicker than water.”

“Doss, dear,” said Cousin Georgiana mournfully, “some day you will discover that blood is thicker than water.”

“Of course it is. But who wants water to be thick?”

parried Valancy. “We want water to be thin—sparkling—crystal-clear.”

“What—what,” demanded Aunt Wellington of the universe, “has come over Valancy? Valancy!”

The universe did not answer but Uncle James did.

“Isn’t there something coming up of late about secondary personalities cropping out? I don’t hold with many of those newfangled notions, but there may be something in this one. It would account for her incomprehensible conduct.”

Valancy toiled not, neither did she spin.

There was really very little work to do. She cooked their meals on a coal-oil stove, performing all her little domestic rites carefully and exultingly, and they ate out on the verandah that almost overhung the lake.

“You must,” protested Valancy, “if you want to. I’d be miserable if I thought you wanted to go and didn’t, because of me. I want you to feel perfectly free.”

“There is no such thing as freedom on earth,” he said.

“Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. You think you are free now because you’ve escaped from a peculiarly unbearable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me—that’s a bondage.”

But in spite of Barney’s doctrine of bondage, Valancy thought they were splendidly free.

It was amazing to be able to sit up half the night and look at the moon if you wanted to.

To be late for meals if you wanted to—she who had always been rebuked so sharply by her mother and so reproachfully by Cousin Stickles if she were one minute late. Dawdle over meals as long as you wanted to.

Or they just prowled and explored through woods that always seemed to be expecting something wonderful to happen. At least, that was the way Valancy felt about them. Down the next hollow—over the next hill—you would find it.

“We don’t know where we’re going, but isn’t it fun to go?”

Barney used to say.

She had forgotten all the old humiliating things that used to come up against her in the night—the injustices and the disappointments. It was as if they had all happened to some other person—not to her, Valancy Snaith, who had always been happy.

“I understand now what it means to be born again,” she told Barney.

Holmes speaks of grief “staining backward” through the pages of life; but Valancy found her happiness had stained backward likewise and flooded with rose-colour her whole previous drab existence. She found it hard to believe that she had ever been lonely and unhappy and afraid.

Holmes speaks of grief “staining backward” through the pages of life; but Valancy found her happiness had stained backward likewise and flooded with rose-colour her whole previous drab existence. She found it hard to believe that she had ever been lonely and unhappy and afraid.

“When death comes, I shall have lived,” thought Valancy. “I shall have had my hour.”

One day Valancy had heaped up the sand in the little island cove in a tremendous cone and stuck a gay little Union Jack on top of it.

“I’m afraid heaven will be very dull after this past year,” thought Valancy. “But perhaps one will not remember. Would that be—nice? No, no. I don’t want to forget Barney.

I’d rather be miserable in heaven remembering him than happy forgetting him.

And I’ll always remember through all eternity—that he really, really liked me.”

Thirty seconds can be very long sometimes. Long enough to work a miracle or a revolution.

In thirty seconds life changed wholly for Barney and Valancy Snaith.

Valancy flinched as if one of them had leaned from the car and cut her across the face with a whip.

She had made a covenant with death and death had cheated her.

Now life stood mocking her. She had trapped Barney. Trapped him into marrying her. And divorce was so hard to get in Ontario. So expensive. And Barney was poor.