“Yes,” said Valancy honestly. “I have to be tidy. I don’t really want to be. But untidiness hurts me. Yes, I’ll have to tidy up your shack.”
“I was prepared for that,” said Barney, with a hollow groan.
“But,” continued Valancy relentingly, “I won’t insist on your wiping your feet when you come in.”
“No, you’ll only sweep up after me with the air of a martyr,” said Barney. “Well, anyway, you can’t tidy the lean-to. You can’t even enter it. The door will be locked and I shall keep the key.”
“Bluebeard’s chamber,” said Valancy. “I shan’t even think of it. I don’t care how many wives you have hanging up in it. So long as they’re really dead.”
“Dead as doornails. You can do as you like in the rest of the house. There’s not much of it—just one big living-room and one small bedroom. Well built, though. Old Tom loved his job. The beams of our house are cedar and the rafters fir. Our living-room windows face west and east. It’s wonderful to have a room where you can see both sunrise and sunset. I have two cats there. Banjo and Good Luck. Adorable animals. Banjo is a big, enchanting, grey devil-cat. Striped, of course. I don’t care a hang for any cat that hasn’t stripes. I never knew a cat who could swear as genteelly and effectively as Banjo. 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.
“Two old crows live in a pine-tree on the point and are reasonably neighbourly. Call ’em Nip and Tuck. And I have a demure little tame owl. Name, Leander. I brought him up from a baby and he lives over on the mainland and chuckles to himself o’ nights. And bats—it’s a great place for bats at night. Scared of bats?”
“No; I like them.”
“So do I. Nice, queer, uncanny, mysterious creatures. Coming from nowhere—going nowhere. Swoop! Banjo likes ’em, too. Eats ’em. I have a canoe and a disappearing propeller boat. Went to the Port in it today to get my license. Quieter than Lady Jane.”
“I thought you hadn’t gone at all—that you had changed your mind,” admitted Valancy.
Barney laughed—the laugh Valancy did not like—the little, bitter, cynical laugh.
“I never change my mind,” he said shortly.
They went back through Deerwood. Up the Muskoka road. Past Roaring Abel’s. Over the rocky, daisied lane. The dark pine woods swallowed them up. Through the pine woods, where the air was sweet with the incense of the unseen, fragile bells of the linnaeas that carpeted the banks of the trail. Out to the shore of Mistawis. Lady Jane must be left here. They got out. Barney led the way down a little path to the edge of the lake.
“There’s our island,” he said gloatingly.
Valancy looked—and looked—and looked again. There was a diaphanous, lilac mist on the lake, shrouding the island. Through it the two enormous pine-trees that clasped hands over Barney’s shack loomed out like dark turrets. Behind them was a sky still rose-hued in the afterlight, and a pale young moon.
Valancy shivered like a tree the wind stirs suddenly. Something seemed to sweep over her soul.
“My Blue Castle!” she said. “Oh, my Blue Castle!”
They got into the canoe and paddled out to it. They left behind the realm of everyday and things known and landed on a realm of mystery and enchantment where anything might happen—anything might be true. Barney lifted Valancy out of the canoe and swung her to a lichen-covered rock under a young pine-tree. His arms were about her and suddenly his lips were on hers. Valancy found herself shivering with the rapture of her first kiss.
“Welcome home, dear,” Barney was saying.
XXVII
Cousin Georgiana came down the lane leading up to her little house. She lived half a mile out of Deerwood and she wanted to go in to Amelia’s and find out if Doss had come home yet. Cousin Georgiana was anxious to see Doss. She had something very important to tell her. Something, she was sure, Doss would be delighted to hear. Poor Doss! She had had rather a dull life of it. Cousin Georgiana owned to herself that she would not like to live under Amelia’s thumb. But that would be all changed now. Cousin Georgiana felt tremendously important. For the time being, she quite forgot to wonder which of them would go next.
And here was Doss herself, coming along the road from Roaring Abel’s in such a queer green dress and hat. Talk about luck. Cousin Georgiana would have a chance to impart her wonderful secret right away, with nobody else about to interrupt. It was, you might say, a Providence.
Valancy, who had been living for four days on her enchanted island, had decided that she might as well go in to Deerwood and tell her relatives that she was married. Otherwise, finding that she had disappeared from Roaring Abel’s, they might get out a search warrant for her. Barney had offered to drive her in, but she had preferred to go alone. She smiled very radiantly at Cousin Georgiana, who, she remembered, as of someone known a long time ago, had really been not a bad little creature. Valancy was so happy that she could have smiled at anybody—even Uncle James. She was not averse to Cousin Georgiana’s company. Already, since the houses along the road were becoming numerous, she was conscious that curious eyes were looking at her from every window.
“I suppose you’re going home, dear Doss?” said Cousin Georgiana as she shook hands—furtively eyeing Valancy’s dress and
