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edwindvinas
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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shadowy to be black, had a slant that was almost Oriental. Apart from
her eyes she was neither pretty nor ugly—just insignificant-looking,
she concluded bitterly. How plain the lines around her eyes and mouth
were in that merciless light! And never had her narrow, white face
looked so narrow and so white.
She did her hair in a pompadour. Pompadours had long gone out of
fashion, but they had been in when Valancy first put her hair up and
Aunt Wellington had decided that she must always wear her hair so.
“It is the _only_ way that becomes you. Your face is so small that you
_must_ add height to it by a pompadour effect,” said Aunt Wellington,
who always enunciated commonplaces as if uttering profound and
important truths.
Valancy had hankered to do her hair pulled low on her forehead, with
puffs above the ears, as Olive was wearing hers. But Aunt Wellington’s
dictum had such an effect on her that she never dared change her style
of hairdressing again. But then, there were so many things Valancy
never dared do.
All her life she had been afraid of something, she thought bitterly.
From the very dawn of recollection, when she had been so horribly
afraid of the big black bear that lived, so Cousin Stickles told her,
in the closet under the stairs.
“And I always will be—I know it—I can’t help it. I don’t know what it
would be like not to be afraid of something.”
Afraid of her mother’s sulky fits—afraid of offending Uncle
Benjamin—afraid of becoming a target for Aunt Wellington’s
contempt—afraid of Aunt Isabel’s biting comments—afraid of Uncle James’
disapproval—afraid of offending the whole clan’s opinions and
prejudices—afraid of not keeping up appearances—afraid to say what she
really thought of anything—afraid of poverty in her old age.
Fear—fear—fear—she could never escape from it. It bound her and
enmeshed her like a spider’s web of steel. Only in her Blue Castle
could she find temporary release. And this morning Valancy could not
believe she had a Blue Castle. She would never be able to find it
again. Twenty-nine, unmarried, undesired—what had she to do with the
fairy-like chatelaine of the Blue Castle? She would cut such childish
nonsense out of her life forever and face reality unflinchingly.
She turned from her unfriendly mirror and looked out. The ugliness of
the view always struck her like a blow; the ragged fence, the
tumble-down old carriage-shop in the next lot, plastered with crude,
violently coloured advertisements; 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. There was
no altering that fact.
In this mood Valancy went down to breakfast.
CHAPTER III
Breakfast was always the same. Oatmeal porridge, which Valancy loathed,
toast and tea, and one teaspoonful of marmalade. Mrs. Frederick thought
two teaspoonfuls extravagant—but that did not matter to Valancy, who
hated marmalade, too. The chilly, gloomy little dining-room was
chillier and gloomier than usual; the rain streamed down outside the
window; departed Stirlings, in atrocious, gilt frames, wider than the
pictures, glowered down from the walls. And yet Cousin Stickles wished
Valancy many happy returns of the day!
“Sit up straight, Doss,” was all her mother said.
Valancy sat up straight. She talked to her mother and Cousin Stickles
of the things they always talked of. She never wondered what would
happen if she tried to talk of something else. She knew. Therefore she
never did it.
Mrs. Frederick was offended with Providence for sending a rainy day
when she wanted to go to a picnic, so she ate her breakfast in a sulky
silence for which Valancy was rather grateful. But Christine Stickles
whined endlessly on as usual, complaining about everything—the weather,
the leak in the pantry, the price of oatmeal and butter—Valancy felt at
once she had buttered her toast too lavishly—the epidemic of mumps in
Deerwood.
“Doss will be sure to ketch them,” she foreboded.
“Doss must not go where she is likely to catch mumps,” said Mrs.
Frederick shortly.
Valancy had never had mumps—or whooping cough—or chicken-pox—or
measles—or anything she should have had—nothing but horrible colds
every winter. Doss’ winter colds were a sort of tradition in the
family. Nothing, it seemed, could prevent her from catching them. Mrs.
Frederick and Cousin Stickles did their heroic best. One winter they
kept Valancy housed up from November to May, in the warm sitting-room.