The Books: The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:

The Blue Castle – by L.M. Montgomery. Another excerpt! So. Valancy is now behaving like a lunatic (according to her family). She is (gasp) speaking her mind, doing what she wants, not living by her mother’s silly rules. But this is not even the beginning of the upset precipiated by Valancy learning she only has one year to live. Valancy is vaguely fascinated by a man named Abel Gay – a drunken free-spirit – who careens thru the upstanding town in his smoking bellowing jalopy. She somehow likes him. He seems to not live by society’s rules. Valancy is jealous. Abel Gay (nicknamed “Roaring Abel” for obvious reasons) has a daughter – a young woman – who is dying of tuberculosis. Her name is Cissy. Cissy is a “fallen” woman – had a child out of wedlock (nobody knows who the father was) – and the child died. Because of this “sin” – Abel cannot get a nurse to come out and take care of Cissy. He does the best he can, in between bacchanalian binges. In conversing briefly with Abel – an idea suddenly comes into Valancy’s head. She will go live with Abel and Cissy, and take care of Cissy in her final illness. And so that is what she does. Her family is beyond shocked. It’s almost like – they didn’t notice her for 29 years – and now she is all they can think about.

Valancy, meanwhile, goes off to the cabin in the woods – and settles in to her new free life. Barney Snaith (a supposed reprobate – mysterious, handsome) is a common visitor – he’s as much of an outcast as Abel Gay. Valancy has had a crush-from-afar on Snaith for a while … so suddenly she finds herself in his company and finds herself really falling for him. He remains mysterious, the opposite of an open book … but even that Valancy doesn’t mind. She’s never had a beau. And she doesn’t want one now – because she’s dying. But she finally allows herself to just fantasize like crazy about Barney. She no longer is ashamed of imagining what he’s thinking about, or what it would be like to kiss him …

Valancy really starts to blossom, out there in the woods with the rejects.

And she just loves Cissy. A sweet bed-ridden woman, who just loves having Valancy there – loves the female company, and loves Valancy’s sympathetic presence.

Here’s an excerpt from the “living with Abel Gay” section of the book.

Excerpt from The Blue Castle – by L.M. Montgomery.

When Abel Gay paid Valancy her first month’s wages – which he did promptly, in bills reeking with the odour of tobacco and whiskey – Valancy went into Deerwood and spent every cent of it. She got a pretty green crepe dress with a girdle of crimson beads, at a bargain sale, a pair of silk stockings to match, and a little crinkled green hat with a crimson rose in it. She even bought a foolish little beribboned and belaced nightgown.

She passed the house on Elm Street twice – Valancy never even thought about it as “home” – but saw no one. No doubt her mother was sitting in the room this lovely June evening playing solitaire – and cheating. Valancy knew that Mrs. Frederick always cheated. She never lost a game. Most of the people Valancy met looked at her seriously and passed her with a cool nod. Nobody stopped to speak to her.

Valancy put on her green dress when she got home. Then she took it off again. She felt so miserably undressed in its low neck and short sleeves. And that low, crimson girdle around the hips seemed positively indecent. She hung it up in the closet, feeling flatly that she had wasted her money. She would never have the courage to wear that dress. John Foster’s arraignment of fear had no power to stiffen her against this. In this one thing habit and custom were still all-powerful. Yet she sighed as she went down to meet Barney Snaith in her old snuff-brown silk. That green thing had been very becoming – she had seen so much in her one ashamed glance. Above it her eyes had looked like odd brown jewels and the girdle had given her flat figure an entirely different appearance. She wished she could have left it on. But there were some things John Foster did not know.

Every Sunday evening Valancy went to the little Free Methodist church in a valley on the edge of “up back” – a spireless little grey building among the pines, with a few sunken graves and mossy gravestones in the small, paling-encircled, grass-grown square beside it. She liked the minister who preached there. He was so simple and sincere. An old man, who lived in Port Lawrence and came out by the lake in a little disappearing propeller boat to give free service to the people of the small, stony farms back of the hills, who would otherwise never have heard any gospel message. She liked the simple service and the fervent singing. She liked to sit by the open window and look out into the pine woods. The congregation was always small. The Free Methodists were few in number, poor and generally illiterate. But Valancy loved those Sunday evenings. For the first time in her life she liked going to church. The rumour reached Deerwood that she had “turned Free Methodist” and sent Mrs. Frederick to bed for a day. But Valancy had not turned anything. She went to the church because she liked it and because in some inexplicable way it did her good. Old Mr. Towers believed exactly what he preached and somehow it made a tremendous difference.

Oddly enough, Roaring Abel disapproved of her going to the hill church as strongly as Mrs. Frederick herself could have done. He had “no use for Free Methodists. He was a Presbyterian.” But Valancy went in spite of him.

“We’ll hear something worse than that about her soon,” Uncle Benjamin predicted gloomily.

They did.

Valancy could not quite explain, even to herself, just why she wanted to go to that party. It was a dance “up back” at Chidley Corners; and dances at Chidley Corners were not, as a rule, the sort of assemblies where well-brought-up young ladies were found. Valancy knew it was coming off, for Roaring Abel had been engaged as one of the fiddlers.

But the idea of going had never occurred to her until Roaring Abel himself broached it at supper.

“You come with me to the dance,” he ordered. “It’ll do you good – put some colour in your face. You look peaked – you want something to liven you up.”

Valancy found herself suddenly wanting to go. She knew nothing at all of what dances at Chidley Corners were apt to be like. Her idea of dances had been fashioned on the correct affairs that went by that name in Deerwood and Port Lawrence. Of course she knew the Corners’ dance wouldn’t be just like them. Much more informal, of course. But so much the more interesting. Why shouldn’t she go? Cissy was in a week of apparent health and improvement. She wouldn’t mind staying alone in the least. She entreated Valancy to go if she wanted to. And Valancy did want to go.

She went to her room to dress. A rage against the snuff-brown silk seized her. Wear that to a party! Never. She pulled her green crepe from its hanger and put it on feverishly. It was nonsense to feel so — so — naked — just because her neck and arms were bare. That was just her old-maidishness. She would not be ridden by it. On went the dress – the slippers.

It was the first time she had worn a pretty dress since the organdies of her early teens. And they had never made her look like this.

If she only had a necklace or something. She wouldn’t feel so bare then. She ran down to the garden. There were clovers there – great crimson things glrowing in the long grass. Valancy gathered handfuls of them and strung them on a cord. Fastened above her neck they gave her the comfortable sensation of a collar and were oddly becoming. Another circlet of them went round her hair, dressed in the low puffs that became her. Excitement brought those faint pink stains to her face. She flung on her coat and pulled the little, twisty hat over her hair.

“You look so nice and — and — different, dear,” said Cissy. “Like a green moonbeam with a gleam of red in it, if there could be such a thing.”

Valancy stooped to kiss her.

“I don’t feel right about leaving you alone, Cissy.”

“Oh, I’ll be all right. I feel better tonight than I have for a long while. I’ve been feeling badly to see you sticking here so closely on my account. I hope you’ll have a nice time. I never was at a party at the Corners, but I used to go sometimes, long ago, to dances up back. We always had good times. And you needn’t be afraid of Father being drunk tonight. He never drinks when he engages to play for a party. But — there may be — liquor. What will you do if it gets rough?”

“Nobody would molest me.”

“Not seriously, I suppose. Father would see to that. But it might be noisy and — and unpleasant.”

“I won’t mind. I’m only going as a looker-on. I don’t expect to dance. I just want to see what a party up back is like. I’ve never seen anything except decorous Deerwood.”

Cissy smiled rather dubiously. She knew much better than Valancy what a party “up back” might be like if there should be liquor. But again there mightn’t be.

“I hope you’ll enjoy it,” she repeated.

Valancy enjoyed the drive there. They went early, for it was twelve miles to Chidley Corners, and they had to go in Abel’s old, ragged top-buggy. The road was rough and rocky, like most Muskoka roads, but full of the austere charm of northern woods. It wound through beautiful, purring pines that were ranks of enchantment in the June sunset, and over the curious jade-green rivers of Muskoka, fringed by aspens that were always quivering with some supernal joy.

Roaring Abel was excellent company, too. He knew all the stories and legends of the wild, beautiful “up back,” and he told them to Valancy as they drove along. Valancy had several fits of inward laughter over what Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Wellington, et al., would feel and think and say if they saw her driving with Roaring Abel in that terrible buggy to a dance at Chidley Corners.