The Cabin on Mistawis

If it had not rained on a certain May morning Verity Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different. She would have gone, with the rest of her clan, to Aunt Wellington’s engagement picnic and Dr. Trent would have gone to Montreal. But it did rain and you shall hear what happened to her because of it.

Verity 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 woman is either pitied as a failure or scrutinised as something not quite natural.

Deerwood and the Stirlings had long since relegated Verity to hopeless old maidenhood. But Verity herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that something would change—that she would change, perhaps, and learn to want what she was supposed to want. That hope died on this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and no closer to wanting any man than she had been at nineteen.

Ay, there lay the sting. Verity did not mind so much being unmarried. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellington or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. The thought of being any man’s wife made her feel faintly ill in a way she had never been able to explain, even to herself. What hurt her—what she could barely stand to look at directly—was that she was wrong, somehow. Broken. That she could not make herself feel what every other woman apparently felt as naturally as breathing.

The tears came into her eyes as she lay there alone in the faintly greying darkness. She dared not let herself cry as hard as she wanted to, for two reasons. She was afraid that crying might bring on another attack of that pain around the heart. She had had a spell of it after she had got into bed—rather worse than any she had had yet. And she was afraid her mother would notice her red eyes at breakfast and keep at her with minute, persistent, mosquito-like questions regarding the cause thereof.

“Suppose,” thought Verity with a ghastly grin, “I answered with the plain truth: ‘I am crying because I will never marry, and you would be more horrified by the reason than by the fact.’ How Mother would look—though she is ashamed every day of her life of her old maid daughter.”

But of course appearances should be kept up. “It is not,” Verity could hear her mother’s prim, dictatorial voice asserting, “it is not maidenly to dwell on such things. You simply haven’t met the right man yet.”

The thought of her mother’s determined hopefulness made Verity laugh—for she had a sense of humour nobody in her clan suspected. For that matter, there were a good many things about Verity that nobody suspected. But her laughter was very superficial and presently she lay there, a huddled, futile little figure, listening to the rain pouring down outside and watching, with a sick distaste, the chill, merciless light creeping into her ugly, sordid room.

She knew the ugliness of that room by heart—knew it and hated it. The yellow-painted floor, with one hideous, “hooked” rug by the bed, with a grotesque, “hooked” dog on it, always grinning at her when she awoke; the faded, dark-red paper; the ceiling discoloured by old leaks and crossed by cracks; the narrow, pinched little washstand; the brown-paper lambrequin with purple roses on it; the spotted old looking-glass with the crack across it, propped up on the inadequate dressing-table; the jar of ancient potpourri made by her mother in her mythical honeymoon; the shell-covered box, with one burst corner, which Cousin Stickles had made in her equally mythical girlhood; the beaded pincushion with half its bead fringe gone; the one stiff, yellow chair; the faded old motto, “Gone but not forgotten,” worked in coloured yarns about Great-grandmother Stirling’s grim old face; the old photographs of ancient relatives long banished from the rooms below. There were only two pictures that were not of relatives. One, an old chromo of a puppy sitting on a rainy doorstep. That picture always made Verity unhappy. That forlorn little dog crouched on the doorstep in the driving rain! Why didn’t some one open the door and let him in? The other picture was a faded, passe-partouted engraving of Queen Louise coming down a stairway, which Aunt Wellington had lavishly given her on her tenth birthday. For nineteen years she had looked at it and hated it, beautiful, smug, self-satisfied Queen Louise. But she never dared destroy it or remove it. Mother and Cousin Stickles would have been aghast, or, as Verity irreverently expressed it in her thoughts, would have had a fit.

Every room in the house was ugly, of course. But downstairs appearances were kept up somewhat. There was no money for rooms nobody ever saw. Verity sometimes felt that she could have done something for her room herself, even without money, if she were permitted. But her mother had negatived every timid suggestion and Verity did not persist. Verity never persisted. She was afraid to. Her mother could not brook opposition. Mrs. Stirling would sulk for days if offended, with the airs of an insulted duchess.

The only thing Verity liked about her room was that she could be alone there at night—alone with her thoughts that must never be spoken, her feelings that must never be shown.

But, after all, what did it matter if a room, which you used for nothing except sleeping and dressing in, were ugly? Verity was never permitted to stay alone in her room for any other purpose. People who wanted to be alone, so Mrs. Frederick Stirling and Cousin Stickles believed, could only want to be alone for some sinister purpose. But her room in the Blue Castle was everything a room should be.

Verity, so cowed and subdued and overridden and snubbed in real life, was wont to let herself go rather splendidly in her day-dreams. Nobody in the Stirling clan, or its ramifications, suspected this, least of all her mother and Cousin Stickles. They never knew that Verity had two homes—the ugly red brick box of a home, on Elm Street, and the Blue Castle in Spain. Verity had lived spiritually in the Blue Castle ever since she could remember. She had been a very tiny child when she found herself possessed of it. Always, when she shut her eyes, she could see it plainly, with its turrets and banners on the pine-clad mountain height, wrapped in its faint, blue loveliness, against the sunset skies of a fair and unknown land. Everything wonderful and beautiful was in that castle. Jewels that queens might have worn; robes of moonlight and fire; couches of roses and gold; long flights of shallow marble steps, with great, white urns, and with slender, mist-clad maidens going up and down them; courts, marble-pillared, where shimmering fountains fell and nightingales sang among the myrtles; halls of mirrors that reflected only lovely women—herself the loveliest of all, for whose glance others might do anything. All that supported her through the boredom of her days was the hope of going on a dream spree at night. Most, if not all, of the Stirlings would have died of horror if they had known half the things Verity did in her Blue Castle.

For one thing she had quite a few lovers in it. Oh, only one at a time. One who wooed her with all the romantic ardour of old tales and won her after long devotion, and was wedded to her with pomp and circumstance in the great, banner-hung chapel of the Blue Castle.

At twelve, this lover had been a fairy-tale prince, vague and golden. At fifteen, a knight in armour, faceless but brave. At twenty, the figure had shifted and blurred—she could not make it come clear no matter how she tried. At twenty-five, Verity had stopped trying to give her lover a shape at all. There was only ever a presence, a warmth, a voice. She told herself this was because she was becoming more spiritual, less concerned with appearances. She did not tell herself—she could not quite let herself know—that whenever the faceless figure began to take form in her drowsing mind, it was never the form she was supposed to imagine.

But recently—very recently—something had changed. Perhaps it was John Foster’s books that had done it, with their wild heroines who lived free in the woods and answered to no one. Perhaps it was simply that Verity was too tired to keep lying to herself. Her dream-lover had begun to solidify: a figure with a brown, laughing face and untidy hair and clever hands. A girl’s face. A woman’s hands.

Verity had shoved the dream away, heart pounding, and had not been able to find the Blue Castle at all for three nights afterward.

I don’t say Verity deliberately murdered her imaginary lovers as she outgrew them. One simply faded away as another came. Things are very convenient in this respect in Blue Castles. But this new specter would not come when called and would not leave when banished, and Verity did not know what to do with her.

On this morning of her day of fate, Verity could not find the key of her Blue Castle at all. Reality pressed on her too hardly, barking at her heels like a maddening little dog. She was twenty-nine, lonely, undesired, ill-favoured—the only homely girl in a handsome clan, with no past and no future. As far as she could look back, life was drab and colourless, with not one single crimson or purple spot anywhere. 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 Verity, in a kind of panic. “We’re all horribly long-lived. It sickens me to think of it.”

She was glad it was raining—or rather, she was drearily satisfied that it was raining. There would be no picnic that day. This annual picnic, whereby Aunt and Uncle Wellington—one always thought of them in that succession—inevitably celebrated their engagement at a picnic thirty years before, had been, of late years, a veritable nightmare to Verity. By an impish coincidence it was the same day as her birthday and, after she had passed twenty-five, nobody let her forget it.

Much as she hated going to the picnic, it would never have occurred to her to rebel against it. There seemed to be nothing of the revolutionary in her nature. And she knew exactly what every one would say to her at the picnic. Uncle Wellington, whom she disliked and despised even though he had fulfilled the highest Stirling aspiration, “marrying money,” would say to her in a pig’s whisper, “No young man on the horizon yet, my dear?” and then go off into the bellow of laughter with which he invariably concluded his dull remarks. Aunt Wellington, of whom Verity stood in abject awe, would talk about Lily’s trousseau preparations and Cecil’s latest devoted letter and look at Verity with that particular expression—pitying, suspicious, faintly distasteful—that said clearer than words: What is wrong with you?

And Verity would have to look as pleased and interested as if Lily’s happiness were her own or else Aunt Wellington would be offended. And Verity 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 Verity on her sallow skin—

“I don’t know why all the girls of today are so sunburned. When I was a girl my skin was roses and cream. I was counted the prettiest girl in Canada, my dear. The men simply flocked around me. You must try to take better care of yourself, Vee—a woman’s complexion is her fortune, you know.”

Perhaps Uncle Herbert wouldn’t say anything—or perhaps he would remark jocularly, “How peaked you’re looking, Vee! You need a husband to put some roses in those cheeks!” And then everybody would laugh over the excessively humorous idea of poor, scrawny little Vee getting a husband.

Handsome, solemn Uncle James, whom Verity disliked but respected because he was reputed to be very clever and was therefore the clan oracle—brains being none too plentiful in the Stirling connection—would probably remark with the owl-like sarcasm that had won him his reputation, “I suppose you’re still waiting for your prince to come, Vee? He must have gotten lost.”

And Uncle Benjamin would ask some of his abominable conundrums, between wheezy chuckles, and answer them himself.

“Why is Vee like a sundial?”

“Because she’s no use without a son—S-U-N, you know, but I mean S-O-N—ha ha!”

Verity had heard him tell that joke a dozen times and every time she wanted to throw something at him. But she never did. In the first place, the Stirlings simply did not throw things; in the second place, Uncle Benjamin was a wealthy and childless old widower and Verity had been brought up in the fear and admonition of his money. If she offended him he would cut her out of his will—supposing she were in it. Verity did not want to be cut out of Uncle Benjamin’s will. She had been poor all her life and knew the galling bitterness of it. So she endured his jokes and even smiled tortured little smiles over them.

Aunt Isabel, downright and disagreeable as an east wind, would criticise her in some way—Verity could not predict just how, for Aunt Isabel never repeated a criticism—she found something new with which to jab you every time. Last year it had been: “You’re getting a strange look about you, Vee. Settles around the mouth in women who’ve given up.” 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. Verity 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.”

Oppressively competent, Aunt Mildred would talk endlessly of her husband and her odious prodigies of babies to Verity, because Verity would be the only one she could find to put up with it. For the same reason, Cousin Gladys—really First Cousin Gladys once removed, according to the strict way in which the Stirlings tabulated relationship—a tall, thin lady who admitted she had a sensitive disposition, would describe minutely the tortures of her neuritis. And Lily, the wonder girl of the whole Stirling clan, who had everything Verity had not—beauty, popularity, love,—would show off her beauty and presume on her popularity and flaunt her sparkling ring in Verity’s dazzled, envious eyes. Lily, who wanted exactly what she was supposed to want and got it without trying. Lily, who had never once had to lie awake at night wondering what was wrong with her.

There would be none of all this today. And there would be no packing up of teaspoons. The packing up was always left for Verity and Cousin Stickles. And once, six years ago, a silver teaspoon from Aunt Wellington’s wedding set had been lost. Verity never heard the last of that silver teaspoon. Its ghost appeared Banquo-like at every subsequent family feast.

Oh, yes, Verity 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. If Aunt Wellington could not celebrate on the sacred day itself she would have no celebration at all. Thank whatever gods there were for that.

Since there would be no picnic, Verity made up her mind that, if the rain held up in the afternoon, she would go up to the library and get another of John Foster’s books. Verity was never allowed to read novels, but John Foster’s books were not novels. They were “nature books”—so the librarian told Mrs. Frederick Stirling—“all about the woods and birds and bugs and things like that, you know.” So Verity was allowed to read them—under protest, for it was only too evident that she enjoyed them too much. It was permissible, even laudable, to read to improve your mind and your religion, but a book that was enjoyable was dangerous. Verity did not know whether her mind was being improved or not; but she felt vaguely that if she had come across John Foster’s books years ago life might have been a different thing for her. They seemed to her to yield glimpses of a world into which she might once have entered, though the door was forever barred to her now. A world where people lived by their own rules, in the wild places, answerable to no one. It was only within the last year that John Foster’s books had been in the Deerwood library, though the librarian told Verity that he had been a well-known writer for several years.

“Where does he live?” Verity had asked.

“Nobody knows. From the books one would think somewhere in the Canadian wilderness, but no more information can be had. The publishers won’t say a word. Quite likely John Foster is a nom de plume. The books are so popular we can’t keep them in at all, though I really can’t see what people find in them to rave over.”

“I think they’re wonderful,” said Verity, timidly.

“Oh—well—” Miss Clarkson smiled in a patronising fashion that relegated Verity’s opinions to limbo, “I can’t say I care much for bugs myself. But certainly Foster seems to know all there is to know about them.”

Verity didn’t know whether she cared much for bugs either. It was not John Foster’s uncanny knowledge of wild creatures and insect life that enthralled her. She could hardly say what it was—some tantalising lure of a mystery never revealed—some hint of a great secret just a little further on—some faint, elusive echo of lovely, forgotten things—the way Foster wrote about freedom and solitude and the green, breathing woods as if they were not just settings but escapes. As if the wilderness could hide you from all the things you were supposed to be. John Foster’s magic was indefinable.

Yes, she would get a new Foster book. It was a month since she had Dovetailed Moments, so surely Mother could not object. Verity had read it four times—she knew whole passages off by heart. One in particular she returned to again and again, about a woman who lived alone in a cabin by a lake: She answered to no name but the one she had chosen for herself. She owed nothing to anyone. The pines kept her secrets.

And—she almost thought she would go and see Dr. Trent about that queer pain around the heart. It had come rather often lately, and the palpitations were becoming annoying, not to speak of an occasional dizzy moment and a queer shortness of breath. But could she go to see him without telling any one? It was a most daring thought. None of the Stirlings ever consulted a doctor without holding a family council and getting Uncle James’ approval. Then, they went to Dr. Ambrose Marsh of Port Lawrence, who had married Second Cousin Adelaide Stirling.

But Verity disliked Dr. Ambrose Marsh. And, besides, she could not get to Port Lawrence, fifteen miles away, without being taken there. She did not want any one to know about her heart. There would be such a fuss made and every member of the family would come down and talk it over and advise her and caution her and warn her and tell her horrible tales of great-aunts and cousins forty times removed who had been “just like that” and “dropped dead without a moment’s warning, my dear.”

Aunt Isabel would remember that she had always said Vee looked like a girl who would have heart trouble—“so pinched and peaked always”; and Uncle Wellington would take it as a personal insult, when “no Stirling ever had heart disease before”; and Georgiana would forebode in perfectly audible asides that “poor, dear little Vee isn’t long for this world, I’m afraid”; and Cousin Gladys would say, “Why, my heart has been like that for years,” in a tone that implied no one else had any business even to have a heart; and Lily—Lily would merely look beautiful and superior and disgustingly healthy, as if to say, “Why all this fuss over a faded superfluity like Vee when you have me?”

Verity felt that she couldn’t tell anybody unless she had to. She felt quite sure there was nothing at all seriously wrong with her heart and no need of all the pother that would ensue if she mentioned it. She would just slip up quietly and see Dr. Trent that very day. As for his bill, she had the two hundred dollars that her father had put in the bank for her the day she was born. She was never allowed to use even the interest of this, but she would secretly take out enough to pay Dr. Trent.

Dr. Trent was a gruff, outspoken, absent-minded old fellow, but he was a recognised authority on heart disease, even if he were only a general practitioner in out-of-the-world Deerwood. Dr. Trent was over seventy and there had been rumours that he meant to retire soon. None of the Stirling clan had ever gone to him since he had told Cousin Gladys, ten years before, that her neuritis was all imaginary and that she enjoyed it. You couldn’t patronise a doctor who insulted your first-cousin-once-removed like that—not to mention that he was a Presbyterian when all the Stirlings went to the Anglican church. But Verity, between the devil of disloyalty to clan and the deep sea of fuss and clatter and advice, thought she would take a chance with the devil.

Besides, she thought, turning her face to the rain-streaked window, Dr. Trent was not the sort of man who would look at a twenty-nine-year-old spinster and wonder what was wrong with her. He would only wonder what was wrong with her heart. And that, at least, was a question Verity might be able to answer.

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