THE BLUE CASTLE: A NOVEL
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General) North American (South West - Texas) North American (US West Coast - California, Portland)Transcript
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Valency 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 29 on the morrow and unmarried in a community in connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man. Deerwood. And the Sterlings had long since relegated valency to hopeless old maidenhood. But Valenti herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed little hope that romance would come her way. Yet never until this wett horrible morning when she wakened to the fact that she was 29 and unsought by any man. I there lay the sting. Valenti did not mind so much being an old maid. 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. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid. No man had ever desired her. The tears came into her eyes as she lay there alone in the faintly graying darkness. She dared to 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 valency with a ghastly grin. I answered with the plain truth. I am crying because I cannot get married. How horrified mother would be 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. Valenti could hear her mother's prim dictatorial voice asserting it is not maidenly to think about men. The thought of her mother's expression made valency laugh for she had a sense of humor. Nobody in her clan suspected for that matter. There were a good many things about valency 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 discolored by old leeks and crossed by cracks, the narrow pinched little wash stand, the brown paper, lambkin 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 Popery made by her mother in her mythical honeymoon. The shell.