Ethan was not allowed to repeat his visit, and life went on for several
years without incident at the old Fort. Yet, since "it is in the soul
that things happen," these were stirring times. One shrinks from
inquiring too closely into what the years held for the two eager-hearted
women shut up there with those perilous companions, thwarted hope,
stunted ambition, and pent-up energy. Well had it been for Valeria had
she not possessed that small, cramped competency. If the girl had had to
earn her living, she might have found peace, if not great gladness, in
wholesome grappling with the material things of life. But in saying so
one forgets that all this was thirty years ago, when a penniless
Southern woman who had a brother, or even some distant relation, to
support her, no more dreamed of getting her own bread than she does
to-day of going before the mast.
Meantime, with John Gano things for a while went better. At the end of
four years of uninterrupted toil, such years of all work and no play as
only an American will put up with, he was able to offer his cousin the
kind of home he had set his heart on. They were married in the South,
and after a brief visit to Mrs. Gano, John took his bride to New York.
Ten months' happiness, followed by the birth of a daughter, whom they
named Valeria, and called Val; then protracted ill-health and a yearly
baby for the young mother, money troubles and killing work for John
Gano.
The distance between New York and New Plymouth was too great to admit of
much visiting back and forth on trivial grounds for people of limited
means. But young Mrs. Gano was not expected to live after the birth of
her fourth child, and her "aunt-mother-in-law" was sent for. The elder
Mrs. Gano stayed till the danger was past, and, as she wrote home to her
daughter, "to relieve Virginia a little of the pressure of existence,"
she had made up her mind to bring back Emmeline with her to the Fort.
Emmeline was the younger of the two little girls, and that was the
reason given for her having been chosen instead of Val, since, with a
new baby in the house, a child of fourteen months was more of a charge
on its mother's mind even than an enterprising young person of four. But
it was presently revealed that Emmeline was by far the more attractive
child, gentle, charming, and very beautiful to look upon; rather like
her cousin Ethan, whose loss was still mourned silently at the old Fort.
There was no further visiting between the two houses until the following
winter, when Valeria's health broke down. Mrs. Gano would not hear it
said that her daughter was dying of consumption.
"I've had a cough myself for half a century. Consumption? Nonsense!
Valeria had undermined her constitution by too much study and a too
sedentary life. What was to be expected when one remembered the hours
she kept! But there! no Gano could ever do anything with moderation."
However, the jealous mother was alarmed at last, and admitted that what
Valeria needed was a change.
"No," said the old-young woman; "I have reached the end."
A journey to the Adirondacks was proposed. Valeria refused to fall in
with the plan.
"You wouldn't let me go away when it would have been some use," she
said; "leave me in peace now."
A horrible fear clutched at the resolute heart of the mother as she took
fresh and sudden note of the wasted frame, the languid, long,
transparent hands, the far-away vision of the eyes.
"No, I _wouldn't_ let you go alone and unprotected. But now that John
and his wife are settled in New York it's a different story altogether.
You can stay with them, and--and study sculpture for a while," she
added, with a visible effort.
Valeria shook her head. But there was a new light in the hollow eyes.
Little by little she was seen to be in reality feverishly bent on
availing herself of her mother's late concession. Mrs. Gano was as good
as her word. She put no further obstacle in the way, and, though it was
the depth of winter, took the long journey with her daughter, arriving
at her son's house much exhausted, to find Mrs. John ill in bed, a
mutiny among the servants, and a scene of inexpressible confusion and
disorder, in the midst of which stood Val, turbulent and triumphant. Nor
did she budge upon the usually subduing apparition of Mrs. Gano. Dirty
and neglected, an impudent little face with bold gray eyes looking out
from a wild swirl of tawny hair, there she stood in the middle of the
untidy dining-room, aided and abetted in some unspeakable enormity by
the mere presence of her faithful ally, a huge St. Bernard dog.
"My patience!" exclaimed Mrs. Gano, surveying the scene.
"Why, it's my dear little namesake," said Aunt Valeria, with a kind of
gentle incredulity, as she moved forward.
Her dear little namesake retreated, dragging the great dog back with her
by the collar.
"_That_ my granddaughter!"
Mrs. Gano spoke with mixed emotion, and hurriedly put on her spectacles.
"My darling," said Aunt Valeria, watching the dog with the tail of her
eye, "come and kiss me."
The child stared solemnly without moving a muscle.
"Come, my dear, and speak to your grandmother."
Mrs. Gano advanced with majesty till she was arrested by a low growl
from the St. Bernard.
"Don't be afraid of us," urged Aunt Valeria, somewhat superfluously.
"I've brought you a pretty toy in my trunk. Come, darling."
The child kept a suspicious eye on the ingratiating stranger.
"She has very pretty hair," pursued Aunt Valeria, amiably.
"She hasn't pretty manners," retorted Mrs. Gano.
"Oh, she's shy. Don't be afraid of us"--she ventured a step nearer.
"Come here, my sweet little one."
Never taking her eyes off her gentle aunt, the sweet little one said,
with a charming childish lisp:
"Ef yer don't be thtil, I'll thick my dawg on yer."
The two ladies fell back appalled.
"Turn that great animal out of doors," said Mrs. Gano, in awful tones,
to the cook. But Katie O'Flynn shrank visibly from availing herself of
this kind permission.
"Sure, mum, he'd have the heart out of me; and that's just what Miss Val
would like, be the Howly Mother!"
"This is beyond everything," said Mrs. Gano, more nonplussed than she
had often found herself. "The child must be out of her senses. We will
go up to your mistress," she said to Katie O'Flynn. "If you were _my_
daughter," she added, solemnly, looking back at the immovable one, "I
should know how to deal with you. As it is, I'll leave you to your
father."
But leaving Val to her father proved a less drastic measure than Mrs.
Gano anticipated. Whether because of his sentiment about the
first-born--offspring of that only year of happiness and hope--or merely
because her wildness was a distraction in his brief moments of respite
from crushing cares, at all events, he looked upon the child with a
lenient eye. He had her much about him when he was at home, smiled at
recitals of her escapades, and called her his amiable firebrand, never
in the least realizing that the overflow of animal spirits, which in
rare hours of ease were his diversion and delight, might be to others a
chronic bewilderment, and a not infrequent torment.
"Her mother," said the elder Mrs. Gano, not thoroughly understanding the
situation--"her mother has utterly spoiled the child."
"No, no," said John Gano, smiling. "Val was born like that. I've never
known anybody with such high spirits."
"'Spirits?' Nonsense! _Fever._ And you, every one of you help to
aggravate her unnatural activity of mind and body. Meanwhile, my advice
to you is: Don't make an idol of your eldest daughter. It's bad enough
in the case of a boy, but no girl survives it."
Mrs. Gano returned home with little loss of time. Her daughter-in-law's
higgledy-piggledy house-keeping, the "slackness" that was not all
ill-health, coupled with the ubiquitous and unquiet presence of Val,
made the elder lady long for her peaceful home in the West. Her going
left behind a memory of awe and a vivid sense of relief.
Valeria the elder, with improved health, or else strung up to a
semblance of it by the potent ghost of a dear ambition, began her
studies in art. She took out a course of lessons in modelling at the
Cooper Institute.
The story of those months may not be written here. We will not dog her
through her days of disillusionment, her shrinking from the curiosity of
the students, her amazement at their facility, her heart-sinking at
their youth. As the weeks went on the teacher, an Italian of fine and
gentle countenance, looked at her far more often than he looked at her
work; and yet it was observed by the merciless young crew in the studio
that her blundering attempts were inspected with an interest and
frequency not bestowed on their more creditable efforts.
Signor Conti leaned over her one day, speaking kindly phrases in broken
English about the new attempt she was making.
"Don't! don't, please!" she said, on a sudden impulse. "Understand that
at least I _know_ it's bad."
"Oh, it will be better," he answered, gently.
"No," she said, very low, "it will never be much better. I've waited too
long."
"You must not feel discouraged." He leaned lower and spoke under his
breath. "You may yet find great happiness by means of your art."
She shook her head, and when she could steady her voice said:
"I'm going home."
The man's face changed.
"You will not do that!"
"Yes."
"It would be another mistake, I think."
"Another?"
"Yes. The first was for one of your temperament to come to a great noisy
class like this. You cannot do your best work here. This is not the
place for you."
"What could I have done?"
"You can work under some artist alone, some one who can give you more
time. I tell you, you have talent, a _bello ingegno, signorina_."
She looked up with a gleam of hope shining through tears.
"You--_you_ are too busy. I'm afraid you don't receive pupils at your
own studio," she said, timidly.
"No, I do not receive pupils as a rule; but I will receive you,
signorina."
That was the end of lessons at the Cooper Institute, and the beginning
of the brief, but best, happiness Valeria's life was to know.
Some indiscreet allusion to the change in a letter Valeria or her
brother had written to their mother brought Mrs. Gano in hot haste to
New York again. She found Valeria a different being--but she also found
Signor Conti and a lonely studio in a side street, where her daughter
worked alone with this foreigner, modelling "the members of the human
body," while the sculptor worked on his "Lady at the Bath." It was all
unspeakably objectionable and un-American. This was no fit _milieu_ for
a Gano. It wasn't a seemly place for any lady. Valeria must come home.
She told her so the same night. No, Valeria could not do that.
"Why? Are you so attached, then, to this Italian image-maker?"
Valeria went home to the West the next day. The following winter she
died.
Little Val was nearly seven when she woke up one morning and was told
that the baby had died in the night. Then it was true, this thing she
had heard about people dying. Her excitement and curiosity were
infinitely greater than her sorrow. Had he gone to heaven yet? No, he
was in the cold, uninhabited "best" room, where nobody but
strangers--guests and grandmothers--had ever slept. She made Nanna hurry
through the bath and dressing. The nurse was crying. Val observed her
critically.
"Isn't heaven a nice place?" the child asked; and a vague uneasiness
seized her with regard to this much-vaunted reward of merit.
"Av coorse, av coorse--the most beautiful place ye can think av. The
streets are all gowld," said the woman, with quivering face.
"I must go and see mamma," the child said.
But she had to pass the "best" room door. She couldn't get by, but stood
there rooted before it. She listened, advancing her small ear nearer and
nearer. No sound. Then she put her eye to the key-hole. But the key-hole
did not command the bed. She glanced over her shoulder--nobody near; the
house silent. She turned the knob softly and went in, shutting the door
behind her; then quickly reopening it, and leaving it prudently ajar.
She tiptoed to the bed. Behold, the coverlid lay smooth, and no little
dead child there at all. Then he _was_ gone to heaven. If she'd got up a
little earlier she might have seen the angel flying off with him. He
hadn't left the window open; the very blind wasn't drawn up. What was
that on the table? Something white, laid over something strange,
and--two little sandalled feet stuck stiffly out!
_On the table!_ It couldn't be the baby lying on the hard marble slab!
The cruelty of the idea made her cold. Slowly she came nearer. She
circled, fascinated, round to the other side. Yes, a gleam of the baby's
yellow hair. The white cloth over him was a little awry, but it covered
the body and hid the face. Horrible to have the air shut out; she felt
stifled at the thought. He was lying on a pillow, she could see. But
there was something inhuman in leaving a baby like this. And they had
been so irritatingly careful of him before, never left him alone a
moment; neglected her on his account; wouldn't even let her hold
him--oh, _so_ carefully; and now--this! Nothing, perhaps, in all the
strange circumstance--not even the subsequent burial--impressed the
child so painfully as this fact of the baby being laid unguarded on a
table, as though he had been no more than a book. This it was that by
one stroke seemed to cut him off from fellowship, that suddenly degraded
him from his high estate of life and lordly consideration. This "death"
was evidently a far stranger thing than going to heaven.
A feeling of intense commiseration for the little brother swept over
her. She came nearer, crying. "Poor! poor!" she whispered. Why had they
shut out the air? She lifted her hand and turned the linen down from the
waxen face. Her tears dried on her cheeks as she stood staring. He might
be only asleep. How had they come to be so sure, and lay him unguarded
on a table, when he might wake and-- She saw in a flash how she would
earn the gratitude of the family. She would wake him, and she, who
hadn't been allowed to hold him, would carry him to her mother. And how
glad they'd all be! And it would be _her_ doing.
"Baby," she said; "baby, wake up!" She put her hand on the body, and
withdrew it quickly. He felt so strangely unlike life and tender
babyhood. An evil dread took hold on her. She strove some moments,
battling with new suspicions and vague fears. "Poor little baby! poor
little baby!" she whispered, tiptoed up, and kissed his cheek. Violently
she started back. Who that ever, as a child, has felt that first chill
contact with the mysterious enemy--who does not remember the formless
horror it conjures up in the unprepared young mind? This, then, was
death. She walked backward to the door, staring at the dead face,
feeling that cold touch on her lips spread like a frost through her
body. She must go quickly and get into her mother's lap. With her hand
on the door, "Poor! poor!" she repeated with a sob, still looking back
at the face. "You can't come and get warm in mother's lap any more;
_you've_ got to go to heaven." Had they any idea how cold the baby was?
Should she go and get his quilted travelling-coat? Was it any use? A
faint dawning of the hopelessness of any earthly service to the dead
made her resolution waver, and, with that, a horrible weight descended
on her heart. She drew a hard breath, ran back to the table, and knelt
down before it with folded hands and trembling lips. "Forgive me, baby,"
she whispered, "'bout the yellow ball. If I'd known this I wouldn't have
taken it away." She scrambled to her feet and ran out as fast as she
could, leaving the door ajar.
She was going up to bed that same evening, full of excitement and
speculation, when her father called to Nanna over the banisters to come
and help to find the smelling-salts--her mistress had fainted.
"Go to your room; I'll come presently," said the woman; and they shut
her mother's door.
They hadn't let her go in since morning. Her mother was ill, they said,
but that was a pretence; she was always ill. The reason Val was shut out
to-day was because her grandmother had arrived that morning, and her
grandmother was her enemy. She was in there now.
On every-day occasions Val would have contested the matter; but,
grandmothers apart, there was a great deal to think about and consider
just now.
She sat down on the stairs. She had seen her father crying that day, and
the very foundations of all stabilities seemed tottering. Men could cry,
it seemed--cry like little children. It was very strange; she had
supposed it a thing to be outgrown. For her own part, she had nearly
overcome the childish habit. The baby, of course, had cried a great
deal; but one's _father_!
Somebody was coming up-stairs behind the servant--a strange man. What
was he carrying? Something big, and as shiny as the new musical-box.
She hugged the banisters as the two passed.
"What's that?" she said to Matilda.
The servant didn't answer. She and the strange man went by. As Val was
in the act of following, her grandmother appeared. She looked at Val a
moment, and then called the nurse in a whisper: "Put that child to bed."
To-morrow was the funeral. She should go, she had said.
"No, certainly not," said her grandmother; and Val set her firm little
mouth.
After breakfast the next morning, her father went into the room where
the baby was, and stayed a long time. The doctor was with her mother.
The doctor was a rude man, with a long yellow-white beard; he had spoken
as sternly as if he'd been one's grandmother when Val had said she
_would_ see her mother. She lingered now by the "best" room door. Would
she hear her father crying again? She hoped she would. There was
something so horribly exciting in it; it made her feel as if she should
die, and yet she listened eagerly to find out if he were doing it again.
No sound. He came out after a long, long while, and kissed her; his face
was wet.
"Run to your nurse, my dear," he said.
She didn't tell him Nanna had been sent out. He smoothed her hair, and
then went into her mother's room.
She was thinking a great deal about the baby. Nanna had been telling her
more about heaven. The nurse hadn't liked it when the child had asked
leading questions about the grave. But Nanna herself had said dozens of
times before, "I've buried me husband and three childer." What a curious
idea to put people in the dirty, black ground! And the baby! It must be
very bad for his pretty white clothes. How awful to have earth on one's
face, all over the ears and mouth! She choked a little. But one wouldn't
feel it, of course; the real baby was in heaven. He would have
everything there. "Yellow balls, too?" she had asked Nanna.
"He won't want the likes of that," the nurse had said. Nanna was very
stupid; as if the baby had ever wanted anything in his life so much as
that yellow ball! Conscience pricked cruelly. She _had_ been selfish and
horrid to the poor baby. She fell a-crying. Very likely they didn't have
yellow balls in heaven, and wouldn't know how much the baby loved them,
and he mightn't like to ask; besides, the poor baby talked such a queer
language, strangers never understood him. A sudden inspiration. It was
rather confusing about the real baby in heaven, and the real baby in the
"best" room. Wouldn't it be better to be on the safe side? Anyhow, there
was that business about Gabriel and the Last Trump and the Resurrection.
They had talked about that in church, and Nanna and mother had said it
was true. The dead would surely rise; the baby in the "best" room there
would one day come alive. It looked as if there'd be two real babies in
the end; but never mind. She flew up-stairs, rummaged the cupboard in
the nursery, and came flying down with something wrapped in her apron.
The doctor was in the lower hall talking to her father; she peeped at
them through the balusters, then softly on to the "best" room.
She shut the door this time, though more frightened than the day before.
She stopped short in the middle of the room. Too late! the baby had
gone. But there was something she'd never seen before. She went close.
How pretty and shiny it was; it smelt like the piano. Why, this was what
the strange man had brought up-stairs behind Matilda last night. It was
bigger than the musical-box--much bigger. What was in this beautiful,
shiny, new thing? She dragged a chair to the table, climbed on it, and
looked down into the coffin.
She stood some time motionless; then, hearing a noise in the hall,
hurriedly lifted a corner of the baby's frock and pushed a yellow ball
down against the padded white satin side.
In spite of the continued "riling" presence of a grandmother in the
house, Val made up her mind to be very good now the baby was gone, and
be a comfort to her mother. No more fights with Nanna, even over the
hair-combing; no defiant refusals to say her prayers. Standing by the
cot in her nightgown the evening of the funeral, "I shall say three
prayers," she announced, sternly; "and you mustn't interrupt, Nanna."
"Three!" said the nurse, suspicious of such overwhelming piety.
"Yes; I shall say, 'Our Father,' and 'Nower Lamy,' and then one of my
own--one I can understand as well as God. Now! Sh!" She knelt down and
recited the two accustomed petitions, and then, still kneeling there,
poured forth some stringent directions to the Lord which horrified the
good Christian woman not a little.
After that, Val insisted on going to church, rain or shine. She read her
Bible with vigor and astonishment, belaboring Nanna with difficult
questions. Nanna was so ill-inspired as sometimes to appeal in her
perplexity to the elder Mrs. Gano. But this lady found to her cost that
the course so successfully pursued with little Ethan was doomed to
failure here. When she thought to curb the excessive Gano concern about
Biblical interpretation by saying, "It is not a book for children," she
was met with:
"My Bible says, 'Suffer little children,' and people 'mustn't despise
the little ones.'"
Her father began to laugh; she felt encouraged to proceed:
"And says, 'Search ye the Scriptures,' too; nothin' 'bout waitin' till
you're old."
"You are too young to understand, even if I should try to explain."
"Why, I understand it nearly every bit," she answered, indignantly, "all
except the mizz--I can't find where it says about the mizz."
"The mizz?" repeated Mrs. Gano.
"The mizz?" her father echoed, uneasily. "I haven't read about that
myself."
"Well, you've heard about it in church. Didn't you go to church when
you were young?"
"Yes," said her parent, meekly, feeling the full force of her implied
criticism. "But I don't recall the--what is it?"
"The mizz. Mr. Weston says every Sunday in the Commandments: 'The sea
and all that in the mizz.'"
The elder Mrs. Gano could have put up with these crude evidences of a
share in the family bias, but not with her granddaughter's growing
unsubmissiveness, her chronic mutiny against the smallest restraint. The
child had been taught early to look upon herself as a very potent factor
in the family life. She observed that arrangements that failed to meet
with her approval were often altered. Her mother's sternest form of
discipline had been to argue with her. More than one servant had been
dismissed in obedience to Miss Val's demands. There was the case of the
lady house-keeper from Boston, who, in addition to regular duties,
undertook also to teach Val--a learned maiden lady with shaky nerves and
a passion for history. It was supposed she left so suddenly because of
illness in her family, until Val admitted that she had threatened the
lady with the carving-knife after dinner one day.
"What on earth made you do that?" said the child's father, horrified.
"She talked too much about the British," replied Val, calmly.
"What!"
"I said the Americans were just as brave. I could see she didn't think
so, so I got the carvin'-knife and--well, you know, she just caught the
three-o'clock train."
The June of that year was intensely hot, but young Mrs. Gano was too ill
to be carried out of the stifling city. Val was sent into the country to
some cousins "for a change"--for whose change was not insisted upon. She
was not brought back till the day after her mother's funeral. It was a
strange and terrible time. For once she was passive and subdued. If the
servants had not already remarked on her hard-heartedness, she would
have cried herself ill. But she was full of a dull resentment as well as
pain. At the time she was sent away she had gathered, as a quick-witted
child does--Heaven knows how!--that her mother was dangerously ill.
During that time in the country she had prayed for her recovery as she
never prayed before or after, as none but the passionate-hearted ever
pray. Night after night, when the light had been put out, and the others
had gone to sleep, Val would get out of bed and kneel down at the side
beseeching God to save her mother's life, and making solemn compacts
with the Lord of Hosts. She would be so good, and build a church, too,
in memory of this answer to prayer; she would be a nun, and serve God
all her days, if He would spare her mother. She pointed out how easy it
was for the All-Powerful to do this little thing. She wasn't waiting
till it would require a Lazarus miracle, she was asking Him in good
time. He had only to let the doctors know what would cure her. But she,
Val Gano, would recognize in the recovery a direct answer to prayer, and
she would keep her vows. She remembered a sermon she had heard on
mountain-moving faith. Hers should be perfect and unfaltering. She knew
God would answer this one prayer; she saw herself already in her nun's
black habit, and began to say her last farewell to the world, to the
prince that she knew was coming later on, to all her children--she
called them by their names, "five brave sons and five beauteous
daughters." She turned her back on them all, cut her long hair, and
heard the convent gates clang to--all this was an accomplished destiny
in her mind, when the telegram came to say her mother was dead. Her
father was ill, too, now; there was nothing but sickness and death in
the world, and the child was to stay where she was. The telegram was
from her grandmother to cousin Nathaniel. Four days later, when she was
permitted to go home, the funeral was over, and her grandmother was in
charge of her mother's house. It was very awful. What did God mean by
it?
The following week John Gano returned to his post at the bank. As he
was leaving the counting-room, that first and last day after the death
of his wife, he was seized with a violent hemorrhage, and was carried
home, it was thought, to die.
Mrs. Gano nursed her son back to something faintly resembling health,
and urged him to come home with her. No; he would stay where he was,
till--
"Nonsense! you must rouse yourself for your children's sake. Here is
Val, left to servants, and running wild. She must go to school. None
better than the New Plymouth Seminary for Young Ladies."
"Oh, time enough for that. I can't let the child go just yet."
"There _isn't_ time. That child is going to wreck and ruin. And you
don't suppose I'm going to leave you here alone? You must come and get
well and strong."
"It's no use," the invalid said, adding, half under his breath: "I'm
done for."
"Hush!" she interrupted, frowning. "Anybody is done for who has made up
his mind that he is."
John Gano shook his head.
"You know we all go like this. It's not a matter of imagination."
"Nearly everything's a matter of imagination," she said.
The gaunt man put his handkerchief to his lips.
"This is imagination, too, I suppose," he said, as he turned the bright
spot in and out of sight--"a case of seeing red."
"That small stain means very little in itself," she retorted, seeming
scarcely moved; "its effect on your mind is the only thing to be afraid
of."
"You speak as though I hadn't inherited the blessed business."
"Oh, inherited--inherited! I'm sick of that white feather showing all
along the line. Look at me!"
He did look at her. She seemed suddenly taller and thinner and grayer
and more defiant than any being he had ever beheld.
"Look at me!" she repeated. "I have been given up by the doctors half a
dozen times. My mother was told when I was sixteen that I had only a
piece of a lung left--that it might last me through the winter. It has
served my purpose for half a century since. But I didn't worry about the
color of my handkerchiefs, and I didn't admit for a moment that I could
possibly be induced to die--that is, of course"--she put on a sudden
aspect of resignation that was almost funny--"unless it was the Lord's
will."