Nothing seemed to matter now that her mother was dead. It was plain Val
would never be happy again. Leaving her home, to which she was devotedly
attached, was hardly a misfortune, any more than going to live with her
grandmother. What did anything matter? God hadn't heard her prayers; He
had mocked her faith, and she was motherless. She hadn't enough interest
in life even to be "owdacious," as her grandmother called it. She was
passive, almost "good."
Her father, observing her settled depression on the journey West,
gathered her into his arms, and whispered:
"We have each other, you know."
And she lay with her face hidden, and cried a long time, so quietly that
her grandmother thought she was asleep.
It was the reunion with her little sister that first roused her out of
her unchildlike apathy. Not the genial warmth of family affection, not
the diversion of having a playmate, but the tonic of a vigorous
antagonism, as unexpected as it seemed unnatural.
"Where is my room?" Val had asked, on the evening of their arrival at
the Old Fort.
"You are to sleep with Emmeline," said her grandmother.
"But, grandma, I've never slept with any one."
"Haven't you, my dear?"
"No, and I've always--"
"That will do now. Go up-stairs and wash your face and hands. Emmeline
will show you the way."
Val went off quietly enough, but it might have staggered Mrs. Gano
could she have known the rage and rebellion that seethed in that small
female heart.
It was dusk up in the little girls' room.
"Why haven't they lit the gas?" asked Val.
"We don't have gas here."
"Lamps, then."
"Gamma thinks lamps are too esplosive."
"Do you live in the dark?"
"No; we have candles, but it ain't dark enough yet. I'll show you where
everything is."
"I'll find 'em myself."
Val had espied the candles on the bureau. She lit them.
"Oh, we never have more'n one," admonished Emmie, gently.
Val went on calmly with her toilet. Presently Mrs. Gano looked in.
"Come to supper, little girls, as soon as you're ready."
She was going away without more words, when Emmie called out excitedly:
"Just look, gamma--two candles a-burnin', 'and no ship at sea!'"
Mrs. Gano smiled.
"Yes, my dear; one is enough."
She put the extinguisher over the nearest, and went down-stairs.
"Skinflint!" observed Val.
The supper was on this occasion a late and hurriedly prepared meal.
There were soft-boiled eggs. Val helped herself to two, and broke them
into a tumbler; then mixed in salt, and pepper, and butter, and bits of
bread.
"Just look at what Val's doing!" said Emmie, with innocent excitement,
while her elder and more accomplished sister stirred the agreeable
compound round and round.
"Never do that again," said Mrs. Gano, suddenly aware of the enormity.
"I don't like people to make puddings in their tumblers at my table."
"T'ain't puddin'," said Val.
"That will do." Mrs. Gano ended the matter according to her usual
formula. "Will you have some corn bread?"
"No, thank you; I don't like it."
"It is enough to answer, 'No, thank you.' Never say you don't like
anything you see on my table."
Val wished her father had not been too tired to come to supper. She had
observed that she was never so much corrected in his presence.
The full moon was shining in the gloaming as they passed the open
veranda door coming from their belated meal.
"Let's go out a minute," said Val to Emmie, in a whisper.
"No; it's too late. I'd catch cold."
"Oh, nonsense! Come along."
And she dragged her little sister off. But they stayed out only a few
minutes.
Emmie came in crying.
"Gamma, she made me fall down on the g'avel."
Val, without explanation or apology, flushed angrily and ran up-stairs.
She knocked at her father's door.
"Come in," he said, and she went over in the dim candlelight and stood
by his bed.
"How you feel, father?"
"Little tired," he answered. "Are you come to say good-night?"
"I 'spose I mustn't stay?"
"Oh, a minute or two."
She perched on the side of his bed. She had come in with the express
intention of making complaints. Some vague notion of sparing him because
he was ill kept her tongue-tied.
"Isn't this a nice old house?" he said, presently.
"Y--yes," she answered.
"In the daytime you'll see what capital places there are for you and
Emmie to play in."
"Is it true I mustn't swing on the gate?"
"Well, I dare say--"
"Emmie says so. Is it true I mustn't roll down the terraces?"
"H'm--well--"
"Emmie says so. What are terraces for, anyhow? I thought," she added,
with a sigh--"I thought it was going to be like the country."
"Oh, wait till you see it by daylight. It's a great deal more like the
country than New York."
"She doesn't keep a horse?"
"No."
"Nor a cow?"
"No; there's no stable, you see."
"There isn't any pig, father!"
"Oh no; she wouldn't like a pig."
"But there isn't a single smallest kind of a dog here. There isn't," she
wound up, tremulously--"there isn't even a chicken."
"You just wait till to-morrow, and I'll show you heaps of nice things.
There isn't a finer tulipifera rhododendron in the world than the one
out by the back veranda. And there's a beautiful old crooked catalpa on
the terrace you can make a house in."
"Emmie says she only lets cousin Ethan climb trees."
"Oh-a, well--a--I dare say there are plenty of other things. Aren't the
peaches nearly ripe?"
"I don't know."
"Have you seen my Indian arrowheads and stone hatchets down-stairs in
the cabinet?"
Val shook her head despairingly.
"They're in _her_ room."
Her father seemed not to notice.
"And to-morrow I must show you the great slab of stone at the back door.
The oldest inhabitant of this place told me when I first came to New
Plymouth that he remembered cracking nuts there at recess in 1800, when
he went to school here. There aren't many little girls who have such a
wonderful old house to live in."
"N--no. I liked the little trees and houses in the silver at supper."
"You'll like lots of things. I've got an old fiddle somewhere about--"
"_Have_ you? Oh, _that_'ll be fun!"
She crept up under his arm and nestled down against him.
It is no part of the office of this plain chronicle to attempt to
justify any person in it. Mrs. Gano herself was too little touched by
other people's opinions for one who sets about reporting her to dare
belittle her robust errors, or omit the defects of her qualities. Few
things would have bothered her so much as "being universally beloved,"
as the phrase goes; and yet, or perhaps because of this, her family
affections struck such deep root that plucking them up was like tearing
asunder the very fibres of her life. Even now, even to her son, she
could not speak of Valeria. Her long hands shook when she touched the
dead woman's books. When chance would bring to light a scrap of the
familiar writing, she would look away hurriedly, that she might not
break down utterly and lose herself in that ocean of agonized regret
that had threatened to sweep her, too, out of the world after Valeria's
death. It could never have occurred to her as possible that she should
set about winning anybody's affections. She would probably have regarded
it as a slavish and far from upright procedure. Affection was not a
thing to set snares for. It was the duty of children to love their
parents (she would probably have said to "honor" them); it was the duty
of parents to train the children in the way they should go. That was
"the law and the prophets." She could never have quite realized the
impression she made on the young or guilty-minded, but she would not
have denied that she belonged to a generation disposed to treat healthy
children on more or less Spartan principles. She had from time to time
obtained a sufficiently all-round view of the spoiling process that had,
to her thinking, wellnigh ruined Val Gano.
She had come quickly to the conclusion that she would say nothing more
to the child's nervous and ailing father, but was quite definitely
minded to set to work quietly and vigorously to correct in Val's
upbringing the pernicious mixture of sentimentality and neglect that had
made the child a _révoltée_ and a household terror. Already in New York
there had been a battle royal on the subject of the proper bedtime for a
little girl. Val had announced herself in no uncertain note as mortally
opposed to retiring at eight, or even nine. If there was one thing more
than another that she objected to utterly it was this going to bed at
all. Her mother had been helpless to prevent her from ranging the house
till remorseless sleep struck her down in the midst of her delights. If
she could manage to keep her eyes open, or to wake up after a brief
oblivion, she had made no bones about descending during the evening in
her night-gown, entirely prepared for the rapturous reception she knew
awaited her from her father. Val had early, then, come to associate her
grandmother with tyrannical designs on the liberty of the free-born
child after the hour of eight. She also had cause to know her repulsive
opinions on the value of a milk and cereal diet for the young. These,
and a general sense of radically opposed interests, not unmixed with
astonishment at, and fear of, the alarming old lady, made up the sum of
Val's dismay when she came calmly to consider what life was going to be
like here at the Fort.
She woke up on the morning after her arrival with a vague sense of a
duty to perform. She rubbed her eyes and kicked Emmie. Ah, yes, that was
it--her grandmother had not understood. She had condemned Val, who was
accustomed to her own room, with all her "things" about her, just as she
liked them, and no one to interfere--she had put Val in "another
person's room," with a single big bed in it, and condemned her to sleep
with Emmie. Her grandmother must be brought to a better understanding.
The child made no further announcement of her frame of mind till she
sat down to a barren breakfast with the despised Emmie. There was no
coffee. There was tea going up to her father, as usual. The silent Emmie
quaffed her mug of milk serenely. For a year now Val had demanded and
been given her morning cup of coffee.
"Ask for some for me, please," she said, after making inquiries of
Venie.
"Gamma says cawfee will make you an old woman before you're a young
one," said Emmie, showing her milk-white teeth in a pleased smile. "You
can't have any cawfee."
"Tell the cook, please," said Val, in a loud voice, "that I'm waitin'
for my coffee."
An' Jerusha put in a turbaned head.
"Lordy, missy! don' yer yell like dat, an' I'll make yo' some cambric
tea."
"I won't drink cambric tea. I'm the oldest of the famerly, and my father
always let me have coffee."
"Yo' father ve'y ill, missy. Yo' mustn't worrit yo' father."
"I _never_ worry my father--I settle everything for myself. Are you
going to get my coffee?"
"Can't do dat, missy, widout leab."
"Isn't grandma coming to breakfast?"
"No; she always habs it in her own room since Miss Valery died."
The child pushed back her chair and marched out. The two women called
remonstrance after her, but a mighty indignation swept her on. She
halted before her grandmother's room, knocked loudly, and opened the
door without further waiting.
Midway in her valiant advance upon the enemy she stood still. Mrs. Gano
was sitting propped with huge feather pillows in an ancient four-poster.
She wore a small shrunken cotton nightcap awry on her wonderful thick
hair, which tumbled out in a tangle of silver and lay dishevelled over
the white flannel jacket that was buttoned crooked over her night-gown,
the sleeves hanging loose and armless. In her long taper fingers she
held an open letter. Envelopes, notes, the _Baltimore Sun_, and other
papers were strewn thick over the silk patchwork quilt. A breakfast tray
stood on a table by the bedside. It wasn't her attire, it wasn't even
the shrunken, rakish nightcap (self-conscious and uneasy at its obvious
shortcomings), that made the old lady's aspect so arresting. She had not
said a word at the child's irruption, but she lowered her chin and
looked over her heavy gold-rimmed spectacles with a strange cold stare,
singularly disconcerting, even slightly paralyzing. But Val's was a bold
heart. And she realized that a blow must be struck for liberty.
"They haven't given me any coffee for my breakfast," she announced, with
equal directness and warmth.
The piercing eyes bored into her, but the stern mouth uttered no word.
The child began to wish she'd waited till her grandmother were properly
dressed and looked more human.
"I'm in my eighth year," she went on with dignity, "and I'm
accustomed--"
"'Good-morning!' is the custom in this house," said the old lady.
"Oh! Good-morning!" Slight pause. "The servant says you told her I
wasn't to have coffee."
"Well?"
"I always have it at home."
"You're not at home now."
"But I can't eat breakfast without--"
"There's no need for you to eat breakfast if you're not hungry."
"_Why_ can't I have coffee?"
"Because I think it injurious"--the keen old eyes caught the swift
disdain of the child's glance at the half-empty cup on the tray--"very
injurious for children," she added.
"My mother didn't think so," Val said, feeling her throat swell.
"But I am your grandmother, you see."
She had lowered her chin again; her eyes were shooting out over her
spectacles, her eyebrows terrifically high. This grandmother of hers
could move her eyebrows about as easily as other people moved their arms
and legs. It was a fearsome accomplishment.
"In _my_ house," she went on, after the awful pause, "the thing to be
considered is what _I_ think. Among other matters I consider your way of
entering a room might be improved. Now, you may see how quietly you can
go out."
Seldom has a child been more surprised at an unexpected turn in affairs
than was this one when she found herself on the outside of the door. She
stood irresolute a moment. Why had she obeyed? She gritted her little
white teeth in self-contempt. Should she go back? There were loads of
things she had forgot to say. The idea of being sent out like that! She
went slowly up-stairs and angrily tumbled some of her clothes out of her
trunk. There were three cookies, a cruller, and some chocolates in a box
near the bottom. Oh, wise precaution of provident childhood! Still, her
present lot was a most unhappy one.
"No breakfast! How angry my poor sainted mother would be!" She shed two
tears. "No mother, no coffee, nothing but a cruel grandmother."
She revelled gloomily in the tragic picture till she heard Emmie coming
up-stairs. She hid the "remainder biscuit" and hurriedly dried her eyes.
There had long been a theory in the family--even her mother had shared
it--that Val never cried, and hadn't any heart to speak of. She was
intensely proud of this reputation for stoicism, and wouldn't for worlds
have undeceived any one. She brushed past Emmie now with lofty looks and
ran down-stairs and out-of-doors. She ranged about the grounds, finding
that her father was right--there were great possibilities of enjoyment
in these neglected haunts. She was not long in discovering the
grape-vine climbing the pear-tree in the wilderness, and satisfying
herself that "peaches were ripe." The osage orange-trees that grew
along the fence behind the drying-ground had dropped their rugged globes
on the grass, and one could play ball with these oranges till their
tough fibres grew soft and yielded grudgingly, like rubber. Presently
one that she had sent flying over the trees into the adjoining grounds
came mysteriously back. Val parted the fringe of lower undergrowth and
peered between the fence rails, but could see no one. She shied another
orange, and this time she saw a boy dart out from behind a tree and send
the orange swiftly through the sunshine over her head. Val leaped up,
and by a fluke caught it firmly in her hands.
"Hooray!" came involuntarily from the next-door neighbor; and they went
on playing ball in ambush till curiosity prevailed over shyness.
When the next-door neighbor drew near the osage barrier, he revealed
himself as a boy about Val's age, with a freckled face and a queer
little knob of a nose.
"Wot's your name?" he inquired.
"Val Gano. What's yours?"
"Jerry--I mean, Jerningham Otway."
"That your house?"
She climbed upon the fence and distinguished glimpses through the bushes
of an imposing place beyond.
"Yes," he answered; "and we got a bank over the river."
This eliciting nothing, he went on, genially:
"You can fire a ball 'bout as well as a boy!"
"I should hope so."
"My sister can't, and she's a year older 'n me. Most girls can't, and
they're all awful mad they wasn't born boys."
"That so?"
"Yes. I know a girl over the river--awfully jolly girl--she's got a
monkey--nicest girl I ever knew!--and Geerusalem! don't she want to be a
boy!"
"She _must_ be a ninny," observed his next-door neighbor.
"Hey?"
"Can't think why any girl in her senses should want to be a _boy_!" as
who should say: the least of created things.
Jerry widened saucer eyes.
"If a girl likes," his neighbor continued, "she can do all the jolly
things a boy does without the bother of _being_ a boy."
"Ho! ho! Don't find it much bother."
"Well, but it's a little dull, ain't it?"
"Hey?"
"Not now exactly, but don't you ever think about the future?"
Jerry looked vaguely alarmed for a single instant, and then strutted off
with his hands in his pockets, whistling defiantly all across the lawn.
He stopped at the barn door, and whistled his way back, in time to catch
a friendly ball.
The feminine wile that eventually won the young gentleman's heart, and
"did for" the girl with the pet monkey, was Val's gift for turning the
most surprisingly rapid somersaults all across the drying-ground. A
small contorting ball, she rolled head over heels, without stopping,
from one side to the other, and came up smiling, in spite of a crack on
her crown against the pump.
"Gee-_rusalem_!" observed Jerry, when he saw she was laughing. "I say,"
he added, with a child's fine disregard for preface or preliminary--"I
say, come over to Bentley's Pond and let's be pirates."
It seems highly probable that Val would have closed with the offer if
Emmie had not made a timely appearance.
"What you doin'?" she asked, Jerry being invisible.
"None o' your business," said her polite sister.
"Oh-h," purred Emmie. "Gamma don't let us--"
She paused.
"Don't let us what?"
"What you're doin'."
"What am I doin'?"
It was difficult to say. She seemed to be just sauntering about,
occasionally kicking an osage orange. But Emmie, not without reason,
had got it into her law-abiding head that whatever this sister of hers
might be engaged in it was pretty sure to be something taboo, and Emmie,
as an older inhabitant here, and one who never made these mistakes, was
bound to keep the new-comer from transgression. Her sister had gone back
to the house now. Emmie followed her up-stairs to their room. Val found
her trunk gone from the upper hall, and its contents disposed in drawers
and wardrobe with Emmie's belongings.
Who had done this thing?
"Venie," said Emmie.
The new-comer anathematized the officious servants of the Fort. Emmie
stood looking on with growing consternation, as Val flung forth from the
wardrobe to the middle of the room a shower of pinafores and petticoats,
books and toys. They lay on the floor in an indiscriminate mass. What
was this daring person about? Emmie stood shyly by the door, her face
flushing with excitement.
"I won't have my things mixed up with other peoples'!" Val announced,
severely. Then, after a moment: "What are you standing there for?"
"I--I don't know," responded Emmie.
"Haven't you got any place of your own, where you belong?"
Emmie looked bewildered, as well she might.
"I've got a little rocking-chair down in gamma's room--used to be cousin
Efan's."
"Humph! rocking-chair's just the thing for _you!_ Why don't you go and
sit in it?"
Val was clearing out the bureau now at the other end of the room. It was
Emmie's things this time that were being flung out with disdain. Val's
harsh question, coupled with the moving spectacle of Emmie's best hat on
the floor, brought ready tears to the soft brown eyes.
"What you got in this?" demanded Val, shaking the rattling contents of a
well tied-up box.
"B'longs to cousin Efan. Gamma don't let us open it."
Val untied the cord and revealed the forbidden spoil--marbles, a
jack-knife, a broken whistle, and at the bottom a little drawing-book
and a French grammar.
"I'll take care of the marbles and the knife for cousin Ethan," said
Val, "but you can have the other things," and she flung the treasured
box to the opposite side of the room. The vandalism widened Emmie's
trouble-clouded eyes. "Now my clothes are going in the bureau."
Val was sorting and folding away her own belongings with a deftness
characteristic of her thin little hands. Emmie watched the process
tearfully.
"And _my_ books and things like that go on this side," she went on,
busily bringing order out of chaos. "Now, do you understand?" she said,
sternly. "This half o' the room is mine. You can't _ever_ come here."
The little girl at the door nodded, speechless.
"Perhaps I'll help you afterwards to put your things away in the
cupboard. First go down into the hall and bring me a piece of chalk out
of the lift-up chair where they keep the brushes."
"Chalk!" What _was_ she going to do?
"Yes, chalk, goosie gander! Chalk! chalk!"
Emmie fled. She had serious thoughts of never returning, but curiosity
and the memory of her best hat sitting on the floor got the better of
her fears.
"That's right," said Val, on Emmie's reappearance. "Don't come over
here!" she shouted. "_Stop_, I tell you!" She stamped violently as the
child advanced, bewildered, holding out a piece of yellow crayon.
"Didn't I just say this part of the room is mine?"
"Y-yes."
"Well, it _is_, just as much as if it had doors, which it ought to have,
and locks and bolts. Don't ever come here till you get my permission.
Understand?"
"I--I--" Emmie dropped the crayon, and retreated slowly. "I was only
going to say we oughtn't to use that chalk. It belongs to Aunt Valeria's
painting things."
"Look here!" Val waived such puny scruples aside. "See this seam in the
carpet?"
"Yes," answered a small, scared voice.
"Well, I'll make it plainer, so's there's no mistake." She stooped and
drew a yellow line down the seam from wall to wall. "Now," she said,
getting up and striking a threatening attitude, "you're younger than me,
but I give you all that side for your room. This side is mine. If you
ever cross that line without my leave, I'll kill you--yes, I'll kill you
dead with cousin Ethan's knife!"
She turned her head and beheld her grandmother standing in the doorway.