Close as was her relationship with her father, there was more than one
thing she never told him. She never spoke of her grandmother's
brutality. She sympathized with him silently for having such a mother,
and felt that they were fellow-sufferers under her iron rule. Did she
not make him, too, do things he didn't want to do--make him go out and
walk when he preferred to sit still, reprove him for trying his eyes by
the waning light, and even at times pass severe strictures on his
clothes and his opinions? He was much better and stronger after a couple
of quiet years at the Fort; but it was cruel of her grandmother to speak
in that way about his "yielding to lassitude and inertia," and hint that
he was "quite as well now as many of the men who were carrying on the
work of the world."
"Health," she would say, "is a comparative term. No one is perfectly
healthy, any more than any one is perfectly good."
But this innocent-sounding platitude was evidently annoying to John
Gano. It was after one of these painful talks about his rousing himself
(of which Val heard only the concluding phrases) that he had tried to
get back into the bank. It wasn't his fault that Mr. Otway couldn't make
an opening for him. John Gano had even been urged into making visits to
Cincinnati and New York to see if he could find something. He came back
from these quests depressed and ill, not mentioning in Val's hearing
having found anything but an unusually fine specimen of the _Ardea
herodias_, or something of the sort, on the far Atlantic coast. But for
long after these expeditions he would talk vehemently to his mother of
the fierce competition of the great cities, of the growing costliness
and cruelty of civilization, and speak darkly of the coming social
revolution, when the poor should learn their power. But Val realized,
and felt miserably certain her father realized, that Mrs. Gano did not
much concern herself with the large historic outlook, that she would
have preferred knowing her son had secured a clerkship, even under some
bloated bondholder, rather than hear that the doom of capital was nigh,
and that Henry George was revolutionizing opinion about the land-tax.
But this particular difference of view was a delicate matter, not seemly
for a daughter to mention. Her father, being a kind of hero, of course
never complained; neither would Val. His sense of loyalty even led him
to excuse his mother when only her own misdeeds arraigned her, as when,
after Emmie began to go to school, she was allowed to stay at home
whenever she cried, whenever it rained, whenever she liked--and Val
never on any pretext whatsoever.
"She thinks Emmie has a delicate chest, you see," her father had
explained. "You are such a hard little nut--no danger of your cracking."
However, her grandmother, who seemed, oddly enough, to have some faint
glimmering of justice, appreciated Val's superiority in some things. If
she lost her spectacles, she would say to Emmie, hunting about with big
blind eyes:
"You are good only at losing things, my dear. Call Val."
Or if a parcel was to be tied up, or something carefully lifted down
from a height, she would trust Val rather than anybody in the house.
This recognition of deft-handedness, small claim on consideration as it
might seem, was still a balm to the child. She was wicked, she was
hideous, she was unloved, but she never broke things as did the adored
Emmie. No, Val was at least clever and quick in her movements; it might
not be much out of the wreck of a heroine, but it was something. One
other quality was admitted as time went on. If something questionable
happened in the house, something that had to be inquired into, it came
in time to be Val's privilege to be called in to give a faithful and
veracious account of it. Emmie was no keen observer, and she was prone
to spare other people's feelings if her own were not too much engaged.
Besides, Emmie had a high character to sustain; Val, having none, could
brace herself and tell the horrid truth, even about herself. One proud
day there was a great difference of opinion as to the exact
circumstances attending the breaking of one of the coffee-mugs of
great-grandfather Calvert's wonderful and priceless service of thin
white china with the broad gold key. It lived in the mahogany buffet,
and was washed once a year--_used_, never! Val was called in before the
assembled household to give her version, the summons being solemnly
prefaced by "I've never known you to tell me a lie." That was what made
it so proud a moment, in spite of the uneasy sense that the tribute was
not deserved. When Miss Brown had required the girls in her class to go
over the arithmetic lesson four times, no matter if they were sure they
had got the sums right at first, Val had instructed the entire
Preparatory Department to lay their books down on the ground and hop
across them. This might next morning be reported as "going over" the
sums as many times as Miss Brown liked.
"You are superficial," Professor Dawson said, detaining Val one day
after the Latin lesson; "your oral translations are too often mere happy
guesses instead of accurate knowledge. You must spend three-quarters of
an hour at least on your Latin alone."
After the first fifteen minutes' application in the evening at home, Val
would place her grammar and her little square red-edged Cæsar on the
chair, and, sitting uneasily on them for the remainder of the prescribed
time, she would look at the pictures in Don Quixote, and read bits here
and there. But she might not have reported this as having "spent a whole
hour on Cæsar," had she known that she was building up a reputation with
her grandmother for incorruptible truth. The commendation quickened
conscience.
As time went on, it became apparent, too, that if Mrs. Gano loved her
more beautiful and amiable granddaughter the best, she took more
interest in the school-work of the elder child. She looked over the
lessons with what Val considered surprising understanding, helping her
more and more as time went on, and revealing unexpected possibilities in
topics hitherto barren. She scanned the reports with eagle eye, and gave
special attention the following week to the study that had had the least
satisfactory marks before. John Gano took only a broad general interest
in the result, but it came to seem that there was one person, at any
rate, to whom it mattered step by step if one did well or ill. _She_
never forgot to inquire on Monday afternoon, "Have you the medal?"
although the usual "Yes, ma'am"--it must have been an easy
honor--elicited no further word.
There was no surprise in Val's mind at overhearing a certain colloquy
between her grandmother and the Principal of the Seminary. A state visit
was made to the Fort once a term, and Miss Appleby was one of the few
people Mrs. Gano conceived it her duty to see.
The Principal, as Val, playing "jack-stones" in the entry could faintly
hear, was complimenting Mrs. Gano rather fulsomely on the extreme and
wonderful cleverness of her grandchildren. Val could feel through the
wall how bored her grandmother was becoming.
"I had to ask at the end of the last term," Miss Appleby's mincing
little voice went on, "if there was only one girl in the Preparatory
Department, since I seemed always to be giving the medal to Valeria
Gano. Ah, how proud--how _very_ proud you must be of your clever
grandchildren!"
"No," said Mrs. Gano, "we expect these things of our children. If they
did not do them, then we might give the matter some thought."
But Val wagged her head wisely and tossed the jack-stones in the air.
Even Emmie, with her weak chest, when she _did_ go to school, was
expected to come home wearing, on a narrow pink ribbon, the Primary
medal--a golden shield, with "No Pains, no Gains," graven on its face.
Val, being "Preparatory," now wore the one inscribed "Perseverantia
omnia vincit" on a ribbon of pale blue, that most adorable of shades.
Emmie loved green, but also bore with red; Val would have nothing of her
"very best," if she could help it, that was not blue. It was not that
she had quite recovered the shock of that discovery in the parlor
mirror, although she had made up her mind, not having read _Jane Eyre_,
that biographers rightly suppressed the fact that many a heroine had
been in childhood not only wicked, but ugly, too; it was not that she
realized then that blue was "her color," as the ladies say; but
something in her responded to the hue. It made her happy just to open
the drawer where her blue sash was kept. In visions of the future, she
had never in her life seen herself clothed in anything but pale blue.
Sometimes the satin was broidered with silver wheat, sometimes with
pearls, but the blueness of it never faded or lost favor.
It was the rule of the house not to discuss the price of things. Money
was not mentioned, except in a wide impersonal way. It was difficult to
believe for a long time, but it came out by implication, that they were
poor; otherwise Emmie would never have begged in vain for the charming
green hat with plumes in Mrs. Crumbaker's millinery window. The "not
suitable for a little girl" was too thin an excuse; besides,
unsuitability could not be the ground of gran'ma's displeasure at the
purchase of a new microscope, after the shock of seeing what the amount
of her son's book bill was at the New Year. Very little was said on
these occasions, but Val was angrily conscious that her father was made
to feel uncomfortable. A grown man, and a hero to boot! It was strangely
short-sighted of him to let his mother keep his money for him--as
apparently he did--for he evidently didn't much relish asking for it,
and he might have learned from Val's experience that she didn't like you
to spend your pocket-money, except at long intervals, in miserable
driblets. There was only one occasion when her father seemed more
unwilling to open his purse than his mother did. It was when the
doctor's bill of two years' standing was left at the door. It was
addressed to John Gano, Esq., and when he opened it he said,
"Damnation!"
Val, who was doing lessons in a far corner, nearly dropped her slate.
Mrs. Gano, instead of reproving her son roundly, looked over his
shoulder and said, quietly:
"Very moderate indeed;" and she tried to take the paper out of his hand.
But he got up hastily, and paced the long room with knitted brows.
"I don't see how it's to be met," he said, presently.
"No trouble about that," she answered, calmly; "I've written Mr. Otway I
wish to realize on some Baltima' and Ohio bonds."
He turned sharply in his restless walk, and looked at her with curious
emotion. Then, quite low:
"This is about the last of them, isn't it?"
"Oh, there is my share of Valeria's still left."
He turned away, and continued his walk. His mother watched him covertly.
"The waste of it, the futility," he muttered, "bolstering up a wreck,
instead of launching new ships. The very savages are wiser. _They_ don't
stint the young to feed the useless, the dying."
"Don't talk nonsense."
She looked very angry.
"It's the rotten place in civilization," he went on, with some
excitement--"skin-deep sentimentality, and a careless cruelty reaching
down to the core of things. Devices of every kind to keep the unfit
here, while the young and strong starve in the streets. Hospitals for
the hopeless, not even bread for the ambitious--"
"Where is Emmeline?" interrupted Mrs. Gano, looking down the long room
towards Val.
"I don't know."
"Go and find her, and don't make her cry. I'll call you both when I want
you."
The next time that Emmie wept because she couldn't have something she
saw in a store window, Val realized it was time that she should be taken
into her confidence. When they were alone:
"Now, can you keep a famerly secret?"
"Yes."
"Cross your heart, and hope you may die if you ever tell."
Emmie complied with these requirements.
"Well, we're pore, all of us--gran'ma, too--awful, awful pore, and you
mustn't hurt their feelin's askin' for green hats and things."
"'Tain't so. Gamma ain't pore."
"I tell you she is."
"Why"--Emmie laughed her silvery little laugh, and showed her small
white teeth bewitchingly--"she's got a ole hair-trunk full o' money."
"_N-o-o-o!_"
"Yes, she has. I found a dusty ten-dollar bill in the fat blue china
vase, and I 'minded her of it when she said she couldn't get me the red
cloak at Alexander's, you know."
"Yes, yes, yes; what'd she say?"
"Said the little trunk in the pack-room was full of bills like that, but
all the same, I couldn't have the red cloak at Alexander's; that's why I
_always_ cry when I see it"--Emmie wound up with the air of one who
takes a lawful pride in accomplishing a mission--"'cause with a trunk
full o' money there's no excuse."
Here was news. Was she a miser, then? The very thought was enough to
make one spin with excitement, and the growing belief that it was so
kept Val "going," so to speak, for many a cheerful week.
There came a day when, after taking oaths of the most binding and
blasphemous character, Julia Otway was let into the "famerly secret."
She was obviously disappointed that all this preparation led up to so
little.
"Why, every human bein' in Noo Plymouth knows your gran'ma's a miser.
My father says she was awful cute, sellin' out her negroes in the nick
o' time, and she came here with heaps o' money; but she don't trust much
of it to the bank, and she lives so close and never spends a cent, so o'
course she's got a hoard som'ers."
Val was not pleased at the tone of this corroboration. The joy of having
a real live miser in the "famerly" was clouded. She determined not to
let her father be the only inhabitant of the town who was still in the
dark on a subject touching his comfort so closely. The next time they
were alone together she told him how much he was deceived as to the
"famerly's" finances.
He laughed till the tears came into his eyes, and he fell to coughing,
and then his mother appeared with the inevitable bottle of tolu,
capsicum and paregoric, and compelled him, between his paroxysms of
amusement and choking, to swallow an extra large dose.
When he told her the news, she laughed too, but a trifle grimly, and
turned on Val with:
"I am surprised to hear that you discuss family affairs with the
neighbors. It's not a Gano habit."
And she went back to her own room without vouchsafing the smallest
defence or explanation. But Val's father took her in his lap, and told
her a long consoling story, beginning, "In the year 18--" This
communication, bristling, as usual, with dates, was to the effect that
the "hidden hoard" was composed of worthless Confederate notes, and it
was just because they had that trunk full of money that they were poor.
Nobody ever heard of a bill going unpaid or having to be presented twice
at Mrs. Gano's door; but Val was very conscious as time went on that her
"frocks," as her grandmother called dresses, were old and ugly and out
of fashion. They had been lengthened, and turned, and dyed, and when
they simply refused to hold together any longer, instead of getting a
new one like Julia Otway's, as she had dreamed, Val had the humiliation
year by year of wearing her way, moth-like, through her aunt Valeria's
entire antiquated wardrobe. There were all kinds of objections to
drawing on this family reserve. The things in themselves, to Val's eyes,
were hideous, _hideous_--barèges unpleasant to the touch and sight, ugly
reps, ancient bayadere silks and flowered organdies that tore if you
looked at them hard; and the inhabitants of New Plymouth looked at them
very hard indeed, and sometimes rubbed their eyes. Then, as if their
being so out of fashion were not cross enough, these fabrics were
fabulously precious to her grandmother's heart, and had to be worn, so
to speak, with fasting and prayer. Woe to Val if she spilt milk, or
dropped maple syrup, on Aunt Valeria's things, for these objectionable
garments never to the bitter end became Val's own. The dead woman seemed
to stretch a hand out of the grave to keep her hold on them, never for a
moment remitting her claim. Spoiling your own pretty blue sash, that
your mother had bought in New York, was naughty, but hurting anything of
Aunt Valeria's was a crime of darker hue. Each time a new garment was
required, Mrs. Gano, with set face and faltering hands, would open Aunt
Valeria's trunk, and, with the air of one dealing out purple and fine
linen, or like a monarch conferring orders of the Garter and the Cross,
she would say to the dark-browed child:
"There! you shall have that!"
And Val would perforce disguise as well as she could her loathing of the
gift.
The child's passionate hatred of the ugly and uncouth was an unending
pain to her. She would shut her eyes tight as she passed old Mr.
Thompson, with his great wen, conscious of the same sensation of
sickness that would come over her at the malodorous neighborhood of a
dead cat. She would jerk her head away in the street as if she had been
struck when she met the idiot boy "Jake," more shaken and afraid than if
she had seen a ghost. She would grit her teeth morning after morning
with unabated rage and detestation as she put on a certain green poplin
of Aunt Valeria's, with its pattern of yellow ochre palms. There was
something about the sad and faded green of this frock, something about
the fat and filthy-colored palms, that made the wearer long to smash
everything within her reach. Some of Val's wildest misdeeds could have
been traced to that green poplin. While the abhorred garment held
together, even her pretty, slim bronze boots were powerless to cheer a
heart so deep bowed down.
Emmie's clothes seemed never to wear out; it was part of her almost
invariable advantage over Val. Mrs. Gano more than once pointed out that
Val succeeded in working her toes through three pairs of boots while
Emmie was carefully wearing one.
"Emmie isn't the captain at prisoner's base," the accused would say, in
self-defence, "and she doesn't walk miles and miles with father on
Sunday afternoons."
Val was very proud of these same walks, even if the conversation did
usually begin with:
"Now that you are learning history, no doubt you can tell me what was
happening in Paris 273 years ago to-day?" or, "This is the anniversary
of a battle that settled the fate of an empire; of course you remember,"
etc.; or that less easily eluded form: "Whose birthday is this?" And
while the child, innocent of a notion, seemed to be diving down into
profound deeps of information after the required fragment, he would help
her on with a hint--"One of the _real_ benefactors of the race; did more
for the good of humanity by his discovery than all the saints in the
calendar. I recollect speaking of him just a year ago, later in the day
than this, about five o'clock, as we stood with Professor Black by the
pyrus japonica."
"Oh yes," Val would cry out with delight at having a "glimmer," though
not of what he asked; "I remember perfectly, and I asked you if the
pyrus was the kind of burning bush Moses saw."
"_Ex_actly."
And the best feeling prevailed, it not occurring to John Gano that even
now his daughter had not the dimmest notion who the great man was who
thus unseasonably intruded on their Sunday _tête-à-tête_.
She was very sensitive to his disapproval, and suffered acutely when he
showed how he despised a person who forgot the difference between a
sycamore and a balsam poplar.
"What's the use of your having eyes if you don't use them?"
And she silently determined to be more observant, and win back her
father's respect.
"You should greet these good friends by name when you walk abroad," he
would say. "You wouldn't pass a woman every day in the street, as
beautiful as that silver birch, or a man as magnificent as the Otways'
copper beech, without asking his name; and you wouldn't be content with
knowing his intimates called him 'John.' 'What family does he belong
to?' you'd say. 'What is his history?' Now, here have I taken the pains
to introduce you to these desirable acquaintances, and yet you--"
"I shall know 'em next time," she would protest, humbly.
By-and-by her father didn't need to interrupt the main thread of his
discourse more than to pause with pointed walking-stick for a second,
while his little companion would interpolate briskly: "_Ulmus
Americana_," or "_Tilia_." And if, instead of his instantly resuming
story or homily, he still stood pointing, she would proceed: "Also
commonly called bass, lime, or linden; bark used for matting and ropes;
wood for sounding-boards; sap for sugar, and its charcoal for
gunpowder."
He would nod and walk on, finishing his broken sentence as though
nothing had intervened between subject and predicate. Although he was
severe with her constitutional forgetfulness of dates, her father, at
least, did not obtrude upon her the disgrace of extreme youth. He talked
the gravest matters to her with an air of conferring with an equal. They
discussed religion with no little openness, and, by dint of diligent
inquiry, she heard, amazed, the extent of his unbelief. He had at first
meant to be reticent, but as she got older and yet more inquiring, he
had said:
"One thing, at least, a child has a right to expect from its parents,
and that is truth. I am bound, as I see the matter, to give my child as
faithful an account of the world as I am able. I am the traveller coming
home, of whom the young one setting forth asks the way. Shall I advise
him to go in the wrong direction because the old sign-posts misled
_me_?" He would shake his head gloomily, and go on as if communing with
his own soul: "Not consciously to mislead, that is the basic human
obligation." Then he would look down on a sudden at the little
school-girl trotting solemnly along by his side, and resume with a kind
of severity: "I don't owe my child money"--he used to revert to this as
if it were a sore point--"I don't owe my child worldly position or
honors, or houses or lands, but I owe him honesty. I shall never
consciously deceive him."
And so Sunday by Sunday she heard the Gospel preached at St. Thomas's in
the morning, and in the later day the new tidings of science, and a sort
of sublimated socialism, preached among the lanes and hills. She heard
the story of the making of the world (not according to Genesis), and was
invited to observe in "Nature's Workshop," as her father called the
hills, how the making and transforming still went on.
"In these high places," he would say, with enthusiasm, "you may detect
Nature in the very act."
Val was shown how busy the little brooks were, and the wide river as
well, ever making "sedimentary deposits," still carving out its channel,
wearing down the fire-born rock as surely as the chalk cliffs in its
"ancient ineradicable inclination to the sea."
She saw for herself how the wind and the weather worked away day and
night disintegrating, tearing down, until even to a child it was clear
that one day the proud upstanding hills would be brought low, and lay
their heads in the plain. There was a tragic element in the story and
its ocular proof. It made the solid earth waver under the feet as in an
earthquake. Her father had pointed out how even the old Fort that had
so stoutly withstood the fierce Red Man could not hold out against this
subtler foe. He had shown her where even the great corner-stones were
exfoliating; with his finger-tip he could flake off the loosened bits,
but regretfully, and only as an object-lesson. No child must lift a
finger to help this insidious enemy; and yet, rightly comprehended,
Nature and Nature's laws were our best friends, Val was given to
understand. It was the theologian who had spoiled man's legitimate
satisfaction in the world. Christianity had been the greatest curse of
Time (this came as a lightning-flash); Christianity had killed art,
discouraged learning, and set back the clock of Progress 2000 years; had
turned man's thoughts and energies from the righteous task of making a
heaven on earth; had filled him with foreboding, and forbidden him
natural joys.
John Gano had no need to tell his daughter not to convey to her
grandmother any inkling of this indictment of the holy faith. It was a
thrilling secret. To be a sharer in it was a proud distinction which led
to Val's being permitted to remain in the room when Professor Black, a
contributor to her father's favorite periodical, the _Popular Science
Monthly_, came on flying visits, and they sat and talked of these real
dark ages of the world--Pliocene, Eocene, and the rest.
Mrs. Gano did not shrink from reading Darwin, and Spencer, and other
books her son left about. As time went on she came to entertain the
clearest views as to science being the handmaid of religion. In these
later days of her own development, she had no quarrel with those
"orthodox scientists," who regarded the Mosaic story with respect as
"symbolical"--symbolical of what was not inquired. The vaster age of the
world, the true story of the rocks, gave Mrs. Gano only a fresh and more
passionate sense of the wonder and majesty of the ways of God. She
corroborated and supported her new friends among modern historians and
men of science as vehemently as of old she had upheld a favorite
preacher, poet, or Biblical commentator. She objected vigorously to
much she found in Buckle and Lecky, and to certain Germans whose names
she disdained to utter, and bestowed her unqualified approval upon some
of the lesser lights whose Theism was sound.
After Professor Black was gone, or that other wise man from the East,
the handsome and distinguished-looking editor of the _Engineering and
Mining Journal_, Mrs. Gano would agitate the great red rocking-chair
into an abortive rock, and lifting her chin with an air of disdain:
"Humph!" she would say, "a mighty superior person!" Then, seeing her son
would not respond to this obvious irony: "Who is he, to quarrel with the
Bridgewater Treatises!"
"Black is too accurate a thinker to accept the theory of design carried
to the highest perfection." And, hoping to stem the tide of further
objurgation of his friend, he would demolish the _Treatise on the Human
Eye_. "So far from its being the nicest adaptation of means to an end,
the eye of man is a clumsy and pitiful production."
This was the kind of irreligion that in these days excited Mrs. Gano's
ire more than any other. So hot would the argument grow, that sometimes
her son would utterly lose sight of his determination never to disturb
his mother's faith. He would turn upon her with all the enthusiasm of
the passionate amateur.
"One glance through the magnifying-glass at the infinitely superior eye
of the common house-fly is enough to--"
"Enough to make any Christian thankful, I should say, that his eyes are
what Providence made them."
"The fly's eye is a far finer instrument."
"Humph! A pretty sight we'd be with protruding goggles bigger than all
the rest of the face!"
"I assure you the fly has a beautiful eye! And then the way it is
placed! Magnificent! A group of powerful lenses mounted on rods,
controlled by delicate muscles that turn the eye about so that without
moving his body he can see all round him. _There_ was an invention if
you like!"
"I shouldn't have liked it in the least."
"Ah, that's because you don't realize that to examine certain insects
through the magnifying-glass is to dispose at once and forever of the
notion than an omnipotent Providence did His level best by man. As a
mechanical contrivance the human eye is merely an intricate failure."
Then, perhaps perceiving that these intricate failures in his mother's
head were shooting lightnings, he would shield his audacities behind a
foreign authority. "Helmholtz says he would be ashamed of any novice in
his laboratory who should design so poor an optical appliance."
"Just like his German impudence! A nation of boors and atheists!"
John Gano would always end by pulling himself up, and accepting these
strictures on his authorities and his friends (and by implication on
himself) with a silent tolerance.
Val felt a fine superiority in thinking that _she_ understood. The
grandmother, who was such an autocrat, and thought so highly of her own
judgment, was in reality very bigoted and lamentably behind the age. But
Val and her father bore with her, not even exchanging covert glances
when, with shining eyes and sibylline aspect, she would burst into Old
Testament denunciation and prophecy. Her father was really a miracle of
forbearance. His behavior to his mother, in spite of her shortcomings,
was beautiful. He would sit and read Ruskin aloud to her by the hour,
and would give her his arm of an evening and slowly pace the gravel
paths, instead of going any more interesting and inspiring tramps with
his brisker companion along river or over hill.
On the occasions when Val tagged after the pair, she was firmly
convinced that the tone of her grandmother's conversation was adjusted
to young ears. It made her long to shout out: "Oh, he tells me a great
deal more than ever he tells you!"
Mrs. Gano would sometimes interrupt her son with scant ceremony and say,
glancing back at the child: "Great is the mystery of godliness. There is
a point at which the finite mind must stop," and so on.
Val's contempt for this was profound; she felt it was not in alignment
with what they had been saying before she came up with them. She would
slip her hand into her father's, and squeeze it gently, to restore the
sense of secret understanding. They would often, when she was there,
talk about the stars, perhaps as being "safe ground," if one may so
speak of the plains of heaven.
Did John Gano say, dreamily, "The Polar star is dim to-night," she would
as likely as not answer with significance: "Is _it_ dim, or our eyes?"
"No fault of our eyes this time, for we can see Mars well enough. He's
in a warlike mood to-night, flaming angrily."
Mrs. Gano would pause, and half to herself repeat:
"'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His
handiwork.'"
"Can you find the Scorpion, little girl?" her father would say.
And if she wasn't quick with eye and answer, her grandmother would stop,
lifting her shawled arm with curious unmodern largeness of movement, and
point the constellation out, half chanting:
"'By His Spirit He hath garnished the heavens; His hand hath formed the
crooked serpent.'"
As if gently to divert her attention, the son would perhaps face about,
and, walking slowly back with her to the house, would do a little
quoting on his own account:
"'Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.'
Ah! the music--the sheer music in that man!"
"There was music before _his_ day. And Tennyson is one of them that hath
ears to hear, as well as tongue to speak. Small doubt but from his ivied
casement in the West he heard the voice of the Lord from out the
chambers of the South. 'Canst thou bind the secret influences of
Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth
in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his suns?'"
"I can see Cassiopeia," Val would observe, just to show that she was not
quite out of it.
And she would grasp her father's hand tighter, to remind him of their
agreement that the straggling W stood for "We"--Val and her father. Then
he would find Lyra and the Little Bear, and tell how the Milky Way,
instead of being, as Hiawatha and Val had thought, "pathway of the
ghosts and shadows," was really star-dust, the scattered nebulæ of other
suns and systems.
Mrs. Gano would look back before going in-doors, and say, with solemn
upward gaze:
"Yes, yes! 'An undevout astronomer is mad.'"
Then they would go in silently to bed.