After several years' supremacy as "the greatest dancer on the earth,"
that brilliant career was suddenly abandoned. It was evident that a
mistake had been made. Val's true destiny was to be Queen of Song. It
was difficult to illustrate the fact in your unmusical grandmother's
house, but you could do a good deal in that direction at the New
Plymouth Seminary for Young Ladies. You could roar down several hundred
girls in the morning hymn, and you could even have occasional
surreptitious performances in the gymnasium, or at home in the kitchen,
where whole cycles of impromptu operas were given in a season. For the
rest, you sang to yourself in lonely places and exulted. Sometimes you
trembled, shaken to the verge of tears by the beauty and pathos of your
own voice.
There had been a brief interval when the sum of achievements in the
drawing-class seemed, in Val's mind, to point to her becoming a second
Rosa Bonheur. It was certain that her copy of Landseer's "Rabbits" was a
work of extreme merit. Even her grandmother, who usually said "Hum!"
when she looked at Val's original designs for wall-paper or carpet,
remarked on beholding the rabbits: "I'll have them framed."
If that were not distinction, where shall it be found?
But it was grasping to set more than one snare for greatness--let Emmie
be Rosa Bonheur, Val would be the great singer of her time.
"Let me have music lessons," she prayed. "I'll practise at school and at
Julia's."
"It is out of the question," said her grandmother.
Val knew "out of the question" meant it was a question of being out of
pocket.
"I'll give up drawing."
"Drawing is much less expensive; and even so, you and Emmie must give it
up after this term."
"Then, what on earth are we going to learn besides common lessons?"
"I'll teach you botany and gardening," said her father.
"I don't care about botany," said Val, hotly, "and"--unmasking the
hypocrisy of years--"and as for gardening, there isn't _any_thing I hate
so much."
"_What?_"
Her father couldn't believe his ears.
"Yes. I'm sorry. It's very kind of you to offer so often to teach me;
but I really quite hate flowers."
Her father looked at her with a severity she had seldom seen in his
face.
"Then, in that case"--he spoke as though originating a punishment fit
for a new unnatural crime--"in that case you should learn cooking."
After such a blow, there was nothing for it but to remember that for
weeks Jerusha had wanted her to take some household sewing to poor old
Miss Kirby up on Plymouth Hill. Val would run all the way to the Dug
Road and there, in the deep cut in the hill-side, or in the even more
lonely ravine above, she would sit with the bundle of sewing on her
knees, raging solemnly over it at fate, and devising spirited revenges.
In a wood on the farther side there was a place deep hidden in bush and
brier, where a wild grape-vine made a swing between two old forest
trees. It was a distinct source of comfort to Val that she didn't know
the names of these trees. She would shut her eyes tight, and swing high
out in the free air, with a sense that she was flying from two calling
voices, afraid the accents should reach her clearly, afraid lest by an
unwary peep something in bark or leaf should press back upon her
impatient memory "their ugly names," cheered and strengthened after each
escape by finding her ignorance intact.
Out, far out, on the wild grape-vine, swinging till she forgot the
importunate trees, forgot all threatened ignominy, forgot everything but
the ecstasy of living and swinging and singing, and looking
forward--looking out past home perplexities and wild wood tangles, out,
far out, towards the secure beauty and the certain wonder of the coming
years.
Emmie came home from school earlier than usual one memorable day, and
told Mrs. Gano with frightened eyes that Val had done something awful.
She couldn't make out what, for all the Academic and Collegiate girls
whispered about it secretly at recess. But Val was locked up in the
Principal's room, and it was considered doubtful if she'd _ever_ be let
out, so angry was Miss Appleby. But even the Principal's wrath was less
than the wrath of her niece, Miss Beach, the new teacher of the primary
school and of gymnastics.
Emmie had naturally felt humiliated at her sister's disgrace. She
thought she could never, never go back to school again. By the time the
miscreant got home, Mrs. Gano was properly worked up to receive her.
Val saw at a glance from Emmie's cloudy eyes and her grandmother's, cold
and gleaming, how her story had been forestalled. She held up her head,
and said, carelessly:
"Well, I've got myself into a scrape."
Her grandmother fixed her silently for an instant, and then said:
"'Scrape' is not the word. You've heard that expression from Jerningham
Otway. _We_ don't get into scrapes."
Emmie seemed to Val's overheated imagination to sit and plume herself.
"All the members of your family have been well-mannered and
well-conducted people. We leave 'scrapes' to others."
Val fell a sudden prey to the old loneliness in the midst of so much
family rectitude.
"I am waiting to hear what has happened."
Mrs. Gano folded her blue-veined hands across the open book on her
knee.
"Well, I think they mean to expel me."
"Expel you!"
She shut the book with a snap.
"Oh, Miss Appleby's coming to see you," said Val, with overacted
indifference. "She'll tell you everything that Emmie hasn't told you
already."
"I don't choose to ask Miss Appleby for details that I ought to hear
from you."
Val looked at Emmie's curiosity-lighted face and kept silence. Her
grandmother understood.
"Run out and play, child; you sit too much in the house," she said to
the younger child.
"I've got nobody to play with," came from Emmie, not budging.
"Then go and get me some jonquils and narcissuses."
"I've hurt my finger."
"Then take a book and sit in the porch."
"I've read all the books on the juvenile shelf."
"Leave the room!"
Val's heart swelled up in gratitude. It was considerate of her judge not
to hold the court of inquiry before Emmie.
"Well," said Val, plunging into the unhappy business the moment the door
was closed, "you know how we hate and despise--I mean how we don't like
Miss Beach."
"Humph! I dare say Miss Beach doesn't like all her pupils."
"I should think she didn't! She hates us!"
"I don't want to hear such strong expressions. I've nothing to do with
the other girls; but it's a bad lookout for you if you haven't earned
the respect of an estimable woman like Miss Beach."
"You wouldn't call her that if she gave _you_ unfair marks, and said and
_looked_ spiteful things at you."
"Looked! What nonsense are you talking?"
"Well, she"--Val dropped her eyes and crimsoned--"she laughed at my new
gymnastic dress." There was a pause. "It _is_ unlike the others."
"Beyond a doubt. Far too good for the purpose. That broché came from
Baltima'. Your aunt Valeria never wore it but once. It was as good as
new."
"Well, all the other girls wear blue serge, but they never laughed. Miss
Beach _did_. Perhaps she didn't mean me to see, but I did."
"Humph! Well?"
"Well, she invents new marches--in-and-out figures, you know--and she
only does them once very quickly, and makes me lead off afterwards, and
blames me if there's the least mistake. So I--I--just thought the next
time she invented something new I'd see if I--I--couldn't make her do it
slower. So--well, I collected parlor-matches for a week."
Mrs. Gano's quick movement said, "_That's_ where the matches have gone."
"And I cut off their heads, and I gave some to--three of my friends, and
I had a lot myself; and as we marched we threw 'em little by little
under Miss Beach's ugly fat--I mean under her feet."
"I'm amazed at you--simply amazed!"
Mrs. Gano's eyebrows had shot up to the middle of her forehead. Val
studied for the hundredth time the hairless bony arches above the
piercing eyes, and the strange look of the patches of eyebrow sitting up
on her forehead in that amazed fashion.
"Well, she _did_ do that new march very slow, stopping and looking round
surprised when the matches exploded, and at last she gave up marching
altogether, and kind of exploded herself. She _was_ angry, and red
too--_purple_, all over her ugly podgy--over her face."
"I don't wonder she blushed for you. I am very much ashamed of you
myself. It was the action of a ruffianly street-boy."
"_She_ wasn't ashamed. She was just mad--I mean angry. She asked who had
done it, and nobody said--"
"I'm not surprised you wanted to hide it."
"Then she said she should get her aunt to suspend the whole class; so I
had to tell her it was me, and they shut me up in Miss Appleby's room."
"Quite right," said Mrs. Gano, backing up the authorities as usual.
"Oh yes," said Val, bitterly, "that's what Miss Beach thought too; she
_said_ it was the only thing to do with a wild beast."
"She didn't use those words!"
The eyebrows suddenly shot up again.
"Yes'm, she did. Ask Julia Otway. Miss Beach'd say _anything_. Why, she
was educated at a mixed school."
"You don't mean blacks and whites together?"
"Yes'm--Oberlin."
Mrs. Gano had some ado to recover her rigid attitude of respect for
those in authority over her grandchild; but she relaxed the upward
tension of her eyebrows and was studying Val straight through her
spectacles.
"You can learn manners at home. Miss Beach is quite competent to teach
Emmie spelling and you dancing and calisthenics, and her manners are not
your business. It is only the young people who are quite perfect
themselves who can waste time criticising their elders."
"Yes'm," answered Val, meekly. She was surprised that her crowning
misdeed and public disgrace were taken so calmly. "Please, who's going
to tell my father I'm expelled?"
"Nobody is to tell him anything of the sort!" she fired up. "Now that
things have come to this pass I must try to make you understand. We
can't go on like this. What you have done to-day would disgrace a street
urchin; and yet you are old enough to be a comfort to your father."
Val fidgeted miserably.
"You have given us more trouble than all the other children of the
family put together; and yet I have discovered there is a kind of
reasonableness in you when it's deliberately appealed to."
Val looked up quickly. She felt there was a new note in these remarks.
"I should be very sorry to go to your father with this miserable story;
he has enough to trouble him, and he is ill; he does not get better."
She had laid convulsive hold on the red-padded arms of the great
rocking-chair, and the purple veins started up on the long hands. "I
sometimes think--I sometimes think he gets worse." Her voice had sunk
very low. There was a look in the waxen features that made the girl's
heart grow chill. "I have noticed your impulse to be considerate towards
your father, to spare him the knowledge of your antics. I have been glad
you had this instinct. _You_ will be glad when you are older--when you
are alone."
There was a long silence. Neither looked at the other. Presently, with
lowered eyes, Val came closer, and on a sudden impulse, kneeling, she
laid her cheek on the long left hand that still clutched the chair-arm.
"You'll see," she said, fighting down her tears--"you'll see I shall be
better."
She felt the other hand laid softly on her head, and neither of the two
spoke or moved for a long time.
A sharp ring broke the spell, and the quick following clatter of "E.
Gano's" knocker sent all gentle influences flying.
"Miss Appleby!" Val sprang up. Yes. They could hear her voice. Before
Venus had time to come and say she was in the parlor, Mrs. Gano had
opened her own door and closed it behind her. Val stood looking out of
the window, trembling with anxiety, registering vows that if she were
let off this time, if by some miracle she were not expelled, she would
be such an honor to the family, such a comfort to her father, that he
would be encouraged to live practically forever.
Emmie presently opened the door very softly, and crept in.
"She's just goin', I think," whispered the little sister, who seldom
bore a grudge. "Oh, she _has_ been getting it!"
"Not gran'ma?"
Emmie squirmed with suppressed merriment at this notion.
"I should think not! Miss Appleby's been getting it. Gran'ma said they
were making a mounting out of a molehill--and expelling people did the
school no good. Said you'd tell Miss Beach you were sorry, and that was
a good deal, 'cause you didn't like beggin' pardings."
"_Did_ she say that?"
"Yes. An' Miss Appleby said she was very grieved, but she had promised
her niece not to take you back this term."
"Her niece! Her sneaking Black and White Oberlin woer-r-r-rm!"
"_Gran'ma_ didn't call her that," whispered Emmie, with an air of gentle
reproof. "She just said, 'Unless your niece is very foolish'" (Emmie
could mimic astonishingly well), "'and unfit for her post, she will be
glad to reconsider.' Miss Appleby got mad at that, and seemed to be
going away, so I ran into the dining-room. When I got back gran'ma was
saying, if they expelled you, I should be taken away too."
"Gracious!"
"And they were both _awful_ mad then, an' gran'ma said, Oh, she'd _just
as soon_ take us away, and she wouldn't hesitate to say why. 'We don't
send our daughters to school to be called wild beasts by young women
from Oberlin.'"
"Hooray! hooray!" Val spun about the room, waving her arms victoriously.
"We've got a oner for a grandmother after all!"
The room door opened and the hall door banged.
"What _are_ you doing?" said Mrs. Gano, stopping short.
"Oh, nothing," replied Val, composing herself expeditiously; "only I
_do_ love you, gran'ma," and she held up her face to be kissed.
"If you love me, keep my commandments," said the lady, without
enthusiasm, and equally without sense of irreverence. "That will do. Now
go."
She was turning away, when some sudden thought occurred to her. She
gleamed at Val through her glasses in an enigmatic way, and said:
"Is this true about the trouble you've given your preceptors over the
Bible verse every morning?"
"I don't give trouble _every_ morning; but it's so tiresome, gran'ma, to
begin exercises every day the same way."
"I should think so, if several hundred girls _will_ go on repeating
exactly the same texts year in and year out."
"Well, when they scolded us for never learning new ones, I tried to
oblige them--I did, indeed."
"Hum! Miss Appleby tells me you appeared next day with 'Jesus wept.'"
Val grinned, and then grew grave.
"They are very hard to please. They want something we hadn't all said a
thousand times, and something longer than--"
"Naturally."
"You can't _think_ how furious they are now if we happen on the same
thing. I do my best to oblige them. I suppose a--Miss Appleby--"
Val tried to find out from the non-committal face whether the principal
had entered upon this. If not, so much confessing all in one day was
perhaps overdoing it.
"Well," said her grandmother, "Miss Appleby _tells_ me--I can hardly
credit it--that you stood up in your place yesterday morning and
recited, 'Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.'"
"Well, it wasn't _me_ that laughed; and I told Miss Appleby it was in
the Bible right enough."
"Yes. Well, I'll pick out your texts for you in future." She spoke with
charming geniality, and a glint through her glasses. "Now go and get
your lessons for to-morrow."
After the failure of Miss Beach to have Val disgraced and expelled, the
girl felt that though her grandmother might herself abuse her, she would
not permit any one else to do so. The early years of warfare merged by
degrees, and in spite of lapses, into a less lawless scheme of life.
The reason of it was not in any great measure regard for her father. He
lived too much apart from the din of daily events for their remote
effect on him to be much present to the preoccupied mind of youth. The
change came about through a growing, albeit unwilling, admiration and
sense of friendship for her grandmother. She was entertaining, this old
lady, in spite of her terrible faults. One was never dull with her. She
told delightful stories, and she laughed at yours when they were good.
Indeed, no matter how abandoned had been your conduct, if you could make
her laugh you were saved. It was not in child-nature not to lay traps
for that pardoning gleam of the fierce eye, that involuntary twitching
of the judicial mouth. An exchange of anecdotes tends inevitably to a
good understanding. But more than by any other means, perhaps, the
perverse school-girl and the autocratic old woman were brought together
by a mutual recognition of a common regard for justice. When Val found
out that her grandmother was not as arbitrary as she had supposed, the
battle was half over. Mrs. Gano had been overheard advising her son,
"Don't try to coerce Val. If you can convince that child's reason you
can do what you like with her, but you can't drive her an inch." The
girl felt that she was being understood. Perhaps the truth was they were
both changing, both developing, the old no less than the young.
Certain it is they became better and better friends, and had
surprisingly much in common. Still, Val had struggled so long against
owning to herself that any good could come out of this Nazareth, that it
was some time before a belated sense of fairness led her to avow
guardedly to her old fellow-sufferer her new view of the autocrat. She
must try, little by little, to convince her father that, contrary to
appearance, and despite many sore experiences, his mother had her good
points.
"Gran'ma's been real kind to me and Julia to-day."
"Has she?"
"Julia thinks she's awfully nice."
This rather in the tone of "there's no accounting for tastes."
"Yes," said her father, not seeming enough impressed.
"She says I may read _The H---- Family_ and all the Frederika Bremer
books now that I've finished the _Waverleys_."
"H'm! I never looked at them myself."
"But do you know why she was so nice about _The H---- Family_?" It was
one thing to do justice to her good deeds, but it was no use setting up
a false ideal and pretending she was better than she was. "You see, we'd
read all the horrid silly little Harry and Lucys and Sandford and
Mertons and _Moral Tales_ and things, and I'd begun Bohn's _Wilhelm
Meister_."
"Oh, ho!"
"I put down the book while I tied my shoe, and when I looked up she was
putting it into the fire."
He laughed.
"But it wasn't _her_ book at all; I got it out of your room underneath
the big Brande and Taylor's _Chemistry_. It had your name in it."
"Yes"--reflectively--"I bought it on April 9, 1870."
"Well, it's burnt now."
He was still smiling and stroking his ragged beard.
"I hope she isn't going to keep the big bookcases locked up forever,"
sighed Val.
"She will never like to see Valeria's books knocking about."
"Gracious, no! She _refused_ to lend Mrs. Otway _Helen Whitman's Poems_,
because she said it had Poe's notes in it; but I knew it wasn't a bit on
account of Poe. It had some of _Aunt Valeria's_ notes in it, and that
was why she wouldn't let it go out o' the house. I was awfully ashamed,
and Mrs. Otway looked so snubbed."
And still he only smiled.
"She isn't a bit like other people, but sometimes I'm not sorry."
"Never be sorry, my child. Never be so dull as not to realize that the
woman who stands at the head of our line gives us our best title to
honor--and to hope."
Val opened astonished eyes. Her father was indeed
forgiving--fantastically generous. He was gazing off into space now, and
his look was strangely lighted.
"She belongs to the heroic age," he said, with a kind of worship in his
face. "She was born before we began to split hairs, and have nerves
instead of nerve."
Val couldn't stand it. Her father was worth fifty grandmothers.
"I should imagine she _thought_ she was a pretty fine sort of person."
"She hasn't a notion how utterly she stands alone. I've gone up and down
the world for over forty years, and never seen her equal. Her _equal_?"
He laughed derisively, and began to talk of her as he might have talked
of Semiramis or Boadicea, only more vividly. It was very annoying. _He_
had come to care about her too, "only more so." But the real blow fell
when it came out that he had felt like this all along. Appreciation,
fairness were all very well, but this besotted heroine-worship was a
little pitiable. All these years that Val had been so sure he was
silently nursing his injuries and modestly contemplating his own
superiority, he had been on the side of the oppressor.
"H'm!" mused Val. "I s'pose she was different, then, to her _own_
children."
"Ah yes; I've often observed the softening of late years."
"The _what_?"
"The growing tolerance, the forbearance with my children, that she never
showed Valeria and me."
Val's imagination reeled at the thought of what her grandmother could
have been like when she was more intolerant than she was to-day. And it
was all forgotten and forgiven! Here he was now leaving glittering
generalities, and telling story after story of his mother's courage and
her wisdom. She did seem to have been a useful kind of parent, and it
appeared she had been more generous in money matters than Val had
thought.
"And what she did that time she has always done. She never failed
anybody who depended on her. I always think of her when I read the
lines:
"'Oh iron nerve to true occasion true,
... that tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!'
Try to understand your grandmother, my child," he wound up; "she is the
Pallas Athene of our line."
Val did not know that an American is never so happy as when he is
vaunting his womenkind. But in her estimation Pallas does better over
your chamber door than in an arm-chair looking at you--through you--with
a grandmother's spectacles. You forget what a heroine she is when she
criticises the way you sit--"A lady never crosses her legs;" and the way
you walk--"I used to swing my arms too--very bad habit; you should study
repose." And when wrought upon by your too generous-judging father, or
by some private discovery of her worth, you burst out: "Oh, I _do_ love
you!" it chills you to get for all response: "You _don't_ love me, or
you'd behave differently. 'By their fruits ye shall know them.'"
It was no better later on, when, with growing freedom of speech and
warmth of feeling, you would ask in an engaging way: "Why don't you love
me?" and get for answer: "It's a mistake to think your relations owe you
love; you have to earn it from them as you do in the world outside."
Worst of all, and most humiliating to the eager spirit, was it to be
"warded off" if you came to kiss her oftener than good-morning and
good-night. "We are not a kissing family," she would say; and you
cringed under the blow.
No; Pallas Athene was not an unqualified success--as a grandmother.
There were times, indeed, when her shortcomings nearly drove her
granddaughter into considering an elopement with Harry Wilbur, the
eighteen-year-old son of Judge Wilbur. With mental apologies to her
ideal hero, Val had kept up a vigorous correspondence with Harry,
pending the time when the superior suitor should carry her off, and save
her the trouble and ungraciousness of breaking the pleasant chains that
bade fair, as the days went on, to bind her to her gallant young
Hercules. Harry Wilbur was captain of the base-ball team, and the
darling hero of the entire New Plymouth Seminary. Most of these studious
young ladies thought more of manly strength and of that particular grace
that is born of bodily vigor than they did of the qualities of the mind.
It was as if, all untutored, they had the improvement of the physique of
the race at heart. Julia Otway, for instance, would descant almost daily
upon Harry Wilbur's "splendid figure," and how he held his shoulders;
how he walked from the hip, and how _easily_ he played the hottest game.
She would give as adequate reason for despising some more wealthy or
more intellectual citizen, that she hated men who did uninteresting
things for a living or did nothing at all. Val shared this spirit of
Julia's to an extent that gave her a pleasant sense of victory when
young Wilbur showed her more attention at dances and archery tournaments
than he showed the other girls. Besides, this open devotion made Ernest
Halliwell sad, and Jerry Otway "mad," and that was highly agreeable. But
Harry didn't "care a fip," as Jerusha said, about music, and music was
the supreme affair of life until--until--
Every year saw the resources of the Ganos lessening, the problem of life
more difficult to solve.
"You see," Val would say, radiant, "it just shows the _need_ for me to
study singing and make money."
"You? Ridiculous and most improper! No woman of your family has ever
dreamed of taking money for anything she has done."
The following summer--or "on June 18," as he would have said, taking
care to add the year, and even the hour--John Gano received a shock. A
kindly letter had come to him from his old flame, Mrs. Otway, to say
that, although he seemed to have forgotten her, still, for old
friendship's sake, and out of affection for Val, she felt it a
neighborly duty to tell him in confidence that his eldest daughter was
making preparations to run away and be a chorus-girl in New York. Mrs.
Otway's own daughter had been so oppressed by the enormity of the
secret, that she had told her mother. Julia had broken open her bank and
given all her savings to "the cause." It was understood, too, that Val
had other sources of revenue not revealed. However, merely to deprive
her of the money might not be sufficient to head her off, as she had
been heard to say she was going to New York, if she had to walk there.
John Gano did not break the awful news to his mother. He betrayed
nothing unusual in his aspect, as he said to his daughter:
"It's a glorious afternoon! Shall we go for a walk?"
Val was not as enthusiastic as she had been wont to be, but after the
fraction of a moment's preoccupied hesitation she answered, brightly:
"I should love it!"
"Come, then."
He caught up his blackthorn stick, and they set off. Val chatted about
the school Commencement, about the new archery club, and how "horrid
much" the bows and arrows cost.
"I dare say I could make you a set," said her father. "I always made my
own cross-bows as a boy."
"I know. And when you were only eight you cut and carved and glued
together a perfect model of a stage-coach. You are wonderful about
making things; but these big bows have to be of orange-wood, tough and
limber, you know."
"Hickory would do."
"No; they _have_ to be all alike. That's what parents never realize.
Gran'ma was just so about my gymnasium dress. But Jerry Otway's going to
bring a piece of orange-wood back. He traded with another boy at the
Military Institute, swopped an old racket for it. He's going to see if
he can't do a home-made bow, so's you can't tell the difference, varnish
and all."
"When does Jerry get back?"
"A week from to-morrow, in time for Julie's birthday-party."
They had gone a mile or so along the old turnpike road. The sun was
still very hot and the dust ankle-deep. Mr. Gano stopped meditatively,
and struck his blackthorn into the gray "MacAdam" powder.
"Yet, in spite of all this to occupy and amuse you, you want to turn
your back on it all."
"I--what?"
"I understand you are thinking of running away."
Val gave a little gasp, and prayed the dusty road might gape and swallow
her.
"I--I--"
"Don't be frightened, and don't be sorry that I know," he said, gently.
"I think you ought to have told me before."
She ventured to lift a pair of very anxious eyes.
"I don't blame you. You are an unfortunate child."
"Child? I am in my sixteenth year," she interposed, with dignity.
"You are an unfortunate child," he repeated, firmly, "with a great deal
of surplus energy. It must go somewhere. It's a law of nature; only I
hadn't quite realized how it was with you. You never seemed at a loss."
"You knew I was just dying for want of proper music-lessons."
She could not keep the excited tears out of her eyes.
"Well, well!" her father muttered, leaning with both hands on his stick
and scrutinizing the dust. "I wonder if a few music-lessons couldn't be
managed."
"A few? I don't want a _few_: I want months and years! I want to act and
sing in grand opera, and--be famous," she said, to herself, but
aloud--"make heaps of money."
Her father turned to walk back to the town, saying, calmly:
"Oh, as to acting and singing, _that_ of course--"
She opened her eyes wide. Did he understand? Was he going to relent?
"A young person's wanting to go on the stage and astonish the world with
her genius--that's natural enough."
Val began to shrink. She hadn't mentioned genius.
"It's a very usual sentiment, I believe, among young people," he went
on, in the same calm voice. "It's a ferment natural to their time of
life--not very serious, any more than first love or measles."
Val grew stiffer and more dignified with each word he uttered.
"Anybody would think from what _you_ say, father"--she was holding
herself down with difficulty--"that people all gave up music when they
arrived at years of discretion. There _is_ such a person as Patti after
all, and there may be somebody somewhere _better_ than Patti, just"--her
voice began to shake--"just waiting for a little help."
"Ah, better than Patti!"
He smiled. The look of tender amusement fell like a lash upon the spirit
of his child.
"Oh yes, it's all very well to laugh, father. _You_ don't care. Nothing
matters any more to you. I dare say, even when you were young, you
didn't know what it was like to feel that you'd be chopped up into
little fine pieces rather than go on in the old dull way that most
people do."
A quick, dim look, like the ghost of an ancient pain, flitted over the
worn face of the man; but he walked on, saying nothing.
"You don't know what it's like to look over there for years and
years"--she flung out a hand to the horizon--"and say to yourself, day
in and day out, 'Beyond that blue line is the world! Oh, when shall I be
seeing the world?'" She stopped, and so did her father, turning now to
look at the excited face. "Some people _never_ do," she said, with a
kind of incredulous horror. "I can't sleep sometimes for thinking of
how, here in New Plymouth, there are all these people, with all their
senses (so far as you can see), and arms, and legs, and money, and _yet_
here they sit, just where they happened to be dumped--sit and wait till
they die! Oh, it's like a nightmare, thinking of them! I feel if I don't
run away quick while I'm awake and able to move, I shall freeze fast in
my hole, too, and never be able to reach all the beautiful things that
are waiting--out there!" She nodded over to the encircling hills.
"_Think_ of it!" and the bright tears tumbled out of her shining eyes.
"I don't want my little girl to miss any good thing," he said,
presently, as they were nearing the town.
"Then help me, father. Be kind to me."
She came closer, and touched his sleeve.
"But the things waiting for those who venture out there"--he turned a
look full of foreboding on the blue horizon--"they aren't all, or even
most of them, good things."
"No, no. I've heard that; but I'll make the best of them."
He shook his head.
"You haven't a notion what a hard world it is for women--and for men, my
dear. I want to save my little girl from--"
"What does it matter if I _do_ have a hard time? I expect a hard time.
Nobody could invent a time so hard that I couldn't bear it, and come out
of it! Oh, you'll see--"
"Perhaps, when you are older--"
"Older!" Her face flashed quick alarm. "I'm dreadfully old already. I
ought to have begun when I was twelve. There's little enough time to
learn all I have to. If I don't run away quick--father, I feel it in my
bones--something will happen; I shall _never_ go, I shall stick here
like the rest, till--till the end."
He glanced sideways at her. She met his eyes with a look he had never
seen in them before.
"Val--" he cleared his throat as they neared the Fort.
"Father!" she interrupted quickly. "Don't ask me to say I won't run
away. I couldn't keep such a promise."
"That was not what I was going to suggest," he answered, completing a
sudden mental readjustment. "I have nothing more to say against your
plan, only I think it must be rather dull to run away alone. Suppose we
run away together?"
"Together, father?"
"Yes; I--I think I'm on the track of a valuable discovery, and I must
follow it up."
"Oh--what?"
"Well, you needn't speak of it to--a--to any one, just yet."
"No, no, father." She was strung up to the great romantic revelation.
"Well, I believe--indeed, I am sure--that all the hot gas and blinding
electric light in use in most houses are very injurious to eyesight."
She stopped and stared at him. Was he going mad? Had she heard aright?
The great romantic revelation that wasn't to be spoken of to any one--
He struck his blackthorn energetically on the ground and went on:
"The increase of eye troubles is appalling. What the world wants"--he
looked up suddenly with enthusiasm, and Val took heart--"what the world
wants is--is a safe and soft-burning reading-lamp at a moderate price. A
whole family shouldn't depend on one or two; every man his own lamp. I'm
inventing it. I shall take out a patent next winter, and--well, it might
make a fortune."
"How nice!" said his daughter, slowly.
John Gano seemed to hear no hint of disillusionment in the tone. He
straightened himself up.
"I'm giving Black a share in it," he said, with a magnanimous air, "for
a mere nominal sum, which I am spending in inspecting all the new
burners and contrivances; they're all failures, not worth house-room.
I've promised to see Black in New York next November, and he and I are
going on to Washington for the patent. All anybody need know is that I'm
taking you East with me on a little visit, and you can look over the
field."
"Father! _Father!_" she felt for his hand. As they went up the
tumble-down steps to the porch, two pairs of eyes were bent on the blue
horizon.
What helped a little to reconcile Val to waiting till November was not
only the simplification of the money question, but also the fact that it
gave her time to carry out a daring scheme that had been suggested by
the contents of the last foreign mail. No letters; but addressed in
cousin Ethan's hand, a French magazine with a queer mystical kind of a
story in it, marked, and a London _Pall Mall Gazette_ with a poem signed
"E. G." It was not the first time Mrs. Gano had received matters of this
sort in lieu of a letter, and when she did she was always angrier, Val
thought, than if she had got nothing at all.
But the poem in the _Pall Mall_ set Val thinking. It was no part of her
scheme of life to have a pleasure trip to New York and return with a
mere "look over the field." She must lay her plans carefully and not
trust to luck. No stone should be left unturned in her endeavor to make
the most of this glorious opportunity. Cousin Ethan! Could he, perhaps,
be turned to account? If there were any influence or advice he could
offer, of course he would be most happy. Val would be intensely grateful
to him; but all the same, it would be the crowning pride of his life
that he had helped to launch his cousin on the tide of fame.
She sat down and wrote to him surreptitiously, made a score of drafts,
and finally evolved this copy:
"THE FORT, _June 20_.
"MY DEAR COUSIN ETHAN,--I have never written to you but once since
I was a child. I have never told you anything except that I wished
you 'A Merry Christmas,' or was glad you were coming--which you
know you never did. I don't think you ever will, and, besides, I
can't wait for you. It may seem funny that, not knowing you any
better, I should write you now about a matter of the deepest
importance, but you are my cousin, and, after my father, you are my
nearest kinsman, and I am in need of help. I want to be a
singer--not a mere parlor warbler, but a Great Singer. I have a
tremendous voice. I am obliged to tell you this, since you can't
hear it. I practise every day by myself, though I can't use the
piano much on account of grandma. I have always led the singing at
school; all the rest, nearly three hundred girls, follow. But I
have never been able properly to study music. I was going to run
away and be a chorus girl till I could earn enough to study for
grand opera, but my father has induced me to wait--just a little.
He is going to take me East in the fall, and says I may 'Look over
the field.' He says, too, it will give me an opportunity of seeing
how difficult it is to do what I mean to do. But I don't think it's
a good plan to take all that trouble (his cough is very bad) just
to show me the thing is difficult. What I want to be shown is the
way--no matter how hard--that it may be done. The trouble is, that
my dear father, who knows many great scientists, and a few
politicians, doesn't know any famous singers, and nobody about here
does, and nobody seems to know any one who ever _did_ know an
opera-singer, much less a manager. My grandmother has often told me
that you have artistic tastes, and now comes the _Pall Mall_ of
London with your 'Song for Sylvia.' I've made up five tunes to it,
and I think you would like them, since, unlike my family, _you_ are
artistic. I've been thinking a person like you must have great
opportunities. You probably know singers, managers, musicians, and
all sorts of delightful people. I wonder if you would help me to
find out how a girl with a very exceptional voice can get it heard
and get it trained? I know there are people who do these things,
and when they discover a great voice they make their fortunes; so
it is not a favor in the end on the part of the manager. But if you
showed me the way, and could lend me five hundred dollars, it would
always be a favor from you, and I would be grateful to you for ever
and ever. If you will send me a letter of introduction to a
manager, I think that would be best--that and five hundred
dollars--and perhaps you would be so very kind as to send me the
lives of Jenny Lind and Patti. It would help me to know what steps
they took. I don't mind any hardship or any labor--I mind _nothing_
but not getting my chance. Don't be afraid of encouraging me to do
something the family has not been accustomed to--my father is on my
side; and, anyhow, they would have to kill me before they could
keep me back now. So you will not feel any responsibility. I would
rather be helped by you because you are my relation, but if you
won't, I must find somebody else. I remain, your affectionate
cousin,
"VAL GANO.
"P.S.--I am a good deal over fifteen; strangers all think I am
twenty.
"P.S. No. 2.--Of course I will pay back the five hundred dollars,
principal and interest. I will send you a promissory note, like the
arithmetic says."
This document was conveyed to the mail with secrecy and despatch. The
days went by like malicious snails; she had never known time drag
before. The slow weeks gathered into monotonous months, and still no
answer. Never mind, she would do everything just the
same--better--without his help. Her future triumphs took on more the
aspect of a judgment on cousin Ethan than a mere reward to Val. She made
up scenes of the coming encounters, when, from the vantage-ground of
being "better than Patti," she would overwhelm her cousin with scorn.
She would meet him as a perfect stranger, declare her surprise at his
claiming her for his cousin. He would find his chief distinction in this
kinship. He would lay his millions at her feet. She would spurn them. "I
have my own millions now. Had it been earlier, cousin, it had been
kind."
September was drawing to a close. Everything was merging now in the
excitement of the Eastern trip, fixed for the end of November.
Idling in the autumn sunshine at the front door after breakfast one
morning, Val and Emmie had a friendly scuffle as to who should take the
mail from the postman. The little heap of letters and papers was soon
sown broadcast in the fray, and still no sign of either yielding, till
Val was arrested on catching sight of the addressed side of one of the
envelopes--"Mrs. Sarah C. Gano," in cousin Ethan's hand. But the real
significance lay in the stamp. Not this time the scantily-clad gentleman
and lady, clasping hands over a mauve world, of the République
Française; no goggle-eyed, mustachioed Umberto, in blue, with his hair
on end, and _Poste Italiane Centesimi Venticinque_ round him in an oval
frame; it was not even the twopenny-half-penny indigo head of Queen
Victoria; but their own rosy two-cent Washington, risking his health in
a low-neck coat, but saving his dignity by the queue. This was the first
letter from Ethan in five years that did not bear a foreign postmark.
While Val stood staring, Emmie had whipped up the letters and carried
them in to her grandmother.
Val, in an agony of suspense, remained in the hall. Presently Emmie
came flying out, clapping her hands. Mrs. Gano followed briskly with the
open letter.
"All those old Tallmadges are dead!" cried Emmie, jumping up and down
behind her grandmother. "He's been back in America over two months, and
he's coming here next week."
Mrs. Gano was hurrying up-stairs to tell her son the great news.