One of the things nobody had been able to get Val to do any more was to
sing. This had been at first set down to the death of her father, and a
special association of him with music. Even Julia shared that view.
The next spring after the summer the Otways had spent at Long Branch,
the three girls--Julia, Emmie, and Val--sat one chill afternoon on the
hearth-rug before the fire in the blue room. With very buttery fingers
they were eating the last of a great bowl of popcorn. Val, who had
presided over the popping, was losing the becoming flush that occupation
lent her. The years had taken from the face something of its old look of
frankness and love of fun, that had been almost boyish in its
simplicity. The subtler woman-look, the faint suggestion of brooding in
the eyes, had matured the face and lent it meaning. Emmie was the same
pretty creature, a little more fragile than before, whereas Julia was
blooming and bourgeoning into a very handsome woman of somewhat majestic
proportions. Instead of two, she looked five or six years older than
Val's twenty-three years. The brown and choral chiné silk Julia wore
this afternoon was turned away at the neck, and a lace fichu carefully
drawn down over the fine bust left visible the prettiest throat in the
world, as well as a little V-shaped space of fair white neck.
Emmie was tired of the talk of a party to which she was not going. It
was on the night of the choir practice, and, besides, she didn't approve
of dancing. She wiped her buttery fingers on her handkerchief.
"Let's go down-stairs and try our new hymn," she said, getting up.
"All right," agreed Julia.
"You two can, if you like," said Val.
"You must sing us 'Den lieben langen Tag;' I haven't heard it for
years."
"Don't care about it any more." Val gathered up and crunched the hard
scorched grains that had remained in the bottom of the bowl.
"Why not?"
"It's absurd to try to sing just after eating pop-corn."
"Nonsense!" said Emmie. "Grandma's reading old letters in the pack-room,
so she won't hear. If you'll put away the corn popper, I'll get the key
of the piano."
"It's a great pity not to keep up your music," said Julia, as Emmie went
off with the empty bowl. "You'll get hopelessly rusty."
"I shall never sing a note as long as I live," said Val, "and I wish you
wouldn't bother me about it before people."
Julia stared at her.
"You ought to understand without my telling you. It kills me to do it
half and half. I'll forget I ever wanted to have music in my life."
"You mean, I must never ask you to sing again?"
"It's the one thing about the whole matter that hurts most. You see,"
Val said, with an effort to speak in a commonplace tone, "I'm not
sulking about it, I'm not angry; I've simply wiped off the score."
"Dear Val, I'm so sorry!" Julia got up and put her arms about her
friend. "I didn't realize-- Oh, dearie, how hard it's been for you all
this time, when you take it like that!"
"Like what?"
"So--so quietly, so splendidly," said Julia, vaguely.
"Oh, you needn't think I'm trying to be a heroine," said Val, a little
defiantly; "it's just that I prefer not being a bungler when I know that
if I'd had half a chance--" She choked suddenly, and flung herself down
before the fire with her face hidden. Julia kneeled beside her,
murmuring sympathy.
"I think such a lot about my aunt Valeria these days," said Val,
sitting up presently and wiping her eyes. "This was her room, you know."
Julia nodded, looking round upon the walls.
"She painted these things, didn't she?"
"Yes," said Val. "Ain't they awful? It would half kill my grandmother to
hear anybody say that, and yet it's her fault that they're awful. You
know she wouldn't let Aunt Valeria go away and study when she was young.
Sh!"
Mrs. Gano's voice was heard outside the door calling Emmie to hunt for a
certain portfolio. She came in, looking through her spectacles at some
papers in her hand. She was heavily shawled and wore gloves (as she did
constantly now), and she had an old white Indian scarf over her head.
The broché ends hung down to her knees. She looked up sharply from the
yellowed papers as she came in. The two girls jumped to their feet. Mrs.
Gano greeted Julia cordially.
"Do you want us to go?" asked Val. "I brought Julia in here because
there was a fire."
"Certainly don't go," said Mrs. Gano. "I only came in for Valeria's
little desk."
Val helped to take off the carefully made cover that fitted over it.
Between the cover and the desk was something lying flat, carefully done
up in tissue-paper. Mrs. Gano opened it and smiled, recognizing the
scrawl on the square of card-board.
"Ah! Valeria's first attempt at a portrait of her father! She was a mere
baby." The old eyes beamed through the gold-bound spectacles, tender
with memory. "Her brother Ethan laughed at her, and said it was more
like the pear-tree than like their father--you see what he meant." She
laughed gently. "But Mr. Gano comforted Valeria, and said, 'It's quite
like enough, my dear. I've no desire to have my daughter a limner.'"
"Do you know, I can never get over the idea that 'limner' is something
immoral--indecent," said Val.
Mrs. Gano smiled reflectively. "Neither could your grandfather. That
was the dash of Puritan in him."
"Oh, but I mean the mere word. You told us that story when we were
children, and I didn't dare to ask; but I was sure it meant something
horrid, like some of the words in the Bible that look quite innocent and
yet mustn't be used in general conversation."
"Not at all," said Mrs. Gano, with a dignified air. "Your grandfather
was merely agreeing with Dr. Johnson that portrait-painting was an
improper employment for a woman. 'Public practice of any art and staring
in men's faces is very indelicate in a female,'" she quoted, but she
smiled again. "If your grandfather had lived, none of you would ever
have had a drawing lesson. I am more liberal about these things."
Val flashed a covert look at Julia. John Gano and others had filled in
the dim outlines of Valeria's life, and the things she had left behind
were eloquent in a way their creator never dreamed, and would bitterly
have resented. Mrs. Gano was lifting up the desk.
"Let me carry it in for you," said Val, preceding her grandmother with
the little rosewood box.
As she came back Julia heard Val in the hall dismissing poor Emmie and
her piano key with short shrift. She closed the door sharply, and
confronted her friend with ominous eyes.
"How my grandmother can bear to be so much in that room!"
"Without a fire on a day like this?"
"Yes; but anyhow, it's horrible in there."
"I thought you used to love it when she let you in."
"Yes, when I was little, and didn't understand. It's full of dilapidated
things that belonged to dead people. Ethan's father's fiddle--smashed.
My father's patent lamps--none of 'em work. Our grandfather's
walking-sticks, very tired-looking, leaning dejected against the wall
under a faded dirty picture of the Baptist college he built--it's a
Roman Catholic hospital now. And then that thing of Aunt
Valeria's--that's the worst of all!" She came nearer, and crouched down
on the rug beside her friend.
"What do you mean?"
"A pile of what used to be modelling clay. It's quite black now, but if
you see it in one particular way a face seems to look dimly at you out
of the dust, and, oh! it's the sorrowfullest face I ever saw. It's the
face of somebody who hadn't a chance."
"What is it like?"
"My opinion is it's Aunt Valeria's face, but sometimes--sometimes it
looks like me."
Neither spoke for awhile. Val sat huddled together staring into the
blaze.
"_She_ used to lie on the rug here before the fire, too."
The girl threw back her head like one shaking off an evil dream, but her
eye was suddenly arrested.
"I wonder what she thought of Mazeppa."
"Mazeppa?" echoed Julia.
"Yes." The other nodded to the iron bas-relief above the grate. "The
first time I heard father talk about natural law, about lines of least
resistance and all kinds of horrors (ante-natal tendencies and the
rest), I used to think of Mazeppa, and feel I was being bound on the
wild horse of the Past and left to the wolves. But I always knew I
should escape. It troubles me when I remember that Aunt Valeria didn't.
And perhaps she sat here with the same faith I have." She gave a little
shiver and stood up. "No, no; of course we've been utterly different
from the beginning."
"You've changed in the last two years more than anybody I ever knew."
Val turned quickly upon her friend.
"You mean, I'm getting to be like Aunt Valeria?"
"I don't know; I never saw her. But you--you are getting awfully
civilized."
She laughed. Val was very grave.
"Do you remember," Julia went on, "your plan of running away to be a
chorus-girl?"
"Yes"--the answer rang sharply--"and I would have done it too but that
grandma needed me--" She stopped, with a face suddenly fear-stricken.
"It looks as if I _was_ growing like Aunt Valeria"--she walked up and
down the room with her head caught between her two hands--"but I'm
not--I'm not."
She stopped before Julia, a prey to the feeling that if she allowed
Julia to think so she _would_ be like Aunt Valeria. She had the sense of
one lying in a trance: that if he does not make a superhuman effort now
and protest effectively he will be buried alive. The girl glanced
excitedly round the room, and felt the old presence egging her on. It
was here that other Valeria had dreamed and tried to work; it was here
she faced defeat--here she died, looking out at dawn to the rampart
hills that had hemmed them both in beyond escape.
"Don't think I'm the very least like her. I don't want to be a sculptor
or a poet, and that's not like Aunt Valeria. I'm not staying here out of
respect for any silly old family traditions, nor even because my
grandmother needs me. I've been pretending. I'm really staying for
Ethan's sake"--her face grew crimson--"_that's_ not like Aunt Valeria."
"For Ethan's sake!" echoed her friend.
"Yes. He made me promise. It's only for a little while I am giving up my
music not because I'm growing civilized, as you imagine, but because I
shall get something I want more, and that's not like Aunt Valeria. And
it doesn't matter who says 'No' to what I want: _I'll have it_--yes,
I'll have it in spite of all the angels in heaven and all the demons in
hell, and _that's_ not like Aunt Valeria!"
Julia, still sitting on the hearth-rug, had leaned forward, and was
staring at Val with a curious expression. The crouched-together attitude
had caused an envelope the girl had hidden in her bodice to work up to
the bit of bare neck revealed by the low-folded fichu. Val fastened
sharp eyes upon that part of the familiar gray-blue paper where in
Ethan's unmistakable hand she read as much of Julia's last name as
"tway." Val's fixed stare made the other look down. Two guilty hands
flew to her breast.
"Will you let me see that letter?" said Val.
"No."
"You must. I've told you my secret."
"I didn't ask you to."
Julia got up.
"There's something in it you're ashamed to show," said Val.
"Not at all."
"How long have you been corresponding with Ethan?"
"You've no right to cross-question me. I'm going home."
She moved to the door, and turned as she put her hand on the knob to say
good-bye. The word died on her lips as she saw Val's face. Before Julia
quite realized what was happening, the other had leaped upon her like a
young panther, and was tearing away the fichu at her neck. A short
struggle, and the letter was dragged out of its hiding-place. Val tore
open the door and fled down-stairs, out across the back and round the
wooden L, in at the side-porch, through the kitchen, crying to Jerusha,
"Don't tell Julia where I am!" up the back-stairs, and into an unused
room opening onto the long hall. She locked herself in, and sat down in
the dim light. Every pulse in her body was thumping like a stamp-mill.
She slipped onto her knees before the shrouded window, and with
quivering hands took out of the crumpled envelope several sheets of thin
blue Irish linen-paper closely written.
"Oh, longer than any of mine!" she wailed, in her sore heart.
But, stop! it wasn't all one letter. A little note was to apologize to
"Dear Miss Julia" for not answering her two former "charming letters,"
and to decline with many thanks the Otways' kind invitation to come and
visit them.
"The audacity! To visit _them_ indeed!"
His excuse was the pressure of political engagements.
"She had to write _two_ charming letters to get this."
But the postmark was the capital of the State. He was less than two
hours away! The other--the long communication--lacked the first page,
according to the numbering. She turned to the broken sentence at the
beginning:
"... realized I was rather too notoriously a 'rich man' to stand
much chance of election, but I was at least a man who could
_afford_ to be defeated, and yet go on doing his level best to
serve his country. I started in, believing that the way to serve
her best was by being a Republican and a Sound Money man. It was
all very well to say my own private interests lay along that line;
I believed the public interest did as well. But I was not satisfied
to be 'run' in blinders by an agent or a committee, pledged to see
nothing but party advantages, pledged to controvert opposing
opinions, however sound or unforeseen. I couldn't help seeing the
other side. That's my special curse, by the way, and will stand
forever between me and effective action. I have been about among
the working-classes and the idle poor. I took nobody's word. I
investigated for myself the trades-unions, the various political
and industrial organizations. I looked into Pullman patriarchal
tyranny and into Carnegie despotism, and recalled the more humane,
more _democratic_, attitude of masters to men in the effete
monarchies abroad. Here, in free America, tyranny stalks naked and
unashamed. The employment of politics for mere private gain, the
abuse of patronage, and in business the war of extermination waged
by trusts and combines--everywhere the right of moneyed might, the
rich playing into the hands of the rich while pretending to serve
the people--all this opened my eyes. I have just come from
Ironville. The strike is not going to be settled so easily,
although the suffering is appalling. The masters mean to starve the
men to death; the men mean to blow the masters to atoms. This is
the _union_ I find in my native land--this the new free brotherhood
of men. Sharks devouring little fishes!
"What with lawless greed on one side and lawless need on the other,
the outlook frowns. The question of the future isn't silver versus
gold, it isn't Republican against Democrat, nor North against
South, nor East against West, but human dignity and decency against
capitalist slave-drivers and despoilers of the poor. _You_ know the
spirit of fervor and of patriotism that carried me into the
campaign. I tell you I'm sick with disillusionment.
"I am far more afraid of being elected than of facing defeat. I
have learned that these measures I proposed in such good faith are
half-measures foredoomed to failure. Give me, if you can, some good
reason to believe that this great and prosperous America is not
like to become the devil's drill-ground. Yours very sincerely,
"ETHAN GANO."
"Well, of all the funny letters for a man to write a girl!"
_Julia_ give him a reason! Julia setting herself up as understanding
politics! To be sure, she was two years older than Val, and was always
seeing her father's political friends; but that didn't account for....
It came over her how little one woman knows the side another woman turns
to men. It must be immensely flattering to have a "politician" writing
to her on terms of equality. Oh yes, Julia must be enormously uplifted.
Val was sure of it by the heaviness that weighed _her_ down. Julia, no
doubt, had "studied up" in order to share Ethan's interests on a side
that Val and other girls couldn't reach.
As she came out of her hiding-place she was concocting in her mind a
letter which the servant should carry over to Julia with the confiscated
correspondence.
Her excitement had died down, leaving for the moment a dead weight of
wretchedness. Ethan's letters to her had seemed before so full and
satisfactory, even her hungry curiosity had felt no want in them that a
letter could supply. For even the love he did not put into words seemed
not only implicit in every line of each "enclosure," but more subtly
delicious being veiled. His letters had filled up the empty spaces in
her life, seeming to carry her along step by step through his. But if
there was all this besides which he cared to write to Julia, what more
might there not be in a life so full and varied as his? How had she been
so blind, so easily content? It was years since they had said good-bye.
Wasn't nearly every novel in the world a warning against believing that
men remembered long the girl who was out of sight? No doubt, what she
had dimly feared had happened at Long Branch last summer--Julia had
improved the shining hour.
Val went wearily down the long hall, feeling that all the zest had gone
out of existence forever. She stopped to lean against the last window at
the head of the back-stairs. Looking out, she saw to her surprise that
Julia was sitting on the terrace under the crooked catalpa-tree. Ah,
she couldn't go and leave that precious letter behind! Val went down to
her with angry-beating heart. The other girl, leaning back against the
tree, watched with sullen eyes the slow approach. She had wrapped the
torn fichu up close about her throat. Something in Julia's handsome
impassivity stirred the other to a rage, more becoming had she not been
the arch offender. She dropped the crumpled envelope into Julia's lap.
"I congratulate you on being able to hold up your end of such a weighty
correspondence."
"Is that all you have to say after leaping at me like a wild-cat and
taking what didn't belong to you?"
"Oh, you're waiting here for me to apologize?"
Julia got up slowly.
"I never thought _you_ would do such a dishonorable thing!"
"It wasn't dishonorable. You and I were '_best_ friends.' I had just
given you my whole confidence. You owed it to me to be as frank with me.
I took what belonged to me."
"And I say that if you broke into our house and stole the silver, you
couldn't be more of a thief than you are this moment."
Val stared at her speechless, and then:
"I think if you were a man I could kill you. Why do you stay here?" she
said, coming a step nearer with ill-controlled fury. "We aren't
expecting Ethan to-day. Why do you stay?"
Julia squared her Junoesque shoulders against the crooked tree and stood
her ground.
"You can, of course, behave like a wild savage if it suits you, but I'd
like to know what you mean to do."
"Do!" Val dropped her arms listless to her sides. "What is there to do?"
"Shall you tell your cousin you stole his letters?"
"No. I shall tell my cousin exactly what happened." She turned to go up
to the house.
"I wouldn't, if I were you. Look here, there's no reason, because our
friendship's broken, that we should do more things we shall regret.
You've no right because you've got hold of my secret--you've no right to
pass it on to Ethan." It was an agony to hear her call him Ethan. "You
mustn't tell him that I--that I carry his letters about. And I won't
tell him that you--"
"Tell him what you like!"
Val went angrily up the terrace-steps; but all the same, Julia knew
perfectly that she had secured herself now against Ethan's hearing what
had happened. Val could, most indefensibly, tear her secret out of her
keeping in the passion of the moment. But Julia had little fear that in
cold blood her old friend would "give her away" to the man they both
loved.