The little girl at the door nodded, speechless.
"Perhaps I'll help you afterwards to put your things away in the cupboard. First go down into the hall and bring me a piece of chalk out of the lift-up chair where they keep the brushes."
"Chalk!" Whatwasshe going to do?
"Yes, chalk, goosie gander! Chalk! chalk!"
Emmie fled. She had serious thoughts of never returning, but curiosity and the memory of her best hat sitting on the floor got the better of her fears.
"That's right," said Val, on Emmie's reappearance. "Don't come over here!" she shouted. "Stop, I tell you!" She stamped violently as the child advanced, bewildered, holding out a piece of yellow crayon. "Didn't I just say this part of the room is mine?"
"Y-yes."
"Well, itis, just as much as if it had doors, which it ought to have, and locks and bolts. Don't ever come here till you get my permission. Understand?"
"I—I—" Emmie dropped the crayon, and retreated slowly. "I was only going to say we oughtn't to use that chalk. It belongs to Aunt Valeria's painting things."
"Look here!" Val waived such puny scruples aside. "See this seam in the carpet?"
"Yes," answered a small, scared voice.
"Well, I'll make it plainer, so's there's no mistake." She stooped and drew a yellow line down the seam from wall to wall. "Now," she said, getting up and striking a threatening attitude, "you're younger than me, but I give you all that side for your room. This side is mine. If you ever cross that line without my leave, I'll kill you—yes, I'll kill you dead with cousin Ethan's knife!"
She turned her head and beheld her grandmother standing in the doorway.
This was the beginning of the Four Years' War.
But although Val was worsted in this encounter, the racewassometimes to the swift and the battle to the ingenious. For instance, that very night in bed she discovered a way of reducing Emmie to submission without resorting to physical violence. Val began to tell out loud a terrible and harrowing tale, which nearly threw the younger child into fits. Emmie would do anything for her dear, dear sister if only darling Val would say the black figure wasn't a ghost. Darling Val complied, after a thorough understanding that whenever Emmie was too unbearable that black figure, which was a ghost only on certain nights—that black figure should be introduced into their nocturnal amenities. Val was not always as good as her word. She did once or twice in the comfortable daytime make the sinister threat, "If you do that again I'll tell you a scary story when we're in bed to-night"; but in the morning the night is almost as far away as being grown up or dying—at all events too far off to seem very real or important. Experience proved that Val would forget the menace by the time it was dark, or else would be too sleepy to live up to it—so sleepy, in fact, that she could do nothing but kick Emmie in a desultory way, or lie like a log in the middle of the bed, leaving the younger child to find her half on the outer edge of both sides; whereupon Emmie's long-suffering patience would suddenly break down, and she would go crying to her grandmother's door, and stand there wailing till she was taken in. After some weeks' trial the plan of making the two sisters share the sameroom was abandoned, and Emmie had a cot at the foot of her grandmother's four-poster.
Val was made to realize that now she had crossed the Rubicon. Up to that hour she had been on probation, but this change once effected, she was "beyond the pale." Not that she was harassed, nagged, scolded; that she would have understood and known how to meet; she was ignored, not spoken to, not even seen. For days she might have been thin air, so little did her grandmother seem able to realize her corporal presence. There had been no doubt in Val's mind from the first but what Emmie was the favourite here. The very servants, she saw, were under the spell of Emmie's pretty ways, and in any time of trouble took it for granted that the imperious Val had been the aggressor. Natural and inevitable as was this attitude of the entire household (for Mr. Gano was spared all details, and did not count), it was not calculated to make the sisters better friends, or win Val to a more amenable mind.
Nobody, from Val's point of view, could care much about what Jerusha and Venie thought, but her grandmother's good opinion was somehow, even at this stage, a secretly coveted honor. Yet there was no blinking the fact Emmie was her pet. This form of putting the hard underlying fact was the more satisfactory in that one could as soon imagine Mrs. Gano dancing the Highland fling as having a pet. Gran'ma! who wouldn't let a dog or even a bird into the house, and whom no one could fancy nursing or caressing anything on earth! There was a suggestion of the ludicrous, a faint ironic aroma, in the phrase, which aroused angry passions. It fitted in, too, with all manner of exigencies. In any event it was apposite to remark, "Of course Emmie's the pet." This could be said with such effect of scorn that Emmie found no refuge save in tears.
"What's the matter?" inquired Mrs. Gano.
She had happened on the twain as they were loitering in the hall before going off to church.
Emmie wept on. Val set her little red mouth doggedly. Her grandmother glared.
"Now what have you been doing to this poor child?" she demanded.
Gran'ma's eyes were very strange when she was angry, as Val had frequently confided to the cobwebs in the wood-shed—unlike anybody's on earth—piercing, glittery; made you cold down your back. Servants shook and scuttled when she looked at them like that. Val herself was always reminded of
"Tiger, tiger, burning brightIn the forests of the night,"
"Tiger, tiger, burning brightIn the forests of the night,"
"Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,"
and braced herself by saying, internally: "I ain't 'fraid o' tigers and I ain't 'fraid o' gran'ma"—this, too, with a fine sense of climax.
"What is it, Emmie? Stop crying. I can't have this noise."
"V—Val says I'm your p—pet."
"Nonsense! I have no pets. You are not to worry Emmeline. Never say that again. Understand?"
Val was silent.
Gran'ma's eyes were awful.
"Are you going to promise, or do you prefer to spend the day alone?"
That had been tried, and proved a great waste of time and opportunity.
"Yes, I promise."
"Very well; now go to church; Venie is waiting."
"Aha!" said the victorious Emmie when they were out of earshot. "Now you see what you get for teasing me."
And she crowed over her comrade with restored vivacity, till Val said, with suspicious geniality:
"Oh, well, I s'pose I was mistaken. I knew you were either her pet or else—"
"What?"
Emmie fixed her beautiful soft eyes expectantly on her sister.
Val turned on her with suppressed fury:
"Or else a creepin', crawlin' little woo—er—er—m."
Floods of tears, and Venus to the rescue.
The Four Years' War did not always rage round Emmie, although it was the innocent little sister who was the means of forcing upon Val the conviction that her grandmother was not, and never could be, her friend. It is true she cherished a dream at first of earning her gratitude and admiration by some splendid heroic deed that should cover her grandmother with shame at the memory of the way she had misunderstood and undervalued her descendant. The house would be on fire some day, and Val would "save all their lives"; or a robber would get in in the night, and by a series of thrilling adventures Val would entrap and lock him up in the closet under the stairs, where that silly old Jerusha said there was a ghost; or the ancient nag that sometimes came from the livery-stable to take her father and grandmother out for an airing—this steed would unexpectedly run away some fine day. Val saw herself dashing out of the bushes at the road-side, seizing the bit, and hanging on to it till she brought the frantic animal to a stand-still. Then her grandmother would say: "Dear, brave child, we owe you our lives," etc. "How I've misunderstood you!" etc. Val would be magnanimous, and forgive everything. She had a fixed intention of saying in reply: "Gran'ma, let the dead past bury its dead." Her grandmother would feel that. But until that day came, how was she to endure all this injustice and oppression? Emmie was her grandmother's—well, she took Emmie's word about everything, and Emmie counted on that. She didn't play fair, and she was an awful cry-baby; couldn't climb trees, or even run hard without falling down and hurting herself and saying it was Val's fault. Then for the rest of the day her grandmother would treat Val like an outcast, and dock her of Jerry's society. How sickening it was to be told Emmie was the littlest, and delicate! Val herself had at one time been "only six," but she hadn't been a sniveller; she had always played fair and never cried. Ask anybody. They'd all say Val Ganonevercried. Whereupon she would steal away to the wood-shed, or climbup high in the catalpa-tree, remind herself she had no mother, shed a private tear or two, and tell herself a story.
After all, the only serious blemishes in the scheme of creation were grandmothers and Sundays. Now that Val had renounced religion, she could not but look on the day of rest as an interruption and a time of bondage, when grandmothers and grandmothers' views pervaded creation to creation's cost.
On the third Sunday after the arrival at New Plymouth she announced that she was not going to church.
"I don't want to, either," whispered Emmie. "Let's pertend we're very ill."
"No; let's just say we won't go."
"Better not," admonished the cautious Emmie. "I think my throat is going to be sore."
So Emmie was duly cosseted by Aunt Jerusha, and given delicious black-currant jelly.
Mrs. Gano, hearing rumors of rebellion, had sent for Val. She was dressed and sitting in the big arm-chair before the fire with a book on her knees. It was quite warm, but she couldn't apparently do without a fire and a shawl. She was seldom seen about the house in these days without a shawl. She must have had hundreds—white and black and gray, striped and dotted; silk, cashmere, canton-crêpe. Her gowns all seemed to be made of rusty black silk. They were so exactly alike that Val thought for long she had but one. There was always, too, the inevitable and spotless lawn at the throat; no frivolous ruffle or after-thought of tie—nothing set on, extraneous, but smooth white folds that seemed to grow up out of the dress—an integral part of the plain and changeless uniform that was the outward and visible sign of one's grandmother's severe, uncompromising spirit.
"What's this I hear? Why are you not dressing for church?"
"I—I don't feel like going to-day."
"Are you not well?"
"Ho yes"—very contemptuous. "I never get ill."
"Then you must go to church. It's the custom in this house."
"Venie saysyougo only twice a year. I'll go when you do."
The old lady's eyes blazed behind her gold spectacles.
"You'll go when you are told." Awful pause. "When you are my age you may suit yourself."
"Father hasn't had to wait all that time; he doesn't go now."
"Your father is very ill."
"Didn't go when he was well; that is,hardlyever," added the explicit young person.
"He went regularly as a boy, before he had a house of his own. But I'm not accustomed to arguing with children. Go and get dressed."
Val wavered a moment, then faced about gravely. She planted herself before the old lady, with the wide-apart legs and tense look of one who braces herself to bear the crack of doom.
"I'm sorry to hurt your feelings," she said; "but I'm a infidel."
"What!"
"Yes; father and I are both infidels."
"Hush! you don't know what you're saying."
"Oh yes, I do. He says, 'Damn it!' when you're not there."
"How dare you!"
"I don't, but father does, so you see—"
"I see that you talk wildly and ignorantly, as well as too much. Go and dress for church."
She had half risen, her eyebrows had risen wholly. She looked singularly alarming. Val retreated backwards to the door, and Mrs. Gano resumed her seat.
"I ain't so igorunt as you think," the child persisted. "The reason I stopped going to church was because my conscience wouldn't let me join in."
Mrs. Gano turned and looked at the child over the backof her arm-chair. There was a gleam of amused tolerance in the steely eyes. Val was quick to detect it.
"You see, it's not worth while to waste the whole morning nearly when the only thing you can join in is a piece they don't do every Sunday."
"Which is that?" asked Mrs. Gano, in an odd voice.
She had turned away again, and Val couldn't see her face now.
"That long piece about the weather."
"Theweather?"
"Yes—lightnings, and whales, and things. Don't you know that one? It's like this." She put her hands behind her, and shrilly intoned: "'O ye green things, angels and fowls of the air, praise Him and magnify Him for-r-rever. O ye—'"
"That will do," interrupted Mrs. Gano, in a stifled voice.
Val felt snubbed; there was a lot more that, with encouragement, she would have endeavored to do justice to. She felt for the door-handle, but paused again on the threshold.
"Mayn't I go and sit with father?"
"Certainly not; you are to go to church."
"Gran'ma." There was a renewal of courage in the clear little voice. With a bound she planted herself in front of the old lady's chair. "Ioughtn'tto go. It's pertending; it's wicked. For I can't say the 'I b'lieve' any more."
Mrs. Gano rose in her wrath and towered. Val stood to her guns, looking up with determined, excited face.
"I used to join in when I was younger: I used to bow, just like mother. Father never bowed.Idon't any more, neither."
Mrs. Gano seized her by the shoulder and propelled her to the door. Wild thoughts of dungeons and burned martyrs flew through the child's mind. Still clutching the infidel, Mrs. Gano opened the door. In an awful voice she called:
"Jerusha! Venus!"
Venus appeared with perturbed countenance, out of which all genial companionableness had fled. Yes, that was the kind of face an executioner might wear.
"Take Miss Val up-stairs and get her ready for church."
Venus took hold of the child none too gently, and pulled her, wriggling vainly, up the long staircase. It was no use to cling feverishly to the banisters; it only hurt her hands. Half-way up Venus stopped for breath. Val looked back to see if her grandmother was still there. Yes; leaning exhausted against the frame of the door, with her handkerchief to her lips. Now Venus was dragging her on again. In a fresh access of rage the child put her chin over the banisters and screamed:
"All the time they're doing the 'I b'lieve,' I shall go like this." She shook her head with such passionate dissent that her shock of wild hair swirled madly back and forth in a cloudy circle, completely hiding the mutinous, flushed face of the infidel.
Very soon after the formal removal of Emmie and her effects to her grandmother's bedroom, Val gave up the last lingering shred of hope that she might ever, while these misunderstood days of childhood lasted, propitiate the powers that be. She was always feeding her imagination in secret with stories of the ultimate love and adoration, not only of the suitors and heroes who should line her path later on, but of her family, too. They and the entire community should adore her one day for something wonderful and noble that she was going to be and to do in that fair future when she should be grown up and great and good.
Meanwhile there were moments when this sense of present outlawry brought with it a fierce and splendid joy. It endowed even a down-trodden child with a superhuman courage. Such a one might even go and plump herself down in the great red chair of state, and rock violently back and forth in a wild abandonment of wickedness, while Emmie stood transfixed and gran'ma's awful eyes made lightning. An outlaw so brave, she could narrate unmoved that she had taken a ride in the milkman's cart.And he had been "so perlite as to ask me how was Grandmother Gano." This horrible insult on the part of the milkman was duly punished, but Val had a momentary sense of having "got even." In the South—in any civilized community, Mrs. Gano would have told you—you did not call people "old"; it had foolishly enough come to be a term of reproach, or at least of scant respect, fit only for "any old thing" of no account. Therefore, let alone the "owdacious" familiarity of asking after a lady as "Grandmother" So-and-so, you couldn't even with decency distinguish the elder lady from her daughter-in-law by asking after old Mrs. So-and-so. In the South, where manners were still understood, you said "senior" and "junior," or, among the better class, you called the son's wife "Mrs." So-and-so, and you called the head of the family "Madam."
"Grandmother Gano, indeed! I'll grandmother him!"
It was a great score, too, when Julia Otway, Jerry's nearly two years older sister, assured Val that that common term of reproach "Grannie," was a corruption of the ancient and honorable title Gran'ma. Inseparably associating the word with the drunken rag-picker, "Ole Granny Gill," and the scathing juvenile satire, "Teach your granny to suck eggs," etc., Val determined on the next provocation to introduce the subject at home. She found occasion to dilate on the virtues of Julia Otway's grandmother. This was a shrunken and timid old lady, who sat unnoticed in the corner, clicking her knitting-needles, and usually saying nothing. When she did speak it was found her speech was odd, and the children laughed.
"Nearly everybody else's gran'ma knits stockens," Val observed one day, with critical eyes on the eternal book open on Mrs. Gano's knees.
"You know very few grandmothers," said the lady.
"I know Julia's. She'ssonice. I don't wonder Julia and Jerry like her."
This elicited nothing.
"She's thekindestperson. She keeps a little chest o' drawers chock-full o' doughnuts and winter-green candy."
"Very strange use for a chest of drawers. Is the lady right in her head?"
Val, very indignant: "Goodness gracious! mercy me! I should think so!"
"I've told you not to use those exclamations."
"No, you didn't say—"
"Do I understand you to be contradicting me?"
"You said I wasn't to say 'Oh, Lord!' nor 'Gee-rusa-lem!' nor 'Dear me suz!' nor 'Holy Moses!' I don't see what there's left to say."
"I said let your speech be 'Yea, yea,' and 'Nay, nay.' You are not to bring sacred names into common talk. The Jews of old had a proper instinct for these things. They never uttered the name of Jehovah even in prayer. No Jew would step upon a piece of parchment, for fear it might be inscribed with the name of God. It is impious to call upon the mercy of the Most High on trivial occasions."
"I don't call on Him—never."
"Yes, you do, when you use those expressions. God is 'gracious'; He alone is 'goodness.'"
Silence; then Val, recovering and returning to the attack:
"Jerry's grandmother—"
"Jerningham Otway's grandmother knows as well as I do that this is a turbulent and stiff-necked generation, without fear of God or reverence for authority.Herremedy seems to be effacement for herself and bribes for her young barbarians. But"—she had risen, and was towering—"I'd have you know, my lady,I'mnot a doughnut grandmother."
Val thought it time to depart. She moved briskly to the door, sending over her shoulder a Parthian shot:
"Julia calls her gran'ma "Granny," and so do lots o' people. It seems it's the reg'lar name."
Thereupon she took to her heels, for even outlaws know limits.
At a safe distance she would speculate darkly: "Iwonder if she knows I hate her. Oh yes; it would be a waste of breath to mention it. She knows, and she doesn't care—she's that hardened."
It was clear at such times that this Ishmaelite's hand must be against every man, and every man's hand against her. All consideration of decent restraint had been flung to the winds. She had turned her back on the hallowed customs of society, and joined the iconoclasts of earth. She would even at times plant her elbows on the dinner-table before everybody, with a wild, despairing sense that nothing mattered forever any more. Nobody loved her. Even her father didn't want her about him since his relapse. He said she came in like a whirlwind on the rare occasions when she was admitted to his room. She should never forget that day when he said: "Why can't you be quiet and good like Emmie?"Like Emmie!Val fled to the wilderness, and in the neighborhood of the barberry-bush flung out her arms and apostrophized the heavens. She talked a great deal to herself in those days—arraigned society, and used long words with vague meaning, but studied accent and overwhelming effect. However, in spite of the difficulty of life, Val found it an exhaustless mine of interest. Being naughty alone was full of palpitating excitement. Besides, she was much better than her family realized; that of itself was curious, and at times sufficient. At any rate, she was not, as she frequently observed to the scarlet barberries—she was not a sniveller. Fortunately, it did not occur to her that the circumstance might be less creditable to her than she fondly imagined.
Her quarrel with domestic conditions lent a fine tragic interest, in her own mind, to a life that was deep-rooted in joy. It was impossible not to be happy, such a splendid world as it was—a world with skipping-ropes and a stolen jack-knife in it; a world where an awful jolly boy lived on the other side the osage-trees, and liked you better than that favorite of fortune who had a pet monkey; a world with wild tracts below its terraces where grandmothers ceased from troubling, and hard-pressed heroines couldhide and talk out loud. A new house building in the next lot, with ceilings open to the sky, and instead of common floors, great beams where a child who "never was 'fraid" could walk up and down with its heart in its mouth; blocks to be picked up, and a kind workman to talk to when it was cold and gran'ma wasn't patrolling the north side of the Fort. Even for rainy afternoons there were the belovedScottish Chiefs; there were jack-stones, and a family next door who owned a barn. Oh, asplendidworld, where you got twelve winter-green drops for a cent, and could play on your father's fiddle in the back hall! Hooray! it was a good plan this being born.
One peculiarity of life at the Fort was that although visitors in general were in high disfavor, everybody, from Mrs. Gano down to Jerusha—especially Jerusha—was always hoping for a visit from cousin Ethan. And he never came. The last vacation before Val's arrival Emmie said he had had to go with the Tallmadges to Bar Harbor. This June he couldn't come, because his aunt Hannah had died, and his grandfather was alone; but he thought he might come "later on." Now that the maples were scarlet and gold, he wrote regretfully, saying that, after all, he had to go back to Harvard without any holiday. He sent his love to his cousins, and the annual photograph—which she had commanded to be taken each year—to his grandmother. She had a row of them on the mantel-piece in her room. When the new one came like a falling leaf each autumn, she spent anxious days deciding which of the old ones should go in a drawer to make room for the latest. There were three that never yielded to any new-comer, however beguiling. Ethan's cousins, it must be admitted, who were ardent admirers of the more recent pictures, thought little enough of Mrs. Gano's favorite three.
The first was of a child about three years old in his night-gown—a dreamy little face framed in a halo of curling hair. Yes; it was more like an angel than a flesh-and-blood boy, but it was yellowed and faded, and not taken at an interesting age, so his two cousins thought.
The next was a very solemn little chap with a tiny pail in his hand, dressed in a kilt, and wearing a wide white collar, seeming to labor hopelessly with a wooden spade in a world of unmitigated woe.
The third had been taken in Paris with his school friend Henri de Poincy, and he had on "funny French clothes," but he held his slender figure very easily erect, and without seeming to remember he was having his photograph taken. He had written from Neuilly to his grandmother:
"I always think of my summer at the Fort when I go to have your picture done."
If that were the case, this time the remembrance must have been a gracious one, for his dark little face was lit, expectant, beautiful.
"Why did he go to France?" Val had asked.
"Oh, some nonsense about accent, as if the only accent to be considered was the French." Mrs. Gano threw back her head. "And then a cousin of the Tallmadges married a Frenchman, a man called De Poincy. The mother died, and left a boy—"
"That awful little ape in the pho— I mean Henri?"
"Yes; Henri, averynice boy."
Mrs. Gano would not have prolonged the conversation, but Emmie said:
"I'm sure he's nice. Cousin Ethan's letters always say beautiful things about Henri.Dogo on."
"I've told you scores of times."
As if that were not the flimsiest reason for not repeating a stock tale, half of whose charm is its familiarity.
"Didn't cousin Ethan find Henri at the Tallmadges' when he got back?"
"Yes, after that summer he spent here." The old eyes were mild. "And although Henri was a couple of years older, the two boys set up a sort of David and Jonathan league. And when Henri's father sent for him to come back to France—they said—humph!"
The mildness vanished in a sudden blaze.
"What did they say?"
Again Mrs. Gano threw back her head.
"Ethanhadbeen coming here. We had his room all ready for him, and Valeria had bought pink wax-candles for his dressing-table—a most unnecessary extravagancefor a boy, as I told her. And as for Jerusha, she wasted half her mornings brightening up Ethan's knocker on the front door, and the rest of the time she was making cinnamon rolls. And, after all—humph!" she said, with something rather near to a snort.
"Then those Tallmadges wrote, didn't they?" said Emmie, gently applying the spur.
"Ho, yes, the Tallmadges wrote. The children were heart-broken at the idea of separating, and so they had to let Ethan go to Neuilly with the De Poincy boy."
"To improve his accent!" added Emmie, with borrowed scorn.
"Oh yes; I admitted in my reply that Ethan's accent was no doubt again in need of improvement, but it had not been necessary to send him so far afield as France."
"How long did he stay?" asked Val.
"Three years. He came back the summer you were born. He was nearly ten."
"Well, it's a good thing he came back. He does look a gump in those French clo's—I mean"—Val caught herself up hurriedly, seeing how unpopular the observation was—"I mean, I like him best in proper American things. This last picture's scrumptious!"
After this, it was not only gran'ma and An' Jerusha who held the Fort in readiness for Ethan's coming, eager to capitulate at the first blow on the door; but two little girls as well, in their different ways, set their faces towards the day when E. Gano's big brass knocker should be lifted by E. Gano's own hand.
School had been postponed, partly because Mrs. Gano was too anxious about her son's health, and too absorbed in the task of convincing him indirectly that life was worth living, to take the necessary steps for entering her granddaughter in the Primary Department of the Plymouth Seminary for Young Ladies. But, besides this preoccupation, it was recognized that the fall term was already far advanced, and it might be as well—it was certainly more economical—to wait till after Christmas. However, thegrowing discomfort and complication of having so objectionable a child about hastened the beginning of Val's school days.
With great misgiving, and full of suspicion, Val took her place at a little hacked and initialed desk in the down-stairs school one fine day towards the middle of November.
But we are forever being disappointed of our direst fears, as well as of our dearest hopes. She found that she soon got the "hang" of the lessons; that her next-door neighbor, Julia Otway, was the nicest girl in school, and very soon her "best friend"; that Val herself could run faster than anybody in the games at recess; and that she had fallen blissfully under the spell of pretty Miss Matson, the primary teacher, who, strange to say, seemed to like Val.
The bustling life at the Plymouth Seminary for Young Ladies, full, varied, delightful, would perhaps be considered by the professional biographer of vital importance in moulding a young person's character; for was this not the time and the place of her education? One is inclined, in Val's case, at any rate, to say no. She learned by rote, at that excellent institution, certain more or less useful things, and, more important still, she made two or three dear friends, who taught her much of value about the human heart; but for the most part she waseducatedat home. There, and not at school, she, in common with many young people, found the influences that made her what she ultimately became.
Her father, if he understood the matter so, naturally did not so express himself. Perhaps he thought this child of his had too little of the Gano love of books, and was over-fond of running breathless races, and playing ball with the neighbor's boy.
"You came here to go to school, you know. You've played all your life up to this. Now you must begin to work. This is a very important time in your life."
"Is it?"
Val sat up very straight, with shining eyes and an air of pleased responsibility.
"Oh, very important, indeed. For now you have still time to decide what kind of a woman you're going to make of Val Gano."
"Oh, have I?"
He nodded.
"You can make up your mind you won't be a dull, ignorant person, all your life bound in shallows and in miseries."
"No, indeed," she said, with vigor.
"It's in your power now to take the necessary steps towards some better fate. By-and-by it will be too late: you'll be like the crooked catalpa in the terrace, grown awry and too old to straighten out."
"No, I shall be like the tulipifera rhododendron."
He laughed.
"You are ambitious, my dear"; and then he sighed. "Few come up to tulipifera. Now, I am far enough from being a rich man, and I can't give my daughters a fortune; but I can give them something far more valuable."
"Now?"
"Yes, I've begun giving it. I mean an education."
"Oh!"
This was a blow.
"See that you make the most of it. It will put a key in your hands that can unlock a hundred doors to happiness. I am doing with you—only a little more helpfully perhaps—what the Swedish peasant did with his eldest son."
"What did he do?"
"He took the boy up to the top of the highest hill in the country, and said, 'You are young, my son, but I am about to give you your inheritance. Look abroad'—and he stretched out his arms—'behold, I give you the world! Go forth and take what portion you will.'"
Val drew a quick breath.
"Ha! I know whatIwant."
"What do you think you want, little girl?"
"I want to be loved—oh, but tremendously! And I want to do some one thing awfully, awfully well."
It was the most old-fashioned, unchildlike speech of which Val had ever delivered herself.
"Well, my dear," her father spoke, dreamily, "to be greatly loved, and to do well some one piece of work, isn't a bad destiny. Older heads than yours would be at a loss to better it."
Even to her father, even in that moment of great outgoing, she had not liked to particularize what it was she wanted to do so "awfully, awfully well." But there was no doubt in her own mind that she was going to be a dancer. She practised every rainy day, and sometimes when it didn't rain, down in the dark parlor, where it smelt so solemn and musty. There was a huge oil-painting on the north wall, of Daniel Boone and his dogs and other friends "Discovering Kentucky." Although their eyes were turned ever towards "the dark and bloody ground," they were Val's audience. To the burly hunter and his raccoon-capped and shaggy companions she bowed and pirouetted, waved her arms and tossed her heels. She did not dare touch the old rosewood piano after one or two rapturous attacks upon the yellow keys had brought swift retribution out of her grandmother's chamber; but dancing was not only a glorious and heady excitement, but, unlike most of this young person's pastimes, it was noiseless; it could be carried on by the hour without rousing any one's suspicions, unless perchance a vague uneasiness as to "what keeps that child so quiet." When discovered, she was usually found to be breathlessly examining the gilt-edged annuals and gift-books on the centre table, or else staring into the "stereopticon," though what view was visible in that dim light remained a marvel.
Perhaps the most memorable crisis of her childhood had found her in the twilight of that musty parlor. It was a pale-gray, teeming spring morning, after a night of rain—Saturday, and yet she had been forbidden to go and see her friends next door.
"WhenIwas a little girl I didn't live at the neighbors'."
Val had been learning lessons, perched in the high window-seat of her own room, looking out now and then with a glad sense of coming summer to the early red of maple blossoms, and off to the blue Mioto Hills, that rose on the other side the river, shutting in her world. Presently, down below the rain-soaked terraces, in Mioto Avenue, a street-organ began to play.
She dropped her book and leaned farther out. A watery gleam of sunshine fell on the warm, dripping world. The smell of earth came up fresh, and full of a mysterious promise. The "grind-organ," as the children called it, sang and clanged. Val beat the swift time with her fist on the stone sill, and her dangling feet moved staccato to the tune. She half closed her eyes. Ah! now she could see better. She was gliding through a brilliant scene at a ball. She was just sixteen, and dressed in blue and silver, and there was a throng about her—all lovers! There were no women, save those that looked enviously on from a far background of flower-festooned wall. The faces near the blue-and-silver maiden were chiefly strange, but all noble and beautiful. All these the generous future would provide, but one or two she recognized as having followed her out of the present. There was cousin Ethan as he looked in the last picture, Jerry—and, well in the foreground, Jerry's handsome elder brother, and certain other less-known young townsmen not to be spared from the gay group of gallants; but they were destined, every man Jack of them, to break their faithful hearts. She smiled and waved her geography—her fan, of course—and each young gentleman took courage. But wait! In a minute she would be carried off by the tall, dark, fierce-eyed hero, who lived somewhere—somewhere—not in ballrooms, except as the eagle may swoop into the valley—not in cities, but in some mountain fastness in the kingdom at the end of the world.
Many a time she had wondered how they were to meet, how he was ever to know that she lived with a cruel grandmother in New Plymouth. Ha! now it was plain. Theorgan had ground out the truth. She would run away by-and-by. He would see her somewhere dancing, and he would say "Eureka!" "Ah!" she would say, "but I'm half engaged to my next-door neighbor, or to the Duke of Daffy-down-dilly." "What does that matter to me?" Whiff! he would carry her off, and say she should love him, whether she liked it or not. Oh, it was wonderful!—it was palpitating to lie in the dark, or in the pale spring sunshine, with shut eyes, and think about this king of men, who would not be denied. Val couldn't remember a time when she had not told herself stories with this fruitful theme for inspiration. The proud, dark figure had come dimly out of the fairy world, and had grown more human and distinct day by day. He began by being a prince, and for some years he wore a gold-embroidered velvet robe. By degrees he adopted a less and less striking attire, which, however, had never yet degenerated into mere modern evening dress. The noble gentleman could not be expected to put off his romantic melancholy along with his royal robes, for a large part of the excitement of this game of the imagination lay in the lady's proud rejection of his suit, and flight from the fortress where he thought to hide her—his hot pursuit—his being baffled, disappointed, and reduced to wild despair before his ultimate victory. And this final triumph (oh, strong survival of the savage in the female breast!) was invariably a triumph of arms. Not even to a hero who was handsome, and tall, and strong as a giant; not even to a hero half bandit, half blameless knight, that every other girl in the world pined for, that every man envied and must needs honor—not even to such a one will the untutored dreamer yield herself a willing bride. A willing bride! The very phrase offends some ancient canon fixed against self-abandonment in the very blood and bone of womankind.
Can it be that in the ages unrecorded, before men going hence left behind them laws on stone, or testament on papyrus, the women of that far-off time had inscribed a legend on the hearts of all their sex, graved it so deep andplain that a little girl of the nineteenth century (casting about for stories to send herself to sleep) may read it in the dark after all those æons have gone by? Can it be that, reading and understanding this language, which being dead yet speaketh, knowing the ancient mother-tongue better even than her father's own, she takes the legend for a text, obeys it as a natural law, and thrills to it as did her old ancestress of the cave and tent, smiling covertly, and deliciously afraid?
The fresh wind blew the child's wild hair across her face; the sun shone down more golden; the organ jangled through its tunes. Now, with a jerk of restlessness, it abandoned "Il Trovatore" and struck into a waltz. Ha! the window-seat was too cramped. She slid down and began to dance. Gran'ma's voice. The little girl stopped suddenly, opened the door, and went sedately down-stairs, with her lesson books conspicuously in evidence. At the bottom she stopped and listened. Cautiously she opened the parlor door and closed it behind her. She flung her books down and coursed wildly round the centre table, as one sees a dog just let out of the kennel celebrate his liberty. Suddenly she stopped and bowed solemnly to Daniel Boone, saying under her breath:
"Now I'm the greatest dancer on the earth. Now they're all applauding. Now I make three courtesies. They clap and clap till I begin again. This is the most wonderful dance of all."
She started afresh, curving her arms above her head, fantasticating steps, some graceful, some grotesque, whirling faster and faster to the rhythm that was beating in her brain. Suddenly a dark face looked out of the throng in that theatre of her imagination, and she knew it was the face of her fate. There was the Duke of Daffy-down-dilly, too, leaning out of a box and applauding as hard as he could. The dark man sat quite still, but his eyes gleamed.
After the last great dance, which was called "The Filigree Finale" (all the dances had beautiful names), the Duke threw her a bouquet of roses, and held out his arms.
"I spurn the flowers." She kicked out a scornful foot. "I turn my back. Oh, it'sdeafeningthe way they're applauding!"
Suddenly, in the heartless process of dancing away from plaudits and a duke, she stopped short as if she had been shot. The color fled out of her face, and her thin hands dropped limp at her side. There was a kind of terror in her eyes as presently she moved forward, dragging her wings, so to speak, to the opposite end of the room, where, over a marble-top table, an old-fashioned mirror reflected Daniel Boone. The child peered into the glass, but it was dark, and the marble-top table held her at arm's-length. She could only see dimly the top of her head. She dropped down in a miserable little heap between the claw feet of the table. Perhaps she alone of all the heroines of earth was not, never could be, beautiful! It had never occurred to her before. A thousand recollections seemed to rush at her at once to fasten the fear in her heart, to make it hideous certainty. If she had been going to be beautiful, would not some one have mentioned it? Emmie had heard a thousand times how pretty she was. Cousin Ethan was known to be the most beautiful of boys. As to Val's looks, why, she was so little a credit to a handsome race that nobody could be got to own her. Hadn't her mother said, "Emmie is like me; but Val—I suppose she's more like you"? and her father had hurriedly disclaimed the faintest resemblance between his eldest daughter and himself. Her grandmother had said: "You are not like my side of the house, and I don't see a trace of the Gano in you. I'm sure I don't know where you came from." Ah, it was clear she had not referred to mere wickedness. She was repudiating her descendant's plainness. The child put her hands over her face. But it was incredible that this blow at the root of joy was meant for her. She dropped her hands, taking heart of grace. Katie O'Flynn, the cook in New York, had said, in some interval of truce, that Val had "rale Oirish oyes," and she had said it with no accent of condolence. If only she hadn't added,"They're put in wid smutty fingers, me darlint!" Even at the time Val had felt the last remark tactless, and had changed the subject, but now—
"Oirish oyes!" It was meant well, but it had a horribly common sound. It was another way of saying, "You look like the cook." And yet—and yet no one had ever cared so much about being beautiful before. She would have submitted gladly to letting those "rale Oirish oyes" be torn out and the poor quivering little body be hacked in pieces if only it might be put together in a truer harmony. But therewereugly people in the world, who began ugly, and went on being ugly to the bitter end. How had she come to take it so for granted that beauty belonged to her as a right? There was Miss Tibbs, who lived near by in Mioto Avenue. Think of being like that! with taily hair, and little, little eyes, and teeth that— No! no! no! She struggled to her feet, storming up into the high window-seat, and straining till she opened the near window, and could force back the heavy shutter, letting in a flood of light. But it was not the sudden glory of the day that made the child blink and draw back so suddenly. Miss Tibbs was passing the gate.
"Good-morning," said that lady, looking more appalling than ever.
"It's like that—like that I'll be," thought the child, tumbling to the ground.
Feverishly she swept the card-basket and the books off the table. Then, drawing up a chair, she climbed up on it, clinching her teeth and setting her jaws to bear the shock that perhaps awaited her. And still there was hope in her heart as she leaned forward on the marble top and looked into the mottled glass with imploring eyes. Slowly the tears gathered. In mute agony she turned away, climbed off the table, and hung limp over the back of the chair.
"Oh, God, I'm ugly!" she said, and clung there with shut, hot eyes. The moments passed. "I can't bear it, God. Let me die!"
The strained voice was muffled in her clinched little jaws, and with her fists she beat helplessly on the back of the old-fashioned chair. Presently she slipped down to the floor, and wandered aimless about the room. When she came near the glass again she glanced with a sharp conviction of intolerable shame at the top of a shaggy head, which was all that she could see. Even that was too much. She flew to the window and drew the shutters to, feeling she should never be able to bear the light again.
"What did You make me for?" she cried, arrested an angry instant, facing sharply about, as though confronting an enemy. "I didn't want to come if I had to be ugly!" She slid down off the window-seat, and walked quickly to and fro with rising anger. "It would have been so easy, too, forYou. Just think what it means to me!" She stopped and looked heavenward. The "Oirish oyes" were blazing. "I should think You'd prefer things pretty for yourself. But if You don't, why do You go and spoil it all for me?" And so on, in frantic young fashion, she beat her wings against the old prison-house. For between the origin of evil and the origin of ugliness there is no great gulf fixed in the female mind.
Looking back long afterwards on this hour of anguish, she could not laugh, as philosophic grown-up folk are pleased to do, at the sorrows of childhood. She knew that that morning in the musty parlor was one of the bitterest experiences life had brought her, simply because it had come to her as a child, for whom beauty was as yet a conventional physical perfection, and not the high soul of things.
After the one-o'clock dinner, she had shaken Emmie off, and gone out to walk up and down in the warm wind behind the house. She had come out bareheaded, and her shock of wild hair was blown about almost as if some one were saying the "I b'lieve," and the Windgeist, or some other "der stets verneint," had borrowed Val's form of dissent.
She was a thin slip of a girl, and no one seeing her wouldhave much wondered that this young worshipper of obvious red-cheeked, dimpled, yellow-haired, picture-book beauty, had been bitterly disappointed with the thin little face, its irregular lines and faint coloring, the good-sized mouth in lieu of the heroine's puckered rosebud, the tawny no color, all colors, hair, that merely waved distractingly instead of curling; the black eyebrows and lashes, too well defined—yes, "smutty"; the long, deep-set gray eyes, that no wishing could make blue before the glass, but that sometimes, out in the sunshine, changed to turquoise, and sometimes in the dusk or lamplight were limpid, gleaming black.
"Hello!" said Jerry, through the osage-trees.
"Hello!"
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
"Been getting it?"
"Don't be an idiot!"
"Come and fish!"
"Can't."
"Does Mrs. Gano make you stay here?"
"She can'tmakeme do anything."
"Then come. I'm going to Bentley's Pond."
Val wavered. She might fish even if she was ugly. In fact, as she came to think of it, it was one of the few things left to do—that and disobeying gran'ma.
"All right; wait a minute."
She went in-doors for her hat. A sense of returning life came warmly over her. She could still fish. Fishing alone was a career. She had a panoramic glimpse of herself through the future years—fishing morning, noon, and night; in all weathers and in every clime; as a young lady, fishing; fishing as a woman; as an old bent crone, still fishing—fishing forever and forever, her head tied up in a veil. She planted a Tam o' Shanter on her wind-blown hair, thinking: "I won't begin with a veil to-day. I don't mind Jerry—he's ugly, too."
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 theArdea 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 fiercecompetition 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 thehouse, 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.Shenever 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—howveryproud 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 shedidgo to school, was expected to come home wearing, on a narrow pink ribbon, the Primary medal—a goldenshield, 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 readJane 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 hispurse 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.Theydon'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 Ialwayscry 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.