"I quite agree; it would have been losing a golden opportunity."
"Oh, here she is!" said Emmie, putting in her head. "I told grandma you'd gone to the party."
"No, I'm not going. It's cold; shut the door."
Emmie was proceeding to perform this operation on the inside when Mrs. Gano called "Val." With a gesture of impatience the girl got up and went out. Mrs. Gano was standing on the threshold of the long room.
"You'll be very late for the party."
"I'm not going."
"Why not?"
"It's raining so."
"Well, I never in all my days heard you make that excuse before!"
Val traced an invisible design on the back of the hall-chair.
"Cousin Ethan was asked, too. It strikes him as being a very bad day."
"Ethan?Preposterous! Why should he bother with the Hornseys?"
There was a pause. Suddenly she asked:
"Was there not an Archery Club meeting yesterday?"
"Yes, but I—I thought I wouldn't go when we had company."
"My dear child, the company need not be so much on your mind. Your father and I are quite capable of entertaining Ethan."
"Oh yes, of course."
"You are a mere child in the eyes of a man of the world, don't forget that."
Val went on making patterns. It did not escape Mrs. Gano that this was only the second time in all her days that Val had not furiously contested the injustice of looking upon her from so mean a point of view. The girl stood quite meek and reflective.
"Don't miss your party because of Ethan," added the old woman, more gently. "You have not understood. Your cousin has a great deal to occupy him in a world we do not belong to. It's of no use for us to disarrange our lives for a person who pays us a visit once in twenty years—here to-day, gone to-morrow."
"Of course not," said Val.
"There is one thing in particular that we must all be careful about." Mrs. Gano sank her voice, although the heavy parlor-door was shut. "Emmie has just told me that Ethan has some plan of giving you children a dog-cart. Now, I can't have that."
"I thought you would object. I said so."
"You were perfectly right. Of course Ethan doesn't realize; he offers these things out of sheer amiability and carelessness. It's a bagatelle to him. To us"—she laid her hand on Val's arm—"it is a question of the principle. We must guard against nothing so carefully as a habit of accepting things from a rich relation. It is a situation full of peril to personal dignity, to continuance of esteem."
Thank Heaven, thought Val, that shameless letter asking for money had the sense to go and lose itself! What a disgrace to have brought upon her family! She felt a spasm of nervous relief go down her spine at the thought of that guilty secret having escaped detection.
Mrs. Gano had gone and opened the front door.
"Make haste, and you won't be so very late."
Val went with lagging steps to the parlor, and came hurrying out with her things. Ethan had not even looked round. He was laughing at something Emmie was saying.
"We haven't seen Harry Wilbur lately; ask him if he can't come in to-night," said Mrs. Gano, as she saw Val off.
Oh yes, a great deal of water had flowed under the bridge since her own daughter was young.
It was plain that Ethan was a great success in New Plymouth. Not that any of the neighbors knew him as yet, not that he had gone anywhere except to St. Thomas'sthat first Sunday; but such glimpses as the inhabitants had of him, whether at his rather absent-minded devotions or driving about with Mrs. Gano, had roused a fever of interest. The fact of his great wealth, combined with his somewhat glowering good looks, his slow transforming smile, ran away with hearts by the score, and made the tumble-down Fort a centre of seething gossip and excitement. Harry Wilbur was known to look upon the new-comer with open suspicion.
"Can't say I've much use for an American whoisn'tan American," said the florid Westerner to Julia Otway at the Hornsey "tea-fight."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, look at him."
"Where—where?"
Her unblushing excitement seemed further to annoy the usually equable Wilbur.
"I don't mean he's here. But you've seen him, haven't you?"
"Oh yes, but only at a distance. Have you?"
"Quite near enough. He's like a Spaniard, or some kind of foreigner, and goes about looking as if he owned the earth."
"Well, he does own a good slice of it, and as to his looks, he's very much like all the rest of the Ganos except Val."
Julia had put great pressure upon herself not to rush over at once and make the new-comer's acquaintance. But there was a general feeling that, however much one naturally yearned to meet the attractive stranger, Mrs. Gano's house was not the place that one could run in and out of without invitation. Julia's patience was rewarded by the bidding to supper, to which she had responded by the suggestion of tennis.
Her presence made a great difference in the family evening at the Fort.
John Gano's form of contribution to the entertainment of his guest was to play chess with him after supper, orelse engage him in conversation on the subject of State RightsversusCentralization. Several nights of such frivolity had satisfied Ethan.
"I hear that you play," he said to Julia Otway, as they came out from supper.
She, nothing loath, and seeming magnetized into forgetfulness of her usual restraint in Mrs. Gano's presence, followed him to the piano.
"Locked. Where's the key?" Ethan asked.
"In my dressing-case," said Mrs. Gano, nodding to Val.
As the girl came back into the parlor with the key, she caught sight of the expression of demure coquetry with which Julia, seated on the piano-stool, was looking up into Ethan's face. He was leaning against the piano, talking and laughing. Why, he hadn't looked as amused as that since he came! WhatcouldJulia have said? With a sudden chill upon her spirit Val came forward and handed Ethan the key.
"Ah, here we are!"
He opened the piano, and Julia began to play. Ethan went over to the window and watched her.
Val sat by her father. Julia was distressingly pretty; there was no disguising the fact. Evidently cousin Ethan thought so. How absorbed he was! He was quite angry at the clatter some one was making at the front door. He knitted his dark brows impatiently. The interrupter must be Harry Wilbur; nobody else approached door-knockers in so athletic a spirit. Yes, it was Harry.
"How do you do? I'msoglad to see you," said Val, with an overflowing cordiality that surprised her visitor quite as much as it gratified him.
He went and spoke in an undertone to Mrs. Gano, and then came back and sat on the other side of Val.
"You haven't told me yet why you were so late at the Hornseys to-day," he whispered.
"It just happened; everybody's late sometimes."
"Why didn't you come to the archery party yesterday?"
"Had something else to do."
"Had to go driving with cousin Crœsus, eh?"
"If you saw me, why didn't you bow?"
"Why have you got your hair up? In honor of cousin Crœsus? Don't look at me like that or I shall cry." His frank face wore a broad smile. "Ilikeyour hair up; you look scrumptious."
"Hush! and listen to the exquisite playing."
"I ain't musical like cousin Crœsus.Yoursinging's the only music I care about."
"You don't care about it; you only pretend."
"I assure you, on my honor—"
"Sh! cousin Ethan's looking at us."
"What if he is? Great Cæsar's ghost! Not that I blame him for looking atyou. Specially lately, you—"
"Hush! and don't talk nonsense."
But cousin Ethan had lifted his head impatiently, and was making her a little sign for silence.
She shrank together as if at a blow. Ethan went back to the piano when Julia finished, and bent over her, speaking thanks and praises. He was asking for something of Brahms'. Julia began again. This was another success. Cousin Ethan was really impressed; no doubt about it. Emmie went over to the piano in the midst of the general conversation, and said in her clear treble:
"Me and Val can sing 'Maid of Athens.'"
He seemed not to hear; he was talking so earnestly to Julia.Sheheard plainly enough. She was only pretending to be oblivious. But Emmie was not to be done out of a share of the festivity.
"Cousin Ethan, doyouknow 'Maid of Athens?'"
"Eh? What? 'Maid of Athens?' Yes."
"So do Val and me. Let's sing it."
"Very well. Will you accompany?" he asked Julia.
She nodded, and began the prelude.
Val didn't budge.
Emmie beckoned. Val studied the long, narrow, heelless silk shoes on her grandmother's feet, and made no sign.
"Come, Val," said Ethan, in an off-hand way.
"Go and sing when cousin Crœsus calls," murmured Harry Wilbur.
"I don't care about 'Maid of Athens,'" said Val, out loud.
"Oh yes; come," Ethan urged, good-humoredly.
"Go and sing when our guests ask you," said Mrs. Gano, in a reproving undertone; and then, as Val got up to obey, she said, in her usual clear accents: "Not too loud. You know I don't like boisterous singing in a parlor."
Val began with the others, in a voice quite depressed enough to please Mrs. Gano. Even Emmie's faint fluting came out more effectively, and Val could easier have wept than gone on singing. Emmie sang two more songs, Julia laughing and coquetting with Ethan over prelude and interlude; and then Julia played a nocturne.
Harry Wilbur made a despairing grimace at this last performance. He rose presently with a determined manner, and quietly bade Mrs. Gano and her son good-night. Val went with him to the front door. They stood talking about her approaching departure, and how Wilbur, too, hoped to get something to do "in the East," so that he might be a witness of Val's triumphs. The conversation pleased her, but her grandmother would be "making eyebrows" if she stayed so long.
"Good-night, then. Look here, Val"—he took her hand warmly in both his own—"I've been awfully cut up lately. I was beginning to be afraid"—he nodded his yellow head towards the parlor—"afraid you might be—"
"Don't be a great silly;" and she ran back to the family circle.
After Julia finished, she got up while Ethan was still talking to her, and made her good-nights all round very prettily.
"But it's quite early," Ethan had said.
"They always send for me at nine."
"Send! Don't you live next door?"
"Not exactly. I have to walk half round the block to get to our gate. We aren't allowed to climb the fence,"she added, in a confidential undertone, with a sly look back at Mrs. Gano as she gave Ethan her hand. "Good-night."
"Sha'n't I see you to your gate?" he said, coming out into the hall. "My uncle ought not—"
"No, thank you. I think by the time I get my things on some one will be here for me."
He had refused to go to the Hornseys with Val, but he was quite ready to face the elements in order to take Julia home!
Critical eyes marked the unusual haste of the guest's hat-pinning and jacket-donning.
"Mrs. Gano always sends for Val," Julia said to Ethan, accounting for the origin of the repulsive custom.
He held her jacket for her.
"You haven't told me yet," he said, "how you learned to play like this?"
Julia laughed, too much pleased to venture on words.
"She has taken lessons," said Val, "ever since she was seven."
"You were sent away to study?"
"No," said Julia, tying her scarf with an effective air.
"But she's hadprivatelessons," Val explained, "besides the music classes at the Sem."
"You really mean"—he was ignoring Val and looking down upon the happy Julia—"do you mean you've learned to play like this in New Plymouth?"
"Yes; of course I practise a good deal."
"As much as ever she likes, and nobody to say 'Not so boisterous,' and then go and lock the piano."
"Well, I must say I think it a very creditable result—with only provincial masters."
As he reached for his hat, he caught sight of Val's face.
"America, thou wear'st a threatening aspect. Mustn't I say provincial?"
At that moment a knock resounded loudly on the door. Julia carried off her disappointment discreetly enough, departing with the servant.
The young people went back to the parlor, but a gloom seemed to have fallen on the party. Mrs. Gano was closing the piano with her son's help.
"Emmie tells me," she was saying, "that Miss Julia complains my piano is out of tune. I wonder, that being the case, she is so fond of playing on it."
"It is out of tune," said Val; "but I suppose she thinks it better than nothing. Isn't she pretty?" Val asked her cousin, in a dogged tone.
"Extremely—most charming little person."
"Sheusuallyhas rather nice, retiring manners," remarked Mrs. Gano.
And then they said good-night.
Ethan looked inquiringly into his cousin's face. "It isn't late; come out on the veranda while I smoke a cigarette."
"I thought you objected to going out such weather as this."
"But we won't get wet on the veranda."
"No, noton the veranda"—but seeing Julia home was a different matter.
"It's your bedtime, Val," interposed Mrs. Gano—"and long past yours, Emmie. Ethan, you must not demoralize the children."
He laughed, and went out by himself.
"Ethan forgets himself," said Mrs. Gano, with low-voiced indignation. "Imagine his asking a French girl, or a young Boston lady, to come out at this hour—while he smoked!" If it had been while he did a little murdering, she could not have looked more horrified. "He must not think manners are superfluous here!"
Val undressed by the open window, where she could smell the ascending smoke, and then she cried under the bedclothes for what seemed to her a long, long time.
Val's unwonted silence and aloofness the evening before had not been lost upon her cousin. He recalled these unaccustomed manifestations the next morning, smiling to himself, and promising his jealous little relative amends. The day, scarce well begun, beheld him on the way to a discovery that he kept on making for years: while you were occupied in realizing that Val Gano was hurt or disappointed, she was apparently getting over it with such despatch that, as you approached with suitable looks of sympathy, lo! she would advance to meet your condolence with banners flying and trumpets blaring, so to speak, obliging you hurriedly to readjust your expression, in order fitly to greet a person so entirely pleased with the course of affairs.
But to think Val miraculously expeditious in "getting over things" was hardly to go to the root of the matter. She did not get over disappointments; she remodelled them in her imagination till they were strokes of luck in disguise, or, at the very least, stepping-stones to some dazzling victory. As she lay in bed in the early morning, she redressed the unequal balance of the night before. After all, Julia wasn't going to have the world-resounding triumphs that awaited Val. Poor Julia! let her enjoy her little hour of drawing-room success; and Val sailed away into a realm of glory, carrying cousin Ethan in her train, and making her toilet to the sound of cymbals and hosannas.
As the breakfast-bell rang, she burst open her bedroom door and went flying down-stairs three steps at a time.
"What's happened?" said Ethan, as he came down behind her, reminded suddenly of his old friend Yaffti, thepatron demon of the stair. All that had "happened" apparently was that Ethan had grown decrepit, else why not go toboganning down the banisters to breakfast, or turn a few somersaults along the hall by way of beginning the day? "In honor of what saint is that?" he called after her, as Val cleared the last three steps with a leap and a bound.
"In honor of St. Sunshiny Morning," answered the girl, turning a radiant face over her shoulder, and waiting for Ethan to overtake her.
"Thought you told me yesterday you didn't take any interest in the weather. Oh dear, no! never noticed it at all."
"I don't care a bit whether the old sun shines or not; can't think what people mean, to go bleating about the bad weather as they do. As if itmattered?"
"And yet it's 'Hurrah!' and three steps at a time for a sunshiny morning."
"Only said that for an excuse—not to tell you the real name of my patron saint."
"But do. Tell me what's your pet superstition, and I'll tell you mine."
"Honest Injun?"
"Yes."
"Well, my pet superstition—only it'snota superstition—is, that I was born lucky."
"Oh! what's the sign?"
"Sign? Nothing outward and visible, just an inward and spiritual grace. You needn't jeer; it's quite true. I'msureI'm lucky. Now I've told you my great article of faith, what's yours?"
But Emmie appeared at that juncture, and Val was secretly pleased that Ethan postponed his answer. Breakfast was already late, and still they waited some time before any one else came down.
Presently Aunt Jerusha appeared with a coffee-pot and a smoking plate piled high with something brown and golden.
The girls received her with a round of wild applause.
"Hi! flannel-cakes—flannel-cakes!" and they executed a war-dance round the popular favorite, who "took her call," so to speak, as pleased as any star-actor at having brought off some noble appeal to the great warm heart of the populace, which ever beats true, etc.
"Law sakes! de way dey goes on!" The black woman stood laden and smiling like some ebon effigy typifying plenty and good cheer. Evidently loath to stop the popular demonstrations in her honor, she still urged feebly: "Shucks! go 'long, Miss Emmie, wid yo' teeterin' up and down! Law sakes! look de way Miss Val kin jump Jim Crow. Yo' gran'ma 'ud be hoppin' mad if she cotch yo' doin' dat ar 'fore folks. He! he! Sakes alive, chillen! stop dem monkey-shines, and eat up dis yer firs' batch fo' dey spile."
"Yes, yes." Val cut "Jim Crow" suddenly short.
With a lightning change, taking the place at the head of the table, and adopting a dignified and official air, she poured out the piping hot coffee.
"Nobody waits for anybody on flannel-cake days," said Emmie, drawing in her chair with a chastened satisfaction.
"Did they give you flannel-cakes in 'Gay Paree'?" asked Val, as she passed Ethan his coffee.
"No, they didn't."
"I suppose," she said, incredulously—"I suppose it's much gayer in Paris than it is here?"
"It's not gayer than this so early in the morning."
He looked at the confident, shadowless face, and instead of comparing it with Mademoiselle Lucie'singénuecountenance or any beauty of thesalonor the stage, memory unfairly conjured up Mary Burne and her despair-whitened features as she harangued her dingy followers. "Not so early in the morning!" Even when the lamps were lit there were places in Paris not so gay as this.
To speak by the card, there were people everywhere, rich and poor, a good deal less pleased with the world than Val Gano. Ah yes! this was why she specially interestedhim. It was a satisfaction to have stumbled on the explanation, for she was surprisingly much in his thoughts, this untutored child, with her bland belief in the world and in Val Gano. She was a kind of pleasant anodyne to a mind over-full of misgiving, overcharged with fear of life's panther-like capacity for quick-leaping revenge.
It was the first morning since Ethan's arrival that his uncle did not appear.
No, he had not had a very good night, Mrs. Gano said, when at last she came in. She changed the conversation abruptly, and went up-stairs when the letters were brought, having scarcely tasted breakfast. French postmark! A letter from De Poincy; not very long, and not much news. He wrote chiefly to ask when Ethan was coming "home" to France.
"I am wondering if you had the courage to carry out your bold design of hunting up your poor relations in the West. If you did, I'm sorry for you. I see it all from here. The provincial setting which all your democracy won't prevent from getting on your nerves, the fervor of the poor relation's devotion, the bottomless pit of his need, the unblushing designs on every single woman's part to marry you, will, I fear and trust, send you back to us with a chastened spirit and a decent regret for your folly in taking exception to Mademoiselle Lucie's charming way of playing the universal game. She, by-the-way, is lost to you forever, having just married a wealthy English brewer. But there are other Lucies over here, ready to hold out their pretty hands in welcome as soon as you weary of the crudities of the New World."
"I am wondering if you had the courage to carry out your bold design of hunting up your poor relations in the West. If you did, I'm sorry for you. I see it all from here. The provincial setting which all your democracy won't prevent from getting on your nerves, the fervor of the poor relation's devotion, the bottomless pit of his need, the unblushing designs on every single woman's part to marry you, will, I fear and trust, send you back to us with a chastened spirit and a decent regret for your folly in taking exception to Mademoiselle Lucie's charming way of playing the universal game. She, by-the-way, is lost to you forever, having just married a wealthy English brewer. But there are other Lucies over here, ready to hold out their pretty hands in welcome as soon as you weary of the crudities of the New World."
Ethan looked up with a smile at his poor relations, thinking how badly they played their parts.
"What conspiracy are you two hatching?" he said.
The two sisters, who seemed not, as a rule, to have much in common, were whispering with great animation.
"Let's tell him," said Emmie.
"No," said Val, getting red.
"Yes, tell me."
"No," repeated Val.
"Why not?" urged Emmie. "He'll never tell."
"Never."
"Well, we're talking about theComet," confessed Emmie. "You don't know about it, do you?"
"No."
"Of course he doesn't, silly. I'll be very angry if you tell."
"Isn't a comet a difficult thing to keep quite to yourselves?"
"Not ours. It's a paper."
"Emmie!"
"Well, he knows now. It's an awfully nice kind of magazine. Val and me write it. It's our secret."
"Pretty kind of secret now!" said Val. "ButIdon't care; I'm going away. I said I wouldn't do another."
"But finish this one. Oh, do it, just a single solitary last time,dearVal."
"Do, dear Val," echoed Ethan, smiling.
The quick blood flew into the girl's face. "Dear" on his lips seemed not only a new word in the language; it called into being something that the wide world lacked before. It struck Val into silence. She sat and looked in her plate.
"We do the printing in father's room when he's well enough to be out digging and fussing with flowers," said Emmie.
"It's a thing we started ages ago, when we were young," Val explained. "It amuses Emmie."
"But there'snoreason to give it upnow," urged the younger girl. "We thought we'd have to once for lack of paper," she said to Ethan. "Grandma gave us only half-sheets. Then Val discovered great-grandfather Calvert's old counting-house books."
"How did you do that?"
"They were in the closet under the stairs," said Val.
"An' Jerusha and Venie and most everybody thought there was a ghost there," added Emmie, with a certain reverence in her voice. "Val said she was goin' to see, and that was how we found all that jolly paper for theComet."
"Emmie writes most of the poetry and all of the stories; I do the illustrations," said Val.
"Andthe conundrumsandthe 'Advice to Parents' column. Oh, Val, what would happen to you if grandma ever saw—"
She began to laugh.
"Miss Val," said Jerusha, putting her head in at the door, "yo' kin run so fas', honey, an' Miss G'no say de doctor's kerridge is a stan'in' at de Tibbses do'; will yo' say de doctor's wanted yer fur Massa John." Val was off like an arrow from a bow before the old woman had finished.
Dr. Wharton was some time up-stairs. Mrs. Gano and Ethan were both in the sick-room. The verdict was that Mr. Gano was not, after all, dangerously ill, but ought to go South before it was too cold for him to travel, and that, at all events, the idea of going to New York in November was absolutely out of the question—"sheer madness."
The first keen edge of Val's anxiety wore off in an hour or so. Her father sent for her. He wasn't really even so ill as the doctor made out. Still, it was very sadly, and with a misgiving foreign to her experience, that she agreed to put off their joint expedition till the spring.
"And meanwhile," said her father, "since you are ambitious to be of use, it would be well if you took a more active part in the care of the house. Jerusha is very, very old, and—"
"Idotake care of my own room."
"Ah yes, but there are other things—"
"Before cousin Ethan came I used to help Venus on Saturdays with the parlor."
"BeforeEthan came?"
"Yes; I can't do it while he's here."
"Why not?"
"Oh, it looks so odd. None of the other girls do. Head in a dust-cap, and horrid black hands! Grandma wouldn't like it at all, not while we have company."
Val seized the opportunity afforded by her father's fit of coughing to consider her audience at an end.
When she came down-stairs from this interview, she found Emmie wandering about disconsolately. Ethan closeted with grandma. No lessons this morning.
"Come," said Val to Emmie, clutching for diversion at their one common interest, "we'll do the magazine."
Emmie got the red and black ink, the fine and the broad nibbed pens, a pile of paper oddments tied with string, and a gigantic ledger, with one of its massive calf-skin covers torn off, revealing the pages, blank at this end, coarse like drawing-paper, and tough, like nothing one sees in these flimsy times—a fabric that, besides never wearing out, had been found to take kindly to the refinements of ornamental printing.
The girls established themselves in the dining-room. After executing the title of Emmie's story in florid Old English lettering, Val did a pen-and-ink sketch of the hero. That gallant individual had started out rather like Harry Wilbur. In this final issue he appeared with Ethan Gano's marked and clear-cut profile, having borrowed from that gentleman not only his tall elegance, but the slight droop of the shoulders and the even more elusive characteristic by means of which, despite the occasional droop, he never lost the air of carrying himself well in some indefinable way.
"Now," said Val, bestowing a finishing touch.
Whereupon, with much gusto, Emmie began to read the last instalment of "The Brown House on the Hill," Val printing at dictation in a rapid, clear italic. The minutes flew. Venus would be coming in presently to set the dinner-table. The clock, chiming the hour, masked the sound of footsteps approaching from the opposite direction. Emmie raised her voice to be heard by the printer above the dozen strokes of noon:
"Ever—and—anon—Archibald—Abalone—murmured—in—Editha's—ear:—'Angel—I—adore—thee.'"
"What nonsense is that you are reading?" said Mrs. Gano, in the sudden silence.
The two girls started like criminals. Not only was their grandmother standing at the door, but cousin Ethan was looking in at their discomfiture over her shoulder.
Val obscured theCometwith the blotter. Emmie, grown very pink, had thrust Editha and Archibald Abalone under the table.
"What is it you have there, Emmeline?"
"Just a—just a thing I was reading Val."
"Let me see it."
"No, grandma, please."
"Let me see it."
She came towering into the room.
"Grandma," said Val, turning at bay, "it isn'tmeantfor you."
"Emmeline, hand me that paper."
Trembling, the younger girl brought up the manuscript.
"It isn't honorable to read things that aren't meant for you," said Val, starting up and displacing the blotter.
"Readit!"
Mrs. Gano caught "The Brown House" out of the child's hands with strange excitement, and tore it across and across.
"Oh, oh!" wailed Emmie, with fast-flowing tears, while Val and Ethan stood transfixed.
There was "the magazine" in full sight, flaunting on its cover a splashing red comet with a fiery tail. Mrs. Gano blazed back at it through her glasses as she threw down the fragments of "The Brown House."
"Whose is this?" she said, opening the stitched and folded sheets of her father's ledger.
"Mine," said Val, laying determined hands on the folio.
"I perceive part of it to be unmistakably yours," said Mrs. Gano, with a cutting inflection: "'Vale, a ballad sung at the Grand Opera House by the world-renowned diva, Signorita Val Gano.'"
Val's hands had dropped from the paper as if paralyzed.
"Now, this verse-stringing is one of the things I willnothave," said the old woman, with a curious tragic intensity. "I've seen enough of young girls ruining their figures, and their eyesight, and their prospects, bending over stuff like this, till it becomes a craze, and they're fit for nothing better."
She took theCometin her hands and tried to tear it up. The ancient paper would have held out well against less fragile fingers, but Ethan did not realize the toughness of the Calvert ledger. He hurried forward.
"Oh, don't tear it. Really, really, a little scribbling isn't so fatal."
"I don't expect you to think so, my dear Ethan, when you do it yourself in two languages, having nothing better to do in either. But if I'm any judge, we've had enough of it inthisfamily." She turned upon the hushed, awed Emmie. "Go out and play," she commanded, but with an air of saying, "Off with your head! So much for Buckingham." "As foryou"—she flashed back a look at Val as she went towards the fireplace—"never let me find you wasting your youth in this pernicious fashion again as long as you live undermyroof."
She put theCometin the fire, and with the poker she pushed it down among the red-hot coals. She waited grimly while it burned, then, without another word or look, she went back to the long room. Ethan had been perilously near laughing at the total rout of the two malefactors. No sooner had the guardian of the family virtue disappeared, and it was possible openly to relieve one's feelings, than Val began striding back and forth with clinched hands and a look of concentrated rage.
He was rather startled at the transformation in the sunny face. It was convulsed, ugly with passion.
"I won't stand it; no, I wouldn't stand it from the Angel Gabriel!" She took a turn up and down the room and burst out afresh: "She, Pallas Athene! She, patron of the arts! It's this sort of thing"—she stopped before her cousin with tragic eyes—"it's this sort of thing that has embittered my youth!"
"What!" he said, holding fast to his gravity. "Has she done this before?"
Val shook her head, and then, in a stifled voice:
"TheComethas been kept dark, but there are other things—things I really care about."
"Is there something you care about more than about writing?"
"Writing?" she echoed, with limitless scorn. "I don't carethatabout writing. It just does to fill in. But the way she behaves about theCometis just a sample. I really thought she was getting to be more liberal-minded. It's a long time since we've had a terrible scene like this; but it just shows you." She turned away and strode up and down. "The only thing she ever let me do was to take drawing lessons; and the only thing she ever took my part about was in defending me from learning cooking. But do you thinkIever had piano lessons? No! Do you thinkI'veever had a private singing lesson in my life? No! Do you know what that means to me? No—because the piano's kept locked, or else I'm made to sing as if I were ashamed of myself, and you haven't a notion that I've got a voice that would make a singer's fortune. Now, have you?"
"N—no."
"Course not. How should you?"
"I suppose," he said, "they naturally don't want you to face the hardships of—"
"As if we didn't face hardships at home. Have you any notion how poor we are? I don't mean holes in the kitchen and rain through the roof—who cares about that? We're so poor"—she advanced upon him step by step—"that we can't have proper clothes, we can't have proper fires, and, except when you're here, we don't have proper food. And me with a voice of gold!—so people say. What's the good of a voice of gold with a grandmother like that?" She pointed a shaking finger of scorn in the direction of the long room. A black face was put shyly in at the opposite door. "Here's Venus to set the table."
Val tumbled down from her climax and stalked miserably out. Ethan followed her.
"Come to the drawing-room," he whispered, in the passage.
"Parlor, I suppose you mean."
"Yes, parlor."
"What for?"
"We can talk there."
They pushed open the door.
"She's left the key!" cried Val, springing towards the piano.
"So she has," he admitted, with less enthusiasm.
"That's foryoursake. Cousin Ethan, you could try my voice if you liked."
"Of course," he said, with misgiving.
How was he to let her down from the dizzy height of her illusion without hurting her cruelly or stultifying himself? The voice that had joined in "Maid of Athens" had been so unremarkable, he could not recall anything about it save that, unwillingly, she had sung. She opened the piano. He saw with pitying amusement how her fingers shook upon the ancient rosewood.
"I am a mezzo-soprano," she said. "I'll show you my range first."
And she proceeded to do so, her voice as shaky at the beginning as her hands, but steadying itself on the second note, rising slowly, with a kind of conscious pride, swelling audaciously rich, mounting higher and clearer, leaping at the top notes like some spirit of delight sounding silver trumpets to the sun.
Ethan stood staring when she finished.
"Either something's wrong with my ears, or else youhavegot a wonderful voice!"
"Oh, cousin Ethan, cousin Ethan!"
She caught his hands, and pressed them in an ecstasy of relief and gladness. He was moved himself when he saw her happy eyes were wet.
"I didn't hear one of those notes last night. What did you do with your voice then?"
"Grandma—she'd put down her foot—soft pedal—she's done that all my life."
"Sing something—I'll play for you."
He swept her off the piano-stool.
"I don't know much but ballads."
She pulled the yellowed sheets out of the stand, wondering as she turned them over which, if any, of these songs he had heard sung by great artists. She was on the point of asking him, when, "Oh," she said, jumping up, "here's this from 'Trovatore,'" and she set the music before him with the firm intention of rivalling that Patti people made such a fuss about. She sang the English words, "Ah, I've sighed to rest me," and not without a certain largeness of effect intensely satisfying to herself.
"There's no doubt," he said, at the end, "that you have a voice. You, naturally, don't in the least know how to use it; but it's there."
This was not what she had expected—in fact, it was a blow; for, in spite of her old desire to be taught, she looked towards a singing-master chiefly as a personal influence to help her into the operatic field. She felt it a grievance against her family that she had had no early advantages, and yet she had thought it more than probable that genius could do without them. But what if cousin Ethan was right? All the more need not to lose time.
"The question is," she said, "What's to be done?"
"Done?"
"Yes."
It flashed over her in the pause that he might think she was hinting that he should defray the expense of her training, and this suddenly seemed as repulsive to reason and to dignity as if five months before she had not calmly suggested it herself. It was Heaven's own mercy that letter had got lost! She must have been crazy when she wrote it.
"Of course," she said, "my family can't do much, and"—looking at him half apologetically, and feeling the necessity to forestall him—"I couldn't allow any one else to do morethan give me advice and letters of introduction. I have my plans all laid—but now my father's ill."
"What plans?"
"I was going to New York with my father next month to look over the field"—at his look of incredulity, she added: "operatic field. As I haven't any money, and can't possibly borrow, I must find a way to be a chorus-girl first."
"What an idea!"
He got up from the piano, and walked the length of the room and back.
"A very good idea."
"My dear Val—"
He stopped.
"No, cousin Ethan"—she motioned away his imaginary offer—"the Ganos don't borrow money, they do without."
He smiled a little.
"Did grandmamma approve of this chorus-girl plan?"
"Of course she wouldn't. It's only father who knows."
"Does he approve?"
"Well, not to say approve, but he knows it's no use objecting."
"Do you know, I don't approve of it either."
She sat down on the piano-stool, looking at him doubtfully. Was this an offer of a million in disguise? or could it be—
"You don't mean," she said, "that you won't give me any letters of introduction?"
"I mean, little cousin, that I'll do all in my power to keep you from the hardships and the hurts of public life."
He put a hand on her shoulder, and was looking down upon her. She opened her lips, but no sound came.
"There won't be any lack inyourlife of beautiful and worth-while things; don't spoil it all—don't spoil yourself by being too eager."
"Y—you don't understand," she faltered, with a suffocating sense of throbbing in her throat.
"Oh yes, I do. I understand a lot. Promise me you won't take any steps about this without letting me know."
She shook her head, and tried to draw from under the thrilling touch of his hand.
"I shall not let you go till you promise."
The other hand had fallen on her other shoulder. It was as if chains were being hung upon her. But why wasn't she struggling? Why—why was bondage so sweet?
"I'm waiting. Promise!" said the masterful voice.
"I—promise."
The tumult in her heart made the clang of the dinner-bell sound as if it were ringing in some far-off place.
"What—what was it I promised?" she asked herself again and again.
It struck Mrs. Gano the next day, as they were out driving, that Val was unusually subdued. She seemed to see nothing that they passed, hear nothing that was said. But it could not be said she looked unhappy. And Ethan was in excellent spirits. Emmie was bowing right and left, bowing with that air she had rapidly acquired, and was sedulously cultivating, a royal-condescension-to-the-crowd kind of bow.
"Who is that?" asked Mrs. Gano, seeing Emmie's pantomime, and seeing, too, that Val had made no sign.
"Mr. Peter Hall."
"What! Not the young Pete Hall that I recommended to Blakistons?"
"Yes'm," said Emmie, meekly.
"Why do you bow to him?"
"Oh, I know him."
"We allknowhim, but that's no reason you should recognize him out of the store."
"I don't see why—" began Emmie.
"I've told you before, you do not know such persons except in their capacity of salesmen."
"He bowed to me, grandma."
"Impertinence! Teach him a lesson next time. Don't notice him."
Mrs. Gano's point of view not only seemed to Val quite natural, but this very same conversation, with some immaterial variation, had taken place too often to merit notice. Cousin Ethan, however, was looking from one to the other in frank amazement.
"'Tisn't as if Peter Hall was a servant," said Emmie,appealingly. "I've given up bowing to the Otways' coachman."
"Isn't all this very undemocratic?" Ethan asked.
"It's a most essential consideration in a democracy."
"But do you realize that it shows a degree of class prejudice that doesn't exist in the older, the monarchical countries?"
"Quite possible. Where the differences are broadly and indelibly stamped, there's no need to remind anybody that they exist."
"Three months ago," said Ethan, meditatively, "I should have called such considerations absolutely un-American. However, a season at Newport, not to speak of glimpses of life in the Boston clubs and on Beacon Hill, have helped to readjust my views. Still, I didn't think I should find out here in the West"—some quick look in Mrs. Gano's face made him modify—"out here in the Great Middle States—"
"You forget your father's family are Southerners, root and branch. But as to that, you will leave distinctions behind when you reach heaven, not before. And even there we are told one star differeth from another star in glory."
"Well," said Ethan, smiling, "I only wish I'd brought Drouet."
"A friend of yours?"
"Well, yes, if I may be so bold. A more necessary friend than most. I rather missed him at first. Drouet is my valet."
"There would have been accommodation for him."
"You see, I didn't know. I thought you would have been scandalized."
"I don't see why you should think that. My father never travelled without his body-servant. You must have had the Tallmadges in mind. They, you know, thought themselves wiser than the prophets. There was no need of hewers of wood and drawers of water. Every one would be free and equal once black slavery was abolished.Childishness! Three-fourths of the human race is in bondage to the other fourth. Whether your servant is a Frenchman and white, or an African and black, the root of the matter is the same. We exact menial services of our inferiors, being of the dominant race."
The carriage drew up before the ruinous Fort, and "the dominant race" got out, while two black faces and a colored turban went scuttling back to the rear. John Gano, in a shabby old coat with a tear in the sleeve, was standing on a step-ladder, lopping off twigs with a huge pair of garden shears.
"John—John! What a mad proceeding! You will take your death!" cried his mother from the carriage window.
The gentleman so addressed climbed carefully down the step-ladder, while Emmie tumbled out of the carriage and ran to meet him.
"What do you think, father?" she said, confidingly. "Cousin Ethan's got a valet."
"A what?"
"A valet," whispered Emmie.
"Valet! What does he want a valet for?"
In vain Emmie squeezed his arm. He spoke in a loud, astonished tone.
"Ah ha! I felt it wouldn't do to produce Drouet in New Plymouth," said Ethan, who was conducting Mrs. Gano to the porch.
"Well," answered his uncle, dryly, "if you were too old or too ill to wait on yourself, I should understand it."
"Do come in out of the draughts, John, and don't stand talking nonsense. Your father had his body-servant before he was either old or ill, and so did my father."
"That was in the antebellum days, before men realized they couldn't oppress their fellows with impunity."
"Whatdoyou mean?" asked Mrs. Gano, turning sharply on her son.
"I mean that if our forefathers had realized what an awful inheritance they were laying up for their children inthe negro problem, they would have gone without their valets and left the negro in his native wilds."
"Oh, if you only mean that the initial mistake was in having the shiftless creatures here at all, I agree. The negro enslaved was a care and a drag on the South; the negro free is a menace to all America."
She opened the door of the long room and rang for Venus to take off her shoes.
"Yes, the Color Question," said John Gano, sitting down heavily on one of the fleur-de-lis chairs—"the Color Question is just one of the forms of ferociously usurious interest one generation has to pay on the debts incurred by another. The world learns its lessons with infinite pains. The same thing happens over and over again, and no one raises a finger."
He sat gazing at some impending peril with prophetic gloom.
"What is happening over again?" asked Ethan, divesting himself of his outer coat.
"The importation of ignorant debased foreigners to do the work that the American born not only won't do himself, but won't, in his haste to get rich, allow to remain undone. Why do the offscourings of the earth flock to America? Not because it's any longer the New World. They don't go to Australia or South Africa in the same numbers. They comeherebecause the American born is more of an arrant fool and snob than any creature God permits to breathe. Hardly any one so poor but he will pay the highest wages for the worst alien service."
"Father!" Val, half-way up-stairs, came running back to her country's rescue. "Cousin Ethan won't understand you are just arguing. Father doesn't really think Americans are snobs."
"Yes, snobs of the worst kind! What respect have we for the laboring man? What do we know or practise of healthy German industry, of the thrift of the French?"
"I thought our industries were our strong point."
"Industries, yes—not our industry. We can establishmills and manufactories, and then get ship-loads of Teutons and of Irish to come over and work them."
"If they'd only be content with that," said Ethan, "but they end by working our municipalities too and running our country."
"They always do," said John Gano, shaking his forefinger in the air. "They alwayshave!" With that he brought his clinched fist down on his knee. "If you can't hoe your row yourself, don't call in a man to help you. He'll end by helping himself. You'll have saved the hoeing and lost the row. But the average American won't do anything himself that he can get another man to do for him."
No wonder, thought Ethan, that the foreign visitor to these shores has such difficulty in classifying American opinion. Here, under the same roof, within the bonds of the closet kinship, were to be heard the old views of "the dominant race" from Mrs. Gano, and here was her own son railing.
"Nobody is content any more to work his own land or learn a trade; everybody must scramble for the big money prizes, the privilege of being anemployerof labor."
It was a deed of some daring to interrupt the flow of masculine talk, but Val sat down on the bottom step of the stairs, saying firmly:
"Americans can't help being ambitious. They know there's a great deal to do."
"Thereisa great deal to be done; but the American has mistaken notions as to what. The American artisan thinks his son must aim at being a boss, if not being President. The farmer thinks he's doing his share when he hires hands and sends his own boys to swell the stream of clerks and town-strugglers. The infection seized on the women about thirty years ago."
"Stick up for us," whispered Val's voice behind Ethan.
"The result is," her father went on, "it's harder to find in America to-day a good cook or chambermaid than to find a woman musician, novelist, linguist, or painter."
"Say something," admonished the low voice from the bottom step.
"I imagine," the perfidious Ethan remarked, "that there are accomplished persons on both sides the sea who are ready to excel in any art except the art of being of use."
"Exactly. These people no doubt exist everywhere, but they should be swept off the face of America." Val looked out anxiously past the sheltering form of her cousin. "Farmers', tradesmen's daughter's all over the land are giving up house-work"—Val withdrew her head and sat in obscurity—"giving up field and dairy work. Their foolish fathers buy them pianos, buy them novels; and able-bodied young women idle away their days in rocking-chairs, breeding discontent and disease."
Val appeared to be making preparations to retire.
"You think," asked Ethan, "there is any application in the fact—to—a people of another class?"
"Most assuredly. What the ignorant ignorantly despise, we must elevate. We must show them the bottomless vulgarity of their view." The restive movement on the bottom step augmented his ire. "I assure you the market cries aloud for house-keepers, nurses, laundresses, sempstresses. We are not in need of any more poetesses, department clerks,singers."
He had got up and was glowering unmistakably at the girl who had risen from the bottom step.
"It's too bad, father, your going back on my singing, just because I forgot to mend your coat. I thought you were an invalid in bed. I didn't expect you to climb trees to-day."
"To-day has got nothing to do with it, although Iamsurprised and disappointed that you want your grandmother to engage some raw Irish girl—"
"Only while we have company."
"Company!" he said, bristling more than ever. "What can 'company' get but profit out of seeing thatwethink nobly of work; that we're ready to do our part towardsturning domestic and industrial service from an ugly slavery into a beautiful and noble privilege."
"Come, Emmie," said Val, "let's get our things off."
The two girls simultaneously took to their heels. John Gano leaned back in the chair, coughing feebly, all his animation spent.
"She has set her heart on my taking her East to learn singing," he said, in a low, dispirited voice. "I've been feeling to-day I may never go East again."
"You are not strong enough just yet," began Ethan.
"I wish Val would get over this craze about opera, especially if I'm not here. I've been thinking a great deal about it to-day. If she could take up some of the duties here—" He looked round helplessly, as if to find something she might with advantage begin upon.
"Oh, we must get the opera idea out of her head. I am quite of your opinion there."
"Ha, really?" said John Gano, with a relieved, almost incredulous air. "You think there's something in what I say?"
"Indeed I do."
"Mostassuredly." He got up with renewed energy. "I'll tell her that the women who take up the despised craft of home-making and home-keeping will be not only the true artists of the future, they'll be the only order of working-women, never in want of a place."
As Ethan went to his room he indulged the cynical suspicion that his uncle had some definite vision of the particular home that Val was to labor for and ornament, and it was not the Fort. Well? He smiled. Pshaw! "Am I growing old, that a little school-girl should get hold of me after all my escapes?" For so much had his social experience warped him that he seldom thought of marriage now, save as of something others plotted and which he must frustrate and elude.
Val! He laughed to himself. Absurd! But his face had little amusement in it, and less irony than he would have credited. "The older men grow," he said tohimself, "the more the fainter-hearted among them shrink from age, the more they worship youth. Now, if I were fifty I might be in danger."
Going down, after writing some letters, an hour or so later, he heard "the little school-girl" coming behind him, and then stopping suddenly.
"That you, Val?" He stood waiting. No answer. She had gone back into her room. He stood stamping his letters under the hall lamp.
Val's head presently peered down from the top of the stair.
"Yes, I'm here," said Ethan, provokingly.
"I'm looking for one of the servants," Val said, descending with dignity.
Ethan looked up, laughing at her over the banisters.
"What makes you look so solemn?" he asked.
"My sister's got a sore throat, and I can't find the stuff for a compress."
"No use telling me you're such a sympathetic sister as you make out. What's therealmatter?"
Ethan had come down-stairs, intending to be more discreet than ever in the future. De Poincy was no doubt right—even here it was necessary to been garde. With this idea dragged well into the foreground again, what demon of perversity made him lift a hand above the banisters and hold the girl's fingers fast to the polished rail? It was the first time he had touched her. He was rather startled at the commotion set up in his own nerves by the trifling action, but it was mainly, he assured himself, the reflex of the evident agitation of the girl. She had dropped her eyes, and he saw her upper lip tremble.
"What's the real matter?" he repeated, letting go her hand, not all of a sudden, but drawing his own across it lingeringly; "I thought you were always happy."
"Happy!" she said, making a gallant effort to recover her usual manner. "Well, it's nobody's fault if I am."
"Now that I come to look at you, I believe youarehappy, all the same."
"Course I am; but it's only because I was born that way and can't get out o' the habit." She came on down-stairs.
"Your father was quite right, you know, in what he said this afternoon."
"Oh, he didn't really mean it. It was partly just arguing—father does so love arguing—and partly because Emmie told on you. I've been saying she deserved to have a sore throat."
"Told on me?"
The supper-bell rang.
"Yes," said Val, when she could make herself heard; "let out that you had a valet. Emmie's so indiscreet. It was all right to tell grandma, shelikessplendor, but Emmie might have known father would shy awfully at a valet. Sh! here he is!"
Ethan went and sat by Emmie a little while after supper that evening. They were great friends, these two; but somehow Ethan's conversation flagged. For no discoverable reason he had fallen into the clutch of one of those fits of gloomy silence that before he came to the Fort had been growing in frequency and in power to cripple and to numb his spirit. He had just given Emmie an old silver pounce-box that had belonged to some dead and gone Tallmadge, and that Ethan for years had carried in his pocket. Emmie was to keep menthol in it, Ethan said, and to sniff the aromatic remedy through the open-work inner lid of gold. Emmie was delighted at this attention on the part of her cousin, but she glanced up now and then from her occupation of crumbling the menthol into the tiny receptacle, keenly conscious of Ethan's black-browed preoccupation.
"Why do you think so much?" she said.
"Heaven forfend! I never think."
"Oh yes, you do—unless Val's here. Grandma has often said," she continued, with her little air of superiority, "no one can think when Val's in the room."
"Ah," said Ethan to himself, "that's at the bottom of my affection for Val."
If he was unconscious of any change in her enlivening influence in the days following, it did not escape Mrs. Gano that Val's humor was more capricious than her family had been accustomed to find it. The old on-looker at the game could not, of course, know that alone with Ethan the girl was embarrassed, breathless, almost terrified, and yet deliciously happy. She was no sooner alone with him than she wanted to run away—no sooner had she run away than she wanted to go back. When he was present, she was often in the wildest spirits; when he went out of the room, he seemed to take her soul away with him. She sat silent, helpless, till he came again. She seemed to have lost her hitherto unfailing gusto for games and outings. She saw as little as possible of Julia and of Harry Wilbur. She did her lessons absent-mindedly, and was not much heard from in the general family talks. Val! Who had never found it possible before to realize that young people should be seen and not heard! Mrs. Gano had not lived seventy years in the world for nothing. She saw enough of the state of affairs to feel sore at heart for the poor foolish little girl, who was groping her way through her first great initiation into the mystery of mysteries.
For all Mrs. Gano's pride in, and affection for, Ethan, she felt scant patience at his lingering on at the Fort, amusing himself with Val's oddities and adorations, carelessly absorbing her generous capacity for hero-worship, building himself a shrine in her imagination before turning his back upon the Fort, perhaps for another twenty years. It was plain to Mrs. Gano that Ethan was a person exercising no little fascination upon womankind; equally plain was it that the school-girl worship of his little country cousin was in the nature of a smiling incident that could not arrest him long.
"What an absurd infant you are!" she had heard him exclaim.
"I'm not in the very least like an infant," Val had retorted.
"Well, you arequitethe youngest person I've ever known," he assured her.
As Val sat at her lessons in the long room of a morning, Mrs. Gano had no need to look out herself to see, or to ask, who was passing under her windows. If, at the morning's end, the door behind them opened, she saw in Val's face if it were Ethan coming in. Old Jerusha was right—the face was like a lamp, and like an open book the young heart underneath its light.
"John," said Mrs. Gano, at the beginning of the next week, "has Ethan told you how long he means to stay?"
"No."
"H'm! Well, I think you should talk to him about taking life more seriously. He ought not to idle away his youth as he's doing."
"We can't complain that he's idled much of it away here hitherto."
"Why doesn't he prepare himself for some profession?"
"He's done a good deal of preparing. He tells me he's going into politics."
"Humph! politics. When?"
"Well, I dare say when he goes East again."
"I don't approve of idle men."
"No," said John Gano, with some asperity, "I know you don't."
Body-servants and "splendor" were all very well, but it was not pleasing to Mrs. Gano that her only grandson should be regarded even temporarily in the light of that character, looked at askance even in the old unenterprising South, "the gentleman of leisure." In her heart she thought it undignified that Ethan should spend so many mornings playing tennis; that he should laugh and sing with Julia Otway (another victim, plainly) as though amusement were the end of existence. Harry Wilbur, too, who had begun with a good honest detestation of the visitor at the Fort, was at the end of three weeks one of his most ardent friends.
"The Wilburs want cousin Ethan to go and dine withthem on Sunday," Emmie reported. "They simply love him. I don't wonder. He's going to get Harry Wilbur something to do in Boston."
"Humph!" ejaculated Mrs. Gano; "when is he going to get himself something to do?"
Emmie and her cousin continued the best possible friends. No cloud upon that relation, at all events. He had promised to teach her to ride, but Emmie was not strong enough for violent exercise, her grandmother thought, and Emmie herself thought riding must be "awfully scary." Val, in what her elders took to be some unaccountable mood, had also declined to ride, saying, mendaciously, that she had enough riding on Julia's pony. This resulted in Ethan's going out several times with Julia. She was nearly two years older than Val, and "quite the young lady." People began to smile and speculate, and the Otways took to asking Ethan "over."
"Change your mind, Val, and come out with us this morning," Ethan had said, before going off with Julia for that second ride.
"I can't; I have lessons."
"Not to-day," said Mrs. Gano.
"No, it's Saturday. Come, I'll get you a mount."
"No, thank you, father's better now. We're beginning algebra again to-day."
"Algebra!What on earth do you want with—"